Now my thoughts had been so absorbing that for a time I had forgotten both my companions and my whereabouts. However, a gentle chuckle from the inspector brought me to my senses, and, looking up, I found that if my thoughts had been interesting, the detective was still gazing at the key as though he had been hypnotized.
“That is strange—very strange—very strange indeed,” he whispered at last.
“Well,” said the inspector, “both of you two gentlemen might have been crystal gazing, but there seems to me to be nothing very extraordinary in Dr. Wallace locking the door, putting the key in his pocket, and then forgetting that he’d done it.”
“Oh!” was Allport’s comment, and he shrugged his shoulders in a manner that must have riled the inspector, for his shoulders said “Poor fool” as plainly as shoulders could, then smiling at me he added, “And so you found it rather intriguing also, my friend? Now I wonder why?” And he looked at me appraisingly as though I had suddenly gone up in his estimation.
Then he stood thinking deeply again, and I thought for a moment that he was sinking into another reverie, but he went back into Stella’s room and looked out of the window which was immediately over the flat-topped roof of the doctor’s wing. Next to the house the roof is of plain cement, but at the end away from it it is covered thickly by a large-leaved ivy which runs riot a good foot deep. I went up and stood beside him, but I could see nothing that might have aroused his sudden interest, or which could have any possible connection with the key that had been found in the doctor’s pocket.
He shut the window down again saying, “Well, we are wasting time. Inspector, you are wanted on the telephone. Mr. Jeffcock, and you, Inspector, as well, I want you both to promise me most solemnly that nothing we have spoken of together, and nothing you have seen, Mr. Jeffcock, shall be mentioned to another soul. Neither the finding of the key, nor anything else must be spoken of.”
I gave him my promise.
“I thank you, it is of great importance, and now I shall be obliged if you will return to the rest.”
What on earth could he have seen that was so important in the finding of the key in the doctor’s coat? Why did he go back into Stella’s room and look out of the window, and what were the little pieces of glass that I had caught him so carefully preserving? These were the questions I asked myself as I went back to the drawing-room, but I agreed with Ethel that the little man was inclined to improve as one got to know him better.
Ethel and Margaret, had, I found, completed the straightening out of the furniture. I was afraid that they might ask me for the reason of my prolonged absence, and I had no answer ready to give them, but although I fancied Margaret watched me with a kind of half-eager expectation, they neither of them asked me any questions.