28 chapters
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28 chapters
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
Seen in the sad glamour of an English twilight, the old moat-house, emerging from the thin mists which veiled the green flats in which it stood, conveyed the impression of a habitation falling into senility, tired with centuries of existence. Houses grow old like the race of men; the process is not less inevitable, though slower; in both, decay is hastened by events as well as by the passage of Time. The moat-house was not so old as English country-houses go, but it had aged quickly because of i
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
Miss Heredith turned her steps towards the house. The guests had dispersed while she was saying farewell to Captain Nepcote, and nothing further was expected of her as a hostess until dinner-time. It was her daily custom to devote a portion of the time between tea and dinner to superintending the arrangements for the latter meal. The moat-house possessed a competent housekeeper and an excellent staff of servants, but Miss Heredith believed in seeing to things herself. On her way to the house she
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
Sir Philip Heredith was a dignified figure of an English country gentleman of the old type. He was tall and thin, aristocratic of mien, with white hair and faded blue eyes. His face was not impressive. At first sight it seemed merely that of a tired old man, weary of the paltry exactions of life, and longing for rest; but, at odd moments, one caught a passing resemblance to a caged eagle in a swift turn of the falcon profile, or in a sudden flash of the old eyes beneath the straight Heredith bro
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
"It was before the war. Many strange things have happened in the world before the Boche broke loose with his dream of 'Deutschland über Alles.' I had been to Melville Island trying to match a pearl for the Devonshire necklace, and I went from the pearl fisheries to New Zealand, led there by rumours of the discovery of some wonderful black pearls. It was, however, a wild-goose chase. These rumours generally are. One of the experts of the New Zealand Fishery Department had been exploring the Haura
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
A shaded light in an alcove at the head of the stairs threw a dim light down the passage which led off the first-floor landing, but Musard felt for the electric switch and pressed it. The light flooded an empty corridor, with the door of the room nearest to him gaping into a dark interior. Musard stepped inside the open door, struck a match to find the switch, and walked over and turned on the light. As he did so, Phil and his father reached the door and followed him into the room, where, less t
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
The butler left the moat-house at a brisk pace which became almost a run after he crossed the moat bridge. His way across the park lay along the carriage drive, bordered by an avenue of tall trees, between an ornamental lake and some thick game covers, and then through the outer fields to the village. It was a soft and mellow September night, with a violet sky overhead sprinkled with silver. But a touch of autumn decay was in the air, which was heavy and still, and a white mist was rising in thi
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
It was the morning after the murder, and five men were seated in the moat-house library. One of them attracted instant attention by reason of his overpowering personality. He was a giant in stature and build, with a massive head, a large red face from which a pair of little bloodshot eyes stared out truculently, and a bull neck which was several shades deeper in colour than his face. He was Superintendent Merrington, a noted executive officer of New Scotland Yard, whose handling of the most impo
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
As they reached the library again a small silver clock on the mantelpiece gave a single chime. Merrington looked at it, and then glanced at his watch. "Half-past eight!" he said. "That clock is five minutes slow—by me. The people who have been staying here will go off after breakfast. Visitors always leave a house of trouble as soon as possible—like rats deserting a sinking ship. The thing is to question as many as we can get hold of before they go. As some of them knew Mrs. Heredith before her
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
"Have you formed any theory of the murder yet?" It was the evening of the same day, and Superintendent Merrington and Captain Stanhill were once more in the moat-house library. It was Captain Stanhill who asked the question, as he stood warming his little legs in front of a crackling fire of oak logs which had just been lighted in the gloomy depths of the big fireplace. Although it was early in autumn, the evening air was chill. Superintendent Merrington was walking up and down the room with rap
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
In accordance with Merrington's instructions, Caldew devoted a considerable portion of the morning seeking information among the moat-house guests. But few of them showed any inclination to talk about the murder. Many of the women were too upset to be seen, and the men had plainly no desire to be mixed up in such a terrible affair by giving interviews to detectives. Everybody was anxious to get away as speedily as possible, and Caldew was compelled to pursue his inquiries amongst groups of hurry
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
On his way to Chidelham, Caldew again pondered over the murder, and for the first time seriously asked himself whether Miss Heredith could have committed the crime. He had glanced at that possibility before, and had practically dismissed it on the score of lack of motive, but his sister's story of the differences between Miss Heredith and her nephew's wife supplied that deficiency in a startling degree. In reviewing the whole of the circumstances by the light of the information his sister had gi
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
As Caldew returned to the house for his interview with Merrington, the one clear impression on his mind was that the discovery of the owner of the missing brooch was the starting point in the elucidation of the murder. In the library he found Superintendent Merrington, Captain Stanhill, Inspector Weyling, and Sergeant Lumbe. The sergeant, who looked tired and dirty, was apologetically explaining that his visit to Tibblestone had been fruitless. "I had my journey for nothing," he was saying in hi
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
The girl who entered the room a moment later was tall and graceful, with a yearning expression in her soft dark eyes, as though in search of a happiness which had been denied her by Fate. Her appearance was one of unusual refinement. She had not a trace of the coarsened blowzy look so common in English country girls; there was nothing of rustic lumpishness in her slim figure, and there was more than mere prettiness in her exquisite small features, her thick dark hair, her clear white skin with a
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
The popular fallacy which likens circumstantial evidence to a chain naturally found no acceptance in the mind of Superintendent Merrington. If a link in a chain snaps, the captive springs free, but if he is bound by a rope it is necessary for all the strands to be severed before liberty can be regained. Merrington remained at Heredith to weave additional strands for the rope of circumstantial evidence by which Hazel Rath was held for the murder of Violet Heredith. It was a good strong case as it
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
Colwyn had rooms in the upper part of a block of buildings on Ludgate Hill, looking down on the Circus, above the rookery of passages which burrow tortuously under the railway arches to Water Lane, Printing House Square, and Blackfriars. It was a strange locality to live in, but it suited Colwyn. It was in the thick of things. From his windows, high up above the roar of the traffic, he could watch the ceaseless flow of life eastward and westward all day long, and far into the night. No other par
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
It was so late that Ludgate Circus was deserted except for a ramshackle cab with a drunken driver pouring forth a hoarse story of a mean fare to a sleepy policeman leaning against a lamp post. The sight of two gentlemen on foot when all 'buses had stopped running for the night raised fleeting hopes in the cabman's pessimistic breast, and changed the flow of his narrative into a strident appeal for hire, based on the plea, which he called on the policeman to support, that he hadn't turned a wheel
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
"Lunch is waiting," said the young man. "My aunt thought that you did not hear the gong, so I came up to tell you." "Miss Heredith was right—I did not hear it. I am sorry if I have kept you waiting. I have been so busy that I forgot the passing of time." If Phil felt any curiosity as to the matters which had engaged Colwyn's attention in the room where his wife had been murdered, he did not express it in words. "My aunt will show you over the moat-house after lunch, if you wish," was what he sai
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
Colwyn was upstairs in his bedroom preparing for his return journey to London when a meek knock and an apologetic cough reached his ears. He turned and saw Tufnell standing at the half-open door. The face of the old butler wore a look of mingled determination and nervousness—the expression of a timid man who had braced himself to a bold course of action after much irresolute deliberation. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said, and his trepidation was apparent in his voice. "But might I—that is to sa
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
Superintendent Merrington sat in his office at Scotland Yard, irascible with the exertions of a trying day which had made heavy inroads upon his temper and patience. He had several big cases on his hands, his time had been broken into by a series of visitors with grievances, and he had been called upon to adjust a vexatious claim of a woman attacked in the street by a police dog, while the animal was supposed to be on duty tracking a sacrilegious thief who had felled a priest in an oratory and b
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
Colwyn spent a couple of hours that night reading the depositions he had obtained from Merrington, and next morning he studied them afresh with a concentration which the incessant hum of London traffic outside was powerless to disturb. He was well aware that a report was a poor substitute for original impressions, but in the typewritten document before him lay the facts of the Heredith case so far as they were known. It was a clear and colourless transcription of the narrative of the witnesses,
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
On reaching the street, they crossed Ludgate Circus, and directed their steps towards Hatton Garden by way of St. Bride Street. A few minutes later, they emerged in that portion of Holborn which is graced by the mounted statue of a dead German prince acknowledging his lifelong obligations to British hospitality by raising his plumed hat to the London City & Midland Bank on the Viaduct corner. Hatton Garden, as every Londoner knows, begins on the other side of this improving spectacle—a s
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
It was to Merrington's credit as an official that he suppressed his feelings as a man on hearing Caldew's story, and did everything possible to retrieve the situation once he was convinced that Nepcote had fled. Any lingering doubts he may have had were scattered on learning, after confidential inquiry at Whitehall, that Captain Nepcote had not put in an appearance at the War Office that day, and had neither requested nor been granted leave of absence from his duties. On receipt of this informat
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
There are moments when the human brain refuses to receive communication from its peripheries, and the rapidity of thought becomes so slow that it can be measured by minutes. The stage of consciousness on which life's drama is solitarily played for every human being is too circumscribed to expand all at once for the reception of a strange and unexpected image. Such moments follow in, the wake of a great shock, like a black curtain descending on a lighted scene. When the curtain begins to rise aga
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CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
Strong in his conviction that the story of Hazel Rath was largely the product of an hysterical imagination, Merrington dismissed it from his mind and devoted all his energies to the search for Nepcote. The task looked a difficult one, but Merrington did not despair of accomplishing it before the day came round for the adjourned hearing of the charge against the girl. He knew that it was a difficult matter for a wanted man to remain uncaptured in a civilized community for any length of time if th
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CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXV
In that swift unexpected recognition Colwyn observed that the man for whom they had been searching looked pale and worn. He stood quite still in the doorway, his breath coming and going in quick gasps. "We have been looking for you, Captain Nepcote," Colwyn said. "I am aware of that. I have been waiting to see you, but I could get nobody to answer my ring." "My man is out. You had better come upstairs to my rooms." He led the way to the lift at the end of the corridor. When they reached the room
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CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI
It was late afternoon when Colwyn reached Heredith the following day. The brief English summer, dying under the intolerable doom of evanescence for all things beautiful, presented the spectacle of creeping decay in a hectic flare of russet and crimson, like a withered woman striving to stave off the inevitable with pitiful dyes and rouge. In this scene the moat-house was in perfect harmony, attuned by its own decrepitude to the general dissolution of its surroundings. Its aspect was a shuttered
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CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVII
The gun-room was dark and silent as a vault. In the deep recesses the armoured phantoms of dead and gone Herediths seemed to be watching the intruder with hidden eyes behind the bars of their tilting helmets and visored salades. The light of Colwyn's electric torch fell on the shell of a mighty warrior who stood with one steel gauntlet raised as though in readiness to defend the honour of his house. His initials, "P.H.," were engraved on his giant steel breast, and his steel heels flourished a p
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CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXVIII
The three dined together in the big dining-room almost in silence. Musard and Philip Heredith had not returned until after six, and their first knowledge of Colwyn's presence was by some oversight deferred until they met at the dinner table. In the awkwardness of that surprise they sat down to dine, and Musard's half-hearted efforts to start a conversation met with little response from his companions. Colwyn was preoccupied with his own thoughts, which apparently affected his appetite, for he se
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