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Rh "Why, yes." The attorney looked somewhat taken aback. "What are you driving at, Sergeant?"

"The necessity for the stairs being rendered almost fatally dangerous in the night. It was a risk, you know, with you two talking in that room right at hand."

"But I don't see"—Titheredge stammered. "I thought it was done to cause the death of the first member of the family who attempted to descend, regardless of which one it might be."

Odell shook his head, and his tone was very grave.

"Had anyone been listening in the hall outside the library last night and heard your decision to take your story to the police this morning, they would naturally suppose that you would rise earlier than the rest of the family, and that you and Mr. Lorne would descend the stairs together; wouldn't they?"

"Good heavens!" the attorney exclaimed. "That never occurred to me. It was a mad, desperate attempt, then, to kill us in order to prevent our notifying you!"

"Not necessarily to kill you, but to injure you and delay our receipt of your message at least until the portrait had been rehung and the only bit of real evidence which you seem to possess—the cut wires—removed." Odell laughed. "Of course, I may be dead wrong, and it isn't my usual method to form conclusions before I've even gone over the ground, and then expatiate on them; but that's the way it looks to me now. Is this your shop?"

The taxi had stopped before a store the signboard of which read: "William Kenny, Carpentering, Plastering and Interior Decorating." It appeared to be a small place of an inferior sort.