“As soon as we have finished tea,” she said, “we will go and look over the cupboard where the electro moulds were kept—that is, the permanent ones. The gelatine moulds for works in the round couldn’t be kept. They were melted down again. But the water-proofed plaster moulds were stored away in this cupboard, and the gutta-percha ones, too, until they were wanted to soften down to make new moulds. And even if the moulds were destroyed, Father usually kept a cast.”
“Would you be able to tell by looking through the cupboard?” I asked.
“Yes. I should know a strange mould, of course, as I saw all the original work that he did. Have we finished? Then let us go and settle the question now.”
She produced a bunch of keys from her pocket and crossed the studio to a large, tall cupboard in a corner. Selecting a key, she inserted it and was trying vainly to turn it when the door came open. She looked at it in surprise and then turned to me with a somewhat puzzled expression.
“This is really very curious,” she said. “When I came here this morning I found the outer door unlocked. Naturally I thought I must have forgotten to lock it, though that would have been an extraordinary oversight. And now I find this door unlocked. But I distinctly remember locking it before going away last night, when I had put back the box of modelling wax. What do you make of that?”
“It looks as if some one had entered the studio last night with false keys or by picking the lock. But why should they? Perhaps the cupboard will tell. You will know if it has been disturbed.”
She ran her eyes along the shelves and said at once: “It has been. The things are all in disorder and one of the moulds is broken. We had better take them all out and see if anything is missing—so far as I can judge, that is, for the moulds were just as my father left them.”
We dragged a small work-table to the cupboard and emptied the shelves one by one. She examined each mould as we took it out, and I jotted down a rough list at her dictation. When we had been through the whole collection and re-arranged the moulds on the shelves—they were mostly plaques and medallions—she slowly read through the list and reflected for a few moments. At length she said:
“I don’t miss anything that I can remember. But the question is, Were there any moulds or casts that I did not know about? I am thinking of Dr. Thorndyke’s question. If there were any, they have gone, so that question cannot be answered.”
We looked at one another gravely, and in both our minds was the same unspoken question: “Who was it that had entered the studio last night?”