“Crazy about him.”

“You knew that she was to inherit a considerable sum of money?”

“I did.”

“What were your exact movements, the night Mrs. Fairbanks was killed? While the nurse was downstairs boiling water?”

“I cleaned the hypo with alcohol. After that I looked in at Mrs. Fairbanks. She was breathing all right, so I went back to see Jan. I was there about five minutes. I went back and poured some coffee. I was drinking it when the nurse came up with the water.”

“At what time did you see Mrs. Garrison?”

He was startled.

“Mrs. Garrison! She wasn’t there. She didn’t come until the next day. Sunday.”

“She was there, doctor. She saw you coming out of her mother’s room.”

“Oh, God,” he said wretchedly. “So she was there, too. Poor Jan!”

But his story was straightforward. He had not seen Marian when he came out of Mrs. Fairbanks’s room. Later, however, as he poured the coffee, he had felt that someone was overhead, on the third floor. The glass chandelier was shaking. He had looked up the staircase, but no one was in sight.

They showed him the knife, and he smiled thinly.

“Never saw it before,” he said. He examined it. “Somebody did a rotten job of sharpening it,” he said.

“It seems to have answered,” the inspector observed dryly. “Have you ever done any surgery, doctor?”

“Plenty.”

“You could find a heart without trouble? Even in the dark?”

“Anybody can find a heart. It’s bigger than most people think. But if you mean did I stab Mrs. Fairbanks, certainly not.”

He explained readily enough his search and Jan’s for the combination of the safe.

“She knew the agreement was there. The old lady had told her. She was afraid it would incriminate her father. When nobody could open the safe I happened to think of the cards. Mrs. Fairbanks played solitaire at night. But maybe she didn’t. Jan believed she locked herself in and then opened the safe, and we thought the cards might have the combination. I’d seen them with pictures painted on the edges. You arranged them a certain way and there was the picture.”

“The idea being to get this document?”

“Well, yes. She was worrying herself sick. But the nurse was too smart for us. She locked the door.”

It was five o’clock before he was released, with a warning not to leave town. He managed to grin at that. He got out his wallet and some silver from his pocket.

“I could travel—let’s see—exactly five dollars and eighty cents’ worth,” he said. “I’ve just paid the rent.”

The inspector looked at Henderson after he had gone.

“Well?” he said.

“Could have,” said Henderson. “But my money’s on the other fellow. Garrison was broke, too, but he wouldn’t be without the alimony.”

“Why didn’t he have it reduced? It would have been easier than murder.”

“Still in love with the first wife,” said Henderson promptly. “Sticks out all over him.”