Part 6 (1/2)

He went quietly enough; if I had had my wits about me I would have had my suspicions aroused by that same fact. I was flushed with victory, and, what was even more pleasant, I was acting to an impressionable audience. I was sure that Moira could not fail to appreciate the neatness with which I had conducted the whole affair, and, though I kept telling myself that I did not care a hang for her, I hadn't the faintest objection to showing off before her. On the contrary. That, in part at least, was the cause of my undoing.

The hall ended in a big French window that opened out on to the back verandah. It was very seldom used, indeed I had never seen it opened, but there it was with gla.s.s all the way to the floor. When I marched my prisoner down the hall I had some vague idea of taking him out on to the verandah and inducing him to tell me what he had come for. But the man had other plans maturing, and when we were just about six or seven feet away from the window he gave a little twist and a wriggle and slipped out of my hands as if he had been an eel. Then, before I had quite recovered sufficiently to make a grab at the empty air, he hurled himself against the window. It was one of those foolhardy things that succeed just because of the sheer, daring recklessness of the man who carries them through. He swept through the gla.s.s with a splintering crash that must have been audible for half-a-block away, and then, while the falling pieces still tinkled on the floor, he placed his hand on the verandah rail and vaulted to the ground. I drew my revolver at once--I had been pulling it out of my pocket even as I ran down the hall--and took a flying shot at him. But in the hurry of the moment I missed, and I padded out on to the verandah through the splintered window just in time to see him scaling the back fence with the practised ease of the family tabby.

I did not attempt to follow him. I knew the uselessness of such a proceeding. Just for the fraction of a second his hurrying silhouette had shown on the top of the fence, and then it had melted into the surrounding shadows of the dawn with a silence and celerity which, more than anything else, told me how difficult it would be to trace him.

I turned on my heel, only to find that the lights were blazing up in practically every room, and Moira, Bryce and the servants were gathered in a huddled, indecisive group just inside the window. Most of them looked startled. Bryce had been a little shaken, but his self-possession was rapidly returning. Moira, indeed, was the only one who faced me with anything like calmness in her face.

”You'd better all get back to bed,” I said, seeing that someone had to take the initiative. ”It's nothing very much, nothing to worry you at any rate.”

”Yes, you'd better go back,” Bryce said, seconding my remarks. ”There's nothing doing.”

The servants moved away one by one, leaving the three of us together.

For quite a minute Bryce eyed the revolver that I still held in my hand, then his glance travelled to the shattered window, and, completing the circle, came to rest on me again.

”Well?” he queried, with intense interest in his voice. I knew what that monosyllable meant. It was a request for a detailed account of the events of that night. Seeing that there was nothing to be gained by withholding anything, I plunged into the tale and related everything just as it had happened.

”So he got away from you?” he remarked when I had finished.

”He did,” I said emphatically.

”That's about the best thing he could have done,” Bryce ran on. ”I don't know what we could have done with him if we had kept him.”

”'He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day,'” I reminded him.

”That other day is a matter for the future,” he answered. ”We'd better see what he took though. Come on.”

He turned on his heel and led the way to his study just as the first rays of the rising sun crept up over the distant hills.

CHAPTER V.

CIRc.u.mSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.

The room was much as we had left it the evening before. The typed papers had disappeared, but a sheet which I recognised as the one I had picked up from the kitchen floor the day of my arrival lay on the table in full view. Beside it was the clean blotting pad that I had never yet seen used. Bryce took no notice of the sheet of figures, but lifted the pad up, and, drawing a magnifying gla.s.s from his pocket, ran his eyes over the rough white surface. Moira and I watched him with unfeigned interest. At last he looked up.

”Just as I thought,” he remarked. ”Have a look yourself, Jim.” He handed both gla.s.s and pad to me. I studied the latter for some seconds before I quite dropped to what he meant. Gradually I made out figures impressed on the rough surface. Our midnight visitor had made a copy of that single sheet, had made it hurriedly in pencil, and the impression had gone through on to the receptive softness of the blotting paper. My scrutiny over, I handed the materials to Moira.

”You understand?” Bryce queried, with little laughter-wrinkles about his eyes.

”I do,” I said admiringly. ”I don't know what the man was after, but he didn't get it. He got a fake instead.”

Bryce nodded. ”He's up a gum-tree instead of under one,” he said enigmatically.

I made no answer to that, chiefly because it struck me that it was the sort of remark that meant a good deal more than appeared on the surface.

I tucked it away in my memory, quite confident that sooner or later the march of events would make it clear to me. As a matter of fact, if I hadn't taken so much notice of that simple sentence, this story would never have been written, for the key to everything was contained in that casual remark.

”Nothing else has been disturbed,” Bryce announced, and included the whole room in one comprehensive gesture. ”I'm going back to bed for a couple of hours. You young people can do just what you like.”

He hustled us out of the room, shut the door carefully behind us, and went off to his room. Moira made no attempt to follow his example, but stood in the pa.s.sage with her deep golden-brown eyes fixed on me. There was a look in them that I could not quite fathom; it whirled me back through five years of sorrow and stress, brought me back to the days when----. No, I wasn't going to think about it at all. It didn't bring me back to anything; it brought nothing back to me. Yet I could not help remarking that her eyes held solicitude for me and something that was more than that.