“It killed a dog in the backyard behind the house,” Oakes said. “The window of Captain Gunner’s room projects out over it. It is full of boxes and litter and there are a few stunted shrubs scattered about. In fact, there is enough cover to hide any small object like the body of a dog. That’s why it was not discovered at first. The maid at the Excelsior came on it the morning after I sent you my report while she was emptying a box of ashes in the yard. It was just an ordinary stray dog without collar or license. The analyst examined the body, and found that the dog had died of the bite of a cobra.”
“But you didn’t find the snake?”
“No. We cleaned out that yard till you could have eaten your breakfast there, but the snake had gone. It must have escaped through the door of the yard, which was standing ajar. That was a couple of days ago, and there has been no further tragedy. In all likelihood it is dead. The nights are pretty cold now, and it would probably have died of exposure.”
“But, I just don’t understand how a cobra got to Southampton,” said the amazed Mr. Snyder.
“Can’t you guess it? I told you it came from Java.”
“How did you know it did?”
“Captain Muller told me. Not directly, but I pieced it together from what he said. It seems that an old shipmate of Captain Gunner’s was living in Java. They corresponded, and occasionally this man would send the captain a present as a mark of his esteem. The last present he sent was a crate of bananas. Unfortunately, the snake must have got in unnoticed. That’s why I told you the cobra was a small one. Well, that’s my case against Mr. Snake, and short of catching him with the goods, I don’t see how I could have made out a stronger one. Don’t you agree?”
It went against the grain for Mr. Snyder to acknowledge defeat, but he was a fair-minded man, and he was forced to admit that Oakes did certainly seem to have solved the impossible.
“I congratulate you, my boy,” he said as heartily as he could. “To be completely frank, when you started out, I didn’t think you could do it. By the way, I suppose Mrs. Pickett was pleased?”
“If she was, she didn’t show it. I’m pretty well convinced she hasn’t enough sense to be pleased at anything. However, she has invited me to dinner with her tonight. I imagine she’ll be as boring as usual, but she made such a point of it, I had to accept.”
VI
For some time after Oakes had gone, Mr. Snyder sat smoking and thinking, in embittered meditation. Suddenly there was brought the card of Mrs. Pickett, who would be grateful if he could spare her a few moments. Mr. Snyder was glad to see Mrs. Pickett. He was a student of character, and she had interested him at their first meeting. There was something about her which had seemed to him unique, and he welcomed this second chance of studying her at close range.
She came in and sat down stiffly, balancing herself on the extreme edge of the chair in which a short while before young Oakes had lounged so luxuriously.
“How are you, Mrs. Pickett?” said Mr. Snyder genially. “I’m very glad that you could find time to pay me a visit. Well, so it wasn’t murder after all.”
“Sir?”
“I’ve just been talking to Mr. Oakes, whom you met as James Burton,” said the detective. “He has told me all about it.”
“He told
Mr. Snyder looked at her inquiringly. Her manner seemed more suggestive than her words.
“A conceited, headstrong young fool,” said Mrs. Pickett.
It was no new picture of his assistant that she had drawn. Mr. Snyder had often drawn it himself, but at the present juncture it surprised him. Oakes, in his hour of triumph, surely did not deserve this sweeping condemnation.
“Did not Mr. Oakes’ solution of the mystery satisfy you, Mrs. Pickett?”
“No!”
“It struck me as logical and convincing,” Mr. Snyder said.
“You may call it all the fancy names you please, Mr. Snyder. But Mr. Oakes’ solution was not the right one.”
“Have you an alternative to offer?”
Mrs. Pickett tightened her lips.
“If you have, I should like to hear it.”
“You will—at the proper time.”
“What makes you so certain that Mr. Oakes is wrong?”
“He starts out with an impossible explanation, and rests his whole case on it. There couldn’t have been a snake in that room because it couldn’t have gotten out. The window was too high.”
“But surely the evidence of the dead dog?”
Mrs. Pickett looked at him as if he had disappointed her. “I had always heard
“I have always tried to use common sense.”
“Then why are you trying now to make yourself believe that something happened which could not possibly have happened just because it fits in with something which isn’t easy to explain?”
“You mean that there is another explanation of the dead dog?” Mr. Snyder asked.
