At first he thought of taking Mr. Duke into his confidence and asking him to assist him in some subterfuge by which he could enter the house. But presently he saw that it would be better if the old gentleman knew nothing of his plan, lest he might inadvertently warn a possible criminal.
For the same reason—that Mr. Duke might get to know of it—he decided he would be wiser not to undertake the business in person. But he knew the man for the job—a certain detective-sergeant named Patrick Nolan. This man was something of a Don Juan in his way, and had a positive genius for extracting confidences from the fair sex. If he could scrape acquaintance with the maids of the establishment, it would not be long before he knew all they had to tell.
Accordingly next morning he sent for Sergeant Nolan and explained his idea, and Nolan, who, where his superiors were concerned, was a man of few words, said, “Yes, sir,” and withdrew.
The following day he returned with his first report. It seemed that, changing into the garb of a better-class mechanic and taking a small kit of tools with him, he had called at Mr. Duke’s in the character of an electrician who had been sent to overhaul the light fittings.
Miss Duke happened to be out, and the rather pretty housemaid who opened the door, charmed with the newcomer’s manner, admitted him without hesitation. He had gone all over the house, paying particular attention to Mr. Duke’s bedroom. In the middle of the day he had asked and been granted leave to heat his can of soup at the kitchen fire, and to such purpose had he used the opportunities thus gained that before he left he had prevailed on the pretty housemaid to go with him to supper and the pictures on her next evening out. “Once I get a drop of spirits into her I’ll get all she knows,” he concluded, “though I doubt if it’ll be much.”
“That’s all right so far as it goes,” French admitted, “but what have you actually found out?”
“Well, there’s first of all the family. It’s a small one; there’s only the father and the daughter, Miss Sylvia. The mother’s alive, but she has been in a lunatic asylum for years, quite incurable, they said. Miss Sylvia is a nice-looking young lady and well liked, by what Rachael says—that’s the housemaid. Then there’s the servants; this Rachael, and another girl, Annie, and Sarah, the cook, and there’s a shover they call Manley. I didn’t see him, but the girls seem all right—not the kind that would be after the keys of jewel safes anyway.”
“What’s the house like?”
“It’s a middling big house, and the furniture’ll have been good when it was bought, though it’s getting a trifle shabby now. Mr. Duke’s bedroom is at the end of the left wing, and Miss Duke’s is in the front of the house, so anybody could go through Mr. Duke’s room without being seen. Anybody could get a mould of that key if he left it in his room, say, while he was having his bath.”
“Did you find out any possibilities; any tradesmen in, like yourself, or anyone staying in the house?”
The Sergeant shook his head.
“I did not, sir,” he admitted. “I thought I had maybe done enough for one day. I didn’t want to be after starting them wondering about me. But I’ll get that out of Rachael tomorrow night.”
“Better see that Manley, the chauffeur—or no, I shall see him myself. You stick to what you’re at. Anything else?”
“No, sir, I think not. What the girls talked most about was Miss Sylvia’s engagement. It seems she was engaged to some friend in the City and they were to have been married at the end of the month, and now they’ve had some bust up and the whole thing’s postponed, if not off altogether.”
“That so? They didn’t tell you the reason?”
“They did not, sir. But I can likely find out from Rachael if you want to know.”
“I don’t suppose I do,” French returned, “but you might as well find out what you can—on spec. You know who the young man is?”
“No, sir. They didn’t say.”
French looked up his notebook.
“I seem to know a deal more about it than you do,” he grumbled. “He is a clerk in Mr. Duke’s office, name of Harrington—Stanley Harrington. I interviewed him with the others in the office on the day after the murder, and he told me about the engagement. It seemed to be going strong then. When did they postpone it?”
“They didn’t say that either, sir.”
“Well, find that out, too. That’ll do for the present.”
That evening French, in the guise of an out-of-work mechanic, took up his stand near Mr. Duke’s house, and presently saw the old gentleman arrive back from business in his car. An hour later he followed the chauffeur from the garage to a house in a small street off Esther Road. There French hung about for perhaps another hour, when he had the satisfaction of seeing the quarry emerge again, pass down the street, and disappear into the Rose and Thistle bar. This was just what the Inspector had hoped for, and after a few minutes he followed him in.
To scrape acquaintance was easy enough. French, as a motor mechanic out of work, was provided with a ready introduction to any chauffeur, and over a couple of glasses of beer he learned first of the chances of jobs in the district, and secondly, by skilful pumping, many details of his new companion’s work and of the Duke ménage. But he heard nothing that seemed in the slightest degree suspicious or interesting. The man himself, moreover, seemed of an honest, harmless type, and much too stupid to be concerned personally in enterprises with keys of safes.
For a day the inquiry hung fire, and then Sergeant Nolan brought in a report which turned the Inspector’s thoughts into still another channel. Nolan had,
