Charles Random had made an indeterminate sound. He looked up quickly at Alleyn, hesitated and then said rapidly, “As a matter of fact, I did. I’ve always been mildly interested in codes and I heard everybody muttering away about the lock on the safe and how the word might be ‘glove.’ I have to do a lot of waiting about in my dressing-room and thought I’d try to work it out. I thought it might be one of the sorts where you write down numerals from 1 to 0 in three rows one under another and put in succession under each row the letters of the alphabet, adding an extra A B C D to make up the last line. Then you can read the numbers off from the letters. Each number has three equivalent letters.”
“Quite so. And you got—? From the word ‘glove’?”
“Seven-two-five-two-five, or, if the alphabet was written from right to left, four-nine-six-nine-six.”
“And if the alphabet ran from right to left and then, at K, from left to right and finally, at U, from right to left again?”
“Four-two-five-nine-six, which seemed to me more likely as there are no repeated figures.”
“Fancy you remembering them like that!” Destiny ejaculated, and appealed to the company. “I mean—isn’t it? I can’t so much as remember anyone’s telephone number—scarcely even my own.”
Winter Meyer moved his hands, palms up, and looked at Alleyn. “But, of course,” Random said, “there are any number of variants in this type of code. I might have been all wrong.”
“Tell me,” Alleyn said, “are you and the boy on in the same scenes? I seem to remember that you are.”
“Yes,” Peregrine and Random said together, and Random added: “I didn’t leave any notes about that Trevor could have read. He tried to pump me. I thought it would be extremely unwise to tell him.”
“Did you, in fact, tell anybody of your solutions?”
“No,” Random said, looking straight in front of him. “I discussed the code with nobody.” He looked at his fellow players. “You can all bear me out in this,” he said.
“Well, I must say!” Gertrude Bracey remarked, and laughed.
“A wise decision,” Alleyn murmured, and Random glanced at him.
“I wonder,” he said, fretfully.
“I think there’s something else you have to tell me, isn’t there?”
In the interval that followed Destiny said with an air of discovery: “No, but you must all admit it’s terribly clever of Charles.”
Random said, “Perhaps it’s unnecessary to point out that if I had tried to steal the treasure I would certainly not have told you what I have told you; still less what I’m going to tell you.”
Another pause was broken by Inspector Fox, who sat by the door and had contrived to be forgotten. “Fair enough,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Random, startled.
“What are you going to tell us, Mr. Random?”
“That, whatever the combination may be, Trevor didn’t know it. He’s not really as sharp as he sounds. It was all bluff. When he kept on about how easy it was I got irritated — I find him extremely tiresome, that boy — and I said I’d give him a pound if he could tell me and he did a sort of ‘Yah-yah-yah, I’m not going to be caught like that’ act.” Random made a slight, rather finicky movement of his shoulders and his voice became petulant. “He’d been helping himself to my make-up and I was livid with him. It blew up into quite a thing and—well, it doesn’t matter but in the end I shook him and he blurted out a number—five-five-five-three-one. Then we were called for the opening.”
“When was this?”
“Before last night’s show.” Random turned to Miss Bracey. “Gertie dresses next door to me,” he said. “I daresay she heard the ongoings.”
“I certainly did. Not very helpful when one is making one’s preparation which I, at any rate, like to do.”
“Method in her madness. Or is it,” Harry Grove asked, “madness in her Method?”
“That will do, Harry.”
“Dear Perry. Of course.”
“You told us a moment ago, Mr. Random,” Alleyn said, “that the boy didn’t reveal the number.”
“Nor did he. Not the correct number.” Random said quickly.
Destiny Meade said: “Yes, but why were you so sure it was the wrong number?”
“It’s the Dolphin telephone number, darling,” Grove said. “Five-five-five-three-one. Remember?”
“Is it? Oh, yes. Of course it is.”
“First thing to enter his head in his fright, I suppose,” Random said.
“You really frightened him?” asked Alleyn.
“Yes, I did. Little horror. He’d have told me if he’d known.” Random added loudly: “He didn’t know the combination and he couldn’t have opened the lock.”
“He was forever badgering me to drop a hint,” Winter Meyer said. “Needless to say, I didn’t.”
“Precisely,” said Random.
Peregrine said: “I don’t see how you can be so sure, Charlie. He might simply have been holding out on you.”
“If he knew the combination and meant to commit the theft,” Knight said, flinging himself down into his chair again, “he certainly wouldn’t tell you what it was.”
There was a general murmur of fervent agreement. “And after all,” Harry Grove pointed out, “you couldn’t have been absolutely sure, could you, Charles, that you hit on the right number yourself or even the right type of code? Or could you?” He grinned at Random. “Did you try?” he asked. “Did you prove it, Charles? Did you have a little twiddle? Before the treasure went in?”
For a moment Random looked as if he would like to hit him but he tucked in his lips, gave himself time and then spoke exclusively to Alleyn.
He said: “I do not believe that Trevor opened the safe and consequently I’m absolutely certain he didn’t kill Henry Jobbins.” He settled his shoulders and looked defiant.
Winter Meyer said: “I suppose you realize the implication of what you’re saying, Charles?”
“I think so.”
“Then I must say you’ve an odd notion of loyalty to your colleagues.”
“It doesn’t arise.”
“Doesn’t it!” Meyer cried and looked restively at Alleyn.
Alleyn made no answer to this. He sat with his long hands linked together on Peregrine’s desk.
The superb voice of Marcus Knight broke the silence.
“I may be very dense,” he said, collecting his audience, “but I cannot see where this pronouncement of Charles’s leads us. If, as the investigation seems to establish, the boy never left the theatre and if the theatre was locked up and only Hawkins had the key to the stage-door: then how the hell did a third person get in?”
“Might he have been someone in the audience who stayed behind?” Destiny asked, brightly. “You know? Lurked?”
Peregrine said, “The ushers, the commissionaire, Jobbins and the A.S.M. did a thorough search front and back after every performance.”
“Well, then, perhaps Hawkins is the murderer,” she said, exactly as if a mystery-story were under discussion. “Has anyone thought of that?” She appealed to Alleyn, who thought it better to disregard her.
“Well, I don’t know,” Destiny rambled on. “Who could it be if it’s not Trevor? That’s what we’ve got to ask ourselves. Perhaps, though I’m sure I can’t think why, and say what you like motive is important—” She broke off and made an enchanting little grimace at Harry Grove. “Now don’t you laugh,” she said. “But for all that just suppose. Just suppose—It was Mr. Conducis.”
“My dear girl—”
“Destiny, honestly.”