it would have been heavy. But the police were there first and they had it fairly well trampled.”
McIntosh sank lower in his swivel chair. “Tree?”
“I gave it a going-over. You could see where the limb had been jammed. Rubbed the bark of a sound branch. You could see that it hadn’t been attached by much. A few slivers of wood and bark. It weighed around a hundred and fifty pounds. It could, so far as signs show, simply have come loose while he crouched there, and dropped on him and conked him, turned as it hit the pool, and swatted him again. It could, for all I can surely prove.”
McIntosh looked at his watch. On its chain was a Phi Beta Kappa key. “You say the lilies were in wooden boxes. Could one of them have changed position so he mistook it, at night, in a flashlight beam, for what he imagined was related to his other — discovery?”
“How can anybody answer that except Bogan himself? He said he saw the box plainly. Said he saw brass screw heads. No screws in his lily boxes. And it’s hardly anything he’d dream up. Besides, the lily boxes have no tops. They’re filled with compost, and that’s covered with white sand.”
“One might turn turtle.”
“Yes. Except that it would haul under water a conspicuous bouquet of lily pads and buds and flowers.”
“You believe there was a box and Bogan got slugged and the box was taken away while he was unconscious?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe”—McIntosh took time to make himself say it—“that there was uranium in the box?”