“But the poison?”
“Had it been poison alone, there might be a question. But that stunning blow has to be remembered. And neither Miss Stuart nor Miss Frayne can be thought of for a moment in connection with that piece of brutality.”
“But the snake? The queer costume?”
“The costume wasn’t so queer—for a boudoir garb. The snake is inexplicable,—unless the man has a disordered mind, and used insane methods to cover his tracks. Then there’s the glove, you can’t get around that!”
“That glove might have been put in her hand by anybody.”
“That’s so! By a professional burglar, say! I really believe——”
“Oh, let up on that professional burglar business! No burglar is going off without his loot, when he has uninterrupted time enough to kill a person twice, with poison and then, to hide that, with a fractured skull! How do you explain, even in theory, those two murderous attacks?”
“Good Lord, man, I don’t know! It’s all the most inexplicable muddle. I don’t see how any of the things could happen, but they did happen! You’re the detective, not I! Aren’t you ever going to discover anything?”
“I may as well own up, Mr. Haviland, I am beyond my depth. There is a belief among detectives that the more bizarre and amazing the clues are, the easier the deduction therefrom. But I don’t believe that. This case is bizarre enough, in all conscience, yet what can one deduce from that paper snake and that squeezed-up glove? It was all up in a little wad, you know, not at all as if it were carelessly drawn from a man’s hand, or pulled off in a struggle.”
“There was no struggle. The features were composed, even almost smiling.”