“As for the bet, which clinched the handing over of the chocolates, I cannot believe that this was just a stroke of luck for Sir Eustace. That seems too good to be true. Somehow, I’m sure, though I won’t attempt to show how (that would be mere guesswork), Sir Eustace arranged for that bet in advance. And if he did, the fact in no way destroys my initial deduction from it, that Mrs. Bendix was not so honest as she pretended; for whether it was arranged or whether it wasn’t, the plain fact is left that it is dishonest to make a bet to which you know the answer.
“Lastly, if I am to follow the fashion and cite a parallel case, I decide unhesitatingly for John Tawell, who administered prussic acid in a bottle of beer to his mistress, Sarah Hart, when he was tired of her.”
The Circle looked at her admiringly. At last, it seemed, they really had got to the bottom of the business.
Sir Charles voiced the general feeling. “If you’ve got any solid evidence to support this theory, Miss Dammers …” He implied that in that case the rope was as good as round Sir Eustace’s thick red neck.
“Meaning that the evidence I’ve given already isn’t solid enough for the legal mind?” enquired Miss Dammers equably.
“Psy—psychological reconstructions wouldn’t carry very much weight with a jury,” Sir Charles took refuge behind the jury in question.
“I’ve connected Sir Eustace with the piece of Mason’s notepaper,” Miss Dammers pointed out.
“I’m afraid on that alone Sir Eustace would get the benefit of the doubt.” Sir Charles was evidently deprecating the psychological obtuseness of that jury of his.
“I’ve shown a tremendous motive, and I’ve connected him with a book of similar cases and a book of poisons.”
“Yes. Oh, quite so. But what I mean is, have you any real evidence to connect Sir Eustace quite definitely with the letter, the chocolates, or the wrapper?”
“He has an Onyx pen, and the inkpot in his library used to be filled with Harfield’s Ink,” Miss Dammers smiled. “I’ve no doubt it is still. He was supposed to have been at the Rainbow the whole evening before the murder, but I’ve ascertained that there is a gap of half-an-hour between nine o’clock and nine-thirty during which nobody saw him. He left the dining-room at nine, and a waiter brought him a whisky-and-soda in the lounge at half-past. In the interim nobody knows where he was. He wasn’t in the lounge. Where was he? The porter swears he did not see him go out, or come in again; but there is a back way which he could have used if he wanted to be unnoticed, as of course he did. I asked him myself, as if by way of a joke, and he said that he had gone up to the library after dinner to look up a reference in a book of big-game hunting. Could he mention the names of any other members in the library? He said there weren’t any; there never were; he’d never seen a member in the library all the time he belonged to the club. I thanked him and rang off.
“In other words, he says he was in the library, because he knows there would be no other member there to prove he wasn’t. What he really did during that half-hour, of course, was to slip out the back-way, hurry down to the Strand to post the parcel (just as Mr. Sheringham saw Mr. Bendix hurrying down), slip in again, run up to the library to make sure nobody was there, and then go down to the lounge and order his whisky-and-soda to prove his presence there later. Isn’t that more feasible than your vision of Mr. Bendix, Mr. Sheringham?”
“I must admit that it’s no less so,” Roger had to agree.
“Then you haven’t any solid evidence at all?” lamented Sir Charles. “Nothing that would really impress a jury?”
“Yes, I have,” said Miss Dammers quietly. “I’ve been saving it up till the end because I wanted to prove my case (as I consider I have done) without it. But this is absolutely and finally conclusive. Will everybody examine these, please.”
Miss Dammers produced from her bag a brown-paper-covered parcel. Unwrapping it, she brought to light a photograph and a quarto sheet of paper which looked like a typed letter.
“The photograph,” she explained, “I obtained from Chief Inspector Moresby the other day, but without telling him the specific purpose for which I wanted it. It is of the forged letter, actual size. I should like everybody to compare it with this typed copy of the letter. Will you look at them first, Mr. Sheringham, and then pass them round? Notice particularly the slightly crooked s’s and the chipped capital H.”
In dead silence Roger pored over the two. He examined them for a full two minutes, which seemed to the others more like two hours, and then passed them on to Sir Charles on his right.
“There isn’t the slightest doubt that those two were done on the same machine,” he said soberly.
Miss Dammers showed neither less nor more emotion than she had displayed throughout. Her voice carried exactly the same impersonal inflection. She might have been announcing her discovery of a match between two pieces of dress-material. From her level tone it could never have been guessed that a man’s neck depended on her words no less than on the rope that was to hang him.
“You will find the machine in Sir Eustace’s rooms,” she said.
Even Mr. Bradley was moved. “Then as I said, he deserves all that’s coming to him,” he drawled, with a quite impossible nonchalance, and even attempted a yawn. “Dear me, what a distressing bungler.”
Sir Charles passed on the evidence. “Miss Dammers,” he said impressively, “you have rendered a very great service to society. I congratulate you.”
“Thank you, Sir Charles,” replied
