too. I don't know why, and I don't know what for, but I'm jolly well certain who the party is, b 'gad; and it's a howlin' eye-opener, I give you my word! Wait a bit!"
He got up suddenly, walked to the door, opened it a foot or so, peeped out, then reclosed it and walked back to his seat. He poured out a third brandy, and drank it almost neat this time, then put his elbows upon the table, and, leaning forward, looked straight into Cleek's eyes.
"Barch, I've discovered something," he said in a lowered voice. "My father's playing a double game. He's a damned old two-faced hypocrite, that's what, and I've found him out at last!"
The cigar dropped suddenly from Cleek's fingers, and he ducked down in quest of it. He simply had to have some excuse to cover up the state of his feelings, or they would have got the better of him. A while ago he had said to himself that the fellow was despicable enough to implicate his own parents if it were necessary to save his skin; but even then he had only half believed it; now, however, he knew, and a fierce indignation bit into the very soul of him.
The worm had suddenly developed into a viper.
He went on groping for the dropped cigar. He might have found it at once had he chosen to do so, but he did not. It needed a moment or two to whip his savage desires into subjugation, to get himself well in hand again that he might face this unnatural son without giving way to the temptation to thrash him; and all the while his head was whirling with the crushing recollections that were crowding into it.
If it were worth his while—to save his own skin, to divert suspicion from himself—— Well, was it not worth his while now? The chase was narrowing, and perhaps he knew it—one could not be certain what such a man would find means of discovering. Perhaps he knew of the unearthing of the buried clothing. Perhaps he knew that there was proof the murderer had been traced to Wuthering Grange, and knowing, realized the necessity for diverting suspicion from himself, if he were guilty? But, guilty or innocent, principal or accessory, this one thing was certain: last night a murder had been committed; last night a dead man had been spiked to the wall in true Apache fashion; and this Mr. Harry Raynor, who was casting slurs upon his own father, was hand and glove with the Apache queen!
CHAPTER TWENTY
"HOW SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH"
Cleek found his cigar at last, and rose with it in his hand, leaving young Barch to finish his story in his own inimitable way.
"Yes," he continued, "what I call a regular facer for me. I was swindled into going away by a forged letter, which I swear he wrote himself. Recollect, don't you, that when you came to meet me at the ruin, I told you I'd suddenly been called away? Well, so I had. While I was waiting there at the ruin for you to get shot of that muff Geoff Clavering and come to join me, up walks the pater and hands me a letter—a typewritten letter, mark you—with word that a messenger had just brought it. Now listen to this closely, Barch! Last January some fool of an editor suggested to my pater that he should write a series of articles upon the proper cultivation of hot-house fruits for his tomfool paper, and said that typewritten copy was absolutely necessary. Out goes the pater and buys a typewriter, and engages a girl to operate it. Got her from some typewriting school in town, and a rippin' fine little girl she was, too! Name, Katie Walters. Pretty as a picture and lively as a cricket. Well, Katie and I became jolly good pals. Pater found it out, and then just what you might have expected happened. I got a lecture, and Katie got the sack and was packed off to town before I could get a private word with her. Now, the letter my father handed me this afternoon was supposed to come from that girl."
"And didn't?"
"No, it didn't. It asked me to run up to town and meet her just outside the typewriting school when the day's work was over. I went, but I didn't do exactly as I'd been asked. I suppose the party that wrote it hoped that I'd wait there until dark, and that when she didn't come out I'd come to the conclusion that I'd missed her, and, being in town, would probably go somewhere else and make a night of it, as I most likely should have done under ordinary circumstances. But I didn't feel like waiting round for that bally school to close; so as soon as I got there, I walked upstairs and asked to see her."
"Humph! And she wasn't there?"
"No, she wasn't. And what's more, she hadn't been there for weeks and weeks. Had got a position up in Scotland, and is going to be married to a bank clerk next month."
"Oho!" said Cleek, "I see! I see!"
He walked over to the other side of the room, where there was a huge potted azalea on an ebony pedestal. He had admired and he had examined that azalea earlier in the evening, so it was, perhaps, only natural that he should be attracted by it now. Still, for once in a way, it was not the blossoming beauty of the plant that lured him to it, much as flowers always had and always would appeal to him. He could see the trend of young Raynor's tale now, the dim, shadowy outline of the argument he was putting forth, the suspicion he was endeavouring to lead; and he was afraid that something in his face or his eyes might betray the true state of his feelings if he remained there in the bright light for the man to study him. The big azalea offered the refuge of shadow. He walked there and stood in the shade of it, and began idly poking at the earth in the huge pot.
"Naturally, dear boy," he went on, "when you heard that you knew that you had been taken in."
"So I did, on the instant," said young Raynor, tackling yet a fourth glass of brandy. "It was as plain as the nose on your face that somebody had tried to spoof me; somebody had an interest in sending me off to town on a wild-goose chase and getting me out of this neighbourhood to-night, and that that somebody hadn't reckoned upon my doing what I did, and didn't know about my having promised you to take you to see Mignon de Varville, when that blithering letter intervened. And speaking of that— I say, Barchie, we'll go to-night, if you like—eh, what?"
"Sorry, dear boy," said Cleek, whose intention was to get out on the Common to-night and test the truth of Geoff Clavering's story; "sorry, but I'm afraid we'll have to put that off until to-morrow. Thinking you weren't coming back in time, I arranged with the ladies for an evening of bridge; so, if you don't join us, you'll have to pay your respects to 'Pink Gauze' to-night without me. And, by the way, how did you get that bit of pink gauze, old chap? Any particular significance attached to it?"
"Lord, no! Bit of gauze scarf she wore the other night—always wears pink, by the way—caught in my watch chain. Tore in gettin' loose, and I kept the bit as a memento."
"Ah, I see. Well, get on with the other subject; I'm immensely interested. As soon as you'd found out that Katie What's-her-name couldn't have written the letter, and that you'd been deceived by somebody, then what?"
"Why, then I put back home by the first possible train. I had my suspicions—yes, rather—so I came back to prove them true."
"And did you?"
"Ah, didn't I? Nobody knew of my affair with Katie outside of my father, and my father has a typewriter ready to hand, and typewriters don't betray anybody's 'fist.' I went to the lodgekeeper. No messenger had passed him to-day. I went to Hawkins and Hamer. No messenger had brought any letter that they knew of to the house. I couldn't ask Johnston, because this is his evening off; but no doubt that when I do ask him he'll say the same. Well, now, you put all those things together, Barch, and see for yourself what they make. As nobody but my father knew anything about the girl, and nobody gave him a letter, and he has a typewriter ready to hand, why there you are. He wrote the letter, that's what. And if he wrote it to get me
