MARTIN HEWITT Complete Series: 25 Mysteries in One Volume (Illustrated). Arthur Morrison
Hewitt has come,” he said. “Indeed, I had already decided to give the police till this time to-morrow, and then, if they had found nothing, to call in Mr. Hewitt myself.”
Hewitt bowed in his turn, and then asked: “Will you let me see the various breakages? I hope they have not been disturbed.”
“Nothing whatever has been disturbed. Do exactly as seems best. I need scarcely say that everything here is perfectly at your disposal. You know all the circumstances, of course?”
“In general, yes. I suppose I am right in the belief that you have no resident housekeeper?”
“No,” Claridge replied, “I haven’t. I had one housekeeper who sometimes pawned my property in the evening, and then another who used to break my most valuable china, till I could never sleep or take a moment’s ease at home for fear my stock was being ruined here. So I gave up resident housekeepers. I felt some confidence in doing it because of the policeman who is always on duty opposite.”
“Can I see the broken desk?”
Mr. Claridge led the way into the room behind the shop. The desk was really a sort of work-table, with a lifting top and a lock. The top had been forced roughly open by some instrument which had been pushed in below it and used as a lever, so that the catch of the lock was torn away. Hewitt examined the damaged parts and the marks of the lever, and then looked out at the back window.
“There are several windows about here,” he remarked, “from which it might be possible to see into this room. Do you know any of the people who live behind them?”
“Two or three I know,” Mr. Claridge answered, “but there are two windows—the pair almost immediately before us—belonging to a room or office which is to let. Any stranger might get in there and watch.”
“Do the roofs above any of those windows communicate in any way with yours?”
“None of those directly opposite. Those at the left do; you may walk all the way along the leads.”
“And whose windows are they?”
Mr. Claridge hesitated. “Well,” he said, “they’re Mr. Woollett’s, an excellent customer of mine. But he’s a gentleman, and—well, I really think it’s absurd to suspect him.”
“In a case like this,” Hewitt answered, “one must disregard nothing but the impossible. Somebody—whether Mr. Woollett himself or another person—could possibly have seen into this room from those windows, and equally possibly could have reached this room from that one. Therefore we must not forget Mr. Woollett. Have any of your neighbors been burgled during the night? I mean that strangers anxious to get at your trap-door would probably have to begin by getting into some other house close by, so as to reach your roof.”
“No,” Mr. Claridge replied; “there has been nothing of that sort. It was the first thing the police ascertained.”
Hewitt examined the broken door and then made his way up the stairs with the others. The unscrewed lock of the door of the top back-room required little examination. In the room below the trap-door was a dusty table on which stood a chair, and at the other side of the table sat Detective-Inspector Plummer, whom Hewitt knew very well, and who bade him “good-day” and then went on with his docket.
“This chair and table were found as they are now, I take it?” Hewitt asked.
“Yes,” said Mr. Claridge; “the thieves, I should think, dropped in through the trap-door, after breaking it open, and had to place this chair where it is to be able to climb back.”
Hewitt scrambled up through the trap-way and examined it from the top. The door was hung on long external barn-door hinges, and had been forced open in a similar manner to that practiced on the desk. A jimmy had been pushed between the frame and the door near the bolt, and the door had been pried open, the bolt being torn away from the screws in the operation.
Presently Inspector Plummer, having finished his docket, climbed up to the roof after Hewitt, and the two together went to the spot, close under a chimney-stack on the next roof but one, where the case had been found. Plummer produced the case, which he had in his coat-tail pocket, for Hewitt’s inspection.
“I don’t see anything particular about it; do you?” he said. “It shows us the way they went, though, being found just here.”
“Well, yes,” Hewitt said; “if we kept on in this direction, we should be going toward Mr. Woollett’s house, and his trap-door, shouldn’t we!”
The inspector pursed his lips, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. “Of course we haven’t waited till now to find that out,” he said.
“No, of course. And, as you say, I didn’t think there is much to be learned from this leather case. It is almost new, and there isn’t a mark on it.” And Hewitt handed it back to the inspector.
“Well,” said Plummer, as he returned the case to his pocket, “what’s your opinion?”
“It’s rather an awkward case.”
“Yes, it is. Between ourselves—I don’t mind telling you—I’m having a sharp lookout kept over there”—Plummer jerked his head in the direction of Mr. Woollett’s chambers—“because the robbery’s an unusual one. There’s only two possible motives—the sale of the cameo or the keeping of it. The sale’s out of the question, as you know; the thing’s only salable to those who would collar the thief at once, and who wouldn’t have the thing in their places now for anything. So that it must be taken to keep, and that’s a thing nobody but the maddest of collectors would do, just such persons as—” and the inspector nodded again toward Mr. Woollett’s quarters. “Take that with the other circumstances,” he added, “and I think you’ll agree it’s worth while looking a little farther that way. Of course some of the work—taking off the lock and so on—looks rather like a regular burglar, but it’s just possible that any one badly wanting the cameo would like to hire a man who was up to the work.”
“Yes, it’s possible.”
“Do you know anything of Hahn, the agent?” Plummer asked, a moment later.
“No, I don’t. Have you found him yet?”
“I haven’t yet, but I’m after him. I’ve found he was at Charing Cross a day or two ago, booking a ticket for the Continent. That and his failing to turn up to-day seem to make it worth while not to miss him if we can help it. He isn’t the sort of man that lets a chance of drawing a bit of money go for nothing.”
They returned to the room. “Well,” said Lord Stanway, “what’s the result of the consultation? We’ve been waiting here very patiently, while you two clever men have been discussing the matter on the roof.”
On the wall just beneath the trap-door a very dusty old tall hat hung on a peg. This Hewitt took down and examined very closely, smearing his fingers with the dust from the inside lining. “Is this one of your valuable and crusted old antiques?” he asked, with a smile, of Mr. Claridge.
“That’s only an old hat that I used to keep here for use in bad weather,” Mr. Claridge said, with some surprise at the question. “I haven’t touched it for a year or more.”
“Oh, then it couldn’t have been left here by your last night’s visitor,” Hewitt replied, carelessly replacing it on the hook. “You left here at eight last night, I think?”
“Eight exactly—or within a minute or two.”
“Just so. I think I’ll look at the room on the opposite side of the landing, if you’ll let me.”
“Certainly, if you’d like to,” Claridge replied; “but they haven’t been there—it is exactly as it was left. Only a lumber-room, you see,” he concluded, flinging the door open.
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