“Mr. Manager, I asked you once before if Mr. Eames left anything in the safe. You said no. We have learned to-day that he may have had some hundreds of pounds with him. Are you sure of the honesty of your booking clerks?”
“Oh, quite! Absolutely.” There was no mistaking the conviction in the manager's tones, but also no mistaking the fact that he had turned very pale.
“You have the only key to the safe, I understand?”
“That is so.”
“I see.” Pointer was watching him intently and not disguising the fact. “The night-clerk, Biggs, says that he happened to see you open the safe several times during the days Eames was here, and noticed a small sealed box, wrapped in green and white striped paper, on the top shelf to the right. He is certain that he saw it last on the night of the third—Saturday—when you opened the safe to give a Dutch gentleman back his deposit. On Sunday morning the safe was opened at nine o'clock to let a lady put in her jewels, and the box was gone. Can you tell me anything about that box?”
“That box? Oh, yes, I remember now. That box belonged to me. I often keep spare cash in the safe.”
Both men looked at the safe facing them cemented into the wall of the manager's sitting-room.
“And the green and white striped paper? I showed the clerk the piece I found in this room the morning after Mr. Beale's—ah—departure, and he positively identifies it as similar to that which he saw in the safe. Yet when I questioned you, sir, about that same piece you expressly stated that it was not yours?”
The manager did not speak. He looked as if he could not, and after waiting a full minute the Chief Inspector rose.
“You have no explanation to offer, sir?”