y way to Southampton. What will he tell them about me? How
account for his returning alone and without the car? As I asked myself
that sinister question there rushed into my mind the last of my
difficulties: 'Where are the thousand pounds?' And in the same instant
came the answer: 'The thousand pounds are in my pocket.'

"I got up and stepped from the car. My knees trembled and I felt very
sick. I saw the plot now--as I thought. The whole of the story about the
papers and the necessity of their being taken to Paris was a blind. With
Manderson's money about me, of which he would declare I had robbed him,
I was to all appearance attempting to escape from England, with every
precaution that guilt could suggest. He would communicate with the
police at once, and would know how to put them on my track. I should be
arrested in Paris--if I got so far--living under a false name, after
having left the car under a false name, disguised myself, and traveled
in a cabin which I had booked in advance, also under a false name. It
would be plainly the crime of a man without money, and for some reason
desperately in want of it. As for my account of the affair, it would be
too preposterous.

"As this ghastly array of incriminating circumstances rose up before me,
I dragged the stout letter-case from my pocket. In the intensity of the
moment I never entertained the faintest doubt that I was right, and that
the money was there. It would easily hold the packets of notes. But as I
felt it and weighed it in my hands it seemed to me there must be more
than this. It was too bulky. What more was to be laid to my charge?
After all, a thousand pounds was not much to tempt a man like myself to
run the risk of penal servitude. In this new agitation, scarcely knowing
what I did, I caught the surrounding strap in my fingers just above the
fastening and tore the staple out of the lock. These locks, you know,
are pretty flimsy as a rule."

Here Marlowe paused and walked to the oaken desk before the window.
Opening a drawer full of miscellaneous objects, he took out a box of odd
keys, and selected a small one distinguished by a piece of pink tape.

He handed it to Trent. "I keep that by me as a sort of morbid memento.
It is the key to the lock I smashed. I might have saved myself the
trouble if I had known that this key was at that moment in the left-hand
side-pocket of my overcoat. Manderson must have slipped it in, either
while the coat was hanging i