The Ashiel Mystery: A Detective Story - free ebook by Charles Bryce

THE ASHIEL MYSTERY A DETECTIVE STORY

"It is the difficulty of the Police Romance, that the reader is always a man of such vastly greater ingenuity than the writer. "...

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CHAPTER I

When Sir Arthur Byrne fell ill, after three summers at his post in the little consulate that overlooked the lonely waters of the Black Sea, he applied for sick leave. Having obtained it, he hurried home to scatter guineas in Harley Street; for he felt all the uneasy doubts as to his future which a strong man who has never in his life known what it is to have a headache is apt to experience at the first symptom that all is not well. Outwardly, he pretended to make light of the matter. "Drains, th

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CHAPTER II

One hot summer day, a few months after the marriage, Juliet, returning to the consulate after a morning spent in very active exercise upon a tennis court, was met on the doorstep by Dora, the youngest of the Clarency Butchers, who was awaiting her approach in a high state of excitement. "Hurry up, Juliet," she cried, as soon as she could make herself heard. "You'll never guess what there is for you. Something you don't often get!" "What is it?" said Juliet, coming up the steps. "Guess!" "A prese

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CHAPTER III

A gloomy little clerk climbed down from a high stool where he sat writing, and opened the door. "Oh yes, Miss Juliet Byrne," he said when Juliet had told him her name. "Mr. Findlay is expecting you. Will you walk upstairs, Miss Byrne, please. I think you have an appointment for twelve o'clock? This way, if you please." He led the way up a steep and narrow flight of stairs, which rose out of the black shadows at the end of the passage. "Ladies find these stairs rather dark, I'm afraid," he remark

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CHAPTER IV

On Tuesday afternoon, when Juliet, having hung up the telephone through which she had been conversing with Lord Ashiel, hurried out to see what Bond Street could provide her with, a little man was sitting writing in a luxuriously furnished room in a flat in Whitehall. He was small and thin, and possessed a pair of extraordinarily bright and intelligent brown eyes, which saw a good deal more of what happened around him than perhaps any other eyes within a radius of a mile from where he sat. He wa

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CHAPTER V

The lady, whose visit to Gimblet dovetailed so neatly with the departure of his other client on that summer afternoon, was unknown to him. He had scarcely re-entered the room and resumed his accustomed seat by the window when Higgs announced her. "A lady to see you, sir." The lady was already in the doorway. She must have followed Higgs from the hall, and now stood, hesitating, on the threshold. "What name?" breathed Gimblet; but Higgs only shook his head. The detective went forward and spoke to

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CHAPTER VI

"Here they come again." Lord Ashiel spoke in a voice scarcely above a whisper, and Juliet crouched low against the peaty wall of the butt. There was an instant's silence, and then crack, crack, shots sounded from the other end of the line. Another minute and Lord Ashiel's gun went up; she heard the whirr of approaching wings before she covered both ears with her hands to deaden the noise of the explosions she knew were coming. Then several guns seemed to go off at once. Bang! bang! bang! Bang! b

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CHAPTER VII

It was a few days after this that Gimblet, taking up an evening paper at the Club, was startled to see a sinister headline of "Murder," immediately followed by the name of Ashiel. "They've got him," he muttered between his teeth as he hastily began to read the paragraph that followed: "News reaches us, as we go to press, of a dastardly crime, involving the death of Lord Ashiel, which occurred late last night at his residence in the Highlands of Scotland. Lord Ashiel was sitting quietly in his li

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CHAPTER VIII

They had reached a place where a wide horseshoe of beach ran down to the loch. For more than a week there had been no rain to speak of. The season as a whole had been dry, and the water was very low; tufts of grass dotted the shore; brambles and young alders were springing up bravely, determined to make the most of their time. At the back stretched a meadow, part of which had been cut for hay; the rest of it was so full of weeds and wild flowers, ragweed, burdock and the red stalks of sorrel, th

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CHAPTER IX

"The next thing I remember, was finding myself lying on the floor, and, when I tried to get up, seeing everything in the room swinging about me like the swinging boats at a fair. I don't know how long I had been unconscious, but when, at last, I managed to stand up, and clinging, faint and giddy, to the back of a chair, looked again at the motionless figure that sprawled across the writing-table, there was a great pool of blood on the polished oak of the floor beneath it, which grew slowly broad

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CHAPTER X

"And now," said Gimblet, "may I visit the scene of the crime?" Mark took him first to his uncle's bedroom; a room austere in its simplicity, with bare white-washed walls and uncarpeted floor. No one could have hidden a sheet of paper in that room, thought the detective, as he gazed round it, after he had looked, with a feeling akin to guilt, on the features of the dead peer. He had not known how to protect this man from the dreadful fate that had struck him down from a direction so utterly unexp

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CHAPTER XI

Gimblet left the gun-room quietly; and after some more exploring discovered the way to the back premises. In the pantry he found Blanston, whom he invited to follow him to the deserted billiard-room for a few minutes' conversation. "You know," he told him, "Miss Byrne and your new young master want me to examine the evidence that Sir David Southern is the author of this terrible crime." "I'm sure I wish, sir," said the man, "that you could prove he never did it. A very nice young gentleman, sir,

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CHAPTER XII

Juliet failed to extract much comfort from Gimblet when, about six o'clock, she met him coming up through the garden to Inverashiel Cottage. All the afternoon she had possessed her soul in what patience she could muster, which was not a great deal. Still, by dint of repeating to herself that she must give the detective time to study the facts, and opportunity to verify them at his leisure and in his own way, she had managed to get through the long inactive hours, and to force herself not to dwel

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CHAPTER XIII

By the time he reached the castle, the night was dark indeed. He approached it by the path along the burn, and felt his way cautiously up the steep zigzags of the hill, and past the servants' quarters, where a dog barked and gave him an uneasy minute till he found that it was tied up, and that the noise which issued from a brilliantly lighted window—which he guessed to be the servants' hall—did not cease or diminish on account of it. There were no other lights to be seen, and he edged his way ro

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CHAPTER XIV

Gimblet was up early next morning, refreshed by a sound and dreamless sleep. For two hours before breakfast he wrestled with the cryptic message on the sheet of paper, trying first one way and then another of solving the riddle it presented, but still finding no solution. He was silent and preoccupied during the morning meal, replying to inquiries as to his headache, alternately, with obvious inattention and exaggerated gratitude. Neither of the ladies spoke much, however, and his absent-mindedn

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CHAPTER XV

Blanston, to whom he appealed, could give no useful information. Yes, some of the plate was old, but that was all at the bank in London. Mrs. Haviland, his lordship's sister, had liked it on the table when his lordship entertained in his London house, and it had not been carried backwards and forwards to Scotland since her ladyship's death. He knew of nothing resembling a bull in his lordship's possession, unless it was the picture of cows that hung in the drawing-room opposite the one of the de

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CHAPTER XVI

With her white paint and her scarlet smokestack, the Inverashiel —one of the two small steamers that during the summer months plied up and down the loch, and incidentally carried on communication between Inverashiel and Crianan—was a picturesque addition to the landscape, as she approached the wooden landing-stage that stood half a mile below the promontory on which the castle was built. It was the morning of Friday, the day following the funeral, and clouds were settling slowly down on to the t

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CHAPTER XVII

Behind the shrubberies, which lay at the back of the holly hedge that surrounded the little enclosed garden outside the library, beyond the end of the battlements, and reached by a disused footpath, a great tree stood upon the edge of the steep hillside and thrust its sweeping branches over the void. Its trunk was grey and moss-grown; moss carpeted the ground between its protruding roots, but the bracken and heather held back, and left a half-circle beneath it, untenanted by their kind. It would

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CHAPTER XVIII

Later on in the afternoon, when Gimblet arrived at the castle, he was immediately shown into the presence of Lord Ashiel, who was pacing the smoking-room restlessly, a cigarette between his teeth. He looked pale and haggard, the strain of the last few days had evidently been too much for him. Gimblet greeted him sympathetically. "You have not found your uncle's will, I can see," he began, "and you are fretting at the idea of keeping his daughter out of her fortune. But set your mind at rest; we

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CHAPTER XIX

When Juliet, incensed and indignant at the Russian's behaviour, discovered the door in the clock and was on the point of opening it and making her presence known, a noise of steps in the passage made her pause. As she listened, there was the sound of a key turning in the lock, the library door was thrown suddenly open, and Mark stepped into the room. Juliet saw Julia's expression as she sprang round to face the newcomer. She saw it change, swift as lightning, from a look of horrified dismay to o

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CHAPTER XX

It did not occur to Juliet to deny that she had overheard their talk. She had been found in the act of spying on them, and it was inconceivable that they should believe she had not done so. Besides, she was raging at the thought of what she had heard, and her anger gave her a courage she might otherwise have found it hard to maintain. "I have been there all the time," she declared stoutly. "I heard all you said, you wicked, wicked man. A murderer! Oh, how horrible it all is!" Julia laid a hand o

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CHAPTER XXI

Juliet dug her nails into the cracks of the stone floor with all the energy of despair, but in a moment her feet were over the edge of the pit and she was falling. Her fingers gripped the edge with a fierce tenacity, and for some minutes she hung there, minutes that seemed longer than all the rest of her life put together. And so she hung, her knees drawn up in a frantic effort to pull herself out of the depths, till her muscles refused any longer to contract, and she felt herself gradually stra

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CHAPTER XXII

It was after dinner that night, as he sat in the little drawing-room of the cottage with Lady Ruth and Sir Arthur, that his hostess asked him to explain to them how he had contrived to detect the way in which the murder had been committed. "You promised to tell me all about it," Lady Ruth reminded him, "if I would keep silent about your finding the papers in the statue." "Tell us the whole thing from the beginning," Sir Arthur urged him. "I will willingly tell you anything that may interest you,

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