Conway Westenhanger had never pretended, even to himself, that he had
a natural gift for detective work. He had quite frankly recognised
that only good luck could bring him to success in his search for the
taker of the Talisman; and a retrospect over the events of the week
served merely to confirm the idea. None the less, the history of the
case caused him to feel a touch of chagrin. While he had been
following out erroneous inductions, the two Dangerfields had gone
straight to the mark; and if he had actually beaten them by a short
head in the end, it was by good luck and nothing else. In fact, he had
profited by their manœuvres in the matter of the Talisman’s return.
Without that incident, he would have been unable to discover anything
at all.
Now, so far as he was concerned, the episode seemed to have reached
its end, but when he thought over the whole affair, one point still
remained a mystery to him. Why had old Rollo shown that touch of
dismay at a reference to the Dangerfield Secret? The thing had been
only momentary, but it had been unmistakable, and Westenhanger had
seen it twice over within a very short period. The first time, he
recalled, was when he had hinted to Rollo that he had stumbled on the
Secret; the second occasion was when he had shown signs of asking
questions which, possibly, might touch the same subject.
“Is this Secret of theirs merely the use of the replica as a
stalking-horse, to mask the real Talisman?” Westenhanger asked
himself.
But a moment’s reflection showed him that this explanation would not
cover the facts.
“No, it isn’t that. Old Rollo knew I’d tumbled to their use of the
replica. That was what startled him the first time. But it was some
time after that, when I began asking questions to clear the affair up,
that he got really worried. He couldn’t have been troubled about his
stalking-horse then, because obviously I knew all about it already.
But he was quite evidently afraid I was getting near something. Ergo,
the replica affair isn’t the real Dangerfield Secret at all. There’s
something further, behind all this. And it must be something pretty
big, too; for Rollo Dangerfield isn’t a person one could easily jar
off the rails.”
Westenhanger hated to be puzzled. A problem worried him, until he
could get at its solution. And this affair at Friocksheim had given
him more anxiety than he had expected, when he had first gone
light-heartedly to Freddie Stickney’s inquiry. Then, he had been in a
completely detached position, the one person who could not come under
suspicion. But the outcome of Freddie’s operations had been to drag
Westenhanger into the business on behalf of Eileen Cressage; and from
that he had gone further in his attempt to clear up the whole affair
and fix the blame on the right shoulders. And now, something seemed to
lead him another step on the road; a fresh mystery confronted him,
obscure and tantalising by its very vagueness.
With an effort he put it to the back of his mind.
“It’s no affair of mine,” he repeated to himself again and again.
But even that truism failed to exorcise his demon. Ever and again the
Dangerfield Secret crept up out of his mental background and insisted
on forcing itself upon his conscious thoughts, and with each
appearance it took on a slightly different and more definite form. He
gathered no fresh data, but things which he knew already began to fit
themselves together in his mind, until at last, in a flash of
illumination, he seemed to see the whole puzzle completed.
“So _that’s_ the Dangerfield Secret!”
Then, as the fuller implications of the thing forced themselves upon
him:
“No wonder they were afraid. Poor devils!”
He ran over the evidence once more, and found himself forced to
believe that he had reached a correct solution. Everything pointed in
the same direction. Not only so, but other things now fitted
themselves into the scheme, things which he had noticed casually, and
had not hitherto thought of, connecting together. And then a further
conjecture shot across his mind, completing the whole history of the
Dangerfield Secret.
“That’s it, almost certainly,” he reflected. “They’ve made nothing of
it themselves, though they’re cute enough. But I wonder . . .”
He paused, in doubt for a moment.
“It’s a very long shot; but a fresh mind often sees a thing that other
people overlook. Perhaps one might lend them a hand. Luck’s been with
me, so far. Let’s press it while it lasts. If it’s a wash-out there’s
no harm done.”
His first step was to seek out Rollo Dangerfield.
“Might I have another look at that peculiar leather thing you showed
us one night—the thing your grandfather left?”
Rollo looked at him suspiciously, but complied without any marked
reluctance. They went together to the Corinthian’s Room where Rollo
opened the safe.
“I’d like to have a glance at the chess-board problem, too,” said
Westenhanger, as though struck by an after-thought. “I used to be
rather keen on these things, and I’d like to see if I could solve that
one.”
The old man put his hand into the safe and withdrew the two objects.
Westenhanger took them.
“I’ll copy this, if you don’t mind, and then you can put them back
into safety. I’d rather not be responsible for them longer than’s
necessary.”
He stepped over into the library, followed by Rollo, and copied down
the wording of the document and the position of the chess-pieces under
the old man’s supervision. Then he took up the leather disc and
inspected it closely.
“I thought, perhaps, that it might have been a leather washer for some
mechanical contrivance,” he said at last, handing the shrivelled
object back to its owner. “But now that I’ve seen it again, I don’t
believe it can have been that, after all. It’s certainly been used for
some purpose or other, for the surface isn’t smooth on either side.
Shoemaker’s leather sheets always have one side semi-polished, if I’m
not mistaken.”
“What made you think of a washer?” inquired Rollo, more from
politeness than from interest, it seemed.
“You mentioned that your grandfather took some interest in mechanics—a
bit of an inventor, I gathered. So I thought possibly it might have
some connection with machinery. But when one looks at it, I doubt if
that’s a possible explanation. It might be the washer of a
pump-piston, of course, but I shouldn’t think so. The hole in the
centre’s only big enough to take the twine. A piston-washer would have
a bigger hole in it. No, it beats me.”
Rollo took the thing back without comment. Westenhanger passed him the
paper also; and old Dangerfield replaced them in the safe. He was
turning to leave the room when Westenhanger spoke again.
“By the way, the Dangerfield Secret’s only three generations old,
isn’t it, Mr. Dangerfield?”
By the startled expression on Rollo’s face, Westenhanger saw that he
had hit the mark. The old man was plainly astounded by the question.
It was a few moments before he replied.
“You’re somewhere near it,” he admitted, looking distrustfully at the
engineer. “How did you come to hit on that particular period?”
“Oh, just a guess,” said Westenhanger, lightly.
Rollo seemed in doubt as to what he should say next. Then evidently he
felt it best to keep off a subject which he seemed to think a
dangerous one.
“If you find the key-move of that chess-problem,” he said, changing
the topic with obvious intention, “you might make a note of it and
tell me what it is. We may as well enter it up in the archives.”
He smiled with little apparent amusement and left Westenhanger to his
self-imposed task. The engineer plunged at once into the study of the
chess-position. Two minutes’ scrutiny satisfied him on one point.
“That’s no normal chess problem,” he said to himself. “If it’s White
to play, he can checkmate Black by simply taking that pawn with his
bishop. The old Corinthian evidently was an expert, from what old
Dangerfield told us; and no expert would trouble to put down a thing
like this on paper. And, by the same reasoning, Rollo’s suggestion’s
rubbish, too. There could be no conceivable dispute over a position of
this sort. The merest beginner would see at a glance that Black has
lost the game. The Corinthian would never have troubled to jot this
down, if that was all the matter at stake.”
He looked at the diagram disgustedly.
“Of course, if one were full up to the back-teeth with port, it might
look less obvious than it does. I shan’t try the experiment, though.
It’s quite on the cards that he was completely dazed and didn’t see
the mate in one move. Let’s leave it at that just now, and try the
rest of the thing.”
He transferred his attention to the inscription above the diagram.
“_Nox nocti indicat scientiam._ Night unto night sheweth knowledge,
it’s translated in the Bible, I remember. That’s mysterious enough. I
wonder why he chose the Latin instead of the English version. Perhaps
he read the Vulgate and liked the sound of the Latin. Now what about
these two texts: Matthew Sixth and Twenty-first; Luke Twelfth and
Thirty-fourth. There ought to be a Bible somewhere on the shelves.”
He hunted for a time and at last discovered the volume.
“Let’s see. ‘_For where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be
also._’ And the other one: ‘_For where your treasure is, there will
your heart be also._’”
He pondered over the texts for a time, but no enlightenment came to
him.
“All the same,” he assured himself at last, “these two texts seem more
to the point than the rest of the stuff. I can’t help feeling I’m on
the right track. Suppose we put it all together and see if there’s any
traceable connection between the three links.”
He began at the top of the paper.
“_Nox_. Darkness. Black. Does that mean, by any chance, that it’s
Black’s turn to play and not White’s?”
He mentally tried over the possible moves; but they led to nothing.
“No good. A bit far-fetched, in any case. But why use Latin in one
text and English for the rest; for the text-references are obviously
to the English Bible and not to the Vulgate—Luke isn’t Latin. There
might be something there, if one could only see it.”
He stared at the paper as though hoping that some key-word would flash
up from the inscriptions.
“The fresh eye doesn’t seem to see much,” he confessed ruefully, after
a time. “I make neither head nor tail of it. And yet I’m dead certain
that the thing’s there, if one could only get a glimpse of it. What’s
wanted is someone I could talk it over with—one often gets a flash
that way.”
A recollection of Rollo’s words passed through his mind: “You may tell
Miss Cressage what you think fit. We can trust her.”
Westenhanger hesitated.
“It’s straining the meaning a bit further than old Dangerfield meant,
perhaps. But the principle’s the main thing. She wouldn’t let anything
slip out. Besides, they’ve never taken me into their confidence. I’m
not giving away anything they’ve told me. So why not?”
He folded up his paper, put it into his pocket, and left the room. It
took him some time to discover Eileen, but at last he found her at the
tennis-courts, watching Douglas and Cynthia playing a single.
On the departure of the three pariahs, the Friocksheim atmosphere had
cleared, as the weather changes after the passing of thunder. Sudden
relaxation of the long-drawn-out strain of suspicion produced a
reaction among the remaining company; and the influence of Douglas
Fairmile soon supplanted the morbid inquisitiveness of Freddie
Stickney. Tacitly it was resolved to obliterate the whole incident
from memory, and to make the house-party a success.
In this new medium Eileen Cressage had undergone an almost visible
change. Relieved from the irritation of Freddie’s suspicions and freed
from the annoyance of Morchard’s presence, she had recovered an
enjoyment of life and high spirits which marked how much she had been
repressed under the weight of mistrust. Westenhanger had been
surprised to find in her almost a new character.
“Care to walk down to the sea?” he asked, as he came up to where she
was sitting.
She sprang up at once and joined him.
“Let’s go to the headland again,” she suggested, as they passed
through the gardens. “I’d rather like to sit there for a while.”
“The _Kestrel’s_ still in the bay,” Westenhanger reminded her. “You
won’t have to sweep the horizon for her smoke this time, thank
goodness.”
“No. That’s over. And I suppose you won’t be worried over puzzles
about whether I’m right or left-handed this time.”
Westenhanger took up the challenge, much to her surprise.
“Don’t be too sure of that! I’ve got another problem on hand now. Care
to help?”
Eileen’s face clouded suddenly.
“Not more suspicion, surely? And I thought we’d got rid of all that!
Friocksheim’s been lovely, since we put all that affair behind us.
You’re not raking it up again, are you?”
Westenhanger reassured her with a smile.
“No. That’s the last thing I’d want to do. You know that quite well.
This is a philanthropic effort, if it’s anything.”
“Oh, well, if it’s merely a case of helping someone, I’ll be delighted
to do anything.”
They had reached the headland, and he took a seat by her side before
saying more.
“It’s just a thing that’s puzzling me,” he explained. “You remember
Mr. Dangerfield showed us those relics of the old Corinthian that
night? I’ve had another look at them, and I feel sure there’s
something behind the business. I’d like to talk it over with you, just
to see what you make of it. Of course, we say nothing to anyone else
about it—that’s understood?”
Eileen nodded agreement.
“Go ahead then, Conway. But I shan’t be much help, I know.”
Westenhanger pulled out his copy of the Corinthian’s document.
“This is the thing. I feel sure that it’s the key to something or
other. The Dangerfields evidently have made nothing of it, so I
thought I’d try my hand—or our hands—at it.”
Eileen took the paper from him and scanned it for a moment.
“You’ve come to the wrong girl. I don’t know Latin and I don’t play
chess. What help could I be?”
“Well, ask any questions you like. Perhaps they’ll suggest something.
That’s the way you can help.”
Eileen looked again at the sheet in her hand.
“What does this Latin sentence mean, first of all? I’ve forgotten what
Mr. Dangerfield told us.”
“_Nox nocti indicat scientiam_? ‘One night gives a tip to another
night’ would be a colloquial translation of it.”
The girl looked puzzled.
“But I thought it came from the Bible. I never heard knights mentioned
in the Bible. Are you sure you’re right?”
It was Westenhanger’s turn to look blank.
“Your education’s been neglected. Didn’t it rain for forty days and
forty nights about the time of the Deluge?”
Eileen’s face cleared.
“Oh, I see what you mean. I thought you meant K-N-I-G-H-T when you
said that one gave the other a tip.”
Westenhanger’s excitement was obvious.
“I knew you’d throw some light on the thing! That makes it clear
enough. But who’d have thought of a pun?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look here, Eileen. ‘Night unto night sheweth knowledge.’ That’s how
it reads in English. These horse-headed pieces on the chess-board are
knights—with a K. If the old Corinthian had put his text into English,
it would have been fairly obvious: ‘Night unto night’ . . . and two
knights on the board. So he used the Latin and concealed the thing. It
could only be understood if one translated into English and took the
sound of the words as a guide instead of the spelling.”
“I think I see. So that really means that one of these knights on the
chess-board has something to tell the other one? What is it he can
tell? You play chess; I don’t.”
Westenhanger shook his head.
“It’s not so easy as all that, Eileen. Chess doesn’t help much here,
so far as I can see. But suppose we go up to the house and get a board
and the pieces. It’ll be easier to see then, perhaps. If anyone comes
across us, I’m teaching you chess, remember. We don’t want this talked
about.”
“Very good.” She rose to her feet. “Let’s go now.”
They went up to the house and Westenhanger unearthed a chess-board and
men in the library. Soon he had set up a duplicate of the diagram with
the pieces, and he and Eileen bent their heads over it.
“Even if you don’t know chess, at least you know what a knight’s move
is: two squares on and then one to the right or left. You can make the
move in any direction you please. Like this, or this.”
He illustrated it on the board.
“Yes, I remember that. It comes into puzzles and things of that sort.”
Westenhanger thought for a short time without saying anything.
“One knight gives a tip to the other,” he mused at last. “There’s only
one tip worth having in chess: and that’s how to checkmate your
opponent.”
He looked over the board once or twice.
“That’s it!” he exclaimed. “One of these knights can mate the black
king without the help of any other piece if he moves this way.
One—two—three—four moves!”
He moved the white knight from the knight’s square successively to the
squares number 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the diagram.
[Illustration: The same chess-board diagram, this time with four
squared numbered to show the moves that one of the White knights can
make to put the Black king in checkmate.]
“That gives checkmate. Now let’s try the other knight.”
He tried a move or two.
“This second knight can’t get a mate in four moves by any chance. That
looks all right, doesn’t it?”
“You mean that the one knight could show the other one how the thing
ought to be done?”
“Something like that. A bit far-fetched, of course; but so is the pun
on the word knight—and I’m sure we’re right about it.”
“Well,” demanded Eileen, eagerly. “What does it lead to? Do you see
what it means?”
Westenhanger made a gesture of negation.
“No. In itself it doesn’t mean anything to me. We’ll need to guess
again. I’m afraid I’ll have to think it over for a time. At present it
suggests nothing to me.”
Eileen’s face showed her disappointment.
“Oh, I thought we were just on the edge of finding out something. What
a nuisance.”
Westenhanger thoughtfully folded up his paper. Then he replaced the
chessmen in their box and put the box and chess-board back into their
proper places.
“Well, let’s go out and see if we can’t find something else to do,” he
suggested. “Sometimes a thing occurs to one easier if one doesn’t
think too hard about it. Shall we take out one of the cars for an hour
or two?”
They left the library and passed into the Corinthian’s Room.
Westenhanger’s eye was caught by the Chess-board on the pavement and
his face lighted up.
“I believe I’ve got it!” he exclaimed. “Didn’t Mr. Dangerfield tell us
that night, something about the pieces being found in position on that
Chess-board?”
Eileen recalled the scene.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “He said that after the duel they found the
document on his desk and the pieces in the same order on that big
Chess-board. You remember he suggested that it might be the end of the
game he and his friend had been playing.”
Westenhanger’s features showed the elation he felt.
“Well, I believe we’ve stumbled right on the solution. Our luck’s
holding, after all; for it was pure luck that I happened to look at
that Chess-board as we passed. I’d forgotten about the thing—or at
least I hadn’t thought about it in that connection. But when my eye
caught the board I remembered something else.”
He knelt down and scrutinised the corners of one or two squares.
“Yes, they are oil-holes right enough. I was sure they were, the first
time I saw them, but I couldn’t make out what they were there for.
They’re all stopped up with dirt. We’ll need a fine wire and a bottle
of oil. Probably the whole affair’s rusted up with age; for it can’t
have been working for years and years.”
Eileen’s eyes shone with excitement.
“You really think you’ve got to the bottom of it? Let’s go at once and
get the oil and the wire and whatever else you need. I do want to see
you clear the thing up. This last bit sounds exciting.”
“It may be all wrong, you know,” Westenhanger warned her. “Don’t
imagine we’re out of the wood yet.”
“What do you think you’re going to find out? The Dangerfield Secret?”
“If this turns up trump,” said Westenhanger, “you and I will know more
about the Dangerfield Secret than the Dangerfields themselves do. I’m
pretty sure of that, at any rate. But there’s an ‘if’ with a capital
‘I’ in it yet; so don’t expect too much. It’s quite on the cards that
we’re on a wild-goose chase with a mare’s nest at the end of it.”
“Well, do let’s get the things you need and start as soon as we can.”
Westenhanger had little difficulty in getting what he wanted. They
came back to the Corinthian’s Room and, with precautions against being
surprised, set to work to clear the oil-holes of the accumulated dirt.
After that, Westenhanger, with an oil-can, liberally dosed each
channel.
“There,” he said. “We’ll need to give the stuff time to ooze into the
bearings. Let’s go and fill in the time with something else.”
They played tennis for an hour and then came back to the Corinthian’s
Room. Westenhanger had refused to explain his purpose, and the girl
was on tenterhooks to see what he meant to do. Westenhanger took out
his paper, opened the cupboard containing the iron chessmen, and began
methodically to set them up in the positions marked in the
Corinthian’s diagram. In a few minutes he had the scheme completed.
“Now we come to the final stage,” he said. “We’ll play over the four
knight’s moves. I think that’s the key to the thing.”
With considerable difficulty he shifted the white knight from square
to square.
“One—Two—Three. Now for it—four!”
The heavy iron figure dropped into its final position—and nothing
happened! Westenhanger stared at the board in unconcealed
discomfiture, and Eileen’s face showed her disappointment.
“It hasn’t worked!” she exclaimed. “That’s hard lines, Conway.”
“No, it hasn’t worked,” he answered, in a tone of perplexity. “And yet
I feel absolutely sure that we’re on the right track. It all fits
together too neatly to be wrong. Those four moves ought to have
released some catch or other. I expected one of the Chess-board
squares to spring up, or something like that. But nothing’s happened.”
He lifted the iron pieces one by one and restored each to its proper
place in the cupboard.
“There’s some step we’ve missed, evidently. I wonder what it can be.”
Just as he closed the cupboard door, Cynthia came into the room.
“Oh, you’re here, Eileen? I’ve been hunting for you all over the
place. We want you, if Mr. Westenhanger can spare you just now.”
She asked Westenhanger’s permission with a glance; and he made a
gesture of release.
“I’ll think over it,” he said to Eileen. “Perhaps I may hit on
something.”
After the two girls had left the room he stood for a time staring at
the Chess-board; but it seemed to suggest nothing fresh to him. He
returned to the library, pulled out his copy of the Corinthian’s
document and fell to studying it once more. As he opened out the
paper, his eye was caught by the part of the inscription which
hitherto he had neglected:
Matt. VI. 21; Luke XII. 34.
“That’s got to come into it somehow,” he admitted to himself. “But I
can’t see the relevancy as it stands. _For where the treasure lies,
there will your heart be also._ It sounds like the only straight tip
in the whole business—the key to the affair. But what the devil can it
mean, exactly? It’s very vague as it stands.”
Feeling sure that up to that point he had been on the right track, he
went over each link in his chain of thought; and then, in a flash, he
saw what he had previously missed.
“That’s it! Of course, the other text ought to have put me on the
track. He wasn’t so bemused after all, that old bird! A deuced good
mnemonic—once one has the key. Now it all depends on one point. I’d
better leave the old man alone. He’s getting a bit tired of questions.
I’ll get hold of Eric. He’s likely to know.”
Luck was in Westenhanger’s way that morning. He discovered Eric
Dangerfield sitting reading on one of the lawns, at no great distance
from the house. His ankle was still weak and kept him tethered within
a short radius.
Westenhanger did not plunge immediately into the subject which
interested him, though he had little fear of arousing any suspicion in
Eric’s mind. He was sure that at this time he had out-distanced the
Dangerfields completely, and was nearer the solution of their family
mystery than they themselves had ever been. Luck had stood him in good
stead.
At last he led the conversation round to the point.
“I suppose you’ve made very few changes in Friocksheim in the last
hundred years—electric light, and so on, of course; but a lot of
furniture seems good old stuff.”
Eric nodded.
“We’re a conservative lot,” he said.
“That’s a good bit of tapestry in the Corinthian’s Room. I suppose
it’s hung there for long enough?”
“About a century and a half, I should think. It’s taken down for
cleaning, of course; but it’s never been shifted out of the Room since
it came here. It fits the wall space exactly; and there’s no point in
hanging it in a fresh place.”
“You’ve got one or two pretty good pictures, too. I like the Dutch one
in your uncle’s study.”
“Girl trying on jewels? It’s not at all bad.”
“What is it? Seventeenth century? I know next to nothing about these
things.”
Eric professed ignorance.
“You’ve come to the wrong shop. I know as little about these things as
you do yourself. Try my uncle. He’s got a turn for them; and he can
tell you the history of most of them.”
Westenhanger had secured the information he needed. He changed the
subject, and, very shortly afterwards, he left Eric to his book.
“Now,” he said to himself, as he walked back to the house, “is that
absolutely everything linked up at last? I can’t afford to have
another fiasco through overlooking things. Let’s see. The Latin text?
Right! Then the chess problem? Right, also. Then the two English
texts? O.K. now, I think.” He went back to the Corinthian’s Room and
stood for a few seconds before the tapestry of Diana’s hunting.
“Yes,” he concluded, “I think that’s all right also. That’s all, isn’t
it? No, it isn’t! I’d forgotten that leather thing. The chances are it
has nothing to do with the affair; but one ought to give it a trial.”
He sat down and filled his pipe while he speculated.
“I’m pretty sure it isn’t a washer, though that’s what one might have
expected it to be. Now what on earth does one use a leather disc of
that size for, unless it’s in connection with machinery. And the old
Corinthian was a bit of an inventor—more than a dabbler in mechanics,
if I’m on the right track. And yet from the look of the thing I’m
almost certain it’s got no normal use in a machine. The twine through
it proves that almost conclusively. Hold on, though! It might be a
valve of sorts. That might be it. But why leave a valve-piece along
with the document? That must be wrong.”
He thought over the matter without evolving anything which seemed to
throw light on the problem. At last he took up a fresh line.
“Old Rollo suggested that it was a toy that the old Corinthian had
made for his kiddie. But then, why leave it along with the document?
That seems a silly sort of thing to do. And from the look of the
leather, the thing had been used in some way. I don’t know much about
leather; but the way that disc was warped. . . . It must have been
wetted and allowed to dry, or something. That would crinkle it.”
Then a final flash of illumination lit up the whole problem in his
mind. He laughed partly at himself and partly at the simplicity of the
solution.
“Why, of course, it’s a kid’s toy. I’ve played with the same sort of
thing myself. And that’s what he used it for. He was a bright old
bird, right enough. No wonder we got no result with the Chess-board.”
He stepped into the Corinthian’s Room, drew aside the tapestry, and
examined the panelling behind it. To the ordinary eye it showed
nothing; but Westenhanger seemed satisfied with what he saw. He let
the tapestry fall into place again.
“Now let’s see! Nothing doing to-day, that’s certain. I’ll have to
wait till to-morrow before I can try it out. But I’m dead sure of it
this time. It’s no wonder the Dangerfields never got near the thing.
I’d never have been near it myself if it hadn’t been for that talk
with Eileen. Pure luck. No credit to any of us.”
He turned away from the hanging and consulted his watch.
“Just time, if I take the car down. The Frogsholme cobbler first of
all; and then a shop where I can get some long needles. That fits me
out. And to-morrow I’ll give old Rollo the surprise of his life. The
bottom will be out of the Dangerfield Secret! What a relief for the
old man!”