Murchison regarded us with a heavy and sleepy smile.
"If what the governor says about you is true," he remarked, with a sudden come-down from his official manner when he nodded towards Stone, "you haven't had a decent bit of luck since you left Torquay. And you haven't officially `discovered this body," he jerked his head, "yet. But I want you to understand my position. I'm not the Chief Constable. I'm not even the superintendent. I'm a common-or-garden detective-inspector with none too brilliant a record at that. I can't turn you loose, officially, and let you get back to London, even if you could find a way back at this time in the morning. It's certain you can't stay in Bristol, for there'll be a big whoop when this news goes to headquarters. But there is one thing I can do: I can put you in a police-car and send you back to Torquay. Then it's their business. What they see fit to do I can't say. You're wanted as witnesses by the Chief Constable there, and that's all I know about it. Follow me?"
There was a pause.
"And from Mechlin church-steeple we heard the half-chime,"
recited Evelyn ecstatically.
"And Joris broke silence with, `Yet there is time!'"
"Ken, we may be going back in the other direction, but it's the only thing that can save us; and we'll be at that wedding yet! I say, thanks most awfully. You've pulled us through."
"Thank him, Miss Cheyne," grunted Murchison, and nodded towards Stone. "He seems to have taken a fancy to you. Is everything agreed? Right. I'll go down and discover the body now. You three had better stay here, and keep in the background as much as possible. No, wait; you'd better come along with me, Mr. Blake. You'll have to get through to Torquay before a crowd gathers, and there's a telephone in Dr. Keppel's rooms."
We went out into the dim corridor, closing the door behind us. Down by the cut-glass lamp at the stairs, a mysterious and furtive head first poked itself round and then dodged back in singularly ghostly fashion. Murchison first whistled. and then ran after it. It turned out to be the head of the night-porter, who was sheepish. From him Murchison procured the pass-key and opened the door of Keppel's sittingroom.
There was a light-switch at the left of the door. Once the chandelier was illuminated in that large white-papered room with the etchings on the walls, it had lost most of its terror. It was still bleak. The little corpse in the chair was still grotesque enough. But we had learned the explanation and dug the core out of the mystery: there could now be room for pity. Murchison closed the door and stood with his back against it.