"I see a case that you and I know to be none too uncommon," Pointer replied, looking at his boot tips. "I see a case that may—likely as not—end in a 'No thoroughfare.' Where the Yard is sure of their man, but can't get evidence enough to send him—or her—for trial. You know how often that happens, and the public begin heaving rotten eggs. But you can't manufacture evidence—at least, the Yard doesn't, and you can't invent a motive—again, we don't in the force. And yet, if one has to sail out into the unknown—unguessed—" He was talking to himself.
"Even so, you'll make port with a fine cargo," the doctor said confidently. "But I see that you don't intend to spill any beforehand. You asked me to drop you at the police station. Here we are. So long, till the next time you want me to swindle a brother medico into thinking me a Doctor Thorndyke!"
Pointer was shown into Superintendent Harris's room. The two were old friends. Pointer had served under him when he was first sent to London as a young police man.
"So there's murder to pay!" Harris said very soberly. "Thank God, you're here, Alf! Makes it seem like old times, my lad. Though I ought to call you 'sir,' of course!"
"You try it, if you think it safe!" Pointer said fiercely. For a second Harris gave his genial laugh, then his face clouded swiftly.
"Murder! Terrible word to use about our Miss Charteris. The town's been proud of her. Proud of having a great London beauty living here, and proud of her father, the professor, too. Murder!" He shook his grizzled head, and crossing to a cupboard, took out couple of glasses, a siphon, and a bottle. "Say when!"
Pointer said it before the cork was drawn.
"I don't mind telling you," Harris went on, "that when I got my breath after the doctor's evidence, and knew you were there on hand in case the Yard was asked to take over, I said to myself, 'Saved!' Yes, that's what I said. The flesh may be willing, but the spirit's a bit weak—like this in the bottle."
Pointer looked uncomfortable.
"You're pulling my leg, Harris!"
"Fact, Alf," the superintendent said solemnly. "I got along quite nicely with a tramp now and then, an gippies, and drunks of a Saturday night. And once we had a missing gal, but this isn't that sort of, thing. This'd be my ruin. I'm due to retire in a month, and I want to go out at peace with my neighbours as far as may be. I'd do my duty, of course, but it's making a hash of that same duty I can't stand, and turning my old friend upside down, only to find that the criminal was perhaps miles away all the time. Why, Alf, that cottage the Wife and I are moving into belongs to Colonel Scarlett. And then this here foreign nobleman—no, no! We'll finish this, and another like it, or at least I will, and then we'll up and along to the chief. He's down with the flu, but I slipped out and telephoned him the news during that surprise inquest. He'd be having a heart to heart talk with the Yard at this moment, and sending you S.O.S.'s by the hatful if you weren't here. I call it sheer Providence."
So Major Vaughan seemed to think, and Pointer and the superintendent were making their way out to the former's car, after a pleasant interview with the sick man, when Colonel Scarlett almost bumped into them on the top step. Superintendent Harris introduced Pointer.
"So New Scotland Yard's taking over. I'm thankful to know the case will be in such thorough hands. Though I fancy there's nothing very deep about the terrible affair. Those beads and a passing tramp, I think. Some garnet on the pendant and the snap looked just like uncut rubies to any eye but an expert's, and the setting, though silver might have been taken for platinum. However, you'll find out all about that. I only came to hear how my old friend the chief constable is getting on. I suppose you'd want to ask us all some questions up at my house, Chief Inspector? I'll telephone them to have the library ready for you, and I'll be there myself in a few minutes."
He passed into the house, and the two men drove off.
"What's the colonel's reputation hereabouts?" Pointer asked, after a short silence. Harris eyed him askance.
"Not going to start in by having trouble, with my future landlord, are you?" he asked in half real, half assume trepidation.
"He's not an easy man to read," Pointer said slowly. "We gave him a nasty jolt just now. He's anything but thankful that the Yard's taking a hand. I wonder why not?"
"He's plenty of friends," Harris ruminated. "The Scarletts have lived at Stillwater since they dispossessed the abbot up at the ruins, and took the monastery land. He's none so well off. Had to leave the Tenth Hussars because he found it too expensive. Some say he's a bit grasping. I think myself, that rent for the cottage's a bit steep, but take him all in all, he's very popular. Betting man. Good eye for a horse, and yet never lands a winner. Odd, ain't it!"
Pointer digested this, then he said briskly, "By the way, I'm in possession of a set of casts of Miss Rose shoe-prints on that short cut, and a drawing of them to scale. I'll leave them here, at the police station. If you'll take them on as your own, it'll save bother." He began to unpack his bag in the inner room.
Superintendent Harris eyed the casts ruminatingly.
"Found on the doorstep? Or blew in by chance through an open window?"
Pointer told him of Thornton's message, and his arrival, as Brown. Harris was amused.
"And the chief telling you kind as father who everybody was. You're deep, Alf! But this sets Mr. Thornton, at least, in a good light, doesn't it?" Harris had a most undetective-like eagerness to see his neighbours in a good, or at least a satisfactory light.
"Humph, seems so. But possibly he was rushed by those friends of his, 'Bond and Co.,' as he calls them."
"Ah, there's that, of course They did rather take the lead. And what's that other parcel you're getting out for me?"
"This is Lady Maxwell's evening dress that she wore on Thursday at dinner at Stillwater House."
"Anything wrong with it? It looks all right to me."
Pointer gave a demonstration by artificial light.
Harris drew a deep breath as the splotches showed. "Isn't this pretty conclusive?" he asked.
"I don't know yet," Pointer said frankly, "and the rest of what I don't know about this affair I'll tell you and Inspector Rodman this evening. It'd take too long now. This Lady Maxwell is being watched, of course. But I want to speak to the inspector a moment. Ah, here he is."
Pointer had liked the keen, smart look of that police officer at the inquest He gave him his instructions in a few sentences. The frock was to be returned to its owner, and at the same time as much information as possible was to be obtained.
Pointer and Harris drove off separately.
Pointer did not hope for much from the questions at Stillwater House. That part of the work seemed to him what asking a patient to put out his tongue was to the old-fashioned doctor, something expected on both sides; a sort of preliminary canter. Not by sitting asking questions would the real bones of Rose Charteris's murder be laid bare, of that he felt quite sure. Yet a few useful items might be collected. He left that part, for the moment, to Superintendent Harris, for he had to go to town to see the head of Scotland Yard, and be formally invested with the case. But first he stopped at Mr. Gilchrist's and had a short interview with him. Then after an equally brief interview with the assistant commissioner of New Scotland Yard, he made for 17 Upper Brook Street, Professor Charteris's town address, outside of which Watts was already waiting.
They came, as two solicitor's clerks, armed with letter from Gilchrist to take away some papers of the professor's which were wanted for the adjourned inquest.
The manservant showed them up to the first floor and opened a door.
The detectives examined the professor's three room with care. Pointer came to rest before a semicircle of tobacco-shreds behind a tobacco jar.
"That wasn't done by filling a pipe. Looks as if some one had stirred that Shiraz like a Christmas pudding within the last twenty-four