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Rh hurries back to the house, climbs up to the balcony, and re-enters his room. He assures himself that there are no bloodstains on him anywhere, then he moves his table near the window and sits down to wait for Drysdale’s return.

“As soon as he hears him enter his room, he gathers up the letters which he had, of course, written during the afternoon, and goes downstairs. And it is here that he makes his most serious mistake. He fancies, perhaps, that he is to have only the country police to deal with—only your Heffelbowers—that he must clinch the nail, that he cannot make the evidence against his victim too strong. So, when he places his letters in the bag on the hall-rack, he also tears off the top button of Drysdale’s rain-coat.

“He returns to the hall, talks with Delroy; the storm comes up and young Graham rushes in. They run down to the pier, kneel beside the body, try to discover signs of life—and Tremaine adroitly shuts the button within the dead man’s hand. That, my dear Lester, is, I fancy, the whole story.”

I smoked on for a moment in silence, turning it over in my mind with a certain sense of disappointment.

“It may be true,” I said. “It seems to hold together. But, after all, there isn’t a bit of positive evidence in it. How are we to convince a jury that Tremaine really did all these things?”

Godfrey blew a great smoke ring out over the seat in front of us.

“I agree,” he said, “that we haven’t as yet any direct evidence against Tremaine; it may be that this whole structure will fall to pieces about my ears. But