“Now you can put your back against the door, Squire. We don’t want any visitors.”
From a tiny glass bottle which he drew from his pocket, the Chief Constable extracted one of the ill-omened darts.
“This is the one which wounded Miss Hawkhurst,” he explained, as he dropped it into a glass of water. “Now we’ll need to give it time.”
He stirred it round occasionally; and gradually a faint bluish tinge communicated itself to the water. Ardsley was scrutinising the glass with deep interest, but his face showed nothing of the thoughts in his mind.
“Now we add a drop of vinegar, Squire,” said Sir Clinton, suiting the action to the word.
As the vinegar mixed with the solution, Wendover saw a change in the tint—a pale red replaced the original blue.
“Now some washing soda, for a change,” said Sir Clinton, dropping in a crystal and swirling the liquid round in the glass. As he did so, the blue tinge returned to the solution.
Ardsley nodded approvingly.
“Litmus, obviously. That clinches it. You must be a bit of a chemist to have hit on that tip.”
Sir Clinton made no reply, but he cautioned Wendover to bear the test in mind.
“If that’s all you want, I’ll go back to Miss Hawkhurst,” Ardsley said, as soon as Sir Clinton ceased speaking.
“We’re going back to the Grange, now,” Sir Clinton explained. “If you need me, you’ve only to ring up.”
“I thought you were in a hurry,” Wendover said in some surprise when he found that Sir Clinton seemed to have nothing on hand on their return to the Grange. “You broke off your talk with Stenness on that excuse. Why not have finished it at the time, instead of trailing over there again later in the day?”
“I’m worried about Miss Hawkhurst, Squire; and I prefer to get my news direct from Ardsley rather than over the phone.”
“You didn’t get much out of him this morning,” Wendover complained. “And I can’t think why you put that man into the business at all. It seems to me tempting Providence. Why, he’s quite possibly the source of the original curare, for all you know; he’s one of the suspects.”
“He’s not on my list of suspects, Squire; and if he’s on yours, you may score him off straight away. That’s definite. As to my using him, who could do the work better? What would a country G.P. make of Miss Hawkhurst’s case? Nothing whatever! You can’t expect rural medicos to be the last word in the study of out-of-the-way poisons. It’s not reasonable to ask it.”
Wendover’s increasing disquietude found its relief in speech at last.
“I can’t see what your aim is in this affair, Clinton. You say you know the murderer. Why don’t you arrest him at once? You claimed to know him days ago; and yet you did nothing. And now you’ve let things drift; and the result has been this attack on Sylvia Hawkhurst. Why, you’re responsible for that! You were criminally careless with these poison darts, leaving them lying about for anyone to pick up.”
Sir Clinton made no defence. Instead, he turned Wendover’s vehemence into another channel.
“It’s easy to say ‘Arrest somebody!’ Suppose you were in my shoes, Squire, and you wanted to be absolutely on the safe side; whom would you arrest at this very moment?”
Under the spur of the direct question, Wendover had a flash of illumination.
“Ernest Shandon,” he said. “I’ve just been thinking over things, and I’ve seen one or two points in a fresh light. Who was it opened the window last night and so made it possible for the murderer to shoot into the room? Ernest Shandon! Who was out of the room when the shot was fired? Ernest Shandon! Where was he? In the winter-garden, which has a door opening close to the bank of rhododendrons in which the murderer hid himself. Who had access to that stock of curare in the museum? Ernest Shandon!”
Sir Clinton failed to repress a smile, though he did his best.
“And who was attacked himself, in the Maze? Ernest Shandon! And who was sitting with a nail in his boot on the public highway that afternoon when his brothers were killed? Ernest Shandon! Let’s complete the tale, you know, before we begin to talk about arrests. The real truth of the matter is that Ernest Shandon has annoyed you by his cowardice and his general selfishness, and, therefore, you think he’d be all the better for a hanging. You’re beginning to see red here, just as you saw red in Ardsley’s case.”
Wendover sullenly admitted his blunder.
“But there’s another person who ought to be under observation—young Hawkhurst,” he continued. “That young beggar seems to me hardly sane at times. Look at him this morning! That cerebrospinal affair has affected him far more than I supposed …”
He broke off, struck by a fresh idea.
“Is he the person you have your eye on, Clinton? I never thought of that! Now that might account for the thing that’s been puzzling me—the damned aimlessness of all the Whistlefield affair. It’s just the sort of thing a lunatic would do. And they say that in a sleepy sickness case, if it turns to homicidal mania, the creature may go for the nearest relations. Just what’s happened at Whistlefield! And it was he who put on the loudspeaker last night and so covered any noise he might have made in getting into position outside the window. I hadn’t thought of that before. And it was his airgun that I found in the rhododendrons.”
This time, Sir Clinton did not smile.
“I don’t mind admitting to you, Squire, that young Hawkhurst is one of my difficulties.”
Wendover returned to his original charge.
“Well, I can’t understand what you’re driving at, Clinton. On the face of things, it seems to me that you’ve gambled away that poor girl’s life merely to get a case that you can prove; and now you’re no nearer it than you were
