"Quite, sir. Ann has just been up there, putting on some fresh sheets. Perhaps you wouldn't mind turning off the gas at the meter as you go up—it is just underneath the stairs. If you would not mind the trouble Ann could then go to bed. We keep early hours here, as a rule. There is nothing to sit up for."
"I'll turn off the gas—I know where the meter is. How is it, Benson, that the gas is laid on in only two of the rooms upstairs—the rooms Mr. Glenthorpe used to occupy? It would have been an easy matter to lay it on to the adjoining rooms, once the pipes had been taken upstairs."
"That's quite true, sir, but the gas was taken upstairs on Mr. Glenthorpe's account, shortly after he came here. He thought he would like it, and he paid the bill for having it fixed. But after it was laid on he rarely used it. He said he found the gaslight trying for his eyes when he wanted to read in bed, so he got a reading lamp."
"And yet the gas tap was partly turned on in his room the morning after the murder," remarked Colwyn meditatively.
"Perhaps the murderer turned it on," suggested the innkeeper in a low tone.
But there was a slight tremor in his voice that did not escape the keen ears of the detective.
"That is possible, but the point was not cleared up at the trial; it probably never will be now," he replied, eyeing the innkeeper attentively. "And the incandescent burner was broken too. Have you had a new burner attached, Benson?"
"No, sir. The room has never been used since."
"It's a queer thing about that broken burner. That's another point in this case that was not cleared up at the trial. Who do you think broke it?"
"How should I know, sir?" His bird's eyes, in their troubled shadow, turned uneasily from the detective's glance.