Quite evidently he disliked the whole subject.
“That leaves still in the net,” he continued, “Wraxall for one. I’m prejudiced in favour of Wraxall; but if he’d planned that theft beforehand, he’d have fixed up some very neat, circumstantial story to account for all his night’s doings, you may be sure. And he undoubtedly had the most complete tale of the lot. I’m morally sure he didn’t do it; but there’s a loop-hole all the same. Besides, we can’t afford to ignore possible motives, and there’s no question that he came here for one purpose only—to get the Talisman. Leave Wraxall in, eh? We’re trying to be inclusive, remember.”
“Wraxall’s a good sort,” was Douglas’s verdict. “I can’t think he’s the man we’re after. But leave him in, since we can’t count him as definitely cleared.”
“Freddie?”
“I’m all for keeping Freddie under observation. I don’t say he took the thing, of course. Can’t go that length. But the line he’s followed all along has been just the sort of thing he might have been expected to do, if he were the man we want. Who would suspect him, when he volunteered as a sleuth from Sleuth Town? Good bit of camouflage for a criminal, I think. And he had a very poor account to give of himself when it came to the pinch, very thin. Freddie stays in, so far as I’m concerned.”
“My feeling too. Well, that leaves only two more, both Dangerfields: Eric and Helga. I’m not an enthusiast for Eric. Rather a rotter, it seems to me. But there’s nothing very definite against him; we agreed on that before.”
“Leave him in, then,” Douglas decided. “We can’t say more than ‘not proven’ for him, can we?”
“That brings us to Helga. I say, Douglas, did you make anything of that affair to-night? The girl wasn’t lying. Neither was Eileen.”
“That was what I felt,” concurred Douglas. “Neither of ’em was lying, to my mind. And yet the thing seems flatly impossible unless one of them was giving the truth a pretty wide miss.”
“It might have been someone else in a similar dressing-gown,” suggested Westenhanger, half-heartedly.