started the rush in the first place; it was like sheep following a leader. So-' He waved his hand. 'Look here, Inspector, haven't we told you enough for one night? Marion is dead exhausted....'
'Yes,' said Masters, 'yes. You may go.' Suddenly he looked up. 'Young Latimer - wait a bit!-young Latimer was the only one with a flashlight? Yours was broken; then Mr. Blake gave you his when we heard Miss Latimer calling in the passage?'
Halliday looked at him a moment, and then laughed. 'Still suspicious of me, Inspector? Well, you're quite right to be. But, as it happens, I'm strictly innocent in the flashlight business. I gave that one to Ted, at his request. You should ask him, you know.:.. Well, good night.' He hesitated, and walked over to me, putting out his hand. 'Good night, Mr. Blake. I'm only sorry I dragged you into this mess. But I didn't know, you see. By God, we did start a hare, didn't we?'
... They went out the back door, and we remained in our separate and foolish positions; conscious of a city waking to daylight all around, and only the ashes of a haunted house. Presently McDonnell came over to the work- bench, beginning to sort out the penciled notes he had brought in.
'Well, sir?' Masters addressed me. 'What about it? Brain working?'
I said that it wasn't, and added: 'Of itself, the conflicting testimony may not be so inexplicable. That is, three people said there was somebody moving about in the room, and two people said there wasn't. But the two people who denied it, Lady Benning and Ted Latimer, were the ones who might be so rapt in concentration or prayer, or whatever it was, that they wouldn't hear it....'
'Yet they all heard the bell fast enough,' said Masters. 'And it didn't ring at all loudly, I'll swear.'
'Yes. That's the part that sticks. . . . Oh, admittedly somebody was lying. And it was as expert lying as we'll probably ever listen to.'
Masters got up. 'I'm not going to hash the thing over now,' he snapped. 'Not with a dead brain. I'll forget even the great big snag in the business that's worse than people who can walk over soft mud without leaving footprints. I'll put it out of my mind. And yet I've a hunch - a hunch - I don't know - what is a hunch, anyway?'
'Well, sir,' said McDonnell, 'I've generally discovered that a hunch is what you call an idea that you're afraid is wrong. I've been having them all evening. For 'instance, it struck me-'
'I don't want to hear it. Lummy, I'm sick of the business! I want a cup of strong coffee. And some sleep. And - wait a minute, Bert. What about those reports you've got? If there's anything interesting, let's have it now. Otherwise let it wait.'
'Right you are, sir. Surgeon's report: `Death of a stab wound, made by the sharp instrument submitted for inspection-that's the L.P. dagger-penetrating through....''
'Where is the blasted thing, by the way?' interrupted Masters, struck with an idea. 'I shall have to take it along. Did you pick it up?'
'No. Bailey was photographing it on the table; they set up the table after we'd taken the measurements and shot the scene as it was. It's probably still out on the table. By the way, its blade had been ground to a needle-point sharpness. Doesn't sound like a ghost there.'
'Right. We'll pick it up. I don't want our 'man with his back turned’ messing about with it again. Never mind the doctor's report. What about fingerprints?'
McDonnell scowled. 'Not a print on the dagger of any kind, Williams says. He says it had been wiped clean, or the chap used gloves; that was only to be expected.... Otherwise, the whole place is alive with 'em. He counted two separate sets of prints aside from Darworth's. The photos will be around this morning. Also a lot of footprints. The place was dusty. No marks in the blood, though, except half a footprint that probably belongs to Mr. Blake.'
'Yes. We shall want to go over this house here, and try to match up the prints; take care of it. What j'you get out of his pockets?'
'Usual lot. Nothing enlightening. No papers of any kind, in fact.' McDonnell took from his pocket a folded sheet of newspaper, wrapped round a small collection of articles. 'Here it is. Bunch of keys, notecase, watch and chain, some loose silver: that's the. lot.... There was just one other funny thing....'
Masters caught sharply at the other's uncertainty. 'Well?'
'The constable noticed it when we were raking out the fire, to see whether somebody might have got down the chimney. It was glass, sir. In the fire. Big fragments like a jar or bottle, maybe; but they were so splintered and burnt and softened out of shape that you couldn't tell.... Besides, it might have been there some time.'
'Glass?' repeated Masters, and stared. `But wouldn't it melt?'
'No. It bursts and splinters, that's all. I thought perhaps-'
The inspector grunted. 'Whisky-bottle, maybe. Dutch-courage for Darworth. I shouldn't worry about it.'
'Might have been, of course,' admitted McDonnell. But he was not satisfied. His fingers tapped his pointed chin, and his eyes roved about the room. 'Still, it's dashed funny, though, isn't it? I mean, chucking a bottle in the fire when you've finished with it: hardly a natural action, is it, sir? Did you ever see anybody do it? It struck me that—“
'Stow it, Bert,' said Masters, dragging out his words and making a wry face. 'We've had plenty. Come along. 'We'll have a last look at the place in daylight, and then we'll dear out.'
A cool wind blew drowsily on our eyelids as we went down into the yard. The gray light was uncertain and murky as though we saw the whole place under water; it looked larger than I had imagined it last night, and must have covered a good half-acre. Set down in the midst of decaying brick buildings, gaunt and crooked against the dawn, with their blind windows staring into it, this yard was uncanny in its desolation. You felt that no churchbells, or street-organs, or any homely, human sound, could ever penetrate it.
A brick wall perhaps eighteen feet high dosed it round on three sides of a rough oblong. There was a few dying plane trees straggling beside it, with an ugly coquettish appearance like the wreaths and Cupids on the cornice of the big house, as though they were dying in the mopping, mincing postures of the seventeenth century. In one corner was a disused well, and the crooked foundations of what might once have been a dairy. But it was the little stone house, standing out in the center and alone towards the rear wall, that carried the most evil suggestion.
It was blackish gray and secret, gaping with its smashed door. On the pitch of the roof were heavy curved tiles that might once have been red; the chimney was squat black, with a toppling chimney-pot like a rakish hat. Not far away grew the dead, crooked tree.
That was all. The stiff sea of mud about it, and only the broad squashy lines of tracks where many people had tramped up to the door in the same path. From this path, just two sets of prints - Masters' and mine-straggled close to the wall of the house towards the window at which I had held Masters up for his first sight of Darworth dead.
In silence we walked all around the house, keeping to the margin of the yard. The puzzle grew more monstrous and incredible as we stared at every blank side. Yet I have not overlooked, omitted, or misstated anything, and all was exactly as it seemed to be: a stone box, with door and windows solidly inaccessible, no tricks of secret entrances, and no footprints near it anywhere before Masters and I had gone out. That is literal truth.
It remained, to complete it, only for Masters to snatch at the only remaining lead, and to have that swept away also. We had got round to the other side of the house - the left side, looking towards it from the back door - and Masters stopped. He stared at the blighted tree, then back at the wall.
'Look here-' he said. The voice sounded strange and hoarse in that dead-silent place. 'That tree. I know it won't explain the rest, but it might explain the absence of footprints ... a very agile man who got on to that wall might swing from the wall to the tree, and then from the tree to the house. It could be done, you know; they're not very far apart. . .
McDonnell nodded. He said grimly: 'Yes, Sir. Bailey and I thought of that too. It was one of the first things we did think of, until somebody got a ladder round at the side, and I climbed up on the wall and walked round and tried to test it.' He pointed up. 'You see that broken branch? That's where I damned near broke my neck. The tree's dead, sir. It's as rotten as pulp. I'm fairly light myself, and I didn't do much more than touch it. It wouldn't support any weight. Try it for yourself.... You see, the tree has a different connotation.'
Masters turned round. 'Oh, for Lord's sake quit being superior!' he said raspingly. 'What do you mean, connotation'?'
'Well, I was wondering why they'd cut down the rest of 'em, and left this one here. . . .' Pressing a hand over his eyes, the other looked puzzled and disturbed. His bleary gaze was turned on the ground at the foot of the tree:
