The Master Detective: Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles

by Percy James Brebner

Quarles's deductions so far as they went were right, but they had not gone nearly far enough. Neither of us had thought of Sir Michael as the criminal, and had it not been for the maid Perry I have little doubt that this would have been our last case. Perry herself had not suspected Sir Michael until that day, but she had always been suspicious of Mrs. Reville. That morning, however, when Sir Michael arrived at Whiteladies, she had chanced to overhear a conversation. She heard Sir Michael tell Mrs. Reville there would be visitors that evening, and suggested that she should be near the front door at the time to admit them, as it would be well if they were not seen by the servants. Perry did not understand who the visitors were to be, but she thought such secrecy might be connected with her young mistress, and she had hidden herself earlier in the evening in the small room adjoining the library.

"It is fortunate Saunders taught me how to use a revolver," she said, when Quarles thanked and complimented her.

"A narrow escape, Wigan," the professor said to me. "One of our failures, eh? The fear expressed in the will, the fact that Sir Michael could not benefit by the death of his niece, confused me. He is a very clever scoundrel, making no mistake, making no attempt to implicate any one. His treatment of Cayley on his sudden return from Paris was a masterpiece of diplomacy; so was his handling of us from the first. He concocted no complicated story, so ran no risk of contradicting himself. He was simple and straightforward, and when a villain is that a detective is practically helpless. I was thoroughly deceived, Wigan, I admit it, and it is certain that had it not been for Joan Perry I should not be alive to say so, and you would not be here to listen. Do you know, I should not be surprised if it was the fear expressed in the will which gave Sir Michael the idea of kidnaping his niece and putting the ransom into his own pocket."

At his trial Sir Michael confessed that the will had given him the idea.
Personally I think he got far too light a sentence.

As I hear that Cayley and Miss Wilkinson are to be married shortly, I suppose her guardian's consent to her marriage has been obtained; at any rate, it will be a good thing for her to have a husband to protect her from such a guardian. I hear, too, that Saunders and Perry are to be married on the same day as their mistress, and I am quite sure of one thing, two of the handsomest wedding presents Joan Perry receives will come from Christopher Quarles and myself.

CHAPTER III

THE DELVERTON AFFAIR

After our experience at Whiteladies Christopher Quarles went into Devonshire. He declared that excitement of that kind was a little too much for a man of his years and he must take a long rest to recuperate and get his nerves in order. Under no circumstances whatever was I to bother him with any problems. Had I been able to do so I should have gone away too. Sir Michael Lavory had succeeded in giving me the jumps. In her letters Zena told me the professor was playing golf, and knowing something of him as a golfer, I rather pitied the men he induced to play with him. It was not so much that he was a very bad player, it was the peculiar twist in his brain which convinced him that he was a good one. To give him a hint was to raise his anger at once.

One morning I received a letter from him, two pages of golf talk, in which he opined he was playing at about five handicap—pure imagination, of course, because he never kept a card and didn't count his foozled shots—and then he came to the raison d'être of his letter.

"I want you to look up a case," he wrote. "It happened about three years ago. A man named Farrell, partner in the firm of Delverton Brothers of Austin Friars, was found dead in his office. An open verdict was returned. It may have been a case of suicide. Get all the facts you can. If you can obtain any information from some who were interested in the tragedy, do. I am not sure that the result of your inquiries will interest me, but it may. Send me along a full report, it may bring me back to Chelsea, but I am so keen to put another fifty yards on to my drive that I may remain here for three months. Why live in Chelsea when there is such a place as Devonshire?"