"No two questions about it, to my way of thinking," said he quietly, as they traversed the darkness together. "That Captain Macdonald did the thing—because of those footprints of his outside the window—and as he couldn't or wouldn't give the reason of why he was in the grounds here last night at that identical time. And the person he was shielding was obviously Lady Paula. She, too, has been involved in this, though whether in the actual murder or not, I'm not prepared to say. And Ross Duggan, too. I imagine the whole thing is a put-up job; don't you, Cleek?"
"I can't rightly say," returned Cleek in an uncertain tone. "Sometimes it points one way and sometimes another. And I'm inclined to agree with you where Lady Paula is concerned. She knows a good deal more than she says, and is wily—deuced wily, as all drug-takers are. And the motive would be there all right, judging from what Maud Duggan told me was the share which Sir Andrew had apportioned out for his widow and her boy. She'll double that easily enough. But to kill for such a thing seems incredible—though I've known of worse crimes for less reason than that. But Ross Duggan's is the greatest motive of all, taking into consideration just when the thing happened—before his name was erased, you must remember, Mr. Narkom, and as he's a dabster at electricity and the only person with an air-pistol in the house ... well, circumstantial evidence looks pretty black against him, doesn't it?"
"It certainly does." Mr. Narkom's voice was a trifle apologetic. "Well, I hardly know what to think, Cleek. And you're such a beggar for stringing evidence together, and never forgetting it! And there's such a dickens of a lot of evidence in this case that a chap gets horribly involved, and his memory is likely to play him tricks. And then that Italian chap whom Dollops has seen such a lot of to-day—where does he come in?"
"Right into the midst of the whole caboosh," returned Cleek enigmatically, "and don't you make any mistake about that, my friend. Dicky-Dago, to use Dollops's name, is one of the prime movers in this little inheritance game, and in another one also. A dollar to a ducat he knows the whole thing, and Tweed Coat's with him."
"Who the dickens is Tweed Coat?"
"The gentleman whom Dollops so aptly described a few moments ago," returned Cleek quietly. "Perhaps you didn't notice Ross Duggan's coat this morning, Mr. Narkom? No? Well, it was made of a very sweetly smelling cloth called Harris tweed; and when Dollops described the one he saw to me this evening, I recognized it at once."
"Then Tweed Coat is Ross Duggan, Cleek?"
Mr. Narkom's voice was a trifle shrill. Cleek's eyes met his squarely, and his eyebrows went up.