The Chronicles of Addington Peace/The Mystery of the Jade Spear
VIII
THE MYSTERY OF THE JADE SPEAR
“Are you Inspector Peace, sir?”
He looked what he was, a gardener's boy, and he stood on the platform of Richmond Station regarding us with a solemn, if cherubic, countenance. The little inspector nodded his head as he felt in his pocket for the tickets.
“I have a cab waiting for you, sir.”
“Are you from the Elms?”
“Yes, sir. Miss Sherrick sent me to meet you, having heard as you were coming.”
We walked up the steps to the roadway, climbed into the cab, and, with the boy on the box, dragged our way up the steep of the narrow street, past the Star and Garter (the hostelry of ancient glories), and so for a mile until, at a word from our youthful conductor, the cab drew up at a wicket-gate in a fence of split oak. As we stepped out a girl swung open the gate and stood confronting us.
She was a tall and graceful creature, with the delicacy of the blonde colouring a beautiful face. There was fear in her blue eyes, a fear that widened and fixed them; and a tremor of the full red lips that told of a great calamity.
“Inspector Addington Peace?”
“Yes, Miss Sherrick.”
There was that about the little inspector which ever invited the trust of the innocent, and also, to be frank, no inconsiderable proportion of the guilty, to their special disadvantage. I have noticed a similar confidence inspired by certain of the more famous doctors. So I was not surprised when Miss Sherrick walked up to him, and laid her hand on his arm, with a confident appeal in her eyes.
“Do you know they have arrested him?” she said.
“I had not heard. What is his name?”
“Mr. Boyne.”
“The man who found the body.”
“Yes. The man I intend to marry.”
I liked that sentence. It was stronger than any protestations of his innocence that she could have made. Peace marked it, too, for he smiled, watching her with his head to one side in his solemn fashion.
“You cannot think he is guilty,” she said quietly. “You are too clever for that, Inspector Peace.”
“My dear young lady, at two o'clock I heard that a Colonel Bulstrode, of The Elms, Richmond, had been stabbed to death in a road near his house. That was the single fact telegraphed to Scotland Yard. Taking my friend here, I caught the 2.35 from Waterloo Station. It is now half-past three. As you will observe, my work has not yet commenced.”
“I sent the boy to meet you. I wished you to hear my story before you saw—the police up at the house. I should like to tell you all I know.”
“That will, doubtless, be very valuable,” said the little inspector. “Can you find us a place where we shall not be disturbed?”
For answer she led the way through the wicket-gate. A couple of turns and the winding walk brought us to an open space in the laurels and rhododendrons. On the further side was a garden-bench, and there we seated ourselves, waiting, with great anxiety on my part at least, for further details of the tragedy.
“My father was a widower,” said Miss Sherrick, “and when he died he left as my guardians and trustees my mother's two brothers, Colonel Bulstrode and Mr. Anstruther Bulstrode. Colonel Bulstrode, who had been in the Indian Staff Corps, had retired the year before my father's death, and taken this house. It was with him that I went to live. Richmond suited him, for he could spend the day at his London club and yet be home in plenty of time for dinner.
“My uncle Anstruther was also an Anglo-Indian. He had been for many years a planter in Ceylon. It was on the Colonel's advice that he took a house near us when he came home this spring.
“I first met Mr. Boyne last Christmas, when we were skating on some flooded meadows by the Thames. He is a lawyer, and, though he is doing well, is by no means a rich man. Unfortunately, I am an heiress, Inspector Peace.”
“I understand, Miss Sherrick.”
“Colonel Bulstrode expected me to make what he called a first-rate marriage. Mr. Boyne and I had been engaged for two weeks, and at last we decided to tell the Colonel. We knew there would be trouble, but there was nothing to be gained by continued postponement. Mr. Boyne made an appointment with him for one o'clock to-day.
“The morning seemed as if it were never to end. As the hour approached I could wait in my room no longer. I slipped out of a side door into the upper garden, which lies at the further side of the house. I wandered about for some time in great misery. When I heard the stable clock chime the half-hour, I started back to the house. It must have been decided between them one way or the other.”
“I had reached the drive and was walking up to the front door when I saw Cullen, the butler, come running out of the Wilderness—as we call the shrubberies where we now are—and so across the lawn towards me. He was in an excited state, waving his arms and shouting. Cullen is so stout and respectable that I could only conclude that he had gone mad. When he was some twenty yards off, he caught sight of me, and slunk away towards the front door as if trying to avoid me.
“'What is the matter, Cullen?' I called to him.
“He slackened his pace, and finally stopped, with his eyes staring at me in an odd fashion.
“You come in with me, miss,' he stammered. 'It's no mischief of your making. Eh, eh, but it's ugly work—black and ugly work.'
“'What do you mean, Cullen?' I said as boldly as I could, for his manner frightened me.
“The colonel has come by an accident, miss, down by the wicket-gate. I was going for a doctor.'
“I did not wait to hear more. I was very fond of my guardian, Mr. Peace. He had a hot temper, but to me he had ever been kind and considerate. As I started, however, Cullen came panting up and tried to turn me back, waving his hands. Lunatic or not, I did not mean to let him frighten me. So I avoided him, and set off running across the grass to the Wilderness gate—the one through which we have just come. I had almost reached it when I met Mr. Boyne. I was surprised, for I thought he had already gone home. Beyond him I could see the gate, with two of our gardeners standing on the further side and talking earnestly together.
“I asked Mr. Boyne what was the matter, and for answer he took me by the arm and led me back towards the house. He looked very white and ill. I still begged for an explanation, and at last he told me the truth. My uncle, Colonel Bulstrode, had been found lying in the road stabbed to death with a spear. They had no idea who the murderer might be.
“They brought up the body to the house. Afterwards they let me see him. Even in death his face was convulsed with passion. Oh, it is dreadful, dreadful!”
Her reserve gave way all in a moment, and she burst into a fit of sobbing, hiding her face in her hands. It was some time before she regained her self-control, and when she spoke again it was with difficulty and in detached sentences.
“It was about three o'clock,” she said. “Mr. Boyne came into the room where I was. He told me that my uncle had spoken very bitterly to him in their interview, and that there had been a quarrel between them; but Mr. Boyne's sorrow was sincere. I am sure it was sincere. Afterwards he begged me not to believe any rumours I might hear about him. Then he went away. Afterwards, as I was looking from the window, I saw him walking down the drive with a policeman. Several of the servants were gathered at the front door watching and pointing. I don't know how—but the suspicion came to me—perhaps it was through what Cullen had said. I ran down the stairs and ordered them to answer. At last they told me—he had been arrested—for the murder.”
We waited for a while, and then the little inspector rose, and, in his courteous manner, offered her his arm. She took it, looking at him through her tears.
“He is innocent, Mr. Peace,” she said.
“I trust so, Miss Sherrick.”
They moved off up the walk, I following behind them. We emerged from the shrubbery on to a broad lawn. The house, a sprawling old mansion of red brick, was before us. We crossed the grass, and, turning an angle of the house, came to the porch, from which a drive curled away amongst the foliage of an avenue of elms.
The central hall was better fitted for a museum than a habitation of comfort-loving folk. Bronze gods and goddesses glimmered in the corners, dragons carved in teak glared upon the Eastern arms and armour that lined the walls, the duller hues of ivory and jade contrasted with the brilliant turquoise of old Pekin vases. It was here, among these spoils of the East, that Miss Sherrick left us, walking up the stairs to her room, as fair a figure of beauty in distress as a man might see.
As she disappeared, a tall, thin fellow in plain clothes stepped out of a door on our right and saluted the inspector.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant Hales,” said Addington Peace. “So you have arrested Boyne?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Upon good grounds?”
“The evidence is almost complete against him.”
“Indeed. I shall be pleased to hear it.”
“Well, sir, it stands like this. Mr. Boyne called upon Colonel Bulstrode about one o'clock. He was shown into the library and”
“One moment,” interrupted the inspector. “Where is the library?”
“That is the door, sir,” answered Hales, pointing to the room from which he had emerged.
“Perhaps it would be easier to understand if we go there?”
The library was a long, low room, lined with shelves that were in a great part empty. It projected from the main building—evidently it was of more recent construction—and thus could be lighted by windows on both sides. To our right were two which commanded the drive; to the left two more looked out upon a plot of grass dotted with flower-beds, upon which several windows at the side of the house, at right angles to the library, also faced.
“Pray continue,” said Inspector Peace.
“About ten minutes later, Cullen, the butler, heard high words passing. A regular fighting quarrel it sounded—or so he says.”
“How could he hear? Was he listening in the hall?”
“No, sir; he was in his pantry, cleaning silver. The pantry is the first of those windows at the side of the house. The library windows being open, he could hear the sound of loud voices, though, as he says, he could not distinguish the words.”
The inspector walked to an open lattice and thrust out his head. He closed it before he came back to us, as he did to the second window on the same side.
“Mr. Cullen must not be encouraged,” he said gently. “He is there now, listening with pardonable curiosity. Well, Sergeant?”
“Presently there came a tremendous peal at his bell, and he hurried to answer it. When he reached the hall, he found the colonel and Mr. Boyne standing together. 'You understand me, Boyne,' the colonel was saying, 'If I catch you lurking about here again after my niece's money-bags, I'll thrash you within an inch of your life; I will, by thunder!' The young man gave the colonel an ugly look, but he had seen the butler, who was standing behind his master, and kept silent. 'Show this fellow out, Cullen,' said the colonel. 'And if he ever calls slam the door in his face.' And with that he stumped back into the library, swearing to himself in a manner that, as the butler declares, gave him the creeps, it was so very imaginative.
“With one thing and another, Cullen was so dumfounded—for he thought that Boyne and Miss Sherrick were as good as engaged already—that he stood in the shadow of the porch watching the young gentleman. Boyne walked down the drive for a hundred yards or so, looked back at the house, and, not seeing the butler, as he supposes, turned off to the left along a path that led towards the fruit gardens. Cullen did not know what to make of it. However, it was none of his business, and at last he went back to his pantry. Sticking out his head, he could see the colonel writing at that desk”—the sergeant pointed a finger at a knee-hole table littered with papers that was set in the further of the windows looking out upon the grass-plot—“and so concluded that he could not have seen Boyne leave the drive, having had his back to it at the time.
“About twenty minutes later Cullen and Mary Thomas, the parlour-maid, were in the dining-room, getting the table ready for lunch. This room looks out upon the lawn at the front of the house. All of a sudden they heard a shout, and the next moment the colonel rushed by and made across the lawn to the Wilderness gate. He had a revolver in his hand, and was loading it as he ran. He dropped two cartridges in his hurry, for I found them myself when I was going over the ground. Cullen had been with him for years; he is an old soldier himself, and at the sight of the revolver he dropped the tray he was holding, climbed out of the window, and set off after his master, who had by then disappeared amongst the shrubberies.
“He is a slow traveller, is the old man, and he reckons that he was not more than halfway across the lawn when he heard a distant scream, which pulled him up in his tracks. It put the fear into him, that scream. He told me that he had seen too much active service not to know the cry that comes from a sudden and mortal wound. It was no surprise to him, therefore, when at last he reached the wicket-gate, to find his master lying dead in the road.
“Above him, tugging at the spear that had killed him, stood Boyne.
“There was no one in sight, and though the road curves at that point he could see it for fifty yards and more either way. He had no doubt in his own mind as to who had done the thing. Boyne must have seen the suspicion in his face, for he jumped back, Cullen says, and stood staring at him as white as a table-cloth.
“'Why do you look at me like that, Cullen?' he says. You don't think'
“'If you can explain that away,' says Cullen, pointing to the body, 'you will be, sir, if you'll forgive me for saying it, a devilish clever man.'
“'You're mad,' says Boyne. 'I found him like this.'
“'And where did you spring from, if I may make so bold?' asked the butler. Very sarcastic he was, he tells me.
“'I had been in the upper garden, and as you very well know, Cullen, I wished to avoid the colonel,' says the young man. 'I came round the back of the house and entered the Wilderness at the upper end. I was walking down the centre path towards the wicket-gate, when I heard some one scream, and set off running. I could not have been here more than half a minute before you.'
“The butler did not argue the matter, but left him standing beside the body, and went to get assistance. On the lawn he met two of the gardeners, and sent them back. I believe he also saw Miss Sherrick near the porch. It was upon those facts, sir, that I arrested Boyne.”
“I don't think said the inspector, shaking his head at him, “I don't think that I should have arrested him, Sergeant Hales.”
“It looks very black against him, you must allow.”
“Which affects his guilt or innocence neither one way nor the other. Has a doctor examined the body?”
“Yes, sir, and extracted the spear.”
“Why did you let him do that?” asked the little man, sharply.
“I knew you would be vexed about it, but it was done while I was out of the house, examining the road and lawn. He was very careful not to handle it more than was necessary, he said; but he had to saw the shaft in two.”
“And why was that?” .
“He said that the force used by the thrower must have been very great.”
“Very great?”
“Yes, sir, gigantic—that is what he said.”
Addington Peace walked to the window and stood there staring out at the elm avenue that swayed softly in the breeze.
“Is the doctor still in the house?” he asked over his shoulder.
“No, sir.”
“We have none too much light left. Have you the spear?”
The sergeant opened a side cupboard and drew out two pieces of light-coloured wood. The polished surface was dulled by stains that were self-explanatory. The head was broad and flat, formed of the finest jade, microscopically carved. It had been fashioned for Eastern ceremony, and not for battle. That was plain enough.
Peace returned to the window and examined it with the closest attention. Presently he slipped out a magnifying glass, staring eagerly at a spot on the longer portion of the shaft.
“Do I understand you, Sergeant Hales, that you found Boyne endeavouring to pull out the spear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who else touched it?”
“No one that I know of, save the doctor.”
“And yourself?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Let me see your hands.”
The sergeant thrust them out with a smile. They had plainly not been washed that afternoon.
“Thank you. Have you discovered the owner of this spear?”
“No, sir; I wish I could.”
“Have you tried Cullen or Miss Sherrick?”
“No, sir,” said the sergeant, looking blankly at the inspector.
The little man walked to the fireplace and touched the electric bell. In a few moments the door opened and a fat, red-faced man walked in. There is no mistaking the attitude and costume of a British butler.
“Colonel Bulstrode was a collector of jade?” said the inspector, in his most innocent manner.
“Yes, sir.”
“I noticed the specimens in the hall. Well, Cullen, have you ever seen this spear amongst his trophies?”
The man glanced at it, and then shrank back with a shiver.
“It's the thing that killed him,” he stammered.
“Exactly. But you do not answer my question.”
“There may have been one like it, but I couldn't swear to it, sir. The colonel would never have his collection touched. He or Miss Sherrick dusted 'em and arranged 'em themselves. He was always buying some new thing.”
“Would Miss Sherrick know?”
“Very likely, sir.”
“Thank you. That is all.”
As the butler closed the door, the sergeant stepped up to the inspector and saluted.
“I should have noticed those collections,” he said. “I have made a fool of myself, sir.”
“A man who can make such an admission is never a fool, Sergeant Hales. And now kindly take me upstairs to the colonel's room. You can wait here, Mr. Phillips.”
It was close upon the half-hour before they came back to me, and I had leisure enough for considering the problem. When Peace had walked into my rooms at lunch-time, mentioning that he had a case with possibilities at Richmond, if I cared to come with him, I had never expected so strange a development. Nor, I fancy, had he.
This Colonel Bulstrode had served many years in India. Had the mysteries of the East followed him home to a London suburb? The gigantic force with which this spear had been thrown—there was something abnormal there, a something difficult to explain. Yet, after all, it might be a simple matter. Boyne was presumably a strong man, and the deadly fury that induces murder in a law-abiding citizen is akin to madness, giving almost a madman's strength. I was still puzzling over it when the door opened and the little inspector walked in.
“The story of Sergeant Hales?” I, asked him. “Is he exaggerating—was the spear thrown with unusual violence?”
“Very unusual. It is the crime of a giant or”
He did not finish his sentence, but stood tapping the table and staring out at the gold and green of a summer sunset. At last he turned to me with a slow inclination of the head.
“Hales is waiting,” he said, “and we must get to work. The light will not last for ever.”
The sergeant led us over the lawn to the Wilderness and through its paths to the wicket-gate. Showers in the early morning had turned the dust of the road into a grey mud that had dried under the afternoon sunshine. The surface was scored into a puzzle of diverging lines by the wheels of carts and carriages, cycles and motors. Yet Peace hunted it over even more closely than he had hunted the paths in the grounds. He was particularly anxious to know the position in which the body had lain, and finally the sergeant got down in the drying mud to show him.
Apparently the colonel had walked about ten yards from the gate when the spear struck him. He had fallen almost in the centre of the road, which at that point was broad, with stretches of grass bordering it on either side. His revolver had not been fired, though he had been found with it in his hand.
We walked on down the road, Addington Peace leading, his eyes fixed on its surface, and the sergeant and I following behind. For myself, I had not the remotest idea of what he hoped to effect by this promenade, nor do I believe had the sergeant. We circled the outside of the gardens, the road finally curving to the left, and bringing us to the entrance-gates. Here we stopped at a word from the inspector. The little man himself walked on, and finally dropped on his knees close to the hedge. When he joined us again, it was with an expression of satisfaction. He beamed through the gates at the old elm avenue, that rustled sleepily in the gathering dusk.
“What a pretty place it is,” he said. “Thank Heaven that these old houses still find owners or tenants who dare to defy the jerry builder and all his works. Hello, and who may this be?”
He had turned to the toot of the horn. The motor was close upon us, for a steam-car moves in silence as compared to the busy hum of a petrol-driven machine. It stopped, and the chauffeur jumped down and ran to open the gates. Of the driver we could see nothing save a peaked cap, goggles, and a long white dust-coat.
As it disappeared up the avenue towards the house I heard a faint bubble of laughter in my ear. I turned in surprise.
“Why, Peace,” I said, “what is the joke?”
“There is no joke, Mr. Phillips,” he answered. “It was fate that laughed, not I.”
There were moments when, to a man of ordinary curiosity, Inspector Addington Peace was extremely irritating.
We walked up the avenue in silence. The motor was standing at the front door, the chauffeur, a bright-faced youngster, loitering beside it. Peace greeted him politely, entering at once into a dissertation upon greasy roads and the dangers of side-slips. Was there nothing that would prevent them? He had heard that there was a patent, consisting of small chains crossing the tyres, that was excellent.
“It's about the best of them, sir,” said the lad. “Mr. Bulstrode uses it on this car sometimes.”
“So this is Mr. Anstruther Bulstrode's car?”
“Yes, sir. He was the brother of the poor gentleman inside.”
“The roads are fairly dry now,” continued Peace, “but if you had been out this morning”
“Oh, Mr. Bulstrode had the chains on this morning,” he interrupted. “I did not go with him, but when he came back he told me he was glad to have them, for the roads were very bad.”
“And Mr. Bulstrode thought the roads were dry enough this afternoon to do without them?”
“Yes. He told me to take them off. He”
“I am glad to see the police interest themselves in motoring,” broke in a high-pitched voice behind us. “I was under the impression—false as I now observe—that they were confirmed enemies to the sport.”
A yellow husk of a man was Mr. Anstruther Bulstrode, as I knew this stranger must be. Years under the Indian sun had sucked the English blood from his veins and burnt their own dull colour into his cheeks. He stood on the step of the porch with his hands behind him and his little eyes glaring at the inspector like a pair of black beads. His mouth, twitching viciously under his straggly moustache, proved that the poor Colonel had not been the only member of the Bulstrode family possessed of an evil temper. Over his shoulder I could see Miss Sherrick's white face watching us. And now she stepped forward to explain.
“This is Inspector Peace, uncle,” she said nervously.
“I know, my dear, I know. Do you think I can't tell a detective when I see him. So you have caught your man, eh, Inspector?”
“If you will come into the library, Mr. Bulstrode, I will answer what questions I may.”
It was now close upon eight o'clock and the pleasant twilight of the long summer evening was drawing into heavier shadows. There was no gas in the old house, but Miss Sherrick ordered lamps to be brought in. We all seated ourselves about the big fireplace save Peace, who stood on the hearth-rug with his back to the flowers that filled the empty grate. The shaded lamp dealt duskily with our faces. There was a strain, a vague anxiety in the air that kept me leaning forward in my chair, nervous and watchful.
“Well, Inspector,” repeated Mr. Bulstrode, “what is your news?”
For answer, Peace walked up to the lamp and laid beneath it the jade spearhead, now cleaned and polished, with its four inches of broken shaft.
“Do you recognize that, Miss Sherrick?”
The girl bent over it without alarm. She had no idea what part it had played in that grim tragedy.
“Certainly,” she said. “It is a unique piece of stone, and Colonel Bulstrode prized it more than anything else in his collection. I know it was hanging in the hall this morning, for I was at work with a duster. How did the shaft come to be broken?”
“An accident, Miss Sherrick.”
“My poor uncle would have been dreadfully angry about it, and so must you be, Uncle Anstruther, for I understand you claim it to be yours.”
“We did not come here, Mary, to talk about jade collecting,” snarled the old planter.
“But does the spear really belong to you, Mr. Bulstrode?” asked the inspector, blandly.
The man stiffened himself in his chair with his fists clenched on his knees, and his beady eyes staring straight before him.
“That spear is mine, Mr. Detective. My brother having practically stolen it from me, threatened me with personal violence if I attempted to reclaim it. It was the most perfect piece of workmanship in my own collection. I shall take legal steps to claim my rightful property in due course.”
“Your brother seems to have acted in a very high-handed manner with you, Mr. Bulstrode. I wonder that you did not walk in here one day and recover your property.”
The planter rose with a twisted laugh.
“I'm not a housebreaker,” he said. “Also, I must point out that I don't intend to sit here all night. Can I do anything more for you, Inspector?”
“No, Mr. Bulstrode.”
“Or for you, Mary?”
“No, uncle. I have my maid, and there is Agatha, the housekeeper.”
“So that's all right. Let us thank Heaven the criminal is no longer at large. It didn't take long for our excellent police to make up their minds. Gad! they're clever beggars. They had their hands on him smart enough. It is a pleasure to meet such a man as you, Inspector Addington Peace. A celebrity, by thunder, that's what I call you.”
He burst out into a peal of high-pitched laughter, rocking to and fro and clutching the edge of the table with his hand. Then he bowed to us all very low and swaggered out of the room. Peace stepped out after him, and I followed at his heels.
A lamp hung in the roof of the porch, and Mr. Bulstrode stopped beneath it. In its light he looked more fierce and old and yellow than ever.
“It is no good, Mr. Bulstrode,” said Addington Peace.
“Exactly; can I give you a lift?” he said quite quietly as he pointed to the car.
“It would certainly be most convenient.”
Mr. Bulstrode laughed again, leering back at me over his shoulder, as if my presence afforded an added zest to his merriment. There seemed an understanding between him and the inspector. Frankly, it puzzled me.
“You do not make confidants of your assistants, Mr. Peace,” he said.
The little inspector bowed.
“At the same time,” continued the old planter, “I should like to make a statement before we go. There is no necessity to warn me. I know the law.”
“It is just as you like, Mr. Bulstrode.”
“If I sneered at the police this evening I now make them my apologies. You have managed this business well. I still do not understand how you come to accuse me. Remember, I did not know he was dead until I received a telegram from my niece after lunch. It was rather a shock; perhaps at first I was of a mind not to confess. It would have saved me much inconvenience.”
“And endangered an innocent man,” said the inspector.
“Well, well, you couldn't have proved it against him, and I might have escaped. The whole affair was an accident. I had no intention even of wounding him.”
“Exactly, Mr. Bulstrode—no more than the excursionist who throws out a glass bottle intends to brain the man walking by the line.”
The truth was clear enough now. In some strange fashion this man had killed his brother. I stepped back a pace instinctively.
“You see,” he continued, “brother William had, under circumstances of no immediate importance, appropriated my jade spear. I made up mind to get it back. I knew the hour at which he lunched, and leaving my motor in the road I walked down the avenue, hoping to find the front door open and no one about. I had a successful start. The front door was ajar. I went in, took the spear from the wall, and set off back to my car. I was some fifty yards down the drive when I heard a yell, and there was brother William tumbling out of the porch, revolver in hand.
“It startled me, for he had the most devilish of tempers; but though I was the elder man I knew I had the pace of him, and set off running. When I reached the entrance gates and looked back he was nowhere to be seen. I took it that he had thought better of it and gone back to lunch.
“I was driving the car myself, having left the chauffeur behind, as I did not wish him to know what I was about. I started up the engines, jumped into the seat, put the spear beside me, and let her go. We came round that corner at a good thirty miles an hour, and there was brother William in the road, waving his revolver and cursing me for a thief. He had run down through the Wilderness to cut me off.
“I give you my word I was frightened, for I knew him and his tempers. I took up the spear, and as I passed I threw it at him anyhow. Let him keep it, and be d—d to him, I thought. I wasn't going to have a hole drilled in me for any jade ever carved. I never saw what happened, for in that second I was off the road and only pulled the car straight with difficulty. The spear must have struck him end on, and I was travelling thirty miles an hour.
“My niece sent me a wire. When I received it I understood what had happened. I was in a blue funk about the business. I meant to get out of it if I could. You see I am hiding nothing. I told my man to take the chains off the motor—I had a thought for the tracks I might have left—and came back to find out how the land lay. Well, you know the rest.”
“You have done yourself no harm, Mr. Bulstrode, by this confession,” said Inspector Addington Peace.
“Thank you. And now, if you will jump in, I will drive you to the police-station. You will want to get Boyne out and put me in, eh, Inspector?”
He was still laughing in that high-pitched voice of his when the car faded into the night.
••••••
It was not until next day that Peace gave me his explanation over our pipes in my studio. It is interesting enough to set down, if briefly.
“There were many points in the favour of Boyne,” he said. “Miss Sherrick's story not only coincided with that told us by Cullen, but it also explained much that the butler considered suspicious. The young man left the drive hoping to meet Miss Sherrick. Cullen told me that Boyne asked where she was as he left, and was informed somewhere in the upper garden. He failed to find her, however, and probably concluded she had gone in to lunch. Boyne said he was walking down through the Wilderness when he heard the scream. Suppose this were a lie, then how could he have obtained the spear? Was he a man of such phenomenal strength as to use it in so deadly a fashion? You observe the difficulties.
“It was when I was upstairs examining the body that the idea occurred to me. The force used in throwing the spear was abnormal. Either the murderer must have been a man of remarkable physique, or he must have thrown the spear from a rapidly moving vehicle. You remember the notices that are displayed in railway-carriages begging passengers not to throw bottles from the window which will imperil the lives of plate-layers. It is not in the force of the throw but in the pace of the train that the danger lies. It was a possible parallel.
“And here I made a remarkable discovery. On closely inspecting the shaft of the spear, I found a smear of lubricating oil such as motorists use. It suggested that a man who had been lately attending to the machinery of a car had been handling the weapon. Had one of the group under possible suspicion anything to do with motors or machinery? Not one.
“I had noticed the jade collections in the hall. This spearhead was of unusual beauty. Could it have come from the colonel's own collection? He had not taken it with him when he ran towards the Wilderness, loading his revolver. Why did he so run thus armed? Had he been robbed?
“Yet the thief had not passed that way. Cullen would have seen him if he had done so. Was the colonel endeavouring to cut him Off?
“I found the motor-tracks in the drying mud—unusual tracks, mark you, for the driver had run off the road circling the place where the colonel had stood. I traced them easily by the chain marks on the tyres. They led to the front gate, and just beyond it the car had stopped for some time close to the hedge. Lubricating oil had dripped on the road while it waited. The case was becoming plainer.
“My talk with Bulstrode's chauffeur made it self-evident. The information of Miss Sherrick and her uncle's own explanation as to his quarrel with his brother over the spear swept away my last doubt. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said. “It seems simple now. Bulstrode has had bad luck, though. Things look black against him.”
“I think he will be all right,” said Addington Peace. “His story has the merit of being not only easily understandable, but true.”
“And Boyne?”
“I saw him meet Miss Sherrick. It was enough to make an old bachelor repent his ways, Mr. Phillips. Believe me, there is a great happiness of which we cannot guess—we lonely men.”
THE END
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