“Yes, it was,” said Keefe. “You see, he is a clever genius, in a sly way. He reasoned that if a fire occurred, everybody would run to it except Mr. Wheeler, who cannot go over the line. He hoped that, therefore, Mr. Appleby would not go either—for Mr. Appleby suffered from flatfoot—at any rate, he took a chance that the fire would give him opportunity to shoot unnoticed. Which it did.”
“It certainly did. Now, Mr. Keefe, did he tell you how he set that fire?”
“No, he did not,” was the short reply. “Moreover, Mr. Stone, I resent your mode of questioning. I’m not on the witness stand. I’ve solved a mystery that baffled you, and though I understand your embarrassment at the situation, yet it does not give you free rein to make what seem to me like endeavors to trip me up!”
“Trip you up!” Stone lifted his eyebrows. “What a strange expression to use. As if I suspected you of faking his tale.”
“It speaks for itself,” and Keefe glanced nonchalantly at the paper he had brought. “There’s the signed confession—if you can prove that signature a fake—go ahead.”
“No,” said Daniel Wheeler, decidedly; “that’s John Mills’ autograph. I know it perfectly. He wrote that himself. And a dying man is not going to sign a lie. There’s no loophole of doubt, Mr. Stone. I think you must admit Mr. Keefe’s entire success.”
“I do admit Mr. Keefe’s entire success,” Stone’s dark eyes flashed, “up to this point. From here on, I shall undertake to prove my own entire success, since that is the phrase we are using. Mr. Wheeler, your present cook was here when John Mills worked for you?”
“She was, Mr. Stone, but you don’t need her corroboration of this signature. I tell you I know it to be Mills’.”
Half unwillingly, Wheeler agreed, and Maida stepped out of the room and summoned the cook.
The woman came in, and Stone spoke to her at once.
“Is that John Mills’ signature?” he asked, showing her the paper.
“It is, sir,” she replied, looking at him in wonder.
A satisfied smile played on Keefe’s face, only to be effaced at Stone’s next question.
“And was John Mills the person you saw—vaguely—on the south veranda that night of Mr. Appleby’s murder?”
“That he was not!” she cried, emphatically. “It was a man not a bit like Mills, and be the same token, John Mills was in his bed onable to walk at all, at all.”