wasn't. Being ten minutes fast after I changed it. 1 mean?'
'Yes, of course. And why didn't you change the others?
'I was a-going to sir. But then I went into the library, and Mr. Martin was there. And he says, `What are you doing?' and when I told him he says, 'You let them clocks alone,' he says. And of course I did. Him being the master, and all. And that's all I know, sir.'
'Thank you, Martha.. Mrs. Bundle, did you or any of the housemaids see Mr. Herbert leaving the house last night?'
Mrs. Bundle thrust out her jaw. 'When we went to the fair at Holdern,' she replied, malignantly, 'Annie Murphy's purse was stole by thiefpockets. And they put me on a thing what goes round and round, it did; round and round; and then I walks upon boards which shakes, and stairs which collapses, and in the dark, and me 'airpins comes loose, which is that the way to treat a lady? Eeee! Drat 'em!' squawked the housekeeper, shaking her keys ferociously. 'It was a in-vention, that's what it was, a dratted in-ven-tion! All them inventions is like that, which I told Mr. Herbert about it many's the time, and when I see him going out to the stable last night?'
'You saw Mr. Herbert leave?' demanded the chief constable.
'— to the stable where he keeps them inventions which to be sure I don't look at stairs which shakes out me very 'airpins. Do I?'
'What inventions?' said the chief constable, rather helplessly.
'It's all right, Sir Benjamin,' said Dorothy. 'Herbert is always tinkering with something, without any success. He had a workshop out there.'
Further than this no information could be elicited from Mrs. Bundle. All inventions, she was convinced, had to do with certain contraptions which threw one about in the dark at the Holdern fair. Apparently somebody with a primitive sense of humour had led the good lady into the Crazy House, where she had screamed until a crowd assembled, got caught in the machinery, hit somebody with an umbrella, and was finally escorted out by the police. Just as, after a tempestuous review of the matter without enlightenment for her hearers, she was led out by Budge.
'Waste of time,' growled Sir Benjamin, when she had gone. 'There's your question about the clock answered, Doctor. Now I think we can proceed.'
'I think we can,' Payne interposed, suddenly.
He had not moved from his position beside the girl's chair; small, his arms folded, ugly as a Chinese image.
'I think we can,' he repeated. 'Since you seem to get nowhere with this aimless questioning, I fancy that some explanations are due me. I hold a trust in this family. For a hundred years nobody except members of the Starberth family have been allowed in the Governor's Room on any pretext whatsoever. This morning, I am given to understand, you gentlemen — one of you a perfect stranger — violated that law. That in itself calls for an explanation.'
Sir Benjamin shut his jaws firmly. 'Excuse me, my friend,' he said. 'I don't think it does.'
The lawyer was beginning, in a furious voice: 'What you think, sir, is of minor?' when Dr. Fell cut him short. He spoke in a tired and indolent voice.
'Payne,' said Dr. Fell, 'you're an ass. You've made trouble at every turn, and I wish you wouldn't be such an old woman…. By the way, how did you know we were up there?'
The tone in which he spoke, one of mild expostulation, was worse than any contempt. Payne glared.
'I have eyes,' he snarled. 'I saw you leaving. I went up after you to be sure your meddling ways had interfered with nothing.'
'Oh!' said Dr. Fell. 'Then you violated the law too?'
'That is not the question, sir. I am privileged. I know what is in that vault….' He was so angry that he grew indiscreet, and added, 'It is not the first time I have been privileged to see it.'
Dr. Fell had been staring blankly at the floor. Now he rolled up his big lionlike head, still with that vacant expression, to regard the other.
'That's interesting,' he murmured. 'I rather thought you had, too. H'mf. Yes.'
'I must remind you again,' said Payne, 'that 1 hold a trust?'
'Not any longer,' said Dr. Fell.
There was a pause, which somehow seemed to make the room cold. The lawyer opened his eyes wide, jerking his head towards Dr. Fell.
'I said, `not any longer,' ' the doctor repeated, raising his voice slightly 'Martin was the last of the direct line. It's all over. The trust, or the curse, or whatever you care to call it, is done with for ever; and for that part of it I can say, thank God… Anyhow, it needn't be a mystery any longer. If you were up there this morning, you know that something has been taken from the safe.
'How do you know that?' demanded Payne, sticking out his neck.
'I'm not trying to be cute,' the doctor responded, wearily. 'And I wish you wouldn't try to he. either. In any case, if you want to help justice, you'd better tell us the whole story of your trust. We shall never know the truth about Martin's murder unless we know that. Go on, Sir Benjamin. I hate to keep butting in like this.'
'That's the position exactly,' said Sir Benjamin. 'You'll withhold no evidence, sir. That is, unless you want to be held as a material witness.'
Payne looked from one to the other of them. He had had an easy time of it, you felt, up to now. Few people had crossed him or sat upon him. He was wildly trying to keep his cool dignity, like a man striving to manage a sailboat in a high wind.
'I will tell you as much as I think fit,' he said with an effort, 'and no more. What do you want to know?'
'Thank you,' said the chief constable, drily. 'First, you kept the keys to the Governor's Room, did you not?'
'I did.'
'How many keys were there?'
'Four.'
'Damn it, man,' snapped Sir Benjamin, 'you're not on the witness-stand! Please be more explicit.'
'A key to the outer door of the room. A key to the iron door giving on the balcony. A key to the vault. And, since you have already looked inside that vault,' said Payne, biting his words, 'I can tell you the rest. A small key to a steel box which was inside the safe.'
'A box?' Sir Benjamin repeated. He glanced over his shoulder at Dr. Fell; his eyes had verified a. prediction, and there was a small, knowing, rather malicious smile in them. 'A box. Which, we know, is gone…. What was inside the box?
Payne debated something in his mind. He had not unfolded his arms, and the fingers of one hand began to tap on his biceps.
'All that it was my duty to know,' he answered after a pause, 'is that there are a number of cards inside, each with the eighteenth-century Anthony Starberth's signature on it. The heir was instructed to take out one of those cards and present it to the executor next day, as proof that he had actually opened the box. Whatever else there may have been inside?' He shrugged.
'You mean you don't know?' asked Sir Benjamin.
'I mean that I prefer not to say.'
'We will return to that in a moment,' the chief constable said, slowly. 'Four keys. Now, as to the word which opens the letter-lock… neither are we quite blind, Mr. Payne… as to the word: you are intrusted with that also?
A hesitation. 'In a manner of speaking, I am,' the lawyer returned, after considering carefully. 'The word is engraved on the handle of the key which opens the vault. Thus some burglar might get a duplicate key made for the lock; but without the original key he was powerless.'
'Do you know this word?'
A longer hesitation. 'Naturally,' said Payne. 'Did anybody else know it?'
'I consider that question an impertinence, sir,' the other told him. Small brown teeth showed under his upper lip. His face had become all wrinkles and ugliness, the grey cropped hair drawn down. He hesitated again, and then added, more mildly: 'Unless the late Mr. Timothy Starberth communicated it to his son by word of mouth. He never took the tradition very seriously, I am bound to say.'
