“Then, determining to carry out his hastily formed plan for stealing the radium, he watched his chance and while Miss Day was busy in the kitchen and Miss Keate was detained for some fifteen minutes in—Room 11?”
“Room 11,” I said.
“—he must have slipped along the corridor into the drug room and helped himself to morphine tablets and hypodermic needle and hurried back, unseen, to Room 18. Jackson very likely never knew what happened, but Dr. Letheny was safe because, in the first place, Jackson was not surprised at the presence of his doctor and would have had no occasion to object to a hypodermic injection, and furthermore, on waking from a drugged sleep, impressions immediately preceding that sleep are vague and confused and could scarcely be given as evidence. I do not believe that Dr. Letheny intended to make the dose fatal; I believe he only intended that Jackson should know nothing of the radium being removed, but in his natural excitement Dr. Letheny either misjudged the dose he was giving or the resistive powers of his patient, with the result that we know. Dr. Letheny tossed the needle through the open window, where it was later found. In the main, I believe I am right; there may be slight discrepancies. One can’t be absolutely sure when both—er—participants are dead.”
There was a moment of tense silence. Then Corole spoke.
“So it was Louis,” she said in a tone of ugly satisfaction. “I knew it. I knew it all along for I watched——” She checked herself.
O’Leary turned sharply.
“Just a moment,” he said coldly. “Your skirts are not entirely clear. There is Higgins’s death yet to explain, and the theft of the radium.”
“I knew nothing about Higgins’s death,” cried Corole.
“Go on, Mr. O’Leary,” begged Dr. Balman. Under the light his face looked drawn and aged.
“From that night on the struggle has been for the discovery and possession of the radium. It was thought, by those who knew of Dr. Letheny’s participation in the affair, to be still in Room 18. Hajek was determined to find it, even going so far as to steal the key to the south door in order to effect an entrance at any time.”