‘Yes, sir. I’ve been trying to sort things out. There’s the report on the silver cleaning. Young Carewe took that on and he seems to have made a fair job of it. Got himself up as a Rat and Mice Destruction Officer and went round all the houses and palled up with the servants. All the Carrados silver was cleaned this morning including Sir Herbert’s cigar-case which isn’t the right shape anyway, because he saw it in the butler’s pantry. Sir Daniel’s man does his silver cleaning on Mondays and Fridays, so it was all cleaned up yesterday. François does Dimitri’s stuff every day or says he does. Young Potter and Withers are looked after by the flat service and only their table silver is kept polished. The Halcut-Hacketts’ cases are cleaned once a week—Fridays—and rubbed up every morning. That’s that. How’s the report from Bailey?’

‘Bailey hasn’t much. There’s nothing in the taxi. He got Withers’s prints from my cigarette-case but, as we expected, the green sitting-room was simply a mess. He has found Withers’s and young Potter’s prints on the pages of Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence. The pages that refer to asphyxiation.’

‘By gum, that’s something.’

‘Not such a great deal, Fox. They will tell us that when the newspaper report came out they were interested and turned up Taylor on suffocation; and who is to call them liars? The man who went to Leatherhead had a success. Apparently Withers keeps a married couple there. Our man pitched a yarn that he had been sent by the borough to inspect the electrical wiring in the house, and got in. What’s more he seems to have had a good look round. He found a roulette wheel and had the intelligence to examine it pretty closely. The middle dozen slots had been very slightly opened. I expect the idea is that Master Donald or some other satellite of Withers should back the middle dozen. The wheel seems brand new. There was an older one that showed no signs of irregularity. There were also several packs of cards which had been lightly treated with the favourite pumice-stone. Luckily for us the married couple had a violent row with the gallant Captain and were prepared to talk. I think we’ve got enough to pull him in on a gambling-hell charge. Thompson reports that Withers has stayed in all day. The telephone was disconnected as soon as we left. Donald Potter’s clothes were returned to him by taxi. Nobody has visited Withers. Dimitri comes next. Dimitri went home after he left here, visiting a chemist on the way to get his hand bandaged. He, too, has remained indoors, and has made no telephone calls. Most exemplary behaviour. How the blazes are we going to get any of these victims to charge Dimitri?’

‘You’re asking me!’ said Fox.