“That key was in Rex’s box. I remember now that he mentioned casually that he put it in his trunk before he went away.”
Carver nodded.
“I guessed that,” he said. “Probably we both arrived at that solution when we saw the key on the table. The burglary of your flat is, of course, explained. He came the first time for the key and was disturbed by the tenant from the flat beneath and got away before it had been found. Tonight, the need being urgent, he took a chance, found the key, and—” he shrugged. “How did the key get on the table? The door was locked both sides, yet there is the key—and the new pin,” he added half to himself, “the second new pin.”
He got up and stretched himself and began to pace up and down old Trasmere’s sitting-room.
“No weapon, nothing but the body—and the new pin,” he mused, half to himself. “This lets out friend Walters, of course; there isn’t a shadow of evidence against him after this second murder. We can hold him for theft on his own confession—but no more. Tab, I am going down to the vault; I don’t want you to come with me. There are one or two things that I want to be certain about.”
He was gone half-an-hour and Tab, whose head was throbbing, was glad to see him when he returned.
Carver said nothing, walked out into the hall where the police constable was sitting.
“Nobody is to be allowed into this house unless they are accompanied by me,” he said.
He drove Tab to Doughty Street and went up to see the damage that the burglar had done. But he was less interested in the condition of Rex Lander’s wardrobe than he was in the torn photographs. He held their borders to the light.
“No fingerprints, he wore gloves, of course. I wondered if—yes, ah, here it is.” He pieced together a torn photograph; scrawled on the face was a heavy black cross. “Yes, I expected that,” he said to himself.
“If I were you, Tab, I should put the bolt on the door tonight. I don’t want to alarm you unduly but I rather think you should. The Man in Black is going to stop at nothing. Have you got a gun?”
Tab shook his head and Carver slipped the automatic from his pocket and laid it on the table.
“Borrow mine,” he said, “and take my considered advice—do not hesitate to shoot anybody you find in this flat, or in your room tonight.”
“You are a cheerful little soul, Carver!”
“Better be cheerful than dead,” said the detective cryptically, and left him to puzzle it out.
XXIII
The noise of the roaring presses came up to Tab as he worked in his office. The building shook and trembled, for every machine was running with the story of the mystery of Mayfield. Slip by slip his copy was rushed to the linotype room. Presently the presses would stop and the last city edition would be prepared.
He finished at last, pulled the last sheet from the typewriter and hunched himself back in the chair.
To the detective’s warning he gave no serious attention. He was perfectly satisfied in his own mind that the burglar had come to his flat in order to secure the key. The menace was not against himself, but against Rex Lander. What was that menace, he wondered? Had the old man some other relative who felt himself wronged when the property passed into the hands of the Babe? He was confident that the search of his own belongings had been made in order to find something that had to do with Rex. As to the tearing up of his photographs—he grinned at the thought.
“I never did like those pictures anyway,” he said.
“What pictures?” asked a solitary reporter in the room.
“I am vocalising my thoughts and unveiling the tablet of my mind,” said Tab politely.
The late duty man grinned.
“You are a lucky devil,” he said, “to be in both these cases. I have been five years on this paper and never had anything more exciting than a blackmail case which was hushed up before it went to court. What’s that drawing?”
“I am trying to draw a plan of the vault and the passage,” said Tab.
“Was the body found in exactly the same place?” asked the interested reporter.
“Almost,” said Tab.
“And the key?”
Tab nodded.
“Is there a window to the vault?” asked the reporter hopefully.
Tab shook his head.
“If the murderer was a bug, he couldn’t have got into that vault without unlocking the door,” he said.
As he was speaking the chief came in. He very seldom visited the reporters’ room and it was unusual to find him at the office at all after eleven o’clock. But the news of the crime had been telephoned to him and he had driven in. He was a stout man with gray hair and a disconcerting habit of anticipating excuses. He was at once High Priest and Father Confessor of the Megaphone office.
“Come into my room, Holland,” he said, and Tab obeyed meekly.
“The Trasmere murder seems to have been repeated in every detail,” he said. “Have you found out where this man Brown has been?”
“I gather that he has been in an opium den of some kind,” said Tab. “Yeh Ling—”
“The man who owns the Golden Roof?” asked the editor quickly.
“That’s the chap. He gave us a hint that that is where Brown had been staying. The man was a notorious drug fiend.”
“I understand that two men went into the house together. Nobody saw the second man?”
“Nobody except Stott,” said Tab, “and Stott was so scared that he cannot give us anything like a picture of either of them. Certainly nobody saw him come out; he was gone when we arrived.”
“And the key on the table—what does that mean?”
Tab made a gesture of despair.
“Of course I know what it means,” said the
