"Well," he said serenely, "the will has disappeared, at any rate. No servant has touched it, I suppose? Or entered this room last night before I came, Miss Duggan?"
"None that I know of. It's peculiar, to say the least of it."
H'm. Then among this little company around and about him Cleek registered the fact that one might include a thief and a murderer. Not any too pleasant a thought, when the guilt could not definitely be fixed upon any single one. But stay!—there was the boy Cyril, and if that will had been stolen, why should not he have done it as much as anybody? He and his mother would benefit more if the will disappeared entirely than by the simple bequests which Maud Duggan had told him had been left to them. A widow had always a third share by law, that was an understood thing; and a third share of this enormous estate meant a good deal more than one at first imagined. The boy Cyril must be interviewed in due course.
Then there was another point to be taken up, the question of Captain Macdonald's presence in these grounds last night, shortly after the murder had taken place. That gentleman must account for his movements in the proper quarter. And if by any chance there were footprints outside that very window, then—b'gad! he, too, might be included in the circle of possible criminals.
He strode quickly over to the window and leaned out of it, looking down upon the flower-bed beneath it, just a matter of three feet or so, and the little walled-in courtyard that girt it about. Eh? what? There were marks in the soft earth, and plenty of 'em!
Then the assembled company fairly gasped at his next action, while Mr. Narkom, knowing him better than they did, pelted over to the window and leaned out of it. For Cleek had climbed upon the ledge and had let himself down—light as a cat—down on to the bed, and stood looking in through the window at them with serenely smiling face.
"Gad!" he ejaculated excitedly. "Well, and why not? Footprints!... Constable, just nip along into the village, and fetch me back Captain Angus Macdonald. I want to speak to him rather particularly. Tell him it's the Law—and that he's got to come—and he'll come along pretty lively, I can promise you."
The constable nipped along forthwith, while of a sudden Maud Duggan's flushed face went white as a dead face, and her eyes fairly blazed at him.
"Captain Macdonald! Oh, it's ridiculous, Mr. Deland!—absurd! What on earth are you dragging him in for? You must be mad to think for one moment——"
Cleek held up a silencing hand before he dropped to the ground and began peering at the footprints in the soft earth through a magnifying glass.