Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

The bath-chair in which the old man had been found dead occupied a place under the stairs, and to Dick's surprise the detective gave instructions to have it taken into the front room study. Surefoot had always had an uncomfortable feeling that he had not paid sufficient attention to the chair. What he had learned in the past few days made a further examination essential.

Immediately opposite the door of the study there was an alcove in the wall of the passage, and he saw now that this served a useful purpose. Obviously Lyne was in the habit of getting into the bath-chair in the study. Against the lintel of the door, at the height of the wheel's hub, were several scratches and indentations where the hub had touched the wood. But for the fortuitous circumstance of the alcove being so placed, it would have been difficult either to take the chair into the room or bring it out. Surefoot put a detective into the chair and made the experiment of drawing him into the street. The width of the conveyance was only a few inches less than the width of the front door opening and again he found marks on the door posts where the hub had touched. Without assistance he drew the chair into the street. The wheels fitted into the little tramlines which Lyne had had placed for the purpose. The slope was so gentle that it was as easy to pull the laden chair back into the house.

The experiment told him very little. On the day of the murder he had examined every square inch of the vehicle. He ordered it to be put back in the place where it had been found and then continued his search and examination of the house.

"What do you expect to find?" asked Dick.

"Binny," was the terse reply. "This fellow isn't a fool. He has got a hiding place somewhere, and I wish I knew where to look for it." He looked at his watch. "I wonder if I could persuade Miss Lane to come along?"

Dick Allenby took a cab to the hotel, a little doubtful whether after the excitement of the night she would be either physically fit or willing to come to this house of gloom.

He found her in her sitting-room, showing no evidence of the strain she had experienced. Her first question was about Binny.

"No, we haven't found him," said Dick. His voice was troubled. "I am getting terribly worried about you, Mary. This fellow would stop at nothing."

She shook her head.

"I don't think he'll worry me again," she said. "Mr. Smith is right: Binny will take no risk that does not bring him profit. As long as he thought he could get the bank statement from me or stop me speaking and telling what I had discovered about the cheques, I think I must have been in terrible danger."

"How did he know you were making enquiries?"

"He knew when I sent him up to the North," she said. "That was a crude little plan, wasn't it? I under-rated his intelligence and he must have been following me when I was visiting the tradesmen. I had an idea once that I saw him. It was the day I went to Maidstone."

She showed no reluctance in accompanying Dick back to the house. On the way she told him that she had seen Leo Moran in the night and that he was out of danger. There had been a time when the doctors had been doubtful as to whether he would recover.

They reached the house. Surefoot was in the little courtyard at the back. She followed Dick down the few steps that led to the kitchen. She shuddered as she recalled her midnight visit to this sinister little apartment. Even now, in the light of day, it had an unpleasant atmosphere, due, she admitted to herself, rather to her imagination than to unhappy memory. There was the "cupboard" door wide open now and the little door into which she had fitted the replica of the silver key. The kitchen and the adjoining scullery seemed amazingly small. She realised that this was due to the fact that her earliest recollections of the house belonged to childhood when small rooms look large and low articles of furniture unusually high.

Surefoot came in as she was looking around and nodded a greeting.

"Remember this, Miss Lane?"

"Yes." She pointed to the inner kitchen, looking very modern with its lining in white glazed brick. "That's new," she said, and walked in.

The place puzzled her: she missed something, and try as she did she could not recollect what it was. Some feature of the room as she remembered it, was missing. She did not mention her doubts, thinking that memory was playing tricks--a way that memory has.

"You know what this is?" asked Smith.

He had found it in the kitchen drawer: a curious looking instrument rather like a short garden syringe, except that at the end was a rubber cup.

"It is a vacuum pump," explained Smith.

He wetted the edge of the rubber cup, pressed it on the table and, drawing up the piston, lifted the table bodily at one end.

"What's the idea of that? Have you ever seen it before?"

She shook her head.

Surefoot had found some other things: a small pot of dark-green paint and a hardened mass wrapped in oily newspaper.

"Putty," he explained. "I saw it when I was here before. Do you know what it was used for?"

He beckoned her and she followed him into a dark passage. The lamp that had been switched on gave very little light, but Surefoot took a powerful little torch from his pocket and, walking up to the door, stooped and, sending the bright light along the inside of the thick door panel, said:

"You see that, and that?"

She saw now a deep circular indentation.

"It was filled with putty and painted over. I thought it was a nut-hole until I started picking out the putty."

"What is it?" she asked wonderingly.

"It is the mark made by a spent bullet," said Smith slowly. "The bullet that killed Hervey Lyne. He was shot in this passage."