'I'm going to pass this off before evening,' I said, putting it in my
pocket, 'and I hope none of your men will arrest me.'
'That's all right,' laughed Hale as he took his leave.
At half-past three Podgers was waiting for me, and opened the front
door as I came up the steps, thus saving me the necessity of ringing.
The house seemed strangely quiet. The French cook was evidently down
in the basement, and we had probably all the upper part to ourselves,
unless Summertrees was in his study, which I doubted. Podgers led me
directly upstairs to the clerk's room on the third floor, walking on
tiptoe, with an elephantine air of silence and secrecy combined, which
struck me as unnecessary.
'I will make an examination of this room,' I said. 'Kindly wait for me
down by the door of the study.'
The bedroom proved to be of respectable size when one considers the
smallness of the house. The bed was all nicely made up, and there were
two chairs in the room, but the usual washstand and swing-mirror were
not visible. However, seeing a curtain at the farther end of the room,
I drew it aside, and found, as I expected, a fixed lavatory in an
alcove of perhaps four feet deep by five in width. As the room was
about fifteen feet wide, this left two-thirds of the space unaccounted
for.
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