The Skeleton Key Part 1

INTRODUCTION

To introduce the last book by the late Bernard Capes is a sad sort of honour in more ways than one; for not only was his death untimely and unexpected, but he had a mind of that fertile type which must always leave behind it, with the finished life, a sense of unfinished labour. From the first his prose had a strong element of poetry, which an appreciative reader could feel even more, perhaps, when it refined a frankly modern and even melodramatic theme, like that of this mystery story, than when it gave dignity, as in Our Lady of Darkness, to more tragic or more historic things. It may seem a paradox to say that he was insufficiently appreciated because he did popular things well. But it is true to say that he always gave a touch of distinction to a detective story or a tale of adventure; and so gave it where it was not valued, because it was not expected. In a sense, in this department of his work at least, he carried on the tradition of the artistic conscience of Stevenson; the technical liberality of writing a penny-dreadful so as to make it worth a pound. In his short stories, as in his historical studies, he did indeed permit himself to be poetic in a more direct and serious fashion; but in his touch upon such tales as this the same truth may be traced. It is a good general rule that a poet can be known not only in his poems, but in the very titles of his poems. In the case of many works of Bernard Capes, The Lake of Wine, for instance, the title is itself a poem. And that case would alone illustrate what I mean about a certain transforming individual magic, with which he touched the mere melodrama of mere modernity. Numberless novels of crime have been concerned with a lost or stolen jewel; and The Lake of Wine was merely the name of a ruby. Yet even the name is original, exactly in the detail that is hardly ever original. Hundreds of such precious stones have been scattered through sensational fiction; and hundreds of them have been called 'The Sun of the Sultan' or 'The Eye of Vishnu' or 'The Star of Bengal.' But even in such a trifle as the choice of the title, an indescribable and individual fancy is felt; a sub-conscious dream of some sea like a sunset, red as blood and intoxicant as wine. This is but a small example; but the same element clings, as if unconsciously, to the course of the same story. Many another eighteenth century hero has ridden on a long road to a lonely house; but Bernard Capes, by something fine and personal in the treatment, does succeed in suggesting that at least along that particular road, to that particular house, no man had ever ridden before. We might put this truth flippantly, and therefore falsely, by saying he put superior work into inferior works. I should not admit the distinction; for I deny that there is necessarily anything inferior in sensationalism, when it can really awaken sensations. But the truer way of stating it would perhaps be this; that to a type of work which generally is, for him or anybody else, a work of invention, he always added at least one touch of imagination.

The detective or mystery tale, in which this last book is an experiment, involves in itself a problem for the artist, as odd as any of the problems which it puts to the policeman. A detective story might well be in a special sense a spiritual tragedy; since it is a story in which even the moral sympathies may be in doubt. A police romance is almost the only romance in which the hero may turn out to be the villain, or the villain to be the hero. We know that Mr Osbaldistone's business has not been betrayed by his son Frank, though possibly by his nephew Rashleigh. We are quite sure that Colonel Newcome's company has not been conspired against by his son Clive, though possibly by his nephew Barnes. But there is a stage in a story like The Moonstone, when we are meant to suspect Franklin Blake the hero, as he is suspected by Rachel Verinder the heroine; there is a stage in Mr Bentley's Trent's Last Case when the figure of Mr Marlowe is as sinister as the figure of Mr Manderson. The obvious result of this technical trick is to make it impossible, or at least unfair, to comment, not only on the plot, but even on the characters; since each of the characters should be an unknown quantity. The Italians say that translation is treason; and here at least is a case where criticism is treason. I have too great a love or lust for the roman policier to spoil sport in so unsportsmanlike a fashion; but I cannot forbear to comment on the ingenious inspiration by which in this story, one of the characters contrives to remain really an unknown quantity, by a trick of verbal evasion, which he himself defends, half convincingly, as a scruple of verbal veracity. That is the quality of Bernard Capes' romances that remains in my own memory; a quality, as it were, too subtle for its own subject. Men may well go back to find the poems thus embedded in his prose.

G. K. Chesterton.

 

CHAPTER I

MY FIRST MEETING WITH THE BARON

(From the late Mr Bickerdike's 'Apologia'^[1])

Some few years ago, in the month of September, I happened to be kicking my heels in Paris, awaiting the arrival there of my friend Hugo Kennett. We had both been due from the south, I from Vaucluse and Kennett from the Riviera, and the arrangement had been that we should meet together for a week in the capital before returning home. Enfants perdus! Kennett was never anything but unpunctual, and he failed to turn up to time, or anywhere near it, at the rendezvous. I was a trifle hipped, as I had come to the end of my circular notes, and had rather looked to him to help me through with a passing difficulty; but there was nothing for it but to wait philosophically on, and to get, pending his appearance, what enjoyment I could out of life. It was not very much. The Parisian may be a saving man, but Paris is no city to save in. It is surprising how dull an empty purse can make it. It had come to this after two days, either that I must shift my quarters from the Ritz into cheaper lodgings, or abandon my engagement altogether and go back alone.

One afternoon, aimless and thirsty, I turned into the Café l'Univers in the Place du Palais Royal, and sat down at one of the little tables under the awning where was a vacant chair. This is a busy spot, upon which many streets converge, and one may rest there idly and study an infinite variety of human types. There was a man seated not far from me, against the glass side of the verandah whose occupation caught my attention. He was making very rapidly in a minute-book pencil notes of all the conspicuous ladies' hats that passed him. It was extraordinary to observe the speed and fidelity with which he secured his transcripts. A few, apparently random, sweeps of the pencil in his thin nervous fingers, and there, in the flitting of a figure, was some unconscious head ravished of its most individual idea. It reminded me of the 'wig-snatching' of the eighteenth century; yet I could not but admire the dexterity of the thief, as, sitting behind him, I followed his skilful movements.

'A clever dog that, sir,' said a throaty voice beside me.

It came from a near neighbour, whom I had not much observed until now—a large-faced, clean-shaved gentleman of a very full body and a comfortable complacent expression. He was dressed in a baggy light-grey suit, wore a loose Panama hat on his head, and smelt, pleasantly and cleanly, of snuff. On the table before him stood a tumbler of grenadine and soda stuffed with lumps of ice, and with a couple of straws sticking from it.

'Most,' I answered. 'What would you take him to be?'

'Eh?' said the stranger. 'Without prejudice, now, a milliner's pander—will that do?'

I thought it an admissible term, and said so, adding, 'or a fashion-plate artist?'

'Surely,' replied the stranger. 'A distinction without a difference, is it not?'

No more was said for the moment, while I sat covertly studying the speaker. He reminded me a little of the portraits of Thiers, only without the spectacles. A placid, well-nourished benevolence had been his prominent feature, were it not somehow for the qualification of the eyes. Those were as perpetually alert, busy, observant, as the rest was seemingly supine. They appeared to 'peck' for interests among the moving throng, as a hen pecks for scattered grain.

'Wonderful hands,' he said suddenly, coming back to the artist. 'Do yon notice anything characteristic about them now?'

'No,' I said. 'What?'

He did not answer, but applied for a refreshing moment or two to his grenadine.

'Ah!' he said, leaning back again, with a relishing motion of his lips. 'A comfortable seat and a cool glass, and we have here the best café-chantant in the world.'

'Well, it suits me,' I agreed—'to pass the time.'

'Ah!' he said, 'your friend is unpunctual?'

I yawned inexcusably.

'He always is. What would you think of an appointment, sir, three days overdue?'

'I should think of it with philosophy, having the Ritz cuisine and cellar to fall back upon.'

I turned to him interestedly, my hands behind my head.

'You have?'

'No, but you,' said he.

I was a bit puzzled and amused; but curious, too.

'You are not staying at the Ritz?' I asked. He shook his head good-humouredly. 'Then how do you know I am?'

'There is not much mystery in that,' said he. 'You happened to be standing on the steps when I happened to be passing. The rest you have admitted'

'And among all these,'—I waved my hand comprehensively—'you could remember me from that one glimpse?'

He laughed, but again ignored my question.

'How did you know,' I persisted, 'that my friend was a man?'

'You yourself' said he, 'supplied the gender.'

'But not in the first instance.'

'No, not in the first instance,' he agreed, and said no more.

'You don't like the Ritz?' I asked after an interval, just to talk and be talked to. I was horribly bored, that is the truth, by my own society; and here was at least a compatriot to share some of its burden with me.

'I never said so,' he answered. 'But I confess it is too sumptuous for me. I lodge at the Hôtel Montesquieu, if you would know.'

'Where is that, may I ask?'

'It is in the Rue Montesquieu, but a step from here.'

'I should like, if you don't mind, to hear something of it. I am at the Ritz, true, but in a furiously economical mood.'

'Certainly,' he answered, with perfect good-humour. 'It would not suit all people; it does not even figure in the guides; but for those of an unexacting disposition—well it might serve—to pass the time. You can have your good bedroom there and your adequate petit déjeuner—nothing more. For meals, there is' a Duval's across the road, or, more particularly, the Restaurant au Bœuf à la mode in the Rue de Valois close by, where such delicacies may be tasted as sole à la Russe, or noisettes d'agneau à la Réjane. Try it'

I was half thinking I would, and wondering how I could express my sense of obligation to my new acquaintance, when a sudden crash and scream in the road brought us both to our feet. The hat-sketcher, having finished with his task and gone, had stepped thoughtlessly off the kerb right under the shafts of a passing cab.

For a tranquil body, my companion showed the most curious excitement over the accident. Uttering broken exclamations of reproof and concern, he hurried down, as fast as his bulk would permit him, to the scene of the mishap, about which a crowd was already swarming. I could see little of what followed; but, the press after a time dispersing, I made shift to inquire of an onlooker as to the nature of the victim's hurt, and was told that the man had been taken off to the St. Antoine Hospital in the very cab which had run him down, my friend of the Panama hat accompanying him. And so there for the moment our acquaintance ended.

But we met again at the Montesquieu—whither I had actually transferred my quarters in the interval—a day or two later. He came down into the hall just as I had entered it from the street, and greeted me and pressed my arm paternally.

'But this will not do at all,' he said. 'This will not do at all,' and summoned the hôtelier from his little dark room off the passage.

'I am sorry, Monsieur,' he said, when the bowing goodman appeared, 'to find such scant respect paid to my recommendation. If this is the treatment accorded to my patronage, I must convey it elsewhere.'

The proprietor was quite amazed, shocked, confounded. What had he done to merit this severe castigation from M. Le Sage? If M. le Baron would but condescend to particularise his offence, the resources of his establishment were at M. le Baron's command to remedy it.

'That is easily specified,' was M. le Baron's answer 'I sing the modest praises of your hotel to my friend, Mr Bickerdike; on the strength of these my friend decides to give you a trial. What is the result? You put him into number 19, where the aspect is gloomy, where the paper peels off the wall; where to my certain suspicion there are bugs.'

I laughed, not quite liking this appropriation, but the landlord was profuse in his apologies. Not for a moment had he guessed that I was a friend of M. le Baron Le Sage; I had not informed him of the fact; it was a mere question of expediency: Number 19 happened to be the only room vacant at the moment; but since—in short, I was transferred straightway to a very good appartement in the front, where were ample space and comfort, and a powder-closet to poke my head into if I wished, and invoke the ghosts of the dead lords of Montesquieu, whose Hôtel this had once been.

Now I should have been grateful for M. le Baron's friendly offices, and I hope I was, but with a dash of reservation. I did not know what to make of him, in fact, and the uncertainty kept me on my guard. Nor was I the more reassured upon his commiserating me presently on the fact of my friend, Mr Kennett, not having yet turned up. So he had found out my friend's name? That might be possible through an inquiry at the Ritz, where Kennett was expected. But why was he interested in inquiring at all? Then, as to my own name; he might have ascertained that, of course, of my present landlord—a pardonable curiosity, only somehow coloured by his unauthorised examination of my room. What had he wanted in there in the first instance? On the other hand, he was evidently held, for whatever reason, in high respect by the proprietor; and if the reason itself was to seek for me, I had certainly no grounds for suspecting its adequate claims. He appeared to be a man of education and some distinction, not to speak of his title, which, however, might be territorial and of small account. And, assuredly, he did not seem French, unless by deliberate adoption. His speech, appearance, habit of mind, were all as English as the shoes he wore on his feet.

I asked him, on that day of his service to me, how it had gone with the poor hat-sketcher whom, I had understood, he had accompanied to the hospital. He seemed to regard my question as if for a moment it puzzled him, and then he answered:—

'O, the artist! O, yes, to be sure. I accompanied him, did I? Yes, yes. An old house this, Mr Bickerdike—a fragment of old Paris. If there is nothing more I can do for you, I think I will be going.'

So it always was on the few further occasions which brought us together. He could not, or would not, answer a direct question directly; he seemed to love secrecy and evasion for their own sake, and for the opportunity they gave him for springing some valueless surprises on the unsuspecting. Well, he should not have his little vanity for me. There is nothing so tiresome as that habit of meaningless reserve, of hoarding information which there can be no possible objection to disseminating; but some people seem to have it. I responded by asking no more questions of M. le Baron, and I only hope my incuriosity disappointed him. The next day, or the day after, Kennett turned up, and I left the Montesquieu for my original quarters.

1. ↑ Found in manuscript.

CHAPTER II

MY SECOND MEETING WITH THE BARON

(From Mr Bickerdike's Manuscript)

It might have been somewhere near the anniversary of my first meeting with the Baron when I came upon him again—in London this time. I had been lunching at Simpson's in the Strand, and, my meal finished, had gone up into the smoking-room for a coffee and liqueur. This is a famous corner of a famous caravansary, being dedicate, like no other smoking-room I know, to the service of the most ancient and most royal game of chess, many of whose leading professors forgather therein, as it were, in an informal club, for the mixed purposes of sociability and play. There one may watch astounding mental conflicts which leave one's brain in a whirl; or, if one prefers it, may oneself join issue in a duel, whether for glory or profit; or, better still, like Gargantua, having a friend for adversary, for the mere serious diversion of the game, and for its capacity for giving a rare meditative flavour to one's tobacco. The room, too, for such a haunt of gravity, is a cheerful room, with its large window overlooking the Strand, and one may spend a postprandial hour there very agreeably, and eke very gainfully if one takes an idler's interest in other people's problems. That I may confess I do, wherefore Simpson's is, or was, a fairly frequent resort of mine.

Now, on this occasion I had hardly entered the room when my eyes fell on the figure of M. le Baron sitting profoundly absorbed over a game with one in whom I recognised a leading master in the craft. I knew my friend at once, as how could I fail to, for he sat before me in every detail the stranger of the Café l'Univers—bland, roomy, self-possessed, and unchanged as to his garb. I would not venture to break into his preoccupation, but passed him by and took a convenient seat in the window.

'Stothard has found his match,' remarked a casual acquaintance who lounged near me, nodding his head towards the pair.

'Who is it?' I asked. 'Do you know?

'I know his name,' was the answer, 'Le Sage, an out-of-pocket French Baron; but that's all.'

'O! out of pocket, is he?'

'I've no right to say it, perhaps, but I only surmise—he'll play you for a half-crown at any time, if you're rash enough to venture. He plays a wonderful game.'

'Is he new to the place?'

'O, no! I've seen him here frequently, though at long intervals.'

'Well, I think I'll go and watch them.'

Their table was against the wall, opposite the window. One or two devotees were already established behind the players, mutely following the moves. I took up a position near Le Sage, but out of his range of vision. He had never, to my knowledge, so much as raised his face since I entered the room; intent on his game, he appeared oblivious to all about him. Yet the moment I came to a stand, his voice, and only his voice, accosted me,—

'Mr Bickerdike? How do you do, sir?'

I confess I was startled. After all, there was something disconcerting about this surprise trick of his. It was just a practised pose, of course; still, one could not help feeling, and resenting in it, that impression of the preternatural it was no doubt his desire to convey. I responded, with some commonplace acknowledgment, to the back of his head, and no more was spoken for the moment. Almost immediately the game came to an end. M. le Baron sat back in his chair with a 'My mate, I think?'—a claim in which his opponent acquiesced. Half the pieces were still on the board, but that made no difference. Your supreme chess expert will foresee, at a certain point in the contest, all the possible moves to come or to be countered, and will accept without dispute the inevitable issue. The great man Stothard was beaten, and acknowledged it.

M. le Baron rose from his seat, and turned on me with a beaming face.

'Happy to renew your acquaintance, Mr Bickerdike,' he said. 'You are a student of the game?'

'Not much better, I think,' I answered. 'I am still in my novitiate.'

'You would not care——?'

'O, no, I thank you! I'm not gull enough to invite my own plucking.'

It was a verbal stumble rather than a designed impertinence on my part, and I winced over my own rudeness the moment it was uttered, the more so for the composure with which it was received.

'No, that would be foolish, indeed,' said M. le Baron.

I floundered in a silly attempt to right myself.

'I mean—I only meant I'm just a rotten muff at the game, while you——' I stuck, at a loss.

'While I,' he said with a smile, 'have just, like David, brought down the giant Stothard with a lucky shot.'

He touched my arm in token of the larger tolerance; and, in some confusion, I made a movement as of invitation, towards the table in the window.

'I am obliged,' he said, 'but I have this moment recalled an appointment.' 'So,' I thought, 'in inventing a pretext for declining, he administers a gentle rebuke to my cubbishness.' 'You found your friend, I hope' he asked, 'when you left the Montesquieu on 'that occasion?'

'Kennett? Yes,' I answered; and added, moved to some expiatory frankness; 'it is odd, by the bye, M. le Baron, that our second meeting should I associate itself with the same friend. I am going down to-morrow, as it happens, on a visit to his people.'

'No,' he said: 'really? That is odd, indeed.'

He shook hands with me, and left the room. Standing at the window a moment after, I saw him going Citywards along the Strand, looking, with his short thick legs and tailed morning coat, for all the world like a fat jaunty turtle on its way to Birch's.

Now I fancied I had seen the last of the man; but I was curiously mistaken. When I arrived at Waterloo Station the next day, there, rather to my stupefaction, he stood as if awaiting me, and at the barrier—my barrier—leading to the platform for my train, the two o'clock Bournemouth express. We passed through almost together.

'Hullo!' I said. 'Going south?'

He nodded genially. 'I thought, with your permission, we might be travelling companions.'

'With pleasure, of course. But I go no further than the first stop—Winton.'

'Nor I.'

'O, indeed? A delectable old city. You are putting up there?'

'No, O no! My destination, like yours, is Wildshott.'

'Wildshott! You know the Kennetts then?'

'I know Sir Calvin. His son, your friend, I have never met. It is odd, as you said, that our visits should coincide.'

'But you must have known yesterday—if you did not know in Paris. Why in the name of goodness did you not——' I began; and came to a rather petulant stop. This secrecy was simply intolerable. One was pulled up by it at every turn.

'Did I not?' he said blandly. 'No, now I come to think of it—— O, Louis, is that an empty compartment? Put the rugs in, then, and the papers.'

He addressed a little vivid-eyed French valet, who stood awaiting his coming at an opened door of a carriage. Le Sage climbed in with a breathing effort, and I followed sulkily. Who on earth, or what on earth, was the man? Nothing more nor less than what he appeared to be, he might have protested. After all, not himself, but common gossip, had charged him with necessitousness. He might be as rich as Crœsus, for all I knew or he was likely to say. Neediness was not wont to valet it, though insolvency very well might. But he was a friend of Sir Calvin, a most exclusive old Bashaw; and, again, he was said to play chess for half-crowns. O! it was no good worrying: I should find out all about him at Wildshott. With a grunt of resignation I sank into the cushions, and resolutely put the problem from me.

But the fellow was an engaging comrade for a journey—I will admit so much. He was observant, amusing, he had a fund of good tales at his command, and his voice, without unpleasant stress; was softly penetrative. Adapted to anecdote, moreover, his habit of secrecy, of non-committal, made for a sort of ghostly humour which was as titillating as it was elusive; and the faint aroma of snuff, which was never absent from him, seemed somehow the appropriate atmosphere for such airy quibbles. It surrounded him like an aura—not disagreeably; was associated with him at all times—as one associates certain perfumes with certain women—a particular snuff, Macuba I think it is called, a very delicate brand. So he is always recalled to me, himself and his rappee inseparable.

CHAPTER III

WILDSHOTT

Wildshott, the Hampshire seat of the Kennetts, stands off the Winton-Sarum road, at a distance of some six miles from the former, and some three and a half from the sporting town of Longbridge, on the way to the latter. The house is lonely situated in wild but beautiful country, lying as it does in the trough of the great downs whose summits hereabouts command some of the most spacious views in the County. A mile north-east, footing a gentle incline, shelters the village of Leigh way; less than a mile away, in a hollow of the main road, stands a wayside tavern called the Bit and Halter; and, with these two exceptions, no nearer neighbour has Wildshott than the tiny Red Deer inn, which perches on a high lift of the downs a mile and a half distant, rising north.

The stately, wrought-iron gates of Wildshott open from the main road. Thence a drive of considerable extent reaches to the house, which is a rectangular red-brick Jacobean structure, with stone string-courses and a fine porch, having a great shell over it. There are good stables contiguous, and the grounds about are ample and well timbered—almost too well timbered, it might be thought by some people, since the closeness of the foliage gives an effect of gloom and solemnity to a building which, amid freer surroundings, should have nothing but grace and frankness to recommend it. But settled as it is in the wash of the hills, with their moisture draining down upon it, growth and greenness have become a tradition of its life, and as such not to be irreverently handled by succeeding generations of Kennetts.

All down the west boundary of the upper estate—which, to its northernmost limit, breaks upon that bare hill on whose summit, at closer range now, the little Red Deer inn sits solitary—runs a wide fringe of beech-wood, which is continued to the high road, and thence, on the further side, dispersed among the miscellaneous plantations which are there situated. The highway itself roughly bisects the property—the best of whose grass and arable lands are contained in the southern division—and can be reached from the house, if one likes, through the long beech thicket by way of a narrow path, which, entering near the stables, runs as far as the containing hedge, in which, at some fifty yards from the main entrance, is a private wicket, leading down by a couple of steps to the road. This path is known, through some superstitious association, as the Bishop's Walk, and is little used at any time, the fact that it offers a short cut from the house to the lower estate being regarded, perhaps, as inadequate compensation for its solitariness, its dankness, and the glooms of the packed foliage through which it penetrates. Opposite the wicket, across the road, an ordinary bar-gate gives upon a corresponding track, driven through the thick of a dense coppice, which, at a depth of some two hundred feet, ends in the open fields. It is useful to bear in mind these local features, in view of the event which came presently to give them a tragic notoriety.

At Winton a wagonette met the two gentlemen, and they were landed at Wildshott soon after four o'clock. Bickerdike was interested to discover that they were the only guests. He was not surprised for himself, since he and Hugo Kennett were on terms of unceremonial intimacy. He did wonder a little what qualities he and the Baron could be thought to possess in common that they should have been chosen together for so exclusive an invitation. But no doubt it was pure accident; and in any case there was his friend to explain. He was a bit down in the mouth, was Hugo—for any reason, or no reason, or the devil of a reason; never mind what—and old Viv was always a tower of strength to him in his moods—hence old Viv's citation to come and 'buck' his friend, and incidentally to enjoy a few days' shooting, which accounted for one half of the coincidence. Old Viv accepted his part philosophically; it was not the first time he had been called upon to play it with this up and down young officer, whose temporal senior he was by some six years, and whose elder, in all questions of sapience and self-sufficiency, he might have been by fifty. He did not ask what was the matter, but he said 'all right' as if all right were all reassurance, and gave a little nod to settle the matter. He had a well-looking, rather judicial face, clean shaven, a prim mouth, a somewhat naked head for a man of thirty, and he wore eyeglasses on a neatly turned nose, with a considerable prominence of the organ of eventuality above it. The complacent bachelor was writ plain in his every line. And then he inquired regarding the Baron.

'O! I know very little about him,' was young Kennett's answer. 'I believe the governor picked him up in Paris originally, but how or where I can't say. He's a marvel at chess; and you remember that's the old man's obsession. They're at it eternally while he's down here.'

'This isn't his first visit then?'

'No, I believe not; but it's the first time I've seen him. I'm quoting Audrey for the chess. Why, what's the matter? Is anything wrong with him?'

'There you go, you rabbit! Who said anything was wrong with him? I've met him before, that's all.'

'Have you? Where?'

'Why, in Paris. You remember the Montesquieu, and my French Baron?'

'I remember there was a Baron. I don't think you ever told me his name.'

'Well, it was Le Sage, and this is the man.'

'Is it? That's rather queer.'

'What is?'

'The coincidence of your meeting again like this.'

'O, as to that, coincidence, you know, is only queer till you have traced back its clues and found it inevitable.'

'Well, that's true. You can trace it in his case to the governor's being down with the gout again, and confined to the house, and wanting something and somebody to distract him.'

'There you are, you see. He thought of chess, and thought of this Le Sage, and wrote up to him on the chance. Your father probably knows more about his movements than we do. So we're both accounted for. No, what is queer to me is the man's confounded habit of secrecy. Why didn't he say, when I met him in Paris, that the friend I was waiting for was known to him? Why didn't he admit yesterday, admit until we actually met on the platform to-day, that we were bound for the same place? I hate a stupidly reticent man.'

Kennett laughed, and then frowned, and turned away to chalk his cue. The two men were in the billiard-room, playing a hundred up before dinner.

'Well,' he said, stooping to a losing hazard, 'I hope a fellow may be a good fellow, and yet not tell all that's in him.'

'Of course he may,' answered Bickerdike. 'Le Sage, I'm sure, is a very good fellow, a very decent old boy, and rare company when he chooses—I can answer for that. But there's a difference between telling all that's in. one and not telling anything.'

'Well, perhaps he thinks,' said the other impatiently, 'that if he once opened the sluice he'd drain the dammed river. Do let him alone and attend to the game.'

Bickerdike responded, unruffled. He had found his friend in a curiously touchy state—irritable, and nervous, and moody. He had known him to be so before, though never, perhaps, so conspicuously. Hugo was temperamentally high-strung, and always subject to alternations of excitement and despondence; but he had not yet exhibited so unbalanced a temper as he seemed inclined to display on this occasion. He was wild, reckless, dejected, but seldom normal, appearing possessed by a spirit which in turns exalted or depressed him. What was wrong with the boy? His friend, covertly pondering the handsome young figure, found sufficient solution in the commonplace. He was in one of his nervous phases, that was all. They would afflict men subject to them at any odd time, and without apparent provocation. It was one of the mysteries of our organic being—a question of misfit somewhere between spirit and matter. No one looking at the young soldier would have thought him anything but a typical example of his kind—constitutionally flawless, mentally insensitive. He belonged to a crack regiment, and was popular in it; was tall, shapely-built, attractive, with a rather girlish complexion and umber-gold hair—a ladies' man, a pattern military man, everything nice. And yet that demon of nerve worked in him to his perfection's undoing. Perhaps it was the prick of conscience, like a shifting grit in one's shoe, now here, now there, now gone—for the boy had quite fine impulses—for a spoilt boy, a spoilt child of Fortune—and spoilt, like Byron by his mother, in the ruinous way. His father, the General, alternately indulgent and tyrannical, was the worst of parents for him; he had lost his mother long ago; his one sister, flippant, independent—undervalued, it may be, and conscious of it—offered no adequate substitute for that departed influence. And so the good in Hugo was to his own credit, and stood perhaps for more than it might have in another man.

His father, Sir Calvin—he had got his K.C.B., by the way, after Tel-el-Kebir in '82, in reward for some signal feat of arms, and at the expense of his trigger-finger—was as proud as sin of his comely lad, and blind to all faults in him which did not turn upon opposition to himself. He designed great connexions for the young man, and humoured his own selfishness in the prospect. He was a martinet of fifty-five, with a fine surface polish and a heart of teak beneath it, a patrician of the Claudian breed, irascible, much subject to gout for his past misdeeds, and an ardent devotee of the game of chess, at which he could hold his own with some of the professed masters. It was that devotion which had brought him fortuitously acquainted with the French Baron—a sort of technical friendship, it might be called—and which had procured the latter an occasional invitation of late to Wildshott. Le Sage came for chess, but he proved very welcome for himself. There was a sort of soothing tolerance about him, the well-informed urbanity of a polished man of the world, which was as good as a lenitive to the splenetic invalid. But nobody, unless it were Sir Calvin himself, appeared to know anything concerning him; whether he were rich or indigent; what, if dependent on his wits, he did for a living; what was the meaning or value of his title in an Englishman, if English he were; whether, in short, he were a shady Baron of the chevalier d'Industrie order, or a reputable Baron, with only some eccentricities to mark him out from the common. One of these, not necessarily questionable, was his sly incommunicativeness; another was his fondness for half-crowns. He invariably, whether with Sir Calvin or others, made that stake, no more and no less, a condition of his playing at all, and for the most part he carried it off. Vivian Bickerdike soon learned all that there was to be told about him, and he was puzzled and interested—'intrigued' as they would say in the horrible modern phrase. But being a young man of caution, in addition to great native curiosity, he kept his wits active, and his suspicions, if he had any, close.

The game proceeded—badly enough on the part of Hugo, who was generally a skilful player. He fouled or missed so many shots that his form presently became a scandal. 'Phew!' whistled his opponent, after a peculiarly villainous attempt; 'what's gone wrong with you?'

The young man laughed vexedly; then, in a sudden transition to violence, threw his cue from him so that it clattered on the floor.

'I can't play for nuts,' he said. 'You must get somebody else.'

'Hugh,' said his friend, after a moment or two of silence, 'there's something weighing on your mind.'

'Is there?' cried the other jeeringly. 'I wonder.'

'What is it? You needn't tell me.'

'O! thank you for that. I tell you what, Viv: I dreamed last night I was sitting on a barrel of gun-powder and smoking a cigarette, and the sparks dropped all about. Didn't I? That's what I feel, anyhow. Nerves, all nerves, my boy. O! shut up that long mug, and talk of something else. I told you I was off colour when I wrote.'

'I know you did, and I came down.'

'Good man. You'll be in at the kill. There's going to be a most infernal explosion—pyrotechnics galore. Or isn't there? Never mind.'

He appeared to Bickerdike to be in an extraordinary state, verging on the hysterical. But no more was said, and in a few moments they parted to dress for dinner.

M. le Baron, coming up to his room about the same time and for the same purpose, was witness of a little stage comedy, which, being for all his bulk a light treader, he surprised. The actors were his valet Louis and an under-housemaid, the latter of whom was at the moment depositing a can of hot water in the washing basin. He saw the lithe, susceptible little Gascon steal from his task of laying ready his master's dress clothes, saw him stalk his quarry like a cat, pounce, enfold the jimp waist, heard the startled squeal that followed, a smack like a hundred kisses, a spitting sacré chien! from the discomfited assailant, as he staggered back with a face of fury and a hand held to his ear, and, seeing, stood to await the upshot, a questioning smile upon his lips. Both parties realised his presence at the same instant, and checked the issue of hot words which was beginning to join between them. The girl, giving a defiant toss to her chin, hurried past Le Sage and out of the room; M. Louis Cabanis returned to his business with the expression of a robbed wild-cat.

Le Sage said nothing until he was being presently helped on with his coat, and then suddenly challenging the valet, eye to eye, he nodded, and congratulated him:—

'That is better, my friend. It is not logical, you know, for the injurer to nurse the grievance.'

The Gascon looked at his master gravely.

'Will you tell me who is the injurer, Monsieur?'

'Surely,' answered Le Sage, 'it cannot be she, in these first few hours of your acquaintance?'

'But if she had appeared to encourage me, Monsieur?'

The Baron laughed.

'The only appearance to be trusted in a pretty woman, Louis, is her prettiness.'

'Monsieur, is her ravishing loveliness.'

'Well, well, Louis, as you will. Only bear it no grudge.'

He turned away from a parting keen scrutiny of the dark, handsome face, and left the room, softly carolling. The little episode had amused rather than surprised him. Certainly it had seemed to point, in respect of time, to a quite record enslavement on the Gascon's part; but then the provocation to that passionate impressionable nature! For the girl had been really amazingly pretty, with that cast of feature, that Hebe-like beauty of hair and eye and complexion about whose fascination no two properly constituted minds could disagree. She was a domestic servant—and she was a young morning goddess, fresh from the unsullied dawn of Nature, a Psyche, a butterfly, a Cressid like enough. 'If I were younger,' thought Le Sage, 'even I!' and he carolled as he went down to dinner.

CHAPTER IV

I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON

(From the Bickerdike MS.)

I seemed conscious somehow, at dinner on the night of our arrival, of a feeling of electricity in the domestic atmosphere, Having no clue, such as the later course of events came to supply, to its origin, I diagnosed it, simply and vulgarly, as the vibrations from a family jar, of the sort to which even the most dignified and well-regulated households cannot always rise superior. Sir Calvin himself, exacting and domineering, could never at the best of times be considered a tactful autocrat: a prey to his hereditary foe, he appeared often to go out of his way to be thought detestable. When such was the case, his habit of harping on grievances could become an exquisite torture, his propensity for persisting in the unwelcome the more he saw it resented a pure malignancy. On this occasion, observing an obvious inclination in his son, my friend, to silence and self-obliteration, he took pleasure in drawing him out, with something of the savagery, I could not but think, of a fisherman who wrenches an obstinate hermit crab from its borrowed shell for bait. I saw how poor Hugh was rasped and goaded, but could do no more than take upon myself, where I could, the burden of response. Believing at the time that this aggravated fencing between the two was a part, or consequence, of some trouble, the serious nature of which might or might not have been implied in my friend's recent outburst, I made and could make but an inefficient second; yet, even had I known, as I came to know, that my surmise was wrong, and that the father's persistence was due to nothing but a perverse devil of teasing, it is not clear to me how else I could have helped the situation. I could not have hauled my host by the ears, as I should have liked to do, over his own dining-room table.

But the sense of atmospheric friction was not confined to these two. In some extraordinary way it communicated itself to the servants, the very butler, our young hostess. I had not seen Audrey at tea, and now greeted her for the first time. She came in late, to find us, by the Bashaw's directions, already seated, and to suffer a sharp reprimand for her unpunctuality which brought a flush to her young rebellious cheek. Nor did I better things, so far as she was concerned, by an ostentatious display of attentions; she seemed to resent my sympathy even more than the harshness which had provoked it. It is the way of cats and women to tear the hand that would release them from the trap.

The dinner, in short, began very uncomfortably, with an irascible host, a moody son, and an offended daughter, the butler taking his cue from his master, and the servants from the butler. They waited nervously, and got in one another's way, only the more flurriedly for their whispered harrying by the exacerbated Cleghorn. I was surprised, I, confess, by the change in that usually immaculate dignitary. The very type and pattern of his kind, correct, imperturbable, pontifical, I had never before known Cleghorn to manifest the least sign of human emotion, unless it were when Mr Yockney, the curate from Leighway, had mixed water with his Château Margaux 1907. Now, preposterous as it appeared, I could have believed the great man had been crying. His globous eyes, his mottled cheeks, bore suspicious evidences of the fact; his very side- whiskers looked limp. Surely the domestic storm, if such, which had rocked the house of Kennett must have been demoralising to a hitherto unknown degree.

It was the Baron who redeemed the situation, winning harmony out of discord. He had, to do him justice, the reconciliatory faculty, chiefly, I think, because he could always find, as one should, a bright interest in differences of opinion instead of a subject for contention. I never knew him, then or thereafter, to be ruffled by opposition or contradiction. He accepted them placidly, as constituting possible rectifications of his own argumentative frontiers.

His opportunity came with a growl of Sir Calvin's over the lateness of the evening papers. The General had been particularly curious to hear the result of a local trial, known as the Antonferry Bank robbery case, which was just reaching its conclusion, and it chafed him to be kept waiting. Le Sage asked for information, and the supplying it smoothed the troubled waters. There is a relish for most people in being the first to announce news, whether good, bad, or indifferent.

The case, as stated, was remarkable for nothing but the skill with which it had been unravelled. A Bank in Antonferry—a considerable market town lying some eight or nine miles north of Wildshott—had been robbed, and the question was by whom. That question had been answered in the upshot by an astute Scotland Yard detective, who, in spite of the obloquy thrown upon his kind by Mr Sherlock Holmes, had shown considerable sagacity in tracing the crime to its source in the Bank's own manager—a startling dénouement. The accused, on the strength of this expert's evidence, had been committed to stand his trial at Winton Quarter Sessions, and it was the issue of that event which was interesting Sir Calvin. He had had some dealings with the Bank in question, and had even been brought into some personal contact with the delinquent official.

'It seems,' he ended, 'that there can be no doubt about the verdict. That Ridgway is a clever dog.'

'The detective?' queried Le Sage; and the General nodded.

'The sort I should be sorry, if a thief, to have laid on my trail.'

'But supposing you left none?' questioned the Baron, with a smile.

'Ah!' said Sir Calvin, having nothing better to reply.

'I have often thought,' said Le Sage, 'that if crime realised its own opportunities, there would be no use for detectives at all.'

'Eh? Why not?' asked his host.

'Because there would be nothing to find out,' answered the Baron.

'How d'ye mean? Nothing to find out?'

'Nothing whatever. My idea, now, of a successful crime is not a crime which baffles its investigators, but a crime which does not appear as a crime at all.'

'Instance, M. le Baron,' I ventured to put in.

'Why,' said Le Sage good-humouredly, 'a dozen may well present themselves to a man of average inventive intelligence. Direct murder, for example—how crude! when a hundred means offer themselves for procuring plausible ends to life. Tetanus germs and an iron tack; ptomaine, that toxicologic mystery, so easy to introduce; the edge of a cliff and a windy day; a frayed picture cord; a loosened nut or two; a scrap of soap left on the boards by an opened window—given adroitness, timeliness, a little nerve, would not any of these do?'

Audrey drew back in her chair, with a flushed little laugh.

'What a diabolical list!' she said, and made a face as if she had taken medicine.

'Yes,' said I. 'But after all, Baron, this is no more than generalising.'

'You want a concrete instance?' he answered, beaming on me. 'What do you say then to a swimmer being awarded the Humane Society's certificate for attempting to save the life of a man whom he had really drowned? It needs only a little imagination to fill in the details.'

'That is good,' I admitted. 'We put one to your credit.'

'Again,' said the Baron, 'I offer the case of a senseless young spendthrift. He gambles, he drinks, his life is a bad life from the insurance company's point of view. When hard pressed, he is lavish with his I O U 's; when flush of money he redeems them; he pays up, he throws the slips into the fire with hardly a glance at them. One who holds a good deal of his paper observes this, and acts accordingly. He preserves the original securities, and on redemption, offers forgeries in their place, which he is careful to see destroyed. On the death of the young man he puts in his claim on his estate on the strength of the indisputable original documents. Thus he is paid twice over, without a possibility of any suspicion arising.'

'But one of the forged I O U's,' said Audrey, 'had been carried up the chimney without catching alight, and had been blown through the open window of the young man's family lawyer, who had kept it as a surprise.'

There was a shout of laughter, in which the Baron joined.

'Bravo, Audrey!' cried her brother. 'What about your average inventive intelligence, Baron?'

'I said, specifically, a man's,' pleaded Le Sage. 'Women, fortunately for us, are not eligible for the detective force.'

Audrey laughed at the compliment, but I think she liked the Baron for his pleasant good-nature. About that, for my part, I kept an open mind. Had he really invented these cases on the spur of the moment, or could it be possible that they touched on some experience of his own? One could not say, of course; but one could bear the point in mind.

The dinner went cheerfully enough after this jeu d'esprit of Audrey's. That had even roused Hugh from his glooms, and to quite exaggerated effect. He became suddenly talkative where he had been taciturn, and almost boisterously communicative where he had been reserved. But I noticed that he drank a good deal, and detected curiously, as I thought, a hint of desperation under his feverish gaiety.

In all this, it may be said, I was appropriating to myself, without authority, a sort of watching brief on behalf of a purely chimerical client. I had no real justification for suspecting the Baron, either on his own account, or in association with my friend's apparent state; it was presumptive that Sir Calvin knew at least as much about the man as I did; still, I thought, so long as I preserved my attitude of what I may call sympathetic vigilance à la sourdine, nothing could be lost, and something even might be gained. The common atmosphere, perhaps, affected me with the others, and inclined me to an unusually observant mood; a mood, it may be, prone to attach an over-importance to trifles. Thus, I could find food for it in an incident so ordinary as the following. There was a certain picture on the wall, a genre painting, to which Le Sage, sitting opposite it, referred in some connexion. Sir Calvin, replying, remarked that so-and-so had declared one of the figures to be out of proportion—too short or too tall, I forget which—and, in order to measure the discrepancy, interposed, after the manner of the connoisseur, a finger between his eye and the subject. There was nothing out of the common in the action, save only that the finger he raised was the second finger of his right hand, the first having been shot away in some long-past engagement; but it appeared, quite obviously to me, to arrest in a curious way the attention of the visitor. He forgot what he was saying at the moment, his speech tailed off, he sat gazing, as if suddenly fascinated, not at the picture but at the finger. The next instant he had caught up and continued what he was observing; but the minute incident left me wondering. It had signified, I was sure, no sudden realization of the disfigurement, since that must have been long known to him, but of some association with it accidentally suggested. That, in that single moment, was my very definite impression—I could hardly have explained why at the time; but there it was. And I may say now, in my own justification, that my instinct, or my intuition, was not at fault.

Once or twice later I seemed to catch Le Sage manœuvring to procure a repetition of the action, but without full success; and soon afterwards the two men fell upon the ever-absorbing subject of chess, and lapsed into vigorous discussion over the relative merits of certain openings, such as the Scotch, the Giuoco Piano, the Ruy Lopez attack, Philidor's defence, and the various gambits; to wit, the Queen's, the Allgaier, the Evans, the Muzio, the Sicilian, and God knows what else. They did not favour the drawing-room for long after dinner, but went off to the library to put their theories into practice, leaving Hugh and me alone with the lady. I cannot admit that I found the subsequent evening exhilarating. Hugh appeared already to be suffering a relapse from his artificial high spirits, and again disturbed me by the capricious oddity of his behaviour. He and his sister bickered, after their wont, a good deal, and once or twice the girl was brought by him near the verge of angry tears, I thought. I never could quite make out Audrey. She seemed to me a young woman of good impulses, but one who was for ever on the defensive against imagined criticism, and inclined therefore, in a spirit of pure perversity, to turn her worst side outermost. Yet she was a really pretty girl, a tall stalk of maidenhood, nineteen, and athletically modern in the taking sense, and had no reason but to value herself and her attractions at the plain truth they represented. The trouble was that she was underestimated, and I think proudly conscious of the fact. With a father like Sir Calvin, it was, and must be, Hugo first and the rest nowhere. He bullied every one, but there was no under-suggestion of jealous proprietorship in his bullying of Audrey as there was in his adoring bullying of his son. He did not care whether she felt it or not; with the other it was like a lover's temper, wooing by chastisement. Nor was Hugo, perhaps, a very sympathetic brother. He could enjoy teasing, like his father, and feel a mischievous pleasure in seeing 'the galled jade wince' Audrey, I believe, would have worshipped him had he let her—I had observed how gratified she looked at dinner over his commendation of her jest—but he held her aloof between condescension and contempt, and the two had never been real companions. The long-motherless girl was lonely, I think, and it was rather pathetic; still, she did not always go the right way about it to avoid unfavourable criticism.

We were out for a day in the stubble on the morrow, and I made it an excuse for going to bed betimes. The trial of the Bank-Manager, I may mention by the way, had ended in a verdict of guilty, and a sentence of three years penal servitude. I found, and took the paper in to Sir Calvin before going upstairs. The servants never dared to disturb him at his game.

CHAPTER V

THE BARON CONTINUES TO INTEREST ME

(From the Bickerdike MS.)

We were three guns—Hugo, myself, and a young local landowner, Sir Francis Orsden, of Audley, whom I had met before and liked. He was a good fellow, though considered effeminate by a sporting squirearchy; but that I could never see. Our shooting lay over the lower estate, from which the harvest had lately been carried, and we went out by the main gates, meeting the head gamekeeper, Hanson, with the dogs and a couple of boy beaters, in the road. Our plan was to work the stubble as far as possible in a south-westerly direction, making for Asholt Copse and Hanson's cottage, where Audrey and the Baron were to meet us, driving over in a pony trap with the lunch.

I perceived early enough that my chance of a day's sport wholly untrammelled by scruples of anxiety was destined to be a remote one. Hugh, it had been plain to me from the first, had not mastered with the new day his mood of the night before. His nervous irritability seemed to me even to have increased, and the truth was he was a trying companion. I had already made him some tentative bid for his confidence, but without result; I would not be the one again to proffer my sympathy uninvited. After all, he had asked for it, and was the one to broach the subject, if he wanted it broached. Probably—I knew him—the matter was no great matter—some disappointment or monetary difficulty which his fancy exaggerated. He hated trouble of any sort, and was quite capable of summoning a friend from a sick-bed to salve some petty grievance for him. So I left it to him to explain, if and when he should think proper.

It was a grey quiet day, chill, but without wind; the sort of day on which the echo of a shot might sound pretty deceptively from a distance—a point to be remembered. I was stationed on the left, Orsden on the extreme right, and Hugh divided us. His shooting was wild to a degree; he appeared to fire into the thick of the coveys without aim or judgment, and hardly a bird fell to his gun. Hanson, who kept close behind his young master, turned to me once or twice, when the lie of the ground brought us adjacent, and shook his head in a surprised, mournful way. Once Hugh and I came together at a gap in a hedge. I had negotiated it without difficulty, and my friend was following, when something caught my eye. I snatched at his gun barrel, directing it between us, and on the instant the charge exploded.

'Good God, man!' I exclaimed. 'You?'

Like the veriest Cockney greenhorn, he had been pulling his piece after him by the muzzle, and the almost certain consequence had followed. I stood staring at him palely, and for the moment his face was distorted.

'Hugh!' I said stiffly, 'you didn't mean it?'

He broke into a mirthless laugh.

'Mean it, you mug! Of course I didn't mean it. Why should I?'

'I don't know. Mug for saving your life, anyhow!'

'I'll remember it, Vivian. I wish I owed you something better worth the paying.'

'That's infernal nonsense, of course. Now, look here; what's it all about?'

'All what?'

'You know.'

'I'll tell you by-and-by, Viv on my honour, I will.'

'Will you? Hadn't you better go back in the meantime and leave your gun with Hanson?'

'No; don't be a fool, or make me seem one. I'll go more careful after this; I promise you on my sacred word I will. There, get on.'

I was not satisfied; but Hanson coming up at the moment to see what the shot had meant, I could have no more to say, and prepared silently to resume my place.

'It's all right, George,' said his master, 'only a snap at a rabbit.'

Had he meant to kill himself? If he had, what trouble so much more tragic than any I had conceived must lie at the root of the matter! But I would not dare to believe it; it had been merely another manifestation of the reckless mood to which his spoilt temper could only too easily succumb. Nevertheless, I felt agitated and disturbed, and still, in spite of his promise, apprehensive of some ugly business.

He shot better after this episode, however, and thereby brought some reassurance to my mind. Hanson, that astute gamekeeper, led us well and profitably, and the morning reached its grateful end in that worthy's little parlour in the cottage in the copse, with its cases of stuffed birds and vermin, and its table delectably laid with such appetising provender as ham, tongue, and a noble pigeon pie, with bottled beer, syphons, and old whisky to supply the welcome moisture. Audrey presided, and the Baron, who had somehow won her liking, and whom she had brought with her in the governess cart, made a cheerful addition to the company. He was brightly interested in our morning's sport, as he seemed to be generally in anything and everything; but even here one could never make out from his manner whether his questions arose from knowledge or ignorance in essential matters. They were not, I suppose—in conformity with his principle of inwardness—intended to betray; but the whole thing was to my mind ridiculous, like rattling the coppers in one's pocket to affect affluence. One might have gathered, for all proof to the contrary, that his acquaintance with modern sporting weapons was expert; yet he never directly admitted that he had used them, or was to be drawn into any relation of his personal experiences in their connexion. The subject of poachers was one on which, I remember, he exhibited a particular curiosity, asking many questions as to their methods, habits, and the measures taken to counter their dangerous activities. It was Orsden who mostly answered him, in that high eager voice of his, with just the suspicion of a stammer in it, which I could never hear without somehow being tickled. Hugh took no trouble to appear interested in the matter. He was again, I noticed with uneasiness, preoccupied with his own moody reflections, and was drinking far too much whisky and soda.

The Baron asked as if for information; yet it struck me that his inquiries often suggested the knowledge they purported to seek, as thus:—

'Might it not be possible, now, that among the quiet, respectable men of the village, who attend to their business, drink in moderation, go punctually to church, and are well thought of by the local policeman, the real expert poacher is mostly to be found—the man who makes a study and a business of his craft, and whose depredations, conducted on scientific and meteorological lines, should cause far more steady havoc among the preserves than that wrought by the organised gangs, or by the unprofessional loafer—"moucher," I think you call him?'

Or thus: 'This country now, with its mixture of downlands and low woods, and the variety of opportunities they afford, should be, one might imagine, peculiarly suited to the operations of these gentry?'

Or thus: 'I wonder if your shrewd poacher makes much use of a gun, unless perhaps on a foggy morning, when the sound of the report would be muffled? He should be a trapper, I think, par excellence'—and other proffered hypotheses, seeming to show an even more intimate acquaintance with the minutiæ of the subject, such as the springes, nets, ferrets, and tricks of snaring common to the trade—a list which set Orsden cackling after a time.

'On my word, Baron' said he, 'if it wasn't for your innocent way of p-putting things, I could almost suspect you of being a poacher yourself.'

Le Sage laughed.

'Of other men's game, in books, perhaps,' he said.

'Well,' said Orsden, 'you're right so far, that one of the closest and cunningest poachers I ever heard of was a Leighway hedge-carpenter called Cleaver, and he was as quiet, sober, civil-spoken a chap as one could meet; pious, too, and reasonable, though a bit of a village politician, with views of his own on labour. Yet it came out that for years he'd been making quite a handsome income out of Audley and its neighbours—a sort of D-Deacon Brodie, you know. Not one of their preserves, though; you're at fault there, Baron. Your local man knows better than to put his head into the noose. His dealings are with the casual outsiders, so far as pheasants are concerned. When he takes a gun, it's mostly to the birds; and of course he shoots them sitting.'

'Brute!' said Audrey.

'Well, I don't know,' said the young Baronet. 'He's a tradesman, isn't he, not a sportsman, and tradesmen don't give law.'

'How did he escape so long?' asked the girl.

'Why, you see,' answered Orsden, 'you can't arrest a man on suspicion of game-stealing with nothing about him to prove it. He must be caught in the act; and if one-third of his business lies in poaching, quite two-thirds lie in the art of avoiding suspicion. Fellows like Cleaver are cleverer hypocrites than they are trappers—J-Joseph Surfaces in corduroys.'

'Do you find,' said Le Sage, 'men of his kind much prone to violence?'

'Not usually,' replied Orsden, 'but they may be on occasion, if suddenly discovered at work with a gun in their hands. It's exposure or murder then, you see; ruin or safety, with no known reason for any one suspecting them. I expect many poor innocent d-devils were hanged in the old days for the sins of such vermin.'

'Yes,' said Le Sage, 'a shot-gun can be a great riddler.'

One or two of us cackled dutifully over the jeu de mot. Could we have guessed what tragic application it would receive before the day was out, we might have appreciated it better, perhaps.

I shall not soon forget that afternoon. It began with Audrey and the Baron driving off together for a jaunt in the little cart. They were very merry, and our young Baronet would have liked, I think, to join them. I had noticed Le Sage looking excessively sly during lunch over what he thought, no doubt, was an exclusive discovery of his regarding these two. But he was wrong. They were good friends, and that was all; and, as to the young lady's heart, I had just as much reason as Orsden—which was none whatever—for claiming a particular share in its interest. Any thought of preference would have been rank presumption in either of us, and the wish, I am sure, was founded upon no such supposition. It was merely that with Hugh in his present mood, the prospect of spending further hours in his company was not an exhilarating one.

He was flushed, and lethargic, and very difficult to move to further efforts when the meal was over; but we got him out at last and went to work. It did not last long with him. It must have been somewhere short of three o'clock that he shouldered his gun and came plodding to me across the stubble.

'Look here, Viv.,' he said, 'I'm going home. Make my apologies to Orsden, and keep it up with him; but I'm no good, and I've had enough of it.'

He turned instantly with the word, giving a short laugh over the meaning expressed obviously enough, I dare say, in my eyes, and began to stride away.

'No,' he called, 'I'm not going to shoot myself, and I'm not going to let you make an ass of me. So long!'

I had to let him go. Any further obstruction from me, and I knew that his temper would have gone to pieces. I gave his message to Orsden, and we two continued the shoot without him. But it was a joyless business, and we were not very long in making an end of it. We parted in the road—Orsden for the Bit and Halter and the turning to Leigh way, and I for the gates of Wildshott. It was near five o'clock, and a grey still evening. As I passed the stables, a white-faced groom came hurrying to stop me with a piece of staggering news. One of the maids, he said, had been found murdered, shot dead, that afternoon in the Bishop's Walk.

CHAPTER VI

'THAT THUNDERS IN THE INDEX'

Le Sage, in the course of a pleasant little drive with Audrey, asked innumerable questions and answered none. This idiosyncrasy of his greatly amused the young lady, who was by disposition frankly outspoken, and whose habit it never was to consider in conversation whether she committed herself or any one else. Truth with her was at least a state of nature—though it might sometimes have worn with greater credit to itself a little more trimming—and states of nature are relatively pardonable in the young. A child who sees no indecorum in nakedness can hardly be expected to clothe Truth.

'This Sir Francis,' asked the Baron, 'he is an old friend of yours?'

'O, yes!' said Audrey; 'quite an old friend.'

'And favourite?'

'Well, he seems one of us, you see. Don't you like him yourself?'

'I suppose he and your brother are on intimate terms?'

'We are all on intimate terms; Hugh and Frank no more than Frank and I.'

'And no less, perhaps; or perhaps not quite so much?'

'O, yes they are! What makes you think so?'

'Not quite so intimate, I will put it, as your brother and Mr Bickerdike?'

'I'm sure I don't know. Hugh is great friends with them both.'

'Tell me, now—which would you rather he were most intimate with?'

'How can it matter to me?'

'You have a preference, I expect.'

'I certainly have; but that doesn't affect the question. It was Hugh you were speaking of, not me.'

'Shall I give your preference? It is for Mr Bickerdike.'

'Well guessed, Baron. Am I to take it as a compliment to my good taste?'

'He is a superior man.'

'Isn't he? And always wishes one to know it, too.'

'Aha! Then the Baronet is the man?'

'How absurd you are! Do you value your friends by preference? Nobody is the man, as you call it. Because I don't much like Mr Bickerdike, it doesn't follow that I particularly like anybody else.'

'Why don't you like him?'

'I don't know. Perhaps because he likes himself too much.'

'Conceited, is he?'

'Not quite that: a first-rate prig I should call him—always wanting to appear cleverer than he really is.'

'Isn't he clever?'

'O, yes! Clever after a sort; but frightfully obtuse, too. I wouldn't trust him with a secret. He's so cocksure of himself that he'd always be liable to give it away with his blessing. But I oughtn't to speak like that of him. He's a great friend of Hugh's, and he does really like to help people, I think, only it must be in his own way and not theirs. Do you like him?'

'I am rather surprised that he and your brother should be on such close terms of friendship.'

'Are you? Why?'

'Is not Mr Hugo, now, without offence, a rather passionate, self-willed young gentleman?'

'Very, I should say.'

'Balance and instability—there you are.'

'You mean they are not at all alike. I should have thought that was the best reason in the world for their chumming. One of oneself is quite enough for most people. Fancy the horror of being a Siamese twin!'

'Is that why you and Sir Francis are on such good terms—because there is nothing in common between you?'

'Isn't there? What, for instance.'

'He presents himself to me, from what little I have seen and heard of him, as a rather gentle, spiritual young man, with a taste for books and the fine arts, and a preference in sport, if any, for angling. In aere piscari.'

'What does that mean?'

'I should fancy him a fisherman, by choice, of ideas rather than of streams.'

'And me, I suppose, a cross-tempered, empty-headed country hoyden, who thinks of nothing but dogs and stables?' But she laughed as she bent to Le Sage, looking mockingly into his smiling eyes. 'M. le Baron, what a character!'

'It is not of my giving,' he said. 'A spirited Diana should have been my antithesis.'

'But why should you contrast us at all? Frank and I are not going to live together.'

'You are bearing in mind, I hope,' he said, 'that I promised your father to be back at Wildshott by half-past two?'

'For chess again? What can you find in it?' She pulled up the pony, and, halting in the road, determinedly faced her companion. 'Do you know you never answer anything that's asked of you? Why don't you?'

'I didn't know I didn't.'

'Don't fib, sir.'

He chuckled aloud. 'You are a frank young lady.' He took her slim left hand between his cushiony palms, and patted it paternally. 'When a suspected man is arrested, my dear, the first warning he receives from the police is that anything he says may be used in evidence against him. Supposing we apply that rule to common converse? Then at least we shall avoid self-committal.'

'But are we all, every one of us, suspected people?'

'One never knows what may lie in a question. For instance, you ask me what can I find in chess. Very seeming innocent; but, O, the suspicion it may embody!'

'What suspicion?'

'Why, that chess represents my poor wits, and that I live upon them.'

Audrey tinkled with laughter. 'I never guessed I was such a serpent. But I am afraid I was only thinking of the dullness of it. To sit for ten minutes looking at a board, and then to move a pawn a single inch on it! Ugh! By that time I should be screaming for "Grab."'

'Let us play "Grab" one night,' said the Baron gaily.

They drove on by the pleasant lanes, and presently came out into the High road near Wildshott. As they passed the wicket in the hedge, a gleam of something, quickly seen and quickly withdrawn among the green beyond, caught Le Sage's attention. He laid a hand on the reins, suggesting a halt.

'Was that a private way to the house?' he asked. '—there, where the little gate stood?'

Audrey told him yes. That it was called the Bishop's Walk, and that he, might lift the latch and go by it if he pleased. She twinkled as she spoke, and the Baron looked roguish.

'Inquisitive?' said he; 'I admit it, if it is the word for an inquiring mind. But not conceited, I hope. I am going to explore.'

He was out in the road, to the dancing relief of the governess-cart springs, and waved au revoir to his companion. She nodded, and drove on, while he turned to go back to the wicket. He hummed as he went, a little philandering French air, droning the words in a soft, throaty way, and was still recalling them as he mounted the two steps from the road, opened the gate, and passed through. His eyes, moving in an immobile face, were busy all the time. 'Dites moi, belle enchanteresse,' he sang, 'Qui donc vous a donné vos yeux?' just above his breath and suddenly, at a few yards in, eighteen or twenty, swerved from the close narrow track and stepped behind a beech-trunk. And there was a girl hiding from view, her eyes wide, her forefinger crooked to her lip.

'Vos doux yeux, si pleins de tendresse,' hummed M. le Baron, and nodded humorously. 'I thought I recognised you from the road.'

She did not flush up or exclaim 'Me!' or exhibit any of the offensive-defensive pertness of the ordinary housemaid surprised out of bounds. She just stood looking at the intruder, a wonder on her rosy lips, and Le Sage for his part returned her scrutiny at his leisure. His impression of the night before he found more than confirmed by daylight: she was a very Arcadian nymph, with a sweet-briar complexion and eyes and hair of thyme and honey; shapely as a doe, ineffably pretty. He wondered less than ever over Louis's infatuation.

And what was she doing here? Her head was bare; a light waterproof veiled her official livery: it might be concluded without much circumspection that a tryst was in the air.

'I am sorry,' said M. le Baron. 'I did not come to be a spoil-sport. I ought, perhaps, to have pretended to see nothing and pass by. But that rudeness of my man last night sticks in my mind, and it occurred to me to apologise for him.'

She laughed, with a tiny toss of her head. 'Thank you, sir, but I can look after myself.'

'So I perceive,' he said. 'You tone very well with the trees. No eyes, except perhaps the favoured ones, could possibly guess you were here.'

'Except yours, sir,' she said, with just a tiny sauce of irony.

'Except mine, of course,' he agreed; and left her to wonder why, if she would.

'Well,' he said, after a smiling moment, 'that was an unpardonable act of Louis's, only don't visit it further on his head. I have wanted to warn you, and here is my opportunity. He comes of a hot-blooded race, and there's no knowing——. But you can look after yourself; I will take your word for it.'

He believed she could, though she made no further answer to assure him; and, with a nod, he went on his way, taking up again the little murmured burden of his song: 'Yeux, yeux,—Astres divins tombés des cieux.' 'O, eyes!' he said. 'Sweetest eyes were ever seen!' From what heaven did you fall to flower in a housemaid's face!' There was something suggestive about the girl, more than her surprising beauty—a 'towniness' a hint, both in speech and manner, of some shrewd quality which was not of the soil. 'When Lamia takes to country service' thought the Baron, 'let more than rustic hearts look to their locks!' With whom, he wondered, could be her assignation? What if, after all, it were with Louis himself? Would that surprise him? Perhaps not. Cabanis was a handsome and compelling fellow, and women, like the Lord, could chasten whom they loved. But he devoutly hoped it was not so; he desired no amorous complications in his train; and, disturbed by the thought, he inquired for his valet the moment he reached the house only to learn that the man had gone out some time before and had not yet returned. Somewhat disquieted, Le Sage entered the hall, where he was met by his host.

'Ah, Baron!' hailed Sir Calvin. 'Punctuality itself! Go into my study, will you, and I'll join you in a moment.'

The study was a comfortable room on the ground floor, with a large bay window overlooking the gardens. Here the table for chess was set ready, with a brace of high easy chairs and, handily contiguous, a smoker's cabinet. There were trophies of the chase and some good sporting pictures on the walls, against them a couple of mahogany bookcases containing well-bound editions of Alken, Surtees, and others, and, let into an alcove of that one of them which included the fireplace, a substantial safe. Le Sage knew it was there, though it was hidden from sight behind a shallow curtain; and now, as he moved humming about the room, his hands behind his back, his eyes scrutinising a picture or two while he awaited his host's coming, he gravitated gradually towards its place of concealment. Arrived there, he lifted very delicately, and still humming, the hem of the curtain, just exposed the keyhole, and bent to examine it with singular intentness. But a moment later, when the General entered, he was contemplating a coaching print by Flavell over the mantelpiece.

'Indifferent art, I suppose you will admit,' he said. 'But there is something picturesquely direct about these old Sporting pieces.'

'Well, they suit me,' answered Sir Calvin, 'because I understand them; Red's red and blue's blue to me, and if any artist tells me they are not, I've nothing to answer the fellow but that he's a damned liar.'

Le Sage laughed—'What is the colour of a black eye, then?'—and they settled down to their game. The General was a good player; all the best of his mental qualifications—which were otherwise of the standard common among retired officers of an overbearing, obstinate, and undiscerning disposition—were displayed in his astute engineering of his small forces. He was a tactical Napoleon in miniature when it came to chess; he seemed to acquire then a reason and a dignity inconspicuous in his dealings with living people. The chess-men could not misrepresent him; their movements were his movements, and their successes or failures his. If he lost, he had no one but himself he could possibly blame, and his understanding of that condition seemed to bring out the best in him. He was never choleric over the fortunes of the game. For the rest, he was not a wise man, or an amenable man, or anything but a typical despot of his class, having an inordinate pride of family, which owed less than it should have to any moral credit he had brought it in the past. In person he was a leanish, clean-built soldier of fifty-five, with bullying eyebrows and a thick blunt moustache of a grizzled blonde.

He and the Baron were very fond of devising problems, which they would send up for solution to the Morning Post. They set to elaborating a tough one now, a very difficult changed-mate two-mover, which kept them absorbed and occupied over the board for a considerable time. Indeed, a full hour and a half had passed before they had settled it to their satisfaction; and then the Baron, taking a refreshing pinch of Macuba, rose to his feet.

'That is it, my friend,' said he; 'an economical B.P. at K. Knight 4, and the thing is done.'

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed a quarter past four as he spoke, and on the tinkling reverberation of its one stroke some one opened the door. It was Hugo Kennett: the young man's face was ghastly; his hands shook; he came into the room hurriedly, as if overweighted with some dreadful piece of intelligence.

'Good God, Hughie!' exclaimed his father, and rose, staring at the boy, his eternal cigarette caught between his teeth.

The young soldier made an effort to speak; his breath fluttered audibly in him like the leaf of a ventilator; his nerve seemed for the moment gone utterly beyond his control.

'Steady, sir!' commanded the General; and his masterful tone had its visible effect. 'Now' he said, after a rallying pause. 'What is it?'

Hugh swallowed once or twice, and answered. Le Sage, observant of him, could see what immense force he had to put upon himself to do so.

'The Bishop's Walk! Can you come at once, sir? There's been what looks like a dreadful murder there.'

Sir Calvin never so much as blenched or exclaimed. One might at least admire in him the self-possessed soldier, not to be rattled by any sudden call upon his nerve.

'Murder!' he said. 'Whose murder?'

The young man's lips quivered; he looked physically sick.

'It's one of the maids, sir. I saw her; I came upon her myself. I had forgotten my gun, and went back to fetch it, and there she was lying on her face, and——' he put his hands before his own face and shuddered horribly.

'Look here,' said the father, 'you must pull yourself together. This won't do at all. Baron, get me my hunting flask, if you'll be so good. It's in the right-hand top drawer of my desk.'

He poured into the cup, with an unshaking hand, a full half gill of liqueur brandy, and made his son drink it down. It wrought a measure of effect; a tinge of colour came to Hugh's cheek; his hurried respirations steadied.

'Now,' said Sir Calvin, 'try to be coherent. What do you mean by forgetting your gun?'

'I mean, sir,'—he looked down; his features still twitched spasmodically, 'I mean—it was like this. I was no good at the shoot, and I left it and came back by myself—came back by the Bishop's Walk. Just a little way inside, I stopped to light a cigarette, and rested my gun against a tree and forgot it; but an hour later I remembered that I had left it there, and went back to fetch it, and saw—O, it was ghastly!'

'Steady, man! Was the girl there when you first entered the path?'

Le Sage listened for an answer in the affirmative, and could hardly hear it when it came.

'And you stopped to light a cigarette?' The father looked keenly into the son's face. 'You haven't yet told us what girl, Hughie.'

The good liquor was working. The young fellow lifted his head, a new passionate expression in his eyes:—

'It was Annie, sir—that good-looking housemaid. You wouldn't wonder over my horror if you saw. He must have fired at short range, the damned villain, and when she was turned from him. There is a hole in her back that one could put—ah, I can't tell you!'

M. le Baron exclaimed, 'That would have been,' said he, speaking for the first time, 'between three and four, when you discovered the body?'

'Just now,' answered Hugh, addressing his father. 'I have come straight from it. They are waiting for you, sir, to know what to do.'

'It was done with your gun? Is that the assumption?' suggested the Baron.

'I don't know,' replied the young man feverishly, again not to the questioner. 'I suppose so; I dare say. Both barrels are discharged, and one I am pretty sure I left loaded. Are you coming, sir?'

Sir Calvin, frowning a stiff moment, moved to acquiesce. They all went out together. At the entrance to the track a group of frightened maidservants stood white-lipped and whispering, afraid to penetrate farther. One or two grooms and a couple of gardeners had already gone in, and were awaiting about the body the arrival of their master. It lay, face downwards, close beside the beech trunk behind which the living girl had sought to hide herself from Le Sage. That stood at a point in the winding path some twenty-five yards from the wicket, and was nowhere remotely visible from the road. She might have been making her way back to the house when she was fired on and shattered. It was a pitiful, ugly sight; but death must have been instantaneous—that was one comfort. Le Sage made the most of it to himself, though he was really distressed and moved. 'Poor eyes!' he thought, 'si pleins de tendresse: but an hour ago so beautiful, and now quenched in death. So this was the tryst you kep ! Why, it can hardly be cold yet about your heart.'

Sir Calvin, stern and wrath, gave brief directions. A shutter was to be brought, a doctor fetched from Longbridge by one servant, the county police informed by another. He asked a short question or two—one of his son. Was this the tree against which he had left his gun leaning? Hugh answered no, while Le Sage listened. He had left it, he said, propped against a smaller trunk, four or five yards nearer the gate. He had had to pass the body to recover it, and had then taken it home, and thrust it into the gun-room as he had hurried by to raise an alarm. He spoke with extreme agitation, averting his eyes from the dead girl; and, indeed, it was a sight to move a tougher heart than his. Sir Calvin's next question was to the group at large. It was to ask if any one knew of any enemy the unfortunate victim had raised against herself, or of any possible reason for the attack. But no one knew or guessed, or, if he felt a suspicion, would have dared to formulate it. It would have been too risky a venture at this stage of the affair. Their master looked from face to face, and grunted and spoke a warning word. If that were so, he said, let them avoid all loose discussion of the matter until the police had taken it in hand. It might, after all, prove no murder, but only an accident, the perpetrator of which, terrified by the deed which he had unwittingly committed, might be keeping silence only until assured that he could tell the truth without danger to himself. Le Sage ventured to applaud that suggestion, turning to Hugh to ask him if he did not think it a quite reasonable one. But the young man refused to consider it; he was very excited; it was murder, he said, gross, palpable, open, and it was mere criminal sophistry to pretend to account for it on any other theory. His father steadied him once more with a word, and the three turned to go back to the house together as they had come, leaving the men to follow with the body. On issuing from the copse they found the little group of frightened sobbing women reinforced by Cleghorn. The butler wore a cloth cap and a light overcoat. His face was the colour of veal, and his lower jaw hung in a foolish incapable way.

'Ha, Cleghorn!' said his master. 'This is a bad business.'

'It's knocked me all of a heap, sir,' answered the man. His voice shook and wheezed. 'I've only this moment heard of it, sir.'

Hugo hung behind as they entered the hall. His father, steady as a rock, marched on to his study, and was followed by M. le Baron. The latter shut the door upon them.

'An ugly business,' he said.

'A cursed interruption to our game,' damned the General. He was greatly incensed. That such a vulgar scandal should have come to pollute the sacred preserves of Wildshott seemed to him the incredible outrage.

'What am I to do?' he said. 'What is the infernal procedure? There will have to be an inquest, I suppose, and then——.'

'And then to indict the murderer,' said Le Sage, answering the pause.

'You think it is a murder?'

'What do you think?'

'I don't know; I suppose so. It may prove a devil of a business to find out. Ought we to have a detective?'

'These provincial police are excellent men, but their normal training——. Still, it may prove a quite simple affair.'

'I have a feeling somehow that it won't. I'd better write up to Scotland Yard.'

'If you're decided on it, why not apply? there is, or was, in the neighbourhood the very man.'

'You mean that fellow Ridgway? By Jove, yes—a clever dog! I'll motor into Winton first thing to-morrow, and find out. In the meantime—where's Hugo?'

'I think I saw him go upstairs. I'll have him sent to you, if you'll allow me. I was wanting to write some letters.'

He retreated, with a smile which left his face the moment he was outside. Finding a servant, he gave her Sir Calvin's message, and then put a question of his own:—

'Do you know where my man is, my dear?'

'I think Mr Cabanis is out, sir,' answered the girl. Her cheeks were still mottled with the fright of things. 'He went out some time ago.'

'O, to be sure! About three o'clock, wasn't it?'

'Earlier than that, sir—directly after dinner in the servants' hall.'

Her manner appeared a little odd, disordered; but that might have been due to the shock they had all received.

'And he has not yet returned?' said the Baron cheerily. 'Well, send him to me the moment he comes in, if you will be so good. And he moved to mount the stairs, humming as he went. But again, though his song was light, he turned a dark face to the wall.

CHAPTER VII

THE BARON VISITS THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

(From the Bickerdike MS.)

I confess that the man's communication, coming on the top of my concern for my friend, fairly, in the first moment of it, took me aghast. The state in which I had found Hugh, that disquieting business of the gun, his insistence on sticking to his weapon—it was inevitable that any mind should instinctively leap to some association between these and a catastrophe so seemingly their corollary in its nature and instrumentality. It was odd, but ever since my meeting with the Baron in Simpson's smoking-room a sense as of some vague fatality had seemed to overcloud me. It was formless, impalpable, but it was there, like that unnerving atmosphere which precedes, according to people who know, an earthquake. But that first sick alarm was not long in dissipating itself in me in a fine scorn. The thing, to my recovered judgment, was simply incredible. Apart from the brutal clumsiness, the unthinking recklessness of such a deed, what was there in my knowledge of my friend to justify such a horrible assumption? Spoilt he was, selfish he was, no doubt, but always the last man in the world to incline to personal violence. A sensitiveness to pain, almost morbid, on account of himself or others, was rather his characteristic; an excess of affection, his charm and his weakness. He could not have done it, of course, for whatever mad reason.

But, as I came to learn the particulars of the tragedy, so far as they were known or guessed, another suspicion, less base though still discomposing, would occur to me. The poor girl, according to all accounts, had been a great beauty; and it appeared probable—from evidence freely volunteered by M. le Baron, who had passed through the copse some short time before the murder must have been committed, and who had seen and spoken with her there—that she was keeping an assignation. With whom? Who could as yet say? But I had too good reason to dread my friend's susceptibility where the adorable feminine was concerned, and I could not forget how the time of the assignation, if such it were, had coincided with that of his leaving the shoot. 'This,' I thought, 'may be as unjustified an assumption as the other; still, for the sake of argument, admit it, and one thing at least is accounted for. With such a wire-strung nature as Hugh's, the consciousness of a guilty intrigue would be quite enough to induce in him that state of recklessness and excitability which had so bothered and perplexed me.'

It was still, in fact, perplexing me at dinner on the night of the murder, when, after the withdrawal of Audrey and the servants, much discussion of the tragic subject took place, and later, when he and I were for a brief time alone together in the billiard-room. It was not so much that he was not shocked and horrified with the rest of us, as that his emotions were expressed in such an extraordinary form. They made him lament one moment, and go into half hysterical laughter the next; now utter raging imprecations against the dastard capable of so damnable a crime, now assert that jealousy was probably responsible for it, and that no man who had not felt jealousy had a right to sit in judgment on a passion which was after all not so much a passion as a demoniac possession. Then he would declare that, the thing being done, it was no good making oneself miserable about it, and rally me on my long face, which, he said, made him feel worse than a hundred murders. The horror of the thing had no doubt unhinged him, coupled with the knowledge that it was through his own carelessness in leaving a loaded gun within reach of temptation that the deed had been made possible. With such a nature as his, that consciousness must have counted for much, though still, and at the same time, I could never quite rid myself of the feeling that, beneath all his expressed remorse and pity, a strange little note of—I will not call it relief, but ease from some long haunting oppression, made itself faintly audible. However, remembering his late promise of confidence to me, I determined to abide in patience its coming, only wondering in the interval what had instigated his remarks on jealousy, and if it were possible that they had been inspired by any suspicion, of the criminal, and if so, on what personal grounds. He came down quite quiet to breakfast the next morning, and from that time onwards was his own rational hospitable self.

Early in the afternoon of that day Sir Calvin came back with the detective, Sergeant Ridgway, in tow. The latter had been retrieved, by good luck, from Antonferry, whither, after the trial, he had returned from Winton to settle for the lodgings he had occupied during the Bank investigations. The General had been fortunate in encountering him at the very moment of his departure, and had at once secured from him, contingent on the receipt of official authority, a promise to undertake the case. A prepaid telegram to Scotland Yard had brought the necessary sanction, and within a couple of hours of its despatch the Sergeant was safe at Wildshott, and already engaged over the preliminaries of the business. Personally, I admit, I felt greatly relieved by his appearance on the scene. A notable writer has somewhat humoured a belief in the fatuity of the professional detective; but that was with a view, I think, to exalt his own incomparable amateur rather than to discredit a singularly capable body of men, having a pretty persistent record of success to justify their being. Intellectuality was at least not absent by inference from this face. When I saw it, I felt that the case was in safe hands, and that henceforth we might, one and all of us, cast whatever burden of personal responsibility had unwittingly overhung our spirits. The Sergeant was installed in the house, and lost no time in getting to work in a reassuring, business-like way. He went in the first instance to view the body, which had been laid on a table in the gun-room, with a policeman—one of two brought over the night before by the Chief Constable, a friend of Sir Calvin's, in person—to watch the door. Thereafter, established in the General's study, he briefly reviewed the evidence of such witnesses as could supply any topical information that bore on the crime—Le Sage, to wit, Hugo himself, Mrs Bingley the housekeeper, and one or two of the servants, including the men who, on their young master's alarmed summons, had first entered the copse to remove the body.

I was present during the whole, I think, of this examination, and for the following reason. It happened that I and the Baron, on his way to the study, met in the hall, when he attacked me, I thought rather impertinently, on a question of punctilio.

'Do you not think, my friend,' he said, 'that under the circumstances it would be decent of us to offer to terminate our visit? Supposing we both, here and now, address Sir Calvin on the subject?'

I was very much annoyed. 'Baron,' I said, 'I am not accustomed to seek advice in matters of conduct, and I certainly shall not do as you propose. Apart from the question of deserting my friend in a crisis, I think that any suggestion of our leaving now would look like a desire to avoid inquiry—which I, for my part, am far from wishing to do—and would bear a very bad complexion. You can act as you like; but it is my intention to see this thing through.'

'O, very well!' he said. 'Then I will speak for myself alone.'

Why should he wish to escape? All my instinctive suspicion of him reawakened on the moment; and I wondered. True, he could not himself have perpetrated the crime; Hugo's evidence would not permit of such a supposition; but could he not be somehow implicated in it as instigator or abettor? I determined then and there to keep a very close observation on M. le Baron.

We entered the room together, since I would not suffer his going in alone to misrepresent me. Sir Calvin was there, with his son and the detective. I saw the last for the first time. He was quite the typical Hawkshaw, and handsome at that—a lithe man of middle height, with a keen, dark, aquiline face, and clean-shaven jaws and chin. I could have thought him a young man for his work and reputation; he did not look more than thirty-five, and might have been less; but about his mental ability, if one could judge by indications, there was no question. A certain rather truculent dandyism in his dress contrasted oddly with this intellectuality of feature; it showed itself a little over-emphatic in the matter of trouser-crease and collar and scarf-pin, and it tilted his black plush Homburg hat, when out of doors, at a slightly theatrical angle. But taste, after all, is a question not of mind but of breeding, and the man who has, like Disraeli, to stand on his head for a living, may be excused a little ostentation in the process. He looked at us both searchingly as we entered.

'This, Sergeant,' said Sir Calvin, 'is the Baron Le Sage, whom I mentioned to you as having encountered the unfortunate young woman in the copse a little before——.'

The detective nodded. 'I should like to ask a question of you, sir.'

Le Sage told what he knew. It was very little, and only of value in so far as it touched upon the evidence of time.

'It must have been a little before half-past two when we met,' he said.

'And shortly after three,' said the detective, turning to Hugo, 'when you came by the same path, sir, and had your little talk with her, like this gentleman?'

'My talk,' said the Baron, smiling, 'was of the briefest. We exchanged but a pleasant word or two, and I passed on.'

'And yours,' said the detective to Hugh, 'was perhaps of a more prolonged sort?'

'It may have been, Sergeant,' was my friend's answer. He was looking pale but composed; and his manner was absolutely frank and unequivocal. 'You see,' said he, 'poor Annie was, after all, one of the household, and there was nothing out of the way in my stopping to speak with her. We may have chatted for ten minutes—I should think no longer—while I put down my gun and lighted a cigarette. I was back at the house by a quarter past three or thereabouts.'

'And you remembered, and returned for your gun?'

'That must have been just about four o'clock.'

'So that the murder, if murder it was, must have been committed some time between 3.15 and 4 p.m.'

'That is so, I suppose.'

The detective stood as if mutely weighing the few facts at his disposition for a moment or two, then turned to the General.

'We shall want evidence of identity, Sir Calvin,' he said. 'Your housekeeper, I suppose, engaged the young woman? Can I see her?'

Mrs Bingley was rung for, and in the interval, while awaiting her appearance, Le Sage approached our host.

'Pardon me, Sir Calvin,' said he; 'but before you proceed any further, would you not prefer that I should withdraw? I cannot but feel that my visit itself is proving untimely, and that it were better that I should relieve you of the embarrassment of——.'

But the General broke in forcibly.

'Not a bit of it! There's nothing to conceal. Damn it, man! Beyond helping this Sergeant what we can to find out the truth, I don't see why the even tenour of our ways need disturb itself by so much as a thought. No, no; you came for chess, and you'll stay for chess!' A sentiment which, while justifying my own attitude, pretty effectually disposed of the Baron's affected, and perhaps interested scruples.

He smiled, with a tiny shrug. 'Well, if I am not in the way!' and addressed the detective; 'the ruling passion, you see, Sergeant Ridgway. Do you play chess?'

'A little,' answered the man, cautious even in his admission. 'It's a great game.'

'It's the game,' said the Baron. 'We'll play, you and I, one of these days, when you're needing some distraction from your labours.'

'Very well, sir' responded the detective civilly, and at that moment Mrs Bingley entered the room.

Wildshott was, by common assent, fortunate in its housekeeper. She was a good soul and a good manager, strict but tolerant, ruling by tact alone. Spare and wiry, her virgin angularity (despite her courtesy title), was of the sort one associates with blessed women in old painted manuscripts. Firmness and patience showed in her capable face, to which agitation had now lent a rather red-eyed pallor. She bowed to Sir Calvin, and faced the detective quietly:—

'You wanted to speak with me, sir?'

'Just a few words,' he answered. 'This young woman's name, Mrs Bingley——?'

'Was Annie Evans, sir.'

'And her age?'

'She was just, by her own statement, turned twenty-three.'

'You have communicated with her relations?'

'No, indeed. She never referred to any, and I have no means of finding them out. Annie was a very reserved girl.'

'But surely, when you engaged her——'

'I did so by advertisement, sir, through the Ladies' Times newspaper. We were in immediate need of an under-housemaid, and there was a difficulty about local girls. I put an advertisement in the paper, as, I had often done before, preferring that method to the agencies, and she answered it. That was about two months ago.'

'And her former employer?'

'That was a Mrs Wilson, sir. She had gone to New Zealand, and left a written character with Annie. It was quite against my custom to take a servant with only a written character; but in this instance I was persuaded to break my rule, the character given was so excellent, and the girl herself so modest and attractive.'

'H'm! Then you saw her before engaging her?'

'I went up to see her at the office of the paper itself by her own appointment, and was so struck by her manner and appearance that I settled with her then and there. She was to come down two days later. To the best of my memory, I never inquired about her people.'

'But she must have spoken of them—received letters?'

'She never spoke of them to my knowledge, or that of her fellow servants, to whom I have put the question. As to letters, Annie certainly did receive one now and again—one or two quite recently; but I have been looking, and can find no trace of any. It would have been just like her funny sensitive ways to destroy every one of them.'

The detective was silent for a moment, his dark scrutinizing eyes fixed on the speaker's face, as if he were pondering some significance, to him, in the answer.

'What became of the written character?' he asked presently.

'I returned it to her, sir. It is customary to do so.'

'In case she should want to use it again? That being so, I should have thought she would have kept it?'

'Yes, sir.'

'But you have not come across it?'

'It may be in her boxes. I have not looked.'

'You and I must overhaul those boxes, Mrs Bingley. Did you think, now, of making any inquiries about this Mrs Wilson?'

'No, it would have been useless; she had already sailed for New Zealand.'

'Do you remember her address?'

'She wrote, so far as I can recollect, from the Savoy Hotel.'

Sergeant Ridgway took an envelope from his pocket, and making a note on the back of it, returned it into keeping.

'Well, you can leave that to me,' he said, and, resting his right elbow in the palm of the other hand, softly caressed his chin, bending an intent look on his witness.

'Now, ma'am,' he said. 'I want to ask you a particular question. Has Annie Evans's conduct, while in this service, always continued to justify you in your first good opinion of her?'

'Always,' answered the housekeeper with emphasis. 'She was a thoroughly good straightforward girl, and during the short time she was here I have never had any trouble with her that was of her own procuring.'

'Will you tell me quite what you mean by that?'

'Well, sir, she could not help being pretty and admired, and if it led to some quarrels among the men on her account, the blame was theirs, and never in the smallest degree to be charged to her conduct with them. She always did her best to keep them at a distance.'

'O, quarrels, were there? Can you tell me of any particular quarrel, now?'

'I could——' began the housekeeper, and stopped.

'Come, Mrs Bingley,' said her master. 'You mast speak out without fear or favour.'

'I know it, sir,' said the housekeeper, distressed. 'I will try to do my duty.'

'Hey!' cried the General. 'Of course you must. You wouldn't want to risk hanging the wrong man? What particular quarrel—hey?'

'It was between Mr Cleghorn and the Baron's gentleman, sir.'

'Cleghorn, eh? Great Scott! Was he sweet on the girl?'

'I think for some time he had greatly admired her, sir. And then Mr Cabanis came; and being a young man, with ways different from ours——' again she hesitated.

'Out with it!' cried Sir Calvin. 'Don't keep anything back.'

'On the night before—before the deed,' said the housekeeper, with an effort, 'Annie had come down into the kitchen, I was told, red with fury over Mr Cabanis having tried to kiss her. She had boxed his ears for him, she said, and he had looked murder at her for it. He came down himself later on, I understand, and there was a fine scene between the two men. It was renewed the next day at dinner, when Annie wasn't there, and in the end, after having come to blows and been separated, they both went out, Cabanis first, and Mr Cleghorn a little later. That is the truth, sir, and now may I go?'

I think we were all sorry for the Baron; it appeared so obvious whither the trend of the detective's inquiries must henceforth carry him. But he sat quite quiet, with only a smile on his face.

'Louis is not vindictive,' was the sole thing he contented himself with saying.

Sir Calvin turned to the detective. 'Do you need Mrs Bingley any more?'

'Not for the present,' answered the Sergeant, and the housekeeper left the room. I had expected from him, on her disappearance, some significant look or gesture, betokening his acceptance of the inevitable conclusion; but he made no such sign, and merely resumed his business conduct of the case. He knew better than we, no doubt, that in crime the most obvious is often the most unreliable.

'We must find the girl's relations, if possible, Sir Calvin,' he said. 'You can leave that to me, however. What I would advise, if her boxes yield no clue, would be an advertisement in the papers.'

An examination of some of the servants ensued upon this; but beyond the fact of their supplying corroborative testimony as to the quarrel, their evidence was of little interest, and I omit it here. The Baron disappeared during the course of the inquiry, so secretively that I think I was the only one who noticed his going. At the end the detective expressed a desire to examine the scene of the crime. If one of us, he said, would conduct him there, he would be satisfied and would ask no more. He did not want a crowd. I ventured to volunteer, and was accepted. Sir Calvin had looked towards his son; but Hugh, with reason sufficient, had declined to go. He had sat throughout the inquiry, after giving his own evidence, perfectly still, and with a sort of white small smile on his lips. Thinking my own thoughts, I was sorry for him.

The Sergeant and I made for the coppice. Passing the constable at the gun-room door, he nodded to him. 'That's a poor thing inside,' he said, as we went on. 'What a lot of trouble she'd save if she could speak! Well, I suppose that him that did it thinks she's got her deserts.' 'I hope he'll get his,' I answered. 'Ah!' he agreed, 'I hope he will.' We turned a bend as we came near the fatal beech-tree—and there was the Baron before us!

The detective stopped with a smart exclamation, then went on slowly.

'Doing a little amateur detective work on your own, sir?' he asked sarcastically.

'I was considering, my friend,' answered the Baron. 'It becomes interesting to me, you see, since my man is involved.'

'Who said he was involved, sir?'

'Ah! Who, now? You can see very distinctly, Sergeant, where the body lay—just the one ugly token. No signs of a struggle, I think; and the ground too hard to have left a trace of footprints. But I won't disturb you at your work.'

'I wouldn't, sir,' said the detective pretty bluntly. 'You can undertake, I fancy, to leave it all to me.'

'I'm sure I can,' answered the Baron pleasantly, and he went, off towards the house, humming softly to himself a little French air.

'Who is he?' asked the detective, when the odd creature was out of hearing.

'I know little more about him than you do,' I answered; 'and Sir Calvin's acquaintance with him is, I think, almost as casual as my own. We both met him abroad at different times. He may be a person of distinction, or he may be just an adventurer for all I know to the contrary.'

'Well,' said the officer, 'whoever he is, I don't want him meddling in my business, and I shall have to tell Sir Calvin so.'

'Do,' I said. 'Chess is the Baron's business, and it's that that he's here for.'

But I kept my private suspicion, while duly noting as much as might or might not be implied in Le Sage's curious interest in the scene of the crime. No doubt the last thing he had expected was our sudden descent upon him there.

CHAPTER VIII

AN ENTR'ACTE

Jake was a boy of imagination, though one would never have thought it to look at his jolly rubicund face and small sturdy form. The very gaiters on his stout calves, spruce and workmanlike, would have precluded any such idea. His master, Sir Francis Orsden—the son of one of whose gamekeepers he was—would never, though a young man of imagination himself, have guessed in Jake a kindred spirit. Yet, when Sir Francis played on the organ in the little church at Leighway, and Jake blew for him, it was odds which of the two brought the more inspiration to his task. Sir Francis would practise there occasionally, and bring the boy with him, because Jake was dogged and strong of muscle, and not easily tired. He never knew what secret goad to endurance the small rascal possessed in his imagination. The business in hand-blowing was to watch a plummet's rise and fall: you pumped for the fall and slackened for the rise. That was the hard prose of it; but Jake knew a better way. He would imagine himself blowing up a fire with a bellows. When a full organ was needed, he had to blow like the devil to keep the plummet down, and then the fire roared under his efforts; otherwise, a gentle purring glow was easily stimulated. At another time he would be filling a bucket at a well for a succession of thirsty horses, and would so nicely time the allowance for each that the bucket was descending again on the very point of its being sucked dry. Or he would be the landlord of the Bit and Halter, dozing over his parlour fire, nodding, nodding down in little jerks, and then recovering himself with an indrawn rising sigh. Sometimes, when the music was very liquid, he would work a beer engine—one or two good pulls, and then the upward flow through the syphon; sometimes he would fish, and, getting a bite, pull in. These make-believes greatly ameliorated the tedium of his office by importing a sense of personal responsibility into it. It was not so much the music he had to keep going as his fancy of the moment.

One morning he was blowing for his master—and pretending, rather gruesomely, to be an exhausted swimmer struggling for a few strokes, and then relaxing and drifting until agonised convulsively to fresh efforts—when he became aware of a young lady standing by him and amusedly watching his labours. Jake ducked, even in the process of pumping, and Miss Kennett put a finger to her lips. She was quite a popular young lady among the villagers, whom she treated on terms of sociability which her father would strongly have disapproved had he known. There was nothing of Touchstone's rosy Audrey about Miss Kennett, but there was a good deal of the graceful and graceless rebel. Grievance, mutely felt, had thrown her into another camp than that of her order.

Sir Francis played on, unconscious of his listener; until presently, with a whispered 'Give it me, Jacob,' the young lady appropriated the pump-handle and began herself to inflate the lungs of the music. The change did not make for success; her strokes, femininely short and quick, raced against the rising plummet, and presently gave out altogether at a critical moment of full pressure. The wind went from the pipes in a dismal whine; Miss Kennett sat back on the pump-handle in a fit of helpless laughter, and Sir Francis came dodging round the organ in a fume.

'Great Scott!' he exclaimed; and the asperity in his face melted into an amiable grin.

'My mistake,' said Audrey. 'Do go on!'

'How did you know I was here?'

'I didn't; but I heard some one grinding the organ, and came in to see.'

'Jake,' said his master, 'Miss Kennett is going to blow for me, so you can cut along.'

The boy touched his forehead, secured his cap, and departed.

'A good youngster,' said Sir Francis.

'I love him,' said Audrey.

'Ah!' sighed the young Baronet, 'lucky Jake!'

'Frank, don't be tiresome. Do you really want me to blow for you? No, not for ever. I know you are going to say it, and it would simply be silly. If I am going to stop here, you must talk sense.'

'I have hardly said anything yet.'

'Well, don't say it. Sit down and play.'

'I don't want to play: I want to be serious. Why am I so obnoxious to you, Audrey?'

'Now I shall go.'

'No. Do be patient. Really, you know, you have never yet said, in so many words, why you won't marry me.'

'Yes I have. It is because I couldn't possibly call myself Audrey Orsden of Audley.'

'Well, if you will be flippant.'

She stood looking at him a moment. 'I didn't mean to be flippant, Frank—nothing but kind. Shall we go a walk together? It's such a lovely morning. Only you must promise.'

'I think I know what you mean by kind, Audrey—kind in forbearing. Very well, I will promise.'

He stowed his music away, and they went out together—out through the green and shadowed churchyard, with its old headboards and epitaphs. There was one to a merry maid dead at sixteen, whose thoughtless laughter had served some mortuary rhymster for a theme on the perishableness of sweet things, with an earnest recommendation to the Christian to be wise while he might—as if wisdom lay in melancholy. There was a fine opportunity for drawing a moral; but Sir Francis did not draw it. Perhaps he thought he would rather have marriage as a jest than no wife at all.

Soon they were outside the village and making for the free Downs. Audrey was always at her best and frankest on the Downs.

'I had wanted to speak to you,' said her companion. 'Is it really true that our friend the Baron's man has been arrested in connexion with this horrible affair?'

'Yes, it is quite true. Poor Baron! I am not allowed to know much about it all; but it seems that everything points to this Louis being the culprit. He went out on the afternoon of the murder with the express purpose of seeking Annie, and did not come home till long afterwards. The police have taken him into custody on suspicion.'

'It must be awkward for you all, having the Baron for a guest.'

'It is, in a way; but we can't very well ask him to go elsewhere while his man is in peril. He offered; but papa wouldn't hear of it. He said the best thing for them both was to go on playing chess.'

'How's Hugo?'

'He's all right. Why shouldn't he be?'

'I don't know. Only he struck me as being upset about something on that day we shot together.'

'Well, he doesn't give me his confidence, you know.'

'No, I know. Poor Audrey!'

'Why do you call me poor Audrey?' asked the girl angrily. 'I don't want your pity, or anybody's.'

'You don't want anything of mine, I'm sure; and yet it's all there for your acceptance—every bit.'

'Is this keeping your promise? No, I don't. I want what I want, and it's nothing that you can give me.'

'Not my whole love and submission, Audrey?'

She flounced her shoulder, and seemed as if about to leave him, but suddenly thought better of it, and faced him resolutely.

'It's that, Frank, though you don't seem to understand it. I don't want any man's submission! I want his mastership, if I want him at all.' Her eyes softened, and she looked at him pityingly. 'I hate to pain you, you dear; but I can't marry you. You have a thousand good qualities; you are gentle and true and just and honourable, and you have a mind to put my poor little organ to shame. Why you should possibly want me, I can't tell; but I'm very sure of one thing—that I am wise in disappointing you. We should be the brass and the earthenware pots, Frank, and you would be the one to be broke. I know it. You are a poet, and I am the very worst of prose. You have a right to despise me, and I have a right—not to despise you, but to see what you are not—from my point of view.'

'That is to say, a sportsman.'

'You know I could never pretend to any sympathy with your real tastes—books and music and musty old prints, and all that sort of thing.'

He laughed. 'Well, I shall try again.'

His persistence goaded her to cruelty.

'If you want to know the truth, I like a man to be a man, as my brother is.'

His face twitched and sobered. 'And I am not one.'

'Why do you make me say these things?' she cried resentfully. 'You drive me to it, and then take credit, I suppose, for your larger nature.'

'I take credit for nothing,' said he. 'My account with you is all on the debit side. Audrey, dear, please forgive me for having broken my word. It shall be the last time.'

'I believe it has been the first,' she said, with a rather quivering lip. 'I will say that for you, Frank. Your word is your bond. Now do let us talk about something else. I came out to get rid of all that horrible atmosphere, of police, and detectives, and suspicions about everybody and everything, and this is my reward. The inquest is taking place this very day, and how glad I shall be when the whole sick business is over, and the poor thing decently buried, words can't say. Now, one, two, three, and let us race for that clump.'

CHAPTER IX

THE INQUEST

The Bit and Halter was seething with excitement. Its landlord, Joe Harris, selected foreman of the jury about to sit on the poor remains of that which, five days earlier, had been the living entity known as Annie Evans, had all the bustling air of a Master of the Ceremonies at some important entertainment. The tap overflowed as on an auction day—occasion most popular for bringing together from near and far those birds of prey to whom a broken home or a bankrupt farm stock offers an irresistible attraction. Here it was another sort of calamity, but the moral was the same. It turned upon that form of Epicurism which consists in watching comfortably from an auditorium the agonies of one's martyred fellow-creatures in the arena. There are sybarites of that complexion who, if they cannot be in at the death, will go far to be in at the burying.

The case, both from its local notoriety and the agreeable mystery which surrounded it, had aroused pretty widespread interest. Speculation as to its outcome was rife and voluble. Quite a pack of vehicles stood congregated in the road, and quite a crowd of their owners in and about the inn enclosure. Each known official visage, as it appeared, was greeted with a curious scrutiny, silent until the new-comer had passed, and then rising garrulous in the wake of his going. There was no actual ribaldry heard, but plenty of rather excited jocularity, with odds given and taken on the event. If the poor shattered voiceless thing, which lay so quietly in its shell in an outhouse awaiting the coming verdict, could only once have pleaded in visible evidence for itself, surely the solemnity of that mute entreaty for peace and forgetfulness would have found its way even to those insensate hearts. But charity is as much a matter of imagination as of feeling, and many an unobtrusive need in the world fails of its relief through the lack of that penetrative vision in the well-meaning. Our souls, it may be, are not to be measured within the limits of our qualities.

At near eleven o'clock the deputy District Coroner, Mr Brabner, drove up in a fly. He was a small important-looking, be-whiskered man, in large round spectacles of such strength as to impart to his whole face a solemn owlish look, very sapient and impressive. A hush fell upon the throng as he alighted, with his clerk, and, ushered by the landlord, entered the inn. But he had hardly disappeared when a more thrilling advent came, like Aaron's serpent, to devour the lesser. This was of the arrested man, in charge of a couple of officers from the County police-station. The unhappy little Gascon looked frightened and bewildered. His restless, vivacious, brown eyes glanced hither and thither among the people, seeming to deprecate, to implore, to appeal for pity from a monstrous terror which had trapped and was about to devour him. But his emotions had hardly found scope for their display when he was gone hurried in by his escort.

Thereafter—the party from the house, with all necessary witnesses, being already assembled in the inn—no time was lost in opening the proceedings, which were arranged to take place in the coffee-room, the one fair-sized chamber in the building, though still so small that only a fraction of the waiting public could be allowed admittance to it, the rest hanging disconsolately about the passages and windows, and getting what information they could by deputy. The Coroner took his seat at one end of the long table provided; the jury—probi et legates homines—to the number of twelve, good farm-hands and true, the most of them, and ready to believe anything they were told were despatched to view the body; and the business began. Mr Redstall, a Winton solicitor, watched the case on behalf of Sir Calvin, the deceased's family being unrepresented, and Mr Fyler, barrister-at-law, appeared for the police. A report of the subsequent proceedings is summarised in the following notes:—

Evidence of identification being in the first instance required, Sergeant Ridgway, of the Scotland Yard detective force, stated that it had been found impossible so far, in spite of every effort made, to trace out the deceased's relations. He had himself made a journey to London, whence the girl had been originally engaged, for the express purpose of inquiring, but had failed wholly to procure any information on the subject. All agencies had been communicated with, and the name did not figure anywhere on their books. An advertisement, appealing to the next of kin, had been inserted in a number of newspapers, but without as yet eliciting any response. He called on Mrs Bingley to repeat the statement she had already made to him regarding the deceased's engagement by her, and the housekeeper having complied, he asked the Coroner, in default of any more intimate proof, to accept the only evidence of identification procurable at the moment. Further attempts would be made, of course, to elucidate the mystery, as by way of the deceased's former employer, Mrs Wilson; but that lady, being gone to New Zealand, might prove as difficult to trace as Evan's own connexions; and in any event a long time must elapse before an answer could be obtained from her. A search of the girl's boxes and personal belongings, though minutely conducted by himself and the housekeeper, had failed to yield any clue whatsoever, and, in short, so far as things went, that was the whole matter.

The Sergeant spoke, now as hereafter, always with visible effect, not only on the jury but on the Coroner himself. His cool, keen aspect, his pruned and essential phrases, the awful halo with which his position as a great London detective surrounded him, not to speak of the local reputation he had lately acquired, weighted his every word, to these admiring provincial minds, with a gravity and authority which were final. If he said that such a thing was, it was. The Coroner's clerk entered on his minutes the name of Annie Evans, domestic servant, age twenty-three, family and condition unknown; and the case proceeded.

Mr Hugo Kennett was the first witness called. He gave his evidence quietly and clearly, though with some signs of emotion when he referred to his discovery of the dead body. His relation of the event has already been given, and need not here be repeated. The essential facts were that he had entered the Bishop's Walk, on the fatal afternoon, shortly after three o'clock; had encountered and stood talking with the girl for a period estimated at ten minutes; had then continued his way to the house, which he may have reached about 3.15, and later, just as it struck four, had suddenly remembered leaving his gun in the copse, and had returned to retrieve it, with the result known. The body was lying on its face, and from its attitude and the nature of the injury, it would appear that the shot had been fired from the direction of the road. He went at once to raise an alarm.

At the conclusion of this evidence, Counsel rose to put a few questions to the witness.

Q. You say, Mr Kennett, you left at once, on discovering the body, to give the alarm?

A. Yes.

Q. Leaving your gun where it was?

A. No, I forgot. I spoke generally, not realising that the point might be important.

Q. You see that it may be?

A. Quite.

Q. You secured your gun first, then?

A. Yes, I did. I had to pass the body to do it, not liking the job, but driven to it in a sort of insane instinct to get the thing into my safe keeping when it was too late. You see, I blamed myself for having in a sort of way contributed to the deed by my carelessness. I was very much agitated.

Q. You mean that, in your opinion, the crime might never have been committed had not the gun offered itself to some sudden temptation?

A. Yes, that is what I mean.

Q. You are convinced, then, that the shot was fired from this particular weapon?

A. It seems reasonable to conclude so.

Q. Why?

A. I had left it with one of the barrels loaded, and when I saw it again they had both been discharged.

Q. You will swear to the one barrel having been loaded when you left it leaning against the tree?

A. To the best of my belief it was.

Q. You will swear to that?

A. No, I cannot actually swear to it, but I am practically convinced of the fact.

Q. Did you notice, when you took up the gun again, if the barrels, or barrel, were warm?

A. No, I never thought of it.

Q. Don't you think it would have been well if it had occurred to you? Don't you think you would have done better to leave the gun alone altogether, until the police arrived?

A. (The witness for the first time exhibiting a little irritability under this catechism): I dare say it would have been better. I was agitated, I tell you, and the situation was new to me. One doesn't think of the proper thing to do on such an occasion unless one is a lawyer. I just took the gun with me, and chucked it into the gun-room as I passed, hating the infernal thing.

Q. Very natural under the circumstances, I am sure. Now, another question. The shot was fired, you consider, from the direction of the road. At what distance from the deceased would your knowledge as a sportsman put it?

A. Judging roughly, I should say about fifteen feet.

Q. About the distance, that is to say, between the tree against which you had leaned your gun and the spot where the body was found?

A. Yes.

Q. Then the inference is that the gun had suddenly been seized by some one from its position, fired, and replaced where it was?

A. I suppose so.

Q. You reached the house, you say, about 3.15, and left it again, on your way to the copse, just as it struck four. Would you mind telling us how you disposed of the interval?

A. (With some temper): I was in my own den all the time. What on earth has that to do with the matter?

Q. Everything, sir; touching on the critical movements of witnesses in a case of this sort matters. I wish to ask you, for instance, if, during that interval from 3.15 to 4 o'clock, you heard any sound, any report, like that of a gun being discharged?

A. If I had, I should probably have paid no attention to it. The sound of a gun is nothing very uncommon with us.

Q. I ask you if you were aware of any such sound?

A. Not that I can remember.

Mr Fyler was an advocate of that Old Bailey complexion, colourless, black-eyebrowed, moist, thick rinded, whose constant policy it is to provoke hostility in a witness with the object of bullying him for it into submission and self-committal. With every reason, in the present case, to respect, and none to suspect, the deponent, his professional habit would nevertheless not permit him to cast his examination in a wholly conciliatory form.

Q. Now, Mr Kennett, I must ask you to be very particular in your replies to the questions I am about to put to you. You came upon Annie Evans, I understand, shortly after entering the copse, and put down your gun with the purpose of speaking to her?

A. With the purpose of lighting a cigarette.

Q. But you did speak with her?

A. Yes, I have said so.

Q. You placed your gun against the tree where you afterwards found it?

A. Yes.

Q. Was the deceased then standing near you, or further in by the tree where her body was found?

A. She was standing (Some amazing purport in the question seemed suddenly here to burst upon the witness, and he uttered a violent ejaculation) Great God! Are you meaning to suggest that I fired the shot myself? (Sensation.)

Q. I am suggesting nothing of the sort, of course. Will you answer, if you please, whether, after you had put aside your gun, she came towards you or you walked towards her?

A. (Recovering himself with obvious difficulty): She came towards me.

Q. So as to bring herself within view, we will say, of any one who might be watching from the road, or thereabouts?

A. Just possibly she might, if the person had come inside the gate.

Q. Would you mind telling us what was the subject of your brief conversation with the deceased?

A. I asked her what she was doing there.

Q. Just so. And she answered, Mr Kennett?

A. O! what one might expect.

Q. Evasively, that is to say?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you twit her, possibly, with being there for an assignation?

A. Something of the sort I might.

Q. And she admitted it?

A. Of course not. (Laughter.)

Q. What else, would you mind saying?

A. I understood from her that she had come out to escape the company in the kitchen. It seemed there had been a row regarding her between Cleghorn our butler and the prisoner, and she wanted to get away from them both. She said that the foreigner had paid her unwelcome attentions, and had tried to kiss her, for which she had boxed his ears, and that ever since she had gone in fear of her life from him. (Sensation.) I took it more for a joke than a formal complaint, and did not suppose her to be serious. It did not occur to me that she was really frightened of the man, or I should have taken steps for her protection.

Q. And that was all?

A. All that was essential.

Q. Thank you, Mr Kennett. I will not trouble you any further.

Witness turned and retired. His evidence had yielded something of the unexpected, in its incredulous little outburst and in its conclusion. As to the first, it was patent that Counsel's object in putting the question which had provoked it was to suggest maddened jealousy as a motive for the crime on the part of some one to whom the girl's actions had become suddenly visible through her movement towards the witness, between whom and herself had possibly occurred some philandering passages Such, at least, from the witness's own implied admission of a certain freedom in his conversation with the deceased, would appear a justifiable assumption. His final statement—though legally inadmissible—inasmuch as it supplied the motive with a name, caused a profound stir in Court.

Mrs Anna Bingley, housekeeper to Sir Calvin Kennett, was the next witness called. Her evidence repeated, in effect, what has already been recorded, and may be passed over. Where it was important, it was, like the other, evidence of hearsay, and inadmissible.

Jane Ketchlove, cook to Sir Calvin, gave evidence. She had never seen the prisoner till the night of his arrival, though she had seen his master once or twice on the occasion of former visits. He, the Baron, had not at those times come accompanied by any gentleman. Mr Cabanis made himself quite at home like: he was a very lively, talkative person, and easily excited, she thought. He showed himself very forward with the ladies, and they remarked on it, though putting it down to his foreign breeding. On the night of his arrival the valet went up to lay out his master's things about seven o'clock. Shortly afterwards Annie followed him with the hot water. She, witness, rather wondered over the girl's assurance in going alone, after the way the man had been acting towards her. He had seemed like one struck of a heap with her beauty; for the poor creature was beautiful, there was no denying it. It was as if he claimed her for his own from the first moment of his seeing her, and dared any one to say him nay. A few minutes later Annie came down, red with fury over his having tried to kiss her. She had boxed his ears well for him, she said. Mr Cleghorn was in the kitchen, and he flew into a fury when he heard. He said she must have encouraged the man, or he never would have dared. He was a great admirer of Annie himself, and it was always said among us that they would come to make a match of it. Annie answered up, asking him what business it was of his, and there was a fine row between the two. In the middle this Cabanis came down. His cheek was red as fire, and he looked like a devil. He said no one had ever struck him—man, woman, or child—without living to repent it. He and Mr Cleghorn got at it then, and the rest of us had a hard ado to part them; but we got things quiet after a time, though it was only for a time, Mr Cleghorn having to go upstairs, upset as he was. They simmered like, and came on the boil again the next day at dinner in the servants' hall. Annie was not there, and that seemed to give them the chance to settle things in her absence. Mr Cleghorn began it, insisting on his prior claim to the girl, and Cabanis answered that, if he couldn't have her, nobody else should; he would see her dead first. That led to a struggle, ending in blows between them; and at the last Cabanis broke away, declaring he was going out then and there to find the girl and put the question to her.

Q. What question?

A. Whether it was to be himself or Mr Cleghorn, sir.

Q. Did he utter any threat against the girl, in case her choice was against him?

A. Not in so many words, sir; but we were all terrified by his look and manner.

Q. They struck you as meaning business, eh?

A. That was it, sir.

Q. About what time was that?

A. As near as possible to two o'clock.

Q. And Mr Cleghorn followed?

A. After waiting a bit, sir, to recover himself. Then he got up sudden, saying he was going to see this thing through, and, putting on his cap and coat, out he went.

Q. At what time was that?

A. It may have been ten minutes after the other.

Q. Did you form any conclusion as to what he meant by seeing the thing through?

A. We all thought he meant, sir, that he was going to follow Cabanis and get the girl herself to choose between them.

Q. When did you see him again?

A. It was at half after four, when, as some of us stood waiting and shivering at the head of the path, he came amongst us.

Q. In his cap and overcoat?

A. Yes, sir. Just as he had gone out. We told him what had happened.

Q. And how did he take it?

A. Very bad, sir. He turned that white, I thought he would have fallen.

Q. And when did the prisoner return?

A. It may have been five o'clock when I saw him come in.

Q. Did his manner then show any signs of agitation or disturbance?

A. No, sir, I can't say it did. On the contrary, he seemed cheerful and relieved, as if he had got something off his mind.

Q. Did you tell him what had happened?

A. Yes, to be sure.

Q. And how did he take it?

A. Very quiet—sort of stunned like.

Q. Did he make any remark?

A. He said something in his own language, sir, very deep and hoarse. It sounded like but I really can't manage it.

M. le Baron (interposing): 'It was "Non, non, par pitié!"'

Counsel (tartly): I shall be obliged, sir, if you will keep your evidence till it is asked for. (M. le Baron admitted his error with a bow.)

Q. Was that all?

A. One of the maids told him, sir, that his master was asking for him, and he went off at once, without another word.

Q. And he has never referred to the subject since?

A. He would not talk of it. It was too horrible, he said.

Jessie Ellis, parlour-maid, and a couple of housemaids—(they kept no male indoor servants, except the butler, at Wildshott)—Kate Yokes and Mabel Wheelband, gave corroborative evidence, substantiating in all essential particulars the last witness's statement.

Reuben Henstridge, landlord of the Red Deer inn, was the next witness summoned. He was a big cloddish fellow, unprepossessing in appearance, and reluctant and unwilling in his answers, as though surlily suspecting some design to ensnare him into compromising himself. He deposed that on the afternoon of the crime he was out on the hill somewhere, below his inn 'taking the air' when he saw a man break through the lower beech-thicket skirting Wildshott, and go down quickly towards the high road. That man was the prisoner. He parted the branches savage-like, and jumped the bank and trench, moving his arms and talking to himself all the time. Witness went on with his business of 'taking the air' and, when he had had enough, returned to his own premises. Later, Mr Cleghorn, whom he knew very well as a casual customer, came in for a glass. He did not look himself, and stayed only a short time, and that was the whole he knew of the matter.

Q. What time of day was it when you saw the prisoner come from the wood?

A. Ten after two, it might be.

Q. And he went down towards the road?

A. Aye.

Q. Did you notice what became of him?

A. No, I didn't. I had my own concerns to look after.

Q. Taking the air, eh?

A. That's it.

Q. You weren't taking it with a wire, I suppose? (Laughter.)

A. No, I weren't. You keep a civil tongue in your head.

The witness, called sharply to order by the Coroner, stood glowering and muttering.

Q. Where is your inn situated?

A. Top o' Stockford Down.

Q. How far is it from the high road?

A. Call it a mile and a half.

Q. Where were you on the hill when you saw the prisoner?

A. Nigher the road than the inn. Three-quarters way down, say.

Q. Were you anywhere near the prisoner when he emerged?

A. Nigh as close as I am to you.

Q. Did he see you?

A. No, he didn't. I were hid in the ditch. (Laughter.)

Q. You didn't recognise him?

A. Not likely. I'd never seen him before.

Q. Did anything strike you in his manner or expression?

A. He looked uncommon wild.

Q. Did he? Now, what time was it when you started to return to your inn?

A. It may have been an hour later.

Q. A little after three, say?

A. Aye.

Q. Did you pass anybody by the way?

A. No.

Q. The Red Deer is very lonely situated, is it not?

A. Lonely enough.

Q. High up, at the meeting of four cross roads, I understand?

A. That's it.

Q. You don't have many customers in the course of a day?

A. Maybe, maybe not.

Q. Not so many that you would forget this one or that having called yesterday or the day before?

A. What are you trying to get at?

Q. I must trouble you to answer questions, not put them. What time was it on that day when Mr Cleghorn looked in?

A. Put it at four o'clock.

Q. And you thought he looked unwell?

A. He said himself he was feeling out of sorts. The liquor seemed to pull him round a bit.

Q. Did he say anything else?

A. Not much. He went as soon a'most as he'd drunk it down. I thought he'd tired himself walking up the hill.

Q. What made you think that?

A. I see'd him a'coming when he was far off. I was crossing the yard to the pump at the time. That might have been at a quarter before four. He looked as if he'd pulled his cap over his eyes and turned his coat collar up; but I couldn't make him out distinct.

Q. How did you know, then, that it was Mr Cleghorn?

A. Because he come in himself a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes later. Who else could it be?

Q. What sort of coat and hat or cap was this figure wearing?

A. What I see when Mr Cleghorn come in, of course—same as he's got now.

Q. Colour, style—the same in every particular?

A. That's it.

Q. You made out the figure in the distance to be wearing a coat and cloth cap like Mr Cleghorn's?

A. Nat'rally, as it were Mr Cleghorn himself.

Q. Now attend to me. Will you swear you could distinguish the colour of the coat and cap the figure was wearing?

A. I won't go so far as to say that. It were a dull day, and my eyesight none of the best k and he were too far off, and down in the shadder of the hollers. He looked all one colour to me—a sort o' misty purple. But I knew him for Mr Cleghorn, sure enough, when he walked into the tap.

Q. Wonderfully sagacious of you. (Laughter.) How far away was this figure when you saw it?

A. Couple o' hundred yards, maybe.

Q. Was it climbing the hill fast?

A. What you might call fast—hurrying.

Q. Didn't it strike you as odd, then, that it should take it a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes to cover that short distance between the spot where you saw it and your inn?

A. No, it didn't. I didn't think about it. Mr Cleghorn, he might have stopped to rest himself, or to tie a bootlace, or anything.

Q. After seeing the figure did you return to the bar?

A. No. I went into the parlour to make tea.

Q. And remained there till Mr Cleghorn entered?

A. That's it.

Counsel nodded across at the detective, as if to say, 'Here's possible matter for you, Sergeant,' and with that he closed the examination, and told the witness he might stand down.

Samuel Cleghorn, butler to Sir Calvin, was then called to give evidence. Witness appeared as a substantial, well-nourished man of forty, with a full, rather unexpressive face, a fixed eye (literally), and a large bald tonsure—not at all the sort of figure one would associate with a romantic story of passion and mystery. He admitted his quarrel with the prisoner, pleading excessive provocation, and that he had followed him out on the fatal afternoon with the intention actually suggested by the witness Ketchlove. He had failed, however, to discover him, or the direction in which he had gone, and had ultimately, after some desultory prying about the grounds, withdrawn himself to the upper kitchen gardens, where he had taken refuge in a tool-shed, and there remained, nursing his sorrow, until 3.30 or thereabouts, when, feeling still very overcome, he had decided to go up to the Red Deer for a little refreshment, which he had done, afterwards returning straight to the house.

Q. How did you leave the kitchen garden?

A. By a door in the wall, sir, giving on the downs; and by that way I returned.

Q. During all this time, while you were looking for the prisoner, or mourning in the tool-shed—(laughter)—did you encounter any one?

A. Not a soul that I can remember, sir.

Q. You were greatly attached to the deceased?

A. (With emotion.) I was.

Q. And wished to make her your wife?

A. Yes.

Q. Though your acquaintance with her extended over only a couple of months?

A. That is so.

Q. Almost a case of love at first sight, eh?

A. As you choose, sir.

Q. Did she return your attachment?

A. Not as I could have wished.

Q. She refused you?

A. I never offered myself to her in so many words.

Q. Had you reason to suspect a rival?

A. None in particular—till the Frenchman came.

Q. Rivals generally, then?

A. Naturally there were many to admire her.

Q. But no one in especial to excite your jealousy?

A. No.

Q. Did the deceased give you her confidence?

A. Not what you might call her confidence. We were very friendly.

Q. She never spoke to you of her past life, or of her former situations, or of her relations?

A. No, never. She was not what you might call a communicative young woman.

Q. You had no reason to suspect that she was carrying on with anybody unknown to you?

A. No reason, sir. I can't answer for my thoughts.

Q. What do you mean by that?

A. Why, I might have wondered now and again why she was so obstinate in resisting me.

Q. But you suspected no rival in particular? I ask you again.

A. A man may think things.

Q. Will you answer my question?

A. Well, then, I didn't.

Q. Are you speaking the truth?

A. Yes.

Witness was subjected to some severe cross-questioning on this point, but persisted in his refusal to associate his suspicions with any particular person. He argued only negatively, he said, from the deceased's indifference to himself, which (he declared amid some laughter) was utterly incomprehensible to him on any other supposition than that of a previous attachment. Counsel then continued:—

Q. When, after leaving the garden, you were making for the Red Deer, did you observe any other figure on the hill, going in the same direction as yourself, but in advance of you?

A. There may have been. I won't answer for sure.

Q. Will you explain what you mean by that?

A. I was what you might call preoccupied—not thinking much of anything but my own trouble. But—yes, I have an idea there was some one.

Q. How was he dressed?

A. I can't say, sir. I never looked; it's only a hazy sort of impression.

Q. Was he far ahead?

A. He may have been—very far; or perhaps it was only the shadows. I shouldn't like to swear there was any one at all.

Q. You have heard the witness Henstridge's evidence. Are you sure you are not borrowing from it the idea of this second figure, a sort of simulacrum of yourself?

A. Well, I may be, unconscious as it were. I can't state anything for certain.

Q. Were you walking fast as you got near the inn?

A. I dare say I was—fast for me. (Laughter.) What with one thing and another, my throat was as dry as tinder.

Q. Did you stop, or linger, for any purpose when approaching the inn?

A. Not that I can remember. I may have. What happened afterwards has put all that out of my head.

Q. You mean the news awaiting you on your return?

A. Yes.

Q. So that you can't tell me, I suppose, whether or not, as you climbed the hill, your coat-collar was turned up and the peak of your cap pulled down?

A. It's like enough they were. I had put the things on anyhow in my hurry. But it's all a vague memory.

Counsel. Very well. You can stand down.

Daniel Groome, gardener, was next called. He stated that he was sweeping up leaves in the drive to the east side of the house—that is to say, the side furthest from the copse—on the afternoon of the murder. Had heard the stable clock strike three, and shortly afterwards had seen the young master come out of the head of the Bishop's Walk and go towards the house, which he entered by the front door. He was looking, he thought, in a bit of a temper: but the young master was like that—all in a stew one moment over a little thing, and the next laughing and joking over something that mattered. Had wondered at seeing him back so soon from the shooting, but supposed he had shot wild, as he sometimes would, and was in a pet about it. Did not see him again until he, witness, was summoned to the copse to help remove the body.

Q. During the time you were sweeping in the drive, did you hear the sound of a shot?

A. A'many, sir. The gentlemen was out with their guns.

Q. Did any one shot sound to you nearer than the others?

A. One sounded pretty loud.

Q. As if comparatively close by?

A. Yes, it might be.

Q. From the direction of the Bishop's Walk?

A. I couldn't rightly say, sir. It wasn't a carrying day. Sounds on such a day travel very deceptive. It might have come from across the road, or further.

Q. At what time did you hear this particular shot?

A. It might have been three o'clock, or a little later; I couldn't be sure.

Q. Think again.

A. No, I couldn't be sure, sir. I shouldn't like to swear.

Q. Might it have been nearer half-past three?

A. Very like. I dare say it might.

This point was urged, but the witness persisted in refusing to commit himself to any more definite statement.

John Tugwood, coachman, Edward Noakes, groom, and Martha Jolly, lodge-keeper, were called and examined on the same subject. They had all distinguished, or thought they had distinguished, the louder shot in question; but their evidence as to its precise time was so hopelessly contradictory that no reliance whatever could be placed on it.

Sergeant-Detective Ridgway deposed that, having been put in charge of the case by Sir Calvin Kennett, he had proceeded to make an examination of the spot where the body had been found. This was some twenty-four hours after the commission of the alleged crime, and it might be thought possible that certain local changes had occurred during the interval. He understood, however, that the police had, when first called in, conducted an exhaustive investigation of the place, and that their conclusions differed in no material degree from his own, so that he was permitted to speak for them in the few details he had to place before the jury. Briefly, his notes comprised the following observations:—The measured distance from the wicket in the boundary hedge to the tree against which the witness, Mr Hugo Kennett, had stated that he rested his gun was nineteen and a quarter yards: thence to the beech-tree by which the body had been found was another fifteen feet. Between the wicket and the first tree there was a curve in the track, sufficient to conceal from any one standing by the second, or inner, tree the movements of one approaching from the direction of the gate. All about this part of the copse, down to the hedge, was very dense thicket, which in one place, in close proximity to the first tree supporting the gun, bore some tokens as of a person having been concealed there. If such were the case, the movements of the person in question had been presumably stealthy, the growth showing only slight signs of disturbance, not easily detected. His theory was that this person had entered possibly by the gate from the road, had crept along the path, or track, until he had caught a glimpse through the trees of the deceased in conversation with Mr Kennett, had then slipped into the undergrowth and silently worked his way to the point of concealment first-mentioned, where he would be both eye and ear witness of what was passing between the two, and had subsequently, whether torn by the passion of revenge or of jealousy, issued noiselessly forth, some few minutes after Mr Kennett's departure, seized up the gun, and either at once, or following a brief altercation, shot the deceased dead as she was moving to escape from him. Conformably with this theory, there was no sign of any struggle having occurred; but there were signs that the murderer had moved and conducted himself with great caution and circumspection. Unfortunately no evidence as to footprints could be adduced, the ground being in too hard and dry a state to record their impression. Finally, he was bound to say that there was nothing in his theory incompatible with the assumption that the prisoner was the one responsible for the deed. On the other hand, it was true that the man's movements between the time when the witness Henstridge had seen him descending towards the road, and the time of the commission of the crime-which could not have been earlier than three o'clock—had still to be accounted for. But it was possible, of course, that he had occupied this interval of three-quarters of an hour in stalking, and in finally running to earth his victim. If he could produce witnesses to prove the contrary, the theory of course collapsed.

The Sergeant delivered his statement with a hard, clear-cut precision which was in curious and rather deadly contrast with the nervous hesitation displayed by other witnesses. There was a suggestion about him of the expert surgeon, demonstrating, knife in hand, above the operating table; and in a voice as keen and cold as his blade.

Raymond, Baron Le Sage, was the next witness called. It was noticed once or twice, during the course of the Baron's evidence, that the prisoner looked as if reproachfully and imploringly towards his master.

Q. The prisoner is your servant?

A. He is my servant.

Q. Since when, will you tell me?

A. He has been in my service now over a year.

Q. You took him with a good character?

A. An excellent character.

Q. He is a Gascon, I believe?

A. Yes, a Gascon.

Q. A hot-blooded and vindictive race, is it not?

A. A warm-blooded people, certainly.

Q. Practising the vendetta?

A. You surprise me.

Q. I am asking you for information.

A. I have none to give you.

Q. Very well; we will leave it at that. On the afternoon of the murder, about half-past two, you entered the Bishop's Walk?

A. I had been out driving with Miss Kennett, and, passing the gate, asked her whither it led. She told me, and I decided to go by the path, leaving her to drive on to the house alone.

Q. Why did you so decide?

A. I had caught a glimpse among the trees, of, as I thought, the maid, Annie Evans, and I wished to speak with her.

Q. Indeed? (Counsel was evidently a little taken aback over the frankness of this admission.) Would you inform me on what subject?

A. I had been accidental witness the night before of the scrimmage between her and Louis already referred to, and I wished at once to apologise to her for Louis's' behaviour, and to warn her against any repetition of the punishment she had inflicted.

Q. On what grounds?

A. On the grounds that, the man being quick-tempered and impulsive, I would not answer for the consequences of another such assault. (Sensation.)

Q. And what was the deceased's answer?

A. She thanked me, and said she could look after herself.

Q. Anything further?

A. Nothing. I went on and joined my friend, Sir Calvin, in the house.

Q. The deceased, while you were with her, offered no sort of explanation of her presence in the copse?

A. None whatever.

Q. And you did not seek one?

A. O, dear, no! I should not have been so foolish. (Laughter.}

Q. Did you speak to the prisoner on the subject of the assault?

A. At the time, yes.

Q. And what did you gather from his answer?

A. I gathered that, in his quick ardent way, he was very much enamoured of the girl's beauty.

Q. And was correspondingly incensed, perhaps, over her rejection of his advances?

A. Not incensed. Saddened.

Q. He uttered no threat?

A. No.

Q. On the afternoon of the murder, on your return to the house, as just described, you inquired for the prisoner?

A. I inquired for him, then, and again later on our return from the copse after we had been to view the body.

Q. You were troubled about him, perhaps?

A. I was uneasy, until I had seen and questioned him.

Q. When was that?

A. He came in about five o'clock, and was immediately sent up to me.

Q. You asked him, perhaps, to account for his absence?

A. I did.

Q. And what was his explanation?

A. He made a frank confession of his quarrel with Mr Cleghorn, described how his first intention on rushing from the house had really been to find the girl and throw himself upon her mercy; but how, once in the open air, his frenzy had begun to cool, and to yield itself presently to indecision. He had then, he said, gone for a long walk over the downs, fighting all the way the demon of rage and jealousy which possessed him, and had finally, getting the better of his black unreasoning mood, grown thoroughly repentant and ashamed of his behaviour, and had returned to make amends.

Q. And you credited that wonderful story?

A. I believed it implicitly.

Q. Well, indeed, sir! Did he appear overcome by the news which had greeted him on his return?

A. He appeared stupefied—that is the word.

Q. Did he comment on it at all?

A. If you mean in the self-incriminating sense, he did not.

Q. In what sense, then?

A. He cursed the assassin capable of destroying so sweet a paragon of womanhood." (Laughter.}

Q. Very disinterested of him, I'm sure. Thank you, sir; that will suffice.

Counsel sitting down, Mr Redstall, for Sir Calvin, rose to put a question or two to the witness:—

Q. You have never had reason, M. le Baron, to regard the prisoner as a vindictive man?

A. Never. Impulsive, yes.

Q. And truthful?

A. Transparently so—to a childish degree.

Q. He would have a difficulty in dissembling?

A. An insuperable difficulty, I should think.

Dr Harding, of Longbridge, was the last witness called. He deposed to his having been summoned to the house on the afternoon of the murder, and to having examined the body within an hour and a half of its first discovery in the copse. The cause of death was a gunshot wound in the back, from a weapon fired at short range. Practically the whole of the charge had entered the body in one piece. Death must have been instantaneous, and must have occurred, from the indications, some two hours before his arrival; or, approximately, at about 3.30 o'clock. The wound could not possibly have been self-inflicted, and the position of the gun precluded any thought of accident. He had since, assisted by Dr Liversidge of Winton, made a post-mortem examination of the body. Asked if there was anything significant in the deceased's condition, his answer was yes.

This completed the evidence, at the conclusion of which, and of some remarks by the Coroner, the jury, after a brief consultation among themselves, brought in a verdict that the deceased died from a gunshot wound deliberately inflicted by the prisoner Louis Victor Cabanis, in a fit of revengeful passion; which verdict amounting to one of wilful murder, the prisoner was forthwith, on the Coroner's warrant, committed to the County gaol, there to await his examination before the magistrates on the capital charge. The jury further—being local men—added a rider to their verdict respectfully commiserating Sir Calvin on the very unpleasant business which had chosen to select his grounds for its enactment; and with that the proceedings terminated.

CHAPTER IX

THE INQUEST

The Bit and Halter was seething with excitement. Its landlord, Joe Harris, selected foreman of the jury about to sit on the poor remains of that which, five days earlier, had been the living entity known as Annie Evans, had all the bustling air of a Master of the Ceremonies at some important entertainment. The tap overflowed as on an auction day—occasion most popular for bringing together from near and far those birds of prey to whom a broken home or a bankrupt farm stock offers an irresistible attraction. Here it was another sort of calamity, but the moral was the same. It turned upon that form of Epicurism which consists in watching comfortably from an auditorium the agonies of one's martyred fellow-creatures in the arena. There are sybarites of that complexion who, if they cannot be in at the death, will go far to be in at the burying.

The case, both from its local notoriety and the agreeable mystery which surrounded it, had aroused pretty widespread interest. Speculation as to its outcome was rife and voluble. Quite a pack of vehicles stood congregated in the road, and quite a crowd of their owners in and about the inn enclosure. Each known official visage, as it appeared, was greeted with a curious scrutiny, silent until the new-comer had passed, and then rising garrulous in the wake of his going. There was no actual ribaldry heard, but plenty of rather excited jocularity, with odds given and taken on the event. If the poor shattered voiceless thing, which lay so quietly in its shell in an outhouse awaiting the coming verdict, could only once have pleaded in visible evidence for itself, surely the solemnity of that mute entreaty for peace and forgetfulness would have found its way even to those insensate hearts. But charity is as much a matter of imagination as of feeling, and many an unobtrusive need in the world fails of its relief through the lack of that penetrative vision in the well-meaning. Our souls, it may be, are not to be measured within the limits of our qualities.

At near eleven o'clock the deputy District Coroner, Mr Brabner, drove up in a fly. He was a small important-looking, be-whiskered man, in large round spectacles of such strength as to impart to his whole face a solemn owlish look, very sapient and impressive. A hush fell upon the throng as he alighted, with his clerk, and, ushered by the landlord, entered the inn. But he had hardly disappeared when a more thrilling advent came, like Aaron's serpent, to devour the lesser. This was of the arrested man, in charge of a couple of officers from the County police-station. The unhappy little Gascon looked frightened and bewildered. His restless, vivacious, brown eyes glanced hither and thither among the people, seeming to deprecate, to implore, to appeal for pity from a monstrous terror which had trapped and was about to devour him. But his emotions had hardly found scope for their display when he was gone hurried in by his escort.

Thereafter—the party from the house, with all necessary witnesses, being already assembled in the inn—no time was lost in opening the proceedings, which were arranged to take place in the coffee-room, the one fair-sized chamber in the building, though still so small that only a fraction of the waiting public could be allowed admittance to it, the rest hanging disconsolately about the passages and windows, and getting what information they could by deputy. The Coroner took his seat at one end of the long table provided; the jury—probi et legates homines—to the number of twelve, good farm-hands and true, the most of them, and ready to believe anything they were told were despatched to view the body; and the business began. Mr Redstall, a Winton solicitor, watched the case on behalf of Sir Calvin, the deceased's family being unrepresented, and Mr Fyler, barrister-at-law, appeared for the police. A report of the subsequent proceedings is summarised in the following notes:—

Evidence of identification being in the first instance required, Sergeant Ridgway, of the Scotland Yard detective force, stated that it had been found impossible so far, in spite of every effort made, to trace out the deceased's relations. He had himself made a journey to London, whence the girl had been originally engaged, for the express purpose of inquiring, but had failed wholly to procure any information on the subject. All agencies had been communicated with, and the name did not figure anywhere on their books. An advertisement, appealing to the next of kin, had been inserted in a number of newspapers, but without as yet eliciting any response. He called on Mrs Bingley to repeat the statement she had already made to him regarding the deceased's engagement by her, and the housekeeper having complied, he asked the Coroner, in default of any more intimate proof, to accept the only evidence of identification procurable at the moment. Further attempts would be made, of course, to elucidate the mystery, as by way of the deceased's former employer, Mrs Wilson; but that lady, being gone to New Zealand, might prove as difficult to trace as Evan's own connexions; and in any event a long time must elapse before an answer could be obtained from her. A search of the girl's boxes and personal belongings, though minutely conducted by himself and the housekeeper, had failed to yield any clue whatsoever, and, in short, so far as things went, that was the whole matter.

The Sergeant spoke, now as hereafter, always with visible effect, not only on the jury but on the Coroner himself. His cool, keen aspect, his pruned and essential phrases, the awful halo with which his position as a great London detective surrounded him, not to speak of the local reputation he had lately acquired, weighted his every word, to these admiring provincial minds, with a gravity and authority which were final. If he said that such a thing was, it was. The Coroner's clerk entered on his minutes the name of Annie Evans, domestic servant, age twenty-three, family and condition unknown; and the case proceeded.

Mr Hugo Kennett was the first witness called. He gave his evidence quietly and clearly, though with some signs of emotion when he referred to his discovery of the dead body. His relation of the event has already been given, and need not here be repeated. The essential facts were that he had entered the Bishop's Walk, on the fatal afternoon, shortly after three o'clock; had encountered and stood talking with the girl for a period estimated at ten minutes; had then continued his way to the house, which he may have reached about 3.15, and later, just as it struck four, had suddenly remembered leaving his gun in the copse, and had returned to retrieve it, with the result known. The body was lying on its face, and from its attitude and the nature of the injury, it would appear that the shot had been fired from the direction of the road. He went at once to raise an alarm.

At the conclusion of this evidence, Counsel rose to put a few questions to the witness.

Q. You say, Mr Kennett, you left at once, on discovering the body, to give the alarm?

A. Yes.

Q. Leaving your gun where it was?

A. No, I forgot. I spoke generally, not realising that the point might be important.

Q. You see that it may be?

A. Quite.

Q. You secured your gun first, then?

A. Yes, I did. I had to pass the body to do it, not liking the job, but driven to it in a sort of insane instinct to get the thing into my safe keeping when it was too late. You see, I blamed myself for having in a sort of way contributed to the deed by my carelessness. I was very much agitated.

Q. You mean that, in your opinion, the crime might never have been committed had not the gun offered itself to some sudden temptation?

A. Yes, that is what I mean.

Q. You are convinced, then, that the shot was fired from this particular weapon?

A. It seems reasonable to conclude so.

Q. Why?

A. I had left it with one of the barrels loaded, and when I saw it again they had both been discharged.

Q. You will swear to the one barrel having been loaded when you left it leaning against the tree?

A. To the best of my belief it was.

Q. You will swear to that?

A. No, I cannot actually swear to it, but I am practically convinced of the fact.

Q. Did you notice, when you took up the gun again, if the barrels, or barrel, were warm?

A. No, I never thought of it.

Q. Don't you think it would have been well if it had occurred to you? Don't you think you would have done better to leave the gun alone altogether, until the police arrived?

A. (The witness for the first time exhibiting a little irritability under this catechism): I dare say it would have been better. I was agitated, I tell you, and the situation was new to me. One doesn't think of the proper thing to do on such an occasion unless one is a lawyer. I just took the gun with me, and chucked it into the gun-room as I passed, hating the infernal thing.

Q. Very natural under the circumstances, I am sure. Now, another question. The shot was fired, you consider, from the direction of the road. At what distance from the deceased would your knowledge as a sportsman put it?

A. Judging roughly, I should say about fifteen feet.

Q. About the distance, that is to say, between the tree against which you had leaned your gun and the spot where the body was found?

A. Yes.

Q. Then the inference is that the gun had suddenly been seized by some one from its position, fired, and replaced where it was?

A. I suppose so.

Q. You reached the house, you say, about 3.15, and left it again, on your way to the copse, just as it struck four. Would you mind telling us how you disposed of the interval?

A. (With some temper): I was in my own den all the time. What on earth has that to do with the matter?

Q. Everything, sir; touching on the critical movements of witnesses in a case of this sort matters. I wish to ask you, for instance, if, during that interval from 3.15 to 4 o'clock, you heard any sound, any report, like that of a gun being discharged?

A. If I had, I should probably have paid no attention to it. The sound of a gun is nothing very uncommon with us.

Q. I ask you if you were aware of any such sound?

A. Not that I can remember.

Mr Fyler was an advocate of that Old Bailey complexion, colourless, black-eyebrowed, moist, thick rinded, whose constant policy it is to provoke hostility in a witness with the object of bullying him for it into submission and self-committal. With every reason, in the present case, to respect, and none to suspect, the deponent, his professional habit would nevertheless not permit him to cast his examination in a wholly conciliatory form.

Q. Now, Mr Kennett, I must ask you to be very particular in your replies to the questions I am about to put to you. You came upon Annie Evans, I understand, shortly after entering the copse, and put down your gun with the purpose of speaking to her?

A. With the purpose of lighting a cigarette.

Q. But you did speak with her?

A. Yes, I have said so.

Q. You placed your gun against the tree where you afterwards found it?

A. Yes.

Q. Was the deceased then standing near you, or further in by the tree where her body was found?

A. She was standing (Some amazing purport in the question seemed suddenly here to burst upon the witness, and he uttered a violent ejaculation) Great God! Are you meaning to suggest that I fired the shot myself? (Sensation.)

Q. I am suggesting nothing of the sort, of course. Will you answer, if you please, whether, after you had put aside your gun, she came towards you or you walked towards her?

A. (Recovering himself with obvious difficulty): She came towards me.

Q. So as to bring herself within view, we will say, of any one who might be watching from the road, or thereabouts?

A. Just possibly she might, if the person had come inside the gate.

Q. Would you mind telling us what was the subject of your brief conversation with the deceased?

A. I asked her what she was doing there.

Q. Just so. And she answered, Mr Kennett?

A. O! what one might expect.

Q. Evasively, that is to say?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you twit her, possibly, with being there for an assignation?

A. Something of the sort I might.

Q. And she admitted it?

A. Of course not. (Laughter.)

Q. What else, would you mind saying?

A. I understood from her that she had come out to escape the company in the kitchen. It seemed there had been a row regarding her between Cleghorn our butler and the prisoner, and she wanted to get away from them both. She said that the foreigner had paid her unwelcome attentions, and had tried to kiss her, for which she had boxed his ears, and that ever since she had gone in fear of her life from him. (Sensation.) I took it more for a joke than a formal complaint, and did not suppose her to be serious. It did not occur to me that she was really frightened of the man, or I should have taken steps for her protection.

Q. And that was all?

A. All that was essential.

Q. Thank you, Mr Kennett. I will not trouble you any further.

Witness turned and retired. His evidence had yielded something of the unexpected, in its incredulous little outburst and in its conclusion. As to the first, it was patent that Counsel's object in putting the question which had provoked it was to suggest maddened jealousy as a motive for the crime on the part of some one to whom the girl's actions had become suddenly visible through her movement towards the witness, between whom and herself had possibly occurred some philandering passages Such, at least, from the witness's own implied admission of a certain freedom in his conversation with the deceased, would appear a justifiable assumption. His final statement—though legally inadmissible—inasmuch as it supplied the motive with a name, caused a profound stir in Court.

Mrs Anna Bingley, housekeeper to Sir Calvin Kennett, was the next witness called. Her evidence repeated, in effect, what has already been recorded, and may be passed over. Where it was important, it was, like the other, evidence of hearsay, and inadmissible.

Jane Ketchlove, cook to Sir Calvin, gave evidence. She had never seen the prisoner till the night of his arrival, though she had seen his master once or twice on the occasion of former visits. He, the Baron, had not at those times come accompanied by any gentleman. Mr Cabanis made himself quite at home like: he was a very lively, talkative person, and easily excited, she thought. He showed himself very forward with the ladies, and they remarked on it, though putting it down to his foreign breeding. On the night of his arrival the valet went up to lay out his master's things about seven o'clock. Shortly afterwards Annie followed him with the hot water. She, witness, rather wondered over the girl's assurance in going alone, after the way the man had been acting towards her. He had seemed like one struck of a heap with her beauty; for the poor creature was beautiful, there was no denying it. It was as if he claimed her for his own from the first moment of his seeing her, and dared any one to say him nay. A few minutes later Annie came down, red with fury over his having tried to kiss her. She had boxed his ears well for him, she said. Mr Cleghorn was in the kitchen, and he flew into a fury when he heard. He said she must have encouraged the man, or he never would have dared. He was a great admirer of Annie himself, and it was always said among us that they would come to make a match of it. Annie answered up, asking him what business it was of his, and there was a fine row between the two. In the middle this Cabanis came down. His cheek was red as fire, and he looked like a devil. He said no one had ever struck him—man, woman, or child—without living to repent it. He and Mr Cleghorn got at it then, and the rest of us had a hard ado to part them; but we got things quiet after a time, though it was only for a time, Mr Cleghorn having to go upstairs, upset as he was. They simmered like, and came on the boil again the next day at dinner in the servants' hall. Annie was not there, and that seemed to give them the chance to settle things in her absence. Mr Cleghorn began it, insisting on his prior claim to the girl, and Cabanis answered that, if he couldn't have her, nobody else should; he would see her dead first. That led to a struggle, ending in blows between them; and at the last Cabanis broke away, declaring he was going out then and there to find the girl and put the question to her.

Q. What question?

A. Whether it was to be himself or Mr Cleghorn, sir.

Q. Did he utter any threat against the girl, in case her choice was against him?

A. Not in so many words, sir; but we were all terrified by his look and manner.

Q. They struck you as meaning business, eh?

A. That was it, sir.

Q. About what time was that?

A. As near as possible to two o'clock.

Q. And Mr Cleghorn followed?

A. After waiting a bit, sir, to recover himself. Then he got up sudden, saying he was going to see this thing through, and, putting on his cap and coat, out he went.

Q. At what time was that?

A. It may have been ten minutes after the other.

Q. Did you form any conclusion as to what he meant by seeing the thing through?

A. We all thought he meant, sir, that he was going to follow Cabanis and get the girl herself to choose between them.

Q. When did you see him again?

A. It was at half after four, when, as some of us stood waiting and shivering at the head of the path, he came amongst us.

Q. In his cap and overcoat?

A. Yes, sir. Just as he had gone out. We told him what had happened.

Q. And how did he take it?

A. Very bad, sir. He turned that white, I thought he would have fallen.

Q. And when did the prisoner return?

A. It may have been five o'clock when I saw him come in.

Q. Did his manner then show any signs of agitation or disturbance?

A. No, sir, I can't say it did. On the contrary, he seemed cheerful and relieved, as if he had got something off his mind.

Q. Did you tell him what had happened?

A. Yes, to be sure.

Q. And how did he take it?

A. Very quiet—sort of stunned like.

Q. Did he make any remark?

A. He said something in his own language, sir, very deep and hoarse. It sounded like but I really can't manage it.

M. le Baron (interposing): 'It was "Non, non, par pitié!"'

Counsel (tartly): I shall be obliged, sir, if you will keep your evidence till it is asked for. (M. le Baron admitted his error with a bow.)

Q. Was that all?

A. One of the maids told him, sir, that his master was asking for him, and he went off at once, without another word.

Q. And he has never referred to the subject since?

A. He would not talk of it. It was too horrible, he said.

Jessie Ellis, parlour-maid, and a couple of housemaids—(they kept no male indoor servants, except the butler, at Wildshott)—Kate Yokes and Mabel Wheelband, gave corroborative evidence, substantiating in all essential particulars the last witness's statement.

Reuben Henstridge, landlord of the Red Deer inn, was the next witness summoned. He was a big cloddish fellow, unprepossessing in appearance, and reluctant and unwilling in his answers, as though surlily suspecting some design to ensnare him into compromising himself. He deposed that on the afternoon of the crime he was out on the hill somewhere, below his inn 'taking the air' when he saw a man break through the lower beech-thicket skirting Wildshott, and go down quickly towards the high road. That man was the prisoner. He parted the branches savage-like, and jumped the bank and trench, moving his arms and talking to himself all the time. Witness went on with his business of 'taking the air' and, when he had had enough, returned to his own premises. Later, Mr Cleghorn, whom he knew very well as a casual customer, came in for a glass. He did not look himself, and stayed only a short time, and that was the whole he knew of the matter.

Q. What time of day was it when you saw the prisoner come from the wood?

A. Ten after two, it might be.

Q. And he went down towards the road?

A. Aye.

Q. Did you notice what became of him?

A. No, I didn't. I had my own concerns to look after.

Q. Taking the air, eh?

A. That's it.

Q. You weren't taking it with a wire, I suppose? (Laughter.)

A. No, I weren't. You keep a civil tongue in your head.

The witness, called sharply to order by the Coroner, stood glowering and muttering.

Q. Where is your inn situated?

A. Top o' Stockford Down.

Q. How far is it from the high road?

A. Call it a mile and a half.

Q. Where were you on the hill when you saw the prisoner?

A. Nigher the road than the inn. Three-quarters way down, say.

Q. Were you anywhere near the prisoner when he emerged?

A. Nigh as close as I am to you.

Q. Did he see you?

A. No, he didn't. I were hid in the ditch. (Laughter.)

Q. You didn't recognise him?

A. Not likely. I'd never seen him before.

Q. Did anything strike you in his manner or expression?

A. He looked uncommon wild.

Q. Did he? Now, what time was it when you started to return to your inn?

A. It may have been an hour later.

Q. A little after three, say?

A. Aye.

Q. Did you pass anybody by the way?

A. No.

Q. The Red Deer is very lonely situated, is it not?

A. Lonely enough.

Q. High up, at the meeting of four cross roads, I understand?

A. That's it.

Q. You don't have many customers in the course of a day?

A. Maybe, maybe not.

Q. Not so many that you would forget this one or that having called yesterday or the day before?

A. What are you trying to get at?

Q. I must trouble you to answer questions, not put them. What time was it on that day when Mr Cleghorn looked in?

A. Put it at four o'clock.

Q. And you thought he looked unwell?

A. He said himself he was feeling out of sorts. The liquor seemed to pull him round a bit.

Q. Did he say anything else?

A. Not much. He went as soon a'most as he'd drunk it down. I thought he'd tired himself walking up the hill.

Q. What made you think that?

A. I see'd him a'coming when he was far off. I was crossing the yard to the pump at the time. That might have been at a quarter before four. He looked as if he'd pulled his cap over his eyes and turned his coat collar up; but I couldn't make him out distinct.

Q. How did you know, then, that it was Mr Cleghorn?

A. Because he come in himself a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes later. Who else could it be?

Q. What sort of coat and hat or cap was this figure wearing?

A. What I see when Mr Cleghorn come in, of course—same as he's got now.

Q. Colour, style—the same in every particular?

A. That's it.

Q. You made out the figure in the distance to be wearing a coat and cloth cap like Mr Cleghorn's?

A. Nat'rally, as it were Mr Cleghorn himself.

Q. Now attend to me. Will you swear you could distinguish the colour of the coat and cap the figure was wearing?

A. I won't go so far as to say that. It were a dull day, and my eyesight none of the best k and he were too far off, and down in the shadder of the hollers. He looked all one colour to me—a sort o' misty purple. But I knew him for Mr Cleghorn, sure enough, when he walked into the tap.

Q. Wonderfully sagacious of you. (Laughter.) How far away was this figure when you saw it?

A. Couple o' hundred yards, maybe.

Q. Was it climbing the hill fast?

A. What you might call fast—hurrying.

Q. Didn't it strike you as odd, then, that it should take it a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes to cover that short distance between the spot where you saw it and your inn?

A. No, it didn't. I didn't think about it. Mr Cleghorn, he might have stopped to rest himself, or to tie a bootlace, or anything.

Q. After seeing the figure did you return to the bar?

A. No. I went into the parlour to make tea.

Q. And remained there till Mr Cleghorn entered?

A. That's it.

Counsel nodded across at the detective, as if to say, 'Here's possible matter for you, Sergeant,' and with that he closed the examination, and told the witness he might stand down.

Samuel Cleghorn, butler to Sir Calvin, was then called to give evidence. Witness appeared as a substantial, well-nourished man of forty, with a full, rather unexpressive face, a fixed eye (literally), and a large bald tonsure—not at all the sort of figure one would associate with a romantic story of passion and mystery. He admitted his quarrel with the prisoner, pleading excessive provocation, and that he had followed him out on the fatal afternoon with the intention actually suggested by the witness Ketchlove. He had failed, however, to discover him, or the direction in which he had gone, and had ultimately, after some desultory prying about the grounds, withdrawn himself to the upper kitchen gardens, where he had taken refuge in a tool-shed, and there remained, nursing his sorrow, until 3.30 or thereabouts, when, feeling still very overcome, he had decided to go up to the Red Deer for a little refreshment, which he had done, afterwards returning straight to the house.

Q. How did you leave the kitchen garden?

A. By a door in the wall, sir, giving on the downs; and by that way I returned.

Q. During all this time, while you were looking for the prisoner, or mourning in the tool-shed—(laughter)—did you encounter any one?

A. Not a soul that I can remember, sir.

Q. You were greatly attached to the deceased?

A. (With emotion.) I was.

Q. And wished to make her your wife?

A. Yes.

Q. Though your acquaintance with her extended over only a couple of months?

A. That is so.

Q. Almost a case of love at first sight, eh?

A. As you choose, sir.

Q. Did she return your attachment?

A. Not as I could have wished.

Q. She refused you?

A. I never offered myself to her in so many words.

Q. Had you reason to suspect a rival?

A. None in particular—till the Frenchman came.

Q. Rivals generally, then?

A. Naturally there were many to admire her.

Q. But no one in especial to excite your jealousy?

A. No.

Q. Did the deceased give you her confidence?

A. Not what you might call her confidence. We were very friendly.

Q. She never spoke to you of her past life, or of her former situations, or of her relations?

A. No, never. She was not what you might call a communicative young woman.

Q. You had no reason to suspect that she was carrying on with anybody unknown to you?

A. No reason, sir. I can't answer for my thoughts.

Q. What do you mean by that?

A. Why, I might have wondered now and again why she was so obstinate in resisting me.

Q. But you suspected no rival in particular? I ask you again.

A. A man may think things.

Q. Will you answer my question?

A. Well, then, I didn't.

Q. Are you speaking the truth?

A. Yes.

Witness was subjected to some severe cross-questioning on this point, but persisted in his refusal to associate his suspicions with any particular person. He argued only negatively, he said, from the deceased's indifference to himself, which (he declared amid some laughter) was utterly incomprehensible to him on any other supposition than that of a previous attachment. Counsel then continued:—

Q. When, after leaving the garden, you were making for the Red Deer, did you observe any other figure on the hill, going in the same direction as yourself, but in advance of you?

A. There may have been. I won't answer for sure.

Q. Will you explain what you mean by that?

A. I was what you might call preoccupied—not thinking much of anything but my own trouble. But—yes, I have an idea there was some one.

Q. How was he dressed?

A. I can't say, sir. I never looked; it's only a hazy sort of impression.

Q. Was he far ahead?

A. He may have been—very far; or perhaps it was only the shadows. I shouldn't like to swear there was any one at all.

Q. You have heard the witness Henstridge's evidence. Are you sure you are not borrowing from it the idea of this second figure, a sort of simulacrum of yourself?

A. Well, I may be, unconscious as it were. I can't state anything for certain.

Q. Were you walking fast as you got near the inn?

A. I dare say I was—fast for me. (Laughter.) What with one thing and another, my throat was as dry as tinder.

Q. Did you stop, or linger, for any purpose when approaching the inn?

A. Not that I can remember. I may have. What happened afterwards has put all that out of my head.

Q. You mean the news awaiting you on your return?

A. Yes.

Q. So that you can't tell me, I suppose, whether or not, as you climbed the hill, your coat-collar was turned up and the peak of your cap pulled down?

A. It's like enough they were. I had put the things on anyhow in my hurry. But it's all a vague memory.

Counsel. Very well. You can stand down.

Daniel Groome, gardener, was next called. He stated that he was sweeping up leaves in the drive to the east side of the house—that is to say, the side furthest from the copse—on the afternoon of the murder. Had heard the stable clock strike three, and shortly afterwards had seen the young master come out of the head of the Bishop's Walk and go towards the house, which he entered by the front door. He was looking, he thought, in a bit of a temper: but the young master was like that—all in a stew one moment over a little thing, and the next laughing and joking over something that mattered. Had wondered at seeing him back so soon from the shooting, but supposed he had shot wild, as he sometimes would, and was in a pet about it. Did not see him again until he, witness, was summoned to the copse to help remove the body.

Q. During the time you were sweeping in the drive, did you hear the sound of a shot?

A. A'many, sir. The gentlemen was out with their guns.

Q. Did any one shot sound to you nearer than the others?

A. One sounded pretty loud.

Q. As if comparatively close by?

A. Yes, it might be.

Q. From the direction of the Bishop's Walk?

A. I couldn't rightly say, sir. It wasn't a carrying day. Sounds on such a day travel very deceptive. It might have come from across the road, or further.

Q. At what time did you hear this particular shot?

A. It might have been three o'clock, or a little later; I couldn't be sure.

Q. Think again.

A. No, I couldn't be sure, sir. I shouldn't like to swear.

Q. Might it have been nearer half-past three?

A. Very like. I dare say it might.

This point was urged, but the witness persisted in refusing to commit himself to any more definite statement.

John Tugwood, coachman, Edward Noakes, groom, and Martha Jolly, lodge-keeper, were called and examined on the same subject. They had all distinguished, or thought they had distinguished, the louder shot in question; but their evidence as to its precise time was so hopelessly contradictory that no reliance whatever could be placed on it.

Sergeant-Detective Ridgway deposed that, having been put in charge of the case by Sir Calvin Kennett, he had proceeded to make an examination of the spot where the body had been found. This was some twenty-four hours after the commission of the alleged crime, and it might be thought possible that certain local changes had occurred during the interval. He understood, however, that the police had, when first called in, conducted an exhaustive investigation of the place, and that their conclusions differed in no material degree from his own, so that he was permitted to speak for them in the few details he had to place before the jury. Briefly, his notes comprised the following observations:—The measured distance from the wicket in the boundary hedge to the tree against which the witness, Mr Hugo Kennett, had stated that he rested his gun was nineteen and a quarter yards: thence to the beech-tree by which the body had been found was another fifteen feet. Between the wicket and the first tree there was a curve in the track, sufficient to conceal from any one standing by the second, or inner, tree the movements of one approaching from the direction of the gate. All about this part of the copse, down to the hedge, was very dense thicket, which in one place, in close proximity to the first tree supporting the gun, bore some tokens as of a person having been concealed there. If such were the case, the movements of the person in question had been presumably stealthy, the growth showing only slight signs of disturbance, not easily detected. His theory was that this person had entered possibly by the gate from the road, had crept along the path, or track, until he had caught a glimpse through the trees of the deceased in conversation with Mr Kennett, had then slipped into the undergrowth and silently worked his way to the point of concealment first-mentioned, where he would be both eye and ear witness of what was passing between the two, and had subsequently, whether torn by the passion of revenge or of jealousy, issued noiselessly forth, some few minutes after Mr Kennett's departure, seized up the gun, and either at once, or following a brief altercation, shot the deceased dead as she was moving to escape from him. Conformably with this theory, there was no sign of any struggle having occurred; but there were signs that the murderer had moved and conducted himself with great caution and circumspection. Unfortunately no evidence as to footprints could be adduced, the ground being in too hard and dry a state to record their impression. Finally, he was bound to say that there was nothing in his theory incompatible with the assumption that the prisoner was the one responsible for the deed. On the other hand, it was true that the man's movements between the time when the witness Henstridge had seen him descending towards the road, and the time of the commission of the crime-which could not have been earlier than three o'clock—had still to be accounted for. But it was possible, of course, that he had occupied this interval of three-quarters of an hour in stalking, and in finally running to earth his victim. If he could produce witnesses to prove the contrary, the theory of course collapsed.

The Sergeant delivered his statement with a hard, clear-cut precision which was in curious and rather deadly contrast with the nervous hesitation displayed by other witnesses. There was a suggestion about him of the expert surgeon, demonstrating, knife in hand, above the operating table; and in a voice as keen and cold as his blade.

Raymond, Baron Le Sage, was the next witness called. It was noticed once or twice, during the course of the Baron's evidence, that the prisoner looked as if reproachfully and imploringly towards his master.

Q. The prisoner is your servant?

A. He is my servant.

Q. Since when, will you tell me?

A. He has been in my service now over a year.

Q. You took him with a good character?

A. An excellent character.

Q. He is a Gascon, I believe?

A. Yes, a Gascon.

Q. A hot-blooded and vindictive race, is it not?

A. A warm-blooded people, certainly.

Q. Practising the vendetta?

A. You surprise me.

Q. I am asking you for information.

A. I have none to give you.

Q. Very well; we will leave it at that. On the afternoon of the murder, about half-past two, you entered the Bishop's Walk?

A. I had been out driving with Miss Kennett, and, passing the gate, asked her whither it led. She told me, and I decided to go by the path, leaving her to drive on to the house alone.

Q. Why did you so decide?

A. I had caught a glimpse among the trees, of, as I thought, the maid, Annie Evans, and I wished to speak with her.

Q. Indeed? (Counsel was evidently a little taken aback over the frankness of this admission.) Would you inform me on what subject?

A. I had been accidental witness the night before of the scrimmage between her and Louis already referred to, and I wished at once to apologise to her for Louis's' behaviour, and to warn her against any repetition of the punishment she had inflicted.

Q. On what grounds?

A. On the grounds that, the man being quick-tempered and impulsive, I would not answer for the consequences of another such assault. (Sensation.)

Q. And what was the deceased's answer?

A. She thanked me, and said she could look after herself.

Q. Anything further?

A. Nothing. I went on and joined my friend, Sir Calvin, in the house.

Q. The deceased, while you were with her, offered no sort of explanation of her presence in the copse?

A. None whatever.

Q. And you did not seek one?

A. O, dear, no! I should not have been so foolish. (Laughter.}

Q. Did you speak to the prisoner on the subject of the assault?

A. At the time, yes.

Q. And what did you gather from his answer?

A. I gathered that, in his quick ardent way, he was very much enamoured of the girl's beauty.

Q. And was correspondingly incensed, perhaps, over her rejection of his advances?

A. Not incensed. Saddened.

Q. He uttered no threat?

A. No.

Q. On the afternoon of the murder, on your return to the house, as just described, you inquired for the prisoner?

A. I inquired for him, then, and again later on our return from the copse after we had been to view the body.

Q. You were troubled about him, perhaps?

A. I was uneasy, until I had seen and questioned him.

Q. When was that?

A. He came in about five o'clock, and was immediately sent up to me.

Q. You asked him, perhaps, to account for his absence?

A. I did.

Q. And what was his explanation?

A. He made a frank confession of his quarrel with Mr Cleghorn, described how his first intention on rushing from the house had really been to find the girl and throw himself upon her mercy; but how, once in the open air, his frenzy had begun to cool, and to yield itself presently to indecision. He had then, he said, gone for a long walk over the downs, fighting all the way the demon of rage and jealousy which possessed him, and had finally, getting the better of his black unreasoning mood, grown thoroughly repentant and ashamed of his behaviour, and had returned to make amends.

Q. And you credited that wonderful story?

A. I believed it implicitly.

Q. Well, indeed, sir! Did he appear overcome by the news which had greeted him on his return?

A. He appeared stupefied—that is the word.

Q. Did he comment on it at all?

A. If you mean in the self-incriminating sense, he did not.

Q. In what sense, then?

A. He cursed the assassin capable of destroying so sweet a paragon of womanhood." (Laughter.}

Q. Very disinterested of him, I'm sure. Thank you, sir; that will suffice.

Counsel sitting down, Mr Redstall, for Sir Calvin, rose to put a question or two to the witness:—

Q. You have never had reason, M. le Baron, to regard the prisoner as a vindictive man?

A. Never. Impulsive, yes.

Q. And truthful?

A. Transparently so—to a childish degree.

Q. He would have a difficulty in dissembling?

A. An insuperable difficulty, I should think.

Dr Harding, of Longbridge, was the last witness called. He deposed to his having been summoned to the house on the afternoon of the murder, and to having examined the body within an hour and a half of its first discovery in the copse. The cause of death was a gunshot wound in the back, from a weapon fired at short range. Practically the whole of the charge had entered the body in one piece. Death must have been instantaneous, and must have occurred, from the indications, some two hours before his arrival; or, approximately, at about 3.30 o'clock. The wound could not possibly have been self-inflicted, and the position of the gun precluded any thought of accident. He had since, assisted by Dr Liversidge of Winton, made a post-mortem examination of the body. Asked if there was anything significant in the deceased's condition, his answer was yes.

This completed the evidence, at the conclusion of which, and of some remarks by the Coroner, the jury, after a brief consultation among themselves, brought in a verdict that the deceased died from a gunshot wound deliberately inflicted by the prisoner Louis Victor Cabanis, in a fit of revengeful passion; which verdict amounting to one of wilful murder, the prisoner was forthwith, on the Coroner's warrant, committed to the County gaol, there to await his examination before the magistrates on the capital charge. The jury further—being local men—added a rider to their verdict respectfully commiserating Sir Calvin on the very unpleasant business which had chosen to select his grounds for its enactment; and with that the proceedings terminated.

CHAPTER X

AFTERWARDS

The Inquest was over, the provisional verdict delivered, and all that remained for the time being was to put the poor subject of it straightway to rest under the leafless trees in Leigh way churchyard. It was done quietly and decently the morning after the inquiry, with some of her fellow-servants attending, and Miss Kennett to represent the family; and so was another blossom untimely fallen, and another moral—a somewhat ghastly one now—furnished for the reproof of the too hilarious Christian.

Audrey, coming back from the sad little ceremony, met Le Sage walking by himself in the grounds. The Baron looked serious and, she thought, dejected, and her young heart warmed to his grief. She went up to him, and, putting her hands on his sleeve, 'I am so sorry,' she said, 'so very, very sorry.'

He smiled at her kindly, then took her hand and drew it under his arm.

'Let us walk a little way, and talk,' he said; and they strolled on together. 'Poor Louis!' he sighed.

'It is not true, is it, Baron?'

'I don't think it is, my dear. But the difficulty is to prove that it isn't.'

'How can it be done?'

'At the expense only, I am afraid, of finding the real criminal.'

'Have you any idea who that is?'

He laughed; actually laughed aloud.

'Have I not had enough of cross-examination?'

'I could not help wondering why, as I have been told, you confessed to the warning you gave the poor girl.'

'About the danger of tempting hot blood, and so forth?'

'Yes, that.'

'It was the truth.'

'Yes, but——'

He put a finger to his lips, glancing at her with some solemnity.

'You were not going to say that it is my way to repress the truth?'

'No' answered the girl, with a little flush; 'but only not to blurt it out unnecessarily.'

'My dear,' he said, 'take my word for it that I always speak the truth.'

'O! I only meant to say——' she began; but he stopped her.

'What would you do if a question were put to you which, for some reason of expediency, or, good-feeling, you did not wish to answer?'

'I am afraid I should fib.'

'Try my plan, and answer it with another question. It saves a world of responsibility. That is a secret I confide to you. An answer may often be interpreted into an innuendo which is as false to the speaker's meaning as it is unjust to its subject. I love truth so much that I would not expose it to that misunderstanding. In this instance, to have left the truth for some one else to discover might have cast suspicion on us both, thereby darkening the case against Louis. But, in general, not to answer is surely not to lie?'

'No, I suppose not, Baron,'—she thought a little—'I wonder if you would answer me just one question?'

'What is that?'

'Do you put any faith in that talk about there having been another man on the hill besides Cleghorn?'

He did not reply for awhile, but went softly patting the hand on his arm. Presently he looked up.

'If I were to say yes, I should not speak the truth, and if I were to say no, I should not speak the truth. So I follow my bent, and you will not be offended with me. Are you going to take me for a drive to-day, I ask?'

'Certainly, if you wish it.'

'What a question! I can answer that without a scruple. I wish it with such fervour, seeing my companion, as my years may permit themselves. Where shall we go?'

'You shall choose.'

'Very well. Then we will go north by the Downs, that we may take the great free air into our lungs, and realise the more sympathetically the condition of my poor Louis.'

'O, don't! It would kill me to be in prison. Baron, you are going to stop with us, are you not, until the trial is over?'

'Both you and your father are very good. I may have, however, to absent myself for a short time presently. We will see. In the meanwhile I am your grateful Baron.' He took vast snuff, making his eyes glisten, and somehow she liked him for it.

'I shall be glad,' she said, 'when that detective goes. One will feel more at peace from the squalor of it all.'

He shook his head.

'I do not think he means to go just yet.'

'Not? Why not?'

'Ah! that is his secret.'

'But what can he have to do now?'

'You must ask him, not me. All I can tell you is that he considers his work here not yet finished; in fact, from words I heard him let fall to your father this morning, little more than just begun.'

'How very strange! What can it mean?'

'Let us hazard a conjecture that he is not wholly satisfied with the evidence against my Louis. It would be a happy thought for me.'

'O, yes, wouldn't it! But—I wonder.'

'What do you wonder?'

'If the question of that other figure on the hill is puzzling him too.'

Le Sage laughed. 'Well, we are permitted to wonder,' he said, and, humming a little tune, changed the subject to one of topography, and the situation of various places of interest in the neighbourhood.

Audrey was perplexed about him. That he felt, and felt deeply, not only the unhappy position of the prisoner, but the disturbance which he himself had been the innocent means of introducing into the house, she could not doubt; yet the patent genuineness of this sentiment was unable, it seemed, wholly to deprive him of that constitutional serenity, even gaiety, habitual to his nature. It was as if he either could not, or would not, realise the black gravity of the affair; as if, almost, holding the strings of it in his own hands, he could afford to give this or that puppet a little tether before reining it in to submit to his direction. And then she thought how this impression was probably all due to that unanswering trick of his which they had just been discussing, and which might very well seem to inform his manner with a significance it did not really possess or intend. She left him shortly, being called to some duty in the house, and he continued his saunter alone, an aimless one apparently, but gradually, after a time, assuming a definite direction. It took him leisurely down the drive, out by the lodge gates into the road as far as the fatal wicket, and so once more into the Bishop's Walk. Going unhurried along the track, he suddenly saw the detective before him.

The Sergeant, bent over, it seemed, in an intent observation of the ground, was fairly taken off his guard. He showed it, as he came erect, in a momentary change of colour. But the little shock of surprise was mastered as soon as felt: self-possession is not long or easily yielded by one trained in self-resourcefulness.

'Were you wanting me, sir?' he said; 'because, if not——'

'Because, if not,' took up the Baron, wagging his head cheerfully, 'what am I doing here, interrupting you at your business?'

'Well, sir, it's you have said it, not I.'

'So your business is not yet over, Sergeant? Am I to borrow any hope for my man from that?'

'Was it the question, sir, you were looking for me to answer?'

'Excellent! My own way of meeting an awkward inquiry.'

'What do you mean by awkward?'

'Why, you won't answer me, of course. What sensible detective would, and give away his case? Still, I am justified in assuming that there is something in the business which, so far, does not satisfy you; and I build on that.'

'O! you do, do you?' He rubbed his chin grittily, pulling down his well-formed lower jaw, and stood for a moment or two speculatively regarding the face before him. 'I wonder now,' he said suddenly, 'if you would answer a question I might put to you?'

'I'll see, my friend. Chance it.'

'What made you so interested in this business before even your man was charged on suspicion?'

'You allude?'

'I allude to my finding you already on the spot here when I came down to make my own examination of it.'

'Surely I have no reason to hide what I have already admitted in public. I was uneasy about Louis.'

'And wanted to look and see, perhaps, if he'd left any evidences of his guilt behind him?'

'I admit I was anxious to assure myself that there were no such evidences.'

'And you did assure yourself?'

'Quite.'

'You found nothing suspicious?'

'Nothing whatever to connect with his presence here.'

'Found nothing at all?'

'Yes, I did: I found this.'

The Baron took from a pocket a common horn coat-button, and handed it to the other, who received it and turned it over in silence.

'I picked it up,' said Le Sage, 'near the tree where the gun had stood.'

'Why,' said the detective, looking up rather blackly, 'didn't you produce this at the Inquest?'

'I never supposed for the moment it could be of any importance.'

'H'mph!' grunted the Sergeant, and after a darkling moment, put the button into his own pocket. 'I don't know; it may or may not be; but you should have told me about it, sir. For the present, by your leave, I'll take charge of the thing. And now, if you've nothing more to show me——'

'Nothing.'

'Then I should like to get on with my work, if it's all the same to you'

'And I with my walk,' said the Baron, and he tripped jauntily away.

CHAPTER XI

THE BARON DRIVES

(From the Bickerdike MS.)

On the day following the Inquest, the plot thickened. It became really entertaining. One did not know whether to appear the more scandalised or amused. On the one hand there was a certain satisfaction in knowing that the last word was apparently not said in what had seemed to be a perfectly straightforward affair, on the other one's sense of fitness had received a severe blow. In short, the impeccable Cleghorn had been arrested, and was detained on suspicion. I saw him go off in a fly in charge of a couple of policemen, and never did hooked cod-fish on the Dogger Bank look more gogglingly stupefied than he over the amazing behaviour of the bait he had swallowed. Sir Calvin stormed, and blasphemed, and demanded to know if the whole household of Wildshott was in a conspiracy to shame him and tarnish his escutcheon; but his objurgations were received very civilly and sensibly by the detective, who explained that he must act according to his professional conscience, that detention did not necessarily mean conviction, or even indictment, and that where a sifting of the truth from the chaff imposed precautionary measures, he must be free to take them, or abandon his conduct of the case. Whereon the wrathful General simmered down, and contented himself only with requesting sarcastically a few hours' grace to settle his affairs, when it came to be his turn to wear the official bracelets.

And so, for the while, we were without a butler; nor could one, on reviewing the evidence, be altogether surprised, perhaps, over that deprivation. Certainly Cleghorn's account of his own movements could not be considered wholly satisfying or convincing, and he had admitted his lack of any witness to substantiate it. It seemed incredible, with a man of his substance and dignity; but is not the history of crime full of such apparent contradictions? After all, he had had the same provocation as the other man, and had departed, apparently, the same way to answer it; and, as to his moral condition after the event, all testimony went to prove that it was worse than that of the Gascon. Anyhow, this new development, however it was destined to turn out, added fifty per cent, to the excitement of the business. Cleghorn! It seemed inexpressibly comic.

As day followed day succeeding this terrific event, however progressively other things might be assumed to be moving, no ground was made in the matter of tracing out the dead girl's origin or connexions—and that in spite of the publicity given to the affair. It was very strange, and I was immensely curious to know what could be the reason. Her portrait was published in the Police Gazette, and exhibited outside the various stations, but without result. I saw a copy of it, and did not wonder. It had been reproduced, enlarged, it seemed, from a tiny snapshot group, taken by one of the grooms, in which she had figured quite inconspicuously, and was like nothing human. I spoke to Ridgway about it, and he said it was the best that could be done, that no other photograph of her could be traced, though all the photographers in London had been applied to, and he owned frankly that there seemed some mystery about the girl. I quite agreed with him, and hinted that it was not the only one that remained to be cleared up. He did not ask me what I meant, but I saw, by his next remark, that he had understood what was in my mind.

'Why don't you persuade him, sir,' he said, 'to throw this business off his chest, and get back to his old interests? He takes it too much to heart.'

It was to Hugo he referred, of course, and I did not pretend to misapprehend him. To tell the truth, I was a little smarting from my friend's treatment of me, and not in the mood to be indulgent of his idiosyncrasies. I might have my suspicions as to his involvement in a discreditable affair, but I had certainly not made him a party to them, or even touched upon the subject of the scandal to him save with the utmost delicacy and consideration. If he had chosen to give me his confidence then and there, I would have honoured it; as it was, since he showed no disposition to keep his promise to me made on the day of the shoot, I considered myself as much at liberty to canvass the subject as any one else who had heard, and formed his own conclusions, from the doctor's evidence. It was true that, to me at least, Hugh was doing his best to give his case away by his behaviour. He seemed to make little attempt to rally from the gloom with which the tragedy had overcast him, but mooned about, silent and aimless, as if for the moment he had lost all interest in life. It was only that morning that, moved by his condition, I had come at last to the resolution to remind him of his promise, and get him to share with me, if he would, the burden that was crushing his soul. His answer showed me at once, however, the vanity of my good intentions. 'Thanks, old fellow,' he had said; 'but a good deal has happened since then, and I've nothing to confide.'

Now, that might be true, in the sense that the danger was past, and I could have forgiven his reticence on the score of the loyalty it might imply to a reputation passed beyond its own defence; but he went on with some offensive remark about his regret in not being able to satisfy my curiosity, and ended with a suggestion which, however well-meaning it might have been, I considered positively insulting.

'You are wasting yourself here, old boy,' he said. 'I'm not, truth to tell, in the mood for much, and we oughtn't to keep you. I feel that I got you here under false pretences; but I couldn't know what was going to happen, could I? and so I won't apologise. I think, I really think, that, for the sake of all our feelings, it would be better if you terminated your visit. You don't mind my saying so, do you?'

'On the contrary, I mind very much,' I answered. 'Have you forgotten how, at considerable inconvenience to myself, I responded at once to your invitation, and came down at a moment's notice? The reason, as you ought to know, Hugh, was pure regard for yourself and a desire to help, and that desire is not lessened because I find you involved in a much more serious business than I had anticipated.'

'O, if you put it in that way'—he began.

'I do put it in that way,' I said, 'and I don't take it very friendly of you that you should talk of denying me a privilege which you were ready enough to grant to that precious new Baron of yours—even pressing him to stay.'

'It was not I who asked him,' he murmured.

'No,' I insisted, 'I came to be helpful, and I am going to remain to be helpful. I don't leave you till I have seen this thing through.'

'Well,' he said very equivocally, 'I hope that will be soon'—and he left me to myself to brood over his ingratitude. I was sore with him, I confess, and my grievance made me more unguarded perhaps in my references to him than otherwise I should have been.

'I dare say he does,' I answered the detective; 'but after all, I suppose, it is his heart that is affected.'

He looked at me keenly.

'You mean, sir?'

'O! what you mean,' I answered, 'and that I can see that you mean. What's the good of our beating about the bush? My friend wouldn't be the first young fellow of his class to have got into trouble with a good-looking servant girl.'

'No,' he said, 'no' in a hard sort of way. 'They are not the kind to bother about the consequences to others where their own gratification is concerned. I've knocked up against some pretty bad cases in my time. So, that's what you gather from the medical report?'

'Partly from that; not wholly.'

'Ah! I dare say now, being on such friendly terms with Mr Kennett, you've been taken into his confidence?'

'Not directly; but in a way that invited me to form my own conclusions. What then? It doesn't affect this case, does it, except in suggesting a possible motive for the crime on the part of some jealous rival?'

'That's it. It's of no consequence, of course—except to the girl herself—from any other point of view.'

His assurance satisfied me, and, taken by his sympathetic candour, I could not refrain from opening my rankling mind to him a bit.

'The truth is,' I said, 'that the moment I came down, I saw there was something wrong with my friend. Indeed, he had written to me to imply as much.'

'He was upset like, was he?' commented the detective.

'He was in a very odd mood,' said I—'an aggravated form of hysteria, I should call it. I had never known him quite like it before, though, as I dare say you have gathered, his temperament is an excitable one, up and down like a see-saw. He talked of his dreaming of sitting on a gunpowder barrel smoking a cigarette, and of the hell of an explosion that was coming. And then there was his behaviour at the shoot the next day.'

'I've heard something about it,' said Ridgway. 'Queer, wasn't it?'

'More than queer,' I answered. 'I don't mind telling you in confidence that I had reason at one time to suspect him of playing the fool with his gun, with the half intention—you know—an accident, and all the bother ended. He swore not, when I tackled him about it; but I wasn't satisfied. I tried to get him to go home, leaving his gun with the keeper, but he absolutely refused; and he refused again to part with it when, in the afternoon, he finally did leave us, saying he was good for nothing and had had enough of it. If only then he had done what I wanted him to do, and left his gun behind, this wretched business might never have happened.'

'Ah!' said the detective, 'he feels that, I dare say, and it doesn't help to cheer him up. Well, sir, I'd get him out, if I was you—distract his thoughts, and make him forget himself. He won't mend what's done by moping.'

'All very well,' I answered, 'to talk about making him forget himself; but when I'm forced to affect an ignorance of the very thing he wants to forget—if we're right—what am I to do? You might think that after having had me down for the express purpose of advising him—as I have no doubt was the case—in this scrape, he would take me more into his confidence, and not at least resent, as seemingly he does, any allusion to it.'

'Well, you see,' said the detective, 'from his point of view the scrape's ended for him, and so there isn't the same need for advice. But I'd keep at it, if I was you, and after a time you may get him to unburden himself.'

I had not much hope, after what had passed between us; but I held the Sergeant's recommendation in mind, and resolved to watch for and encourage the least disposition to candour which might show itself on my friend's part. Perhaps I had gone a little further than I should have in taking the detective into my confidence about a scandal which, after all, was no more than surmise; but it was so patent to me that his judgment ran, and must run, with my own, that it would have been simply idle to pretend ignorance of a situation about which no two men of intelligence could possibly have come to differing conclusions. And, moreover, as Ridgway himself had admitted, true or not, the incident had no direct bearing on the case.

These days at Wildshott, otherwise a little eventless for me as an outsider, found a certain mitigation of their dullness in the suspicion still kept alive in me regarding the Baron's movements, and in the consequent watchfulness I felt it my duty to keep on them. I don't know how it was, but I mistrusted the man, his secretiveness, the company he kept, the mystery surrounding his being. Who was he? Why did he play chess for half-crowns? Why had he come attended—as, according to evidence, never before—by a ruffianly foreign man-servant, ready, on the most trifling provocation, to dip his hands in blood? That had been outside the programme, no doubt: men who use dangerous tools must risk their turning in their hands; but what had been his purpose in bringing the fellow? Throat-cutting? Robbery?—I was prepared for any revelation. Abduction, perhaps: the Baron was for ever driving about the country with Audrey in the little governess cart. In the meanwhile, following that miscarriage of his master's plans, whatever they might be, Mr Louis Victor Cabanis had been had up before a full bench of magistrates, and, the police asking for time in which to compact their evidence, had been remanded to prison for a fortnight. The delay gave some breathing space for all concerned, and was, I think, welcomed by every one but Hugo. I don't know by what passion of hatred of the slayer my friend's soul might have been agitated. Perhaps it was that, perhaps mere nervous tension; but he appeared to be in a feverish impatience to get the business over. He did not say much about it; but one could judge by his look and manner the strained torment of his spirit. We were not a great deal together; and mostly I had to make out my time alone as best I could. Sometimes, in a rather pathetic way, he would go and play chess with his father, a thing he had never dreamed of doing in his normal state. I used to wonder if the General had guessed the truth, and how he was regarding it if he had. According to all accounts, he had been no Puritan himself in his younger days.

I have said that Audrey and the Baron were about a good deal together. They were, and the knowledge troubled me so much that I made up my mind to warn her.

'You appear to find his company very entertaining,' I said to her one day.

Audrey had a rather disconcerting way of responding to any unwelcome question with a wide-eyed stare, which it was difficult to undergo quite stoically.

'Do I?' she said presently. 'Why?'

'You would hardly favour it so much otherwise, would you?'

'Perhaps not. You see I take the best there is. I can't help it if the choice is so limited.'

'That's one for me. But never mind. I'm content he should do the entertaining, if I can do the helpful.'

'To me, Mr Bickerdike?'

'I hope so—a little. As Hugo's friend I feel that I ought to have some claim on your forbearance, not to say your good will. I think at least that, on the strength of that friendship, you need not resent my giving you a word of advice on a subject where, in my opinion, it's wanted.'

'I have a father and brother to look after me, Mr Bickerdike.'

'I'm aware of it, Audrey; and also of the fact that—for reasons sufficient of their own, no doubt—they leave you pretty much as you like to go your own way. It may be an unexceptionable way for the most part; but the wisest of us may occasionally go wrong from ignorance, and then it is the duty—I dare say the thankless duty—of friendship to interpose. You are very young, you know, and, one can't help seeing, rather forlornly situated——'

'Will you please to leave my situation alone, and explain what this is all about?'

'Frankly, then—I offer this in confidence—I don't think the Baron very good company for you.'

'Why not?'

'It's a little difficult to say. If you had more knowledge of the world you would understand, perhaps. There's an air about him of the shady Continental adventurer, whose purpose in society, wherever he may seek it, is never a disinterested purpose. He's always, one may be sure, after something profitable to himself—in one word, spoil. What do we any of us know about the Baron, except that he plays chess for money and consorts with doubtful characters? Your father knows, I believe, little more than I do, and that little for me is summed up in the word "suspect." One can't say what can be his object in staying on here when common decency, one would have thought, seeing the trouble he has been instrumental in causing, should have dictated his departure; but, whatever his object, it is not likely, one feels convinced, to be a harmless one, and one cannot help fearing that he may be practising on your young credulity with a view to furthering it in some way. I wish you would tell me—will you?—what he talks to you about.'

She laughed in a way which somehow nettled me. 'Doesn't it strike you,' she said, 'as rather cheek on the part of one guest in a house to criticize the behaviour of another to his hostess?'

'O, if you take it in that way,' I answered, greatly affronted, ' I've nothing more to say. Your power of reading character is no doubt immensely superior to mine.'

'Well, I don't think yours is very good,' she answered; 'and I don't see why the question of common decency should apply to him more than to another.'

"Don't you?' I said, now fairly in a rage: 'then it's useless to prolong the discussion further. This is the usual reward of trying to interpose for good in other people's affairs.'

'Some people might call it prying into them,' she answered, and I flung from her without another word. I felt that I really hated the girl—intolerable, pert, audacious young minx; but my rebuff made me more determined than ever to sift the truth out of this questionable riddle, and face her insolent assurance with it at the proper time.

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