"Howe's importance arises from the peculiar acoustics of that portion of the Nettleton Building about Doctor Westbrook's office." Converse then told of his experience with Lynden in the Doctor's laboratory, concluding: "It is not at all surprising that Howe could not hear a struggle in the hall, while, at the same time, he could hear such faint sounds as the scratching of a pen and the rustling of paper while the Doctor was writing in the reception-room.
"As for Lynden, we have to show he so quickened his pace that he overtook De Sanchez at Doctor Westbrook's door. He shared with all the frequenters of the Doctor's office a knowledge of the dagger and where it usually reposed. Under such a theory, however, Lynden's actions would have displayed a carelessness and a reckless disregard for consequences which I don't think the man capable of. He did not know who had or had not gone home from the other offices that line the hall, and the deceased was not surprised by the sudden onrush of a determined murderer. Had such been the case, how about Doctor Westbrook's statement that De Sanchez came on steadily to the reception-room door?—for, singularly enough, in the reception-room one can hear quite distinctly sounds arising in the hall. Besides, the Doctor does not remember having heard Lynden at all until the young man grasped his arm."
"Well, now, tell us of the cigarette stubs." This from the District Attorney.
Converse picked them both up, one in each hand, and contemplated them with uplifted brow and puckered lips.
"Gentlemen," he began at length, "these two snipes have caused me more mental worry—I have had more trouble in fitting them into any place where they could belong—than anything else concerning this case.
"You will observe that both of them are but half consumed, and that when rolled neither was moistened by the tongue to hold it together. Any one who has travelled in Mexico or the extreme Southwest will recognize this as a national and local characteristic. The paper of both is identical—coarse and a dark brown; and the tobacco is from a black Mexican growth. I suppose, outside the Mexican quarter you could not find a man in the city who smokes such a cigarette—excepting Vargas. It is just such a cigarette as nine out of ten of the lower class of Mexicans—men, women, and children—smoke. Yet the tastes of neither De Sanchez nor Vargas were too fastidious for them; the papers and tobacco are identical with those found in the deceased's pocket, and they are just like those Mr. Vargas smokes.
"The first I picked up near the top of the Nettleton Building stairway, while I was accompanying Lynden to Doctor Westbrook's offices; the second I found on the skylight at the bottom of the light-well. The ends that had been held in the mouth were still moist when I found them, so they had not been long discarded. De Sanchez, of course, is responsible for the first; but how about the other? Could he, after throwing one cigarette away at the point where I found the first, roll and light another and smoke it half up as he walked down the hall, then flip the second out the hall window into the light-well just before turning toward the Doctor's door? I believe not.
"The second could have come from any window abutting upon the light-well, of either the Field or the Nettleton Buildings. But who threw it, and why was he there at that particular time? Well, it took two men more than an hour this morning to eliminate all except five windows out of a possible twenty; and those five told nothing. I examined them myself. Yet it might be possible that the second stub came from the unknown woman.
"Did she steady her nerves and beguile the time until her victim's approach, with a cigarette? It may be—"
Here, for the first time, Mr. Merkel interrupted.