"What?" Skrine stared at him. "I don't seem able to follow you this morning, Stoddart. Perhaps it's because it is my greatest friend who has been foully done to death. You mean that there is more than one in it—that this woman—"
"I don't know." The detective hesitated. "No, I think not. But I am certain that some one knows who the man with the dark beard is. And I am pretty sure also that that some one is living or at any rate is some one; who comes in and out of this house."
"Why? What ground have you for making; such an assertion?" Sir Felix had resumed his best cross-examination manner now. His blue eyes were focused upon the detective as though they would wring the truth out of him.
"Well, Sir Felix, I only heard this morning, so there has not been much chance of telling you yet," the detective began slowly.
Sir Felix made an impatient sound.
"Telling me what? Make haste, Stoddart. This man has got to be found, and his accomplices too, if he has any."
Stoddart hesitated.
"I don't know about accomplices, Sir Felix! I don't think, as I said a moment ago, that anyone was concerned in the actual murder except probably the man with the dark beard. But some one knows who he is and that someone we have got to find—"
"Yes, you said that before. But your reasons?" interrupted Sir Felix.
"The paper with the words 'It was the Man with the Dark Beard' that was found on the desk," Stoddart went on with exasperating slowness. "It has been taken for granted that it was Dr. Bastow's writing, but I thought it better to make certain, and I sent it to Thornbow. I had his report this morning."
"What is it?" Sir Felix questioned eagerly. "Well, as you will have guessed, he says the words were not written by Dr. Bastow. They are a forgery—have been intentionally forged. There can be no doubt of that. But the question is, who wrote them? Thornbow gives it as his opinion that the writer was a woman."
"A woman!" Sir Felix repeated in surprise. "That seems to me most unlikely. And my experience has taught me not to place too much reliance on expert evidence. Who was it who said there were three kinds of liars—liars, damned liars and experts? I am inclined to stick to my opinion that the words are in Dr. Bastow's writing. And I am as familiar with it as most people. Besides, what object could anyone else have had in writing just that?"
"The object of giving us a clue to the murderer. The writer knew who he was."
"Pity not to have been a bit more definite about it, then," said Skrine.
"Guess she had her own reasons for not wanting to come out in the open," said Stoddart with an emphasis on the pronoun that made the lawyer look at him.
"Have you any idea who she is?"
The inspector permitted himself a sardonic smile.
"Well, rather. Though how she managed to place the paper on the desk I can't say. Who could it be but that girl who has decamped—Mary Ann Taylor?"
"Out of the question," Skrine said sharply.
Chapter VI
There was dead silence for a few minutes; broken at last by Stoddart.
"Don't you think it is time to speak out, Sir Felix? Was the secret of which Dr. Bastow spoke connected with this girl?"
"I don't know," Skrine said slowly. "I have guessed—I have thought that perhaps it was. But I really know nothing."
"But you had some reason for thinking it might be, I expect."
Stoddart was in a difficult position. He held a very responsible post at Scotland Yard; but Skrine was one of the greatest—some said the greatest—criminal lawyers of his day. Stoddart dared not deal with him as he would have liked—could not force from him the secret which he expected had led to Dr. Bastow's death, as he would have done from a different man.
Skrine had been leaning against the mantelpiece. Instead of answering the detective's question at once, he dropped the arm with which he had been supporting himself, pulled himself together and began to pace up and down the room, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent, his blue eyes thoughtful. At last he came to a stop before Stoddart.
"When I first saw Mary Ann Taylor as the parlourmaid here I recognized that I had met her in very different circumstances some years before. Do you remember the Carr case?"
"Tried in Edinburgh five years ago," the inspector rejoined eagerly. "It was out of our jurisdiction. But I always regretted it did not occur in London. I think we should have brought Major Carr's murder home to his wife. To allow that verdict of 'Not proven' is a tremendous mistake."
"I don't think so," Sir Felix said shortly. He went back to the mantelpiece, leaning his elbow on the high wooden shelf and resting his head on his hand, with his face averted from Stoddart. "After all, it comes to the same thing when our juries fail to agree upon a verdict."
"Not quite. Because in that case the prisoner can be, and generally is, tried again," the inspector argued shrewdly. "In Scotland 'Not proven' is final."
Sir Felix nodded.
"Quite. I had forgotten. Well, to return to the Carrs. About a year before the tragedy I was staying with Sir Donald Ferguson in Perthshire; there was a big house party, and the Carrs were there among others. I took a violent dislike to him—he was a first-class sort of brute, and whoever killed him ought to be forgiven, but I do not for one moment believe his wife was guilty. She was a good-looking woman and he led her a dog's life. She bore with him like an angel."
"Angels, like worms, probably turn sometimes," the inspector remarked with a grim smile. "But you surely don't mean, Sir Felix, that Mary Ann Taylor was—"
"Mrs. Carr," Sir Felix finished. "Whether that was the discovery Dr. Bastow made I don't know. But that is and was the only thing I can think of."
"Would that have worried him?" debated the inspector.
"Depends on how he looked at the case," Sir Felix answered. "If he believed her guilty, and had only just discovered her identity, the thought that he had introduced a murderess into his family, however unwittingly, would not be a pleasant one."
"But he could have got rid of her at once. He need not have worried himself about it," the inspector argued.
Sir Felix raised his eyebrows.
"Well, it is the only secret I can think of. It appears to me too that there we have the reason for her disappearance. Mrs. Carr did not wish to be recognized as Mary Ann Taylor. She must have thought it probable that in the case of any murder occurring in a house of which she was an inmate she was an obvious suspect. And, if she knew or guessed anything and gave evidence, she would have been recognized and scarcely believed."
"Why should Mrs. Carr be masquerading as a parlourmaid?" the inspector said thoughtfully. "She was left quite well off. In that fact was supposed to lie the motive for the crime. But, Sir Felix, doesn't a curious similarity between the two murders strike you?"
"There is a certain resemblance," assented Sir Felix. "But Major Carr was shot out of doors, in a wood. My dear old friend was murdered by some fiend as he sat quietly in his consulting-room. The likeness between, the two lies in the fact that both were shot through the brain."
"Exactly!" the inspector agreed. "But it goes a little further than that, Sir Felix. In both cases the revolver must have been held quite close to the head, since the edges of the wound were blackened and discoloured, the inference being that the murderer was some one known and trusted, I would rather say 'not feared,' by the victim."
Sir Felix held up his hand.
"Not quite so fast, Stoddart. In Carr's case it was assumed that he was shot by some one walking with him, some one who