“Why, you’ve got the club.”
“Yes, yes; but you don’t tell me that the murderer carried that immense unwieldy thing up two flights of stairs, when he might easily have been seen. No, Prinsep wasn’t killed with that club. George Brooklyn was; but it was some other weapon that killed Prinsep.”
“There’s the knife,” suggested the inspector. “But you have that too.”
“Really, inspector, you are unusually thick-headed this morning. The man wasn’t killed with a knife. He was killed with a blow on the back of the head, delivered with some heavy blunt instrument. Isn’t that what the doctors said?”
“Quite. If it wasn’t the club, I suppose the murderer carried the weapon away.”
“I suppose he may have done, as you did not find it. You are sure there was no object in the room that might have been used as a weapon.”
“None at all, I think. The stick belonging to Walter Brooklyn could not have made the wound, I am told—nor any of the other sticks for that matter. It looked much more like a case of sand-bagging, now I think of it in this light.”
“Well, inspector, I’m not satisfied, and I feel sure you will not object if I do a bit of investigation on my own.”
“Are you taking the case out of my hands, sir?”
“No, no. I want you to carry on, and especially to find out what these young people—Miss Cowper and Ellery—are doing. There are only two or three points on which I want to satisfy myself personally.”