We were confronted then, on the morning after our visit to the Three Cows, with the following position of affairs. The secret of a singularly deadly poison had been stolen, and in the process of the theft the inventor of the poison had disappeared, his dog had been killed, and the man who, according to his own story, had not only been his friend but had also been financing his experiments, had been murdered. The death of the constable was an extraneous matter, and therefore did not affect the position, save that it afforded proof, if further proof was needed, of the deadliness of the poison.
Sinclair and I, owing to the fact that we had come to Gaunt’s rooms, had been followed; and, of the two of us, I was regarded as the more dangerous. So much the more dangerous, in fact, that my death had been deliberately decided on under circumstances which our enemies imagined did not admit of failure.
They had clearly added Drummond to our list, probably, as he surmised, owing to the incident at Hatchett’s. And the fact that the head waiter knew him rendered his efforts to throw them off his track abortive. We were undoubtedly followed to the Three Cows, with the idea of inveigling us to Ashworth Gardens. MacIver was there simply and solely because he knew it was the pub in which the taxi-driver had been drugged the night before, and he hoped to pick up a thread to follow.
And there came our first query. Did MacIver recognise the two men, and did they recognise him? To the first of these questions we unhesitatingly answered—No. There was no reason that he should know them at all as far as we could see; and the fact that MacIver’s worst suspicions were at once concentrated on me rendered it less probable that he would notice them. To the other question we again answered—No, but with less certainty. It didn’t appear a very important one, anyway, but it struck us that it would be taking an unnecessary and dangerous risk on their part to carry on with their programme if they thought they were being watched. And human nature being what it is, they would, with their guilty conscience, if they had recognised MacIver, have assumed he was after them.
As far as we were concerned they didn’t care—in fact, they wanted to be recognised. They wanted us to assume that they didn’t know us—that our disguises were perfect. And so what more natural than that they should discuss things openly in our hearing? In fact, they had been very sure of themselves, had those two gentlemen.
All that was clear: it was over the subsequent events that there rested the fog of war. Why hang the poor little brute when obviously they had a supply of the poison? If they wished to kill him, that would have been a far surer and more efficacious method. And why the spiders?
We were holding a council of war, I remember, at which I met Peter Darrell and Algy Longworth for the first time, and we discussed those two points from every angle. And it was Drummond who stuck out for the simplest explanation.
“You’re being too deep, old lads,” he remarked. “The whole of this thing has been done with one idea, and one idea only—to frighten us. They think I’m a positive poop—a congenital whatnot. They intended to kill Stockton, whom they are afraid knows too much; and they intended to inspire in me a desire to hire two nurses and a bath-chair and trot up and down the front at Bournemouth. The mere fact that they have brought off a double event in the bloomer line doesn’t alter the motive.”
He rose and pressed the bell, and in a moment or two his butler entered.
“Did you take in those two parcels from Asprey’s last night, Denny?”
“I did, sir.”
“What time did they come?”
“About midnight, sir.”
“Who brought ’em?”
“A man, sir.”
“You blithering juggins, I didn’t suppose it was a tame rhinoceros. What sort of a man?”
“Don’t know that I noticed him particularly, sir. He just handed ’em in and said you’d understand.”
Drummond dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
“No help there,” he remarked. “Except as to time. Obviously they had everything prepared. As soon as they saw we were going to Ashworth Gardens, one of them came here, and the other followed us.”
“Granted all that, old bean,” said Toby. “But why hang rat face? that’s what beats me.”
Drummond lit a cigarette before replying.
“There’s a far more interesting point than that,” he remarked. “And I mentioned it last night. Who hanged him? There were people in that house before we got there: men don’t hang themselves as a general rule. Those people left that house before we arrived there, just as the man who tried to murder Stockton got there after we arrived there. And on one thing I’ll stake my hat: the latter gentleman did not come up the stairs, or I’d have heard him. If he didn’t come up the stairs he entered by some unusual method: presumably the same as that by which the others left, or else Toby would have seen them. And houses with unusual entrances always interest me.”
“There’s generally a back door,” said Algy Longworth.
“But only one staircase, laddie,” returned Drummond. “And the man I killed did not come up that staircase.
