Page:The Benson Murder Case (1926).pdf/345

 "Lucky?" retorted Stitt. "It'll save him from State prison."

When the accountant had gone, Markham sat like a man of stone, his eyes fixed on the wall opposite. Another straw at which he had grasped in his instinctive denial of the Major's guilt, had been snatched from him.

The telephone rang. Slowly he took up the receiver, and as he listened I saw a look of complete resignation come into his eyes. He leaned back in his chair, like a man exhausted.

"It was Hagedorn," he said. "That was the right gun."

Then he drew himself up, and turned to Heath.

"The owner of that gun, Sergeant, was Major Benson."

The detective whistled softly, and his eyes opened slightly with astonishment. But gradually his face assumed its habitual stolidity of expression.

"Well, it don't surprise me any," he said.

Markham rang for Swacker.

"Get Major Benson on the wire, and tell him—tell him I'm about to make an arrest, and would appreciate his coming here immediately." His deputizing of the telephone call to Swacker was understood by all of us, I think.

Markham then summarized, for Heath's benefit, the case against the Major. When he had finished, he rose and rearranged the chairs at the table in front of his desk.

"When Major Benson comes, Sergeant," he said, "I am going to seat him here." He indicated a chair directly facing his own. "I want you to sit at his