“That is all that can be done this afternoon, then. I quite understood that you were prepared to be definite with regard to the identification or I would not have troubled you.”
“I am sorry!” the rector said hesitatingly. “Then—then there is nothing more?”
“Nothing more!” the inspector responded curtly.
He and John Steadman were standing against the writing-table, in one drawer of which the emeralds had been deposited. Mr. Collyer paused a moment near the door and looked at them doubtfully. Once he opened his mouth as if to speak, then apparently changing his mind closed it again dumbly.
When the sound of his footsteps had died away on the stone passage outside, Steadman glanced across at the inspector.
“Unsatisfactory, isn't it?”
“Very,” the inspector returned shortly. “Thank you, sir.” He took a cigarette from the case Steadman held out to him. “Well, fortunately, the cross was exhibited at the Great Exhibition in '61, so I think we shall be able, with the description then given and the expert evidence of to-day, to reconstruct the cross and make sure about the emeralds. But what can be wrong with the rector?”
“Is anything wrong with him?” Steadman questioned in his turn as he lighted a match.
“He looks like a man who has had some sort of a shock,” the inspector pursued. “I wonder if it means that Mr. Tony——”
“Tony had nothing to do with the loss of the emeralds,” John Steadman said in his most decided tones. “You can put that out of your mind.”