There was no answer.
“Yale!” he called more loudly. “Do you hear me?”
There was no reply and springing to the door he snapped the lock, and rushed into the room, Jack at his heels.
What they saw might have paralysed even a more experienced officer than Inspector Parr.
Stretched upon the ground, his wrists fastened with handcuffs, his ankles strapped, and a towel over his face lay the prostrate figure of Derrick Yale. The window was open, and there was a strong scent of ether and chloroform. The package of money which had lain upon the table had disappeared. Three seconds later, an aged postman left the hall of the building, carrying his letter-bag on his shoulder, and the police who were watching the house, let him pass without question.
XXIII
The Woman in the Cupboard
Parr bent down, and snatched the saturated towel from the detective’s face, and he opened his eyes, and stared around.
“What is it?” he asked thickly, but the inspector was busy unscrewing the handcuffs. Presently he threw them clanking to the floor, and lifted the man to his feet, as Jack, with trembling fingers, unbuckled the straps about Yale’s legs.
They led him to his chair, and he fell heavily into its depths, passing his hand across his forehead.
“What happened?” he asked.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Parr. “Which way did they go?”
The other shook his head.
“I don’t know, I can’t remember,” he said. “Is the door locked?”
Jack ran to the door. The key was turned from the inside. He could not have gone that way, but the window was open. That was the first thing Parr had seen when he entered the room.
He ran to the window, and looked out. There was a sheer fall of eighty feet, and no sign of a ladder or of any means by which Yale’s assailant could have escaped.
“I don’t know what happened,” said Yale, when he had partially recovered. “I was sitting in this chair when suddenly a cloth was pulled across my face, and two powerful hands gripped me with a strength which I shouldn’t have thought possible in any human being. Before I could struggle or cry out I must have lost consciousness.”
“Did you hear my call?” asked Parr.
The other man shook his head.
“But, Mr. Yale, we heard a noise and Mr. Parr asked if you were all right. You replied that you had only stumbled.”
“It was not me,” said Yale. “I remember nothing from the moment the cloth was put on my face until the moment you found me here.”
Inspector Parr was at the window. He pulled down the sash, and he pushed it up again, and then he looked on the windowsill, and when he turned there was a large smile on his face.
“That is the cleverest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Something of Jack’s old antipathy to the stout detective returned.
“I don’t think it is particularly clever. They’ve half-killed Yale, and they’ve got away,” he said.
“I said it was clever, and it was clever,” said Mr. Parr stolidly, “and now I think I’ll go down, and interview the officers I left on duty in the hall.”
But the watching officers had nothing to say. Nobody had entered or left the building except the postman.
“Except the postman, eh?” said Parr thoughtfully. “Why, of course, the postman! All right, sergeant, you can dismiss your men.”
He went up in the elevator and rejoined Yale.
“The money’s gone all right,” he said. “I don’t know what we can do except report the matter to headquarters.”
Yale was now nearly his normal self, and sat at his desk with his head resting on his hands.
“Well, I’m the culprit this time,” he said, “and they can’t blame you, Parr. I’m still trying to puzzle out how they got into that window, and how they reached me without making a sound.”
“Was your back to the window?”
Yale nodded.
“I never dreamt of the window. I sat so that I could see both doors.”
“Your back was also to the fireplace?”
“They couldn’t have come that way,” said the other, shaking his head. “No, this is the supreme mystery of my career; more astounding than the identity of the Crimson Circle,” he got up slowly, “I must report this to old man Froyant, and you had better come along and lend me your moral support,” he said. “He will be furious.”
They left the office together, Yale locking both doors and slipping the key into his pocket.
To say that Mr. Froyant was furious is to employ a very mild expression to describe his hectic frenzy.
“You told me, you practically promised me,” he stormed, “that the money would come back to me, and now you have come with a cock-and-bull story of being drugged. It is monstrous! Where were you, Parr?”
“I was on the premises,” said Mr. Parr, “and the story Mr. Yale has told is correct.”
Suddenly Froyant’s rage died down, so suddenly that the calmness of his voice was almost startling after its previous rancour.
“All right,” he said, “nothing can be done. The Crimson Circle have had their money, and that is the end of it. I’m much obliged to you, Yale. Please send your bill to me.”
And with these brusque instructions, he sent them to rejoin Jack, who was waiting in the street outside.
“Well, that beats the band,” said Parr. “I thought at one time he was going to have a fit, and then did you notice how his manner changed?”
Yale nodded slowly.
At the moment of Froyant’s change of manner a great idea was formed in his mind, a tremendous and startling doubt that was almost paralysing.
“And now,” said Parr good-humouredly, “as I have given you moral support, perhaps you will extend the same service to me. At police headquarters I am not so much persona grata as you. Come along and see the Commissioner and tell him what happened.”
Derrick Yale’s office was silent and deserted. Ten minutes had passed since the drone of the elevator announced the departure of the three men. The silence was
