Andrew considered the question for a moment. He was looking, for him, unusually serious.
“To make your theory feasible,” he pointed out, “the young man would have had to enter my wife’s sitting room, pass through her bathroom, and conceal himself in her bedroom whilst she herself was in one of these three apartments.”
The detective was hard at work with his pen, his eyes fixed upon the desk.
“It would seem so,” he assented, “unless—”
“Unless what?”
“Unless he had entered her ladyship’s room by the door opening from the corridor or through your apartments.”
“You are suggesting an impossibility,” Andrew pointed out coldly. “It was proved at the inquest that both doors were locked.”
Mr. Felix Main relapsed into one of his meditative fits.
“They were discovered to be locked after the tragedy,” he ventured presently. “It would have been possible, however, you see, for any one to have entered through either door and locked it afterwards on the inside.”
“You are not suggesting this seriously, I trust?” Andrew asked, a very ominous note creeping into his tone.
“At this stage,” Mr. Felix Main assured him hastily, “I am making no serious suggestions—just feeling around. Let me ask you this, though— Was it usual for her ladyship’s door opening out on to the corridor, and for the door communicating with your apartments, to be locked?”
“Most unusual,” Andrew admitted.
“Can you suggest any reason why this should have been the case upon that particular night?”
“Her ladyship may have locked them, hearing my servant in my room and thinking that he might come in to talk to her maid. You see, she retired rather early, and my man would imagine that it was Annette moving about and not her ladyship.”
Felix Main nodded.
“That’s quite a plausible theory,” he agreed, “and one which will have to be taken account of. I have explained to your lordship now,” he went on, “just how far I have gone. Am I to proceed with my investigations? If so, I shall now devote myself to studying the lives and habits of two men—Mr. Rodney Haslam and the young Russian gentleman, Prince Charles of Suess.”
His head was once more bent. Andrew took out a cigarette and lit it. His fingers were not altogether steady.
“Anything of that sort would be sheer waste of time,” he declared. “I am much obliged to you for what you’ve done, although you haven’t worked along exactly the lines I wished. Let me have your account as soon as you like and I’ll square it up. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s better to let Sir Richard and the police deal with the matter their own way.”
“I think for the sake of your lordship’s peace of mind,” the other rejoined, “you are probably wise.” Glenlitten stared at him.
“What the devil do you mean?” he demanded.
“Ah, well!” Felix Main explained evasively, “one never knows where these investigations may lead. One might discover things about one’s friends one would rather not know. I take it then that you wish to let the matter drop?”
“Those are my instructions,” was the stern command.
“Unless, of course,” the detective concluded, as his client rose to his feet, “something turned up which altered the whole complexion of the affair, something more definite than anything we have yet stumbled across. In that case I take it that you would rather I communicated with you than—say with the police?”
Andrew had recovered his nonchalance.
“Communicate with me or the police, whomever you like,” he replied indifferently. “Both her ladyship and I are only too anxious that the full truth should be known.”
Andrew dismissed his car and walked all the way to his club. He felt the need of fresh air. Arrived there, he washed, without any particular reason for doing so, and ordered a double whisky and soda. An acquaintance chaffed him upon the size of his drink.
“Had to have it,” he confided. “I’ve been talking to a dirty little bounder who poisoned the very air around. I had to walk two miles, stick my head under a tap, and now here goes for the double drink, to get rid of the germs of him. Hope I never see or hear from the fellow again.”
But that was not altogether Mr. Felix Main’s idea.
CHAPTER XIV
“Mrs. Drayton, the young person who wished to see you, my lady,” Parkins announced, with discreet reserve. He did not in the least approve of his mistress’s good-natured, but somewhat tiresome habit of seeing every one who enquired for her, whether they were mendicants, vendors of new and amazing commodities, or representatives of charitable organizations.
Félice sat up on the sofa and motioned her visitor to a seat.
“Forgive me that I do not rise,” she begged. “I have been sleeping and I am still very lazy.”
Mrs. Drayton sat primly upon the edge of her chair and looked cautiously towards the door which the butler, who had announced her, was in the act of closing. She was dressed in severe black and with great neatness, but her hair was bobbed, and of that violent shade of auburn, a little blacker towards the roots, which even the least sophisticated of mortals accepts with some slight hesitation. Her complexion had that tired look which comes with the sudden and complete cessation of all cosmetics. She had bold dark eyes, just now judiciously lowered— a woman of about thirty-five years of age, hard to place.
“You are very kind to see me, my lady,” she acknowledged. “Did you happen to remember my name—to know who I was?” she added, a little wistfully.
“Let me see—Mrs. Drayton, was it not?” Félice reflected. “No, I am afraid I did not remember it. Have you been to see me before? It is some charity, perhaps?”
The woman shook her head.
“In a way it is charity, my lady, for which I have come to beg, but not for money. I am the wife of Max Drayton, who broke into your house in Hampshire in the hope of stealing your necklace.”
Félice sat up with a start.
“His wife!” she exclaimed. “You are that man’s wife? The man who climbed up the ladder—I can see him now with his knee upon the window sill of my room—you say that you are his wife?”
“Yes, my lady,” the woman assented, with something which closely approached a snivel. “You see, there are all sorts of us in the world, but after all we’re all human beings. I didn’t come here to talk about myself. Max was a sneak thief when I married him, and I knew it—I wasn’t much better myself.”
“I am sorry,” Félice murmured vaguely.
“I haven’t come to beg him off for the burglary,” his wife went on. “Wouldn’t be any use, I suppose, if I had. It was a fair cop, and he hadn’t even got rid of the ring. They tracked him