MR. POTTER'S SOLUTION
The man from Burton's was a light sleeper—at least, so he believed himself to be. He woke from his arm-chair doze very suddenly—noticing by the clock on the mantelpiece that he had slept for nearly two hours. He was conscious of having been awakened by some sound. Yet there was no one in the room. He started up from the chair. Was it fancy that, as he did so, he heard the closing of a door, as though someone had quietly left the room?
He glanced at the bed. Yes, someone had entered the sick-room, and for the hideous purpose that he had conceived to be possible. Only one thing assured him of this fact, but it was quite enough. It told him all.
A pillow which had reposed at the foot of the great bed when he had first entered the room was no longer in that place. It had been shifted to the other end, and now lay firmly pressed down upon the unconscious patient's face. Here was yet another attempt to murder the unhappy Squire. It had been placed there to suffocate him.
Hastily, yet gently, the detective raised it from its position, and flung it into a corner. So recently had it been placed upon the patient's upturned face that no harm had been done. But Mr. Potter shuddered to think what would have happened had he not awakened in time to avert the catastrophe.
His first duty had been that of "nurse," now his detective instincts asserted themselves. While he had waited to learn whether the Squire yet lived, he had allowed the would-be murderer time to make good his escape. But he hurriedly opened the door of the sick-room and peered out into the dark passage. Not a sound disturbed the silence of night. Mr. Potter muttered something of the nature of an oath as he realised how he had been caught napping in both senses of the word. The heartless son, Laurence, of whose guilt he was so confident, had nearly got the better of him. He made up for his shortcoming by keeping awake and alert during the remaining hours of his watch. But nothing happened—no one came, and when Mrs. Featherston arrived at half-past seven to relieve him for a short period he threw up for the time the rôle of nurse, and walked out of the sick-room in his investigator's capacity to learn what he could about the true facts of the attack on the moor.
His night had not been wasted. He had carefully examined the Squire's body, and convinced himself that a very remarkable, but unsuccessful, attempt to kill the old gentleman had been made. Yet a tiny, ragged cut on the front of the neck, almost upon the throat, was the only visible clue to the manner of that attempt.
He had further made a careful examination of the room and of the clothes that the Squire had worn. Yet he obtained but a slight clue that seemed likely to lead to anything. This was a yellow hair—or rather, yellow wisp of silk—that he found upon the patient's cravat. It was of a peculiar colour, but hardly likely, Potter thought, to prove of any assistance. Yet he carefully gummed it by means of a strip of court plaster to a page of his note-book, and proceeded to investigate the furniture in the room. Nothing in the way of a possible clue came to light. One thing alone caused him surprise.
This was the discovery of the body of an ordinary bat found lying in a dark corner of the room. The creature was dead—it had apparently been crushed when some furniture had been moved, possibly by the doctor's direction.
Mr. Potter carefully picked up his curious find, and placed it in a cardboard box on which his eye chanced. The box he placed on a high shelf in a convenient cupboard. It might, he thought, prove useful in the future.
Confident though he was of Laurence's guilt, he determined not to be rash. To start from the beginning was his intention. And so his first move was to interview Moggin, the coachman, to whom he introduced himself as the "nurse." Cautiously guiding the conversation on to the subject of highwaymen of the present time, he was rewarded by a confidential description of the attack on the carriage, that had happened a few days before. Moggin had, of course, learned of the injury that had befallen his master, and confessed that he connected the two attacks with one another, as having been made by the same man.
Mr. Potter was annoyed. The coachman was certainly telling the truth. He had deemed it possible that Moggin might have been an accomplice in the so-called attack, and that no "highwayman"—not even another accomplice in disguise—had existed. This was evidently not the case. Ergo, there must be some other man in league with Laurence. This other accomplice was a very important person. He had, according to the detective, not only played the highwayman, but also the market-woman whom Miss Scott had decided was a man disguised.
Oliver Potter was at a loss to know what step to take next. Strange to say, it never entered his head to visit Durley Dene. In his confidence that he was on the right track, he evidently had little doubt but that the neighbouring mansion was uninhabited. For who knew anything about the persons that lived there? Only Laurence! Of course, the message that had been sent by means of a catapult from the grounds of the Dene had been despatched by the accomplice on whom Potter was so anxious to lay his hand.
Then a brilliant idea struck the man from Burton's. Was Selene Scott that accomplice? Might not she have attacked the carriage on the moor? Might not the story of the market-woman in disguise, and the letter from Durley Dene, be false? When he came to think of it, Mr. Potter marvelled that he had not discovered this probability before. Why were Laurence Carrington and Miss Scott so apparently intimate? Was it not possible that they might be engaged—or even married? In which case it would be to their mutual advantage were the Squire dead, since then his money would naturally come to them.
"Eureka," cried the man from Burton's, who was proud of his knowledge of half a dozen Greek and Latin words, "I hold in my hand the key to the mystery!"