Thompson was described at the restaurant as always taking his meals by himself and speaking to no one, and always at the same table. Then the waitress who had waited on him for the last two years had never heard him say more than good morning, or good afternoon. He always lunched à la carte, so that there was no ordering to be done. Still with the precautions taken, with his description circulated through the country, it seemed that his capture could only be a matter of time.
But the inspector was frankly puzzled. At every point he was baffled in his attempt to discover anything of the real man. The very mystery about him was in itself suspicious.
The inspector and Mr. Steadman were in Mr. Bechcombe's private room this afternoon. Everything remained just as it had been when the murder was discovered, except that the body had been removed to the nearest mortuary now that the inquest had been adjourned, and the funeral was to take place at once.
The inspector had been over the room already with the most meticulous care. To-day he was trying to reconstruct the crime. The dead man's writing-table was opposite the door into the ante-room, which opened into the clerks' room. The door into the passage opened upon Mr. Bechcombe's usual seat. Supposing that to have been unlocked, it seemed to the inspector that, when Mr. Bechcombe had received his expected visitor, he might have been thinking over some communication that had been made to him, and the assassin might have entered the room silently from behind, and strangled him before he was aware of his danger. But there seemed no motive for such a crime, and the inspector was frankly puzzled. There was no view from the window, the lower panes being of frosted glass, the upper looking straight across to a blank wall. The safe was locked again now as it had been in Mr. Bechcombe's lifetime. Mr. Turner had finished his examination. But, try as the inspector would to reconstruct the crime, he could not build up any hypothesis which could not be instantly demolished, or so it seemed to him. Mr. Steadman stood on the hearthrug with his back to the ashes of Luke Bechcombe's last fire. For the lawyer had been old-fashioned—he had disliked central heating and gas and electric contrivances. In spite of strikes and increasing prices he had adhered to coal fires.
At last the silence was broken by Mr. Steadman:
“You have the experts' opinion of the fingerprints, I presume?”
The inspector bent his head.
“It came this morning. It was not put in at the inquest, for it is just as well not to take all the world into our confidence at first, you know, Mr. Steadman.”
“Quite so,” the barrister assented. “Do you mean that you were able to identify them?”
“No,” growled the inspector. “They will never be identified. The murderer wore those thin rubber gloves that some of the first-class crooks have taken to of late.”