In half an hour Salt was among us once more, and half an hour later he had come upon the entrance to the underground channel, an arch of stone masonry veiled by an overhanging branch of alder and almost wholly submerged in the stream. It lies, as we expected to find, at the part of Aidenn Water nearest the tennis court, and a fair current sweeps beneath it. This curious tunnel appears to extend several hundred feet, and does not end where the Knight’s body was found. The corpse had been detained by a partial stoppage caused by the collapse of some of the masonry. But we have not discovered where the channel rejoins the main stream. If I am at all a judge of facial expressions, Salt is a disappointed man. Evidently this gruesome factor casts some elaborate equation of his out of all computation. It struck me at dinner that Aire, too, looked a bit frustrated.
Talk in the Hall of the Moth after dinner was equally divided between pity for Sir Brooke (and for Mrs. Bartholomew, who was absent) and amazement at the lopped and disordered accounts given of our mystery in the London papers which Salt had brought with him as he had promised. I rather enjoyed hearing Ludlow pitch into the gentlemen of the press, for whom it is obvious he has no love—and for those for whom he has no love he has no mercy.
Maryvale came up, and for once I did not feel uneasy at the sight of him. He was smiling broadly, I thought a little too broadly after what had occurred this afternoon. I recalled, however, that Aire was now taking precautions to insulate Maryvale from contact with any atrocities which may present themselves—and then flashed through my mind almost the very words which the man of business was about to say.
“You don’t think so cheaply of my warnings now, Mr. Bannerlee. Now you must realize what was meant by the spanning and roofing of the waters.”
“Fully.”
“No, sir!—not fully. There is much for you yet to know. But all this agitation, this ebullition in the newspapers, this official scrutiny, will lead to nothing.”
“You refer to what you told me this morning?”
“As I said, this man Cosgrove was removed because he stood in my way and in the way of my art.”
I thrust in sharply. “Did you remove him yourself?”
“No,” answered Maryvale, “but I have done worse deeds.”