“A thousand!” responded Mr. Criedir with great geniality.
“Very well. Did Marbury say he’d call on Cardlestone?”
“He did. Said he’d call as soon as he could—that day.”
“Have you told Cardlestone what you’ve just told me?”
“I have. But not until an hour ago—on my way back from your office, in fact. I met him in Fleet Street and told him.”
“Had he received a call from Marbury?”
“No! Never heard of or seen the man. At least, never heard of him until he heard of the murder. He told me he and his friend, Mr. Elphick, another philatelist, went to see the body, wondering if they could recognize it as any man they’d ever known, but they couldn’t.”
“I know they did,” said Spargo. “I saw ’em at the mortuary. Um! Well—one more question. When Marbury left you, did he put those stamps in his box again, as before?”
“No,” replied Mr. Criedir. “He put them in his right-hand breast pocket, and he locked up his old box, and went off swinging it in his left hand.”
Spargo went away down Fleet Street, seeing nobody. He muttered to himself, and he was still muttering when he got into his room at the office. And what he muttered was the same thing, repeated over and over again:
“Six hours—six hours—six hours! Those six hours!”
Next morning the Watchman came out with four leaded columns of up-to-date news about the Marbury Case, and right across the top of the four ran a heavy double line of great capitals, black and staring:—
Who Saw John Marbury Between 3:15 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. on the Day Preceding His Murder?
X
The Leather Box
Whether Spargo was sanguine enough to expect that his staring headline would bring him information of the sort he wanted was a secret which he kept to himself. That a good many thousands of human beings must have set eyes on John Marbury between the hours which Spargo set forth in that headline was certain; the problem was—What particular owner or owners of a pair or of many pairs of those eyes would remember him? Why should they remember him? Walters and his wife had reason to remember him; Criedir had reason to remember him; so had Myerst; so had William Webster. But between a quarter past three, when he left the London and Universal Safe Deposit, and a quarter past nine, when he sat down by Webster’s side in the lobby of the House of Commons, nobody seemed to have any recollection of him except Mr. Fiskie, the hatter, and he only remembered him faintly, and because Marbury had bought a fashionable cloth cap at his shop. At any rate, by noon of that day, nobody had come forward with any recollection of him. He must have gone West from seeing Myerst, because he bought his cap at Fiskie’s; he must eventually have gone Southwest, because he turned up at Westminster. But where else did he go? What did he do? To whom did he speak? No answer came to these questions.
“That shows,” observed young Mr. Ronald Breton, lazing an hour away in Spargo’s room at the Watchman at that particular hour which is neither noon nor afternoon, wherein even busy men do nothing, “that shows how a chap can go about London as if he were merely an ant that had strayed into another ant-heap than his own. Nobody notices.”
“You’d better go and read up a little elementary entomology, Breton,” said Spargo. “I don’t know much about it myself, but I’ve a pretty good idea that when an ant walks into the highways and byways of a colony to which he doesn’t belong he doesn’t survive his intrusion by many seconds.”
“Well, you know what I mean,” said Breton. “London’s an ant-heap, isn’t it? One human ant more or less doesn’t count. This man Marbury must have gone about a pretty tidy lot during those six hours. He’d ride on a bus—almost certain. He’d get into a taxicab—I think that’s much more certain, because it would be a novelty to him. He’d want some tea—anyway, he’d be sure to want a drink, and he’d turn in somewhere to get one or the other. He’d buy things in shops—these Colonials always do. He’d go somewhere to get his dinner. He’d—but what’s the use of enumeration in this case?”
“A mere piling up of platitudes,” answered Spargo.
“What I mean is,” continued Breton, “that piles of people must have seen him, and yet it’s now hours and hours since your paper came out this morning, and nobody’s come forward to tell anything. And when you come to think of it, why should they? Who’d remember an ordinary man in a grey tweed suit?”
“ ‘An ordinary man in a grey tweed suit,’ ” repeated Spargo. “Good line. You haven’t any copyright in it, remember. It would make a good cross-heading.”
Breton laughed. “You’re a queer chap, Spargo,” he said. “Seriously, do you think you’re getting any nearer anything?”
“I’m getting nearer something with everything that’s done,” Spargo answered. “You can’t start on a business like this without evolving something out of it, you know.”
“Well,” said Breton, “to me there’s not so much mystery in it. Mr. Aylmore’s explained the reason why my address was found on the body; Criedir, the stamp-man, has explained—”
Spargo suddenly looked up.
“What?” he said sharply.
“Why, the reason of Marbury’s being found where he was found,” replied Breton. “Of course, I see it all! Marbury was mooning around Fleet Street; he slipped into Middle Temple Lane, late as it was, just to see where old Cardlestone hangs out, and he was set upon and done for. The thing’s plain to me. The only thing now is to find who did it.”
“Yes, that’s it,” agreed Spargo. “That’s it.” He turned over the leaves of the diary which lay on his desk. “By the by,” he said, looking up with some interest, “the adjourned inquest is at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. Are you going?”
“I shall certainly
