This brought him back to his investigations in the rosery. The abrasure he had discovered on the timber upright was the mark of a bullet and a mark freshly made at that. Moreover, it had almost certainly been fired from the library window—from the window which Parrish had opened; the angle at which it had struck and marked the tree showed that almost conclusively.
Yet there had been but one shot! If only he had been able to find that bullet in the rosery! Robin thought ruefully of his long hunt among the sopping rose-bushes.
Yes, there had been only one shot. Mary Trevert had stated it definitely. Besides, the bullet that had killed Hartley Parrish had been fired from his own revolver and had been found in the body. Robin Greve felt the murder theory collapsing about him. But the suicide theory did not stand up, either. What possible, probable motive had Hartley Parrish for taking his own life?
“He wasn’t the man to do it!”
The wheels of the train took up the rhythm of the phrase and dinned it into his ears.
“He wasn’t the man to do it!”
The riddle seemed more baffling than ever.
Robin thrust one hand into his right-hand pocket to get his pipe, his other hand into his left-hand pocket to find his pouch. His left hand came into contact with a little ball of paper.
He drew it out. It was the little ball of slatey-blue paper he had found on the floor of the library beside Hartley Parrish’s dead body.