Battle, Superintendent (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories; Police -- England -- Fiction
And again the Superintendent's eyes twinkled.
"Well, ostensibly, Mr. Eversleigh and Mr. Thesiger were to divide the
night into two watches. Really, Mr. Eversleigh and Miss St. Maur did
so. She was on guard at the library window when she heard Mr. Thesiger
coming and had to dart behind the screen.
"And now comes the cleverness of Mr. Thesiger. Up to a point he told
a perfectly true story, and I must admit that with the fight and
everything, I was distinctly shaken--and began to wonder whether he had
had anything to do with the theft at all, or whether we were completely
on the wrong track. There were one or two suspicious circumstances that
pointed in an entirely different direction, and I can tell you I didn't
know what to make of things, when something turned up to clinch matters.
"I found the burnt glove in the fireplace with the teeth marks on
it--and then--well--I knew that I'd been right after all. But, upon my
word, he was a clever one."
"What actually happened?" said Bundle. "Who was the other man?"
"There wasn't any other man. Listen, and I'll show you how in the end
I reconstructed the whole story. To begin with, Mr. Thesiger and Miss
Wade are in this together. And they have a rendezvous for an exact
time. Miss Wade comes over in her car, climbs through the fence and
comes up to the house. She's got a perfectly good story if any one
stops her--the one she told eventually. But she arrived unmolested on
the terrace just after the clock had struck two.
"Now, I may say to begin with that she was seen coming in. My men saw
her, but they had orders to stop nobody coming in--only going out. I
wanted, you see, to find out as much as possible. Miss Wade arrives
on the terrace, and at that minute a parcel falls at her feet and she
picks it up. A man comes down the ivy and she starts to run. What
happens next? The struggle--and presently the revolver shots. What will
everyone do? Rush to the scene of the fight. And Miss Loraine Wade
could have left the grounds and driven off with the formula safely in
her possession.
"But things don't happen quite like that. Miss Wade runs straight into
my arms. And at that moment the game changes. It's no longer attack but
defence. Miss Wade tells her story. It is perfectly true and perfectly
sensible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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