“Last night—about dusk.”
He looked at me soberly.
“Then the man in Room 18 last night—if it was a man—must have hidden the radium for fear he would be caught with the incriminating box. He must have thrust it hurriedly into the flower pot and left plant and all in the corridor in the hope of being able to get hold of the radium more easily than if it were left again in Room 18. That is, if we are to believe Miss Day’s statement. Positively that lobelia was not in Room 18 when I examined the room almost immediately after Higgins’s death. I did not miss a square inch!”
I was still thinking of Maida.
“Did you ask her about the hypodermic syringe?”
He nodded.
“She says that she found her own needle had disappeared, naturally disliked calling anyone’s attention to the fact, in view of the existing circumstances, and simply substituted your tool for the lost one. She says she acted hastily and only from a dislike of being even remotely connected with the tragedies. My own opinion is that someone advised her to do so. Especially since there was a cut-and-dried air about everything she said.”
“How did the hypodermic syringe get out there in the shrubbery?”
“Miss Day insists that she knows nothing of that. And I’m more than half inclined to believe her, there.”
“The cuff link?” I persisted anxiously.