'I'm also curious,' the doctor was ruminating, without seeming to hear him, 'as to what letter they have the combination on now. Will you stand aside a moment, old man? Here…. By Jove! the thing's oiled!'
He was working the metal flap up and down as they crowded about him.
'It's set on the letter `S.' Maybe that's the last letter of the word, and maybe it isn't. Anyhow, here goes.'
He turned, with a sleepy grin among his chins, peering at them mockingly. over his glasses, as he seized the handle of the safe.
'Everybody ready? Look sharp, now!'
He twisted the handle, and slowly the door creaked on its hinges. One of his canes fell down with a sharp clatter. Nothing came out….
Chapter 8
Rampole did not know what to expect. He held his ground at the doctor's elbow, though the others had instinctively backed away. During an instant of silence they heard rats stirring behind the wainscot.
'Well?' demanded the rector, his voice high.
'I don't see anything,' said Dr. Fell. 'Here, young fellow — strike a match, will you?'
Rampole cursed himself when he broke off the head of the first match. He struck another, but the dead air of the vault extinguished it the moment he put it inside. Stepping inside, he tried another. Mould and damp, and a strand of cobweb brushing his neck. Now a tiny blue flame burnt in the cup of his hand….
A stone enclosure, six feet high and three or four feet deep. Shelves at the back, and what looked like rotting books. That was all. A sort of dizziness went from him, and he steadied his hand.
'Nothing,' he said.
'Unless,' said Dr. Fell, chuckling, 'unless it got out.'
'Cheerful blighter, aren't you?' demanded Sir Benjamin. 'Look here — we've been wandering about in a nightmare, you know. I'm a business man, a practical man, a sensible man. But I give you my word, gentlemen, that damned place put the wind up me for a moment. It did for a fact.'
Saunders ran his handkerchief round under his chin. He had suddenly become pink and beaming, drawing a gusty lungful of air and making a broad unctuous gesture.
'My dear Sir Benjamin,' he protested, boomingly, 'nothing of the kind! As you say — practical men. As a servant of the Church, you know, I must be the most practical person of all in regard to — ah — matters of this kind. Nonsense! Nonsense!'
He was altogether so pleased that he seemed about to shake Sir Benjamin's hand. The latter was frowning over Rampole's shoulder.
'Anything else?' he asked.
The American nodded. He was holding the flame of the match down against the door, and moving it about. Clearly something had been there, by the outline in the heavy dust: a rectangular outline about eighteen by ten inches. Whatever it was, it had been removed. But he hardly heard the chief constable's request to close the vault again. The last letter of the combination was 'S.' Something was coming back to him, significant and ugly. Words spoken over a hedge at twilight, words flung at Herbert Starberth by a drunken, contemptuous Martin when the two were coming home from Chatterham yesterday afternoon. 'You know the word for it right enough,' Martin had said. 'The word is Gallows.'
Rising and slapping dust from his knees, he pushed the door shut. Something had been in that vault — a box, in all likelihood-and the person who killed Martin Starberth had stolen it.
'Somebody took — ' he said, involuntarily.
'Yes,' said Sir Benjamin. 'That seems fairly clear. They wouldn't hand down such a piece of elaborate mummery all these years without any secret at all. But there may be something else. Has it occurred to you, Doctor?'
Dr. Fell was already lumbering round the centre table, as though he were smelling it. He poked at the chair with his cane; he bent down, his big mop of hair flying, to peer under it; and then he looked up vacantly.
'Eh?' he muttered. 'I beg your pardon. I was thinking of something else. What did you say?'
The chief constable assumed his schoolmaster's air again, drawing in his chin and compressing his lips to indicate that a deep subject was coming. 'Look here,' he said, 'look here. Don't you think it's more than a coincidence that so many of the Starberth family have died in this particular way?'
Dr. Fell looked up with the expression of a man who has just been hit on the head with a club in a movie comedy.
'Brilliant!' he said. 'Brilliant, my boy! — Well, yes. Dense as I am, the coincidence gradually begins to obtrude itself. What then?'
Sir Benjamin was not amused. He folded his arms.
'I think, gentlemen,' he announced, seeming to address everybody, 'that we shall get forrader in this investigation if we acknowledge that I am, after all, the chief constable, and that I have been at considerable trouble to take over?'
'Tut! I know it. I didn't mean anything.' Dr. Fell chewed his moustache to keep back a grin. 'It was your infernally solemn way of saying the obvious, that's all. You'll be a statesman yet, son. Pray go on.'
'With your permission,' conceded the chief constable. He tried to retain his schoolmaster's air; but a smile crept up his speckled face. He rubbed his nose amiably, and then went on with earnestness: 'No, see here now. You were all sitting on the lawn watching this window, weren't you? You'd have seen anything untoward that happened up here, certainly — a struggle, or the light knock over, or something. Eh? You'd certainly have heard a cry.'
'Very probably.'
'And there wasn't any struggle. Look where young Starberth was sitting. He could see the only door in the room; it's exceedingly likely he had it locked, too, if he was as nervous as you say. Even if a murderer could have got into the room first, there was no place for him to hide — unless — Hold on! That wardrobe… ' -
He strode across and opened the doors, disturbing thick dust.
'That's no good, either. Nothing but dust, mouldy clothes… I say, here's one of your frogged greatcoats with the beaver collars; George IV style — spiders!' Closing the doors with a slam, he turned back. 'Nobody hid there, I'll swear. And there was no place else. In other words, young Starberth couldn't have been taken by surprise, without fight or at least outcry…. Now, then, how do you know the murderer didn't come in here after young Starberth had fallen from the balcony?'
'What the devil are you talking about?'
Sir Benjamin's mouth assumed a tight mysterious smile.
'Put it this way,' he urged. 'Did you actually see this murderer throw him over? Did you see him fall?'
'No, as a matter of fact, we didn't, Sir Benjamin,' put in the rector, who evidently felt he had been neglected long enough. He looked thoughtful. `But then we wouldn't have, you know. It was very dark and raining hard, and the light was out. I am of the opinion that he could have been thrown over even while the light was on. You see… here's where the light was, on the table. The broad end of the lamp is here, meaning that the beam was directed on the safe. Six feet to the other side, where the balcony door is, and a person would have been in complete darkness.
The chief constable drew up his shoulders and stabbed one long finger into the palm of his head.
'What I am trying to establish, gentlemen, is this: There may have been a murderer. But that murderer did not necessarily creep in here, smash him over the head, and pitch him down to his death; I mean, there may not have been two people on the balcony at all…. What about a death-trap?'
'Ah!' muttered Dr. Fell, hunching his shouders. 'Well?'
'You see, gentlemen,' Sir Benjamin went on, turning to the others in an agony of verbal precision, 'I mean — At least two Starberths have met their deaths off that balcony before this one. Now suppose there were something about that balcony — a mechanism — eh?'
Rampole turned his eyes towards the balcony door. Beyond the torn ivy he could see a low stone wall, balustraded, suggestive. The very room seemed to grow darker and more sinister.
