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The Hand in the Dark

by Arthur J. Rees · English · Gutenberg #20546 · 622,268 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Hand in the Dark

Author: Arthur J. Rees


        
Release date: February 8, 2007 [eBook #20546]
                Most recently updated: August 19, 2012

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAND IN THE DARK ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









                          THE HAND IN THE DARK

                            BY ARTHUR J. REES

                      AUTHOR OF "THE SHRIEKING PIT"




NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
Copyright, 1920

PRESS OF
THE VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON, N. Y., U. S. A.




THE HAND IN THE DARK




CHAPTER I


Seen in the sad glamour of an English twilight, the old moat-house,
emerging from the thin mists which veiled the green flats in which it
stood, conveyed the impression of a habitation falling into senility,
tired with centuries of existence. Houses grow old like the race of men;
the process is not less inevitable, though slower; in both, decay is
hastened by events as well as by the passage of Time.

The moat-house was not so old as English country-houses go, but it had
aged quickly because of its past. There was a weird and bloody history
attached to the place: an historical record of murders and stabbings and
quarrels dating back to Saxon days, when a castle had stood on the spot,
and every inch of the flat land had been drenched in the blood of serfs
fighting under a Saxon tyrant against a Norman tyrant for the sacred
catchword of Liberty.

The victorious Norman tyrant had killed the Saxon, taken his castle, and
tyrannized over the serfs during his little day, until the greater
tyrant, Death, had taught him his first--and last--lesson of humility.
After his death some fresh usurper had pulled down his stolen castle,
and built a moat-house on the site. During the next few hundred years
there had been more fighting for restless ambition, invariably connected
with the making and unmaking of tyrants, until an English king lost his
head in the cause of Liberty, and the moat-house was destroyed by fire
for the same glorious principle.

It was rebuilt by the freebooter who had burnt it down; one Philip
Heredith, a descendant of Philip Here-Deith, whose name is inscribed in
the Domesday Book as one of the knights of the army of Duke William
which had assembled at Dives for the conquest of England. Philip
Heredith, who was as great a fighter as his Norman ancestor, established
his claim to his new estate, and avoided litigation concerning it, by
confining the Royalist owner and his family within the walls of the
moat-house before setting it on fire. He afterwards married and settled
down in the new house with his young wife. But the honeymoon was
disturbed by the ghost of the cavalier he had incinerated, who warned
him that as he had founded his line in horror it would end in horror,
and the house he had built would fall to the ground.

Philip Heredith, like many other great fighters, was an exceedingly
pious man, with a profound belief in the efficacy of prayer. He
endeavoured to thwart the ghost's curse by building a church in the
moat-house grounds, where he spent his Sundays praying for the eternal
welfare of the gentleman he had cut off in the flower of his manhood.
Perhaps the prayers were heard, for, when Philip Heredith in the course
of time became the first occupant of the brand-new vault he had built
for himself and his successors, he left behind him much wealth, and a
catalogue of his virtues in his own handwriting. The wealth he left to
his heirs, but he expressly stipulated that the record of his virtues
was to be carved in stone and placed as an enduring tablet, for the
edification of future generations, inside the church he had built.

It was a wise precaution on his part. The dead are dumb as to their own
merits, and the living think only of themselves. Time sped away, until
the first of the Herediths was forgotten as completely as though he had
never existed; even his dust had been crowded off the shelf of his own
vault to make room for the numerous descendants of the prolific and
prosperous line he had founded. But the tablet remained, and the old
moat-house he had built still stood.

It was a wonderful old place and a delight to the eye, this mediaeval
moat-house of mellow brick, stone facings, high-pitched roof, with
terraced gardens and encircling moat. It had defied Time better than its
builder, albeit a little shakily, with signs of decrepitude here and
there apparent in the crow's-feet cracks of the brickwork, and decay
only too plainly visible in the crazy angles of the tiled roof. But the
ivy which covered portions of the brickwork hid some of the ravages of
age, and helped the moat-house to show a brave front to the world, a
well-preserved survivor of an ornamental period in a commonplace and
ugly generation.

The place looked as though it belonged to the past and the ghosts of the
past. To cross the moat bridge was to step backward from the twentieth
century into the seventeenth. The moss-grown moat walls enclosed an
old-world garden, most jealously guarded by high yew hedges trimmed into
fantastic shapes of birds and animals; a garden of parterres and lawns,
where tritons blew stone horns, and naked nymphs bathed in marble
fountains; with an ancient sundial on which the gay scapegrace Suckling
had once scribbled a sonnet to a pair of blue eyes--a garden full of
sequestered walks and hidden nooks where courtly cavaliers and
bewitching dames in brocades and silks, patches and powder, had played
at the great game of love in their day. That day was long since dead.
The tritons and nymphs remained, to remind humanity that stone and
marble are more durable than flesh and blood, but the lords and ladies
had gone, never to return, unless, indeed, their spirits walked the
garden in the white stillness of moonlit nights. They may well have done
so. It was easy to imagine such light-hearted beauties visiting again
the old garden to revive dead memories of love and laughter: shadowy
forms stealing forth to assignations on the blanched, dew-laden lawn,
their roguish faces and bright eyes--if ghosts have eyes--peeping out of
ghostly hoods at gay ghostly cavaliers; coquetting and languishing
behind ghostly fans; perhaps even feeding, with ghostly little hands,
the peacocks which still kept the terrace walk above the moat.

The spectacle of a group of modern ladies laughing and chatting at tea
in the cloistered recesses of the terrace garden struck a note as
sharply incongruous as a flock of parrots chattering in a cathedral.

It was the autumn of 1918, and with one exception the ladies seated at
the tea-tables on the lawn represented the new and independent type of
womanhood called into existence by the national exigencies of war. The
elder of them looked useful rather than beautiful, as befitted patriotic
Englishwomen in war-time; the younger ones were pretty and charming, but
they were all workers, or pretended workers, in the task of helping
England win the war, and several of them wore the khaki or blue of
active service abroad. They were all very much at ease, laughing and
talking as they drank their tea and threw cake to the peacocks perched
on the high terrace walk above their heads.

The ladies were the guests of Sir Philip Heredith. Some months before,
his only son Philip, then holding a post in the War Office, had fallen
in love with the pretty face of a girl employed in one of the
departments of Whitehall. He married her soon afterwards, and brought
her home to the moat-house. It was the young husband who had suggested
that they should liven up the old moat-house by inviting some of their
former London friends down to stay with them. Violet Heredith, who found
herself bored with country life after the excitement of London war work,
caught eagerly at the idea, and the majority of the ladies at tea were
the former Whitehall acquaintances of the young wife, with whom she had
shared matinee tickets and afternoon teas in London during the last
winter of the war.

The hostess of the party, Miss Alethea Heredith, sister of the present
baronet, Sir Philip Heredith, and mistress of the moat-house since the
death of Lady Heredith, belonged to a bygone and almost extinct type of
Englishwoman, the provincial great lady, local society leader, village
patroness, sportswoman, and church-woman in one, a type exclusively
English, taking several centuries to produce in its finished form. Miss
Heredith was an excellent, if somewhat terrific, specimen of the class.
She was tall and massive, with a large-boned face, tanned red with
country air, shrewd grey eyes looking out beneath thick eyebrows which
met across her forehead in a straight line (the Heredith eyebrows) and a
strong, hooked nose (the Heredith falcon nose). But in spite of her
massive frame, red face, hooked nose, and countrified attire, she looked
more in place with the surroundings than the frailer and paler specimens
of womanhood to whom she was dispensing tea. There was a stiff and
stately grace in her movements, a slow ceremoniousness, in her
politeness to her guests, which seemed to harmonize with the
seventeenth-century setting of the moat-house garden.

At the moment the ladies were discussing an event which had been
arranged for that night: a country drive, to be followed by a musical
evening and dance. The invitations had been issued by the Weynes, a
young couple who had recently made their home in the county. The husband
was a popular novelist, who had left the distractions of London in order
to win fame in peace and quietness in the country. Mrs. Weyne, who had
been slightly acquainted with Mrs. Heredith before her marriage, was
delighted to learn she was to have her for a neighbour. She had arranged
the evening on her behalf, and had asked Miss Heredith to bring all her
guests. The event was to mark the close of the house party, which was to
break up on the following day. Unfortunately, Mrs. Heredith had fallen
ill a few hours previously, and it was doubtful whether she would be
able to join in the festivity.

"I hope you will all remember that dinner is to be a quarter of an hour
earlier to-night," said Miss Heredith, as she handed a cup of tea to one
of her guests. "It is a long drive to the Weynes' place, so I shall
order the cars for half-past seven."

The guests glanced at their hostess and murmured polite assent.

"I am looking forward to the visit so much," said the lady to whom Miss
Heredith had handed the cup. "It will be so romantic--a country dance in
a lonely house on a hill. What an adorable cup, dear Miss Heredith! I
love Chinese egg-shell porcelain, but this is simply beyond anything!
It's----"

"Whatever induced Dolly Weyne to bury herself in the country?" abruptly
exclaimed a young woman with cropped hair and khaki uniform. "She
loathed the country before she was married."

"Mrs. Weyne is a wife, and it is her duty to like her husband's home,"
said Miss Heredith a little primly. She disapproved of the speaker,
whose khaki uniform, close-cropped hair, crossed legs, and arms a-kimbo
struck her as everything that was modern and unwomanly.

"Then what induced Teddy Weyne to bury himself alive in the wilds? I'm
sure it must be terrible living up there alone, with nothing but earwigs
and owls for company."

"Mr. Weyne is a writer," rejoined Miss Heredith. "He needs seclusion."

"My husband doesn't," said a little fair-haired woman. "He says
newspaper men can write anywhere. And we know another writer, a Mr.
Harland, I think his name is, who writes long articles in the Sunday
newspapers----"

"I don't think his name is Harland, dear," interrupted another lady.
"Something like it, but not Harland. Dear me, what is it?"

"Oh, the name doesn't matter," retorted her friend. "The point is that
he writes long articles in his London office. Why can't Mr. Weyne do the
same?"

"Mr. Weyne is a novelist--not a journalist. It's quite a different
thing."

"Is it?" responded the other doubtfully. "All writing is the same, isn't
it? Harry says Mr. Harland's articles are dreadfully clever. He
sometimes reads bits of them to me."

"Mrs. Weyne feels a little lonely sometimes," said Miss Heredith. "She
has been looking forward to meeting Violet again. It will be pleasant
for both of them to renew their acquaintance."

"I should think she and Violet would get on well together," remarked the
young lady with the short hair. "They both have a good many tastes in
common. Neither likes the country, for one thing." The other ladies
looked at one another, and the speaker, realizing that she had been
tactless, stopped abruptly. "How is Violet?" she added lamely. "Do you
think she will be well enough to go to-night?"

"I still hope she may be well enough to go," replied Miss Heredith. "I
will ask her presently. Will anyone have another cup of tea?"

Nobody wanted any more tea. The meal was finished; but the groups of
ladies at the little tables sat placidly talking, enjoying the peaceful
surroundings and the afternoon sun. Some of the girls produced
cigarette-cases, and lit cigarettes.

There was a sound of footsteps on the gravel walk. A tall, good-looking
young officer was seen walking across the garden from the house. As he
neared the tea-tables he smilingly raised a finger to his forehead in
salute.

"I've come to say good-bye," he announced.

The ladies clustered around him. It was evident from their manner that
he was a popular figure among them. Several of the younger girls
addressed him as "Dick," and asked him to send them trophies from the
front. The young officer held his own amongst them with laughing
self-possession. When he had taken his farewell of them he approached
Miss Heredith, and held out his hand with a deferential politeness which
contrasted rather noticeably with the easy familiarity of his previous
leave-taking.

"I am sorry you are compelled to leave us, Captain Nepcote," said Miss
Heredith, rising with dignity to accept his outstretched hand. "Do you
return immediately to the front?"

"To-night, I expect."

"I trust you will return safely to your native land before long, crowned
with victory and glory."

Captain Nepcote bowed in some embarrassment. Like the rest of his
generation, he was easily discomposed by fine words or any display of
the finer feelings. He was about twenty-eight, of medium height,
clean-shaven, with clear-cut features, brown hair, and blue eyes. At the
first glance he conveyed nothing more than an impression of a handsome
young English officer of the familiar type turned out in thousands
during the war; but as he stood there talking, a sudden ray of sunlight
falling on his bared head revealed vague lines in the face and a
suspicion of silver in the closely cropped hair, suggesting something
not altogether in keeping with his debonair appearance--secret trouble
or dissipation, it was impossible to say which.

"Will you say good-bye to Mrs. Heredith for me?" he said, after a slight
pause. "I hope she will soon be better. I have said good-bye to Sir
Philip and Phil. Sir Philip wanted to drive me to the station, but I
know something of the difficulties of getting petrol just now, and I
wouldn't allow him. Awfully kind of him! Phil suggested walking down
with me, but I thought it would be too much for him."

They had walked away from the tea-tables towards the bridge which
spanned the entrance to the moat-house. Miss Heredith paused by two
brass cannon, which stood on the lawn in a clump of ornamental foliage,
with an inscription stating that they had been taken from the
_Passe-partout_, a French vessel captured by Admiral Heredith in the
Indian Seas in 1804.

"It is hard for Phil, a Heredith, to remain behind when all young
Englishmen are fighting for their beloved land," she said softly, her
eyes fixed upon these obsolete pieces of ordnance. "He comes of a line
of great warriors. However," she went on, in a more resolute tone, "Phil
has his duties to fulfil, in spite of his infirmity. We all have our
duties, thank God. Good-bye, Captain Nepcote. I am keeping you, and you
may miss your train."

"Good-bye, Miss Heredith. Thank you so much for your kindness during a
very pleasant visit. I've enjoyed myself awfully."

"I am glad that you have enjoyed your stay. I hope you will come and see
us again when your military duties permit."

"Er--yes. Thank you awfully. Thank you once more for your kindness."

The young officer uttered these polite platitudes of a guest's farewell
with some abruptness, bowed once more, and turned away across the old
stone bridge which spanned the moat.




CHAPTER II


Miss Heredith turned her steps towards the house. The guests had
dispersed while she was saying farewell to Captain Nepcote, and nothing
further was expected of her as a hostess until dinner-time. It was her
daily custom to devote a portion of the time between tea and dinner to
superintending the arrangements for the latter meal. The moat-house
possessed a competent housekeeper and an excellent staff of servants,
but Miss Heredith believed in seeing to things herself.

On her way to the house she caught sight of an under gardener clipping
one of the ornamental terrace hedges on the south side of the house, and
she crossed over to him. The man suspended his work as the great lady
approached, and respectfully waited for her to speak.

"Thomas," said Miss Heredith, "go and tell Linton to have both motors
and the carriage at the door by half-past seven this evening. And tell
him, Thomas, that Platt had better drive the carriage."

The under gardener touched his cap and hastened away on his errand. Miss
Heredith leisurely resumed her walk to the house, stopping occasionally
to pluck up any weed which had the temerity to show its head in the trim
flower-beds which dotted the wide expanse of lawn between the moat and
the house. She entered the house through the porch door, and proceeded
to the housekeeper's apartments.

Her knock at the door was answered by a very pretty girl, tall and dark,
who flushed at the sight of Miss Heredith, and stood aside for her to
enter. A middle-aged woman, with a careworn face and large grey eyes,
dressed in black silk, was seated by the window sewing. She rose and
came forward when she saw her visitor. She was Mrs. Rath, the
housekeeper, and the pretty girl was her daughter.

"How are you, Hazel?" said Miss Heredith, offering her hand to the girl.
"It is a long time since I saw you. Why have you not been to see us
lately?"

The girl appeared embarrassed by the question. She hesitated, and then,
as if reassured by Miss Heredith's gracious smile, murmured that she had
been so busy that she had very little time to herself.

"I thought they gave you an afternoon off every week at your place of
employment," pursued Miss Heredith, seating herself in a chair which the
housekeeper placed for her.

"Not always," replied Hazel. "At least, not lately. We have had such a
lot of orders in."

"Do you like the millinery business, Hazel?"

"Very much indeed, Miss Heredith."

"Hazel is getting on nicely now," said her mother.

"I am very glad to hear it," responded Miss Heredith, in the same
gracious manner. "You must come and see us oftener. I take a great
interest in your welfare, Hazel. Now, Mrs. Rath."

There are faces which attract attention by the expression of the eyes,
and the housekeeper's was one of them. Her face was thin, almost meagre,
with sunken temples on which her greying hair was braided, but her large
eyes were unnaturally bright, and had a strange look, at once timid and
watchful. She now turned them on Miss Heredith as though she feared a
rebuke.

"Mrs. Rath," said Miss Heredith, "I hope dinner will be served
punctually at a quarter to seven this evening, as I arranged. And did
you speak to cook about the poultry? She certainly should get more
variety into her cooking."

"It is rather difficult for her just now, with the food controller
allowing such a small quantity of butcher's meat," observed Mrs. Rath.
"She really does her best."

"She manages very well on the whole, but she has many resources, such as
poultry and game, which are denied to most households."

When Miss Heredith emerged from the housekeeper's room a little later
she was quite satisfied that the dinner was likely to be as good as an
arbitrary food controller would permit, and she ascended to her room to
dress. In less than half an hour she reappeared, a rustling and
dignified figure in black silk. She walked slowly along the passage from
her room, and knocked at Mrs. Heredith's door.

"Come in!" cried a faint feminine voice within.

Miss Heredith opened the door gently, and entered the room. It was a
spacious and ancient bedroom, with panelled walls and moulded ceiling.
The Jacobean furniture, antique mirrors, and bedstead with silken
drapings were in keeping with the room.

A girl of delicate outline and slender frame was lying on the bed. She
was wearing a fashionable rest gown of soft silk trimmed with gold
embroidery, her fair hair partly covered by a silk boudoir cap. By her
side stood a small table, on which were bottles of eau-de-Cologne and
lavender water, smelling salts in cut glass and silver, a gold cigarette
case, and an open novel.

The girl sat up as Miss Heredith entered, and put her hands mechanically
to her hair. Her fingers were loaded with jewels, too numerous for good
taste, and amongst the masses of rings on her left hand the dull gold of
the wedding ring gleamed in sober contrast. Her face was pretty, but too
insignificant to be beautiful. She had large blue eyes under arching
dark brows, small, regular features, and a small mouth with a petulant
droop of the under lip. Her face was of the type which instantly
attracts masculine attention. There was the lure of sex in the depths of
the blue eyes, and provocativeness in the drooping lines of the
petulant, slightly parted lips. There was a suggestion of
meretriciousness in the tinted lips and the pretence of colour on the
charming face. The close air of the room was drenched with the heavy
atmosphere of perfumes, mingled with the pungent smell of cigarette
smoke.

Miss Heredith took a seat by the bedside. The two women formed a
striking contrast in types: the strong, rugged, practical country lady,
and the fragile feminine devotee of beauty and personal adornment, who,
in the course of time, was to succeed the other as the mistress of the
moat-house. The difference went far beyond externals; there was a wide
psychological gulf between them--the difference between a woman of
healthy mind and calm, equable temperament, who had probably never
bothered her head about the opposite sex, and a woman who was the
neurotic product of a modern, nerve-ridden city; sexual in type, a prey
to morbid introspection and restless desires.

The younger woman regarded Miss Heredith with a rather peevish glance of
her large eyes. It was plain from the expression of her face that she
disliked Miss Heredith and resented her intrusion, but it would have
needed a shrewd observer to have deduced from Miss Heredith's face that
her feeling towards her nephew's wife was one of dislike. There was
nothing but constrained politeness in her voice as she spoke.

"How is your head now, Violet? Are you feeling any better?"

"No. My head is perfectly rotten." As she spoke, the girl pushed off her
boudoir cap, and smoothed back the thick, fair hair from her forehead,
with an impatient gesture, as though she found the weight intolerable.

"I am sorry you are still suffering. Will you be well enough to go to
the Weynes' to-night?"

"I wouldn't dream of it. I wonder you can suggest it. It would only make
me worse."

"Of course I shall explain to Mrs. Weyne. That is, unless you would like
me to stay and sit with you. I do not like you to be left alone."

"There is not the slightest necessity for that," said Mrs. Heredith
decisively. "Do go. I can ring for Lisette to sit with me if I feel
lonely."

"Perhaps you would like Phil to remain with you?" suggested Miss
Heredith.

"Oh, no! It would be foolish of him to stay away on my account. I want
you all to go and enjoy yourselves, and not to fuss about me. At present
I desire nothing so much as to be left alone."

"Very well, then." Miss Heredith rose at this hint. "Shall I send you up
some dinner?"

"No, thank you. The housekeeper has just sent me some strong tea and dry
toast. If I feel hungry later on I'll ring. But I shall try and sleep
now."

"Then I will leave you. I have ordered dinner a little earlier than
usual."

"What time is it now?" Violet listlessly looked at her jewelled
wrist-watch as she spoke. "A quarter-past six--is that the right time?"

Miss Heredith consulted her own watch, suspended round her neck by a
long thin chain.

"Yes, that is right."

"What time are you having dinner?"

"A quarter to seven."

"What's the idea of having it earlier?" asked the girl, propping herself
up on her pillow with a bare white arm, and looking curiously at Miss
Heredith.

"I have arranged for us to leave for the Weynes' at half-past seven. It
is a long drive."

"I see." The girl nodded indifferently, as though her curiosity on the
subject had subsided as quickly as it had arisen. "Well, I hope you will
all have a good time." She yawned, and let her fair head fall back on
the pillow. "Now I shall try and have a sleep. Please tell Phil not to
disturb me. Tell him I've got one of my worst headaches. You are sure to
be back late, and I don't want to be awakened."

She closed her eyes, and Miss Heredith turned to leave the room. As she
passed the dressing-table her eyes fell upon a handsome jewel-case. As
if struck by a sudden thought, she turned back to the bedside again.

"Violet," she said.

The girl half opened her eyes, and looked up at the elder woman from
veiled lids. "Yes?" she murmured.

"Your necklace--I had almost forgotten. Mr. Musard goes back to town
early in the morning, and he wishes to take it with him."

"Oh, it will have to wait until the morning. I don't know where the keys
are, and I can't be bothered looking for them now." The girl turned her
face determinedly away, and buried her head in the pillow, like a spoilt
child.

Miss Heredith flushed slightly at the deliberate rudeness of the action,
but did not press the request. She left the room, softly closing the
door behind her. She walked slowly along the wide passage, hung with
bugle tapestry, and paused for a while at a narrow window at the end of
the gallery, looking out on the terrace gardens and soft green landscape
beyond. The interview with her nephew's wife had tried her, and her
reflections were rather bitter. For the twentieth time she asked herself
why her nephew had fallen in love with this unknown girl from London,
who loathed the country. From Miss Heredith's point of view, a girl who
smoked and talked slang lacked all sense of the dignity of the high
position to which she had been called, and was in every way unfitted to
become the mother of the next male Heredith, if, indeed, she consented
to bear an heir at all. It was Miss Heredith's constant regret that Phil
had not married some nice girl of the county, in his own station of
life, instead of a London girl.

Miss Heredith terminated her reflections with a sigh, and turned away
from the window. She was above all things practical, and fully realized
the folly of brooding over the inevitable, but the marriage of her
nephew was a sore point with her. She proceeded in her stately way down
the broad and shallow steps of the old staircase, hung with armour and
trophies and family portraits. At the bottom of the stairs she
encountered a manservant bearing a tray with sherry decanters and
biscuits across the hall.

"Where is Mr. Philip?" she asked.

"I think he is in the billiard room, ma'am," the man replied.

Miss Heredith proceeded with rustling dignity to the billiard room. The
click of billiard balls was audible before she reached it. The door was
open, and inside the room several young men, mostly in khaki, were
watching a game between a dark-haired man of middle age and a young
officer. One or two of the men looked up as Miss Heredith entered, but
the young officer went on stringing his break together with the
mechanical skill of a billiard marker. Miss Heredith mentally
characterized his action as another instance of the modern decay of
manners. In her young days gentlemen always ceased playing when a lady
entered the billiard room. The middle-aged player came forward, cue in
hand, and asked her if she wanted anything.

"I am looking for Phil," she said. "I thought he was here."

"He was, but he has just gone to the library. He said he had some
letters to write before dinner."

"Thank you." Miss Heredith turned away and walked to the library which,
like the billiard room, was on the ground floor. She opened the door,
and stepped into a large room with an interior which belonged to the
middle ages. There was no intrusion of the twentieth-century in the
great gloomy apartment with its faded arabesques and friezes, bronze
candelabras, mediaeval fittings, and heavy time-worn furniture.

The young man who sat writing at an ancient writing-table in the room
was not out of harmony with the ancient setting. His face was of antique
type--long, and narrow, and his long straight dark hair, brushed back
from his brow, was in curious contrast to the close crop of a military
generation of young men. His eyes were dark, and set rather deeply
beneath a narrow high white forehead. He had the Heredith eyebrows and
high-bridged nose; but, apart from those traditional features of his
line, his rather intellectual face and slight frame had little in common
with the portraits of the massive war-like Herediths which hung on the
walls around him. He ceased writing and looked up as his aunt entered.

"I have just been to see Violet," Miss Heredith explained. "She says she
is no better, and will not be able to accompany us to the Weynes'
to-night. I suggested remaining with her, but she would not hear of it.
She says she prefers to be alone. Do you think it is right to leave her?
I should like to have your opinion. You understand her best, of course."

"I think if Violet desires to be alone we cannot do better than study
her wishes," replied Phil. "I know she likes to be left quite to herself
when she has a nervous headache."

"In that case we will go," responded Miss Heredith. "I have decided to
have dinner a quarter of an hour earlier to enable us to leave here at
half-past seven."

"I see," said the young man. "Is Violet having any dinner?"

"No. She has just had some tea and toast, and now she is trying to
sleep. She does not wish to be disturbed--she asked me to tell you so."
Miss Heredith glanced at her watch. "Dear me, it is nearly half-past
six! I must go. Tufnell is _so_ dilatory when quickness is requisite."

"Did you remind Violet about the necklace?" asked Phil, as his aunt
turned to leave the library.

"Yes. She said she would send it down in the morning, before Vincent
leaves."

Phil nodded, and returned to his letters. Miss Heredith left the room,
and proceeded along the corridor to the big dining-room. An elderly man
servant, grey and clean-shaven, permitted a faint deferential smile to
appear on his features as she entered.

"Is everything quite right, Tufnell?" she asked.

Tufnell, the staid old butler, who had inherited his place from his
father, bowed gravely, and answered decorously:

"Everything is quite right, ma'am."

Miss Heredith walked slowly round the spacious table, adjusting a knife
here, a fork there, and giving an added touch to the table decorations.
There was not the slightest necessity for her to do so, because the
appointments were as perfect as they could be made by the hands of old
servants who knew their mistress and her ways thoroughly. But it was
Miss Heredith's nightly custom, and Tufnell, standing by the carved
buffet, watched her with an indulgent smile, as he had done every
evening during the last ten years.

While Miss Heredith was thus engaged, the door opened and Sir Philip
Heredith entered the room in company with an old family friend, Vincent
Musard.




CHAPTER III


Sir Philip Heredith was a dignified figure of an English country
gentleman of the old type. He was tall and thin, aristocratic of mien,
with white hair and faded blue eyes. His face was not impressive. At
first sight it seemed merely that of a tired old man, weary of the
paltry exactions of life, and longing for rest; but, at odd moments, one
caught a passing resemblance to a caged eagle in a swift turn of the
falcon profile, or in a sudden flash of the old eyes beneath the
straight Heredith brows. At such times the Heredith face--the warrior
face of a long line of fierce fighters and freebooting ancestors--leaped
alive in the ageing features of the last but one of the race.

His companion was a man of about fifty-five. His face was brown, as
though from hot suns, his close-cropped hair was silver-grey, and he had
the bold, clear-cut features of a man quick to make up his mind and
accustomed to command. His eyes were the strangest feature of his
dominating personality. They were small and black, and appeared almost
lidless, with something in their dark direct gaze like the unwinking
glare of a snake. His apparel was unconventional, even for war-time,
consisting of a worn brown suit with big pockets in the jacket, and a
soft collar, with a carelessly arranged tie. On the little finger of his
left hand he wore a ruby ring of noticeable size and lustre.

Vincent Musard was a remarkable personality. He came of a good county
family, which had settled in Sussex about the same time that the first
Philip Heredith had burnt down the moat-house, but his family tree
extended considerably beyond that period. If the name of Here-Deith was
inscribed in the various versions of the Roll of Battle Abbey to be seen
in the British Museum, the name of Musard was to be found in the French
roll of "Les Compagnons de Guillaume a la Conquete de l'Angleterre en
1066," the one genuine and authentic list, which has received the stamp
of the French Archaeological Society, and is carved in stone and erected
in the Church of Dives on the coast of Normandy. Vincent Musard was the
last survivor of an illustrious line, a bachelor, explorer, man of
science, and connoisseur in jewels. He had been intended for the Church
in his youth, but had quarrelled with it on a question of doctrine.
Since then he had led a roving existence in the four corners of the
earth, exploring, botanizing, shooting big game, and searching for big
diamonds and rubies. He had written books on all sorts of out-of-the-way
subjects, such as "The Flora of Chatham Islands," "Poisonous Spiders
(genus Latrodectua) of Sardinia," "Fossil Reptilia and Moa Remains of
New Zealand," and "Seals of the Antarctic." But his chief and greatest
hobby was precious stones, of which he was a recognized expert.

His father had left him a comfortable fortune, but he had made another
on his own account by his dealings in gems, which he collected in remote
corners of the world and sold with great advantage to London dealers. He
was intimately acquainted with all the known mines and pearl fisheries
of the world, but his success as a dealer in jewels was largely due to
the fact that he searched for them off the beaten track. He had explored
Cooper's Creek for white sapphires, the Northern Territory for opals,
and had once led an expedition into German New Guinea in search of
diamonds, where he had narrowly escaped being eaten by cannibals.

The passage of time had not tamed the fierce restlessness of his
disposition. Although he was not quite such a rover as of yore, the
discovery of a new diamond field in Brazil, or the news of a new pearl
bed in southern seas, was sufficient to set him packing for another
jaunt half round the world. He was the oldest friend of the Herediths,
and Miss Heredith, in particular, had a high opinion of his qualities.
Musard, on his part, made no secret of the fact that he regarded Miss
Heredith as the best of living women. It had, indeed, been rumoured in
the county a quarter of a century before that Vincent Musard and Alethea
Heredith were "going to make a match of it."

It was, perhaps, well for both that the match was never made. Musard had
departed for one of his tours into the wilds of the world, not to return
to England until five years had elapsed. Their mutual attraction was the
attraction of opposites. There was nothing in common except mutual
esteem between a wild, tempestuous being like Musard, who rushed through
life like a whirlwind, for ever seeking new scenes in primitive parts of
the earth, and the tranquil mistress of the moat-house, who had rarely
been outside her native county, and revolved in the same little circle
year after year, happy in her artless country pursuits and simple
pleasures.

Of late years, Musard had spent most of his brief stays in England with
the Herediths. He had his own home, which was not far from the
moat-house, but he was a companionable man, and preferred the warm
welcome and kindly society of his old friends to the solitary existence
of a bachelor at Brandreth Hall, as his own place was named.

He had recently returned to England after a year's wanderings in the
southern hemisphere, and had arrived at the moat-house on the previous
day, bringing with him a dried alligator's head with gaping jaws, a
collection of rare stuffed birds and snakeskins for Phil, who had a
taste in that direction, and a carved tiki god for Miss Heredith. He had
also brought with him his Chinese servant, two kea parrots, and a mat of
white feathers from the Solomon Islands, which he used on his bed
instead of an eiderdown quilt when the nights were cold. He had left in
his London banker's strong room his latest collection of precious
stones, after forwarding anonymously to Christie's a particularly fine
pearl as a donation towards the British Red Cross necklace.

Musard's present stay at the moat-house was to be a brief one. The
British Government, on learning of his return to his native land, had
asked him to go over to the front to adjust some trouble which had
arisen between the head-men of a Kaffir labour compound. As Musard's
wide knowledge of African tribes rendered him peculiarly fitted for such
a task, he had willingly complied with the request, and was to go to
France on the following day.

Miss Heredith had taken advantage of his brief visit to consult him
about the Heredith pearl necklace--a piece of jewellery which was
perhaps more famous than valuable, as some of the pearls were nearly
three hundred years old. Sir Philip had given it to Violet when she
married Phil. But Violet had locked it away in her jewel-case and never
worn it. She had said, only the night before, that the setting of the
clasp was old-fashioned, and the pearls dull with age. Miss Heredith,
although much hurt, had realized that there was some truth in the
complaint, and she had asked Musard for his advice. Musard had expressed
the opinion that perhaps the pearls were in need of the delicate
operation known as "skinning," and had offered to take the necklace to
London and obtain the opinion of a Hatton Garden expert of his
acquaintance.

Vincent Musard smiled at Miss Heredith in friendly fashion as he entered
the dining-room, and Sir Philip greeted his sister with polite, but
somewhat vague courtesy. Sir Philip's manner to everybody was
distinguished by perfect urbanity, which was so impersonal and unvarying
as to suggest that it was not so much a compliment to those upon whom it
was bestowed as a duty which he felt he owed to himself to perform with
uniform exactitude.

Musard began to talk about the arrangements for his departure the
following day, and asked Tufnell about the trains. On learning that the
first train to London was at eight o'clock, he expressed his intention
of catching it.

"Is it necessary for you to go so early, Vincent?" inquired Miss
Heredith. "Could you not take a later train?"

"I daresay I could. Why do you ask?"

"I was thinking about the necklace. Violet was too unwell to give it to
me to-night, and she may not be awake so early in the morning. I should
like you to take it with you, if it could be managed."

"I can take a later train. It will suit me as well."

"Is Violet unable to go with us to the Weynes' to-night?" said Sir
Philip, glancing at his sister.

"Yes; her head is too bad."

"It is a pity we have to go without her, as the party is given in her
honour. Of course, we must go."

"Where is her necklace?" asked Musard. "Is it in the safe?"

"No," replied Miss Heredith. "It is in Violet's room, in her
jewel-case."

"Well, as Mrs. Heredith will be alone in the house to-night, I think it
would be wise if you locked it in the safe," said Musard. "There are
many servants in the house."

"I think that is quite unnecessary, Vincent. Our servants are all
trustworthy."

"Quite so, but several of your guests have brought their own
servants--maids and valets."

"Very well. If you think so, Vincent, I will see to it after dinner."

The conversation was terminated by the sound of the dinner-gong. The
guests came down to dinner in ones and twos, and assembled in the
drawing-room before proceeding to the dining-room. The men who were not
in khaki were dressed for dinner. The gathering formed a curious mixture
of modern London and ancient England. The London guests, who were in the
majority, consisted of young officers, some young men from the War
Office and the Foreign Office, a journalist or two, and the ladies Miss
Heredith had entertained at tea on the lawn. These people had been
invited because they were friends of the young couple, and not because
they were anybody particular in the London social or political world,
though one or two of the young men had claims in that direction. Mingled
with this very modern group were half a dozen representatives of old
county families, who had been invited by Miss Heredith.

The party sat down to dinner. There were one or two murmurs of
conventional regret when Miss Heredith explained the reason of Mrs.
Heredith's vacant place, but the majority of the London
guests--particularly the female portion--recognized the illness as a
subterfuge and accepted it with indifference. If Mrs. Heredith was bored
with her guests they, on their part, were tired of their visit. The
house party had not been a success. The London visitors found the fixed
routine of life in a country house monotonous and colourless, and were
looking forward to the termination of their visit. The life they had led
for the past fortnight was not their way of life. They met each morning
for breakfast at nine o'clock--Miss Heredith was a stickler for the
mid-Victorian etiquette of everybody sitting down together at the
breakfast table. After breakfast the men wandered off to their own
devices for killing time: some to play a round of golf, others to go
shooting or fishing, generally not reappearing until dinner-time. After
dinner they played billiards or auction bridge, and the ladies knitted
war socks or sustained themselves till bedtime with copious draughts of
the mild stimulant supplied by their favourite lady novelists. At
half-past ten o'clock Tufnell entered with a tray of glasses, and the
guests partook of a little refreshment. At eleven Miss Heredith bade her
visitors a stately good-night, and they retired to their bedrooms. The
great lady of the moat-house was a firm believer in the axiom that a
woman should be mistress in her own household, and she saw no reason why
her guests should not adopt her way of life while under her roof. She
was a country woman born and bred, believing in the virtues of an early
bed and early rising, and she was not to be put out of her decorous
regular way of living by Londoners who turned night into day with
theatres, late suppers, night clubs, and other pernicious forms of
amusement which Miss Heredith had read about in the London papers.

Dinner at the moat-house was a solemn and ceremonious function. In
accordance with the time-honoured tradition of the family, it was served
at the early hour of seven o'clock in the big dining-room, an ancient
chamber panelled with oak to the ceiling, with a carved buffet, an open
fireplace, Jacobean mantelpiece, and old family portraits on the walls.
There were sconces on the walls, and a crystal chandelier for wax
candles was suspended from the centre of the ceiling above the table.
The chandelier was never lit, as the moat-house was illuminated by
electric light, but it looked very pretty, and was the apple of Miss
Heredith's eye--as the maidservants were aware, to their cost.

The dinner that night was, as usual, very simple, as befitted a
patriotic English household in war-time, but the wines made up for the
lack of elaborate cooking. Sir Philip Heredith and his sister followed
their King's example of abstaining from wine during the duration of war,
but it was not in accordance with Sir Philip's idea of hospitality to
enforce abstinence on their guests, and the men, at all events, sipped
the rare old products of the Heredith cellars with unqualified approval,
enhanced by painful recollections of the thin war claret and sugared
ports of London clubs. Such wine, they felt, was not to be passed by. Of
the young men, Phil Heredith alone drank water, not for the same reason
as his father, but because he had always been a water drinker.

Under the influence of the good wine the guests brightened up
considerably as the meal proceeded. Sir Philip, in his old-fashioned
way, raised his glass of aerated water to one and another of the young
men. He was an ideal host, and his unfailing polished courtesy hid the
fact that he was looking forward to the break up of the party with a
relief akin to that felt by the majority of his guests. Conversation had
been confined to monosyllables at first, but became quite flourishing
and animated as the dinner went on. Miss Heredith smiled and looked
pleased. As a hostess, she liked to see her guests happy and
comfortable, even if she did not like her guests.

The conversation was mainly about the war: the Allies' plans and hopes
and fears. Several of the young men from London gave their views with
great authority, criticising campaigns and condemning generals. Phil
Heredith listened to this group without speaking. Two country gentlemen
in the vicinity also listened in silence. They were amazed to hear such
famous military names, whom they had been led by their favourite
newspapers to regard as the hope of the country's salvation, criticised
so unmercifully by youngsters.

"And do you think the war will soon be over, Mr. Brimley?" said a
feminine voice, rather loudly, during a lull in the conversation. The
speaker was a near neighbour and friend of Miss Heredith's, Mrs. Spicer,
who was not a member of the house party, but had been invited to dinner
that night and was going to the Weynes' afterwards. She was stout and
fresh-faced, and looked thoroughly good-natured and kind-hearted.

She addressed her question to a tall young man with prematurely grey
hair, prominent eyes, and a crooked nose. His name was Brimley, and he
was well-known in London journalism. His portrait occasionally appeared
in the picture papers as "one of the young lions of Fleet Street," but
his enemies preferred to describe him as one of Lord Butterworth's
jackals--Lord Butterworth being the millionaire proprietor of an
influential group of newspapers which, during the war, had stood for
"the last drop of blood and the last shilling" rallying cry. As one of
the foremost of this group of patriots, Mr. Brimley had let his ink flow
so freely in the Allies' cause that it was whispered amongst those "in
the know" that he was certain for a knighthood, or at least an Empire
Order, in the next list of honours.

Mr. Brimley looked at the speaker haughtily, and made an inaudible
reply. Although he was a lion of Fleet Street, he did not relish being
called upon to roar in the wilds of Sussex.

"Won't the poor German people be delighted when our troops march across
the Rhine to deliver them from militarism," continued the old lady
innocently.

There was a subdued titter from the younger girls at this, and a young
officer sitting near the bottom of the table laughed aloud, then flushed
suddenly at his breach of manners.

"Have I said something foolish?" asked the old lady placidly. "Please
tell me if I have--I don't mind."

"Not at all," said another young officer, with a beardless sunburnt
face. "Personally, I quite agree with you. The Germans ought to be jolly
well pleased to be saved from their beastly selves."

"What a number of land girls you have in this part of the world, Miss
Heredith," remarked the young officer who had laughed, as though anxious
to turn the conversation. "I saw several while I was out shooting
to-day, and very charming they looked. I had no idea that sunburn was so
becoming to a girl's complexion. I saw one girl who had been riding a
horse through the woods, and she looked like what's-her-name--Diana. She
had bits of green stuff sticking all over her, and cobwebs in her hair."

"That reminds me of a good story," exclaimed a chubby-faced youth in the
uniform of the Flying Corps. "You'll appreciate it, Denison. Old Graham,
of the Commissariat, was out golfing the other day, and he turned up at
the club all covered with cobwebs. Captain Harding, of our lot, who was
just back in Blighty from eighteen months over there, said to him,
'Hullo, Graham, I see you've been down at the War Office.' Ha, ha!"

The other young men in khaki joined in the laugh, but a tall gaunt man
with an authoritative glance, the Denison referred to, looked rather
angry. Miss Heredith, with a hostess's watchful tact for the
suspectibilities of her guests, started to talk about a show for
allotment holders which had been held in the moat-house grounds a few
weeks before. It seemed that most of the villagers were allotment
holders, and the show had been held to stimulate their patriotic war
efforts to increase the national food supply. The village had entered
into it with great spirit, and some wonderful specimens of fruit,
vegetables, poultry and rabbits had been exhibited.

"The best part of it was that Rusher, my own gardener, was beaten badly
in every class," put in Sir Philip, with a smile.

"Not in every class," corrected Miss Heredith. "The peaches and
nectarines from the walled garden were awarded first prize."

"Rusher was beaten in the vegetable classes--in giant vegetable marrows
and cabbages," retorted Sir Philip, with a chuckle. "He hasn't got over
it yet. He suspects the vicar of favouritism in awarding the prizes. The
fact that his daughter won first prize for rabbits with a giant Belgian
did little to console him."

"And we raised quite a respectable sum for the Red Cross by charging
threepence admission to see a stuffed menagerie of Phil's," added Miss
Heredith.

"A stuffed menagerie! What a curious thing," remarked a young lady.

"Not quite a menagerie," said Sir Philip. "Merely the stuffed remains of
some animals Phil used to keep as a youngster. When they died--as they
invariably did--he used to skin them and stuff them. He was quite an
expert taxidermist."

"Tell them about your museum exhibit, Philip," said Miss Heredith, with
quite an animated air.

"We also arranged a little exhibition of--er--old things," continued Sir
Philip diffidently. "Armour, miniatures, some old jewels, and things
like that. That also brought in quite a respectable sum for the Red
Cross."

"From the Heredith collection, I presume?" said Mr. Brimley.

"What wonderful old treasures you must have in this wonderful old house
of yours," gushed the young lady who had spoken before. "I am so
disappointed in not seeing the Heredith pearl necklace. What a pity dear
Mrs. Heredith is ill. She was going to wear the pearls to-night, and now
I shall have to go away without seeing them."

Sir Philip bowed. He did not quite relish the trend of the conversation,
but he was too well-bred to show it.

"You shall see the pearls in the morning," said Miss Heredith
courteously.

"I adore pearls," sighed the guest.

"If you admire pearls, you should see the collection which is being made
for the British Red Cross," remarked Vincent Musard. "I had a private
view the other day. It is a truly magnificent collection."

All eyes were turned on the speaker. The topic interested every lady
present, and they were aware that Musard was one of the foremost living
authorities on jewels. The men had all heard of the famous traveller by
repute, and they wanted to listen to what he had to say. Musard seemed
rather embarrassed to find himself the object of general attention, and
went on with his dinner in silence. But some of the ladies were
determined not to lose the opportunity of learning something from such a
well-known expert on a subject so dear to their hearts, and they plied
him with eager questions.

"It must be a wonderful collection," said a slight and slender girl
named Garton, with blue eyes and red hair. She was a lady journalist
attached to Mr. Brimley's paper. Twenty years ago she would have been
called an advanced woman. She believed in equality for the sexes in all
things, and wrote articles on war immorality, the "social evil" and
kindred topics in a frank unabashed way which caused elderly
old-fashioned newspaper readers much embarrassment. Miss Garton was just
as eager as the more frivolous members of her sex to hear about the Red
Cross pearls, and begged Mr. Musard to give her some details. She would
have to do a "write up" about the necklace when she returned to London,
she said, and any information from Mr. Musard would be so helpful.

"It is not a single necklace," said Musard. "There are about thirty
necklaces. The Red Cross committee have already received nearly 4,000
pearls, and more are coming in every day."

"Four thousand pearls!" "How perfectly lovely!" "How I should love to
see them!" These feminine exclamations sounded from different parts of
the table.

"I suppose the collection is a very fine and varied one?" observed Sir
Philip.

"Undoubtedly. The committee have had the advice of the best experts in
London, who have given much time to grading the pearls for the different
necklaces. In an ordinary way it takes a long while--sometimes years--to
match the pearls for a faultless necklace, but in this case the experts
have had such a variety brought to their hands that their task has been
comparatively easy. But in spite of the skilful manner in which the
necklaces have been graded, it is even now a simple matter for the
trained eye to identify a number of the individual pearls. The largest,
a white pearl of pear shape, weighing 72 grains, would be recognized by
any expert anywhere. There are several other pearls over thirty grains
which the trained eye would recognize with equal ease in any setting.
The few pink and black pearls are all known to collectors, and it is the
same with the clasps. One diamond and ruby clasp is as well-known in
jewel history as the State Crown. The diamonds are in the form of a
Maltese Cross, set in a circle of rubies."

"That must have been the gift of the Duchess of Welburton," remarked Sir
Philip. "She inherited it from her great aunt, Adelina, wife of the
third duke. There was a famous pearl necklace attached to the clasp
once, but it disappeared about ten years ago at a ball given by the
German Ambassador, Prince Litzovny. I remember there was a lot of talk
about it at the time, but the necklace was never recovered. The clasp,
too, has a remarkable history."

"All great jewels have," said Musard. "In fact, all noteworthy stones
have dual histories. Their career as cut and polished gems is only the
second part. Infinitely more interesting is the hidden history of each
great jewel, from the discovery of the rough stone to the period when it
reaches the hands of the lapidary, to be polished and cut for a
drawing-room existence. What a record of intrigue and knavery, stabbings
and poisonings, connected with some of the greatest jewels in the
British Crown--the Black Prince's ruby, for example!"

Musard gazed thoughtfully at the great ruby on his own finger as he
ceased speaking. The guests had finished dinner, and Miss Heredith, with
a watchful eye on the big carved clock which swung a sedate pendulum by
the fireplace, beckoned Tufnell to her and directed him to serve coffee
and liqueurs at table.

"What is your favourite stone, Mr. Musard?" said a bright-eyed girl
sitting near him, after coffee had been served.

"Personally I have a weakness for the ruby," replied Musard. "Its
intrinsic value has been greatly discounted in these days of synthetic
stones, but it is still my favourite, largely, I suppose, because a
perfect natural ruby is so difficult to find. I remember once journeying
three thousand miles up the Amazon in search of a ruby reputed to be as
large as a pigeon's egg. But it did not exist--it was a myth."

"What a life yours has been!" said the girl. "How different from the
humdrum existence of us stay-at-homes! How I should like to hear some of
your adventures. They must be thrilling."

"If you want to hear a real thrilling adventure, Miss Finch, you should
get Mr. Musard to tell you how he came by that ruby he is wearing," said
Phil Heredith, joining in the conversation.

The eyes of all the guests were directed to the ring which Musard was
wearing on the little finger of his left hand. The stone in the plain
gold setting was an unusually large one, nearly an inch in length. The
stone had been polished, not cut, and glowed rather than sparkled with a
deep rich red--the true "pigeon's-blood" tint so admired by
connoisseurs.

"Nonsense, Phil"--Musard flushed under his brown skin--"your guests do
not want to hear me talk any more about myself. I've monopolized the
conversation too long already."

"Oh, please do tell us!" exclaimed several of the guests.

"Really, you know, I'd rather not," responded Musard, in some
embarrassment. "It's a long story, for one thing, and it's not
quite--how shall I express it--it's a bit on the horrible side to relate
in the presence of ladies."

"I do not think that need deter you," remarked one of the young officers
drily. "We are all pretty strong-minded nowadays--since the War."

"Oh, we should love to hear it," said the lady journalist, who scented
good "copy." "Shouldn't we?" she added, turning to some of the ladies
near her.

"Yes, indeed!" chorused the other ladies. "Do tell us."

"Go ahead, Musard--you see you can't get out of it," said Phil.

"Perhaps, Phil, as Mr. Musard does not think it a suitable
story--" commenced Miss Heredith tentatively. Her eye was fixed anxiously
on the clock, which was verging on twenty minutes past seven, and she
feared the relation of her old friend's experience might make them late
at the Weynes. But at that moment Tufnell approached his mistress and
caught her eye. A slight shade of annoyance crossed her brow as she
listened to something he communicated in a low voice, and she turned to
her guests.

"I must ask you to excuse me for a few moments," she said.

She rose from her place and left the room. As the door closed behind her
the ladies turned eagerly to Musard.

"Now, please, tell us about the ruby," said several in unison.

The explorer glanced at the eager faces looking towards him.

"Very well, I will tell you the story," he said quietly, but with
visible reluctance.




CHAPTER IV


"It was before the war. Many strange things have happened in the world
before the Boche broke loose with his dream of 'Deutschland ueber Alles.'
I had been to Melville Island trying to match a pearl for the Devonshire
necklace, and I went from the pearl fisheries to New Zealand, led there
by rumours of the discovery of some wonderful black pearls. It was,
however, a wild-goose chase. These rumours generally are. One of the
experts of the New Zealand Fishery Department had been exploring the
Haurakai Gulf, and returned to Auckland with a number of black pearls,
which he had found in an oyster-bed on one of the Barrier Islands. He
thought his fortune was made, though, being a fishery expert, he ought
to have known better. They were black pearls right enough, but they came
from edible oysters, and were valueless as jewels--not worth a shilling
each.

"I put up at the Royal hotel, Auckland, waiting for a ship to take me
back to England. I had arranged to return round the Cape, to look at a
parcel of diamonds which were expected to arrive at Capetown from the
fields in about six weeks' time. The day before I was due to sail, a
rough-looking man named Moynglass, a miner, came to the hotel to see me.
He had heard of me as a mining expert, and he had a business proposition
which he wanted to place before me.

"He told me he and four others had just returned to Auckland after
putting in six weeks among the volcanic beaches of the North Island,
searching--'fossicking,' he called it--for fine gold. These black sand
volcanic beaches are common in parts of New Zealand. The black sand is
derived from the crystals of magnetic iron, and there is frequently a
fair amount of fine gold mingled with them. By the continued action of
the surf the heavier materials, gold, and ironstone sand, are mingled
together between high and low water mark, and what appears as a stratum
of black sand is found on the surface or buried under the ordinary sand.
The gold is usually very fine, and the trouble of sifting and collecting
it is great. A man works for wages, and hard-earned wages at that, who
goes in for this kind of mining. But your true miner is ever an
adventurer and a gambler, and gold thus won is dearer to his heart than
gold which might be earned with less effort and more regularity in the
form of sovereigns. You see, there is always the chance of a big find.

"Moynglass and his party had met with fair success along the beaches,
but they wanted more than that. Moynglass was anxious to trace the fine
gold to its source, and find a fortune. He believed, like most miners,
that this fine gold is carried along the beds of the larger rivers and
distributed by the action of the sea along the different beaches where
it is found. His theory was that if the drift of the gold sands could be
traced to their source, a great quartz reef would be found which would
make the discoverers wealthy men. But he and his mates knew nothing
about geology, and they wanted somebody to go with them who could chart
the course, and lead them to the launching point of the gold.

"I had heard this theory before, and was not impressed by it. I should
probably have turned down Moynglass's proposition if, in the course of
his conversation, he had not produced a sample of ruby quartz from his
pocket and showed it to me. He said he had found it while exploring one
of the rivers of the Urewera country. I examined the quartz attentively.
It was emery rock, and imbedded in the pale green mass were ruby
crystals, and true Oriental rubies at that. I realized the valuable
nature of the discovery, and questioned the man closely as to where he
had obtained the ruby rock, but he became instantly suspicious, and
guarded in his replies. If I joined his party--well and good: he would
show me the spot, and we would share and share alike, but he would tell
me nothing otherwise.

"I decided to go, and the terms were agreed upon. We set out from
Auckland, the five of us, a week later. We went by coastal steamer to a
little port in the Bay of Plenty, and there we plunged into the Urewera
Mountains. My companions thought of nothing but the search for the
source of the golden sands, but I was interested only in the ruby rock.
There lay the fortune, if I could find it. I carried the specimen of
corundum in my waistcoat pocket.

"The river we were ascending to its source was called the Araheoa. It
was a rushing, noisy torrent, winding along a deep and narrow gorge,
which in places almost met overhead. Some patches of olivine and
serpentine encouraged me to think that we should find a heavy belt of
the rock somewhere along the upper part of the valley, but my hopes were
not realized. Day after day passed, and I found no more of it. When my
companions washed the sands of likely stretches of river beach for fine
gold, I examined the waste for corundum crystals, but I found no signs
of them.

"We followed the river until we reached an inaccessible mountain gorge
which seemed to bar our further progress. But, by diverting our course
some miles to the northward, we were able to ascend to the upper reaches
of the river, and, here, to my delight, I found the banks and rapids
studded with great green masses of olivine rocks.

"I was anxious to examine these rocks, which extended up the mountain
side, and my companions agreed with me that it was advisable to leave
the bed of the river for the spur of the mountains where the river
apparently took its rise. We crossed the stream, and commenced a gradual
but oblique ascent of the spur. But after climbing for some hours we
found our further progress stopped by a wide and deep gully, a sinister
place, full of masses of dark green rocks. At the foot of one of the
largest of these rocks we came across a large hole descending almost
perpendicularly into the earth.

"We lit our lamps and descended. After some scrambling we found
ourselves on a landing-place, from which another low passage of an
easier gradient led into a large cave in the solid rock.

"The surface underneath our feet was covered with a dust so fine that it
slipped from beneath us like sand, and rose in thick clouds about us.
The cave was high enough to walk upright in, and seemed to run a great
distance, with many lateral passages and smaller recesses off the
principal chamber. Moynglass entered one of these passages and
disappeared from view. A few moments afterwards we heard him, in a very
excited voice, calling us to follow him.

"We proceeded stooping, in Indian file, down the passage, and found
Moynglass in a smaller cave at the end of it, staring intently at
something which was at first difficult to see in the gloom. Then, by the
light of our lamps, we made out a sapling sticking up between two rocks,
with a withered human hand impaled on it by a rusty sheath knife.

"As I was examining it, one of my companions, who had been exploring the
cave, gave a cry of astonishment which caused me to look round. In a
corner of the cave, revealed by his lamp, lay two skeletons side by
side. The hand of one skeleton was missing, and in the eye of the other
there gleamed a large uncut ruby. We examined the skeletons and searched
the cave, but found nothing to throw any light on the mystery or reveal
any clue of identity. There was not a vestige of food or clothing around
the remains, and not a scrap of writing--only the two crumbling
skeletons, the sapling, the sheath knife, and the ruby.

"What had brought about such a tragedy in the dim recesses of that
prehistoric cave? Who could say? Perhaps the men had been prospecting
together, and one had found the ruby and hidden in the cave, where his
companion had found him and cut off his right hand with some primitive
idea of making his vengeance fit the crime. Then, perhaps, they had been
unable to escape from the cave, and had died together of thirst and
hunger. But what is the use of speculating? The secret must ever remain
hidden in the cave where the skeletons still lie."

Musard stopped abruptly, and sat staring straight in front of him. His
strange eyes had a fixed look, as if gazing into the distance. His brown
hand rested lightly on the white tablecloth, and the great ruby on his
little finger gleamed fitfully in the light.

"You haven't told us all the story yet," said Phil Heredith quietly.

The other looked doubtfully at the ring of intent faces regarding him.
"I left that part untold for a good reason," he admitted. "It is--well,
I thought it a little bit too horrible to relate."

"Oh, do tell us," said the lady journalist enthusiastically. "We are all
dying to hear it. It is such an unusual and exciting story that it would
be cruel to leave us in suspense about the end."

"Very well, then," said Musard, as the other ladies chorused their
approval. "We left the cave, and Moynglass, who considered himself the
leader of the expedition, put the ruby in his pocket. That night we
camped at a wild desolate spot, not far from the edge of a cliff about
two hundred feet high, at the foot of which the bitter sulphurous waters
of the river flowed into a chasm. In the morning we found Moynglass
lying dead in his blanket, with the rusty sheath knife he had brought
away from the cave sticking in his breast. The ruby was gone, and, so,
also, was the eldest member of our party--an elderly dark-faced Irishman
named Doyne, who, the previous day, had angrily disputed Moynglass's
right to carry the ruby.

"We searched for Doyne all that day, but could find no trace of him. The
next day we tracked across a glacier-like expanse littered with large
blocks of sandstone. It was a grim spot. A horrible, stony, treeless
waste which might have been the birthplace of the earth and the scene of
Creation--a tableland between great mountains, full of masses of
rhodonite contorted into grotesque shapes of stone images; a place where
our lightest whispers came shouting back out of the profound stillness
from the huge castellated black rocks bristling on the edge of a
precipice which slit the valley from end to end.

"It was there we found Doyne, staggering along the lip of the gorge. He
had gone mad in the solitude, and was wandering along bareheaded,
tossing his arms in the air as he walked. When I saw him I thought of
Cain trying to escape from the wrath of God after killing Abel. He saw
us as soon as we saw him, and started to run. We set out in pursuit, but
he fled with great speed, leaping from rock to rock like a mountain
goat. He was getting away from us when he slipped and fell into the
chasm with a loud cry. We found a path down the precipice and descended,
and discovered him at the foot, battered to death, with the ruby
clutched in his hand. That ended the expedition. The others insisted on
returning to the coast without delay, and when we arrived there they
gladly sold their shares in the ruby to me."

There was rather a long silence when the explorer had finished his
narration. The long hand of the clock on the mantelpiece was creeping
past the half-hour, but the circle round the dining-room table had been
so enthralled by the story that nobody had noted the passage of time.

"What a ghastly adventure, Mr. Musard!" began one of the ladies, with a
mirthless little laugh. "Did you never discover anything more about the
two dead men in the cave?"

"No," replied Musard. "As I said, there were no papers or any clue to
throw light on their identity. The skeletons must have lain there for
many years, for the bones were crumbling into decay."

"You have never revisited the spot?" asked Sir Philip.

"I was in the Ureweras two years later with a Maori guide, investigating
copper deposits for the New Zealand Government, but I did not go back to
the valley."

"Would it not have been possible to give the poor things--the skeletons,
I mean--Christian burial?" Mrs. Spicer asked timidly.

"It was impossible to dig a grave in the solid rock. Besides, they have
a sepulchre of Nature's which will outlast any human grave," replied
Musard.

"The thing that puzzles me is how the ruby got into the skeleton's eye,"
remarked the lady journalist musingly. "If that was the skeleton of the
man who killed the other for stealing the ruby, who placed the ruby
where you found it? Obviously, he could not have done it himself, for it
must have been put there after death. Who, then, could it have been?"

"I have no idea," said Musard, in a tone which suggested that he did not
care to discuss the subject further.

"May I look at the ring?" Miss Garton asked.

Musard drew it off his finger and handed it to her in silence. The
others wanted to see it, so it was passed from hand to hand round the
table, to the accompaniment of many admiring comments on the size and
beauty of the stone. One of the young officers, with an air of much
interest, asked Musard whether he thought there were other rubies like
it to be found near the spot.

"Hardly in that form," replied Musard. "It is a puzzle to me how the men
who found the ruby managed to get it out of the ruby rock and partially
polish it. They had no tools or instruments of any kind--at least, we
found none in the cave. Undoubtedly there are rubies in that part of the
world. It was near the valley that Moynglass found his sample of
corundum, with a ruby crystal in it. On our way back, at the head of the
valley, I came across a belt of magnesian rocks charged with ores of
copper and iron, and probably containing the matrix of ruby crystals."

"I wonder you wear the thing," said the chubby-faced youth of the Flying
Corps, handing the ring across the table to the explorer.

"Why not?" asked Musard.

"Well, I wouldn't care to wear a ring found in a skeleton's head. I
should expect the old bus to flop to the ground while I was doing a
stunt, if I had a thing like that on my finger. Aren't you frightened of
being haunted by the original owner?"

"Oh, I don't know," replied Musard indifferently. "There's a horrible
history attached to most jewels, if it comes to that. I am not
superstitious." He replaced the ring on his finger, and added
thoughtfully: "I suppose many people would regard it in that light--as a
grim sort of relic. Certainly, I shall never forget the valley of rocks
where we found it. It was the strangest place I have ever seen--a 'waste
howling wilderness.' And sometimes I fancy I can still hear the cry
Doyne gave as he slipped or jumped from one of the black rocks into
space. I remember how it came ringing back from the cliffs a hundred
times repeated. It was--"

He broke off suddenly, as a scream pealed through the moat-house--a wild
shrill cry, which, coming from somewhere overhead, seemed to fill the
dining-room with the shuddering, despairing intensity of its appeal. It
was the shriek of a woman in terror.

The ladies at the dinner table regarded one another with frightened eyes
and blanched faces.

"What was that?" several of them whispered together.

"It came from Violet's room! My God, what has happened?" exclaimed Phil.
He sprang to his feet in agitation and pushed back his chair. His face
was white, his mouth drawn, and he fumbled at his throat with a shaking
hand, as though the pressure of his collar impeded his breathing. Musard
rose from the table and walked to where the young man was standing.

"Don't get upset needlessly, Phil," he said soothingly, placing a hand
on his shoulder.

Sir Philip had also risen from his seat, and for the briefest possible
space the three men stood thus, facing each other, as if uncertain how
to act. Then the tense silence of the dining-room was broken by the loud
report of a fire-arm.

"Let me go!" cried Phil shrilly, shaking off Musard's arm. He turned and
limped rapidly towards the door, and as he did so his infirmity of body
was apparent. One of his legs was several inches shorter than the other,
and he wore a high boot.

Musard reached the door before him in a few rapid strides, and Sir
Philip came hurrying after his son. The rest of the male guests
followed, flocking towards the door in a body.

The first sight that Musard's eye fell upon as he passed through the
doorway was the figure of Miss Heredith, rapidly descending the
staircase. By the hall light he could see that her face was pale and
agitated. She walked swiftly up to her old friend, and laid a trembling
hand on his arm.

"Oh, Vincent, I was just coming for you--something terrible must have
happened!" she began, in a broken, sobbing voice. "I was going upstairs
to my room, when I heard the scream, and then the shot. They must have
come from Violet's room. Will you go up and see, Vincent?"

Musard did not wait for her concluding words. He was already mounting
the staircase, taking two or three of the broad shallow stairs in his
stride. Phil hobbled after him, and Sir Philip and some of the guests
straggled up in their wake.




CHAPTER V


A shaded light in an alcove at the head of the stairs threw a dim light
down the passage which led off the first-floor landing, but Musard felt
for the electric switch and pressed it. The light flooded an empty
corridor, with the door of the room nearest to him gaping into a dark
interior.

Musard stepped inside the open door, struck a match to find the switch,
and walked over and turned on the light. As he did so, Phil and his
father reached the door and followed him into the room, where, less than
two hours before, Miss Heredith had been with Phil's young wife, and
left her to sleep. The room seemed as it had been then; there was no
sign of any intruder. The cut-glass and silver bottles stood on the
small table by the head of the bed; the gold cigarette case was open
alongside them; a novel, flung face downward on the pillows, revealed a
garish cover and the bold lettering of the title--"What Shall it
Profit?"--as though the book had dropped from the hand of some one
overcome by sleep. But the white rays of the electric globe, hanging in
a shade of rose colour directly overhead, fell with sinister
distinctness on the slender figure of the young wife, lying in a huddled
heap on the bed, her fashionable rest gown stained with blood, which
oozed from her breast in a sluggish stream on the satin quilt. A sharp,
pungent odour was mingled with the heavy atmosphere of the room--the
smell of a burning fabric. There was no disorder, no weapon, no
indication of a struggle. Only the motionless, bleeding figure on the
bed revealed to the guests clustering outside the room that somebody had
entered and departed as silently as a tiger.

Musard went swiftly to the bedside and bent over the girl.

"She has been shot," he said, in a tone which was little more than a
whisper.

"She has been murdered!" It was Phil, pressing close behind Musard, who
uttered these words. "Murdered!" he cried, in an unnatural voice, which
was dreadful to hear. He made a few steps in the direction of the bed
with his arms outstretched, then stopped, and, swinging round, faced the
guests who were thronging the corridor outside. "Murdered, I say!" he
repeated. "Where is the murderer?"

He stood for a moment, fixing a wild eye on the group of frightened
faces in the doorway, as though seeking the murderer among them. Then
his face became distorted, and he fell to the ground. His limbs seemed
to grow rigid as he lay; his legs were extended stiffly, the upper part
of his arms were pressed against his breast, but the forearms inclined
forward, with the palms of the hand thrown back, and the fingers wide
apart. Even in his unconsciousness he looked as though he were warding
off the horror of the sight which had stricken him to the ground.

In the presence of domestic calamity human nature betrays its inherent
weakness. At such times the artificial outer covering of civilization
falls away, and the soul stands forth, stark, primitive, forlorn, and
cries aloud. The strain of the tremendous tragedy which had entered his
house, swift-footed and silent, was too much for Sir Philip. He sank on
his knees by the side of his unconscious son, whimpering like a child--a
weak and helpless old man. There was no trace of the dignity of the
Herediths or pride of race in the wrinkled face, now distorted with the
pitiful grin of senility, as Sir Philip crouched over his son, stroking
his face with feeble fingers.

One or two of the women in the passage became hysterical. The young men
looked on awkwardly, with grave faces, not knowing what to do. There was
something very English in their shy aloofness; in their dislike of
intruding in the room unasked.

Musard, looking round from the bedside, glanced briefly at the prostrate
figure of Phil, and then his gleaming eyes travelled to the group at the
doorway. He, at all events, was calm, and master of himself.

"The ladies had better go downstairs," he said, speaking in a subdued
voice, but with decision. "They can do no good here. And will you
two"--he singled out two of the young men with his eye--"carry Phil
downstairs? He has only fainted. Please take Sir Philip away also.
Telephone for Dr. Holmes immediately, and send for Sergeant Lumbe. And
some of you young men search the house thoroughly--at once. No, not this
room. Search the house from top to bottom, and the grounds outside. Be
quick! There is no time to be lost."

The group in the doorway melted away. The ladies, pale-faced and
weeping, went downstairs together like a flock of frightened birds, and
the young men, only too glad to obey somebody who showed nerve and
resolution at such a moment, dispersed at once to search the house.

Musard was left in the room alone, but not for long. Miss Heredith
entered from the corridor almost immediately. Tufnell accompanied her to
the door, but stopped there, with staring eyes directed towards the bed.
Miss Heredith's face was drawn, but she had recovered her self-control.
She walked quickly towards Musard, who was still bending over the bed.

"Vincent!" she cried. "In pity's name tell me what dreadful thing has
happened? They have carried Phil downstairs, and they tried to detain
me, but I broke away from them and came straight to you. Is Violet----"

Musard sprang to his feet at the first sound of her voice, and wheeled
round swiftly, as if trying to impose his body between her and the
figure on the bed.

"Go back, Alethea!" he sternly commanded. "Go back, I say! This is no
sight for you, and you can do no good."

He still sought to intercept her as she approached, but she gently put
aside his detaining hand, and, walking to the bedside, looked down.
Then, at that sight, her fingers sought for his with an impulsive
feminine movement, and held them tight.

"Do not be afraid for me," she whispered. "See! I am calm--I may be able
to help. Is she--dead?"

"Dying," said Musard sadly.

"Is it...?" her voice dropped to nothingness, but her frightened eyes,
travelling fearfully into the shadowy corners of the big bedroom,
completed the unspoken sentence.

Musard understood her, and bowed his head silently. Then, turning his
face to the door, he beckoned Tufnell to approach. The old servant
advanced tremblingly into the room, vainly endeavouring to compose his
horror-stricken face into a semblance of the impassive mask of the
well-trained English servant.

"Go downstairs and get me some hot water," said Musard quietly. "Look
sharp--and bring it yourself. I do not want any maidservants here to go
into hysterics."

Tufnell hastened away. Musard resumed his place at the bedside, silently
watching the figure on the bed. There was blood on his hands and
clothes.

"Is there no hope? Can nothing be done to save her?" whispered Miss
Heredith.

"Nothing. The lung is penetrated. She is bleeding to death."

His quick eye noticed a change in the figure on the bed. The face
quivered ever so slightly, and the blue eyes half opened. Then the
stricken girl made an effort as though she wanted to sit up, but a
sudden convulsion seized her, and she fell back on her pillow, with one
little white hand, glittering with rings, flung above her head, as if
she died in the act of invoking the retribution of a God of justice on
the assassin who had blotted out her young life in agony and horror.

"She is dead," said Musard gently. "This is a terrible business, and our
first duty is to try and capture the monster who committed this foul
crime."

They stood there in silence for a moment, looking earnestly at one
another. Outside, somewhere in the woodland, there sounded the haunting
gush of a night-bird's song, shivering through the quietness like a
silver bell. The sweet note finished in a frightened squawk, and was
followed by the cry of an owl. The song had betrayed the singer.

Musard turned away from Miss Heredith, and walked restlessly around the
bedroom, scanning the heavy pieces of furniture and the faded hangings,
and peering into every nook and corner, as if seeking for the murderer's
place of concealment. A roomy old wardrobe near the window attracted his
eye, and he stopped in front of it and flung its doors open. It
contained some articles of the dead girl's apparel--costumes and
frocks--hanging on hooks.

His eye wandered to the window, shrouded in the heavy folds of the
damask curtains. He walked over to it, and drew the curtains aside. The
bottom half of the window was wide open.

Miss Heredith, who was following his movements closely, gave vent to a
faint cry of surprise.

"The window!" she exclaimed.

Musard looked round inquiringly.

"The window--what of it?" he asked.

"It was closed when I came in here before dinner to see Violet."

"You are quite sure of that?"

"Oh, yes! At least, I think so."

"I do not understand you."

"I mean that the atmosphere of the room was heavy and thick, as if the
window had not been opened all day."

"It has been a still, close day."

"But Violet never had a window open if she could help it. She disliked
fresh air. She was always afraid of catching cold."

Musard looked out of the window into the velvet darkness of the night.

"If the window was closed before, the murderer has opened it and escaped
through it," he said.

"It is hardly possible."

"Why not?" He turned round and faced her.

"The ground falls on that side. The window is nearly twenty feet from
the ground. And--there is the moat to be crossed. There is no bridge on
that side of the house, and this window opens on the garden. Don't you
remember?"

"I remember now."

"I thought you would."

"Still----" Musard broke off abruptly, and walked away from the window.

Near the window stood the dressing-table. The swing oval mirror
reflected its contents--ivory brushes, silver hand mirrors, all the
costly bijoutry of a refined woman's toilet. Among them stood Violet's
silver jewel-case. Musard strode over and examined the case. It was
locked.

"This ought to be put away," he said.

"I was coming up to get it when I heard the scream," whispered his
companion.

"Perhaps you will take charge of it now," he said, placing it in her
hands. As he did so there flashed across his mind the cynical
appropriateness of the old proverb about locking doors after stolen
steeds.

There was a restraint and lack of spontaneity about their conversation
of which both were acutely conscious. The note was forced, as though
from too great an effort to strike the right key. A curious
psychological change had swept over both since they stood together by
the bedside of the dying woman. It had come with the entry of death.
They conversed hurriedly and guardedly, as if they mistrusted each
other. In each of them two entities were now apparent--a surface
consciousness, which talked and acted mechanically, and a secondary
inner consciousness, watchful, and fearful of misinterpretation of the
spoken word. The faculties which make up the human mind are different
and complex, and mysteriously blended. It may be that when tragedy
upsets the frail structure of human life the brute instincts of
watchfulness and self-preservation come uppermost, guarding against
chance suspicion, or the loud word of accusation. Perhaps through
Musard's mind was passing the thought of the strange manner in which the
murder had been committed, and how he, by detaining everybody downstairs
at the dinner table while he told his story had been an instrument in
its accomplishment.

The situation was terminated by the arrival of Tufnell with some hot
water. Almost on his heels came the young men who had been searching the
house. Musard was relieved by their return, though his impassive face
did not reveal his feelings. Miss Heredith left the room with Tufnell,
taking the jewel-case with her. Musard met the young men at the
threshold.

The tall young officer with the sunburnt face, Major Gardner, informed
Musard that they had completed a search of the house from top to bottom,
but had found nothing. They had also searched the grounds, without
result.

"Mrs. Heredith is dead," Musard gravely informed them. "She died while
you have been searching for the miscreant who fired the shot we heard at
the dinner table. Gentlemen, he must be found. It seems hardly possible
that he has succeeded in getting clear away in so short a time."

"We have searched the place from top to bottom," remarked one of the
young men.

"It is a strange, rambling old place, and difficult to explore unless
you know it thoroughly," said Musard.

"We have done the best we could."

"I do not doubt it, but there are many old nooks and corners in which a
man might hide."

"His first thought, after such a dreadful crime, would be to get away as
quickly as possible," said Major Gardner.

"But how did he escape? Certainly not by the staircase, because we
rushed out from the dining-room directly we heard the shot, and we
should have caught him on his way down."

"Is there not a window in the bedroom? Could he not have escaped that
way?"

"The window is nearly twenty feet from the ground."

"An athletic man might jump that distance," remarked Major Gardner
thoughtfully.

"I still think it possible he may be concealed about the premises,"
replied Musard. "There is an old unused staircase at the end of this
passage, which opens on the south side of the moat-house. Did you find
it? It shuts with a door at the top, and might easily have escaped your
notice."

"I opened the door and went down the staircase," said the young flying
officer. "Nobody could have escaped that way. The door at the bottom is
locked, and there is no key."

The scared face of a maidservant at that moment appeared at the head of
the stairs.

"If you please, sir," she said, addressing Musard, "one of the gentlemen
downstairs sent me up to tell you that he has been trying for the last
ten minutes to ring up the police, but he can't get an answer."

"Send the butler to me at once."

The maid disappeared, and in another moment the butler came hurriedly up
the stairs.

"Tufnell," said Musard quickly, "you must go at once to the village and
get Sergeant Lumbe and Dr. Holmes. Hurry off, and be as quick as you
can. And now, gentlemen," he added, turning to the others, "let us go
downstairs. While we are waiting for the police I will help you make
another search of the house and grounds. The murderer may escape while
we stand here talking. We have wasted too much valuable time already."




CHAPTER VI


The butler left the moat-house at a brisk pace which became almost a run
after he crossed the moat bridge. His way across the park lay along the
carriage drive, bordered by an avenue of tall trees, between an
ornamental lake and some thick game covers, and then through the outer
fields to the village.

It was a soft and mellow September night, with a violet sky overhead
sprinkled with silver. But a touch of autumn decay was in the air, which
was heavy and still, and a white mist was rising in thick, sluggish
clouds from the green, stagnant surface of the lake. The wood was veiled
in blackness, in which the trunks of the trees were just visible,
standing in straight, regular rows, like soldiers at attention.

Tufnell hurried along this lonely spot, casting timid glances around
him. He was not a nervous man at ordinary times, but like many country
people, he had a vein of superstition running through his phlegmatic
temperament, and the events of the night had swept away his calmness.
The croaking of the frogs and the whispering of the trees filled him
with uneasiness, and he kept glancing backwards and forwards from the
lake to the wood, as though he feared the murderer might suddenly appear
from the misty surface of the one or the dim recesses of the other.

He had almost reached the confines of the wood when he was startled by a
loud whirr, which he recognized as the flight of a covey of partridges
from a cover close at hand. What had startled them? Glancing fearfully
around him he saw, or thought he saw, the crouching figure of a man in
one of the bypaths of the wood, partly hidden by the thick branches
which stretched across the path a short distance from the drive.

Tufnell's first impulse was to take to his heels, but he was saved from
this ignominious act by the timely recollection that he was an
Englishman, whose glorious privilege it is to be born without fear. So
he stood still, and in a voice which had something of a quaver in it,
called out:

"Who is there?"

In the wood a bird gave a single call like the note of a flute, the wind
murmured in the tall avenue of trees, a frog splashed in the still
waters of the lake, but there was no sound of human life. Glancing
cautiously into the wood, the butler could no longer see anything
crouching in the path. The man--if it had been a man--had vanished.

"It may have been my fancy," muttered the butler, speaking aloud as
though to reassure himself by hearing his own voice.

He walked quickly onward, and was relieved when he had left the wood
behind him, and could see the faint lights of the village twinkling
beyond the fields. Crossing a footbridge which spanned a narrow stream
at the bottom of the meadows, Tufnell climbed over a stile, and walked
along the road on the other side until he reached a cottage standing
some distance back from the road at the summit of a gentle slope.
Tufnell ascended the slope and knocked loudly at the cottage door.

After the lapse of a few moments the door was opened by a woman with a
candle in her hand--a stout countrywoman of forty, with a curved nose,
prominent teeth, and hair screwed up in a tight knob at the back of her
head. Her small grey eyes, scanning the visitor at the door, showed both
surprise and deference. The butler of the moat-house was not in the
habit of mixing with the villagers, and by them he was accounted
something of a personage. He not only shone with the reflected glory of
the big house, but was respected on his own merit as a "snug" man, who
had saved money, and had a little property of his own.

"Is your husband at home, Mrs. Lumbe?" he asked, in response to her mute
glance of inquiry. He spoke condescendingly, like a man who recognized
the social gulf between them, but believed in being polite to the lower
orders.

"Yes, he is in, Mr. Tufnell. Will you come inside?"

The butler rubbed his boots carefully on the doormat, and followed the
woman down a narrow passage to a small sitting-room at the end of it,
where a man was sitting, reading a newspaper and smoking a pipe.

"Robert," said the woman, "here is Mr. Tufnell to see you."

The man looked up from his newspaper in some surprise, and got up to
greet his visitor. He was not in uniform, and his rough, ungainly figure
and round red face revealed the countryman, but from the crown of his
close-cropped bullet head to his thick-soled boots he looked like a
rural policeman. There was an awkward pose about him as he stood up--a
clumsy effort to maintain the semblance of an official dignity. The
questioning look his ferret eyes cast at the butler through the haze of
tobacco smoke which filled the room indicated his impression that the
visit was not merely a neighbourly call. Tufnell did not leave him in
doubt on the point.

"You are wanted at the moat-house at once, Sergeant Lumbe," he said
gravely. "A terrible crime has been committed. Mrs. Heredith has been
murdered."

"Murdered!" ejaculated the sergeant, looking vacantly across the table
at his wife, who had given vent to a cry of horror. "Murdered!" he
repeated, as though seeking to assure himself of the truth of the
butler's statement by a repetition of the word.

"Yes. She was shot in her bedroom a little while ago while the other
guests were at dinner. You must come at once."

Sergeant Lumbe laid his pipe on the table with a trembling hand. He was
overwhelmed by the magnitude of the catastrophe, and hardly knew what to
do. His previous experience of crime was confined to an occasional
arrest of the village drunkard, who invariably went with him
confidingly. His eye wandered to a bookcase in the corner of the room,
as if he would have liked to consult a "Police Code" which was
prominently displayed on one of the shelves. Apparently he realized the
indignity of such a course in the presence of a member of the public, so
he turned to Tufnell and said:

"I'll go with you, but I must first put on my tunic."

"Be as quick as you can," said the butler, taking a chair.

Sergeant Lumbe went into an inner room, where his wife followed him.
Tufnell heard them whispering as they moved about. Then Sergeant Lumbe
hastily emerged buttoning his tunic. There was an eager look on his
face.

"The wife has been saying that we ought to take her brother along," he
said. "He belongs to Scotland Yard. He's spending his holidays with us."

"Where is he?" asked Tufnell, impressed by the magic of the name of
Scotland Yard.

"He's just stepped over to the _Fox and Knot_ to have a game of
billiards, finding it a bit lonesome here, after London. Do you think we
might send for him and take him with us?"

"I think it would be a very good idea," said Tufnell. "But can he be got
at once?" he added, with a glance at the little clock on the
mantelpiece. "The sooner we return the better."

"The wife can bring him while I am changing my boots. Hurry down to the
_Fox_, Maggie, and tell Tom he's wanted at once."

"Don't tell him what it's for until you get him outside," hastily
counselled the butler as the policeman's wife was departing on her
errand. "Sir Philip won't like it if he hears that what happened
to-night was discussed in the _Fox_ tap-room."

The little clock on the mantelpiece had barely ticked off five
additional minutes when Mrs. Lumbe returned in a breathless state,
accompanied by a young man with billiard chalk on his coat and hands.

"This is my brother, Detective Caldew," said Mrs. Lumbe, between pants,
to the butler. "I told him about the murder, and we hurried back as fast
as we could."

"It's a horrible crime, and we must lose no time while there is still a
chance of catching the murderer," said the young man, regaining his
breath more easily than his stout sister. He brushed the billiard chalk
off his clothes as he spoke. "Let us go at once."

Tufnell cast a curious glance at the new-comer. He saw a man of about
thirty-five, tall, well-built and dark, with a clean-shaven face and
rather intelligent eyes under thick dark brows. He had some difficulty
in recognizing Detective Caldew as the village urchin of a score of
years before who had touched his cap to the moat-house butler as a great
personage, second only in importance to Sir Philip Heredith himself.

Tufnell was not aware that in the former village boy who had become a
London detective he was in the presence of a young man of soaring
ambition. Caldew had gone to London fifteen years before with the idea
of bettering himself. After tramping the streets of the metropolis for
some months in a vain quest for work, he had enlisted in the
metropolitan police force rather than return to his native village and
report himself a failure. At the end of two years' service as a
policeman he had been given the choice of transfer to the Criminal
Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. He had gladly accepted the
opportunity, and had shown so much aptitude for plain-clothes work that
by the end of another two years he had risen to the rank of detective.
Caldew thought he was on the rapid road to further promotion, and had
married on the strength of that belief. But another ten years had passed
since then, and he still occupied a subordinate position, with not much
hope of promotion unless luck came his way. And there seemed very little
chance of that. Caldew's professional experience had imbued him with the
belief that the junior officers of Scotland Yard existed for no other
purpose than to shoulder the blame for the mistakes of their official
superiors, who divided amongst themselves the plums of promotion,
rewards, and newspaper publicity. That, of course, was the recognized
thing in all public departments. Caldew found no fault with the system.
His great ambition was to obtain some opening which would bring him
advancement and his share of the plums.

He believed his opportunity had arrived that night. It had always been
his dream to have the chance to unravel single-handed some great
crime--a murder for choice--in which he alone should have all the glory
and praise and newspaper paragraphs. He determined to make the most of
the lucky chance which had fallen into his hands, before anybody else
could arrive on the scene. He had confidence in his own abilities, and
thought he had all the qualifications necessary to make a great
detective. He was, at all events, sufficiently acute to realize that
opportunity seldom knocks twice at any man's door.

The three men set out for the moat-house. At the butler's request
Sergeant Lumbe went ahead to summon the doctor, who lived on the other
side of the village green, and while he was gone Caldew drew the details
of the crime from his companion. Lumbe rejoined them at the footbridge
which led across the meadows into the Heredith estate, and they
proceeded on their way in silence. Sergeant Lumbe's brain--such as it
was--was in too much of a whirl to permit him to talk coherently;
Tufnell, habitually a taciturn individual, had been rendered more so
than usual by the events of the night; and Caldew was plunged into such
a reverie of pleasurable expectation, regarding the outcome of his
investigations of the moat-house murder, that the stages of his
promotion through the grades of detective, sub-superintendent, and
superintendent, flashed through his mind as rapidly as telegraph poles
flit past a traveller in a railway carriage. The crime which had struck
down one human being in the dawn of youth and beauty, turned another
into a murderer, and plunged an old English family into horror and
misery, afforded Detective Caldew's optimistic temperament such extreme
gratification that he could scarcely forbear from whistling aloud. But
that is human nature.

They passed through the wood, and crossed the moat bridge. The mist was
creeping out of the darkness on both sides of the moat-house, casting a
film across the faint light which gleamed from one or two of the heavily
shuttered windows. Caldew, pausing midway on the bridge to glance at the
mist-spirals stealing up like a troop of ghosts, asked his
brother-in-law if the moat was still kept full of water. He received an
affirmative reply, and walked on again.

A maidservant answered Tufnell's ring at the front door, and informed
him in a whisper that Sir Philip and Miss Heredith were in the
drawing-room. Thither they bent their steps, and found Musard awaiting
them near the door. He nodded to Sergeant Lumbe, whom he knew, and
glanced interrogatively at Caldew. Lumbe announced the latter's
identity.

"You had better come in here first," said Musard, opening the door of
the drawing-room and revealing the baronet and Miss Heredith sitting
within. Brother and sister glanced at the group entering the room.

"This is Detective Caldew, of Scotland Yard," Musard explained to them,
indicating the young man. "He is staying with Lumbe, who thought it
advisable to bring him."

"Have you told them everything?" Miss Heredith spoke to Tufnell. Her dry
lips formed the words rather than uttered them, but the old retainer
understood her, and bowed without speaking. "What do you wish to do
first, Detective Caldew?" she added, turning to him, and speaking with
more composure. She was quick to realize that he would take the lead in
the police investigations. A glance at Sergeant Lumbe's flustered face
revealed only too clearly that the position in which he found himself
was beyond his official capabilities.

Caldew stepped briskly forward. He was in no way embarrassed by his
unaccustomed surroundings or by the commanding appearance of the great
lady who was addressing him. He was a man who believed in himself, and
such men are too much in earnest to be diffident.

"I should like to ask a few questions first, madam," he said. "So far, I
have heard only your butler's version of what happened." Without waiting
for a reply he launched a number of questions, and made a note of the
replies in a pocket-book.

Musard, who assisted Miss Heredith to answer the questions, was rather
impressed by the quick intelligence the detective displayed in eliciting
all the known facts of the murder, but Sergeant Lumbe, who remained
standing near the door, was shocked to hear Caldew cross-questioning the
great folk of the moat-house with such little ceremony. He thought his
brother-in-law a very forward young fellow, and hoped that Miss Heredith
would not hold him responsible for his free-and-easy manner.

"Now I should like to commence my investigations," said Caldew,
replacing his pocket-book. "There has been too much time lost already. I
will start with examining the room where the body is, if you please."

"Certainly." Miss Heredith rose from her seat as she uttered the word.

"My dear Alethea!"--Musard's tone was expostulatory--"I will take the
detective upstairs. There is no need for you to come."

"I prefer to do so." Miss Heredith's tone admitted of no further
argument. She was about to lead the way from the room when she paused
and glanced at Tufnell. "When will Dr. Holmes be here?" she asked.

"Almost immediately, ma'am."

"You had better stay here and receive him, Philip." Miss Heredith placed
her hand affectionately on her brother's shoulder. He had not spoken
during the time the police were in the room, but had sat quietly on his
chair, with bent head and clasped hands, looking very old and frail. "It
will be as well for him to see Phil before going upstairs," she added.

Sir Philip looked up at the mention of his son's name. "Poor Phil," he
muttered dully.

"I think the doctor should examine Phil the moment he comes," continued
Miss Heredith, aside, to Musard. "His look alarms me. I fear the shock
has affected his brain. Tufnell, be sure and show Dr. Holmes to Mr.
Philip's room directly Sir Philip has received him."

"You can rely upon me to do so, ma'am," said Tufnell earnestly.

"Very well. We will now go upstairs."

She left the drawing-room and proceeded towards the broad oak staircase,
with Musard close behind her. Detective Caldew followed more slowly,
noting his surroundings. When they reached the head of the staircase
Miss Heredith switched on the electric current, and the bedroom corridor
sprang into light. Detective Caldew was surprised at its length.

"Where does this passage lead to?" he asked abruptly.

"To the south side of the moat-house," replied Musard.

"Has it any outlet?"

"Yes; a door at the end communicates with a narrow staircase, leading to
another door at the bottom. The second door was a former back
entrance--it opens somewhere near the servants' quarters, I think?" He
glanced inquiringly at Miss Heredith.

"Those stairs are never used now," she replied. "The entrance door at
the bottom of the staircase is kept locked."

"There are such things as skeleton keys," commented the detective.

Musard opened the door of the death-chamber and switched on the light.
Caldew walked at once to the bedside. He drew away the covering which
had been placed over the face of the young wife, and stood looking at
her.

Death had invested her with pathos, but not with dignity. On the pallor
of the death mask the tinted lips, the spots of rouge, the pencilled
eyebrows of the dead face, were as clearly revealed as print on a white
page. The lips were parted; the small white teeth were showing beneath
the upper lip. The little nose rose in the sharp outline of death;
between the half-closed eyelids the darkened blue eyes looked out
vacantly. The thick, fair hair, spotted with blood, flowed in disordered
waves over the white pillow; the numerous rings on the dead hands blazed
and glittered with hard brilliance in the electric light.

It was these costly jewels on the murdered girl's hands which prompted
the question which sprang to the detective's lips:

"Did the murderer take anything?" he asked. "Has anything been missed?"

"No," said Miss Heredith. "Nothing has been taken."

"Mrs. Heredith had more jewellery than this, I suppose?" pursued the
detective. "Brooches and necklaces, and that kind of thing. Where were
they kept?"

"Mrs. Heredith's jewel-case is downstairs, in the safe in the library,"
replied Miss Heredith. She did not feel called upon to add the
additional information that she had taken it there herself, and locked
it up, not half an hour before.

Detective Caldew made a mental note of the fact that the motive for the
crime was not robbery, unless, indeed, the murderer had become flurried,
and fled. His eye, glancing round the room, was attracted by the window
curtains, which were stirring faintly. He flung them back, and saw the
open window.

"How long has this window been open?" he asked.

Miss Heredith gave her reasons for believing that the window was closed
when she left Violet to go downstairs to the dining-room. Caldew
listened thoughtfully, and nodded his head in quick comprehension when
she added the information that the bedroom window was nearly twenty feet
from the ground.

"You think the murderer did not jump out of the window," he said. "The
more important point is, did he get in that way? It is not a difficult
matter to scale a wall to reach a window if there is any sort of a
foothold. It is a point I will look into afterwards."

He tried the window catch, and then walked about the room, examining it
closely. His quick, eager eyes, looking about in every direction, were
caught by something glittering on the carpet, close to the bed. He
glanced at his companions. As a detective, he had long learnt the wisdom
of caution in the presence of friends and relatives.

"I should like to be left alone in the room in order to examine it more
thoroughly," he briefly announced.

When Miss Heredith and Musard had left the room he locked the door
behind them, and, kneeling down by the bedside, disentangled a small
shining object almost concealed in the thick green texture of the
carpet. It was a trinket like a bar brooch, with gold clasps. The bar
was of transparent stone, clear as glass, with a faint sea-green tinge,
and speckled in the interior with small black spots. Caldew had never
seen a stone like it. The frail gold of the setting suggested that it
was not of much intrinsic value, but it was a pretty little trinket,
such as ladies sometimes wear as a mascot. Caldew reflected that if it
were a mascot it was by no means certain that the owner was a woman.
Many young officers took mascots to the front for luck.

As he turned it over in his hand he observed some lettering on the
underside. He examined it curiously, and saw that an inscription had
been scratched into the stone in round, irregular handwriting--obviously
an unskilled, almost childish effort. Holding the brooch closer to the
light, he was able to decipher the inscription. It consisted of two
words--"Semper Fidelis."

It seemed to Caldew that the inscription rather weakened the correctness
of his first impression that the trinket had been worn as a feminine
mascot. He doubted very much whether any modern woman would cherish a
mid-Victorian sentiment like "Always Faithful." On the other hand, many
men might. His experience as a detective had led him to the belief that
men were more prone to such sentiments than the other sex, though their
conduct rarely accorded with their protestations and temporary
intentions.

Struck by a sudden thought, he dropped the trinket back on the carpet.
It was just visible in the thick pile.

"A good idea!" he murmured, as he rose to his feet. "I'll watch this
room to-night."

As he stood there, speculating on the possibility of the owner of the
trinket returning to the room to search for it, he was interrupted by a
low tap at the door. He walked across and opened it. Tufnell stood
outside, grave and composed.

"Mr. Musard would like to see you in the library," he said.

His tone was even and almost deferential, but the detective's watchful
eyes intercepted a fleeting glance cast by the butler over his shoulder
in the direction of the still figure on the bed.

"Very well, I will see him," said the detective.

"I will take you to him, if you will come with me." The butler preceded
him along the passage with noiseless step, and Caldew followed him, deep
in thought.

The butler escorted him to the library, and entered after him. Musard
was in the room alone, standing by the fireplace, smoking a cigar. He
looked up as Caldew entered.

"I have just learnt something which I think you ought to know," he said.
"The information comes from Tufnell. He tells me that while he was going
around the house this afternoon he found the outside door of the back
staircase unlocked."

"Do you mean the door at the bottom of the staircase in the left wing?"
asked Caldew.

"Precisely."

"I understood from Miss Heredith that this door was always kept locked."

"So it is, as a rule. It was only by chance that the butler discovered
this evening that it had been unlocked. You had better explain to the
detective, Tufnell, how you came to find it unfastened."

"I was going round by the back of the house this evening," said the
butler, coming forward. "As I passed the door I tried the handle. To my
surprise it yielded. I opened the door, and found that the key was in
the keyhole, on the other side. I locked the door, and took the key
away."

"What time was this?" inquired Caldew.

"A little before six--perhaps a quarter of an hour."

"Is it your custom to try this door every night?"

"Oh, no, it is not necessary. The door is always kept locked, and the
key hangs with a bunch of other unused keys in a small room near the
housekeeper's apartments, where a number of odds and ends are kept."

"When was the last time you tried the door?"

The butler considered for a moment.

"I cannot rightly say," he said at length. "The door is never used, and
I rarely think of it."

"Then, for all you know to the contrary, the key may have been in the
door for days, or weeks past."

"Why, yes, it is possible, now that you come to mention it," said the
butler, with an air of surprise, as though he had not previously
considered such a contingency.

"The key had been taken off the bunch?"

"Yes."

"Do the servants know where the key is kept?"

"Some of the maidservants do. The back staircase is occasionally opened
for ventilation and dusting, and the maid who does this work gets the
key from the housekeeper."

"Who has charge of the room where the keys are kept?"

"Nobody in particular. It is really a sort of a lumber-room. The
housekeeper has charge of the keys."

"Thank you; that is all I wish to know."

The butler left the room, and Caldew looked up, to encounter Musard's
eyes regarding him.

"Do you think this has anything to do with the murder?" Musard asked.

Caldew hesitated for a moment. It was on the tip of his tongue to reply
that he attached no importance to the butler's statement, but
professional habits of caution checked his natural impulsiveness.

"I want to know more about the circumstances before advancing an
opinion," he replied. "Tufnell's story was rather vague."

"In what respect?"

"In regard to time. The door may have been left unlocked for days."

"Who would unlock it?" replied Musard. "The inference, in view of what
has happened, seems rather that the door was unlocked to-day, and
Tufnell stumbled upon the fact by a lucky chance--by Fate, if you like.
At least it looks like that to me."

"And the murderer entered by the door?"

"Yes."

"I think that is assuming too much," said Caldew. He had no intention of
pointing out to his companion that such an assumption overlooked the
fact that Tufnell's discovery, and the locking of the door, had not
prevented the crime and the subsequent escape of the murderer.

He turned to leave the room, but Musard was in a talkative mood. He
offered the detective a cigar, and kept him for a while, chatting
discursively. Caldew was in no humour to listen. His mind was full of
the problems of this strange case, and he was anxious to return
upstairs. He took the first opportunity of terminating the conversation
and leaving the room.

It was his intention to conceal himself in one of the wardrobes of the
bedroom in the hope that the owner of the trinket he had found would
return in search of it. As he reached the landing he was surprised to
see that the door of the murdered woman's bedroom was wide open,
although he remembered distinctly that he had closed it when he left the
room to accompany the butler downstairs. With a quickly beating heart he
hurried across the room to the spot where he had left the trinket. But
it was gone.




CHAPTER VII


It was the morning after the murder, and five men were seated in the
moat-house library. One of them attracted instant attention by reason of
his overpowering personality. He was a giant in stature and build, with
a massive head, a large red face from which a pair of little bloodshot
eyes stared out truculently, and a bull neck which was several shades
deeper in colour than his face. He was Superintendent Merrington, a
noted executive officer of New Scotland Yard, whose handling of the most
important spy case tried in London during the war had brought forth from
a gracious sovereign the inevitable Order of the British Empire.
Merrington was known as a detective in every capital in Europe, and
because of his wide knowledge of European criminals had more than once
acted as the bodyguard of Royalty on continental tours, and had received
from Royal hands the diamond pin which now adorned the spotted silk tie
encircling his fat purple neck.

The famous detective's outlook on life was cynical and coarse. The
cynicism was the natural outcome of his profession; the coarseness was
his heritage by birth, as his sensual mouth, blubber lips, thick nose,
and bull-neck attested. It was a strange freak of Fate which had made
him the guardian of the morals of society and the upholder of law and
order in a modern civilized community. By temperament and disposition he
belonged to the full-blooded type of humanity which found its best
exemplars in the early Muscovite Czars, and, if Fate had so willed it,
would have revelled in similar pursuits of vice, oppression, and
torture. As Fate had ironically made a police official of him, he had to
content himself with letting off the superfluous steam of his tremendous
temperament by oppressing the criminal classes, and he had performed
that duty so thoroughly that before he became the travelling companion
of kings his name had been a terror to the underworld of London, who
feared and detested his ferocity, his unscrupulous methods of dealing
with them, and his wide knowledge of their class.

He was a recognized hero of the British public, which on one occasion
had presented him with a testimonial for his capture of a desperado who
had been terrorizing the East End of London. But Merrington disdained
such tokens of popular approval. He regarded the public, which he was
paid to protect, as a pack of fools. For him, there were only two
classes of humanity--fools and rogues. The respectable portion of the
population constituted the former, and criminals the latter. He had the
lowest possible opinion of humanity as a whole, and his favourite
expression, in professional conversation, was: "human nature being what
it is...." He was still a mighty force in Scotland Yard, although he had
passed his usefulness and reached the ornamental stage of his career,
rarely condescending to investigate a case personally.

His present visit to the moat-house was one of those rare occasions, and
was due to the action of Captain Stanhill, the Chief Constable of
Sussex, who was seated near him. Captain Stanhill was a short stout man,
with a round, fresh-coloured face, and short sturdy legs and arms. He
wore a tweed coat of the kind known to tailors as "a sporting lounge,"
and his little legs were encased in knickerbockers and leather gaiters,
which were spattered with mud, as though he had ridden some distance
that morning. He was a very different type from Superintendent
Merrington--a gentleman by birth and education, a churchman, and a
county magnate. He never did anything so dangerous as to think, but
accepted the traditions and rules of his race and class as his safe
guide through life. Like most Englishmen of his station of life, he was
endowed with just sufficient intelligence to permit him to slide along
his little groove of life with some measure of satisfaction to himself
and pleasure to his neighbours. He was a sound judge of cattle and
horses, but of human nature he knew nothing whatever, and his first act,
on being informed of the murder at the moat-house, was to ring up
Scotland Yard and request it to send down one of its most trusted
officials to investigate the circumstances. In reply to this call for
assistance, Superintendent Merrington, not unmindful of the county
standing and influence of the Herediths, had decided to investigate the
case himself, and had brought with him two satellites--a finger-print
expert who was at that moment paring his own finger-nails with a
pocket-knife as he stared vacantly out of the library window, and an
official photographer, who was upstairs taking photographs in the death
chamber.

Seated near the finger-print expert was a police official of middle-age,
Inspector Weyling, of the Sussex County Police. He was a saturnine sort
of man, with a hooked nose, a skin like parchment, and a perfectly bald
sugar-loaf head, surmounted at the top by a wen as large as a duck-egg.
His deferential attitude and obsequious tone whenever Superintendent
Merrington chose to address a remark to him indicated that he had a
proper official respect for the rank and standing of that gentleman.
Inspector Weyling was merely a police official. He had no personal
characteristics whatever, unless a hobby for breeding Belgian rabbits,
and a profound belief that Mr. Lloyd George was the greatest statesman
the world had ever seen, could be said to constitute a temperament.

The fifth man was Detective Caldew, who had just completed a narrative
of the events of the previous night for the benefit of his colleagues,
but more especially for Superintendent Merrington, in whose hands lay
the power of directing the investigations of the crime. It was by no
wish of Detective Caldew that Superintendent Merrington had been brought
into the case. Caldew thought when the county inspector arrived and
found a Scotland Yard man at work he would be only too glad to allow him
to go on with the case, and he anticipated no difficulty in obtaining
the consent of his official superiors at Scotland Yard to continuing the
investigations he had commenced. But Inspector Weyling, when notified of
the crime by Sergeant Lumbe, had telephoned to the Chief Constable for
instructions. The latter, distrustful of the ability of the county
police to bring such an atrocious murderer to Justice, had begged the
help of Scotland Yard, with the result that Superintendent Merrington
and his assistants appeared at the moat-house in the early morning
before the astonished eyes of Caldew, who was taking a walk in the
moat-house garden after a night of fruitless investigations.

In the arrival of Merrington, Caldew saw all his fine hopes of promotion
dashed to the ground. He was by no means confident that Merrington would
permit him to take any further share in the investigations, but he was
quite certain that if he did, and the murderer was captured through
their joint efforts, very little of the credit would fall to his share
when such a famous detective as Merrington was connected with the case.
Merrington would see to that.

Caldew, in his narration of the facts of the murder, laid emphasis on
the mysterious nature of the crime, in the hope that Merrington might
deem it wiser to return to London and leave him in charge of the case,
rather than risk a failure which would greatly damage his own
reputation. Merrington listened to him gloomily. He fully realized the
difficult task ahead of the police, and his temper was not improved in
consequence.

"Apparently the murderer has got clean away without leaving a trace
behind him?" he said.

"Yes."

"No sign of any weapon?"

"No."

"Anything taken?"

"No. Miss Heredith says nothing was taken from the room, and nothing is
missing from the house."

"The motive was not robbery then," remarked Captain Stanhill.

"It may have been," responded Merrington. "Caldew says the first
intimation of the crime was the murdered woman screaming. The scream was
followed in a few seconds by the revolver shot. If she screamed when she
saw the murderer enter her room, he may well have feared interruption
and capture, and bolted without stealing anything."

"Why did he murder her, then, in that case?" asked Captain Stanhill.

"To prevent subsequent identification. Many burglars proceed to murder
for that reason. I know plenty of old hands who would commit half a
dozen murders rather than face the prospect of five years' imprisonment.
I do not say that burglary was the motive in this case, but we must not
lose sight of the possibility."

"It seems a strange case," murmured Inspector Weyling absently. He was
thinking, as he spoke, of his rabbits, and wondering whether his wife
would remember to give the lop-eared doe with the litter a little milk
in the course of the morning.

"It's a very sad case," said Captain Stanhill. "Poor young thing!" The
Chief Constable was a human being before he was a police official, and
his face showed plainly that he was stricken with horror by the story of
the crime.

"It's a damned remarkable case," exclaimed Merrington, in his booming
voice. "I do not remember its parallel. An English lady is murdered in
her home, with a crowd of people sitting at dinner in the room
underneath, and the murderer gets clean away, without leaving a trace.
No weapon, no finger-prints or footprints, and no clue of any kind."

Caldew had been hoping to get an opportunity of telling Merrington
privately about the missing trinket, but he realized that he was not
doing his duty by delaying the explanation.

"There was something which might have helped us as a clue," he said.
"Last night, while I was examining Mrs. Heredith's bedroom, I saw a
small trinket lying on the floor near the bedside."

"What sort of a trinket?" asked Merrington.

"A small bar brooch."

"Where is it?"

"I do not know," replied Caldew awkwardly. "I left it where I saw it,
hidden in the carpet, thinking it possible that the person who had lost
it might return in search of it, but while I was downstairs it
disappeared."

"It is rather strange," said Merrington thoughtfully. "I am not inclined
to think there is anything in it to help us," he added, after a moment's
consideration. "Still, I will look into it later. Why did you leave the
trinket in the room, Caldew?"

"I thought it possible that if the owner had anything to do with the
crime he--or she--might return for it," said Caldew. "So I left it where
I found it, and watched the room from the end of the passage."

"A murderer doesn't go about wearing a cheap trinket, and, if he did, he
wouldn't risk his neck coming back to look for it. The brooch was more
likely dropped by one of the maidservants, who picked it up again."

"Would a girl go into a room where there was a dead body?"

"A country wench would. English countrywomen have pretty strong nerves.
You ought to know that. But why did you leave the room if you expected
the owner of the trinket to return in search of it?"

"I was called downstairs to see Mr. Musard. An unused outside door which
is generally kept locked was discovered unlocked by the butler before
the murder was committed. As the door opens on a staircase leading to
the left wing, Mr. Musard thought the butler's discovery had some
bearing on the crime."

"He thought the murderer may have entered the house that way? Such a
theory would suggest that one of the servants is implicated."

"Yes; but I do not agree with Mr. Musard."

"What is your own opinion?"

"I think the key must have been left in the door by one of the
servants--perhaps some days ago. The fact that the butler locked the
door when he found it unfastened did not prevent the murder being
committed, or the murderer escaping afterwards."

"The murderer may have entered by the door before the butler discovered
that it had been unlocked, and then concealed himself inside the house
awaiting an opportunity to commit the crime."

"In that case, he would have tried to escape the same way, but it is
quite certain that he did not do so. Mr. Musard says that the staircase
was the first place to be searched when the guests rushed upstairs. If
the murderer had gone that way he would have found the door at the
bottom locked, and the key removed, and he must have been caught before
he could get back upstairs."

"There's something in that," said Merrington. "But how do you account
for the door being unlocked in the first instance?"

"The servants know where the key is kept. One of the maids may have
taken it to steal out of the house that way to keep an appointment with
a sweetheart, and forgotten all about it when she returned. The back
staircase and entrance are never used by the members of the household,
and the key, which was inside the door, may have been there for days
without being noticed. Tufnell admits that it was only by chance he
tried the door yesterday. He had not tried it for weeks before."

"I'll have a look at this door later. And now, we had better get to
work. We have got to catch this murderer pretty quickly, or the press
and the public will be up in arms. He's had too long a start already.
You must make up your mind for considerable public indignation about
that, Caldew."

"I do not see how I can be held responsible for the murderer getting
away," said Caldew, in an aggrieved tone. "He had his start before I
arrived. I did everything that I could. I searched the house inside and
out, and Sergeant Lumbe has been scouring the country-side since
daybreak looking for suspicious characters."

"I am not blaming you, Caldew," responded Merrington, but his voice
suggested the reverse of his words. "I am merely pointing out to you the
way the British public will look at it. They will say, 'Here is a young
wife murdered in the bosom of her home and family, and the murderer gets
right away. What do we pay the detective force for? To let murderers
escape?' Mark my words, if we don't lay our hands on this chap quickly,
we'll have the whole of the London press howling at our heels like a
pack of wolves. Half a dozen special reporters travelled down in the
train with me and pestered me with questions all the way. They are
coming along here later for a statement for the evening editions. But
never mind the journalists--let us get to work without further loss of
time. Have you made a list of all the guests who have been stopping in
the house?"

"Not yet. Here is a sketch plan of the moat-house interior and the
grounds which you may find useful."

"Thanks. You had better prepare a list of the guests before they leave.
They are sure to get away as fast as possible, and we may want to
interview some of them later on. Now we had better have a look at the
body."

They went upstairs to the bedroom. There they found a young man, with a
freckled face and a snub nose, packing up a photographic apparatus. He
was the photographer, and he had been taking photographs of the dead
body.

"Finished?" inquired Merrington. "That's right. Then you and Freeling
had better return to London by the next train--you'll be wanted in that
Putney case."

The photographer and the finger-print expert left the room together, and
Merrington walked across to the bed. He drew away the sheet which
covered the dead girl, and bent over the body, examining it closely, but
without touching it.

"The corpse has not been moved, I suppose?" he remarked to Caldew, who
was standing beside him.

"Not since I arrived. But she may not have been shot in that position.
She lived some minutes afterwards, and may have moved slightly--not
much, I should say, for there are no marks of bloodstains on any other
part of the bed."

Merrington nodded. He was looking at the bullet wound, which was plainly
visible through a burnt orifice in the rest-gown which the dead girl was
wearing. The wound was a circular punctured hole in the left breast,
less than the size of a sixpenny piece.

"The wound has been washed," he observed. "Was that done by the police
surgeon?"

"The police surgeon has not been here. The corpse was examined by the
village medical man, Dr. Holmes."

"I should like to see him. Where is he to be found?"

"He will be here in the course of the morning. He is attending young
Heredith, who is suffering from the shock. The doctor fears brain
fever."

"When he comes I want to see him. It is idle speculating about the cause
of death in the absence of a doctor. Death in this case appears to have
been due to haemorrhage. Apparently the murderer aimed at the heart and
missed it, and the shot went through the lungs. The shot was fired at
very close range too--look how the wrapper is burnt! Any sign of the
bullet, Caldew?"

"I found none."

"Well, we shall have to wait for the doctor to clear up these points."

His trained eyes swept round the bedroom, taking stock of every article
in it. He next carefully examined the door, and the lock on it.

"The door was open when the others came upstairs, you said, Caldew?"

"Yes--about half open."

"That accounts for the scream and the shot being heard so plainly
downstairs. It also suggests that the murderer fled very hurriedly,
leaving the door open behind him."

"It seems to me more likely that he escaped by the window, even if he
did not enter that way. Miss Heredith, who was the last inmate of the
household to see Mrs. Heredith alive, thinks that the window was closed
when she was in the room before dinner."

Merrington walked over to the window and examined it, testing the lock
and looking at the sill.

"Does Miss Heredith say that the window was locked, or merely closed,
when she was in the room?" he asked.

"She cannot say definitely. She thinks it was closed because the air was
heavy, and she knew that Mrs. Heredith disliked having her bedroom
window open."

Merrington shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

"A woman's fancies are not much to build a theory upon," he said. "Have
you any other reason for thinking that the murderer may have escaped by
this window?"

"Yes. After the shot was fired the guests rushed upstairs immediately,
and the murderer would have run into them if he had attempted to escape
downstairs."

"Is there no other means of escape from the wing except by the
staircase?"

"There is the back staircase I told you of, at the end of the corridor.
That staircase is never used. The door is kept locked, and the key hangs
in a room downstairs. It was the door at the bottom of this staircase
which was found unlocked by the butler yesterday evening."

"I'll have a look at it, and then we'll go downstairs. I want to see
this bedroom window from outside."

They left the bedroom and proceeded to the end of the corridor, where
Caldew pointed out the door at the top of the staircase. Merrington
opened it, and went down the stairs. He reappeared after the lapse of a
few minutes with dusty hands and cobwebs on his clothes.

"The murderer didn't get in that way," he said. "On the face of it, it
seems a plausible theory to suggest that he entered by the locked door
and hid himself somewhere in this wing, and escaped after committing the
murder by jumping through the bedroom window. But it is impossible to
get over your point that if he had entered by the door he would have
tried to escape by the same means, not knowing that the door had been
locked in the meantime. To do that he must have traversed the corridor
twice and gone down and up these back stairs while the guests were
coming up the other stairs. He couldn't have done it in the time. He
would have been caught--cut off before he could get back. Look at this
steep flight of stairs and the length of the corridor! That disposes of
the incident of the door. Whoever unlocked it was not the murderer."

Merrington retraced his steps along the corridor. As he walked, his eyes
roved restlessly over the tapestry hangings and velvet curtains, and
took in the dark nooks and corners which abound in old English
country-houses.

"Plenty of places here where a man might hide," he muttered, in a
dissatisfied voice.

At the head of the front staircase he paused, and looked over the
balusters, as though calculating the distance to the hall beneath. Then
he descended the stairs.

It still wanted half an hour to breakfast time. There was no sign of
anybody stirring downstairs except a fresh-faced maidservant, who was
dusting the furniture in the great hall. She glanced nervously at the
groups of police officials, and then resumed her dusting. Merrington
strode across to her.

"What is your name, my dear?" he asked, in his great voice.

"Milly Saker, sir."

"Very well, Milly. I'll come and have a talk with you presently--just
our two selves."

The girl, far from looking delighted at this prospect, backed away with
a frightened face. Merrington strode on through the open front door, and
turned towards the left wing.

It was a crisp autumn morning. The early sunshine fell on the hectic
flush of decay in the foliage of the woods, but a thin wisp of vapour
still lingered across the moat-house garden and the quiet fields beyond.
Merrington kept on until he reached the large windows of the
dining-room, which opened on to the terraced garden.

"That's Mrs. Heredith's window," he said, pointing up to it. "Her
bedroom is directly over the dining-room. If the murderer escaped by the
window he must have dropped on to this gravel path."

"It is a pretty stiff drop," said Captain Stanhill, measuring the
distance with his eye.

"Oh, I don't know," replied Merrington. "He'd let himself down eight
feet with extended arms, and that would leave a drop of only ten feet or
thereabouts--not much for an athletic man. But if he dropped he must
have left footprints."

"There are none. I have looked," said Caldew.

The information did not deter Merrington from examining the path anew.
He got down on his hands and knees to scrutinize the gravel and the
grass plot more thoroughly.

"Nothing doing here either," he said as he scrambled to his feet. "There
are neither footprints nor marks such as one would expect to find if a
man had dropped out of the window. What are you looking at, Weyling?"

In reply Inspector Weyling made his first and only contribution towards
the elucidation of the crime.

"Could not the murderer have climbed up to the bedroom by that creeper?"
he asked, pointing to a thin trail of Virginia creeper which stretched
up the wall almost as high as the window.

Merrington tested the frail creeper with his great hand. His sharp tug
detached a mass of the plant from the brickwork.

"Not likely," he replied. "It might bear the weight of a boy or a
slender girl, but not of a man. What do you think, Caldew?"

Caldew nodded without speaking. Weyling's remark had started a train of
thought in his mind, but he had no intention of revealing it to a man
who plainly did not intend to confer with him on equal terms, or
disclose his own theory of the murder--if he had formed one.

"Let us get inside again," said Merrington, in his masterful way.

He turned back towards the house, and the others followed.




CHAPTER VIII


As they reached the library again a small silver clock on the
mantelpiece gave a single chime. Merrington looked at it, and then
glanced at his watch.

"Half-past eight!" he said. "That clock is five minutes slow--by me. The
people who have been staying here will go off after breakfast. Visitors
always leave a house of trouble as soon as possible--like rats deserting
a sinking ship. The thing is to question as many as we can get hold of
before they go. As some of them knew Mrs. Heredith before her marriage,
we may elicit something about her or her antecedents which will throw
some light on the motive for the crime."

"I do not think Sir Philip will care to have his guests questioned,"
remarked Captain Stanhill doubtfully. "They must be all well-connected
and very respectable people, or they would not have been invited here."

"There have been very respectable and highly connected murderers before
to-day, Captain Stanhill, as no doubt you are aware," rejoined
Merrington caustically.

"The guests were all downstairs in the dining-room at the time the
murder was committed," said Caldew. "Miss Heredith told me so herself."

"I am aware of that fact also," retorted Merrington sharply.
"Nevertheless, they must be seen. We cannot afford to throw away a
chance."

"It is a delicate and awkward business," murmured the Chief Constable.

"It will be a delicate and awkward business for us if we don't lay our
hands on this criminal," responded Merrington. "Sir Philip Heredith,
with his influence and connections, will be able to make it pretty hot
for Scotland Yard and the County Police if the murderer of his son's
wife is allowed to escape. You'd better take the job in hand at once,
Caldew. Weyling can go with you and help. See as many of the guests as
you can--especially the ladies--and get what you can out of them. But
I'd be glad if you'd first ask Miss Heredith to grant me an interview
before breakfast. Don't send a servant, but see her yourself."

Caldew left the room to undertake the investigations allotted to him,
and Weyling followed him with a startled expression of face. He felt
overweighted by the magnitude of the task which had been thrust upon
him, and doubted his ability to discharge it properly.

"Miss Heredith will be able to give us more information than Sir
Philip," remarked Merrington in a friendly tone to Captain Stanhill, as
the door closed behind the subordinate officials. "A woman is generally
more observant than a man--particularly if anything underhand has been
going on."

Captain Stanhill cast a puzzled glance at his companion. As a
simple-minded English gentleman he was quite unable to penetrate the
obscurity of expression which masked the meaning of the last remark.
Merrington caught the look, but had formed too poor an opinion of his
companion's understanding to explain himself further. Besides, he liked
mystifying people.

"I'm going to put the servants through their facings straight away," he
continued. "If there is anything to be learnt we are more likely to find
it out from them than the guests. Trust the backstairs for knowing
what's going on upstairs! Servants want skilful handling, though. You've
got to know when to bully and when to coax. Half measures are no good
with them."

Captain Stanhill did not reply. He wandered round the spacious library,
glancing at the rows of books in their oaken shelves. Superintendent
Merrington, while awaiting the arrival of Miss Heredith, drew forth the
plan of the moat-house which Caldew had sketched, and studied it
closely.

The moat-house had only two stories, but it was a rambling old place and
covered a considerable area of ground, facing three sides of the county.
The principal portion, consisting of the old house which had been burnt
down and rebuilt, faced the north. The two wings had been added later.

The front door opened into a spacious entrance hall which in former
times had been the dining-room. At the end of the hall was the grand
staircase, adorned by statues, armour, and the Heredith arms carved in
panels. The principal rooms, with the exception of the dining-room, were
all on the ground floor of the main building, but corridors led off the
entrance hall to the newer wings at each side, extending on the right
side to the billiard room, conservatory, greenhouses, and orangery, and
on the left side to the dining-room, Miss Heredith's private
sitting-room, and Sir Philip's study.

Merrington carefully studied the arrangements of this wing, as depicted
on Caldew's sketch plan. The upper portion was reached by a staircase
which opened off the corridor almost opposite the dining-room door, and
ran, with one turning, to a landing which was only a few feet away from
the door of the bedroom in which Mrs. Heredith was murdered. Next to
this room was a dressing-room, and a spare bedroom. The remainder of the
wing consisted of two bathrooms, a linen room, and Miss Heredith's
bedroom, which was at the south end of the wing. The rooms all faced the
west side of the house, and were lit by windows opening on the terraced
gardens. They were entered by a corridor which ran the whole length of
the wing, terminating in the door which opened on the unused back
staircase.

Before Merrington had finished his scrutiny of the plan, the door
opened, and Miss Heredith entered the library. She looked pale and worn,
and there were dark rings under her eyes which suggested a sleepless
night. But her face was composed, though grave.

Captain Stanhill advanced and shook hands with her, uttering a few words
of well-bred sympathy as he did so, and then introduced Superintendent
Merrington.

"Superintendent Merrington has been kind enough to come down from
Scotland Yard at my request to give us the benefit of his skill in
investigating this terrible crime," he said simply.

"I desired an interview with you in order to ask a few questions," said
Merrington, coming to the point at once.

Miss Heredith bowed.

"Were all the blinds down in the dining-room last night during dinner?"
asked Merrington.

Captain Stanhill looked quickly at his colleague. He failed to see the
purpose of the question.

"I think so," replied Miss Heredith, after a moment's reflection. "I
cannot say for certain, as I was out of the room during the latter
portion of the dinner, but I can easily ascertain." She touched a bell,
which was answered by a maidservant. "Tell Mr. Tufnell I wish to speak
to him," she said.

The girl went away, and Tufnell appeared a moment afterwards.

"Were the blinds all drawn in the dining-room during dinner last night,
Tufnell?"

"Yes, ma'am. I pulled them down myself before sounding the gong."

"Thank you, Tufnell."

"I understand that you were not present at the dinner table when the
shot was fired?" said Merrington when the butler had left the room.

"No, I was not."

"May I ask why you left the table?"

The question was put suavely enough, but a half-uttered protest from
Captain Stanhill indicated that he, at least, realized the sting
contained within it. But Miss Heredith, looking at Merrington with her
clear grey eyes, replied calmly:

"I was called out of the room to speak to our chauffeur. He had been
ordered to have an extra vehicle in readiness to convey our guests to an
evening entertainment, and he wished to consult me about it."

"Why did you not return to the dining-room?"

"Because dinner was nearly finished when I left the room."

"Where were you when the shot was fired?"

"I was on the stairs, on the way to my room when I heard the scream. I
was hastening back to the dining-room as quickly as possible, but before
I reached it the shot rang out."

"Surely these questions are unnecessary, Merrington," exclaimed
Captain Stanhill. "Anyone would think--I mean that there is not the
slightest idea in our minds that Miss Heredith--at least, I meant to
say--" Captain Stanhill floundered badly as he realized that his remarks
were capable of a terrible interpretation which he did not intend, and
broke off abruptly.

"I am very glad that Superintendent Merrington has asked these
questions," said Miss Heredith coldly.

Merrington bowed a grim acknowledgment. He had still many questions he
wanted to ask Miss Heredith, and he proceeded to put them in his own
masterful way, very much as though he were examining a witness in the
police court, Captain Stanhill thought, but in reality with a courtesy
and consideration quite unusual for him. It was his best manner; his
worst, Captain Stanhill was to see later. As a matter of fact, it was
impossible for Merrington to be gentle with anybody. He had spent so
many years of his life probing into strange stories and sinister
mysteries that he had insensibly come to regard the world as a larger
criminal court, made up of tainted and adverse witnesses, whom it was
his privilege to cross-question.

He questioned Miss Heredith searchingly about the young bride. According
to an eminent expert in jurisprudence, the tendency to believe the
testimony of others is an inherent instinct implanted in the human
breast by the Almighty. If that be so, it is to be feared that the seed
had failed to germinate in Merrington's bosom, for his natural tendency
was to look upon his fellow creatures as liars, particularly when they
were of good social standing, with that hatred of notoriety which is
characteristic of their class. Merrington had this fact in his mind as
he interrogated Miss Heredith closely about the circumstances of her
nephew's marriage. He hoped to extract from her something which her
English pride might lead her to conceal, something which might throw a
light on the motive for the murder.

Miss Heredith answered him with a frankness which even Merrington
grudgingly realized left nothing to be desired. She was, apparently,
only too anxious to help the police investigations to the best of her
ability. But what she had to tell amounted to very little. Her first
knowledge of her nephew's intention to marry was contained in a letter
written home some four months before, in which he announced his
engagement to a young lady engaged in war work in a London Government
office. A month later came the news that he was married, and was
bringing his young bride to the moat-house. The young couple arrived a
week after the receipt of the second letter. They were welcomed home,
and settled down to country life in the old place. Phil left his post in
the War Office, and busied himself in looking after the estate. He was
very fond of his young wife, but it was obvious from the first that
Violet found the quiet country existence rather dull after her London
life. She knew nobody in Sussex except Mrs. Weyne, the author's wife,
who had been an acquaintance of hers in London years before, and she did
not seem to care much for the county people who visited the moat-house.
She received letters from girl friends in London, and sometimes read
extracts from them at the breakfast table, but her life, on the whole,
was a secluded one. It was in order to brighten it that Phil suggested a
house party. The guests consisted principally of Violet's and Phil's
London friends and acquaintances.

"Do you know the names of these girl friends who used to write to her?"
asked Merrington.

Miss Heredith replied that she did not.

"I suppose her husband would know them?"

"It is quite impossible to question my nephew," said Miss Heredith
decisively. "He is dreadfully ill."

Merrington nodded in a dissatisfied sort of way. He was aware of Phil's
illness, and his suspicious mind wondered whether it had been assumed
for the occasion in order to keep back something which the police ought
to know. His thick lip curled savagely at the idea. If these people
tried to hide anything from him in order to save a scandal, so much the
worse for them. But that was something he would go into later.

The next questions he put to Miss Heredith were designed to ascertain
what she thought of the murder, whether she had any suspicions of her
own, and whether there was any reason for suspecting Miss Heredith
herself. At that stage of the inquiry it was Merrington's business to
suspect everybody. He could not afford to allow the slightest chance to
slip. His object was to get at the truth; to weigh each particle of
supposition or evidence without regard to the feelings or social
position of the witness.

The case so far puzzled him, and Miss Heredith's answers to his
questions revealed little about the murder that he had not previously
known. The only additional facts he gleaned related to the murdered
girl's brief existence at the moat-house; of her earlier history and her
London life Miss Heredith knew nothing whatever. Merrington made some
notes of the replies in an imposing pocket-book, but he was plainly
dissatisfied as he turned to another phase of the investigation.

"Were all your guests in the dining-room at the time the scream and the
shot were heard?" he asked.

"They were all there when I left the room. The butler can tell you if
any left afterwards."

"I will question Tufnell on that point later. No, on second thoughts, it
will be better to settle it now. I attach importance to it."

Tufnell was recalled to the room, and, in reply to Superintendent
Merrington's question, stated that none of the guests left the
dining-room before the shot was fired. Tufnell added they were all
interested in listening to a story that Mr. Musard was telling. Having
imparted this information the butler returned to the breakfast room,
overweighted with the responsibility of superintending the morning meal
in his mistress's absence.

"Is this Musard the jewel expert of that name?" asked Merrington.

"Our guest is Mr. Vincent Musard, the explorer," replied Miss Heredith
coldly.

"The same man." Merrington made another minute note in his pocket-book,
and continued, "May I take it, then, that all your guests who were
staying here were assembled in the dining-room at the time the murder
was committed?"

"Yes; except one who left during the afternoon."

"Who was that?"

"Captain Nepcote, a friend of my nephew's. He received a telegram
recalling him to the front, and returned to London by the afternoon
train."

Merrington made a note of this in his pocket-book with an air of
finality, and asked Miss Heredith to see that the servants were sent to
the library one by one, to be questioned. Miss Heredith said she would
arrange it with the housekeeper, and was then politely escorted to the
door by Captain Stanhill.

The next few hours were educative for Captain Stanhill. Although he was
Chief Constable of Sussex, he took no part in the proceedings, but sat
at the table like a man in a dream, living in a world of Superintendent
Merrington's creation--a world of sinister imaginings and vile motives,
through which stealthy suspicion prowled craftily with padded feet,
seeking a victim among the procession of weeping maids, stolid
under-gardeners, stable hands, and anxious upper servants who presented
themselves in the library to be questioned. But it seemed to Captain
Stanhill that though the women were flustered and the men nervous, they
knew nothing whatever about the atrocious murder which had been
committed a few hours before in the room above their heads. Merrington
also seemed to be aware that he was getting no nearer the truth with his
traps, his questions, and his bullying, and he grew so angry and savage
as the day wore on that he reminded Captain Stanhill of a bull he had
once seen trying to rend a way through a mesh. As the morning advanced,
Merrington's face took on a deeper tint of purple, his fierce little
eyes grew more bloodshot, and between the intervals of examining the
servants he mopped his perspiring head with a large handkerchief.

The significance of one fact he did not realize until afterwards. The
last of the inmates of the moat-house to come to the library was the
housekeeper, Mrs. Rath, who presented herself at his request in order to
acquaint him with the details of the domestic management of the
household. Mrs. Rath entered the room with a nervous air. Her white face
contrasted oddly with her black dress, and her hands shook slightly, in
spite of her effort to appear composed. Merrington stared at her
careworn face and hollow grey eyes with the perplexed sensation of a man
who is confronted with a face familiar to him, but is unable to recall
its identity.

"Where have I seen you before?" he blurted out.

The housekeeper raised frightened eyes, ringed with black, to his
truculent face, but dropped them again without speaking. Merrington did
not repeat his question. He did not imagine the housekeeper knew
anything about the murder, but it was a mistake to put a witness on her
guard. It was in quite a different tone that he thanked Mrs. Rath for
sending the servants to the library, and asked her to describe the
household arrangements of the previous night. Mrs. Rath, who had been
palpably nervous after his first question, became reassured and more at
her ease, and answered him intelligently.

"And where were you at the time of the murder, Mrs. Rath?" pursued
Merrington, when he had drawn forth these details.

"I was in my sitting-room."

"Did you hear the scream and the shot?"

"I heard the scream, but not the shot."

"How was that?"

"My sitting-room is a long way from Mrs. Heredith's room. Perhaps that
is the reason."

Merrington looked at the position of the housekeeper's room on the plan
of the moat-house which Caldew had drawn. As she said, it was a
considerable distance to her room, which was in the old portion of the
house, near the rear, and on the ground floor.

"Were you alone in your room?" he asked.

"No. My daughter was sitting with me."

To a quick ear it may have seemed that the answer was a trifle long in
coming.

Merrington shook his head irritably. Really, it seemed impossible to
reach the end of the people who were in this infernal moat-house at the
time of the murder.

"Does your daughter live with you here?" he asked.

"Oh, no. She came to see me yesterday afternoon, and stayed all night
because she missed her train back after--after the tragedy."

"Is she here now?"

"No. She went away by an early train. She is employed as a milliner at
Stading, the market town, which is ten miles away."

"She lives there, I suppose?"

"Yes. She lives in."

"Who is her employer?"

"Mr. Closeby, the draper. Daniel Closeby and Son is the name of the
firm."

Merrington made another note in his pocket-book. It sounded plausible
enough, but the girl must be added to the lengthening list of people in
the case who would have to be seen.

"I think that is all I need detain you for, Mrs. Rath," he said.

The housekeeper lingered to inquire when the gentlemen would like their
lunch. Merrington, who had breakfasted early and passed an arduous
morning, replied bluntly that it could not be too soon to please him.

"I'll have it served in the small breakfast-room in a quarter of an
hour," said Mrs. Rath, hurrying away.

Her whole bearing, as she departed, indicated such an air of
irrepressible relief at having passed through a trying ordeal that all
Merrington's former doubts of her revived.

"I'd give something to remember where I've seen that infernal woman
before," he ejaculated, slapping his thigh emphatically.

"What infernal woman?" asked Captain Stanhill, who had come to the
conclusion that he did not like Superintendent Merrington or his style
of conversation.

"Why, that woman who has just left the room--that housekeeper. I've seen
her before somewhere, in very different circumstances, but I cannot
recall where. I recollect her face distinctly--particularly her eyes. I
flatter myself I never forget a pair of eyes. Confound it, where the
devil have I seen her?"

Captain Stanhill turned away indifferently, and the conversation was
terminated by the appearance of Detective Caldew, who appeared in the
doorway as Mrs. Rath left the room.

"Dr. Holmes is waiting in the drawing-room if you wish to see him," he
announced.

"Bring him here," commanded Merrington curtly. He had a great notion of
his self-importance, and had no intention of dancing attendance on a
mere country practitioner.

Caldew went away, and shortly reappeared with a little man whom he
introduced as Dr. Holmes. The doctor was a meagre shrimp of humanity,
with a peevish expression on his withered little face, as though he were
bored with his own nonentity. He was dressed in faded clothes and
carried a small black bag in one hand and a worn hat in the other. If he
had any idea of airing a professional protest at being compelled to wait
upon the police, the thought vanished as his eye took in the stupendous
stature of Superintendent Merrington, who towered above him like a
mastiff standing over a toy terrier.

"Sit down, doctor," he curtly commanded. "I want to ask you a few
questions about the death of Mrs. Heredith. You examined the body, I
understand?"

Dr. Holmes bowed, put on a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles in order to
see Superintendent Merrington better, and waited to be questioned.

"I understand you were summoned to the moat-house last night, doctor,
after Mrs. Heredith was murdered, and examined the body. What was the
cause of death?"

"The cause of death was a bullet wound," pronounced the doctor
oracularly.

"I am aware of that much," answered Merrington irritably. "But a bullet
wound is not necessarily fatal. Mrs. Heredith lived some time after her
death, so it is certain that the bullet which killed her did not
penetrate the heart. What is the nature of the injuries it inflicted?"

"Death in Mrs. Heredith's case was the result of a bullet passing
through the left lung. It passed between the second and third ribs in
entering the body, traversed the lung, causing a great flow of blood,
which filled the air passages."

"Then the cause of death was haemorrhage?"

"Yes. There was very severe internal haemorrhage. The face and the
left-hand side of the neck were covered with blood. There had also been
bleeding from the mouth and nose. Mr. Musard, who accompanied me to the
room, told me he had washed it away while Mrs. Heredith was dying, in an
endeavour to staunch the flow."

"She was quite dead when you saw her?"

"Oh, yes. Judging by the warmth of the body, and by the fact that blood
had ceased to flow, I should say that death had taken place about forty
minutes before."

"What time did you reach the moat-house?"

"It would be about twenty minutes past eight. Sergeant Lumbe called at
my house at ten minutes past the hour--I made a note of the time--and I
went immediately. It is about ten minutes' walk to the moat-house from
the village."

"Was the main blood vessel of the lung broken?" asked Captain Stanhill,
who had been following the doctor's remarks with close attention.

"The aorta? It is difficult to say from an external examination. Mr.
Musard tells me that Mrs. Heredith died about five minutes after he
reached the room. The aorta is a very large vessel, and if it were burst
bleeding to death would be very rapid."

"Could the wound have been self-inflicted?" asked Merrington.

Dr. Holmes pursed his lips.

"I can form no definite opinion on that point," he said. "By the
direction of the bullet, I should say not."

"Have you found the bullet?"

"No, it is in the body. As apparently it took a course towards the right
after entering the body, and there is no corresponding wound in the
back, I should say that it is lodged somewhere in the vertical column.
Of course, I cannot be sure."

"The Government pathologist will clear up these points when he makes the
post-mortem examination," said Merrington. "I do not think we have any
more questions to ask you, doctor."

"How is your patient, the young husband?" asked Captain Stanhill, as Dr.
Holmes rose.

"The symptoms point to brain fever. The family, on my advice, have sent
to London for Sir Ralph Horton, the eminent brain doctor."

"I do not wonder his mind has given way under the shock," remarked
Captain Stanhill. "To lose his wife in such terrible circumstances after
three months' marriage must have been a cruel blow."

"It was the worse in his case because he has always been nervous and
highly strung from childhood--partly, I think, as the result of his
infirmity. He has a deformed foot. His present illness seems to be a
complete overthrow of the nervous system. I have been with him the
greater part of the night. He has been highly delirious, but he is a
little quieter now."

Merrington pricked up his ears at this last remark. After his fruitless
investigations of the morning he was inclined to think that the clue to
the murder lay in the past--it might be in some former folly or secret
intrigue of the young wife's single days. The question was, in that
case, whether the husband was likely to have any knowledge of his wife's
secret. If he had, he might, in his delirium, babble something which
would provide a clue to trace the murderer. It was a poor chance, but
the poorest chance was worth trying in such a baffling case.

"I should like to have a look at your patient," he said to Dr. Holmes.

"It would be impossible to question him in his present state," replied
the doctor stiffly.

"I do not wish to question him. I merely wish to look at him."

"In that case you may see him. He is quite unconscious, and recognizes
nobody. I will take you to his room, if you wish."

The little doctor bustled along the corridor, and turned into a passage
traversing the right wing of the moat-house. About half way down it he
paused before a door, which he opened softly, and motioned to the other
two to enter.

It was a single bedroom, panelled in oak, which was dark with age, with
one small window; but it had the advantage of being as far away as
possible from the upstairs bedroom in the left wing where Phil's wife
lay murdered. A small fire burnt in the grate, a china bowl of autumn
flowers bloomed on a table near the bedside, and a capable looking nurse
was preparing a draught by the window. She glanced at the three men as
they entered, but went on with her occupation.

The sick man lay on his back, breathing heavily. His black hair framed a
face which was ghastly in its whiteness, and his upturned eyes, barely
visible beneath the half-closed lids, seemed fixed and motionless.

"Any change, nurse?" the doctor asked.

"No change, sir."

But even as she spoke Phil's face changed in a manner which was
wonderful in its suddenness. His features became contorted, as though a
sword had been thrust through his vitals, and he struggled upright in
his bed, with one shaking hand outstretched. His eyes, glaring with
delirium, roved restlessly over the faces of the men at the foot of the
bed.

"She's dead, I tell you! Violet's dead.... Have they found him? Ah,
who's that?"

Once again he uttered his young wife's name, and fell back on the
pillow, motionless as before, but with one arm athwart his face, as
though to cover his eyes.

"I shall be glad if you will leave the room," said the little doctor
gravely. "Your presence excites him." He hurried round to the bedside
and bent over his patient.




CHAPTER IX


"Have you formed any theory of the murder yet?"

It was the evening of the same day, and Superintendent Merrington and
Captain Stanhill were once more in the moat-house library. It was
Captain Stanhill who asked the question, as he stood warming his little
legs in front of a crackling fire of oak logs which had just been
lighted in the gloomy depths of the big fireplace. Although it was early
in autumn, the evening air was chill.

Superintendent Merrington was walking up and down the room with rapid
strides, occasionally glancing with some impatience at the clock which
ticked with cheerful indifference on the mantelpiece. He was about to
return to London, but was waiting for the return of Detective Caldew and
Sergeant Lumbe. Caldew had cycled to Chidelham to see the Weynes, and
Lumbe had been sent to investigate a telephoned report of a suspicious
stranger seen at a hamlet called Tibblestone, some miles away.

Merrington's face wore a gloomy and dissatisfied expression. He had
spent the afternoon in a whirlwind of energy in which he had done many
things. He had explored the moat-house from top to bottom, squeezing his
vast bulk into every obscure corner of the rambling old place. He had
rowed round the moat in a small boat, scrutinizing the outside wall for
footmarks. He had mustered the male servants, and superintended an
organized beat of the grounds, the woods, and the neighbouring heights.
He had interviewed the village station-master to ascertain if any
stranger had arrived at Heredith the previous day, and had made similar
inquiries by telephone at the adjoining stations. He had inspected the
horses and vehicles at the village inn to see if they showed marks of
recent usage, and he had peremptorily interrogated everybody he came
across to find out whether any one unknown in the district had been seen
skulking about the neighbourhood.

Merrington lacked the subtle and penetrative brain of a really great
detective, but he possessed energy, initiative, and observation. These
qualities had stood him in good stead before, but in this case they had
brought nothing to light. The mystery and meaning of the terrible murder
of the previous night were no nearer solution than when he had arrived
to take up the case, ten hours before.

The most baffling aspect of the crime to him was the apparent lack of
motive and the absence of any clue. In most murders there are generally
some presumptive clues to guide those called upon to investigate the
crime--such things as finger-prints or footprints, a previous threat or
admission, an overheard conversation, a chance word, or a compromising
letter. Such clues may not prove much in themselves, but they serve as
finger-posts. Even the time, which in some cases of murder offers a
valuable help to solution, in this case tended to shield the murderer.
It seemed as though the murderer had chosen an unusual time and unusual
conditions to shield his identity more thoroughly and make discovery
impossible.

The case was full of sinister possibilities and perplexities. It bore
the stamp of deep premeditation and calculated skill. As the crime was
apparently motiveless, it was certain that the motive was deep and
carefully hidden. The only definite conclusion that Merrington had
reached was that the murderer would have to be sought further afield,
probably in London, where the dead girl had lived all her life. There
seemed not the slightest reason to suspect anybody in the neighbourhood,
as she was a stranger to the district, and knew nobody in it except Mrs.
Weyne, who lived some miles away. It was unfortunate that her husband,
who was the only person able to give any information about her earlier
life, was too ill to be questioned.

On hearing Captain Stanhill's question, Merrington paused abruptly in
his impatient pacing of the carpet, and glanced at him covertly from his
deep-set little eyes. If he had consulted his own feelings he would have
told the Chief Constable that it was not the time to air theories about
the crime. But in his present position it behoved him to walk warily and
not make an enemy of his colleague. If there was to be an outburst of
public indignation because the murderer in this case had not been
immediately discovered and brought to justice, it would be just as well
if the county police shared the burden of responsibility. Merrington
realized that he could best make Captain Stanhill feel his
responsibility by taking him fully into his confidence. He was aware
that he had practically ignored the Chief Constable in the course of the
day's investigations, and it was desirable to remove any feeling that
treatment may have caused. Superintendent Merrington had the greatest
contempt for the county police, but there were times when it was
judicious to dissemble that feeling. The present moment was one of them.

Captain Stanhill, on his part, cherished no animosity against his
companion for his cavalier treatment of him. He realized his own
inexperience in crime detection, and had been quite willing that
Superintendent Merrington should take the lead in the investigations,
which he had assisted to the best of his ability. He thought Merrington
rather an unpleasant type, but he was overawed by his great reputation
as a detective, and impressed by his energy and massive self-confidence.
The Chief Constable had not asserted his own official position, because
he was aware that he was unable to give competent help in such a
baffling case. He was, above all things, anxious that the murderer of
Violet Heredith should be captured and brought to justice as speedily as
possible, and he had no thought of his personal dignity so long as that
end was achieved.

The abstract ideal of human justice is supposed to be based on the
threefold aims of punishment, prevention, and reformation, but the heart
of the average man, when confronted by grevious wrong, is swayed by no
higher impulse than immediate retribution on the wrongdoer. Captain
Stanhill was an average man, and his feelings, harrowed by the spectacle
of the bleeding corpse of the young wife, and the pitiful condition to
which her murder had reduced her young husband, clamoured for
retribution, swift, complete, and implacable, on the being who had
committed this horrible crime. And he hoped that the famous detective
would be able to assure him that his desire was likely to have a speedy
attainment. That was why he asked Merrington whether he had formed any
theory about the crime.

"It would be too much to say that I have formed a theory," replied
Merrington, in response to Captain Stanhill's question. "It is necessary
to have clues for the formation of a theory, and in this case we are
faced with a complete absence of clues."

"Do you not think that the trinket found by Detective Caldew in Mrs.
Heredith's bedroom has some bearing on the murder?" said Captain
Stanhill.

"I attach no importance to it. There were a number of persons in the
bedroom after the murder was committed, and any of them might have
dropped the ornament. Or it may have been lost there days before by a
servant, and escaped notice."

"But it was picked up again during Caldew's absence from the room. Do
you not regard that as suspicious? Detective Caldew, when he was
relating the incident to us this morning, seemed to think that the
trinket belonged to the murderer, who took the risk of returning to the
room to recover it for fear it might form a clue leading to discovery."

"Caldew reads too much into his discovery," replied Merrington, with an
indulgent smile. "Like all young detectives, he is inclined to attach
undue importance to small points. As I told him, I cannot imagine a
murderer taking such a desperate risk as to return to the spot where he
had killed his victim, in order to search for a trinket he had dropped.
Caldew may have concealed the brooch so effectually in the thick folds
of the velvet carpet that he could not find it again when he looked for
it on his return to the room. That explanation strikes me as probable as
his own theory of a mysterious midnight intruder returning to search for
it while he was out of the room. The trinket may have some connection
with the crime, or it may not, but as I have not seen it I prefer to
leave it out of my calculation altogether. This case is going to be
difficult enough to solve without chasing chimeras. But to return to
your question. Although I have not actually formed a theory, my
preliminary investigations of the circumstances have led me to arrive at
certain conclusions and to exclude possibilities I was at first inclined
to adopt. I will go over the case in detail, and then you will see for
yourself the conclusions I have formed, and understand how I have
arrived at them.

"In the first place, the greatest problem of this murder is the apparent
lack of motive. There seems to be no reason why this young lady should
have been killed. She had only recently been married, and, apparently,
married happily, to a wealthy young man of good family, who was very
much in love with her. It is obvious that money difficulties have
nothing to do with the crime. Her husband is the only son of a wealthy
father, and he is able to give his wife everything that a woman needs
for her happiness and comfort. She is cherished, petted, and loved, and
has a beautiful home. Who, therefore, had an object in putting an end to
this young woman's life in her own home, in circumstances and conditions
attended with the utmost possibility of discovery and capture? The
perpetrator of the deed must have acted from some very strong motive or
impulse to venture into a country-house full of people, at a time when
everybody was indoors, in order to kill his victim.

"In a seemingly purposeless murder like this, a certain amount of
suspicion gathers round the other members of the household. Human nature
being what it is, one should never take anything for granted, but should
always be on the watch for hidden motives. But in this case the members
of the household, with the exception of Miss Heredith, were downstairs
in the dining-room at the time the murder was committed. Miss Heredith
left the room a few minutes before the shot was heard. You will recall
that she volunteered that statement to us this morning. It occurred to
me at the time that that may have been bluff to put us off the scent.
Clever criminals often do that kind of thing. My suspicions against her
were strengthened by the additional fact that Miss Heredith did not like
her nephew's wife. She masked the fact beneath a well-bred semblance of
grief and horror, but it was plain as a pikestaff to me. But, after
thinking over all the circumstances, I came to the conclusion that she
had nothing whatever to do with it."

"Such a possibility is inconceivable," exclaimed Captain Stanhill. "A
lady like Miss Heredith would never commit murder."

"It was not for that reason that I excluded her from suspicion," replied
Merrington drily. "The points against her were really very damaging. She
was out of the dining-room when the scream was heard, and when the
others rushed out of the dining-room on hearing the shot, the first
thing they saw was Miss Heredith descending the staircase of the wing in
which her nephew's wife had been murdered. Fortunately for Miss
Heredith, she was almost at the bottom of the staircase when she was
seen. The guests streamed out of the dining-room directly the shot was
heard, therefore it is impossible that Miss Heredith could have shot
Violet Heredith and then reached the bottom of the stairs so quickly.
She is able to establish an alibi of time, by, perhaps, half a minute.

"As all the members of the house party were in the dining-room at the
time, it is clear that they had nothing to do with the actual commission
of the crime. The next thing is the servants, and they also can be
excluded from suspicion. When we examined them this morning they were
all able to prove, more or less conclusively, that they were engaged in
their various duties at the time the murder was committed. The point is
that not one of them was upstairs in the left wing of the house when
Mrs. Heredith was shot.

"My original impression that the murder was not committed by a native of
the district has been deepened by our afternoon's investigations. Where,
then, are we to look for the murderer? To answer that question, in part,
let us first consider _how_ the murder was committed, and try and
reconstruct the circumstances in which the murderer must have entered
and left the house.

"Caldew thinks that the murderer entered the house by scaling the
bedroom window, and made his exit by the same means. He bases that view
on Miss Heredith's belief that the window was closed when she was in the
bedroom before dinner. After the murder was committed the window was
found open. But Miss Heredith's statement about the closed window does
not amount to very much. She does not actually know whether the window
was open or shut, because the window curtains were completely drawn at
the time she was in the room. Those curtains are so thick and heavy that
they would keep out the air whether the window was open or shut, and
account for the stuffy atmosphere in a room which had been occupied all
day.

"I do not regard the open window as a clue one way or the other. The one
thing we must not lose sight of is that nobody can say definitely when
it was opened. It may have been opened by Mrs. Heredith herself before
Miss Heredith came into the room, or the murderer may have flung it open
and escaped from the room that way after committing the murder.
Personally, I do not think that he did, but I am not prepared altogether
to exclude the possibility of his having done so. But I am convinced
that he did not enter the bedroom by scaling the outside wall and
getting in through the window. In the first place, there are no marks of
any kind on the window sill or the window catch. There is not very much
one way or another in the absence of marks on the sill or even on the
catch, supposing the window was locked. The murderer might have opened
the catch from outside without leaving a mark--I have known the trick to
be done--and he might have got into the room without leaving any marks
on the sill, particularly if he wore rubber boots. But, what is far more
important, there are no marks on the wall outside, or any disturbance or
displacement of the Virginia creeper which covers a portion of the wall,
to suggest that the murderer climbed up to the room that way. I think it
is certain that if he had done so he would have left his marks on the
one or the other. The wall is of a soft old brickwork which would
scratch and show marks plainly, and the Virginia creeper would break
away. In any case, as I said this morning, it would barely sustain the
weight of a boy, or a very slight girl. Finally, there are no marks of
footsteps approaching the wall in the garden outside.

"The question of entry is naturally of great importance, and that was
why I questioned the butler this morning whether the blinds were drawn
in the dining-room last night. At that time, before I had had an
opportunity of making my subsequent investigations, I deemed it possible
that the murderer might have entered from outside by the window. In that
case he would have had to pass the dining-room windows to reach the
bedroom window, and might have been seen by one of the guests in the
dining-room. It would be dark at the time, but last night was a very
clear one, and his form might have been discerned flitting past the
dining-room windows. But the absence of footprints in the gravel, and
more particularly, in the soft yielding earth beneath the bedroom
window, is conclusive proof to me that he did not get into the room that
way.

"Did he escape by the window? That question is more difficult to answer.
It is quite possible that it might have been done without injury, but it
is a desperate feat to leap from an upstairs window in the dark. The
murderer was in desperate straits, and for that reason we must not rule
out the possibility that he did so. But if the leap was made through the
window, my argument about the absence of footprints in the soft garden
soil underneath the window comes in with additional force. A person
leaping from such a height, even in stocking feet or rubber boots, would
be certain to leave the impress of the drop, in footmarks or heelmarks,
in the soil where he landed.

"Caldew's principal reason for believing that the murderer escaped by
the window was based on the point that there was no other avenue of
escape possible. We can only speculate as to what happened in the
bedroom immediately before the murder was committed, but Caldew's theory
is that Mrs. Heredith saw the murderer approaching her, and screamed for
help. That scream hurried the murderer's movements. The scream was sure
to arouse the household, and it left the murderer with the smallest
possible margin of time in which to shoot Mrs. Heredith and make escape
by the window. An attempt to escape down the front staircase meant
running into the arms of the inmates of the dining-room rushing
upstairs. The only other exit from that wing of the house was the
disused back staircase, and that was found locked when it was searched
after the murder. Therefore, according to Caldew, the murderer escaped
by the window because there was no other way out.

"That theory is plausible enough on the surface, but only on the
surface. For the same reason that establishes Miss Heredith's innocence,
the murderer could not have escaped by running down the staircase,
because there was not sufficient time to get past the people who had
been alarmed by the scream. But if the murderer was a man, it is just
possible that he might have darted out of the bedroom and dropped over
the balusters, before the dining-room door was opened, getting clear
away without being seen by anybody--not even by Miss Heredith. An
examination of the staircase of the left wing has convinced me that this
feat was possible. The staircase has a very sharp turn in the middle,
which has the effect of hiding the top of the staircase from the bottom,
and the bottom from the top. The leap is not so dangerous as the one
from the window, because it is not so high. It is probably six feet
less, allowing for the flooring beneath and the higher window opening
above. The spot by the foot of the staircase where the murderer might
have dropped is well screened, even from the view of anybody near the
bottom of the staircase, by some tall tree shrubs in tubs, and some
armour.

"But there is another and likelier way by which the murderer might have
escaped. I saw the possibility of it as soon as I examined the upstairs
portion of the wing in which the murder had been committed. There are
several places where the murderer could have hidden until chance
afforded the opportunity of escape. He would avoid seeking shelter in
any of the adjoining bedrooms, because he would realize that they would
be searched immediately the murder was discovered, but there are
excellent temporary places of concealment behind the tapestry hangings,
or in the thick folds of the heavy velvet curtains at the entrance to
the corridor, or in the small press or wardrobe which is built right
over the head of the stairs. Suppose that the murderer, after firing the
shot, dashed out into the corridor with the idea of escaping down the
stairs. He hears the guests coming upstairs, and realizes that he is too
late. He instinctively looks round for some place to hide, sees the
curtains, and slips behind them. From their folds he watches the guests
troop along the corridor to the murdered woman's bedroom. He could touch
them as they passed, but they cannot see him. Then, while they are all
congregated round the doorway of Mrs. Heredith's bedroom, he emerges on
the other side of the curtains, slips down the staircase, and gets out
of the house without meeting anybody."

"But all the guests did not go upstairs," observed Captain Stanhill, who
was following his companion's remarks with close attention. "Some stayed
in the dining-room. Tufnell, the butler, made that quite clear when you
were examining him this morning."

"Yes--a few hysterical females cowering and whimpering with fear as far
away from the door as possible," retorted Merrington contemptuously.
"The butler made that clear also."

"But the servants would also have heard the scream and the shot,"
pursued Captain Stanhill earnestly. "Is it not likely that some of them
would have been clustered near the foot of the staircase, wondering what
had happened?"

"No," replied Merrington. "Servants are even more cowardly than they are
curious. They would be too frightened to congregate at the foot of the
staircase, for fear the murderer might come leaping downstairs and
discharge another shot in their midst. It is possible, however, that the
murderer remained hidden upstairs for some time longer--perhaps until
the butler left the house to go to the village for the police, and
Musard took all the male guests downstairs to make another search of the
house. He would then have an exceedingly favourable opportunity of
slipping away unobserved. It is true that the upstairs portion of the
wing was searched before that time arrived, but the search was conducted
by amateurs who knew nothing about such a task, and would probably
overlook such hiding-places as I have indicated."

It appeared to Captain Stanhill that Superintendent Merrington, instead
of always adopting his theory of fitting the crime to the circumstances,
was sometimes in danger of reversing the process.

"From what you say it seems to me that it is very difficult to tell how
the murderer escaped," he remarked.

"It is even more difficult to say how the murderer, after entering the
moat-house, found his way to Mrs. Heredith's bedroom in order to murder
her. The house is a big rambling place, consisting of a main building
and two wings. It would be impossible for you or me or any other
stranger to find our way about it without previous knowledge of the
place, unless we had a plan. How, then, did the murderer accomplish it?
How did he know that Mrs. Heredith slept in the left wing? How did he
know that he would find her alone in that wing while everybody else was
downstairs at the dinner-table?"

Again, it seemed to Captain Stanhill that Merrington's detective methods
had a tendency to multiply difficulties rather than clear them up.

"Perhaps he was provided with a plan of the house," he suggested.

"That answers only one of my points. In my consideration of this aspect
of the case, two possible solutions occurred to me. It is impossible for
any of the guests to have committed the crime, because they were all
downstairs at the time, but it is just possible one of them may have
instigated it."

"It is incredible to me that a guest staying in a gentleman's house
could plot such a crime," said Captain Stanhill.

"Nothing is incredible in crime," replied Merrington. "I've no illusions
about human nature. It is capable of much worse things than that.
Strange things can happen in a big country-house like this, filled with
a large party of young people of both sexes--flirtations, intrigues, and
worse still."

"But not murder, as a general rule," commented Captain Stanhill, with a
trace of sarcasm in his mild tones.

"You cannot lay down general rules about murder. An unbalanced human
being, under the influence of hatred, jealousy, or revenge, is no more
amenable to the rules of society than a tiger. But I do not think that
this crime was instigated by one of the guests, because in that case it
would probably have been arranged to be committed later in the evening,
when the members of the house-party were at the house of the Weynes, and
the moat-house was occupied only by the servants. Still, I do not intend
to lose sight of the hypothesis. Another possibility is that one of the
servants was in league with the murderer. A third possibility is that
Mrs. Heredith may have brought in the murderer herself."

"What do you mean?"

"She may have had a lover, and the lover may have murdered her."

"Oh, impossible!" Captain Stanhill repelled the idea with an instinctive
gesture of disgust. "It is too monstrous to suppose that a happily
married young wife would be carrying on an intrigue three months after
her marriage."

"More monstrous things happen every day--human nature being what it is,"
retorted Merrington coolly. "You must remember that we know practically
nothing about her. The people who knew her in London left the house
before they could be questioned; Miss Heredith and her brother have no
knowledge of her past; and her husband is too ill to tell us anything.
Her marriage was apparently a hasty love match--a love match so far as
young Heredith was concerned. So far, we have only two slender facts to
guide us in our estimate of her, which are contained in the two letters
in which young Heredith announced his marriage to his people. According
to those statements, she was an orphan who was earning her living as a
war clerk in the Government department in which young Heredith held his
appointment. That does not carry us very far. During her brief life at
the moat-house she seems to have been reticent about her earlier life.
Miss Heredith is not the type of woman to have questioned her, and,
apparently, she vouchsafed no information. An examination of her boxes
and her writing-table has brought to light nothing in the way of writing
or correspondence to help us. Such a girl--a bachelor girl in London in
war-time--may have had passages in her past life of which her husband
knew nothing--passages which may have an important bearing on her
murder. Not until we have a thorough knowledge of her antecedents and
her past life can we hope to pierce the hidden motives which have led to
this murder. It is there, in my opinion, that we must seek for the clue
to this strange murder, and it is to that effort I shall devote my
energies as soon as I return to London. Until those facts are brought to
light we are merely groping in the dark."




CHAPTER X


In accordance with Merrington's instructions, Caldew devoted a
considerable portion of the morning seeking information among the
moat-house guests. But few of them showed any inclination to talk about
the murder. Many of the women were too upset to be seen, and the men had
plainly no desire to be mixed up in such a terrible affair by giving
interviews to detectives. Everybody was anxious to get away as speedily
as possible, and Caldew was compelled to pursue his inquiries amongst
groups of hurrying people, flustered servants, and village conveyances
laden with luggage. Most of the departing guests replied to his
questions as briefly as possible, and gave their London addresses with
obvious reluctance; the few who were willing to aid the cause of justice
could throw very little light on the London life of the murdered girl.
Even those who had been acquainted with her before her marriage seemed
to know very little about her.

Caldew finished his inquiries by midday. By that time most of the guests
had departed from the moat-house and were on their way to London.
Superintendent Merrington and Captain Stanhill were in the library
examining the servants. Sergeant Lumbe had gone by train to Tibblestone
to sift the story of the suspicious stranger who had descended on that
remote village during the previous night.

It wanted an hour to lunch-time, and Caldew decided to spend the time by
making a few investigations on his own account before cycling over to
Chidelham in the afternoon to see the Weynes.

Caldew had not been impressed with Merrington's handling of the case.
Subordinates rarely are impressed with the qualities of those placed
over them in authority. They generally imagine they could do better if
they had the same opportunities. Caldew was no exception to that rule.
It seemed to him that Merrington lacked finesse, and was out of touch
with modern methods of criminal investigation. He had been spoilt by too
much success, by too much newspaper flattery, by too many jaunts with
Royalty. No man could act as sheep-dog for Royalty and retain skill as a
detective. That kind of professional work was fatal for the
intelligence. Merrington had a great reputation behind him, and his
knowledge of European criminals was probably unequalled, but his methods
of investigating the moat-house murder suggested that he was no longer
one of the world's greatest detectives, if, indeed, he had ever deserved
recognition in their ranks. Caldew recalled that his fame rested chiefly
on his wide experience rather than on the more subtle deductive methods
of modern criminology. It was said in Scotland Yard that when Merrington
was at the height of his reputation, twenty years before, his knowledge
of London criminals and their methods was so extensive that he could in
most cases identify the criminal by merely looking at his handiwork.

As a modern criminologist, Caldew believed that the less a detective
intruded his own personality into his investigations the better for his
chances of success. He did not think that the loud officialism of
Merrington was likely to solve such a deep, subtle crime as the murder
of Violet Heredith, and, consequently, he had the chance for which he
had waited so long. It now remained for him to prove that he could do
better than Merrington. He had sufficient confidence in his own
abilities to welcome the opportunity, but at the same time he believed
that he was confronted with a crime which would tax all his resources as
a detective to unravel.

Like Merrington, he had been struck by the strangeness of the murder.
All the circumstances were unusual, and quite outside his previous
experience of big crimes. He had also come to the conclusion that the
ease with which the murderer had found his way into the moat-house, and
afterwards escaped, pointed to an intimate knowledge of the place.

It would be too much to say that Caldew and Merrington reached different
conclusions by the same road. Up to a certain point their independent
deductions from the more obvious facts of the case were alike, as was
inevitable. In every crime there are circumstances and events which are
as finger-posts, pointing the one way to the experienced observer. But
their subsequent deductions from the outstanding facts branched widely,
perhaps because the younger detective did not read so much into
circumstances as Merrington. From the same facts they had reached
different theories about the murder. Merrington, by a process of minute
and careful deductions which he had placed before the Chief Constable,
had convinced himself that the key to the murder and the murderer was to
be found in London; Caldew believed that the solution of the mystery lay
near the scene of the events, and perhaps in the house where the murder
was committed.

Caldew was aware that he could have given no satisfactory reason for
holding that belief, apart from the point that the murder had been
committed by somebody who knew the moat-house sufficiently well to get
in and out of the place without being seen. But that point was open to
the explanation that the criminal might have provided himself with a
plan of the house. Nevertheless, the impression had entered his mind so
strongly that he could not have shaken it off if he had tried. But he
did not try. He had sufficient imagination to be aware that intuition,
in crime detection, is sometimes worth more than the most elaborate
deductions.

For the rest, all his speculations about the crime were affected by the
trinket he had found in the bedroom on the night of the murder. But the
discovery and su

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