“What did you see?”
Douglas lit a cigarette before replying.
“Last night,” he went on, “while you and Eileen were wandering around outside, admiring the moon after dinner, our three pariahs—Freddie, Morchard, and Mrs. Scorton—got up a little game of cut-throat. I expect they felt a bit chary of asking any of the rest of us to make up a four. At any rate, they were playing three-handed, and I happened to be sitting across the room. I wasn’t so engrossed in Cynthia’s conversation that I couldn’t keep one eye on their table now and again.”
“Get on with it,” advised Westenhanger.
“Now this is what I saw,” continued Douglas, seriously. “Freddie and Morchard are normal, beyond a doubt. I watched ’em very carefully, and that’s a cert. But the fair lady deals with her left hand. Strange I never noticed it before; but one seldom looks at a dealer, except casually, I suppose. However, there it is.”
Westenhanger considered the matter for a time without comment.
“There’s no motive,” he concluded. Then his memory spontaneously threw up the incident of Eileen Cressage’s mirror. “But perhaps that’s where we went wrong. We’ve been on the hunt for a motive the whole time, Douglas. What about scrapping that notion and trying kleptomania for a change?”
“I was just working up to that point myself.”
“Well, Eileen’s silver mirror was taken from her room the other day. That’s another motiveless affair—even more so than the Talisman.”
“Ah, that puts a new face on things. I didn’t know about that. And I can put something else in the kitty, judging from that. Mrs. Brent’s gold wrist-watch has gone astray. She’s been hunting for it all over the place. Of course I never thought of it having been taken. But this mirror-affair connects ’em up nicely. It’s just the pointless sort of snatching that one might expect, if your notion’s right.”