house to ask
Wicks if Woods had had any papers with him when he returned the garage
key, but slackened my pace before I had gone half-way. After all, it
made very little difference. The evidence had only been gathered to
keep Helen with her husband. Now, since that was no longer an issue,
what did it matter if Woods had stolen the proofs of his own
dishonesty. True, Simpson and Todd had asked me to get them, but I
felt that they had urged the importance of those papers more to give me
something to do than for any real need of them.

Just then an automobile came up the drive and Simpson jumped out. He
was gravely skeptical until I led him into the garage and showed him
the bullet holes; then he was enthusiastic. He examined the back of
the car minutely, and at the end of his scrutiny he turned to me.

"I'm not at all sure that we were justified in giving Zalnitch a clean
bill of health so soon. It is just possible he had a lot more to do
with this than we supposed."

While we were talking the coroner drove up. He took the bullet I had
extracted from the back of the car and looked at it as though he
expected to find its owner's name etched on it, after which he examined
the holes in the back of the car and in the foot-board. Then I eagerly
related our suspicions against Zalnitch, but he shook his head.

"This would seem to clear Mrs. Felderson but it also makes it look as
though every other suspect is innocent. Look at these holes in the
floor! The bullets that lodged there must have been fired from above.
Also you will notice there are three bullet holes in the back of the
car and two in the foot-board, besides the shot that killed Mr.
Felderson. Unless your friends, the Socialists, were carrying a young
armory with them, they could never have fired that many shots in the
short space of time that it took Mr. Felderson to pass them. I should
say that it would take a man from--well, from fifteen to thirty
seconds, at least, to fire six shots at _any_ target, and before that
time, the automobile would have been out of range."

"He might have used an automatic rifle," I interposed.

The coroner took off his hat and rubbed the bald spot on the back of
his head.

"That is possible," he admitted, "but it doesn't explain how those
bullet holes got into the floor. There might have been a struggle and
the gun discharged into the floor that way."

"That doesn't explain the holes in the back of the car," I ob