“I think I get you,” said Bat Scanlon, slowly. “Check me off, and see if I’m right. This fellow, Alva, is the leader of the party at the inn. He’s done for three of the Campe family already, and is reaching for a fourth. The answer to this, so you tell me, is that his Indian ancestors loved blood spilling, and that the thing’s broke out in him.”
“That’s a part of the answer. It was only after failing in something else, remember, that the murder mania took possession of him. And boasting of his Indian ancestry, as Fuller reports, it is not at all strange that his murderous tendency should find vent in the ancient form.”
Bat nodded.
“But why all the frills? Why this?” touching the drumhead with the toe of his shoe. “Why the execution stone?”
“All part of a system for terrorizing Campe. And you’ve seen how it succeeded. They knew he would understand; through fear of the death which overtook his father, his uncle and his brother, they hoped to bring him to some sort of terms.”
“I see,” said the big man. He stood in silence for a time, apparently digesting what he’d heard; then he asked, curiously: “But how did you drop to all this? How did you begin? How did you work it out?”
“My starting point,” said Ashton-Kirk, “was when you told me the landlord had had the inn only a short time. I knew that if there was a band working on the Campe affair they would have headquarters in the neighbourhood; and what you said looked promising.”
“That’s why you wanted to go there before you tried anything else,” said Mr. Scanlon.
The crime specialist nodded.
“As I told you, the atmosphere of the inn struck me unfavourably as soon as I had a chance to feel it. I got the impression that there was an understanding between the people we saw there; and then it occurred to me that they were fakes; with the exception of Alva there wasn’t a genuine invalid in the lot.”