'Oh, yes. Yes. What was Lady Benning doing there?'
'I don't know, sir. She gabbled some nonsense about this being James's room, and for us to get out. Porter - that's this butler chap - swore he hadn't let her into the house. Then she started to curse us. Lummy, it was awful, sir! That is, her being a lady, and refined and all that - you know you feel embarrassed - and an old lady, too. That seemed to make it worse. Then I felt a bit sorry for her, because she got up, and was very lame. But she wouldn't let anybody help her, and sat down again.... Well, we hadn't time to waste, so we had to go to work on the room.... '
'Go to work on the room? How?'
Again the easy, tolerant, contemptuous smile. 'I tell you, sir, of all the clumsy stuff I ever saw, this was the worst! How Darworth got away with it I don't know, unless it was his personality that carried him. Lord, he'd never court investigation.... The whole room was wired. Electric coils and magnet in the table for spirit-raps. Dictograph attachment in the chandelier, so every word spoken could be heard in another room - we found the little place, a sort of trunk-room, on the same floor, where Darworth could sit and control the whole seance. One of those home wireless-sets hidden in a panel behind the medium's alcove: microphone arranged, so Darworth could be all the voices. Gauze ectoplasm in those folding packets; a gauze panel on a sort of magic-lantern projection outfit for floating-faces; tambourines on wires; a rubber glove stuffed with wet tissue paper---“
'Never mind the inventory,' H.M. interrupted irritably. 'Well, sir, Bert and I went to work and ripped that room to pieces. And Lady Benning - it's funny how noise must affect some people. She watched us. Every time we'd tear out a wire or something, she'd stiffen up and shut her eyes. When I was pulling that dummy wireless-attachment out from behind the medium's alcove, I carried it over to the table. I saw the tears were running out of her eyes. ... Not crying like you think of people crying, just those tears and no blinking or anything. Then she got up and started to go out again; and I'll admit I was nervous. I ran after her (she let me take her arm then), and I said I'd take her down and put her in a cab.'
The recollection disturbed Masters. He stroked his solid jaw, and he seemed annoyed with himself for giving what he would have called 'impressions' instead of facts; for he pulled himself up and abruptly recited in a strange police-court fashion:
'I took the witness downstairs. Er - the witness looked up at me and said, 'Would you like to take the clothes off me, too?' She emphasized the word `clothes', so I - er -I didn't know what in lum's name she – er - what the witness was getting at, sir. She was wearing something fancy, not like an old lady at all, and had a lot of paint on
At H.M.'s gesture, I had already gone over to pour out our drinks; and both H.M. and I looked at the Inspector. The hiss of the soda-siphon seemed to affect him as a slur on his powers of understanding.
'Just so, sir. I got a cab and put the witness into it. She leaned out of the window and said.. ' He picked up his notebook. 'The exact words were, `I talked to my dear, dear nephew's fiancee this morning, Sergeant. I think you, ought to take a little interest in those people, you know. Especially since dear Theodore has seen fit to go away so suddenly.''
H.M. nodded. He did not seem much interested. I said:
'Hullo! Featherton spoke to Lady Benning on the telephone this morning, but she didn't mention to him-'
'Naturally that wasn't pleasant news, sir,' Masters continued. 'I hurried inside and phoned the Latimers. Miss Latimer answered, very upset. I was pretty sharp with her, but she couldn't tell much. She hadn't got back home (they live in Hyde Park Gardens) until past six this morning. He had got home before her, for she saw his hat and coat in the hall; but she didn't disturb him, and went to bed.
'When she woke up this morning, her maid gave her a note from her brother. All it said was, 'Investigating. Don't worry.' The maid said he had left the house with a traveling-bag at about ten o'clock. It was eleven when she got the note. I asked her why she hadn't let us know immediately, and she admitted she'd been afraid. She begged me not to take any notice of it; said it was another of his vagaries; and that he'd probably be back by evening. First she thought he might have gone to Lady Benning's, but she phoned the old Lady and he wasn't there. Since then she'd been calling everybody he knew, without result.
'It was close on time for my appointment with you here, sir. So I sent Bert round there to make inquiries. But I warned her that I would issue a writ compelling his presence at the inquest; that's the legally safe way of arresting somebody if he tries to bolt; that his description would go out through the usual police channels as 'wanted,' and over the wireless, and so on.' Masters shut up his notebook. He absently took the stiff drink I offered him, put it down on the table, and added savagely: 'Personally, sir, I think that kid is either guilty or stark mad. Bolting like that-! Mad, or guilty; maybe both. If I had a scrap of evidence, beyond his having that key to the padlock, I'd hold him for murder. But if I make just one more mistake. . .
He gestured. It was graphic enough.
'It could be,' said H.M. 'Yes. Humph. If he deliberately wanted us to get suspicious of him, now, and frame a charge - why, that's how he'd do it. I wonder. That all you know?' he asked sharply. His little eyes wheeled round.
'I've got a complete record, if there's anything else you want to know.'
'Yes. There's something missing, son. It ain't what I want, somehow. Burn me, I've a feeling that. . . . Look here. Darworth's house, now. You sure there wasn't anything else you noticed? Let your imagination float. That's it! Quick, what were you thinkin' about?'
'Only Darworth's workshop, sir,' answered the Inspector. He seemed taken back by H.M.'s uncomfortable habits of reading the most wooden poker-face. 'But you. didn't want to hear about the fake spiritist devices, so I thought
'Never mind, son. You keep talkin'. If I seem to shut you off; that may be because I've got ideas all of a sudden.'
'It was only a room in the basement where he manufactured his boxes of tricks. No magic supply-house for him, sir; too dangerous. He made 'em himself, and he was skillful with his hands. 'Quite. I - you see, I mess about with that sort of thing myself, just as a hobby, and there was the finest little electric lathe you ever saw; delicate as a razor-blade. I wondered what trick he'd been up to last, for there were little whitish powdery traces on it ..'
H.M. stopped with his whisky-glass halfway to his lips.
'... and some calculations on a slip of paper, measurements in millimeters, and a few scribblings I didn't pay much attention to it. Also, he'd been tinkering with life-masks, and made a good job of it. It's quite easy; tried it myself. You vaseline the person's face, and then spread the soft plaster on it. It doesn't hurt when it hardens, unless it catches in the eyebrows. Then you remove the cast,
and fit over its inner side sheets of moist newspaper.... I was watching H.M. Now if, at this point, H.M. had dramatically slapped his forehead or uttered a startled exclamation, I should have known that he was off on one of his intolerable digressions. But he didn't. He remained very quiet, except that he was wheezing a little. Taking a deep drink, he removed his feet from the desk, motioned the Inspector to go on talking, and picked up the sheets of Masters' report.
'-and not only that,' H.M. suddenly observed, as though he were continuing a discussion with himself, 'but a heavy incense, spices of some kind, burned in the fireplace of that little stone room.'
'I beg your pardon, sir?' said Masters.
'Oh, I was just sittin' and thinkin',' the other replied, twiddling his thumbs and blinking about him with a heavy lift of his shoulders. 'And I've been askin' myself all day why there was heavy incense. And now - white powder. ... Well, I'm a ring-tailed bastard,' he murmured softly and admiringly. 'I wonder if it could be? Ha ha ha.'
'Just so, sir. You were thinking?' demanded Masters.
'Ho-ho-ho,' said H.M. 'I know what you're thinkin', Masters. And you too, Ken. I read another locked-room story once. I read plenty of 'em. Mysterious fiend invents a deadly gas unknown to science, and stands outside the room and blows it through the keyhole. Feller inside smells it and instantly goes off his onion. Then he strangles himself to death, or something. Ha-ha-ha. Boys, I actually read one of them things where the feller smells it in bed, and is so enlivened that he leaps up and perforates himself by accident on the spike of the chandelier. If that don't take all records for the sittin' high jump, I hope I never read another....
'No, no, son. Get your mind off that. This was something that let our murderer, our X, get in and skewer his man as neat as you please.' He scowled, remembering old injuries. 'Besides, there ought to be a law against stories about gases unknown to science, or poisons that leave no trace. They give me a pain. If you're allowed to be as
