"You made a bad mistake, young man, in keeping back what you ought to have told at the inquest on Phillips!" he said, reprovingly. "Indeed, you ought to have told it before that—you should have told us."
"Aye!—if I'd only known as much as that," began Chisholm, "I'd have—"
"You'd probably have done just what he did!" broke in Mr. Lindsey—"held your tongue till you knew more!—so let that pass—the lad did what he thought was for the best. You never suspected Sir Gilbert of any share in these affairs, either of you—so come, now!"
"Why, as to that, Mr. Lindsey," remarked Murray, who looked somewhat nettled by this last passage, "you didn't suspect him yourself—or, if you did, you kept it uncommonly quiet!"
"Does Mr. Lindsey suspect him now?" asked Chisholm, a bit maliciously.
"For if he does, maybe he'll give us a hand."
Mr. Lindsey looked at both of them in a way that he had of looking at people of whose abilities he had no very great idea—but there was some indulgence in the look on this occasion.
"Well, now that things have come to this pass," he said, "and after Sir Gilbert's deliberate attempt to get rid of Moneylaws—to murder him, in fact—I don't mind telling you the truth. I do suspect Sir Gilbert of the murder of Crone—and that's why I produced that ice-ax in court the other day. And—when he saw that ice-ax, he knew that I suspected him, and that's why he took Moneylaws out with him, intending to rid himself of a man that could give evidence against him. If I'd known that Moneylaws was going with him, I'd have likely charged Sir Gilbert there and then!—anyway, I wouldn't have let Moneylaws go."
"Aye!—you know something, then?" exclaimed Murray. "You're in possession of some evidence that we know nothing about?"
"I know this—and I'll make you a present of it, now," answered Mr. Lindsey. "As you're aware, I'm a bit of a mountaineer—you know that I've spent a good many of my holidays in Switzerland, climbing. Consequently, I know what alpenstocks and ice-axes are. And when I came to reflect on the circumstances of Crone's murder, I remember that not so long since, happening to be out along the riverside, I chanced across Sir Gilbert Carstairs using a very late type of ice-ax as a walking-stick—as he well could do, and might have picked up in his hall as some men'll pick up a golf-stick to go walking with, and I've done that myself, hundred of times. And I knew that I had an ice-ax of that very pattern at home—and so I just shoved it under the doctor's nose in court, and asked him if that hole in Crone's head couldn't have been made by the spike of it. Why? Because I knew that Carstairs would be present in court, and I wanted to see if he would catch what I was after!"
"And—you think he did?" asked the superintendent, eagerly.