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believe he had much in the way of non-professional correspondence. On the other hand, I cannot quite persuade myself that he was murdered, either; yet it is a fact that he was, so chances are that something may turn up.’
    ‘Would he not have kept personal papers in his flat rather than in his study?’ I asked.
    ‘Apparently not. The lady who came daily to clean and cook for him claims there wasn’t so much as a scrap in the house. But that’s normal enough, after all; his study was not really separate from his flat, it was just below it. He had a couple of large cabinets in his study, in which he piled and filed everything except whatever he was working on at the moment, which he kept in his desk.’
    ‘I see,’ I said. ‘All this makes me feel that I would dearly like to have a look around in his study. But I suppose it is hopeless, since you said that the police have sealed off the room.’
    ‘Well – at any rate they have locked it and carried off the key,’ he said.
    ‘And the spare one as well, I suppose,’ I replied. ‘Was there really no other?’
    ‘The police believe so,’ he replied with an indefinable expression, which might have been very slightly smug. ‘That is what the lady who did for him told them. But as a matter of fact, there is another. Ralston actually had his key copied, and he gave the copy to me on the eve of a trip to the Continent that he took one or two years ago. Of course he packed every document he thought he would need, but he still worried that once over there, he might realise that something he had left behind was absolutely indispensable after all. He wanted me to be able to fetch it out and send it to him in case that happened.’
    ‘And did he end up asking you to do so?’
    ‘No, he did not. In fact, I rather believe that he forgot about it altogether. He was a very possessive man, and I amquite certain that if he had remembered about the key, he would have asked me for it immediately upon his return. I forgot all about it myself, as a matter of fact. I simply added it to the ring of keys I usually keep at home. But I remembered it suddenly yesterday, when I got your telegram, and have brought the ring with me.’ And he proceeded to extract it from a leather case he carried. ‘I would be hard put to tell you which one it is on sight,’ he added, looking at the tightly crowded congregation of keys of all shapes and sizes, ‘but it must be here, and we shall find it. I only hope that our action cannot be considered illegal.’
    He flagged a cab and we climbed in and directed the driver to Adelphi Street. He occupied the drive in giving me sundry details and thumbnail sketches of the members of the department. I paid special attention to any mention of past conflicts, and retained a few names for further investigation. At length, the cab drew up in front of the library and we stepped out.
    It was peculiar to confront the tall iron grille, the impressive gate opening onto the street, and the wide path leading up between two narrow green swards to the heavy, square stone house, with the images that I had formed in my mind while listening to the descriptions of the place given to me in my own home. It was not really dissimilar to what I had imagined, yet it possessed the inexplicable additional sharpness of reality, which also distinguishes familiar figures seen in dreams from their actual embodiments.
    We walked up the path slowly. I tried to estimate how much time it took us, and to imagine suddenly seeing thetwo students come tearing around the corner of the house, and myself running to follow them inside. I wondered if the sequence of events could really be so impossible to adjust as the professors and police seemed to imagine, and if it would be possible, at some point, to make some experiments myself.
    We entered. The vast, square room with its enormous windows looking out in all directions was peopled only by two lonely figures. One, a young man with spectacles,