“And you think that’s going to help now?”
“I don’t know in the least. But there’s no harm in trying, is there?”
He walked to the middle of the room and turned slowly about, letting the picture sink into his brain. When he had made the complete circuit, he sat on the edge of the table and shut his eyes.
Alec watched him interestedly. “Any luck?” he asked, after a couple of minutes’ silence.
Roger opened his eyes. “No,” he admitted, a little ruefully. It is always disappointing after such carefully staged preparations to find that one’s pet trick has failed to work. Roger felt not unlike a conjuror who had not succeeded in producing the rabbit from the top-hat.
“Ah!” observed Alec noncommittally.
“I can’t see anything different,” said Roger, almost apologetically.
“Ah!” Alec remarked again. “Then I suppose that means that nothing is different?” he suggested helpfully.
“I suppose so,” Roger admitted.
“Now are you going to tell me that this is really devilish significant?” Alec grinned. “Because if you do, I warn you that I shan’t believe you. It’s exactly what I expected. I told you you were making too much fuss about a lot of trifles.”
“Shut up!” Roger snapped from the edge of the table. “I’m thinking.”
“Oh, sorry!”
Roger took no notice of his fellow sleuth’s unprofessionally derisive grin. He was staring abstractedly at the big carved oak chimneypiece.
“There’s only one thing that strikes me,” he observed slowly after a little pause, “now I come to think of it. Doesn’t that chimneypiece look somehow a bit lopsided to you?”
Alec followed the other’s gaze. The chimneypiece looked ordinary enough. There were the usual pewter plates and mugs set out upon it, and on one side stood a large blue china vase. For a moment Alec stared at it in silence. Then:
“I’m blessed if I see anything lopsided about it,” he announced. “How do you mean?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Roger replied, still gazing at it curiously. “All I can say is that in some way it doesn’t look quite right to me. Side-heavy, if I may coin a phrase.”
“You may,” said Alec kindly. “That is, if you’ll tell me what it means.”
“Well, unsymmetrical, if you like that better.” He slapped his knee suddenly. “By Jove! Idiot! I see now. Of course!” He turned a triumphant smile upon the other. “Fancy not noticing that before?”
“What?” shouted Alec in exasperation.
“Why, that vase. Don’t you see?”
Alec looked at the vase. It seemed a very ordinary sort of affair.
“What’s the matter with it? It looks all right to me.”
“Oh, there’s nothing the matter with it,” said Roger airily. “It is all right.”
Alec approached the table and clenched a large fist, which he proceeded to hold two inches in front of Roger’s nose.
“If you don’t tell me within thirty seconds what you’re talking about, I shall smite you,” he said grimly. “Hard!”
“I’ll tell you,” said Roger quickly. “I’m not allowed to be smitten before lunch. Doctor’s orders. He’s very strict about it, indeed. Oh, yes; about that vase. Well, don’t you see? There’s only one of it!”
“Is that all?” asked Alec, turning away disgustedly. “I thought from the fuss you were making that you’d discovered something really exciting.”
“So I have,” returned Roger, unabashed. “You see, the exciting part is that yesterday, I am prepared to swear, there were two of it.”
“Oh? How do you know that?”
“Because now I come to realise it, I remember an impression of well-balanced orderliness about that chimneypiece. It was a typical man’s room chimneypiece. Women are the unsymmetrical sex, you know. The fact of there being only one vase alters its whole appearance.”
“Well?” Alec still did not appear to be very much impressed. “And what’s that got to do with anything?”
“Probably nothing. It’s just a fact that since yesterday afternoon the second vase has disappeared; that’s all. It may have been broken somehow by Stanworth himself; one of the servants may have knocked it over; Lady Stanworth may have taken it to put some flowers in—anything! But as it’s the only new fact that seems to emerge, let’s look into it.”
Roger left the table and strolled leisurely over to the fireplace.
“You’re wasting your time,” Alec growled, unconvinced. “What are you going to do? Ask the servants about it?”
“Not yet, at any rate,” Roger replied from the hearthrug. He stood on tiptoe to get a view of the surface of the chimneypiece. “Here you are!” he exclaimed excitedly. “What did I tell you? Look at this! The room hasn’t been dusted this morning, of course. Here’s a ring where the vase stood.”
He dragged a chair across and mounted it to obtain a better view. Alec’s inch or two of extra height enabled him to see well enough by standing on the shallow fender. There was very little dust on the chimneypiece, but enough to show a faint though well-defined ring upon the surface. Roger reached across for the other vase and fitted its base over the mark. It coincided exactly.
“That proves it,” Roger remarked with some satisfaction. “I knew I was right, of course; but it’s always pleasant to be able to prove it.” He bent forward and examined the surface closely. “I wonder what on earth all these other little marks are, though,” he went on thoughtfully. “I don’t seem able to account for them. What do you make of them?”
Dotted about both in the ring and outside it were a number of faint impressions in the shallow dust; some large and broad, others quite small. All were irregular in shape, and their edges merged so imperceptibly into the surrounding dust that it was impossible to say where one began or the other ended. A few inches to the left of the ring, however, the dust had been swept clean away across the whole depth of the surface for a width of nearly a foot.
“I don’t know,” Alec confessed. “They don’t convey anything to me, I’m afraid. I should say that somebody’s simply put something down
