“Don’t trouble, pray, ma’am, on my account,” entreated Mr. Halfpenny. “It’s of no consequence. We’re deeply obliged to you.” He swept off his hat in an old-fashioned obeisance and drew Mr. Tertius away to the coupé brougham. “That was Barthorpe, of course,” he said. “He lost no time, you see, Tertius, in trying to see Burchill.”
“Why should he want to see Burchill?” asked Mr. Tertius.
“Wanted to know what Burchill had to say about signing the will, of course,” replied Mr. Halfpenny. “Well—what next? Do you want me to see Cox-Raythwaite with you?”
Mr. Tertius, who had seemed to be relapsing into a brown study on the edge of the pavement, woke up into some show of eagerness. “Yes, yes!” he said. “Yes, by all means let us go to Cox-Raythwaite. I’m sure that’s the thing to do. And there’s another man—the chauffeur. But—yes, we’ll go to Cox-Raythwaite first. Tell your man to drive to the corner of Endsleigh Gardens—the corner by St. Pancras Church.”
Professor Cox-Raythwaite was exactly where Mr. Tertius had left him in the morning, when the two visitors were ushered into his laboratory. And for the second time that day he listened in silence to Mr. Tertius’s story. When it was finished, he looked at Mr. Halfpenny, whose solemn countenance had grown more solemn than ever.
“Queer story, isn’t it, Halfpenny?” he said laconically. “How does it strike you?”
Mr. Halfpenny slowly opened his pursed-up lips.
“Queer?” he exclaimed. “God bless me!—I’m astounded! I—but let me see these—these things.”
“Sealed ’em up not so long ago—just after lunch,” remarked the Professor, lifting his heavy bulk out of his chair. “But you can see ’em all right through the glass. There you are!” He led the way to a side-table and pointed to the hermetically-sealed receptacles in which he had safely bestowed the tumbler and the sandwich brought so gingerly from Portman Square by Mr. Tertius. “The tumbler,” he continued, jerking a big thumb at it, “will have, of course, to be carefully examined by an expert in finger-prints; the sandwich, so to speak, affords primary evidence. You see—what there is to see, Halfpenny?”
Mr. Halfpenny adjusted his spectacles, bent down, and examined the exhibits with scrupulous, absorbed interest. Again he pursed up his lips, firmly, tightly, as if he would never open them again; when he did open them it was to emit a veritable whistle which indicated almost as much delight as astonishment. Then he clapped Mr. Tertius on the back.