“It was something at the bottom of the trunk. I should imagine it was in this box.”
He handled a little wooden box with a sliding lid.
“And here is the top,” he said, picking it up from the bed. “Can you get in touch with Mr. Lander?”
“He’ll be at Naples in a day or two. I’ll wire him then, but I shouldn’t imagine he had lost anything worth the thief’s trouble,” said Tab.
They went back to the sitting-room and Carver stood a long time by the table, tapping its covered surface nervously, his long face puckered in thought.
“Do you know what I think?” he said suddenly.
“Generally,” said Tab.
“Do you know what I am thinking now?”
“You think I am giving you a lot of trouble over a happening which wasn’t worth mentioning,” said Tab.
Carver shook his head.
“I am thinking this,” he said slowly and deliberately, “that the man who burgled this flat was the man who killed Jesse Trasmere! If you ask me to give chapter and verse for my conclusion I shall both disappoint you and disappoint myself. I have always found,” he went on, “that when one has an instinctive conviction, it is a mistake to make too close an examination of one’s mind. Every human being was endowed some time or other, with as powerful and potent an instinct as the most sensitive of wild animals. With the growth of reason, the instinctive quality faded, until today, in humanity, we find only the faintest trace of it. Yet,” he said earnestly, “it is possible for humanity to cultivate that germ of instinct so that one can go to a racetrack and pick every winner.”
“You are joking,” said Tab surprised, but Carver shook his head.
“You get flashes of it at times; you call them ‘hunches.’ It is really your atrophied instinct asserting itself. But you won’t give it a chance. You slay it with the hands of logic and smother it with argument, and my instinct tells me that the hand that opened Mr. Lander’s trunk was the hand that destroyed Trasmere. I had a queer feeling when you telephoned to me,” he went on, “a queer feeling as though you or somebody was going to hand to me a ready-made solution of Trasmere’s death.”
“And you are disappointed. My poor old Carver,” said Tab, pityingly. “You think too much!”
“We all think too much,” said Carver, relapsing into his natural gloom.
The next morning the tenant who occupied the flat below came up whilst Tab was dressing and Mr. Holland was a little taken aback to see one who so seldom put in an appearance on any day. He was a red-faced gentleman, somewhat sportily attired.
“I hope you didn’t mind my shouting up at you last night,” he said apologetically, “but I had been travelling night and day and I had had no sleep and naturally I was a little rattled when I heard that noise going on overhead. Did you drop a box or something?”
“To be exact, I didn’t drop a box at all,” said Tab. “In fact, the noise you heard was made by a burglar.”
“A burglar?” said the startled man. “I heard the row and it woke me up. I got out of bed and yelled up, as I thought, to you.”
“What time was this?”
“Between ten and half-past,” said the other. “It was just getting dark.”
“He must have dropped the box as he was putting it on the bed,” said Tab thoughtfully. “You didn’t by any chance see him?”
“I heard him go out about a quarter of an hour after I’d made a fuss,” said the man from downstairs, “and I was feeling so ashamed of myself for losing my temper that I opened the door to apologize for shouting at him.”
“You didn’t see him?”
The man shook his head.
“He shut the door quick, just as I got into the passage. The only thing I saw was his hand on the edge of the door. He was wearing black gloves. Naturally I thought it was you, though the black gloves seemed to be a queer sort of thing for a young man to wear, even if he was in mourning, and taking it for granted that it was you, and that you were mad with me, I thought no more about it.”
All this Tab duly reported to Carver.
That ended the episode of Saturday. Sunday’s surprise was more pleasant but not less disturbing. It was late in the evening, and Tab was reading by the light of a table-lamp, when the bell which connected with the front door rang urgently. This meant that the front door was closed. On the night of Wellington Brown’s visit it was open. He unconsciously connected the two visitations and wondered whether his instinct was working as well as Carver could wish. Putting the book aside, he went down and opened the door, and nearly staggered in his astonishment, for his visitor was Ursula Ardfem, and her little car stood by the edge of the sidewalk.
“I am on my way to the Central,” she explained. “May I come in?”
He had seen the two suitcases strapped to the back of the car and had wondered to what distant and inaccessible spot she was bound.
“Come in, please,” he said hastily. “I am afraid this room is rather smoky.” He made to pull up the blind, but she stopped him.
“Please don’t,” she said, “I am all nerves and shivers and I feel I could swoon on the slightest excuse. It is rather a pity that that delightful practice of our grandmothers’ days went out of fashion. It would be such a relief to swoon sometimes.” Her tone was half-jesting, but there was a whole lot of seriousness in her face. “I am coming to live at the Central again,” she said, “though I really cannot afford that extravagance.”
“What has happened?”
“Stone Cottage is haunted,” was the staggering reply.
“Haunted?”
She nodded and a momentary smile came into her eyes, only to fade
