‘Sawdust!’ he exclaimed.
‘Sawdust,’ returned the other, in a pleased and important tone. ‘See here,’—he traced a circle on the floor—‘sawdust has been spilled over all this, and there’s where the cask stood beside it. I tell you, Burnley, mark my words, we are on to it now. That’s where the cask stood while Felix, or Boirac, or both of them together, packed the body into it.’
‘By Jove!’ Burnley cried again, as he turned over this new idea in his mind. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if you are right!’
‘Of course I’m right. The thing’s as plain as a pike-staff. A woman disappears and her body is found packed in sawdust in a cask, and here, in the very house where she vanishes, is the mark of the same cask—a very unusual size, mind you—as well as traces of the sawdust.’
‘Ay, it’s likely enough. But I don’t see the way of it for all that. If Felix did it, how could he have got the cask here and away again?’
‘It was probably Boirac.’
‘But the alibi? Boirac’s alibi is complete.’
‘It’s complete enough, so far as that goes. But how do we know it’s true? We have had no real confirmation of it so far.’
‘Except from François. If either Boirac or Felix did it, François must have been in it, too, and that doesn’t strike me as likely.’
‘No, I admit the old chap seems all right. But if they didn’t do it, how do you account for the cask being here?’