"It was a creature from another world," he protested angrily. "None of us had a reason to kill Mr. Gird."
O'Bryant emitted a sharp, equine laugh. "Don't go to tell me any ghost stories, Doctor Zoberg. We folks have heard a lot about the hocus-pocus you've pulled off here from time to time. Looks like it might have been to cover up some kind of rough stuff."
"How could it be?" demanded Zoberg. "Look here, Constable, these handcuffs." He held out one pair of them. "We were all confined with them, fastened to chairs that were sealed to the floor. Mr. Gird was also chained, and his chair made fast out of our reach. Go into the next room and look for yourself."
"Let me see them irons," grunted O'Bryant, snatching them.
He turned them over and over in his hands, snapped them shut, tugged and pressed, then held out a hand for my keys. Unlocking the cuffs, he peered into the clamping mechanism.
"These are regulation bracelets," he pronounced. "You were all chained up, then?"
"We were," replied Zoberg, and both Susan and I nodded.
Into the constable's blue eyes came a sudden shrewd light. "I guess you must have been, at that. But did you stay that way?" He whipped suddenly around, bending above my chair to fix his gaze upon me. "How about you, Mr. Wills?"
"Of course we stayed that way," I replied.
"Yeh? Look here, ain't you a professional magician?"