“Well,” he said, now speaking in quite audible accents, the occasion for secrecy having evidently passed, “what do you say to a cigar?—I suppose there’s a smoking-room here?”
“Very kind of you, Sir Charles,” replied the inspector. “Smoking-room just across the hall.”
When they had gone away, I thought things over—rapidly. It was then close upon ten o’clock, and I already knew sufficient of the domestic habits of Kelpieshaw as to know that they kept early hours there. But I felt, more from instinct than anything, that Parslewe ought to be put in possession of my news, and that I ought not to leave the imparting of it until next morning, however early. So going out into the hall, I got hold of the boots, and, taking him aside, made inquiries about my chances of getting a car, late as it was. He got one for me—with considerable delay and difficulty—but I took good care not to let him nor its driver know where I was going until I had got clear of the hotel.
The last stage of the road to Kelpieshaw was of such a nature that a car could do no more than crawl over it, and it was nearly midnight when I saw the tower of the old house standing dark and spectral against a moonlit sky. As I expected, there was not a light to be seen in any of the windows, not even in those of the upper part of the tower wherein Parslewe had his library. I felt very lonely when the car had driven off, leaving me in the solitude of the wind-swept courtyard. I knocked on the turret door several times without getting any response, and knowing the thickness of the walls and doors as I did, I began to fear that no summons of mine would be heard, and that I should have to camp out in one of the buildings. But my knocking roused the dogs; they set up a great barking, and at that a window opened, and Tibbie Muir’s voice, wrathful enough, demanded to know what ill body was below.
“Don’t be angry, Tibbie,” I called. “It’s I, Mr. Craye. Tell your master I’m back, and let me in.”
It was Parslewe himself who presently came down. He seemed in no way surprised, and he treated me to one of his sardonic grins.
“Well, young master?” he said, holding up his lamp and giving me a careful inspection as I stepped within. “You look a bit way-worn!” Then, in his eccentric, jocular fashion, and as he bolted and locked the big door behind me, he began to spout, dramatically:—
“‘Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night,