"Get out!" said Jim scornfully.
"I bet you I"m right! I bet you Mr. Roberts will think there"s something in it, even if you don"t.
Because the only thing that put him off Pritchard"s scent was his being in the hall when they heard the shot. It"s no use you making that face! It"s perfectly true! I talked to Mr. Roberts about it when you first started wondering about this Leighton bloke, and he said it had occurred to him, quite early on, only it led nowhere, because Pritchard had a cast-iron alibi."
Hannasyde, who had been listening to him with an unmoved countenance, said: "You mustn"t mention this to Pritchard, you know, or to any of the servants."
"Rather not! Of course I wouldn"t breathe a word to them! I can tell Mr. Roberts, can"t I?"
"Oh yes, you can tell him if you want to," replied Hannasyde, "Help me to put the tub back, will you, Sergeant?"
Jim said, his brows knit: "Do you think he ought to say anything about this to anyone at all, Superintendent? It"s not my affair, I know, but--"
"It doesn"t matter what he tells Mr. Roberts," replied Hannasyde. "It mustn"t come to the butler"s ears, though. But he understands that. All right, Hemingway, that"s all."
"Are you going back to Portlaw?" inquired Timothy, seeing the two detectives preparing to depart. "Because if you are, I"ll come with you as far as Victoria Place."
"All right," said Hannasyde, glancing at his wrist.w.a.tch. "But we must hurry if we want to catch the ten forty-five bus."
"Look here, just a minute!" said Jim. "What are you going to do about this? I mean, it"s all very well for you to waltz off in this airy fashion, but I happen to be rather vitally concerned in the case!"
"I hadn"t forgotten that," said Hannasyde. "I am going to the police station to put through a number of urgent inquiries to Scotland Yard. I may be in a position to tell you the result of those inquiries by this evening, or possibly some time tomorrow. Meanwhile, I"m afraid you"ll have to possess your soul in patience."
"And what about my precious life?" asked Jim.
"Sergeant Trotter will be answerable for that," replied Hannasyde with the glimmer of a smile.
"I don"t think it is in immediate danger."
He and Sergeant Hemingway, with Mr. Harte between them, walked off at a brisk pace down the avenue and arrived at the lodge gates just in time to catch the omnibus into Portlaw. The omnibus being empty, Mr. Harte was able to beguile the tedium of the journey by speculating on the case and trying to coax information out of his two companions. At Victoria Place, in Portlaw, he left them, promising to conduct himself with the utmost circ.u.mspection.
No sooner had he alighted from the omnibus than the sergeant drew a deep breath and said: "Well, I never thought I"d live to see this day, that"s certain!"
"Pleasant surprise for you," said Hannasyde.
"Super, what"s come over you? If anyone had told me you"d go pursuing investigations with a couple of people looking on and, what"s more, explain it all to them on top of it, I"d have laughed in their face!"
"Would you?" said Hannasyde, not paying much heed to him.
"I would," said the sergeant emphatically. "You told me not to get rid of Terrible Timothy, and I didn"t. But what"s your game?"
"Think it out," replied Hannasyde.
The sergeant made a sound suspiciously like a snort. "What do we do now?" he asked.
"Telephone to the Yard first, and get them to put through an inquiry to Colt"s, in America. We must know where this gun was bought."
"Well, I"m not surprised young James Kane wonders what you"re up to," said the sergeant.
James Kane, however, a.s.suming that Superintendent Hannasyde knew his own business best, did not waste much time in idle speculation. He decided to say nothing either to his fiancee or to his relatives about the discovery of the gun, a resolve that he was soon forced to break, Ogle having informed her mistress of the ravages done to the garden, and Emily, as soon as she came downstairs, dressed for her morning drive, demanded to be told instantly what such conduct meant.
As she chose to address Jim in the presence of Miss Allison and Lady Harte, both of whom immediately joined with her in wanting to know the truth, Jim thought it best to disclose the bare fact of Hannasyde"s having found the gun in the rain tub.
When Timothy came in an hour later, the first person he encountered was his mother, and he straightway poured the whole story into her ears. By lunchtime everyone but the servants was in possession of all the facts, and Miss Allison, knowing the strength of the bond between Mrs. Kane and Ogle, had little doubt that it would not be long before the news spread to the servants" hall.
"I told you Mr. Roberts would listen to me!" Timothy said triumphantly.
"Well, I think it"s the most crackbrained idea I ever heard," replied Jim. "I can quite easily imagine Roberts lapping it up, because he"s been full of crackbrained ideas from the start, but I did not expect the superintendent to run amok over it. What"s he up to now? Do you know?"
"No, but I know Mr. Roberts has gone to the police station to see him, because as soon as I told him about the silencer and the fuse, he said it put an entirely new complexion on the affair, and he"d have to go and see the superintendent at once. So I came home. Gosh, I do wonder what"s happening, don"t you? Do you suppose they"ll come and arrest Pritchard?"
"No, I don"t, and for G.o.d"s sake be careful what you say! We shall find ourselves had up for libel, or something, if Pritchard hears this sort of chat going on."
As the day wore on without news from Hannasyde Timothy found it increasingly hard to bear the suspense with anything approaching equanimity. He wandered about the house and grounds, propounding theories to anyone whom he encountered, until, in desperation, Jim bore him off to the nearest golf course and gave him an hour"s coaching in approach shots. When they returned it was time to change for dinner. During the meal Pritchard"s presence precluded any mention being made of the affair, but when the party a.s.sembled in the drawing room for coffee afterwards, it was not Timothy only who evinced a strong desire to discuss the subject ad nauseam. So persistent were the comments and surmises made that Sir Adrian, aloof from the discussion behind the evening paper, presently lowered it to say in a bored voice that, since the matter seemed to have become such an obsession with the family, he personally would feel extremely grateful to Hannasyde for solving the mystery.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when Pritchard entered the room to inform Jim that Superintendent Hannasyde had called and would like to see him.
Jim got up but was checked by an indignant outcry from his mother, his stepbrother, and his fiancee.
Emily Kane, immovable in the winged armchair by the fireplace, said: "If he wants to see you he can see you here. I"ve no patience with all this hole-and-corner business." She nodded at Pritchard.
"Show him in!"
A couple of minutes later Pritchard ushered Hannasyde into the room. To Mr. Harte"s chagrin the superintendent made no effort even to detain him. As the door closed softly behind him, Mr.
Harte, unable to contain himself, blurted out: "I say, aren"t you going to arrest him after all?"
For the first time during their dealings with Superintendent Hannasyde the family heard him laugh. "No, I"m afraid I"m not," he answered. "I"m sorry to have to disappoint you about that."
"Didn"t he do it?" asked Timothy, greatly cast down.
Hannasyde shook his head. Jim said: "Won"t you sit down? Is the case still in the air, or have you cleared it up?"
"I haven"t finished with it yet, but there"s so little doubt that it will be cleared up that I came to set your mind at rest, Mr. Kane. You"re no longer in danger of being murdered."
"Was he ever in danger?" said Lady Harte, laying down her Patience cards and removing the horn-rimmed spectacles from her nose.
"Yes, I think almost certainly."
"You didn"t think so at the time."
"You will have to forgive me, Lady Harte, if I-reserved judgment. I did give him a bodyguard, you know," said Hannasyde, recognising the signs of tigress-in-defence-of-her-young.
Emily thumped her ebony stick on the floor. "That"s enough beating about the bush!" she said sharply. "Do you know who murdered my son?"
"I have no proof that your son was murdered, Mrs. Kane. I know who murdered your great-nephew, Clement Kane."
"Who?" demanded Timothy. "Did Mr. Roberts put you onto him?"
Hannasyde looked at him rather gravely. "Not quite in the way you mean."
Sir Adrian, rising from his chair, wandered across the room to take a cigarette from a box on one of the tables. "Ah, so it was Roberts himself, was it?" he said, mildly interested.
Hannasyde nodded. A stunned silence reigned for perhaps half a minute. Timothy had gone white and was staring at Hannasyde with his lips very firmly set.
Sir Adrian offered the cigarette box to Hannasyde. "Edwin Leighton?" he inquired.
"Yes," replied Hannasyde. "I don"t think there"s much room for doubt about that. We can"t identify him for certain until we get his fingerprints from Melbourne, of course; but they"ll be through almost any day now."
"Roberts?" Jim e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "But that"s fantastic! Are you seriously suggesting that it was he who cut the hole in the Seamew and loosened the nut on my car?"
"Yes, I think so," said Hannasyde.
"But, good Lord, Superintendent, it was he who first warned me my life might be in danger!"
"Clever, wasn"t it?" agreed Hannasyde.
Lady Harte got up from the card table and came to sit down in a chair opposite Hannasyde. "I insist upon being told the whole story!" she announced. "I freely admit I never suspected the man.
How long have you known it?"
"I"ve had my suspicions ever since I first considered the Leightons as possible factors in the case, Lady Harte. I wasn"t sure till this morning, when we found the gun with the silencer fitted to it and the length of fuse. That seemed to me to be fairly conclusive. I"ve been busy all the rest of the day collecting proof that the gun did belong to him."
"Tall order, that," said Lady Harte professionally. "A Colt .38, wasn"t it? Did you manage to trace it?"
"Yes, we did, after a good deal of trouble. Scotland Yard got an answer from the States at 5 P.M.
The American police cabled that the makers had sold that gun to their agents in Melbourne. The Yard then put through a radiogram to Australia. I"ve just heard the result. The gun was supplied to a retail shop in Melbourne and was bought by a man calling himself Oscar Roberts six months ago."
"Really, I call that marvellous!" said Lady Harte. "Here we are at 10.30 P.M., and since ten-thirty this morning you"ve been in touch not only with America but with Australia as well. When one considers the difference in time it seems hardly possible!"
"Well, you see, our cable reached the Melbourne police in the small hours, and they probably got the information we wanted as early as they could. As soon as the business houses were open, in fact. There was obviously no difficulty in tracing the gun, for Scotland Yard received the answer by radiogram just on ten o"clock. They rang me up at once, and I caught the ten-fifteen bus out here."
"Yes, very good of you," interrupted Jim; "but never mind about what the Australian police did!
You say you"ve established the fact that the gun belonged to Roberts, and that settles that. He must have shot Clement, and I suppose he must be Edwin Leighton. But I can hardly believe it, all the same. It was he who started every scare we"ve had. While the rest of us thought my cousin Silas had missed his footing in the fog, he went about hinting that he"d met with foul play. He warned me to be careful--"
"He warned you to be careful," said Hannasyde; "but if you think back, you"ll find that he never pretended to know anything until others were beginning to suspect it. The instant he realised that some, at least, of you felt that Mr. Silas Kane"s death had not been investigated enough, he gave you to understand that he had thought so all along. When your motorboat sank and you, in company with everyone else, were convinced that your stepbrother had run her on the rocks, did he tell you he thought the boat had been tampered with?"
"No, he jolly well did not!" growled Timothy.
"No, not then," said Jim. "But when I told him that Timothy and Miss Allison had got the wind up about it--"
"He said that he had suspected it from the start," interjected Hannasyde.
"Well, yes," admitted Jim. "He did."
"Of course. It was quite safe once the idea of foul play had entered your head. He tried to make you-and incidentally me-think that Mr. Paul Mansell was the villain of the piece. He played his part very well indeed, but he slipped up yesterday. Up till that moment I had regarded him in the light of a somewhat tiresome amateur detective-we meet a good many, you know. But that slip of his made me sit up and take a certain amount of notice. You will remember that I came to call on you, Mrs. Kane, to find out what you could tell me about the Leightons?"
"Yes," said Emily. "Not that I knew anything about them."
"Roberts was present," continued Hannasyde. "My question must have jolted him badly, for he made a mistake. He hinted, very broadly, that Mr. Clement Kane had murdered his cousin and went to some trouble to demonstrate how unlikely it was that two such dissimilar murders should have been committed by the same man. Until that moment he had insinuated that Paul Mansell was responsible for both deaths."
"Quite true," agreed Sir Adrian. "One is led to suppose that he had not antic.i.p.ated that you would look farther than the Mansells or-er-me, perhaps."
Hannasyde acknowledged this thrust with a twinkle, but Lady Harte said stringently: "I"ve had enough of that nonsense, Adrian! This whole case astounds me! I"m not squeamish: I"ve knocked about the world too much to be easily upset; but the idea of a man deliberately setting out to dispose of three people so that his wife would inherit a fortune absolutely appals me!"
Rosemary, who had till then been too much surprised to say a word, now made a contribution to the discussion. "I can believe anything of that man!" she said intensely. "I"ve had the most extraordinary feeling about him from the moment I set eyes on him. I didn"t like to say anything about it, but my instinct is hardly ever at fault."
"So you"ve said before," replied Emily. "Don"t interrupt!" She looked at Hannasyde. "I dare say he thought Maud was Clement"s heir, eh?"
"Very probably," agreed Hannasyde. "I, too, find it difficult to believe that at the outset he contemplated the murders of three people. Two he might have got away with; the third, though inevitable once the first two had been committed, made the whole position very dangerous. He was gambling for a big stake; having gone so far, he couldn"t think of giving up. So instead of being able to withdraw from the scene and to be next heard of as Edwin Leighton in Sydney, he was forced to remain here until he had succeeded in disposing of Mr. James Kane."
"Extremely hazardous," said Sir Adrian. "I suppose, had his wife indeed succeeded Clement Kane, he would have continued to be an errant husband until she was safely in possession of the fortune."
"I imagine so. Of course, we don"t know whether she was aware of his plot. I hardly think she can have been; but from what Mrs. Kane told me, I gathered that once he elected to return to her she would do exactly as he told her."
"I dare say," said Emily scornfully.
Jim walked over to a side table, whereon Pritchard had set a tray earlier in the evening, and began to pour out drinks. "This has absolutely got me down," he confessed. "Of all the diabolical schemes!-- He must have calculated to the last second the time it would take him to reach the front door from the study window. He even made an appointment to see Clement at three-thirty that afternoon. I suppose partly as a blind, partly to make it fairly certain that Clement would be in his study. If he hadn"t been there, no doubt the murder would have been postponed. He must be a complete devil."
"No, not entirely," said Lady Harte. "He did rescue Timothy. I can"t forget that."
"It"s beastly!" said Mr. Harte violently. "He-he pretended to be trying to guard Jim, when all the time he was waiting to do him in! I think-I think it"s the limit! I don"t care if he did rescue me! I"d rather not have been rescued by him, and I jolly well hope you catch him!"
"Oh, we"ve done that," said Hannasyde. "You helped a lot, you know."
"Did I?" said Mr. Harte. "I say, you"re not pulling my leg, are you?"
"No, you really did help. When I found the revolver this morning I was sure Roberts was the man I was after, but I wasn"t sure that the department would succeed in tracing the gun. You told him I"d found the gun and the fuse, and that I knew the noise you all heard hadn"t been caused by the shot that killed Mr. Clement Kane. Once I"d discovered the fuse the game was up, and he knew it. You led him to think that I suspected Pritchard; he saw his one chance of making a getaway and seized it. As soon as he"d got rid of you he shaved off his beard and moustache and caught the eleven-thirty train to town. Sergeant Hemingway was shadowing him, and he was taken into custody at three this afternoon-detained for inquiries."
Mr. Harte looked a little dubious. "Well, I don"t see that I did much," he said candidly. "I mean, I never knew I was doing anything."
"Never mind," said Hannasyde. "You made him run, and that was what I wanted him to do." He accepted the gla.s.s Jim Kane was holding out to him. "Thank you."
Lady Harte got up and shook him vigorously by the hand. "Well, really, I think we owe you a debt of grat.i.tude, Superintendent!" she said. "You"ve cleared the whole thing up most satisfactorily. I for one am extremely grateful to you."
This sentiment was echoed by Jim and Miss Allison.
Sir Adrian, sipping his whisky, said: "I congratulate you, Superintendent. An astonishingly difficult case."
Hannasyde looked a trifle embarra.s.sed and made haste to disclaim any extraordinary astuteness.
"Nonsense!" said Lady Harte briskly. "You"ve done a very fine piece of work, hasn"t he, Aunt Emily?"
Emily, who was feeling tired, said: "I dare say he"s been very clever; but I"m not at all surprised.
I never did like that Roberts." She gave her shawl a twitch and added with a certain grim satisfaction: "I always said those Australian Kanes were an encroaching lot."