At six o’clock the body was taken away, and at seven-thirty, after an early dinner, Mr. Harton went.  Gertrude had not come down, and there was no news of Halsey.  Mr. Jamieson had taken a lodging in the village, and I had not seen him since mid-afternoon.  It was about nine o’clock, I think, when the bell rang and he was ushered into the living-room.

“Sit down,” I said grimly.  “Have you found a clue that will incriminate me, Mr. Jamieson?”

He had the grace to look uncomfortable.  “No,” he said.  “If you had killed Mr. Armstrong, you would have left no clues.  You would have had too much intelligence.”

After that we got along better.  He was fishing in his pocket, and after a minute he brought out two scraps of paper.  “I have been to the club-house,” he said, “and among Mr. Armstrong’s effects, I found these.  One is curious; the other is puzzling.”

The first was a sheet of club note-paper, on which was written, over and over, the name “Halsey B. Innes.”  It was Halsey’s flowing signature to a dot, but it lacked Halsey’s ease.  The ones toward the bottom of the sheet were much better than the top ones.  Mr. Jamieson smiled at my face.

“His old tricks,” he said.  “That one is merely curious; this one, as I said before, is puzzling.”

The second scrap, folded and refolded into a compass so tiny that the writing had been partly obliterated, was part of a letter—­ the lower half of a sheet, not typed, but written in a cramped hand.

“——­by altering the plans for——­rooms, may be possible.  The best way, in my opinion, would be to——­the plan for——­in one of the——­rooms——­chimney.”

That was all.

“Well?” I said, looking up.  “There is nothing in that, is there?  A man ought to be able to change the plan of his house without becoming an object of suspicion.”

“There is little in the paper itself,” he admitted; “but why should Arnold Armstrong carry that around, unless it meant something?  He never built a house, you may be sure of that.  If it is this house, it may mean anything, from a secret room—­”

“To an extra bath-room,” I said scornfully.  “Haven’t you a thumb-print, too?”

“I have,” he said with a smile, “and the print of a foot in a tulip bed, and a number of other things.  The oddest part is, Miss Innes, that the thumb-mark is probably yours and the footprint certainly.”

His audacity was the only thing that saved me:  his amused smile put me on my mettle, and I ripped out a perfectly good scallop before I answered.

“Why did I step into the tulip bed?” I asked with interest.

“You picked up something,” he said good-humoredly, “which you are going to tell me about later.”

“Am I, indeed?” I was politely curious.  “With this remarkable insight of yours, I wish you would tell me where I shall find my four-thousand-dollar motor car.”

“I was just coming to that,” he said.  “You will find it about thirty miles away, at Andrews Station, in a blacksmith shop, where it is being repaired.”