I cast a hasty glance about at our little audience. Doyle was hushed, now. This was far beyond him. Leslie was deeply interested. Doctor Lathrop had moved closer to Honora on the other side of Shattuck, as if to reassure her.
Kennedy, too, was studying attentively the effect of his revelation both on Honora and the others.
Honora, her shoulders bent with the outpouring of the long-suppressed emotion of the examination, called for sympathy.
Shattuck saw it, saw the distress she so plainly showed.
"Kennedy," he exclaimed, unable to restrain himself longer, pushing aside Doctor Lathrop, as he placed himself between her and the man whom he regarded now as her tormentor, "Kennedy—you are a faker—nothing but a damned dream doctor—in scientific disguise."
"Perhaps," smiled Kennedy, unaffected by the threat. "But let me finish. Then you may think differently."
He turned deliberately from Shattuck to the rest of us.
"What happened at that office the fatal night was this," he shot out. "There was a woman there. But from what I deduce, it was not Honora Wilford. It must have been Vina Lathrop!"
I felt a shock of surprise. Yet, after all, I had to admit that there was nothing improbable about it.
"Later," he resumed, "someone else did enter that office. In all probability that person did hold up Vail Wilford, with a gun perhaps, just about as we have heard described. The Calabar bean was cut in half, undoubtedly. You will see from the facts in the case that it must have been so. Probably, too, each wrote a suicide note—on the typewriter—either to save the survivor, or at the dictation of the person who survived. Each must have eaten half of the bean.