Then something in its particular shade of blue struck a sudden note in his memory, and he stared at it curiously.
“What’s that little blue thing by the roots of those laurels, Alec?” he asked, frowning at it. “It seems vaguely familiar somehow.”
He stepped across the path and picked it up. It was a piece of blue china.
“Hullo!” he said eagerly, holding it up so that Alec could see it. “Do you realise what this is?”
Alec joined him on the path and looked at the piece of china without very much interest.
“Yes, it’s a bit of broken plate or something.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t! Don’t you recognise the colour? It’s a bit of the missing vase, my boy. I wonder—By Jove, I wonder if the rest is in here.”
He dropped on his hands and knees and peered among the laurels. “Yes, I believe I can see some other bits farther in. I’ll investigate, if you’ll keep an eye open to see that nobody is coming.” And he crawled laboriously into the little shrubbery.
A few moments later he returned by the same route. In his hands were several more pieces of the vase.
“It’s all in there,” he announced triumphantly. “Right back by the wall. You see what must have happened?”
“The fellow threw it in there,” said Alec wisely.
“Exactly. I expect he put the pieces in his pocket when he collected them, in order to chuck them away somewhere as soon as he got clear. Methodical sort of bird, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Alec agreed, looking at Roger with some surprise. “You seem quite excited about it.”
“I am!” Roger said emphatically.
“Why? It’s what we expected, isn’t it? More or less. I mean, if the vase was broken and the pieces disappeared, it’s a pretty reasonable assumption that he threw them away somewhere, isn’t it?”
Roger’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, perfectly. But the point is where he threw them. Doesn’t it occur to you, Alec, that this place is not on the route between the lattice window and the quickest way out of the grounds? In other words, the drive. Also, doesn’t it occur to you that if he wanted to throw them where nobody would be likely to find them, the best place to do it would be that thick undergrowth on either side of the drive—especially as he would be passing along it on his way out? Don’t those points seem rather significant to you?”
“Well, perhaps it is a little curious, now you come to mention it.”
“A little curious!” Roger repeated disgustedly. “My dear chap, it’s one of the most significant things we’ve struck yet. What’s the inference? I don’t say it’s correct, by the way. But what is the inference?”
Alec pondered.
“That he was in a deuce of a hurry?”
“That he was in a deuce of a fiddlestick! He’d have gone on straight down the drive if that is all. No! The inference to my way of thinking is that he never was going down the drive at all.”
“Oh? Where was he going, then?”
“Back into the house again! Alec, it’s beginning to look as if that Mysterious Stranger of ours may be going the same way as Mr. John Prince.”
XVIII
What the Settee Had to Tell
Alec stared incredulously. “Back into the house? But—but what on earth would he want to be going back into the house for?”
“Ah, now you’re asking me something. I haven’t the least idea. I don’t even know that he was going back into the house. All I say is that that is the only inference I can draw from the fact of these pieces of vase being where they are. It’s possibly quite wrong.”
“But look here, if he wanted to go into the house again, why on earth should he have taken the trouble to climb out of the window like that? Why didn’t he just go out of the library door?”
“Obviously because he wanted to leave all ways into or out of the library fastened on the inside, in order to further the idea of suicide.”
“But why should he have gone back into the house at all? That’s what I can’t understand.”
“Well,” Roger remarked very casually, “supposing he lived there?”
“What?”
“I said, supposing he lived there. He’d want to go up to bed, wouldn’t he?”
“Good Lord, you’re surely not suggesting that somebody in the house murdered old Stanworth, are you?” Alec asked in horrified tones.
Roger relit his pipe with some care.
“Not necessarily, but you keep asking me why he should want to get back into the house, and I give you the most obvious explanation. As a matter of fact, I should say that he probably wanted to communicate with somebody inside before making his escape.”
“Then you don’t think it was somebody from inside the house who killed Stanworth?” Alec asked with some relief.
“Heaven only knows,” Roger replied laconically. “No, perhaps on second thoughts I don’t. We mustn’t forget that Jefferson couldn’t find those keys this morning. Unless that was a blind, by Jove! I never thought of that. Or he might have forgotten something important and wanted to get at the safe again, not realising that he’d put the keys back in the wrong pocket.”
“I suppose,” Alec said slowly, “that Jefferson is the only person inside the house that you would suspect of having done it?”
“No, I’m hanged if he is,” Roger retorted with energy.
“Oh! Who else then?”
“I’m suspecting everybody at present; put it like that. Everybody and everything within these four walls.”
“Well, look here, don’t forget your promise, mind. No decisive steps to be taken without me, eh?”
“Yes, but look here, Alec,” Roger said
