Morton had an uncomfortable feeling that the Japanese was scornful of him, and, worse still, that the other listeners were also.
“You may go,” he told Ito, and then, turning to Lockwood, he said, a little belligerently, “Who is in charge here? To whom do I make my report?”
The question was like a bombshell. All were silent, until Mrs. Bates said, “I suppose I am what might be called in charge. You may report to me.”
“To you, ma’am?” Morton was, clearly, surprised.
“Yes; as Doctor Waring’s affianced wife, and as his heir, I feel I am in authority. And also, I wish all reports made to me, as I am the one most deeply interested in learning the identity of the murderer.”
“If he was murdered,” supplemented Mrs. Bates.
And Mrs. Peyton broke in, “You needn’t think, Mr. Morton, that there’s such a thing as a secret entrance or secret passage in this house, for I know there is not.”
“Yet there are other theories, other possibilities,” the detective said, his air a little less important than it had been. “Suppose, now, that Nogi had robbed and murdered his master, when he carried in the water tray. Just suppose that, and suppose that, with his Japanese cunning he had devised a way to lock the door behind him—or, say, he had gone out by the glass door, and had locked that behind him.”
“How?” cried Pinckney, his eyes wide with excitement.
“Say he had previously removed a pane of glass—they are not large panes. Say, he reached through, locked the door inside—the French window, I mean—and then had put in the pane, reputtied it, and gone away.”