Five minutes later he was ringing the late Sir Lucien’s door-bell.

A constable admitted him, and he walked straight through into the study where Coombes, looking very tired but smiling undauntedly, sat at a littered table studying piles of documents.

“Anything to report?” rapped Kerry.

“The man, Mareno, has gone to bed, and the expert from the Home office has been—­”

Inspector Kerry brought his cane down with a crash upon the table, whereat Coombes started nervously.

“So that’s it!” he shouted furiously, “an ’expert from the Home office’!  So that’s the dark horse in the fur coat.  Coombes!  I’m fed up to the back teeth with this gun from the Home office!  If I’m not to have entire charge of the case I’ll throw it up.  I’ll stand for no blasted overseer checking my work!  Wait till I see the Assistant Commissioner!  What the devil has the job to do with the Home office!”

“Can’t say,” murmured Coombes.  “But he’s evidently a big bug from the way Whiteleaf treated him.  He instructed me to stay in the kitchen and keep an eye on Mareno while he prowled about in here.”

“Instructed you!” cried Kerry, his teeth gleaming and his steel-blue eyes creating upon Coombes’ mind an impression that they were emitting sparks.  “Instructed you!  I’ll ask you a question, Detective-Sergeant Coombes:  Who is in charge of this case?”

“Well, I thought you were.”

“You thought I was?”

“Well, you are.”

“I am?  Very well—­you were saying—?”

“I was saying that I went into the kitchen—­”

“Before that!  Something about ‘instructed.’”

Poor Coombes smiled pathetically.

“Look here,” he said, bravely meeting the ferocious glare of his superior, “as man to man.  What could I do?”

“You could stop smiling!” snapped Kerry.  “Hell!” He paced several times up and down the room.  “Go ahead, Coombes.”

“Well, there’s nothing much to report.  I stayed in the kitchen, and the man from the Home office was in here alone for about half an hour.”

“Alone?”

“Inspector Whiteleaf stayed in the dining-room.”

“Had he been ‘instructed’ too?”

“I expect so.  I think he just came along as a sort of guide.”

“Ah!” muttered Kerry savagely, “a sort of guide!  Any idea what the bogey man did in here?”

“He opened the window.  I heard him.”

“That’s funny.  It’s exactly what I’m going to do!  This smart from Whitehall hasn’t got a corner in notions yet, Coombes.”

The room was a large and lofty one, and had been used by a former tenant as a studio.  The toplights had been roofed over by Sir Lucien, however, but the raised platform, approached by two steps, which had probably been used as a model’s throne, was a permanent fixture of the apartment.  It was backed now by bookcases, except where a blue plush curtain was draped before a French window.