"A broken ukulele string." He paused and then went on: "_What did you
do with the other one?_"
"The other one?"
"_The one you strangled her with._ You were very clever, weren't you?
It was done very quickly--just in that moment we were all laughing and
talking in the hall.
"Mabelle came back into this room for her ukulele. You had taken the
string off as you fiddled with it just before. You caught her round
the throat with it and strangled her. Then you came out and locked the
door and joined us. Later, in the dead of night, you came down and--and
disposed of the body by hanging it on the door of her room. And you put
another string on the ukulele--_but it was the wrong string_, that's
why you were stupid."
There was a pause.
"But why did you do it?" said Mr. Satterthwaite. "In God's name, _why_?"
Mr. Keeley laughed, a funny giggling little laugh that made Mr.
Satterthwaite feel rather sick.
"It was so very simple," he said. "That's why! And then--nobody ever
noticed me. Nobody ever noticed what I was doing. I thought--I thought
I'd have the laugh on them."
And again he gave that furtive little giggle and looked at Mr.
Satterthwaite with mad eyes.
Mr. Satterthwaite was glad that at that moment Inspector Winkfield came
into the room.
* * * * *
It was twenty-four hours later, on his way to London, that Mr.
Satterthwaite awoke from a doze to find a tall dark man sitting
opposite to him in the railway carriage. He was not altogether
surprised.
"My dear Mr. Quin!"
"Yes--I am here."
Mr. Satterthwaite said slowly, "I can hardly face you. I am ashamed. I
failed."
"Are you so sure of that?"
"I did not save her."
"But you discovered the truth?"
"Yes, that is true. One or other of those young men might have been
accused--might even have been found guilty. So, at any rate, I saved
a man's life. But she--she--that strange, enchanting creature--" His
voice broke off.
Mr. Quin looked at him.
"Is death the greatest evil that can happen to anyone?"
"I--well--perhaps--No."
Mr. Satterthwaite remembered--Madge and Roger Graham--Mabelle's face in
the moonlight--its serene unearthly happiness--
"No," he admitted. "No--perhaps death is not the greatest evil."
He remembered the ruffled blue chiffon of her dress that had seemed to
him like the plumage of a bird, a bird with a broken wing.
When he looked up, he found himself alone. Mr. Quin was no longer
there. But he had left something behind.
On the seat was a roughly-carved bird fashioned out of some dim blue
stone. It had, possibly, no great artistic merit. But it had something
else.
It had the vague quality of enchantment.
So said Mr. Satterthwaite--and Mr. Satterthwaite was a connoisseur.