After giving a few instructions to the detectives, the Commissioner followed the young man into a room which was evidently the late Professor’s library.
“I have been my uncle’s assistant and secretary for three years,” he said, “and we have always been on the most affectionate terms. It was my uncle’s practice to spend the morning in his library, the whole of the afternoon either in his laboratory or at his office at the University, and he invariably spent the hours between dinner and bedtime working at his experiments.”
“Did he dine at home?” asked Fare.
“Invariably,” replied Mr. Munsey, “unless he had an evening lecture or there was a meeting of one of the societies with which he was connected, and in that case he dined at the Royal Society’s Club in St. James’s Street.
“My uncle, as you probably know, Mr. Fare, has had a serious disagreement with his son, Stephen Tableman, and my cousin and very good friend. I have done my best to reconcile them, and when, twelve months ago, my uncle sent for me in this very room and told me that he had altered his will and left the whole of his property to me and had cut his son entirely from his inheritance, I was greatly distressed. I went immediately to Stephen and begged him to lose no time in reconciling himself with the old man. Stephen just laughed and said he didn’t care about the Professor’s money, and that, sooner than give up Miss Faber—it was about his engagement that the quarrel occurred—he would cheerfully live on the small sum of money which his mother left him. I came back and saw the Professor and begged him to restore Stephen to his will. I admit,” he half smiled, “that I expected and would appreciate a small legacy. I am following the same scientific course as the Professor followed in his early days, and I have ambitions to carry on his work. But the Professor would have none of my suggestion. He raved and stormed at me, and I thought it would be discreet to drop the subject, which I did. Nevertheless, I lost no opportunity of putting in a word for Stephen, and last week, when the Professor was in an unusually amiable frame of mind, I raised the whole question again and he agreed to see Stephen. They met in the laboratory; I was not present, but I believe that there was a terrible row. When I came in, Stephen had gone, and Mr. Tableman was livid with rage. Apparently, he had again insisted upon Stephen giving up his fiancée, and Stephen had refused point-blank.”
“How did Stephen arrive at the laboratory?” asked Gonsalez. “May I ask that question, Mr. Fare?”
The Commissioner nodded.
“He entered by the side passage. Very few people who come to the house on purely scientific business enter the house.”
“Then access to the laboratory is possible at all hours?”
“Until the very last thing at night, when the gate is locked,” said the young man. “You see, Uncle used to take a little constitutional before going to bed, and he preferred using that entrance.”
“Was the gate locked last night?”
John Munsey shook his head.
“No,” he said quietly. “That was one of the first things I investigated. The gate was unfastened and ajar. It is not so much of a gate as an iron grille, as you probably observed.”
“Go on,” nodded Mr. Fare.
“Well, the Professor gradually cooled down, and for two or three days he was very thoughtful, and I thought a little sad. On Monday—what is today? Thursday?—yes, it was on Monday, he said to me: ‘John, let’s have a little talk about Steve. Do you think I have treated him very badly?’ ‘I think you were rather unreasonable, Uncle,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I was,’ he replied. ‘She must be a very fine girl for Stephen to risk poverty for her sake.’ That was the opportunity I had been praying for, and I think I urged Stephen’s case with an eloquence which he would have commended. The upshot of it was that the old man weakened and sent a wire to Stephen, asking him to see him last night. It must have been a struggle for the Professor to have got over his objection to Miss Faber; he was a fanatic on the question of heredity—”
“Heredity?” interrupted Manfred quickly. “What was wrong with Miss Faber?”
“I don’t know,” shrugged the other, “but the Professor had heard rumours that her father had died in an inebriates’ home. I believe those rumours were baseless.”
“What happened last night?” asked Fare.
“I understand that Stephen came,” said Munsey. “I kept carefully out of the way; in fact, I spent my time in my room, writing off some arrears of correspondence. I came downstairs about half past eleven, but the Professor had not returned. Looking from this window you can see the wall of the laboratory, and as the lights were still on, I thought the Professor’s conversation had been protracted, and, hoping that the best results might come from this interview, I went to bed. It was earlier than I go as a rule, but it was quite usual for me to go to bed even without saying good night to the Professor.
“I was awakened at eight in the morning by the housekeeper, who told me that the Professor was not in his room. Here again, this was not an unusual circumstance. Sometimes the Professor would work very late in the laboratory and then throw himself into an armchair and go off to sleep. It was a habit of which I had remonstrated as plainly as I dared; but he was not a man who bore criticism with equanimity.
“I got into my dressing-gown and my slippers, and went along to the laboratory, which is reached, as you know, by the way we came here. It was then that I discovered him on the floor, and he was quite dead.”
“Was the door of the laboratory open?”
