“No, certainly not,” he said. “They would not be so silly. It was just a coincidence that we should have been discussing all this foolishness beforehand. No, there are thousands of deluded idiots about, of one sort or another, who have gone mad on this spiritualism business, and I think the most probable explanation is that some week-end visitor at the hotel—we’ve got quite a decent hotel in the village, you know, kept by a fellow called Messenger—some woman or other, a little cracked on this subject, came out here and was tempted to try a little experiment on us. Probably she didn’t mean to go quite so far, in the first instance. Just showed herself in the moonlight, playing at being an apparition for our benefit. She’d be able to see us on the lawn from here. And then when we caught her, she had to play up to the part. No doubt, she recognised Lady Ulrica’s credulity. Recognised her as the kind of woman that makes the fortune of the ordinary medium. And all that nonsensical talk of hers—not badly done, in a way, by the by—was just the sort of stuff they spew up at a séance. Eh? Don’t you agree? What we’ve got to do now is to find out who it was. We’ll go down and talk to Messenger tomorrow morning, and get the truth about it. He’s got an uncommonly pretty daughter, by the way; and I don’t think we’ll take Fell. He showed signs of being a trifle épris in that quarter, when he was down here last.”
Harrison’s confidence grew as he spoke, and before he had finished he had warmed to quite a glow of certainty. His excitement had something the quality of that displayed by one who finds himself unhurt after a nasty accident.
“Expect you’re right,” Greatorex agreed calmly.
“Well, we’d better get back to the others—with our—our evidence.” Harrison looked down at the scarf in his hands, and began automatically to fold it as he spoke. “There’s a path through the plantation, a few yards further up,” he continued. “No need for us to tear ourselves to pieces among the shrubs. As you said, we haven’t the least chance of finding the lady by this light, and the only decent thing we can do is to clear off, and let her find her way back to the hotel.”
“If your theory is the right one,” Greatorex commented, as they began to walk up the bank of the lake.
“Have you a better?” snapped Harrison.
“No—no,” Greatorex admitted. “Can’t say I have. And anyway, yours is susceptible of proof. All we have to do is to find the lady.”
“Quite so,” Harrison said without conviction. He foresaw, with a little qualm of uneasiness, that his failure to produce the lady might prove a difficulty in any controversy that might follow with Vernon and Lady Ulrica. If he definitely committed himself to a theory that could be upheld or discredited by the investigation of verifiable facts, he would be at an immense disadvantage should the facts go against him—as, he was ready to admit to himself, they very possibly might. He realised that in his excitement he had been too hasty.
“Of course, G.,” he said on a faintly expostulating note, “of course, I may have been rather premature in assuming that this—er—visitor of ours was staying at the hotel. I—I don’t in any way insist on that. It’s our first chance and perhaps our best one; but there are other alternatives. We can begin with this scarf. That’s our solid ground of evidence. What we have to do is to trace the owner.”
“Exactly,” Greatorex agreed thoughtfully.