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Sir Gregory and the artist, off whom Gimblet’s right and left shots had glanced with a sting but produced no permanent wounds, fell back silenced for the moment, though unflinchingly determined to see anything there was to be seen. The quick, searching eyes of Brampton rested on the clerk, and he took in his woeful condition with the rapidity of his trade.

“That young fellow ought to be in bed,” he said, in a low voice, in Sir Gregory’s ear, “but I suppose, like the rest of us, he won’t be able to tear himself away from this exciting spot.”

They followed Gimblet, who had opened the door and passed through it into the hall. He looked round him in despair.

“Really, gentleman,” he cried, “you must stay at the door for the present. If this house has anything to tell, it will never do so after you have trampled all traces from the very floors with your innumerable feet. I will just see if there is anyone here; and, if not, you can come in after I have begun my thorough examination, as long as you keep out of my way and do as I tell you. Otherwise I warn you, Sir Gregory, that you will ruin every chance of success.”

“He talks as if we were centipedes,” murmured Brampton.

Sir Gregory motioned him to silence, and they remained obediently in the doorway while the detective and Higgs ran over the house, opening all the doors and glancing into the rooms to see if there were anyone in them. Whatever secret might lurk beneath that roof, for the moment at least there was no visible human occupant to divulge it; and, if he was to arrive at any answer to the problem of what had taken place on Monday night after the arrival of the ladies, it was clear to Gimblet that he must do so with no help other than the dumb aid he might receive from the inanimate objects still within the walls, or even from the very walls themselves.

As soon as he had completed the first hurried general survey, the detective began a systematic examination of the house, starting with the hall and passage of the ground floor. The other men had to move away from the steps while he was here, as their figures crowding in the open doorway blocked the light, and he wanted all he could get. There was no electric light. In Scholefield Avenue, Brampton told Sir Gregory, all the houses were dependent on gas for their illumination. Gimblet knelt down and examined the carpet of the hall on his hands and knees. He took a small magnifying lens from his pocket, and applied it to certain spots, which he lingered over longer than the rest of the floor; at the foot of the stairs he picked up a small object from under the corner of the mat; he held it to the light for a moment between finger and thumb, and then put it carefully away in a little box like a pill-box, which he also produced from his pocket. Then he stood up, and examined the furniture with the same patient deliberation. Presently he spoke to the clerk, who was standing before the door, a little apart from the others.

“Have you got that inventory?” he asked. “Just read out the contents of the hall.”

Tremmels came up the steps and opened the book he carried.

“Two oak chairs, one oak table, one mirror, one mat,” he read. “One umbrella stand; two chairs on landing, eight engravings in frames.”

“Wait a bit,” interposed the detective, “we haven’t got there yet.”

He went to the door, and called to Sir Gregory and Brampton.

“I’ve finished the hall,” he said. “If you want to come in, you can, as long as you stay behind me and don’t bother me with talking.”

Then he turned back to his search, and began to subject each tread of the staircase to the same minute examination as the hall had received. From time to time he added another tiny object to the one he had already placed in the pill-box; four or five were deposited there before they reached the first floor.

In this way the party ascended, a step at a time, till Brampton’s curiosity began to succumb to the boredom of such ineffably slow, crawling, snail-like progress.

“I think I’ll not inflict my presence any longer, Mr. Gimblet,” said he, “it is time I dressed for dinner, or my wife will have to wait for me.”

Receiving no answer from Gimblet, who was now absolutely absorbed in his work, he whispered to Sir Gregory that he would come back after dinner, and retired from the scene, escorted to the door by Higgs, who let him out and shut it behind him before he returned to his post at the foot of the staircase.

At the top of the house Gimblet straightened himself and turned to Sir Gregory and the clerk, who were on the stairs a few steps below him.

Sir Gregory, who was nearly choking with pent-up questions, seized the opportunity.

“Have you found anything?” he cried, and Tremmels, though he said nothing, was a living echo of the words, as he strained forward behind Sir Gregory to catch the reply.

“Nothing definite as yet,” said Gimblet, “but I may say it appears to me probable that, if Mrs. Vanderstein did come here on Monday night, she did not stay in the house long. I should say she went no higher, at all events, than the drawing-room floor.” And he proceeded to the examination of the rooms working his way downwards.

The bedrooms yielded no harvest; they wore the dismal look of unoccupied rooms and had apparently not been entered since, having been swept and cleaned with great thoroughness, they had been left ready for the use of the tenant. None of the beds were made, there was no water in the jugs, there was absolutely no indication of so much as one of them having been used since the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Mill. Gimblet did not spend so long over them as he had over the staircase, but it was past eight o’clock when at length he came out of the last one and descended to the first floor.

“I can always try upstairs again if there is nothing conclusive here,” he said to Sir Gregory, as they went down.

With his hand on the knob of the drawing-room door he paused an instant, looking with more sympathy than he had lately shown at the anxious face of the old soldier. A feeling crept over him that it would not be good for Sir Gregory to enter this room; it was a vague impalpable feeling, which he could not explain; and in a moment it had passed. He opened the door and went into the drawing-room, leaving the baronet, in obedience to instructions received, faithfully standing on the landing, the white face of the clerk showing over his shoulder, framed in the square of the doorway against the dusky shadows beyond.

CHAPTER XVIII

In the preliminary hasty search over the house, it had fallen to Higgs to reach the first floor earlier than his master. Gimblet had left it to him to examine, while he himself hurried to the upper stories; so that he now entered the drawing-room for the first time.

He stood for a moment turning his head to right and left, taking in the principal features of the apartment with quick, comprehensive glances. Then, of a sudden, the whole figure of the man stiffened; and it was hard to recognise Mr. Gimblet, the dilettante, the frequenter of curiosity shops, the lounger in picture galleries, in the tense, motionless form of Gimblet, the detective, at this moment. He stood, as a pointer stands when it catches the wind of game, erect and stiff, in an attitude of interrupted movement, one knee still bent for the step he had been in the very act of making; his whole form absolutely still, save for a series of short, successive intakings of the breath, as, with head thrown back and his eyes shining with the keen, well-balanced excitement of the hunter, he sniffed the air.

What was it he smelt? Something so faint, so indefinite, that after the first arresting instant he had lost it altogether; and with it the knowledge of what it was – which in that one second had seemed almost his – slipped away and was gone, nor could his most strenuous effort recall it. Oh, for one more whiff of that evasive, troubling odour! But sniff as he might he could no longer detect anything, and slowly his attitude relaxed, and he brought other senses to bear upon the scene.

The room was divided, by its shape, into a front and back drawing-room, as is commonly the case in London houses; but the two had been thrown into one and the door led into the narrower back part, so that the light from the window overlooking the garden, which was obscured by trees, while it still illumined all that lay on Gimblet’s right, hardly penetrated into the front and larger portion of the place. There the closed shutters of the three windows leading to the balcony prevented the light from finding an entrance, and it was very dark. The detective lit the gas and looked around him.

It was a cheerful, pleasant room; not overcrowded with furniture, and showing taste and judgment in its arrangement and decoration, though there was nothing very original about it. On the walls, which were covered with some light coloured paper, were hung three or four good modern pictures; the mantelpiece was an eighteenth century one, and on either side of it was placed a Chippendale cabinet, with shelves for china, of which some good pieces could be seen through the small panes of the glass doors. At the opposite end of the room was a long, low bookcase and, except for a large writing bureau, the rest of the furniture consisted of sofas and chairs, with one or two small tables. It was a room at once dainty and desolate, gay and forlorn. The empty flower vases which stood on the tables, the absence of stray books, work, papers, or other signs of human occupancy, gave it a look of discomfort and dreariness; but it was plain, from the bright chintzes and curtains and the soft luxury of the carpet, that it only needed the presence of its owners to assume a cheerful and lively aspect.

Gimblet began his examination in his usual methodical manner, working his way over the floor on hands and knees, gazing at the carpet through his lens at any place where there appeared a doubtful mark or change in the appearance of its surface from that of the surrounding parts. As he came to chairs or tables he moved them to one side, and continued his quest on the spot where they had stood. There were two small Chesterfield sofas, one of which jutted out at right angles to the fire-place before the right hand window of the front part of the room, the other facing the door with its back against the wall.

When the detective came to the sofa by the fireplace, he pushed it to one side as he had pushed each piece of furniture in its turn, and as his eyes fell on the floor beneath it a low whistle escaped him: there was a patch of reddish stain on the green Wilton carpet, about three inches in diameter, and a smaller spot or two near by of the same rusty colour.

With his head on one side, and his lips still pursed as if to emit a whistling sound, but with no audible noise issuing from them, Gimblet gazed at the stain on the carpet; and the longer he looked the sterner his face became; the whistling expression vanished, and he opened and shut his mouth with a grinding sound as the teeth met. He rubbed his finger over the marks, and the patch seemed to crumble away at his touch, till a hole appeared in the carpet and the white boards of the flooring were exposed to view. He applied his lens to the edges of the hole and plucked at the frayed wool with his fingers. A small piece that he pulled off he bestowed in one of the little specimen boxes with which he had provided himself.

Then he replaced the sofa in its original position, and continued his examination of the floor. Under the fender he discovered another of the little objects he had picked up on the stairs, but nothing else did he find of any interest till he began to turn his attention to the furniture. Almost the first thing he looked at was the sofa that concealed the hole in the carpet; he was drawn back to it with an irresistible attraction. A careful scrutiny, however, did not reveal much more than the fact that the chintz cover was rather tumbled. Gimblet dug his hand down at the back of the seat, and pulled out the part of it which was tucked down. As he did so he felt a little lump under his fingers, and holding it up saw that it was yet another tiny shining thing for his pill-box collection, and as he looked at the piece of chintz he had pulled out he perceived several more of the same kind.

They glittered in the gaslight like little diamonds, but had evidently come off the spangled tulle of a lady’s dress. Gimblet remembered that Mrs. Vanderstein’s dress had been described by her maid as “diamantée”; but then it was possible, indeed probable, that Mrs. Mill, or her friends, possessed gowns of similar material. Gimblet stooped again, and tugged up the rest of the sofa covering from the depths behind the cushions. This time he pulled it all up; the whole covering lay spread before him in an untidy, unwieldy mass, and from the end, as he plucked it out, there shot two small objects, which fell to the floor at his feet. In a moment he had lifted them from the ground and stood staring at them: they were a piece of crushed and folded paper and a minute powder puff.

The detective unfolded the paper, and held it to the light; it was a sheet of thick white notepaper, and on it was embossed a crown and device in heavy gold lettering. Below these was written in a fine, slanting foreign hand

“Most adored, I count the hours, the minutes, till I shall hear for the first time the sound of your voice. Heaven be praised that I have not long to wait, and you, whom heaven has sent to me, accept the thanks of my grateful heart. I send this by Madame Q.”

The signature that followed made Gimblet open his eyes. “Felipe,” in conjunction with the crown at the head of the paper and the foreign character of the penmanship, could refer to one person only. Gimblet was well aware that the Prince of Targona was honouring London with his presence. He glanced carefully round the room to make sure no one was near, folded the paper carefully, and placed it in his notebook. Then he turned his attention to the powder puff.

It was an ordinary little powder puff of pink silk and white down – very small, very dainty, if very commonplace. Gimblet turned it over and over, but could see nothing about it which stamped it as different from other powder puffs. Not that it was a curio in the peculiarities of which he was very well versed; he could not help realising that in the matter of powder puffs his education had been neglected. A French detective, he told himself sadly, would have read a whole history in this soft toy. He brushed it across the back of his hand, but it left no mark; he shook it into the palm, but no powder fell from it. It was plain to him that, whatever uses it might have served in the white hands that had formerly clasped it, it was not of any use at all in his, and in his irritation he was inclined to hurl it from him. But his methodical habits prevailed and he felt in his coat for a box to contain it. And suddenly, with what seemed like an involuntary movement, he lifted the hand that held the powder puff, and held it to his nose.

“Ah,” he sighed, and it was a sigh of deep content. Then he stored away the precious fluffy thing, and put it in his pocket. He finished the tour of the furniture without further discovery; at the end of it he requested Tremmels to read out the contents of the room from the inventory, as he had done at the conclusion of his visits to each room or landing, checking off each object as the clerk read out its description.

“I am in hopes,” he said to Sir Gregory, “of finding something not mentioned in the inventory, which we might take to be the property of Mr. West. But so far there is nothing that can possibly be his, not so much as a toothbrush. He certainly seems to be a leader of the simple life.” Then he turned to Tremmels again. “Is there no mention of the chair covers?” he asked. But the young man only stared at him open-mouthed, and he seized the book from his hand.

“Let me see,” he murmured, running a finger down the page. “Here we are. ‘Two Chesterfield sofas and five arm-chairs with loose chintz covers.’ Might mean anything. Look here!” he turned to the clerk again, “you went over the inventory. What do you remember about that sofa?” He pointed to the one opposite the door, which, unlike the other sofas and chairs, had no chintz covering. Tremmels was flurried by the detective’s sharp tone.

“I – I don’t remember anything at all,” he stammered.

“What, don’t you remember that it had a cover?”

Gimblet’s second question was still more sharply spoken. The clerk shot a glance at him in which suspicion, timidity, and bewilderment were oddly mixed, and he answered stubbornly, repeating his former words as if he imagined a trap were being laid for him.

“I don’t remember anything about it.” His pale face wore an expression more wooden than ever.

The detective turned from him with an impatient movement, and stood looking down at the sofa with a frown on his face. It was exactly the same as the one in the front part of the room, but, instead of a cover of pink and white chintz, it displayed only the upholstery with which it had been originally covered by the makers: a kind of white tapestry with grey flowers and flecks of red, in general colouring not unlike the chintz on the other sofas and chairs, but tightly fitting and leaving exposed the bare legs of brown varnished wood, which were of a particularly ugly shape.

“Come,” said Gimblet at last, “I must go downstairs.”

“What did you find?” Sir Gregory asked him anxiously as they went down, followed at a distance by the clerk, “what did you find by the other sofa?”

The detective hesitated an instant.

“Sir Gregory,” he said, “there is something here, some story to be read, if I can read it. The walls are trying to speak to me, I believe, if I could only listen rightly. There are things very plain that I can see, but not enough of them, and there is something that I don’t understand. But what I have seen points to sinister things, and I must warn you that I don’t like the look of them.”

“Mr. Gimblet!” cried Sir Gregory. “What do you mean?”

“Yes, Sir Gregory,” said the detective. “I am very much more – uneasy about your friend than I have yet been. I fear that, when I am in a position to give you news of her, it may be very bad. You may have to stand a shock. Don’t you think it would be best if you went home and waited till I came to you?”

But, though on Sir Gregory’s face there crept a look of terrified grief, he would not go.

The dining-room told nothing, Gimblet’s researches there were vain, and he soon adjourned to the room behind it, which seemed to be a library or smoking-room. The shutters, as they had seen from the garden, were fastened, but by this time the last of the long summer twilight was fading and the night promised to fall dark and windy. Gimblet’s first act was to light the gas.

It was a small room, this back room, where, no doubt, Mr. Mill, when he was at home, was accustomed to smoke his pipe and attend to his correspondence. Two of the walls were lined with bookshelves; one side was taken up by the window; and on the fourth, opposite the door and above the fire-place, were hung a quantity of mezzotints framed in sombre black. They surrounded a small oil painting that filled the place of honour immediately over the chimney piece, and which caught Gimblet’s interested eye directly. It appeared to be an example of the early Dutch school, and he was seized with the desire to examine it more closely. The fire-place below it was lined with old blue and white tiles, and at these too he cast an envious glance, but the feelings of the collector were subservient just now to those of the detective, and he turned to the more everyday furniture of the room.

There was not very much in it: a couple of arm-chairs stood one on each side of the fire-place, and before the window was a large writing table with inkstand and blotting book disposed upon it, together with a few odds and ends. Even with these the table looked empty; one missed the papers that by rights should have been scattered there. As Gimblet stood beside it, he was conscious of the cold draught that whistled by his ear, and it was then that he first looked toward the window.

“It must be open,” he said to himself, and then, as he looked closer: “By Jingo!”

It was a sash window of the old-fashioned kind, with a dozen or so wood-framed panes to each half of it, and the usual metal catch holding the top and bottom in position together when the window was shut. It was shut now, and the cold air that pervaded the place entered through cracks in the shutters, and after that encountered no further obstacle, for the top middle pane of the lower sash was destitute of glass.

Gimblet pushed away the table and examined the empty framework carefully, touching the edges with an incautious finger, which, however, he withdrew rather hurriedly and transferred to his mouth. He looked at the floor; and then, following his usual custom, knelt down on it, lens in hand. The gaslight was obscured by the shadow of the writing table, and he had recourse to the aid of a pocket electric torch. He was satisfied with what he saw, apparently, for he soon rose and turned to the window again. He unfastened the catch, and placing one hand on the framework sought to raise the sash, but it stuck stiffly, and both hands and a good deal of strength had to be exerted before he was able to lift it.

Then he flashed the light of the little torch on the window sill, and took from it a splinter of broken glass. After this he pursued his inspection of the room and its contents. There was, as has been said, little enough in it except books, but everything there was came in for the usual close scrutiny; the waste paper basket was not forgotten, nor were the empty grate and coal scuttle. In the end, after comparing the things mentioned in the inventory with those in the room, Gimblet shut the door into the hall, and ran his lens hastily over its woodwork. Apparently he saw on it more than he expected, for he returned more slowly to the task and spent several minutes examining some small spots of dirt, which were visible to the naked eye on the white paint.

At last he had done, and there only remained the basement to be investigated. This took some time, and the results disappointed him, with the exception of a cupboard under the stairs where he discovered a housemaid’s dustpan full of pieces of broken glass. He seized on it with eager excitement, and examined the surface of the tin very carefully with his lens; only to put it down again with an irritated clicking of the tongue.

Sir Gregory watched these proceedings in a stricken silence; his hopes had turned to lead at the words Gimblet had addressed to him on leaving the drawing room; as each successive door was thrown open he felt a tightening of the heart and a sick fear of being confronted with some terrible sight. Now he would almost have preferred that the detective should find no clue, so much he dreaded the solution to which he instinctively felt that these small discoveries were irresistibly leading.

The face of the clerk, who equally shared the rôle of silent onlooker, wore an expression of excited interest, except when he was addressed, when it relaxed into its usual wooden apathy. At other times he peered over Sir Gregory’s shoulder with feverish, straining eyes, evidently possessed by all the passion for sensation in any form which is common to his class; though, that he was as much in the dark as Sir Gregory, with regard to the conclusions suggested to the detective by the various objects he examined, was clear from the look of something like elation with which he watched the minute attention bestowed upon the unprofitable dustpan.

Gimblet returned this article to its place, and drew out, one by one, the other things in the cupboard: a water-can, a bucket, a scrubbing brush, and other odds and ends. The last thing he brought to light was a crumpled ball of newspaper, stuffed away at the back of some brooms and pails. This did not look interesting; and, while Sir Gregory saw with relief the handling of anything which gave him breathing space, Tremmel’s face fell.

Gimblet, however, was too methodical to ignore anything, even so unpromising an object as an old newspaper. He opened it out on the floor of the passage, unrolling the crumpled pages and spreading them flat on the boards. In the middle of the ball was a small quantity of dust, or rather what looked more like earth. Gimblet scooped it up in one hand and let it fall through his fingers into the palm of the other; it was black and fine, but gritty to the touch. With a puzzled expression he stowed some of it away in one of his little boxes, and put the rest in his pocket, wrapped in a piece of the newspaper. Then he disappeared into the coal cellar, which was the only place left that he had not visited. He found nothing there.

By this time it was nearly ten o’clock.

They went back into the hall and Gimblet opened the door of the little library.

“Sit down in here, Sir Gregory,” he said, “you have been on your feet for hours” – and indeed the baronet was dropping with fatigue – . “I am just going out into the garden, and you may as well rest a little. As for you,” he added to Tremmels, “you can go home if you like. I’ve done with the inventory.”

“There’s the key,” the clerk reminded him, “and, if you don’t mind my sitting down here in the hall for a few minutes before I go … I’m feeling a bit tired myself, sir.”

He certainly looked it, but then he had looked so ill from the beginning that the effect of these hours of standing about and the lack of food, which told heavily upon Sir Gregory, hardly added to the miserable aspect of Tremmels, whatever he might be feeling.

Gimblet told him to sit down, and leaving them went out into the garden. He walked round to the back, and along the path which led to the toolshed. Going into it he hunted, by the light of his torch, among the implements that leant against the wall; but what he sought was not there, and he retreated, unsatisfied. As he returned slowly to the house, he moved his lamp from side to side, so that the light shone on the flower beds between which he walked and not on the path beneath his feet; it was as if he hoped to find what he wanted among the flowers.

Turning the corner of the wall, he saw a dark figure in the act of shutting the further gate; it came towards him and he recognised the artist, Brampton.

“You work late, Mr. Gimblet,” he said, as he met the detective. “Any discoveries?”

Gimblet did not reply; he was looking at his watch.

“It is late,” he said after a pause; and then half to himself, “late! too late, and too dark,” he murmured; and again, “perhaps it is just as well. It will do Sir Gregory no harm to wait till to-morrow for bad news.”

“What,” said Brampton, “you have bad news for him?”

“I fear there will be bad news – to-morrow,” said Gimblet.

The night was very dark, for clouds had gathered afresh, and the wind was getting up again. The leaves of the trees in the street rustled loudly as if in protest; from a distance the tinkle of a barrel organ sounded fitfully in the intervals between gusts of wind.

“It’s as cold as winter,” grumbled Brampton.

Gimblet was staring up at the front of the house, and when he spoke Brampton was struck by the change in his voice.

“Of course!” he cried, “the crumpled newspaper! What have I been about? Now, ah, now I know! Mr. Brampton,” he said, moving, so that he faced the other in the darkness, “there is something very terrible here; something to be done that is quite unfit for Sir Gregory to take part in. I am only too well convinced that a crime has been committed in this house, a gruesome and dastardly crime, which but for the merest accident might not have been discovered for weeks. No ordinary criminals have been at work here; we have to deal with some scoundrel so cold-blooded and resourceful, so prudent, and so full of forethought and vile cunning, as I do not think I have ever encountered before. What is your nerve like, Mr. Brampton? I see you are muscularly a strong man, and I shall have need of help. What do you say? Can you give me the assistance I want, or shall I go and find the policeman on this beat?”

The solemn words of the detective, and still more acutely the grave and urgent note in his voice, thrilled the imagination of the artist, and awoke in him a horrified perception of the seriousness of the situation, which hitherto he had looked on with an eye, half amused, half derisive, as we may contemplate a game of Red Indians played by some earnest and dramatic children. The spirit of adventure cried aloud in him, and overcame the shrinking of a refined nature from contact with the horrible.

“You can rely on me,” was all he said, and thereupon Gimblet ran up to the door, calling to Higgs to open it.

The other men were sitting as he had left them, Sir Gregory in an arm-chair by the library fire-place, and the clerk in the hall; both drooped in attitudes of extreme weariness.

“Will you please stay where you are a little longer?” Gimblet said to Sir Gregory. “I am going upstairs with Mr. Brampton, to see if he can tell me one or two things I want to know about the ordinary disposal of the furniture; and after that we will go home, unless you will be guided by me and do so at once. No? Well, we shall not be long. We shall not want you,” he added to Tremmels, who was struggling stiffly to rise from his seat.

At Gimblet’s words he sank back again, and leant his head weakly against the wall.

With a sign to Higgs and Brampton to follow him, Gimblet went upstairs.

The gas was still burning in the drawing-room, and the door stood open as he had left it. Gimblet paused on the threshold and drew Brampton’s attention to the sofa opposite.

“Do you remember,” he asked, “whether that sofa had a cover like the other before Mr. Mill went away?”