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‘Is there any reason why it should?' Mitchell returned, though Bobby thought he looked worried. ‘There may be some connexion but it's just as likely there's none. Anyhow, what we've to find out is not why Mark Lester shot himself, but who shot Sir Christopher Clarke. For the moment, there doesn't seem much else we can do, and in any case I don't suppose we shall proceed to arrest Carsley till we hear from New York.'

‘From New York?' repeated Bobby, surprised.

‘Yes,' answered Mitchell. ‘We had an anonymous letter the other day. Anonymous letters are generally lies written to mislead, but not always, and even if they are lies, they are still useful, for at any rate they prove what it is someone wants to be believed. This one says Sir Christopher bought a revolver from a friend in New York when he was over there just before his marriage to Mrs Laing, as she was then. The friend is named and the business he's connected with is mentioned, so it should be easy to trace him, and confirm, and we've sent a cable to the New York police to ask them to do that for us. If they succeed it will be important, for that would go to prove the murder was committed by someone who was a member of the household or a frequent visitor to the house – like Carsley.'

‘But the pistol is supposed to have been kept in Sir Christopher's dressing-room, in a drawer that was always locked,' Bobby objected. ‘Carsley surely wouldn't have found it easy to get hold of it there.'

‘No great difficulty,' Mitchell answered. ‘Besides, there's the Jennie girl, Mrs Carsley now. He might have got her to get the thing for him.'

‘If that's so...' began Bobby and paused.

‘If it is, she may suspect now,' Mitchell observed.

‘I can't believe...' Bobby began and paused again. Mitchell smiled, a little sadly.

‘Never believe anything, my boy,' he said, ‘or disbelieve it, either. Nothing's too bad for human nature. Nothing's too good, either, thank God, or else a few years in the police service would drive you clean out of your mind. It's quite possible a man might use his wife to help him murder her father and then plot to get rid of her, too, if he thought that she suspected – especially if he stood to inherit a large fortune on her death. On the other hand, he might not; and though at present it's a pattern that seems all to point one way, still it's a pattern that leaves out a good deal. There's too much altogether left out to my mind, though maybe what's left in is enough to hang Peter Carsley, even if he did run straight at Cardiff the day you saw him there. And it's a comfort anyhow that someone's started at last to tell us things. Perhaps they'll go on now, it's about the only way I know of you can really get to find things out – when the people who know already, come and tell you.'

‘Yes, sir,' agreed Bobby, ‘only in this case they don't seem to want to, and there's so much – I can't understand for instance why Marsden seemed worried at the idea that perhaps we hadn't kept Mr Carsley under observation.'

‘Well, we have and are,' said Mitchell, ‘we're watching him pretty closely, though that doesn't mean we're on his heels every second. But we're watching him all right – did you tell Marsden so?'

‘I said I didn't know but I supposed we were,' Bobby answered. ‘I can't understand why he should care, one way or the other.'

‘Perhaps he's afraid Carsley may do him in next,' suggested Mitchell, ‘and feels safer if he thinks Carsley's being trailed. So far as I can see the investigation will be rather at a standstill until we hear from New York about the revolver, and as you've had a busy time of it just lately, you can have twenty-four hours' leave, if you like. But don't go far away. I want you to stay in touch. You had better ring up two or three times during the day to ask if there are any orders. I suppose you'll have breakfast in bed and go to the pictures afterwards – that's my idea of a holiday.'

‘I don't think I'll go to the pictures, sir,' answered Bobby. ‘I think I'll go for a walk instead, and try to think things out, and see if I can't get them clearer in my mind.'

‘I find the pictures rather good for that myself,' observed Mitchell. ‘Nice, comfortable seat, temper unruffled because you haven't been rooked out of sixpence extra to pay for a programme that's two-thirds advertisements, and then it's so soothing to watch the screen go flickering on, just one long, long kiss after another, and all the time your mind busy with what you're trying to think out. Try it some day.'

‘Yes, sir,' said Bobby, but doubtfully.

‘Ah, you're young,' commented Mitchell. ‘Perhaps all those long, long kisses don't soothe you the way they do me. Well, stick to a walk in the open. It's a better way perhaps, and less risk of dropping off to sleep. Or there's the Regency: why not have an evening there? Jolly good show, I thought it.'

‘Yes, sir,' agreed Bobby, ‘but I don't think I feel up to Shakespeare just now.'

‘No one does, no one does nowadays,' sighed Mitchell, looking quite disappointed. ‘Well, get along, and spend your holiday the way you want to.'

‘Thank you, sir,' said Bobby, and went back to his lodgings, just a little disappointed himself in that he had not been awarded any further task, and even a little worried in his mind because of a vague feeling he had that it was not merely pure Shakespearian enthusiasm which had made Mitchell suggest Bobby should spend an evening at the Regency, and look a trifle disappointed when that idea had not seemed very warmly welcomed.

Worrying, too, Bobby found it, the way in which the Regency and Shakespeare and all that crush seemed always turning up in the case, as if in some way the explanation of the mystery of Sir Christopher's murder was wrapped up with the excellence of this successful ‘silver and grey'
Hamlet
, as the advertisements called it. A fantastic notion, of course, and Bobby tried to forget it, and then, for he was more tired and more worried than he quite realized, he began to fret over the possibility that this unasked-for twenty-four hours' leave was merely a way of breaking to him that it was intended to return him to uniform duty. So it was in a somewhat despondent mood that Bobby went to bed that night, and in the middle of it, somewhere in the small hours, he woke with a violent start and the question ringing in his mind, almost as if someone had shouted it at him: Why was Marsden so careful to give such exact particulars of the lonely house in which he declared Carsley to have shown so unusual an interest?

Bobby sat upright in bed and slept no more. He really almost had the illusion that this question had been asked him by some outside entity, for he had no knowledge of how well the sub-conscious can dramatize our hidden thoughts. In the dark night, in the silence, the question seemed to him to assume an immense importance, an importance, too, as obscure and threatening as the surrounding night itself.

‘Why? Why?' he asked himself, and there was terror in his mind, a terror of some unknown threat of which he seemed to sense the heavy menace.

Uselessly he told himself it was mere lolly to let himself be troubled by such fancies. Marsden had simply mentioned the incident as an example of the bad terms on which he was with his partner and of how any trifle was good enough for quarrelling about. That he had mentioned that the dwelling concerned was in an out-of-the-way spot and likely to remain unoccupied for years, was purely accidental – absurd to suppose anything more, the height of absurdity to suppose any threat or danger lay behind. Yet in the darkness Bobby was aware that he was trembling slightly, that a great dread possessed him.

A lonely house in a lonely spot, he told himself again, and Carsley had the key and no one else – nothing in all that, why should there be? There's no lack of lonely houses in lonely inconvenient spots, likely to remain unoccupied for long periods, and someone has to have the key.

But all the same he could not sleep and in the morning he was up even earlier than usual and poring over the list of house and estate agents in the directory – a dismaying list, for the profession is popular and easily entered.

In spite of his unsought leave, he thought of appealing to Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard, with its immense, ever-ready organization, could within a few hours put the inquiry before every house agent in London – in the country almost. But then he had so little to go on. In his written report he had already referred to the matter; and it was the responsibility of his superiors to decide whether any further steps should be taken regarding it. Bobby had, too, an uneasy feeling that some of those superiors were a little inclined to regard him as a pushing, interfering, officious youngster, badly in need of being taught his place. Better not to give them any further ground for criticism by what might look like a fresh attempt to teach his chiefs their business.

To his troubled and restless mind indeed the twenty-four hours' special leave that had been given him began to look uncommonly like twenty-four hours' suspension from duty, or at any rate a hint to try not to meddle quite so much.

He made up his mind firmly to forget all about the case, to spend the morning loafing, the afternoon at the pictures, the evening at the Regency, and so for that day at least avoid all risk of annoying his seniors by a display of too much energy. There was a friend of his who was always ready for a night out; and though he was a young man who in a general way preferred a song and dance show, yet Bobby felt it would do him all the good in the world, and probably improve his mind quite a lot, to introduce him to Shakespeare. So Bobby went out to find him, but on his way to the tube station, where he meant to take the train, he happened to pass an estate agent's. Before he well knew what had happened, Bobby found himself inside, explaining that he had an eccentric friend, an artist, who was looking for an appropriate residence, old-fashioned, quiet, out of the way – something like an old windmill turned into a dwelling-house would suit him admirably. Did the estate agent know of anything like that?

The estate agent did not, but since he did know that few people know what they want so clearly that they will not take something else if it is pressed upon them with sufficient energy, he recommended in turn a semi-detached villa in Golders Green, a wonderfully cheap luxury mansion flat practically in the heart of the West End, Bayswater district, and an attractive half-house in Chelsea. Bobby said he thought these were not quite what his friend was looking for, and managed to escape, but not all twenty minutes had elapsed. At twenty minutes to a visit, that meant three estate agents questioned an hour, without allowing for the time occupied going from one to another. It seemed at that rate as though progress would be slow, and Bobby wondered whether it would not be better to go straight to Lincoln's Inn and ask for the information direct from Marsden or one of the clerks. But something seemed to warn him against doing that. If the reference to the lonely windmill turned into a house meant anything, then it would be wiser not to risk putting those concerned on their guard. He felt he did not trust Marsden, better not give Marsden any hint of what was being done, and then he had a new idea as he noticed that just across the way stood a public library.

Entering the library, he asked for the librarian. He was, he explained to that official, interested in windmills; he was, so to say, collecting windmills, windmills were the passion of his life, the sole interest of his passing days. Could the librarian tell him where and how he could get information about the sites of all the old windmills in or near London?

The librarian received the request quite calmly. He was used to such demands. The earnest young lady wanting a book giving a brief, bright and complete account of the Kantian philosophy, the currency reformer requiring information on the monetary system of Ur, the biblical student wishing for a complete list of all contemporary references to the book of Daniel, the local antiquarian needing direction to the exact spot where stood the last old oaks that had flourished in the borough, the amateur of languages in a spasm of indignation because the library had no copy of the recently-published
Elements of Iroquois Grammar in Its Primitive Period
– the sad librarian knew them all, and a little inquiry about the sites of windmills left him quite unruffled. He provided Bobby at once with an armful of books, and added that one that might be useful,
Picturesque Windmills and Watermills of the Southern Counties
, was in the reference department of the central branch but could be got down by the afternoon, if Bobby would like to see it.

Bobby said he would, expressed his gratitude, and retired with his armful of books, searched them diligently without coming across anything that seemed likely to be useful, and then retired to seek some lunch. In the afternoon he went back and found
Picturesque Windmills and Watermills
waiting for him. It was a formidable and ponderous tome, written three-quarters of a century ago, and when he had searched it half way through he came to a description that seemed to him as if it might be that of the house Marsden had spoken of.

At any rate the district was one that even yet London's all-pervading tide had not entirely flooded, and the author of the book had added to his account of this particular windmill an indignant protest against the impending vandalism which was threatening to turn it into a dwelling-house. Nothing else in the book seemed of interest, so Bobby returned it to the librarian, expressed his thanks once more, and then, after having a cup of tea and ringing up Scotland Yard to be assured there were no orders for him, started off to find the spot described.

Rather a wild goose chase, he supposed, but still it was something to occupy his mind and prevent his thoughts beating so restlessly against the bars of the problem in which it felt itself confined.

The task did not prove an easy one, for the directions given in the book had not been explicit. Even when he reached what he thought must be the right locality, an old gentleman, smoking his pipe outside his cottage door, from whom Bobby made inquiries, declared emphatically, and with some amusement at the suggestion, that there was no windmill there and never had been, and he had known the neighbourhood, man and boy, for seventy year.