Branston bowed. “A dreadful affair this,” he declared, “dreadful from whatever point of view you look at it. Pretty rotten for me, you know—in the business sense. It sounds frightfully callous, I know, but self-preservation’s the first law of nature. This job isn’t going to do my business any good and every man has to think of himself.” He flushed under his dark skin.
Bannister eyed him sternly. “I am Chief-Inspector Bannister,” he said, “of ‘Scotland Yard.’ Sergeant Godfrey has requested my assistance. Tell me exactly what happened.”
Branston’s nostrils quivered slightly as he began to tell his story but he rapidly regained control over himself and his words came clearly and without a shade of tremor in his voice. “I can only repeat to you,” he stated, “what I have already told Sergeant Godfrey here. This unhappy lady entered the room in which we are now standing a few minutes before two o’clock this afternoon. I had just attended to a previous patient who was my first of the afternoon. She asked me to perform an extraction. I administered a simple local anæsthetic and extracted a left-hand bicuspid. The lady seemed quite comfortable after the extraction. I gave her the usual glass of water as a mouth-wash—there’s the very tumbler on that stand—just as she must have put it down before she was murdered—and then went along to my work-room. I had a special job on this afternoon as I’ve previously explained to the Sergeant and it’s my customary practice to let a patient alone for a moment or two after an extraction.”
“One minute,” broke in Bannister. “Was the extraction a necessary one?”
“Oh, undoubtedly—the tooth had been filled on a previous occasion and the filling had worn away. The patient had been in considerable pain, she informed me, and I could well understand it. She had probably caught cold in the bad tooth.”
“Thank you,” observed the Inspector. “Please proceed.”
“Well, here comes the extraordinary part of the story.” Here Branston’s nervousness began to show itself again. “The job took me a little longer than I had anticipated—when I turned to open the door of the room in which I was working, I found to my complete astonishment that I was shut in. Somebody had shot the brass bolt on the outside of the work-room door. I called out and banged on the door but there I had to stay until my housekeeper heard me yelling and released me. I rushed back to the operating room and discovered—this.”
“How long were you away—as accurately, now, as you can possibly place it?”
Branston knitted his brows in reflection. “I wouldn’t put it at more than seven minutes,” he answered, calculatingly.
“Did you hear any step at all when you were in the work-room?”