“No, I won’t,” he said emphatically. “I don’t like your game. But I do want a cigarette.”
He reached out his uninjured arm and picked up the cigarette nearer me .
“Thanks, Ed,” I said. “Now I hate to tell you this, but I’m going to swing you.”
“You’re balmy, my son.”
“You’re thinking of the San Francisco job, Ed,” I explained. “I’m talking about Seattle. You, a hotel sneak-thief, were discovered in a room with a man who had just died with a bullet in his head. What do you think a jury will make out of that, Ed?”
He laughed at me. And then something went wrong with the laugh. It faded into a sickly grin.
“Of course you did,” I said. “When you started to work out your plan to inherit all of Mrs. Ashcraft’s wealth by having her killed, the first thing you did was to destroy that suicide letter of her husband’s. No matter how carefully you guarded it, there was always a chance that somebody would stumble into it and knock your game on the head. It had served its purpose—you wouldn’t need it. It would be foolish to take a chance on it turning up.
“I can’t put you up for the murders you engineered in San Francisco; but I can sock you with the one you didn’t do in Seattle—so justice won’t be cheated. You’re going to Seattle, Ed, to hang for Ashcraft’s suicide.”
And he did.