"That's it, get chairs 'for the ladies, Jimmy. Miss Carewe needs one. Now, ma'am, take it easy. -You others, shut up!" He turned savagely as Maurice came forward in a cold rage.
"What I'm doin'," he continued almost affably, "is broadening the whole field again after you'd narrowed it down. I'll let you sorta guess for yourselves, before I prove it, which person in the house came into this room and smashed in Tait's head with. Humph. No; we won't mention the weapon just yet.
"Now we've already heard two very interestin' theories about how the murderer worked. Both of 'em happened to be wrong. But the interest lay in the occasional glimmer of reason and truth that appeared in each and had just sufficient plausibility to lead the guesser in the wrong direction. I been sittin' and thinkin' about this thing, and, burn me, the longer I sit and think the more it occurs to me as a miracle that nobody thought of an obvious explanation which would have avoided all the hocus-pocus and camel-swallowin' of the other two.
"So here's what I mean to do. I'm goin' to hold a little class in what I'll call Imaginative Common Sense. I got another witness besides myself to a certain thing that happened a few minutes ago; so I needn't worry about bein' able to hang the murderer, and I can make this killer squirm a little while I ask my class questions. Ho ho. First, then, I'm goin' simply to state a few clear facts which everybody knows and everybody admits. Second, in case you haven't tumbled to it by that time, I'll state my suggested explanation. Third, nil support if by plagiarizin' the few good wild words of truth from the other two explanations, and complete the pie with a little deduction of my own.
"Um. Now lemme see." With the pipe upside down in his. mouth, he drowsily held up his blunt fingers and checked them off. "Quite a little time before midnight last night, Tait began to get nervous and impatient, and began to ask to be taken out to the pavilion. That's admitted, ain't it? She was taken out there at a little past midnight, and was even more impatient. When Willard went out for a sociable chat a bit afterwards, she shooed him out. Point o' fact, as Masters reported it to me, Willard said that she went several times into the drawin'-room of the pavilion and looked out the front windows. Hey?"
"Quite," said Willard dryly. "But don't you think this restating of facts has become a bit monotonous by this time?"
"Uh-huh. Burn me, that's what makes me despair of your intellects) I think that at one place John Bohun said his appointment with Canifest was early in the evening, and at another place he said it was at ten o'clock. Now, we won't argue about that. We'll say the appointment (at the newspaper office) was at the rather later instance of ten o'clock. You still don't seem to get it through your heads that, even if it was as late as that, by all rights he should have been back here by midnight at the latest! We're lookin' at it from Tait's viewpoint, who never has been kept waitin' by anybody and don't intend to start it now. We're lookin' at it from the viewpoint of a woman whose life-and-death interests are centered in the news Bohun'll bring back from, town, and who ain't likely to be in a patient mood. If you'll admit she was restless at half past eleven and at midnight, how restless do you think she would have been at half-past twelve? And another half-hour passes, until one o'clock, and still he's not appeared. What's her state of mind then?
"But I won't diverge yet from statin' facts. We know, don't we, that you, can see the windows of this room-the back windows of this room-?' he pointed with his pipe, "from the pavilion? Uh-huh. We also know that several times, while Willard was with her, she ran into the front room of the pavilion to look out? Quite. Finally, we know that at one o'clock, when she must 'a' been a bit furious with impatience, a light went on in this room."
Maurice, who was sitting bolt upright in a narrow chair, jabbed his stick against the floor. He said gently: "Most extraordinary. Surely you know that it has no significance? Surely you know that the light was turned on only by Thompson, who put it on for John's return when he set out sandwiches and prepared the room?"
"Sure I know it," agreed H. M. "Thompson told me. But how was Tait goin' to know that? Here's a man she's waitin' for, who is already an hour overdue. A light goes on in his room. But does he come down to see her, as he's supposed to do as soon as he returns? No. On the contrary, my lad, this light continues to burn strongly and brightly; and for another half-hour a woman who's already got the wind up pretty thoroughly is still required to wait while nobody shows”