“Most entertainin’, what? As an elim’nator of suspects the Colonel has his good points.”
“Eliminator!” retorted Markham. “It’s a good thing he’s not connected with the police: he’d have half the community jailed for shooting Benson.”
“He is a bit blood-thirsty,” Vance admitted. “He’s determined to get somebody jailed for the crime.”
“According to that old warrior, Benson’s coterie was a camorra of gunmen—not forgetting the women. I couldn’t help getting the impression, as he talked, that Benson was miraculously lucky not to have been riddled with bullets long ago.”
“It’s obvious,” commented Vance, “that you overlooked the illuminatin’ flashes in the Colonel’s thunder.”
“Were there any?” Markham asked. “At any rate, I can’t say that they exactly blinded me by their brilliance.”
“And you received no solace from his words?”
“Only those in which he bade me a fond farewell. The parting didn’t exactly break my heart. . . . What the old boy said about Leacock, however, might be called a confirmatory opinion. It verified—if verification had been necessary—the case against the Captain.”
Vance smiled cynically.
“Oh, to be sure. And what he said about Miss St. Clair would have verified the case against her, too—last Saturday.—Also, what he said about Pfyfe would have verified the case against that Beau Sabreur, if you had happened to suspect him—eh, what?”