XXXIVTen minutes later Lamb said, “Well, Miss Silver, we are very much obliged to you. There’s no doubt we’ve got the weapon. Fortunately Oakley must have been in too much of a hurry to do more than pitch that log in on the back of the fire without waiting to see where it landed. If it hadn’t rolled off what was left of the fire it would probably have caught. As it is, there’s no mistake about what it was used for.”
“Oakley?” Miss Silver coughed in rather a definite manner. “Mr. Oakley, Chief Inspector?”
He stared. Frank Abbott gave a slight start.
Miss Silver was knitting rapidly. She said,
“If that log was the weapon, Mr. Oakley was not the murderer. It is not possible.”
She got a grunt and a curt “Your reasons?”
“When Mr. Pearson came to tell me of the telephone conversation he ha
