“He picked me up by arrangement a week later in Steyne Square. Then he gave me all the final particulars. I got down to Beardmore’s place soon after it was dark, and hid in the wood. He told me Mr. Beardmore generally walked through the wood every morning, and that I was to make myself comfortable for the night. I hadn’t been in the wood an hour when I had a fright. I heard somebody moving. I think it must have been a gamekeeper. He was a big fellow, and I only just got a glimpse of him.
“And I think that’s about all, gentlemen, except that the next morning the old fellow came in the wood and I shot him. I don’t remember much about it, for I was drunk at the time, having taken a bottle of whisky into the wood with me. But I was sober enough to get on to the bicycle, and I rode off. And I should have got away altogether, if it hadn’t been for the booze.”
“And that is all?” asked Parr, when the confession had been read over and the man had affixed a rough cross.
“That’s all, guv’nor,” said the sailor.
“And you don’t know who it was who employed you?”
“Not the faintest idea,” said the other cheerfully. “There’s one thing about him, though, I could tell you,” he said after a pause. “He kept using a word that I’ve never heard before. I’m not highly educated, but I’ve noticed that some men have favourite words. We had an old skipper who always used the word ‘morbid.’ ”
“What was the word?” asked Parr.
The man scratched his head.
“I’ll remember it and let you know,” he said, and they left him to his meditations, which were few, and probably not unpleasant.
Four hours after, the jailor took Ambrose Sibly some food. He was lying on his bed, and the jailor shook him by the shoulder.
“Wake up,” he said, but Ambrose Sibly never woke again.
He was stone dead.
And in the tin dipper, half-filled with water, which stood by his bed, and with which he had slaked his thirst, they found sufficient hydrocyanic acid to kill fifty men.
But it was not the poison which interested Inspector Parr so much as the little circle of crimson paper which was found floating on the top of the water.
XII
The Pointed Boots
Mr. Felix Marl sat behind the locked door of his bedroom, and he was engaged in a task which had the elements of unpleasant familiarity.
Twenty-five years before, when he was an inmate of the big French prison at Toulouse, he had worked in a bootmaker’s shop, and the handling of boots was an everyday experience. It is true his business had been to repair, and not to destroy. Today, with a razor-sharp knife, he was cutting to shreds a pair of pointed patent leather shoes which he had only worn three times. Strip by strip he cut the leather, which he then placed on the fire.
Some men live intensely and suffer intensely. Mr. Felix Marl was one of those who could crowd into a day the terrors of an aeon. In some manner a newspaper had got hold of the story of the footprint in Beardmore’s ground, and a new fear had been added to the many which confused and paralysed this big man. He was sitting in his shirt sleeves, the perspiration rolling down his face, for the fire was a big one and the room was super-heated.
Presently the last shred was thrown into the fire and he sat watching it grill and flame before he put away the knife, washed his hands and opened the windows to let out the acrid odour of burning leather.
It would have been better, he thought, if he had carried out his first resolution, and he cursed himself for the cowardice which had induced him to substitute his revolver for a fountain pen. But he was safe. Nobody had seen him leave the grounds.
With such men as he, blind panic and unreasoning confidence succeed one another, almost as a natural reaction. By the time he had descended his stairs to his little library he had almost forgotten that he was in any danger.
In the fading light of day he had written a conciliatory, even a grovelling letter, and had, as he believed, delivered it safely. Would it be found? He had another moment of panic.
“Pshaw!” said Mr. Marl, and dismissed that dangerous possibility.
His servant brought him a tea-tray and arranged it on a small table by the side of his desk, where the big man sat.
“Will you see that gentleman now, sir?”
“Eh?” said Mr. Marl, turning round. “Which gentleman?”
“I told you there was a man who wanted to see you.”
Marl remembered that his boot-destroying operation had been interrupted by a knock.
“Who is he?” he asked.
“I put his card on the table, sir.”
“Didn’t you tell him that I was engaged?”
“Yes, but he said he’d wait until you came down.”
The man handed him the card, and Mr. Marl reading it, jumped and turned a sickly yellow.
“Inspector Parr,” he said unsteadily. “What does he want with me?”
His shaking hand fingered his mouth.
“Show him in,” he said with an effort.
He had not met Inspector Parr either professionally or socially, and his first glance at the little man reassured him. There was nothing particularly menacing in the appearance of the red-faced detective.
“Sit down, inspector. I’m sorry I was busy when you came,” said Mr. Marl. When he was agitated his voice was almost birdlike in its thinness.
Parr sat down on the edge of the nearest chair, balancing his Derby hat on his knee.
“I thought I’d wait until you came down, Mr. Marl. I wanted to see
