‘You are always thinking of that gold-buyer of yours that was shot, Bright,’ said Greffham, wincing uneasily, though, under the concentrated gaze of three remarkably steady pairs of eyes,—Merlin’s, Bright’s, and Markham’s. ‘It’s my belief that Halliday shot himself; he was something like you, in always carrying half a bushel of revolvers, and, like your battery, it went off accidentally sometimes.’
‘There’s a boot mark in the sand underneath that oak-tree,’ said Markham, with great suavity; ‘it’s the very model of your track, Mr. Greffham, that you made there. Excuse me, sir.’
‘I suppose other people wear boots as well as I,’ he said. ‘Bushmen and diggers are deuced rough, and all that, but they haven’t come to going barefoot yet.’
‘Nor wearing French boots with very narrow heels,’ said Markham, as he measured the imprint of the said bottine with a small pocket rule. ‘However, boots don’t go for much, unless corroborated.’ With this sapient speech Mr. Markham closed his remarks and apparently lost interest in the scene.
‘Now this poor fellow,’ interpolated Mr. Merlin, lifting up the trooper’s face, and parting the thickly clustering brown curls, ‘has been shot from behind. Here’s the little hole through the back of his head, and the pistol must have been pretty close, as the powder has burned one side of it considerably. He has simply fallen over on his face, and there was an end of him. Here you can see where the valise containing the gold and notes was unstrapped from Sergeant Carroll’s saddle. The saddles had been put back to back on the ground. One carbine is here still, and one is missing.’
‘By Jove!’ said Greffham, ‘you know everything, Merlin. You’re like the man in the Arabian Nights who described the camel that had passed the day before,—lame, blind of an eye, having lost two front teeth, and loaded half with rice and half with dates, and yet never saw him at all. You’re a wonderful fellow! You’re so devilish sharp.’
‘And you’re a more wonderful fellow; you’re so devilish cool,’ said Merlin. ‘I do know a thing or two, and, upon my soul, I have need—par exemple, old fellow—it was devilish good-natured of you to come out all the way with us, but it has just occurred to me that you seem to have seen these poor fellows so very lately, just before they were rubbed out, that, quite as a matter of form, I must trouble you to explain your proceedings on that day to the authorities. Lionel Greffham!’ continued he, in a voice which, raised and vibrating, was so utterly changed that Ernest Neuchamp did not know it as that of this smiling satirist with his society talk and ready rapier of repartee, ‘I arrest you on suspicion of murder and robbery.’
Perhaps the least astonished and agitated individual of the company was the accused himself. He swung round on one heel as Merlin laid a sinewy grasp upon his shoulder, and, drawing a small foreign-looking revolver from his breast, aimed fair at the heart of his quondam companion. At the same moment he was covered by the weapons of Markham, the troopers, and of Mr. Bright, who held straight for his former acquaintance with unmistakable aim and determination.
‘It’s no use, Mr. Greffham,’ said Markham, ‘I made your popgun safe at the inn last night. It would never have done to leave you the chance of giving us “Squirt Street.” It won’t pop if you pull the trigger for a week. Say you could drop Mr. Merlin, why we can “twice” you over and over.’
Mr. Merlin’s clear gray eyes glittered with unwonted excitement. He also held a revolver in his right hand. ‘My dear fellow,’ he said, ‘all excitement is bad form. You must be aware that you are only arrested on suspicion. Nothing may turn up to implicate you any more than Bright there, but in all these cases a man in my position has a duty to perform, and you know well I should do mine if you were my own brother, or the best friend I had in the world.’