“I think so, sir,” assented the sergeant, courteously but with a quiet enjoyment of the situation. “Well, miss, I’ll be getting back now. I think I have everything I want.”
“You will excuse me a few minutes?” said Miss Whitmarsh, and the two callers were left alone.
“Parkinson,” said Carrados softly, as the door closed, “look round on the floor. There is no wad lying within sight?”
“No, sir.”
“Then take the lamp and look behind things. But if you find one don’t disturb it.”
For a minute strange and gigantic shadows chased one another across the ceiling as Parkinson moved the table-lamp to and fro behind the furniture. The man to whom blazing sunlight and the deepest shade were as one sat with his eyes fixed tranquilly on the unseen wall before him.
“There is a little pellet of paper here behind the couch, sir,” announced Parkinson.
“Then put the lamp back.”
Together they drew the cumbrous old piece of furniture from the wall and Carrados went behind. On hands and knees, with his face almost to the floor, he appeared to be studying even the dust that lay there. Then with a light, unerring touch he carefully picked up the thing that Parkinson had found. Very gently he unrolled it, using his long, delicate fingers so skilfully that even at the end the particles of dust still clung here and there to the surface of the paper.
“What do you make of it, Parkinson?”
Parkinson submitted it to the judgment of a single sense.
“A cigarette-paper to all appearance, sir. I can’t say it’s a kind that I’ve had experience of. It doesn’t seem to have any distinct watermark but there is a half-inch of glossy paper along one edge.”
“Amber-tipped. Yes?”
“Another edge is a little uneven; it appears to have been cut.”
“This edge opposite the mouthpiece. Yes, yes.”
“Patches are blackened, and little holes—like pinpricks—burned through. In places it is scorched brown.”
“Anything else?”
“I hope there is nothing I have failed to observe, sir,” said Parkinson, after a pause.
Carrados’s reply was a strangely irrelevant question.
“What is the ceiling made of?” he demanded.
“Oak boards, sir, with a heavy cross-beam.”
“Are there any plaster figures about the room?”
“No, sir.”
“Or anything at all that is whitewashed?”
“Nothing, sir.”
Carrados raised the scrap of tissue paper to his nose again, and for the second time he touched it with his tongue.
“Very interesting, Parkinson,” he remarked, and Parkinson’s responsive “Yes, sir” was a model of discreet acquiescence.
“I am sorry that I had to leave you,” said Miss Whitmarsh, returning, “but Mrs Lawrence is out and my father made a practice of offering everyone refreshment.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Carrados. “We have not been idle. I came from London to pick up a scrap of paper, lying on the floor of this room. Well, here it is.” He rolled the tissue into a pellet again and held it before her eyes.
“The wad!” she exclaimed eagerly. “Oh, that proves that I was right?”
“Scarcely ‘proves,’ Miss Whitmarsh.”
“But it shows that one of the shots was a blank charge, as you suggested this morning might have been the case.”
“Hardly even that.”
“What then?” she demanded, with her large dark eyes fixed in a curious fascination on his inscrutable face.
“That behind the couch we have found this scrap of powder-singed paper.”
There was a moment’s silence. The girl turned away her head.
“I am afraid that I am a little disappointed,” she murmured.
“Perhaps better now than later. I wished to warn you that we must prove every inch of ground. Does your cousin Frank smoke cigarettes?”
“I cannot say, Mr Carrados. You see … I knew so little of him.”
“Quite so; there was just the chance. And your father?”
“He never did. He despised them.”
“That is all I need ask you now. What time to-morrow shall I find you in, Miss Whitmarsh? It is Sunday, you remember.”
“At any time. The curiosity I inspire doesn’t tempt me to encounter my friends, I can assure you,” she replied, her face hardening at the recollection. “But … Mr Carrados——”
“Yes?”
“The inquest is on Monday afternoon…. I had a sort of desperate faith that you would be able to vindicate papa.”
“By the time of the inquest, you mean?”
“Yes. Otherwise——”
“The verdict of a coroner’s jury means nothing, Miss Whitmarsh. It is the merest formality.”
“It means a very great deal to me. It haunts and oppresses me. If they say—if it goes out—that papa is guilty of the attempt of murder, and of suicide, I shall never raise my head again.”
Carrados had no desire to prolong a futile discussion.
“Good-night,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Good-night, Mr Carrados.” She detained him a moment, her voice vibrant with quiet feeling. “I already owe you more than I can ever hope to express. Your wonderful kindness——”
“A strange case,” moralized Carrados, as they walked out of the quadrangular yard into the silent lane. “Instructive, but I more than half wish I’d never heard of it.”
“The young lady seems grateful, sir,” Parkinson ventured to suggest.
“The young lady is the case, Parkinson,” replied his master rather grimly.
A few score yards farther on a swing gate gave access to a field-path, cutting off the corner that the high road made with the narrow lane. This was their way, but instead of following the brown line of trodden earth Carrados turned to the left and indicated the line of buildings that
