“You’re quite right, Hume. The cloak is Miss Moore’s.”
He turned round quickly.
“Do you want to hang her now instead of Philip? Or do you want to hang them both?”
“You talk too much of hanging. I mean you and I to understand each other before you leave this room; and we shan’t get there by blinking facts. I say that the cloak’s Miss Moore’s. You perceive that it’s caked with blood.”
“I see.”
“I believe that blood to be Edwin Lawrence’s. The proof is easy; you have only to subject it to a microscopical examination you will know. The stain on my pyjamas came off her cloak. That on the towel was where she wiped her hands, not where I wiped mine. The water in which she washed them I threw into the road. It was bright red. Not only were her hands reeking wet, there were smears upon her face as well.”
“Ferguson!”
“Those are the facts. I’ve made it a rule of my life never to dodge a fact which I don’t like; I hit at it. And it’s because I hit at those facts that I know they don’t mean she killed him; I know she didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
I laughed.