This disclosure was followed by another concerted gasp of surprise. After it had subsided, McGinity exclaimed: "Well, that's certainly a knockout, Mrs. LaRauche! Why, I've read all of your novels, including the latest one, 'The Country House Mystery,' and I consider Martha Claxton—you—a close runner to the English Agatha Christie—a feminine J. S. Fletcher. No wonder your husband, with his jealous temperament, had this constitutional antagonism against any rival in his household, in the field of fame."
"Combine jealousy and revenge," Mrs. LaRauche said, "and in these two forces you have the most perverse evil in the world. Rene was not only intensely jealous of Henry Royce for his successful findings as an amateur scientist and astronomer, but he nursed a revenge against him for the exposé of those faked African jungle films, and his subsequent expulsion from the Exploration Club. He blamed—"
"Officially, I had nothing to do with it," Henry interrupted, vehemently. "I simply voiced my belief to a fellow member of the club that the films looked like fakes to me."
"What raised your suspicions?" Mrs. LaRauche asked.
"Well, I recognized, among those African jungle midgets," Henry replied, "a Negro dwarf I had seen years ago at a circus side-show. She was exhibited as a human crow. She had the remarkable physiognomy and jet blackness of a crow, and she could caw like one. She must be an old woman by now. In your husband's faked film, she took the part of a chattering, pigmy grandmother, who was thrown into the river and drowned because of her great age and uselessness. As she was engulfed in the river torrent, and sank, I recognized her pitiful 'caw-caw'."
"Fancy your remembering that," Mrs. LaRauche remarked.
Again Chief Meigs spoke abruptly. "Pardon me, Mrs. LaRauche," he said, "but how long do you reckon your husband has been out of his mind?"
She looked startled for a moment, then calmly replied. "He was silent and brooding for some months past, but I attributed this to his being deeply engrossed in some new scientific research. It's rather difficult to say when he passed into the stage of actual insanity. It's my opinion that all inventive scientists are a little bit cracked." She hesitated a moment, and smiled apologetically at Henry. "It's my belief, though," she went on, "that he became definitely deranged when the success of his scheme centered the attention of the world upon Henry Royce, and raised him to the heights of fame. Rene had not figured on this. It was like a boomerang. When he realized that his scheme was reacting to his own damage, then, perhaps, something in his brain snapped."
"Have you any personal knowledge of the implication of your husband and Orkins in the theft of the rocket?" McGinity asked.
She shook her head. "Only a suspicion," she replied. "There were many, many nights, while I was locked in the attic, when I couldn't sleep, so I used to listen for sounds from the lower part of the house. The night the rocket was stolen, I remember distinctly the house was as quiet as a tomb. I remained awake all night, terrorized at the thought of being left alone. Towards morning, I heard familiar sounds again—footfalls in the hall—voices—and went to sleep."