Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/22

 Wedgwood went into the room: within a moment he was back.

"There's no manuscript there," he said.

"It was there, when I left him to go to Miss Callender's," declared Miss Tandy. "I remember seeing it, distinctly. It lay just where it had been put down—right in the middle of the blotting-pad. A manuscript in a brown paper cover, with a white label on the front."

"Not there!" repeated Wedgwood.

"There are papers in his pockets," remarked the sergeant. "A quantity"

Wedgwood again turned back to the parlour, followed by the police-inspector; the sergeant, after an exchange of whispers with the two doctors went after them. Almost as soon as he had got into the room he was out again: Wedgwood had sent him off on an errand. A brief errand—for within ten minutes he was back in the flat again and at the detective's elbow.

"That's quite correct," he whispered. "I've seen Miss Callender. Middle-aged lady, like this. She says Miss Tandy came to her about this typing business and was at her place the best of ten minutes, perhaps. Well, it's two minutes' walk there; two minutes back. That 'ud about make the quarter of an hour Miss Tandy spoke of." He paused, cocking an eye