“Instructive,” said Leyland. “If Mr. Quirk is right, our friend probably wanted to climb out of the window. May we go round and see it? He couldn’t climb out of the front room without risking being seen.”
The window of Number Two certainly seemed to bear out the theory. It was large, and low in the wall; and an outhouse roof made it a very simple climb down. Proceeding, the landlady explained that the second gentleman arrived about five or ten minutes later, and she knew who he was by the camera slung across his back. She couldn’t hardly say whether he was like the other gentleman, but she thought yes; and as for his voice, why, the second gentleman didn’t hardly so much as open his mouth, except to say Thank you. Had the second gentleman a pack on his shoulders too? Why no, she thought not, but she didn’t feel surprised over that, seeing as the pack the first gentleman had was plenty for two; very big pack it was. Was the first gentleman still moving in his bedroom when the second gentleman came upstairs? Ah, she’d have to ask the girl that, it was Lizzy took the second gentleman upstairs. Lizzy was then summoned, and said No, she had not heard the other gentleman move, not to remember it.
“Were his boots outside the door?” asked Leyland.
No, it appeared that neither gentleman had put his boots out to be cleaned. Recalled, and asked whether this behaviour was usual among travellers, the landlady deposed that she couldn’t hardly say; some did, some didn’t. But these river folk would as like as not be wearing sandshoes or something of that; and if so, why then their boots wouldn’t want no cleaning. Were both beds slept in? Lizzy had to be recalled. Yes, both beds had been slept in, very much tumbled about they was, and both basins used. The first gentleman gave no orders about calling; the second asked to have a tray left outside on the mat, with a pot of tea and a couple of nice poached eggs. That was at half-past seven, and the other gentleman, that was the gentleman from Number Two, he came down about a quarter before eight. Did he have breakfast? Oh yes, a pot of tea and a couple of nice poached eggs.
“Good God,” said Bredon, “did the man get through four poached eggs in a morning?”
“Might have shied the bedroom eggs into those bushes,” suggested Leyland. “The birds would have got them by now.”
Number Two, it appeared, had not taken long over his breakfast, but had paid his bill and set out for the river about a quarter-past eight. As for Number Three, there wasn’t nobody could speak to having seen him go out. But the bill was paid for both.
“Has anybody been staying here since,” asked Leyland, “or would the rooms be more or less as they were left?”
No, there had been no later visitors; it wasn’t hardly the season not so early in the month. But Lizzy, of course, she had done the rooms after the gentleman left. Still, they were welcome to go up and see. They inspected both rooms, Leyland and Bredon addressing particular attention to the window-frame of Number Two, in the hope that they might find some traces of a hurried exit. But no scratches were apparent; and it looked as if they would have to return home with the unsatisfactory experience of a theory formed, tested, and corroborated, but not proved. They were already on their way downstairs when the American spoke almost for the first time:
“It’s with considerable diffidence that I make any suggestions to such competent investigators, but isn’t it possible that we might still find some thumb-marks? Our experts in the United States have laid it down that, if there was any grease on the hand, a finger- or thumb-mark, even when invisible to the naked eye, may persist for a considerable number of days. And I’ve noticed myself in your country that the hotel servants aren’t always just very particular in the way they do the rooms. Now, I would suggest, that if you’ve got any powder in your kit, you might just try the carafes in those rooms for fingerprints.”
It seemed a desperate remedy; but in default of a better suggestion it was tried. The impossible resulted; on either decanter appeared at least one thumbprint, in tolerably definite outline. There was a tense silence as Leyland carried them to the window, and held them up side by side. There could be no reasonable doubt of the fact—the thumb-marks were exactly similar. Both decanters were carefully wrapped up, and carried off as spoils of the victory.
“Mr. Quirk,” said Leyland, “I’m hanged if I know what to make of your discovery. But you’ve proved your idea up to the hilt, and I must say I hope you’ll keep on working at the case. I’m always ready to give you any ‘pointers,’ as you call them, within reason. You’re staying at the Gudgeon, I think?”
“You’ll find me right there until this business is cleared up, Inspector. I don’t know what it is, but a real detective puzzle kind of gets hold of a man the way he can’t drop it if he wanted to. And I have to be on this side for nearly two months yet, so that the Gudgeon Hotel is a good enough address for me.
