T. X. looked at him in astonishment. The hate in the man’s face took his breath away. Never before had he experienced or witnessed such a vehemence of loathing.
“What did Kara do to you?” he demanded.
The other looked out of the window.
“I am sorry,” he said in a milder tone; “that is my weakness. Some day I will tell you the whole story but for the moment it were better that it were not told. I will tell you this,” he turned round and faced the detective squarely, “Kara tortured and killed my wife.”
T. X. said no more.
Halfway through lunch he returned indirectly to the subject.
“Do you know Gathercole?” he asked.
T. X. nodded.
“I think you asked me that question once before, or perhaps it was somebody else. Yes, I know him, rather an eccentric man with an artificial arm.”
“That’s the cove,” said T. X. with a little sigh; “he’s one of the few men I want to meet just now.”
“Why?”
“Because he was apparently the last man to see Kara alive.”
John Lexman looked at the other with an impatient jerk of his shoulders.
“You don’t suspect Gathercole, do you?” he asked.
“Hardly,” said the other drily; “in the first place the man that committed this murder had two hands and needed them both. No, I only want to ask that gentleman the subject of his conversation. I also want to know who was in the room with Kara when Gathercole went in.”
“H’m,” said John Lexman.
“Even if I found who the third person was, I am still puzzled as to how they got out and fastened the heavy latch behind them. Now in the old days, Lexman,” he said good humouredly, “you would have made a fine mystery story out of this. How would you have made your man escape?”
Lexman thought for a while.
“Have you examined the safe?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the other.
“Was there very much in it?”
T. X. looked at him in astonishment.
“Just the ordinary books and things. Why do you ask?”
“Suppose there were two doors to that safe, one on the outside of the room and one on the inside, would it be possible to pass through the safe and go down the wall?”
“I have thought of that,” said T. X.
“Of course,” said Lexman, leaning back and toying with a salt-spoon, “in writing a story where one hasn’t got to deal with the absolute possibilities, one could always have made Kara have a safe of that character in order to make his escape in the event of danger. He might keep a rope ladder stored inside, open the back door, throw out his ladder to a friend and by some trick arrangement could detach the ladder and allow the door to swing to again.”
“A very ingenious idea,” said T. X., “but unfortunately it doesn’t work in this case. I have seen the makers of the safe and there is nothing very eccentric about it except the fact that it is mounted as it is. Can you offer another suggestion?”
John Lexman thought again.
“I will not suggest trap doors, or secret panels or anything so banal,” he said, “nor mysterious springs in the wall which, when touched, reveal secret staircases.”
He smiled slightly.
“In my early days, I must confess, I was rather keen upon that sort of thing, but age has brought experience and I have discovered the impossibility of bringing an architect to one’s way of thinking even in so commonplace a matter as the position of a scullery. It would be much more difficult to induce him to construct a house with double walls and secret chambers.”
T. X. waited patiently.
“There is a possibility, of course,” said Lexman slowly, “that the steel latch may have been raised by somebody outside by some ingenious magnetic arrangement and lowered in a similar manner.”
“I have thought about it,” said T. X. triumphantly, “and I have made the most elaborate tests only this morning. It is quite impossible to raise the steel latch because once it is dropped it cannot be raised again except by means of the knob, the pulling of which releases the catch which holds the bar securely in its place. Try another one, John.”
John Lexman threw back his head in a noiseless laugh.
“Why I should be helping you to discover the murderer of Kara is beyond my understanding,” he said, “but I will give you another theory, at the same time warning you that I may be putting you off the track. For God knows I have more reason to murder Kara than any man in the world.”
He thought a while.
“The chimney was of course impossible?”
“There was a big fire burning in the grate,” explained T. X.; “so big indeed that the room was stifling.”
John Lexman nodded.
“That was Kara’s way,” he said; “as a matter of fact I know the suggestion about magnetism in the steel bar was impossible, because I was friendly with Kara when he had that bar put in and pretty well know the mechanism, although I had forgotten it for the moment. What is your own theory, by the way?”
T. X. pursed his lips.
“My theory isn’t very clearly formed,” he said cautiously, “but so far as it goes, it is that Kara was lying on the bed probably reading one of the books which were found by the bedside when his assailant suddenly came upon him. Kara seized the telephone to call for assistance and was promptly killed.”
Again there was silence.
“That is a theory,” said John Lexman, with his curious deliberation of speech, “but as I say I refuse to be definite—have you found the weapon?”
T. X. shook his head.
“Were
