‘You think you’ll find him, do you?’ said Hallick quickly. ‘Do you know where he is?’
‘I only know one thing,’ said Connor huskily, ‘and Soapy knows it too. He let it out that morning we were waiting for the gold lorry. It just slipped out—what O’Shea’s idea was of a quiet hiding-place. But I’m not going to tell you. I’ve got four months to serve, and when that time is up I’ll find O’Shea.’
‘You poor fool!’ said Hallick roughly. ‘The police have been looking for him for ten years.’
‘Looking for what?’ demanded Connor, ignoring Marks’ warning look.
‘For Len O’Shea,’ said Hallick.
There came a burst of laughter from the convict.
‘You’re looking for a sane man, and that’s where you went wrong! I didn’t tell you before why you’ll never find him. It’s because he’s mad! You didn’t know that, but Soapy knows. O’Shea was crazy ten years ago. God knows what he is now! Got the cunning of a madman. Ask Soapy.’
It was news to Hallick. His eyes questioned Marks, and the little man smiled.
‘I’m afraid our dear friend is right,’ said Marks suavely. ‘A cunning madman! Even in Dartmoor we get news, Mr Hallick, and a rumour has reached me that some years ago three officers of Scotland Yard disappeared in the space of a few minutes—just vanished as though they had evaporated like dew before the morning sun! Forgive me if I am poetical; Dartmoor makes you that way. And would you be betraying an official secret if you told me these men were looking for O’Shea?’
He saw Hallick’s face change, and chuckled.
‘I see they were. The story was that they had left England and they sent their resignations—from Paris, wasn’t it? O’Shea could copy anybody’s handwriting—they never left England.’ Hallick’s face was white.
‘By God, if I thought that—’ he began.
‘They never left England,’ said Marks remorselessly. ‘They were looking for O’Shea—and O’Shea found them first.’
‘You mean they’re dead?’ asked the other.
Marks nodded slowly.
‘For twenty-two hours a day he is a sane, reasonable man. For two hours—’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Mr Hallick, your men must have met him in one of his bad moments.’
‘When I meet him—’ interrupted Connor, and Marks turned on him in a flash.
‘When you meet him you will die!’ he hissed. ‘When I meet him—’ That mild face of his became suddenly contorted, and Hallick looked into the eyes of a demon.
‘When you meet him?’ challenged Hallick. ‘Where will you meet him?’
Marks’ arm shot out stiffly; his long fingers gripped an invisible enemy.
‘I know just where I can put my hand on him,’ he breathed. ‘That hand!’
Hallick went back to London that afternoon, a baffled man. He had gone to make his last effort to secure information about the missing gold, and had learned nothing—except that O’Shea was sane for twenty-two hours in the day.
IT was a beautiful spring morning. There was a tang in the air which melted in the yellow sunlight.
Mr Goodman had not gone to the city that morning, though it was his day, for he made a practice of attending at his office for two or three days every month. Mrs Elvery, that garrulous woman, was engaged in putting the final touches to her complexion; and Veronica, her gawkish daughter, was struggling, by the aid of a dictionary, with a recalcitrant poem—for she wooed the gentler muse in her own gentler moments.
Mr Goodman sat on a sofa, dozing over his newspaper. No sound broke the silence but the scratching of Veronica’s pen and the ticking of the big grandfather’s clock.
This vaulted chamber, which was the lounge of Monkshall, had changed very little since the days when it was the anteroom to a veritable refectory. The columns that monkish hands had chiselled had crumbled a little, but their chiselled piety, hidden now behind the oak panelling, was almost as legible as on the day the holy men had written them.
Through the open French window there was a view of the broad, green park, with its clumps of trees and its little heap of ruins that had once been the Mecca of the antiquarian.
Mr Goodman did not hear the excited chattering of the birds, but Miss Veronica, in that irritable frame of mind which a young poet can so readily reach, turned her head once or twice in mute protest.
‘Mr Goodman,’ she said softly.
There was no answer, and she repeated his name impatiently.
‘Mr Goodman!’
‘Eh?’ He looked up, startled.
‘What rhymes with “supercilious”?’ asked Veronica sweetly.
Mr Goodman considered, stroking chin reflectively.
‘Bilious?’ he suggested.
Miss Elvery gave a despairing cluck.
‘That won’t do at all. It’s such an ugly word.’
‘And such an ugly feeling,’ shuddered Mr Goodman. Then: ‘What are you writing?’ he asked.
She confessed to her task.
‘Good heavens!’ he said despairingly. ‘Fancy writing poetry at this time in the morning! It’s almost like drinking before lunch. Who is it about?’
She favoured him with an arch smile. ‘You’ll think I’m an awful cat if I tell you.’ And, as he reached out to take her manuscript: ‘Oh, I really couldn’t—it’s about somebody you know.’
Mr Goodman frowned.
‘“Supercilious” was the word you used. Who on earth is supercilious?’
Veronica sniffed—she always sniffed when she was being unpleasant.
‘Don’t you think she is—a little bit? After all, her father only keeps a boarding house.’
‘Oh, you mean Miss Redmayne?’ asked Goodman quietly. He put down his paper. ‘A very nice girl. A boarding house, eh? Well, I was the first boarder her father ever had, and I’ve never regarded this place as a boarding house.’
There was a silence, which the girl broke. ‘Mr Goodman, do you mind if I say something?’
‘Well, I haven’t objected so far, have I?’ he smiled.
‘I suppose I’m naturally romantic,’ she said. ‘I see mystery in almost everything. Even you are mysterious.’ And, when he looked alarmed: ‘Oh, I don’t mean sinister!’
He was glad she did not.
‘But Colonel Redmayne is sinister,’ she said emphatically.
He considered this.
‘He never struck me that way,’ he said slowly.
‘But he is,’ she persisted. ‘Why did he buy this place miles from everywhere and turn it into a boarding house?’
‘To make money, I suppose.’
She smiled triumphantly