He nodded.
“You have seen her then?” I asked.
“Yesterday. I talked to her. Yes, I suppose she does love clothes and finery. It is on account of her—dark blood.”
“Her what?” I sat bolt upright.
“Good Lord, Miss Keate! Didn’t you know that?”
“Know that Corole Letheny is a—?”
“I think it comes to her by way of Haiti,” he interrupted. “And a very beautiful mother.”
“But—her light hair and eyes! You must be mistaken!”
“Her eyes are yellow, Miss Keate. A good deal like a tiger’s. In fact she is a rather tigerish lady, on the whole. I suspected it when I first saw her brown hands, and was convinced when I found a reference to her in Dr. Letheny’s papers; once he mentions her rather bitterly as ‘my mulatto cousin,’ and another time refers to her birthplace and his aunt, Jolbar, who, it seems, traced her lineage directly, if unobtrusively, to a cannibalistic royal line. Don’t be so shocked, Miss Keate. A little mixture of blood doesn’t hurt her. It only increases my difficulty.”
“Increases your difficulty?” I murmured, feeling rather dazed.
“By increasing the complexities of a personality that I must classify and index. You see,” he went on, as I still did not wholly understand him, “Corole is a factor to be considered along with the rest of the possibilities. And this fact warns me that she likely has a streak of savagery back of those yellow eyes; that the beat of tom-toms would stir her, for instance. She is apt to be rather indolent, too, and to seek what she desires in unconventional ways. Such as by the use of revolvers.”
“Why, yes,” I murmured idiotically. “Murder is unconventional.”
“So you see, the counts against Corole are interesting, to say the least. Then, there are the others at that ill-fated dinner party. We shall have to consider the possible culpability of every single one of them—even of you, Miss Keate.” He added this with a half smile but I did not relish his joke—if joke it was. I was inclined to think it was not.
“Corole Letheny,” he checked her off on his fingers. “Because her revolver was found in the closet of Room 18, because she knew of the radium being in use and of the hospital routine and of the door being left unlocked and because she benefits by Dr. Letheny’s death.”
“But I’m sure she did not know what had happened to the radium,” I said, going hastily on to tell him of her questions concerning it.
“She shows considerable interest, however,” commented O’Leary. “And at an inappropriate time, too. Yes, we must consider Corole.”
“But she—oh, she could not have done that!” I cried, revolted.
“We can’t be sure of anything, Miss Keate, until it is proved,” remarked O’Leary drily. “Then, there is Dr. Hajek; he was like the others, familiar with the circumstances, he had access to the morphine, being a doctor, and his coat was damp when, after some delay, you finally succeeded in rousing him, which, of course, leads one to believe that he was absent from his room and had recently been out in the rain.”
“But,” I objected, “Dr. Hajek was the only one of us who did not admit to wanting money—if we are to consider the radium as the motive.”
“That does not prove anything. Indeed, it was more natural to admit a desire that everybody experiences at one time or another. Then, there was Dr. Balman. He, too, was familiar with the circumstances. Of course there remains the important questions of how Dr. Letheny comes into the puzzle, and whether Dr. Balman could have had time to drive to his apartment in order to be there when the telephone rang to call him back to the hospital.”
“Why, yes,” I said thoughtfully. “He could have done so. You see, just as the storm broke and I was at the south door, closing it, I saw the lights of a car on the lower road. That could have been Dr. Balman. But the idea is absurd. Dr. Balman is too mild, too kind—too—Oh! It is impossible!”
“Nothing is impossible,” commented Lance O’Leary gravely. “But those lights may have belonged to another car. One driven by Jim Gainsay.”
I may have imagined it, but it seemed to me, in view of my guilty knowledge of that cigarette case, that he eyed me rather closely as he spoke. However, if so he gained nothing by it, for I was honestly surprised.
“Jim Gainsay!” I cried.
“Yes,” he answered, going on to explain. “The sedan owned by Dr. Letheny was seen standing in front of the Western Union office at about two o’clock that night. This information was brought to my ears and upon investigation I found that Gainsay took the Doctor’s car—Huldah, in fact, saw him leave—and drove into the city, starting shortly before the storm began. He sent a message, of which I shall have a copy before the day is over. We also know that Gainsay frankly said he intended to get hold of fifty thousand dollars—wasn’t it that?” I nodded dumbly and he went on. “And he intended to go to New York this morning but is still here, work or no work. Also, as with the others, he knew something of the circumstances, and while his being able to obtain and administer morphine is a point to consider, still I understand that engineers almost have to have a practical working knowledge of medicine. But even if we could safely exonerate him from causing Jackson’s death there is still the death of Dr. Letheny, for which somebody is responsible. And this Gainsay is a strong young fellow who looks as if he would stick at little.”
“But he looks honest, too,” I protested.
“They all look honest. Everyone of you.”
“It seems terrible to consider people one knows in such a sordid connection. Why not all the other people in and around the hospital?”
He looked at me as if he were amused.
“But, Miss Keate, is it possible that you do not know that we immediately accounted for every soul
