“I think we go in,” said Harriet. “I suppose you haven’t such a thing as a pair of long-nosed pliers? No. Well, it’s probably just as good to break the glass.”

“Don’t cut yourself.”

How many times, thought Harriet, had her detective, Robert Templeton, broken through doors to discover the dead body of the murdered financier! With a ludicrous feeling that she was acting a part, she laid a fold of her dressing-gown across the panel and delivered a sharp blow upon it with her closed fist. Rather to her astonishment, the panel broke inwards exactly as it should have done, to the accompaniment of a modest tinkle of glass. Now-a scarf or handkerchief wrapped round to protect the hand and wrist, and prevent leaving extra finger-prints on key and handle. The Dean obligingly fetched this needful accessory, and the door was opened.

Harriet’s first glance by torch-light was for the switch. It stood in the “Off” position, and she struck it down with the handle of the torch. The room stood revealed.

It was a rather bare, uncomfortable place, furnished with a couple of long tables, a quantity of hard chairs and a blackboard. It was called the Science lecture-room partly because Miss Edwards occasionally used it for coachings that needed little in the way of apparatus, but chiefly because some dead-and-damned benefactor had left to the College a sum of money, together with a quantity of scientific books, anatomical casts, portraits of deceased scientists and glass cases filled with geological specimens; saddling this already sufficiently embarrassing bequest with the condition that all the bric-a-brac should be housed in one room together. Otherwise there was nothing that particularly fitted the room for scientific study, except that it communicated on one side with a closet containing a sink. The closet was occasionally used by photographic enthusiasts as a dark-room, and was so called. The cause of the crash and bumping heard by the two scouts was plain enough as soon as the light was turned on. The blackboard had been flung to the ground and a few chairs displaced, as though somebody, hurriedly making her way from the room in the dark, had become entangled among the furniture. The most interesting thing about the room was the collection of things that lay on one of the tables. There was a spread sheet of newspaper on which stood a paste-pot with a brush in it, part of a cheap scribbling block and the lid of a cardboard box, filled with cut-out letters. Also, laid out upon the table were several messages, couched in the Poison-Pen’s now familiar style, and pasted together in the usual way; while a half-finished work in the same style of art had fluttered to the floor, showing that the Pen had been interrupted in the middle other work.

“So here’s where she does it!” cried the Dean.

“Yes,” said Harriet. “I wonder why. It seems unnecessarily public. Why not her own room?… I say, Dean-don’t pick that up, if you don’t mind. Better leave everything as it is.”

The door into the dark-room was open. Harriet went in and examined the sink, and the open window above it. Marks in the dust showed clearly where something had scrambled over the sill.

“What’s underneath this window outside?”

“It’s a flagged path. I’m afraid you won’t find much there.”

“No; and it happens to be a spot that’s overlooked by absolutely nothing except those bathroom windows in the corridor. It’s very unlikely that the person should have been seen getting out. If the letters had to be concocted in a lecture room, this is as good a place as any. Well! I don’t see that we can do much here at the moment.” Harriet turned sharply on the two scouts. “You say you saw the person, Annie.”

“Not exactly saw her, madam, not to recognize. She had on something black and was sitting at the far table with her back to the door. I thought she was writing.”

“Didn’t you see her face when she got up and came across to turn off the light?”

“No, madam. I told Carrie what I saw and Carrie asked to look and bumped the door, and while I was telling her not to make a noise the light went out.”

“Didn’t you see anything, Carrie?”

“Well, I don’t hardly know, miss, I was in such a fluster. I saw the light, and then I didn’t see nothing.”

“Perhaps she crept round the wall to get to the light,” said the Dean.

“Must have, Dean. Will you go in and sit at the table on the chair that’s pulled out a bit, while I see what I can see from the door. Then, when I knock on the glass, will you get up and out of sight as quickly as you can and work round to the switch and turn it off? Is the curtain much as it was, Annie, or did I disarrange it when I broke the glass?”

“I think it’s much the same, madam.”

The Dean went in and sat down. Harriet shut the door and put her eye to the chink in the curtain. This was at the hinge side of the door, and gave her a sight of the window, the ends of the two tables and the place where the blackboard had stood beneath the window.

“Have a look, Annie; was it like that?”

“Yes, madam. Only the blackboard was standing up then, of course.”

“Now-do as you did then. Say to Carrie whatever it was you said, and Carrie, you knock on the door and then look in as you did the first time.”

“Yes, madam. I said, ‘There she is! we’ve got her.’ And I jumped back like this.”

“Yes, and I said, ‘Oh, dear-Let’s have a look!’-and then I sort of caught against Annie and knocked-like that.”

“And I said, ‘Look out-now you’ve done it.”

“And I says, ‘Coo!’ or something like that, and I looked in and I didn’t see nobody-”

“Can you see anybody now?”

“No, miss. And I was trying to see when the light went out all of a sudden.” The light went out.

“How did that go off?” asked the Dean, cautiously, with her mouth at the hole in the panel.

“First-rate performance,” said Harriet. “Dead on time.”

“The second I heard the knock, I just nipped away to the right and crept round the wall. Did you hear me?”

“Not a sound. You’ve got soft slippers on, haven’t you?”

“We didn’t hear the other one either, miss.”

“She’d be wearing soft slippers, too. Well, I suppose that settles that. We’d better have a look round College to see that all is well and get back to bed. You two can be off now, Carrie-Miss Martin and I can see to things.”

“Very good, miss. Come along, Annie. Though I’m sure I don’t know how anybody’s to get to sleep-”

“Will you stop making that filthy row!”

An exasperated voice heralded the appearance of an exceedingly angry student in pyjamas.

“Do remember some people want to get a bit of rest at night. This corridor’s a-Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Martin. Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing at all, Miss Perry. I’m so sorry we disturbed you. Somebody left the lights on in the lecture-room and we came to see if it was all right.” The student vanished, with a jerk of a tousled head that showed what she thought of the matter. The two servants went their way. The Dean turned to Harriet.

“Why all that business of reconstructing the crime?”

“I wanted to find out whether Annie could really have seen what she said she saw. These people sometimes let their imagination run away with them. If you don’t mind, I’m going to lock these doors and remove the keys. I’d rather like a second opinion.”

“Aha!” said the Dean. “The exquisite gentleman who kissed my feet in St. Cross Road, crying, Vera incessu patuit dean?”

“That sounds characteristic. Well, Dean, you have got pretty feet. I’ve noticed them.”

“They have been admired,” said the Dean, complacently, “but seldom in so public a place or after five minutes’ acquaintance. I said to his lordship, ‘You are a foolish young man.’ He said, ‘A man, certainly; and sometimes foolish enough to be young.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘please get up; you can’t be young here.’ So then he said, very nicely, ‘I beg your pardon for behaving like a mountebank; I have no excuse to offer, so will you forgive me?’ So I asked him to dinner.”