Stephen was down late to breakfast next morning. Mrs. Dickinson, following the custom by which the privileges of invalids are always extended to the recently bereaved, was breakfasting in bed. Anne had already finished her meal some time before, but was still in the dining-room. Stephen came in just as she was jabbing the stub of her third cigarette into an ashtray. She had an air of impatient exasperation.
“Well?” she fired at him at once.
Stephen did not reply. He went over to the sideboard and helped himself to coffee.
“Stone-cold,” he remarked. “And the milk has a disgusting skin on it. What a filthy stink you have made in here. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen you smoking in the dining-room after breakfast.”
“Go on! Say it!” said Anne. “If Father was alive I shouldn’t be doing it. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“Well, there’s no harm in looking on the bright side, is there? You’re very pugnacious this morning, Anne.”
“I’m very impatient, if you like. I thought you were never coming down.”
“Impatient?” said Stephen, buttering a piece of toast with great deliberation. “What about?”
“About everything, of course. Are you getting on to Jelks today? When are we going to see the insurance person? What are we going to do first? There are scores of things I want to discuss with you. And then you ask what I’m impatient about!”
“The first thing I’m going to do,” said Stephen, “is to have my breakfast, and I wish I could feel that it was more than a forlorn hope that I should have it in comparative peace and quiet. After that—”
“Yes?”
“After that, I am not going to discuss matters with Jelks, or the insurance people, or, for the matter of that, with Martin. I am going to make a few quiet inquiries on my own. Now don’t start making a fuss,” he went on quickly before she could speak. “I know quite well what you are going to say. But I’ve thought this out, and I’ve made up my mind. I’ve read the evidence and you haven’t. There’s just one chance for us, as far as I can see, and I’m going to test it, and see if there’s a reasonable prospect of its coming off. If there is, we go right ahead. If not—”
“You mean that you’re looking for an excuse to back out. It’s just the sort of thing I might have expected!”
“Need we go into all this again?” said Stephen wearily. “I am not anxious to back out, as I think I explained to you last night. But you don’t understand the position at all. If,” he went on with a maddening assumption of superiority, “you had had the decency to let me eat my breakfast in peace, I dare say I should have explained it to you. As it is, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait.”
Anne got up and went to the door. With her hand on the latch she turned and said:
“Stephen, this is all very ridiculous. I’m sorry about last night, if that’s what you want me to say. Why on earth should this horrible thing have made us squabble like two children?”
“Because we look at it from two different angles, I suppose. Not that I admit for a moment that there is anything in the least childish in my behaviour, at any rate. So far as you are concerned—”
“Oh, very well!” Anne exclaimed, and flounced out of the room. A moment later she opened the door again, and did her best to repair the anti-climax by the sarcastic tone in which she asked: “Will your lordship be good enough to indicate where he is going to prosecute his inquiries, and whether he expects to be home to lunch?”
Bowing gravely over his boiled egg, Stephen replied: “I shall not be in to lunch. And I see no objection to informing you that I am going to Scotland Yard.”
Going to Scotland Yard was simple enough; doing anything when there turned out to be a difficult matter. The polite but inquisitive policeman at the entrance made that clear to Stephen. So he wished to see Inspector Mallett, did he? Precisely. In connexion with what case was it? Oh, a private matter? Just so. Had he an appointment, perhaps? No? That was unfortunate. Stephen, feeling uncomfortably warm with embarrassment and with a growing sensation that his collar was a size too small for him, agreed that it was unfortunate. No, he did not desire to state his business to any other officer. Yes, he quite understood that the inspector was a busy man, but the matter was urgent and would not detain the inspector long. Yes, here was his card. By all means he would wait. No, he really would prefer not to explain the position to the sergeant. No, not at all. . . . Oh, certainly. . . . Yes, rather. . . . Thanks, if you don’t mind. . . . I quite understand. . . . Yes. . . . No. . . .
These preliminaries occupied about half an hour, and the sojourn in the waiting-room that succeeded them some twenty minutes more. At the end of that time, Stephen was informed that the inspector was in conference with the Assistant Commissioner, and that when the conference was over he would be at his lunch. The tone in which this latter piece of information was delivered indicated that Inspector Mallett’s lunch was not a function to be treated lightly. After his lunch, if he was not otherwise engaged, the card of this importunate visitor would be put before him, and he might consent to receive him—if he thought fit. The officer obviously did not think it likely that the inspector would so think, but he indicated that there would be no harm in trying, and Stephen, by now thoroughly cowed, promised to return at two o’clock.
He lunched miserably in the neighbourhood and soon after Big Ben had struck the three-quarters was back again in the dirty brick quadrangle which seemed by now depressingly familiar. Resigned to another long period of unprofitable waiting, he was agreeably surprised to be met by the news that the inspector’s conference had finished earlier than was expected, that the inspector had had his lunch all right (this was a most important point, evidently), that the inspector had seen Stephen’s card, and that the inspector was free and would see him now, and would he come this way please?
Somewhat dazed, Stephen suffered himself to be led along many passages and up many flights of stairs, and finally found himself in a small airy room which overlooked the Thames, and which at first sight seemed to him to be distinctly overcrowded. The impression of overcrowding, he soon decided, was largely contributed to by the great bulk of the man who was its only occupant, and who now sat behind his desk regarding him with an expression that was at once genial and inquiring.
“Mr. Stephen Dickinson?” said Mallett in a voice surprisingly quiet and gentle for one of his large frame. “Won’t you sit down?”
Stephen did so, and opened his mouth to explain himself, but the inspector went on: “Are you the son of the late Mr. Leonard Dickinson?”
“Yes. In fact I—”
“I thought so. You are rather like him in some ways.”
The young man flushed.
“Oh, do you think so?” he said, in a tone of some annoyance. “I never thought there was much likeness myself.”
Inspector Mallett chuckled.
“One of my grandmother’s rules of conduct,” he observed, “was: ‘Never see a likeness.’ She had a theory that it was rude. I’m afraid manners were never my strong point, though. I joined the Force before the days of courtesy cops. But there is a likeness, all the same,” he added.
Recollecting the late Mr. Dickinson’s unattractive elderliness, he was not in the least surprised that his son should repudiate the suggestion so curtly. It was in any case, he reflected, a likeness of expression rather than of feature. It was difficult to pin down, as family resemblances so often are, but the fact remained that with his first glance at Stephen, his mind had gone back at once to old Mr. Dickinson. Oddly enough, he had been reminded of the dead man’s face, not as he had seen it pressed close to his own in garrulous confidences after dinner, but as it had appeared the next morning, silent and still, the lines of worry and disillusionment smoothed out in death. Then the essential cast of countenance had been revealed with the removal of the accidental tricks that life had played with it. In Stephen’s case, experience had not yet had time to spin its web of disguise. And the common factor was—he fumbled for a definition—that each was essentially the face of a man who was before all things self-centred. At bottom, he felt, the likeness between father and son was a good deal more than skin-deep, though one was a weary pessimist and the other obviously alert and self-confident to the point of bumptiousness. Had he known it, this parallel between himself and his parent would have annoyed Stephen considerably more than the discovery that they possessed a similar nose or chin could possibly have done.
Meanwhile Stephen was speaking.
“At all events,” he said, “it was about my father that I came to see you.”
“Yes?” Mallett was friendly, but showed no inclination to help him out.
“Yes.” He hesitated for a moment, braced himself as though for a plunge into cold water, and then came out with: “I’m not satisfied with the verdict on my father’s death.”
Mallett raised his eyebrows.
“The coroner’s jury was wrong,” Stephen repeated.
“Yes,” said Mallett slowly. “I appreciate that that was what you meant. But in that case, Mr. Dickinson, don’t you think you ought to go and see the police about it? I mean,” he went on, smiling at the puzzled expression on the young man’s face, “the Markshire police. This is their affair, you know. My own connexion with it was purely accidental and unofficial. Perhaps if I were to give you a note to the local superintendent—”
“No,” said Stephen firmly. “I quite understand what you say, but that isn’t what I want. I came to see you personally, because . . .” He hesitated.
“Yes?”
“Because you were the person largely responsible for things going wrong at the inquest.”
It was a long time since Inspector Mallett had had a remark of this kind addressed to him, and he did not take it very kindly. For a moment he was tempted to deal very severely with this impertinent person, and it was perhaps fortunate for Stephen that he was still in a post-prandial mood of kindliness. His momentary look of annoyance, however, did not pass unnoticed, and Stephen was prompt to apologize.
“Please don’t think—” he began.
“Never mind what I think,” the inspector interrupted him. “It’s what I did that is in question, isn’t it? Let’s keep to that. I was a witness at the inquest on your father—a witness of fact, purely and simply. I hope I was an accurate witness. I certainly tried to be.”
“Exactly. And it was your evidence that caused all the trouble. Although it was accurate—because it was accurate—it resulted in the coroner and the jury being hopelessly misled.”
Stephen sat back with the air of one who has delivered an ultimatum. But Mallett showed no sign of being impressed. He merely laid his broad hands flat upon the desk in front of him, pursed his lips, and looked into space about a foot above the top of Stephen’s head.
“You know, I haven’t the least idea what you are talking about,” he murmured. “Now look here—” He suddenly brought his gaze down full upon the other’s face. “Suppose we start at the beginning. It’s much more satisfactory. Mr. Dickinson died from an overdose of Medinal. The medical evidence was conclusive on that point, to my mind at least. Are you disputing it?”
“No.”
“Very well. On the evidence, of which mine was part, the coroner’s jury came to the conclusion that he had taken his own life. That you say was wrong?”
“Exactly.”
“Apart from my evidence, do you think that the verdict would have been different?”
“I think there was a very good chance of a finding of accidental death.”
“I don’t altogether agree with you. As I recollect the evidence—but we can discuss that later. Do you think that accidental death would have been a proper verdict?”
“I should have been perfectly satisfied with it.”
“But do you think it would have been a proper verdict?”
“No. If by ‘proper’ you mean in accordance with the facts, I don’t think it would.”
A long pause followed these words. Mallett opened his mouth to say something, evidently thought better of it, and then said: “But you told me just now you would have been satisfied with that verdict?”
“That’s not quite the same thing, is it?”
“You needn’t tell me that,” said Mallett with some asperity. He looked at Stephen quizzically for a moment in silence and then said: “Mr. Dickinson, I don’t understand you in the least. You object to the verdict which was given because you think it was incorrect, but you would have been perfectly prepared to accept another, equally incorrect. Evidently you are not concerned about—abstract justice, shall we say? And at the same time you don’t strike me as a person who would worry very much about any stigma attaching to a finding of suicide. Or am I wrong?”
“No,” said Stephen. “I’m not very strong on abstractions. As to stigmas,” he grinned reminiscently, “some of my family seem to have them on the brain. Personally, I don’t care two hoots about them. But it so happens that a very large sum of money depends upon my establishing that my father did not kill himself.”
The inspector could not suppress a smile.
“And therefore you have determined that the verdict was wrong?” he said.
Stephen frowned at the imputation.
“No!” he protested. “I knew that the verdict was wrong as soon as I heard it. So would you, if you had known as much about my father as I do. But the wrongness doesn’t concern me; its consequences do. That is why I should have been content with a verdict of accidental death. And that is why, very much against my will, I find myself in the position of having to prove the truth, which for other reasons it would have been much better for all concerned not to have bothered about.”
To himself Inspector Mallett murmured with satisfaction, “Self-centred!” Aloud he said, “And what precisely do you mean by the truth, Mr. Dickinson?”
“That my father was murdered.”
The inspector tugged thoughtfully at the points of his fierce military moustache. If he was at all shocked at the suggestion, he gave no signs of it.
“Murdered?” he said softly. “Just so! Then in that case, don’t you think my original suggestion was the correct one—that you should put the case before the appropriate authority, the Markshire County Police?”
“I don’t know whether it was correct or not,” retorted Stephen with some impatience. “I do know that it’s no sort of use to me. For one thing, I have at the present moment no evidence whatever to put before the Markshire or any other police, and for another, I am not interested in proving that any particular person killed my father. I only want to show, to the satisfaction of the insurance company, or a court of law if necessary, that he was killed by somebody.”
“I see,” said Mallett. “You put the position very clearly. You can hardly expect a police officer to take the same rather—er—detached view of crime as you do, but I appreciate your position. I take it that your object now is to get what evidence you can in order to prove your case against the insurance company?”
“That is what I am here for.”
Mallett made a little gesture of impatience.
“But my dear sir,” he said, “we are back where we started from! How can I help you? Officially—”
“I am here quite unofficially.”
“Very good, then. Unofficially, I am simply an individual who was called to give some evidence which was perfectly accurate, and which the jury believed and acted upon. If you ever bring any proceedings in which your father’s death is in question, I should probably be called as a witness again, and should give the same evidence, which would presumably have the same effect on another jury. What can I do about it?”
To his surprise, Stephen replied airily, “Oh, I can dispose of your evidence easily enough.”
“Indeed!”
“Certainly. I should probably have done so at the inquest, if I had been there, instead of in Switzerland all the time, out of reach of newspapers and letters. After all, what did it amount to? You had a talk to my father the night before he died, or rather, if I know anything of the matter, he did the talking and you just listened and wished you could get away from such a shocking old bore. You found him a gloomy old man—as who wouldn’t?—full of complaints about life in general and his family in particular. That is the main effect of it, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” the inspector admitted. “But it went a good deal further than that.”
“I bet it did. You didn’t enter into very many details, but I expect I can supply a few for you. He told you that he had made a mistake marrying a woman so much younger than himself, didn’t he? He said that he had been born at Pendlebury Old Hall and that it meant much more to him than his family could ever imagine, because it was the only place where he had been happy in the whole of his life. And finally, he said that he felt like a snail, dragging its trail about with him wherever it went, and wondered with an air of deep significance where the trail would end.”
“But I never mentioned that in my evidence,” said Mallett. “How did you know that he used that expression?”
“Because he was always using it, of course. You don’t imagine that he invented it for your benefit, do you? In the home one could expect that sort of stuff to come up every month or so. The snail and his trail has been the theme song of my family for ages. In fact, I did actually write a song about it. It begins like this:
“How doth the melancholy snail
Invigorate his friends,
By looking back upon his trail
And wondering where it ends.
“Not very high-class verse, I admit, but it proves my point, anyhow. So far as your talk with him is relied on as evidence of suicide, you can wash it out altogether.”
“My evidence was not confined to my conversation of the night before,” Mallett pointed out. “And I don’t think that the coroner relied on that alone when he came to sum up to the jury.”
“No, of course he didn’t. What he relied on most of all was the silliest bit of evidence of the whole lot—not that I blame him, he couldn’t have known. It was simply the most sickening piece of bad luck—a pure coincidence that nobody could have foreseen. I suppose, by the way, that we are talking about the same thing—I mean the inscription, motto, or whatever you like to call it, that was found by his body?”
Mallett nodded.
“We are in the power of no calamity, while Death is in our own,” Stephen quoted. He laughed mirthlessly. “Gosh! Isn’t it ridiculous! By the way, Inspector,” he went on, “did you happen to notice what sort of paper it was written on?”
“Yes. It was on a small slip of white paper of good quality. The ink was dark, I remember, as though it had been written at least some hours before I saw it, possibly more. That would depend on the type of ink, you know. The handwriting, you may remember, was identified at the inquest by your mother.”
“Oh, no question about the writing,” said Stephen. “The silly thing is, it might just as likely have been mine. That would have puzzled the coroner a bit, wouldn’t it?”
“Yours, Mr. Dickinson? How could that be?”
Stephen did not answer the question directly.
“Do you ever read detective stories, Inspector?” he said. “There’s a very good one of Chesterton’s, in which a man is found with an apparent confession of suicide beside him, which is really a fragment from a novel he is writing. The murderer pinches the sheet he has just written, and snips off the edge of the paper which has the inverted commas on it.”
“But this was a small slip of paper,” was Mallett’s practical comment. “Not a fragment of a book or anything else. And I’m quite certain none of the edges were snipped off.”
“And you may add with equal truth, my father was not writing a novel. But I’ll tell you what he was doing, he was compiling a calendar.”
“A calendar?”
“Yes—a calendar of quotations, one for every day of the year. And being my father, it was, of all things, a calendar of pessimistic quotations. Incidentally, can you imagine a man who really contemplated suicide devoting years of his life to selecting and arranging the three hundred and sixty-five gloomiest observations on life that he could find?”
“This was a quotation, then?”
“Lord, yes! My father wasn’t capable of producing a sentiment of that kind out of his own head. It was written by a gent named Sir Thomas Browne, about three hundred years ago. Father was fearfully pleased when he discovered it, or rather when I discovered it for him. I wrote it down for him a month or two ago, and evidently he thought it good enough to keep for his permanent collection, as he copied it out on one of his little slips. He had hundreds of them, you see, and was always shuffling them about and rejecting the ones that didn’t come up to his standard of depression. He got some perverted pleasure out of it—I can’t think what. That’s why his calendar took such a long time to complete. I’ve brought some to show you the sort of thing.” From his pocket he took several small slips of paper. “Here’s a good example,” he said.
My Brother, my poor Brothers, it is thus;
This life itself holds nothing good for us,
But it ends soon and nevermore can be;
And we knew nothing of it ere our birth,
And shall know nothing when consigned to earth:
I ponder these thoughts and they comfort me.
“The City of Dreadful Night, you know. He got quite a number of his best quotes out of that. Then this one is rather amusing:
Howbeit, I do here most certainely assure you, there be many wayes to Peru.
“I don’t quite know how he came by that. It’s out of Hakluyt’s Voyages. He seems to have thought that Peru was symbolical of the next world, or something of the kind, whereas as a matter of fact it’s a perfectly straightforward piece of geographical information. Anyhow, he discarded it in favour of something grislier. Like this, for example—”
“I think that’s enough to go on with,” said Mallett, who was beginning to feel somewhat overwhelmed at this display of erudition. “You seem to have proved your point, Mr. Dickinson. But I don’t understand why this particular passage should have been found by your father’s bed after he was dead. Are you asking me to believe that someone else put it there, in order to give the effect of suicide?”
Stephen pondered for a moment before he answered.
“No,” he said. “No, I’ve thought of that, and it doesn’t hold water. For one thing how would he have known where to find it? The simple explanation is that my father took it out of his pocket when he undressed, along with his other things, and kept it by his bedside to gloat over. I know that sounds improbable to you, Inspector, and God knows how I should ever get a jury to believe it, but that happens to be the kind of odd fish my father was. He got a kick out of this sort of thing, just as old men of another kind get a kick out of indecent photographs. And like them, he enjoyed having his pet vice handy.”
“It’s possible,” said Mallett slowly. “Yes, I suppose it’s just possible.”
“It’s a dead certainty to me, knowing Father as I did.”
“Well, assuming—just assuming—that you are right so far, and that your father did not in fact kill himself. You are still a long way from proving the rather startling theory which you advanced just now—that this is a case of murder.”
“If he didn’t kill himself, then someone else did,” said Stephen with an air of finality.
“That’s just the point I want to put to you. Your father died, as we agreed just now, from an overdose of Medinal, a drug which he was regularly taking on medical advice. If we exclude the possibility that he took the overdose deliberately, surely the inference is that he took it by accident?”
“Yes, it ought to be, but there again luck is against us. I’ve told you already I’m not in the least keen to prove that a murder has been committed, but I’m driven to it. I think the evidence quite clearly puts an accidental overdose outside the bounds of possibility.”
Mallett reflected for a moment.
“I begin to remember,” he said. “There were two bottles of tablets beside the bed, were there not? One nearly full, and the other completely empty.”
“Exactly. Two bottles. Now one can understand a man, having taken his proper dose, forgetting that he had done so, and taking another one, out of the same bottle. You could easily get a jury to swallow that. But who on earth is going to believe that anyone in his senses should go and open a fresh bottle when the old one is staring him in the face, to prove that he had taken his proper dose already?”
“Yes. I remember that the coroner dealt with that question.”
“And,” Stephen added, to clinch the point, “there weren’t enough tablets missing from the full bottle to constitute a lethal dose.”
“He certainly died from the effects of a very large overdose indeed. The doctors were quite clear on that.”
“Quite so. Therefore I should fail if I attempted to prove that my father died accidentally. If I am to dispose of the verdict of suicide, I must rely on the only other possible cause of death—namely, murder.”
“I suppose,” said Mallett ironically, “that you haven’t considered such minor questions as who murdered your father, or how, or why?”
“Not yet,” answered Stephen with irritating composure. “That will, of course, be the next stage in my inquiries. And remember, it is no part of my job to convict anybody. I’m only interested to show that my father’s estate is entitled to collect the cash from the insurance company. That’s where I want your help. You are interested in punishing crime, I suppose, so I presume you have no objection to giving it.”
“I have already explained,” said the inspector, “that this case is no affair of mine. Even if you are right in your suggestion, I can take no part in any inquiries unless and until I am called in.”
“You misunderstand me. I’m not asking you to take any part in the inquiries. I am sorry to have taken so long to come to the point, but I had to explain the position first. What I’m after is this: If this was a case of murder—and I, at any rate, am satisfied that it was—there must have been something to indicate it. Something fishy—something a little out of the ordinary, at least. And if there was, you were the person to notice it at the time. Oh, I know you’re going to tell me that you weren’t there on business. I admit that. But after all, you’re a detective by training. You can’t get away from that, wherever you are and whatever you happen to be doing. You can’t help noticing things and remembering them afterwards, even if they don’t seem of any significance at the time.”
“If I had noticed anything in the least suspicious,” Mallett pointed out, “I should have mentioned it at once to the local police.”
“I didn’t say suspicious. I’m after anything you saw that was in the least unusual. It may not convey anything to you, but it may be of value to me. Do you see what I mean? Take my father’s room, for example. What did you observe in it?”
Mallett almost laughed out loud. It had so often been his experience in the past to put a question of this kind to witnesses that it tickled him to find the tables turned in this way.
“Your father’s room,” he repeated. “Let me see. The bed was on the right of the door as you went in, against the wall. By the bed was a little table. You’ll find everything that was on the table set out in the evidence at the inquest. You have read that, I take it?”
Stephen nodded.
“Furniture,” Mallett went on. “A wardrobe, closed. A chair with some clothes left on it. Two ugly china vases on the mantelpiece. Near the window, a dressing-table with drawers beneath it. On the dressing-table, your father’s hair-brushes, shaving things, and so on. Also the contents of his pockets—small change, keys, a note-book. And—yes, this was unusual—a small plate. On the plate was an apple, with a folding silver knife beside it. That’s all I saw. Of course, I wasn’t in the room any length of time, and I may have missed something.”
“Well done!” said Stephen softly. “I’m much obliged, Inspector.”
“Have I told you anything useful?”
“You’ve knocked another nail into the coffin of the suicide verdict, anyway. The apple, I mean.”
“How so?”
“Father believed in an apple a day. He used to eat one every morning before breakfast, and after shaving. He was a creature of habit, you see. If he went away anywhere for a week, he’d take seven apples with him, so as to make sure he wouldn’t run short. He took the silver knife with him too, to cut the apples up with. Before he went to bed, he would put an apple out for next morning. That’s what he’d done this time, obviously. Not a likely thing for a man to do if he knew he wasn’t going to be alive to eat it, was it?”
“I’m only telling you what I saw, I’m expressing no opinion. But there was something that happened the night before which you may as well hear, though I expect there’s nothing in it. Your father saw a man in the hotel whom he thought he recognized.”
“What!” Stephen sat bolt upright in excitement. “Where was this? Upstairs, in the corridor outside his room?”
“No, no. In the lounge, while we were talking after dinner.”
“In the lounge? Someone he knew? By Jove, Inspector, but this is really interesting. What was he like?”
“I didn’t see him myself. He passed behind me. I got the impression of someone who wasn’t very tall, from his shadow, that’s all. But if you’ll take my advice, you won’t build on this. Your father thought he saw an acquaintance and then decided that he hadn’t. That’s all. Probably his second impression was the right one.”
“Did he say he was wrong?” Stephen persisted, unwilling to give up the slender clue. “You don’t remember his actual words, I suppose?”
“As it happens, I do. He said: ‘I must have been mistaken. Thought it was somebody I knew, but it couldn’t have been.’ Then he said something about the deceptiveness of back views and went on talking. The interruption made him change the subject, I recollect, without his realizing he had done so.”
“ ‘Must have been mistaken,’ ” said Stephen. “That’s not the same thing, is it? He thought he must have made a mistake, that it couldn’t have been the person he thought it was, because he didn’t think it possible that person could have been there. You know, Inspector, my father was an awful old dunderhead in lots of ways, but he had eyes in his head, and he didn’t often make a mistake of that kind. Suppose he wasn’t mistaken, and the person who ‘couldn’t’ have been there really was there? Suppose—”
“There are a great many suppositions in your case, I’m afraid,” said Mallett, looking at his watch.
“I’m afraid there are. And I’m afraid, too, that I’ve wasted a great deal too much of your time, as you have just reminded me.” He got up. “That is all you have to tell me, I suppose?”
“There is nothing else that I can think of at this moment, Mr. Dickinson.”
“Then I will say goodbye and thank you. You’ve given me something to go on, anyhow. At breakfast this morning I was half inclined to chuck the whole thing up.”
“I don’t see that I have given you very much help,” said the inspector.
“You’ve given me enough to see this thing through, anyhow,” was the answer. And a moment or two later a very determined-looking young man walked out of New Scotland Yard.
Left alone, Mallett sat thinking for a few moments. He was conscious that he had shamelessly wasted quite a considerable amount of valuable official time discussing a theory that was probably entirely without foundation and was certainly no affair of his. A conscientious officer should have felt a good deal of regret at the fact. But Mallett, whom his worst enemies had never called anything but conscientious, did not feel a single qualm of regret. Instead, to his surprise, he felt pleasurably excited. Some sixth sense seemed to tell him that this was only the second chapter, and not the end, of the story which had begun at Pendlebury Old Hall. From a drawer in his desk, he pulled out an empty file. Smiling at his own folly as he did so, he solemnly entitled it “Re Dickinson,” and returned it, still empty, to the drawer. Then he took a sheet of notepaper and wrote a personal letter, in very guarded terms, to his good friend the head of the plain-clothes force of the Markshire County Constabulary.
When all this had been done, Inspector Mallett plunged again into his proper work. Routine reigned once more in the little room overlooking the river.