Suddenly there came a knocking on the great front door. This knocking was not loud, yet it seemed to the old man the more terrible for that. For there is always something terrible about a knock upon a door.
For a full minute he strove to leave the shelter of the little, cheerful, glowing room. At last he succeeded, struggling through the beastly mysteries of the dimly lighted hall to open with trembling hands the great oak door.
Anthony stepped over the threshold; stripped off dripping cap and mackintosh.
“A dirty night, Poole,” he said.
“It is indeed, sir! Indeed it is, sir!” The old man’s voice was hysterical with relief.
Across the hall to them came Sir Arthur, sturdy, benign, hair as smoothly brushed as ever.
“Oh, it’s you, is it, Gethryn?” he said. “I wondered who was knocking. You must have very pressing business to bring you up here on a night like this. Aren’t you wet?”
“Nothing to speak of. I wanted to talk with you. It’s important—and urgent.”
Sir Arthur grew eager. “My dear boy, of course. Where shall we go? Billiard-room?”
“All right.”
They turned, but before they had crossed the hall,
“Tell you what,” Anthony said, “the study’d be better. Not so near the servants, you know.”
“You’re right,” Sir Arthur agreed.
The study had that queer stillness which comes to a room at one time in constant use and then suddenly deserted save for the morning activities of a servant with duster and broom. It had an air of almost supernatural lifelessness, increased, perhaps, by the fact that now everything was in its accustomed place; the same pictures on the walls; the table; the chairs; the very curtains cutting off the alcove at the far end of the room hanging in the old slightly disordered folds.
A silence fell upon both men while they found chairs and drew them up to the table, under the light.
Sir Arthur spoke first. “Out with it, now, Gethryn. You’ve excited me, you know.” He rubbed his hands. “I’ve always thought you’d do something; go one better than those damn fools of policemen!”
Anthony leant back in his chair. “This,” he said, “is a most unusual business. I said so at the beginning, and, by God, I say so now! You might say that I have solved the mystery. After I’ve told you, that is. And in another way, as you’ll see, it’s more of a puzzle than ever.”
Sir Arthur leant forward. “Go on, man, go on! Do you mean to say you actually know who killed John?”
“I do not.” Anthony laid his head against the back of his chair and closed his leaden, burning eyes.
Sir Arthur started to his feet. A crash of thunder drowned his words. Followed a zigzag of lightning so vivid as to seem more a stage-effect than an outburst of nature. Outside, the rain fell heavily, solidly—a veil of water. The furious blast of wind which had come hard on the heels of the great peal died away in a plaintive moan.
Anthony opened his eyes. “What did you say? Before that barrage, I mean.”
Sir Arthur paced the room. “What did I say?” he exploded. “I said that if you hadn’t found out who did it, I couldn’t see the use of coming here and gabbling about mystery. Damn it, man, we’re not in a two-shilling novel! We’ve got to get Deacon off, that’s what we’ve got to do! And find the murderer! Not sit here and play at Holmes and Watson. It’s silly, what we’re doing! And I expected great things of you, Gethryn!”
“That,” Anthony said placidly, “was surely foolish.”
Sir Arthur made impatient sounds in his throat; but lessened the pace of his prowling. Under the graying hair his broad forehead was creased in a tremendous frown.
Anthony lit a cigarette. “But I may yet interest you,” he went on. “You said, I think, that you wished to lay your hands on the murderer.”
“I did. And by God I meant it!”
Anthony looked up at him. “Suppose you sit down and then I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Sit down!” Sir Arthur shouted. “Sit down! God above, you’ll be telling me to keep calm next!” He flung himself into his chair. “Here I am then. Now get on!” He buried his face in his hands; then looked up to say: “You must forgive me, Gethryn; I’m not myself. I’ve been more on edge the last few days—a lot more—than I’ve let anyone see. And tonight, somehow, my nerves have gone. And when you came with news I thought it meant that you’d caught the real murderer and that the boy would get off—and—and everything!”
“I was going to tell you,” Anthony said, “that the murderer of John Hoode will never be caught. To get him is impossible. Please understand that when I say impossible I mean it.”
“But why, man? Why?” cried Sir Arthur.
“Because,” said Anthony slowly, “he doesn’t exist.”
“What?” Sir Arthur was on his feet again at a bound astonishing in its agility.
Anthony lay back in his chair. “I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!” he said plaintively. “You know, you’re very violent tonight. I can’t talk if you will jump about so.”
The elder man groaned apology and sat again in his chair. His eyes, bewildered, sought Anthony’s.
Raising his voice to carry above the increasing roar of the storm, Anthony said: “Sorry if I seem too mysterious. But you must let me elucidate in my own way. Here goes: I have said that the murderer of John Hoode doesn’t exist. I don’t mean that the murderer’s dead or that Hoode committed suicide. I mean that John Hoode was never killed; is not, in fact, dead.”
Sir Arthur’s lips moved, but no sound came from them. His chair was outside the circle of light and it was by the vivid violet illumination of a quivering glare of lightning that Anthony saw
