you have taken the notes to Pittsburg. The probabilities are that she follows you there, on the chance of an opportunity to get them, either for Bronson or herself.
“Nothing doing during the trip over or during the day in Pittsburg; but she learns the number of your berth as you buy it at the Pullman ticket office in Pittsburg, and she thinks she sees her chance. No one could have foreseen that that drunken fellow would have crawled into your berth.
“Now, I figure it out this way: She wanted those notes desperately - does still - not for Bronson, but to hold over his head for some purpose. In the night, when everything is quiet, she slips behind the curtains of lower ten, where the man’s breathing shows he is asleep. Didn’t you say he snored?”
“He did!” I affirmed. “But I tell you - ”
“Now keep still and listen. She gropes cautiously around in the darkness, finally discovering the wallet under the pillow. Can’t you see it yourself?”
He was leaning forward, excitedly, and I could almost see the gruesome tragedy he was depicting.
“She draws out the wallet. Then, perhaps she remembers the alligator bag, and on the possibility that the notes are there, instead of in the pocketbook, she gropes around for it. Suddenly, the man awakes and clutches at the nearest object, perhaps her neck chain, which breaks. She drops the pocketbook and tries to escape, but he has caught her right hand.
“It is all in silence; the man is still stupidly drunk. But he holds her in a tight grip. Then the tragedy. She must get away; in a minute the car will be aroused. Such a woman, on such an errand, does not go without some sort of a weapon, in this case a dagger, which, unlike a revolver, is noiseless.
“With a quick thrust - she’s a big woman and a bold one - she strikes. Possibly Hotchkiss is right about the left-hand blow. Harrington may have held her right hand, or perhaps she held the dirk in her left hand as she groped with her right. Then, as the man falls back, and his grasp relaxes, she straightens and attempts to get away. The swaying of the car throws her almost into your berth, and, trembling with terror, she crouches behind the curtains of lower ten until everything is still. Then she goes noiselessly back to her berth.”
I nodded.
“It seems to fit partly, at least,” I said, “In the morning when she found that the crime had been not only fruitless, but that she had searched the wrong berth and killed the wrong man; when she saw me emerge, unhurt, just as she was bracing herself for the discovery of my dead body, then she went into hysterics. You remember, I gave her some whisky.
“It really seems a tenable theory. But, like the Sullivan theory, there are one or two things that don’t agree with the rest. For one thing, how did the remainder of that chain get into Alison West’s possession?”
“She may have picked it up on the floor.”
“We’ll admit that,” I said; “and I’m sure I hope so. Then how did the murdered man’s pocketbook get into the sealskin bag? And the dirk, how account for that, and the blood-stains?”
“Now what’s the use,” asked McKnight aggrievedly, “of my building up beautiful theories for you to pull down? We’ll take it to Hotchkiss. Maybe he can tell from the blood-stains if the murderer’s finger nails were square or pointed.”
“Hotchkiss is no fool,” I said warmly. “Under all his theories there’s a good hard layer of common sense. And we must remember, Rich, that neither of our theories includes the woman at Doctor Van Kirk’s hospital, that the charming picture you have just drawn does not account for Alison West’s connection with the case, or for the bits of telegram in the Sullivan fellow’s pajamas pocket. You are like the man who put the clock together; you’ve got half of the works left over.”
“Oh, go home,” said McKnight disgustedly. “I’m no Edgar Allan Poe. What’s the use of coming here and asking me things if you’re so particular?”
With one of his quick changes of mood, he picked up his guitar.
“Listen to this,” he said. “It is a Hawaiian song about a fat lady, oh, ignorant one! and how she fell off her mule.”
But for all the lightness of the words, the voice that followed me down the stairs was anything but cheery.
“There was a Kanaka in Balu did dwell, Who had for his daughter a monstrous fat girl—
he sang in his clear tenor. I paused on the lower floor and listened. He had stopped singing as abruptly as he had begun.
CHAPTER XXII
AT THE BOARDING-HOUSE
I had not been home for thirty-six hours, since the morning of the preceding day. Johnson was not in sight, and I let myself in quietly with my latchkey. It was almost midnight, and I had hardly settled myself in the library when the bell rang and I was surprised to find Hotchkiss, much out of breath, in the vestibule.
“Why, come in, Mr. Hotchkiss,” I said. “I thought you were going home to go to bed.”
“So I was, so I was.” He dropped into a chair beside my reading lamp and mopped his face. “And here it is almost midnight, and I’m wider awake than ever. I’ve seen Sullivan, Mr. Blakeley.”
“You have!”
“I have,” he said impressively.
“You were following Bronson at eight o’clock. Was that when it happened?”
“Something of the sort. When I left you at the door of the restaurant, I turned and almost ran into a plain clothes man from the central office. I know him pretty well; once or twice he has taken me with him on interesting bits of work. He knows my hobby.”
“You know him, too, probably. It was the man Arnold, the detective whom the state’s attorney has had watching Bronson.”
