He must see Joan, and tell her what he suspected. She might well know some fact, of which he was ignorant, that would throw a clear light on the motive behind the crimes. But would she ever believe that Woodman had done it? Ellery realized that what to him seemed like certainty would seem to others only a guess, and that he had not merely no proof but actually no evidence to support his assumptions. What evidence there was told the other way. Still, this did not shake his assurance. He must make Joan see the case as he had come to see it. Then they could seek together for the proof.
As soon as Ellery had breakfasted, he set off for Liskeard House to find Joan. They must get to work at once.
Joan, too, had spent a good part of the night thinking; but her thoughts had brought her no nearer to a solution of the mystery surrounding the murders. There was literally not one, of all those who seemed to be concerned, who could, in her judgment, have been the murderer. She was reduced to the supposition that it must be some outsider—someone whom they had not even dreamed so far of connecting with the crimes.
But Joan’s thoughts, unlike Ellery’s, persistently wandered from the problem which she had set herself to solve. She kept thinking of the future—of the thing that was dearest to the heart of the old man lying at death’s door. It was not the money: it was the direction of the great dramatic enterprise which he alone had built up. He had set his heart, she knew, on passing on, not merely his fortune, but the headship of the Brooklyn Corporation to one of his own blood, one who could carry on the work he had set himself to do. Whom would he now put in the place which Prinsep had lately occupied? He might, indeed, die without the strength to make a change; but Joan did not believe that he would. It seemed to her inconceivable that he would leave matters so that the bulk of his fortune, and with it the control of the Brooklyn Corporation, would pass to her stepfather, who had manifestly neither the will nor the special capacity to carry on the work. She was convinced that Sir Vernon would change his will; and she could see but one man whom he was now likely to make heir to his wealth and position. Carter Woodman had the talent and the knowledge to run the Corporation as a business, if not as an artistic success. Would Sir Vernon put Woodman in Prinsep’s place? Joan hated the very idea; for she believed in the Brooklyn Corporation as an artistic venture, and she had always somehow both disliked and distrusted Carter Woodman. She would have found it difficult to give a definite reason for her dislike, and she admitted that she was perhaps unfair; but there it was. She hoped Carter would not get the job, and she was sure that, however successful he might be commercially, his accession to power would put an end to all hope of artistic success. Still, she told herself, it was no business of hers, and she would certainly not try to influence Sir Vernon in any way. She supposed he would make Woodman his heir; for there was no one else.
Against her will, the thought of Ellery came into her mind. He would be, would he not?—she seemed to be arguing with a nonexistent adversary—just the man to carry on Sir Vernon’s great artistic enterprises. Joan found herself building up quite a romance on the basis of Robert Ellery’s succession to control of the great Brooklyn enterprise. How well he would do it! And then she reminded herself sharply that she had no right to entertain such ideas, and that, in any case, she certainly could not say a word on Bob’s behalf to Sir Vernon. No, Carter Woodman would get the job. Joan sighed as she resigned herself to the inevitable. But despite her good resolutions, she was still thinking what an excellent successor to Sir Vernon Robert Ellery would make, when she was told that he was waiting to see her. She brushed the thought she had been entertaining out of her mind, and, dressing hastily—for she had breakfasted in bed—went down to see him.
“Well, my dear, what news?” he asked.
“My dear Bob, I’ve had a beastly night, and I feel utterly washed out. And my thoughts keep on going round and round in a circle.”
“Poor darling,” said Ellery. “You are having a time.”
“And yet, Bob, it’s odd how little it all matters now I have you.”
“I must give you a kiss for saying that, my dear. And I must try to live up to it.”
“Dear boy,” said Joan, and then for a few minutes they managed to get along without the need for words. Joan was the first to rouse herself. “My dear Bob,” she said, “this is a fine way of wasting time. I thought our job was to find out who did it.”
“My dear child, I’ve been thinking all the time. It’s wonderful how putting my head on your shoulder clears my brain. Now I’m ready to behave like a real scientific detective.”
“I think you’ll do it
