“All right.” Belknap was already absorbed in the loose papers scattered on the desk. “Several notes from ladies.”
“Yes, I noticed them. Old Gleason had a few friends in the chorus, I judge. But, unless they have any bearing on the case, there’s no call to exploit ’em, eh?”
“No, of course not. Nor any reason to mention them to the Lindsays.”
“They’ll know all there is to know. You can’t fool ’em. Miss Phyllis is as wide-awake as they come, and the Mrs is nobody’s fool. The boy, I don’t think much of. Say, aren’t you going up there? Don’t you want to see them?”
“Later, yes. But me for the other tenants here, first. Here’s where Gleason lay, was it? Near the telephone table—look here, if the first shot did for him, how could he telephone to the doctor that he was wounded?”
“Oh, I don’t know! I don’t believe that dope about the doctors knowing which shot came first. And, as you say, it couldn’t have been the fatal one first, or how could he have phoned? Anyway he could only have called the doctor if it was a suicide. You don’t think, do you, that the murderer would stand by and let him call up!”
“Scarcely. That’s why I haven’t given up the idea that it was a suicide.”
“Never mind, Oscar, you will. Why, that man was too happy to kill himself. His friends all say so. No, he was shot, all right, but the two shots make a mystery that I can’t get yet.”
Belknap frowned deeply, and thought for a few moments.
“Great mistake,” he said at last, “to reason from insufficient data.”