“I’m afraid that won’t work,” replied Mr. Copperdock, shaking his head. “There’s not one in a thousand as goes into the shop that know’s the pipe’s there. You didn’t yourself till I told you just now, yet you say you’re a regular customer. No, if that pipe was tampered with, it was somebody on the other side of the counter what did it.”
“Then you are quite convinced in your own mind that Mr. Colburn was deliberately murdered?” suggested Mr. Ludgrove. “But what motive could anybody have for desiring his death?”
“What motive had anybody for murdering poor old Jim Tovey last week?” retorted Mr. Copperdock. “There’s only one person who gains anything by Ben’s death, and who that is you know as well as I do!”
“I can’t help thinking that you are taking too grave a view of the case,” said Mr. Ludgrove. “I admit that it is difficult to account for a piece of poisoned glass finding its way on to Mr. Colburn’s pipe by accident, but murder is a very grave charge, and there is hardly sufficient evidence at the moment to warrant it.”
Mr. Copperdock braced himself in his chair as though to give himself the strength to utter his next words. “Ludgrove,” he said impressively. “I know poor Ben Colburn was murdered, same as I know Jim Tovey was murdered. And it was the same hand as struck them both down.”
Mr. Ludgrove sank slowly back into his chair, and a faint smile twinkled for a moment at the corner of his lips. But before he could make any remark, Mr. Copperdock, who had been watching him closely, continued.
“It’s all very well for you to laugh, but neither you nor any other living soul knows what I do. Now just you listen, and see if I’m not right. Last Wednesday, I was in the Cambridge Arms in the evening, same as I almost always am. In comes old Ben Colburn, and comes straight over to me. He puts his hand in his pocket, and slaps an ordinary bone counter down on the table in front of me. ‘Now then, Sam, what’s the meaning of this little joke?’ he says.
“I looks at the counter and I looks at him. ‘What do you mean, what’s the joke?’ I says.
“Why, didn’t you send me this?” he says, suspicious like.
“I told him I hadn’t, and then he says that it came to him by post that morning, wrapped up in a bit of blank paper. ‘I made sure it was one of your jokes, Sam,’ he says. I picked up the counter and looked at it. On one side it had the figure II drawn on it in red ink. ‘What does it mean?’ I said. ‘That’s just what I want to know,’ says Ben. ‘You shove it in your pocket, Sam, you’re better at finding out that sort of thing than I am.’ So I shoved it in my pocket, and here it is.”
Mr. Ludgrove took the counter which the tobacconist handed him and looked at it curiously. It was just as Mr. Copperdock had described it, a white bone counter, about the size of a halfpenny, with the Roman numeral II, carefully traced upon it in red ink.
“I never thought about it again, until this afternoon,” continued Mr. Copperdock. “Naturally I didn’t connect it with Ben’s death. Why should I? But today, being Sunday, I went round to see Mrs. Tovey neighbour-like. You see, it was her first Sunday after Jim’s death, and I thought that she and Ivy might get brooding over things.”
Mr. Copperdock looked anxiously at his friend as he spoke, but the expression on the herbalist’s face was one of polite interest only. “Very thoughtful of you, I’m sure,” he murmured. “I hope that Mrs. Tovey is not taking her husband’s death too much to heart.”
“She’s bearing up as well as can be expected,” replied Mr. Copperdock. “She and I got to talking about Jim, and wondering whoever it could have been that murdered him. She was telling me all about the telephone call, and she went on to say that this was the second queer thing that happened just before he died. Naturally I asked her what the first was, and she told me that on the Friday morning before his death, a typewritten envelope came addressed to him. He opened it, and all there was inside was a white counter with the number I drawn on it in red ink. Now what do you make of that?”
Mr. Ludgrove sat silent for a moment under his friend’s triumphant gaze, a thoughtful frown upon his face. “This is most extraordinary,” he said at last. “If your facts are correct—not that I doubt them for a moment, but I know how fatally easy it is to find presages after the event—it means that both Mr. Tovey and Mr. Colburn received, a couple of days or so before their respective deaths, a white counter bearing a numeral in red ink. It is almost certain that both counters were sent by the same person, and, if they were intended as a warning, we may infer, as you said, that both men were murdered by the same hand.”
Mr. Copperdock nodded rather impatiently. “Just what I told you, all along,” he said.
“But, my dear sir, look at the difficulties which that theory entails,” objected Mr. Ludgrove. “We are agreed that it is impossible to think of any motive for the murder of Mr. Tovey, and I at least am inclined to say the same regarding the murder of Mr. Colburn. Yet now we are faced with the problem of finding a man
