“Could it be that some enemy of yours, Otis, knowing that you had been chosen to—to invite him to leave the country, had killed him with the object of throwing the blame on you?”
“I’ve thought of that,” Otis replied. “For a time I believed that might be the real solution of the case. But the one thing that disproves it is Fyffe’s own writing on the floor. I can swear that’s his writing. Then why, if the chief or even the incidental motive was to cast suspicion on me, should Joe Fyffe himself name me as his murderer?”
Mariel, puzzled, shook her head. “Let’s go over this thing bit by bit. Let’s recreate the scene of the crime, just as it was at the time you entered the cabin. Please show me just where and how the—the body lay, and what details of the room, if any, differ from the way you found it when you entered.”
Otis flung himself face down upon the floor over the hole in the planking.
“This is where we found him,” he explained. “You can see part of the outline of the pool of blood, under my arms here. The message, which was covered with blood at first, was, of course, written here upon the plank which the deputy tore up.”
He rose to his knees and went on: “Right about here, say eighteen inches from his hand, we found the stub of the pencil he had used.
“It seems he had rushed into the cabin, clutched at the phone, knocking his camera off the table, and then had sunk to the floor, probably with the telephone instrument still in his hands.
“We found the telephone hanging from the cord. The camera was on the floor under the table—at least Deputy Markey told us he had found it there, and had replaced it on the table.”
“Then the actual shooting happened outside the cabin?” Mariel asked.