Molloy himself was no loss. His place could be filled a dozen times over. As to any harm that he could do, unless he had gone straight to the police, he could be reached—reached and silenced. And Ember knew his Molloy. He would not go straight to the police. If he meant to sell them, he would set about it with a certain regard for appearances. There would be pourparlers, some method of approach which would save his face and leave him an emergency exit. Ember checked over in his mind the four or five places to which Molloy might have retreated. Then there was the money. That they must have; but Molloy, once found, could be scared into giving it up.
Ember let his eyes travel around the laboratory. The lists lay upon the bench where Jane had put them not five minutes before. He frowned and picked them up, stared at them, and frowned more deeply still. They had been folded and refolded, doubled into a small package since he had last handled them. Who had done it? The sheets had been smooth from the typewriter when he gave them to Molloy. They had been handled and , with the that come from tight folding. Had Molloy meant to take them with him, and then at the last moment been afraid? It looked like it. He turned over the pages, counting them. Suddenly his eyes , his fingers their hold. There was a fresh smudge of ink on the top of the fifth page—a smudge so fresh that the blue ink had not yet turned black. That meant two things: Molloy had copied the lists before he left, and he had only been gone an hour or two—that at the outside, probably less.
In the moment that passed before Ember laid the papers down, Mr. Molloy received his death sentence as duly and irrevocably as if it had been pronounced by an Assize Judge in and ermine, white and black cap.
Ember gave just a little nod, opened a safe that stood in the corner, pushed the papers into it, and pocketed the key.
It was a little later that he found the first spot of candle grease. It was half-way up one of the side passages, on the spot where Jane had been when he and Molloy entered the laboratory the evening before. He looked at it for a long time very thoughtfully before he took his torch and proceeded to a search of the passages.
He found no living person, but came upon dropped wax in three more places, at the edge of the well, by the headland exit, and half-way down the steps to the beach. He came slowly back along the main passage, and stood for some time with his light focused on the sand which he had spread at the foot of the stair. There was no footmark upon it, but he was prepared to swear that it was not as he had left it. He had the sand loosely, and it was pressed down and too smooth. He thought that it had been smoothed by a hand passing over it. He mounted the first two steps. The thread of cotton which he had fastened across the stairway was still there. He beneath it, came to the top, and threw his light full upon the back of the panelled door. The second piece of cotton was gone.
He flashed the ray upon the floor once—twice. The third time he found what he was looking for, a fine black thread lying across the threshold. It ran out of sight under the door. Some one had gone out that way since Mr. Ember had come in. Who? Not Molloy—impossible that it could have been Molloy.
Ember passed through the panel, closed it behind him, and walked slowly and along the corridor to the library, still pursuing his train of thought. Molloy would have blundered through that first piece of cotton without ever feeling it at all, just as Molloy’s foot in its heavy boot would have been of the sand. If it was a woman who had passed—now who would have used a candle in the passages? Not Raymond. She had more than one electric torch which she used constantly for night work. But Renata, the little soft-spoken stupid mouse of a thing, if she had a fancy to go spying, she’d take a candle; yes, and let it too.
Mr. Ember’s instinct for danger had always reacted to this question of Renata Molloy. Over and over again there had been the , the response, the warning . An extreme regret that he had not arranged for a convenient accident to overtake Renata Jeffrey Ember. The , he , should be with as little delay as possible. He locked the library door and went to the telephone.
It took him half an hour to get the number that he wanted, but he betrayed no . When at last a man’s voice came to him, along the wire, he inquired in the Bavarian dialect, “Is that you, Number Five?” The voice said, “Yes,” whereupon Ember gave a password and waited until he had received the . He then began to issue orders, using an unhurried voice. Every now and then he shivered a little in the early morning cold, and his coat higher about his ears.
“You are promoted. You go up to Four and come on to the Council. I will notify you of the next meeting. Number Three is a
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