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There was an "upstairs" to the place, such as it was, but if Melinoff was up there alone, or with the Pippin, they were up there in the dark unless they were in the rear upstairs room; in which case they could not, in view of the ramshackle nature of the building, have made the slightest movement without making themselves heard from where he stood.
There had even been then, it seemed, no need for Melinoff's dying accusation the evidence of the Pippin's guilt would have been plain enough to the first person who found old Melinoff and moved the old man's body.
Was this joy, relief, rage or fury that, surging upon him, was robbing him of his senses! The Pippin! How could it be the Pippin! The cloak with its hood, and the long, gray matted wig were very like Silver Mag's very like Silver Mag's! The Pippin! The Pippin! one-time actor who had murdered old Melinoff, the old-clothes dealer! No he was not mad!
For a moment, his lips tight and set, Jimmie Dale held the other there in his arms, as he stared at a little object on the floor where Melinoff had been lying, and that previously had been hidden beneath the other's body an object that glittered and sparkled now as the light caught it.
Those words of the Pippin's note seemed to be searing through his brain in letters of fire "go the limit go the limit." There was no need to speculate longer on their meaning; they meant murder. On the floor, a dark ugly, crimson pool beside him, lay Melinoff, the old-clothes dealer.
The minutes passed; at first quickly enough, and then they began to drag heavily. Jimmie Dale's mind was back now on old Melinoff. What had the man meant by his feverish, eager, pitiful insistence that he had not forgotten, that he had remembered, that he could never forget, and that he had not understood at first?
Melinoff, if he had had no other virtue, had at least loved his wife, and the Melinoff of old, then a sprightly enough man for his years, was no more, and it was a decrepit, stoop-shouldered, dirty and grey-bearded figure that shuffled now around the old-clothes shop, apathetic of "bargains," where before it had been a man whose keenness was matched only by the sort of eager craft and low cunning with which he had conducted his business.
Was it some previous criminal undertaking between himself and the Pippin, in which the Pippin believed himself to have been betrayed by Melinoff, while Melinoff, on the other hand, protested that and then Jimmie Dale shrugged his shoulders impatiently. What was the use of speculation? The vital matter of the moment was the Pippin's delay in returning for that cuff link!
Where where did the police come from?" "I sent them from Melinoff's," said Jimmie Dale grimly. The Pippin came up on his elbow. "You!" he gasped. "You you know what happened there you were wise to everything all the time?" "No," said Jimmie Dale. "I only knew you had murdered Melinoff. You left one of your cuff links there." "Did I?" said the Pippin. He sank back on the floor again.
Jimmie Dale brushed his hand across his eyes in a dazed way. No, of course, he did not know, he could not actually know that it was the same guiding evil genius at work here that had murdered both Forrester and old Melinoff, but something beyond actual proof, a sense of intuition, made of it a certainty in his own mind, at least, which left no room for argument.
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