“I am.”
“And your reasons for questioning me, Mr. Barclay?”
“I am desirous of helping trace the murderer.” The surgeon’s question had brought a touch of color to his white face. “I want to help trap Yoshida Ito.”
“Ah, then you know him to be guilty.”
“No, only believe him to be guilty,” corrected Barclay quickly. “And all evidence, as far as I can ascertain, points to him—”
“Except a possible motive,” supplemented McLane. “Men do not murder each other, Mr. Barclay, without a motive.”
The remark brought a curious glint in Barclay’s eyes which the surgeon observed, but his own expression remained impassive.
“There is always the alternative of suicide,” remarked Barclay composedly. “But in the case of the murder of your cousin, Dwight Tilghman, that theory can be dispensed with.”
“Your reasons for that assertion?”
Barclay drew back farther in his chair, and the movement again brought his face in shadow. “If Dwight Tilghman had committed suicide the receptacle out of which he drank the poison would have been found near him.”