Part 2 — PART II (continued 2)

"Just what a couple of other witnesses have told me," he said.

"Submarines?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"The odds against a torpedo sending a ship straight up like that are enormous. And one would have heard two explosions—which nobody did. Besides, the one man who was picked up has luckily been able to talk a little already. I am certain there was no torpedo attack."

"She simply blew up then?"

"That was it."

"Accident or design?"

"God knows! Perhaps no one else ever will. It may have merely been the ammunition. As you know, that has happened before now. But it's a very curious coincidence that it should have happened off Ransay, knowing what we know. I hear a lot of the men were ashore buying things. I wonder what they brought aboard with them!"

"I can tell you what one lot brought: eggs, poultry, cheeses, and a large parcel in newspaper which I took to be butter. But that was only one party I happened to see. They were all over the island."

He thought in silence for a few moments, and then he glanced at his watch.

"Look here, old chap," he said, "I'm afraid I must be getting off again now. Walk back with me as far as it's safe and I'll tell you something that you must know. We can discuss the evidence later, when a little more has been collected. The point that concerns you is that Bolton has been sent for again."

"The devil he has! Do I retire then?"

"Not at all. You see nobody in these parts is in the Hobhouse secret, so they sent for Bolton at once to make his own kind of enquiries while we make ours. You of course go on making yours in your own way just the same. All the same I think it would be tactful to stand aside—with your eyes open of course—while Bolton is on the job."

"Tactful," I agreed, "but a little annoying."

"Well, Roger, it can't be helped, I'm afraid. I'm not the boss here and the man is on his way now as fast as he can travel. And now what about telling him who you really are? I've been thinking it over, and if you are agreeable I think I ought to."

I saw that this meant that he had decided he was going to, so I merely said:

"If you think it best, certainly tell him. Only swear him to secrecy."

"Certainly. And I'm sure the man himself will see the point in that. But you see if I didn't tell him who you really were, he'd very likely put you down as a suspicious character and recommend your removal."

"You're quite right," I agreed.

"Besides what you know may help him, and it would be a dog in the manger kind of game to keep back anything, now that he has taken up the business."

"Right again. Well, I'll keep my nose out of the business till Bolton has had his innings."

"Good man!" said Jack. "Well, we'd better separate now. Good luck to you both!"

I trust I am not of an unduly jealous disposition, but being thus asked to take a back seat just as something really definite had happened was a strain on my philosophy. The tragedy of the Uruguay might not have anything to do with the secret agency in the island—though I felt in my bones it had, and Mr. Bolton might come and go and leave me possibly with a little information to help my own quest. Still, it was annoying.

At the same time, my cousin's arguments were absolutely sound and I saw perfectly that it would have been both foolish and ungenerous to play Hobhouse with the man. So I went back and picked up a novel and tried to dismiss the whole business from my mind in the meantime.

For the next twenty-four hours the island was full of gruesome stories and the wildest rumours, but for most of the time Mr. Hobhouse stayed at home and finished his novel. It was on the evening of the day after the tragedy, when the doctor and he were sitting over the smoking room fire, lighting their pipes after tea, that the bell rang. "Hallo, who's that at this hour?" said the doctor.

I heard a heavy footstep in the passage, and guessed, but the only announcement was that a gentleman wished to see Dr. Rendall. He was out of the room for a long time, nearly an hour by the clock, and when he came back his manner was serious and a little apologetic.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, Mr. Hobhouse," said he, "and I assure you there is nothing to worry about, but the fact is a detective is here and wants to have a word with you."

"A detective!" exclaimed Mr. Hobhouse nervously. "You don't say so? Dear me, what can he want me for!"

"He's a man Bolton," said the doctor, "the very man who came up about six months ago under the name of Thompson and gave himself out as a cattle dealer. By Jove, I can see now what he came for! But anyhow it's about the Uruguay business this time and he is interviewing everybody, and if you don't mind, he'd like a few words with you."

I went into the dining room and saw for the first time my rival. He was a big, sturdy, red-faced man, with a plain bluff manner, an ideal dealer; but his eyes were shrewd and keen. In fact once I had looked into them I put him down as a better man than I had fancied. We exchanged a conventional word on either side, and then both of us instinctively glanced at the door.

"Better speak quietly, Mr. Merton," said he.

I nodded and said with a smile: "So you are not here as a dealer this time, Mr. Bolton?"

"No," said he, "I want to get straight to business, and there's too much humbug and waste of time if one has to talk cattle for half an hour first. Besides, after what has just happened they'd be quite sharp enough here to tumble to the game. Anyhow, the people I want to get at would be, and there's no point in humbugging the others."

"Well," I said, "you know what I'm here for, and though I'm sorry to say I haven't been able to pick up much so far, anything I have picked up is at your service."

"Much obliged, Mr. Merton," said he. "We're like a couple of terriers after the same rat, and as long as we get him that's all that matters. You've had your go and now I'm going to have a little go."

He laughed genially, but it was clear enough that when he said two terriers, he meant one terrier at a time, and I accepted the situation frankly.

"Right you are," I said. "I'll take a breather while you go in and finish him off. Only of course if you want me to lend a hand, here I am, with nothing else to do."

He seemed distinctly relieved by this declaration and grew more friendly than ever.

"Well now to come to business," he said. "I must tell you frankly in the first place, Mr. Merton, that there were some things in your story last time you were here that I didn't know just how much to believe in. The most truthful people sometimes imagine the queerest things. If you'd had my experience, Mr. Merton, you'd feel just the same about a tale like yours. But now I know you and know what's been happening here, and particularly what's happened yesterday, it's a different story. Do you mind just telling me in your own words about what you saw last time and anything you've noticed this trip?"

My opinion of Mr. Bolton's shrewdness continued to rise as I noticed his close attention to my tale and how much to the point his questions were. Every now and then he stopped me while he made a jotting in a fat little brown leather pocket book, and at the end he observed.

"Well, Mr. Merton, it's a queer case but I daresay I may be able to throw a bit of light on things before I've done."

I wondered very much, and from the look on his face I do not believe for a moment that he saw a single blink of light at that time.

"And now," said he, "coming to this explosion, I don't want to hear anything more about the flames and smoke and such like. All that is for the Navy people. It doesn't come under the head of my department, Mr. Merton; but this buying of stuff ashore and taking parcels aboard the ship, that does come under it. In fact that's what I'm up here to investigate, for it's pretty clear even to a man like me that knows nothing of ships that any one on this island couldn't swim out and hold a match to a ship o' war and blow her up that way! If it was done from here, it must have been by one of those parcels."

"Obviously," I agreed. "And I also agree that it's for the experts to decide whether a bomb could be slipped into a paper parcel of butter or a large cheese, or anything else they bought; and for you simply to find out exactly what was bought and who sold it."

"A paper parcel of butter and a large cheese," he repeated. "Did you happen to see any of those things being sold yourself?"

"I happened to pass some blue jackets who had just bought them."

He made me tell him exactly the circumstances of my seeing the men and my passing Peter and Jock previously; precisely in fact as I have told it in this account. He thought for a few moments in silence after I had finished and then asked me if I knew definitely of any other people who had sold anything to the sailors.

"I happen to know for certain of Dr. Rendall and his cousin Mr. Philip Rendall—or rather Mr. Philip Rendall's farmer, but from all I saw and all I heard I fancy the difficulty will be to find a house that did not sell something."

He nodded thoughtfully.

"That's exactly the difficulty," he said, and then he rose and held out his hand. "Goodnight, Mr. Merton, I'm much obliged to you and I'll promise you to make an excuse for looking you up very soon again and letting you know how I am getting on. By the way, you had better tell the doctor I was much interested in your account of how the explosion happened. That will account for my calling again."

"I must have detective instincts myself," I smiled. "I had already thought of the same lie."

In fact it came in very handy no later than Mr. Bolton's departure that night. The doctor wondered very much what the detective had to say to his patient that took him so long to tell, and his curiosity was satisfied as per arrangement.

X

WHERE THE CLUE LED

I saw nothing of Bolton next day, nor as a matter of fact did I expect to. Indeed, when he called for me on the morning after, it was a good deal sooner than I had counted on. The doctor was out, so no fable was necessary, and I took him into the smoking room and offered him an easy chair.

"Well, Mr. Bolton, any news?" I enquired.

He remained standing, and shook his head at the chair.

"I've no time to sit down," he said, "but I thought I'd just look in as I passed."

There was a note in his voice that made me look at him sharply.

"Have you discovered anything?" I asked.

He nodded his head slowly.

"Not very much, Mr. Merton, but something."

Yet there seem to be a hint of jubilation in his eye.

"Won't you tell the other terrier?"

His face relaxed a little and for a moment I half thought he was going to confide in me, and then he said,

"It's a little too soon to say much. But I'm on the track of something, I don't mind admitting; something pretty surprising too, if it's the right track. Possibly I may be able to tell you more to-night. Could you come out this evening with me if I needed you?"

"Rather!"

"Well," he said, moving towards the door, "any time after dark I may look in—if this leads to anything."

"Even if it doesn't, look in and put me out of suspense, like a good fellow-'tec,' Mr. Bolton."

He smiled again. Evidently he was decidedly pleased with himself this morning.

"All right, Mr. Merton. I'll do that much for you."

Just before I opened the door for him I had one last shot.

"Won't you even give me a hint, Mr. Bolton?"

He looked at me for a moment, and then said in a low voice (for we were near the door),

"There's some one in this island who hasn't lived in it all their life—not by any means. I've found that out."

He nodded significantly at me, but his lips closed tight again and I saw there was no more to be got out of him, so I wished him luck and returned to my chair to think.

Whether excitement at the prospect of actually reaching the crisis of this adventure that very night, or chagrin at seeing the problem which had eluded me solved straight off by this great drover of a fellow was my uppermost feeling, I should be afraid to say. I know both were strongly mingled and for a few minutes it never even occurred to me to question whether the man really was within sight of a solution. And then I began to wonder.

Who was this mysterious person who had not lived all "their" life on the island? He had concealed, probably deliberately, "their" sex. And was it then a fact of which I myself was unaware? Bolton said he had found it out. But it might be no news to me. I thought of several people, a woman and at least two men, who had certainly lived a considerable part of their lives out of the island. But there was no use speculating with the test so near at hand.

All the same I felt so restless that I should have gone out to walk it off there and then had it not been for the fear that I might chance to follow in Bolton's tracks and lead him to think I was doing it deliberately. At all costs I wanted him to see that I was playing the game (as I was playing it), so I waited till after our early dinner and then set off.

I well remember the day, a nasty raw specimen of March weather, not exactly raining, but trying to all the time, and altogether grey and dismal. The spring ploughing was proceeding apace, and as the fields grew brown, there was less and less trace of colour left in the landscape. In fact it was a day when something evil could scarcely help happening; or at least it seems so looking back.

I walked briskly to keep the chill out, following the winding road, but so wrapt in my thoughts that I hardly noticed where I was going till I found myself passing from the metalled highway on to the rough track that led one beyond the last of the farms out to the desolate stretch of country at the nor' west end of the island. At both sides, and especially on the north, the rocks rose here till they became genuine cliffs, not very high, but rugged and broken, with little hollows dipping down through them here and there and giving scrambling access to small coves. I kept along near this northern cliff line, still thinking all the while, until with a start and a quickening of my heart I became abruptly conscious of a figure fifty yards or so ahead.

I had a sudden dim recollection; he seemed disturbingly familiar, and then in a moment I recognised Jock, though why the sight of Jock should rouse a disturbing thought was more than I could say. When I saw him he was close to one of those little dips, but whether he had been down at the shore or not, I could not say, for up to that instant I had been quite inattentive. But in any case Jock was such a chronic aimless wanderer that his appearance anywhere never surprised his acquaintances.

Evidently he recognised the harmless eccentric Mr. Hobhouse quickly enough, for he broke into a shambling trot and came towards me with an unusual air of eagerness.

"Stones!" he cried as he came up to me. "Jock knows stones!"

"Stones?" said I genially. "Dear me, Jock, this is great news. Are these the stones?" and I pointed to the rocks all about us.

"Stones here!" cried Jock pointing eagerly across towards the other side of the promontory, and catching me by the arm in a friendly way.

I had never seen the creature so excited before and for a moment could make neither head nor tail of it. And then I remembered. On my last visit to the knoll near the Scollays', Jock had been watching me, and by way of playing my part thoroughly I had affected a vast interest in certain large slabs of stone showing here and there through the grass. Looking at stones was the last thing I was keen about this afternoon, but there was simply no resisting Jock. With the air of a pleased child he led me in the way he wished me to go, only letting go my arm when he saw I really meant to inspect his stones.

"This is an unusual exhibition for Jock," I thought, but in the character of Mr. Hobhouse there was nothing for it but pretending high gratification and going where he led me.

The promontory was about a third of a mile across at this point and when we had made this journey, my intelligent guide triumphantly pointed out a few ordinary boulders at the end of it. They were large, it is true, but there their merits ended. However, I examined them with every appearance of pleasure, thanked Jock effusively and even gave him a sixpence, and at last bade him good-day and started for home.

It had been a queer little episode, and had I been in my usual clue-hunting humour I should no doubt have dissected it carefully—and then abused myself for being a fanciful fool. But this afternoon I had too much else to think of and the incident passed out of my mind in the meantime.

At tea I prepared the doctor for the possibility of my going out at night by a long-winded, babbling, and entirely fictitious account of Bolton's morning call, from which it appeared that Mr. Bolton was so interested in Mr. Hobhouse's account of how he saw the ship blow up that he would probably call in the evening to verify certain particulars and might even want Mr. Hobhouse to come with him to the house where he was lodging. And then after tea I smoked and read and waited.

Darkness was beginning to fall when we finished tea that night and the lamps were lit when we went into the smoking room. At any moment the summons might come, and yet eight o'clock struck, and nine, and ten, and I even induced the doctor to sit up till after eleven, but still there was no sign of Bolton. And then at last I said some severe things to myself about the man, and we went to bed.

Next morning was equally chilly and dismal, and after the doctor went out to visit a case, I sat over the fire resolved to stay there till Mr. Bolton came and explained himself. I stayed there all morning, but he never came, and no more did Dr. Rendall. Our dinner hour approached and passed, and at last I sat down and had my meal alone. I had just finished when I heard the front door open sharply and the doctor's step in the passage. It struck me instantly as curiously quick for him. He entered the dining room and I saw at once that something was very much the matter.

"Bolton has been murdered," he said abruptly. "His body has just been found in the sea."

XI

AN EYE-OPENER

I leapt to my feet and stared at him. "Drowned?" I gasped.

"No, he was shot first with a pistol at close quarters. I've just been examining the body."

"Where was it found?"

"Away right at the very North end."

Yesterday's episode rushed into my mind.

"At the very end?"

"Practically."

"It wasn't by any chance as much as half a mile on this side?"

He stared at me curiously and I remembered that this was certainly an odd enquiry, and also that Mr. Hobhouse was speaking very concisely.

"No," he said. "Why do you ask?"

I took refuge in an ultra-Hobhousian explanation of how I had been there myself a few days ago, and it had struck me as a very murderous looking place, and then I asked,

"Is anything more known, doctor?"

"No," he answered, and then added abruptly and with unusual energy, "This is absolutely damnable!"

He walked out of the room again as he spoke, and I was left to my thoughts. I went into the smoking room but forgot to light my pipe. With my head in my hands I bent over the fire and tried in the first place to grasp this second tragedy, and then to piece things together and see some sequence in them.

That Bolton had really been on the right scent now seemed highly probable, though as he made no concealment of his business, it was possible that an agency which had tried to murder me, defied all efforts to check it for months, and to all seeming had lately blown up a cruiser, might get rid of him simply on general principles. Still, the working hypothesis must be that he had got on to their track. And, oh, if he had only told me what he had discovered! But that secret had died with him, and now once more one must begin all over again.

Yet this time I had secured one significant-looking starting point. The coincidence of Jock's appearance out at that lonely place more or less about the time when the murder must have taken place, and his leading me away in another direction from that in which I was heading, was certainly suggestive. The creature had exhibited more appearance of intelligence than I had given him credit for, and might he not then be used by some one who knew him well and had strong influence over him, to play such a simple part as he had acted? Supposing he were with such a person and that person saw me coming and did not wish me to spy him, how easy it would be to say, "Go, Jock, and show that gentleman stones over there!"

As to whom to suspect of having such influence over him, that was easy enough. I recalled young Peter Scollay's stare and laugh when I suggested that they were going to look at the ship, and it sounded to me now a very sinister laugh.

And yet the more I thought over all this, the more objections I saw. In the first place the body was not found where I had seen Jock. True, it might have been moved if the murderer had been wily and suspicious enough to think that the simple Mr. Hobhouse was capable of connecting the harmless episode of the stones with his gruesome work, though even that seemed to imply more than was likely; but a more formidable difficulty was the evidence of educated cunning in every crime committed or attempted by that hand. For "that hand" I decided I must certainly substitute "those hands." I had always thought there was more than one in it, and now I felt surer of this than ever.

With the back of my head, as they say, I heard Dr. Rendall go into dinner and then come out again into the hall, and then I heard him, instead of coming into the smoking room, open and shut the front door. He had evidently gone out again and I was not sorry to be left alone.

A little later, in the same absent-minded way, I heard the front door bell faintly ring and I only woke out of my reverie when the smoking room door opened.

"Dr. Rendall is out, I hear," said a voice that made me jump up very hurriedly.

It was Jean Rendall, delightful to look at as ever, but with a new expression on her face. If she was not anxious, and very keenly anxious too, about something, I was much mistaken.

Unwillingly I resumed the role of Thomas Hobhouse and informed her nervously that the doctor had gone out, I knew not where.

She said nothing for a moment, but still lingered. Then she said,

"What a dreadful thing about poor Mr. Bolton!"

"Dreadful!" agreed Mr. Hobhouse. "Terrible! Dreadful! Terrible!"

"Did my cousin tell you much about it?"

"Oh, no, not much, very little. He was upset, very much upset, I could see."

"Everybody is," she said, and then added, "I should think you must be, Mr. Hobhouse."

There seemed to be an odd note in her voice set up a vague chain of disquieting emotions, but Mr. Hobhouse answered in the same tone as before:

"Oh, yes, I am distressed; dreadfully distressed."

Again she was silent, but still she lingered.

"I am going to walk home again," she said suddenly. "Would you care to walk a little way with me?"

At that moment I wanted my own company and had a certain shrinking from hers; so the voice of Mr. Hobhouse bleated something about having caught a slight chill.

"Please come a little way," she said. "I want to speak to you particularly."

There was a note of appeal in her voice which would have taken a stouter man than Thomas Hobhouse to resist. Besides, he felt exceedingly curious. Her whole manner during the interview in fact roused a very strong sensation of curiosity.

He got his hat and his coat (Mr. Hobhouse always wore a topcoat) and they crunched their way down the knobbly drive and passed out into the road, neither saying a word. And then Mr. Hobhouse got the most rousing eye-opener of his career, or of Roger Merton's either. She turned to him and said quietly,

"I hope you are taking care of your own life, Mr. Merton."

XII

THE CONFIDANT

A second or two passed before I was able to answer at all, and even then my first remark was not in the least worthy of the occasion; but it expressed precisely what was in my mind.

"How the—how on earth did you find me out?"

She smiled a little, but her manner was anxious still.

"I haven't lived all my life in Ransay," she said. "I have even been to London and to quite a good many London theatres. In fact I've seen you act before, Mr. Merton."

"What an extraordinary way to be found out!" I thought, and aloud I said,

"But my name isn't on the programme in Ransay."

"It was, when you were last here, you must remember," said she.

I looked at her for a moment, and she at me, and in that exchange of glances I decided emphatically that there was no sign of evil in those eyes. Anyhow, I stood to lose nothing if I got her confidence, and my own could be withheld or not as I saw fit.

"We might as well be frank," I said. "How exactly did you come to spot me?"

Again she smiled, and each time she smiled straight at me like that, I confess frankly I grew less cautious.

"Do you remember when Captain Whiteclett came to arrest you, your bed-room door was open just for a minute?"

I did remember now and recalled her face outside and its very expression vividly.

"I heard him call you 'Roger' and saw that you knew each other well, and then of course I knew we had been utterly wrong in thinking you a—"

She paused and I finished the sentence for her.

"A spy."

"Well, are you honestly surprised? You did do some most extraordinary things, Mr. Merton! I only began to get the least idea of what you were about some time afterwards."

"And what idea did you get then? And how did you get it?"

"It was when we began to hear of the bad name our island was getting. Then I guessed you must have been trying to investigate and catch the traitor—and I had gone and interfered—and even locked you up!"

"It was you, then?"

"Well, father, of course, approved, but I locked the door. And after I had found out the truth, I could have murdered myself! But why did you puzzle us so?"

Her charm and sincerity and animation almost made me tell her there and then, but I had just enough hold of myself to ask instead,

"But this doesn't explain how you came to find me out this time?"

"Well in a way it does; for I knew then that Roger Merton was your real name and then I remembered where I had heard it before, and I knew you were the same person. When you called as Mr. Hobhouse that first day I hadn't the least suspicion to begin with, and then suddenly you began to look familiar—"

"With this beard!"

"Well, your face isn't all hidden by your beard and I thought I recognised the other bits. If I hadn't known you were an actor—"

"A pretty bad one, it appears," I interposed.

"Oh, no, indeed, you were simply splendid! You still kept me puzzled and only half certain even after I had met you and Captain Whiteclett walking together and noticed you move apart when you saw me. In fact I wasn't sure till that walk along the shore. I arranged that to make quite certain."

"You arranged it!" I exclaimed. "The deuce you did, Miss Rendall!"

She laughed defiantly.

"I was dying to make sure! So when I saw you coming towards the house, I rushed into my things and went out to meet you. I thought if I could take you the same walk as we had been before, you could hardly help doing something to give yourself away. And at last you did!"

"May I ask what my relapse was?"

"When I got you to the same place as last time and said the same thing, I noticed you jump. And then you did really rather give yourself away when I asked you if you wanted to look at the rocks, and you jumped at the chance. I know nothing about antiquities—not even as much as you do, Mr. Merton—"

"Hit me again!" I laughed.

"Oh, but it was very clever of you to pretend to be so learned!" she hastened to say. "Still, I did know that there are no antiquities below high water mark, so I knew you just wanted to inspect the place where something happened to you before."

"Where what happened?" I enquired.

"That's what I want you to tell me! Oh, if you only knew how I've died to know what happened that night!"

"How do you know anything happened?"

"I guessed," she said.

This may not sound convincing on paper, but it did as she said it. I was almost ready, in fact, to swear by Jean Rendall now.

"And so you made sure of Thomas Hobhouse!" I said. "But why then didn't you unmask him at once?"

"Oh, but it wasn't my business to! Of course I had guessed what you were doing here—"

"What?"

"Trying to rid our island of traitors of course! I had interfered with you once, but I wasn't going to do it again. In fact I tried to reassure you by talking of my walk with Mr. Merton."

"Miss Rendall," I said, "I am a child at this game. You did reassure me. I have been as clay in your hands. But tell me one thing more. Why on earth did you come out with me on that first walk—armed with that horse pistol?"

"Oh, you saw it then!" she exclaimed.

"I almost smelt the slow match! But why did you do it?"

"Well, you know what I thought you were then, and there was no one else to go with you."

"Then you actually went out with a spy at night to keep an eye on him—and shoot him if he spied?"

"I should probably have missed!" she laughed.

I was quite ready to swear by Jean Rendall now. Talk of pluck! I never heard of a more fearless performance!

"Please understand, Mr. Merton," she went on earnestly, "that I should never have dreamt of letting you know that I had recognised you—I haven't even told father, I assure you!—only when I heard of this dreadful death of Mr. Bolton—"

She paused and glanced at me, half apologetically, half beseechingly, it seemed.

"Well?" I said.

"Well, I realised the danger you were in supposing anybody else guessed. And I thought I'd come and speak to you. I'm afraid I sometimes act on impulse."

"So do I," I confessed. "In fact I'm going to act on impulse now. Do you care to hear some bits of the story you don't know?"

Her eyes absolutely danced.

"Oh, I'd love to! I've been longing—dying to know the rest of it! I've guessed and guessed, but I haven't been able to make any sense out of things!"

I remembered my uncle's injunctions distinctly. I also remembered my cousin's cautions and my own good resolutions. A woman, of all things, I was to beware of; but I knew I was perfectly safe to throw overboard the whole collection of cautions: and already I had a strong suspicion I should be far from a loser by it. Miss Rendall seemed, in fact, to have distinctly more natural capacity for detective work than I had, judging by her performances so far.

So I plunged straight into the tale of my first landing on Ransay and my adventure with the oilskinned man on the shore, and may I always have as attentive an audience when I tell a story.

"So there is actually a German who dares to live on Ransay!" she exclaimed, her cheeks flushing a little.

"A man whom I certainly took to be a German—a man who talks German fluently."

She fell very thoughtful and presently repeated,

"Middle-sized—with a beard—and dark eyes?"

"Yes," I said confidently; for somehow or other I began to feel singularly sure of these features.

"Of course I know who you suspect," she said, looking up suddenly. "And you had him removed from the island afterwards."

"You mean O'Brien? Yes, I did suspect him—though, mind you, I had nothing to go on. Do you know if he talked German?"

"He once told me he did, but I never heard him, and I didn't believe him."

"Why not?"

"One couldn't believe half he said, and I don't think he intended one to. He was very Irish. But I don't believe he was the man."

"Why not?" I asked again.

"Oh, just because I don't. And what happened next?"

I told her of my night at the Scollays' and my plan for trapping the spies. My self-respect as a criminal catcher was distinctly soothed to hear her hearty approval of this scheme.

"It was awfully ingenious," she said decidedly. "I can't imagine a better plan, and you did it so well that you took us all in completely. I suppose you felt you had to count us among the suspicious characters, but what a pity you hadn't confided in father or me as it happened! We would have done everything we could to help you. I'd have loved to spread dreadful rumours about you!"

"I'm sure you would," I said, "but as things turned out, and in the light of what has happened since, I believe you saved my life by arresting me."

She turned on me and asked breathlessly.

"Did they guess who you really were? Did they try to do anything to you?"

"Merely murder me, as they murdered poor Bolton. The first attempt was made that night on the shore."

I saw her lips parting as I neared the end of telling her that story, and the instant I finished she cried,

"Of course you thought it was father!"

I did my best to shuffle out, but she was a hopeless person to try to deceive.

"It was quite natural you should," she said, "but I can tell you something now that throws some light on things. Next morning I heard that a man had been calling for you after dinner and was told that you had gone out with me. And the funny thing was that the maid didn't know him by sight, or know his voice. He kept his face rather hidden, she said, and talked in a low voice. Of course it simply increased our suspicions of you. But that was how they knew where you were! And that was the man who tried to kill you."

"And who'd have done it for certain if he had found me at home that night," I added.

I must frankly confess that this little incident made me feel uncomfortable. The audacity of the steps my enemies took, their remorseless thoroughness, the extraordinary completeness with which they covered their tracks, their appearances from nowhere and disappearances into space, were particularly nasty to contemplate with Bolton's fate so fresh in my mind.

"They are pretty thorough," I said.

She seemed to divine the thoughts behind this remark.

"But they haven't suspected you yet," she said reassuringly, "and they mustn't! And now, tell me some more, Mr. Merton."

So I went on telling her more:—about the man with spectacles, the shooting episode, every single thing in fact I could remember. As we neared the house we walked more and more slowly, but my tale was barely finished when we got there.

"You'll come in, won't you?" she said. "I know father is out, so we can go on talking."

She saw me hesitate and her colour faintly rose.

"You do trust me now, surely!" she said.

"All the way, Miss Rendall. But these devils may be on to my track at any moment, and if they suspect you are in my confidence—"

"What nonsense!" she cried, "if there's any risk I want to share it. For the credit of our island these people have got to be hunted down, and I'd like them to know I'm hunting them! Besides, there's rather a nice cake for tea; you must come in."

And in we went.

XIII

JEAN'S GUESSES

"Come into father's room and then you can smoke," said Jean.

It was the same pleasant, well-remembered room into which she had shown me that day when I first made her acquaintance, and as I followed her in now it struck me forcibly that I had taken the wrong turning that August morning. If I had taken these people into my confidence then, I should at least have started on the right road. Better than ever I realised what tricks my instincts play me. Or perhaps it may be my efforts to regulate them by the light of what I am pleased to call my reason that produce such unhappy results.

"I am wondering how they found you out," she began. "It seems so mysterious that they should have suddenly started to try and murder you like that. They must have felt quite positive—and what made them feel positive?"

"Did you or your father say anything to anybody about my voice; that I didn't seem to have so much accent as I had at first, or anything of that kind?"

"Not a word," she said positively. "Father is the most uncommunicative of people, and I have inherited some of his closeness."

"Your servants?" I suggested.

"They are Ransay girls, and one foreign accent is the same as another to them," she laughed.

"Then it must have been finding the parachute. I always thought that gave me away."

"But it wasn't found till Monday morning, after we had been for that walk."

"It might have been found by these people sooner."

"It might," she admitted without much conviction. "But still—who did you see or speak to apart from us and Dr. Rendall and Mr. O'Brien?"

"The Scollays," I said, "and several farmers I happened to meet; but always with a most suspicious accent. Oh, and there was one incident I forgot to mention. On the Sunday afternoon I was doing a little fancy shooting with my revolver down on the beach when Jock turned up. You know Jock the idiot?"

"Well," she said, but her attention had evidently been caught by my first words. "You were doing fancy shooting," she repeated. "Are you a very good shot?"

"Quite useful," I admitted with becoming modesty. "That afternoon I was rather above myself."

"Then," she cried, "you were seen, and that's why the man stopped firing at you as soon as you aimed at him! He knew he would be hit if he went on!"

I opened my eyes a little and smiled.

"That is a flattering solution," I said, "but if I may venture to say so, it seems rather a bold inference."

"I'm certain it's right," she said confidently. "Did you speak to Jock?"

"Yes, I had a little talk with him; that's to say of course I did all the talking."

"In your natural voice?"

"Latterly I did," I admitted.

"Were you far from the wall above the beach."

"Not very."

"And I suppose there were lots of rocks about?"

"The usual supply."

"Then some one was behind either the wall or the rocks and you were overheard! That's how you were found out!"

"Miss Rendall," I said, "you arrive at solutions by such brilliant short cuts that I feel like an old cart horse stumbling along out of sight behind you. My models hitherto have been the classical detectives—"

"Tuts!" she laughed, "they were only men!"

"Yes," I agreed, "we are not much of a sex. And now, guess again please, it's a very simple conundrum this time—for you. Who was the man behind the wall—or the rocks?"

She looked the least trifle hurt.

"I am really trying to help," she said,

"I know it!" I assured her. "And don't think I am laughing at you. This jumping to conclusions is probably the right way of reaching them. Anyhow my way has failed, and I am only too keen to try yours."

But I could see that I had a sensitive as well as a clever ally, and her ardour was evidently a little damped. I tried my best to rekindle it.

"I haven't told you yet," I said, "about Mr. Hobhouse's attempts at detection. He discovered one little fact. The old man with the tinted spectacles was seen by a small child running towards the beach after he had interviewed me."

I could see her pricking up her ears again, but she said little this time, and I went on to tell her of Bolton's two talks with me. When I came to his discovery her ardour was fairly aflame again, yet she still seemed to be holding herself in a little.

"Some one who hasn't lived all 'their' life in the place," she repeated. "Yes, it sounds as if he meant a woman."

"Oh, I didn't say that," I interposed.

"You thought it," she retorted, "and in that case I suppose it was me."

"But surely he must have known that before!"

"One would think so," she said thoughtfully, "but he didn't look a very intelligent man—poor fellow! Still, it would be a stupid kind of discovery to make a fuss about."

"There's just one thing more to tell you," I said; and I told her of the curious episode by the cliffs on the day Bolton was murdered, and mentioned my own conclusions, such as they were, and my difficulties in fitting them into the evidence.

There was no doubt about her keenness now, yet I noticed that there were no bold inferences this time. Nor did she even ask me many questions. But I saw her grow very thoughtful.

"Well," I said, "have you any ideas—any suspicions?"

She gave no answer for a few moments, and then she said.

"I am not going to jump to conclusions again, Mr. Merton. There is no use trying to act on wild ideas till we have found a little more out. You might just be running risks for no purpose, and you are in quite enough danger as it is."

"Hobhouse will look after me," I assured her.

She glanced at me with a look in her eyes that gave me a little thrill, and then I saw a slight shiver run over her.

"You are too brave to realise what danger you are in! Remember Bolton!"

"Believe me, Miss Rendall, I am just as careful of my skin as other people, but there is absolutely no danger so long as they don't spot me."

"But how long will that be? And you are taking no precautions at all!"

"But I am! I assure you I am. I have a code wire arranged with my cousin and when he gets the message 'Request permission to be visited by my own doctor,' he will be in Ransay as fast as he can steam."

She gave a little laugh, but looked anxious still.

"What a delicious message! Well, that's better than nothing. But you don't imagine they will give you warning, do you?"

"You will," I said confidently. "When you guess there's danger I'll wire. And now, I hope you have some idea in your head besides this notion of my danger. Be honest! what's in your mind?"

But I now perceived I had also an obstinate ally.

"I have told you," she persisted, "we must find out a little more before doing anything rash. And I promise not to keep anything back, and to tell you at once if I find out anything worth knowing. Oh, if you only knew how I want you to catch those people! As if I could possibly do anything again to interfere with you!"

What I should have liked to do was to take her hands and say something very friendly. What I did do was to thank her and assure her I trusted her, in words that I think she knew were sincere; and arrange to see her accidentally next day. And then I set off for my sanatorium with thoughts that were not in the least of the detective type.

It was Jean Rendall's eyes, voice, smile and face—herself from her hair to her ankles—that filled my mind as I hummed my way home. Unlike the suspicious stranger, Thomas Sylvester Hobhouse had not been given to singing, whistling, or humming as he walked, but he broke loose now. I had instinctively dreaded a too close acquaintance with that girl while the case was doubtful. I felt in my bones she would be dangerous. Now I was enraptured to discover she was fatal.

XIV

THE POCKET BOOK

Out of the doctor's smoking-room window you saw nothing but a field or two of bleached wintry grass, with a glimpse of grey sea beyond and that iniquitous pebble drive close at hand. That at least was all I could see on the blighting March morning after my tea with Jean Rendall. The chilly damp weather had given place to chillier hard weather. With the temperature below freezing and thin showers of dry snow driving up every now and then before a biting nor'east wind, there was little temptation to go abroad without excuse. My excuse was due in an hour's time when Miss Rendall and Mr. Hobhouse proposed to encounter one another accidentally on the road, and meantime I was turning away from the window towards the fire when I heard the gravel crunch.

On general principles I turned back and looked out, to see a certain small farmer approaching the front door. I knew the man slightly and was not in the least interested in him. Presumably, I thought, it was a call for the doctor; and then my attention was sharply caught. He was carrying in his hand a fat little brown leather pocket book and in an instant I had remembered where I had seen exactly such a pocket book before.

A minute or two later it so chanced that as the maid was speaking to the man at the door, the amiable Mr. Hobhouse came out into the hall, and in his friendly way approached to see what the matter was; and very interested indeed he became when he heard. The pocket book, said the farmer, bore the name of James Bolton inside, and the maid was shuddering over a dull stain on the cover when Mr. Hobhouse appeared. The man went on to explain that he and a friend had been visiting the scene of the tragedy early that morning and had discovered the pocket book among the rocks close to where the body had been found. The local police had been in the island and visited the spot yesterday afternoon, he said, and he had meant to give his find to them, but now he heard that they had left again. They were coming back, and London police with them, people said, but meanwhile he thought the pocket book should be deposited either with the doctor or the laird (being Justices of the Peace), and he had called at the doctor's first. Now, the doctor being out, he meant to take it to Mr. Rendall's.

Hardly necessary to say, Mr. Hobhouse instantly took upon himself the responsibility of seeing that the doctor got the pocket book the moment he returned, and the farmer, glad enough to save himself a longer walk, handed it over. And then Mr. Hobhouse put a few very natural questions.

"Was the pocket book wet when it was found?"

"No wetter than she is now," said the man.

"Then it must have fallen out of poor Bolton's pocket before his body was thrown into the sea! Dreadful! Dreadful!" exclaimed the distressed gentleman. "And was it quite conspicuous—easily seen on the rocks?"

"We saw it a' right," said the man.

"And yet the police never noticed it? Dear me, dear me! Well, well, I'll give it to the doctor. Good morning, my good fellow, and many thanks; good morning!"

Over the smoking room fire I examined this discovery very thoughtfully. That it should have lain on the rocks all the time, and nobody, not even the police, noticed it till now, seemed strange. Still, when one came to think of it, the brown colour was very like the seaweed, and among that jumble of boulders such a thing might readily have happened. But certainly it had fallen out before the body was thrown into the sea, as its condition proved.

I glanced through the entries till I came to the very last the poor man had made; and then I sat up and opened my eyes very wide indeed. Plainly and distinctly these mems. were jotted:

"Proof positive O'B. or confederate.

"To be discovered whether O'B. himself—or the other?

"Possibilities—Thomsons—No Scotts—No Scollays—No."

The Thomsons and Scotts I knew to be tenants of seaboard farms like the Scollays, and after the Scollays came three other names, each with "No" written after them. A pencil mark also scored across all the six names.

So here was Bolton's secret. Either O'Brien was actually in the island himself, or he had a "confederate" here, and since that entry was made, one of the two had crowned his series of crimes by murdering the man who was on his track. And who was this confederate? Or alternatively, where was O'Brien himself lurking? Obviously the six names were people definitely acquitted, in Bolton's estimation anyhow; for the "No" and the line through their names could only mean that.

In this list certain names were not included—I had got so far when I happened to glance at the clock and started to my feet. My appointment with Jean was already overdue.

No sign of her when I reached the road, so I set off to walk slowly towards her house, thinking, thinking, thinking. Of course the man most of all to be suspected was her own cousin. And if he were in it, I knew that any person of common sense would warn me to beware of confiding in his only relatives in the island. But I felt sure I knew better than any person of mere common sense. Still, I could scarcely ask her to abet me in convicting the doctor. Then I must not show her the note book. And that meant a breach in our confidence at the very start.

I had walked on till I was approaching her house, and still there was no sign of her ahead, nor was there any conclusion in my mind. And then I chanced to look round and saw her hastening after me, about a couple of hundred yards away. I wheeled round and on the instant leapt to one of my typical haphazard decisions. I would simply show her the pocket book and see how she took it.

She had evidently been running and met me half cross and half laughing and divinely flushed after her stern chase.

"I've been chasing you for miles!" she cried. "Why ever didn't you look round?"

"But I thought you were coming straight from home!"

"I never said so, and I wasn't! I've been somewhere else first."

There seemed to be a hint of something significant in these last words, but I was so eager to come to the point that I never paused to question her.

"I am dreadfully sorry," I said, "but I was thinking so hard I never thought of looking round. I have got some news for you."

Her eyes sparkled.

"What is it?" she cried.

"Bolton's pocket book has been found among the rocks, and this was his last entry before he was killed."

I handed her the book open at the place and watched her face as she read. And one thing her expression revealed beyond any possibility of doubt. She was utterly and completely taken aback, and for some moments simply stared at the jottings in dead silence. Then I saw a sudden gleam in her eye, and a moment later she turned to me and cried,

"This wasn't written by Bolton!"

It was my turn to stare.

"Not written by Bolton!" I exclaimed. "Let me look at it again."

Standing there in the middle of the windy road, we quite forgot the temperature, and a passing snow shower even whipped us unnoticed.

"Look!" she said. "The writing is thicker and blacker and a little bigger than the other entries."

"It was evidently written with a different pencil, or with a blunt pointed pencil. A man writing with a short blunt stump naturally writes a little bigger and blacker. But look at the _t_s and the _r_s, and the capital P; in fact, look at all the letters. They are exactly the same type."

"Of course any one trying to copy another man's hand would make his letters the same," she retorted, "but the character isn't the same. Can't you see?"

"There is a slight difference," I admitted, "but I really can't honestly say I see any sufficient ground for putting this down as a fake. Besides, what do you suppose it is—a practical joke?"

"No, of course not. It was written by the real murderer to put people off the scent."

I tried not to smile, but I am afraid I did.

"Another brilliant guess!" I said, and then hastened to add, "But a most ingenious one and quite possibly—very probably, in fact, you are right."

But she saw through my compliments, and I felt rather than observed an instant change in her.

"Oh, you may be right," she said, and handed me back the pocket book.

"Or wrong," I replied, "but I mean to try and discover which."

Instead of asking me what I meant to do, as I feared and expected, she walked by my side very thoughtfully and in silence. I gave her a moment or two to put the question which never came, and then changed the subject.

"And have you discovered anything?" I asked.

"Not discovered—only guessed," she answered with a smile in her eyes, half defiant, half mischievous.

"And what have you guessed?"

"Oh, I won't trouble you with more guesses. I must find something out first—something really convincing, like that note book."

I was a little piqued, but I merely laughed and said,

"Well, we'll see!"

By this time we were quite near the house.

"Won't you come in and have lunch with us?" she asked.

The temptation was strong, but the scent seemed too warm to lose, and I said I must be back for lunch at home. We stopped, and as she looked at me I noticed in her eyes what first seemed to be doubt and anxiety and a moment later to become resolution.

"Mr. Merton," she said; her voice rather low, "which ever of us is right, I think we must be getting near rather a critical point. Don't you think you had better send off that wire to Captain Whiteclett?"

I shook my head.

"Not quite yet," I said. "You see it's a serious matter dragging my cousin out here unless one is quite certain he will be needed."

"But then he may not be in time!"

"I must risk that. But you may rest assured I'll wire the very instant I know it won't be bringing him out on a wild goose chase."

For an instant she was silent again, and then she suddenly said,

"I'm sure that writing was forged!"

It seemed to me that I read in her exclamation a kind of whipping up of her unbelief, as though she needed to reassure herself.

"A pair of gloves on it?" I suggested.

I quite confess that it was not one of my most tactful suggestions. She froze up again at once. Not that there was anything unkind in her eye as we said good-bye, only it was clear that in the meantime we were each going our own way.

I set out at my best pace back for I was hot for instant action, and Jean's doubts, though I dismissed them as quite unjustified by anything in the writing, nevertheless made me anxious to settle the question at once. The end might be very near indeed, I told myself, as I strode out with the last remains of my limp quite vanished. But what prompted those doubts; a genuine disbelief in the authenticity of the handwriting, or a perception of the logical consequences and a very natural shrinking from them? I wondered very much. The fact that she had refrained from asking a single question as to what I meant to do, suggested the second solution. And yet it was curiously unlike Jean Rendall's fearless spirit.

XV

PART OF THE TRUTH

I never remember feeling more intensely chagrined than when I reached our bleak house twenty minutes late for our early dinner to find the doctor had eaten a hurried meal quarter of an hour before the usual hour and rushed out to attend an urgent case.

I asked at once whether he had been told of the pocket book. Yes, it appeared he had. He had seemed very interested, but had immediately ordered his dinner hour to be advanced and then hurried away without putting further questions.

Was his haste a consequence of what he was told, or merely a coincidence? Well, I was resolved to leave that point in doubt no later than his return. I hardly debated at all the question of what to do. The baffling business of groping in the dark, and daily scheming to discover a window, without giving myself away, had gone on long enough. I had found a head at last and I meant to hit it. It might turn out to be the wrong head; still, I felt convinced I could scarcely fail to discover something fresh.

But though I proposed to take a bold course and make a short cut to the heart of this infernal mystery, I realised perfectly that if the cut actually led me there, it would prove an exceedingly dangerous by-way. It was such a gamble that I shrank from summoning my cousin until it had come off, but I wrote out the code telegram we had arranged and put it in my pocket ready for emergencies. Of the doctor's two servants the younger anyhow was absolutely trustworthy I was convinced, and I meant to send her with the wire to the post office while I kept guard over the prisoner. And then, to ensure there being a prisoner, I saw that all the chambers of my revolver were loaded and put it in my coat pocket ready to my hand.

The afternoon dragged on, the wind still blustering round the house and the hail now and then rattling on the windows; but no Dr. Rendall appeared. Tea time arrived and still no sign of him. I gave him half an hour's grace and then had my own tea and returned to the smoking-room. The evening by this time had fallen and the curtains were drawn and the lamps lit.

And then at last I heard him enter the front door. I jumped up and, with a dramatic instinct for taking the centre of the stage, placed myself before the fire, but I heard him run upstairs and it was some minutes before the sound of his descending steps reached me. The moment the door opened I was conscious that one of those peculiar changes I had so often noticed had taken place in the man. He smiled at me, but with a curiously furtive eye, and then he shut the door and came forward.

"You have had tea, I hope," said he.

I wasted no time in preliminaries. Keeping my right hand closed over the revolver in my pocket I held out the pocket book with my left.

"Dr. Rendall," I said, "you have heard that Bolton's pocket book has been found. Here it is. Kindly look at that entry."

The man started perceptibly and stared at me. Speaking in that tone and without my eye glasses I must have made an astonishing contrast to the Thomas Hobhouse he had last seen that morning at breakfast.

"Read that," I commanded.

He took the pocket book and I watched him closely. I saw his eyebrows rise as he read.

"What's all this about?" he asked.

"It is Bolton's last entry in his note book before he was murdered, and it means that O'Brien is either still in this island, or that a confederate of his is playing traitor in his place, and that one of the two has just committed murder. It is quite impossible that you don't know something of this!"

His blue eyes now had considerably more anger than guilt in them. In fact I was bound to admit that he looked a fine upstanding man, with his grey moustache, high colour, and an air of unmistakable indignation in his face.

"Who the devil are you?" he demanded.

"I may tell you that I am not Thomas Sylvester Hobhouse, and that I have never taken liquor enough in my life to hurt myself. I am here to investigate certain things that have been going on in this island, and I'll put one question to you straight, Dr. Rendall. You remember being visited by a certain man Merton last August, When you heard him approaching your house why did you pull down your blind?"

That shot went straight home. All the indignation vanished and I saw on the instant I had him at my mercy.

"What—what—has that to do with it?" he stammered.

"Don't trouble to try and hedge. As a matter of fact I am Merton and I saw the blind go down myself. Since then we have always been on your tracks, Dr. Rendall."

"I swear that that had nothing to do with treason!"

"You are accused of treason, your relations to O'Brien were very peculiar, and if you can't explain that blind and this entry and a number of other things, you will be in an extremely nasty position."

The doctor made no further effort to stand up to me. He sank into a chair while I stood over him, and I knew I was going to hear the truth at last. And yet this sudden collapse, and indeed his whole attitude, were so unexpected that I felt more puzzled than triumphant.

"Mr. Merton," he said, "for God's sake don't give me away and I'll tell you the whole truth. My cousin Philip can confirm it—or at least part of it. I came up here because—well, I'd married the wrong woman and gone off the rails a bit and Philip settled me here to keep me straight. I had debts too—I have them still, I may tell you frankly. That's why I took in O'Brien. I wasn't supposed to keep any liquor in the house—that was one of the conditions. But damn it, I wasn't born to be a teetotaler, and that's the plain truth, Mr. Merton. That devil O'Brien found me out and started to blackmail me—"

"Blackmail?" I asked.

"In his own way. He made me give him liquor—and there we were the pair of us! That's why I pulled down the blind. The decanter and glasses were all out on this table here! And that's why O'Brien was afraid you might be sent by his relations. That was the one thing he was afraid of,—that he might be found out and taken away."

I bent over him and sniffed.

"You have had a dram now!" I exclaimed.

"And it's not the first since you've been here either. You see I'm perfectly frank with you, Mr. Merton. If you like to give me away to Philip—well be d——d, you can if you like. But you'll surely not? I've told you what I've told to no one else."

There rushed into my mind confirmation enough of part at least of the poor devil's story. His curious moods, his manner as he entered the room this evening, O'Brien's impish allusions to liquor when I first visited the house, all fell into their places now. Yet utterly as this had exploded my hopes, I think I was more glad than sorry to see the doctor come out of the ordeal with only this kind of stain on his character. He was a likeable man, we had been capital friends—and he was Jean's cousin.

"I promise you, doctor," I said, "that I shall repeat no word of this story—except of course in confidence to those who are on the track of this business in Ransay. Only in return you must tell me absolutely frankly if you have seen any grounds for suspecting O'Brien of anything treasonable—anything whatever."

The doctor shook his head emphatically.

"The only plotting the man was capable of was to get liquor. Otherwise he was just a gas bag. I've seen him too often in a state when he'd have given everything away, if there had been anything to give."

And then I remembered the pocket book.

"But this entry!" I cried. "How do you explain that?"

The doctor looked at it again and his bewilderment was obviously sincere.

"I'm frankly d——d if I can make head or tail of it," he said. "Bolton must have got on the wrong scent; that's the only thing I can imagine."

And then, like a sharp smack in the face, Jean's reading of that entry came back to me. Could she have guessed right after all? It looked uncommonly like it.

"And yet," I said to myself, "it's a great thing to have tested the other hypothesis."

In fact, if one is not built to be easily dispirited, well, it is not easy to dispirit one. I looked at the doctor, and something in my expression seemed to make him smile. When he smiled he looked so pleasant that my conscience smote me. I told myself he certainly deserved some reparation for the ordeal I had put him through.

"Doctor," I said, "I am devilish thirsty myself after this bout. Let's each have a whisky and soda!"

It may or may not have been the wisest suggestion to make. I am not an expert in these matters. But anyhow if he enjoyed his drink as much as I enjoyed mine, it was at least a happy idea.

We had lit our pipes with our glasses at our sides, and I was in the midst of giving the doctor some further reparation in the shape of the true tale of my adventures, when I saw him suddenly start and glance guiltily at his tumbler.

"Is that some one in the hall?" he exclaimed.

"Probably the servants," I suggested.

The next instant the door opened and, without any announcement, in walked my uncle Sir Francis Merton followed by my cousin Commander John Whiteclett.

XVI

TRACKED DOWN

"I trust we are not interrupting you, Roger," said my uncle.

His voice was caustic and his eye severe, and as the costume he had selected for this thunderbolt entrance was apparently designed to suggest a combination of North Sea pilot and pirate King (including a fur cap with ear flaps tied under his venerable chin) one might have fired a twelve inch gun into the room and produced much less impression.

"Not a bit," I said, bounding to my feet, "but—er—wouldn't you like to untie your bonnet, Uncle Francis?"

He frowned at me heavily but I was thankful to notice that his eye did twinkle for an instant.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded.

"That is just the question, sir, I was going to put."

My cousin interposed.

"Uncle Francis arrived this morning to see how things were getting on and when I got your wire I brought him out with me. What has happened?"

"Got my wire!" I exclaimed. "Surely—I'm certain I never sent it off!"

I put my hand in my pocket, and there it was right enough.

"My dear Jack, here it is. It never was sent."

His hand dived into his own pocket and then held out a crumpled telegram. I took it and read this message.

"Request permission to be visited by my own doctor. Hobhouse."

"Do you mean to say you never sent that off yourself?" exclaimed Sir Francis.

"Never!"

"Then who the—!" My uncle's expression completed the sentence.

Jack Whiteclett was looking uncommonly grave.

"This is a somewhat serious matter, Roger," he said quietly. "Didn't you write this either?"

He handed me a half sheet of paper on which was written in pencil these words.

"GO TO DOCTOR'S. IF NO FURTHER MESSAGE THERE GO ON TO SCOLLAYS' IMMEDIATELY."

It was printed in capital letters so as to give no clue to the handwriting.

"When did you get that?" I cried.

"It was handed to me as we landed. The messenger went off again at once, but I assumed of course it was from you."

"Roger!" thundered my uncle. "Who have you taken into your confidence?"

His eye turned manacingly on the doctor and I hastened to intervene.

"Dr. Rendall—Sir Francis Merton," I introduced. "But it certainly wasn't Dr. Rendall who sent these messages. He has only just learned the facts."

My uncle bowed very stiffly to the doctor and turned on me again.

"And how many more people have 'learned the facts'—the facts, I may remind you, which it was so vital they should not learn?"

I bared my metaphorical breast, and with as close an imitation of a clear-conscienced young man revealing the harmless necessary truth as I could achieve without rehearsal, I told him,

"I have only informed one person, and she is thoroughly trustworthy."

"She!" said my uncle, not very loudly but extremely unpleasantly.

"She is Miss Rendall," I added.

My revelations to the doctor not having reached this stage when we were interrupted, I think I can honestly say that no utterance of mine ever produced a more telling effect on these men simultaneously.

"Jean!" exclaimed the doctor.

"Oh, is that her name?" said my uncle as soon as he could trust himself to speak.

My cousin alone came straight to the point.

"Then she has sent me this wire and this message?"

"She must have," I agreed.

"In that case we had better push on for the Scollays at once and see what she means."

"You don't think it's a trap?" asked my uncle.

Jack Whiteclett smiled slightly. The idea of the Navy pausing to weigh the risk appeared to amuse him.

"We must take our chance," he said briefly. "We've both got our shooting irons."

"And so have I," I added, "and certainly I am going to the Scollays. You can trust Miss Rendall!"

"You can that!" said the doctor heartily. "And if you don't mind I'll come with you."

I saw doubt in my uncle's eye and put in quickly.

"Certainly, doctor! We may all be needed. Come on!"

It was quite dark, and mortal cold; the road was frozen hard and the nor'east wind swept over it without a break from wall or hedge-row. We all four trotted for a little to get up our circulation and then settled down to a fast five-mile-an-hour walk. About half the distance had been covered when I first heard a little sound ahead.

"What's that!" I exclaimed, and we stood still and listened.

"Somebody running!" said my cousin.

"Towards us?" asked Sir Francis.

"Yes."

Plainer and plainer sounded the pattering steps on the frozen road, and as they drew nearer I thought I could tell that they were light steps—a woman's or a boy's, they seemed.

"Let's drop into the ditch and see who it is," whispered Jack.

We broke, two of us to either side of the road, and I found myself with my uncle stooping in one ditch, with Jack and the doctor across the road in the other. Thus bent down, one could see objects against the sky more distinctly and in a moment I spied the runner dimly, pattering down the middle of the road straight for us. And then, in a few seconds, this runner gradually took shape and my eyes at last could see the swing of a skirt and thought they could even recognise the slim figure. I jumped up.

"Wait!" muttered my uncle.

"It's all right! We mustn't frighten her," I said.

I came out into the middle of the road and saw the other three rising at the sides. The runner was barely twenty yards away by now and I heard her gasp as she stopped abruptly.

"Miss Rendall?" I said.

The next moment she had rushed up to me, her eyes sparkling, her voice coming in pants.

"Mr. Merton!" she panted and then her eyes fell on the others. "They've come then—I'm so glad!—forgive me for wiring—but—look!"

She handed me something small and long-shaped. It was a spectacle case.

"Take them out!" she said.

We were all four gathered round her now and I heard my uncle say,

"Where's that torch of yours, Jack?"

Then the flash of my cousin's electric torch fell on the spectacles and my heart leapt.

"The tinted spectacles!" I cried.

"Where did you find them?" demanded my uncle and cousin simultaneously, and I could tell from their voices that all doubts had vanished, and that, like me, they were burning now only with the excitement of the chase.

"At the Scollays'!" she said, still panting. "But there's no time to lose—you'll see everything if we only hurry—he may be back if we don't!"

Sir Francis (of course) pocketed the spectacle case, and the whole five of us set out at the double, Jean trotting in front between Jack and me, and Sir Francis and the doctor clattering behind. My cousin and I each tried a question, but we saw that Jean's breath would be better saved for whatever was ahead, and so our voices fell silent and presently as we left the high road our feet fell almost silent too. We only dropped to a walk when the farm buildings loomed up close ahead, and then for a moment Jean stopped us and listened intently.

"They are all in the house still," she whispered. "I think we are in time!"

She led us, walking in single file and on our toes, into the midst of the huddle of low houses until we came to one open, pitch-dark door. And then she flashed a little torch and we followed her into a building which I remembered distinctly. One end was the barn where I slept that memorable first night in Ransay. The other was filled with a litter of odds and ends—coils of rope, fishing nets, a barrel or two, spades, a pick-axe, and I cannot remember what else. With feverish energy she pushed and pulled these things aside, my cousin's torch lighting up the jumble, until a large rough wooden box became visible, standing in the very corner against the wall. I could see at a glance that it had been locked and the lock forced.

"I broke it open!" she whispered. "So there was no time to lose or he'd have known!"

We raised the heavy lid and the very first thing my eyes fell on was a white false beard. Jean picked it up and I could hear her voice shaking with excitement.

"There's the rest of the disguise!" she said.

And there was the old coat, and a nasty looking scythe blade, and a number of other things of which the powers that be have an inventory now, but which they would scarcely thank me for mentioning here. I may say, however, that they made a very thorough outfit for the job the owner of them had been engaged on. Among them was one very curious looking find: the two halves of a large cheese hollowed out, and one-half broken across. Jack Whiteclett pointed to this with a grim look.

"An unsuccessful experiment," he whispered. "He must have made a better one for the Uruguay"

"Do you mean," gasped Jean, "that this was for a bomb?"

"Looks like it," he answered.

"Hush!" I whispered.

The torch went out on the instant and in absolute inky darkness we held our breath and listened. Somebody was quietly approaching the barn. The steps were not exactly stealthy, but guarded and wary, though quite assured, as if the man were only exercising a general precaution.

"Keep your faces hidden as much as you can!" whispered Whiteclett.

There was enough light in the open door to silhouette a figure as it entered, and a moment later I saw for an instant quite distinctly the outline of that oilskinned man once more. And then for perhaps three long seconds he was lost in the gloom within and we only knew of his approach by the sound of his footsteps. Abruptly they stopped. He was little more than a couple of paces from us now and I thought I heard him move back a step. Probably he had seen the white of some one's face.

There was a little click and Whiteclett's torch flashed full on him. In that instant I saw his hand rise, and with my head down I charged him. The report of his pistol rang through the barn and almost simultaneously down he came, and I had a firm grip of those oilskins at last.

How the man fought! Not till I was sitting on his legs and Jack and the doctor each had an arm pinned to the floor did he cease to struggle, and even then he did not cease to swear. Sir Francis standing up over him, with the torch in his own hand, now turned the light on to his face. When I saw what it revealed I nearly let go our prisoner's legs through sheer bewilderment. For there in the torch's bright circle lay the poor idiot Jock, cursing us in fluent German.

XVII

THE REST OF THE TRUTH

"Does any one know him?" demanded my uncle.

"It's the Scollays' idiot son!" I gasped.

I heard an exclamation both from Jean and the doctor.

"Son?" said Jean. "What! Did you think Jock was a Scollay?"

"He was sent up here about a couple of years ago to be looked after by these Scollays," explained the doctor. "We always supposed he was somebody's—?" he glanced at Jean and hesitated—"er—somebody's son."

"Good Heavens!" I cried. "What a fool I've been!"

Swiftly I ran over in my mind my first night with the Scollay household. Had I ever been told Jock was a son? No, I had simply assumed it, and gone on that assumption without ever once thinking anything more about the matter. And so, with this impenetrable curtain between me and all possibility of guessing the truth I had gone on uselessly groping.

"Fool!"

A harsh voice startled me. It was Jock, gazing viciously up at me and talking guttural English now. His face was still framed in the circle of the torch, and as I looked at it now I realised that the truth had actually been written there all the time for a closely observing eye to read. This man's features differed vitally from the Scollays' and, especially, there was no cast in his eyes.

"Fool!" he snarled, "yes, you have been a damned fool, you Hobhouse! Ach, if I had known, you should have been a dead fool!"

"You mean if you hadn't been made a bit of a fool of too?" I suggested.

He was a brave man and a useful man to his country, but the German boastfulness would out.

"Ach, but I should have found you out soon! Me, you would have found out never!"

His eyes rolled round our party and I could see curiosity overcoming even his bragging.

"Who did tell you?" he demanded.

"If it is any satisfaction to you to know," replied Sir Francis, "your machinations were discovered and you were tracked down and caught by a girl." He turned to Jean and added, "An exceedingly clever, brave and patriotic girl."

I am sorry to say our prisoner still further smirched his record. What he said was fortunately in German and the words at the beginning of his sentence were not the kind that Jean would know. Before he had finished it my uncle had struck him with the butt end of the torch on the mouth.

"Hold your foul tongue!" he cried and then turned away and I could see a kind of shiver run over him.

"God forgive me!" he murmured. "I never struck a man when he was down before!" And then he recovered himself a little and added, "But is a German a human being?"

Meanwhile Jean was already bringing a bundle of rope from the corner under my cousin's direction, and in a few minutes his practised hands had knotted our prisoner up so securely that we were able to move aside from him and hold a hasty council of war.

"Now for the rest of the gang!" said my uncle. "Do you suppose they've heard us and bolted?"

"Do you mean the Scollays?" asked Jean. "Oh, I don't believe they knew!"

"My dear young lady, it's very painful for you to think your tenants are playing such games, but they simply must have known!"

"We can't afford to give them the benefit of the doubt," said Jack Whiteclett. "That's absolutely certain. I am afraid I must arrest them, Miss Rendall, and the sooner it's over the better."

"Jack!" commanded our uncle, "this is a matter I think I could handle rather better than a hot-headed young man." (Commander Whiteclett, it may be mentioned, was reputed in the Navy to have a remarkably cool head.) "Dr. Rendall, perhaps you will be good enough to keep watch over our prisoner for a few minutes while we are gone. Roger, give the doctor your pistol. If we hear you fire, doctor, we'll be out in a few seconds. Jack and Roger, come along with me."

Jack and I exchanged a look but said nothing. Our uncle still held the torch, and flashing it before him led the way out of the barn. We followed him, but my eyes I am afraid were over my shoulder. I saw Jean slip her own torch into the doctor's hand and then she ran after me.

"May I come too!" she whispered.

"Of course!" I said, "you're in command of the party—or ought to be!" and out we went together.

The farm yard made rough walking, and there seemed every excuse for my taking her arm and none for her objecting; nor did she.

"Who is this delightful, arbitrary old gentleman?" she asked in my ear. "You never introduced me!"

"Our uncle," I murmured back. "Jack and I both have expectations so we've got to give him his head!"

I must say Sir Francis stage-managed our entrance into the Scollays' house very effectively. As he quietly opened the door, he got us all close behind him, exactly like a band of robbers, so that we trod on one another's heels down a yard or two of narrow passage. The Scollays were all seated round the kitchen table when our uncle's figure suddenly towered out of the gloom, his pistol covering Peter senior's head, and his voice thundering:

"Hands up!"

At the first command they simply gasped.

"Hands up or I fire!" thundered Sir Francis again, and up went every pair of hands, and what is more they stayed up.

"Your confederate is captured and has confessed everything!" announced Sir Francis.

The family visibly trembled but looked more amazed than ever.

"This fellow they call—" My uncle looked over his shoulder and whispered, "What the devil was the fellow's name." And then in his stentorian voice again, "This fellow called Jock has confessed! So I know all about it. What have you got to say for yourselves?"

I saw their bewildered eyes wandering from one to the other of the family, and in a moment Mrs. Scollay asked in a quavering voice,

"What's come over Jock, do ye say, sir?"

"He has confessed!" repeated my uncle. "We know that he is a German spy!"

He glared at each astounded face in turn and then exclaimed over his shoulder,

"By Heaven, I actually don't believe they knew!"

"I think, sir, if you'll allow me," suggested my cousin, "I'd like to put a few questions."

"Well," growled our uncle, "fire away!"

We all trooped into the kitchen and the whole four of us cross-examined that family in turn, so that by the end of it we got a pretty good idea of how the land lay.

It seemed that two years before, the Scollays had been visited by a polite stranger apparently of the tourist species. This gentleman, after admiring the healthy yet retired situation of their residence, had suddenly been seized with an inspiration. The very place for an unfortunate young man of his acquaintance! he cried, and thereupon asked them if they could take charge of a blameless, helpless, harmless idiot. The stranger hinted that there were the best of reasons why the parents of this unfortunate wished him kept in the background. He had been boarded out previously, it appeared, but too near home, and now here was an ideal out-of-the-way spot for his retirement! The terms were so handsome that further enquiries on the Scollays' part seemed superfluous, and so in a week's time Jock had arrived.

His harmlessness had been absolutely guaranteed, provided always that no restraints were put upon him and that any little innocent fancy was indulged. Thus he wandered all over the island and at all hours, sometimes even wandering out at night when the foolish fancy took him, until this was accepted as the normal thing for harmless Jock. Another innocent whim he had of making a collection of rubbishy odds and ends and keeping them in a box in the barn. He had even repeated "Lock! Lock!" and stamped his harmless foot till they good-naturedly provided him with a lock and key for this treasure chest. And thus long before August, 1914, Jock was provided with a character that rendered his habits above suspicion, and a strong box which nobody would ever dream of examining.

Two or three times the same polite tourist paid a visit to the island to see how the poor demented young man was being looked after, and on these occasions he would take Jock out for quite a long walk, and afterwards assure the family that their guest's health was benefiting greatly. But this gentleman had not visited the island since the war, it seemed.

This was the Scollays' story and I think we all believed that in the main it was true. In fact, since then it has stood the test of all the evidence that could be got to check it. At the same time it seemed pretty clear that their greed had made them blinder than any one without a strong monetary interest could possibly have been. For fear of losing their little gold mine they had shut their eyes when people of average common sense would have opened them pretty wide. Our questions convicted them of this much, and at the end Whiteclett said emphatically that the two Peters must depart that night with him for further examination, if for nothing more.

"I'll leave you here with them, sir, for a moment, while I have a look at the other prisoner," he said quickly before our uncle could begin to issue the commands that we knew were coming, and with a sign to Jean and myself, hurried out.

We were at his heels and followed him to the barn. There Jock was still lying bound with the doctor sitting over him.

"Has he said anything to you?" asked my cousin when he had called the doctor aside.

Dr. Rendall smiled under his grey moustache.

"He offered me L200 in gold to be paid on the nail if I would let him loose. We must have a dig for that money to-morrow, Whiteclett."

"Anything else?"

"Not a word after I had refused, and it's my belief you'll never get another word out of the man between now and his execution."

"He seems that sort," my cousin agreed. "And now, doctor, you and I will carry him into the house and keep Sir Francis company. The three of us will have an eye on all the prisoners then, till I can get some fellows up from the drifter to escort them. Do you mind going down to the boat, Roger, and sending up a party? You can find your way in the dark?"

"I'll make a shift to."

"Perhaps if Miss Rendall is going home she might put you on the right road," he suggested.

"Of course I will!" said Jean.

As I left him, Jack pressed my hand and whispered,

"Never say again I'm not tactful, Roger! Congratulations, old chap, you've brought off a triple event if I'm not mistaken!"

"Triple?"

"That's one," he said pointing to our prisoner, "Uncle Francis is another, and I'll bet you sixpence I'm right about the third as soon as you shave that filthy beard. Get off with you now and don't keep a lady waiting!"

XVIII

THE FROSTY ROAD

Sometimes we walked and sometimes we trotted in step side by side, her arm through mine, where I had persuaded it to venture, and where it thrilled me by remaining. Personally I was not in the least anxious to bring our errand to an early end, but Jean was fired with zeal to astonish my relations by the speed with which we brought reinforcements, and so, trot and walk, we hurried down the frosted road through that black March night, talking, talking, almost every step of the way.

It was she who began as soon as we were clear of the farm.

"Are your uncle and Captain Whiteclett going back tonight?" she asked anxiously, and when I said I didn't know, she cried, "Well then I must come back and see them in case they go. There has been no time to explain and they must be told that it was simply my stupidity that prevented you from catching Jock sooner!"

"Your—what?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, I ought to have seen that you didn't know he wasn't one of the family!" she insisted. "And that was one of the reasons why I went and interfered again when I'd vowed I wouldn't. I thought if you didn't suspect him, perhaps I was wrong, and if I had been, you'd never have trusted my 'guesses' again; so I wanted to get some proof to show you. But all the credit is really yours."

Our debate on this point was too one-sided to be worth recording. And yet though my arguments were irresistible, she would persist—and persists to this day—that somehow or other I unmasked Jock the spy.

"Well, let's leave it at that," I said at last. "Disguised as Miss Rendall, alone I did it! And now tell me what made you suspect the man?"

"It was only when you told me about meeting him by the cliffs on the day of the murder that I suddenly thought of Bolton's discovery and then I saw that he must have meant Jock. At least I guessed, but I knew it would seem the wildest idea until there was a little more proof, and so I determined to make a few enquiries and then tell you at once if there seemed to be anything in my idea. So next morning I went to the Scollays and paid them a friendly visit and began talking about Jock and his habits and movements, and I found he had disappeared for a good part of that day when Bolton was murdered. I also found he was often out at nights, and that he kept that locked box in the barn."

"So you felt sure?"

"I would have if you hadn't made me rather less confident about my guesses. Still, I'd have told you next morning, only when you showed me that pocket-book you seemed so positive that you quite shook me. And then I determined to go myself and break into the box and see if I could find some proof."

"That's the one thing I can't quite forgive you for; running all that risk by yourself!"