“You have the hatpin,” I suggested.
“Yes,” he replied vaguely, “we have the hatpin.”
But he had evidently no intention of talking about that.
When they had gone I set myself down to concentrate my thoughts—on the girl’s woollen cap. I have so trained my faculty of observation—just as a conjurer trains his fingers or a dancer her feet—that I see everything even to the smallest detail, though often without making any conscious record of it at the time. When the girl fainted in my arms her woollen cap had fallen off. Consequently there had been no hatpin, though, as I visualised it, I remembered that on the rim of grey cloth which bound the knitted shape, there were marks showing that a hatpin had been in use. Was it with her hatpin that Sir Philip Clevedon had been done to death?
There you—this to the reader—have the case set forth, and you are in exactly the same position that I was myself—a stranger to the place and the people, knowing practically nobody and with every item of information yet to seek. But we both of us have one small advantage over the police. The latter, as far as I could make out, knew nothing of Miss Kitty Clevedon’s midnight adventure.
CHAPTER III
A MEETING IN THE DARK
I had not long to wait before making further acquaintance with my pretty midnight visitor. Our second meeting took place within a few hours of the police call and on the same day. I had been out for a long walk across the hills and was tramping steadily along the high road towards Stone Hollow, when I saw, gleaming through the darkness—it was already dark though only late afternoon—at probably the loneliest and most desolate spot in the Dale, the headlights of a motor-car evidently at a standstill.
“It’s a weird place for a halt and worse if it’s a breakdown,” I murmured, and involuntarily quickened my steps.
But as I approached the car I saw a moving light and then the shadow of a woman walking towards me, carrying, apparently, a small electric torch. Evidently she had heard my approach and had set out to meet me. As she stepped momentarily into the light of the car I recognised her. It was the girl of the midnight visit.
“Who is it, Kitty?” demanded a quick, imperious voice somewhere in the darkness. “Tell him to come here. Do you know him?”