“Whilst you were in the house you heard no sound to suggest that there was anybody else present? Where are the servants?”
“There is only the cook,” said Rex and Carver went in search of her.
But the kitchen was closed and deserted. It was apparently the cook’s day off.
“I’ll make a search of the house,” said Carver. “Come along, Tab, you are in this case now and you had better stay with it.”
The search did not take a very long time. There were two rooms used by Mr. Trasmere, the remainder were locked up and apparently unused. A passageway led to Walters’ sleeping apartment, which had originally been designed as a guest room and was larger than servants’ quarters usually are. The room was meagrely furnished and there was evidence that Mr. Walters had not anticipated so hurried a flight. Some of his clothing hung on pegs behind the door, others were found in a wardrobe, whilst a cup filled with coffee stood on the table. Carver dipped his little finger into the liquid. It was still warm.
A cloth had been thrown hurriedly over some bulky object at one end of the table, and this the detective removed. He whistled. Clamped to the edge of the table was a small vice and scattered about were a number of files and other tools. Carver turned the screw of the vice and released the object in its grip. It was a small key of peculiar shape, and the man must have been working upon it recently, for steel filings covered the base of the tool.
“Then friend Walters was making a key,” said Carver. “Look at that plaster cast! That is an old dodge of his. I suppose he got an impression of the key on soap or wax and has been working at it ever since.” He looked at the thing in his palm curiously. “This may save us a great deal of trouble,” he said, “for unless I am mistaken, this is the key of the strongroom.”
A few minutes later the house was filled with detectives, police photographers and coroner’s officers. They came on a useless errand, for the door remained locked. Tab took advantage of their arrival to escort his friend home.
Before he went, Carver drew him aside.
“We shall have to keep in touch with Mr. Lander,” he said. “He may be able to throw a great deal of light upon this murder. In the meantime I have sent out all station calls to pull in Felling—who is Wellington Brown?”
“Wellington Brown? That is the man who has been threatening Trasmere—I told you about him at lunch.”
Carver pulled an old pair of gloves from his pocket.
“Mr. Wellington Brown was in that underground corridor,” he said quietly, “and was sufficiently indiscreet to leave his gloves behind—his name is written inside!”
“You will charge him with the murder?” asked Tab, and Carver nodded.
“I think so. Either he or Walters. At any rate, we shall hold them on suspicion, but I cannot be more definite until we’ve got inside that vault.”
Tab escorted his friend to the flat, and leaving him, hurried back to Mayfield, by which fanciful name Trasmere had called his grim house.
“We’ve found no weapon of any kind,” said the detective whom he found sitting in Trasmere’s dining-room with a plan of the house before him. “Maybe it is in the vault, in which event it looks like a case of suicide. I have been on the telephone with the boss of Mortimers, the builders. They say that there is only one key in existence for that vault—I was speaking to Mr. Mortimer himself and he knows. Trasmere made a special point about the lock and had twenty or thirty manufactured by different locksmiths. Nobody knows which one he used, and Mortimer says that the orders were so imperative that there should be no duplicate key, that it is unlikely—in fact, I think, impossible—that the murderer could have entered the vault except by the aid of Trasmere’s own key. However, we shall soon know; I have the best workman in town working at the unfinished key in Felling’s room and he says it is so far advanced that he is in no doubt he will be able to open the vault tonight.”
“Then it is useless in its present state?”
The other nodded.
“Quite useless, we have tried it and the locksmith, who is an expert, says that it wouldn’t fit into the keyhole as it was when we found it.”
“Then you suggest it is a case of suicide? That old man Trasmere went into the vault, locked himself in and then shot himself.”
Carver shook his head.
“If the revolver is found in the vault, yours would be a very sound theory, though why Trasmere should shoot himself is entirely beyond me.”
At a quarter to eleven that night three men stood before the door of the Trasmere vault, and the shirt-sleeved workman inserting the key, the lock snapped back. He was pushing the door open when Carver caught his arm.
“Just leave it as it is,” he said and the locksmith, obviously disappointed that he should be denied a full view of the tragedy which he had only half glimpsed went back to gather up his tools.
“Now,” said Carver, drawing a long breath and pulling a pair of white gloves from his pocket, he put them on.
Tab followed him into the chamber of death.
“I’ve telephoned for the doctor. He’ll be here in a few seconds,” said Carver, looking down at the silent figure leaning against the table legs. He pointed to the table. In the exact centre lay a key, but what brought the exclamation to the detective’s lips, was the fact
