Page:Burton Stevenson--The marathon mystery.djvu/272

246 The story that Godfrey had built up was, I reflected, wholly hypothetical, flimsy with the flimsiness which always attaches to circumstantial evidence. I knew how a jury, looking at Tremaine, would laugh at it. No lawyer would risk his reputation with such a case, no magistrate would allow it to proceed before him. Why, for all I knew, Tremaine could prove an alibi for the tragedy in suite fourteen as complete as that which Delroy had offered for him in the Edgemere mystery. Godfrey and I had been forging a chain of sand, imagining it steel! As for that prison photograph, I had been deceived by a chance resemblance.

“The boat starts from pier fifty-seven, North River, at the foot of West Twenty-seventh Street, at eight o’clock,” were Tremaine’s last words to me. “We shall look for you there.”

Is there any virtue in dreams, I wonder? That night, while I slept, the tragedy in suite fourteen was re-enacted before me. I witnessed its every detail—I saw Tremaine snatch up the pipe and strike a heavy blow—then, suddenly, behind him, appeared a face dark with passion, a hand shot out, a pistol flashed, even as Tremaine tried to knock it aside, and Cecily looked down upon her victim with eyes blazing with hatred!

I was at the pier in good time, for, let me confess it, I was curious to see the details of this leave-taking. Cecily and Tremaine were there before me, the former leaning sadly against the rail while the latter directed the checking of some baggage.