Then, again, assuming that he had got away, there would surely have been some indication of his mode of exit—an unfastened window, an unlocked door. But the most exhaustive inquiry satisfied me there was neither one nor the other.
But if Balfour was not out of the house, he must be in the house; and if he was in the house, it was as a dead man. And where was his body?
It seemed unreasonable to suppose that a human body could be disposed of so quickly and so effectually as to leave not a trace behind.
Then, again, granting that he was murdered, who murdered him, and why was he murdered? Who raised the unearthly cry, and was it raised purposely to draw him from the room in order that he might be immediately struck down?
Such was the problem with which I was confronted, and I freely confess that at this stage I felt absolutely baffled. I saw no clue, and nothing likely to lead me to a clue; but though baffled, I was not beaten. The mystery was profound, and the whole case so strange, so startling, that I was not surprised at ignorant people attributing it to supernatural agency. It had about it all the elements of some wild, weird story of monkish superstition, lifted from the pages of a mediæval romance. It was no romance, however, no legend, but a hard, dry fact of the nineteenth century that had to be accounted for by perfectly human means.
There was one point, however, which made itself clear through the darkness. It was that the author of the deed was a person of such devilish cunning, such brutal ferocity, such crafty ingenuity, that he would occupy a niche all to himself for evermore in the gallery of criminals.
As I have already said, though I was baffled, I was not beaten, and I felt sure I should ultimately succeed in the task set me. I had in my possession the broken blade of the stiletto, and I knew that might prove of value as a clue; and having done all that it was practical to do for the moment, I set to work to define a motive for the crime, and to construct a theory that would aid me in my efforts to solve the problem.
CHAPTER III.
THE DEAD HAND SMITES.
Peter Brodie stood very high in his profession. He had made his mark as a detective, and had solved some very complicated problems. In recalling him from Liverpool, whither he had been sent on important business, the authorities felt that if the Corbie Hall mystery was to be cleared up he was the man to do it. They saw from the first that it was a very difficult case, when all the circumstances were considered, but they were sure that Brodie was the one man likely to tackle it successfully.
It seemed as if the evil reputation of Corbie Hall was never to pass away, and after this new tragedy people recalled how Peter Crease, the drunken owner of it, and uncle of Balfour, had broken his neck in a quarry; how, following that, the gloomy house had fallen into dilapidation, until it was shunned as a haunted place. When the rightful heir turned up, they thought he would put things right; but instead of that he proved himself to be as big a reprobate as his relative had been: and now his mysterious disappearance, and Maggie Stiven’s murder, realized the croakings of the wiseacres, who had said that a curse hung over the house, and that anyone who went to live in the Hall would come to grief.