rs this room, I promise
you. Inspector Petrie himself will be around presently. And
Superintendent Narkom should be with us at twelve o'clock or
thereabouts."

Left alone, therefore, in the early morning sunlight of that perfect
June day, Cleek made his way into the still room, closed the door behind
him, and then, glancing up, caught sight of the stolid back of the
constable on duty outside of the courtyard window, and not being wishful
to enter into conversation with him, began to poke about of his own
accord.

But the room held little or no clues for him to go upon. Not in the
first rough glance, at any rate. Over by the window, where it had stood
upon the previous day, when Maud Duggan had shown it to him, stood the
spinning wheel, innocently incongruous indeed in this room of Death. He
gave it a casual glance, and then turned to the desk-top where a pile of
papers lay scattered in some disarray upon its leather surface.

Cleek ran his fingers quickly through these, glancing at each of them in
turn.

"He was just about to alter the will, was he? Well, if that were so, the
will should be here now--and it isn't," he said to himself, with
suddenly up--flung brows. "Queer thing! Unless someone put it away. I'll
try the drawers. There should be no secrets from a detective, my poor
misguided friend, and if the drawers don't answer to my fingers, I'm
going to search your pockets for the key--though to steal from the dead
is a ghoulish business at the best of times.... Hello, hello! Locked, of
course! Brrrh! I don't fancy the task at all, but I mean to have my
little look-in before any of the other members of the family get
downstairs for their breakfast. So here goes."

Still mentally talking to himself, Cleek went over to the Thing that had
once been Sir Andrew Duggan, and plunged his hands in the trousers'
pockets without more ado. A bunch of keys rewarded the search. He ran
them over adroitly in his fingers; chose one which he thought would fit
the lock of the drawers, found it didn't fit, chose another, and this
time was more successful. For the top left-hand drawer of that
handsomely carved desk slid noiselessly open for him, stopped
automatically, and gave a funny little click. In a moment he had slid
down on his knees beside that gruesome figure which so impeded his
progress, and slipped his fingers up under the drawer (which was half
full of papers and so allowed him to do so), touched something which
felt l