“Murder, I suppose.”
“So your view of the crime would depend upon the stage at which you witnessed it, eh? That’s just my position in this Ravensthorpe affair. You’ve been looking at it from yesterday’s standpoint, and you call it a theft of three replicas. But I wonder what you’ll call it when we know the whole of the facts.”
The Inspector declined to follow his chief to this extent.
“All the evidence we’ve got, so far, points to theft, sir. I’ve no fresh data that would let me put a new name to it.”
“Then you regard it as a completed crime which has partly failed in its object?”
The Inspector gave his acquiescence with a nod.
“You think it’s something else, Sir Clinton?” he inquired.
The Chief Constable refused to be explicit.
“You’ve got all the evidence, Inspector. Do you really think a gang would take the trouble to steal replicas when they could just as easily have taken the three originals—that’s the point. The replicas have no intrinsic value beyond the gold in them, and that can’t be worth more than twenty or thirty pounds at the very outside. A mediocre haul for a smart gang, isn’t it? Hardly Trade Union wages, I should think.”
“It seems queer at first sight, sir,” he admitted, “but I think I can account for that all right when you come to the rest of your rhyme.”
Sir Clinton showed his interest.
“Then let’s go on,” he suggested. “The next question is: ‘Who did it?’ What’s your answer to that, Inspector?”
“To my mind, there seems to be only one possible thief.”
Sir Clinton pricked up his ears.
“You mean it was a single-handed job? Who was the man, then?”
“Foxton Polegate,” asserted the Inspector.
He watched Sir Clinton’s face narrowly as he brought out the name, but the Chief Constable might have been wearing a mask for all the change there was in his features as he listened to the Inspector’s suggestion. As if he felt that he had overstepped the bounds of prudence, Armadale added hastily:
“I said ‘possible thief,’ sir. I don’t claim to be able to bring it home to him yet.”
“But you think it might even be ‘probable’ instead of only ‘possible,’ Inspector? Let’s hear the evidence, please.”
Inspector Armadale turned over the leaves of his notebook until he reached some entries which he had previously made.
“First of all, sir, Polegate must have known the value of these medallions—the originals, I mean. Second, he learned that they would be on show last night; and he knew where they’d be placed in the museum. Third, it was after Polegate came by this knowledge that the practical joke was planned. Fourth, who suggested the sham burglary? Polegate. Then fifth, who gave himself the job of actually taking the medallions? Polegate again. Sixth, where was Polegate immediately after the robbery? We’ve only his own word for it that he was strolling about, having a smoke. He might have been elsewhere, easily enough. Seventh, he was dressed up as a Harlequin when you saw him: but he might quite easily have slipped on a white jacket and a pair of Pierrot’s trousers over his Harlequin costume. He could disguise himself as a Pierrot in a couple of ticks and come out as a Harlequin again just as quick. So he might quite well have been the man in white that they were all busy chasing last night. Eighth, he knows the ground thoroughly and could give strangers the slip easily enough at the end of the chase. And, ninth, he didn’t appear when you wanted him last night. He only turned up when he’d had plenty of time to get home again, even if he’d been the man in white. That’s a set of nine points that need looking into. Prima facie, there’s a case for suspicion, if there’s no more. And there isn’t anything like so strong a case against anyone else, Sir Clinton.”
“Well, let’s take the rest of the first line,” said the Chief Constable, without offering any criticism of the Inspector’s statement of the case. “ ‘When was it done, and where?’ ”
“At 11:45 p.m. and in the museum,” retorted Armadale. “That’s beyond dispute. It’s the clearest thing in the whole evidence.”
“I should be inclined to put it at 11:44 p.m. at the latest, or perhaps 11:43 p.m.,” said Sir Clinton, with an air of fastidiousness.
The Inspector looked at him suspiciously, evidently feeling that he was being laughed at for his display of accuracy.
“I go by Miss Rainhill’s evidence,” he declared. “She was the only one who had her eye on her watch, and she said she pulled out the switch at 11:45 precisely.”
“I go by the evidence of Polegate and young Chacewater,” said Sir Clinton, with a faint parody of the Inspector’s manner. “They were taken by surprise when the light went out, although they expected it to be extinguished at 11:45 p.m.”
“Oh, have it your own way, sir, if you lay any stress on the point,” conceded the Inspector. “Make it 11:44 or 11:45; it’s all the same, so far as I’m concerned.”
Armadale seemed slightly ruffled by his chief’s method of approaching the subject. Sir Clinton turned to another side of the matter.
“I suppose you say the crime has been committed in the museum?” he inquired.
The Inspector looked at him suspiciously.
“You’re trying to pull my leg, sir. Of course, it was committed in the museum.”
Sir Clinton’s tone became apologetic.
“I keep forgetting that we’re not talking about the same thing, perhaps. Of course, the theft of the replicas was committed in the museum. We’re quite in agreement there.”
He threw away his cigarette, selected a fresh one, and lighted it before continuing.
“And on that basis, I suppose there’s no mystery about the next query in the rhyme: ‘How done?’ ”
“None whatever, in my mind,” the Inspector affirmed. “Polegate could take what he wanted, once the light was out.”
Sir Clinton did not dispute this point.
“Of course,” he said. “And now for the next
