closed the door, put on the lights, and set himself to unravel the inexplicable mystery of its opening. Before he went to bed he had shot home the bolt, had turned the key in the lock, and the key was still on the inside. It struck him, as he turned it, that he had never heard a lock that moved so silently or a bolt that slipped so easily into its groove. Both lock and bolt had been recently oiled. He began a scrutiny of the inside face of the door, and provided a simple solution to the somewhat baffling incident of its opening.
The door consisted of eight panels, carved in small lozenge-shaped ornaments. The panel immediately above the lock moved slightly when he pressed it, but it was a long time before he found the tiny spring which held it in place. When that was found, the panel opened like a miniature door. He could thrust his hand through the aperture and slide back the bolt with the greatest ease.
There was nothing very unusual or sinister about this. He knew that many hotels and boarding houses had methods by which a door could be unlocked from the outside—a very necessary precaution in certain eventualities. Mr. Reeder wondered whether he would find a similar safety panel on the door of Margaret Belman's room.
By the time he had completed his inspection, it was daylight, and, pulling back the curtains, he drew a chair to the window and made a survey of as much of the grounds as lay within his line of vision.
There were two or three matters which were puzzling him. If Larmes Keep was the headquarters of the Flack gang, in what manner and for what reason had Olga Crewe been brought into the confederation? He judged her age at twenty-four; she had been a constant visitor, if not a resident, at Larmes Keep for at least ten years, and he knew enough of the ways of the underworld to realise that they did not employ children. Also she had been to a public school of some kind, and that would have absorbed at least four of the ten years—Mr. Reeder shook his head in doubt.
Nothing would happen now until dark, he decided, and, stretching himself upon the bed, he pulled the coverlet over him and slept till a tapping at the door announced the coming of the housemaid with his morning tea.
She was a round-faced woman, just past her first youth, with a disagreeable cockney accent and the brusque and familiar manner of one who was an indispensable part of the establishment. Mr. Reeder remembered that the girl had waited on him at dinner.
"Why, sir, you haven't undressed!" she said.
"I seldom undress," said Mr. Reeder, sitting up and taking the tea from her. "It is such a waste of time. For no sooner are your clothes off than it is necessary to put them on again."
She looked at him hard, but he did not smile.
"You're a detective, ain't you? Everybody at the cottage knows that you are. What have you come down about?"
Now Mr. Reeder could afford to smile cryptically. There was a suppressed anxiety in the girl's voice.
"It is not for me, my dear young lady, to disclose your employer's business."
"He brought you down? Well, he's got a nerve!"
Mr. Reeder put his finger to his lips.
"About the candlesticks?"
He nodded.
"He still thinks somebody in the house took them?"
Her face was very red, her eyes snapped angrily. Here was exposed one of the minor scandals of the hotel.
It was not an uninteresting sidelight. For if ever guilt was written on a woman's face it was on hers. What these candlesticks were and how they disappeared, Mr. Reeder could guess. Petty larceny runs in well-defined channels.
"Well, you can tell him from me" she began shrilly, and he raised a solemn hand.
"Keep the matter to yourself—regard me as your friend," he begged.
He was in his lighter moments a most mischievous man, a weakness that few suspected in Mr. J. G. Reeder. Moreover, he wanted badly some inside information about the household, and he had an idea that this infuriated girl who flounced out and slammed the door behind her would supply him with that information. In his most optimistic moments he could not dream that in her raw hands she held the secret of Larmes Keep.
As soon as he came down, Mr. Reeder decided to go to Daver's office; he was curious to learn the true story of the missing candlesticks. The sound of an angry voice reached him, and as his hand was raised to knock at the door, it was opened by somebody who was holding the handle on the inside, and he heard a woman's angry voice.