‘But it was freezing hard last Wednesday, wasn’t it?’ replied Linley.
‘Well, pretending to dig,’ said the inspector. ‘But we can’t hang him on that. No one would dig while it was freezing that hard; but we can’t prove it; and we couldn’t hang him on it if we could.’
‘No, it just shows you and me that he’s up to his old tricks again.’
‘That’s all,’ said the inspector.
It was snowing even as they spoke, and had been freezing all the week. I sat quite still and just listened, and I think they forgot me.
‘He had a good heap of earth to show for his digging,’ Inspector Ulton said, ‘but that didn’t say that he’d only just done it. Lots of people heard a shot, though nobody saw it. We’ve had the whole body photographed by X-rays and there’s no sign of a bullet.’
‘Could he have hit Slugger with a pick-axe through the window?’
‘No, first floor,’ said the inspector. ‘The room upstairs. And Steeger shot him from his upstairs room too, only there’s no bullet. The wound goes a little downwards, and Steeger’s upper storey was the higher one of the two. If you could only find that bullet for us.’
‘A deep wound, I suppose.’
‘Oh, very,’ said Ulton.
‘He must have extracted it.’
‘Oh, no one crossed the street after the shot. Mears; that’s the constable there; lives in the very street, twenty-eight doors away and he was out of his house in ten seconds; the whole street was empty.’
‘He didn’t have the bullet tied to a thin wire,’ said Linley; ‘you’d have thought of a thing like that.’
‘Yes, we thought of that,’ said the inspector. ‘But a big bullet like that would have left blood-marks somewhere, either on Slugger’s sill, or the street, or the wall of Steeger’s house; and there weren’t any.’
‘What cheek,’ said Linley, ‘going and living right opposite Slugger’s house.’
‘Yes,’ said the inspector. ‘And Slugger knew what Steeger was waiting for too. But he wasn’t going to give up his house on that account. Steeger thinks he can do what he likes, having escaped the first time.’
‘Slugger had his window open, you say?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You can prove that?’ said Linley. ‘Because you’d have to prove it, considering the weather.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Ulton, ‘Mears will swear to that. Slugger had his window open in all weathers. He was sitting beside it reading. The paper was in his hand.’
‘It certainly looks as if Steeger shot him through the window,’ said Linley.
‘It stands to reason he did,’ said Ulton. ‘But, without the bullet to show, you know what a jury would do. They’d go and let him off.’
‘Yes,’ said Linley. ‘How wide was the street?’
‘Ten yards from wall to wall,’ said the inspector. ‘Barely that. Nine yards two feet.’
‘Well, I’ll think it over,’ said Linley, ‘and let you know tomorrow how I think Steeger did it.’
‘I’d be very glad if you would,’ said the inspector, and he turned to go away. And at that he noticed me again, and told me that any suggestion from me that Steeger had ever killed anyone would be highly criminal, as though he hadn’t been slandering Steeger (if that’s the word for it) himself for the last fifteen minutes. I said I wouldn’t say a word against Steeger, and the inspector left.
‘What do you make of it?’ asked Linley.
‘Me?’ I said. ‘If he shot Slugger and the bullet didn’t go through, it must be still in the body.’
‘But they’ve found that it isn’t,’ said Linley.
‘Let me go down there and have a look,’ I said.
‘No, Smethers,’ he said. ‘You won’t find anything Scotland Yard has missed.’
‘Well, what are you going to do?’ I said.
‘Think,’ said Linley.
‘What about?’ I asked.
‘Evaporating bullets,’ said Linley.
‘Are there such things?’ I asked him.
‘No,’ said Linley.
‘Then what’s the use of thinking about them,’ I said.
‘Because it’s happened,’ said Linley. ‘When a thing’s happened you’ve got to admit it, and try and see how.’
‘What about a big arrow,’ I said. ‘And pull it back by a string.’
‘Worse than the bullet tied to a wire,’ he answered. ‘Still more blood-marks.’
‘What about a spear ten yards long,’ I said.
‘Ingenious,’ was Linley’s only comment.
I got a bit huffed when he wouldn’t say more than that, and began to argue with him. But Linley was right. They didn’t find any spear, for one thing, when they searched Steeger’s house; and, for another, there wouldn’t have been space for it in the upstairs room.
And then the telephone-bell rang. It was Inspector Ulton. Linley went to the ’phone. ‘They’ve found a wad in the street,’ he said.
‘A wad?’ said I.
‘A wad of the eight-bore,’ he answered. ‘Between the two houses.’
‘Then he shot him,’ I said.
‘We know that,’ said Linley.
‘Well, what’s the difficulty,’ said I, ‘if you know it already?’
‘To prove it,’ said Linley.
He sat thinking in front of the fire for a long time, and I could do nothing more to help him. And after a while he said, ‘Ring up Scotland Yard, Smethers, and ask if there was any sign of burning about the wound.’
I did it and they said No. The doctor had thought for a moment that he felt some small foreign particle, which made them think that he might have lost the bullet, but he said that he was mistaken, and that there was nothing there, and no sign of burning.
I told Linley, and all he said was, ‘Then it was nothing that burned away.’
And he was quite silent again.
So was I, for I could think of nothing. I knew it was Steeger, just as he did; but that was no good.
‘We must hang Steeger,’ he said after a while. And I knew that he was thinking of Nancy Elth, the girl Steeger murdered the last time. He sat silent for so long then that I thought it had beaten him. Time passed and I was even afraid that he had given it up, which I knew he ought not to do, because I was sure he could solve it.
‘How did Steeger do it?’ I asked after a while.
‘He shot Slugger,’ said Linley.
‘How?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘And I never shall.’
‘Oh, yes, you will,’ I said, ‘if you give your mind to it.’
‘Oh, well,’ said he, ‘give me a chess-problem to look at.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘If you get looking at them you’ll never leave them alone. Let’s solve this problem first.’
For I saw he