“I certainly am, Fibs. And yet, the thing is so absolutely impossible that there must be a solution within easy reach. It can’t be suicide, with the weapon gone, and it can’t be murder with the room locked up. Now, as it must be either suicide or murder, then it follows, that either the weapon isn’t gone, or the room isn’t locked up.”
“Wasn’t, you mean.”
“Yes, wasn’t. But I don’t yet think that any one disturbed the conditions purposely. For why would the secretary take away the weapon to make it seem a suicide—”
“He would if he did it.”
“He didn’t do it. Trask sees that. The man Trask is a sharp one. He sees all there is to see, and since there’s practically nothing to see that solves the mystery, he sent for me. It would be a good one on me, Terence, if I have to give the thing up as unsolvable.”
“That won’t happen, F. Stone, but I’m free to confess, I can’t see any way to look.”
The next morning, Maurice Trask went over to the Adams house, and brought Miss Mystery back with him.
She came willingly enough, and the interview with the detective took place in the room of the tragedy itself.
Stone noticed that the girl showed no horror or distaste of the scene, and even sat in the chair he placed for her, which was the same plush-covered one that had received the tell-tale imprints.
Fleming Stone regarded Miss Austin curiously. Not only was her beauty all that Trask had described it, but there was an added quality of fineness, a trace of high mentality, that naturally enough Maurice Trask quite overlooked.