“Is it necessary to ask!” I cried. “But—whatever were you doing there by the Black Gap?”
“Fishing! Look what I have caught!”
He held up for my inspection the object which he carried, by means of two loops of stout cord bound about it. It was a large china figure of an ape!
“The blue monkey!” he snapped. “Come! I am going to The Warrens.”
IV
Again I sat in the fine old library of The Warrens. At the further end of the long, book-laden table, facing me, sat East; Mr. Damopolon occupied a chair on the right, and midway between us, in the centre of the table, presiding over that strange meeting, was the fateful blue monkey.
“You see, Mr. Damopolon,” said East, “I knew that Sir Jeffrey was carrying this thing”—he indicated the image—“at the time of his death, and, since it had disappeared, I assumed at first that it had been the motive of the crime. Sir Jeffrey had money and other valuables upon him; therefore we were obviously dealing with no ordinary thief.
“Accordingly, I made inquiries respecting the history of the thing, and found that it possessed but little market value and next to no historical importance. It was of comparatively modern Chinese workmanship, and Sir Jeffrey had bought it, apparently, because it amused him, though why he should have taken the trouble to carry it home, heaven only knows. My first idea—that the curio was a very rare and costly piece—was thus knocked on the head.
“I sought another motive for a crime so horrible and, by a stroke of intuition, I found one. You may not have had an opportunity of studying the mysterious tracks which so puzzled us, Mr. Damopolon, before they were obliterated, but my friend, the doctor, will bear me out. They commenced, then, close beside the body of the murdered man, and they were, as I now perceive, made by the feet of this blue monstrosity upon the table here!”