“One in the eye for me,” he said, “and a very pretty one, too. All the same it’s too damn’ clever by half. Look here, Inspector. When I came up here twenty minutes ago the counterweight was not attached to the rope over there, and the pulley had been moved eighteen inches this way by a loop of cord.”

“Is that so?” said Wade solemnly. After another pause he glanced at Alleyn apologetically. “It’d be very dark then, sir. No lights at all, I take it. I suppose—”

“I’ll go into the box and swear my socks off and my soul pink,” said Alleyn. “And I had a torch, what’s more. No—it’s been put right again. It must have been done while I was in the dressing-room. By George, I wonder if the fellow was up here on the platform when I came up the ladder. You had just got to the theatre when I went down.”

“D’you mean,” asked Wade, “d’you mean to tell me that this gear was all different when we came in and someone’s changed it round since? We’d have known something about that, Mr. Alleyn.”

“My dear chap, but would you? Look here, kick me out. I’ve no business to gate-crash on your job, Inspector. It’s insufferable. Just take my statement in the ordinary way and I’ll push off. Lord knows, I didn’t mean to buck round doing the C.I.D. official.”

Wade, whose manner up to now had been a curious mixture of deference, awkwardness, and a somewhat forced geniality, now thawed completely.

“Look, sir,” he said, “you don’t need to make any apologies. I reckon I know a gentleman when I meet one. We’ve read about your work out here, and if you like to interest yourself—well, we’ll be only too pleased. Now! Only too pleased.”

“Extraordinary nice of you,” said Alleyn. “Thank you so much for those few nuts and so on. All right. Didn’t you stay by the stage-door for a bit, when you came in?”

“Yes, that’s right, we did. Mr. Gascoigne met us there and started some long story. We didn’t know what was up. Simply got the message, there’d been an accident at the theatre. It took me a minute or two to get the rights of it and another minute or two to find out where the body was. You know how they are.”