“Well, Barbara behaved like an absolute thoroughbred. In fact, she told him, in so many words, to go to the devil; she wouldn’t dream of involving me in the affair, and as for her and her mother, they’d have to take what was coming to them if he chose to behave in such a damnable way, but they’d take it alone. Great Scott, she was wonderful! She practically defied him to do his worst, and said that she was going to break off her engagement to me the very next morning. Then she sailed out of the room with her head in the air, leaving him sitting there. No tears, no entreaties; simply the most overwhelming contempt. Roger, she was just marvellous!”
“I can believe you,” Roger said simply. “What happened then?”
“I came out again. I think I meant to kill Stanworth then if I got a chance to do so without making a worse mess of things. Remember, I knew already to what lengths he was ready to push the wretched women that he had in his clutches, and though Barbara would certainly never give way to him an inch, I wasn’t so sure about Mrs. Shannon. Well, there was the safe still open, and there was Stanworth sitting in his chair with the revolver in his hand. He looked at me with a grin as I appeared, and said he hoped I hadn’t been too bored. I walked straight up to him without a word (I was beyond talking by then), and I suppose he could see from my face what I had in mind. Anyhow, when I was only a few feet away he whipped up the revolver and fired. Luckily he missed, and I heard the vase shatter behind me. I lunged forward, grabbed his wrist and used all my strength to twist it round till the muzzle was pointing straight at his own forehead. Then I simply tightened my finger over his on the trigger and shot him.
“I didn’t stop to think what I was doing, or anything like that; I hardly imagine I was capable of thought at the moment. I just knew that Stanworth had got to be killed, in the same way that one knows that a mad dog or a rat or any other vermin has got to be killed. In fact, once he was dead, I hardly paid any more attention to him at all. He was a filthy thing wiped out, and that’s all there was about it. I never felt, nor have felt since, a single moment’s compunction. I suppose it’s curious in a way.”
“You’d have been a sentimental fool if you had,” Roger said with decision.
“Well, I suppose I’m not a sentimental fool then,” Alec replied with a slight smile; “for I most certainly haven’t. Well, as soon as the man was dead I became as cool as ice. I knew exactly, almost without thinking about it, what had got to be done. First of all, and in case I was interrupted, the evidence in the safe had got to be destroyed, and then I had to make my escape. It didn’t take long to burn the documents in the safe. There was one shelf full of them, all done up in envelopes inscribed with various addresses; about sixteen or seventeen altogether, I suppose. I burnt them in the hearth without opening them, and just ran through the contents of the other shelves to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything.
“Up till then, mind, it had never occurred to me that the case would ever appear to be anything but murder; and if it was traced back to me, I should simply say that I had shot him in self-defence, after he had first shot at me. I would have gone to the police straight away and told them the whole thing, if it wasn’t that that would have given away the facts of blackmail, which it was of course essential to hush up. Then I glanced at the chair in which he was lying, and it struck me that he looked exactly as if he had shot himself, so I began to wonder if I couldn’t make the whole thing look like suicide.
“I knew you weren’t such a blithering fool as you’ve been trying to make yourself out to be for the last forty-eight hours——”
Roger interjected, “Yes?”
“Well, the whole finished effect didn’t occur to me at once. I started off by shutting the safe and putting the keys back in his waistcoat pocket; the wrong pocket, as it turned out afterwards. Then I cleared up the bits of vase and shoved them into my pocket for the time being, and examined the revolver in Stanworth’s hand. To my joy, I found that I could get at the chamber and extract the first shell without loosening his grip, which I proceeded to do. You were right about my knowledge of lattice windows. I knew that trick with the handle when I was a boy, and patted myself on the back when I realised how I could get out of the room and leave everything locked behind me. Lord, I never thought anyone would spot that!”