Chapter 13

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

"Remarkably," agreed Simon.

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

"Very ordinary," said Simon.

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

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

"May I see them?"

"You--you think they are important?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Sir Reginald was mistaken. No such conversation."

"Do you mean to tell me literally that _no_ such conversation took place? Was it a mere delusion?"

"Er--practically. Yes, a delusion."

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

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

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

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

"Had she any news?" asked the other.

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

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

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

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

XXXII

THE SYMPATHETIC STRANGER

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

"I might as well try 'em!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"When was that?"

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

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

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

The stolid Superintendent looked at him in surprise.

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

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

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

"What were the exact facts?" demanded Carrington.

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

"Did the servants ever speak of it again?"

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

Carrington was silent for a few moments.

"Are the servants intelligent girls?" he enquired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XXXIII

THE HOUSE OF MYSTERIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Tell me how it happened!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Was the window shut or open?"

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

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

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

"Was anything stolen?"

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

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

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

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

"Just threw it out of the window."

The sympathetic stranger crossed to the window and looked out.

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

"No, sir."

"Did the police come down and make enquiries?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

He opened his eyes and then smiled.

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

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

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

"Another burglar!" he exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again he sat up and gazed at her.

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

She hesitated and then in a very low voice answered:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XXXIV

A CONFIDENTIAL CONVERSATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"More or less," admitted Carrington.

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

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

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

"What has happened?"

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

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

"I learned from Bisset this morning."

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

Carrington's interest was manifest.

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

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

"I think I can," said Carrington quietly.

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

"I thought so."

"How the devil did you guess?"

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

"Well, she spotted you were a detective--"

Carrington started and then laughed.

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

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

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

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

"Pretty thorough!" murmured Carrington.

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

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

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

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