into his head. It was possible that the intruder had found a way to climb up to the bedroom window. The next moment he reassured himself, for the window, he remembered, would not open. Anybody entering that way would have to break the glass and make a noise. Then he remembered how easy a thing it was to cut glass and make a way in. Training and common sense wrestled in George, but not for more than a moment. The door was half open. He stepped across his mattress and walked into Mrs. Bradley’s room.
“Stand still!” she said, but not loudly.
“It’s only me, madam. The night has had its suspicious element, madam, and I wondered whether you were safe.”
“Yes, thank you, George. Did somebody come upstairs?”
“You couldn’t have heard them, madam.”
“Second sight, then, George. I certainly thought I did.”
“Well, I saw the beam of their torch, but I certainly didn’t
“It must have been instinct, then. What happened, and how did you know?”
“I happened to be about, madam.”
“Sleeping outside my door? I call that very touching and noble, George!”
George, in the darkness, grinned.
“I didn’t like the things that have happened with hammers, madam.”
“No, George, neither did I. But I slept very peacefully, knowing that you were on guard, for I heard you come. Were you trained as a Scout in your youth?”
“I was a Scout, and then a Rover until I joined the army, madam, yes.”
“Well, you’d better go back to bed. You must be tired. I shan’t bother to sleep any more, so have no fears. Do you know, by the way, that there’s a gas fire in this room?”
“Nothing doing, madam, I shouldn’t think. The young lady wouldn’t have been persuaded to come out here. Besides, the gas! The room ’ud be full of it, without a window open. The murderer would never have got out conscious, and the body was found at the convent, don’t forget.”
“No, I’m not forgetting,” said Mrs. Bradley.
George retired, but no farther than his pallet on the landing. The rest of the hours of darkness passed without incident, and as soon as he heard the servants’ alarum clock ring, he took up his bed and belongings and went back to the room assigned to him.
At breakfast, which he had in the kitchen along with the maids and the barman, one of the girls observed:
“Can’t think how Miss Ada can come to leave the pantry window unfastened nohow. Seems to me that was shut all day long yesterday, on account of the wind being that way.”
“Was the pantry door locked?” asked George.
“Lor’, no. Why should it be?”
“I wondered. People sometimes lock the downstair rooms at night, just in case.”
“In case of burglars, do you mean?”
George agreed that he did, but added carelessly: “Nothing to burgle here particular, I take it.”
“Nothing to signify. All the big takings goes to the bank each day. Of course, there’s the evening custom, but master sleeps on it all, as everyone round about know.”
George went along after breakfast to have a look at the window. There was nothing to show it had been forced, and yet to suppose that the murderer—he assumed that the unknown prowler had been after Mrs. Bradley —had had the luck to find a downstair window open on the only night that it was necessary to get into the inn, seemed far too great a coincidence to be likely. He went outside and carefully examined the ground, but it was crazy paving, and told him nothing. It had retained no marks, and there was no scrape of shoes on stonework, wood or paint round the window or in the pantry.
He went to the landlord.
“Have any unusual customers yesterday, barring us?”
The landlord thought for a minute, then shook his head.
“Not as I recollect. Why, what’s the trouble?”
“The pantry window was left open.”
“That? Oh, that’s my darter, I reckon. Does her Keep Fit in there each night, her do, and deep breathing opposite the window. Told her once to shut it after her and mind we didn’t get cats, I’ve told her a dozen times.”
“Does her exercises in the pantry, does she?”
“Ah, her do, on account of the window opening on to the garden. Mother won’t have her gallivanting overhead, on account of the plaster from the ceilings; there isn’t no room in the kitchen, and the other rooms downstairs is all public rooms, do you see.”
George said that he did see, and went to Mrs. Bradley with the news.
“So it isn’t a mystery, madam, and may have been the ordinary sort of burglar.”
“Most likely,” Mrs. Bradley agreed.
