Sir Clinton in the Museum
“There’s the light on again in the museum,” Sir Clinton observed. “I
think we’ll go in and have a look round, now, to see if the place
suggests anything.”
Mold stood aside to let them pass, and then resumed his watch at the
door to prevent any one else from entering the room. The servant had
just finished fitting the new globe in its place and was preparing to
remove the steps which he had used, when Sir Clinton ordered him to
leave them in position and to await further instructions.
The museum was a room about forty feet square, with a lofty ceiling.
To judge by the panelling of the walls, it belonged to the older part
of Ravensthorpe; but the parquet of the floor seemed to be much more
modern. Round the sides were placed exhibition cases about six feet
high; and others of the same kind jutted out at intervals to form a
series of shallow bays. In the centre of the room, directly under the
lamp, stood a long, flat-topped case; and the floor beside it was
littered with broken glass.
“I think we’ll begin at the beginning,” said Sir Clinton.
He turned to the servant who stood waiting beside the steps.
“Have you got the remains of the broken lamp there?
“You can go now,” he added. “We shan’t need you further.”
When he had received the smashed lamp, he examined it.
“Not much to be made out of that,” he admitted. “It’s been one of
these thousand candle-power gas-filled things; and there’s practically
nothing left of it but the metal base and a few splinters of glass
sticking to it.”
He looked up at the fresh lamp hanging above them.
“It’s thirty feet or so above the floor. Nothing short of a
fishing-rod would reach it. Evidently they didn’t smash it by hand.”
He stooped down and sorted out one or two small fragments of glass
from the debris at his feet.
“These are more bits of the lamp, Joan,” he said, holding them out for
her to look at. “You see the curve of the glass; and you’ll notice
that the whole affair seems to have been smashed almost to
smithereens. There doesn’t seem to be a decent-sized fragment in the
whole lot.”
He turned to the keeper.
“I think we’ll shut the door, Mold. We’d better conduct the rest of
this business in private.”
The keeper closed the door of the museum, much to the disappointment
of the group of people who had clustered about the entrance and were
watching the proceedings with interest.
“Now, Joan, would you mind going round the wall-cases and seeing if
anything has been taken from them?”
Joan obediently paced round the room and soon came back to report that
nothing seemed to have been removed.
“All the cases were locked, you know,” she explained. “And there’s no
glass broken in any of them. So far as I can see, nothing’s missing
from the shelves.”
“What about that safe let into the wall over yonder?” Sir Clinton
inquired.
“It’s used to house one or two extra valuable things from time to
time,” Joan explained. “But to-night everything was put on show, and
the safe’s empty.”
She went over and swung the door open, showing the vacant shelves
within.
“We do take precautions usually,” she pointed out. “The museum door
itself is iron-plated and has a special lock. It was only to-night
that we had everything out in the show-cases.”
Sir Clinton refrained from comment, as he knew the girl was still
blaming herself for her share in the catastrophe. He turned to examine
the rifled section of the central case.
“What’s missing here, Joan, can you make out?”
Obediently, Joan came to his side and ran her eye over the remaining
articles in the compartment.
“They’ve taken the Medusa Medallions!” she exclaimed, turning pale as
she realized the magnitude of the calamity. “They’ve got the very pick
of the collection, Sir Clinton. My father would have parted with all
the rest rather than with these, I know.”
“Nothing else gone?”
Joan looked again at the case.
“No, nothing else, so far as I can see. Wait a bit, though! They’ve
taken the electrotype copies as well. There were three of each: three
medallions and an electrotype from each that Foxton Polegate made for
us. The whole six are gone.”
She cast a final glance at the compartment.
“No, there’s nothing else missing, so far as I can see. Some of the
things are displaced a bit; but everything except the medallions and
the electros seems to be here.”
“You’re quite sure?”
“Certain.”
Sir Clinton seemed satisfied.
“Of course we’ll have to check the stuff by the catalogue to make
sure,” he said, “but I expect you’re right. The medallions alone would
be quite a good enough haul for a minute or two’s work; and probably
they had their eyes on the things as the best paying proposition of
the lot.”
“But why did they take the electros as well?” Joan demanded.
Then a possible explanation occurred to her.
“Oh, of course, they wouldn’t know which was which, so they took the
lot in order to make sure.”
“Possibly,” Sir Clinton admitted. “But don’t let’s be going too fast,
Joan. We’d better not get ideas into our minds till we’ve got all the
evidence, you know.”
“Oh, I see,” said Joan, with a faint return of her normal spirits,
“I’m to be Watson, am I? And you’ll prove in a minute or two what an
ass I’ve made of myself. Is that the idea?”
“Not altogether,” Sir Clinton returned, with a smile. “But let’s have
the facts before the theories.”
He turned to the keeper.
“Now we’ll take your story, Mold; but give us the things in the exact
order in which they happened, if you can. And don’t be worried if I
break in with questions.”
Mold thought for a moment or two before beginning his tale.
“I’m trying to remember how many people there were in the room just
before the lights went out,” he explained at last, “but somehow I
don’t quite seem able to put a figure on it, Sir Clinton. I’ve a sort
of feeling that some of ’em must ha’ got away before I stopped the
door—sneaked off in the dark. At least I know I felt surprised when I
saw how few I’d got left when they began to come up to me to be let
out. But that’s all I can really say, sir.”
Sir Clinton evidently approved of the keeper’s caution.
“Now tell us exactly what happened when the light went out. This is
the bit where I want you to be careful. Tell us everything you can
remember.”
Mold fixed his eye on the corner of the room near the safe.
“I was patrollin’ round the room, sir, most of the night. I didn’t
stand in one place all the time. Now just when the light was about to
go out, I was walkin’ away from this case here”—he nodded towards the
rifled central case—“and as near as may be, I’d got to the entrance to
that second-last bay, just before you come to the safe. I just turned
round to come back, when I heard a pistol goin’ off.”
“That was the first thing that attracted your attention?” questioned
Sir Clinton. “It’s an important point, Mold.”
“That was the first thing out o’ the common that happened,” Mold
asserted. “The pistol went bang, and out went the light, and I heard
glass tinkling all over the place.”
“Shot the light out, did they?” Sir Clinton mused.
He glanced up at the carved wooden ceiling, but evidently failed to
find what he was looking for.
“Have you a pair of race-glasses, Joan? Prismatics, or even
opera-glasses? Tell Mold where he can get them, please.”
Joan gave the keeper instructions and he left the room.
“Knock when you come back again,” Sir Clinton ordered. “I’m going to
lock the door to keep out the inquisitive.”
As soon as the keeper was out of earshot, Sir Clinton turned to Joan.
“This fellow Mold, is he a reliable man? Do you know anything about
him, Joan?”
“He’s our head keeper. We’ve always trusted him completely.”
She glanced at Sir Clinton, trying to read the expression on his face.
“You don’t think _he’s_ at the bottom of the business, do you? I never
thought of that!”
“I’m only collecting facts at present. All I want to know is whether
you know Mold to be reliable.”
“We’ve always found him so.”
“Good. We’ll make a note of that; and if we get the thing cleared up,
then we’ll perhaps be able to confirm that opinion of yours.”
In a few minutes a knock came at the door and Sir Clinton admitted the
keeper.
“Prismatics?” he said, taking the glasses from Mold. “They’ll do quite
well.”
Adjusting the focus, he subjected the ceiling of the room to a minute
scrutiny. At last he handed the glasses to Joan.
“Look up there,” he said, indicating the position.
Joan swept the place with the glasses for a moment.
“I see,” she said. “That’s a bullet-hole in the wood, isn’t it?”
Sir Clinton confirmed her guess.
“That’s evidently where the bullet went after knocking the lamp to
pieces. Pull the steps over there, Mold. I want to have a closer look
at the thing.”
With some difficulty, owing to his injured ankle, he ascended the
steps and inspected the tiny cavity.
“It looks like a .22 calibre. One could carry a Colt pistol of that
size in one’s pocket and no one would notice it.”
His eye traced out the line joining the bullet-mark and the lamp.
“The shot was evidently fired by some one in that bay over there,” he
inferred. “Just go to where you were standing when the light went out,
Mold. Can you see into this bay here?”
Mold looked around and discovered that a show-case interposed between
him and the point from which the pistol had been fired.
“They evidently thought of everything,” Sir Clinton said, when he
heard Mold’s report. “If a man had brandished his pistol in front of
Mold, there was always a chance that Mold might have remembered his
costume. Firing from that hiding-place, he was quite safe, and could
take time over his aim if he wanted to.”
He climbed down the steps and verified the matter by going to the
position from which the shot had been fired. It was evident that the
shooter was out of sight of the keeper at the actual moment of the
discharge.
“Now what happened after that, Mold?” Sir Clinton demanded, coming
back to the central case again.
Mold scratched his ear as though reflecting, then hurriedly took his
hand down again.
“This pistol went off, sir; and the lamp-glass tinkled all over the
place. I got a start—who wouldn’t?—with the light going out, and all.
Before I could move an inch, some one got a grip of my wrists and
swung me round. He twisted my arms behind my back and I couldn’t do
anything but kick—and not much kickin’ even, or I’d have gone down on
my face.”
“Did you manage to get home on him at all?”
“I think I kicked him once, sir; but it was only a graze.”
“Pity,” Sir Clinton said. “It would have always been something gained
if you’d marked him with a good bruise.”
“Oh, there’ll be a mark, if that’s all you want, sir. But it wouldn’t
prevent him runnin’ at all.”
“And then?” Sir Clinton brought Mold back to his story.
“Then, almost at once when the lights went out, I heard glass
breakin’—just as if you’d heaved a stone through a window. It seemed
to me—but I couldn’t take my oath on it—as if there was two smashes,
one after t’other. I couldn’t be sure. Then there was a lot of
scufflin’ in the dark; but who did it, I couldn’t rightly say. I was
busy tryin’ to get free from the man who was holdin’ me then.”
Sir Clinton moved over to the rifled compartment and inspected the
broken glass thoughtfully for a moment or two.
“Are you looking for finger-marks?” asked Joan, as she came to his
side.
Sir Clinton shook his head.
“Not much use hunting for finger-marks round here. Remember how many
people must have leaned on this case at one time or other during the
evening, when they were looking at the collection before the robbery.
Finger-prints would prove nothing against any one in particular, I’m
afraid, Joan. What I’m really trying to find is some evidence
confirming Mold’s notion that he heard two smashes after the light
went out. It certainly looks as if he were right. If you look at the
way that bit of glass there is cracked, you’ll see two series of lines
in it. It might have been cracked here”—he pointed with his
finger—“first of all: long cracks radiating from a smash over in this
direction. Then there was a second blow—about here—which snapped off
the apices of the spears of glass left after the first smash. But that
really proves nothing. The same man might easily have hit the pane
twice.”
He turned back to the keeper.
“Can you give me an estimate, Mold, of how long it was between the two
crashes you heard?”
Mold considered carefully before replying.
“So far’s I can remember, Sir Clinton, it was about five seconds. But
I’ll not take my oath on it.”
“I wish you could be surer,” said the Chief Constable. “If it really
was five seconds, it certainly looks like two separate affairs. A man
smashing glass with repeated blows wouldn’t wait five seconds between
them.”
He scanned the broken glass again.
“There’s a lot of jagged stuff round the edge of the hole but no
blood, so far as I can see. The fellow must have worn a thick glove if
he got his hand in there in the dark without cutting himself in the
hurry.”
He turned back to the keeper.
“You can go outside, Mold, and keep people off the doorstep for a
minute or two. Perhaps we shall have news of the man-hunt soon. If any
one wants to see me on business; let him in; but keep off casual
inquirers for the present.”
Obediently Mold unlocked the door and took his stand on the threshold
outside, shutting the door behind him as he went. When he had gone,
Sir Clinton turned to Joan.
“Were these medallions insured, do you know?”
Fortunately, Joan was able to supply some information.
“Maurice insured them, I know. But I’ve heard him say that he wasn’t
content with the valuation put on them by the company. It seems they
wouldn’t take his word for the value of the things—they thought it was
a speculative one or something—and in case of a loss they weren’t
prepared to go beyond a figure which Maurice thought too small.”
“The electros weren’t insured for any great amount, I suppose?”
Joan shook her head.
“I don’t think they were specially insured. They were just put under
the ordinary house policy, I think. But you’d better ask Maurice. He
knows all about it.”
Sir Clinton glanced round the room once more.
“I doubt if there’s much more to find out here,” he concluded. “It
doesn’t give us much to go on, does it? Perhaps we’ll have better luck
when these fellows come in from their hunt. They may have some news
for us. But as things stand, we can’t even be sure whether it was two
men or two gangs that were at work. One can’t blame Mold for not
giving us better information; but what he gave us doesn’t seem to
amount to very much at present.”
He turned, as though to leave the room; but at that moment the door
opened and Mold appeared.
“There’s a Mr. Foss wants to see you, sir. He says he’s got something
to tell you that won’t wait. He’s been looking for you all over the
house.”
“That’s the American, isn’t it?” Sir Clinton asked Joan in a low
voice.
“Yes. He’s been here for a day or two, consulting with Maurice about
these medallions.”
“Well, if he can throw any light on this business, I suppose we’d
better let him in and see what he has to say. You needn’t go, Joan.
You may as well hear his story, whatever it may be.”
He turned to the keeper.
“Let Mr. Foss in, Mold; and wait outside the door yourself.”