Inche had not stopped short of embroiling son
with father, but had gone on to the end ominously shadowed forth by
the appearance of the gunman in those rooms....
What he saw from the threshold of the lighted room was Bayard Shaynon
still in death upon the floor, one temple shattered by a shot fired at
close range from a revolver that lay with butt close to his right
hand--carefully disposed with evident intent to indicate a case of
suicide rather than of murder.
XXI
THE SORTIE
At pains not to stir across the threshold, with quick glances P.
Sybarite reviewed scrupulously the scene of November's crime.
Eventually his nod indicated a contemptuous conclusion: that it should
not prove difficult to convict November on the evidence afforded by
the condition of the apartment alone. A most superficial inspection
ought to convince anybody, even one prone to precipitate conclusions,
that Bayard Shaynon had never died by his own hand.
If November, in depositing the instrument of his crime close to the
hand of its victim, had meant to mislead, to create an inference of
_felo de se_, he had ordered all his other actions with a carelessness
arguing one of three things: cynical indifference to the actual
outcome of his false clue; sublime faith in the stupidity of the
police; or a stupidity of his own as crass as that said to be
characteristic of the average criminal in all ages.
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