"Found anything further?" Dr. Ringwood inquired as Sir Clinton glanced up from his task.
"Nothing except this."
The Chief Constable indicated the lowest drawer in front of him.
"Somebody’s broken the lock and gone inside in a hurry. The drawer’s been shoved home anyhow and left projecting a bit. It caught my eye when I came in."
He pulled the drawer open as he spoke, and Dr. Ringwood moved across and looked down into it over the Chief Constable’s shoulder. A number of jewel-boxes lay in one corner, and Sir Clinton turned his attention to these in the first place. He opened them, one after another, and found the contents of most of them in place. One or two rings, and a couple of small articles seemed to be missing.
"Quite likely these are things she’s wearing to-night," he explained, replacing the leather cases in the drawer as he spoke. "We’ll try again."
The next thing which came to his hand was a packet of photographs of various people. Among them was one of young Hassendean, but it seemed to have no special value for Mrs. Silverdale, since it had been carelessly thrust in among the rest of the packet.
"Nothing particularly helpful there, it seems," was Sir Clinton’s opinion.
He turned next to several old dance-programmes which had been preserved with some care. Lifting them in turn and holding them so that the doctor could see them, the Chief Constable glanced at the scribbled names of the various partners.
"One gentleman seems to have been modest, anyhow," he pointed out. "No initials, even—just an asterisk on the line."
He flipped the programmes over rapidly.
"Mr. Asterisk seems to be a favourite, doctor. He occurs pretty often at each dance."
"Her dancing-partner, probably," Dr. Ringwood surmised. "Young Hassendean, most likely, I should think."
Sir Clinton put down the programmes and searched again in the drawer. His hand fell on a battered notebook.
"Part of a diary she seems to have kept while she was in a convent. . . . H’m! Just a school-girl’s production," he turned over a few pages, reading as he went, "and not altogether a nice school-girl," he concluded, after he had paused at one entry. "There’s nothing to be got out of that just now. I suppose it may be useful later on, in certain circumstances."
He laid the little book down again and turned once more to the drawer.
"That seems to be the lot. One thing’s pretty clear. The person who broke that lock wasn’t a common burglar, for he’d have pouched the trinkets. The bother is that we ought to find out what this search was for; and since the thing has probably been removed, it leaves one with a fairly wide field for guessing. Let’s have another look round."
Suddenly he bent forward and picked up a tiny object from the bottom of the drawer. As he lifted it, Dr. Ringwood could see that it was a scrap of paper; and when it was turned over he recognised it as a fragment torn from the corner of an envelope with part of the stamp still adhering to it.
"H’m! Suggestive rather than conclusive," was Sir Clinton’s verdict. "My first guess would be that this has been torn off a roughly-opened letter. So there must have been letters in this drawer at one time or another. But whether our murderous friend was after a packet of letters or not, one can’t say definitely."
He stood up and moved under the electric light in order to examine the fragment closely.
"It’s got the local post-mark on it. I can see the VEN. The date’s 1925, but the month part has been torn."
He showed the scrap to Dr. Ringwood and then placed it carefully in his note-case.
"I hate jumping to conclusions, doctor; but it certainly does look as if someone had broken in here to get hold of letters. And they must have been pretty important letters if it was worth while to go the length of casual murder to secure them."
Dr. Ringwood nodded.
"He must have been a pretty hard case to murder a defenceless woman."
Sir Clinton’s face showed a faint trace of a smile.
"There are two sexes, doctor."
"What do you mean? . . . Oh, of course. I said ‘he must,’ and you think it might have been a woman?"
"I don’t think so; but I hate to prejudge the case, you know. All that one can really say is that someone came here and killed that unfortunate woman. The rest’s simply conjecture and may be right or wrong. It’s easy enough to make up a story to fit the facts."
Dr. Ringwood walked across to the nearest chair and sat down.
"My brain’s too fagged to produce anything of the sort, I’m afraid," he admitted, "but I’d like to hear anything that would explain the damned business."
Sir Clinton closed the drawer gently and turned round to face the doctor.
