Death at the Excelsior | Page 5

is not easy to
get him to talk. As regards the death of Captain Gunner he can tell me
nothing. It seems that on the night of the tragedy he was away at
Portsmouth with some friends. All I have got from him is some
information as to Captain Gunner's habits, which leads nowhere. The
dead man seldom drank, except at night when he would take some
whisky. His head was not strong, and a little of the spirit was enough to
make him semi-intoxicated, when he would be hilarious and often
insulting. I gather that Muller found him a difficult roommate, but he is
one of those placid persons who can put up with anything. He and
Gunner were in the habit of playing draughts together every night in
their room, and Gunner had a harmonica which he played frequently.
Apparently, he was playing it very soon before he died, which is
significant, as seeming to dispose of the idea of suicide.
As I say, I have one or two theories, but they are in a very nebulous
state. The most plausible is that on one of his visits to India--I have
ascertained that he made several voyages there--Captain Gunner may in
some way have fallen foul of the natives. The fact that he certainly died
of the poison of an Indian snake supports this theory. I am making
inquiries as to the movements of several Indian sailors who were here
in their ships at the time of the tragedy.
I have another theory. Does Mrs. Pickett know more about this affair
than she appears to? I may be wrong in my estimate of her mental
qualities. Her apparent stupidity may be cunning. But here again, the
absence of motive brings me up against a dead wall. I must confess that
at present I do not see my way clearly. However, I will write again
shortly.
Mr. Snyder derived the utmost enjoyment from the report. He liked the
substance of it, and above all, he was tickled by the bitter tone of
frustration which characterized it. Oakes was baffled, and his

knowledge of Oakes told him that the sensation of being baffled was
gall and wormwood to that high-spirited young man. Whatever might
be the result of this investigation, it would teach him the virtue of
patience.
He wrote his assistant a short note:
Dear Oakes,
Your report received. You certainly seem to have got the hard case
which, I hear, you were pining for. Don't build too much on plausible
motives in a case of this sort. Fauntleroy, the London murderer, killed a
woman for no other reason than that she had thick ankles. Many years
ago, I myself was on a case where a man murdered an intimate friend
because of a dispute about a bet. My experience is that five murderers
out of ten act on the whim of the moment, without anything which,
properly speaking, you could call a motive at all.
Yours very cordially, Paul Snyder
P. S. I don't think much of your Pickett theory. However, you're in
charge. I wish you luck.
IV
Young Mr. Oakes was not enjoying himself. For the first time in his
life, the self-confidence which characterized all his actions seemed to
be failing him. The change had taken place almost overnight. The fact
that the case had the appearance of presenting the unusual had merely
stimulated him at first. But then doubts had crept in and the problem
had begun to appear insoluble.
True, he had only just taken it up, but something told him that, for all
the progress he was likely to make, he might just as well have been
working on it steadily for a month. He was completely baffled. And
every moment which he spent in the Excelsior Boarding-House made it
clearer to him that that infernal old woman with the pale eyes thought
him an incompetent fool. It was that, more than anything, which made
him acutely conscious of his lack of success. His nerves were being
sorely troubled by the quiet scorn of Mrs. Pickett's gaze. He began to
think that perhaps he had been a shade too self-confident and abrupt in
the short interview which he had had with her on his arrival.
As might have been expected, his first act, after his brief interview with
Mrs. Pickett, was to examine the room where the tragedy had taken
place. The body was gone, but otherwise nothing had been moved.

Oakes belonged to the magnifying-glass school of detection. The first
thing he did on entering the room was to make a careful examination of
the floor, the walls, the furniture, and the windowsill. He would have
hotly denied the assertion that he did this because it looked well, but he
would have been