“You’re crazy, crazy,” claimed Crofts.
“I tell you it never would have happened if you hadn’t been so fractious this morning. I said this sort of thing might conceivably take place. Well, it has, that’s all.”
Eve Bartholomew ventured. “You mean that you—you—”
“Very simply indeed.” Aire hunched his shoulders appreciatively. “A matter of two spools and a bit of string connected with the mechanism of the chimes. A scurvy conjurer’s trick; that’s all. I apologize.”
“But the blood!” I cried in a sudden access of emotion. “Spools and strings don’t produce blood. I saw it oozing from the cheek!”
Aire smiled, shook his head slightly. “No, they don’t. But then, you didn’t see blood oozing from the cheek.”
Half a dozen hot affirmatives contradicted him.
“I tell you no. You’re all acquainted with the prophecy of the bloody cheek, and you were all hypnotized.”
“Don’t try to tell me,” bullied Crofts, brushing the little man aside and bending to the wreckage.
Aire smiled dryly. “That’s not blood, you see; it’s painted blood.”