It was dawn by that time. The electric light was paling and growing sickly under the gray streaks of daybreak at the windows, and I recall a vague little feeling of amazement when the thin rays of washed-out sunlight began to find their way into the room. Sunlight after a week of rain!
O’Leary, entering the room, had closed the door and crossed to the radiator and sunk wearily down upon it. He appeared worn and enormously tired, with no shred of the jubilance I should have expected.
“Well,” my voice quavered a little as I spoke. “Well—you have succeeded.”
“Yes. I’ve got my man.”
“You don’t seem to be rejoicing about it.”
“I am not,” said Lance O’Leary flatly. “That is, don’t misunderstand me—I am glad that I have done my duty. But I am sorry to see a man, a brilliant scientist, a scholar, a useful surgeon—go wrong. Dr. Balman has actually given his life—mistakenly of course, for his science. He wanted the radium, he needed the money it would bring. For the rest he was, as much as anything, a victim of circumstance. It is a sad thing—yet just.”
“Dr. Balman was a wicked man,” I said. Odd how we were speaking of him in the past tense.
“Yes,” agreed O’Leary. “But Dr. Letheny was equally culpable. Strange how a man can devote his life to a woman or—a career. Well,” he broke off, shrugging, “there’s no use philosophizing. Don’t mind my low spirits. I should feel much lower if I had failed.”
“I didn’t know what you were doing until Dr. Balman said: ‘When she opened the door.’ Then I began to have a premonition, for I recalled the request you made at the first inquest.”
“What was that?” asked Jim.
“I asked Miss Keate not to mention the fact that when she came down the corridor after hearing the sound that she thought was a door closing and was actually—”
“Don’t!” I interrupted with a shudder.
“—was actually something else, she came to the door of Eighteen and opened it and stood there for a few seconds listening.”
“Why? Did she hear something? Or see anything?”
“No. But I reasoned that the guilty man must have still been in Room 18. It had not been a moment since the sound of the blow that—the blow that killed Dr. Letheny, and I knew that the man who did it could not have dragged Dr. Letheny’s body to the closet, locked the door, and made his escape before Miss Keate got to the door of Eighteen. Hence I knew that only the guilty man knew what she had done.”
“Did you plan that far ahead? Did you know you could work him to admit that knowledge?” cried Jim in honest amazement.
O’Leary shook his head, smiling ruefully.
“No. I am but human. But I plan to take every chance. Hoard every possible bit of evidence. That was small but conclusive.”
“Is that the only proof you have against Dr. Balman?” asked Jim.
“No. I have others. But I wasn’t quite satisfied. You see, I let Balman know that the radium was in this room and would be guarded all day but not at night because I intended to remove it then. Miss Keate helped me there. Dr. Balman was on the other side of the door in the garage this morning—or rather yesterday morning,” explained O’Leary to me. “Of course, I had actually removed the radium at once and substituted a dummy box. I expected Balman would try to secure it in the dark of night and hoped to catch him red-handed. But instead—you, Gainsay, nearly spoiled the works for me. You have been a good deal of trouble, one way and another,” he interpolated, with a glance that held nothing humorous. “However, I know the reason for your—er—meddling.” O’Leary smiled openly at Maida; it was that extraordinary winning smile that he reserved for certain occasions and Maida smiled, too. “I can’t say that I blame you for that. Though if you had advised her to tell of the cuff link business in the first place—”
“That cuff link!” murmured Maida with contrition. “I am sorry. I should have explained it immediately. But it—would have meant such publicity. It was so disagreeable.” She flushed pinkly and Jim’s heart was in his steady eyes fastened upon her.
“But what else do you have against Dr. Balman?” I inquired hastily, for once uninterested in matters of the tender sentiment.
“The story that I told here tonight is, in the main part, true if you simply change the name of Hajek to Balman. For the points against Balman—” he checked off the items on his fingers. “First, finger prints on that revolver of Corole’s. Dr. Letheny’s and those of Dr. Balman were very clear. It was some time before I could get a good print of Balman’s, though I had those of everyone else connected with the case. Then there was the fact that he asked to have this low window bolted and the request came simultaneously with the disappearance of the key to the south door; having provided himself with a mode of entrance he was anxious to keep others out of the room that held the radium. Then there was the matter of the ether that you smelled, Miss Keate, the ether that Higgins said was somewhere about the coat that was left there just outside the window of Eighteen, and that you found on a handkerchief in the pocket of that yellow slicker. I found on investigation that the only person seen to leave St. Ann’s that Friday evening just at dinner time was Dr. Balman and that he wore a yellow slicker. That was not conclusive, for he might have borrowed it as Miss Keate did. But yesterday morning I found in the side pocket of his car a small
