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Updated: May 29, 2025
"Yes; how you found me when you looked in that morning, between two and three ... your usual hour ...?" "Yes," the editor nodded. Granice gave a short laugh. "In my old coat with my pipe: looked as if I'd been working all night, didn't I? Well, I hadn't been in my chair ten minutes!" Denver uncrossed his legs and then crossed them again. "I didn't know whether you remembered that." "What?"
As he summed himself up thus for the third or fourth time the door opened and he turned with a thrill of relief to greet his guest. But it was only the man-servant who entered, advancing silently over the mossy surface of the old Turkey rug. "Mr. Ascham telephones, sir, to say he's unexpectedly detained and can't be here till eight-thirty." Granice made a curt gesture of annoyance.
"I haven't a theory. I KNOW who murdered Joseph Lenman." Ascham settled himself comfortably in his chair, prepared for enjoyment. "You KNOW? Well, who did?" he laughed. "I did," said Granice, rising. He stood before Ascham, and the lawyer lay back staring up at him. Then he broke into another laugh. "Why, this is glorious! You murdered him, did you? To inherit his money, I suppose?
In the right-hand corner lay a thick manuscript, bound in paper folders, and tied with a string beneath which a letter had been slipped. Next to the manuscript was a small revolver. Granice stared a moment at these oddly associated objects; then he took the letter from under the string and slowly began to open it. He had known he should do so from the moment his hand touched the drawer.
Even if he had not been so incurably sick of life, the electric chair seemed now the only alternative to the strait-jacket. As he paused to wipe his forehead he saw the District Attorney glance at his watch. The gesture was significant, and Granice lifted an appealing hand. "I don't expect you to believe me now but can't you put me under arrest, and have the thing looked into?"
He spoke quite naturally now, as if the knot in his throat had been untied. "Good Lord good Lord," the lawyer gasped. "But I suppose," Granice continued, "there's no doubt this would be murder in the first degree? I'm sure of the chair if I own up?" Ascham drew a long breath; then he said slowly: "Sit down, Granice. Let's talk." GRANICE told his story simply, connectedly.
At this point in his narrative Granice stood up, and went to lean against the mantel-piece, looking down at Ascham, who had not moved from his seat, or changed his attitude of rigid fascinated attention. "Then came the summer when we went to Wrenfield to be near old Lenman my mother's cousin, as you know. Some of the family always mounted guard over him generally a niece or so.
"See that fellow over there the little dried-up man in the third row, pulling his moustache? His memoirs would be worth publishing," McCarren said suddenly in the last entr'acte. Granice, following his glance, recognized the detective from Allonby's office. For a moment he had the thrilling sense that he was being shadowed. "Caesar, if he could talk !" McCarren continued.
Granice looked at him hopelessly, trying to take the measure of his quick light irreverent mind. No one so full of a cheerful animal life would believe in the craving for death as a sufficient motive; and Granice racked his brain for one more convincing. But suddenly he saw the reporter's face soften, and melt to a naive sentimentalism. "Mr. Granice has the memory of it always haunted you?"
"My coming in that particular night or morning." Granice swung round in his chair. "Why, man alive! That's why I'm here now.
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