"Then he 'd—ah—he 'd turn round and walk back again."
"Not very interesting for you. But we know one thing for certain: he 's uneasy. I have a far lighter task for you, though, than following the erratic movements of Mr. Alexander Burke."
And then I recounted for his benefit all that I knew respecting the ruby, declared my belief that it lay somewhere in the house, and, finally, outlined my plans for the immediate future.
"We 'll divide the vigil between us, Stodger; you and I shall camp right here until that costly bauble comes to light. We 'll have to keep our eyes open and our wits about us, too; I wouldn't be surprised at some tricky attempt to recover it at any time—especially during darkness."
After showing him the cipher and requesting that he be observant to find the counterpart of the two peculiar designs, I left him in charge of the house. Next I arranged that our meals be brought to us, after which I returned to town and held a long conference with my chief. This proved to be eminently satisfactory, inasmuch as he left the Page affair entirely in my hands.
Although I hoped that some new development would require another interview with Miss Cooper, absolutely nothing transpired until the next morning. During the rest of Wednesday afternoon—perhaps I forgot to mention that the murder was committed at about midnight Tuesday—and until late Wednesday night, Stodger and I prosecuted a diligent and systematic search for the ruby, the original of the design on the cipher, and for anything else that might bear upon the crime, but found nothing to reward our efforts. At a late hour we knocked off and sought the library's easy-chairs. After a while Stodger asked me for the cipher. When I dropped off to sleep he was industriously digging away at it, with many gasps and inarticulate exclamations.
Concerning the cipher, it is perhaps well to mention that I applied it to the door of the hidden safe on the chance that the opposed arrows indicated the different movements of the dial; but I discovered the combination to be much simpler. In fact, there were not sufficient tumblers in the dial to allow for so complicated a combination at all.
There remained the possibility that the numerals belonged to some other safe, though I did not think so: those two odd crenellated figures could have nothing in common with any permutation-lock. I had seen them; they were tantalizingly familiar; but where? And what meaning did those two figure "10's" bear? Here was a riddle for Oedipus.
The next morning—Thursday—Dr. De Breen conducted the inquest in the library. I mention this hearing solely because of a number of circumstances which occurred during the proceedings—although unrelated to them—and which have a bearing upon the story. As for the testimony itself, it was about as satisfactory as in most instances where little respecting the crime is definitely known.
Stodger and I had the burden of additional watchfulness imposed upon us; a number of people would be brought upon the scene, and each of us had to be present at some time during the hearing without leaving the house unguarded for a second.