A Scream in Soho by John G. Brandon Page A

positive in my own mind that the door had never been opened, though why I was is more than I could tell you at the moment. But I was, and I was wrong. You were fairly sure that the body had been got away through it; you, too, were wrong. You can see for yourself how utterly impossible it would have been to do it without leaving, at least, a bloodstain or some tell-tale mark or other.”
    He next gave his attention to the huge, old-fashioned box lock of the door; from the size of it and its cumbersomeness, generally, it might well have been the original article, fitted when the house had been built. Its key must have been an enormous one, but, although it was locked, there was no sign of it. The door was also secured by two large iron bolts, top and bottom, both of which were shot. There was a spring lock set in above the old one.
    â€œNice chance we’d have had of breaking in here,” the inspector commented.
    â€œNot much, and that’s a fact,” the sergeant agreed, “we’d have had to have made entry by one of the windows. Though, of course,” he corrected himself, “there’d be the door from that area where you found the knife and the handkerchief.”
    â€œWe’d have found it bolted quite as securely as this one, I don’t doubt,” McCarthy said. “Anyhow, as we’re here you’d better bawl through the keyhole to the man on duty outside, and get him to send for the divisional-surgeon and the ambulance to remove Harper’s body to the mortuary. He’d better request your inspector to send some more men here at the same time. Tell him to instruct them to come to the back door with as little fuss as possible—and, under no circumstances, are any of them— any of them, mark y’—to so much as set foot inside that back gate until I’ve had a chance to go over the ground by daylight. And, moreover,” he added quickly as the sergeant was stooping to poke open the shield of a fairly large letter-slit to use it for transmitting his instructions, “for the love of Mike tell him to keep his hands off the door, and be careful not to let anyone else touch it. That may also have something to tell when I’ve a chance to get at it in daylight.”
    These instructions being faithfully, indeed almost belligerently, bawled through the keyhole to the man outside, the sergeant turned again to McCarthy.
    â€œWhat next, sir?” he asked.
    The inspector was giving his attention to the entirely modern Yale lock set in the upper part of the door.
    â€œThat was the mode of entrance, of course,” he remarked. “The big lock, in all probability, is not used at all—a clumsy contraption, and quite out of date. Though, of course,” he added, “there’s just a chance that it may be locked as a sort of additional safeguard last thing in the evening by the charladies when they depart. They’d probably exit by that back door, and the boy you spoke of come in by the same way.”
    But the sergeant shook his head.
    â€œNo, sir,” he said, very positively, “both the charwomen leave by the front door because I’ve seen them, and I’ve also seen the lad let himself in by the front door in the morning.”
    â€œHm,” McCarthy uttered musingly. “In that case, it isn’t possible for this big lock and those bolts to be used at all. So the situation, on the face of it, looks to be this. If the man who committed the outside crime came through this way, he must have let himself in by a latchkey, then turned the key in the big lock, and shot the bolts. The reason for that is obvious: to gain time should the police, arriving hurriedly on top of that scream, attempt to force entrance here. Finding that they did not, and that he had time to take things calmly, he stayed quietly where he was, until he thought it safe to venture out and make a getaway by the back door and through that