“Well, there’s an itinerant vendor at the Lodge now, and he’s more keen on buying than selling. He doesn’t make any bones of the fact that he’d like to get hold of the original of this.”
Derrick put the model on the table, and Burke fingered it curiously.
“Neat sort of job you’ve made of it, sir. Weighs about the same, too, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, I put some shot inside the base and balanced it with the other. It’s the other that my peddler friend is coming to see at six o’clock. Martin will be there with him.”
“When did this fellow turn up?”
Derrick told him all that had happened, Burke’s face growing ever more tense, while he thrilled to the belief that the Millicent case was alive again.
“You haven’t missed much, sir,” he rambled presently. “Now what can I do?”
“At six o’clock those two men will be in the study. Blunt will be apparently in charge of Martin, whom I have made responsible for him, but actually I suspect it is the other way round. From what I can see, Martin is under Blunt’s thumb. Blunt will be asked if the room suggests anything to him in connection with the murder. He will probably pretend it does, and begin some kind of queer story, which may after all have something in it. I expect that he will in some way involve Martin, and that’s what Martin is in such fear of. At the same time, so far as Blunt is concerned, I can’t feel that Martin is so very important. It’s the image he’s after. Whether he can resist the impulse when he sees the real thing I can’t tell, but if he does not, that’s where you come in. The Millicent case will then start all over again with an attempted burglary, and I shall be in a position to testify that Martin lied to me about the burglar. And that’s as far as I can go at the moment.”
Burke nodded approvingly. “Then you want the grounds guarded?”
“Yes, in any way you think best. I would not bother about the front door; it would take too long to get out that way. The French window is the place.”