"If that's your impossible," he replied, "in the case of my own son, I'd rather his defense were a concrete alibi."
Inspector McCausland was a detective of the good old school, renowned in many states and not unknown to Scotland Yard and the keen Parisians. Nature had favored him with an exterior of deceptive smoothness. No vulpine contraction of the muzzle, such as would have suggested the sleuth and invited suspicion. Round, florid, pleasant-faced, a little sloping in the shoulders, decidedly suave of voice and genial in manner, he did not look the figure to be feared. Yet some, not easily frightened, would depart in haste from the neighborhood of Richard McCausland.
"The only living occupants of the room," he continued, unfolding his chain of reasoning to the still skeptical marshal, "at the time when Bertha went in, were the St. Bernard, Sire, whose barking had attracted her attention upstairs, and the canary bird, whose life she tried to save."
"Probably the delicate creature was dead when she opened the door," said the marshal.
"At any rate, it is impossible that an old dog, sleeping on the mat, or a golden-feathered songster, whistling in his cage, could be the author of this fire——"
"And loss of life."
"If the housemaid is telling the truth there was some other cause; and if she is lying," he concluded, arising to go, "it must be to cover up carelessness or guilt, either on her own part or on the part of some one in whom she takes an interest."
Intimate associates found McCausland a rollicking companion; but, in the pursuit of crime, he was a practical believer in the doctrine of total depravity, or, rather, to be just, he knew the potential evil which is harbored in every human heart until some life-or-death temptation effects, perhaps, the wreck of honor and humanity.
"Well, this is another feather in Federhen's cap," said the marshal, cheerily, at the door.
"He must share it with Jupiter Pluvius," answered McCausland.