... The reamer he must
have brought out here after he used it to enlarge the hole in my hot-air
register after midnight Sunday morning. It is possible he did his
cleaning up job here at the same time. It was safe enough to have lights
on, since the house is so isolated and there had been no guard here
since Thursday."
"Well--" Sanderson drew a deep breath. "He was a far cleverer man than
any of us suspected. The mechanical arrangements were absurdly easy to
rig up, in all three cases, but the _thinking_ of them----. It is a pity
Nita did not fear him as she feared Sprague's vengeance----"
"You're right," Dundee answered. "Nita did not fear Miles, not even when
she was making him pay and pay.... No woman could look at Miles and
believe him capable of murder. But a conviction of sexual inferiority
leads to strange things, as psychologists can tell you.... I believe
Miles married the only two women who ever fell in love with him, and
there can be no doubt that Nita really loved him, for she kept her
wedding dress for more than twelve years and chose it to be her shroud.
It is possible she was still fond of him, although she was infatuated
with Sprague when she came down here and was later sincerely in love
with Ralph Hammond. Another reason she did not fear Miles when she made
her will was that she counted on being able to tell him Saturday night
at the latest that she would never ask him for money again, if he would
trade silence for silence.
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