“I’m morally certain of it. I always have been.”
“You didn’t seem anxious to identify it.”
“I was a little conservative.”
“Very well, go ahead,” Dixon said.
“Well,” Clane observed thoughtfully, his eyes flickering in swift appraisal over the faces which were turned towards him, “one of the important questions to be considered is: How did that sleeve gun get into Mandra’s possession? The next question is: How did it get here? How do you account for that, Sou Ha?”
“I know nothing further,” she said.
“What did you do with the sleeve gun after you killed Mandra?”
“I tried to return it to your collection. The door of the case was locked and so I...”
She hesitated.
“So you what?” Terry asked.
“I have finished,” she said with calm dignity. “So much I will tell and then I tell no more.”
Clane nodded and said to the district attorney, “Let’s see if we can’t reason out an answer to those two questions — first, how the sleeve gun got into Mandra’s possession; second, how it happened to be found in your office. We’ll begin by taking Mandra’s character and his desires into consideration.
“We must remember Mandra was very anxious to get a sleeve gun. It’s a weapon which is very typical of his collection. One which is both rare and valuable. Therefore, Mandra was willing to go to any lengths to secure a genuine, authentic, antique sleeve gun.
“Our knowledge of Mandra’s character is that he didn’t stop when once he had made up his mind. He didn’t limit himself to orthodox methods. Someone took that sleeve gun from my apartment and transferred it to Mandra’s possession. Perhaps the best way of determining who that someone was, is by considering how the sleeve gun came into your possession.
“That gun was put here by someone who had been unexpectedly brought to this office. If he’d known in advance he was coming here, he naturally wouldn’t have carried the gun with him. I gather, therefore, that the person who brought the gun here was someone who was picked up by your man as he was leaving my apartment; since everyone who left my apartment was unexpectedly placed under restraint and brought here.
“The question arises why that person should have had the sleeve gun in his possession on leaving my apartment. There is one answer, and, as I see it, only one answer. That person had stolen the gun from my collection, knowing that it would be some time before I would miss it, in the ordinary course of things. He was anxious to return it after the murder, just as he had been anxious to take it before the murder. He wanted to replace it in the glass-enclosed case where I keep many of my curios, but he didn’t have the chance to do so because Yat Toy had locked the door, which was customarily kept unlocked. He therefore decided he’d try it again at a later date, left my apartment and was picked up by officers with the sleeve gun still in his possession. Now, that person couldn’t have been Sou Ha because, as Sou Ha has suddenly realized, she didn’t come to this office prior to the time the sleeve gun was found. It’s at that point the circumstances cease to corroborate the confession she has made. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to find out who brought that sleeve gun here.
“Now, gentlemen, there was only one person in my apartment who had any opportunity to try to return that sleeve gun.”
Terry paused, whirled, and extended a dramatic forefinger at Levering.
“You, George,” he said, “tried to return that sleeve gun and you were baffled by a locked door. And you were whisked up to the district attorney’s office before you had any chance to get rid of the weapon. You managed to wipe all the fingerprints off of it with your handkerchief while you were waiting in the outer office here, but you didn’t have a chance to hide it until you had entered this room.
“Now then,” Terry demanded, staring into Levering’s pale eyes, “where did you get that sleeve gun?”
Levering stared with wide, apprehensive eyes at Terry as though hypnotized. Parker Dixon’s urbanity of expression gave way to a puzzled frown, while his lips forgot their ready smile. Alma Renton shifted startled eyes from Terry to Levering.
Terry said slowly and impressively, “I’ll answer that question for you, Levering. I’ll tell you where you got that gun. You got it from William Shield. You stole that gun for Shield in the first place. Shield and Mandra were engaged in a racket by which they framed hit-and-run charges on a carefully selected list of people who were accustomed to drive their cars after taking one or two cocktails. You were picked to be one of their victims because, through Alma, you had access to my apartment. Mandra didn’t blackmail you for money. He blackmailed you for my sleeve gun. The price you had to pay for escaping prosecution on a hit-and-run charge was the stealing of that sleeve gun. It was understood Mandra was going to have a duplicate gun made and let you return that duplicate to my collection. You were convinced the substitution could be made before the absence of the sleeve gun had been noticed.
“But a murder was committed with that sleeve gun. The dart had buried itself in Mandra’s heart, and couldn’t be recovered by the murderer. The authorities were certain to learn the nature of the murder weapon when they recovered that dart at the post-mortem. Therefore, since I had not known that my sleeve gun was missing, it became vitally important to the murderer to have that gun returned to its position in the cabinet before I missed it. So Shield once more brought pressure to bear upon you to return that gun.”
Dixon interrupted. “Just a moment, Mr. Clane,” he said, “we’re going to keep this straight as we go along. Why should Shield seek to protect this Chinese girl?”
Terry said, “He wasn’t trying to protect her. Let’s use our heads, gentlemen, and not overlook the most significant fact in this entire case. The testimony of the impartial, disinterested witnesses shows that when the woman who took the painting from Mandra’s apartment was seen on the stairs she was holding the canvas away from her in both hands, one hand resting on each side of the canvas. It’s impossible, under those circumstances, for the woman to have carried both the canvas and her purse. This is particularly true when we consider that the paint on the portrait was still wet.”
Dixon’s face showed sudden interest.
“Therefore, you mean...”
“Therefore, I mean that that woman must have returned for her purse,” Clane said. “She’s the only person we’ve so far discovered who must have had the key to that corridor door, with the possible exception of Shield, or his associates.
“Now, Shield or his associates wouldn’t have gone to Mandra’s apartment at that hour of the morning unless they’d planned a premeditated murder, and, if they had planned a premeditated murder, they’d have brought a weapon. The person who killed Mandra was one who became seized with a sudden impulse to kill. By a fortuitous chain of circumstance, the weapon was ready at hand. The crime, therefore, was one of emotion. Now we know Juanita left that apartment at two o’clock in the morning, carrying this portrait. We know she didn’t have her purse with her then, since she paid the cab driver from ‘mad money’ she took from her stocking. We have established, furthermore, that the crime was one, not of premeditation, but of emotion and impulse. We have established the fact that some woman’s purse was lying on the table in front of Jacob Mandra when Juanita left in a jealous rage at two o’clock in the morning. That purse was seen by Sou Ha at two forty-five. We know the purse wasn’t there when the body was discovered. What more logical, therefore, than to assume Juanita Mandra, remembering when she was called on to pay off her taxi-cab in front of her apartment that she had left her purse behind her, paid off the cab driver from her ‘mad money’, took the portrait up to her apartment, and later summoned another cab and went back after her purse?