“Oh, that’s all right, sir. You see, Mr. Vance had me all worked up about the kid. And I like kids, sir.”
Markham turned an inquisitive look on Vance.
“You expected to find the child alive?”
“Yes; but drugged or stunned perhaps. I didn’t think of her as dead, for that would have contravened the Bishop’s joke.”
Heath had been pondering some troublous point.
“What I can’t get through my head,” he said, “is why this Bishop, who’s been so damn careful about everything else, should leave the door of the Drukker house unlocked.”
“We were expected to find the child,” Vance told him. “Everything was made easy for us. Very considerate of the Bishop, what? But we weren’t supposed to find her till to-morrow—after the papers had received the Little-Miss-Muffet notes. They were to have been our clew. But we anticipated the gentleman.”
“But why weren’t the notes sent yesterday?”
“It was no doubt the Bishop’s original intention to post his poetry last night; but I imagine he decided it was best for his purpose to let the child’s disappearance attract public attention first. Otherwise the relationship between Madeleine Moffat and little Miss Muffet might have been obscured.”
“Yeh!” snarled Heath through his teeth. “And by to-morrow the kid woulda been dead. No chance then of her identifying him.”