Colwyn smiled slightly. He was not unacquainted with Merrington's methods of cross-examination.

"You could have spoken to Detective Caldew, the other officer engaged in the case," he said.

"Young Tom Caldew!" exclaimed the butler, in manifest surprise.

"You know him then?"

"I know him, but I cannot say I know any good of him," rejoined the butler severely. "Young Tom Caldew was born and bred in this village, and an idle young vagabond he was. Many a time have I dusted his jacket for stealing chestnuts in our park. The place was well rid of him, I take it, when he ran away to London and joined the police force. No, sir, I really couldn't see myself confiding in young Tom Caldew."

"And why have you confided in me now?"

"Well, sir, it was the arrest of the young woman that set me thinking, and caused me to wonder whether I'd done right in keeping this back. What I thought I saw that night may have been merely fancy on my part, but it took on an added importance in my mind when Miss Rath was arrested for murdering Mrs. Heredith. It seemed to me as though I might be doing some sort of injustice to her by not telling about it, and I wouldn't like to have that on my conscience after the way things turned out. But I thought it was too late to say anything after they had arrested Miss Rath and taken her away. Then Mr. Philip got better from his illness and went to London to fetch you. The same evening I heard Miss Heredith and Mr. Musard talking at the dinner table about the murder, and I gathered from what they said that Mr. Philip thought the detectives had made a mistake in arresting Miss Rath. Then I decided to tell you when you arrived, but I couldn't summon up my courage to do so until now," concluded the butler simply. "I hope I have done right, sir."

"You have certainly done right in not keeping the story to yourself any longer," said Colwyn. "Before I leave here you had better show me the place in the woods where you thought you saw this man."

"I shall be happy to do so, sir. I should like to thank you for listening to me. It is a weight off my mind."

"I shall be going almost immediately," continued Colwyn. "I think the best plan will be for you to meet me in the carriage drive, near the spot. Can you manage that?"

"Quite easily, sir."

"Excellent. And now, as you go downstairs, I should be glad if you would tell Mr. Musard that I should like to see him in my room before I go."

"Very well, sir. Afterwards you will find me waiting at the bend of the carriage drive where it winds round the lake."

Colwyn nodded his comprehension, and Tufnell left the room with a relieved countenance. A few moments later there was another knock at the door. In response to Colwyn's invitation the door opened, and Musard appeared.

"Tufnell said you wished to see me," he said, with an inquiring glance from beneath his dark brows.

"Yes. I should be glad if you would give me a description of the missing necklace. It will be useful in tracing it."

"It is not difficult to describe," replied Musard, seating himself on the edge of the bed. "It consisted of a single row of pink pearls, none of them very large. The biggest is about forty grains, and the others between twenty and thirty. It has a diamond clasp, set in antique gold, which is the most valuable part of the necklace. Do you know anything about jewels?"

"A little."

"Then you are aware that blue and red diamonds are the most valuable of stones. This diamond is a blue one—not very large, but a particularly fine stone."

"Of course the necklace is well-known to jewel experts?"

"As well-known as any piece of jewellery in Europe. Some of the pearls in it are hundreds of years old. It would be almost impossible for the thief to dispose of the necklace."

"It might be taken to pieces," suggested Colwyn.

"In order to hide its identity? Well, yes, but the selling value would be greatly reduced. The pearls have been strung."

"What about the diamond? Could not that be sold by the thief without risk of discovery?"

"Only by sending it to Amsterdam to get it cut into two or three smaller stones, so as to lessen the risk of detection. The Heredith blue diamond is known to many connoisseurs. It is cut in an unusual form—a kind of irregular rosette, in order to display its fire and optical properties to the best advantage. If it were cut it would lose a great deal of its value. The money value of one large diamond of first quality is very much greater than the same stone cut into three. But it would be difficult to sell the diamond in its present form. The chances are that it would be recognized in Hatton Garden—if it were offered for sale there."

"But if the diamond fell into the hands of somebody with a knowledge of precious stones he might keep it close for a while and then dispose of it abroad—in America, for instance," returned Colwyn. "That trick has been performed with better-known stones than the Heredith diamond. In fact, it strikes me as possible to sell the whole necklace that way. The disposal of the necklace depends largely upon who stole it—upon whether it has fallen into experienced or inexperienced hands. There are jewel dealers who ask no awkward questions if they can get things at their own price."

"Quite so," assented Musard, casting a quick glance at his companion's face. "It would be a risk, though—the thief might pick the wrong man. I can give you the addresses of two or three men in Hatton Garden who should be able to tell you if the necklace has been offered there. They know everything that is going on in the trade."

"I shall be glad to have them."

Musard scribbled several names and addresses on a leaf of his pocket-book, tore it out, and handed it to the detective.

"There is a curious coincidence about the loss of this, necklace," he remarked casually, as he rose to go. "It is another example of the misfortune which attaches to the possession of a blue diamond."

"Are you thinking of the Hope blue diamond? That certainly has a sinister history."

"That is the most notorious instance. But all blue diamonds are unlucky. I could tell you some gruesome stories connected with them. The previous wearer of the Heredith necklace—Philip's mother—died in giving birth to him. Incidentally, there is a curious legend attached to the moat-house in the form of a curse laid on it by the original builder, who was burnt alive in the old house. He prophesied that as the house of the Herediths was founded in horror it should end in horror. These old family curses sometimes come home to roost after a long lapse of time, though modern cynicism affects to sneer at such fancies. Of course, there may be nothing in it, but we have had more than enough horror in the moat-house recently, and poor Mrs. Heredith had a blue diamond in her room when she was murdered. But I must not keep you any longer, Mr. Colwyn. If there has been any miscarriage of justice in this terrible case I trust that you will be successful in bringing it to light."

He lingered after shaking hands, as though he would have liked to continue the conversation. Apparently not finding sufficient encouragement in the detective's face to do so, he turned and left the room, and Colwyn resumed his preparations for departure.

When they were completed he, too, went downstairs, carrying his bag. Miss Heredith and Phil were waiting to bid farewell to him. As Miss Heredith said good-bye, she looked into his face with the perplexed expression of a simple soul seeking reassurance from a stronger mind in the deep vortex of extraordinary events into which she had been plunged beyond her depth. Phil looked white and ill, and the hand which he gave into the detective's cool firm grasp was hot and feverish. While his aunt murmured those conventional phrases under which women seek to cover the realities of life as they bedeck corpses with flowers, Phil stood aside with the impatient air of one scornful of the futility of such things. As Miss Heredith ceased speaking he took a step forward, his dark eyes fixed eagerly and searchingly on Colwyn.

"You will lose no time?" he said. "You will find out everything?"

"I have already promised you that I will continue my investigations," replied Colwyn. The quiet sincerity of his words was the indication of a mind which despised the weakness of mere verbal emphasis.

"Lose no time. Spare no money," said Phil rapidly. His words and utterance contrasted forcibly with the stillness and composure of the man he was addressing. "Think what it means! Let me know everything that happens. Send me telegrams. Follow this thing out night and day. I depend on you—"

"Phil, Phil!" remonstrated Miss Heredith. "Mr. Colwyn has already promised to do all he can. You must be patient."

"Patience! My God, don't talk to me of patience," retorted her nephew fiercely. "I shall have no patience nor peace till this thing is settled."

Miss Heredith looked at him sadly. His breach of good manners in uttering an oath in her presence hurt her worse than a blow, but her heart sickened with the realization that it was but another manifestation of the complete change in him which had been brought about by his wife's murder. Colwyn brought the scene to a close.

"Of course I shall communicate with you," he said to Phil, as he took his departure. Phil accompanied him to his car, and stood under the portico watching him as he drove away. Colwyn glanced back as he crossed the moat-house bridge. The young man was still standing in the open doorway, looking after him. The next moment the bend of the carriage way hid him from view.

Colwyn encountered Tufnell at the next bend of the drive, waiting for him on the path under the trees which bordered the edge. The detective pulled up his car and stepped out.

"It was just off here, sir, that I thought I saw the figure that night," said the butler.

He plunged into a leafy avenue which led off the path at right angles, and followed it into the wood until he reached the mossy trunk of a great oak, which flung a gnarled arm horizontally across the narrow walk as though barring further intrusion into its domain. Tufnell stopped, and turned to the detective.

"It seemed to me as though a man was crouching just about here, sir," he said in a whisper, as if he feared that the intruder might still be hiding there and overhear his words.

Colwyn carefully examined the spot. The moss and grass where he stood grew fresh underfoot, with no marks to suggest that they had been trodden on recently. But close by, behind the horizontal branch of the great oak, was a tangled patch of undergrowth and brambles, broken and pressed down in places, as though it had been entered by a human being. As Colwyn was looking at this place, his eye was attracted by a yellow speck in the background of green. It was a tiny fragment of khaki, caught on one of the bramble bushes.



CHAPTER XIX

Superintendent Merrington sat in his office at Scotland Yard, irascible with the exertions of a trying day which had made heavy inroads upon his temper and patience. He had several big cases on his hands, his time had been broken into by a series of visitors with grievances, and he had been called upon to adjust a vexatious claim of a woman attacked in the street by a police dog, while the animal was supposed to be on duty tracking a sacrilegious thief who had felled a priest in an oratory and bolted with the silver candlesticks from the altar.

The woman had gone mad from the shock and had been placed in a public asylum, where she had imagined herself to be a horse, and in that guise had neighed harmlessly, for some years, until cured by auto-suggestion by a rising young brain doctor who had devoted much time and study to her peculiar case. Her first act of returned reason was to bring a heavy claim for damages against Scotland Yard, and Merrington had fought it out that day with an avaricious lawyer who had taken up the case on the promise of an equal division of the spoils.

Merrington had preferred to pay rather than contest the suit in law, and he was exceedingly wroth in consequence. He was angry with the old woman for presuming to get cured, and angry with the brain doctor for curing her. He considered that the brain doctor had been guilty of a piece of meddlesome interference in restoring the old lady to so-called sanity in a world of fools, without achieving any object except robbery from the public funds by a rascally lawyer. To use Merrington's own words, expressed with intense exasperation to an astonished subordinate, the old woman was quite all right as a horse, comfortable and well-fed, and had probably got more out of life in that guise than she ever had as a human being, compelled to all sorts of shifts and contrivances and mean scrapings before her betters for a scanty living, with nothing but the work-house ahead of her. He concluded in a sort of grumbling epilogue that some people never knew when to leave well alone.

It was in no very amiable frame of mind, therefore, that he received Colwyn's card with a pencilled request for an immediate interview. Merrington disapproved of all private detectives as an unwarrantable usurpation of the functions of Scotland Yard, but he particularly disapproved of a private detective like Colwyn, whose popular renown was far greater than his own. But there were politic reasons for the extension of courtesy to him. The famous private detective was such a powerful rival that it was best to conciliate him with a little politeness, which cost nothing, and he had done Scotland Yard several good turns which at least demanded an outward show of gratitude. He had influence in the right quarter, too, and, altogether, was not a person to be lightly affronted. The consideration of these factors impelled Merrington to inform the waiting janitor that he would see Mr. Colwyn at once, and even caused him to crease his fat red features into a smile of welcome as he awaited his entrance.

When Colwyn appeared in the doorway the big man he had called to see got up from his swing-chair to shake hands with him. When his visitor was seated Merrington leaned back in his own chair and remarked, in his great rolling voice:

"What can I do for you, Mr. Colwyn?"

"Nothing personally. I have called to have a talk with you about the Heredith case."

The veneer of welcome disappeared from Merrington's face at this opening, though a large framed photograph of himself on the wall behind his chair continued to smile down at the private detective with unwonted amiability.

"Ah, yes, the Heredith case," he responded. "A strange affair, that. I investigated it personally. It was a pity you were not in it. There were points about that murder—distinct points. You would have enjoyed it."

Merrington's professional commiseration of Colwyn's ill-luck in missing an enjoyable murder was intended to convey a distinct rebuke to the other's presumption in discussing a case in which he had not been engaged. But Colwyn's next words startled Merrington out of his attitude of censorious dignity.

"I was not in the case at first, but I was called into it subsequently by the husband of the murdered woman. He is dissatisfied with the outcome. He thinks a mistake has been made in arresting the girl Hazel Rath."

The silence with which Merrington received this information was an involuntary tribute to his visitor, implying, as it did, that he knew Colwyn would not have come to see him without weighty reason for the support of what sounded like the repetition of a mere expression of opinion.

"I was reluctant to interfere until Mr. Heredith told me something which suggested that one of your men was in danger of underestimating an important clue," continued Colwyn. "That decided me. I went back with Mr. Heredith in my car the night before last. After my arrival at the moat-house I made an interesting discovery—quite by accident. I discovered that a pearl necklace which had been given to Mrs. Heredith by Sir Philip Heredith was missing from the jewel-case in which it had been locked. That jewel-case was in Mrs. Heredith's bedroom on the night she was murdered."

This piece of news was so unexpected that it caught Merrington off his guard.

"A jewel robbery as well as murder!" he ejaculated, in something like dismay.

"It looks like it. You will be able to form a better judgment when I have told you all the circumstances of the discovery."

Merrington had long ago convinced himself that the case he had worked up against Hazel Rath did not admit of the slightest possibility of doubt; and, like all obstinate men, he adhered to his convictions with additional strength in the face of anything tending to weaken them. As he recovered from his surprise at the private detective's piece of news, he listened to his account of the opening of the jewel-case with the wary air of one seeking a loop-hole in an unexpected obstacle. Before Colwyn had finished he had found it in the belief that Hazel Rath, and nobody else, had stolen the missing jewels.

"This girl is a thief as well as a murderer," was the manner in which he expressed his opinion when Colwyn had ceased speaking. "She has stolen the necklace."

"She may have done so, but it is too great an assumption to make without proof," returned Colwyn. "You must be perfectly well aware, Mr. Merrington, that this belated discovery is of the utmost importance to the Crown case, one way or the other. If you can prove that Hazel Rath stole the necklace, it gives you an unassailable case against her. If the necklace was stolen by somebody else, you are confronted with a new and strange aspect of this murder."

"Not to the extent of lessening the strength of the case against this girl," replied Merrington doggedly. "She was seen going to the staircase leading to Mrs. Heredith's room just before the murder; her brooch was found upstairs in the room; and the revolver and her handkerchief were found concealed in her mother's rooms. Add to that, her silence under accusation, and it is impossible to get away from the belief that she, and nobody else, murdered Mrs. Heredith."

"I am not attempting to controvert your theory or contradict your facts," rejoined Colwyn coldly. "My visit is to bring under your notice a fresh fact in the case which needs investigation. Whether that fact squares with your own theory or not, it is too important to be disregarded or overlooked. That is why I left the moat-house immediately I discovered it. I felt that you had been ignorantly misled, and that it was only right you should be told without delay."

Merrington was conscious of that evanescent feeling which men call gratitude. His impulse of thankfulness towards the man opposite him was all the keener for the realization that he would not have acted so generously if he had been in Colwyn's place. But his gratitude was speedily swallowed up by the knowledge that he had been led astray, and his anger was mingled with the determination to find a scapegoat.

"I am obliged to you for your information, although I do not attach quite so much importance to it as you do," was his careful rejoinder. "But I certainly blame Detective Caldew for not finding it out before you did. He made the original inquiries at the moat-house, and he seems to have made them very carelessly. He said nothing to the Chief Constable of Sussex or myself, when we arrived, about a jewel-case, locked or open."

"He didn't know himself."

"It was his duty to inquire. When he assured us, on the authority of Miss Heredith, that nothing was missing, I naturally assumed that he had made the proper inquiries. But I thank you for letting me know, and I shall, of course, have investigations made. But I should like to know why young Heredith interfered and brought you into the case?"

"For one thing, he has a strong belief in Hazel Rath's innocence."

"Mere sentiment," replied Merrington contemptuously. "Perhaps he's still sweet on the girl."

"There is more than that in it. There's the question of the revolver. Of course you are aware that he identified the revolver with which his wife was shot as the property of Captain Nepcote, a guest at the moat-house who left on the afternoon of the day on which Mrs. Heredith was murdered. Heredith does not accept your theory of the way in which Hazel Rath is supposed to have obtained the revolver. He does not think that Nepcote left the revolver behind him at the moat-house. He told Caldew this, but Caldew said the ownership of the revolver was a matter of no consequence."

"Caldew's a fool if he said that, and I wish I'd never allowed him to meddle in the case," replied Merrington forcibly. "I've had the police court proceedings against the girl put back for a week till the question of the ownership of the revolver could be settled. Now that it is decided I shall have Nepcote interviewed and questioned without delay."

"Before you try to trace the missing necklace?" The faint inflection of surprise in Colwyn's voice might have escaped a quicker ear than Merrington's.

"Scotland Yard will trace the necklace fast enough," he confidently declared. "I like to take things in their proper order. The next thing to do is to ascertain whether Nepcote left his revolver behind him at the moat-house, though I have not the least doubt that he did. The necklace is really a minor consideration. It merely provides another motive for the murder—cupidity as well as jealousy."

"Is that the way you regard it?" A less thick-skinned man than Merrington would this time have caught something more than surprise in the other's tone.

"Is there any other way of looking at it?"

"I would not like to venture an opinion in this case without more knowledge than I have at present," returned Colwyn in sober accents. "But so far as I have gone into it I should say that there are several things which seem to require more explanation. Nepcote's own actions seem to call for some investigation."

"You are surely not suggesting that Nepcote had anything to do with the murder or the robbery of the pearls?" said Merrington in an astonished voice. "That is quite impossible. He left the moat-house in the afternoon before the murder was committed, and went over to France that night."

"He didn't go to France that night. He stayed in London, and did not return to France until the following day."

Merrington was obviously startled at this unexpected information.

"This is news to me," he said gravely. "Where did you learn it?"

"From the War Office this morning. There is no possibility of mistake. Nepcote was in London on the night of the murder."

"He probably has an explanation, but what you have just told me is an additional reason for seeing and questioning Nepcote without delay, even if I have to send a man to France for the job."

"It will not be necessary for you to do that. Nepcote returned to London two days ago—sent over on some special mission. I ascertained that fact also from my friend at the War Office."

Merrington glanced at a small clock which stood on the desk in front of him.

"I will go immediately and see him myself," he said.

"I should like to accompany you."

"I shall be delighted to have you," replied Merrington with complete untruth. "I have Nepcote's address included in the list of guests who were at the moat-house at the time of the murder," he added, opening his pocket-book and hastily scanning it. "Ah, here it is—10 Sherryman Street. I'll send for a taxi-cab. Is there anything I can do for you in return for your kindness in bringing me this information?"

"I should be obliged if you would lend me a copy of the coroner's depositions in the Heredith case."

"With pleasure." Merrington touched a bell, and instructed the policeman who answered it to bring a typescript of the Heredith murder depositions and the revolver which figured as an exhibit in the case. "And tell somebody to call a taxi, Johnson," he added.

When Merrington and Colwyn emerged from the swing doors of the entrance a few moments later, a taxi-cab was waiting at the bottom of the stone steps, with a pockmarked driver leaning against the door of the vehicle, gazing moodily over the Thames Embankment. He received Merrington's instructions morosely, cranked his cab wearily, and was soon threading his way through the mazes of Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus with a contemptuous disregard for traffic regulations, due to his prompt recognition of the fact that he was carrying a high official of Scotland Yard who was above rules of the road regulated by mere police constables. He skimmed in a hazardous way along Regent Street, dipped into the network of narrower streets which lay between that haunt of the fox and the geese and Baker Street, and finally stopped abruptly outside a tall house which was one of a row in a quiet street which led into the highly fashionable locality of Sherryman Square.

Sherryman Street, in which the taxi-cab had stopped, was an offshoot and snobbish mean relation of Sherryman Square, which housed a duke, an ex-prime minister, and a fugitive king, to say nothing of several lesser notabilities, such as a High Court Judge or two, several baronets, and a war-time profiteer whose brand-new peerage had descended in the last heavy downpour of kingly honours. Because of their proximity to these great ones of the earth, the inhabitants of Sherryman Street assumed all the airs of exclusiveness which distinguished the residents of the superior neighbourhood, and parasitical house agents spoke of it with great respect because one end opened into the rarefied atmosphere of the Square. It was true that the other end was close to a slum, and there was a mews across the way, but these were small drawbacks compared to the social advantages.

Sherryman Street was full of gaunt, narrow houses, with prim fronts and narrow railed windows, let in segments, flats, and bachelor apartments. Number 10 was as like its fellows as one drab soul resembles another. Superintendent Merrington's ring at the doorbell brought forth an elderly woman with an expressionless face surmounted by a frilled white cap. She informed them in an expressionless voice that Captain Nepcote's apartments were on the second floor. Having said this much, she disappeared into a small lobby room off the entrance hall, leaving them free to enter.

A knock at the entrance door of the second-floor flat brought forth a manservant whose smart bearing and precision of manner suggested military training. He cautiously informed Superintendent Merrington, in reply to his question, that he was not sure if Captain Nepcote was at home, but he would go and see.

"Who shall I say, sir?" he asked, in unconscious contradiction of his statement.

Merrington stopped further parleying by impatiently pushing past the servant into the room.

"Go and tell your master I want to see him," he said, seating himself.

The servant looked angrily at the burly figure on the slender chair, and then, as though realizing his inability to eject him, he left the room without further speech.

The room they had entered was furnished in a style which suggested that its occupier had sufficient means or credit to gratify his tastes, which obviously soared no higher than racehorses and chorus girls. Pictures of the former adorned the wall in oak; the latter smirked at the beholder from silver frames on small tables. The room was handsomely furnished in a masculine way, although there was the suggestion of a feminine touch in the vases on the mantelpiece and some clusters of flowers in a bowl.

The door opened to admit a young man, who advanced towards his visitors with a questioning glance. His appearance, though military, was far from suggesting the sordid warfare of the trenches. He was well-groomed and handsome, and wore his spotless uniform with that touch of distinction which khaki lends to some men.

"Good afternoon," he said, and waited for them to announce the object of their visit.

"Are you Captain Nepcote?" Merrington asked.

"My name is Nepcote," was the response. "May I ask who you are?" His glance included both his visitors.

"My name is Merrington," responded that officer, answering for himself. "Superintendent Merrington, of Scotland Yard. This is Mr. Colwyn, a private detective," he added, as an afterthought. "I wish to ask you a few questions. I understand you were staying at the residence of Sir Philip Heredith when young Mrs. Heredith was murdered."

"That is not quite accurate," replied the young man. "I left the moat-house on the afternoon of the day that the murder was committed, and returned to London. What is it you wish to ask me? I am afraid I cannot enlighten you about the crime in any way, for I know nothing whatever about it. It came as a great shock to me when I heard of it."

"Is this your revolver?" said Merrington, producing the weapon and laying it on the table.

"Why, yes, it is," said the young man, picking it up and looking at it in unmistakable surprise. "Where did you get it?"

"Where did you have it last?" was Merrington's cautious rejoinder.

"Let me think," returned Nepcote thoughtfully. "Oh, I remember. The last time I saw it was at the moat-house on the day before my departure. We were using it for a little target practice in the gun-room downstairs."

"And what did you do with it afterwards?"

"That I cannot tell you," responded Nepcote. "I have no recollection of seeing it since. I have never thought about it."

"Nor missed it?"

"No. It is no use to me—it is not an Army revolver. But it seems to me that I must have left it in the moat-house gun-room after the target shooting. After we finished shooting some of us had a game of bagatelle on a table in the gun-room. I must have put the revolver down and forgotten all about it afterward. I have no recollection of taking it upstairs, and I have certainly never seen it since. Was it found in the gun-room?"

"It was found at the moat-house, at any rate. It was the weapon with which Mrs. Heredith was killed."

"What!" His exclamation rang out in horror and incredulity. "Why, it is impossible. The thing is a mere toy."

"A pretty dangerous toy—as it turned out," was the grim comment of Merrington.

"It seems incredible to me," persisted the young man. "It's very old, and you have to be very strong with the finger and thumb to make it revolve. And the cartridges are very small; only seven millimetres—about a quarter of an inch. I've had the old thing for years, but I never regarded it as a real fire-arm. I'd never have let the girls use it in the gun-room if I'd thought it was a dangerous weapon. Perhaps there is some mistake."

"There is no mistake," replied Merrington. "Mrs. Heredith was killed with that revolver, and no other. We were unable to establish the identity of the weapon until a day or two ago, and that is one of my reasons for calling on you to-day—to make quite sure of the identity and see if you could tell me where you left it."

"I have no doubt now that I must have left it behind me at the moat-house," responded Nepcote. "I was recalled to France and went away in a hurry. God forgive me for my carelessness. To think that it resulted in this terrible murder!" His face had gone suddenly white.

"Did you return to France that night?" asked Merrington carelessly.

"As a matter of fact, I did not. When I returned to London from Sussex I found another telegram here from the War Office extending my leave until the following day. I returned to France the next afternoon."

"Thank you, Captain Nepcote." Merrington, as he rose to go, held out his hand. It was evident that the statement about the telegram had cleared his mind of any suspicions he may have felt about the young man. As Nepcote shook hands he added: "You had better hold yourself in readiness to attend the police court inquiry, which will be held a week from to-day. I will send you a proper notification of time and place. All we need from you is the formal identification of the revolver."

"Is it essential that I should attend?" asked the young man anxiously. "I'd rather not be mixed up in the case at all, you know. Besides, I may have to return to France."

"Perhaps we shall be able to dispense with your evidence now that we have the facts," replied Merrington, after a moment's consideration. "I will see what can be done, and let you know. You had better give me your address in France, in case you have left England. It is necessary for me to know that, because the case has to some extent taken a new turn by the discovery that robbery as well as murder has been committed. A valuable necklace belonging to the murdered woman is missing."

Captain Nepcote had taken out his pocket-book while Merrington was speaking, in order to extract a card. As the other uttered the last sentence, the pocket-book half slipped from his fingers, and several other cards fluttered onto the table. Nepcote picked them up hastily, but not before Colwyn's quick glance had taken in their contents. It seemed to him something more than a coincidence that the name and address displayed in neat black lettering on one of the cards should be identical with one of the Hatton Garden addresses given him by Musard at the moat-house the previous day.



CHAPTER XX

Colwyn spent a couple of hours that night reading the depositions he had obtained from Merrington, and next morning he studied them afresh with a concentration which the incessant hum of London traffic outside was powerless to disturb. He was well aware that a report was a poor substitute for original impressions, but in the typewritten document before him lay the facts of the Heredith case so far as they were known. It was a clear and colourless transcription of the narrative of the witnesses, set down with a painstaking regard for the value of departmental records, and chiefly valuable to Colwyn because it contained the expert evidence which sometimes reveals, with the pitiless accuracy of science, what human nature endeavours to hide. In the balance of the scales of justice it is the ascertained truth which weighs heavier than faith, reason, or revealed religion.

When he had finished his study of the depositions, he sat awhile pondering over his own discoveries since he had been called into the case by the husband of the dead woman. These discoveries, due apparently to chance, invested the murder with a complexity which stimulated all the penetrative and analytical powers of his fine mind, because they brought with them the realization that he was face to face with one of those rare crimes where the solution has to be unravelled from a tangle of false circumstances, which, by their seeming plausibility, make the task of reaching the truth one of peculiar difficulty. As Colwyn sat motionless, with his chin resting on his hand, brooding over the sullen secretive surface of this dark mystery, the feeling grew upon him that the murder had been preconceived with the utmost cunning and caution, and that the facts so far brought to light, including his own discoveries, did not penetrate to the real design.

The one conviction in his mind at that moment was that the man he and Merrington had interviewed on the previous afternoon had some connection with the mystery, and that an investigation of Nepcote's actions was the first step towards the solution of the murder. Colwyn based that belief on the apparently detached facts of the revolver, the patch of khaki he had found in the woods near the moat-house, and the accident which disclosed that Nepcote was carrying the address of a Hatton Garden jeweller in his pocket-book. These things, taken apart, had perhaps but slight significance, but, considered as links in a chain of events which started in Philip Heredith's statement that he had first met his wife at a friend's house where Nepcote was also a guest, and finishing with the knowledge that Nepcote had not returned to France on the night of the murder, they assumed a significance which at least warranted the closest investigation.

Colwyn was not affected by the fact that Superintendent Merrington looked at the case from an entirely different point of view. He did not want the help of Scotland Yard in solving the crime. He had too much contempt for the official mind in any capacity to think that assistance from such a source could be of value to him. He always preferred to work alone and unaided. It was the Anglo-Saxon instinct of fair play which had prompted him to tell Merrington about the missing necklace, so that there might be no unfair advantage between them. Merrington had received the information with the imperviable dogmatism of the official mind, strong in the belief in its own infallibility, resentful of advice or suggestion as an attempt to weaken its dignity. It seemed to Colwyn that not only had Merrington's ruffled dignity led his judgment astray in an attempt to fit the discovery of the missing necklace into his own theory of the case, but it had caused him to commit a grave mistake in putting Nepcote on his guard at a moment when the utmost circumspection of investigation was necessary.

To Colwyn, at all events, the discovery of the missing necklace was of the utmost importance because it substituted another motive for the murder, and a motive which carried with it the additional complication that the thief had some motive in trying to keep its disappearance secret as long as possible by locking the jewel-case after the jewels had been abstracted. If Hazel Rath had not stolen the necklace, the whole of the facts took on new values. It was quite true that the mystery of Hazel Rath's actions on the night of the murder, her subsequent silence after the recovery of the brooch and the handkerchief and the revolver in her mother's rooms, remained as suspicious as before, but the changed motive caused these points to assume a different complexion, even to the extent of suggesting that she might be a lesser participant in the crime, perhaps keeping silence in order to shield the greater criminal.

Merrington, stiff-necked in his officialism, had been unable to see this changed aspect of the case, and, strong in his presumption of the girl's guilt, had acted with impulsive indiscretion in going to see Nepcote before attempting to trace the missing necklace.

Colwyn's reflections were interrupted by the appearance of the porter from downstairs to announce a visitor. The visitor, partly obscured behind the burly frame of the porter in the doorway, was Detective Caldew, of Scotland Yard. Colwyn had met him at various times, and invited him to enter. As Colwyn had once said, his feelings towards all the members of the regular detective force were invariably friendly; it was not their fault, but the fault of human nature, that they were sometimes jealous of him. So he made Caldew welcome, and offered him a cigar.

Caldew accepted the cigar and the proffered seat a little nervously. His was the type of temperament which is overawed in the presence of a more successful practitioner in the same line of business. He had long envied Colwyn his dazzling successes, but at the same time he had sufficient intelligence to understand that many of those successes stood in a class which he could never hope to attain.

At the present moment, Caldew's feelings were divided between resentment at Colwyn's action in conveying information to Scotland Yard which had earned him a reprimand from Superintendent Merrington, and the anxious desire to ascertain what the famous private detective thought of the Heredith case.

"Merrington has sent me round for the copy of the depositions he lent you yesterday." It was thus he announced the object of his visit. "Have you finished with it?"

It was apparent from this statement that Superintendent Merrington's gratitude for information received might now be considered as past history. Colwyn, reflecting that it had lasted as long as that feeling usually does, congratulated himself on his forethought in having made a copy of the report. He handed the copy before him to his visitor.

"I am obliged for the loan of it," he said. "It makes interesting reading. You're own share in the original investigations has some excellent touches, if you'll permit me to say so. That trap for the owner of the brooch was a neat idea."

Caldew's resentment waned under this compliment to his professional skill.

"The trick would have worked, too, if I hadn't been called downstairs," he said. "The girl was quick enough to get into the room while I was out of it. Not that it mattered much, as things turned out, but it is a strange thing about this necklace, isn't it?"

"Very. Has Merrington told you all about it?"

"Yes, and he gave me a rare wigging for not discovering the loss. Between ourselves, I do not think that I was treated quite fairly about it. Miss Heredith never said a word to me about a jewel-case being in the room. She took it downstairs before I arrived, and never mentioned it when I asked her if anything had been stolen. If she had told me I should have had the case opened. But that didn't weigh with Merrington. He's beastly unfair, and never loses a chance to put the blame on to somebody else when anything goes wrong."

"I am sorry if you got into trouble through my action in informing him," said Colwyn. "But of course you must realize that a discovery of such importance could not be kept secret."

"That's quite true," replied Caldew, in a softened voice. "Fortunately, it does not affect the issue, one way or another. Mr. Heredith believes that Hazel Rath is innocent, and I suppose that is why he has called you into the case. But she is guilty, right enough. I tried to make that clear to Mr. Heredith, but he appears to be a man of fixed ideas. The question is, what has become of the necklace? My own impression is that she has hidden it somewhere. She had no opportunity to dispose of it before she was arrested."

"That means that you think she has stolen it."

"Why, of course—" Caldew's confident tone died away at the expression of his companion's face. "Don't you?"

"I do not."

"Why not?"

"For one thing, the jewel-case was locked. How did the girl know where the key was kept?"

"She might have got the knowledge from her mother. Mrs. Rath, as the housekeeper, would probably know all about the keys of the household."

"Of the ordinary keys—yes. But that knowledge was hardly likely to extend to Mrs. Heredith's private keys, unless Miss Heredith told her. Even if Hazel Rath did know where the key was kept, it is difficult to believe that she searched for it after committing the murder, and then restored it to the drawer where it was kept. That argues too much cold-blooded deliberation even in a murderer, and more especially when the murderer is supposed to be a young girl."

"I am not so sure of that," responded Caldew, with a shake of the head. "Murder is a cold-blooded crime."

"On the contrary, murders are almost invariably committed under the influence of the strongest excitement, even when the incentive is gain, and the murder has been deeply premeditated. That is a remarkable truth in the psychology of murder. But the important fact about the theft of the necklace is that even if Hazel Rath knew where the key of the jewel-case was kept she had not time to obtain it from the drawer on the other side of the bed, steal the necklace, restore the key to its place, and escape from the room before the guests from downstairs entered the bedroom. If Hazel Rath was indeed the murderess, time was of paramount importance to her. She must have realized that the scream of her victim would alarm the household downstairs, and that some of the men must have started upstairs before the subsequent shot was fired."

Caldew was silent for a space, cogitating over these points with a troubled look which contrasted with his previous confident expressions of opinion about the case. His inward perturbation was made manifest in the question:

"Do you also share Mr. Heredith's view that Hazel Rath is innocent?"

"I cannot say. The facts against her are very strong."

"Of course they are strong!" exclaimed Caldew eagerly, as though clutching this guarded expression of opinion as a buoy for his own sinking conviction. "They are so strong that it is quite certain she committed the murder."

Colwyn remained silent. A statement which was merely an expression of opinion did not call for words.

Caldew, always impressionable, became uneasy under his companion's silence, and that uneasiness was tinctured in his mind with such a dread of the possibility of mistake that it flowed forth in impulsive words:

"I wish you would tell me what you really think of the case, Mr. Colwyn. I have been waiting for years for the chance of handling a big murder like this, and now that it has come my way I should like to pull it off. It means a lot to me," he added simply.

Colwyn reflected that he had already given away more information about the Heredith case than his judgment approved or his conscience dictated. But his kindly nature prompted him to help the anxious young man seated in front of him, who had so much more than he to gain by success.

"I think there is more in this case than you and Merrington have yet brought to light," he said.

"I suppose there is, if it is proved that Hazel Rath did not steal the necklace. But have you found out anything else besides the loss of the necklace?"

Colwyn did not directly reply. He was glancing over the depositions again.

"There are one or two curious points here," he remarked, as he turned over the leaves. "In the first place, the ammunition expert who was called at the inquest to give evidence about the bullet extracted from the body testified that in weight and in length it corresponded with the seven millimetre bullet made for a pinfire revolver. The bullet had undoubtedly been fired from the revolver which you found in Mrs. Rath's rooms. Bullets for English revolvers are not graded in millimetres, but there appears to be sufficient demand for this size to cause British firms to manufacture them. The nearest size in central-fire cartridge to seven millimetres is called the 300, which is .3 of an inch. Seven millimetres is .276 of an inch. The point to which I want to draw your attention is the extreme slightness and smallness of the revolver with which Mrs. Heredith was killed. As Captain Nepcote told Merrington yesterday, it is little more than a toy."

"That struck me as soon as I saw it," said Caldew. "But I do not see what bearing the fact has on the case, one way or another."

"Nevertheless, it is a point not without importance, when it is considered in conjunction with the other circumstances of the case. The evidence of the Government pathologist is also of interest. After stating the cause of death to be heart failure due to haemorrhage consequent upon the passage of the bullet through the lung, he mentions that there was a large scorched hole through the rest-gown and undergarment which Mrs. Heredith was wearing at the time she was murdered."

"I noticed that when I was examining the body."

"Was the dress-stuff smouldering when you saw the body?"

"No; but there was a smell of a burning fabric in the room."

"The Government pathologist says that the burnt hole was nearly two inches across, but he also states that the punctured wound made by the bullet was about the size of a threepenny piece. The disparity suggests two facts. In the first place, the shot must have been fired at very close range—very close indeed, considering the smallness of the revolver and the largeness of the burnt hole. In the next place, somebody must have extinguished the burning fabric before you arrived, otherwise it would have smouldered in an ever-widening ring until the whole of the dead woman's garments were destroyed."

"Mrs. Heredith may have extinguished it herself in her dying moments," said Caldew, who had been following his companion's deductions with the closest attention.

"That is unlikely, in view of the nature of her injuries. The bullet, after traversing the left lung, lodged in the spinal column. After such a wound Mrs. Heredith was not likely to be conscious of her actions."

"It may have been extinguished by Musard, who tried to stop the flow of blood while Mrs. Heredith was dying."

"He would have mentioned it to you. It is my intention to ask him, but my own opinion is that we are faced with a different explanation."

"What is that?"

"The presence of another person in the room."

"Somebody who escaped through the window!" exclaimed Caldew, placing his own interpretation on the deduction. "Do you suspect anybody?"

"Not exactly. But I intend to investigate Captain Nepcote's actions on the night of the murder."

Caldew, who lacked some of the information possessed by his companion, found this jump too great for his mind to follow.

"For what purpose?" he asked. "Nepcote returned to France before the murder was committed."

"He did not. He stayed in London that night, and did not return to France until the following day. He explained that yesterday by stating that when he reached London after leaving the moat-house he found another telegram from the War Office extending his leave for twenty-four hours."

"Merrington said nothing of this to me. All he told me was that you and he had seen Nepcote, who identified the revolver as his property, and said that he had left it behind at the moat-house by accident."

"Merrington is a man of fixed ideas, to use your phrase. He insisted on trying to fit in the loss of the necklace with his own theory of Hazel Rath's guilt. It was his obstinacy which led him to commit the folly of going to see Captain Nepcote before endeavouring to trace the missing necklace. It is only fair to Nepcote to add that he volunteered the information that he did not return to France on the night of the murder."

"That does not seem like the action of a man with anything to hide," commented Caldew thoughtfully.

"Unless he was facing a dangerous situation. In that case, frankness would be his best course to remove Merrington's suspicions. The fact that the murder was committed with his revolver is in itself a suspicious circumstance, in spite of the apparently plausible explanation. I have realized that all along. I had also previously acquainted Merrington with the fact that Nepcote did not return to France on the night of the murder, as was supposed. Merrington led up to that point skilfully enough, but it struck me that Nepcote saw the trap, and took the boldest course. It gave him time, at all events."

"Time for what?"

"Time to profit by Merrington's folly in putting him on his guard. Time to permit him to make his escape, if he is actually implicated in the crime."

"Surely you are reading too much into this," exclaimed Caldew in a protesting voice. "Nepcote's story seems to me quite consistent with what we know of his movements. Miss Heredith, when giving us the names of the guests who had been staying at the moat-house, mentioned that Captain Nepcote had been recalled to France on the afternoon of the murder by a telegram from the War Office. Nepcote tells you that when he reached London he found another telegram awaiting him extending his leave. Surely that is consistent?"

"Is it consistent that the two telegrams were sent to different addresses? They would have been either both sent to the moat-house, or both sent to his London flat—that is, if they were sent by the War Office. Only a relative or a personal friend would take the trouble to send to different addresses. There lies the weak point of Nepcote's statement."

"By Jove, there is a point in that," said Caldew, in a startled tone. "But these are facts which can be ascertained," he added, as though seeking to reassure himself.

"They can be ascertained too late. I have already set inquiries on foot, but it takes some time to gain any information about official telegrams. Nepcote has plenty of time to take advantage of Merrington's blunder, if there is any occasion for him to do so. No matter what his explanation is, the fact remains that he was in England, and not in France, on the night the murder was committed, and I propose to find out how he spent the time. But it is of the first importance to find out what has become of the missing necklace, which is the really important clue. Is Scotland Yard making any investigations about it?"

"Yes. Merrington has put me on to that because I let you score the point over him of discovering that it was missing. I am sure that he hopes I will fall down over the job of tracing it. I shouldn't be surprised if I did, too. It's no easy thing to get on the track of missing jewellery, especially if it has been hidden. I have not even got a description of the necklace to help me."

"I can give you a description, and perhaps help you in the work of tracing it."

"Can you? That's awfully good of you." Caldew's face showed that he meant his words. "Have you any idea where it is?"

"I have at least something to guide me in commencing the search—something, which, curiously enough, I owe to Merrington's blunder in visiting Nepcote before he looked for the necklace. We will go across to Hatton Garden, and I will put my idea to the test."



CHAPTER XXI

On reaching the street, they crossed Ludgate Circus, and directed their steps towards Hatton Garden by way of St. Bride Street.

A few minutes later, they emerged in that portion of Holborn which is graced by the mounted statue of a dead German prince acknowledging his lifelong obligations to British hospitality by raising his plumed hat to the London City & Midland Bank on the Viaduct corner. Hatton Garden, as every Londoner knows, begins on the other side of this improving spectacle—a short broad street which disdains to indicate by external opulence the wealth hidden within its walls, though, to an eye practised in London ways, there is a comforting suggestion of prosperity in its wide flagged pavements, comfortable brick buildings, and Jewish names which appear in gilt lettering on plate-glass windows.

Colwyn walked quickly along, glancing at the displayed names. He had almost reached the Clerkenwell end of the Garden when his eye was caught by the name of "Austin Wendover, Dealer in Oriental Stones," gleaming in white letters on the blackboard indicator of a set of offices hived in a building on the corner of a side street. It was the name of the man he was searching for. He turned into the passage, and mounted the stairs. Caldew followed him.

On the landing of the first floor another and smaller board gave the names of those tenants whose offices were at the back of the building. Mr. Wendover's was amongst them, and a pointing hand opposite it revealed that he conducted his business at the end of a long passage with a bend in the middle. When this passage was traversed, Mr. Wendover's name was once more seen, this time on a door, with a notice underneath inviting the visitor to enter without knocking.

Within, a young Jew with a sensual face was busily writing at a desk in the corner, with his back to the door. He ceased and turned around at the sound of the opening door, and, thrusting his fountain pen behind an ear already burdened with a cigarette, waited to be informed what the visitors wanted.

"Is Mr. Wendover in?" Colwyn inquired.

"Yes, he is. What name, please?" The young Jew scrambled down from his stool preparatory to carrying a message.

In answer Colwyn tendered Musard's card of introduction. The young Jew scanned it, shot an appraising glance at the two detectives, and vanished into an inner room. He reappeared swiftly in the doorway, and beckoned them to enter.

The inner room was furnished with leather chairs, a good carpet, and a large walnut table. Mining maps and framed photographs of famous diamonds hung on the walls, but there was nothing about the man seated at the table to suggest association with precious stones except the gleam of his small grey eyes, which were as hard and glistening as the specimen gems in the showcase at his elbow. His face was long, thin and yellow, of a bilious appearance. His gaunt frame was clothed in black, and his low white collar ended in front in two linen tags, fastened with a penny bone stud instead of the diamond which might have been expected. This device, besides dispensing with a necktie, revealed the base of a long scraggy neck, with a tuft of grey hair pushing its way up from below and falling over the interstice of the collar, matching a similar tuft which dangled pendulously from the diamond merchant's nether lip. Altogether, as Mr. Austin Wendover sat at his table with his long yellow hands clasped in front of him waiting for his visitors to announce their business, he looked not unlike a Methodist pastor about to say grace, or a Garden City apostle of culture for the masses preparing to receive a vote of thanks for a lecture on English prose at a workers' mutual improvement society. Even his name suggested, to the serious mind, the compiler of an anthology of British war poets or the writer of a book of Nature studies, rather than the material wealth, female folly, late suppers, greenrooms, frivolity and immorality brought before a vivid imagination by the mere mention of the word diamonds.

"My name is Colwyn; my friend is Detective Caldew, of Scotland Yard," said Colwyn, in response to Mr. Wendover's glance of interrogation. "We are in search of a little information, which we trust you will give us."

"That depends upon what ye want to know." This reply, delivered in an abrupt and uncouth manner, suggested that the diamond merchant's disposition was anything but a cut and polished one.

"Quite so. You have heard of the Heredith murder, I presume."

The diamond merchant nodded his head without speaking, and waited to hear more.

"The Heredith necklace of pink pearls was stolen from Mrs. Heredith's room on the night that she was murdered, and we are endeavouring to trace it."

"And what has that got to do with me?"

"I have reason to think that the necklace may have been offered or sold in Hatton Garden. It may have been submitted to you."

"What d'ye mean by coming to me with such a question? What does Mr. Musard mean by sending ye here? Does he think I've turned receiver of stolen property at my time of life? I'm surprised at him."

"My dear Mr. Wendover, Mr. Musard had no such thought in his mind. We simply come to you for information. Mr. Musard gave me your address as a reputable dealer of stones who would be likely to know if this necklace had been offered for sale in Hatton Garden."

"Well, it has not been offered to me. I've handled no pearls for twelve months."

"Would you know the Heredith necklace if it were offered to you?"

"I would not, and I've already told ye it was not offered to me."

Colwyn was nonplussed and disappointed, but the recollection of Nepcote's furtive glance and hasty concealment of the diamond merchant's card on the previous night prompted him to a further effort.

"It is possible the necklace may have been broken up and the stones offered separately," he said. "The clasp contained a large and valuable blue diamond."

"I tell ye I know nothing about it. I very rarely buy from private persons. It's not my way of doing business."

"We have reason to suspect that the necklace was offered for sale by a young military officer, tall and good looking, with blue eyes and brown hair, slightly tinged with grey at the temples."

"That description would apply to thousands of young officers. They're a harum-scarum lot, and dissipation soon turns a man's hair grey. I have had some of them here, trying to sell family jewels for money to throw away on painted women. There was one who called some days ago in a half-intoxicated condition. He clapped me on the back as impudent as you please, and calling me a thing—a dear old thing, which is one of their slang phrases—asked me what he could screw out of me for a good diamond. I sent him and his diamond off with a flea in the ear." Mr. Wendover's gummy lips curved in a grim smile at the recollection.

"Can you describe him more particularly?" asked Colwyn, with sudden interest.

"I paid no particular attention to him, and I wouldn't know him again if he were to walk in the door. It was almost dark when he came, and my eyes are not young. But he was not the man ye're after. It was days before the murder."

"Did he give you his name?"

"He did not, and I wouldn't tell ye if he did. What's it to do with the object of your visit? Ye're a persistent sort of young fellow, but I'm not going to let ye hold a general fishing inquiry into my business. There are two kinds of foolish folk in this world. Those who babble of their affairs to their womenfolk, and those who babble of them to strangers. I have no womenfolk, thank God! so I cannot talk to the futile creatures."

"Then I shall not ask you to break the other half of your maxim on my account," said Colwyn, rising with a smile.

"It would be no good if ye did," responded Mr. Wendover, with a reciprocatory grin which displayed two yellow fangs like the teeth of a walrus. "My business conscience is already pricking me for having said so much. He that holds his own counsel gives away nothing—except that he holds his counsel. Ye might do worse than lay that to your heart, Mr. Colwyn, in your walk through life. There's fifty years' experience behind it. Good-bye to ye, Mr. Colwyn, and ye, young man. I wish ye both luck in your search, but my advice is, try the pawn-shops." At the pressure of his thumb on the table the young Jew appeared from the next room, as if summoned by a magic wand, to let the visitors out.

"That's a queer old bird," said Caldew, as they walked away. "Do you think he has told us the truth?"

Colwyn did not reply. He was thinking rapidly, and wondering whether by any possibility he had made a mistake. But once more there flashed into his mind, like an image projected on a screen, the little scene which he alone had witnessed at the flat on the previous evening—the fluttering cards, the quick, unconscious gesture of concealment, and the startled glance which so plainly reflected the dread of discovery. No! there was no mistake there, but the explanation lay deeper.

They had reached the angle of the narrow passage which led to the front outlet of the offices. A small window was fixed at the dark turn of the long dark corridor to admit light. Colwyn chanced to glance through this window as he reached it, and his quick eye took in the figure of a man standing motionless in a narrow alley of the side street below. He was almost concealed behind an archway, but it was apparent to the detective that he was watching the corner building. As Colywn looked at him he slightly changed his position and his face came into view. With a quick imperative gesture to his companion, Colwyn ran swiftly along the remainder of the corridor and down the flight of stairs into Hatton Garden.

Caldew followed more slowly, puzzled by the other's strange action. When he reached the doorway Colwyn was nowhere to be seen, so he waited in the entrance. After the lapse of a few minutes he saw Colwyn returning from the direction of Clerkenwell.

"He has got away," he said, as he reached Caldew. His voice was a little breathless, as though with running.

"He? Who?"

Colwyn drew him into the empty entrance hall before he answered:

"Nepcote. He was watching outside. I saw him through the upstairs window. He either followed us here or has been waiting to see if we came. I should have foreseen this."

A flicker of unusual agitation on Colwyn's calm face increased Caldew's mental confusion.

"I don't understand," he stammered. "He—Nepcote—why should he be watching us?"

"Because he penetrated the truth last night. He knew he was in danger."

"But why should he follow us here?"

"He accidentally dropped some cards from his pocket-book when giving Merrington an address at his flat last night, and one of them was Wendover's business card. Merrington did not see it—it would have conveyed nothing to him if he had—but I did. Nepcote knew that I saw it, and must have realized that I suspected him. He has been watching my rooms and followed us here, or he has been hanging around this place to see if I called on Wendover."

"Even now I do not see the connection. If Wendover told us the truth, Nepcote has not been to him with the necklace. Then what did it matter to Nepcote whether you came here or not?"

"Nepcote may have been the man who offered the diamond to Wendover."

"That is impossible. Wendover says that man called some days before the murder."

"Still, it may have been Nepcote."

"That goes beyond me," said Caldew, with a puzzled look. "What are you implying?"

"Nothing at present. Every step in this case convinces me that we are faced with a very deep mystery. It isn't worth while to hazard a guess, because guessing is always unsatisfactory."

"Perhaps we had better try and get a little more out of Wendover," said Caldew.

"That would be merely waste of time. He has not got the necklace, and he is unable to describe the man who offered him the diamond. I believe now that it was Nepcote, but that doesn't matter, one way or another. It is far more important to know that he came here to-day to watch for us. That implies that he had reason to fear investigations about the necklace. The inference to be drawn is that Nepcote is responsible for the disappearance of the necklace, and is, therefore, deeply implicated in the murder."

"Perhaps it was not Nepcote that you saw?" suggested Caldew. He felt that the remark was a feeble one, but he was bewildered by the sudden turn of events, and in a frame of mind which clutches at straws.

"Put that doubt out of your mind," said Colwyn. "I saw his face distinctly. He had disappeared by the time I got down. The alley where he was standing commanded a view of the entrance of this building. I ascertained that by standing in the same spot. His flight is another proof—though that was not needed—of his guilty knowledge and complicity in this murder. Why should he run away? According to his own story last night he had nothing to fear. But now, by his own actions, he has brought the utmost suspicion on himself."

"I suppose it is no use searching about here for him?" remarked Caldew, glancing gloomily out of the doorway.

"Not in the least. The neighbourhood is a warren of alleys and side streets from here to Grays Inn Road."

"Then I shall go up to his flat at once," said Caldew. "He has not had time to go back."

"He will not return to his flat. We have seen the last of him until we catch him. He has had two warnings, and he is not likely to be guilty of the folly of waiting to see whether lightning strikes thrice in the same spot. He will get away for good, this time, if he can. Nevertheless it is worth while going to the flat. We may pick up some points there." Colwyn uttered these last words in a lower tone at the sight of two office girls descending the staircase with much chatter and laughter.

"Let us go then."

They travelled by 'bus from Grays Inn Road as far as Oxford Circus, and walked along a number of quiet secluded streets—the backwaters of the West End—in order to reach Sherryman Street from the lower end, which, with a true sense of the fitness of things, was called Sherryman Street Approach. If the Approach had not been within a stone's throw of Sherryman Square it might have been called a slum. It had tenement houses with swarms of squalid children playing in the open doorways, its shops offered East End food—mussels and whelks, "two-eyed steaks," reeking fish-and-chips, and horsemeat for the cheap foreign element. There were several public-houses with groups of women outside drinking and gossiping, all wearing the black shawls which are as emblematic of the lower class London woman as a chasuble to a priest, or a blue tattooed upper lip to a high-caste Maori beauty. A costermonger hawked frozen rabbits from a donkey-cart, with a pallid woman following behind to drive away the mangy cats which quarrelled in the road for the oozing blood which dripped from the cart's tail. An Italian woman, swarthy, squat, and intolerably dirty, ground out the "Marseillaise" from a barrel-organ with a shivering monkey capering atop, waving a small Union Jack, and impatiently rattling a tin can for coppers.

To turn from this squalid quarter into Sherryman Street was to pass from the east to the west end of London at a step. It was as though an invisible line of demarcation had been drawn between the lower and upper portion of the street, and held inviolate by the residents of each portion. There were no public houses or fish-shops in Sherryman Street; no organ-grinders, costermongers, unclean children, or women in black shawls. It had quiet, seclusion, clean pavements, polished doorknockers, and white curtains at the windows of its well-kept houses, which grew in dignity to the semblance of town mansions at the Square end.

Number 10 showed a blank closed stone exterior to the passer-by, like an old grey secretive face. As they approached it Colwyn, with a slight movement of his head, drew his companion's attention to the upper windows which belonged to Nepcote's flat. The blinds were down.

"It looks as if Nepcote left last night," he said.

The sight of the drawn blinds, like yellow eyelids in the grey face, awakened some secret irritation in Caldew's breast, and with it the realization of his powers as an officer of Scotland Yard.

"I shall force a way in and see," he angrily declared.

"Better get a key from the housekeeper," suggested Colwyn. "The women who look after these bachelor flats always have duplicate keys. But the front door is ajar. Let us go upstairs first."

They ascended the stairs to the flat, and the first thing they noticed was a Yale key in the keyhole of the door.

"A sign of mental upset," commented Colwyn. "At such moments people forget the little things."

They opened the door and entered. The front room was much as Colwyn had seen it the previous night. The flowers drooped in their bowl; the chorus girls smirked in their silver settings; the framed racehorses and their stolid trainers looked woodenly down from the pink walls.

"Nepcote does not seem to have taken anything away with him," remarked Caldew, looking into the bedroom. "The wardrobe is full of his uniforms, but the bed has not been occupied."

"Here is the proof that he has fled," said Colwyn, flinging back the lid of a desk which stood in the sitting-room. It was filled to the brim with a mass of torn papers.

"Anything compromising?" asked Caldew, eagerly approaching to look at the litter.

"No; only bills and invitations. Any dangerous letters have been burnt there." He pointed to the grate, which was heaped with blackened fragments. "He's made a good job of it too," he added, as he went to the fireplace and bent over it. "There's not the slightest chance of deciphering a line. But it would be as well to search his clothes. He may have forgotten some letters in the pockets."

Caldew took the hint, and disappeared into the inner room, leaving Colwyn examining the contents of the grate. He returned in a few minutes to say that he had found nothing in the clothes except a few Treasury notes and some loose silver in a trousers' pocket.

"That looks as if he had bolted in such a hurry that he forgot to take his change with him," said Colwyn. "It is another interesting revelation of his state of mind, because there is very little doubt that he returned to the flat this morning after leaving it last night."

"How do you arrive at that conclusion?"

"By the burnt letters in the grate. They are still warm. He was in such a state of fear that he dared not sleep in the flat last night, but he returned this morning to burn his letters and change into civilian clothes. Then he rushed away again in such a hurry that he forgot his money. There is nothing more to be seen here. We had better make a few inquiries of the housekeeper as we go downstairs."

They walked out, and Caldew locked the door behind him and placed the key in his pocket. When they reached the entrance hall Colwyn paused outside the door of the recess where the housekeeper lurked, like an octopus in a pool. At Colwyn's knock a white face, topped by a white cap, came into view through the narrow slit in the curtained glass half of the door, and swam towards them in the interior gloom after the manner of the head of a materialized ghost in a spirit medium's parlour. The door opened, and the apparition appeared in the flesh, looking at them with stony eyes. Caldew undertook the conversation:

"Did Captain Nepcote sleep here last night?" he curtly asked.

"I don't know."

"Well, has he been here this morning?"

"I don't know." The tone of the second reply was even more expressionless than the first, if that were possible.

"It's your business to know," said Caldew angrily.

"It is not my business to discuss Captain Nepcote's private affairs with strangers." The woman turned back into her room without another word, closing the door behind her.

"D—n her!" muttered Caldew, in intense exasperation.

"These ancient females learn the wisdom of controlling their natural garrulity when placed in charge of bachelors' flats," said Colwyn with a laugh. "We will get nothing out of her if we stay here all day, so we had better go."

"I am going straight back to Scotland Yard," Caldew announced with sudden decision when they reached the pavement. "I must tell Merrington all about this morning's work, and the sooner the better. We must have the flat watched. Perhaps Nepcote may return."

"He will not return," said Colwyn. "He knows that we are after him, and that the flat will be watched. But it is a good idea not to let him have too long a start. Come, let us see if we can find a taxi, and I will drop you at Scotland Yard."

They walked along to Sherryman Square, and esteemed themselves fortunate in picking up a cruising taxi-cab with a driver sufficiently complaisant to drive them in the direction they wished to go.



CHAPTER XXII

It was to Merrington's credit as an official that he suppressed his feelings as a man on hearing Caldew's story, and did everything possible to retrieve the situation once he was convinced that Nepcote had fled. Any lingering doubts he may have had were scattered on learning, after confidential inquiry at Whitehall, that Captain Nepcote had not put in an appearance at the War Office that day, and had neither requested nor been granted leave of absence from his duties.

On receipt of this information Merrington turned to his office telephone, and, receiver in hand, bellowed forth peremptory instructions which set in motion the far-reaching organization of Scotland Yard for the capture of a fugitive from justice. Nepcote's description was circulated to police stations, detectives were told off to keep an eye on outgoing trains and the docks, and the entrances to the tubes and underground railways were watched. After enclosing London, Merrington made a wider cast, and long before nightfall he had flung around England a net of fine meshes through which no man could wriggle.

But it is difficult even for Scotland Yard to lay quick hands on a fugitive in the vast city of London, as Merrington well knew. While waiting for the net to close over his destined captive, he decided in the new strange turn of the case to investigate the whole of the circumstances afresh. Inquiries set afoot in London, with the object of discovering all that could be learnt of Nepcote's career and Violet Heredith's single life, occupied an important share in Scotland Yard's renewed investigations into the Heredith murder.

Caldew was sent to Heredith to look for new facts. He returned after a day's absence with information which might have been obtained before if chance had not directed suspicion to Hazel Rath: with a story of an unknown young man who had left the London train to Heredith at Weydene Junction on the night of the murder. The story, as extracted from an unintelligent ticket collector, threw no light on the identity of the stranger beyond a statement that he had worn a long light trench-coat, beneath which the collector had caught a glimpse of khaki uniform as the gentleman felt for his ticket at the barrier.

On that slight information Caldew had pursued inquiries across a long two miles of country between Weydene and the moat-house, and had deemed himself fortunate in finding a farm labourer who, on his homeward walk that night, had been passed by a young man in a long coat making rapidly across the fields in the direction of Heredith. The labourer had stared after the retreating figure until it disappeared in the darkness, and had then gone home without thinking any more of the incident. Caldew was so impressed by the significance of the second appearance of the man in the trench-coat that he had timed himself in a fast walk over the same ground from Weydene to the moat-house, and was able to cover the distance in half an hour. On the basis of these facts, he pointed out to Merrington that, if Nepcote was the man who left the train at Weydene at seven o'clock, he had time to walk across the fields and reach the moat-house by half-past seven, which was ten minutes before the murder was committed.

Merrington admitted the possibility, but refused to accept the inference. He was forced by recent events to accept the theory of Nepcote's implication in the mystery, but he was not prepared to believe without much more definite proof that he was the murderer. He was still strong in his belief that Hazel Rath was the person who had killed Mrs. Heredith, whatever the young man's share in the crime might be. The discovery about the man in the trench-coat was all very well as far as it went, and perhaps formed another clue in the puzzling set of circumstances of the case, but it did not carry them very far, and certainly did nothing to lessen the weight of evidence against the girl who was charged with the murder.

Merrington was forced back on the conclusion that the most important step towards the solution of the mystery was to lay hold of Nepcote, and to that end he directed his own efforts and that of the service of the great organization at his command. As the days went on, he supplemented his original arrangements for Nepcote's arrest with guileful traps. The female dragon who guarded masculine reputations at 10, Sherryman Street, was badgered into cold anger by pretty girls, who sought with tips and blandishments to glean scraps of information about the missing tenant. Scented letters in female handwriting, marked "Important," appeared in the letter racks of Nepcote's West End clubs. Merrington even inserted an advertisement in the "Personal" column of the Times, setting forth a touching female appeal to Nepcote for a meeting in a sequestered spot.

At the end of three days, with no sign of Nepcote in that period, Merrington was compelled to make application to the Sussex magistrates for another adjournment of the police court proceedings, on the ground that fresh information needed investigation before Scotland Yard could proceed with the charge against Hazel Rath. An additional week was granted with reluctance by the chairman of the bench, a Nonconformist draper with political ambitions, who seized the opportunity to impress the electors of a constituency he was nursing for the next general election by making some spirited remarks on the sanctity of British liberty, which he coupled with a scathing reference to the dilatory methods of Scotland Yard. He let it be understood that the police must be prepared at the next hearing to go on with the charge against the prisoner or withdraw it altogether.

In the face of these awkward alternatives, Merrington pursued the quest for Nepcote with vigour. The men working immediately under his instructions were spurred into an excess of energy which brought about the detention of several young men who could not adequately explain themselves or their right to liberty in the great city of London. But none of these captures turned out to be Nepcote. Merrington believed he was hiding in London, but at the end of five days he still remained mysteriously at liberty in spite of the constant search for him. He seemed to have disappeared as completely as though he had passed out of the world and merged his identity into a chiselled name and a banal aspiration on a tombstone.

In the angry consciousness of failure, Merrington was not blind to the fact that he had only his own impetuosity to blame for allowing Nepcote to slip through his fingers. His mistake was due to his dislike of private detectives and his unbelief in modern deductive methods of crime solution. His own system, which is the system of Scotland Yard, was based on motive and knowledge. If he found a strong motive for a crime he searched for the person to whom it pointed. If there was no apparent motive he fell back on his great knowledge of the underworld and its denizens to fit a criminal to the crime. The system has its measure of success, as the records of Scotland Yard attest.

Merrington had brought both methods to bear in his handling of the Heredith case. When his original investigations failed to reveal a motive for the murder, he determined to return to London to ascertain what dangerous criminals were at liberty who might have committed the murder. His own view then was that the murder was the work of an old hand who had entered the moat-house to commit burglary, and had murdered Mrs. Heredith to escape identification. The isolation of the moat-house, the presence of guests with valuable jewels, the time chosen for the crime, and the scream of the victim, tended to confirm him in this belief. Caldew's chance discovery about Hazel Rath, and the subsequent events which arrayed such strong circumstantial evidence against her, brought the other side of the system uppermost and set Merrington seeking for a motive which would accord with the presumption of the girl's guilt. Having found that motive, he was satisfied that he had done his duty, and he thought very little more about the case.

It was his tenacious adhesion to conservative methods which caused him to blunder in his treatment of Colwyn's information about the missing necklace. He rarely acted on impulse. His habitual distrust of humanity was deep, and to it was wedded a wariness which was the heritage of long experience. But his obstinate conviction of Hazel Rath's guilt led him to make a false move in his effort to square the loss of the necklace with the evidence against the girl. His own poor opinion of human nature hindered him from seeing, as Colwyn had seen, any inconsequence between such widely different motives as maddened love and theft; that was one of those subtle differentiations of human psychology in which his coarse-grained temperament was at fault. It is probable that Merrington's dislike of private detectives contributed to obscure his judgment at a critical moment. He was unable to see that Colwyn, by reason of his intellect and practical capacity, stood in a class apart and alone.

In his contemplation of the case Merrington's thoughts turned to Colwyn, and he wondered in what direction the private detective's investigations into the case had progressed—if they had progressed at all—since he had seen him last. In a chastened mood, he reflected that Colwyn had not only given him a warning which was annoyingly different from other advice in being well worth following, but had acted generously in informing him of the missing necklace when he might have kept the discovery to himself, in order to score a point over Scotland Yard and place one of the Yard's most distinguished officials in an awkward position.

With a belated but unconscious recognition of an intelligence which far surpassed his own, Merrington felt that it would be worth while to have another talk with Colwyn, in the hope of finding some way out of the perplexities in which he had plunged himself by permitting Nepcote to escape.

The next interview, which was of his seeking, took place at Colwyn's rooms in the evening, after Merrington had previously arranged for it by telephone. The face of the private detective revealed neither surprise nor resentment at the sight of Merrington. He invited his guest to sit down, and then seated himself a little distance from the table, on which whisky and cigars were set out.

"Well, Mr. Colwyn, you were right and I was wrong about that fellow Nepcote," Merrington commenced, realizing that it was best to come to the point at once. "I wish now that I had followed your advice."

"If you hadn't gone to see him perhaps you wouldn't know as much as you know now," said Colwyn drily.

"That's one way of looking at it," responded Merrington with his great laugh. "Unfortunately, that interview caused Nepcote to bolt, and so far he has shown us a clean pair of heels."

"You've had no news of him?"

"Only a lot of false reports. I am convinced that he is still hiding in London, but the trouble is to get hold of him. These infernal darkened streets make it more difficult. A wanted man can walk along them at night right under the nose of the police without fear of being seen."

"Have you made any fresh discoveries about the case?"

"We have ascertained that a man who may have been Nepcote was seen near the moat-house on the night of the murder."

Colwyn nodded indifferently. The tracing of Nepcote's movements on the night of the murder was to him one of the minor points of the problem, like the first pawn move in chess—essential, but without real significance, in view of the inevitable inference of the flight.

"I have been working on the case from this end," he said.

"In what direction?"

"Trying to arrive at the beginning of the mystery. I have been endeavouring to find out something about Mrs. Heredith's earlier life. It struck me that it might throw some light on the subsequent events."

"I have been investigating along similar lines. Shall we compare notes?"

"With pleasure, but I should think that you have been able to find out more than I have been able to discover single-handed. For one thing, I have seen Lady Vaughan, the wife of Sir William Vaughan, of the War Office. She is a kind and gracious woman, taking a great interest in the hundreds of girl clerks employed at her husband's department in Whitehall. Last winter she gave a series of dances at her house in Knightsbridge, and the girls were invited in turns. Mr. Heredith was present at one of these functions."

"So much I know," said Merrington.

"Then you are probably aware that Captain Nepcote was also present that evening, and brought several other young officers with him. It was he who introduced Philip Heredith to the girl whom he afterwards married."

"I knew Nepcote was a guest at one of the dances, but it is news to me that he introduced the girl to young Heredith. Lady Vaughan did not tell us this."

"Lady Vaughan did not know. I ascertained the fact later from one of the guests who witnessed the introduction. I attach some importance to the point. Last winter Philip Heredith and Nepcote were on fairly intimate terms, working together in the same room at the War Office, and sometimes going together to the houses of mutual friends. It was evidently a case of the attraction of opposites."

"It must have been," replied Merrington emphatically. "I have had inquiries made about Nepcote, and I should not have thought he would have appealed to Mr. Heredith. There is nothing actually wrong so far as we can learn, but he had the reputation, before the war, of a fast and idle young man about town, with a weakness for women and gambling. He came into a few thousands some years ago, but soon spent it. I imagine that he has subsisted principally on credit and gambling since he squandered his money, for he is certainly not the type of man to live on his pay as an officer. As a matter of fact, he was in serious trouble with the Army authorities recently for not paying his mess bills in France. He was not brought up to the Army, and he has seen very little active service. He got his captain's commission about twelve months after the war commenced, when the War Office was handing out commissions like boxes of matches, but he managed to keep under the Whitehall umbrella until quite recently. He seems to have a bit of a pull somewhere, though I cannot find out where. Perhaps it is his charm of manner—everybody who knows him says he has a charming manner, though it wasn't apparent to me that night I interviewed him at his flat."

"Perhaps he was too afraid to exercise it on that occasion," suggested Colwyn, with a smile. "He must have thought that it was all up with him."

"Have you discovered anything about Mrs. Heredith's antecedents?" asked Merrington with an abruptness which suggested that he had little relish for the last remark.

"Very little, apart from the fact that she lived in rooms, and had no real girl friends, so far as I can ascertain. Apparently she was a girl who played a lone hand, as they say in America. The type is not uncommon in large cities. My information, such as it is, is not of the least importance one way or the other."

"I have learnt very little more than you, except that she changed her rooms pretty frequently, but always kept within an easy radius of the West End, living in dull but respectable neighbourhoods like Russell Square and Woburn Place. It was precious little time she spent there, though. The people of these places know nothing about her except that she used to go out in the morning and did not return till late at night—generally in a taxi, and alone, so far as is known. She was, apparently, one of those bachelor girls who have sprung into existence in thousands during the war—one of that distinct species who trade on their good looks and are out for a good time, but keep sufficiently on the safe side of the fence to be careful of their reputations. It's part of their stock in trade.

"Such girls contrive to go everywhere and see everything at the expense of young men with more money than brains, who have been caught by their looks. It's the Savoy for lunch, a West End restaurant for dinner, revue, late supper, and home in a taxi—with perhaps, a kiss for the lot by way of payment. The War Office was a godsend to this type of girl. It gives them jobs with nothing to do, with a kind of official standing thrown in, and the chance of meeting plenty of young officers over on leave from the front, with money to burn and hungry for pretty English faces. It is difficult to find out anything about these bachelor girls. They have no homes—only a place to sleep in—they confide in nobody, and their men friends will never give them away. Almost any woman will give away a man, but I have never yet known a man give away a woman."

"If Mrs. Heredith was that type of girl, it is possible that some early episode or forgotten flirtation in her past life is mixed up with the mystery of her death."

"You think that, do you?" asked Merrington regarding his companion attentively.

"How else can we explain Nepcote's appearance in the mystery, except on the ground that he may have murdered her for the necklace? It is important to bear in mind that Nepcote knew her in her single days. If she had a secret she has taken it to the grave with her. There remains Nepcote, who is deeply implicated in the case in some way. You may learn something from him if you can catch him and induce him to speak, though I must confess I find it difficult to reconcile the supposition that he committed the murder with the known circumstances of the case."

"There I agree with you," exclaimed Merrington. "What is Hazel Rath's position if we admit any such supposition? Nothing has yet come to light to shake the evidence which points to her as the person who murdered Mrs. Heredith."

"Does she still refuse to speak?"

"Yes. She is as obstinate as a mule and as mute as a fish. I sent a very clever woman detective down to the gaol at Lewes to try and coax her to say something, but she could get nothing out of her. She said she had no statement to make, and nothing whatever to say. She refused to go beyond that."

"She may have some strong reason for keeping silence," remarked Colwyn thoughtfully. "Arrested persons sometimes remain silent under a grave charge because they are anxious to keep certain knowledge in their possession from the police. Nepcote's implication in the case lends colour to the theory that Hazel Rath may be keeping silent for some such purpose."

"In order to shield Nepcote?"

"It is possible, though I do not think we are in a position to infer that much without further knowledge. But now that we know that Nepcote is connected with the case I certainly think that a strong effort should be made to induce Hazel Rath to speak."

"It is not to be done," replied Merrington, with an emphatic shake of the head. "The girl is not to be drawn."

"Have you told her about the recent developments of the case?"

"About Nepcote, do you mean?"

"Yes."

"Certainly not," replied Merrington, in a tone of outraged officialism. "To give the girl that piece of information before I know what it means would place such a powerful weapon in the hands of the lawyer for the defence that I should have to withdraw the charge against Hazel Rath at the next police court proceedings if I did not arrest Nepcote in the meantime. I do not want any dramatic developments—as the idiotic newspapers call it-in my cases. There is a certain amount of public sympathy with this girl already."