In a few seconds, a fellow constable, a smart young fellow, hurried up to him. Brown pointed to the broken pane, the uplifted window. The smart young man projected himself through the open space. Brown followed, explaining as he went.
They searched the basement, the ground floor, and the floor above--with no result.
"Now for the caretaker," said the younger and the more quick-witted of the two policemen.
"He sleeps up at the top," answered Brown. "He generally comes home half-seas over. If a regiment was hammering at the door he would not wake till his sleep was done."
They went up to the caretaker's room on the top floor. The bed was empty. Miles had evidently taken a holiday.
The young constable grunted. "Seems a reliable sort of chap, doesn't he? I wonder how long he has been away? The house agents can tell us if they have sent any clients to view the house during the last twenty-four hours, and whether they have been able to get in or not. Anyway, for the present, he seems out of this job."
Brown assented. He did not talk as much as his quicker-witted colleague, but his rather slow mind was working at its normal speed.
"We've got to examine the other floors, you know. I've made up my mind to one thing--whoever came in here, robbery wasn't the object."
"There I quite agree," remarked the younger man.
They made their way down from the top floor, which consisted of three attics. On the floor beneath this, they searched every room and found nothing.
But on the floor underneath their search was rewarded. In a small dressing-room, leading off the bedroom which fronted the square, they found a gruesome sight--the lifeless body of a man, comparatively young, somewhere about thirty-five or so, a deep gash in his throat, in his stiffened hand a razor.
The two men gazed, horrified. It was an early summer morning, the sun was shining through the windows, the birds were twittering in the trees. Shortly the whole world would be astir. And here, in the small room, lay the senseless clay, oblivious of all these signs of awakening life and vigour.
Brown was the first to speak. "Suicide!" he said hoarsely. "The poor devil wanted to make an end of it, and crept in here, knowing it was an empty house."