Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/310

 Menendez, and once, at least, actually in the same hotel in the United States. Consider the rifle found under the floor of the hut; and, having weighed all these points judicially, Wessex, tell me frankly, if in the whole course of your experience, you have ever met with a more perfect frame-up?”

“What!” shouted Wessex, in sudden excitement. “What!”

“I said a frame-up,” repeated Harley, quietly. “An American term, but one which will be familiar to you.”

“Good God!” muttered the detective, “you have turned all my ideas upside down.”

“What may be termed the physical evidence,” continued Harley, “is complete, I admit: too complete. There lies the weak spot. But what I will call the psychological evidence points in a totally different direction. A man clever enough to have planned this crime, and Camber undoubtedly is such a man, could not—it is humanly impossible—have been fool enough, deliberately to lay such a train of damning facts. It’s a frame-up, Wessex! I had begun to suspect this even before I met Camber. Having met him, I knew that I was right. Then came an inspiration. I saw where there must be a flaw in the plan. It was geographically impossible that this could be otherwise.”

“Geographically impossible?” I said, in a hushed voice, for Harley had truly astounded me.

“Geographical is the term, Knox. I admit that the discovery of the rifle beneath the floor of the hut appalled me.”

“I could see that it did.”

“It was the crowning piece of evidence, Knox, evidence of such fiendish cleverness on the part of those who had plotted Menendez’s death that I began to