Tragedy at Ravensthorpe

Chapter Fifteen. SIR CLINTON’S SOLUTION

“IT’S a pleasure to meet Sir Clinton again,” Joan observed when they had finished their coffee. “For the last ten days or so, I’ve been dealing with a man they call the Chief Constable. I don’t much care for him. These beetle-browed officials are not my sort. Too stiff and overbearing for me, altogether.”

Sir Clinton laughed at the hit.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve invited one of your aversions to join us. In fact, I think I hear him at the door now.”

“Inspector Armadale?” Joan demanded. “Well, I’ve nothing against him. You never let him get a word in edgeways at our interviews. Grasping, I call it.”

The door opened and the Inspector was ushered in. As he entered, a glance passed between him and Sir Clinton. In reply, Armadale made a furtive gesture which escaped the rest of the company.

“Passed in his checks,” Sir Clinton interpreted it to himself. “That clears the road.”

Joan poured out coffee for the Inspector and then turned to the Chief Constable.

“Cecil promised that you’d tell us all about everything. Don’t linger over it. We’re all in quite good listening form and we look to you not to be boring. Proceed.”

Sir Clinton refused to be disconcerted.

“Inspector Armadale’s the last authority on the subject,” he remarked. “He’s got the confession of the master mind in his pocket. I haven’t seen it yet. Suppose I give you my account of things, and the Inspector will check it for us where necessary? That seems a fair division of labour.”

“Very fair,” Una Rainhill put in. “Now, Joan, be quiet and let’s get on with the tale.”

“Before the curtain goes up,” Sir Clinton suggested, “you’d better read your programmes. First of all you find the name of Thomas Pailton, alias Cocoa Tom, alias J. B. Foss, alias The Wizard of Woz: a retired conjuror, gaolbird, confidence-trick sharp, etc. As I read his psychology, he was rather a weak character and not over straight even in dealing with his equals. In the present play, he was acting under the orders of a gentleman of much tougher fibre.

“The next name on the programme is Thomas Marden. The police have no records of his early doings, but I suspect that Mr Marden had cause to bless his luck in this respect, rather than his honesty. I’m sure he wasn’t a prentice hand. As to his character, I believe he was rather a violent person when roused, and he had a deplorable lack of control over a rather bad temper.

“The third name is . . . ?”

“Stephen Racks,” the Inspector supplied in answer to Sir Clinton’s glance of inquiry.

“Alias Joe Brackley,” Sir Clinton continued. “I think we’ll call him Brackley, since that was the name you knew him by, if you knew him at all. He was nominally Foss’s chauffeur. Actually, I think, he was the brain of the gang and did the planning for them.”

“That’s correct,” the Inspector interpolated.

“Mr Brackley, I think, was the most deliberately unscrupulous of them all,” Sir Clinton continued. “A really dangerous person who would stick at nothing to get what he wanted or to cover his tracks.

“Then, last of all, there’s a Mr Blank, whose name I do not know, but who at present is under arrest in America for forging the name of Mr Kessock the millionaire. He was employed by Mr Kessock in some capacity or other which gave him access to Mr Kessock’s correspondence. I’ve no details on that point as yet.”

“This is the kind of stuff I always skip when I’m reading a detective story,” complained Joan. “Can’t you get along to something interesting soon?”

“You’re like the Bellman in the Hunting of the Snark, Joan. ‘Oh, skip your dear uncle!’ Well, I skip, as you desire it. I’ll merely mention in passing that an American tourist came here a while ago and asked to see the Leonardo medallions, because he was writing a book on Leonardo. He, I believe, was Mr Blank from America; and his job was to see the safe in the museum and note its pattern.

“I must skip again; and now we reach the night of the robbery in the museum. You know what happened then. Mr Foss came to me with his tale about overhearing some of you planning a practical joke. His story was true enough, I’ve no doubt; but it set me thinking at once. I may not have shown it, Joan, but I quite agreed with you about his methods. It seemed a funny business to come straight to the police over a thing of that sort. Of course he had his reason ready; but it didn’t ring quite true, somehow. I might have put it down to tactlessness, if it hadn’t suggested something else to my mind.

“That pistol-shot which smashed the lamp was too neatly timed for my taste. It was fired by someone who knew precisely when the keeper was going to be gripped, and it was fired just in time to get ahead of Foxton Polegate in the raid on the show-case. That meant, if it meant anything, that the man who fired the shot was a person who knew of the practical joke. But on the face of it, Foss was the only person who knew about the joke, bar the jokers themselves. So naturally I began to suspect Foss of having had a hand in the business. It was the usual mistake of the criminal—trying to be too clever and throw suspicion on to someone else.

“Now Foss wasn’t the man in white, obviously; for he came to see me while the man-hunt was still in full cry. So at that stage in the business I was fairly certain that at least two people were in the game: Foss and someone else, who was the man in white. That looked like either the valet or the chauffeur, since they were the only people I knew about who were directly associated with Foss while he was here. But this incognito business at the masked ball had made it possible for outsiders to come in unrecognized; so the man in white might be a confederate quite outside our range of knowledge. One couldn’t assume that either Marden or Brackley was in the show at all.

“I learned, later on, that Foss had synchronized his watch with yours, Cecil; and that, of course, made it pretty plain that he was in the game. There was also another bit of evidence which suggested something. If either the valet or the chauffeur was the confederate, then they could easily enough have found out from the servants what costume Maurice meant to wear that night—a few questions to his valet would have got the information—and they could have chosen the Pierrot costume for their own runner in order to confuse things. That suggested that Foss’s servants might be in the business; but it proved nothing really. The white Pierrot costume was chosen mainly for its conspicuousness, I’m sure.

“Now I come to the disappearance of the man in white.”

“Thank goodness!” Joan commented. “It gets more interesting as it goes on, does it? That’s something to be thankful for.”

“One does one’s best,” Sir Clinton retorted, unperturbed. “Now the vanishing of that fellow could be accounted for in various ways, so far as I could see. First of all, he might have slipped down the rope into the little lake. That was what the rope was meant to suggest, obviously. But fortunately one of the hunters had the wit to keep an eye on the lake; and it was pretty clear the man in white didn’t go that way. Then there was the possibility of his being concealed in the cave; but that was ruled out by the search of the cave. Thirdly, the gang might have hit on the opening of one of the secret passages of Ravensthorpe. Candidly, I ruled that out also. It seemed next door to impossible. But if you exclude all these ways, then there seem to be only two possibilities left. The first of these depends on the man in white having a confederate in the cordon who let him slip through. But the chance of a slip-through of that sort escaping the notice of the rest of the hunters seemed very small. It seemed to me too risky a business for them to have tried.

“The final possibility was that the fugitive disguised himself as something else. Well, what disguise would be the best? It’s a question of camouflage, and they had only a few seconds to do the camouflaging You can’t dress up as a drain-pipe or a garden-seat in a couple of seconds. So we come down to something that’s human in shape but isn’t really human. In a garden, you might pretend to be a scarecrow; but up on that terrace a scarecrow was out of the question. And then I remembered the statues.

“Suppose somebody had gone up there in the evening and had chiselled one of the statues off its base. The broken marble could be heaved over into the little lake and the bare pedestal would be left for the fugitive.

“I ought to have thought of that,” Michael interjected. “It’s so obvious when you think of it. But I didn’t think of anything like that at the time.”

“My impression then,” Sir Clinton continued,” was that the man in white had white tights on under his Pierrot dress. His face and hands were whitened, also; so that as soon as he stripped off his jacket and trousers, he was sufficiently statuelike to pass muster in that light. His eyes would have given him away in daylight; but under the moon he’d only got to shut them and you’d hardly notice his whitened eyelashes. In the few moments that you left him, while the cordon was being formed, he took off his Pierrot things, wrapped them round the weight he’d used in breaking the case’s glass, and pitched the lot over the balustrade. That would account for the splash that was heard.”

Sir Clinton paused to light a cigarette.

“That theory seemed to fit most of the evidence, as you see. It explained why they’d chosen that particular place for the disappearing trick; and it accounted for the splash as well. Further, it suggested that there was a third man in the gang: the man who smashed down the real statue. They’d leave that bit of work to the last moment for fear of the damage being seen accidentally beforehand. Now Foss was at the masked ball, so it wasn’t he. The man in white might need all his powers in that race, so it was unlikely that he’d been up there on a heavy bit of manual labour just then, for the shifting of that statue, even in pieces, can have been no light affair. That suggested the use of a third confederate. But I’m no wild enthusiast for theories. I simply noted the coincidence that this theory demanded three men and that Foss’s party contained three men: himself, the valet, and the chauffeur.

“Now, for reasons which I’ll give you immediately, it seemed likely that this affair was only a first step in a more complicated plan. On the spur of the moment, I decided it was worth while taking a hand. So I got a patrol set round the spinney and issued orders that no one was to go up to the terrace until I’d been over the ground. I took good care that everyone knew about this; and I took equally good care not to go there myself. I rather advertised the thing, in fact. That was to assure the fellows that no one had seen the empty pedestal. They were pretty certain to rout about for information; and they’d hear on all sides that no one had been up to the terrace. That left the thing open for them to try again if they wanted to.

“Another thing confirmed my notions. When the Inspector was dragging the lake, he got a largish piece of marble out of it. That fitted in with the view that the broken statue was down in the water in fragments, hidden by the weeds. It all fitted fairly well, you see.

“Then came another bit of evidence—two bits, in fact. The village drunkard put abroad some yarn about seeing a White Man in the woods; and a little girl saw a Black Man. That might have been mere fancy. Or it might have been true enough. When the hunters had gone, the pseudo-statue would come down off his pedestal. Suppose he wandered off into the wood and was seen by old Groby. There’s your White Man. But he couldn’t possibly get back to the house in white tights. He’d want to get in as quietly as possible. What about a set of black tights under the white ones? When he took off the white ones, he’d be next door to invisible among shadows; and he’d be able to sneak in through a window in the servants’ wing—in the shadow of the house—fairly inconspicuously. Perhaps that’s how it happened.”

“That was it,” the Inspector confirmed, looking up from a sheet of paper which he was consulting from time to time.

Sir Clinton acknowledged the confirmation but refused to lay much stress on the point.

“I thought it possible,” he said, “but it was merely a guess. In itself the evidence wasn’t worth anything; but it fitted well enough into the hypothesis I’d made.”

He turned to the Inspector.

“Did you get the five medallions as I expected?”

Armadale put his hand into his pocket and withdrew the five disks of gold, which he handed over to the Chief Constable. Sir Clinton took the sixth medallion from his own pocket and laid the whole set on the table beside him.

“They say,” he went on, “that the more outré a crime is, the easier it is to find a solution for it. I shouldn’t like to assert that in every case. But there’s no harm in paying special attention to the bizarre points in an affair. If you cast your minds back to the case as it presented itself to us on the night of the masked ball, you’ll recall one point which undoubtedly seemed out of the common.”

He glanced round the circle of listeners, but no one ventured to interrupt.

“Here was a gang of thieves bent on stealing something. One of them—Foss—knew that in the showcase there were three medallions and three replicas. The medallions were of enormous value; the replicas were worth next to nothing. Foss, I was sure—and it turned out afterwards that I was right—Foss knew that the real medallions were in the top row and that the replicas were in the lower row.”

He arranged the six disks on the table as he spoke.

“And yet, with that knowledge, it was the replicas which they stole and not the real medallions. Amazing, at first sight, isn’t it? To my mind it was much more bizarre than the vanishing trick. And, naturally, it was on that point in the case that I fixed my attention. These weren’t blunderers, remember. The rest of the business showed that they were anything but that. The way they had seized upon that practical joke to serve their ends was quite enough to prove that there was a good brain at the back of the thing. That joke wasn’t in their original programme, and yet they’d taken it in their stride and turned it to account in a most ingenious way. They weren’t the sort of people who would make a mistake about the positions of the replicas. If they took the electrotypes instead of the real things, it was because the electrotypes were what they wanted.

“Why did they want them? That question seemed to thrust itself forward in front of all the others which suggested themselves in the case; and it was that question that had to be answered before one could see light anywhere.”

He leaned forward in his chair and glanced at the two rows of medallions on the table before him for a moment.

“If one thinks about a point long enough, it often happens that all of a sudden a fresh idea turns up and fits into its place. I think it was probably the notion of the pseudo-statue that put me on to this affair. There you had a fraud imposing itself on some people simply because they had no reason to suppose that any fraud was intended. I doubt if any of you people, Mr Clifton, gave a second glance at these statues that night. You simply regarded them as statues, because you knew that statues were on all the pedestals in normal circumstances. You were off your guard on that particular point.

“That idea seemed to give me the key to this mysterious preference for replicas. If they’d taken the real medallions that night, with all the fuss that was made, then you Ravensthorpe people would have known at once that the true Leonardos had gone; and, naturally, with the theft of them dated to a minute, the risk was considerable. But suppose that the theft of the replicas was only the first stage in the game, what then? They had the replicas; you had the real medallions. Foss, as the agent for Kessock, had every excuse for asking to see the medallions again.

“Now at that point there would come in the very same subconscious assurance that played into their hands in the case of the statue. Maurice would know for certain that the three things in his safe were the real Leonardos. He’d fish them out for Foss to examine; and he’d put them back in the safe without any minute inspection when Foss handed them over. The replicas would be off the board—lost, gone for good. He’d never think of them.”

Sir Clinton glanced mischievously at Joan before continuing.

“As it happens, I can do a little parlour conjuring myself. It comes in handy when one has to live up to the part of Prospero or anything like that. I know what one can do in the way of palming things, and so forth. And as soon as I hit on this idea of the case, I saw how things might be managed. Foss would fake up some excuse for handling the real medallions; and during that handling, he’d substitute the replicas for the Leonardos. Maurice, having apparently had the things under his eye all the time, would never think of examining the medals which he got back from Foss’s hands. He’d simply put them back into the safe. Foss would have the real things in his pocket; the deal would fall through; Foss Co. would retire gracefully . . . and it was a hundred to one that no minute examination of the medallions in the safe would be made for long enough. By that time it would be impossible either to find Foss or to bring the thing home to him even if you did find him.

“You see the advantages? First of all, the only theft would be one of the replicas, which no one cared much about. Second, the date of the real theft would be left doubtful. And third, this plan gave them any amount of time to dispose of the real things before any suspicions were aroused at all, as regards the genuine Leonardos. My impression is that they had a market for them: some scoundrelly collector who’d pay high to have the Leonardos even if he couldn’t boast publicly that he had them.”

“That’s correct, sir,” the Inspector interposed. “Brackley had a market, but he wouldn’t tell me who the collector was.”

Joan rose from her chair, crossed the room to a small table, and solemnly came back with a tray.

“Have some whisky and soda,” she suggested to Sir Clinton.

“You find the tale rather dry?” he inquired solicitously. “Life’s like that, you know. Inspector Armadale really needs this more than I do. He’s been a long time out in the cold up yonder. I’ll take some later on, if you don’t mind.”

Joan presented the tray to the Inspector, who helped himself.

Sir Clinton waited till he was finished with the siphon and then continued, addressing himself to Joan:

“Perhaps the story has lacked feminine interest up to this point. We’ll hurry on to the day when you, Maurice, and Foss had your talk on the terrace. Down below was Foss’s motor, serving two purposes. It was there if they had to make a bolt, should things go wrong. It also allowed the chauffeur, making a fake repair, to watch what went on in the museum. I gather that he meant to keep an eye on his confederates.

“At that moment, Foss had the three replicas in his pocket; and he was looking for some excuse to carry out the exchange. He led the conversation on to Japanese swords and so forth. I suspect Brackley supplied the basis for that matter, enough to allow Foss to make a show of information. Then Foss brought up the subject of his ‘poor man’s collection’ of rubbings. I’ve no doubt he forced a card there—induced Maurice to offer to let him take rubbings of the medallions. That would be child’s play to an ex-conjurer with a smart tongue. He got his way, anyhow.

“But then came a complication he hadn’t expected. You, Joan, got interested in this taking of rubbings. I admit it was hard lines on the poor fellow. It was the last thing he could have anticipated.”

“Thanks for the compliment!” Joan interjected, ironically.

“Well, it wasn’t in the plan, anyhow,” Sir Clinton went on. “It meant an extra pair of eyes to deceive when the exchange was made; and as the exchange was the crucial move in the whole scheme, your company—strange to say—was not appreciated. In fact, you made Mr Foss nervous. He wasn’t quite as cool as he could have wished; and my reading of the situation is that he bungled his first attempt at the substitution and had to prolong the agony by pretending to take a second rubbing of the first medallion he got into his hands.

“He had more luck with his second attempt, even with your eagle eyes on him; and he stowed away Medallion Number One in one of the special concealed pockets which he had in his clothes. But he desired intensely to be relieved of your company; and he proceeded to draw your attention to someone calling you. Of course that voice existed solely in his own imagination. But it was quite as effective as a real voice in getting you to leave the museum; and then there was one onlooker the less to bother him in his sleight-of-hand.”

Sir Clinton paused to light a cigarette before continuing. Inspector Armadale, laying down his paper, turned to the Chief Constable as though expecting at this point to hear something which he did not already know.

“The next stage is one of pure conjecture,” Sir Clinton went on. “Foss is dead, and I haven’t had any opportunity of interrogating the other actor: Marden.”

Inspector Armadale smiled grimly at the way in which the Chief Constable evaded any reference to the valet’s murder.

“Possibly Inspector Armadale has a note or two on the matter,” Sir Clinton pursued, “but even if he has, it can only be something like ‘what the soldier said,’ for Brackley could have merely second-hand evidence at the best. Take the case as the Inspector and I found it. Foss was dead, stabbed with the Muramasa sword. On its handle we found the finger-prints of Maurice, and no others. Under Foss’s body we found an undischarged automatic pistol with his finger-prints on the butt. We noticed curious pockets in Foss’s clothes; but they were empty. And we found no trace of any of the medallions about the place. Maurice was non est inventus—we could see no sign of him. Marden had cut his hand in a fall against one of the cases. He’d wrapped it up with his handkerchief in a rough sort of way. The case containing the Muramasa sword was open, and the sheath was lying in it, empty, of course.

“It’s only fair to Inspector Armadale to tell you that he suspected Marden immediately. What I’m going to give you is merely the case as it presented itself to me.”

Armadale looked slightly flustered by this tribute to his perspicacity. He glanced suspiciously at the Chief Constable, but Sir Clinton’s face betrayed no ironical intention.

“He may be pulling my leg again,” the Inspector reflected, “but at least it’s decent of him to go out of his way to say that. It’s true enough, but not exactly in the way that they’ll understand it.”

“Marden had a very complete story to tell us. He’d come to the door of the museum with a parcel which Foss had sent him to post. He’d found the address was incomplete and came back to get Foss to finish it. He stayed outside the door and he heard a quarrel between Maurice and Foss, ending in a struggle. When he burst into the room, Maurice was disappearing at the other end and Foss was dead on the floor. Then Marden slipped on the parquet, fell against a show-case, cut his hand, and tied it up in his handkerchief. Then he gave the alarm.

“The parcel with the incomplete address was the first thing that interested me. We opened it and we found in it a cheap wrist-watch in perfect condition, apparently. The Inspector tried it for finger-prints. There weren’t any of any sort, either on the watch or the box in which it was enclosed. That seemed a bit rum to us both.

“The only thing that seemed to fit the case was this. Suppose Marden wanted to keep an eye on Foss. This parcel would give him the excuse of bursting in on his employer at any moment. Assume that Marden himself had made up the parcel and that Foss had nothing to do with it. It was wrapped up in paper on which the address was written. You know how one writes on a parcel—not the least like one’s normal handwriting if the paper is crumpled a bit in the wrapping-up. That would make a bit of rough forgery of Foss’s writing fairly easy. Further, if by any chance the parcel fell into the hands of the police—as actually happened—there was nothing inside to show that Foss hadn’t wrapped it up himself. Nobody else’s finger-marks were on it at all. It had been wrapped up with gloved hands. And the contents were innocent enough: only a watch being sent to a watch-maker to be regulated, perhaps. If it had been a letter, then to carry the thing through properly they’d have had to forge Foss’s writing all the way through, in order to make it look genuine if it happened to be opened.

“But if that theory were adopted, a lot followed from it. First and foremost, it meant that Marden was the boss and his nominal employer was an underling in the gang, who would have to back up any story that Marden liked to tell. Secondly, it pointed to the fact that Marden didn’t trust Foss much. He wanted an excuse to get at Foss at any moment—which is hardly in the power of a simple valet. When he thought Foss needed watching, all he had to do was to trot up with his little parcel, just to let Foss see that he was under observation. Thirdly, this dodge was worked at a crucial stage in the game—when the replicas were being exchanged for the Leonardo medallions. Doesn’t that suggest that Marden didn’t trust Foss very much? It looks as if Marden was none too sure that he’d get a square deal from Foss once the real medallions had changed hands. Am I right in my guesses, Inspector?”

“They didn’t trust Foss to play straight, sir. Brackley was quite open about that.”

“And it was Brackley’s idea? The parcel, I mean. It looks as if it came from his mint.”

“He said so, sir. Foss knew nothing about it, of course. It was a surprise for him. They knew he’d have to pretend he knew all about it when Marden brought it to him.”

“That finishes the parcel,” Sir Clinton continued. “But it had suggested one or two things, as you see. The most important thing, from my point of view, was that this gang was not exactly a band of brothers. Two of them suspected the third. Possibly the split was even more extensive.

“The next thing was the valet’s story. According to him, Maurice stabbed Foss, after a quarrel which Marden couldn’t overhear clearly. Unfortunately for that tale, the blow that killed Foss was a powerful one. What Marden didn’t know was that Maurice had sprained his wrist that morning. I doubt if a sprained wrist could have achieved that stab. There was no proof, of course; but it seemed just a little doubtful. Then Marden said that from the door he couldn’t catch the words of the quarrel, although the voices were angry in tone. I tried the experiment myself later; and it’s perfectly easy to overhear what’s said in the museum from the position Marden said he was in. So that was a deliberate lie. On that basis, one could eliminate most of Marden’s tale as being under suspicion.

“What really happened in the museum? Maurice is gone, Foss is dead, Marden won’t tell. One has just to reconstruct the thing as plausibly as one can. My impression—it’s only conjecture—is this. Marden was listening at the door and he could see some parts of the room, since the door was ajar. Foss had succeeded in substituting one replica for a real medallion. To get Maurice’s eye off him, he asked to see the Muramasa sword. Maurice went to get it, leaving Foss at his rubbing—visible to Maurice all the time. Foss made the exchange of the second replica at that moment. Maurice came back with the Muramasa sword—and of course in doing that, he put his fingerprints on the handle in drawing the blade from the sheath. Marden, at the door, saw him do this and made a note of it. Just as Maurice came back to Foss, he was suddenly taken ill. He had the third real medallion in one hand; and as he passed Foss he picked up the two replicas—which he believed to be the other two real medallions. He went to the safe and hurriedly put on a shelf the two replicas; but the other medallion, in his other hand, he forgot all about. He shut the safe and staggered into the secret passage.”

Inspector Armadale looked frankly incredulous.

“Do people take ill all of a sudden like that?” he demanded. “Why should he want to rush off all at once?”

Sir Clinton swung round on him.

“Ever suffered from rheumatism, Inspector? Or neuralgia? Or toothache?”

“No,” the Inspector replied with all the pride of perfect health. “I’ve never had rheumatism and I’ve never had a tooth go wrong in my life.”

“No wonder you can’t understand, then,” Sir Clinton retorted. “Wait till you have neuralgia in the fifth nerve, Inspector. Then, if you don’t know yourself that you’re unfit for human society, your friends will tell you, soon enough. If you get a bad attack, it’s maddening—nothing less. Men have suicided on account of it often enough,” he added, with a meaning glance at Armadale.

A light broke in on the Inspector’s mind.

“So that was it? No wonder I couldn’t put two and two together!” he reflected to himself; but he made no audible comment.

“Now we come to a mere leap in the dark,” Sir Clinton continued. “I believe that as soon as Maurice was out of the way, Marden went into the museum and demanded the medallions from Foss.”

He put down his cigarette and leaned back in his chair. When he spoke again, a faint tinge of pity seemed to come into his voice.

“Foss was a poor little creature, hardly better than a rabbit in the big jungle of crime. And the other two were something quite different: carnivores, beasts of prey. They’d picked him out simply on account of his one miserable talent: his little trick of legerdemain. He was only a tool, poor beggar, and he knew it. I expect that when he saw what sort of company he’d fallen into, he was terrified. That would account for the pistol he carried.

“His only chance of a fair deal from them lay in the fact that he had the real medallions in his possession; and he meant to hold on to them. And when Marden demanded them, Foss revolted. It must have been like the revolt of a rabbit against a stoat. He hadn’t a chance. He pulled out his pistol, I expect; and when that appeared, Marden saw red.

“But Marden, even in a fury, was a person with a very keen mind. Perhaps he’d thought the thing over beforehand. He was evidently one of these subhuman creatures with no respect for human life—the things they label Apaches in Paris. When the pistol came out he was ready for it. Foss, I’m sure, brandished the thing in an amateurish fashion—he wasn’t a gunman of any sort. Probably he imagined that the mere sight of the thing would bring Marden to heel.

“Marden had his handkerchief out at once. Probably he had it ready in his hand. He picked up the Muramasa sword, leaving no finger-marks of his own on it through the handkerchief. And . . . that was the end of Foss.”

Sir Clinton leaned over, selected a fresh cigarette with a certain fastidiousness, and lighted it before going on with his tale.

“That was the end of his feeble little attempt to get the better of his confederates. The money in his pocket-book didn’t give him the escape he’d hoped for. All his precautions to leave no clues to his real identity played straight into the hands of Marden and Brackley.

“Marden’s immediate problem, once he’d come out of his fury, was difficult enough. I suspect that his first move was to search Foss and get the medallions out of his pockets. Then he was faced with the blood on his hands and on his handkerchief. He had his plan made almost in a moment. He went across, deliberately slipped—he was an artist in detail, evidently—smashed against the glass of one of the cases, cut his hand, and then he felt fairly secure. He wrapped up the wounds in his handkerchief—and there was the case complete to account for any stray blood anywhere on his clothes. He tried the safe, for fear Maurice was lurking inside; and then he gave the alarm.”

Sir Clinton glanced inquiringly at the Inspector, but Armadale shook his head.

“Brackley had nothing to say about all that, sir. Marden gave him no details.”

“It’s mostly guess-work,” Sir Clinton warned his audience. “All that one can say for it is that it fits the facts fairly well.”

“And is that brute in the house now?” Una Rainhill demanded. “I shan’t go to sleep if he is.”

“Two constables were detached to arrest him,” Sir Clinton assured her. “He’s not on the premises, you may count on that.”

Inspector Armadale’s face took on a wooden expression, the result of suppressing a sardonic smile.

“Well, he does manage to tell the truth and convey a wrong impression with it,” he commented inwardly.

“Now consider the state of affairs after the Foss murder,” Sir Clinton went on. “Marden and Brackley were in a pretty pickle, it seems to me. They had three medallions which Marden had got when he rifled Foss’s body. But they didn’t know what they’d got. They weren’t in the secret of the dots on the replicas. For all they knew—knew for certain, I mean—Foss might have bungled the affair and the things they had might be merely replicas. If so, they were no good. I can’t tell the difference between a medallion and an electrotype myself; but I believe an expert can tell you whether a thing’s been struck with a die or merely plated from a mould. These two scoundrels, I take it, weren’t experts. They couldn’t tell which brand of article they had in their hands.

“There was only one thing to be done. They’d have to get the whole six things into their hands, and then they’d be sure of having the three medallions. So they fell back on their original scheme of plain burglary. That, I’m sure, had been their first plan. They’d sent their American confederate to see the safe a long while ago; and no doubt he’d reported that it was an old pattern. Hence the otophone, by means of which they could pick the combination lock. The otophone was still on the premises: I’d left it for them. But they were up against one thing.

“I’d put a guard night and day on the museum. That blocked any attempt at burglary unless they were prepared to take the tremendous risk of manhandling the guard. If the door had merely been locked, I don’t think it would have given them much trouble. I’m pretty sure there’s a very good outfit of burglar’s tools mixed up with the tool-kit of the car, where it would attract no attention. But the guard was a difficulty in the way.”

Without making it obvious to the others, Sir Clinton made it clear to Armadale that the next part of his story was meant specially for the Inspector.

“I’ve given you the view I held of the case at that point. I felt fairly certain I was right. But if I’d been asked to put that case before a jury, I certainly would have backed out. It was mostly surmise: accurate enough, perhaps, but with far too little support. A jury—quite rightly—wants facts and not theories. Could one even convince them that the vanishing trick had been carried through as I believed it had? It would have been a bit of a gamble. And I don’t believe in that sort of gamble. I wanted the thing proved up to the hilt. And the best way to do that was to catch them actually at work.

“There seemed to me just one weak point in the armour. I counted on a split between the two remaining confederates, if I could only get a wedge in somehow. I guessed, rightly or wrongly, that the Foss murder would strike the chauffeur as a blunder, and that there might be the makings of friction there. The chauffeur’s watching the museum under cover of the fake repair to the hood suggested that he mistrusted the others. I suspected that Marden might have stuck to the stuff he’d taken off Foss’s body. If Brackley hadn’t got his share of that swag, he’d be in a weak position. I gambled on that: everything to gain and nothing much to lose. I had the chauffeur up for examination again; and when I gave him an opening, he deliberately gave his friend away by letting me know he’d seen Marden and Foss together just before the murder. And when he did that, I blurted out to Inspector Armadale that the guards on the terrace and the museum door were to be discontinued. Brackley went off with those two bits of exclusive information. He didn’t tell them to Marden. He saw his way to make the balance even between himself and his confederate. If he kept his news to himself, he could burgle the museum safe; get the remainder of the six medallions; and then he’d be sure of getting his share of the profits. Neither of them could do without the other in that case.

“In actual practice, Brackley went a stage farther than I’d anticipated. He schemed to get Marden’s loot as well as the stuff from the safe. I needn’t go into that side-issue.”

Again Inspector Armadale suppressed his amusement at the way in which Sir Clinton chose to present the truth.

“The rest of the tale’s short enough,” Sir Clinton went on. “Brackley determined to burgle the safe. If pursued, he decided, he’d repeat the vanishing trick on the terrace; for I’d convinced him, apparently, that the modus operandi of it was still unknown to us. Probably he went up there and satisfied himself that no one came near, after the patrol was taken off. He got himself up for the part: whitened his face; put on white tights; covered himself with Marden’s waterproof as a disguise and to conceal his fancy dress; put on a big black mask to hide the paint on his face, lest he should give the show away if an interruption came. And so he walked straight into the trap I’d laid for him.

“We saw the whole show from start to finish. I even let Cecil and Mr Clifton into the business, so that we’d have some evidence apart from police witnesses. We saw the whole show from start to finish.”

Sir Clinton broke off his story and glanced at his watch.

“We’ve kept Inspector Armadale up to a most unconscionable hour,” he said, apologetically. “We really mustn’t detain him till sunrise. Before you go, Inspector, you might tell us if my solution fits the confession you got out of Brackley—in the later stages, I mean.”

Inspector Armadale saw his dismissal and rose to his feet.

“There’s really nothing in the confession that doesn’t tally, sir. Differences in detail, of course; but you were right in the main outlines of the affair.”

Sir Clinton showed a faint satisfaction.

“Well, it’s satisfactory enough to hear that. By the way, Inspector, you’d better take my car. It’s in the avenue still. Send a man up with it, please, when you’ve done with it. There’s no need for you to walk after a night like this.”

Armadale thanked him; declined Cecil’s offer of another whisky-and-soda; and took his departure. When he had gone, Cecil threw a glance of inquiry at the Chief Constable.

“Do you feel inclined to tell us what you made of my doings? I noticed that you didn’t drag them out in front of the Inspector.”

Sir Clinton acquiesced in the suggestion.

“I think that’s fairly plain sailing; but correct me if I go wrong. When you heard of Maurice’s disappearance, you saw that something was very far amiss. You had a fair idea where he might be, but you didn’t want to advertise the Ravensthorpe secrets. So you came back one night and went down there. I don’t know whether you were surprised or not when you found him; but in any case, you decided that there was no good giving the newspapers a titbit about secret passages. So you took him out into the glade by the other entrance to the tunnel; and then you came up to Ravensthorpe as though you’d come by the first train. The Inspector tripped you over that point, but it didn’t matter much. He doesn’t love you, though, I suspect. I’d no desire to make matters worse by interfering between you; for you seemed able to look after yourself. Wasn’t that the state of affairs?”

“There or thereabouts,” Cecil admitted. “It seemed the best thing to do, in the circumstances.”

Sir Clinton showed obvious distaste for discussing the matter further. He turned to the girls.

“It’s high time you children were in bed. Dawn’s well up in the sky. You’ve had all the excitement you need, for the present; and a good sleep seems indicated.”

He gave a faint imitation of a stifled yawn.

“That sets me off,” said Una Rainhill, frankly. “I can hardly keep my eyes open. Come along, Joan. It’s quite bright outside and I’m not afraid to go to bed now.”

Joan rubbed her eyes.

“This sort of thing takes more out of one than twenty dances,” she admitted. “The beginning of the night was a bit too exciting for everyday use. How does one say ‘Good-night’ in proper form when the sun’s over the horizon? I give it up.”

With a gesture of farewell, she made her way to the door, followed by Una. When they had disappeared, Sir Clinton turned to Cecil Chacewater.

“Care to walk down the avenue a little to meet my car? The fresh air and all that. I rather like the dawn, myself, when it happens to come my way without too much exertion.”

Cecil saw that the Chief Constable was giving him an opening if he cared to take it.

“I’ll come along with you till you meet the car.”

Sir Clinton took leave of Michael Clifton, who obviously intended to go to bed immediately. As soon as he was well clear of the house, Cecil turned to the Chief Constable.

“You skated over thin ice several times in that yarn of yours. Especially the bits about Maurice. Toothache! Neuralgia! That infernal Inspector of yours swallowed it all down like cat-lap. From his face, you’d have thought he picked up an absolute cert. that no one else could see. I almost laughed, at that point.”

He changed suddenly to a serious tone.

“How did you spot what was really wrong with Maurice?”

“One thing led to another,” Sir Clinton confessed. “I didn’t hit on it all at once. The Fairy Houses set me thinking at the start. One doesn’t keep toys like that in good repair merely on account of some old legend. They were quite evidently meant for use. And then, Cecil, you seemed to have some private joke of your own—not a particularly nice joke either—about them. That set me thinking. And after that, you dropped some remark about Maurice having specialized in family curses.”

“You seem to have a devil of a memory for trifles,” Cecil commented, in some surprise.

“Trifles sometimes count for a good deal in my line,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “One gets into the habit of docketing them, almost without thinking about it. I must have pigeon-holed your talk about the Fairy Houses quite mechanically. Then later on I remembered that these things were dotted all over your estate and nowhere else. On their own ground, the Chacewaters were always within easy distance of one or other of these affairs. Ancient family curse; curious little buildings very handy; one brother grinning—yes, you did grin, and nastily too—at them, when you know he hates another brother like poison. It was quite a pretty little problem. And so . . .”

“And so?” demanded Cecil, as Sir Clinton stopped short.

“And so I put it out of my mind. It wasn’t the sort of thing I cared to think much about in connection with Ravensthorpe,” Sir Clinton said, bluntly. “Besides, it was no affair of mine.”

“And then?”

“Then came Michael Clifton’s story of finding Maurice in one of these Fairy Houses. And the details about the queer state Maurice was in when he was found. That came up in connection with a crime; and crimes are my business. Why does a fellow crawl away into a place like that? Why does he resent being dragged out of it. Why won’t he even take the trouble to get up? These were the kind of questions that absolutely bristled over the whole affair. One couldn’t help getting an inkling. But that inkling threw no light on the crime in hand, so it was no affair of mine. I dropped it. But . . .”

“Yes?”

“Maurice wasn’t an attractive character, I’ll admit that. I loathed the way he was going on. But I like to look on the best side of people if I can. In my line, one sees plenty of the other side—more than enough. And by and by I began to see that perhaps all Maurice’s doings could be explained, if they couldn’t be excused. He was off his balance.”

“He was, poor devil,” Cecil concurred, with some contrition in his tone.

“Then came the time I forced you to open the secret passage. Your methods were the very worst you could have chosen, Cecil. I knew perfectly well that you hadn’t done anything to Maurice. You’re not the fratricidal type. But you very evidently had something that you wanted to conceal behind that door. You were afraid of my spotting something. The Inspector jumped to the conclusion that it was murder you were hushing up. By that time I had a pretty good notion that it was the Ravensthorpe family secret. Once I saw that passage of yours, dwindling away to almost nothing, the thing was clear enough. With the Fairy House clue as well, the thing was almost certain. And finally, you gave the show away completely by what you said beside Maurice’s body.”

“Chuchundra, you mean?”

“Yes. I remembered—another of these docketed trifles—just what Chuchundra was. He was the musk-rat that tried to make up his mind to run into the middle of the room, but he never got there. Then I asked you if the trouble began with A. Of course it did. Agoraphobia. I suppose when Maurice was a kid he had slight attacks of it—hated to move about in an open room and preferred to sidle along by the walls if possible. That was the start of the nickname, wasn’t it?”

Cecil assented with a nod.

“It evidently cropped up in your family now and again. Hence the Fairy Houses—harbours of refuge when attacks came on. And that underground cell, where a man could shut himself up tight and escape the horror of open spaces.”

“I’d really no notion how bad it was with Maurice,” Cecil hastened to say. “It must have been deadly when it drove him to shoot himself.”

“Something beyond description, I should say,” Sir Clinton said, gravely.

He glanced over the wide prospects of the park and then raised his eyes to where great luminous clouds were sailing in stately procession across the blue.

“Looks peaceful, Cecil, doesn’t it? Makes one rather glad to be alive, when one gets into a scene like this. And yet, to poor Maurice it was a mere torture-chamber of nausea and torment, a horror that drove him to burrowing into holes and crannies, anywhere to escape from the terrors of the open sky. I don’t suppose that we normal people can even come near the thing in our imaginations. It’s too rum for our minds—outside everything we know. Poor devil! No wonder he went off the rails a bit in the end.”