One thing seemed clear enough: unless the man were a consummate actor, he was not the Monk. It seemed improbable that, in his half-drugged condition, he could be acting a part, but on the other hand that very condition made it dangerous to set too much store by what he said. Much of it sounded suspiciously like the waking dreams experienced by drug-addicts, yet when he had spoken of the Monk, Charles thought that he had detected a look of perfectly sane hatred in his eyes. He had not been talking of a ghost: that much was certain. To Duval, the Monk was real, and, apparently, terrible. It was possible, of course, that in a state that resembled delirium his mind had seized on the idea of the ghostly inmate of the Priory, and woven a story about it. Possible, Charles admitted, but hardly probable.
If one accepted the provisional hypothesis that the Monk was no ghost, one was immediately faced with two problems. The first, Charles thought, was the reason he could have for what seemed a senseless masquerade; the second, which might perhaps be easier to solve if the first were discovered, was his identity.
Since they had had, so far, no means of identifying any single thing about him, he might be any one of the people with whom they had become acquainted, or, which was quite possible, someone whom they had never seen.
The artist apparently knew something, but how much it was hard to decide. Charles hoped that on the following day he might, by buying one of his pictures, induce him to disclose more. If he was weaving a fanciful tale out of his own clouded mind it would be merely misleading, of course, but Charles felt that for the sake of the remote chance of discovering the Monk's object in haunting the Priory, this must be faced.
He had reached the Bell Inn by this time. The bar was not open, but on the other side of the archway into the yard there was a draughty apartment known as the lounge. Here he found his brother-in-law seated in an uncomfortable leather chair, and chatting to Colonel Ackerley. The Colonel's golf clubs were propped against one of the tables, and he was wearing a suit of immensely baggy plus-fours.
"Aha, here's Malcolm!" he said, as Charles entered the room. "Sit down, my dear fellow! Been fishing? I'm on my way back from my day's golf! Noticed your car outside and looked in to see which of you was trying to get a drink out of hours. Found you out, eh?"
"It cannot be too widely known," said Charles, "that I am more or less of a teetotaller."
"But mostly less," Peter interpolated.
The Colonel was much amused by this, and repeated it. "More or less - that's very good, Malcolm. I must remember that. Might mean either, what? But what have you been doing? Calling on the Vicar's wife?"
"I regard that as a reflection on my sobriety, sir," Charles said gravely. "No. I've been watching a very odd specimen paint a still odder picture."