I had no comment to make, and Zena leaned forward in her chair, evidently excited.
"It is a point to remember that she ran out exactly at the moment Poulton was pa.s.sing, which may have been chance, of course, but from that room over the hall one can see down the drive and, by the light of a street lamp, some way down the road. Had any one watched there he could have prompted the girl when to start."
"You seem to be overloading the theory too much," I said, "and I do not see many real facts yet."
"I am coming to some facts presently," said Quarles. "I am showing you my working. Now, having done away with the gang of burglars, we ask how did the man get into the house. Your argument that no one could have escaped through that window in the pa.s.sage was sound, I think, Wigan, and considering the immaculate condition of the latch and the lack of signs on the sill and the flower bed, I doubt if any one got in that way, either. On the whole, I am inclined to think he came through the front door, which was opened for him by Hollis the butler or by one of the servants."
"Still no facts," I said.
"Still theory," admitted Quarles. "By my theory it follows that the dead man was known to the Croslands. We will a.s.sume that in some family quarrel he was killed that night. The death--the murder--had to be concealed, so they pitched on the idea of the burglars, put the body in the hall, fired a shot into the landing wall, and threw open the pa.s.sage window. It was smartly conceived, but, of course, took some little time, which had to be accounted for. Crosland could only say that he could not tell how long a time elapsed between the firing and the arrival of Poulton. Everything had to be thought of before Helen Crosland rushed out for the police."
"You a.s.sume that the whole household was in the conspiracy?" I asked.
"Yes, and that they are exceedingly clever. What do you think of the theory?"
"As a theory rather interesting, but I am still waiting for a fact or two."
"Here"s one," said Quarles, taking up the revolver. "This is Crosland"s; I purloined it. It is a very good weapon by a small maker. Curiously enough the thief"s weapon was exactly like it."
"That may be a coincidence," said Zena.
"It may be, but I prefer to think it a significant fact," the professor returned; "but we"ll go back to the theory again for the moment. I was very interested in Crosland and his sister, they were not exceedingly unlike each other. There was no portrait of Mrs. Crosland about, so I could not tell which of them took after the mother. Had you told me that Helen Crosland was the butler"s daughter I should have believed you. Did you notice the likeness, Wigan?"
"No," I said with a smile. It seemed to me that the theory had got altogether out of hand.
"Well, it made me curious about the nephew," Quarles went on. "I wondered whether the dead man was the nephew and so I asked Crosland about a family skeleton, showed him that I had no belief in the burglar theory, and he quickly responded by saying there was nothing in the house worth stealing. I helped him out of a difficulty, and it was easy to talk about his mother and her rheumatism. So we got to the specialist Bush. You see the chief point was to find out the ident.i.ty of the dead man. Now we get to two facts. He isn"t the nephew who is still in Paris, and Bush is supposed to be in Yorkshire."
"Do you mean--"
"I am still theorizing," said Quarles. "There are no portraits at Clarence Lodge; you noticed a lack of portraits in Bush"s flat, and you conclude by external evidence that his temperament is artistic. The dead man"s hands were curiously capable and artistic. It struck me the moment I looked at them."
"I am not convinced, Professor."
"Nor was I," said Quarles, "so I mentioned the rheumatic specialist who had cured me."
"You, grandfather!" Zena exclaimed.
"Ah, you have evidently forgotten how I used to suffer," was the smiling answer. "I allowed Morrison to make a mistake on purpose and go to Clarence Lodge, his one idea to get an interview with Mrs. Crosland."
"And you have seen him since?" I asked.
"Came home with him from Grange Park," answered Quarles. "He was roundly abused to begin with, but, as you were told, he saw Mrs. Crosland. It was an interesting interview. The first thing that struck him was that the old lady was totally unlike her children, a different type altogether.
She is a hard, masculine kind of woman, not at all of the nervous temperament he had been led to expect; and he was convinced that she had only consented to see him to make sure that he was no more than he had proclaimed himself--a specialist in rheumatism. My friend Morrison came to the conclusion that the nurse, as a nurse, was incompetent, and that the room he entered would not have been the one constantly occupied by the invalid. He was exceedingly interested in Mrs. Crosland, seeing in her a woman of extraordinary force of character and intellectual capacity, and he came to the conclusion that there was nothing whatever the matter with her."
"No rheumatism?" said Zena.
"About as much as I suffer from," said Quarles. "In short, Morrison was rather glad to get safely out of the house. He was certain that the old lady had a revolver under her pillow, and would certainly have shot him had she suspected that he was any one else but a specialist in rheumatism."
I was looking at Quarles as he turned to me.
"What do you make of my theory now, Wigan?"
"Were you Morrison?" I asked.
"Of course, and it was a trying ordeal. Do you think we have enough facts to go on?"
"Not facts, exactly, but evidence," I admitted.
"I think we shall find that the dead man is Bush," said the professor.
"Inquiry will probably show that he has a record for quackery and has probably sailed fairly close to the wind at times. His connection with the Crosland family was not professional, but had other aims, and his profession was used merely as a reason for not having a doctor for Mrs.
Crosland, who found it convenient to pose as an invalid. A quarrel resulted in Bush"s being shot that night. I hazard a guess that it was the old lady who shot him, and that it was her brain which conceived the way out of the difficulty."
"That is guessing with a vengeance," I said.
"Yes, but not without some reason," Quarles went on. "Let"s go back to the Grange Park burglaries for a moment, and suppose that a gang of expert thieves under the name of Crosland took Clarence Lodge. An invalid mother, son and daughter so called, butler, servants--a most respectable family apparently, in the midst of people worth plundering, able by friendly intercourse to collect the necessary information and plan their raids. Bush is the outside representative of the firm, so to speak, and the nephew who travels abroad occasionally sees to the selling of the spoil. It was the plot of a master mind--the old lady"s, which has entirely beaten us until they quarrel between themselves. Now what do you think of my theory?"
"It takes me back to Grange Park without unnecessary delay," I said, getting up quickly.
"I thought it would. You have got the men waiting for you there, and I should raid the house forthwith. But caution, Wigan. I don"t think they have any suspicion of Morrison, but the moment they tumble to your intentions they"ll show fight, and probably put up a hot one. And don"t forget the nephew in Paris. Take him, too."
The raid upon Clarence Lodge took place that evening, and was so managed that the servants and the chauffeur were taken before Crosland and his sister, who proved to be no relation as Quarles had surmised, were aware of the fact. Faced with the inevitable they made no fight at all, but the old lady was made of entirely different metal. She barricaded herself in her room, and swore to shoot the first man who forced the door. She had the satisfaction of wounding me slightly in the shoulder, and then before we could stop her she had turned the weapon upon herself and shot herself through the head.
The nephew was taken in Paris, and with the rest of the gang was sent to penal servitude. The evidence at the trial proved Quarles"s theory to be very much as the tragedy had happened. The dead man was Bush, and it was his threat to give the burglaries away unless he had a larger share of the spoil than had been a.s.signed to him which made the old lady shoot him in an ungovernable fit of rage.
"A master mind, Wigan," Quarles remarked, "and it is just as well not to have her as a neighbor. Your wound is not likely to put off your wedding?"
"No."
"A little better aim and she would have put it off altogether."
"Don"t be so horrible," said Zena.
"A fact, my dear. Murray has been very keen about getting: hold of facts in this case, so I mention one. The Grange Park burglaries beat me because there was no clue to build on, but with a dead body--well, it really wasn"t very difficult, was it?"
"Quite easy," I answered as if I really meant it, and then turned to discuss carpets with Zena.
It was not always wise to let the old man know you thought him clever.
THE END