We’ll call him James C.
Norton, because that’s the name he used when he rented the safe deposit box.
Norton.
And up to a quarter to three o’clock today we hadn’t a hope of landing him.
We knew he was guilty, guilty as hell.
We’ve watched him and followed him, but we hadn’t a thing.
Then today he went to the Commercial Bank—he had to—and he gave the show away.
“Mind you, he knew he was being watched, or he suspected it.
He didn’t know I’d found Walter, however.
He had half killed Walter and tied him up in an abandoned farmhouse, and for a while he went back there now and then.
It wasn’t to his interest that Walter die.
But later on it was to his interest that Walter Somers die.
He left him where I found him, left him to die.
I want you to remember that.
“Things were getting pretty hot for him, and with Walter dead the story wasn’t likely to come out.
And I’ll say for him, that he held on to the last minute.
He knew we had nothing on him.
As a matter of fact we didn’t, until about seven o’clock tonight.
“I want to give you a picture of this man, Miss Bell.
We knew that he was at least moderately tall and stronger than the average.
After I learned the story of that little comedy at the Imperial we knew he could act, and that he was a bit of a forger.
Also we knew he was quick and catlike on his feet.
“But we knew some other things.
“This man had no heart, had no bowels of compassion.
He had instead a lust for money and an infinite capacity for wickedness.
Also he had cunning, a cunning so devilish that he had not only covered up his tracks; he had deliberately thrown suspicion on another man by the manufacture of false evidence.
“Such, for instance was the oil in Jim Blake’s car; the use of Jim Blake’s name in that deadly visit to New York, and the clothing, expressly arranged to give the impression to the man Parrott that it was Blake; and there was the telephone message using Blake’s name.
And I say here and now that this man would have let Jim Blake go to the chair with less scruple than I break this toothpick.
“That’s the picture of this assassin.
I want you to remember it.
“Now I’m going to somebody else.
I don’t need to give you a picture of her.
But she seemed to be in this thing up to the neck.
She was, and my hat’s off to her.
Her name is Mary Martin.”
“Mary!
What has she done, but damage?”
He smiled again.
“She did her bit, when the truth began to drift in on her.
She tried to save Howard Somers, but this—this Norton was too smart for her.
She helped to find Walter.
And on the night she was seen here in the drive she was running because she knew something.
She knew there was going to be another murder, or an attempt at it.”
“She knew Joseph was to be killed!”
“She was afraid it would be tried.
We’re coming to that.
But she was in a bad way herself; she suspected what had happened to Walter.
She was almost crazy, that girl.
So she relaxed her vigilance and—you find Joseph shot.”
“What possible interest had Mary Martin in Walter Somers, Inspector?” I asked, bewildered.