"Thanks very much. I'll rely on you, then. And we might even want you to lend a hand. What's that, Miss Duggan? Lend a hand for what? Oh, simply in capturing a somewhat wild mare that has got loose in this part of the country and has been kicking up a pretty shindy all over the place. Mr. Tavish's strength and knowledge of horse-flesh ought to be a real help, eh, my friend?"
Here he winked broadly at the vanishing Tavish, and brought up a chair for Maud Duggan after she had greeted Mr. Narkom and given Dollops a little forlorn smile as Cleek introduced him to her notice.
"And have you followed up any of the clues which you discovered yesterday, Mr. Deland, to the utter desolation of all my hopes and fears?" she asked him wearily, sitting down with her hands lying loosely in her lap, a very picture of despondent womanhood.
He bowed his head.
"I'm afraid I have. Several of them. And yet—I don't know. Anyhow, I want you all to come along to the library again this morning—and for the last time. After to-day you ought not to be put to any further worry and inconvenience, my dear young lady. But what I want you to do is to assemble all the members of the immediate household together for me, and tell them I've discovered a perfectly new clue altogether—and from a perfectly new person—someone who, so far as you or I know, has never even entered the house at all, at any time. So you see, that's not such bad news, is it?"
At these words her head came up upon the slim column of her neck, and she looked into his face with suddenly bright eyes.
"You mean to say that—you mean to say that you can prove that neither Ross nor—Captain Macdonald is guilty of that terrible crime?" she gave out in a shrill voice, shutting her hands together in her emotion, and breathing hard. "Oh, Mr. Deland, if you have only found out that——"
"Not quite so fast, please," he responded a trifle sternly. "I'm afraid I can't give you any of the facts yet. Only I want you to know that—in one direction, at any rate—you may have some cause to hope. That is, of course, if my deductions are correct. It all depends. Even a policeman can make a mistake—isn't that so, Mr. Narkom?—and find himself led away upon a false scent. It depends a lot upon the wiliness of the fox he's in pursuit of. And in this case, when there's a—animal's a female, one has the disadvantage of the woman's intuitive faculties and natural gifts of deceit. 'The female of the species'—you know what Kipling said, of course? That sounds rude, doesn't it? But it's amazingly true, all the same—yourself, I'm sure, always excepted."
She made no answer to the little sally other than to pass a pale hand across a paler forehead, and pat a piece of dark hair into place, with that little gesture of forlornness which went straight to Cleek's heart.
"Then you have nothing more to tell me, Mr. Deland? Nothing for me to build my hopes on save that a new element has entered the case——"