“Well, you could have for one, Murgatroyd. As far as I remember, you were standing directly behind it when the lights went out.” Miss Hinchcliffe laughed heartily. “Highly suspicious character, aren’t you, Murgatroyd? But who’d think it to look at you? Here, give me that trowel—thank heavens it isn’t really a revolver. You’d have shot yourself by now!”

IV

“It’s a most extraordinary thing,” muttered Colonel Easterbrook. “Most extraordinary. Laura.”

“Yes, darling?”

“Come into my dressing room a moment.”

“What is it, darling?”

Mrs. Easterbrook appeared through the open door.

“Remember my showing you that revolver of mine?”

“Oh, yes, Archie, a nasty horrid black thing.”

“Yes. Hun souvenir. Was in this drawer, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Well, it’s not there now.”

“Archie, how extraordinary!”

“You haven’t moved it or anything?”

“Oh, no, I’d never dare to touch the horrid thing.”

“Think old mother whatsername did?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think so for a minute. Mrs. Butt would never do a thing like that. Shall I ask her?”

“No—no, better not. Don’t want to start a lot of talk. Tell me, do you remember when it was I showed it to you?”

“Oh, about a week ago. You were grumbling about your collars and the laundry and you opened this drawer wide and there it was at the back and I asked you what it was.”

“Yes, that’s right. About a week ago. You don’t remember the date?”

Mrs. Easterbrook considered, eyelids down over her eyes, a shrewd brain working.

“Of course,” she said. “It was Saturday. The day we were to have gone in to the pictures, but we didn’t.”

“H’m—sure it wasn’t before that? Wednesday? Thursday or even the week before that again?”

“No, dear,” said Mrs. Easterbrook. “I remember quite distinctly. It was Saturday the 30th. It just seems a long time because of all the trouble there’s been. And I can tell you how I remember. It’s because it was the day after the hold-up at Miss Blacklock’s. Because when I saw your revolver it reminded me of the shooting the night before.”

“Ah,” said Colonel Easterbrook, “then that’s a great load off my mind.”

“Oh, Archie, why?”

“Just because if that revolver had disappeared before the shooting—well, it might possibly have been my revolver that was pinched by that Swiss fellow.”

“But how would he have known you had one?”

“These gangs have a most extraordinary communication service. They get to know everything about a place and who lives there.”

“What a lot you do know, Archie.”

“Ha. Yes. Seen a thing or two in my time. Still as you definitely remember seeing my revolver after the hold-up—well, that settles it. The revolver that Swiss fellow used can’t have been mine, can it?”

“Of course it can’t.”