“Of course,” said Abbershaw slowly, “you were wrong.”
“In not pitching on von Faber as my first victim?” said Wyatt.
Abbershaw shook his head.
“No,” he said. “In setting out to fight a social evil single-handed. That is always a mad thing to do.”
Wyatt raised his eyes to meet the other’s.
“I know,” he said simply. “I think I am a little mad. It seemed to me so wicked. I loved her.”
There was silence after he had spoken, and the two men sat for some time, Abbershaw staring into the fire, Wyatt leaning back, his eyes half-closed. The thought that possessed Abbershaw’s mind was the pity of it—such a good brain, such a valuable idealistic soul. And it struck him in a sudden impersonal way that it was odd that evil should beget evil. It was as if it went on spreading in ever-widening circles, like ripples round the first splash of a stone thrown into a pond.
Wyatt recalled him from his reverie.
“It was a perfect murder,” he said, almost wonderingly. “How did you find me out?”
Abbershaw hesitated. Then he sighed. “I couldn’t help it,” he said. “It was too perfect. It left nothing to chance. Do you know where I have spent the last week or so? In the British Museum.”
He looked at the other steadily.
“I now know more about your family history than, I should think, any other man alive. That Ritual story would have been wonderful for your purpose, Wyatt, if it just hadn’t been for one thing. It was not true.”
Wyatt rose from his chair abruptly, and walked up and down the room. This flaw in his scheme seemed to upset him more than anything else had done.
“But it might have been true,” he argued. “Who could prove it? A family legend.”
“But it wasn’t true,” Abbershaw persisted. “It wasn’t true because from the year 1100 until the year 1603—long past the latest date to which such a story as yours could have been feasible, Black Dudley was a monastery and not in the possession of your family at all. Your family estate was higher up the coast, in Norfolk, and I shouldn’t think the dagger came into your possession until 1650 at least, when an ancestor of yours is referred to as having returned from the Papal States laden with merchandise.”
Wyatt continued to pace up and down the room.
“I see,” he said. “I see. But otherwise it was a perfect murder. Think of it—Heaven knows how many fingerprints on the dagger handle, no one with any motive—no one who might not have committed the crime, and by the same reasoning no one who might. It had its moments of horror too, though,” he said, pausing suddenly. “The moment when I came upon Miss Oliphant in the dark—I had to follow the dagger round, you see, to be in at the first alarm. I saw her pause under the window and stare at the blade, and I don’t think it was until then that I realized that there was blood on it. So I took it from her. It was an impulsive, idiotic thing to do, and when the alarm did come the thing was in my own hand. I didn’t see what they were getting at at first, and I was afraid I hadn’t quite killed him, although I’d worked out the blow with a medical chart before I went down there. I took the dagger up to my own room. You nearly found me with it, by the way.”
Abbershaw nodded.
“I know,” he said. “I think it was instinct, but as you came in from the balcony I caught a glimpse of something in your hand, and although I didn’t see what it was, I couldn’t get the idea of the dagger out of my mind.”
“Two flaws,” said Wyatt, and was silent.
The atmosphere in the pleasant room had become curiously cold, and Abbershaw shivered. The sordid glossy photograph lay upon the floor, and the pretty childish face with the expression of innocence which had now become so sinister smiled up at him from the carpet.
“Well, what are you going to do?”
It was Wyatt who spoke, pausing abruptly in his feverish stride.
Abbershaw did not look at him.
“What are you going to do?” he murmured.
Wyatt hesitated.
“There is a Dominican Foundation in the rocky valley of El Puerto in the north of Spain,” he said. “I have been in correspondence with them for some time. I have been disposing of all my books this week. I realized when von Faber passed into the hands of the police that my campaign was ended, but—”
He stopped and looked at Abbershaw; then he shrugged his shoulders.
“What now?” he said.
Abbershaw rose to his feet and held out his hand.
“I don’t suppose I shall see you again before you go,” he said. “Goodbye.”
Wyatt shook the outstretched hand, but after the first flicker of interest which the last words had occasioned his expression had become preoccupied. He crossed the room and picked up the photograph, and the last glimpse Abbershaw had of him was as he sat in the deep armchair, crouching over it, his eyes fixed on the sweet, foolish little face.
As the little doctor walked slowly down the staircase to the street his mind was in confusion. He was conscious of a strong feeling of relief, even although his worst fears had been realized. At the back of his head, the old problem of Law and Order as opposed to Right and Wrong worried itself into the inextricable tangle which knows no
