bit too quick for you just now. You’d had time to dope Tuppence, put her under the bolster, and be gagged and bound by your accomplices next door, and I’ll admit we swallowed your story all right for the moment. But when one came to think it out—with order and method—impossible to drug a girl, dress her in boy’s clothes, gag and bind another woman, and change one’s own appearance—all in five minutes. Simply a physical impossibility. The Hospital Nurse and the boy were to be a decoy. We were to follow that trail, and Mrs. Van Snyder was to be a pitied victim. Just help the lady off the bed, will you, Evans? You have your automatic? Good.”
Protesting shrilly, Mrs. Van Snyder was hauled from her place of repose. Tommy tore off the coverings and the bolster.
There, lying horizontally across the top of the bed was Tuppence, her eyes closed, and her face waxen.
For a moment, Tommy felt a sudden dread, then he saw the slight rise and fall of her breast. She was drugged, not dead.
He turned to Albert and Evans.
“And now, Messieurs,” he said dramatically. “The final coup !”
With a swift unexpected gesture, he seized Mrs. Van Snyder by her elaborately dressed hair. It came off in his hand.
“As I thought,” said Tommy. “ No. 16!”
It was about half an hour later when Tuppence opened her eyes and found a