It was the startled cry of Parr that brought Derrick Yale rushing into the room. Parr’s face was as white as death as he stared at the tragic figure in the chair, and neither man spoke a word.
Then Parr spoke.
“Call my men in,” he said. “Nobody is to leave this house. Tell the butler to assemble the servants in the kitchen and to keep them there.”
He took in every detail of the room. Across the big windows which looked on to a square of green at the back of the house, heavy velvet curtains were drawn. He pulled them aside. Behind these were shutters and they were securely fastened.
How had Harvey Froyant been killed?
His desk was opposite the fireplace, and the desk was a narrow Jacobean affair which would have distracted any ordinary man by its lack of width, but it was a favourite of the dead financier.
From which way had the murderer approached him? From behind? The knife was thrust in a downward direction, and the theory that his assailant came upon him unawares was at least plausible. But why the glove? Inspector Parr handled it gingerly. It was a leather gauntlet, such as a chauffeur uses, and had been well worn.
His next move was to call the Police Commissioner and, as he had suspected, the colonel was waiting for a communication from Harvey Froyant.
“Then he did not telephone to you?”
“No. What has happened?”
Parr told him briefly, and listened unmoved to the almost incoherent fury of his chief at the other end of the wire. Presently he hung up the receiver and went back to the hall, to find his men already posted.
“I am searching every room in the house,” he said.
He was gone half an hour, and returned to Derrick Yale.
“Well?” asked Yale eagerly.
Parr shook his head.
“Nothing,” he said. “There is nobody here who has no right to be here.”
“How did they get into the room? The hallway was never empty except when Steere came into the drawing-room.”
“There may be a trap in the floor,” suggested Yale.
“There are no traps in drawing-room floors in the West End of London,” snapped Parr, but a further search had a surprising result.
Turning up one corner of the carpet, a small trapdoor was discovered, and the butler explained that in the days of the war, when air raids were a nightly occurrence, Mr. Froyant had had a bombproof shelter constructed of concrete in a lower wine cellar, ingress to which was gained by means of a flight of stairs leading from his study.
Parr went down the stairs with a lighted candle and discovered himself in a small, square, cell-like room. There was a door, which was locked, but, searching the body of Harvey Froyant, they found a master key. Beyond the first door was a second of steel and this brought them into the open.
The houses in the street shared a common strip of lawn and shrubbery.
“It is quite possible to get into here through the gate at the end of the garden,” said Yale, “and I should say that the murderer came this way.”
He was flashing his electric lamp along the ground. Suddenly he went down on to the ground and peered.
“Here is a recent footprint,” he said, “and a woman’s!”
Parr looked over his shoulder.
“I don’t think there is any doubt about that,” he said. “It is recent.”
And then suddenly he stepped back.
“My God!” he gasped in awestricken tones. “What a devilish plot!”
For it came upon him with a rush that this was the footprint of Thalia Drummond.
XXXI
Thalia Answers a Few Questions
Derrick Yale sat with his head on his hands, reading a newspaper. He had read a dozen that morning, and one by one he had cast them aside to open another.
“Under the eyes of the police,” he quoted. “Incompetence at Police Headquarters.” He shook his head. “They are giving our poor friend Parr a bad time in this morning’s press,” he said as he threw the paper aside, “and yet he was as incapable of preventing that crime as you or I, Miss Drummond.”
Thalia Drummond looked a little peaked that morning. There were dark circles about her eyes, and an air of general listlessness which was in contrast to her usual cheerful buoyancy.
“If you’re in that game you expect to get kicks, don’t you?” she asked coolly. “The police can’t have it all their own way.”
He looked at her curiously.
“You aren’t a particular admirer of police methods, are you, Miss Drummond?” he asked.
“Not tremendously,” she replied, as she laid a stack of correspondence before him. “You aren’t expecting me to get up testimonials to the efficiency of headquarters, are you?”
He laughed quietly.
“You’re a strange girl,” he said. “Sometimes I think that you were born without compassion. And you worked for Froyant, too, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said shortly.
“You lived some time in the house?”
She did not reply, but her grey eyes met his steadily.
“I did live some time in the house,” she admitted. “Why do you ask that?”
“I wondered if you knew of the existence of this underground room?” said Derrick Yale carelessly.
“Of course I knew of the room. Poor Mr. Froyant made no secret of his cleverness. He has told me a dozen times how much it cost,” she added with a faint smile.
He cogitated a moment.
“Where were the keys usually kept that opened the door of the bombproof room?”
“In Mr. Froyant’s desk. Are you suggesting that I have had access to them, or that I was concerned in last night’s murder?”
He laughed.
“I am not suggesting anything,” he said. “I am merely
