Part 39 (1/2)

”Hardly. And yet it is possible that Mrs. Darcy may have been killed by the watch.”

”Killed by it?--how?” gasped Jack Young. ”I thought she was stabbed, and her skull fractured.”

”She had both those injuries, it is true. But what is to have prevented her from having been punctured by the watch just before she received those hurts?

”I mean in this way,” went on the colonel. ”We will a.s.sume that Singa Phut, finding some trifling thing the matter with his devilish watch, brought it to the Darcy shop, where he was fairly well known.

”Darcy promised to fix the timepiece but neglected or forgot to do it, leaving it on his table. Then, remembering it early in the morning--perhaps feeling guilty at having spent part of the night working on his electric lathe--he got up to do as he had promised, and--”

”Finds his cousin dead!” interrupted Mr. Kettridge.

”So he _says_!” added Jack Young significantly.

”Well, we won't go into that,” observed the colonel. ”I was going to make another point. Leaving Darcy out of it, and a.s.suming that he had left the watch on his table intending to get up in the morning and fix it, what is to have prevented Mrs. Darcy from coming down to her store--say, before midnight, after Darcy left her.

”She saw the watch on the table, and, picking it up, may have wound it.

This set in motion the death-dealing mechanism, and her hand may have been punctured with the poison.”

”But, even then,” put in Young, as he puffed out another cloud of smoke, ”if the poison from the watch killed her, why would any one strike her on the head and stab her?”

”That may have occurred just after her hand was punctured by the needle of the watch,” said the detective, ”and before the poison had time to work. It is not instantaneous.”

”But who would have struck or stabbed her after that?” asked Mr.

Kettridge. ”I mean, of course, leaving Jimmie out, for I don't believe he did it.”

”Could not Singa Phut have done it?” asked Colonel Ashley quietly.

”Singa Phut!” cried both his auditors.

”Yes. Suppose, after he had left the watch to be repaired with young Darcy, the East Indian happened to think that he had not warned against winding it up, which a jeweler would be most apt to do after making repairs. Singa Phut had no reason for wis.h.i.+ng harm to Darcy. He may have come to the store late at night intending to warn him to be careful.”

”Well, a.s.suming that, what next?” asked Jack Young.

”Well, Singa, coming say at eleven o'clock to the jewelry store, finds Mrs. Darcy there. She has picked up the watch--she must have done that, for it was in her hand. Singa sees it and fearful of what might happen he rushes in and tries to take it away from her. She, thinking him a thief, resists and he, fearful that he will be caught and arrested as a robber, struggles to get the watch and to make his escape.

”Now remember that he is of excitable nature, that he is a foreigner, fearful of our laws, and that he knows the deadly nature of the poison in the watch. Could not he have both struck Mrs. Darcy with the hunter statue and stabbed her in trying to get away from her? That would account for the killing.”

”But there would have been an alarm--the struggle would have made a noise,” objected Jack Young.

”Yes, but there are not many people pa.s.sing the store around midnight.

Every one in the place had gone to bed--the sleeping rooms are quite a distance from the shop. Then, too, very little noise may have been made. I remember in the Peal case two strong and vigorous men battled at midnight, one killing the other, in a store on a main street in a big city. But trolley cars and autos going past drowned all sounds of the fight. It may have been so in this case.”

”Are you going to offer that to the jury to clear Darcy?” asked Mr.

Kettridge.

”I may have to,” was the colonel's answer. ”How does it sound to you, gentlemen?”

”Very plausible,” admitted Jack Young. ”But what about the electric wires on Darcy's table?”