"What the hell!" Stephen demanded, his eyes lifting from the case to Hemingway's face. "What kind of a damned silly joke do you imagine you're playing?"
"Oh, I'm not playing any joke!" responded Hemingway.
Stephen took the case, and stood holding it, "I thought this was your most valuable piece of evidence?"
"Yes, so did I," agreed Hemingway. "And I don't mind admitting that it's very disappointing for me to have to give it up. But there it is! A detective's life is one long disappointment."
Stephen smiled, in spite of himself. "Would you like to explain a little? Why do I get my case back? I thought you had me booked for the County gaol."
"I don't deny that's about what I thought too," Hemingway admitted. "And if only you'd left a fingerprint or two on that case of yours, I daresay I'd have had the handcuffs on you by now."
"Didn't I?" said Stephen, frowning in a little perplexity.
"Not one!" said Hemingway cheerfully.
Stephen glanced down at the case, turning it over in his hand. "I don't seem to be very bright this morning. Am I to infer that my finger-prints had been wiped off?"
"That's about the size of it, sir."
He encountered a very hard, direct look. "Mind telling me if there were any finger-prints on it at all?"
"No," said Hemingway; "I'm not one to make a lot of mystery. There weren't any."
"Oh!" said Stephen. Again he looked at the case, his frown deepening. "A plant, in fact!"
The Inspector fixed him with a bright, enquiring gaze. "Got any ideas about that, sir?"
Stephen slipped the case into his pocket. After a moment's hesitation, he said: "No. Not immediately. When I do get an idea -"
"Now, you don't want to go taking the law into your own hands, sir!" interrupted the Inspector. "What do you think I'm here for? If you know anything, you tell me, and don't start any rough-houses on your own, because though I can't say I'd blame you, I'd have to take you up for disturbing the peace, which, properly speaking, isn't my line of business at all."
Stephen laughed. "What would you do if you found that someone had tried to do the dirty on you to this tune, Inspector?"
The Inspector coughed. "Report it to the proper quarters," he said firmly.
"Well, I'd rather rub his damned nose in it!" said Stephen.
"As long as you don't go farther than that, I've no objection," said Hemingway, with the utmost cordiality. "And if you want a bit of advice, don't go leaving any more of your things about! It puts highly unsuitable ideas into people's heads, besides setting the police off on wildgoose chases, which is a very reprehensible thing to do, let me tell you!"
"Sorry!" Stephen said. "Very annoying for you: you must now be back exactly where you started."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that!" Hemingway replied.
"No, I don't suppose you would: not to me, at any rate. If it's all the same to you, I'd now like to go back and finish my breakfast."
The Inspector signifying that it was quite the same to him, Stephen returned to the dining-room, where the rest of the party was still seated at the table. Every face turned towards him as he entered, some asking a mute, anxious question, some avidly curious. He sat down in his place, and told Sturry, who had found an excuse to come back into the room, to bring him some fresh coffee.
"Gosh, I quite thought you'd be under arrest by now!" said Valerie, putting into words what everyone else had been thinking.
"I know you did, my pretty one," Stephen answered.
"What happened, Stephen?" Mathilda asked him, in a low voice.
He favoured her with one of his twisted smiles, and took out his cigarette-case, and opened it, and selected a cigarette. As he tapped it on the case, every eye became riveted on it. Mathilda looked quickly up at him, but saw that he was not paying any heed to her, but rather letting his challenging gaze wander round the table, dwelling for a moment on Roydon's face, travelling on to Mottisfont's, and resting there for a moment.
Again it was Valerie who found her voice first. "Why, that's your cigarette-case! The one the police took!"
"As you say."
"Do you mean they've given it back to you?" asked Roydon, in bewildered accents.
"Yes," said Stephen. "They've given it back to me."
"I never heard of such a thing!" exclaimed Mottisfont. "It can't be the same case! You're trying to pull our legs, for some reason best known to yourself! The police would never have relinquished the real case!"
"I'd give it to you to look at, only that the Inspector warned me to be more careful with my property in future," said Stephen. "When I leave my things about, they have an odd way of transporting themselves - isn't that nicely put? - into quite different parts of the house."
"What the devil do you mean by that?" demanded Mottisfont, half-rising from his chair.
"Do you believe in poltergeists?" asked Stephen, still smiling, but not very pleasantly.
"Stephen!" Joseph said, his voice trembling with emotion. "Stephen, my boy! Does it mean that they don't suspect you after all?"
"Oh, I gather that I am wholly cleared!" Stephen replied.
It was not to be expected that Joseph would greet such news as this in a restrained manner. He bounced up out of his chair, and came round the table to clasp his nephew's hands. "I knew it all along!" he said. "Thank God, thank God! Stephen, old boy, you don't know what a weight it is off my mind! If - if the worst had happened, it would have been my fault! Oh yes, it would! I know that. My dear, dear boy, if it were not for that one great sorrow hanging over us, this would be a red-letter day indeed!"
"But I don't understand!" Paula said. "Why are you in the clear? Are you sure it isn't some kind of a trick?"
"No, there's no trick about it," he answered.
"Why should there be a trick?" Joseph said. "Can it be that you doubted Stephen's innocence? Your own brother!"
"How did it come to be in Uncle's room?" Paula asked, disregarding Joseph. "You may as well tell us, Stephen! We must all have guessed!"
"Clever, aren't you? I'm a child in these matters myself, but I gathered from the Inspector that in his opinion it was planted there."
Paula flashed a look round the table. "Yes! That has always stood out a mile!" she declared.
"I don't believe it!" Mottisfont said, reddening angrily. "That's what you chose to hint from the outset, but I consider it a monstrous suggestion! Are you daring to imply that one of us murdered Nat, and tried to fasten the crime onto you?"
"It's so obvious, isn't it?" Stephen said.
Joseph, who had been looking from one to the other, with an expression of almost pathetic bewilderment on his face, was so shocked that his voice sank quite three tones. "It couldn't be true!" he uttered. "It's too infamous! too terrible for words! It was Nat himself who took your case up! It must have been! Good God, Stephen, you couldn't believe a thing like that of anyone here - staying with us - invited here to - No, I tell you! It's too horrible!"
At any other time Mathilda could have laughed to see Joseph's roseate illusions so grotesquely shattered. As it was, the situation confronting them seemed to her to be too grim to admit of laughter. She said in a studiedly cool voice: "What gave the Inspector this idea?"
"The absence of any finger-prints on the case," answered Stephen.
It took a minute or two for the company to assimilate the meaning of this, nor did it seem from Maud's blank face, or from Joseph's puzzled frown, that its full import had been universally realised. But Roydon had realised it, and he said: "It's the meanest thing I ever heard of! I hope you don't imagine that any of us would stoop so low?"
"I don't know at all," said Stephen. "I shall leave it to the Inspector to find out."
"That's all very well!" struck in Paula. "But if there were no finger-prints on the case, how is he to find out?"