“Tell me.”
“Assume, for instance, that several persons comprised the gang. They laid their plans, paved the way to execute them, and provided themselves with the blood required.”
“Well?”
“Tilly Lancey may have been duped into admitting one of them to her flat last night, possibly more, and they may have been concealed there during her interview with Gordon. That could have been craftily accomplished by Cora Cavendish, if she was out to deceive and murder her intimate friend.”
“I admit that much, Nick, of course,” Chick allowed.
“Tilly Lancey could have been killed, then, and prob[Pg 20]ably was, immediately after Gordon left the house,” Nick continued. “She was struck down with a jimmy, which was afterward used to pry open her desk, and later carried away by her assailants.”
“But you say the blood on this jimmy is not Tilly Lancey’s blood.”
“True,” Nick nodded. “This is not the jimmy used for the murder, mind you, but one precisely like it.”
“Ah, I see.”
“The crooks were working along fine lines,” Nick pointed out. “They wanted a weapon found that would correspond with the wounds inflicted. So they got two like jimmies, one of which they stained with blood and concealed after a fashion in Gordon’s grounds. I say after a fashion, Chick, because they designedly put it where it would soon be discovered.”