H. M. blinked at him.
"Do you think, my amiable dotard," he growled, "they wouldn't have seen the light just the same? Didn't you and me ourselves see a light, through those slits in the Venetian blind, when Willard turned one on this afternoon in the drawin'-room? Y'know, it's a funny thing how every one of the answers to all these questions had been repeated before our eyes to sorta help us along. Quit interruptin', will you? Dammit, I'm in full stride and enjoyin' myself..
"He struck matches while he tipped things over, smashed glasses, took off the woman's fur coat and stowed away her galoshes in the closet where I went lookin' for 'em. He didn't have anything to simulate a weapon with, although he tried to make it seem like the poker. I could tell it wasn't; no blood or hair. He put her on the floor after a couple of minutes of crazy work. Then he went to the door, saw Locker over across the way; hailed him; strolled back, uttered a rather unnecessary yell which didn't sound like Bohun at all and made me suspicious to begin with. Rushin' back to the door, he meets Jim Bennett comin' down the lawn…
"By the way, I hear he had blood on his hands then. Didn't that seem fishy to you, son — sticky blood, although the woman had been murdered some hours before? It didn't mean he'd killed her. It meant he'd heavily yanked or disturbed the body somehow, such as he wouldn't have done merely by examinin' it; he'd disturbed clots and released something, although the heart had stopped pumpin' and it wasn't fresh-"
Somebody cried out. H. M. glanced at them as though he held a whip.
"Then," he went on heavily, "he was ready. The feller was clever in everything but one. He forgot about the snow. Do you wonder he was shaken up when Jim Bennett pointed it out; and he yelled out that it didn't mean anything? Do you see why he could afford to laugh when Willard suggested Tait's murder at the pavilion meant an assignation there last night? An assignation, lads, yet the blind wasn't even pulled down on a towerin' window! hadn't that feature struck anybody's boarding-house mind? Never mind. He thought he'd covered everything up. Now he could announce to everybody that he'd arrived home here a good deal earlier than he actually had. He could say he didn't kill Canifest because he was here before the time 'Canifest was knocked off. "
Maurice Bohun began to laugh; a thin, malicious laughter that convulsed his shoulders.
"Quite, Sir Henry," he said. "But I should fancy — in fact I do fancy — that's exactly where your theory comes crashing down. Most interesting! You proclaim the spotless innocence of my brother. You say he did all these things for one express purpose. That purpose had two parts: the first, which I concede you readily, was to shift Marcia's body so that he would not be thought guilty by having it found in his room. But the second part-to lie about the time he had actually arrived home — utterly destroys your whole case. He did not lie about the time he arrived home. In fact, what you have done is to build up a brilliant and almost unanswerable case against my poor brother as the murderer. He arrived at shortly after three o'clock. Just a few minutes afterwards, by medical testimony, Marcia was murdered. Well?"
"Exactly," said H. M. "That's what makes me absolutely certain, son, that he didn't commit the murder."
"What? I do not think, Sir Henry," said Maurice, suddenly checking his rage, "this is precisely the time for talking nonsense. "