“I am glad we have given you satisfaction,” said Tommy. “But I’m afraid I can’t stop. I have a most urgent appointment. Member of the Cabinet.”
He hurried out to the car and jumped in. Tuppence jumped in beside him.
“But Tommy,” she cried. “Haven’t they arrested Lady Laura, after all?”
“Oh!” said Tommy. “Didn’t I tell you? They’ve not arrested Lady Laura. They’ve arrested Elise.”
“You see,” he went on, as Tuppence sat dumbfounded, “I’ve often tried to open a door with soap on my hands myself. It can’t be done—your hands slip. So I wondered what Elise could have been doing with the soap to get her hands as soapy as all that. She caught up a towel, you remember, so there were no traces of soap on the handle afterwards. But it occurred to me that if you were a professional thief, it wouldn’t be a bad plan to be maid to a lady suspected of kleptomania who stayed about a good deal in different houses. So I managed to get a photo of her as well as of the room, induced her to handle a glass slide and toddled off to dear old Scotland Yard. Lightning development of negative, successful identification of fingerprints—and photo. Elise was a long lost friend. Useful place, Scotland Yard.”
“And to think,” said Tuppence, finding her voice, “that those two young idiots were only suspecting each other in that weak way they do it in books. But why didn’t you tell me what you were up to when you went off?”
“In the first place, I suspected that Elise was listening on the landing, and in the second place—”
“Yes?”
“My learned friend forgets,” said Tommy. “Thorndyke never tells until the last moment. Besides, Tuppence, you and your pal Janet Smith put