“He insisted on it—in the end,” answered Viner. “And in my opinion he was right. But—you think this is very serious?”
“Serious? Yes!” exclaimed Felpham. “He says he spent the night in a shed in the Harrow Road district. Now the things that were taken from Ashton’s body are discovered in such a place—nay, the very place; for if you remember, Hyde particularized his whereabouts. What’s the obvious conclusion? What can anybody think?”
“I see two or three obvious conclusions, and I think several things,” remarked Viner. “I’ll tell you what they are when we’ve seen Drillford. I’m not alarmed about this discovery, Felpham. I think it may lead to finding the real murderer.”
“You see further than I do, then,” muttered Felpham. “I only see that it’s highly dangerous to Hyde’s interests. And I want first-handed information about it.”
Drillford, discovered alone in his office, smiled as the two men walked in—there was an irritating I-told-you-so air about him.
“Ah!” he said. “I see you gentlemen have been reading the afternoon papers! What do you think about your friend now, Mr. Viner?”
“Precisely what I thought before and shall continue to think,” retorted Viner. “I’ve seen no reason to alter my opinion.”
“Oh—but I guess Mr. Felpham doesn’t think that way?” replied Drillford with a shrewd glance at the solicitor. “Mr. Felpham knows the value of evidence, I believe!”
“What is it that’s been found, exactly?” asked Felpham.
Drillford opened a locked drawer, lifted aside a sheet of cardboard, and revealed a fine gold watch and chain and a diamond ring. These lay on two or three sheets of much crumpled paper of a peculiar quality.
“There you are!” said Drillford. “Those belonged to Mr. Ashton; there’s his name on the watch, and a mark of his inside the ring. They were found early this morning, hidden, in the very place in which Hyde confessed that he spent most of the night after Ashton’s murder—a shed belonging to one Fisher, a greengrocer, up the Harrow Road.
“Who found them?” demanded Felpham.
“Fisher himself,” answered Drillford. “He was pottering about in his shed before going to Covent Garden. He wanted some empty boxes, and in pulling things about he found—these! Couldn’t have made a more important find, I think.
“Were these things loose?” asked Viner.
“Wrapped loosely in the paper they’re lying on,” replied Drillford.
Viner took the paper out of the drawer, examined it and lifted it to his nose.
“I wonder, if Hyde really did put those things there,” he said, “how Hyde came to be carrying about with him these sheets of paper which had certainly been used before for the wrappings of chemicals or drugs?”
Felpham pricked his ears.
“Eh?” he said. “What’s that?”
“Smell for yourself,” answered Viner. “Let the inspector smell too. I draw the attention to both of you to the fact, because we’ll raise that point whenever it’s necessary. Those papers have at some time been used to wrap some strong-smelling drug.”
“No doubt of it!” said Felpham, who was applying the papers to his nose. “Smell them, Drillford! As Mr. Viner says, what would Hyde be doing with this stuff in his pocket?”
“That’s a mere detail,” remarked Drillford impatiently. “These chaps that mooch about, as Hyde was doing, pick up all sorts of odds and ends. He may have pinched them from a chemist’s shop. Anyway, there’s the fact—and we’ll hang him on it! You’ll see!”
“We shall never see anything of the sort!” said Viner. “You’re on the wrong tack, Inspector. Let me put two or three things to your intelligence. Where’s Ashton’s purse? I know for a fact that Ashton had a purse full of money when he went out of his house that night—Mrs. Killenhall and Miss Wickham saw him take it out just before he left to give some cash to the parlourmaid, and they saw him replace it in his trousers pocket; I also know for another fact where he spent money that evening—in short, I know now a good deal about his movements for some hours before his death.”
“Then you ought to tell us, Mr. Viner,” said Drillford a little sulkily. “You oughtn’t to keep any information to yourself.”
“You’re going on the wrong tack, or I might,” retorted Viner. “But you’ll know all in good time. Now, I ask you again—where’s Ashton’s purse? You know as well as I do that when his clothing was examined, almost immediately after his death, all his effects were gone—watch, chain, rings, pocketbook, purse. If Hyde took the whole lot, do you think he would ever have been such a consummate ass as to wait until next morning to pawn that ring in Edgware Road? The idea is preposterous!”
“And why, pray?” demanded Drillford, obviously nettled at the turn which the conversation was taking.
“I wonder your own common sense doesn’t tell you,” said Viner with intentional directness. “If Hyde took everything from his victim, as you say he did, he would have had a purse full of ready money. He could have gone off to some respectable lodging-house. He could have put a hundred miles between himself and London by breakfast-time. He would have had ready money to last him for months. But—he was starving when he went to the pawnbrokers! Hyde told you the truth—he never had anything but that ring.”
“Good!” muttered Felpham. “Good, Viner! That’s one in the eye for you, Drillford.”
“Another thing that you’re forgetting, Inspector,” continued Viner: “I suppose you attach some value to probabilities? Do you, as a sensible man, believe for one moment that Hyde, placed in the position he is, would be such a fool, such a suicidal fool, as to tell you about that particular shed if he’d really hidden those things there? The mere idea is absurd—ridiculous!”
“Good again, Viner!” said Felpham. “He wouldn’t!”
Drillford, obviously ill-pleased, put the strongly-smelling paper and the valuables which had been wrapped in it, back in the drawer and turned the key.
“All very well talking and theorizing, Mr. Viner,” he said sullenly. “We know from his own lips that Hyde did spend the night
