Читать книгу Flowers for the Judge - Margery Allingham - Страница 7

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Mr. Campion sat in the waiting room at the Sign of the Golden Quiver and reflected philosophically that it is often the fate of experts to be called in and left in a corner. The young woman who had admitted him had been very firm: he was to wait.

As he sat in the shadow of the mahogany mantelpiece and sniffed the leather and tobacco-scented air he regarded the room with interest. There are publishers whose waiting rooms are like those on draughty provincial railway stations; others that resemble corners of better-class bookshops, with the wares tastefully displayed; and still others that stun by their sombre magnificence and give the odd impression that somebody very old and very rich is dying upstairs: but the waiting room at Twenty-three expressed the personality of Barnabas, Limited and was solid and comfortable and rather nice, like the dining room of a well-fed mid-Victorian household.

Mr. Campion caught himself glancing at the polished side tables and supposing that the silver had gone to be cleaned. Apart from a few early editions in a locked glass and wire-fronted cupboard there was not a book in the place.

A portrait of Jacoby Barnabas, the uncle of the present directors, hung over the mantelpiece in a grand baroque frame. Head and shoulders were life size, and it was evident from a certain overpainting in the work that the artist had striven with some difficulty for a likeness.

It showed a strong, heavily boned man of sixty odd with the beard and curling white hair of a Victorian philanthropist, but the light eyes set deeply in the fine square head were imperious and very cold and the small mouth was pursed and narrow amid the beautiful fleecy whiteness of the beard. A grim old boy, thought Mr. Campion, and turned his attention to the other visitor, who stood stiffly on the other side of a centre table which ought to have had a silver epergne upon it.

He was a fat young man with a red face, who looked less as though he had a secret sorrow than a grievance which was not going to be a secret very long. He regarded Mr. Campion with what appeared to be suppressed hatred, but as soon as the other ventured to remark inanely that it was a nice foggy day he burst out into the spasmodic but more than eager conversation of one who has been in solitary confinement.

Mr. Campion, who thought privately that all young persons who voluntarily shut themselves up half their lives alone, scribbling down lies in the pathetic hope of entertaining or instructing their fellows, must necessarily be the victims of some sort of phobia, was duly sympathetic. Moreover, his curiosity concerning the business downstairs was fast becoming unbearable and he was glad to have something to crowd it out of his mind.

The fat young man flung himself down in a chair.

“I’m waiting to see Mr. Widdowson,” he said abruptly. “I usually see Brande, but today I’ve got to go to the Headmaster. They’re all infernally casual, aren’t they? I’ve been here half an hour.”

In view of all the circumstances Mr. Campion did not know quite what to say, but his silence did not worry the other man, if indeed he noticed it at all.

“I expect Brande will be down in a moment,” he went on explosively. “Do you know him? A nice chap. Very enthusiastic. Gets all het up about things. He’s made a lot of difference to this place since he left the army. He was in the States for a bit, you know, and then came back and started putting a bit of pep into this mausoleum.”

He paused again but only for breath. Since neither of them even so much as knew the other’s name Mr. Campion found him quite extraordinarily indiscreet, but he recognized the symptoms and understood that people who are forced to spend long periods alone can rarely chat non-committally. The fat young man’s tongue was running away with him again.

“Brande married an American, you know,” he said accusingly. “Extraordinarily pretty girl, I believe. It seems a pity they don’t ...” He broke off hastily and rose to his feet again, glaring at Campion this time as if he had discovered him trying to surprise him into a confidence.

Mr. Campion looked comfortingly blank and as the other retired to a corner, crimson with rage and confusion, he rose himself and, wandering across to the heavily curtained windows, peered through them into the fog.

“I wonder where Brande is,” said the plaintive voice behind him after a pause.

Mr. Campion stiffened and controlled the insane impulse to say, “There goes his body, anyway. Looks a fishy little procession, doesn’t it?” and turned back into the room just as the door opened and a girl came in.

She was neither particularly good to look at nor possessed of an arresting personality, but she caught Mr. Campion’s interest at once. She was small and very dark and affected the coiffure of a medieval page and a small straight blue serge dress with a white collar and cuffs. The effect aimed at was a twelve-year-old schoolgirl but the result was ruined by the maturity of her face, hands and neck. She smiled at the fat young man.

“Oh, Mr. Tooth,” she said, “I’m so sorry you’ve been kept waiting. I’m afraid Mr. Widdowson won’t be here today. He’s been called away. Would you mind very much if we wrote you?”

Mr. Tooth grew red and then pale with indignation and Mr. Campion was inclined to sympathize with him.

“I’ll go in and see Mr. Brande, then,” said Mr. Tooth with dignity. “He’s not engaged, is he?”

“Oh, no, he’s not engaged, but I’m afraid you can’t see him.” There was a quality in the girl’s voice which was hard to define. She was enjoying the situation, certainly, but she was not bursting to come out with the news. Rather, she was being unduly secretive about it. Mr. Campion was interested. Why should the staff of Barnabas, Limited have decided to try to keep Paul’s death a secret? The death of a man is a hopeless thing to hide from his friends; after all, it is no little peccadillo or temporary embarrassment from which he may be expected to recover and afterwards prefer not to have discussed.

“Miss Netley, is there anything wrong?” Mr. Tooth had caught the savour of unrest in the air and Campion watched the girl. She did not look in the least confused.

“Well, he won’t be here today,” she said, not so much evasively as tantalizingly. “I’m so sorry.”

A great desire to get to the heart of the trouble downstairs passed over Mr. Campion and unobtrusively he moved to the door. Mr. Tooth he dismissed from his mind. Their interests, he felt, did not meet. But there was something very curious about Miss Netley, something about her personality which was peculiar. He made a mental note of her name.

The wide entrance hall at Twenty-three was of a very simple plan and Mr. Campion had no trouble in locating the basement stairs. He sauntered through the gloomy shadows and stepped slowly down the first flight. He did not move furtively and at the first sound of his shoes upon the stone there was a warning cough from below and three men in packers aprons slid out of a doorway below him and made for their own domain. The first two walked with their faces averted and the third glanced sharply but ineffectually at the young man’s grey figure in the fog.

“Door not even locked, and plenty of visitors. The police will be pleased,” murmured Mr. Campion as he wandered on towards the scene of the trouble which had been so neatly pointed out to him.

In the entrance to the strong room he paused. The retreating packers had not thought to switch off the light and the whole scene lay before him, inviting him to examine it. It was not difficult to see where the body had lain, especially as he had Miss Curley’s telephoned description of its discovery firmly fixed in his mind.

The bare table puzzled him at first but it did not take a very acute mind to reconstruct roughly what had happened after the body had been found.

As Mr. Campion glanced at the heterogeneous collection of books and papers which Mike had heaped upon the floor his sympathy for any police detective who might come after him grew more intense. Since so much damage had already been done he had no hesitation in entering the room. One more set of footprints in the dust, he decided, could do little harm.

The construction of the place interested him immensely. It was clear that it had at one time been part of the kitchens of the house and its subsequent alterations had done something to enhance the dungeon-like qualities of the domestic offices of the eighteenth century.

The walls appeared to be lined first with some sort of metal and then with asbestos, while the window which had been immediately on the right of the doorway had been bricked up and covered by the shelves which ran all round the walls.

Mr. Campion sniffed the air. It was still stuffy, in spite of the open door, yet, as it seemed impossible that a room of its size could have been left entirely without ventilation, he took the opportunity of examining the outside wall.

Yet fog had penetrated even here and he could not understand it at first until his search was rewarded by the discovery of a tiny iron grating let into the wall directly beneath one of the lower shelves, where a brick had been displaced. The two centre bars of the grating had been broken, leaving a ragged hole some two inches in diameter.

At this hole Mr. Campion looked very thoughtfully. By squatting down on his heels he found that he could peer through the broken ventilator into some half-lit chamber beyond, which he erroneously decided was the loading shed.

He spent some time considering the shelf below the ventilator and restrained with difficulty his impulse to touch the papers thereon.

When at last he straightened his back and continued round the room his face was much graver than usual and narrow vertical lines had appeared between his eyebrows.

At the far end of the room, between the safe and the table, the chaos was indescribable, but, looking at it, Campion was inclined to think that it was the outcome of years of untidiness rather than the result of one frenzied five minutes indulged in by any hasty or excitable person.

It passed through his mind that the term “businesslike” rarely applied to business people. There are degrees of muddle to be found in the offices of old established firms which transcend anything ever achieved in a schoolboy’s locker.

The strong room at Twenty-three seemed to have become simply one of those useful places where nothing is ever cleaned up, so that anything deposited therein may reasonably expect to remain in safety until it is again needed.

All the same, it occurred to him as he looked round that the amount of odds and ends which three generations of Barnabas directors had considered worth keeping was distressing when viewed in the bulk.

The safe, he decided, could well be the centrepiece in any museum which an enterprising burglars’ guild might establish for the edification of junior members. It was massive enough in all conscience and looked as if it had been built to withstand shell-fire, but it opened with a key, a large key if the size of the highly decorated hole could be taken as a guide.

He was still looking at it when hasty footsteps pattered down the passage and the door leading out into the yard banged. Feeling a little guilty but not really deterred, Mr. Campion continued his tour.

Lying on a dusty parcel of manuscript on the shelf nearest the table he came upon an anachronism. It was a bowler hat, nearly new and only very slightly dusty. Turning it over gingerly he saw the initials “P.R.B.” inside, and on the floor below was a neatly rolled umbrella.

Mr. Campion’s frown deepened. The problem as he saw it had certainly a great technical interest, apart from its personal side. A man, dressed for the street, found dead in his own strong room, the door locked on the outside, four days after he had disappeared, presented a situation provoking thought.

Campion took another look at the ventilator and wished he might see the body.

A few minutes later he was examining the door of the room and had just decided that at no time had the lock been forced or picked when the pattering feet returned, this time from the courtyard. There was a rush of bitter air as the door swung open and next moment somebody paused and looked in at him.

Mr. Rigget and Mr. Campion exchanged glances.

For some seconds Mr. Rigget hesitated, torn between a desire to see what was going on upstairs and an inclination to investigate Mr. Campion’s unexpected presence. He took stock of the stranger carefully, his eyes round and excited behind his glittering pince-nez.

He decided almost immediately that Mr. Campion was not a detective. Mr. Rigget’s knowledge of detectives was small and his opinion bigoted. A thrilling alternative occurred to him and he came forward ingratiatingly.

“Could I help, I wonder?” he suggested, lending the offer a tinge of the underhand. “I shouldn’t want my name mentioned at first, of course, but if there’s anything you want to know ... ?”

He broke off promisingly, adding a moment later as Campion’s expression did not change:

“You’re a journalist, of course?”

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it,” said Mr. Campion. “What’s on the other side of this wall?”

“A—a garage,” said Mr. Rigget, startled into speech.

Mr. Campion’s eyebrows seemed in danger of disappearing.

“How many cars?”

“Only one. Mr. Wedgwood keeps his Fiat there. Why?”

Mr. Campion ignored the question. Instead he snapped out another.

“Who are you?”

Neither his tone nor manner fitted in with Mr. Rigget’s idea of the jolly, hard-boiled journalist he had seen so often on the films. He grew crimson.

“I have a position here,” he said stiffly.

“Fine,” said Mr. Campion heartily. “Toddle along and keep it up.”

“You are a journalist, aren’t you?” said Mr. Rigget, now considerably alarmed.

“Certainly not.” Campion looked astonished by the suggestion.

“But you’re not a detective. It wasn’t you who came in with the Coroner’s Officer just now.”

“Ah! He’s here at last, is he?” said the pale young man with interest. “Splendid! Good morning.”

“Shall I tell him you’re waiting?” Mr. Rigget’s slender pink nose quivered as he caught a glimpse of this exciting chance to visit, if only for a moment, the heart of the enquiry.

“No,” said Mr. Campion. “It wouldn’t be true.” And, brushing past his would-be informant, he moved quietly out of the room and mounted the stairs.

Mr. Rigget stood irresolute. Some instinct told him that it would not be wise to follow immediately. Moreover, the sense of mingled shame and apprehension, inevitable aftermath of a too hastily seized conclusion, was upon him. The scene of the trouble, on the other hand, was not a healthy spot in which to linger with the police in the house. In default of any other retreat Mr. Rigget shut himself in the washroom.

Mr. Campion hurried up the stairs. His face was unusually blank and there was a strained expression in his pale eyes. He had made a discovery, or at least he had unearthed a possibility which, if it should prove to be substantiated by other facts, was going to lead to serious trouble.

At the top of the stairs he hesitated. His next step presented difficulties. He was not at all sure of his own place in the proceedings. Miss Curley had invited him to the house presumably on her own initiative; therefore he was not working with the police but in the interests of his friends. In view of everything Mr. Campion was inclined to wonder what their interests would prove to be.

However, his curiosity overrode his caution and he considered the best means of getting the information he needed.

He was still hesitating in the fog-laden hall, wondering if he should take the bull by the horns and go up to Gina’s flat, when he caught sight of a shadowy figure drifting down the stairs from the floor above. Ritchie, of course; Mr. Campion had forgotten him. He stepped forward, his hand outstretched.

“Mr. Barnabas,” he began, “I don’t know if you remember me—”

The tall, loosely built man paused abruptly and a pair of astonishingly mild blue eyes peered into Campion’s own.

“Yes,” he said. “I do. You’re a friend of Mike’s, aren’t you? Albert Campion. You’re the man we want. You’ve heard, of course?”

Campion nodded. The sense of shock and regret which he had missed in the office was here very apparent. Ritchie looked haggard and the bony hand he thrust into Campion’s own shook.

“They’ve only just told me,” he said. “One of the secretaries came up to my room. I was reading. I didn’t dream ... Mike went down there last night, you know.”

He paused and passed his hand through his tufty grey hair.

“Twenty years ago ...” he added unexpectedly. “But it was May then ... none of this awful fog about.”

Mr. Campion blinked. He remembered now the other’s habit of flitting from subject to subject, linked only by some erratic thought process at which one could only guess. However, he had no time to study Ritchie Barnabas’s eccentricities at the moment. There was something very important that he had to find out at once.

“Look here,” he said impulsively, “I’m at a great disadvantage. I really haven’t any business here at all, but I do want a few words with someone who has seen the body. Do you think—I mean, could you possibly ... ?”

Ritchie hesitated. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said at last, adding abruptly, his eyes fixed anxiously upon Campion’s like a dog who is attempting to talk: “The body ... that was the terrible part of it then.... Nothing ... not a sign. Poor young Paul!” And afterwards, in an entirely different tone: “A mild day it was, inclined to be misty. But no fog like this.”

He turned away and had gone halfway up the stairs again when he paused and finally returned.

“Go upstairs to my room,” he said. “It’s right at the top of the house. Forgive me for not thinking of it before.”

He went off again, only to turn at the landing to look back.

“I’ll meet you there,” he said. “Come up now.”

Mr. Campion found his way to Ritchie’s office with some difficulty. It lay at the very top of the house and was approached by a small staircase set behind the panelling of a larger room. Campion discovered it only by accident, having caught a glimpse of the swinging door as he put his head into the last room on what had at first appeared to be the top floor.

The office itself was a fitting place for its owner. It was very small and was built round an old-fashioned brick chimney, to which it seemed to cling for support. Apart from two dilapidated chairs huddled close to the minute fireplace, the whole place was a mass of manuscripts. They jostled and sat upon each other in tall unsteady piles rising up to meet the sloping ceiling.

A little window through which the fog now looked like a saffron blanket held up to the light filled one alcove, and, save for this and the glow from the fire, the place was in darkness.

Campion found the switch and a dusty reading lamp on the mantelpiece shot into prominence.

He sat down to wait. After the chill downstairs the room felt warm and musty, the air spiced with the smell of paper. It was a very personal place, he decided; like an old coat slipped off for a moment regretfully.

He had barely time to let its unexpected charm take hold of him when Ritchie returned. He came scrambling up the staircase like some overgrown spider, his long thin arms and legs barking themselves recklessly on the wooden walls.

“She’s coming,” he said. “Won’t be a moment. Had to powder her face. Too bad ... a child, Campion ... only eighteen. Very pretty ... typist or something. Good family ... been crying ... making statement.”

He sat down.

Mr. Campion, who had deduced that he was not talking about Miss Curley, had an inspiration.

“You’ve got hold of the girl who found him?”

Ritchie nodded. “Terrible experience! Glad to get away from them all. Nice girl.”

He brought a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one thoughtfully. He had replaced the package when, with a word of apology, he produced it again and forced a rather battered cigarette upon Campion.

“You knew Paul well?” he said. “Poor fellow! Poor fellow! You didn’t? Oh, I see.... Well, it’s a shock for everybody. It must be.... Dead three days, they say. Can’t have been. Mike was there last night. Doctors don’t know, do they?”

Mr. Campion was slowly getting used to this somewhat extraordinary method of conversation. He had experienced this jerky chatter before, but in Ritchie’s case the man had a disconcerting way of fixing one with his gentle blue eyes with an earnestness which was somehow pathetic. It was evident that he wanted to be understood, but found speech very difficult.

In spite of his preoccupation with the pressing matter on hand, Campion noticed that the elder man used long sweeping gestures, completely meaningless in themselves, and he began to understand why the intolerant Jacoby Barnabas of the portrait in the waiting room had found this particular nephew so unsatisfactory.

Although he was still obviously very shaken, Ritchie seemed more at ease now that he was back in his own little room. He glanced about it, caught Mr. Campion’s eye and smiled shyly.

“Been here twenty years, reading,” he said.

Campion was taken off his guard.

“No remission for good conduct?” he said involuntarily.

Ritchie looked away, and for the first time the younger man was aware of something not quite frank about him.

“Get away sometimes,” he said. “Week or two now and again. Why not ... ? Must live.”

His tone was so nearly angry that Campion almost apologized. He had the uncomfortable impression that the man was hiding something.

He put the idea from him as absurd, but the impression remained.

Ritchie was puffing furiously at his cigarette, his long thin fingers with their enormous knuckles gripping the little flattened tube clumsily.

“Strong personality,” he said, his blue eyes once again fixed on Campion’s face. “Moved very quickly ... did foolish things. But to be found dead ... terrible! Have you ever been in love?”

“Eh?” said Mr. Campion, completely taken aback.

“Don’t understand it,” said Ritchie with a wave of a long bony arm. “Never did. Paul didn’t love Gina. Extraordinary. Mike’s a good boy.”

Campion was sorting out the possible relations between these disjointed ramblings when there was a movement on the stairs below and Ritchie got up.

“Miss Marchant,” he said.

He disappeared for a moment, to return almost at once with a very pretty girl. She had been crying, and was still near tears. As he caught sight of her Mr. Campion was inclined to agree with Ritchie’s sympathetic outburst. It certainly did seem a shame that this little yellow-haired girl with the big frightened eyes and demure, intelligent face should have been subjected to what must have been a very unpleasant experience.

Ritchie was already performing the introductions. He was less jerky and more at his ease when speaking to the girl, and there was a gentleness about him which was very attractive.

“Sit down,” he said, taking her by the hand and leading her into the room. “This is Mr. Campion, a very clever man, not a policeman.”

He peered down into her face and evidently thought he saw tears there, for he pressed a large white pocket-handkerchief into her hand without any explanation.

“Now,” he said, squatting down between them on the dusty boards, “tell him.”

Campion leant forward. “I’m awfully sorry to trouble you, Miss Marchant,” he said. “It must be most unpleasant for you to go all through this again. But you would be doing me and Mr. Barnabas a very great service if you’d answer one or two questions. I won’t keep you long.”

The girl made a rather pathetic attempt at a smile.

“I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m glad to get away from them all. What do you want to know?”

Mr. Campion approached his point gingerly. It was not going to be easy.

“When you went down to the strong room this morning,” he began, “did Miss Curley give you the key or did you take it out of her desk?”

“I—I took it. It was hanging on a little hook screwed into the underside of the flap at the back. It always hangs there.”

“I see. And you just took it and went straight downstairs?”

“Yes. But I’ve told all this to the Coroner’s Officer.” Her voice was rising, and Mr. Campion stretched out a soothing hand.

“I know,” he said. “And it’s really very kind of you to tell it to me again. When you unlocked the door and went in, what did you do?”

The girl took a deep breath.

“I switched on the light,” she said. “Then I’m afraid I screamed.”

“Oh, I see....” Mr. Campion was very grave. “You saw him at once?”

“Oh, yes. He was just inside the door. My foot nearly touched his foot. When I turned on the light I was looking straight down at him.”

Ritchie nodded at her, and with a wave of a flail-like arm encouraged her to use the handkerchief he had just lent her. There was something so extremely comic in the gesture that just for an instant laughter crept out behind the tears in the round eyes.

Mr. Campion proceeded cautiously.

“Look here,” he said very gently, “this is going to help a lot. Try not to think of the man you found as someone you’ve seen in the office, someone you’ve worked for; think of him just as a thing, a rather ugly sight you’ve been called upon to look at. What struck you most about him when you first saw him?”

Miss Marchant pulled herself together. Mr. Campion had been speaking to her as though she were a child, and she was a modern young woman of eighteen.

“His colour,” she said.

Mr. Campion permitted himself a long intake of breath.

“He was pink,” said the girl. “I didn’t think he was dead, you see. I thought he’d fallen down in a fit—apoplexy or something. I went up to him and bent down, and then I saw he was dead. He was bright, bright pink, and his lips were swollen.”

“And was he lying quite naturally?” said Mr. Campion, anxious to lead her away once the vital fact had been ascertained.

Miss Marchant hesitated. “I think so. He was on his back and stretched out, his hands at his sides. It wasn’t—nice.”

“Terrible!” said Ritchie earnestly. “Terrible! Poor girl! Poor Paul! All frightful ...”

He hurled his cigarette stub into the fire and searched frantically for another, hoisting his gaunt body from side to side as he fought with his pockets.

Miss Marchant glanced at Mr. Campion.

“That’s all,” she said. “I ran out and told Miss Curley and the others after that.”

“Naturally.” Campion’s tone was soothing and friendly. “Where was the hat?”

“The hat?” She looked at him dubiously for a moment, her brows wrinkled. “Oh, his bowler hat ... of course. Why, it was there on the ground, just near him.”

“Near his head or near his hand?” Mr. Campion persisted.

“Near his shoulder, I think ... his left shoulder.” She was screwing up her eyes in an effort of recollection.

“How was it lying?”

Miss Marchant considered. “Flat on its brim,” she said at last. “I remember now. It was. I caught sight of the round black mound out of the corner of my eye and I wondered what it was at first. His umbrella was there too, lying beyond it, where it must have fallen when he fell.”

She shuddered involuntarily as the picture returned to her, and looked younger than ever.

“On the left?” laboured Mr. Campion. “On your left?”

“No, his left. I told you. The side furthest from the table.”

“I see,” said Mr. Campion, and his face became blank. “I see.”

Ritchie shepherded Miss Marchant to the floor below. When he came back his mild blue eyes rested upon Campion eagerly.

“Clearer?” he enquired, and added abruptly: “Sounds like gas, doesn’t it?”

Mr. Campion regarded the other man thoughtfully. It had been slowly dawning upon him for some time now that Ritchie’s disjointed phrases and meaningless gestures were disabilities behind which a mind resided. However, this last shrewdness was unexpected.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “It does. Carbon monoxide, in fact. Of course one can’t possibly tell for certain without taking a blood test but Miss Marchant’s description does indicate it. Besides, it fits in damnably with one or two things I noticed downstairs.”

Ritchie heaved a sigh of relief. “Garage next door to the strong room,” he remarked. “Fumes must have percolated somehow. Accident. Poor Paul....”

Mr. Campion said nothing.

Ritchie clambered into the chair Miss Marchant had vacated and sat poring over the fire, his immense bony hands held out to the tiny blaze.

“Carbon monoxide,” he said. “How much of it will kill?”

Mr. Campion, who had been reflecting upon the problem for some time, gave a considered opinion.

“I’m not sure of the exact proportion,” he said, “but it’s something very small ... just over four per cent in the atmosphere in some cases, I believe. The trouble with the stuff is that it’s so insidious. You don’t realize you’re going under until you’ve gone, if you see what I mean. The exhaust of a car is pretty nearly the pure stuff.”

Ritchie nodded sagaciously. “Dangerous,” he said. “No ventilation down there with the door shut.”

“... And locked.” The words were on the tip of Mr. Campion’s tongue, but he did not utter them.

Ritchie continued. “Shouldn’t have been there,” he said. “Paul always poking about out of hours. Silly fellow ... sorry he’s dead.”

The last remark was not put in as an afterthought. Every line of Ritchie’s gaunt body indicated his regret, and his tone was as expressive as the most elaborate speech.

“I didn’t know him well,” said Campion. “I met him at most four or five times.”

Ritchie shook his head. “Difficult chap,” he remarked. “Great egoist. Too dominant. But good fellow. Impulsive. Not in love with Gina. Dreadful accident.”

Mr. Campion’s mind wandered to the little grating under the shelf in the strong room, and presently, when he and the other man went down the stairs together, it was still in his thoughts.

Ritchie was frankly overcome by the horror of the accident. The locked door and the time of death were both points that he had evidently shelved as minor details, while the significance of the position of the hat and umbrella had escaped him entirely.

As they crossed the hall, two policemen in plain clothes came up from the basement. Campion recognized one of them as Detective-Sergeant Pillow of the special branch. The man glanced up as he passed, and nodded, satisfaction in his little black eyes.

As Campion caught sight of the curious burden he carried, his heart missed a beat. Carefully wrapped round the middle with a dark handkerchief, its ends looped into drooping bows and its protected centre clasped in the Sergeant’s stubby hand, was a length of rubber tubing such as is sometimes used for the improvisation of a shower-bath. Sergeant Pillow carried it as though it were his dearest possession.