CHAPTER XXIX
HOW MASTER HOBBS GOT HIS BALL FROM A NEIGHBOUR’S YARD
WHEN Constable Hobbs had seen his visitors safely out of the house he returned to the room of the crime full of thought.
It was apparent to him that this strange old man had read the secret and method of the murder at a glance. Not two minutes had he been in the room, and the tone of his involuntary exclamation announced that he had solved the riddle.
How had he done it? What magic was there in this old man’s vision that was lacking in his own? He had marked in his mind every movement, every glance of Soft Sam—the door that had hardly arrested his slow walk into the room, the fire-place he had only touched, and finally, the window where the exclamation had taken place.
What was there so noticeable about the window to excite the old man? He went towards it, and looked it over carefully. Four squares of glass, two in each sash, secured by a common window-fastener, that was now closed, as Police-Constable Hobbs had always seen it.
He opened the window, and scrutinized it carefully.
What were these two small lines that cut the paint of the lower bar of the upper sash, immediately under the fastener?
He looked at them carefully. At the edges the cuts were deeper. They were such marks as are seen on the tops of corks of lemonade bottles. And the marks were recent.
“That’s it!” cried Hobbs, joyfully. “That’s what he saw! What a fool I was never to have opened the window! They are hardly to be seen when it is closed.”
But his triumph was only for a moment. These marks may have explained everything to the old man; they were so far silent to Constable Hobbs. He had, however, found a clue, and he started to think to put this and that together.
The window had, so far, never entered his calculations; there were so many objections to be overcome in that direction. Nevertheless, putting them aside, he devoted all his thought to the window and its lock. Drawing out his pocket-knife, he found it was an easy job to press back the little brass bar when it was open. He remembered doing the same trick as a boy, when he happened to be locked out of his own home. But with the knife he found it quite impossible to shut the lock again from the outside.
Descending to the kitchen of the house he procured a piece of very fine wire, and, having borrowed a ladder, mounted to the window from the outside. He had previously again closed the window. He now readily opened it as before, with his knife pushed up between the junction of the two sashes and pressed sideways. Raising the lower sash and bending his wire in the form of a loop, he was able with a little dexterity to pass it over the knob of the catch; holding the two ends of the wire in one hand he drew down the lower sash, and then by a sideway pull easily pulled the little brass bar out again.
The window was shut and locked. He had only to loosen one end of the wire to withdraw the whole and place it in his pocket.
Descending the ladder and mounting to the room, he again opened the window and examined the two marks. Yes, there could be no doubt on the matter. The two marks were deeper and plainer than ever. His own wire had fitted the grooves left by a previous one.
He felt happy and proud of himself. At any rate, he had beaten the much-vaunted Dobell so far. So pleased was he at that moment, that if some peripatetic hawker had at that time cried out “prawns” for sale in the street, he would have lavishly treated himself to a pint, in spite of Bell and all her lessons in domestic economy.
But this rash ardour soon cooled, and no demand was made on his tendency to extravagance. He was not out of the wood yet, not by a long way, he told himself, as he surveyed the iron bars and the thirty feet fall to the ground.
“Supposing a man got to the window, how could he get through?”
He tried each iron bar. They were all solidly soldered into the stone window-sill. Look at them as he would, they baffled him. Even a child could not squeeze through. And then again, a ladder must have been used to mount to the window. The one he had just used himself he had borrowed from a painter who was at work on a house close by. But he remembered that the morning after the murder, with the possible idea in his mind that the murderer had got into the room from the chimney, he had searched the neighbourhood for some distance round, and had found no privately-owned ladder long enough, and no painters using ladders. It was a common burglar’s trick to enter houses this way, so he had looked, and carefully looked, but he had found no sign of ladder, or even marks of where a ladder must have stood if it had been used.
His mind was in a turmoil. He thought and thought, but could see no way out. At last, in despair, he went home to tea, and relieved his mind by telling his discovery and his troubles to his wife. He had another matter on his mind that worried him also. At the Golden Bar, which he had visited more than once, he had had pointed out to him the person of Huey Gosper, and the man’s aspect had struck him as familiar, but for the life of him he could not bring to mind in what way or under what conditions he had seen him before.
Mrs. Hobbs was rejoiced at her husband’s news.
“Didn’t I say so, Tom, you would find it out? I always had my doubts about that window, though you were so positive! Why did you not look before?”
“Why indeed!” echoed Tom. “Why don’t we do fifty things that are plain enough to us after we have lost the opportunity?”
“And you can’t understand how the murderer got through the iron bars on the window?”
“No, that’s what puzzles me most of all.”
“Perhaps he did not get through at all.”
“Don’t be a fool, Bell!”
“Drat that boy!” interjected Mrs. Hobbs. “He has got a new ball, and won’t come in to his tea. Here, Harry! Come here!”
But Harry did not answer, and did not come. So his mother went to the back door to call him. But she did not call him, but paused in a kind of wonderment on the doorstep. Presently she shouted—
“Come here, Tom!”
Languidly, and with true official deliberation, Mr. Hobbs came to her side.
“Well, what’s the matter, Bell?”
“Look at that boy, Tom. His ball has fallen in the next yard. He cannot squeeze through the fence or climb over it, but he is getting the ball all the same.”
“So I see. He has got your clothes-prop through the palings and is dragging the ball towards him. That’s nothing. I used to steal apples that way when I was a boy.”
“But does not that explain what you were talking about?”
“What! You think the murder might have been committed with a clothes-prop?”
“No, I don’t say anything of the kind. But it might have been somehow in the same way.”
“Bell, you’re mad! Wash up the tea-things, that’s more in your line. I’ll have a smoke.”
Hobbs sat and puffed the blue clouds, and so deep was he lost in thought that his lips puffed mechanically long after his pipe had gone out.
This idea of Bell’s was filtering into his mind. At first regarding it as absurd, he gradually came to think it possible, then probable; finally, he was morally certain there was a basis of truth in it. But not a word of his revulsion of feeling did he let fall to Mrs. Hobbs. In fact, he was quite convinced from that time forth that the idea was all his own.
“Burning! Burning!” he said to himself, with reference to an old game of hide-and-seek that he was wont to play in his boyhood, this being the cry of the fellow players when the seeker was near the object sought.
Burning! Burning! He felt he was touching the key to the mystery at last.
An hour might have passed, when he jumped up with a loud exclamation—
“I remember! I remember!”
“What do you remember?” inquired Mrs. Hobbs, coming in hurriedly from the kitchen.
“I remember where I have seen this Huey Gosper before! He is the man I saw on the night of the murder, chased in the scrub, and followed down Lavender Bay steps to the boat! That’s the man! I will swear to him!”
“Will you arrest him?”
“I will apply for a warrant to-morrow! There is no hurry. He thinks himself quite safe!”