Druce shook his head. “No, sir—nothing.” This decisively! “He ’ad a joke on his lips, sir, when he came up the stairs with me—just as he usually had. Told me I could go ’ome and do some gardenin’—before I went to ‘Kip.’ Twelve o’clock at night, sir, that was.”
“You went downstairs to open the doors to let him in?”
“Yes, sir. He always give three loud sharp knocks.”
“And you noticed nothing then—or at any other time during the evening that you regarded as unusual or abnormal? Think carefully!”
Druce pondered over the question. “No—I can’t say as how”—then a sudden reminiscence seemed to awake in him—“well, sir—now you mention it, there was an incident, so to speak, when Jim Mason come to the—nothing at all important, sir——” he spoke deprecatingly.
“Let’s hear it,” rapped Goodall. “Every word of it!”
Every vestige of blood went from the night-watchman’s face. “I’m sorry I didn’t think of it before, sir,” he muttered, “I hope there’s no harm done——”
“Let’s have it,” bellowed Goodall, “every second’s of importance!”
“Well, sir,” said Druce—“it was like this. When I ’eard Jim Mason knock—he give his three knocks just as usual—I went downstairs to let ’im in. When I opened the door he was standin’ there just in the ordinary way—when a female comes up to us. Wanted to know what time the Galleries opened the next morning—that was all she enquired, sir! I told her ‘ten o’clock.’ Then she pointed down the street and asked if that way was the right direction for the Marble Arch.”
“And was it?” snapped Goodall eagerly.