It must have been an optical delusion, he thought, but the memory of the burglar came to him as he closed the door slowly behind him. For a second he hesitated, and then pushed open the closed door of the sitting-room. The first thing he noticed was that all the blinds were down, and he had left them up. He heard the sound of heavy breathing.
“Who’s there?” he asked and then reached out his hand for the switch.
Before his fingers could close upon the lever something struck him. He felt no pain, was conscious only of a terrific shock that brought him to his knees, incapable of thought or movement. Somebody pushed past him in the darkness. There was a slam of the flat door, a quick patter of feet on the stairs, and the street-door slammed.
Still Tab remained on his hands and knees, held there by his own invincible will. There was a trickle of warm blood running over his forehead and into the corner of his eye and the subsequent smart of it brought him at last to his senses. He got unsteadily to his feet and put on the lights.
It was a chair that had struck him; it lay overturned near the door. Tab felt gingerly at his forehead and then went in search of a mirror. The injury was a very slight one, the wound being superficial. He guessed that the chair must have caught against the wall and eased the blow, for one of the legs was broken and there was a long scratch on the wall. Mechanically he bathed his face, put a rough dressing on his forehead and then went back to the sitting-room to get a better idea of the confusion which reigned there, than he had been able to appreciate at first. Every drawer in his desk had been emptied. One which he kept locked and which contained his more private papers, had been forcibly broken open and the contents were scattered, some on the floor, a few on the desk. A little bureau by the wall had been treated with the same lack of courtesy and the floor was littered with its contents.
He found the same in his bedroom; every drawer rummaged except his wardrobe, every box opened.
In Rex’s room the only thing that had been touched was the second trunk that the burglar had left on his previous visit. This was on the bed, opened, and its contents had been thrown around in confusion.
Tab’s gold watch and chain, which he had inadvertently left behind, was untouched. His cashbox had been wrenched open, but though the money had been emptied out, not a cent had been taken. Then he made a curious discovery. In one of the drawers of his desk he had a portfolio of photographs of himself which had been made a year before at the request of his many maiden-aunts. This had been removed and every photograph torn into four pieces. He found the debris with the other papers. It was the only wanton damage that the burglar had done. For what had he been searching? Tab puzzled his brains to remember the possession of something which might interest an outsider. What did Rex own that was worth all the trouble that this unknown visitor had taken?
He got on to the telephone and tried to reach Carver, and then remembered Carver had told him the station phone was out of order.
On the stroke of midnight Inspector Carver was tidying his desk, preparatory to leaving, when a dishevelled and damaged Tab made his appearance.
“Hullo,” said Carver, “been fighting?”
“The other fellow did the fighting,” said Tab. “Carver, I am going to sue the man who supplied us with our furniture. He said that the chairs were mahogany and they are only pine.”
“Sit down,” commanded the detective. “You seem to be a little out of your mind,” and then quickly, “you haven’t had another visit from your burglar?”
Tab nodded.
“And what is more, I found him at home,” he said grimly, and related all that had happened in the flat.
“I’ll come along and see the damage, though I don’t think it will help us much,” said Carver slowly. “So he tore up your photographs, did he? That is rather interesting.”
“I guess he didn’t like me,” said Tab. “I have been trying to remember all the crooks I have annoyed, Carver. It can’t be young Harry Bolton, because he must be still in prison and it can’t be Lew Sorki because, if I remember rightly, he got religion in prison and he is now conducting a mission to the submerged. They are the only two people who expressed their intention of cutting short my young life.”
“It is neither of these.” Carver was emphatic on this point. “Tell me again, Tab, from the moment you opened the door to the moment you lost interest in the proceedings, just what happened. First, did you close the flat door behind you?”
“Yes,” said Tab surprised.
“And then you went into the sitting-room and he caught you a whack with the chair? There were no lights?”
“None whatever.”
“No light on the landing outside the flat door?” asked Carver eagerly.
“None.”
“And he just rushed past you and was gone. You remember that very well, I suppose, although you were knocked out?”
“I remember his going and hearing the door slam,” said Tab wondering.
Carver was making notes on his blotting pad in that strange system of shorthand which nobody understood but Carver.
“Now Tab, think very carefully before you reply, was there anything in Lander’s box, any reference to his uncle, any document respecting his uncle, anything, indeed, that had to do, even remotely, with Trasmere, in that box of Lander’s? Because I am perfectly certain that there
