“Oh!” ejaculated Mrs. Harrison. “They left it behind after all. It’s Miss Messenger’s. She identified it at once and wondered how it had got here.”
“Certain it was hers, I suppose?” Harrison asked.
“Oh yes! It’s got her initials worked on it,” his wife told him.
For a few seconds Harrison stood thoughtfully drawing the scarf through his hands, then dropping it back on to the chair, he said: “That’s all right, then. Hadn’t we better be going to bed? It’s after one o’clock.”
2
When Charles Harrison set about the investigation of that night’s mystery, he was still intent upon the theory that the appearance he had seen and spoken to was in fact the living personality of some stranger who had been staying either in the village or possibly at Orton Park, the grounds of which sloped down to the other side of the lake. There were a couple of canoes and a punt in Lord Orton’s boathouse, and the crossing presented no real difficulty. He was, however, finally deflected from that theory in the course of his interview with Miss Messenger.
He had been quite firm at breakfast. As a result, no doubt, of the “conference” they had held the night before, Lady Ulrica and Vernon were eager to begin an immediate discussion of what they called the “phenomenon.” Harrison effectively stopped that.
“No! no!! no!!!” he said, putting his hands over his ears as soon as the topic was opened. “Now, Vernon, you profess to be scientific in your investigations. You—you insisted on that in your—er—lecture under the cedar last night. Now listen to me. I promise to thrash this out with you—presently. To—to discuss the thing in all its bearings. But I at least mean to be thorough and careful in my methods. Give me to-day to examine the case. I must cross-examine the principal witness—er—alone. Yes. I insist on that. You’ll have the very best intentions, of course. I don’t doubt it. But you’ll offer suggestions—unconsciously, perhaps, but you’ll do it.”
“And you?” Vernon replied. “Won’t you put suggestions into the examinee’s mind, too?”
“Hm! hm! You’ll have to trust me,” Harrison said. “I assure you that I only want to arrive at the truth of—of the actual facts, you understand. I want to know what Miss Messenger was doing down there for three hours or more. And if you want me to discuss the thing with you, you must let me get at the facts in my own way. I—I make that a condition. If you won’t agree to it, I shall refuse to discuss the thing at all.”