"Into the town, sir. I knew she was out, of course, and she just mentioned afterwards where she had been."

"Have you any idea whom she saw or what she did?"

Bisset shook his head.

"I have no datas, sir, that's the plain fac'."

"But you can't think of any likely errand to take her in so late in the afternoon?"

"No, sir. In fact, I mind thinking it was funny like her riding about alone in the dark like yon, for she's feared of being out by hersel' in the dark; I know that."

Carrington reflected for a few moments longer and then seemed to dismiss the subject.

"By the way," he asked, "can you remember if, by any chance, Sir Reginald had any difficulty or trouble or row of any kind with anyone whatever during, say, the month previous to his death? I mean with any of the tenants, or his tradesmen—or his lawyer? Take your time and think carefully."

* * * * *

Carrington dismissed his car at Mr. Rattar's office. When he was shown into the lawyer's room, he exhibited a greater air of keenness than usual.

"Well, Mr. Rattar," said he, "you'll be interested to hear that I've got rather a new point of view with regard to this case."

"Indeed?" said Simon, and his lips twitched a little as he spoke. There was no doubt that he was not looking so well as usual. His face had seemed drawn and worried last time Carrington had seen him; now it might almost be termed haggard.

"I find," continued Carrington, "that Sir Reginald displayed a curious and unaccountable irritability before his death. I hear, for instance, that a letter from you had upset him quite unduly."

Carrington paused for an instant, and his monocle was full on Simon all the time, and yet he did not seem to notice the very slight but distinct start which the lawyer gave, for he continued with exactly the same confidential air.

"These seem to me very suggestive symptoms, Mr. Rattar, and I am wondering very seriously whether the true solution of his mysterious death is not—" he paused for an instant and then in a low and earnest voice said, "suicide!"

There was no mistake about the lawyer's start this time, or about the curious fact that the strain seemed suddenly to relax, and a look of relief to take its place. And yet Carrington seemed quite oblivious to anything beyond his own striking new theory.

"That's rather a suggestive idea, isn't it?" said he.

"Very!" replied Simon with the air of one listening to a revelation.

"How he managed to inflict precisely those injuries on himself is at present a little obscure," continued Carrington, "but no doubt a really expert medical opinion will be able to suggest an explanation. The theory fits all the other facts remarkably, doesn't it?"

"Remarkably," agreed Simon.

"This letter of yours, for instance, was a very ordinary business communication, I understand."

"Very ordinary," said Simon.

"Of course, you have a copy of it in your letter book—and also Sir Reginald's reply?"

There was a moment's pause and then Simon's grunt seemed to be forced out of himself. But he followed the grunt with a more assured, "Certainly."

"May I see them?"

"You—you think they are important?"

"As bearing on Sir Reginald's state of mind only."

Simon rang his bell and ordered the letter book to be brought in. While Carrington was examining it, his eyes never left his visitor's face, but they would have had to be singularly penetrating to discover a trace of any emotion there. Throughout his inspection, Carrington's air remained as imperturbable as though he were reading the morning paper.

"According to these letters," he observed, "there seems to have been a trifling but rather curious misunderstanding. In accordance with written instructions of a fortnight previously, you had arranged to let a certain farm to a certain man, and Sir Reginald then complained that you had overlooked a conversation between those dates in which he had cancelled these instructions. He writes with a warmth that clearly indicates his own impression that this conversation had been perfectly explicit and that your forgetfulness or neglect of it was unaccountable, and he proposes to go into this and one or two other matters in the course of a conversation with you which should have taken place that afternoon. You then reply that you are too busy to come out so soon, but will call on the following morning. In the meantime Sir Reginald is murdered, and so the conversation never takes place and no explanation passes between you. Those are the facts, aren't they?"

He looked up from the letter book as he spoke and there was no doubt he noticed something now. Indeed, the haggard look on Simon's face and a bead of perspiration on his forehead were so striking, and so singular in the case of such a tough customer, that the least observant—or the most circumspect—must have stared. Carrington's stare lasted only for the fraction of a second, and then he was polishing his eyeglass with his handkerchief in the most indifferent way.

A second or two passed before Simon answered, and then he said abruptly:

"Sir Reginald was mistaken. No such conversation."

"Do you mean to tell me literally that no such conversation took place? Was it a mere delusion?"

"Er—practically. Yes, a delusion."

"Suicide!" declared Carrington with an air of profound conviction. "Yes, Mr. Rattar, that is evidently the solution. The unfortunate man had clearly not been himself, probably for some little time previously. Well, I'll make a few more enquiries, but I fancy my work is nearly at an end. Good-morning."

He rose and was half way across the room, when he stopped and asked, as if the idea had suddenly occurred to him:

"By the way, I hear that Miss Farmond was in seeing you a couple of days ago."

Again Simon seemed to start a little, and again he hesitated for an instant and then replied with a grunt.

"Had she any news?" asked the other.

Simon grunted again and shook his head, and Carrington threw him a friendly nod and went out.

He maintained the same air till he had turned down a bye street and was alone, and only then he gave vent to his feelings.

"I'm dashed!" he muttered, "absolutely jiggered!"

All the while he shook his head and slashed with his walking stick through the air. There was no doubt that Mr. Carrington was thoroughly and genuinely puzzled.



XXXII

THE SYMPATHETIC STRANGER

Carrington's soliloquy was interrupted by the appearance of someone on the pavement ahead of him. He pulled himself together, took out his watch, and saw that it was still only twenty minutes past twelve. After thinking for a moment, he murmured:

"I might as well try 'em!"

And thereupon he set out at a brisk walk, and a few minutes later was closeted with Superintendent Sutherland in the Police Station. He began by handing the Superintendent a card with the name of Mr. F. T. Carrington on it, but with quite a different address from that on the card he had sent up to Mr. Rattar. It was, in fact, his business card, and the Superintendent regarded him with respectful interest.

After explaining his business and his preference for not disclosing it to the public, he went briefly over the main facts of the case.

"I see you've got them all, sir," said the Superintendent, when he had finished. "There really seems nothing to add and no new light to be seen anywhere."

"I'm afraid so," agreed Carrington. "I'm afraid so."

In fact he seemed so entirely resigned to this conclusion that he allowed, and even encouraged, the conversation to turn to other matters. The activity and enterprise of the Procurator Fiscal seemed to have particularly impressed him, and this led to a long talk on the subject of Mr. Simon Rattar. The Superintendent was also a great admirer of the Fiscal and assured Mr. Carrington that not only was Mr. Simon himself the most capable and upright of men, but that the firm of Rattar had always conducted its business in a manner that was above reproach. Mr. Carrington had made one or two slightly cynical but perfectly good-natured comments on lawyers in general, but he got no countenance from the Superintendent so far as Mr. Rattar and his business were concerned.

"But hadn't he some trouble at one time with his brother?" his visitor enquired.

The Superintendent admitted that this was so, and also that Sir Reginald Cromarty had suffered thereby, but he was quite positive that this trouble was entirely a thing of the past. There was no doubt that this information had a somewhat depressing effect even on the good-humoured Mr. Carrington, and at last he confessed with a candid air:

"The fact is, Superintendent, that I have a theory Sir Reginald was worrying about something before his death, and as all his business affairs are conducted by Mr. Rattar, I was wondering whether he had any difficulties in that direction. Now about this bad brother of Mr. Rattar's—there couldn't be trouble still outstanding, you think?"

"Mr. George Rattar was out of the firm, sir, years ago," the Superintendent assured him. "No, it couldna be that."

"And Mr. George Rattar certainly died a short time ago, did he?"

"I can show you the paper with his death in it. I kept it as a kind of record of the end of him."

He fetched the paper and Carrington after looking at it for a few minutes, remarked:

"I see here an advertisement stating that Mr. Rattar lost a ring."

"Yes," said the Superintendent, "that was a funny thing because it's not often a gentleman loses a ring off his hand. I've half wondered since whether it was connected with a story of Mr. Rattar's maid that his house had been broken into."

"When was that?"

"Curiously enough it was the very night Sir Reginald was murdered."

Carrington's chair squeaked on the floor as he sat up sharply.

"The very night of the murder?" he repeated. "Why has this never come out before?"

The stolid Superintendent looked at him in surprise.

"But what connection could there possibly be, sir? Mr. Rattar thought nothing of it himself and just mentioned it so that I would know it was a mere story, in case his servants started talking about it."

"But you yourself seemed just now to think that it might not be a mere story."

"Oh, that was just a kind o' idea," said the Superintendent easily. "It only came in my mind when the ring was never recovered."

"What were the exact facts?" demanded Carrington.

"Oh," said the Superintendent vaguely, "there was something about a window looking as if it had been entered, but really, sir, Mr. Rattar paid so little attention to it himself, and we were that taken up by the Keldale case that I made no special note of it."

"Did the servants ever speak of it again?"

"Everybody was that taken up about the murder that I doubt if they've minded on it any further."

Carrington was silent for a few moments.

"Are the servants intelligent girls?" he enquired.

"Oh, quite average intelligent. In fact, the housemaid is a particular decent sort of a girl."

At this point, Mr. Carrington's interest in the subject seemed to wane, and after a few pleasant generalities, he thanked the Superintendent for his courtesy, and strolled down to the hotel for lunch. This time his air as he walked was noticeably brisker and his eye decidedly brighter.

About three o'clock that afternoon came a ring at the front door bell of Mr. Simon Rattar's commodious villa. Mary MacLean declared afterwards that she had a presentiment when she heard it, but then the poor girl had been rather troubled with presentiments lately. When she opened the front door she saw a particularly polite and agreeable looking gentleman adorned with that unmistakeable mark of fashion, a single eyeglass; and the gentleman saw a pleasant looking but evidently high strung and nervous young woman.

"Is Mr. Simon Rattar at home?" he enquired in a courteous voice and with a soothing smile that won her heart at once; and on hearing that Mr. Rattar always spent the afternoons at his office and would not return before five o'clock, his disappointment was so manifest that she felt sincerely sorry for him.

He hesitated and was about to go away when a happy idea struck him.

"Might I come in and write a line to be left for him?" he asked, and Mary felt greatly relieved at being able to assist the gentleman to assuage his disappointment in this way.

She led him into the library and somehow or other by the time she had got him ink and paper and pen she found herself talking to this distinguished looking stranger in the most friendly way. It was not that he was forward or gallant, far from it; simply that he was so nice and so remarkably sympathetic. Within five minutes of making his acquaintance, Mary felt that she could tell him almost anything.

This sympathetic visitor made several appreciative remarks about the house and garden, and then, just as he had dipped his pen into the ink, he remarked:

"Rather a tempting house for burglars, I should think—if such people existed in these peaceable parts."

"Oh, but they do, sir," she assured him. "We had one in this very house one night!"



XXXIII

THE HOUSE OF MYSTERIES

The sympathetic stranger almost laid down his pen, he was so interested by this unexpected reply.

"What!" he exclaimed. "Really a burglary in this house? I say, how awfully interesting! When did it happen?"

"Well, sir," said Mary in an impressive voice, "it's a most extraordinary thing, but it was actually the very self same night of Sir Reginald's murder!"

So surprised and interested was the visitor that he actually did lay down his pen this time.

"Was it the same man, do you think?" he asked in a voice that seemed to thrill with sympathetic excitement.

"Indeed I've sometimes wondered!" said she.

"Tell me how it happened!"

"Well, sir," said Mary, "it was on the very morning that we heard about Sir Reginald—only before we'd heard, and I was pulling up the blinds in the wee sitting room when I says to myself. 'There's been some one in at this window!'"

"The wee sitting room," repeated her visitor. "Which is that?"

He seemed so genuinely interested that before she realised what liberties she was taking in the master's house, she had led him into a small sitting room at the end of a short passage leading out of the hall. It had evidently been intended for a smoking room or study when the villa was built, but was clearly never used by Mr. Rattar, for it contained little furniture beyond bookcases. Its window looked on to the side of the garden and not towards the drive, and a grass lawn lay beneath it, while the room itself was obviously the most isolated, and from a burglarious point of view the most promising, on the ground floor.

"This is the room, sir," said Mary. "And look! You still can see the marks on the sash."

"Yes," said the visitor thoughtfully, "they seem to have been made by a tacketty boot."

"And forbye that, there was a wee bit mud on the floor and a tacket mark in that!"

"Was the window shut or open?"

"Shut, sir; and the most extraordinary thing was that it was snibbed too! That's what made the master say it couldna have been a burglar at all, or how did he snib the window after he went out again?"

"Then Mr. Rattar didn't believe it was a burglar?"

"N—no, sir," said Mary, a little reluctantly.

"Was anything stolen?"

"No, sir; that was another funny thing. But it must have been a burglar!"

"What about the other windows, and the doors? Were they all fastened in the morning?"

"Yes, sir, it's the truth they were," she admitted.

"And what did Mr. Rattar do with the piece of mud?"

"Just threw it out of the window."

The sympathetic stranger crossed to the window and looked out.

"Grass underneath, I see," he observed. "No footprints outside, I suppose?"

"No, sir."

"Did the police come down and make enquiries?"

"Well, sir, the master said he would inform the pollis, but then came the news of the murder, and no one had any thoughts for anything else after that."

The sympathetic visitor stood by the window very thoughtfully for a few moments, and then turned and rewarded her with the most charming smile.

"Thank you awfully for showing me all this," said he. "By the way, what's your name?" She told him and he added with a still nicer smile, "Thank you, Mary!"

They returned to the library and he sat down before the table again, but just as he was going to pick up the pen a thought seemed to strike him.

"By the way," he said, "I remember hearing something about the loss of a ring. The burglar didn't take that, did he?"

"Oh, no, sir, I remember the advertisement was in the paper before the night of the burglary."

He opened his eyes and then smiled.

"Brilliant police you've got!" he murmured, and took up the pen again.

"There was another burglar here and he might have taken it!" said Mary in a low voice.

The visitor once more dropped the pen and looked up with a start.

"Another burglar!" he exclaimed.

"Well, sir, this one didn't actually burgle, but—"

She thought of the master if he chanced to learn how she had been gossiping, and her sentence was cut short in the midst.

"Yes, Mary! You were saying?" cooed the persuasive visitor, and Mary succumbed again and told him of that night when a shadow moved into the trees and footprints were left in the gravel outside the library window, and the master looked so strangely in the morning. Her visitor was so interested that once she began it was really impossible to stop.

"How very strange!" he murmured, and there was no doubt he meant it.

"But about the master's ring, sir—" she began.

"You say he looked as though he were being watched?" he interrupted, but it was quite a polite and gentle interruption.

"Yes, sir; but the funny thing about losing the ring was that he never could get it off his finger before! I've seen him trying to, but oh, it wouldn't nearly come off!"

Again he sat up and gazed at her.

"Another mystery!" he murmured. "He lost a ring which wouldn't come off his finger? By Jove! That's very rum. Are there any more mysteries, Mary, connected with this house?"

She hesitated and then in a very low voice answered:

"Oh, yes, sir; there was one that gave me even a worse turn!"

By this time her visitor seemed to have given up all immediate thoughts of writing his note to Mr. Rattar. He turned his back to the table and looked at her with benevolent calm.

"Let's hear it, Mary," he said gently.

And then she told him the story of that dreadful night when the unknown visitor came for the box of old papers. He gazed at her, listening very attentively, and then in a soothing voice asked her several questions, more particularly when all these mysterious events occurred.

"And are these all your troubles now, Mary?" he enquired.

He asked so sympathetically that at last she even ventured to tell him her latest trouble. Till he fairly charmed it out of her, she had shrunk from telling him anything that seemed to reflect directly on her master or to be a giving away of his concerns. But now she confessed that Mr. Rattar's conduct, Mr. Rattar's looks, and even Mr. Rattar's very infrequent words had been troubling her strangely. How or why his looks and words should trouble her, she knew not precisely, and his conduct, generally speaking, she admitted was as regular as ever.

"You don't mean that just now and then he takes a wee drop too much?" enquired her visitor helpfully.

"Oh, no, sir," said she, "the master never did take more than what a gentleman should, and he's not a smoking gentleman either—quite a principle against smokers, he has, sir. Oh, it's nothing like that!"

She looked over her shoulder fearfully as though the walls might repeat her words to the master, as she told him of the curious and disturbing thing. Mr. Rattar had been till lately a gentleman of the most exact habits, and then all of a sudden he had taken to walking in his garden in a way he never did before. First she had noticed him, about the time of the burglary and the removal of the papers, walking there in the mornings. That perhaps was not so very disturbing, but since then he had changed this for a habit of slipping out of the house every night—every single night!

"And walking in the garden!" exclaimed Mr. Carrington.

"Sometimes I've heard his footsteps on the gravel, sir! Even when it has been raining I've heard them. Perhaps sometimes he goes outside the garden, but I've never heard of anyone meeting him on the road or streets. It's in the garden I've heard the master's steps, sir, and if you had been with him as long as I've been, and knew how regular his habits was, you'd know how I'm feeling, sir!"

"I do know, Mary; I quite understand," Mr. Carrington assured her in his soothing voice, and there could be no doubt he was wondering just as hard as she.

"What o'clock does he generally go out?" he asked.

"At nine o'clock almost exactly every night, sir!"

Mr. Carrington looked thoughtfully out of the window into the garden, and then at last looked down at the ink and paper and pen. Not a word was written on the paper yet.

"Look here, Mary," he said very confidentially. "I am a friend of Mr. Rattar's and I am sure you would like me to try and throw a little light on this. Perhaps something is troubling him and I could help you to clear it up."

"Oh, sir," she cried, "you are very kind! I wish you could!"

"Perhaps the best thing then," he suggested, "would be for me not to leave a note for him after all, and for you not even to mention that I have called. As he knows me pretty well he would be almost sure to ask you whether I had come in and if I had left any message and so on, and then he might perhaps find out that we had been talking, and that wouldn't perhaps be pleasant for you, would it?"

"Oh, my! No, indeed, it wouldn't!" she agreed. "I'm that feared of the master, sir, I'd never have him know I had been talking about him, or about anything that has happened in this house!"

So, having come to this judicious decision, Mr. Carrington wished Mary the kindest of farewells and walked down the drive again. There could be no question he had plenty to think about now, though to judge from his expression, it seemed doubtful whether his thoughts were very clear.



XXXIV

A CONFIDENTIAL CONVERSATION

The laird of Stanesland strode into the Kings Arms and demanded:

"Mr. Carrington? What, having a cup of tea in his room? What's his number? 27—right! I'll walk right up, thanks."

He walked right up, made the door rattle under his knuckles and strode jauntily in. There was no beating about the bush with Mr. Cromarty either in deed or word.

"Well, Mr. Carrington," said he, "don't trouble to look surprised. I guess you've seen right through me for some time back."

"Meaning—?" asked Carrington with his engaging smile.

"Meaning that I'm the unknown, unsuspected, and mysterious person who's putting up the purse. Don't pretend you haven't tumbled to that!"

"Yes," admitted Carrington, "I have tumbled."

"I knew my sister had given the whole blamed show away! I take it you put your magnifying glass back in your pocket after your trip out to Stanesland?"

"More or less," admitted Carrington.

"Well," said Ned, "that being so, I may as well tell you what my idea was. It mayn't have been very bright; still there was a kind of method in my madness. You see I wanted you to have an absolutely clear field and let you suspect me just as much as anybody else."

"In short," smiled Carrington, "you wanted to start with the other horses and not just drop the flag."

"That's so," agreed Ned. "But when my sister let out about that L1200, and I saw that you must have spotted me, there didn't seem much point in keeping up the bluff, when I came to think it over. And since then, Mr. Carrington, something has happened that you ought to know and I decided to come and see you and talk to you straight."

"What has happened?"

Ned smiled for an instant his approval of this prompt plunge into business, and then his face set hard.

"It's a most extraordinary thing," said he, "and may strike you as hardly credible, but here's the plain truth put shortly. Yesterday afternoon Miss Farmond ran away." Carrington merely nodded, and he exclaimed, "What! You know then?"

"I learned from Bisset this morning."

"Ah, I see. Did you know I'd happened to see her start and gone after her and brought her back?"

Carrington's interest was manifest.

"No," said he, "that's quite news to me."

"Well, I did, and I learnt the whole story from her. You can't guess who advised her to bolt?"

"I think I can," said Carrington quietly.

"Either you're on the wrong track, or you've cut some ice, Mr. Carrington. It was Simon Rattar!"

"I thought so."

"How the devil did you guess?"

"Tell me Miss Farmond's story first and I'll tell you how I guessed."

"Well, she spotted you were a detective—"

Carrington started and then laughed.

"Confound these women!" said he. "They're so infernally independent of reason, they always spot things they shouldn't!"

"Then she discovered she was suspected and so she got in a stew, poor girl, and went to see Rattar. Do you know what he told her? That I was employing you and meant to convict Sir Malcolm and her and hang them with my own hands!"

"The old devil!" cried Carrington. "Well, no wonder she bolted, Mr. Cromarty!"

"But even that was done by Simon's advice. He actually gave her an address in London to go to."

"Pretty thorough!" murmured Carrington.

"Now what do you make of that? And what ought one to do? And, by the way, how did you guess Simon was at the bottom of it?"

Carrington leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment before answering.

"We are in pretty deep waters, Mr. Cromarty," he said slowly. "As to what I make of it—nothing as yet. As to what we are to do—also nothing in the meantime. But as to how I guessed, well I can tell you this much. I had to get information from someone, and so I called on Mr. Rattar and told him who I was—in strict confidence, by the way, so that he had no business to tell Miss Farmond or anybody else. I had started off, I may say, with a wrong guess: I thought Rattar himself was probably either my employer or acting for my employer, and when I suggested this he told me I was right."

"What!" shouted Ned. "The grunting old devil told you that?" He stared at the other for a moment, and then demanded, "Why did he tell you that lie?"

"Fortune played my cards for me. Quite innocently and unintentionally. I tempted him. I said if I could be sure he was my employer I'd keep him in touch with everything I was doing. I had also let him know that my employer had made it an absolute condition that his name was not to appear. He evidently wanted badly to know what I was doing, and thought he was safe not to be given away."

"Then have you kept him in touch with everything you have done?"

Carrington smiled.

"I tell you, Mr. Cromarty, my cards were being played for me. Five minutes later I asked him who benefited by the will and I learned that you had scored the precise sum of L1200."

"I hadn't thought of that when I made my limit L1200!" exclaimed Ned. "Lord, you must have bowled me out at once! Of course, you spotted the coincidence straight off?"

"But Rattar didn't! I pushed it under his nose and he didn't see it! Inside of one second I'd asked myself whether it was possible for an astute man like that not to notice such a coincidence supposing he had really guaranteed me exactly that sum—an extraordinarily large and curious sum too."

"I like these simple riddles," said Ned with a twinkle in his single eye. "I guess your answer to yourself was 'No!'"

Carrington nodded.

"That's what I call having my cards played for me. I knew then that the man was lying; so I threw him off the scent, changed the subject, and did not keep Mr. Simon Rattar in touch with any single thing I did after that."

"Good for you!" said Ned.

"Good so far, but the next riddle wasn't of the simple kind—or else I'm even a bigger ass than I endeavour to look! What was the man's game?"

"Have you spotted it yet?"

Carrington shook his head.

"Mr. Simon Rattar's game is the toughest proposition in the way of puzzles I've ever struck. While I'm at it I'll just tell you one or two other small features of that first interview."

He lit a cigarette and leant over the arm of his chair towards his visitor, his manner growing keener as he talked.

"I happened to have met Miss Farmond that morning and my interview had knocked the bottom out of the story that she was concerned in the crime. I had satisfied myself also that she was not engaged to Sir Malcolm."

"How did you discover that?" exclaimed Ned.

"Her manner when I mentioned him. But I found that old Rattar was wrong on both these points and apparently determined to remain wrong. Of course, it might have been a mere error of judgment, but at the same time he had no evidence whatever against her, and it seemed to suggest a curious bias. And finally, I didn't like the look of the man."

"And then you came out to see me?"

"I went out to Keldale House first and then out to you. I next interviewed Sir Malcolm."

"Interviewed Malcolm Cromarty!" exclaimed Ned. "Where?"

"He came up to see me," explained Carrington easily, "and the gentleman had scarcely spoken six sentences before I shared your opinion of him, Mr. Cromarty—a squirt but not homicidal. He gave me, however, one very interesting piece of information. Rattar had advised him to keep away from these parts, and for choice to go abroad. I need hardly ask whether you consider that sound advice to give a suspected man."

"Seems to me nearly as rotten advice as he gave Miss Farmond."

"Exactly. So when I heard that Miss Farmond had flown and discovered she had paid a visit to Mr. Rattar the previous day, I guessed who had given her the advice."

Carrington sat back in his chair with folded arms and looked at his employer with a slight smile, as much as to say, "Tell me the rest of the story!" Cromarty returned his gaze in silence, his heaviest frown upon his brow.

"It seems to me," said Ned at last, "that Simon Rattar is mixed up in this business—sure! He has something to hide and he's trying to put people off the scent, I'll lay my bottom dollar!"

"What is he hiding?" enquired Carrington, looking up at the ceiling.

"What do you think?"

Carrington shook his head, his eyes still gazing dreamily upwards.

"I wish to Heaven I knew what to think!" he murmured; and then he resumed a brisker air and continued, "I am ready to suspect Simon Rattar of any crime in the calendar—leaving out petty larceny and probably bigamy. But he's the last man to do either good or evil unless he saw a dividend at the end, and where does he score by taking any part or parcel in conniving at or abetting or concealing evidence or anything else, so far as this particular crime is concerned? He has lost his best client, with whom he was on excellent terms and whose family he had served all his life, and he has now got instead an unsatisfactory young ass whom he suspects, or says he suspects, of murder, and who so loathes Rattar that, as far as I can judge, he will probably take his business away from him. To suspect Rattar of actually conniving at, or taking any part in the actual crime itself is, on the face of it, to convict either Rattar or oneself of lunacy!"

"I knew Sir Reginald pretty well," said Ned, "but of course I didn't know much about his business affairs. He hadn't been having any trouble with Rattar, had he?"

Carrington threw him a quick, approving glance.

"We are thinking on the same lines," said he, "and I have unearthed one very odd little misunderstanding, but it seems to have been nothing more than that, and, apart from it, all accounts agree that there was no trouble of any kind or description."

He took a cigarette out of his case and struck a match.

"There must be some motive for everything one does—even for smoking this cigarette. If I disliked cigarettes, knew smoking was bad for me, and stood in danger of being fined if I was caught doing it, why should I smoke? I can see no point whatever in Rattar's taking the smallest share even in diverting the course of justice by a hair's breadth. He and you and I have to all appearances identical interests in the matter."

"You are wiser than I am," said Ned simply, but with a grim look in his eye, "but all I can say is I am going out with my gun to look for Simon Rattar."

Carrington laughed.

"I'm afraid you'll have to catch him at something a little better known to the charge-sheets than giving bad advice to a lady client, before it's safe to fire!" said he.

"But, look here, Carrington, have you collected no other facts whatever about this case?"

Carrington shot him a curious glance, but answered nothing else.

"Oh well," said Ned, "if you don't want to say anything yet, don't say it. Play your hand as you think best."

"Mr. Cromarty," replied Carrington, "I assure you I don't want to make facts into mysteries, but when they are mysteries—well, I like to think 'em over a bit before I trust myself to talk. In the course of this very afternoon I've collected an assortment either of facts or fiction that seem to have broken loose from a travelling nightmare."

"Mind telling where you got 'em?" asked Ned.

"Chiefly from Rattar's housemaid, a very excellent but somewhat high-strung and imaginative young woman, and how much to believe of what she told me I honestly don't know. And the more one can believe, the worse the puzzle gets! However, there is one statement which I hope to be able to check. It may throw some light on the lady's veracity generally. Meantime I am like a man trying to build a house of what may be bricks or may be paper bags."

Ned rose with his usual prompt decision.

"I see," said he. "And I guess you find one better company than two at this particular moment. I won't shoot Simon Rattar till I hear from you, though by Gad, I'm tempted to kick him just to be going on with! But look here, Carrington, if my services will ever do you the least bit of good—in fact, so long as I'm not actually in the way—just send me a wire and I'll come straight. You won't refuse me that?"

Carrington looked at the six feet two inches of pure lean muscle and smiled.

"Not likely!" he said. "That's not the sort of offer I refuse. I won't hesitate to wire if there's anything happening. But don't count on it. I can't see any business doing just yet."

Ned held out his hand, and then suddenly said, "You don't see any business doing just yet? But you feel you're on his track, sure! Now, don't you?"

Carrington glanced at him out of an eye half quizzical, half abstracted.

"Whose track?" he asked.

Ned paused for a second and then rapped out:

"Was it Simon himself?"

"If we were all living in a lunatic asylum, probably yes! If we were living in the palace of reason, certainly not—the thing's ridiculous! What we are actually living in, however, is—" he broke off and gazed into space.

"What?" said Ned.

"A blank fog!"



XXXV

IN THE GARDEN

It was a few minutes after half past eight when Miss Peterkin chanced to meet her friend Mr. Carrington in the entrance hall of the Kings Arms. He was evidently going out, and she noticed he was rather differently habited from usual, wearing now a long, light top coat of a very dark grey hue, and a dark coloured felt hat. They were not quite so becoming as his ordinary garb, she thought, but then Mr. Carrington looked the gentleman in anything.

"Are you going to desert us to-night, Mr. Carrington?" asked the manageress.

"I have a letter or two to post," said he, "they are an excuse for a stroll. I want a breath of fresh air."

He closed the glass door of the hotel behind him and stood for a moment on the pavement in the little circle of radiance thrown by the light of the hall. Mr. Carrington's leisurely movements undoubtedly played no small part in the unsuspecting confidence which he inspired. Out of the light he turned, strolling easily, down the long stretch of black pavement with its few checkers of lamplight here and there, and the empty, silent street of the little country town at his side. It was a very dark, moonless night, and the air was almost quite still. Looking upward, he could see a rare star or two twinkle, but all the rest of the Heavens were under cloud. Judging from his contented expression the night seemed to please him.

He passed the post office, but curiously enough omitted to drop any letters into the box. The breath of fresh air seemed, in fact, to be his sole preoccupation. Moving with a slightly quickened stride, but still easily, he turned out of that street into another even quieter and darker, and in a short time he was nearing the lights of the station. He gave these a wide birth, however, and presently was strolling up a very secluded road, with a few villas and gardens upon the one side, and black space on the other. There for a moment he stopped and transferred something from the pocket of his inner coat into the pocket of his top coat. It was a small compact article, and a ray of light from a lamp-post behind him gleamed for an instant upon a circular metal orifice at one end of it.

Before he moved on, he searched the darkness intently, before him and behind, but saw no sign of any other passenger. And then he turned the rim of his dark felt hat down over his face, stepped out briskly for some fifty yards further, and turned sharply through an open gate. Once again he stopped and listened keenly, standing now in the shadow of the trees beside the drive. In his dark top coat and with his hat turned over his face he was as nearly invisible as a man could be, but even this did not seem to satisfy him, for in a moment he gently parted the branches of the trees and pushed through the belt of planting to the lawn beyond.

The villa of Mr. Simon Rattar was now half seen beyond the curving end of the belt that bounded the drive. It was dim against the night sky, and the garden was dimmer still. Carrington kept on the grass, following the outside of the trees, and then again plunged into them when they curved round at the top of the drive. Pushing quietly through, he reached the other side, and there his expedition in search of fresh air seemed to have found its goal, for he leaned his back against a tree trunk, folded his arms, and waited.

He was looking obliquely across a sweep of gravel, with the whole front of the house full in view. A ray came from the fanlight over the front door and a faint radiance escaped through the slats of the library blinds, but otherwise the villa was a lump of darkness in the dark.

One minute after another passed without event and with scarcely even the faintest sound. Then, all at once, a little touch of breeze sprang up and sighed overhead through the tree tops, and from that time on, there was an alternation of utter silence with the sough of branches gently stirred.

From a church tower in the town came the stroke of a clock. Carrington counted nine and his eyes were riveted on the front door now. Barely two more minutes passed before it opened quietly; a figure appeared for an instant in the light of the hall, and then, as quietly, the door closed again. There was a lull at the moment, but Carrington could hear not a sound. The figure must be standing very still on the doorstep, listening—evidently listening. And then the thickset form of Simon Rattar appeared dimly on the gravel, crossing to the lawn beyond. The pebbles crunched a little, but not very much. He seemed to be walking warily, and when he reached the further side he stood still again and Carrington could see his head moving, as though he were looking all round him through the night.

But now the figure was moving again, coming this time straight for the head of the belt of trees. Carrington had drawn on a pair of dark gloves, and he raised his arm to cover the lower part of his face, looking over it through the branches, and facing the silent owner of the garden, till there were hardly three paces between them, the one on the lawn, the other in the heart of the plantation.

And then when Simon was exactly opposite, he stopped dead. Carrington's other hand slipped noiselessly into the pocket where he had dropped that little article, but otherwise he never moved a muscle and he breathed very gently. The man on the turf seemed to be doing something with his hands, but what, it was impossible to say. The hands would move into his pocket and then out again, till quite three or four minutes had passed, and then came a sudden flash of light. Carrington's right hand moved halfway out of his pocket and then was stayed, for by the light of the match he saw a very singular sight.

Simon Rattar was not looking at him. His eyes were focussed just before his nose where the bowl of a pipe was beginning to glow. Carrington could hear the lips gently sucking, and then the aroma of tobacco came in a strong wave through the trees. Finally the match went out, and the glowing pipe began to move slowly along the turf, keeping close to the shelter of the trees.

For a space Carrington stood petrified with wonder, and then, very carefully and quite silently, he worked his way through the trees out on to the turf, and at once fell on his hands and knees. Had any one been there to see, they would have beheld for the next five minutes a strange procession of two slowly moving along the edge of the plantation; a thickset man in front smoking a pipe and something like a great gorilla stalking him from behind. This procession skirted the plantation nearly down to the gate; then it turned at right angles, following the line of trees that bordered the wall between the garden and the road; and then again at right angles when it had reached the further corner of Mr. Rattar's demesne. Simon was now in a secluded path with shrubs on either hand, and instead of continuing his tour, he turned at the end of this path and paced slowly back again. And seeing this, the ape behind him squatted in the shadow of a laurel and waited.

A steady breeze was now blowing and the trees were sighing continuously. The sky at the same time cleared, and more and more stars came out till the eyes of the man behind the bush could follow the moving man from end to end of the path. The wind made the pipe smoke quickly, and presently a shower of sparks showed that it was being emptied, and in a minute or two another match flashed and a second pipe glowed faintly.

Backwards and forwards paced the lawyer, and backwards and forwards again, but for the space of nearly an hour from his first coming out, that was everything that happened; and then at last came a tapping of the bowl and more sparks flying abroad in the wind. The procession was resumed, Simon in front, the ape-like form behind; but with a greater space between them this time as the night was clearer, and now they were heading for the house. The lawyer's steps crunched lightly on the gravel again, the front door opened and closed, and Carrington was alone in the garden.

Still crawling, he reached the shelter of the belt of trees and then rose and made swiftly for the gate, and out into the road. As he passed under a lamp, his face wore a totally new expression, compounded of wonder, excitement, and urgent thought. He was walking swiftly, and his pace never slackened, nor did the keenness leave his face, till he was back at the door of the Kings Arms Hotel. Before he entered, he took off his hat and turned up the brim again, and his manner when he tapped at the door of the manageress' room was perfectly sedate. He let it appear, however, that he had some slight matter on his mind.

"What is the name of Mr. Rattar's head clerk?" he enquired. "An oldish, prim looking man, with side whiskers."

"Oh, that will be Mr. Ison," said the manageress.

"I have just remembered a bit of business I ought to have seen about to-night," he continued. "I can't very well call on Mr. Rattar himself at this hour, but I was thinking of looking up Mr. Ison if I could discover his whereabouts."

"The boots will show you the way to his house," said she, and rang the bell.

While waiting for the boots, Mr. Carrington asked another casual question or two and learned that Mr. Ison had been in the office since he was a boy. No man knew the house of Rattar throughout its two generations better than Mr. Ison, said Miss Peterkin; and she remembered afterwards that this information seemed to give Mr. Carrington peculiar satisfaction. He seemed so gratified, indeed, that she wondered a little at the time.

And then the visitor and the boots set out together for the clerk's house, and at what hour her guest returned she was not quite sure. The boots, it seemed, had been instructed to wait up for him, but she had long gone to bed.



XXXVI

THE WALKING STICK

Had there been, next morning, any curious eyes to watch the conduct of the gentleman who had come to rent a sporting estate, they would probably have surmised that he had found something to please his fancy strangely, and yet that some perplexity still persisted. They would also have put him down as a much more excitable, and even demonstrative, young man than they had imagined. On a lonely stretch of shore hard by the little town he paced for nearly an hour, his face a record of the debate within, and his cane gesticulating at intervals.

Of a sudden he stopped dead and his lips moved in a murmured ejaculation, and then after standing stock still for some minutes, he murmured again:

"Ten to one on it!"

His cane had been stationary during this pause. Now he raised it once more, but this time with careful attention. It was a light bamboo with a silver head. He looked at it thoughtfully, bent it this way and that, and then drove it into the sand and pressed it down. Though to the ordinary eye a very chaste and appropriate walking stick for such a gentleman as Mr. Carrington, the result of these tests seemed to dissatisfy him. He shook his head, and then with an air of resolution set out for the town.

A little later he entered a shop where a number of walking sticks were on view and informed the proprietor that he desired to purchase something more suitable for the country than the cane he carried. In fact, his taste seemed now to run to the very opposite extreme, for the points on which he insisted were length, stiffness, and a long and if possible somewhat pointed ferule. At last he found one to his mind, left his own cane to be sent down to the hotel, and walked out with his new purchase.

His next call was at Mr. Simon Rattar's villa. This morning he approached it without any of the curious shyness he had exhibited on the occasion of his recent visit. His advance was conducted openly up the drive and in an erect posture, and he crossed the gravel space boldly, and even jauntily, while his ring was firmness itself. Mary answered the bell, and her pleasure at seeing so soon again the sympathetic gentleman with the eyeglass was a tribute to his tact.

"Good morning, Mary," said he, with an air that combined very happily the courtesy of a gentleman with the freedom of an old friend, "Mr. Rattar is at his office, I presume."

She said that he was, but this time the visitor exhibited neither surprise nor disappointment.

"I thought he would be," he confessed confidentially, "and I have come to see whether I couldn't do something to help you to get at the bottom of these troublesome goings on. Anything fresh happened?"

"The master was out in the garden again last night, sir!" said she.

"Was he really?" cried Mr. Carrington. "By Jove, how curious! We really must look into that: in fact, I've got an idea I want you to help me with. By the way, it sounds an odd question to ask about Mr. Rattar, but have you ever seen any sign of a pipe or tobacco in the house?"

"Oh, never indeed!" said she. "The master has never been a smoking gentleman. Quite against smoking he's always been, sir."

"Ever since you have known him?"

"Oh, and before that, sir."

"Ah!" observed Mr. Carrington in a manner that suggested nothing whatever. "Well, Mary, I want this morning to have a look round the garden."

Her eyes opened.

"Because the master walks there at nights?"

He nodded confidentially.

"But—but if he was to know you'd been interfering, sir—I mean what he'd think was interfering, sir—"

"He shan't know," he assured her. "At least not if you'll do what I tell you. I want you to go now and have a nice quiet talk with cook for half an hour—half an hour by the kitchen clock, Mary. If you don't look out of the window, you won't know that I'm in the garden, and then nobody can blame you whatever happens. We haven't mentioned the word 'garden' between us—so you are out of it! Remember that."

He smiled so pleasantly that Mary smiled back.

"I'll remember, sir," said she. "And cook is to be kept talking in the kitchen?"

"You've tumbled to it exactly, Mary. If neither of you see me, neither of you know anything at all."

She got a last glimpse of his sympathetic smile as she closed the door, and then she went faithfully to the kitchen for her talk with cook. It was quite a pleasant gossip at first, but half an hour is a long time to keep talking, when one has been asked not to stop sooner, and it so happened, moreover, that cook was somewhat busy that morning and began at length to indicate distinctly that unless her friend had some matter of importance to communicate she would regard further verbiage with disfavour. At this juncture Mary decided that twenty minutes was practically as good as half an hour, and the conversation ceased.

Passing out of the kitchen regions, Mary glanced towards a distant window, hesitated, and then came to another decision. Mr. Carrington must surely have left the garden now, so there was no harm in peeping out. She went to the window and peeped.

It was only a two minutes' peep, for Mr. Carrington had not left the garden, and at the end of that space of time something very disturbing happened. But it was long enough to make her marvel greatly at her sympathetic friend's method of solving the riddle of the master's conduct. When she first saw him, he seemed to be smoothing the earth in one of the flower beds with his foot. Then he moved on a few paces, stopped, and drove his walking stick hard into the bed. She saw him lean on it to get it further in and apparently twist it about a little. And then he withdrew it again and was in the act of smoothing the place when she saw him glance sharply towards the gate, and the next instant leap behind a bush. Simultaneously the hum of a motor car fell on her ear, and Mary was out of the room and speeding upstairs.

She heard the car draw up before the house and listened for the front door bell, but the door opened without a ring and she marvelled and trembled afresh. That the master should return in a car at this hour of the morning seemed surely to be connected with the sin she had connived at. It swelled into a crime as she held her breath and listened. She wished devoutly she had never set eyes on the insinuating Mr. Carrington.

But there came no call for her, or no ringing of any bell; merely sounds of movement in the hall below, heard through the thrumming of the waiting car. And then the front door opened and shut again and she ventured to the window. It was a little open and she could hear her master speak to the chauffeur as he got in. He was now wearing, she noticed, a heavy overcoat. A moment more and he was off again, down the drive, and out through the gates. When she remembered to look again for her sympathetic friend, he was quietly driving his walking stick once more into a flower bed.

About ten minutes afterwards the front door bell rang and there stood Mr. Carrington again. His eye seemed strangely bright, she thought, but his manner was calm and soothing as ever.

"I noticed Mr. Rattar return," he said, "and I thought I would like to make sure that it was all right, before I left. I trust, Mary, that you have got into no trouble on my account."

She thought it was very kind of him to enquire.

"The master was only just in and out again," she assured him.

"He came to get his overcoat, I noticed," he remarked.

Mr. Carrington's powers of observation struck her as very surprising for such an easy-going gentleman.

"Yes, sir, that was all."

"Well, I'm very glad it was all right," he smiled and began to turn away. "By the way," he asked, turning back, "did he tell you where he is going to now?"

"He didn't see me, sir."

"You didn't happen to overhear him giving any directions to the chauffeur, did you? I noticed you at an open window."

For the first time Mary's sympathetic friend began to make her feel a trifle uncomfortable. His eyes seemed to be everywhere.

"I thought I heard him say 'Keldale House,'" she confessed.

"Really!" he exclaimed and seemed to muse for a moment. In fact, he appeared to be still musing as he walked away.

Mary began to wonder very seriously whether Mr. Carrington was going to prove merely a fresh addition to the disquieting mysteries of that house.



XXXVII

BISSET'S ADVICE

The short November afternoon was fading into a gusty evening, as Ned Cromarty drew near his fortalice. He carried a gun as usual, and as usual walked with seven league strides. Where the drive passed through the scrap of stunted plantation it was already dusk and the tortured boughs had begun their night of sighs and tossings. Beyond them, pale daylight lingered and the old house stood up still clear against a broken sky and a grey waste with flitting whitecaps all the way to the horizon. He had almost reached the front door when he heard the sound of wheels behind him. Pausing there, he spied a pony and a governess' car, with two people distinct enough to bring a sudden light into his eye. The pony trotted briskly towards the door, and he took a stride to meet them.

"Miss Farmond!" he said.

A low voice answered, and though he could not catch the words, the tone was enough for him. And then another voice said:

"Aye, sir, I've brought her over."

"Bisset!" said he. "It's you, is it? Well, what's happened?"

He was lifting her out of the trap and not hesitating to hold her hand a little longer than he had ever held it before, now that he could see her face quite plainly and read what was in her eyes.

"I've dared to come after all!" she said, with a little smile, which seemed to hint that she knew the risk was over now.

"I advised her vera strongly, sir, to come over with me to Stanesland," explained her escort. "The young lady has had a trying experience at Keldale, and forby the fair impossibility of her stopping on under the unfortunate circumstances, I was of the opinion that the sea air would be a fine change and the architectural features remarkably interesting. In fac', sir, I practically insisted that Miss Farmond had just got to come."

"Good man!" said Ned. "Come in and tell me the unfortunate circumstances." He bent over Cicely and in a lowered voice added: "Personally I call 'em fortunate—so long as they haven't been too beastly for you!"

"It's all right now!" she murmured, and as they went up the steps he found, somehow or other, her hand for an instant in his again.

"If you'll stand by your pony for a moment, Bisset, I'll send out some one to take her," he said with happy inspiration.

But Mr. Bisset was not so easily shaken off.

"She'll stand fine for a wee while," he assured his host. "You'll be the better of hearing all about it from me."

They went into the smoking room and the escort began forthwith.

"The fact is, Mr. Cromarty, that yon man Simon Rattar is a fair discredit. Miss Farmond has been telling me the haill story of her running away, and your ain vera seasonable appearance and judicious conduct, sir; which I am bound to say, Mr. Cromarty, is neither more nor less than I'd have expectit of a gentleman of your intelligence. Weel, to continue, Miss Farmond acted on your advice—which would have been my own, sir, under the circumstances—and tellt her ladyship the plain facts. Weel then——"

"And what did Lady Cromarty say to you?" demanded Ned.

"Hardly a word. She simply looked at me and said she would send for Mr. Rattar."

Not a whit rebuffed, Mr. Bisset straightway resumed his narrative.

"A perfectly proper principle if the man was capable of telling the truth. I'm no blaming her ladyship at that point, but where she departit from the proper principles of evidence——"

"When did Rattar come?"

"This morning," said Cicely. "And—can you believe it?—he absolutely denied that he had ever advised me to go away!"

"I can believe it," said Ned grimly. "And I suppose Lady Cromarty believed him?"

"God, but you're right, sir!" cried Bisset. "Your deductions are perfectly correct. Yon man had the impudence to give the haill thing a flat denial! And then naturally Miss Farmond was for off, but at first her ladyship was no for letting her go. Indeed she went the length of sending for me and telling me the young lady was not to be permitted to shift her luggage out of the house or use any conveyance."

"But Bisset was splendid!" cried Cicely. "Do you know what the foolish man did? He gave up his situation and took me away!"

Bisset, the man, permitted a gleam of pleasure to illuminate his blunt features; but Bisset, the philosopher, protested with some dignity.

"It was a mere matter of principle, sir. Detention of luggage like yon is no legal. I tellt her ladyship flatly that she'd find herself afore the Shirra', and that I was no going to abet any such proceedings. I further informed her, sir, of my candid opinion of Simon Rattar, and I said plainly that he was probably meaning to marry her and get the estate under his thumb, and these were the kind o' tricks rascally lawyers took in foolish women wi'."

"You told Lady Cromarty that!" exclaimed Ned. "And what did she say?"

"We had a few disagreeable passages, as it were, sir," said the philosopher calmly. "And then I borrowed yon trap and having advised Miss Farmond to come to Stanesland and she being amenable, I just brought her along to you."

"Oh, it was on your advice then?"

"Yes, sir."

Cicely and her host exchanged one fleeting glance and then looked extremely unconscious.

"She's derned wise!" said he to himself.

He held out his hand to the gratified counsellor.

"Well done, Bisset, you've touched your top form to-day, and I may tell you I've been wanting some one like you badly for a long while, if you are willing to stay on with me. Put that in your pipe, Bisset, and smoke over it! And now, you know your way, go and get yourself some tea, and a drink of the wildest poison you fancy!"

Hardly was the door closed behind him than the laird put his fate to the test as promptly and directly as he did most other things.

"I want you to stop on too, Cicely—for ever. Will you?"

Her eyes, shyly questioning for a moment and then shyly tender, answered his question before her lips had moved, and it would have been hard to convince them that the minutes which followed ever had a parallel within human experience.

A little later he confessed:

"Do you know, Cicely, I've always had a funky feeling that if I ever proposed my glass eye would drop out!"

The next event was the somewhat sudden entry of Lilian Cromarty, and that lady's self control was never more severely tested or brilliantly vindicated. One startled glance, and then she was saying, briskly, and with the old bright smile:

"A telegram for you, Ned."

"Thanks," said he. "By the way, here's the future Mrs. Ned—that's to say if she doesn't funk it before the wedding."

Lilian's welcome, Lilian's embrace, and Lilian's congratulations were alike perfect. Cicely wondered how people could ever have said the critical things of her which some of her acquaintances were unkind enough to say at times. As to Bisset's dictum regarding the lady in the castle, that was manifestly absurd on the face of it. Miss Cromarty was clearly overjoyed to hear of her brother's engagement.

"And now, Neddy dear!" cried the bright lady, "tell me how it all came about!"

Ned looked up from his telegram with a glint in his eye that was hardly a lover's glance.

"Cicely will tell you all about it," said he. "I'm afraid I've got to be off pretty well as quick as I can."

He handed them the wire and they read: "Meet me eight to-night Kings Arms urgent. Carrington."

"From Mr. Carrington!" exclaimed his sister.

Ned smiled.

"Cicely will explain him too," he said. "By Gad, I wonder if this is going to be the finishing bit of luck!"

In another twenty minutes the lights of his gig lamps were raking the night.



XXXVIII

TRAPPED

Cromarty and Carrington slipped unostentatiously out of the hotel a few minutes after eight o'clock.

"Take any line you like," said Carrington, "but as he knows now that you brought Miss Farmond back and have heard her version, he'll naturally be feeling a little uncomfortable about the place where one generally gets kicked, when he sees you march in. He will expect you to open out on that subject, so if I were you I'd take the natural line of country and do what he expects."

"Including the kicking?"

Carrington laughed.

"Keep him waiting for that. Spin it out; that's your job to-night."

"I wish it were more than talking!" said Ned.

"Well," drawled Carrington, "it may lead to something more amusing. Who knows? You haven't bought your own gun, I suppose? Take mine."

He handed him the same little article he had taken out the night before, and Ned's eye gleamed.

"What!" said he. "That kind of gun once more? This reminds me of old times!"

"It's a mere precaution," said the other. "Don't count on using it! Remember, you're going to visit the most respectable citizen of the town—perhaps on a wild goose errand."

"I guess not," said Ned quietly.

"We daren't assume anything. I don't want to make a fool of myself, and no more do you, I take it."

"I see," said Ned, with a nod. "Well, I'll keep him in his chair for you."

"That's it."

They were walking quickly through the silent town under the windy night sky. It was a dark boisterous evening, not inviting for strollers, and they scarcely passed a soul till they were in the quiet road where the villa stood. There, from the shadows of a gateway, two figures moved out to meet them, and Cromarty recognised Superintendent Sutherland and one of his constables. The two saluted in silence and fell in behind. They each carried, he noticed, something long-shaped wrapped up loosely in sacking.

"What have they got there?" he asked.

"Prosaic instruments," smiled Carrington. "I won't tell you more for fear the gamble doesn't come off."

"Like the sensation before one proposes, I suppose," said Ned. "Well, going by that, the omens ought to be all right."

They turned in through Simon's gates and then the four stopped.

"We part here," whispered Carrington. "Good luck!"

"Same to you," said Ned briefly, and strode up the drive.

As he came out into the gravel sweep before the house, he looked hard into the darkness of the garden, but beyond the tossing shapes of trees, there was not a sign of movement.

"Mr. Rattar in?" he enquired. "Sitting in the library I suppose? Take me right to him. Cromarty's my name."

"Mr. Cromarty to see you, sir," announced Mary, and she was startled to see the master's sudden turn in his chair and the look upon his face.

"Whether he was feared or whether he was angered, I canna rightly say," she told cook, "but anyway he looked fair mad like!"

"Good evening," said Ned.

His voice was restrained and dry, and as he spoke he strode across the room and seated himself deliberately in the arm chair on the side of the fire opposite to the lawyer.

Simon had banished that first look which Mary saw, but there remained in his eyes something more than their usual cold stare. Each day since Carrington came seemed to have aged his face and changed it for the worse: a haggard, ugly, malicious face it seemed to his visitor looking hard at it to-night. His only greeting was a briefer grunt than ordinary.

"I daresay you can guess what's brought me here," said Ned.

The lawyer rapped out his first words jerkily.

"No. I can't."

"Try three guesses," suggested his visitor. "Come now, number one——?"

For a moment Simon was silent, but to-night he could not hide the working of that face which usually hid his thoughts so effectually. It was plain he hesitated what line to take.

"You have seen Miss Farmond, I hear," he said.

"You're on the scent," said his visitor encouragingly. "Have another go."

"You believe her story."

"I do."

"It's false."

Ned stared at him very hard and then he spoke deliberately.

"I'm wondering," said he.

"Wondering what?" asked Simon.

"Whether a horse whip or the toe of a shooting boot is the best cure for your complaint."

The lawyer shrank back into his chair.

"Do you threaten me?" he jerked out. "Be careful!"

"If I threatened you I'd certainly do what I threatened," said Ned. "So far I'm only wondering. Where did you learn to lie, Mr. Rattar?"

The lawyer made no answer at all. His mind seemed concentrated on guessing the other's probable actions.

"Out with it, man! I've met some derned good liars in my time, but you beat the lot. I'm anxious to know where you learned the trick, that's all."

"Why do you believe her more than me?" asked Simon.

"Because you've been found out lying before. That was a pretty stiff one about your engaging Carrington, wasn't it?"

Simon was quite unable to control his violent start, and his face turned whiter.

"I—I didn't say I did," he stammered.

"Well," said Ned, "I admit I wasn't there to hear you, but I know Carrington made you put your foot fairly in it just by way of helping him to size you up, and he got your size right enough too."

"Then——" began Simon, and stopped and changed it into: "What does Carrington suspect—er—accuse me of?"

Ned stared at him for several seconds without speaking, and this procedure seemed to disconcert the lawyer more than anything had done yet.

"What—what does Carrington mean?" he repeated.

"He means you've lied, and he believes Miss Farmond, and he believes Sir Malcolm, and he believes me, and he puts you down as a pretty bad egg. What did you expect to be accused of?"

Simon could no more hide his relief to-night than he could hide his fears.

"Only of what you have told me—only of course of what you say! But I can explain. In good time I can explain."

It was at that moment that the door opened sharply and the start the lawyer gave showed the state of his nerves after Mr. Cromarty's handling. Mary MacLean stood in the doorway, her face twitching.

"What's the matter?" snapped her master.

"Please, sir, there are men in the garden!" she cried.

The lawyer leapt to his feet.

"Men in the garden!" he cried, and there was a note in his voice which startled even tough Ned Cromarty. "What are they doing?"

"I don't know, sir. It sounded almost as if they was digging."

Simon swayed for an instant and grasped the back of his chair. Then in a muffled voice he muttered:

"I'm going to see!"

He had scarcely made a step towards the door when Cromarty was on his feet too.

"Steady!" he cried. "Get out there, and shut the door!"

The towering form and formidable voice sent Mary out with a shut door between them almost as the command was off his tongue. A couple of strides and he had got the lawyer by the shoulder and pulled him back.

"Sit down!" he commanded.

Simon turned on him with a new expression. The terror had passed away and he stood there now as the sheer beast at bay.

"Damn you!" he muttered, and turned his back for a moment.

The next, his hand rose and simultaneously Ned's arm shot out and got him by the wrist, while the shock of his onslaught drove the man back and down into his chair. Though Simon was tough and stoutly built, he was as a child in the hands of his adversary. A sharp twist of the wrist was followed by an exclamation of pain and the thud of something heavy on the floor. Ned stooped and picked up the globular glass match box that had stood on the table. For a few moments he stared at it in dead silence, balancing it in his hands. It was like a small cannon ball for concentrated weight. Then in a curious voice he asked:

"Is this the first time you have used this?"

Simon made no reply. His face was dead white now, but dogged and grim, and his mouth stayed tight as a trap. Ned replaced the match box on the table, and planted himself before the fire.

"Nothing to say?" he asked, and Simon said nothing.

They remained like this for minute after minute; not a movement in the room and the booming of the wind the only sound. And then came footsteps on the gravel and the ringing of a bell.

"We'll probably learn something now," said Ned, but the other still said nothing, and only a quick glance towards the door gave a hint of his thoughts.

There was no announcement this time. Superintendent Sutherland entered first, then the constable, and Carrington last. The superintendent went straight up to the lawyer, his large face preternaturally solemn. Touching him on the shoulder he said:

"I arrest you in the King's name!"

The man in the chair half started up and then fell back again.

"What for?" he asked huskily.

"The murder of Simon Rattar."

The lawyer took it as one who had seen the sword descending, but not so Ned Cromarty.

"Of Simon Rattar!" he shouted. "What the—then who the devil is this?"

Carrington answered. He spoke with his usual easy smile, but his triumphant eye betrayed his heart.

"The superintendent has omitted part of the usual formalities," he said. "This person should have been introduced as Mr. George Rattar."

"George!" gasped Ned. "But I thought he was dead!"

"So did I," said Carrington, "but he wasn't."

"What proof have you of this story?" demanded the man in the chair suddenly.

"We have just dug up your brother's body from that flower bed," said Carrington quietly. "Do you recognise his ring?"

He held up a gold signet ring, and the lawyer fell back in his chair.

"But look here!" exclaimed Ned, "what about Sir Reginald's murder? He did that too, I suppose!"

Carrington nodded.

"We hope to add that to his account in a day or two. This is enough to be going on with, but as a matter of fact we have nearly enough evidence now to add the other charge."

"I can add one bit," said Ned, picking up the match box. "He has just tried to do me in with this little thing, and I take it, it was the third time of using."

Carrington weighed it in his hand, and then said to the prisoner:

"You put it in the end of a stocking, I suppose?"

The man looked up at him with a new expression in his eye. If it were not a trace of grim humour, it was hard to say what else it could be.

"Get me a drink," he said huskily, nodding towards the tantalus on the side table, "and I'll tell you the whole damned yarn. My God, I'm dry as a damned bone!"

"Give me the key of the tantalus," said Carrington promptly.

But the superintendent seemed somewhat taken aback.

"Anything you say may be used against you," he reminded the prisoner.

"You know enough to swing me, anyhow," said Rattar, "but I'd like you to know that I didn't really mean to do it. I want that drink first though!"

He took the glass of whisky and water and as he raised it to his lips, that same curious look came back into his eye.

"Here's to the firm of S. and G. Rattar, and may their clients be as damned as themselves!" he said with a glance at Cromarty, and finished the drink at a draught.



XXXIX

THE YARN

"I needn't trouble you with my adventures before I came down here to visit brother Simon," began the prisoner, "for you know them well enough. It was about a month ago when I turned up at this house one night."

"How did you get here?" demanded the superintendent.

"I did the last bit under the seat of the carriage," grinned Rattar, "and when we got into the station I hopped out on the wrong side of the train. The way I paid my fare wasn't bad either, considering I hadn't half of the fare from London in my pocket when I started—or anything like it. However, the point is I got here and just as I'd come through the gates I had the luck to see both the maids going out. So the coast was clear.

"Well, I rang the bell and out came Simon—the man who'd got me convicted, and my own brother too, mind you!—looking as smug as the hard-hearted old humbug he was. He got the shock of his life when he saw who it was, but I began gently and I put a proposition to him. I'll bet none of you will guess what it was!"

He looked round the company, and Carrington answered:

"Blackmail of some sort."

"You may call it blackmail if you like, but what was the sort? Well, you'd never guess. I was wearing a beard and moustaches then, but I knew if I took them off I'd look so like Simon that no one meeting one of us would know which it was, supposing we were dressed exactly alike and I did Simon's grunting tricks and all that. And Simon knew it too.

"'Well, Simon, my dear brother,' I said to him, 'I'll make you a sporting proposition. My idea is to settle down in this old place, and I'm so fond of you I mean to shave, get an outfit just like yours, and give free rein to my affection for you. I'm so fond of you,' I said, 'that I know I shan't be able to keep more than five yards away from you whenever you are walking the streets, and I'll have to sit in church beside you, Simon. That's my present programme.'

"I let that sink in, and then I went on:

"'Supposing this programme embarrasses you, Simon, well there's one way out of it, and I leave it to your judgment to say what it is.'

"Now, mind you, I'd banked on this coming off, for I knew what a stickler Simon was for the respectable and the conventional and all that. Can't you see the two of us going through the streets together, five yards apart and dressed exactly alike! Wouldn't the small boys have liked it! That was my only idea in coming down here. I meant no more mischief, I'll swear to that! Unfortunately, though, I'd got so keen on the scheme that I hadn't thought of its weak spot.

"Simon said not a word, but just looked at me—exactly as I've been looking at people since I took his place in society. And then he asked me if I was really very hard up. Like a fool I told him the plain truth, that I had inside of five bob in my pockets and that was every penny I owned in the world.

"He grinned then—I can see him grinning now—and he said:

"'In that case you'll have a little difficulty in paying your board and lodging here, and still more in buying clothes. I tell you what I'll do,' he said, 'I'll buy a ticket back to London for you and leave it with the stationmaster, and that's every penny you'll ever get out of me!'

"I saw he had me, but I wasn't going off on those terms. I damned him to his face and he tried to shut the door on me. We were talking at the front door all this while, I may mention. I got my foot in the way, and as I was always a bit stronger than Simon, I had that door open after a tussle and then I followed him into the library.

"I knew the man was hard as flint and never showed mercy to any one in his life when he had them on toast, and I knew he had me on toast. How was I to get any change out of him? That was what I was wondering as I followed him, and then all at once something—the devil if you like—put the idea into my head. I'd be Simon!"

He looked round on his audience as though he still relished the memory of that inspiration.

"The beauty of the idea was that no one would ever dream of suspecting a man of not being himself! They might suspect him of a lot of things, but not of that. I hadn't thought of the scheme ten seconds before I realised how dead safe it was so long as I kept my head. And I have kept it. No one can deny that!"

His glance this time challenged a contradiction, but no one spoke. The circle of steadfast eyes and silent lips he seemed to take as a tribute to his address, for he smiled and then went on:

"Yes, I kept my head from the beginning. I stood talking to him in this very room, he refusing to answer anything except to repeat that he'd buy a ticket to London and leave it with the stationmaster, and I working out the scheme—what to do it with and how to manage afterwards. I knew it was a swinging risk, but against that was a starving certainty, and then I spied that match box and the thing was settled. I got him to look the other way for a moment—and then he was settled. Give me another drink!"

Carrington got him a drink and he gulped it down, and then turned suddenly on Ned Cromarty.

"Your damned glass eye has been getting on my nerves long enough!" he exclaimed. "My God, that eye and your habit of hanging people—I've had enough of them! Can't you turn it away from me?"

"Won't turn," said Ned coolly, "spring broken. Get on with your story!"

Even in his privileged position as prisoner, Rattar seemed disinclined to have trouble with his formidable ex-client. He answered nothing, but turned his shoulder to him and continued:

"After that was over I set about covering my tracks. The first part was the worst. Before the maids came back I had to get Simon stowed away for the night—no time to bury him then of course, and I had to get into his clothes, shave, and learn the lie of the house and all that. I did it all right and came down to breakfast next morning and passed muster with the servants, and never a suspicion raised!"

"There was a little," remarked Carrington, "but never enough."

"Not enough was good enough!"

"I am not quite certain of that," said Carrington. "However, go on. Your next bunker was the office."

The prisoner nodded.

"It took some nerve," he said complacently, "and I'm free to confess that to begin with I always had a beastly feeling that some one was watching me and spotting something that didn't look quite right, but, good Lord, keeping my head the way I kept it, there was nothing to worry about! Who would ever think that the Simon Rattar who walked into his office and grunted at his clerks on Wednesday morning, wasn't the same Simon Rattar who walked in and grunted on Tuesday morning? And then I had one tremendous pull in knowing all the ropes from old days. Simon was a conservative man, nothing was ever changed—not even the clerks, so I had the whole routine at my fingers. And he was an easy man to imitate too. That was where I scored again. I daresay I have inherited some of the same tricks myself. I know I found them come quite easy—the stare and the silence and the grunts and the rest of them. And then I always had more brains than Simon and could pick up business quicker. You should have heard me making that ass Malcolm Cromarty, and the Farmond girl, and this hangman with the glass eye tell me all about themselves and what their business was, without their ever suspecting they were being pumped! For, mind you, I'd never set eyes on Malcolm Cromarty or the Farmond girl before in my life! No, it wasn't at the office I had the nastiest time. It was burying the body that night."

The boastful smile died off his lips and for a moment he shivered a little.

"What happened about that?" enquired Carrington keenly.

Rattar's voice instinctively fell a little.

"When I got home that afternoon I found he wasn't quite dead after all!"

"That accounts for it!" murmured Carrington.

"For what?"

"Your maid heard him moving."

The prisoner seemed to have recovered from his passing emotion.

"And I told her it was a rat, and she swallowed it!" he laughed. "Well, he didn't move for long, and I had fixed up quite a good scheme for getting him out of the house. A man was to call for old papers. I even did two voices talking in the hall to make the bluff complete! Not being able to get his ring off his finger rather worried me, but I put that right by an advertisement in the paper saying I'd lost it!"

He was arrested by the look on Carrington's face.

"What happened?" he exclaimed. "Do you mean to say that gave me away?"

"Those superfluous precautions generally give people away."

"But how?"

"It doesn't matter now. You'll learn later. What next?"

"Next?" said Rattar. "Well, I just went on keeping my head and bluffing people——" he broke off, looked at Superintendent Sutherland, and gave a short laugh. "I only lost my nerve a bit once, and that was when the glass-eyed hangman butted in and said he was going to get down a detective. It struck me then it was time I was off—and what's more, I started!"

The superintendent's mouth fell open.

"You—you weren't the man——" he began.

"Yes," scoffed the prisoner, "I was the man with toothache in that empty carriage. I'd got in at the wrong side after the ticket collector passed and just about twenty seconds before you opened the door. But the sight of your red face made me change my plans, and I was out again before that train started! A bright policeman you are! After that I decided to stick it out and face the music; and I faced it."

His mouth shut tight and he sat back in his chair, his eyes travelling round the others as though to mark their unwilling admiration. He certainly saw it in the faces of the two open-eyed policemen, but Cromarty's was hard and set, and he seemed still to be waiting.

"You haven't told us about Sir Reginald yet," he said.

Rattar looked at him defiantly.

"No evidence there," he said with a cunning shake of his head, "you can go on guessing!"

"Would you like to smoke a pipe?" asked Carrington suddenly.

The man's eyes gleamed.

"By God, yes!"

"You can have one if you tell us about Sir Reginald. We've got you anyhow, and there will be evidence enough there too when we've put it together."

The superintendent looked a trifle shocked, but Carrington's sway over him was by this time evidently unbounded. He coughed an official protest but said nothing.

The prisoner only hesitated for a moment. He saw Carrington taking out a cigarette, and then he took out his keys and said:

"This is the key for that drawer. You'll find my pipe and baccy there. I'll tell you the rest." And then he started and exclaimed: "But how the h— did you know I smoked?"

"At five minutes past nine o'clock last night," said Carrington, as he handed him his pipe, "I was within three paces of you."

The prisoner stared at him with a wry face.

"You devil!" he murmured, and then added with some philosophy: "After all, I'd sooner be hanged than stop smoking." And with that he lit his pipe.

"You want to know about old Cromarty," he resumed. "Well, I made my first bad break when I carried on a correspondence with him which Simon had begun, not knowing they had had a talk between whiles cancelling the whole thing. You know about it and about the letter Sir Reginald sent me after I'd written. Well, when I got that letter I admit it rattled me a bit. I've often wondered since whether he had really suspected anything or whether he would have sooner or later. Anyhow I got it into my head that the game was up if something didn't happen. And so it happened."

"You went and killed him?" said Ned.

"That's for you and your glass eye to find out!" snapped the prisoner.

"Take his pipe away," said Carrington quietly.

"Damn it!" cried Rattar, "I'll tell you, only I'm fed up with that man's bullying! I put it in a stocking" (he nodded towards the match box) "just as you guessed and I went out to Keldale that night. My God, what a walk that was in the dark! I'd half forgotten the way down to the house and I thought every other tree was a man watching me. I don't know yet how I got to that library window. I remembered his ways and I thought he'd be sitting up there alone; but it was just a chance, and I'd no idea I'd have the luck to pick a night when he was sleeping in his dressing room. Give me another drink!"

Carrington promptly brought one and again it vanished almost in a gulp.

"Well, I saw him through a gap in the curtains and I risked a tap on the glass. My God, how surprised he was to see me standing there! I grinned at him and he let me in, and then——" He broke off and fell forward in his chair with his face in his hands. "This whisky has gone to my head!" he muttered. "You've mixed it too damned strong!"

Ned Cromarty sprang up, his face working. Carrington caught him by the arm.

"Let's come away," he said quietly. "We've heard everything necessary. You can't touch him now."

Cromarty let him keep his arm through his as they went to the door.

"I'll send a cab up for you in a few minutes," Carrington added to the superintendent.

They left the prisoner still sitting muttering into his hands.



XL

THE LAST CHAPTER

On their way down to the hotel Ned Cromarty only spoke once, and that was to exclaim:

"If I'd only known when I had him alone! Why didn't you tell me more before I went in?"

"For your own sake," said Carrington gently. "The law is so devilish undiscriminating. Also, I wasn't absolutely certain then myself."

They said nothing more till they were seated in Carrington's sitting room and his employer had got a cigar between his teeth and pushed away an empty tumbler.

"I'm beginning to feel a bit better," said he. "Fire away now and tell me how you managed this trick. I'd like to see just how derned stupid I've been!"

"My dear fellow, I assure you you haven't! I'm a professional at this game, and I tell you honestly it was at least as much good luck as good guidance that put me on to the truth at last."

"I wonder what you call luck," said Ned. "Seems to me you were up against it all the time! You've told me how you caught Rattar lying at the start. Well, that was pretty smart of you to begin with. Then, what next? How did things come?"

"Well," said Carrington, "I picked up a little something on my first visit to Keldale. From Bisset's description I gathered that the body must have been dragged along the floor and left near the door. Why? Obviously as a blind. Adding that fact to the unfastened window, the broken table, the mud on the floor, and the hearth brush, the odds seemed heavy on entry by the window. I also found that the middle blind had been out of order that night and that it might have been quite possible for any one outside to have seen Sir Reginald sitting in the room and known he was alone there. Again, it seemed long odds on his having recognised the man outside and opened the window himself, which, again, pointed to the man being some one he knew quite well and never suspected mischief from."

"Those were always my own ideas, except that I felt bamboozled where you felt clear—which shows the difference between our brains!"

Carrington laughed and shook his head.

"I wish I could think so! No, no, it's merely a case of every man to his own trade. And as a matter of fact I was left just as bamboozled as you were. For who could this mysterious man be? Of the people inside the house, I had struck out Miss Farmond, Bisset, Lady Cromarty, and all the female servants. Only Sir Malcolm was left. I wired for him to come up and was able to score him out too. I also visited you and scored you out. So there I was—with no conceivable criminal!"

"But you'd already begun to suspect Rattar, hadn't you?"

"I knew he had lied about engaging me; I discovered from Lady Cromarty that he had told her of Sir Malcolm's engagement to Miss Farmond—and I suspected he had started her suspicions of them; and I saw that he was set on that theory, in spite of the fact that it was palpably improbable if one actually knew the people. Of course if one didn't, it was plausible enough. When I first came down here it seemed to me a very likely theory and I was prepared to find a guilty couple, but when I met Miss Farmond and told her suddenly that Sir Malcolm was arrested, and she gazed blankly at me and asked 'What for?' well, I simply ran my pencil, so to speak, through her name and there was an end of her! The same with Sir Malcolm when I met him. And yet here was the family lawyer, who knew them both perfectly, so convinced of their guilt that he was obviously stifling investigation in any other direction. And on top of all that, all my natural instincts and intuitions told me that the man was a bad hat."

"But didn't all that make you suspect him?"

"Of what? Of leaving his respectable villa at the dead of night, tramping several miles at his age in the dark, and deliberately murdering his own best client and old friend under circumstances so risky to himself that only a combination of lucky chances saw him safely through the adventure? Nothing—absolutely nothing but homicidal mania could possibly account for such a performance, and the man was obviously as sane as you or I. I felt certain that there was something wrong somewhere, but as for suspecting him of being the principal in the crime, the idea was stark lunacy!"

"By George, it was a tough proposition!" said Ned. "By the way, had you heard of George Rattar at that time?"

"Oh, yes, I heard of him, and knew they resembled one another, but as I was told that he had left the place for years and was now dead, my thoughts never even once ran in that direction until I got into a state of desperation, and then I merely surmised that his misdeeds might have been at the bottom of some difficulty between Simon and Sir Reginald."

"Then how on earth did you ever get on to the right track?"

"I never would have if the man hadn't given himself away. To begin with, he was fool enough to fall in with my perfectly genuine assumption that he was either employing me or acting for my employer. No doubt he stood to score if the bluff had come off, and he banked on your stipulation that your name shouldn't appear. But if he had only been honest in that matter, my suspicions would never have started—not at that point anyhow."

"That was Providence—sure!" said Ned with conviction.

"I'm inclined to think it was," agreed Carrington. "Then again his advice to Sir Malcolm and Miss Farmond was well enough designed to further his own scheme of throwing suspicion on them, but it simply ended in his being bowled out both times, and throwing suspicion on himself. But the precaution which actually gave him away was putting in that advertisement about his ring."

"I was just wondering," said Ned, "how that did the trick."

"By the merest fluke. I noticed it when I was making enquiries at the Police Office on quite different lines, but you can imagine that I switched off my other enquiries pretty quick when Superintendent Sutherland calmly advanced the theory that the ring was stolen when Rattar's house was entered by some one unknown on the very night of the murder!"

"This is the first I've heard of that!" cried Ned.

"It was the first I had, but it led me straight to Rattar's house and a long heart to heart talk with his housemaid. That was when I collected that extraordinary mixed bag of information which I was wondering yesterday whether to believe or not. Here are the items, and you can judge for yourself what my state of mind was when I was carrying about the following precious pieces of information."

He ticked the items off on his fingers.

"A mysterious man who entered the garden one night and left his footprints in the gravel, and whose visit had a strange and mysterious effect on Rattar. Funny feelings produced in the bosom of the housemaid by the presence of her master. Doors of unused rooms mysteriously locked and keys taken away; said to be old papers inside. Mysterious visit of mysterious man at dead of night to remove the said papers. A ring that couldn't come off the owner's finger mysteriously lost. Mysterious burglary on night of the murder by mysterious burglar who left all windows and doors locked behind him and took nothing away. Mysterious perambulations of his garden every night at nine o'clock by Mr. Simon Rattar."

"Great Scot!" murmured Cromarty.

"I have given you the items in what turned out to be their order of date, but I got them higgledy-piggledy and served up in a sauce of mystery and trembly sensations that left me utterly flummoxed as to how much—if anything—was sober fact. However, I began by fastening on to two things. The first was the burglary, which of course at once suggested the possibility that the man who had committed the crime at Keldale had returned to Rattar's house and got in by that window. The second was the nightly perambulations, which could easily be tested. When Mr. Rattar emerged at nine that night, I was in the garden before him. And what do you think he did?"

"Had a look at his brother's grave?"

"Smoked two pipes of tobacco! A man who was an anti-tobacco fanatic! The truth hit me straight in the eye—'That man is not Simon Rattar!' And then of course everything dropped into its place. The ex-convict twin brother, the only evidence of whose supposititious death was an announcement in the paper, obviously put in as a blind. The personal resemblance between the two. All the yarns told me by the housemaid, including the strange visitor—George of course arriving; the man who came for the papers—George himself taking out the body; and the vanished ring. Everything fitted in now, and the correspondence between Sir Reginald and Rattar which had beaten me before, gave the clue at once as to motive."

"I guess you felt you had deserved a drink that trip!" said Ned.

"I didn't stop to have my drink. I went straight off to see old Ison and pumped him for the rest of the evening. He wasn't very helpful but everything I could get out of him went to confirm my theory. I found for certain that Simon Rattar had never smoked in his life, and that George used to be a heavy smoker. I also learned that a few recent peculiarities of conduct had struck the not too observant Ison, one being very suggestive. Rattar, it seemed, kept an old pair of kid gloves in his desk which he was in the habit of wearing when he was alone in the office."

"Don't quite see the bearing of that."

"Well, on my hypothesis it was to avoid leaving finger marks. You see George was an ex-convict. It was a very judicious precaution too, and made it extremely difficult to catch him out by that means, for one could scarcely approach a respectable solicitor and ask him for an impression of his fingers! And anyhow, nothing could be definitely proved against him until we had found Simon's body. That was the next problem. Where had he hidden it?"

"And how did you get at that?"

"Guessed it. At first my thoughts went too far afield, but when I went over the times mentioned in the maid's story of the man who took away the papers, and the fact that she heard no sound of a wheeled vehicle, I realised that he must have simply planted it in one of the flower beds. This morning I prodded them all with a stout walking stick and found the spot. Then I talked like a father to old Sutherland and fixed everything up with him. And then I sent my wire to you."

"And you deliberately tell me you got there as much by good luck as good guidance?"

Carrington's eyes thoughtfully followed his smoke rings.

"I can see the luck at every turn," he answered, "and though I'd like to believe in the guidance, I'm hanged if it's quite as distinct!"

"If you are telling me the neat, unvarnished truth, Carrington," said his admiring employer, "I can only say that you've a lot to learn about your own abilities—and I hope to Heaven you'll never learn it!"

"But I assure you there are some people who think me conceited!"

"There are guys of all sorts in the world," said Ned. "For instance there's a girl who has mistaken me for a daisy, and I've got to get back to her now. Good night! I won't say 'Thanks' because I can't shout it loud enough."

When his gig lamps had flashed up the silent street and Carrington had turned back from the pavement into the hotel, he met his friend Miss Peterkin.

"Mr. Cromarty's late to-night," said she. "A fine gentleman that! I always say there are few like Mr. Cromarty of Stanesland."

"That's lucky for me," said Carrington with a smile that puzzled her a little. "My business in life would be gone if there were!"

THE END