"Why was she so long suspecting Janet?"
"Huh? Well—if a murder is committed are you apt to suspect a person you've known as well as you know yourself for twenty-five years? I've been wondering what first directed Ocky's suspicion to her companion, and I think I have the answer. The other day when Sherwood was describing the actions of the monk at the time of the murder, Ocky suddenly revealed a tremendous lot of emotion; depend upon it, something he said then must have given her a clue to the truth. And the incident of the fingerprints on the notebook—change one woman for the other and that is explained! It was not the cautious Janet that found the book in Ocky's bureau—it was the heedless Ocky who found it somewhere among Janet's things and never stopped to think that she was leaving prints when she picked it up!"
"But—this playing Destiny, as you call it. Ocky could do that without fear of the consequences, since she believed her days to be numbered, but could Janet?"
"Why not?" Creighton's voice was still confident but he had begun to look askance at his friend as he caught a hint of something more serious behind this inquisition. "Haven't we an explanation for that in Kitty's telegram? She says 'Janet seemed to go mad'. Isn't that the whole story after all? Janet was unbalanced; she pondered the cussedness of Varr; she fell victim to an obsession. She began to picture herself as a scourge of the unrighteous—she probably read up on Jael and Charlotte Corday and women like that. Her brain cracked. I'm not romancing, either. History is full of cold-blooded murders committed from motives of altruism. Common enough, both the cause and effect. Anyway, we have Janet's full confession coming to us—" He broke off short at an involuntary movement on the part of his friend—and abruptly a fear crept into his eyes. "Krech—what are you thinking of?"
"The same thing you are, Creighton."
"Put it into words!" commanded the detective fiercely.
"You've done it yourself. You have pointed out that the two women are interchangeable. So they are—even to the point where each makes what is tantamount to a dying statement! Ocky's confession was convincing when you heard it, wasn't it? Janet's will be equally so when it arrives. Creighton—which are we to believe?"
"That's it!" whispered Creighton. "That's it!"
The big man came back slowly from the desk. They stared at each other blankly. The light had gone from the detective's eyes, the new born life from his limbs. He felt weak and beaten as he contemplated this fresh perplexity. He moistened his lips before he could speak.
"It—it seems to resolve itself into a problem in psychology," he said wearily. "No definite, tangible proof either way. Janet was perhaps the more likely of the two to commit murder—I know something of that dour Scotch temperament and its slow-burning fire that suddenly explodes into flame. She traveled with Ocky and imbibed her own share of Oriental fatalism. On the other hand, Ocky was far the cleverer of the two, there's no denying that. Hers would be the brain more apt to conceive the masquerade of the monk, the promotion of the strike, the concoction of that note with its queer phrases—'stiff-necked son of Belial', 'thunderbolts of wrath'—all that stuff. Yet again, those are just the expressions Janet might use if she were afflicted with a semi-religious mania! But Ocky was better equipped mentally to carry the scheme through, that took a cool head, and Janet, from Kitty's account, was rather of the emotional, high-strung, hysterical type. Oh—!" Creighton raised his two hands and dropped them despairingly. "Krech—I'm just going around in circles!"