“THEY HAD TO SWILL IT BEFORE IT WAS SEEN TO BE A
LINEN BUNDLE”
“Lord!” exclaimed Inspector Truscott, “what’s this? It’s a queer place to hide swag of this sort. Why, that watch and those instruments must be ruined.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” Hewitt answered. “You see, the things are wrapped in the sheets, just as you expected. But those sheets mean something more. There are two, you notice.”
“Yes, of course; but I don’t see what it points to. The whole thing’s most odd. Foster certainly would have been a fool to hide the things here; he’s a sailor himself, and knows better than to put away chronometers and sextants in a wet ditch—unless he got frightened, and put the things there out of sight because the murder was discovered.”
“But you say you have traced his movements after he left. If he had come near here while the police were about, he would have been seen from the house. No, you’ve got the wrong prisoner. The person who put those things there didn’t want them again.”
“Then do you think robbery wasn’t the motive, after all?”
“Yes, it was; but not this robbery. Come, we’ll talk it over in the house. Let us take these things with us.”
Arrived at the house, Hewitt immediately locked, bolted, and barred the front door. Then he very carefully and gently unfastened each lock, bolt, and bar in order, pressing the door with his hand and taking every precaution to avoid noise. Nevertheless the noise was considerable. There was a sad lack of oil everywhere, and all the bolts creaked; the lock in particular made a deal of noise, and when the key was half turned its bolt shot back with a loud thump.
“Anybody who had once heard that door fastened or unfastened,” said Hewitt, “would hesitate about opening it in the dead of night after committing murder. He would remember the noise. Do you mind taking the things up to the room—the room—upstairs? I will go and ask Mrs. Beckle a question.”
Truscott went upstairs, and presently Hewitt followed. “I have just asked Mrs. Beckle,” he said, “whether or not the captain went to the front door for any purpose on the evening before his death. She says he stood there for some half an hour or so smoking his pipe before he went to bed. We shall see what that means presently, I think. Now we will go into the thing in the light of what I have found out.”
“‘HE STOOD THERE FOR SOME HALF AN HOUR OR SO SMOKING
HIS PIPE BEFORE HE WENT TO BED.’”
“Yes, tell me that.”
“Very well. I think it will make the thing plainer if I summarise separately all my conclusions from the evidence as a whole, from the beginning. Perhaps the same ideas struck you, but I’m sure you’ll excuse my going over them. Now here was a man undoubtedly murdered, and the murderer was gone from the room. There were two ways by which he could have gone—the door and the window. If he went by the window, then he was somebody who did not live in the place, since nobody seemed to have been missing when the girl came down, though, mind you, it was necessary to avoid relying on all she said, in view of her manner, and her almost acknowledged determination not to incriminate Foster. It seemed at first sight probable that the murderer had gone out by the door, because the key was gone entirely, and if he had left by the window he would probably have left the key in the lock to hinder anybody who attempted to get in with another key, or to peep. But then the blind was up, and was found so in the morning. It would probably be pulled down at dark, and the murderer would be unlikely to raise it except to go out that way. But then the casement was shut and fastened. Just so; but can’t it be as easily shut and fastened from the outside as from the in? The catch is very loose, and swings by itself. True, this prevents the casement shutting when it is just carelessly banged to, but see here.” He rose and went to the window. “Anybody from outside who cared to hold the catch back with his finger till the casement was shut as far as the frame could then shut the window completely, and the catch would simply swing into its appointed groove.
“‘THE CATCH WOULD SIMPLY SWING INTO ITS
APPOINTED GROOVE.’”
“And now see something more. You and I both looked at the sill outside. It is a smooth new sill—the house itself is almost new; but probably you saw in one place a sharply marked pit or depression. Look, it seems to have been drilled with a sharp steel point. It was absolutely new, for there was the powder of the stone about the mark. The wind has since blown the powder away. Now if a man had descended from that sill by means of a rope with a hook at the end, that was just the sort of mark I should expect him to leave behind. So that at any rate the balance of probability was that the murderer had left by the window. But there is another thing which confirms this. You will remember that when Mrs. Beckle mentioned that the sheets were gone from the bed you concluded that they had been taken to carry the swag.”
“Yes, and so they were, as we have seen here in the bundle.”
“Just so; but why both sheets? One would be ample. And since you allude to the bundle, why both sheets as well as the Indian shawl? This last, by the way, is a thing Mrs. Beckle seems not to have missed in the confusion, or perhaps she didn’t know that Pullin possessed it. Why all these wrappings, and moreover, why the hook? The presumption is clear. The bundle was already made up in the Indian shawl, and required no more wrapping. The two sheets were wanted to tie together to enable the criminal to descend from the window, and the hook was the very thing to hold this rope with at the top. It was not necessary to tie it to anything, and it would not prevent the shutting of the window behind. Moreover, when the descent had been made, a mere shake of the rope of sheets would dislodge the hook and bring it down, thus leaving no evidence of the escape—except the mark on the sill, which was very small.
“Then again, there was no noise or struggle heard. Pullin, as you could see, was a powerful, hard-set man, not likely to allow his throat to be cut without a lot of trouble, therefore the murderer must either have entered the room unknown to him—an unlikely thing, for he had not gone to bed—or else must have been there with his permission, and must have taken him by sudden surprise. And now we come to the heart of the thing. Of the two papers burnt in the grate—you have kept them under the shade, I see—one bore no trace of the writing that had been on it (many inks and papers do not after having been burnt), but the other bore plain signs of having been a cheque. Now just let us look at it. The main body of the paper has burnt to a deep gray ash, nearly black, but the printed parts of the cheque—those printed in coloured inks, that is—are of a much paler gray, quite a light ash colour. That is the colour to which most of the pink ink used in printing cheques burns, as you may easily test for yourself with an old cheque of the sort that is printed from a fine plate with water-solution pink ink. The black ink, on the other hand, such as the number of the cheque is printed in, has charred black, and by sharp eyes is quite distinguishable against the general dark gray of the paper. The cinder is unfortunately broken rather badly, and the part containing the signature is missing altogether. But one can plainly see in large script letters part of the boldest line of print, the name of the bank. The letters are e r n C o n s o, and this must mean the Eastern Consolidated Bank. Of course you saw that for yourself.”
“Yes, of course I did.”
“Fortunately the whole of the cheque number is unbroken. It is B/K63777. Of course I took a note of that, as well as of the other particulars distinguishable. It is payable to Pullin, clearly, for here is the latter half of his Christian name, Abel, and the first few letters of Pullin. Then on the line where the amount is written at length there are the letters u s a n d and p. Plainly it was a large cheque, for thousands. At the bottom, where the amount is placed in figures, there is a bad break, but the first figure is a 2. The cheque, then, was one for £2000 at least. And there is one more thing. The cinder is perfect and unbroken nearly all along the top edge, and there is no sign of crossing, so that here is an open cheque which any thief might cash with a little care. That is all we can see; but it is enough, I think. Now would a thief, committing murder for the sake of plunder, burn this cheque? Would Pullin, to whom the money was to be paid, burn it? I think not. Then who in the whole world would have any interest in burning it? Not a soul, with one single exception—the man who drew it.”
“Yes, yes. What! do you mean that the man who drew that cheque must have murdered Pullin in order to get it back and destroy it?”
“That is my opinion. Now who would draw Pullin a cheque for £2,000? Anybody in this house? Is it at all likely? Of course not. Again, we are pointed to a stranger. And now remember Pullin’s antecedents. On his last voyage but one his ship, the Egret, from Valparaiso for Wellington, New Zealand, was cast away on the Paumotu Islands, far out of her proper course. There was but a small crew, and, as it happened, all were lost except Pullin and one Kanaka boy. The Egret was heavily insured, and there were nasty rumours at Lloyd’s that Captain Pullin had made sure of his whereabouts, taken care of himself, and destroyed the ship in collusion with the owners, and that the Kanaka boy had only escaped because he happened to be well acquainted with the islands. But there was nothing positive in the way of proof, and the underwriters paid, with no more than covert grumblings. And, as you remember, Mrs. Heckle told us yesterday Pullin on his return had no money. Now suppose the story of the intentional wreck were true, and for some reason Pullin’s payment was put off till after his next voyage, would the people who sent their men to death in the Pacific hesitate at a single murder to save £2,000? I think not.
“After I left you yesterday I made some particular inquiries at Lloyd’s through a friend of mine, an underwriter himself. I find that the sole owner of the Egret was one Herbert Roofe, trading as Herbert Roofe & Co. The firm is a very small one, as shipping concerns go, and has had the reputation for a long time of being very ‘rocky’ financially; indeed, it was the common talk at Lloyd’s that nothing but the wreck of the Egret saved Roofe from the bankruptcy court, and he is supposed now to be ‘hanging on by his eyelashes,’ as my friend expresses it, with very little margin to keep him going, and in a continual state of touch-and-go between his debit and credit sides. As to the rumours of the wilful casting away of the Egret, my friend assured me that the thing was as certain as anything could be, short of legal proof. There was something tricky about the cargo, and altogether it was a black sort of business. And to complete things he told me that the bankers of Herbert Roofe & Co. were the Eastern Consolidated.”
“Phew! This is getting pretty warm, I must say, Mr. Hewitt.”
“Wait a minute; my friend aided me a little further still. I told him the whole story—in confidence, of course—and he agreed to help. At my suggestion he went to the manager of the Eastern Consolidated Bank, whom he knew personally, and represented that among a heap of cheques one had got torn, and the missing piece destroyed. This was true entirely, except in regard to the heap—a little fiction which I trust my friend may be forgiven. The cheque, he said, was on the Eastern Consolidated, and its number was B/K63777. Would the manager mind telling him which of his customers had the cheque book from which that had been taken? Trace of where the cheque had come from had been quite lost, and it would save a lot of trouble if the Bank could let him know. ‘Certainly,’ said the manager; ‘I’ll inquire.’ He did, and presently a clerk entered the room with the information that cheque No. B/K63777 was from a book in the possession of Messrs. Herbert Roofe & Co.”
The inspector rose excitedly from his chair. “Come,” he said, “this must be followed up. We mustn’t waste time; there’s no knowing where Roofe may have got to by this.”
“Just a little more patience,” Hewitt said. “I don’t think there will be much difficulty in finding him. He believes himself safe. As soon as my friend told me what the Bank manager had said, I went round to Roofe’s office to ascertain his whereabouts, prepared with an excuse for the interview in case I should find him in. It was a small office rather, over a shop in Leadenhall Street. When I asked for Mr. Roofe, the clerk informed me that he was at home confined to his room by a bad cold, and had not been at the office since Tuesday—the next day but one before the body was discovered. I appeared to be disappointed, and asked if I could send him a message. Yes, I could, the clerk told me. All letters were being sent to him, and he was sending business instructions daily to the office from Chadwell Heath. I saw that the address had slipped inadvertently from the clerk’s mouth, for it is a general rule, I know, in city offices to keep the principals’ addresses from casual callers. So I said no more, but contented myself with the information I had got. I took the first opportunity of looking at a suburban directory, and then I found the name of Mr. Roofe’s house at Chadwell Heath. It is Scarby Lodge.”
“I must be off, then, at once,” Truscott said, “and make careful inquiries as to his movements. And those cinders—bless my soul, they’re as precious as diamonds now! How shall we keep them from damage?”
“Oh, the glass shade will do, I fancy. But wait a moment; let us review things thoroughly. I will run rapidly over what I suggest has happened between Roofe and Pullin, and you shall stop me if you see any flaw in the argument. It’s best to make our impressions clear and definite. Now we will suppose that the Egret has been lost, and Pullin has come home to claim the reward of his infamy. We will suppose it is £2,000. He goes to Roofe and demands it. Roofe says he can’t possibly pay just then; he is very hard up, and the insurance money of the Egret has only just saved him from bankruptcy. Pullin insists on having his money. But, says Roofe, that is impossible, because he hasn’t got it. A cheque for the amount would be dishonoured. The plunder of the underwriters has all been used to keep things going. Roofe says plainly that Pullin must wait for the money. Pullin can’t reveal the conspiracy without implicating himself, and Roofe knows it. He promises to pay in a certain time, and gives Pullin an acknowledgment of the debt, an I O U, perhaps, or something of that kind, and with that Pullin has to be contented, and, having no money, he has to go away on another voyage, this time in a ship belonging to somebody else, because it would look worse than ever if Roofe gave him another berth at once. He makes his voyage and he returns, and asks for his money again. But Roofe is as hard up as ever. He cannot pay, and he cannot refuse to pay. It is ruin either way. He knows that Pullin will stand no more delay, and may do something desperate, so Roofe does something desperate himself. He tells Pullin that he must not call at his office, nor must anybody see them together anywhere for fear of suspicion. He suggests that he, Roofe, should call at Pullin’s lodgings late one night, and bring the money. Pullin is to let him in himself, so that nobody may see him. Pullin consents, and thus assists in the concealment of his own murder. He stands at the front door smoking his pipe (you remember that Mrs. Beckle told me so), waiting for Roofe. When Roofe comes, Pullin takes him very quietly up to his room without attracting attention. Roofe, on his part, has prepared things by feigning a bad cold and going to bed early, going out—perhaps through the window—when all his household is quiet. There are plenty of late trains from Chadwell Heath that would bring him to Stratford.
“Well, when they are safely in Pullin’s room, Roofe hears the front door shut and bolted, with all its squeaks and thumps, and decides that it won’t be safe to go out that way after he has committed his crime. The men sit and talk, and Pullin drinks. Roofe doesn’t. You will remember the bottle on the table, with only one glass. Roofe produces and writes a cheque for the £2,000, and Pullin hands back the I O U, which Roofe burns. That would be the lower of the two charred pieces of paper, which we have there with the other, but can’t read.
“Then the crime takes place. Perhaps Pullin drinks a little too much, perhaps he dozes—we shall never know, unless Roofe confesses circumstantially. At any rate, Roofe gets behind him, uses the sharp seaman’s knife he has brought for the purpose, and straightway the skipper is dead at his feet. Then Roofe gets back the cheque and burns that. After that he ransacks the whole room. He fears there may be some documentary evidence, unguarded letters or something of the sort, which, being examined, may throw some light on the Egret affair. There are none. Then he sets about his escape. He has the whole night before him, and to make the thing look like a murder for ordinary plunder, and at the same time account for the upset room, he takes away all the dead man’s valuables, tied in that shawl. He sees the hook—just the thing he wants—and of course the sheets are an obvious substitute for a rope. He takes away the door-key, to make it seem likely that somebody inside the house had been the criminal, and then he simply goes away through the window, as I have already explained. At 5.45 there would be a train to Chadwell Heath, and that would land him home early enough to enable him to regain his bedroom unobserved. After that he wisely maintains the pretence of illness for a day or two.
“I guessed that the things carried off would be in that ditch, for very simple reasons. I looked about the house, and the ditch seemed the only available hiding-place near. More, it was on the way to the station, the direction Roofe would naturally take. He would seize the very first opportunity of getting rid of his burden, for every possible reason. It was a nuisance to carry; he could not account for it if he were asked; and the further he carried it before getting rid of it, the more distinct the clue to the direction he had taken, supposing it ever were found. As I quite expected, my guess was right. The behaviour of some of the people in the house might have been suspicious, if I hadn’t had so strong a clue in my hand, leading in another direction. Foster, poor fellow, has probably pawned all his clothes, one after another, and put those bricks in his boxes to conceal the fact, so that Mrs. Beckle might not turn him away. He owed her so much that at last he hadn’t the face to go and eat her breakfast when he had no money to pay for it. He went out early, met friends, got ‘stood’ drinks and came back drunk. The girl Taffs very naturally ran from the horrible sight in this room, and probably Foster had been kind to her at some time or another, so that when she found he was suspected she refused to give any information.”
“Yes,” the inspector said, “it certainly seems to fit together to the smallest bit as you put it. There’s a future before you, Mr. Hewitt. You ought to be in the force. But now I must go to Chadwell Heath. Are you coming?”
III
At Chadwell Heath it was found that a first-class return ticket to Stratford had been taken just before the 10.54 train left on the last night Abel Pullin was seen alive, and that the return half had been given up by a passenger who arrived by the first train soon after six in the morning The porter who took the ticket remembered the circumstance, because first-class tickets were rare at that time in the morning, but he did not recognise the passenger, who was muffled up.
“But I think there’s enough for an arrest without a warrant, at any rate,” Truscott said. “We shall be able to walk round and pick up a little more evidence after that. I am off to Scarby Lodge. Can’t afford to waste any more time. He was foolish to take a first-class ticket, any way. That singles a man out, and he might easily have been recognised. He was smart enough not to use his season ticket, though. That would have done him clean.”
Scarby Lodge was a rather pretentious house, standing in about three acres of ground. The path to the front door was well shaded, and it was arranged that Truscott should wait aside till Hewitt had sent in a message asking to see Mr. Roofe on a matter of urgent business, and that then both should follow the servant to his room. This was done, and as the parlourmaid was knocking at the bedroom door she was astonished to find Hewitt and the police inspector behind her. Truscott at once pushed open the door, and the two walked in.
It was a large, well-lighted room, and at the far end a man sat in his dressing-gown near a table, on which stood several medicine bottles. He was a man apparently of about thirty-eight, well built, and with sharp features. He frowned as Truscott and Hewitt entered, but betrayed no sign of emotion, carelessly taking one of the small bottles from the table at his side. “What do you want here?” he said.
“Sorry to be so unceremonious, Mr. Roofe,” Truscott said, advancing up the long room, “but I am a police officer, and it is my duty to arrest you on a serious charge—a charge of murder on the person of—— Stop, sir! Let me see that!”
“‘STOP, SIR! LET ME SEE THAT!’”
But it was too late. Before Truscott could reach him, Roofe had swallowed the contents of the small bottle, and, swaying once, dropped to the floor as though shot. A faint smell as of bruised almonds rose in the air.
Hewitt stooped over the man. “Dead,” he said; “dead as Abel Pullin. It is prussic acid. He had arranged for instant action if by any chance the game went against him.”
But Inspector Truscott was troubled. “This is a nice thing,” he said, “to have a prisoner commit suicide in front of my eyes. It’ll be an unpleasant job for me, I’m afraid. But you can testify that I hadn’t time to get near him, can’t you? Indeed he wasn’t a prisoner at the time, for I hadn’t arrested him, in fact.”
THE CASE OF MR. GELDARD’S ELOPEMENT
I
MANY people have been surprised at the information that, in all Martin Hewitt’s wide and busy practice, the matrimonial cases whereon he has been engaged have been comparatively few. That he has had many important cases of the sort is true, but among the innumerable cases of different descriptions they make a small percentage. The reason is that so many of the persons wishing to consult him on such concerns were actuated by mere unreasoning or fanciful jealousy that Hewitt would do no more in their cases than urge reconciliation and mutual trust. The common “private inquiry” offices chiefly flourish on this class of case, and their proprietors present no particular reluctance to taking it up. In any event it means fees for consultation and “watching”; and recent newspaper reports have made it plain that among some of the less scrupulous agents a case may be manufactured from beginning to end according to order. Again, Hewitt had a distaste for the sort of work commonly involved in matrimonial troubles; and with the immense amount of business brought to him, rendering necessary his rejection of so many commissions, it was easy for him to avoid what went against his inclinations. Still, as I have said, matrimonial cases there were, and often of an interesting nature, taking rise in no fanciful nor unreasoning jealousy.
When, on its change of proprietorship, I accepted my appointment on the paper that now claims me, I had a week or two’s holiday pending the final turning over of the property. I could not leave town, for I might have been wanted at any moment, but I made an absorbing and instructive use of my leisure as an amateur assistant to Hewitt. I sat in his office much of the time, and saw more of the daily routine of his work than I had ever done before; and I was present at one or two interviews that initiated cases that afterwards developed striking features. One of these—which indeed I saw entirely through before I resumed my more legitimate work—was the case of Mr. and Mrs. Geldard.
Hewitt had stepped out for a few minutes, and I was sitting alone in his private room, when I became conscious of some disturbance in the outer office. An excited female voice was audible making impatient inquiries. Presently Kerrett, Hewitt’s clerk, came in with the message that a lady—Mrs. Geldard was the name on the visitor’s slip that she had filled up—was anxious to see Mr. Hewitt, at once, and failing himself, had decided to see me, whom Kerrett had calmly taken it upon himself to describe as Hewitt’s confidential assistant. He apologised for this, and explained that he thought, as the lady seemed excited, it would be as well to let her see me to begin with, if there was no objection, and perhaps she would begin to be coherent and intelligible by Hewitt’s arrival, which might occur at any moment. So the lady was shown in. She was tall, bony, and severe of face, and she began as soon as she saw me: “I’ve come to get you to get a watch set on my husband. I’ve endured this sort of thing in silence long enough. I won’t have it. I’ll see if there’s no protection to be had for a woman treated as I am—with his goings out all day ‘on business’ when his office is shut up tight all the time. I wanted to see Mr. Hewitt himself, but I suppose you’ll do, for the present at any rate though I’ll have it sifted to the bottom and get the best advice to be had, no matter what it costs though I am only a woman with nobody to confide in or to speak a word for me and I’m not going to be crushed like a fly as I’ll soon let him know.”
Here I seized a short opportunity to offer Mrs. Geldard a chair, and to say that I expected Mr. Hewitt in a few minutes.
“Very well, I’ll wait and see him. But you have to do with the watching business, no doubt, and you’ll understand what it is I want done; and I’m sure I’m justified, and mean to sift it to the bottom, whatever happens. Am I to be kept in total ignorance of what my husband does all day when he is supposed to be at business? Is it likely I should submit to that?”
I said I didn’t think it likely at all, which was a fact. Mrs. Geldard appeared to be about the least submissive woman I ever saw.
“No, and I won’t, that’s more. Nice goings on somewhere, no doubt, with his office shut up all day and the business going to ruin. I want you to watch him. I want you to follow him to-morrow morning and find out all he does and let me know. I’ve followed him myself this morning and yesterday morning, but he gets away somehow from the back of his office, and I can’t watch on two staircases at once, so I want you to come and do it, and I’ll—”
Here fortunately Hewitt’s arrival checked Mrs. Geldard’s flow of speech, and I rose and introduced him. I told him shortly that the lady desired a watch to be set on her husband at his office, and a report to be given her of his daily proceedings. Hewitt did not appear to accept the commission with any particular delight, but he sat down to hear his visitor’s story. “Stay here, Brett,” he said, as he saw my hands stretched towards the door. “We’ve an engagement presently, you know.”
The engagement, I remembered, was merely to lunch, and Hewitt kept me with some notion of restricting the time which this alarming woman might be disposed to occupy. She repeated to Hewitt, in the same manner, what she had already said to me, and then Hewitt, seizing his first opportunity, said, “Will you please tell me, Mrs. Geldard, definitely and concisely, what evidence, or even indication, you have of unbecoming conduct on your husband’s part, and substantially what case you wish me to take up?”
“Case? Why, I’ve been telling you.” And again Mrs. Geldard repeated her vague catalogue of sufferings, assuring Hewitt that she was determined to have the best advice and assistance, and that therefore she had come to him. In the end Hewitt answered: “Put concisely, Mrs. Geldard, I take it that your case is simply this. Mr. Geldard is in business as, I think you told me, a general agent and broker, and keeps an office in the city. You have had various disagreements with him—not an uncommon thing, unfortunately, between married people—and you have entertained certain indefinite suspicions of his behaviour. Yesterday you went so far as to go to his office soon after he should have been there, and found him absent and the office shut up. You waited some time, and called again, but the door was still locked, and the caretaker of the building assured you that Mr. Geldard usually kept his office thus shut. You knocked repeatedly, and called through the keyhole, but got no answer. This morning you even followed your husband and saw him enter his office; but when, a little later, you yourself attempted to enter it, you once more found it locked and apparently tenantless. From this you conclude that he must have left his rooms by some back way, and you say you are determined to find out where he goes and what he does during the day. For this purpose you, I gather, wish me to watch him and report his whole day’s proceedings to you?”
“Yes, of course; as I said.”
“I’m afraid the state of my other engagements just at present will scarcely admit of that. Indeed, to speak quite frankly, this mere watching, especially of husband or wife, is not a sort of business that I care to undertake, except as a necessary part of some definite, tangible case. But apart from that, will you allow me to advise you? Not professionally, I mean, but merely as a man of the world. Why come to third parties with these vague suspicions? Family divisions of this sort, with all sorts of covert mistrust and suspicion, are bad things at best, and once carried as far as you talk of carrying this, go beyond peaceable remedy. Why not deal frankly and openly with your husband? Why not ask him plainly what he has been doing during the days you were unable to get into his office? You will probably find it all capable of a very simple and innocent explanation.”
“Am I to understand, then,” Mrs. Geldard said, bridling, “that you refuse to help me?”
“I have not refused to help you,” Hewitt replied. “On the contrary, I am trying to help you now. Did your husband ever follow any other profession than the one he is now engaged in?”
“Once he was a mechanical engineer, but he got very few clients, and it didn’t pay.”
“There, now, is a suggestion. Would it be very unlikely that your husband, trained mechanician as he is, may have reverted so far to his old profession as to be conceiving some new invention? And in that case, what more probable than that he would lock himself securely in his office to work out his idea, and take no notice of visitors knocking, in order to admit nobody who might learn something of what he was doing? Does he keep a clerk or office boy?”
“No, he never has since he left the mechanical engineering.”
“Well, Mrs. Geldard, I’m sorry I have no more time now, but I must earnestly repeat my advice. Come to an understanding with your husband in a straightforward way as soon as you possibly can. There are plenty of private inquiry offices about where they will watch anybody, and do almost anything, without any inquiry into their clients’ motives, and with a single eye to fees. I charge you no fee, and advise you to treat your husband with frankness.”
Mrs. Geldard did not seem particularly satisfied, though Hewitt’s rejection of a consultation fee somewhat softened her. She left protesting that Hewitt didn’t know the sort of man she had to deal with, and that, one way or another, she must have an explanation.
“Come, we’ll get to lunch,” said Hewitt. “I’m afraid my suggestion as to Mr. Geldard’s probable occupation in his office wasn’t very brilliant, but it was the pleasantest I could think of for the moment, and the main thing was to pacify the lady. One does no good by aggravating a misunderstanding of that sort.”
“Can you make any conjecture,” I said, “at what the trouble really is?”
Hewitt raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “There’s no telling,” he said. “An angry, jealous, pragmatical woman, apparently, this Mrs. Geldard, and it’s impossible to judge at first sight how much she really knows and how much she imagines. I don’t suppose she’ll take my advice. She seems to have worked herself into a state of rancour that must burst out violently somewhere. But lunch is the present business. Come.”
The next day I spent at a friend’s house a little way out of town, so that it was not till the following morning, about the same time, that I learned from Hewitt that Mrs. Geldard had called again.
“Yes,” he said; “she seems to have taken my advice in her own way, which wasn’t a judicious one. When I suggested that she should speak frankly to her husband, I meant her to do it in a reasonably amicable mood. Instead of that, she appears to have flown at his throat, so to speak, with all the bitterness at her tongue’s disposal. The natural result was a row. The man slanged back, the woman threatened divorce, and the man threatened to leave the country altogether. And so yesterday Mrs. Geldard was here again to get me to follow and watch him. I had to decline once more, and got something rather like a slanging myself for my pains. She seemed to think I was in league with her husband in some way. In the end I promised—more to get rid of her than anything else—to take the case in hand if ever there were anything really tangible to go upon; if her husband really did desert her, you know, or anything like that. If, in fact, there were anything more for me to consider than these spiteful suspicions.”
“I suppose,” I said, “she had nothing more to tell you than she had before?”
“Very little. She seems to have startled Geldard, however, by a chance shot. It seems that she once employed a maid, whom she subsequently dismissed, because, as she tells me, the young woman was a great deal too good-looking, and because she observed, or fancied she observed, signs of some secret understanding between her maid and her husband. Moreover, it was her husband who discovered this maid and introduced her into the house, and furthermore, he did all he could to induce Mrs. Geldard not to dismiss her. He even hinted that her dismissal might cause serious trouble, and Mrs. Geldard says it is chiefly since this maid has left the house that his movements have become so mysterious. Well it seems that in the heat of yesterday’s quarrel Mrs. Geldard, quite at random, asked tauntingly how many letters Geldard had received from Emma Trennatt lately—Emma Trennatt was the girl’s name. This chance shot seemed to hit the target. Geldard (so his wife tells me, at any rate) winced visibly, paled a little, and dodged the question. But for the rest of the quarrel he appeared much less at ease, and made more than one attempt to find out how much his wife really knew of the correspondence she had spoken of. But as her reference to it was of course the wildest possible fluke, he got little guidance, while his better-half waxed savage in her triumph, and they parted on wild-cat terms. She came straight here, and evidently thought that after Geldard’s reception of her allusion to correspondence with Emma Trennatt—which she seemed to regard as final and conclusive confirmation of all her jealousies—I should take the case in hand at once. When she found me still disinclined, she gave me a trifling sample of her rhetoric, as no doubt commonly supplied to Mr. Geldard. She said in effect that she had only come to me because she meant having the best assistance possible, but that she didn’t think much of me after all, and one man was as bad as another, and so on. I think she was a trifle angrier because I remained calm and civil. And she went away this time without the least reference to a consultation fee one way or another.”
“SIGNS OF SOME SECRET UNDERSTANDING.”
I laughed. “Probably,” I said, “she went off to some agent who’ll watch as long as she likes to pay.”
“Quite possibly.” But we were quite wrong. Hewitt took his hat, and we made for the staircase. As we opened the landing-door there were hurried feet on the stairs below, and as it shut behind Mrs. Geldard’s bonnet-load of pink flowers hove up before us. She was in a state of fierce alarm and excitement that had oddly enough something of triumph in it, as of the woman who says, “I told you so.” Hewitt gave a tragic groan under his breath.
“Here’s a nice state of things I’m in for now, Mr. Hewitt,” she began abruptly, “through your refusing to do anything for me while there was time though I was ready to pay you well as I told your young man but no, you wouldn’t listen to anything, and seemed to think you knew my business better than I could tell you and now you’ve caused this state of affairs by delay perhaps you’ll take the case in hand now?”
“But you haven’t told me what has happened—” Hewitt began, whereat the lady instantly rejoined, with a shrill pretence of a laugh, “Happened? Why, what do you suppose has happened after what I have told you over and over again? My precious husband’s gone clean away, that’s all. He’s deserted me and gone nobody knows where. That’s what’s happened. You said that if he did anything of that sort you’d take the case up; so now I’ve come to see if you’ll keep your promise. Not that it’s likely to be of much use now.”
We turned back into Hewitt’s private office, and Mrs. Geldard told her story. Disentangled from irrelevances, repetitions, opinions and incidental observations, it was this. After the quarrel Geldard had gone to business as usual, and had not been seen nor heard of since. After her yesterday’s interview with Hewitt, Mrs. Geldard had called at her husband’s office and found it shut as before. She went home again, and waited, but he never returned home that evening, nor all night. In the morning she had gone to the office once more, and finding it still shut, had told the caretaker that her husband was missing, and insisted on his bringing his own key and opening it for her inspection. Nobody was there, and Mrs. Geldard was astonished to find folded and laid on a cupboard shelf the entire suit of clothes that her husband had worn when he left home on the morning of the previous day. She also found in the waste-paper basket the fragments of two or three envelopes addressed to her husband, which she brought for Hewitt’s inspection. They were in the handwriting of the girl Trennatt, and with them Mrs. Geldard had discovered a small fragment of one of the letters, a mere scrap, but sufficient to show part of the signature “Emma,” and two or three of a row of crosses running beneath, such as are employed to represent kisses. These things she had brought with her.
Hewitt examined them slightly, and then asked, “Can I have a photograph of your husband, Mrs. Geldard?”
She immediately produced, not only a photograph of her husband, but also one of the girl Trennatt, which she said belonged to the cook. Hewitt complimented her on her foresight. “And now,” he said, “I think we’ll go and take a look at Mr. Geldard’s office, if we may. Of course I shall follow him up now.” Hewitt made a sign to me, which I interpreted as asking whether I would care to accompany him. I assented with a nod, for the case seemed likely to be interesting.
I omit most of Mrs. Geldard’s talk by the way, which was almost ceaseless, mostly compounded of useless repetition, and very tiresome.
The office was on a third floor in a large building in Finsbury Pavement. The caretaker made no difficulty in admitting us. There were two rooms, neither very large, and one of them at the back very small indeed. In this was a small locked door.
“That leads on to the small staircase, sir,” the caretaker said in response to Hewitt’s inquiry. “The staircase leads down to the basement, and it ain’t used much ’cept by the cleaners.”
“If I went down this back staircase,” Hewitt pursued, “I suppose I should have no difficulty in gaining the street?”
“Not a bit, sir. You’d have to go a little way round to get into Finsbury Pavement, but there’s a passage leads straight from the bottom of the stairs out to Moorfields behind.”
“Yes,” remarked Mrs. Geldard bitterly, when the caretaker had left the room, “that’s the way he’s been leaving the office every day, and in disguise, too.” She pointed to the cupboard where her husband’s clothes lay. “Pretty plain proof that he was ashamed of his doings, whatever they were.”
“Come, come,” Hewitt answered deprecatingly, “we’ll hope there’s nothing to be ashamed of—at any rate till there’s proof of it. There’s no proof as yet that your husband has been disguising. A great many men who rent offices, I believe, keep dress clothes at them—I do it myself—for convenience in case of an unexpected invitation, or such other eventuality. We may find that he returned here last night, put on his evening dress, and went somewhere dining. Illness, or fifty accidents, may have kept him from home.”
But Mrs. Geldard was not to be softened by any such suggestion, which I could see Hewitt had chiefly thrown out by way of pacifying the lady, and allaying her bitterness as far as he could, in view of a possible reconciliation when things were cleared up.
“That isn’t very likely,” she said. “If he kept a dress suit here openly, I should know of it; and if he kept it here unknown to me, what did he want it for? If he went out in dress clothes last night, who did he go with? Who do you suppose, after seeing those envelopes and that piece of the letter?”
“Well, well, we shall see,” Hewitt replied. “May I turn out the pockets of these clothes?”
“Certainly; there’s nothing in them of importance,” Mrs. Geldard said. “I looked before I came to you.”
Nevertheless Hewitt turned them out. “Here is a cheque-book with a number of cheques remaining. No counterfoils filled in, which is awkward. Bankers, the London Amalgamated. We will call there presently. An ivory pocket paper-knife. A sovereign purse—empty.” Hewitt placed the articles on the table as he named them. “Gold pencil case, ivory folding rule, russia-leather card-case.” He turned to Mrs. Geldard. “There is no pocket-book,” he said, “no pocket-knife and no watch, and there are no keys. Did Mr. Geldard usually carry any of these things?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Geldard replied, “he carried all four.” Hewitt’s simple, methodical calmness, and his plain disregard of her former volubility, appeared by this to have disciplined Mrs. Geldard into a businesslike brevity and directness of utterance.
“As to the watch now. Can you describe it?”
“Oh, it was only a cheap one. He had a gold one stolen—or at any rate he told me so—and since then he has only carried a very common sort of silver one, without a chain.”
“The keys?”
“I only know there was a bunch of keys. Some of them fitted drawers and bureaux at home, and others, I suppose, fitted locks in this office.”
“What of the pocket-knife?”
“That was a very uncommon one. It was a present, as a matter of fact, from an engineering friend, who had had it made specially. It was large, with a tortoise-shell handle and a silver plate with his initials. There was only one ordinary knife-blade in it; all the other implements were small tools or things of that kind. There was a small pair of silver calipers, for instance.”
“Like these?” Hewitt suggested, producing those he used for measuring drawers and cabinets in search of secret receptacles.
“Yes, like those. And there were folding steel compasses, a tiny flat spanner, a little spirit level, and a number of other small instruments of that sort. It was very well made indeed; he used to say that it could not have been made for five pounds.”
“Indeed?” Hewitt cast his eyes about the two rooms. “I see no signs of books here, Mrs. Geldard—account-books I mean, of course. Your husband must have kept account-books, I take it?”
“Yes, naturally, he must have done. I never saw them, of course, but every business man keeps books.” Then after a pause Mrs. Geldard continued: “And they’re gone too. I never thought of that. But there, I might have known as much. Who can trust a man safely if his own wife can’t? But I won’t shield him. Whatever he’s been doing with his clients’ money he’ll have to answer for himself. Thank Heaven I’ve enough to live on of my own without being dependent on a creature like him! But think of the disgrace! My husband nothing better than a common thief—swindling his clients and making away with his books when he can’t go on any longer! But he shall be punished, oh yes; I’ll see he’s punished, if once I find him!”
Hewitt thought for a moment, and then asked, “Do you know any of your husband’s clients, Mrs. Geldard?”
“No,” she answered, rather snappishly, “I don’t. I’ve told you he never let me know anything of his business—never anything at all; and very good reason he had too, that’s certain.”
“Then probably you do not happen to know the contents of these drawers?” Hewitt pursued, tapping the writing-table as he spoke.
“Oh, there’s nothing of importance in them—at any rate in the unlocked ones. I looked at all of them this morning when I first came.”
The table was of the ordinary pedestal pattern with four drawers at each side and a ninth in the middle at the top, and of very ordinary quality. The only locked drawer was the third from the top on the left-hand side. Hewitt pulled out one drawer after another. In one was a tin half full of tobacco; in another a few cigars at the bottom of a box; in a third a pile of notepaper headed with the address of the office, and rather dusty; another was empty; still another contained a handful of string. The top middle drawer rather reminded me of a similar drawer of my own at my last newspaper office, for it contained several pipes; but my own were mostly briars, whereas these were all clays.
“There’s nothing really so satisfactory,” Hewitt said, as he lifted and examined each pipe by turn, “to a seasoned smoker as a well-used clay. Most such men keep one or more of them for strictly private use.” There was nothing noticeable about these pipes except that they were uncommonly dirty, but Hewitt scrutinised each before returning it to the drawer. Then he turned to Mrs. Geldard and said: “As to the bank now—the London Amalgamated, Mrs. Geldard. Are you known there personally?”
“Oh, yes; my husband gave them authority to pay cheques signed by me up to a certain amount, and I often do it for household expenses, or when he happens to be away.”
“Then perhaps it will be best for you to go alone,” Hewitt responded. “Of course they will never, as a general thing, give any person information as to the account of a customer; but perhaps, as you are known to them, and hold your husband’s authority to draw cheques, they may tell you something. What I want to find out is, of course, whether your husband drew from the bank all his remaining balance yesterday, or any large sum. You must go alone, ask for the manager, and tell him that you have seen nothing of Mr. Geldard since he left for business yesterday morning. Mind, you are not to appear angry, or suspicious, or anything of that sort, and you mustn’t say you are employing me to bring him back from an elopement. That will shut up the channel of information at once. Hostile inquiries they’ll never answer, even by the smallest hint, except after legal injunction. You can be as distressed and as alarmed as you please. Your husband has disappeared since yesterday morning, and you’ve no notion what has become of him; that is your tale, and a perfectly true one. You would like to know whether or not he has withdrawn his balance, or a considerable sum, since that would indicate whether or not his absence was intentional and premeditated.”
Mrs. Geldard understood and undertook to make the inquiry with all discretion. The bank was not far, and it was arranged that she should return to the office with the result.
As soon as she had left, Hewitt turned to the pedestal table and probed the keyhole of the locked drawer with the small stiletto attached to his penknife. “This seems to be a common sort of lock,” he said. “I could probably open it with a bent nail. But the whole table is a cheap sort of thing. Perhaps there is an easier way.”
He drew the unlocked drawer above completely out, passed his hand into the opening and felt about. “Yes,” he said, “it’s just as I hoped—as it usually is in pedestal tables not of the best quality; the partition between the drawers doesn’t go more than two-thirds of the way back, and I can drop my hand into the drawer below. But I can’t feel anything there—it seems empty.”
He withdrew his hand and we tilted the whole table backward, so as to cause whatever lay in the drawers to slide to the back. This dodge was successful. Hewitt reinserted his hand and withdrew it with two orderly heaps of papers, each held together by a metal clip.
The papers in each clip, on examination, proved to be all of an identical character, with the exception of dates. They were, in fact, rent receipts. Those for the office, which had been given quarterly, were put back in their place with scarcely a glance, and the others Hewitt placed on the table before him. Each ran, apart from dates, in this fashion: “Received from Mr. J. Cookson 15s., one month’s rent of stable at 3, Dragon Yard, Benton Street, to”—here followed the date. “Also rent, feed and care of horse in own stable as agreed, £2.—W. Gask.” The receipts were ill-written, and here and there ill-spelt. Hewitt put the last of the receipts in his pocket, and returned the others to the drawer. “Either,” he said, “Mr. Cookson is a client who gets Mr. Geldard to hire stables for him, which may not be likely, or Mr. Geldard calls himself Mr. Cookson when he goes driving—possibly with Miss Trennatt. We shall see.”
The pedestal table put in order again, Hewitt took the poker and raked in the fireplace. It was summer, and behind the bars was a sort of screen of cartridge paper with a frilled edge, and behind this various odds and ends had been thrown—spent matches, trade circulars crumpled up, and torn paper. There were also the remains of several cigars, some only half smoked, and one almost whole. The torn paper Hewitt examined piece by piece, and finally sorted out a number of pieces, which he set to work to arrange on the blotting pad. They formed a complete note, written in the same hand as were the envelopes already found by Mrs. Geldard—that of the girl Emma Trennatt. It corresponded also with the solitary fragment of another letter which had accompanied them, by way of having a number of crosses below the signature, and it ran thus:—
Tuesday Night.
Dear Sam,—To-morrow, to carry. Not late because people are coming for flowers. What you did was no good. The smoke leaks worse than ever, and F. thinks you must light a new pipe or else stop smoking altogether for a bit. Uncle is anxious.
Emma.
Then followed the crosses, filling one line and nearly half the next—seventeen in all.
Hewitt gazed at the fragments thoughtfully. “This is a find,” he said—“most decidedly a find. It looks so much like nonsense that it must mean something of importance. The date, you see, is Tuesday night. It would be received here on Wednesday—yesterday—morning. So that it was immediately after the receipt of this note that Geldard left. It’s pretty plain the crosses don’t mean kisses. The note isn’t quite of the sort that usually carries such symbols, and moreover, when a lady fills the end of a sheet of notepaper with kisses she doesn’t stop less than half way across the last line—she fills it to the end. These crosses mean something very different. I should like, too, to know what ‘smoke’ means. Anyway this letter would probably astonish Mrs. Geldard if she saw it. We’ll say nothing about it for the present.” He swept the fragments into an envelope, and put away the envelope in his breast pocket. There was nothing more to be found of the least value in the fireplace, and a careful examination of the office in other parts revealed nothing that I had not noticed before, so far as I could see, except Geldard’s boots standing on the floor of the cupboard wherein his clothes lay. The whole place was singularly bare of what one commonly finds in an office in the way of papers, hand-books, and general business material.
Mrs. Geldard was not long away. At the bank she found that the manager was absent, and his deputy had been very reluctant to say anything definite without his sanction. He gave Mrs. Geldard to understand, however, that there was a balance still remaining to her husband’s credit; also that Mr. Geldard had drawn a cheque the previous morning, Wednesday, for an amount “rather larger than usual.” And that was all.
“By the way, Mrs. Geldard,” Hewitt observed, with an air of recollecting something, “there was a Mr. Cookson I believe, if I remember, who knew a Mr. Geldard. You don’t happen to know, do you, whether or not Mr. Geldard had a client or an acquaintance of that name?”
“No, I know nobody of the name.”
“Ah, it doesn’t matter. I suppose it isn’t necessary for your husband to keep horses or vehicles of any description in his business?”
“No, certainly not.” Mrs. Geldard looked surprised at the question.
“Of course—I should have known that. He does not drive to business, I suppose?”
“No; he goes by omnibus.”
“But as to Emma Trennatt now. This photograph is most welcome, and will be of great assistance, I make no doubt. But is there anything individual by which I might identify her if I saw her—anything beyond what I see in the photograph? A peculiarity of step, for instance, or a scar, or what not.”
“Yes, there is a large mole—more than a quarter of an inch across, I should think—on her left cheek, an inch below the outer corner of her eye. The photograph only shows the other side of the face.”
“That will be useful to know. Now has she a relative living at Crouch End, or thereabout?”
“Yes, her uncle; she’s living with him now—or she was at any rate till lately. But how did you know that?”
“The Crouch End postmark was on those envelopes you found. Do you know anything of her uncle?”
“Nothing, except that he’s a nurseryman, I believe.”
“Not his full address?”
“No.”
“And Trennatt is his name?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. I think, Mrs. Geldard,” Hewitt said, taking his hat, “that I will set out after your husband at once. You, I think, can do no better than stay at home till I have news for you. I have your address. If anything comes to your knowledge, please telegraph it to my office at once.”
The office door was locked, the keys were left with the caretaker, and we saw Mrs. Geldard into a cab at the door. “Come,” said Hewitt, “we’ll go somewhere and look at a directory, and after that to Dragon Yard. I think I know a man in Moorgate Street who’ll let me see his directory.”
We started to walk down Finsbury Pavement. Suddenly Hewitt caught my arm and directed my eyes toward a woman who had passed hurriedly in the opposite direction. I had not seen her face, but Hewitt had. “If that isn’t Miss Emma Trennatt,” he said, “it’s uncommonly like the notion I’ve formed of her. We’ll see if she goes to Geldard’s office.”
We hurried after the woman, who, sure enough, turned into the large door of the building we had just left. As it was impossible that she should know us, we followed her boldly up the stairs, and saw her stop before the door of Geldard’s office, and knock. We passed her as she stood there—a handsome young woman enough—and well back on her left cheek, in the place Mrs. Geldard had indicated, there was plain to see a very large mole. We pursued our way to the landing above and there we stopped in a position that commanded a view of Geldard’s door. The young woman knocked again and waited.
“This doesn’t look like an elopement yesterday morning, does it?” Hewitt whispered. “Unless Geldard’s left both this one and his wife in the lurch.”
The young woman below knocked once or twice more, walked irresolutely across the corridor and back, and in the end, after a parting knock, started slowly back downstairs.
“Brett,” Hewitt exclaimed with suddenness, “will you do me a favour? That woman understands Geldard’s secret comings and goings, as is plain from the letter. But she would appear to know nothing of where he is now, since she seems to have come here to find him. Perhaps this last absence of his has nothing to do with the others. In any case, will you follow this woman? She must be watched; but I want to see to the matter in other places. Will you do it?”
Of course I assented at once. We had been descending the stairs as Hewitt spoke, keeping distance behind the girl we were following. “Thank you,” Hewitt now said. “Do it. If you find anything urgent to communicate, wire to me in care of the inspector at Crouch End Police Station. He knows me, and I will call there in case you may have sent. But if it’s after five this afternoon, wire also to my office. If you keep with her to Crouch End, where she lives, we shall probably meet.”
We parted at the door of the office we were at first bound for, and I followed the girl southward.
This new turn of affairs increased the puzzlement I already laboured under. Here was the girl Trennatt—who by all evidence appeared to be well acquainted with Geldard’s mysterious proceedings, and in consequence of whose letter, whatever it might mean, he would seem to have absented himself—herself apparently ignorant of his whereabouts, and even unconscious that he had left his office. I had at first begun to speculate on Geldard’s probable secret employment; I had heard of men keeping good establishments who, unknown to even their own wives, procured the wherewithal by begging or crossing-sweeping in London streets; I had heard also—knew, in fact, from Hewitt’s experience—of well-to-do suburban residents whose actual profession was burglary or coining. I had speculated on the possibility of Geldard’s secret being one of that kind. My mind had even reverted to the case, which I have related elsewhere, in which Hewitt frustrated a dynamite explosion by his timely discovery of a baker’s cart and a number of loaves, and I wondered whether or not Geldard was a member of some secret brotherhood of Anarchists or Fenians. But here, it would seem, were two distinct mysteries, one of Geldard’s generally unaccountable movements, and another of his disappearance, each mystery complicating the other. Again, what did that extraordinary note mean, with its crosses and its odd references to smoking? Had the dirty clay pipes anything to do with it? Or the half-smoked cigars? Perhaps the whole thing was merely ridiculously trivial after all. I could make nothing of it, however, and applied myself to my pursuit of Emma Trennatt, who mounted an omnibus at the Bank, on the roof of which I myself secured a seat.
II
Here I must leave my own proceedings to put in their proper place those of Martin Hewitt as I subsequently learnt them.
Benton Street, he found by the directory, turned out of the City Road south of Old Street, so was quite near. He was there in less than ten minutes, and had discovered Dragon Yard. Dragon Yard was as small a stable-yard as one could easily find. Only the right-hand side was occupied by stables, and there were only three of these. On the left was a high dead wall bounding a great warehouse or some such building. Across the first and second of the stables stretched a long board with the legend, “W. Gask, Corn, Hay, and Straw Dealer,” and underneath a shop address in Old Street. The third stable stood blank and uninscribed, and all three were shut fast. Nobody was in the yard, and Hewitt at once proceeded to examine the end stable. The doors were unusually well finished and close-fitting, and the lock was a good one, of the lever variety, and very difficult to pick. Hewitt examined the front of the building very carefully, and then, after a visit to the entrance of the yard, to guard against early interruption, returned and scrambled by projections and fastenings to the roof. This was a roof in contrast to those of the other stables. They were of tiles, seemed old, and carried nothing in the way of a skylight; evidently it was the habit of Mr. Gask and his helpers to do their horse and van business with gates wide open to admit light. But the roof of this third stable was newer and better made, and carried a good-sized skylight of thick fluted glass. Hewitt took a good look at such few windows as happened to be in sight, and straightaway began, with the strongest blade of his pocket-knife, to cut away the putty from round one pane. It was a rather long job, for the putty had hardened thoroughly in the sun, but it was accomplished at length, and Hewitt, with a final glance at the windows in view, prised up the pane from the end and lifted it out.
The interior of the stable was apparently empty. Neither stall nor rack was to be seen, and the place was plainly used as a coach or van house simply. Hewitt took one more look about him, and dropped quietly through the hole in the skylight. The floor was thickly laid with straw. There were a few odd pieces of harness, a rope or two, a lantern, and a few sacks lying here and there, and at the darkest end there was an obscure heap covered with straw and sacking. This heap Hewitt proceeded to unmask, and having cleared away a few sacks, left revealed about half a dozen rolls of linoleum. One of these he dragged to the light, where it became evident that it had remained thus rolled and tied with cord in two places for a long period. There were cracks in the surface, and when the cords were loosened the linoleum showed no disposition to open out or to become unrolled. Others of the rolls on inspection exhibited the same peculiarities. Moreover, each roll appeared to consist of no more than a couple of yards of material at most, though all were of the same pattern. Every roll, in fact, was of the same length, thickness, and shape as the others, containing somewhere near two yards of linoleum in a roll of some half-dozen thicknesses, leaving an open diameter of some four inches in the centre. Hewitt looked at each in turn, and then replaced the heap as he had found it. After this, to regain the skylight was not difficult by the aid of a trestle. The pane was replaced as well as the absence of fresh putty permitted, and five minutes later Hewitt was in a hansom bound for Crouch End.