“Of course I would. Wait a moment while I get rid of that hypochondriacal crone. Shan’t be long. Don’t move. She only wants a flea in her ear.”

Dr. Shaw went into the waiting room. Alleyn could hear his voice raised in crisp admonishment.

“… Pull yourself together, you know — sound as a bell… Take up a hobby… Your own physician… Be a sensible woman…”

A doorbell rang and in a moment Fox and Superintendent Harper were shown into the surgery.

“Hullo, hullo!” said Harper. “What’s all this I hear? Thought I’d come along. Got an interesting bit of news for you.” He dropped his voice. “I sent a chap up to London by the milk train. He’s taken the dart to Dabs and they’ve just rung through. The prints are good enough. What do you think they’ve found?”

“I can see they’ve found something, Nick,” said Alleyn, smiling.

“You bet they have. Those prints belong to Mr. Montague Thringle, who did four years for embezzlement and came out of Broadmoor twenty-six months ago.”

“Loud cheers,” said Alleyn, “and much laughter.”

“Eh? Yes, and that’s not the best of it. Who do you think defended one of the accused and shifted all the blame on to Thringle?”

“None other than Luke Watchman, the murdered K.C.?”

“You’re right. Legge’s a gaol-bird who owes, or thinks he owes, his sentence to Watchman. He’s just dug himself in pretty, with a nice job and lots of mugs eating out of his hand, and along comes the very man who can give him away.”

“Now I’ll tell you something you don’t know,” said Alleyn. “Who do you think was implicated with Montague Thringle and got off with six months?”

“Lord Bryonie. Big scandal it was.”

“Yes. Miss Darragh’s unfortunate cousin, the Lord Bryonie.”

“You don’t tell me that! Miss Darragh! I’d put her right out of the picture.”

“She holds a watching-brief for Thringle-alias-Legge, I fancy,” said Alleyn, and related the morning’s adventure.

“By gum!” cried Harper, “I think it’s good enough. I reckon we’re just about right for a warrant. With the fact that only Legge could have known the dart would hit — what d’you think? Shall we pull him in?”

“I don’t think we’ll make an arrest just yet, Nick.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I think the result would be what the highbrows call a miscarriage of justice. I’ll tell you why.”

ii

But before he had finished telling them why, an unmistakable rumpus in the street announced the arrival of Colonel Brammington’s car. And presently Colonel Brammington himself came charging into the room with Dr. Shaw on his heels.

“I saw your car outside,” he shouted. “A galaxy of all the talents with Æsculapius to hold the balance. Æsculapius usurps that seat of justice, poetic justice with her lifted scale.”

Dr. Shaw put a small pair of scales on the table and grinned. Colonel Brammington took one of Alleyn’s cigarettes and hurled himself into a chair.

“Curiosity,” he said, “was praised by the great Doctor, as one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect His namesake, the rare Ben, remarked that he did love to note and to observe. With these noble precedents before me, I shall offer no excuse, but following the example of Beatrice, shall like a lapwing run, close to the ground to hear your confidence. An uncomfortable feat and one for which my great belly renders me unfit. Have you any matches? Ah, thank you.”

Harper, with his back to the Chief Constable, turned his eyes up for the edification of Fox. He laid a tin box on the table.

“Here you are, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Good.” Alleyn weighed the box speculatively in his hands and then emptied its contents into the scale.

“What is that?” demanded Colonel Brammington. “Glass? Ah, the orts and fragments of the brandy glass, perhaps”

“That’s it, sir,” said Alleyn.

“And pray why do you put them on the scales?”

“Sir,” murmured Alleyn politely, “to find out their weight.”

Colonel Brammington said mildly: “You mock me, by Heaven. And what do they weigh?”

“Two ounces, forty-eight grains. That right, Dr. Shaw?”

“That’s it.”

Alleyn returned the fragments to their box and took a second box from his pocket.

“In this,” he said, “are the pieces of an identically similar glass for which I gave Mr. Pomeroy one and sixpence. They are his best glasses. Now then.”

He tipped the second shining heap into the scales.

“Yes, by George,” said Alleyn softly. “Look. Two ounces, twenty-four grains.”

“Here!” exclaimed Harper. “That’s less. It must be a lighter glass.”

“No,” said Alleyn. “It’s the same brand of glass. Abel took the glasses for the brandy from a special shelf. I’ve borrowed two more, unbroken. Let’s have them, Fox.”

Fox produced two tumblers. Each of them weighed two ounces, twenty-four grains.

“But look here,” objected Harper. “We didn’t get every scrap of that glass up. Some of it had been ground into the boards. Watchman’s glass should, if anything, weigh less than the others.”

“I know,” said Alleyn.

“Well then—”

“Some other glass must have fallen,” said Colonel Brammington. “They were full of distempering draughts, red-hot with drinking. One of them may have let fall some other glass. A pair of spectacles. Didn’t Watchman wear an eyeglass?”

“It was round his neck,” said Dr. Shaw, “unbroken.”

“There seems to have been no other glass broken, sir,” said Alleyn. “I’ve asked. Did you find all the pieces in one place, Harper?”

“Like you’d expect, a bit scattered and trampled about. I daresay there were pieces in the soles of their boots. Damn it all,” cried Harper in exasperation, “it must weigh lighter.”

He weighed the glass again, peering suspiciously at the scales. The result was exactly the same. The fragments of Watchman’s glass weighed twenty-four grains heavier than the unbroken tumbler.

“This is rather amusing,” said Colonel Brammington.

Alleyn sat at the table and spread the broken glass over a sheet of paper. Fox gave him a pair of tweezers and he began to sort the pieces into a graduated row. The other men drew closer.

“It’s the same tumbler,” said Colonel Brammington. “There, you see, are the points of one of those loathsome stars.”

Alleyn took a jeweller’s lens from his pocket. “Ah!” muttered Colonel Brammington, staring at him with a bulging and raffish eye. “He peers. He screws a glass into his orb and with enlarged vision feeds his brain.”

“We always feel rather self-conscious about these things,” said Alleyn, “but they have their uses. Here, I think, are three, no four small pieces of glass that might be different from — well, let’s weigh them.” He put them in the scales.

“Thirty-one grains. That, Harper, leaves a margin of eleven grains for the bits you missed. Any good?”

“Do you think these bits are a different class of stuff, Mr. Alleyn?” asked Harper.

“I think so. There’s a difference in colour and if you look closely you can see they’re a bit thicker.”

“He has written a monograph on broken tumblers,” cried Colonel Brammington delightedly. “Let me look through your lens.”

He crouched over the table.

“They are different,” he said. “You are quite right, my dear Alleyn. What can it mean? The iodine bottle? No, it was found unbroken beneath the settle.”

“What did you discover at Woolworth’s, Fox?” asked Alleyn.

“Nothing much, Mr. Alleyn. I tried all the other places as well. They haven’t sold any and they say there’s very little shop-lifting in Illington.”

“Veil upon veil will lift,” remarked Colonel Brammington, “but there will be veil upon veil behind. What is this talk of shop-lifting?”

“I’ll explain, sir,” began Alleyn.

“On second thoughts, pray don’t. I prefer, Alleyn, to be your Watson. You dine with me to-night? Very good. Give me the evidence, and let me brood.”