“Is that the only proof you have against Dr. Balman?” asked Jim.
“No. I have others. But I wasn’t quite satisfied. You see, I let Balman know that the radium was in this room and would be guarded all day but not at night because I intended to remove it then. Miss Keate helped me there. Dr. Balman was on the other side of the door in the garage this morning—or rather yesterday morning,” explained O’Leary to me. “Of course, I had actually removed the radium at once and substituted a dummy box. I expected Balman would try to secure it in the dark of night and hoped to catch him red-handed. But instead—you, Gainsay, nearly spoiled the works for me. You have been a good deal of trouble, one way and another,” he interpolated, with a glance that held nothing humorous. “However, I know the reason for your—er—meddling.” O’Leary smiled openly at Maida; it was that extraordinary winning smile that he reserved for certain occasions and Maida smiled, too. “I can’t say that I blame you for that. Though if you had advised her to tell of the cuff link business in the first place——”
“That cuff link!” murmured Maida with contrition. “I am sorry. I should have explained it immediately. But it—would have meant such publicity. It was so disagreeable.” She flushed pinkly and Jim’s heart was in his steady eyes fastened upon her.
“But what else do you have against Dr. Balman?” I inquired hastily, for once uninterested in matters of the tender sentiment.
“The story that I told here to-night is, in the main part, true if you simply change the name of Hajek to Balman. For the points against Balman——” he checked off the items on his fingers. “First, finger prints on that revolver of Corole’s. Dr. Letheny’s and those of Dr. Balman were very clear. It was some time before I could get a good print of Balman’s, though I had those of everyone else connected with the case. Then there was the fact that he asked to have this low window bolted and the request came simultaneously with the disappearance of the key to the south door; having provided himself with a mode of entrance he was anxious to keep others out of the room that held the radium. Then there was the matter of the ether that you smelled, Miss Keate, the ether that Higgins said was somewhere about the coat that was left there just outside the window of Eighteen, and that you found on a handkerchief in the pocket of that yellow slicker. I found on investigation that the only person seen to leave St. Ann’s that Friday evening just at dinner time was Dr. Balman and that he wore a yellow slicker. That was not conclusive, for he might have borrowed it as Miss Keate did. But yesterday morning I found in the side pocket of his car a small empty bottle and a sponge that still had a lingering trace of that very clinging odour.”
“But why ether?” said Jim.
“He had evidently intended to anesthetize Mr. Jackson, steal the radium while the patient was unconscious and get away. But when after waiting about the grounds for some time until he thought the coast was clear he finally got into Room 18, he found another man in the room, the radium gone and his patient dead. The next thing for me to do was to break what appeared to be an alibi. I did so when I found that there was a freight elevator at the back of the apartment house in which Balman lived. He knew how to operate it and must have taken precautions to leave by way of the freight elevator and the basement so that the night man in the front of the house never dreamed that Balman had gone out again. He returned the same way and must have got there just in time to answer the telephone. It was his car that left along the lower road just as the storm broke, Miss Keate.”
“He must have driven like mad,” I speculated.
“Think what he left behind him,” said O’Leary grimly. “He knew, too, that at any moment the alarm might come and his presence would be needed at the hospital. He must be in his rooms when the call came.”
“All put together those things are almost—positive proof,” said Jim.