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As soon as I found it I went up and fitted it to the lock. I knew where I had left the thing. So do you, I think, Mr. Trent. Don't you?" There was a faint shade of mockery in Marlowe's voice. "Touché!" Trent said, with a dry smile. "I found a large empty letter-case with a burst lock lying with other odds and ends on the dressing-table in Manderson's room. Your statement is that you put it there.
The whole of the story about the papers and the necessity of their being taken to Paris was a blind. With Manderson's money about me, of which he would declare I had robbed him, I was to all appearance attempting to escape from England, with every precaution that guilt could suggest. He would communicate with the police at once, and would know how to put them on my track.
I promised myself that I would speak to you about it if we should meet again; and now I've kept my promise. Trent, his chin resting on his hand, was staring at the carpet. The excitement of the hunt for the truth was steadily rising in him. He had not in his own mind accepted Mrs Manderson's account of Marlowe's character as unquestionable.
His idea was all right, I guess; he gathered it from something said by Mrs Manderson's French maid. Trent looked up at him quickly. 'Celestine! he said; and his thought was, 'So that was what she was getting at! Mr Bunner misunderstood his glance. 'Don't you think I'm giving a man away, Mr Trent, he said. 'Marlowe isn't that kind.
I spent the time after Martin had left me in carefully thinking over the remaining steps in my plan, while I unloaded and thoroughly cleaned the revolver, using my handkerchief and a penholder from the desk. I also placed the packets of notes, the note-case and the diamonds in the roll-top desk, which I opened and re-locked with Manderson's key.
Still it was uneasy work mounting the stairs, and holding myself ready to retreat to the library again at the least sound from above. But nothing happened. 'The first thing I did on reaching the corridor was to enter my room and put the revolver and cartridges back in the case. Then I turned off the light and went quietly into Manderson's room. 'What I had to do there you know.
I could see when I looked into the thing on the spot why it had to be on that side of the house; there was a danger of being seen by Martin or by some servant at a bedroom window if you got out by a window on one of the other sides. But there were three unoccupied rooms on that side: two spare bedrooms and Mrs. Manderson's sitting-room.
His tone was bitter. Mr. Cupples, understanding nothing, stared at his motionless back for a few moments. "I am still completely in the dark," he ventured presently. "I have often heard of this finger-print business, and wondered how the police went to work about it. It is of extraordinary interest to me, but upon my life I cannot see how in this case Manderson's finger-prints are going "
He constrained himself not to commit the crowning folly of seeking out Mrs Manderson's house in Hampstead; he could not enter it, and the thought of the possibility of being seen by her lurking in its neighbourhood brought the blood to his face. He stayed at an hotel, took a studio, and while he awaited Mr Cupples's return attempted vainly to lose himself in work.
There are a score of ridge-characteristics on which an expert would swear in the witness-box that the marks on that bowl and the marks I have photographed on this negative were made by the same hand. 'And where did you photograph them? What does it all mean? asked Mr Cupples, wide-eyed. 'I found them on the inside of the left-hand leaf of the front window in Mrs Manderson's bedroom.
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