“Are these the gloves with which you filched Miss Mdevani’s pistol and handled the paper knife against Blake?”
“I didn’t kill Blake.”
And so on, over and over, with Crawford’s voice dull and monotonous. But driven and hounded as he was he never yielded a point beyond his admission of an old murder and an intended one. But, as Stebbins said to Berry, it was merely a matter of time before they had a full confession from Crawford: he was the kind that eventually succumbs to third degree methods. And Stebbins was the one man sure of the way the wind blew!
He treated Nadia on the other hand with due respect, as they did all three. Stebbins obviously feared her. Berry sat gazing at her, spellbound. Belknap looked anywhere but at her, paced the floor, threw spokes in the wheels of Stebbins’ questionnaire, and put up defences that, in his blindness to them, he apparently thought were as invisible to others.
“Your handkerchief, Miss Mdevani?” Stebbins produced the handkerchief found by Belknap.
“Mine.”
“That handkerchief,” Belknap interposed impatiently, “was on the library floor when I helped Whittaker to his room at 11:30.”
“This is the first we have heard of it,” Stebbins snapped.
“I haven’t the least idea when I dropped it,” Nadia went on, ignoring the interruption. “Possibly it was when I found Blake, about 4:30.”
“You found Blake?” Stebbins pounced on her.