“He’s just gone—Mason, I mean. I asked him about this Incorporated Playhouses. He said, quite frank, that he’d be the whole works now Meyer was out of it. ’Course, he would be frank about that. We’d find out, anyway. He made no trouble about our looking at the books, either, though I must say he didn’t seem too pleased when I sat down here and started going through the drawers.”

“That was Mr. Meyer’s desk, wasn’t it?” asked Alleyn.

“Yes, that’s right. I said: ‘This was deceased’s private property, like, I suppose?’ and he just nodded, and I must say he did look a bit sick. Kind of annoyed, too, as if he might go crook at me, any moment.”

“What, oh what,” wondered Alleyn, “is the fine shade of meaning attached to this word ‘crook’?” Aloud he asked:

“Have you been through the desk?”

“Not yet, sir. There’s a whale of a lot of stuff. All very neat and business-like, though. He actually carted round the desk itself. Can you beat that? Couldn’t do without it, Mason said. It’s not much of an affair, either. Seems deceased had it for years and reckoned it brought him luck. Very superstitious gang, theatricals. It’s a rickety old show, too.”

Wade reached down to a lower drawer and pulled at the knob.

“A real old-timer,” he said and gave it a vigorous jerk. The drawer shot out suddenly. He looked down. “Hul-lo!” said Wade. “What’s this! What’s this!”

“It looks rather like a will,” said Alleyn.

CHAPTER NINE

Courtney Broadhead’s Scene

“BY CRIPES, THAT’S just what it is,” said Wade with the liveliest satisfaction.

He opened out his find and laid it on the desk. ‘Quite short, too, it seems to be. Look here, sir.”

Alleyn read over his shoulder. Cass, with heavy nonchalance, moved a step or two nearer. A long silence followed, broken occasionally by a stertorous whispering noise made by Inspector Wade when he came upon a passage of involved legal phraseology. At last Alleyn straightened his long back and Wade brought his palm down with a slap on the open will.

“Money!” he said. “We’ve got it here all right. Yee-ers. Notice the date? Two years ago. And three months. Seems Mr. Mason is a principal legatee. Can you beat that? Meyer fixes the wife up with a whacking big lump sum and leaves the rest to his partner in—how does it go?—‘in recognition of his lifelong devotion to the firm of Incorporated Playhouses and in memory of a friendship that only death can sever.’”

“Pleasantly Victorian,” remarked Alleyn, “and rather charming.”

“Well, they certainly hit the right note when they said Mason’d be a rich man,” said Wade.

“They did, didn’t they?”