The clerk yawned dismally, and Pointer, with a laugh, let him go, after having him write down the names of any of the occupants of the five balcony rooms which were not known to the management from other visits. There were only two. Numbers eleven and twelve; and of these, number eleven was “expecting to leave” daily. “Now, who do I see about the service-stairs—who is supposed to keep an eye on them?” “The housekeeper. She's still up; I'll send her to you.” The housekeeper assured him that at noon by Saturday the service-door just beyond the manager's suite was duly locked and bolted. After that hour it could only be used with her consent and approval. The lower door in the basement—the delivery door proper—was, of course, another matter. The key of the upper door hung in the maids' sitting-room just opposite,—a small room used especially by the maid who waited on the manager. “That door leads to the maids' sitting-room and to the service-stairs, doesn't it?” The Chief Inspector pointed to a door opening out of the manager's little lobby. He opened it as he spoke—not for the first time that night. The housekeeper looked surprised. “Bless me, sir, it doesn't take you police gentlemen long to find your way about.” “And that is the door leading into the street, eh?” “Yes, sir.” “It's not locked now.” “Oh, yes, it is, sir.” She laid a confident hand on it to turn in bewilderment as it opened easily. “Why—why—someone must have undone it!” “Just so,” agreed Pointer dryly. “And the key?” She opened a door facing the street entrance, and switched on the light. “There it is, hanging where I put it at twelve o'clock.” Pointer raised a weary eyebrow, but he said nothing, and made his way to the lounge, where, after asking both the manager and Mr. Beale to hold themselves in readiness for any possible further questions to-morrow morning, he joined Watts upstairs and spent a strenuous hour with him. “No key to fit his trunk—no sign of the bag which the booking-clerk and porter saw him carry upstairs,—no sign of a ring,—no scrap of paper nor any mark of identity beyond his signatures,—humph!” The Chief Inspector dusted his knees carefully and went to the mantelpiece. “Here's a box of wax vestas right enough, the same kind as the vesta I picked up in the wardrobe, but that one was still warm and soft. Burnt down to the last end and dropped burning into the wardrobe when it scorched someone's fingers—whose, Watts?” Watts shook his head. “—Not more than half-an-hour before we came into the room, so Eames couldn't have done it, for more reasons than one.” “I saw you try the electric torch in that American gent.'s bag, sir,” Watts threw in. “Just so. It was out of order. He didn't say a word about that in his evidence downstairs. You noticed those marks on the top of the wardrobe, where someone had evidently passed a stiff brush over it, presumably to do away with any finger marks or streaks?”