He continued his laborious search of the room, but without finding anything else which interested him. Finally, while his men were photographing the prints he had discovered, he sat down in the leather-covered armchair and considered what he had learned.
Certainly a good deal of the evidence pointed to Gething. Gething knew the stones were there. According to Duke, no one else could have got hold of the key to the safe to make an impression. Moreover, his body was found before the safe with the latter open. All circumstantial evidence, of course, though cumulatively strong.
However, whether or not Gething had contemplated robbery, he had not carried it through. Someone else had the diamonds. And here the obvious possibility recurred to him which had been in his mind since he had heard the Superintendent’s first statement. Suppose Orchard was the man. Suppose Orchard, visiting the office in the evening, arrived to find the safe open and the old man stooping over it. Instantly he would be assailed by a terrible temptation. The thing would seem so easy, the way of escape so obvious, the reward so sure. French, sitting back in the armchair, tried to picture the scene. The old man bending over the safe, the young one entering, unheard. His halt in surprise; the sudden overwhelming impulse to possess the gems; his stealthy advance; the seizing of the poker; the blow, delivered perhaps with the intention of merely stunning his victim. But he strikes too hard, and, horrified by what he has done, yet sees that for his own safety he must go through with the whole business. He recalls the danger of finger prints, and wipes the handles of the poker and of the drawer in the safe from which he has abstracted the diamonds. With admirable foresight he waits until the body grows cold, lest an examination of it by the policeman he intends to call might disprove his story. Then he rushes out in an agitated manner and gives the alarm.
Though this theory met a number of the facts, French was not overpleased with it. It did not explain what Gething was doing at the safe, nor did it seem to fit in with the personality of Orchard. All the same, though his instruction to his man to shadow Orchard had been given as an obvious precaution inevitable in the circumstances, he was glad that he had not overlooked it.
Another point occurred to him as he sat thinking over the affair in the leather-lined chair. If Orchard had stolen the stones, he would never have risked having them on his person when he gave the alarm. He would certainly have hidden them, and French could not see how he could have taken them out of the building to do so. A thorough search of the offices seemed therefore called for.
The Inspector was tired, but, late as it was, he spent three solid hours conducting a meticulous examination of the whole premises, only ceasing when he had satisfied himself beyond possibility of doubt that no diamonds were concealed thereon. Then, believing that he had exhausted the possibilities of the scene of the crime, he felt himself free to withdraw. Dawn was appearing in the eastern sky as he drew the door after him and set off in the direction of his home.
III
Gathering the Threads
The fact that he had been out all the previous night was not, in Inspector French’s eyes, any reason why he should be late at his work next day. At his usual time, therefore, he reached New Scotland Yard, and promptly engaged himself in the compilation of a preliminary report on the Hatton Garden crime. This completed, he resumed direct work on the case.
There were still several obvious inquiries to be made, inquiries which might almost be called routine, in that they followed necessarily from the nature of the crime. The first of these was an interview with the other members of the Duke & Peabody staff.
An Oxford Street bus brought him to the end of Hatton Garden, and soon he was once more mounting the staircase to the scene of his last night’s investigation. He found Mr. Duke standing in the outer office with Orchard and the typist and office boy.
“I was just telling these young people they might go home,” the principal explained. “I am closing the office until after the funeral.”
“That will be appreciated by poor Mr. Gething’s family, sir. I think it is very kind of you and very proper too. But before this young lady and gentleman go I should like to ask them a question or two.”
“Of course. Will you take them into my office? Go in, Miss Prescott, and tell Inspector French anything he wants to know.”
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to do quite so much as that, Miss Prescott,” French smiled, continuing to chat pleasantly in the hope of allaying the nervousness the girl evidently felt.
But he learned nothing from her except that Mr. Duke was a very nice gentleman of whom she was somewhat in awe, and that Mr. Gething had always been very kind to her and could be depended on to let her do whatever she wanted. Neither about the clerk, Orchard, nor the pupil, Harrington, was she communicative, and the office boy, Billy Newton, she dismissed as one might a noxious insect, a negligible, if necessary, evil. Mr. Gething had been, as far as she could form a conclusion, in his usual health and spirits on the previous day, but she thought he had seemed worried and anxious for the past two or three weeks. As to herself, she liked the office, and got
