The Mystery at Lovers’ Cave

By

Anthony Berkeley

Contents

Chapter I.
Our Special Correspondent

“If,” said Roger Sheringham, helping himself to a third piece of toast, “your brain had as many kinks in it as your trousers have few, Anthony, you would have had the intelligence to find out our train from St. Pancras this morning before you ever arrived here last night.”

“There’s a telephone here and an enquiry office at St. Pancras, I believe,” retorted his cousin. “Couldn’t the two be connected in some way?”

“You write to me and ask me to waste my valuable time in amusing you on your holiday,” Roger pursued indignantly. “I not only consent but very kindly allow you to choose the place we shall go to and book our rooms for us; I even agree to harbour you here for a night before we start and submit to your company and your chattering at my own breakfast-table (a thing peculiarly offensive to any right-minded man and destroying at one blow the chief and abiding joy of bachelorhood). I do all this, I say, and what is my reward? You refuse point-blank even to find out the time of our train from St. Pancras!”

“I say, did you see this?” exclaimed Anthony, glancing up from the Daily Courier. “Kent all out for forty-seven on a plumb wicket at Blackheath! Whew!”

“If you were to turn to the centre of the paper,” replied Roger coldly, “I think you might find some rather more interesting reading matter than the performances of Kent on plumb wickets at Blackheath. The editorial page, for instance.”

“Meaning there’s another of your crime articles in?” Anthony asked, flicking back the pages. “Yes, I’ve been reading some of them. They’re really not at all bad, Roger.”

“Thank you very much indeed,” Roger murmured gratefully. “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! Anyhow, you understood them, did you? That’s good. I was trying to write down to the standard of intelligence of the ordinary Courier reader. I appear to have succeeded.”

“This is rather interesting,” Anthony remarked, his eyes on the required page.

“Well, yes,” said Roger modestly, folding up his napkin. “I did rather flatter myself that I’d⸺”

“This article on ‘Do Shingled Heads Mean Shingled Hearts?’ By Jove, that’s an idea, isn’t it? You see what he’s getting at. Boyishness, and all that. He says⸺”

“I think you’ve mistaken the column,” Roger interrupted coldly. “The one you’re looking for is on the right, next to the correspondence.”

“Correspondence?” repeated Anthony vaguely. “Oh, yes; I’ve got it. ‘Clergymen Who Gabble. Sir: I attended the burial service of my great-aunt by marriage last Thursday and was exceedingly distressed by the slipshod way in which the officiating clergyman read the⸺’ ”

“I don’t think I’ll go for a holiday with you, Anthony, after all!” observed Roger suddenly, rising to his feet with such vehemence that his chair fell violently to the floor behind him.

“You’ve knocked over your chair,” said Anthony, quite seriously.

At this point, very fortunately, the telephone-bell rang.

“Hullo!” said Roger into the mouth-piece, more loudly than was strictly necessary.

“Hullo!” answered a voice. “Is that Mr. Sheringham?”

“No! He left for Derbyshire early this morning.”

“Oh, come!” chided the voice gently. “Not before eleven o’clock, surely. He wouldn’t go without his breakfast, would he?”

“Who’s speaking?”

“Burgoyne, Daily Courier. Seriously, Sheringham, I’m very relieved that I’ve caught you. Listen!”

Roger listened. As he did so his face gradually cleared and a look of intense excitement began to take the place of the portentous frown he had been wearing.

“No, I’m afraid it’s out of the question, Burgoyne,” he said at length. “I’m just off for a fortnight in Derbyshire with a cousin of mine, as you know. Rooms booked and everything. Otherwise I should have been delighted.”

Expostulatory sounds made themselves heard from the other end of the wire.

“Well, I’ll think it over if you like,” Roger replied with a great show of reluctance, “but I’m very much afraid— Anyhow, I’ll let you know definitely in a quarter-of-an-hour. Will that do?”

He listened for a moment, then hung up the receiver and turned to Anthony with a beaming face. “Our little trip’s off I fear,” he said happily.

“What?” exclaimed Anthony. “But—but we’ve booked our rooms!”

“You’ve booked them,” Roger corrected. “And there’s nothing to prevent you from occupying them. You can sleep in one and brush your hair in the other, can’t you? Of course I shall be delighted to reimburse you for any expense you may have incurred through your misunderstanding that I would accompany you, though I must take this opportunity of pointing out, without prejudice, that I am not legally liable; and should my heirs or fellow-directors dispute the claim, my solicitors will have instructions not to⸺”

“What are you talking about?” Anthony shouted. “Why do you want to back out at the last minute like this? What’s happened? Whom were you talking to then?”

Roger resumed his seat at the breakfast-table and poured himself out another cup of coffee.

“To take your questions in inverse order,” he said at length, and with a slight diminution of his bantering air, “that was the editor of the Daily Courier, a very great man and one before whom politicians tremble and duchesses stand to attention. You may remember that I had some truck with him last summer over that Wychford business. He wants me to go down at once to Hampshire as Special Correspondent to the Courier.”

“To Hampshire?”

“Yes. I don’t know whether you saw a little paragraph in the papers yesterday about a woman who fell over the cliffs at Ludmouth Bay and was killed. The idea now appears to be that it might not have been an accident after all, and there’ve been one or two important developments. They want me to follow up those articles I’ve been doing by covering the business for them, to say nothing of putting in a little amateur sleuth-work if the chance arises. It’s a job after my own heart!”

“But I heard you say that it was out of the question, because you were going away with me?”

Roger smiled gently. “There’s a way of doing these things, little boy, as you may find out when you get a little older. But, seriously, you’ve got the first claim on me; if you’re dead set on this Derbyshire trip, I’ll come like a shot and chuck the other.”

“Of course not!” Anthony said warmly. “I wouldn’t dream of it. What do you take me for? Run off and sleuth to your heart’s content. I may even buy the Courier once or twice to see how big an idiot you’re making of yourself.”

“If you can drag your eyes away from the cricket page! Well, it’s jolly sporting of you to take it like this, Anthony, I must and will say. I know how maddening it is to have one’s plans upset at the last minute.”

“I dare say I shall be able to survive it,” Anthony opined philosophically, stuffing tobacco into his pipe. “I’m not much of a whale for my own company, it’s true, but I’ll probably fall in with somebody or other up there; one often does. Baccy?”

“Thanks.” Roger took the extended pouch and transferred some of its contents to the bowl of his own pipe with a somewhat absent air. Suddenly his face cleared and he smote the table lustily. “I’ve got it! Why on earth shouldn’t you come too? It ought to be interesting enough and I’d be jolly glad of your company. Of course!”

“But the other rooms have been booked,” Anthony demurred.

“For goodness’ sake, stop harping on the bookedness of those rooms! You’re getting positively morbid about them. They can be cancelled, can’t they? Would you like to come down with me?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Then go out and cancel them by wire, and I’ll send the woman a cheque from Ludmouth; so that’s settled. I’ll ring up the Courier and say I’ll go, and then I shall have to fly down there and see them before I start. There’s a train for Bournemouth at twelve-ten, I know, because I caught it a fortnight ago. Greene will have got my bag packed by now, so after you’ve wired come back here and collect the luggage and go on to Waterloo. Take two first singles to Ludmouth and I’ll meet you in front of the little place where you book for Sandown Park five minutes before the train goes. Shoot!”

“What’s your second name, Roger?” Anthony asked admiringly. “Pep or Zip?”

As he made his way down the main stairs of the building in which Roger Sheringham’s bachelor flat was situated, Anthony Walton smiled slowly to himself. The little holiday he had fixed up with Roger was going to be even more amusing than he had expected.

Although there were more than ten years between the cousins (Roger was now thirty-six, Anthony a bare twenty-five), they had always been good friends, and that also in spite of the fact that they had scarcely a taste or a feeling in common. It is often remarked, and even by people whom one would certainly expect to know better, that opposites make a happy marriage. Nothing could be more ludicrously untrue, but they do frequently make a happy male friendship. This one was a case in point.

Anthony, big, broad-shouldered, good-natured and slow-witted, had got his blue for rugger at Oxford, and now regularly left his father’s office, where he sat and amiably did nothing for the rest of the week, each Saturday morning to play for the Harlequins. It was his secret opinion that games were the only things that mattered in this world. In the matter of brains he was no match for the keen-witted if slightly volatile Roger, and his slow deliberation was in equal contrast with that gentleman’s dynamic energy; nor did he possess enough imagination to be impressed in the slightest degree by his cousin’s fame as a novelist with an already international reputation, though he did afford him a qualified respect as the owner of a half-blue for golf obtained at Oxford nearly fifteen years ago.

With his usual methodical care Anthony set about carrying out the string of orders which had been entrusted to him. Seven minutes before the train was due to leave he took up his position, tickets in hand, at the appointed spot on the vast surface of Waterloo Station. Punctually two minutes later Roger appeared and they passed through the barrier together, followed by a staggering porter with their combined traps. The train was not full, and an empty first-class smoker was obtained without difficulty.

“We’re going to enjoy ourselves on this little trip, Anthony, my son,” Roger remarked as the train began to move, settling himself comfortably in his corner and beginning to unfold a large wad of newspapers which he had brought with him. “Do you know that?”

“Are we?” Anthony said equably. “I shall enjoy watching you on the trail, certainly. It must be a strange sight.”

“Yes, and now I come to think of it, you’re by way of being rather indispensable there yourself, aren’t you?”

“Me? Why?”

“As the idiot friend,” Roger returned happily. “Must have an idiot friend with me, you know. All the best sleuths do.”

Anthony grunted and began somewhat ostentatiously to turn the pages of The Sportsman with which he had prudently armed himself. Roger applied himself to his bundle of papers. For half-an-hour or more no word was spoken. Then Roger, throwing aside the last newspaper from his batch, broke the silence.

“I think I’d better give you the facts as far as I can make them out, Anthony; it’ll help to stick them in my own memory too.”

Anthony consulted his wrist-watch. “Do you know you haven’t spoken for thirty-six minutes and twelve seconds, Roger?” he said in tones of the liveliest astonishment. “I should think that’s pretty nearly a record, isn’t it?”

“The name of the dead woman was Vane,” Roger continued imperturbably; “Mrs. Vane. She appears to have gone out for a walk with a girl cousin who was staying with her, a Miss Cross. According to this girl’s story, Mrs. Vane sent her back as they were approaching the village on their way home, saying that she wanted to call round and see a friend on some matter or other. She never got there. A couple of hours later a fisherman turned up at the police-station and reported that he had seen something on the rocks at the foot of the cliffs as he was rowing out to some lobster-pots half-an-hour earlier, though it had apparently not occurred to him to go and see what it was. A constable was sent off to investigate, and he and the fisherman climbed down the cliffs, which seem to be fairly well broken up at that point. At the bottom they found Mrs. Vane’s body. And that was that.”

“I believe I did see something about it,” Anthony nodded. “Wasn’t it an accident?”

“Well, that’s what everybody thought, of course; and that was the verdict at the inquest yesterday, Accidental Death. But this is the important development. The Courier’s local correspondent caught a glimpse of Inspector Moresby, of all people, prowling about the place this morning! He telephoned through at once, and⸺”

“Inspector Moresby? Who’s he?”

“Oh, you must have heard of him. He’s one of the big noises at Scotland Yard. I suppose he’s been mixed up in nearly every big murder case for the last ten years. Anyhow, you see the idea. If Moresby’s on the job, that means that something rather important’s going to happen.”

“By Jove! You mean she was murdered?”

“I mean that Scotland Yard seems to think she was,” Roger agreed seriously.

Anthony whistled softly. “Any clues?”

“None that I know of, though of course they must be working on something. All the local man can tell us is that Mrs. Vane was a charming woman, quite young (twenty-eight, I think Burgoyne said), pretty, attractive, and very popular in the neighbourhood. Her husband’s a wealthy man, a good deal older than herself and a scientist by hobby; in fact quite a fairly well-known experimentalist, I understand.”

“Sounds queer!” Anthony ruminated. “Who on earth would want to murder a woman like that? Did you gather whether any motive had come to light?”

Roger hesitated for a moment. “What I did gather is that the girl cousin benefits to the extent of over ten thousand pounds by Mrs. Vane’s death,” he replied slowly.

“Oho! That sounds rather rotten, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Roger agreed gravely.

There was another little pause.

“And you’ve got to write about it for the Courier?” Anthony remarked almost carelessly.

“Yes; as far as we know we’re the first in the field. It’ll be a decent little scoop if we’re the only people to come out with the news about Moresby to-morrow morning. I shall have to fly off and have a chat with him the moment we arrive. Luckily I know him slightly already.”

“Take your seats for lunch, pleece,” observed a head popping suddenly into the carriage from the corridor. “Lunch is now being served, pleece.”

“I say, Roger,” Anthony remarked, as they rose obediently, “what put you on to this crime business? Before that Wychford affair, I mean. You never used to be keen on it. What made you take it up?”

“A certain knotty and highly difficult little problem which I had the felicity of solving about two years ago,” Roger replied modestly. “That made me realise my own powers, so to speak. But I can’t tell you names or anything like that, because it’s a most deadly secret. In fact, you’d better not ask me anything about it at all.”

“Right-ho, I won’t, if it’s a secret,” Anthony promised.

Roger looked slightly disappointed.

Chapter II.
Girls and Murder

Ludmouth village is nearly a mile away from its station. On arriving at the latter Roger and Anthony put their traps in the combined ticket-office, porter’s room, luggage depot and cloakroom, and proceeded to make enquiries regarding hotels.

“ ’Otel?” repeated the combined porter, station-master and ticket-inspector, scratching the top of his head with an air of profound cogitation. “Why, there ain’t no ’otel ’ereabouts. Leastaways, not what you might call an ’otel, there ain’t.”

“Well, a pub, then,” rejoined Roger a trifle irritably. The journey had been a long and tiresome one, and since changing at Bournemouth they had seemed to progress at the rate of ten miles an hour. For one who was as eager to get going as Roger had been all that day, few things could have been more maddening than the journey as habitually performed between Bournemouth and Ludmouth. It is not to say that the train does not go fast when it is going, but stations seem to demoralise it completely; it sits down and ruminates for a matter of twenty minutes in each one before it can bring itself to go on to the next. “What’s the name of the best pub in Ludmouth?”

The combination chuckled hoarsely. “The best pub?” he echoed with considerable amusement. “The best pub, hey? Oho! Hoo!”

“I’ve said something funny,” Roger pointed out to Anthony. “You see? The gentleman is amused. I asked the name of the best pub, so no wonder he’s convulsed with mirth.”

Anthony inspected the combination with some attention. “I don’t think he’s laughing at you at all. I think he’s just seen a joke that Gladstone made in 1884.”

“There ain’t nobbut one!” roared the combination. “So when you says the best pub I⸺”

“Where is the one pub in Ludmouth?” asked Roger patiently.

“Why, in the village, o’ course.”

“Where is the village of Ludmouth and its one pub?” Roger pursued with almost superhuman self-restraint.

This time a more lucid reply was forthcoming, and the two strode out into the hot sunshine and down the country road in the direction indicated, leaving behind them a combination of porter, station-master and ticket-inspector guffawing at irregular intervals as some fresh aspect of this cream of jests appeared to occur to him.

It was a warm walk into the village, and they were glad enough to plunge into the gloom of the little old-fashioned inn which stood in the middle of the small cluster of houses which constitutes the nucleus of the village. A smart rap or two on the counter brought the landlord, a large man of aspect not unlike a benevolent ox and perspiring almost audibly.

“Can’t serve you, gents, I’m afraid,” he rumbled cheerfully. “Leastaways lemonade you can have, or ginger-beer, for the matter of that; but nothing else.”

“That so?” said Roger. “Then produce two large tankards of beer, the biggest tankards and the wettest beer you’ve got, for we came not as travellers but as residents.”

“You don’t mean you want to stay ’ere as well? You want rooms?”

“Rooms we shall want, certainly; but what we want just at the moment is beer—and don’t forget what I told you about the size of those tankards.”

“Oh, well, that’s a different matter, that is,” agreed the landlord. “I can let you have a couple of quart tankards, if they’re any use to you.”

“Any use? You watch!”

With much wheezing and creaking the landlord filled the two huge tankards, and the two fell upon them gratefully. Then Roger replaced his on the counter and wiped his mouth.

“So this is the only inn hereabouts, is it?” he asked with a careless air.

“Yes, sir; it is that. Ludmouth’s a small village, you see, as far as the village goes.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, there’s far more big ’ouses round and gentry and suchlike than there is of us villagers, and naturally they don’t want public-’ouses.”

“Oh, I see. Yes, quite so. By the way, I believe there’s a friend of mine somewhere about here called Moresby. You seen or heard of him by any chance?”

“Mr. Moresby?” beamed the landlord. “Why he’s staying ’ere, he is. Took ’is room this very mornin’, he did. Well, fancy that!”

“Fancy it indeed! You hear that, Anthony? Dear old Moresby staying under the very same roof-tree! What do you think of that, eh?”

“Good enough,” Anthony agreed.

“I should say so.” He took another pull at his tankard. “Been having some excitement down here, landlord, haven’t you? Lady fell over a cliff, or something?”

“Mrs. Vane, sir? Yes. Very sad business, very sad indeed. A wonderful nice lady she was too, they say, though I can’t say as how I knew ’er meself. A bit of a stranger in these parts, she was, you see. ’Adn’t been married to the doctor more nor five years.”

“The doctor? Her husband is a doctor, is he?”

“Well, in a manner o’ speaking he is. He’s always called Dr. Vane, though he don’t do no doctoring. Plenty o’ money he’s got now and always ’as ’ad since he settled ’ere twenty or more years ago, but a doctor he was once, they do say, an’ Dr. Vane he’s always called.”

“I see. And where does he live? Near here?”

“A matter of a mile or so out Sandsea way; big ’ouse standin’ in its own grounds back from the cliffs. You couldn’t miss it. Very lonely, like. You might take a stroll out there and see it if you’ve got nothing to do.”

“By Jove, yes, we might, mightn’t we, Anthony?”

“I should think so,” said Anthony cautiously.

“But first of all about these rooms. How many have you got vacant, landlord?”

“Well, besides Mr. Moresby’s, there’s four others altogether. If you’d like to step up in a minute or two and see ’em, you could choose which ones you’d like.”

“We won’t bother. We’ll take them all.”

“What, all four of ’em?”

“Yes; then we can have a bedroom and a sitting-room apiece, you see.”

“But there’s a sitting-room downstairs I could let you ’ave. A proper sitting-room.”

“Is there? Good! Then we’ll take that too. I love proper sitting-rooms. That’ll be five rooms altogether, won’t it? I should think that ought to be enough for us. What would you say, Anthony?”

“I think that might be enough,” Anthony assented.

“You see, landlord? My friend agrees with me. Then that’s settled.”

“It’ll cost you more, sir,” the landlord demurred in some bewilderment.

“Of course it will!” Roger agreed heartily. “Ever so much more. But that can’t be helped. My friend is a very faddy man—a very faddy man indeed; and if he thinks we ought to have five rooms, then five rooms we shall have to have. I’m very sorry, landlord, but you see how it is. And now I expect you’d like us to pay you a deposit, wouldn’t you? Of course. And after that, there are our bags and things to be got from the station, if you’ve got a spare man about the place; and you might tell him from me that if the red-faced man who hands them over begins to make curious noises all of a sudden, he needn’t take offence; it only means that he’s just seen a joke that someone told him the year Queen Victoria was born. Let’s see now; a deposit, you said, didn’t you? Here’s ten pounds. You might make me out a receipt for it, and be careful to mention all five rooms on the receipt or I shall be getting into trouble with my friend. Thanks very much.”

The landlord’s expression, which had been growing blanker and blanker as this harangue proceeded, brightened at the sight of the two five-pound notes which Roger laid on the counter; words may be words, but money is always money. He had not the faintest idea what it was all about and it was his private opinion that Roger was suffering from rather more than a touch of the sun, but he proceeded quite readily to make out the required receipt.

Roger tucked it away in his pocket-book and, professing a morbid interest in the late Mrs. Vane, began to ask a number of questions regarding the exact spot where she had fallen over the cliff and how best to get there. This information having been obtained and the conveyance of the bags arranged for, he shook the puzzled landlord heartily by the hand and drew Anthony out into the road.

“Well, I suppose you know what you’re doing,” remarked that young man, as they set off briskly in accordance with the landlord’s instructions, “but I’m blessed if I do. Why on earth did you book four bedrooms?”

Roger smiled gently. “To prevent all the other little journalists from sharing our advantage in staying under the same roof as Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard, Cousin Anthony. A dirty trick, no doubt; but nevertheless a neat one.”

“Oh, I see. Very cunning. And where are we off to now? The cliffs?”

“Yes. You see, I want to get hold of Moresby as soon as I possibly can, and it seems to me that if he only arrived here this morning he’ll still be hanging round those cliffs; so the best thing I can do is to make for them too.”

“Seems a sound scheme. And after that?”

“Well, I ought to try to get an interview with one of the people at the house, I suppose, though I don’t much fancy the idea of tackling the doctor himself.”

“Dr. Vane? No, dash it, you can hardly butt in on him.”

“That’s what I feel. He has a secretary, I believe, though I don’t know what her name is, and of course there’s the girl cousin, Miss Cross. She’s the person one ought to make for, I think.”

Anthony frowned. “Seems rather rotten to me.”

“To interview her? Not necessarily, at all. She might have something to say that she’d very much like published. She knows that the uncompromising fact about that ten thousand pounds is going to be talked about pretty hard if there’s any question of Mrs. Vane’s death not being an accident; naturally she’d like an opportunity of putting an indirect answer of her own forward.”

“I never thought of that,” Anthony confessed, his frown disappearing.

“Nor did I, till this minute,” Roger said candidly. “Still, it’s true enough. And there’s a little job for you, Anthony. I shan’t want you with me while I’m talking to Moresby; it’s going to be difficult enough to get anything out of him in any case, but your presence would probably dry him up altogether. So you might stroll along the cliffs, locate the Vanes’ house, and see if you can discover unobtrusively any information as to the girl’s movements or where I might be likely to catch her—outside the house, of course, if possible. What about that?”

“Yes, I could do that for you. And meet you later on?”

“Yes; just stroll back along the top of the cliffs again and I shall be sure to run into you. Well, there’s the sea not three hundred yards ahead, and nothing but nice, open downs along the top of the cliffs up there. We turn off to the right, I suppose, and you go straight along while I make for the edge just over there. I expect I shall be through in something under an hour. So long!”

As Anthony made his way leisurely over the springy turf in the direction in which he judged his objective to lie, he pondered with no little interest over the object of their journey down to this charming part of the world and its possible outcome. There was in his make-up none of that eager curiosity regarding his fellow-creatures, their minds and the passions which sway them that had led Roger, after the way had once been opened to him, to explore the vast field of criminology with all its intense and absorbing interest for the student of the human animal. Indeed the notion of nosing out hidden facts and secret horrors (“like a bally policeman,” as he had contemptuously phrased it to Roger over their lunch on the train) had at first actually repelled him; it was not until Roger had been at considerable pains to point out the moral duty which every living person owes to the dead that his eyes were opened to any wider conception of the idea. And even then, though admitting that there must be detectives just as much as there must be hangmen, he was quite firm in his gratitude to Providence that he at any rate was not one of them; nor could Roger, expatiating on the glories of a clever piece of deductive reasoning, the exquisite satisfaction of logical proof, the ardour of the chase with a human quarry (but none the less a quarry that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred deserved not a jot of mercy) at the end of it, move him an inch from this position.

It was this state of mind which had caused him to receive with ominous disapproval Roger’s pointed information about the girl cousin and her ten thousand pounds. A girl, to Anthony’s mind, should not be mentioned in the same breath as the word murder. Girls were things apart. Murder concerned men; not girls. Girls might be and very often were murdered, but not by other girls. If it were distasteful to hunt down a man suspected of murder, how impossible would it not be to harry a wretched girl in the same circumstances?

As his thoughts progressed with his steps, an idea began to form in Anthony’s mind. He would not only seek out the whereabouts of Miss Cross, as Roger had asked him; he would contrive to speak to her for a minute or two and, if possible, drop a veiled warning as to the things that might be expected to happen—that were, in fact, even now happening—together with an equally veiled hint that at any rate he, Anthony Walton, was prepared to extend to her any help within his power, should she wish to accept it. After all, that was the least a chap could do. It was the only decent thing. Ten to one she wouldn’t need anything of the sort, but the offer—yes, of course it was the only decent thing to do. Girls were weak, helpless things. Let them know they’ve got a man behind them (even a perfect stranger if the case is serious enough to warrant it) and it makes all the difference in the world to ’em. Naturally!

In the glow of this resolution Anthony had unconsciously directed his steps toward the sea, so that he was now striding along the very edge of the cliffs. Coming to his senses with a jerk, he pulled up short and looked inland. Not five hundred yards to his right there stood, in a large fenced area which evidently stretched to the road half-a-mile away, a big red house. As the landlord of the inn had said, there was no mistaking it. Anthony gazed at it for a few moments without moving; now that he was face to face with it, the task of penetrating its purlieus and demanding speech with an unknown lady in order to warn her against dangers which quite probably did not exist at all, suddenly took on a somewhat formidable aspect.

His eyes left its red roof and began, probably with an instinctive idea of looking for help, to sweep the remainder of the view, arriving in due course at the edge of the cliff just in front of him. At this point Anthony started violently, for seated on a small grassy ledge not a dozen feet below the cliff top, which was crumbled away at the point to form a steep but not impossible slope down, was a girl who was occupied in gazing as hard at Anthony as he had been gazing at the house. As his glance at last fell upon her she also started, coloured faintly, and hurriedly transferred her eyes to the horizon in front of her.

On an impulse Anthony stepped forward and raised his hat.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I am looking for Dr. Vane’s house. Could you tell me if that is it?”

The girl twisted half round to face him. She wore no hat, and the sun glinted on her dark hair, unshingled and twisted in two coils on either side of her head; the eyes with which she looked at Anthony were large and brown, and the simple little black frock she was wearing suited her lithe, graceful body so well that one would have said she should never wear anything else.

“I thought you must be,” she said calmly. “Yes, it is. Did you want to see anyone in particular?”

“Well, yes; I— That is, I rather wanted to see Miss Cross.”

The girl suddenly stiffened. “I am Miss Cross,” she said coldly.

Chapter III.
Inspector Moresby Is Reluctant

The village of Ludmouth lies about half a mile back from the sea. At the nearest point to the village, where Roger and Anthony had left the road to strike across open country, the water had broken in upon the stern lines of the high cliffs which form the coast-line for several miles in either direction. The result is a tiny little inlet, almost completely circular in shape, which has been dignified by the name of Ludmouth Bay.

At either horn of this minute bay, which could hardly have been more than a couple of hundred yards wide, the cliffs rise almost sheer to a height of at least a hundred feet, to sink gradually down as they follow the bay’s curve into a strip of sandy beach at the innermost edge, whence a steep track leads up to the village on the high ground behind. It is a charmingly picturesque spot and, lying as it does a little way off the beaten track, has not yet been spoiled (except for occasional excursion parties on bicycles from the neighbouring town of Sandsea, half-a-dozen miles away to the West) by the ubiquitous tripper; for the roads on all sides are too steep and too dangerous for char-à-bancs—a matter of much comfort to those of the inhabitants who keep neither public-houses nor banana shops.

The cliffs which stretch toward Sandsea face the open sea with considerably less frowning austerity than those to the East; they slope slightly backward instead of dropping sheer, and are so irregular and split up into huge boulders, clefts and rocky knobs, as to be by no means impossible for a determined man to climb. About a third of the way down their face they bear a narrow ledge, which proceeds more or less level for a considerable distance and has been turned, by means of a flight of steps cut in the rock at either end, into a pathway. At one time this pathway had been in some favour among the lads of the village as a place from which to fish when the tide was high; but customs change even in Ludmouth, and nowadays anyone in search of solitude could usually be sure of finding it here. To add to its advantages in this respect, a bulge in the rock just above served to hide it completely for nearly its whole length from the eyes of anybody standing on the top of the cliff overhead. Inspector Moresby, sitting on a low boulder at a spot where the ledge widened out to a depth of nearly a dozen feet, could be observed from nowhere except the open sea.

Inspector Moresby was as unlike the popular idea of a great detective as can well be imagined. His face resembled anything but a razor, or even a hatchet (if it must be compared with something in that line, it was far more like a butter-knife); his eyes had never been known to snap since infancy; and he simply never rapped out remarks—he just spoke them. Let us not shirk the fact: a more ordinary-looking and ordinarily behaved man never existed.

To proceed to details, the inspector was heavily-built, with a grizzled walrus moustache and stumpy, insensitive fingers; his face habitually wore an expression of bland innocence; he was frequently known to be jovial, and he bore not the least malice toward any of his victims.

At the moment of our introduction to him he was gazing with an appearance of extreme geniality, his chin on his knuckles and one elbow perched on either knee, at a small rowing-boat half-a-mile out at sea; but his expression was not inspired by any feeling of affectionate regard for the boat’s horny-handed occupant. He was, indeed, quite unaware of the boat’s existence. He was engaged in wondering very intensely how a lady could have managed to fall accidentally off this ledge at the particularly broad part where he was now sitting; and why, if the lady had not fallen off accidentally but had been committing suicide, she should have done so with a large button from somebody else’s coat tightly clenched in her right hand.

Quite an interesting problem, Inspector Moresby had decided; interesting enough, at any rate, to call him over semi-officially that morning from Sandsea, where he had been in the middle of his annual holiday with his wife and two children, to look into the matter a little further pending instructions from Scotland Yard and the county police authorities.

The sound of footsteps advancing along the path from the East caused him to glance up sharply, his face just a shade less genial than usual. The next moment a stockily-built man, hatless and wearing a pair of perfectly shapeless grey flannel trousers and a disreputable old sports coat, and smoking a short-stemmed pipe with an enormous bowl, came into sight round a bend in the path, walking rapidly.

The newcomer slowed up at sight of the inspector and glanced at him with an air of elaborate carelessness. A look of equally elaborate incredulity appeared on his face, then he smiled widely and hurried forward with outstretched hand.

“Great Scott, Inspector Moresby! Well, fancy seeing you here, Inspector! You remember me, don’t you? My name’s⸺”

“Mr. Sheringham! Of course I remember you, sir,” returned the inspector warmly, shaking the other’s hand with great heartiness. “Shouldn’t be likely to forget you after enjoying your books so much, you know, let alone the way you astonished us all at the Yard over that business at Wychford. Let’s see now, it was with Mr. Turner of the Courier, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right. The ‘Hattan Garden jewel case,’ as the papers called it. Well, Inspector, and what are you doing in this peaceful part of the world?”

“I’m on my holiday,” replied the inspector with perfect truth. “Staying over at Sandsea with the wife and children.”

“Oh, yes,” said Roger innocently.

“And how do you come here, sir? Holidaying too?”

Roger winked broadly. “Me? Oh, no. I’m down here in pursuit of a new profession that’s just been thrust upon me.”

“Indeed, sir? What’s that?”

“Well, to put it quite bluntly, I’m down here to ask Inspector Moresby on behalf of the Courier what he’s got to tell me about a lady who fell off the cliff somewhere about here a day or two ago, and why such an important person as he should be so interested in an ordinary accident.”

The inspector rubbed his chin with a rueful grin. “And I’d just strolled over here from Sandsea to get away from the crowds for a bit!” he deplored innocently. “I’ve only got to yawn at the wrong time, and there’s half-a-dozen gentlemen of your new profession round the next minute asking what the significance is.”

“Going to have a nice nap before you go back to Sandsea?” Roger asked with a twinkle in his eye.

“A nap?”

“Yes; at least, I don’t suppose you booked that room at the Crown just to brush your hair in, did you?”

The inspector chuckled appreciatively. “Got me there, sir! Well, I may be staying over here for a day or two, yes. Even accidents can have their interesting side, you know, after all.”

“Especially an accident that isn’t an accident, eh? Come on, Inspector; you can’t put me off like that, you know. I’m developing a nose like a bloodhound’s for this sort of thing, and it’s busy telling me very hard that you’ve got something up your sleeve. What’s the idea? Can’t you give me a pointer or two?”

“Well, I don’t know that perhaps I mightn’t. I’ll think it over.”

“Can’t you do it now? Just a few words to send the Courier before the other johnnies turn up. I’ll get ’em to splash your name all over it, if that’s any good to you. Come now!”

The inspector considered. He was never averse to having his name splashed about in an important paper like the Courier if the circumstances warranted it. As long as the bounds of discretion were not overstepped a little publicity never did a police officer any harm, and it has frequently done him a great deal of good.

“Well, without saying too much, I don’t mind telling you that there are one or two suspicious circumstances, Mr. Sheringham,” he admitted at length. “You see, the lady was supposed to have been alone at the time when she fell over here.”

“At this very spot, I take it?” Roger put in.

“At this very spot. But I’m not at all sure—not at all sure!—that she was alone. And that’s really all I can say at present.”

“Why do you think she wasn’t?”

“Ah!” The inspector looked exceedingly mysterious. “I can’t go so far as to tell you that, but I think you can let your readers know that I’m not speaking altogether at random.”

“ ‘Inspector Moresby, who has the matter in hand, intimated that he has discovered an important clue. While not at liberty to disclose the precise nature of this, he assured me that important developments may be expected shortly,’ ” Roger intoned solemnly.

“Something like that,” the inspector laughed. “And of course I needn’t point out to a gentleman like you how improbable it would be for anyone to fall over accidentally just here where this ledge is so deep.”

Roger nodded. “Suicide, by any chance?”

“May have been,” agreed the inspector in a perfectly expressionless voice.

“But you’re quite sure it wasn’t!” Roger smiled. “Eh?”

The inspector laughed again. “I’ll be able to let you know a bit more later on, no doubt, sir. In the meantime⸺” He paused significantly.

“In the meantime you’d be very much obliged if I’d stop these awkward questions and leave you in peace again? I get you, Inspector. Very well. But you don’t mind if I just have a look round here before I go, do you?”

“Of course not, Mr. Sheringham,” said the inspector heartily. “By all means.”

It was with a mild feeling of resentment, however, in spite of the inspector’s friendly reception of him, that Roger embarked upon a cursory examination of the ledge on which they were standing. It was more in the nature of a demonstration than anything else, for he knew perfectly well that there would be nothing for him to find; Inspector Moresby would have seen to that. No doubt it was perfectly right and proper to withhold from him the clues which he had most certainly discovered—no doubt at all. But Roger did think the man might have treated him somewhat differently from an ordinary reporter, especially after his reference to Wychford. It was annoying in a way; decidedly annoying. And still more annoying was the fact that he had nothing whatever to be annoyed about. In the inspector’s eyes he was a reporter, and that was all there was to it; he had come down here as a reporter, he was acting as a reporter, he was a reporter. Hell!

As he had expected, the ledge yielded nothing at all.

“Humph!” he observed, straightening up from a boulder behind which he had been peering. “Nothing much here. And no signs of a struggle either.”

“There wouldn’t be, on this rocky surface,” the inspector pointed out kindly. “Too hard to take impressions, you see.”

“Yes, that idea occurred to me,” Roger remarked a trifle coldly. He walked over to the western end of the ledge, where it narrowed down rapidly into a pathway not more than four or five feet wide, and began to stroll along it.

He had scarcely covered half-a-dozen paces before the inspector’s voice pulled him up with a jerk. “Not that way, if you want to get back, sir. I shouldn’t go that way if I were you; it’s very much longer. You’ll find the way you came a good deal shorter.”

Roger started slightly. “Oho, old war-horse!” he murmured to himself. “So the ears are pricking, are they?” He turned about and scrutinised the inspector with interest. “Now I wonder just exactly why you don’t want me to go this way, Inspector?”

“It’s no matter to me, sir,” returned the inspector very innocently. “I was just trying to save you a bit of a walk round, that’s all.”

“I see. But do you know, I think I should like a bit of a walk round,” Roger remarked with some care. “I feel it would do me good. Clear my brain, and all that. Good-bye, Inspector; see you later, no doubt.” And he set off again, though more slowly this time, in the confident expectation of being called back once more.

He was not disappointed.

“I see I shall have to tell you,” said the inspector’s resigned voice behind him. “But you understand, I don’t want this mentioned yet awhile, sir. I’m not scaring my bird just at present if I can help it—always provided there is one, of course. Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

He led the way a few yards farther along the path and paused in front of a wide patch of dry mud. Plainly marked in the mud were the imprints of two pairs of feet, both women’s, one pair decidedly larger than the other; the deep impressions of the high heels were clean and distinct.

“Oho!” said Roger softly, staring hard.

“Yes, that’s why I said the lady wasn’t alone,” the inspector pointed out. “I’ve ascertained pretty certainly that she came along from this end, you see, and these marks were made yesterday morning or thereabouts. It’s a bit of luck that they haven’t been obliterated since, but everyone else seems to have come and gone from the other end as it’s so near the steps. I’ve tried the shoes she was wearing, by the way, and they fit exactly in the smaller impressions. That’s nothing like so important as the story-books make out, of course (I dare say there are at least twenty pairs of shoes even in this small place which would fit one or other of those prints); but it’s a point worth mentioning for all that.”

Roger turned eagerly from his contemplation of the mud. “This is jolly significant, Inspector; anyone can see that. But it doesn’t absolutely destroy the accident theory, does it? Not alone. No, I’m ready to bet you’ve got something else up your sleeve as well.”

“Well, perhaps I have, sir,” twinkled the inspector, who was not feeling inclined to talk about coat-buttons just at the moment. “Perhaps I have. But you must take it from me that this is all I can tell you for the moment, and that last bit isn’t for publication yet awhile either, you won’t forget.”

They turned and walked back to the ledge again.

“Where was the body found?” Roger asked. “In the water?”

“No, a couple of feet above high-water mark. You see that big rock down there—the one with the seaweed half-way over the top and a bunch of yellow limpets on this side? Well, wedged between that and the smaller one this side of it.”

“I see,” said Roger thoughtfully, gauging the distance from the edge of the ledge. A person tumbling straight over the edge would miss it by feet; quite a respectable little jump would be needed to reach it. A jump, or—a push! Furthermore, there was, straight down below the ledge, a deep pool among the rocks into which anybody just tumbling over must inevitably have fallen. Mrs. Vane’s body had cleared the pool and landed on the boulders beyond it. The inference was obvious; any question of an accident was now almost definitely ruled out. It was a matter of suicide or murder.

Roger turned to the inspector. “There’s been a post mortem, I suppose?”

“Yes. This morning.”

“Were any bones broken?”

The inspector smiled. “Oh, yes; plenty. She hadn’t been murdered anywhere else and put there, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“It did cross my mind,” Roger smiled back. “I needn’t ask whether anyone saw anything from the sea?”

“No, I was making enquiries on those lines this morning, myself. Unfortunately there don’t seem to have been any boats out here at all just then. But the old fisherman who subsequently discovered the body seems to think he heard a scream coming from this direction about an hour beforehand; in fact, he says that’s probably what made him look over here as he was rowing past. But he didn’t pay any attention to it at the time, thinking it was some dratted girl being tickled—his own words, by the way.”

“That’s interesting,” observed Roger, the light in his eye belying his laconic words. “By the way, I suppose you’ve been down to those rocks?”

“No, sir, I’m afraid I haven’t,” said the inspector a little guiltily. “I should have done, I know, but I’m not built for climbing down from here, and I don’t seem to have had time to get round there in a boat. In any case, I’m pretty sure there’d be nothing to find. The constable who recovered the body brought her hand-bag and her parasol, and he said he’d had a good look round. Strictly between ourselves, Mr. Sheringham, I was going to assume that his eyes are as good as mine; but don’t put anything about that in the Courier.”

“I’ll have to think that over,” Roger laughed. “Anyhow, I’m a man of stern duty: I’m going to see if I can scramble down and poke round. I know there won’t be anything to find, but it’s the sort of thing that gives one a lot of satisfaction afterward to have done.”

“Well, don’t you stumble and pitch on the rocks too,” said the inspector humorously. “Somebody might come along and accuse me of things.”

The way down was not nearly so difficult as it looked from above. Everywhere the face of the cliff was so seamed and fissured that foothold was easy, while half-way down a great piled-up pyramid of boulders provided a kind of giant’s staircase tolerably simple to negotiate. Within five minutes of leaving the inspector, Roger was standing on the big rock beside which Mrs. Vane’s body had been found.

For some minutes he poked about, peering into pools and religiously exploring the recesses of every cranny, while the inspector kept up a running commentary upon the habits of crabs, lobsters and other sea-going creatures which lurk in dark holes awaiting an opportunity to deal drastically with exploratory hands; then he stood up and swept a brief glance round before beginning the climb back.

“No,” he called up to the inspector, who had just finished recounting an anecdote about the grandfather of a friend of his who had been stung to death by a jellyfish while paddling among the rocks off Sandsea. “Nothing here! Now tell me a story about the great-aunt of another friend of yours who fell down a hundred feet when rock-climbing in Cumberland. I shall be ripe for something like that in about five minutes, when I’m clinging on to that last bit of cliff up there with my teeth and eyebrows.”

The obliging inspector instantly embarked on the anecdote required, and at the same moment Roger, in mid-stride between two boulders, noticed something white glistening below him. Action was almost instinctive.

“Hullo!” exclaimed the inspector in concern, breaking off his narrative abruptly. “Hurt yourself?”

Roger picked himself up slowly and brushed a little green slime off his trousers with his hands. “No, thanks,” he called back cheerfully. “Not a bit!” And he went on brushing himself with his hands.

He couldn’t use his handkerchief, because that was lying in his breast pocket, wrapped about the piece of paper on top of which he had skilfully stage-managed his fall.

Chapter IV.
Anthony Interviews a Suspect

Anthony had not had very much experience with women. In the brief instant after the girl had spoken it occurred to him with some force that his ideas on the subject might require drastic revision. Women were not necessarily weak, helpless creatures. Names such as Joan of Arc, Boadicea, Florence Nightingale, Queen Elizabeth, occurred to him with startling rapidity. Were they weak, helpless creatures? They were not. Nor was the girl who was standing in front of him and regarding him now with cold, haughty eyes. Anybody less weak and helpless, anybody more obviously capable of looking after herself could hardly have existed.

“I am Miss Cross,” she repeated in frigid tones. “What do you want?”

Anthony’s tongue seemed to have become jammed. His mission, which had seemed a moment before so altogether right and proper, suddenly took on the aspect of the most fatuous thing ever conceived by misguided human mind. Even to connect this beautiful, proud creature with the mere idea of bare self-interest appeared a kind of blasphemy.

“Oh, I—I wanted to speak to you for a minute,” he managed to stammer. “But it doesn’t matter.” At this point Anthony ought to have turned about and run off at top speed with his tail between his legs, making a noise like a flat pancake. But he couldn’t. By some curious action of nature his feet seemed to have taken root in the ground.

“Are you connected with the police?” the girl asked with incredible scorn.

“Great Heavens, no!” cried Anthony, genuinely shocked. “I should think not! Great Scott, no! Good Lord, no!”

The girl’s uncompromising attitude relaxed slightly. “Then why did you want to see me?” she asked, as if very few people except the police ever wanted to see her.

“Well, it was just about something I thought I ought to tell you,” Anthony mumbled. “But it doesn’t matter. I see that now. It doesn’t matter a bit.”

Curiosity could be seen struggling with resentment in the girl’s face. Strangely enough, curiosity won.

“You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve come all this way out to speak to me, and now you’ve got here you’ve decided that it doesn’t matter?” she said, and actually a faint hint of the merest shadow of a suspicion of a smile flitted for a quarter-of-a-second into and out of her eyes.

“Now I’ve seen you, I’m quite sure it doesn’t matter, Miss Cross,” Anthony said simply.

“Well, thank Heaven my appearance seems to impress somebody favourably,” murmured the girl wearily, more to herself than the other, and for an instant the mantle of pride she had been wearing seemed to drop from her and she looked utterly forlorn and miserable.

Anthony was emboldened into a sudden decision. “I’ll tell you why I came, Miss Cross, after all. I just came to say that if you wanted any help in the present circumstances, I should be very proud to— That is to say, I should like you to know that—I mean⸺” He ceased floundering, for the girl’s eyes were regarding him steadily with an expression in their depths which he was finding peculiarly disconcerting.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” she said haughtily. “I was not aware that I needed any ‘help.’ ”

“No, of course not,” Anthony stammered. “Naturally not! I was only thinking that⸺”

“And I must decline to discuss my private affairs with a stranger! So if there is nothing else⸺” She paused, obviously waiting for him to go.

Anthony felt himself becoming annoyed. He knew that his recent embarrassment had made him look a fool and he resented the fact; he knew that his motive in seeking speech with this girl had been a completely altruistic one and here she was treating it as a piece of unwarrantable impertinence, and he resented that still more.

“In that case,” he said stiffly, “there is nothing more to be said, and I must apologise for bothering you. Though I think you should understand,” he added on the impulse of the instant by way of a parting shot as his temper momentarily got the better of his manners, “I think you should understand that possibly your private affairs will soon be becoming of some interest to the public at large, Miss Cross.”

The girl coloured violently and for a moment seemed incapable of speaking. Her eyes blazed, she clinched her small fists by her sides and her dark head was flung back as if to meet an actual attack.

“If you’ve come here to insult me⸺” she choked out.

“But I haven’t!” said Anthony in considerable alarm at this unexpected result of his thrust. “I simply meant that I’ve come down here with a friend of mine who’s working for the Daily Courier and he said something about getting you to give him an interview. I thought you ought to know.”

As abruptly as it had arisen the girl’s anger disappeared and something very like fear took the place of the fire in her eyes. She stared at Anthony widely.

“A—a reporter?” she muttered. “Good Heavens, has it come to that now?”

Men are curious creatures. A moment ago Anthony was severely annoyed and wanted nothing better than to make this extremely crushing young lady severely annoyed too. The instant he had succeeded in doing so, he had been filled with alarm. Now that he had changed her mood once more, from anger to fear, he began to feel the worst kind of inhuman brute imaginable.

“No, but look here,” he said eagerly, “there’s nothing to be alarmed about. They always do it, you know. Interviews and all that. He’s an awfully nice chap too. Roger Sheringham, the novelist, you know. Cousin of mine, as a matter of fact. I dare say he won’t try to see you at all if you don’t want him to. Sure he won’t! I’ll tell him, shall I? Dash it all, there are crowds of other people he can interview if he must interview somebody. I was against it at the time, to tell you the truth, but he thought you might want to be interviewed for some reason or other. I’ll tell him, Miss Cross. Don’t you bother about that. I’ll see it’s all right.”

It was doubtful if the girl had understood a single word beyond the general drift of what Anthony was saying. She continued to stare at him; but mechanically, as if paying attention only to her own thoughts. When next she spoke her voice was under control again, though her words were a little halting.

“Then am I to understand that—that the London papers are taking an interest in—in my cousin’s death?” she asked.

“I’m afraid they are,” said Anthony humbly, apologising for the London paper en masse.

The girl shifted her gaze and contemplated the horizon with unseeing eyes, busy again with her thoughts. Anthony, judging he had received permission to exist a little longer, made advantageous use of his reprieve by contemplating her.

She really was extraordinarily pretty, he had no difficulty in deciding. He liked her slimness and grace, he liked the way her head was set on her neck, he liked the way her black hair curled over her ears, he liked her wrists and her small feet, he liked— But why reduce Margaret Cross to a catalogue? There was nothing about her Anthony did not like. When he got back to his lodgings he would probably think this over and the realisation would suddenly strike him that this was the one girl in the world for him—expressly designed and manufactured by a thoughtful Providence for the sole purpose of delighting, harassing, maddening and ultimately very greatly gratifying one Anthony Walton, bachelor. The realisation had already struck him exactly twenty-three times before and twenty-three times he had mistaken the intentions of Providence; but this time it was the real thing. It always was.

Anthony continued his contemplation, each second more raptly than before.

Suddenly the girl appeared to come to a decision. She turned to him with an impulsive movement, and to his relief Anthony saw that she was smiling.

“Will you come and sit down here a minute, Mr.⸺?”

“Walton!” Anthony supplied hastily.

“Mr. Walton. I owe you an enormous apology, I’m afraid. It was very kind indeed of you to think of coming along to give me warning. I was a pig to you.”

“Not a bit,” Anthony averred, scrambling eagerly down the little bank to join her on the little grassy ledge a dozen feet down from the cliff’s lip. “It was most natural. I ought to apologise if anyone should. Frightfully tactless.”

“Not at all!” said the girl warmly. “It was entirely my fault. But if you’ll forgive me, we’ll say no more about it. Now let’s sit down here and make ourselves comfortable, because I’m going to take you at your word.”

“Do, please,” Anthony said earnestly, as he seated himself on the warm, springy turf at her side. “I should be awfully proud.”

The girl clasped her arms round her knees and stared out to sea. Anthony, glancing at her covertly, noted with approval the firm and resolute lines of her profile. She could not be more than one- or two-and-twenty, he decided, but even he could read an experience beyond her years of the world, its trials and its anxieties in the tiny lines of care about her mouth and the faint markings on her white forehead.

“You said something about my needing help,” she said slowly, as if choosing her words with care. “Well, why should I be silly and pretend I don’t? I do need it. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you; but I feel I can trust you, and there’s nobody else to whom I can speak. Not a single soul. I suppose you know that—that⸺”

“Yes,” Anthony interrupted gently. “I think I know all the facts.”

“I supposed so, or you wouldn’t have said that.” She fixed her big, sorrowful brown eyes on Anthony’s face. “But what you don’t know, Mr. Walton, is that a police inspector from Scotland Yard was with me for nearly two hours this morning, asking me the most horrible questions!”

A cold hand seemed to lay itself over Anthony’s heart. “I say, was he really?” he muttered. “No, I didn’t know that.”

The girl nodded. She opened her mouth to speak again, but her lips trembled and she turned her head quickly away. A little quiver shook her body. Then suddenly the control that had borne her up all this time, ever since that dreadful interview in the morning, gave way before Anthony’s silent sympathy. She buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

“He seems to think—oh, the most awful things!” she sobbed.

Anthony stared at her in dismay. It was bad enough that she should have burst into tears at all, without the terrible significance of her last words. He was certain that Margaret Cross was not the sort of person to give way to tears unless matters had reached an acute crisis; the fact that she had done so impressed him with the seriousness of the situation even more than had her decision to confide in himself, a complete stranger. She must be not only utterly alone in the world; she was very nearly at the end of her tether as well.

Masculine sympathy with distressed femininity is nearly always inarticulate (distrust it when it is not!), but fortunately it has resource at its command far superior to mere words. Anthony did not stop to think. He acted instinctively. Putting his arm about her he drew her toward him without a word and laid her head on his shoulder. Almost gratefully she buried her face in the hollow of it like a small child seeking consolation from its mother and continued to weep. Anthony had the wisdom to let her go on doing so without attempting a single word of clumsy consolation—though indeed it is doubtful whether he would have been able to do so had he wished, for he was vaguely feeling himself almost sanctified by contact with something rather holy and, for such an outwardly unemotional Briton, there was a most unusual lump in his throat as he looked down on the sleek dark head sheltering against his rough coat and felt the sobs shaking the slim body he held in his arms.

By degrees the girl’s weeping subsided. Her form ceased to quiver and she gently disengaged herself from Anthony’s encircling arm.

“I’m a fool,” she said, looking at him with rather a watery smile. “Is my nose disgustingly red?”

“Not a bit!” Anthony lied stoutly, considerably relieved by the smile. “It’s ripping.”

Margaret dived into her bag and produced a little mirror. Sounds of dismay issued from her, and a powder-puff was hastily brought into action.

“That’s better,” she observed a minute or two later, scrutinising her image with close attention. She turned and faced Anthony with a frank smile that was a tacit acknowledgment of the bond between them. “Will you ever forgive me for making such an idiot of myself?”

“Look here,” Anthony said slowly, “I don’t want to butt in on anything you don’t want to tell me, but wouldn’t you like to tell me the whole story? You know I’m only too anxious to do anything I possibly can to help you, and matters seem to be a bit—well, a bit more serious even than I’d thought. If you would like to let me know the whole circumstances⸺?”

He paused, and the girl nodded understandingly. “You mean it’s no good asking you to help me unless you know what I’m up against?” she said thoughtfully. “Well, that stands to reason. Of course I’ll tell you. I was going to before as a matter of fact, only I⸺” She left the sentence unfinished and, hunching her knees, resumed her former pose and gazed out to sea.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” Anthony asked, producing his pipe.

“Of course not. In fact I rather feel I need a cigarette myself. No, don’t you bother!” she added quickly, as Anthony felt in his pockets. “I’ve got some of my own particular brand here, and I hardly ever smoke anything else.”

She produced a cigarette-case from her bag, and Anthony held a match for her, lighting his own pipe from it afterward. She drew one or two deep inhalations and sighed contentedly.

“Well, about myself; there’s really very little to tell you. Four months ago I was in London, broke to the wide—as I had been off and on for the last seven years. My father was an officer in the regular army; he was killed in France in 1917, when I was fifteen years old. I inherited about two hundred pounds from him and, of course, a pension; the pension was just enough to keep body and soul together if one lived on rice and cold water, but not much more.” She paused for a moment as if in thought.

“Unfortunately,” she went on with a touch of cynicism, “it appears that my father had ‘married beneath him.’ I don’t remember my mother at all (she died when I was a baby), but I believe that she was the daughter of a fraudulent bucket-shop proprietor in Liverpool who had served two terms of imprisonment and my father was more or less entrapped into marriage with her when he was a young subaltern. He never hinted a word of all this to me, by the way; don’t think that. He was a dear. But it’s been rubbed into me pretty thoroughly since by other charming people.”

“I say,” Anthony put in in acute distress, “please don’t tell me anything you’d rather not. I mean⸺!”

“Why not?” asked the girl in a hard voice. “Why shouldn’t I tell you everything? That police inspector seems to know all about it. Probably it will be in all the papers to-morrow.”

“But⸺” Anthony shifted his position and relapsed into uncomfortable silence.

“Well, the consequence was that my father had been cut off by his family. They wouldn’t have anything more to do with him. Nor would they with me. One of his brothers sent five hundred pounds to daddy’s solicitors to provide for my education and keep me till I was old enough to earn my own living, but that was as far as any of them would go. I’m not complaining; in the circumstances it was remarkably generous of him. That money, with my own two hundred, kept me till I was eighteen, after that I had to earn my own living. You’ve probably heard that girls had some difficulty in getting jobs after the war. It’s perfectly true. I was trained as a shorthand-typist, but unfortunately nobody seemed to want a shorthand-typist. But I got work all right. I had to. During the last three years I’ve been a governess, a shop-assistant, a waitress and a parlour-maid.”

“Good God!” Anthony breathed.

The girl laughed suddenly with genuine amusement. “Oh, you needn’t pity me for the last. That was the best of the lot. I can’t think why I didn’t try it sooner. Governessing was the worst I think; but they do work waitresses rather hard, I must admit. Well, that sort of thing went on for three years, as I told you; and then I was dismissed from my proud position of parlour-maid by an irate lady because her husband wanted to kiss me and was tactless enough to try with the door open. I boxed his ears for her, but apparently that wasn’t enough, so I was turned out, with a month’s wages in my bag. I’d just come to an end of them and was beginning to wonder rather desperately where the next was to come from, when I got a letter from Elsie—Mrs. Vane, you know.”

Anthony nodded. “Your cousin?”

“Yes; her mother was my mother’s sister. I’d never seen her in my life—hardly even heard of her, in fact—but to my astonishment she said that she’d heard I was having rather a rough time and, as she had plenty of money of her own, would like to extend a helping hand, so to speak. Anyhow, the upshot was that she invited me to come and live here, nominally as her companion and with a quite generous salary.”

“Jolly decent of her,” Anthony commented.

The girl glanced at him rather queerly. “Yes, wasn’t it? And very extraordinary too. But there was something more extraordinary to come. A day or two after I had arrived she broke the news to me quite casually that she had made a new will that morning leaving all her money and everything else unconditionally to me—ten thousand pounds or more, to say nothing of her jewellery. As you can imagine, I was absolutely astounded.”

“I should think so. But how topping of her!”

“Very,” said the girl drily. “But you see the position it puts me in—combined with my excellent grandfather. Rather—difficult, to say the least, isn’t it? And the trouble is that I’ve simply nobody to advise me. The solicitor who managed my affairs is dead; George—Dr. Vane—is—well, he’s not the sort of person one could talk to about this sort of thing; nor is Miss Williamson, his secretary. I’m absolutely alone.” She tossed her cigarette out over the sea and laughed a little bitterly. “So now perhaps you can understand why I’m ready to take into my confidence the very first person who comes along—though even that doesn’t excuse my howling on his shoulder, I’m afraid.”

“It’s a perfectly damnable position,” growled Anthony. “I’d like to wring that inspector’s neck. But one thing’s perfectly clear. You must talk all this over with my cousin. He’ll help you if anyone can, and I’m sure he won’t use anything you tell him for the Courier without your consent.”

The girl nodded slowly. “Ye-es, perhaps that would be best. Roger Sheringham, you said, didn’t you? I’ve read some of his books. I think he must be rather a nice person.”

“He is. He’d talk the hind-leg off a dead mule, but he’s a thoroughly decent chap. Got a half-blue at Oxford, you know. Well, look here, I was to meet him on these cliffs about this time; supposing if I dash off and collect him and bring him along right away? I don’t think we’ve any too much time to waste, you know.”

“You’re awfully kind, Mr. Walton,” said the girl gratefully. “I shall lie awake for hours to-night cursing myself for being such a perfect pig to you when you first arrived.”

Chapter V.
Roger Takes Up the Cudgels

On the whole Roger was feeling not a little pleased with himself as he emerged on the top of the cliffs once more after his interview with Inspector Moresby. That the inspector had one or two facts up his sleeve (and probably highly important facts at that) was not a matter for doubt; on the other hand Roger had gleaned considerably more information than he had really expected. There was too at that moment reposing in his breast pocket the piece of paper he had picked up within a couple of yards of the spot where the body had been found, about the existence of which the inspector had not the slightest suspicion. Two people could play at the same game of withholding information! He began to walk rapidly in the direction in which he had arranged to meet Anthony.

Fifty yards ahead of him the ground rose to form a little hillock; once over that Roger felt that it would be safe enough to examine his find without fear of interruption. His hand was actually inside his pocket as he breasted the rise when the figure of Anthony appeared suddenly over the top. On seeing him Anthony broke into a run.

“Hullo, Anthony!” said Roger mildly. “You seem in a hurry.”

“Look here,” Anthony began breathlessly and without preamble. “Look here, I’ve seen Miss Cross and it’s jolly serious. That infernal inspector’s been up there and nearly frightened the life out of her. I want you to come along and speak to her. And let me tell you, Roger, that things are getting a bit thick. Anybody who’s hinting things about that girl ought to be taken out and shot. The poor kid’s⸺”

“Here, wait a minute!” Roger interrupted. “Let’s get this straight. You’ve seen Miss Cross, have you?”

“Yes, and she’s⸺”

“And she’s a remarkably pretty girl, isn’t she?”

Anthony stared. “How the devil did you know that?”

“Merely a simple piece of deductive reasoning,” replied Roger modestly. “Now then, start at the beginning and tell me exactly what happened.”

Rather more coherently this time, Anthony complied. He gave an account of his meeting with the girl, told how she had broken down (glossing as delicately as possible over the subsequent proximity of her dark head and his shoulder) and went on to give his highly interested listener a detailed synopsis of the story she had told him in order to spare her the pain of having to recount it a second time. This recital lasted them almost to the very spot where she was waiting, and Anthony had only just time to reiterate in a fierce undertone the promise he had given that they would do all in their power to help her and to demand that a similar promise should be given by Roger himself within the first five minutes of the interview, before her black dress sprang into view on the little ledge just below them.

Roger was conducted down the bank and ceremoniously introduced and the three of them disposed themselves on the soft turf to discuss the situation.

“Now I want you to understand, Miss Cross,” Roger said briskly after a few general remarks had been made, “that my cousin and I are entirely on your side.” Roger had been as favourably impressed at first sight with this slender, courageous-looking, proud-spirited girl as had Anthony, and he was at no pains to attempt to disguise the fact. “There’s no use pretending that this isn’t a bad business. It is—more so than you know: and it may become even worse than that in the very near future.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Sheringham?” asked the girl with anxiety. “How more so than I know?”

Roger deliberated. “Well I don’t see that there can be any harm in telling you,” he said gravely. “You’re bound to know sooner or later. But please don’t tell anybody else just yet awhile.—I’m afraid there can be very little doubt that your cousin’s death was not an accident.”

“You don’t mean that—that⸺?” The girl broke off, white to the lips.

“I’m very much afraid so,” Roger said gently. There was no need to mention the ugly word ‘murder’; its implication was sufficiently obvious.

“Good God!” Anthony breathed, aghast. “Has that been definitely proved?”

“As definitely as matters. She wasn’t alone when she met her death, for one thing, though it isn’t known who was with her. And there are one or two other details too into which I needn’t go now, small enough in themselves but uncommonly convincing in the mass. Anyhow, you can see that it’s a really bad business. So if I put one or two questions to you, Miss Cross, you won’t think me unnecessarily impertinent, will you?”

“Of course not,” said the girl earnestly. “And I can’t tell you how grateful I am for your kindness. But you won’t—you won’t put too much about me in the Courier, will you?”

“You can rely on my discretion,” Roger smiled. “I’ll see that you’re not worried in that sort of way so far as I’m concerned at any rate; and I’ll drop a word or two in season to any others of my kidney who follow me down here. Well now, first of all I want you to tell me exactly what happened on this walk you had with your cousin. Can you do that?”

The girl frowned in an effort of memory. “Yes, I think so. It was quite simple. We walked along the cliffs about a mile toward Sandsea and then turned round and came back; just before we got as far as this Elsie said she wanted to go over and speak to a Mrs. Russell, a neighbour, about some treat for the village children that they were getting up between them. She knew this was a favourite place of mine, so she asked me to wait for her here, and we could go back to the house for tea together.”

“One minute,” Roger interrupted. “Where does Mrs. Russell live?”

“About half-way between our house and the village.”

“I see. So it was really out of her way to come back and pick you up here?”

“Yes, it was a little; but Elsie always liked walking along these cliffs. She nearly always went into the village this way instead of by the road.”

“The road lying on the other side of the house from here, of course. Then is the Russells’ house on the same road?”

“Yes, but the road winds toward the cliffs farther along, so it wouldn’t take her so much out of her way to come back to me here as if it didn’t.”

“No, I see that. Yes?”

“Well, she didn’t come back. I must have waited for nearly an hour and a half. Then, as it was past tea-time, I walked over to the house alone.”

“Now, sitting down here, you couldn’t see anybody walking along the cliff top, or they you, unless they happened to walk right over the top of this bank at the back here?”

“No.”

“As a matter of fact, did anybody pass while you were here?”

“No, not a soul.”

Roger frowned. “That’s a pity. That means you can’t actually prove that you were here during that time, can you?”

“If Miss Cross says she was here,” Anthony put in warmly, “then she was here. That ought to be good enough for anyone.”

“Except a court of law, Anthony. Courts of law are nasty, suspicious things, I’m afraid. By the way, did Mrs. Vane ever get to the Russells’ house, Miss Cross?”

“No, she didn’t; that’s the extraordinary thing. In fact nobody seems to have seen her at all from the time she left me to the time her body was found.”

“It’s a nasty gap,” Roger commented thoughtfully. “Isn’t it rather curious that she should have been about here all that time without being seen? Aren’t there usually plenty of people in the neighbourhood?”

“No, as a matter of fact there aren’t. It’s usually fairly deserted up here. Ours and the Russells’ are the only two houses out this way, you see. And there’s another point about that; anybody walking along the edge of the cliff can’t be seen from the road except in one or two places, because of the high ground between, if you remember noticing it.”

“Yes, that is so; you’re right. Hullo, what’s that bell?”

“That will be our dinner-bell,” said the girl with a faint smile. “A most efficient one, isn’t it?”

“Highly. Well, Miss Cross,” Roger said, scrambling to his feet, “I don’t think there’s any need to keep you any longer just now, though there are one or two more things I shall want to ask you. Could you meet us here at say half-past ten to-morrow morning for more cross-examination, do you think?”

“Of course, Mr. Sheringham. I shall be only too pleased. And you will try to—to⸺”

“To throw a little fresh light on that hour and a half?” Roger suggested as he shook hands. “I promise you I will. That’s the crux of the whole thing, isn’t it? I’ll do all I can, Miss Cross, you can be sure.”

They climbed the little bank and Anthony, by a curious lapse of memory, appeared to forget that he had already shaken hands on the lower level; at any rate he did so again, even more warmly than before.

“It’s a nasty business,” Roger remarked as the two of them set out on their walk back to the inn. “Nastier than I let out. I didn’t tell the little lady that the other person with Mrs. Vane was a woman, by the way.”

“Was she?” said Anthony gloomily. “Hell!”

“Yes, I’ll tell you what I managed to find out down there. Not much, but decidedly interesting. Mrs. Vane must have— By jove, I was nearly forgetting!”

“What?”

“Something I picked up near where the body was found—a bit of writing-paper. I haven’t been able to look at it yet. It may be nothing, but on the other hand it may be something uncommonly important. Anyhow, let’s have a look at it.” And digging into his breast-pocket, Roger drew out his handkerchief and its precious contents.

“Looks a bit sodden,” Anthony remarked, as the little ball of bluish-grey paper emerged from its covering.

“Naturally, as it’s been in the water off and on for sixty odd hours or so,” said Roger, straightening out the sodden little tangle with infinite care. It was a ticklish business, for the least false move would tear the flimsy stuff and it had to be unwrapped half-an-inch at a time.

“Can you make anything out?” Anthony asked eagerly, as the sheet was at last laid out flat on the palm of Roger’s hand.

“It’s a bit of ordinary notepaper,” Roger murmured, peering down at it intently. “Good quality. Watermark a big crown and some kind of inscription. Ought to be easy enough to trace.”

“Yes, but is there any writing on it?”

“There has been, but that’s about as much as one can say. See these faint pen-marks? But I should think it’s pretty well impossible to make out what was written on it.”

“Then it’s no use?” Anthony asked disappointedly.

“I wouldn’t say that. An expert might be able to make them out. I suppose there are ways of testing this sort of thing. We’ll see, anyhow. But we mustn’t build any hopes on it. Ten to one it had nothing to do with Mrs. Vane at all, and even if it did it’s another ten to one that it had nothing to do with what we’re after. However, we’ll take it back and see if it’s possible to do anything with it.”

Roger took off his hat and laid the paper carefully inside to shield it from the wind, and they resumed their journey.

“What did you think of Miss Cross?” Anthony asked very airily, gazing at the easy feats of a neighbouring gull with an appearance of intense interest.

“Oh, all right,” Roger said with malicious indifference. “Perfectly ordinary sort of girl, I thought, didn’t you?”

“Personally, she struck me as being rather an exceptional one,” Anthony said coldly.

“Did she? Ah, well! Bit long in the nose, wasn’t she?”

“Long in the nose!” exclaimed the indignant Anthony. “Why, her nose is absolutely⸺” He caught sight of Roger’s grin and broke off abruptly. “Damn you!” he growled, flushing vividly.

“Ah, you young people!” Roger continued to grin. “Ah, youth, happy youth! Ah⸺”

“Roger, you ass, be serious for a minute. Do you think that girl’s in any danger?”

“I do indeed,” Roger said with a quick change to gravity. “At least, I don’t know about danger, but I certainly think she’s in a very awkward position. Very awkward indeed.”

“But you don’t think—you don’t think there can be anything in—well, what the inspector seems to be thinking, do you?”

“You mean, that she pushed her cousin over the cliff?” amplified Roger, who was not a person to mince matters. “No, I don’t think I do. I liked her, I must say—though that isn’t anything to go by, is it?”

“It’s a devil of a lot. And you really will do all you can to help clear her, Roger?”

“Of course I will. Haven’t I told her so half-a-dozen times over?”

“Thanks, old man,” said Anthony simply.

It was a slightly awkward moment. To tide it over Roger embarked upon a voluble account of his conversation with Inspector Moresby, what he had discovered and what he had not, which took them right up to the door of their inn.

“And that’s the first thing we’ve got to discover, fair coz,” he was saying vehemently as they crossed the threshold. “What old Moresby’s got up his sleeve. And that’s what I’m jolly well going to get out of him somehow, by hook, or even, if it comes to the point, by crook. And what’s more, I think I see a way of going about it. So now for our four bedrooms and a little cold water. By Jove, Anthony, it’s hot isn’t it? What about a tankard apiece before we go upstairs?”

“How you do think of things!” was Anthony’s strongly approving comment.

They adjourned briskly into the cool little bar.

“Mr. Moresby back yet, do you know?” Roger asked the landlord in a casual voice as he set the mighty tankard down on the counter after an initial gulp at its contents.

“No, sir,” replied that mountainous man. “He said he’d be back for ’is supper round about eight o’clock.”

“Well, we shall be ready for ours about that time too. You might as well serve all three in our sitting-room. And send me up a bottle of gin, half-a-dozen bottles of ginger-beer, a bottle of whisky, a couple of syphons of soda and a corkscrew. Can you manage that?”

“Yes, sir,” said the landlord benevolently. “That I can.”

“Excellent! I suppose it would be too much to ask if you’ve got any ice as well?”

“I have an’ all, sir,” replied the landlord with conscious pride. “I gets it three times a week from Sandsea in this ’ot weather. There’s some come in this morning you can have, and welcome.”

“But this is sheer epicureanism!” Roger cried.

“Yes, sir,” said the landlord. “There’s been two gents in this evening asking for rooms. London gents, by the look of ’em. I told ’em I ’adn’t got any.”

“That’s right, landlord,” Roger said with approval. “Speak the truth and shame the devil, you know.”

“Yes, sir,” said the landlord, and turned away to serve another customer.

“I say,” Anthony asked hopefully as they climbed the stairs a few minutes later, “I say, are we going to make old Moresby tight?”

“Certainly not,” said Roger with dignity. “I’m surprised at you, Anthony. Do I look the sort of person to interfere with the sobriety of the police in the execution of their duty?”

“Well, what’s all that gin and stuff for, then?”

“To pour libations to the great and puissante Goddess of Bluff! Now then, Anthony, how many bedrooms would you like to sleep in to-night? One, two or three?”

Chapter VI.
An Unwelcome Clue

Inspector Moresby, it has been said, was a genial man. He had no hesitation in falling in with Roger’s suggestion that the three of them should sup together. Even a Scotland Yard detective is human, and Inspector Moresby very much preferred to spend his moments of leisure in the congenial company of his fellows than alone.

In the same way he had no hesitation in accepting a little gin before a meal. In yet once more the same way he had not the slightest hesitation in drinking some gin and ginger-beer with his supper because, as anyone knows, gin and ginger-beer with a lump of ice clinking invitingly against the glass is the greatest of all drinks on a hot day and has the Olympian nectar beaten to a standstill; thus far has civilisation progressed. And after a meal when, pleasantly tired and a pleasant hunger pleasantly allayed, one sprawls in a horsehair armchair and contemplates a case of stuffed birds, an iced whisky and soda by one’s side is almost a sine qua non. Inspector Moresby was a genial man.

Roger had behaved with exemplary tact. Not a word about their common mission to Ludmouth had passed his lips. Instead, he had set out to be as entertaining as he possibly could; and when Roger set out to be entertaining he could prove a very good companion indeed. He had recounted numberless anecdotes about the humours of his own early struggles and experiences, and the inspector had been amused; he had recounted further anecdotes of the great people he had met and knew, all of whom he called by their Christian names, and the inspector had been impressed; he had kept a judicious eye on his victim’s glass—or rather, succession of glasses, and the inspector had become mellowed. Roger loved the inspector, and the inspector loved Roger.

Roger chose his moment and struck.

“Look here, Inspector,” he said quite casually, “about this Mrs. Vane business, by the way. I wish you’d look on me not as a reporter but as an amateur criminologist, extraordinarily interested in the way the police go about the solving of a mystery like this and only too ready to put any small brains I may have at their assistance. I do happen to be writing this thing up for a newspaper, it’s true; but that’s only by the way. I’m not a reporter by instinct or profession or anything else, and I only jumped at the chance of becoming one because it would give me first-hand information about a very interesting little mystery. Do you see what I mean?”

The inspector’s eyes twinkled. “I think so, sir. You want me to take you into my confidence, don’t you?”

“Something like that,” Roger agreed. “And I must tell you that the balance won’t be entirely on your side. I’ve got something rather important to offer you—a clue I found this afternoon under your very nose down among those rocks. I don’t want to hold it up or anything like that; but candidly, I don’t want to give it away for nothing either. Can’t we arrange a swap, so to speak?”

The inspector’s eyes twinkled more merrily than ever. “I’ve been waiting for something like this ever since I came up here, Mr. Sheringham; though I didn’t expect you to put it quite that way. I thought you’d just got me here to try to pump me in the ordinary way, as hundreds of new journalists have tried already before they found out it wasn’t any use.”

“Oh!” said Roger somewhat crestfallen. “Did you? But about this clue, I⸺”

“Lord, the number of clues I’ve had offered me in my time!” observed the inspector reminiscently. “Thousands of ’em! And not a single one worth a twopenny rap.”

“Oh!” said Roger again. “Then there’s nothing doing, I take it, in the confidence line?”

The inspector continued to chuckle for a moment; it pleased him mildly to score off Roger and he thought the latter deserved it. Even Anthony, in spite of his disappointment, could hardly repress a smile at that confident gentleman’s discomfiture.

Then the inspector proceeded to relent. “However, I’m not saying there isn’t any sense in what you said. There is. I know you’re not an ordinary journalist. I know what you did at Wychford and I’ve seen by your articles in the Courier that you really are interested in this sort of thing for its own sake. So as long as I have your word that you won’t publish anything that I want held up, perhaps I don’t mind letting you in on a thing or two that I should keep back from anyone else, and even talking the case over with you as well. Though mind you, it’s highly unprofessional conduct, as they say, and I should get into real hot water at the Yard if they ever came to hear of it.”

“I say, that’s awfully sporting of you, Inspector!” Roger cried with vast relief. “I quite thought you were going to turn me down. Yes, I promise you the Yard shan’t hear of it, and of course I won’t publish anything without your consent. It’s a purely personal interest, you know.”

“And you too, Mr. Walton? You agree to that?”

“Rather, Inspector! It’s extraordinarily decent of you.”

“Then let’s hear about this clue of yours first of all, Mr. Sheringham, if you please.”

Roger rose and went to the sideboard, from a drawer of which he produced the piece of paper, now almost dry. “I found this a couple of rocks away from where the body was lying. It may have nothing to do with the affair at all, of course, but there’s always a chance. There’s been writing on it, but it’s quite obliterated. Can you make anything of it?”

The inspector took the bit of paper and bent over it; then he held it up to the light.

“I’ll keep this, if I may,” he said. “As you say, there’s probably nothing in it, but I’ll send it up to our man at the Yard and I think he’ll be able to read it all right; at any rate, we can’t afford to neglect its possibilities.” He laid the paper down on a table nearby and leaned comfortably back in his chair again. “So now you can fire away, Mr. Sheringham. I know you’ve got half a hundred questions on the tip of your tongue.”

“At least that,” Roger laughed, as he resumed his seat. “And I certainly would like to polish off a few of them in rather a hurry. I must get through to London on the telephone pretty soon and dictate my article, and I can take notes for it as we go along.” He rummaged in a side-pocket and produced a pencil and note-book. “Now first of all, are you sure in your own mind that it’s a case of murder and not accident or suicide?”

“Well, between ourselves, sir, I am. As sure, that is, as anyone can be in my line without absolutely convincing proof. But don’t say that in your article. I shouldn’t get further than ‘suspicious circumstances’ in that yet awhile.”

Roger nodded. “Yes, I quite see that. By the way, that scream rather clinches it, doesn’t it? I mean, if one allows that the distance of the body from the edge of the cliffs rules out any question of accident, the scream, equally seems to rule out suicide. A suicide wouldn’t scream.”

“That was my line of thought exactly,” the inspector agreed.

“And you’ve also established the fact that she wasn’t alone. Have you got any ideas who the second woman was?”

“I’ve got my suspicions,” said the inspector guardedly. “I was up at the house for a goodish bit this morning,” he went on, delicately shifting the ground of discussion. “Have you been along there?”

“No, not to the house, though I heard you had.”

“You ought to go; I think you’d find it interesting. The household, I mean.”

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t felt quite hardened enough to my new profession yet. I don’t think I could butt in on Dr. Vane and ask him for an interview just at present. Can’t you tell me about them and save me the trouble?”

“Well, I daresay I could. There’s not really much to tell you. But the doctor’s a queer stick. Big man, he is, with a great black beard, and spends most of his time in a laboratory he’s had fitted up at the back of the house. Research work of some kind. Bit brusque in his manner, if you understand me, and doesn’t seem any too cut up by his wife’s death—or doesn’t show it if he is, perhaps I ought to say.”

“Oh, he doesn’t, doesn’t he?”

“But I gather that the two of them didn’t hit it off any too well together. That seemed the idea among the servants, anyhow. I had all of them up and questioned them this morning, of course. Then there’s his secretary, a dry stick of a woman with pince-nez and short hair, who might be any age between thirty and fifty, and a cousin of Mrs. Vane’s who’s been living there for the last few months called Miss Cross. That’s the girl who’s come into all the money, as I expect you’ve heard.”

“And the girl who was the last person apparently except one to see Mrs. Vane alive,” Roger nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen her, had a chat with her in fact.”

“Oh, you have, have you? And what did you think of her, Mr. Sheringham?”

“I don’t know,” Roger hedged. “What did you?”

The inspector considered. “I thought she was quite a nice young lady,” he said carefully, “though perhaps a bit deeper than one might think—or than she’d like you to think, maybe. Did you get any information from her?”

“Look here, Inspector,” Anthony burst out suddenly, “just tell me this, will you? Do you really honestly think that⸺”

“Shut up, Anthony, and don’t be tactless!” Roger interposed hastily. “Did I get any information out of her, Inspector? Nothing more than you got yourself, I fancy. She told me that you’d been putting her through it.”

“She’s a very important person in the case,” said the inspector with an apologetic air. “Last one to see Mrs. Vane alive, as you said just now.”

“I didn’t say that exactly,” Roger remarked drily; “but let it pass. And you got no further impression from her than that she was a nice young lady and might be a bit deep?”

“Well I didn’t say that, sir,” ruminated the inspector. “No, I wouldn’t say that at all. I got the impression that she wasn’t over-fond of that cousin of hers, for one thing.”

“Wasn’t fond of her cousin?” Roger cried in surprise. “But Mrs. Vane had been extraordinarily kind to her. Taken her to live with them, paid her a generous salary probably for doing nothing, made a will in her favour! Why, she owed Mrs. Vane a tremendous lot!”

“Are we always over-fond of people we owe a tremendous lot to?” asked the inspector pointedly.

“I’m sure,” Anthony began stiffly, “that Miss Cross⸺”

“Shut up, Anthony!—But why are you so sure about this, Inspector? You must have something more to go on than just an impression.”

“I have, sir. What I learned from the servants. Mrs. Vane and Miss Cross used to quarrel quite a lot, I understand. It seems to have been a matter of common talk among the servants.”

“Of course, if you take any notice of the gossip of servants,” said Anthony with fine scorn, “I daresay you’d⸺”

“Anthony, will you shut up or have I got to send you to bed? For goodness’ sake, help yourself to another drink and keep quiet.”

“You’ve seen Miss Cross too, Mr. Walton, I take it?” observed the inspector mildly.

“Yes, I have,” Anthony said shortly.

“A very pretty young lady,” commented the inspector with vague application.

“Oh, by the way!” Roger exclaimed suddenly. “I was very nearly forgetting the most important question of all.”

“And what’s that, Mr. Sheringham?”

“Why, to ask you what you’ve got up your sleeve in the way of clues. You admitted this afternoon there were some things you wouldn’t tell me.”

“One,” acknowledged the inspector with a smile. “That’s all. A coat-button.” He felt in his pocket and produced a light-blue bone button with a white pattern, about an inch and a half in diameter, which he held out on the flat of his palm. “This was found clenched in the dead woman’s hand.”

Roger whistled softly. “I say, that is a clue and no mistake! The first really definite one there’s been, except those footprints. May I have a look at it?” He took the button from the other’s outstretched hand and examined it intently. “It wasn’t one of her own, by any chance?”

“No, sir; it wasn’t.”

“Have you found out whose it is?” Roger asked, looking up quickly.

“I have,” replied the inspector contentedly.

Anthony’s heart almost stopped beating. “Whose?” he asked in a strained voice.

“It’s a button off a sports-coat belonging to Miss Cross.”

For a moment there was a tense silence. Then Roger asked the question that was burning a hole in his brain.

“Was Miss Cross wearing the coat when she went out for her walk with Mrs. Vane?”

“She was, sir,” replied the inspector with a more serious air than he had yet displayed. “And when she got back to the house that button was missing from it.”

Chapter VII.
Sidelights on a Loathsome Lady

“I tell you I don’t care!” Anthony almost shouted. “To say that girl had anything to do with the wretched woman’s death is too damned silly for words!”

“But I’m not saying so,” Roger pointed out patiently. “I don’t think she had, in spite of everything. What I am saying is that we can’t dismiss the possibility of it in this cocksure way just because she’s got a pretty face. The inspector isn’t⸺”

“Blast the inspector!” observed Anthony savagely.

“Blast him by all means, but, as I was saying, he isn’t by any means a fool, and it’s quite obvious what his opinion about Mrs. Vane’s death is at present. After all, you must face the fact that the evidence is absolutely overwhelming.”

“If his opinion is that Miss Cross murdered her cousin, then he is a fool,” growled Anthony finally; “and a damned fool at that.”

It was the following morning, and the two men were walking along the top of the cliffs to keep their appointment with Margaret Cross. The inspector had betaken himself to bed on the previous evening soon after the bursting of his bombshell, and the discussion between Anthony and Roger had lasted well into the small hours of the morning, broken only by an interval of half-an-hour while Roger telephoned through to the Courier. It was still raging.

Anthony had refused point-blank to consider even the possibility that Margaret had not spoken the exact truth in every detail or had wilfully suppressed any material fact, while as for the only logical deduction to be drawn from the facts as they were then known, he would rather have been torn in pieces by red-hot pincers than admit it within the category of bare feasibilities. To Roger, who was no less anxious that the girl’s name should be cleared, but had a livelier conception of the difficulties in the way of doing so, this attitude was a little trying. To Anthony’s final remark he forbore to reply, only sighing gently to himself. It required an effort of will, but no good purpose would be served by quarrelling with Anthony, and Anthony was very ready to quarrel with someone. They traversed the rest of the journey in difficult silence.

Margaret Cross was waiting for them by the little ledge, her face anxious and bearing the marks of a sleepless night.

“Oh, I am glad to see you!” she exclaimed as she shook hands with Roger. “Really I feel as if you were the only friend I’d got in the world.”

“Don’t forget me, Miss Cross,” Anthony smiled, shaking hands with her in his turn.

“No, of course not,” said the girl in a voice that was neither enthusiastic nor chilling—just indifferent; and she snatched away the hand that Anthony was manifestly attempting to press and, turning ostentatiously back to Roger, began to question him eagerly as to whether anything fresh had transpired.

Over Anthony’s face passed an expression such as might have been seen on the face of a dog which has put out a paw to toy with a fly and discovered it to be a wasp—hurt and yet puzzled. As Margaret Cross continued to display to him only her back the puzzled part of his expression gave way to resentment; as she made no effort to include him in her eager conversation, but on the contrary quite pointedly ignored him, resentment and chagrin alike were swallowed up by sheer annoyance. As ostentatiously as herself, he strolled a few paces away and began to amuse himself by throwing stones over the edge of the cliff. Anthony was sulking.

Had he been a little wiser, he might have felt flattered. As it was, how could he be expected to guess that to a young lady who is accustomed to pride herself not a little on her self-reliance and strength of mind, the thought of having been such a sloppy little idiot as to weep on the shoulder of a complete stranger and actually grovel before the protective feel of his unknown arm about her, might possibly be a singularly ignominious one? In which case, of course (so the older and wiser Anthony might have complacently assumed), her resentment, directed naturally against himself as the witness of her humiliation, would be only complimentary. But Anthony was neither older nor wiser.

“I say, Anthony, come and listen to this!” called Roger, who had a shrewd idea of the way in which the wind was blowing.

Very nonchalantly Anthony strolled across. “Yes?” he said in a voice that was neither rude nor frigid—just bored.

“I’ve been telling Miss Cross about the coat-button. It may not be quite playing the game with the inspector, but I really think it’s only fair that she should know.” He turned to the girl. “And you say you must have lost it on that walk?”

“Yes, I must have lost it on the walk,” the girl said in puzzled tones, “but where, I haven’t the least idea. All I know is that it was on when I started, and I noticed that it was off when I got back. It might have dropped simply anywhere. How it got into Elsie’s hand I can’t imagine. Mightn’t she have picked it up and been meaning to give it back to me?”

“That does seem the only possible explanation,” Roger agreed. He did not think it necessary for the moment to point out that as Mrs. Vane’s subsequent steps would hardly have covered any of the ground that she and Margaret had passed over together, the explanation was not very probable.

“Oh, Mr. Sheringham, I do wish I could get away from this dreadful atmosphere of suspicion!” cried the girl suddenly, her strained nerves overcoming for the moment her self-control. “It’s really getting almost unbearable! Every fresh fact that comes to light only makes it worse. I shall really begin to think of jumping over the cliff myself if something doesn’t happen soon. And they’re evidently beginning to talk in the village already. Mrs. Russell cut me dead outside her own house this morning.”

“Dear Mrs. Russell!” Roger murmured. “Wouldn’t I like to flay the hag. Christian charity, I suppose she calls that. But look here, don’t you give way before any nonsense like that, Margaret, my dear.” Roger invariably addressed every unmarried lady below the age of thirty by her Christian name after the briefest possible acquaintance, it accorded with his reputation for mild Bohemianism, and it saved an awful lot of trouble. “We’re going to see you through this, Cousin Anthony and I. So keep your chin up and let all the old cats go to the devil!”

Margaret turned away for a moment, biting her lip. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said in rather a shaky voice. “I really can’t think what I should have done if I hadn’t met you two, Mr. Sheringham.”

“Roger!” exclaimed Roger briskly. “For Heaven’s sake do call me Roger, Margaret! Only people who owe me money call me ‘Mr. Sheringham.’ It has a nasty, sinister sound.”

“Very well, then,” the girl smiled. “Thank you—Roger!”

Roger drew a breath of relief as he saw the threatened tears disappear before his calculated nonsense. “And this is Anthony,” he went on with mock seriousness. “Let me introduce you. Anthony, Margaret. Margaret, Anthony. Now shake hands and tell each other what a lovely day it is.”

“How do you do, Anthony?” Margaret said gravely, a little smile dancing in her brown eyes; and somehow she managed to convey the impression that she was sorry for having made a pig of herself ten minutes before, that this was her apology and that would he please forgive her?

“How do you do, Margaret?” said Anthony, taking the slim fingers in his great paw; and the slight pressure he gave them said perfectly plainly that it wasn’t his place to forgive anything; wouldn’t she rather forgive him instead for sulking in that childish way, for which he was heartily sorry?

So that was all right.

“Why stand up when we can sit down?” Roger remarked, observing the results of his tactfulness with some satisfaction; and he set a good example by throwing himself at full length on the springy turf. The others followed suit.

“Now what we’ve got to do,” he went on, lying on his back and puffing hard at his pipe, “is to form an offensive and defensive alliance of three. Your job, Margaret, will be to get us any information we want about the household and so on, and mine to put that information to the most advantageous use.”

“What about Anthony?” asked Margaret.

“Oh, he’s the idiot friend. He came down on purpose to be it. We mustn’t do him out of that, or he’d be awfully disappointed.”

“Poor Anthony!” Margaret laughed. “Roger, I think you’re horrid.”

“Not horrid,” Anthony said lazily. “Just an ass. But pretend not to notice it, Margaret. We always try to ignore it in the family.”

“Reverting to the topic in hand,” Roger observed, unperturbed, “there’s one thing that I really must impress on both of you. Rather a nasty thing, but we’ve got to face it. From the facts as we know them at present, there’s simply only one deduction to be drawn; if we want new deductions, we must have new facts.”

“I see what you mean,” Margaret said slowly. “Yes, and I see that it’s quite true too. But how on earth are we to get any new facts?”

“Well, let’s see if a little judicious questioning will bring anything to light.” Roger paused for a moment as if considering. “I suppose you were very fond of your cousin, Margaret?” he said after a second or two in an almost careless voice.

It was Margaret’s turn to pause and consider. Then: “No!” she said almost harshly. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you, though I realise that it doesn’t make my position any better. I detested her!”

“You detested her?” Roger repeated, raising himself on his elbow to look at her in his astonishment. “But I thought she’d been so kind to you? I thought she was such a charming woman?”

Margaret laughed bitterly. “Quite a number of people think that. Elsie took good care that they should. Isn’t there a saying about speaking only good of the dead? Well, I never have been a conventional person. Elsie was one of the most loathsome people who can ever have existed!”

“Oho!” said Roger softly. “She was, was she? Talk about new facts! This looks like opening up a whole new field of enquiry. Perpend, lady! Why was Elsie ‘one of the most loathsome people who can ever have existed’?”

“It is rather a sweeping charge, isn’t it?” said Margaret soberly. “Well, I’ll tell you the whole story and you can judge for yourself. When Elsie met George she was in rather the same position as I was in myself a few months ago—broke to the wide. But she didn’t let him know that. She pretended to belong to a good family and to have plenty of money of her own. In fact, she deliberately set out to deceive him. George believed every word she said, fell in love with her and married her—which, of course, was what she’d been aiming at.”

“You mean she married Dr. Vane for his money?”

“Purely and simply! I know, because she used to boast of it to me, and advise me to do the same. Boast of it! How she’d taken him in and hoodwinked him from beginning to end. She got a tremendous marriage settlement out of him, too. All the money she left me. Ten thousand pounds settled on her absolutely. Of course she hadn’t a penny of her own. She often used to tell me how well she’d done for herself. Oh, Elsie was a true daughter of her grandfather—our grandfather, I should say!”

“I see,” said Roger thoughtfully. “Yes, that does shed a somewhat different light on the lady. And she took you to live with her so that you could have the chance of meeting another wealthy man and hoodwinking him similarly?”

“Indeed she didn’t! That’s what she used to tell me, but nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that there were several reasons why she wanted me with her. In the first place, she wanted someone whom she could order about in a way that no servant would stand for a minute, someone who would do things for her that she would never have dared to ask any servant to do. Oh, Roger, you can’t imagine the things I’ve had to do since I came here! Menial things that she couldn’t have made anybody else in the world do for her. And yet nothing outrageous, if you understand—nothing that I could flare up at and flounce out of the house over. Oh, it’s extraordinarily difficult to explain. You see, you probably haven’t any idea what a beast one woman can be to another in a subordinate position without ever doing anything that you could actually call beastly.”

“I think I have, though, for all that,” Roger murmured sympathetically.

Margaret knitted her brows. “Well, suppose we’d been out for a walk together in the rain and come in rather tired and rather wet and rather muddy. The first thing she’d do would be to send me upstairs with her wet coat and hat and tell me to bring down a pair of dry shoes. I should go down and find her sprawling in a chair in the drawing-room in front of the fire, but otherwise just as I’d left her. She’d want me to change her shoes for her, probably even pull her gloves off for her as well. Then she’d find out that her stockings were wet too, and I should be sent to get a dry pair—and probably change those for her as well. Then she’d decide she didn’t like those shoes with those stockings, and off I’d have to go to get another pair. As soon as I’d done that, I’d be sent up again for something else that she’d pretend to have forgotten all about, and then for something more after that. In other words, she kept me on the go the whole time: I was hardly ever allowed to have a single second to myself.”

Roger nodded understandingly. “I know the type.”

“Well, that was one thing she wanted me for. Another was that she was a horrid little bully, and she must have someone to bully. You can’t bully servants; they give notice. There’s nobody like a poor relation for bullying. And all with a sweet smile you know, that seemed to make it even more unbearable if anything.”

“But why did you stick it?” Anthony asked indignantly.

Margaret flushed slightly. “Because I was a coward, I suppose. I’d had about enough of roughing it by then, and I was comfortable at any rate. Besides, there was that ten thousand pounds she was dangling over me. If you’d ever known what it’s like not to be able to afford a penny bun or a cup of tea, you might realise what a tempting bait ten thousand pounds can be and what a lot you’ll put up with to qualify for it. Very mercenary, isn’t it? But Elsie knew all right. She’d been through it herself.”

“I’m sorry, Margaret,” Anthony said in some confusion. “I was an ass to say a thing like that. Of course I understand.”

“As a matter of fact,” Margaret went on more calmly, “I was going to cut and run for it. I’d discovered the game wasn’t worth the candle after all. But I hadn’t fixed any date or made up my mind what to put my hand to next, and then—and then this happened.”

There was a little silence.

“Can you give me a few more details about your cousin?” suddenly asked Roger, who seemed to have been pursuing a train of thought of his own. “A little bit more about her character, and what she looked like, and all that sort of thing?”

Margaret considered. “Well, she was little and fragile to look at, with rather a babyish face, fair hair, and a slight lisp which she cultivated rather carefully. She used to pose as the helpless, appealing little woman, though anybody less helpless than Elsie, so far as her own interests were concerned, I’ve never met. Her idea (as she told me perfectly frankly) was that men liked the helpless, appealing type; and judging by results, she wasn’t far wrong. As for her character, I don’t see what else there is to tell you. She was a hypocrite, a bully, utterly selfish, mean, and bad all through.” Margaret gazed out to sea, breathing heavily, her cheeks flushed. Evidently she was calling to mind some of the humiliations and unkindnesses she had suffered at the dead woman’s hands. Anthony watched her with deepening indignation.

“Did her husband know her real character?” Roger asked thoughtfully.

Margaret removed her eyes from the horizon and began to pluck with aimless fingers at the turf by her side. “I don’t know!” she said slowly, after a momentary hesitation. “As a matter of fact I’ve often wondered that. Sometimes I think he must have, and sometimes I’m quite sure he didn’t. Elsie was clever, you see. I don’t suppose she showed her real self to anybody but me. And I shouldn’t say that George was very observant. He was always perfectly courteous to her.”

“Is he very upset about her death?”

“Outwardly, not a bit; but what he’s feeling inside him I haven’t the least idea. George never shows his feelings. He might be made of stone for all the emotion he ever displays. Besides, he spends nearly all his time shut up in his laboratory, just as he always has all the time I’ve been here.”

“You can’t say whether they got on well together, then?”

“Not a word! All I can tell you is that he was always courteous to her, and she⸺” Margaret uttered a cynical laugh. “Well, it was going to pay her to keep on good terms with him, so I’ve no doubt she did.”

“I see. There’s nothing further you can tell me about her?”

“Well, there is one thing,” the girl said a little doubtfully, “but it’s so very vague that I’m not sure whether I ought to mention it. It’s this. I couldn’t help feeling once or twice that there was somebody Elsie was afraid of.”

“Afraid of? Hullo, that’s interesting! Who?”

“That I haven’t the least idea. In fact the whole thing is quite probably moonshine. I’ve really got nothing definite to go on at all. It’s just a sort of impression I formed.”

“Well, impressions are often valuable. And you can’t say anything more definite than that?”

“I’m afraid I can’t. Probably I ought not to have mentioned it at all, but it might give you a line of enquiry perhaps.”

“I should think so. That’s just the kind of thing I want to know.” Roger plucked a handful or two of grass and scattered them over the edge of the cliff. “Margaret,” he said suddenly, “what’s your opinion about it all? Your perfectly private, not-for-publication opinion?”

“I think there’s a great deal more in it than meets the eye,” said the girl without hesitation.

“So do I, by Jove!” Anthony concurred.

“Yes, there’s no doubt about that,” Roger said thoughtfully. “But it’s all so infernally vague. If one could only get hold of a definite thread to follow up, however tiny! You’ve widened the area of enquiry enormously with what you’ve told us about your cousin, but even now we’re quite in the dark. All we know is that, instead of nobody having a grudge against her, any number of people might. Isn’t there one single definite pointer you can get hold of for us? Somebody might have a cause for hating her, say, or a reason for wanting her out of the way. Rack your brains!”

Margaret racked them obediently and for some minutes there was silence, broken only by the cries of the swooping gulls and the splash of the waves against the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs.

“There’s only one person I can think of who had cause for hating Elsie,” she said slowly at last. “Or rather, did hate her, I’m quite certain—whether with cause or without, I don’t know. Mrs. Russell!”

Roger popped up on his elbow. “Mrs. Russell?” he repeated eagerly. “Why did she hate Mrs. Vane?”

“She had an idea that Elsie and Mr. Russell were a little too friendly. A good deal too friendly, not to mince matters!”

“Oho! The plot thickens. And were they?”

“I don’t know. They were very friendly, certainly. Whether they were too friendly, I can’t say.”

“But it’s possible?”

“Quite—as far as Elsie is concerned. She had neither morals nor scruples.”

“And Mr. Russell? What sort of a man is he?”

“Oh, jolly and red-faced and beefy, you know. The sort of man you see in those old hunting prints.”

“Just the sort to whom her type might appeal, in fact. So I should imagine it was quite possible as far as he was concerned too, eh?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Roger smote the turf with an enthusiastic fist. “By Jove, Margaret, I believe you’ve hit on something here. Mrs. Russell was simply eaten up with jealousy, of course. And there’s no motive like jealousy!”

“Aren’t we getting on a little too fast?” asked the girl dubiously.

“Not a bit! Now tell me—what sort of a woman is this Mrs. Russell?”

“Oh, she’s rather fat too; very downright and decided. A lot of people would call her rude, but I rather liked her. Not at all good-looking now, though she may have been once. Pince-nez, hair going a little grey, about forty-five years old, I suppose.”

“In other words, exactly the sort of woman to be furiously jealous of a young and pretty one throwing sheep’s eyes at her husband!” Roger summed up, not without satisfaction.

“I say!” Anthony exclaimed excitedly. “You said she was big, didn’t you? Has she got rather large feet?”

“Yes, I fancy she has. Why?”

The two men exchanged significant glances. Then Roger sprang to his feet.

“Good for you, Anthony! You mean that second lot of footprints, don’t you? Well, good-bye, my children. Amuse each other till lunch-time.”

“Where are you going, Roger?” cried Margaret.

“To look into this matter of the lady with the large feet and the jealous disposition,” Roger called back, disappearing at full speed over the bank.

Chapter VIII.
Introducing a Goat-faced Clergyman

Roger had no definite plan in his mind as he walked with quick strides along the cliff-top in the direction of Ludmouth. His impulsive flight from the other two had been dictated by two instinctive feelings—that he wanted to be alone to ponder over the significance of this fresh information, and that Anthony and Margaret would probably be not at all averse to a little dose of each other’s undiluted company. His first idea, equally instinctive, had been to make a bee-line for the Russells’ house and pour out a torrent of eager questions into the lady’s astonished ears. Second thoughts warned him against any such precipitation. He sat down on a convenient little hummock facing the sea, pulled out and re-lit his pipe and began to think.

It did not take him many minutes to see that, if this new lane of enquiry were not to prove a blind alley, there were two questions of paramount importance first requiring a satisfactory answer. Of these one was concerned with Mrs. Russell’s shoes: did they fit the second lot of footprints in that patch of mud on the cliff-path, or not? If they did, that did not actually prove anything, but Mrs. Russell remained a suspected person; if they did not, then she must be exonerated at once. The second, and far more important, was this—who had been at the Russells’ house during the time when Mrs. Vane might have been expected to call?

Roger was still considering the interesting possibility depending on the answer to this question, when a gentle voice behind him cut abruptly into his reverie.

“A charming view from this point, sir, is it not?” observed the gentle voice.

Roger turned about. A little elderly clergyman, with silvery hair and a face like a benign but beardless goat, was peering at him benevolently through a large pair of horn spectacles. “Oh, Lord, the local parson!” Roger groaned to himself—not because he disliked parsons, local or otherwise, but because parsons are inclined to talk and Roger, at that particular moment in his existence, surprisingly enough was not. Aloud he said, courteously enough, “It is indeed; particularly charming.”

The little old parson continued to beam, the sunlight glittering on his huge spectacles. He did not go nor did he very definitely stay—he hovered.

“He’s going to talk,” Roger groaned to himself again. “He wants to talk. He’s aching to talk—I know he is! My pipe to the Coliseum he’s going to talk!”

Roger’s deduction was not amiss. It was only too plain that the little old clergyman had every intention of talking. He had, to be accurate, on seeing Roger’s back in the distance, come nearly a quarter-of-a-mile out of his way for the express purpose of talking. He began to talk.

“I don’t remember seeing you in our little village. Perhaps you have walked over from Sandsea?”

“No,” said Roger patiently. “I’m staying in Ludmouth.”

“Ah! At Mrs. Jameson’s, no doubt? I did hear that she was expecting a visitor.”

“No, at the Crown.”

“Oh! Oh, dear me! Surely I am not talking to Mr. Roger Sheringham, am I?” twittered the little clergyman.

“That is my name, sir, yes,” Roger admitted, with a mental side-note upon village gossip, its velocity and the surprising quarters it reaches.

“My dear sir!” The little parson’s beam grew brighter than ever. “You must permit me to shake hands with you. No, really you must! This is indeed a gratifying moment. I have read all your books, every one; and I cannot tell you how I enjoyed them. Well, fancy, now!”

Roger was never in the least embarrassed by this kind of encounter. He shook hands with his admirer with the greatest heartiness.

“It’s very kind of you to say so,” he smiled. “Very kind indeed. I won’t pretend I’m not gratified. Any author who pretends to be indifferent to appreciation of his books is a hypocrite and a liar and an anointed ass.”

“Quite so,” agreed the little clergyman in some bewilderment. “Quite so, no doubt. Well, well, well!”

“How did you know I was staying at the Crown, sir?”

“Oh, these things get about in a little community like ours, Mr. Sheringham; very rapidly indeed, if I may say so. And having read your books, to say nothing of your recent articles in the Courier, including even this morning’s⸺ Ah, a sad business that brings you down here, Mr. Sheringham! Very sad indeed! Dear me, poor lady, poor lady!”

Roger’s annoyance at the interruption to his thoughts, already considerably lessened, vanished completely. If this garrulous old man had anything of interest to tell, without doubt he could be induced to tell it. Perhaps the encounter could be turned to good account; in any case it would be no bad thing to be persona grata with the vicar. He indicated with the stem of his pipe the hummock on which he had been sitting.

“Won’t you sit down, sir?” he asked with a fittingly serious face. “Yes, indeed it is; extraordinarily sad.”

The little clergyman seated himself with a nod of gratitude and Roger dropped on to the warm turf by his side.

“Do you know, there is a most distressing rumour going about in the village, I understand,” remarked the former deprecatingly, but none the less gossipingly. “Something about foul play. That is nothing new, of course; your article this morning hinted quite plainly at it. But they have got to the stage in the village of importing actual names into their suspicions. Do you know that? Most regrettable; most regrettable.”

“It’s what you’d expect, isn’t it?” said Roger a trifle shortly; he had stayed to pump the other, not to be pumped himself. “What name or names have they imported?”

“Really, Mr. Sheringham,” the parson hesitated, “I’m not sure whether I ought⸺”

“I’ve only got to walk into the bar at the Crown and ask the nearest loafer, if you don’t wish to tell me,” Roger pointed out with an air of indifference.

“That is true. Yes, that is very true, I’m afraid. Yes, I fear you have. Well, perhaps in that case⸺ Well, they are talking about Miss Cross, you know; Mrs. Vane’s cousin. Most regrettable; most regrettable! Surely you don’t think, Mr. Sheringham, that⸺”

“I agree with you,” Roger interrupted brusquely, forestalling the unwelcome question. “Most regrettable! But surely you, as their vicar, could⸺?” He broke off meaningly.

The little clergyman looked at him in surprise. “Me?” he said innocently. “Oh, but you are making a mistake. I am not the vicar here. Oh, dear, no! Meadows, my name is: Samuel Meadows. Wait a moment; I have a card somewhere.” He began to fumble violently in all his pockets. “Oh, dear, no; I am not the vicar. I have retired into private life. A small legacy, you understand. Just a resident here, that is all; and of only a few weeks’ standing. Oh, dear, no; my parish was in Yorkshire. But Ludmouth is so— Ah, here we are!” With an air of mild triumph he produced a card from the pocket which he had first searched, and held it out to Roger. “Perhaps if you were passing one day—? I should be extremely honoured.”

“Very kind of you indeed,” said Roger politely, his interest in the little cleric now completely evaporated. He struggled to his feet. “Well, I must be getting along.”

“You are going back to Ludmouth?” queried the other with gentle eagerness, rising also. “So am I. We might perhaps walk in together.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m going the other way,” returned Roger firmly. “Good morning, Mr. Meadows. See you again soon, I expect.” And he set briskly off in the direction of Sandsea.

Behind the first undulation he took cover and watched his late interlocutor make for the road and pass slowly out of sight. Then he came out of hiding and walked rapidly over to the little house which lay half-way between that of Dr. Vane and the village—the house which sheltered the frivolous Mr. Russell and his jealous lady.

A perfectly respectable parlour maid answered his ring and looked at him enquiringly.

“Is Mrs. Russell in?” Roger asked. “I should like to speak to her for a moment.”

“No, sir; I’m afraid she isn’t. And Mr. Russell is out too.”

“Oh! That’s a nuisance.” Roger rubbed his chin a moment in thought; then he came to a sudden decision. “You read the Courier sometimes I expect, don’t you?” he asked unexpectedly.

“Yes, sir,” replied the maid in a puzzled voice. “Cook takes it in, she does.”

“She does, does she? Good for Cook! Well, look here, I’ve come down to Ludmouth specially for the Courier, to send them news about that accident you had here the other day.”

The girl’s face cleared. “Mrs. Vane? Oh, yes, sir! Then you’re a—a reporting gentleman, sir?”

“A reporting gentleman!” Roger laughed. “Yes, rather; that describes me to a T. Well, now,” he went on very confidentially, “the fact of the matter is this. I ran along to ask Mrs. Russell one or two questions, and I’m in too much of a hurry to wait for her. Now, do you think you could answer them for me instead?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” fluttered the maid. “I think I could. What would it be that you want to know?”

“Well, now; Mrs. Vane was coming here that afternoon, wasn’t she? And she never came. Now, I suppose you were in all the afternoon yourself, weren’t you?”

“Me, sir? Oh, no. I was on my holidays. I only got back yesterday.”

“I see. Rotten, coming back to work again, isn’t it? But the cook would have been in, of course?”

“No, sir; she was out too. It was her afternoon off. There was nobody in that afternoon but Mrs. Russell herself.”

“Aha!” observed Roger all to himself. Aloud he said mechanically, “I see,” and began to rack his brains furiously for a tactful way of getting hold of a pair of Mrs. Russell’s shoes. It was not an easy problem.

Usually a problem tended to lose its interest for Roger if it were too easy, but for this one the time-limit was not sufficient. On the spur of the moment he could only see one thing to do, so he did it.

“Can you lend me a pair of Mrs. Russell’s shoes for an hour or so?” he asked blandly.

“Her shoes?” repeated the astonished maid.

“Yes; any pair of outdoor ones. I’ll let you have them back before she notices they’re gone.” And he jingled significantly the loose silver in his trouser-pocket.

“Not—not foot-prints?” twittered the maid, thrilled to the bone.

Roger made up his mind in a flash. After all, why not tell the truth? There was no doubt that the maid would appreciate it, and a spy in the enemy’s camp might be useful.

“Yes,” he nodded. “But keep this to yourself, mind. Don’t tell a soul!”

“Not even Cook?” breathed the excited girl.

“Yes, you can tell Cook,” conceded Roger gravely, knowing the paramount necessity of permitting a safety-valve. “But you’ll be responsible for it going no further. Promise?”

“Oo, yes, sir! I promise.”

“Well, cut up and get me a pair of her shoes, then.”

The girl needed no second invitation. She cut.

In less than a minute she was back again. “Here you are, sir. I put a bit of newspaper round them, so as nobody could see what you’re carrying. But you’ll bring them back, won’t you, sir?”

“Oh, yes; some time this afternoon. In fact, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll bring them to the back-door. How about that?”

“Yes, that would be better, sir. Thank you.”

“And if anybody else wants to know what I came for, say I’m a reporter for the Courier wanting to see Mrs. Russell; that’ll do as well as anything else. Here!”

A ten-shilling note changed hands, and Roger turned to go. A stifled sound from the girl caused him to look round.

“Yes?” he said enquiringly.

“Oo, sir! Mrs. Russell! You don’t think as how she done it, do you?”

“Done what?” asked Roger gravely.

“P-pushed Mrs. Vane over the cliff! They hated each other like wild cats, they did. Many and many’s the time I’ve heard the missis giving it to the master about Mrs. Vane. ‘If I get hold of her, I’ll give her what-for!’ she says. ‘I’ll spoil her looks for her! I’ll show her she can’t⸺’ ”

“No, no!” Roger interrupted hastily. “Good gracious, no! You mustn’t think anything like that. I want the shoes for—for quite a different reason.” And he fled for the front gate.

The maid looked after him with an air of distinct disappointment.

The newspaper parcel under his arm, Roger made at top-speed for the point on the cliffs where the second stair-way emerged. It was only a matter of form to try the shoes he was carrying into that second lot of footprints; he knew beyond any shadow of doubt that they were going to fit. Within a quarter-of-an-hour of leaving the lady’s own front door his confidence was justified: her shoes fitted as perfectly into the tracks as if they had made them—which Roger had very little doubt they had! With a crow of triumph he turned round and scurried up the stairs again two at a time. The Ludmouth Bay Mystery was as good as ended.

Half-way across the open ground toward the house he caught sight of a large and portly figure turning in at the front gate from the road. Judging correctly that the mistress of the household was returning, he changed his direction abruptly and made for the little ledge, whistling loudly (and quite unnecessarily, as Anthony pointed out later with some heat. “Dash it all, man, I haven’t known the girl for twenty-four hours yet. That sort of thing makes a chap look such an ass!”) as he approached within view of it.

“Victory! Victory!” he exclaimed dramatically to the startled couple beneath him, waving the shoes above his head. “And here are the spoils—your prize, fair lady! You might return them to the owner for me some time, will you? Or rather, to the owner’s parlour maid for preference. Catch!” And tossing the shoes down on to the ledge below, he took a standing jump and hurtled through the air in their wake.

“Roger, you’ve discovered something!” Margaret cried, as the victorious one landed with a thud perilously near her feet. “What?”

“I say, you haven’t got to the bottom of it, have you?” demanded Anthony excitedly.

Roger folded his arms and, striking a Napoleonic attitude, grinned down most un-Napoleonically at the other members of the alliance. “I have solved the Mystery of Ludmouth Bay, my children!” he announced. “Not alone I did it, for you, Margaret, put me on the right track, and yon pair of shoes also played their part. But the important thing is that the mystery is solved, and you can hold up your head again, Margaret, my dear, or your hands or your feet or anything else you jolly well like; nobody will say you nay.”

“Oh, Roger, do explain! Not—not Mrs. Russell?”

The grin died slowly out of Roger’s face. His imagination was his trade, yet it had simply never occurred to him that the rescue of Margaret meant the snaring of somebody else—that through his activities Mrs. Russell now stood in the perilous position from which Margaret had been plucked only just in time.

“I’m afraid so,” he nodded seriously. “And by the way, there’s one very obvious thing we overlooked about you, Margaret,” he went on, glancing at the neat little feet upon which he had so nearly landed. “However much the rest of the evidence might seem to compromise you, you were never in any real danger; that second lot of footprints was obviously never made by you, you see. Well, I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing.”

He dropped on to the turf, pulled out his pipe and began his story.

“I say, that’s great!” exclaimed Anthony in high glee, when he had finished.

“Oh, poor Mrs. Russell!” was Margaret’s comment, and Roger glanced at her with quick understanding. It was an echo of his own thoughts of a few minutes before.

They began to discuss the situation.

“Well, Anthony,” Roger remarked half-an-hour later. “Time we were getting back for lunch. And I want to hear what Moresby’s got to say, too.”

“Moresby’s going to get the shock of his young life,” observed Anthony grimly. “And I’m going to be in at the death.” Inspector Moresby, one gathered, had infringed upon Anthony’s code of things that aren’t done when he had the presumption to follow up a train of evidence to its logical conclusion—Margaret; henceforward there was no good in him.

“Well, in that case come along,” Roger replied, scrambling up. “Margaret, you’ll deliver those shoes at the back-door some time this afternoon, will you? Thanks very much. Well, now, about meeting you again, I should think⸺”

“Oh, we’ve fixed all that,” Anthony interrupted very airily.

It was about five minutes after this that Anthony delivered his views upon whistling already recorded. At the same time he had something to say on the subject of grins, and still more upon that of winks. Grins, winks and whistles, it appeared, shared with Inspector Moresby the murkiest depths of Anthony’s hatred and contempt.

Lunch was waiting for them when they arrived back, hot and thirsty, at the inn—huge plates of cold beef, a salad, a white loaf and pleasantly salt butter, raspberry tart and cream. Inspector Moresby was also waiting for them, his face completely obscured at the moment of their entering the room by the bottom of one of their host’s satisfactory tankards (one cannot realise too strongly the fact that, when not standing at street corners or arresting unarmed the most dangerous criminals, members of the British Police Force are utterly and completely human).

“Ah, here you are, gentlemen,” he observed heartily, emerging from the tankard. “They asked me if we were going to take our meals together in here, and I took the liberty of telling them we were. It’s a bit lonely eating down there alone, if you’ve no objection.”

“None at all,” responded Roger, no less heartily. “Only too pleased, Inspector. And I see you had the forethought to order up three of the best. Excellent! Well, you’d better get ready to drink my health.”

“What have you been doing then, sir?” asked the Inspector humorously. “Solving the mystery?”

“I have,” said Roger, and plunged into his story once more.

“So what do you think of that?” he concluded, not without a certain triumph.

The Inspector wiped his moustache carefully. “It’s ingenious,” he said. “Quite ingenious. But I shouldn’t pay too much importance to footprints if I were you, Mr. Sheringham. Footprints are the easiest thing in the world to fake.”

“It’s ingenious because we’re dealing with the deeds of an ingenious criminal. That’s all. Anyhow, can you produce anything that can’t be explained by the theory?” Roger challenged.

“Yes, sir, I can,” replied the inspector imperturbably. “That bit of paper you picked up yourself. Our expert made it out all right. The original’s coming on by special messenger, but I got a code telegram half-an-hour ago, and I’ve written out for you what was on the paper. How are you going to explain that by your theory?”

Roger took the piece of paper the other was holding out to him and read it eagerly, Anthony craning over his shoulder. It was inscribed as follows:⸺

Monday.

“Elsie darling, for Heaven’s sake meet me once more before you do anything rash. You must let me explain. You can’t do what you threaten when you think what we’ve been to each other. Meet me at the usual place to-morrow, same time. Please, darling!

“Colin.”

“P. S. Destroy this.”

Chapter IX.
Colin, Who Art Thou?

Roger handed the letter back with a little smile. “How can I explain this by my theory? Well, obviously enough, surely. ‘Colin’ must be Mr. Russell.”

“Ah, but is he? Somehow I feel pretty sure he isn’t. Anyhow, that’s a point we can soon settle. I bought a directory of the neighbourhood yesterday—always do when I’m working on a case in the country. I’ll run down and get it.”

“In the meantime,” said Roger, as the inspector’s heavy footsteps echoed down the stairs, “we might as well get on with our lunch. I wish I’d taken on a small bet with him about the identity of friend Colin.”

“I shouldn’t have said there was much doubt about it,” observed Anthony, helping himself largely to salad. “It all fits in, doesn’t it?”

Two minutes later the inspector returned, an open book in his hand. He laid it down on the table-cloth beside Roger and indicated an entry in it with a large thumb.

“There you are, sir,” he said, with a commendable absence of triumph. “ ‘Russell, John Henry, Rose Cottage.’ That’s your gentleman.”

“Humph!” said Roger, a little disconcerted. “But look here,” he added, brightening, “Colin might have been a pet-name, or something like that.”

The inspector took his place at the table. “It isn’t likely,” he said, shaking out his napkin. “If it had been signed Tootles, or Fuzzy-wuzzy, it might have been a pet-name all right. But Colin! No, that doesn’t sound like a pet-name to me.”

“Then this appears to complicate matters pretty considerably,” Roger remarked with some asperity.

“On the contrary, sir,” retorted the inspector cheerfully, applying himself to his cold beef with every sign of satisfaction, “perhaps it’s going to simplify them a lot.”

Roger knew that the inspector was confidently expecting to be asked to explain this dark observation; he therefore went on with his meal in silence. Somewhat to his surprise the inspector volunteered no explanation of his own accord, his attention appearing to be entirely divided between his plate and the directory, down the columns of which he continued to run a careful thumb.

“There are two Colins in this neighbourhood,” he announced at last. “Smith, Colin, plumber, East Row, Ludmouth, and Seaford, Colin James, architect, 4 Burnt Oak Lane, Milbourne (that’s a village a couple of miles inland). Neither of them looks like our man. But I hardly expected to find him in here.”

“Why not?” asked Anthony.

“Because he’s probably a young man, living with his parents (isn’t that a young man’s note, Mr. Sheringham, eh?); in which case of course, he wouldn’t be mentioned. No, I shall have to spend the afternoon making enquiries. In the meantime, I’d be much obliged if you two gentlemen would not say anything about this. I stretched a point in showing you what was on that paper, and I want you to reciprocate by keeping quiet about it. I don’t want anybody told, you understand,” he added, with a significant look at Anthony; “male or female! You can promise me that, can’t you?”

“Naturally,” Roger said with a slight smile.

“Of course,” Anthony said stiffly.

“Then that’s all right,” observed the inspector with great heartiness. “I shan’t be able to do anything until my man comes down with the original document, of course; but he ought to be here any time now. And by the way,” he added to Roger, “it may interest you to hear that I’m officially in charge of the case now. I got my authorisation from headquarters this morning.”

Roger picked up his cue. “I’ll mention that in my report to-night, Inspector.”

“Well, you can if you want to, sir, of course,” said the inspector with an air of innocent surprise.

As if by tacit agreement, the talk for the rest of the meal turned upon general topics.

As soon as his pipe was alight the inspector rose to go. Roger waited until he had left the room, then rose from his chair and darted in his wake, closing the sitting-room door behind him.

“Inspector,” he said in a low voice, as he caught him up on the landing, “there’s one question I must ask you. Are you intending to arrest Miss Cross?”

The inspector looked at him quizzically. “Are you speaking as a newspaper-man or as a friend of the lady’s, sir?”

“Neither. As Roger Sheringham, private and inquisitive citizen.”

“Well,” the inspector said slowly, “to a newspaper-man I should answer, ‘Don’t ask me leading questions’; to a friend of the lady’s, ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about’; and to Mr. Sheringham, private citizen and personal friend of my own, if I may say so, ‘No, I’m not!’ ”

“Ah!”

“For one thing, you see,” the inspector added with a smile, “the evidence against her isn’t quite complete yet.”

“But look here, you don’t mean to say you still think that she may have⸺”

The inspector waved aside the awkward question with a large hand. “I’m not going to say what I think about that, even to you, Mr. Sheringham. But one word of warning I will give you, to pass on to your cousin or not as you think fit—things aren’t always what they seem.”

“Ah!” Roger observed. “In other words, I suppose, ladies strongly under suspicion on circumstantial evidence aren’t necessarily guilty after all. Is that what you mean?”

“Well, sir,” replied the inspector, who seemed not a little pleased with his conundrum, “that’s all I’ve got to say. What I mean, you must decide for yourself.”

“Inspector, you’re hopeless!” Roger laughed, turning back to the sitting-room.

Anthony was brooding darkly over his empty cheese-plate.

“I say, Roger,” he said at once, looking up, “does that damned inspector still think that Margaret had anything to do with it?”

“No, I don’t imagine so, really. He may, but I’m more inclined to think that he’s pulling our legs about her—yours especially. And you are a bit of a trout over Margaret, aren’t you, Anthony? You rise to any fly that he dangles over you.”

Anthony made a non-committal growling sound, but said nothing. Roger began to pace the little room with restless steps.

“Dash that infernal letter!” he burst out a few minutes later. “There’s no doubt that it does complicate matters most awkwardly. Though it doesn’t rule out my bright solution of before lunch by any means. The inspector ought to have seen that. What she was doing with friend Colin doesn’t affect in the slightest degree the bad blood between her and Mrs. Russell. We mustn’t get confused by issues that lie outside the main chance.”

There was another pause.

“I must see Margaret!” Roger announced suddenly, stopping short in his stride. “You muttered something this morning about having arranged a meeting. For when?”

“Well, we didn’t actually arrange anything,” Anthony replied with preternatural innocence. “She happened to say that she’d probably be going out to that ledge this afternoon about three o’clock with a book, and I just mentioned that⸺”

“Cease your puling!” Roger interrupted rudely. “It’s a quarter to three now. Get your hat and come along.”

Five minutes later they were walking briskly up the rise from the road to the top of the cliffs, the wind blowing coolly about their heads. It is perhaps not uninteresting to note in passing that Anthony wore a hat and Roger did not. And one might go on to add at the same time that Anthony’s grey flannel trousers were faultlessly creased, while in Roger’s not a vestige of a crease could be seen. From this sort of thing the keen psychologist draws any number of interesting deductions.

“I say, you don’t mind me coming along, Anthony, do you?” Roger was asking with an appearance of great anxiety.

“Of course I don’t. Why should I?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t there some old saying about the difference between a couple and a trio in connection with company? I mean⸺”

“Oh, dry up, for Heaven’s sake! You’re not funny, Roger.”

“That,” Roger maintained firmly, “is a matter of opinion. Well, let us talk very seriously about gulls. There are no less than seven hundred and forty distinct species of gulls known to the entomologist, of which one hundred and eighty-two may be found by the intrepid explorer around the rocky coasts of these Islands. Perhaps the most common variety is the Patum Perperium, or Black-hearted Wombat, which may be distinguished by⸺”

“What are you talking about?” demanded his bewildered listener.

“Gulls, Anthony,” replied Roger, and went on doing so with singular ardour right up to the ledge itself.

“Hullo, Margaret,” he greeted its occupant pleasantly. “Anthony and I have been talking about gulls. Do you think you could invite us to tea this afternoon with you?”

“To tea? Whatever for?”

“Well, it’s such a long way back to our own. Yours is so much easier.”

“Don’t take any notice of him, Margaret,” Anthony advised. “He’s only being funny. He’s been funny ever since we left the Crown.”

“Yes, and about gulls, too,” Roger added with pride. “Extraordinarily difficult things to be funny about, as you’ll readily understand. But I’m quite serious about tea, Margaret. I want to have a chance of studying the occupants of your household at close quarters.”

“Oh, I see. But why?”

“No particular reason, except that I ought to have as close a view as possible of everybody mixed up with the case. And I must confess that I’m rather interested to have a look at this doctor-man of yours; he sounds interesting. Can it be done?”

The girl wrinkled her brow. “Ye-es, I should think so. Yes, of course it can! I’m keeping house for the time being, you know. I’ll just take you in with me, and that’s all there’ll be to it.”

“Good! You needn’t say what we are or anything about us. Just introduce us as two friends of yours who are staying down here.”

“Yes, I understand, Miss Williamson will be there, of course, but I don’t know about George; as often as not he has a tray sent into the laboratory for him. Still, you can take the chance.”

“Thanks, we will,” Roger said, descending to the little ledge. “And now, as we’ve got an hour or so to spare, I propose that we devote it to an elevating discussion upon some subject as remote as possible from the business in hand. How say you, my children?”

“Right!” agreed Anthony, who had taken the opportunity of propping himself with his back to the rock as near as possible to Margaret’s side as was consistent with the convention that a young man shall not sit directly on top of a young woman to whom he is not engaged. “Anything you like—except gulls!”

During the next excellent hour Roger, lying on his back in the shade a couple of yards away and staring up into the blue sky, could not possibly have seen a tentative hand emerge from Anthony’s pocket, grope about the turf in an apparently aimless way for at least ten minutes and then pluck up the courage at last to fasten firmly upon another, and very much smaller, hand which had been lying quite still by its owner’s side the whole time. He could not possibly have seen—but he quite definitely knew all about it.

Chapter X.
Tea, China and Young Love

“By the way, I ought to warn you. Miss Williamson isn’t exactly an ordinary secretary: she’s rather an important person. She does any secretarial work George wants, of course, which is very little, but her chief job is to help him in the laboratory. She took a science degree at Cambridge—and I must say,” Margaret added with a little laugh, “she looks it.”

It was nearly half-past four, and the three of them were sitting in Dr. Vane’s drawing-room, waiting for tea and for the other members of the household. Margaret and Anthony showed distinct signs of nervousness, though for what exact reason was not really apparent to either of them; Roger was as collected as ever. The five-odd minutes which had elapsed since they entered the room had been spent happily by him in examining with no little interest the really fine collection of china which filled two large glass-fronted cabinets and overflowed on to two or three shelves and, in the case of a few plates, even the walls themselves. Roger’s knowledge of china was not a large one, but he had a sufficiently good smattering to enable him to talk intelligently on the subject with a collector.

“Don’t be catty, Margaret,” he said now, examining a Dresden ornament depicting four persons at a whist-table, the lace of the little ladies’ gowns and of the miniature fans they fluttered being picked out with almost incredible daintiness. “I say, surely your cousin never amassed this collection, did she?”

“No. It’s George’s. The only hobby he’s got apart from his test-tubes and things. Why?”

“I thought it didn’t seem to fit in very well with the synopsis you gave me of the lady’s character. Anyhow, that’s all to the good; I’ll congratulate George on his collection and he’ll love me like a brother. I’ve met these china-maniacs before and I think I know how to deal with them.”

“You’re perfectly right,” Margaret smiled. “It’s certainly the shortest cut to George’s heart.”

“And before George is much older he’s going to hear a few things about china,” Anthony was beginning with heavy sarcasm, when the opening of the drawing-room door cut him short.

Of the two people who entered the room the next moment, it is hard to say which presented the more striking figure. Miss Williamson, who preceded her employer, would have drawn attention in any company. She was a tall, angular woman, with high cheek-bones and close-cropped fair hair, and the pince-nez she wore seemed to add emphasis to the darting looks of her cold, slightly prominent blue eyes. Her clothes were neat to the point of severity and there was that air of brisk efficiency about her which is likely to reduce the ordinary man to a condition of tongue-tied uneasiness when he encounters it in a strange female, it clashes so persistently with all his ideas of what the word “feminine” ought to convey. Yet with it all the secretary was not one of those distressing creatures, a mannish woman; and though by no means beautiful, she was not in a way unhandsome. “A distinct personality here,” Roger told himself before his eyes had been resting longer than two seconds upon her.

Dr. Vane, who followed close on her heels, bore out the picture Margaret had already given—a great hulking man, six feet two inches tall at least, with an enormous black beard and a stern eye, yet with a gentleness and delicacy of movement which was in striking contrast with the rugged strength of his appearance; as he closed the door behind him, one could scarcely hear it meet the lintel, so restrained was his action.

Margaret jumped to her feet as the two entered.

“Oh, George, these are two friends of mine, Mr. Sheringham and Mr. Walton,” she said, not without confusion. “They called in to see me, not knowing about—about⸺”

“I am very glad for you to welcome your friends here, Margaret,” the doctor said with grave courteousness. “It is after all the very least I can do now that you are so kindly looking after things here for me.”

Margaret thanked him with a quick smile, and introduced the two to Miss Williamson. Bows were exchanged, and the latter rang the bell for tea.

“We’ve only got ten minutes, Margaret,” she said briskly. “In the middle of something rather important, and it was as much as I could do to drag George in here at all.”

The two girls and Anthony formed a group by the window, and Roger approached Dr. Vane.

“A magnificent collection of china you’ve got here, doctor,” he said easily. “I’ve been admiring it ever since I came in. I’ve never seen finer Spode in my life than those bits over there.”

Into the doctor’s stern eye leapt the light of the collector who hears his collection praised, which is much the same as that of the mother who is told that her infant possesses her own nose. “You are interested in china, Mr. Sheringham?”

“I’m crazy about it,” returned Roger untruthfully.

The rest simply followed.

With the arrival of tea the conversation became more general, and Roger was able to allow the novelist in him to rise to the surface and survey this truly piquant situation. Here was a man whose wife only three days ago had met with a violent death in circumstances which were, to say the least of it, suspicious, receiving his tea-cup from the hands of a young and pretty girl who, as he could hardly fail to realise after Inspector Moresby’s visit, had come very closely under the notice of the police in connection with the same violent death. Yet the relations between the two, which might have been expected to be almost intolerable, did not appear, on the surface at any rate, to be even so much as strange. Margaret was perfectly natural; Dr. Vane courteous, gentle and mildly affectionate. The more Roger watched, the more he marvelled. Unconventional though he was in literature as in life, he would hardly have dared to make use of such a situation for one of his books; it would have been voted too wildly improbable.

The talk, which had shifted for a few minutes to trifles, showed a tendency to revert, so far as Dr. Vane was concerned, to his former topic. Somewhat to Roger’s surprise, Miss Williamson joined in as the doctor warmed again to his theme, even going so far as to put him right once or twice upon small points of detail.

“You’re an enthusiast too, then?” Roger could not help asking her.

“Now, yes,” she replied. “When I first came I knew nothing about it at all, but George showed me the way and now I’m as much under the spell even as he is.”

“And know a good deal more about it, Mary, don’t you?” commented the doctor, with the first signs of a smile he had yet displayed. “Another case of the pupil and the master, I’m afraid, Mr. Sheringham,” he added to Roger, with an air of mock disgust.

“Oh, nonsense, George!” Miss Williamson laughed. “I only wish I did. You’ve got a great deal to teach me yet, I fear.”

Fortunately it was clear that Dr. Vane had no idea of the identity of his visitor, as also had not Miss Williamson (indeed, neither of them looked the sort of person who might be expected to read the Courier), so that no suspicion as to the reason of his call could occur to either of them. Roger, content enough with the success of his tactics, continued to play the safe card of china; while Margaret and Anthony, to neither of whom china contained the least interest, were reduced for the most part to sitting and looking at each other in silence. They seemed perfectly content with this state of affairs.

When, half-an-hour later instead of ten minutes, Miss Williamson issued her third ultimatum which had the effect of bringing the doctor to his feet at last, Roger felt he had had enough of china to last him for several years. Dr. Vane, however, could not have felt the same, for he shook his visitor warmly by the hand and, having ascertained that he and Anthony expected to be staying several days in Ludmouth, invited both of them to supper on the following Sunday, brushing aside Roger’s half-hearted attempts at a refusal with a firmness that was almost genial.

Roger sank back into his chair as the door closed behind them and fanned himself with a limp hand. “Did I happen to hear anyone mention the word china just now?” he asked feebly.

“Well?” Margaret demanded. “What did you think of them?”

“What did I think?” Roger repeated, speaking for the moment from the fullness of his heart. “I think that within a year or so the wedding-bells will be heard once more in Ludmouth.”

“What?” cried Anthony and Margaret together.

Roger realised that he had spoken unguardedly, but it was too late to withdraw his words. “I think,” he said more carefully, “that George and that lady will make a match of it.”

“She’s head over heels in love with him,” Margaret nodded. “I’ve known that for years. But I didn’t expect you to notice it.”

“That’s my business, fair lady,” Roger returned sweetly.

“You saw she was keen on him?” Anthony asked in astonishment. “How on earth did you do that?”

“For the answer to this question, refer to my last remark,” Roger murmured. “Alternative answer—china!”

“Yes, that rather gave it away,” Margaret agreed. “Especially after what I’d said before. Do you remember?”

“It was that I was thinking of,” Roger laughed.

Anthony looked from one to the other. “What are you two talking about?” he appealed.

“Nothing that you’d understand, little boy,” said Roger kindly. “Run away and play with the blind-tassel. I like your doctor-man, Margaret.”

“George? Yes, he’s a dear, isn’t he? Though it took me ever so much longer to know him than it seems to have taken you. And he liked you too. I’ve never known him to ask anyone to supper on such a short acquaintance.”

“I am rather likable,” Roger admitted.

The conversation then became purely frivolous.

Having achieved the object with which he had set out, Roger was anxious to talk over its results with Anthony—a thing that could hardly be done in this case in the presence of Margaret. It was not long before he began to show signs of readiness to embark on the process of leave-taking. He ostentatiously arranged a meeting with Margaret the next morning “just in case,” he rose to his feet, hovered near the door, sat down and rose again, and he said that they must be going at least half-a-dozen times over, each time more as if he meant it than before. At this point he realised that nothing short of heroic measures would be likely to shift Anthony from that drawing-room.

Roger was not the person to shirk heroic measures when nothing short of heroic measures was required. “Anthony,” he said with decision, “I don’t think you realise that we’re out-staying our welcome. I’ve been trying to hint gently for the last quarter-of-an-hour that it’s time we were going. Margaret’s sure to have lots to do, you know.”

“But I haven’t, Roger,” Margaret objected. “Nothing.”

“Yes, you have,” Roger said firmly. “Lots. Come on, Anthony.”

“No, really I haven’t. Nothing at all.”

“Well, I have. Come on, Anthony!”

This time Anthony came.

Margaret said good-bye to them in the drawing-room, and from the hall Anthony had to go back to tell her something he’d forgotten. Roger waited five minutes; then he followed and dug Anthony out again. Margaret came out into the hall with them and said good-bye there, and from half-way down the drive Anthony had to go back for his stick. Roger waited ten minutes, then he followed once more, running the culprit to earth again in the drawing-room.

“Anthony, I think we ought to be going now,” he said. “Job speaking. Anthony, I think we ought to be going now. Have you remembered to say all you’d forgotten to remember to say? Have you your stick, your hat, your shoes, your tie-pin, your spectacles and your lace cap? Anthony, I think we ought to be going. Margaret, perhaps if you were to go and immure yourself in your bedroom or the bathroom or the linen-cupboard or any other suitable place of immurement, I think Anthony might be induced in despair to⸺”

“Roger, I hate you!” Margaret gasped in a stifled voice, hurrying with burning cheeks out of the room.

“Portrait of a lady on her way to immurement,” murmured Roger thoughtfully, gazing after her flying figure.

“Damn you, Roger!” spluttered the indignant Anthony, no less puce. “What the deuce do you want to go and⸺”

“Anthony, I think it’s time we were going,” Roger pointed out gently.

This time Anthony really did go, not only out of the house but right down the drive, over the road and on to the cliffs.

Roger gave him ten minutes to work off steam and simmer down again; then he got on with the business in hand.

“Now, look here, Anthony, drop all that and tell me this—what deductions did you draw at our little tea-party?”

“What deductions?” Anthony said a little reluctantly. “I don’t know that I drew any. Did you?”

“One or two. That the lady we had the pleasure of meeting wouldn’t be at all averse to becoming Mrs. Vane now that the post is vacant, for one thing.”

“How on earth could you tell that, Roger?”

“It was sticking out in lumps all over her for anybody who had the eyes to see. In fact it seemed to me that she wasn’t even troubling to hide it. But was the doctor-man equally minded? Now that I’m not nearly so sure about.”

“You think he isn’t?”

“No, I don’t say that for a minute. What I do say is that he’s very much better at hiding his feelings. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking at all, except that he’s fond of Margaret and anxious to show it. The only really significant thing about him was the fact of his asking us to supper like that.”

“You mean only four or five days after his wife’s death?”

“Exactly. Now what does that show?”

“That he’s not any too cut up about it.”

“Precisely. In other words, I should say, he knew his wife’s true character. And not being sorry she’s dead, he’s not going to pretend that he is; that’s how the man strikes me.”

“Yes,” Anthony said slowly. “I think I agree with you.”

“Nor is the woman. That was obvious enough. He may even be taking his cue from her. She’s without doubt the stronger character of the two.”

“Is she?”

“Oh, yes. Then there’s another thing. Does the woman know Mrs. Vane’s real character too? On the whole I should be inclined to say yes. She’s pretty sharp.”

“That might even have started her being keen on him,” Anthony pointed out; “if she really is. I mean, it must have been a pretty ghastly sight to see a decent chap like that tied up to a little rotter of a woman, mustn’t it?”

“That’s a very shrewd idea,” Roger agreed. “Yes, I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if that isn’t how things did happen. Gradually, of course; these things always do. I’m not hinting that there was an intrigue between them or anything like that; I don’t for a moment think there was. In fact, I shouldn’t be surprised if the doctor hasn’t got the least idea about her feelings even now. But he’ll find himself marrying her one day for all that. She’s a woman of unusually strong mind and she’s made it up on that particular point all right, I wouldn’t mind betting.”

“She had large feet,” said Anthony quite irrelevantly.

“So have a number of people. You, for instance. Did it strike you whether she liked Margaret?”

“She’d be a fool if she didn’t,” said Anthony with complete conviction.

“Do refrain from being maudlin, Anthony. Personally, I thought she didn’t. She was inclined to be peremptory and not a little bossy, did you notice? But jealousy would quite well account for that. After all, Margaret is young and pretty and she’s neither. Did anything else strike you about Dr. Vane? About his character, or anything like that?”

Anthony considered. “I should think he’s probably got the very devil of a temper,” he decided.

“You take the words out of my mouth. That’s precisely what struck me. I don’t suppose it has any significance at all, but it’s a point that we might well keep before us. Dr. Vane has the very devil of a temper. Now, about that invitation, I don’t— Hullo! Isn’t that the inspector on the road? Yes, it is; I’d know that bulky form anywhere. Let’s cut across and see if he’s got any news. By the way, congratulations, Anthony.”

“What on?”

“Not saying anything to Margaret about friend Colin’s letter. A most admirable piece of self-restraint.”

A lusty hail from Roger brought the inspector to a standstill. He halted and waited for them to catch up with him.

“It’s a hot day for running about, gentlemen,” he greeted them mopping his large red face. “Uncommonly hot.”

“You’re right, Inspector. And has virtue brought its own reward, or have you got any news?”

“I have got some news, sir, I’m glad to say. I’ve succeeded in locating the gentleman who wrote that letter. Been a bit of a job, but I’m pretty sure I’ve found him this time.”

“You have, have you? I say, that’s good! Who is he?”

“Gentleman by the name of Colin Woodthorpe; son of a Sir Henry Woodthorpe who’s got a big place between here and Sandsea. I thought of going round to call on him this evening.”

“Good,” said Roger promptly. “May I come?”

“It’s a bit irregular, sir.”

“I know it is. Frightfully irregular. But you do owe me something over the letter, don’t you?”

“Very well, sir,” the inspector grinned. “I can see you’re determined to come, so I suppose I shall have to take you with me. But it’ll have to be as that personal friend of mine, mind, not as a newspaper-man.”

“On my oath!” said Roger piously. “In any case I wouldn’t— Oh, Heavens, talk hard and don’t let me be buttonholed. This is the most persistent talker in the south of England coming along the road toward us.”

“When you’re in the north, Roger,” Anthony amended humorously.

“His name is the Rev. Samuel Meadows,” Roger went on to the inspector. “He caught me on the cliffs this morning and held me for half-an-hour by the clock. The Ancient Mariner couldn’t make a match of it with him.”

In some curiosity the other two watched the little clerical figure approach. He smiled benignly as he recognised Roger and touched the wide brim of his hat in a somewhat expansive gesture, but made no attempt to speak.

“Saved!” Roger murmured dramatically as they passed him. “Friends, I thank you!”

But the inspector did not smile. His brow was corrugated and he was tugging at his long-suffering moustache.

“Now, where the dickens,” he remarked very thoughtfully to his boots, “have I seen that face before?”

Chapter XI.
Inspector Moresby Conducts an Interview

Clouston Hall, the home of Sir Henry and Lady Woodthorpe, was a stolidly built Georgian house, with the usual aspect of square solidity so happily typical of its period. It stood in its own grounds of nine or ten acres, and as Roger and the inspector made their way up the trim drive the setting sun was burnishing the mellow brick of its front to a deeper red and slanting over the velvety expanse of lawn, unprofaned by tennis nets or chalk lines, which faced it across the broad carriage-sweep.

“By Jove!” Roger exclaimed softly. “It’s a fine picture, isn’t it? There’s something about these big Georgian country houses, you know, Inspector, that does stir the imagination. Can’t you just see that carriage-sweep stiff with huntsmen in red coats and jolly red faces, all engulfing a couple of gallons of home-brew before going off to give Reynard the run of his life?”

“It’s a tidy bit of property,” the inspector agreed. “But they’re child’s-play for burglars, these old houses are.” To every man his own point of view.

“I wonder what it is that always makes one associate Georgian houses with hunting scenes,” Roger mused. “Must be the red, I suppose. Red brick, red coats, red faces. Yes, red seems to be the key-colour of the times. What would Rowlandson have done if there’d been no red on his palette? He’d have had to draw people without any noses at all.”

They reached the white porch, and the inspector placed a large thumb over the un-Georgian electric bell-push. “You’ll remember, Mr. Sheringham, won’t you?” he said half apologetically. “We’re here on official business, and it’s me who’s got to do all the talking.”

“Did I or did I not give you my solemn word, Inspector?” queried Roger in hurt tones. “Besides, I would have you know that at school my nickname was ‘Oyster.’ ‘Oyster Sheringham,’ I was invariably called.”

“There’s often an untrue word spoken in jest,” murmured the inspector with a face of preternatural innocence.

Before Roger could reply suitably the door was opened by a large and fish-like butler.

There are few men in this country who can remain their normal selves in face of a truly fish-like specimen of the English butler. Roger’s admiration of his companion increased almost visibly as he watched him confront this monumental dolphin (that was the word which rose unbidden into Roger’s mind the moment the door opened) without so much as a blench.

“I want to see Mr. Colin Woodthorpe,” said the inspector heartily, in a voice free from the slightest tremor. “Is he at home?”

“I will enquire, sir,” returned the dolphin coldly, eyeing their dusty appearance with obvious pain, and made as if to close the door. “Would you care to leave your name?”

The inspector placed a large foot in the aperture. “You needn’t put on any of those frills with me,” he said with the utmost cheerfulness. “You know whether the gentleman I want to see is at home or not.” He paused and looked the other in the eye. “Is he?” he shot out with startling abruptness.

Roger watched the dolphin’s reaction to this mode of attack with some interest. His gills opened and closed rapidly, and a look of distinct alarm appeared in his pale sandy eyes. Roger had never seen an alarmed butler before, and he certainly never expected to see one again.

“He—he was in to dinner, sir,” gasped the dolphin, almost before he knew what he was doing.

“Ha!” observed the inspector, evidently satisfied. “Then you cut along, my man, and tell him that Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard would like a word or two with him. And you needn’t shout it out for all the rest of the world to hear, understand?” It appeared that the dolphin understood. “Very well. Now show us somewhere where we can wait.”

The chastened dolphin led them into a small room on the left of the big hall, the gun-room. As the door closed behind him, Roger seized the inspector’s hand and wrung it reverently. “Now I see how you can arrest seventeen armed criminals in the most dangerous dive in Limehouse with nothing but a walking-stick and a safety-pin,” he said in awe-struck tones. “ ‘My man!’ And yet the heavens remain intact!”

“I never stand nonsense from butlers,” remarked the inspector modestly.

Roger shielded his eyes and groaned.

Colin Woodthorpe, who made his appearance a couple of minutes later, proved to be a pleasant-looking young man of some five- or six-and-twenty, with fair hair and a sanguine complexion, big and sturdy; he was wearing a dinner-jacket, but Roger instinctively saw him in gaiters and riding-breeches. He was perfectly self-possessed.

“Inspector Moresby?” he asked with a little smile, picking out Roger’s companion without hesitation.

“That’s me, sir,” assented the inspector in his usual genial tones. “Sorry to bother you, but duty’s duty, as you know. I hope that butler of yours didn’t make too much pother. I told him not to. Scotland Yard has a nasty sound in the ears of the old people, I know.”

“Oh, no,” laughed the young man. “As a matter of fact I was alone, though it was very kind of you to think of warning him. Well, what’s it all about, Inspector? Sit down, won’t you? Cigarette?”

“Well, thank you, sir,” The inspector helped himself to a cigarette from the other’s case and disposed his bulk in a comfortable leather-covered armchair. Roger followed suit.

As the young man sat down, the inspector edged his chair round so as to be able to look him directly in the face. “As I said, sir, I’m sorry to bother you, but it’s this matter of Mrs. Vane’s death I’m looking into.” He paused significantly.

Roger could have sworn that a look of apprehension flitted for an instant across the young man’s face, but his voice when he spoke after only a second’s hesitation was perfectly under control.

“Oh, yes?” he said easily (almost too easily, Roger felt). “And why have you come to me?”

The inspector’s hand shot out toward him, holding the piece of paper he had already drawn from his pocket. “To ask you to explain this, sir, if you please,” he said very much more brusquely.

Colin Woodthorpe looked at the paper curiously; then, as his brain took in the significance of the words written upon it he flushed deeply. “Where—how did you get hold of this?” he asked in a voice that was none too steady.

The inspector explained briefly that the original had been found among the rocks close to where the body was lying. “I want you to explain it, if you please, sir,” he concluded. “I need not point out to you its importance as far as we are concerned. You ask the lady to meet you, and on the very day you arrange she meets her death. If you kept the appointment, it seems to us that you ought to be able to shed some light on that death. I need hardly ask you whether you did keep it?”

The young man had recovered himself to some extent. He frowned and crossed his legs. “Look here, I don’t understand this. I thought Mrs. Vane’s death was an accident. They’ve had the inquest, and that was the verdict. Why are you ‘looking into it,’ as you say?”

“Well, sir,” the inspector returned in his usual cheerful tones, “I came here to ask questions, not to answer them. Still, I don’t mind answering that one. The fact of the matter is that we’re not at all sure that Mrs. Vane’s death was an accident.”

There was no doubt that the young man was genuinely startled. “Good Heavens!” he cried. “What on earth do you mean? What else could it be?”

The inspector looked at him quizzically. “Well—it might have been suicide, mightn’t it?” he said slowly.

“Suicide!” Woodthorpe sat up with a jerk and his rosy face paled. “You don’t—you don’t really mean to say you think it might have been, Inspector?”

“Have you any particular reason for thinking it might have been, sir?” the inspector shot out.

The young man sat back in his chair again, moistening his lips with a quick movement of his tongue. “No, of course not,” he muttered. “I don’t understand.”

“Oh, yes, you do, sir,” retorted the inspector grimly. “Now look here, Mr. Woodthorpe,” he went on in a more kindly voice. “I want you to put down your cards on the table and tell me the whole story. Believe me, it’s far and away the best thing to do, from your point of view as well as ours. It’s bound to come out in the end you know. And⸺”

Woodthorpe had risen to his feet. “Excuse me, Inspector,” he interrupted stiffly, “I must repeat that I don’t understand you. I have nothing to tell you. Is that all you wished to see me about?”

He walked toward the door as if inviting the other to rise and take his departure, but the inspector blandly ignored the hint.

“Of course I know what you’re feeling, sir,” he remarked. “You’re trying to shield the lady’s reputation, I know that. Well, the best way you can do so is to answer my questions. I’ve got to get my information, and if I get it from you we may be able to keep it between ourselves; if you force me to try other sources, I’m afraid there’s no hope of keeping it dark. At present (if you haven’t given yourselves away elsewhere) there’s nobody but you and us who knows that you were Mrs. Vane’s lover.”

Woodthorpe looked at him steadily. “Inspector,” he said slowly, “may I say that you are being offensive?”

“Can’t help that, sir, I’m afraid,” replied the inspector cheerily. “And if you’re not going to be open with me, I daresay you’ll find me more offensive still. And you can’t bluff me, sir, you know. Not that I blame you for trying; I’d do the same myself for a lady I’d got into a mess with.” The inspector’s choice of words may not have been fortunate, but his sentiment was admirable. “Still, you’ve given yourself away too much in this note, you know, sir—besides what I’ve been able to find out elsewhere. For instance, I know that Mrs. Vane had been your mistress for some little time, that you’d got tired of her and were trying to break with her, and that she was threatening you if you did. I know all the essentials, you see. It’s only a few details I want you to tell me, and I’d much rather have them from you than from anybody else.”

The young man had put up a good fight, but it was plain to Roger that he now accepted defeat. Indeed, it was difficult to see what else he could do. Dropping back into his chair, he acknowledged the truth of the inspector’s words by a tacit hiatus. “If I answer your questions,” he said curtly, “will you treat what I tell you as private and confidential?”

“As far as I possibly can, sir,” the inspector promised. “It’s no wish of mine to drag out unnecessary scandals, or make things awkward which might have been better left undisturbed.”

“I can’t see what you’re driving at, in any case,” Woodthorpe said wearily, lighting another cigarette. “Mrs. Vane is dead, isn’t she? What does it matter whether her death was accident or suicide? It can’t help her to have these things raked over.”

“It’s my duty to look into it, sir,” replied the inspector primly. “Now, when I mentioned the word ‘suicide’ just now you were startled, weren’t you? Did it cross your mind that she might have killed herself because you insisted on breaking with her, and she didn’t want to let you go?”

Woodthorpe flushed. “Yes,” he admitted reluctantly. “It did.”

“Ah!” Having succeeded in impressing the young man with his own mental acuteness, the inspector proceeded to the questions of real importance. “Did you keep that appointment, sir?”

“No.” Reconciled as he now was to the necessity of being frank, Woodthorpe spoke with no hesitation or sullenness. “You were wrong about that note of mine. It’s nearly three weeks old. That appointment was for a fortnight ago last Tuesday, and I did keep it then.”

“I see.” The inspector’s voice did not show the slightest surprise at this unexpected piece of news; Roger’s face, on the contrary, betrayed the liveliest astonishment. “And where was the meeting held, sir? What, in fact, is ‘the usual place’?”

“A little cave we knew of on that ledge, quite near the place she was killed. I discovered it about a year ago; and was struck with its privacy. Anyone who didn’t know of it would never find it. The mouth is at an angle in the rock, and there’s a big boulder masking it. We’ve been in there heaps of times when people have passed by outside without spotting us.”

“How many times have you met Mrs. Vane since then?”

“Not at all. I broke with her finally at that meeting.” He shifted a little uneasily in his chair, and Roger guessed that the process of breaking had not been a simple one. “I’d like to add, by the way,” he went on a little stiffly, “that the fault for the whole thing was mine. Mrs. Vane was in no way to blame. I⸺”

“We’ll leave that for the moment, sir, if you don’t mind,” the inspector interrupted. “It’s facts I’m after, not faults. Why did you decide to break with Mrs. Vane?”

“For private reasons,” Woodthorpe replied shortly, setting his jaw and looking very obstinate indeed.

The inspector abandoned that point. “What was Mrs. Vane threatening to do if you broke with her?” he asked bluntly.

“Tell her husband,” replied the other, no less bluntly.

The inspector whistled. “Whew! The whole story?”

“The whole story.”

“But that would have meant divorce!”

“She said she didn’t mind about that.”

“Humph!” The inspector turned this surprising information over in his mind. “How long had you been—well, friendly with her?” he continued, somewhat inadequately, after a short pause.

“For about a year,” replied Woodthorpe, who evidently understood what the inspector’s delicacy was intended to convey.

“Did you have many quarrels during that time?”

“About as many as other people do, I suppose.”

“Not more than you might expect to have with any other woman?”

“Well—perhaps a few more,” Woodthorpe admitted awkwardly.

Frantic signs from Roger conveyed the information to the inspector that his companion was anxious to put a question of his own. As the conversation had taken a psychological turn, the inspector saw no harm in graciously according permission.

“Did you find that you had cause as time went on very considerably to modify your original estimate of the lady’s character?” Roger asked, choosing his words with some care.

Woodthorpe shot him a grateful look. “Yes,” he said instantly. “I did.”

Roger held him with a thoughtful eye. “Would you call her,” he said slowly, “an imprudent woman?”

Woodthorpe hesitated. “I don’t know. In some things, damnably! In others, very much the reverse.”

Roger nodded as if satisfied. “Yes, that’s just what I imagined.—All right, carry on, Inspector. Sorry to have interrupted you.”

Chapter XII.
Real Bad Blood

“Well?” Roger asked, as the two of them walked down the drive again half-an-hour or so later. “Well, what did you make of that young man, Inspector?”

“A very nice young gentleman, I thought,” returned the inspector guardedly. “What did you, Mr. Sheringham, sir?”

“I thought the same as you,” Roger replied innocently.

“Um!” observed the inspector.

There was a little silence.

“You brought out your deductions from the wording of that note very pat and cleverly,” Roger remarked.

“Ah!” said the inspector.

There was another little silence.

“Well, I’m quite sure he knows nothing about it,” Roger burst out.

The inspector bestowed a surreptitious grin on a small rambling rose. “Are you, sir?” he said. Mr. Roger Sheringham was perhaps not the only psychologist walking down the drive of Clouston Hall at that moment.

“Aren’t you, Inspector?” Roger demanded point-blank.

“Um!” replied the inspector carefully.

“If he does, he’s a better actor than ever I’ve met before,” said Roger.

“I was watching him closely, and I’m convinced his surprise was genuine,” said Roger.

“He certainly believed her death had been accidental,” said Roger.

“I’ll stake my life he knows nothing about it,” said Roger defiantly.

“Will you, sir?” queried the inspector blandly. “Well, well!”

Roger cut viciously with his stick at an inoffensive daisy.

There was another little silence.

They turned out of the drive and began to tramp along the dusty highroad.

“Still,” said Roger cunningly, “we got some extraordinarily valuable information out of him, didn’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” said the inspector.

“Which goes some way to confirm a rather interesting new theory of my own,” said Roger, still more cunningly.

“Ah!” said the inspector.

Roger began to whistle.

“By the way,” said the inspector very airily, “what exactly was the significance of that question you put to him about Mrs. Vane being an imprudent woman, sir? Why ‘imprudent’?”

“Um!” said Roger.

In this way the time passed pleasantly till they returned to their inn. An impartial spectator would probably have given it as his opinion by that time that the honours were even, with, if anything, a slight bias in favour of the inspector. Roger retired to telephone his report through to London, stretching his meagre amount of straw into as many bricks as possible, and the inspector disappeared altogether, presumably to chew over the cud of his mission. Anthony was not in the inn at all.

Returning from the telephone, Roger looked into the little bar-parlour; three yokels and a dog were there. He looked into their private sitting-room; nobody was there. He looked into each of their bedrooms; nobody was there either. Then he took up his station outside Inspector Moresby’s bedroom, laid back his head, and proceeded to give a creditable imitation of a bloodhound baying the moon. The effect was almost instantaneous.

“Good Heavens!” exclaimed the startled inspector, emerging precipitately in his shirt-sleeves. “Was—was that you, Mr. Sheringham?”

“It was,” said Roger, pleased. “Did you like it?”

“I did not,” replied the inspector with decision. “Are you often taken that way, sir?”

“Only when I’m feeling very chatty, and nobody will talk to me or occasionally when I’ve been trying to thought-read, and nobody will tell me whether I’m right or wrong. Otherwise, hardly at all.”

The inspector laughed. “Very well, sir. I guess I have been trying your patience a bit. But now you’ve got that telephone business done with, perhaps we might have a chat.”

“Distrustful lot of men, the police,” Roger murmured. “Disgustingly. Well, what about a visit to the sitting-room? That bottle of whisky isn’t nearly finished, you know.”

“I’ll be with you in half-a-minute, sir,” said the inspector quite briskly.

Roger went on ahead and mixed two drinks, one stiff, one so stiff as to be almost rigid. The inspector, smacking his lips over the latter two minutes later, remarked regretfully that that was good stuff for nowadays, that was, but it was a pity they filled the bottles half up with water in these times before the stuff ever got into a glass at all. It is a hard business, trying to loosen a Scotland Yard Inspector’s tongue.

“Well, now,” said Roger, pulling himself together and settling down more comfortably in his chair. “Well, now, Inspector, what about it all? If you feel a little more disposed to be confidential, isn’t this rather a good opportunity to review the case as it stands at present? I’m inclined to think it is.”

The inspector set down his glass and wiped his moustache. “You mean, while there’s only two of us to do the discussing instead of three?” he asked with a large wink.

“Exactly. My cousin’s outlook is—well, not altogether unprejudiced.”

“And is yours, sir?” asked the inspector shrewdly.

Roger laughed. “A palpable hit. Well, I certainly do not think the young lady in whom you’ve been taking so much interest has anything to do with it, I must confess. In fact, I’ll go further and say that I’ve absolutely made up my mind on the point.”

“And yet the evidence points more conclusively to her than to anybody else,” remarked the inspector mildly.

“Oh, no doubt. But evidence can be faked, can’t it? And you yourself were pointing out to me only a few hours ago that things aren’t always what they seem.”

“Was I, now?” queried the inspector, with an air of gentle surprise.

“Oh, Inspector, don’t start fencing with me again!” Roger implored. “I’ve given you a perfectly good drink, I’m prepared to hand over to you all my startling and original ideas—do try to be human!”

“Well, Mr. Sheringham, what is it you want to discuss?” asked the inspector, evidently trying hard to be human.

“Everything!” returned Roger largely. “Our interview just now; my idea about Mrs. Russell; your suspicions of Miss Cross (if you really have suspicions, and aren’t just pulling my leg)—everything!”

“Very well, sir,” said the inspector equably. “Where shall we start?”

“Well, we began just now with Miss Cross. I want to add a word to the very dogmatic statement I made, though it’s not really necessary. You know, of course, why I’m so convinced she had nothing to do with it?”

“Well, I won’t make you wild by saying ‘because she’s an uncommonly pretty girl,’ ” the inspector smiled. “I’ll wrap it up a bit more and say ‘because you think she couldn’t commit a murder to save her life.’ ”

“That’s right,” Roger nodded. “In other words, for overwhelmingly psychological reasons. If that girl isn’t as transparently straight as they make ’em, may I never call myself a judge of character again!”

“She is uncommonly pretty, I must say,” remarked the inspector non-committally.

Roger disregarded the irrelevance. “You must have to make use of psychology in your business, Inspector, and continual use too. Every detective must be a psychologist, whether he knows it or not. Don’t all your instincts tell you that girl’s as innocent—I don’t mean merely of this crime, but innocent-minded—as you’d wish any daughter of your own to be?”

The inspector tugged at his moustache. “We detectives may have to know a bit about psychology, as you say, sir; I’m not disputing that. But it’s our business to deal in facts, not fancies; and the thing we’ve got to pay most attention to is evidence. And in nine cases out of ten I’ll back evidence (even purely circumstantial evidence like this) against all the psychology in the world.”

Roger smiled. “The professional point of view, as opposed to the amateur. Well, naturally I don’t agree with you, and as I said, I’m not at all sure that you aren’t pulling my leg about Miss Cross all the time. Let’s go on to that interview of ours this evening. I needn’t ask you whether you saw that Master Colin wasn’t being altogether as frank with us as he might have been. He was keeping something back, wasn’t he?”

“He was, sir,” the inspector agreed cheerfully. “His real reason for breaking with Mrs. Vane.”

“Yes, that’s what I meant. You don’t think it was the reason he certainly wanted us to believe, then—that he was bored with her?”

“I know it wasn’t,” the inspector returned shrewdly. “He’s a chivalrous young gentleman as far as the ladies are concerned, is Mr. Woodthorpe, and he’d never break with an old flame who was still desperately in love with him merely because he’d got bored with her. There was some much more powerful reason than that behind it.”

“Ah!” said Roger. “I was right; you are a psychologist, after all, Inspector. And what do you think of this reason that friend Colin is so industriously hiding from us?”

“I think,” the inspector said slowly, “that it would go a long way toward clearing up the case for us, if we knew it.”

Roger whistled. “As important as all that, eh? I must say, I hadn’t arrived at that conclusion myself. And have you got any inkling as to its nature?”

“Well—!” The inspector took a sup of whisky and wiped his moustache again with some deliberation. “Well, the most likely thing would be another girl, wouldn’t it?”

“You mean, he’d fallen seriously in love elsewhere?”

“And wanted to get engaged to her,” the inspector amplified. “Was engaged to her secretly, if you like. That’s the only thing I can see important enough to make him resolve to break with Mrs. Vane at all costs.”

Roger nodded slowly. “Yes, I think you’re right.—But I’m blessed if I see how knowing it for certain is going to clear up the case for you?”

“Can’t you, sir?” the inspector replied cautiously. “Well perhaps it’s only a whim of mine, so we’ll say no more about it for the time being.”

Roger’s curiosity was piqued, but he knew that its gratification was impossible. Accepting defeat, he turned to another aspect of the case.

“What did you think of that Russell theory of mine, by the way?” he inquired.

“Since you ask me, sir,” answered the inspector with candour, “nothing!”

“Oh!” said Roger, somewhat dashed.

“I’d already collected all the gossip on those lines,” the inspector proceeded more kindly, “and I’ve had a few words with the lady herself, as well as her husband. It didn’t take long to satisfy me that there was nothing for me there.”

Roger, who had confidently assumed that the Russell idea had been his and his alone, looked his chagrin. “But it was a woman who was with Mrs. Vane before she died,” he argued. “And a woman with large feet at that. In fact, it hardly seems too much to assume that it was a woman with large feet who pushed Mrs. Vane over that cliff. Find a woman with large feet who’d got a big grudge against Mrs. Vane, and—! Well, anyhow, why are you so sure that Mrs. Russell is out of it?”

“She’s got an alibi. I followed it up, naturally. Cast-iron. Whoever the woman was, it wasn’t Mrs. Russell. But don’t forget what I said once before, will you, Mr. Sheringham? Footprints are the easiest things in the world to fake.”

“Humph!” Roger stroked his chin with a thoughtful air. “You mean, they might have been made by a man with small feet, wearing a woman’s shoes for the express purpose?”

“It might have been anything,” said the inspector guardedly. “All that those footprints mean to me at present is that there was another person on that ledge with Mrs. Vane.”

“And that person was the murderer?”

“You might put it like that.”

Roger considered further. “You’ve gone into the question of motive, of course. Has it struck you what a tremendous lot of people had a motive for wishing this unfortunate lady out of the way?”

“The difficulty is to find anybody who hadn’t,” the inspector agreed.

“Yes, that’s what it really does amount to. Very confusing, considering how valuable a motive usually is. Establish your motive and there’s your murderer, is a pretty sound rule at Scotland Yard, I understand. Help yourself to some more whisky, Inspector.”

“Well, thank you, sir,” said the inspector, and did so. “Yes, you’re right. I can’t say I ever remember a case when so many people had a reason, big or little, for wishing the victim dead. Here’s luck, Mr. Sheringham, sir!”

“Cheerio!” Roger returned mechanically.

They fell into silence. Roger realised that the inspector, while pretending outwardly to be ready enough to discuss the case, was in reality determined to do nothing of the kind, at any rate so far as giving away his own particular theory was concerned. Official reticence, no doubt, and of course perfectly right and proper; but distinctly galling for all that. If the inspector would only consent to work with him frankly, Roger felt, they really might achieve excellent results between them; as it was, they must work apart. This professional jealousy of the amateur was really rather petty, especially as Roger would not insist upon any large share of the credit for a swift and successful solution. Well, at least he would present his rival (for such, apparently, was what the inspector was determined to be) with no more gratuitous clues such as that interesting scrap of paper, that was flat!

In the meantime, all being fair in love and war, it was always open to him to pick his opponent’s brains to the best of his ability. He tried a new tack.

“You were asking me on the way back what I meant by applying the word ‘imprudent’ to Mrs. Vane,” he said with an air of ingenuous candour. “I’ll tell you. From what I can gather about her, the lady was anything but imprudent. She certainly married the doctor for his money, so far as my information goes; she cozened that extremely generous settlement out of him; and I’m quite sure that over anything which might affect her material welfare, imprudent is the very last thing in the world she would be. So if she struck that boy as being so, she was bluffing.”

“You mean, that she never intended to tell her husband at all? I see. Yes, that’s my opinion too. It wouldn’t square with my information about her either, not by a long chalk.”

“Then what do you think her game was? Do you imagine she was genuinely in love with him?”

“Well, sir, that’s impossible to say, isn’t it? But knowing what I do about the lady, I should say she’d got some deeper game on than that. Something that was going to turn out to her material welfare, as you put it, I wouldn’t mind betting.”

“Of course you’ve had her past history probed into?” Roger remarked, with careful indifference. “That’s where you Scotland Yard people can always score over the free-lance sleuth. Did anything interesting come to light? I gather she was a bit of a daisy.”

The inspector hesitated and filled in a pause by application to his glass. Clearly he was debating whether any harm could be done by divulging this official secret. In the end he decided to risk it.

“Well,” he said, wiping his moustache, “you’ll understand that this is strictly confidential, sir, but we have had a man on the job—or two or three men, for that matter, both in London and up in the north, where the lady originally came from; and a few very interesting facts they were able to bring to light, too. Nobody has the slightest idea down here, of course, but the woman who called herself Mrs. Vane—well, she was a bit of a daisy, as you say.”

Roger’s eyes gleamed. “What do you mean, Inspector? Called herself Mrs. Vane? Wasn’t she really?”

The inspector did not answer the question directly. He leaned back in his chair and puffed at his pipe for a moment or two, then began to speak in a meditative tone.

“There’s real bad blood in that family—proper criminal stock, you might call ’em. The great-grandfather was one of the smartest burglars we’ve ever had in this country; they knew all about him at headquarters, but they never caught him. He never was caught, in fact. A lot of his jobs were put down later on to Charlie Peace, but they weren’t, they were his all right; and he was lucky, while Peace wasn’t. His son was a cut above burglaring. The old man left him a lot of cash, and he set up a bucket-shop in Liverpool. But he did over-reach himself. He served one stretch of three years, and one of five.

“This chap had two daughters and one son. They were left in pretty poor circumstances, because before he died their father managed to get rid of all the money he’d been left and all he’d made for himself besides. He’d managed to get rid of one of his daughters, as well before this, however—Miss Cross’s mother, who married an army officer and passes out of the family history. The son was a bit of a bad egg, but he went over to America and operated there; he’s still alive, and as a matter of fact in prison at the moment. Confidence-man, his little game is.

“The other daughter, Mrs. Vane’s mother, we’ve got nothing particular against either. She married a tradesman in Liverpool in a fair way of business, but ran away with another man after she’d brought him into the bankruptcy court by her extravagance, leaving her child, then ten years old, behind her. Her husband removed to London, taking the child with him, and took a post with a firm of wholesale chemists. He died when Mrs. Vane was seventeen, leaving nothing but debts.