I had nothing to say, no explanation to give, and stood stupidly tongue-tied before them all. I was too astounded to speak or protest, but I remembered that the doctor had been awake and abroad in the quiet house while I was down-stairs and the rest were locked in their rooms and asleep. His and mine were the only two unoccupied. To make up the notice—place it over the switch and then step into my room and deposit the paper where it had been found—what, I thought, could have been easier for him to do than that? Had he not just stated that if he were guilty that was what he would do? But afterward? Would he have gone up-stairs to Stella’s room and have allowed me to find him there? Or was his search and his private detective work all a pretense and was he really on some murderous errand which I had interrupted? “I knows what I knows,” cook had said. Besotted, drunken cook, what did she know, I wondered? Was she really up-stairs snoring, or had she too, like Stella, made her last adventure and opened the door at the end of the passage?
These were the thoughts that flashed across my mind as I stood stupidly turning the paper this way and that. When I did look up I found Margaret gazing at me with ill-concealed horror; The Tundish, half amused and wholly sympathetic. Kenneth was making a further search and he soon produced another card like the one that had been completed, a tube of paste, and then a pair of scissors.
The paste came from the doctor’s desk, the scissors Margaret claimed as hers. They were the ones she had missed when she cleared up her work to go to bed, and she did not fail to remind me how we had looked for them together.
“Well, it certainly smells a bit fishy.”
“And did you smell fish when the key was found under your own pillow, Kenneth?” The Tundish asked him quietly.
“Yes, I did, and as you’ve asked me the question, I believe it was the same piece of fish.”
“Meaning?”
“Why you, you damned liar, of course.”
The doctor laughed. “You’ll win yet, Kenneth, for you’ll certainly be the death of me! Anyhow you take charge of the treasure trove. Margaret, off to bed with you! We can do no more here and now.” He was in command of the situation once more, and to me, at least, it seemed quite natural that he should be.
Kenneth insisted, however, that we should go up-stairs and verify the doctor’s statement that cook’s snores could be heard through the door, and though I could hear her distinctly and could confirm his opinion, Kenneth pretended that he was not sure and Ralph, of course, followed Kenneth’s lead and was not certain either. The Tundish was willing to convince them and fetched a stout screw-driver, with which, after some little delay, the lock of the door was pried open.