"whether you, or anyone, had happened to find a wad lying about
anywhere."
The sergeant stroked his well-kept moustache to hide the smile that
insisted, however, on escaping through his eyes.
"Scarcely, sir," he replied, with fine irony. "Bulleted revolver
cartridges contain no wad. You are thinking of a shot-gun, sir."
"Oh," said Carrados, bending over the spent cartridge he was examining,
"that settles it, of course."
"I think so, sir," assented the sergeant, courteously but with a quiet
enjoyment of the situation. "Well, miss, I'll be getting back now. I
think I have everything I want."
"You will excuse me a few minutes?" said Miss Whitmarsh, and the two
callers were left alone.
"Parkinson," said Carrados softly, as the door closed, "look round on
the floor. There is no wad lying within sight?"
"No, sir."
"Then take the lamp and look behind things. But if you find one don't
disturb it."
For a minute strange and gigantic shadows chased one another across the
ceiling as Parkinson moved the table-lamp to and fro behind the
furniture. The man to whom blazing sunlight and the deepest shade were
as one sat with his eyes fixed tranquilly on the unseen wall before him.
"There is a little pellet of paper here behind the couch, sir,"
announced Parkinson.
"Then put the lamp back."
Together they drew the cumbrous old piece of furniture from the wall and
Carrados went behind. On hands and knees, with his face almost to the
floor, he appeared to be studying even the dust that lay there. Then
with a light, unerring touch he carefully picked up the thing that
Parkinson had found. Very gently he unrolled it, using his long,
delicate fingers so skilfully that even at the end the particles of dust
still clung here and there to the surface of the paper.
"What do you make of it, Parkinson?"
Parkinson submitted it to the judgment of a single sense.
"A cigarette-paper to all appearance, sir. I can't say it's a kind that
I've had experience of. It doesn't seem to have any distinct watermark
but there is a half-inch of glossy paper along one edge."
"Amber-tipped. Yes?"
"Another edge is a little uneven; it appears to have been cut."
"This edge opposite the mouthpiece. Yes, yes."
"Patches are blackened, and little holes--like pinpricks--burned
through. In places it is scorched brown."
"Anything else?"
"I hope there is nothing I have failed to observe, sir," said Parkinson,
after a pause.
Carrados's reply was a strangely irrelevant question.
"What is the ceiling made of?" he demanded.
"Oak boards, sir, with a heavy cross-beam."
"Are there any plaster figures about the room?"
"No, sir."
"Or anything at all that is whitewashed?"
"Nothing, sir."
Carrados raised the scrap of tissue paper to his nose again, and for the
second time he touched it with his tongue.
"Very interesting, Parkinson," he remarked, and Parkinson's responsive
"Yes, sir" was a model of discreet acquiescence.
"I am sorry that I had to leave you," said Miss Whitmarsh, returning,
"but Mrs Lawrence is out and my father made a practice of offering
everyone refreshment."
"Don't mention it," said Carrados. "We have not been idle. I came from
London to pick up a scrap of paper, lying on the floor of this room.
Well, here it is." He rolled the tissue into a pellet again and held it
before her eyes.
"The wad!" she exclaimed eagerly. "Oh, that proves that I was right?"
"Scarcely 'proves,' Miss Whitmarsh."
"But it shows that one of the shots was a blank charge, as you suggested
this morning might have been the case."
"Hardly even that."
"What then?" she demanded, with her large dark eyes fixed in a curious
fascination on his inscrutable face.
"That behind the couch we have found this scrap of powder-singed paper."
There was a moment's silence. The girl turned away her head.
"I am afraid that I am a little disappointed," she murmured.
"Perhaps better now than later. I wished to warn you that we must prove
every inch of ground. Does your cousin Frank smoke cigarettes?"
"I cannot say, Mr Carrados. You see ... I knew so little of him."
"Quite so; there was just the chance. And your father?"
"He never did. He despised them."
"That is all I need ask you now. What time to-morrow shall I find you
in, Miss Whitmarsh? It is Sunday, you remember."
"At any time. The curiosity I inspire doesn't tempt me to encounter my
friends, I can assure you," she replied, her face hardening at the
recollection. "But ... Mr Carrados----"
"Yes?"
"The inquest is on Monday afternoon.... I had a sort of desperate faith
that you would be able to vindicate papa."
"By the time of the inquest, you mean?"
"Yes. Otherwise----"
"The verdict of a coroner's jury means nothing, Miss Whitmarsh. It is
the merest formality."
"It means a very great deal to me. It haunts and oppresses me. If they
say--if it goes out--that papa is guilty of the attempt of murder, and
of suicide, I shall never raise my head again."
Carrados had no desire to prolong a futile discussion.
"Good-night," he said, holding out his hand.
"Good-night, Mr Carrados." She detained him a moment, her voice vibrant
with quiet feeling. "I already owe you more than I can ever hope to
express. Your wonderful kindness----"
"A strange case," moralized Carrados, as they walked out of the
quadrangular yard into the silent lane. "Instructive, but I more than
half wish I'd never heard of it."
"The young lady seems grateful, sir," Parkinson ventured to suggest.
"The young lady is the case, Parkinson," replied his master rather
grimly.
A few score yards farther on a swing gate gave access to a field-path,
cutting off the corner that the high road made with the narrow lane.
This was their way, but instead of following the brown line of trodden
earth Carrados turned to the left and indicated the line of buildings
that formed the back of one side of the quadrangle they had passed
through.
"We will investigate here," he said. "Can you see a way in?"
Most of the buildings opened on to the yard, but at one end of the range
Parkinson discovered a door, secured only by a wooden latch. The place
beyond was impenetrably dark, but the sweet, dusty smell of hay, and,
from beyond, the occasional click of a horse's shoe on stone and the
rattle of a head-stall chain through the manger ring told them that they
were in the chaff-pen at the back of the stable.
Carrados stretched out his hand and touched the wall with a single
finger.
"We need go no farther," he remarked, and as they resumed their way
across the field he took out a handkerchief to wipe the taste of
whitewash off his tongue.
Madeline had spoken of the gradual decay of High Barn, but Carrados was
hardly prepared for the poverty-stricken desolation which Parkinson
described as they approached the homestead on the following afternoon.
He had purposely selected a way that took them across many of young
Whitmarsh's ill-stocked fields, fields in which sedge and charlock wrote
an indictment of neglected drains and half-hearted tillage. On the land,
the gates and hedges had been broken and unkempt; the buildings, as they
passed through the farmyard, were empty and showed here and there a
skeletonry of bare rafters to the sky.
"Starved," commented the blind man, as he read the signs. "The thirsty
owner and the hungry land: they couldn't both be fed."
Although it was afternoon the bolts and locks of the front door had to
be unfastened in answer to their knock. When at last the door was opened
a shrivelled little old woman, rather wicked-looking in a comic way,
and rather begrimed, stood there.
"Mr Frank Whitmarsh?" she replied to Carrados's polite inquiry; "oh yes,
he lives here. Frank," she called down the passage, "you're wanted."
"What is it, mother?" responded a man's full, strong voice rather
lazily.
"Come and see!" and the old creature ogled Carrados with her beady eyes
as though the situation constituted an excellent joke between them.
There was the sound of a chair being moved and at the end of the passage
a tall man appeared in his shirt sleeves.
"I am a stranger to you," explained Carrados, "but I am staying at the
Bridge Inn and I heard of your wonderful escape on Thursday. I was so
interested that I have taken the liberty of coming across to
congratulate you on it."
"Oh, come in, come in," said Whitmarsh. "Yes ... it was a sort of
miracle, wasn't it?"
He led the way back into the room he had come from, half kitchen, half
parlour. It at least had the virtue of an air of rude comfort, and some
of the pewter and china that ornamented its mantelpiece and dresser
would have rejoiced a collector's heart.
"You find us a bit rough," apologized the young man, with something of
contempt towards his surroundings. "We weren't expecting visitors."
"And I was hesitating to come because I thought that you would be
surrounded by your friends."
This very ordinary remark seemed to afford Mrs Whitmarsh unbounded
entertainment and for quite a number of seconds she was convulsed with
silent amusement at the idea.
"Shut up, mother," said her dutiful son. "Don't take any notice of her,"
he remarked to his visitors, "she often goes on like that. The fact is,"
he added, "we Whitmarshes aren't popular in these parts. Of course that
doesn't trouble me; I've seen too much of things. And, taken as a
boiling, the Whitmarshes deserve it."
"Ah, wait till you touch the coal, my boy, then you'll see," put in the
old lady, with malicious triumph.
"I reckon we'll show them then, eh, mother?" he responded bumptiously.
"Perhaps you've heard of that, Mr----?"
"Carrados--Wynn Carrados. This is my man, Parkinson. I have to be
attended because my sight has failed me. Yes, I had heard something
about coal. Providence seems to be on your side just now, Mr Whitmarsh.
May I offer you a cigarette?"
"Thanks, I don't mind for once in a way."
"They're Turkish; quite innocuous, I believe."
"Oh, it isn't that. I can smoke cutty with any man, I reckon, but the
paper affects my lips. I make my own and use a sort of paper with an end
that doesn't stick."
"The paper is certainly a drawback sometimes," agreed Carrados. "I've
found that. Might I try one of yours?"
They exchanged cigarettes and Whitmarsh returned to the subject of the
tragedy.
"This has made a bit of a stir, I can tell you," he remarked, with
complacency.
"I am sure it would. Well, it was the chief topic of conversation when I
was in London."
"Is that a fact?" Avowedly indifferent to the opinion of his neighbours,
even Whitmarsh was not proof against the pronouncement of the
metropolis. "What do they say about it up there?"
"I should be inclined to think that the interest centres round the
explanation you will give at the inquest of the cause of the quarrel."
"There! What did I tell you?" exclaimed Mrs Whitmarsh.
"Be quiet, mother. That's easily answered, Mr Carrados. There was a bit
of duck shooting that lay between our two places. But perhaps you saw
that in the papers?"
"Yes," admitted Carrados, "I saw that. Frankly, the reason seemed
inadequate to so deadly a climax."
"What did I say?" demanded the irrepressible dame. "They won't believe
it."
The young man cast a wrathful look in his mother's direction and turned
again to the visitor.
"That's because you don't know Uncle William. _Any_ reason was good
enough for him to quarrel over. Here, let me give you an instance. When
I went in on Thursday he was smoking a pipe. Well, after a bit I took
out a cigarette and lit it. I'm damned if he didn't turn round and start
on me for that. How does that strike you for one of your own family, Mr
Carrados?"
"Unreasonable, I am bound to admit. I am afraid that I should have been
inclined to argue the point. What did you do, Mr Whitmarsh?"
"I hadn't gone there to quarrel," replied the young man, half sulky at
the recollection. "It was his house. I threw it into the fireplace."
"Very obliging," said Carrados. "But, if I may say so, it isn't so much
a matter of speculation why he should shoot you as why he should shoot
himself."
"The gentleman seems friendly. Better ask his advice, Frank," put in the
old woman in a penetrating whisper.
"Stow it, mother!" said Whitmarsh sharply. "Are you crazy? Her idea of a
coroner's inquest," he explained to Carrados, with easy contempt, "is
that I am being tried for murder. As a matter of fact, Uncle William was
a very passionate man, and, like many of that kind, he frequently went
beyond himself. I don't doubt that he was sure he'd killed me, for he
was a good shot and the force of the blow sent me backwards. He was a
very proud man too, in a way--wouldn't stand correction or any kind of
authority, and when he realized what he'd done and saw in a flash that
he would be tried and hanged for it, suicide seemed the easiest way out
of his difficulties, I suppose."
"Yes; that sounds reasonable enough," admitted Carrados.
"Then you don't think there will be any trouble, sir?" insinuated Mrs
Whitmarsh anxiously.
Frank had already professed his indifference to local opinion, but
Carrados was conscious that both of them hung rather breathlessly on to
his reply.
"Why, no," he declared weightily. "I should see no reason for
anticipating any. Unless," he added thoughtfully, "some clever lawyer
was instructed to insist that there must be more in the dispute than
appears on the surface."
"Oh, them lawyers, them lawyers!" moaned the old lady in a panic. "They
can make you say anything."
"They can't make me say anything." A cunning look came into his
complacent face. "And, besides, who's going to engage a lawyer?"
"The family of the deceased gentleman might wish to do so."
"Both of the sons are abroad and could not be back in time."
"But is there not a daughter here? I understood so."
Whitmarsh gave a short, unpleasant laugh and turned to look at his
mother.
"Madeline won't. You may bet your bottom tikkie it's the last thing she
would want."
The little old creature gazed admiringly at her big showy son and
responded with an appreciative grimace that made her look more
humorously rat-like than ever.
"He! he! Missie won't," she tittered. "That would never do. He! he!"
Wink succeeded nod and meaning smile until she relapsed into a state of
quietness; and Parkinson, who had been fascinated by her contortions,
was unable to decide whether she was still laughing or had gone to
sleep.
Carrados stayed a few more minutes and before they left he asked to see
the watch.
"A unique memento, Mr Whitmarsh," he remarked, examining it. "I should
think this would become a family heirloom."
"It's no good for anything else," said Whitmarsh practically. "A famous
time-keeper it was, too."
"The fingers are both gone."
"Yes; the glass was broken, of course, and they must have caught in the
cloth of my pocket and ripped off."
"They naturally would; it was ten minutes past nine when the shot was
fired."
The young man thought and then nodded.
"About that," he agreed.
"Nearer than 'about,' if your watch was correct. Very interesting, Mr
Whitmarsh. I am glad to have seen the watch that saved your life."
Instead of returning to the inn Carrados directed Parkinson to take the
road to Barony. Madeline was at home, and from the sound of voices it
appeared that she had other visitors, but she came out to Carrados at
once, and at his request took him into the empty dining-room while
Parkinson stayed in the hall.
"Yes?" she said eagerly.
"I have come to tell you that I must throw up my brief," he said. "There
is nothing more to be done and I return to town to-night."
"Oh!" she stammered helplessly. "I thought--I thought----"
"Your cousin did not abstract the revolver when he was here on Thursday,
Miss Whitmarsh. He did not at his leisure fire a bullet into his own
watch to make it appear, later in the day, as if he had been attacked.
He did not reload the cartridge with a blank charge. He did not
deliberately shoot your father and then fire off the blank cartridge. He
_was_ attacked and the newspaper version is substantially correct. The
whole fabric so delicately suggested by inference and innuendo falls to
pieces."
"Then you desert me, Mr Carrados?" she said, in a low, bitter voice.
"I have seen the watch--the watch that saved Whitmarsh's life," he
continued, unmoved. "It would save it again if necessary. It indicates
ten minutes past nine--the time to a minute at which it is agreed the
shot was fired. By what prescience was he to know at what exact minute
his opportunity would occur?"
"When I saw the watch on Thursday night the fingers were not there."
"They are not, but the shaft remains. It is of an old-fashioned pattern
and it will only take the fingers in one position. That position
indicates ten minutes past nine."
"Surely it would have been an easy matter to have altered that
afterwards?"
"In this case fate has been curiously systematic, Miss Whitmarsh. The
bullet that shattered the works has so locked the action that it will
not move a fraction this way or that."
"There is something more than this--something that I do not understand,"
she persisted. "I think I have a right to know."
"Since you insist, there is. There is the wad of the blank cartridge
that you fired in the outbuilding."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, in the moment of startled undefence, "how do
you--how can you----"
"You must leave the conjurer his few tricks for effect. Of course you
naturally would fire it where the precious pellet could not get
lost--the paper you steamed off the cigarette that Whitmarsh threw into
the empty fire-grate; and of course the place must be some distance from
the house or even that slight report might occasion remark."
"Yes," she confessed, in a sudden abandonment to weary indifference, "it
has been useless. I was a fool to set my cleverness against yours. Now,
I suppose, Mr Carrados, you will have to hand me over to justice?
"Well; why don't you say something?" she demanded impatiently, as he
offered no comment.
"People frequently put me in this embarrassing position," he explained
diffidently, "and throw the responsibility on me. Now a number of years
ago a large and stately building was set up in London and it was
beautifully called 'The Royal Palace of Justice.' That was its official
name and that was what it was to be; but very soon people got into the
way of calling it the Law Courts, and to-day, if you asked a Londoner to
direct you to the Palace of Justice he would undoubtedly set you down as
a religious maniac. You see my difficulty?"
"It is very strange," she said, intent upon her own reflections, "but I
do not feel a bit ashamed to you of what I have done. I do not even feel
afraid to tell you all about it, although of some of that I must
certainly be ashamed. Why is it?"
"Because I am blind?"
"Oh no," she replied very positively.
Carrados smiled at her decision but he did not seek to explain that when
he could no longer see the faces of men the power was gradually given to
him of looking into their hearts, to which some in their turn--strong,
free spirits--instinctively responded.
"There is such a thing as friendship at first sight," he suggested.
"Why, yes; like quite old friends," she agreed. "It is a pity that I had
no very trusty friend, since my mother died when I was quite little.
Even my father has been--it is queer to think of it now--well, almost a
stranger to me really."
She looked at Carrados's serene and kindly face and smiled.
"It is a great relief to be able to talk like this, without the
necessity for lying," she remarked. "Did you know that I was engaged?"
"No; you had not told me that."
"Oh no, but you might have heard of it. He is a clergyman whom I met
last summer. But, of course, that is all over now."
"You have broken it off?"
"Circumstances have broken it off. The daughter of a man who had the
misfortune to be murdered might just possibly be tolerated as a vicar's
wife, but the daughter of a murderer and suicide--it is unthinkable! You
see, the requirements for the office are largely social, Mr Carrados."
"Possibly your vicar may have other views."
"Oh, he isn't a vicar yet, but he is rather well-connected, so it is
quite assured. And he would be dreadfully torn if the choice lay with
him. As it is, he will perhaps rather soon get over my absence. But, you
see, if we married he could never get over my presence; it would always
stand in the way of his preferment. I worked very hard to make it
possible, but it could not be."
"You were even prepared to send an innocent man to the gallows?"
"I think so, at one time," she admitted frankly. "But I scarcely thought
it would come to that. There are so many well-meaning people who always
get up petitions.... No, as I stand here looking at myself over there, I
feel that I couldn't quite have hanged Frank, no matter how much he
deserved it.... You are very shocked, Mr Carrados?"
"Well," admitted Carrados, with pleasant impartiality, "I have seen the
young man, but the penalty, even with a reprieve, still seems to me a
little severe."
"Yet how do you know, even now, that he is, as you say, an innocent
man?"
"I don't," was the prompt admission. "I only know, in this astonishing
case, that so far as my investigation goes, he did not murder your
father by the act of his hand."
"Not according to your Law Courts?" she suggested. "But in the great
Palace of Justice?... Well, you shall judge."
She left his side, crossed the room, and stood by the square, ugly
window, looking out, but as blind as Carrados to the details of the
somnolent landscape.
"I met Frank for the first time after I was at all grown-up about three
years ago, when I returned from boarding-school. I had not seen him
since I was a child, and I thought him very tall and manly. It seemed a
frightfully romantic thing in the circumstances to meet him
secretly--of course my thoughts flew to Romeo and Juliet. We put
impassioned letters for one another in a hollow tree that stood on the
boundary hedge. But presently I found out--gradually and incredulously
at first and then one night with a sudden terrible certainty--that my
ideas of romance were not his.... I had what is called, I believe, a
narrow escape. I was glad when he went abroad, for it was only my
self-conceit that had suffered. I was never in love with him: only in
love with the idea of being in love with him.
"A few months ago Frank came back to High Barn. I tried never to meet
him anywhere, but one day he overtook me in the lanes. He said that he
had thought a lot about me while he was away, and would I marry him. I
told him that it was impossible in any case, and, besides, I was
engaged. He coolly replied that he knew. I was dumbfounded and asked him
what he meant.
"Then he took out a packet of my letters that he had kept somewhere all
the time. He insisted on reading parts of them up and telling me what
this and that meant and what everyone would say it proved. I was
horrified at the construction that seemed capable of being put on my
foolish but innocent gush. I called him a coward and a blackguard and a
mean cur and a sneaking cad and everything I could think of in one long
breath, until I found myself faint and sick with excitement and the
nameless growing terror of it.
"He only laughed and told me to think it over, and then walked on,
throwing the letters up into the air and catching them.
"It isn't worth while going into all the times he met and threatened me.
I was to marry him or he would expose me. He would never allow me to
marry anyone else. And then finally he turned round and said that he
didn't really want to marry me at all; he only wanted to force father's
consent to start mining and this had seemed the easiest way."
"That is what is called blackmail, Miss Whitmarsh; a word you don't seem
to have applied to him. The punishment ranges up to penal servitude for
life in extreme cases."
"Yes, that is what it really was. He came on Thursday with the letters
in his pocket. That was his last threat when he could not move me. I can
guess what happened. He read the letters and proposed a bargain. And my
father, who was a very passionate man, and very proud in certain ways,
shot him as he thought, and then, in shame and in the madness of
despair, took his own life.... Now, Mr Carrados, you were to be my
judge."
"I think," said the blind man, with a great pity in his voice, "that it
will be sufficient for you to come up for Judgment when called upon."
* * * * *