“He certainly put it across you all right,” said MacIver grimly. “I’d give quite a lot to meet the gentleman.”
“I wonder what the inducement was,” said Drummond. “No man was going to run such an infernal risk for fun.”
“By Jove!” cried MacIver, “that cistern is gone. It’s lucky I had the handkerchief in my pocket.”
“He was carrying a tin with straps on it when he spoke to me,” said Fosdick, and MacIver groaned.
“Literally through our fingers,” he said. “However, we’ve got the other three cisterns. Though I’d much sooner have had the man.”
“Anyway that’s a point cleared up,” remarked Drummond cheerfully. “We know why he came here—”
“We don’t,” snapped MacIver. “The fact that he took the blamed thing is no proof that he came for that purpose.”
“True, my dear old policeman,” said Drummond. “But it is, as they say, a possible hypothesis. And, as I remarked before, he didn’t come here for fun, so in default of further information we may as well assume that he came for the cistern. In the hurry of their departure last night they forgot these little fellows down in the cellar, so someone came back to get them. He found one nicely put out for him on the table, and a personally conducted Cook’s party in the cellar inspecting the others. So in addition to taking his property he locked the cellar door. Easy, laddie: easy.”
“Yes; isn’t it?” said MacIver sarcastically. “And perhaps you’ll explain what he’d have done if we hadn’t been in the cellar.”
“My dear Mac, what’s the good of making it harder? I haven’t the faintest idea what he’d have done. Stood on his head and given an imitation of a flowerpot. He did find us in the cellar, and that’s all we’re concerned with. He took a chance—and a darned sporting chance—and it came off. You’re up against something pretty warm, old lad. I don’t pretend to be a blinking genius, but if my reconstruction of what has happened up to date is right, I take off my hat to ’em for their nerve.”
“What is your reconstruction?” said MacIver quietly, and I noticed his look of keen attention. Whatever may have been his official opinion of our interference, it was pretty clear that unofficially he was under no delusions with regard to Drummond. In fact, as he told me many months later, there was no one he knew who had such an uncanny faculty for hitting the nail on the head.
“Well, this is how I see it,” said Drummond. “Their first jolt was the fact that Gaunt managed to get through on the telephone to Stockton. Had that not happened they’d have been in clover. It might have been a couple of days before the Australian was found dead in that house. The old woman is deaf, and probably the first thing she’d have known about it was when she showed a prospective lodger a dead man in her best bedroom and a dead dog across the passage. But Gaunt getting through on the phone started it all, and everything that has happened since is due, I’m certain, to their endeavour to fit in their previous arrangements with this unexpected development. They brought Gaunt here: that’s obvious. Why did they bring Gaunt here particularly? Well—why not? They had to take him somewhere. They couldn’t leave him lying about in Piccadilly Circus.
“They brought him here, and then for reasons best known to themselves they decided to murder Stockton. Well, we all know what happened then, and it was another unexpected development for them. The last thing they wanted was your arrival on the scene. And you wouldn’t have arrived, Mac—unless you’d followed Stockton. That’s what huffed ’em: old Stockton giving his celebrated rendering of a mechanic at the Three Cows. Naturally you suspected him at once: it was without exception the most appalling exhibition of futility I’ve ever seen.”
“Thanks so much,” I murmured.
“That’s all right, old bean,” he said affably. “I expect you’re the hell of a lawyer. However, to continue. You arrived, Mac, with most of the police force of London next door—and you can bet your life the people in here began to sweat some. Why didn’t they go away at once, you say? I don’t know. Instead of their quiet little backwater the whole glare of Scotland Yard was beating on the next-door house. And what was even worse for them was, that not only had they failed to murder Stockton before you came, but one of their own men was dead. Inquests: newspaper publicity. All the more reason for them to go at once. Why didn’t they? What was their reason for stopping on when they must have realised their danger? I don’t know; but it must have been a pretty strong one. Anyway they chanced it—and, by Jove! they’ve pulled it off. That’s why I take off my hat to ’em. They were ready to go last night, and they went last night, and the last twenty-four hours they spent in this house must have been pretty nerve-racking.”
“May I ask what you are doing in my house?” came in an infuriated female voice from the door.
A tall, thin, acidulated woman was standing there regarding us balefully, and MacIver swung round.
“May I ask your name, madam?”
“Simpson is my name, sir. And who may you be?”
“I’m Inspector MacIver from Scotland Yard, and I must ask you to answer a few questions.”
“Scotland Yard!” cried Miss Simpson shrilly. “Then you’re the very man I want to see. I have been the victim of a monstrous outrage.”
“Indeed,” remarked MacIver. “I’m sorry about that. What has happened?”
“Three weeks ago a female person called to see me in this house. She wished to know
