had come up behind us. "That's so," he confirmed. "I've just been having a word with the Inspector about that. He doesn't think anybody here will have to attend any inquiry or anything; the police evidence ought to be enough. So I was thinking, Mrs. Esdaile," he turned to Mollie, whose face was still pale and drawn and who bit the corner of her lip incessantly, "that the best thing for you to do is to stick to your program just as if this hadn't happened. You'll do no good staying[Pg 23] here. You didn't see it,"—here Joan Merrow, from the little sofa, raised her head but dropped it again without speaking—"well, I mean that even Joan didn't see anything that five hundred other people didn't see just as well. Rooke may just possibly be wanted, but anyway he'll be here. And as for Philip——" [Pg 23] He broke off abruptly. Of a sudden we all stared at one another. We had forgotten all about Philip. Where was he? If you remember, he had gone down into the cellar to fetch a bottle of wine. And in performing this simple errand he had been away for close on half an hour. Mollie Esdaile, all on edge again, turned swiftly to Monty Rooke. "Where is he? He did go down there, didn't he? You did give him the cellar key, didn't you? And nobody heard him go out of the house?" Well, that was a matter that was very easily ascertained. Already Hubbard had taken a stride towards the door that led to the cellar. But he did not reach the door. A footstep was heard behind it and the turning of a key, and Esdaile entered. In one hand he carried a stone jar of Dutch curaçao. In the other, arrestively out of place in the spring sunshine, its flame a dingy orange and its little spiral of greasy smoke fouling the air, he held a lighted candle in a flat tin stick. [Pg 24] [Pg 24] V For a moment we all gazed stupidly at that jar and candle; but the next moment our eyes were fastened on Philip's face.
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