"She would keep the money in her safe, I suppose?" Pointer suggested.
"She might have."
"You think the loss was unconnected with her death?"
"Obviously. But how many people would you trust in a house with the mistress dead, and a wad of notes like that?" Pointer and Haviland nodded their agreement with the only possible answer to this question.
"But what makes you think your wife had not invested the money in some way? She might have posted that fifteen hundred off at any time between two and the hour she returned to Riverview—about four."
"I've always seen to her investments. Why should she pay a stockbroker's charges when she could get it done for nothing?"
"Perhaps she wanted a bit of a flutter with it, and did not like to you know. There's a tremendous boom in cotton just starting."
"Don't you suppose Sladen and I have 'phoned to every inside and outside man, every bucket-shop in the kingdom, before turning to you?" Tangye asked impatiently. "No offence, Chief Inspector, but I'm afraid you're only losing time with your questions. The best thing for you to do is—"
"For me to decide, sir," Pointer finished very quietly.
Tangye mumbled what was meant for an apology.
"I don't see how you can be sure that Mrs. Tangye might not have gambled in another name," the Scotland Yard official went on.
"No point in that. She was absolutely her own mistress."
"The exact halving of the money looks as though she had some definite purpose in view," Pointer went on unruffled.
"And how do you know that none was spent yesterday, sir? A lady can get rid of a lot of coin in a couple of hours, for a fact," Haviland said with the gloom of a husband and father, as he went off to the library to telephone the numbers of the missing banknotes to his inspector at the police station, with instructions as to where to try to-night.
"Fifteen hundred pounds!" Tangye repeated the sum under his breath as though the figures loomed large to him. "It's not the money in itself. But I don't like to be done. No man does. I won't be done!"
"It seems quite simple to me," Pointer said mendaciously. "Those lost keys and the lost money will be found to belong together. Find who has taken the one, and you'll find who has taken the other."
He was watching Tangye in the mirrcr, as he seemed engrossed in getting his pipe to draw better.
Tangye stiffened in his chair.
"Damned nonsense. You must excuse me, Chief Inspector. But that cock won't fight. Can't. I know those keys are somewhere in the house, as I told you. On thinking it over, I remember now quite clearly seeing them myself lying about the place after the police left. I can't recollect where—but I know I saw them."
Pointer dropped the subject of the keys.
"Mr. Tangye," he said instead in a low voice. "You know more than you're telling us. About this missing money. Or, at least, you suspect more. You have some reason for feeling so certain it was stolen."
Tangye's face paled a little. He detached a cigar-band with extreme care, and laid it on the exact centre of a log, as though it were a votive offering, and as such had to be presented with strict conformity to rule.
"Not at all. But my knowledge of my wife's habits makes me feel sure that Mrs. Tangye had done none of the things with the money you suggest. I believe it was in the house when she had that fatal accident. I believe that some one, knowing it was there, stole it."
Pointer bent forward.
"Whom do you suspect?"
Tangye got up and walked to the window. Drew up the blind with a snap, and let it down again with a crash. That done, he helped himself to a stiff drink. Then only did he reply.
"No one. That's what I want you to find out. You're so extraordinarily interested in Mrs. Tangye's death, which is no mystery, and perfectly simple—though God knows it's terrible enough—yet, when I hand over to you a genuine inquiry, you seem to want me to do the work, the investigation."
Tangye's nerves were evidently strained.
"It's the idea of being done, I can't stand," he said himself, as though in excuse.
They sat in silence for a few minutes.
"By the way, while the Superintendent is putting one of his men on to trying the railway stations and other open-all-night places, I'd like another word with you about Mrs. Tangye's cousin. We want to be sure he wasn't in touch with her just before her death."
"You can be sure. They were on anything but a friendly footing. Naturally. Oliver is a thoroughgoing blackguard. My wife usually refused to even speak of him. He would hardly venture to write to her—"
"But he might have come."
"Here? To Riverview? I should like to see him dare to show his face here. I should have had him kicked out inside of ten seconds, and as for Mrs. Tangye—! I suppose you know something of his record?"
Pointer only confessed to an extreme interest to learn it.
"He was sent down from Oxford. Cheating at cards. He's been auctioneer's clerk, sailor, orchid-hunter, and rumrunner since then."
"You feel quite certain that he had not written to Mrs. Tangye in all these years? She was his only relative." Tangye sat, apparently thinking back.
"'Pon my word! I wonder if he could have had the collossal nerve! She used to say that he could blarney a cannibal. You know that he once got Branscombe to give him some money for a fresh start? Oliver started all right—drug-smuggling to the Bantus. Mrs. Tangye stopped the supplies as soon as she learnt of it."
"Was there anything odd about his appearance? I mean anything that would attract attention? Stick in the memory? Been easily recognised again?"
"Yes to all the list. Unforgettable sort of face. Bird of prey, yet clever! Then he was immensely tall and thin."
"Had he a limp?"
"He hadn't when I saw him, but if the rumour's true I heard some years back that he was gun-running for the Riffs, I should think it probable that he has one by now."
Pointer got as detailed an account of the missing man as Tangye's remembrance could supply. He asked if Miss Saunders might join them for a moment.
She came in with her quick, silent step, which yet conveyed no suggestion of lightness.
Pointer watched her in the mirror, his back to the door, as she entered. She flashed a swift glance first at him and then at Tangye. That glance was unmistakable to the eyes on her. It was a confederate's glance.
"Anything wrong?" was telegraphed as clearly as though ticked out in Morse. So these two were partners, at least for the time being. At any rate in something. Tangye's eyes avoided hers.
Turning, Pointer explained the circumstances of the missing money to her. He noticed that Tangye waited for him to do this. She looked startled and uneasy, and something else that even Pointer could not decipher, it was so quickly repressed. Pointer thought that she seemed inclined to doubt the whole story until she heard of the solicitor from whose offices Mrs. Tangye had taken the money only yesterday.
She then said that Mrs. Tangye must have banked it, or used it in some way. Tangye retorted that that was what they all thought. He looked at the woman with a lowering stare.
"Do you want us to list the money under 'missing or stolen,' or only under 'stolen'?" Haviland asked returning to the room.
Tangye started a little.
"Under 'missing or stolen,'" he said after moment's thought. It was the most natural form where a doubt existed. But it was also the only form which would let Tangye stop the inquiries should he later find, or pretend to find the money. Once entered as Stolen, only an order from the Home Office could check the search being carried