“Up there, sir, at that window. He was talking to Mr. Foss.”
“When you were up on the running-board, you could just see into the room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What happened after that?”
“I finished the repair; so I came down off the running-board and let down the hood again.”
“Anything else you can remember, Brackley?”
“No, sir.”
“Very well. That will do. By the way, Inspector,” Sir Clinton turned round, preventing the Inspector from making any comments while the chauffeur was standing by, “I’d clean forgotten the patrolling of the place up yonder. I’ve never found time to go up there; but it’s really a bit out of date now. I think we can dispense with the patrol after tonight. And the same holds for that guard on the museum. There’s no need for either of them.”
“Very good, sir,” Armadale responded, mechanically.
The Inspector was engaged in condemning his own stupidity. Why had he not seen the possibilities involved in that repair of the hood? With the extra foot of elevation of course the chauffeur could see further into the museum than a man standing on the ground. And here was the damning evidence that Marden’s story was a lie. And the Inspector had missed it. He almost gritted his teeth in vexation as he thought of it. The keystone of the case: and the Chief Constable had taken it under his nose!
Sir Clinton turned to Cecil as the chauffeur retired.
“I shall be here about one o’clock in the morning, Cecil,” he said, lowering his voice. “I want you to be on the watch and let me in without anyone getting wind of my visit. Can you manage it?”
“Easily enough.”
“Very well. I’ll be at the door at one o’clock sharp. But remember, it’s an absolutely hush-hush affair. There must be no noise of any sort.”
“I’ll see to that,” Cecil assured him.
Sir Clinton turned to the Inspector.
“Now I think we’ll go across to where we left my car.”
On the way to the police station Sir Clinton’s manner did not encourage conversation; but as they got out of the car he turned to Armadale.
“Map-drawing’s a bit late in the day now, Inspector; but we may as well carry on for the sake of completeness.”
He led the way to his office, took a ruler and protractor from his desk, and set to work on a sheet of paper.
“Take this point as the museum,” he said. “This line represents the beginning of the tunnel. I took the bearing that time when I lagged behind you. At the next turn—this one here—I made a pretence of examining the walls and took the bearing as we were standing there. I got the third bearing when I asked you to measure the dimensions of the tunnel. As it has turned out, secrecy wasn’t really necessary; but it seemed just as well to keep the survey to ourselves. I got the distances by pacing, except the last bit. There I had to estimate it, since we were crawling on all fours; but I think I got it near enough.”
“And you carried all the figures in your memory?”
“Yes. I’ve a fairly good memory when I’m put to it.”
“You must have,” said Armadale, frankly.
“Now,” Sir Clinton went on. “By drawing in these lines we get the position of that underground room. It’s here, you see. The next thing is to find out where it lies, relative to the ground surface. I had a fair notion; so when I got to the top of the turret I took the bearing of the Knight’s Tower. I’ll just rule it in. You see the two lines cut quite near the cell. My notion is that there’s a second entrance into that tunnel from that ruined tower. In the old days it may have been a secret road into the outpost tower when a siege was going on.”
“I see what you’re getting at now,” Armadale interrupted. “You mean that Maurice Chacewater’s body was in the cell and that it was shifted from there up the other secret passage—the one we didn’t see—and left alongside the tower this morning?”
“Something of that sort.”
“And now we’ve got to find who killed Maurice Chacewater down there, underground?”
“There’s nothing in that, Inspector. He killed himself. It’s a fairly plain case of suicide.”
“But why did he commit suicide?”
Sir Clinton appeared suddenly smitten with deafness. He ignored the Inspector’s last inquiry completely.
“I shall want you tonight, Inspector. Come to my house at about half-past twelve. And you had better wear rubber-soled boots or tennis shoes if you have them. We’ll go up to Ravensthorpe in my car.”
“You’re going to arrest Marden, sir?”
“No,” was Sir Clinton’s reply, which took the Inspector completely aback. “I’m not going to arrest anybody. I’m going to show you what Foss was going to do with his otophone; that’s all.”
XIII
The Otophone
Punctually at half-past twelve the Inspector arrived at Sir Clinton’s house. The Chief Constable’s first glance was at the feet of his subordinate.
“Tennis shoes? That’s right. Now, Inspector, I want you to understand clearly that silence is absolutely essential when we get to work. We’ll need to take a leaf out of the book of the Pirates of Penzance:
With catlike tread
Upon our prey we steal.
That’s our model, if you please. The car’s outside. We’ll go at once.”
As preparations for an important raid, these remarks seemed to Armadale hardly adequate; but as Sir Clinton showed no desire to amplify them, the Inspector was left to puzzle over the immediate future without assistance. The hint about the otophone had roused his curiosity.
“Foss’s hearing was quite normal,” he said to himself, turning the evidence over in his mind. “He heard that conversation in the winter-garden quite clearly enough. So quite evidently one couldn’t call him deaf. And yet he was dragging an otophone about with him. I don’t see it.”
The Chief Constable pulled up the car in the avenue at a considerable distance from the house.
“Change here for Ravensthorpe,” he explained, opening the
