“I’ll be damned, Mr. Lane,” muttered Thumm, “if I’ve ever heard anything like it. I’ll tell you the truth - in the beginning I thought you were an old fossil bluffing your head off. But this - Lord, it isn’t human!”

  Bruno licked his thin lips. “I’m inclined to agree with you, Thumm, because knowing the whole story as I do, even at this point I can’t see how Mr. Lane got anywhere on that third murder.”

  Lane held up one white hand; he was laughing openly now. “Gentlemen, please. You embarrass me. As for the third murder - I haven’t finished with the second!

  “For I said to myself at this point: Is Wood still only an accomplice, or is he the murderer himself? Before I discovered that the ferry corpse was not Wood’s, the indications pointed to the former. Now the pendulum swung back to the latter.

  “There were three definite psychological reasons for the reborn theory that Wood himself killed Longstreet.

  “The first was: Wood had planted on himself for five years certain characteristics of an unknown man in order to prepare for that man’s murder - certainly this is the action of an active murderer, not a mere tool.

  “The second: The sending of the warning letter and the deliberate deception in identity leading to Wood’s self-effacement were more the indications of a murderer’s scheming than of a pawn’s.

  “The third: All the events, circumstances, deceptions were planned obviously to insure the safety of Wood - certainly again the premeditated actions of a central figure rather than of an accessory.

  “In any event, the situation at the end of the second murder was this: Wood, killer of Longstreet and an unknown man, had attempted to efface himself from the scene by the coruscating method of seeming to be murdered himself, and was still alive after having deliberately involved John DeWitt in this seeming murder of himself.”

  Drury Lane rose and pulled the bellcord by the mantel. Falstaff materialized in the room and was commanded to fetch another caldron of hot coffee. Lane sat down again. “Patently, the next question was: why should Wood have framed DeWitt with the cigar after decoying him to the ferry? - for it followed that since Wood was the conniver, it had been somehow through his instrumentality that DeWitt had been lured to the boat. Either because DeWitt’s strong motive against Longstreet made him the most natural suspect in the eyes of the police, or - and this was important - because Wood’s motive against Longstreet also applied to DeWitt.

  “In the latter event, if the frame-up were successful and DeWitt were arrested, tried but acquitted, there was every reason to expect that the murderer would attempt to consummate his original scheme by attacking DeWitt. This,” and Lane accepted another mug from Falstaff’s pudgy hand, gesturing toward his guests, “this was why I was willing to allow DeWitt’s trial to be prosecuted, despite my knowledge of his innocence. For as long as DeWitt was in danger of conviction by the legal method, he was physically safe from an attack by Wood. You were puzzled, no doubt, by my peculiar attitude; it was really paradoxical, for by plunging DeWitt into one danger I staved off another and more certain danger. At the same time, I gave myself the advantage of a breathing-spell, a period of quiet during which I could chew the cud of my thoughts, perhaps unearth evidence which would lead to the apprehension of the murderer. Don’t forget that I had not the slightest idea of what form Wood was taking… There was another advantage, too; for I hoped that the seriousness of DeWitt’s predicament - on trial for his life - would force him to reveal facts which I knew him to be withholding, facts which were undoubtedly linked with the man who called himself Wood and the lurking, still obscure motive in the background.

  “With the case going against DeWitt, however, imperiling his life, I was forced to step in and bring out the argument concerning DeWitt’s wounded finger, although I was no further advanced at that time than before. I should like to point out here that had I not been in possession of the facts concerning DeWitt’s wound, I should never have allowed you to prosecute him; if you were bull-headed, Mr. Bruno, I should have been compelled to reveal all I knew.

  “With acquittal, DeWitt’s personal danger became an immediate consideration.” Lane’s face clouded, and his voice became troubled. “I have tried many times since that night to convince myself that I was not to blame for DeWitt’s death. Apparently I had taken all precautions. I consented with alacrity to accompany him to his West Englewood domicile, even intending to stay the night there; I could not foresee how completely I might be fooled. In extenuation of myself, I must confess that I did not expect Wood to attack DeWitt the very night of the day the poor man was acquitted. After all, since I did not know the new identity Wood was taking, or where he was, I considered that he had weeks, months in which to find his opportunity to kill DeWitt. But Wood turned out a greater opportunist than I knew. He found his opportunity the very first night of DeWitt’s acquittal and he seized it. In this Wood outsmarted me, did the utterly unexpected. When Collins approached him I could scent nothing wrong, because I knew Collins was not Wood. However” - there was a touch of self-reproach in his luminous eyes - “I cannot really claim victory in this affair. I was not sharp enough, not fully enough alive to the potentialities of the murderer. I am still, I fear, an amateur man-hunter. If ever I have the opportunity to investigate another…

  He sighed and pressed on. “Another reason for my acquiescence to DeWitt’s invitation that night was that he promised to reveal information of importance to me next morning. I suspected then - and now I am sure - that he meant at last to reveal the true story of his background, the story Stopes told you in his confession, the story which, by following the trail of DeWitt’s South American visitor - never heard of him, I’ll wager, Inspector! - I learned anyway. This trail in turn led to Ajos, the Uruguayan consul…

  Bruno and Thumm were regarding him in amazement. “South American visitor? Uruguayan consul?” spluttered Thumm. “Why, I never even heard of them!”

  “Let’s not discuss that now, Inspector,” said Lane. “Actually, the vital result of my discovery that Wood had executed a deception in identity and was still alive, was that it swung the probabilities from Wood’s being a mere accomplice to his being the brilliant murderer himself, maneuvering the complicated segments of a series of crimes of many years’ planning in an imaginative, daring, and nearly flawless manner. On the other hand, while I was convinced of this, I had not the remotest notion of where to look for him. Charles Wood, as Charles Wood, I knew to be wiped from the face of the earth; in what incarnation he would next appear I could only conjecture fruitlessly. But that he would appear I was sure, and that was what I was waiting for.

  “Which brings us to the third murder.”

  Lane refreshed himself from the steaming mug. “The very rapidity of the DeWitt murder, combined with certain other elements, indicated clearly that this crime also was a well-planned one - probably planned simultaneously with the first two.

  “My solution of the DeWitt murder hinged almost wholly upon the fact that DeWitt had purchased a new fifty-trip ticket-book in the presence of Ahearn, Brooks, and myself while we waited for the train in the West Shore waiting-room that night. If DeWitt had not done so, there is no telling whether the case would ever have been brought to a satisfactory denouement. For, despite my knowledge of the identity of the murderer of Longstreet, I should never have known in what disguise Stopes committed the murder of DeWitt.

  “The primary point was the location of this ticket on DeWitt’s person. In the terminal he had placed it in the upper left pocket of his vest, together with the single tickets which he purchased for the others of the party. When he left with Collins later to go to the rear car, he took from the same upper left vest pocket the single tickets and handed them to Ahearn; and I saw that he did not remove the new ticket-book from its original vest pocket.

  But when DeWitt’s corpse was searched by our Inspector here, I noticed with astonishment that the new ticket-book was no longer in the upper left vest pocket, but now reposed in the inside breast pocket of the coat!” Lane chuckled sadly. “DeWitt had been shot through the heart. The bullet had pierced the coat on the left side, the upper left vest pocket, the shirt, and the underclothing. The conclusion was elementary; at the time he was shot the book was not in the upper left vest pocket, for if it had been it would have contained a bullet-hole, whereas when we found it the book was unpunctured, indeed unmarked in any way.

  “I asked myself immediately: How account for the fact that the ticket had been removed from one pocket to another before DeWitt was shot?

  “Recall the condition of the body. DeWitt’s left hand formed some sort of sign by the overlapping of his medius, or middle, finger and his index finger. Inasmuch as Dr. Schilling affirmed that DeWitt had died instantly, the overlapping fingers indicated three vital conclusions: First, that DeWitt made the sign before he was shot - there were no death-throes. Second, that, since he was right-handed and the sign was made with his left hand, therefore his right hand was occupied when he decided to make the sign. Third, that since the sign he made required a conscious physical effort, it must have been made for a definite purpose connected in some way with the murder.

  “Now mull over this third point. If DeWitt had been a superstitious man, the fingers might have denoted the protection-sign against the evil eye, and might have indicated a realization that he was to be murdered and an instinctive superstitious gesture to ward off the ‘evil.’ But it was known that DeWitt was not superstitious in the slightest degree. The sign, therefore, purposely made, must have related not to himself but to his murderer. This was unquestionably the result of a conversation DeWitt, Brooks, Ahearn, and I had engaged in just a few moments before DeWitt left with Collins. The conversation swung about the last thoughts of dying men, and I related the story of a murdered man who left a sign to the identity of his murderer before dying. I felt sure, then, that DeWitt, poor fellow, had snatched at this fresh recollection and left a sign for me - for us, I should say - which pointed to the identity of his murderer.”

  Bruno looked triumphant. Inspector Thumm said excitedly: “Just what Bruno and I figured!” Then his face fell. “But,” he said, “even so… How the deuce does that apply to Wood? Was he superstitious?”

  “Inspector, DeWitt’s sign did not point to Wood, or Stopes, in the superstitious sense,” replied Lane. “In fact, I should tell you that I never subscribed to that interpretation of the sign. It was too utterly fantastic. What it meant I did not know at the time. In fact, it was necessary for me to solve the case completely before making the connection between the murderer and DeWitt’s sign - a connection which I shamefacedly admit stared at me from the first…

  “In any event, the only reasonable explanation for the overlapping fingers was that somehow they pointed out the identity of the murderer. But see! Leaving a clue to his murderer’s identity proved that DeWitt knew who his murderer was, knew enough about his assailant to leave a symbol referring personally to this individual.

  “There was an even more cogent deduction in this connection. For whatever the sign of itself meant, its being on the left hand indicated that his right hand, the one he normally used to do everything, was occupied, as I said a moment ago, just before the murder. Now what could this occupation have been? There was no sign of a scuffle; he might have been warding off his murderer with his right hand, but it seemed unlikely that while he was doing this he was simultaneously making a sign with his left - a sign which required conscious physical effort. Was there a better explanation, I demanded of myself? Was there anything about the body that suggested itself as an explanation for the occupation of the right hand? Yes, there was! - for I knew that the ticket-book had been moved from one pocket to another.

  “I swiftly went through the possibilities. It was conceivable, for instance, that DeWitt moved the book some time before the murder with his own hand - that is, that the transference of the book from one pocket to another had nothing to do with the crime itself. But this would leave the occupation of his right hand during the murder-period still unaccounted for. If I worked on the theory, however, that the book was moved at the time of the murder, I explained in one fell swoop why the right hand was occupied, and why the left hand was employed in making a sign which ordinarily would have been made by the right. This seemed to be a fecund theory; it did cover all the facts. Being fruitful, it called for close examination; where did it lead?

  “For one thing, it led to this speculation: Why should the ticket-book have been in DeWitt’s hand at all at the time he was murdered? Only one defensible explanation - he was intending to use it. Now we knew that up to the time Collins left DeWitt the conductor had not reached them to collect and punch their tickets, for Collins was still in possession of his unpunched ticket when you arrested him in his apartment that night. If the conductor had reached them, Collins’s ticket would have been taken from him. Then when DeWitt entered the dim car he had not yet been approached by the conductor for his ticket. Of course, I did not know this that night on the train; it was not until you, Inspector, apprehended Collins that his possession of the ticket came out. But in pursuing my argument I played with the theory that later was confirmed.

  “In the light of the hypothesis, later a fact, that DeWitt had not been approached by the conductor by the time he entered the dim car, what would explain most naturally his action in my theory that he produced his ticket- book and held it in his right hand just before his death? The explanation was simple: the approach of the conductor. But both conductors claimed that they did not approach DeWitt. Was my theory wrong, then? Not necessarily. Not if one of the conductors did approach DeWitt, was the murderer, and lied because he was the murderer.”

  Bruno and Thumm were sitting tensely forward, fascinated by the remarkable analysis falling calmly from Lane’s lips, enriched by his flexible thrilling voice. “Did this theory plausibly cover all the known facts? It did.

  “For, one, it explained why the sign was made with the left hand.

  “Two, it explained why and with what the right hand was occupied.

  “Three, it explained why the ticket was left unpunched. For if the conductor were the murderer and after killing DeWitt saw the ticket-book in DeWitt’s hand, he could not punch it; since the punchmark would leave absolute proof that he was perhaps the last person to see DeWitt alive and would therefore point to his guilt, or at least bring him actively into the investigation of the murder - an undesirable state of affairs for any scheming murderer, naturally.

  “Four, it explained why the ticket was found in the inside breast pocket. If the conductor were the murderer, he naturally could not allow the ticket to remain in DeWitt’s hand to be found by the police, for exactly the same reason that he could not punch the ticket - its presence at the time of instant death would have indicated the very thing he wished to avoid - that DeWitt was aware of the conductor’s approach and had been killed immediately after. On the other hand, the conductor would prefer not to take away the ticket, since its newness indicated by the perforated date on its cover presupposed the possibility that someone had seen it purchased that very night, and would miss it; and if it were missing it would not be difficult for the police to make the dangerous ‘ticket-conductor’ mental connection. No, the conductor’s best course was to keep himself and suspicion of himself completely out of the scene.

  “Now then - what would the conductor do with regard to leaving the ticket on DeWitt’s body, since his safest course was not to take it away? He would put it back into one of DeWitt’s pockets - reasonable, eh? In which pocket? Well, either he would know where DeWitt usually kept the ticket, or he would look in DeWitt’s pockets for an indication of where he usually kept it. Finding the old, expired ticket-book in the inside breast pocket, what more natural than that he should put the new one into the breast pocket with the old one? Even if he knew that DeWitt had placed this new book in the vest pocket, he could not return it to that pocket; for the vest pocket was in direct line with the course of the bullet already in DeWitt’s body, and to replace the ticket in the vest pocket unpunctured by a bullet-hole would make it obvious that it had been placed there after the murder. A police conclusion the conductor again wished to avoid.

  “Fifth, as a result of the fourth point - the theory also explained why the ticket-book had no bullet-hole in it. The conductor could not have shot another bullet into the book and expected to hit precisely the spot which would have been pierced had the book been in the pocket at the time of the original shot. In addition, there was danger of a second shot being heard. And to have shot a second time in the car would have left the bullet imbedded somewhere to be found later. And, to cap it all, such a procedure would have been involved, tortuous, time-consuming, and generally foolish on the surface. No, all told, he took the most natural course and what seemed to be the safest.