From where he stood the light caught it and sent up a thread of silvery
reflection. He stooped mechanically and picked it up.
“What is that?” asked the detective curiously.
“It looks to me like a pin,” said Tab.
It was a very ordinary pin, silvery bright and about an inch and a half
in length. In that sense it was of an unusual size, though it was the
kind that is commonly used by bankers, who delight in fastening large
documents together by this barbarous method. It was not straight; there
was a slight bend in it, but otherwise it had not remarkable features.
Tab looked at it stupidly.
“Give it to me,” said Carver. He took it in his white-gloved hand and
walked to a position under one of the lights. “I don’t suppose it
has any significance,” he said, “but I’ll keep it.” He put the pin
carefully away in the match-box where he had put the key. “Now, Tab,”
he said more briskly as they went out of the house together into the
bright sunlight, two unshaven, weary-looking men, “you have the story
of your life, but go easy on any clues we have found.”
“I didn’t know we had found any,” said Tab, “unless the pin is a clue.”
“Even that I should not mention,” said Carver gravely.
When he got back to his flat Tab found the lights of the sitting-room
blazing and Rex Lander, fully dressed, asleep on the settee.
“I waited up till three,” yawned Rex. “Have they caught Walters or
whoever it was?”
“Not when I left Carver, which was ten minutes ago,” replied Tab. “They
suspect that man Brown. His gloves were found in the passage.”
“Brown, the man from China?--It was pretty awful, wasn’t it?” asked
Babe in a hushed voice, as though the fearfulness of those moments
through which he had passed were only now appealing to him in their
sheer terror. “My God, what an awful thing! I’ve tried not to think
about it all night, that horrible memory persisted so that it nearly
drove me mad.”
“I have one bit of good news for you, Rex,” said the other as he began
to prepare for bed. “We found your uncle’s will. That is unofficial.”
“You found the will, did you?” said the other listlessly. “I am afraid
I am not interested in his will just now. Who gets the money, the Dogs’
Home, or the Cats’ Creche?”
“It goes to a stout young architect,” said Tab with a grin, “and I can
see our little home breaking up. Maybe I’ll come and see you when you
are rich, Babe, if you’ll know me.”
Rex’s impatient gesture silenced him.
“I’m not thinking about money--I’m thinking about other things,” he
said.
Tab slept for four hours and woke to find that Rex had gone out.
When he came into the street the special editions of the Sunday
newspapers were selling with stories of the murder.
The news editor had not arrived when Tab reached the office, but he
turned in the rough narrative of the tragedy to guide the office in its
general search for Walters and Brown.
He went on to Mayfield, but Carver was not there and the police
sergeant in charge of the house was indisposed to admit him. Carver
being a single man, lived in lodgings. Tab surprised him in the act of
shaving.
“No, there is no news of Felling, and Brown, who is a much more
difficult proposition, has disappeared from view. Why is he more
difficult? Because he is unknown. In comparison, tracing Walters is
child’s play. Yet we haven’t even found him,” said the inspector wiping
his face, “which is rather surprising, considering that we know his
usual haunts and acquaintances. None of these say they have seen him.
The cab-driver has come forward in answer to our hurry up call, and
says he set down Felling at the Central Station. They stopped on the
way to buy a hat, apparently.”
Carver had not been to the station that morning and even if he had, he
could not have given the news which was to startle Tab later in the day.
“Have you formed any fresh theory, Carver?”
Carver looked out of the window and pulled his long nose thoughtfully.
He was a tall thin man with a lean face that was all lines and furrows.
In repose it was melancholy in the extreme, and his gentle apologetic
tone seemed somehow in keeping with his appearance.
“There are several theories, all more or less fluid,” he said.
“Has it occurred to you,” asked Tab, “that the shot might have been
fired through one of the ventilator holes?”
Carver nodded several times before he answered.
“It occurred to me after I left you and I went back to make sure, but
there was no blackening of the grating such as there would be if a
pistol of sufficient small calibre had been pressed against one of the
holes and fired, added to which, there is this important fact, that
the bullet of the size the doctors found in Trasmere’s body would not
go through any such hole.” Carver shook his head. “No, the murder was
committed actually in the vault, either by Brown, by Walters or by some
third person.”
Tab had a few independent enquiries to pursue, one of which related to
the cook. She had already been questioned by the police, he discovered,
when he reached her little suburban home. A quiet, motherly and
unimaginative woman, there was little she could tell him.
“It was my day off,” she said. “Mr. Trasmere said he was going into the
country, though I don’t suppose he was. He had said that before, but
Walters told me to take no notice. I have never seen Mr. Trasmere,” she
said, to Tab’s surprise. “All my orders came through Mr. Walters, and
practically I was never inside the house except once, when the cleaning
woman did not turn up in the morning and I helped Walters to tidy the
master’s sitting-room. I remember that morning because I found a little
black lid--well it was hardly a lid, I have got it here if you would
like to see it. I have often wondered what it was for.”
“Lid,” said Tab. “What kind of a lid?”
“It was like the lid of a small pill-box,” explained the woman, “about
the size of a threepenny piece. I picked it up and asked Mr. Walters
what it was for, and he said he didn’t know. It was on the floor near
the table and I brought it home, meaning to ask my husband what it was.”
She went out of the room and returned with the “lid” which proved, on
examination, to be a celluloid cap such as typists use to cover their
keys.
“Had Mr. Trasmere a typewriter?”
“No, sir,” she answered, shaking her head, “not so far as I know. I
have never seen one. As I say, I have only been that once into the
house. The kitchen is built away from the living rooms, although it is
connected; Mr. Trasmere gave strict orders that I was to keep to my
kitchen.”
Tab looked at the little cap which he held between his finger and
thumb. It was undoubtedly part of a typist’s equipment, and yet Mr.
Trasmere had never employed a typist. He always wrote to Rex in his own
hand.
“Are you sure nobody came during the day to take your master’s
correspondence?” he asked.
“No, I am perfectly sure Mr. Walters would have told me. He used to
complain how dull it was because nobody came to the house at all and he
was rather partial to young women, so I am sure I should have heard.
Have they found Mr. Walters? I’m certain he didn’t do it.”
Tab satisfied her on that point.
“Do you know the Greens?” he asked, remembering just as he was on the
point of leaving the house, the witnesses to the old man’s will.
“No, sir, not really,” she said. “Mrs. Green was cook before me and I
saw her once, the day I came, and Mr. Green too. They were a very nice
couple and I don’t think the master treated them very well.”
“Where are they now?”
“I don’t know, sir,” she said. “I did hear that they had gone to
Australia. They were middle-aged people, but very strong and healthy
and Mr. Green was always talking about going to Australia where he was
born and settling down there.”
“Did Green or his wife have any hard feelings against Mr. Trasmere?”
She hesitated.
“Well, they naturally felt sore because they had been accused of
thieving, and Mr. Green seemed to feel the disgrace terribly,
especially when the master had their boxes searched because he had lost
some valuable silver and a gold watch.”
This was news to Tab. He had heard of the food pilfering, but he had
not heard of the other losses.
She could tell him very little more, except that Green had acted as a
sort of butler.
“Was Walters there at the time?” asked Tab.
“Yes, sir; he was Mr. Trasmere’s valet. After Mr. Green went Mr.
Walters was butler and valet, too.”
Tab went straight to the office to write the story up to date, but he
knew that it was a waste of labour, since some news was certain to come
in before nightfall.
The news editor was at his desk when he pushed open the big swing
doors and came into the news room to report.
“These front page crimes always come together in shoals,” complained
the news editor bitterly. “I have another very good story--”
“Well, give it to a good story writer,” said Tab. “This case is going
to occupy not only my time, but the time of half-a-dozen men very fully
indeed. What is the new sensation?” he asked sarcastically.
“An actress has lost her jewels, which does not sound tremendously
exciting,” said the news editor, fishing for two slips of paper on
which he had made a rough note of the case, “but you needn’t bother
about that. I’ll put another man on the story as soon as I can get one.”
“Who is the actress?”
“Ursula Ardfern,” replied the editor, and Tab’s jaw dropped.