He swung the door again and Tab saw the telltale stains.
“That door was unlocked from the inside after the old man was dead and locked again upon him.”
“But how did the key get back to the table?” asked the bewildered reporter.
Mr. Carver shook his head.
“A medical student was once asked by a professor whether Adam was ever a baby, and he replied: ‘God knows’—that is my answer to you!” he said. “We will leave the other boxes until tomorrow, Tab.”
Carver led the way out of the vault, locked the door with the duplicate key and put it in his pocket.
“My brain is dead,” said Tab.
And it was then that he saw the new pin.
VII
From where he stood the light caught it and sent up a thread of silvery reflection. He stooped mechanically and picked it up.
“What is that?” asked the detective curiously.
“It looks to me like a pin,” said Tab.
It was a very ordinary pin, silvery bright and about an inch and a half in length. In that sense it was of an unusual size, though it was the kind that is commonly used by bankers, who delight in fastening large documents together by this barbarous method. It was not straight; there was a slight bend in it, but otherwise it had not remarkable features. Tab looked at it stupidly.
“Give it to me,” said Carver. He took it in his white-gloved hand and walked to a position under one of the lights. “I don’t suppose it has any significance,” he said, “but I’ll keep it.” He put the pin carefully away in the matchbox where he had put the key. “Now, Tab,” he said more briskly as they went out of the house together into the bright sunlight, two unshaven, weary-looking men, “you have the story of your life, but go easy on any clues we have found.”
“I didn’t know we had found any,” said Tab, “unless the pin is a clue.”
“Even that I should not mention,” said Carver gravely.
When he got back to his flat Tab found the lights of the sitting-room blazing and Rex Lander, fully dressed, asleep on the settee.
“I waited up till three,” yawned Rex. “Have they caught Walters or whoever it was?”
“Not when I left Carver, which was ten minutes ago,” replied Tab. “They suspect that man Brown. His gloves were found in the passage.”
“Brown, the man from China?—It was pretty awful, wasn’t it?” asked Babe in a hushed voice, as though the fearfulness of those moments through which he had passed were only now appealing to him in their sheer terror. “My God, what an awful thing! I’ve tried not to think about it all night, that horrible memory persisted so that it nearly drove me mad.”
“I have one bit of good news for you, Rex,” said the other as he began to prepare for bed. “We found your uncle’s will. That is unofficial.”
“You found the will, did you?” said the other listlessly. “I am afraid I am not interested in his will just now. Who gets the money, the Dogs’ Home, or the Cats’ Creche?”
“It goes to a stout young architect,” said Tab with a grin, “and I can see our little home breaking up. Maybe I’ll come and see you when you are rich, Babe, if you’ll know me.”
Rex’s impatient gesture silenced him.
“I’m not thinking about money—I’m thinking about other things,” he said.
Tab slept for four hours and woke to find that Rex had gone out.
When he came into the street the special editions of the Sunday newspapers were selling with stories of the murder.
The news editor had not arrived when Tab reached the office, but he turned in the rough narrative of the tragedy to guide the office in its general search for Walters and Brown.
He went on to Mayfield, but Carver was not there and the police sergeant in charge of the house was indisposed to admit him. Carver being a single man, lived in lodgings. Tab surprised him in the act of shaving.
“No, there is no news of Felling, and Brown, who is a much more difficult proposition, has disappeared from view. Why is he more difficult? Because he is unknown. In comparison, tracing Walters is child’s play. Yet we haven’t even found him,” said the inspector wiping his face, “which is rather surprising, considering that we know his usual haunts and acquaintances. None of these say they have seen him. The cabdriver has come forward in answer to our hurry up call, and says he set down Felling at the Central Station. They stopped on the way to buy a hat, apparently.”
Carver had not been to the station that morning and even if he had, he could not have given the news which was to startle Tab later in the day.
“Have you formed any fresh theory, Carver?”
Carver looked out of the window and pulled his long nose thoughtfully.
He was a tall thin man with a lean face that was all lines and furrows. In repose it was melancholy in the extreme, and his gentle apologetic tone seemed somehow in keeping with his appearance.
“There are several theories, all more or less fluid,” he said.
“Has it occurred to you,” asked Tab, “that the shot might have been fired through one of the ventilator holes?”
Carver nodded several times before he answered.
“It occurred to me after I left you and I went back to make sure, but there was no blackening of the grating such as there would be if a pistol of sufficient small calibre had been pressed against one of the holes and fired, added to which, there is this important fact, that the bullet of the size the doctors found in Trasmere’s body would not go through any such hole.” Carver shook his head. “No, the murder was committed actually in the vault, either by Brown, by Walters or by some third person.”
Tab
