“You seem to forget,” I continued, “and of this fact I am quite certain, that the victim met his death while wholly or partly unconscious.”
Merritt gave a slight start, and his face fell.
“The autopsy must have been made by this time. Did not the doctor find traces of alcohol or a drug?” I demanded.
“Yes,” admitted the detective, “alcohol was found in large quantities.”
“Now, Greywood had been dining quietly with a lady, and it is inconceivable that he could have been drunk, or that, being in that condition, she should not have noticed it, which she could not have done—otherwise she would certainly not have allowed him to go up-stairs with her.”
“That is a good point,” said the detective.
“Besides, the corpse bears every indication of prolonged dissipation. Now, no one has hinted that Greywood drank.”
“No, but he may have done so, for all that,” said Mr. Merritt.
“He could not have done so to the extent of leaving such traces after death without its being widely known,” I asserted. “The dead man must have been an habitual drunkard, remember, and that the young artist certainly was not. No, if you persist in believing the murdered man to be Greywood, you must also believe that Miss Derwent lured him to her rooms, while he was so intoxicated as to be almost, if not quite helpless, and there, either killed him herself or allowed her brother to kill him. In the latter case, do you not think a lady’s hat-pin rather a feeble weapon for a young desperado to select? And that that description can be applied to Allan Derwent, everything I have heard of him tends to show.