This is Inspector Perkins." Mr.Manley introduced himself as the secretary of the murdered man, and with an air of quiet importance told Mr.Flexen that Lady Loudwater had put him in charge of the Castle till her lawyer came.

Then he took the keys of the smoking-room and the library door from his pocket and said: "I locked up the room in which the dead body is, and the library through which there is also access to it, leaving everything just as it was when the body was found.

I do not think that any traces which the criminal has left, if, that is, he has left any, can have been obliterated." He spoke with the quiet pride of a man who has done the right thing in an emergency.
"That's good," said Mr.Flexen, in a tone of warm approval.

"It isn't often that we get a clear start like that.

We'll examine these rooms at once." Mr.Manley went to the door of the smoking-room and was about to unlock it, when Dr.Thornhill, a big, bluff man of fifty-five, bustled in.