The Story of Ivy · Chapter 20 (2/2)

He went up to the cupboard. Then he did something to the lock with a bit of wire he happened to have in his pocket, and⁠—the big door swung open.

Orpington came forward quickly. He peered into the mahogany-lined cavity. It was empty, save for a shabby-looking red-leather despatch-box, on which, so faded as to be practically indecipherable, were embossed three gilt letters.

“That’s a rummy looking thing! One wouldn’t expect Mrs. Lexton would have such an object as this about,” and he lifted the despatch-box out of the cupboard.

It was surprisingly light.

“I wonder if she kept Gretorex’s love-letters in there,” said the other with a laugh. “If so, we may find something useful, eh?”

Orpington shook the box. Though it was so light he could feel that there was something in it which rolled about.

“You won’t find it as easy to open this box as you did that cupboard,” he observed, “but it has to be done.”

“The only way we could open this,” said the sergeant, decidedly, “would be with a kitchen knife, unless they’ve got a chisel.”

“You go and get what you can from the old woman.”

A minute or two later the man came back. “She’s in her room tidying up,” he said with a grin, “so I just took this without saying ‘by your leave.’ ” And he held up a short stout kitchen knife.

“You just lock that door,” said Orpington quickly.

And then, the two men, by exerting a great deal of strength, managed to prize open the hinges of the old despatch-box which had belonged to Ivy’s father. The lock stayed fast.

The inspector felt a pang of disappointment, for there only lay on the rubbed green velvet lining a lady’s fancy handbag.

And then Orpington suddenly remembered Mrs. Huntley’s sworn statement. In that statement was actually a description of the bag Ivy had had with her when the old woman had found her alone in the surgery with the jar of arsenic on the table before her. A bolster bag that “looked like mother-of-pearl.” This was the same one without doubt.

He took the odd little bag out of the despatch-box and pressed the jewelled knob⁠—to find nothing in it but a cable from South Africa. The signature, “Rushworth,” meant nothing to him, though of course he knew of the famous Rushworth Line.

Then he opened the little white leather-lined, inner pocket of the bag. It, too, was empty. A faint scent, that of a popular face powder, rose from it.

And then, suddenly, he noticed, with a queer quickening of his pulse, that a few grains of what looked like kitchen salt clung to the white leather sides.

Moistening his finger, he put it against the leather, and a few grains stuck on to his wet finger. Face powder? No, not face powder. He touched his finger with his tongue, and then the colour rushed up all over his face.

“I’d like Sir Bernard to have a squint at that!” he exclaimed, holding up the open bag.

“D’you mean you’ve found something?” the other cried excitedly.

“Hush!”

Carefully Orpington put the rather absurd-looking mother-of-pearl bolster into a big black bag which he had brought with him. Then he put the empty despatch-box back into the cupboard.

“Let’s get out of this,” he murmured, “before the old woman sees us. Can you manage to shut the cupboard as cleverly as you opened it?”

“I think I can,” said the other. And sure enough he did shut it, though it took him longer to lock up the half of the great early-Victorian cupboard than it had done to unlock it.

Orpington took a card out of his notebook. He wrote on it: “We’ve seen everything we wanted. Shan’t be troubling you any more,” and left it in a prominent place on the hall table.

Then he shut the front door rather loudly behind him, and, together, the two men went down the stairs by the side of the lift.

When they were safely out of the Duke of Kent Mansion, the inspector stayed his steps.

“I’ve got her!” he said exultingly. “Little Ivy will live to be sorry she bamboozled ‘yours truly,’ my boy!”