Such were the thoughts that kept dawdling through his mind, when he felt that he ought to be forming important decisions. What was he going to say when he was called in evidence? Was he going to give any hint as to his suspicions of foul play, or would it be better to leave the police to their own unaided intelligence? And if he did breathe his suspicions, was he bound to mention the golf-ball which he had found at the top of the embankment? Would they ask how he had employed his time between the moment when he found the body and the moment when the police arrived? He wished that he had discussed all this beforehand with Gordon—or would that have been conspiring to defeat the ends of justice? Anyhow, he wished the preliminary proceedings would hurry up.
When he was actually called, he found that he was not asked for his opinion on any theoretical point, and indeed was given no opportunity of getting a word in edgeways as to the view he had formed of the case. He was only asked details about the exact time of his discovery (this question confused him rather) and the precise attitude in which the body lay. Instead of being criticized for disturbing the clues by removing the dead body, he was thanked for having removed it. Altogether, the proceedings struck him as singularly ill-calculated to assist in the clearing up of a mystery. It seemed rather as if Society were performing a solemn act of purification over the remains of the dead. In the end he sat down feeling exactly (the atmosphere helped) as if he were back at school again, had just been “put on construing,” not at the passage he had specially “mugged up,” but at the passage next door to it, and had acquitted himself better than he expected in the circumstances. The feeling was intensified when Marryatt got up; Marryatt was still intensely nervous over the prospect of a suicide verdict; and he answered the questions put to him confusedly and at random, like a schoolboy who has omitted the formality of preparing the lesson at all.
The heroine of the afternoon was undoubtedly Mrs. Bramston. The coroner was not ready for her, and she got right in under his guard, pouring out a flood of promiscuous information which he neither demanded nor desired. Then strangers came—people from Brotherhood’s office in London, people from the Insurance Company, people representing the creditors: people, too, who represented the railway company, and dilated for hours on the impossibility of falling out of their trains by accident. In fact, nobody seemed to care a straw about the mangled temple of humanity that lay in the next room, or whether it cried to heaven for vengeance. Only two points mattered, whether the Insurance Company had got to pay up, and whether the Railway Company owed Compensation. Brotherhood had, as far as could be discovered, neither kith nor kin in the world, and it was perhaps not unnatural that the verdict given was one of death by suicide. Yet Marryatt was to be freed of his apprehensions: Brotherhood had looked worried lately at the office—had said, “Damn you, get out of the way” to the lift-boy—had complained of headaches. He had committed suicide, clearly while of unsound mind; and Marryatt might get on with the funeral.
Marryatt seemed five years younger when they met afterwards to discuss the situation. Strange, Reeves reflected, how in certain natures the wish is father to the thought. Only last night Marryatt had seemed eager to follow up the clues of a murder, so as to get the bugbear of suicide off his mind; now that the act of suicide was declared inculpable, he showed no great interest in prosecuting the inquiry. “It’s a mystery,” he kept on saying, “and I don’t think we’re ever likely to get to the bottom of it. If we could have hunted Davenant, we should have had something to go on. Now that we know Davenant was a fictitious personage, what’s the use of worrying? We’ve no clues that can help us to any further action. Unless, of course, you like to go to the police and tell them what you know.”
But to this Reeves would not consent. Ever since the apparent indifference with which the police had treated his warning chits when he was in the Military Intelligence, he had longed for an opportunity to show them in the wrong.
“There are one or two things,” he pointed out, “which we’ve still got to account for. There’s that cipher message we found in Brotherhood’s pocket. There’s the list we found on the back of it; only four words, but full of suggestion. And there’s the golf ball we found on the embankment—there we have the actual clue in our pockets.”
“A precious poor sort of clue,” objected Gordon. “Leave that ball lying about, and every third man in the club will be prepared to adopt it as his long-lost property.”
Carmichael seemed destined to overwhelm them with surprises. At this point he suddenly remarked, “You know, that’s not all the clues we’ve got. There’s one that dropped out of poor Brotherhood’s pocket as the caddies were carrying off the body to the tool-house. At least, the caddies said so: my private impression is that the young ruffians searched the pockets on their own—”
“Why on earth should they do that?” asked Reeves.
“Well, you know what caddies are—it’s a demoralizing profession. Not that I believe much in boys going to school myself, but it does keep them out of mischief. Those two boys, I think, went through the pockets on their own.”
“They left four bob there,” suggested Gordon.
“Yes, boys are frightened of stealing money; they connect it with going to prison. But they don’t mind stealing other things; I think they could tell you why the pouch was empty, and why there was only one
