“I’m only thinking, Marshal, that the FBI will have all the latest equipment and can probably save you a lot of trouble.”
“My trouble is what the town pays me for,” Tanner said equably. “But don’t worry, we won’t disturb anything. You didn’t disturb anything, did you, Jock?”
“No, sir.”
“You didn’t have a chance to wipe up that word on the floor, before you called anyone?”
Ingram’s straightforward eyes did not waver, but a flush crept into his face.
“I could have, I suppose. I didn’t think of it.”
“Did anyone else have a chance to mess up anything?”
Ingram hesitated, and Rand said, “Yes, I did.”
He was sublimely unabashed by the reactions that simultaneously converged upon him.
“There was a diagram pinned on that board,” he said. “I noticed that it included the fullest details of... of our most recent advances in... in the problems we have been working on. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific. This is such a highly classified project that I mustn’t even say what it’s about, except to someone with special credentials.”
“I don’t think that matters to us,” said the Saint. “So it’s the long awaited Death Ray, or a gizmo that transmutes red tape into blue ribbons. The only point we’re concerned with is that it would be of incalculable value to the Enemy.”
“Exactly.”
“And it’s gone,” Simon said, glancing at the uncluttered drafting table.
“That’s what I was telling you,” Rand said testily. “I removed it and locked it in my safe. Not knowing who might be brought here by an inevitable investigation, it was my duty to keep it out of sight of any unauthorized person. However, it may be pertinent for you to know that it was there.”
Tanner’s stolid bulk quivered momentarily with what in any less undemonstrative individual would have been taken for the vibration of a chuckle.
“Well,” he said, “thanks anyway for giving us the motive.” He gazed woodenly at the Saint. “You want to look around here any more?”
“I don’t think so,” Simon said, after doing exactly that for several seconds, but without shifting from where he stood. “I guess I’ve seen all I’m going to. I’ll leave the magnifying-glass and vacuum-cleaner work to the Sherlock squad. Now what about this door here?”
“The bathroom,” Rand said.
Simon opened the door and looked in. The room had been used for some minor laboratory work, and there were a dozen chemical bottles on the tile-topped counter in which the washbasin was set. There was another door on the opposite side of it.
“I suppose that goes to another former bedroom?”
“Yes. We’re using all the rooms. As a matter of fact, I was working in there myself from about eight-fifteen on.”
Simon tried the handle.
“It’s locked.”
“I’m afraid it will have to remain so,” Rand said, with a tightening of his thin lips. “Except to the FBI, or someone properly authorized by the Department of Defense. The same applies to the other rooms where we have — er — experimental assemblies. However, if you’ll step outside, I’ll tell you all that you need to know.”
They filed out into the corridor again.
“The door at the end used to be the master bedroom; now it’s our main workshop. The room you were just in, as you saw, is a drafting and general utility room.” Rand was leading them briskly back along the passage. “Then the room you were asking about, which communicates through the bathroom. Then this” — Rand opened the door nearest the living room — “used to be the den. We use it as an office and for some of our paperwork. Miss Tanner works here.”
It was a completely unremarkable room, to all appearance, except for being somewhat overcrowded by a secretary’s desk, typewriter stand, and filing cabinets which had been added to the normal furniture.
“The other doors are just powder room — storage closets — linen closet, and so on,” said Professor Rand, dismissing them with a flick of his hand, and led the way back through the arch into the living room where Soren and the girl were still waiting.
“In fact,” Simon observed, “this must be one of the smallest Defense establishments in the country.”
“It isn’t a factory,” Rand said severely. “It’s purely a Research Station. And the — er — device we are working on is quite small. But I assure you, its size is in no proportion to its importance. I think I can say that without betraying any official secrets.”
From Harry Tanner came the kind of subsonic rumble that might have been emitted by a volcano that was trying not to erupt.
“Official shinplasters,” he said obscurely. “What I’d like to know, Professor, is how you expect me to investigate a murder without investigating anything around it.”
“What I’ve been trying to tell you, Marshal, is that I don’t expect you to. That is no slight, but—”
“But you think I’m just a dumb village cop, eh?”
“I know your record, Marshall, but I’m sure you don’t claim to have the same facilities here that you had in Cleveland.”
“That’s right,” Simon interposed quietly. “And we probably don’t even need them.”
All of them looked at him in a puzzled but guarded way, irresistibly drawn by an elusive quality of assurance that emanated from him, but uneasy as to what it might portend for any of them individually. Tanner in particular had a shocked and resentful expression, as if one ally that he had counted on was deserting him at the first shot.
The Saint lighted a cigarette as if he were quite unaware of being saddled with so much responsibility and went on: “After all, there might be a clue anywhere in the house. Perhaps in the kitchen. I’m sure Professor Rand wouldn’t object if we searched the kitchen. But if we aren’t looking for anything definite, I’m damned if I know what we’re likely to find. The clue might just as well be a bottle of Escoffier Sauce as an electrode... And the same with the fingerprint routine. There doesn’t seem to be any possibility that this wasn’t an inside job. Therefore everyone at the Station is theoretically suspect. But so far as I know, everyone at the Station could have a legitimate excuse for having been anywhere or touched anything.”
“Except the cops,” Soren said.
He had a very deep voice that reverberated disproportionately from his narrow chest and a meticulous way of articulating every syllable that made him sound rather like a talking robot.
“Beg your pardon, sir,” Ingram put in. “The guards are supposed to check all the rooms, twice in each watch, at night and on weekends or whenever there’s nobody working.”
“Okay,” said the Saint. “So no fingerprints mean a thing, anywhere, except maybe on the soldering iron or the screwdriver — and you can bet the murderer wiped those.”
“Precisely,” Rand agreed, but in a somewhat defensive way, as if he wondered what his concurrence might be letting him in for.
Simon took a long drag at his cigarette and half sat on one corner of a sturdy antique table.
“That brings us,” he said, “to the next standard routine: alibis.”
There was a brief silence, until it became apparent that he was waiting for answers.
“Klein’ll have the best one,” Ingram said. “He left the Station soon after seven, to drive to Tucson.”
“So I heard,” Tanner confirmed. “And Loretto and Burney sat chewing the fat after you started your round until you found the body and called ’em. So they rule out each other.”
“Unless they were in cahoots,” Soren said, with the punctilious enunciation that gave such an odd effect to his choice of vocabulary.