In the Night

The quiet of a fine summer evening was falling on the little village of Salting; the fields were slowly emptying as the dusk settled down, and the bar of the Rose and Crown was steadily filling with the heavy-footed, silent-minded labourers. Salting lies a mile or two away from a branch-line which ends with apparent inconsequence at a sleepy town some ten miles further; and the pursuits of its inhabitants, and in consequence their conversation, range eternally round the topics of the season and the crops and the simple, but not necessarily good-natured, personalities concerning one another. Nor is it a social district in the sense in which so many English neighbourhoods are, galvanized sporadically into an appearance of life by the moneyed activities of the upper classes. There are no small gentry, only farmers of varying prosperity; there is only one large estate, and though the great house which is hidden in the woods of it had been built for twenty-five years or more, it had never become in any sense part of the life of the place.

Salting Towers was the residence of Sir Roger Penterton, a man who cared nothing for the village which had happened to lie in the hollow below the hill selected as a suitable site for his house. He was not interested in agricultural affairs; he had chosen the locality solely because it was sufficiently convenient for the visits he continued to pay two and three times a week to the town in which he had pursued a highly successful career at the head of a big business; hence an appearance in a birthday honour list and that accretion of dignity and pride which proclaims itself in the carriage of a Knight. He liked, however, to fancy himself as a landed proprietor even while holding that class in the greatest contempt as a set of idle and unthrifty folk; the type of man of whom he was a shining example was, as he often used to proclaim as he stood astride of the fire in hall or smoking-room, the real backbone of the country. By years of hard work he had built up a fine business, amassed a large fortune, and incidentally married above himself. He had succeeded and not by any stroke of luck, but, as he would declare, by sheer industry, and so could any one else; he had no pity for failures. “Show me a failure and I’ll show you an idler,” was a favourite remark of his to those who tried to enlist his purse in aid of some charitable scheme.

As Inspector Humblethorne sat finishing his supper in the dingy coffee-room of the Rose and Crown, he could see the grandiloquent sweep of the drive as it crossed the park and disappeared into the wood which shut off the Towers from the village, and idly wondered where it led to. He had never heard of Sir Roger Penterton. The warmth of the evening and the freshness of the air had their usual subtle effect upon him, which the draining of a big glass of ale did nothing to dispel. He felt mellowed, sociable and well-pleased with himself, and heaved a big sigh to say so to all whom it might concern. It concerned nobody; that was the one objection to an otherwise entirely satisfactory state of things.

As he gazed out with dreamy eyes across the lane, watching the cattle which showed dimly in the meadow beyond and listening to the slow, ceaseless chatter of voices in the bar and the occasional sounds of the village, he had a vague feeling in his mind that he was ripe for conversation. He was not yet sufficiently accustomed to solitude to feel bored; ease and inactivity were still delightful companions, but nevertheless his mind did take hold for the first time of a certain indefinite feeling that he didn’t know quite what he was going to do with himself in this self-contained and seemingly lifeless spot. In town, whilst still shackled with work, nothing had seemed to him more deliciously original than to bury himself for his holiday in a picturesque and unexciting village, but it must be confessed that on this first evening a vague doubt as to the wisdom of this originality began to present itself to him. There wasn’t a soul to talk to, and he felt talkative, not to say, witty.

In this last it is possible he may have been deceived, for no one had yet associated wit with Emmanuel Humblethorne. His colleagues in the Force would have described him as a good little fellow, painstaking and accurate rather than intuitive in his work, and kind and helpful in his social relations. He was universally popular, even with those against whom his work was necessarily directed, but not exactly celebrated for his wit; he was of too sterling and quiet a strain to seem to incur that dangerous reputation. Nevertheless the fact remains on record that on this first free evening of his holiday he felt almost witty, and had no one upon whom to exercise the unusual faculty.

He was about to feel in his pocket for his pipe and rise from the table with the idea of strolling out and seeking amusement for himself, as it seemed obvious that none was coming to him of its own accord, when sounds outside indicated the arrival of another visitor to the Rose and Crown. But much to Humblethorne’s disappointment the newcomer, when at length he entered the coffee-room, showed himself openly, almost aggressively, indisposed to be sociable; he glanced at Humblethorne in a swift and rather nervous way which was certainly not suggestive of geniality, sat down at the furthest end of the table without a word and, after glancing at his watch, drew out a crumpled newspaper, put his elbows on the table and, resting his head upon his hands, began to read.

Humblethorne, checked in the casual greeting which he was about to give, filled his pipe with the studious regard of the completely idle man and let his eyes rest vacantly upon the stranger. Now that he was cheated of a companion the little curiosity he would have had was without reason, but the mind is often above reason and after its bent has been given it by years of training and application will proceed quite happily on its own account. Humblethorne did not know he was taking in the stranger detail by detail, but his mind in fact received a clear and reproducible impression of a tall, thin man of about thirty-three or thirty-four years of age, with hands which bore indistinct indications of refinement and clothes that bore none. A few minutes later when the stranger’s supper was brought in and he was compelled to give over his steady reading of the paper, Humblethorne also noted in the same uninterested way that he had a mouth of delicate sensibility unusual for a man of his apparent status, and above it a pair of restless and perhaps anxious eyes.

These met his as the stranger, after another glance at his watch, began his supper; and he gave a curt nod in forced recognition of the other’s presence, of which Humblethorne took immediate advantage.

“Mind my lighting up?” he inquired affably as he struck a match.

“Not at all,” replied the stranger, but without the least sociability.

“A fine evening,” resumed Humblethorne, “and looks like keeping fine for a bit.”

The stranger took no notice whatever of this original conversationalism, but Humblethorne, undaunted, tried again: “Know this part of the country at all?”

The other mumbled an unwilling, “Not very well.”

“Stopping here long, then,” persisted Humblethorne.

“What the devil’s that to you?” answered the stranger, suddenly looking up with surprising surliness.

“Nothing, nothing at all,” replied Humblethorne, rising in high indignation, “except that if you are, I’m not,” after which he slammed the door violently behind him and felt slightly better.

“Jolly sort of philanthropist to run up against on a holiday,” grumbled the little man to himself as he left the inn and struck out down the lane. “What boors we English are! Now if that had been a Frenchman we’d have been bowing and parlevooing away like anything by this time. Damn the fellow, he’s quite put me out of temper.”

He wandered on in an absent manner and his anger quickly cooled as he drew in the fresh, sweet air of the July night and exchanged a pleasant “Good evening” with a couple of labourers plodding by in the gloom. By the time that he had found a convenient stile, which seemed to invite a man to lean on it and look along the misty darkness of the valley, his good humour was quite restored and he had even begun to blame himself. “What an infernal thing it is,” he mused, “to get into the habit of always asking questions; it’s bad enough when you’re interested in the answers, but hopeless when you aren’t in the least. I suppose it’s too late, though, for me to alter that, and it has certainly proved useful once or twice; I doubt if I should ever have got onto the track in the Scrawley case if it hadn’t been for that chance conversation in the ’bus!” He was thinking, as he often did, of the one great case in his career when, favoured by a singular piece of luck, he had succeeded where a much more brilliant man had been totally at sea; it had won him promotion and gained for him a temporary reputation, subsequently to sink to a more solidly based but less elevated level, and it was a harmless belief of his that he might have succeeded without it. “I suppose I resented his seeming to think I had a reason for my remarks just because I might have had,” he thought, and drifted away into a reverie on the inconsequent perversity of human nature.

When at last he returned to the inn after a long silent communing with the stars, which on this still, clear night powdered the heavens with peculiar brilliance, he found the landlord standing at the door and entered immediately into the easy conversation he had been so long denied.

“A glorious night,” he said, “do you often have weather like this?”

“Well, it’s middlin’ good here as a rule about this time o’ year,” replied the man with something of that rather sententious condescension with which inhabitants of a place so often speak of fine weather to a stranger, as if suggesting that they have had some hand in it and should be regarded with gratitude accordingly. “You don’t get much of this sort in Lunnon, likely,” he added, “and I s’pose it’s natural you should notice it. Powerful lot of rain we had last night, though. The other gennelman, ’e’s out somewhere too, enjoying hisself; I shall be locking ’im out if ’e don’t come in soon.”

“Who is he, d’you know?” asked Humblethorne incuriously.

“No, sir. Traveller, I should say; leastways ’e ain’t stayin’ here, except just for the night, as you might say.”

“Well, I’m not sorry to hear it; he’s an unsociable sort of devil. Now I like a fellow who can talk a bit. Pretty place you have here.”

“Ay, it is that, so I’m told.”

“What’s the best walk about here?” continued Humblethorne. “Not too far; I’m not much of a walker, but I should like to see a bit of the country whilst I’m here.”

“I couldn’t rightly say,” answered the landlord slowly; “I don’t hold for walkin’ myself, and besides I ain’t been here long.”

“No! I thought you’d have been born here.”

“Lord, no; what made you think that, sir? I’ve been here six months come Michaelmas; ’ad a place down Melbury way before that, that’s where I was bred.”

Conversation flourished on similarly simple lines for some time and presently from the clock in the village church midnight boomed out slowly.

“Twelve o’clock!” exclaimed the landlord. “Time I was abed. Wunnerful how time goes when you get talkin’. If you ain’t a-comin’ in just yet, sir, will you have the kindness to lock this door and put out the lamp?”

“With pleasure,” replied Humblethorne. “I shall just finish this pipe and then I shall be turning in, too.”

The continued absence of the stranger had passed out of mind, and Humblethorne had just knocked out the pipe he always declared was the best of the whole day and turned to obey the injunction of the landlord, when he heard hurried steps in the lane, and in another minute the surly stranger came into the little ring of light cast by the lamp. He shot a keen glance of apparent resentment at the sight of Humblethorne standing with one hand on the door, brushed past him without a word, passed through and closed the door quickly and with unnecessary force behind him.

“Quite the gentleman,” murmured Humblethorne as he reopened it; “my gratitude for not being locked out is amazing. Now I should say,” he added thoughtfully as he lit his candle and put the light out, “that that young fellow was following a true instinct in taking a dislike to me—but it’s no concern of mine.”

With which piece of philosophy he went to bed.

Earlier on the same evening, about six o’clock to be more exact, two young girls were playing an unequal set of tennis up at the Towers. They were nearly of an age, between twenty-three and twenty-four, but there was almost as much difference in their appearance as there certainly was in their play. Celia Penterton was very pretty, fair of complexion, slender in figure and delicate both in feature and physique, with a grace in every movement which was quite unavailing to impart accuracy to her strokes; she was getting badly beaten by her friend, Evelyn Temple, who had a transparent vivacity and charm about her which owed nothing to beauty and was playing with an easy skill sufficient for victory without exertion. She looked a picture of mental and bodily health as she stood on the court, laughing, full of attraction in the simple white dress which set off the glow of her cheeks, and swung her racket gaily into the air to mark the end of the game.

“Play up, Celia!” she cried. “You aren’t having a look in.”

“I know; it’s hopeless playing against you, Evie,” answered Celia; “and I’m worse than usual to-day, and besides, I am so hot.”

“D’you want to go on?”

“Not much; I can’t give you a decent game.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter, though you aren’t exactly at your best, I must say.”

“No, I know; as a matter of fact, I’ve rather a headache.”

“My dear, why didn’t you tell me?” exclaimed Evelyn.

“Well, it wasn’t much, and I thought perhaps a set would drive it away, but it hasn’t,” answered Celia.

“Then we certainly won’t go on.”

The two came together at the net collecting the balls and Evelyn looked at her friend with concern. “Nothing the matter, is there?” she asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” replied Celia doubtfully.

“If I were you, I think I should go and lie down for a bit before dinner,” said Evelyn; “you haven’t been quite up to the mark for the last day or two.”

“So obvious as all that?” inquired Celia, and it seemed as if the question was not asked in a wholly idle spirit.

“Not obvious to any eyes but mine, darling,” replied Evelyn; “at least I shouldn’t think so. Anyway, go and have a rest now; you’ll be catching cold otherwise.”

“It might be just as well,” agreed Celia, “though I’m all right; you needn’t be alarmed.”

“I’m not, only you are such a goose sometimes.” Evelyn put her arm affectionately round her friend’s waist as she spoke; she was in reality a few months the younger of the two, but in all the years of their friendship the leadership had been freely surrendered to her.

Left to herself, she sat down on the bench beside the court and, flinging one arm carelessly over the back, after a few moments took up the book which she had laid down before the game. Thus engaged, she failed to see a young man come lifelessly along the path from round the back of the house: he saw her, however, at once, and pleasure showed openly in his face as he struck across the grass towards the bench. His slightly drooping shoulders and rather pale cheeks made him look older than his real age which was just over thirty-one; his eyes showed bright and even penetrating behind his pince-nez, but had a tired look in them which his pleasure had momentarily displaced, and his dark lounge suit, neat but by no means new, looked a little out of the picture. Evelyn did not hear him until he was quite close, and then she looked suddenly up and smiled to see him.

“Well, this is a bit of luck, isn’t it?” he said, dropping naturally on to the other end of the bench and surveying her with an air which plainly showed that he meant what he said.

“It entirely depends on what you call luck,” she answered lightly. “Personally I was not complaining before; it’s a good book. Ever read it?” She held it up.

“Yes, ages ago,” he answered; “that is, not yet, but I will if you like, though I haven’t a moment. But hang it all, I don’t feel literary and I hope you don’t. Where’s Celia?”

“Gone in with a headache.”

“Oh, dear; too bad on a day like this. One of the most perfect we’ve had this year, isn’t it? And so useless—until this very minute, that is.”

“Useless, why? You don’t look over well yourself, my friend, now that I come to look at you.”

“I’m quite well; it isn’t that, Evelyn.”

“Well, what is it then?”

“Same old trouble, only worse. It was a bit thick that Sir Roger should have selected to-day of all days to have what he calls a grand clear up; yesterday, when it was raining cats and dogs, would have been better, wouldn’t it? But I don’t mind that; after all, he can do what work he likes when he likes, and I’m here for nothing else. But what I do object to is his way of doing it. The first thing he said to me, for instance, this morning when he got to his desk was ‘Now, my lad, I’ll have you remember you’re paid to work, not loaf about and look pretty. Why the devil wasn’t all this ready for me yesterday?’ and in that nasty hard voice of his, which always reminds me of the shutting of a despatch box. I pointed out to him as quietly as I could——”

“I know that quiet way of yours,” interrupted Evelyn; “it’s rather irritating, you know, sometimes, Philip, especially to a man like Sir Roger.”

“Well, I try not to make it so, but I can’t help the facts, can I? He had distinctly told me a couple of days ago to leave the thing over till to-day; and he was furious when I reminded him of what he’d said. It seems to me sometimes that he takes a perfect delight in petty tyranny.”

“Oh, I don’t like to think that.”

“He used not to be so bad, but he’s getting worse, and when he has a touch of gout he really is the very deuce. As a matter of fact, I don’t really mind his manner, except sometimes, but just lately he has begun to hint at things.”

“What d’you mean by things?”

“Well——” he paused irresolutely and then continued, “he doubted my word the other day, more than half suggested I was feathering my own nest at his expense, cooked his accounts, if you want to know; and then when he found he was wrong and I was fool enough to think he’d apologize—not he; all he said was that I’d better be careful, he’d got his eye on me. I tell you, Evelyn, it’s rotten.” He stared out gloomily across the lawn.

“I’m sure it is,” she answered with real sympathy. “Tell me, how’s the book going? That is always a great consoler, isn’t it?”

“It used to be,” he replied, “but I’m stuck. It began so well last summer, didn’t it?”

“Yes, I liked the first part very much.”

“Well, all I’ve done since is heavy; I feel it is and I’m sure you’d think so. I haven’t been able to get the necessary lightness, and a tale of that sort is no good at all unless it’s told charmingly. However,” with a swift transition to brightness, “I don’t care really about anything else as long as I’m here. That’s the real trouble,” he frowned heavily again and went on with a return to gloom; “he’s begun to intimate that he’s only waiting for a chance to sack me.”

“Philip!”

“Yes, I know, and that I simply won’t bear. I’ll see that he doesn’t get a legitimate chance, but if he makes one—and he’s quite capable of doing it—well, let him look out for himself, that’s all.”

“Oh, come, what melodrama! I can’t believe he’s the least likely to do anything of the sort.”

“I can easily.”

“Well, and if he did, what would, what could you do?”

“Do?” repeated Philip, in a tone of sudden ferocity. “What wouldn’t I do?”

“You’re tired and you’re talking wildly,” said Evelyn quietly, “and you know it. It wouldn’t matter much, would it, if he did; there are heaps of better openings for you.”

“Wouldn’t it?” asked Philip scornfully. “You wouldn’t care, I suppose, not a bit?”

“Don’t be absurd; I should care very much if he sacked you, as you call it. But you might anticipate him, if you really dislike working under him so—if it becomes unbearable, I mean; and that would be quite different.”

“I sometimes believe you haven’t a heart at all,” he retorted. “How would it be different? I should have to go away from here just the same.”

“Are you so fond of the place?” she asked.

“The place! Good Lord, no!” He was taken aback by her literalness.

“Well then,” she continued, “I really can’t see what you mean.”

“Can’t you? People can be very dense sometimes. This place means you, and I’ll put up with a lot more than I have done yet just to be with you.”

“You’re very nice, Philip,” she answered with a change of tone, “only you don’t mean half the flattering things you say. Why, I’m only here sometimes; this place isn’t my home.”

“It seems to be,” he replied. “I mean—well, I don’t mean that as it sounds. And, anyway, that’s not the point; it’s the only place in which I ever see you or am ever likely to see you, and before I let that old beast drive me from it, I’ll, I’ll——”

“Don’t. You mustn’t talk of him like that. He’s not as kind as he might be, I know—I know it a great deal better than you do, Philip, for all your work with him”—there was a note of real sadness in her voice—“but after all he’s my host, and you’re his secretary, and we mustn’t sit and abuse him here. Let’s talk of something else.”

“Very well,” he assented reluctantly; “only it’s a great relief; the man who invented swearing knew very well what he was about; it has prevented a multitude of crimes—but on your head be it. What shall we talk about? The beautiful sunshine or your irresistible charm?”

“You are too ridiculous for words sometimes,” she laughed. “If I thought you meant a word of what you say I should be very angry with you.”

“Oh, do,” he pleaded. “I’ve seen you in many moods and I don’t know one in which you’re not more fascinating than any other girl I ever met. But I’ve never seen you angry, and it must be worth watching.”

“It is,” she acknowledged—“from a distance, and I said ‘angry with you.’ ”

“Yes, I admit the direction of the blow might make a difference; I’ve no doubt you can hit straight.”

“Perhaps; I don’t know. The only time I’ve ever really been angry—I don’t count just flyings out and in again, you know; they’re like the pebbles on the beach both for quantity and importance—but really angry, I didn’t hit at all; I couldn’t. It wouldn’t have done the least bit of good, only made things worse.”

The lightness had dropped from her voice; she was obviously speaking of something which touched her nearly still, and his tone changed in sympathy.

“When was that?”

“It was when John was driven away from home.”

“Oh, yes,” he murmured.

“It has meant more to Lady Penterton and to Celia than they will ever acknowledge—and never to speak to him again. Oh, it was odious! You would hardly remember it,” she went on more quietly, “it must be nearly ten years ago.”

“I do,” he said. “It was soon after I came. John and I were friends, of a sort, you know, and, as a matter of fact, it was John who originally recommended me to Sir Roger.”

“Was it? You have never told me that.”

“Well, there was no reason why I should; there wasn’t much in it. I mean, it was my references rather than his recommendation which got me the place. I suppose I didn’t mention it because he’s the forbidden subject. D’ you know, I shouldn’t wonder if that isn’t at the bottom of Sir Roger’s treatment of me. I never thought of it before.”

“It is possible,” she agreed thoughtfully; “but I don’t know, he’s like that to everybody. Only yesterday I heard him using dreadful language to old Fairlie; called him a Mid-Victorian fossil with epithets thrown in I won’t repeat.”

“I wonder the old man stands it,” remarked Philip.

“He wouldn’t, not for a day, if it was a case of Sir Roger alone, but he’ll live and die with Lady Penterton and Celia.”

“Yes, he’s a faithful old card.”

“He’s a dear,” exclaimed Evelyn warmly, “only he does require living up to. It’s too comic the way he shows his disapproval when Celia and I are being frivolous; I sometimes can’t help shocking him just for the fun of it, and he ought to know us by this time.”

“It seems to me,” remarked Philip casually, “that we are straying from the subject. I don’t object to abusing Sir Roger, as I think you know; he’s a poisonous——”

“Now, then!”

“Well, as I was saying,” he continued imperturbably, “I don’t object to discussing you, angry or otherwise, but I do draw the line at discussing Fairlie.”

“A very respectable subject.”

“Yes, that’s just it; respectability is the curse of conversation.”

“You’re now in a pretty dilemma,” she said, rising; “you don’t object to discussing me, but you do object to discussing a respectable subject: thank you, sir.” She made him a mock bow, and started merrily for the house.

“No, don’t go!” he pleaded. “Please don’t; I’ll be very good.”

“Even that prospect cannot detain me,” she answered over her shoulder; “I shall be late for dinner as it is.”

He watched her enter the house and then mechanically lit a cigarette. “Damn!” he said forcibly. “I haven’t said one single thing I meant to, and I’ve said a great many I didn’t mean to at all.”

Humblethorne lay late in bed the following day—wallowed in bed would perhaps be a more fitting description of the way in which he shamelessly and luxuriously stretched himself down between the sheets long after his usual time of rising. It was due to no feeling of fatigue; he had slept without stirring and, as the occupant of the adjoining room could have testified if he had been disposed to do so, with a sonorous simplicity. It was due to laziness, self-indulgence unmitigated. He had even gone to the lengths, in order to enjoy his extra hour the more, of getting out and pulling up the blind, so that his eyes might rest comfortably on the sunny meadows outside, and then getting back into bed again, an act which, as all true sluggards will bear witness, denotes the lover of laziness for laziness’s own sake.

He heard and vociferously answered the knock of the girl announcing morning and hot water, but took no steps whatever to prevent the latter getting cold outside his door; he was startled from a fugitive dream by the thump of his boots, but again he made no movement to empty the passage. If the truth must be told, it was more than laziness which kept him in bed; it was the truth dimly acknowledged that he had no idea what he was going to do with himself all day long. Somehow those meadows, sun notwithstanding, had an insipidity in his eyes which the vision of them a few days ago in town had certainly lacked. Then he had felt so sure, that it admitted of no question, that he had only to be among them, with nothing to do, to be absolutely happy; already on realization of his vision he found it vaguely unsatisfying. He was, he perceived, no country lark but a very ordinary London sparrow; he was not already bored, but he had a feeling that he very soon might be. At any rate he saw no need to make the day needlessly long; he couldn’t sit indefinitely many hours alone in a meadow. So it happened that when at last he came down to a perfectly cold breakfast—he had forgetfully ordered it to be ready at 8.15, and it had been, within twenty minutes or so—he found the table laid for one and no trace of the surly stranger of the previous evening. That did not depress him and he rang happily for a fresh brew of tea, rang two and three times, but nobody took the least notice, though he could hear a great deal of talking going on in the servants’ quarters. It seemed so animated that he lacked the courage to go and make his wants known, and after a long wait he sat down to his meal in no very good humour, vowing that when next he chose to be lazy he would at any rate have his breakfast brought up to him.

He finished, however, all that was on the table, and then, lighting a pipe, strolled out of the coffee-room with placidity restored. In the passage he met Timmins, the landlord, who wore a very obvious air of great importance.

“Good morning!” said Timmins in a sepulchral voice of pleasure, in response to Humblethorne’s greeting. “Dreadful news this morning, isn’t it?”

“What’s that? I have heard nothing,” replied Humblethorne.

“Not heard? Bless my soul, I thought as every one knew it by this time. Why,” coming closer and speaking slowly and deeply so as to extract the fullest amount of dramatic effect from a new listener—he had had a good deal of practice that morning and was getting distinctly good at it—“Sir Roger was found dead on ’is own stairs, right there in the ’all, they say, this very morning! Terrible wounds on his ’ed too; seems as if they’d really set on ’im proper, don’t it?”

“You don’t say so!” exclaimed Humblethorne. Timmins was disappointed; the quiet little man had seemed such a splendid subject for the gratifying reception of gruesome details, and yet he did not seem particularly impressed, at least, not in the way in which Timmins had expected. A thoughtful look came into his eyes and then they lit up with a gleam that Timmins took for pleasure but was really professional interest.

“Ah,” said Timmins, “I see you knew ’im. Well, there ain’t many as’ll be sorry, a hard-hearted old grasper ’e was and no mistake. But isn’t it terrible? So sudden-like. There’ll be a sight of people over, I’m thinking. It’s lucky as I ordered in an extry large joint for to-day. Bound to be busy ’ere with a thing like that ’appening. But it’s a kind of reflection on the place, look at it ’ow you will, don’t you think?”

“No, I didn’t know him,” said Humblethorne, breaking abruptly into these remarks. “But of course I’m interested: I’m an inspector of police, though you’ll help me by not letting on about that in the village.”

“You leave it to me, sir,” said Timmins importantly. “Lord! An inspector! Knew all about it before’and, I’ll lay, and came here on the quiet-like.”

“No, indeed I did not,” replied Humblethorne warmly: his sense of propriety was outraged at the expense of his sense of humour.

“You leave it to me,” repeated Timmins in suppressed tones of confidence; “I’ll see as nobody twigs your little game; I’ll see you through.”

“I suppose there’s a police-station in the village,” said Humblethorne, ignoring the heavy suggestion of alliance.

“Yes, sir, just along to the left. Birts, Sergeant Birts, is your man: shall I step round with you?”

Humblethorne declined the offer, though Timmins assured him more than once it would be no trouble, not the least in the world, busy as he was what with the expected custom and one thing and another. But as Humblethorne had a rooted objection on principle to giving offence to any one who might conceivably be useful to him—or to any one else for that matter—he contrived to avoid doing so by intimating that Timmins would be of great assistance if he kept an eye upon any chance visitors to the inn. He left Timmins finally with an accession of importance which was terrifying to behold, and made his way quietly along the village to the police-station. Here an official card and a very few words sufficed to establish his identity; and as the details of the great Scrawley case had lingered on in the retentive minds of the country police long after it had been forgotten by their busier brethren he found it likely that even the sergeant would regard his appearance as a godsend. He was able quickly to satisfy himself that it was at any rate a case of suspected violence and, inwardly rejoicing at the dissipation of all his fears of boredom, desired that a telegram should be sent to headquarters asking that he should be put in charge.

Humblethorne had always firmly believed in refusing to speculate upon untrustworthy data: gossip and second-hand evidence were far more often misleading than helpful; the mind was too apt to catch up and assimilate what it first received with the possible result that later and more important information attracted less attention than it deserved, at least so he had found. So he had deliberately abstained from questioning Timmins, and now, having learned that Sir Roger Penterton had indeed been found dead in a state suggesting foul play, he asked no further questions of the eager subordinate. Sergeant Birts was “with the corpse,” he was informed, and with no haste but equally no unnecessary delay Humblethorne now bent his steps in the same direction.

From the social status and business importance of the dead man the case was bound to attract attention, and the thinly populated locality suggested that the tracking of the criminal would not be a specially difficult matter. Humblethorne saw himself the speedy solver of an important crime, and it was in high spirits that he passed up the drive, which ran across the park and entered the woods at the point at which he had watched it the previous evening. He emerged onto a large and beautifully kept garden which stretched on either side of the drive, and another hundred yards brought him in front of the big, modern mansion known as Salting Towers.

It looked as if the owner had originally demanded comfort of his architect and made no stipulation as to beauty, beyond, indeed, the adornment of pretentious towers at either end; it was a rambling, irregular building with a large gravel space before the heavy door which was set nearly in the centre of the house. On the right-hand side clumps of rhododendrons, abutting on the gravel, shut off the drive as it went on to the back entrance; on the left a large expanse of lawn stretched away, broken up near the house by a few flower-beds. A gravel path cut the lawn round the house, leaving only room for a strip of grass and for a narrow flower-bed from which grew ivy of no great age and Virginian creeper.

So much Humblethorne noted whilst walking up—a house not difficult of access, he decided, if, as seemed likely, the lawn and path ran on round to the left in front of the south aspect. He rang the bell and waited. After an interval he was just about to ring again when the door was suddenly opened by a large individual in sergeant’s uniform who ran his eyes aggressively over the visitor and inquired: “What might you be wanting?”

“Am I speaking to Sergeant Birts?” asked Humblethorne pleasantly.

“That’s my name. Who are you?”

“I am Inspector Humblethorne; possibly you have heard of me,” he handed over a card as he spoke, which the sergeant took with no very good grace.

“You’re early on the field, sir,” he said at length. “How on earth did you hear of the case so soon?”

Humblethorne looked at him closely a moment and allowed the dream he had pleased himself with spinning as he walked up to vanish. “I am staying at the Rose and Crown,” he said; “and so could hardly do otherwise than make it my business to assist you. I inquired at the station and they told me you were here, as I expected; so I came up at once. I need hardly say, sergeant, that I shall see you get full credit for any success which may attend our efforts; I know so well what it means to a man to have an important case at last.”

The sergeant’s face brightened instantly. “It’s very good of you to say so, sir,” he said, heartily. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sorry you’re here.” He paused and then added with professional impressiveness, “it’s a case, sir. Of course I’ve only had time to make a few preliminary inquiries, but there isn’t a clue of any sort; in fact, I think you’ll admit it has some curious features. But come in.”

“I never knew a case yet without a clue of some sort, but whether there’s one that leads to anything is another matter,” Humblethorne replied as he stepped through the door and found himself in the large hall of the house. He then stood, without going further, familiarizing his eyes with the surroundings, according to his invariable rule.

“That’s where the body was found,” said the sergeant, pointing half-left to the foot of the broad staircase, which ascended from the hall to a landing and then turned upward again to the first floor; “lying on the floor by the stairs there, it was.”

“And isn’t it now?” asked Humblethorne sharply. “What’s that under the sheet?”

“Them’s only the marks; the body’s in the smoking-room, first room on the left there.”

“Who moved it?” exclaimed Humblethorne with much severity. “Did you?”

“Yes, sir; at least——” Birts grew rather red under Humblethorne’s eye, and went on less confidently: “I allowed it to be moved after the doctor had seen it and I’d had a careful look.”

“You allowed it to be moved! What were you about?”

“Well, sir; I’d seen all there was to see, and of course I had no idea you were coming.”

“You’d seen all there was to see!” There was as much contempt in the little man’s voice as he was capable of by nature. “Good Lord, man, how on earth could you? You haven’t had any special training. Why in the name of all that’s holy didn’t you wait? If I hadn’t come somebody else would probably have been sent from London as soon as they’d heard of it there.”

“I’m extremely sorry, sir; I see I was hasty. But Mr. Castle, him as is secretary to Sir Roger, asked me when I’d finished looking if it couldn’t be moved away from the staircase; he said it was dreadful to have it lying there all day, where every one had to pass to go upstairs. Of course, it was broad daylight by then. Naturally,” ended Birts, red and apologetic, “I shouldn’t have moved it if he hadn’t asked me to.”

“Well,” said Humblethorne, “it’s no use crying over spilt milk. It’s done now. But never, never move anything—in a case of this kind everything may depend on it. I should have thought you’d have known as much, even in the country. Who found the body?” he asked abruptly.

“Mr. Castle did, about half-past one this morning. We can tell you exactly how it lay, sir,” added Birts eagerly, “and of course we took particular care not to touch the stains or anything. Come and look, sir.”

“In a minute. Let me just get the geography of this place clear; on the left, first, smoking-room, then drawing-room, is that it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s this room on our right—dining-room?” He stepped forward, opened the door and looked in and satisfied himself that it was so. “And opposite the main door, ah, the billiard-room. Where does this passage lead to?” pointing to one that led off to the right separating the dining-room from the billiard-room.

“That goes through to the kitchen and leads off round to the left of Sir Roger’s study and also Mr. Castle’s room.”

“And the body was found by Mr. Castle about 1.30 this morning lying in this hall to which five doors and a passage have access. Any explanation?”

“No, sir, absolutely none. Nobody that I’ve seen so far heard anything or saw anything at all. But of course I haven’t had time yet for a proper inquiry.”

“Very singular. Windows and doors all right, eh?”

“No traces so far as I have discovered. Fairlie—that’s the butler—assures me he locked up as usual last night; and the maids say everything was all right this morning.”

“That looks bad. Who does the household consist of?”

“Sir Roger and her ladyship—dreadfully upset she was at the news, so I heard, though he wasn’t exactly what you’d call a kind husband, but I daresay she thought more of him than we did and it would be a shock to an old lady at the best of times; she was always so particular, too, to have things just so. Then there’s the daughter, Miss Celia, great friends she and I used to be when she was little—she’s all right. Then there’s Miss Temple, Miss Celia’s friend, but she isn’t really an extra; she’s always staying here: like sisters those two are, and I’ve known her ever since she was so high,” putting his hand on a level with his waist. “Mr. Castle, again, has been secretary here for a great many years; very clever he is, and very easy to get on with too, I must say. He’s high-strung and finding the corpse upset him a bit, but he’s all right.” Birts spoke grudgingly; he regarded Castle as the man who had got him into trouble. “Then there’s Fairlie, James Fairlie, and he again has been here, well, as long as I can remember and was with her ladyship’s family, so I believe, before she married, and is as decent an old fellow as you’d see anywhere. Not much to go upon yet, sir, is there?”

“Too early to give an opinion,” replied Humblethorne, cautiously. “I’m not sure whether it helps or hinders most to know them all as you do. It certainly saves a lot of questioning, but then it prejudices a man also.”

“Perhaps it does, sir; but then I know it isn’t anything but waste of time to go suspecting some people—Miss Celia, for example. Why, that girl, sir, just couldn’t hurt a soul; I don’t believe she could if she was to die for it. She’s been delicate, as you might call it, for a long time, for one thing.”

“And yet,” remarked Humblethorne gravely, “if you recall the Featherstone mystery, there was a girl just as you describe, gentle and popular, a member of societies for doing charitable things and all that—and she did have to die for it. One thing is certain and that is that you can’t ever be sure about human nature; at least, that’s my experience. Many a criminal has concealed a cold-blooded heart under a guise of benevolence, and it doesn’t do in our profession to forget it, Birts. Suspect everybody at first, and don’t allow your sympathies to put any possibility out of your calculations. Not, of course,” he observed, seeing polite incredulity in the sergeant’s face, “that I have at present the least doubt of Miss Penterton’s innocence; all I mean is, I shan’t refuse facts if later they should point to her—that’s all. And now who else lives here?”

“Only servants, besides those I’ve mentioned. None of them been here long except Fairlie and the cook. Sir Roger used to upset them a bit, you know; he was rough with his tongue when put out. But there’s nothing against any of them: footman seems an ordinary sort of lad. Comes from Southhurst, that’s nine miles away; I can easily find out all about him.”

Whilst they had been talking, Humblethorne had been taking in the hall with a steady general scrutiny; and now expressed himself ready for a more particular examination. They moved accordingly to the spot at which the body had been found; and Birts carefully removed the sheet which had been covering it.

“You’ll hear the facts from Mr. Castle yourself, of course,” he said; “but Sir Roger was lying just here on his right side, with his head here.” He indicated the marble just below the left-hand bottom corner of the stairs.

“When did you see it?” asked Humblethorne, gazing intently at the tell-tale stains which, spreading across the marble, had soaked into the edge of the carpet. A heavy silver cigarette box of Indian workmanship, adorned with richly embossed figures, lay with cigarettes scattered round it just at the foot of the stairs and a little to the left side: further to the left, a couple of yards away beyond the stains, lay a heavy stick.

“About half-past five this morning.”

“Not till then.” Humblethorne looked up quickly.

“No; I was only told of the crime at twenty past four. Alfred, that’s the footman, came on a bicycle.”

“And the body was found about one—a long interval, Birts; much might happen in that time. Has anything besides the body been moved that you know of?”

“Well, sir, some of these cigarettes were lying on the stairs. I let Mr. Castle move them; he asked if he might and I didn’t see no harm; they were on the stairs so as to make it awkward to pass.” Humblethorne silently invoked heaven, so that Birts added hastily, “They’re all here, though, I counted them to make sure. But you’ll hear Mr. Castle yourself.”

“I intend to; and next time, for the Lord’s sake don’t move or let anyone move a thing: It makes it hopeless.” Humblethorne knelt down and examined everything, especially the stick and cigarette box, with the utmost care. The box was lying close to where the dead man’s head had rested; the main bloodstain ran up to it and had darkly marked the centre of its lower edge: nothing else was noticeable except that one of its corners had been dented and the brightness of the dent seemed to show that this had been recently done. “Looks as if it had been used,” he remarked, pointing this out.

“That’s the weapon all right,” returned Birts, confidently. “Struck him on the forehead and made a nasty hole.”

“Where did it come from, d’you know?”

“No, but I expect Fairlie’ll be able to tell us.”

“Whose is the stick?”

“That belonged to Sir Roger.”

“H’m, there seems to be plenty of blood about,” remarked Humblethorne, rising from his knees. “Look here, and here.” He pointed first to the left-hand corner of the stone stairs, and then to the centre of the carpet covering the second and fourth steps, on each of which a faint, but traceable, oblong stain could be seen.

“This,” said Birts, referring to the first, “is close to his head and he hit it falling—there’s a cut on the side to fit. But I don’t know what the others are.”

“Footsteps, Birts, footsteps. Many a man’s been hung on less. That’s the ball of the foot of a person we want going upstairs, or I’m much mistaken.”

“Or coming down, it might be?”

“Possibly; but why should whoever it was come down with feet like that? No, going upstairs—and either very careless or very agitated. Let me see the body.”

They passed into the smoking-room, where a policeman was on duty beside the covered body of the late owner of the house. Humblethorne knelt down and, removing the covering, looked long at the clean-shaven face of a man of about seventy-five, hard-featured in life and inexpressibly repellant in the rigidity of death; his eyes were wide open and seemed to stare out of the scowling face with a cold malignity. The features were slightly distorted, whether with fear, anger, or other emotion it was impossible to say. On his left temple was a deep, ugly, triangular wound, an inch in diameter, and the congealed blood lay dark and sinister across his forehead; on the right side of his head, just above and in front of the ear, was a short perpendicular cut, made, to judge by the slight flattening of the face on that side, by some heavy object striking against it with considerable force or by a fall upon a sharp and unyielding substance. He was in a smoking-jacket and ordinary evening dress; his watch and chain was in its place, and there was a sovereign and some odd silver in his pockets.

“Doctor seen him?” inquired Humblethorne, rising at last from his examination and replacing the sheet.

“Yes, sir. Arrived soon after me. He said death had taken place some hours previously; didn’t like to be more definite. Either of the two wounds would be sufficient to cause death, he said, especially the one on the side of the head; skull’s fractured. He gave it as his opinion that that was caused by striking the edge of the stairs in his fall.”

“Probably,” agreed Humblethorne. “Well, now I should like to hear what Mr. Castle has to say. And that I think I can do better in the hall.”

Humblethorne crossed to the fireplace and rang the bell, which was answered in a few moments by the appearance of an old man whose quiet, impassive respectability betrayed no hint either of the tragedy which overshadowed the house or of his own want of sleep. He allowed himself to notice the presence of a stranger by an almost imperceptible lift of his eyebrows before turning to Birts and saying—

“Did you ring, sergeant? Is there anything you require?”

“This is Inspector Humblethorne, Fairlie,” answered the sergeant; “he wishes to see Mr. Castle. Not in here—in the hall.”

“Mr. Castle is in the study; I will acquaint him with your wishes,” said Fairlie, acknowledging the introduction by turning his body slightly towards Humblethorne and preparing to go.

“One moment,” interrupted Humblethorne. “You’re the butler, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“You have been here a long time?”

“That is so.”

“I shall want to ask you a few questions after I have seen Mr. Castle.”

“I shall be happy, h’only too happy to place myself at your disposal,” replied Fairlie, allowing a faint undercurrent of human interest to show for the first time through the dignity of his demeanour. “Her ladyship and Miss Celia are upset, naturally upset, if I may say so, at the terrible event in the house, and I have had no orders; but I am sure her ladyship would wish me to help you to the best of my abilities and to offer you every opportunity for arriving at the truth.”

“Thank you,” answered Humblethorne meekly, and Fairlie withdrew.

“Not quite the man you would expect Sir Roger to have had as butler,” remarked Humblethorne; “altogether too old-fashioned and superior.”

“Yes, he came with her ladyship. He’s a bit slow, no doubt, but he has a warm heart, has old Fairlie, and many’s the kind thing he’s done for the people in the village. Now Sir Roger didn’t care a rap of his fingers for the village.”

“He certainly does not seem to have been a popular figure.”

“Popular? Him popular?” The sergeant gave a short laugh which, in deference to the dead man beside him, he tried to turn into a cough.

“Mr. Castle is in the hall,” said Fairlie, opening the door quietly.

The appearance of Philip Castle had not been improved by the tragic events of the night; he was dressed in the same dark suit which he had worn the previous day, but the neatness had gone from it; his tie was badly tied and his collar was dirty. He still wore evening socks and shoes, and it looked as if his changing had been a hasty and casual affair. His stoop as he walked restlessly up and down on the further side of the hall was accentuated and his pallor increased, whilst his eyes, though still clear and bright, had a haggard as well as a tired look.

He glanced irritably at Humblethorne as he approached, and then seemed to look past him at the closing door with a nervous movement.

“Well!” he exclaimed, “I understand you want to ask me some more questions about this horrible business, and here of all places. I’ve already told you what I know, and I don’t think you quite realize how unpleasant it is for me to talk about it.”

“Murder is an unpleasant business,” replied Humblethorne calmly. “It is the duty of every one to do what they can to help.”

“I know. You must excuse a little irritation! I’ve been up all night.”

Humblethorne’s eyes had travelled slowly over Philip, apparently seeing little and yet recording in his mind each detail, and they now rested upon his shoes.

“I am sure you have had a trying time, Mr. Castle,” he said. “I understand you are the dead man’s private secretary.”

“Yes.”

“And have been with him for some time?”

“Nearly eleven years.”

“Now, Mr. Castle, is there any one as far as you know to whom his death at the present moment would be of advantage?”

“That’s not a very easy question to answer,” replied Castle with some hesitation. “Sir Roger had few friends and he had made, in one way and another, a great many enemies in the course of his life—but none, as far as I know, who would be the least likely to resort to violence. The answer must certainly be, no.”

“Did he go in fear of any one, for example?”

“Not in the least; he was afraid of nothing and nobody.”

“In fact you had no apprehensions for him of any sort?”

“None; I thought he would live to be a hundred.”

“That stick over there, that belonged to him, I understand?”

“Yes; he’d been walking with it the last day or two.”

“In the house, d’you mean?”

“Yes, he had had twinges of gout; he had it all last evening.”

“I was coming to that; perhaps you will be good enough to tell me in your own words exactly what happened last night.”

“I came along the passage to go to bed——”

“One minute,” interposed Humblethorne quickly; “that’s the end; I should like to know all that happened previous to that. Did you notice anything unusual in Sir Roger’s manner, for instance, during the day?”

“No, I can’t say I did. He was, well, brusque and touchy about trifles, but that was entirely usual, especially when he had gout. He told me a couple of days ago he intended to have a grand clear up yesterday, but there is no significance in that; it was an expression he often used, and only meant an extra hard day’s work for me. He came to his study as usual after breakfast and dictated a few business letters for me to write, and also told me to have ready for him by the evening a detailed précis of a lot of new material he had had sent him at various times, all relating to a branch he had thoughts of opening in Liverpool. He was in his study all the morning. He was reading in the garden with his foot up, I believe, all the afternoon, at least that’s what he said at lunch he was going to do; I was busy with the précis, so I don’t know for certain. He signed his letters for the six o’clock post, and told me he had some more letters he would dictate after dinner so that they could go out at nine o’clock this morning. We all sat here while he smoked a cigar after dinner, and he and I went to his study, as near as I can remember, just after ten o’clock.”

“He sounds very busy for a man of his age, partially retired,” remarked Humblethorne thoughtfully. “Was this an average day for him?”

“Not quite: he seldom worked after dinner, and usually went to bed early. But I’ve known him do it when interested in any new development, and on the whole it was a fairly ordinary day for a day here.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“He used to go to Southampton two or three times a week. As a matter of fact, he was busy just now, and even when he wasn’t he liked to pretend that he was and make work. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly, please go on.”

“Well, we worked together for about an hour and a half; he read the précis and even commended it—that perhaps was the one unusual thing of the evening. Then he dictated his letters to me and left me to go to bed.”

“What time was that? Can you say at all precisely?”

“Yes, I think I can tell you exactly, for I glanced at the clock as he left the room: by that it was thirteen minutes to twelve.”

“And then?”

“I debated whether I should write the letters then or get up early to do them; he would require them to be ready for signature when he came down to breakfast. I decided to finish them; there were a dozen or more to write, and they took me over an hour to do. I was not through till nearly half-past one; found I had run out of cigarettes and came along to get one here before going to bed.”

“What time was that?”

“As nearly as I can fix it, about twenty-five minutes past one. I came along the passage——”

“By the passage you mean that passage behind you now?” asked Humblethorne, referring to the one leading between the dining-room and billiard-room. “It is important to have that quite clear.”

Castle nodded wearily. “That’s the one,” he said. “My ordinary way from my room up to bed would be up the back stairs, but, as I say, I wanted to get a cigarette and so I came along that passage, feeling my way. The lights had all been turned out—Sir Roger had a passion for small economies—but it was a bright night with a bit of a moon and there was a certain amount of light coming in from that small window on the landing.” Castle paused and a look of vivid remembrance passed across his face; he had been speaking quietly and evenly, but now his voice rose, and it was obvious that he was painfully agitated. “I had got almost to the stairs,” he went on, “before I noticed anything. Then I trod on something, a cigarette, I think, and I looked down. I saw something dark and round just in front of me at the foot of the stairs. I couldn’t think what it could be. I bent over. God! shall I ever forget that hideous, blood-stained face?” He ended with a half-hysterical cry and sank down into a chair, white and shaking.

Humblethorne, upon whom the clearness and quietness of the earlier part of his narrative had made, in spite of his first prejudice against the secretary, a distinctly favourable impression, watched him curiously for a moment and then said with sudden, deliberate sharpness, “Yes, and what did you do then?”

“Then?” repeated Castle vaguely. “Then I staggered back and it was all I could do to keep myself from screaming at the top of my voice.”

“It would probably have been the best thing you could have done, sir,” remarked Birts.

“It was the last thing a gentleman should have done,” retorted Castle angrily. “It would have terrified Lady Penterton and the ladies out of their wits to have been roused to such a dreadful sight suddenly like that.”

“Let us hear what you did do,” repeated Humblethorne, with a gentle insistence which had its due effect.

“I fumbled about until I got my hand on the switch,” went on Castle shakily, “and turned the light on. It wasn’t quite as bad as it had been coming suddenly in that eerie light, but it doesn’t bear talking about. I got down beside him somehow then, but I didn’t need to feel his heart to see that he was dead all right.”

“How exactly was he lying? Go to the place, please, and describe it as accurately as you can.”

“He was lying here,” said Castle, going with a very apparent distaste for his task to the foot of the stairs, “just to the left of the staircase, his head on the floor here below the bottom stair almost touching the corner; he was on his right side; his knees were drawn up and both arms flung out in front of him; his hands were open. It was a natural attitude, except for his head, which was bent backwards in a way that seemed to me particularly hideous.”

“Yes, that’s just how he was when I see him,” added Birts in a rather aggrieved tone.

Humblethorne remained silent, watching Castle as closely as the spot indicated. “Yes?” he said.

“That’s all,” replied Castle. “I don’t think there is anything else I can add.”

“According to your account, then, there is an interval of an hour and thirty-eight minutes from the time that Sir Roger left you to the time you came along the passage.”

“Yes, just about; I cannot fix the exact minute I left my room.”

“Were you writing in your room or in Sir Roger’s?”

“In my room; I took my notebook back into it as usual when he had finished dictating.”

“And during this time that you were writing you heard nothing?”

“Not a sound of any sort; but of course I was busy.”

“What did you do after turning the light on and satisfying yourself Sir Roger was dead? By the way, what made you conclude at once that he was dead?”

“The blood had already ceased flowing and his arm had begun to stiffen; besides, there was no mistaking the look on his face. He must have been killed very soon after leaving me.”

“Well; go on, please.”

“My first thought,” continued Castle with an angry glance at the imperturbable figure of Humblethorne, “was of course that he had met with an accident; fallen and killed himself, I mean.”

“Come, Mr. Castle,” broke in Birts, “that won’t do!”

“I know that as well as you do, Birts,” retorted Castle irritably. “But I’m not accustomed, like you are, to meeting with such things as part of my ordinary life. For an old man to fall and kill himself in his hall without rousing the house is not impossible; the other seemed to be. But I realized, when I pulled myself together, that there was something more than accident about him. I tried the door; it was locked. I went as quickly as I could round the windows, both here and in all the adjoining rooms, making sure that I should find one forced, but they were all fastened. Then I did not know what to do, so I went and knocked up Fairlie. He was asleep of course, but I made him get up and dress as quickly as he could and come into the hall. After that I went and knocked at Miss Temple’s door, woke her up, told her and left her to tell Lady Penterton and Miss Celia, and came down here again.”

“When did you send for Birts?” asked Humblethorne.

“Oh, I don’t know,” returned Castle wearily. “I was here trying to think it out; it seemed so extraordinary. And then Fairlie suggested that I should try and telephone to Birts and the doctor; but I could get no answer whatever from the Exchange, though I tried ever so long. So finally I scrawled a couple of notes and sent them off by Alfred on a bicycle.”

“It was 4.20 a.m. by the station clock when Alfred reached me,” said Birts.

“Yes, I must have spent half an hour or more trying to get through, and I don’t suppose he hurried himself dressing and all that.”

“Mr. Castle,” said Humblethorne quietly, “on what terms were you yourself with Sir Roger?”

“On what terms?” repeated Castle with a surprised stare. “What do you mean? I was his private secretary.”

“Yes, I know that; I mean, were you on intimate terms or what?”

“Sir Roger was not on intimate terms with any one, so far as I know,” answered Castle with some confusion. “Why do you ask?”

“It helps in a case of this kind to know everything,” replied Humblethorne suavely.

“Well, then, yes, in a sense I was; that is to say, I’d been with him a long time and probably knew him better than any one else.”

“That is a mere evasion of my question,” said Humblethorne softly.

“Well,” cried Castle, “if you mean, did I like him, no, emphatically no! Did any one? Birts will tell you what sort of a man he was, if you don’t know.”

“I didn’t mean that; I meant, did he like you?”

“This is too much!” exclaimed Castle. “I won’t be cross-examined in this way. What are you driving at?”

“I may take it then,” said Humblethorne, quite unruffled, “that there were differences between you.”

“You may take it how you like,” replied Castle with some heat. “Differences, of course there were differences. If you think a man could live for eleven years without differences with Sir Roger Penterton, you’re mistaken.”

“I quite understand, Mr. Castle,” Humblethorne said in a more conciliatory tone; “you mustn’t take offence at my questions; I am bound to ask them, you know.”

“Questions, yes, but——”

“Just one more and I think I have finished,” interposed Humblethorne gently. “Birts tells me you asked if the body couldn’t be moved. That’s not a very usual request; d’you mind telling me why you made it?”

“Certainly. I felt that it was too ghastly an object to leave lying at the foot of the main staircase a moment longer than was necessary. I hoped that the ladies would remain upstairs, as in fact they did, but they might want to come down any time later, and I saw no reason after Birts and the doctor had made their examinations why the risk should be run. I couldn’t have done it, naturally, without Birts’s permission; as he gave it, well, wring what significance you can out of it.” After saying which, Castle looked straight at Humblethorne and left the hall.

“Well!” said Birts, who did not at all like the trend of the conversation. “I have known Mr. Castle for over ten years, but I’ve certainly never known him speak like that.”

“You probably have never known him in quite these circumstances,” remarked Humblethorne drily, ringing the bell.

“No more I have!” exclaimed Birts, as if embracing a quite new idea.

“Ah, Fairlie,” said Humblethorne, when the butler quietly appeared, “there are one or two things I want to ask you. Just give me, if you will, your version of what took place.”

“That is easily done,” replied Fairlie. “Sir Roger seemed quite as usual last night, both at dinner and when I took him in the tray about twenty minutes past ten.”

“Was he a heavy drinker?”

“Heavy but not excessive,” replied Fairlie solemnly. “I’ve not often known him the worse for liquor, but he was fond of wine. Still he wasn’t a drinker between meals, only now and again he would have a whisky or two if he was going to sit up. He only wanted soda last night, though, because he was threatened with his gout, I expect. He was at work with Mr. Castle when I went in, and he did not ring or require anything again. I locked up as usual, saw that everything was all right and went to bed.”

“What time was that?”

“Well, let me see; I locked up and put the lights out about a quarter to eleven, I should say. The ladies had all gone up then, and Sir Roger used to go on at me for leaving lights burning when they weren’t wanted, so even if he did happen to be working late I didn’t leave them on. I waited up a little in case he should ring for anything, and got to bed about twelve.”

“And you didn’t hear a sound between locking up and going to bed?”

Fairlie thought for a moment. “No, nothing,” he said. “I was doing the silver and I shouldn’t have heard anything in the hall short of a revolver going off.”

“You are positive the fastenings of the doors and windows were all right?”

“They were when I went round. We have a good deal of silver and one thing and another, and it is not a duty I could leave to any one else.” He spoke with dignity and decision.

“And then what was the next thing you heard?”

“I went to bed and had dropped off to sleep when Mr. Castle burst into my room—terribly agitated, he was, and it was some time before I could understand just what had happened. It must have been about half-past one he came to me.”

“Are you sure of the time?” asked Humblethorne slowly.

“I wouldn’t like to be positive; it may have been a bit sooner or a bit later. I didn’t think to look at my watch until afterwards; I just dressed as quickly as I could and came along.”

“And then?”

“I stayed in the hall with Sir Roger until Mr. Castle came back after telling Miss Evelyn. He sat here a bit with his head on his hand looking worn out; then he began to walk up and down, and I ventured to remind him it would be as well to telephone for Dr. Shipstone, not that he could do anything—and for you, Birts. But he couldn’t get through, and at last I sent Alfred off.”

That really ended the story of the night.

In response to further questions, Fairlie identified the cigarette box as the one which usually stood in the hall on a small table close to the drawing-room door and corroborated Castle’s statement that the stick was the one with which Sir Roger had been walking. The evidence of the other servants threw no fresh light whatever upon the death; they had all gone to bed at their ordinary times and had heard and seen nothing unusual at all. Fairlie was able to substantiate the simple statement of Alfred, the only other man in the house, by stating that he had heard him snoring horribly when he himself went to bed.

It was getting on for two o’clock by this time, and Humblethorne expressed his intention of returning to the Rose and Crown for luncheon. Fairlie assured him that Lady Penterton would wish him to be offered the hospitality of the house; but Humblethorne declared that a walk would do him good. He really wanted to be alone to arrange in his mind the facts which had been presented to him. Birts accompanied him in silence a little way down the drive.

“It’s beyond me,” said that worthy officer after they had gone a few yards. “Man murdered in his own hall and not a single person know anything about it.”

“We have not yet completed the preliminary inquiry,” responded Humblethorne, “and may still find some one who does. But assuming, what is most likely, that the remaining members of the household——”

“Why, there’s only her ladyship, Miss Celia, and Miss Temple left!” exclaimed Birts in surprise.

“Exactly. If, as is most probable, they were in bed and also know nothing about it, we arrive at the conclusion that nobody does. Well, he couldn’t have dealt himself that wound on the forehead. So either the assailant came from outside, in which case there’ll be some trace on window or door and it’s up to us to find it—or he came from inside, in which case we’ve listened to a good many lies this morning. There is a third alternative,” Humblethorne added slowly, “and that is that the murderer came from outside, but was let in: there might be no trace then, but there would be somebody who knows a good deal more than he has any idea of telling us. Well, it’s a nice little problem, Birts. Don’t get talking to anybody, whatever you do, and keep a sharp look out, especially in the hall, and don’t let a thing more be moved till I come back. I shan’t be long.”

“Very good, sir,” answered Birts submissively.

“Damn that man!” said Humblethorne to himself as he walked on alone. “There may have been nothing to see; there may have been a lot—either seems equally probable. But what a mug!” Then apparently irrelevantly he added, “Now I wonder what Mr. Castle possesses in the way of shoe leather?”

Whilst Humblethorne was thus pursuing his investigations in the hall with that unruffled air of patient determination which had threatened seriously to upset the equanimity of the overwrought secretary, Evelyn Temple was upstairs in her friend’s room, sitting beside her whilst she slept. Celia had consented to stay in bed, but it had taxed all Evelyn’s influence to achieve so much. The news of her father’s sudden and terrible end had worked on her, goading her to aimless restlessness like a spur, and seemed a far acuter sorrow than Evelyn would have imagined had her imagination ever run into such a morbid channel.

As she sat holding her friend’s hand, without the comforting strength of which Celia seemed unable to try to get the rest she so obviously needed, Evelyn went over in her mind the events of the night. An insistent knocking had mingled itself with the staging of her dream until it drowned the dream altogether and she woke to hear some one knocking in actual fact on her door, shaking it with irregular violence. As she started up she heard Philip Castle’s voice—at least it sounded strangely unlike his and yet could belong to no one else—telling her to open it; she flung on a dressing-gown and obeyed, and found Philip standing outside, his face working with some strong emotion, saying in a low, uncertain tone, “I thought I should wake the whole house before I made you hear. He’s dead!”

She was still so little awake that she could only stare in uncomprehending amazement and answer, “What are you saying?”

“Sir Roger. He’s dead. In the hall,” he said jerkily.

“Sir Roger dead! Impossible!” she gasped.

“It’s true.”

“Philip! It can’t be!”

Her scepticism, based on the complete inability of a girl whose experience has run along quiet channels to credit anything terrible as happening in her own life, had a steadying effect upon him.

“It is true,” he answered less tensely. “I almost stumbled across him as I was coming up to bed; he is dead beyond possibility of doubt.”

“How horrible!” she exclaimed, every nerve wrung. “What can have happened?”

“I don’t know. He has a horrible gash in his temple.”

“I don’t understand; did he fall?”

“I am afraid he has been murdered,” he answered slowly.

“Murdered!” The sinister word struck her like a blow and she recoiled in horror. “In this house! How could he have been?”

“I don’t know. That will all have to be gone into later. Will you break it to Celia?”

“I suppose I must.”

“And Lady Penterton must be told.”

“I will go and tell Celia now and she must tell her mother.”

“Yes, but whatever you do, don’t let either of them come downstairs. He was awful enough in life, but now, Evelyn, it’s hideous!”

She shuddered involuntarily, then laid her hand on his arm.

“You’re unnerved, Philip,” she said. “What can I do to help? Shall I come down as soon as I’ve told Celia? It won’t be so bad for me.”

He drew back almost fiercely. “You!” he cried. “How can you suggest such a thing? Stay with them. You must, I tell you. I wouldn’t have you see it for the world. Besides, Fairlie’s there.”

She looked at him a moment. “Very well,” she said quietly. “I’ll go to Celia now.”

And she had gone along to her friend’s room, which lay separated from her own only by a room that had once been a nursery, and now was given over to the two girls as a study and workroom. She tapped lightly on the door with a rhythm they were in the habit of using to each other, and opened it, but she had hardly entered before she was met by Celia who, seizing her arm with a quick, half-imploring gesture, asked in tones almost of despair, “Evelyn! What is it? How you startled me!”

She had obviously leapt out of bed at the first sound of the tapping; she was in her nightdress, her hair was flowing loose in some disorder, and her face looked particularly childlike and even piteous. Evelyn gathered the slight figure to her and said with the utmost gentleness, “Darling, you must be brave.”

“I know,” answered Celia, clinging to her, “I’m a pitiful coward, but I couldn’t sleep, and I—I suppose I lay imagining things; I think—I think,” her hesitating uncertainty of speech made her seem more fragile than ever, “I perhaps was dreaming a little; and then when I heard your rap it made me so frightened. Why have you come? I thought you would be asleep ages ago.”

“You must be brave, darling,” Evelyn repeated, drawing her down into the bed and sitting down beside her. “Philip has just woken me to tell me some bad news.”

“Bad news!” exclaimed Celia, half starting up. “What has happened? Evelyn, tell me what has happened. Quickly, tell me quickly!”

“Sir Roger——” began Evelyn, wondering whether it would not have been better to put off telling her until the morning as she was in such a state of nerves.

“Yes, what has happened?” Celia interposed in an agitated voice.

“Darling, I don’t know how best to tell you. He’s dead.”

“Dead!” Celia rose up, drawing away from her friend’s detaining arm, her whole body stiffening.

“Yes; I’m afraid it’s very terrible. You had better know the worst. Philip found him with a wound on his forehead lying dead in the hall.”

“In the hall!” Celia repeated after her, staring down with wild eyes, full of sick horror. She swayed suddenly and Evelyn only just caught her as she fainted.

Evelyn lifted her into bed and used every effort to restore her to consciousness, but it was some little time before she came to herself.

“Lie still,” ordered Evelyn as soon as she opened her eyes again. “There is no need for you to move.”

“How did it happen?” asked Celia in an agonized whisper. “It’s horrible.”

“Yes, it is, darling; Philip couldn’t tell me any more than just that he had found him. I don’t know anything more. Now if you will lie still I will go and tell your mother.”

“Doesn’t she know?”

“Not yet; I thought you would go and break it to her.”

“Oh, I can’t!” cried Celia, beginning to cry.

“No, I will. Just lie still; I’ll come back to you as soon as I can.”

“Yes, please; I can’t bear it alone.”

Evelyn had then bent and kissed her, and gone along to Lady Penterton’s room. She knocked on the door and then opened it gently, saying, “Aunt Eleanor!” She had invented this name years ago to express her affection for her friend’s mother.

Lady Penterton’s voice answered her sharply, “Who’s that? What is it?”

“It’s Evelyn,” the girl answered soothingly.

“Evelyn? What is it you can want? What is it?”

Evelyn crossed to the bedside in the darkness, and as gently as she could told the old lady, who clutched her nervously, her dismal news. The effect was as she rather feared; Lady Penterton, never robust, had been in feeble health for some time. Now she clung to Evelyn with all her strength and gave way to dry, gasping sobs, which were terrible to listen to. At one time she could hardly get her breath and Evelyn became seriously alarmed; but the paroxysm passed, and gradually she became calmer and allowed Evelyn to lay her back on her pillow. She began to speak between tears, which still shook her with their violence, of things in her married life of years ago, and of the time of her engagement. For a long time Evelyn sat beside her and endeavoured to soothe her; but it was not until her maid, who had now heard of the death, came in that Evelyn felt it possible to leave her.

She had then come back, as she had promised, to Celia hoping that she would find her asleep and be able to get a little rest herself; but Celia was sitting up in her chair, wide-eyed, white and restless, and turned at once at her entrance, saying—

“Oh, Evie, how long you’ve been! I thought you had forgotten to come back, only I did not hear you pass. Have you heard any more?”

“Poor child,” answered Evelyn tenderly, “why didn’t you stay in bed? I hoped you’d be asleep; I have only just left Aunt Eleanor. She was dreadfully upset, but she is a little better now, and Thompson is with her. Come to bed, dear; you won’t do any one any good by staying up.”

“I couldn’t lie still; I tried,” answered Celia. “Does any one know how it happened?”

“I haven’t heard anything more. Come, let’s try and rest together; I’m tired out.” Her appeal on her own behalf had been immediately successful. They had lain down together and succeeded in getting some much-needed rest. They had breakfasted upstairs, and then Evelyn had dressed, promising to remain with Celia if she stayed in bed.

As she sat beside her friend, who seemed fragile indeed in the uneasy sleep of exhaustion, Evelyn’s lively curiosity as to the mysterious tragedy which had so suddenly come into their midst was at work. She had seen neither the body nor the hall, but knew now the general circumstances; the maid who attended her had naturally been brimming over with it, and had told her volubly, “she had had it from Mr. Birts himself that ’ow any one ’ad got in and murdered the master there in the ’all was an absolute riddle, seein’ as there weren’t nothing to show for it, no window open, none of the silver gorn nor nothink.”

If that was really so, if there was indeed nothing to show for it, it could only have come from inside; she did not think of Humblethorne’s third alternative, namely, possible co-operation inside—she saw the problem simply in its elemental possibilities, if not from without, then from within. But there was no one, there could be no one inside the house who could conceivably be guilty of such an act. So far her thoughts had gone when, like a leaping flash of light, she remembered the way Philip had talked the preceding evening, a way she had at once denounced as melodramatic. Was it conceivable that any real meaning should then have been attached to it? The apparent absence of motive beyond general dislike had been perplexing her as it was already perplexing Humblethorne: he only concluded rather vaguely that there must have been some grave cause of disagreement between Sir Roger and the secretary who acted so strangely, and hoped to find something to justify the conclusion; but she knew of a grave cause. Was it possible that last night Sir Roger had carried out the threat he had been holding over Philip’s head and given him his dismissal? And, if so, what then? Had Philip in sudden passion struck him down? She remembered the unsettled way he had looked when he came to tell her; his “I am afraid he has been murdered” beat in her brain. Her vivid imagination reconstructed the scene of the blow: Sir Roger, just as he turned to go upstairs to bed, jerking out in his harshest way a definite dismissal, Philip’s remonstrance leading to argument, angry words—and a blow?

She would have risen from the bed in agitation, but for Celia’s hand within hers. The vision she had conjured up seemed for a terrible moment suddenly real: then as suddenly it seemed absurd. She felt that Philip might have struck a blow in a gust of anger, but could never conceal that he had done so. He would, she was convinced, have been overcome with remorse, and would have confessed the whole story then and there to her. Her momentary doubt shrivelled as an unclean thing flung into a fire; she hated herself that she had ever entertained it for a single instant. Philip was hasty, and high-strung; at the moment he was also worn out; but whatever he had done, it went outside her knowledge of him, her long trust and belief in him, that he could be acting a part to save his own skin. In this thought she understood his manner; to a man of his temperament to come across such a sight unexpectedly—he had almost stumbled across the body, he had said—would be sufficiently unnerving. In unconscious reparation for what she now termed disloyalty her confidence grew all the stronger in so old and true a friend.

She stirred, without knowing it, as she dispelled her disquieting and ungenerous suggestion, and Celia at once awoke. She still looked white and worn out and turned to Evelyn with a heavy sigh and then lay still again. “How good of you to sit with me, Evie,” she said at last, looking across the room in a tired way.

“My dear, what nonsense between us!” exclaimed Evelyn warmly. “Of course I’m glad to do all I can. But you mustn’t take it so much to heart. It is a dreadful thing, I know; horrible to think of, but after all——” She paused and then added gently, “I know just what you are thinking.”

Celia’s eyes turned upon her suddenly. She did not speak, but her hand tightened on Evelyn’s.

“You mustn’t blame yourself. You’re thinking, I know,” went on Evelyn, answering her gaze, “that you found him cold, even cruel, in his lifetime, and now that he has gone you wish you had loved him more.”

Celia’s eyes dropped: she looked away and said at last in a low, irresolute tone, “No, it isn’t that. It’s just the awful suddenness. I didn’t love him; I wouldn’t tell any one else, especially now, but you know I didn’t. But it is dreadful to think that——” She broke off abruptly.

“Well, you must try not to think about it any more than you can help. That’s so easy to say I know, but try.”

“I can’t help it,” said Celia, bursting suddenly into tears. She controlled herself in a minute with an effort, dried her eyes, and then said, “You’re quite right; I’m very silly. I will try. I think I’ll get up and go and see mother now. I haven’t been to see her at all, have I? Oh, if it had been any way but this—but I mustn’t say that.”

When she came back Evelyn saw at once that she had overrated the strength of her new resolution, and was on the point of giving way completely. She did not speak but sank down into a chair and hid her face in her hands whilst her shoulders shook with weeping.

“Celia!” exclaimed Evelyn with intentional sharpness. “This will not do; it is almost ridiculous. Pull yourself together at once.”

Celia raised her face and the expression in her eyes as she looked at her friend reminded Evelyn of a wounded hare.

“Don’t speak to me like that, Evie,” she said piteously. “I can’t bear it.”

“Darling, I’m sorry, but you must not go on like this,” replied Evelyn. “You really, really must show more courage. What has upset you again?”

“Nothing, only being with mother was very trying. She was very quiet, but somehow very old. And—oh, Evie, she wants me to send a telegram to John to come here at once.” There was a sudden sound of hopelessness in her voice.

“Well, why not?” replied Evelyn, answering the unspoken disagreement. “There’s no reason now why he shouldn’t come here, and of course he must be told at once.”

“You don’t understand,” exclaimed Celia, breaking into an irritation unusual to her.

“No, I don’t,” replied Evelyn. “He’s the only son, and the mere fact that his father ordered him out of the house years ago is no reason why he shouldn’t come to his mother and sister at such a time as this. They’ve never lost their love for him.”

“And never will!” cried Celia vehemently. “But that’s nothing to do with it.”

“We seem to be talking at cross-purposes,” Evelyn said in the most matter of fact voice she could manage; she did not know what to make of Celia in this new, unpliant mood. “Aunt Eleanor wants him, of course she does, and I should have thought you would have wanted him just as much.”

Celia looked at her a moment without speaking, a worried, piteous look which went straight to Evelyn’s heart.

“What is it, Celia?” she asked simply. “Why don’t you want him to come? We have never talked about him, I know; we couldn’t honourably after the promise Sir Roger made you and Aunt Eleanor give, but I’ve always thought he was the one person you loved better than me, and Aunt Eleanor has never been the same since; joyousness went out of her somehow when John left. And yet now you don’t want him sent for, when he could be such a comfort to you both. What is it? Won’t you tell me?”

Celia had turned to the window whilst her friend was speaking, her hands clasping and unclasping under an agitation she strained to subdue. At last she spoke, still looking away, low and faltering, “Evie, he mustn’t come, he mustn’t.” She turned and continued rapidly, her eyes wandering over the room refusing to meet the other’s troubled gaze, her colour coming and going painfully. “You don’t know about him. Mother and I have never mentioned his name—she had given her word and would never break it, she’s like that, you know, but I’m not; I couldn’t let him go out of our lives absolutely whatever I’d promised. And so I’ve managed to get news of him and told her from time to time, not by name but so that she could understand. She never answered me; I could see sometimes how she wanted to; her longing was terrible, but she wouldn’t because she had promised.” She spoke in a rush of words as if to forestall criticism.

“Yes, dear, but surely that promise is ended now. You see she thinks so; she wants him now.”

“But he can’t come, he mustn’t come,” cried Celia passionately. “She’s not able to stand another shock. I’ve let her suppose he was happy and doing very well. So he was, but he isn’t now. He’s had a lot of trouble lately; Margaret and the child are ill and he’s no work and is practically without a penny. I should have to tell mother, and it has been her one joy to believe him successful. It would kill her. I can’t.”

“Then I will,” answered Evelyn firmly. “She’ll want him all the more.”

“No! you mustn’t, promise you won’t! I oughtn’t to have told you!” Celia spoke with intense agitation and seized her hand. “Promise!”

“It’s your secret, not mine,” answered Evelyn gravely. “But you will do a great wrong if you don’t tell her, a wrong to both of them. She ought to know now: and if he wants help it will be her happiness to give it him.”

“No, no!” cried Celia, her voice breaking into wild sobs. “Later perhaps, not now. Oh, you don’t understand, Evelyn. I’m afraid, so terribly afraid. They’ll rake up everything in father’s life, and when they find out about John they’ll think he had a hand in it; I know they will. He mustn’t, he mustn’t come here!” She had worked herself up into such a state that Evelyn realized that it would be harmful to press what seemed to her so obvious. She replied now to the last wild words, “Darling, you mustn’t run away with such absurd ideas. To think that any one could suppose, just because John quarrelled with his father ages ago—ten years ago, isn’t it?—that he—it’s too silly of you!”

“It isn’t silly,” replied Celia, weeping. “I may be silly about some things but not—oh, I can’t bear it! You don’t know; John was——” She choked her words down sharply, turned away and fought herself back to some control.

“I will try and rest again a little now,” she said at last wearily. “Don’t you worry about me, Evelyn; I shall be all right.”

But Evelyn was worried about her, worried and puzzled more than she cared to own, even to herself. For the first time in her life she did not feel sure that she altogether understood Celia.

Humblethorne walked back to the Rose and Crown with a mind fully occupied: the fields, among which he had been looking forward to idling only to find that idleness of so rustic a character had no attractions for him, existed no more than if he had been walking along the streets of a town. He was absorbed in the problem he had stumbled on, and almost entirely happy. He would have been completely so if he had not retained, even in a profession most unfavourable to the growth of sentiment, a certain fresh idealism: just because it was so obviously impossible, he longed to be able to take people on trust. It was to remind himself as much as to warn Birts, that he had dwelt on the need for general suspicion in the first stages of every inquiry. He would have liked to be able, on faith alone, to narrow down the field of search. And he was never completely happy as a man, however absorbed he might become as an official, when engaged upon a case of treachery or twisted motives. Straightforward violence he understood; it was regrettable and must be punished, but it did not offend him. He envied Birts for his simple faith, especially as it seemed likely to be so little justified.

There were, as he saw the case, two main avenues of inquiry; he had to satisfy himself first whether or no any one had made an entrance unassisted into the Towers, and, secondly—a subject that bore closely on the first—how far the secretary was telling the truth. The impression Castle had made upon him as a personality was distinctly favourable; the facts Castle had related and admitted just the reverse. The man was unmistakably a gentleman, Humblethorne decided, by that much misused word meaning not merely a man of birth or wealth. He was undoubtedly in a highly strung condition, and too much emphasis should not be laid on his having asked that ass, Birts, for leave to shift the body; but it was at least suggestive of a desire to hide things. It had to be borne in mind that a great deal rested at present on Castle’s word alone, that even on his own showing there was an hour and a half during which Sir Roger had not been seen, and that there had been an apparent forgetfulness, to say the least of it, in communicating with the police. Humblethorne, putting aside his personal impression of Castle, felt convinced that there was a skilful mixture of truth and falsehood in the tale he had been told, a clever juggling with the clock, a concealment of some vital fact. It would be his business to sift that truth out: there was much yet to ascertain before he felt justified in arriving at any conclusion. It was quite possible, it was even, he thought, probable that he would find some tangible piece of evidence of which there was at present so little, which would throw light suddenly upon some part of the story where falsehood was grafted on to truth. “Talk! talk!” he said to himself. “Plenty of that, and deuced few facts. Well, we’ll find them, if they’re there; and if they’re not, well, that will be a fact of the highest importance in itself.”

He had forgotten the existence of Timmins, but Timmins had not forgotten him. He had no sooner put his foot inside the inn than Timmins met him and exclaimed, “Ah! there you are, sir! I ’ardly expected to see you till the evening. But there ain’t much that’s hid from you now, I’ll be bound.”

This was intended, as Humblethorne was well aware, as a question, but he did not choose to gratify idle curiosity and he was very hungry; so he only replied that he wanted some lunch and hoped that he would receive a little more attention than he had been favoured with at breakfast. Timmins was disappointed, even pained, and roared out commands to bring the gentleman his lunch immediately; how much longer was he to be kept waiting? His personal endeavours produced it in a time that ordinary frequenters of the inn would have considered astounding, and he waited himself upon so august a guest.

Humblethorne ate for some time in silence, and Timmins after trying in vain to draw him out, even suggesting half a dozen people that he “ ’ad ’is suspicions of,” finally remarked with a sigh—

“I see ’ow it is; you ain’t got all your ideas in order yet to want to talk. I only wanted to ’elp, as it might be. There’s a lot o’ sense in that old saying about two ’eds sometimes. Many a time my old woman ’as come to me and sed, ‘Joe!’ she sez——”

Humblethorne pushed his plate away. It was obvious that Timmins meant to talk; he might as well be made to talk to some purpose. “Timmins,” he said, “Sir Roger seems to have been a highly unpopular man.”

“Ah, you may well say that, sir,” responded Timmins heartily; no true inhabitant of a village fails to enter with gusto into the demerits of a neighbour. “There won’t be many as’ll break their ’earts over ’im.”

“Why was that? I mean, was there anything particular about him? It seems to be more than general dislike.”

“Well, there was ’arf a dozen things the people ’ere had agin him; but I reckon it was the way ’e treated ’is son that first let folks see ’is real character.”

“His son? I didn’t know he had one,” said Humblethorne.

“Yes, ’e has one. It ’appened long before I came ’ere, so it’s all ’earsay, as it were, but by all accounts ’is son was as different from ’im—well, as ’er ladyship is. That made for trouble, I dessay: ’e was for being a hartist, I believe, and Sir Roger, ’e don’t ’old with anything of that sort; but I don’t rightly know ’ow the actual quarrel came about. The son, ’e married a girl whose people used to live in the village, I’ve ’eard tell, and Sir Roger, ’e was that mad when ’e come to ’ear of it, ’e turned ’im out of the ’ouse, at night it was too, with awful words, and they say as ’ow ’e made ’er ladyship and Miss Celia—she must ’ave been only a little girl then—give ’im their solemn word they’d never mention ’is son’s name again. I believe ’e’d ’ave turned them out too if they ’adn’t. People as knew ’im, they say ’e was worse as ’e grew older. Anyways, there ain’t one who could have lived with ’im as her ladyship’s done, not for all ’is money. The things she’s ’ad to put up with don’t bear telling, they say; but there, I don’t ’old with gossip myself, and I don’t suppose ’e was as black as ’e’s painted.”

Humblethorne listened with much attention; anything which bore upon the life of the house might have its significance, though he was too well versed in the exaggerations of popular report to do more than docket the main facts of the story in his mind.

“And this was a long time ago, you say?”

“It must be nigh on ten year, I should say,” replied Timmins, after much thought. “Mrs. Martin was talking about it only this morning, and I remember she said as ’ow her eldest was just turned two when it happened, and ’e’s getting on for twelve now.”

“Well, I must be going out again,” said Humblethorne, rising. “You have certainly given me a good deal of information.”

“Always glad to oblige,” replied Timmins with an air of superb condescension.

Humblethorne walked slowly back to the Towers, turning over the story in his mind; but it was ancient history, he reflected, and, however interesting for the side-lights it threw upon Sir Roger’s character and reputation, it seemed to have no bearing upon the facts before him.

He was met at the door by Birts, who put on a look of importance immediately and obviously had something fresh to tell him.

“Well, Birts,” he said, seeing that the other was anxious to be asked, “you look as if you had found out something.”

“I have,” replied Birts with a pleased air. “I rather think it isn’t going to be a real case, after all.”

“What have you found?”

“There was a window forced last night, after all,” answered Birts. “It seemed as if there must be somewhere. It’s the small one in the pantry: glass smashed and all.”

“Let me see it. Nothing been touched, I hope?”

“Not a thing; I give orders it wasn’t to be till you’d had a look.”

Humblethorne nodded; his mind was running rapidly over possibilities.

They went together to the pantry, which was empty, Birts leading the way with the expression of a showman about to exhibit his treasures. He pointed to a small window, about two feet high and one foot wide, in the extreme right-hand corner of the wall opposite the door which led into the dining-room. This was hinged like a door and had a catch on one side; just below the centre and close to the handle a piece of glass large enough to admit a man’s hand had been broken away. The window was fastened and fragments of glass were lying on the sill and on the floor: the sill itself had several long scratches on it at right angles to the window. “There you are!” said Birts. “There’s the whole thing! Some one after the silver, there’s not the smallest doubt. It’s kept in the dining-room, most of it, in a safe in the sideboard. Sir Roger hears some one in there as he goes to bed: fellow had only just got in, I should think. Sir Roger comes in, and gets one on the head; he drops and the man bolts in a funk. He could easily shut that window after him. That’s what happened, sure as fate.”

“Something of the kind may have happened certainly,” replied Humblethorne thoughtfully; “only it doesn’t explain why Sir Roger dropped on the far side of the hall, or the extraordinary choice of a weapon.”

“N—no,” answered Birts. “That is awkward. I don’t know,” he said, brightening; “the fellow got as far as the hall; he saw that box, all silver, mind you, and then Sir Roger came along. The hall was dark,” continued Birts, warming to his work, “he stood still, hoping to escape detection, and Sir Roger didn’t see him until he was almost across. Then of course the fellow hurled the box just because he had it in his hands.”

“It’s not impossible that you are right, Birts. It’s certainly the simplest solution.” Humblethorne examined the window again carefully. “Whoever came in here,” he said at last, “was no fool. He has taken very good care not to put his hands on the paint, and it can’t have been so easy to avoid.” He opened the window and leant out. “H’m, I see,” he remarked, closing it again. “No fool, indeed. It is difficult to follow footprints on a much-used gravel path.” He bent down and scrutinized the floor with the utmost care, from the window to the door and then across the dining-room and on into the hall. “Nothing to help us,” he said at last. “You may be right, Birts; I won’t say you’re not, but I should like a little more evidence before I say you are. Any strangers noticed hanging about?”

“So far as I’ve heard,” replied Birts, “no one has been hanging round the place, and no one was seen last night; I’ll make inquiries, but of course it’s a big place, and it would be easy enough for any one to get into the park without being noticed.”

“Yes,” answered Humblethorne, “but they would have to know the habits and ways of the house when they got here. Just think, Birts, supposing your theory’s the right one, of the risks the fellow ran. Why come then, about midnight according to Mr. Castle, anyway before half-past one? The chances of running into some one were enormous. Think of it, through the pantry and the dining-room into the hall, of all places. It won’t do—not like that. Some one may have come there, but, if any one did, it wasn’t just a fellow after the silver.”

At that moment he heard some one come into the dining-room, the door of which he had left open. Looking in, he found Fairlie putting away the silver which had come down from the luncheon-trays.

“Fairlie,” he said, “I thought you told me particularly that every window and door was fastened all right last night?”

“And so they were when I went round,” repeated Fairlie, decidedly. “But, as I told Birts, I only saw to the doors and the windows of the living-rooms down here, all except the study and Mr. Castle’s room, that is, of course; it wasn’t my place to see to them, when they were used after dinner. I shut that window in the pantry myself when I finished in there about nine o’clock; so I didn’t look at it again.”

“When did you find it broken?” Humblethorne asked, turning to Birts.

“Fairlie came and told me about it, let me see, about half an hour after you’d gone,” replied Birts.

“How was it no one discovered it before?”

“On an ordinary morning,” Fairlie replied, “of course either Alfred or myself would have been bound to see it first thing in the morning; but everything has been at sixes and sevens all day. The maids don’t go in there. Alfred, he’d been up and out on his bicycle, and I let him off when he came back, and I didn’t have a minute to myself. I did go into the pantry, but just hastily and out again, and didn’t think to look at the window in the corner. It wasn’t till I’d had my dinner that I came in and saw it. And then of course I called Birts’s attention to it immediately. I wish I had seen it last night,” added the old man: “then we would have had some chance before the fellow had gone far.”

“Some one may have got in when the servants were all at supper,” remarked Birts hopefully to Humblethorne when they were alone again in the hall, “and hid himself till he thought the house was quiet. He wouldn’t know Sir Roger and Mr. Castle were working late in the study.”

“He knew a good deal if he could dare to come in and hide himself in a place like this, full of people,” was all Humblethorne answered. “Now I’m going to take a look round.”

He went along the passage intending to begin his survey of the ground floor in the study in which Sir Roger had last been seen alive, whilst Birts went out to interrogate the gardeners and look for traces of the man who, he was convinced, had come to burgle and been led on into murder.

Philip Castle was lying down in his bedroom, and Humblethorne found the time opportune for a thorough examination of both studies, but was unable by any discovery to shake the story he had been told. The précis lay on Sir Roger’s desk, with pencil notes scrawled here and there in another hand; a dozen letters, all dealing with various business matters and bearing the previous day’s date, lay beside it awaiting the signature they could never now receive. As he had provided himself with the dead man’s keys, he was able to make an exhaustive search in all the drawers, but he found nothing but documents and papers, none of which helped him to build any theory whatever. “I am wasting my time here,” he said to himself at last with conviction: “if there was anything, there isn’t now. I’ll be better employed elsewhere.”

He stepped out into the passage and, seeing the little door into the garden standing open to the warm air, turned that way. A minute examination of the lock satisfied him it had not been tampered with, and he passed outside on to a pleasant stone-flagged loggia which ran along the west side of the house between the two projecting wings formed by the drawing-room on the south and the study on the north. Several cane garden-chairs were ranged irregularly along the wall, and in one of these an old lady was sitting. There was a dignity about her which not even the evidences of physical weakness and mental suffering could destroy, an attraction in the delicate yet firm lines of her face which made it apparent that in youth she must have been really beautiful; but, even apart from the ravages which tragedy and sleeplessness had just impressed upon it, it was a sad face, worn with many lines. She sat motionless, white and almost haggard, gazing without purpose across the brilliant day.

Humblethorne coughed apologetically, and she turned her head sharply with a nervous movement of her hands.

“I beg your pardon, my lady,” said Humblethorne gently. “I had no wish to intrude. I am the inspector in charge of the case.”

She gazed at him for some moments without speaking; her thoughts seemed to be far away and to be recalled with an effort. “Yes?” she said at last vaguely. “What is it you want?”

“If your ladyship will excuse me,” said Humblethorne, anxious to make the most of the opportunity which had presented itself, “I should be glad if I might ask one or two questions.”

She seemed to be utterly weary and hardly to hear. “Ask me what you wish,” she said listlessly.

“Thank you, my lady. I only wanted to know whether you noticed anything unusual about your husband during the evening. Did he seem quite himself at dinner, for instance?”

“Quite.”

“Not anxious, by any chance?”

“My husband was never anxious.”

“I see. And then after dinner he went to his study: was that usual?”

“Not usual, but work sometimes made it necessary.”

“And you went upstairs, I suppose?”

“I read for a while in my boudoir; I did not go straight to bed.”

“Can you tell me at all what time you went to bed, my lady?”

“What time? I don’t know exactly. I did not notice the time. My maid could tell you—oh no, how I am forgetting! I had lent her to Miss Penterton that evening as my daughter had gone up early with a headache and I was anxious about her. She is not strong, you know.” The old lady sighed heavily, tremulously; tears seemed not far away.

“So I have been told,” answered Humblethorne with sympathy. He waited a moment and then asked: “You have said your husband was never anxious; had he never any apprehensions? I mean, had he any enemies that you know of?”

She shook her head slowly. “No,” she answered hesitatingly; then she added in a low, half-broken voice, as if wrestling with a truth it was useless to conceal, “I’m afraid it is not quite true to say he had no enemies: every very successful man has, and perhaps in rising he made them. But you understand.”

“Yes, my lady,” he assented; her pathetic loyalty touched him. He wished to go and leave her to her sorrow, but one thing remained in his mind on which she could perhaps tell him more than any one, and with a strong reluctance he said gently, “In a case of this sort, my lady, it helps to know everything or I wouldn’t mention it. I understood he had differences with his son.”

Colour sprang into her white cheeks, and she clutched the arms of the chair; her listless air vanished. “What has that to do with this?” she asked with a sudden fire of which she had seemed incapable. “He had; every one knows that. My son is coming: I have had him sent for. Ask him if you want to know the wretched story. Go!” she added imperiously, “unless you have anything to ask I alone can answer. I am not strong enough for the questions of idle curiosity. Every assistance will be given you.”

She sank back in her chair, exhausted and trembling; and Humblethorne, with a slight flush of self-reproach, moved away and left her.

Meanwhile during Humblethorne’s fruitless investigation of the two studies, Evelyn came down the main stairs to dissolve her uneasiness and drive away the headache which was threatening her by a little fresh air. As she reached the landing and turned down the flight of stairs towards the hall she saw the sheet carefully covering the evidences of the crime, and hesitated. She had not been told the exact position in the hall where the body had been found and had not realized she would have to pass so close to it. She half turned to retreat and go by the back stairs, but the silence encouraged her and curiosity drove her on. Skirting the sheet carefully, she gained the hall. No one was about; she saw the body was not there and, stooping with a sudden impulse, she lifted the sheet and looked down. She noted with repulsion but also with interest, as her gaze grew more intent, the main bloodstains on the marble and edge of carpet and those both on the edge of the bottom stair and on the second and fourth steps. They became photographed in her mind as any unusual sight will impress itself on a vivid brain. She then looked with kindling imagination at the cigarette box and confusion of cigarettes: “if the box was thrown at him—and one could hardly hold it to strike with—it is funny it didn’t drop further away and the cigarettes fly all over the place,” she thought.

Forgetting in the interest of the amateur such scientific details as the possibility of finger-marks, she bent down and gingerly lifted the box, taking care not to soil her fingers by touching the bloodstains on it. She noticed the dent on the corner and saw, rather to her surprise, that there was no blood there. As she bent down with a little exclamation of disgust to replace the box in the exact position in which she had found it, she paused suddenly, turned the box carefully over and saw that the bottom had from its edge to its centre an irregular, blot-like stain, corresponding to that on the carpet as now shown by the lifting of the box. The box was heavy, and the impression of its shape was clearly visible on the soft carpet. “I don’t quite understand this,” she said to herself, putting the box back with great care. “If the box was there when the blood trickled down to it, I should have thought it would have more or less dammed the trickle. It must have been moved, I suppose; I wonder why.”

She replaced the sheet and stood there, puzzling over the little problem she believed she had discovered.

“Now that box belongs on this table,” she said, going slowly to the small table which stood against the wall close to the drawing-room door, “and it was there last night after dinner, because I saw it. I shall begin my investigations in the drawing-room.” With a sense of slight amusement at the way she was following out a momentary impulse she opened the door and went in.

It was rather a crestfallen little man who re-entered the house after leaving Lady Penterton. The afternoon was passing, and he had made no progress whatever; more than that, which was negative, he reproached himself with a positive act of unnecessary brutality. Why had he asked her that question about Sir Roger and their son? It was ten years ago and quite beside his inquiry. He cursed Timmins in his heart; if he hadn’t had the story forced on his mind that same afternoon, he would never have wasted his time and put an old and tragedy-burdened lady to further pain. Humblethorne resolved to devote the remainder of the day exclusively to an examination of the rooms, and especially the windows, of the ground floor.

He accordingly made his way to the dining-room and began an unhurried, methodical examination. He worked intently and yet his whole mind was not on his task. The firm yet sensitive mouth he had just been watching recalled to him some other mouth he had seen, and he could not think whose. Mouths were a speciality with Humblethorne; a mouth was difficult to disguise, even a beard and moustache could not hide its tendencies completely and nothing else hid them at all; and the mouth betrayed more than any other feature. Much of his firm belief originated, as men’s beliefs will, in a single successful instance of clever identification, and it had not been weakened by later failures. He was convinced he had seen a mouth of just the same character before; when and where he was quite unable to recall. It might be of no importance at all, a mere coincidence; it might, on the other hand, assist: it annoyed him that he could not remember, especially as in that elusive game the mind plays with every one it seemed just round the corner, as it were, of his memory.

He worked over the whole dining-room with this dual mind, but nothing rewarded his industry. He went outside and satisfied himself from there that no one had either attempted to force his way in or, as far as could be seen, had entered through either window. He then went along the outside of the house past the hall to the smoking-room window, examined this without result, turned the corner to the south, the garden side, and was brought up short. In front of the third window on that side, which was the first of the two in the drawing-room, he saw a girl kneeling down and earnestly studying the soil in the narrow bed immediately below.

Such a proceeding interested Humblethorne to an amazing degree: instantly desisting from his own search, he moved along the edge of grass till he could see what was attracting her attention. The soil had been obviously trampled; the rain on the day preceding the murder had been heavy and the impress of a foot was clearly visible. At the same instant that he noticed this, Evelyn perceived that she was not alone.

“Who are you and what are you doing?” he asked brusquely, as she sprang up and turned in some confusion. Then she realized who he must be and the situation began to appeal to her.

“I am Miss Temple,” she answered calmly. “Who are you?”

“I am Inspector Humblethorne, in charge of this case,” he replied, “and you have only answered the least important half of my question.”

“Perhaps we are doing the same thing,” she said, smiling and meeting his gaze with absolute frankness, “I happening to be just ahead of you; that’s all.”

Her complete self-possession, her frank and winning air could hardly have failed to impress the most naturally suspicious of men; official and would-be idealist conflicted in Humblethorne as he looked at her, and idealist won. He found that, without further proof of innocence, he was acquitting this vivid girl at least from any connexion with the dark mystery he was engaged in trying to solve. Nevertheless, he was slightly annoyed at her remark, and answered quietly, “I think there are enough riddles already here. Will you please explain?”

“With pleasure,” replied Evelyn. “The train of reasoning which brought me to this spot is simplicity itself. A certain cigarette box is found lying close to—well, to the body; that cigarette box belongs to a certain table; it was on it last night, and it is probable, not certain of course but probable, that whoever threw it picked it up from there. That table stands close to the door of the drawing-room. Interest—curiosity, if you like—suggested to me that, since that was so, it was possible, perhaps even probable, that the intruder came from the drawing-room. A guess certainly, but after all not a wild guess, especially when one remembers that the drawing-room opens onto this quiet stretch of lawn. It would be so easy to get into the park and cross the lawn without being seen; and then again the drawing-room is the earliest room to be left unoccupied. True, it is next the smoking-room, but you cannot expect everything.”

Humblethorne listened with the greatest attention. “Your reasoning,” he said, as she stopped, “is admirably clear. But what made you come here?”

“There seem to be boot-marks on the sill inside,” she said simply, “though it is difficult to be sure without opening the shutters, and I was afraid I might disturb something if I did that. But they made me curious to see the earth outside, so I came round. And I find this.” She pointed to the trampled soil as she spoke.

“Do you often do this sort of thing?” he asked, his eyes still on her.

She laughed. “I began five minutes ago,” she answered. “It was an impulse which struck me as I came downstairs to go out.”

“Well,” he said, “I could do with a few of the same myself. Tell me,” he went on, “now I am here, can you add anything of importance to what I have gathered about last night?”

“My own knowledge is nil,” she answered. “Mr. Castle woke me about half-past one, I don’t know exactly when but about then, and told me, well, what had happened, and I then told Miss Penterton and Lady Penterton. I’m afraid I’m not much help. There was nothing whatever out of the way during the evening.”

“No,” he conceded, “that isn’t much help. Well,” he changed his tone and became brisk, professional, “let’s examine these marks.”

He bent down and saw that beyond possibility of doubt some one had at any rate stood beneath that window; the marks inside would speak as to the actual entrance. He took out his pocket-book and a measuring tape with a sense of relief; this at any rate was plain sailing. Evelyn watched him with breathless interest as, taking the greatest care not to disturb the earth which had grown hard and crumbling under the recent sun, he measured and noted the one footprint which showed clear in the midst of the trampled soil.

“I think he made that mark getting in,” she said. “See, here’s where he rested the other foot.” She pointed to a spot on the little ledge below the window, where a slight newly-made scratch showed on the brick, and the bark of a tendril of ivy was badly bruised.

“You have quick eyes, Miss Temple,” remarked Humblethorne, appreciatively. “I have no doubt you are right. By the marks he stood here some little time, too, waiting——”

The moment he had spoken the last word he longed to recall it. He stopped abruptly; but it was too late: she caught him up at once.

“Waiting?” she cried, “for what?” He did not answer, and her eyes dilated and into them came a sudden, chilling fear. “For whom,” she added in a low voice; not as one asking a question, but as a slow sinking of fact into her own brain.

“Let me see the inside,” he said, rising and shooting a glance of keenest inquiry at her. She did not seem at first to hear him; interest had died in her; she was turning away and all her vivacity had been struck from her face.

“I have seen it,” she said in a dull voice: “I do not wish to see it again.” Without another word she left him.

Humblethorne stood looking after her, moved less by interest than by sympathy.

“She doesn’t know who came in or she’d never have pointed anything out,” he thought, “but she thinks she knows who helped him in.”

When she was out of sight, he went swiftly back, and, crossing the hall, entered the drawing-room. He turned on all the lights and stood for one moment, taking stock of the room generally, and then slowly approached the window. No marks were discernible on the carpet, but a search revealed little pieces of dry earth on the stained wood. Carefully he unbarred the shutters, taking great pains not to touch anything but the bottom of the bolt, and the extreme rim of the shutters; there was no longer uncertainty about the entrance. Pieces of earth lay on the sill, only minute particles as if it had been hastily swept, but the white paint was scored to the left of the centre with a number of tiny criss-cross scratches, and among them dirt was ground in. Some one’s boot had been pressed and then turned upon it, it was impossible to doubt it. If confirmation were needed, it was given by the damning evidence of the faint imprint of finger-tips on the lintel, where any one entering by the window would naturally have caught hold to steady himself.

As he gazed, Humblethorne let out his breath in a long “ah!” Suddenly, with that agility of performance with which the mind sometimes chooses to delight those who have long been turning over a set of isolated facts without being able to fit them together, he saw clear: three facts came together without conscious effort and made a pattern. The mouth of which Lady Penterton’s had reminded him in vain was that of the unsociable stranger at the Rose and Crown, he remembered it now perfectly, and had no doubt whatever—fact number one; that stranger had gone out and returned hurriedly to the inn shortly after midnight on the night of the murder—fact number two; some one had made a secret entrance into the Towers—fact number three. In a flash his mind had forged a complete chain of events: the stranger was the son of whom he had been hearing; he had returned home secretly—for what purpose was at the moment immaterial—he had encountered his father, whether by arrangement or by accident; a quarrel had ensued; the son had struck his father down, and fled—and some one had first let him in, and had afterwards closed the window and bolted the shutters behind him.

Here the shutters did not help him; no finger prints were discernible. Closing them again, he sat down and ran over in his mind all the evidence in the light of what he now suspected with such deadly confidence. It remained to track and identify the stranger of the inn, perhaps a difficult but at any rate a straightforward task, and to investigate further such questions as Castle’s property in shoes. He rose up, full of energy and certain of success, went into the hall and rang the bell.

When Fairlie presented himself he said in a casual manner, “Oh, Fairlie, do you know where Mr. Castle is?”

“He was resting, but I think I heard him come down a few minutes ago and go into his study. Do you wish to speak to him?”

“No, it doesn’t matter. Have you had any rest? You must be pretty tired yourself.”

“I am all right, thank you,” Fairlie replied with a certain dignity. “It doesn’t signify with me, and I have the household to look after.”

“By the way,” remarked Humblethorne idly, “you’ve told me that all the windows were fastened; were all the shutters barred as well? I mean, you are sure?”

“Quite sure,” replied Fairlie with a slight lift of his eyebrows. “It was my duty to see to that. Whoever came in knew better than to try any of those windows: that’s why he broke in through the pantry—at least,” he added in a self-depreciatory tone, “I don’t know how people of that sort reckon things out, but that seems sense to me.”

“Yes, perhaps,” murmured Humblethorne absently. “What about being seen from the bedrooms upstairs, though? How do they go?”

“There isn’t anybody sleeps on that side of the house now,” replied Fairlie, “except Mr. Castle and he’s right at the corner over the study, with the kitchens, etc., between him and the pantry window. It’s as safe a place to get in by as there could be.”

“I see. Well, thanks; sorry to trouble you.”

“It’s no trouble,” returned Fairlie simply, “I am glad to help, though it’s little I can do. Besides, it will be her ladyship’s wish that I should help in every way I can. I shall be bringing tea up in a few minutes now. I expect you would like a cup too. Will you have it here?”

“Oh, that’s very kind: yes, here will do nicely,” said Humblethorne, anxious now he had learnt all he wished to know to get rid of Fairlie and go upstairs without attracting attention.

Fairlie departed and Humblethorne, as soon as he was alone, went quickly upstairs and made his way to the room indicated as belonging to Castle. He listened outside a moment, heard nothing, and then quietly opened the door and stepped in.

A dirty evening shirt and evening socks lay on the chair beside the bed, which was crumpled, and a pair of evening shoes now lay thrown on the top of the rest below the dressing-table. Castle had evidently completed his changing at last. The shoes were those he had worn whilst he had told his story that morning. Humblethorne, after one searching glance round, walked across and picked them up, and turned them over; they were nearly new and the soles smooth and as clean as could be expected. Humblethorne had looked for nothing else; they were not the pair, he was certain, Castle had worn the previous evening. He measured them swiftly and noted the measurements in his pocket-book, laid them down, examined the soles of all the other boots and shoes just to leave nothing to chance, and then swiftly, but methodically searched the room. He found nothing: ten minutes satisfied him that no trace of what he was looking for was in that room. He went first to one window and then to the other, and came rapidly to the conclusion that a very brief search would reveal any package flung out of either, “and this man’s no fool, whatever he may seem,” he concluded; “no, nothing so obvious as that; but I’ll find them yet.”

He stepped out and on an impulse turned to the left instead of returning along the passage by which he had come, and opened the door of the adjoining room. He found himself in a small room, neat and plain; on the chest of drawers stood a little folding book-case full of books—a miscellaneous collection composed of a Browning, an anthology of verse, a few small monographs on famous artists, and half a dozen novels: some moderate engravings of country subjects were on the walls and over the mantelpiece a couple of groups of school elevens: boots and shoes were ranged tidily by the further wall. The room produced an odd impression; it was fresh and clean and yet had a curious atmosphere of emptiness. Humblethorne walked straight to the mantelpiece; the groups were what interested him. One look, and he knew his chain of events was founded on no coincidence; the boy under whom was written “J. Penterton” bore an unmistakable resemblance to the stranger of the inn. Humblethorne opened the Browning; on the fly-leaf was written, “John, from his loving Mother;” a date, twelve years old, followed. He went over to the other wall, picked up a boot and compared its measurements with those he had entered in his notebook from the imprint below the drawing-room window: they were practically identical.

He had just replaced the boot and was gazing out of the window in a dark reverie when the door was pushed further open and Evelyn looked in at him. She had been returning wearily to her room, and with new unreasoning reluctance to pass those sheeted stains again had come up the little back staircase which passed the door. It was standing ajar and instantly attracted her attention.

For a moment no one spoke. He was particularly vexed at her finding him in the room; she was sick with apprehension at the thoughts which crowded in on her. Then in a low, strained voice she said, “What are you doing—here?”

“I am just looking round the house,” he answered evasively.

“But here, you can learn nothing here.”

“This seems to be the son’s room if I’m not mistaken?” he asked. “I understood he never came here.”

“It is ten years since he was here,” she answered; then, seeing his unspoken question, she went on, “It was his mother’s whim to keep the room exactly as it was when he was ordered out of the house: he went, you know, just as he stood, and left everything; he was proud—and angry. I expect you have heard the story. Anyway, his name was never allowed to be mentioned again. Sir Roger had one great fault; he was proud too but in a very different way, and he could not forgive.”

“I see, but I should have thought that this——” he paused and indicated the room.

“Oh, he never asked about it, why should he? It was never mentioned, just maintained. Sentimental, yes, but it harmed no one and pleased his mother. But I am afraid,” she went on, forcing herself to speak lightly, “that this old history, sad as it has been, is only a waste of time now. Tragedies of ten years ago have little bearing on tragedies of to-day.”

“I am bound to look everywhere,” he said, coming out. They walked along the passage together in silence. Each was wondering how much the other knew; she dared not say more in the light of her fears, he did not wish to in the light of his knowledge.

Evelyn went to her room and then, after taking off her hat, went with leaden feet to Celia.

“Well,” she said as brightly as she could as she entered, “how are you feeling now? It’s lovely out, not too hot like yesterday.”

“Where did you go?” asked Celia without interest.

“Oh, only in the garden.” Evelyn found a difficulty in keeping her voice quite natural, and her eyes strayed restlessly to the window. This was horrible; what was it that had thrust itself between them? She must make some effort to end the crushing uncertainty she had been suddenly called upon to face. Anything was better than that; and in her heart she was convinced, in spite of all the evidence which was pressing on her, that a frank renewal of speech would dispel the spectre. She might be deceived in her eyes and her reason, but she felt she could not be deceived in the character of her own Celia. She looked up abruptly and said, “I’m afraid the police are working rather at random.”

It seemed to her, though she hated to think it, that Celia did not receive this remark quite naturally; she turned quickly and said with a strange note—was it relief or disappointment or was it merely an overstrung imagination in the listener?—“Why do you say that?”

“Well, that inspector seems to be looking through the rooms just in case he can come across anything unusual. I found him just now,” Evelyn added as naturally as she could, “in John’s little room.”

She had hoped above all things that saying this would have little effect, but her hopes were doomed to extinction. Celia started away, grew as white as a sheet and said wildly, “In John’s room!”

“I told him,” answered Evelyn quickly, “I was afraid he was wasting his time.”

“It’s horrible, horrible!” moaned Celia. “What could he find in there?” She seized Evelyn’s hand convulsively: “Evie, for God’s sake, tell me, what did he say?”

“Only that he was bound to go everywhere,” answered Evelyn in a flat voice which sounded odd in her own ears.

Celia did not remark it; she sank back with a deep sigh, shivered a little and then stayed white and silent. Evelyn could not bear it; “she will not tell me,” she thought, “and she has something to tell.” She rose wearily and said, “I’m going to lie down a bit myself or I shall be the next one with a headache.”

But it was her heart rather than her head that was aching, and when she got to her room she could not force herself to rest.

When Humblethorne, on leaving Evelyn, descended once more to the hall, he found his tea set in readiness for him at the end opposite the stairs. He felt that he had earned it, and sat down in one of the big armchairs facing the fireplace, well satisfied with his afternoon’s work. Presently through the front door on his left Birts entered and, seeing him, at once came to tell of his afternoon’s activities. The tale of the account he had given to a friendly reporter he did not think it necessary to repeat—that had not had much to do with Humblethorne; but he had an entirely negative report of the inquiries he had been pursuing in the grounds to deliver.

“There hasn’t been a soul hanging round that any one admits to seeing,” was his conclusion.

“And you didn’t find any traces—not a pair of shoes, for example?” inquired Humblethorne with a light, half-amused glance at him.

“A pair of shoes,” repeated Birts in surprise. “No, I certainly haven’t seen any.”

“That’s a pity, for I particularly want to find some.”

“Give me their description,” said Birts, taking out his notebook.

Humblethorne laughed. “I believe I could describe them fairly accurately,” he said; “but that won’t help you to find them. I’ve looked in all the likely places already.”

“You mean,” remarked Birts after he had considered this remark, “that they’ve been hidden away?”

“Hidden away or destroyed.”

“If they’ve been destroyed, that doesn’t give us a chance.”

“I agree—if they have been destroyed. But shoes aren’t easy things to destroy without leaving any traces, especially in summer when there are no fires. No, depend upon it, they have been hidden and well hidden: the point is, where?”

“Just so,” remarked Birts. “It’s a large place and plenty of rabbit-holes and the like in the woods.”

“When I was down at lunch, where were you, Birts?”

“I was here all the time till Fairlie came about that window, and then here again after that.”

“Any one come downstairs?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, as you say, it’s a big place.” Humblethorne relapsed into silence which remained unbroken for a few moments, each man pursuing his own train of thought.

“I was thinking, if you agreed, sir,” said Birts at last, “of making inquiries in the village and neighbourhood this evening.”

“Quite unnecessary; and, besides, I want you here.”

Birts stared at him in deep astonishment and Humblethorne allowed himself the gratification of watching him with a little smile.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Birts at length. “Unnecessary—does that mean you’ve traced him? And what can I do here?”

“I want you to stay here to-night,” repeated Humblethorne. “You have a man with the body too, haven’t you? Well, I want one of you to remain on duty all the time and make sure that nobody leaves the house without your knowing all about it. I may be quite wrong, but I think there’s some one in this house with a pair of shoes and a guilty conscience to dispose of, and I don’t want that done without our knowing all about it. See?”

Birts struggled manfully to appear as if he saw, but he was too full of curiosity to conceal it. “I see, sir,” he said, “of course exactly what you want me to do, but I can’t say as I quite follow what you have in your mind. When you say inquiries are unnecessary do you mean as you know who did it?”

Humblethorne paused. It was a pleasant moment for him, and he consciously prolonged it. At last, leaning back in his chair, he answered the eager question.

“Yes, I know,” he said. “I know in spite of what has been done since to prevent my knowing. It only remains to put my hand on him.”

“Oh!” Astonishment at the beginning of the sentence mingled with disappointment at its conclusion. “But you know him?” Birts went on. “Who is he? I’ll find him for you all right. I know every one about here.”

“All in good time,” replied Humblethorne, who was willing to gratify the sergeant’s curiosity to a certain extent, but had received too evident a proof of his lack of ability to confide in him unduly at this stage. “If you want to know, he’s a youngish man, clean-shaven, rather over six foot I should say, thin, has blue eyes, and fairly dark brown hair a little grey above the ears.” It was not quite fair of Humblethorne; he was a poseur and he knew it. He was ascribing to his own cleverness what was really due entirely to his luck, but the astonished admiration of Birts was an incitement he could not resist.

“You’re laughing at me, sir?” exclaimed the sergeant. “You can’t have found out all that this afternoon; it beats reason. And it isn’t as if you lived in these parts and knew every one.”

“Indeed, I am not laughing at you, Birts,” protested Humblethorne a little more warmly than he would have spoken if he had not been so nearly doing it. “That is a fairly exact description of the man who got into the house last night——”

“Yes, through that little window,” interpolated Birts, anxious to remind Humblethorne that he had at any rate reasoned the crime out from that start.

“What little window? Oh, in the pantry: I’d forgotten about that. No, he didn’t get in there.”

“Not there! Why——”

“That has nothing whatever to do with the case. I never really supposed it had,” interrupted Humblethorne decisively. “That might have got broken in a score of ways; there’s not the smallest evidence that any one got in through it, and there’s every reason to suppose that no one did.”

“How did he get in then?” Birts was nettled at this drastic sweeping away of his one theory and spoke with the air of a man putting an unanswerable conundrum.

“Through the drawing-room,” replied Humblethorne shortly.

“Through the drawing-room!” repeated Birts incredulously. “But the shutters were all up; they hadn’t been touched either, for I looked at them myself when I got here.”

“It is possible to open them from inside,” remarked Humblethorne gravely, “and that is the reason I am now looking for a pair of evening shoes. If I can find them, I know all I want to know about the man on whose story so much depends.”

“Mr. Castle!” gasped Birts. “You don’t mean——”

“I mean nothing,” broke in Humblethorne, irritated that he had been led on to say so much, “and take care you say nothing yet to any one of what I’ve been saying—not to any one.”

“I’ll keep my mouth shut all right, sir, never fear,” said Birts with sudden sternness: he recognized that in the eyes of his superior he had allowed himself to be made a fool of by one of the criminals, and he was full of personal as well as professional resentment.

“Good; I trust you, remember,” said Humblethorne, rising, “or I wouldn’t have told you so much until the chain of evidence was complete. Until it is, by the way, I think I’ll take charge of the weapon. I’m afraid we shan’t learn much from it, though: that kind of florid silver work is pretty hopeless for finger-prints. Pity it isn’t an ordinary smooth box; if it was, it could tell us all we most want to know.” He went over to the sheet, lifted it, and with great precautions not to interfere with any finger-prints which might be discoverable on it removed and wrapped up the cigarette box. “Now I’m off, Birts,” he said; “remember what I told you.”

They moved off towards the door, Birts saying grimly, “I don’t think as I’m likely to forget.”

“I may not be here to-morrow morning,” added Humblethorne, in a lower tone, “I’ve a few inquiries to put through, and they may take a little time.”

“I can’t bring to mind any one about here who exactly fits that description you give me,” remarked Birts ruminatively; “let’s see——”

“Don’t worry about it, Birts; I know my man and I can trace him. Also I want to try and see if this cigarette box has anything to say. Well, so long—and keep your eyes open.”

Now, as related at the end of the last chapter, Evelyn had found it impossible to rest, torn as she was with the conviction she could not dispel, that Celia, her own bosom friend, held the key to the dark mystery overshadowing the house. She had reached a pitch of weariness, mental even more than physical, when to keep still had become intolerable; she tried to read but could not fix her thoughts on the page. At last she left her room in despair and, drawn by a hateful but irresistible magnet, slowly descended the stairs towards the hall. When she reached the landing and turned to come down the straight flight of stairs to the spot where the body had been found, she saw the two men sitting with their backs to her, engaged in conversation. She stopped in some annoyance, having no wish to keep on running across Humblethorne, and was about to retire as quietly as she had come, when she heard his protest: “Indeed, I am not laughing at you, Birts; that is a fairly exact description of the man who got into the house last night,” and Birts’s self-conscious interpolation, “Yes, through that little window.” “Little window?” she thought, “why ‘little’?” Humblethorne’s rejoinder riveted her attention: it was the first she had heard of the broken pantry window. She stole down a couple of steps and heard every word of the remainder of their discussion.

It was with a sudden shock for which she was wholly unprepared that she heard the words “the man on whose story so much depends.” After the momentary suspicion of Philip Castle of which she had been immediately ashamed she had entirely put him out of her head in connexion with the tragedy; all her mind was centred on the strange manner and wild words of Celia. When she had discovered the marks on the drawing-room window she had been acting on a mere impulse and, concentrating simply on the one fact before her eyes, had gone out to verify her discovery without reasoning beyond it. Humblethorne’s incautious comment on the character of those marks had turned her reason onto the dreadful significance which lay behind: the man who had left those footprints had been waiting to be let in, there was no hope of doubting the conclusion. In a flash her reason had been forced over her love to the truth. “John was——” Celia had begun in her extraordinary agitation at the idea of sending for him now—“here and I let him in,” finished reason in spite of all Evelyn could do to drive the thought away. It had swept in, overwhelmingly reinforced, at the way Celia received the news of Humblethorne’s visit to John’s room. So it was with a mixture of relief and indignation that she learnt that it was not Celia, but Philip who lay under the dreadful suspicion. That was ridiculous—and it was unjust.

As Humblethorne rose to his feet, she slipped upstairs again, recalled to the part of eavesdropper she was playing. She was above and out of sight when the two men turned and went over to the sheet, but heard Humblethorne’s remarks about the cigarette box and then his announcement of departure. The possibility that it might be her finger-marks which would be found on the box suddenly crossed her mind, but more lasting was the memory of the original little puzzle which had started her on her career of investigation. She had forgotten all about it in the turmoil of her emotions, but now it came back to perplex her; there was probably some very obvious solution, but she resolved to ask Philip at the first opportunity if he had moved the box.

Though she dreaded with all her strength the terrible solution which her reason told her was the right one, she continued to hope that something would be found wholly to falsify it: this fact, new to her, of the broken pantry window might possibly help to establish faith in triumph over reason. Humblethorne’s rather contemptuous dismissal of it did not promise well, but still she felt she must find out about it for herself, if only to divert her mind from facts which it was torture to contemplate.

She heard the hall door close as Humblethorne took his departure and after a moment’s hesitation came downstairs again. Birts was standing in the hall, gloomily surveying the carpet. He was not in a good humour; his faith had been callously imposed upon, he considered, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that when all the facts came to the ears of his chief he would be lucky if he escaped merely with a reprimand. He looked up sharply when he heard her tread; then, seeing who it was, he allowed his official manner to relax a little: he had known her these twenty years.

“Oh, it’s you, Miss Evelyn, is it?” he said. “Take care as you come by, miss; nothing’s to be moved, not on no account.”

“No, I see,” she answered, skirting the wall scrupulously. She looked keenly at Birts when she was well in the hall and, though she did not follow all his thoughts, made a very shrewd guess at his general humour. “You look tired, Birts,” she said sympathetically; “it’s the responsibility, I suppose. I hope Fairlie’s looking after you all right; did he bring you any tea?”

“Well, miss,” replied Birts, gratified, “I haven’t had any and that’s a fact. It isn’t Fairlie’s fault; I was out and come in too late; the inspector had some all right.”

“Oh, but that’s not fair; why should he have his and you not? I’ll go and see about it at once.”

“Don’t trouble, miss; I’ll ask Fairlie for a cup when I see him.”

“It’s no trouble: every one has to do what they can to help at a time like this.”

She smiled at him and went through the dining-room to the pantry door, glad to have so easily found an excuse for going there. The door stood ajar and she pushed it open to find the footman alone in it, humming a tune. “Oh, Alfred,” she said, “get a cup of tea and some bread and butter for Sergeant Birts; he’s in the hall, and has had nothing.”

“Very good, miss,” returned the lad.

“Hullo!” she went on with well-sustained naturalness, “how did that little window get broken?” She crossed casually to look at it.

“That’s where the fellow got in who killed Sir Roger, miss,” replied Alfred with interest.

“Really! That’s very interesting,” she replied. She examined the sill, the glass, the lintel and the litter on the floor with an attention she tried to make appear that of the purest curiosity. The scratches on the sill interested her most. “What are these?” she asked.

“Them’s ’is boots,” Alfred answered, “’ob-nailed boots, so Birts ses; I ain’t much ’and at following such things meself.”

“Nor I,” she answered slowly.

Like Humblethorne, she could see no other marks suggestive of an entrance, but, unlike Humblethorne, that in itself seemed to her rather interesting. In common with all but the best brains in his profession Humblethorne had one characteristic which acted as a limitation; he was able to preserve a completely open mind at the start of an inquiry, but when he had collected sufficient facts to justify the deliberate adoption of a theory he was prone to treat as of little importance new facts which did not square with that theory; in other words, when once his thoughts had taken to running along a fixed channel facts were apt to get twisted, instead of the channel being twisted or changed to include them. He saw nothing to make probable Birts’s facile theory; he knew a great deal to make it improbable. When further search revealed clues which confirmed his theory in every respect and in addition he had the very definite identification of the stranger at the inn and John Penterton, the broken window became to him of trifling importance: he had enough to go upon with assurance without it. But to Evelyn, who embraced no theory and longed to be able to refute the conviction forced upon her, it appeared in a different light. The scratches Humblethorne soon decided had not been made by a boot, not even a hobnailed one, and it was for boot-marks that he was looking: Evelyn, who was not looking for anything, did not ignore them because to her too they seemed too regular to have been made by boots. She did not understand them and continued to wonder what had caused them.

“There seem to be a good many things I don’t understand,” she thought to herself as, having reminded Alfred about the tea, she returned to the hall, “but after all that is hardly to be wondered at.”

“I’ve told them to bring you some tea, Birts,” she said, “and something to eat; I expect you’ll be glad of it.”

“Thank you, miss; it’s very kind of you.”

“By the way, I see there’s a window broken in the pantry,” she remarked casually.

“You didn’t touch nothing, I hope,” exclaimed Birts hastily.

“I was careful not to,” she answered; “Alfred told me it was where the—the man got in last night; so of course I didn’t.”

“That’s what I says,” said Birts, “but the inspector, he doesn’t think it has anything——” he broke off, remembering Humblethorne’s injunction.

“Well,” remarked Evelyn lightly, “I’ve no doubt he’s very clever, but all the same it seems a little curious to me. Doesn’t it to you?”

“I must say as it does,” confessed Birts.

“When did you find it was broken?” she asked.

“I should say it was a little after two o’clock; at least the inspector had been gone to lunch about half an hour.”

“Two o’clock this afternoon? Not till then? But didn’t you see it early this morning? I thought all the doors and windows had been examined then.”

A glance at Birts’s face gave her her answer; he might have examined all the more obvious ways into the house, but it was evident that there had been some gaps. She added quickly, “No, I expect you had plenty to see to in here. What a horrible business it is!”

Just then Alfred appeared with a tray and Evelyn, having learnt everything that Birts was likely to tell her, left him to enjoy his tea in peace. She went slowly to her room, turning over and over in her mind the new facts on which she had lighted. Some one might have got in by that window; she wished her mind would think that some one had, for he could have entered there unassisted. But her mind did not think so and she could not force it to; the scratches were too obvious somehow. Close on the heels of this thought came the conclusion—some one had marked the sill in order to make it seem the place where the entrance was effected. Once more she was brought face to face with evidence from which her only wish was to find an escape. This last was worst of all, arguing a deliberate intention to mislead, a desire to cover up the admittance and lay a false trail which could only have taken shape after the deed. This went beyond all her former fears and chilled her to the bottom of her heart.

Evelyn did not go downstairs again that evening; nor did she make any attempt to see Celia. She sent word that she was worn out, would just like some dinner brought her, and did not wish otherwise to be disturbed. She was very tired physically; mentally she was strained and harassed whichever way her thoughts turned. For some hours she tossed restlessly in the vain attempt to escape from them; several times she made up her mind to have nothing further to do with investigations. Each time she had played detective her reason had demanded of her more than her heart could yield. But she was in the grip of her mind; it would not let her leave bad alone, and always she continued to hope, to try and force herself to believe that, if she only had eyes to see it, some other and less terrible solution lay before her.

Already she had come upon two almost irreconcilable sets of facts. It was possible that John had been let in that night by Celia—she remembered that Celia had gone up early, pleading headache, and had said good-night, telling her not to come in again—but it did not seem possible that after the tragedy Celia could have let John out and then laid a false trail: it asked for greater resolution and coolness than Evelyn had ever seen Celia show.

Evelyn taxed her memory to recall exactly how Celia had looked and spoken when she broke the news to her. She had been, it seemed looking back, fearful, apprehensive; she had known something, enough to be afraid, not enough to know of what to be afraid. Yet John had been let out, the window had been barred, a false trail had been laid—by whom? Evelyn’s mind swung back in spite of her utmost resistance to the one other person who had admittedly been awake, Philip Castle. Suddenly she felt the whole truth was laid before her. Celia had known that John was coming that night to see his father—perhaps she had arranged it, hoping against hope no doubt that Sir Roger would find it at last in his heart to forgive—there had been a quarrel, John had killed his father, accidentally she was sure, and Philip—it was Philip who was doing all he could to screen him. At last on this thought, much less terrible than any yet she had found, she fell asleep.

She awoke the next morning in a calmer and more decided frame of mind. She was confident that she had hit upon the truth, and was only anxious to have it confirmed. One thought made her pause; Humblethorne knew of John and suspected Philip; his view of the affair corresponded rather closely with her own—only he read it as murder and she did not. How were they to prove that it was not? The broken window, clever as it was, had not thrown Humblethorne off the track, but he had missed its true significance. If he once grasped that, it might be hard, perhaps impossible, to prove that there had been no intention in the death. But there might be some fresh fact still to be discovered to help that proof. Evelyn smiled a little: wearily at her many resolutions to have nothing more to do with investigation: the spirit of it had caught hold of her. There was one thing now she did not understand, the first thing which had really set her feet towards discovery, and that was the shape of the stain on the bottom of the cigarette box. Why had Philip—or perhaps John—moved it? For moved it had been, she felt sure. Had one of them kicked it as they ran to Sir John? Probably it would not help at all to know, but it annoyed her; it was the one thing still concealed from her.

As soon as she had had breakfast, she got up, dressed, and went downstairs. No one was in the hall, but, recognizing what an enormity she had committed in lifting the sheet and fingering the cigarette box, she was specially careful to come down the further side of the stairs. The sheet which usually lay more to the right was now a little in the way of her passing: to steady herself more surely in stepping round she put her hand on the heavy wooden cornice which ran along the wall at approximately the same height as the balusters on the other side; and as she stepped round and rather dragged her hand, she ran a small splinter into her thumb. She had gone several steps along the hall towards the passage, when it suddenly struck her as odd that a polished cornice should have such a thing as a splinter. She walked back and carefully examined the cornice. Level with the third step, on the under side of the cornice she found that the wood had received a blow. The projection of the cornice above kept it in shadow and on the mahogany it was hardly noticeable unless the eye was actually looking for it, but direct examination revealed a dent about a third of an inch across and half an inch deep; the edges where the polish was crushed were fresh.

“Something else I don’t understand,” she muttered to herself; “now what in the world did that?”

She spent several minutes examining cornice and wall, both above and below, for some distance on either side of the dent, but found nothing, and finally decided that there was nothing more to find.

“Probably that has nothing whatever to do with it and I am vexing my brains to no purpose,” she thought as she desisted from her examination and went along, according to her original intention, to the study.

Here, as she hoped, she found Philip Castle, who was engaged in going through and docketing the dead man’s papers ready for the perusal of the family solicitor. His face brightened when he saw who his visitor was, and he rose from his chair with a cordial greeting—

“Why, Evelyn,” he exclaimed, “come in! I don’t feel as if I’d seen you for a hundred years.”

“I’ve come—on business, Philip,” she said with some hesitation: he looked now so different from the white, excited man she had been recalling for so many troubled hours. He had recovered his self-possession, and, though still looking tired and a little shaken, was apparently much as usual.

“Oh!” he said with a slight frown of surprise. “Well, come in and sit down, won’t you?” He placed the armchair for her as he spoke.

She shut the door and sat down. Now that she was here she found words difficult; he saw that she was troubled, and sat down himself gravely to hear what it was she wanted to tell him.

“Philip,” she said at last, “we’ve known each other a long time.”

“Yes, indeed,” he assented warmly, wondering what was coming.

“Is there—is there anything about this horrible business you can tell me that you can’t tell anybody else?”

He started from his chair. “Evelyn!” he exclaimed, “What do you mean?”

His astonishment at her question sounded so genuine that she in her turn stared at him in blank surprise.

“Don’t you know who did it?” she asked, almost anxiously.

“Know who did it?” he repeated. “Know who did it? Evelyn!” Reproach, bewilderment was in his voice.

“You don’t?” she cried.

“What does such a question mean?” he asked, looking at her in a strange way. “Why should I know? Is it a way of saying you think I did it?”

“No, no!” she answered. “I don’t think you did it.”

“Thank heaven for that! But you think I know who did it?”

She looked at him miserably. “I did think so,” she said in a low voice; her theory, the one theory to which after hours of restless, unhappy doubt she could fit without too great pain the facts her reason had given her, was crumbling in ruins.

He began to walk in extreme agitation up and down the room; he was obviously cut to the heart by her thought. She watched him and could think of nothing except that she had been wretchedly wrong as usual. Presently he stopped in front of her and said quite quietly:

“Evelyn, as you said at first, we have known each other a long time; d’you mind telling me why you thought I knew?”

She felt herself placed by her own action in a dreadful dilemma: she could not tell him the torment of doubt through which she had passed, about Celia and about him; yet she recognized the justice of the question and the moderation with which he spoke.

“You have a right to know, Philip,” she said at length; “don’t imagine it was easy for me to think so; I’ve been suffering pretty acutely this last twenty-four hours. But partly by accident and partly by using my intelligence I have found out several things, and the only conclusion I could come to—a horrid one, but less horrid than some I’ve been fighting against—was that you knew and were trying to screen somebody.” She saw his lips forming into a question and added hurriedly, “Don’t ask me whom, Philip, please. I may be wrong, as I was about you. It isn’t anybody in the house.”

“It is difficult to understand,” he said slowly. “What can you have found out to make you conclude such a thing?”

She longed to tell him everything; but if he knew nothing—and all her faith in him now was regained—then she was back in her former doubt, and she could not utter a word to bring Celia’s name into such a thing. She might be utterly wrong, she hoped with her whole heart she was. But somebody knew, somebody had opened the shutters and closed them again afterwards. Whatever faith she had in her friends, she could not lay that irrefutable fact aside.

“I wish I felt I could tell you,” she said as these thoughts swept over her; “I hate evasions. But if it is not your secret, and I know now it is not, then, well, the less said about it the better, till it’s not guesswork but certainty.”

“You are very mysterious,” he said.

“Am I?” she answered wearily. “Yes, I’m afraid I am. And I am very worried; it is all so dreadful, I wish I could keep my mind quiet: it will fly round and round and try against my will to solve what it does not understand.”

“I didn’t expect you to doubt me, Evelyn,” he said, following out his own thought. “With others it’s different: that ass, Birts, for instance, is eyeing me this morning as if I were a rattlesnake.”

“Don’t be angry with me,” she exclaimed; “I believe you absolutely. If I did think you knew, I was sure you were acting from a generous motive in pretending you didn’t. I thought some one must have come in and then there had been a quarrel and an accident, and you wanted to save an unhappy man from consequences he never intended, and you could not tell me because it didn’t involve you alone. That would have been like you, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said a little awkwardly; “it doesn’t sound so bad, put that way.”

“And that is the way I did put it,” she answered quickly; “I know you. But, Philip, these men don’t, and it is natural, I suppose, that they should think differently. You have told them everything, I suppose?”

“They have questioned me to their heart’s content,” he replied.

“What I mean is—suppose they decide that you know, even that you helped the other escape, isn’t there some way to prove conclusively that you didn’t?”

He changed colour a little. “Good heavens, Evelyn!” he cried. “What a horrible question! No, there isn’t, I was quite alone. I can only say I found him as I told them; I can’t prove it.”

She became suddenly thoughtful. “No, I see that,” she said; “but as long as there is nothing to seem to prove the contrary, it doesn’t matter what they think. You didn’t,” she asked the question hesitatingly, “move the cigarette box or anything, did you?”

He looked at her blankly as he exclaimed, “Move the cigarette box! Evelyn, what on earth have you in your mind? Why do you ask?”

“Because it was moved and very soon after Sir Roger was killed.”

“How can you possibly know that?” he asked, taken aback at the quiet assertion.

“I have seen it since,” she answered, a little confused; “and the marks on it make me think that it was put down on the blood, after it had stopped flowing but before it dried.”

“What an extraordinary girl you are!” he said in a tone divided between admiration and amazement. “And that made you think I’d moved it? No, I didn’t touch it. I touched nothing till Birts and the doctor had come. Oh!” he cried, his face lighting up as if a sudden light had broken in upon him, “I think I understand why Birts is looking at me like that this morning. After he’d finished making his notes and all that, I asked if I couldn’t move the body into the smoking-room; it seemed so dreadful to have it lying there all day: I was afraid you would come down and see it. He was very doubtful, but I persuaded him at last to let me. And I expect that other fellow was annoyed he hadn’t seen it where I found it, and told Birts he oughtn’t to have allowed it, and Birts is working off his annoyance on me.”

Evelyn had listened intently, but now spoke with impatience:

“It was idiotic of you, Philip. What did it matter if I did see it?”

“It had upset me,” he said simply, “coming on it suddenly in the dark: and I couldn’t bear the idea of your receiving the same sort of impression.”

“It is just like you,” she said. “You never think things out. It was nice of you in a way, but the act of a——.” she stopped; then added with conviction, “an innocent man; no one else would have dared, there is that about it. Tell me,” she went on with a change of manner, “I wish you would, just what you told that inspector. I haven’t heard and I may think of something.”

He at first wished to refuse, but in response to her further request, told again what he had already told Humblethorne. She listened, all her mind absorbed, trying in vain to see whether it threw any new light on the facts of which she was in possession. When he finished she stayed silent a long while, leaning forward in her chair, her head on her hands.

“One thing puzzles me besides that point about the box,” she said at last as much to herself as to him. “If it had been thrown as apparently it was and came open enough to let any cigarettes fall out, why weren’t they all over the place instead of all more or less together?”

“They were,” he replied: “there were some on the floor, but most of them were on the stairs, scattered about. Birts let me move them, after he had counted them, so as to clear a way upstairs.”

“Scattered about on the stairs,” she repeated thoughtfully. “Where?”

“Oh, all over the place,” he replied vaguely.

“Yes, but where exactly? On which stairs? You must know, Philip.”

“I don’t see that it matters,” he answered.

“Nor do I, but I want to know.”

“Well, all over the stairs, most of them four or five steps up, some in the centre and some on the right, as you go up; that’s why they were so in the way. But really I can’t see that it’s of the least importance.” He spoke with a touch of impatience.

“No, probably it isn’t. Well, you’re tired of being asked questions; I can see that, and I don’t wonder. I’ll leave you in peace now. Don’t worry about anything I’ve said, Philip. It’s troubling me so, and I’m always wrong.”

As she turned out of the study and passed the back staircase she remembered going up it the evening before and finding Humblethorne in John’s room. She stopped. After all, she reflected, she did not know it was John who entered by the drawing-room window; she only suspected it because of Celia. Now that her thoughts about the one were in such confusion, she might be wrong about the other. She believed she was right, but she could turn belief into certainty. She slipped upstairs, entered John’s room, took a boot belonging to a left foot, since that, she remembered, was the clear impression, and went quietly downstairs and out of doors. No one was about; she went straight to the first drawing-room window, stooped down and, as lightly as possible so as not to break away the edges, placed the boot over the impression.

With a heavy heart she saw that it confirmed her fears; she could doubt no longer that John had been there on the evening of the tragedy, had waited to be let in, an obviously arranged meeting, and had been let out secretly—it could not be by Philip after what he had said; if it was by Celia, then she had indeed little knowledge of her friend.

It was a sorely puzzled investigator who went slowly, wearily back into the house and replaced the boot which she had prayed would give her thoughts the lie.

Evelyn stood for many minutes after replacing the boot, in doubt and distress. She absolved Philip; she could neither absolve Celia nor understand how it was possible that she had had the resolution to do what undeniably had been done. There was something else, there must be, which would explain all. Perhaps if she could find the reason for the two things which still seemed to have none, the moving of the box and the dent in the wall, she would understand everything. At any rate she could make no discovery which rendered things less horrible than they had now again become.

So thinking, she came down once more to the hall, took up a position on the further side opposite the foot of the stairs and tried with an intense effort of mind to imagine stage by stage exactly what had taken place. It was fruitless; she was unable to pass beyond the conclusions to which she had already been forced. At last, rather hopeless of progress, fearful that no progress was possible, and that, incredible as it seemed to her, the truth lay between Celia and John as she had first been appalled by it on realizing the significance of the barred shutters, she came slowly forward to the edge of the sheet.

She did not dare move it again, but she had no need to; she saw the stains and all below it in her mind as clearly as in a photograph. She was thinking whether any enlightenment was to be found in the original positions of the cigarettes. “Most of them four or five steps up,” she thought, “in the centre and right.” Her heart gave a sudden leap, light burst in her brain and thoughts followed one upon the other. That was just beyond the dent, the dent was made by the box, the cigarettes had naturally fallen scattered, most of them just beyond where it struck. She ran up the first and second steps, stooped at the third, looked at the dent again, and was certain of her conclusion. Then she turned round and faced the hall from there. Her eyes travelled automatically to the little table on which the cigarette box ordinarily stood; instantly she saw that the cigarettes had fallen on the centre and right because the box came obliquely from the left, clearing the end of the balusters and striking against the wall. The thought rose sharp and bewildering—the box had missed! But it had been found lying at the foot of the stairs, close to the dead man’s head and stained with his blood. The one thing remaining which had puzzled her was suddenly illuminated with light; it was no accident, but murder, and the murderer was the man who had moved the box! He had set it down in the dead man’s blood deliberately to make it appear the weapon, and it had never touched him at all.

Relief and dread fought a bitter battle in her. For the first time since he had come into her thoughts to overshadow them with fear, she felt it possible to acquit John not only of murder but of causing his father’s death at all; the thought of him had been bound up with the box and now she knew the box had shed no blood. But the instant she had yielded herself up to the relief of this her reason became weighed with a greater sense of evil still. The box had missed, but none the less Sir Roger had been struck down. In spite of all her reborn belief she could not repress the thought that this might have been by the hand either of John or of Philip. Philip and John might both have attacked Sir Roger; more odious still, Philip might have killed him after John had left, believing that it would not be difficult to shift the guilt onto one who had secretly entered the house he was forbidden. She felt sick as these possibilities forced their way in on her. No longer could she even comfort herself by believing in the thought of accident.

And after the deed was done, what then? If they had acted together, Philip had let John out and broken the little window. Then, back at the body, he had had a spasm of fear and put the box where it had been found—that at least would throw suspicion away from him. If he had done it after he had let John out, striking perhaps on an impulse without thinking it out in all its traces afterwards, the moving of the box argued just the same a fell and deadly motive. Then he had gone back to his study—she saw the whole thing—written those letters rapidly and then returned to make a show of finding the body and to act a long-drawn lie.

Wildly she wracked her brain for one detail which could disprove these fearful imaginings. “A pair of evening shoes”—the words she had heard Humblethorne use in his talk with Birts the previous evening, words then without special significance, came instead with swift insistence into her mind. They wanted a pair of Philip’s shoes; she had heard them say so. Why? Instantly thought answered itself as she remembered the rest of the stains so close to her. She stooped, and lifting the edge of the sheet, looked again at the two faint, oblong stains, one on the second and one on the fourth step. “He went upstairs after the murder,” came the flashing conclusion—“to act his lie first to me,” she added with a horror-stricken repulsion. So violent was this that she struggled with all her might against it: this seemed to her the most shocking part of the whole dreadful business, “To me, with wet blood on his shoes—impossible! He must have had some other reason; it must have been before that,” she found herself saying. She dropped the sheet she had been clutching with unconscious fierceness, and white and cold, with her mouth set in a fierce, hard line, examined the stairs above, and then the landing, and then the second flight of stairs.

When she reached the top without having found anything to answer her, she stopped: she would not believe her first thought while any other solution could be found. She leant against the balustrade and looked down into the hall. Suddenly it crossed her mind that it was possible that Sir Roger might have been struck from there: she wondered why it had not occurred to her before and then realized that as long as it was assumed that the cigarette box had killed him any such possibility was far too remote. But now when another weapon was in question the situation was different. As she stood, though, just at the head of the stairs, she saw that Sir Roger would have had his back towards her, if he had been turned towards the hall; and he had been, she was sure, for, if he had been coming up the stairs and the body moved, there must have been some indications, and there were none. She accordingly went along a few steps until she reached a bracket which stood against and level with the top of the balusters, and could see most of the hall.

Here she was almost directly above the spot at which the body had been found, and she stood still, her thoughts concentrated on the one problem directly before her mind, why had Philip come upstairs immediately after the murder? She gazed out over the hall and tried to find a reason. Her eyes travelled slowly over all she could see, from the doors of the hall and the dining-room across the hall to the tragic place almost immediately below her. No thought, no reason came to her. She leant forward to discover how far underneath her towards the drawing-room door she could see and found that it was invisible. She was turning away with a gesture of impatience when her glance fell on a little bronze statuette of a dancing girl about nine inches high and fixed into a small ebony pedestal which stood on the bracket level with the top of the balusters. It had stood there for years and she had passed it a thousand times, but there was something about its pose now which instantly attracted her attention, keyed as that was to the uttermost. The right arm, which ordinarily was raised with the elbow bent at right angles to the body and the forearm curving in an easy, graceful manner outwards, was now bent forwards and rather across the body in a way that huddled the shoulder awkwardly.

Evelyn gripped the rail of the balusters with both hands with a sudden violence of which she was completely unconscious: and then, her heart beating wildly with an intuition of success, bent to examine what she had found. On the elbow, a little underneath and behind it so that, unless the statuette was moved—and she had no intention of touching it then—it could only be seen by twisting well over the balusters, was a little, dirty, dark red clot: the whole of the arm at the back from elbow to shoulder and again a little down the side was slightly stained as well. Evelyn knew that she had come upon not only the answer to the puzzle which had then been engaging her but the true weapon as well.

The statuette stood almost directly above the spot where Sir Roger’s body had been found. She saw it all now. It had been so easy to fling it down upon the victim standing below. Sir Roger’s attention must have been attracted by a noise above just too late; he had started back, and the statuette had struck him on his uplifted forehead and dashed him to the ground. It was obvious too why the murderer had come upstairs immediately after committing the crime—it was to replace the statuette. What part John had played she could not tell; it was evident that he could have had no direct hand in it, he would never have come there to seize and hurl so bizarre a weapon. Black as the tragedy seemed, Evelyn was sensible of two consoling thoughts. John might know, but it might have happened after he had gone—probably it had; at any rate he had not struck the blow; and secondly, Celia, whatever she knew and feared, had not known of this, had not helped to cover up the tracks of her father’s murderer.

She drew back a little from the bracket, clutching these two thoughts to her bitter, sickened heart, and then, stooping down, gazed fixedly at the floor for any further direct testimony as to the replacing of the statuette. Nothing was visible on the carpet, but, outlined on the white paint, between the carpet and the balusters was the imprint of a left foot, very faint, but clear enough of outline to intently searching eyes. It needed no great acuteness to deduce that in the act of putting the statuette back on the bracket the murderer had stepped off the carpet with one foot.

For many minutes after making this discovery Evelyn remained staring at the ominous mark: then she turned and went straight to her room; she felt appalled, terrified at the abysses of human nature into which she had unwittingly forced her way. Once again she wished with all her heart that she had never been curious enough to try and penetrate the mystery; she had been drawn on from one darkness to another, and yet she had not been able to leave it alone. Nor could she now; she was impelled against her desire to turn conviction into undeniable certainty. Remembering that the first thing Humblethorne had done on coming on the footmarks outside the drawing-room window had been to secure the measurements, she took a pair of scissors and a piece of drawer-paper and, returning to the mark below the statuette, carefully cut out a pattern. Then she went back to her room. What her purpose was she hardly knew; she did not know what she would do when she had established conviction on an unbreakable chain of reason, but while any possibility of error remained her bitterness of spirit gave her no rest. She looked at the cutting in her hand and shivered at the significance which so simple a thing contained. Then she wondered if she dared go immediately to compare it with its original; but she did not know for certain that Philip was still in the study, and she saw no way of finding out without revealing the horror in her soul. She stood turning the pattern over and over purposelessly; then she thrust it into a drawer as if it burnt her; she would go and get a measuring tape, anything to feed her craving for action. With this intention she went into the room she shared with Celia and was rummaging in a work-basket when her friend came in.

“Why, Evelyn,” said Celia, “I didn’t know where you were: you have neglected me this morning!”

“Have I, dear?” replied Evelyn in so vague a tone that it was obvious that the remark had not penetrated in the least.

“What’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling any better?” asked Celia with sympathetic surprise: she was not used to such replies.

“What’s that? Better? Oh, I’m all right,” said Evelyn, trying to force her thoughts away and speak naturally. She put the work-basket down, closed it and then looked across at Celia.

“And how are you this morning?” she added. “You seem a little more rested, but why that worried look?”

“Oh, Evie, it’s about—well, what we spoke of yesterday,” responded Celia, half eagerly from desire to share and half fearfully from memory of their difference of view. “About, well, John, you know.” Her voice in saying the name quivered and stumbled.

“Yes?” asked Evelyn with a quick glance.

“I’ve just been with mother and she began by asking me if I had had any answer to my telegram. I couldn’t tell her I hadn’t sent one—I didn’t, you know—so I simply answered, no. And then she said it was very odd that we hadn’t heard from him and went on about it worrying so that I didn’t know what to do. And so I told her—I didn’t mean to, but I suppose I let out a hint and she seized on it and made me tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“About, about,” Celia caught her friend’s glance and faint colour came into her white cheeks as she hesitated and stuck in the sentence she was on the point of uttering; then summoning up a little determination, she said doggedly, “about his having troubles of his own, how he really wasn’t rich and happy now as I had always let her suppose, and how Margaret was ill and all; I said I couldn’t worry him to come now. She was very upset as I was afraid she would be.” Celia stopped and then resumed. “She agreed, though, at last about not urging him to come; I promised to write and send him some money and tell him she said he was to bring Margaret as soon as she is better and able to come here too. She said of course they must regard this as home now. But——” again she stopped and this time did not say any more, but remained plucking nervously at a cushion-cover with down-cast eyes.

“Celia,” said Evelyn gently after waiting a moment in hope she would go on of her own accord.

“Yes,” replied Celia, neither looking up nor desisting from her restless movements.

“Won’t you tell me everything?”

“That’s all; I came away then,” answered Celia, speaking quickly in a weak defiance of fear and not looking up.

“I mean, about John. Why did he come here two nights ago?”

Celia went suddenly white to the lips: her eyes widened slowly in intense distress, and she breathed in a low, strained voice, “You know!”

“Yes, I have known since yesterday. You can tell me, Celia; you must tell me so that I can help him and you.”

“Does any one else know?” A fearful anxiety was in her question.

“No one knows as much as I do. The others who know think he killed Sir Roger. I know he didn’t.”

The effect of this simple assertion was startling. Celia stretched out her hand to Evelyn, her breath coming in quick, short gasps, and cried with half-incredulous joy, “Evie! do you know what you are saying?”

“Yes. I can prove he didn’t, too, but it will be much easier if you tell me what he did do. Why he came and everything you know. It’s not like us to have secrets from each other.”

“Oh, you don’t know what joy you give me. Yes, I will tell you everything: it has been so terrible bearing it alone,” cried Celia, holding on to her friend and weeping in wild relief. “I couldn’t tell you about his coming beforehand; he made me promise not to; he was more afraid, I think, of mother’s finding out about his being so worried and unhappy than of anything else. And afterwards I couldn’t tell you, because—because I was so afraid he must have done it. Oh, Evie, are you sure he didn’t?”

“Darling, what made you even think for a moment he did?”

“Because I left them together,” answered Celia in a low, terrified voice; “and father was in one of his rages and John white and cold.”

“Well, he didn’t,” replied Evelyn. “I thought at first he did, by accident, of course, but he didn’t. So tell me everything from the beginning.”

“It began about a month ago,” said Celia, “with Margaret getting ill: that was the final misfortune. I was away on a visit to the Williamsons then, you remember, so he could write without being afraid that his letters would be noticed—I have always managed to let him know when I’m away from here—and he told me how bad things were with him. Finally, he asked for my help; he had always refused to take a penny before—he has all mother’s pride, you know—but he couldn’t get the things Margaret needed if she was to have a chance of getting well, and that broke it down; nothing else would have. I was for sending him all I could scrape together, but a sudden, foolish desire to see me and talk to me came over him; he wrote as eagerly as a boy and made this plan. Father almost always went up early; it seemed so easy for me to slip down and open the drawing-room window and he could so easily get into the park and steal across the lawn. I didn’t much like it, but there was no other way in which I could see him without running the risk of father’s getting to hear of it—and when once it had been suggested, oh, Evie, I longed to see him as much as he did to see me.”

“Yes, dear,” Evelyn said understandingly. “And what happened?”

“I slipped down as arranged,” went on Celia nervously; “that was easy. I’d gone to my room early, you remember, after saying good-night to you on the plea of headache. I hated hiding it from you, Evie, but John thought it better no one should know. It was about eleven, I should think; all lights were out downstairs and I thought every one was in bed. I opened the window, and he was there, waiting. We talked there a long while, and then he said he couldn’t see me properly or I him, and he came in. I went and turned on the light, and then I heard father as he limped along in the hall. I didn’t know what to do, I was so afraid he had seen the light and was coming straight in. I thought the only thing to do was to go out and pretend I’d only come down for a book or something. I signed to John to stay still and stepped out.” She shivered, and it was a moment before she went on. “I suppose I acted badly,” she said finally; “at any rate, father suspected something; he told me very angrily to give him none of my nonsense, and when I tried to pass it off and to go upstairs he caught me so roughly by the arm that I cried out. And—and that was more than John could stand. He came out and ordered father to leave me alone: he was terribly angry, not in father’s way, but white and stern. He alarmed me, but father, after staring at him as if he could not believe his own eyes, broke out into awful language and then turned on me and told me to go upstairs. I would have disobeyed, even if he had struck me, but John said to me in a little, dry voice, ‘You had better go,’—and so, hating it but not seeing how I could help, I went. That’s all I know; and when father was found like that, I couldn’t help believing John had done it. You can imagine how I have been suffering, and then when mother wanted him to come here it was dreadful.”

Evelyn had listened to every word with the deepest attention; she was hearing the truth, she knew. When Celia had finished, she became very thoughtful and finally said, “No, you couldn’t help believing it: I can quite understand. Well, don’t worry any more: I’m going to show he didn’t.”

She walked to the window and gazed out; then abruptly turned and disappeared into her room. She had seen Philip Castle strolling along away from the house.

Without delaying a moment Evelyn took the paper pattern of the footprint she had discovered from her drawer and went along the corridor to Philip’s room. The door was standing ajar; she pushed it open, entered and closed it after her. Now that she had come to the climax of her investigations her mind for all its deadly horror was free of the tortures of uncertainty; intimacy, free and absolute, had been regained between her and Celia, and she had had the joy of taking from Celia the crushing belief in her brother’s guilt.

But the criminal remained in all his blackness, and her heart knew no pity there: she stooped and, fighting down a sense of nausea, took up the pair of evening shoes on which Humblethorne had pounced with avidity on his entrance the day before. Their smooth, undarkened soles came as a sudden shock to her; she had been so certain that she would have no need to look further. Then the same thought occurred to her as previously to Humblethorne—these were worn and left conspicuously about just because he had a second pair. She understood completely now what Humblethorne had meant. But she had something which would be decisive even without the discovery of that pair: with a trembling hand she took up her paper pattern and laid it on the left shoe of the two in her hand. It was several sizes too large!

To say that she was taken aback would be hopelessly to understate the turmoil in her brain; she stared at the misfit, so incomprehensible, so utterly unexpected, as if she were seeing a ghost. Her breath went and came; her colour left her; it was against all reason, past all understanding. It could not be true.

Then after a few moments of absolute blank disbelief, when it was obvious that unless she had taken leave of her senses she could not by any alteration of the placing of the pattern make it coincide with the shoe, her mind began to work feverishly again. She could not be entirely wrong, it was the shoe which was wrong, it must be. She knew that at any rate this was not the shoe which had left the stain; perhaps the subtle mind of the man she was tracking had foreseen this, and had deliberately left these small shoes about to be found by any one who came so far along the path of his crime. She snatched up one after the other the left feet of the three other pairs of shoes and boots in the room: the result was identically the same.

“I’m going out of my mind,” she thought; “there’s something wrong somewhere!” It could not now be the shoe; it was absurd to suppose that all the footgear was a blind. It must be the pattern, she decided; she was agitated when she cut it out and had made it too big. Yes, that must be it: she seized the left evening shoe again, hurried out of the room down the passage until she stood half-breathless once more before the little dancing girl. She waited a moment to steady herself and then bent down and, taking the utmost pains to ensure accuracy, placed the shoe over the stain. She could no longer doubt her eyes: the stain was too big.

When at last she became convinced that this was so, she experienced an overpowering revulsion of feeling. For an hour or more her whole soul had been sickened with the contemplation of a dastardly crime and the callous effrontery of the criminal. Now she was forced to believe that she had done him a great wrong; it was certain now that he had not replaced the statuette, it was probable he had never laid hands on it at all. She was hurled in this terrible see-saw of doubt back on the story she had just heard from Celia. John and his father had been left facing each other in the hall in deepest anger. Had John after all done this? Her mind, leaping to the question, instantly conceived how it might have been—she pictured Sir Roger suddenly altering his mind about Celia’s departure, John on an impulse running upstairs to fetch her back, then the thought of the strange weapon at his elbow and the fierce flinging of it down. And then, perhaps, Philip had found him in remorse beside his father’s body, had decided to shield him and had let him out after John had replaced the weapon. And she had just told Celia John was guiltless and she could prove it—that to her was the most poignant tragedy of this surprise. She felt estranged from Philip for ever, whatever part he had played, and, if it had to lie between him and John, she longed only to be able to say it was not John.

In acute agony she returned to Philip’s room, not greatly caring now whether she ran into him or not, replaced the shoe and almost automatically took up the pattern which in her bewilderment she had left lying on his dressing table. She turned out of the room with a strange feeling of apathy, saw she held the pattern in her hand, and, with an unreasoning resentment, tore it to pieces. She had hardly done so before she regretted the action: at least she might make as certain of John as she had tried to do of Philip. She went into John’s room and, seeing an odd boot at the end of the row, took it up. It was a left one and she was puzzled to know what could have become of its fellow. It had been there, she was sure, when she had looked in and found Humblethorne the day before. However, that mattered little beside the purpose for which she had come.

She took up the boot and went back to the stain; almost listlessly she placed the one over the other. Then she gave a little cry; John’s boot fitted no better than Philip’s shoe! She rose unsteadily, her mind in a whirl; she was utterly crushed, humiliated. On what foolish belief in her own cleverness had she been building these fearful ideas about her friends? She had seen something she did not understand and had immediately set to work to paint disloyal and hideous pictures, refusing in her pride of brain to listen to the true promptings of her heart. And now she had finally and conclusively proved her folly to herself. Philip had not been there, nor John. Her abasement at her own self-deceptions did not prevent her from a feeling of relief so great as almost to choke her, but it kept in the back of her consciousness the question which still remained. She put it from her, kept it ignored, and moved away from the fatal spot in a dazed, unthinking condition, content with what she knew and conscious of a great contempt for her powers of investigation. It was only when she had gone some yards that she saw that she was still holding John’s left boot. Who, she thought, could have taken the other one; what was the point when John was innocent? Then she remembered that Humblethorne did not know he was; of course he must have taken it. She wondered where Humblethorne was, becoming aware she had not seen him the whole morning. The boot in her hand and the thought of Humblethorne brought back the recollection of the meeting outside the drawing-room window; she could afford to smile at it now. She would go and look at the window again; in the light of what she knew it would interest her without tempting her to any further frightful theories. She went down and entered the drawing-room and saw to her surprise that the window was now standing open.

Meanwhile Humblethorne had been spending his time in the straightforward, though difficult, business of following up the stranger of the inn. Inquiry showed that he had left early on the morning after the crime, walked to the railway station and there caught the 8.7 a.m. train. He had taken no ticket, obviously having a return half. Having ascertained so much, first from Timmins and then by a visit to the station, Humblethorne walked back, intending to send off a long official telegram which would start the great machinery of the police force at work in picking up the trail. As he passed the post-office, however, an idea struck him; he sauntered in and over the sale of a picture postcard drifted easily into conversation with the postmaster on the great topic of the crime. A skilful suggestion about the awfulness of having to write such news to the son bore unexpected fruit; Miss Celia, it appeared, had written to him. The postmaster was easily drawn on to talk: the letter had attracted notice by being the first written to Mr. John since he was driven from home, think of that, and he had noticed the street and the suburb, though he couldn’t be certain of the number. The telegram that Humblethorne eventually dispatched in official code would do the rest.

Humblethorne then devoted his energies to an endeavour to procure further identification, either of John Penterton or of Philip Castle from the cigarette box, but, as he had feared, the roughness of the surface, owing to the ornamentation and tooling, made the discovery of any finger-marks hopeless. Evelyn, had she thought of it further, only narrowly escaped falling under suspicion herself by virtue of this accident.

One half of his inquiry, that relating to John, being now finished, Humblethorne next directed his attention to the finding of the evidence against Castle which he was firmly persuaded was still in existence. He walked up to the Towers, and, entering quietly, made his way up the back stairs. With unhurried, unwearied persistence he searched the two large unoccupied rooms, which were at the end of the passage past Castle’s room. He found no trace whatever of what he was looking for, entered John’s room and repeated the process, again without result. Puzzled, he stopped, wondering where he should search next. His glance fell upon the boots and it occurred to him that it would still further strengthen the chain of evidence if he verified his measurements: also he would re-examine the window in the hope that he might find he had overlooked some proof of the identity of the man who had bolted the shutters. He accordingly picked up the nearest boot of the row, went downstairs and crossed the hall into the drawing-room.

Here he subjected the window and shutters to the minutest examination, but shutters will not retain any impression from hands that are clean, and he could still find nothing, except the dirty finger-marks on the lintel: these he resolved to have photographed that afternoon. He threw open the window at last, and looked out. It was pleasant there in the sun and he remained in meditation several minutes; then realizing that he was idling, he went out to fit the boot he had taken to the one clear impression in the soil. He bent down to do so when he realized that he had stupidly brought only one boot and that the wrong one. For another minute he looked the soil over to see if amongst its tramplings he could make out a right foot with sufficient clearness, but saw it was hopeless and exclaimed irritably to himself, “I shall have to get the other, that’s all.”

“Perhaps I can save you the trouble,” he heard a voice say pleasantly, and straightening his back he looked up and saw Evelyn at the window holding the left boot.

“Well, I’m hanged!” he exclaimed.

“You will probably wish to fit it yourself,” she said, leaning out; relief at her failures was making her spirits rise above the humiliation of her late thoughts and she spoke almost gaily. “It does fit; I know, because I tried it yesterday.”

He was so taken aback by her sudden appearance and her manner that she could not help smiling.

“This is the window I always come to first, isn’t it?” she said. “Don’t grudge it me.”

“I don’t understand,” he replied slowly. “Do you know whose boots these are?”

“Ten years ago they belonged to Mr. John Penterton,” she answered coolly.

“And feet don’t change their size much after people grow up,” he added rather slowly.

“From which the conclusion is to be drawn——?” she asked.

“That two nights ago Mr. Penterton was let in through this window.”

“Well? We know that. What of it?”

It was obvious that she puzzled him: he remembered too well the way she had been suddenly stricken dumb before this same window the day before, and now she leant out of it, inconsequent, almost gay. He was more than puzzled; he felt a vague misgiving, but he did not care to confess it.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me,” he said with an assumption of the official manner, “why, if you fitted that boot here yesterday, you come here with it again to-day?”

“I was making sure,” she answered slowly.

“I see; well, perhaps you would let me do the same.”

She handed him the boot without a word and watched him fit it carefully to the impression. He raised himself after having done so with an air of subdued triumph in his eyes and felt a renewal of misgiving as he noticed that in hers was only a fairly obvious amusement.

“Don’t lean out of that window, please,” he said rather stiffly. “You are very nearly touching the lintel and I have still to take a copy of those finger-marks.”

She drew back obediently at once and asked with interest—

“How do you manage to do that? It must be very difficult there.”

“I shall photograph those,” he answered.

“The whole system of taking finger-marks is extraordinarily fascinating,” she said; “I don’t see how you do it.”

“Oh, it’s not difficult when once you know how.”

“Like so many things, I suppose,” she remarked, “but it must require great dexterity and special training.”

“I don’t know,” he answered: insensibly his tone had become that of the expert, good-humouredly answering the questions of a layman; and he was not altogether sorry to have an opportunity to show this clever amateur the science that lay beneath his methods. “Of course,” he went on, “I have taken prints for years, and practice makes perfect, they say; but I don’t know that it is specially difficult.”

“How do you set about it in the ordinary way?” she asked.

“Well, it depends of course what they are on,” he replied rather sententiously. “And you can do it in several ways.”

“Yes, but ordinarily.”

“Oh, well, if they were on paper, for example, and you were to sprinkle a little lamp-black over the place, you would see all there was: if on something dark, well, there are several things one can use; fine flour does as well as anything.”

“And it shows up the marks?”

“If there are any; but you have to dust it off very lightly. It’s the grease on the hand, you see, miss, that makes the mark and you want something light that will stick on the place when the rest is brushed off. Of course you can touch plenty of things and not leave a mark, anything rough for instance; in moments of great agitation, however, the human hand becomes moist, which facilitates the work of discovery.”

“I see; it’s very interesting. Well, thank you. I hope I haven’t wasted your time. Oh,” a little smile played round her lips, “I know I haven’t done that.”

He was slightly nettled. “And how do you know?” he asked.

“Because—well, it sounds rude but I don’t mean it to be—because you are wasting it for yourself out there. The man who made those marks is not the man who killed Sir Roger.”

She nodded pleasantly and left him to stare after her with open mouth and profoundly puzzled eyes, as she went slowly upstairs to luncheon.

“Celia let him in; who let him out? What really happened?” she was thinking. “How, when and why did I begin to build up my castle of falsehood?” She stopped dead half way up the stairs; it was the little window, she remembered, which had first convinced her it was Philip just because she was sure Celia could not have done that. In her revulsion of feeling she now absolved Philip afresh; who broke the window then? Suddenly without seeking for it she remembered every word of her conversation with Birts about that window. How blind she had been to its real significance! The breakage had not been discovered till two o’clock on the day after the murder. It might, then, have been done any time between after dinner on the night of the murder and two o’clock next day; it might have been done, the thought came insistently, on the morning after the murder. It might, yes, but why should it have been? No answer suggested itself, but it was with quickened interest in the sudden opening up of a new avenue of thought that she continued her way slowly upstairs.

During luncheon Evelyn sat absorbed in her own thoughts, and spoke little and then at random. Celia, her only companion at the meal, was naturally full of questions; how did Evelyn know John had not done it? Why had she left her so suddenly? And the like, to all of which Evelyn returned evasive answers. She could not shake herself free from the baffling problems of the tragedy, no matter how often or how sincerely she resolved to leave them alone. She had been hopelessly, grievously wrong, but how and why? What had made her go wrong? On what false basis had she reared her crazy edifices? “Some one,” her mind kept repeating to her, “barred that window; John couldn’t do it himself; you have heard and you believe Celia’s story, you have followed Philip’s trail and it has led you to an absurdity. Who remains?” Then her mind ran away with her to the new fact which had just penetrated her consciousness, that there was a large margin of time inside which the little window might have been broken; it was probable of course that it had been done soon after the murder, but it was odd, if that was so, that it had not been discovered many hours earlier than it was. Supposing it had been done the morning after, what could she make of that? Who could have done it, and what was the reason why it was done? It was so easy to make suppositions, so easy to ask questions, but she seemed to be led into a blank wall when she tried to answer them.

Luncheon over, she threw herself down into a low basket chair, and gave herself entirely to a reconsideration of everything she had discovered. The most important point to be decided was, who had left that larger footmark in replacing the statuette? It was not John, it was not Philip. Who else could it possibly have been? As if in reply to the reiterated question, there was a discreet knock on the door and Fairlie entered. He bent in his habitual manner of semi-apology when delivering a message and said that her ladyship would be glad if Miss Celia would come and sit with her that afternoon. Evelyn, reclining in her chair, suddenly grew rigid: her eyes had fallen upon his shoes. She glanced away hurriedly, fearful of betraying the agitation in her mind; her thoughts had received their answer.

Two men remained who could have broken that window, Fairlie and the footman. The latter she put out of her reckoning at once; he was an ordinary, unintelligent, unresourceful lad, who had only been there a few months. He had never known John; he could not have played a part afterwards in any case even to save his neck from the gallows. She could not conceive any reason, except robbery—and of that there was no trace here—why he should murder his master. But Fairlie was a being of very different fibre. No one could ever guess at the thoughts lying hid in that silent soul beneath his stolid mask of dignified imperturbability. Whatever he had done, he was capable, if he chose, of concealing it.

Evelyn was too fresh from the complete upsetting of all her reasoning to leap at once to new conclusions of guilt; she was grown more moderate in her imaginings and no longer felt assured that any picture her mind painted was necessarily the truth. But she realized in an instant the possibilities of this new thought. Fairlie had been devoted to John as a little child. Whatever had happened it would have been his first thought to avoid running the risk of implicating John. She did not go so far in her thoughts as to say Fairlie struck Sir Roger down, but she saw that he might have done so; he might for instance have intervened in a quarrel. As to all that she did not know and refused, as far as she could, to speculate upon thoughts alone; but at any rate Fairlie might have let John out, Fairlie might have broken the window—no one more likely. It was obvious that if he was the one who had barred the window then whether it was he who hurled the statuette or no and whether that was done before or after John’s departure, he would have provided the semblance of some other entrance so that John’s presence on the scene might never be suspected.

The more she thought of it the more probable it seemed that Fairlie was the man: she was amazed that she had never given him a thought before. She recalled Philip’s account of how he had roused Fairlie: there was nothing in that to have prevented Fairlie’s participation during the earlier part of that long interval between thirteen minutes to twelve when Sir Roger left the study and half-past one when he was found dead: plenty of time for him to have let John out, killed Sir Roger—or killed Sir Roger and let John out, if that was the order—and gone himself to bed.

Full of such thoughts she saw her work clear before her, to find proofs which should either dispel this theory as all her others had been dispelled or make it stand out evident to all as the truth. It fitted all facts so well that even in her humility she felt assured that this time it would be strange indeed if she were entirely wrong. She had none of the bitter, horror-stricken resentment with which her belief in Philip’s guilt had inspired her; horror she felt still certainly, but also a kind of unwilling pity. She could not imagine Fairlie capable of what she would call a selfish crime: there could be no reason for such an act. Whatever his feelings towards Sir Roger were—and it was probable that beneath his respectful deference had lain a deep resentment—they would never have blazed, she felt, into violence. The thought fought itself in on her that he might have acted merely as a shield against discovery to John.

At this she rose hastily: it was no use repeating error by vexing herself in advance needlessly. It was time to act, to prove, not think. Her recent talk with Humblethorne on the subject of finger-marks had not been entirely conversational: at the back of her mind, humiliated though she had been, had still lingered irrepressible interest, and she had kept wondering whether it would not be possible to find on the statuette marks which would guide her towards the real truth. Now she would put the information given her by Humblethorne to the test. It was characteristic of her that she never stopped to consider the propriety of her handling the statuette for such a purpose: it would have been simpler and safer to have informed Humblethorne of her discovery, but she had erred alone and she would succeed alone.

She got up from the easy chair and thought out her plans. She must first get some fine flour and test the statuette. She was about to go downstairs to beg some from the cook, when glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece she noticed that it was just two o’clock. The sense of time had slipped from her: she saw instantly that it would be the most ill-fitting time to approach the cook, but the best to pursue unobserved any private inquiry of her own. The servants would all be at their dinner. At once her mind was made up. She went to her room, took scissors and paper, and, hurrying to the stain which had so baffled her, cut out another pattern. Then she made her way without noise or hesitation to the room she knew to be Fairlie’s. Outside she paused, wondering what explanation she would give if she were seen, but the clatter and voices in the servants’ hall reassured her: she opened the door and stole in. Beneath the washstand were a couple of pairs of boots; she dived at a left foot, turned it over and placed her pattern upon it. She had made no error this time: one thing was certain now, Fairlie’s foot had made the stain.

She was fearful of being discovered and had no definite object in further delay. But she saw no evening shoes; no doubt the pair then on his feet were those he had been wearing the evening of the murder, but they might be hidden away. Hastily she searched the most likely places, but without result; she opened rapidly one after another the drawers, but could find nothing. She dared stay no longer, and closed the drawers silently. She could not quite push home the top left-hand drawer, however; it had been closed and she was anxious to leave everything exactly as she had found it. She made another attempt and became convinced something was obstructing it. Hurriedly she pulled the drawer right out, felt at the back, and to her horror drew out a dirty, crumpled handkerchief stained with blood. She had hardly done so when she heard the screech of a chair being pushed back in the servants’ hall: she snatched a clean handkerchief from the drawer, thrust it behind, inserted and forced the drawer home, and fled back to her room with her pattern and the blood-stained relic crushed in her hand.

Then, locking the door, she examined what she had so unexpectedly stumbled upon. It was a man’s ordinary white handkerchief of good, but not especially fine, linen; it bore in the corner the initials J.F.; right across its width from edge to edge the centre was stained with a streaky band of blood, about three inches across at its widest and then narrowing irregularly to about an inch and a half; and it was marked by little ribs of dirt.

“More puzzles!” thought Evelyn. “Now what has this been used for?”

She locked it away carefully and then went down as she had first intended and managed to borrow some fine flour from the cook without exciting any special interest in that good woman’s lethargic mind; she had supplied both Celia and Evelyn with many curious things in her time when they had been amusing themselves learning to cook. So far Evelyn had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams; she had now the most delicate part of her self-imposed task before her.

A confidence, however, in her own dexterity of touch—if a clumsy-handed man like Humblethorne could do it, she certainly could, was her thought—and a belief that any discovery her experiment might yield would at best be only additional to what she already knew helped to steady her excitement and kept her from realizing how unusual her action was. She put on a pair of thin gloves, went along the passage, first making sure that no one was about, and, after examining the statuette once more as it stood, lifted it down by the arm which was free of any stain.

She was surprised to find how heavy it was; it looked slight and small in position, but she realized what a terrible blow it must have inflicted, hurled from that height. One other thing she noticed as she carried it unobserved to her room, and that was that it had become loose on its little ebony pedestal. The closer inspection, which was possible as soon as she was secure against observation or interruption inside her own locked door, revealed that the stout pins which entered the pedestal from the feet and held the figure in place had been badly strained, so that one foot had driven slightly into the pedestal to one side, and then when the statuette was put again in an upright condition had shifted back, leaving a distinct mark on the polished wood. That the statuette had had a severe fall was placed beyond all doubt.

Celia was a keen and skilful artist in delicate water-colour, so Evelyn had only to slip through to the girls’ study and borrow a fine brush to have all her preparations made for the new experiment. First of all, however, she practised making a few finger-prints by pressing her thumb on the polished mahogany of her dressing-table and sprinkling and brushing the flour. She had not been quite so ignorant of the elements of the art as her questions to Humblethorne had suggested and in any case did not find it particularly difficult. After a few attempts she felt reasonably sure of being able to make visible whatever the statuette concealed.

She came to it, and as she stood looking again at the bent arm a sudden knowledge came to her as to the use to which the blood-stained handkerchief had been put: like so much else it seemed obvious directly the thought had come at all—the handkerchief had been used to wipe the arm and shoulder. She took it out and examined it again in connexion with the stains on the statuette; yes, there could be little doubt. The line of her mouth tightened: a passionate impulse, even if it culminated in a blow, was less horrible than these evidences of a cool-headed and deliberate purpose afterwards. She was struck with the inconsistencies which showed themselves here before her. The criminal could think to wipe the statuette, move the box, break the window, but he had never noticed that he had put his foot in the blood. Well, this was what she had often heard, that criminals nullified a dozen careful clevernesses by a single evident oversight: the agitated mind, she supposed, was too occupied in laying its deceptions to observe the most obvious realities. Her thoughts went again to the marks on the sill of the drawing-room window, which she had been able fully to see that morning for the first time; it had struck her then that they had seemed not merely indefinite, but partially obliterated. She saw at once now that her thought had been right; the ribs of dirt on the handkerchief, so out of place in the property of a conspicuously clean and respectable butler, had been made when the handkerchief had been hastily rubbed over the trodden sill. She could not be sure, but at least it seemed highly probable; and just as the stains raised the presumption of Fairlie’s handling of the statuette so did the dirt of his shutting of the window.

She laid the handkerchief by, took the statuette carefully in her gloved hand by the clean arm and tipped it over; she was sure that the smooth polish of the pedestal would yield the best results and was afraid of testing the statuette itself in case she altered the appearance of the bloodstains. Carefully she sprinkled the fine flour over the front of the pedestal, brushed the surface very lightly, and then paused with shining eyes and a deep sigh, half satisfaction at the correctness of her conclusions and facility of her execution, half distress at the evidence of guilt before her. Clearly marked on the ebony towards each corner of the pedestal stood out the impressions of two large thumbs: the criminal after setting it down had evidently pressed it carefully back into its exact position.

She sat for some minutes staring almost vacantly at the marks; one link in the chain alone remained now, and that was the identification of those thumbs. That would not be difficult, she reflected: Fairlie had necessarily to be always handling things. She rose with quick decision—the sooner her task was complete the better—locked away the handkerchief, cleared a drawer, lifted the statuette carefully and placed it in a prone position in the drawer which she locked. Then she went downstairs.

In the hall she met Humblethorne, who was holding a telegram in his hand which Birts had just brought him. He wore a look of dissatisfaction in consequence both of an absolutely fruitless search for some further evidence, the shoes for preference, which should establish Philip Castle’s participation in the escape of the murderer, and also of the news he had just heard. The telegram said briefly in official code that John Penterton, carrying a bag, had left his home shortly before Humblethorne’s information had been received and had not returned, destination at present unknown, house would be watched and all steps to trace him followed.

Humblethorne glanced at Evelyn without pleasure. Her attitude had puzzled him, and if his evidence had not been so overwhelmingly direct he would have admitted that he felt a real misgiving. People do not say “Well! we know that: what of it?” in a matter of fact tone, in such circumstances as his last meeting with Evelyn, unless they have a reason. Thinking it over, he had been forced reluctantly to the conclusion that, though he could prove John’s secret entry, he could not prove his hand in the murder; he could only throw on John the onus of disproving it. And whatever grounds for suspicion he might have he knew that so far he had found no proof against Philip whatever. He had no doubt in his own mind, but this girl showed up to him fearlessly, almost, he felt, cynically, the weaknesses of his case.

“Miss Temple,” he said, as she was passing the two men, “I think you ought to be told a little how the case stands. It will be my duty very shortly to make a very painful communication to Lady Penterton; I think it would be as well if she was prepared. She may see it in the paper at any moment now.”

Evelyn shot a keen glance at him and his telegram, and then replied quietly, “It would be foolish of me to pretend I do not understand. Has Mr. Penterton been arrested?”

“Not yet,” Humblethorne admitted rather reluctantly. “But it is only a question of a few hours now before he will be.”

“Then you have still time to avoid making a mistake publicly,” she replied. “I advise you to use it.”

“Your good opinion of your friend’s brother does you credit,” remarked Humblethorne drily; “I regret I cannot share it.”

“It is hardly a question of good opinion,” she returned boldly, “but of proof. You know very well that you have none.”

Humblethorne flushed at this direct blow. “I have proof of things that will need a good deal of explanation,” he said shortly.

“You shall have all the explanation you require—in half an hour,” she said. “Delay the arrest that length of time and you will have no reason to regret it.”

“What do you mean?” he exclaimed.

“You have been looking for a pair of evening shoes, I think,” she went on with apparent irrelevance.

“Yes.” He tried unsuccessfully to hide his eagerness.

“I will show you them—in half an hour. Wait that long at any rate.” She nodded and went into the dining-room.

With a heart beating with excitement Evelyn opened the door that led from the dining-room into the pantry. Luck favoured her, for Fairlie was in there alone.

“Oh, Fairlie,” she said in the most natural voice she could assume, “I’m so thirsty; can you give me a glass of water?”

As he went to fetch it her mind was in a ferment. She had promised to explain everything in half an hour, but could she? There was much she could only guess even if her deductions all proved to be facts; and it suddenly crossed her mind that, if the finger-marks on the pedestal did not prove to be Fairlie’s, she was as far from the truth as ever. At any rate, she had come to a point when she must share all her discoveries with Humblethorne. Fairlie now returned with a glass of water on a small silver tray. She took the latter carefully by the opposite side; then, wishing to duplicate his finger-prints in case of failure, she said, “That looks a little dusty, Fairlie,” and lifted the tray towards him.

Unsuspectingly he took the glass, held it up against the light, and then set it down again on the tray.

“It looks all right to me, Miss Evelyn; but I’ll get you another,” he replied.

“Oh no, don’t trouble,” she exclaimed, and bore away tray and glass.

As she passed through the hall again she was very conscious of the curious, not to say suspicious, gaze of the two men; but she was too intent on her purpose, and that purpose held too much that was terrible, for her to feel the amusement which would otherwise have been hers. Without looking at them she carried her last evidence carefully upstairs.

“Well,” remarked Birts with a heavy sigh as she disappeared, “I wonder what she’s up to now: play acting, I call it.”

Humblethorne did not reply, though his thoughts were running in the same direction. He was uneasy; it was difficult to stifle altogether the conviction that this girl, whose quick brain and perceptive eye had already aroused his appreciation, would not speak so confidently unless she had something better than a mere belief to go upon. He was moodily pacing the hall when Evelyn came downstairs again.

“I am ready now,” she said. “I asked for half an hour, but it did not take so long.”

“Perhaps you will be good enough to explain your mysteries, then,” remarked Humblethorne with slight irony.

“I will tell you everything I have discovered,” she answered; “it does not explain everything, I know, but it explains enough for you to be able to find out the rest. I have gone as far as I can alone,” she added simply, “and my only course now is to place it in your hands to use as you think fit.”

Humblethorne was mollified; he had been afraid she was going to taunt him with failure. But with the end of her task a heaviness had fallen upon her; to investigate was interesting, to discover horrible.

“Let us go into the drawing-room,” she said; “we cannot be overheard there, and here, as I know, we can be. Oh, I want you first to look at this. I don’t wonder it was overlooked; I only found it by accident,” and she took the two men to the dent under the cornice level with the third step of the stairs.

“You never saw the cigarettes in their original positions, I think,” she said to Humblethorne, as he bent over to look at it with his interest roused instantly to the full.

“No: did you?” he queried instantly.

“No, but after I found this dent yesterday I asked Mr. Castle to tell me exactly where they had lain. It was obvious when I came to look again that they had fallen out when the cigarette box struck the wall here.”

She spoke simply, intent on her explanation, and looked up in surprise when Humblethorne, seeing the full significance of her remark, gave a sudden exclamation and cried excitedly—

“Struck the wall! When was that?”

“Before Sir Roger was killed, obviously,” she answered. “How long before I do not know.”

“But, but——” he began, trying to assimilate this new and startling fact.

“It does rather upset one’s preconceived ideas, doesn’t it?” she said. “But I do not see how the conclusion is to be avoided. The box would hardly be thrown after Sir Roger lay dead.”

“You have made a discovery of the very greatest importance, Miss Temple,” Humblethorne asserted. “I will not deny that, but this doesn’t clear John Penterton.”

“I am aware of that,” she replied; the unconscious touch of condescension had not escaped her. “Perhaps it would help if you told me what evidence you have against him. I know he was here—Miss Penterton had arranged some while ago that he should come. Is that evidence that he is guilty of his father’s death?”

While she was speaking the dining-room door opened, and Fairlie came quietly into the hall.

“That remains to be seen,” returned Humblethorne. “He came secretly at night-time, and there are several questions to be answered. Did his father know of his coming? Was his father alive when he left? Who let him out? His father was killed that evening; if he didn’t kill him, who did? Answer me that, Miss Temple?”

As the questions followed each other, Evelyn felt as if the ground were opening under her feet; she had still all the evidence of the statuette, but she realized with a sudden pang that that did not answer the one dreadful question, “Was his father alive when he left?” She turned uneasily and saw Fairlie standing in the doorway; his guard was down as he listened, and a terrible indecision was written on his face. Evelyn read him like a book—his young master was accused; in spite of the way he had tried to cover up the trail, it was known that John had been there, and there was no one now alive except Fairlie himself who could save him, and he could only save him by admitting his own guilt—so Evelyn understood the look of doubt and agony with which the old man’s usually settled face was working. Whether, left to himself, he would have risen to a confession was never decided. Humblethorne’s final words had been a challenge as one should say, “Certainly I did overlook this dent which you admit you yourself only found by accident, but what difference does it really make?” and almost without thinking Evelyn took up the challenge.

“If he didn’t kill him, who did?” she repeated. “Look behind you! There stands your answer in the shoes for which you have been searching!”

Both men wheeled sharply. “Fairlie!” they gasped. The butler’s face set again, just as if a curtain had fallen across the vivid drama momentarily revealed; and he came forward, paler than usual, bowed down a little by age and the fearful thoughts within him, but retaining his imperturbable manner undiminished.

“I do not understand how you have ascertained the fact, Miss Evelyn,” he said, searching her with a slow, keen glance, but speaking in his normal, respectful voice; “but it is quite true that I killed Sir Roger.”

“Take care!” cried Humblethorne sharply. “It is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be used in evidence against you.”

“I quite understand that,” replied Fairlie with a characteristically gracious inclination of his body towards Humblethorne. “I am obliged to you, but since I have been discovered there is no further object in concealment. I am not sorry,” he added wearily. “Perhaps you will excuse me if I sit down a moment.” He seated himself after an apologetic glance at Evelyn with the air of a man who has neither hope nor fear of any future thing.

The two men were too taken aback at the extraordinary suddenness of the accusation and confession to say a word: Evelyn was too overwhelmed with the conflict in her mind, horror, pity and a kind of dreadful fascination in this fulfilment of her labours.

“I will tell you how it happened,” resumed Fairlie slowly; “there has been enough of mystery in this house. Will you tell me, Miss Evelyn, how you found me out?”

“I knew that Mr. John couldn’t have done it when I found the dent in the wall showing the box had missed,” she replied; “so I searched for the real weapon. At first I thought—I didn’t know what to think. I knew it was some one in the house; Miss Celia had not let Mr. John out, nor broken the pantry window. By the way, when did you break that?”

“About ten minutes to two yesterday, when the other servants were just sitting down to dinner.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want Mr. John’s name brought into it; I was hurried the night before and didn’t think of it. In the morning I saw from the inspector’s questions that it was necessary to provide a way in for an ordinary burglar, or else they would find out Mr. John had been here and suspect him—though of course he had nothing whatever to do with it—or get on my tracks, as you have done. But I don’t see how you did, Miss Evelyn.”

“I found the statuette,” she said simply.

“The statuette?” exclaimed Humblethorne, bewildered.

“Yes, I will show it you later. Oh, I know you wiped it, Fairlie,” she added, seeing mystification still on his face. “I have the handkerchief you used both for that and for the window-sill, but the right arm has plenty of stains on it still: then you left a footprint on the wood below and marks of both thumbs on the pedestal when you replaced it.”

The old man was silent for several minutes; then he said slowly—

“I have made many mistakes; I fear I am a poor criminal. I didn’t think it out, you see. This was how it happened. I had locked up and put the lights out and should have gone to bed only Sir Roger was sitting up in his study with Mr. Castle, and I thought he might want something and ring, and if he did he would be very angry if no one came. So I busied myself with the silver and one thing and another to pass the time; Sir Roger did not used to sit up late. I was in the dining-room putting away the last of the silver when I heard him coming along the passage. The door was ajar and I could hear him quite well. The hall was in darkness, according to orders, as I told you.” He inclined towards Humblethorne, who nodded. “But Sir Roger was very contrary; I heard him swearing at me for not leaving a light on and saying I was too old and he’d give me notice to-morrow. I stepped across and put out the dining-room light for fear he should see it and come in and give me notice then and there—that would have been like him; he was very hasty always—and had hardly done so before I heard him give a sharp exclamation. I wondered what was up, and I pulled the door more open very quietly and looked out.

“I saw Miss Celia standing there in front of the drawing-room door, and he was going on at her, insisting that she was up to some mischief. And then she tried to pass him and go upstairs and he caught hold of her arm. She gave a little cry—he was always rough, was Sir Roger—and then out of the drawing-room came Mr. John. I hadn’t seen him for ten years or more and nor had Sir Roger, but we both recognized him at once. Sir Roger used dreadful language at him—you know, of course, the way he drove him from home—and then ordered Miss Celia to her room, saying he’d deal with her later. She was for staying, but Mr. John saw she couldn’t do any good and he told her to go too. Then Sir Roger began on Mr. John and called him all the things he could think of, dreadful the way he went on, it was: and at last he raised his stick and made as if to strike at him. Mr. John had stood there very quietly, not saying a word—he knew it wasn’t no use—but when he saw Sir Roger lift his stick at him he picked up that cigarette box which was just by his hand and threw it at him, not fierce-like but just to keep him off. It hit the wall and the cigarettes fell all over the stairs—and Mr. John gave a short laugh and ran back into the drawing-room: and I didn’t see him again.”

“What time was this?” interposed Humblethorne as Fairlie paused.

“Twelve o’clock struck just afterwards,” replied Fairlie.

“Well, what then?” interjected Birts after a moment’s silence.

“Then,” resumed Fairlie slowly, “I slipped away and turned up the back stairs and round to the top there where I could see down into the hall. I thought it was my duty to remonstrate with Sir Roger if he intended to go to Miss Celia: in the state he was in he would have thrashed her, as likely as not. I couldn’t stand by and see that. He was still in the hall, muttering to himself. He was just below me and it came over me all of a sudden. What with the fear of him giving me notice and the fear of him lifting his hand to Miss Celia—but, there, I can’t explain it. He heard me up there, looked up and somehow, when I see his face like that, I felt that he wasn’t fit to live and I tipped the statuette down on him. He just fell and never moved again.”

Fairlie paused, took out his handkerchief, blew his nose solemnly and then replaced his handkerchief carefully.

“I was filled with horror,” he went on, “at what I had done, naturally. But he was dead and couldn’t be brought to life again. It was as I was going downstairs I saw how thoughtless I’d acted. People that didn’t know him might think Mr. John had had a hand in it. So, after seeing that Sir Roger was really dead, I went and fastened up the drawing-room window, using my handkerchief, as Miss Evelyn guessed, to clean the sill in case of boot-marks. Then I came back and thought what was best to be done. First I picked up the cigarette box and put it down beside Sir Roger—I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t been agitated; I was just thinking that would seem as if Sir Roger had come on some burglar, and, having shut Mr. John out, I didn’t think of him any more—but I was agitated and didn’t think clear. Then I picked up the statuette, wiped it with my handkerchief and put it back on the bracket upstairs. If I hadn’t been hurried I should have seen I had blood on my shoe. I made a great many mistakes.” He sighed deeply. “I ought to have broken the pantry window then, but I didn’t think it out. I saw that I had to be in bed when the body was found, and I knew Mr. Castle was still in his study: so I hurried to my room and I only just had time to get undressed and into bed before Mr. Castle came along. That’s just what happened.” He sighed again heavily and sat still, looking old and wearied but still indomitably respectable.

There was a long silence when he had finished, broken only by the stertorous breathing of Birts as he waited for orders from his superior officer; it was the most dramatic moment of Birts’s life and would be told by him with proper pride for years afterwards.

“You will remain in charge of the prisoner, Birts,” said Humblethorne at length. “I will see what Miss Temple has to show me.”

“Very good, sir,” replied Birts stolidly.

“Let us go up,” said Evelyn hurriedly; this was dreadful. She paused a moment, hesitating before Fairlie: she could not leave him without a word. “Oh, Fairlie,” she cried suddenly, “I am terribly sorry! Why, why did you do it?”

“Don’t take on, Miss Evelyn,” Fairlie replied looking up, the light of kindly affection coming for an instant over his sombre face. “What’s done is done. I didn’t think things out: that was where I went wrong.” His face settled back into solemn imperturbability, and with a heavy load upon her heart Evelyn led Humblethorne upstairs.

When she had shown him the bracket on which the statuette had stood and the footprint below it, she briefly described the course of her investigations from that point, omitting, however, all reference to her doubts of John and Philip. Then she took him to her room and handed over to his charge the statuette and the handkerchief and the glass and tray which had identified the thumb marks.

“I acted carefully on the information you kindly gave me,” she said. “It was not as difficult as I had supposed.”

“You have certainly shown remarkable resource, and, if I may say so, courage, Miss Temple,” Humblethorne remarked as he, fastened up the evidence with much precaution against injury. “It was taking a serious responsibility to handle this statuette after what you suspected.”

“Perhaps,” she returned vaguely: “it is necessary sometimes. At any rate I have finished now, and I wish I had never started. It is horrible to feel my hand has doomed one who has been really an old friend.” She shuddered and then added, “Well, at any rate you need not trouble about Mr. Penterton. This is the end.”

“Yes,” repeated Humblethorne thoughtfully, “this is the end—if Fairlie is speaking the truth, the whole truth, I mean. But is he?”

Without waiting for an answer he bowed to Evelyn in acknowledgment of her services and left the room.

It was some minutes before Evelyn gathered her thoughts together after Humblethorne’s parting remark: it startled her into fresh speculation just when she thought she could at last put the whole dreadful business firmly from her mind. Then resentment came to her rescue—

“How like that little man!” she thought. “He will never own that he has been hopelessly wrong: he began by believing John did it and he still believes it; well, what does it matter? He can’t bring a shred of evidence to support what isn’t true.” With that she made a great effort to throw off the fear he had left with her.

She looked into the room she used with Celia, hoping to find her friend and tell her what had taken place. The room was empty, and Evelyn remembered that Celia was sitting with her mother. They would both have to know and she had better go and tell them at once for fear of their hearing the news suddenly from a less sympathetic source. However broken, it was bound to be a terrible shock to Lady Penterton: Fairlie had been a servant to her and her father for over forty years and there was a very real and deep attachment between them. It was an unpleasant task, but she obviously could not avoid it.

Reluctantly she went along the passage to Lady Penterton’s boudoir. No one was there, and she went on to the bedroom she had visited with the first news of the tragedy: now she had to complete the tale. She knocked lightly and entered; Celia was sitting in an armchair reading in a low voice to her mother who was lying back in her bed, wan and listless. As Evelyn looked at the fine, weary face, Celia’s description of her mother the day before as ‘very quiet but somehow very old’ returned to her mind with vivid force.

“Here’s Evelyn, mother,” said Celia, breaking off from her reading.

“How are you feeling to-day, Aunt Eleanor?” said Evelyn, bending over the bed and kissing the old lady. “I thought you would be in your boudoir.”

“I meant to get up, dear,” she replied in a dull voice.

“She did get as far as the loggia yesterday,” said Celia.

“Yes, the sun tempted me, but it tried me too much.” Lady Penterton sighed and relapsed into silence. For a minute more Evelyn sat, stroking tenderly the wrinkled hand.

“I have something to tell you both,” she said at length. “I am afraid it will distress you. But you will have to know and it is better that I should tell you than any one else.”

Lady Penterton turned her head wearily on the pillow towards her, while Celia laid down her book with a sharp intake of the breath.

“I have stumbled more by chance than any skill on things the detectives happened to overlook; they had a certain idea in their heads,” she glanced across at Celia to try and read whether she had told her mother of John, and received a quick negative shake of the head, “and perhaps that blinded them to anything else; I don’t know. But I found footmarks and finger-prints they had not seen; and I followed them up.” She paused, uncertain how best to break the conclusion of that following up.

Lady Penterton’s agitation at this talk of the tragedy was evident.

“My dear child,” she exclaimed, her hand tightening nervously on Evelyn’s, “what an extraordinary thing for you to do!”

“Yes, perhaps it was,” admitted Evelyn, “but I didn’t stop to think about that.”

“Oh, what did you find? How dreadful it all is!”

“I found,” said Evelyn slowly, unwillingly, “that it was done by Fairlie.”

“By Fairlie!” uttered the old lady, turning so white that Evelyn thought she was going to faint.

“It is dreadful, I know, but, when charged with it, he confessed.”

Celia started up, crying in amazement, “Fairlie!” and Lady Penterton with a deep sigh, fell back, her fingers relaxed and she lay white and still.

Both girls, terribly alarmed, bent over her; Evelyn ran to the washstand for cold water and then said quickly to Celia, “Send for the doctor! I’ll attend to her.” But as she spoke Lady Penterton recovered herself, her lips moved, and then she said faintly, “Fairlie! Fairlie confessed! Evelyn, was that what you said? No,” to Celia who was slipping out, “stay with me; I don’t want any one.”

“I know it is terrible news for you, Aunt Eleanor,” Evelyn said very gently; “but there is no doubt about it, I’m afraid. He did it by flinging down the statuette of the little dancing girl that stands on the bracket by the stairs; you know the one I mean.” She saw a sign of understanding on Lady Penterton’s lips, as she lay rigidly still with eyes closed, and continued, “He left his finger-marks on the pedestal and a footprint underneath. Why he did it I hardly know; he doesn’t really know himself. It was a mad impulse, which he says he can’t explain.”

“How dreadful!” exclaimed Celia, pale with emotion. “Oh, how dreadful!”

Lady Penterton lay, only her lips moving nervously, inaudibly, while the two girls watched her with anxiety. At last she opened her eyes; her lips closed tightly and it was obvious that she was making a great effort to regain the self-possession from which she had been so startlingly shaken.

“I should like to see him,” she said.

“Oh, mother!” exclaimed Celia in protest.

“He has been with me most of my life,” answered Lady Penterton simply.

“I felt the same,” said Evelyn in a low voice to Celia; “it will distress her more if she doesn’t.” Then to Lady Penterton, “I will fetch him.”

“Thank you, dear.” Lady Penterton closed her eyes again with a little sigh as of a weariness almost intolerable.

Evelyn went downstairs and found Humblethorne and Birts on the point of departure with Fairlie in their custody.

“I have just been with Lady Penterton and told her,” she said; “she wishes to see Fairlie. May she? He has been with her so long she feels she cannot let him go without saying a few words to him.”

“Well,” said Humblethorne, “it’s not exactly regular, but I don’t see that there can be any harm in stretching a point.”

“It can do no good,” said Fairlie. “I do not wish to see her ladyship in these altered circumstances.”

“Oh, Fairlie,” exclaimed the girl, “it will distress her so much more if she doesn’t. Do this for her at least.”

Fairlie kept his eyes upon the ground and hesitated a long while. “It can do no good,” he repeated doggedly.

“I am afraid she will be really ill unless she is given in to in this little way. It need only be for a moment.”

“Well, for a moment, Miss Evelyn.” He straightened his bowed shoulders. “But I am sure you will appreciate how painful it is for me.”

“Yes, yes, I know, but just for a moment. She will feel less unhappy afterwards.”

He signified that he assented, and the four of them went upstairs to the bedroom. Evelyn knocked and entered first. “He is here, Aunt Eleanor,” she said, “but he did not wish to come.”

“Fairlie, Fairlie!” cried the old lady, sitting up in her emotion with a sudden accession of strength. “What does this mean?”

He remained obstinately silent; before the mistress he had served so long and faithfully it was evident that he found it difficult to maintain the air of stolid, half-resigned, half-defiant gloom which had settled down upon him like a cloak; he shifted uneasily from one foot to another, he kept his eyes on the carpet, and his breath came irregularly.

“What a servant, what a friend you have always been, Fairlie!” continued the old lady in the strained, high-pitched voice of intense feeling, looking at him with wide eyes which glistened with tears. “In the happy years before I married I remember you so well; in the long, dark years afterwards you have been, oh, like a shield, standing by ready to help always. And now!” Her gaze faltered and wandered from the bowed, uneasy figure until it met Humblethorne’s, and she went on, “You do not get servants like that nowadays; he has been with me over forty years.” Her eyes left Humblethorne and rested on Evelyn. “How clever you have been, Evelyn!” she exclaimed, as if a new thought had entered her weary, restless brain. “I do not understand at all how you made it out. Very clever—but quite wrong!”

“Wrong!” cried Evelyn, astounded.

“Yes, dear,” said Lady Penterton. “Fairlie didn’t kill Sir Roger,” she paused for the fraction of a second as she looked at him: “I did!”

On all but one of her audience this announcement, delivered with such rapidity that none could forecast the direction in which her apparently haphazard remarks were tending, came with the effect of a thunderclap. “You!” they cried in a single voice of stupefaction—but on Fairlie the effect was very different. He started forward in the attempt to check her speech, but was too late; then, seizing her hand, he pressed it to his lips as he cried in tones of acutest distress, “Oh, my lady, my lady, why did you speak? I would have died, willingly I would.”

“I know; I believe you,” she answered, bending over him with a rare tenderness; “but I could not allow that.”

“I don’t understand,” cried Evelyn, finding her voice at last. “You killed him, Aunt Eleanor, you? But——”

“I will tell you all about it,” said Lady Penterton, still looking at Fairlie and paying very little attention to anybody else. “I never meant not to, only it was so terrible and got harder instead of easier. It is very simple; it was quite an accident. Oh, I did not mean to; did you think I did, Fairlie?”

“I didn’t know, my lady. I couldn’t see very clearly; it was too dark.”

“Where were you?”

“Just inside the dining-room, my lady.”

“Oh, I see: that explains it.” She leant back and closed her eyes.

“I think,” said Humblethorne, after waiting several moments for her to go on, “that we must hear everything now. I never thought Fairlie was speaking the truth before.”

“But I was,” returned Fairlie, rising and facing the inspector; “up to a point, that is. Everything I told you was as it happened up to the time Sir Roger was left alone in the hall.”

“What happened then? The truth, this time.”

“Of course,” replied Fairlie with dignity. “I saw her ladyship look over the stairs, wondering, I suppose, what was happening: the cigarette box made a bit of noise hitting the wall and falling, naturally, and I suppose her ladyship heard it.” He glanced in a respectful way at Lady Penterton, but she was lying back as if exhausted and made no sign. “Sir Roger stood there, muttering curses under his breath and waving his stick, and I saw her ladyship lean forward; the banisters creaked and Sir Roger looked up and then something fell down and hit him on the forehead. Her ladyship gave a little cry and stood there wringing her hands, and then after a minute she came downstairs. She stood as if she didn’t dare go actually to him; I think even then she was afraid of him and presently she made a shuddering sound—I can’t describe it any differently—I saw her pick up the statuette in a kind of wondering way and then she went upstairs as if she was terrified. When she was at the top I saw her stop suddenly. She was looking at what she had caught hold of in her hands; I could see she didn’t know how it got there. She put it down and stood, holding her elbow as if it hurt her and shaking in a kind of way as if she didn’t know what she was doing, and then she gave a dreadful gasp and I could hear her sobbing as she went along to her room. It was terrible for me to hear her ladyship like that. Then I acted just as I told you: I was afraid there would be stains on the statuette and that it wasn’t put back proper.”

He stopped and looked at Lady Penterton, who raised herself up on one elbow and gazed at him.

“If you had only told me you were there,” she said, “how much better it would have been! Oh, the awfulness of that silent hall!” She shuddered convulsively.

“Tell us everything, my lady,” said Humblethorne.

She did not seem at first to hear; it was some minutes before she could gain control of herself and summon up the resolution to speak.

“It is very simple,” she said at last, tremblingly. “I was reading in my boudoir later than usual—the book was interesting—and I was just thinking of going to bed when I heard my husband’s voice raised in anger in the hall. At first I tried to take no notice: it was,” she paused and looked piteously at Fairlie before continuing, “it was not uncommon. But it went on and at last I came out to listen. He was standing at the foot of the stairs calling some one names—I could not see whom and no one answered.”

Humblethorne shot a searching glance at Evelyn, who said in a whisper, “She does not know. She has not been told.”

“The silence seemed to infuriate my husband—he was, I am afraid, like that”—went on Lady Penterton, oblivious of this by-play, “he raised his stick and cried out some threatening words. The person—it must have been some one come on business, and my husband hated being disturbed in that way, here—made a movement and then I saw something bright hit the wall, and fall with a clatter, I don’t quite know what it was, and then I heard steps of some one going away. My husband remained where he was, but his anger was terrible to see. It frightened me; I leant against the balusters, trembling, and they made a noise. My husband looked up and saw me; I leaned over to speak to him and I knocked against the statuette—I have the mark on my elbow now—I was trembling so that I couldn’t catch it and it fell.”

She stopped, breathless, in terrible agitation. Celia went to her, took her hand and held it in silence, and in a minute she went on again more calmly.

“I ought to have told somebody at once, of course I ought. If I had known Fairlie was there, I would have called to him. But there seemed to be no one. I listened and could not hear a sound. I came down and called to my husband in a whisper, but he did not answer and I was afraid. Then I don’t know what happened—I don’t remember anything clearly: I found myself at the top of the stairs with that dreadful statuette in my hands. I could not think: I don’t really remember what I did; I was terrified and I hurried to my room. I had lent my maid to Miss Penterton: there was no one there. My mind was making strange patterns and it was difficult to see: I got to bed, I do not remember how. And then I could think, and the worst was I could not, I could not cry; I tried to, but I could not. I suppose I was too terrified. It was such a dreadful end to his life, that he should have died like that whilst he was so angry. It was so dreadful that it should have been through me, his wife. I have tried so hard always, and then this happened. If I had been a bad wife, I should not have minded so much; but I have tried always to be patient. And then you came,” addressing Evelyn, “and told me he had been found. Oh, what a relief that was! But I could not tell you then. I did not care about any one finding out; I did not care about anything, but I could not tell any one; it was too dreadful. Only when you told me it was Fairlie and he had confessed—I saw then he was trying to save me, as he has tried all my married life, and I had to tell.”

She fell silent and Humblethorne was just about to speak when a voice was heard outside, a rapid knock shook the door, which was flung open and John Penterton entered. His glance swept the company with surprise and, encountering Humblethorne, took on a vague recognition, but his whole interest was with his mother, who gave a sudden, wild cry, “John! my boy, my boy!”

She stretched out her arms to him and he went straight to them.

“I did not know any one was with you, mother,” he said as soon as he could speak. “I was told you were in your bedroom and came straight up. I saw the awful news in the paper, and started as soon as I could.”

“Didn’t you get my letter?” cried Celia in surprise.

“No; I have had no letter,” he answered. “But I saw I must come here at once. It was obvious from the account that it was the only thing I could do to clear myself as I had been here that night.”

“As you had been here, John!” cried the old lady in a voice rising almost to a scream. “Was it you? Was it you down there? Merciful heavens, why wasn’t I told? Oh, my boy, they might have suspected you!”

Humblethorne had no longer the least doubt that he had now heard the whole truth of the mysterious tragedy: the old lady’s tears of welcome and joy at the sudden appearance of her son had dispelled from it the last uncertainty. He rose to the occasion now. “No one, my lady,” he said with a grand air, “had any real reason to do that.” He opened the door and, summoning the agape Birts with his eye, said as he passed through, “You will wish to be alone now with him, no doubt, my lady.” Birts and Fairlie followed him, and Evelyn also left brother and sister to explain everything to one another and to their mother.

“If you don’t mind taking a tip from me, Miss Temple,” she heard Humblethorne saying in her ear as they went along the passage, “you have a real gift, but you make one mistake.”

“What is that?” she asked without the least interest.

“In thinking that there can be only one explanation of any set of facts,” he replied. “Now I have had years of experience and I know that the same facts can often be explained in several different ways. And you see now that I’m right.”

“Yes,” she answered slowly, “I see now: it is wonderful to see at last, isn’t it?”

The End