“At the back,” said Marjorie. “You take the path round to the left—”
“Let’s take it,” said Colonel March.
Dusk was coming on, but no lights showed at Greenacres. They circled the house under the blast of an east wind, Colonel March stumping ahead with his coat collar turned up and an old tweed cap pulled low on his forehead. Climbing some flagged steps to a terrace, they looked into the nearer of the study windows; and came face to face with Mr. Ireton Bowlder looking out at them.
One of Bowlder’s hands flattened out against the glass with white fingers. The other hand, which was wrapped in a handkerchief, he thrust into his pocket. In the twilight he looked nervous and a trifle greenish.
“Good afternoon,” said Colonel March politely.
The wind whipped the words away; and Bowlder inside the glass was as silent as a fish in an aquarium, though his lips moved. Then Bowlder raised the window.
“I said good afternoon,” repeated Colonel March. Before Bowlder could move back, Colonel March had reached out and shaken hands with him through the window. “You know most of us, I think.”
“Yes,” said Bowlder, looking at Marjorie. “What do you want?”
Colonel March leaned against the ledge of the window.
“I thought you would like to know,” he said, “that the manager of the City and Provincial Bank was a little better this morning. That will probably make the charge against five persons something less than murder.”
“Indeed. The fifth is young Parrish, I suppose?”
“No,” said Colonel March. “The fifth is probably yourself.”
Again wind whipped round the corner of the house, ruffling Bowlder’s neat hair. But Bowlder himself was not ruffled. He regarded them with a pale and skeptical smile; then he began to close the window.
“Better not,” the Colonel advised. “We’re coming in.”
“You have a warrant?”
“Oh, yes. That window is now in working order, I see. Robinson,” he looked at the plain-clothes man, “will climb through and stay with you while we go round by the front door.”
By the time they reached the study, Bowlder had turned on a standing lamp by the table, upon which it threw a bright light, though most of the room was left in shadow. The room was exactly as Marjorie Dawson had described.
“Now, then,” said Bowlder quietly, “will you explain what you mean by this nonsense about a charge?”
“If,” said Colonel March, “the City and Provincial money is found here, you’re likely to be charged with Skipper Morgan. That is what I meant.”
“Gentlemen — and Miss Dawson — listen to me. How many times have I got to submit to this? You don’t really mean you want to make still another search?”
“Yes.”
“Look round you,” said Bowlder. “Take a long careful look. Can you think of any place that could have been overlooked the first time?”
Chief Inspector Ames had to admit to himself that he couldn’t. But Colonel March, instead of searching for a secret in the room, lowered himself into an easy chair by the table. Removing his cap and turning down the collar of his coat, he faced them with a kind of sleepy affability.
“In order to show you what I mean,” he went on, “I must point out one of the curiously blind spots in the human mind. Has it ever occurred to you, Ames, that there’s one piece of furniture in a room that nobody ever notices?”
“No, sir, it hasn’t,” said Ames. “You mean it’s hidden?”
“On the contrary, I mean that it may be right there in front of everyone’s eyes. But few people ever see it.”
“Are you trying to tell me,” asked the Chief Inspector, “that there’s such a thing as an invisible piece of furniture?”
“A mentally invisible piece of furniture,” returned Colonel March. “Would you like proof of it? You have one, my boy, in the sitting room of your own flat. I imagine there’s one in the bedroom as well. It is under your eyes all the time. But suppose I said to you: ‘Give me a list of every piece of furniture in your flat.’ You would then give a list of things down to the smallest lamp shade or ashtray; but I am willing to bet you would omit this whacking great object—”
Chief Inspector Ames looked round rather wildly. But his eye fell on Mr. Ireton Bowlder, and he checked himself. Bowlder, who had been lighting a cigarette, dropped the match on the floor. Under the bright light of the lamp his forehead shone with sweat; and he was not smiling.
Ames stared at him. “Whether or not I understand you,” he said, “by Jupiter, that fellow does!”
“Yes, I thought he would,” agreed Colonel March, and got to his feet. “That’s where he has hidden the money, you see.”
“Oh, what on earth are you talking about?” cried Marjorie Dawson. She could keep herself in hand no longer, and she almost screamed. “What could be invisible? What is there we can’t see? What part of the room is it in? What’s the size of it? What’s the color of it?”
“As for size,” replied the Colonel, “it may vary a good deal, but in this case it is about three feet high, two and a half feet long, and three or four inches deep. In color it is sometimes painted a bright gilt; but in this case the object is painted a modest brown.”
“What?”
“I mean,” said Colonel March, “a steam radiator — particularly a dummy radiator like that one in the corner over there.”
Ireton Bowlder made a run for the door, but he was tripped and brought down by P. C. Robinson. They were compelled to use handcuffs when they took him away.
“The possibilities of a dummy radiator, used for concealing something inside,” said Colonel March, when they were on their way home, “deserve the attention of our best crooks. It is very nearly a perfect hiding place. It is compact. It will hold a great deal of swag. And it is the one thing we never seem to notice, even if we happen to be looking at it.
“Nobody, you see, regards it as a piece of furniture at all — certainly not as a piece of furniture in which anything could possibly be concealed. Inspector Daniels never looked twice at the radiator in Bowlder’s study, and it is difficult to blame him. The radiator gave out heat, like an honest radiator; it was of iron; it seemed solid; it was clamped to the floor.
“You can buy one of them easily enough. They are really disguised oil stoves; portable, with several concealed burners, one under each coil. I have never forgotten the shock I received, sitting comfortably by a steaming radiator in the house of a friend of mine, when it suddenly occurred to me that the house was not centrally heated.
“Bowlder’s radiator was a more elaborate affair, but one that could be constructed without difficulty. Two of the coils contained no burners, were invisibly hinged at the back, and formed hollow receptacles as large as he could wish. The house was centrally heated, so that a mere radiator aroused no suspicion whatever. It was, in short, a private safe without lock or combination, but so commonplace as to defy suspicion. I have been waiting for somebody to try the trick; and lo, somebody did.”
Marjorie Dawson looked at him inquiringly.
“You mean you expected to find one of those things when we went down to Greenacres?” she asked.
“I am the Department of Queer Complaints,” said Colonel March with apology, “and I was on the lookout for it as soon as central heating was reported in that room. I wasn’t sure, of course, until we talked to Bowlder through the study window. The banknotes would get rather warm, you can understand, from being in a compartment next to the oil burner. They wouldn’t scorch, any more than our clothes scorch when we put them to dry on top of an ordinary radiator, but they would be tolerably warm; and so would the fastenings when Bowlder opened his safe. That was why he had to wrap a handkerchief round his right hand. And it was Chief Inspector Ames, with unerring intuition, who hit on the real clue long before it ever came to me.”