“Oh, it must have been prearranged,” said Bates, thoughtfully. “There’s not the slightest doubt,” he went on hurriedly, “that whoever killed him,—man, woman or child!—came in from the street to do the deed.”
“Why, of course,” agreed Miss Prall; “where else could they have come from? Nobody in the house would do it!”
“No; I suppose not,” admitted Corson. “Well, then, ma’am, we have the assassin coming in from the street, while Moore is upstairs. And, according to the victim’s own statement, the assassin was feminine and there were two, at least, of them. For I’ve studied that paper, and it says, clearly, ‘women did this.’ Want to see it?” his hand went toward his breast pocket.
“No,—oh, no,” and Miss Prall shuddered.
“Well, supposing a couple of women came in, having, we’ll say, watched their chance, what more likely than that it was two chickens,—beg pardon, ma’am, that means gay young ladies,—with whom Sir Herbert had been dining? Why, like as not they came in with him. They didn’t hang round outside waiting for him. You see, they’d been with him, and he had in some way offended them, let us say, and they wanted to kill him——”
“Seems to me you’re drawing a long bow,” and Bates almost smiled at the mental picture of two gay chorus girls committing the gruesome deed.
Corson spoke seriously. “No, Mr Bates, I’m not. If we take this written paper at its face value, and I don’t know why we shouldn’t, it means that women killed that man. And if women, who more likely than the chorus girls? Unless you people up here can suggest some other women,—some, any women in the man’s private life who wished to do him harm or who wished him out of the way. That’s why I’m here, to learn anything and all things you may know that might aid me in a search for the right women—the women who really killed him. Chorus girls are wholly supposititious. But the real women, the women who are the criminals, must and shall be found!”