CHAPTER XVIII
HUSBAND AND WIFE
Hugo bolted the front-door on the inside, relighted the candle which
Hawke's man had used as a weapon, and placed it in the middle of the
hall floor. He then penetrated into the servants' part of the flat, and
emerged on to the balcony by the small side-door, which was open, and
had evidently been forced by Hawke's man. And there, on the balcony, he
leaned over the balustrade in the cold humid night, and tried to recover
his calmness. He felt that any systematic, scientific search of the
premises would be impossible to him until his mind resembled somewhat
less a sea across which a hurricane has just passed.
Many questions stood ready to puzzle his brain, but he ignored them all,
and fell into a vague reverie, of which Camilla was the centre. And from
this reverie he was suddenly startled by the clear, unmistakable sound
of a door being shut within the flat. It was not the shutting of a door
by the wind, but the careful, precise shutting of a door by some person
who had a habit of shutting doors as doors ought to be shut.
'Polycarp has returned!' was his first thought. But he remembered. 'No!
I bolted the front-door on the inside.'
The conundrum of the clock and of the two sizes of footprints in the
drawing-room recurred to him.
Pages:
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164