“Well, sir, a glance at the body would show anyone that something of the sort had been used. He wasn't giving much away by leaving the thing itself, was he?”
Sir Clinton did not seem altogether satisfied with the Inspector's view.
“The less a murderer leaves behind, the more difficult it is to catch him, Inspector. That's a truism. Now this fellow is no fool, as I've frequently remarked to you. Hence one might have anticipated that he'd leave as few traces as possible. But here he presents us with the actual weapon, and a weapon that has fairly salient peculiarities of its own. Queer, isn't it?”
“Then you think it's a non-scientific murderer using scientific appliances so as to suggest that the crime was done by someone in the scientific line—Silverdale, I mean?”
Sir Clinton was silent for a moment or two, then he said thoughtfully:
“What I'm not sure about is whether it's a pure bluff or a double bluff. It looks like one or the other.”
The Inspector obviously had difficulty in interpreting this rather cryptic utterance. At last he saw his way through it.
“I think I see what you mean, sir. Suppose it's not Silverdale that did the murder. Then somebody—knowing that this kind of tubing's common in Silverdale's laboratory—may have left it on purpose for us to find, so that we'd be bluffed into jumping to the conclusion—as I admit I did—that Silverdale did the trick. That would be a simple bluff. Or again, supposing it's Silverdale who's the murderer, then he may have left the tubing on purpose, because he'd say to himself that we'd never believe that he'd be such a fool as to chuck a thing like that down beside the body—and hence we'd pass him over in our suspicions. Is that it, sir?”
“It sounds devilish involved, as you put it, Inspector; but I have a sort of dim perception that you've grasped my meaning,” Sir Clinton answered. “My own impression is simply that we musn't let this tourniquet lead us too far, for fear we go completely astray. If we get on the right track, I've no doubt it'll fit neatly enough to the rest of the evidence; but it's not the sort of thing I'd care about staking a lot on by itself. Now suppose we come out of these flowery by-paths and get back to the main thoroughfare of the facts.”
The Inspector refused to be damped by his superior. Indeed, he had the air of a player holding good cards, and not caring who knew it.