“Damned ingenious,” said Colonel Brammington, “but conjectural.”

“I know. We are only halfway through the case. It has changed its complexion with Oates’s arrest of Legge for assault. We’ve only been here some thirty hours, you see. If we can check the time Legge appeared in the public bar with the time he left the private one, and all that dreary game, we shall be a step nearer. But dismiss all this conjecture and we still have the facts. We still know that only Legge controlled the flight of the dart.”

“Yes.”

“The next day was the fatal one. Legge stayed out of sight all day. Late in the afternoon, he left it as late as possible, and just before the others came in, he went down to the bar with a razor-cut on his chin and asked Abel for some iodine. Abel got the box out of the corner cupboard and gave it to Legge. Legge returned it a few minutes later. He had dabbed iodine on his chin. He had also substituted, for the iodine bottle in the box, the iodine bottle he had taken from the bathroom. This he had doctored with prussic acid from the rat-hole. By this really neat manœuvre he got Abel to do the dirty work and accounted for any prints of his own that might afterwards be found on the bottle. In the evening Legge had a perfectly genuine appointment in Illington. At about five o’clock the storm broke, and I think that, like a good villain, Mr. Legge made plans to the tune of thunder off-stage. The storm was a fair enough reason for staying indoors. The failing lights were propitious. The Pomeroys both told him he couldn’t get through the tunnel. When Will Pomeroy went up to Legge’s room in the evening, he found him rather thoughtful. However, he came down and joined the party in the bar. I think he had made up his mind that, if Watchman suggested the trick should be done that night, he would wound Watchman. Abel, so keen on antisepsis, would produce the first-aid set from the cupboard. So it worked out. Two points are interesting. The first is the appearance and the consumption of the brandy. That was an unexpected development but he turned it to good account. He sat in the inglenook and appeared to get quietly and thoroughly soaked. That would account nicely for his missing with the trick. In the wood-basket beside his seat we found a newspaper into which liquid had been poured. The newspaper had been there since that night. Fox and I think we can detect a trace of the fruitful vine in the stains. But he must have watched the others anxiously. Would they be too tight to remember he had no chance to monkey with the darts? Luckily for him Will, Abel, Miss Darragh, and Miss Moore all remained sober. That brings us to the second point. Legge’s great object was to provide himself with an alibi for doctoring the darts. That was why he fell in with Abel’s suggestion that he should use the new darts. Legge stood under the central light and waited for the darts to be handed to him. He was in shirt-sleeves and they were rolled back like a conjurer’s. Parish, Will, Abel and Watchman all handled the darts. When Legge got them he at once threw them one by one into the board as a trial. That was his first mistake, but it would have looked odd for him not to do it. Watchman spread out his hand and the sequel followed. There were six people ready to swear Legge had done nothing to the darts.”

Alleyn paused.

“I’m afraid this is heavy going,” he said. “I won’t be much longer. Watchman, when hit, pulled out the dart and threw it into the floor. When Oates called for the dart Legge obligingly found it on the floor behind the table, but not before Oates — who’s a sharp fellow, Nick — has, as he says, spotted it alaying there. You throw those darts down as often as you like and I’ll guarantee they stick in. And moreover we’ve statements from them all that it did stick in. All right. The lights had been wavering on and off throughout the evening. Before Watchman died they went off. There was a horrid interval during which Watchman made ghastly noises, everybody tramped about on broken glass, and Cubitt felt somebody’s head butt against his legs. Miss Moore, she told me, heard somebody click the light to make sure it would stay off. He then dived down to find the tell-tale iodine bottle and plant the innocent one under the bench. He must, as you say, have found the bottom of the bottle hard to smash and have thrown it in the fire. You remember he called out that he would throw wood on the fire in order to get a little light. Just as he did that, the lights went on. There’s a second switch in the inglenook, you know. He’d done another job of work in the dark. He’d picked up the dart and infected it with the cyanide. The dart was sticking in the floor, well away from the others. He had only to feel for the table and then find the dart. Here he made the fatal mistake of adding a fancy touch. We’ve proved that the dart was infected after the accident. Legge’s fingerprints are all over it. If anyone else had pulled it out of the floor they would either have left prints of their own or smudged his. He should have left the dart alone, and we would have concluded that if it was ever poisoned the stuff was washed off by blood or had evaporated.”

“I cannot conceive,” said the Colonel. “why he’d wanted to anoint the dart. Why implicate himself? Why?”

“In order that we should think exactly what we did think. ‘Why,’ we cried, ‘there was Legge, finding the dart, with every opportunity to wipe it clean, and he didn’t! It couldn’t be Legge!’ Legge’s plan, you see, depended on the theory of accident. He made it clear that he could have done nothing to the dart beforehand.”

“Then,” said the Colonel, “if the rest of this tarradiddle, forgive me my dear fellow, is still in the air, we yet catch him on the point of the dart.”

“I think so. I explained to Harper this afternoon that I thought it better not to make an arrest at once. We realized that our case rested on a few facts and a mass of dubious conjecture. Fox and I pretended to despise conjecture and we hoped to collect many more bits of evidence before we fired point-blank. We still hope to get them before Legge comes up for assault and battery. We hope, in a word, to turn conjecture into fact. Until this evening I also hoped to get more from Legge himself, and, by George, I nearly got a dose of prussic acid. He must have slipped into the tap-room and put his last drop of poison in the decanter. He must also have had that last drop hidden away in a bottle somewhere, ever since he murdered Watchman. Not on his person for he was searched, and not in his room. Perhaps in his new room at Illington, perhaps in a cache somewhere outside the pub. Some time after Harper had searched his room, Legge got rid of a small glass dropper with a rubber top. If he used it to draw prussic acid from the rat-hole, he must have cleaned and filled it with his lotion, emptied it, and restored it to its place on his dressing-table. If he also used it to do his work with the decanter, he got rid of it this afternoon together with whatever vessel housed the teaspoonful of prussic acid. We’ll search for them both.”

Alleyn paused and looked round the circle of attentive faces. He raised a long finger.

“If we could find so much as the rubber top of that dropper,” he said, “hidden away in some unlikely spot, then it would be good-bye conjecture and welcome fact!”

iii

“A needle,” cried Colonel Brammington, after a long pause, “a needle in a haystack of gigantic proportions.”

“It’s not quite so bad as that. It rained pretty heavily during the lunch-hour. Legge hasn’t changed his shoes and he hasn’t been out in them. They’re slightly stained and damp. He crossed the yard several times, but he didn’t get off cobblestones. The paths and roads outside the pub are muddy. He’s therefore either thrown the bottle and dropper from the window or got rid of them in the house or garage.