Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 50, No. 1. Whole No. 284, July 1967

The Lion’s Paw by John Dickson Carr

“How could he have been murdered? He was all alone on this path. There wasn’t anybody within a hundred yards of him... No one could have touched him. And yet he was stabbed...” Exactly the kind of case for Colonel March, head of D3 Department at Scotland Yard, better known as the Department of Queer Complaints...

Under the white light of daybreak the beach seemed deserted for a full half-mile toward the headland. The tide was out, showing a muddy slope at the foot of smooth sand. But it had begun to turn, and flat edges of surf moved snakily back toward the beach.

A narrow lane led down to it, between the high and crooked banks which closed it off from the road. Until you were well out on the sands it was impossible even to see Norman Kane’s cottage some distance up toward the right. But one landmark showed in a dark wedge against sand and sea. For several hundred yards out into the water a line of rocks ran in humped formation, curved at the end, in a way that suggested the paw of an animal. It seemed to catch at the incoming tide. Bill Stacey knew it at once for the Lion’s Paw, and he set off down the lane toward the beach.

It is to Stacey’s credit that he still felt moderately cheerful after having just tramped two miles on an empty stomach, carrying a heavy suitcase. Norman Kane had specified the train he was to take from London, and the wayside station at which it would land him. But Kane had said nothing about a certain lack of transport at that hour of the morning.

The prospect of seeing Marion — Kane’s niece and secretary — so cheered him that he forgot the matter. He did not know whether Kane knew he was in love with Marion. Norman Kane had for him the slightly amused tolerance with which Kane would naturally regard an easy-going journalist like Stacey. And Stacey, in turn, had concealed from a hero-worshipping Marion his belief that Norman Kane was an imposing, dignified, and strenuous crook.

For in his way Kane was a great man, a power in the City and a company-juggler of skill. And he was genuinely fond of Marion, as he was of all his dependents. With his theatricalism went tireless energy; it was only at Dr. Hastings’ orders, when he had developed signs of a bad heart, that he had been dragged off for the summer to South Wales.

Heart trouble, Stacey knew, was often the case with these ex-athletes who have run to fat. Kane’s worried looks, Marion’s worried looks, had disturbed him the last time he saw them. But as he came out on the beach in the morning light, he felt that nothing ever could happen to Kane.

There was the man himself. Even at a distance he recognized Kane’s bulky figure, jauntily wrapped in a dark-red bathrobe with white facings, striding along with a towel over his arm, kicking the sand out of his way with rubber slippers. His bathrobe made a spot of color against that lonely shore, where the Lion’s Paw stretched out into the tide.

And Kane strode out briskly along the Paw. He was not going to bathe. He was going out along the rocks to dive.

“Here!” Stacey said aloud. Swimming, in that sea, with a bad heart? The mutter of the surf was growing as it drove in, and the farther end of the Paw was already awash.

“Ahoy there!” he yelled. “Kane! Hoy!”

The cry seemed to linger in emptiness across the sands. But it reached Kane, who turned round. He was some fifty yards out on the ridge, but he lifted his towel and waved it.

“Ahoy, my lad!” he bellowed back. “I didn’t expect you so early. Come for a dip! The water’s fine. Everything is—”

Then it happened.

Stacey never forgot that big, grayish-haired figure, framed against the sea and the dark crook of the Lion’s Paw. He was too far away to catch the expression on Kane’s face. But Kane’s voice died away in a gulp, a puzzled kind of gulp, and his shoulders drew together. For a moment he stood looking at the beach, swaying a little and pressing his arms as though he were cold. Then he pitched forward on his face like a bag of sand.

It was a second or two before Stacey began to run. As he did so he noticed other figures moving on the beach. From some distance away to the right, in the direction of Kane’s cottage, he saw Marion running toward him. There was a gleam on her yellow hair; she wore a bathing suit and a beachrobe blown out by the wind. Behind her lumbered Dr. Hastings, in a white linen suit.

But Stacey did not wait for him. He knew instinctively that something had happened to Norman Kane, something worse than a faint.

Along the top of the Lion’s Paw there had been worn a natural sunken path some two feet wide. Picking his way out across this, he found Kane’s great bulk wedged into it. Kane’s right hand, still clutching the towel, was doubled under him; his left hand lay limply outstretched ahead. Stacey took his pulse, but there was no pulse.

He stood staring down, listening to the slap and swing of the water against the rocks. Heart gone: just like that. At that moment he did not notice the small hole or tear in the back of the dark-red bathrobe, just over the heart. He was too dazed to notice anything more than the fact of death. He hurried back to the beach, where he met Marion and Dr. Hastings.

“Steady,” he said, as the girl tried to push past him. “You’d better go out there, Doctor. But I’m afraid he’s done for.”

None of them moved. He could not quite estimate the effect of his words on Kane’s niece. He realized, too, that he had never before seen Marion without her glasses, which had added a businesslike and almost prim touch to her good looks. Over her shoulder towered Dr. Hastings, whose wiry, close-cut hair had a Teutonic look, and his expression a Teutonic heaviness.

“Oh!” said the girl. She was looking at him curiously, and she breathed hard. “Was it — suicide?”

“Suicide?” repeated Stacey, startled. “No. His heart gave out. Why should you think it was suicide?”

“Oh!” said Marion again. She put her hand on his arm and pressed it. “I want to see him. No, I’m quite all right. I hope I can move. I can’t think very well.”

Dr. Hastings, who seemed about to launch a violent protest, checked himself and pushed past. They went with him to the body, and watched while he made his examination. Then he urged them back toward the beach.

“Look here,” Hastings began heavily. He cleared his throat, and tried again. “Yes, he’s dead right enough; but possibly not for the reason you think. Do you know if Lionel is up yet, Marion?”

So that fellow was at the cottage, thought Stacey. He had never liked the supercilious and esthetic Mr. Lionel Pell. Norman Kane had once courted Lionel’s mother, in the days before she had married the late Mr. Pell; and this seemed to give Lionel the idea that he had some claim on Kane, particularly with regard to sponging.

“Lionel?” repeated Marion. “I... I haven’t seen him. I got up and went out for an early swim on the other side of the bay. But I shouldn’t think he was up yet. Why?”

“Because,” replied Dr. Hastings with his usual directness, “he’ll have to get out his car and drive to the village and get the police. I’m afraid this is murder.”

The surf was driving in now, with deepening thunder. A wave veered against the rocks and flung up a ghostly mane of spray. A cold wind had begun to blow from the south, fluttering Marion’s beachrobe. She looked at the doctor with rather blind blue eyes, blinking as though to keep back tears.

“We had better go up to the house,” Hastings went on, “and get something to use as a stretcher: he’s a weight to move. There are some bad crosscurrents out at this distance when the tide rises, and we don’t want him washed out to sea before the police get here.”

Then Stacey found his voice.

“The police? Good God, what do you want with the police? His heart—”

“His heart was as sound as yours or mine,” said Hastings.

“So,” said Marion, “you knew that.”

“I should hope I knew it, my dear girl. I happen to be his doctor. Now keep your chin up and let’s face the facts. He’s been murdered. What little blood there is doesn’t show up well against that dark-red bathrobe; but you probably noticed it. And you may have seen the cut in the back of the bathrobe just over the heart.”

Stacey put his arm round Marion, who had begun to tremble. He spoke with restraint.

“Look here, Doctor. I don’t like to suggest that you’re out of your mind, but you might come aside and talk nonsense to me instead of talking it to her. Murdered? How could he have been murdered? He was all alone on this path. There wasn’t anybody within a hundred yards of him. You must have seen that for yourself.”

“That’s true,” put in Marion suddenly. “I was sitting up at the top of the beach, up under the bank, getting dry; and I saw him go past. That is true, Doctor.”

“Yes. It is true. I saw him from the veranda of the cottage,” agreed Hastings.

“Then why all this talk about murder?” asked Stacey. “Hold on! Are you saying he was shot with a long-range rifle, or something of the sort? It would have to be very long range. His back was towards the sea when he was hit, and there were several miles of empty water behind him.”

“No, I am not saying that.”

“Well?”

“He was killed,” answered Dr. Hastings slowly, “with some kind of steel point like an old-fashioned hatpin. That’s what I think, anyhow. I haven’t removed it. And I can’t swear to the exact nature of the weapon until the post-mortem.”

That afternoon, while the gray rain fell, Superintendent Morgan tramped up to the cottage. He had joined the quiet group assembled inside the veranda — Marion, Dr. Hastings, Lionel Pell, and Bill Stacey sat there. Outside, the sea looked oily and dangerous, as though by its restless movements it were about to burst against the cottage. Superintendent Morgan wore a sou’wester and an oilskin cap; the expression of his face was a contrast to his soft voice.

He glared at Dr. Hastings.

“And that’s that,” he said. “I’m suggesting to you, Doctor, that you did this deliberately.”

“You mean,” asked Hastings, examining all sides of the matter, “that I killed Mr. Kane?”

“That is not what I mean. I mean, that you deliberately allowed that body to be washed out to sea. Don’t worry. We’ll find it. Indeed we will. That was an incoming tide, and it’s somewhere along the beach.” The Superintendent’s light eyes opened. His singsong voice was more disturbing than violent. “I say you deliberately let it be carried off so that we shouldn’t find out how Mr. Kane was killed.”

“Miss Kane and Mr. Stacey,” said Hastings shortly, “will tell you I warned them. I wanted to get a stretcher and move him in time. We were too late, that’s all. Why shouldn’t I want you to find out how he was killed?”

“Because it’s an impossible thing you tell us. The man was alone. No one could have touched him. And yet he was stabbed. There must have been a way of doing that. If we had found the body we should have known how it was done.”

“Probably you would have,” agreed Hastings.

There was an ominous silence, broken by the flat drizzle of the rain. Bill Stacey, sitting beside Marion, did not look at the Superintendent. He found himself more curious about another person, a man who lounged across the veranda near the doorway.

The stranger weighed some 250 pounds and his waterproof made him seem even larger. From under a sodden tweed cap a bland blue eye surveyed the company; and from under a cropped mustache, which might be sandy or gray, there projected a large-bowled pipe, at which he seemed to be sniffing. Stacey had heard the Superintendent address him as Colonel March. Colonel March listened, but so far had said nothing.

“Meantime,” said Superintendent Morgan, taking out a notebook, “there are more queernesses here. I want to hear about them, if you please. Miss Kane!”

Marion glanced up briefly. She had been holding herself in well, Stacey thought, and preserving her blank, “secretarial” manner.

“We’ve heard a good deal hereabouts,” Morgan went on, “about Mr. Kane and his bad heart. You tell us you knew he didn’t have a bad heart at all.”

“I guessed it. So did Dr. Jones in the village, I think.”

“Then why did he keep on saying he had?” demanded Morgan.

“I... I don’t know.”

“Then tell me this, miss. When you first heard this morning that Mr. Kane was dead, you asked whether it was suicide. Why did you ask that?”

“I—”

“Truth, miss!”

“I’ve been worried about him,” answered Marion. “He’s been threatening suicide, if you must know. And he’s been acting queerly.”

Lionel Pell intervened. Lionel’s way of speaking, which sometimes made him as unintelligible as a gramophone running down, now became almost clear. His long legs were out-thrust; and his usual expression of supreme indifference was now replaced by one almost helpful. He sat back, long of nose and jaw, and laid down his pronouncement.

“The word, I believe, is ‘childish,’” he decided. “The poor old boy — Norman, of course — has been playing with toys. Tell them about the cardboard soldiers, Marion. And the air rifle.”

Marion gave him an almost malevolent look.

“There’s nothing very childish about the air rifle. It’s a powerful one, hardly a toy at all. You’ve used it yourself. But I admit I don’t understand about the soldiers.

“You see,” she appealed to Morgan, “only the night before last my uncle came home with a huge box of cardboard soldiers. He bought them in Cardiff. They were gaudily painted, each of them five or six inches high. In the bottom of the box was a wooden cannon, painted yellow, that fired a hard rubber ball. My uncle went back to his study and unwrapped them, and set them all up on the table.”

At this point, Stacey noticed, the man called Colonel March stirred and glanced across with sudden interest. They all saw it; it brought a new atmosphere of tension. Morgan looked at her with quick suspicion.

“Did he, Miss Kane? Did he seem to be... er... enjoying himself?”

“No,” she replied quite seriously “He looked ill. Once he came out, for no reason at all, and begged my pardon.”

“Miss Kane, do you mean your uncle was insane?”

Dr. Hastings interposed. “Norman Kane,” he said, “was one of the sanest men I ever met.”

“Now I will tell you something myself,” said Superintendent Morgan. “He ‘begged your pardon,’ you say. You talk of suicide. I have heard of your Mr. Kane from my cousin who tells me that your Mr. Kane was not much better than a swindler. My cousin says his companies are crashing, and that he was going to be prosecuted. Is that a reason for suicide? I think it is.”

“I know nothing of my uncle’s private affairs,” said Marion. And yet it was, Stacey felt, the thing she had been fearing. Marion wore a print frock, and she seemed less like a secretary than a nurse — a nurse at the bedside of a patient who she had determined should not die.

“Is that, I ask you, a reason for suicide?”

“It may be a reason for suicide,” snapped Dr. Hastings. “But it won’t explain how a man could run himself through the back at an angle his hand couldn’t possibly reach — and in full sight of three witnesses as well.”

“Murder or suicide, it is still impossible!”

“And yet the man is dead.”

“One moment,” said Colonel March.

It was an easy, comfortable voice, and it soothed tempers frayed by rain and fear. His presence was at once authoritative and comfortable, as though he invited them to a discussion rather than an argument; and his amiable eye moved round the group.

“It’s not my place to butt in,” he apologized, “but there are one or two things here that are rather in my line. Do you mind, Superintendent, if I ask a question or two?”

“Glad,” said Morgan fervently. “This gentleman,” he explained, “is the head of D3 Department at Scotland Yard. He is down here—”

“—on not a very exciting errand,” said Colonel March sadly. “A matter of a curious thief who steals only green candlesticks, and therefore comes under the head of our special investigation department. Excuse me: Miss Kane, two days before he died your uncle bought a box of cardboard soldiers. Will you get me that box of soldiers now?”

Without a word Marion got up and went into the cottage. Dr. Hastings looked up suddenly, as though on the defensive.

“We have also heard,” Colonel March continued presently, “that he bought an air rifle. I think you used that air rifle, Mr. Pell?”

Lionel sat up. With the Superintendent he had been friendly and helpful. With Colonel March he had adopted his usual indifference, the air of ease and right with which he (at twenty-three) had called Kane “Norman” and conferred a favor by accepting loans.

“I have used it,” he said. “It was not my property. Are you under the impression that our late good host was killed by being shot with one of those microscopic pellets out of a toy air rifle? Or, for that matter, by a rubber ball out of a toy cannon?”

“Where was the air rifle kept?”

You could not shake Lionel’s placidity.

“I believe I kept it in my room. Until last night, that is. Then I lent it to Marion. Hadn’t you better ask her?”

Marion returned in a few moments with a large and bright-colored box which she handed to Colonel March. She seemed to feel that her name had been mentioned; for she looked quickly between Lionel and Bill Stacey. Colonel March opened the box, sniffing at his pipe.

“And yet,” he said, with a sharpness which made Stacey uneasy, “the rubber ball is gone. Where, I wonder, is the air rifle now? You borrowed it, Miss Kane?”

“Look here—” interrupted Dr. Hastings, with an oddly strained expression. He got up from his chair and sat down again.

“Yes, I borrowed it,” Marion answered. “Why? Didn’t I tell you? I took it out with me when I went to swim this morning, at the other side of the cottage. I shot a few bottles and things, and then put it down. When I came back to this side of the beach I must have forgotten it.”

She stared at them, her eyes widening.

“I’m afraid it’ll be ruined, in all this rain. I’m sorry. But what of it? Is it important?”

“Miss Kane,” said Colonel March, “do you usually go out for a swim as early in the morning as that?”

“No. Never. Only I was horribly worried about my uncle. I couldn’t sleep.”

“You were fond of him?”

“Very fond of him,” said Marion simply. “He had been very good to me.”

Colonel March’s expression seemed to darken and withdraw. It was as expressionless as his ancient cap or his ancient pipe; and he said nothing. But he closed the box of soldiers with great care, and beckoned the Superintendent to one side.

Late that afternoon a body was washed up on the shore two miles below Barry Island. And Marion Kane was detained for questioning at the police station, as a prelude to formal detention on a charge of murder.

Stacey spent one of the worst nights of his life. He told himself that he must keep calm, that he must resist the impulse to telephone wildly for solicitors, invade the police station, and generally make a nuisance of himself. He realized, wryly, that he was not a strong, silent man like Dr. Hastings. In difficulties he wanted to do something about them, if only to adopt the dubious course of hitting somebody in the eye.

Things would be all right, he assured himself. Kane’s own solicitor was coming from London, and the police were fair. But this very feeling that the police were fair disturbed him worst of all. After a sleepless night at the cottage he dozed off at dawn, and came downstairs at ten o’clock. Lionel Pell was coming up the veranda steps with a newspaper. It was still raining, and so dark that Dr. Hastings had lighted the oil lamps in the living room.

“Here’s their case,” said Lionel, holding up the newspaper. “Our Superintendent has been talking indiscreetly. It’s plastered all over the world.”

“Their case? Their case against—?”

Stacey had to admit that his opinion of Lionel had changed. Lionel had no affectations now; under press of trouble he was only lanky and awkward and human.

“Well, they don’t mention her name, of course. She’s not officially under arrest. It’s very carefully worded. But they appear to have found that air rifle buried in the sand at the top of the beach under the bank. They found it at the exact place where Marion says she was sitting when old Norman fell, and in an almost direct line with the Lion’s Paw.”

Against the lamplight from one of the living-room windows appeared Dr. Hastings’ head. It was only a silhouette with wiry cropped hair, but they saw his knuckles bunch on the window sill.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Lionel urged hastily. “I was in bed and asleep when it happened. But you recall, Bill, that until you came well out on the beach yesterday morning you couldn’t see Marion at all. You were in the little lane. Dr. Hastings couldn’t see her either. He was on the veranda here, and this cottage is set well back behind the line of the bank.

“If Norman were shot in the back, particularly with a weapon like that, he wouldn’t feel it the moment he was hit. People don’t, they say. He would hear a hail from Bill Stacey, and turn round. Then he would fall forward with the weapon in his heart—”

From the window Hastings uttered a kind of growl.

“The weapon?” he said. “As a matter of academic interest, will you tell me just what an air rifle has to do with this, anyhow?”

“Oh, come! You won’t be able to dodge responsibility like that, Doctor,” said Lionel, who always dodged responsibility.

“Dodge—?”

“Yes. It’s your fault. You were the one who suggested that the wound was made by a point and shaft like an old-fashioned hatpin?”

“Well?”

“Those air rifles, you know; they’re pretty powerful. Hardly like a toy at all. But sometimes the lead pellets stick in the barrel and clog it. So as a rule the makers give you a very thin light rod to clean the barrel with. If you cut off about three-quarters of the rod, and sharpen the other end to a needle point, you would have a short missile that could be fired with very damaging force in the ordinary way.”

There was a silence, except for the noise of sea and rain. Stacey walked to the end of the veranda.

“I’ve heard rot before,” he said, as though making a measured decision. “But never in my life... Do you realize that there’s no air rifle powerful enough to carry any kind of missle with enough force to kill at a distance of well over fifty yards?”

“Yes, I know,” admitted Lionel. “But you see the trouble?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s just plausible,” said Lionel. “I don’t believe it. It only worries me.”

“I want my hat,” said Dr. Hastings suddenly. “Where’s my hat? This can’t go on; I won’t have it. I’m going down to the police station and tell them what really happened.”

Outside the cottage there was a rustle of footsteps, stumbling footsteps in the gloom. It was so dark that they could barely see the two persons who came up the steps, but Dr. Hastings picked up a lamp inside the window and held it so that the light fell on Colonel March and Marion Kane.

Colonel March was wheezing a little, but as bland as ever. Marion’s expression could not be read. There was relief in it, and disillusionment, and even peace; despite the signs of recent emotion, she was smiling.

“I should like a cigarette, please, Bill,” she said. Then she took his arm. “Thank heavens for an ordinary decent human being.”

“The Superintendent and I,” said Colonel March, “have come to apologize. Of course, we did what we did entirely with Miss Kane’s consent. We have concocted a fiction and kept on the lee side of libel. We have set a trap and heard it snap. We have given you all, I fear, a bad night. But it was the only way we could bring the corpse back to tell his own story... You had better come up now, Mr. Kane.”

It was a very muddy, shamefaced, and glowering corpse who walked up the steps behind Superintendent Morgan. Norman Kane, whose heart had stopped beating more than twenty-four hours ago, was now very much alive; and looked as though he wished he weren’t.

Norman Kane’s gray-haired dignity did not sustain him. He seemed undecided whether or not to hide behind Superintendent Morgan. For a moment he stood opening and shutting his hands. Then he caught sight of Dr. Hastings standing in the window, holding up the lamp.

“You traitor,” he roared, and flung himself at the doctor.

“He was dead,” insisted Stacey. “His heart had stopped; I’ll swear to that. How did he manage it?”

On a clear, cool morning after the rain, Marion, Stacey, and Colonel March stood on the beach looking at a new tide. Colonel March frowned.

“You had better hear the story,” he said. “Kane was wrong in nearly everything; he was wrong in the way he flared out against Dr. Hastings. Hastings is his friend, and only tried to help him when his pig-headed piece of deception would have been discovered in two minutes.

“You will already have guessed the fact which Miss Kane feared: Norman Kane was heading for a bad financial smash. It might not necessarily mean prison, but it would mean ruin and penury. Kane did not like such embarrassments. So he planned to stage a fake death and disappear, with a good sum laid by. Other financiers have been known to do it, you know,” Colonel March added dryly.

Marion tossed a pebble at the water and said nothing.

“He was going to ‘die’ and have his body washed out to sea — never to be found,” the Colonel went on. “But he did not want either the stigma of suicide or the prying investigation of a murder. So, with the assistance of Dr. Hastings, he arranged to die of heart failure on the Lion’s Paw. There had to be an independent witness there to swear to his death — you, Mr. Stacey.

“You were summoned for that purpose. Hastings had to be there to corroborate you. Then Hastings would shepherd you to the cottage, hundreds of yards away, as the tide rose. Kane, a supremely powerful swimmer, could let himself into the water, swim out and round to the headland, and disappear.

“So for a long time he gabbled everywhere about his weak heart. But he would not listen to Hastings, who told him it was very risky. Miss Kane knew that his heart was not weak. Even the village doctor knew it. If Kane, therefore, suddenly dropped dead of a complaint he did not have, there would be a strong suspicion of fraud at the start. It was altogether a foolish plan. Even so it might have gone through if, on the very morning chosen for the ‘death’ Miss Kane had not decided to get up for an early swim.

“She was not accustomed to getting up early, as she told us. Norman Kane and Dr. Hastings thought they would have the whole beach to themselves at that hour — except for their special witness, a young man of... er... unsuspicious nature.”

Stacey looked at him glumly.

“For ‘unsuspicious,’” he said, “read ‘imbecile.’ Very well; but I was in full command of what faculties I have, Colonel. I know when a man is dead. And I tell you his heart had stopped.”

“I beg your pardon,” beamed Colonel March. “His heart had not stopped. But his pulse had stopped.”

“His pulse?”

“You will recall how he was lying. Flat on his face, with his right hand doubled under him, but his left hand stretched out invitingly. He was also lying wedged in a kind of trough; and you know his great weight. To move him and get at his heart would be difficult and awkward. You would never try to do it, with that limp hand stretched out towards you. You would automatically feel the pulse at his wrist. And there was no pulse.”

“But how the dickens can you stop a pulse? It’s the same as a heart.”

“You stop it,” said Colonel March, “by means of a small, hard, rubber ball, such as the little one supplied with the toy cannon in the box of soldiers. It is a good trick, which was exhibited before a group of doctors in London some time ago — and it worked. At the same time it is so simple that I suggest you try it for yourself. Kane, of course, got it from Dr. Hastings.

“The small rubber ball is placed under the armpit. The arm is pressed hard against the side; the flow of blood is cut off; and the man is ‘dead.’ Kane lay with his upper arm against his side, but with his lower arm from elbow to wrist extended for your inspection. That is all.

“Even so, the whole plan almost crashed, because Miss Kane unexpectedly appeared on the scene. You, Mr. Stacey, had found the body and announced death from heart failure. But Hastings knew that this would never do. Miss Kane strongly suspected that the weak heart was a sham.

“If the body had already been swept out to sea, if she had come on the scene only afterwards, she might have wavered. She might have been uncertain. She might have thought it was suicide, which they tried to conceal from her under a mask of heart failure. But there was the body. If something were not done quickly, she would have insisted on examining it. And it would never do for her to find a living man.”

Marion nodded. She was still shaken from the after-effect of a somewhat bitter hoax.

“I certainly should have!” she said. “Only the doctor—”

“Diverted your attention. Exactly. He is an ingenious fellow, Hastings; and no wonder he was upset that morning. He diverted it in the only possible way, with a sudden clap of violence and murder. He drew you hastily back to the beach so that Kane should not overhear. He shocked you out of your wits, which made it easy for him to put ideas into your mind.

“Remember you never actually saw any trace of a wound or a weapon. All you saw was a very minute tear in the back of the bathrobe, where it had been skagged on a sharp stone.

“That tear, he admits, put the idea into his mind while he was making his ‘examination.’ To account for such a very small puncture, and such a complete absence of blood, he had to think of some weapon corresponding to that description; so he postulated something like an old-fashioned hatpin. He could have said it was suicide, of course. But he knew that a man could neither stab himself in the back at that angle, in the presence of witnesses, nor press such a weapon so far into the flesh as to be invisible. Whereas it was just possible that a thin blade might have been projected or fired by a murderer. It was altogether too possible. Dr. Hastings had acted wildly and unwisely on the spur of the moment, to prevent the discovery of his friend’s hoax; but he must have grown somewhat ill when he saw the case we spun out of a completely harmless air rifle.”

Colonel March smiled apologetically.

“It was a very weak case, of course,” he said, “but we had to bring the corpse back. We had to have something — suggestive, but noncommittal and nonlibelous — to stare at Kane from the Welsh newspapers. It had to be done before he got away to the Continent, or we might never have caught him. The discovery of a drowned body, washed up at Barry, was very helpful; it aided the illusion with which we might snare Kane. The matter was suggested to Miss Kane, who agreed...”

“Agreed?” cried Marion. “Don’t you see I had to know whether... I have looked up to him all my life. I had to know whether he would cut and run just the same if he thought I might be hanged for his murder.”

“Which he did not do,” said Colonel March. “Mr. Norman Kane, I think, has had a refreshing shock which will do him no harm. I should like to have seen him when he crept into town last night, when he found that he was not dead of heart failure and washed out to sea but that his murdered body had been found and his niece was accused of having killed him. No wonder he burst out at Hastings. But what did he do? He must have realized, Miss Kane, that this charge against you would sooner or later be shown as nonsense; and yet he came back. It was a decent thing to do, as decent as the thing you did yourself. I think it likely that, if he faces his difficulties now, he will save himself as he thought he was saving you.”