“Money. That young man is over head and ears in debt.”
“To whom?”
“To shops—jewelers, florists, restaurants. All the debts a gay young blade would incur.”
“You amaze me, Morton. Lockwood isn’t that sort.”
“Isn’t he? You’re deceived, like every one else, by that icy calm of his. He stares haughtily, and appears above and beyond ordinary mortals, but he’s deep. That’s what he is, deep.”
“Well, how did he do it?”
“With his penholder. A smooth, sharp silver penholder. And he took the money and the ruby.”
“And how did he leave the room?”
“Don’t ask me that! That’s his secret. But, I’ve a notion he was in cahoots with that new Jap, the one that vamoosed. I theorize,” Morton waxed important as he noted the Prosecutor’s attention, “that the Jap had some grudge against Waring, and it was he who branded his forehead, and who contrived a way to leave the room locked behind him. Why, I read a story the other day, where a key was turned from the other side of a door by means of a slender steel bar through the key handle, and a string from the bar, leading down and under the door. Once outside, the murderer pulled the string, the bar turned the key in the lock, the bar fell to the floor and he dragged it under the door by means of the string.”
“Ingenious! but it implies a door raised from the floor.”