“Perhaps,” replied the policeman, wondering why the other should be so persistent in the matter; “but you forget one thing which is rather fatal to your argument.”
“And what is that?” inquired Rayner quickly.
“Well, I was not expecting to find a woman up in this wilderness; indeed, it was the last thought in my mind. That fact makes your argument fail, at any rate as applied to the cry I heard.”
To this Mr. Rayner made no reply. He pushed a wine decanter towards the other, and rising from the table crossed the room to a cabinet, from which he took out a box of cigars.
“We will have a smoke, before going to look at this dead man.”
Corporal Bracknell accepted the cigar, which was of choice brand, and when he had lit it he looked at the other—and said thoughtfully. “I have been wondering why Miss Gargrave lives up here in the wilds?”
Rayner laughed a little. “I am not surprised at that. Everybody wonders. But the fact is that she has no real choice in the matter. As I dare say you will have heard, Rolf Gargrave was immensely rich, and he made his daughter his heiress, but on the condition that for three years after his death she should live at North Star Lodge. That is the explanation!”
“But why on earth should he make a condition of that sort—- for a girl?”
“He was a crank!” replied Rayner contemptuously. “He was not an admirer of what is called modern civilization—indeed, he detested it most heartily and whilst he sent his daughter to England to be educated, he desired to protect her against society influences; and he believed that a few years in the North here, in touch with primitive life, would give her a distaste for the shams and artificialities of great cities. Also—I believe he was a little afraid of fortune-hunters and wanted Joy’s mind to mature before she met the breed.”
Bracknell nodded his understanding of the situation, and then remarked. “The place is not without its points—but to my thinking it has grave dangers also. When Miss Gargrave returns to civilization, the reaction from the hard life and the solitude of the North is likely to be so great that in the whirl she may be carried off her feet.”