VII
From where he stood the light caught it and sent up a thread of silvery reflection. He stooped mechanically and picked it up.
“What is that?” asked the detective curiously.
“It looks to me like a pin,” said Tab.
It was a very ordinary pin, silvery bright and about an inch and a half in length. In that sense it was of an unusual size, though it was the kind that is commonly used by bankers, who delight in fastening large documents together by this barbarous method. It was not straight; there was a slight bend in it, but otherwise it had not remarkable features. Tab looked at it stupidly.
“Give it to me,” said Carver. He took it in his white-gloved hand and walked to a position under one of the lights. “I don’t suppose it has any significance,” he said, “but I’ll keep it.” He put the pin carefully away in the match-box where he had put the key. “Now, Tab,” he said more briskly as they went out of the house together into the bright sunlight, two unshaven, weary-looking men, “you have the story of your life, but go easy on any clues we have found.”
“I didn’t know we had found any,” said Tab, “unless the pin is a clue.”
“Even that I should not mention,” said Carver gravely.
When he got back to his flat Tab found the lights of the sitting-room blazing and Rex Lander, fully dressed, asleep on the settee.
“I waited up till three,” yawned Rex. “Have they caught Walters or whoever it was?”