In this list certain names were not included—I had got so far when I happened to glance at the clock and started to my feet. My appointment with Jean was already overdue.
No sign of her when I reached the road, so I set off to walk slowly towards her house, thinking, thinking, thinking. Of course the man most of all to be suspected was her own cousin. And if he were in it, I knew that any person of common sense would warn me to beware of confiding in his only relatives in the island. But I felt sure I knew better than any person of mere common sense. Still, I could scarcely ask her to abet me in convicting the doctor. Then I must not show her the note book. And that meant a breach in our confidence at the very start.
I had walked on till I was approaching her house, and still there was no sign of her ahead, nor was there any conclusion in my mind. And then I chanced to look round and saw her hastening after me, about a couple of hundred yards away. I wheeled round and on the instant leapt to one of my typical haphazard decisions. I would simply show her the pocket book and see how she took it.
She had evidently been running and met me half cross and half laughing and divinely flushed after her stern chase.
“I’ve been chasing you for miles!” she cried. “Why ever didn’t you look round?”
“But I thought you were coming straight from home!”
“I never said so, and I wasn’t! I’ve been somewhere else first.”
There seemed to be a hint of something significant in these last words, but I was so eager to come to the point that I never paused to question her.
“I am dreadfully sorry,” I said, “but I was thinking so hard I never thought of looking round. I have got some news for you.”
Her eyes sparkled.
“What is it?” she cried.
“Bolton’s pocket book has been found among the rocks, and this was his last entry before he was killed.”
I handed her the book open at the place and watched her face as she read. And one thing her expression revealed beyond any possibility of doubt. She was utterly and completely taken aback, and for some moments simply stared at the jottings in dead silence. Then I saw a sudden gleam in her eye, and a moment later she turned to me and cried,
“This wasn’t written by Bolton!”
It was my turn to stare.
“Not written by Bolton!” I exclaimed. “Let me look at it again.”
Standing there in the middle of the windy road, we quite forgot the temperature, and a passing snow shower even whipped us unnoticed.
“Look!” she said. “The writing is thicker and blacker and a little bigger than the other entries.”
“It was evidently written with a different pencil, or with a blunt pointed pencil. A man writing with a short blunt stump naturally writes a little bigger and blacker. But look at the t’s and the r’s, and the capital P; in fact, look at all the letters. They are exactly the same type.”
“Of course anyone trying to copy another man’s hand would make his letters the same,” she retorted, “but the character isn’t the same. Can’t you see?”
“There is a slight difference,” I admitted, “but I really can’t honestly say I see any sufficient ground for putting this down as a fake. Besides, what do you suppose it is—a practical joke?”
“No, of course not. It was written by the real murderer to put people off the scent.”
I tried not to smile, but I am afraid I did.
“Another brilliant guess!” I said, and then hastened to add, “But a most ingenious one and quite possibly—very probably, in fact, you are right.”
But she saw through my compliments, and I felt rather than observed an instant change in her.
“Oh, you may be right,” she said, and handed me back the pocket book.
“Or wrong,” I replied, “but I mean to try and discover which.”
Instead of asking me what I meant to do, as I feared and expected, she walked by my side very thoughtfully and in silence. I gave her a moment or two to put the question which never came, and then changed the subject.
“And have you discovered anything?” I asked.
“Not discovered—only guessed,” she answered with a smile in her eyes, half defiant, half mischievous.
“And what have you guessed?”
“Oh, I won’t trouble you with more guesses. I must find something out first—something really convincing, like that note book.”
I was a little piqued, but I merely laughed and said,
“Well, we’ll see!”
By this time we were quite near the house.
“Won’t you come in and have lunch with us?” she asked.
The temptation was strong, but the scent seemed too warm to lose, and I said I must be back for lunch at home. We stopped, and as she looked at me I noticed in her eyes what first seemed to be doubt and anxiety and a moment later to become resolution.
“Mr. Merton,” she said; her voice rather low, “which ever of us is right, I think we must be getting near rather a critical point. Don’t you think you had better send off that wire to Captain Whiteclett?”
I shook my head.
“Not quite yet,” I said. “You see it’s a serious matter dragging my cousin out here unless one is quite certain he will be needed.”
“But then he may not be in time!”
“I must risk that. But you may rest assured I’ll wire the very instant I know it won’t be bringing him out on a wild goose chase.”
For an instant she was silent again, and then she suddenly said,
“I’m sure that writing was forged!”
It seemed to me that I read in her exclamation a kind of whipping up of her unbelief, as though she
