The Red House Mystery Quotes

“I make a point of being polite at breakfast,” said Bill, helping himself largely to porridge.

“Quite right, Major; it’s only manners.”

In the drowsy heat of the summer afternoon the Red House was taking its siesta. There was a lazy murmur of bees in the flower-borders, a gentle cooing of pigeons in the tops of the elms. From distant lawns came the whir of a mowing-machine, that most restful of all country sounds; making ease the sweeter in that it is taken while others are working. It was the hour when even those whose business it is to attend to the wants of others have a moment or two for themselves.

I was never the one to pretend to be what I wasn’t.

“If I’m fifty-five, I’m fifty-five—that’s what I say.” “Fifty-eight, isn’t it, auntie?” “I was just giving that as an example,” said Mrs. Stevens with great dignity.

“Funny thing that about Mr. Mark’s brother. Fancy not seeing your brother for fifteen years.”

“Well, he may have been in Australia,” said Mrs. Stevens, judicially; “I can’t say for that, not knowing the country; but what I do say is he’s never been here. Not while I’ve been here, and that’s five years.”

“I can take my oath he’s not set foot in the house since five years Whitsuntide. And if he’s been in Australia, as you say, well, I daresay he’s had his reasons.”

“And when he stays in Australia fifteen years, as Mr. Mark says, and as I know for myself for five years, he has his reasons. And a respectably brought-up girl doesn’t ask what reasons.”

“What reasons?” said Audrey lightly. “Never mind what reasons. Being in the place of a mother to you, since your poor mother died, I say this, Audrey—when a gentleman goes to Australia, he has his reasons.”

The ringing of a bell brought Audrey to her feet—no longer Audrey, but now Stevens.

Mr. Cayley, the master’s cousin, was a surprise; and, having given a little exclamation as she came suddenly upon him, she blushed, and said, “Oh, I beg your pardon, sir, I didn’t see you at first,” and he looked up from his book and smiled at her. An attractive smile it was on that big ugly face.

“Such a gentleman, Mr. Cayley,” she thought to herself as she went on, and wondered what the master would do without him.

She told her aunt afterwards that she would have known him anywhere for Mr. Mark’s brother, but she would have said that in any event. Actually she was surprised.

Dapper little Mark, with his neat pointed beard and his carefully curled moustache; with his quick-darting eyes, always moving from one to the other of any company he was in, to register one more smile to his credit when he had said a good thing, one more expectant look when he was only waiting his turn to say it; he was a very different man from this rough-looking, ill-dressed colonial, staring at her so loweringly.

“I want to see Mr. Mark Ablett,” he growled. It sounded almost like a threat.

She had a smile for everybody.

“What d’you call this place, eh?” “The office, sir.” “The office?” “The room where the master works, sir.” “Works, eh? That’s new. Didn’t know he’d ever done a stroke of work in his life.”

The fact that Mr. Mark “wrote,” though nobody knew what, was a matter of pride in the housekeeper’s room.

Well! Here was something to tell auntie! Her mind was busy at once, going over all the things which he had said to her and she had said to him—quiet-like.

Why, you could have knocked her over with a feather. Feathers, indeed, were a perpetual menace to Audrey.

The thoughts were not of any great value; moreover, they were given off at the dinner-table more often than they got on to paper, and got on to paper more often than they got into print. But that did not prevent the master of The Red House from being a little pained when a visitor treated the Temple carelessly, as if it had been erected for the ordinary purposes of flirtation and cigarette-smoking.

“I wouldn’t go out of this room now, not if you paid me a hundred thousand pounds.” “Oh, Mrs. Stevens!” said Elsie, who badly wanted five shillings for a new pair of shoes, “I wouldn’t go as far as that, not myself, but—”

The first to appear was Major Rumbold, a tall, grey-haired, grey-moustached, silent man, wearing a Norfolk coat and grey flannel trousers, who lived on his retired pay and wrote natural history articles for the papers.

Betty was the eighteen-year-old daughter of Mrs. John Calladine, widow of the painter, who was acting hostess on this occasion for Mark.

Ruth Norris took herself seriously as an actress and, on her holidays, seriously as a golfer. She was quite competent as either. Neither the Stage Society nor Sandwich had any terrors for her.

Mark came in. He was generally the last. He greeted them and sat down to toast and tea. Breakfast was not his meal.

“Good God!” said Mark suddenly. There was an instinctive turning of heads towards him. “I beg your pardon, Miss Norris. Sorry, Betty.” Miss Norris smiled her forgiveness. She often wanted to say it herself, particularly at rehearsals.

“Got any brothers, Major?” “No.” “Well, take my advice, and don’t have any.” “Not likely to now,” said the Major.

“Personally,” said Bill, “I think relations are a great mistake.”

“All I knew was that one didn’t ask questions about him.”

At about the time when the Major (for whatever reasons) was fluffing his tee-shot at the sixteenth, and Mark and his cousin were at their business at the Red House, an attractive gentleman of the name of Antony Gillingham was handing up his ticket at Woodham station and asking the way to the village. Having received directions, he left his bag with the station-master and walked off leisurely. He is an important person to this story, so that it is as well we should know something about him before letting him loose in it. Let us stop him at the top of the hill on some excuse, and have a good look at him.

Above a clean-cut, clean-shaven face, of the type usually associated with the Navy, he carries a pair of grey eyes which seem to be absorbing every detail of our person.

Beverley and he met again a little later at a restaurant. Both of them were in evening-dress, but they did different things with their napkins, and Antony was the more polite of the two. However, he still liked Bill.

Antony couldn’t help feeling a thrill of excitement as he followed Cayley’s example, and put his face close up to the glass. For the first time he wondered if there really had been a revolver shot in this mysterious room. It had all seemed so absurd and melodramatic from the other side of the door.

“Who is it?” said Antony. “Robert Ablett.” “Oh!” said Antony. “I thought his name was Mark,” he added, more to himself than to the other. “Yes, Mark Ablett lives here. Robert is his brother.” He shuddered, and said, “I was afraid it was Mark.” “Was Mark in the room too?” “Yes,” said Cayley absently. Then, as if resenting suddenly these questions from a stranger, “Who are you?”

But then one always went about imagining that these things didn’t happen—except to other people. It was difficult to believe in them just at first, when they happened to yourself.

“Did you know him well?” said Antony quietly. He meant, “Were you fond of him?”

“Mark is my cousin. I mean, Mark is the brother I know best.”

“Not that water is any use to a dead body,” he said to himself, “but the feeling that you’re doing something, when there’s obviously nothing to be done, is a great comfort.”

“I will stay if I can be of any help.” “Please do. You see, there are women. It will be rather painful. If you would—” He hesitated, and gave Antony a timid little smile, pathetic in so big and self-reliant a man. “Just your moral support, you know. It would be something.”

“You must make allowances for me, Mr. Gillingham. You see, I’ve known Mark for a very long time. But, of course, you’re quite right, and I’m merely being stupid.”

The window was open, and he looked out at the well-kept grass beneath him, and the peaceful stretch of park beyond; and he felt very sorry for the owner of it all, who was now mixed up in so grim a business.

Revolvers go off accidentally; and when they have gone off, people lose their heads and run away, fearing that their story will not be believed. Nevertheless, when people run away, whether innocently or guiltily, one can’t help wondering which way they went.

Antony laughed. “Oh, well, I notice things, you know. I was born noticing.”

Guests at the Red House were allowed to do what they liked within reason—the reasonableness or otherwise of it being decided by Mark. But when once they (or Mark) had made up their minds as to what they wanted to do, the plan had to be kept.

“He says that no doubt you would prefer, the house-party having been broken up in this tragic way, to leave as soon as possible.” He gave a pleasant apologetic little smile and went on, “I am putting it badly, but what he means, of course, is that you must consult your own feelings in the matter entirely, and please make your own arrangements about ordering the car for whatever train you wish to catch. There is one this evening, I understand, which you could go by if you wished it.”

Mrs. Calladine was quietly mistress of herself.

“We shall be in the way, yes, I quite understand,” she said; “but we can’t just shake the dust of the place off our shoes because something terrible has happened there.

“Oh! Well, come along, and let’s get the facts sorted out a bit. I like to know where I am, Mr. Gillingham.”

“D’you know where you are in this case?” “I know where I’m going to be.” “Where’s that?” “Put through it by Inspector Birch,” said Antony with a smile.

“I was only about twelve at the time. The sort of age when you’re told not to ask questions.”

“Perhaps what might seem wicked to a clergyman might seem only wild to a man of the world.”

“Mark Ablett never talked about him?” “Hardly ever. He was very much ashamed of him, and—well, very glad he was in Australia.”

“They’d never liked each other as boys. There was never any affection between them. I don’t know whose fault it was in the first place—if anybody’s.”

“I should hardly call it ‘reasonable’ to lose your head,” said Antony, getting up from his chair and coming towards them.

“I think, Mr. Cayley, it would be better if I saw the servants alone. You know what they are; the more people about, the more they get alarmed. I expect I can get at the truth better by myself.”

The housekeeper’s room had heard something of the news by this time, and Audrey had had a busy time explaining to other members of the staff exactly what he had said, and what she had said. The details were not quite established yet, but this much at least was certain: that Mr. Mark’s brother had shot himself and spirited Mr. Mark away, and that Audrey had seen at once that he was that sort of man when she opened the door to him.

“Everyone is very unkind to me,” said Elsie between sniffs, “and there’s that poor man lying dead there, and sorry they’d have been, if it had been me, to have spoken to me as they have done this day.”

Robert is a stranger; Mark is an intimate friend. Robert has written a letter that morning, the letter of a man in a dangerous temper. Robert is the tough customer; Mark the highly civilized gentleman. If there has been a quarrel, it is Robert who has shot Mark.

“That’s the question,” said Antony to himself, as he filled his pipe, “and bless me if I know the answer.

“I was wanting a new profession,” he thought, “and now I’ve found it. Antony Gillingham, our own private sleuthhound. I shall begin to-day.”

He knew nothing about Mark; he knew nothing about Robert. He had seen the dead man before he was told who the dead man was. He knew that a tragedy had happened before he knew that anybody was missing. Those first impressions, which are so vitally important, had been received solely on the merits of the case; they were founded on the evidence of his senses, not on the evidence of his emotions or of other people’s senses.

It would have interested Antony to know that, just at the time when he was feeling rather superior to the prejudiced inspector, the Inspector himself was letting his mind dwell lovingly upon the possibilities in connection with Mr. Gillingham. Was it only a coincidence that Mr. Gillingham had turned up just when he did? And Mr. Beverley’s curious answers when asked for some account of his friend. An assistant in a tobacconist’s, a waiter! An odd man, Mr. Gillingham, evidently. It might be as well to keep an eye on him.

“Oh, I beg your pardon. But anyhow, Bill, I want you more than she does just now. So try and put up with me.” “I say, do you really?” said Bill, rather flattered. He had a great admiration for Antony, and was very proud to be liked by him.

The guests had said good-bye to Cayley, according to their different manner. The Major, gruff and simple: “If you want me, command me. Anything I can do—Good-bye”; Betty, silently sympathetic, with everything in her large eyes which she was too much overawed to tell; Mrs. Calladine, protesting that she did not know what to say, but apparently finding plenty; and Miss Norris, crowding so much into one despairing gesture that Cayley’s unvarying “Thank you very much” might have been taken this time as gratitude for an artistic entertainment.

Bill looked at him eagerly. “I say, are you being the complete detective?” “Well, I wanted a new profession,” smiled the other. “What fun! I mean,” he corrected himself apologetically, “one oughtn’t to say that, when there’s a man dead in the house, and one’s host—” He broke off a little uncertainly, and then rounded off his period by saying again, “By Jove, what a rum show it is. Good Lord!”

“What’s the good of talking about it at all, if it comes to that?” “What, indeed?” said Antony, and to Bill’s great disappointment they talked of books and politics during the meal.

“Are you prepared to be the complete Watson?” he asked. “Watson?” “Do-you-follow-me-Watson; that one. Are you prepared to have quite obvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give me chances of scoring off you, to make brilliant discoveries of your own two or three days after I have made them myself—all that kind of thing? Because it all helps.” “My dear Tony,” said Bill delightedly, “need you ask?”

“Well, I can’t explain it, whether it’s something in the actual eye, or something in the brain, or what, but I have got rather an uncanny habit of recording things unconsciously.

Properly speaking, I oughtn’t to explain till the last chapter, but I always think that that’s so unfair.

No, not a murderer; not Cayley. That was rot, anyway. Why, they had played tennis together.

“I say, what fun! I love secret passages. Good Lord, and this afternoon I was playing golf just like an ordinary merchant! What a life! Secret passages!”

There seemed to be no doubt now that Cayley was a villain. Bill had never been familiar with a villain before. It didn’t seem quite fair of Cayley, somehow; he was taking rather a mean advantage of his friends.

“My dear Watson,” he said, “you aren’t supposed to be as clever as this.”

“I love you on Mark,” he said. “You’re priceless.”

Lot of funny people there were in the world—funny people with secrets.

“One should modulate the voice, my dear William, while breathing gently from the hips. Thus one avoids those chest-notes which have betrayed many a secret..”

“Are you often like this at breakfast?” “Almost invariably. Said he with his mouth full. Exit W. Beverley, L.” “It’s a touch of the sun, I suppose,” said Bill, shaking his head sadly. “It’s the sun and the moon and the stars, all acting together on an empty stomach.”

Cayley says that you will amuse me, but so far you have not made me laugh once. You must try and be more amusing when you have finished your breakfast.

Bill continued his breakfast with a slightly bewildered air. He did not know that Cayley was smoking a cigarette outside the windows behind him; not listening, perhaps; possibly not even overhearing; but within sight of Antony, who was not going to take any risks. So he went on with his breakfast, reflecting that Antony was a rum fellow, and wondering if he had dreamed only of the amazing things which had happened the day before.

But since his evidence was given for his own ends, it was impossible that it could be treated as the evidence of an impartial and trustworthy onlooker.

“It’s a funny business,” thought Antony. “The one obvious solution is so easy and yet so wrong. And I’ve got a hundred things in my head, and I can’t fit them together.

“I say, what fun! You do want me, don’t you?” “Of course I do. Only, Bill don’t talk about things inside the house, unless I begin. There’s a good Watson.”

The library was worth going into, passages or no passages. Antony could never resist another person’s bookshelves. As soon as he went into the room, he found himself wandering round it to see what books the owner read, or (more likely) did not read, but kept for the air which they lent to the house.

“There’s one thing, which we have got to realize at once,” said Antony, “and that is that if we don’t find it easily, we shan’t find it at all.” “You mean that we shan’t have time?” “Neither time nor opportunity. Which is rather a consoling thought to a lazy person like me.”

“Shaw, Wilde, Robertson—I like reading plays, Bill. There are not many people who do, but those who do are usually very keen.”

“It’s what I was saying just now—a secret is a secret until you have discovered it, and as soon as you have discovered it, you wonder why everybody else isn’t discovering it, and how it could ever have been a secret at all.”

Cayley’s qualities, as they appeared to Bill, may have been chiefly negative; but even if this merit lay in the fact that he never exposed whatever weaknesses he may have had, this is an excellent quality in a fellow-guest (or, if you like, fellow-host) in a house where one is continually visiting. Mark’s weaknesses, on the other hand, were very plain to the eye, and Bill had seen a good deal of them.

Yet, though he had hesitated to define his position that morning in regard to Mark, he did not hesitate to place himself on the side of the Law against Cayley. Mark, after all, had done him no harm, but Cayley had committed an unforgivable offence. Cayley had listened secretly to a private conversation between himself and Tony. Let Cayley hang, if the Law demanded it.

“I hope the landlord at ‘The George’ gave me a good character?” The Inspector looked at him quickly. “Now how on earth do you know anything about that?” Antony bowed to him gravely. “Because I guessed that you were a very efficient member of the Force.”

“By Jove! You mean that as soon as the pond has been dragged, Cayley will hide something there?” “Yes, I’m afraid so.” “But why afraid?” “Because I think that it must be something very important, something which couldn’t easily be hidden anywhere else.”

“What’s the safest place in which to hide anything very important?” “Somewhere where nobody will look.” “There’s a better place than that.” “What?” “Somewhere where everybody has already looked.”

“My dear Tony, he had more clothes than anybody in the world. He just kept them here in case they might be useful, I expect.

“It was a hobby with him, collecting clothes. If he’d had half a dozen houses, they would all have been full of a complete gentleman’s town and country outfit.”

“He was very finicking.”

“What did he want to shut the door for?” said Bill. “That’s what I don’t understand. You couldn’t have seen him, anyhow.” “No. So it follows that I might have heard him. He was going to do something which he didn’t want me to hear.” “By Jove, that’s it!” said Bill eagerly. “Yes; but what?” Bill frowned hopefully to himself, but no inspiration came.

“Oh, idiot, idiot!” Antony cried. “Oh, most super-excellent of Watsons! Oh, you lamb, you blessing! Oh, Gillingham, you incomparable ass!”

“The window, the window!” cried Antony, pointing to it. Bill turned back to the window, expecting it to say something. As it said nothing, he looked at Antony again.

“He came in here in order to open the window. He shut the door so that I shouldn’t hear him open the window. He opened the window. I came in here and found the window open. I said, ‘This window is open. My amazing powers of analysis tell me that the murderer must have escaped by this window.‘”

He understood now. It explained so much that had been puzzling him.

What is he to do? He does the natural thing, the thing which Mark would always do in such circumstances. He consults Cayley, the invaluable, inevitable Cayley.”

“Good Cayley. Faithful Cayley! Mark’s courage comes back. Cayley will explain all right. Cayley will tell the servants that it was an accident. He will ring up the police. Nobody will suspect Cayley—Cayley has no quarrel with Robert.”

“You’re being dashed mysterious, old boy.”

“Perhaps I’m being an ass, just a melodramatic ass. Well, I hope I am.”

“Mark had an extraordinary characteristic voice.”

This was glorious fun; this was life. The immediate programme could hardly be bettered. First of all he was going to stalk Cayley. There was a little copse above the level of the pond, and about a hundred yards away from it. He would come into this from the back, creep cautiously through it, taking care that no twigs cracked, and then, drawing himself on his stomach to the edge, peer down upon the scene below him. People were always doing that sort of thing in books, and he had been filled with a hopeless envy of them; well, now he was actually going to do it himself. What fun!

Even if you found nothing, you couldn’t get away from the fact that a secret passage was a secret passage, and anything might happen in it.

He saw so much, and yet somehow it was all out of focus. It was like looking at an opal, and discovering with every movement of it some new colour, some new gleam of light reflected, and yet never really seeing the opal as a whole.

He was facing the secret door; if it opened he would see it. At any moment now it might open. Bill dropped into a chair and thought. Antony must be warned. Obviously. But how? How did one signal to anybody? By code. Morse code. Did Antony know it? Did Bill know it himself, if it came to that? He had picked up a bit in the Army—not enough to send a message, of course. But a message was impossible, anyhow; Cayley would hear him tapping it out. It wouldn’t do to send more than a single letter. What letters did he know? And what letter would convey anything to Antony?.... He pulled at his pipe, his eyes wandering from Cayley at his desk to the Reverend Theodore Ussher in his shelf. What letter? C for Cayley.

“There is nothing that you and I could not accomplish together, if we gave our minds to it.” “Silly old ass.” “That’s what you always say when I’m being serious. Well, anyway, thanks awfully. You really saved us this time.”

Antony was silent, and since it is difficult to keep up a conversation with a silent man for any length of time, Bill had dropped into silence too. Or rather, he hummed to himself, hit at thistles in the grass with his stick and made uncomfortable noises with his pipe.

“Well, I have got jolly good eyes.”

“We must be devilishly inconvenient for him, hanging about the house. Any moment he can get, when we’re definitely somewhere else, must be very useful to him.”

“Yes—Angela Norbury,” murmured Bill. “Not bad-looking, is she?”

They were close to Jallands now, an old thatched farmhouse which, after centuries of sleep, had woken up to a new world, and had forthwith sprouted wings; wings, however, of so discreet a growth that they had not brought with them any obvious change of character, and Jallands even with a bathroom was still Jallands.

The girl who stood by the little white gate of Jallands was something more than “not bad-looking,” but in this matter Bill was keeping his superlatives for another. In Bill’s eyes she must be judged, and condemned, by all that distinguished her from Betty Calladine. To Antony, unhampered by these standards of comparison, she seemed, quite simply, beautiful.

Mrs. Norbury was delighted to see them, as she always was to see any man in her house who came up to the necessary standard of eligibility.

When her life-work was completed, and summed up in those beautiful words: “A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between Angela, daughter of the late John Norbury....” then she would utter a grateful Nunc dimittis and depart in peace—to a better world, if Heaven insisted, but preferably to her new son-in-law’s more dignified establishment.

But it was not as “eligibles” that the visitors from the Red House were received with such eagerness to-day, and even if her special smile for “possibles” was there, it was instinctive rather than reasoned. All that she wanted at this moment was news—news of Mark.

She was often amused by her mother’s ways; sometimes ashamed of them; sometimes distressed by them.

Other suitors, upon whom her mother had smiled, had been embarrassed by that championship; Mark appeared to depend on it as much as on his own attractions; great though he thought these to be.

Mrs. Norbury recognized at once that Antony was likely to be the more sympathetic listener; and when tea was over, and Bill and Angela had been dispatched to the garden with the promptness and efficiency of the expert, dear Mr. Gillingham found himself on the sofa beside her, listening to many things which were of even greater interest to him than she could possibly have hoped.

“Of course, yes, I was forgetting. But, believe me, Mr. Gillingham, you can trust a woman’s intuition in these matters.”

“Think of my feelings as a mother.”

Antony was thinking of Miss Norbury’s feelings as a daughter, and wondering if she guessed that her affairs were now being discussed with a stranger. Yet what could he do? What, indeed, did he want to do except listen, in the hope of learning?

“I never liked him, never!” “Never liked——?” said Antony, bewildered. “That cousin of his—Mr. Cayley.”

“I ask you, Mr. Gillingham, am I the sort of woman to trust my little girl to a man who would go about shooting his only brother?”

“If there has been any shooting done, it has been done by somebody else.”

“I never liked him,” said Mrs. Norbury firmly. “Never.” However, thought Antony to himself, that didn’t quite prove that Cayley was a murderer.

“Girls are so foolish, Mr. Gillingham,” she was saying. “It is fortunate that they have mothers to guide them.”

“Such a gentleman. So nice-looking, in his artistic way. A regular Velasquez—I should say Van Dyck.”

“Oh, no! There is such a thing, Mr. Gillingham, as being too devoted a lover.

“You see,” he said to Bill, as they walked back, “we know that Cayley is perjuring himself and risking himself over this business, and that must be for one of two reasons. Either to save Mark or to endanger him. That is to say, he is either whole-heartedly for him or whole-heartedly against him. Well, now we know that he is against him, definitely against him.”

“But, I say, you know,” protested Bill, “one doesn’t necessarily try to ruin one’s rival in love.” “Doesn’t one?” said Antony, turning to him with a smile.

What was it which Cayley was going to hide in that pond that night? Antony thought that he knew now. It was Mark’s body.

Can’t arrange a suicide. Too difficult.

“Yes, but you were so dashed mysterious about that. I asked you what the point of it was, and you wouldn’t say anything.”

“I suppose you meant that Cayley deliberately betrayed Mark, and tried to make him look like a murderer?”

“I wanted to warn you that we should probably find Mark in the passage, alive or dead.”

“Now I think that his dead body is there.”

“Well, that’s what I shrink from, Bill. It’s so horribly cold-blooded. Cayley may be capable of it, but I hate to think of it.”

My theory is that he quarrelled violently with Mark over the girl, and killed him in sudden passion. Anything that happened after that would be self-defense.

Anything that happened after that would be self-defense. I don’t mean that I excuse it, but that I understand it.

“You may be right, but it’s all guess-work, you know.” Antony laughed. “Good Lord, of course it is,” he said. “And to-night we shall know if it’s a good guess or a bad one.”

“I say, to-night’s going to be rather fun. How do we work it?”

“Of course,” he said at last, “we ought to inform the police, so that they can come here and watch the pond to-night.” “Of course,” grinned Bill. “But I think that perhaps it is a little early to put our theories before them.” “I think perhaps it is,” said Bill solemnly. Antony looked up at him with a sudden smile. “Bill, you old bounder.” “Well, dash it, it’s our show. I don’t see why we shouldn’t get our little bit of fun out of it.” “Neither do I. All right, then, we’ll do without the police to-night.” “We shall miss them,” said Bill sadly, “but ‘tis better so.”

“Let’s look at it from Cayley’s point of view,” said Antony. “He may not know that we’re on his track, but he can’t help being suspicious of us.

He’s bound to be suspicious of everybody in the house, and more particularly of us, because we’re presumably more intelligent than the others.

“Of course, the trouble with water is that one bit of it looks pretty much like the next bit. I don’t know if that had occurred to you.”

“Well, it’s rather useful, that’s all.” “Said Sherlock Holmes enigmatically,” added Bill. “A moment later, his friend Watson had hurled him into the pond.”

“I love being Sherlocky,” he said. “It’s very unfair of you not to play up to me.”

“Why is that fence useful, my dear Holmes?” said Bill obediently. “Because you can take a bearing on it. You see—” “Yes, you needn’t stop to explain to me what a bearing is.”

“And there, I almost forgot to remark, will the taller eagle, Beverley by name, do his famous diving act. As performed nightly at the Hippodrome.” Bill looked at him uneasily. “I say, really? It’s beastly dirty water, you know.”

“Right, old boy. Leave it to me. I can do this on my head.”

Cayley seemed very fond of them that night. After dinner was over, he suggested a stroll outside. They walked up and down the gravel in front of the house, saying very little to each other, until Bill could stand it no longer. For the last twenty turns he had been slowing down hopefully each time they came to the door, but the hint had always been lost on his companions, and each time another turn had been taken.

Cayley’s business would make no noise, give no sign, to attract the most wakeful member of the household, so long as the household was really inside the house. But if he wished to reassure himself about his guests, he would have to wait until they were far enough on their way to sleep not to be disturbed by him as he came up to reassure himself. So it amounted to the same thing, really. He would wait until they were asleep.

Good heavens, what fools they had been!

The pond was waiting for them, more solemn in the moonlight. The trees which crowned the sloping bank on the far side of it were mysteriously silent. It seemed that they had the world very much to themselves.

He picked up the bag from between his feet, leant over the nose of the boat, and rested it lightly on the water for a moment. Then he let go. It sank slowly. He waited there, watching; afraid, perhaps, that it might rise again.

For a long time, as it seemed to the watchers, he stood there, very big, very silent, in the moonlight. At last he seemed satisfied. Whatever his secret was, he had hidden it; and so with a gentle sigh, as unmistakable to Antony as if he had heard it, Cayley turned away and vanished again as quietly as he had come.

Good Lord, what a life!

“You’re quite sure that you wouldn’t like to do the diving yourself?” “Quite, thanks.”

“What’s it like?” said Antony. “Cold. Well, here’s luck to it.”

“I feel that if I threw you a sardine,” said Antony, with a smile, “you’d catch it in your mouth quite prettily.” “It’s awfully easy to be funny from where you are. How much longer have I got to go on doing this?” Antony looked at his watch. “About three hours. We must get back before daylight. But be quicker if you can, because it’s rather cold for me sitting here.” Bill flicked a handful of water at him and disappeared again.

“I’m a bit lost for the moment, Bill, and that’s the fact.”

“I had many bright thoughts in my bath this morning,” began Antony. “The brightest one of all was that we were being damn fools, and working at this thing from the wrong end altogether.”

“Of course it’s very hampering being a detective, when you don’t know anything about detecting, and when nobody knows that you’re doing detection, and you can’t have people up to cross-examine them, and you have neither the energy nor the means to make proper inquiries; and, in short, when you’re doing the whole thing in a thoroughly amateur, haphazard way.”

He gave his evidence carefully, unemotionally—the lies with the same slow deliberation as the truth. Antony watched him intently, wondering what it was about him which had this odd sort of attractiveness. For Antony, who knew that he was lying, and lying (as he believed) not for Mark’s sake but his own, yet could not help sharing some of that general sympathy with him.

Cayley went back heavily to his seat. “Damn it,” said Antony to himself, “why do I like the fellow?”

“He did a lot of early morning exercises which were supposed to make him bright and cheerful at breakfast. They didn’t do that, but they seemed to keep him pretty fit.”

It was nearly eight o’clock when William Beverley, the famous sleuth-hound, arrived, tired and dusty, at ‘The George,’ to find Antony, cool and clean, standing bare-headed at the door, waiting for him.

When the first edge of his appetite had worn off, and he was able to spare a little time between the mouthfuls, Bill gave an account of his adventures. The landlord of the “Plough and Horses” had been sticky, decidedly sticky—Bill had been unable at first to get anything out of him. But Bill had been tactful; lorblessyou, how tactful he had been.

“Have some more beer,” said Antony with a smile. And Bill had to be content with that.

To live on terms of intimate friendship with a man whom you hate is dangerous work for your friend.

Perhaps it is as well that we have died out.

We might have been friends in another world—you and I, and I and she.

Don’t let Bill think too badly of me. He is a good fellow; look after him. He will be surprised. The young are always surprised. And thank you for letting me end my own way. I expect you did sympathize a little, you know.

His whole life was make-believe, and just now he was pretending to be a philanthropist.

Mark could never live alone. There must always be somebody to listen to him.

Drinking is such a beastly thing, anyhow.

Yes, I kept him outwardly decent; and perhaps now I was becoming like the cannibal who keeps his victim in good condition for his own ends.

I used to gloat over Mark, thinking how utterly he was mine to ruin as I pleased, financially, morally, whatever way would give me most satisfaction.

To have lived with that shrivelled little soul would have been hell for her; and a thousand times worse hell when he began to drink.

Then he killed himself. That futile little drunkard, eaten up with his own selfishness and vanity, offered his beastliness to the truest and purest woman on this earth.

Certainly he had some ability for the stage, so long as he had the stage to himself and was playing to an admiring audience.

“To be called an artist was what he longed for most. Now I knew that I had him.”

He had only to deceive Miss Norris and the other guests; I had to deceive the world.

He was being what he wished most to be—an artist.

Can you imagine the feelings of a ‘murderer’ who has (as he thinks) planned for every possibility, and is then confronted suddenly with an utterly new problem?

There was a time when I hoped that there might be a happy future for me, not at the Red House, not alone. Perhaps it was never more than an idle day-dream, for I am no more worthy of her than Mark was.

But I could have made her happy, Mr. Gillingham. God, how I would have worked to make her happy! But now that is impossible. To offer her the hand of a murderer would be as bad as to offer her the hand of a drunkard. And Mark died for that. I saw her this morning. She was very sweet. It is a difficult world to understand.

“I am lonely to-night without Mark. That’s funny, isn’t it?”

“I couldn’t help liking Cayley in a kind of way, you know.”

“He’s a clever devil. If you hadn’t turned up just when you did, he would never have been found out.”

“I wonder. It was ingenious, but it’s often the ingenious thing which gets found out.

“Yes. Well, if any of ‘em should happen to be murdered, you might send for me. I’m just getting into the swing of it.”

I mean he may have been so full of his appearance as Robert that he had almost got to believe in Robert, and had to tell everybody.

He generally gets discovered in the end; a professional criminal; perhaps not—but an amateur like Mark!

“It was decent of you to give him a chance. I’m glad you did.”