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Page 20
"You mean Marie?"
"Exactly. She will lie, beyond doubt, but we shall find means to reach
the truth."
"Would it not be advisable, Inspector," I asked excitedly, "to make
sure of her at once?"
Gatton smiled grimly, and:
"Marie would have to make herself invisible to evade Scotland Yard
now," he replied. "She is being watched closely. But," he continued,
"what do you make of these marks on the door?"
We had reclosed the garage door and now were standing immediately
inside. The marks to which my companion had drawn my attention were
situated high up near the roof.
"This may account for the statement of Bolton that the door seemed
more difficult to open last night than to-day," he said. "Unless I am
greatly mistaken, some sort of attachment existed here until quite
recently."
"Possibly a contrivance for reclosing the door?" I suggested.
The marks in fact roughly corresponded to those which would be made by
the presence of such a contrivance and there seemed to have been some
attempt where it had been removed to disguise the holes left by the
screws.
"But the purpose of it?" muttered Gatton helplessly.
"God knows," I said; "the purpose of the whole thing is a mystery
beyond me entirely."
"Assuming that such a piece of mechanism as you suggest had been
attached to the door," mused Gatton, "you would have noticed its
operation last night, unless one of you held the door open."
"Neither of us held the door!" I interrupted excitedly. "I remember
that we stood just outside looking in. I was behind the constable and
he was directing the rays of his lantern into the place."
"H'm," muttered Gatton. "Then it wasn't a contrivance for closing the
door; it was something else. Suppose we investigate the other door?"
We proceeded to the other door and I became aware of an intense
curiosity respecting what we should find, and of a conviction too that
there would be evidence here of another attachment. In this I was
quite correct. Some piece of mechanism had evidently been fastened to
this door also. Together we stood staring up at these tell-tale
screw-holes and then rather blankly we stared at one another.
"We only lack one thing," said Gatton; "the scheme upon which all
these contrivances and apparently isolated episodes were hung
together. Nothing, as we have already assumed, was accident, and
nothing coincidence. It was with some deliberate purpose that the
constable was instructed to walk through this garage, opening and
shutting the doors behind him."
"From whom did these instructions come?"
"That is one of the minor points which I have already cleared up," he
replied. "On my way here I called at the house agent's, as you know,
since I have the keys; I also called at the station. The sergeant who
was on duty last night I could not see, unfortunately, but I
learned--that it was a woman who rang up."
My heart sank lower and lower. It seemed to me as we stood in that
empty garage that an invisible hand was drawing a net closer and
closer about Isobel and my ideas became increasingly chaotic, for the
purpose of it all eluded me, try how I would to conceive of a scheme
by which any one could profit which necessitated the imprisonment, or
worse, of Isobel.
"And the agent?" I asked in a rather toneless voice.
Gatton shook his head.
"I have no reason to doubt the word of this man of business," he
replied, "because at the time when I saw him he could not possibly
have learned of the crime, but nevertheless his account is almost
unbelievable. It appears then, he, too, received his instructions
throughout by telephone."
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