Sir Clinton was silent for a moment. His glance wandered to the broken, white-clad figure on the ground, but no pity showed on his face. Then he turned back to Armadale.
“See if you can get a confession out of him, Inspector. He won’t live long at the best; and he might as well tell what he can. We can’t hang him now, unfortunately; and he may as well save us some trouble in piecing things together. For one thing, he’s got a bag or a suit-case lying around somewhere in the neighbourhood with a suit of clothes in it. You’d better find out where that is, and save us the bother of hunting for it. If you manage to get anything out of him, take it down and get it witnessed. Bring it down to Ravensthorpe at once.”
He paused, then added as if by an after-thought:
“You’d better search these tights that he’s wearing. There ought to be five of the medallions concealed about him somewhere. Get them for me.”
He turned to Cecil and Michael.
“We’ll go back now to Ravensthorpe. Unless I’m far astray in my deductions, there’s been another murder there; and we must keep the girls from hearing about it, if we can.”
As they walked through the pine-wood, Sir Clinton maintained a complete taciturnity, and neither of the others cared to break in on his silence. His last words had shown that ahead of them might lie yet another of the Ravensthorpe tragedies, and the shadow of it lay across their minds. It was not until they were approaching the house that the Chief Constable spoke again.
“You’ve spun that yarn I gave you to the girls?”
“They know there was some stunt afoot,” said Cecil, “but they were to keep out of the way, in their rooms, until we were clear of the house.”
“One had to tell them something,” Sir Clinton answered. “If one hadn’t, they’d have been pretty uncomfortable when all that racket started. You managed to scare him out very neatly with the row you raised when I blew my whistle.”