“Yessir, that’s what I’m bankin’ on. You see, Mr. Patterson, now—he’s over head and ears in debt to Embury. He was against Embury for club president. He was present at the henbane discussion. And—he’s an habitual buyer of raspberry jam.”
“Some counts,” and Fleming Stone looked thoughtful. “But not entirely convincing. How’d he get in?”
“You know his apartment is directly beneath the Embury apartment—but two floors below.”
“Might as well be ten floors below. How could he get in?”
“Somebody got in, Mr. Stone. You know as well as I do, that neither Mrs. Embury nor Miss Ames committed that murder. We must face that.”
“Nor did Ferdinand do it. I’ll go you all those assumptions.”
“All right, sir; then somebody got in from the outside.”
“How?”
“Mr. Stone, haven’t you ever read detective stories where a murder was committed in a room that was locked and double-locked and yet somebody did get in—and the fun of the story is guessing how he got in.”
“Fiction, my boy, is one thing—fact is another.”