The Cask. Freeman Wills Crofts
afraid we can’t assume that. We certainly can’t be sure.’
‘Who could there be?’
‘Well, your French friend. How do you know he didn’t write to others beside you?’
Felix sat up as if he had been shot.
‘By Jove!’ he cried, ‘it never entered my head. But it’s most unlikely—most unlikely.’
‘The whole thing’s most unlikely as far as that goes. Perhaps you are not aware that some one else was watching the house last evening?’
‘Good God, Inspector! What do you mean?’
‘Some one came to the lane shortly after your arrival with the cask. He waited and heard your conversation with your friend Martin. When you and your friend left, he followed you.’
Felix passed his hand over his forehead. His face was pale.
‘This business is too much for me,’ he said. ‘I wish to heaven I was out of it.’
‘Then help me to get you out of it. Think. Is there any one your friend knows that he might have written to?’
Felix remained silent for some moments.
‘There is only one man,’ he said at length in a hesitating voice, ‘that I know he is friendly with—a Mr. Percy Murgatroyd, a mining engineer who has an office in Westminster. But I don’t for one moment believe he had anything to say to it.’
‘Let me have his name and address, anyway.’
‘Four St. John’s Mansions, Victoria Street,’ said Felix, on referring to an address book.
‘You might write it down, if you please, and sign it.’
Felix looked up with a smile.
‘You generally write notes yourself, I should have thought?’
Burnley laughed.
‘You’re very quick, Mr. Felix. Of course it’s your handwriting I want also. But I assure you it’s only routine. Now please, think. Is there any one else?’
‘Not a living soul that I know of.’
‘Very well, Mr. Felix. I want to ask just one other question. Where did you stay in Paris?’
‘At the Hotel Continental.’
‘Thanks, that’s everything. And now, if you will allow me, I will take a few winks here in the chair till it gets light, and if you take my advice you will turn in.’
Felix looked at his watch.
‘Quarter-past three. Well, perhaps I shall. I’m only sorry I cannot offer you a bed as the house is absolutely empty, but if you will take a shakedown in the spare room——?’
‘No, no, thanks very much, I shall be all right here.’
‘As you wish. Good night.’
When Felix had left, the Inspector sat on in his chair smoking his strong black cigars and thinking. He did not sleep, though he remained almost motionless, only at long intervals rousing up to light another cigar, and it was not until five had struck that he got up and looked out of the window.
‘Light at last,’ he muttered, as he let himself quietly out of the back-door into the yard.
His first care was to make a thorough search in the yard and all the out-houses to ensure that the cask was really gone and not merely hidden in some other room. He was speedily satisfied on this point.
Since it was gone it was obvious that it must have been removed on a vehicle. His next point was to see how that vehicle got in, and if it had left any traces. And first as to the coach-house door.
He picked up the padlock and examined it carefully. It was an ordinary old-fashioned four-inch one. The ring had been forced open while locked, the hole in the opening end through which the bolt passes being torn away. Marks showed that this had been done by inserting some kind of lever between the body of the lock and the staple on the door, through which the ring had been passed. The Inspector looked round for the lever, but could not find it. He therefore made a note to search for such a tool, as if it bore marks which would fit those on the door, its evidence might be important.
There was next the question of the yard gate. This opened inwards in two halves, and was fastened by a wooden beam hinged through the centre to the edge of one of the half gates. When it was turned vertically the gates were free, but when horizontally it engaged with brackets, one on each half gate, thus holding them closed. It could be fastened by a padlock, but none was fitted. The gate now stood closed and with the beam lying in the brackets.
The Inspector took another note to find out if Mr. Felix had locked the beam, and then stood considering. It was clear the gate must have been closed from the inside after the vehicle had gone out. It must have been opened similarly on the latter’s arrival. Who had done this? Was Felix lying, and was there some one else in the house?
At first it seemed likely, and then the Inspector thought of another way. Constable Walker had climbed the wall. Why should not the person who opened and shut the gate have also done so? The Inspector moved slowly along the wall scrutinising it and the ground alongside it.
At first he saw nothing out of the common, but on retracing his steps he noticed, about three yards from the gate, two faint marks of mud or dust on the plaster. These were some six feet from the ground and about fifteen inches apart. On the soft soil which had filled in between the cobble stones in this disused part of the yard, about a foot from the wall and immediately under these marks, were two sharp-edged depressions, about two inches long by half an inch wide, arranged with their longer dimensions in line. Some one had clearly used a short ladder.
Inspector Burnley stood gazing at the marks. It struck him they were very far apart for a ladder. He measured the distance between them and found it was fifteen inches. Ladders, he knew, are about twelve.
Opening the gate he went to the outside of the wall. A grass plot ran alongside it here and the Inspector, stooping down, searched for corresponding marks. He was not disappointed. Two much deeper depressions showed where the ends of the ladder-like apparatus had sunk into the softer ground. These were not narrow like those in the yard, but rectangular and of heavier stuff, three inches by two, he estimated. He looked at the plaster on the wall above, but it was not till he examined it through his lens that he was satisfied it bore two faint scratches, corresponding in position to the muddy marks on the opposite side.
A further thought struck him. Scooping up a little soil from the grass, he went again into the yard and compared with his lens the soil and the dry mud of the marks on the plaster. As he had anticipated, they were identical.
He could now dimly reconstruct what had happened. Some one had placed a peculiar kind of ladder against the outside of the wall and presumably crossed it and opened the gate. The ladder had then been carried round and placed against the inside of the wall, but, probably by accident, opposite end up. The outside plaster was therefore clean but scraped, while that on the inside bore traces of the soil from the ends that had stood on the grass. In going out after barring the gate, he imagined the thief had pulled the ladder after him with a cord and passed it over the wall.
The Inspector returned to the grass and made a further search. Here he found confirmation of his theory in a single impression of one of the legs of the ladder some two feet six out from the wall. That, he decided, had been caused by the climber throwing down the ladder when leaving the yard. He also found three footmarks, but, unfortunately, they were so blurred as to be valueless.
He took out his notebook and made a sketch with accurate dimensions showing what he had learnt of the ladder—its length, width, and the shape of the legs at each end. Then bringing out the steps Felix had used to hang the chain blocks, he got on the wall. He examined the cement coping carefully, but without finding any further traces.
The yard, being paved, no wheel or footmarks were visible, but Burnley spent quite a long