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By Root 816 0

—Whynmouth is a sleepy place, and the last optimist who had tried peddling alleged “late editions” had gone out of business some months earlier. The Admiral had not gone into the Lord Marshall; could not, then, have picked up a copy there and walked off with it. If he was really in possession of it while still alive, it followed that he must have called somewhere else that night. Sir Wilfrid Denny’s house suggested itself as a possibility. If, on the other hand, the paper had been thrust into the pocket after his death by the man who murdered him, that could only have been done with the intention of falsifying the evidence. Falsifying it how? In point of time, by suggesting that the murder took place, say, after nine instead of having taken place before nine? But that would bring the real time to an impossibly early hour. In point of place, then; the murder really happened in some place at a distance from Whynmouth; and the murderer, by thrusting the Gazette into the dead man’s pocket, had tried to create the impression that the murder took place at Whynmouth, or at least while the victim was on his way back from there. Read so, this piece of evidence chimed in with the conclusion which had already suggested itself—that the murderer wanted it to be thought, falsely, that the Admiral was in Whynmouth that evening. If you accepted this argument, a further consideration arose. The murderer was somebody who did not know Whynmouth, or whose knowledge of it was not up-to-date. A resident—the elusive Sir Wilfrid, for example—would not have made the mistake of imagining that the Gazette was still on sale at eleven o’clock in the evening.

28. Of what nature were the documents marked “X”? That they were secret, that they were valuable, went without saying. What was much more remarkable, if you came to think of it, was that any reference to “X” should have been given among the files at all. The Admiral himself, though he was one of the few admirals who had not publicly attested his indebtedness to any system of memory-training, was clearly not absent-minded beyond the average of humanity; why then should he need a reference to remind him where these all-important documents were kept? Yet, if the references were not for the Admiral’s own benefit, who else could profit by them? In the event of his desk being broken open, would it not have been safer to leave the very existence of “X,” as well as its whereabouts, a secret? It looked almost as if the Admiral had expected the fate which ultimately came upon him—after all, there was that loaded revolver in the desk—expected that a police officer sooner or later would rummage in his desk, and would need a pointer to inform him that secret papers were concealed somewhere. It would appear that Sir Wilfrid was somewhat involved, also the nephew, Walter. It seemed probable that the background was Chinese. Was it blackmail? If so, Sir Wilfrid must surely be the victim of it, not Walter; you cannot threaten with exposure a man who has disappeared from human ken.

29. Were they destroyed, or stolen? And by whom? It was just possible that Penistone at some time had got rid of documents which would be damaging to himself or to someone he cared for. It was more natural to assume that the murderer was also a thief. But—here was an important point—the person who stole those papers must, almost necessarily, have been an inmate of the house; the desk had shown no traces of being rifled, there were no marks of violence about the secret drawer. If, then, the villain of last night had removed those papers, he had known exactly where to look for them, and had wasted no time over it.

Whew! There was a fresh section of the evidence concluded; that finished the clues which dated from last night. Rudge’s left foot had gone to sleep, and he tramped his room for a bit, trying to map out what remained of his task. Yes, he must analyse the behaviour of the various people, against whom suspicion might conceivably lie, since the actual discovery of the corpse. The most noticeable feature, undoubtedly, was what you