"That is very good of you, sir," said the slight man with the piercing grey eyes who stood confronting his intruder. "A policeman was here just now who refused to believe my identity. I am Miguel del Viantes, as I can bring a dozen people to prove, and I have been in London all day. Do you think I would stoop to go near Lord Rayburn? A clever man, no doubt, but a humbug, sir, and a good bit of a charlatan."
"I don't think we need go into that," Hayter said coolly. "And you, sir, are prejudiced, in any case. Still, Lord Rayburn has been murdered and robbed of a valuable diamond, and as you are apparently the gentleman you claim to be, we are wasting our time here. What do you say. Inspector?"
There was no more to be said, and nothing to be done but to make as graceful an exit as possible and lose no time in seeking a clue elsewhere.
But the days went on till a month had elapsed, and no trace had been found of the clever criminal who had so cunningly made use of the Spaniard to commit a successful crime and get away clearly with his prize. And it was by no means a pleasant month for Hayter, either. He was cognisant of the fact that he was being dogged and watched, and there were many signs that the police held him under suspicion.
For practically everything depended upon his uncorroborated testimony. Nobody had seen the murderer but himself, no one had ever seen the slightest trace of the car, and as to the letter which the Spaniard was supposed to have written, that might easily have been forged by anybody. And, again, the diamond had vanished. It would take all the dead man's fortune to make the loss of it good, so that all Hayter's dreams of a happy and comfortable marriage had vanished into thin air.
Still, he was allowed to go on with his research work at Tulham Place, and, indeed, he had had more than one plain hint to the effect that he had better stay there for the present. Inspector Jones had been mightily curious on the subject of what he called the clue of the broken orchid, coupled with the fact that the body of Rayburn had been found by his chief assistant, who had also discovered the fact that the diamond was missing.
And so matters drifted on till the end of November without the slightest clue to the identity of the real culprit. Who he was, and whence he came, no one knew, though Del Viantes had hinted vaguely at a foreign assistant who had been in his employ for some little time, and had been discharged for flagrant dishonesty.
It was a fine morning at the end of November when Hayter was interrupted in the laboratory by the entrance of one of his mechanics.
"Sorry to trouble you, sir," he said, "but aren't you going to open Number Three Tank to-day? It's been frozen for the last three months at two hundred below zero, and that bacteria must be ready now. Shall I get on with it, sir?"
"Perhaps you had better," Hayter said languidly. "Draw the slide back from the roof and take the iron shutters down from the front pf the tank. Let the light play on it as much as possible. I'll come along presently."