“I meant that I’d charge the man with stealing the replicas. You couldn’t charge him with anything else, since nothing else is missing. At least, that’s what you told me. He wanted the real medallions, but he didn’t pull that off.”
Sir Clinton refused to be drawn. He resorted to one of his indirect replies.
“ ‘What was the crime?’ ” he repeated. “Now, I’ll put a case to you, Inspector. Suppose that you saw two men in the distance and that you could make out that one of them was struggling and the second man was beating him on the head. What crime would you call that? Assault and battery?”
“I suppose so,” Armadale admitted.
“But suppose, further, that when you reached them you found the victim dead of his injuries, what would you call the crime then?”
“Murder, I suppose.”
“So your view of the crime would depend upon the stage at which you witnessed it, eh? That’s just my position in this Ravensthorpe affair. You’ve been looking at it from yesterday’s standpoint, and you call it a theft of three replicas. But I wonder what you’ll call it when we know the whole of the facts.”
The Inspector declined to follow his chief to this extent.
“All the evidence we’ve got, so far, points to theft, sir. I’ve no fresh data that would let me put a new name to it.”
“Then you regard it as a completed crime which has partly failed in its object?”
The Inspector gave his acquiescence with a nod.
“You think it’s something else, Sir Clinton?” he inquired.
The Chief Constable refused to be explicit.
“You’ve got all the evidence, Inspector. Do you really think a gang would take the trouble to steal replicas when they could just as easily have taken the three originals—that’s the point. The replicas have no intrinsic value beyond the gold in them, and that can’t be worth more than twenty or thirty pounds at the very outside. A mediocre haul for a smart gang, isn’t it? Hardly Trade Union wages, I should think.”
“It seems queer at first sight, sir,” he admitted, “but I think I can account for that all right when you come to the rest of your rhyme.”
Sir Clinton showed his interest.
“Then let’s go on,” he suggested. “The next question is: ‘Who did it?’ What’s your answer to that, Inspector?”
“To my mind, there seems to be only one possible thief.”
Sir Clinton pricked up his ears.
“You mean it was a single-handed job? Who was the man, then?”
“Foxton Polegate,” asserted the Inspector.
He watched Sir Clinton’s face narrowly as he brought out the name, but the Chief Constable might have been wearing a mask for all the change there was in his features as he listened to the Inspector’s suggestion. As if he felt that he had overstepped the bounds of prudence, Armadale added hastily:
“I said ‘possible thief,’ sir. I don’t claim to be able to bring it home to him yet.”
“But you think it might even be ‘probable’ instead of only ‘possible,’ Inspector? Let’s hear the evidence, please.”
Inspector Armadale turned over the leaves of his notebook until he reached some entries which he had previously made.
“First of all, sir, Polegate must have known the value of these medallions—the originals, I mean. Second, he learned that they would be on show last night; and he knew where they’d be placed in the museum. Third, it was after Polegate came by this knowledge that the practical joke was planned. Fourth, who suggested the sham burglary? Polegate. Then fifth, who gave himself the job of actually taking the medallions? Polegate again. Sixth, where was Polegate immediately after the robbery? We’ve only his own word for it that he was strolling about, having a smoke. He might have been elsewhere, easily enough. Seventh, he was dressed up as a Harlequin when you saw him: but he might quite easily have slipped on a white jacket and a pair of Pierrot’s trousers over his Harlequin costume. He could disguise himself as a Pierrot in a couple of ticks and come out as a Harlequin again just as quick. So he might quite well have been the man in white that they were all busy chasing last night. Eighth, he knows the ground thoroughly and could give strangers the slip easily enough at the end of the chase. And, ninth, he didn’t appear when you wanted him last night. He only turned up when he’d had plenty of time to get home again, even if he’d been the man in white. That’s a set of nine points that need looking into. Prima facie, there’s a case for suspicion, if there’s no more. And there isn’t anything like so strong a case against anyone else, Sir Clinton.”
“Well, let’s take the rest of the first line,” said the Chief Constable, without offering any criticism of the Inspector’s statement of the case. “‘When was it done, and where?’”
“At 11.45 p.m. and in the museum,” retorted Armadale. “That’s beyond dispute. It’s the clearest thing in the whole evidence.”
“I should be inclined to put it at 11.44 p.m. at the latest, or perhaps 11.43 p.m.,” said Sir Clinton, with an air of fastidiousness.
