“Do about it? Forget it, of course. I told you my views just now, when I said the man who killed Stanworth ought to be acclaimed as a public benefactor. As that is unfortunately out of the question, the next best thing is to forget as diligently as possible that Stanworth did not after all shoot himself, as everybody else believes.”
“Humph!” said Alec, gazing out of the window. “I wonder! You’re really sure of that?”
“Absolutely,” said Roger with decision. “Anything else would be ludicrous under the circumstances. We won’t discuss that side of it again.”
There was a little pause.
“The—the second woman,” Alec said tentatively. “How were you able to identify her so positively?”
Roger drew the envelope out of his breast pocket, opened it, and carefully extracted the hair. He laid it across his knee for the moment and contemplated it in silence. Then with a sudden movement he picked it up and threw it through the open window.
“There goes a vital piece of evidence,” he said with a smile. “Well, for one thing, there was nobody else in the house with just that particular shade of hair, was there?”
“I suppose not,” Alec replied.
There was another silence, rather longer this time.
Then Roger, glancing curiously across at his companion, remarked very airily: