and the other fellow has found his.”
In the same reticent fashion Marley proceeded to unlock a safe in the corner, and from thence he produced what appeared to be the identical cause of all this talk. He pulled the electric table lamp over to him and proceeded to examine the inside carefully.
“You are quite right,” he said, at length. “Your initials are here.”
“Not strange, seeing that I scratched them there last night,” said David, drily. “When? Oh, it was after you left my house last night.”
“And it has been some time in your possession, sir?”
“Oh, confound it, no. It was—well, it was a present from a friend for a little service rendered. So far as I understand, it was purchased at Lockhart’s, in North Street. No, I’ll be hanged if I answer any more of your questions, Marley. I’ll be your Aunt Sally so far as you are officially concerned. But as to yonder case, your queries are distinctly impertinent.”
Marley shook his head gravely, as one might over a promising but headstrong boy.
“Do I understand that you decline to account for the case?” he asked.
“Certainly I do. It is connected with some friends of mine to whom I rendered a service a little time back. The whole thing is and must remain an absolute secret.”
“You are placing yourself in a very delicate position, Mr. Steel.”
David started at the gravity of the tone. That something was radically wrong came upon him like a shock. And he could see pretty clearly that, without betraying confidence, he could not logically account for the possession of the cigar-case. In any case it was too much to expect that the stolid police officer would listen to so extravagant a tale for a moment.
“What on earth do you mean, man?” he cried.
“Well, it’s this way, sir,” Marley proceeded to explain. “When I pointed out the case to you lying on the floor of your conservatory last night you said it wasn’t yours. You looked at it with the eyes of a stranger, and then you said you were mistaken. From information given me last night I have been making inquiries about the cigar-case. You took it to Mr. Mossa’s, and from it you produced notes to the value of nearly £1,000 to pay off a debt. Within eight-and forty hours you had no more prospect of paying that debt than I have at this moment. Of course, you will be able to account for those notes. You can, of course?”
Marley looked eagerly at his visitor. A cold chill was playing up and down Steel’s spine. Not to save his life could he account for those notes.
“We will discuss that when the proper time comes,” he said, with fine indifference.
“As you please, sir. From information also received I took the case to Walen’s, in West Street, and asked Mr. Walen if he had seen the case before. Pressed to identify it, he handed me a glass and asked me to find the figures (say) ‘1771. x 3,’ in tiny characters on the edge. I did so by the aid of the glass, and Mr. Walen further proceeded to show me an entry in his purchasing ledger which proved that a cigar-case in gun-metal and diamonds bearing that legend had been added to the stock quite recently—a few weeks ago, in fact.”
“Well, what of that?” David asked, impatiently. “For all I know, the case might have come from Walen’s. I said it came from a friend who must needs be nameless for services equally nameless. I am not going to deny that Walen was right.”
“I have not quite finished,” Marley said, quietly. “Pressed as to when the case had been sold, Mr. Walen, without hesitation, said: ‘Yesterday, for £72 15s.’ The purchaser was a stranger, whom Mr. Walen is prepared to identify. Asked if a formal receipt had been given, Walen said that it had. And now I come to the gist of the whole matter. You saw Dr. Cross hand me a mass of papers, etc., taken from the person of the gentleman who was nearly killed in your house?”
David nodded. His breath was coming a little faster. His quick mind had run on ahead; he saw the gulf looming before him.
“Go on,” said he, hoarsely, “go on. You mean to say that—”
“That amongst the papers found in the pocket of the unfortunate stranger was a receipted bill for the very cigar-case that lies here on the table before you!”
VI. A POLICY OF SILENCE
Steel dropped into a chair and gazed at Inspector Marley with mild surprise. At the same time he was not in the least alarmed. Not that he failed to recognise the gravity of the situation, only it appealed in the first instance to the professional side of his character.
“Walen is quite sure?” he asked. “No possible doubt about that, eh?”
“Not in the least. You see, he recognised his private mark at once, and Brighton is not so prosperous a place that a man could sell a £70 cigar-case and forget all about it—that is, a second case, I mean. It’s most extraordinary.”
“Rather! Make a magnificent story, Marley.”
“Very,” Marley responded, drily. “It would take all your well-known ingenuity to get your hero out of this trouble.”
Steel nodded gravely. This personal twist brought him to the earth again. He could clearly see the trap into which he had placed himself. There before him lay the cigar-case which he had positively identified as his own; inside, his initials bore testimony to the fact. And yet the same case had been identified beyond question as one sold by a highly respectable local tradesman to the mysterious individual now lying in the Sussex County Hospital.
“May I smoke a cigarette?” David asked.
“You may smoke a score if they will be of any assistance to you, sir,” Marley replied. “I don’t want to ask you any questions and I don’t want you—well, to commit yourself. But really, sir, you must admit—”
The inspector paused significantly. David nodded again.
“Pray proceed,” he said: “speak from the brief you have before you.”
“Well, you see it’s this way,” Marley said, not without hesitation. “You call us up to your house, saying that a murder has been committed there; we find a stranger almost at his last gasp in your conservatory with every signs of a struggle having taken place. You tell us that the injured man is a stranger to you; you go on to say that he must have found his way into your house during a nocturnal ramble of yours. Well, that sounds like common sense on the face of it. The criminal has studied your habits and has taken advantage of them. Then I ask if you are in the habit of taking these midnight strolls, and with some signs of hesitation you say that you have never done such a thing before. Charles Dickens was very fond of that kind of thing, and I naturally imagined that you had the same fancy. But you had never done it before. And, the only time, a man is nearly murdered in your house.”
“Perfectly correct,” David murmured. “Gaboriau could not have put it better. You might have been a pupil of my remarkable acquaintance Hatherly Bell.”
“I am a pupil of Mr. Bell’s,” Marley said, quietly. “Seven years ago he induced me to leave the Huddersfield police to go
