"The deuce!" ejaculated Krech, startled. He fumbled in his pocket, produced a match and struck it. "Mind if I light the lamp?" But the flickering flame of the match showed him a face so white and drawn that he caught his breath in sudden realization of the truth. He abandoned his idea of lighting the lamp and fumbled his way to a chair near the foot of the bed. "So—you know!" he said quietly.
"Yes," admitted the detective wearily. "But how did you?"
"I tumbled to it the night you went to New York," answered Krech, his voice anything but happy. "I didn't go home after I left you at the station. Came back here. You hinted something might happen if you went away and gave it a chance, and I didn't see why it shouldn't happen right away. I hoped the monk would turn up again; had a notion that my head would feel better if I could once get my hands on that wire-stretching humorist.
"I kept carefully out of sight in the woods and settled down at a point where I could watch both the kitchen garden and the spot where we'd last seen the monk. I waited three hours. If patience and perseverance make a good detective I was the best in the world that night.
"The reason I waited so long was that I was interested in a lighted window—Miss Ocky's. She was keeping pretty late hours, talking to Janet Mackay, I recognized her tall, thin shadow as it occasionally fell on the blinds, and you know I had already suggested that there was something dubious about Janet because of her acquaintance with Charlie Maxon.
"That light didn't go out until three in the morning. A few minutes later I saw some one slip out the back door of the house and hurry across the garden to the trail. Janet! It was brilliant moonlight, you'll remember, and I recognized her at once.
"I followed her, keeping a cautious distance behind. Lost her once when she vanished from the trail into the woods, but she came back a minute or two later with a bundle under her arm that she had retrieved from some hiding-place. After that she took a bypath leading downhill in the direction of that poisonous little brook which runs through those meadows after passing the tannery.
"I watched her as she knelt down on the bank of the stream, weighted her bundle with a couple of rocks and hove it as far out as she could into the water. She stood watching the bubbles break above the spot where it disappeared, then turned and marched away erect as a grenadier and calm as a cucumber.
"I let her go, of course. My interest was centered in that stuff she had sunk, and I scurried around until I found a long pole. Then I started dredging operations that would have been a credit to De Lesseps himself—and brought ashore that bundle.
"You've guessed what it was. The monk's disguise, complete even to the shoes!