There was a moment’s silence and then Aunt Cal asked tremulously, “You were with him when he died?”
The other nodded. “And that reminds me,” he said, “he sent you a message, said I was to come back and give it to you myself. Or if you wasn’t here to get your address and mail it to you.” He began feeling in the pocket of his trousers, presently bringing out a dog-eared bill folder from which he extracted a dirty envelope.
“And why have you not given me this before?” Aunt Cal inquired as she took the letter from the man’s hand.
He shrugged. “All in good time. I says to myself I’ll just take a look round first and get the lay of the land like.”
Hamish eyed him fiercely. “So you opened the letter,” he accused “and took out the part you thought interesting—the sheet that had those measurements on it!”
Mr. Bangs shook his head. “Naw, Mr. Detective, you got me wrong. I never opened the letter. I found that there paper—since you’re so interested—with Carter Craven’s things after he died.”
“And that’s where you got the key to the house too, I suppose,” Michael put in.
“Right, Buddy.”
“Anyway,” Hamish persisted, “you thought you were going to dig up a neat little fortune out there in the garden, didn’t you? Well, you jolly well got fooled!” He turned to the cupboard and drew out the key. “If you’d dug in the right place—which you didn’t ’cause you were too stupid—that was all you’d have found.”
Mechanically the man’s clawlike fingers reached out and took the key. His glance strayed from it to Michael’s honest gray eyes. “Say,” he asked wonderingly, “is this on the level?”