Landis shook his head.
“Maybe it would shoot one of those Japanese arrows and shoot it hard. But think of the risk of lugging that thing down to the library door! He’d have to lug it back upstairs again, don’t forget, with the house humming about his ears! It isn’t like shooting with a bow that’s already there and stays there!”
“Look here,” growled Bernard, “I never liked that Japanese bow theory! How could a man move around in there, get the bow, fit an arrow to it and wait until Harrison got up, without Harrison seeing him or hearing him or sensing him there? Harrison had his side face to the end of the library, not his back! But to creep up to the door, wait your chance and let fly with that cross-bow from outside the library—that’s different.”
“The risk of being caught there!” Landis demurred.
Bernard scratched his head.
“That’s the hell of it! On the other hand, your Japanese bow is definitely out! It couldn’t shoot that hard!”
Landis shrugged his shoulders.
“Maybe somebody had the Japanese bow all wiped and the cross-bow and a Japanese arrow tucked away behind that couch in the hall back of the library. But at that it’s a terrible risk to run. Anybody might have come along through the billiard-room!”
Bernard turned away to the cross-bow, took it down from the wall by the gut bowstring and carried it to the work-bench, where he lit the light. Turn it this way and that as he might, to catch the light, not a finger-mark showed on its polished wooden surface.
“It ought to be covered with finger-prints!” he growled. “There isn’t one! I tell you, this cross-bow shot the Japanese arrow that killed Harrison and the one that almost killed Graham!”