“You old ghoul. May I ask if you intend to search all the ladies?”

“Don’t you think it quate nayce?”

“No, I don’t.”

“P’r’aps you’re right. Hullo, Bailey.”

The fingerprint expert reappeared.

“I’ve been through the rooms,” he said in a bored voice. “No sign of the blanks. Got all their prints.”

“Really — how?”

“Oh, asked for them.” Bailey grinned sardonically. “You weren’t there, sir.”

“That’s all right.” Alleyn disliked asking directly for fingerprints and preferred to pick them up without the owners’ knowledge. “Well,” he said, “we’d better get on with the good work.”

“We could do with those dummies,” Bailey remarked. “Inspector Fox is searching the other men now, sir. Thought it would save you the trouble.”

“Intelligent as well as kind. But he won’t find them.”

“The dummies?” Bailey eyed his surprise.

“The dummies. Unless our murderer is particularly vindictive.”

“What’s this?” demanded Nigel suspiciously. “Isn’t a murderer usually rather vindictive?”

“You don’t understand, I’m afraid,” said Alleyn kindly. “I think—” he added, turning to Bailey—“I think the cartridges will be in the obvious place.”

“Obvious!” repeated Bailey. “You’ve got me beat, sir. Is there an obvious place?”

“You’ll never make a murderer, Bailey. Before we move away let us have a look at that desk. It’s in the wings, there. Give me a hand.”

Nigel stood near the centre of the stage. He had moved forward towards the wings, when a voice, raucous and detached, yelled above their heads.

“Look out!”

An instant later, Inspector Alleyn hurled himself full at Nigel, driving him backwards. He fell, sprawling across a chair, and at the same moment was aware of something else that fell from above, and crashed down deafeningly on to the stage. Something that raised a cloud of dust.

He got to his feet shaken and bewildered. Lying on the stage was a shattered heap of broken glass. Alleyn stood near it, looking up into the flies.

“Come down out of that,” he shouted.

“Yessir. Coming, sir.”

“Who the devil are you?” bawled Bailey suddenly.

“Only the props, sir. I’m coming.”

They stumbled into the wings, where they were all met by Inspector Fox who had run agitatedly from the wardrobe-room. They all peered up the wall of the stage. An iron ladder ran aloft into the shadows. Soft footsteps padded up there in the dark, and presently among the shadows a darker shape could be seen. The iron ladder vibrated very faintly. Somebody was coming down.

The shadowy figure came very deliberately down the ladder. Nigel, Alleyn and Bailey did not speak, but fell back a little. Nigel was still shaken by his escape from the chandelier. He felt bewildered, and watched, without thinking, the rubber soles of a pair of dilapidated tennis shoes come down, rung by rung. The man did not turn his face away from the wall until he had completed his descent. Then he swung round slowly.

Bailey moved forward and seized his arm.

“Now then — you,” he said.

“Don’t you act old-fashioned at me,” snarled the man.

“Just a minute, Bailey,” said Alleyn. Bailey stared indignantly round.

“You’re the property master,” said Alleyn. The man stood with his heels together and his hands held tidily at the seams of his trousers. His face was long, thin, and white; with eyebrows that grew together. He looked fixedly at a spot on the scenery above the inspector’s head.

“Yessir,” he said.

“Been at this job long?”

“Ever since I was demobbed.”

“In the Brigade of Guards, weren’t you?”

“Yessir. Grenadiers, sir. King’s Company.”

“You made the dummy cartridges for this show?”

“Yessir.”

“Where are they?”

“I gave them to Mr. Simpson.”

“The dummy cartridges. Are you sure of that?”

“Yessir.”

“How are you so sure? They might have been the real thing.”

“No, sir.” The man swallowed. “I was looking at them. I dropped a cartridge, and the bullet was loose, sir.”

“Where are they now?”

“I dunno, sir.”

“How did you come to drop that chandelier?”

Silence.

“How is it fixed up there?”

“On a pulley.”

“And the rope turned round a piece of wood or something, to make it fast?”

“Yessir.”

“Did the rope break or did you unwind it?”

“I can’t say, sir.”

“Very well. Sergeant Bailey, go up and have a look at the rope there, will you? Now, Props, you go up to the switch-board and give us some light behind the scenes.”

Props turned smartly and did as he was told. In a moment, light flooded the back-stage harshly while, with the facial expression popularly attributed to a boot, Bailey climbed the ladder.

“Now come back.” Props returned.

Alleyn had moved over to the desk which stood a little way out from the wings. Nigel, Fox, and the property master followed him. He drew out a pocket-knife and slipped the front of the blade under the top left-hand drawer and pulled it out.

“That’s where Surbonadier got the cartridges,” he said. “It’s empty. Bailey had better get to work on it, but he’ll only find stage hands’ prints and Surbonadier’s, I expect. Now then.”

Using the very greatest care to avoid touching the surface, Alleyn next drew out the second drawer with the point of his blade.

“And here we are,” he said brightly.

The others bent forward. Lying in the drawer were six cartridges.

“By gum,” said Fox, “you’ve got ’em.”

With one accord he and Nigel turned to look at the property master. He was standing in his ridiculous posture of attention, staring, as usual, above their heads. Alleyn, still bent over the drawer, addressed him mildly.

“Look into that drawer. Don’t touch anything. Are those the dummies you made?”

Props craned his long neck and bent forward stiffly.

“Well?”

“Yessir.”

“Yes. And there — look — is the loose one. There is a grain or two of sand fallen out. You made a job of them. Why didn’t you want me to find them?”

Props gave another exhibition of masterly silence.

“You bore me,” said Alleyn. “And you behave oddly, and rather like an ass. You knew those dummies were in the drawer; you heard me say I was going to look for them. You were listening up there in the dark. So you cheerfully dropped half a ton of candelabrum on the stage, first warning us of its arrival, as apparently you weren’t keen on staging another murder to-night. I suppose you hoped for a scene of general confusion, during which you would shin down the ladder and remove the dummies. It was a ridiculous manoeuvre. The obvious inference is that you dumped the damn’ things there yourself, and took to the rigging when the murder came off.”

“That’s right, sir,” said Props surprisingly. “It looks that way, but I never.”

“You are, as I have said, an ass; and I’m not sure I oughtn’t to arrest you as a something-or-other after the fact.”

“My Gawd, I never done it, sir!”

“I’m delighted to hear you say so. Why, then, should you wish to shield the murderer? Oh, well, if you won’t answer me, you won’t; and I refuse to go on giving an imitation of a gentleman talking to himself. I shall have to detain you in a police station, Props.”

A kind of tremor seemed to shake the man. His arms twitched convulsively and his eyes widened. Nigel, who was not familiar with the after-effects of shell-shock, watched him with reluctant curiosity. Alleyn looked at him attentively.

“Well?” he said.

“I never done it,” said Props in a breathless whisper. “I never done it. You don’t want to lock me up. I was standing in the prompt box and if I thought I seen a bloke or it might have been a woman, moving round in the dark—” He stopped short.

“You’d much better say so,” said Alleyn.