“I didn’t know I was that funny,” Prye said coldly.
Emily wiped her eyes. “Y-you are. Y-you’re a s-scream! You 1-1-look so s-serious!” she gasped.
“Well, damn it, I am serious.”
“I know. That’s what’s so f-funny.”
Prye grasped the handle of her wheelchair and wheeled her toward the bathroom. “The bathtub seems called for.”
“Stop!” she yelled.
Prye stopped. Emily’s face had lost its color.
“Not that bathtub,” she said in a sickly voice.
Ten minutes later Inspector White and two policemen were examining the room formerly occupied by Miss Alfonse. Prye stood by the window, peering at the ledge and then out into the darkness below.
Inspector White straightened up to his full height and let out an involuntary cry of rage.
“It’s appalling!” he shouted in Prye’s direction. “It’s absolutely incredible that someone could get into this room, murder a woman, dispose of the body, and walk away scot-free. It will cost me my job. It will terrorize the countryside. We will lose our tourist trade and be derided by the newspapers. Will you stop fingering that ledge and listen to me?”
“Sure,” Prye said. “But I don’t give a damn about the newspapers or the tourist trade. All I want to know is, where is Miss Alfonse? If she was flung from this window and then dragged down to the lake you’d expect to find some blood splattered around. But there isn’t any, except that neat little pool on the floor. You’ve been on the scene of a murder before. Did you ever see one arranged like this?”
“You’ve missed something,” the inspector said in a hard voice. “Come here.”
He pulled open the bottom drawer of the dresser. On top of a pile of clothing lay a pair of scissors, a package of cotton, and a roll of adhesive tape. They were covered with blood.
“You see,” the inspector said, “the murderer stanched the wound with cotton and the plaster was used to bold the cotton on.”
“Why bother about that and leave the pool of blood on the floor?” Prye asked.
“The blood on the floor may have been overlooked.”
“Or planted.”
“Why planted?” the inspector roared. “Where would the blood come from to plant? And why?”
“I don’t know, but I like to think of possibilities. And certainly one possibility is that Miss Alfonse, for reasons of her own, would like us to believe she was murdered. She didn’t know that Little’s body had been found, and she may have gotten ideas. If one body remained undiscovered it wouldn’t look so suspicious if another one—”
“You mean this is a fake!”
“Possibly. You see, I think it’s strange that anyone could have murdered Miss Alfonse. She was sly and suspicious, and she knew who the murderer was.”
Inspector White’s face seemed to be expanding like a red balloon.
“I can see the adrenalin pouring into your system,” Prye said. “A bad thing. Be kind to your adrenals and they’ll be kind to you. Of course Miss Alfonse knew who murdered Little. She had information which was worth a great deal of money, and if she divulged it she would kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. Golden eggs were right down Miss Alfonse’s alley. So it’s possible that this charming tableau” — he waved his arm around the room — “was arranged by Miss Alfonse herself, perhaps with the aid of the murderer.”
“She can’t get away, even if you are right. Look how we got Mr. Smith.”
“Miss Alfonse is a professional,” Prye said, “and Mr. Smith is the veriest amateur. The difference glares. And speaking of Mr. Smith, would you mind if I borrowed your gun?”
“My gun? What for?” the inspector asked suspiciously.
“Because I want to scare the pants off Mr. Smith.”
“You can’t do that! It isn’t legal. See Section—”
“Unload it. It’s just for a prop anyway. There are too many mysteries around here and I might be able to clear up one of them.”
“The law—”
“If I do anything illegal,” Prye said, “you may put me in jail. After all, that’s what the law seems to be — curative rather than preventive. I’d rather be cured than prevented. Do I get the gun?”
Inspector White took the gun from the holster attached to his belt, removed the cartridges, and handed it over.
“Keep everything as legal as possible,” he said, sighing.
Mr. John Wayne Smith was lying in bed reading a detective story. Although the heroine was unwittingly about to marry a werewolf Mr. Smith was not, in fact, very interested. He was not in the proper frame of mind to read a detective story; he scorned and was skeptical. He was not even convinced that werewolves ever entertained thoughts of matrimony, let alone reached the point where they decked themselves out in morning clothes and slunk up the aisle.
Since Mr. Smith was reading about a wedding it was not surprising that his first thought when he heard the knock on his front door was: “She’s come for me!”
Mr. Smith was not a coward, however. He pulled on his bathrobe, whistled to Horace, and went downstairs.
Prye was already inside, and when Smith reached the middle of the stairs he was greeted informally.
“Mr. Smith, I’m a reasonable man,” Prye said. “I’ll give you five minutes.”
Mr. Smith saw the revolver and clutched the banister.
“Go get him, Horace!” he yelled.
It was a tactical error. Horace had already met, sniffed, and approved Dr. Prye, and he seldom took his master’s commands seriously anyway.
“Into the living room, Mr. Smith, with your hands up.”
Mr. Smith went.
“Would you like to sit down, Mr. Smith?”
Mr. Smith sat down.
“What are you doing in Muskoka, Mr. Smith?”
“J-just living.”
Prye patted Horace’s head with one hand and dangled the revolver in the other.
“I said five minutes, Mr. Smith.”
“I’m... I’m dodging the police,” Smith said in a strangled voice. “And other p-people.”
Prye nodded approvingly. “That’s better, Mr. Smith. Why?”
“They want me. At least they don’t want me but somebody else does.”
“It’s thin, Mr. Smith, it’s very thin,” Prye said musingly. “Next thing you’ll be telling me you’re a fugitive from the OGPU.”
Mr. Smith gathered up his dignity. “I am a fugitive from a determined woman.”
“What woman?”
“My wife. That is, my ex-wife. She divorced me.”
“And now she’s after you again, Mr. Smith?”
“Not exactly,” Smith said unhappily. “I... I neglected to— That is, I found the alimony exorbitant.”
“You’re an alimony jumper.”
“Well, yes.” Mr. Smith was stirred to eloquence by his injuries. “If the judge had been more reasonable— But three hundred dollars a month simply because I worked in my store on Sundays and caused her grievous mental anguish! I didn’t mind the money, but the way she gloated... Well, I simply ran away.”
“But she’s on your trail?”
Mr. Smith shuddered and pulled his bathrobe closer around him. “I have heard so.”
“What will she do if she finds you?”
“She’ll gloat,” Mr. Smith said simply.
Prye tossed the revolver in the air and caught it again.
“I’d rather be gloated at than arrested for murder,” he said. “Why didn’t you clear this up before instead of trying to escape on Monday night?”
“The press. If I got my name or my picture in the papers she’d be here like a shot. She always reads all the papers.”
“Did you know someone else has disappeared?” Prye asked.