A pause in the conversation ensued: Blick began to pace the room again, thinking. The Chief Constable, who, during the whole of Lansbury’s narrative, had occupied himself in drawing apparently aimless lines on his blotting-pad, laid down his pen, sat back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling; he, too, was apparently in deep thought. But it was he who first broke the silence.
“I suppose von Eckhardstein is a wealthy man?” he said, turning to Lansbury.
“He enjoys that reputation in financial circles,” replied Lansbury. “You may safely say he is!”
“Not likely to murder another man for a couple of thousand pounds?”
“Well,” remarked the Chief Constable, with a glance at Blick, “it now looks as if Guy Markenmore was murdered for—not two, but three thousand pounds! Anyway, according to you, Mr. Lansbury, he’d that sum on him when you left him at, say, half-past three, and it wasn’t on him when his clothing was examined by Blick there, a very few hours later! Who got it? Where is it?”
Blick turned in his walk and came back to the hearth by which they were talking.
“Have you got the numbers of the notes you gave to Markenmore?” he asked. “I suppose you have, of course!”
“I have not,” replied Lansbury. “Careless, perhaps, but that’s so—I haven’t. But I reckon my bankers may have them—they enter numbers when paying them out, don’t they?”
“International Banking Corporation—London office in Bishopsgate,” replied Lansbury promptly. “But I can’t be certain that I got those particular notes there. I may have—in which case, they will have. But I mayn’t—in which case they won’t have. Those notes—or some of them—may have been paid to me by other people. And—once or twice, recently—I have cashed cheques for large amounts in other places than London. My financial operations are considerable, and I handle notes in large numbers.”
“All the same,” said Blick, “we’ll have to do what we can in tracing those notes. But now we’re faced with another matter. Von Eckhardstein is missing. His hostess thinks he’s had an accident while out on one of his night walks. I don’t!—I think he’s run away.”
“Why, now, Blick?” asked the Chief Constable.
“Why didn’t he come forward at the inquest and tell us what Mr. Lansbury has just told us?” answered Blick. “He’d the chance!—and he sat there and said nothing. Von Eckhardstein knows something—and he must be found. I wish I’d laid hands on him last night. Now, we must get to work on tracking him. You’d better come out with me to Markenmore, and let’s see into things.”