"Aye!" meditated Gowrie, sipping his drink, "I mind now. Th' auld mon hed siller wi' him, es yon lawyer body tauld Kind. Twa thoosand. Aye! A couple o' hundreds in gold, an' one thoosand eight hundred in notes, Bank o' England, nae doot. Hoots! they wudnae gang wi' only twa hundred in gold, an' they darenae cash the notes. Aye! The ways o' transgressors are haird."
These thoughts revealed plainly that Mr. Gowrie suspected Mrs. Narby of having killed Sir Simon, either with or without the connivance of her husband, in order to get the money. The gold she had used to send Pope to London, and doubtless had supplied him with a sum to publish his verse; but the notes, owing to the warning of the numbers being kept having been given in the newspapers, had not been presented. The desire to go at once to the States was thus explained. Mrs. Narby, and possibly her husband, were flying from justice. Gowrie was certain that she had killed the old man, as he remembered the swish of a woman's dress which he had heard in the darkness. There was a sound about that which a keen-eared man like himself could not mistake.
"And then she knew that Herries was drugged," thought Gowrie, "and so implicated him in the crime by placing the razor on his quilt and smearing his sleeve with blood. Then she found the pocket-book under the bed, where no doubt she placed it. Those who hide, find. I see now that she is guilty--the money carried by Sir Simon was too tempting for her. She must have hidden the notes somewhere. If I could only find them, I would soon have her in charge."
This being Gowrie's belief, he made up his mind to stop at the inn until he could unearth the notes, and meanwhile he kept a jealous watch on Mrs. Narby's every action. She became aware of his scrutiny, and--strange to say in so masculine a woman--became panic-struck. It was with the greatest difficulty that she preserved her composure towards him. During the afternoon, and when it was growing dark, she broke down entirely.
"Why do you 'ave yer h'eye on me?" she inquired angrily, "I ain't got 'orns a-growin' h'out of me 'ead, 'ave I?"
"Nae, nae, but ye mind me of a sister o' mine, lang syne deid. She wos a sweet lassie."
"Rats," retorted Mrs. Narby, going about her duties as usual, but she bridled all the same, being open to a compliment in spite of her resemblance to the witches in Macbeth. But after she had shown that she knew his eye was on her, Gowrie became much more circumspect, and several times later when Mrs. Narby looked, she found that he was not staring in her direction. Consequently she recovered her spirits and nerve. But Gowrie was on her trail, as she had, to his mind, given herself entirely away.
Gowrie sat, genial and warm in the tap-room, talking to anyone who came in, and enjoying himself thoroughly. Alice, the maid, served the yokels with beer, and Mrs. Narby tore in and out of the room, to keep an eye on what was doing. But for the most part she remained in the back parts of the house, and Gowrie noticed that her dress was wet, and her boots muddy as though she had been out in the rain. More, he noted that the mud she left on the tap-room floor was red, and remembered that there was earth of this peculiar hue down by the creek which ran past the bottom of the back garden attached to the "Marsh Inn." Wondering what could take her down there, and suspecting from her uneasy glances that she had something to conceal, Gowrie resolved to take the first opportunity to spy on her footsteps. But she gave him no chance for quite a long time, and then, when the opportunity did occur, he was momentarily withdrawn from his purpose by the entrance of Captain Bruce Kyles, who strode bluffly into the tap-room, looking more like a buccaneer than ever.
"Aye, Captain," said Gowrie genially, "it's you, is it?"
Kyles stared at the fiery-faced old man with narrowing eyes.