CHAPTER V.THE MURDER AT SEVEN KINGS“This is Mrs. Chugg, sir,” said Mr. Marigold, “the charwoman who found the body!”The Chief and Desmond stood at the detective’s side in the Mackwaytes’ little dining-room. The room was in considerable disorder. There was a litter of paper, empty bottles, overturned cruets and otherdébrison the floor, evidence of the thoroughness with which the burglar had overhauled the cheap fumed oak sideboard which stood against the wall with doors and drawers open. In the corner, the little roll-top desk showed a great gash in the wood round the lock where it had been forced. The remains of a meal still stood on the table.Mrs. Chugg, a diminutive, white-haired, bespectacled woman in a rusty black cape and skirt, was enthroned in the midst of this scene of desolation. She sat in an armchair by the fire, her hands in her lap, obviously supremely content with the position of importance she enjoyed. At the sound of Mr. Marigold’s voice, she bobbed up and regarded the newcomers with the air of a tragedy queen.“Yus mister,” she said with the slow deliberation of one who thoroughly enjoys repeating an oft-told tale, “I found the pore man and a horrid turn it give me, too, I declare! I come in early this morning a-purpose to turn out these two rooms, the dining-room and the droring-room, same as I always do of a Saturday, along of the lidy’s horders and wishes. I come in ’ere fust, to pull up the blinds and that, and d’reckly I switches on the light ‘Burglars!’ I sez to meself, ‘Burglars! That’s wot it is!’ seeing the nasty mess the place was in. Up I nips to Miss Mackwayte’s room on the first floor and in I bursts. ‘Miss,’ sez I, ‘Miss, there’s been burglars in the house!’ and then I sees the pore lamb all tied up there on ’er blessed bed! Lor, mister, the turn it give me and I ain’t telling you no lies! She was strapped up that tight with a towel crammed in ’er mouth she couldn’t ’ardly dror ’er breath! I undid ’er pretty quick and the fust thing she sez w’en I gets the towl out of her mouth, the pore dear, is ‘Mrs. Chugg,’ she sez all of a tremble as you might say, ‘Mrs. Chugg’ sez she, ‘my father! my father!’ sez she. With that up she jumps but she ’adn’t put foot to the floor w’en down she drops! It was along of ’er being tied up orl that time, dyer see, mister! I gets ’er back on the bed. ‘You lie still, Miss,’ says I, ‘and I’ll pop in and tell your pa to come in to you!’ Well; I went to the old genelmun’s room. Empty!”Mrs. Chugg paused to give her narrative dramatic effect.“And where did you find Mr. Mackwayte?” asked the Chief in such a placid voice that Mrs. Chugg cast an indignant glance at him.“I was jes’ going downstairs to see if ’e was in the kitching or out at the back,” she continued, unheeding the interruption, “when there on the landing I sees a foot asticking out from under the curting. I pulls back the curting and oh, Lor! oh, dear, oh, dear, the pore genelmun, ’im as never did a bad turn to no one!”“Come, come, Mrs. Chugg!” said the detective.The charwoman wiped her eyes and resumed.“’E was a-lying on his back in ’is dressing-gown, ’is face all burnt black, like, and a fair smother o’ blood. Under ’is hed there was a pool o’ blood, mister, yer may believe me or not...”Mr. Marigold cut in decisively.“Do you wish to see the body, sir?” the detective asked the Chief, “they’re upstairs photographing it!”The Chief nodded. He and Desmond followed the detective upstairs, whilst Mrs. Chugg resentfully resumed her seat by the fire. On her face was the look of one who has cast pearls before swine.“Any finger-prints?” asked the Chief in the hall.“Oh, no,” he said, “Barney’s far too old a hand for that sort o’ thing!”The landing proved to be a small space, covered with oilcloth and raised by a step from the bend made by the staircase leading to the first story. On the left-hand side was a window looking on a narrow passage separating the Mackwayte house from its neighbors and leading to the back-door. By the window stood a small wicker-work table with a plant on it. At the back of the landing was a partition, glazed half-way up and a door—obviously the bath-room.The curtain had been looped right over its brass rod. The body lay on its back at the foot of the table, arms flung outward, one leg doubled up, the other with the foot just jutting out over the step leading down to the staircase. The head pointed towards the bath-room door. Over the right eye the skin of the face was blackened in a great patch and there was a large blue swelling, like a bruise, in the centre. There was a good deal of blood on the face which obscured the hole made by the entrance of the bullet. The eyes were half-closed. A big camera, pointed downwards, was mounted on a high double ladder straddling the body and was operated by a young man in a bowler hat who went on with his work without taking the slightest notice of the detective and his companions.“Close range,” murmured Desmond, after glancing at the dead man’s face, “a large calibre automatic pistol, I should think!”“Why do you think it was a large calibre pistol, Major?” asked Mr. Marigold attentively.“I’ve seen plenty of men killed at close range by revolver and rifle bullets out at the front,” replied Desmond, “but I never saw a man’s face messed up like this. In a raid once I shot a German at point blank range with my revolver, the ordinary Army issue pattern, and I looked him over after. But it wasn’t anything like this. The only thing I’ve seen approaching it was one of our sergeants who was killed out on patrol by a Hun officer who put his gun right in our man’s face. That sergeant was pretty badly marked, but...”He shook his head. Then he added, addressing the detective: “Let’s see the gun! Have you got it?”Mr. Marigold shook his head.“He hadn’t got it on him,” he answered, “he swears he never had a gun. I expect he chucked it away somewhere. It’ll be our business to find it for him!”He smiled rather grimly, then added:“Perhaps you’d care to have a look at Miss Mackwayte’s room, sir!”“Is Miss Mackwayte there” asked the Chief.“I got her out of this quick,” replied Mr. Marigold, “she’s had a bad shock, poor girl, though she gave her evidence clearly enough for all that... as far as it goes and that’s not much. Some friends near by have taken her in! The doctor has given her some bromide and says she’s got to be kept quiet...”“What’s her story!” queried the Chief.“She can’t throw much light on the business. She and her father reached home from the theatre about a quarter past twelve, had a bit of supper in the dining-room and went up to bed before one o’clock. Miss Mackwayte saw her father go into his room, which is next to hers, and shut the door. The next thing she knows is that she woke up suddenly with some kind of a loud noise in her ears... that was the report of the pistol, I’ve no doubt... she thought for a minute it was an air raid. Then suddenly a hand was pressed over her mouth, something was crammed into her mouth and she was firmly strapped down to the bed.”“Did she see the man?” asked Desmond.“She didn’t see anything from first to last,” answered the detective, “as far as she is concerned it might have been a woman or a black man who trussed her up. It was quite dark in her bedroom and this burglar fellow, after binding and gagging her, fastened a bandage across her eyes into the bargain. She says she heard him moving about her room and then creep out very softly. The next thing she knew was Mrs. Chugg arriving at her bedside this morning.”“What time did this attack take place?” asked the Chief.“She has no idea,” answered the detective. “She couldn’t see her watch and they haven’t got a striking clock in the house.”“But can she make no guess!”“Well, she says she thinks it was several hours before Mrs. Chugg arrived in the morning... as much as three hours, she thinks!”“And what time did Mrs. Chugg arrive!”“At half-past six!”“About Mackwayte... how long was he dead when they found him? What does the doctor say?”“About three hours approximately, but you know, they can’t always tell to an hour or so!”“Well,” said the Chief slowly, “it looks as if one might figure the murder as having been committed some time between 3 and 3.30 a.m.”“My idea exactly,” said Mr. Marigold. “Shall we go upstairs?”He conducted the Chief and Desmond up the short flight of stairs to the first story. He pushed open the first door he came to.“Mackwayte’s room, on the back,” he said, “bed slept in, as you see, old gentleman’s clothes on a chair—obviously he was disturbed by some noise made by the burglar and came out to see what was doing! And here,” he indicated a door adjoining, “is Miss Mackwayte’s room, on the front; as you observe. They don’t use the two rooms on the second floor, except for box-rooms... one’s full of old Mackwayte’s theatre trunks and stuff. They keep no servant; Mrs. Chugg comes in each morning and stays all day. She goes away after supper every evening.”Desmond found himself looking into a plainly furnished but dainty bedroom with white furniture and a good deal of chintz about. There were some photographs and pictures hanging on the walls. The room was spotlessly clean and very tidy.Desmond remarked on this, asking if the police had put the room straight.Mr. Marigold looked quite shocked.“Oh, no, everything is just as it was when Mrs. Chugg found Miss Mackwayte this morning. There’s Miss Mackwayte’s gloves and handbag on the toilet-table just as she left ’em last night. I wouldn’t let her touch her clothes even. She went over to Mrs. Appleby’s in her dressing-gown, in a taxi.”“Then Master Burglar didn’t burgle this room?” asked the Chief.“Nothing touched, not even the girl’s money,” replied Marigold.“Then why did he come up here at all?” asked Desmond.“Obviously, the old gentleman disturbed him,” was the detective’s reply. “Barney got scared and shot the old gentleman, then came up here to make sure that the daughter would not give him away before he could make his escape. He must have known the report of the gun would wake her up.”“But are there no clues or finger-prints or anything of that kind here, Marigold?” asked the Chief.“Not a finger-print anywhere,” responded the other, “men like Barney are born wise to the fingerprint business, sir.”He dipped a finger and thumb into his waistcoat pocket.“Clues? Well, I’ve got one little souvenir here which I daresay a writer of detective stories would make a good bit of.”He held in his hand a piece of paper folded flat. He unfolded it and disclosed a loop of dark hair.“There!” he said mockingly, straightening out the hair and holding it up in the light. “That’s calculated to set one’s thoughts running all over the place, isn’t it? That piece of hair was caught in the buckle of one of the straps with which Miss Mackwayte was bound to the bed. Miss Mackwayte, I would point out, has brown hair.Whose hair do you think that is?”Desmond looked closely at the strand of hair in the detective’s fingers. It was long and fine and glossy and jetblack.The Chief laughed and shook his head.“Haven’t an idea, Marigold,” he answered, “Barney’s, I should imagine, that is, if he goes about with black ringlets falling round his shoulders.”“Barney?” echoed the detective. “Barney’s as bald as I am. Besides, if you saw his sheet, you’d realize that he has got into the habit of wearing his hair short!”He carefully rolled the strand of hair up, replaced it in its paper and stowed it in his waistcoat pocket.“It just shows how easily one is misled in a matter of this kind,” he went on. “Supposing Barney hadn’t got himself nabbed, supposing I hadn’t been able to find out from Miss Mackwayte her movements on the night previous to the murder, that strand of hair might have led me on a fine wild goose chase!”“But, damn it, Marigold,” exclaimed the Chief, laughing, “you haven’t told us whose hair it is?”“Why, Nur-el-Din’s, of course!”The smile froze on the Chief’s lips, the laughter died out of his eyes. Desmond was amazed at the change in the man. The languid interest he had taken in the different details of the crime vanished. Something seemed to tighten up suddenly in his face and manner.“Why Nur-el-Din?” he asked curtly.Mr. Marigold glanced quickly at him. Desmond remarked that the detective was sensible of the change too.“Simply because Miss Mackwayte spent some time in the dancer’s dressing-room last night, sir,” he replied quietly, “she probably sat at her dressing-table and picked up this hair in hers or in her veil or something and it dropped on the bed where one of Master Barney’s buckles caught it up.”He spoke carelessly but Desmond noticed that he kept a watchful eye on the other.The Chief did not answer. He seemed to have relapsed into the preoccupied mood in which Desmond had found him that morning.“I was going to suggest, sir,” said Mr. Marigold diffidently, “if you had the time, you might care to look in at the Yard, and see the prisoner. I don’t mind telling you that he is swearing by all the tribes of Judah that he’s innocent of the murder of old Mackwayte. He’s got an amazing yarn... perhaps you’d like to hear it!”Mr. Marigold suddenly began to interest Desmond. His proposal was put forward so modestly that one would have thought the last thing he believed possible was that the Chief should acquiesce in his suggestion. Yet Desmond had the feeling that the detective was far from being so disinterested as he wished to seem. It struck Desmond that the case was more complicated than Mr. Marigold admitted and that the detective knew it. Had Mr. Marigold discovered that the Chief knew a great deal more about this mysterious affair than the detective knew himself? And was not his attitude of having already solved the problem of the murder, his treatment of the Chief as a dilettante criminologist simply an elaborate pose, to extract from the Chief information which had not been proffered?The Chief glanced at his watch.“Right,” he said, “I think I’d like to go along.”“I have a good deal to do here still,” observed Mr. Marigold, “so, if you don’t mind, I won’t accompany you. But perhaps, sir, you would like to see me this afternoon?”The Chief swung round on his heel and fairly searched Mr. Marigold with a glance from beneath his bushy eyebrows. The detective returned his gaze with an expression of supreme innocence.“Why, Marigold,” answered the Chief, “I believe I should. Six o’clock suit you?”“Certainly, sir,” said Mr. Marigold.Desmond stood by the door, vastly amused by this duel of wits. The Chief and Mr. Marigold made a move towards the door, Desmond turned to open it and came face to face with a large framed photograph of the Chief hanging on the wall of Miss Mackwayte’s bedroom.“Why, Chief,” he cried, “you never told me you knew Miss Mackwayte!”The Chief professed to be very taken aback by this question. “Dear me, didn’t I, Okewood?” he answered with eyes laughing, “she’s my secretary!”
“This is Mrs. Chugg, sir,” said Mr. Marigold, “the charwoman who found the body!”
The Chief and Desmond stood at the detective’s side in the Mackwaytes’ little dining-room. The room was in considerable disorder. There was a litter of paper, empty bottles, overturned cruets and otherdébrison the floor, evidence of the thoroughness with which the burglar had overhauled the cheap fumed oak sideboard which stood against the wall with doors and drawers open. In the corner, the little roll-top desk showed a great gash in the wood round the lock where it had been forced. The remains of a meal still stood on the table.
Mrs. Chugg, a diminutive, white-haired, bespectacled woman in a rusty black cape and skirt, was enthroned in the midst of this scene of desolation. She sat in an armchair by the fire, her hands in her lap, obviously supremely content with the position of importance she enjoyed. At the sound of Mr. Marigold’s voice, she bobbed up and regarded the newcomers with the air of a tragedy queen.
“Yus mister,” she said with the slow deliberation of one who thoroughly enjoys repeating an oft-told tale, “I found the pore man and a horrid turn it give me, too, I declare! I come in early this morning a-purpose to turn out these two rooms, the dining-room and the droring-room, same as I always do of a Saturday, along of the lidy’s horders and wishes. I come in ’ere fust, to pull up the blinds and that, and d’reckly I switches on the light ‘Burglars!’ I sez to meself, ‘Burglars! That’s wot it is!’ seeing the nasty mess the place was in. Up I nips to Miss Mackwayte’s room on the first floor and in I bursts. ‘Miss,’ sez I, ‘Miss, there’s been burglars in the house!’ and then I sees the pore lamb all tied up there on ’er blessed bed! Lor, mister, the turn it give me and I ain’t telling you no lies! She was strapped up that tight with a towel crammed in ’er mouth she couldn’t ’ardly dror ’er breath! I undid ’er pretty quick and the fust thing she sez w’en I gets the towl out of her mouth, the pore dear, is ‘Mrs. Chugg,’ she sez all of a tremble as you might say, ‘Mrs. Chugg’ sez she, ‘my father! my father!’ sez she. With that up she jumps but she ’adn’t put foot to the floor w’en down she drops! It was along of ’er being tied up orl that time, dyer see, mister! I gets ’er back on the bed. ‘You lie still, Miss,’ says I, ‘and I’ll pop in and tell your pa to come in to you!’ Well; I went to the old genelmun’s room. Empty!”
Mrs. Chugg paused to give her narrative dramatic effect.
“And where did you find Mr. Mackwayte?” asked the Chief in such a placid voice that Mrs. Chugg cast an indignant glance at him.
“I was jes’ going downstairs to see if ’e was in the kitching or out at the back,” she continued, unheeding the interruption, “when there on the landing I sees a foot asticking out from under the curting. I pulls back the curting and oh, Lor! oh, dear, oh, dear, the pore genelmun, ’im as never did a bad turn to no one!”
“Come, come, Mrs. Chugg!” said the detective.
The charwoman wiped her eyes and resumed.
“’E was a-lying on his back in ’is dressing-gown, ’is face all burnt black, like, and a fair smother o’ blood. Under ’is hed there was a pool o’ blood, mister, yer may believe me or not...”
Mr. Marigold cut in decisively.
“Do you wish to see the body, sir?” the detective asked the Chief, “they’re upstairs photographing it!”
The Chief nodded. He and Desmond followed the detective upstairs, whilst Mrs. Chugg resentfully resumed her seat by the fire. On her face was the look of one who has cast pearls before swine.
“Any finger-prints?” asked the Chief in the hall.
“Oh, no,” he said, “Barney’s far too old a hand for that sort o’ thing!”
The landing proved to be a small space, covered with oilcloth and raised by a step from the bend made by the staircase leading to the first story. On the left-hand side was a window looking on a narrow passage separating the Mackwayte house from its neighbors and leading to the back-door. By the window stood a small wicker-work table with a plant on it. At the back of the landing was a partition, glazed half-way up and a door—obviously the bath-room.
The curtain had been looped right over its brass rod. The body lay on its back at the foot of the table, arms flung outward, one leg doubled up, the other with the foot just jutting out over the step leading down to the staircase. The head pointed towards the bath-room door. Over the right eye the skin of the face was blackened in a great patch and there was a large blue swelling, like a bruise, in the centre. There was a good deal of blood on the face which obscured the hole made by the entrance of the bullet. The eyes were half-closed. A big camera, pointed downwards, was mounted on a high double ladder straddling the body and was operated by a young man in a bowler hat who went on with his work without taking the slightest notice of the detective and his companions.
“Close range,” murmured Desmond, after glancing at the dead man’s face, “a large calibre automatic pistol, I should think!”
“Why do you think it was a large calibre pistol, Major?” asked Mr. Marigold attentively.
“I’ve seen plenty of men killed at close range by revolver and rifle bullets out at the front,” replied Desmond, “but I never saw a man’s face messed up like this. In a raid once I shot a German at point blank range with my revolver, the ordinary Army issue pattern, and I looked him over after. But it wasn’t anything like this. The only thing I’ve seen approaching it was one of our sergeants who was killed out on patrol by a Hun officer who put his gun right in our man’s face. That sergeant was pretty badly marked, but...”
He shook his head. Then he added, addressing the detective: “Let’s see the gun! Have you got it?”
Mr. Marigold shook his head.
“He hadn’t got it on him,” he answered, “he swears he never had a gun. I expect he chucked it away somewhere. It’ll be our business to find it for him!”
He smiled rather grimly, then added:
“Perhaps you’d care to have a look at Miss Mackwayte’s room, sir!”
“Is Miss Mackwayte there” asked the Chief.
“I got her out of this quick,” replied Mr. Marigold, “she’s had a bad shock, poor girl, though she gave her evidence clearly enough for all that... as far as it goes and that’s not much. Some friends near by have taken her in! The doctor has given her some bromide and says she’s got to be kept quiet...”
“What’s her story!” queried the Chief.
“She can’t throw much light on the business. She and her father reached home from the theatre about a quarter past twelve, had a bit of supper in the dining-room and went up to bed before one o’clock. Miss Mackwayte saw her father go into his room, which is next to hers, and shut the door. The next thing she knows is that she woke up suddenly with some kind of a loud noise in her ears... that was the report of the pistol, I’ve no doubt... she thought for a minute it was an air raid. Then suddenly a hand was pressed over her mouth, something was crammed into her mouth and she was firmly strapped down to the bed.”
“Did she see the man?” asked Desmond.
“She didn’t see anything from first to last,” answered the detective, “as far as she is concerned it might have been a woman or a black man who trussed her up. It was quite dark in her bedroom and this burglar fellow, after binding and gagging her, fastened a bandage across her eyes into the bargain. She says she heard him moving about her room and then creep out very softly. The next thing she knew was Mrs. Chugg arriving at her bedside this morning.”
“What time did this attack take place?” asked the Chief.
“She has no idea,” answered the detective. “She couldn’t see her watch and they haven’t got a striking clock in the house.”
“But can she make no guess!”
“Well, she says she thinks it was several hours before Mrs. Chugg arrived in the morning... as much as three hours, she thinks!”
“And what time did Mrs. Chugg arrive!”
“At half-past six!”
“About Mackwayte... how long was he dead when they found him? What does the doctor say?”
“About three hours approximately, but you know, they can’t always tell to an hour or so!”
“Well,” said the Chief slowly, “it looks as if one might figure the murder as having been committed some time between 3 and 3.30 a.m.”
“My idea exactly,” said Mr. Marigold. “Shall we go upstairs?”
He conducted the Chief and Desmond up the short flight of stairs to the first story. He pushed open the first door he came to.
“Mackwayte’s room, on the back,” he said, “bed slept in, as you see, old gentleman’s clothes on a chair—obviously he was disturbed by some noise made by the burglar and came out to see what was doing! And here,” he indicated a door adjoining, “is Miss Mackwayte’s room, on the front; as you observe. They don’t use the two rooms on the second floor, except for box-rooms... one’s full of old Mackwayte’s theatre trunks and stuff. They keep no servant; Mrs. Chugg comes in each morning and stays all day. She goes away after supper every evening.”
Desmond found himself looking into a plainly furnished but dainty bedroom with white furniture and a good deal of chintz about. There were some photographs and pictures hanging on the walls. The room was spotlessly clean and very tidy.
Desmond remarked on this, asking if the police had put the room straight.
Mr. Marigold looked quite shocked.
“Oh, no, everything is just as it was when Mrs. Chugg found Miss Mackwayte this morning. There’s Miss Mackwayte’s gloves and handbag on the toilet-table just as she left ’em last night. I wouldn’t let her touch her clothes even. She went over to Mrs. Appleby’s in her dressing-gown, in a taxi.”
“Then Master Burglar didn’t burgle this room?” asked the Chief.
“Nothing touched, not even the girl’s money,” replied Marigold.
“Then why did he come up here at all?” asked Desmond.
“Obviously, the old gentleman disturbed him,” was the detective’s reply. “Barney got scared and shot the old gentleman, then came up here to make sure that the daughter would not give him away before he could make his escape. He must have known the report of the gun would wake her up.”
“But are there no clues or finger-prints or anything of that kind here, Marigold?” asked the Chief.
“Not a finger-print anywhere,” responded the other, “men like Barney are born wise to the fingerprint business, sir.”
He dipped a finger and thumb into his waistcoat pocket.
“Clues? Well, I’ve got one little souvenir here which I daresay a writer of detective stories would make a good bit of.”
He held in his hand a piece of paper folded flat. He unfolded it and disclosed a loop of dark hair.
“There!” he said mockingly, straightening out the hair and holding it up in the light. “That’s calculated to set one’s thoughts running all over the place, isn’t it? That piece of hair was caught in the buckle of one of the straps with which Miss Mackwayte was bound to the bed. Miss Mackwayte, I would point out, has brown hair.Whose hair do you think that is?”
Desmond looked closely at the strand of hair in the detective’s fingers. It was long and fine and glossy and jetblack.
The Chief laughed and shook his head.
“Haven’t an idea, Marigold,” he answered, “Barney’s, I should imagine, that is, if he goes about with black ringlets falling round his shoulders.”
“Barney?” echoed the detective. “Barney’s as bald as I am. Besides, if you saw his sheet, you’d realize that he has got into the habit of wearing his hair short!”
He carefully rolled the strand of hair up, replaced it in its paper and stowed it in his waistcoat pocket.
“It just shows how easily one is misled in a matter of this kind,” he went on. “Supposing Barney hadn’t got himself nabbed, supposing I hadn’t been able to find out from Miss Mackwayte her movements on the night previous to the murder, that strand of hair might have led me on a fine wild goose chase!”
“But, damn it, Marigold,” exclaimed the Chief, laughing, “you haven’t told us whose hair it is?”
“Why, Nur-el-Din’s, of course!”
The smile froze on the Chief’s lips, the laughter died out of his eyes. Desmond was amazed at the change in the man. The languid interest he had taken in the different details of the crime vanished. Something seemed to tighten up suddenly in his face and manner.
“Why Nur-el-Din?” he asked curtly.
Mr. Marigold glanced quickly at him. Desmond remarked that the detective was sensible of the change too.
“Simply because Miss Mackwayte spent some time in the dancer’s dressing-room last night, sir,” he replied quietly, “she probably sat at her dressing-table and picked up this hair in hers or in her veil or something and it dropped on the bed where one of Master Barney’s buckles caught it up.”
He spoke carelessly but Desmond noticed that he kept a watchful eye on the other.
The Chief did not answer. He seemed to have relapsed into the preoccupied mood in which Desmond had found him that morning.
“I was going to suggest, sir,” said Mr. Marigold diffidently, “if you had the time, you might care to look in at the Yard, and see the prisoner. I don’t mind telling you that he is swearing by all the tribes of Judah that he’s innocent of the murder of old Mackwayte. He’s got an amazing yarn... perhaps you’d like to hear it!”
Mr. Marigold suddenly began to interest Desmond. His proposal was put forward so modestly that one would have thought the last thing he believed possible was that the Chief should acquiesce in his suggestion. Yet Desmond had the feeling that the detective was far from being so disinterested as he wished to seem. It struck Desmond that the case was more complicated than Mr. Marigold admitted and that the detective knew it. Had Mr. Marigold discovered that the Chief knew a great deal more about this mysterious affair than the detective knew himself? And was not his attitude of having already solved the problem of the murder, his treatment of the Chief as a dilettante criminologist simply an elaborate pose, to extract from the Chief information which had not been proffered?
The Chief glanced at his watch.
“Right,” he said, “I think I’d like to go along.”
“I have a good deal to do here still,” observed Mr. Marigold, “so, if you don’t mind, I won’t accompany you. But perhaps, sir, you would like to see me this afternoon?”
The Chief swung round on his heel and fairly searched Mr. Marigold with a glance from beneath his bushy eyebrows. The detective returned his gaze with an expression of supreme innocence.
“Why, Marigold,” answered the Chief, “I believe I should. Six o’clock suit you?”
“Certainly, sir,” said Mr. Marigold.
Desmond stood by the door, vastly amused by this duel of wits. The Chief and Mr. Marigold made a move towards the door, Desmond turned to open it and came face to face with a large framed photograph of the Chief hanging on the wall of Miss Mackwayte’s bedroom.
“Why, Chief,” he cried, “you never told me you knew Miss Mackwayte!”
The Chief professed to be very taken aback by this question. “Dear me, didn’t I, Okewood?” he answered with eyes laughing, “she’s my secretary!”