But they stayed on talking. A kind of perverseness kept them wedded to their discomfort. They grew more and more wakeful and their ideas seemed to grow sharper. Their thoughts cleared. Alleyn spoke for a long time and the other two listened to him eagerly. Quite suddenly he stopped and shivered. The virtue went out of them. They felt dirty, and dog-tired. Wade began to gather up his papers.

“I reckon that finishes us for tonight. We’ll lock up this show and turn it up till tomorrow. There’ll be the inquest next. Cripey, what a life!”

Alleyn had strolled over to the door in the back wall and was peering at a very murky framed drawing that hung beside it. He wiped the glass with his handkerchief.

“Plan of the theatre,” he said. “All fine and handy. I think I’ll just make a rough copy. It won’t take a moment.”

He got a writing-pad from the desk and worked rapidly.

“Here we go,” he murmured. “Stage-door. Footlights. Dressing-room passage here. Prompt-side ladder to the grid, about here. Back-stage one here. There’s a back door there, you see. I noticed it when I was in full cry after Master Gordon. We’ll have a look at it by the light of day. Now the front of the house. Stalls. Circle. No pass-doors through the proscenium. Here’s this office. Door into box-office. Door to yard. The bicycle shed isn’t in their plan, but it begins just beyond this office. The shed comes forward like that. The yard widens out after you pass the sheds. Packing-cases. Then there’s this affair—a garage, isn’t it?—and the other shed here. And there’s Master Gordon’s getaway.”

“Need we mark that?” asked Wade, yawning horribly.

“I’m sure Cass thinks it worthy of record,” said Alleyn, smiling. “How wide are you, Cass?”

“Twenty-four inches across the shoulders, sir,” said Cass, and was shaken by a stupendous belch. “Pardon,” he added morosely.

“Then the space between the two buildings is certainly less,” murmured Alleyn. “Of course, Master Gordon is a mere stripling. Tell me, Cass, how did it all happen?”

“He was coming along as quiet as you please, sir,” began Cass angrily, and instantly interrupted himself with a perfectly deafening rumble, “—as quiet as you please, when he suddenly lets out a sort of squeak and bolts down that gap like a bloody rabbit. I never stops to think, you see, sir. I tears into it good-oh, and I come at it that determined-like I swept all before me, as you might say, for the first six inches, and then it kind of shut down on me.”

“It did indeed,” said Alleyn.

“By gum, yes, sir, it did so. And I was doubled up like as I was saying to Mr. Wade, sir, and I hadn’t got no purchase.” He belched violently. “Pardon. It’s gone crook on my digestion. Being doubled up.”