"I—I never saw one—I did not think he had one." A hoarse sob rose in her throat.
The inspector went on apparently scrawling hieroglyphics in his pocket-book. Lawrence and Crasster knew that his look, his very silence, betokened that he was satisfied.
Nobody spoke for a minute or two, as if by common consent. Every one avoided looking at the agonized face of the woman in the big chair. Lawrence glanced at Crasster, some faint foreshadowing of what was coming upon him, unreal, fantastical, as must appear the happenings it involved. Inspector Furnival glanced at Mrs. Rankin. "You have nothing more to tell us, I think?"
"No," she answered with a little catch in her breath. "Only that on Tuesday before the murder Stanmore called on us and asked us if we could tell him where Lady Carew was to be found. We declined to give him any information of course, and he went away asking us if we should hear of her later, to let him know at the Abbey Court flats, where he told us he was staying under the name of Charles Warden."
The inspector tapped his notebook thoughtfully. "Did he tell you why he was anxious to find Lady Carew?"
Mrs. Rankin shook her head.
"No further than that he said he had come back to England to claim some great inheritance that had fallen to him, and we gathered that he wished her to share it with him."
"Um! Um!" The inspectors did not speak for a minute or two, then he looked up suddenly. "Did he give you any notion of the sort of inheritance to which he had succeeded?"
"No—no," Mrs. Rankin said slowly, "further than that he spoke as if it meant rank as well as wealth. But I think he was too much excited to talk coherently, and we, of course, were only too anxious to get rid of him.
"Naturally!" the inspector assented. "Well, I don't think we need trouble you any further to-day."
Mrs. Rankin sat back in her chair with an audible sigh of relief.
Sir Anthony looked at the detective. "Can you help us, Furnival, or are we too hopelessly in the mire?"
"I think I shall be able to do something, Sir Anthony." The inspector glanced over what he had written, then he closed the book and fastened it. "But before we go any further I should suggest Lady Carew goes to her room. I am sure Mrs. Rankin will agree with me that it is the best thing for her."
"They—they do believe me, Anthony?" she said piteously, as her husband came forward and drew her arm through his.
The inspector took the answer upon himself.
"Well, I do, for one, Lady Carew," he said heartily. "And later on Sir Anthony will tell you the name of the Abbey Court murderer."
"Thank you!" Judith murmured brokenly. She felt strangely bewildered, scarcely able even to think. All she could realize was that there was hope at last, hope that the awful black cloud that had brooded over Heron's Carew for so long was going to be dissipated.
Her husband half-supported, half-carried her to her room, and then, whispering soothing words, he left her to Mrs. Rankin's care, and went back to the morning-room. The three men had their heads close together when he entered. He fancied that Crasster looked strangely disturbed.
"Excuse me, Sir Anthony," murmured the inspector. He went across to the window, and, throwing it open, put his head out with a curious whistling sound, like a bird's cry. It was answered from the bushes on the other side of the terrace. He stepped back and closed the window.
"It is all right," he observed enigmatically. "You are going to have a visitor, Sir Anthony. I hear a car in the drive."
"A visitor!" Sir Anthony stepped to the bell.
"Allow him to be admitted, please, Sir Anthony," said the inspector. "I fancy it is one whose evidence may be very germane to the case."
Sir Anthony started.
"Germane to the case! I don't see—"
"One moment, Sir Anthony!"
The inspector held up his hand.
The bell pealed loudly, they heard the old butler open the door, a murmured colloquy, then Sir Anthony's face altered.
"Chesterham! Ah, of course his testimony—"
"Will supply the missing link!" the inspector finished.
"Exactly." Sir Anthony opened the door. "Ah, Chesterham, we were just speaking of you. Come in."
Chesterham was distinctly paler than usual, his face looked anxious and worried.
"I only heard half an hour ago of the accident that happened to Lady Carew last night," he began, advancing to meet Sir Anthony. "I trust its gravity has been exaggerated. How is she? I—" He broke off as he saw the men behind Sir Anthony.
Inspector Furnival stepped forward. Sir Anthony with a puzzled expression moved aside.
"You do not disturb us, Lord Chesterham!" the inspector remarked suavely. "As Sir Anthony said, we were just speaking of you. You can supply exactly the evidence we want!"
"Evidence! I don't understand you!" Chesterham's face darkened as he spoke, and he drew back. "I came here to speak to Sir Anthony Carew," he added with an assumption of hauteur that brought a slight smile to the inspector's lips.
At the same time there was a knock at the front door. Furnival signed to the butler to open it. A couple of men in dark clothes entered and stood on the mat. As soon as they were fairly inside, the inspector advanced towards the astonished Chesterham.
"Ronald Lee, alias Jermyn Leigh, alias Viscount Chesterham, I arrest you for the wilful murder of Cyril Stanmore, Lord Chesterham, at the Abbey Court flats on the night of April — 19—. And it is my duty to warn you that anything you say in answer to the charge will be taken down in writing and may be used against you."
He drew his hand from his pocket, something of steel dangling from it suggestively.
For an instant, it seemed to the lookers-on that Chesterham visibly cowered and shrank, the next he had to some extent pulled himself together.
"You must be mad!" he said loudly. "Stark, staring mad! When you hear that the visitor to Stanmore's flat on the night of the murder was—"
"We have been aware of that lady's identity from the first." The inspector's tone was ominously quiet. "Your game has been a bold one, Mr. Lee, but I think it is played out now. I shall have to trouble you to come with me to the police station at Caversham. One of my men will get a conveyance from the Carew Arms, or if you would prefer to use your—I should say Lord Chesterham's—motor, perhaps it would be better!"
Chesterham's eyes wandered slowly round from the pale shocked faces of Sir Anthony Carew and Stephen Crasster, to the inspector's keen alert countenance and to his solid-looking assistants behind. Then he drew something from his pocket, something that gleamed in the light. The next instant there was a shot, a sharp exclamation from the inspector, and the men gathered round the prostrate figure on the floor. Furnival was the first to look up.
"The fool I was not to think of this! But he has missed his aim—it is nothing but a flesh wound in the thick part of the leg; I can manage to dress it for the present, and we will call in at Dr. Bennett's as we go through the village."
Chapter XXXI
"Committed for trial, is he? well, they couldn't do much else!"
It was the verdict of Mrs. Curtis, at the Carew Arms, as she watched the crowd pouring down the village street.
Carew village had never known such excitement within the memory of man. Lord Chesterham, in some extraordinary way, had turned out not to be Lord Chesterham at all, but Ronald Lee, whom many of the villagers remembered as a child, and, as if this news was not thrilling enough, he had been