_The Walter States His Third Case_
"Congratulations!" exclaimed the waiter, clapping his hands
noiselessly together. "My lord, your dramatic sense is springing to
life! I doubt if I could have told that case more effectively."
"You seem to have a high estimate of your abilities," retorted the
judge, frigidly.
"On the contrary, I have--or had--a low one of yours."
"You are damnably impertinent, sir!"
The waiter bent forward and his face assumed a severe expression. He
shook his forefinger at the judge.
"Another word of such language and I shall commit you for contempt of
court!" he cried. "It is intolerable that the dignity of this
assembly should be lowered by the vulgar parlance of the taproom. I
give you an opportunity to apologize to ourselves before I send you
to a place where you shall have leisure to reflect on your
indiscretion!"
No wonder the judge gasped. The words thus addressed to him were his
own--the very warning he had uttered to a prisoner but recently in
his own court!
He experienced a sensation that made a chill run down his spine. The
very manner of uttering the warning was his. That poised forefinger!
That out-thrust chin! Those slitted eyelids!
He trembled, though he tried to control his limbs.
"I am sorry if I have, in the heat of the moment, given way to my
feelings," he stammered. "I withdraw the offending words."
"Excellent!" cried the waiter. "Excellent! My lord, you are
becoming almost human!"
Once more the judge experienced that chilling sensation. He had
unconsciously made exactly the same apology that the prisoner had
made to him!
The perspiration rolled down his face. He drew out his handkerchief
and mopped his brow.
"Pray, sir," he forced himself to say, "how is it that you seem to
have such an intimate knowledge of legal procedure?"
"Ah, it may be heredity, my lord. Or it may be that I am a criminal.
Or it may be both."
The judge fixed his eyes on the waiter.
"You seem to know my court very well. Yet I cannot recollect ever
seeing you in the dock."
"You see so many that your memory cannot retain every face. I will
admit, however, that you have never sentenced me. I have,
nevertheless, attended your court often enough and have listened to
your learned summing up of the law. I have generally been in the
public gallery."
There was a silence.
The waiter had regained his buoyancy of spirit. His resentment at
the judge's outburst had entirely disappeared. He was almost
smiling. The judge felt a little more comfortable.
"As it is now my turn to state a case for the prosecution of the
prisoner and the views he holds," said the waiter--and at the words
the judge's heart fluttered a bit--"I wish, in the very first place
at this stage, to make a protest and a suggestion. I have never
understood the justice of putting a _suspected_ person in the dock,
for the fundamental principle of penology and law is that an accused
person is innocent until he is proved guilty. It follows, then, that
until the verdict is given the accused is technically innocent. Do
you agree?"
"Technically, yes, but----"
"Never mind the 'but.' You lawyers are constantly admitting
arguments and then inserting a 'but.' The plain truth is that a
suspected person has no legal or logical right in the dock. He is
presumably innocent. I hold--and I am not alone in this--that just
as the state has its public prosecutor so the accused person ought to
have the services of a public defender. Do you agree?"
"I am afraid----" began the judge, cautiously, and the waiter waved
his hand contemptuously.
"Of course you are afraid."
"I am not afraid!" snarled the judge, angrily, his temper fanned to
flaming condition.
"But you said you were!"
"I am not!"
"Be careful. You say now that you are not afraid. Yet it is not a
moment since you said you were afraid. Which is it to be?"
"I have told you. I am not afraid--not in the sense you mean."
"How do you know what sense I mean? Tell me how you are not afraid."
"I am afraid"--and the judge stopped and smashed his fist
tempestuously on the table, baited to active resentment and his
temper now well alight, furious at having contradicted himself,
raging at the misconstruction put on his words and anxious to recover
from the vindictive pressure of the waiter--"I am afraid, sir, that I
do not feel called upon to explain why I am not afraid."
"Pray be calm," said the waiter, patiently, assuming an affectation
of aggrieved innocence of all baiting intentions. "If you do not
feel able to answer a plain question, or if you are afraid, as you
have admitted, that you cannot tell me why you are not afraid, will
you then confess at once why you are afraid you cannot tell me why
you are not afraid?"
"I decline to reply to foolish questions," cried the exasperated
judge, his face crimson.
"Very well. But I warn you that the responsibility may be grave if
you persist in that attitude."
The judge turned his head away and pretended to become engrossed in
the ceiling.
A silence ensued that might have been interminable had not the judge,
after a while, happened to drop his eyes. To his astonishment, he
saw the waiter doing his best to stifle laughter by holding his
handkerchief over his mouth. But his eyes were brimming with
suppressed mirth and his hand was holding his side.
"Ah, judge," he cried, taking his handkerchief from his face, "you do
not make a very good witness for the defense!"
"What do you mean?" growled the judge.
"Merely that you now know what a poor devil of a prisoner, or
witness, feels like when a counsel roasts him in cross-examination.
I have seen you yourself take a delight in the game. How do you like
it now you see it from another viewpoint?" And the waiter put his
handkerchief to his face again and went into a paroxysm of laughter.
The judge did not deign to answer this unseemly taunt. He was more
than ever convinced that the waiter was mad; but at the same time he
wished that he had come out of the cunningly planned ordeal in a
different fashion.
"I observe," he said, coldly, "that you make no defense of the crime
of Nathaniel Gore. Perhaps you have no defense and so try to hide
the fact under a camouflage of boisterous, if rather forced, mirth."
The waiter controlled his features and pocketed his handkerchief.
"Pardon me," he retorted, with gravity, "it is you who are adopting
an old legal trick. Having no case to present, it is the custom to
slang the opposite side. How long will it take you to get it into
your head that I am not acting for the defense? I am prosecuting."
"Then I shall be glad to hear your prosecution of the law that hanged
Nathaniel Gore," remarked the judge drily. "I recited the case to
prove that execution did in fact act as a deterrent. I would merely
add that since Gore was hanged, as he deserved to be, there has never
been an attempt to steal diamonds brought from abroad by ships. If
that is not deterrent, then I do not know the meaning of the word."
"And so you expect to make use of the antidote in this flask and
recall one of your members back to consciousness? I would be the
first to admit your right to the claim if I thought it was reasonable
and beyond controversy. But it does not happen to be so. As for
your failure to see the reason of my mirth, that is quite
understandable. Few prisoners, or witnesses, do relish the laughter
in court that judges indulge in, with counsel as good supports, but
which they suppress in anybody else. Their sense of humor is not the
same. How can a prisoner be expected to enjoy a joke when the
discussion giving rise to it involves his chance of life?"
All trace of levity had now disappeared from the waiter's manner. He
was once more the serious person the judge desired him to be.
"And while I have mentioned executions," continued the waiter, "let
me bring to your notice the remarkable methods that penal codes adopt
in order to carry out the judgment of death. Each country has its
own particular form of procedure. In England the method is hanging,
in France it is the guillotine, in some states in America it is the
electric chair. There has been some discussion of late as to which
is the most humane way of killing criminals guilty of murder. The
guillotine is said to be at least the swiftest, if it is the most
bloody. England claims that hanging is the surest. In those states
in America where hanging is adopted there is a difference in the
mechanism of the scaffold. The American way is to have a heavy
weight to jerk the condemned man into the air instead of the usual
drop used in England. But this weight method raised a considerable
protest in Connecticut when a bandit was jerked into the other world.
It was held to be barbaric.
"England's claim is not altogether well founded, either. There was a
case some time ago where a man had to endure three successive
attempts to hang him by the drop method, none of which was
successful. Can you wonder that the officials present were filled
with disgust?
"As for the electric-chair method, it is held to be barbaric in the
extreme. It is not an electric chair at all, except in name. The
prisoner has to be strapped into it. He walks to it in an old suit
of black generously provided by the state. His funeral clothes. How
edifying and gentle is civilization! Behold, too, the paradox of one
of the wardens of a famous prison where executions are carried out
actually making it known that personally he is against the death
penalty! Poor man, he has his job to consider.
"We have had a parallel to this expression of opinion in England.
The late Major Blake, at one time governor of Pentonville prison, who
saw a number of executions, confessed that the whole thing sickened
him. '_I cannot help asking myself,_' to quote his exact words,
written after he had ceased to be a governor, '_why, when one was
called upon to superintend an execution one should have been affected
with such a keen sense of personal shame.... There must be something
fundamentally wrong with a law which has the effect of lessening the
self-respect of those whose duty it is to carry it out._'
"And, by the way, how many advocates of the judgment of death would
be willing to carry out the sentence? Is not it true that, according
to law, the sheriffs ought to do the deed? Why, then, pay a hangman
to do the thing they shrink from? Not so long ago a chief warder at
Wandsworth prison, in London, committed suicide because of the
haunting memories of the executions at which he had assisted. Ah,
that emblem of death, the black cap, which you don with
self-confessed satisfaction, your lordship, is no mere emblem of
retribution focused on the victim alone!"
The judge frowned, but did not interrupt, though he was sorely
tempted to. He wanted to claim his point and restore one of his
members to life.
The waiter seemed to read his thoughts, for without more ado he began
to state his third case.
THE PASSIONATE CRIME
Though you did not sentence Walter Seale to death [said the waiter],
you will find his crime mentioned in your minute-book. You may not
have been present at the meeting at which your fellow members [and he
made an eloquent gesture toward the unconscious men] discussed his
case and came to the conclusion that he also justly deserved to be
executed. As in every case that has come up before the erudite Clue
Club, all members have been entirely unanimous in their conclusions.
Walter Seale has been chosen for presentation because his criminal
act fits in very appropriately at this juncture. Have you not
related the case of The Mole, that representative of a base stratum
of the social cosmos? Is not it quite fitting, then, that a
representative of another stratum should be paraded whose sentence
and crime were in the same category so far as the penal code judged?
After all, The Mole was a criminal who warred on society so that he
might live. Walter Seale---- But you shall hear his story.
When Seale had thought out his plan to the last detail he went to the
Criminals' Rescue Guild, saying that his sympathies were entirely
with them in their difficult work, and asked if they could provide
him with a valet.
He was given a choice of several men who had served considerable
terms of imprisonment for various offenses. One was an ex-forger;
one was an ex-"confidence" man; one was a habitual convict; one had
spent many years making himself a proficient burglar. There were
others, all men who had reformed after having paid the penalties of
their evil-doing. Walter Seale chose Adam Jelks, the ex-burglar.
"We do not wish to hide from you the fact that occasionally we are
bitterly disappointed in those we try to help," was the candid
admission of the secretary of the guild, "but we believe that all the
men you have seen are honestly making an endeavor to go straight. At
the same time, in taking them as employes, employers are accepting
them at their own risk; but the men have asked for jobs, and if
treated fairly they generally prove worthy of the trust. I am quite
sure that Adam Jelks will turn out a good servant. If you have any
complaint, please let us know."
Walter Seale thereupon took Adam Jelks into his employ as valet in
the small bachelor flat he rented in the West End.
What Walter Seale, however, did not tell the Criminals' Rescue Guild
was that he had not come to give a man a chance to build up a new and
honest career, but he had come to choose a man whose past would aid
him to commit a crime if the crime he contemplated was necessary; and
he wanted a man who, without knowing it, would be his best defense, a
sure shield against suspicion falling on Mr. Seale when and if
suspicion fell at all.
For several weeks Adam Jelks did his duty as valet with a willingness
that no employer could question or find fault with. He took pains to
show that he was worthy of his hire, that he was desirous of being
able to face the world again. He was a young man, considerably
younger than Walter Seale; and Seale was not much over thirty years.
Jelks had a small bedroom at the flat. He had one whole day and one
half-day off every week. He was treated well. He responded to the
good treatment by giving good service.
One afternoon, when Jelks was engaged in polishing the silver in his
kitchenette, Walter Seale called to him to come at once. Jelks
hastened into the sitting-room. Seale was busy with a few
photographs, a pot of paste, and some cardboard mounts. He nodded
toward a wineglass on the table.
"Jelks, please fetch a little water in that glass. I want to damp
the backs of these pictures to make them stick fast."
Jelks took the glass and brought it back filled with water.
"Can I help you in any way, sir?" he asked, seeing his employer using
both hands to hold down a mount.
"No, thanks. I can manage all right. Get ahead with your polishing.
Clean hands are wanted for this job."
Jelks returned to his work, closing the sitting-room door behind him.
In the sitting-room, as soon as he was alone, Walter Seale ceased to
be interested in photographs. He had not been mounting them at all,
just pretending; and he was now looking, with every sign of intense
interest and satisfaction, at the glass Jelks had brought him. A
strange smile was on his face. He took a cigarette from his case and
began to smoke leisurely, still gazing at the glass.
When he had finished his cigarette he lifted the wineglass carefully,
one finger and thumb on the rim and base, respectively; emptied the
water into a flower-bowl; and, when dry, placed the glass in a small
cardboard box that seemed to be made for it. He next put the box
into a drawer of his writing-desk and locked the drawer. The first
step in his elaborate plan had been achieved.
That evening, while dressing for dinner, which he was taking at the
club, he called Jelks once more. This time he informed Jelks that he
had lost a valuable set of studs. He was very perturbed at the loss,
as also was Jelks. A search failed to reveal the missing studs.
"I left them on my dressing-table," said Seale, indignantly. "They
couldn't walk off. They were there this afternoon."
"I never saw them," protested Jelks.
"There was nobody here except you and me," retorted his employer,
meaningly. "It's a scandalous thing to lose valuable articles right
under one's nose. I shall have to use a set for my shirt that I
don't care for. Are you sure you did not lift them?"
"I did not lift them; and I did not steal them, if that's what you
mean, sir," replied Jelks. "You may search my room if you like. I
swear I know nothing about them."
Walter Seale considered the matter. He had the shirt-studs in his
pocket at that very moment; but he was playing his game.
"Very well, Jelks, I'll say nothing more about the matter for the
time being. I am going over to the Continent tomorrow for a week,
and I shall want these studs when I come back."
"I'll try to find them, sir. I'll hunt through the flat----"
"Well, no. I was thinking of locking up the flat, Jelks. You had
better take a week's holiday, as there is no need for you to stay
here alone. I shall send for you if I want you when I return. I
want you to leave here tomorrow morning. I am going off in the
afternoon. Your address will always be at the offices of the Rescue
Guild, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir," replied Jelks, humbly, stunned by the possibility of
losing his job. "If you don't want me again, will you give me a
reference?"
"I'll see to that when I come back, Jelks." And Walter Seale went
off to his dinner at his club.
The next morning Jelks informed him that he had searched over the
whole flat but could not find the missing shirt-studs. Walter Seale
made no comment. He paid Jelks his wages, and after saying that he
would let him know if he desired his services when he returned from
France, he retired to his room.
Before lunch time the valet's belongings had been removed and Seale
was alone in the flat. The second step in his plan had been carried
out.
For the time being he dismissed the personality of Jelks from his
mind and concentrated on his next move. He went out for lunch and
returned to his flat before tea time. After waiting for a short time
he prepared for the great crisis.
He went up the carpeted stairs of the block of flats and rang the
bell next a door on the top floor.
His summons brought a woman clad in a bewitching afternoon gown. She
was young, beautiful, attractive; but her brows wrinkled as she
recognized her caller.
"May I see you for a minute, Dora? I thought you'd be at home."
"I hardly expected you to come here again," she answered, coldly.
"You know I told you not to call."
"It may be the last time you'll see me. Surely you won't refuse a
final interview?"
She allowed him to enter, and he walked straight into the tiny parlor
where she had been sitting at crochet work. The fire was lit in the
grate, the room was as cozy as a nest. On a side table, on a tea
tray, were a cup and saucer, a plate of cakes, and a silver teapot.
"What have you to say?" she asked, a little uneasily. "Have you done
what you promised?"
He sat down, but he was gazing at her, trying to read her thoughts.
"You know I love you, Dora."
"You must not begin that over again. I have answered you once and
for all time. Have you straightened out the swindle in which I
detected you----"
"Dora----"
"Please answer my question. I told you that unless you put that
matter right I would tell my husband tonight."
"You really meant that threat?"
"Certainly I meant it. Now answer my question. That is the only
matter you are to talk about to me."
"Then you will never love me? You will never accept my love?"
"Mr. Seale, how dare you begin all that again!"
They looked at each other for a moment, she with indignation, he with
a desperate desire to move her.
She seemed to read something in his face, for she suddenly made an
exclamation.
"You have not carried out your promise--the one chance I gave you! I
shall tell my husband the whole affair of your swindle when he comes
home."
"I have not carried out my promise," cried Seale, harshly. "I cannot
carry it out. If you would only be reasonable----"
"If you do not go away I shall have you ejected."
"Is that your last word?" he cried, passionately. "Reflect that I
love you more than your husband does----"
She clutched her crochet work tightly and threw her arm out toward
the door. She was more beautiful than ever in that attitude, a
perfect woman. Even though she was angry, Seale desired to possess
her.
"Go!" she cried. "I gave you a chance. Now go!"
It was then that Walter Seale, seeing her so determined, committed
his terrible, passionate crime.
He shot her where she stood.
It was the work of a moment. He whipped out his revolver and fired
like lightning. Thwarted passion was behind that shot, the desire to
possess was the urge.
She fell, bleeding from a wound in the center of the forehead. She
was dead before she touched the floor.
Looking on her lifeless form, Walter Seale realized that the crisis,
the apex of all his plans, had arrived--and passed. He could never
undo that act, he could never bring back that life.
He experienced neither fear nor remorse. In a way he had killed this
woman to save himself.
He had always declared that he loved her, even before she had married
her husband; but he was of no interest to her, though he pressed his
friendship on her and on her husband after the marriage. He pestered
her with his attentions after as he had pestered her before. Since
he could not possess her as his wife, he wanted to possess her
anyhow. This continued appeal had compelled the woman to tell him
that if he wished to retain friendship he must cease to talk of love.
From that moment Seale opened a new campaign.
It mattered nothing to him that she was the wife of another man.
Indeed, this only added to his mental unrest. Unrequited love may be
a torture as exquisite as any ever devised; and he considered that
she belonged to him by right of his own infatuation.
The truth was, nevertheless, that he had become enamoured of her
because he was a voluptuary by nature. Men of his kind share with
painters and sculptors the discerning knowledge of a perfect form
when they have but glanced at it; but where an artist may view such a
form with all the enthusiasm of a creative workman bent on copying,
Walter Seale saw a masterpiece for love.
His new campaign became subtle, and he took pains that it should be
unnoticed. His conduct became strictly correct. He appeared to
accept the situation and continued his friendship with the woman and
her husband, biding his time. He was aware that the husband did not
know of the siege he had made, or was making, of his wife's heart.
She had told Seale that she had not mentioned the circumstance to her
husband, not because she had anything to hide, but because she did
not wish to give her husband any anxiety. All this helped Seale
toward his objective, which was nothing less than the ruin of the
husband so that the wife might surrender.
Seale was in the City, dabbling in financial transactions. He
advised the husband on deals, keeping back the fact that he himself
was barely solvent. By one move after another he had obtained the
husband's confidence until he had involved him to such an extent that
there was little hope of recovery. To save himself he had descended
to forging the husband's signature. It was merely a matter of time,
he knew, before he could recover sufficiently to save his own face,
but by adjusting affairs he would leave the husband worse than
bankrupt. But the woman had found him out.
With that instinct which is the finest weapon of a good wife, she had
suspected Seale. She had made inquiries, as a woman makes them,
which is the most secretive way of all. She had faced Seale with an
accusation, and she had given him a short period of time in which to
restore the situation or face her husband. It was because he had
pleaded for this chance that she had given it him.
But Walter Seale knew that it was beyond his power to make
restoration. His crooked deal would go through without any suspicion
attaching to himself. The woman's discovery meant disaster. Her
ultimatum meant disgrace in any case.
Warring with the humiliation of being found out was the frantic
desire he had to possess her. This desire amounted almost to an
insanity that he could not, or did not, control. From the moment
that she intimated she had discovered his deception he saw that she
was forever beyond his reach. He saw his danger. He resolved to
make one last appeal, and if the appeal failed she must pay the
penalty of finding out these things. Thus his selfishness came to
the top.
Once she was dead, he would be avenged on both wife and husband. If
she lived she would denounce him and he would lose not only her, but
his liberty. The forked stick on which he found himself did not
cause him much anxiety as to choice of ways. He was, like many men
who are not criminals, prepared to sacrifice anything or anybody to
his own ends. This quality had caused him to be regarded as a good
business man. He would have made an excellent lawyer. His excuses
and distortions of plain truths were innumerable; and mostly they
were plausible.
Everything went by the board so that he might survive. His valet was
but a pawn in the game, a decoy, a figurehead behind which he
sheltered. The desire to have the woman was in his mind right up to
the last moment, but the necessity to save himself outweighed this
when he saw that she was incorruptible.
He had planned the climax and the steps leading to it with superb
cunning. He knew the movements of the woman's husband and was aware
that he would not return from the City until late in the evening. He
knew that the maid would be out for her half-day when he called.
While he stood looking at the body of his victim the clock on the
mantelpiece chimed the hour. He glanced up and noted that he had
sixty minutes before the husband arrived. There was plenty of time
to complete his scheme.
First he put the revolver into his pocket and pulled on his gloves.
They were yellow chamois gloves which could be washed. He stepped to
the bathroom and raised the lower half of the window as high as
possible. A fire-escape iron staircase passed just under the window,
near enough for an active man to enter or leave.
Seale went back to the parlor and tossed cushions about to make it
appear that a struggle had taken place. He cut the telephone cord.
He laid a valuable flower-vase on the hearth and smashed it with his
heel, letting the water run over the tiles and carpet. He upset a
chair or two. He did all this noiselessly.
He went into a bedroom and rummaged among the contents of a wardrobe.
He did the same with the dressing-table. He found several articles
of jewelry--a watch, a brooch, a string of pearls, a few rings.
These he put into his pocket, with the exception of the brooch, which
he laid carelessly on the step of the iron fire-escape nearest the
bathroom window.
He went into the dining-room and took a decanter of wine from the
sideboard. This he carried to the parlor. He took from his pocket
the small box containing the wineglass which he had brought with him,
extracting it as carefully as he had laid it there, by finger and
thumb on rim and base. He poured a little wine into the glass. As
he did so he smiled to himself.
Plainly marked on the glass were the fingerprints of Adam Jelks, the
ex-burglar, his valet.
The glass was of the same pattern as the others on the sideboard.
Seale had seen to that, by getting one some time previously so that
he might match it, on the pretense that he liked the design. But he
had not matched it. He had merely obtained Jelks's fingerprints.
When he had completed his arrangements he took a last look at the
dead woman. She was lovely even in death. If only she had been
unfaithful!
She lay with her crochet work still clasped in her hands, and her
workbag had dropped from her chair to the floor. Did Seale feel
regret? He regretted, at any rate, that she had refused to listen to
him. He walked to the door; but just as he was in the act of opening
it he remembered that he had left his walking-stick in a corner of
the parlor. That would have been fatal. He returned, lifted the
stick, and, stepping over the dead woman, took a last look around.
There was nothing he had forgotten, nothing he had omitted, nothing
he had left undone. He had accomplished what every criminal hopes
one day to accomplish--the perfect crime!
There was not a trace of his presence, not an item that would lead to
him. Everything would lead to Adam Jelks. He opened the door and
stepped out to the corridor. The passage was deserted. He began to
descend the carpeted stairs.
Was he not perfectly secure? Had he not carried out the murder with
absolute excellence, with consummate ingenuity? Not a blemish could
be found in his mode of action. The police would find the wineglass
and would observe the fingerprints. Adam Jelks would be arrested.
Would not the past career of Adam Jelks rise up and convict him--or
at least aid toward a conviction? Seale himself would give evidence,
since he had been the last to employ the ex-convict. He would, with
seeming reluctance, relate the incident of the valuable shirt-studs;
he would tell how he had therefore dismissed Jelks before going to
Paris. In this connection he had but one more item to fill in and
the picture would be complete. It would be the high spot that
artists always add last, but it would throw the whole scene into
proper perspective. He would write to the Prisoners' Rescue Guild
and inform them, with regret, of the studs and his action. He would
do this before he took his suitcase and drove off to catch the night
express to Dover. As for his swindle, the husband of the dead woman
would be too busy to worry about financial matters for the time
being; when he did get the true position he would be hit. Seale
would be all right.
Walter Seale entered his own flat, leaving his front wooden door open
as usual. The vestibule door closed softly on its catch. He sat
down at his desk and laid a sheet of notepaper on the blotter in
front of him. There was no real hurry for the letter, which he had
not already written because of his hope that the woman would
surrender. The boat train did not leave yet awhile. He smoked a
cigarette with satisfaction and enjoyment, lingering over every
whiff. His only emotion was regret that the woman had refused him to
the last.
Finally he lifted his pen to write the letter; and as he stretched
his arm toward the inkwell the vestibule door was thrown open. Two
men appeared on the threshold. One was the husband of the woman,
disheveled and agitated. The other was a policeman.
"What do you want?"
Seale was quite calm as he turned toward them, pen in hand.
Both men stepped toward him. It was the policeman who spoke.
"There's been trouble. This gentleman's wife has been murdered. He
brought me here. I want a word with you."
"Why come to me about this?" asked Seale. "Murdered, you say? That
is terrible news----"
"Have you been up at her flat?"
"Me? No, I haven't been near the place. I've been here all day----"
The policeman took a step nearer.
"Then how do you explain this?" he demanded, pointing to the floor.
Walter Seale could not suppress a cry of dismay when he looked down.
Caught in the spat on his right foot was a silk thread that trailed
along the floor behind him. The policeman was speaking again.
"We followed it down. The other end of that silk is in a ball wedged
between the dead woman and the leg of a table. It isn't easily
broken, that stuff. I'm going to search you now for the weapon that
killed her."
And thus, instead of going to Paris, Walter Seale spent that night,
after the search, in a police cell.
A silken cord had trapped him. It was the hangman's coarser rope
that hanged him.