“Damn it all!” he went on, after a moment’s silence, “in any other circumstances I’d be quite willing to bow to your vastly greater experience, Gethryn. And to Margaret’s womanly intuition and all that sort of thing. But this is a bit too much. When you get such a lot of circumstantial and presumptive evidence as there is against this man Deacon and then add to it the fact that his fingerprints were the only ones on the weapon the other feller was killed with, it does seem insane to blither: ‘He couldn’t have done it! Just look at his sweet expression!’ and things like that!”
“I dare say,” Anthony said. “But then Miss Warren and I are so psychic, you see.”
“But the fingerprints, man! They—”
Anthony became sardonic. “Ah, yes! Those eternal fingerprints. Hastings, you’re an incorrigible journalist. Somebody says ‘fingerprint’ to you, you shrug—and the case is over. The blunt instrument bears the thumb-mark of Jasper Standish, ergo Jasper’s was the hand which struck down the old squire. It’s so simple! why trouble any more? Hang Jasper! Hang him, damn him, hang him!”
“But look here, that’s not—”
Anthony lifted his hand. “Oh, yes, yes. I know what you’re going to say. And I know I’m talking like a fool. The fingerprint system is wonderful; but its chief use is tracing old-established criminals. If you consider the ingenuity exercised by this murderer in everything else, doesn’t it strike you as queer that he should leave the damning evidence of fingermarks on only one thing, and that the actual weapon? Why, he might as well have stuck his card on Hoode’s shirtfront!”
Hastings looked doubtful. “I see what you’re driving at,” he said, “but I’m not convinced. Not yet, anyhow. And we’ve rather got away from Belford. Not that there’s any more to say, really. He merely struck us as being rather too scared.”
“What you really mean, I think,” said Anthony, “is that in your opinion Belford was very likely in it with Deacon.”
Margaret laughed. “That’s got you, Jack. You shouldn’t funk.”
Anthony said: “Let us leave ferret-face for the moment. Was there no one else you thought behaved suspicious-like?”
Margaret fingered the notebook in her lap. Hastings looked at her.
“You shouldn’t funk, Maggie,” he said.
“Pig!” said Margaret. “And don’t call me Maggie! It’s disgusting!”
“What is all this, my children?” Anthony asked.
Margaret looked up at him. “It’s only that I told this person that Miss Hoode made me uncomfortable.”
“You’ve watered it down a good bit,” Hastings laughed.
“Well, all I meant was that she seemed so contradictory. Not in what she said, you know, but in the way she looked and—and behaved. It was funny, that feeling I had. At first I thought she wasn’t suffering over her brother’s death, but was just worn out with fear and with trying to—to hide something. And then after that I began to think she was sorry after all, and that all the queer things about her were due to grief. And then after that again I sort of half went back to my first ideas. That’s all. You must think I’m mad, Mr. Gethryn.”
“I think,” said Anthony, “that you’re a remarkable young woman. You ought to set up in the street of Baker or Harley, or both.” His tone was more serious than his words; Margaret blushed.
“Did they,” asked Anthony, after a pause, “exhibit the wood-rasp at the ’quest?”
Hastings nodded. “And a nasty weapon it must have made, too.”
“I must get a look at it somehow,” Anthony said. Then added, half-aloud: “Now, why does that mark worry me?”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Anthony stretched himself. “Enough for today, children. Hastings, there is a lovely lady who wishes to visit your flat, and this tonight. She is the sister of our old friend J. Masterson. I promised she could see him if she went up to town this evening.”
“Of course. J. Masterson, by the way, is all right. Temperature much lower; though he’s very weak still, of course. Does nothing but sleep. Doctor saw him again this morning, and says his trouble is really nothing worse than flu, aggravated by inattention and complicated nervous thingumitights due probably to shell-shock.”
“I see. It’ll be all right about his sister seeing him this evening?”
“Of course.” Hastings’s smile was replaced by a blank sort of look. “Er—by the way, if this lady lives down here, perhaps I had—could drive her up now, what?”
“I was going to ask whether you would,” Anthony said, after a pause, “but I’ve changed my mind. Don’t look too relieved.” His reasons for this sudden change of plan were mixed; it is certain they were not purely philanthropic.
“I gather, then,” said Hastings, “that having left a competent subordinate to take down the dregs of the inquest, the lady Margaret and I may now get back to town.”
They descended to the waiting car. Before it began to move,
“Miss Warren,” said Anthony, “would you be so kind as to have that report of this morning’s proceedings typed by someone and sent down to me here tomorrow; it’ll be so much better than the public ones.”
“I’ll do it myself at once,” said Margaret.
The car moved forward. Anthony waved his thanks, turned on his heel and reentered the inn.
IV
Within half an hour he was in Lucia’s drawing-room. Outside the gate was his big red car.
Lucia kept him waiting barely two minutes. When she came he noticed with irritation the schoolboyish unruliness of his heart. There was for him some new, subtle quality in her beauty today. Something dark and wonderful and rather wild.
She gave him her hand. “I heard the car. I haven’t kept you waiting, have I?” she asked.
Anthony shook his head. She glanced curiously round the room.
“No,” he said. “Hastings hasn’t come. He had to get back. That’s my car outside.
