He chuckled.

"Cranmere's own brother was actually deceived when we brought the two together, as a test," he went on. "Preston is a genius. He doesn't merely 'make up' to look like someone else; he doesn't, when he is made up, just impersonate the character; for the time he _is_ the man, he 'feels like him,' he says, he shares his views, he becomes his other ego. He has the advantage in this case of knowing Cranmere well, and he has, in consequence, excelled himself to-night. The way he has. .h.i.t off Cranmere's lisp is marvellous. Easterton, who meets Cranmere frequently, is at this moment in the hall arguing with Preston about land taxation and small holdings, under the impression that he is talking to Cranmere.

It really is rather amusing."

When I had expressed my astonishment, and we had talked for a minute or two, he suddenly grew serious.

"But remember, Mike," he said, laying his hand upon my shoulder, "n.o.body knows this--n.o.body but you and I. Preston has a.s.sured me that the success of our efforts to run the leaders of this gang to ground--he tells me he is sure there is a gang working together and playing into one another's hands very cleverly--will largely depend upon our discreetness and our secretiveness, also upon our tact and our knowledge of when to act. So not a word, mind; not a syllable even to Dulcie Challoner--have I your promise?"

Dulcie and I talked but little as we sped homeward through the darkness.

She seemed depressed, I thought, though she a.s.sured me that she had thoroughly enjoyed herself and was feeling quite well. I must say that the "mental atmosphere" of that party had affected me unpleasantly, though I could not have said precisely why.

On and on the car travelled, smoothly, almost noiselessly. Snow was falling--it had been falling for two hours, the chauffeur had told us before we started--though not very heavily. The night was quite still.

We had long pa.s.sed the tiny hamlets a mile or two from Newbury and were now on the five miles' stretch of winding road between there and Holt Stacey. Soon we pa.s.sed the sign-post close to Holt Stacey railway station. As we sped through the village some moments later the houses and cottages all wrapped in darkness seemed to spring forward into the light one after another as though to peer at us as we shot by.

Now Holt Stacey lay behind us, and only four miles remained. From the time we had left Newbury no vehicle of any kind had pa.s.sed us, nor any human being, nor had we overtaken any. Dulcie, nestling close to me in the warm, comfortable brougham, was more than half asleep. I too felt drowsy, and I fear that more than once my chin had dropped forward with a jerk. Suddenly the car swerved abruptly to the right. So tightly were the brakes applied at the same instant that we were both thrown forward almost on to the floor. The car lurched, rose up on one side, then as I instinctively threw my arms about Dulcie to protect her if possible from what seemed about to be a very serious accident, the car righted itself and stopped dead.

"Good heavens! What has happened?" I exclaimed, as the chauffeur, who had sprung off his seat, opened the door. Dulcie still lay in my arms, trembling with fear, though from the first she had not uttered a sound, or in the least lost her head.

"Someone lying in the road, sir," he answered, "drunk, I shouldn't wonder. He was half covered with snow, and I all but ran over him."

"Lying in the snow! Why, he'll die if he's left there," I exclaimed. "Go and have a look at him, and then come back to me."

Several minutes pa.s.sed, and the chauffeur did not return. Becoming impatient, I opened the door of the brougham, and called out. A moment later the man appeared. The electric torch he carried--one he used when occasion arose to examine the car in the dark--was still switched on.

The hand that held it trembled a little, and in the light which shone down inside the brougham I noticed that the chauffeur looked singularly pale.

"Could you kindly step out for a moment, please, sir?" he said in a curious tone.

Guessing that something serious must be amiss to prompt him to ask me to step out into the deep snow in my evening shoes, I got out at once, in spite of Dulcie's entreating me not to do so and get my feet soaked.

When I had shut the car door, and we had walked a few paces, the chauffeur stopped abruptly.

"Sir," he said in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

"Well, what?" I asked, also stopping.

"Sir--it's Churchill, the gardener. Poor fellow! It's awful! He's dead, sir, quite cold. He--he's been killed--_murdered_!"

CHAPTER XIII

THE BARON

Coming so soon after the robbery at Holt, the brutal murder of Sir Roland's head gardener created an immense sensation throughout both Berkshire and Hampshire--for the Holt Manor estate, though actually in Berkshire, is also upon the border of Hampshire. The London papers, too, devoted much s.p.a.ce to the matter, the problem they set their readers to solve being: whether the murder could have any bearing upon the robbery.

Some of the leading journals declared that both crimes must have been in some way related; others urged that this was most unlikely, and then proceeded to "prove" the accuracy of their own individual reasoning.

The man had been done to death in a peculiarly horrible manner. He had been hit upon the back of the head with some heavy implement--probably a "jemmy" the police said when the wound, with the wounds upon the forehead, had been examined beneath a microscope. The theory they held was that some person had crept up unheard behind the victim--as this could easily have been done with snow so thick upon the ground--stunned him with a blow upon the back of the head, and then despatched him outright by blows upon the forehead. No footsteps were anywhere visible, the falling snow having hidden them.

Churchill's movements during that afternoon had in part been traced.

Directly after taking to Dulcie the buckle he had found and obtaining her permission to absent himself for the afternoon, he had walked to Holt Stacey, and there caught the 4:05 train to Newbury. He had exchanged the time of day with the ticket-collector at Newbury, who had taken the half of his ticket. The return half had afterwards been found in the dead man's pocket. Where he had been, or what he had done, between 4:20--from the time he left Newbury station, on foot--and 6:10, when he had looked in at the "Dog and Clown" and had a drink and a chat with the landlord, was unknown. He had not told the landlord why he was in Newbury, or said anything concerning his movements in that town.

The fact of his having bought a return ticket showed that he had intended to return to Holt Stacey by train. But he had not gone back by train. The last train for Holt Stacey left Newbury at 9:11, and at 9:30 he had been seen by a seedsman who kept a shop in the town, and who knew Churchill well, standing in the High Street talking to an unknown man he had never seen before. After that, n.o.body appeared to have seen Churchill until--just before 10:30, at which time the inn at Holt Stacey closed--he had come into the inn and ordered a hot drink. n.o.body was with him then. He appeared, so the innkeeper said, to already have drunk to excess, and this had surprised the innkeeper, who knew him to be a temperate man, adding that that was the first time he had ever seen him even partially intoxicated. Incidentally Churchill had mentioned that "a gentleman had given him a lift from Newbury in his car." He had not said who the gentleman was--if a stranger or somebody he knew, or where he was going. Presumably the man in the car had branched off at Holt Stacey--for he had not put up there for the night. Had he been going on past Holt Manor he would, it was reasonable to suppose, have taken Churchill all the way, and dropped him at the gate.

Soon after 10:30 Churchill had left the inn, saying that he was about to walk home to Holt Manor, a distance of four miles. That was the last time he was known to have been seen alive. It was snowing when he set out.

Poor Dulcie was terribly cut up. I had always known her to be very partial to the old gardener, who remembered her as a baby, but until after his death I had not realized how deeply attached to him she really had been. What most distressed me was that she blamed herself, indirectly, for what had happened. Again and again did she declare to me that, had she not given him leave to take the afternoon off the tragedy would not have happened. In vain I tried to make her see the fallacy of her argument--she would not listen to reason.

A fortnight went by, and nothing was discovered. The secret of the murder remained even a greater mystery than the secret of the robbery.

True, I had my suspicions, but until I had some slight shreds of evidence to go upon it would, I knew, be futile to make known those suspicions. And it was because I suspected somebody of indirect, if not direct, connivance at Churchill's murder, that I became more and more distressed, indeed alarmed, at Dulcie's daily increasing affection for the woman Stapleton. Their friendship was now firmly established--at any rate, Dulcie's feeling of friendship for the widow. Whether the widow's feeling of friendship for Dulcie was actual or only apparent was, I thought, quite another matter.

"_Come at once. Urgent_:--_Jack_."

That telegram reached me on this afternoon, exactly two weeks after the murder, two weeks that I had spent at Holt Manor with Dulcie, during which time, I am bound to say, Aunt Hannah had revealed herself in quite a new light, being friendly, even affectionate in the extreme.

"Don't go--oh! don't go, Mike!" Dulcie cried out, suddenly clutching my arm, after reading the telegram which I had handed to her.

"But I must, darling," I exclaimed. "Jack wouldn't send me that wire if the matter were not really urgent. It has most likely to do with the robbery--I have told you that he is determined to find out who committed it, with the help of that detective friend of his, George Preston. It may even have to do with the other affair--or possibly with Jack being kept confined in the house in Grafton Street."

"I don't care what it has to do with--don't go, dearest--please don't, I ask you as a favour," and, bending over, she kissed me on the lips.

It was horribly hard to resist such an appeal, and yet I felt I should be a cur if Jack really needed me--and obviously he did--and I failed to go to him. And what would Dulcie think of me later if, through my giving way to her entreaty, some serious harm should befall my friend? Much as I loved her, I could not let her influence me in such a case; even if I did, it might in the end make her despise me.

"I would do anything in the world for you, sweetheart," I said, kissing her fondly. "You know that, as well as I do. I would grant you any favour provided--"

"Provided what?" she asked quickly as I paused.

"Provided that my doing so could have no harmful result. Prevent my going to Jack in such a crisis, and--"

I stopped abruptly. My tongue had, alas, outrun my discretion.

"Crisis? What crisis?" Dulcie burst forth, startled at my tone. "Oh, Mike, you are keeping something from me, you are deceiving me--don't say that you aren't, for I know you are!"

"Darling," I exclaimed, taking her in my arms, "I am not deceiving you--indeed, indeed I am not. I may have been wrong in using the word 'crisis.' What I meant was that, knowing that Jack and a friend of his are striving tooth and nail to track down the thieves who robbed this house, and seeing that I have promised to help Jack to the best of my ability, I feel that this urgent telegram of his means that something has come to light, that he has heard something or discovered some clue which makes it imperative that I should go to him at once. And I am going--now."

Quickly I released her. Then, fearing that further delay--added, possibly, to further persuasion on her part--might end by weakening my determination, I gave her a final kiss, and hurried out of the room.

Again I glanced at the telegram--

"_Come at once. Urgent.--Jack._"

Then I crumpled the paper and tossed it into the fire.

Having arrived at Paddington I went straight to Jack Osborne's hotel.

He had left word that, upon my arrival, I should be told to go to a house in Warwick Street, Regent Street, and there inquire for him.

It was George Preston's address. I hastened there in a taxi, and, as I rang the bell, I heard a clock strike six. Preston himself admitted me.