“I was in a terrible state of mind, for I had in my room a considerable quantity of stolen property and I knew that my next conviction would mean a very long sentence. I rushed up to the room, gathered my stuff together and was out of the house a little before three. As I opened the door I saw Mr. Rex Lander standing by the gate. I had seen Mr. Lander before, because he had stayed for a little time in the house a month after I had taken up my position. He had always been very nice to me and he is a gentleman for whom I have a great deal of respect.
“His uncle, the late Mr. Trasmere, did not like him. He told me once that Mr. Rex was extravagant and lazy. On seeing Mr. Rex at the gate my heart went down into my boots and I thought that he must immediately detect that something was wrong. He asked me if his uncle was ill and that gave me a moment to pull myself together, and I told him that I was going on a very urgent errand and running into the street, I had the good luck to find a taxicab which drove me to the Central Station. I did not, however, leave town, but made my way to a room which I had once occupied in a house which I knew in Reed Street, where I have been in hiding ever since. I did not see Mr. Trasmere again after lunch. He did not come out to enquire who had called when the telegram arrived; there were frequent callers, tradesmen and others, and I never reported to him unless there was something important or unless letters or telegrams came for him. I have never been in the vault or in the passage leading to the vault, nor have I at any time owned a revolver.
“I make this statement voluntarily, without any pressure, and have answered the questions which Inspector Carver has put to me, without any suggestion on his part as to the way they should be answered.”
XX
“There is the statement,” said Carver. “Not a line must be used; only the fact that the statement has been made can be published. What do you think of it?”
“It reads fairly honest to me,” said Tab, and the inspector nodded.
“It does to me also. I never had the slightest doubt in my mind that Walters, or Felling, was innocent. The references to Miss Ardfern’s visits are a little obscure, and in one sense rather remarkable, particularly the old man’s reference to the pin.”
“You are thinking of the pin we found in the corridor?” said Tab quickly.
Carver laughed softly.
“I was and I wasn’t,” he said. “The pin of which the old man spoke was obviously one of the jewels which were in the box, and as obviously he was taking an inventory of the jewel-case to see that everything was there.”
Tab was silent for a while.
“You mean that the jewels really belonged to Trasmere, that he loaned them to the girl and that she had to return them every night?” he asked quietly.
“There is no other explanation,” said Carver. “There is no other explanation, either, for her secretarial activities. Trasmere was in a score of enterprises and I have no doubt that he was the man who put up the money for Ursula Ardfern’s season. He was a shrewd old boy and probably had seen her acting. My own impression is that he made a fortune out of this girl—”
“But why should she, a successful actress, consent to act as his midnight secretary? Why should she go on as though she were a slave to this man, instead of being, if your theory is correct, an earner of big money?”
Carver looked at him steadily.
“Because he knew something about Miss Ardfern, something that she did not wish should be known,” he said gently. “I am not suggesting it is anything discreditable to her,” he went on discreetly, detecting the cloud gathering on Tab’s face. “Some day she’ll tell us all about it I daresay. At present, it is unimportant.”
He got up from his desk—they were talking in his office—and stretched himself.
“This concludes the day’s entertainment, gentlemen,” he said, “and if you are dissatisfied, your money will be returned to you at the doors.”
There were moments when Carver could be facetious.
“No, I’m not going home. I have a couple of hours’ work here. I shan’t be disturbed. Happily the station telephone is out of order. A tree fell across a line somewhere between here and the exchange. Remember, Tab, only the briefest notes of Walters’ arrest. Nothing about the charge, not a single item of his statement, beyond the fact that he has made one.”
Happily Jacques had gone home, or the news editor would have exploded at the meagre details with which Tab supplied his newspaper that night.
He reached home at half-past eleven with a queer little ache at his heart. What was Ursula Ardfern’s secret? Why the mystery? Why must her mystery be interwoven with the greater and the more sordid mystery of the old man’s death?
As he pushed open the door he saw a telegram in the box which was common to the whole of the flats, once the entrance door was closed. It was for him and he tore open the envelope and unfolded its flimsy contents. It was handed in at Naples and was from Rex.
“Going on to Egypt. Quite recovered. Shall be back in a month.”
He smiled to himself and hoped that “quite recovered” referred to his youthful infatuation as well as his disordered nerves. He paused outside the door of his flat to find his key and as he did so, he thought he heard a sound. It may have come from one of the
