The rain droned monotonously on the roof, but there was no other sound.
Sheffield climbed out and passed around by the poplars and through the laurel bushes to the front. Dawson and Alden stood by the door. With a pair of handcuffs the inspector broke the glass, and, adopting the same method as the Frenchman, used his coat to protect his hands from the splintered pieces in forcing the catch. The rain came down in torrents. He was drenched to the skin.
Seizing the yellow blind, he tore it from the roller, and also pulled down the curtains. By the light of the bull's-eye lantern which Dawson carried he surveyed the little sitting-room. Next, with a muttered exclamation, he leapt through and searched the one hiding-place--beneath a large sofa--which the room afforded.
On the common oval walnut table lay a caped overcoat and a rain-soaked silk hat.
The two doors--other than that guarded by Dawson and Alden--gave (1) on the room occupied by Harborne; (2) on the room occupied by Duquesne and Lemage. The keys were missing. The one window, other than that by which he had entered, was heavily barred, and in any case, visible from the front door of the cottage.
All five had seen their man enter; all had heard the banging door when Sheffield knocked. No possible exit had been unwatched for a single instant.
When the others, having searched painfully every inch of ground, joined the inspector in the front room, Harborne, taking up the silk-lined caped overcoat, observed something lying on the polished walnut beneath.
"Damn!" cried Duquesne at his elbow, characteristically saying the right thing at the wrong time. "A white _odontoglossum crispum_, with crimson spots!"
"He is very handsome," sighed the little Frenchman.
"That is an extreme privilege," said his chief, shrugging composedly and lighting a cigarette. "It is so interesting to the women, and they are so useful. It was the women who restored your English Charles II.--but they were his ruin in the end. It is a clue, this white orchid, that inspires in me two solutions immediately."
M. Duquesne suffered, temporarily, from a slight catarrh, occasioned, no doubt, by his wetting. But he lacked the courage to meet the drooping eye of his chief.