"Do you know this word?"
A longer hesitation. "Naturally," said Payne. "Did anybody else know it?"
"I consider that question an impertinence, sir," the other told him. Small brown teeth showed under his upper lip. His face had become all wrinkles and ugliness, the grey cropped hair drawn down. He hesitated again, and then added, more mildly: "Unless the late Mr. Timothy Starberth communicated it to his son by word of mouth. He never took the tradition very seriously, I am bound to say."
For a moment Sir Benjamin went prowling up and down before the fireplace, flapping his hands behind his back. Then he turned.
"When did you deliver the keys to young Starberth?" "At my office in Chatterham, late yesterday afternoon." "Was anybody with him?"
"His cousin Herbert."
"Herbert was not present during the interview, I take it?"
"Naturally not… I delivered the keys, and gave the only instructions left me: that he open the safe and the box, examine what was inside, and bring me one of the cards inscribed with Anthony Starberth's name. That was all."
Rampole, sitting far back in the shadow, remembered those figures in the white road. Martin and Herbert had been coming from the lawyer's office when he saw them, and Martin had uttered that inexplicable taunt, "The word is Gallows." And he thought of that paper, written over with the queer meaningless verses, which Dorothy had shown him; it was fairly clear, now, what had been inside the box, despite Dr. Fell's ridicule of a "paper." Dorothy Starberth sat motionless, her hands folded; but she seemed to be breathing more rapidly…. Why?
"You refuse to tell us, Mr. Payne," the chief constable pursued, "what was inside that box in the vault?"