"I've got those maps you wanted," I remarked as Bryce opened the door, "and I hope I haven't kept you waiting too long."
"You haven't," he said with a smile. "As a matter-of-fact I've been otherwise occupied. I've had a visitor."
"A visitor?" I said guardedly, though what on earth there was to guard against was more than I could have said just then. Some cross-grained streak in my nature made me both cantankerous and suspicious, and while the mood was on me I would have contradicted or queried the word of an archangel.
"Yes," Bryce replied. "The lady you met in the passage. I gather that she knows you."
"We knew each other years ago," I said shortly. In a flash the meaning of the conversation I had overheard burst on me. I began to perceive that her presence in the house was due in part at least to me. Well, if he fancied he was going to patch up our old love affair he had undertaken a bigger job than he thought. For two pins I would have told him, had he uttered another word, that there was one matter in which I would brook no man's interference, and that even the ties that bound him to my father were not strong enough to allow him to settle what was nobody's affair but mine. But, with even greater tact than I believed he possessed, he switched the conversation on to quite another subject and talked to me for the better part of half-an-hour about the maps I had brought.
He had the formation of the country and its industries at his fingers' ends, and he spoke like a man who had gained his information at first-hand. I listened attentively, for I guessed in some queer fashion of my own that the maps and that foolish cryptogram, the shooting on the beach and the piece of driftwood were all somehow connected. But either I must have missed some very obvious point or else he picked his words so carefully that he misled me.
I used my eyes for all they were worth, which wasn't much. The typewriter stood on the table in its old position, and the table itself was littered with sheets of typed figures. "More timber measurements," I said to myself. Somehow the sight of those sheets troubled me. They were innocent-looking enough in all conscience, and I couldn't for the life of me understand why they should have this peculiar effect on me. I felt as if a cold gust of wind, the icy breath of Death himself, had passed and touched me in the passing. I flatter myself that I have pretty strong nerves—the Lord knows they've been tested often enough—but there was something in the atmosphere of that room, something in the sight of those littered sheets of paper, that sent a cold shiver through me, that made me want to rush from the place into the golden sunshine out of doors. It was a presentiment, but one that could not be localised. It did not appear to be one that could be shared either, for Bryce still talked on in his own quaint way, apparently unaffected by the strange influence which so troubled me.
At last he rose and proceeded to gather up the disordered papers on the table. I rose too, and with a careless "So long," was making for the door when he stopped me with a question.
"I suppose," he asked, "that you haven't seen anything lately of our inquisitive friends?"
"The Roman sentry and the gentleman with the hardware and the smashed wrist?" I answered his question with one of mine.
He smiled at my description and the laughter-lines about his mouth creased into a myriad wrinkles. "You have them exactly," he remarked.
"No, I haven't seen them," I said. "They seem to have disappeared into nothingness."
Curiously enough the news, instead of pleasing, seemed to disappoint him. "They evidently mean business," he said in a semi-undertone. It seemed almost as if he was speaking his thoughts out aloud.
He glanced up at me with brooding eyes and brows drawn close together. "We'll hear from them presently," he murmured, "and then the end won't be far away."
"Cheer up," I said hastily, "They've got a long way to go yet, and I don't think they'll find me altogether pleasant to deal with."
"If you knew all about it," he said, and then he hesitated. For just the fraction of a second he trembled on the point of divulging everything, and then his old cautiousness re-asserted itself and the impulse died away.
"That'll be all," he said briskly. "Just keep your eyes and your ears open, Jim, and, as you say, we'll beat them yet."
But I rather fancied from his tone that he meant that last sentence the other way about.
I came awake instantly. The noise that had awakened me still echoed in my ears and, though I could not put a name to it, I could have sworn that it came from the room where Bryce did his typing. It was a very faint noise, not the kind to bring a heavy sleeper instantly awake. But my nerves work like a hair-trigger, and the almost noiseless pad of a cat across the room at night is sufficient to rouse me. What I had heard had been so faint that a less matter-of-fact man might have imagined that he had dreamt it. But I knew better. I don't dream.
The obvious thing was to slip out of bed at once and investigate. I didn't. I knew a trick worth two of that. I sat up and listened. It might be a wandering tabby that had blundered into a piece of furniture; perhaps the window had creaked; it might be any one of half a hundred things. If there was an intruder in the house I felt certain that presently I would hear something more. No man, no matter how careful he be, can move with a complete absence of sound.
Five minutes passed, ten, a quarter of an hour. Nothing happened. And then, just as I was beginning to despair, I heard it again. It was a little plainer this time. Somebody had scraped a chair across the floor and it had creaked slightly.
That was more than enough for me. I slipped out of bed, but I did not hurry. Many a man with the prize almost within his grasp has lost it simply because he has rushed at it with his eyes shut. I didn't dawdle, but I said to myself, "The more haste the less speed, Jim," and accordingly I took my time. Of course if I had fancied that there was one chance in a hundred of the man getting away, I would have been on the spot like a shot, but I guessed from what I had heard that the visitor was in no hurry, and certainly hadn't the faintest suspicion that anyone in the house was aware of his presence. I got my clothes on somehow and took a grip of my long Colt by the barrel end. I didn't want to shoot unless there was no other way out of it, and anyway a revolver-shot kicks up such an infernal racket inside a house and brings on the scene quite a number of people who'd be better at home and in bed.
I slunk down the passage like a shadow, walking as if I were treading on eggs. Very softly I tried the door. To my disgust it was locked. Now the only time Bryce ever locked it was when he was at work inside, so I knew that my man was still within reach. As if to make assurance doubly sure I caught, as I stepped back, the faint gleam of a pencil of light from under the doorway.
The position as I summed it up was this:—The intruder had entered through the door and had quietly locked it behind him. That would have been the first noise I had heard. Then he had hunted about for whatever he wanted and, once it had been found, he had drawn the chair up to the table and settled down to a prolonged study of the matter. That would explain the two sounds. Now as my man had come in through the door he was almost certain to go out the same way and, in the interests of peace and quiet, the proper course to take was to sit down and wait until he decided to come out.
I can't say how long I waited there. It seemed like hours, but of course at the outside it could not have been many minutes. I would dearly have liked to smoke, but I rather fancied that the other man's nose would be sure to scent me out. Also a scrape of a match in a still house at the dead of night sounds like a bomb-explosion. So I just squatted down on my heels and cursed my man under my breath. I was in deadly fear most of the time that he would make a noise of some kind and bring the other inhabitants down about my ears. He was my meat, and I meant to eat him myself.
At length the pencil of light went out. Somebody moved stealthily across the room and the key turned softly in the lock. I balanced the gun in my hand and got ready to swing. It was pitch-dark in the hall and I could not see an inch in front of me, but I had my fingers right up against the jamb of the door and I could feel it opening. The man was breathing with a barely perceptible wheeze and, if I had not been listening for something of the kind, I might have missed it altogether. But it was quite loud enough for me to position the fellow, and the next instant I flopped out of the darkness on to him. He gave a surprised little gasp, a sort of sizzling like the air escaping out of a punctured tyre, and went down on the mat underneath me. I had taken him so completely off his guard that there was no need for me to use my gun. I got one hand on his throat in the most approved style of the garrotte and just pressed. He wriggled a little at first, but I kept up the same even pressure, and presently he went limp. I knew then that he was harmless for the next ten minutes, so I released my hold, slipped my useless Colt into my pocket, and made to stand up. But at that precise moment the electric light in the hall went on, and a silvery voice said, "Hands up, please!"
In the astonishment of the moment I shot my hands heavenwards and turned round to view the new arrival. It was just as I thought. Moira had blundered into my little surprise party, and she was doing her level best to annex all the honors for herself. She was standing with one hand on the light switch and the other held Bryce's automatic. Her face was very pale, and the hand that held the revolver wasn't quite as steady as I could have wished. She blinked a little at me—her eyes seemed blinded by the sudden radiance—and I don't think she recognised me for the moment, so much do one's ordinary clothes make the man.
It was clearly up to me to disillusion her and persuade her either to put down the revolver or hold it in a way less calculated to alarm the peaceful public.
"You'd better put down that infernal thing, Moira," I said calmly, "or you'll be doing someone damage. The mere sight of you makes me nervous, Diana."
There was a studied insult in the last word, but I think somehow she must have missed it in the excitement of the moment, for she lowered her gun and ran towards me.
"Oh, it's you!" she cried surprisedly.
"It's me," I said dourly, and I dropped my hands into a more convenient position. "In fact it's so much me that I'd be obliged if you'd keep quiet for a while and help me look after this gentleman on the floor. I want to examine him, and I don't think I'll be able to do it in comfort if you wake the rest of the family."
"Who is he?" she asked, showing by the subdued note of her voice that she had taken my warning to heart.
"That's more than I can say," I answered. "I discovered him in the room there, and when he came out I promptly sat on him."
"But what did he want?"
"If one can judge anything from his present attitude, he came to study the pattern of the carpet, Moira."
"Be serious, Jim, please."
"I couldn't if I tried," I said, rising to my feet. "It's too much like hard work. But let's look at the captive, Diana."
This time the shot went home, and in a way I was glad. I had four years' arrears to make up yet. It was not a very manly thing to do, I know—it certainly wasn't at all gentlemanly—but it gave me a deuce of a lot of satisfaction, and that's about all I can say in defence. She looked up at me with both hurt and contempt in her eyes, but I was far too engrossed in the business in hand to give her more than passing notice. When I came to think it over in calmer moments I realised that, despite all that had happened, the girl was just as much in love with me as ever she had been.
The fellow was young, at the most he could not have been more than twenty-four or five, and I saw instantly that he was the man I had called the Roman sentry—the chap who had been spying on the house the day Bryce had driven me home from the Heads. The life wasn't crushed out of him by any means; even as I examined him he stirred a little and his eyes opened. They were nice black eyes, the sort that brim over with humor, yet way at the back of them I caught a glimpse of something else. It was a queer mixture of anger and determination, and I saw just sufficient of it to warn me to take no unnecessary risks. Save for that first spasmodic movement he lay perfectly still, those black eyes of his laughing up at me and challenging. Somehow they filled me with a curious sense of unrest, a feeling as if everything that made life safe and secure was slipping away from me. I did not speak a word, however, but gave him back look for look, striving with my eyes to beat down the challenge I read in his. They said as plainly as so many words, "I'm the better man, and I'll beat you yet. Try and see if I don't."
"What are you doing here?" I demanded at length, seeing that one of us must speak, and he seemed the less likely.
"If I told you I was a somnambulist you wouldn't believe me, would you?" he replied.
"I wouldn't," I said tersely.
"I'm not, anyway," he continued, with those infernally self-possessed eyes daring me ... daring me what?
"You've got to explain what you were doing in that room," I threatened. "The sooner you tell me the better it'll be for you."
"It's no use talking like that, my friend," he said. "You won't get a word more out of me than I wish, and while I think of it you'd better call in the police at once and have done with it."
It was the first time that the idea of the police had occurred to me, and, now I came to think of it, it wasn't too acceptable. Without knowing much about it, I surmised that the less Bryce had to do with the police the better he'd be pleased, that is if I could base anything on the way he had behaved that morning on the beach. As it was Moira seemed to have much the same idea as myself, or perhaps she spoke from superior knowledge.
"Don't call the police in, Jim," she said in a quick whisper. "You mustn't do that. It'd be better to let him go."
I shook my head. "I don't want to let him go," I said, "but if you don't want to make an example of him, I don't see what else there is for it. I'll have a word with him first, at any rate, and see what I can make out of him."
"Be careful, Jim," she whispered, all the strain and anger occasioned by my ill-timed insult disappearing in her anxiety for my welfare.
I ignored her admonition, more because I could think of no suitable reply than for any other reason, and addressed myself to the captive.
"Get up," I said. "You and I are going to have a little heart-to-heart talk."
He made no effort to rise, so I leaned over and hauled him up by the collar. By the feel of him he was some forty pounds lighter than I, and I made a mental note of that in case we had a scrimmage on the way. Weight counts a good deal in a rough-and-tumble. I got a good neck-hold on him, and then I turned to Moira. "You'd better get back to bed and forget," I said. "I'll deal with this smart Alec here."
I did not wait to see if she took my advice, but I prodded my captive with my free hand. "Jog along, Eliza," I said. "Straight down the hall, and don't try any monkey tricks."
He went quietly enough; if I had had my wits about me I would have had my suspicions aroused by that same fact. I was flushed with victory, and, what was even more pleasant, I was acting to an impressionable audience. I was sure that Moira could not fail to appreciate the neatness with which I had conducted the whole affair, and, though I kept telling myself that I did not care a hang for her, I hadn't the faintest objection to showing off before her. On the contrary. That, in part at least, was the cause of my undoing.
The hall ended in a big French window that opened out on to the back verandah. It was very seldom used, indeed I had never seen it opened, but there it was with glass all the way to the floor. When I marched my prisoner down the hall I had some vague idea of taking him out on to the verandah and inducing him to tell me what he had come for. But the man had other plans maturing, and when we were just about six or seven feet away from the window he gave a little twist and a wriggle and slipped out of my hands as if he had been an eel. Then, before I had quite recovered sufficiently to make a grab at the empty air, he hurled himself against the window. It was one of those foolhardy things that succeed just because of the sheer, daring recklessness of the man who carries them through. He swept through the glass with a splintering crash that must have been audible for half-a-block away, and then, while the falling pieces still tinkled on the floor, he placed his hand on the verandah rail and vaulted to the ground. I drew my revolver at once—I had been pulling it out of my pocket even as I ran down the hall—and took a flying shot at him. But in the hurry of the moment I missed, and I padded out on to the verandah through the splintered window just in time to see him scaling the back fence with the practised ease of the family tabby.
I did not attempt to follow him. I knew the uselessness of such a proceeding. Just for the fraction of a second his hurrying silhouette had shown on the top of the fence, and then it had melted into the surrounding shadows of the dawn with a silence and celerity which, more than anything else, told me how difficult it would be to trace him.
I turned on my heel, only to find that the lights were blazing up in practically every room, and Moira, Bryce and the servants were gathered in a huddled, indecisive group just inside the window. Most of them looked startled. Bryce had been a little shaken, but his self-possession was rapidly returning. Moira, indeed, was the only one who faced me with anything like calmness in her face.
"You'd better all get back to bed," I said, seeing that someone had to take the initiative. "It's nothing very much, nothing to worry you at any rate."
"Yes, you'd better go back," Bryce said, seconding my remarks. "There's nothing doing."
The servants moved away one by one, leaving the three of us together. For quite a minute Bryce eyed the revolver that I still held in my hand, then his glance travelled to the shattered window, and, completing the circle, came to rest on me again.
"Well?" he queried, with intense interest in his voice. I knew what that monosyllable meant. It was a request for a detailed account of the events of that night. Seeing that there was nothing to be gained by withholding anything, I plunged into the tale and related everything just as it had happened.
"So he got away from you?" he remarked when I had finished.
"He did," I said emphatically.
"That's about the best thing he could have done," Bryce ran on. "I don't know what we could have done with him if we had kept him."
"'He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day,'" I reminded him.
"That other day is a matter for the future," he answered. "We'd better see what he took though. Come on."
He turned on his heel and led the way to his study just as the first rays of the rising sun crept up over the distant hills.
The room was much as we had left it the evening before. The typed papers had disappeared, but a sheet which I recognised as the one I had picked up from the kitchen floor the day of my arrival lay on the table in full view. Beside it was the clean blotting pad that I had never yet seen used. Bryce took no notice of the sheet of figures, but lifted the pad up, and, drawing a magnifying glass from his pocket, ran his eyes over the rough white surface. Moira and I watched him with unfeigned interest. At last he looked up.
"Just as I thought," he remarked. "Have a look yourself, Jim." He handed both glass and pad to me. I studied the latter for some seconds before I quite dropped to what he meant. Gradually I made out figures impressed on the rough surface. Our midnight visitor had made a copy of that single sheet, had made it hurriedly in pencil, and the impression had gone through on to the receptive softness of the blotting paper. My scrutiny over, I handed the materials to Moira.
"You understand?" Bryce queried, with little laughter-wrinkles about his eyes.
"I do," I said admiringly. "I don't know what the man was after, but he didn't get it. He got a fake instead."
Bryce nodded. "He's up a gum-tree instead of under one," he said enigmatically.
I made no answer to that, chiefly because it struck me that it was the sort of remark that meant a good deal more than appeared on the surface. I tucked it away in my memory, quite confident that sooner or later the march of events would make it clear to me. As a matter of fact, if I hadn't taken so much notice of that simple sentence, this story would never have been written, for the key to everything was contained in that casual remark.
"Nothing else has been disturbed," Bryce announced, and included the whole room in one comprehensive gesture. "I'm going back to bed for a couple of hours. You young people can do just what you like."
He hustled us out of the room, shut the door carefully behind us, and went off to his room. Moira made no attempt to follow his example, but stood in the passage with her deep golden-brown eyes fixed on me. There was a look in them that I could not quite fathom; it whirled me back through five years of sorrow and stress, brought me back to the days when——. No, I wasn't going to think about it at all. It didn't bring me back to anything; it brought nothing back to me. Yet I could not help remarking that her eyes held solicitude for me and something that was more than that.
"Aren't you going back to rest?" I asked, and was surprised to note that there was both interest and defiance in my voice.
"I want to talk to you," she said, answering my question by inference. "I want to talk seriously to you."
So it was coming at last. She intended putting Bryce's advice into execution. Perhaps she thought it was merely a matter of telling me that she was sorry for what had occurred, and then everything would begin again just where it had left off. If she thought so she was radically mistaken. My love had been rejected and I had been wounded in my pride. Through four long years of repression the knowledge had rankled in my mind till now the very sight of her standing there and beseeching me with her eyes was more than I could bear. I would not have been human had I not felt the old wound pricking me again, and I certainly would not have been a Carstairs had the mere sight of her apparent contrition moved me to forgive her on the spot. I was quite willing to be friendly, I told myself, but by nothing short of a miracle could we regain the old footing. The worst of it was that something moved me to take her in my arms then and there and kiss away the tears that were very near her eyes.
"I don't know what to say to you, Jim," she said tentatively.
"There's no need to say anything, Moira." I tried to speak as kindly as possible, but somehow I think I failed. "I happened to overhear you and your uncle yesterday, and I know just what you mean. But, Moira, I don't see how things can ever be the same again. It isn't as if it were something I could forget. It isn't. It goes right down to the fundamentals. If our love wouldn't stand the strain I put on it, it wasn't worth having. I hate to have to speak to you like this, but, when all's said and done, it's just as well to be frank first as last."
She nodded with tight-closed lips. I saw that she was trying her hardest to keep control of herself, and for a moment it was touch and go with me. I very seldom set my mind to anything that I don't carry through, and in this instance I had a very clear and definite plan outlined in my mind. So I just set my teeth and carried it off as if nothing really mattered very much.
"You heard us yesterday then?" she said at length. She spoke so slowly that she almost drawled her words.
I nodded.
"That's what you were doing then when I came out of the room?"
"Exactly," I said. I fancied it would only make matters worse if I explained everything in detail.
"I was wrong, Jim, and I apologise," she said. There was a little gleam of flame in her eyes that made me hang on her words. "I was wrong," she repeated. "I said yesterday that you had changed, but I don't think you have. You're just the same old Jim, a bit of a savage and just as primitive as ever."
"Thank you, Moira," I said. "I didn't expect it from you, but now I know what to look for."
"It is war then?" she said, with a little sparkle in her eyes.
"War it is," I answered; "as the Spaniards say, 'Guerra al cuchillo.'"
"Please translate," she requested. "I do not speak Spanish."
"War to the knife," I said briskly.
She half turned, then spoke to me over her shoulder. "I had hoped that we would be allies," she said softly, and was gone before I could ask her why.
As was only to be expected, things were very quiet during the next few days. Bryce went about his own affairs more openly than hitherto. With the passing of our midnight visitor all fear of attack seemed to have disappeared. He did not say as much to me, but in many little ways he showed that he was much easier in his mind. I found that I had next to nothing to do. He did not go out of his way now to find something to keep me occupied. As a matter of fact, I saw very little of him and practically nothing at all of Moira.
I spent most of my time thinking. I went over everything that had happened from the moment I sat down on the beach right down to the visit of that interesting and entertaining gentleman who had made his exit from the house in so unorthodox a manner. There was logic running right through the piece; every little incident seemed to dovetail into the others, yet, because I did not have the key, I could not read the riddle. Why did the man on the beach fire at Bryce? I could not say. Then just for amusement's sake I got a piece of paper and a pencil and dotted down the items that wanted explaining. They ran somehow like this:—
1. Why was Bryce shot at?
2. Why was he being watched?
3. What was the meaning of those figures I had seen?
4. Why was Bryce so anxious to avoid publicity?
5. Why did everybody seem satisfied when the burglar got away?
6. What was the burglar after, and why was he apparently satisfied even when he got the wrong figures?
7. What did the piece of driftwood have to do with it, and what connection was there between the wood and the typed figures?
And, lastly, what was it all about, anyhow?
Some of the items taken singly were quite susceptible of explanation, but I could not put forward any solution that covered them in toto. So eventually I gave it up, deciding that it wasn't my affair, and the less I worried myself about what didn't concern me, the better.
The tragedy, coming as it did like a bolt out of a clear sky, so upset everything that I really cannot say whether it was a week or ten days later that it happened. But I do remember, with that accuracy of detail that a man sometimes retains even when he is doubtful of essentials, the various events of that evening.
Immediately after tea Bryce rose from the table with the expressed intention of going to his study. I recall that he remarked to Moira as he passed her that everything was going along swimmingly, and that if he had no further word during the next couple of days he would consider that it was quite safe to try his luck. I didn't understand what he meant, though he seemed to be referring in a general way to the late burglary, if burglary it could be called. Moira was quite aware of the drift of his remarks, for she asked him wouldn't it be better to let the week elapse before he did anything.
"We've waited too long," he said. "We should have got to work long before. Too much time has been wasted already." Then he turned to me and said casually, "Drop in and see me later on, Jim. I'll be working till about ten."
I told him that I'd be along very shortly, and then I went hunting for a book to read. I found one at length, and I got so interested in it that I did not notice time passing. I was brought back to reality by a quick step in the passage, and I turned my head to view the newcomer. It was only Moira on her way to the study. She went by me with her head in the air, as if I did not exist. I recall taking out my watch and noting that it was just a quarter-past-nine, and high time I went in and saw Bryce. However, as Moira had got in ahead of me, and her business was probably of a private nature, I decided to wait until I heard her come out again.
I turned back to my book, but had scarcely found my place when I caught the tinkle of breaking glass on woodwork, and practically at the same instant there was a sharp "pop," as if someone had drawn a cork from a bottle of some gaseous liquid. On the heels of that had come the single whip-like crack of a revolver. I swung to my feet in an instant, and the book dropped unheeded to the floor. During the last few days I had got out of the habit of carrying my revolver, but for all that I made straight for the study, and without the slightest ceremony turned the handle. The door was not locked; it opened at my touch. I doubt if it was even latched.
If my long years of training in the hard school of experience have brought me nothing else, they at least taught me to keep my head in just such an emergency as this present one. It was well for me that I had my nerves under complete control, for the sight that faced me was one that I could not have pictured in even my wildest flights of fancy. Bryce was slumped forward in his chair, his big head sunk on his chest. All the color had fled from his face, leaving it ashen pale. The kind eyes that used to sparkle so were glazed now in death, and squinted up at me through the tangled mat of his eyebrows. The whiteness of his immaculate shirt-front was defiled for the first and last time by the big blood stain that showed how his life had ebbed away. But it was Moira most of all who caught and held my attention. She was standing just a little to the left of Bryce, her deep eyes wide with horror and a smoking revolver still held in her white clenched hand. She was staring at Bryce and the blood-stain on his shirt as if what she saw was too monstrous for belief.
"Moira Drummond," I said, in a hard, cold, emotionless voice that I hardly recognised as mine, "put down that thing instantly."
She turned her head at my words and regarded me dazedly for just the fraction of a second. Then in an instant the revolver dropped from her nerveless fingers and clattered to the floor, she swayed like a willow-wand in the wind, and would have fallen had I not sprung to catch her. She went limp in my arms. I did not need a second glance to tell me that Bryce was dead, and that no one in this world could do anything for him now. So, recognising that my first duty was to the living, I turned my attention to Moira. She had merely fainted, and one or two simple remedies brought her round very quickly. She opened her golden-brown eyes and looked up into mine. The unaccustomed horror of what she had just gone through had not yet died out of them; they held a plaintive, pleading look that somehow went straight to my heart.
"I didn't do it," she quavered.
"Who said you did?" I asked.
"The way you looked and spoke to me, Jim——"
I stopped her with a gesture. "That's all right," I said consolingly. "I wouldn't have thought so for a moment. But tell me just what happened."
"That's more than I can," she said. "I was standing by him, talking, and suddenly I heard the window glass smash and something went 'pop.' And the next I knew uncle gave a little cry and his head fell forward on his chest. The blood was welling up out of his wound, and I saw that he was killed. His revolver was on the table, so I seized it and fired at the window. I don't know whether I hit whoever fired, but I hope I did," she concluded, with the faintest touch of forgivable viciousness in her voice.
It was only when she drew my attention to it that I remembered having heard the glass break. The window had a great big star in the centre of it with a myriad little cracks radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel.
Moira looked first at the window, then at the still figure sitting in the chair. Finally she turned to me.
"Jim, what are we to do?" she asked helplessly.
"Well," I answered, seeing now that everything fell upon me, "we'll have to get hold of a doctor. It's just for form's sake, you understand. He won't be able to do anything. Then we'll have to ring up the police. It's a blessing we've got the 'phone on, as I wouldn't care to leave you by yourself now even for a moment. It's a wonder that none of the servants heard the noise."
"They're all out, Jim."
"That's lucky in one way," I said. "Now, Moira, I want you to understand that the safety of us both depends on how far you back me up. We can't touch your uncle until the police come; there'd be trouble if we did. I'm going to ring up now, and in the meantime you'd better find some of your uncle's cartridges."
"Why, Jim?"
"I'll tell you when I come back," I said. "Just do as I tell you. There should be some in the drawer of that table. Be careful how you get them out; you don't want to have to touch anything more than you can help. I'll leave the door open so I can see you from the 'phone. You won't be frightened?"
She shook her head, but her white face told me as plainly as so many words that the sooner I came back the better. Accordingly I wasted no further time, but turned on the hall light and took up the telephone-book. For a wonder I had no difficulty in getting connected with either the doctor or the police, and, once I had made my meaning plain, I hung up and returned to Moira.
"The police'll be here in ten minutes at the outside," I said. "I've got just that time to make you word-perfect. You've got the cartridges? Thanks. I only want one. Now listen. Your story's thin, it's so thin that there's many a detective wouldn't believe it; but I'm not going to give them a chance. I'm going to rig up things so that they'll look right. What happened is this:—You and I were out in the next room, reading if you like, when we heard a shot. We rushed in and found your uncle just as he is now. We've no idea who shot him, and neither you nor I fired a shot. When we find your uncle's revolver in the drawer with its seven chambers undischarged we're going to be just as much at sea as anybody else."
"But I did fire a shot," she objected. "How can you get away from that?"
"Easy. First of all I take out the discharged cylinder. Then I clean out the gun. I mustn't forget to clean it out, because if I do and people examine it, they'll see that it's been discharged, and they'll begin to suspect. We mustn't leave the least ground for suspicion. Now, there's the gun ready loaded in all its chambers and as clean as the day it came out of the shop. Back it goes into the drawer, and it stays there until the police find it. You understand just what you've to do now?"
"I think I do, Jim. But, oh, you've got to help me all you can!"
"I will that," I said in a sudden burst of cordiality. "I want you to feel that you can rely on me right through. And if there's any questions asked just let me do the answering, and if you're asked anything, why just say the same as I do. You can't say anything else because we were together all the night."
"But, Jim, I don't see why we should have to deceive people like this. Why is it necessary?"
"Have you ever heard of the thing called circumstantial evidence, Moira? You must remember that I heard a shot, and ran into the room just in time to see you standing over your uncle with a smoking revolver. I know what happened, but the police mightn't look at the matter in the same light. There's plenty of other ways of explaining that broken window."
"I suppose you know what's best," she said with a tired little sigh. "But it all does seem so horrible. I wish I hadn't to lie so."
"There's worse things than lying," I hinted. "It's a case of choosing the lesser of two evils, and really, Moira, I think in his own peculiar way your uncle trusted me."
She nodded as if she could not trust herself to speak.
Then came the sound of heavy footsteps on the verandah, and the door-bell rang violently.
"That's the police, very likely," I said in a quick whisper. "Just keep your head and leave the rest to me."
She said no word, but the pressure of her hand on mine told me more than hours of speech.
The police had brought the divisional surgeon with them, and he made his brief examination while the sergeant questioned Moira and myself. My story was the simple one that I had outlined, and I must say that Moira played up well to my lead. She was naturally upset at what she had gone through, and the sergeant, I fancy, made allowance for this, and attributed any trifling discrepancies between our two stories to this fact. He was one of the politest officials it has ever been my lot to deal with, and he carried out his duties in a way that made me his debtor for life. I was not as shocked by the occurrence as I might have been. I had seen far too much of the rough side of life and the sudden side of death to have any other feeling than a rather natural sorrow at losing a man who had been something more than a benefactor to me; but I did not make the radical mistake of treating Bryce's death too lightly. I rather flatter myself that I mixed my sorrow and my common sense in just the right proportions. It was different with Moira; she was genuinely distressed, and made no effort to conceal it. It was the first time for many years that I had seen her so unaffected, and natural, and I must say that the sight brought out all that was best in me.
The sergeant took our names and then began a close personal questioning. He enquired into my past life, asked me how long I had been with Bryce, and then bluntly demanded to know in what capacity I was staying in the house.
"Mr. Bryce," I said, "was an old friend of my father's, and naturally there was always a welcome here for me."
I picked my words carefully, because I was in mortal dread that some stray remark might put him on to that affair on the beach. I knew that if he once got wind of that everything was up with us, and our hastily-built castle of cards would come tumbling to the ground. While I was thinking of this it struck me all of a heap that there was a chance of something leaking out about the burglar of the other day. The only thing I could see was to make a clean breast of it.
"I don't know whether this has got anything to do with the burglary the other night," I said casually.
"What's that?" the sergeant demanded.
I repeated my remark. "This is the first I've heard of it," the man said. "Why wasn't it reported before? It's over a week ago, you say."
"About that," I agreed, "but it was reported. Mr. Bryce went down himself to tell you." And here I looked warningly at Moira. She gave no sign that she had noticed my glance, but somehow I felt that she quite understood what was required of her.
"I don't deny he might have come down," the man ran on, "but all the same no report has reached us."
"That's mighty curious," I said with assumed thoughtfulness. "Now I come to think of it, it struck me at the time that you people hadn't followed the matter up. I meant to ask Mr. Bryce about it, but the matter went clean out of my mind, and it was just this moment that I recollected it. It does seem a bit of a puzzler."
"If you tell me all that happened, Mr. Carstairs," the sergeant suggested, "it might help us a bit. There's something very like a motive in this."
I gave him a rather sketchy account of the night of the burglar's visit, but, without actually giving a false description of the burglar himself, I so drew him that he would be difficult to recognise. I was swayed by cautiousness more than anything else at the moment, but I fancy that deep down in my mind was a primitive longing to settle with the man without having recourse to the law. At any rate no policeman in the country would have arrested him on the description I gave.
"It's a pity he got away," said the sergeant when I'd finished. "It looks as if he's the man. What was taken, Mr. Carstairs?"
"According to Mr. Bryce there wasn't anything even touched."
"Looks as if Mr. Bryce had a past," the man said in a half-whisper meant for my ears alone.
I regarded the suggestion with alarm. "I don't see how that could be," I told him. "I've known him for a good many years, and my father knew him before that. But of course I've been in the Islands for close on to four years, and something that I am unaware of may have occurred in that time."
"Just so," he agreed. "We'll see what Miss Drummond has to say."
"Had your uncle any enemies that you know of?" she was asked.
She answered the question with admirable adroitness. "My uncle was the kindest of men," she said. "I can conceive of no reason why he should have any enemies."
I suppose our very apparent frankness threw the man off his guard, for I'm perfectly satisfied that he could have tripped us up more than once had he had the faintest suspicion that we were not telling the exact truth. But we strove, rather successfully as it now appears, to twist the truth to suit ourselves without actually telling a downright lie, and we did it in a way that seemed to satisfy him, astute though he was. I told him but one lie that evening, though as a matter of fact it was much nearer the truth than anything else I had said, so strangely do things fall out.
"Miss Drummond is Mr. Bryce's niece, isn't she?" he asked.
"That's right," I said, and Moira nodded.
"Now let me see," he ran on, ticking off the points on his fingers, "you are an old friend of the family's. That's correct, isn't it?"
"That's so," I agreed.
"Anything more?"
"I don't quite understand you," I said, with the faintest doubt at the back of my mind. He spoke as if he knew or suspected something more than I had told him.
He looked at Moira and then at me, and I saw that he was smiling. It was just the sort of smile that one would expect from that portion of the world that loves a lover.
"Oh!" I said with a relief that I made no attempt to hide, "so you've guessed it."
"Guessed what?" Moira queried quickly, her face paling to a perceptible degree.
I turned to her with the cheeriest smile I could muster at the moment. "He's guessed that we're engaged, Moira," I said. And the note of exultation in my voice was more real than I had intended.
"It's not the time to be rejoicing over such things," I rattled on, "but—well, I suppose we're all young only once and we've got to make the best of it."
The sergeant was a gem of his kind, and even the nearness of a tragedy and the rigidness of the rules that governed his daily life had not crushed out of him that little touch of Nature that makes the whole world kin. Thanks to the easiness of my manner and his own ready stumbling into the trap I had not set for him, he now looked upon me as nothing more than a love-sick youth with no eyes for anyone or anything save the girl who occupied his heart. If the man could only have seen what was in my mind, if by any chance he had overheard our conversation on the morning of the burglary, how quickly he would have changed his good opinion of us both. But luckily he was no mind-reader, and my little piece of bluff achieved more success than was its due.
"You needn't worry about anything," he said with an almost paternal note in his voice. "We police have certain duties to carry out, but we're human after all, and anything I can do as a man and a brother I'll be only too pleased to have you ask."
"Thank you," I said, with gratitude that was less than half feigned.
The divisional surgeon gave it as his opinion that death had been practically instantaneous. The bullet had entered the wall of the chest a little too close to the heart to be pleasant. The doctor did tell me just what else had happened, but either he did not make himself clear or I have forgotten it.
Presently a couple of the police who had been put on the trail of the fugitive returned and reported nothing doing. The garden just outside the window was a good deal trampled about, and there were footmarks in plenty on the soft soil, but, as the sergeant remarked, "Footmarks are like finger prints—they're no use unless you know who made them." All things considered, it looked as if our man had got clean away again. I had a fancy that neither Moira nor I had seen the last of him. Standing there in the very room that had witnessed the tragedy, with the body of the murdered man hanging limply in the chair, the lifeless clay scarcely yet cold, it came to me with something of the clearness of prophecy that this was not the end but the beginning of the play. It was something closely akin to second sight, and for the moment the spaciousness of the vision that I saw but dimly thrilled me with its possibilities. I knew, though how I knew I cannot say even at this distant date, that the calm, silent policemen with their helmets in their hands, the earnest, energetic divisional surgeon, and his confrère the sergeant, even the dead man himself, were but the merest supers in the prelude to adventure. Moira and I were the only ones who were real, the only actors that were something more than mummers. Yet even I failed to see that what had happened that night was something more than a queer insoluble mystery. There was nothing in my experience to tell me that it was vitally connected with the early history of Victoria, that it had its being in the now far-off days before Australia became a nation. I think if any supernatural whisper of the truth had reached me that I would not have been surprised, but that is the most that I can say.
I came back abruptly to reality to find a cold wind blowing in through the crack in the window. The doctor and the two policemen between them were lifting Bryce out of the chair he would never more occupy, and I, with my profounder knowledge of death and its consequences, saw just what they were going to do.
"I think I'd better take Miss Drummond outside for the present," I whispered to the sergeant. The man nodded, and, taking Moira by the arm, I led her from the room.
"It would be better if you could go to bed," I suggested.
She shook her head wearily. "I can't, Jim. It's no good trying to persuade me. I just couldn't."
"I think I understand," I said softly.
"I don't feel sorry a bit, Jim. I know it's a strange thing to say, but it's the truth, and there it is. I couldn't summon a tear. But just inside me there's a vacancy, a sense of loss. He's gone out of my life, and I'll never meet anyone who'll quite take his place. I can't put what I mean into so many words, but I think you can understand. You're quick at understanding, Jim. I don't feel sorry a bit, and I don't want to cry, somehow; but I'll miss him dreadfully. I'm hard in some ways, Jim. I must be terribly devoid of affection."
I made no answer to that. My thoughts were on one summer's evening four—or was it five?—years ago, and in the light of what had happened then I could scarcely contradict her now.
"I'm sorry," I said abruptly, "that I had to tell that lie about our being engaged. But I had to be as natural as I could, and the more obvious an explanation I gave the better for us all."
She looked at me for a moment with unutterable things in the depths of her golden-brown eyes.
"I'm sorry," she said slowly, "that you had to tell a lie."
I took her remark as the natural corollary of mine, but some sub-conscious sense in me insisted that its very ambiguity was designed.
Almost at that moment I heard footsteps in the hall, and knew that the servants had just come home. The big clock in the hall chimed ten.
"There's the women," I said. "You'd better tell them, and see they don't make a scene."
Moira nodded and went down the hall to meet them.
There is little more to relate of this phase of my story. Naturally there was an inquest, and just as naturally was a verdict returned of "death at the hands of a person or persons unknown," or words to that effect. The situation, in fine, was that Bryce was dead and buried, and the police admitted that they held no clue to the identity of the murderer. Motive there was none as far as they could see, and the whole affair looked like one of these senseless crimes that from time to time startle the city folk from their easy-going equanimity. The matter was not even a nine-days' wonder, for other things occupied the attention of the press, and a stickful was the most it ever got in any paper.
I stayed on in the house at Moira's request and attended to several matters that were rather outside her province. The old man turned out not to be as rich as we had thought, though he had money enough in truth. The bulk of this went to Moira, with the curious proviso that she could not invest it in any way without first submitting the proposal to me and receiving my sanction. The will was of recent date, as a matter of fact it had been drawn up within a few days of Moira's arrival. There was a sum left to me, too, enough to make me independent for a good many years to come.
Moira's mother arrived the day after the tragedy, and showed no very evident intention of returning home. She was very nice to me, but then there was no reason why she should have been anything else. Any strain that there had been, and was still for that matter, was between her daughter and myself, and, like a wise mother, she forebore from interfering in what did not immediately concern her.
For my own sake, if for no other reason, I hurried along the winding-up of Bryce's affairs. I saw, or fancied I saw, that the sooner I left the house the better would Moira be pleased. For when all was said and done there could be no denying that things were far from satisfactory. Neither of us made any further reference to my bare-faced lying on that ill-starred night, but the more I thought of it the more equivocal did the present situation seem. I for one was doubly glad when at last we finished with the lawyers, and things—blessed, indefinite word—seemed like to settle down again.
My time of departure was no further off than twenty-four hours away when the incident occurred that led to a hurried readjustment of my plans and that brought us, willy-nilly, to the Valley—for so I still persist in calling it, as if there were not another valley in the world—and the treasure that lay there and helped us to unravel the tangled threads of Bryce's past life.
I had my bag already packed, and had announced that I was going the next evening, when Moira stayed me with a word.
"I've been meaning to talk to you for a long time," she said, "but somehow I could never seem to summon up enough courage. It's about Uncle and ... well, you know as well as I do, that there was some mystery about him."
"Go on," I said.
"Well, he told me once that if ever anything happened to him we would find documents in his room that would help us to take up the work where he left off. He repeated that the very night he died. Don't you see what that means?"
"It means that they are still there," I said soberly.
"That's the peculiar part of it, Jim. They should still be in the room, because they couldn't possibly have been taken away. Yet I've hunted high and low and I can't find them."
"And, now you find you're in difficulties, you call me in," I hinted.
"Jim, I wish you wouldn't talk that way. There's no call for us to be continually bickering. If we can't be anything else, at least we can be friends, can't we?"
"I suppose it's worth trying. But what have the papers to do with me?"
"They affect you as well as me, Jim. Uncle wished the two of us to carry on his work."
"How pleasant!" I murmured. "And suppose I refuse?"
"Well," she said, with just the least gesture of helplessness, "I'll have to do whatever I can myself. But it was Uncle's wish that we divide the proceeds."
"The proceeds of what?"
"That's more than I can say, Jim. We've got to find the papers first."
"That's so, Moira. Seeing it's you, I'll hunt for them; if it's worth while I might even help you through, but you'll have to understand from the very start that I won't finger a penny of what you call the proceeds."
"You usen't to be like that, Jim."
"I've changed a lot, haven't I?" I grinned.
For a moment she stared blankly at me, then she asked me, as if the thought had just occurred to her, "There isn't any other girl, is there?"
"There never was any other girl," I said. "There was always only the one, but she failed...."
I saw that she had some intimate little revelation on the tip of her tongue, so, for fear she might say too much—one never knows what a woman will say if she fancies any words of hers will gain the day—I said briskly, "Now, about those papers, Moira. Where did you look?"
"Everywhere, Jim."
"You couldn't have. There's one place at least where you haven't looked."
"And that?" she queried eagerly.
"The place where they're hidden," I answered disconcertingly.
"Oh," she said blankly; and then, "Have you any idea where that is?"
I shook my head. "None at all, Moira. Still your uncle told you that they were in his study, and as you say they couldn't have been taken away, the only thing to do is to look in every likely place for a start."
"And if we find nothing?"
"Then we'll look in the unlikely places. And as there's no time like the present, I suggest we start now."
Moira was quite agreeable to that, so we entered the room. Books and everything lay just as we had left them the night of the tragedy; only the broken window-pane had been taken out and a new one inserted.
"I never thought of it before," I remarked, "but the sight of that new pane just brought to my mind how narrow a squeak you had that night."
"I don't follow you, Jim."
"Well, if our friends the police hadn't been so willing to swallow the obvious, they would have seen that my tale was all bunkum. When that chap fired he starred the window, and when your shot went through it finished the job and knocked a finger of glass right out. If the sergeant had only gone over to the window and examined it carefully, he would have seen enough to make him wonder how the deuce the same shot could have hit the same bit of glass in two places. But he didn't go over to examine it; I had filled his mind with an hypothesis, and he couldn't see anything else but that. Now it's the same with this business of looking for the papers. You seem to think your uncle would put them just where anyone could lay hands on them. I don't. Your uncle had a fair amount of foresight—he realised all along that it was likely that he'd be cut off short—and the mere fact that he told you twice at least that he had left you instructions shows that he had gone about things carefully and methodically. Again, he had no means of knowing just how he would be killed, so you can take it for granted that he provided against such a contingency as this room being thoroughly searched by the murderers. In other words, the papers are so placed that only an intelligent person who knew your uncle's mind would guess where the hiding place is. Now I'm having a wild shot at it, but it's logical enough in all conscience. When you can't find a thing, try to take over the mentality of the man who hid it."
"I'm afraid you're getting too deep for me, Jim."
"I'll put it another way, Moira. Something influenced your uncle in the hiding-place he selected, and we've got to parallel his thoughts, if we can, in order to find out the spot."
"But that's impossible."
"At first glance it seems like it. But just think the matter over. I've got more than half an idea already. Whatever those papers are they're certainly typewritten, and I'm sure they've something to do with that bit of wood. Oh, I forgot. I've never told you about that. It happened on the beach."
"Uncle told me how he met you," Moira volunteered.
"I'll bet he didn't say anything about the driftwood though."
"No, he did not," Moira admitted. So then and there I told her the tale. "You can understand from that," I concluded, "that whatever he was typing had something to do with that piece of wood. Now when he had made up his mind to secrete the papers two words would be prominent in his thoughts."
"I know," she said with a flash of intuition.
"Tell me," I smiled.
"'Sands' and 'wood,'" she said eagerly.
"'Wood' is one of them," I answered, "but I rather prefer to say 'bury' for the other. Now the only place he could bury anything about here in such a way that it wouldn't be noticed is under the hearthstone; but, as it's cement in this case, I think we can leave it out of the question. He wouldn't put them under the floor. For one thing it'd take too long, and the sweepers would be sure to notice if the carpet or the linoleum had been disturbed. So that brings us back to 'wood' again."
"How about the wall? A secret panel, or something of the kind?"
"I don't think he'd select anything so obvious," I said with a shake of my head. "It had to be a place that we'd find, but that everyone else would miss. There's quite a lot of wooden articles here, Moira, so we'll go over them very carefully."
I surveyed the furniture ruefully. "Looks as if we'll have to chop a lot of things to pieces," I remarked.
"Silly!" said Moira Drummond disgustedly. "We're looking for something hollow, so why not tap?"
"Brilliant idea!" I said.
As I sit writing at this table in that very same room, the scene comes back to me with all the clearness of a well-developed photograph. In my mind's eye I see Moira and myself on our knees tapping every inch of the old mahogany and the newer imitation Chippendale, and I realise as I have realised a dozen times since to what needless trouble we went, when a little thought upon the lines that I have already mapped out would have led us just as easily, and perhaps a good deal quicker, to the very spot itself. But we were young then—though for that matter we are still—and to young people all motion is progress. It is only when one gets older and sees things in perspective that one realises.... But that wasn't what I set out to write about.
The long and short of it was that we tapped all the furniture most carefully, and at the end of it found that our persistence was still unrewarded.
"There's something wrong somewhere," Moira said disappointedly.
"It seems as if there's been a mistake in our judgment," I agreed. "Still I fancy the table's the most likely place. You see he sat there always."
"Suppose you sit in his place then, Jim."
"Excellent idea, Moira," I said, and at once proceeded to put it into practice.
"Now if I had just finished typing anything and was looking for a safe place to hide it, where would I naturally go?" I said out aloud. Moira dropped into a chair on the other side of the table and leaned forward, her chin resting in her hand, and regarded me with intense interest. I went on talking to myself. "I'm thinking of wood, and the nearest wood to me is the table. Therefore I'd hide it somewhere about the table, not in or on it, but just about it."
Moira's eyes glowed—I remember that particularly—and we both must have seized on the idea at one and the same instant.
"Oh, why didn't we think of it before?" she cried, and then the two of us were on our knees and groping under the table. It was a massive piece of furniture in its way, with a large cross-piece running from side to side underneath. And on this cross-piece, so tied with string that it could not slip off, was a tiny packet of oil-skin.
"The safest place in the house," I said, as I stood upright and held out a helping hand to Moira. "No one would ever think of looking there. See how nearly we missed it."
"Jim, Jim, let's have a look!" she begged.
My answer was to place the package in my pocket. "Not here," I said in explanation. "You must remember that those murdering gentlemen aren't accounted for yet, and it'd be a pity to let them get hold of the very thing we've been keeping out of their clutches for so long."
"I never thought of that," she said with a crestfallen air. "Of course you're right. But where'll we go?"
"Any of the inner rooms. The drawing-room, say. That hasn't got any windows opening out on to the garden."
Moira caught my arm. "Come on, Jim," she cried, "I'm dying to know what is in it."
"The more haste the less speed," I remarked soberly. "Likewise there's many a slip between the cup and the lip."
"Don't, Jim, don't be pessimistic just when everything's beginning to turn out well."
"Beginning," I repeated. "You're right there. We're just beginning now."
But all the same she did not take her hand off my arm, and when hers slipped through mine in quite the good old way, I could not find it in my heart to tell her that she must do no such thing.
The drawing-room was just as comfortable a place as a man could wish, and I saw at a glance that there was no likelihood of our being disturbed there.
I held the packet in my hands for I don't know how many seconds, almost afraid to open it. Inside was the secret that had lost Bryce his life, the secret that had cost, though I did not know it at the time, almost a dozen lives, and that would bring two at least of our associates perilously close to the grave before our work was ended. Moira shared some of my hesitation, for she made no effort to hurry me into undoing the packet, but stood awaiting my pleasure.
The string was tied so tightly that I could not unknot it. I drew my knife and cut it, and the oil-skin unrolled of itself. The first thing I came across was a letter from Bryce addressed to the two of us. It was not contained in an envelope, but seemed to have been slipped in as an after-thought. It ran:—