He was altogether so pleased that he seemed about to shake Sir Benjamin's hand. The latter was frowning over Rampole's shoulder.
"Anything else?" he asked.
The American nodded. He was holding the flame of the match down against the door, and moving it about. Clearly something had been there, by the outline in the heavy dust: a rectangular outline about eighteen by ten inches. Whatever it was, it had been removed. But he hardly heard the chief constable's request to close the vault again. The last letter of the combination was "S." Something was coming back to him, significant and ugly. Words spoken over a hedge at twilight, words flung at Herbert Starberth by a drunken, contemptuous Martin when the two were coming home from Chatterham yesterday afternoon. "You know the word for it right enough," Martin had said. "The word is Gallows."
Rising and slapping dust from his knees, he pushed the door shut. Something had been in that vault — a box, in all likelihood-and the person who killed Martin Starberth had stolen it.
"Somebody took — " he said, involuntarily.
"Yes," said Sir Benjamin. "That seems fairly clear. They wouldn't hand down such a piece of elaborate mummery all these years without any secret at all. But there may be something else. Has it occurred to you, Doctor?"
Dr. Fell was already lumbering round the centre table, as though he were smelling it. He poked at the chair with his cane; he bent down, his big mop of hair flying, to peer under it; and then he looked up vacantly.
"Eh?" he muttered. "I beg your pardon. I was thinking of something else. What did you say?"
The chief constable assumed his schoolmaster's air again, drawing in his chin and compressing his lips to indicate that a deep subject was coming. "Look here," he said, "look here. Don't you think it's more than a coincidence that so many of the Starberth family have died in this particular way?"
Dr. Fell looked up with the expression of a man who has just been hit on the head with a club in a movie comedy.