“Who was occupying that room?” repeated Quimby in augmented interest. “The room he stopped at and whose door he tried.”
“I—I don’t know,” stammered Clive. “And it’s of no importance anyhow. I mentioned it to prove Vail could be corroborated in part of his account of how he spent the night, and that if part of his story was true it all was true. He—”
“I don’t agree with you that it’s ‘of no importance,’ whose locked door he tried to open,” snapped the chief. “It is highly important in every way. If—”
“Then I can clear up the mystery,” said Vail wearily. “My own bedroom is next to Creede’s. That is the room in which Chase was sleeping.”
“Ah! Then—”
“Only,” pursued Vail, “my loyal friend here is mistaken in saying I tried the door. I didn’t try that or any other door.”
“I never said you did, Thax!” protested Clive eagerly. “I said I heard a rattle, as if a door was being tried. It may have been a door somewhere rattling in the wind, or it may have been—”
“On a windless night?” cut in the chief. “Or did the killer of Willis Chase try first to get into his room by way of the door and then, finding that locked, enter the room later by the open window? In that case—”
“Shame!”
It was Doris Lane who broke in furiously upon the chief’s deductions.