"Yessir—except for a photograph of a young wummun. It was hidden in a carved wood box on the dressin' table. I brought it along in case you might find some use for it. Here it is."
Speaking, he drew the bit of pasteboard from his pocket and handed it across to Cleek, who bent his eyes upon it, gave a little start at something which was written across it in bold capitals and underscored three times, gazed a moment at the pictured face, and then promptly opened his pocketbook and placed it within.
"Very good, Constable. Mr. Narkom, you will do me a personal favour if you arrange for P. C. Mackay's promotion. He did good work last night, and it must not be forgotten. You may go, Constable."
"Thank you, sir."
The man saluted smartly, grinned all over his ruddy Scotch face at the word "promotion," and went back to his position outside the library door, his head in the clouds and his heart longing for the time when he could impart this wonderful knowledge to his Maggie, and see her blue eyes brighten.
Meanwhile Cleek, the door shut once more, dived down into his pocket and produced the little bit of red electric wire which he had picked up in the library that first day before the tragedy had taken place, when Maud Duggan was showing him over the house. He fingered it idly, and then showed Mr. Narkom the two pieces spread upon his open palm.
"Not much in that, I'm afraid. Just the ordinary kind of wire which everyone uses, and with nothing to show any peculiarities," he said, speaking half to himself and half to the Superintendent. "Both cut with a sharp knife, obviously. Now, if they mated evenly—and gad! they do mate!" He brought them together and dovetailed the two frayed ends one against the other until the edges met in a perfectly even line. "That's a funny thing! A deuced funny thing! But they belong to each other as much as two twin souls belong. They're one and the same piece. Gad! and with the photograph of the estimable young woman—it proves it without a doubt!"
"Proves what, my dear chap?"
Mr. Narkom's voice was a trifle testy. The whole affair of that morning had got upon his nerves. In the first place, he had had to get up too early after a broken night, and in the second, Cleek hadn't given him time to digest his meal, and then the whole higgledy-piggledy of Cleek's words, from which he could make neither head nor tail, served to irritate him still further.
Cleek laid a hand upon the Superintendent's arm, and spoke in his most coaxing voice.