The door clicked to behind the men and the shrouded thing they carried. The clock struck again.
“Good for you, grandfather,” muttered Anthony, without turning in his chair to look. “I wish to High Heaven you could talk for a moment or two.”
“Bong!” went the clock again.
Anthony pulled out his watch. The hands stood at eleven o’clock. “All right, granddad,” he said. “You needn’t say any more. I know the time. I wish you could tell me what happened last night instead of being so damned musical.”
The clock went on striking. Anthony wandered to the door, paused, and went back to the writing-table. As he sat down again the clock chimed its final stroke.
He felt a vague discomfort, shook it off and continued his scrutiny of the table. It was of some age, and beautiful in spite of its solidity. The red leather covering of its top had upon it many a stain of wear and inks. Yet one of these stains seemed to Anthony to differ from the general air of the others. He rubbed it with his fingers. It was raised and faintly sticky. It was at the back of the flat part of the tabletop. Immediately behind it rose two tiers of drawers and pigeonholes. Also, its length was bisected by a crack in the wood.
He rubbed at the stain again; then cursed aloud. That vague sense of something wrong in the room, something which did not fit the essential sanity of life, had returned to his head and spoilt these new thoughts.
The door opened and shut. “What’s the matter, sir? Puzzled?” Boyd came and stood behind him.
“Yes, dammit!” Anthony swung round impatiently. “This room’s getting on my nerves. Either there’s something wrong in it or I’ve got complex fan-tods. Never mind that, though. Boyd, I think I’m going to give you still more proof that there was no struggle. Come here.”
Boyd came eagerly. Anthony twisted round to face the table again.
“Attend! The body was found over there by the fireplace. If one accepts as true the indications that a struggle took place, the natural inference is that Hoode was overpowered and struck down where he was found. But we have found certain signs that lead us to believe that the struggle was, in fact, no struggle at all, and here, I think, is another which will also show that Hoode’s body was dragged over to the hearth after he had been killed.”
Boyd grew excited. “How d’you mean, sir?”
“This is what I mean.” Anthony pointed to the stain he had been examining. “Look at this mark here, where my finger is. Doesn’t it look different to the others?”
“Can’t say that it does to me, sir. I had a look over that table myself and saw nothing out of the ordinary run.”
“Well, I beg to differ. It not only looks different, it feels different. I notice these things. I’m so psychic, you know!”
Boyd grinned at the chaff, watching with keen interest as Anthony opened a penknife and inserted the blade in the lock of the table’s middle drawer.
“I think,” said Anthony, “that this is one of those old jump locks. Aha! it is.” He pulled open the drawer. “Now, was that stain different? Voilà! It was.”
Boyd peered over Anthony’s shoulder. The drawer was a long one, reaching the whole width of the table. In it were notebooks, pencils, half-used scribbling pads, and, at the back, a pile of notepaper and envelopes.
On the white surface of the topmost envelope of the pile was a dark, brownish-red patch of the size, perhaps, of a half-crown. Boyd examined it eagerly.
“You’re right, sir!” he cried. “It’s blood right enough. I see what you were going to say. This is hardly dry. It must have dripped through that crack where the stain you pointed out was. And the position of that stain is just where the deceased’s head would have fallen if he had been sitting in this chair here and had been hit from behind.”
“Exactly,” said Anthony. “And after the first of those pats on the head Hoode must’ve been unconscious—if not dead. Ergo, if he received the first blow sitting here, as this proves he did, there was no struggle. One doesn’t sit down at one’s desk to resist a man one thinks is going to kill one, does one? What probably happened is that the murderer—who was never suspected to be such by Hoode—got behind him as he sat here, struck one or all of the blows, and then dragged the body over to the hearth to lend a touch of naturalness to the scene of strife he was going to prepare. He must be a clever devil, Boyd. There’s never a stain on the carpet between here and the fireplace. There wouldn’t have been on the table either, only he didn’t happen to spot it.”
The detective nodded. “I agree with you entirely, sir.”
But Anthony did not hear him. That wrong something was troubling him again. He clutched his head, trying vainly to fix the cause of this feeling.
Boyd tried again. “Well, we know a little more now, sir, anyhow. Quite a case for premeditation, so to speak—thanks to you.”
Anthony brought himself back to earth. “Yes, yes,” he said. “But hearken again, Boyd. I have yet more to say. Don’t wince, I have really. Here it is. Assuming the reliability, as a witness, of Poole, the old retainer, we know the murderer didn’t come into this room through the door. Nor could he, as you’ve explained, have used the chimney. Remains the one window that was open. Observe, O Boyd, that that window is in full view of a man seated at this table. Now one cannot come through a window into a room at a distance of about two yards from a man seated therein at
