“We merely want to question you about last night,” answered Vance soothingly. “We thought it possible you could help us.”
“What help can I give you?” Rex asked sullenly, slumping into a chair. He gave his brother a sneering look. “Chester’s the only one round here who seems to have been awake.”
Rex Greene was a short, sallow youth with narrow, stooping shoulders and an abnormally large head set on a neck which appeared almost emaciated. A shock of straight hair hung down over his bulging forehead, and he had a habit of tossing it back with a jerky movement of the head. His small, shifty eyes, shielded by enormous tortoise-rimmed glasses, seemed never to be at rest; and his thin lips were constantly twitching as with a tic douloureux. His chin was small and pointed, and he held it drawn in, emphasizing its lack of prominence. He was not a pleasant spectacle, and yet there was something in the man—an overdeveloped studiousness, perhaps—that gave the impression of unusual potentialities. I once saw a juvenile chess wizard who had the same cranial formations and general facial cast.
Vance appeared introspective, but I knew he was absorbing every detail of the man’s appearance. At length he laid down his cigarette, and focussed his eyes languidly on the desk-lamp.
“You say you slept throughout the tragedy last night. How do you account for that remarkable fact, inasmuch as one of the shots was fired in the room next to yours?”
Rex hitched himself forward to the edge of his chair, and turned his head from side to side, carefully avoiding our eyes.
“I haven’t tried to account for it,” he returned, with angry resentment; but withal he seemed unstrung and on the defensive. Then he hurried on: “The walls in this house are pretty thick anyway, and there are always noises in the street. . . . Maybe my head was buried under the covers.”
“You’d certainly have buried your head under the covers if you’d heard the shot,” commented Chester, with no attempt to disguise his contempt for his brother.
Rex swung round, and would have retorted to the accusation had not Vance put his next question immediately.
“What’s your theory of the crime, Mr. Greene? You’ve heard all the details and you know the situation.”