"I am glad that he has come in," he said mildly. "He has nothing to fear if he has a clear conscience."
"That is what I have told him," said Solar Pons. "Though I am glad to have it confirmed from your own lips."
Heathfield leaned forward and pressed a button on his desk. A door in the far corner of the room opened and a tall, frosty-haired man came in. He looked incuriously at the Superintendent.
"This is Detective-Inspector Glaister. I would like you to take a statement from Mr Hardcastle here. He is the man we wish to question in connection with this business at the Zoological Gardens. He is the client of Mr Solar Pons, whom I believe you know."
The Inspector smiled and came over to Pons and shook his hand cordially.
"Glad to see you again, Mr Pons."
He waited while Hardcastle got to his feet. At a gesture from Pons Heathfield hesitated a moment and then added, "When you have finished with Mr Hardcastle bring him over to the Zoo, will you. I shall be there with Mr Pons and Dr Parker."
"Very good, sir."
Our client went out apprehensively with the big officer. Heathfield put down his cup with a clink in the silence.
"If all is as you say, Mr Pons, he has nothing to fear. Let us just hope he has been telling the truth."
"This business is all too curious to be the work of that young man, Superintendent," said Solar Pons.
Heathfield opened his mouth to answer but at that moment there came a deferential tap at the door and a uniformed Sergeant appeared to announce Sir Clive Mortimer. Pons and I would have withdrawn but Heath-field gestured to us to remain. The peppery little man who bounced into the room hesitated on seeing the three of us, but then squared his shoulders and advanced grimly toward the Superintendent's desk.
"I must say, Superintendent, that this is outrageous. Absolutely outrageous. That this scoundrel can lay waste the Zoological Gardens in such a manner without being detected is quite beyond my comprehension."
Sir Clive spluttered as if he had run out of steam and glared at Heathfield belligerently. He had a pink face almost like a child's, with feathery white hair and a thin smear of moustache like lather. With his old-fashioned frock-coat, his dark raincoat and the black wide-awake hat he carried in his hand, he looked like an illustration out of a nineteenth century volume by Dickens or Wilkie Collins.
"Please compose yourself, Sir Clive. Have a cigar, sir. I assure you we are doing all we can. Allow me to present Mr Solar Pons and his colleague Dr Lyndon Parker."
The little man brightened.
"Mr Pons. The eminent consulting detective?"
He came forward to shake hands with us both, then turned back to give a frosty glance to Heathfield.
"Is it too much to hope that Mr Pons has been retained in this matter? I would give a great deal if it were so."
Inspector Heathfield chuckled with amusement.
"Mr Pons is already connected with the affair, Sir Clive. One of your keepers, Hardcastle, has fallen under suspicion. Mr Pons has been engaged to represent him."
"Hardcastle?"
The little man wrinkled up his face.
"Well, I know nothing of the details, Superintendent. But I am responsible to the Fellows and the Society's Council. We have never had anything like this in all our long history. I hope that it will shortly be cleared up."
He came close to my companion and peered sharply in his face.
"And I trust your man is innocent, Mr Pons. Though I have no doubt you will shortly get to the bottom of the business. I have little faith in the London police."
Solar Pons smiled.
"You are too flattering in my case, Sir Clive. And too harsh in your strictures on the official force. I have no doubt that between us we shall introduce light into what has hitherto been murky."
"Well, you may well be right, Mr Pons," said Sir Clive grudgingly. "Now, Superintendent, I believe you wish to see me privately. After that, I am at your service. I would like to return to the Gardens at once. Some of my colleagues are standing by at my office there."
"Certainly, Sir Clive. If you would come into this inner room for a few minutes. I am sure you do not mind waiting a short while, Mr Pons."
"By all means, Superintendent."
When we were alone Solar Pons stretched himself out on his chair, put his long legs in front of him and lit his pipe. He wreathed blue smoke at the ceiling. His eyes were twinkling.
"Well, Parker, what do you think of this business?"
"It would seem dark and impenetrable, Pons. Assuming that your client, Hardcastle, is innocent. Apart from everything else it is completely pointless."
"Is it not. Yet does not the sheer welter of events and the degree of mischief involved suggest something to you?"
I stared at my companion in astonishment.
"I do not follow you, Pons."
"It would not be the first time, Parker. Just use those faculties of intelligence that you so often bring to your medical diagnoses."
"Ah, well, Pons, that is a matter of science, whose limits are well sign-posted with text-book examples." Solar Pons shot me a wry smile.
"But detection is an equally exact science, Parker. Every apparently disconnected fact has its place in the diagnosis. Just as you draw logical conclusions from your patient's perspiration, breathing and location of pain so do I similarly read a connected sequence of events from crushed blades of grass; cigarette ash carelessly scattered; or the angle of a wine-glass. Let me just have your thoughts on the present troubles at Regent's Park Zoo."
"You are right, Pons, of course," I replied. "But I fear I make a poor diagnostician in your sphere of life. Each to his own profession."
"Tut, Parker, you do yourself poor justice. You are constantly improving in your reading of events. For example, what motive would the person or persons committing malicious damage bring to these senseless acts?"
Pons stared at me through the wreathing blue coils of smoke from his pipe.
"It is just in those areas that I am such a poor reasoner, Pons."
"Pschaw, the matter is so simple as to be obvious. I have already given you the clue in my remarks. Malice, Parker. Malign, perverted anger and an urge to destroy, which does not even shrink at the possibility of taking human life in the process. When we get such acts then we begin to find our thoughts directed into other areas. As we progress, so will the motive become clear. But here is the Superintendent back again."
The vigorous figure of Heathfield had returned to the desk, reaching down his raglan overcoat and umbrella from the stand behind it. Behind him the uneasy, chastened figure of Sir Clive. Pons turned from the vinegary countenance of the Zoo official and the lid of his right eye dropped slowly. I savoured the moment all the way to the Zoo.
4
It was almost ten o'clock when we arrived at Regent's Park yet despite the lateness of the hour the main entrance to the Zoo was a blaze of light. But the police driver, at a sign from Heathfield, obeyed Sir Clive's instructions to drive farther on to the Fellows' Entrance.
"More discreet," said the President, clearing his throat with an irritating little coughing noise. Pons and I waited until he and Heathfield had alighted and then followed. The rain was still driving hard and I buttoned up my coat collar tightly as we crossed the asphalt. We were within the Zoo grounds as the police car had driven straight in and the coughing roar of a lion, drifting across the Regent Canal came to us, mysterious and sinister in the semi-darkness.
"I have an office in the administrative building," said Sir Clive fussily. "We had best go there initially. I have kept back the key staff following today's incident and you will no doubt wish to question them, Mr Pons."