“Yes, old man. I didn’t realize the situation here might actually be serious. I merely supposed some sneak-thief was snooping in the neighbourhood. But it did seem a good chance to have a little sport with you. You will let yourself in for it,” he accused our muttering host. “I thought I’d make myself up into a figure of fun and have a reconnaissance of the scene a couple of nights, just to assure myself there was no cause for alarm. Then I’d be seen on purpose by some good honest yokels and perhaps a village idiot or so, and pop in in a day or two to see what the effect had been in the Vale. But matters turned out differently from what I had expected, and by the time I met with you, Mr. Bannerlee, the last thing on earth I wanted was to have it known I was in the neighbourhood. So I improvised some unnatural eccentricities and made up a line of desperate talk that I knew would spoil the last chance of Crofts’ guessing it was me, in case you told him of your experience, as I felt certain you would.”
“But I didn’t.”
“No, you didn’t. And it made no difference, for what I said about the bothersome watch-dogs wouldn’t have made much impression, would it, unless our friend knew where it came from? All those men you sent out,” he told Crofts, “kept treading on my toes. I had to leg it twice to slip away from them. And that was after I had made some very material discoveries and would have given a year of my life not to be seen.”
“How was I to know that?” said Crofts. “What discoveries do you mean?”
“I ran into a chap who must have been Sir Brooke Mortimer from what I know now. He seemed to have lost his way, quite a distance up the Vale. I set the gentleman going in the right direction and watched him start back downstream. A bit unsteady, I thought he was—oh, nothing wrong with him that way, but I could see his eyes weren’t too good. He didn’t seem able to pick his footing, and he might have stepped into a hole as big as a house without knowing what had happened to him.”
“And do you mean to say that he followed your directions unhesitatingly when according to yourself you looked like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales?” asked Lord Ludlow, who had been playing finger-exercises on his knees.
“I don’t believe he quite took me in, my Lord. I’m telling you his eyesight couldn’t have been good. He might have thought I was a gentleman-farmer, for all I know—and he seemed like an unsuspicious, trusting little chap.”
I saw that the subject was a painful one to be discussed in full session this way, and I wanted to divert the course of conversation. I nodded to Salt.
“The discovery of Mr. Heatheringham knocks one off the list of your favourite suspects, eh, Superintendent?”
“Can’t say it does,” he rejoined, with that slow smoulder of humour underneath the surface. “I’ve known about Mr. Heatheringham since he arrived in our little community over a week ago.”