“This is Sir Clinton Driffield, Miss Hawkhurst,” Wendover hastened to say, when he remembered that they had not met in the afternoon. Sir Clinton bowed to the girl and then, with a word of apology, he turned to Wendover.
“Got the stuff?” he demanded; and his face cleared when Wendover held up the little earthenware pot. A glance at Ardsley confirmed that it was the right thing; and Sir Clinton seemed to pay no further attention to it at the moment.
“I’m afraid I disturbed your uncle, Miss Hawkhurst. He was busy in the study, and I was rather loath to interrupt him; but he very kindly came out at once.”
Ernest, in the background, fumbled for a moment with his eyeglasses.
“I was very busy,” he admitted. “But of course I wasn’t so busy that I couldn’t stop. In fact, I was just turning over papers and going through the safe with Stenness. It wasn’t really important, or at least not so important that it couldn’t be put aside for a time, and Sir Clinton said he wasn’t going to stay more than a few minutes. So I just left things, of course. I’d just been looking over Roger’s will. We happened to come across it on the top of a pile of things in the safe. I couldn’t understand it—to tell you the truth. These lawyers are terrible fellows for putting in long words—like ‘hereinafter’ and ‘heritable’ and ‘moveable’ and ‘accretion,’ and so on. And all about ‘survivor or survivors’ and ‘beneficiaries’ and a lot of complicated things besides. If it hadn’t been for Stenness I don’t think I could have made out what it was all about.”
He blinked helplessly at the group, and then continued with a tinge of pride in his tone.
“Roger made me one of his trustees. Neville was another of them. And there’s a third, the head of his firm of lawyers, I think, or at any rate, a lawyer.”
Then, in a rather discouraged voice:
“I suppose that’ll mean a lot of bother—signing papers and all that sort of thing.”
Sir Clinton waited patiently for the end of Ernest’s speech; and then he came to the point at once.
“If you’re an executor that simplifies matters, Mr. Shandon. I want to take away this article here”—he indicated the pot in Wendover’s hand—“but only for a day or two, probably. You’ll get it back again in due course. It’s only a loan, you understand.”
Ernest evidently felt the dignity of his new position. He put out his hand for the pot, examined it carefully through his glasses, then handed it over to Sir Clinton, though with a certain reluctance.
“Have I any right to part with it, Stenness? You know what the will says.”
“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, Mr. Shandon,” the secretary reassured him. “Besides, if the Chief Constable wants it in connection with this afternoon’s affair”—he glanced interrogatively at Sir Clinton—“I’ve no doubt he could get power to take it, whether you want to give it up or not.”
Ernest seemed to feel that he had got into deeper waters than he cared about.
“Well, if Stenness says that, I suppose it’s all right. He understood the will and he ought to know. He explained it all to me very carefully just a few minutes ago, so he knows what’s what. I could understand him all right. Why can’t lawyers use plain language like Stenness, instead of wrapping it all up in ‘hereinafters’ and ‘aforesaids’? It’s a stupid sort of way to write. I can’t think what they do it for.”
Rather to Wendover’s surprise, Sir Clinton showed no great eagerness to be gone. He pulled from his pocket the tin box which had been found in the Maze and slowly removed the cover.
“You’re an expert with airguns, I think, Mr. Hawkhurst?” he asked pleasantly, as though appealing to an authority. “Would you mind having a look at these things and telling me what you make of them? Don’t touch the points,” he added quickly. “They’re very dangerous.”
Arthur Hawkhurst had been listening with a frown to Sir Clinton’s negotiations for the pot of curare; but he seemed to be flattered by the Chief Constable’s direct appeal to him. He came forward, took the box in his hand, and examined the contents minutely.
“May I take one out to look at it?”
“Of course—but be careful,” Sir Clinton agreed.
Arthur removed one of the darts and inspected it.
“They seem to be just ordinary-pattern airgun darts. They’d fit any of the guns we have. But someone seems to have been monkeying with them—boring holes in them and filling them up with some dirt or other. And the feathering’s all filthy, too.”
He completed his examination and handed the box back to Sir Clinton.
“Anybody else claim to be an expert?” asked the Chief Constable.
Sylvia looked at the tiny missiles with a shudder.
“They’re just ordinary darts so far as I can see,” she said. “And was it one of these things that killed my uncles? They seem such harmless little things. I’ve fired them often and often at targets myself. One would never dream they could be deadly.”
Sir Clinton closed the box and put it down on the mantelpiece behind him. He seemed suddenly to have been struck by a fresh idea.
“You said ‘any of the guns we have,’ Mr. Hawkhurst. I’d like to know how many airguns you have on the premises.”
Arthur looked at him distrustfully.
“I can’t tell you on the spot,” he admitted, grudgingly. “We have half a dozen that I could lay my hands on; but we’ve got more than that lying about somewhere or other. They get left in odd places. The gardeners sometimes use them for shooting rats for amusement and so on, and one never knows where the guns are till one asks for them.”
Sir Clinton seemed rather taken aback.
“You seem to have a regular armoury,” he said.
“I’m keen on airguns,” Arthur explained. “You’re not going to take them away, are you?”
Sir Clinton waved the suggestion aside at once.
“Of course not. I only asked
