“Why do you say that?”
“It’s the age a man loses his head badly about a girl—even if he hasn’t done so before.”
“Dash it all, Satterthwaite, I’m—er—getting on for fifty-five.”
“I know,” said Satterthwaite.
And before his gentle twinkling gaze Sir Charles’s eyes fell.
Unmistakably he blushed….
Five
IN THE BUTLER’S ROOM
“How about an examination of Ellis’s room?” asked Mr. Satterthwaite, having enjoyed the spectacle of Sir Charles’s blush to the full.
The actor seized at the diversion.
“Excellent, excellent. Just what I was about to suggest myself.”
“Of course the police have already searched it thoroughly.”
“The police—”
Aristide Duval waved the police away scornfully. Anxious to forget his momentary discomfiture, he flung himself with renewed vigour into his part.
“The police are blockheads,” he said sweepingly. “What have they looked for in Ellis’s room? Evidences of his guilt. We shall look for evidences of his innocence—an entirely different thing.”
“You’re completely convinced of Ellis’s innocence?”
“If we’re right about Babbington, he must be innocent.”
“Yes, besides—”
Mr. Satterthwaite did not finish his sentence. He had been about to say that if Ellis was a professional criminal who had been detected by Sir Bartholomew and had murdered him in consequence the whole affair would become unbearably dull. Just in time he remembered that Sir Bartholomew had been a friend of Sir Charles Cartwright’s and was duly appalled by the callousness of the sentiments he had nearly revealed.
At first sight Ellis’s room did not seem to offer much promise of discovery. The clothes in the drawers and hanging in the cupboard were all neatly arranged. They were well cut, and bore different tailors’ marks. Clearly castoffs given him in different situations. The underclothing was on the same scale. The boots were neatly polished and arranged on trees.
Mr. Satterthwaite picked up a boot and murmured, “Nines, just so, nines.” But, since there were no footprints in the case, that didn’t seem to lead anywhere.
It seemed clear from its absence that Ellis had departed in his butler’s kit, and Mr. Satterthwaite pointed out to Sir Charles that that seemed rather a remarkable fact.
“Any man in his senses would have changed into an ordinary suit.”
“Yes, it’s odd that…Looks almost, though that’s absurd, as if he hadn’t gone at all…Nonsense, of course.”
They continued their search. No letters, no papers, except a cutting from a newspaper regarding a cure for corns, and a paragraph relating to the approaching marriage of a duke’s daughter.
There was a small blotting book and a penny bottle of ink on a side table—no pen. Sir Charles held up the blotting book to the mirror, but without result. One page of it was very much used—a meaningless jumble, and the ink looked to both men old.
“Either he hasn’t written any letters since he was here, or he hasn’t blotted them,” deduced Mr. Satterthwaite. “This is an old blotter. Ah, yes—” With some gratification he pointed to a barely decipherable “L. Baker” amidst the jumble.
“I should say Ellis ha
dn’t used this at all.”
“That’s rather odd, isn’t it?” said Sir Charles slowly.