"You saw Mr. Herbert leave?" demanded the chief constable.
"— to the stable where he keeps them inventions which to be sure I don't look at stairs which shakes out me very 'airpins. Do I?"
"What inventions?" said the chief constable, rather helplessly.
"It's all right, Sir Benjamin," said Dorothy. "Herbert is always tinkering with something, without any success. He had a workshop out there."
Further than this no information could be elicited from Mrs. Bundle. All inventions, she was convinced, had to do with certain contraptions which threw one about in the dark at the Holdern fair. Apparently somebody with a primitive sense of humour had led the good lady into the Crazy House, where she had screamed until a crowd assembled, got caught in the machinery, hit somebody with an umbrella, and was finally escorted out by the police. Just as, after a tempestuous review of the matter without enlightenment for her hearers, she was led out by Budge.
"Waste of time," growled Sir Benjamin, when she had gone. "There's your question about the clock answered, Doctor. Now I think we can proceed."
"I think we can," Payne interposed, suddenly.
He had not moved from his position beside the girl's chair; small, his arms folded, ugly as a Chinese image.
"I think we can," he repeated. "Since you seem to get nowhere with this aimless questioning, I fancy that some explanations are due me. I hold a trust in this family. For a hundred years nobody except members of the Starberth family have been allowed in the Governor's Room on any pretext whatsoever. This morning, I am given to understand, you gentlemen — one of you a perfect stranger — violated that law. That in itself calls for an explanation."
Sir Benjamin shut his jaws firmly. "Excuse me, my friend," he said. "I don't think it does."