"No, really, thanks, I shall be better without anything. I know how to treat these heads of mine by now, I assure you, and I won't have anything to eat till to-morrow morning. The only thing I need is quiet and sleep. If you will be so very kind as to give orders that I shall not be disturbed…."
"Of course, of course," said his hostess, full of concern. "And you must let me give you an excellent remedy for headaches. It was given me years ago by dear old Sir Ronald Tompkins, that famous specialist, you know, who always ordered every one to roll on the floor after meals, and I invariably keep a bottle by me."
And she hurried off to fetch it.
Gimblet accepted it gratefully, and as he passed a hand across his aching brow said he felt sure it would do him good.
Once again within his own room, however, the detective's headache seemed to have miraculously vanished, and he showed himself in no hurry to go to bed. Instead, having locked the door and drawn down the blind, he sat down in an arm-chair and gave himself up to reflection. Mentally he rehearsed the facts of the case as far as they were known to him, and was obliged to admit that he found several of them very puzzling.
There were other problems, too, not directly connected with the murder, of which he could not at present make head or tail. For instance, where was he to find the documents which he knew it was Lord Ashiel's wish he should take charge of. He had promised that he would do so, and the recollection of his failure to guard the first thing the dead peer had entrusted him with made him the more determined that he would carry out the remainder of his promise. But how was he to begin his search? He had so little to go on, and he dared not hint to anyone what he wished to find. Yet, if he delayed, it was possible that young Ashiel would come across the papers in his hunt for his uncle's will, and Gimblet felt there was danger in their falling into the hands of anyone but himself.
He took out his notebook and studied the dying words of his unfortunate client.
"Gimblet—the clock—eleven—steps." Or was it steppes?
Considering that he had lived in dread of a blow which should descend on him out of Russia, the last seemed the more likely.
There was the strange circumstance of the body's being found by the police in a position differing from that described by those who first saw it. Young Ashiel, Juliet and the butler all agreed that it had fallen forward on to the blotting-book in the middle of the table; but Mark had told him that on his return with the police the attitude had been changed. Had he been mistaken? Macross's photographs would show. But if not, and the murdered man had really shifted his position, what did it prove? That they had been wrong in thinking him dead? The doctor's evidence was that the wound he had received must have been instantly fatal, or almost instantly. Then some one must have moved the body, and who but David knew where the key of the room had been put away? But why should David have moved him?