Meldon rode rapidly westwards out of the town, in the direction of
Ballymoy House. He swept round the sharp corner and through the
entrance gate at high speed, leaning over sideways at so impressive an
angle that the six Callaghan children, who were standing in the porch
of the gate lodge, cheered enthusiastically. He disappeared from their
view before their shouts subsided, and rushed up the avenue. He
reached the gravel sweep in front of the house, pressed on both brakes
with all his force, brought the bicycle to an abrupt standstill, and
dismounted amid a whirling cloud of dust and small stones. He rang the
door bell furiously. Finding that the door was not immediately opened
he rang again, and then a third time, leaving less than half a minute
between the peals. Then a maid, breathless, and in a very bad temper,
opened the door and asked him what he wanted.
"I must see Miss King at once," said Meldon, "on most important
business."
"Miss King is out, sir," said the maid.
"Where is she? When did she go out? When will she be home?"
The servant could have answered two of the three questions without
difficulty. She knew when Miss King went out. She also knew where she
had gone to. She could have guessed at the hour of her return; but
seeing that Meldon appeared to be in a hurry she took her revenge for
the violent ringing of the bell which had disturbed her.
"I'll go and enquire, sir," she said.
She spent nearly ten minutes making enquiries. Then she returned with
the information that Miss King had gone out immediately after luncheon.
She had accompanied Sir Gilbert Hawkesby to the river where he intended
to fish.
"She's gone with Sir Gilbert Hawkesby!" said Meldon.
"Yes, sir."
Meldon turned away and walked slowly down the avenue. When he reached
the tennis court he propped his bicycle up against a tree and took out
his pipe. Miss King's brilliant hammock was still hanging between the
two trees to which Callaghan had attached it on the morning after her
arrival. Meldon lit his pipe and lay down in the hammock. He was
puzzled. Miss King's conduct was unaccountable. The judge's was
strange. But Meldon held a belief that there is no problem so
difficult but will yield its solution to patient thought and tobacco.
He drew in and expelled rich clouds of smoke; and set himself to think
hard. The judge had recognised the impossibility of living in Doyle's
hotel. That was a plain and intelligible point from which to start.
He had gone straight to Ballymoy House, knowing that he would find Miss
King there. It was difficult to guess where he got his information;
but mere speculation on points of that kind was obviously useless. The
judge did know, and had made up his mind to settle down in Ballymoy as
Miss King's guest. Miss King had apparently received him; had even
gone out fishing with him. Meldon could find no explanation of the
facts except one, and it was extremely unsatisfactory. The judge must
have imposed himself on Miss King, and induced her to receive him by
means of threats. Such things have, no doubt, been done occasionally;
though rarely by judges. People, especially women with doubtful pasts,
are always open to threats of exposure, and may be induced to submit to
blackmail. Sir Gilbert Hawkesby was evidently--Meldon had ample
evidence of this--determined to fish. He was, according to Doyle and
Sabina Gallagher, in a bad temper, and therefore, for the time,
unscrupulous. He had spent a most uncomfortable night. He was also
extremely hungry. It was just possible that he had forced himself upon
Miss King. Meldon sighed. This adjustment of the facts was not
satisfactory, but there was no other. He knocked the ashes out of his
pipe and stood up. Then he became aware that Callaghan was watching
him from the far end of the lawn. Meldon walked over to him.
"If it's news about Mr. Simpkins you want," said Callaghan, "there's
none, for he hasn't been near the place since the last day I was
talking to you."
"For the immediate present," said Meldon, "I'm not so much interested
in Mr. Simpkins as in another gentleman that came here to-day."
"Is it him they call Sir Gilbert Hawkesby?"
"It is," said Meldon, "that very man. Did you see him?"
"I did. It was half past ten o'clock, or maybe a little later, and the
young lady was just after coming out with a terrible big lot of papers
along with her. She sat herself down there in the little bed where you
were lying this minute, and 'Good morning to you, Callaghan,' she says
when she saw me."
"What were you doing there?" said Meldon.
"I was looking at her. Wasn't that what you told me to do? I was
watching out the same as I've been doing this last week, the way
Simpkins wouldn't come on her unawares, and me maybe somewhere else and
not seeing him."
"All right," said Meldon. "I haven't the least doubt that's exactly
what you were doing. I put the wrong question to you. What I ought to
have asked you was this: What did Miss King think you were doing? What
were you pretending to do?"
"I was making as if I was scuffling the walk with a hoe, and the Lord
knows it wants scuffling, for the way the weeds grow on it is what
you'd hardly believe."
"Well, and after she said good morning to you what happened?"
"There wasn't anything happened then," said Callaghan, "unless it would
be some talk there was between us about the weather, me saying it was
seasonable for the time of year, and--"
"You needn't go into details about the weather," said Meldon. "I
suppose, sooner or later, something else happened?"
"There did then."
"And what was it?"
"There came a car up along the avenue with a gentleman on it, and it
was Patsy Flaherty that was driving it; and him lacing the old mare
with the whip the same as if the gentleman might be in a hurry."
"He was in a hurry," said Meldon. "As a matter of fact, he hadn't had
a bite to eat since the middle of the day yesterday, and not much then.
Any man would be in a hurry if he was as hungry as that judge."
"That may be. Any way, whatever the reason of it was, he had Patsy
Flaherty leathering the mare like the devil. Then, as soon as ever
Miss King set eyes on him, she was up out of the little bed where she
was, and the papers threw down on the ground, and her running as fast
as ever she could leg it across the grass."
"Poor thing!" said Meldon. "It must have been a shock to her to catch
sight of him like that. Where did she run to?"
"To meet him, of course," said Callaghan.
"To meet him! Be careful what you're saying now, Callaghan. It's more
likely she ran the other way."
"Amn't I telling you it was to meet him? And, what's more, you'd say
by the way she was running that she was thinking it a long time till
she got to him."
"You're mistaken about that," said Meldon. "Unless she completely lost
her head through sheer nervousness; it must have been away from him she
ran."
"It was not, but to him. And then as soon as ever he seen her coming
he put out his hand, and gripped a hold of Patsy Flaherty by the arm,
and 'Stop, ye divil,' says he. 'Haven't ye had enough of battering
that old screw for one day?' says he, 'and don't you see the young lady
that's coming across the lawn there and her lepping like a
two-year-old, so as the sight of her would make you supple and you
crippled with the rheumatics?'"
"I know now," said Meldon, "that you're telling me a pack of lies from
start to finish. There's not a judge in the world would say the words
you're putting into that one's mouth. It isn't the way judges talk,
nor the least like it. You oughtn't to try and invent things,
Callaghan. You can't do it. You haven't got any faculty for dramatic
probability in characterisation. That story of yours wouldn't go down
with Major Kent, and what's the good of your offering it to me? You
may not know it, Callaghan, but I'm something of an expert in textual
criticism. I can separate up the Book of Genesis into its component
documents as well as any man living, and I'm quite capable of telling
by internal evidence, that is to say by considerations of style and
matter, whether any particular verse is written by the same man that
wrote the verse before. Now in both respects, matter and style, I
recognise in your story the strongest possible evidence of fabrication.
Any literary critic who knew his business would agree with me. In the
first place, Miss King wouldn't have run to meet that judge. She'd
have run away from him if she ran at all."
"It was to him she did run," said Callaghan, "and what's more--"
"In the second place," said Meldon, "the judge wouldn't have spoken
that way to Patsy Flaherty. If he'd wanted to have the car stopped
he'd have said, 'Pull up for a minute, my good man,' or words to that
effect."
"Well," said Callaghan, "it might have been that he said. How was I to
hear what passed between them when I was half ways across the lawn at
the time scuffling the path with my hoe?"
"And if you couldn't hear," said Meldon, "what on earth do you mean by
pretending to repeat to me the exact words the judge used?"
"I told you the best I could. If them wasn't the words he said he
looked mighty like as if they were. Any way Patsy Flaherty gave over
lambasting the old mare, and she stood still, the way you'd think she
was glad of the rest. Then the gentleman took a lep down off the car,
and away with him to meet the lady."
"Well?"
"She was mighty glad to see him," said Callaghan, "for she kissed him
twice."
"Nonsense," said Meldon, "she couldn't possibly have kissed him. And,
listen to me now, Callaghan. You set up to be mighty particular about
moral conduct, and the day I first talked to you about Miss King you
said a lot about disliking any kind of impropriety. But you don't
hesitate to tell me a grossly scandalous story about a lady who never
did you any harm. I don't think you ought to do it."
"There was no impropriety of conduct about it."
"There was. How can you possibly say there wasn't? What could be more
improper, judged by any conceivable standard of conduct, than for a
young lady to go rushing and tearing across a lawn--and I declare I
don't like to repeat the thing you said."
"There was no impropriety of conduct," said Callaghan, "because the
gentleman was her uncle."
"Do you mean to tell me," said Meldon, "that Sir Gilbert Hawkesby is
Miss King's uncle?"
"He is. I might have guessed it when I saw her kissing him. And I
partly did guess there must be something of the sort in it; for I have
a respect for Miss King, and I know well that she's not the sort that
would do the like of that without the gentleman would be a near friend
of her own. But the way I'd make sure I went and asked the young lady
within in the kitchen."
"Do you mean the cook?"
"I do," said Callaghan. "It might have been an hour after or maybe
more when I was taking in a dish of peas for the dinner. 'Miss Hodge,'
says I, speaking respectful--for the girls that does be in it thinks a
lot of themselves on account of their coming over here all the way from
London--'Miss Hodge,' says I, 'that's a mighty fine gentleman that's
come to see the mistress to-day.' 'The devil a much credit it is to
you to find that out,' says she, 'for--'"
"She didn't," said Meldon. "Nobody of the name of Hodge who came from
London would or could say 'the devil a much credit' under any
circumstances."
"It's what she meant," said Callaghan, "and what's more, she told me
about his being a high-up gentleman, and a judge, no less. 'Do you
tell me that now?' says I. 'I'm glad of it, for, if you believe me,
it's the first time ever I set eyes on one of them.' 'You'll see
plenty of him,' says she, 'for he'll be stopping here along with Miss
King till he's done fishing.' 'Will he then? And what could he be
doing that for?' 'It's on account of the way them murdering villains
down in the hotel--'"
"I wish," said Meldon, "that you wouldn't try to repeat the cook's
exact words. You're getting them wrong every time and making it more
and more difficult for me to believe your story."
"It's the truth I'm telling you whether or no," said Callaghan, "and
what she said was that he was coming up here to stay on account of the
way they had him poisoned down in the hotel, which is what I was sorry
to hear her say, for Sabina Gallagher's a friend of my own, her sister
being married to my wife's cousin, and I wouldn't like to hear of the
girl getting a bad name. Any way, 'it's that way it is,' said Miss
Hodge, 'and where would he come to if it wasn't--?'"
"You're at it again," said Meldon. "Why can't you tell what you have
to tell without spoiling what might be a good story by insisting on
making the cook talk in that unnatural way?"
"What she said was," said Callaghan, "that it was no more than right
and proper that he'd come to the house of his own niece."
"You're absolutely certain she said that?"
"I am; for it wasn't once nor twice she said it, but more; like as if
she was proud of being along with a lady that was niece to a judge."
"If the facts are as you state them," said Meldon, "a good many things
become clear to me, and the general situation is by no means so
desperate as I was inclined to think."
"Would you say now, your reverence," said Callaghan, "that it's true
what she was after telling me about Sabina doing the best she could to
poison the judge with paraffin oil?"
"There's a foundation of truth in the statement," said Meldon, "but it
has been very much exaggerated."
"It's what I didn't think Sabina would do, for she was always a quiet,
decent girl, with no harm in her."
"Don't run away with the idea that Sabina has done anything wrong,"
said Meldon, "for she hasn't. I can't stop here to explain the whole
circumstances to you, for I have other things to do, and in any case
you wouldn't be able to understand. But I would like to fix this fact
firmly in your mind: Sabina is in no way to blame."
"Is there any fear now," said Callaghan, "that she might be took by the
police?"
"Not the slightest."
"Him being a judge and all?"
"That doesn't make the least difference. If Sabina had poisoned
anybody--she hasn't, but if she had--or even if she'd tried to, she'd
be had up for it whether her victim was a judge or a corner boy. It's
worse, I believe, if you poison the king; but short of that it's the
same thing exactly. The law doesn't set a bit more value on a judge's
life than on any one else's, and Sir Gilbert Hawkesby would be the
first man to tell you that. You can ask him if you like. But the
point isn't really of any importance, because, as I said before, Sabina
has neither poisoned nor tried to poison anybody. She has simply done
her duty."