The Bozeman courier. (Bozeman, Mont.) 1919-1954, 1926-03-19

crashed down on the cement floor, and he
falling directly onto the broken, jagged
fragments.
They would break into fearful triangular
pointed Lieces, so what more obvious than
that one Of these should have pierced his
throat, severing Jugular and carOhdG How
simple and fatal an accident! Why i'm the
name Of common sense look for an assassin,
and Of all persons, why fasten il on a man
who might or might not have stopped be-
fore the villa gates in his car. then gone on
againf Here were two witnesses who had
seen Monsieur Wharf enter the cabSne,
seen its plank door shut behind him, heard
the crash and the muffled cutlery, or, to be
precise, the muffled cutlery and the crash,
which was a more natural sequence
Anybody holding a fragile object under
such conditions would be apt to yell some
imprecatiOn as he saw it lettering to a fall,
try TO save it at whatever cost of losing
equilibrium, easily be carried with It, as
In the case Of such big, clumsy, heavy
things.
GraLple as I might with the problem. 1
could not for the life Of me see where
Robert came into it, even indirectly. 1
formed all sorts Of hypOtheSe, only TO dis
miss them as absurdly wild. I thought cf
his having possibly introduced into the
cabane something that might have been in
tended to injure Monsieur Vibart-a pOis-
OnOus gas, an Internal machine, or some
thing in his sabOt, a curtain tack with a
poisonous tip-Or Of his having found
means to administer some slow acting drug
that might have giddied him under his CT
IOILS as the morning wore on. Inc mOLlNeS
Of the multitude Of detective stories / had
read came boiling up, not to help and sug-
gest, but to bewilder me-. as, I should say,
all such fantastic ideas are really more apt
to do.
I gave it up then, and my thought went
back to Jacques, who was placidly eating
an apple that cost at that season ten
francs. His unruffled calm upset me. Even
in the face of il, I found it impossible to
credit him with the power he protested. 1
did not believe that any man possessed it
under such control, or even had possessed
it, outside of a divinity or great prophet,
perhaps who would be d|iviinely restrained
from exercising it in any such manner as
this.
Like most people Of curious and active
mind, / had prObed and studied metaphy-
sizes! made certain concessions to the claims
Of spiritism, but qualified them. If one
man could read the thoughts of another,
to the gain of the one and the undOing of
the other, then others would be able to do
this thing, and in such a case our system
of criminal Investigation must long ago
have been disOrganized.
I thought, of course, Of the administra-
ton of certain drugs, notably scOpaline, TO
produce a sort Of talking twilight sleep
by which it is claimed that the accused
is unable to dissemble, bound to speak the
truth. That might be true, but in the first
criminal procedure, or even if used surrep-
; titiOusly, then jacques services would not
be needed.
? In the second Llace, he was not to listen
in on what the accused might say in a de-
; fenseless state, but to what he might be
thinking in the full possession of his fac
utlies.
( Copyright: 1925 by Henry c. ROwland)
To be Concluded in Next Weeks Issue