“There’s a man into whose soul the iron has entered, my friend!” he said. “Poor fellow! poor fellow! I feel deeply and sincerely sorry for him. Seven years lonely brooding over his love affair—terrible!”
“I fear you have a very deep vein of sentiment, sir!” observed Blick. “I’m sorry for the chap, too; he evidently took Myra’s defection pretty badly to heart. But I’ll tell you what I think, Professor—I think Master Roper ought to be feeling very thankful that I didn’t request him to march down to Selcaster police-station with me! If I were not a believer in psychology as a science I should certainly have desired his presence there. But I sized him up, and watched him closely, and I think I understand his curious mental processes, and I believe he told us the truth. I only wish he’d come and confided in me a week since!”
“Do you know, I rather think that I should have done precisely what he did, had I been in his case?” remarked the Professor ingenuously. “I sympathized with the unhappy man all through. But now, my dear fellow—this mysterious person? How are you going to get on his trail?”
“The queer thing about that,” observed Blick, “is this—at least, it’s a surface difficulty. Taking Roper’s story to be true—as I do—here’s a strange man, a Londoner by his speech, says Roper, by which he probably means a man of the educated classes, on the downs with Guy Markenmore, late on Monday evening. Who is he? Did he come down with Markenmore from London? Did they meet in the train? Did they foregather on the way between Mitbourne and Markenmore? We don’t know. But there are more important questions than any of these—for one, where was that man going? Where did he go when he and Markenmore parted?—for another. And for a third, and most important one—if he’s the man who shot Guy Markenmore next morning, where had he been in the meantime? Where did he spend Monday night? It couldn’t have been far away from hereabouts, if he laid in wait for his victim at four o’clock next morning!”
“Puzzling!” admitted the Professor. “Yet I suppose that a man who had much at stake wouldn’t mind sticking it out in these woods for a few hours—the nights are warm now, and there’s a lot of shelter here, in these valleys. Now, what amazes me is—if this man murdered Guy Markenmore, as I’m sure he did, why didn’t he murder him on Monday night and get away in the darkness?”
Blick laughed.
“I’ll tell you why,” he answered. “He was a man whom Guy Markenmore had taken into his confidence about this dye affair. He had come down with him, fully acquainted with what Guy was doing. He knew that the money business was likely to be settled that night. And he waited until morning so that he could possess himself of the cash as well as the formula you have told us of—with your opinion attached to it. Probably he is the man of whom Markenmore’s clerk at Folgrave Court told you, and we’ll have to try and find him. But the clue’s thin and poor, so far.”
The Professor nodded, paused, and looked about him. While talking, they had strolled slowly along the hill-side into a still wilder stretch of country. They were now standing on the edge of a deep ravine, which cut into the land beneath to a depth of some two hundred feet; here and there the fall was precipitous; in the dark and gloomy recesses far below great masses of yew and pine were broken by huge blocks of grey limestone; over everything hovered a sombre and mysterious silence. But suddenly the Professor broke it.
“There is somebody signalling to us!” he exclaimed. “Down there! A woman!”
Blick looked in the direction indicated, and started in surprise. Far away below them, a little to their right, he saw a woman’s figure standing near a grove of trees which lay at the foot of the most precipitous part of the ravine. And, as the Professor said, she was certainly endeavouring to attract their attention.