第 13 页

She drew a long breath.

"Let it go at that. No, I do not like your Mr. Betcher Long!"

The girl was silent. In the circumstances, it would be worse than foolishness to attempt to defend a man who she felt had done his duty. She could not imagine Arnold Long failing in his trust.

"What is this story of an explosion in your room, Nora?" she asked suddenly.

The girl could only tell her what had happened.

"I knew nothing until I saw Mr. Long trying my door. One of the maids told me she had heard three or four shots fired, and there was something burning on the hearth when Mr. Long and I went in: a thick strip of white paper."

"What happened to that?" asked Miss Revelstoke curiously, and Nora told her.

Evidently it did not seem a very alarming happening to the elder woman, for she made no further reference to it. She went down to join the guests, leaving the girl to pack— hearing of the tragedy, she had announced her intention of returning to London in the morning. Nora was so engaged when there was a knock at the saloon door. It was Mr. Cravel, and he was a very self-possessed man.

"Everybody is leaving," he said. "The news got out through the doctor. This is ruin for me!"

Yet his voice was very calm and his attitude was that of a man who was viewing another's misfortune.

"I suppose the thing will blow over between now and next year, and anyway, I intended to make big alterations here. We shall cut out the room where this wretched suicide happened— I can bring the staircase through it without any great difficulty."

His whole interest in the tragedy was the effect it had upon his own fortunes. It was natural, perhaps, thought the girl, and yet there was a certain cold-bloodedness in his disregard of the horror which had swept Joshua Monkford into eternity that was almost repulsive to the girl.

When Miss Revelstoke returned, Nora spoke of the manager's seeming callousness.

"My dear, you don't expect him to weep over poor Monkford, do you?" asked the elder woman testily. "He is probably ruined— certainly so far as this season is concerned. Only the lunatic golfers are staying; the rest of the guests are leaving in the morning; some have already left. The week is spoilt from Cravel's point of view, and I think it is rather wonderful that he can keep his head as he is doing. I saw your detective downstairs. He asked me if he might come up and speak to you— you don't mind?"

Nora shook her head.

"What information he expects to get from you, I can't imagine," said Miss Revelstoke. "You won't object to being left alone with him? The very sight of the man irritates me."

It was soon after this that Arnold Long made his appearance. He was looking dreadfully tired, the girl thought; the strain was telling on him, and her heart went out to him in sympathy.

Contrary to Nora's expectations, Miss Revelstoke did not mark her disapproval by leaving them together.

On the contrary, she made no sign of departing.

"Well, Mr. Long, have you made any discovery?"

"None," he said curtly, "except, of course, that Monkford was murdered."

"But how? The manager tells me the room was empty when you went in, and that the only man near poor Monkford when he was shot— was you!"

Betcher looked at her quickly.

"Was me? That view certainly hadn't struck me," he said ironically.

"I daresay it will occur to others," said Miss Revelstoke. "Mr. Cravel tells me that he was on the second floor, heard a shot, and ran upstairs, and found you standing at the door, apparently trying to open Mr. Monkford's door. Why should it be locked?"

"I have wondered that, but it was locked." The yellow-faced woman shrugged her shoulders, and her lips twitched with amusement.

"Apparently, there is no key, and Mr. Cravel said the door could not have been locked on the inside; otherwise, he could not have opened it with his pass-key. But perhaps you have found the key of the door?"

"There is that possibility," replied the detective coolly. "It was, in fact, in poor Monkford's pocket." Miss Revelstoke's eyebrows arched inquiringly.

"Cravel said that the key was still hanging in the reception office, and is there still. As you found the key in Monkford's pocket, it must have been one quite unknown to the hotel."

She saw Betcher Long start, and a smile dawn on his tired face.

"That's it!"

Of a sudden his face had changed; the tiredness had vanished, and a new light had come to his eyes.

"That's it, of course! What a fool I was! What an utterly stupid fool!"

The effect of his sudden enthusiasm on Miss Revelstoke did not pass unobserved. Nora saw the woman's face lengthen, her lips parted as though she were going to say something, but no sound came; and then the arched brows came down to a deep frown.

"That is it?" she repeated. "What do you mean?"

"Miss Revelstoke"— he was almost jovial—"you have supplied me with the obvious solution to this terribly queer mystery. And now I will unburden my soul. I lied to you just now when I told you I had found the key in his pocket. As a matter of fact, I didn't find the key in his pocket, and I've been searching the room for it since the crime was committed. But I lie naturally, and a lie's the most exciting and provocative statement I know, especially to those—"

He did not conclude the sentence, and Miss Revelstoke waited, but waited in vain. He turned to the girl.

"I was going to ask you a whole lot of questions about the explosion in your room," he said, "but that is not necessary. I know every fact now, except one: how did the man who killed Joshua Monkford escape from the room?"

Miss Revelstoke's lips curled.

"That seems to be rather more important than any other question," she said, with her arid smile.

"It is and it isn't," said Betcher Long, speaking half to himself. "The really important question that I have not yet answered is: why did Mr. Henry, that eminent lawyer, call at Staines police station at a quarter to nine and report to the inspector in charge the loss of a wristwatch which he had left behind in his room?"

The woman's eyes were wide open now, and the smile had left her face.

"You're almost as mysterious as the mysterious people, Mr. Long," she said.

"Mysteriouser," said Betcher Long. "For at the very minute Henry called at the police station, Monkford was shot dead. I have never heard of a better alibi!"

Chapter 19

MISS REVELSTOKE had not exaggerated when she had said that more than half the guests were leaving. Arnold Long, who had made a flying visit to town, returned to find no more than half a dozen people in the big luncheon room, and the settled air of melancholy upon the faces of the waiters was convincing proof that the season was spoiled.

At Cravel's earnest request, three joiners had been engaged since the early morning in removing the panelling from the room where the crime had been committed, and this had been carried out under the supervision of Detective-Sergeant Rouch.

Betcher went up to inspect the devastation. The walls had been stripped to the brickwork; a section of the floor had been taken up, and the detective needed to be no architect to understand that it was impossible for any person to have entered or left the room.

Sergeant Rouch was a fair, stout man of middle age, whose principal characteristic was his optimism, and his admirable faith that the most complicated problem would solve itself. This had been the guiding principle of his life, as he explained to Betcher in a moment of confidence.

"It doesn't matter how clever these fellows are, they're bound to hang themselves in the long run," he said cheerfully. "My own idea is that poor old Monkford was shot by a marksman from Grundley Hill— it's only five hundred yards away—"

"The windows were closed, and the bullet that killed Monkford was fired from less than six inches' distance," said Betcher curtly.

He took out of his pocket a little package and unfolded it, revealing the soiled end of the burnt and sodden paper he had taken from the hearth in Nora's room.

"What is that?" asked Rouch curiously.

"It is all that remains of a cracker. You can buy them at a shilling a packet—"

"Fireworks?" asked Rouch, in surprise.

"Fireworks," agreed Mr. Long gravely. "The delight of your childhood, Rouch— if you ever had a childhood."

"Certainly I did," said Rouch indignantly. "Why, when I was four—"

"Don't let us go into your horrible past," interrupted Betcher. "This was thrown through the window of Miss Sanders's room, or introduced in some other way, the object being at a crucial moment to attract me from Monkford's room, and, like a fool, I was attracted! Whilst I was away, something happened—"

"The murderer escaped," said Rouch comfortably. "I've seen that done before. When I was on the Gonleston bank case—"

"The murderer couldn't have escaped, because the murderer wasn't there," Betcher Long went on, displaying admirable patience with these interruptions.

"Then how was he killed?" asked Mr. Rouch triumphantly.

Betcher regarded him more in sorrow than in anger. "Rouch, you have everything in the world that man can desire, except brains!" he said.

"Well, how was he killed?" persisted Rouch. "It is all very well to say that I haven't brains, Mr. Long, but here is a man killed in a locked room, the only human being near being you—"

"You've got that theory, too, have you?" Betcher grinned. "Sit ye down, Rouch. I'm going to put you through the third degree. Where did you get that 'you were the only man' stuff?"

"Well"— Sergeant Rouch was a little uncomfortable, wiped his profusely perspiring brow with a rapid sweep of his handkerchief, and shrugged his plump shoulders—"I'm only saying—" he began.

"Where did you get your say? You could never have acquired that illuminating theory out of your own nut. Who has been talking to you?"

"It is what Cravel thinks, anyway," said the disgruntled detective. "He said it was very curious that you were the only person near at hand when the shot was fired."

"Bring Cravel here: I want a little talk with him."

Mr. Cravel came. It seemed that by now he was resigned to the inevitable monetary loss that the tragedy brought to him. He could even smile as he glanced round the dismantled room.

"Well, Mr. Long, have you found any secret traps or secret panels?"

Betcher did not reply.

"Shut the door," he said to his subordinate, and, when this was done:

"You remember, Cravel, that when you came upstairs after you heard the shot, I was standing at the door, trying to open it?"

For a second the ghost of apprehension appeared in the manager's eyes.

"You're not going to take seriously anything I've said to Rouch, are you? I merely remarked that you were the nearest living person, so far as we know, to Mr. Monkford when he was murdered. That is so obvious a fact that you won't think I suggested—"

"I'm not worrying about what you suggest," interrupted Betcher. "I'm merely going to ask you a few questions. You remember my turning to you and asking if you had a key to the door?"

Cravel nodded; he was watchful, alert, all his senses tense.

"And you also remember that you went downstairs and returned with a pass- key?"

"I did, yes."

"From whom did you get it?" asked Betcher.

"From the floor waiter."

"Find him," said Betcher curtly, addressing Rouch. He did not speak till the waiter was brought into the room.

"Have you a pass-key for this floor?"

Only for the fraction of a second did the man glance at his employer, and then: "Yes."

"Let me see it."

Reluctantly the waiter took the key from his pocket and handed it to Betcher Long, who slipped it into the lock of the door and tried to turn it.

"This doesn't fit," he said. "In fact, this pass-key doesn't function on the third floor at all, does it?"

The waiter did not answer this, again shooting that furtive glance at his master which Betcher had detected before.

"Who has the pass-key of the third floor?"

The waiter shifted uncomfortably.

"I don't know, sir," he said. "Probably the floor waiter."

"Get him," said Betcher again, and dismissed the man with a nod.

"What is the idea, Long?" asked Cravel, when they were left alone.

"I'll take you into my confidence," replied Arnold Long quietly. "When Monkford went to his room after inviting me to follow him, it is an intelligent view that he did not lock the door. Why should he? And it is obvious to the meanest mind that he could not lock the door if he had no key. Therefore, it is a logical sequence that the door was locked by somebody else, either from the outside or the inside. I heard Mr. Monkford call the office, and I am satisfied that he called the office because he found the door had been locked on him from the outside. I heard him say 'Who has—' and then a shot. What he was trying to say was, 'Who has locked my door?'"

Cravel's face was the colour of chalk.

"I am suggesting, further, that the man who locked the door was you; that you had the pass-key in your pocket, and that your running downstairs to get the key was the merest blind to hide that fact from me."

At this moment Rouch came back to report that the floor waiter who had been on duty on the night of the murder had gone on leave.

"I expected something like that," said Betcher slowly.

"What in hell do you mean?"

The man was in a cold fury, but he was mortally afraid, too.

"Are you going to say that I unlocked the door whilst you were there, went in, and shot Monkford?"

"I suggest that you locked the door before he was dead, well knowing what would happen to him— now, come across, Cravel."

"It's a lie!" stormed the manager. "I had not been anywhere near the door. Why should I lock it? You have fallen down on this case, Long, and you're handing up all sorts of wild theories to save your coat."