The gun-room was dark and silent as a vault. In the deep recesses the
armoured phantoms of dead and gone Herediths seemed to be watching the
intruder with hidden eyes behind the bars of their tilting helmets and
visored salades. The light of Colwyn's electric torch fell on the shell
of a mighty warrior who stood with one steel gauntlet raised as though
in readiness to defend the honour of his house. His initials, "P.H.,"
were engraved on his giant steel breast, and his steel heels flourished
a pair of fearful spurs, with rowels like daggers. Standing by this
giant was a tiny suit of armour, not more than three feet in height,
which might have been worn by a child.
"A strange pair," murmured Colwyn, pausing a moment to glance at them.
As he turned his light in their direction his eye was caught by an
inscription cut in the stone above their heads, and he drew nearer and
read that the large suit had been worn by the former Philip Heredith, "A
True Knight of God." The smaller suit had been made for a dwarf attached
to his house, who had followed his master through the Crusades, and
fought gallantly by his side.
Colwyn turned away and flashed his light along the walls in search of
the case of pistols. His torch glanced over the numerous trophies
adorning the walls, lances, swords, daggers, steel head-pieces,
bascinets, peaked morions--relics of a departed age of chivalry, when
knights quarrelled prettily for ladies, and fighting was fair and open,
before civilization had enriched warfare with the Christian attributes
of gas-shells, liquid fire, and high explosives. Then the light fell on
that which he was seeking--a dark oblong box, with brass corners, and a
brass handle closing into the lid.
Colwyn lifted the case down from the embrasure in which it was placed,
and carried it to the bagatelle table. A brief examination of the lock
satisfied him that it was too complicated and strong to be picked or
broken. It was curiously wrought in brass, of an intricate antique
pattern which would have puzzled a modern locksmith. He turned the case
over, and saw that the bottom had been mortised and screwed. The screws
had been deeply countersunk, and were embedded in rust, but a few were
loose with age. Colwyn unscrewed these loose ones with his pocket-knife,
and then set about unloosening the others.
It was a tedious task, but Colwyn lightened it with the aid of a bottle
of gun oil which he found in one of the presses. Some of the screws
yielded immediately to that bland influence, and came out easily. Others
remained fast in the intractable way of rusty screws, but Colwyn
persevered, and by dint of oiling, coaxing, and unscrewing, finally had
the satisfaction of seeing all the screws lying in a little greasy brown
heap on the faded green cloth of the bagatelle table. The next thing was
to lever off the bottom of the lid. That was not difficult, because the
glue in the mortises had long since perished. Soon the bottom was lying
on the table beside the screws, and the interior of the case revealed.
The pair of weapons which Colwyn lifted from the case were horse pistols
of a period when countryfolk feared to ride abroad without some such
protection against highwaymen. They were superior specimens of their
type. They were beautifully made, rich in design and solid in form, with
ebony stocks and chased silver mountings. The long barrels were
damascened, and the carved handles terminated in flat steel butts which
would have cracked the pate of any highwayman if the shot missed fire.
As Colwyn anticipated, the pistols were muzzle-loaders. The cock, which
laid over considerably, was in the curious form of a twisted snake. When
the trigger was pulled the head of the snake fell on the nipple.
Colwyn examined them carefully. He first ascertained that they were
unloaded by probing them with the ramrod which was attached to each by a
steel hinge. Then he ran his finger round the inside of the muzzles to
ascertain whether either pistol had been recently fired. One was clean,
but from the muzzle of the other he withdrew a finger grimed with
gunpowder. While he was doing this his other hand came in contact with
something slightly uneven in the smooth metal surface of the butt. He
turned the pistol over, and noticed a small inner circle in the flat
steel. It was a small hinged lid, which hid a pocket in the handle. He
raised the little lid with his finger-nail, and a shower of percussion
caps fell on the bagatelle table. This contrivance for holding caps was
not new to Colwyn. He had seen it in other old-fashioned muzzle-loaders.
Colwyn compared the caps which had dropped on the table with the one he
had found upstairs. They were the same size. He tried the solitary cap
on the nipple, and found that it fitted perfectly. As he did so, he saw
something resembling a thread of yellow wool caught in the twisted steel
of the hammer. It was a minute fragment, so small as to be hardly
noticeable. Colwyn was quite unable to determine what it was, but its
presence there puzzled him considerably, and he was at a loss to
understand how it had got caught in the hammer of the pistol. It struck
him that the thread might be khaki, and his mind reverted to his earlier
discovery of the patch of khaki in the wood outside the moat-house.
It was with the hope of finding out whether this pistol had been lately
used that Colwyn turned his attention to the velvet-lined interior of
the case. The inside was divided into a large compartment for the
pistols and several small lidded spaces. In one of these he found some
shot, a box of percussion caps, and a powder-flask half-full of common
gunpowder. Another space contained implements for cleaning the pistols.
The contents of the next compartment puzzled him. There were some odd
lengths of knotted string, and a coil of yellow tubular fabric, about
the thickness of his little finger, some inches in length. Colwyn
recognized it at once. It was the wick of a tinder-lighter, then being
sold by thousands by English tobacconists to replace a war-time scarcity
of matches, and greatly used by cigarette smokers.
The mystery of the presence of the wick in the pistol-case was not
lessened because it enabled Colwyn to identify the tiny yellow fragment
adhering to the cock of the pistol. He picked up the wick and observed
that one end was cut clean, but the other end was blackened and burnt.
At that discovery there entered his mind the first prescient warning of
the possibility of some deep plan in which the pistol and the wick
played important parts. With his brain seeking for a solution of that
possibility, he proceeded to examine the pieces of string.
They were odd lengths of ordinary thick twine, but they all seemed to
consist of loose ends which had been knotted together. It was not until
Colwyn took them out of the compartment that he noticed an amazing
peculiarity about them. Each piece of knotted string was burnt at both
ends.
There are some discoveries which spring into the mind with shattering
swiftness. This was one of them. A revelation seemed to come to Colwyn
as light from the sky at midnight, which, lays everything bare in one
frightful flash.
"Is it possible?"
He felt as though these words rushed from him like a thunder-roll
reverberating through the empty space around him. But his set lips had
not uttered a single sound. With tingling nerves he proceeded to carry
out an experiment. He first laid the wick of the tinder-lighter along
the stock of the pistol, just behind the hammer. He next took up one of
the lengths of string, and pulling back the hammer and the trigger of
the pistol, proceeded to bind them both firmly back with the string,
which he passed twice round the wick. When he had tied the string tight
he lit a match and applied it to the end of the wick which was farthest
from the string. His idea was to see whether this extemporized fuse
would creep along the stock of the pistol, burn the string, and release
the bound cock and trigger.
The wick smouldered and glowed, and began to creep towards the string,
which crossed the stock of the pistol about three inches from the
burning end. Colwyn took out his watch and timed its progress. In four
minutes the first inch of the wick was consumed, and the spark at the
end continued to creep sullenly forward in a dull red glow. In another
eight minutes it reached the string, and Colwyn eagerly watched the
process of the burning of the binding. The string singed, smouldered,
and when nearly severed, sprang apart under the pressure of the hammer
and trigger it had been holding back. The released hammer fell with full
force on the cap on the nipple, and exploded it.
There, then, seemed the explanation. Mrs. Heredith had been shot with
Nepcote's revolver, but it was not the deliberately deadened sound of
that slight weapon which had startled the guests in the dining-room on
the night of the murder. The report they had heard was made by the
heavier pistol in front of him. It was a ruse of terrifying simplicity
but diabolical ingenuity. The wick of the tinder-lighter was an
admirable slow match, obtainable in any tobacconist's shop for a few
pence, which, by means of this trick, had established a false alibi for
the actual murderer by causing the report which had reached the
dining-room, and sent the inmates hastening upstairs to ascertain the
cause. The shot which had mortally wounded Mrs. Heredith must have been
fired before.
How long before? Obviously not very long. That would have been dangerous
to the murderer's plans. He had to consider two things. There was the
chance of somebody entering the room before the false charge exploded,
and the possibility that the coldness of the body of his victim might
arouse medical suspicions. Colwyn did not think that the criminal had
avoided killing Mrs. Heredith so as to ensure against that risk of
discovery. The infliction of a mortal wound which failed to cause
immediate death not only required a high degree of anatomical knowledge,
but left the door open to a dying confession which might have upset the
whole plan. Fate had helped the murderer to that extent.
But the murderer owed more than that to Fate. It was to that grim
goddess he was indebted for the last wonderful touch of actuality which
lifted the whole contrivance so superbly above the realm of artifice.
Suspicion was in the last degree unlikely in any case, but Hazel Rath's
entry and loud scream, just before the moment fixed for the explosion,
ensured complete success by adding a natural verisimilitude which might
have deceived the very Spirit of Truth. Colwyn esteemed himself
fortunate indeed in lighting on what he believed to be the facts. Who
could have imagined a situation in which whimsical Destiny had
ironically stooped down from her high place to dabble ignobly in a
murderer's ghastly plot?
The one point which perplexed Colwyn was the successful concealment of
the pistol on the night of the murder. That part of the plan was as
essential to the murderer as the false report, but it seemed strange
that the pistol had not been discovered when the room was searched. An
examination of the grate upstairs might reveal the reason.
Before leaving the gun-room Colwyn replaced one of the pistols and
restored the case as he had found it to its original position. He
carried away with him the pistol which had been used.
When he reached the upstairs bedroom he locked the door before
proceeding to examine the fireplace. It was immediately apparent to him
that the pistol had not been placed in the grate or beneath it. Either
place would have meant discovery when the room was searched. It was a
careful examination of the upper portion of the grate which suggested
the hiding-place. The weapon could have been safely hidden within the
broad iron flange running round the open damper of the grate.
The complete revelation of this portion of the murderer's design came to
Colwyn as he was passing his hand over the inner surface of this ledge.
It was a register grate, and the space at the back had not been filled
in. The murderer, when concealing the pistol at the top of the grate,
had only to balance it carefully on the flange, with the muzzle pointing
into the room, to ensure that the recoil from the report would cause the
weapon to fall into the deep hole between the back of the grate and the
chimney.
This additional proof of the murderer's perverted intelligence impressed
Colwyn as much as the mechanism for the false report. The pistol,
blindly recoiling and jumping behind the grate after the explosion of
the blank charge, was almost as effectually concealed as at the bottom
of the sea, and might have remained there for years without discovery.
Colwyn plunged his arm into the hole, but could not reach the bottom.
But the murderer had more in his mind than the effectual concealment of
the pistol, important though that was to him. The grate was an excellent
choice for two other reasons. It carried the slight vapour from the
tinder wick up the chimney, and the convex iron interior formed an
excellent sounding board which would enhance the sound of the report.
Truly the dark being who had planned it all had left nothing to chance.
He had foreseen everything. His handiwork bore the stamp of unholy
genius.
Who had done this thing? Who had sought, with such patient cunning, to
upset those evidential principles by which blind Justice gropes her
hesitating way to Truth? In concocting his masterpiece of malignant
ingenuity the murderer had worked alone. His only accomplice--apart from
the after-hand of Fate--was a piece of automatic mechanism which had
done his bidding secretly, and would never have betrayed him. It was
this ability to work alone, scheming and brooding in solitary
concentration until the whole of the horrible conception had been
perfected in every degree, which stamped the designer as a ferocious
criminal of unusual mould, remorseless as a tiger, with a neurasthenic
mind swayed by the unbridled savagery of natural impulse.
As Colwyn meditated over the murder, his original impression of the
guests assembled in the dining-room downstairs in a premeditated scene
set for its production came back to him with renewed force. The murderer
had taken his part in that scene as one of the unconscious audience,
dining and taking his share in the conversation, while his secret
consciousness was strained to an intense anticipation of the false
signal from his mechanical accomplice upstairs. Colwyn could picture him
joining in the mockery of meaningless phrases with dry lips, his ears
listening for every sound, his eyes covertly watching the crawling hands
of the clock. Then, when the crack had pealed forth, he had been able to
exchange suspense for action, and rush upstairs with the others,
confident in the feeling that, let suspicion point where it would, it
could not fall on him.
But the murderer had not foreseen the scream which preceded the shot.
How had he comported himself under the shock of that cry, which was
outside the region of his calculations? He had not time to reflect upon
its origin, to investigate its source. He had to steel his nerves to
face it because he dared not do otherwise. But its sudden effect on the
nerve centres of his brain, previously strained almost to the breaking
point, must have brought him to the verge of a subsequent collapse.
Colwyn believed he saw the end in sight. The presumptions, the facts,
and the motive all pointed to one figure as the murderer of Violet
Heredith. She had been killed from the dual motive of punishment in her
own case and vengeance on a greater offender than herself. The alibi had
been devised to ensure a tremendous revenge on the man by bringing him
to the gallows as her supposed murderer. That part of the plan had gone
astray, so the murderer, in the fanatical resolve of his latent fixed
idea, had recourse to a further expedient as daring and original as the
scheme which failed. The second instrument had been the means of his own
undoing.
But as he reached this final stage of his reasoning, Colwyn stopped
short in something like dismay. He had left a point of vital importance
out of his calculations. If the murderer was the man he thought, he was
downstairs in the dining-room at the time the false shot was fired. Then
whose hand had clutched Hazel Rath's throat in the murdered woman's
bedroom upstairs, just before the shot was fired?
Colwyn slowly paced up and down the room in the midnight silence,
conning all the facts over again in the light of this overlooked
incident.