The Case and the Girl

"Yet it is true, every word true"; he asserted stoutly. "Why else should I be here? You returned with us to 'Fairlawn,' and we chatted together pleasantly all the way. Later you seemed to change, and discharged me rather rudely. Then Percival Coolidge was killed--shot down by an assassin, not a suicide. I know because I found the body. You were at the inquest, and testified. I saw you with my own eyes. The next day you discharged Sexton, and later he learned, and reported to me, that some one called you on the phone from Wray Street, and wanted you to come over there at once."

"Was that why you went there?"

"Yes; I felt something was wrong; the killing of Percival Coolidge had aroused my suspicions; and I sought to learn who those people were you had visited in the cottage. They were gone, and only for this telephone call, I should have lost the trail entirely. I found you there, and this fellow Hobart with you."

"But, Captain West, I never saw you; I never left the room in the third story where I was locked in, except when they took me away in a machine to the yacht."

"You dropped a note in the alley, enclosed in a silver knife?"

"Yes, I did. I dared not hope it would be found, but I took the chance. Did you find it?"

"Sexton did, and that was what brought me here."

"But it is all so strange," she exclaimed despairingly. "How could I have done all these things, been in all these places, and yet know nothing about it? Could I have been drugged? or influenced in some way by those people? I have read there is such a power--where one person can make another obey absolutely, with no knowledge of what he is doing; what do they call that?"

"Hypnotism. I have seen it cut some odd capers; but I do not believe you were either hypnotized or drugged. Good God; why did I not think of this solution before? I must have been blind; that was not you; I can recall a hundred little things now to convince me."

"What is it you mean?"

"Another woman played your part; a woman most wonderfully like you, even to the voice. There is no other solution of the problem. And that reveals the plan of robbery--to get you out of the way, and then have her take the fortune. Who would ever suspect such a fraud?"

She sat silent, motionless, apparently unable at once to grasp all the meaning in his words. It seemed unbelievable, and her gaze was straight out across the black waters, one hand clinging firmly to offset the rocking of the frail raft. Then she pointed away into the distance.