“Well,” said Shelley, “there doesn’t really seem much point in your staying while I put all this in order. It looks as if it will be a longish job—take me a good hour to go through all that’s there, I expect. And while I am about it I may as well go through it all. Even if the will isn’t there, something else may give me some sort of pointer on the problem.”

“Right,” she said, with a graceful smile. “Just ring if there’s anything that you want, won’t you?”

“I will,” said Shelley, and started on the job.

It was one of the most tiresome tasks that he had ever undertaken. Nearly all the papers in the desk were concerned in one way or another with the dead professor’s work. There were memoranda of lectures delivered and listened to. There were notes of books read. There were letters received from editors of literary journals, from fellow-workers in the field of literary research, and from students in search of information. There were masses of notes on the various Elizabethan dramatists, and at least four separate beginnings to a book on the subject. Clearly the late Professor Arnell, whatever his merits as a student or a research-worker, was not in any way a tidy, methodical man. Yet every scrap of this documentary evidence had to be carefully sifted, every single piece of writing carefully scanned to see if it held any item of important information. Shelley knew too many cases where a detective had missed an invaluable clue by not being sufficiently thorough. He was thorough enough, yet, at the end of nearly two hours’ solid work, he had to admit himself defeated. The will was not here. Nor was there any trace of any correspondence of a personal nature. Every letter dealt, in some way or another, with the late professor’s work. It began to look as if Miss Arnell had been only too correct when she stated that her father had no friends apart from his literary companions.

Shelley sat back in his chair and thought deeply. That there would be a will somewhere he felt very certain. But where on earth could it be? He was sure that Professor Arnell was not the sort of man to die intestate. He had a good deal of money, and he was too fond of his daughter to run any risk of her not coming into her inheritance. The whole thing was baffling in the extreme.

The door opened slowly, and Miss Arnell’s face peeped around it. There was a sparkle in her eye, and an air of suppressed excitement about her that instantly told Shelley that she had some important information to impart.

“Come in, Miss Arnell,” he said.

She came in. “No luck, I suppose, Inspector,” she said.