"That door leads to the maids' sitting-room and to the service-stairs, doesn't it?"
The Chief Inspector pointed to a door opening out of the manager's little lobby. He opened it as he spoke—not for the first time that night.
The housekeeper looked surprised. "Bless me, sir, it doesn't take you police gentlemen long to find your way about."
"And that is the door leading into the street, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
"It's not locked now."
"Oh, yes, it is, sir." She laid a confident hand on it to turn in bewilderment as it opened easily.
"Why—why—someone must have undone it!"
"Just so," agreed Pointer dryly. "And the key?"
She opened a door facing the street entrance, and switched on the light. "There it is, hanging where I put it at twelve o'clock."
Pointer raised a weary eyebrow, but he said nothing, and made his way to the lounge, where, after asking both the manager and Mr. Beale to hold themselves in readiness for any possible further questions tomorrow morning, he joined Watts upstairs and spent a strenuous hour with him.
"No key to fit his trunk—no sign of the bag which the booking-clerk and porter saw him carry upstairs,—no sign of a ring,—no scrap of paper nor any mark of identity beyond his signatures,—humph!"
The Chief Inspector dusted his knees carefully and went to the mantelpiece. "Here's a box of wax vestas right enough, the same kind as the vesta I picked up in the wardrobe, but that one was still warm and soft. Burnt down to the last end and dropped burning into the wardrobe when it scorched someone's fingers—whose, Watts?"
Watts shook his head.
"—Not more than half-an-hour before we came into the room, so Eames couldn't have done it, for more reasons than one."
"I saw you try the electric torch in that American gent's bag, sir," Watts threw in.
"Just so. It was out of order. He didn't say a word about that in his evidence downstairs. You noticed those marks on the top of the wardrobe, where someone had evidently passed a stiff brush over it, presumably to do away with any finger marks or streaks?"
"I did, sir. And wasn't his—I mean Mr. Beale's—clothes-brush in a fearful state. He did look put out when you picked it up first thing."
The Chief Inspector nodded with a grim smile. "Aye, he did. He might have thought it less of a give-away if he'd known that all along he had a fine smear of dust on the under part of his sleeve. A smear that could only have been got up there. The manager's coat was clean, though that proves little. I hope you noticed the washstand before the doctor washed his hands?"
Watts was an honest young fellow, and he flushed by way of answer.
"The towel was damp, so was the soap. So was the inside of the basin. The jug was half empty, but there wasn't a drop of water in the pail. Whatever water had been used had been flung out of the window. It's been pouring so hard all day that a bit more or less would never be noticed. But the fact is odd. Why should anyone mind pouring the basin into the pail?"
"The water was too black after that wardrobe top," laughed Watts. The Chief Inspector was popular with his men, and Watts was, moreover, a distant connection.
"Then that chest of drawers. You know the feeling of using a key after a pass-key?"
"As though the lock were stuck, sir?"
"Just so. I turned the key very slowly, and each drawer had been last opened with a pass-key, or rather locked with one. And that smell of tobacco when we opened them—same smell as Mr. Beale's cigars. And that dusting of cigar ash on one of the ties. I shouldn't wonder if this is going to turn into a very funny case, Watts. I shouldn't wonder at all."
Watts' eyes brightened. A "funny case" from the point of view of the police often leads to promotion, and though Pointer was the youngest Chief Inspector at the Yard, Watts believed he could unravel any tangle. Pointer lived in Bayswater. He liked its open squares and clearer air. He shared three rooms there with a friend, James O'Connor, now a bookbinder, but during the War a very successful member of the Secret Service. Talkative, gossipy, and secretive was the Celt. Only a few had any idea of the hard core of blue steel that lay beneath his apparent easy-going cheeriness. Pointer was one of these few. He and O'Connor had worked once together, the one openly representing the law, the other secretly endangering his life every moment of the day while tracking down a German-American-Irish plot. O'Connor never referred to those days, though, had his means permitted, he would have liked to continue his hazardous work; but with peace he had to turn his attention to making a livelihood, and being single-minded in all his doings, he refused absolutely to be drawn into any of his friend's problems except as the merest onlooker.
It always gave the Chief Inspector genuine pleasure to step from the little lobby into the huge living-room which the two men used in common. He saw richer rooms often, but never one which suited him so well, with its ivory walls and paint, kept up to the mark by his own neat brush, the thick, short, draw-curtains of apple-green silk to the four windows, the chair covers of a Persian pattern—green leaves rioting over a cream ground, with here and there a pomegranate or a blue bird—book cases in quiet walnut stood against the walls.
Pointer's large writing desk, and O'Connor's equally huge table, filled the corners by the windows. In one open fireplace logs were heaped, the other was kept free for burning papers. The soft brightness of his home was like a friendly hand clasp to the weary police officer after the rain outside.
O'Connor smiled up at him and pointed to the table.
"Mrs. Able is thirsting for your blood. I told her to leave the things the last time she brought them in. I couldn't face her again." He turned out an electric hot-plate as he spoke.
A vegetable soup, a dish of Tatar bitokes—savory balls of beefsteak and marrow and seasonings pounded to perfection and browned to a turn, a well-made potato salad, some crisp rolls, and a glass of light wine made Pointer ready for another stretch of work if need be.
When the meal was cleared away by his landlady, who ruled the two men with her cooking, he filled his pipe from a beautiful covered jar of modern Japanese enamel where gold fish glittered among green waves. Jim's tobacco lived in a dull blue pot at the other end, and in the middle stood the room's one useless ornament, a carved Chinese ball-puzzle, fine as a birch leaf and showing ball within ball in tantalizing glimpses of color. It typified his calling to the policeman. He picked it up again and turned it gently to and fro.
"Yes," he said ruminatingly, "get hold of your key and you'll open up all right. But how to get hold of your key—"
"I thought the Meredith case was practically over," murmured O'Connor through clouds of smoke.
"Finished at eight. I've another case on now, and rather a stiff one, or all signs belie it. It's a hotel case, and you know how I feel about them."
"Still, old chap, you did very well with that robbery down at Ramsgate. It gave you your leg-up."
There was nothing Pointer enjoyed more than talking his cases over with his friend, whose discretion was as much to be trusted as his own. Not that he often got an opinion out of the Irishman, but the mere reciting aloud of the various phases of a problem in itself helped to clear his mind.
"They are the very devil all the same. You never know where you are. Take a private house—and the servants, the furniture, the rooms, the very walls can give you points, but a hotel! How can you follow up a hundred or so possible criminals? Personally, if I ever go in for a murder I should never dream of choosing any other place."
"A murder case, eh?"
"Did I say so? Well, see what you think.