The Inspector looked at him suspiciously, evidently feeling that he was being laughed at for his display of accuracy.
“I go by Miss Rainhill’s evidence,” he declared. “She was the only one who had her eye on her watch, and she said she pulled out the switch at 11.45 precisely.”
“I go by the evidence of Polegate and young Chacewater,” said Sir Clinton, with a faint parody of the Inspector’s manner. “They were taken by surprise when the light went out, although they expected it to be extinguished at 11.45 p.m.”
“Oh, have it your own way, sir, if you lay any stress on the point,” conceded the Inspector. “Make it 11.44 or 11.45; it’s all the same, so far as I’m concerned.”
Armadale seemed slightly ruffled by his chief’s method of approaching the subject. Sir Clinton turned to another side of the matter.
“I suppose you say the crime has been committed in the museum?” he inquired.
The Inspector looked at him suspiciously.
“You’re trying to pull my leg, sir. Of course, it was committed in the museum.”
Sir Clinton’s tone became apologetic.
“I keep forgetting that we’re not talking about the same thing, perhaps. Of course, the theft of the replicas was committed in the museum. We’re quite in agreement there.”
He threw away his cigarette, selected a fresh one, and lighted it before continuing.
“And on that basis, I suppose there’s no mystery about the next query in the rhyme: ‘How done?’”
“None whatever, in my mind,” the Inspector affirmed. “Polegate could take what he wanted, once the light was out.”
Sir Clinton did not dispute this point.
“Of course,” he said. “And now for the next query: ‘With what motive?’ Where do you stand in that matter, Inspector?”
But here Armadale evidently felt himself on sure ground.
“Polegate’s a rackety young fool, sir. This is where local knowledge comes in. He’s got no common sense—always playing practical jokes. He’s been steadily muddling away the money his father left him. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s hard up. That’s the motive.”
“And you think he’d steal from his oldest friends?”
“Every man has his price,” retorted the Inspector, bluntly. “Put on the screw hard enough in the way of temptation, and any man’ll fall for it.”
“Rather a hard saying that, Inspector; and perhaps a trifle too sweeping.” Sir Clinton turned on Armadale suddenly. “What would be your price, now, if I asked you to hush up this case against young Polegate? Put a figure on it, will you?”
Armadale flushed angrily at the suggestion; then, seeing that he had been trapped, he laughed awkwardly.
“Nobody knows even their own price till it’s put on the table, Sir Clinton,” he countered, with a certain acuteness.
The Chief Constable turned away from the subject.
“You’re depending on there being a fair chance of Polegate getting away with the medallions without being suspected. But when young Chacewater and Miss Rainhill were in the scheme as well as Polegate, suspicion was sure to light on him when the medallions vanished. The other two were certain to tell what they knew about the business.”
Inspector Armadale glanced once more at his notebook in order to refresh his memory of the rhyme.
“That really comes under the final head: ‘Who in the deed did share?’” he pointed out.
“Pass along to the next caravan, then, if you wish,” Sir Clinton suggested. “What animals have you in the final cage?”
The Inspector seemed to deprecate his flippancy.
“It’s been very cleverly done,” he said, seriously. “You objected that suspicion was bound to fall on young Polegate; and so it would have done, if he hadn’t covered his tracks so neatly. He’s set everyone on the hunt for a gang at work, or at least for an outside criminal. Now I believe it was a one-man show from the start, worked from the inside. Polegate planned the practical joke—that gave him his chance. Then he forced himself forward as the fellow who was to do the actual stealing—and that let him get his hands on the medallions while young Chacewater held the keeper up for him. Without the hold-up of the keeper, the thing was a wash-out. The joke helped young Polegate to enlist innocent assistance.”
“But still suspicion would attach to him,” Sir Clinton objected.
“Yes, except for a false trail,” the Inspector agreed. “But he laid a false trail. Instead of waiting for the switch to be pulled out, he fired his shot from the bay, extinguished the light and then rushed out of the bay and went for the medallions.”
“Well?” said Sir Clinton in an encouraging tone.
“When he’d smashed the glass of the case, he took out the whole six medallions, and not merely three of them as he told you he’d done.”
“And then?”
