She was looking at the white clouds.

‘I wonder if it will rain,’ she said.

‘Rain! Why! Do you want it to?’

They started on the return journey, Clifford jolting cautiously downhill. They came to the dark bottom of the hollow, turned to the right, and after a hundred yards swerved up the foot of the long slope, where bluebells stood in the light.

‘Now, old girl!’ said Clifford, putting the chair to it.

It was a steep and jolty climb. The chair pugged slowly, in a struggling unwilling fashion. Still, she nosed her way up unevenly, till she came to where where the hyacinths were all around her, then she balked, struggled, jerked a little way out of the flowers, then stopped

‘We’d better sound the horn and see if the keeper will come,’ said Connie. ‘He could push her a bit. For that matter, I will push. It helps.’

‘We’ll let her breathe,’ said Clifford. ‘Do you mind putting a scotch under the wheel?’

Connie found a stone, and they waited. After a while Clifford started his motor again, then set the chair in motion. It struggled and faltered like a sick thing, with curious noises.

‘Let me push!’ said Connie, coming coming up behind.

‘No! Don’t push!’ he said angrily. ‘What’s the good of the damned thing, if it has to be pushed! Put the stone under!’

There was another pause, then another start; but more ineffectual than before.

‘You MUST let me push,’ said she. ‘Or sound the horn for the keeper.’

‘Wait!’

She waited; and he had another try, doing more harm than good.

‘Sound the horn then, if you won’t let me push,’ she said. ‘Hell! Be quiet a moment!’

She was quiet a moment: he made shattering efforts with the little motor.

‘You’ll only break the thing down altogether, Clifford,’ she remonstrated; remonstrated ‘besides wasting your nervous energy.’

‘If I could only get out and look at the damned thing!’ he said, exasperated. And he sounded the horn stridently. ‘Perhaps Mellors can see what’s wrong.’

They waited, among the mashed flowers under a sky softly curdling with cloud. In the silence a wood–pigeon began to coo roo–hoo hoo! roo–hoo hoo! Clifford shut her up with a blast on the horn.

The keeper appeared directly, striding inquiringly round the corner. He saluted.

‘Do you know anything about motors?’ asked Clifford sharply.

‘I am afraid I don’t. Has she gone wrong?’

‘Apparently!’ snapped Clifford.

The man crouched solicitously by by the wheel, and peered at the little engine.

‘I’m afraid I know nothing at all about these mechanical things, Sir Clifford,’ he said calmly. ‘If she has enough petrol and oil—’

‘Just look carefully and see if you can see anything broken,’ snapped Clifford.

The man laid his gun against a tree, took oil his coat, and threw it beside it. The brown dog sat guard. Then he sat down on his heels and peered under the chair, poking with his finger at the greasy little engine, and resenting the grease–marks on his clean Sunday shirt.

“But surely, Holmes, character goes goes for something? Then, again, why should he leave the girl in the street and dart away to commit a felony?”

“Exactly! There are certainly objections. But it is a formidable case which they have to meet.”

Mr. Sidney Johnson, the senior clerk, met us at the office and received us with that respect which my companion’s card always commanded. He was a thin, gruff, bespectacled man of middle age, his cheeks haggard, and his hands twitching from the nervous strain to which he had been subjected.

“It is bad, Mr. Holmes, very bad! Have you heard of the death death of the chief?”

“We have just come from his house.”

“The place is disorganized. The chief dead, Cadogan West dead, our papers stolen. And yet, when we closed our door on Monday evening, we were as efficient an office as any in the government service. Good God, it’s dreadful to think of! That West, of all men, should have done such a thing!”

“You are sure of his guilt, then?”

“I can see no other way out of it. And yet I would have trusted him as I trust myself.”

“At what hour was the office closed on Monday?”

“At five.”

“Did you close it?”

“I am always the last man out.”

“Where were the plans?”

“In that safe. I put them there myself.”

“Is there no watchman to the building?”

“There is, but he has other departments to look after as well. He is an old soldier and a most trustworthy man. He saw nothing that evening. Of course the fog was very thick.”

“Suppose that Cadogan West wished to make his way into the building after hours; he would need three keys, would he not, before he could reach the papers?”

“Yes, he would. The key of the outer door, the key of the office, and the key of the safe.”

“Only Sir James Walter and you had those keys?”

“I had no keys of the doors — only of the safe.”

“Was Sir James a man who was orderly in his habits?”

“Yes, I think he was. I know that so far as those three keys are concerned he kept them on the same ring. I have often seen them there.”

“And that ring went with him to London?”

“He said so.”

“And your key never left your possession?”

“Never.”

“Then West, if he is the culprit, must have had a duplicate. And yet none was found upon his body. One other point: if a clerk in this office desired to sell the plans, would it not be simpler to copy the plans for himself than to take the originals, as was actually done?”

“It would take considerable technical knowledge to copy the plans in an effective way.”

“But I suppose either Sir James, or you, or West had that technical knowledge?”

“No doubt we had, but I beg you won’t try to drag me into the matter, Mr. Holmes. What is the use of our speculating in this way when the original plans were actually found on West?”