‘ “It must be on Coombe himself,” growls the Hun,’ he began.
‘ “Of course,” agrees the pawn, adding mentally: “Heaven pray it may be so,” or words to that effect. “Go and see, you!” venoms the Hun, and off goes Whitby, fear padding at his heels.’
He paused for breath and regarded them soberly.
‘Seriously, though,’ he continued with sudden gravity. ‘The chap must have had a nasty ten minutes. He knew that if anything had gone wrong and old Coombe had somehow managed to double-cross the gang, as guardian he was for it with von Faber at his nastiest. Look now,’ he went on cheerfully, ‘this is where the deduction comes in; as I work it out, as soon as Whitby entered the darkened part of the house, someone put the dagger in his hand and then, I should say, the whole idea occurred to him. He went up to old Coombe in the dark, asked him for the papers; Coombe replied that he hadn’t got them. Then Whitby, maddened with the thought of the yarn he was bound to take back to von Faber, struck the old boy in the back and, after making a rapid search, took the dagger, joined in the game for thirty seconds, maybe – just enough time to hand the thing on to somebody – and then dashed back to Faber and Gideon, with his news. How about that?’
He smiled at them with deep satisfaction – he had no doubts himself.
For some minutes his audience were silent. This solution was certainly very plausible. At last Abbershaw raised his head. The expression on his face was almost hopeful.
‘It’s not a bad idea, Martin,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘In fact, the more I think about it the more likely it seems to become.’
Martin pressed his argument home eagerly.
‘I feel like that too,’ he said. ‘You see, it explains so many things. First of all, it gives a good reason why von Faber thought that one of our crowd had done it. Then it also makes it clear why Whitby never turned up again. And then it has another advantage – it provides a motive. No one else had any reason for killing the old boy. As far as I can see he seems to have been very useful to his own gang and no harm to anybody else. Candidly now, don’t you think I’m obviously right?’
He looked from one to the other of them questioningly.