porter’s lodge. He ought to have had a team of locksmiths up from London, working at that safe all night…
He set himself to an inspection. Nothing, as far as he could see, had been disturbed. The desk was untampered with. And the safe had not been forced. Whoever had been in the room had known what he wanted, where it lay concealed and how to gain access to it. The safe, the very existence of which appeared to be unknown to the rest of the college, had held, even in the combination that opened it, no secret for this intruder. Who had the intruder been? Appleby turned to the probabilities. One of the four men sleeping in Little Fellows’ next door could have broken in easily enough. He slipped once more through the curtains and examined the window. What had happened was clear. The burglar had made three circles with a diamond and to each of these he had applied a piece of sacking treated with some sticky substance; through this deadening medium he had then smashed the holes which enabled him to get at bolts and key. It was a trick out of fiction rather than out of current burglarious practice, and it was surprising that it had worked as well as it had done. A resounding splintering of the whole great pane ought to have been the result; as it was, the fractures had almost confined themselves to their diamond-scrawled boundaries and the noise would have been insufficient to penetrate either to the quarters of the dead President’s domestic staff or round the corner to Little Fellows’.
It might have been one of the Little Fellows’ men – but what then was the meaning of the open west gate? The key had been on the orchard side. If the burglary and the open gate were connected, and if one of these four – Empson, Haveland, Pownall, Titlow – was responsible, he had gone on through the gate to one of the other courts – and was there still . Or somebody from outside St Anthony’s had entered with this tenth key through the wicket, committed the burglary, and similarly gone on to the other part of the college.
But the indications might be deliberately misleading. Why had the key been left in the lock? As a deliberate false trail? Supposing the burglary had been committed not from the orchard side but from the Bishop’s side? The perpetrator might then have left the key on the orchard side to suggest the contrary. But what would that suggestion, logically followed up, imply? It would imply that somebody had passed from Orchard Ground (or perhaps from Schools Street) into the main courts of the college and had then (as a fictitious person could obviously not be discovered there) passed back, leaving the gate open and abandoning the key. The pretence was too thin to have been worth putting up. Almost certainly somebody had passed from Orchard Ground to Bishop’s; and almost certainly that person was there still. For if (as the creak suggested) the gate had been left open to cut down noise pending a return and one final shutting of it, then the key might have been forgotten in the moment that such a procedure was decided upon. But if the person concerned had passed back to Orchard Ground his whole instinct would be to cover his traces: he would almost certainly take the very slight risk of shutting the gate, and would almost certainly repossess himself of the key.
If this was indeed the situation, if the burglar was now somewhere in the main buildings and had his escape to make through the gates he was virtually in Appleby’s hands. Leaving the gate open, with police possibly prowling round, had been a gross error of judgment; abandoning the key in the lock had been more careless still: both acts implied a sort of mind that Appleby had not hitherto associated with Umpleby’s murderer. If this was the murderer who was operating now the St Anthony’s mystery might be past history within half an hour. It was somehow a disconcerting thought.
And now Appleby glided into the darkness again and made his way back to the
He set himself to an inspection. Nothing, as far as he could see, had been disturbed. The desk was untampered with. And the safe had not been forced. Whoever had been in the room had known what he wanted, where it lay concealed and how to gain access to it. The safe, the very existence of which appeared to be unknown to the rest of the college, had held, even in the combination that opened it, no secret for this intruder. Who had the intruder been? Appleby turned to the probabilities. One of the four men sleeping in Little Fellows’ next door could have broken in easily enough. He slipped once more through the curtains and examined the window. What had happened was clear. The burglar had made three circles with a diamond and to each of these he had applied a piece of sacking treated with some sticky substance; through this deadening medium he had then smashed the holes which enabled him to get at bolts and key. It was a trick out of fiction rather than out of current burglarious practice, and it was surprising that it had worked as well as it had done. A resounding splintering of the whole great pane ought to have been the result; as it was, the fractures had almost confined themselves to their diamond-scrawled boundaries and the noise would have been insufficient to penetrate either to the quarters of the dead President’s domestic staff or round the corner to Little Fellows’.
It might have been one of the Little Fellows’ men – but what then was the meaning of the open west gate? The key had been on the orchard side. If the burglary and the open gate were connected, and if one of these four – Empson, Haveland, Pownall, Titlow – was responsible, he had gone on through the gate to one of the other courts – and was there still . Or somebody from outside St Anthony’s had entered with this tenth key through the wicket, committed the burglary, and similarly gone on to the other part of the college.
But the indications might be deliberately misleading. Why had the key been left in the lock? As a deliberate false trail? Supposing the burglary had been committed not from the orchard side but from the Bishop’s side? The perpetrator might then have left the key on the orchard side to suggest the contrary. But what would that suggestion, logically followed up, imply? It would imply that somebody had passed from Orchard Ground (or perhaps from Schools Street) into the main courts of the college and had then (as a fictitious person could obviously not be discovered there) passed back, leaving the gate open and abandoning the key. The pretence was too thin to have been worth putting up. Almost certainly somebody had passed from Orchard Ground to Bishop’s; and almost certainly that person was there still. For if (as the creak suggested) the gate had been left open to cut down noise pending a return and one final shutting of it, then the key might have been forgotten in the moment that such a procedure was decided upon. But if the person concerned had passed back to Orchard Ground his whole instinct would be to cover his traces: he would almost certainly take the very slight risk of shutting the gate, and would almost certainly repossess himself of the key.
If this was indeed the situation, if the burglar was now somewhere in the main buildings and had his escape to make through the gates he was virtually in Appleby’s hands. Leaving the gate open, with police possibly prowling round, had been a gross error of judgment; abandoning the key in the lock had been more careless still: both acts implied a sort of mind that Appleby had not hitherto associated with Umpleby’s murderer. If this was the murderer who was operating now the St Anthony’s mystery might be past history within half an hour. It was somehow a disconcerting thought.
And now Appleby glided into the darkness again and made his way back to the
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