Joseph suddenly paused and handed over the keys he was dangling.
"Open them yourself!" he said.
He turned on his heel, and without another word or look went back into the private parlour. And Polke, opening the door of the dining-room, ushered his party inside, and then stepped back to the two men who were waiting in the hall.
"Smithson," he said to one of them, "you'll stop at the house-door here—inside, mind, so as not to attract attention from any customers coming up this hall to the bank. Jones—come out here with me a minute," he continued, taking the second man outside. "Look here—I've a quiet job for you. You know the housekeeper here—Mrs. Carswell? She's disappeared. May be all right—and it mayn't. Now, you go out and take a look round for her. And go to the cab-stand at the corner of the Moot Hall, and just find out if she's taken a taxi from them, and if so, where she wanted to be driven to. And then come back and tell me—and when you come back, stay inside the house with Smithson."
The policeman nodded his comprehension of these instructions and went out, and Polke turned back to the dining-room and closed the door. He looked at Starmidge.
"Now I'm in your hands," he said quietly. "You take charge of this. What do you wish to do?"
"One thing particularly at first," answered Starmidge. "And we can all work at it. Never mind these secret passages and dark corners and holes in the panels!—at present: we may have a look at these later on. What I do want to find out is—if there's any letter amongst Mr. Horbury's papers making an appointment with him last Saturday evening. To put matters briefly—I want some light on that man who came to the Station Hotel on Saturday, and who presumably came to meet Mr. Horbury."
"I see," said Polke. "Good! Then—first?"
"Here's his desk—and its drawers," suggested Starmidge. "Now, let us all four take a drawer each and see if we can find any such letter. I'm going on the presumption that this stranger came down to see Mr. Horbury, and that on his arrival he telephoned up to let him know he'd got here. If that presumption is correct, then, in all probability, there'd been previous correspondence between them as to the man's visit."
"If that man came to see Mr. Horbury," remarked the solicitor, "why didn't he come straight here to the bank-house?"