“Why do you think that?”

“I’ve a theory. No facts.”

“Give me the theory.”

“Well, I’ve always been interested in abnormal psychology,” Easter said. “Didn’t take much notice of the Thomas case because it was just another husband-wife brawl, but after the trial we dug up the papers and read the reports and got different ideas about the woman. When she disappeared, other things added up.

“I’d say Myra Thomas was vanity plus. She had tasted fame, strictly local though it was, but what a banquet during her trial! She finds herself hitting the headlines all over Australia. I’ll bet no one received a bigger shock than she did when she was acquitted. What happened? She becomes the centre of nation-wide controversy, then within a week all the glory has faded, and the morons who screamed their admiration as she left court, deserted her to rush to the airfield to yell and scream their welcome to a foreignswooner. So, having dined with the gods, she must scramble under the table after the crumbs.”

Bony was frankly astonished by this lucid exposition.

“What happens next?” proceeded Easter. “She planned the disappearance, planned it to take place in the middle of the fabulous Nullarbor Plain, the only place of its kind in the world and famous for just that. So she vanishes from a famous train when in the middle of a famous Plain. Sounds like poetry, doesn’t it? Dressed in her night things and wearing slippers, she left the train at Cook and entered a car or truck driven by a pal who took her by the only track to the coast road, from which point they could go east or west into smoke.

“She certainly got what she wanted-more and more publicity which made the publicity at the triallook like a social paragraph. Now she will lie low for some time, and then reappear with the yarn that she had a sudden attack of amnesia brought on by the dreadful horror of the murder. Imagine the headlines! The money in the story of her life! That’s my theory.”