“Leave Maurice out of it!” he thought, as he walked at a snail’s pace towards the room where he had left Joan. “That’s a nice bit of advice! If you leave Maurice out of it, there seems to be nothing left in it. Now what the devil am I to say to her? If I say nothing, she’ll jump to the worst conclusion; and if I say anything at all, she’ll jump to the same.”
CHAPTER IX.
The Muramasa Sword
As the door closed behind Michael Clifton, the Chief Constable turned to the Inspector.
“Now we can get to business, Inspector. Let’s have a look round the place at leisure, and perhaps the surgeon will turn up before we reach the body itself.”
Followed by Armadale, he stepped over to the bay containing the corpse of Foss and began methodically to inspect the surroundings.
“This must have been the case that Marden slipped against when he cut his hand,” the Inspector pointed out. “There’s a big hole in the glass and some blood on the broken edges of the gap.”
“Oh, yes, there’s blood enough to suit most people,” Sir Clinton admitted, with a glance towards the shattered case. But he seemed less interested in the glass than in the floor surface; for he moved slowly to and fro, evidently trying to place himself so that the sunlight from the window was reflected up to him from the parquet. After a moment or two, he seemed satisfied.
“That part of Marden’s story seems true enough. He did slip here. If you come across, you’ll see a line where the polish of the parquet has been taken off by some hard part of his shoe. You won’t be able to spot it unless you make a mirror of the floor.”
The Inspector in his turn moved over and satisfied himself of the existence of the faint mark.
“That confirms part of his story,” he admitted, grudgingly. “There’s a lot of blood about, quite apart from the stuff from the body. One might make something out of that.”