"I've only been here two weeks, sir."
"Then you don't know the gentleman I mean even by sight?"
"I saw the manager and a gentleman whom he told me afterwards was a Mr. Sikes—but more than that I couldn't say, sir," and Mrs. Green, looking as though she would have preferred to say still less, tried to walk on, but he blocked the way.
"Just a moment. I particularly want to find out any friends of Mr. Eames, and I've reason to believe that he and this Mr. Sikes knew each other. The manager—I've just spoken to him"—Pointer was always glad to find even a crumb of truth which he could mix in with business—"doesn't remember whether Mr. Sikes went into Mr. Eames' room or not."
"You mean afterwards, sir?" Mrs. Green's suspicions of the police were again lulled. "The two gentlemen left Mr. Eames' room together and went on into the other balcony rooms. Mr. Sikes was looking for a room for his wife and family, but I had an idea—well, I thought the manager didn't want it talked about: you know he has to make special terms to some; but there, of course as he spoke to you about it, why, there can't be any harm in my referring to it—but whether the gentleman with him came back later and saw Mr. Eames or spoke to him downstairs is more than I can say; and now I must go, sir, or goodness knows what the girls will be up to in the linen-room." And go she did this time.
A message reached Watts on his return from rescuing the family hats from the monkeys which caused him to take the evening train to Coventry, there to learn as much as possible about its doubtless worthy citizen, Sikes.
Miller, who had been sent across to have a chat with the porters of the large block of flats opposite, brought back no grist for the official mill. But he had allowed it to leak out, in accordance with instructions, that there had been a robbery at the Enterprise, and that "the party interested" would pay for any information as to the thief who had escaped, possibly with a bag, either by way of the balcony or by the little side-door on Saturday afternoon.
"It's going to be a regular November Special," Pointer said to O'Connor on his return to his rooms, "or all the signs deceive me."
"D'ye mean to tell me that the criminal is still at large after all this time—close on twenty-four hours! Let me have the facts, Watson; sure Sherlock Holmes will give you a leg-up with pleasure," and "Sherlock Holmes" assumed a judicial attitude.
Pointer carefully went over the knotty points unearthed during the day. "There's Cox..." the Scotland Yard man was evidently telling over his pieces, "who takes a room at the Marvel and uses it for a couple of hours...he's in the center of the puzzle. Yes, he's that little gold ball you can just see." He glanced up at the Chinese puzzle above his head.
"Why d'ye place him there? Because you found that wax vesta in his room?" grunted O'Connor, who was for the moment a profound pessimist. His stamp had just slipped on a valuable piece of leather.
"No, partly because the two men who talked with him speak of him as possibly an American. Mr. Beale is an American, and Eames' clothes looked to me like Yankee cut, besides his umbrella. Thank God, tomorrow's Monday. I'm a Christian man, but there are times when I could do without Sundays—here at home. There is where the foreign police score. I shan't forget that Avery case when I was sent to Naples—"
"I know," yawned Jim; "it rained all the time, and as for the famous view of the Bay—why, Plymouth Harbour beat it by ten goals to none."
"I don't wonder there are so many hasty marriages," Pointer spoke in sad soliloquy; "a man does feel a wish sometimes to come home to something alive, something intelligent."
"She wouldn't have much intelligence if she let you find her at home," pointed out his friend dispassionately, damping some leather with a hot sponge preparatory to making a fresh start, and for a while there was silence.
"When Cox tapped on the window of No. 14 who did he expect would open it for him?" the Irishman asked suddenly. "Eames? Or d'you think he knew that Eames was dead, and wanted to meet an accomplice there? If so, who? Beale?"
"I've only one idea about Mr. Beale so far, but it's a fixed one," Pointer replied slowly. "For some reason he's playing a game of his own. Judging by his eyes, it's bound to be a crafty scheme, and by his mouth, it won't boggle at trifles. However, the shape of his head guarantees that it'll be a clever one."
"You're a wonder, Alf. Since you've gone in for those phrenological and graphological lectures at the Kindergarten there's no hiding anything from you. Can you tell me by the shape of my head what Mr. Grey will say to me when he sees how that tooling has been done? You can't! Well, I can! You might as well continue your sermon by the way. I'm helpless, I must listen to it."
His friend was far too canny to proceed.
O'Connor began again: "Was the crime, for of course you think it was a crime, you hope it was one, you sin-hardened man-hunter, was it meant to be discovered by Beale, or...by someone else? Was Eames' body placed in that locked wardrobe so that the wrong person shouldn't find it, or so that the right person should?" O'Connor had given up all pretense at working and tried to read the answers to his conundrums one by one on Pointer's face, who finally answered a little wearily:
"Only time can tell, but as I said last night, frankly I'm puzzled as to what Mr. Beale with his position—for as I said I haven't a doubt but that he's all he claims to be—and his dollars are doing in this business of a shabbily-dressed young man who puts up in a single room at the Enterprise. Miller found out today that Mr. Beale didn't make any inquiries for rooms at the smarter hotels, but only applied in Southampton Row."
"Had he tried the Marvel?"
"No, he seems to've worked from the other end."
"Look here, you don't suspect him of being the actual murderer, do you?" O'Connor asked guilelessly.
Pointer pursed his lips. "Not the kind of man to do that sort of thing himself, I should judge, yet the way the job was done"—he trailed off into silence.
"Supposing it was he, and not Sikes, who was at the hotel earlier in the day, why should he come back in the evening? D'ye suppose he thought of those fingerprints of his which he had left everywhere, and wanted to have a chance to make them openly, as it were?" Judging by the detective's face he thought but poorly of this suggestion.
"You say the smaller footmarks, those on the canvas and on the doorstep about fitted Beale's slippers, didn't you?" persisted the other.
"As far as size goes—yes. Mr. Beale could have—though it would seem a mad risk to take—still he could have gone back upstairs again, when he left us last night in No. 14, and got out on to the balcony through the landing-window. But to get out with an umbrella and a raincoat would have been a feat he didn't look up to, though you never can tell. When I saw him a little later in the manager's room he certainly hadn't been clambering about in the rain."
"Well, his departure looks to me very fishy," maintained O'Connor in a tone which suggested that Pointer had steadily upheld it as a proof of the absent man's innocence. "What made him bolt out of the window?"
"I think he saw Cox pass by and recognized him."
"Suppose he and the manager are in it together? It was the manager who put Beale into No. 14. Perhaps Beale knew it was empty and the inquiries at the other hotels were only a blind."
The Irishman reveled in these talks early in a case, when there were not sufficient facts to hamper his idle fancy in its flights.
"Ah, as for the manager—" Pointer walked up and down the room. "That bit of acting about that green and white striped paper was badly enough done."
"So badly that it was creditable to him, eh?"
"...And as for not discussing Eames' death with Mr. Beale—well, was it likely! When our expert tells me how much of that ash is Mr. Beale's cigars and how much the manager's cigarettes—he doesn't smoke cigars—I shall know better how much time those two spent hobnobbing together. At any rate something has changed the manager overnight. Then he acted like—well, if not an innocent man, then at least like a man