Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination by Edogawa Rampo Read Free Book Online

statements, forgot vital details, and then tried to cover up by making other contradictory remarks, all of which tended only to incriminate him further and further. Simultaneously, there was another factor which tortured him and drove him to the verge of insanity. This was the fact that he was guilty of having stolen half of the old woman's money, precisely as Fukiya had theorized.
    The district attorney carefully summed up the evidence, circumstantial as it was, against Saito, and pitied him deeply. It could not be denied that all the odds were against him. But, Kasamori asked himself again and again, had this weak, blubbering fool been capable of committing such a vicious, cold-blooded murder? He doubted it So far Saito had not confessed, and conclusive proof of his guilt was still lacking.
    A month went by, but the preliminary probe had not yet been completed. The district attorney became decidedly annoyed and impatient at the slow pace of the investigation.
    "Curse the slow-grinding wheels of the law!" he exploded to a subordinate one day, while rechecking his documents on the case for what was probably the hundredth time. "At this rate, it'll take us a thousand years to solve the case." He then strode angrily to another desk and picked up a sheaf of routine documents filled out by the captain of the police station in whose jurisdiction the murder of the old lady fell. He looked casually at one of the papers and noticed that a purse containing ninety-five thousand yen in thousand-yen notes had been found at a spot near the old lady's house on the same day of the murder. The finder of the money, he further learned from the report, was a student, Fukiya by name, and a close friend of Saito's, the key murder suspect! For some reason—possibly because of the urgency of other duties—the police captain had failed to submit his report earlier.
    After finishing reading the report, Kasamori's eyes lit up with a strange glow. For a full month now he had felt like a person fumbling in the dark. And then came this information, like a thin ray of light. Could it have any significance, any bearing on the case at hand? He decided to find out without delay.
    Fukiya was quickly summoned, and the district attorney questioned him closely. After a full hour's questioning, however, Kasamori found he was getting nowhere. Asked as to why he had not mentioned the incident of his finding the purse when he had been interrogated previously in connection with the murder, Fukiya maintained calmly that he had not thought the matter to have any bearing on the case.
    This reply, given straightforwardly, sounded most reasonable, for the money believed to have belonged to the old lady had been found in Saito's possession. Naturally, therefore, who could have imagined that the money found on the street was also a part of the old lady's property?
    Nevertheless, Kasamori was deeply puzzled. Was it nothing but a mere coincidence that the very man who was a close friend of Saito's, the leading suspect, the man who, according to Saito's testimony in court, had also known where the old lady had hidden her money, had picked up so large a sum at a spot not far from the place where the murder had been committed? Here, indeed, was a conundrum worthy of the mind of a master sleuth.
    Struggling angrily with the problem, the district attorney cursed the unfortunate fact that the serial numbers of the banknotes had not been recorded by the old woman. Had they been recorded, it would have been a most simple task to verify whether the money found by Fukiya was part of the same loot.
    "If only I could find one single clue," he kept repeating to himself.
    In the days that followed, Kasamori revisited the scene of the crime and talked to the victim's relatives, going over the same ground again and again, but all to no avail. He had to admit that he was up against a wall, with not a single tangible clue to follow up.
    So far as he could see, the only possible way in which