“The hypocrite!” Mr. Craske exclaimed.
“A detective, that’s what he was,” Rawson went on. “Not a police detective, you understand, but one of them that goes about spying for a living. Now he is up and swore that the night of the burglary he seen some one leave the Hall by the oak library, which is Mr. Gregory’s private way almost, twenty minutes or half an hour before the burglary were committed.”
There was a little buzz of exclamations and remarks, a general feeling of indignation against the pseudo-schoolmaster.
“If he were one of these paid spies,” Mr. Craske enquired, “who were paying him?”
“That I can’t say for sure,” the butler acknowledged, “but I have my suspicions—very grave suspicions too.”
“And whom might you be fancying to be the man, Mr. Rawson?” one of the little group asked.
“Him as has taken the Great House—Mr. Johnson, by name,” was the injured reply. “We’ve had him up to lunch too, and treated him, as it were, beyond his station. I’m glad to find he’s not here to-day, gentlemen. There’s a word or two I might have had to say to him.”
“It do seem most mysterious,” the innkeeper declared. “What do you suppose this Mr. Johnson has got to do with it all, Mr. Rawson, that he’s putting his oar in?”
“Mr. Johnson,” the butler announced, “has come to these parts under false pretences. There’s many has wondered why he settled here and many asked him the question, and all the time he answered innocent like that he just wanted the country and the house suited him, and so on. Do you mind—all on you—when he pretended to be surprised about the murder? He knew about it all the time. He was Mr. Endacott’s partner out somewhere in foreign parts, and he settled down here in a mischievous kind of way to make trouble and disturbance amongst his betters.”
“Well, I never!” Mr. Pank exclaimed. “A pleasanter-spoken body never came in the place or a more harmless looking. There’s nothing fresh, is there, Mr. Rawson, about the murder?”