One thing was clear: his duty lay straight before him. He must go over that empty house. A careful examination might reveal something or nothing.
But he was a very cautious man, and with no great belief in his own powers. He would not make the examination alone. He blew his whistle for further assistance.
In a few seconds, a fellow constable, a smart young fellow, hurried up to him. Brown pointed to the broken pane, the uplifted window. The smart young man projected himself through the open space. Brown followed, explaining as he went.
They searched the basement, the ground floor, and the floor above—with no result.
“Now for the caretaker,” said the younger and the more quick-witted of the two policemen.
“He sleeps up at the top,” answered Brown. “He generally comes home half-seas over. If a regiment was hammering at the door he would not wake till his sleep was done.”
They went up to the caretaker’s room on the top floor. The bed was empty. Miles had evidently taken a holiday.
The young constable grunted. “Seems a reliable sort of chap, doesn’t he? I wonder how long he has been away? The house agents can tell us if they have sent any clients to view the house during the last twenty-four hours, and whether they have been able to get in or not. Anyway, for the present, he seems out of this job.”
Brown assented. He did not talk as much as his quicker-witted colleague, but his rather slow mind was working at its normal speed.
“We’ve got to examine the other floors, you know. I’ve made up my mind to one thing—whoever came in here, robbery wasn’t the object.”
“There I quite agree,” remarked the younger man.
They made their way down from the top floor, which consisted of three attics. On the floor beneath this, they searched every room and found nothing.
But on the floor underneath their search was rewarded. In a small dressing-room, leading off the bedroom which fronted the square, they found a gruesome sight—the lifeless body of a man, comparatively young, somewhere about thirty-five or so, a deep gash in his throat, in his stiffened hand a razor.
The two men gazed, horrified. It was an early summer morning, the sun was shining through the windows, the birds were twittering in the trees. Shortly the whole world would be astir. And here, in the small room, lay the senseless clay, oblivious of all these signs of awakening life and vigour.
Brown was the first to speak. “Suicide!” he said hoarsely. “The poor devil wanted to make an end of it, and crept in here, knowing it was an empty house.”
The younger man spoke less convincingly. “It looks like it. Suicide, as you say.” He paused a moment, and then spoke slowly: “I think it’s suicide, but it might be—mind you, I only say might be—a very carefully planned murder. And now, let us overhaul his pockets, we may find something to establish identification.”
Together they bent down, and rummaged the dead man’s pockets. They found plenty of material for identification.
As they were engaged in their gruesome task, they heard the sound of a latch-key being put in the front-door. They heard the door banged to, and heavy footsteps ascended the staircase.
“Miles come back after his spree,” whispered Constable Brown to the younger man.
Miles, all unsuspecting of what had taken place during his absence, came heavily up the stairs. It could not be said that he was by any means drunk, but he was not absolutely sober. He was slowly recovering from the previous night’s debauch.
Arrived on the floor where the two policemen were conducting their investigations, absolute sobriety came back to him. He saw the open door of the dressing-room, two men in uniform kneeling by the side of an inanimate object. His brain cleared as if by magic. He recognised in one of the kneeling constables his old friend Brown.
He indulged in a little profanity, born of his emotion, which need not be set down here. Shorn of certain expletives, natural to a man of his class, he inquired of Brown what was the matter.
Brown on his side was cool and explicit, and instead of answering the caretaker’s questions, he preferred to put a few of his own.
“Nice sort of caretaker you are,” he said in a contemptuous voice. “You’re paid to look after this house, aren’t you? Where were you all last night I should like to know? You can see what has happened. Somebody has got in through the back, either to commit suicide, or with a companion who brought him here to murder him. That’s got to be found out before the Coroner.”
Miles pulled himself together. He was by no means a fool when sober, and in sight of this ghastly object the fumes of last night’s intoxication had absolutely cleared.
“I can show an alibi right enough,” he said doggedly.
The younger and readier-witted of the two constables looked up and spoke sharply. “So far, my friend, we have not accused you, but you may as well tell us the details of your alibi.”
Miles’s explanation, delivered in the somewhat halting way of his class, bore the ring of truth. An old acquaintance of his, whose name and address he gave, had looked him up the day before and asked him to spend a day with him at Shepperton, where the said acquaintance kept a small shop. Miles had succumbed to the temptation.
“It drives a man fair off his blooming chump to be tied by the leg in a hole like this,” he interpolated in the midst of his narrative, “waiting for would-be tenants who never call. I daresay you chaps do your eight or ten hours a day, but you’re out in the open air, not looking on four walls. You see a bit of life, I don’t.”
Constable Brown cut across his narrative swiftly.
“Never mind your grievances, Miles. If you could get a better job, I guess you would take it. Where did you spend the night?”
“At the same old show, down at Shepperton,” replied the unabashed Miles. “My old pal’s a sport, I can tell you. When he shut up his shop, he plied me with some of the best. I wasn’t backward, I admit. I missed the last train back, and slept on the sofa in the back room. When I woke, I remembered things a bit, and got an early train home. Here I am. My old pal Jack will tell you I’m speaking gospel truth.”
Neither of the two men listening to him had any doubt that his narrative was a true one. He was a poor, weak, bibulous creature, but by no stretch of the imagination could he be an accessory to the gruesome happenings at Number 10.
Even had he been at his post, as he should have been on this particular night, he would have been sunk in a stertorous sleep, and have heard nothing.
But to make everything sure, Constable Brown pulled him along and forced him to look at the dead man.
“You have never seen him before, Miles? I mean he has not called to look over the house or anything?”
“No.” Miles, looking shudderingly at the ghastly sight, was ready to swear he had never seen him before.
He turned his frightened gaze away: “It will be all over the town to-night,” he said ruefully. “We shall never let the house after this.”
“It will still be a soft job for you, Miles,” retorted Brown, a little spitefully. “You won’t have to play up the damp and the beetles. You are here for life, old man.”
“I know,” said Miles in a gloomy tone. “But I shall see him staring at me every minute of the day and night.”
The body was removed to the mortuary. The evening newspapers had flaring headlines: “Gruesome Discovery in Number 10 Cathcart Square.” An enterprising journalist had got hold of Miles, and speedily