The constable nodded.
“We’d best have a doctor anyway,” he decided. A telephone stood on the top of the desk, and he called up his headquarters, asking that an officer and a doctor be sent at once. Then he turned to his companion.
“Now, sir, what’s all this about? Who are you, and how do you come to be here?”
The young man, though obviously agitated and ill at ease, answered collectedly enough.
“My name is Orchard, William Orchard, and I am a clerk in this office—Duke & Peabody’s, diamond merchants. As I have just said, I called in for a book I had forgotten, and I found—what you see.”
“And what did you do?”
“Do? I did what any one else would have done in the same circumstances. I looked to see if Mr. Gething was dead, and when I saw he was I didn’t touch the body, but ran for help. You were the first person I saw.”
“Mr. Gething?” the constable repeated sharply. “Then you know the dead man?”
“Yes. It is Mr. Gething, our head clerk.”
“What about the safe? Is there anything missing from that?”