“ ‘But this theory of Carmichael’s makes an even prettier parable of the great and unpardonable error which tries to make one thing out of matter and Spirit—tells you that Spirit is a mode of matter, or the other way round. Just as Carmichael will have it that Davenant is a mode of Brotherhood. Like the materialist or the idealist he is stultifying experience for the sake of a formula. Couldn’t one write this up, somehow? Brotherhood, representing Matter, leaves off where Davenant, representing Spirit, begins. Carmichael, representing the modern mind, finds this an excellent reason for supposing that they are really, somehow, the same thing. The materialist sees Brotherhood everywhere, the Idealist sees Davenant everywhere, and consequently neither of them can solve the detective mystery of existence. It looks as if one could work up a sort of Oriental mythology out of it, as good as most Oriental mythologies anyway. And the joke of it is that Davenant’s really round the corner the whole time.’ I say, that was a pretty good shot anyhow. Why, Carmichael, I even seem to have anticipated your discovery of the secret passage.”
“H’m,” said Carmichael; “there are some interesting half-truths in all that.”
XVI
Reeves Promises to Do His Best
The conversation recorded in the last chapter took place (I forgot to say) on Saturday afternoon. It was while he was at tea downstairs that a message was brought in to Reeves telling him that a lady wished to see him on urgent business. She would not give her name, but she was waiting for him in what was called “the small lounge”—a dreary little room, which had something of the air of a hospital waiting-room; she would be glad if he could come as soon as possible. Disregarding Gordon’s suggestion that he should take Carmichael with him as a chaperon, he made his way to the small lounge with some feeling of self-importance, and found himself most unexpectedly confronted with Miss Rendall-Smith.
“I’m afraid you think badly of me, Mr. Reeves,” she said, “and you’ll probably think worse of me before I’ve finished.” (Reeves gurgled dissent.) “The other day I turned you out of the house and told you to your face you were a liar. And that’s a bad introduction for me when I have to come to you, as I come now, asking for your help.”
Reeves was horribly embarrassed. You can offer whisky to a policeman to show there is no ill-feeling, but it is more difficult to offer it to a lady. “I’m sure I should be very glad to be of any use,” he said. “I seem somehow to have made a bad impression on you the other day, though I still haven’t the least idea how. Wouldn’t it really be better if we put all our cards on the table and treated one another frankly?”
“That’s just what I want to do. And, as a sort of guarantee of good faith, I’m going to tell you exactly what it was that made me suspicious of you the other day. You brought me a photograph of myself and told me you had found it on the body of the man who was killed. Now, I was quite prepared to believe you; he had got, and I knew he had got, a photograph of me. But the photograph you showed me was not the one I gave him. It was a portrait taken on the same occasion, at the same sitting; but it was in a slightly different pose. So I thought, you see, that you were setting a trap for me. Your manner was so dreadfully Come-now-young-woman-I-know-all-about-you, that I really thought you were a policeman, and were trying to bluff me in some way … No, I haven’t finished yet. There was one person living round here who had a copy of the other photograph, the same kind as you showed me. And that was Mr. Davenant, whom they arrested this morning as the murderer.”
“I see. Yes, of course you must have thought I was trying it on. The fact is, I don’t yet know exactly how that photograph got into my possession, but I can give a guess now, which I couldn’t have then.” And he described in outline the discovery of the secret passage and the sliding panel. “You see, if it was Davenant who was behind that panelling all the time, it was quite possible for him to take away the portrait we found on Brotherhood, and to put the portrait you gave him there instead. I can’t think why he should have wanted to do it; but there were four of us who all thought at the time that the photograph looked different when we took it down from the cornice. And that’s quite natural, if it really was a different one.”
“Well, all that gets us into the reason why I called. Mr. Reeves, are you working in any sort of cooperation with the police?”
“No. I helped the police by taking them to Weighford and back in my motor, but I’m not working for them, I’m working on my own. To tell the truth, I haven’t very much confidence in the intelligence of the police, or in their methods.” He omitted, somehow, to mention that the cooperation of civilians was contrary to police regulations.
“In that case I can speak freely. But I want you to understand, please, that I tell you
