"Oh, you'll listen to me, damn you." His voice wavered a moment; it became close to a screech. "Can't you let me explain? Can't you give me fair play? Give me a minute, two minutes, only two minutes! Oh, for God's sake let me say what I've got to say! " His desperation to have a man hanged broke his gloss and stolidity, but briefly; for he got himself in hand, and there was only cool contempt in the unshaven face. "Now I'll explain it. At midnight last night, after we'd left Marcia in the pavilion (what Willard told you about that is true), Mr. Bohun and I — Mr. Maurice Bohun, my host — came to the library. To this room. We talked of books and other matters you wouldn't understand. We were here for something like two hours. Naturally neither of us could see John Bohun come in: the driveway is clear at the other end of the house. And we didn't hear him, for the same reason. But we heard the dog."
"Dog?"
"A big police dog, what you call an Alsatian. They don't turn it loose at night, because it flies at anything. They keep it chained to a sort of runway wire, so that it can run twenty or thirty feet from the kennel, but no farther. It barks at anybody, known or unknown — Mr. Maurice Bohun told me. Are you listening to me now? We were sitting here last night, when we heard it commence barking and keep on barking.
"I asked him, I said, `Have we got burglars, or has somebody gone out?' He said, `Neither. That will be John coming home. It's half-past one.' We talked about the detective stories (he likes detective stories), and the dog that doesn't bark because it recognizes somebody, thus presenting a clue. That's hogwash. Real dogs bark at everybody, till you get close enough to speak."
Rainger coughed. His forehead was damp from his intense concentration when his head must be spinning; he brushed an arm across his face, and his. speech weirdly degenerated.
"That was at ha' past one. Old Bohun held out his watch and says, `See, it's ha' past one.' He's always fidgety, and he got even more fidgety and nervous about the noise while he was showing me books. Late as it is, he rang for that butler and told him to phone down to the stable and have 'em lock the dog up. He said it would drive him crazy. "
Inspector Potter struck in, heavily and eagerly: "That part of it's true anyhow, sir. This butler said he used the telephone at one-thirty to tell them at the stable they must lock the dog up-"
Masters waved his hand. "And is that, Mr. Rainger," he said, "all you've got to accuse a man of murder?"
"No. I am going to tell you what John Bohun did.”
"He arrived here at one-thirty, and left his car in the driveway.. He was wearing evening-clothes and light patentleather evening shoes-"
"How do you know that?"
"I use my brain, you see," nodded Rainger, bending forward. "I got that from the maid who went into his room this morning to light the fire. She saw the clothes scattered. She also told me (eh?) that his bed was still made and had not been slept in last night."
After a pause Masters said, "Take that down, Potter."
"He walked straight down to the pavilion, as he and Marcia had arranged. (The fool lied to you when he said he didn't know Marcia was there, and yet he admitted she had told him she was going there. He knew Marcia never changed her mind; you'll see why he lied.) Well, the dog barked for longer than usual. Why? Because of the time it took him to walk down. If he'd only gone into the house, the dog would have shut up."
Inspector Potter uttered an exclamation.
"You're suggesting-?" said Masters quickly.
"Oh, he was her lover," said Rainger. "I know that." He leaned over suddenly and spat into the fire.
"Now see. He had bad news for her. Marcia didn't take any bad news well; and not the smash-up of everything she wanted to do. But you don't know Bohun's character if you think he told her straight out. He's too weak. He put it off, and first told her everything was all right. There was love-making; the fool thought he could get Marcia into the right state of mind with that. Kuaa! Afterwards he admitted things. And she told him for the first time how she really felt towards him."
Rainger's voice rose. "He smashed her head in about an hour and a half after he'd got to the pavilion. Then the fool found that the snow had stopped long ago. His footprints going out there had been effaced. There wasn't a mark on the snow now, and if he left that place he would leave his own footprints to hang him. Well? What did he do? What did even a nervous fool do?"
Rainger must have seen that he had caught his audience. For a moment Bennett thought the man had grown cold sober; that he had forced himself sober by very violence of will; and, but for the twitching of the fingers and uncertain movements of the head, Bennett would have believed it.
"Use your brains," said Rainger, with that queer diabolical grin. "What was the only thing that would save him?"
Masters studied him. "If I had been in his place (oh, ah! supposing this to be true!), there was an easy way."
"Think so? What would you have done?"
"Rummy games we're playing! Eh? Well, then, I should have left that pavilion, messing up my own trail thoroughly by shuffling and kicking and scraping over the tracks so that nobody'd know whose they were. I'd have carried that messed-up trail up over the lawn to the high-road, or anywhere you like. The house, even. Time? Oh, ah; I'll admit it would have taken some time, and in the dark, but there'd be all the time until daylight."
Rainger blew out a blast of sour smoke. "Any fool," he said, "would have remembered the dog." Masters stopped.
"The dog, my flatfoot-friend, that barked like hell and for such a long time-while Bohun was only hurrying down to the pavilion before — that the old man had it locked up. Think that over, will you? Mr. John remembered that dog; it almost gave him away before. What did he think it would be during the fifteen or twenty minutes it would take him to mess up all his tracks? How was he to know it was locked up? What happens in a house when a dog keeps on steadily barking at four o'clock in the morning. They'd wake up. They'd look out. And there was Bohun in the middle of the lawn, caught."
Bennett went over and sat down on the divan. His wits were whirling, but he knew the man was right. Bennett said:
"But what could he do? He couldn't take up the time to mess the trail, and he couldn't hurry out and leave his tracks to betray him… You've got him in the pavilion with no tracks outside; but he says he was talking to the butler in his riding-clothes at close on seven o'clock this morning; and I'll swear on the Bible that, when I got to the pavilion this morning, there was only one line of tracks going in."
"Just so. Steady, sir," said Masters. "He did wake the butler up in this house at a quarter to seven. The butler says so."
Rainger savored a triumph. He looked from one to the other.
"Sure, sure, sure. That was his alibi. He remembered the riding-engagement; but didn't it smell very funny to you, eh, that he should have said he got up early in the morning, put on his riding-clothes, and went to wake the butler up before he was certain they would ride that morning?. He tried to be clever. He thought he was clever. Riding boots are useful. They're bigger, a good deal bigger all the way around, than little patent leather dancing-shoes."
Masters whistled. He made a big gesture as Rainger said:
"He waited till it was nearly daylight, and he could see not to bang into anything. I like to think of him sweating beside that dead woman. Then he walked out of your pavilion, and he walked backwards. When he'd changed his clothes and made his alibi, all he had to do was walk back again in his own footprints to `discover' the body. He couldn't have done it if he'd had on the same sized shoes. If he tried to step in the tracks-even in a very thin plaster of snow — he'd only have blurred the prints. If the snow had been deep instead of a little crust, he would have sloughed the tracks up. But he stamped a fresh print with bigger shoes all over the others, and concealed the first outline. The sole-and-heel prints would be messed inside the track, but they always are from the way you walk in snow. No wonder the tracks were fresh. No wonder that stable-hand saw him-from a distance — just going in at the door. He'd literally `covered' his tracks. He'd got himself the swellest alibi a man ever had. But when you got there, young man," said Rainger, choking with the last effort of keeping his words steady, "didn't he seem a little rattled?"