BOOK IV

THE MAN IN THE DARK

JOHN FERGUSON

FRONT PAGE MYSTERIES

Second Series

P. F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1928,

BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.

Published, June, 1928

Second printing, July, 1928

Third printing, August, 1928

Fourth printing, October, 1928

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

TO

F. P. AND P. P.

CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE MURDER IN THE HOUSE AT EALING

BOOK II

NARRATIVE OF GODFREY CHANCE, JOURNALIST

BOOK III

STATEMENT BY DR. DUNN

BOOK IV

THE SECOND NARRATIVE OF GODFREY CHANCE

BOOK I

THE MURDER IN THE HOUSE AT EALING

CHAPTER I

Along the Embankment the fog was even worse than it had been in the

Strand. Kinloch thought it queer that in so short a distance there

should be so much difference. But worse it was. The sulphurous taste

became intensified, while in addition a new and acrid flavour, probably

the river's contribution to the mixture, made its presence felt on the

roof of his mouth.

But progress was far easier on the Embankment. Up in the street he

barged into and cannoned off some other pedestrian at every step. The

handling he suffered! Hands some of them, it is true, gently warding

off the impact of body on body; but others there were who thrust one

impatiently aside, digging hard with elbows, so that, for a fellow

in Kinloch's condition, the street quickly became something like a

nightmare. But down on the Embankment, though his advance was still

slow and uncertain, he had more room to feel his way, and to breathe

freely, for that road was as silent and deserted as a Scottish village

street on a Sunday afternoon.

With such sounds as did come the fog, he found, played strange tricks.

Some it magnified and others it muffled up. The cough and sneeze of

an occasional pedestrian would come quite audibly across the wide

road; and while the rumble of a train crossing the bridge sounded like

thunder, the chimes of Big Ben striking seven came through the sheeted

air refined, as if by increased altitude, into a faint and silvery

whispering.

At the foot of Villiers Street, however, he once more stumbled into the

stream of hurrying people. Now, at least, there was no risk of missing

the Underground. He was jostled inside the vestibule by a quick-footed

crowd all going one way, and all equally eager on such a night to reach

the shelter of their suburban homes.

As he moved on in the queue towards the ticket grille the sharp tones

of the clerk, the smash of coins on the counter and then the scurry of

feet running for the stairs made him contrast his own case with that

of all these bustling, purposeful people. He had nothing to hurry for.

Nobody listened for his latch-key. Time was nothing to him. The fog? He

counted on being back in the thick of it within a couple of hours. It

was curious how much alone he felt. He went down the stairs, clinging

to the hand rail, while numberless people flitted past him, not one of

them more to him than a tattoo of rapid feet, swarming for the trains.

Yet had he been sensitive enough that feeling of being so alone in the

crowd might well have served as a premonition. It was perhaps Fate

singling him out, and separating him off from his fellowmen for the

strange sequence of events destined to begin that night. Fate seems to

work like that, using a man for a purpose he cannot see at the time. He

goes down one street rather than another, for no apparent reason, and

something happens in that street which alters the whole of his life.

When Kinloch left the train at Ealing Broadway the fog was still there,

coming cold and dank to the face, though some of its more virulent

ingredients had gone. After getting the direction from a forlorn but

kindly taxi man who must certainly have seen from his clothes that he

was not a possible fare, Kinloch set out to grope his way to Albany

Road. It was in Albany Road Peter Dunn lived; and on Peter Dunn his

hopes were centred. A man who lived in the same doss had looked him up

in the medical directory at the municipal library; and it was this same

man--a begging-letter writer by profession--who advanced the amount

of the fare to Ealing. A sporting fellow he was in his way, for their

combined resources did not run to more than the ticket from Charing

Cross to Ealing, and even at that it meant the pair must go supperless

to bed if Kinloch failed.

It was the first begging call of his life and, though he never doubted

about success, the fact that it was an old friend to whom he was

applying made the journey very distasteful. This surprised him in a

mild way, for he counted himself pretty tough at that time. And so

while he stumbled on in the dark, and as if to fortify his resolution,

he fell to thinking over Peter Dunn, mentally recounting all the

incidents in which, in happier days, he and Dunn had been associated.

It was the worst thing he could have done, to think of the old days.

It forced up the contrast between what life had been and what it had

become; between the lad he looked at in the early days and the man he

was at the moment, hardened, bitter, and almost unscrupulous. In a

word, while he looked at himself as he once had been he saw himself as

he was.

Hugh Abercromby had brought them together, the unforgotten, the

unforgettable Hugh, beloved of both. A fine, fresh day in spring it

was when he first met Dunn on the links at St. Andrews--all three

were third-year students. At first Peter and he had eyed each other

askance, like two young dogs jealous of the place the other might have

in Hugh's affections. But Dunn proved to have a taste for literature,

and though he kept this taste under control, so that it never, as in

his own case, interfered with his professional studies, yet it served

to draw both together. Many times they fell out, for Dunn was of a

queer, dour temper, and his mental processes, if sure, were annoyingly

slow in working. Then Kinloch's mind turned to their last meeting. To

him, then, that also seemed long ago. It had taken place in the General

Hospital outside Boulogne to which he had been brought with his first

wound. Coming into the ward Peter must have recognized him as he lay

tossing uneasily, that hole in the shoulder making itself a centre of

pain that gathered almost all thought to itself, so that he could give

heed to little beyond its small circumference. Unperceived by him, Dunn

in his white overalls had seated himself beside the bed in which he

lay, feverish and stifled by the hot motionless air and the fire of his

wound. Then bending forward Dunn began slowly, and almost in a whisper,

to recite certain lines, the first words of which made him jump:

_St. Andrews by the Northern Sea

A haunted town it is to me._

A little city, worn and grey,

The grey North Ocean girds it round,

And o'er the rocks, and up the bay

The long sea rollers surge and sound.

Startled by the familiar words, Kinloch had twisted round to look

at this man who from what he said might at that moment have been

eavesdropping at the door of his heart. "Peter!" he had cried,

recognizing the broad face, so rugged, and the grey eyes bent over him.

But Dunn put him down again by laying a hand on his chest.

O broken minster looking forth

Beyond the bay, above the town,

O winter of the kindly north,

O college of the scarlet gown!

And shining sands beside the sea,

And stretch of links beyond the sand,

Once more I watch you, and to me

It is as if I touched his hand....

_St. Andrews by the Northern Sea

A haunted town it is to me._

Well, as has been said, all this, and much more, came back as Kinloch

was fumbling his way along those desolate Ealing roads and avenues.

One may wonder why these memories gave him no confidence. It is,

perhaps, the measure of the abyss into which the man had fallen to say

now that such memories daunted rather than encouraged him. The more

he remembered and the nearer he got to Dunn's door, the more clearly

he saw what he had become. A false pride was in it too. The _hash_ he

had made of life, while Dunn had prospered. And--another thing--for

the past six years he had heard nothing of Peter Dunn. How much may

happen in six years! The truth is he feared to find his old-time friend

with a wife and perhaps a family; a settled and sedate medical general

practitioner. For, as he used to argue in the old days, in no calling

is the change from roystering youth to smug and portly respectability

so rapid and complete as in the medical. There lurks something of a

poet in the wildness of the medical student; but once that student

becomes a G.P. he treats his poetic soul as a disease; and invariably

it yields to treatment. Invariably! The thought made Kinloch pull up

short. Peter's wife instantly grew terribly real to him. He visualized

Dunn as ill at ease about having to introduce an out-at-elbows friend

to her; and he saw the lady herself regarding him with a fixed smile,

and hostile eyes, while she wondered whatever the parlourmaid would

think.

Then as he stood hesitating in that deserted road, a prey to sickening

indecision, struggling between a sense of shame and a knowledge of his

pressing needs, the heavy tread of a policeman sounded at his back.

Fate had stepped in and again decided for him. He was, little as he

knew it, being pushed on to his destiny, and the choice as to whether

he would go on or turn back was now less than ever in his own hands.

For as he automatically resumed his walk the following footsteps

quickened and a heavy hand descended on his shoulder.

"What are you loitering here for?"

"I have lost my way."

He spoke like a child, confusedly, as one coming back too suddenly from

a dream. He was a little frightened. Lost his way! So indeed he had.

But long before that night. Some vague perception of this may have

added to the bewilderment with which he spoke. This the policeman took

for guilt. The walking-stick was dexterously twisted out of Kinloch's

nervous hand.

"Gammon! A clearer case of loitering with intent I never saw. Had my

eye on you for the last half-hour. You come along."

His grip shifted to the coat collar.

"I am looking for 28 Albany Road," Kinloch protested, now fully awake.

The policeman gave a grunt of scorn.

"Dining there, I suppose."

"No--er--consulting Dr. Dunn."

"Don't try that gaff on me. Dr. Dunn has no patients of your

class--except when he acts as our casualty surgeon. Now then!"

He gave Kinloch's arm a twist, and at the same time trod heavily on his

left foot. The old Sandy Kinloch fired up momentarily.

"Are you trying to make me a casualty?" he asked, shoving him off.

The man was on him with a bound, in joyful brutality. Kinloch had heard

tales of his sort from other unfortunates. The wantonly inflicted pain

was probably intended to provoke resistance, which of course would

serve as corroboration of any serious charge. Why should a guiltless

man resist? Kinloch knew from experience that here and there a type of

officer still remains who believes he must produce cases to justify his

own existence.

His foot throbbed with pain, but he restrained the natural temptation

to prolong the struggle.

"All right," he said. "So long as I see Dr. Dunn it's all one whether

you take me to him or bring him to me."

Have you ever tried to make a policeman change his mind? A forlorn

hope it usually is. It puzzled Kinloch as to how he succeeded with

that animal. Possibly the careless indifference of his last words had

an effect; but more probably it was due to the memory of some recent

reprimand for an equally wanton arrest. Anyhow the thick fingers

gripping his garments at the back of the neck again shifted to his arm.

The officer said:

"Albany Road is on our way. We can call in as we pass." But his grasp

was less assured than before.

Albany Road indeed proved to be round the next corner, and the man had

just pushed open a gate a little way along it when Kinloch heard a door

bang. He could not tell whether it meant some one entering or leaving.

Hastily he felt at his torn collar and tried to get it down to meet the

tie, also damaged by his recent rough handling. Then a voice boomed out

from the doorway:

"What is it, officer?"

The policeman pulled his captive forward, half uneasily.

"This man, sir, I got him loitering. Says he knows you, and was coming

here."

"Says he knows me, does he? Put your lantern on his face...."

The next moment a cry came.

"Sandy--Sandy Kinloch by all the--" Dunn broke off short. He must

with his quick, professional eye at once have observed the other's

affliction. The policeman dropped the arm he held as if it had burned

his fingers.

"Oh, Sandy, my poor lad, Sandy!" Dunn said in a low voice.

The policeman here returned the walking-stick, and stepped out nimbly

for the gate. A mighty relief it was to hear him go. Dunn slipped a

hand under his old friend's arm.

"Och, och, come away in," he said.

"But, Peter, your--your wife," the other stammered.

"My what?" he cried, pulling up.

"I'm in rather a disreputable condition. Will she mind?"

"You mean about her chintz chairs and so on, I suppose. Who told you I

was married?"

"Nobody; I guessed it."

"A bad guess, Sandy: there's no minx here to mess up my place with

china ornaments and female fallals. So wipe your feet on the bass, lad,

and step inside."

Dunn has said that he saw at the first glance just what Kinloch's

condition was. No doubt this is correct; his professional eye would

give him information not so apparent to others. He says, however, that

he made no comment at the time on his old-time friend's affliction,

though he admits making a joking remark on the length of Kinloch's hair

to put him at his ease. This remark the other turned aside, probably

because Dunn would not have understood that where Kinloch had lived for

the past year there was a prejudice against the owners of close-cropped

heads. Most close-cropped heads in Rowton Street were cropped, without

their owners' consent, at their country's expense.

In Dunn's cosy study that night, after such a meal as had become no

more than a dim memory to him, Kinloch told his story. Much more of it

was told than need be set down here. Not so much because of its dull

and sordid details, but because it has no direct bearing on what was to

follow. The real story in fact only began that night--little as either

of the men dreamed so then.

Dunn heard it out in silence, except for an occasional grunt or sign of

indignation. When he had finished the doctor hit the coal a resounding

blow with the poker, as if he wished it had been Maxtone's head. For

Kinloch had rounded off his story by telling him of his experiences

with Maxtone. Maxtone was the editor who had turned him down.

At the end of a long silence Dunn's voice broke in plaintively:

"I never could understand why you did it, Sandy."

"Did what?" the other asked, coming back startled from his memories of

Maxtone.

"Took up this silly writing business, and wrecked such brilliant

prospects."

"Because I couldn't help it, Peter."

Dunn gave a grunt of incredulity.

"I had leanings to poetry myself, once," he said, "but it was one of

the few temptations I've found it easy to resist."

Kinloch laughed the first mirthful laugh for many a day.

"Yes, you old pill-pusher, and proud you are of it. But then you will

never know the joy of creation--to take up an idea and give it flesh

and blood, to see the germ of excellence spring out of nothing."

"Ay--and lead to nothing."

The sharp disgust in this muttered rejoinder was probably due to what

seemed the extravagant enthusiasm of the other's previous words. But

at that moment, when Kinloch was over-sensitive, and in great need,

it came to him suddenly that Dunn was now anticipating an appeal for

help, and was half-resentful over it. It was like a cold douche after

his mirth. His long lost pride came back, as other things came back

that night. He would show Dunn he would ask for nothing. So taking this

reproach as a warning, he got to his feet. But Dunn took no notice.

"Well, I must be going," Kinloch said with a flourish.

"Going," he repeated; "going where?"

"To the place this scribbling has led to--a cubicle in a doss in Rowton

Street," Kinloch replied bitterly.

Dunn shoved him back in the chair with some violence.

"You needn't be so touchy. If I am angry it is solely for you, Sandy,

knowing what your capacities once were. Man, man, but you were aye an

unco thin-skinned lad."

Dunn, like many of his race, was accustomed to use the broad dialect

of his country whenever he was under the stress of some strong emotion

of which he was half ashamed. But well as the other knew this national

trait he was too fantastically sensitive by this time to be influenced

by that knowledge.

"What is the good of reproaches now?" he said wearily. "After all, as

things have turned out, what else could I do but write? What sort of a

doctor could I make now, after the war has done with me?"

It was here that Dunn blundered.

"No; but if you had qualified in medicine you would never have been

in the fighting line, and so have escaped your present calamity," he

persisted.

Kinloch fired up at once.

"Been safe at a _base_ hospital, you mean," he retorted hotly.

After that things somehow went from bad to worse. There is no doubt

Dunn had intended to stand by his friend. When the other had leisure,

with a cooler head, to think over what happened, he saw that, for he

knew that Dunn was not of the sort who give good advice when they mean

to give nothing else. Dunn no doubt meant to do probably a good deal

more than his friend had hoped for, but on that very account he claimed

the right, like the dour Scot he was, to improve the occasion.

The rupture came suddenly, before either was aware. Dunn, hot headed,

began to preach at him, and Kinloch, sore and sick with the picture

of himself as drawn by his candid friend, stung him with a gibe that

smacked of the den from which he had emerged.

Dunn rose in wrath.

"You spoke of a _base_ hospital just now," he cried. "It might have

been better for you had you died in that same base hospital; it might

have saved you from a base existence."

Both were now on their feet; and this time Dunn made no effort to

detain the other. He was breathing heavily, and his keys jingled in a

hand trembling with anger as he opened a drawer. But Kinloch rejected

the money when he offered it: it was not possible for him to do

otherwise after the particular gibe he had used, and the retort Dunn

had made to it.

"As you please," he said.

"Fortunately I'm not quite penniless," Kinloch proclaimed with

ludicrous dignity and entire untruth. "It would be painful to have to

pocket your insult with your money."

"Oh, I did not mean to insult you," the other man said, almost humbly.

Kinloch said nothing.

When they reached the door Dunn gave a sudden exclamation.

"Lord, I had forgotten that!" he cried.

"What?" Kinloch asked, surprised at his sharp exclamation.

"The fog. I can't let you go, Kinloch. It's thicker than ever. Even a

beggar's dog would lose his way to-night."

It may have been his unaccustomed use of the surname--never had he

been other than Sandy to him--or perhaps his reference to a beggar

that touched Kinloch on the raw once more. Without a word he stumbled

quickly to the gate.

"Come back, Sandy," Dunn called, following. "On a night like this--"

"Fog makes no difference to me, Dunn," Kinloch cried, as with an

affected laugh he slammed the gate.

Touched with remorse the other started after him, but Kinloch hurried

away; and it needed but a few steps in that fog to be beyond finding.

Kinloch, indeed, had not gone far in the fog before the awkwardness of

the situation pulled him up. It was somewhere after eleven, he was many

miles from Rowton Street, and with not a penny in his pocket to get

there. Cool enough he was now as he stood against a wall and under a

dripping, overhanging tree in that sodden, deserted road. For half an

hour he must have leant against that wall dully considering the plight

in which his foolish quarrel with Dunn had placed him. His clothes,

too, had suffered much in his brief interview with the policeman.

Though worn threadbare, his suit had been of good quality originally,

and he had always taken care of it. It is extraordinary how important

the condition of a last suit becomes to a man who has reached the

end of his resources. At an interview with a possible employer boots

can be more or less hidden, and a shabby hat can be held negligently

behind one's back, but one's suit takes the eye, and supplies the first

impression by which most men judge. But these were not thoughts that

occupied him for long. His one thought soon turned to how he could get

back to Rowton Street. For the Underground barriers cannot be passed

without a ticket. Then he remembered the Ealing Great Western Station,

close to the District. If he could slip into a carriage there he should

reach Paddington, where, in such a large station, it would be easier to

evade the collectors at the exit. If not--well, arrest at least would

provide a shelter for the night.

He had gone some distance towards the station when a new thought

came, one which would probably never have occurred to him but for the

recently recovered memories of better days. It was this: if he had to

risk arrest he must see to it that his name did not come out. It is

almost comical that he should have been so sensitive about this all at

once. Anyhow the fact remains that he went methodically through every

pocket, and tore into scraps every paper that could serve as a clue

by which his identity could be traced. Dunn must not know--this was

his motive, probably. So all along those suburban roads and avenues he

laid down something like a paper-chase trail, and only when the job was

finished and he had left himself with nothing in his pockets did he

begin to heed where he was going.

The fog seemed to be as thick as ever. Behind its almost impenetrable

wall he knew there lay on each side of him rows and rows of houses,

each separated by no more than a yard or two of turf from the road, but

for all that showed of the life within them he might as well have been

limping through a dead city.

A little later, finding himself alongside a great line of massive iron

railing, so stout that he knew they must have been built with public

money, he felt he was passing beyond the suburban villa region, and

became doubtful of his direction. When the road began to make a great

sweeping uphill curve, doubt became certainty: he knew he had not come

that way.

Something like a tremor of anxiety passed through him, while he

stood, doubtful as to what course to pursue. It was very cold, in a

raw, penetrating fashion; for by this time his clothes were fairly

sodden from exposure to the fog. Eagerly as he bent for any sound, his

ear caught nothing but the eerie drip, drip, drip of the condensing

moisture falling from some trees inside the railings.

Using the stick on these same railings he worked along them, trusting

to come on the gate of some house at which he might obtain guidance.

Failing in this he crossed the road in the hope of finding houses

on the other side, and eventually after fumbling along a high blank

wall he came on a little iron gate that certainly belonged to a villa.

Without one thought as to the late hour, Kinloch mounted the steps

and pulled the bell. By this time he was so eager for the sound of a

human voice that if any inmate were only to lift a window to curse at

him he would have welcomed the voice. But that did not happen. No one

responded. Peal on peal he sent through that house before realizing

from the hollow, ghostly re-echoing of the bell that the house was

empty.

Up and down how many roads he went after that in search of something

human he never knew. What, however, he could never forget is that

in rounding a new corner in a dull despair he walked suddenly into

something soft and human--a stout man of middle height in a thick

overcoat with fur collar and cuffs. The man gripped at Kinloch to save

himself from a tumble.

"Damn you," the stranger cried, irascibly shaking him. "Are you quite

blind?"

The unexpectedness of the meeting more than the violence of the

collision left Kinloch for a moment speechless.

"Sorry, sir, but you were certainly going the faster," he said.

The stranger was passing on, but stopped at the other's words.

"H'm, a man of some politeness. You recognized who I am, no doubt."

When Kinloch haltingly explained his plight, he emitted a quiet

whistle; but not, as it turned out, from any sympathy.

"Not acquainted with this neighbourhood?" he queried, coming nearer

again.

Wondering who this man could be who expected to be recognized by any

chance passer-by the young man explained that, so far from being

familiar with the locality, he had not the least notion of where he

then was. If, he went on, he could be put on the way to the railway

station he would be very thankful. For a moment the stout gentleman

said nothing, but seemed to stand there in the fog debating something

with himself.

"I can put you on the way to something much better," he said at length.

"You are just the man I want. There's something providential in our

meeting. Yes, sir, I seem to detect a Higher Hand in this, though I am

not a superstitious man."

When he took him by the arm, his hand trembling with eagerness, it

struck Kinloch that the man was in a state of agitation or anxiety. He

freed himself half uneasily.

"Look here, come to business. What do you want?" he asked.

"A small service, for which I will pay much."

"How much?"

The man in the fur coat hesitated. It is significant of Kinloch's

desperate condition rather than of his nationality that he enquired as

to the amount of the reward before asking the nature of the service.

"Five pounds for half an hour or so seems ample."

Kinloch laughed, exhilarated by the prospect held out to him. The

stout man evidently took the laugh for one of derision.

"Five pounds. It's surely enough," he said.

"That depends. I've gone through half-hours I wouldn't repeat for five

hundred."

"But this is merely to sit still in a chair, in a quiet room, and

rustle some papers."

Kinloch's heart sank as he realized the man must be a lunatic, a

harmless wandering lunatic. Of course he was! Who else would be abroad

on such a night--owning a fur-lined coat? When he recalled, too, that

the man had expected to be recognized, no doubt from supposed portraits

in the papers, suspicion of his insanity turned to certainty. Kinloch's

hopes sank to zero.

"If you tell me where you live," he said soothingly, "I'll take you

home. Your people must be getting anxious."

"You think it too little?" the stranger said sharply, and the tone was

not that of a man with wandering wits.

Kinloch shook his head.

"No; too much, unless something shady lies behind it."

"Nothing lies behind it that need concern you. I offer you so much

because, to be quite frank, I admit that if I had searched all London

I might not have found a man better suited for my purpose. Come; time

presses. Is it a bargain?"

But his ill-concealed eagerness roused a new suspicion.

"You must be more explicit," he said, wondering to find himself so

curiously unwilling to go with the man.

An impatient exclamation came. A masterful, domineering man Kinloch

now judged him to be, certainly no lunatic in the ordinary sense. It

was evident that he could barely restrain his temper while the young

man dallied with his proposal. With quite apparent effort he now spoke

calmly:

"An important interview lies before me at my own house. A man is coming

to confer with me, and it is essential that a third party should be

present. Not to see, still less to overhear what is said, but simply to

make it evident to my visitor that I am not alone. Now I am the last

man in England to be caught in a corner, as you would know if I were to

reveal my name. So, needless to say, the witness had been arranged for;

but he has failed me. This cursed fog," he burst out uncontrollably,

breathing heavily. "Chance has got lost in it, no doubt."

"Chance?" Kinloch repeated, bewildered.

"Did I say Chance? Well," he laughed, "chance has put five pounds at

your disposal, my needy friend. You agree?"

"Sir," was the reply, "I am one who has had to part with most of his

scruples, and to earn five pounds at this moment I would do much."

From the other came a grunt of coarse satisfaction.

"So I judged," he remarked. "A gentleman on his uppers! Just the man

for my money; I cannot understand why you hesitated."

But the coarse joviality of his new tones had an effect opposite to

that he probably intended.

"I said most of my scruples. Unfortunately I have still one or two

left."

"Set your mind at rest, then. Had you retained as many as your

maiden aunt, you might still come with me. You are not engaged for

housebreaking or deeds of violence. You will expose yourself to no

danger of arrest, for I am asking you to my own house solely for my own

business. Is that enough assurance?"

"Quite," Kinloch agreed with great relief. "So long as the police are

not in it, five pounds will do."

And, as the stranger slipping an arm through Kinloch's began to lead

him eagerly down the road, the younger man puzzled over the way

in which the other had used the word "chance." In his own mind no

doubt existed that, despite his clumsy attempt to use the word in

another sense, Chance was the surname of the man whose job he was now

undertaking. The name had slipped out in the stress of the other's

anxiety and excitement. Chance: it was a name too uncommon to be

readily forgotten.

But, however that might be, the man in the fur coat meant to let

nothing else slip out; for, as if annoyed with himself, he remained

silent till they reached his house. Having opened a door with a

latch-key--a door which was certainly not the main entrance to a house

of the size this proved to be--he led the way through a corridor into

his study. The room was very long, and rather narrow. A big, crackling

fire diffused a warm glow as they passed it to reach the niche at the

far end which it appeared had been prepared for Mr. Chance to occupy.

This niche seemed like a semi-circular bow window opening possibly on

to a lawn, and into this apse he was placed after stumbling against the

screen drawn across its entrance to prevent Mr. Chance from seeing--or

being seen. Only when he had Kinloch seated at a table behind the

screen did he speak again.

"Your part in this comedy is not a speaking one," he said. "All you

have to do is to prove your presence when I give you the signal. Then

you may make a rustling noise as if busy with papers. But on no account

are you to speak or show yourself. And remember this"--his stumpy

forefinger tapped Kinloch's ribs--"the signal may _not_ be given at

all."

"What is the signal to be?"

"Three taps with the poker," he replied promptly. "We'll rehearse it

now."

It was at once evident that all had been carefully arranged--even to

keeping control of the poker, Kinloch said to himself, while feeling

about on the table for the paper with which he was to operate. When his

host returned after making three audible taps and the alert young man

remarked that he appeared to have forgotten the paper, the man threw

something on the other's hands.

"There, try that; it will sound like music in your ears."

Kinloch tried it, and it made an admirable sound, the crackling sound

that a new crisp Bank of England fiver always makes. Still, as Kinloch

remarked, it wouldn't be so audible at a distance, and in the midst of

talk might be unheard.

"Then you are to cough. Yes, as the night is raw you may cough. Indeed,

it may be well to do so from time to time--of course after I have given

the signal--as a reminder to my caller of your presence."

He left his guest alone after that. What he did, or where he went,

Kinloch did not know. And at the moment he did not care. For at once

he fell to spinning glorious dreams as to the spending of the fiver.

He held it between his fingers, making it talk to him with its cheery,

crackling whispers. Untold wealth that crinkly note seemed to him

then. To the passage of time he gave no heed. But to judge by the

number of things he decided to do with the money it was certainly an

under-estimate on his host's part to say that the business would only

take half an hour.

Then with a start he heard the murmur of voices at the far end of

the room. A door shut. Kinloch came out of his dreaming and sat up

attentive. Chairs were moved about, as if for more comfort before

settling down to business. But when he heard the clink of glasses that

spoke of friendly intercourse, it struck him that his host had been

unduly timorous in engaging anyone for protection.

Very little of the talk came to Kinloch's ears for some time. Both

men were speaking in an even murmurous undertone which might have

been chosen either to be persuasive or to prevent him from hearing.

Not that he had any other thought than to be alert for the signal and

honourably earn the reward he had already received. He was happy in a

quiet way, feeling assured that his luck had turned, that his dark hour

had passed, and he sat behind the screen with his hand motionless on

the fiver which he dare not play with any more for fear of prematurely

indicating his presence. He was hard put to it in his damp clothes to

restrain from the coughing which was not yet required.

Then quite abruptly, heat and excitement broke out between the

two men. One voice rose in pitch as if to warn Kinloch the crisis

approached.

"So you think you have me cornered!"

In a flash Kinloch thought he understood--a blackmailing visitor.

"That depends entirely on yourself."

"How?"

"Tut, tut. For a man of the world like you, that is surely a needless

question to put."

"Ah, needless, is it? Yes, I suppose so--to put to a devil like you."

"No devil at all," said the other, "neither devil nor angel, but just

a plain business man ready for a deal. Do not pretend that anything in

this takes you by surprise."

"It does not. I am prepared for it."

There was something in the way the man snapped out these words that

Kinloch at least found ominous. A quiet laugh came.

"In that case we had better get down to business at once."

The last three words were accompanied by three distinct taps as if to

emphasize the statement, so anyhow Kinloch took them, for he promptly

made the prearranged reply.

"_What was that?_"

To leave the man in no doubt he followed up his signal by a cough, and

a very genuine cough it was.

"We are not alone," he heard his employer say in a bantering tone. "I,

too, prepared for our meeting here to-night."

Again there was a pause. The stranger seemed to be readjusting himself

to the new situation created by the revelation of Kinloch's presence.

He did not take long.

"By God, so that is your game, is it? This time you've mistaken your

man!"

There came a sudden quick scramble of feet: a crash of glass followed

as a table overturned with a dull thud.

"Keep off, keep off!"

The sudden, wild scream sent Kinloch's nerves leaping. He rose amid

the struggle and the thud of chairs overturning on the thick carpet.

He knew the man who had hired him was stumbling towards him, calling

for help. But almost before he could move there came a sound he

recognized--a sound more horrible to the ear than the startling cry of

pain or terror--a tired kind of sigh followed by the noise of a heavy

body collapsing in a heap on the floor. Starting up in the dark Kinloch

blundered into the screen, plunged forward in an effort to retain his

balance, tripped over a chair and shot headlong to the floor. Groping

about quickly with both hands to recover his stick as a weapon, his

hands went slithering into something warm and wet.

"Ah, the rat leaves his hole!" a voice cried viciously.

He knew the man was coming for him. He came slowly, though, walking as

if he himself had been hurt, or was impeded by the scattered furniture.

Kinloch worked rapidly along the wall with some dim idea of finding a

window or a door. He heard the man close behind, but by an instinctive

swerve he evaded the clutching hands and went on. The room was silent

now, so silent that in the darkness Kinloch could hear the man's quick

breathing, and the smothered oath that followed his own momentary

escape. Yes, the man appeared to have been hurt himself in the

struggle, for his soft padding steps sounded uneven.

Then abruptly the stillness was rent by a piercing cry:

"Don't. Oh, don't!"

It was a woman's voice, and at the shrill and imploring cry, which

revealed to Kinloch the unguessed presence of a woman, he stopped dead.

In a moment the man was on him. One hand clutching his hair, pulled the

head backward. The strength of madness was in that man.

"_Safe bind, safe find_," he shouted fiercely, as if it were some sort

of slogan.

In the horror of that paralyzing moment Kinloch's nerve snapped, and he

began to plead, weakly re-echoing the woman's entreaty.

"Don't, oh, don't! Look at me, I--"

But something struck him heavily. A brilliant light flashed through his

brain, and he went in a heap to the floor.

CHAPTER II

Consciousness came back to Kinloch at no definite moment. It was

like rising slowly to the surface through deep waters. What he first

recalled was a sound, a low murmuring that somehow had determination

in it, and never ceased. For a time he thought the sound was in his

head, and with that the remembrance returned that some one had just

knocked him on the head. He felt horribly sick and shaken, and the

instinctive attempt he made to move showed him he was lying full length

on his back, helpless. So he lay still, nerving himself at first for

the second blow he expected to fall, and was unable to avert. Then as

the blow did not come at once he remained motionless in the hope of

escaping another by pretending it was needless.

For a time he lay like that, still as death, but thinking brokenly

about the nasty, violent business into which he had walked. He knew

the man meant murder, knew that the flutter of an eyelid now would be

enough to make him finish the job. So, shamming death, he listened

hard, seeking to catch a hint of the other's movements in the room.

It was very difficult to hear anything because of that dull, continuous

drumming in his head. He tried to ignore it, to listen, as it were,

through the throbbing sound. But nothing else could he hear. In a dazed

way he then began to be surprised that so soon he should feel so cold

and stiff. It was exactly like what he had experienced when he lay for

hours against a shattered wall at La Boiselle with his first wound.

But there was a difference. Then he had felt no resentment towards the

hand that had struck him down. Then it had been a fight for life on

equal terms. This time he had been helpless, defenceless in the hands

of a man who had shown no mercy. And as he remembered how his broken

spirit had forced from his lips the cry for mercy his shame gave birth

to a hatred of the man, all the more intense and enduring because he

must lie there incapable of fight. To have to die like a dog cowering

on the floor in a corner. Was that to be his end? How much better to

have died at La Boiselle then than in this sordid way, in some quarrel

between two blackguards whose names he did not even know! He felt so

sick and cold and stiff. Then with a start the question burst on him:

had he been lying where he now found himself for a long time--a longer

time, at all events, than the man was likely to stand over him to see

if he were dead? A gleam of hope came. Remembering he had been struck

down close to the wall on his right along which he had been feeling his

way, he cautiously stretched out a hand with the notion of verifying

that wall.

But it was not a wall he felt: it was something that recoiled from his

touch with a smothered exclamation. The cry was instantly followed by

a metallic click exactly like the sound made in releasing the safety

catch in an automatic pistol.

"Oh, damn!" he cried, thinking that he had after all betrayed himself.

A hand was laid on him gently but firmly.

"No need to be afraid. You are safe now."

The voice was a woman's, and, remembering, he did not doubt it was she

who had tried to stop the man's murderous attack.

"Has he gone?" he asked in a whisper.

Again there came that ominous, metallic click.

"You have a pistol," he said. Lifting his hand, he found his head and

half his face swathed in bandages.

"No, no, that was the switch for the light under the dash you heard. I

turned it on to see if you were all right. Try to sleep again. I must

watch the road."

But he did not go to sleep. He lay awhile trying to piece together what

she could mean, wondering most as to why she must watch the road. The

noise in his head made thinking very difficult. It was like the word

"thud" repeated unendingly, in a low, murmuring tone, yet infinitely

more rapidly than mortal lips could articulate the word.

All at once he understood. That dull pain was indeed inside his head,

but the drumming sound was an external sound. It was the beat of a

motor engine. Instantly the woman's words about the light under the

dash, and about having to watch the road became intelligible. She was

carrying him off. She was taking him out of danger. They were out and

away on the open road!

How that perception changed his feelings about that drumming engine!

So long as he thought the noise was in his own head, it wearied him.

Now it seemed unutterably friendly, and he lay prone, rejoicing

in the sound, feeling from the engine's eager strokes that it was

whole-heartedly on his side. He gave little or no thought to the woman,

or where she was taking him; he did not then even wonder who she

could be. His whole thought went to the purring engine that whispered

continuous comfort to his ear. To him that engine was, even more than

the silent woman, a living thing, making heroic efforts to carry him

into safety. Lying prone he thrilled to think he was safe so that,

sooner or later, he would get even with the man who had struck him

down....

The next thing Kinloch remembered was the sound of a great bell,

sonorous and so exalted that it might be the bell on some lofty

cathedral tower. It struck six times, with a magnificent slow dignity

between each stroke, and he began to wonder in a half dazed fashion

what little town owned so great a clock. That it was a little town he

knew because presently he felt from the ceasing of all echoes that the

car had left the narrow streets and was speeding upwards on a straight,

smooth road.

Afterwards, however, he was to be glad at having heard that bell, glad

that its tone stuck in the memory. But just then such thought as he was

capable of filled him with shame. The woman had heard him plead for his

life, bleating like a sheep, he put it to himself. The remembrance made

him shiver with mortification. Her pity flayed him like a whip, for he

fancied there was in it a tinge of contempt. Later he heard the click

of that switch again.

"You are putting on the light," he cried, almost involuntarily; for he

did not wish to be seen by her at that moment.

"No, turning out the head-lights. It will soon be day."

They must then have been running along a wood-lined road, for now he

could hear the twitter of birds, that preliminary twittering and trial

of their notes they all seem to make in the early dawn. He lay awhile

listening. The air was cold but dry. Presently the chatter of the birds

faded and died out behind.

Almost at once the woman spoke:

"Why do you come to be associated with evil men? Your face is not--not

altogether an evil face."

After his kindly thoughts of the woman and the car the question

surprised and wounded him.

"Is it light enough to see that?" he asked in sarcasm.

She hesitated a moment as if not quite understanding.

"If you will sit up and look you will see the daybreak," she said, "and

the light creeping through the trees, and--and"--a catch came in her

words--"and the birds." The horn sounded for something on the road.

"But," she added in a changed voice, "I suppose a person like you cares

for none of these things."

"No--not--not now," Kinloch said.

"Used you to? I would like to think you not a bad man at heart."

There was an almost eager note in her voice that irritated him again.

"Look here," he said shortly, "don't you start worrying yourself about

my heart. My heart is no better than my face."

Now, at all events, he began to wonder who this woman could be.

Evidently she had mistaken his previous hesitation, and imagined her

description of the morning had touched his better nature. She was so

sure of his badness too! No doubt, he admitted to himself, he must

look, that morning, with his bandaged head, torn clothes, frowzy,

unshaved and unwashed as he was, an offence to the pure dawn. He could

imagine the contrast present itself to her. But, after all, he was no

criminal. His mild feeling of irritation deepened.

No more was said then. But she had started him off thinking things out,

and presently, when the car turned a corner, and was clearly taking a

side road at a reduced pace, it occurred to him that he had a right to

put a few questions on his own account.

"Where are you taking me?" he demanded.

"Not much farther; I am going to drop you on the road."

"Drop me by the road! What for?"

"To get rid of you--a better fate than you deserve," she said.

On that he awakened to realities.

"Is that man dead?" he asked in a whisper.

"Oh, yes. There are worse things than death, you know."

Kinloch shuddered violently. He thought she was referring to his own

pitiful pleading for mercy, and tried to be cynical.

"Are there? I wonder if--if _he_ thinks so?" He paused, breathing

heavily. "This is a hanging business, then."

"Well, you will be out of it--unless the police take you," she said.

"I see, it is for the murderer's safety, all this. You thought I saw

the man who did the deed, and on his account it was judged better that

I should not fall into the hands of the police. An awkward witness I

might have been against that man! So you propose to drop me by the

roadside."

She heard him out in silence. Then after a pause she coolly said:

"Yes, you so far profit by my interest in his safety."

It was her calm assumption of his badness that he found exasperating.

She took his evil character for granted, and seemed to regard it as an

accident that he himself had not committed the murder. He struggled to

a sitting posture, cold with anger.

"Your interest in the murderer must be very deep," he retorted. "How

is it you come to be associated with such an evil man--you who seem to

have such high standards of morality, and care so much for the clean

sunrise and the guileless birds?"

That touched her up. He heard her sharp indrawn breath. Presently, with

the car slowing down to a creep, she said:

"After all, I've had some trouble to save you from arrest, and may

have saved your life. Why shouldn't I be glad to know that life not so

worthless as it looks?"

"Drop me here," Kinloch said shortly. "Your preaching makes me sick."

Promptly the brakes were applied.

While he was fumbling with the catch of the door she bent forward and

undid it herself, flinging the door wide open. Kinloch stumbled on to

the road.

"By Heaven, you are a cool creature," he remarked. "How old are you?"

"Not so old as I look this morning."

Standing there on the road he laughed derisively, and then got his

parting-shot ready. For he had a parting-shot, and a nasty one, he

considered it.

"If you only knew it, you might have gone to bed, and left your car in

the garage: there was no need to carry me so far."

"Oh, Jane doesn't mind," she said.

"Jane?" he repeated, mystified.

"That is what I call my little car. Plain Jane, for she has no frills."

The flippant tone of the remark, and the fact that it delayed the

retort with which he meant to crush her, irritated him again.

"And you are plain too?" he said.

There was no response to this impertinence, except that the engine

began to throb more quickly, as if in indignation. Then the brake was

taken off with a sharp clatter of metal over the stops.

"If you will kindly remove your hand from the door--" she said icily.

But he held on, grimly nodding up at her, taking the opening at last

given him.

"I'd like you to know this first," he said. "I never saw the man who

was murdered nor the man who--who did the deed, so I could never have

been a damaging witness against him."

"That is incredible," she said coolly. "Impossible unless you were

quite blind."

"Quite impossible," he agreed, "unless I were quite blind."

It took her a moment or two before she understood. Then the engine

ceased racing as if her foot had slipped from the accelerator.

He knew she was staring hard at him now.

"Blind," she whispered. "Oh--it--it--can't be--it can't be! I'd need to

be blind myself not to have seen that."

The man laughed harshly.

"Sharper sight than yours missed seeing that last night, in that fog,

which makes you all grope about like the blind," he said.

But she did not seem to be listening.

"Oh, dear God, what am I to do now? What am I to do?" she said, her own

eyes riveted on the careworn face and the unseeing eyes of the man on

the road.

Kinloch was taken aback by the blank horror in her voice. What

difference could this make to the plans she had formed for his

disposal? She ought to feel safer. He recalled the man in the fur

coat. That man had been glad to discover he was blind. It had made him

laugh aloud with relief. So ought she to be glad--at least after, as

was natural, a little irritation over her needless journey. Why didn't

she say something? Why didn't she clear out? The news of his blindness

should be good news to her and to--Then his ear caught an unexpected

sound; it was like some one quietly weeping.

CHAPTER III

The breakdown was at once so utter and so unexpected that it amazed

Kinloch. He could not understand it. It was the last thing he expected

from her. Up to this point she had shown such cool, masterful

self-assurance, and, as he judged, such calculating selfishness, that

he had been sure she was either a tough, middle-aged, hard-bitten woman

of the world, or one of those modern young women who are without the

least grain of tenderness, even for themselves. Hard she might be, but

evidently she had her breaking point. As the man stood silent, feeling

helpless in the face of this distress, the tinkle of a bicycle bell

recalled him to action.

"Some one coming," he said quickly. "Pull yourself together."

Then going down on his knees beside a wheel, with his back to the road,

he affected to be looking at some damage to the tyre; for it were well,

he thought, if she could not control herself, to make it appear as if

she had some cause for distress. While so engaged he heard the soft

whir of wheels flitting past on the gritty lane. Only when he heard the

bell again as the cyclist dropped down to the main road did he stand up.

"He stared hard at you," she whispered over the side.

"Who was it?"

"A policeman, a country policeman, on his round." It startled the man

queerly to find himself so soon after the incidents of the previous

night in contact with the police. But the ruse he had adopted to

divert attention from himself to what he was doing pleased him.

"I pretended you had a puncture."

"Oh, dear," she cried, "no wonder he turned round to look at you.

Didn't you notice the tyres are solid?"

His hand went out to be assured she spoke the truth. He had never heard

of a solid tyred car till that moment.

"We had better push on," she said, throwing open the door. "This is a

bad beginning."

"They can't possibly have heard yet," he argued.

"No, but when the news comes out that policeman will remember us."

Her voice was so full of foreboding that Kinloch was surprised.

"Oh," he said, with an attempt at reassuring her, "the thing may make a

noise in Ealing, but after all--"

A strange sound cut him short. He could hardly believe his ears. She

was laughing. Not that it had any mirth in it. He noted that. And it

ended as abruptly as it began.

"What did you laugh at?" he asked sharply. "Seems to me you've not much

to laugh at."

"No. But that wasn't laughing."

He became suspicious.

"It really happened at Ealing, didn't it?"

"Oh, yes."

"Well?"

"If--if--it would make a noise only in Ealing," she said with a sigh,

as if to herself.

But he overheard.

"You go on"--he spoke almost gently--"I dare say you're not a bad

sort, and I'm too dangerous for you to have on your hands."

"No. I can't leave you here."

There was a world of quiet decision in that utterance. But the man

thought she spoke from mere impulsive sympathy, and had not calculated

the dangers.

"My dear lady, look at me, and then look at yourself. What sort of a

pair do we make--to sit together in a car? The difference must be a

difference that would excite notice wherever we went."

"Then we must in some way reduce the difference, that is all. Leave you

here to be caught by the police I dare not."

Kinloch stood awhile, his head still throbbing with pain, so that

clear thought was impossible, trying to envisage the situation. As he

hesitated a cry came from her.

"O God, there is the policeman coming back. I thought he would. Oh, be

quick," she pleaded in an agony of dread.

Kinloch got somehow into the car, and she raced it up and shot away.

For about half an hour they ran on without further speech. He was

afraid some word of his might unnerve her again. But from the turns and

twists he knew they were among lanes with the main road far behind.

After that she began, as it were, to breathe more freely. He sat

wondering how it would all end, and was rather bewildered by the quick

march of events.

"Where are you taking me now?" he asked at length.

There was no tremor in the voice that now replied:

"Where I had meant to go myself for a time--a queer lonely village on

the top of this ridge. It's shut in with gates at either end, and has

a village green--well, I suppose it's more of a common than a village

green, for it's a mile long and has clumps of trees on it, and furze."

She appeared in fact to be talking to put him at his ease.

"And when we get there--what then?"

"There's a house--some one I know has a little bungalow which he uses

only in summer. An old woman, a neighbour, has the key. It will be all

right; she knows me. You can stay there for a few days to get well and

to see what has happened--whether anything has been discovered. Not one

soul need know you are there."

"What is this place called?" he asked.

She hesitated over her answer.

"Ah, you don't want me to know?"

She did not reply, so he added: "Never mind, I know it isn't many miles

from Chichester."

She seemed to give a start of surprise at his shot, and after a moment

said:

"Why do you think so?"

"From the bell striking six, and the time we took to reach the small

town in which there was such a bell. Besides that, the way we've been

going up and down among hills would tell me these hills can only be the

Sussex downs."

After a moment she said:

"If you are wise you won't try to find out where you are."

The reply let him see exactly where he stood with her. Evidently he

was to be told as little as possible. He nodded his understanding of

that fact to himself. So, in spite of her earlier breakdown and her

tears, she was now on her guard, with all her wits about her, and knew

how to take full advantage of his want of sight.

Later, when they approached the village, she left him in a thicket a

little way off the lane, and went on to interview the old woman who had

charge of the house. It needed considerable trouble to fix things up,

evidently, for she was away about two hours. When she came back she

brought some food for him. The old woman was then getting the place

ready. She had shown no surprise over the unexpected arrival. The

doings of the town people--foreigners as they were called--were always

odd, even when they were not altogether mad. Much more, while he ate,

she told Kinloch, sitting beside him on the rug. Although she seemed to

be talking for talking's sake, he noted that she did so warily all the

same, for nothing to give him a clue as to where he was slipped out.

"What is this village called?" he asked, as if forgetting for the

moment her previous reluctance to tell him.

"I call it Minnis," she said.

And he gathered from her tone that it was so called by no one else.

Another thing he noted: for all her volubility there were occasionally

sudden, oddly abrupt silences. He could feel she was thinking hard.

He thought she was troubled, nervous, strained. And in those uneasy

silences from among the wood below there came the clear strokes of a

woodman's axe.

It was, of course, impossible for him to enter the bungalow before

darkness came. He must stay where he was till nightfall. So after

she had slipped away again he had nothing to do to keep him from

thinking. His thoughts went straight back to that room in Ealing. What

had that man in the fur coat been up to to get himself blackmailed?

Beaumont--it was unlikely that was his real name--the begging-letter

writer in Rowton Street, had told him tales of that fashionable crime.

Not that blackmail was Beaumont's own game; he hadn't got the nerve

for it, he had admitted. Nothing paid better; but, unfortunately, it

was dangerous, he said. Then another thing Beaumont said came back

to Kinloch--that in almost all cases of blackmail there was sure to

be a woman somewhere. A lady of high position, he had said, smacking

his lips, whose reputation afforded the leverage necessary to extract

substantial amounts. It was only in such cases, he asserted, that

sufficient pressure could be applied. And as Kinloch filled a second

pipe his mind turned to the woman in this case. Was this the woman?

Something of what was afoot between the two men she must have known.

But she came into the room just too late. That fog again, he thought.

The man must have envisaged murder from the start, for he had carried

a knife, and no man carries a knife capable of inflicting death at one

stroke--Kinloch had heard the heavy sigh that follows the use of steel

too often not to draw that inference--except with murder in his mind.

Besides, his hand had gone into that pool of warm fluid in about a

minute after the blow.

At this last remembrance he sat up in sudden apprehension, the match

burning itself out over the unlit pipe. Had he left any traces of his

presence there? The man who came prepared to do murder, thoughtfully

choosing a noiseless knife rather than a revolver, _he_ was unlikely to

scatter proofs of his own presence, or of his identity, around. But he

himself could have had no such forethought; and it gave him a sudden

qualm to remember he had left his stick in that fateful room.

No, decidedly, it would be safer to lie low for a time. Remote as the

place was, newspapers would no doubt penetrate even there, and with

safety he could hear what they contained from her. Meanwhile no one had

seen them come there, and no one need see him enter the bungalow. So

she had said. He was rather content to take the course she proposed,

for he did want to know more about the case, and about this girl's part

in it. His first dislike of her had passed away. She was not quite

what he had first thought; and, anyway, he determined to see the thing

through.

It was very cold lying among the damp trees on the northern slope of

that ridge; but he had lain in worse places.

And it consoled him to remember that if the January day is raw it is

also short.

CHAPTER IV

He started up at the sound of a snapping twig, aware that he had been

nodding with fatigue and sleep. The next instant a hand was laid on his

shoulder.

"Come," she murmured, "it's safe now."

"Is it dark?" he asked with surprise.

"Quite--a black night."

Walking was difficult at first, for he was stiff and numb with inaction

and cold, and as if from the long exposure the wound in his head began

to ache and throb worse than ever. But taking his arm she guided him

through the undergrowth, and out on to the road.

Close as she was to him he could hear her draw a sharp breath now and

then, though whether from some fancied alarm or painful memory he could

not say.

After a time they passed through a heavy gate across the road.

"Now," she breathed, "quick as we can go; we are on the open common

beside the first house."

For a village, that Minnis was a queer place. Once inside the gate his

feet were on a road as smooth and even as is the drive to some great

house. And when they left the road for the turf, which they did very

soon, he found the turf as springy and level as any lawn. But there

was gorse on it, and bracken too, in patches, for once catching sight

of some object looming up a short way ahead she made him lie down in a

clump of bracken while she herself went forward to reconnoitre.

Kinloch could tell when they were nearing the house from the way in

which her hand tightened on his arm, and her breathing quickened. From

her movements, so close was she to him, he knew her to be glancing this

way and that, peering into the darkness. All around them the night was

as still as the grave, and on that turf feet made no sound. What with

all this dread of being seen, and the convulsive grip on his arm, an

uneasy feeling came to him, a vague sense of disquiet as to what he

might encounter in that house. But before this feeling had time to grow

very strong he found himself at the door.

The sharp, deep sigh of relief too, with which she shut and bolted that

door, gave him the measure of her previous anxiety. He knew terror

had gripped her lest they should be seen. She must have sunk down

into some chair as soon as they stumbled into the room. Kinloch, left

to himself, after standing at a loss for a little, groped about to

discover another chair. There seemed to be very few in the room, but

coming on one he drew it towards the glow of warmth that told him where

a good fire was burning. For the slow, cautious crawl they had made

from his hiding-place among the trees had done little to restore his

circulation, cold and numb as he was with so many hours of inaction and

exposure.

But the first thought she showed afterwards was one to take note of.

For her first act as soon as she recovered breath was to attend to his

damaged head. She undid the bandages, and having deftly snipped the

hair from around the wound, and washed it carefully, she readjusted the

bandages in a way that revealed experience. From this he concluded

that his mystery woman had probably done nursing at a war hospital.

Then from her movements he knew she had set about preparing a meal.

After a little, as he sat holding out both hands to the blaze, she came

over beside him to kneel before the fire.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Like a piece of frozen mutton."

By the simile he meant to convey no more than that he felt very cold

indeed; but she appeared to imagine he had laid emphasis on the last

word.

"You cannot blame yourself for what has happened," she said. He noticed

now that her voice seemed almost youthful, clear in tone, yet low in

pitch. But blame himself! He was far from doing that! He wished the

man who knocked him out had been there. He'd have done more than blame

_him_. He had a score to settle with him--one day sooner or later. But

he kept quiet about that intention then. He said:

"Well, as to that, I've been in the control of others in this affair

all along--at their disposal, I mean, driven like a sheep--an ignoble

part."

She began to stir up the fire. From the abstracted, mechanical way in

which she used the poker, he gathered she was deep in thought. In the

end she left him without saying more.

Kinloch listened hard to see if he could detect the presence of any one

else in that house. As the numbness melted out of him before the log

fire, and his faculties began to thaw, the first human quality that

seemed to come back was a quickly growing curiosity about that woman.

That she was deeply involved in the affair was plain enough; that she

had carried him off to save the other man he felt certain. Yet it was

not upon such facts that his thoughts now mainly turned, not even on

what the graver issues of the tragedy might be, but merely on who she

was, and what she was like. And here, once for all, certain facts set

forth afterwards by Dr. Dunn, need to be understood by all who possess

their eyesight. They are these: the mind of a blind person tends to be

more active and alert than that of a sighted person. He lives in his

mind more exclusively, for he is thrown in upon himself in a variety

of ways, and is almost certain to make up for lost physical activity

by an increased mental life. In consequence, and as if in compensation

for the lost sight, certain other senses become more acute--touch

and hearing immensely more, and his memory and imagination are more

developed. The point in asking that these facts should be remembered

lies in this: many people regard a blind man as a more or less helpless

creature. He is so only in regard to one of his five senses; in the

other four he is not unlikely to be more efficient than the person who

pities him.

Thus, for the answers to the questions as to who this woman was and

what she was like, it might be thought that Kinloch was helpless except

in so far as she chose to enlighten him. But that was not his view;

and he made up his mind, sitting there that night, to get an answer to

them, and to others. For he did not feel under any weight of obligation

to her. It was clear enough that, though she had carried him away from

what might have proved more than an awkward situation, she had done so

only because his story of what had happened might, if it were believed,

make things much more awkward for the other man, and perhaps herself

also.

The woman too, he thought, must have begun to do a lot of thinking

just then. Whether it was that the house in Minnis had associations

connected with happier days, or whether she had little chance and

less liking for thought up to the time they reached the shelter of

the house, Kinloch didn't know; but she had precious little to say to

him that night. Still, she must have had her eyes on him, for after

the meal, when he returned to the fire, she at once perceived the

drowsiness that stole over him, and packed him off to his room. It

would be time enough, she said, to talk plans over in the morning.

The next morning, however, Kinloch was made aware that even in that

lonely house their situation was not without its dangers. Very early he

was awakened by a peremptory tapping at his door, followed by a summons

to breakfast. The decision in the knocking caught his attention: it was

that of one who had taken command. He was unwilling to stir at once,

wishing to luxuriate awhile in such a smooth, warm bed as he had not

lain in for ages. And when he sat up and felt his stubby chin it did

not add alacrity to his movements. But he scrambled out, feeling almost

glad he could not himself see what he looked like.

Over breakfast the delicacy of the situation was made known to him.

The old woman, Mrs. Spedding, was coming to do the housework, and he

would have to be concealed for the two hours she would be moving about

the house. But this seemed easy. He had only to stay in his room, a

room which, since it was supposed to be unoccupied, the old dame would

have no occasion to enter. As it chanced, they were almost caught

straight away; for he had not finished eating before the old woman was

at the door. In her eagerness to please, she had come before the time

appointed. Kinloch was breathlessly smuggled into a sort of cloak-room

cupboard in a corner of the little lounge hall in which they were

breakfasting. But she got the door shut just as the old woman opened

the other. He heard all that passed.

"Mornin', ma'am. Thought I'd best be a bit early this first morning in

case anything 'ad 'appened."

"That was good of you, Mrs. Spedding. Did you think I'd burn the bacon

or spill the milk?"

Mrs. Spedding chuckled.

"No, miss, not 'zackly, though I might 'ave, you not being used a-doin'

for yourself. What was in me mind was that you might be scared outen

your wits your first night alone, what with all them there cat burglars

we reads on nowadays."

When the girl laughed, or rather tried to, Kinloch knew she was

standing with her back close against the cupboard door, more afraid of

Mrs. Spedding than Mrs. Spedding would have believed. Afraid, too, she

must have been of what the old woman might let out in his hearing.

"Well, you see I'm not a bit scared."

From her shaky tone Kinloch would have said she was in mortal terror;

but the old woman cackled wheezily.

"No, miss--ma'am, I mean--but all the same if you'll 'scuse me, you've

lost your roses. Quite pale you be. Last night I was putting it down to

your travels, but now I sees 'tain't."

The voice stopped abruptly and then there came rather tremulously the

question:

"What is it, Mrs. Spedding?"

"I thought you was alone here."

What the old woman had seen Kinloch could not guess, but he felt as if

their game was up already.

"What makes you think I'm not?" came faintly from the other side of the

door.

"The table's a-laid for two, and two's been using the things!"

Then in the horrible pause that followed the old woman laughed.

"Ah, I see how 'tis--seein' them two cups give me quite a turn; but

that on t'other side be the one you used last night, I reckon."

"I was so tired last night, Mrs. Spedding."

There came a quick clatter as the old dame began to collect the dishes.

Kinloch waited for another exclamation. Fortunately, however, her

eagerness to gossip kept her from discovering what he expected her to

discover, what his own touch would have instantly told him--that _both_

the cups were warm.

"Ah, reckon the air of the Downs will put ee to rights. You used to

thrive on it when ee was a little un." She sighed reminiscently. "Folks

ain't forgotten you 'ere, Miss Stella. And that reminds me, we all saw

your fortygraft in the papers the time you was wedded. Tolputt--you

remember Mr. Tolputt at the post office--ee twisted it round a pot o'

molasses for Mrs. Prebble, and never noticed it were you. But there,

men don't never notice nothin', except it hits them somewheres. But

Mrs. Prebble saw who 'twere--trust her!--and she cut the fortygraft

out, and showed it all round. It was that picture of you stepping out

o' church under a harchway of swords, and you holding a nosegay. 'Appy

you looked! I'd have knowed your smile anywheres. Yes, I reckon it were

that smile first showed us who 'twas."

The door behind which Kinloch stood creaked as if some one had leant

heavily against it, and after the cheerful Mrs. Spedding had stumped

off with her loaded tray he heard in the empty room something between a

sigh and a sob. And this at least was more than he wanted to hear.

Mrs. Spedding came bustling back in a moment, however, brushing the

cloth as she resumed her talk.

"Jane Prebble, she put the fortygraft in her Prayer Book next Sunday

to show the folks coming outer church. It was wonderful to see how it

waked them all up. Crowdin' round her they all came. Farmer Noakes

first 'ad it in his hand, and what with all the rest a-craning of

their necks over his shoulders to see what 'twas, while he was getting

out his glasses--well, if he didn't have to set down on the late Mrs.

Uden's tomb to keep 'em off his back. But all the same some on them

cried out your name afore ee got the glasses to his nose. 'So 'tis,'

ee says, holding it out and a-cockin' his head, 'so 'tis. Townified

of course, but Miss Stella it be.' Then ee hold it outen to show 'em.

'Folks,' ee says, 'who'd a-thought of that grand lady once a-riding my

old Buller bare back, and a-stroddle, as bold as brass?' Old Jacob

Wytch caught up the talk then. 'A taking young 'ussy she always were.

Whoi, masters, afore I knowed who she was didn't I catch her in the

orchard among my cherries one marnin', and dang me if I didn't find

myself afore I knew a-showing 'er where t' best ones was.' Young Bob

Ames, ee cut in then: ''Twasn't perticklar like you, Jacob Wytch, that

wasn't,' he says. But Mr. Noakes nodded as he tooken off his glasses.

'No,' he says, 'it wasn't like Wytch to act so, but it were main like

she to get un.' And all the folks laughed _so_ hearty at Jacob. 'So

t' little maid's married?' Mr. Noakes says. Then young Bob, he says,

'Let's look at the fellow she's a-wed to,' taking over the picture. But

Jane Prebble snatched it away, proper angry, and Jacob Wytch cuffed

young Bob's ear. 'Be that a way to speak of the high nobility? Fellow

indeed,' he says."

Mrs. Spedding might apparently have rattled on, but a sudden pause

almost coincided with a sort of moan that came from the other side of

the door.

"Bain't you feeling well, ma'am--m'lady I mean?"

From her tone Mrs. Spedding was aghast.

"Oh yes--quite--well. Just a little--faint after--after yesterday. A

glass of water, please."

"There, drat me if I haven't wearied you out with my gabble!"

The old woman hobbled off to the kitchen. In a moment the other, as

if recovered from her faintness, had Kinloch out of his cupboard and

along the passage, pushing him into his own room. The rapidity of the

change left him breathless. For the clever fashion in which he had

been manœuvred out of earshot by a woman who had seemed to be on the

point of collapse gave him food for thought. His sympathy, he now felt,

had been wasted. He was almost certain that that sudden faintness,

with the demand for water, if real at all, was due less to the dread

of detection by Mrs. Spedding than to the fact that the old woman was

on the verge of saying more than the lady would wish him to hear.

Of course she did not trust him. Her refusal to tell him so much as

the name of the village proved that, and now he felt sore over that

distrust--and the sympathy he had wasted. In consequence, at lunch,

after the old woman left, he said:

"So your name is Stella?"

"Yes."

"Stella means a star."

"Yes."

"I've been wondering how to address you; it's awkward to be with a

person who is--well, anonymous as well as invisible."

"You may call me Stella."

"But I don't want to. A star means nothing to a blind man--doesn't

exist for him."

She said nothing at all to this.

"She called you 'm'lady' once," he reminded her. "That might be better."

"That means nothing either--just a poor old woman's courtesy."

"So as I don't know your surname I shall have to call you Stella?"

"Circumstances give you that privilege," she said coldly.

"Well, it does seem a little over intimate after one day's

acquaintance."

He waited in vain for any response.

"So I am going to be told nothing?" he said at length.

"The less you know the better."

"Better for whom?" he asked.

"Yourself."

"Is that a threat, then?"

He heard the door shut as she left the room.

CHAPTER V

From that day a silent fight began between them. Piqued by her distrust

of him, and heedless of her warning, Kinloch appears to have become

determined to find out all he could about the affair at Ealing and the

people concerned in it. And the lady seems to have been quite confident

that he could only know what she liked to tell him.

He did not use her permission to call her Stella. When he called her

anything it was "m'lady"; and just because he did not think she had any

right to that form of address, the title came easy to him in the half

serious fashion in which he used it.

But he was certainly wholly serious in his determination to dig out the

facts. With her he had no quarrel. Indeed he thought he rather liked

her. The fingers that dressed his wounded head were very gentle. And

he had learned to judge people's souls by their touch. But whether she

were innocently or guiltily involved in the Ealing affair he was quite

sure that for his own sake, and probably for hers in the long run, he

must get at the facts.

He began by cross-examining himself on what he already knew or could

safely infer. Why had he not been left lying in that room with the

other victim? Why take him away at all? To have left him there to be

found with the murdered man--wasn't that the real game to play? For

what could he say, when he came round, to explain his presence in that

house? Anything he said would count as nothing in the face of what the

eye could see: the man lying there murdered, and himself a wandering

vagabond of disreputable appearance. His tale of being invited to the

house by the dead man--how ridiculous and fantastic it would sound!

Indeed, the case against him was blacker than the real criminal knew.

For a blind man's weapon naturally would be a knife and not a revolver.

And the murderer, leaving him where he fell, could have placed the

knife in his hand and so put the halter round his neck as surely

as--Kinloch pulled up suddenly. A strong motive for his own removal

became apparent to him. He himself had been knocked unconscious; there

was the wound in his head to witness to that fact. Therefore when

he was found in the room the question would arise as to _who_ had

inflicted that wound. Obviously the dead man couldn't have struck him

down after he was dead! And if this blow that knocked him out had been

struck before the other was dead, the man who received it would never

have been able to strike back. Therefore that wound in his head would

testify to the presence of a third person in that room, and so far

support the otherwise incredible story he would have to tell of that

night's happenings. Have to tell?

Kinloch's thoughts fastened on the words. Yes, have to tell if he had

been found lying unconscious in that room. But, he asked himself, would

he volunteer the story _now_? Could he come forward with the tale now?

And in the answer he gave to the question he found a sufficient answer

to the questions as to why he had been carried away from the Ealing

house. It would never have suited the criminal that an _unconscious_

man should be found in that room--a man who, when he came round,

could, for all that was known to the murderer, fully and accurately

describe the man who struck the blow. But it would not suit himself

now, with the wound in the head almost healed, to fall into the hands

of the police. A cock and bull story it would all sound at this date,

especially if he had to end it up by admitting that he did not even

know the name of the village to which he said he had been taken!

Then, sitting on his bed, thoughtfully nursing his knee, he saw with

sudden, startling clarity the problem he had to solve. He must find out

the name of that village. He had to know where it was, as safeguard

against future chances. He sat a long time racking his brains over

this. For the first time he became fully aware of the woman's quiet

determination to keep him ignorant of where he was, and of the terrible

danger this ignorance might yet be to him. He didn't feel hopeless,

though, about beating her. There was that great bell he remembered, and

the little town through which they had passed. Was this queer scattered

village somewhere in Sussex as he had guessed? He went over Mrs.

Spedding's gossip. How easily the name of the place might have slipped

out! But it hadn't.

Still, there were all those names the old woman had mentioned. Many

names had, he knew, a place connection. From a surname you could often

tell from what part of England a man came. Tyldesley, for instance,

meant Lancashire; Fosters were common in Worcestershire. Were Prebble,

Ames, Tolputt, Uden, common names in Sussex? He did not know; but he

knew there were men who were authorities in such matters. And these

names, taken together, had the air of belonging to some particular

locality. And yet this was not much to go on. Rather like clutching at

straws, he felt. He must somehow find out the name of the village she

called Minnis. The problem, he saw, was a double one: to find out where

he was, and to find it out without letting her know that he knew. For

he had a suspicion now that this knowledge would be a very hazardous

possession to him if it were known he had it.

Yet for all his brooding on the subject, on that day and on others

following, he was quite unable to see how he could come by the

information.

Once, a few days later, he almost got what he wanted by accident.

And again it was through Mrs. Spedding. Of course after that first

mischance the lady had taken care there should be no more surprises of

the sort. But this once she was caught napping.

One of her precautions was to keep out of Mrs. Spedding's way whenever

the old lady was at work anywhere in the house within earshot of his

room. In consequence he never heard them talking together except at a

safe distance, the lady never entering her room, the door of which was

almost opposite his own, till Mrs. Spedding had left the house. On this

particular morning, however, Kinloch heard Mrs. Spedding come stumping

along the passage and, the door evidently having been left open, he

heard her voice at once.

"This list of things you want, Miss Stella, it can't be right."

"Let me see."

He heard the flutter of paper.

"Sakes alive, you can't 'ave used all them things already. Unless it be

as Ben Horrockes is a-givin' short weight."

Kinloch, suddenly aware of a new and unforeseen danger, bent forward to

listen. The lady seemed to become aware of the danger too.

"I--I--like to--don't like to run short," she said.

"Lor', Miss Stella, but ye do eat 'arty, nowadays, though you've little

enough to show for it," the old woman grumbled, "you not bein' nigh so

plump as a young girl oughter be."

He heard the lady attempt a laugh.

"You don't think I--I look right, Mrs. Spedding?"

The uneasiness was obviously misinterpreted by the old woman.

"Oh, m'lady, don't you worry about your looks. You've no call. Folks

here think you better looking than ever yu was," she said reassuringly.

"Why, even that old nabbler, Jacob Wytch, must a got 'is head turned

when he saw you yesterday; turned 'im into as big a nissy as young Bob

Ames, the sight of you did. Didn't I 'ear him myself telling old Uden

as hadn't seen y' yet, that you was lovelier than the Queen of Sheba in

a chariot what they'd got painted on the walls of Brooky church where

he was a lad nigh sixty years agone. But I wasn't meaning them sort

of--" The voice diminished as the old woman was led or hustled out of

earshot, and he heard no more.

Kinloch, however, sat very still for a long time thinking over what

he had just heard. And at first his thoughts had nothing to do with

the discovery he was so keen to make. Up till then he had scarcely

ever wondered what the lady looked like. To a blind man people's looks

didn't matter much. The voice counts for more, and from her voice,

deepened perhaps by her own recent experiences, he had vaguely judged

her to be older than it now appeared she was. But what a light this

revelation threw on the whole of the tragedy at Ealing! He recalled

Beaumont's words, that behind most crimes, if you could only find her,

there was a woman. And this one must be beautiful indeed. There was

the impression she had made on Jacob Wytch to prove that. Kinloch was

deeply impressed by the effect she had made on old Wytch. The sight

of her had reawakened in this old man, after an interval of sixty

years, the memory of what, in his youth, had no doubt stood to him for

a vision of all that was beautiful in woman. It almost awed Kinloch

to see the significance of that. And his mind went back to recall

the names of the fair women, good and bad, women like Helen of Troy,

Deirdre, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, and Mary, Queen of Scotland, whose

beauty had brought men to ruin and death.

He was startled by this revelation. More lay behind the affair at

Ealing than he had supposed; the waters were deeper than he had

guessed. But startled as he was, he soon perceived that in more senses

than one now he _must know where he was_.

So he was thrown back on his original line of action. He began to

ponder over Mrs. Spedding's words from a new angle. But what he knew

seemed precious little. The old woman had mentioned Brooky church. Yet

though that was definite, it might well be a long way off; and in any

case it seemed to be a diminutive of some fuller name. Still, he stored

the name of the place in his memory, for possible future use. He had,

on the whole, more hope from the peculiar dialect words Mrs. Spedding

had used. She called Wytch an old nabbler who had been turned into as

big a nissy as young Ames by the sight of the girl. The two words,

nabbler and nissy, he had never before heard, but the very sound told

him their meaning. They were dialect words, certainly not in common

use, yet, like all dialect, familiar in a more or less restricted area.

The scent was strengthening. Kinloch, pleased with his astuteness, was

quite sure that a professional detective would have let these two words

pass unheeded. They were not the sort of clues he would understand. For

himself, he was resolved to let nothing pass.

But his self-satisfaction proved to be short lived. Days went by and

brought nothing to him--nothing but a growing conviction that the girl

was going to be too much for him. She countered his every move. One day

she said suddenly:

"You haven't found out very much, have you?"

It was the first time she had openly referred to the struggle between

them. And from this open reference he saw she considered him beaten.

There was even a touch of pity in her voice as if she took him for a

rather naughty child.

"Not much," he admitted.

"Nothing," she said, in the tone of one who had the situation well in

hand.

"Only that you are younger than I thought, and something of a beauty,

it appears."

"And that is hardly what you hoped to find out." She almost laughed.

Kinloch fired up, responding with grim humour.

"Well, you'll find I'm impervious to beauty's eyes, anyhow. Here's one

man, at least, whose head isn't to be turned by any woman's looks."

But this was said merely to cover his sense of defeat. She had no need,

he knew, to turn his head with her beauty, for he had not discovered

anything likely to make him dangerous. He went straight off to his

room. And there, sitting on his bed, kicking his heels, he started to

think the thing out afresh. She had almost laughed at him. How sure

she must be that she had him in her pocket! And he must stay there,

it seemed, till--Kinloch sat up suddenly, under the shock, as an idea

struck into his mind, an idea that had about it the brilliancy of an

inspiration!

That same night he was sitting with her before the fire behind the

closely curtained windows. The strong southwester that had sprung up

with the fall of night made it safe for them to talk above the usual

subdued monotone. No one approaching the house unseen could hear voices

above that wind. He said to her:

"I can guess what a derelict I look."

"There's no one to see you but me," she said.

"It's not a matter of vanity. If any one else chanced to see me,

wouldn't it be dangerous?"

"Dangerous?" she echoed sharply.

"A man like me seen in the house."

"But you're not going to be seen."

"It might happen by some accident. You can never tell. Anyway it's a

needless risk to run when you could so easily get me some new clothes."

She seemed doubtful, and he felt her eyes on him when he produced the

crisp, clean fiver he had received from the man in the fur coat.

"The nearest biggish town," he said. "You'll find some outfitter with a

selection of ready mades. How far will you have to go?"

"Oh, not very far," she said evasively. "I can go in the car to-morrow

afternoon after Mrs. Spedding has left."

She seemed pleased to find him so thoughtful of a danger that had not

occurred to herself. He showed her how to take his measurements with a

piece of string.

But the next afternoon a disappointment came. She returned without the

clothes. It was early closing day in the unknown town, and the shops

were shut.

"Didn't you know?" he asked disappointedly.

"No. Most towns close on Wednesday," she replied innocently.

Kinloch instantly forgot his disappointment. Another clue had been

presented to him. Putting things together he now knew that the house in

which they were hiding was one in a village of widely scattered houses

which stood on a ridge of downs not more than--to judge by the time

taken in going and coming--ten or twelve miles from a town whose early

closing day was Thursday.

"And to-morrow will be market day," he said, fishing.

"What do you mean?"

She seemed a trifle startled, for the words came quickly.

"It will be very busy," he prevaricated, "if it's market day."

"Oh, I'll get the things to-morrow," she said, leaving him no wiser as

to whether Friday was or was not market day. So he failed to get that

further clue as to the identity of the town.

But had she seen him open the parcel next day she would have been still

more startled. He, however, did not open it before her. When he got to

his room with the new clothes the first thing he did after locking the

door was to feel the inside of the coat just below the collar. A thrill

came as he found what he sought. Yes, it was there, the small square

of silk that bore the name of the outfitter from whom the suit had

been bought--the name and, his fingers told him, the address. He could

not read the lettering; and there was, as yet, no one whom he could

ask to read it for him. But, he said to himself, while shaving with

the new razor, it was a satisfaction to know that he now carried the

information about with him!

And he fell to thinking of how easy it would be to ascertain the

identity not only of the village but of the woman herself. For, the

name of the town once known, it would be simple to identify the village

about ten miles distant which among its inhabitants had people of the

names of Prebble, Ames, Tolputt and the rest, not to mention a farmer

called Noakes; a village which had in the churchyard a tomb to a lady

evidently of some position, named Uden. As for the house, he could

describe every corner of it. But that wouldn't be necessary. For Mrs.

Spedding once found, the lady's identity could no longer be concealed.

Kinloch was so full of all this that, his toilet completed, he returned

to the sitting-room without thinking of the very different appearance

he now presented to the eye. A smothered cry followed his entrance.

"What is it? Anything wrong?" he said. And then he recalled his altered

appearance. "Is it as bad as all that?" he asked.

"I--I--didn't know you at first," she stammered. "I thought some one

had come to--" She broke off and added tamely, "I didn't know clothes

could make so much difference in a man."

He brushed this aside.

"You were frightened, not surprised," he said.

"No."

"You thought it was--"

"No, I didn't. Come, here is your chair."

Kinloch put out his hand. She took it in her own to lead him, and he

found that the hand in his shook like a frightened bird. Beyond doubt

she had taken him for a police officer. But her eyes must have been on

his face.

"What has happened?" she asked as soon as he was seated.

"Happened?" he repeated, taken aback in his turn.

"You look so different to-night--happier."

Inwardly Kinloch cursed his tell-tale face.

"Of course I do. Who wouldn't after getting rid of those rags?"

"Sorry I didn't think of it before," she said humbly.

"So am I. Feel ever so much better now."

He certainly did. He was tremendously conscious of that little square

of silk at the back of his neck, just on the spot at the nape of his

neck where the knot of the hangman's halter might have come one day, he

reflected.

CHAPTER VI

With the last days of January a week of wild rough weather set in, the

wind, accompanied with alternating showers of sleet and drenching rain,

blowing in great gusts over the exposed uplands. The storm kept people

to their houses, and the few outdoor winter occupations in that remote

agricultural region were at a standstill. There were days when even

Mrs. Spedding did not come to the house. Now and then a lonely horse

and cart, with the driver huddled up, and heading into the blast, might

be seen crossing the common among a sea of tossing gorse bushes. But

scarcely another sign of life showed for several days.

Inside the house the storm, and the increased sense of isolation it

brought, had the effect of making the man and woman draw somehow nearer

to each other. Thrown together they had been by a strange stroke of

Fate, but with fear overshadowing them and mutual distrust between

them, there had been so far little scope for understanding. Now,

however, when Kinloch felt he had the secret sewn on to his coat, his

half-felt antagonism died away, and the girl, no doubt feeling the

change, without knowing its real cause, responded to that change in

him. Kinloch, in fact, had come to regard her as much more the victim

of the man whose identity she was struggling to hide than he was

himself.

One night while brushing out her hair--she had probably come to see

there was nothing in letting down her hair before a blind man--she said

to him suddenly:

"Didn't they give you a disability pension?"

Kinloch, who had been listening to the long soft swish of the brush

and trying to judge of the length of her hair from the length of the

stroke, was taken aback.

"Oh, yes," he said, "but I commuted for a lump sum."

Her insistence amused him. But the brushing stopped even before his own

short laugh.

"You squandered it, I suppose. Is that why you laugh?"

"No; it was your inquisitive questions. So like a careful,

old-fashioned wife, before the days of shingling, cross-examining a

husband."

He heard the brush get to work again, but more slowly, as if she were

looking at him thoughtfully through the strands of her hair.

"Look here," he said defensively, "I didn't 'blow' the money--not in

the usual sense anyway. It went into tea shares, Kalindar, a company a

friend told me of. Ninepence each they were then, and I believe there

are thousands registered in my name, all quite unsaleable. They mostly

belonged to the friend who advised me to buy and who swore they were

bound to rise."

After this outburst he was surprised to find himself so anxious she

should not think ill of him.

But although she was always ready and even eager to talk about his

past and his future, he did notice that the moment he turned the talk

to her own past and her own future she became dumb at once. He could

see she dreaded all questions. He was certain, too, it was to head him

off herself and keep his mind occupied that she not only read aloud

to him but set him on to study the Braille system of reading for the

blind. But he had quite enough of the embossed letters, sitting on

his bed fingering away at them in silence during the three hours Mrs.

Spedding was at work about the house. Then the Braille book saved him

from infinite boredom; so that, presently becoming keen about it, he

made rapid progress. In the evenings she would listen to his stumbling

efforts to read her some passage. It was exactly like some child

learning to read. The same halts, hesitations, long pauses and false

starts. But having at last attained the end he would seem still more

like the small boy in his deep sigh of satisfaction, and his face lit

up by sense of triumph. Then she in her turn would pat him on the back

and he would glow with pride. Thus insensibly, but very effectively,

her mental ascendancy over him grew. She was the school-mistress, he

the scholar.

But the man in him reawakened sharply one night. They were seated

before the fire, the lamp unlit, the big book with its embossed

characters on a small table between them. He had, with the usual

stammering and straining, and puckering of the facial muscles, just got

through his day's task, and was about to sit back when he felt her hand

take hold of his. That had happened before when she wished to test his

progress by putting his hand on some unfamiliar new page in the Braille

book. But this time he felt the touch had in it a different quality,

and as he heard her turn the pages he found himself detaining her hand,

and somehow thrilling and responding to her touch. For a second this

lasted. He felt the soft warmth of the hand. Then hastily she put his

own fingers in contact with the page.

"Read me that," she ordered.

But her voice had a break in it and was not at all like that of a

governess. And as he bent to read he felt her breath like a caress on

his cheek, while a strand of her loosened hair touched his face.

He jumped up. Was she trying to dominate him, to capture and subdue

him? To put him in her pocket and make him safe? A suspicion of this

flashed to his mind.

"What is it?" she asked, with an appearance of astonishment.

"Not any more to-night. You're--you're pushing me too hard, you know."

"Sorry. Shall I read to you, then?"

"Yes, it's your turn."

She got up, and while lighting the lamp asked:

"What shall I read to-night?"

"'Travels with a Donkey,'" he said, promptly now conscious of the

ascendancy she had won, and of how near he had come to making a fool of

himself.

"But we have no Stevensons," she said.

"Then for a change let's have the newspaper."

Not for an instant did he believe she would read him anything of the

sort. She had never even admitted that she saw a newspaper. So he was

correspondingly surprised to hear her presently unfold a paper. But he

was amazed when he heard the first words. He had supposed she would

choose some innocent political leading article, or something about the

present condition of the Iron Industry, or the prospects of the Boot

and Shoe Trade. A leader it was, but not one on politics, and she began

in a voice not quite in perfect control:

"THE EALING MYSTERY

"That section of the public which has begun to fear that the

present day police methods in the detection of crime are too

stereotyped will have had their fears confirmed by almost

everything that has happened in connection with this case. While

ourselves not entirely in sympathy with the blame now being so

freely showered on New Scotland Yard, we are bound to admit frankly

that it is very disquieting to remember that already two weeks have

elapsed since the date of the tragedy without an arrest having been

effected. We stress this fact not to disparage the Yard, whose

methods are admirable in some respects, but as palpable evidence

of the fact that the new type of criminal who has arisen in our

midst calls not only for new methods but for a new type of officer.

Unfortunately there seems little chance that we shall see this

new type yet. The authorities still adhere to the rule that all

detective officers must first serve as ordinary police constables.

The absurdity of this rule is manifest when we remember that the

ordinary policeman is selected more for his muscular than for his

intellectual endowments."

This was the first time he had heard a word from the outside world

about the crime. And it made him realize the thing in a new way. He

felt somehow solemnized. When the reading stopped he said nothing for a

moment.

"Why did you read me that?" he asked quietly.

"Because you wanted me to."

"No! You knew I've wanted news all along, and you wouldn't say a word.

Why do you read this to me now?"

He heard her folding up the paper before she replied.

"To reassure you," she said. "Nothing is known. You'll soon be able to

go your way and I mine, safe."

Safe! The word took his ear.

"So," he said, "up till now you have hidden what you read because the

news was not good?"

"Partly," she admitted.

"You read things in the paper that made you feel we were not safe?"

"Oh, yes."

Again he felt awed. He could now visualize the forces of the law and

all the wide-flung resources of the press combining to hunt them down.

"Well, m'lady," he said finally, "if you keep the newspapers from me

after this I'll know what to think."

She came over and sat down. He heard her take up the paper and stir the

fire in an abstracted way, as if thinking of something else.

Perhaps they might have parted and gone their different ways after that

night but for the gale that began in the early hours of the morning.

Probably she had to wait for instructions from the man for whom she

was presumably acting. Kinloch certainly meant to go. But the wild

weather came and it lasted eight days. Eight days and never an hour in

all their number in which Kinloch did not remember the small hand he

had held for a moment nor feel the place where her hair had touched

his face burn like fire. But he was on his guard once more against

her. Knowing from that newspaper how soon they could now part, she

had attempted those blandishments to capture him, to make him safe,

to ensure his silence, if any doubt about that remained. Perhaps she

had even been acting on instructions in what she did--caressing him by

order! Under his breath Kinloch swore.

On the fourth day of the storm he said to her:

"You have read me nothing more from the newspaper."

"I haven't seen it. I've to go to"--she checked herself--"a long way

to get it." Then she added, "To-morrow I must see one, whatever the

weather."

Next day he was waiting for her when she returned.

"Well?" he said.

"There's nothing, not a word of any kind in it."

His ear detected uneasiness in her voice that made him sure she was

lying.

"No news is good news. Why are you frightened?" he asked contemptuously.

He expected a denial to his question.

"You--you still feel sure you can't be traced?" she said hesitatingly.

"Quite," he replied, wondering what this meant.

"You think you can't be connected with--with what happened?"

"Don't see how. I left only a walking-stick in that room."

"A walking-stick can be traced to its owner."

"Not this one," Kinloch asserted. "Men who live where I lived don't

have their names and addresses engraved on their walking-sticks."

"But the policeman who stopped you that night, he would know you

again?"

"Perhaps. But I'm not going to let him see me."

"He couldn't fail to see you were blind."

"It's what he did fail to see. Otherwise he would hardly arrest a blind

man for loitering with intent. And you must remember that for the short

distance we had to walk he held my arm, leading me. I didn't tell him I

was blind; I kept that fact in reserve till we should reach the police

station. I owed him one, you see, for he was rather a nasty brute."

"But surely there's some one who will miss you?" she persisted.

Kinloch laughed grimly.

"Not a soul. Not one will have raised a clamour, unless it's Beaumont,

the begging-letter chap who lent me the fare to Ealing that night, but

he'll say nothing about my disappearance."

"Why not?"

"Why, don't you see, he'll take it that I didn't return so as to escape

repaying him. I'm sorry for that: his estimate of human nature is low

enough already. Now," he added, "will you tell me the meaning of all

this. You have read something in the paper, haven't you?"

"No, there's nothing in the paper about the case; but there's something

in it about you."

"About me?" he cried incredulously.

"Listen. It's from the 'Agony' column:

"Alexander David Kinloch, last seen at Ealing on the night of

Monday, 15th of January. Will any person in a position to supply

information as to his present whereabouts kindly communicate with

Messrs. Selwyn & Smith, Devon Chambers, Chancery Lane. Liberal

reward."

He was utterly amazed and bewildered.

"Somebody seems to want you for something," she said doubtfully.

The remark brought a smile in the midst of his perplexity.

"It isn't Beaumont anyhow--he'd have cut his losses long ago."

"The police?" She breathed the question.

"Might be. Read it again."

While she read he noted the peculiar form in which the notice was put.

It did not, as was usual in such advertisements, invite Alexander David

Kinloch himself to reply. Why not? They either knew that he could not

or would not. Then another peculiarity caught his attention: "Last seen

in Ealing." Last seen by _whom_? he asked himself. The more he thought

of it the less he liked it. Even if the thing did not come from the

police it would certainly attract their attention. For the night of

Monday, 15th January, on which Alexander David Kinloch was last seen in

Ealing, was also the night of the Ealing murder. And that coincidence

was certainly one into which they would enquire.

"It looks," he said to her finally, "as if they were after me."

There was no fear in his words. He was simply surprised. He could not

imagine how it had been done: how they had managed to connect him with

the case.

They were both silent for a time.

"We must stay on," she said. "No one can know where you are."

He then remembered a saying of Beaumont's. There had been a discussion

in their doss on the best way to avoid the police. The subject

always led to lively and animated arguments there. It was Beaumont's

contention, he remembered, that the police owe more to the stupidity

of the men wanted than to their own cleverness. "Lie low!" That was

Beaumont's advice. "It may take some nerve but it's the correct game.

Once they get you on the run that's telling who done it, and then

you're as good as lost."

"Yes," he said to her, "it seems best to lie low here for a bit." He

listened to the wind raging outside. "If this isn't a safe place there

isn't any."

And up to the last day of the storm they lived in peace, seeing no

more newspapers. Then the thunder-clap fell. And from a quarter both

had overlooked. Mrs. Spedding had just left, and the girl was in her

room getting ready to dash away for the latest newspaper. Kinloch was

about to emerge from his own room when he heard quick, determined

steps coming down the passage. A peremptory knock sounded on the door

opposite. Then he heard Mrs. Spedding's voice.

"Miss Stella!"

"Yes?"

"I got a question to ask you. This can't go on no longer. I can't keep

it back no more, I can't, I can't!"

The old woman's voice was charged with high excitement, and this time

the reply, if there was any, he did not overhear. But he heard the

question easily. It came with a rush, loudly, uncontrollably:

"_Be there a man in this house?_"

CHAPTER VII

He expected some such question after he had noted the excitement under

which the old woman was labouring. But the lady appeared speechless

with surprise, for it was a moment or two before he heard her stammer a

reply:

"A--a man in this house?"

"Yes, a man you're a-hiding."

"Are you crazy? The question is an insult. What gave you such a

ridiculous suspicion, Mrs. Spedding?"

"Several things, m'lady. Perhaps I am crazy." She sighed heavily. "It

is a crazy question, come to think of it." She paused doubtfully.

"Then don't think of it any more, Betsy. The weather must have got on

your nerves."

"Maybe 'tis so. That wind a-whistling all day and a-howling all through

the night gives you the idea there's voices all round ye. Last night

while I lay wakeful in bed I could have took my oath I 'eard Joe

Spedding a-callin' to me from the garden, though ee's lain up in the

churchyard nigh thirty years."

The old woman seemed shaken. Kinloch heard the low murmur of sympathy

with which she was led away down the passage.

Later they talked over the incident. Kinloch thought she should have

found out what had raised the old woman's suspicion of his presence.

But it appeared she had been too frightened to ask, and had preferred

to leave well alone. Mrs. Spedding had gone away reassured, and would

probably be thoroughly ashamed of herself next day. But all the same he

noted that she had now put off her intention of going for the newspaper

as soon as the old woman left. He himself shared in the feeling

of vague insecurity he divined in her. Discovery by Mrs. Spedding

neither of them had ever thought likely. Yet something had evidently

awakened the suspicions of that quite unsuspicious creature. What was

it? Neither of them could guess. But they would have to find out if

the same danger was to be avoided in the future. For the old woman's

suspicions once awakened would be more easily reawakened, but not be so

easily dispelled a second time.

Kinloch brooded long over the situation, when after dusk fell he was

left alone in the house. His thoughts were not about himself. He had no

apprehension for his own safety. Once he might not have minded much had

Mrs. Spedding seen him, and been able to identify him afterwards and so

far corroborate his story. But now that he had all that was necessary

sewn inside the collar of his coat, identification by her, if arrest

came, was unnecessary. By a hundred details of the life in that house

he could prove his presence there, and secure Mrs. Spedding's support

in what he said. But he was conscious now that he was unwilling to see

the girl come to grief. She carried some dark secret, and was fighting

well. He tried to analyze his feelings about her. What if the man for

whom she fought was a criminal? Many a good soldier has fought in a bad

cause. Like himself she was the victim of that man. And, he saw now, it

was because he did not mean her to be left in that man's hands that he

had been content to remain with her in that house.

A long time he sat absorbed in the thoughts that followed. But a moment

came when he sat up with a start, all at once alert and fully conscious

of his surroundings. Something had happened to disturb him. He saw

that. But it puzzled him to think what it could be. A noise in the

house? He listened hard, and heard nothing beyond the wind whistling

on the roof. Then a door banged. The wind, he told himself, only half

believing. But if so the noise had been caused by a sudden inrush of

air as some other door or window was opened.... He waited, rigid with

attention. Then he heard a board creak. There was a loose one--he knew

it well--at the threshold of the sitting-room. _That_, at least, was

not the wind. His mouth went suddenly dry, and he sat petrified. He

could hear the wind moaning above the interior stillness. Then the

distant door banged again.

After a long time he ceased to listen and began to urge himself into a

belief that it was nothing, that no one had stared at him from the open

door. Doors do sometimes bang mysteriously, and even a mouse can make

a board creak. Anyway, nothing had happened. He was getting as nervous

as Mrs. Spedding herself, and far more fanciful. They had nothing to be

afraid of. It was impossible that the police could trace them to that

lonely house. Any clue they might have held would have been used long

ago. And since none had been used it was now obvious they had none to

use. He ought therefore with every day that passed to be getting less

and less, instead of more and more, jumpy and uneasy.

And yet some unknown sense seemed to be telling him as he sat on that

danger was drawing nearer. The storm seemed to have spent itself, for

the wind had dropped quite suddenly, half an hour ago. And now there

had come what seemed after those days of unending tumult a great calm

in which nothing moved. He was almost sorry the storm had passed. That

gale was like a wall that shut off the rest of the world from them.

But in this sudden hush and stillness there was somehow not peace

but expectancy. The world seemed stilled with the sense of something

terrible about to happen.

Yet it was a good hour before he heard the sound for which he had sat

listening, the quick, sharp click of a key in the lock of the front

door. He stood up to meet her, noting the hurry of her approach.

"You have news," he said to her.

"You know?"

"Felt it in my bones. What is it?"

She did not reply, but when he heard the glass shade tinkle as with a

trembling hand, when she removed it to light the lamp, he knew both

that the news was bad and that it was something she must read to him.

He heard her spread out a newspaper on the table.

THE EALING MYSTERY

ARREST IMPENDING

"Events continue to move rapidly in connection with this crime,

and the general public will learn with relief that it is not one

destined to be added to the long list of unsolved mysteries which

have of late so frequently baffled the police. The strictures this

paper was impelled to make on the out-of-date methods of the police

will yet be fresh in the memory of our readers. In consequence of

the strong exception taken in certain quarters to what we then

said, we may now reveal the fact that to justify our contention

this paper set a specially selected crime expert to work upon the

case. And the peculiar qualifications possessed by our agent have

yielded the most gratifying results. Working along lines quite

different from those being followed by the many police engaged on

the case, he is now so close on his quarry that an arrest may be

looked for within the next twenty-four hours.

"In the interests of justice we must of course still write in the

most guarded terms. But in amplification of what we have said

in previous issues we may assert that the public interest will

not cease with the arrest of the man and woman concerned in this

remarkable case."

Kinloch heard her put down the paper. He was silent too. It was not the

confident tone of the paragraph that shook him, but the reference to

the man and woman implicated. The precision of that reference impressed

him; and from its correctness he did not doubt that much was known

which was left unsaid.

He heard her get up and begin to walk about the room. There might be a

doubt as to whether the wanted man were the other man or himself; but

there could be no doubt that this was the woman wanted. And now Kinloch

found that he wished to save the woman. That was the discovery he made

as he sat there. He wished to save her. Men, he told himself, are

what they make themselves, and women are what men make them. His hands

clenched in hate of that man. Her voice came in a hoarse whisper:

"How long do you think we've got?"

"Is that to-day's paper?"

"Yes. Oh, I shouldn't have minded the weather. The weather! And there

were things in the paper that would have shown me sooner what was

coming. But for five days I haven't seen a paper, on account of the bad

weather. Oh, but I felt so safe--safe with you here."

He was not listening to her. If this was that day's paper then they

might expect to hear that peremptory knock on the door at any moment

now. Half hypnotized by the expectation he lifted his head to listen.

And it was so quiet after the storm that he could hear the girl's

steps, and even her breathing, as she passed restlessly up and down the

room.

"Is it worth while trying to get away--is there time?" she asked,

stopping in front of him.

He shook his head doubtfully.

"Don't know."

Then just as he spoke his ear, tuned to listening, caught a sound

somewhere in the house. The remembrance of his earlier suspicion of

some one in the house returned. He knew it now! Of course that had been

no fancy: they had merely waited till she came back to take them both

together. He held up his hand.

"Listen," he whispered sharply. "Listen!... There is the answer to your

question."

And the quick indraw of breath told him she too had heard. But the

next moment she had him on his feet, and half leading, half pushing,

scrambled him into the embrasure of the nearest window. Kinloch yielded

himself, aware of the uselessness of the attempt at concealment. Not

till the house was surrounded would they be offered a chance of escape

by a window. But, making no attempt to open the window, she stood him

behind the curtains and herself stepped back into the room. Though

he believed this to be equally futile he played up to her, leaning

back against the glass to avoid contact with the curtains. There

followed the briefest interval in which nothing happened. Then a sharp

exclamation came from the girl. This Kinloch read as meaning that the

intruder was not the person she had expected to see.

"Oho," the voice came, "popped out o' sight again, 'as ee, that

Jack-in-the-box o' yourn?"

"Mrs. Spedding, what on earth--"

The girl's indignant expostulation was cut short.

"Oh, I seen 'im, not 'alf an hour agone, and not for the first time

neither, and seein's believing, they say. Locked 'im in, did ye, while

yu was away? Yes, but I unlatched the kitchen window this morning. So I

crept in and had a good look at 'im settin' before the fire. Leastways

I saw enough of him to know from the picture in the paper that _he_

wasn't the man what went to church with you."

The old woman was almost shrill with reproach and anger.

"The innocent I was! I believed you about them two cups on the table

the first mornin'. But I didn't know I'd been doing only half the

washin' up ever since. Nor the lot you eat didn't start me suspecting.

Nor even the smell o' baccy. Nor nothing else, till I saw you was

buying things elsewheres. I knowed it from the printed names on the

bags as ye sometimes forgot to burn. See? 'Something queer, 'ere,' I

says to myself."

"And you came to spy?"

"That's just what I done," the old woman cried defiantly. "But with no

bad in my mind. You wouldn't 'ave me to sleep 'ere as I wanted to do,

and the thought of you all alone wouldn't let me rest o' nights. So I

began to come round 'ere in the dark to see if yu was all right. Yes,

but I soon found out you wasn't so lonely as I thought for."

"But he's only a friend, you silly old thing."

This assurance seemed to exasperate rather than to mollify Mrs.

Spedding.

"Only a friend, is he? Didn't I see ye setting with him last night?

Didn't I see ye through the window whenever the draught swayed the

curtains, and you a-brushing your hair wi' your arms and shoulders

white in shameless nakedness afore his very eyes? 'That ought by rights

to be 'er 'usband,' I says, 'but if so,' I says to myself, 'if so, why

be she a-hiding of un?' So I made up my mind as I'd have a closer look.

See?"

"But there's nothing wrong."

"Nothing wrong? Then what's he a-hiding for? Having a game of

peek-a-boo with old Spedding, I s'pose, like what you played in the old

days? I reckon not! Townified ways this--us country folk don't hold

wi' them. It ain't proper for him to be livin' 'ere, not you and him

alone." The voice began to quiver and break. "Us--us country folk knows

the same conduc' as we 'olds to isn't to be expected from gentlefolk,

but--" Mrs. Spedding broke down.

Behind the curtain the man stifled the curse that rose to his lips, and

listened to hear the girl defend herself. Not a word came from her. And

so still was it in that room that he could hear the old woman's heavy,

agitated breathing.

"You're--you're in love with him, that's how 'tis."

"Y-es. Of course I--I love him. Why else should he be here?"

The words came quickly.

So that was the line she was taking! Well, it did explain his presence.

"Oh, it ain't right, it ain't right."

"One can't help one's feelings. They get too--too strong before you

know."

"Oh, but we can all help what we do. And, oh, Miss Stella, even if you

can't, why didn't ee go somewheres else? Why didn't ee take him where

ye wasn't known, and leave us free to think on ee as us used to think."

Mrs. Spedding seemed to go closer, raising her voice in a quick

passionate appeal.

"Give him up," she cried. "No good can come of it--nothing but scandal.

And that mayn't be so far off, neither." She drew near to whisper

loudly. "Look, m'lady, when I was a-coming across the common I came on

a stranger man."

"A stranger?"

"Yes, a man I didn't know, and who didn't know the common from the

way he was movin' among the gorse bushes. Didn't 'ear my feet on the

grass, and he seemed to be looking for something. Then the thought came

to me. 'What if it should be her husband?' I says to myself."

"What was he like, this man?"

"Couldn't tell. It were too dark. Turned away soon as he saw me, but he

was a big man, and nobody belonging to these parts. Oh, I don't go for

to say as 'twas your husband, but it's a warning, it might well have

been. So give him up, m'lady, give this other up."

There was no reply at first. But presently the words came in a rush:

"Yes, I'm taking him away to-night--to-night. You'll never see or hear

of him again. But you'll tell no one, will you? If--if any one came

asking about him, you won't tell, Betsy?"

"Tell? Tell a thing like that? Wild 'orses couldn't drag it from my

mouth."

Half an hour later Kinloch was sheltering in the lee of a haystack in

the corner of a field. He had been hurried out of the house by the back

door; and they had scaled a fence and wormed a way through several

hedges to reach this shelter. Then before either had recovered breath

she had gone back to get the car, bring it round as quietly as possible

and pick him up.

Left to himself Kinloch made some of the hay into a little heap and sat

down against the rick to think things out. She had warned him that she

might not be able to come back for a long time. Who was this man who

had been seen nosing about on the common? Mrs. Spedding, to frighten

her, had suggested it might be the girl's husband. Well, it might be.

But on the whole the man was more likely to belong to the police.

Anyhow she might have to face this man, and even outwit him, before

she could get away with the car. Kinloch here considered a notion that

came suddenly to him. Why not go away alone? Walk clean out of the

business--and leave all trouble behind. His presence in that house had

put the girl into a horrible position with Mrs. Spedding, forcing her

to lie brazenly, and in the end forcing her to pretend to be in love

with him. With him! She said that unwillingly--he recalled her low,

halting murmur--and only when hard pressed by the necessities of the

situation. There simply was nothing else left for her to say. That,

and that alone, certainly was the only convincing reason, short of the

truth, which she could give for keeping a man hidden in that house.

Yet the curious thing was that, lie though he felt her pretence of

love to be, ever since he had heard her faltering admission to Mrs.

Spedding, he wanted to help her. Up till then he had fought her to find

out what he could--fought her not unfairly considering his handicap.

It had been a struggle between them, each wary of the other, fencing,

feinting, each alert, he for what he needed to know, and she determined

to conceal it. But now, as he sat there with his head leaning back

against the pungent hay, he was conscious of a complete change in his

attitude towards her. In the presence of this new danger he felt wholly

on her side. And the question arose in his mind as to whether the best

help he could give her would be to go away, to disappear before she

returned. Was not that, he asked himself, the decent thing to do? But

no sooner had he reached this conclusion than a doubt arose in his

mind. Would it be fair to go off and leave her uncertain as to why he

had gone and what he meant to do? He tried to imagine what her feeling

would be when she came back and found him gone. Would she feel relief

or fear? He could not decide. He did not know enough. Perhaps, if he

fell into the hands of the police, they could infer from whatever he

told them more than he meant them to know. He might blunder out some

damaging fact which he himself took to be quite innocent. He could not

tell. It depended on how much the police already knew.

That advertisement asking for information about Alexander David

Kinloch's whereabouts seemed to show they knew something about himself.

At least they seemed to know he could not read. And if it were known he

was blind how quickly they would get their hands on a blind stranger

found wandering about a neighbourhood which they were evidently then

searching. No; he must stay there till she came back. And having

reached this conclusion he was surprised to find himself rather glad.

Then in this moment of danger Kinloch's thoughts ran back once more to

the thing's beginning, and the tragic night when he had become involved

in the crime. The murdered man himself had no desire to be known, he

remembered. There was his delight, his unconcealed delight, on learning

that he had found a blind man who did not know who he was. Kinloch

smiled grimly. Too clever by half that man had been. The carefully

staged trap, and all his neat pre-arrangements to frighten his visitor,

had only served to make the assassin's job easier. Probably the deed

would not be discovered for hours afterwards. For the victim who, like

the murderer, had laid his plans so carefully, would have seen to it

that there was no likelihood of any intrusion into that room by any

member of his own household.

But some one must open that door sooner or later. The speculation as

to who it would be somehow fascinated Kinloch. In the end he decided

it would be a housemaid, a sleepy housemaid, early next morning. He

pictured her opening the door, pulling up the blinds with a yawn, and

turning broom in hand to begin her work. And then he could see the

wild-eyed horror come suddenly to her face, and the stupid stare,

before she began to scream, when she saw what lay there on the floor.

BOOK II

NARRATIVE OF GODFREY CHANCE, JOURNALIST

CHAPTER VIII

At the time he was murdered Ponsonby Paget was one of the most

popular men in England. It is true he was eyed askance by some of his

colleagues in Fleet Street; but that was on personal grounds, and none

of them ever denied his journalistic genius. There were those indeed

who said he could interest any one in anything he chose to write about.

On matters affecting public morals he put into words what the plain man

felt but could not express, and he was a master of that piquant and

witty paragraph of society scandal which all women love. Where he got

his information none of us knew; but he was certainly familiar with the

private, and even secret, lives of the most distinguished people in

England.

With the masses he enjoyed a reputation second to none for blunt,

outspoken honesty. He never claimed to be spotless, but he never ceased

to proclaim that he was British; and the public, taking this to be

much the same thing, took Ponsonby Paget to its heart. On the platform

after he entered Parliament he was immense. His squat, full-bodied,

bull-necked figure topped by the blunt, rugged face made him so like an

incarnation of John Bull himself that his audience believed what he had

to say before he had time to say it. But trenchant orator as he was his

real forte was journalism. He wrote prose as brilliant as Macaulay's.

And it was in the _Eye Opener_, the weekly paper he owned and edited,

that his genius found its full vent.

The _Eye Opener_ has now passed into other hands, and like some of

those who were pilloried and exposed in its columns has changed its

name. Statesmen are no longer apprehensive, nor do, I imagine, Society

ladies tremble or gloat, as the case may be, while they turn its pages.

It is not what it was in the days of the Ponsonby Paget _régime_,

when I, an apprentice in journalism, carried it in my overcoat pocket

against my heart. In those days genius was stamped all over that

paper--even on the buff coloured cover. On the upper half of the cover

appeared the head and nude shoulders of a massive woman with a very

long neck and features of classic beauty. Her head was thrown proudly

back, the lips apart, and each eye was shut by a penny piece, twopence

being the price of the paper. I remember pointing out the symbolism of

these two pennies to Matheson, my chief on the _Record_, when, in my

early days on that journal, he caught me with the _Eye Opener_ on my

desk.

"For twopence she opens the eyes of the British public," I said.

I was a callow youth then, having lately left a country town for Fleet

Street, or I would have known better than to try to teach him anything.

Matheson sniggered as he eyed the female bust.

"It doesn't say how much it costs to shut her mouth. Probably that

price varies," he sneered.

I knew what he meant: that rich rogues who liked to pay the price could

escape exposure.

"Nothing can shut that mouth," I asserted hotly.

And now--the thought comes with sudden solemnity--something _has_ shut

it--Death! The great Ponsonby Paget is dead. White as alabaster and

incredibly still I saw him lying, murdered, in the police mortuary at

Ealing, with two penny pieces on his own eyes.

* * * * *

As we viewed the body in the presence of the police that day, my

thoughts returned to the day on which I had first seen the man on whom

my eyes now rested for the last time.

My acquaintance with the late Mr. Ponsonby Paget had begun with a

contribution I sent to his paper. The subject matter of that article

was derived not from any gossip in the sub-editors' room, but through

my association with Francis McNab, the private enquiry agent, a man

of whom I shall have to speak presently. The _Eye Opener_ returned my

article; but instead of the usual rejection slip there came back with

it a personal note from the editor asking me to call and see him.

How vivid is my first personal impression of the man! After a few

enquiries into the sources of the information my article had contained,

and also as to my position on the _Record_, he talked on nothing but

literary style. He held out hopes of employing me provided I could

liven up my style. How I hung on his words! Hung on them like a new

gospel, as he paced that room, a stout, short-legged figure, more like

an English farmer talking on turnips than a master discoursing on

English prose.

"Above all," he said, "shun parenthetical clauses. The English don't

like them. The English are a blunt, straightforward people, and they

like language like themselves. There's always something Frenchified

about a parenthetical clause; it sounds as if you weren't quite sure;

and it seems to shilly-shally with the subject. And don't be afraid

of repeating yourself. It is necessary to repeat yourself. You can no

more get a point home to the British public by saying a thing once than

you can get a nail home by hitting it once. Besides, the English like

repetitions. They like repetitions for the same reason that they like

the big drum. The big drum is the only instrument in the band they

understand; it is the only instrument that keeps on saying the same

thing over and over again, and therefore it sounds in earnest."

And yet, looking back, I now recognize that with all his surface

simplicity and directness there was in Ponsonby Paget a subtlety and

adroitness equally exceptional, though less evident to a raw recruit

in journalism, as I then was. In the column of his paper headed _P. P.

Peeps_, which he himself wrote, things were said about distinguished

people, public men and society ladies, which no other paper would have

dared to print. Not because the things were false but rather because

they were true. For these things he was never prosecuted. Partly, no

doubt, he owed this liberty of speech to the place he occupied in the

nation's heart, and partly to his known skill with juries; but most of

all probably he owed his immunity from actions for slander to the fact

that no man in England could suggest so much in words so apparently

innocent.

Such was the man I found lying dead, that black January night, on

the study floor of his Ealing residence. Matheson had never viewed

my acquaintance with him with favour, had in fact warned me against

him; but Matheson owed it to me that his paper appeared with an

exclusive report of the tragic discovery. And it was one of the

biggest sensations the _Record_ ever created. How well I remember

lingering in the street to witness the sensation our news of his awful

death would create when the newsboys appeared with their papers and

placards. Weary, hungry, heavy with sleep after that terrible night's

experiences, I yet lingered on to hear the cry that would startle

London. My eager ear caught the yell they made afar off. Like a flood

they burst along the Strand, every one with a big armful of papers, and

this bill dangling against their legs:

DAILY RECORD

MURDER!

PONSONBY PAGET

MURDER!

As I turned away to seek my long overdue sleep I felt sure Mr. Ponsonby

Paget would have approved of that bill--had he himself, that is, not

been the subject of it. For there was in it not only the repetition

that he favoured but also that irresistible appeal to curiosity in

which he delighted. One, that is, had to buy the paper to know whether

Ponsonby Paget was criminal or victim, or even to be sure that the bill

was not an incitement to murder by our own paper. No doubt that bill

was the grim Matheson's own idea; but anyhow the matter behind it had

been provided by me. And it proved to be one of the finest selling

bills that has ever appeared on the streets of London.

* * * * *

This is the story of how I came to be the discoverer of the crime.

About one o'clock on the day of his death, which was Monday, January

15th, Mr. Ponsonby Paget rang me up as I was going out for lunch:

could I, he enquired, dine with him at his house in Ealing that night?

The invitation sent a pleasant glow coursing through me; it marked

such a definite step forward in one's career to be taken up by a man

of his standing in the world of journalism. But my heart fell as I

recalled that I was booked for duty at the big political meeting in the

Albert Hall that night. When I explained this regretfully there was

what sounded like a muttered oath at the other end of the phone. This

startled me, for he was not given to swearing. Then his cheery laugh

came through.

"You're my second disappointment," he said.

"Sorry to be that," I rejoined, "but Matheson wouldn't let me off; so

it's useless asking him."

"Look here," he said briskly, "what time will you be free--by ten?"

I considered a moment. To come back to the office and turn in my copy

would not take half an hour. Before I could reply his voice came again,

rather eagerly:

"What I want to know is: can I rely on your being here by eleven?"

"Oh, certainly."

"You are absolutely sure?"

The emphasis he put into that question was startling and I replied with

becoming gravity.

"I'll let nothing stand in the way, Mr. Paget, you can depend on that."

"Good!" Then his cheery laugh came again. "Take the sack rather than

disappoint me. It is a big thing for you. Afraid you'll get no dinner,

though."

"Perhaps I may hope for a little supper," I suggested jocularly,

meaning to respond to his change of tone.

"Eh?"

I repeated the remark.

"Oh, well, a man on whom _I_ can rely may hope for more than

that--before long," he added significantly. And when the jar of his

receiver came through as he rang off, I felt like a man whose future is

assured.

* * * * *

It was the fog that led to his death. But for the fog Ponsonby Paget

would be alive to-day, for I should have reached Ealing in time to

save him. The fog came on about four o'clock, as night began to fall.

Matheson had sent me round to see Francis McNab about a promising crime

story I had reported from Bow Street in the forenoon. From the little

window in McNab's office, which was in the Adelphi, right on the top

of a lofty edifice overlooking the river, I watched the Surrey side

gradually being washed out as the fog crept up, like waves of smoke

rising out of the river. I watched it idly while waiting for McNab,

attaching no sinister importance to its coming, my thoughts for the

moment turning on the little man for whom I waited.

For some considerable time the _Record_ had specialized in the

treatment of crime; not, of course, pandering to depraved tastes for

the grotesque or the morbid, but, all the same, supplying matter

unobtainable through the ordinary channels. The paper had come into

touch with McNab rather curiously. At the time when the mysterious

Acton Green affair was creating such a splash in the press, McNab

sent us a letter propounding a theory on the crime so startling

and apparently far-fetched and incriminating that Matheson, as I

have heard, not trusting the wastepaper-basket, himself put the

communication, spitted on the end of the poker, into the fire. When,

however, subsequent events proved McNab right in regard to the high

placed criminal, Matheson grabbed the private detective as a special

contributor. He it was who over the _nom de plume_ of "The Lamplighter"

contributed those illuminating articles on current crime which were so

long a special feature in the _Record_.

Well, just as I was giving him up McNab came into the office. He was,

with his thin, clean-shaven face and thoughtful eyes, more like a

youngish doctor than a detective--except that there was nothing affable

about him.

"Hullo, Chance--business or pleasure?" he asked with a nod.

"Matheson's business: my pleasure," I returned. "Come over to the Blue

Bird and have tea."

"And pay half a crown for threepence worth of tea? No, no, laddie."

Then he struck a match and lit the gas ring upon which a kettle

stood ready prepared. This done he sat down astride a chair to read

Matheson's letter.

McNab was painfully Scotch. Matheson was Scotch too, but it flattered

him to be taken for an Englishman, which was the one thing I liked

about Matheson. McNab, however, was of the brand of Scotch labelled

extra special. His accent made his English sound like a foreign

tongue. Yet he was the only Scotchman I ever really liked, and the

only acquaintance I had who never made puns on my name. At first this

fact led me to infer he had no sense of humour. How well my mind goes

back to that afternoon in McNab's office: it was the calm before the

unsuspected storm.

"Business slack?" I enquired as he poured out the tea.

He sighed, nodding at Matheson's letter.

"So-so. A sort of haberdasher's time I'm having, big turnover but small

profit."

"Matheson says he's found out you had a university training and

took high distinction in logic at Aberdeen," I blurted out like an

interviewer.

He threw up his hands in protest.

"Heaven forbid--not Aberdeen! I resent the accusation."

Then I broached a matter that had puzzled me for some time.

"An English university man would never think of taking up your kind of

work, you know."

"Wouldn't he? Why not?"

"He'd have more--well, ambition."

"Ambition!" he cried. "Man, man, do ye not see the world is full of

men just _not_ good enough for their jobs? And what is responsible for

that? Ambition. Ambition pushed them on to take jobs just beyond their

powers. Whereas, if they'd been content with a job well inside their

capacity, they would be successful men. But no! Ambition is the itch

that spurs them on to make a hash of it."

"Then, Mac," I protested, "if these are your opinions why in the name

of Samuel Johnson didn't you stay on in Scotland?"

His dark eyes twinkled at me.

"Laddie, now you are making yoursel' more stupid than Nature intended

ye to be. Why didn't I stay in Scotland? ye ask. Well, in the first

place Scotland is an honest, law-abiding country; in the next place, in

England intelligent competition is less severe."

He handed me over the biscuit tin, leaving me doubtful as to how much

of all this was seriously meant.

When we had finished tea, and cigarettes were produced, I sprang the

surprise on him which I had kept to the last.

"Mac, I mentioned your name in a letter to my people the other day, and

I hear my maternal grandmother was Scotch."

"Not so bad. But it's highly diluted."

"What?"

"The Scots blood that's in you; it will be swamped, I doubt, or will

only show in exceptional moments."

"I'm told she had red hair, and came from Aberdeen."

"From Aberdeen? That alters the case. They're all made of granite up

there, like their city. So I'll not deny that the Aberdeen fluid isn't

the better of a strong dilution. It needs a large infusion of the soft

English blood to give it a touch of humanity."

That is the kind of man he was. One could rarely be sure whether he

was serious, although he always looked so. But as I took leave of him

later, thinking on this, I little thought of the seriousness of what

then lay so close ahead.

* * * * *

After my duty in connection with the Foreign Secretary's speech at the

Albert Hall was over I found myself with an ample margin of time to

reach Ealing before eleven. But I had no sooner put my nose outside

the door than I determined not to surrender control of my progress

to the district railway. The risk on such a night of a probable hold

up in some tunnel was too great. I therefore took a taxi--they were

having a pretty thin time of it that night. A taxi if slower and more

expensive was surer. Besides, I reckoned on getting clear of the fog

belt somewhere beyond Kensington.

At first our pace was no more than a crawl; but this I had expected,

and it caused me no uneasiness since my driver asserted he was so

familiar with the route that he could travel to Ealing blindfolded.

There is this to be said for the man; he ran into nothing, nor did he

once touch either kerb or refuge. Indeed, to me it seemed miraculous

how he divined his track to an inch merely by the dim glow overhead

that marked the position of the invisible lamp-posts. When, however, my

watch showed 10.15 uneasiness began, for we had not yet passed beyond

the fog radius. In a few minutes more the brakes jarred, and as the

cab came to a halt the figure of a policeman loomed up alongside. My

heart sank as I saw his uselessly extended arm giving directions to

my driver. Hastily lowering the window I heard him speak of taking

the third on the right and the second on the left: we had crossed the

direct road a couple of miles back!

I am not going to give the history of our further wanderings that

night. Heaven knows where we went; but at no time did we get free of

the fog. In the end we found ourselves in Ealing before knowing we were

near it; and I left the cab and, on the plea that it was a matter of

life and death, got a policeman to take me up to Mr. Ponsonby Paget's

house in Tookworth Avenue.

When he left me to return to another section of his beat I stole a look

at my watch. For a long time, sitting in that wandering vehicle, I had

not dared to look at it. It was almost one o'clock. I pulled up in the

drive to consider what to do. The large house I dimly discerned ahead

stood eerie and ghost-like in that veil of mist, without a lighted

window.

Was it worth while, I asked myself, to go on? To decide the question I

determined to walk round the house and see if any window behind showed

a light. It would be something, at least, to prove to Mr. Ponsonby

Paget that I had done my best to keep my word to him. Scouting about,

I came on a bricked path, circling in among shrubbery, and taking

this, found that it led me on to the lawn fronting the house. Crossing

the lawn I turned the corner at the far end, and at once saw light

streaming out from the windows of what appeared to be a one-storied

addition to the main building. There was no door that I could see,

but the brick pathway took me right up to the single step that gave

entrance to the room by means of a French window. This window was

slightly ajar.

After waiting a moment I tapped on the glass.

Possibly the noise I made was much less than it sounded in my nervously

sensitive ears. The place was so weirdly still. Even the fog itself

seemed petrified, standing thick and heavy, so that it needed a mental

effort to thrust one's hand through it. Anyhow, when no response came

I could not bring myself to repeat the knock. Instead I stood up on

the step and tried to peer into the room. Immediately inside there

appeared to be a dark curtained-off recess; but, as the curtains did

not quite meet, the opening between them permitted a diagonal view

into the interior beyond. I could see the soft glow of a fire showing

above the back of an intervening lounge chair; but the room seemed

unoccupied. Possibly, I thought, my host had fallen asleep in that

huge chair beside that fire. After debating what course to pursue I

tapped on the glass again, more loudly. The hollow, glassy rattle

seemed to reverberate suddenly at my back. No doubt the illusion was

caused by some high parallel wall behind me, invisible in such a

night; but, coming from behind like that, the echo so startled me that

involuntarily I pushed the glass door open, and stepped just inside the

room.

My first glance showed me there was something wrong.

There had been a struggle in that room. One of the heavy curtains

had, I now saw, been half torn from its suspension; a table inside

the recess lay overturned, with a draught screen toppled against its

upraised legs. The room itself was in great disorder, a jumble of

displaced furniture, some chairs broken, with white shattered fractures

showing oddly, and almost everything in disarray, or standing at

unwonted angles. Somehow it was horrible to view all that evidence of

violent motion in its present almost frozen stillness. Only one thing

appeared to be in its normal place--the massive oak table, covered

with books and writing materials, which stood opposite the fire. As I

regarded it in wonder a sudden crackle came from the fire, and a flurry

of gassy flame lighted up the shadowed end of the long table. Then

something else caught my eye, something that protruded beyond the far

end of that table--a human foot. Yes, a human foot, with the firelight

now flickering brightly on the patent leather of the upraised toe.

CHAPTER IX

How long I stared at that shoe I cannot tell. I must have been waiting

in the hope of seeing it move. There were moments when I could have

sworn it did move. It must have been an illusion, created by the spurts

of firelight playing intermittently on the polished toe as the fire

began to break through. Emboldened by the illusion of movement, I crept

round the other side of the table and found--well, instant proof that

the foot had not moved, that it would never move again.

The body lying there on its back, one foot doubled awkwardly

underneath, and with the arms extended, palms upward, was that of Mr.

Ponsonby Paget. On his white pleated shirt front there was a dark red

circle, and on the grey, thick-pile, Indian carpet, a puddle of crimson.

It was quite clear to me he was dead. I had attended police courts

and inquests too often, and heard too much about the symptoms and

appearances of death not to be assured of that. And the moment I was

assured of his death I started off to rouse the house.

Once outside the room I found the house in total darkness, and in haste

went blundering and fumbling about, seeking the back stairs to find the

servants' quarters. For though I knew Ponsonby Paget to be a widower

I was unaware of what relatives might form his household, and judged

it safer first to establish contact with some domestic. As it happened

the servants found me rather than I them; for as I stumbled up the

service stairs, a man in shirt and trousers, holding a candle in one

hand and a poker in the other, appeared at the top.

"What do you want?" he cried shakily.

"Hush," I motioned to him. "My name is Chance. Come and show me where

the telephone is--something's happened."

As he stared down at me uncertainly some figures in white appeared

behind him, huddled together with scared faces.

"Come at once," I urged.

"Are you the gentleman Mr. Paget was expecting?" he asked.

"Yes." Then to reassure him I added, "You were to give me supper."

"That's right, sir; it's laid in the morning-room now," he said, as if

I had merely mounted there to ask about it.

"Oh, you fool, send those women back to bed and come at once."

But he was all right by the time I got him down. Indeed, from the

manner in which he surmounted the shock of finding his master dead, he

was either a man of good nerve or had small affection for the deceased.

With some relief I learned from him that Mr. Paget had no relatives

in the house. My first act was to ring up the local police, which did

not take long, and my second was to get on to the _Record_ with the

news, asking them to keep space for further particulars. One is not a

good journalist for nothing. While I waited for the police I wrote

furiously, knowing that already in the office they would be hunting out

the obituary and the stock half-tone block of the murdered man.

The weather conditions did not delay the arrival of the local police.

First one came in, off his beat apparently, and he took over charge of

the room. On his heels came an inspector and two others, accompanied

by a doctor. To the inspector I presented my card and told my story.

But all on edge though I was to get away to my paper, he refused

permission. Indeed, he seated me in a chair against the wall, with one

of his men pretty well standing over me, while the doctor examined the

body.

I could hear them talking together, but did not catch what passed. When

the medical man came across and had a look at my coat sleeves he shook

his head to the inspector after giving me a grim smile of apology.

"Must have been drenched," he said, turning to the inspector. "I'll

tell you this, Green, the hand that sent that knife to the heart was

expert--accustomed to the use of it. He struck upwards, not downward as

is the natural inclination."

The inspector was nosing about among the _débris_ of furniture, clearly

looking for some signs of the murderer's presence. Nothing was being

disturbed I saw; he used his eyes only, while the rest of us watched.

In a very short time we saw him stoop swiftly and fish out something

from beneath the overturned screen. I could see it was a light-coloured

walking-stick, and after examining it thoughtfully for a moment he came

across to us.

"This seems out of place in a study," he said. "I wonder if--" He

checked himself and said, "Dr. Dunn, how tall was the man who used this

stick?"

The doctor took the thing in his hand. All at once he started rather

violently.

"My God!" he whispered.

"What?" the officer said in surprise. "What is it?"

"Oh, I see what you mean," the doctor stammered hurriedly. "You think

this may have been left by the criminal?"

The other nodded.

"Must have been at least six feet to use a stick of that length

comfortably."

"At least," agreed the doctor rather eagerly, trying it at his side,

"if not a bit over."

How impatiently I listened as they talked on. Would they never let me

go! The provincial editions, and the home editions of my paper were

already out. My only hope now was for the 3 a.m. London edition. That I

must catch.

At last, when I had reached despair, the inspector, after taking

counsel with his chief on the phone, and then verifying my identity

by referring to the _Record_ office, let me go. But in the police car

only. And it was still early morning when they set me down at the

office.

I found myself almost famous, the printers on tiptoe for my copy.

And when my job was completed the saturnine Matheson informed me

that Babbington would want to see me later. Lord Babbington was the

proprietor of the _Record_, and seeing the surprise on my face Matheson

grunted.

"It is not often that keeping doubtful company leads to so great a

distinction," he said.

* * * * *

It seemed to me I had not been ten minutes in bed that same morning

when there came a furious knocking at the door. A note was slipped in,

and on tumbling half awake out of bed I found it directed me to go at

once to Ealing to assist McNab, who had been sent there to investigate

on the paper's behalf. As I dressed, the clearness of the day outside

made me look at my watch: it was close on noon. I had slept for nearly

five hours, and the fog had gone. It was only then that I had time to

think of poor Ponsonby Paget as a human being whom I had known and

liked, and not as a sensational case which I had to report. But I can

say that I thought of him with a personal sorrow all the way to his

house.

There was little difficulty in knowing which that was once I reached

Tookworth Avenue. A constable stood at the gate to prevent the scores

of curious sightseers from entering the grounds. I observed, too, that

a rope across the drive now prevented any one from entering that way.

This was a precaution that appeared to fascinate the onlookers, for

they craned their necks and pointed at the drive beyond the rope. But

nothing was on the path except the wheel tracks and footprints of many

who had come and gone before the rope had been placed there to stop

them. On the lawn press photographers were mighty busy getting the

deceased's residence from every sort of angle. My friend, the Ealing

inspector, I found inside the hall, reduced now to little more than

doorkeeper since the arrival of the big men from New Scotland Yard. He

nodded to the officer to let me enter.

"Inspector Snargrove wishes to see you," he said, beckoning. "Come this

way."

Snargrove I knew by repute. So far I had been too busy with the fact

of the murder to theorize on its motive. But I had taken it almost for

granted that it was the work of some burglar, or prowling vagabond,

who, like myself, had come on the unlatched window. To hear, however,

that the local police had called the Yard in at once dispelled the

notion that this was a case without complexity.

The Ealing inspector tapped softly, as if at a sick room door, and

popping his head in to announce me stood aside.

Inspector Snargrove, a magnifying glass at his eye, was on his knees

closely examining the wall opposite the fireplace. As a greeting he

waved me to one side without speaking. Another man stood with his back

to the fire, close to McNab, who was seated. Except that the body had

been removed the room appeared to be untouched since I first entered

it. Neither McNab nor the thin man with the sharp ascetic face of a

priest took any notice of me, both being intent on Snargrove. So I also

turned to watch him.

The detective was peering at certain dark spots showing on the plain,

grey wall-paper, about three feet from the floor. There was a series of

these spots, disposed irregularly in sets of three, close together, the

one in the centre slightly higher than the other two beside it. Each

set was separated from the next by about two feet. The spots varied in

density, those nearer the inner door being fainter.

Before I had ceased to wonder Snargrove pocketed his lens, rose to his

feet and came across. He was a burly man with a drooping moustache, was

rather high in colour, and had eyes of the cold grey-blue so frequent

in men of his complexion.

"I think," he said as he took a chair, "we are now able to put a few

questions, a few intelligent questions, to our young friend."

The man with the thin-lipped, priest-like face sat down also. McNab

motioned me to a small chair next his own. Snargrove turned towards me

pleasantly, producing from his pocket the report I had intended for the

_Record_.

"Your notes have been very useful, Mr. Chance, very useful so far as

they go. Still, from my point of view, they leave several details

uncertain."

"All I know is at your disposal."

"Good." He waved his powerful hand. "Mr. Freely's affair."

The thin-lipped man referred to nodded curtly. His questions were quick

and snappy. One somehow had to be quick in reply. Snargrove gave one

time to think, but Freely didn't.

"Mr. Paget expected you last night?"

"Yes, he had asked me to dine with him."

"What hour was fixed?"

"Eleven."

Mr. Freely lifted his eyebrows. It was as if he meant to disconcert me.

I recounted the telephone talk I had held with the dead man.

"He was anxious to have you here?"

"Oh, yes."

"Hm, how are you so certain of that?"

"Well, I remember he swore to himself, quite softly, when he thought I

couldn't come. And I never heard him use an oath in any circumstances

before."

"He was agitated?"

"Very much."

"Did you gather there were to be any others present?"

"He mentioned none, and I certainly expected to find him alone."

"Mr. Chance, if a decanter of whisky and two glasses were set out on

this table, would you take it that one of the glasses was meant for

your use?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Mr. Paget was aware of my habits. When I first went to his club he

pressed a drink on me."

"And he never did so again?"

"Never. He was a man who remembered little things very well."

"You reached here about one, the officer says?"

"Three minutes past by my watch."

"You were so anxious to see Mr. Paget that you entered even at that

hour? What made _you_ so determined to see him?"

"I debated the question of entering with myself when I got here, and

finally walked round the house to see if any room showed a light. I was

anxious to show Mr. Ponsonby Paget that I had not failed him without an

effort."

Mr. Freely came over to me.

"Hold up your left hand," he said, fingering in his pocket.

When I held up my hand half resentfully he examined it closely through

the lens he had brought out. It struck me as stupid to look at my hands

after all the time that had elapsed.

"Thank you. Now tell us what first attracted your notice when you

entered the room."

"The torn curtain and the overturned chairs. Then I saw a foot

projecting from behind the table."

"It frightened you, and you gripped the table?"

"Startled me, not frightened; I saw the foot before reaching the table."

"You are mistaken, Mr. Chance. You did not see the foot till you stood

at the table. Although the room was lit the body lay in the shadow at

the far end of the table."

"I do not recall gripping the table, though."

Mr. Freely smiled.

"Don't be so eager to deny that. It is a fact which serves to clear you

of any complicity in the crime. Look here."

He led me to the farther side of the big table, and, removing a

newspaper, revealed four chalk marks on the outer edge of the polished

wood.

"These are the four fingers of your left hand. The thumb is underneath.

Excellent impressions they are, just because you gripped hard, and your

hand became suddenly clammy. The man who made that impression came

on an unexpected sight, in fact he broke into a cold sweat. Compare

the whorl in the middle finger and the lines making a half circle as

if to avoid contact with the double transverse line behind the first

joint--they are your marks."

Freely was certainly right, as I had to admit on making the comparison;

but I had no recollection of ever having gripped that table.

"We had a reason for demonstrating this to you, Mr. Chance. Your

profession, with its acquired habit for observation, makes you a more

reliable source of evidence than we usually get, but not--er--as you

see--infallible. Be careful about the answer to my next question."

He paused for my nod of assent.

"James Brown, the butler, says the key of that door always remains in

the lock inside. When you left the room to summon help was that door

locked or not?"

It was humiliating to me not to remember, but I did not, and, after a

pause, said so.

"A pity," Freely commented, "but quite natural while the one thought of

getting help occupied your mind. However, here is something easier." He

stepped over to the table, lifted from it the walking-stick I had seen

the Ealing inspector find beneath the screen, and held it out. "Is this

your stick by any chance?"

"No, I never use a stick."

"Look at it. Have you seen it before, with Mr. Paget for instance?"

It was a long stout oak stick of the ordinary kind, with a plain rather

grimy handle.

"Never. It would be too long for Mr. Paget," I remarked, "and not half

smart enough."

"Capital! That corroborates the butler, who scoffs at the idea of his

master possessing such an article. It was almost certainly left by the

criminal."

Mr. Freely's satisfaction was very manifest, and Snargrove nodded

agreement. While he replaced it a knock came at the door, and an

officer entered carefully carrying a square of white paper on the palm

of his hand. Freely directed him to put the paper on the table. From

the five smudges I could see on its upper surface I divined they were

imprints of the dead man's fingers.

"Better settle this at once, eh, Snargrove?"

For answer to his confrère's question the inspector rose and approached

the table. McNab remained where he was, elbows on knees, his face

between his hands and his brow furrowed, obviously lost in thought.

More than interested in the proceedings, I took up a position on the

side of the table opposite the two Scotland Yard experts. When one is a

journalist one becomes hardened to possible rebuffs. But they did not

seem to mind my watching them at all.

It was now that I observed on the table an array of articles which my

experience in the law courts told me the police called "exhibits." A

queer lot they were to be brought into connection with each other! At

the far end of the row was an overcoat with fur collar and cuffs; next

to it a pair of dress shoes, followed by a little heap of broken glass,

a plain envelope, a decanter half full of what looked like whisky, then

a wedge-shaped splinter from what seemed a hand mirror, and, last in

the row, the stout oak stick already mentioned.

The two Yard men began on the little heap of glass. With a pair of

forceps Freely lifted and set out each piece into one or two separate

places, and when he had finished I saw they now formed the remains of

two tumblers. Snargrove, watching, took a small box from his pocket.

But Freely upon reconsideration shuffled one or two pieces from the

remains of one tumbler to the other heap. Then the inspector dusted

the whole with grey powder from his box. Waiting a minute or so Freely

began to go over the powdered surface, delicately, with a soft brush.

The result amazed me. It was like watching a photographic plate being

developed, for finger-prints came up on the glass as if by magic.

"Got him!" Snargrove murmured. "Got him: this is the glass he used."

Freely stood up and, after a glance at the paper with the dead man's

imprints in black, nodded assent. I could see myself those fingers on

the glass were different, even in size. They left untouched the other

glass, which had evidently been Mr. Ponsonby Paget's.

But it was a disappointment when they returned to their seats, for I

was curious about the other "exhibits," especially so in regard to what

the envelope contained.

"We are now almost in a position to reconstruct the crime," said

Snargrove, settling himself comfortably. "Call James Brown, the butler.

I've one or two supplementary questions yet to put."

The butler seemed a trifle nervous with his hands as he entered. In

the excitement of our first meeting I had scarcely looked at him.

But I took note of him now as he stood in front of Snargrove. He was

in the early fifties, stoutish, puffy under the eyes and with the

smooth mask-like face peculiar to his calling. There was no hint of

nervousness, though, in the bow he made to the inspector.

"You have said you admitted no visitors to this room last night?"

Snargrove began.

"Yes, sir, that is so."

"Did Mr. Paget ever have visitors you had not admitted?"

"Frequently."

"Late at night?"

"More often than not, sir."

"You could hear their voices?"

"When I went round locking up, or as happened sometimes when the bell

rang for me to serve refreshments."

"Did you ever happen to hear a woman's voice?"

"Oh, yes, sir, quite often."

Snargrove nodded.

"Of what class were these ladies?" he next enquired. And as the butler

hesitated he added quickly, "Come, a man in your position must know how

to 'place' people by their appearance or their voices."

"Well, they were of all classes, from ladies' maids to--well, to the

lady herself, as you might say."

"And did you ever form any notion as to their business and why they

came so late?"

Brown moved uncomfortably for a moment.

"Well, sir, it was generally understood--in the Room I mean--that they

came on business connected with the paper, and so naturally they did

not wish to be seen."

At this reply I saw McNab glance swiftly up at Brown's face. He too, I

know, was asking himself if this mask-like butler was capable of the

irony his answer implied. Snargrove also caught at the word.

"Naturally, you say. Do you mean they came to supply Mr. Paget with

gossip for the _Eye Opener_?"

But Brown was not to be drawn. The flicker of light died from his eyes

and like a man who had said more than he had intended his face became

wooden again.

"That I don't know; I never heard they did, sir."

Snargrove gave a laugh--to my ear of bluff carelessness.

"And how about the men who came, Mr. Brown?"

"There never were any, leastways so late as that."

"So if a man was here about midnight last night you would regard it as

exceptional?"

"Indeed yes, sir, very exceptional indeed."

"Thank you, that will do."

"And now," Snargrove said when the door closed softly behind the

butler, "we can proceed to the reconstruction."

To me there was something appalling in the cold, slow, unruffled

deliberation of these men. For all they knew the murderer might with

every minute that passed be putting another mile between himself and

pursuit. Yet here they were, slowly and methodically thinking it out;

and, to judge from McNab's attitude, they might have been at it for

hours. All the same at Snargrove's words McNab looked up alertly.

"Go on, inspector," he said.

CHAPTER X

Inspector Snargrove began his reconstruction of the murder in a quiet,

even tone.

"Last night," he said, "Mr. Ponsonby Paget sat where I am now. He was

expecting some one who did not come. That person was not Mr. Chance.

The deceased, knowing his abstemious habits, would not have got a

glass ready for Mr. Chance's use, nor would he, as James Brown, the

butler, has said he did, have directed the decanter to be refilled.

Mr. Paget became very uneasy as time passed and his expected visitor

did not arrive. He opened the French window leading into the garden.

Why? Not perhaps to look for his visitor there, but because from there

he could most quickly and conveniently see if the fog still held. He

wondered if the person had been delayed by, or gone astray in, that

fog. Therefore that person was neither a neighbour nor, probably, one

familiar with the neighbourhood, but one who had to travel some quite

considerable distance. It may or may not be symptomatic of Mr. Paget's

nervous condition that he left the window unbolted. But his uneasiness

assuredly went on increasing as the night passed. He left the house by

the front door, and walked for some considerable time, presumably in an

attempt to find the person who he must have concluded had lost his way.

That he did this on the smallest chance of lighting on him reveals the

anxiety he now felt. He returned alone, re-entering by the front door."

At my exclamation of surprise McNab touched me.

"Hush!"

But Snargrove was quite mild about it.

"The overcoat he wore is kept in the cloak-room beside the front door,

Mr. Chance. The coat is still damp. Soaked fur retains moisture a long

time, especially in muggy weather, such as has prevailed, if _well_

soaked. So he was out some considerable time."

"He was a considerable time in town yesterday," I said dryly.

"Not wearing this coat, Brown asserts. Besides, there's the grit and

mud on his dress shoes, and these he certainly did not wear in town."

After that crushing retort I kept a respectful silence.

"He returned alone," Snargrove resumed, in his former dreamy tones,

like a man retelling something seen in vision, "replacing the coat in

the cupboard where we found it. Why do I say alone?" Snargrove paused

with his eyes on me. "Because of what that decanter tells me. When I

cross-question it, at first its testimony seems to say he did _not_

return alone. But a little careful questioning gives us the truth.

Its measured capacity is one quart, and it was filled to capacity by

the butler after dinner last night. Now one pint two ounces are gone.

Who consumed that amount? We have the broken pieces of two glasses,

both of which were used last night. But note this: that used by the

criminal has but one set of clearly defined traces of the right hand

finger-prints. That is, it was but _once_ used, and its capacity is a

half-pint."

Snargrove's eyes glittered brightly as he looked round his audience. He

pointed to the second broken glass, the fragments of which Freely had

not brushed.

"I am going to say that if the finger-prints on that glass, the glass

used by the dead man, were exposed, they would show that the glass had

been used more than once."

Freely, rising hurriedly, produced his powder and the little brush, and

set to work on the glass.

"Assume that is so till we know," the inspector continued, "the

inference will follow that the two parties who used these glasses used

them at different times. Notice this well! This stranger took his

whisky in one gulp. Does a guest do that? I think not. Neither, on the

other hand, does a host go on helping himself while his guest's glass

is empty. And if I am right about his glass that is what Mr. Paget

did--if the two men drank together."

"You're right, Snargrove," Freely announced. "He took up and put down

this glass five times at least."

Snargrove waved a hand.

"That settles it: the man who used the other glass is the man who _had

already_ killed Ponsonby Paget, and he used the glass put there for

some one else _who never came_."

All this close reasoning was startlingly impressive and convincing to

the mind. The detective inspector drew a deep breath through his teeth.

"And now," he said grimly, "let us have a look at the murderer."

Freely returned to his seat. As for me, I hung on Snargrove's words,

startled by his tone of certainty.

"He crept in by the French window while his victim sat where I now sit,

with his back to that window. Mr. Paget had given up all expectation

by this time, and sat low down in his chair so that he was hidden

from the man who examined the room from behind the curtains. This man

was tall and dark, well under middle age, of exceptionally powerful

build, but lame. After a glance around the room he concluded from

seeing the lights left on that it had been only temporarily vacated.

He must therefore be quick and take what lay to his hand. He had just

emerged from behind the curtain when Mr. Paget rose from his chair

and approached the table to replenish his empty glass. The stopper

found lying on the table beside the decanter tells its own tale. It

tells us that at the precise moment he was about to lift the decanter

he heard a noise, probably the intruder's awkward attempt at stepping

backwards behind the curtain. Thinking it might be the delayed guest,

or Mr. Chance here, Mr. Paget hurried to the alcove. The intruder could

not get away in time, and his lameness made it certain he could not

finally get away at all. Mr. Paget seized him; there was a struggle,

the curtain was torn, and the small table and the draught screen were

overturned. Mr. Paget raised an outcry and held on. Though a foot

shorter, his weight, and the other's lameness, enabled him to hold his

own. The struggle carried round the room. In the end youth told, and

the older man, in the act of being thrown, clutched desperately at

the other's hair. Only then did the murderer draw his knife. He was a

man who knew how to use a knife. But before he could use it Mr. Paget

saw what was coming and, dropping his hold, started back, stumbled,

fell here." Snargrove moved across to a spot on the carpet on which

a little circle of chalk was drawn, and indicated the spot with his

foot. "He was trying, you can see, to put the big table between them.

He was too late."

The inspector stepped to the place marked by the dark crimson stain.

For a moment he stood regarding that stain. Then approaching the table

with the exhibits he picked up the envelope. From it he very carefully

shook a few strands of dark hair into his palm, and as he looked at

them said:

"Freely, he was not one of your chronics. The habitual criminal whose

outfit includes a weapon, carries a revolver, not a knife of the sort

used here. Your type of criminal has a prejudice against the sight of

blood; and in addition he knows all about finger-prints. But this man,

though unaware of the danger of finger-prints, was a fellow used to the

sight of red. He was probably a soldier, an ex-service man, to judge

by the length of this hair. A bit of a fop too"--Snargrove touched

the splinter of the mirror--"young men carry that sort of thing now.

Ten years ago that would have meant a woman in the case!" He laughed

shortly. "This chap whipped it out to see if his face had got--well,

splashed. The glass had got cracked in the struggle and this splinter

dropped out. Something scared him then. Probably some noise, real or

imaginary, for he left in a mighty hurry, before he had time to recover

his stick, which was only out of sight under the overturned draught

screen, at the spot where he was seized by the murdered man."

Inspector Snargrove, his eyes brightening, nodded satisfaction.

"Yes, it ought not to be a long hunt, Freely. A regular amateur in

crime, though not in killing, this fellow. Why, look at that"--he

wheeled round dramatically, pointing to the smears on the wall

opposite--"who but an amateur would think of wiping his fingers on

the wall! In the whole of my experience I never saw anything like

it--never."

At this juncture McNab looked up, and, nursing his left knee in his

clasped fingers, nodded his agreement.

"Nor have I. That's what makes me wonder." He whistled meditatively for

a moment. "But, after all, these smears tell you little."

We were all now looking across at the marks on the wall.

"Yes," Snargrove agreed, "that is so. The dragging of the fingers

downward, and the rough canvas surface, destroyed the finger-prints, if

that is what you mean."

"Partly," McNab rejoined. His eyes narrowed. "You say he was a tall

man. If so he must have gone on his knees to put those marks where they

are. He may have gone down to do that, of course, but it bothers me to

think why he took the unnecessary trouble. You say he was scared too.

There again I'm in a difficulty. The marks were made by the right hand

of a man going towards the door--those nearest the door being fainter.

But if he was scared by anything at all his natural impulse would make

him run for the exit, the window by which he had entered, which was

that French window at the other end of the room. But as a fact he made

for that door leading to the interior of the house."

"The scare possibly came from the garden," Snargrove said.

"Quite--if there was a scare at all. By the way, you have examined the

path for footprints?"

Snargrove smiled.

"We have not--it is only in works of fiction that criminals leave

footprints on a brick path."

McNab ignored the gibe.

"Suppose there was a scare, inspector, did the man take the whisky

before or after he had wiped his hands on the wall?"

Snargrove smiled still more indulgently.

"After, otherwise the glass would carry traces of blood. Wiping his

hands on the wall was sufficient to remove the stains at just the

points where the finger-tips made contact with the glass."

"Then if he stayed to drink the whisky he must have discovered his

scare to be a false alarm, and did not leave in such a hurry after all?"

Snargrove thoughtfully licked the end of his moustache in between his

teeth, and then frowned as if he did not like its taste.

"And yet," McNab continued, "he takes nothing, except the whisky--not

even his victim's watch and chain, which glittered in the light before

his eyes, ready to his hand!"

"He was an amateur in burglary but not in killing, as I read him,"

Snargrove said; adding significantly, "Like most amateurs he bungled."

"What's your theory?" Freely asked bluntly, turning to McNab.

"I've got none: it fair beats me," McNab admitted, "to account for

all the--the--phenomena." He turned to the inspector. "I'll allow,

Snargrove, that some of your inductions were masterly in certain

details, but in the total I find your reconstruction does not carry

complete conviction. There's that matter of the walking-stick for

example."

From the surprised look on Snargrove's face it was clear he plumed

himself on his deductions from the stick.

"Well, what about it?"

"You infer the murderer was lame because he used a stick. Put that

into logical form and see what happens: _All lame men are men who use

walking-sticks._ Is that what you say?"

The inspector after a moment nodded assent.

"That's about it."

"Very good. Here then we have a walking-stick. If the conclusion you

draw from it is sound, it should be capable of conversion into this

other complementary proposition: _All walking-sticks are things that

are used by lame men._ Which is a manifest absurdity, since many

who are not lame use walking-sticks. There's the fallacy for you,

arising from the fact that the predicate in your proposition is an

undistributed predicate. Therefore such a proposition can only convert

into this proposition: _Some walking-sticks are things used by lame

men._"

"Quite so, and I say this one was."

"But why? Just because you _want_ to believe it. I defy you to give any

reason in logic for that belief."

Snargrove, reddening at the gills, pursed out his lips.

"Logic! What is logic?" he asked contemptuously.

The retort that came must have been as little expected by him as it was

by me. Perhaps the previous sneer about bungling amateurs had stung

more than appeared at the moment.

"Logic," said McNab coldly, "is the science which teaches foolish men

a respect for truth not theirs by nature; it trains our ignorant minds

to take account of _all_ the facts, and not merely--like lawyers,

policemen and politicians--those facts which suit their case."

Snargrove went quite pale--more pale than Freely himself. But I will

say this for him--although he may have been a poorer logician, he had a

better control of his temper than McNab. McNab called logic a science,

but he was as touchy about it as if it had been a religion. Indeed to

him it was a religion. So in the silence that followed his rude retort

I made a mental note never to speak disrespectfully of logic in his

presence. And the next moment I was admiring the amazing way in which

discipline told on Inspector Snargrove.

"What are the facts to which you allude?" Snargrove asked calmly.

"Besides those I have already mentioned there's this. You say the

murder was not done by the man Ponsonby Paget waited for. He never

came, you say. Then, doubtless, a letter of apology or explanation has

come in. No? Odd, surely, one would have expected a letter of apology

or explanation by first post from a guest who had failed to turn up."

Freely looked over quickly.

"Oh, I don't know," he said pointedly, "bad manners are not so uncommon

as all that."

McNab smiled as he took the thrust.

"Sir," he said, turning to Snargrove, "for classifying you with

lawyers and politicians just now I apologize humbly."

"That's all right," the inspector said with brusque awkwardness. Then

turning to Freely he added, "We'd better be moving now."

McNab must have seen that he had mortally offended Inspector Snargrove,

and he stood up eagerly.

"Before you go, inspector, I beg you to consider one possibility

overlooked so far in this case. Was the light on or off when those

hands touched that wall? It's almost incredible the man knew of the

blood on his hands. If the light was off, was the man who left the

traces of his blood-stained hands on that wall not feeling for the

switch? He was going in its direction, crawling--he was _certainly_

crawling--along the wall, anxiously feeling for something. Why did

he crawl? Because the furniture was all scattered over the floor. He

was afraid of falling over something, and making more noise, or, more

likely, getting hurt. And, if he was in the dark, consider how that

fact explains more than the blood-stains. He did not see his hands, and

so of course did not observe what he was leaving on the wall-paper. But

this would explain, too, the fact that nothing was taken, or could be,

till he found the switch; and the darkness would also account for the

fact that he left his stick behind. The room was in _darkness_, man."

Snargrove laughed.

"That it wasn't. You are forgetting the mirror. He would hardly take

out a mirror in darkness. Besides, Mr. Chance found it lit up."

"Yes, but _not_ lit up by the man who crawled along the wall, and who,

as the marks show us, never reached the switch."

"I beg your pardon, you are--"

But McNab threw up his hands on recognizing that Snargrove's mind was

closed.

"Oh, man," he cried with a weary sigh, "do not bother to beg my pardon;

it would be more to the purpose if you didna beg the question."

And he turned his back on Snargrove.

The inspector wheeled round.

"You go your way, I go mine," he said challengingly. "We'll see who

lays him by the heels."

When we in turn left the room we found Freely trying for finger-prints

on the glass of the French window, and Snargrove himself busy inside

the roped off portion of the drive. That anything could be got there

seemed to me incredible. The footprints on the drive, which was spongy

after the days of soft rain and fog, were numberless. While McNab

watched I tried idly to pick out my own of the previous night, and soon

saw how impossible it was. So I turned to see if on McNab's face there

was reflected anything of the futility I felt Snargrove's examination

to be. But he was not looking at the inspector's broad bent back.

He seemed to be occupied in much the same way himself. I waited as

patiently as I could, till after a time he perhaps became conscious of

me as a disturbing presence and straightened himself.

"You needn't wait," he said. "I won't be coming yet. There's still

something I want to ask James Brown, the butler."

CHAPTER XI

On the following Wednesday, after returning to the office from the

inquest, which was adjourned for seven days at the request of the

police, Matheson asked me to go round to the Adelphi to remonstrate

with Francis McNab.

"He seems to have fallen out with Snargrove," Matheson said

disagreeably. "The _Record_ will suffer for it. This will never do.

Snargrove has turned uncommunicative."

He lifted a police bill with the usual heading, and handed it to me.

"Take that round to him; it is all Snargrove has seen fit to give us

about the case. Nothing more than is to be read on every hoarding. Show

him what he has done. And you can add that it will be difficult for

Lord Babbington to secure him special privileges for his work if he

becomes--er--_persona non grata_ with the authorities."

While Matheson was laying it off I read the bill:

"WANTED. Young, dark, well-dressed man, about six feet in height

and of strong build, but walks with a pronounced limp. Known to

have been in Ealing on the night of Monday, January 15th. Any

information should be sent to New Scotland Yard or to the nearest

police station."

"McNab won't like this; it's contrary to his own theory," I said.

Matheson pricked up his ears.

"He has a theory, then? What is it?"

"He hasn't said."

"But he thinks Snargrove wrong?"

"Astray--like a lost sheep."

Matheson ruminated for a rather long time. I knew just what was passing

in his mind: he was thinking of the possibility of working up a stunt

on the Ponsonby Paget case, supposing the paper took a line at variance

with that taken by the authorities. In other words, he was thinking

that even if a break with the police were inevitable it needn't be

unprofitable.

"Tell him," Matheson said at last, "this paper will back him in any

reasonable line he cares to take."

"Against the police?" I asked.

"Against any one," he snapped.

I found McNab in his eyrie overlooking the river.

"Matheson says he'll back up any attack you make on our police

methods," I announced.

"Does he? Well, I'm not proposing to begin one. The police do their

best, and that more often than not is pretty good." He walked up and

down for a little. "A fine thing if I were to attack the police!"

Stopping, he eyed me quizzically. "Look here, you once asked me why I

took up this kind of work. The true answer is that it's in my blood--my

father was a policeman."

"Oh, I didn't know."

He nodded.

"Yes; though he ended a county inspector he was once a humble village

constable who did fine work in the matter of some Irish Fenians just

before I was born." McNab looked down thoughtfully. "Still, of course,

this Snargrove isn't the police; we must not commit the fallacy of

arguing from the particular to the general."

I seized the moment to produce the police bill.

"Matheson wants to know if you wish to write him anything on this," I

said.

He read it through, making a running commentary:

"'_Young, dark, well-dressed man_'--ay, all that's because his hair was

kept well brushed. They've had the microscope on it. At what age do men

cease to use a hairbrush?

"'_About six feet in height_'--that's an inference from the length of

the walking-stick.

"'_Walks with a marked limp_'--that's the stick again, a _non

sequitur_, I think." He looked up at me in disgust. "Man, the thing

fair reeks with fallacies." Then he thrust the bill back on me. "No,

tell Matheson I've nothing to say." And with that he bundled me with

the police bill outside.

* * * * *

When, however, the day of the resumed inquest arrived I went round, at

Matheson's request, to see if McNab would accompany me to the court.

But he met me with a point-blank refusal.

"I've washed my hands of that case," he declared shortly.

"Well, of course, it is a rather difficult case," I admitted.

He met the remark with a snort.

"Matheson," I continued, "is keen about it. He will give you carte

blanche as regards expense, if you are sure you can make a big splash

of it on _Record_ lines. But he won't stand a penny piece, he says, if

all you can do is to say 'Amen' to what Snargrove says."

He wheeled round on me.

"Is that likely?"

"It's not what I gathered from what you said to him at Ealing. Still,

as you now refuse to get on with it I suppose, after deeper thought,

you've changed your mind."

"Look here, Chance," he cut in, "I'll at least go out with you to hear

the evidence offered at the inquest. It's just possible Snargrove may

have modified _his_ notions."

That was all I wanted.

We arrived at the court rather early, and to pass the time went into

the small ante-room in which the various exhibits connected with the

case were laid out on a table. While we were there Snargrove came in to

post a constable in charge of the productions. He affected not to see

McNab.

The little court was crowded to excess by the curious public. But,

after I had repeated my evidence as already recorded, I secured a place

at the press table. In the small gallery at the back of the hall I saw

McNab's intent face as Inspector Snargrove gave his evidence in the

presence of a hushed court. Before that evidence--unaltered in any

particular of vital importance--had closed, however, I was startled by

a change of countenance in McNab. Seen against the dark woodwork of the

gallery his face had previously looked pale, worn and harassed--the

face of a man disgusted and disagreeing with what he heard, yet unable

to say why--but now there was a complete change. His face, still pale,

had become--it is the only word--illuminated! His dark eyes shone

like lamps. Catching sight of me he rose, made a gesture towards the

door, and left his place. My heart began to thud. Something big had

happened. I got up from the table. There was no real need to wait for

the verdict, it would come through on the tape later. After Snargrove's

evidence the finding was a foregone conclusion--wilful murder by some

person or persons unknown. I hurried out.

McNab stood in the corridor waiting for me, with his eyes shining.

Seldom have I seen a man so eager. Beyond all doubt he had lighted on

something startling and unexpected. And knowing the kind of man he was

I felt certain it was no mare's nest but something that threw fresh

light on the perplexing case.

"Just let us have one more look at the exhibits," he said, taking my

arm.

We passed into the ante-room with a nod to the policeman guarding

the door. He gave little heed to us, for with outstretched neck and

awe-struck eyes he was trying to catch the evidence then being given by

the great detective from the Yard.

McNab almost pounced on the walking-stick, examining it all over, top

and bottom. It trembled in his hands.

"Ye heard me suggest the room was in darkness when those hands with

blood on them marked that wall?" he demanded, his voice vibrating in

suppressed excitement.

"Yes, I did. You were wrong, of course, for the room was brilliantly

lit when I entered."

He shook his head with decision.

"I was not wrong, lad. You see this stick? Examine it well and tell me

what you make of it."

I took the stick and examined it narrowly.

"Describe it," he ordered.

"It is a common, cheap, heavy, oak stick. Except that it must have been

used by a very tall man it is not different from others of its kind," I

said, wondering and mystified, for I had expected something big.

"There is a difference, though. Look! Hold it out straight as if you

were walking. Do you see the _sole_ of it bevelled towards what you

may call its heel? A stick you used would be bevelled slightly on the

side next your right leg. Because you are right-handed it would sooner

or later get worn down on the nearest side. Similarly in the case of a

left-handed man his stick would have a bevel towards his left leg. For

no man holds a walking-stick quite perpendicular; it is always closer

to his flank than to his boots."

"But this is neither," I interrupted, turning up the end. "It is worn,

very much worn, not at either side but right across the heel."

"Precisely. I said that man did his fell work in darkness. I was right.

He did. This stick proves that."

To me it seemed McNab had gone off his head, for all his assured tone.

I watched him anxiously as he stood eyeing the wretched stick, now in

his hands again. There was an expression of rapture on his face. In

fact, he looked like some professor reverently handling the body of

some vile but uncommon reptile. What to make of it I did not know.

It was one of those moments when thought is paralyzed. Some vague

remembrance of Moses and the rod that turned into a serpent came to me.

Then McNab looked up and began to talk just like a professor starting

to lecture.

"Here," he said, "we have a demonstration of the value of the logical

method. In spite of Inspector Snargrove's presentation of the case, and

in spite of your own confident evidence in support, I just could not

believe the room was lighted up when those marks were put on that wall.

No, that I could not believe. Such an act was devoid of sense. And all

actions have some sense traceable in them somewhere. So as a reward of

my fidelity I come on the amazing truth."

He was as maddening then as any long-winded, fossilized professor.

"Don't see how that stick can tell you anything," I said to hurry him

up.

"No? Well, it quite transforms the case. A queer man that! But the rope

is already as good as around his neck."

He replaced the stick on the table and, as it were, awoke from his

ecstasy.

"Must see Matheson at once," he said in a new tone. "Money will be

needed--lots of it. But, Lord, it will be worth it to his paper! This

is a case that will make a noise in the world, Chance."

He began to make for the door. I stopped him, eager enough now.

"Tell me more," I urged.

But he shook me off.

"You bat! You unbeliever! It's all before your eyes. If you can't see,

it will be a good discipline for you to wait."

Again I seized his coat. But he broke free.

"No, no! Matheson must be the first to hear of this."

Then he fairly ran for the door.

CHAPTER XII

But for the officer in charge of the exhibits I should have caught

McNab before he got down the steps. For I had no mind to undergo the

discipline of waiting to learn what the startling discovery was. The

tantalizing refusal to tell me I owed to the evidence I had just given,

which happened to support Snargrove's theory. But the policeman at

the door stopped me. Recalled to a sense of his duty, I dare say, by

McNab's dash past him, he became uneasy, and detained me till he had

counted and scrutinized all the exhibits. That needn't have taken very

long, but by the time he had finished scratching his head over them

McNab was beyond reach.

When I got to the office I heard McNab had been closeted with Matheson

for the last twenty minutes. That, I thought, settled my chance of

hearing more. Matheson would be sure to order McNab to say nothing. But

just as I was resigning myself to the situation the chief's phone rang

sharply, and the order came through to send me up the moment I came in.

When I entered it was to find Matheson at his table in the hunched up,

thoughtful attitude I knew so well. McNab on the hearth-rug, his story

apparently finished, stood fiddling with a cigarette. Matheson, unlike

McNab, cared nothing for the niceties of a criminal case, and McNab,

unlike Matheson, cared nothing as to whether or not a case would make a

rousing stunt for the paper. I knew therefore that I had been called

in not by McNab but by the chief, so that he might be sure the affair

was worth the _Record's_ money. And that told me two things. First, as

I already knew that Matheson wanted McNab to take up the case, I saw

that the case must have taken on an unexpected aspect; secondly, that

it seemed likely to cost more than Matheson bargained for.

But for a time neither of them even glanced at me. McNab, having

unloaded his mind, stood at his ease, breathing out a cloud of smoke,

and looking more than ever like a doctor who has completed the

successful diagnosis of some perplexing case. Matheson, though, seemed

doubtful. He twisted uneasily in his chair, looking down at the notes

he had evidently made of what the other had said.

"If one could only be sure."

"Sure of how much--all?" McNab enquired.

"Well, less would do. But some indubitable facts we must have." He

pondered heavily for a moment. "Perhaps if you were to recapitulate the

absolute certainties in the case it would help us to a decision."

I could see McNab stiffen as he listened.

"If you will only back a certainty," he said tartly, "you'd better drop

this and wait for the Derby."

It was good to hear some one speak like that to Matheson; but I thought

McNab rash if he wanted the paper to take up the affair. Yet Matheson,

fingering his notes, replied quite mildly:

"Didn't you say you were certain the police were on the wrong scent?"

"In my own mind; but there's nothing absolute in that."

Matheson grunted.

"Then just enumerate any other points on which in your own mind you are

equally certain." He glanced over at me to add in quite another tone:

"Attend, please; this is where you come in, Chance."

McNab threw his cigarette into the fire.

"First," he said, "it seems a certainty to me that Mr. Ponsonby

Paget that night expected a visitor whom for some reason he feared.

It is Snargrove's view that this visitor failed to come, and that

the deceased went out to look for him. But on the latter point the

balance of probability surely is that it was Chance for whom he scoured

the roads that night. For some reason unknown, Ponsonby Paget felt

compelled to face his visitor, otherwise he might have evaded the visit

by an absence from home. I regard his dread as proved by the anxiety he

showed to secure Chance's presence. Naturally, then, it was for Chance

he searched, for Chance who had never before been to the house, and who

might well, on such a night, be stumbling about in search of it.

"The next point is still more certain. Those two whisky glasses show

us that the host expected but one visitor. But the visitor did exactly

what Ponsonby Paget tried to do when he rang up Chance from his club:

he too arranged to have another person present. And he succeeded where

his host failed."

Matheson looked up.

"What reason have you for that conclusion?" he asked.

"The list of exhibits is before you. A blind man does not carry

a mirror. Neither did Mr. Ponsonby Paget. It follows that the

walking-stick and the mirror belonged to different persons. It is thus

established that two at least were concerned in the murder."

Here I felt bound to intervene.

"But," I burst in, "how do you know there was a blind man there at all?"

A smile flickered from McNab as he saw me agape with incredulity.

"That stick is a blind man's stick," he said. "It is worn away across

the heel, as you saw, just where he held it well out in front of him to

feel his way. If you doubt it, stop the first blind man you meet and

examine the end of his stick. Yet," he continued, "the walking-stick

alone might have told me nothing without those marks on the wall. Those

marks were, and are, simply inexplicable unless the man who made them

did not see what he was doing. Therefore, one of two things: either

the room was in darkness or he was blind. But you yourself, Chance,

asserted the room was not in darkness when you entered it a few moments

after the murder had been committed. Now--"

Again I had to cut in.

"Not so fast, McNab. You say I entered a few moments after the murder.

That is news to me."

"There are two facts that 'time' the deed. First, we must conclude that

it was at a late hour, long after you were expected, since the man

went out to look for you. That act implies a high degree of prolonged

nervous strain, for really it was long odds against finding you. The

man was fairly desperate before he went out. But better than that is

the witness of the fire. You said in your evidence before the coroner

to-day that you were startled by a sudden crackling from the fire

which then burst into flame, and revealed a foot lying where the table

had previously cast a shadow. That crackle of coal was significant. It

is only newly added coal, expanding with the heat, that crackles like

that. So unless we are to suppose that the murderer thoughtfully mended

the fire before leaving, that coal was added _before_ the murder was

committed."

This reasoning carried conviction. It staggered me to think I had been

so close to the criminal. But just as I found my voice Matheson cut in

impatiently.

"Let's get back to the blind man, if you please."

I knew what Matheson was nosing after: more sensational and exclusive

matter for the _Record_. McNab turned to him.

"Only two facts remain which I can regard as certainties," he said.

"The first is that the blind man is innocent."

With my eyes still on Matheson I saw, and understood, his

disappointment. Indeed, as a journalist I sympathized with him there.

THE EALING MURDER

HUNT FOR A BLIND MAN

What a provocative bill that would have made! And Matheson was good

at bills. When he had anything exclusive to put on them he did them

himself.

"Hm," he almost grunted, "let's hear why you so conclude."

"A review of the known facts forces me to it. First there's the medical

evidence. The job was so neat--one stroke under the fourth costal

rib. By a miracle a blind man might have been so neat. And miracles

sometimes happen. But remember the smashed and scattered furniture!

That took my eye the moment I entered the room. Had the dead man made

all the fight implied by that confusion? I asked myself. If so his body

would have borne the marks of it, and he would not have been knifed so

neatly by any one. Now, with a blind man present, I can account for

what I saw. Most of that confusion at all events could result from a

blind person's frantic blundering about in an unfamiliar room among

furniture he could not see. Further, those marks on the wall tell the

same tale--a frantic and useless effort to get away. But they got him

down at last. Yes, and took him away with them by force."

As McNab stopped speaking and began to pace the room with rising

excitement, I believe our presence was forgotten. His kindled

imagination was seeing the successive events that followed the murder.

But the practical Matheson drew him back to earth.

"By force," he said after a moment, "where is the evidence for that?"

McNab wheeled round impatiently.

"Lord, man, are you still forgetting that stick! Have you considered

what a walking-stick is to a blind man? It is what your eyes are to

you. No, take that as settled, he did not go willingly without his

stick. He was carried off by some one--oh, yes--by some one who may

very well have been unaware he was blind, and who supposed the blind

man would be certain to know him at sight."

"You mean he was an acquaintance?"

"I do not. For in that case he would have known he was blind."

Matheson sat up.

"So you mean the murderer was a person of distinction--a public man?"

McNab, I remember, did not reply. He stood gazing dumbly into vacancy

with his hands thrust deep in his pockets.

"There are things in the case I cannot fathom, though. Why didn't they

finish off the blind man when he was on the floor against the wall? He

was certainly not an accomplice. One cannot visualize any one bringing

a blind man as an assistant in murder. Therefore he was there by

accident. He stumbled in at the garden window--just as Chance himself

did later on--probably while the man was being murdered. There must

have been a cry, you know. Something that told him something untoward

was happening; and he went forward to help, fell, and got the man's

life blood on his hands. What happened when he felt the fluid was

_warm_? But, Lord, how he must have startled _them_! Ay, but what have

they done with him? Where is he _now_? That is the new mystery."

He withdrew his hands, and turning to us smote one fist on an extended

open palm with great violence.

"Matheson, the Acton Green affair was nothing to this."

"Oh, of course, in that affair it was only the social position of the

guilty man that attracted interest."

McNab nodded.

"And in this case we have that interest too, and others as well."

Matheson pricked up his ears. But I knew it was not because some one

had come knocking at the door. Several times in the last half-hour

people had knocked at that same door, and he had paid no heed. He said:

"I don't exactly see how the--er--social status of the guilty man is

evident in the present case."

McNab, pausing as he walked about the room, opened his eyes in surprise.

"No? Why, that to me is so palpable that I took it for granted. You

don't see it? Well, consider this. You know Ponsonby Paget and his

paper. The most popular man in England they called him. He was--with

the masses. But he had his enemies. Big ones! In his paper he shot only

at the biggest game--eh? The smaller fry were not worth his powder

and shot. Well, we needn't look in the East End, or even in Suburbia,

for the man who killed him. And he was sure the man who stumbled into

that room would recognize him. Och, I've no doubt you've published his

portrait in your own paper often enough."

Matheson's face lighted up.

"Go ahead, then. We'll be ready to insert his portrait again--when the

time comes. The _Daily Record_ is behind you," he said, rising. "In the

interests of Justice that man must be unmasked."

* * * * *

And McNab at once began to set his machinery in motion. In the corridor

outside, where I waited for him after Matheson had dismissed me, he

gripped my arm.

"You are to work with me," he said. "I stipulated for that. But nobody

is to know," he added. "You're to act as go-between, you understand,

between me and the _Record_."

This was better than I had hoped.

"Right," I cried joyfully, shaking his hand.

"Here's your first duty, then. Find out if any report has recently

come in of a blind man missing from his home. Bring me round all

particulars."

"That won't take five minutes. If you wait--"

"No! That is the point. Not a soul must guess for whom the information

is wanted. And that's not all. Look out too for any item that may come

in reporting the finding of the body of some unknown man. And, if these

news items haven't already appeared, don't forget I want them before

publication."

The second request startled me. McNab had stirred the imagination by

his conjectures on the blind man's share in the tragedy. It had moved

me to think of that man stumbling innocently by the same entrance as

myself into that room and getting caught in the whirlpool of crime.

"You don't think--" I began.

But he cut me short.

"What I think will keep," he said. "You go and get me what I want to

know."

It took me longer than five minutes to get the information he desired

in the way he ordered. For I could see that if I had to go on repeating

the request for possible news of a missing blind man, or the discovery

of a body, questions would be asked which would be awkward to explain

away. The thing might even become a joke against me, and be bandied

about among the staff. So I had to think out a plan, and set it in

motion tactfully. But I did elicit the information that no such reports

had come in since the date I gave. About five o'clock I went round to

the Adelphi to tell McNab. He seemed to be working out notes on the

case, for his table was littered with foolscap, and I observed a piled

up quantity of the _Eye Opener_ on his left hand. He looked up eagerly.

"Nothing come in yet," I said. "Nobody missing, and no body found."

"Sit down."

"McNab, you don't really think they'll do away with this blind man now?"

A snort of indignation came.

"There's nobody, it seems, would miss him much. Queer that nobody's

asking for him. Does that tell you anything?"

"Possibly he got back to his home."

"And said nothing?"

"They'd have done him in before now, wouldn't they? Why haven't they

done it already?"

He turned on me.

"You offer a fine field for unprofitable speculation there. Why does a

parrot always eat from its left hand? The point is that they have not,

and as long as he remains alive he is likely to prove very useful to

us. For after all, Chance, there are not so many blind men in England,

and of homeless ones still less, thank God."

"You speculated long enough before Matheson."

He laid down his pencil.

"Now don't get huffy. I said unprofitable speculation. I'm ready enough

to speculate where I have data on which to work. On the question as to

why he wasn't finished off along with the old gentleman I have none."

He glanced at me quizzically.

"That doesn't content you?" he asked, feigning indignation.

"Well," I said, "it isn't true. You must have formed _some_ theory as

to why the man's life was spared that night."

"Half a dozen! Here's the best of them, and if you can choose between

them it's more than I can do," he cried in a sudden burst of impatient

disgust. "First, it's possible they turned squeamish, especially if

there was a woman in it. She would be for cajoling him into silence.

A woman's weapon is not violence but guile. Second, they may have

discovered he was blind after they got him down on the floor near the

door, and so knew he could not be sure as to what exactly had happened

in that room, or even, if he had lost his way and strayed in, in whose

house he was. Again, they could have no grudge against him, such as

had moved them to murder in the case of Ponsonby Paget. Thirdly, the

condition of the room points to the fact that at first the blind

stranger was attacked. That scrap of human hair, whoever it belongs

to, tells the same tale. Yet they evidently changed their minds about

him. Why? Chance, can you visualize that scene! Suppose you had strung

yourself up through black hate to the point of murder, and unexpectedly

found yourself, in the midst of your deed, confronted by a stranger.

The first instinct, with your weapon still in your hand and your blood

up, would be to attack him. But think! When you had him on the floor,

and saw those sightless eyes turned on you, straining to see, fearful

of your blow, yet not knowing where, or when, it was to fall. What

then? Could you do it?"

"No; it must have been that."

"Ay, maybe. We cannot tell. But I can tell you this, Chance"--the

impatience had dropped from his voice and he spoke with the utmost

solemnity--"little as he may dream of it now, if they once discover how

dangerous he is to them his fate is sealed. Blindness will only have

bought him a respite."

* * * * *

It was only on that first occasion that McNab talked so freely with me

on the case. In the course of the next few days he turned much less

expansive, and it seemed the affair so gripped him that he must go like

a hound with his nose on the scent, looking neither to right nor left.

On the few occasions on which he did speak at all, I had the fancy that

he was merely using me as a whetstone to stimulate thought, or focus

certain ideas floating in his fertile brain. For, careful as he had

been to warn me against talking to others about the case, I must here

say that in his irritating, Scotch fashion he made doubly sure of my

prudence by telling me no more than he could help. And even then he

broached the matter in the most roundabout way. One day he said:

"I suppose your paper has representatives in different parts of the

country?"

"We have our own correspondents in most places, if that's what you

mean."

He nodded assent.

"Well, ye see, the other day a car knocked down a plumber in Maida

Vale, and I'm particularly anxious to trace it." He looked up at my

exclamation. "What is it now?"

"Have you abandoned the Ealing case then?"

"Oh, no; but this affair in Maida Vale--I'm sure it was Maida Vale--has

upset the equanimity of my mind, you see. It must be settled first, and

I've thought your correspondents might help me."

"What can they do?" I asked in disgust at what seemed a desertion of

the momentous Ealing tragedy for a petty accident in Maida Vale.

"Report to you the presence of the car in their locality. The car, you

see, has certain well defined characteristics."

"Oh, well, if you give me a description I'll see that it goes into

to-morrow's issue."

"But that's exactly what I don't want it to do, the car's chief

characteristics being removable. My notion was that the description

could be sent out privately, and so we could cover a large area. It's a

case in which I'm particularly keen to beat Snargrove," he added.

"Is Snargrove in this too?" I asked, surprised.

"He is that. But whether he found traces of the car when we both

examined the drive at Ealing I cannot say."

"Ealing? You said Maida Vale just now."

"Did I? Well, it was one or the other. But you'd better be careful to

call it Maida Vale to your correspondents."

Then I comprehended.

"Damn you, McNab," I cried, irritated, "why do you trifle with me like

this?"

"Oh," he said coolly, "you're very young, and I put it like that just

to impress you with the need for caution."

Caution! But I sat down again, relieved to find he had not abandoned

the big case.

"You recall that day at Ealing," he resumed, "when we came on Snargrove

examining the drive, and I joined him while you looked on, pitying us

both?"

"The road had been trampled by scores that morning," I said defensively.

"True. It was all trodden by sightseers--women mostly--too curious

to mind the mud. Still, I found something there. Nothing to do with

footprints, you know."

"You found a clue?" I cried, starting up. "Tell me!"

He said nothing at first. I could see it was something big, from the

way he looked at me. And he had kept it to himself all the time. I

never knew a man like McNab for keeping a thing till it was ripe.

"What sort of clue was it?" I demanded.

"An amazing one. The wheel-marks took my eye first. I was idly

wondering why there were so few. Then I remembered that no vehicles

had come to the house that morning, which was Tuesday, since the gate

was closed by the police, and that since there had probably been none

on the Sunday, such wheel-marks as showed very likely belonged to the

Monday's traffic. It was quite easy to count three marks--a studded

Dunlop, the criss-cross of a Michelin, a third with grooved tyres

much worn on the tread, but with the pattern quite discernible at the

two sides of the deep impression made in the soft road. Besides these

three there was a plain unpatterned track, too narrow in the tread to

be made by a tyre, which zigzagged slightly as if from the stride of

an eager horse. 'Four tradesmen, three of them prosperous,' I said to

myself, 'called at the house on Monday.' Merely as a matter of routine

I went to verify this at the house. Brown could not tell me much, and

took me to the kitchen, where the domestics put their heads together.

There was disagreement at first, and a rather hot dispute began between

a housemaid and the cook as to whether the greengrocer's man had, or

had not, called. But when I got it into their heads that I was not

interested in tradesmen who called on foot, or on bicycles, there was

general agreement that three motor vehicles only--the laundry, the

general stores and the baker--had been to the house. As I made a note

of the names and addresses I said, 'And whose was the horse drawn van?'

Then came the surprise. There was no disagreement about the horse van:

no such vehicle had been to the house. I tried to dispute this, but

found that on that point at least they were all quite positive.

"It is queer how a trifle will vex a man. I took Brown out, almost by

the scuff of the neck, to let him see those narrow wheel tracks which,

being far more visible than any of the others, spoke of a vehicle

heavily loaded. Then just as I lifted my finger to point them out to

him I saw the strange thing."

McNab paused, and ceased twiddling his thumbs.

"A car is heavier than a man, and therefore makes deeper marks on a

moist road. But a horse is also heavier than a man, and hoofs cut deep

in pulling a weight. Well, in between those narrow ruts there were

_no hoof marks_. Not one in the whole length of the drive, Chance.

Not one. To tell you the truth their absence struck me dumb, for this

was no hand cart, the wheel-marks were too far apart for that to be

conceivable. What I said to the butler I don't know, but when he had

gone I made a close inspection of those same tracks."

McNab opened a drawer, extracted a paper and handed it over to me.

"That is what I found."

On the paper there appeared two upright lines two inches apart, and

close to the line on the right there was a circle about the size of a

shilling.

"That," said McNab, "is the brass cap of a number .8 cartridge which

this tyre had picked up, and which became embedded in the solid rubber.

Very firmly embedded it was, for when dug out it brought away a

clean-cut disc of rubber. In the soft earth of the drive that hole left

a protuberance which for neatness might have been stamped out with a

baker's biscuit mould.

"You see that tyre was solid rubber, but it was on no horse van, for

there were no hoof marks. Well, there is only one type of car that

answers to these facts, and on this particular one that hole appears

on the outside edge of the offside back wheel of a Trojan car. That

is why I want a copy of this drawing to be sent out to all your local

correspondents."

"But Matheson will want to put this in the paper, probably with a

drawing of the wheel showing its exact position," I said. "It's

irresistible, a thing like this. I'd put it in myself if I were in his

place, especially in so sensational a case."

McNab lifted his eyebrows.

"Sensational--a plumber knocked down in Maida Vale!"

Then I saw the reason for his earlier pretence. Matheson assuredly

would not trouble about an accident in Maida Vale which had not even

got into the press. I was so thinking when McNab, laying his hand on my

arm, spoke in a quiet, confidential tone.

"It was this car that stood somewhere behind the house, that night,

when you stumbled about the garden or were maybe already in that room.

You understand, Chance? This car which no one saw, which none of the

servants knew of, is the car that carried off the blind man." His grip

tightened. "If they keep him we have them," he whispered with eyes

aglow.

* * * * *

And it was only when I caught myself in the midst of this eager hope

of McNab's that I realized how intense was the interest I felt in that

blind man's fate. His would be a story worth telling once we found him.

But it wasn't only as a journalist I wanted him. The human element was

in it too. The man himself as McNab had pictured him, unconscious of

the sudden death that hovered over him, aroused one's sympathy.

Well, news came at last. News that I had indeed planned and schemed to

receive, but had ceased to look for by this time. For in my concern

with posting up the local correspondents I had almost forgotten that

news might come in independently. This news item was ticked off by the

tape machine about 6 p.m. and was laid on my desk with other items from

the same news agency. As soon as I had read it through I put on my hat

and took it round to the Adelphi. How did I know I should find McNab at

home that night? I cannot tell. We always seem to be at home when bad

news comes knocking at the door.

McNab was in. He looked up quickly at my entrance, divining I brought

news, and supposing, no doubt, that something about the car had come in

from one of our correspondents.

"We are too late, McNab."

"Too late?" he repeated, a sudden shadow coming on his face.

"Read this."

I laid the flimsy piece of paper before him on the desk. As his eyes

took in the first words I saw him stiffen suddenly, pass a hand over

his eyes with a quick gesture, and then go on reading. Over his

shoulder I followed the words again:

Man Found Dead. Rye, Sussex. At a lonely spot near Stone, Isle of

Oxney, the dead body of a man was to-day discovered among some

bushes close to a hayrick by a farm labourer proceeding to work.

The body is that of a man in the early thirties, clean-shaven,

with dark hair and refined, regular features, and it is regarded

as curious that though well-dressed nothing was found on him which

could establish identity. The cause of death was not apparent, and

is so far unknown.

McNab sat looking fixedly at the slip of paper long after he must have

finished reading it. Then a sigh came.

"So they've done it after all," he said.

"I had ceased looking out for this."

"It was always a probability. Pass me that time-table."

The pages whirled under his deft fingers.

"Charing Cross to Ashford ... 9.15 Appledore.... Yes, we can just do

it, Chance."

"You are going to Stone?"

"You too. I'll need you. Phone Matheson now."

I was more than ready for the expedition. Then as I stepped to the

phone a thought pulled me up.

"McNab, how can you identify this man? I mean, how can one tell a man

has been blind after he is dead?"

McNab, already stuffing some things into a handbag, looked up.

"From the track of a car, if we find any in those lanes," he said. "If

a small disc shows in its tread this dead man was blind. Yes, and by

God, the man that did this thing shall die too, because he was strong

and had no pity."

BOOK III

STATEMENT BY DR. DUNN

CHAPTER XIII

This is a voluntary statement. It includes all the facts within my

knowledge regarding the Ealing murder, and covers the time from the

night of Monday, January 15th, when Alexander David Kinloch came to my

house in Albany Road, Ealing, till the 26th day of April following,

when I saw him for the last time.

Kinloch was brought to my house by a constable about 8.30 on the date

given. The officer said he had found him loitering, and that he claimed

to know me. He pushed him forward for inspection. The darkness of the

night was intensified by a thick fog, and I requested the constable to

put his lantern close to the man's face. The moment this was done I

recognized Kinloch. He looked in a deplorable condition, his clothing

torn and spattered with mud, and himself nervous and shaken like a man

labouring under strong but suppressed excitement. But as soon as the

light was thrown on his face it was demonstrated to me that something

had happened to him since we had last met. He was different. The next

moment I saw what had happened. The glare from the officer's electric

torch went full into his face, and yet he stared back into it with

unwavering eyes. When the officer thrust a walking-stick into his hand

I didn't need to be told what had happened: the man he had brought to

me was blind.

Kinloch had been an old friend of mine, though I had heard nothing of

him for some years. He had come to me that night for help. That he

came unwillingly I deduced instantly from the fact that he had not

sought me out earlier, but had put off till he had fallen to the state

in which he stood before me, in the last extremity of want.

He was with me about four hours. But he left my house without receiving

any help from me. We disagreed on a matter unconnected with this

case. We had often disagreed before. Indeed, it might be said that to

disagree was part of our friendship. But no previous disagreement had

ever made any rupture in our relations to each other.

When he had gone, however, I sat down filled first with perplexity and

then with remorse. For a long time I sat bewildered by the suddenness

of the rupture. Had he become more touchy? I asked myself. Had I failed

to make allowances for the hammerings of misfortune which he had

endured? Or was the change in myself? Which, I asked myself, has the

worse effect on a man's character--prosperity or adversity? Then the

remorse came when I saw I had taken a too high-handed line with a man

who had come to me unwillingly and ashamed. I want to make this clear.

Many men I have met who eye and appraise a new acquaintance from the

standpoint of their own interest and advantage. Kinloch was not of that

sort. He never tried to make _useful_ friends. And then, just when I

was thinking with increased shame that he certainly had not made one in

me, I heard the telephone bell ring up in my bedroom. It was a welcome

interruption; a night call on the most trivial case would be better

than being left to my present thoughts. I remember glancing at the

clock in the hall as I passed through to mount the stairs: it showed

twelve minutes to two.

But it was not the plaintive voice of some long-suffering attendant on

a querulous patient that awaited me on the other end of the wire. The

voice of the station sergeant came, gruff and hasty:

"Tookworth Avenue, number 15, case of stabbing. Quick as you can go,

sir."

"Ambulance?"

"No."

Knowing from this what instruments and dressings to take, I packed a

bag and ran. At the entrance gate of the house which I recognized as

that of Ponsonby Paget as soon as I sighted it, I met Inspector Green

and two constables approaching as quickly as myself from the opposite

direction.

"Not Ponsonby Paget?" I said.

The inspector nodded breathlessly. We entered together.

In the long oblong room into which we were shown by a white-faced maid

we found a constable and two men. Ponsonby Paget lay on the floor near

his writing-table. But as soon as I got down to examine his wound I

knew he was beyond my help. The position of the wound was clearly

revealed by the puncture showing on his pleated dress shirt, and the

stroke from the knife was one that must have gone through the arch

of the aorta. No need to tell the inspector the man was dead. Green

whispered to me to have a look at the two occupants of the room, who

appeared to have been detained there by the constable in charge when

we entered. One was an elderly man, who turned out to be the butler;

and the other, a young, fair-haired fellow, seemed rather restless and

excited. But a cursory look was enough to show me that neither could

have administered that wound within the previous half-hour and got rid

of the traces from their persons. It was in fact a mere formality to

look at them. So Green took it, for he had already taken his keen eyes

elsewhere.

Then the shock came. Green, who had been poking delicately about among

the wreckage of furniture, pulled out a walking-stick from beneath an

overturned table. After looking at it narrowly he brought it across

to me, and held it out, putting some question to me. But the moment

I had it in my hands I recognized the stick. It was Kinloch's stick.

It was the stick the policeman had handed back to him on my doorstep

a few hours earlier. And of course I remembered it the better because

Kinloch had not put his walking-stick into the hall-stand when I led

him in. A blind man and his stick are inseparable, and I had seen him

with it lying across his knees all the time he had been in my study. So

I inferred that Kinloch had gone to call on Ponsonby Paget after I had

failed him.

What I said and did while the stick was in my hands with Green and the

journalist looking on, I do not know; but I got away somehow. And the

next I remember is finding myself sitting in my study in the dark.

My whole thought kept revolving round one fact and its consequence:

I had practically turned Sandy Kinloch out of my house; he had found

his way into another, and now a man lay dead in that house. And I who

had, as it were, pushed him into that room had been called into it to

witness the consequence of my act. That was the awful thought that

obsessed me. Kinloch had been a man of kindly nature, with something of

more than average capacity for human sympathy, I argued. Yet hardship

hardens, and I had seen traces of bitterness in him that night. Not

that I thought his was the hand that had given that expert thrust to

the heart. No; such a blow could only by a miracle come from a blind

man's hand. Still, he had been involved in the affair; there was the

stick to prove as much. However innocently he might have got into that

room he was in danger, and--this was the thought that kept recurring--I

had pushed him into it as really as if my hand had gone to his back.

The inquest on Ponsonby Paget still further disturbed my peace of mind.

It is true that, when after giving my own medical evidence I stayed on

to hear the verdict, nothing came out against Kinloch. What did come

out from the butler's evidence was that the dead man appeared to be

constantly in touch with a considerable number of very dubious people.

And there might have been comfort for me in that but for one fact. All

along I had cherished the hope that Kinloch's stick might have got by

accident into that room. He might have lost it, or had it taken from

him, I argued. The criminal might have brought it into the room, or

even the dead man himself, for it was certainly proved by the police

that he had been, unknown to the butler, out of the house after he had

dined that night. But this possibility was dispelled by what I saw

in the ante-room to the court. For among the exhibits, and preserved

between two botanical glasses, there was shown something found in the

fatal room--a wisp of black hair which I was able to certify had been

violently torn from some one's head. Still, nothing came out then to

connect Kinloch directly with the murder.

Of course I was aware that the police do not disclose all they know at

an inquest. So when I met Inspector Green a few days afterwards I made

a cautious reference to the case, trying to get him to talk. He did

not prove to be communicative. The chief, he explained, had called in

Scotland Yard, and he himself was no longer working on it. I knew that

even so he would know a good deal of what was going on; but I dared

not risk appearing too curious about this particular case. Green's

reticence I put down to his irritation or disappointment at being

elbowed out of a big case by the Yard. Yet, though polite enough, he

was certainly rather short with me.

Thus denied any inside knowledge of what was going on, I had to rely

on the newspapers. They certainly were full enough of the case. I took

them all and read everything. It was a case that excited more than

the masses. People hardly talked on anything else. At every turn,

in train, bus, street or restaurant the wildest rumours circulated,

the most far-fetched theories as to the cause of the murder, and its

perpetrators, were advanced. My own patients, I found, wanted to

discuss the Ponsonby Paget murder with me--even the old maiden ladies

whom I had never before known to show the least interest in anything

in heaven or earth beyond the symptoms of their own, mostly imaginary,

diseases. My nerves suffered badly.

"Doctor," one of them sighed, "we may all be murdered in our beds."

"Well," I said, exasperated, "it's quite a good place to get murdered

in."

That was a patient I lost.

Then in the outside world beyond Ealing interest in the case began to

slacken. This could be detected from the newspapers. Progressively

the space allotted to the Ealing murder grew less. Presently one of

my papers one day had no reference to it. A little later and the case

had dropped out of several--it seemed for good. After that I told my

newsagent to stop my extra supply. Soon I found myself--no, not ceasing

to think of the Ealing tragedy, but able to think of other things as

well.

One morning, on leaving the hospital, I ran into Inspector Green. He

had been in about some road accident, he told me.

"Nothing doing on the Ponsonby Paget affair?" I said, so much at ease

now that I could refer in an off-hand way to the case.

"No, not much to tell," he said. "Of course you know the Yard took it

over."

When I saw he was now willing to talk of the affair, I inferred that he

had got over his sense of injustice at being pushed aside when the Yard

was called in.

"It has dropped out of the newspapers," I remarked.

"Except the _Record_."

"And you fellows have dropped it too, without exception," I said

banteringly.

He looked back at me humorously.

"I wouldn't say that, doctor. The police never give up a case, you

know." He sighed softly. "Queer case, wasn't it? It wasn't as if we

had nothing to go on; the room was scattered with traces--even to

first-class finger-prints. Hardly ever seen a case with so many good

exhibits--seven, no less."

"Eight," I corrected him promptly.

Green shook his head.

"Wrong, doctor. I remember the number well, for I remember saying to

myself there was one for every day in the week."

"Eight," I persisted.

"Oh, but no. Listen, here they are: overcoat with fur collar, pair

of dress shoes, broken whisky glass, the decanter, the paper of

finger-prints, the envelope with the wisp of black hair, and the

wedge-shaped splinter of a mirror. Seven, I think."

"Yes, seven," I admitted, "but--"

"But what, doctor?" Green turned in surprise.

I felt vaguely uneasy. I'd rather he had forgotten any other item than

that walking-stick.

"You've forgotten the stick," I blurted out.

Green, after a moment of discomfiture in which he stared at me in a

comically intent way, laughed most heartily.

"Fancy me forgetting the stick--me, who found it," he said.

And I laughed too. It was a relief that the stick could be forgotten.

Evidently Green, at least, attached little importance to it.

"But what was I saying?" he resumed thoughtfully. "Oh, yes, I was

saying I'd never known a case with so many apparently promising clues;

and yet"--with a shrug he threw out his hands in a gesture eloquent

of helplessness--"there were so many people to whom these same clues

pointed. You heard the butler's evidence, didn't you? About Ponsonby

Paget's numerous nightly visitors, I mean. Well, with all sorts coming

in secret to see him Snargrove's job needs time."

"Snargrove still on the case, then?"

"Why, yes, of course he is. And I don't envy him. Trying to trace a

score of those visitors who for reasons quite unconnected with the

murder don't want to be found."

We had reached my house by this time; but the inspector had opened up a

new vista for thought, so I paused with my hand on the gate.

"Mostly women, Brown said his visitors were."

"Yes, doctor, women--from the lady's maid to the lady herself. But they

all came on the same errand--to sell him society scandal for his paper."

"I see. Snargrove is after them all, then?"

"Got to. And they're not coming to meet him half-way, as you might

say," Green nodded, sweeping his hand in a parting salute.

* * * * *

It was the feeling of security I had received from my talk with

Inspector Green that led me to reply to Selwyn & Smith's advertisement.

But for now knowing that the authorities were busy tracing those women

I should have been too cautious without knowing much more about Selwyn

& Smith than I did when I went to see them. This is the notice I found

in a chance newspaper, picked up while waiting in a house:

ALEXANDER DAVID KINLOCH will hear something to his advantage by

communicating with Messrs. Selwyn & Smith, Devon Chambers, Chancery

Lane.

One peculiarity of the thing caught my attention. For it was mighty

queer, I thought, that they should, as the wording implied, be unaware

that he was blind, and yet know his full name. Was it a bait set to

catch him? For several days I did nothing--nothing except read the

successive reappearances of that advertisement each morning. I did

not know what I could safely do. On the sixth day the notice had

disappeared. That troubled me. Had something happened? Two more days

and, finding ignorance unbearable, I went up to see Selwyn & Smith,

determined to find out if anything had happened, but resolved to be

very cautious.

"You are advertising for one Alexander David Kinloch," I said, on being

shown into the manager's private room.

Mr. Spencer, a little, round-faced man, looked up, eyeing me narrowly,

over the top of his eyeglasses at the end of his nose.

"Are you Mr. Kinloch?"

"What if I am?" I replied defensively.

Mr. Spencer's eyebrows lifted.

"We shall certainly require proof of your identity," he said dryly.

"For what purpose?"

He got nettled by my wariness.

"Come, come, sir," he said, "let us have no more of this fencing. Your

question is not reasonable. For all I know you may have wandered in

off the street, after seeing our advertisement, to impersonate Mr.

Kinloch."

Well, when I heard that I knew at least that it would be some advantage

to be Kinloch. But when he saw me hesitate his hand went to the bell,

and it was clear he no longer took me for Kinloch. Hastily I placed my

card on the desk and said:

"Will you give me your word that it really is for something to his

advantage you want him? You see," I added lamely, "I want to find him

myself."

He had been scanning my card while I was speaking, and now stared hard

at me.

"And will you give me your word to the same effect, doctor?"

"That I will. Indeed, sir, if I could be certain you meant him equally

well, I'd leave you happier than I've been for many a day."

The fervour with which his question had made me speak seemed to

surprise him. His manner changed.

"I am a busy man," he said, "and since it is clear we both mean well by

the young gentleman, I do not understand why you beat about the bush.

You say you want to find him. So do we. What do you know about him? We

had almost concluded he must be dead."

"No, he is not dead, at least he was alive on the 15th of January when

he called at my house in Ealing."

"Dear me, if only I had known! Strange he didn't once see our

advertisement."

"It would be stranger if he did. Kinloch is blind, Mr. Spencer."

"Blind--oh, how sad! Dear me, not totally and permanently, I trust?"

"Totally, but not, I hope, permanently. That is one reason why I am so

anxious to find him. He suffers from _corneitis_, a form of blindness

once regarded as incurable, but not so since the war."

Mr. Spencer was deeply interested, and while he sat polishing his

eyeglasses I explained that Kinloch had not come to me about his sight

but because I was an old friend, that I was not an oculist, and had

enquired into the new treatment for _corneitis_ only since learning of

my friend's affliction. I wound up by saying that I was ready myself to

bear all the expense of taking him to Edinburgh for treatment by the

famous surgeon whose war experiences had taught him how to perform this

new miracle of ophthalmic surgery.

"Well," he said, "that's very good of you, very good. Still, as to

expenses, Mr. Kinloch ought to be able to meet them himself."

I almost laughed.

"It's very evident you know little about Kinloch," I said. "He's

quite destitute. He hasn't a penny, and so even if he had his sight

I doubt if he'd have seen your advertisement. You see," I felt bound

to add, "he came to my house that night in rags almost, a broken man,

and--well, we quarrelled. It was all my doing. I don't want you to take

me for what I am not; and it is the base truth that I let him go away

unhelped. That is why I want to do something for him now--something

beyond price, beyond all his hopes."

Mr. Spencer bent forward and touched my knee.

"Dr. Dunn," he said, "I understand your feelings, your mental distress,

and I am sure if you can do this for him it will more than make amends,

without meeting the expenses, which he does not now need you to do."

"Not need me--" I said.

"Did Mr. Kinloch ever mention the purchase of any shares to you?"

"Yes, some worthless shares which another of his friends swindled him

into buying," I said bitterly.

The little man smiled.

"I'd like to be swindled in the same way," he said. And he went on

to tell me the story; a complicated story it was, but the gist of

it seemed to be that Kinloch, a babe in financial affairs, had been

induced by some one to put his every penny into the worthless shares

of some tea company. Then the unexpected had happened. Some financial

genius had evolved a scheme to get the output of tea restricted, with

the result that an artificial scarcity was created and prices had

soared. But Kinloch, who had left his holding in the hands of Selwyn

& Smith when he discovered he had been swindled, knew nothing of the

sudden rise in their value.

"And you mean he is rich now?" I asked.

"Rich is a relative term," he replied, "but at least I'll venture to

assert he is comfortably off."

Well, I left that office keener than ever to find Sandy Kinloch. And

I fancy what Mr. Spencer had heard about him from me made him keener

too. But there were difficulties in the way of which Mr. Spencer knew

nothing. It would have been better if I had told him something of the

Ealing murder. But I had kept silence on that subject; it was not my

secret, for one thing; and, for another, I was too wary to blurt out

such a confidence to any man at a first meeting. Yet, as things turned

out, it would have been wiser to have risked a little in the way of

frankness with Spencer. For in his new keenness he began advertising

again for Kinloch, recasting the words in consequence of the facts I

had supplied, and now inserting the thing in the papers read by the

masses. The only paper of that type I had kept on taking in was the

_Record_. It I still saw because it never ceased hammering away at the

Ealing murder. And the moment I read Mr. Spencer's latest advertisement

I felt we were in for trouble. It ran thus:

ALEXANDER DAVID KINLOCH, last seen at Ealing on the night of

Monday, 15th January. Will any person in a position to supply

information as to his present whereabouts kindly communicate with

Messrs. Selwyn & Smith, Devon Chambers, Chancery Lane. Liberal

reward.

Then the mistake I had made became clear. I should either have taken

Spencer into my confidence or at least have supervised the terms in

which the new advertisement was to be recast. All the way up to town

I kept hoping against hope. But my first words with Spencer seemed to

make disaster certain.

"No replies yet?" I asked, inwardly praying for his assent.

"But, yes--three," he said almost cheerfully.

"Three!"

I was aghast. It was almost as if the earth had begun to tremble under

my feet.

"Oh, don't be too hopeful. None of them were very promising, I fear."

Mr. Spencer polished his glasses meditatively. "You see," he continued,

"all three came to make enquiries about our young friend."

"You didn't tell them anything?" I interjected.

"Dear me, no! But they were rather troublesome. I had to point out to

them that they had misread our notice: we desired to _receive_, not to

_give_ information."

"Do you know who they were?"

"No, and I didn't trouble to enquire. An offer of a reward brings all

sorts buzzing in, as we know from experience. Still," he continued,

"these three didn't exactly conform to type, so to speak. That's why

I saw them, and wasted my time." He paused. "You don't know if Mr.

Kinloch had a judgment summons out against him?"

"No. Why?"

"Well, one of them, a burly, fresh-complexioned and muscular fellow

with a heavy moustache, looked as if he might be connected with the

law."

"Connected with the law?" I said in sudden apprehension.

"Oh, well, I don't necessarily mean the criminal side of the law. Debt,

you know. And this fellow did look as if he might be a bailiff's man."

Swift as light there had come back to me the memory of a man who

tallied with the description Mr. Spencer had so off-handedly given--the

Scotland Yard man at the inquest, Inspector Snargrove. But who could

the others be?

"And the two others?" I said.

Mr. Spencer stroked his chin reflectively.

"Well, one was a tallish, rather hawk-eyed fellow with a very close

clipped black moustache, who held himself--well, rather like a soldier

out of uniform. Thought he might be an old comrade of Kinloch's. And

the third man--he hasn't been gone more than half an hour--was wiry

too, but clean-shaven. Unlike the others he did not look as if a

uniform would fit him. Looked rather like a medical man; and he was

certainly a fellow-countryman of yours."

The last two men I could not "place" at all. And I think it was the

uneasiness that inability roused in me that made me there and then

resolve to take Mr. Spencer into my confidence. So, after a hurried

moment or two of thought, I said:

"Since they didn't tell you why they want Kinloch I'd better tell you--"

Mr. Spencer with a hasty ejaculation shot out his hand, cutting me

short.

"They didn't need to," he said. "I guessed it from what you told me of

Mr. Kinloch's financial circumstances--they were all after money; the

bailiff's man, the old comrade of the war, he was either after a loan

from Kinloch or seeking repayment of one; and the Scotch doctor--nosing

after an unpaid bill, eh?"

He laughed. But I shook my head.

"Much more serious. Kinloch is innocent but--"

"Oh," he cut in again, "of all the witless--" He broke off to search

for his eyeglasses which had fallen to the floor. Utterly taken aback,

I stared in silence. After fumbling about a little he sat up rather

red from stooping, and went on as if he had not heard me. "Of course

the bailiff's man said he would find the means to open my lips at the

proper time. But it was easy for me to show him that if I had the least

notion where Mr. Kinloch was I would hardly be offering a reward for

the information."

So that was it! At last I understood. Spencer did not want to know lest

he should have to tell. My respect for him went up. He was as honest as

I had been stupid.

"They will come back, though--these men," I said.

"Oh, no doubt," he replied, cheerful again, "but not till we

discontinue that advertisement." Then, as if to make sure I understood,

he added knowingly, "I have paid in advance for quite a series of

insertions. Foolish, perhaps, for the notice will possibly be appearing

for some time after we have found Kinloch."

* * * * *

But as the days slipped past and nothing was heard of him I began to

think we had heard the last of Kinloch. The frequent visits I paid to

the office in Chancery Lane were always blank. Spencer, however, was

invariably confident. When pressed for his reasons all he said was:

"Doctor, money never goes long a-begging. Never has this firm

advertised like that in vain. Sooner or later it draws a response."

One day later he surprised me by a question:

"Doctor, do you ever look behind?"

Not comprehending, I merely re-echoed his query, and he beckoned me to

the window.

"Look there--that man in the grey overcoat and black bowler on the

opposite pavement, sauntering." And as I peeped out he put the

question: "Ever seen him before?"

I could not recall the burly figure.

"Ah--there--you see!" Spencer cried.

For the man opposite had just taken a swift glance up at our window,

and catching sight of us moved on again, affecting interest in the

traffic.

"He blundered that time," Spencer murmured.

"Who is he?" I asked, not liking this at all.

"Oh, I thought you'd better have a hint you are being shadowed, doctor.

He's been seen out there waiting for you on your last three calls. If

you've been up to anything--well, look out."

After that I ceased my calls at the office, and we arranged that

Spencer would telephone or wire if he wanted me. For, if I was being

shadowed on Kinloch's account, it would be well to let it be supposed

from ceasing my visits to Selwyn & Smith's that we now had no hope of

any reply to the advertisement.

And, indeed, hope on my part had sunk into despair by this time. Yet in

the end Spencer's confidence was proved right. One morning my telephone

rang, and as soon as I picked up the receiver Spencer's voice sounded

in my ear:

"That you, doctor?"

There was elation in his voice. I knew something had turned up.

"Yes, what is it?"

"News."

"Not--"

In my surprise I was almost betrayed into an indiscretion.

"Hush. Come and see me. It may be a hoax."

When I reached the office he laid this scrap of writing before me:

If Messrs. Selwyn & Smith will send some one to Mr. Keiller, now

staying at the Aberlundy Arms, Gart, Argyllshire, they can obtain

full information about Alexander Kinloch.

"Well?" Spencer queried as soon as I had finished reading.

"This is no hoax," I asserted.

"You think this Mr. Keiller knows something?"

"I think this Mr. Keiller may turn out to be Kinloch himself. Anyhow,

this was written by a blind man. You can see how he used the parallel

rulers to guide his pen. See, each line is straight in itself but rises

towards the right because the ruler was not set straight across the

paper."

"Are you sure?" Spencer asked. "I wouldn't care to go so far on a

wild-goose chase."

A closer scrutiny of the handwriting increased my conviction. I had

never seen Sandy's handwriting since his blindness; and I was aware

what a difference is made by blindness. But even now, although all

individuality is taken out of writing so slowly and painfully achieved,

I could detect in the formation of certain letters a resemblance to his

former hand. These I indicated to Spencer.

"I'll tell you what," I said finally, "I'll send you an old letter of

his and you can judge for yourself."

"Right," he said. "In any case I can't go before to-morrow night."

Neither could I, since I had to arrange for a man to look after my

practice. But that I did arrange before returning to Ealing. And

apparently Spencer convinced himself from the letter I sent when I got

home, for next morning a wire reached me:

Euston midnight to-night.

The rest of the day went in making preparations for getting away.

Unusual preparations they were to me. If the truth must be admitted,

I was keenly ashamed that Spencer had to prove to me I was being

shadowed. And yet, though a medical man is a trained observer, his line

of observation lies in another world than that of a man in Spencer's

position. I loathed the notion of peeping round corners, turning round

to watch who might be behind me, or pausing at shop windows to see who

passed. And in fact, even after he warned me, I never did one of these

things. But that day I took precautions. And with the result that never

have I approached any railway station by a route more circuitous than I

reached Euston that night. In fact I began by undressing, turning out

the light and getting into bed at 10.15. There I lay for three quarters

of an hour, when I rang up the hospital and so alarmed a night nurse

with enquiries about one of her patients that I got myself summoned to

an urgent case. At the hospital door I left the taxi standing for ten

minutes while I soothed the nurse, and then returned to tell the driver

to come back in an hour when the operation would be over. After that I

passed through the building, and getting away by a back exit, took the

11.25 to Paddington. From there a taxi down Marylebone Road landed me

on the Euston departure platform at three minutes to midnight. Spencer

was there, standing near the ticket collector at the gate. He had

booked to Glasgow.

"For a novice, a first-rate performance," he said approvingly.

He saw I did not comprehend.

"Look," he said, "if there is any one on your heels they're not close

enough this time."

The ticket collector had just shut the gates with a rolling clash. And

I had been the last man to enter.

* * * * *

Night was closing in as our train drew up at Gart. All the afternoon,

ever since we had left Callander behind, and while the engine patiently

nosed its way round the flanks of mighty mountains, and over hissing

torrents, we had talked of Kinloch. For Spencer was now as eager to

hear about him as formerly he had been unwilling. This surprised me at

first. Then I came to see the reason: in his profession, unlike my own,

one must know either nothing or everything about a case. And now that

he could no longer honourably say he knew nothing it was safer to know

all. And that is what I told him then, as the train laboriously climbed

among the hills. But, nearing Gart, we had fallen silent as I watched

the lights twinkling brightly from cottage windows down in the valley.

My thoughts had turned on our approaching meeting with Sandy Kinloch.

Stiff with our long journey, and cold in that sharp northern air, we

took our directions from Gart's solitary porter, and made our way to

the "Aberlundy Arms." A long, whitewashed, two-story house, as soon

as I discerned it in the dusk I knew the sort of hotel it was--busy

perhaps in the fishing season and in summer, but likely to be quiet

enough now. So it proved. The landlord, a big tub of a man, rosy of

face but obviously lazy and soft, gaped with surprise when we entered

with our bags.

"Come to see Mr. Keiller," Spencer greeted him briskly.

The big man, recovering, shut his mouth to open it again for speech.

"Ay, I was thinkin' somebody ought to turn up afore long. Losh,

gentlemen, I'm right glad to see ye."

"Anything wrong?" I asked sharply.

He turned to examine me before replying.

"Och, no. No catastrophe, if that's what you mean. Not a bit of

it, sirs. He's just been"--dropping his voice to a confidential

whisper--"drinking a bit. A blind man, ye ken--it's no quite safe for a

blind man to get verra drunk."

My heart sank. I heard Spencer's voice as in a dream.

"Ah, and is--is this Mr. Keiller frequently the worse for drink?"

"Hoots, no, not him. Not once have I seen him fou. That's just what

bothers me. He seems to have something upsettin' on his mind that robs

my whisky of its natural effect."

"Take us to him," Spencer said brusquely.

"Say nothing at first of my presence," I whispered to him as we were

led down the passage.

The landlord threw open a door at the far end.

"Gentleman enquiring for you, Mr. Keiller," he called out as if to a

deaf person.

At first I thought the man had shown us into an empty room; but as I

peered about in the gloom I saw a face lifted from the table at which a

man sat with outstretched arms. It was Sandy Kinloch. I knew him as he

turned his sightless eyes in our direction. Thus it was I saw him next,

sitting alone in the dark like a hunted animal.

"Good evening, Mr. Keiller. We--we have come to see you on business,"

Spencer said.

"Business?" Sandy echoed hoarsely.

"Yes; if the landlord will switch on the light for us."

"I'll bring ye a lamp," the big man said, reluctantly going out.

I slid into a chair close to the door as Spencer took a seat opposite

Sandy.

"We are searching for a Mr. Kinloch really," he said.

"So I thought! And it's not difficult to guess your business with him,"

Sandy interjected.

"You surprise me. I thought Mr. Kinloch alone would know about the tea

shares."

"Tea shares?" came blankly.

"Yes; about tea shares."

There was a moment's silence, and then Sandy burst into wild

laughter--laughter that was, however, quite mirthless and which stopped

as abruptly as it started.

"Excuse me," he said, "but your pretence of being here about tea shares

was more humorous than you could know. As it happens, Kinloch did put

a lot of money into tea shares; and he let them lie with the agents,

because they were worthless."

"Worthless!" said Spencer. "My dear sir, do you suppose I'd come all

this way about worthless shares?"

"No, I don't," Sandy rejoined. "That's why it's easy for me to tell why

you have come. Let's have done with pretences: I am Kinloch, and you

are a policeman. And it's not for tea shares you want me but for the

Ealing mur--"

I smothered the last word by kicking over a small crockery-laden table

by the door. But I was just in time, for I saw the advance light of the

lamp which the landlord was carrying along the passage. He entered,

much perturbed by the crash, to find all three of us on our feet. He

surveyed the damage with dismay.

"Och, sirs," he cried, "hae ye been quarrelin' already? If ye'd waited

for the lamp it maybe widna' hae been so expensive."

"Macfarlane," Kinloch almost shouted, "who are these men--what do they

look like?"

In the light of the lamp now set on the table I saw Sandy's face

glisten with beads of sweat. The landlord, trying to soothe him,

examined us with a critical eye.

"They're no that ill-lookin', Mr. Keiller," he pronounced, "nothing out

of the ordinary. I've seen better, and I've seen waur."

"But do they look like policemen?"

"Polismen?" Macfarlane laughed the suggestion to scorn. "Them polismen?

Losh, no; they're no' near big enough--for this district onyway,

unless they were to go about in threes or fours."

He winked across to me as if to convey his apology for this libel on my

physique. At last I mastered my feelings sufficiently to speak.

"Sandy," I said, going over to him, "Sandy, lad."

He started violently, and his feverish hand came out to seek my own.

"Peter!" he whispered. "My God, Peter--you here? What have you come

here for?"

"Just to find you, Sandy."

And while he gripped my hand I turned to get rid of Macfarlane, who was

lingering on.

"Is this a private sitting-room?" I asked.

"No, sir, though it's just as good as one at this time o' the year, for

there's naebody but mysel' to come into it."

"Let's have a quite private one, then," I said to him meaningly.

He replied, stiffening at my tone of voice, as he turned to go:

"Certainly sir; but, mind you," he said, lifting a forefinger

warningly, "it's an extra, with use of the piano."

Of all the incongruous things I have ever heard, this mention of a

piano at such a moment remains unexcelled, even by a patient under

an anæsthetic. Spencer even smiled. But Sandy seemed stimulated to

the pitch of light-headedness by the word. At least that was what I

supposed when he began to hum the refrain of a Scotch ballad:

"Roy's wife of Aldevalloch,

Roy's wife of Aldevalloch,

Wot ye how she cheated me

As I cam' ower the braes o' Balloch....

"Did she? Or did I cheat myself?"

He shook his head wearily, like one who repeats a question he had

already found unanswerable. I could have answered it for him! And that

without knowing the story. For, as I said to Spencer later, if there

was one of these women in it there was not much doubt as to who had

done the cheating.

Kinloch was in a much healthier mental condition next morning. When I

went into his room, the daylight streaming in by an east window as he

sat up, it was possible for me, while we talked, to see his eyes fairly

well without letting him know what I was up to. The scarification

certainly was severe. Before the war his case would have been called

hopeless. But now I wasn't sure. So I resolved to avoid all talk on the

Ealing affair till he had been seen by Fyffe, the Edinburgh specialist.

The first thing was to get him into a healthier, happier condition. And

for that I had set great store on the news Spencer had to give him. But

that morning he seemed to have forgotten Spencer.

"You haven't yet told me how you found out where I was," he said.

"Spencer let me know."

His face showed wonder.

"Spencer--I thought he was a mental case you were in charge of."

"Why?"

"Well, from his nonsensical babble about those shares. He'd heard you

mention them, no doubt."

"He was right about your being here."

"That's true, though how he knew--"

"He was right about the shares also. You can sell for forty-one

shillings to-day."

"Hmp--for the lot, I suppose."

"No, each. Mr. Spencer, as a partner of Selwyn & Smith, knows what he

is talking about."

"Selwyn & Smith!" he cried. "Oh, I didn't know."

I could see he believed me. A faint flush swept over the pale worn

face. He was silent for a long time, and I wondered into what queer

world his thoughts were speeding.

* * * * *

It was on a Sunday morning that I first talked openly to him of his

eyesight. Spencer having finished his business had gone. Kinloch was

not so elated over his news as we had expected. To me it was clear

that Sandy, as the landlord said, had something on his mind. But I put

no questions. I was there not to gratify my curiosity but to help a

friend. So on that Sunday morning while the hills behind re-echoed the

church bell, I suddenly took the plunge, as tactfully as I could.

"You mind that man at Bethsaida, Sandy--him that was blind and had his

eyes opened?"

"Yes," he said after a slight pause. He was very quick with his ear,

and maybe my voice was not under perfect control.

"You mind how they asked him if he saw anything and how in his delight

he cried out, 'Yes, I see. I see men as trees walking'? He was so

content with only that--to see men dimly like walking trees."

"Content? He--he went on his knees, if I remember."

"So he did. Most of us would not, I suppose, be content with so little."

His hands clenched as I watched him.

"God--how little you know," he burst out. "To see men as trees, even to

distinguish the light from darkness--promise a blind man that, and he

will go down on his knees to you too."

Well, I could not promise him even as much as that, but I talked to him

of Fyffe's operation.

He shook his head hurriedly.

"No, no. Things like that don't happen, Peter. The world isn't made

like that. Think of my luck with those shares. Luck isn't showered on a

fellow like that."

"Sandy," I said, "I wouldn't call you a lucky man. Precious little

you've had up to now. But sooner or later there's such a thing as

compensation--a levelling up of things--long overdue in your case, I

think."

He said no more.

And all I need say here of what followed is this: the operation for

_corneitis_ was performed by Sir Donald Fyffe in Edinburgh, and one

week later Kinloch got his first glimpse of the light again, that light

which he had not seen since he was buried by a high explosive during

the advance on Remy in the last six weeks of the war. It was in the

sitting-room, the quite private sitting-room which I had insisted on

having, that the first experiment was made. I removed the bandages,

in semi-darkness, with only a glimmer of weak lamplight in the room.

But when I saw Sir Donald had made another success--well, I felt like

making use of that piano after all.

Yet the first use, the very first use, to which Sandy put his eyes made

me think he had gone crazy. He whipped off his jacket and looked at the

lining, staring at a spot just below the collar. The queer thing was

that there was absolutely nothing to stare at, so far as I could see in

that light. Yet he shook with excitement. After a little he said as if

to himself:

"Now when was that done?"

"When was what done?" I asked.

He held out the jacket.

"See, some one has clipped out the centre of the tab with the tailor's

name and address on it. That was clever--damn clever.... 'Wot ye how

she cheated me ... Roy's wife of Aldevalloch....' Really _smart_, you

know."

Hearing this, I trembled for his sanity, thinking that in the shock of

his recovery his mind had become unhinged. For the coat had been in no

way damaged.

In the next few days, however, his physical improvement grew so

steadily that I began to think of my practice. Indeed, had he become

equally well mentally I should have returned to Ealing much earlier.

But he did certainly show symptoms of mental unrest not at all to my

liking. And into this I knew I must probe before I went. That the

trouble had a connection with the murder I did not doubt, and to

diagnose a woman behind the trouble was still easier. But it was the

latter belief more than the former that made me broach the matter with

the utmost circumspection.

We had climbed up the hills and were sitting among the bracken and

gorse, with a wide prospect down the valley.

"You'll get better every day here," I said. "The air is like wine. A

month or two--"

"I go next week, Peter," he interjected.

"Go next week--where to?" I asked, amazed.

"Town."

"To London?"

He nodded assent without looking at me. Following his long condition of

sightlessness he hadn't yet recovered the habit of looking at those he

was speaking to, I noticed. But I was horrified by his intention.

"London isn't safe for you--yet," I said meaningly.

"Oh, surely a little smoke won't hurt," he replied, thinking I had

referred to his eyes.

When I said nothing he did turn his face my way. Then I said:

"I meant--the Ealing affair."

He in his turn was thunderstruck. For a moment he could say nothing.

"So you know about that," he said at last. He began to breathe quickly.

"Well," he added, "if you know much about it you know I had no hand in

it."

"No, Sandy, you hadn't; but you had--well, a stick in it, so to speak."

"Dunn," he cried, "do you mean to say you have known this all along,

and have never once spoken of it?"

"You said nothing to me, Sandy; and I force no man's confidences."

He didn't like that. Pulling up a strand of the dried bracken he began

to twist it round his finger mechanically, his thoughts elsewhere.

"Peter," he said after a while, "I owe you more than can ever be

repaid. Few men can ever have done so much for another as you have done

for me; but there's things about this affair I cannot tell you, for

there's--there's some one else to whom I owe more even than I owe to

you."

"Roy's wife, I suppose."

"You can if you like," he said, taking the gibe in the same quiet tone.

This put me on the high horse instantly.

"And what kindness might ye owe to her?" I enquired, adding in

pretended haste, "But perhaps the question is indiscreet."

I rejoiced to see his colour rise.

"My debt there is like what I owe you, Peter," he replied patiently,

"in this, at least, that it is more than I'm likely to be able to pay

her."

"If ye'd said pay her _out_, it would be understandable."

In the old days this would have been the point where we would have

quarrelled. And even then, seething with indignation over his

foolishness, I myself would have been ready enough for a quarrel. But

Kinloch still held himself in check. Instead of firing up he said

nothing. And for a little, as I saw his eyes fixed on the outstretched

valley at our feet, I thought he meant to say nothing at all to my

outburst. Then he turned towards me, and I knew he had been considering

not the landscape but what he might reply to me.

"Peter," he began almost wistfully, "there was a time when I could have

agreed with you about that. About paying her out, I mean. There was a

time when I hated her. Really hated her, you understand, exactly as I

now hate the man whose murderous attack on me she stopped. I would have

scoffed at the notion of being grateful, for even when she carried me

away I knew it was all done to save not me but him. At no time did I

have any illusion about that. But there was a time when I behaved like

a cad in that house. You remember that night I came to your house?

What did you think of me--that I had become coarser, less scrupulous,

harder? Yes, you did, and it was true too. Insensibly I had taken on

the colour of my surroundings. For two years I hadn't, as you might

say, touched a clean hand till you took mine that night. Yet it was

not you who lifted me out of that pit, much as you've since done. It's

only as I look back that I see what life with her in that lonely house

really did for me."

"And how," I asked pointedly, "did this happy home come to be broken

up?"

"The old woman who came to do the housework found out I was there.

One night to get rid of me she came back with a cock and bull story

about having seen some man wandering about the common as if watching

the house, affecting to believe him to be Stella's husband. The trick

would have failed but for the fact that it coincided with a newspaper

item about an impending arrest in connection with the Ealing murder.

We thought we had been traced and had to fly, and fly far. But even

then, Peter, that girl was fine, you understand. Broken as she was

by the old woman's imputation on her honour she first got me out of

the house and then herself returned to prepare for our long journey

and if necessary face the unknown man we suspected to be really a

policeman--face him while I sheltered in that haystack."

"And all this she did for you out of a pure disinterested kindness?

You never came to doubt that, did you?" And to rub the question home I

began to whistle the tune, "Roy's Wife."

He flushed at once.

"What if she did cheat me?" he cried. "Hadn't I been trying to outwit

her myself?"

"And you lost."

"As I deserved," he rejoined. Then, after a minute of silence he turned

to me, bending forward. "Peter, I told you I behaved like a cad in that

house. That was true. But the most caddish thing came at the end. We

had travelled here by night in her little car, sleeping in it all day

in some out-of-the-way corner of a field or in a wood. It took us five

nights to reach this place. Then, before I let her go away, I made her

kiss me."

"Ah, here enters the love interest," I said sarcastically. "Is it

possible the hussy spoils this very romantic story by refusing?"

"No," he said quite seriously, "she didn't refuse. At first I thought

she was going to. But when she did--"

"You knew she wasn't--" I helped him out.

"But when she did," he went on, "I found her cheek was wet with tears."

It wasn't what I had expected to hear. And, though I felt it would

have been saner to scoff, I somehow couldn't find the right words in

which to do it. His childlike notion that the woman had cried over

his brutality in making her kiss him simply turned me dumb. There was

nothing left that I could usefully say. But this extravagant notion of

Sandy's prepared me for what was to follow. And for what followed at

once I certainly needed preparation.

"What made you communicate with Selwyn & Smith?" I asked. "You didn't

remember they held the shares?"

"No," he said. "I thought the police were behind that advertisement and

I wanted to give myself up."

"To give yourself up! What for--the murder?"

"Yes."

I could scarcely believe my ears. Of all the silly, quixotic acts ever

recorded this seemed the maddest. Give himself up indeed! Yes, but the

very foolishness of it gave me the measure of this unknown woman's hold

on Kinloch. Cleverly indeed she had done her work, abandoning him at

Gart just when he was sufficiently bewitched to make him keep his mouth

shut, or even, if it came to that, to play the part of willing victim.

And as I perceived this, it was not only anger I felt, but something

like awe, that a woman could so dominate such a man as Kinloch.

"You see," he went on, "to give myself up seemed a way out, an escape

from life. I had got rather tired of life before, you know. My hold on

it was purely parasitic--just an existence, a crawling about in the

dark." He looked over at me with something in his eyes that glowed.

"But you have made all the difference, Peter. You have given me back my

interest in life, and now I can see how mad it was to think of giving

myself up like that."

This was so far satisfactory. But it was still far short of what I

wanted.

"But," I said, "to go to London with the police on the look out is just

to give yourself up in a different way. They'll be on you like hawks,

from what I've seen."

"I'm not afraid. And I've got to find her, now that I can do

something," he said stubbornly.

"But are you sure she wants to be found?"

I had him there, for he looked more sure she did not from the way his

face fell. To push home this discovery I went on:

"Was it her name you took when you came here?"

"I don't know her name," he admitted.

"Then it was to hide your own name from her you called yourself

Keiller?"

"No, she knows my name."

"No doubt! And all about you; while you only know as much about her as

she chose to tell, which seems to have been nothing."

Then a thought burst in on me.

"Why, you don't even know what she looks like, for of course _you've

never seen her_."

"No," he admitted, "if you were to place her photograph in front of me

I wouldn't recognize her."

"And you don't even know so much as her name, or where she lives, or

what she looks like. Why, man, the search is hopeless--a needle in a

haystack is nothing to it."

After that I let the matter drop, for I saw he was weary. We descended

the slope and passed through the pine wood almost without speech, even

when we came out on the highway at the bottom of the valley, where talk

would have been easy.

* * * * *

It is unlikely that I would ever again have reverted to Kinloch's

project had he himself not done so a few nights later. We were sitting

by the fire, smoking an after-dinner pipe. I was to leave Gart next

morning. He began by desiring my advice, showing great deference to

my opinion. Of course I knew he was merely trying to smooth down my

ruffled feelings. But when he went a step farther, and proposed to tell

me his plans, I cut him short. What he meant to do, where he intended

to go, were, I told him, things it was safer to keep to himself. That

he had some plan of action, some wild-cat scheme for finding the lady

I already divined. But it did not interest me; and, in view of his

confessed ignorance of the most essential facts about her, I knew he

must fail. Had he been willing to help the police to lay the man by

the heels the situation would have been simplified. For I did not

doubt now, that, provided he came forward voluntarily, he could, with

the help of Spencer and myself, clear himself from complicity in the

murder. But this he would not do. He would not lift a finger to help

the authorities till he knew how the man's arrest would affect the

woman, a position which put him on the wrong side of the law, and

which might well jeopardize his own safety if the police got their

hands on him. It was this that filled me with an exasperated despair.

For he knew his danger by this time. He had been poring through his

tinted glasses, longer than was good for his eyes, over a file of old

newspapers in which the fullest details of the murder, and the various

theories as to its perpetrator and his motives, were given. So I firmly

refused to listen to his plans for finding out where that woman had

gone. But it was only at Gart Station, while waiting for my train to

start, that I told him why I refused.

"You see, Sandy," I said, "if anybody should ask me where you are, or

what you are doing, I can truthfully say I know nothing."

What I had in mind now that I was about to return to London was the

difficulty experienced in getting away from it. And I had not forgotten

the man who had watched me in Chancery Lane, nor the three who called

at the office there.

"Oh," he said hastily, "of course I can't expect a friend to lie for

me."

"Certainly not," I said. "He has no right to undertake the duty unless

he can do it really well."

It was good to see him smile back as he gripped my hand. I think he

understood.

But it saddened me to part with him, not knowing what his plan was

for finding the lady. Yet it was some satisfaction that we had parted

friends, in spite of great provocation, given and received.

BOOK IV

THE SECOND NARRATIVE OF GODFREY CHANCE