Of all the luxuries of which Hartley Parrish's sudden rise to wealth gave him possession, Bude, his butler, was the acquisition in which he took the greatest delight and pride. Bude was a large and comfortable-looking person, triple-chinned like an archdeacon, bald-headed except for a respectable and saving edging of dark down, clean-shaven, benign of countenance, with a bold nose which to the psychologist bespoke both ambition and inborn cleverness. He had a thin, tight mouth which in itself alone was a symbol of discreet reticence, the hall-mark of the trusted family retainer.
Bude had spent his life in the service of the English aristocracy. The Earl of Tipperary, Major-General Lord Bannister, the Dowager Marchioness of Wiltshire, and Sir Herbert Marcobrunner, Bart., had in turn watched his gradual progress from pantry-boy to butler. Bude was a man whose maxim had been the French saying, "Je prends mon bien où je le trouve."
In his thirty years' service he had always sought to discover and draw from those sources of knowledge which were at his disposal. From MacTavish, who had supervised Lord Tipperary's world-famous gardens, he had learnt a great deal about flowers, so that the arrangement of the floral decorations was always one of the features at Hartley Parrish's soigné dinner-parties. From Brun, the unsurpassed chef, whom Lord Bannister had picked up when serving with the Guards in Egypt, he had gathered sufficient knowledge of the higher branches of the cuisine to enable Hartley Parrish to leave the arrangement of the menu in his butler's hands.
Bude would have been the first to admit that, socially speaking, his present situation was not the equal of the positions he had held. There was none of the staid dignity about his present employer which was inborn in men like Lord Tipperary or Lord Bannister, and which Sir Herbert Marcobrunner, with the easy assimilative faculty of his race, had very successfully acquired. Below middle height, thick-set and powerfully built, with a big head, narrow eyes, and a massive chin, Hartley Parrish, in his absorbed concentration on his business, had no time for the acquisition or practice of the Eton manner.
It was characteristic of Parrish that, seeing Bude at a dinner-party at Marcobrunner's, he should have engaged him on the spot. It took Bude a week to get over his shock at the manner in which the offer was made. Parrish had approached him as he was supervising the departure of the guests. Waving aside the footman who offered to help him into his overcoat, Parrish had asked Bude point-blank what wages he was getting. Bude mentioned the generous remuneration he was receiving from Sir Herbert Marcobrunner, whereupon Parrish had remarked:
"Come to me and I'll double it. I'll give you a week to think it over. Let my secretary know!"
After a few discreet enquiries, Bude, faithful to his maxim, had accepted Parrish's offer. Marcobrunner was furiously angry, but, being anxious to interest Parrish in a deal, sagely kept his feelings to himself. And Bude had never regretted the change. He found Parrish an exacting, but withal a just and a generous master, and he was not long in realizing that, as long as he kept Harkings, Parrish's country place where he spent the greater part of his time, running smoothly according to Parrish's schedule, he could count on a life situation.
The polish of manner, the sober dignity of dress, acquired from years of acute observation in the service of the nobility, were to be seen as, at the hour of five, in the twilight of this bleak autumn afternoon, Bude moved majestically into the lounge-hall of Harkings and leisurely pounded the gong for tea.
The muffled notes of the gong swelled out brazenly through the silent house. They echoed down the softly carpeted corridors to the library where the master of the house sat at his desk. For days he had been immersed in the figures of the new issue which Hornaway's, the vast engineering business of his creation, was about to put on the market. They reverberated up the fine old oak staircase to the luxurious Louis XV bedroom, where Lady Margaret Trevert lay on her bed idly smiling through an amusing novel. They crashed through the thickly padded baize doors leading to the servants' hall, where, at sixpence a hundred, Parrish's man, Jay, was partnering Lady Margaret's maid against Mrs. Heever, the housekeeper, and Robert, the chauffeur, at a friendly game of bridge. And they even boomed distantly into the far-away billiard-room and broke into the talk which Robin Greve was having with Mary Trevert.
"Damn!" exclaimed Greve savagely, as the distant gonging came to his ears.
"It's the gong for tea," said Mary demurely.
She was sitting on one of the big leather sofas lining the long room. Robin, as he gazed down at her from where he stood with his back against the edge of the billiard-table, thought what an attractive picture she made in the half-light.
The lamps over the table were lit, but the rest of the room was almost dark. In that lighting the thickly waving dark hair brought out the fine whiteness of the girl's skin. There was love, and a great desire for love, in her large dark eyes, but the clear-cut features, the well-shaped chin, and the firm mouth, the lips a little full, spoke of ambition and the love of power.
"I've been here three whole days," said Robin, "and I've not had two words with you alone, Mary. And hardly have I got you to myself for a quiet game of pills when that rotten gong goes ..."
"I'm sorry you're disappointed at missing your game," the girl replied mischievously, "but I expect you will be able to get a game with Horace or one of the others after tea ..."
Robin kicked the carpet savagely.
"You know perfectly well I don't want to play billiards ..."
He looked up and caught the girl's eye. For a fraction of a second he saw in it the expression which every man at least once in his life looks to see in the eyes of one particular woman. In the girl's dark-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes he saw the dumb appeal, the mute surrender, which, as surely as the white flag on the battlements in war, is the signal of capitulation in woman.
But the expression was gone on the instant. It passed so swiftly that, for a second, Robin, seeing the gently mocking glance that succeeded it, wondered whether he had been mistaken.
But he was a man of action—a glance at his long, well-moulded head, his quick, wide-open eye, and his square jaw would have told you that—and he spoke.
"It's no use beating about the bush," he said. "Mary, I've got so fond of you that I'm just miserable when you're away from me ..."
"Oh, Robin, please ..."
Mary Trevert stood up and remained standing, her head turned a little away from him, a charming silhouette in her heather-blue shooting-suit.
The young man took her listless hand.
"My dear," he said, "you and I have been pals all our lives. It was only at the front that I began to realize just how much you meant to me. And now I know I can't do without you. I've never met any one who has been to me just what you are. And, Mary, I must have you as my wife ..."
The girl remained motionless. She kept her face averted. The room seemed very still.
"Oh, Robin, please ..." she murmured again.
Resolutely the young man put an arm about her and drew her to him. Slowly, reluctantly, she let him have his way. But she would not look at him.
"Oh, my dear," he whispered, kissing her hair, "don't you care a little?"
She remained silent.
"Won't you look at me, Mary?"
There was a hint of huskiness in his voice. He raised her face to his.
"I saw in your eyes just now that you cared for me," he whispered; "oh, my Mary, say that you do!"
Then he bent down and kissed her. For a brief instant their lips met and he felt the caress of the girl's arm about his neck.
"Oh, Robin!" she said.
That was all.
But then she drew away.
Reluctantly the man let her go. The colour had faded from his cheeks when she looked at him again as he stood facing her in the twilight of the billiard-room.
"Robin, dear," she said, "I'm going to hurt you."
The young man seemed to have had a premonition of what was coming, for he betrayed no sign of surprise, but remained motionless, very erect, very pale.
"Dear," said the girl with a little despairing shrug, "it's hopeless! We can't afford to marry!"
"Not yet, I know," said Robin, "but I'm getting on well, Mary, and in another year or two ..."
The girl looked down at the point of her little brogue shoe.
"I don't know what you will think of me," she said, "but I can't accept ... I can't face ... I ..."
"You can't face the idea of being the wife of a man who has his way to make. Is that it?"
The voice was rather stern.
The girl looked up impulsively.
"I can't, Robin. I should never make you happy. Mother and I are as poor as church-mice. All the money in the family goes to keep Horace in the Army and pay for my clothes."
She looked disdainfully at her pretty suit.
"All this," she went on with a little hopeless gesture indicating her tailor-made, "is Mother's investment. No, no, it's true ... I can tell you as a friend, Robin, dear, we are living on our capital until I have caught a rich husband ..."
"Oh, my dear," said Robin softly, "don't say things like that ..."
The girl laughed a little defiantly.
"But it's true," she answered. "The war has halved Mother's income and there's nothing between us and bankruptcy but a year or so ... unless I get married!"
Her voice trembled a little and she turned away.
"Mary," said the young man hoarsely, "for God's sake, don't do that!"
He moved a step towards her, but she drew back.
"It's all right," she said with the tears glistening wet on her face, and dabbed at her eyes with her tiny handkerchief, "but, oh, Robin boy, why couldn't you have held your tongue?"
"I suppose I had no right to speak ..." the young man began.
The girl sighed.
"I oughtn't to say it ... now," she said slowly, and looked across at Robin with shining eyes, "but, Robin dear, I'm ... I'm glad you did!"
She paused a moment as though turning something over in her mind.
"I've ... I've got something to tell you, Robin," she began. "No, stay where you are! We must be sensible now."
She paused and looked at him.
"Robin," she said slowly, "I've promised to marry somebody else ..."
There was a moment's silence.
"Who is it?" Robin asked in a hard voice.
The girl made no answer.
"Who is it? Do I know him?"
Still the girl was silent, but she gave a hardly perceptible nod.
"Not ...? No, no, Mary, it isn't true? It can't be true?"
The girl nodded, her eyes to the ground.
"It's a secret still," she said. "No one knows but Mother. Hartley doesn't want it announced yet!"
The sound of the Christian name suddenly seemed to infuriate Greve.
"By God!" he cried, "it shan't be! You must be mad, Mary, to think of marrying a man like Hartley Parrish. A fellow who's years older than you, who thinks of nothing but money, who stood out of the war and made a fortune while men of his own age were doing the fighting for him! It's unthinkable ... it's ... it's damnable to think of a gross, ill-bred creature like Parrish ..."
"Robin!" the girl cried, "you seem to forget that we're staying in his house. In spite of all you say he seems to be good enough for you to come and stay with ..."
"I only came because you were to be here. You know that perfectly well. I admit one oughtn't to blackguard one's host, but, Mary, you must see that this marriage is absolutely out of the question!"
The girl began to bridle up,
"Why?" she asked loftily.
"Because ... because Parrish is not the sort of man who will make you happy ..."
"And why not, may I ask? He's very kind and very generous, and I believe he likes me ..."
Robin Greve made a gesture of despair.
"My dear girl," he said, trying to control himself to speak quietly, "what do you know about this man? Nothing. But there are beastly stories circulating about his life ..."
Mary Trevert laughed cynically.
"My dear old Robin," she said, "they tell stories about every bachelor. And I hardly think you are an unbiassed judge ..."
Robin Greve was pacing up and down the floor.
"You're crazy, Mary," he said, stopping in front of her, "to dream you can ever be happy with a man like Hartley Parrish. The man's a ruthless egoist. He thinks of nothing but money and he's out to buy you just exactly as you ..."
"As I am ready to sell myself!" the girl echoed. "And I am ready, Robin. It's all very well for you to stand there and preach ideals at me, but I'm sick and disgusted at the life we've been leading for the past three years, hovering on the verge of ruin all the time, dunned by tradesmen and having to borrow even from servants ... yes, from old servants of the family ... to pay Mother's bridge debts. Mother's a good sort. Father spent all her money for her and she was brought up in exactly the same helpless way as she brought up me. I can do absolutely nothing except the sort of elementary nursing which we all learnt in the war, and if I don't marry well Mother will have to keep a boarding-house or do something ghastly like that. I'm not going to pretend that I'm thinking only of her, because I'm not. I can't face a long engagement with no prospects except castles in Spain. I don't mean to be callous, Robin, but I expect I am naturally hard. Hartley Parrish is a good sort. He's very fond of me, and he will see that Mother lives comfortably for the rest of her life. I've promised to marry him because I like him and he's a suitable match. And I don't see by what right you try and run him down to me behind his back! If it's jealousy, then it shows a very petty spirit!"
Robin Greve stepped close up to Mary Trevert. His eyes were very angry and his jaw was set very square.
"If you are determined to sell yourself to the highest bidder," he said, "I suppose there's no stopping you. But you're making a mistake. If Parrish were all you claim for him, you might not repent of his marriage so long as you did not care for somebody else. But I know you love me, and it breaks my heart to see you blundering into everlasting unhappiness ..."
"At least Hartley will be able to keep me," the girl flashed out. Directly she had spoken she regretted her words.
A red flush spread slowly over Robin Greve's face.
Then he laughed drily.
"You won't be the first woman he's kept!" he retorted, and stamped out of the billiard-room.
The girl gave a little gasp. Then she reddened with anger.
"How dare he?" she cried, stamping her foot; "how dare he?"
She sank on the lounge and, burying her face in her hands, burst into tears.
"Oh, Robin, Robin, dear!" she sobbed—incomprehensibly, for she was a woman.
The great drawing-room of Harkings was ablaze with light. The cluster of lights in the heavy crystal chandelier and the green-shaded electric lamps in their gilt sconces on the plain white-panelled walls coldly lit up the formal, little-used room with its gilt furniture, painted piano, and huge marble fireplace.
This glittering Louis Seize environment seemed altogether too much for the homely Inspector. Whilst waiting for Mary Trevert to come to him, he tried several attitudes in turn. The empty hearth frightened him away from the mantelpiece, the fragile appearance of a gilt settee decided him against risking his sixteen stone weight on its silken cushions, and the vastness of the room overawed him when he took up his position in the centre of the Aubusson carpet. Finally he selected an ornate chair, rather more solid-looking than the rest, which he drew up to a small table on the far side of the room. There he sat down, his large red hands spread out upon his knees in an attitude of singular embarrassment.
But Mary Trevert set him quickly at his ease when presently she came to him. She was pale, but quite self-possessed. Indeed, the effort she had made to regain her self-control was so marked that it would have scarcely escaped the attention of the Inspector, even if he had not had a brief vision of her as she had stood for that instant at the library door, pale, distraught, and trembling. He was astonished to find her cool, collected, almost business-like in the way she sat down, motioned him to his seat, and expressed her readiness to tell him all she knew.
The phrases he had been laboriously preparing—"This has been a bad shock for you, ma'am"; "You will forgive me, I'm sure, ma'am, for calling upon you at a moment such as this"—died away on his lips as Mary Trevert said:
"Ask me any questions you wish, Inspector. I will tell you everything I can."
"That's very good of you, ma'am, I'm sure," answered the Inspector, unstrapping his notebook, "and I'll try and not detain you long. Now, then, tell me what you know of this sad affair ..."
Mary Trevert plucked an instant nervously at her little cambric handerchief in her lap. Then she said:
"I went to the library from the billiard-room ..."
"A moment," interposed the Inspector. "What time was that?"
"A little after five. The tea gong had gone some time. I was going to the library to tell Mr. Parrish that tea was ready ..."
Mr. Humphries made a note. He nodded to show he was listening.
"I crossed the hall and went down the library corridor. I knocked on the library door. There was no reply. Then I heard a shot and a sort of thud."
Despite her effort to remain calm, the girl's voice shook a little. She made a little helpless gesture of her hands. A diamond ring she was wearing on her finger caught the light and blazed for an instant.
"Then I got frightened. I ran back along the corridor to the lounge where the others were and told them."
"When you knocked at the door, you say there was no reply. I suppose, now, you tried the handle first."
"Oh, yes ..."
"Then Mr. Parrish would have heard the two sounds? The turning of the handle and then the knocking on the door? That's so, isn't it?"
"Yes, I suppose so ..."
"Yet you say there was no reply?"
"No. None at all."
The Inspector jotted a word or two in his notebook as it lay open flat upon the table.
"The shot, then, was fired immediately after you had knocked? Not while you were knocking?"
"No. I knocked and waited, expecting Mr. Parrish to answer. Instead of him answering, there came this shot ..."
"I see. And after the shot was fired there was a crash?"
"A sort of thud—like something heavy falling down."
"And you heard no groan or cry?"
The girl knit her brows for a moment.
"I ... I ... was frightened by the shot. I ... I ... don't seem able to remember what happened afterwards. Let me think ... let me think ..."
"There, there," said the Inspector paternally, "don't upset yourself like this. Just try and think what happened after you heard the shot fired ..."
Mary Trevert shuddered, one slim white hand pressed against her cheek.
"I do remember now," she said, "there was a cry. It was more like a sharp exclamation ..."
"And then you heard this crash?"
"Yes ..."
The girl had somewhat regained her self-possession. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief quickly as though ashamed of her weakness.
"Now," said Humphries, clearing his throat, as though to indicate that the conversation had changed, "you and Lady Margaret Trevert knew Mr. Parrish pretty well, I believe, Miss Trevert. Have you any idea why he should have done this thing?"
Mary Trevert shook her dark head rather wearily.
"It is inconceivable to me ... to all of us," she answered.
"Do you happen to know whether Mr. Parrish had any business worries?"
"He always had a great deal of business on hand and he has had a great deal to do lately over some big deal."
"What was it, do you know?"
"He was raising fresh capital for Hornaway's—that is the big engineering firm he controls ..."
"Do you know if he was pleased with the way things were shaping?"
"Oh, yes. He told me last night that everything would be finished this week. He seemed quite satisfied."
The Inspector paused to make a note.
Then he thrust a hand into the side-pocket of his tunic and produced Hartley Parrish's letter.
"This," he said, eyeing the girl as he handed her the letter, "may throw some light on the affair!"
Open-eyed, a little surprised, she took the plain white envelope from his hand and gazed an instant without speaking, on the bold sprawling address—
"Miss Mary Trevert."
"Open it, please," said the Inspector gently.
The girl tore open the envelope. Humphries saw her eyes fill, watched the emotion grip her and shake her in her self-control so that she could not speak when, her reading done, she gave him back the letter.
Without asking her permission, he took the sheet of fine, expensive paper with its neat engraved heading and postal directions, and read Hartley Parrish's last message.
My dear [it ran], I signed my will at Bardy's office yesterday, and he sent it back to me to-day. Just this line to let you know you are properly provided for should anything happen to me. I wanted to fix things so that you and Lady Margaret would not have to worry any more. I just had to write. I guess you understand why.
H.
There was a long and impressive silence while the Inspector deliberately read the note. Then he looked interrogatively at the girl.
"We were engaged, Inspector," she said. "We were to have been married very soon."
A deep flush crept slowly over Mr. Humphries's florid face and spread into the roots of his tawny fair hair.
"But what does he mean by 'having to write'?" he asked.
The girl replied hastily, her eyes on the ground.
"Mr. Parrish was under the impression that ... that ... without his money I should not have cared for him. That is what he means ..."
"You knew he had provided for you in his will?"
"He told me several times that he intended to leave me everything. You see, he has no relatives!"
"I see!" said the Inspector in a reflective voice.
"Had he any enemies, do you know? Anybody who would drive him to a thing like this?"
The girl shook her head vehemently.
"No!"
The monosyllable came out emphatically. Again the Inspector darted one of his quick, shrewd glances at the girl. She met his scrutiny with her habitual serene and candid gaze. The Inspector dropped his eyes and scribbled in his book.
"Was his health good?"
"He smoked far too much," the girl said, "and it made him rather nervy. But otherwise he never had a day's illness in his life."
Humphries ran his eye over the notes he had made.
"There is just one more question I should like to ask you, Miss Trevert," he said, "rather a personal question."
Mary Trevert's hands twisted the cambric handkerchief into a little ball and slowly unwound it again. But her face remained quite calm.
"About your engagement to Mr. Parrish ... when did it take place?"
"Some days ago. It has not yet been announced."
The Inspector coughed.
"I was only wondering whether, perhaps, Mr. Parrish was not quite ... whether he was, maybe, a little disturbed in his mind about the engagement ..."
The girl hesitated. Then she said firmly:
"Mr. Parrish was perfectly happy about it. He was looking forward to our being married in the spring."
Mr. Humphries shut his notebook with a snap and rose to his feet.
"Thank you very much, ma'am," he said with a little formal bow. "If you will excuse me now. I have the doctor to see again and there's the Coroner to be warned ..."
He bowed again and tramped towards the door with a tread that made the chandelier tinkle melodiously.
The door closed behind him and his heavy footsteps died away along the corridor. Mary Trevert had risen to her feet calm and impassive. But when he had gone, her bosom began to heave and a spasm of pain shot across her face. Again the tears welled up in her eyes, brimmed over and stole down her cheeks.
"If I only knew!" she sobbed, "if I only knew!"
Dr. Romain was just finishing his breakfast as Robin Greve entered the dining-room, a cosy oak-panelled room with a bow window fitted with cushioned window-seats. Horace Trevert stood with his back to the fire. There was no sign of either Lady Margaret or of Mary. Silence seemed to fall on both the doctor and his companion as Robin came in. They wore that rather abashed look which people unconsciously assume when they break off a conversation on an unexpected entry.
"Morning, Horace! Morning, Doctor!" said Robin, crossing to the sideboard. "Any sign of Lady Margaret or Mary yet?"
The doctor had risen hastily to his feet.
"I rather think Dr. Redstone is expecting me," he said rapidly; "I half promised to go over to Stevenish ... think I'll just run over. The walk'll do me good ..."
He looked rather wildly about him, then fairly bolted from the room.
Robin, the cover of the porridge dish in his hand, turned and stared at him.
"Why, whatever's the matter with Romain?" he began.
But Horace, who had not spoken a word, was himself halfway to the door.
"Horace!" called out Robin sharply.
The boy stopped with his back towards the other. But he did not turn round.
Robin put the cover back on the porridge dish and crossed the room.
"You all seem in the deuce of a hurry this morning ..." he said.
Still the boy made no reply.
"Why, Horace, what's the matter?"
Robin put his hand on young Trevert's shoulder. Horace shook him roughly off.
"I don't care to discuss it with you, Robin!" he said.
Robin deliberately swung the boy round until he faced him.
"My dear old thing," he expostulated. "What does it all mean? What won't you discuss with me?"
Horace Trevert looked straight at the speaker. His upper lip was pouted and trembled a little.
"What's the use of talking?" he said. "You know what I mean. Or would you like me to be plainer ..."
Robin met his gaze unflinchingly.
"I certainly would," he said, "if it's going to enlighten me as to why you should suddenly choose to behave like a lunatic ..."
Horace Trevert leant back and thrust his hands into his pockets.
"After what happened here yesterday," he said, speaking very clearly and deliberately, "I wonder you have the nerve to stay ..."
"My dear Horace," said Robin quite impassively, "would you mind being a little more explicit? What precisely are you accusing me of? What have I done?"
"Done?" exclaimed the young man heatedly. "Done? Good God! Don't you realize that you have dragged my sister into this wretched business? Don't you understand that her name will be bandied about before a lot of rotten yokels at the inquest?"
Robin Greve's eyes glittered dangerously.
"I confess," he said, with elaborate politeness, "I scarcely understand what it has to do with me that Hartley Parrish should apparently commit suicide within a few days of becoming engaged to your sister ..."
"Ha!"
Horace Trevert snorted indignantly.
"You don't understand, don't you? We don't understand either. But, I must say, we thought you did!"
With that he turned to go. But Robin caught him by the arm.
"Listen to me, Horace," he said. "I'm not going to quarrel with you in this house of death. But you're going to tell here and now what you meant by that remark. Do you understand? I'm going to know!"
Horace Trevert shook himself free.
"Certainly you shall know," he answered with hauteur, "but I must say I should have thought that, as a lawyer and so on, you would have guessed my meaning without my having to explain. What I mean is that, now that Hartley Parrish is dead, there is only one man who knows what drove him to his death. And that's yourself! Do you want it plainer than that?"
Robin took a step back and looked at his friend. But he did not speak.
"And now," the boy continued, "perhaps you will realize that your presence here is disagreeable to Mary ..."
"Did Mary ask you to tell me this?" Robin broke in.
His voice had lost its hardness. It was almost wistful. The change of tone was so marked that it struck Horace. He hesitated an instant.
"Yes," he blurted out. "She doesn't want to see you again. I don't want to be offensive, Robin.."
"Please don't apologize," said Greve. "I quite understand that this is your sister's house now and, of course, I shall leave at once. I'll ask Jay to pack my things if you could order the car ..."
The boy moved towards the door. Before he reached it Robin called him back.
"Horace," he said pleasantly, "before you go I want you to answer me a question. Think before you speak, because it's very important. When you got into the library yesterday evening through the window, you smashed the glass, didn't you?"
Horace Trevert nodded.
"Yes," he replied, looking hard at Robin.
"Why?"
"To get into the room, of course!"
"Was the window bolted?"
The boy stopped and thought.
"No," he said slowly, "now I come to think of it, I don't believe it was. No, of course, it wasn't. I just put my arm through the broken pane and shoved the window up. But why do you ask?"
"Oh, nothing," answered Robin nonchalantly. "I just was curious to know, that's all!"
Horace stood and looked at him for an instant. Then he went out.
A quarter of an hour later, Hartley Parrish's Rolls-Royce glided through the straggling main street of Stevenish. A chapel bell tinkled unmusically, and on the pavements, gleaming with wet, went a procession of neatly dressed townsfolk bound, prayer-book in hand, for their respective places of worship. A newsboy, sorting out the Sunday newspapers which had just come down by train from London, was the only figure visible on the little station platform. Robin bought a selection.
"There's all about Mr. Parrish," said the boy, "'im as they found dead up at 'Arkings las' night. And the noospapers 'asn't 'arf been sendin' down to-day ... reporters and photographers ... you oughter seen the crowd as come by the mornin' train ..."
"I wonder what they'll get out of Manderton," commented Robin rather grimly to himself as his train puffed leisurely, after the habit of Sunday trains, into the quiet little station.
In the solitude of his first-class smoker he unfolded the newspapers. None had more than the brief fact that Hartley Parrish had been found dead with a pistol in his hand, but they made up for the briefness of their reports by long accounts of the dead man's "meteoric career." And, Robin noted with relief, hitherto Mary Trevert's name was out of the picture.
He dropped the papers on to the seat, and, as the train steamed serenely through the Sunday calm of the country towards London's outer suburbs, he reviewed in his mind such facts as he had gleaned regarding the circumstances of his late host's death.
He would, he told himself, accept for the time being as facts what, he admitted to himself, so far only seemed to be such. Hartley Parrish, then, had been seated in his library at his desk with the door locked. The fire was smoking, and therefore he had opened the window. According to Horace Trevert, the window had not been bolted when he had entered the library, for, after smashing the pane in the assumption that the bolt was shot, he had had no difficulty in pushing up the window. Hartley Parrish had opened the window himself, for on the nail of the middle finger of his left hand Robin had seen, with the aid of the magnifying-glass, a tiny fragment of white paint.
Who had closed it? He had no answer ready to that question.
Now, as to the circumstances of the shooting. The suicide theory invited one to believe that Hartley Parrish had got up from his desk, pushing back his chair, had gone round it until he stood between the desk and the window, and had there shot himself through the heart. Why should he have done this?
Robin had no answer ready to this question either. He passed on again. Bude had heard loud voices a very few minutes before Mary had heard the shot. That morning's experiments had shown that Bude could have heard these sounds only by way of the open window of the library and the open doors of the garden and the library corridor. Additional proof, if Bude had heard aright, that the library window was open.
Leaning back in his seat, his finger-tips pressed together, Robin Greve resolutely faced the situation to which his deductions were leading him.
"The voice heard at the open window," he told himself, "was the voice of the man who murdered Parrish and who closed the window, that is, of course, if the murder theory proves more conclusive than that of suicide."
This brought him back to his investigations in the rosery. The abrasure he had discovered on the timber upright was the mark of a bullet and a mark freshly made at that. Moreover, it had almost certainly been fired from the library window—from the window which Parrish had opened; the angle at which it had struck and marked the tree showed that almost conclusively.
Yet there had been but one shot! If only he had been able to find that bullet in the rosery! Robin thought ruefully of his long hunt among the sopping rose-bushes.
Yes, there had been only one shot. Mary Trevert had stated it definitely. Besides, the bullet that had killed Hartley Parrish had been fired from his own revolver and had been found in the body. Robin Greve felt the murder theory collapsing about him. But the suicide theory did not stand up, either. What possible, probable motive had Hartley Parrish for taking his own life?
"He wasn't the man to do it!"
The wheels of the train took up the rhythm of the phrase and dinned it into his ears.
"He wasn't the man to do it!"
The riddle seemed more baffling than ever.
Robin thrust one hand into his right-hand pocket to get his pipe, his other hand into his left-hand pocket to find his pouch. His left hand came into contact with a little ball of paper.
He drew it out. It was the little ball of slatey-blue paper he had found on the floor of the library beside Hartley Parrish's dead body.
"D——!" exclaimed Bruce Wright.
He stood in the great porch at Harkings, his finger on the electric bell. No sound came in response to the pressure, nor any one to open the door. Thus he had stood for fully ten minutes listening in vain for any sound within the house. All was still as death. He began to think that the bell was out of order. He had forgotten Hartley Parrish's insistence on quiet. All bells at Harkings rang, discreetly muted, in the servants' hall.
He stepped out of the porch on to the drive. The weather had improved and, under a freshening wind, the country was drying up. As he reached the hard gravel, he heard footsteps, Bude appeared, his collar turned up, his swallow-tails floating in the wind.
"Now, be off with you!" he cried as soon as he caught sight of the trim figure in the grey overcoat; "how many more of ye have I to tell there's nothing for you to get here! Go on, get out before I put the dog on you!"
He waved an imperious hand at Bruce.
"Hullo, Bude," said the boy, "you've grown very inhospitable all of a sudden!"
"God bless my soul if it isn't young Mr. Wright!" exclaimed the butler. "And I thought it was another of those dratted reporters. It's been ring, ring, ring the whole blessed morning, sir, you can believe me, as if they owned the place, wanting to interview me and Mr. Jeekes and Miss Trevert and the Lord knows who else. Lot of interfering busybodies, I call 'em! I'd shut up all noospapers by law if I had my way ..."
"Is Mr. Jeekes here, Bude?" asked Bruce.
"He's gone off to London in the car, sir ... But won't you come in, Mr. Wright? If you wouldn't mind coming in by the side door. I have to keep the front door closed to shut them scribbling fellows out. One of them had the face to ask me to let him into the library to take a photograph ..."
He led the way round the side of the house to the glass door in the library corridor.
"This is a sad business, Bude!" said Bruce.
"Ah, indeed, it is, sir," he sighed. "He had his faults had Mr. Parrish, as well you know, Mr. Wright. But he was an open-handed gentleman, that I will say, and we'll all miss him at Harkings ..."
They were now in the corridor. Bude jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
"It was in there they found him," he said in a low voice, "with a hole plumb over the heart."
His voice sank to a whisper. "There's blood on the carpet!" he added impressively.
"I should like just to take a peep at the room, Bude," ventured the boy, casting a sidelong glance at the butler.
"Can't be done, sir," said Bude, shaking his head; "orders of Detective-Inspector Manderton. The police is very strict, Mr. Wright, sir!"
"There seems to be no one around just now, Bude," the young man wheedled. "There can't be any harm in my just going in for a second?..."
"Go in you should, Mr. Wright, sir," said the butler genially, "if I had my way. But the door's locked. And, what's more, the police have the key."
"Is the detective anywhere about?" asked Bruce.
"No, sir," answered Bude. "He's gone off to town, too! And he don't expect to be back before the inquest. That's for Toosday!"
"But isn't there another key anywhere?" persisted the boy.
"No, sir," said Bude positively, "there isn't but the one. And that's in Mr. Manderton's vest pocket!"
Young Wright wrinkled his brow in perplexity. He was very young, but he had a fine strain of perseverance in him. He was not nearly at the end of his resources, he told himself.
"Well, then," he said suddenly, "I'm going outside to have a look through the window. I remember you can see into the library from the path round the house!"
He darted out, the butler, protesting, lumbering along behind him.
"Mr. Wright," he panted as he ran, "you didn't reelly ought ... If any one should come ..."