The Haunting of Low Fennel Part 12

"Good! I had accounted for the presence of the murderer. He struck Sir Jeffrey with some heavy implement, but failed to stun him. Then began the struggle, which so churned up the ground that all tracks were lost.

The murderer prevailed. He was a man of wonderful nerve. Never once did he place his foot upon virgin ground; not one imprint by which he might be identified did he leave behind him!"

"Then how," inquired Damopolon, who was hanging upon every word, "did he leave the scene if----"

"Listen," snapped East. "I found by the body the torn paper in which the china image had been wrapped--but no string! I went all the way to London to learn if the parcel had been tied with string and if Sir Jeffrey had been carrying a stick!"

"But surely," said Damopolon, "I could have saved you the journey, since I was with the late baronet immediately before he set out for home."

"Quite so--but I had another reason for my visit."

East shot a sudden glance from Damopolon to myself, and there ensued a moment of electric silence.

"Beside the track made by the feet of the image," he resumed slowly, "I found a series of wedge-shaped holes, one on either side of each monkey-impression. Do you follow me, Mr. Damopolon?"

"Perfectly," replied the Greek, taking up and lighting a cigarette.

"Wedge-shaped holes, you say?"

"They were the clue for which I sought! I saw it all! The china ape had been used as a _stepping-stone_! The cunning criminal had thus gained the firm ground in the coppice without leaving a footprint behind!..."

"But, my dear East," I interrupted, "I cannot follow you. He stepped from beside the body on to the image, which he had placed at a convenient distance?"

"Yes. Then, by means of loops of string--see, they are still attached!--he lifted it forward with his feet----"

"But----"

"Supporting his weight upon two sticks--Sir Jeffrey's and his own! Hence the wedge-shaped holes beside the track! He had actually reached firm ground when his own stick snapped off short, and he made the fatal error of leaving the fragment and the ferrule, imbedded in the hole! Here is the fragment!"

On the table East laid a fragment of an ebony cane, broken off short some three inches above the nickel ferrule.

"Ebony is so brittle, is it not, Mr. Damopolon?" he said.

"It is indeed," agreed Damopolon, standing up as though he believed East to have finished.

"Yet this stick was made of a particularly fine piece," added East.

"Carter!" he cried loudly.

The library door opened ... and Detective Sergeant Carter, of New Scotland Yard, entered, carrying a broken ebony stick. Damopolon dropped his cigarette, and, whilst he stooped to recover it:

"Carter and I went fis.h.i.+ng this afternoon," said East, "in the Black Gap. The criminal had sought to hide the broken cane--which bears his monogram--and also the image. He had tied them together, filled the image with clay, and dropped them into the water. Fortunately, they stuck upon an outstanding ma.s.s of weeds, and we did not fish in vain.

Is there any point, Mr. Damopolon, which I have not made clear? I don't know what implement you used to strike Sir Jeffrey, nor do I know what you did with his ash-stick!..."

Clutching wildly at the table, I rose to my feet, my gaze set amazedly upon the man thus accused, upon the man I had called my friend, upon the man who owed so much to the dead baronet. And he?... He tossed his cigarette into the hearth and shrugged his shoulders. But, now, I saw that he was deathly pale. He began speaking, in a hoa.r.s.e, mechanical voice:

"I struck him with a broken elm branch," he said. "His hat saved him. I completed the matter with my bare hands. I was desperate. You need not tell me that Olive--Miss Baird--has confessed to our secret marriage, nor shall I weary you with the many reasons I had to hate her father and the pressing need I had for the fortune which she inherits at his death.

It is finished; I have lost, and----"

"Carter!" cried East. "Quick! quick!"

But though the detective, who had been edging nearer and nearer to the speaker, now sprang upon him with the leap of a panther, he was too late. The sound of a m.u.f.fled shot echoed through The Warrens, and the Greek fell with an appalling crash fully over the library table, so that the blue monkey slid across its polished surface and was shattered to bits upon the oaken floor!

The Riddle of Ragstaff

I

"Well, Harry, my boy, and what's the latest news from Venice?"

Harry Lorian stretched his long legs and lay back in his chair.

"I had a letter from the governor this morning, Colonel. He appears to be filling his portfolio with studies of windows and doorways and stair-rails and the other domestic necessities dear to his architectural soul!"

Colonel Reynor laughed in his short, gruff way, as my friend, Lorian, gazing sleepily about the quaint old hall in which we sat, but always bringing his gaze to one point--a certain door--blew rings of smoke straightly upward.

"I suppose," said our host, the Colonel, "most of the material will be used for the forthcoming book?"

"I suppose so," drawled Lorian, glancing for the twentieth time at the yet vacant doorway by the stair-foot. "The idea of architects and artists and other const.i.tutionally languid people, having to write books, fills my soul with black horror."

"He had a glorious time with our old panelling, Harry," laughed the Colonel, waving his cigar vaguely toward the panelled walls and nooks which gradually were receding into the twilight.

"Yes," said my friend. "He was here quite an unconscionable time--even for an old school chum of the proprietor. I hope you counted the spoons when he left!"

Lorian's disrespectful references to Sir Julius, his father, were characteristic; for he reverences that famous artist with the double love of a son and a pupil.

"Of course we did," chuckled Reynor. "Nothing missing, my boy!"

"That's funny," drawled Lorian. "Because if he didn't steal it from here I can't imagine from where he stole it!"

"Stole what, Harry?"

"Whatever some chap broke into his studio for last night!"

"Eh!" cried the Colonel, sitting suddenly very upright. "Into your father's studio? Burglars?"

"Suppose so," was the reply. "They took nothing that I was aware to be in his possession, though the place was ransacked. I naturally concluded that they had taken something that I was _unaware_ to be in his----Ah!"

Sybil Reynor entered by the door which, for the past twenty minutes, had been the focus of Lorian's gaze. The gathering dusk precluded the possibility of my seeing with certainty, but I think her face flushed as her dark eyes rested upon my friend. Her beauty is not of the kind which needs deceptive half-lights to perfect it, but there in the dimness, as she came towards us, she looked very lovely and divinely graceful. I did not envy Lorian his good fortune; but I suppressed a sigh when I saw how my existence had escaped the girl's notice and how the world in her eyes, contained only a Henry Lorian, R.I.

Her mother entered shortly afterwards and a general conversation arose, which continued until the arrival of Ralph Edie and his sister. They were accompanied by Felix Hulme; and their advent completed the small party expected at Ragstaff Park.

"You late arrivals," said Lorian, "have only just time to dress, unless you want to miss everything but the nuts!"

"Oh, Harry!" said Mrs. Reynor, "you are as bad as your father!"

"Worse," said Lorian promptly. "I am altogether more rude and have a bigger appet.i.te!"

With such seeming trivialities, then, opened the drama of Ragstaff, the drama in which Fate had cast four of us for leading roles.