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The Ashiel mystery

by Marion Bryce · English · Gutenberg #9746 · 489,215 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Ashiel mystery
        a detective story

Author: Marion Bryce


        
Release date: January 1, 2006 [eBook #9746]
                Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9746

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and PG Distributed Proofreaders


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                           THE ASHIEL MYSTERY
                           A DETECTIVE STORY


                          BY MRS. CHARLES BRYCE




_"It is the difficulty of the Police Romance, that the reader is always a
man of such vastly greater ingenuity than the writer._"

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.




CHAPTER I


When Sir Arthur Byrne fell ill, after three summers at his post in the
little consulate that overlooked the lonely waters of the Black Sea, he
applied for sick leave. Having obtained it, he hurried home to scatter
guineas in Harley Street; for he felt all the uneasy doubts as to his
future which a strong man who has never in his life known what it is to
have a headache is apt to experience at the first symptom that all is not
well. Outwardly, he pretended to make light of the matter.

"Drains, that's what it is," he would say to some of the passengers to
whom he confided the altered state of his health on board the boat which
carried him to Constantinople. "As soon as I get back to a civilized
sewage system I shall be myself again. These Eastern towns are all right
for Orientals; and what is your Muscovite but an Oriental, in all
essentials of hygiene? But they play the deuce with a European who has
grown up in a country where people still indulge in a sense of smell."

And if anyone ventured to sympathize with him, or to express regret at
his illness, he would snub him fiercely. But for all that he felt
convinced, in his own mind, that he had been attacked by some fatal
disease. He became melancholy and depressed; and, if he did not spend his
days in drawing up his last will and testament, it was because such a
proceeding--in view of the state of his banking account--would have
partaken of the nature of a farce. Having a sense of humour, he was
little disposed, just then, to any action whose comic side he could not
conveniently ignore.

When he arrived in London, however, he was relieved to find that the
specialists whom he consulted, while they mostly gave him his money's
worth of polite interest, did not display any anxiety as to his
condition. One of them, indeed, went so far as to mention a long name,
and to suggest that an operation for appendicitis would be likely to do
no harm; but, on being cross-examined, confessed that he saw no reason to
suspect anything wrong with Sir Arthur's appendix; so that the young man
left the consulting-room in some indignation.

He remembered, as soon as the door had closed behind him, that he had
forgotten to ask the meaning of the long name; and, being reluctant to
set eyes again on the doctor who had mystified him with it, went to
another and demanded to know what such a term might signify.

"Is--is it--dangerous?" he stammered, trying in vain to appear
indifferent.

Sir Ronald Tompkins, F.R.C.S., etc. etc., let slip a smile; and then,
remembering his reputation, changed it to a look of grave sympathy.

"No," he murmured, "no, no. There is no danger. I should say, no
immediate danger. Still you did right, quite right, in coming to me.
Taken in time, and in the proper way, this delicacy of yours will, I have
no hesitation in saying, give way to treatment. I assure you, my dear Sir
Arthur, that I have cured many worse cases than yours. I will write you
out a little prescription. Just a little pill, perfectly pleasant to the
taste, which you must swallow when you feel this alarming depression and
lack of appetite of which you complain; and I am confident that we shall
soon notice an improvement. Above all, my dear Sir, no worry; no anxiety.
Lead a quiet, open-air life; play golf; avoid bathing in cold water;
avoid soup, potatoes, puddings and alcohol; and come and see me again
this day fortnight. Thank you, yes, two guineas. _Good_-bye."

He pressed Sir Arthur's hand, and shepherded him out of the room.

His patient departed, impressed, soothed and comforted.

After the two weeks had passed, and feeling decidedly better, he
returned.

Sir Ronald on this occasion was absolutely cheerful. He expressed himself
astonished at the improvement, and enthusiastic on the subject of the
excellence of his own advice. He then broke to Sir Arthur the fact that
he was about to take his annual holiday. He was starting for Norway the
next day, and should not be back for six weeks.

"But what shall I do while you are away?" cried his patient, aghast.

"You have advanced beyond my utmost expectations," replied the doctor,
"and the best thing for you now will be to go out to Vichy, and take a
course of the waters there. I should have recommended this in any case.
My intended departure makes no difference. Let me earnestly advise you to
start for France to-morrow."

Sir Arthur had by this time developed a blind faith in Sir Ronald
Tompkins and did not dream of ignoring his suggestion. He threw over all
the engagements he had made since arriving in England; packed his trunks
once more; and, if he did not actually leave the country until two or
three days later, it was only because he was not able to get a sleeping
berth on the night express at such short notice.

The end of the week saw him installed at Vichy, the most assiduous and
conscientious of all the water drinkers assembled there.

It was on the veranda of his hotel that he made the acquaintance of
Mrs. Meredith.

She was twenty-five, rich, beautiful and a widow, her husband having been
accidentally killed within a few months of their marriage. After a year
or so of mourning she had recovered her spirits, and led a gay life in
English society, where she was very much in request.

Sir Arthur had seen few attractive women of late, the ladies of Baku
being inclined to run to fat and diamonds, and he thought Lena Meredith
the most lovely and the most wonderful creature that ever stepped out of
a fairy tale.

From the very moment he set eyes on her he was her devoted slave, and
after the first few days a more constant attendant than any shadow--for
shadows at best are mere fair-weather comrades. He seldom saw the lady
alone, for she had with her a small child, not yet a year old, of which
she was, as it seemed to Sir Arthur, inordinately fond; and whether she
were sitting under the trees in the garden of the hotel, or driving
slowly along the dusty roads--as was her habit each afternoon--the baby
and its nurse were always with her, and by their presence put an
effective check to the personalities in which he was longing to indulge.
It would have taken more than a baby to discourage Sir Arthur, however:
he cheerfully included the little girl in his attentions; and, as time
went on, became known to the other invalids in the place by the nickname
of "the Nursemaid."

Mrs. Meredith took his homage as a matter of course. She was used to
admiration, though she was not one of those women to whom it is
indispensable. She considered it one of the luxuries of life, and held
that it is more becoming than diamonds and a better protection against
the weather than the most expensive furs. At first she looked upon the
obviously stricken state of Sir Arthur with amusement, combined with a
good deal of gratification that some one should have arisen to entertain
her in this dull health resort; but gradually, as the weeks passed, her
point of view underwent a change. Whether it was the boredom of the cure,
or whether she was touched by the unselfish devotion of her admirer, or
whether it was due merely to the accident that Sir Arthur was an
uncommonly good-looking young man and so little conscious of the fact,
from one cause or another she began to feel for him a friendliness which
grew quickly more pronounced; so that at the end of a month, when he
found her, for the first time walking alone by the lake, and proposed to
her inside the first two minutes of their encounter, she accepted him
almost as promptly, and with very nearly as much enthusiasm.

"I want to talk to you about the child, little Juliet," she said, a day
or two later. "Or rather, though I want to talk about her, perhaps I had
better not, for I can tell you almost nothing that concerns her."

"My dear," said Sir Arthur, "you needn't tell me anything, if you
don't like."

"But that's just the tiresome part," she returned, "I should like you to
know everything, and yet I must not let you know. She is not mine, of
course, but beyond that her parentage must remain a secret, even from
you. Yet this I may say: she is the child of a friend of mine, and there
is no scandal attached to her birth, but I have taken all responsibility
as to her future. Are you, Arthur, also prepared to adopt her?"

"Darling, I will adopt dozens of them, if you like," said her infatuated
betrothed. "Juliet is a little dear, and I am very glad we shall always
have her."

In England, the news of Lena Meredith's engagement caused a flutter of
excitement and disappointment. It had been hoped that she would make a
great match, and she received many letters from members of her family and
friends, pointing out the deplorable manner in which she was throwing
herself away on an impecunious young baronet who occupied an obscure
position in the Consular Service. She was begged to remember that the
Duke of Dachet had seemed distinctly smitten when he was introduced to
her at the end of the last season; and told that if she would not
consider her own interests it was unnecessary that she should forget
those of her younger unmarried sisters.

At shooting lodges in the North, and in country houses in the South,
young men were observed to receive the tidings with pained surprise.
More than one of them had given Mrs. Meredith credit for better taste
when it came to choosing a second husband; more than one of them had
felt, indeed, that she was the only woman in the world with an eye
discerning enough to appreciate his own valuable qualities at their true
worth. Could the fact be that she had overlooked those rare gifts? For a
week or so depression sat in many a heart unaccustomed to its presence;
and young ladies, in search of a husband, found, here and there, that
one turned to them whom they had all but given up as hopelessly
indifferent to their charms.

Unconcerned by the lack of enthusiasm aroused by her decision, Lena
Meredith married Sir Arthur Byrne, and in the course of a few months
departed with him to his post on the Black Sea; where the baby Juliet and
her nurse formed an important part of the consular household.

The years passed happily. Sir Arthur was moved and promoted from one
little port to another a trifle more frequented by the ships of his
country, and after a year or so to yet another still larger; so that,
while nothing was too good for Juliet in the eyes of her adopted mother,
and to a lesser extent in those of her father, it happened that she knew
remarkably little of her own land, though few girls were more familiar
with those of other nations. Nor were their wanderings confined to
Europe: Africa saw them, and the southern continent of America; and it
was in that far country that the happy days came to an end, for poor Lady
Byrne caught cold one bitter Argentine day, and died of pneumonia before
the week was out.

Sir Arthur was heart-broken. He packed Juliet off to a convent school
near Buenos Ayres, and shut himself up in his consulate, refusing to meet
those who would have offered their sympathy, and going from his room to
his office, and back again, like a man in a dream.

Not for more than a year did Juliet see again the only friend she had now
left in the world; and it was then she heard for the first time that he
was not really her father, and that the woman she had called "Mother" had
had no right to that name. She was fifteen years old when this blow fell
on her; and she had not yet reached her sixteenth birthday when Sir
Arthur was transferred back to Europe.

"Your home must always be with me, Juliet," he had said, when he broke to
her his ignorance of her origin. "I have only you left now."

But though he was kind, and even affectionate to her, he showed no real
anxiety for her society. She was sent to a school in Switzerland as soon
as they landed in Europe; and, while she used to fancy that at the
beginning of the holidays he was glad to see her return, she was much
more firmly convinced that at the end of them he was at least equally
pleased to see her depart.

She was nineteen before he realized that she could not be kept at school
for ever; and when he considered the situation, and saw himself, a man
scarcely over forty, saddled with a grown-up girl, who was neither his
own daughter nor that of the woman he had loved, and to whom he had sworn
to care for the child as if she were indeed his own, it must be admitted
that his heart failed him. It was not that he had any aversion to Juliet
herself. He had been fond of the child, and he liked the girl. It was the
awkwardness of his position that filled him with a kind of despair.

"If only somebody would marry her!" he thought, as he sat opposite to her
at the dinner-table, on the night that she returned for the last time
from school.

The thought cheered him. Juliet, he noticed for the first time, had
become singularly pretty. He engaged a severe Frenchwoman of mature age
as chaperon, and made spasmodic attempts to take his adopted daughter
into such society as the Belgian port, where he was consul at this time,
could afford.

It was not a large society; nor did eligible young men figure in it in
any quantity. Those there were, were foreigners, to whom the question of
a _dot_ must be satisfactorily solved before the idea of matrimony would
so much as occur to them.

Juliet had no money. Lady Byrne had left her fortune to her husband, and
rash speculations on his part had reduced it to a meagre amount, which he
felt no inclination to part with. Two or three years went by, and she
received no proposals. Sir Arthur's hopes of seeing her provided for grew
faint, and he could imagine no way out of his difficulties. He himself
spent his leave in England, but he never took the girl with him on those
holidays. He had no wish to be called on to explain her presence to such
of his friends as might not remember his wife's whim; and, though she
passed as his daughter abroad, she could not do that at home.

Juliet, for her part, was not very well content. She could hardly avoid
knowing that she was looked on as an incubus, and she saw that her
father, as she called him, dreaded to be questioned as to their
relationship. She lived a simple life; rode and played tennis with young
Belgians of her own age; read, worked, went to such dances and
entertainments as were given in the little town, and did not, on the
whole, waste much time puzzling over the mystery that surrounded her
childhood. But when her friends asked her why she never went to England
with Sir Arthur, she did not know what answer to make, and worried
herself in secret about it.

Why did he not take her? Because he was ashamed of her? But why was he
ashamed? Her mother--she always thought of Lady Byrne by that name--had
said she was the daughter of a friend of hers. So that she must at least
be the child of people of good family. Was not that enough?

She was already twenty-three when Sir Arthur married again. The lady was
an American: Mrs. Clarency Butcher, a good-looking widow of about
thirty-five, with three little girls, of whom the eldest was fifteen. She
had not the enormous wealth which is often one of her countrywomen's most
pleasing attributes, but she was moderately well off and came of a good
Colonial family. Having lived for several years in England, she had grown
to prefer the King's English to the President's, and had dropped, almost
completely, the accent of her native country. She was extremely well
educated, and talked three other languages with equal correctness, her
first husband having been attached to various European legations.
Altogether, she was a charming and attractive woman, and there were many
who envied Sir Arthur for the second time in his life.

It was not, perhaps, her fault that she did not take very kindly to
Juliet. The girl resented the place once occupied by her dead mother
being filled by any newcomer; and was not, it is to be feared, at
sufficient pains to hide her feelings on the point. And the second Lady
Byrne was hardly to be blamed if she remembered that in a few years she
would have three daughters of her own to take out, and felt that a fourth
was almost too much of a good thing.

Besides, there was no getting over the fact that she was no relation
whatever, and was on the other hand a considerable drain on the family
resources, all of which Lady Byrne felt entirely equal to disbursing
alone and unassisted. Finally, her presence led to disagreements between
Sir Arthur and his wife.

The day came on which Lady Byrne could not resist drawing Juliet's
attention to her unfortunate circumstances. In a heated moment, induced
by the girl's refusal to meet her half-way when she was conscious of
having made an unusual effort to be friendly, she pointed out to Juliet
that it would be more becoming in her to show some gratitude to people on
whose charity she was living, and on whom she had absolutely no claim of
blood at all.

The interview ended by Juliet flying to Sir Arthur, and begging, while
she wept on his shoulder, to be allowed to go away and work for her
living; though where and how she proposed to do this she did not specify.

Sir Arthur had a bad quarter of an hour. His conscience, the knowledge of
the extent to which he shared his second wife's feelings, the remembrance
of the vows he had made on the subject to his first wife, these and the
old, if not very strong, affection he had for Juliet, combined to stir
in him feelings of compunction which showed themselves in an outburst of
irritability. He scolded Juliet; he blamed his wife.

"Why," he asked them both, "can two women not live in the same house
without quarrelling? Is it impossible for a wretched man ever to have a
moment's peace?"

In the end, he worked himself into such a passion that Lady Byrne and
Juliet were driven to a reconciliation, and found themselves defending
each other against his reproaches.

After this they got on better together.




CHAPTER II


One hot summer day, a few months after the marriage, Juliet, returning to
the consulate after a morning spent in very active exercise upon a tennis
court, was met on the doorstep by Dora, the youngest of the Clarency
Butchers, who was awaiting her approach in a high state of excitement.

"Hurry up, Juliet," she cried, as soon as she could make herself
heard. "You'll never guess what there is for you. Something you don't
often get!"

"What is it?" said Juliet, coming up the steps.

"Guess!"

"A present?"

"No; at least I suppose not; but there may be one inside."

"Inside? Oh, then it's a parcel?" asked Juliet good-humouredly.

She felt a mild curiosity, tempered by the knowledge that many things
provided a thrill for the ten-year-old Dora, which she, from the advanced
age of twenty-three, could not look upon as particularly exciting.

"No, not a parcel," cried Dora, dancing round her. "It's a letter.
There now!"

"Then why do you say it's something I don't often get?" asked Juliet
suspiciously; "I often get letters. It's an invitation to the Gertignés'
dance, I expect."

"No, no, it isn't. It's a letter from England. You don't often get one
from there, now, do you? You never did before since we've been here. I
always examine your letters, you know," said Dora, "to see if they look
as if they came from young men. So does Margaret. We think it's time you
got engaged."

Margaret was the next sister.

"It's very good of you to take such an interest in my fate," Juliet
replied, as she pulled off her gloves and went to the side-table for the
letter. As a matter of fact she was a good deal excited now; for what the
child said was true enough. She might even have gone further, and said
that she had never had a letter from England, except while Sir Arthur was
there on leave.

It was a large envelope, addressed in a clerk's handwriting, and she came
to the conclusion, as she tore it open, that it must be an advertisement
from some shop.


"DEAR MADAM,--We shall esteem it a favour if you can make it convenient
to call upon us one day next week, upon a matter of business connected
with a member of your family. It is impossible to give you further
details in a letter; but if you will grant us the interview we venture to
ask, we may go so far as to say that there appears to us to be a
reasonable probability of the result being of advantage to yourself.
Trusting that you will let us have an immediate reply, in which you will
kindly name the day and hour when we may expect to see you.--We are,
yours faithfully,

"FINDLAY & INCE, _Solicitors_."

The address was a street in Holborn.

Juliet read the letter through, and straightway read it through again,
with a beating heart. What did it mean? Was it possible she was going to
find her own family at last?

She was recalled to the present by the voice of Dora, whom she now
perceived to be reading the letter over her shoulder with
unblushing interest.

"Say," said Dora, "isn't it exciting? 'Something to your advantage!' Just
what they put in the agony column when they leave you a fortune. I bet
your long-lost uncle in the West has kicked the bucket, and left you all
his ill-gotten gains. Mark my words. You'll come back from England a
lovely heiress. I do wish the others would come in. There's no one in the
house, except Sir Arthur."

"Where is he?" said Juliet, putting the sheet of paper back into the
envelope and slipping it under her waistband. "You know, Dora, it's not
at all a nice thing to read other people's letters. I wonder you aren't
ashamed of yourself. I'm surprised at you."

"I shouldn't have read it if you'd been quicker about telling me what was
in it," retorted Dora. "It's not at all a nice thing to put temptation in
the way of a little girl like me. Do you suppose I'm made of cast iron?"

She departed with an injured air, and Juliet went to look for the consul.

"What is it?" he asked, as she put the envelope into his hand. "A letter
you want me to read? Not a proposal, eh?" He smiled at her as he unfolded
the large sheet of office paper.

"Hullo, what's this?"

He read it through carefully.

"Why, Juliet," he said, when he had finished, "this is very interesting,
isn't it? It looks as if you were going to find out something about
yourself, doesn't it? After all these years! Well, well."

"You think I must go, then," she said a little doubtfully.

"Go? Of course I should go, if I were you. Why not?"

"You don't think it is a hoax?"

"No, no; I see no reason to suppose such a thing. I know the firm of
Findlay & Ince quite well by name and reputation."

"Oh, I hope they will tell me who I am!" cried Juliet. "Have you no idea
at all, father?"

"No, my dear, you know I have not. Besides, I promised Lena I would never
ask. You are the child of a friend of hers. That is all I know. I think
she scarcely realized how hard it would be for you not to know more when
you grew up. I often think that if she had lived she would have told you
before now."

"If you promised her not to ask, I won't ask either," said Juliet
loyally. "But I hope they'll tell me. It will be different, won't it, if
they tell me without my asking?"

"I think you might ask," said Sir Arthur. "It is absurd that you should
be bound by a promise that I made. And you may be sure of one thing. Your
asking, or your not asking, won't make any odds to Findlay & Ince. If
they mean to tell you, they will; and, if they don't, you're not likely
to get it out of them."

"And when shall I go?" cried Juliet. "They say they want me to answer
immediately, you know."

"Oh well, I don't know. In a few days. You will hardly be ready to start
to-morrow, will you?"

"I could be ready, easily," said Juliet.

"You're in a great hurry to get away from us," said Sir Arthur, with a
rather uneasy laugh.

"Not from you." Juliet put her arm through his. "I could never find
another father half as nice as the one I've got. But you could do very
well without so many daughters, you know." She smiled at him mockingly.
"You're like the old woman who lived in a shoe. You ought to set up a
school for young ladies."

"I don't believe I shall be able to get on without my eldest daughter,"
he replied, half-serious. "Still I think it would be better for you if
your real parents have decided to own up to you. At all events, if they
do not turn out desirable, I shall still be here, I hope; so I don't see
how you can lose anything by taking this chance of finding out what you
can about them."

At this point Lady Byrne came into the room, and the news had to be
retold for her benefit; the letter was produced again, and she joined
heartily in the excitement it had caused.

"You had better start on Monday," she said to Juliet. "That will give you
two days to pack, and to write to an hotel for rooms. Are you going to
take her, Arthur?" she added, turning to her husband.

"I would, like a shot," he replied, "but I can't possibly get away next
week. I've got a lot of work on hand just now. I suppose, my dear," he
suggested doubtfully, "that you wouldn't be able to run over with her?"

Lady Byrne declared that it was impossible for her to do so: she had
engagements, she said, for every day of the following week, which it was
out of the question to break. Had Sir Arthur forgotten that they
themselves were having large dinner-parties on Tuesday and Friday? What
she would do without Juliet to help her in preparing for them, she did
not know, but at least it was obvious that some one must be there to
receive his guests. No, Juliet would have to go alone. She was really old
enough to be trusted by herself for three days, and there was no need,
that she could see, for her to be away longer.

"She can go on Monday, see the lawyers on Tuesday, and come back on
Wednesday," said Lady Byrne. "The helplessness of young girls is the one
thing I disapprove of in your European system of education. It is much
better that they should learn to manage their own affairs; and Juliet is
not such a ninny as you seem to think."

"I shall be perfectly all right by myself," Juliet protested.

Sir Arthur did not like it.

"Supposing she is detained in London," he said.

"What should detain her," demanded his wife, "unless it is the discovery
of her parents? And, if she finds them, I presume they will be capable of
looking after her. In any case, she can write, or cable to us when she
has seen the solicitors, and it is no use providing for contingencies
that will probably never arise."

So at last it was decided. A letter was written and dispatched to Messrs.
Findlay & Ince, saying that Miss Byrne would have pleasure in calling
upon them at twelve o'clock on the following Tuesday; and Juliet busied
herself in preparations for her journey.

On Monday morning she left Ostend, in the company of her maid.

It was a glorious August day. On shore the heat was intense, and it was a
relief to get out of the stifling carriages of the crowded boat train,
and to breathe the gentle air from the sea that met them as they crossed
the gangway on to the steamer. Juliet enjoyed every moment of the
journey; and would have been sorry when the crossing was over if she had
not been so eager to set foot upon her native soil.

She leant upon the rail in the bows of the ship, watching the white
cliffs grow taller and more distinct, and felt that now indeed she
understood the emotions with which the heart of the exile is said to
swell at the sight of his own land. She wondered if the sight of their
country moved other passengers on the boat as she herself was moved, and
made timid advances to a lady who was standing near her, in her need of
some companion with whom to share her feeling.

"Have you been away from England a long time," she asked her.

"I have been abroad during a considerable period," replied the person she
addressed, a stern-looking Scotchwoman who did not appear anxious to
enter into conversation.

From her severe demeanour Juliet imagined she might be a governess going
for a holiday.

"You must be glad to be going home," she ventured.

"It's a far cry north to my home," said the Scotchwoman, thawing
slightly. "I'm fearing I will not be seeing it this summer. I'll be
stopping in the south with some friends. The journey north is awful'
expensive."

"I'm sorry you aren't going home," Juliet sympathized, "but it will be
nice to see the English faces at Dover, won't it? There may even be a
Scotchman among the porters, you know, by some chance."

"No fear," said her neighbour gloomily. "They'll be local men, I have
nae doubt. Though whether they are English or Scots," she added, "I'll
have to give them saxpence instead of a fifty-centime bit; which is one
of the bonniest things you see on the Continent, to my way of thinking."

Juliet could get no enthusiasm out of her; and, look which way she might,
she could not see any reflection on the faces of those around her of the
emotions which stirred in her own breast. It had been a rough crossing,
in spite of the cloudless sky and broiling sunshine, and most of the
passengers had been laid low by the rolling of the vessel. They displayed
anxiety enough to reach land; but, as far as she could see, what land it
was they reached was a matter of indifference to them. No doubt, she
thought, when the ship stopped and they felt better, they would be more
disposed to a sentimentality like hers.

She found her maid--who had been one of the most sea-sick of those
aboard--and assisted her ashore, put her into a carriage and
ministered to her wants with the help of a tea-basket containing the
delicious novelty of English bread and butter. In half an hour's time
they were steaming hurriedly towards London. She was to lodge at a
small hotel in Jermyn Street; and on that first evening even this
seemed perfect to her. The badness of the cooking was a thing she
refused to notice; and the astonishing hills and valleys of the bed
caused in her no sensation beyond that of surprise. She was young,
strong and healthy, and there was no reason that trifling discomforts
of this kind should affect her enjoyment. To the shortcomings of the
bed, indeed, she shut her eyes in more senses than one, for she was
asleep three minutes after her head touched the pillow, nor did she
wake till her maid roused her the next morning.

She got up at once and looked out of the window. It was a fine day again;
over the roofs of the houses opposite she could see a blue streak of sky.
Already the air had lost the touch of freshness which comes, even to
London in August, during the first hours of the morning; and the heat in
the low-ceilinged room on the third floor which Juliet occupied for the
sake of economy, was oppressive in spite of the small sash windows being
opened to their utmost capacity. But Juliet only laughed to herself with
pleasure at the brilliancy of the day. She felt that the weather was
playing up to the occasion, as became this important morning of her life.
For that it was important she did not doubt. She was going to hear
tremendous news that day; make wonderful discoveries about her birth;
hear undreamt-of things. Of this she felt absolutely convinced, and it
would not have astonished her to find herself claimed as daughter by any
of the reigning families of Europe. She was prepared for anything, or so
she said to herself, however astounding; and, that being so, she was
excited in proportion. Anyone could have told her that, by this attitude
of mind towards the future, she was laying up for herself disappointment
at the least, if not the bitterest disillusions; but there was no one to
throw cold water on her hopes, and she filled the air with castles of
every style of architecture that her fancy suggested, without any
hindrance from doubt or misgiving.

She dressed quickly, in the gayest humour, but with even more care than
she usually bestowed upon her appearance; a subject to which she always
gave the fullest attention.

"Which dress will Mademoiselle wear?" the maid asked her.

"Why, my prettiest, naturally," she replied.

"What, the white one that Mademoiselle wore for the marriage of Monsieur,
her papa?" inquired Thérèse, scandalized at the idea of such a precious
garment being put on before breakfast.

"That very one," Juliet assured her, undaunted; and was arrayed in it, in
spite of obvious disapproval.

After breakfast they went out, and, inquiring their way to Bond Street,
flattened their noses against the shop windows to their mutual
satisfaction.

They had it almost to themselves, for there were not many people left in
that part of London; but more than one head was turned to gaze at the
pretty girl in the garden-party dress, who stood transfixed before shop
after shop. This amusement lasted till half-past eleven, when they
returned to the hotel for Juliet to give the final pats to her hair, and
to retilt her hat to an angle possibly more becoming, before she started
to keep her appointment with the solicitors. The next twenty minutes were
spent in cross-examining the hotel porter as to the time it would take to
drive to her destination, and, having decided to start at ten minutes to
twelve, in wondering whether the quarter of an hour which had still to
elapse would ever come to an end.

At three minutes to twelve she rang the bell of the office of Messrs.
Findlay & Ince.




CHAPTER III


A gloomy little clerk climbed down from a high stool where he sat
writing, and opened the door.

"Oh yes, Miss Juliet Byrne," he said when Juliet had told him her name.
"Mr. Findlay is expecting you. Will you walk upstairs, Miss Byrne,
please. I think you have an appointment for twelve o'clock? This way, if
you please."

He led the way up a steep and narrow flight of stairs, which rose out of
the black shadows at the end of the passage.

"Ladies find these stairs rather dark, I'm afraid," he remarked
pleasantly, as he held open a door and ushered Juliet and her maid into
an empty room. "Will you kindly wait here," he continued. "Mr. Findlay is
engaged for the moment. You are a leetle before your time, I believe." He
pulled out his watch and examined it closely. "Not _quite_ the hour yet,"
he repeated, and closed it with a snap. "But Mr. Findlay will see you as
soon as he is disengaged."

With a flourish of his handkerchief he withdrew, shutting the door
behind him.

Juliet sat down on a hard chair covered with green leather, and told her
maid to take another. Her spirits were damped. The sight of Mr. Nicol, as
the clerk was named, often had that effect upon persons who saw him for
the first time; indeed he was found to be a very useful check on
troublesome clients, who arrived full of determination to have their own
way, and were often so cowed by their preliminary interview with Nicol as
to feel it a privilege and a relief subsequently to be bullied by Mr.
Ince, or persuaded by Mr. Findlay into the belief that what they had
previously decided on was the last thing advisable to do.

Mr. Findlay frequently remarked to Mr. Ince, when his partner's easily
roused temper was more highly tried than usual by some imbecile mistake
of the clerk's, that Nicol might have faults as a clerk and as a man, but
that, as a buffer, he was the nearest approach to perfection obtainable
in this world of makeshifts.

To which Mr. Ince would reply with point and fluency that fenders could
be had by the dozen from any shipping warehouse, at a lower cost than one
week's salary of Nicol's would represent, and would be far more efficient
in the office. Still he did not suggest dismissing the man.

Juliet, as she sat and looked round the musty little waiting-room, felt
that here was an end of her dreams of the resplendent family she was to
find pining to take her to its heart. She felt certain that she could
never have any feelings in common with people who could employ a firm of
solicitors which in its turn was served by the man who had received her.
Romance and the clerk could never, she thought, meet under one roof. And
such a roof! The room in which she sat was so dark, so gloomy, so bare
and cheerless, that Juliet began to wonder whether she would not have
been wiser not to have come. This was not a place, surely, which fond
parents would choose for a long-deferred meeting with their child, after
years of separation. She walked to the window, but the only view was of a
blank wall, and that so close that she could have touched it by leaning
out. No wonder the room was dark, even at midday in August. The walls
were lined with bookshelves, where heavy volumes, all dealing with the
same subject, that of law, stood shoulder to shoulder in stout bindings
of brown leather.

There was a fireplace of cracked and dirty marble with an engraving hung
over it, representing the coronation of Queen Victoria. A gas stove
occupied the grate, and a gas bracket stuck out from the wall on either
side of the picture.

On the small round mahogany table that stood in the middle of the room
lay a Bible, and a copy of the _St. James's Gazette_, which was dated a
week back. Juliet took it up and read an account of a cricket match
without much enthusiasm. Then she flung it down and wandered about the
room once more; but she had exhausted all its possibilities; and though
she took a volume entitled _Causes Célèbres_ from the shelf, and turned
its pages hopefully, she put it back with a grimace at its dullness and a
sort of surprise at finding anything drier than the cricket.

She had waited half an hour, when the door opened and the face of Nicol
was introduced round the corner of it.

"Will you please come this way," he said.

Telling her maid to stay where she was, Juliet followed him. He opened
the other door on the landing, and announced her in a loud voice as, with
a quickened pulse, she passed him, and entered the room.

There were two men standing by the hearth. One of them came forward to
receive her.

"How do you do, Miss Byrne," he said; "I am glad you were able to come.
I am Jeremy Findlay, at your service."

Mr. Findlay was a man of moderate height, with a long pointed nose which
he was in the habit of putting down to within an inch or two of his desk
when he was looking for any particular paper, for he was very short
sighted. It rather conveyed the impression that he was poking about with
it, and that he hunted for questionable clauses or illegalities in a
document, much as a pig might hunt for truffles in a wood. For the rest,
he was middle-aged, with hair nearly white, and small grey whiskers. He
beamed at Juliet through gold-rimmed eyeglasses.

"Let me introduce my friend," he said, mumbling something.

Juliet did not catch the name, but she supposed that this was Mr. Ince.

The other man stepped forward and shook hands, but said nothing. He was a
thin, pallid creature, rather above the average height, and had the
drooping shoulders of a scholar. His face, which was long and narrow,
looked pale and emaciated, and though his blue eyes had a kindly twinkle
it seemed to Juliet that they burned with a feverish brightness. His nose
was long and slightly hooked, and beneath it the mouth was hidden by a
heavy red moustache; while his hair, though not of so bright a colour,
had a reddish tinge about it. He appeared to be about fifty years of age,
but this was due to a look of tiredness habitual to his expression, and,
in part, to actual bad health. In reality he was younger.

"Pray take this chair, Miss Byrne," Mr. Findlay was saying. "We are
anxious to have a little conversation with you. I am sure you quite
understand that we should not have asked you to come all the way from
Belgium unless your presence was of considerable importance. How
important it is I really hardly know myself, but I repeat that I would
not have urged you to take so long a journey if I had not had serious
reason to think that it was desirable for your own sake that you should
do so. I may say at once that the matter is a family one; but before
going further I must ask your permission to put one or two questions to
you, which I hope you will believe are not prompted by any feeling of
idle curiosity on my part."

He paused, and Juliet murmured some words of acquiescence. Mr. Findlay
took off his eyeglasses, glared at them, replaced them, and ran his nose
over the surface of the papers on his writing-table.

"Ah, here it is!" he exclaimed triumphantly, pouncing on a folded sheet
and lifting it to his eyes. "Just a few notes," he explained.

"We wrote you care of Sir Arthur Byrne," he resumed; "are you a member of
his family?"

Here was a disturbing question for Juliet. She had imagined, until this
instant, that she was on the point of being told who her family was, and
now this man was asking for information from her. Tears of disappointment
would not be kept from her eyes.

"I am a member of Sir Arthur's household," she stammered.

"Are you not his daughter, then?" asked Mr. Findlay.

"No, I am not really," Juliet replied.

"Then may I ask what relation you are to him?" said the lawyer.

"I am his adopted daughter," said Juliet. "I have always called him
'Father.'"

"Are you not any relation at all?" pursued Mr. Findlay.

"I believe not."

"Then, Miss Byrne, I hope you will not think it an impertinent question
if I ask, who are you?"

"I don't know," acknowledged poor Juliet. "I was hoping you would tell me
that. I thought, I imagined, that that was why you sent for me."

"You astonish me," said Mr. Findlay. "Do you mean to say that your family
has never made any attempt to communicate with you?"

"No, never."

"And that Sir Arthur Byrne has never told you anything as to your birth?
Surely you must have questioned him about it?"

"He has told me all he knows," said Juliet, "but that amounts to
nothing."

"Indeed; that is very strange. He must have had dealings with the people
you were with before he adopted you. He must at least know their name?"

"I don't know," said Juliet. "He doesn't know either, I am sure. It
wasn't Sir Arthur who adopted me. It was the lady he married. A Mrs.
Meredith. She is dead."

"But he must have heard about you from her," insisted Mr. Findlay. "He
would not have taken a child into his household without knowing anything
at all about it."

"His wife told him that I was the daughter of a friend of hers, and
begged him not to ask her any more about me. He was very devoted to her,
and he did as she wished. He has been most kind to me; but I am sure he
would be as glad as I should be to discover my relations. I am dreadfully
disappointed that you don't know anything about them. We all thought I
was going to find my family at last."

Juliet's voice quavered a little. She had built too much on this
interview.

"I am really extremely sorry not to be able to give you any information,"
Mr. Findlay said.

He turned towards the other man with an interrogative glance, and was met
by a nod of the head, at which he leant back in his chair, crossed his
legs and folded his hands upon them, with the expression of some one who
has played his part in the game, and now retires in favour of another
competitor. The pale man moved his chair a little forward and took up the
conversation.

"Are you really quite certain that Sir Arthur Byrne has told you all
he knows?" he said earnestly, fixing on Juliet a look at once grave
and eager.

"Yes," she answered. "I can see that he is as puzzled as I am. And he
would be glad enough to find a way to get rid of me," she added bitterly.

"I thought you said you were attached to him," said the stranger in
surprise, "and that he had been very kind to you?"

"Yes," said Juliet, "he has, and I am as fond of him as possible. But he
has three stepdaughters now; he has married again, you know. And he is
not very well off. I am a great expense, besides being an extra girl. I
don't blame him for thinking I am one too many."

There was a long pause, during which Juliet was conscious of being
closely scrutinized.

"I think I may be able to give you news of your family," said the pale
man unexpectedly. "That is, if you are the person I think you are
likely to be."

"Oh," exclaimed Juliet, "can you really?"

"Well, it is possible," admitted the other. "I can't say for
certain yet."

"Oh, do, do tell me!" cried the girl.

"Out of the question, at present," he replied firmly. "I must first
satisfy myself as to whose child you are, and on that point you appear
able to give me no assistance. You must wait till I can find out
something further about this matter of your adoption. And even then,"
he added, "it is not certain if I can tell you. You must understand
that, though certain family secrets have been placed in my possession,
it does not depend upon myself whether or not I shall ultimately reveal
them to you."

Juliet's face fell for a moment, but she refused to allow herself to be
discouraged.

"There is a chance for me, anyhow!" she exclaimed. "How I hope you
will be allowed to tell me in the end! But why," she went on, turning
to Mr. Findlay, "did you make me think you knew nothing at all about
me. I suppose the family secrets your partner speaks of are the
secrets of my family?"

"My dear young lady," said Mr. Findlay, "Lord Ashiel is not my partner.
On the contrary, he is an old client of ours, and it was at his request
that we wrote to you as we did. We know no more about your affairs than
you have told us yourself."

"Oh," murmured Juliet, confused at her mistake. "I thought you were Mr.
Ince," she apologized; "I am so sorry."

"Not very flattering to poor Ince I'm afraid," said Lord Ashiel, smiling
at her. "He's ten years younger than I am, I'm sorry to say, and I would
change places with him very willingly. Now, if you had mistaken me for
Nicol, that undertaker clerk of Findlay's, who always looks as if he's
been burying his grandmother, I should have been decidedly hurt. What in
the world do you keep that fellow in the office for, Findlay? To frighten
away custom?"

Mr. Findlay laughed.

"He's a more useful person than you imagine," he said. "Though I must say
Ince agrees with you, and is always at me about the poor man. Some day I
hope you will both see his sterling qualities."

"I am afraid you must think I have given you a great deal of trouble for
very little reason," Lord Ashiel said to Juliet. "But perhaps there will
be more result than at present can seem clear to you. I may go so far as
to say that I hope so most sincerely. But, if the secret of which I spoke
just now is ever to be confided to you, it will be necessary for you and
me to know each other a little better. I have a proposal to make to you,
which I fear you may think our acquaintance rather too short and
unconventional to justify."

He paused with a trace of embarrassment, and Juliet wondered what could
be coming.

"It is not convenient for me to stay in London just now," he went on
after a minute, "and I am sure you must find it very disagreeable at this
time of the year; and yet it is very important that I should see more of
you. It is, in fact, part of the conditions under which I may be able to
reveal these family secrets of yours to you. That is to say, if they
should turn out to be indeed yours. I came up from the Highlands last
night. I have a place on the West Coast, where at this moment I have a
party of people staying with me for shooting. My sister is entertaining
them in my absence, but I must get back to my duties of host. What I want
to suggest is that you should pay us a visit at Inverashiel."

"Thank you very much," said Juliet doubtfully. "I should love to, but--I
don't know whether my father would allow me."

"Your father?" exclaimed Lord Ashiel and Mr. Findlay in one breath.

"Sir Arthur Byrne, I mean," she corrected herself.

"You might telegraph to him," urged Lord Ashiel. "And I, myself, will
write. You might mention my sister to him. I think he used to know her.
Mrs. John Haviland. But, indeed, it is very important that you should
come, more important than you think, perhaps."

He seemed extraordinarily anxious, now, lest she should refuse.

"Perhaps," suggested Mr. Findlay, "Miss Byrne would like to think over
the idea, and let you know later in the day."

"A very good plan," said Lord Ashiel. "Yes, of course you would like to
think it over. Will you telephone to me at the Carlton after lunch?
Thanks so much. Good-bye for the present."

He seized his hat and stick and darted to the door. "You talk to her,
Findlay!" he cried, and disappeared.

Juliet and Mr. Findlay were left confronting one another.

"That will be the best plan," the lawyer repeated. "Think it over, Miss
Byrne. I am sure you would enjoy the visit to Scotland. Inverashiel is a
most interesting old place, both historically and for the sake of its
beautiful scenery. A week or two of Highland air could not fail to be of
benefit to your health, even if nothing further came of it, so to speak."

"I should love it," Juliet said again. "But, Mr. Findlay, I don't know
Lord Ashiel, or hardly know him. How can I go off and stay with someone I
never met before to-day?"

"The circumstances are unusual," said the lawyer. "I fancy Lord Ashiel is
anxious to lose no time. He is in bad health, poor fellow. I am afraid he
will worry himself a good deal if you cannot make up your mind to go."

"You see," said Juliet, troubled, "I know nothing about him. I don't know
what my father--I mean, Sir Arthur would say."

"I am sure your father would have no objection whatever to your making
friends with Lord Ashiel," Mr. Findlay assured her. "He is one of the
most respectable, the most domesticated of peers. Not very cheerful
company, perhaps, but no one in the world can justly say a word against
him in any way. He has had a sad time lately; his wife and only child
died within a month of each other, only two or three years ago. They had
been married quite a short time. Since then, his sister, Mrs. Haviland,
keeps house for him; but he does not entertain much, I am told, except
during the autumn in Scotland. You need have no hesitation in accepting
this invitation, Miss Byrne. I am a married man, and the father of a
family, and I should only be too delighted if one of my daughters had
such an opportunity."

"Well," said Juliet, "I think I will risk it, and go. I am old enough to
take care of myself, in any case." This she said haughtily, with her nose
in the air. And then, with a sudden drop to her usual manner, she
exclaimed in a tone of gaiety, "What fun it will be!"

"I am sure you will not regret your decision," repeated Mr. Findlay, as
she got up to go. "You won't forget to let Lord Ashiel know, will you?"

"No, I will telephone to him at once. But I will telegraph home too,
of course."

Excitement over this new plan had almost dispelled the earlier
disappointment, and if Juliet's spirits, as she drove back to Jermyn
Street, were not quite as overflowingly high as when she had started
out, they were good enough to make her smile to herself and to every one
she met during the rest of the day, and to hum gay little tunes when no
one was near, and altogether to feel very happy and pleased and
possessed by the conviction that something delightful was about to
happen. She sent off her telegram to Sir Arthur, spending some time over
it, and spoiling a dozen telegraph forms, before she could find
satisfactory words in which to convey her plans with an appearance of
deference to authority. Then she called up the Carlton Hotel on the
telephone, and was much put out when she heard that Lord Ashiel was not
staying there, or even expected.

It was the hall porter of her hotel who came to the rescue, by
suggesting that she should try the Carlton Club, of which she had never
before heard.

From the quickness with which Lord Ashiel answered her, he might have
been sitting waiting at the end of the wire, and he expressed great
pleasure at her acceptance of his invitation. Indeed, she could hear from
the tone of his voice that his gratification was no mere empty form. It
was arranged that she should travel down on the following night, Lord
Ashiel promising to engage a sleeping berth for her on the eight o'clock
train. He himself was going North that same evening. He had just been
writing a letter to Sir Arthur Byrne, he told her. He hoped she had some
thick dresses with her; she would want them in Scotland.

"I am afraid I haven't," she said. "I only expected to stay in London for
a day or two, you know."

"Well," said the voice at the end of the telephone, "perhaps you can get
a waterproof or something, between this and to-morrow night. I am afraid
I don't know the names of any ladies' tailors, but there are lots about,"
he concluded vaguely.

"I suppose I had better," said Juliet doubtfully. "I wonder if the
shops here will trust me. The fact is, I haven't got very much extra
money. I think perhaps I'd better wait a day or two till I can have
some more sent me."

"My dear child," came the answer in horrified tones, "you must on no
account put off coming. Of course you are not prepared for all this extra
expense. You must allow me to be your banker. I insist upon it. Your
family, in whose confidence I happen to be, would never forgive me if I
allowed you to continue to be dependent on Sir Arthur Byrne."

"It is very kind of you," Juliet began. "But suppose I turn out to be
some one different. You know, you said--"

"If you do, you shall repay me," he replied. "In the meantime I will
send you round a small sum to do your shopping with. Let me see, where
are you staying?"

An hour later a bank messenger arrived with an envelope containing £100
in notes. Juliet had never seen so much money in her life, and thought it
far too much. "I shall be sure to lose it," was her first thought. Her
second was to deposit it with the proprietor of the hotel; after which
she felt safer. Then, in huge delight, she sallied forth again with her
maid, the alluring memory of some of the shop windows into which she had
gazed that morning calling to her loudly; she had never thought to look
at those fascinating garments from the other side of the glass.
Intoxicating hours followed, in which a couple of tweed dresses were
purchased that seemed as if they must have been made on purpose for her;
nor were thick walking shoes, and country hats, and other accessories
neglected. By evening her room was strewn with cardboard boxes, and on
Wednesday more were added, so that a trunk to pack them in had to be
bought as well. The shops were very empty; Juliet had the entire
attention of the shop people, and revelled in her purchases. Time flew,
and she was quite sorry, as she drove to Euston on the following evening,
to think that she was leaving this fascinating town of London.




CHAPTER IV


On Tuesday afternoon, when Juliet, having hung up the telephone through
which she had been conversing with Lord Ashiel, hurried out to see what
Bond Street could provide her with, a little man was sitting writing in a
luxuriously furnished room in a flat in Whitehall. He was small and thin,
and possessed a pair of extraordinarily bright and intelligent brown
eyes, which saw a good deal more of what happened around him than perhaps
any other eyes within a radius of a mile from where he sat. He was, in
other words, observant to a very high degree; and, what was more
remarkable, he knew how to use his powers of observation. There was not a
criminal in the length and breadth of the country who did not wonder
uneasily whether he had really left the scene of his crime as devoid of
clues as he imagined, when he heard that the celebrated detective,
Gimblet, had visited the spot in pursuit of his investigations.

For this was the man, who, in a few years, had unravelled more apparently
insoluble mysteries, and caused the arrest of more hitherto evasive
scoundrels, than his predecessors had managed to secure in a decade. The
name of Gimblet was known and detested wherever a coiner carried on his
forbidden craft, or a blackmailer concocted his cowardly plans; burglars
and forgers cursed freely when he was mentioned, and there was hardly an
illicit trade in the country which had not suffered at one time or
another from his inquisitive habit of interesting himself in other
people's affairs. Scotland Yard officials were never too proud to call
upon him for help, and many a difficulty he had helped them out of,
though he refused an offer of a regular post in the Criminal
Investigation Department, preferring to be at liberty to choose what
cases he would take up. Above all things he loved the strange and
inexplicable. Gimblet had not always been a detective. Indeed, he often
smiled to himself when he thought of the extraordinary confidence which
the public now elected to repose in him.

No one was more conscious than himself that he was far from being
infallible; in fact, his admirers appeared to him to be wilfully blind to
that elementary truth; so that when he failed to bring a case to a
successful issue people were apt to show an amount of disappointment that
he, for his part, thought very unreasonable. It was, perhaps, in the
nature of things that the puzzles he solved correctly received so much
more publicity than was given to his mistakes; but he often could not
avoid wishing that less were expected of him, and that his reputation had
not grown so tropically on what he could but consider insufficient
nourishment.

In early days, after leaving Oxford, he had gone into an architect's
office and had flourished there; till one day an accident had turned his
energies in the direction they had since taken.

A crime had been committed during the erection of a house he was
building, and, when the police were at a loss to know how to account for
the somewhat peculiar circumstances, the young architect, going his
ordinary rounds of inspection, had seen in a flash that there was
something unusual in the disposal of a portion of the building material;
which observation, with certain deductions following thereon, had led to
the detection and arrest of the criminal. From that time on he had been
more and more drawn to the fascination of tracing events to their
causes, when these appeared connected with deeds of violence and fraud,
till of late years he had completely dropped the study of the carrying
powers of wood and stone for the more interesting lessons to be derived
from the contemplation of the strange vagaries indulged in by his fellow
human beings.

He kept, however, a strong taste for art and all that appertained to it;
more especially he was devoted to the collection of old and rare
bric-à-brac. There was not a curiosity shop in London that did not know
him, and he was equally happy when he had discovered some dust-hidden
treasure in the back regions of a secondhand furniture shop, or when he
was engaged in running to earth some human vermin who up till then had
lain snug in his own particular back region of crime, straining his ears,
in a mixture of contempt and anxiety, as the sounds of the hunt went by.

Having finished his letter, Gimblet put his stylo in his pocket, and
turned round to look at the clock.

"Twenty minutes to four," he said half-aloud. "I wish to goodness people
would keep their appointments punctually, or else not come at all."

Five more minutes passed, and he got up and went into the hall.

"Higgs," he called, and his faithful servant and general factotum came
out of the pantry.

"I am going out," said his master, taking up his straw hat. "If anyone
calls, say I could not wait any longer. Ah, there's the front-door bell.
Just see who it is."

He retreated to his sitting-room while Higgs went to the door of the
flat. A minute or two later Lord Ashiel was ushered in.

"I'm very sorry I'm late," said he, as the door closed behind him, "but
you know what kept me."

"Not the young lady, surely," said Gimblet; "you were to see her at
twelve o'clock this morning, weren't you?"

"Yes, but she telephoned to me after lunch. By Jove, Gimblet, I believe
you have got hold of the right girl this time." Lord Ashiel's tone was
enthusiastic. "If she turns out to be half as nice as she looks, I shall
be ever grateful to you for routing her out."

"Indeed, I am very glad to hear it," replied the detective. "And do you
observe a resemblance in her to your family; do you feel satisfied that
she is your daughter?"

"I can't say I do see much likeness," Lord Ashiel confessed rather
reluctantly. "I thought at one moment, when she smiled, that she was like
her mother; but otherwise she did not strike me as resembling either of
us, I am sorry to say."

"Did she know her history at all?" asked Gimblet. "Did she claim you
as father?"

"No, she had never heard of me, as far as I could make out. And she
assured me that Sir Arthur Byrne has no idea whose child she is."

"That certainly seems very improbable," Gimblet commented.

"Yes, it does. Still, I feel sure she was speaking the truth. Why,
indeed, should she not do so? It seems that Byrne has married again, and
that his wife has already three daughters of her own; so, as she says, he
would probably be glad enough to get the fourth one off his hands, as
they are not well off."

"Yes," said Gimblet. "I knew that. No, there seems no reason why Sir
Arthur Byrne should not have told her about you if he knew she was your
child. What is odd, is that he should not have known it."

"He had promised his first wife not to make any inquiries, it seems,"
said Lord Ashiel.

"Well, he is an uncommon kind of man if he kept that promise,"
Gimblet remarked.

"He was devoted to his first wife, this girl told me," said Lord Ashiel.
"You never knew Lena Meredith, Gimblet, or you would not be surprised
that people kept their promises to her. She was my wife's friend, as I
told you, and I only saw her once, but I don't think I shall ever forget
her. It was just after my wife's death, and I was too heart-broken to
take much notice of anyone, but she was the sort of woman who sticks in
your memory, and I can quite understand a man being infatuated about her,
even to the point of curbing his curiosity for a lifetime on any subject
she wished him to leave alone. I went to see her, you know, about the
baby. I remember, as if it was yesterday, how I told her the whole story.
I told her how I had met Juliana two years before, and how, from the
first, we had both known we should never care for anyone else. I told her
about my old grandfather, from whom I had such great expectations, and
who wouldn't hear of my marrying anyone except the cousin, still in the
schoolroom, whom he had picked out as my future wife.

"It was his wish that we should be married when I was twenty-five and
the girl eighteen; but I was not yet twenty-two, so that there were at
least three years of grace before he could begin to try and impose his
design upon us. And he was old and ill, and I had heard that the doctors
didn't give him more than a year or two, at most, to live. I thought
that if Juliana and I were married secretly he would die before the
question of my marriage had time to become one of practical politics;
and I persuaded her to agree to a private marriage, which we would
announce to the world as soon as my eccentric old grandfather was safely
out of it. There was no possible obstacle to our marriage except the old
man's domineering temper. Juliana Sandfort was my superior in every
possible sense, worldly or otherwise; but I came of a good family, was
to inherit an old name and title, and a more than sufficient fortune so
long as I kept on the right side of the old Lord, and we both knew that
there was no objection to be feared from her relations or from any other
one of mine. In short, much as she disliked doing things in that
hole-and-corner sort of way, and ashamed as I was at heart of asking her
to, we neither of us could see much actual harm in the idea, and we were
married accordingly at a registry office in London. Everything would
have been well, and all would have gone as we hoped, but for the one
unforeseen and horrible calamity. My wife died six months before my
grandfather, on the day her baby was born."

Lord Ashiel paused, and sat gazing before him, over Gimblet's shoulder.
There was a look on his face which showed that for the moment he was
blind to the scene that lay in front of him, and that he saw in place of
the bureau which stood opposite to him, and of the Oriental china which
was the detective's special pride, and on which his eyes seemed to be
fixed, some vision of the past which was far more real than the
unsubstantial present. Presently he went on talking in a reflective
undertone:

"All this I told Mrs. Meredith, and a great deal besides, for I was still
in the first violence of bitter, self-reproachful grief. I wanted to be
rid of the child, the cause of the catastrophe, whom I hated as
vehemently as I had loved its mother, and I begged Mrs. Meredith to help
me to dispose of it in such a fashion that, to me at least, the little
one should be to all intents and purposes as dead as she was. Babies, I
knew, had not a very strong hold on life, and I hoped, as a matter of
fact, that it might really die, but this I did not dare to say aloud.
Mrs. Meredith was kind to me. I remember well how good and sympathetic
she was. She had heard most of the story from Juliana, whose friend she
was, and it was at her house that the child was born. We had confided in
no one else. She sat silently for a while after I had finished what I had
to say, till at last she turned to me and tried to persuade me to alter
my intention of disowning the baby. But I repeated doggedly that unless
she had some alternative way to suggest of getting rid of it, I meant to
leave the little girl at the door of one of the foundling hospitals, and
that I would take her that very night.

"At length, seeing that I was resolved, she said she thought she could
manage better than that. She had a friend, she said, an elderly Russian
lady, who was a widow and childless. This lady was anxious to adopt a
little English girl, and had lately written to ask her to find her a baby
whom she could bring up as her own child. There was no reason why
Juliana's baby should not be the one. She would write at once and suggest
it. I was greatly relieved at this idea. Although I had been determined
to do as I proposed, whatever opposition I might meet with, my conscience
had not been willing to let me leave my child on a doorstep without
protesting, and, little though I heeded its condemnation, I was glad to
be able to get my own way and at the same time to silence the voice of my
inward critic.

"The plan seemed simplicity itself. My wife, as I have told you, had no
parents living. Her brothers and sisters, who were all married and
living in different parts of the country, had been led to believe that
her death was the result of an accident. Mrs. Meredith had even managed
to prevail on the doctor to lend himself to this fiction; for, my
grandfather being yet alive, there was still every reason not to declare
our marriage, while there seemed to be none in favour of doing so, and I
shrank from the questionings and scenes which publicity now would not
fail to bring upon me. Before I left Mrs. Meredith we had agreed that
she should at once communicate with her Russian friend, whose name I
refused to let her tell me.

"I have told you before to-day, Gimblet, of all that has happened since.
How I took passionately to books as a refuge from my sorrow; how, at my
grandfather's suggestion, I had been by way of working for the
Diplomatic Service; of how I now worked in good earnest, and in course
of time, and after my grandfather's death, found myself attached to our
embassy at Petersburg. During the two years I spent there I made the
acquaintance of Countess Romaninov. One day when I was talking to her
she happened to mention that she had once known an English lady, Mrs.
Meredith, and I came to the conclusion that the little girl who lived
with her must be none other than my own child. As you know, I could not
stand living in the same town as she did, and for that, and for other
reasons, I left the Diplomatic Service and returned to England, where I
have lived a quiet life on my place in Scotland ever since. Eight years
ago, as you know, I married for the second time, and after a few years
of comparative happiness, found myself again a widower, my second wife
and her child dying within a few months of each other, when my boy was
only four years old.

"It is more than a year, now," continued Lord Ashiel, after a pause,
"since the girl Julia Romaninov came to my sister in London, with a
letter of introduction from our ambassador in Russia. It was not until my
sister invited her down to Scotland that I heard anything about her. Not,
in fact, till the day before she arrived, for I always tell my sister to
ask any girls she pleases to Inverashiel, and she very seldom bothers me
about it. You can imagine my feelings when I heard that Julia Romaninov
was expected within a few hours, and had indeed already started from
London. It was too late to try and stop her, and my first impulse was
flight. But on second thoughts I changed my mind, and stayed. Time had
dulled the feelings with which I had contemplated her share in the
tragedy that attended her birth, and I was not without a certain
curiosity to see this young creature for whose existence I was
responsible.

"I waited; she came; she stayed six weeks. You know the result. My sister
liked her; my nephews, my other guests, every one, except myself, was
charmed with her. And I, for some reason, could never stand the girl. I
told myself over and over again that it was mere prejudice; the remains
of the violent opposition I felt towards her when she was unknown to me;
a survival, unconscious and unwilling, of the hatred I had allowed myself
to nourish for the baby of a day old, which had made it impossible that
she and I should inhabit the same town when she was no more than a child
in pinafores. But I could not reason myself out of my dislike, and it
culminated a few weeks ago when I found that my sister was anxious to
have her with us in the North again this autumn. As you remember, I came
to you, and told you the facts. I made you understand how repulsive it
was to me to think that this girl might be my child, and begged you to
sift the matter as far as was possible, and to find out if there were not
a chance that I was mistaken in thinking it was Countess Romaninov who
had been Lena Meredith's friend."

"Yes," said Gimblet, "and all I could discover at first was that the two
ladies had indeed been acquainted. It is difficult to get at the truth
when both of them have been dead for so many years, and when you will not
allow me so much as to hint that you feel any interest in the matter.
People are shy of answering questions relating to the private affairs of
their friends when they think they are prompted by idle curiosity, and in
this case it seems very doubtful whether anyone even knows the answers.
But in the course of my inquiries I soon discovered the fact that Mrs.
Meredith herself had adopted a child, and it certainly seems more than
possible that it may have been yours and her friend's. As far as I can
find out, both these young ladies are of about the same age, but no one
seems to know exactly when either of them first appeared on the scene. If
we can only get hold of the nurses! But at present I can find no trace of
them, and you won't let me advertise."

"Gimblet, I shall be ever grateful to you," repeated Lord Ashiel. "I had
no idea that Mrs. Meredith had adopted a child. I never saw her again, as
I have told you, and only heard vaguely that she had married and was
living abroad. I purposely avoided asking for news of her. I wished to
forget everything that was past. As if that had been possible!"

"I hoped," said Gimblet, "that you would have seen some strong likeness
in this young lady to yourself, or to your first wife. That would have
clinched the matter to all intents and purposes. But, as things are, I
shouldn't build too much on the hope that she is your daughter. It may
turn out to be the girl adopted by Countess Romaninov."

"I hope not, I hope not," said Lord Ashiel earnestly. "I have got her to
promise to come to Scotland, and in a few days I may get some definite
clue as to which of them it is. It is a very odd coincidence that both
the girls bear names so much like that of my poor wife's." He paused
reflectively, and then added, "In the meantime you will go on with your
inquiries, will you not?"

"I will," said Gimblet. "And I hope for better luck."

A silence followed. Lord Ashiel half rose to go, then sat down again.
Evidently he had something more to say, but hesitated to say it. At
last he spoke:

"When I was at St. Petersburg, twenty years ago, I was aroused to a
state of excitement and indignation by the social and political evils
which were then so much in evidence to the foreigner who sojourned in the
country of the Czars. I was young and impressionable, impulsive and
unbalanced in my judgments, I am afraid; at all events I resented certain
seeming injustices which came to my notice, and my resentment took a
practical and most foolish form. To be short, I was so ill-advised as to
join a secret society, and have done nothing but regret it ever since."

"I can well understand your regretting it," said the detective. "People
who join those societies are apt to find themselves let in for a good
deal more than they bargained for."

"It was so, at all events so far as I am concerned," said Lord Ashiel, "I
had, you may be sure, only the wildest idea of what serious and extremely
unpleasant consequences my unreflecting action would entail. Withdrawal
from these political brotherhoods is to all intents and purposes a
practical impossibility; but, in a sense, I withdrew from all
participation in its affairs as soon as I realized to what an extent the
theories of its leaders, as to the best means to adopt by which to
rectify the injustices we all agreed in deploring, differed from my own
ideas on the subject. And I should not have been able to withdraw, even
in the negative way I did, if accident had not put into my hand a weapon
of defence against the tyranny of the Society."

Lord Ashiel paused hesitatingly, and Gimblet murmured encouragingly:

"And that was?"

"No," said Lord Ashiel, after a moment's silence, "I must not tell you
more. We are, I know, to all appearances, safe from eavesdroppers or
interruption; but, if a word of what I know were to leak out by some
incredible agency, my life would not be worth a day's purchase. As it is,
I am alarmed; I believe these people wish for my death. In fact, there is
no doubt on that subject. But they dare not attempt it openly. I have
told them that if I should die under suspicious circumstances of any
sort, the weapon I spoke of will inevitably be used to avenge my death,
and they know me to be a man of my word. For all these years that threat
has been my safeguard, but now I am beginning to think that they are
trying other means of getting me out of the way."

"It is a pity," said Gimblet, "that you do not speak to me more openly. I
think it is highly probable, from what I know of the methods resorted to
by Nihilists in general, that you may be in very grave danger. Indeed, I
strongly advise you to report the whole matter to the police."

"I wish I could tell you everything," said Lord Ashiel, "but even if I
dared, you must remember that I am sworn to secrecy, and I cannot see
that because I have, by doing so, placed myself in some peril, that on
that account I am entitled to break my word. No, I cannot tell you any
more, but in spite of that, I want you to do me a service."

"I am afraid I can't help you without fuller knowledge," said Gimblet.
"What do you think I can do?"

"You can do this," said Lord Ashiel. He put his hand in his pocket and
Gimblet heard a crackling of paper. "I am thinking out a hiding-place
for some valuable documents that are in my possession, and when I have
decided on it I will write to you and explain where I have put them,
using a cipher of which the key is enclosed in an envelope I have here
in my pocket, and which I will leave with you when I go. Take charge of
it for me, and in the course of the next week or so I will send you a
cipher letter describing where the papers are concealed. Do not read it
unless the occasion arises. I can trust you not to give way to
curiosity, but if anything happens to me, if I die a violent death, or
equally if I die under the most apparently natural circumstances, I want
you to promise you will investigate those circumstances; and, if
anything should strike you as suspicious in connection with what I have
told you, you will be able to interpret my cipher letter, find the
document I have referred to, and act on the information it contains.
Will you undertake to do this for me?"

"I will, certainly," Gimblet answered readily, "but I hope the occasion
will not arise. I beg you to break a vow which was extorted from you by
false representations and which cannot be binding on you. Do confide
fully in me; I do not at all like the look of this business."

"No, no," replied Lord Ashiel, smiling. "You must let me be the judge of
whether my word is binding on me or not. As you say, I hope nothing will
happen to justify my perhaps uncalled-for nervousness. In any case it
will be a great comfort and relief to me to know that, if it does, the
scoundrels will not go unpunished."

"They shall not do that," said Gimblet fervently. "You can make your mind
easy on that score, at least. But I advise you to send your documents to
the bank. They will be safer there than in any hiding-place you can
contrive."

"I might want to lay my hand upon them at any moment," said Lord
Ashiel, "and I admit I don't like parting with my only weapon of
defence. Still, I dare say you are right really, and I will think it
over. But mind, I don't want you to take any steps unless you can
satisfy yourself that these people have a hand in my death. Please be
very careful to make certain of that. My health is not good, and grows
worse. I may easily die without their interference; but I suspect that,
if they do get me, they will manage the affair so that it has all the
look of having been caused by the purest misadventure. That is what I
fear. Not exactly murder; certainly no violent open assault. But we are
all liable to suffer from accidents, and what is to prevent my meeting
with a fatal one? That is more the line they will adopt, if, as I
imagine, they have decided on my death."

"If ever there were a case in which prevention is better than cure," said
Gimblet, "I think you will own that we have it here. If I had some hint
of the quarter from which you expect danger, I might at least suggest
some rudimentary precautions. What kind of 'accident' do you imagine
likely to occur?"

"That I can't tell," replied Lord Ashiel. "I only know that these enemies
of mine are resourceful people, who are apt to make short work of anyone
whose existence threatens their safety or the success of their designs. I
am, by your help, taking a precaution to ensure that I shall not die
unavenged. They must be taught that murder cannot be committed in this
country with impunity. And I am very careful not to trust myself out of
England. If I crossed the Channel it would be to go to my certain death.
Otherwise I should have gone myself to see Sir Arthur Byrne. But in this
island the man who kills even so unpopular a person as a member of the
House of Lords does not get off with a few years' imprisonment, as he may
in some of the continental countries; and the Nihilists, for the most
part, know that as well as I do."

Gimblet followed Lord Ashiel into the hall with the intention of showing
him out of the flat, but the sudden sound of the door bell ringing made
him abandon this courtesy and retreat to shelter.

He did not wish to be denied all possibility of refusing an interview to
some one he might not want to see.

So it was Higgs who opened the door and ushered out the last visitor, at
the same time admitting the newcomer.

This proved to be a small, slight woman dressed in deepest black and
wearing the long veil of a widow, who was standing with her back to the
door, apparently watching the rapid descent of the lift which had brought
her to the landing of No. 7.

She did not move when the door behind her opened, and Lord Ashiel,
emerging from it in a hurry to catch the lift before it vanished, nearly
knocked her down. She gave a startled gasp and stepped hastily to one
side into the dark shadows of the passage as he, muttering an apology,
darted forward to the iron gateway and applied his finger heavily to the
electric bell-push. But the liftboy had caught sight of him with the tail
of his eye, and was already reascending.

His anxiety allayed, Lord Ashiel turned again to express his regrets to
the lady he had inadvertently collided with, but she had disappeared into
the flat, of which Higgs was even then closing the door.

Ashiel stepped into the lift and sat down rather wearily on the
leather-covered seat.

Although, to some extent, the relief of having unburdened his mind of
secrets that had weighed upon it for so many years produced in him a
certain lightness of heart to which he had long been a stranger, yet
the very charm of the impression made upon him by Juliet Byrne, during
his first meeting with her that morning, led him to suspect uneasily
that his hopes of her proving to be his child were due rather to the
pleasure it gave him to anticipate such a possibility than to any more
logical reason.

He was so entirely engrossed in an honest endeavour to adjust correctly
the balance of probabilities, as to remain unconscious that the lift had
stopped at the ground floor, and it was not until the boy who was in
charge had twice informed him of the fact, that he roused himself with an
effort and left the building.

Still absorbed in his speculations and anxieties, he walked rapidly away,
and, having narrowly escaped destruction beneath the wheels of more than
one taxi, wandered down Northumberland Avenue on to the Embankment. He
crossed to the farther side, turned mechanically to the right and walked
obliviously on.

It was not until he came nearly to Westminster Bridge that he remembered
the cipher that he had prepared for Gimblet, and that he had, after all,
finally left without giving it to him. It was still in his pocket, and
the discovery roused him from his abstraction.

He took a taxi and drove back to the flats. A motor which had been
standing before the door when he had come out was still there when he
returned; so that, thinking it probably belonged to the lady he had met
on the landing, and guessing that if so the detective was still occupied
with her, he did not ask to see him again, but handed the envelope over
to Higgs when he opened the door, with strict injunctions to take it
immediately to his master.




CHAPTER V


The lady, whose visit to Gimblet dovetailed so neatly with the departure
of his other client on that summer afternoon, was unknown to him.

He had scarcely re-entered the room and resumed his accustomed seat by
the window when Higgs announced her.

"A lady to see you, sir."

The lady was already in the doorway. She must have followed Higgs from
the hall, and now stood, hesitating, on the threshold.

"What name?" breathed Gimblet; but Higgs only shook his head.

The detective went forward and spoke to his visitor.

"Please come in," he said. "Won't you sit down?"

And he pushed a chair towards her.

"Thank you," said the lady, taking the seat he offered. "I hope I do not
disturb you; but I have come on business," she added, as the door closed
behind Higgs.

"Yes?" said Gimblet interrogatively. "You will forgive me, but I didn't
catch your name when my man announced you."

"He didn't say it," she replied. "I had not told him. I am sure you would
not remember my name, and it is of no consequence at present."

"As you wish," said the detective.

But he wondered who this unknown woman could be. When she said he would
not remember her name, did she mean to imply that he had once been
acquainted with it? If so, she was right in thinking that he did not
recognize her now; but, if she did not choose to raise the thick crape
veil that hid her face, she could hardly expect him to do so.

He wondered whether she kept her veil lowered with the intention of
preventing his recognizing her, or whether in truth she were anxious not
to expose grief-swollen features to an unsympathetic gaze.

Her voice, which was low and sorrowful, though at the same time curiously
resonant, seemed to suggest that she was in great trouble. She spoke, he
fancied, with a trace of foreign accent.

For the rest, all that he could tell for certain about her was that she
was short and slender, with small feet, and hands, from which she was now
engaged in deliberately withdrawing a pair of black suede gloves.

He watched her in silence. He always preferred to let people tell their
stories at their own pace and in their own way, unless they were of those
who plainly needed to be helped out with questions.

And about this woman there was no suspicion of embarrassment; her whole
demeanour spoke of calmness and self-possession.

"I believe," she said at last, "that you are a private detective. I come
to ask for your help in a matter of some difficulty. Some papers of the
utmost importance, not only to me but to others, are in the possession of
a person who intends to profit by the information contained in them to do
myself and my friends an irreparable injury. You can imagine how anxious
we are to obtain them from him."

"Do I understand that this person threatens you with blackmail?"
asked Gimblet.

The lady hesitated.

"Something of the kind," she replied after a moment's pause.

"And you have so far given in to his demands?"

"Yes," admitted the visitor. "Up till now we have been obliged to
submit."

"Has he proposed any terms on which he will be willing to return you the
papers?" asked the detective.

"No," she replied. "I do not think any terms are possible."

"How did this person obtain possession of the papers?" Gimblet asked
after a moment. "Did he steal them from you?"

"No."

"From your friends?"

She hesitated.

"No--not exactly."

"From whom, then?" asked Gimblet in surprise. "I suppose they were yours
in the first place?"

"He has always had them," she said reluctantly; "but they must not
remain his."

"Do you mean they are his own?" exclaimed Gimblet. "In that case it is
you who propose to steal them!"

"No," replied the strange lady calmly. "I want you to do that."

"I'm sorry," said Gimblet; "that is not in my line of business. I'm
afraid you made a mistake in coming to me. I cannot undertake your
commission."

"Money is no object; we shall ask you to name your own price," urged
his visitor.

But the detective shook his head.

"It is a matter of life and death," she said, and her voice betrayed an
agitation which could not have been inferred from her motionless shrouded
figure. "If you refuse to help me, not one life, but many, will be
endangered."

"If you can offer me convincing proof of that," said Gimblet, "I might
feel it my duty to help you. I don't say I should, but I might. In any
case I can do nothing unless you are perfectly open and frank with me.
Expect no assistance from me unless you tell me everything, and then only
if I think it right to give it."

For the first time she showed some signs of confusion. The hand upon her
lap moved restlessly and she turned her head slowly towards the window as
if in search of suitable words. But she did not speak or rise, though she
gradually fidgeted round in her chair till she faced the writing-table;
and so sat, with her head leaning on her hand, in silent consideration.

It was clear she did not like Gimblet's terms; and after a few minutes
had passed in a silence as awkward as it was suggestive he pushed back
his chair and stood up. He hoped she would take the hint and bring an
unprofitable and embarrassing interview to an end.

But she did not appear to notice him, and still sat lost in her
own thoughts.

Suddenly the door opened and Higgs appeared.

Gimblet looked at him with questioning disapproval.

It was an inflexible rule of his that when engaged with a client he was
not to be disturbed.

Higgs, well acquainted with this rule, hovered doubtfully in the
doorway, displaying on the salver he carried the blue, unaddressed
envelope Lord Ashiel had told him to deliver at once.

"It's a note, sir," he murmured hesitatingly. "The gentleman who was with
you a little while ago came back with it. He asked me to be sure and
bring it in at once."

He avoided Gimblet's reproachful eye and stammered uneasily:

"Put it down on that table and go," said the detective. He indicated a
little table by the door, and Higgs hastily placed the letter on it and
fled, with the uncomfortable sensation of having been sternly reproved.

As a matter of fact Gimblet would have shown more indignation if he
had not at heart felt rather glad of the interruption. His visitor had
decidedly outstayed her welcome; and, though she stirred his curiosity
sufficiently to make him wish he could induce her to raise her veil
and let him see what manner of woman it was who had the effrontery to
come and make him such unblushing proposals, he far more urgently
desired to see the last of her. She was wasting his time and annoying
him into the bargain.

As the door shut behind the servant he made a step towards her.

"If, madam, there is nothing else you wish to consult me about," he
began, taking out his watch with some ostentation--"I am a busy man--"

The lady gave a little laugh, low and musical.

"I will not detain you longer," she said, also rising from her chair. "I
am afraid I have cut into your afternoon, but you will still have time
for a game if you hurry."

She laughed again, and moved over to the writing-table, where, among a
litter of papers and writing materials, a couple of golf balls were
acting as letter weights. A putter lay on the chair in front of the desk,
and she took it up and swung it to and fro.

"A nice club," she remarked. "Where do you play, as a rule? There are so
many good links near London; so convenient. Well, I mustn't keep you."
She laid down the putter and fingered the balls for a moment. "Where have
I put my gloves?" she said then, looking around to collect her
belongings.

Gimblet was slightly put out at her inference that his plea of business
was merely an excuse to dismiss her in order that he might go off and
play golf. Heaven knew it was no affair of hers whether he played golf
that day or not! But as a matter of fact he had no intention of leaving
the flat that afternoon, and had merely been practising a shot or two on
the carpet after lunch before Lord Ashiel's arrival. Still it was true
that he had made business a pretext for getting rid of her, and this made
the injustice of the widow's further inference ruffle him more than it
might have if she had been entirely in the wrong. He was the most
courteous of men, and that anyone should suspect him of unnecessary
rudeness distressed him.

He made no reply, however, in spite of the temptation to defend himself;
but stooped to pick up a diminutive black suede glove which his visitor
had dropped when she took up the putter.

She thanked him and put it on, depositing, while she did so, her other
glove, her handkerchief, sunshade and a small brown-paper parcel upon the
writing-table at her side.

Gimblet did not appreciate seeing these articles heaped upon his
correspondence. Without any comment he removed them, and stood holding
them silently till she should be ready.

She took them from him soon, with a little inclination of the head which
he felt was accompanied by a smile of thanks, though through the thick
crape it was impossible to do more than guess at any expression.

She drew on her other glove and held out her hand again.

"My purse?" she said. "Will you not give me that too? Where have you put
it? And then I must really go."

"I haven't seen any purse," said Gimblet.

"Yes, yes!" she cried. "A black silk bag! It has my purse inside it. I
had it, I am sure."

She turned quickly back to the chair she had been sitting in, and taking
up the cushion, shook it and peered beneath it.

"What can I have done with it? All my money is in it."

Gimblet glanced round the room. He did not remember having noticed any
bag, and he was an observant person. She had probably left it in a cab.
Women were always doing these things. Witness the heaped shelves at
Scotland Yard.

"Perhaps you put it down in the hall?" he suggested.

"I am sure I had it when I came in here," she repeated in an agitated
voice. "But it might be worth while just to look in the hall," she added
doubtfully, and moved towards the door.

Gimblet opened it for her gladly; but she came to a standstill in
the doorway.

"There is nothing there, you see;" she said dolefully. "Oh, what
shall I do!"

Gimblet looked over her shoulder. The hall was shadowy, with the
perpetual twilight of the halls of London flats, but he fancied he
could perceive a darker shadow lying beside his hat on the table near
the entrance.

"Is that it? On the table?" he asked.

"Where? I don't see anything," murmured the lady; and indeed it was
unlikely that she could distinguish anything in such a light from
behind her veil.

"On the table by my hat," repeated Gimblet; and as she still did not
move, he made a step forward into the hall.

Yes, it was her bag, beyond a doubt. A silken thing of black brocade,
embroidered with scattered purple pansies.

Gimblet picked it up and turned back to his visitor. After a second's
hesitation she had followed him into the hall and was coming towards him,
groping her way rather blindly through the gloom.

"Oh, thanks, thanks!" she exclaimed. "How stupid of me to have left it
there. Thank you again. My precious bag! I am so glad you have found it."
She took the bag eagerly from him. "I am afraid I have been a nuisance,
and disturbed you to no purpose. You must forgive my mistake. But now I
will not keep you any longer. Good-bye."

She showed no further disposition to loiter; and Gimblet rang the bell
for the lift and saw her depart with a good deal of satisfaction.

In spite of her extremely hazy ideas on the subject of other people's
property, there was, he admitted, something attractive about her. Still
he was very glad she had gone.

He returned to his room, taking up and pocketing Lord Ashiel's envelope
as he passed the little table by the door.

He did it mechanically, for his mind was occupied with a question which
must be immediately decided.

Was it, or was it not, worth while to have the woman who had just left
him followed and located, and her identity ascertained?

Gimblet disliked leaving small problems unsolved, however insignificant
they appeared. On the whole, he thought he might as well find out who she
was, and he turned back into the hall and called for Higgs.

If she were to be caught sight of again before leaving the house there
was not a moment to lose. But Higgs did not reply, and on Gimblet's
opening the pantry door he found it empty. Unknown to him, the moment the
lady had departed Higgs had gone upstairs to the flat above to have a
word with a friend.

The detective seized his hat and ran downstairs, but he was too late.

The widow lady, the porter told him, had gone away two or three minutes
ago in the motor that had been waiting for her. No, he hadn't noticed the
number of the car. Neither had he seen Higgs.

Gimblet shrugged his shoulders as he went upstairs again. After all, the
matter was of no great consequence.

The widow was a cool hand, certainly, he thought, to come to him and
propose he should steal for her what she wanted; but the fact of her
having done so made it on the whole improbable that she was a thief, or
she would not have had need of him. She was certainly a person of
questionable principles, and it seemed likely that in one way or another
a theft would be committed through her agency, if not by herself, as
soon as the opportunity presented itself. She was, in fact, a woman on
whom the police might do worse than keep an eye; but, reflected Gimblet,
he was not the police, and the dishonesty of this scheming widow was
really no concern of his. As he reached his door, a postman was leaving
it, and two or three letters had been pushed through the flap. He let
himself in and took them out of the box. They were not of great
importance. A bill, an appeal for a subscription to some charity, a
couple of advertisements and the catalogue of a sale of pictures in
which he was interested. He turned over the leaves slowly, holding the
pamphlet sideways from time to time to look at the photographs which
illustrated some of the principal lots.

Presently he turned and went back into his room. He sat down in his
favourite arm-chair near the window, where he habitually passed so much
time gazing out on to the smooth surface of the river, and fell to
ruminating on the problem presented by Lord Ashiel's story.

For a long while he sat on, huddled in the corner of an arm-chair, his
elbows on the arm, his chin resting on his hand, and in his eyes the look
of one who wrestles with obscure and complicated problems of mental
arithmetic. From time to time, but without relaxing his expression of
concentrated effort, he stretched out long artistic fingers to a box on
the table, took from it a chocolate, and transferred it mechanically to
his mouth. He always ate sweets when he had a problem on hand. He was
trying to think of some means by which his client could be protected from
the mysterious danger that threatened him; that it was a very real
danger, Gimblet accepted without question; he had only seen Lord Ashiel
twice in his life, but it was quite enough to make him certain that here
was a man whom it would take a great deal to alarm. This was no boy
crying "wolf" for the sake of making a stir.

But the more he thought, the more he saw that there was nothing to be
done. A word to the police would suffice, no doubt, to precipitate
matters; for, if the Nihilist Society which threatened Lord Ashiel
contemplated his destruction, a hint that he might be already taking
reciprocal measures would not be likely to make them feel more mercifully
towards him. It was obvious that Ashiel would look with suspicion upon
any Russian who might approach him, but Gimblet determined to write him a
line of warning against foreigners of any description. Still, these
societies sometimes had Englishmen amongst their members, and ways of
enforcing obedience upon their subordinates which made any decision they
might come to as good as carried out almost as soon as it was uttered.

The detective's cogitations were disturbed by Higgs, who had returned,
and now brought him in some tea. He poured himself out half a cup, which
he filled up with Devonshire cream. He had a peculiar taste in food, and
was the despair of his excellent cook, but on this occasion he ate none
of the cakes and bread and butter she had provided, the chocolates having
rather taken the edge off his appetite.

From where he sat he could see, through the open window, the broad grey
stretches of the river, with a barge going swiftly down on the tide;
brown sails turned to gleaming copper by the slanting rays from the West.
The hum and rattle of the streets came up to him murmuringly; now and
then a train rumbled over Charing Cross Bridge, and the whistle of
engines shrilled out above the constant low clamour of the town.

Gimblet leant out of the window and watched the barge negotiate the
bridge. Then he returned to his chair, and taking Lord Ashiel's envelope
out of his pocket looked it over thoughtfully before opening it. He had
no doubts as to what it contained; he had been on the point of reminding
the peer that he had forgotten to give him the key of the cipher he had
spoken of when the widow's ring at the door had driven him to a hurried
retreat, but he had not considered the omission of any particular
significance. His client would certainly discover it and either return to
give him the key, or send it to the flat.

It would probably be some time before it was required for use here. In
the meantime, thought Gimblet, he would have a look at it before locking
it away in the safe.

He turned over the envelope. To his surprise, the flap was open and the
glue had obviously never been moistened.

It was the work of an instant to look inside, but almost quicker came the
conviction that it was useless to do so.

He was not mistaken.

The envelope was empty.

Gimblet stared at it for one moment in blank dismay. Then he strode to
the door and shouted for Higgs.

"Did you notice," he asked him, "whether the envelope Lord Ashiel gave
you for me was fastened, or was it open as this one is?"

"Oh no, sir," replied Higgs, "it was sealed up. There was a large patch
of red sealing-wax at the back, with a coronet and some sort of little
picture stamped on it. I can't say I looked at it particularly, but there
may have been a lion or a dog, or some kind of animal. His lordship's
arms, no doubt"

"You are quite certain about the sealing-wax?" Gimblet repeated slowly.

"Yes, sir, I am quite certain about that," answered Higgs; and he could
not refrain from adding, "I put down the note on this little table, sir,
as you told me."

"Thank you. That is all."

Gimblet's tone was as undisturbed as ever, but inwardly he was seething
with anger and disgust; directed, however, entirely against himself.

When Higgs had departed he allowed himself the unusual, though quite
inadequate relief of giving the chair on which his last visitor had sat a
violent kick. After that he felt rather more ashamed of himself than
before, if possible, and he sat down and raged at the simple way in which
he had been fooled.

The widow had taken the envelope, of course. She must have snatched it up
during the few seconds he had turned his back on her in order to step
across the hall and retrieve her bag, and have replaced it at the same
instant with this empty one which she had no doubt taken from his own
writing-table while he stooped beside her to pick up her glove.

Gimblet fetched one of his own blue envelopes and compared it with the
substitute. Yes, they were alike in every particular. The watermarks were
the same and showed that she had used what she found ready to her hand.

It seemed, then, that the _coup_ was not premeditated. But why, why, had
he let her escape so easily? If only he had been a little quicker about
following her, and had not wasted time looking for Higgs! She had had
time to get clear away; and he, bungler that he was, had thought it of
little consequence, and had afterwards stood poring over a catalogue in
the hall, having decided that her morals were no business of his. Ass
that he had been!

Who was she? Probably some one known to Lord Ashiel, or why should she
have wanted his letter? Well, Ashiel must have met her on his way out,
and would in that case at least be able to provide the information as to
who she was. Still, more people might know Ashiel than Ashiel knew, and
it was possible that that hope might fail. No doubt she was a member of
the society the peer had so rashly entangled himself with in the days of
his youth; one of those enemies of whom he had spoken with such grave
apprehension. Had she followed him into the house and forced her way in
on a trumped-up pretext, on the chance of hearing or finding something
that might be useful to her Nihilist friends, or had she known that Lord
Ashiel intended to leave some document in Gimblet's keeping, and come
with the idea, already formed, of stealing it? Such a plan seemed to
partake too much of the nature of a forlorn hope to be likely, but
whether or no she had expected to find that letter, Gimblet could hardly
help admiring the rapidity with which she had possessed herself of it
without wasting an unnecessary moment.

She must have been safe in the street and away with it, in less than
five minutes from when she first saw it. Oh, she had been quick and
dexterous! And he? He had been a gull, and false to his trust, and
altogether contemptible. What should he say to Lord Ashiel? Why in the
world hadn't he locked up the letter when Higgs brought it in? This was
what came of making red-tape regulations about not being disturbed. After
all, he comforted himself, she would be a good deal disappointed when she
found what she had got. The key to a cipher; that was all. And a key with
nothing to unlock was an unsatisfactory kind of loot to risk prison for.
Evidently she expected something more important; perhaps the very
documents she had invited Gimblet to steal for her, regardless of
expense. This, he thought, was a reassuring sign for Lord Ashiel. For it
was plain they meant to steal the papers, if they could; but not so plain
that they looked to murder as the means by which to gain that end, since
they applied for help from him.

Gimblet rang up the Carlton Club and asked for his client, but he was not
in, nor did he succeed in communicating with him that afternoon; and when
he rang up the Club for the fifth time after dinner he was told that Lord
Ashiel had already left for Scotland.

With a groan, and fortifying himself with chocolates, the detective sat
down to write a long and full account of his failure to keep what had
been confided to his care, for the space of one hour.

In a couple of days he had an answer. Ashiel did not seem much perturbed
at the loss of the cipher.

"It is a nuisance, of course," he said. "I must think out another, and
will let you have it in a few days before sending you other things. No, I
did not recognize the person I met as I was leaving your rooms. In spite
of what you say as to your belief that theft and not murder is the object
of these people, I am still convinced that my life is aimed at. However,
I think that for the present I have hit on a way of frustrating their
plans. With regard to the other problem you are helping me to solve, I am
seeing a great deal of both the young people, and I believe there can be
no doubt as to the identity of one of them, but I will write to you on
this subject also in a few days' time."

He sent Gimblet a couple of brace of grouse, which the detective devoured
with great satisfaction, and for the next week no more letters bearing a
Scotch postmark were delivered at the Whitehall flat.




CHAPTER VI


"Here they come again."

Lord Ashiel spoke in a voice scarcely above a whisper, and Juliet
crouched low against the peaty wall of the butt. There was an instant's
silence, and then crack, crack, shots sounded from the other end of the
line. Another minute and Lord Ashiel's gun went up; she heard the whirr
of approaching wings before she covered both ears with her hands to
deaden the noise of the explosions she knew were coming.

Then several guns seemed to go off at once. Bang! bang! bang! Bang!
bang! bang!

Juliet did not really enjoy grouse-driving, but she tried to appear as if
she did, since every one else seemed to, and at all events there were
intervals between drives when she could be happy in the glory of the
hills and the wild free air of the moors.

Meanwhile she knelt in her corner of the butt beside her host's big
retriever, and waited. There was a little bunch of heather growing
level with her nose, and she bent forward silently and sniffed at it.
But the honey-sweet scent was drowned for the moment by the smell of
gunpowder and dog.

Bang! bang! bang!

Presently Lord Ashiel turned and looked down at her, with a smile.

"The drivers are close up," he said. "The drive is over."

They went out of the butt, and she stood watching the dog picking up the
birds Lord Ashiel had shot. He found nineteen, and the loader picked up
three more. Juliet was glad her host shot so well. She thought him a
wonderful man. And how kind he was to her. But she could not help looking
over from time to time to the next butt, round which three other people
were wandering: Sir David Southern, and his loader, and Miss Maisie
Tarver, to whom he was engaged to be married.

One of Sir David's birds had fallen near his uncle's butt, and presently
he strolled across to look for it, his eyes on the heather as he
zigzagged about, leading his dog by the chain which his uncle insisted on
his using.

"There is something here," called Juliet. "Yes, it is a dead grouse. Is
this your bird?"

Sir David came up and took it.

"That's it," he said. "Thanks very much. How do you like this sort
of thing?"

He leant against the butt and looked down at her.

"Oh, it's so lovely here," began Juliet.

"But you don't like the shooting, eh?"

"I don't know," Juliet stammered. "I think it's rather cruel."

"You must remember there wouldn't be any grouse at all if they weren't
shot," he said seriously, "and besides, wild birds don't die comfortably
in their beds if they're not killed by man. A charge of shot is more
merciful than a death from cold and starvation, or even from the attack
of a hawk or any of a bird's other natural enemies. Just think. Wouldn't
you rather have the violent end yourself than the slow, lingering one?"

"Yes," admitted Juliet, "I would. I believe you're right. But I don't
really much like seeing it happen, all the same."

"I think you'd get used to it; it's a matter of habit. I believe
everything is a matter of habit, or almost everything. I suppose one gets
used to any kind of horror in time."

He spoke reflectively; more, or so it seemed to Juliet, as if trying to
convince himself than her; and as he finished speaking, she was conscious
that his eyes, which had never left her face while they were talking, had
done so now, and were fixed on some object or person behind her. She
turned instinctively and saw Miss Maisie Tarver approaching, a brace of
grouse swinging in each hand.

"I've got them all, right here, David," she informed him, as she came up.
She was a tall dark girl, with the look of breeding which often proves so
confusing to Europeans when they first come in contact with certain of
her countrywomen. "This bird," she added, holding up one which still
fluttered despairingly, "was a runner, but now he won't do any more
running than the colour of my new pink shirt-waist; and that's guaranteed
a fast tint, I guess."

Juliet looked away, trying not to show her dismay at the struggles of the
wounded bird.

"Here, give me that bird, Maisie," said David rather abruptly. "I'll
knock it on the head."

"Oh, I can do that, if it makes Miss Byrne feel badly," Maisie laughed.

Raising her small foot on to a stone, she began to make ineffectual
attempts to beat the bird's head against her toe. David snatched it from
her unceremoniously, and turned his back while he put an end to the poor
creature's sufferings. His face was very red. When he had killed the bird
he tossed it to Lord Ashiel's loader, and strode away across the heather.

Maisie looked at Juliet with a laugh.

"Your English young men are perfectly lovely," she remarked, "and David
is just elegant, I think, or I'd not have gone and engaged myself to be
led to the altar by him; but I can't kind of get used to the British way
of looking at things. It's quite remarkable the manner you people have
of admiring a girl one moment, because she's a good sport, and throwing
fits of disapprobation the next, because she tries to act like she is
one. Why, David looked at me just now as if he'd have taken less than two
cents to put knock-out drops in my next cocktail."

"Oh," protested Juliet. "I'm sure he didn't mean to. I think his
expression is naturally rather stern."

"Stern nothing," said Miss Tarver. "When I came up he was looking at you
as if he reckoned he could eat you, shooting-stick and all. Oh, there
aren't any flies on me! I know just what myself and dollars are worth to
Sir David Southern, and I'm beginning to do some calculating on my own
account as to what Sir David Southern is worth to me."

"Oh, surely you are wrong," cried Juliet. "I am certain Sir David has
never thought about your money. Oh, I feel sure you misjudge him; and you
mustn't talk like that, even in fun!"

"I don't know," said Miss Tarver doubtfully. "His cousin says David's
really vurry attached to me, but it's the sort of thing one ought to be
able to see for oneself, and I don't seem to feel a really strong
conviction on the subject. As for his thinking of my dollars, I fail to
see how he can help that when he's over head and ears in debt, the way he
is. He told me so himself when he proposed. He put it as a business
proposition. Said his ancient name was up for auction, and did I reckon
it worth my while to make a bid, or words to that effect. There's a
romantic love-story for you. He was the only titled man I'd ever struck
up till a month ago, and I always did think it would be stunning to marry
into an aristocratic British family, so I was pleased to death at the
idea of putting his on its legs again with my dollars. What else could I
do with them anyway? But I believe if I'd met your friend, Lord Ashiel,
before I'd taken the fatal step, I'd have waited to see if he didn't
fancy an Amurrican wife. But of course _he_ doesn't care a hill of beans
whether I'm rich or not. He's got plenty himself, I'm told, and I guess
he'd never have looked at me while you were around, any old way. All the
same I call him a real striking-looking man."

"Oh, don't talk so loud," implored Juliet. "He'll hear you. He's
quite close."

"Not he," said Miss Tarver. "He's back of the butt still. And I will say
he is a real high-toned gentleman, and it's my opinion the girl who gets
him will be able to give points to the man who took a piece of waste land
for a bad debt, and struck the richest vein of gold in Colorado on it."

She looked at Juliet with an insinuating eye.

"Come along," said Lord Ashiel, as he strolled up to them with a bird
he had been looking for, "we're going on now to the next drive," and
they started off down the hillside, wading deep through the heather to
the track.

Juliet had been nearly a week at Inverashiel. A week of wet weather which
had sadly interfered with the shooting, but which had thrown the house
party on its own resources and given her plenty of chances to get well
acquainted with the other guests at the castle. They were most of them
related to Lord Ashiel and already well known to each other. The
American, David Southern's fiancée, the half Russian girl, Julia
Romaninov, who had arrived on the same day as Juliet, and Juliet herself,
were the only strangers. Mrs. Haviland, Lord Ashiel's sister, had been
there when she arrived, but had left a day or two later as her husband,
who was in the south, had fallen ill and needed her presence. Her place
as hostess had been taken by Lady Ruth Worsfold, a distant cousin of the
McConachans, who lived in a little house a mile down the loch, which was
given her rent free by Lord Ashiel. Another cousin of his, Mrs. Clutsam,
a young widow, he had also provided this year with a small house on the
estate which was sometimes let to fishing tenants, and she, too, was at
present staying at Inverashiel.

The guns consisted of Col. Spicer and Sir George Hatch, both well-known
soldiers of between forty and fifty years of age, and Lord Ashiel's two
nephews, David Southern, the son of a widowed sister, and Mark
McConachan, whose father, now dead, had been Lord Ashiel's only brother.
Both were tall, good-looking young men, though there was not even a
family resemblance between the grey-eyed and fairhaired David, with his
smooth-shaven face and slender well-proportioned figure, and his
loose-limbed, rather ungainly cousin, whose appearance of great strength
made up for his lack of grace, and whose large melting brown eyes made
one forget the faults which the hypercritical might have found in the
rest of his face: the rather large nose, and the mouth which was apt too
often to be open except when it closed on the cigarette he was always
smoking. He had been, so Juliet had heard some one say, one of the most
popular men in the cavalry regiment he had lately left on account of its
being ordered to India.

They were all very nice to Juliet, and she thought them all charming.
Especially, she told herself with unnecessary emphasis, did she think
Miss Maisie Tarver a delightful person; rather strange, possibly, to
European ways and customs and manner of conversation, a very different
type, certainly, from the new Lady Byrne--to whom Juliet was beginning to
feel she had perhaps not hitherto sufficiently done justice--but open as
the day, and with a heart of gold. She even went so far as to defend her
to old Lady Ruth Worsfold, who had lamented one morning when David and
his fiancee had gone out shooting together--for Miss Tarver, though not a
good shot, was fond of ferreting rabbits--that the lad should be throwing
himself away on this young lady from a provincial American town.

"I forget which, my dear, but it's something to do with chickens, I
believe." They were sitting in the hall, and Lady Ruth looked up from her
embroidery as she spoke, with art interrogative glance towards Mrs.
Clutsam and Julia.

"Chicago," said Mrs. Clutsam, turning round from the table where she was
writing. "That's where she comes from."

"Yes, that's it," said Lady Ruth; "the name had slipped my memory. It's
the place where they all kill pigs, isn't it? I've read about it in
Kipling. Her having been brought up to do that accounts for her passion
for wounding rabbits, no doubt. I daresay one has to keep one's hand in.
That reminds me, I will tell the cook not to send up sausages for
breakfast. The poor girl is probably tired of the sight of them, though I
suppose they mean money to her, which is always pleasant. When I had a
poultry farm I used to feel my heart warm at the thought of poor dear
Duncan's bald head. You know, my dear," she went on, turning to Juliet,
"my husband had the misfortune to lose all his hair some years before he
died, though really I don't believe there was a patent hair-wash he
didn't try, till the house fairly reeked of them: but they never did any
good, and he got to look more and more like one of my nice new-laid eggs;
though not so brown of course, for I always kept Wyandots which lay the
most beautiful dark brown ones, like _café au lait_"

"Well, the money will be very useful to poor David," said Mrs. Clutsam,
without turning her head. She was rather annoyed because she had found
that she had written "I am so glad you can kill pigs," instead of "I am
so glad you can come" to some one she had invited to stay with her.

"There's plenty of money on this side of the duck pond, or whatever they
call it," said Lady Ruth severely.

And it was then that Juliet had burst in.

"I am sure Sir David has never given a thought to Miss Tarver's
money," she said.

"Why not, my dear?" said Lady Ruth, turning upon her mild, surprised
eyes. "He is terribly badly off; it is his duty to marry money; but he
needn't have gone so far for it."

"I don't believe he would marry for money. He would be above doing such a
thing!" Juliet declared.

Julia, who had said nothing, stared at her, and laughed softly. She had a
very low, musical laugh.

"I don't think you understand the position," said Mrs. Clutsam, turning
round at last and laying down her pen with an air of resignation. "David
Southern has inherited a lot of debts from his father, who only died last
year, and he had piled up a good many on his own account before then,
never suspecting that he would not be very well off. But he found the
place mortgaged up to the hilt. There is really nothing between his
mother and starvation, except her brother-in-law Ashiel's charity, and
that is not pleasant for her because she has never been on good terms
with him. It is very important that David should obtain money somehow,
for her sake more than for his own, and I'm sure he feels that deeply. He
is devoted to her."

"But there are other ways of getting money than by marrying,"
Juliet objected.

"Yes, there are; but they are slow and uncertain, and David can't bear to
see his mother poor. I am sure it was for her sake that he proposed to
Miss Tarver."

"I think he would have tried some other way first, unless he had been in
love with her," Juliet repeated, flushed and obstinate.

"Mr. McConachan says Sir David is very fond of Miss Tarver, really,"
said Julia, speaking for the first time. She spoke English fluently, but
with a slight foreign accent. "He says his cousin is so reserved that
he conceals his feelings as much as possible, but that, _au fond_, he
adores her."

There was a short silence; Mrs. Clutsam seemed about to speak, but her
eyes met those of Lady Ruth fixed on her with an expressionless gaze, and
she turned round without a word and took up her discarded pen.

They were both thinking the same thing. If David concealed his feelings
in the presence of Miss Tarver he was not so successful when he was in
Juliet's neighbourhood. Both women had noticed the change that came over
him when she was in the room. It was not that he did not try to appear
indifferent; he did not talk to her, or seek her society. On the contrary
he seemed to avoid it, and relapsed into silence at her approach. But
both Lady Ruth and Mrs. Clutsam had caught him looking at her when he
thought himself unobserved, and their observations had not left either of
them in any doubt as to how the land lay.

Sir David Southern might be engaged to marry Miss Tarver, but he had
fallen in love with some one quite different, and some one who was,
moreover, or so they imagined, destined for quite another person.

For what was Miss Juliet Byrne doing at Inverashiel Castle?

This was a question which much exercised the minds of Lord Ashiel's
relations and, when she was not present, formed the subject of many
discussions.

Where had this girl, this extremely pretty and attractive girl, suddenly
appeared from? Well, they all knew, of course, where she really had come
from; but why? Why had Lord Ashiel suddenly sprung her on them like
this? He had not even told Mrs. Haviland that he had invited her until
the day before she arrived. Why this mystery? Where had he met her? How
long had he known her? To a casual question Juliet had replied guardedly
that she had not known him very long, but that he knew her family.
Fervently did she hope that what she said was true.

One thing, however, seemed certain. No matter how, where, or why, Ashiel
had made friends with Juliet Byrne, he was bent on becoming even better
acquainted. He appeared to be on excellent terms with her already, and
every day saw them grow more familiar, and, on Ashiel's side, almost
affectionate. If he went shooting or fishing Juliet must go too; to her
he addressed his remarks; it was she whom he consulted when he made plans
for the following days. His health was bad, he was subject to terrible
headaches, and if she were not present he grew quickly nervous and
irritable; when she was, he seldom took his eyes off her. He seemed to
watch her, Mrs. Clutsam thought, with a certain expectancy; but also with
a distinct and unmistakable pride. There was little doubt in the mind of
anyone in the house that there would soon be a second Lady Ashiel.

As the party walked between the butts on that brilliant August day, Miss
Tarver tacked herself on to her host and strode on ahead with him,
keeping up a flow of interminable, drawling inanities, which made him
wonder for the fortieth time what David could see in her.

The others tailed out after them, followed by dogs and loaders.

Without knowing how it came about, Juliet found herself walking beside
David; and, as she was not used to the rough going on the hillside, they
insensibly dropped behind the rest of the long, straggling procession.
The way was uphill; Juliet panted and stumbled; and her companion seemed
disinclined to talk.

They came to a burn, and he gave her his hand to cross from stone to
stone. The burn was high, and one stone was under water, leaving a space
too wide for Juliet to jump. David stepped on to the flooded rock, and
turned to her.

"I will lift you over here," he said shortly. "Oh, I can wade quite
well," said she. "My shoes are wet already."

But without more words he put his arms round her, and lifted her over.
When he put her down he found his tongue.

"If Maisie stands with my uncle at the next drive," he said, "will you
come to my butt?"

"I should like to," she said. For some reason his tone made her breath
come quickly.

David stood looking down at her as though considering.

"I can't go back on my word," he said at last inconsequently. "I shall
have to marry her, if she wants it, I suppose. But I can't bear you to
think that I care for her. I've got to think of other people."

"You mustn't say that!" she cried. "Oh, you mustn't say that to me!"

"Why not?" he said, looking at her strangely. "What have I said that
isn't right?"

"Nothing, I suppose," Juliet faltered. "But--but--Oh," she cried, "if
you don't care for her, you must tell her so, and she will break it off.
Anything would be better than to go on with it!"

"I think she knows," he answered gloomily. "She won't break it off,
because she wants to be 'my Lady,' It's a business matter, really. And
I'd have to stick to it for my mother's sake, anyhow."

Juliet could think of nothing to say. "You ought not to marry her," she
stammered again.

"If I didn't," he began hoarsely--"if she did let me go, I don't suppose
you'd ever care for me enough to marry me? Oh, I know I ought not to say
it," he broke off; "I'm a cad to speak like this. Forgive me, Juliet."

Juliet's world revolved around her at an unusual pace for the space of a
second. She shut her eyes to steady herself; a mixture of misery and
happiness deprived her of speech or movement. Gradually the misery
predominated and she burst into tears.

"Forgive me, forgive me," he was saying. He stood before her, looking as
wretched as a man can look.

"Yes, yes," she sobbed. "Let us forget all about it. You must forget me."

"You know I can't," he said. "Juliet, Juliet, don't cry. If you cry I
shall be simply obliged to kiss you." And he took a step towards her.

They were still standing at the edge of the burn, screened from the
track ahead, partly by a little bush of alder which grew beside them,
partly by the winding of the path round the slope of the hill. As David
spoke a rabbit came scampering up to the other side of the bush, and
then, becoming aware of their proximity, turned at right angles and
darted down the bank. It was three or four yards away, and going hard,
when there was a loud report, and the branches of the alder cracked and
rattled. Several little boughs fell to the ground a foot or two away
from the spot on which Juliet stood. Surprise dried her tears and
restored David to his senses.

"Hi!" he shouted, bounding on to the path, and waving his arms
frantically. "What are you shooting at? Look out, can't you?"

Fifty yards up the track his Cousin Mark was standing, an open gun in his
hand; a scared ghillie was running towards them down the path beyond.

"Good heavens, David," Mark ejaculated, "do you mean to say you were in
the burn? I thought you were on ahead! Why in the world did you lag
behind like that? Do you know I might easily have shot you?"

"Do I know it? You precious near did shoot me, and Miss Byrne, too, I
tell you. If it hadn't been for that alder we should have been bound to
get most of the charge between us. It's not like you to be so careless."

"I'm frightfully sorry, old man," said Mark, coming up; "it was careless
of me, but I felt sure there was no one back there. I saw that rabbit and
stalked it, meaning to overtake you all afterwards. They walk so
fearfully slow, you know, what with all these ladies, and Uncle Douglas
not feeling very fit. And Miss Byrne here, too! By Jove, I _am_ sorry!
Beastly stupid of me."

He was plainly agitated, and could hardly blame himself severely enough.
And David, for his part, was not disposed to make light of what had
happened. Perhaps he was glad of a subject on which he could enlarge.

"It was a rotten shot, too," he mumbled, as they all hurried on after
the others. "You were about four yards behind that rabbit."

"Absolutely rotten," agreed Mark. "I don't know what's happened to my
shooting. I've hit every bird in the tail to-day, except when I've missed
'em clean, and that's what I've done most of the time. There's something
wrong with my eye altogether. If I don't get better, I shall knock off
shooting--for a few days, anyhow."

All his usual self-possession seemed to have been shaken out of him by
the thought of the catastrophe he might have caused. Young, good-looking
and popular, he was accustomed to take the pleasure shown in his society
and the admiring approval of his associates, which had always contributed
so much to his comfortable feeling of satisfaction with himself, and
which had invariably strengthened his reluctance to harbour unpleasant
doubts as to his own perfections, as a matter of course; and the
heartiness with which he now cursed himself for a careless and dangerous
fool testified to the fright he had had.

Even when David, relenting a little, though still reluctant to show
it, grunted surlily, "None of you cavalry soldiers are safe with a
gun." Mark did not, as he would generally have done, deny the
accusation resentfully, but displayed an astonishing meekness, which
proved how clearly he saw himself to be in the wrong. Juliet, who had
sometimes thought him rather selfish--a fault he shared with many
others of his kind, and one perhaps almost unavoidable in attractive
only sons--was touched by his unusual humility, and treated the matter
lightly, doing all she could to cheer him up and restore to him his
good opinion of himself.

But Mark, while he smiled back gratefully in reply, would not allow her
to persuade him that he was less to blame than he asserted, and he was
still lamenting his carelessness when they came up with the rest of the
party, who were already stationed in the butts.

Miss Tarver was beside Lord Ashiel, and Mark stopped a minute to relate
how nearly he had been the cause of an accident, although both David and
Juliet, by mutual consent, guessed what he was going to do, and tried to
dissuade him.

"No need to say anything about it," David mumbled in his ear.

"No, no, don't, please," Juliet murmured in the other.

Yet he would not be tempted, and they walked on together in silence,
leaving him to tell the story.

"I as near as makes no difference peppered David and Miss Byrne just
now," they heard him begin, and then Lord Ashiel's voice broke in in an
angry tone as they passed out of earshot.

David's loader reported afterwards that that young gentleman and Miss
Byrne, when she waited with him in the butt, seemed to find very
little to talk about. And it was a long wait before any birds came up,
on that beat.




CHAPTER VII


It was a few days after this that Gimblet, taking up an evening paper at
the Club, was startled to see a sinister headline of "Murder,"
immediately followed by the name of Ashiel.

"MURDER OF A SCOTCH PEER."
"LORD ASHIEL SHOT DEAD IN HIS OWN HOUSE."
"ESCAPE OF MURDERER."

"They've got him," he muttered between his teeth as he hastily began to
read the paragraph that followed:

"News reaches us, as we go to press, of a dastardly crime, involving the
death of Lord Ashiel, which occurred late last night at his residence in
the Highlands of Scotland. Lord Ashiel was sitting quietly in his library
at Inverashiel Castle, when a shot was fired through the window by
someone in the grounds, which wounded his Lordship so severely that death
took place instantaneously. Although the household was immediately
alarmed and a thorough search made through the garden and grounds
surrounding the castle, the murderer contrived to escape. The police are
continuing their search in the neighbourhood, and it is believed that a
very strong clue to the scoundrel has been discovered. Douglas, Lord
Ashiel, was the seventh Baron. He was born in 1869, educated at Eton and
Oxford, and served for some years in the Diplomatic Service. He was a
widower and childless, and is succeeded in the title by his nephew, Mr.
Mark McConachan."


There was nothing more.

Gimblet strode out of the Club and drove to New Scotland Yard. The
Superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department was in, and
received him gladly. Gimblet held out the paper he had carried off from
the Club and pointed to the news of the tragedy.

"Is all this correct?" he asked.

"Yes, yes, indeed," replied Mr. Beech, the superintendent. "We heard of
it this morning. The Glasgow people have sent their men up, but it will
take them all day to get to the place. Inverashiel is on the West Coast,
and not what one would call easy to get at. They ought to be there about
five o'clock."

"Who has gone?" asked Gimblet.

"Macross has gone himself with one or two others. He has taken a
photographer and a finger-print man, and will get to work as soon as he
possibly can. This is a big business. Lord Ashiel is an important person;
apart from his being a Scotch landowner--he owns 90,000 acres of moorland
there--he is connected with half the great families in England. He has a
cousin in the Cabinet; cousins everywhere, in the Foreign Office, in
Parliament, in trade; he has one who owns a newspaper. He is rich; he is
a sleeping partner in some Newcastle iron works, he is part owner of a
small colliery in Yorkshire. Oh, there's going to be a fine to-do about
this case, you bet your life!"

"I knew him," said Gimblet slowly. "He came to see me a fortnight ago. He
told me he expected an attempt might be made to kill him."

"The deuce he did!" exclaimed Beech. "Did he say who it was he feared?"

"Not exactly; but I gathered he had mixed himself up with some secret
society abroad. He refused to give me any explicit information, or to
appeal to you for protection, as I advised him to do. He told me he had
some document in his possession which his enemies were anxious to obtain
from him, and that if they failed to do so by peaceful methods he thought
it likely they might try to get him out of the way; though he added that
he did not anticipate any open assault, but thought it likely he might
die some death that should have all the appearances of being accidental.
He made me promise to take up the case if this should happen."

"We are always glad of your help, my dear fellow," said Beech.

"He gave me certain instructions, in the event of my being able to
satisfy myself that his death is the work of his Nihilist friends," said
Gimblet, who thought it unnecessary to mention his disconcerting
experience with the veiled lady, "And contrariwise, if I can make sure
that they have no hand in it, it was his wish that I should then leave
the whole thing alone. So I had better see what I can make of it before I
go into this any further with you."

"I can't say I agree with that idea," protested the superintendent.
"However, I know you insist on working on your own lines, and that I have
really no influence with you, in spite of the show you make, humbug that
you are! of consulting my opinion. Well, good luck go with you; and let
me know if you hit on anything that escapes our men."

Gimblet walked back to his flat, his mind full of the tragedy which he
had an uneasy feeling he might, in some way, have averted. How, he hardly
knew. Lord Ashiel could not have lived all his life encircled by a cordon
of police and detectives; and, without such precautions, a man condemned
by Nihilist societies is practically sure to fall a victim to their
excellent organization and disregard for the lives of their own members.

Still Gimblet had liked the dead peer, and could not get the pale
aristocratic face and tired, feverish blue eyes out of his head. Surely
he might have found some way of preventing this catastrophe.

He found a telegram at his flat. It was signed Byrne, and ran:

"Please come immediately to investigate death of Lord Ashiel certain
some mistake."

It had been sent off at four o'clock that day.

"Higgs," called Gimblet to his servant, as he filled up the prepaid reply
form, "I am going North to-night, by the eight o'clock from Euston. Pack
me things for a week; country clothes; and put in plenty of chocolate."

He collected several things he wanted packed, and then retired to his
sitting-room, where he buried himself in an enormous file of typewritten
papers he had borrowed from Scotland Yard, and which related to the
various Nihilists known to be living in England. He had to return them
before he left London, and when he dropped them at the Yard about seven
o'clock, on his way to the station, he learnt that no word had yet come
from the Scotch authorities as to any further developments at
Inverashiel.

A few minutes past eight he was travelling North as fast as the Scotch
express could carry him.

It was midday on the following day when he got off the steamer that had
brought him from Crianan, and landed with his luggage on the wooden pier
which displayed, painted on a rough board, the name of Inverashiel.

One of the deck hands dumped his luggage out on to the side of the loch
and the boat moved on again.

A track led across the moor, and down it Gimblet saw a farm cart
advancing, driven by a man who shouted as he approached:

"The young leddy's comin' doon tae meet ye, sir."

And behind him, on the near skyline, the detective beheld the hurrying
figure of a girl.

Leaving the man with the cart to grapple with his luggage, which was not
of large dimensions, Gimblet walked to meet Juliet. As they drew near,
she stopped and held out her hand.

"Mr. Gimblet?" she asked.

"Yes," he said; "and you are Miss Byrne, are you not?"

He looked at her keenly as he spoke, noticing that her eyes were red and
swollen, and that her whole bearing was eloquent of sorrow and want of
sleep. She lifted a miserable face to him.

"Yes," she said. "I am so glad you have come, but it has seemed a long
while. I suppose you couldn't get here before. Do you know all that has
happened?"

"I know that Lord Ashiel is dead," said the detective. "Hardly more
than that. Will you tell me all there is to tell before we go up to
the castle?"

"I have left the castle, and am staying with Lady Ruth Worsfold, whose
house you can just see through the trees," she said. "Will you come there
first, or shall we go straight to the castle. It is about a mile through
the woods."

"Let us walk straight up," said Gimblet. "You can tell me as we go. I
have, as you say, been a long while getting here, but it is fortunate
that the day is fine. I hope it has not rained during the last
thirty-six hours?"

"I don't know," said the girl. "No; I believe it has been fine. But I
haven't taken much notice what the weather has been like." She was
disappointed and indignant that he should talk in this trivial strain,
when her own heart was nearly bursting, and her every nerve stretched and
tingling. She had pinned all her hopes on the arrival of the famous
detective.

Gimblet heard the change in her tone.

"You think I am talking platitudes about the weather," he said quickly,
"and you think I am unsympathetic for your distress; but, believe me,
what I said is very much to the point. If it has not rained the
murderer's footmarks will be very much more easily seen, and that is very
important."

"You don't know," said Juliet in a voice that trembled ominously. "They
have found plenty of footmarks. The Glasgow detectives said they were
Sir--Sir David Southern's. They found his gun too, not cleaned; and they
say he did it, and they have taken him away, to--to prison." A sob
escaped her, but she controlled herself with a great effort and went on:
"You must prove that he didn't do it. I know he didn't. Anyone who knew
him must know he didn't. Oh you must, you must, find the real murderer!"

Gimblet was silent for a moment before this appeal. It was difficult to
know what to say. He knew Macross well for a cautious, intelligent
officer; if he had arrested Sir David Southern it seemed pretty certain
that there was good evidence against that gentleman. On the other hand
Lord Ashiel had seemed to think it likely that his death might wear an
appearance calculated to mislead. Still Gimblet had a deep-rooted
prejudice against holding out hopes he could not see a good chance of
fulfilling, and he had so often been appealed to by distracted women to
save their friend and "find the real murderer."

"Will you not begin at the beginning?" he said at last. "I know how you
came to be staying at Inverashiel, but I know nothing of what has
happened since your arrival, except the bare fact of Lord Ashiel's death.
Tell me every detail you can think of, but, first, who else was staying
at the castle besides yourself? I suppose they have left now?"

"Yes, they have all gone," said Juliet. "The men went before it all
happened, and the others the next day. There were Lady Ruth Worsfold and
Mrs. Clutsam; they are both cousins of Lord Ashiel's, and he lends them
little houses that belong to him near here, but they were staying at the
castle for a week or two. Then there was Miss Julia Romaninov. She is
half a Russian, and Lord Ashiel's sister, who is away just now, had
invited her. An American girl, Miss Tarver, a great heiress, was there
too. The men were Sir George Hatch and Colonel Spicer, who are cousins of
Lord Ashiel's; and Mr. Mark McConachan and Sir David Southern, who are
his nephews, Mr. McConachan being the son of his dead brother, while Sir
David is his younger sister's child.

"I have been here a fortnight. The time has gone quickly. Every one was
very nice to me; and, though nothing out of the way happened, it was all
new and delightful, and I enjoyed it very much. Lord Ashiel, especially,
was kindness itself; he was never tired of explaining to me the customs
and traditions of the countryside, and he spared no pains to see that I
was amused and entertained. I was with him most of the time, and grew to
know him very well. I thought him a wonderful man: so clever, so widely
read, so tolerant and sympathetic in his opinions. He was terribly
delicate, though; he had continual headaches, and was so easily tired;
but he told me it was a new thing for him to feel ill; up till a year or
so ago he had always had the best of health. Mrs. Clutsam told me she
thought he had been terribly worried over something; she didn't know what
it was; and of course it is not so very long since his wife and child
died. But he did not strike me as being troubled about anything; his eyes
had a sad expression, and sometimes he looked at me in a wondering sort
of way; but I never saw him appear worried, and he was always cheerful
and lively while I was with him."

"Was he not equally so with the rest of the party?" asked Gimblet. "Did
he show his likes and dislikes plainly?"

"I am afraid he did, rather. I think feeling ill and tired made him
irritable, and his temper was very quick. But he was always nice to me."

"Who wasn't he nice too?"

"Well, I don't think he liked Miss Romaninov much, In fact, she seemed to
get on his nerves, and sometimes he was so rude to her that I used to
wonder that she stayed. But she is such a quiet, good-tempered little
thing; she never seems to mind anything, and she was really sorry and
upset when he died. And he didn't much like the other girl, Miss Tarver,
but he made an effort, I think, to bear with her for his nephew's sake.
He said to me how glad he was that the boy would be well provided for."

"Which nephew?" asked Gimblet. "I don't understand. What had Miss Tarver
to do with it?"

"Sir David Southern was engaged to marry her. She has thrown him over
now," said Juliet, and in spite of herself there was a trace of elation
in her voice. "As soon as Sir David was suspected of the murder she broke
off the engagement."

"Ah," said Gimblet, stooping to pick a piece of bracken, and waving it
before him to keep at bay the flies, which were buzzing round them in
clouds. He offered another bit silently to his companion, and she took it
absently, without a word.

"He seemed very fond of Mr. McConachan," she said, "and I think he liked
every one else as well. Yes, I am sure he did, though he did have a
dreadful quarrel with Sir David two days before he was killed; and he was
angry with him once before that."

"Ah," said Gimblet again. "How was that?"

"The first time it was my fault, or partly my fault," Juliet went on. "It
was out shooting, and I couldn't go as fast as the others, so I lagged
behind and nearly got shot by accident, as Mr. McConachan thought we were
in front of him. Sir David was with me, and Lord Ashiel was fearfully
angry with him, and said he'd no business to let me get in a place where
I might have been killed. He was rather cross with him for the next few
days, though I told him it was my fault; and then the other day, when Sir
David annoyed him again, there was a frightful row."

"Was that your fault too?" asked Gimblet with a smile.

"No, it really wasn't. Sir David had a dog, a retriever, to which he was
devoted, but which Lord Ashiel hated. It was not a well-trained dog, I
must admit, and it used to pay very little attention to its master,
except at meal times, when it became very affectionate, not only to him,
but to every one. The truth is that he spoilt it, and never punished it
when it did wrong, or took any trouble to make it behave better. I heard
that before I arrived there was trouble about it, as it did a lot of
damage in the garden, trampling down the flower-beds, and knocking Lord
Ashiel's favourite plants to pieces--he was very fond of gardening--and
the very first day they went out shooting it ran away for miles, and Sir
David after it, which delayed one of the drives half an hour. His uncle
had been very cross about that, they said, and told Sir David he must
keep it on a chain; but the next day it ate a grouse it was supposed to
be retrieving, and Lord Ashiel was furious, and said that if it did
anything more of the kind he'd have it killed.

"However, after that, all went well. The dog was kept tightly chained,
and nothing happened till the other day. We were all out on the moors,
waiting in the butts for the last drive to begin. Everything had gone
badly with the shooting that day; the birds all went the wrong way; there
were hardly enough guns for driving, anyhow; there was a high wind, and
the shooting had been shocking; no one had shot well except Mr.
McConachan, who is such a good shot; every one had been wounding their
birds, and that always annoyed Lord Ashiel. He was in a very bad temper,
and though he was not cross with me, I was rather afraid he might be, so
I went and stood with Sir David. Miss Tarver was watching Sir George
Hatch in the next butt, and then came Colonel Spicer, with Mr. McConachan
and Lord Ashiel right at the end of the line.

"We had been waiting some time, when Sir David whispered to me that the
birds were coming, and crouched down under the wall of the butt. His
loader was kneeling behind him ready to hand him his second gun, with two
cartridges stuck between his fingers to reload the first one. We were all
intent on the grouse, and no one noticed that that wretched dog had
worked his head out of his collar and was roaming about behind us. Just
at that moment a mountain hare came lolloping along the crest of the
hill, and, deceived by the stillness, came to a pause just opposite us
and sat up on its hind legs to brush its whiskers with its paw. Its
toilette didn't last long, however, for by that time the dog had caught
its wind, and with a series of yelps had hurled itself upon it. The hare
was off in a second, and away they went, straight down the line, the dog
making as much noise as a whole pack of hounds as he bounded and leapt
over the thick heather. Sir David started up with an exclamation of
dismay, and I, too, stood up and looked over the top of the butt.
Following the direction of his eyes, I saw clouds of grouse streaming
away to the left, all turning as they came over the hill, and wheeling
away from us towards the north.

"The drive was absolutely spoilt. The hare and its pursuer had by this
time gone the whole length of the butts, and looked like going till
Christmas. Lord Ashiel had come out into the open, and we saw him put his
gun to his shoulder. The dog gave one last leap, and rolled over before
the report reached our ears. It was a quarter of a mile away from us."

Juliet paused; she was out of breath; they had been walking fast and were
within sight of the castle gates. The way led along the side of Loch
Ashiel, and the castle rose in front of them on a tall rocky promontory,
which jutted far into the water.

"Let us rest here a few minutes," said Gimblet. "It is too much to ask
you to talk while we are walking up that hill, and I don't want you to
leave out any details, however unimportant they may appear to you."




CHAPTER VIII


They had reached a place where a wide horseshoe of beach ran down to the
loch. For more than a week there had been no rain to speak of. The season
as a whole had been dry, and the water was very low; tufts of grass
dotted the shore; brambles and young alders were springing up bravely,
determined to make the most of their time. At the back stretched a
meadow, part of which had been cut for hay; the rest of it was so full of
weeds and wild flowers, ragweed, burdock and the red stalks of sorrel,
that it had been left untouched, and filled the foreground with colour.
The grass had gone to seed and turned a rich reddish purple; beneath it
grew wild geraniums whose leaves were already scarlet. Bluebells and
scabious made a haze of mauve, and everywhere the warm, sandy stalks of
the dried grasses shone yellow through the patch.

They sat down at the edge of the beach and leant back against the
overhanging turf. Opposite to them the little town of Crianan clung to
the steep rocks below Ben Ghusy, the houses looking as if they stood
piled one on top of another in a rough pyramid; and the whole surmounted
by the high walls and tower of the Roman Catholic monastery which
dominated the scene, and always seemed to Juliet to wear a look of stern
defiance, as if it were offering a challenge to that other fortress that
frowned back at it. She could imagine the monks in the old days, standing
on its parapet and daring the Lords of Inverashiel to do their worst. Far
away down the loch lay the hills, scarce more deeply grey than the water;
beyond them more distant tops melted into the sky. The grey ripples
lapped gently on jagged shingle, and a persistent housefly buzzed loudly
round their heads; at that hour there were as yet few midges, and it was
very peaceful, very solitary, very desolate.

"I don't know," said Juliet, going on with her story where she had left
off, "which was more angry, Lord Ashiel or Sir David. After the first few
minutes, in which they both said things I am sure they regretted
afterwards, neither of them would speak to the other, and it was a very
uncomfortable evening for every one. The next day was better. Colonel
Spicer and Sir George left by the morning train, both going on to shoot
in other parts of Scotland. Mrs. Clutsam went away too; she had some one
coming to stay with her at her own house near by. Both the young men went
stalking on different parts of the forest, and Lord Ashiel and I, with
the two other girls, spent the morning on the loch trolling for salmon;
but we didn't get a rise.

"In the afternoon I walked up the river with Julia Romaninov; we talked
about our schooldays. She had been at school in Germany, and I in
Switzerland. After a while she got tired and went home, but I went on by
myself, for I had a lot of things to think of, and was glad to be alone.
I came at last to a great pool among the rocks, where the river comes
down in a fall from far above in a cloud of spray and foam. I stood on a
stone at the water's edge and watched the trout rising in the pool. The
river was low and the water very clear. Standing on the rocks above it,
it seemed as if I could see every pebble at the bottom, except where they
were hidden in the ripples which spread away from beneath the fall. The
pool is like the bottom of a well; high rocks rear themselves round it to
a great height; they are veiled in a greenness of fern and moss, and near
the top many trees have found a roothold in the crevices and bend forward
towards each other over the water, as divers poise themselves before
leaping down. Through a narrow opening opposite the fall the river makes
its way onward. As I stood there a stone must have come down from the
heights above. I did not see it, and the noise of the waterfall deadened
any sound of its descent, but suddenly I felt a heavy blow between the
shoulders, and I must have tumbled forward into the pool below.

"The next thing I remember was looking up into the anxious friendly face
of Andrew Campbell, one of the ghillies at Inverashiel. It seemed to be
hanging above me in the sky, which was the only other thing I could see,
and I wondered vaguely why I saw it upside down. My head was aching
cruelly and I couldn't imagine what was the matter, though I was too weak
and faint to care. To cut my adventure short, Andrew had come to a pool
lower down the river just as I floated into it on top of the current; he
had fished me out, and was now restoring me to life again. I was got back
to the house, how I hardly know, put to bed, and actually wept over by
Lord Ashiel. By the evening I had so far recovered that I was able to
come down to dinner, though I should not have done so if it had not been
for the anxiety of my host, as my head still felt as if it was going to
split. I received many congratulations on my escape, and Lord Ashiel,
when he spoke of it, was so much moved that every one was quite
embarrassed, and I myself was touched beyond expression at the affection
he did not attempt to conceal. He was very silent after that, but in
spite of him dinner that night was a merry meal. Every one was in the
best of spirits, or else assumed them for the time being. We all joked
and laughed over my adventure, and Mr. McConachan said I bore a charmed
life, since I had escaped being killed by his careless shot, and now the
river refused to drown me. It was not till the servants had left the
room, and we were preparing to do the same, that Lord Ashiel spoke again.

"Lady Ruth had got up, and was moving towards the door, and the other
girls and I were following her, when he called her back. 'Will you wait a
minute, Ruth,' he said. 'I have something to tell you and my young
friends here.' He smiled round at all of us, including Sir David, to whom
he hadn't spoken since the affair of the dog. 'I have some good news
which I want you to share with me.' He took me by the hand and drew me
forward. 'I want,' said he, 'to introduce you all to a young lady whom
you do not know. This is Juliet McConachan, my dear and only daughter.'

"I was not really so surprised as he expected. His behaviour to me had
made me suspicious, and during the last few days especially I had allowed
myself to nourish a hope that we were related. But I was glad. I can't
tell you how glad and thankful. Every one else was tremendously
surprised. They all clustered round us with questions and exclamations,
but Lord Ashiel would say no more just then, and only smiled and beamed,
and nodded mysteriously. 'I am not going to answer any questions till I
have had a talk with Juliet,' he said. 'This is as much news to her as it
is to any of you, and it is only fair that she should be the first to
hear the story. For I won't deny that there is a story. Come to me
presently, my child,' he went on, addressing himself to me. 'Come to the
library in half an hour's time. You will find me there, and I will tell
you all about it.'

"I went to the drawing-room, my aching head almost forgotten. I was, of
course, intensely excited; indeed I think I scarcely took in any of the
kind things that Lady Ruth and the others said to me that evening; at all
events I have hardly any idea what they were, and none at all as to what
I answered. My one overmastering desire was to be alone; to have time to
think; to realize all that the news meant to me; and after a quarter of
an hour had passed I made some excuse, and left the room. The nearest way
to my bedroom was by a back stair, and to reach it I had to pass through
a passage leading to the gun-room. The door of that room was ajar, and as
I went by Sir David Southern came out.

"'What have you been doing in there at this time of night?' I asked; and
oh, Mr. Gimblet, I was so foolish as to repeat this to the Glasgow
detective when he questioned me. To think that my careless words have led
them to believe Sir David capable of such a crime! But I had no idea of
the meaning they would attach to it. You will understand presently how it
was. 'I went to clean my rifle,' he answered, shutting the door behind
him. 'I always see to that myself. And where are you off to so fast,
Cousin Juliet? That is what you are to me, it appears.' And so we
talked: about me, and our newly discovered relationship. I need not
repeat all that, need I? And, besides, I do not remember everything we
said," added Juliet, flushing.

"After a little while, though, I told him how badly my head ached, and he
was very sympathetic about it. 'You ought not to have come down to
dinner,' he said, 'the dining-room gets so hot and stuffy; it is a low
room, and Uncle Douglas never will have the window open, even on a lovely
night like this.' There is a door at the foot of the stairs, opposite the
gun-room, and as he spoke he drew back the bolt. 'Come out into the
garden for a few minutes,' he said, holding the door open for me to pass,
'a little fresh air will do you more good than anything.'

"The night was warm, I suppose, for Scotland, but cool enough to seem
wonderfully fresh and invigorating after the enclosed air within the
house. It was very dark, and the sky was overcast, though just above us a
star or two was shining, very large and clear. Otherwise I could hardly
distinguish anything at all, except the line, about fifty yards away,
where the lawn came to an end, and the ground dipped abruptly down
towards the loch, so that the level edge of the grass showed up against
the less opaque darkness of the sky, like a black velvet border to a
piece of black silk.

"We stood there a little while, till I remembered I must go to the
library. My head was already much better when I turned back into the
house; Sir David didn't follow me; he seemed to be staring through the
gloom in front of him. 'I am going in,' I said. 'What are you looking
at?' 'I thought I saw something move over there on the skyline,' he
replied; 'do you see anything?' I looked, but could make out nothing.
'Well,' he said, 'if you are going in, I think I'll just go over and see
if there's anyone about; you might leave the door open, will you?'

"And so I left him, and made my way to the library. As I passed through
the billiard-room, Mr. McConachan, who was knocking the balls about,
asked me if I had seen his cousin, and I told him Sir David was outside
on the lawn by the gun-room door.

"Lord Ashiel--my father--was waiting for me, and he came to meet me and
kissed me tenderly. We were both very much agitated: I was still feeling
the effects of my escape from drowning, and he, poor dear, was weak and
ill. In short, neither of us was in a fit state to meet the situation
calmly; and, if my tears flowed, they were not the only ones that were
shed. For a few moments we cried like babies, in each other's arms, and
then I pulled myself together, for I knew how bad it was for his health
to get into this nervous state. Mr. Gimblet, I needn't tell you all the
conversation that followed between us. He told me that you know the whole
story, that you are the one person in the world in whom he had confided;
so it is unnecessary for me to repeat what he said of his marriage to my
mother, of her death, and of his resolve never willingly to look upon me,
the baby who had taken her from him. He told me also of the years that
had intervened between that day when he had shuffled off his
responsibilities on to Mrs. Meredith, and the day, not long ago, when he
at last decided to hunt out his daughter.

"He told me of his fears that she should prove to be none other than
Julia Romaninov, and of how, in desperation, he had applied to you for
help, and of how you had discovered my existence.

"He said he had never really doubted from the moment he first set eyes on
me that I was Juliana's child. But he dared not hint such a thing to me
till he was certain, and anxious though he was to see a likeness between
me and her, or himself, he had not been able to tell himself, truthfully,
that he could really see one, until that day. It was when I was brought
home that afternoon, so white and faint, so changed by my pallor from
what he chose to describe as my usual gay brilliance, that the
resemblance suddenly showed itself. He hardly knew that it was I; it
might have been Juliana that they were carrying. He said there could be
no doubt that I was her daughter; that he for one, required no further
proof; though we should probably get it now it was no longer wanted. Sir
Arthur Byrne might be able to suggest some way of tracing things. Not
that it mattered, for he could not in any case leave me his title, and,
on the other hand, he had full control of his money, which would be mine
before very long.

"I cried out at that, that he must not say so; that it was not money I
wanted, but a father, affection, friendship. He repeated that all the
same I should have it in course of time. That it was all settled already.
Even before he was certain that I was his own child, he liked me well
enough to make up his mind about that. He asked me if I remembered that
he had stayed at home the other day while the rest of us were on the
hill? He said he had made his will that day, and I was the principal
legatee, though he had not alluded to me in it by my own name. But he
worded it carefully, so that that should make no difference; and though
he believed it was quite clear as it was, he would make it over again,
as soon as he could obtain legal proof of my birth.

"I supposed I murmured some sort of thanks for his care of my future, and
he went on again, saying that he only wished the title could come to me
too, when he died; but that it would go to Mark, since the little boy his
second wife had given him was dead, and I was a girl.

"He said he was afraid that Mark might be a little disappointed, for, if
he hadn't found me, Mark and David would have shared his fortune between
them; but they would soon get over it, for they were good lads,
especially Mark; and David would have plenty of money through this very
satisfactory marriage of his. I couldn't help interrupting that money
wasn't everything. I am telling you all these trivial things, Mr.
Gimblet, because you said I was to try and remember everything, however
unimportant."

"Yes," said Gimblet, "that is what I want. Pray go on."

"He only smiled when I said that," Juliet resumed, "and said that
different opinions were held on that subject by different people. Then he
went on talking about my future life, and said again how glad he would
always be that he had consulted you, and how grateful he was for what you
had done for him, and that if any trouble cropped up, I was to be sure
and send for you at once. He looked to you to protect my interests, and,
if necessary, to avenge his death.

"I couldn't think what he meant, and said so; but he only smiled again
and said he hoped there would be no need for it. He said he had some
papers he must send to you to take care of, some papers that were rather
dangerous to their owner, he was afraid, though at the same time they
were a safeguard to him. But he shouldn't like me to have anything to do
with them, or the boys either, and he must get them away from Inverashiel
as soon as he could. In the meantime they were in a safe place where no
one would find them, and he would write to you that night and tell you
how to look for them, just on the chance that something should happen
before he could send them off. His will was with them, too, for the
present, but he would send that up to Findlay & Ince. He wouldn't tell me
where the papers were; he didn't want me to have anything to do with
these tiresome things.

"He said all this with hesitation; with long pauses between the
sentences. It seemed to me that he would have liked to tell me more, and
I didn't know what to say. Indeed, he seemed to be talking rather to
himself than to me, and I am not sure if he heard me when I said that if
he had any anxiety I should like to share it, if it were possible.
Presently he seemed to take a sudden resolution. He said that there was
no reason, at all events, why he should not explain to me how to find the
papers. He had written directions in cipher once before and given you the
key, but you had lost it, and might do so again. It would be just as well
that I should know about it too, in any case. He had had to think out a
new method, and at present it was known to no one except himself, which
was perhaps not very wise. However, he would send it to you that night,
and would explain it to me at once. But first I must promise him, very
faithfully, never to mention it to anyone, whatever happened, not to let
anyone, except you, ever guess that there was such a thing in existence.

"I promised solemnly; still he hardly seemed satisfied, and looked at me
very searchingly, while he said he wondered if I were old enough to
understand the importance of this, and if I realized that I was promising
not to tell my nearest or dearest; not my adopted father, Sir Arthur
Byrne, nor my lover, if I had one. That it was a matter of life and
death, that his life was in danger then, and that I would inherit the
risk unless I did as he said.

"Rather indignant, though completely mystified, I promised again. He
seemed satisfied, and said he would write the whole thing down for me. He
moved from the hearth, where we had been sitting, to the writing-table,
which stands in the middle of the room, in front of the window. He sat
down at it, and I stood a little behind him, looking on as he took a
sheet of notepaper and turned over the pens in the tray in search of a
pencil. The room was very hot; the tufts of peat smouldering in the
grate, and the two lamps, combined with the fumes of Lord Ashiel's cigar
to render the atmosphere oppressive to a person with a violent headache.
I glanced longingly towards the window. It was not entirely hidden by the
heavy curtains which were drawn across it, for they did not quite meet in
the middle, and I could see perfectly well that the window was shut. For
a moment I hesitated, torn between the desire for fresh air and the fear
that my father might feel too cold. He was terribly chilly. I decided to
ask him, and turned to him again as he took up the pencil and examined
the point critically.

"'Would you mind,' I was beginning; but at that instant a loud report
sounded just outside the window. Lord Ashiel fell forward on to the table
with a low cry, his hand clasped to his ribs. 'Oh, what is it?' I cried,
bending over him; 'you are hurt; you are shot! Oh, what shall I do!' He
was making a great effort to speak, I could see that plainly enough; but
no words would come, and he seemed to be choking. At last he managed to
get out a few words. 'Gimblet,' he gasped, 'the clock--eleven--steps--'
and then with a groan his hand dropped from his side, his head rolled
back upon the table, and a silence followed, more horrible to me than
anything that had gone before.

"I saw now that his shirt was already soaked with blood; and, as in
terror I called again upon his name, the dreadful truth was borne in upon
me, and I knew that he was dead."

Juliet's voice failed her; she spoke the last few words in a quavering
whisper, and if Gimblet had looked at her at that moment he would have
beheld a countenance drawn and distorted by horror.

But he was very much occupied, and did not look up. With a notebook open
on his knee, he was busily writing down what she had said.

"You are sure of the words?" he asked, as his pencil sped across the
page. "'Gimblet--the clock--eleven--step,' is that it?"

His matter-of-fact voice soothed and reassured her. This little
grey-haired man, sitting at her side, was somehow a very comfortable
companion to one whose nerves were badly overwrought. Juliet pulled
herself together.

"Steps," she corrected, and her voice sounded almost natural again.
"Not step."

"Do you suppose," asked the detective, "that he meant the English word,
steps, or the Russian, steppes?"

"I don't know," said Juliet, surprised. "I never thought of it. But, Mr.
Gimblet, I have not told anyone but you that he spoke after he was hit. I
thought perhaps that he might have wished those last words of his to be
kept private."

"Quite right," said Gimblet approvingly. "He did right to trust your
discretion. And now, please, go on," he added, putting down his pencil;
"what happened next?"

And Juliet answered him in a tone as calm as his own:

"I think I must have fainted."




CHAPTER IX


"The next thing I remember, was finding myself lying on the floor, and,
when I tried to get up, seeing everything in the room swinging about me
like the swinging boats at a fair. I don't know how long I had been
unconscious, but when, at last, I managed to stand up, and clinging,
faint and giddy, to the back of a chair, looked again at the motionless
figure that sprawled across the writing-table, there was a great pool of
blood on the polished oak of the floor beneath it, which grew slowly
broader, as drop after drop dripped down to swell it. With a great effort
I conquered my faintness, and staggered out of the room and down the
long passage.

"In the billiard-room Mr. McConachan was still practising his game. He
must have been making a break, for I remember hearing him speak, as I
opened the door. 'Twenty-seven,' he said aloud. My voice wouldn't come,
and I stood holding on to the doorpost, while he, with his back to me,
went on potting the red.

"'That you, Miss Byrne?' he said, without looking round. Then, as I
didn't answer, he glanced up and saw by my face, I suppose, that
something was very wrong. He came quickly to me, his cue in his hand.
'What's the matter?' he said. 'Do you feel ill?' 'Lord Ashiel is dead,' I
said; 'in the library. Some one shot him. Didn't you hear?' 'Dead?' he
cried; 'Uncle Douglas shot! Do you know what you're saying! I heard a
shot, it is true, five minutes ago, but surely that was the keeper
shooting an owl or something.'

"I shook my head. 'He is dead,' I repeated dully. He looked at me, still
incredulous, and then darted forward and caught me by the arm. 'Here, sit
down,' he said, and half pushed, half led me to a chair. I saw him run to
the bell and tug violently at the rope. Then I believe I fainted again.

"I think that is all there is to tell you, Mr. Gimblet. You know already
that the murderer got clear away, and the next morning footmarks were
found outside the window which proved to have been made by Sir David
Southern. I was so idiotic, when I was questioned, as to mention having
spoken to him outside the gun-room door, and to repeat, incidentally,
that he had said he had been cleaning his rifle. I never dreamt that
anyone could be so mad as to suspect him. But they looked at the rifle,
and found that it was dirty, so that it must have been discharged again
since I saw him. And it appears he did not join in the search for the
murderer, and was not seen until it was all over. And so they arrested
him and took him away. No amount of evidence could ever make me believe
for a moment that he had a hand in this dreadful thing, but oh, Mr.
Gimblet, I see only too well how black it looks against him. What shall I
do if you, too, now that I have told you everything, think he did it? You
don't, do you?"

"My dear young lady," said the detective. "I really can't give you an
opinion at present. There are a score of points I must investigate, a
dozen other people besides yourself whom I must question, before I can
form any kind of conclusion. I hope that Sir David Southern may prove to
be a much wronged man. But beyond that I can't go, just at present; and I
shouldn't build too much on my help if I were you. I'm not infallible;
far from it. And I certainly can't prove him innocent if he is guilty."

He stood up, shaking the sand out of his clothes.

"Let us go on, up to the castle," he said.

The gates were near at hand; in silence they breasted the steep incline
of the drive, which wound and zigzagged up between high banks covered
with rhododendron and bracken, and grown over with trees. After a quarter
of a mile these gave place to an abrupt, grass covered slope, whose top
had been smoothed and levelled by the hand of man, and from which on the
far side rose the castle of Inverashiel, its stout and ancient framework
disguised and masked by the modern addition to the building which faced
the approach; a mass of gabled and turreted stonework in the worst style
of nineteenth century architecture which in Scotland often took on a
shape and semblance even more fantastically repulsive than it assumed in
the south. The great tower that formed the principal remaining portion of
the old building could just be discerned over the top of the flaring
façade, but the nature of the site was such that most of the ancient
fortress was invisible from that part of the grounds. Juliet stopped at
the turn of the road.

"I will leave you here," she said, "you will not want me, I suppose?
After you have finished, will you come to Lady Ruth Worsfold's house, and
tell me what you think? It is just past the station turning; you will
easily find your way, though the house is hidden by the trees. Your
luggage will be there already, as Lady Ruth is going to put you up."

Mr. Mark McConachan, or rather Lord Ashiel, as he had now become, was in
the act of ending a solitary meal, when Gimblet was announced. He went
to meet the detective, forcing to his trouble-lined face a smile of
welcome that lit up the large melancholy eyes with an expression few
people could resist.

"I thought it was another of those newspaper fellows, but, thank
goodness, I believe they're all gone now," he said. "I am exceedingly
glad to see you, Mr. Gimblet. I should myself have asked you to come to
our aid, but I found that Miss Byrne had been before me. I suppose you
have seen her?"

"Yes," said Gimblet. "She met me at the station. I'm afraid I'm rather
late on the scene. I hear that the Glasgow police have come and gone,
taking with them the author of the crime."

"It is a dreadful business altogether," returned young Ashiel. "I don't
know which part of it is the worst. There's my uncle dead, shot down like
a rat by some cold-blooded scoundrel; and now my cousin David, poor chap,
in jail, and under charge of murder. It seems impossible to believe it of
him, and yet, what is one to believe? One can only suppose that he must
have been off his head if he did it. But have you had lunch, Mr. Gimblet?
Sit down and have something to eat first of all; you can ask me any
questions you wish while you are eating."

And he insisted on Gimblet's doing as he suggested.

"The household is naturally a bit disorganized," he said when the
servants had left the room and the detective was busy with some cold
grouse. "I had a cold lunch myself to save trouble; would you rather
have something hot? I expect that a chop or something could be produced,
if you are cold after your journey."

Gimblet assured him that he could like nothing better than what he
already had.

"You have had Macross up here, haven't you?" he asked. "It is really
disappointing to find the whole thing over before I arrive. I am afraid
there is nothing left for me to do."

Mark looked at him quickly. Was it possible he accepted Macross's verdict
without inquiring further himself?

"We are hoping you will undo what has been done," he said. "I look to you
to get my cousin out of prison. Surely there must be some other
explanation than that he did it. I simply won't believe it."

"If there is any other explanation," said Gimblet, "I will try and
find it; but the affair looks bad against Sir David Southern from what
I can hear."

"Why should he have shot through the window?" said Ashiel. "They were
both in the same house. Why should my cousin go into the garden, when
he had nothing to do but to open the library door and shoot, if he
wanted to?"

"Oh," said Gimblet, "ordinary caution would suggest the garden. He did
not know perhaps, whether his uncle would be alone; and as a matter of
fact, he was not, was he?"

"No, Miss Byrne was with him. By Jove," said Mark, bending forward to
light a cigarette, "I shall never forget the fright it gave me when I
saw her face. She looked as if--oh, she looked perfectly ghastly! I was
in the billiard-room when she came in, as white as a sheet, and stood
there without speaking for a minute, while I imagined every sort of
catastrophe except the real one. And all the time I kept thinking it
would turn out to be nothing really, as likely as not; women will look
hideously frightened and upset if they cut their finger, or see a rat,
or think they hear burglars. One never knows. And then at last she got
out a few words, 'Lord Ashiel has been shot,' or something of the sort,
and fainted."

"What did you do?" asked Gimblet.

"Well, I had to see to her, you know. I couldn't very well leave her in
that state, could I? I hung on to the bell for all I was worth, and the
butler and footmen came running. I told them to look after the young lady
and to call her maid, and then I ran off to the library, followed by old
Blanston, the butler. You know what we found there. My poor old uncle,
dead as a door nail; a hole in the window where the bullet came in, and
the floor around him all covered with blood. Ugh!" Mark shuddered, "it
was horrid. We only stayed to make sure he was dead, and then we left him
as we had found him and rushed back to rouse the rest of the household,
and to start a chase after the murderer. Of course the first person I
looked for was David Southern, but he wasn't to be found, so I and three
menservants ran out at once with sticks and lanterns, and hunted all over
the grounds without seeing or hearing anything or anyone. The hall boy
had been sent down to fetch up the stablemen and chauffeur, and to rout
out some of the gardeners and anyone else he could find, so that we were
a decently large party, and I don't think there was an inch of ground we
didn't go over, of all that lies within the policies. The murderer,
however, had plenty of time to get right away, and as it was hopeless to
scour the whole country side in that darkness--for it was as black as
your hat--I decided, after an hour of groping about in the shrubberies,
that we must leave off and wait for daylight."

"What time was it when you abandoned the hunt?" asked Gimblet.

"It was past midnight. I didn't see that any good could be done by
sitting up all night. On the contrary, I thought it important that we
should get some sleep while we could, so as to be fresher for the chase
when daylight came. At this time of the year it gets light fairly early,
so I sent every one to bed, except two of the ghillies, whom I told to
row across the loch to Crianan and fetch the doctor and police, which I
suppose I ought to have thought of before. Then I went to bed myself."

"And when did Sir David Southern turn up?" asked Gimblet.

"Oh, he appeared soon after we started to beat the policies. I hadn't
time then to ask him where he'd been, and he was as keen on catching
the murderer as anyone. Of course it never occurred to me to
cross-question him."

"Naturally. Please go on with your narrative."

"Well, we slept, to speak for myself, for three or four hours, and then
James and Andrew came back with the people I had sent for. And now, Mr.
Gimblet, I come to a strange thing, a thing I've been careful not to
mention to anyone but you, though I'm afraid it's bound to come out at
the trial. When Blanston and I went out of the library, we locked the
door behind us, but when I opened it again, to let in the doctor and the
police, my uncle's body had been moved."

"Moved? How?" Gimblet repeated after him.

"Oh, not far, but it had been touched by some one, I am ready to swear,
though I said nothing about it at the time. When we first found him, he
was lying forward on the table with one arm under his head and the other
hanging beside him. When I went in for the second time he was sitting
sideways in his chair with his head and arm in quite a different place.
Instead of being in the middle, on the blotting-pad, they were further to
the right, on the bare polished wood."

Gimblet looked at him keenly.

"You are perfectly certain of this?" he said.

"Absolutely. Besides, you can ask Miss Byrne and Blanston. They both saw
him as he was at first. And the police and Dr. Duncan can tell you what
his position was when they went into the room. I said nothing about it
to any of them, because I thought at once that it must be David who had
been there."

"Why did you think that?"

"Because he knew where the key was. I took it out of my pocket when we
were alone in the smoking-room before going up to bed, and asked him what
I should do with it.

"'Oh, put it in a drawer,' he said, pointing to the writing-table, and I
put it there, as he suggested. Of course I see now that some one else may
have found the key in that drawer, but at first it did look as if David
must, for some reason, have taken it, and been in the library, after I'd
gone to bed."

"It seems very unlikely that anyone else would have hit on the place
where you had put it," said Gimblet reflectively. "And if they had
done so, would they have recognized the key? Is the library key
peculiar in any way?"

"It is rather an uncommon pattern," said Mark. "It is very old and
strong. I think anyone who knew the key would have recognized it
all right."

"It is hardly likely that anyone would have found it if they had had to
search all through the house for it in the middle of the night,"
commented Gimblet. "Is there no other way of getting into the library?"

"No, there is only one door."

"How about the window? It was broken; could not anyone have put in a
hand, or raised the sash?"

"I don't think anyone could have got in. It isn't a sash window. There
are stone mullions and small leaded casements in the old part of the
castle where the library is, and I doubt if anyone larger than a child
could squeeze through; in fact, a child couldn't; there are iron bars
down the middle, which make it too narrow."

"H'm," murmured Gimblet. "I should like to have a look at them. And what
was the doctor's report?"

"He said that the injuries to the heart were such that death must have
been instantaneous, or practically so."

"Did anything else come out?"

"Nothing, except the evidence against poor old David, I'm sorry to say."

"You haven't told me that yet," said Gimblet. "Go on from when the police
arrived on the scene."

"As soon as it was daylight we started off again on our search. But right
at the beginning of it, they came upon the footsteps."

"Ah, where were they?"

"The flower-bed outside the library window showed them plainly; the
ground beyond that was mossy, and there were no other marks. We divided
into two parties, one going west down the side of the loch, and the other
north and east over the hills. Till ten o'clock or later we beat the
country, searching behind every rock, and going through the woods and
bracken in a close line. But we saw no sign of a stranger, and came back
at last, dead beat, for food and a rest. When we got back we found that
the policeman left in charge had been nosing about, and whiling away his
time by collecting the boots of every one in the house and fitting them
to the footprints on the flower-bed. As bad luck would have it, David's
shooting-boots exactly fitted the marks."

"His shooting-boots?" said Gimblet. "He wouldn't be wearing
shooting-boots after dinner."

"That's what he said himself, and there seems no imaginable reason why he
should have worn them, unless--" Mark hesitated for a moment, and then
went on in a tone perhaps rather too positive to carry complete
conviction to a critical ear. "Of course not. He can't have put them on
after dinner. The idea is ludicrous. He must have made those footmarks
earlier in the day."

"Is that what he himself says?" asked the detective. He had finished
eating, and was leaning back in his chair with that air of far-off
contemplation which those best acquainted with him knew was
habitually his expression when his attention and interest were more
than usually roused.

"No," admitted Mark regretfully. "He doesn't. He sticks to it that he'd
never been near the flower-bed, with boots, or without them; it's my
belief his memory has been affected by the shock of all this. And he
would insist on talking to the police, though they warned him that
what he said might be used against him. I did all I could to stop him,
but it was no good. It really looked as if he was doing his best to
incriminate himself."

"How was that? What else did he say?"

"You see," said Mark, "when the Crianan man had got hold of the boots
that matched the footprints, he was no end excited by his success.
Pleased to death with himself, he was. And he was as keen as mustard on
following up his rotten clue. The next thing he did was to want a look at
David's guns. Of course we didn't make any objection to that, though if
I'd known--well, it's no earthly thinking of that now. So off we all
marched in procession to the gun-room, and it didn't take long to see
that the only one of the whole lot there that hadn't been cleaned since
it was last fired was the Mannlicher David had shot his stag with the day
before. The silly ass of a constable took it up and squinted through it
as solemn as a judge, and then he just handed it to my cousin, and 'What
have you to say to this, Sir David?' says he. Infernal cheek! 'I shot it
off yesterday, and haven't had time to clean it since,' said David, and
I, for one, could have sworn he was speaking the truth. Why not, indeed?
There was nothing improbable about it. But the dickens of the thing was
that while we were all out of the house, and he had the place to himself,
the policeman had routed out poor Miss Byrne and badgered her for an
account of all that had happened the evening before; and she, without a
thought of doing harm to any of us--I'm convinced she's as sorry for it
now as I am myself--had mentioned incidentally that David had told her,
when she saw him half an hour before the murder, that he'd just been
cleaning his rifle. She'd told me so, too, as far as that goes, when she
passed through the billiard-room on her way to the library. I happened to
ask her if she knew what he was up to."

"Decidedly awkward for Sir David," said Gimblet meditatively, "but
after all, some one else might have fired off the rifle after he had
cleaned it."

Mark shook his head gloomily.

"There are difficulties about that," he said. "It happens that David is
very fussy about his guns, always cleans them himself, you know, and
won't let another soul touch 'em. And though he keeps them in the gunroom
like the rest of us, he's got his own particular glass-fronted cupboard
which he keeps the key of himself. My uncle and I share one between us,
and generally leave the key in the lock, so that the keeper can get at
the guns, which we never bother to clean ourselves. Not so David. Ever
since we were boys he's had his own private cupboard, and no one but
himself has ever been allowed to open it. We always spent our holidays
here, and my uncle let us behave as if we were at our own house. David
took out the key for the sergeant to use, and when he was asked if anyone
else could have got at the rifle, he replied that it was impossible, as
the key had been in his pocket the whole time, except for an hour or two
while he was asleep, when it had lain on the table by his bedside."

"Did he deny having told Miss Byrne he had cleaned the rifle?"
asked Gimblet.

"Yes; he said he hadn't told her so. It was all very unpleasant, and the
police sergeant was as suspicious as you like, by this time. 'What were
you doing when the alarm was given?' he asked David. 'I was out in the
grounds,' said David, and that was rather a facer for the rest of us, I
must confess. He went on to say that he had fancied he saw some one
hanging about at the edge of the lawn--which is the opposite side of the
house from the library--and gone out to make sure, but he had found no
one, though he hunted about for nearly an hour, till he saw lights
approaching and fell in with our party of searchers. He said that it was
then he first heard what had happened."

Gimblet nodded his head thoughtfully.

"Miss Byrne said she saw him start off to look for some one," he
remarked.

"Yes," said Mark eagerly, "there's no doubt he saw a man lurking in the
darkness. And it was dark too," he added, "never saw such a black night
in my life; I must say it beats me how he could have seen anyone. But his
eyes were always rather more useful than mine," he concluded hastily.

"The police, however, seem to have thought it improbable," said Gimblet,
"since they arrested your cousin for the murder."

"Stupid brutes!" said Mark viciously. "No, they would have it it was
impossible he should have seen anyone. And what clinched it was the
unlucky fact that David and my uncle had had a violent row the day
before. My uncle shot David's dog; I must say I think it was uncalled
for, and poor David was absurdly fond of the beast. He felt very savage
about it, and all the ghillies heard what he said to Uncle Douglas."

"What did he say?"

"Oh, a lot of rot. He lost his temper. The idiotic thing he said was,
that he'd a good mind to shoot _him_ and see how he liked it. Pure
temper, you know. I don't believe David would hurt a hair of his head."

"Well, it was decidedly an indiscreet remark."

"It was imbecile. And of course the police heard all about it from the
servants and keepers, and it fitted in only too well with all the rest
about the footmarks and his absence from the house at the time, and the
rifle and everything. By the by, the bullet was a soft-nosed one which
fitted David's rifle; but for that matter it fitted mine--which is a .355
Mannlicher like his--or a dozen others on the loch side. It's a very
common weapon on a Scotch forest. But taking one thing with another there
was a good deal of evidence against him, so they made up their minds he
had done it; and Macross, when he arrived from Glasgow with his
myrmidons, agreed with the local idiots, and took him off. I'm certain
there must be a mistake somewhere, but so far it seems jolly hard to hit
on it. I hope you'll put your finger on the spot."

"I hope so," said Gimblet, but his voice was full of doubt. "It's hard to
see how anyone else could have used his rifle after he cleaned it, since
he admits that he locked it up and kept the key on him. Yes," he murmured
to himself, "the rifle speaks very eloquently. What other interpretation
can be put on these facts? I'm sure you must see that yourself," he went
on, glancing up at Mark, who was feeling in his pocket for another
cigarette. "Sir David told Miss Byrne he had cleaned his rifle; he told
the police he then locked it up and that the key had been in his
possession ever since. But the rifle was found to have been fired again
since he had cleaned it. His only explanation was to contradict what he
had previously said to Miss Byrne. Do those facts appear to you to leave
any possible loophole of doubt as to his guilt?"

Mark struck a match and lighted his cigarette before he answered. When
at length he did so his reluctance was very plain, and his voice full
of regret.

"Poor old chap," he said. "I'm afraid he must have done it in some fit of
madness. As you say, there is no other imaginable alternative."

Gimblet nodded philosophically.

"Is there anything else?" he asked.

Mark hesitated.

"There's a letter which arrived for Uncle Douglas this morning," he said,
"which you may think worth looking at. I daresay it's of no importance,
but it struck me as rather odd."

He took a letter out of his pocket and handed it to the detective, who
opened it and read as follows:

"Si Milord ne rend pas ce qu'il ne doit pas garder, le coup de foudre lui
tombera sur la tête."

There was no signature, nor any date.

Gimblet turned the sheet over thoughtfully. The message was typewritten
on a piece of thin foreign paper; the postmark on the envelope was Paris,
and the stamps French. He folded it again and replaced it in its cover.

"It seems the usual threatening anonymous communication," he observed.
"Have you any idea who it's from?"

Mark shook his head.

"None," he confessed. "It looks, though, as if my uncle had in his
possession something belonging to the writer, doesn't it? Don't you
think it might have something to do with the murder?"

"I don't see why the murderer should send a threatening letter after the
deed was done," said the detective. "Still less could he have posted it
in Paris on the very day the crime was committed."

"No, that's true enough," Mark admitted reluctantly.

"Has any suspicious looking person been seen about this place, this
summer? Any foreigner, for instance?" asked the detective.

"No; no," Mark replied. "I should have heard of it for certain if there
had been. It would have been an event, down here."

Gimblet dropped the subject.

"If I may," he said. "I will keep this. It may lead to something,"
he added, tucking the letter away in an inside pocket. "That's all,
I suppose?"

Mark was silent for a minute. He seemed to be thinking.

"That's all I know about the murder," he said at last, "but there are
plenty of complications apart from that. I suppose Miss Byrne told you
that my uncle electrified us all by saying she was his daughter, only an
hour or so before he died?"

Gimblet nodded. "Yes," he said, "she told me."

"It makes it very awkward for me," said Mark. "I want to do the right
thing, but I'm hanged if I know what I ought to do. You see, my uncle
used to say that he'd left his property between me and David; he never
made any secret of it, and as a matter of fact I've had a communication
from his London lawyers, telling me they have a very old will, made when
I was a small boy, long before the birth of his son, and that everything
is left to me. There were reasons why he may have thought David would be
provided for--he was engaged to marry a very rich American, but she
dropped him yesterday like a red-hot coal as soon as it began to look as
if he'd be suspected. She's gone now, I'm glad to say. As a matter of
fact, if David can only be cleared of this horrible charge, I shall
insist on dividing my inheritance with him. That is, if I can't get Miss
Byrne to take it, or Miss McConachan, as I ought to call her now."

"Lord Ashiel could leave his money where he liked, couldn't he?"
Gimblet inquired.

"Yes, he could, but he would naturally have left it to his daughter, if
she really was his daughter. In fact, Miss McConachan says he told her he
had done so, but I haven't come across the will so far, though I had a
good hunt through his papers this morning; Blanston and the housekeeper,
who say they witnessed some document which may have been a will, have no
idea where it is. Of course, my uncle may have intended to say that he
was going to make one, and Miss McConachan may have misunderstood him,
but she seems to think he had some secret hiding-place of his own, and I
hope to goodness you'll be able to hit on it, if he had. I can't stand
the idea of profiting by a lost will, and I'd far rather simply hand over
the money than bother to look for this missing paper."

"Oh, I daresay it will turn up," said Gimblet. "You haven't had much time
to find it yet."

"My uncle was a very methodical man. Everything is in its place. You wait
till you see his papers! If he made a will he must have hidden it
somewhere where we shall never dream of looking for it. It's just waste
of time hunting about, and I shall have another try at persuading my new
cousin to let me make over everything to her."

"It is not every young man in your position who would part so readily
with a large fortune," observed Gimblet.

But Mark awkwardly deprecated his approving words.

"Oh," he said, "I'm sure any decent chap would do the same in my place."




CHAPTER X


"And now," said Gimblet, "may I visit the scene of the crime?"

Mark took him first to his uncle's bedroom; a room austere in its
simplicity, with bare white-washed walls and uncarpeted floor. No one
could have hidden a sheet of paper in that room, thought the detective,
as he gazed round it, after he had looked, with a feeling akin to
guilt, on the features of the dead peer. He had not known how to
protect this man from the dreadful fate that had struck him down from a
direction so utterly unexpected, and he held himself, in a way,
responsible for his death.

Then young Ashiel led him away, down a wide corridor into the
billiard-room, and so into another passage, at the end of which a door of
stout and time-darkened oak gave access to the library. It creaked
noisily on its hinges, as he pushed it open and ushered Gimblet in. They
stepped into a square room, comfortably furnished, with deep arm-chairs,
and a large chippendale writing-table which stood at right angles to the
bow window, so placed that anyone writing at it should have the light
upon his left. It was rather a dark room, the walls being lined with
books from floor to ceiling, except at two points: opposite the window an
alcove, panelled in ancient oak, appeared in the wall; and above the
fireplace, opposite the door, the wall was panelled in the same manner
and covered by an oil painting, representing Lord Ashiel's grandmother.
The polished b

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