Page:Yellow Claw 1920.djvu/24

 Mr. Exel, tapping his boot with the head of his inverted cane, was staring fixedly at the doctor.

“Here you are, Leroux,” said Cumberly; “drink this up, and let us arrange our facts in decent order before we—”

“'Phone for the police?” concluded Exel, his gaze upon the last speaker.

Leroux drank the brandy at a gulp and put down the glass upon a little persian coffee table with a hand which he had somehow contrived to steady.

“You are keen on the official forms, Exel?” he said, with a wry smile. “Please accept my apology for my recent—er—outburst, but picture this thing happening in your place!”

“I cannot,” declared Exel, bluntly.

“You lack imagination,” said Cumberly. “Take a whisky and soda, and help me to search the flat.”

“Search the flat!”

The physician raised a forefinger, forensically.

“Since you, Exel, if not actually in the building, must certainly have been within sight of the street entrance at the moment of the crime, and since Leroux and I descended the stair and met you on the landing, it is reasonable to suppose that the assassin can only be in one place: here!”

“Here!” cried Exel and Leroux, together.

“Did you see anyone leave the lower hall as you entered?”

“No one; emphatically, there was no one there!”

“Then I am right.”