“Why?” exclaimed Mr. Garson in amazement.
“Listen. He addressed it with a very soft pencil to himself, and traced the address very lightly. It reached his boarding-house Monday morning, of course, and then he erased the pencil-marks and boldly wrote Mr. Hemmingway’s name in ink. Then he cut off the end, in precisely the way Mr. Hemmingway opens his letters, and put the whole thing in his pocket. All day he carried it in his pocket (I am reconstructing this affair as it must have happened), and at four o’clock he went home with the missive still there.
“Late Monday night he returned. After the three visitors had left, he strangled Mr. Hemmingway. You know he’s an athlete, and his employer was a frail old man.
“And _then_ he used the rubber stamp on his own letter and tucked it into the bunch of ‘To be answered.’ Then he rifled the safe, with Mr. Hemmingway’s own keys, turned off all the lights but one and swiftly and silently went home to bed. The rest you know.”
“Mr. Bayliss, I can scarcely believe this!” said Inspector Garson, fairly gasping for breath.
“What, you can’t believe it when the villain has written his own name as damning evidence against himself?”
“It must be,” said the inspector, again scrutinizing the faint trace of pencil-marks. “But why did he do it?”
“Because he wanted to be executor and thus be able to convert into cash the securities he has stolen.”
“He returned those.”
“Only a few. Oh, it was a clever and deep-laid scheme! Fiske has quantities of bonds and other valuable papers entirely unaccounted for and which, as sole executor, he can cash at his leisure, all unknown to any one.”