Miss Fordingbridge made no reply. Sir Clinton interposed tactfully to relieve the obvious strain of the situation.
“We shall do our best, Miss Fordingbridge. I never care to promise more than that, you understand. Now, can you see anything else that’s gone a-missing from here?”
Miss Fordingbridge pulled herself together with an effort. Clearly the loss of the diary had been a severe blow to her sentiment about her nephew’s study. She glanced round the room, her eyes halting here and there at times when she seemed in doubt. At last she completed her survey.
“I don’t miss anything else,” she said. “And I don’t think there’s anything gone that I wouldn’t miss if it had been taken away.”
Sir Clinton nodded reflectively, and led the way in an examination of the rest of the house. Nothing else of any note was discovered. All the window-fastenings seemed to be intact; and there was no sign of any means whereby thieves could have entered the premises. An inspection of the contents of the sack in the drawing-room yielded no striking results. It was filled with a collection of silver knickknacks evidently picked up merely because they were silver. Neither Paul Fordingbridge nor his sister could recall anything of real intrinsic value which might have been stolen.
“Twenty pounds’ worth at the most. And they didn’t even get away with it,” Sir Clinton said absentmindedly, as he watched the inspector, in his rubber gloves, replacing the articles in the sack in preparation for transporting them to the car.
“Is that all we can do for you?” Paul Fordingbridge asked, with a certain restraint in his manner, when the Inspector had finished his task.
Sir Clinton answered with an affirmative nod. His thoughts seemed elsewhere, and he had the air of being recalled to the present by Paul Fordingbridge’s voice.
“Then, in that case, we can go, Jay. I’m sure Sir Clinton would prefer things left untouched at present, so you mustn’t come about here again, shifting anything, until he gives permission. Care to keep the keys?” he added, turning to the chief constable.
“Inspector Armadale had better have them,” Sir Clinton answered.
Paul Fordingbridge handed over the bunch of keys, made a faint gesture of farewell, and followed his sister to the car. Sir Clinton moved across to the window and watched them start down the avenue before he opened his mouth. When they had disappeared round a bend in the road, he turned to his two companions again. Wendover could see that he looked more serious even than at Peter Hay’s cottage.
“I may as well say at once, inspector, that I do not propose to extend my bus-driver’s holiday to the extent of making a trip to Australia.”
Armadale evidently failed to follow this line of thought.
“Australia, sir? I never said anything about Australia.”
Sir Clinton seemed to recover his good spirits.
“True, now I come to think of it. Shows how little there is in all this talk about telepathy. I’d made certain I’d read your thoughts correctly; and now it turns out that you weren’t thinking at all. A mental blank, what? Tut! Tut! It’s a warning against rushing to conclusions, inspector.”
“I don’t see myself rushing to Australia, anyhow, sir.”
“H’m! Perhaps we’ll get along without that, if we’re lucky. But think of the platypus, inspector. Wouldn’t you like to see it at home?”
The inspector gritted his teeth in an effort to restrain his temper. He glanced at Wendover, with evident annoyance at his presence.
“It’s going to be a pretty problem, evidently,” Sir Clinton continued in a more thoughtful tone. “Now, what about the evidence? We’d better pool it while it’s fresh in our minds. Civilians first. What did you see in it all, squire?”
Wendover decided to be concise.
“No signs of entry into the house. Bag of silver odds and ends in drawing-room, as if ready for removal. Set of volumes of diary removed from nephew’s study. Strange story of missing nephew turning up. That’s all I can think of just now.”
“Masterly survey, squire,” said Sir Clinton cordially. “Except that you’ve left out most of the points of importance.”
He nodded to Armadale.
“See anything else, inspector? The credit of the force is at stake, remember.”
“Mr. Fordingbridge didn’t seem overmuch cut up by Peter Hay’s death, sir.”
“There’s something in that. Either he’s a reserved person by nature, or else he’d something of more importance to himself on his mind, if one can judge from what we saw. Anything more?”
“Mr. Fordingbridge and Miss Fordingbridge seemed a bit at cross-purposes over this nephew.”
“That was more than obvious, I admit. Anything else?”
“Whoever packed up that silver must have come in with a key.”
“I think that goes down to Mr. Wendover’s score, inspector. It follows directly from the fact that the house wasn’t broken into in any way.”
“The silver here and the silver at Peter Hay’s link up the two affairs.”
“Probably correct. Anything further?”
“No more evidence, sir.”
Sir Clinton reflected for a moment.
“I’ll give you something. I was watching Mr. Fordingbridge’s face when the loss of the diary was discovered. He was more than usually annoyed when that turned up. You weren’t looking at him just then, so I mention it.”
“Thanks,” Armadale responded, with some interest showing in his voice.
“That missing diary would be a useful weapon,” Sir Clinton continued. “You could check statements by it; or you could produce false statements from it, if you were a swindling claimant.”
“That’s self-evident,” Wendover interjected.
“So it is,” Sir Clinton admitted blandly. “I suppose that’s why you didn’t mention it yourself, squire. To continue. There’s one point which strikes me as interesting. Supposing that Miss Fordingbridge hadn’t come up here today, do you think we’d have discovered that the diary was missing at all?”
“No, unless Mr. Fordingbridge had noticed the loss.”
“Naturally. Now I’ll give you a plain hint. What is there behind Mr. Fordingbridge’s evident annoyance? That seems to me a fruitful line for speculation, if you’re thinking of thinking, as it were.”
Wendover reflected for a moment.
“You mean that the diary would
