"Murder?" interrupted The Thinking Machine. "Might it not have been suicide?"
"Might have been; yes," said the reporter, after a moment's pause. "But it appears to be murder."
"When you say it is murder," said The Thinking Machine, "you immediately give the impression that you were there and saw it. Go on."
From the beginning, then, Hatch told the story as he knew it; of the stopping of The Green Dragon at the Monarch Inn, of the events there, of the whereabouts of Curtis and Reid at the time the girl received the knife thrust and of the confirmation of Reid's story. Then he detailed those incidents of the arrival of the men with the girl at Dr. Leonard's house, of what had transpired there, of the effort Curtis had made to get possession of the knife.
With finger tips pressed together and squinting steadily upward, The Thinking Machine listened. At its end, which bore on the actions of Curtis just preceding his appearance in the room with them, The Thinking Machine arose and walked over to the couch where Curtis lay. He ran his slender fingers idly through the unconscious man's thick hair several times.
"Doesn't it strike you as perfectly possible, Mr. Hatch," he asked finally, "that Miss Melrose _did_ kill herself?"
"It may be perfectly possible, but it doesn't appear so," said Hatch. "There was no motive."
"And certainly you've shown no motive for anything else," said the other, crustily. "Still," he mused, "I really can't say anything until I talk to him."
He again turned to his patient, and as he looked saw the red blood surge back into the face.
"Ah, now we're all right," he announced.