“Really, Mr. Woodman,” said Ellery, “you will find that the whole story is remarkably convincing to others, if not to you. Let me give you an account of the objects you had in view. You knew that it was physically impossible for John and George to have killed each other; but by leaving the signs as you did you hoped to create the impression that either might have killed the other. Your main object, however, was not to create suspicion against either of these two, but to incriminate another person, whom you desired to remove for reasons of your own. You therefore faked the telephone message I have mentioned; and you also left Walter Brooklyn’s stick in John Prinsep’s room. You also detached the ferrule from the stick with your penknife, and left the ferrule in the garden on the spot where George was murdered. By actual murder you had already, on Tuesday night, removed two of the three persons who stood between you and Sir Vernon’s fortune. You hoped that, by means of the clues which you provided, the law would do your work in removing the third. I will not ask you whether this is true. We know it.” Woodman shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, if you know it,” he said, “of course there is nothing for me to say.” “You left Liskeard House wearing George’s hat and overcoat. These you took back to the hotel, and stowed away in a handbag for the night. You went out the next morning carrying the handbag, which you brought to this office. At lunch-time you took it with you. I do not know where you lunched, but you went into the cloak-room of the Avenue Restaurant, as if you were going to lunch there, and left the hat and coat hanging on a peg. You hoped that it would be impossible to trace them to you. They have been traced.” During Ellery’s last speech Woodman’s forced calm had first showed some sign of breaking. But he pulled himself together with an effort. “I must say you have laid this plot very carefully,” he said. “Unfortunately, not only have you been traced,” Joan went on, “but you were unwise enough not to notice, when you left the coat, that it lacked a button. You left that button deep down in the corner of the bag which is now in that cupboard over there.” With a sudden cry Woodman rose from his chair and sprang towards the cupboard. He tore the bag open and felt wildly in it. Then he flung the bag away. “No,” said Joan, “the button is not there, Mr. Woodman—now. It is safe somewhere else.” “And I think, Mr. Woodman, what you have just done rather disposes of the pose of injured innocence. Don’t you?” asked Ellery. Woodman kicked the bag savagely into a corner and sank into his chair. His face had gone dead white. Shakily he poured out and drank a glass of water.