CHAPTER XII

Noah’s Flood

Same day. 8.30 P.M.

And now we know that the Chief Constable has left the direct handling of the case to Salt, under a discreet supervision from afar. Wise of the Constable, since he had no hope of reaching the storm-bound house!

By chance at the bottom landing I met Millicent Mertoun. I thought her more lovely than ever, though the terrors of the day before had altered her cheeks to something like the hue of wax. But her inexpressible dark eyes glowed with undimmed fascination. She smiled, courageously, I imagined.

“It’s terrible, isn’t it, Mr. Bannerlee, to have to eat when everything is so awful? But I’m hungry, really. I couldn’t take a bite last night.”

I sympathized.

“Have you heard anyone speak of finding a scarab, quite a small scarab?”

“I’ve just come down myself this morning, you see; so, of course— But perhaps I can help you look for it. Whereabouts do you think you lost it?”

“It’s not mine—it’s Paula’s. She won’t tell anybody about it, of course, because it’s so unimportant compared with . . . She’s troubled about it, though. It’s an heirloom, I believe, from someone of her family who was in Egypt.”

“I shall have a look for it, I assure you.”

“I’m afraid it’s no use looking, thanks, unless someone’s just happened to pick it up. It was a tiny scarab, set in a ring, and it probably came loose outdoors.”

“Outdoors!”

“Yes, she didn’t notice it was gone until after—after—”

“I see. Well, Miss Mertoun, I’ll let you know in case anyone mentions such a thing.”

“Oh, thank you. But don’t say I told you.”

The straggling procession into the breakfast-room was not merely a subdued but even a sorry lot. Dismay and hunger both had been at work on most of us. Few, I believe, had slept. I myself had, but it was a sleep tossed and pulled by past and future. Food, however, worked its customary melioration, and when at ten o’clock we were summoned to meet Salt in the conservatory, scarcely anyone looked the worse for the mental battering of the day before. I suppose Crofts Pendleton was actually the hardest hit.

It transpired that Salt had already been about the grounds, rain-infested as they were. Insulated in rubber, he had examined the site of Cosgrove’s death, seen the canvas-covered axe, and made a tour of the immediate environs of the house. Already, too, he had concluded an intensive search in Cosgrove’s room and among his belongings, and to that room the unlucky Irishman’s body had lately been conveyed, which relieved some of the gloom in the Hall of the Moth. Now, with the Coroner of few words seated beside him, the Superintendent stood watchfully in the sinus of the piano while we filed into the undertakers’ Elysium. The servants were already standing hangdog along the wall.

“I’ll have to interview each of you separately, ladies and gentlemen,” Salt announced. “But I must really get acquainted a bit with you first, and have your names down. So, if you please, I’ll just ask each of you in turn to tell who you are and what brought you—I mean what association you’ve had with Mr. Pendleton here.”

At this moment Blenkinson took the centre of the stage without a cue. “If I may hinterpose, sir, I ’ave in my pocket a very comprehensive document, I may call it, which will simplify your task considerably.”

“What’s that, for God’s sake?” exclaimed Crofts.

I am sure that the butler never had so many heads looking at him before, but with the coolest air he produced from his tail-pocket a sheaf of papers, and smoothed them lovingly.

Blenkinson was balancing a pince-nez on the bridge of his nose. “With your permission, sir, I will read. Hm! Hrrum!” He teed off and began.

It proved that the butler the evening before had assumed the rôles of despot and inquisitor in the world below stairs, and had then been my serious rival for honours in composition. Blenkinson read loudly in a high, thin voice, a woeful torture to the ear, his eyes behind the pince-nez bulging whenever he licked his thumb to turn the page. The screed he unfolded to the gaping company began with a preamble and concluded with a peroration, and must have been a couple of thousand words long. It was a vindication of the servants’ hall against base suspicion in the matter of the late demise of Sean Cosgrove.

The evidence was in a sort of interlocking system. From the time Crofts had dismissed his court of inquiry after luncheon, until the hideous laugh that emanated from we don’t know where, the whole baker’s dozen of servants were accounted for and quite removed, I should say, from the province of investigation.

The boy Toby had been outside the kitchen entry peeling potatoes and onions all afternoon, on promise, vain, as it proved, of being let off at night for semi-bucolic revelry in New Aidenn. With him for half the time were Jael and Em, the maids, who according to the condensed economy of the house always joined in the “parin’s and dishin’s.” When released from knives and vegetable-baskets, they resorted to the room of their companion Harmony, whom they awoke from snores, and the trio proceeded to improve the afternoon with gossip. Rosa and Ruth Clay could testify to the earlier snoring of Harmony; under the eye of Blenkinson they had then prepared tea, had early wheeled the tea-table, minus tea and hot water, into the Hall, and had gone to the stables for a bit of genteel chat with Morgan. From then until the catastrophe they vouched for him, as well as for the other stablemen, who were moving about, momently in and out of sight, over one hundred feet from the place of Cosgrove’s death. The jealous eye of Ardelia Lacy, too, herself seen in and seeing from Alberta Pendleton’s window, corroborated the Clays; she had come down and was sipping tea in the kitchen at the moment of the attack upon Cosgrove. Soames polishing silver until he answered my ring, and old Finlay pottering about in the flower-beds, were amply vindicated. Even Hughes the keeper was accounted for in Blenkinson’s compendium, for there was plenty of evidence that he had been in his room mending a refractory gun for three solid hours.

That gives a faint idea of the method of Blenkinson’s “document”; it does not begin to do justice to the detail and close-meshed cogency of it. The servants, severally and individually, are out of the investigation. For my part, I never for a moment considered the implication of any of them could be other than mad.

Blenkinson, however, had done more. He had unearthed one or two bits of evidence that may be valuable. Of these I shall relate one, leaving the other until the problem occurred of checking Cosgrove’s whereabouts after he followed Miss Lebetwood from the Hall of the Moth.

Very early indeed yesterday morning Jael, polishing the kettle, sat at the window by the door leading from the kitchen along the passage to the servants’ rooms. In her carefreeness she was singing a measure, when her eye caught movement in the kitchen-garden near the chicken yard. A strange man, “shaped like a lump,” was prowling there. She opened the window, shouted warning to the stables; the invader uttered a short heathenish exclamation and ran away toward the head of the Vale. The men later found his footmarks in a carrot-bed.

Strange to say, there had been no inclination on the part of the servants to assign the attributes of Parson Lolly to this interloper. Perhaps the fact that he left footprints robs him of the distinction. Instantly, however, I recognized in him the gorilla-man I had encountered in the twilight when entering the Vale for the first time. Probably Jael saw him seeking breakfast.

Blenkinson concluded with a peroration the essence of eloquence, pleased with himself as an old stager applauded on his return at sixty in the part of Romeo. For our lively buzz showed that the butler had stimulated us out of our moroseness, made us forget ourselves, even in that rainy, melancholy morning.

“Priceless,” I heard Belvoir chuckle, and our harassed host unbent so far as to smile, whereas Lib Dale forgot the solemnity of the occasion in open chortling. Lord Ludlow muttered something about “probably a stickit minister.” As for the servants, they seemed to be in a stupor of admiration.

Whatever Salt may have thought of Blenkinson’s taking evidence behind his back he kept it to himself. Reaching over, he grasped the document about to disappear into the coat-tail pocket once more, and placed it in his own inner pocket instead.

“Very interestin’,” he remarked. “Now I’m fully informed on that subject. I could pick out every one of you,” he said to the servants, “when Mr. Blenkinson here alluded to you. You’re all excused for the present.” He turned to the guests. “But I’m not clear yet about all of you ladies and gentlemen. You first, Mr. Pendleton, though. How long, now, have you owned this place? I seem to recall it’s about two years.”

“It is, just.”

“And did you know Mr. Watts that was here before you?”

“No, Superintendent, I did not. The House was an unsold portion of old Watts’ estate. It must have been five years after his death that I negotiated for it. . . . Wish to God I hadn’t heard of it,” he appended under his breath.

“That was all my fault, old fellow,” consoled Alberta Pendleton.

“This furniture and the pictures, now, eh?”

“Everything came with the House. Library of books, tooled-leather style—storerooms full of odd stuff, costumes and furniture, crocks mostly—but we did find a fine Buhl bureau buried among some stacks of Victorian newspapers, and dragged it out. There was a little of everything in the attics. He must have been a prime scholar and collector, old Watts.”

“A little of everything, you say? What do you mean, Mr. Pendleton?”

“Cheese-parings and candle-ends: trash, you know. Some queer pieces though. Old Watts must have rowed for his college, or with some club, when he was a youngster. There were oars and other boating paraphernalia in one of the rooms—so much of it we expected to find a shell entombed. I ran across equipment there for a parlour magician—quite elaborate. We were hoping Doctor Aire would give us a show with it only yesterday. And—well, I’ll take you through the lot, if you like.”

“Yes, please.” Salt addressed Alberta. “_You_ hadn’t known Mr. Watts? You spoke just now—your fault, you said—”

“Oh, no; I meant that Crofts bought the place because I preferred it to any other we inspected. It was so out-of-the-way.” She drew the silk scarf about her shoulders closer, as if she were cold. “But that makes it all the more horrible now.”

“Who were the solicitors?”

Crofts told him.

“And by the way, Mr. Pendleton, what is your line of business? You, er, are in business, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” answered our host briefly. “Drugs. Manchester.”

I knew that after this preliminary survey, the Superintendent would interview us separately on the events of the fatal afternoon.

He chose to commence with Maryvale. Salt held the door open for the man of business to pass through, entered himself, and carefully closed the door. It was with a kind of misgiving that I watched them disappear, for now began the really crucial part of the investigation, the ascertainment of precise times and places, the attrition of fact against fact, and the weighing of hypotheses. And I was not at all sure that I fancied Salt, any more than I had last night in the beat of the rain.

The rain continued. The servants had gone, of course, and now the taciturn Coroner departed to catch up sleep in Crofts’ room; so we were an intimate group once more. But the blight of cheerlessness had fallen on us again, and mystery reached its wings of fear about us. The mutter and hiss of rain sometimes redoubled at the vast windows, sometimes sank to a whisper, and those windows from their very size, seemed to admit a darker darkness. Hardly a word was spoken, and that not always heeded.

It was a quarter of an hour before Salt appeared with Maryvale. The official tugged at his border of beard with somewhat dubious expression. It was not hard to imagine that Maryvale had proved an unsatisfactory answerer, now that this strange, detached fit was upon him. Salt nodded to Alberta Pendleton, who passed through the doorway. Maryvale without a word took the piano-seat she had vacated, and began softly to play his sequences of brooding, atonic chords.

The inquiry progressed behind the closed door. Some of us Salt detained only a couple of minutes, persons who could merely verify, but not add to the information already at his disposal; others were with him twenty minutes or more. Among these I was.

“I don’t think—ah, yes, now I seem to remember. You’re the gentleman who had a nasty fall or something. Well now, do you mind tellin’ me how you happened to get here, and if you know anything about this case?”

I suppose that I was able to tell him more than anyone else. I decided then to give my information without stint, since it was not the sort of thing that could possibly benefit mankind by concealment, and it might even speed Salt on the track of his theory. I recounted every incident I have here set down: the search for St. Tarw’s devotional site, the bull, the gorilla-man, the menagerie-keeper, the winking window, his Lordship in the armoury, and whatever else did not merely coincide with other evidence. I did _not_, however, allude to this diary. Salt, by the way, did me the great honour of hearkening without gasp or demur to my story of the tall, bulgy man with the Paul Pry-Schubert umbrella.

In the end he reverted to the matter of the saint’s oratory. “This ruin or something you were lookin’ for, now. Maybe I could give you a feeler for findin’ it.”

I said that he was very kind, that when I set forth from London the task had seemed dubious, and now the death of Cosgrove had driven my hobby well-nigh out of my mind.

“You’ll soon get over that, I expect,” he encouraged heartily. “Now, I’m none of your experts on old stones or old codgers, of course, and I never did hear of the party you mention, but when I was a boy I had a good share of climbin’—aye, and of fallin’—in Aidenn Forest. I can mind once runnin’ across something that sounds like your whatnot. By gummy, sir, if I don’t think I could guide you there yet!”

And forthwith he gave me a series of directions, which he insisted I take down. However interested I should have been in these two days ago, now among grimmer things the project of finding the oratory seems trivial, seems superfluous. But I jotted down what he told me, thanked him, and returned to the conservatory.

The spark of speech had been fanned into life during my absence. They were talking of the events of the day before—what else could they?—but they had happened upon a particular and engrossing phase. No longer, as all last evening, did they repeat to each other what they themselves had done; they had been over that so many times, all to no purpose. When, like me, each had given his account of the afternoon, it was evident that none of them could possibly have been concerned in the death of Cosgrove, or even could have seen the manner of it.

Where, as a fact, had they been after the moment of the Irishman’s disappearance through the shrubs among which Paula Lebetwood had fled? Well, no one had remained long in the House. The Pendletons and the Belvoirs, together with Mrs. Bartholomew, had formed a party for a walk and had gone south. Avoiding the road, they had made their way through park-like portions of the estate all the way to the bridge, to marvel at the volume of Aidenn Water there. Far in the distance beyond the bridge, they had seen the road-mender working his long hours. Ludlow and Miss Mertoun had struck off for a stroll where Aidenn Water makes considerable of a bend beneath the western hills. Bob Cullen, feeling wretched after his dismissal by Lib, had gone alone the opposite way, kicking a disgusted trail in the turf past the stables and on beyond to where the steeply-wooded slope of Whimble Hill commenced. After her departure in dudgeon from the armoury (and from Doctor Aire and me) Lib had gone outside to look vainly about the grounds for Bob, then had come in to find Miss Lebetwood, but had encountered me on the stairs instead. Dr. Aire, having washed his hands free of gardener’s loam, immediately went out, chanced upon Maryvale in the tiny grove of cypress trees, and sauntered up the Vale with him. The men turned off the path to approach the eighteenth-century summer-house, upon whose rotting steps they sat for a half an hour. Incidentally, they saw me wandering toward the deserted farm of the sisters Delambre, and saw me returning therefrom.

Oxford had spent the most peaceful afternoon of all: seating himself in the shade of the gate-house to smoke a cigarette, he had gone to sleep in good earnest. Awakened by a sound, he discovered Miss Mertoun, Ludlow, and Belvoir amusing themselves by turning the winch of the drawbridge. Belvoir, having left his wife and the others below for a brisk walk back along the stream, had met Miss Mertoun and his Lordship, and had suggested the pastime. By now Bob Cullen had made a broad circuit of the House, and stood aloof somewhat churlishly, refusing to be beguiled by the action of the drawbridge.

My report of my own doings, told at breakfast, and including as it needs must the impossible bone, had met a polite but agnostic reception. The table had lapsed into nervous silence. Ludlow, tapping his pince-nez on one knee crossed over the other, stared out the eastern window with a crinkly smile.

“The mystic bone!” he murmured ironically. (The epithet has stuck.)

“What are you suggesting, Lord Ludlow?” I asked brusquely, for my feathers were perhaps a little ruffled.

“I should say you needed to have your sight examined.”

“It has been, recently, and pronounced excellent.”

“Then why not consult our friend Doctor Aire, professionally? He has had something to do with mental cases.”

I was going to retort when Alberta’s even tones admonished me “not to notice his nonsense or he’d get vain”; so I let it go at that.

As for Miss Lebetwood’s hour before the tragedy, she had soon relaxed her pace among the strawberry trees, and the wave of anger had ebbed away. She found herself nearby the tennis court. Feeling, she said, very much ashamed of her lack of self-control, she postponed returning to the House as long as possible, and began to search industriously for some of the lost tennis balls. She failed to recover a single one, and at length, noticing that the planted grove was becoming thick with twilight, and glancing at her wrist-watch, she realized that she must hasten back to the House unless she were to miss tea, and appear more ungracious than ever. She did not, of course, know of the plan to rehearse “Noah’s Flood,” for neither Cosgrove nor anyone else had she seen. Aire had spied her just emerging from the thickets to the lawn. From the time of her outburst against him, she was not to see her betrothed again until, when half-way across the lawn a few rods above the gate-house, she saw him kneeling, as she thought, and dying, as it proved, beside the small tower.

All this, certainly, was threadbare to tell by this morning; backward and forward the courses had been traced until there was disgust at the _resultlessness_ of it all. But now I returned from Salt to find a new problem had arisen in the company. Miss Lebetwood (who with Millicent Mertoun was now engaging in the last of Salt’s private conferences) had said that since Cosgrove had not found her by the tennis court, it was extremely unlikely that he had ever looked for her at all; and once she had uttered these words, every person in the conservatory was acutely aware what a _non sequitur_ yawning lies in the seemingly harmless assumption that because a man stares hard and plunges into some bushes he is of necessity searching for something beyond those bushes. Well then, what _had_ Cosgrove been doing, and where, from leaving the Hall until receiving his death-blow by the tower?

In vain we attempted to make out for him an itinerary which would account for the afternoon. All that the united company could supply was one fact sandwiched between two uncertainties, and even that fact had been offered by the servants’ hall. I may record the items thus:

First uncertainty: Doctor Aire, who left me alone in the armoury a good quarter of an hour after Cosgrove departed from the Hall, says that before seeing Maryvale, he caught a glimpse of what may have been a human face among some dogwood shrubs a little to the right of the cypress grove. But whether it was Cosgrove’s face, or that of an intruder, or “the prodigious Parson’s” (who is so familiar that he seems no intruder), or whether it was no face at all, Aire refuses to commit himself. He seems rather inclined to believe himself the victim of an illusion. The scientific mind, I suppose. (Query—Could _this_ have been the gorilla-man? If so, we have the first evidence to substantiate any definite person’s presence about the time and place of Cosgrove’s death.)

Fact, from Wheeler, the youthful chauffeur, via Blenkinson’s document: Cosgrove beckoned to Wheeler from behind a corner of the garage at about ten minutes past four. Answering the signal, Wheeler had been conducted to a place out of sight among the decaying stonework. (Stables and garage occupy part, but not all the site of the ruined south-east portion of the castle.) “I want no one to overhear us,” said the Irishman, “and I want you to keep eternally silent about what I am going to say.” For emphasis he placed a pound note in Wheeler’s hand. “There will be five more for you at the end of my stay here if you do what I bid you and hold your tongue.” Wheeler swore eternal fidelity, and Cosgrove gave his orders. “It’s almost nothing I want. To-night there will be a foolish entertainment in the House, and everyone will have the costume of an animal. The costumes, I know, are in the storerooms on the second floor. Now, I have a friend who must enter the House to me without anyone being the wiser. He can come in during the mummery if he has the appearance of an animal, and I want you to see that he finds his costume. You know my room?” Wheeler said he did not, and Cosgrove explained that he occupied the room next the inner conservatory wall. “The tower there juts out corresponding to the one on the other side between the Hall of the Moth and the conservatory. At a quarter past nine I shall drop the costume from the tower window; it will be an extra progeny for the elephant, or some such vanity. I want you to be on hand from the time I mentioned until my friend comes a little later, and I want you to see that he gets into the costume and into the Hall, where the performance begins about ten. My friend will also come beneath my window, but I shall no longer be in my room; so you must be there to meet him.” Wheeler guaranteed satisfaction, and was sure that he and Cosgrove had not been seen during this colloquy. (Nor had they been, but they had been heard. Morgan, overhauling a saddle in a harness-closet just beyond the wall, could verify the tones of the men’s voices, but had distinguished none of the sense. In vain, later, he tried to wrest Wheeler’s secret from him.)

Second uncertainty: Belvoir believes, but is not prepared to swear, that just as he and Miss Mertoun and the Baron approached the gate-house from the direction of Aidenn Water, he saw Cosgrove on the lawn. Two things make Belvoir doubt if he actually did see the Irishman or not. First, he was talking about and thinking about something else at the time, and the sight was no more than a surface impression, so to speak, on his mind. Furthermore, he may have been tricked by the twilight, for the huge shadow of the gate-house reached across the lawn just there, even ascending the wall of the House part way. If he saw the Irishman in the shadow, the image must have been extremely vague, for not only is the distance considerable from where the three were walking, but Cosgrove, it must be borne in mind, was wearing a black coat and dark blue breeches. Belvoir is extremely uneasy on the prongs of his dilemma. (Those with him saw nothing.) Asked what position Cosgrove was in, he answers curiously enough that if he saw the Irishman at all, he had lifted the canvas cover part way and was regarding the unexplainable battle-axe.

But I came past soon afterwards, between then and the time Belvoir and his party reached the tower—and there was no Cosgrove staring at a battle-axe then! What does Belvoir’s evidence imply, if it is evidence? Did the axe leap up and smite him while he gazed, and was he lying there unnoticed by me when I returned from the cottage of the sisters Delambre? And that “friend” of Cosgrove’s, who was to come at a little after a quarter past nine—did he arrive so soon? Precious little he could have done to harm the Irishman at the appointed time. If only Wheeler had kept the tryst in the storm, instead of forgetting it completely in the horror of the night until Blenkinson nagged it into his memory again! Was this “friend” the same whose indeterminate face Doctor Aire had perhaps seen, perhaps not? To ask these questions is to realize how vain they are! Yet if we are to know the obscure, impalpable limbo of truth that lies behind this man’s death, must we not know the answers?

The click of the door-lock startled us in the midst of almost lively discussion. Paula Lebetwood and her friend re-entered the conservatory, and Salt stood on the threshold with a thin sheet of bluish paper in his hand. The American girl was paler than before, and, I thought, exercising great self-restraint. While she took her seat beside me, I could see the tremors pass along her throat with each breath. But her eyes were staring at the Superintendent, and my glance followed hers.

Salt said, “This paper, I expect, is Mr. Cosgrove’s Will and Testament.” He held it up for us to grasp at; it was a single translucent page, a tiny thing to dictate the disposal of great riches. “With Miss Lebetwood’s permission—I mean by her request—I’m goin’ to read it to you.”

“One moment,” darted in his Lordship as Salt was about to begin without taking breath: “don’t you know that it is highly irregular to read a copy of a Will until all the legatees—”

“You’ll see why, sir, in a minute. Besides, this is sure to be the original of the Will, and all the heirs happen to be present!”

“Eh?”

“There’s not much to it, you might say, sir. And Miss Lebetwood particularly wants there to be no misunderstanding.”

Forthwith, in that zone of awe, he read the instrument, dated two months ago. It contained fewer than two hundred words. I do not know which to admire most, the clear-cut terseness of it, or the hard cynical sense of its incidental comments, such as, “my body to be buried as soon as possible after my death and as near as practicable to the place of my death, with the least emolument to lawyers, priests, and undertakers.” And withal, according to those of us who have scanned the law most thoroughly, the Will is adamant to any who may attempt to break it.

As for its sense, it devises Cosgrove’s entire fortune to Miss Lebetwood “for her own absolute use and benefit without exception, limitation, reservation or condition, forever.” Cosgrove’s brother, mentioned as having self-denied a share in the estate, is made sole executor. Rather pathetic, those words:

“IRELAND DELIVERED is the cross in whose sign I would conquer; but should I die, without me I know the good work can never go on. Therefore to her who is, or is to be, my dearest helpmeet and sharer of these the Lord’s bounties, best fit to use them wisely, I bequeath all my worldly goods.”

Salt gave us a few breaths to absorb the shock of this overpowering disclosure. I was almost clean stupefied, but I confess that a feeling of despondency came over me at that moment. It was not, of course, that I grudged Paula Lebetwood the fortune _for herself_. But I had supposed, in what brief moments I had thought of it, that Cosgrove’s money would have gone to fight Cosgrove’s good fight, even though a losing one. The lines of that fine poem recurred to me:

“They went forth to battle but they always fell: Their eyes were set above the sullen shields.”

No, that had not been this Irishman’s philosophy; the great cause must wait now for the next great man.

The women had instantly begun to crowd about Miss Lebetwood with exclamations of surprise and pleasure, a flutter of congratulation which must have been an ordeal for the American girl.

Salt extracted from a side pocket an envelope whose flap he loosened with a pencil. He made the round of the room so that each of us could see what was inside. “Paper-ash, this is sure to be. It was all there was in Mr. Cosgrove’s grate. Not a word legible, but one or two blank bits didn’t get burned, as you see. . . . Now, there’s no paper like that anywhere in the house; Mr. Pendleton will go surety for it. It’s different paper from the ‘Lochinvar’ bit. I was wonderin’ if any of you ladies and gentlemen had some like it—could explain the note, perhaps.”

But not even Eve Bartholomew could help the Superintendent now.

Salt turned to Crofts. “It couldn’t have been in the post, you say?”

Crofts answered doggedly, “Cosgrove never got any mail.”

“For a man who never got any mail, he had a tidy bit of mysterious correspondence. Well, I see I shall have to wait a bit before I find what little secret was here.” He looked at his large silver watch. “Thank you very much, all. I don’t think I’ll need to trouble any of you again soon; so I’ll just take this opportunity to give you a suggestion, and maybe a bit o’ reassurance. There are a good many folks we haven’t located that must have somethin’ to do with this case. You all know about Sir Brooke—Mortimer, I think it is; well, I’m telegraphin’ for full particulars of him from wherever he came from, and havin’ a look-out made for him. There are two men Mr. Bannerlee ran across the night he came that I want to find, and also it seems that those Frenchwomen, the Delambres, aren’t on their patch of land. Through one of these outside channels, we’ll come upon a solution. And that means simply routine police work. However, if I were you, I’d not go about separately very far from the House, and just for precaution’s sake you might lock your doors and windows. No alarm, you understand—only you’ll feel safer. Doctor Niblett will hold the inquest as soon as possible. I shall probably be here a good bit for the next few days, and I trust, with the kind permission of Mr. Pendleton, that you will not end your visits until I am certain-sure you can’t assist me.”

“Only too glad, Superintendent to have them all stay until you’ve cornered the brute,” said Crofts between his teeth. Then, becoming expansive, he looked about with a satisfied air. “Well, I’m beginning to think this won’t be a Scotland Yard case after all. And it’s one of those outsiders surely. Crazy to think it could be any of us.”

Suddenly a strange voice was in the room. “And I, Mr. Pendleton, believe in the possible implication of everyone here, including myself.” Paula Lebetwood said the words, unlike any speech we had heard from her lips, a terribly controlled utterance, toneless, as if some insentient thing had spoken. She stood up. The tremor of her throat was still.

“Of yourself, dearest?” cried Miss Mertoun. “How awful to say such a thing!”

“Of yourself!” echoed half a dozen voices.

She was looking straight ahead, sightlessly. “Isn’t it too clear for words? Can’t you understand how _I_ feel?—how I have felt all these weeks? It rests on me, don’t you see? How can I ever touch a cent that was his until his killer has paid for his death? Oh, I’ve felt it ever since he told me—told me he was going to make his Will—” Her eyes darkened, and the first tinge of feeling came into her voice: bitterness. “I was a fool. I should have told him—then.”

Miss Mertoun came over, leaned her cheek against Paula’s, recalling to me that first scene by the tower on the lawn. “Paula, _dearest_.” Gently she pressed the American girl back into her seat, soothed her with soft little speeches, almost made her smile.

Suddenly Mrs. Bartholomew lifted her head, an expression of penetrative power on her face, as if she were probing beyond the realm of sense. She made a quick outreaching gesture with her hands, withdrew them, clasped them in her lap. She began to speak once, but checked herself. Then:

“I have the eeriest feeling, but it is strong, so _strong_!”

“What feeling do you mean?” asked Alberta Pendleton with bated breath.

Eve Bartholomew’s eyes were shining wide. “That Sir Brooke is _here_, _now_, among us!”

She stirred us. We pitied her then, in silence. Whatever he had been to her, or she to him—

She turned to the window close beside her. “This flood may end to-morrow, but it’s the act of Providence all the same!”

“Oh, come, Mrs. Bartholomew,” protested Belvoir’s soft voice. “It’s deuced inconvenient; no two ways about that. We may have to take spades and bury our poor friend here on the spot if it keeps up.”

“That was his wish, wasn’t it?” she retorted. “I say this sundering flood has been our one blessing. How shall the guilty escape now, if he is not one of us? And if he _is_ one of us—” Her eyes beneath that lustrous black hair shone like gems in a mine. “If he _is_, he will betray himself before the flood goes down!”

“Bravo!” exclaimed Lord Ludlow. “Madam, I applaud you. You have feeling, and I respect you for it.”

Miss Lebetwood raised her voice to the man across the room. “That sounds like an indictment of me, sir.”

“Never!”

The American went on. “I suppose I seem to have no grief, no feeling. I am passionless; oh, yes! I tell you I am devoted to only one thing, the finding of the murderer. My task commences to-day, this hour, now. I see by the look on all your faces, and one of them still may be a murderer’s face, that you are shocked. No, I have sorrow; I am not hard-hearted, save for a purpose. I have sorrow—you will never know how much—but I must get it behind me.”

The easy tones of Superintendent Salt intervened. “Miss, I wouldn’t feel so. Everyone is heartily takin’ your part. Why you should think otherwise I don’t know. And have no doubt of one thing: we shall get at the heart of this mystery soon.”

“We must,” said Eve Bartholomew. “The innocent suffer as well as the guilty.”

“I am now going to make a careful inspection of the House,” said Salt. “I got the lay of the land before turnin’ in last night, but now, ladies and gentlemen, I shall take the liberty of lookin’ through your rooms. Mr. Pendleton, I particularly want to see those store-places Mr. Cosgrove evidently had a fancy for, and the cellars. Plenty of cellars, of course?”

“Plenty. And a sub-cellar no one’s been in since before we bought the property.”

“Have you any idea what’s down there?”

“How should I know? Nothing, I suppose. And anyhow, the trap-covers are locked with padlocks and sealed with an inch of dust.”

“Ah, well,” said Salt good-naturedly, “I don’t think I’ll make you sweep ’em off and unlock ’em. Only take me where they are.”

Again while he and Pendleton made their way from the conservatory, I was assailed with doubt concerning the confident Salt. Was he to fumble the case after all? For it seemed to me in trying to resolve an enigma so baffling, no opening ought to be ignored. And the Superintendent was, to say the least, eclectic, when he chose not to enter the sub-cellars.

A hand was laid on my shoulder. I looked up, and was held by those eyes with their unsearchable gleam, Maryvale’s.

“How will they ever solve this riddle and set this wrong aright, if they forget the spanning and roofing of the waters, and the deathless arm?”

“I do not understand you, Mr. Maryvale.”

“What were Sir Pharamond’s words? ‘Let traitors beware!’ Mr. Bannerlee, remember, sir, that they never found the arm of Sir Pharamond—and his tomb in old Aidenn Church attests it.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Oh, Gilbert has a theory all his own,” laughed Belvoir in a friendly manner. “It has absolute novelty to recommend it, and artistic value. It’s the artistic side that appeals to you, isn’t it, Gilbert?”

“Truth appeals to me as well.”

“Well, really—truth!”

“What is your theory, Mr. Maryvale?” I asked with an attempt to disregard the twinges of apprehension that I felt in his presence.

“I have no theory: I have the key.”

“Gilbert means that the corporeal, material, substantial right arm of Sir Pharamond Kay, builder of the castle which now is Highglen House, has risen from its cerements and laid a certain party low. Isn’t that about it, Gilbert?”

“It is all you need to know.”

“But what’s that about the proof being in Old Aidenn Church?”

Belvoir gave a sly chuckle. “Go there some afternoon and have a look for yourself, Mr. Bannerlee. Old Aidenn is only three miles beyond New Aidenn, and both of ’em happen to be as old as Doomsday.”

“It’s as sound, anyhow, as Crofts’ idea that a murderer couldn’t escape from Aidenn Vale,” remarked Aire.

For my part, I looked first at Maryvale’s stooped retreating bulk, and then at the other two men, who solemnly looked at me. We did not speak, but the same thought must have been in all of us. The servants might understandably be shy of strange forms in the dark, but what was to become of _us_, if we began gravely to discuss wee grey-bearded men with voices like honey, or pixies perched on toadstools?

Young Bob Cullen had strayed to the window, was watching the raindrops, now meandering slowly, now darting down the pane.

“Talk about Noah’s Flood,” he growled.

“Forty days he had of it,” mused Lib Dale. “If this keeps up forty minutes more, I’ll be dotty. Oh, look!”

The whole conservatory thrilled with light. A golden-green path lay shimmering across the lawn. It had ceased to rain.