She gave them supper, and after the men had helped clear away the remains of the meal, Tab, at her request, filled his pipe. Carver said he did not wish to smoke.
Conversation, for some reason, seemed to flag. They sat silently about the table, each busy with his own thoughts. Suddenly Ursula said:
“I am almost inclined to make a restricted confession to you, Mr. Carver. I don’t think I should never have dreamt of doing so if I had ever met you.”
“Restricted confessions are irritating things,” said Carver, “so I don’t think I should confess if I were you, Miss Ardfern, especially as I know what the restricted confession is all about.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“You know,” she said.
He nodded.
“You would tell me,” he said, “that you were in the habit of going to Trasmere’s house every night, to leave your jewels with him, though that wasn’t the object of your visit. You went there,” he said slowly and not looking at her, “to act as his secretary. All the letters that were sent away by Jesse Trasmere were typewritten by you on a portable machine, the make of the machine is a Cortona, its number is 29754, it has one key-cap missing, and the letter r is a little out of alignment.”
He enjoyed her consternation for a second and then went on:
“Perhaps you weren’t going to tell me that you and Yeh Ling, the proprietor of the Golden Roof, paid a visit to Mayfield the night I nearly caught you? No, I see that you weren’t. So we’ll restrict the confession to your peculiar occupation.”
Tab was speechless.
Ursula Ardfern the old man’s secretary! One of the most successful actresses in London acting as amanuensis to that crabbed misanthrope; it was unbelievable. Yet a glance at the girl’s face told him that Carver had only spoken the truth.
“How do you know?” she gasped.
Carver smiled again.
“We have very clever people in the police,” he said drily. “You would never imagine it to read the newspapers. Clever old sixty-nine inch brains, eh, Tab?”
“I never said that you had a sixty-nine inch brain,” avowed Tab stoutly.
“But—” interrupted the girl, and her voice was agitated, “do you know—do you know anything else? Why we went that night?”
“You went to show Yeh Ling where the old man kept some of his secret documents, in the fake brick in the fireplace. You went hoping that in that box there were some papers which related to you and you were disappointed. The only thing I am in doubt about is this—was Yeh Ling disappointed too?”
She shook her head.
“I wondered,” mused Carver. “Of course, I guessed that it was in the little lacquer box, and guessed also that the little lacquer box had a false bottom. Am I right?”
She shook her head again.
“No—Yeh Ling thought it was there; the document he sought was in the brick-box.”
“You have the key of Mayfield,” said Carver. “I think you had better give it to me. Otherwise, you may be getting into serious trouble.”
She went out of the room without a word, came back and handed him the small Yale key, which he glanced at and dropped into his pocket.
“If I were a writing man, which, thank heavens, I am not,” he said, “I should carry this story of the Trasmere murder, the ‘Mystery of the Three Keys.’ Here is one solved, and it wasn’t much of a mystery. There are two others. The third is the most difficult of all.”
“You mean the key that was found on the table in the vault?”
He nodded.
“Yes,” he said, and said no more.
In her discretion, Ursula asked no further questions.
Tab was looking at Carver with a new respect.
“Every day, Carver,” he said seriously, “you are getting nearer the fictional ideal of a real detective!”
Carver’s down-turned lips took an upward curve, and then he looked at his watch.
“Ten o’clock, Miss Ardfern,” he said with mock severity, and Ursula made a move to the door. “We must turn these lights out before you leave the room. Everything must be done in order, remembering that somewhere the Black Man is watching.”
She shivered.
It was Tab who blew out the light in the drawing-room.
“I think we may draw the curtains,” said Carver softly, and pulled back the heavy velvet hangings from the window.
It was a starlight night and there was just sufficient light in the sky to outline the gateway.
“This will do admirably,” he said, settling himself in the window-seat. “If you must smoke, Tab, don’t bring your pipe within sight of that gate.”
Tab groaned and laid his pipe upon the fender.
Ten minutes later Ursula came into the room.
“May I stay?” she whispered. “I have put out my bedroom light most artistically.”
They conversed in whispers for an hour, and Tab was beginning to feel sleepy when a hiss from Carver stopped him in the middle of a sentence. Looking out of the window he saw a dark figure by the gate. It was impossible to distinguish more than the outlines. It appeared to be a man of considerable height, but this might have been and probably was an illusion. It wore a broad-brimmed hat, presumably dark; more than this they could not see. They waited in silence as the gate opened and the figure stole noiselessly into the garden.
It was halfway to the door when another figure appeared. It came from nowhere, seeming to rise up from the ground; and then before the man in the wide-awake hat could draw back, the second man had
