“Has it not struck you that the telegram sent from Edinburgh may have been despatched by the assassin?” I asked.
But he was uncertain. He had as yet, he said, formed no theory as to that portion of the problem.
“Where is the unfortunate girl?” I asked, for I had noticed that she was not in the dining-room.
He looked at me quickly, with a strange expression in his peculiar eyes.
“She’s still here, of course,” he declared. “That second phase of the mystery is as complicated as the first—perhaps even more so. Come with me a moment.”
I followed him through the boudoir and into the study, where, opening a long cupboard in the wall, a small iron safe was revealed, the door of which opened at his touch.
“Here,” he explained, “the Professor kept the valuable notes upon the results of his experiments. The safe was closed when I first called, but this morning I found it open, and the contents gone!”
“Then the person who killed Professor Greer was not the thief!” I remarked.
“Unless he returned here afterwards,” was Kirk’s reply, with his eyes fixed upon mine.
Then he glanced at his watch, and without a word turned upon his heel and passed out of the room.