Inspector Drake cleared his throat.

“You reached Melling at about half past nine?”

“It would be somewhere about that time. I didn’t look at my watch.”

“How did you find Mrs. Welby?”

“Much quieter. She had a tray with some coffee beside her. She offered me a cup, but I refused. I said it would keep me awake. She smiled and said it didn’t have that effect on her.”

“How many cups were there on the tray?”

“Only one. She was going to get another, when I stopped her.”

“Mr. Holderness, why was there only one cup if she was expecting you?”

“I had not said what time I would come.”

“Was the coffee made when you got there?”

“Yes-her cup was half-empty.”

“Doesn’t that seem strange to you, her not waiting for you if she knew you were coming?”

Mr. Holderness brought his hands together and looked down at the joined fingertips. He said in the easy tone he would have used to a client,

“No, I don’t think so. She knew I didn’t take coffee. She always offered it to me, but it was just a polite form-she knew I didn’t take it. I didn’t stay very long, you know. Her manner reassured me, and she said she would take a sedative and get a good night’s rest.”

“She was in the habit of taking sedatives?”

Mr. Holderness met the look of sharp enquiry with a faint melancholy smile.

“I have no idea. If I had thought at the time that she meant anything more than perhaps a couple of aspirins, I would not have left her.”

“You did not see any box or bottle of sleeping tablets?”

“Oh, no.”

There was a pause. Then Randal March said,

“Mr. Holderness-your conversation with Mrs. Welby on Saturday morning was overheard.”

As he said the words which he had come there to say he was conscious of a certain sinking feeling. They had not behind them that firmness of conviction which a case of this kind demanded. A fretted feeling that for once in his life he had allowed himself to be rushed lurked in the uneasy recesses of his mind. What had seemed not only possible but final last night was no longer so. In this office, devoted for a hundred and fifty years to the service of the law-under the authoritative gaze of the latest of a line of respectable solicitors, it was extremely difficult to resist the horrid supposition that Allan Grover in a fit of jealousy might quite easily have been telling the tale. That the boy had been infatuated with Catherine Welby and bitterly jealous of his employer, and that he was now nearly beside himself with grief, were self-evident facts. They were, indeed, the very basis of his story. In the momentary silence which followed March’s statement these facts offered very little encouragement.

As the moment passed, Mr. Holderness’s colour was seen to deepen alarmingly. He said in an incredulous voice,

“My conversation with Mrs. Welby was overheard?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask how, and by whom?”

Receiving no answer, he leaned forward and said in a voice vibrant with anger,

“No doubt the person who obliged you with the number of my car! An eavesdropping clerk with his ear to the keyhole-a young man who had made himself such a nuisance to Mrs. Welby that she had had to ask him to discontinue his visits! She spoke of the matter to me, and in her kindness begged me to take no notice of it. She had been good to the young man, lending him books and helping him to improve himself, and now as soon as she is dead this is the return he makes-to throw mud upon her name!”

Randal March said, “In his account of the conversation he stated that he heard Mrs. Welby tell you that she returned to Melling House just after ten o’clock on Wednesday night. She did not go in, because you were there. According to Allan Grover’s statement she said that you were engaged in a violent quarrel with James Lessiter, that he was accusing you of having misappropriated money entrusted to you by his mother, and that he was declaring his intention of taking proceedings against you. Grover states that, according to what he heard Mrs. Welby say, she then gave up any idea of seeing Lessiter herself and returned to the Gate House.”

Mr. Holderness regarded him with a majestic air.

“An eavesdropper’s account of an interview between his employer and a client-a morbid lovesick puppy’s account of his own jealous imaginings! My dear Mr. March, you must be perfectly aware that this sort of stuff isn’t evidence. No court of law would admit it.”

March said quietly, “I am telling you what he has said. His evidence as to your car would be admitted.”

“I have admitted it myself, and accounted for it in a perfectly reasonable manner.”

“Allan Grover will swear that he saw you come down the drive on Wednesday night-and not from the Gate House.”

“I have no doubt that he will be prepared to back his jealous fancies, but I think I could make very short work of them.” He paused, levelled a brilliant indignant glance first at March and then at Drake, and said, “And now are you going to arrest me?”

His tone demanded and challenged. It had all the effect of a blunt “If this is bluff, I call it.” It increased the Chief Constable’s sense of being on ground by no means secure against a most disastrous collapse, whilst at the same time stimulating his determination to maintain that ground. There was hardly any pause before he replied,

“I am afraid we shall be obliged to make a search of the premises.”

Mr. Holderness laughed scornfully.

“It would take you some time to go through all our deed-boxes. Perhaps if you were to give me some idea of what you expect to find in them-”

“I think, Mr. Holderness, we should like to begin with your safe.”

Still with that angry, dominating look, he threw himself back in his chair.

“And if I refuse?”

“Inspector Drake has a search-warrant.”

The deep colour of fury rose to the very roots of the thick grey hair, the dark eyes glared, the left hand lying on his knee jerked into a clench, the right hand tightened upon the arm of the chair until every knuckle showed as white as bone. To the two men who were watching him it seemed as if at any moment all this intense rage and protest must break into a violence of invective, yet moment by moment fell into the silence and he made no sound. Then very slowly the purple colour ebbed away. The eyelids dropped over the glaring eyes. When they rose again the paroxysm was over. He was left very much his usual self-a little paler, a little sterner, a little more dignified. He said,

“Very well. I have, of course, no objection to offer. I do not know what you expect to find. I should have thought my years of practice in this town and the record of my firm might have protected me from what I can only describe as an outrage. I have nothing to conceal, and I can only hope that you will have as little to regret.”

He pushed back his chair, rose to his feet, and crossed to the left-hand side of the hearth, where he stood in a very composed manner whilst he pulled a steel chain out of his pocket and selected one of the keys depending from it.

The panelling about the hearth was enriched with a double row of heavily carved rosettes rising from the floor to a level with the mantelshelf, after which they turned inwards to frame the Stanway portrait. Mr. Holderness took hold of two of these rosettes and twisted them. There was a click, and a section of the panelling started opening like a door until it disclosed the steel front of a modern safe. Nothing could have been more ordinary than the manner in which he unlocked the steel door, set it wide, and withdrew the key.

He said, “There you are, gentlemen,” and went back as far as his chair, where he stood to watch them, one hand in his pocket, the other still holding the bunch of keys.

The safe was fairly full. There were packets of docketed papers. Drake lifted them out, only to find more of the same behind. These too were taken out. Three old-fashioned leather cases followed. They contained an amethyst necklace, set after the Victorian manner in heavy gold, with two matching bracelets. As Drake opened the cases, Mr. Holderness remarked in a sardonic manner,