room, I went back and looked in. I wanted to make sure, if I
could, where the key of the hide-house might be. There was a candle
left alight, and I saw the key right enough on the chest of drawers
beside Maule's watch and chain. It never came into my mind then, that
anybody could have used it. I noticed a bit of folded paper under the
watch. That's it, Mr McKeith. There's the proof that I am not lying
about what I saw.'

Harris had taken out of his breast pocket, a piece of newspaper in
which was wrapped the leaf torn out of Maule's notebook, folded and
addressed. He opened it out, and laid it on the office table in front
of McKeith, keeping his own stubby finger on one corner of the sheet.

Still McKeith maintained his difficult self-restraint.

'So you stole--a private communication that had been left in another
person's room, and was intended for his eyes alone?'

'Come now, Boss. You know well enough that a constabulary officer who's
up against tricks to release a prisoner has got to keep his eyes
peeled, and mustn't let any clue to mischief escape him. How was I to
know that there wasn't some plot to cheat the law? How do I know that
there wasn't? That's why I'm showing you the paper. I'm not a French
scholar--I suppose that's French--and as I suppose you are, I'll ask
you to translate what's written there.'

McKeith pushed aside the man's finger, and taking up the paper carried
it to the window, where he stood with his back to Harris, spelling out
Lady Bridget's hurriedly written sentences.

He seemed a long time in getting at the sense of what he read. As a
matter of fact, he had only a limited acquaintance with any modern
languages except his own. He had picked up some colloquial German, and
once when laid up in hospital, had set himself to read Balzac's PERE
GORIOT with the aid of a dictionary. Thus he had acquired a fairly
extensive if somewhat archaic vocabulary. But Lady Bridget's veiled
intimation of Wombo's escape couched in up-to-date and highly idiomatic
French which would have been perfectly intelligible to Willoughby
Maule, conveyed little to him beyond the fact of a secret understanding
between his wife and a man whom he knew had once been her lover. That
idea drove every other into the background of his thoughts. He did not
care in the least how Wombo had escaped. It seemed clear to him that
Oola had stolen the key after Harris had gone back to his room, while
Maule and his wife were together-