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‘Then we come to Blore.’ Maine hesitated. ‘He of course was one of our lot.’

The other man stirred.

‘Blore,’ said the Assistant Commissioner forcibly, ‘was a bad hat!’

‘You think so, sir?’

The AC said:

‘I always thought so. But he was clever enough to get away with it. It’s my opinion that he committed black perjury in the Landor case. I wasn’t happy about it at the time. But I couldn’t find anything. I put Harris on to it and he couldn’t find anything but I’m still of the opinion that there was something to find if we’d known how to set about it. The man wasn’t straight.’

There was a pause, then Sir Thomas Legge said:

‘And Isaac Morris is dead, you say? When did he die?’

‘I thought you’d soon come to that, sir. Isaac Morris died on the night of August 8th. Took an overdose of sleeping stuff—one of the barbiturates, I understand. There wasn’t anything to show whether it was accident or suicide.’

Legge said slowly:

‘Care to know what I think, Maine?’

‘Perhaps I can guess, sir.’

Legge said heavily:

‘That death of Morris’ is a damned sight too opportune!’

Inspector Maine nodded. He said:

‘I thought you’d say that, sir.’

The Assistant Commissioner brought down his fist with a bang on the table. He cried out:

‘The whole thing’s fantastic—impossible. Ten people killed on a bare rock of an island—and we don’t know who did it, or why, or how.’

Maine coughed. He said:

‘Well, it’s not quite like that, sir. We do know why, more or less. Some fanatic with a bee in his bonnet about justice. He was out to get people who were beyond the reach of the law. He picked ten people—whether they were really guilty or not doesn’t matter—’

The Commissioner stirred. He said sharply:

‘Doesn’t it? It seems to me—’

He stopped. Inspector Maine waited respectfully. With a sigh Legge shook his head.

‘Carry on,’ he said. ‘Just for a minute I felt I’d got somewhere. Got, as it were, the clue to the thing. It’s gone now. Go ahead with what you were saying.’

Maine went on:

‘There were ten people to be—executed, let’s say. They were executed. U. N. Owen accomplished his task. And somehow or other he spirited himself off that island into thin air.’

The AC said:

‘First-class vanishing trick. But you know, Maine, there must be an explanation.’

Maine said:

‘You’re thinking, sir, that if the man wasn’t on the island, he couldn’t have left the island, and according to the account of the interested parties he never was on the island. Well, then the only explanation possible is that he was actually one of the ten.’

The AC nodded.

Maine said earnestly:

‘We thought of that, sir. We went into it. Now, to begin with, we’re not quite in the dark as to what happened on Soldier Island. Vera Claythorne kept a diary, so did Emily Brent. Old Wargrave made some notes—dry legal cryptic stuff, but quite clear. And Blore made notes too. All those accounts tally. The deaths occurred in this order. Marston, Mrs Rogers, Macarthur, Rogers, Miss Brent, Wargrave. After his death Vera Claythorne’s diary states that Armstrong left the house in the night and that Blore and Lombard had gone after him. Blore has one more entry in his notebook. Just two words. “Armstrong disappeared.”