I saw myself crouched over this slain saint whom death had sculpted into marble. My mind remarked with an aloof surprise, how little my observations and my will at work surprised me. Was I discovering, indeed? or was I appraising? Was I probing a crime that for good cause haunted me, or was I reviewing ... reviewing——?
I was on my knees crouched over the body of Philip LaMotte. I heard the door. I looked up at the figure of Detective Gavegan. With careful grace, I arose.
“Does the boy Case have a good memory of the man’s size, who brought the message?”
“He says: about medium size.”
“How tall is Case?”
“You saw him. He’s a short darkey.”
“If the man’d been Mr. LaMotte’s size, Case would have known it?”
“Six foot, one and a half? Well, I guess.” Gavegan flattened his eyes once more upon me in a simagre of study.
“I know what you’re thinkin’,” he snickered. “They all likes to play detective. How could so short a man have finished him so fine? Size ain’t strength, Doctor Mark: no more than a big man need lack for wits.” Gavegan’s huge form swelled.
I watched him. The hopelessness of making him respond to my discoveries, still so dark to myself, fought against a pleasant call in me that it would be wrong to hide anything from the law.