“Yes; and this was a good clock?”
“Yes.”
“Yet the alarm had not been shut off?”
“I didn’t notice... well, no, I guess not. It was completely run down.”
“Yes,” Mason said. “Now, is it your experience, Sergeant, as an expert interpreter of circumstantial evidence, that a sleeper permits an alarm to run entirely down before shutting it off?”
“Some people sleep more soundly than others,” Sergeant Holcomb said.
“Exactly,” Mason agreed, “but when a man is aroused by an alarm clock, his first natural reflex is to turn off the alarm — that is, if the alarm is within reaching distance, isn’t that right?”
“Well, you can’t always figure that way,” Sergeant Holcomb said, his face slowly darkening in color. “Some people go back to sleep after they shut off an alarm, so they deliberately put the alarm clock where they can’t get at it.”
“I understand that,” Mason said, “but in this case the alarm was placed within easy reach of the sleeper, apparently for the purpose of enabling the sleeper to shut off the alarm clock just as soon as it had wakened him, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, I guess so.”