Tab heard with mingled feelings. To assist the police actively meant that his newspaper stories would suffer. He would not be allowed to use any of the information he secured, except in the tamest, most colourless form. If he remained outside, he was fairly certain to get a line to the crime, which he might use without laying himself open to the charge of breaking faith. There was no time to discover the mind of his chief on the subject—he had to make an instant decision.
“I’ll go,” he said. “This means, of course, that I shall only be able to write the punk stuff that the evening papers print, but I’ll take a chance.”
He was surprised, when he came out into Doughty Street, to find that a private car had been placed at Carver’s disposal. Knowing the parsimony of headquarters, he expressed his surprise.
“It is Mr. Trasmere’s own. He has had it garaged for the past year, but Mr. Lander gave us permission to get it out and offered to pay the running expenses.”
“Good old Babe,” said Tab, sinking back into the carriage seat. “He didn’t tell me anything about it.”
Nearing the house, Carver broke the silence.
“I have something to show you later,” he said. “Our men have been at the Post Office all night, making enquiries as to Mr. Trasmere’s correspondence. It appears that he has had a whole lot during the past year or two. We shall probably come across it in the boxes that remain unsearched. But that wasn’t the big thing we found. Most of the telegraph staff were off duty yesterday. It was only this morning that we learnt a telegram had been received at Mayfield about ten minutes before Walters disappeared.”
When they were in the sitting-room and the door was closed, Carver produced the telegram from his pocket. It was handed in at the General Post Office and ran:
“Remember 17th July, 1913. Newcastle police coming for you at three o’clock.”
It was unsigned.
“I have been searching the newspaper files this morning,” said Carver, “to discover the reference to that date. On the 17th July, 1913, I find that Felling was sent down to Newcastle for seven years, and the judge said that if he ever came before him again on a similar charge, he would send him down for life.”
“Then the telegram was despatched by some friend of Walters?” suggested Tab.
Carver nodded.
“It was delivered five minutes before he disappeared, that is to say, exactly at five minutes to three. I have seen the lad who delivered the telegram, and he says that Walters himself took in the message.”
“Would that account for his disappearance?”
“In a sense it might, yet it does not necessarily follow that Walters is innocent of the murder. The telegram may have come to him immediately after the murder was committed and have decided him to get away. If he was responsible for the murder, there would be even more reason why he should leave in a hurry. The arrival of the police, who would find the body, would, of course, have been fatal to him.”
“Did anybody see Wellington Brown go into the house?” asked Tab. It was a question he meant to have put before.
“Nobody,” said the detective. “At what hour he arrived only Walters can tell us.”
He folded the telegram and put it away, then unlocking the door from the study which led to the passage, he went down the steps and stopping only to switch on the lights, made his way into the vault. One by one the boxes were taken down, emptied of their contents and carefully examined.
Money was everywhere; banknotes, treasury bills, money in the greasy notes of a Chinese Government bank, money in the shape of Greek drachmas and Italian lira. Sometimes a box would contain nothing but these valuable squares of paper, sometimes a box held thick packets of correspondence addressed to Trasmere, at queer looking towns in Northern China. All bore the same clerkly number, generally written in green ink, and none of them threw any light whatever upon the tragedy they were investigating.
In the last box of all, the correspondence was more recent. It was mostly typewritten copies of letters, evidently addressed by the dead man to various corporations with whom he had dealings, and these they went through letter by letter.
“Where were those typed?” said Carver. “And when? He doesn’t seem to have kept a secretary.”
Until that moment Tab had forgotten the discovery of the typewriter-key-cover. Now he referred to the find.
“But he used to go out every night at half-past six and remain away until half-past eight,” said Tab. “Probably he went to some typewriting office—there are a few in the city which make a specialty of after-hours work.”
“That is possible,” admitted Carver. “There is nothing here. I have sent anything that looked important to the translators—I don’t think it is worth while sending the trading accounts of ’89.” He put the papers carefully back into the box. “And that’s the lot,” he said.
Tab was standing with his back to the lower shelf to the right hand of the door and his fingers were idly touching the plain strip of steel, when he felt something underneath and looking down, saw that the obstruction which his fingers had found was one of two slides on which hung a drawer. This had been pushed so far back that it was impossible to see it from where they had stood.
The detective stooped and picked it out.
“Hullo,” he said, “what are these?”
He brought out first a small box of Chinese workmanship. It was exquisitely lacquered in pale green. Lifting off the lid he saw that it was empty.
“Nothing there—some curio he was hoarding,” said Carver.
Next he produced a small brown jewel-case from the drawer and putting
