The cuff link, obviously loosened and dropped
unnoticed on the floor during the struggle, would not only connect the
Pippin with the crime, but would convict him of it as well; he, Jimmie
Dale, therefore, did not propose to allow the Pippin to return and
remove that evidence--that was all. It should not be very difficult to
prevent it; nor should it even necessitate his showing himself to the
Pippin. A shot, for instance, fired at the floor, as the Pippin stole in
through that rear door again should be enough to send the man flying
back for shelter to the recesses of the underworld. The Pippin's nerves,
as he crept back to the scene of his crime, would be badly frayed and
unstrung, unless he was a man lacking wholly in imagination, which the
Pippin, once having been an actor, inherently could not be; and, coupled
with this, prompting the Pippin to run at once for cover, would be the
fact that he could not by any means be certain that the link had been
lost there in the room itself, since it might equally have, been forced
loose during his escape, say, for instance, while climbing the series of
backyard fences that would have confronted him from the moment he left
Melinoff's rear door--providing always, of course, that the Pippin, as
it seemed logical and as the evidence seemed to indicate, _had_ made his
escape in that manner.
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