"Well, Roger," said he, "I'll go into this business very carefully and make the most thorough enquiry. Don't think I'm not keen on getting at the bottom of it. You've got to get off at once and rejoin your ship of course?"
I said I must.
"I tell you what I'll do," he went on; "of course we've got to lie very low about this sort of thing, but I feel I owe you some account of what happens. I'll write and let you know as soon as I have finished my investigation."
John Whiteclett was the best of fellows, shrewd and level-headed and a first class officer, but somehow or other I felt small confidence in his getting the better of the cunning foe on Ransay. However, it was all that could be done now. My own part was finished and I had to confess I had failed ignominiously.
XIV
MY COUSIN'S LETTER
Three weeks later I received this letter from my cousin:
"My dear Roger,
"As I promised I am sending you a chit to tell you the result of our enquiry into the Ransay mystery. Of course you will understand that this is strictly for your own eye and mustn't be talked about.
"Well, I wanted to leave no stone unturned to get at the bottom of the affair so we got up a pukka detective from London, a man named Bolton, said to be a first class fellow at the job. He spent a solid week in the island and seems to have poked his nose into pretty nearly every house and spoken to pretty nearly every inhabitant from the laird down. Taking a tip from your tale he posed as a cattle dealer (which is precisely what he looks like) and of course he never let on that he knew of your existence—or mine either.