“But what reason is there in that?” exclaimed Morton. “Even a lunatic murderer wouldn’t mark his victim by means of a tumbler rim.”
Absorbedly, he picked up a tumbler from the water tray, and fitted it to the red mark on Waring’s forehead.
“It doesn’t fit exactly,” he said, “but it does almost.”
“Rubbish!” said Gordon Lockwood, in his superior way. “Why would any one mark Doctor Waring’s face with a tumbler?”
“Yet it has been marked,” Morton looked at the secretary sharply. “Can you suggest any explanation—however difficult of belief?”
“No,” Lockwood said. “Unless he fell over on some round thing as he died.”
“There’s nothing here,” said Morton, scanning the furnishings of the desk “The inkstand is closed—and it’s a smaller round, anyway. There’s no one of these desk fittings that could possibly have made that mark. Therefore, since it was made before death, it must have been done by the murderer.”
“Or by the suicide,” Lockwood insisted firmly.
Morton, looking at the secretary, decided to keep an eye on this cool chap, who must have some reason for repeating his opinion of suicide.
“Now,” the detective said, briskly, “to get to business, I must make inquiries of the family—the household. Suppose I see them in some other room—”