“I haf played ze cards wiz her most often,” answered de Morny, simply.
“But why should Mrs. Trevor commit suicide?” asked Dick, unbelievingly.
De Morny shrugged his shoulders, and answered his question with another: “Why should Monsieur Gordon kill her?”
“That’s right,” declared Captain McLane, of the U.S. Marine Corps. “Why should he? I served three years on board the same cruiser with Donald Gordon, and there isn’t a more honorable, lovable fellow in the Service. It is absolutely unbelievable that he could perpetrate so ghastly a crime.”
As Dick looked across at Peggy he caught Count de Smirnoff’s eye. The Russian was sitting between his hostess and Miss Gleason. For the first time he joined in the conversation.
“Your theory is weak, Henri,” he said, mildly. “Why should a young and beautiful woman, who enjoys health, wealth, and a happy home, kill herself?”
“You nevaire can tell about ze ladies,” retorted de Morny, obstinately. “Zey are—what you say—‘a law unto themselves, and easily wrought-over and deviled up. Zey make trifles into mountains.”
“Granting that Mrs. Trevor might have had a motive for suicide,” said Dick, smiling at the excited Frenchman, “it was utterly impossible for a dead woman to lock herself in the safe.”
“Could she not have killed herself in the safe after shutting the door?” inquired de Smirnoff.
Dick shook his head. “Possibly you do not recollect that witnesses testified at the inquest that her left arm was pressed tightly against the door-jamb, supporting her weight.”