Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/26

6 “if I consent to stay, you’ve got to produce a story. Take those big cases—which do you think was the best of the lot?”

“The best?”

“The most intricate, I mean—the most puzzling—the hardest to solve.”

“Well,” and Simmonds rolled his cigar reflectively, “the hardest to solve, of course, were those that were never solved at all. There was the shooting of old Benjamin Nathan, in the summer of ’70, at his house on West Twenty-third Street, and there was the stabbing of Harvey Burdell. I never had the least doubt that Burdell was killed by Mrs. Cunningham, the woman he’d secretly married. The stabbing was done by a left-handed person, and she was left-handed; but we weren’t able to convict her.”

“Yes,” nodded Godfrey; “and the Nathan case?”

“There wasn’t anybody in the house, so far as known, but the two sons,” said Simmonds slowly, “and both of them managed to prove an alibi. But I’ve always thought Hello! What’s this?”

The door flew back with a crash and a man, rushed in—a heavy-set man, with red cheeks, who stopped, gasping, clutching at his throat.

Godfrey had a flask to his lips in an instant.

“Come, brace up!” he commanded sternly, slapping the stranger on the back. “Take a swallow of this—that’s it.”

“It seems to me I know him,” remarked Simmonds, looking at the flushed countenance with contemplative eye.

“O’ course you do!” gasped the stranger. “I’m