He looked up at the fresh lamp hanging above them.
“It’s thirty feet or so above the floor. Nothing short of a fishing-rod would reach it. Evidently they didn’t smash it by hand.”
He stooped down and sorted out one or two small fragments of glass from the debris at his feet.
“These are more bits of the lamp, Joan,” he said, holding them out for her to look at. “You see the curve of the glass; and you’ll notice that the whole affair seems to have been smashed almost to smithereens. There doesn’t seem to be a decent-sized fragment in the whole lot.”
He turned to the keeper.
“I think we’ll shut the door, Mold. We’d better conduct the rest of this business in private.”
The keeper closed the door of the museum, much to the disappointment of the group of people who had clustered about the entrance and were watching the proceedings with interest.
“Now, Joan, would you mind going round the wall-cases and seeing if anything has been taken from them?”
Joan obediently paced round the room and soon came back to report that nothing seemed to have been removed.
“All the cases were locked, you know,” she explained. “And there’s no glass broken in any of them. So far as I can see, nothing’s missing from the shelves.”
“What about that safe let into the wall over yonder?” Sir Clinton inquired.
“It’s used to house one or two extra valuable things from time to time,” Joan explained. “But tonight everything was put on show, and the safe’s empty.”
She went over and swung the door open, showing the vacant shelves within.
“We do take precautions usually,” she pointed out. “The museum door itself is iron-plated and has a special lock. It was only tonight that we had everything out in the showcases.”
Sir Clinton refrained from comment, as he knew the girl was still blaming herself for her share in the catastrophe. He turned to examine the rifled section of the central case.
“What’s missing here, Joan, can you make out?”
Obediently, Joan came to his side and ran her eye over the remaining articles in the compartment.
“They’ve taken the Medusa Medallions!” she exclaimed, turning pale as she realized the magnitude of the calamity. “They’ve got the very pick of the collection, Sir Clinton. My father would have parted with all the rest rather than with these, I know.”
“Nothing else gone?”
Joan looked again at the case.
“No, nothing else, so far as I can see. Wait a bit, though! They’ve taken the electrotype copies as well. There were three of each: three medallions and an electrotype from each that Foxton Polegate made for us. The whole six are gone.”
She cast a final glance at the compartment.
“No, there’s nothing else missing, so far as I can see. Some of the things are displaced a bit; but everything except the medallions and the electros seems to be here.”
“You’re quite sure?”
“Certain.”
Sir Clinton seemed satisfied.
“Of course we’ll have to check the stuff by the catalogue to make sure,” he said, “but I expect you’re right. The medallions alone would be quite a good enough haul for a minute or two’s work; and probably they had their eyes on the things as the best paying proposition of the lot.”
“But why did they take the electros as well?” Joan demanded.
Then a possible explanation occurred to her.
“Oh, of course, they wouldn’t know which was which, so they took the lot in order to make sure.”
“Possibly,” Sir Clinton admitted. “But don’t let’s be going too fast, Joan. We’d better not get ideas into our minds till we’ve got all the evidence, you know.”
“Oh, I see,” said Joan, with a faint return of her normal spirits, “I’m to be Watson, am I? And you’ll prove in a minute or two what an ass I’ve made of myself. Is that the idea?”
“Not altogether,” Sir Clinton returned, with a smile. “But let’s have the facts before the theories.”
He turned to the keeper.
“Now we’ll take your story, Mold; but give us the things in the exact order in which they happened, if you can. And don’t be worried if I break in with questions.”
Mold thought for a moment or two before beginning his tale.
“I’m trying to remember how many people there were in the room just before the lights went out,” he explained at last, “but somehow I don’t quite seem able to put a figure on it, Sir Clinton. I’ve a sort of feeling that some of ’em must ha’ got away before I stopped the door—sneaked off in the dark. At least I know I felt surprised when I saw how few I’d got left when they began to come up to me to be let out. But that’s all I can really say, sir.”
Sir Clinton evidently approved of the keeper’s caution.
“Now tell us exactly what happened when the light went out. This is the bit where I want you to be careful. Tell us everything you can remember.”
Mold fixed his eye on the corner of the room near the safe.
“I was patrollin’ round the room, sir, most of the night. I didn’t stand in one place all the time. Now just when the light was about to go out, I was walkin’ away from this case here”—he nodded towards the rifled central case—“and as near as may be, I’d got to the entrance to that second-last bay, just before you come to the safe. I just turned round to come back, when I heard a pistol goin’ off.”
“That was the first thing that attracted your attention?” questioned Sir Clinton. “It’s an important point, Mold.”
“That was the first thing out o’ the common that happened,” Mold asserted. “The pistol went bang, and out went the light, and I heard glass tinkling all over the place.”
“Shot the light out, did they?” Sir Clinton mused.
He glanced up at the carved wooden ceiling, but evidently failed to find what he was looking for.
“Have you a pair of
