Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1915-12-12
Behind the Bottled
Door?
Continued from page Il

fear And why? The facts are these:
AS Judge Bishop can tell you, she made
her former will when she married Fisher.
She then believed herself in love with him.
In that first will she made him practically
her sole inheritor As the Judge can also
tell you she had been intending to alter
that for some time.
"She had" said Bishop; "and that was
the thing | was holding back. Not only
had she come to find life intolerable with
the man: she had grown vaguely to fear
him. | don't mean that she could ac-
tualy believe she was in danger from him
at least, not until the last. But she had
taken resolve that he should not profit
by her death-and | think she had let
him know it. Oh, | know; | should have
told all that. But it seemed to me l
would be directly accusing the man, with
out title of evidence-when he had
been away the whole day of the crime,
and when. obviously. he expected to find
her alive when he came home that night.
For he did, Laneham, he did,
mo question of it," said the Doctor
~ can tell you positively he did not eX-
pect her to meet her death until the
morning."
"Good Lord" gasped Glasbury.
The Judge and even the big Inspector
himself We're obviously shaken.
"But get on with it." urged the big
fellow; "get on with it,"
WE have not finished with the will, ;"
said Laneham "What was it. that
morning and a few hours before her death,
that made her suddenly resolve to make
that new will, and at once? That is some
thing we can never know. But, just as
the man in the death-cell can pick out the
man who is to kill him among a dozen, so,
I'm satisfied, she read the thing in Fishers
eyes. So far as Jimmy knows, she had
had no quarrel with him that morning
Fisher himself assured us that they had
made things up after their last, and
accordingly he was bringing Potter home
for dinner and the opera. Doubtless the
devil had parted from her with the best
expressions of affection he could summon.
But you cant arrange murder without
betraying at least some faint, heart-chll-
ing shadow of it to the victim you have
marked. And in some way, by some in
stinct, she half guessed-she had time to
make the new will. But Fishers arrange
ments We're already made. By then, as
I'll show you in due course, his trap was
set. First, come back to all had to work
upon: his actions after the crime.
81 say again, he had shown clearly that
he knew nothing of our safe-breakers,
or OF any secret access to the rooms, or
of the owner of that terrifying voice. His
terror was proof enough of that Before
then he had been giving great demonstra-
tons for his murdered wife. Though it
was well known to all their friends that
for some time there had not been even
normal tolerance between them, he felt
it necessary to act like man half crazed
by his loss. At the first suspicion he was
for having Vikings railroaded to the
chair A little later it was Jimmy. And
later he was quite as ready to give an
exhibition of believing that Maddalina
and MIR. Gasbury, in their turn were
guilty. No psychiatrist on earth was ever
fooled by such flimsy pretenses. But,
meanwhile, | had resolved to test him
out in another way-by letting him feel,
for little while at any rate, that he
was himself suspected.
~Ni1l Than nf ooprca ba JiJ,'t ly,,,,,,