“You’ve said it,” said Davidson, “you’ve brought it all back to me. I can remember how he was going off the ‘deep end.’ He’d got a particular grouch against some Foreign Johnny—some Prince of God knows where—he wouldn’t let on why when we pulled his leg about it—in fact he was inclined to turn sulky—but from what I could gather he fairly ached to present this Prince-person with something lingering with bags of boiling oil in it.”
Bannister sat transfixed in his chair as Davidson concluded his remarks and Anthony could almost see a question trembling on his tongue. Davidson, however, was sublimely oblivious of the fact. He rattled merrily on. “Can’t think of the particular merchant’s name,” he murmured with an air of attempted, but abortive reminiscence, “but it reminded me at the time of geraniums.”
Inspector Bannister leaned over the table and held him lightly by the fore-arm. “Think very carefully,” he said quietly, “was it by any chance the Crown Prince of Clorania? Was that the name?”
Davidson sat back in open-mouthed astonishment. “ ’Pon my solemn soul,” he exclaimed with a look of complete mystification, “you’ve holed in one. You’re sure some little laddie—what?”
CHAPTER XIII.
Re-enter Mr. X
It seemed to “Pinkie” Kerr that her entire world had come tumbling hopelessly about her ears. That she had been relentlessly caught in the mesh of misery. The news that had awaited her upon her arrival at Tranfield had produced in her a species of mental paralysis. Her brain was numbed. The telegram that had summoned her from her Devonshire home and holiday had not told her all. Bannister had deliberately tempered the blow to her by partly preparing her for the inevitable shock. She sat in the dining-room of “Rest Harrow” with the brilliant July sunshine pouring through the windows and tried hard to realise that she would never see her beloved Miss Sheila again in this transitory world of hopes, doubts and fears. And the mental paralysis that had so completely taken hold of her mercifully prevented her from experiencing this bitter realisation to its full poignancy. To her, representative as she was of her class, a telegram was always regarded as the harbinger of evil and when it had reached her on the evening of the previous day, she had felt instinctively and assuredly that this particular telegram would prove no exception to the sinister rule. She had obeyed its startling summons almost mechanically—dumbly as it were—making no articulate complaint against the bludgeoning of Fate and accepting the scroll of punishment with a bowed head and the better part of a contrite heart. As she sat in the comfortable chair in the room at “Rest Harrow” and faced Chief-Inspector Bannister, supported left and right by Anthony Bathurst and Sergeant Ross, her sixty-odd years weighed heavily upon her but she tried hard to collect the best qualities of her intelligence for the sake of her “bairn” that had been so foully struck down and so ruthlessly taken from her. The only real consciousness that she possessed was clamouring for vengeance. She was half Devonian and half Scots and for the moment the Scots strain had struggled for the mastery and after the habit of its kind had succeeded in obtaining it. One thought was being registered clearly in her sorely-afflicted brain and one thought only. She might be the means of bringing Miss Sheila’s murderer to the penalty of Justice. An idea here or a suggestion there might well prove to be a shaft of enlightenment to the skilled brains that were waiting to question her. She sat there, fighting hard against the chaos of her mind. There was not only Miss Sheila’s memory for her to serve! There was also Colonel Dan’s! Colonel Dan to whom she had ministered faithfully for more years than she cared to remember. Colonel Daniel Delaney had been a gentleman—more than that even—he had been an Irish gentleman and as his faithful servant had informed more than a few persons in her time, an “Irish gentleman was the finest gentleman in the world.” When the news was brought home to her years ago that he had been found drowned it had plunged her into genuinely deep distress—distress that persisted—but her supremely loyal nature after a time asserted itself and the distress became alleviated by the loving care that she showered upon the dainty blossom that Colonel Dan had left behind. When Colonel Dan’s widow followed him a few years later to “the bourne from which no traveller returns,” this care became even more assiduous—it became in the nature of a Religion. But now she was assailed by a black and devastating sense of complete and utter loneliness. All her loving care had been brought to naught—she had laboured in vain! The edifice that she had built so lovingly had been eternally shattered. As she sat there sobbing convulsively her tall spare frame shook with the paroxysm of her grief. She dabbed continually at her streaming eyes with her handkerchief and Bannister was sufficiently sensible to let the first flood of her sorrow run its full course before he attempted to put any questions to her. Gradually it began to show signs of subsiding and as the intervals between her shuddering sobs grew more lengthy he saw that before very long she would quieten down considerably. He waited patiently and Anthony could not help admiring his dignified control—so many men of his acquaintance would have rushed their fences and achieved in the rushing entirely inadequate results.
“We want you to help us,” he commenced very quietly, and with a delicate suggestion of sympathy, “we understand your feelings thoroughly. But please do your best to control them—if you do—you will not only help us in our investigations but you will also help the poor girl who has gone. Please understand that——” he added sympathetically.
“What is it you want to know?” she asked listlessly.
“We want to know as much as you can possibly tell us,” said Bannister, “about your young mistress—about her life here with you—what friends she had in her life—you know the kind of things I mean.”
She nodded. “I’ve lived with poor Miss Sheila ever since she was born—I was with her mother when she came—my name is Agnes Kerr—my home is in Devon—I had gone there for a holiday, the address on your telegram is my home.” She stopped for a moment and pushed the buff envelope on to the edge of the table. It would have fallen but for the agility of Mr. Bathurst who gallantly retrieved it. Bannister nodded encouragingly. “We found the address here. We got it from your postcard to Miss Delaney,” he explained.