It was Arnesson who answered, with burlesque irony.
“Gone! Disappeared!—Most tragic. Some eccentric key-collector has evidently been snooping around.” When the girl had left us, he cocked an eye at Vance. “What, in the name of all that’s unholy, has a rusty key to do with the case?”
“Perhaps nothing,” said Vance carelessly. “Let’s go to the drawin’-room. It’s more comfortable there.” He led the way down the hall. “We want you to tell us what you can about last night.”
Arnesson took an easy chair by the front window, and drew out his pipe.
“Last night, eh? . . . Well, Pardee came to dinner—it’s a sort of habit with him on Fridays. Then Drukker, in the throes of quantum speculation, dropped in to pump the professor; and Pardee’s presence galled him. Showed his feelings too, by Gad! No control. The professor broke up the contretemps by taking Drukker for an airing. Pardee moped for fifteen minutes or so, while I tried to keep awake. Then he had the goodness to depart. I looked over a few test papers . . . and so to bed.” He lighted his pipe. “How does that thrilling recital explain the end of poor Drukker?”
“It doesn’t,” said Vance. “But it’s not without interest.—Did you hear Professor Dillard when he returned home?”
“Hear him?” Arnesson chuckled. “When he hobbles about with his gouty foot, thumping his stick down and shaking the banisters, there’s no mistaking his arrival on the scene. Fact is, he was unusually noisy last night.”
“Offhand, what do you make of these new developments?” asked Vance, after a short pause.
“I’m somewhat foggy as to the details. The professor was not exactly phosphorescent. Sketchy, in fact. Drukker fell from the wall, like Humpty Dumpty, round ten o’clock, and was found this morning—that’s all plain. But under what conditions did Lady Mae succumb to shock? Who, or what, shocked her? And how?”
“The murderer took Drukker’s key and came here immediately after the crime. Mrs. Drukker caught him in her son’s room. There was a scene, according to the cook, who listened from the head of the stairs; and during it Mrs. Drukker died from dilatation of the heart.”