Part 3 (1/2)
”I congratulate you, my boy,” he said as heartily as he could. ”To be completely frank, when you started out, I didn't think you could do it.
By the way, I suppose Mrs. Pickett was pleased?”
”If she was, she didn't show it. I'm pretty well convinced she hasn't enough sense to be pleased at anything. However, she has invited me to dinner with her tonight. I imagine she'll be as boring as usual, but she made such a point of it, I had to accept.”
VI
For some time after Oakes had gone, Mr. Snyder sat smoking and thinking, in embittered meditation. Suddenly there was brought the card of Mrs. Pickett, who would be grateful if he could spare her a few moments. Mr. Snyder was glad to see Mrs. Pickett. He was a student of character, and she had interested him at their first meeting. There was something about her which had seemed to him unique, and he welcomed this second chance of studying her at close range.
She came in and sat down stiffly, balancing herself on the extreme edge of the chair in which a short while before young Oakes had lounged so luxuriously.
”How are you, Mrs. Pickett?” said Mr. Snyder genially. ”I'm very glad that you could find time to pay me a visit. Well, so it wasn't murder after all.”
”Sir?”
”I've just been talking to Mr. Oakes, whom you met as James Burton,”
said the detective. ”He has told me all about it.”
”He told _me_ all about it,” said Mrs. Pickett dryly.
Mr. Snyder looked at her inquiringly. Her manner seemed more suggestive than her words.
”A conceited, headstrong young fool,” said Mrs. Pickett.
It was no new picture of his a.s.sistant that she had drawn. Mr. Snyder had often drawn it himself, but at the present juncture it surprised him. Oakes, in his hour of triumph, surely did not deserve this sweeping condemnation.
”Did not Mr. Oakes' solution of the mystery satisfy you, Mrs. Pickett?”
”No!”
”It struck me as logical and convincing,” Mr. Snyder said.
”You may call it all the fancy names you please, Mr. Snyder. But Mr.
Oakes' solution was not the right one.”
”Have you an alternative to offer?”
Mrs. Pickett tightened her lips.
”If you have, I should like to hear it.”
”You will--at the proper time.”
”What makes you so certain that Mr. Oakes is wrong?”
”He starts out with an impossible explanation, and rests his whole case on it. There couldn't have been a snake in that room because it couldn't have gotten out. The window was too high.”
”But surely the evidence of the dead dog?”
Mrs. Pickett looked at him as if he had disappointed her. ”I had always heard _you_ spoken of as a man with common sense, Mr. Snyder.”