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Page 33
"The whole business was built up around a central idea, simple in
itself: that of inveigling Sir Marcus into the prepared supper-room.
His attendance at the New Avenue Theater last night was doubtless
assured--although we may never prove it--by another of these
mysterious telephone messages, probably purporting to come from Miss
Merlin. The cold-blooded thoroughness with which 'A' arranged for a
crate to be delivered at the garage and for the body of the murdered
man to be taken to the docks and shipped to the West Indies,
illuminates the character of the person we have to seek.
"Discovery sooner or later was inevitable, of course. It came sooner
because of the accident at the docks. Had it come later I don't doubt
that 'A' would have dismantled the Red House again so that the
investigation would have been severely handicapped. As it is, the only
dismantling done was the most important of all."
"You mean?" I said with keen interest.
"The death-machine," answered Gatton. "The cunning device around which
all these trappings were erected. We don't have to wait for the
coroner's inquest nor the pathologists' report to know that Sir Marcus
was asphyxiated."
"In that room where supper was laid for two?" I muttered.
"Can you doubt it?"
"No," I said, "and I don't."
"I have allowed nothing to be touched," continued Gatton, "and I am
going around there now to make a final attempt to unravel the mystery
of how Sir Marcus met his death."
"There is one detail," said I, "which it seems impossible to fit into
its proper place in the scheme. The figure of B�st painted upon the
crate--you have that at Scotland Yard--and the little image of the
goddess which was stolen from my table last night."
Gatton stood up, uttering a sigh.
"I have always found, Mr. Addison," he replied, "that it is these
outstanding features of a case, these pieces which don't seem to fit,
that are the most valuable clews. It's the apparently simple cases in
which there is no outstanding point that are the most baffling."
I laughed shortly.
"One could not very well complain of the lack of such features in 'the
_Oritoga_ mystery,'" I said. "As a confr�re of mine remarked when the
body of Sir Marcus was discovered in the crate, the whole thing is as
mad as 'Alice in Wonderland'!"
Gatton presently departed for the Red House and I accompanied him, for
I was intensely curious to learn by what means the murder of Sir
Marcus had been accomplished. As I proposed later in the morning to
call on Isobel, Coates drove Gatton and myself as far as the Red House
and I instructed the man to wait for me.
Although the morning was still young, the prominence given by the
press to this sensational crime had resulted in the presence of quite
a considerable group of pilgrims who even thus early had arrived to
look upon the scene of the mysterious tragedy. London is a city of
onlookers. The most trivial street accident never lacks its interested
audience, and a house in which a murder is reputed to have taken place
becomes a center upon which the idly curious focus from the four
points of the compass.
Our arrival created a subdued excitement amongst the nondescript group
gathered upon the pavement. Despite the efforts of a constable on
duty, men, women and children persistently gathered before the gates
of the drive peering up at the empty house as if they anticipated
seeing the face of the murderer or an apparition of the victim appear
behind one of the windows. A considerable group, too, was gathered
before the garage, but as Gatton and I descended and began to walk up
the drive there was a general movement in our direction.
"I wonder," said I, "if 'A,' the wanted man, is among the crowd? One
reads that murderers are irresistibly drawn back to the scene of their
crimes."
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