“Think it over, Inspector. I won’t insult you by telling you my solution. Let’s take another point. Have you the watch itself here?”
The Inspector produced it and handed it over. Sir Clinton took out a pocket-knife and opened the back of the case.
“No use,” he announced, after examining the back cover carefully. “It’s never been repaired. There are no reference marks scratched on the inside of the back as there usually are when a watch has gone back to the watch-makers. If there had been, we might have found out something about Foss in that way, by getting hold of the watch-makers. By the way, have you timed this thing as I asked you to do?”
“It’s running on time,” Armadale answered. “It hasn’t varied a rap in the last twelve hours.”
“A practically new watch; running to time; never needed repair so far; dispatched by post with no finger-marks of the dispatcher: surely you can see what that means?”
Inspector Armadale shook his head.
“It might be a secret message,” he hazarded, though without much confidence. “I mean a prearranged code.”
“So it might,” Sir Clinton agreed. “The only thing against that in my mind is that I’m perfectly sure that it wasn’t.”
Armadale looked sulky.
“I’m hardly clever enough to follow you, sir, I’m afraid.”