Part 23 (1/2)

Gimblet plunged once more into the shop, and fastened upon some pencils with a zeal not very convincing after his disappointing vacillation over the brooch. The gaunt woman cheered up, however, when he bought the first seventeen she offered him, and, the stock being exhausted, finished by purchasing a piece of india-rubber, a stylographic pen, and a penny paper of pins, which she pressed upon him as particularly suited to his needs and charged him fourpence for.

By the time he issued forth into the open air, his pockets full of packages, the stranger had pa.s.sed the shop and was turning the corner of the next house. To him, now, Gimblet devoted his powers of shadowing.

There was no great difficulty about it. The man walked straight before him, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and as he strode along the wet roads Gimblet noted with satisfaction the long, narrow, pointed footprints that were deeply impressed in the muddy places. He had no doubt they were the same as those he had noticed on the beach on the day of his arrival at Inveras.h.i.+el.

The stranger turned into the Crianan Hotel, which stands on the lake front, fifty yards from the landing-place of the loch steamers. Gimblet pa.s.sed the door without pausing and went down to the loch, where he mingled with the boatmen and loafers who congregated by the waterside.

He kept, however, a strict eye on the door of the hotel, and after a quarter of an hour saw the object of his attentions emerge with fis.h.i.+ng-rod and basket, and cross the road directly towards him. Gimblet had not been able to see his face before, but now he had a good look as he pa.s.sed close beside him.

He was a tall, fair man, evidently a foreigner, but with nothing very striking about his appearance. A pointed yellow beard hid the lower part of his face, and, for the rest, his nose was short, his eyes blue and close together, and his forehead high and narrow. He looked closely at Gimblet as he went by, and for a moment the eyes of the two men met, both equally inscrutable and unflinching; then the stranger glanced aside and strode on to where a small boat lay moored. The detective turned his back while the fair man got in and pushed off into the loch.

”Gentleman going fis.h.i.+ng?” he remarked to a man who lounged hard by upon the causeway.

”He's axtra fond o' the fees.h.i.+n',” was the reply, ”for a' that he's a foreign shentleman.”

Waiting till the boat had become a distant speck on the face of the waters, Gimblet made his way into the inn and entered into conversation with the landlord, on the pretext of engaging rooms for a friend. The landlord was sorry, but the house was full.

”If ye wanted them in a fortnicht's time,” he said, ”ye could hae the hale hotel; but tae the end o' the holidays we're foll up. Folks tak' their rooms a month in advance; they come here for the fis.h.i.+n' on the loch, and because my hoose is the maist comfortable in the Hielands.”

”Indeed, I can well believe that,” Gimblet a.s.sured him. ”I suppose you get a lot of tourists pa.s.sing through, though, Americans, for instance?”

”We hardly ever hae a room tae tak' them in. No, I seldom hae an American bidin' here; they maistly gang doon the loch,” said the innkeeper.

”I thought,” said Gimblet, ”that was a foreign-looking man whom I saw a little while ago, coming out of the hotel.”

”We hae ae gintleman bidin' here wha belongs tae foreign pairts,” the landlord admitted. ”A Polish gintleman, he is, Count Pretovsky, a vary nice gintleman. I couldna just cae him a tourist. He's vary keen on the fis.h.i.+n' and was up here for it last year as well. He has his ain boat and is aye on the water trailin' aefter the salmon.”

”A great many sporting foreigners come to our island nowadays,” Gimblet remarked. ”Does he get many fish?”

”Oh, it's a grand place for salmon,” said the inn-keeper with obvious pride. ”And there's troots tac. And pike, mair's the peety,” he added.

”Dear me,” said Gimblet, ”just what my friend wants. I'm sorry you can't take him in. I must tell him to write in good time next year if he wants a room.”

As he parted from the landlord upon the doorstep of the Crianan Hotel, the Rob Roy-the second of the two loch steamers-was edging away from the pier, under a cloud of black smoke from her funnel The rain had stopped; the pa.s.sengers were scattered on the deck, and in the bows of the vessel the detective caught sight of Julia Romaninov's tweed-clad form. She was leaning against the rail, and gazing at a distant part of the loch where a black speck, which might represent a rowing boat, could faintly be discerned. She had come back, then, from her moorland walk. It was as Gimblet had expected; and, though he chafed at the delay, he regretted less than he would have otherwise that he could not catch the Rob Roy.

The Inveras.h.i.+el would be due on her homeward trip in a couple of hours' time, and meanwhile he had other business that must be attended to.

He went first to the post office, where he registered and posted to Scotland Yard a packet he had brought with him. Then, after asking his way of the sociable landlord of the hotel, he proceeded to the police station, a single-storied stone building standing at the end of a side street.

Here he made himself known to the inspector, and imparted information which made that personage open his eyes considerably wider than was his custom.

”If you will bring one of your men, and come with me yourself,” said Gimblet, at the conclusion of the interview, ”I think I shall be able to convince you that a mistake has been made. In the meantime there will be no harm done by a watch being kept on the foreign gentleman who is at this moment trolling for salmon on the loch.”

The inspector agreed; and when the Inveras.h.i.+el started, an hour later, on her voyage down the loch, she carried the two policemen on her deck, as well as the most notorious detective she was ever likely to have the privilege of conveying.

It was nearly three o'clock when they landed on the Inveras.h.i.+el pier.

The weather, which for the last few hours had looked like clearing, had now turned definitely to rain; clouds had descended on the hills, and the trees in the valleys stooped and dripped in the saturated, mist-laden air. Gimblet conducted the men to the cottage, where Lady Ruth anxiously awaited them.