Page:Chipperfield--Unseen Hands.djvu/316

304 neath that loosened portrait, no matter how unlikely such a supposition would seem.

"Miss Meade had had access to the incubator in which Rannie kept his bacteria and to the medical books of which he had a store, and she had been the only one to listen to his talk on the subject; she had been with her sister when Mrs. Lorne pricked her finger with the infected needle, and she was the only member of the family who was constantly at her bedside, with unlimited opportunity to reinfect her until she died. She as well as another might have slipped up to her oldest nephew's room and, catching him off guard, slashed his throat with the razor. The thing which kept me more than anything else from suspecting was the supposed fact that a struggle must have taken place, and only a powerful person could have overcome Mr. Chalmers's strength; for I had been told that he was a trained athlete in spite of the temporary nervous condition which had pulled him down.

"Only a phenomenally strong person, too, could have pried that picture from the wall and filed away the supporting wires, to say nothing of wielding a saw heavy enough to cut the long, sweeping strokes which I noticed in the top step of the stairs."

"I recall now," Titheredge remarked, "that you asked me when we examined the stairs together if I observed anything else, and when I replied in the negative you said nothing more. What did you mean?"

The almost entire absence of sawdust," Odell responded. "I traced it afterward and learned how it had been disposed of. Another thing which led me off the track was the gruffness of the voice which spoke to Kenny the car-