"Was anything put in the chest to hold them? I mean, could they be lifted out all together, or would they have to be taken out one by one?"
"A piece of embroidered Chinese linen was laid in first. A kumshaw from the Lees. The trees were packed in, and the ends folded down over them and pinned firmly, in place."
"So that they could have been lifted out as one bundle?" Pointer persisted.
"Very possible, I should think."
"Were they damp at all? Would they drip?"
Hardy explained that the trees were planted in small mandarin oranges which had been treated until they were as firm as balls of copper. The aperture for the trees was exceedingly small, and the earth had been covered with some sort of plaster that would break up when watered, but until then would keep the mold from spilling.
"They were as clean to handle as wiped apples," he finished. "Mrs. Armstrong made a point of that. They were Armstrong's, you know. I only bought them for him."
"Can you come with us now to where you bought the chest, or at least one like it?" Pointer asked, leading the way out of the suite and motioning to one of his men to draw his chair against the door inside.
"You don't suppose I'm not going to take a part, however humble, in clearing this up, do you?" the major almost roared. "It was my gift, you know, that chest. Armstrong was a friend in a thousand. And he was found dead—murdered—in my present to him and his wife. Well, if you think I won't do my best to have this cleared up so as to wring the neck of the man who did it with my own hands—" Again the major found a glare safer than words.
This was not exactly the consummation for which Scotland Yard allowed its officers to work, but Pointer only asked:
"When did you see Mr. Armstrong last, sir?"
"Yesterday afternoon at Boodle's, around six."
A constable murmured something to Pointer. The Yard's locksmith was waiting to speak to him.
"Well, Dewar, has a key been turned in the lock of that side door recently?"
"Not for years and years, sir," came the unhesitating reply. Without taking a lock to pieces, Dewar had a way of inserting thin wires with absorbent pads on the ends that told him all that could be known as to the condition of any lock's interior. "Say five years since a key was even put in, and you'll be on the safe side. And as for the wards—it's not merely dust on them, sir, it's more like the muck of centuries."
"And the hinges?" Pointer asked, though he was sure they had not been tampered with.
Dewar shook his head. "That double door's only a piece of the wall, sir. Except for the fact that you can see through the keyhole, it might as well be bricks. Just put there like a handsome panel might be." And with that the locksmith slung his bag over his shoulder and hurried away.
Pointer told one of his men to telephone to Lee and Son, and ask them to send up a responsible person at once to identify—or not—the chest in the house as the one which Major Hardy had bought of them this morning, telling them in explanation that the trees which were to have been delivered inside it were missing.
The reply of Lee and Son was a sentence in good English that their foreman should start off at once and would be at Charles Street as soon as humanly possible.
Meanwhile the chief inspector had a word with the servants.
Mr. Armstrong was always an early riser. He breakfasted generally at half-past eight. This morning he had done so, and seemed as usual when he came down. While he was still at table, the telephone rang. There were four in the house. It was the library bell that rang. Mr. Armstrong had gone to answer it himself, as he preferred to do when near by.
A little later the butler had seen him going up the stairs and heard him speaking as though to Mrs. Armstrong from the door of her room. He had not heard the words. The voice had sounded as though Mr. Armstrong were hurried and impatient to be off.
The butler had noticed his face as he went upstairs, it had looked so pale that he had wondered if his master were ill, but he had not ventured to ask him if he were feeling ill. A footman in the hall had noticed nothing. Both agreed that he had an opened letter in his hands.
What letters had come this morning for Mr. Armstrong? The butler made a motion with his hands. A pile like that. But Mr. Armstrong hadn't opened any of them when the telephone bell rang, and had told him to put them all on his writing-table in the library, where they were at this moment. He could not say if one of the letters had been opened by Mr. Armstrong while in the room to answer the telephone, but he could say that at lunch he had noticed without meaning to notice, that the letter which he had laid on top of the pile was still on top unopened. It was a New Zealand letter.
Continuing with the events of this morning, Mr. Armstrong had told him to telephone to the garage and have his Sunbeam Sports sent around at once. That always meant, the chauffeur told Pointer, that Mr. Armstrong was going alone, and going far.
All three servants had seen him open out a map and jot down some names and directions on a piece of paper. He had left the map open on a table. The butler now produced it. Pointer only gave it a glance to see that it was unmarked, and a small scale map of the counties lying between London and the Bristol Channel. Such a map as a man would look at who was going some distance west to a familiar place, and wanted to have an idea of main-traveled roads only.
When the car came around, Mr. Armstrong told the butler, as he had his valet, that he would not be in before, at the earliest, eight o'clock in the evening, possibly not till later. Then he drove off, and that was the last that the house servants had seen of him—alive.
"How about having come back earlier than he intended? Could Mr. Armstrong have done that?" Pointer asked.
Humanly speaking, he could have, but the butler seemed to think that human speech counted for very little in this affair. True, the house was upset with preparations for the afternoon's reception, and with a burst pipe in a bathroom over the Chinese suite. There was a door opening into a side street, one Mr. Armstrong often used, but it only led to the library, and Mrs. Armstrong had had lunch served in the library today, as she often did when Mr. Armstrong was not there.
"Mr. Armstrong never came back into this house walking on his own feet, sir," the man finished gravely.
"Who else was in the house? The secretary, Mr. Farrant?"
"Mr. Farrant had left us yesterday, sir. Mr. Armstrong wished him to undertake some very important mission, it seems, that may take months."
Pointer was now told that Mr. Farrant had moved his personal effects out of his two upper rooms yesterday afternoon.
"Who told you about the important commission?"
Mr. Farrant had told one of the footmen. "What about Mr. Callard; he's staying here, isn't he?"
Yes, Mr. Callard had arrived for a visit the day before yesterday, and had spoken this morning as though intending to stay some time. But Mr. Armstrong had mentioned three days. Well, no, one could not say that Mr. Armstrong was pleased to see his brother-in-law. He had very patently ignored Mr. Callard whenever the two were alone together, and had tried, the butler thought, to have such occasions be as few as possible. Mr. Callard, on the other hand, had seemed not to mind Mr. Armstrong's manner. He was just back from Cannes, and had let his own rooms at Knightsbridge for a week. There was an idea among the servants that Percy Callard was in low financial water, but as that impression was due to his saying on every possible occasion that he hadn't "a bean," things might not be so dark as they seemed.
Mr. Callard had breakfasted around nine this morning, very unusually early for him, and had then left the house. He had got back about two this afternoon.
"Just when we were all busy getting that huge chest up the stairs, sir. I never thought we could do it."
"What about Major Hardy? Does he often come to the house?"
Very