Drysdale had disappeared downstairs. He was alone with her, and he felt that to tell her another untruth would be the supreme insult. “All right, Miss Dinmont, I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t want you to know the truth before because I thought it might save you from—from feeling sorry about things. But now it can’t be helped. I came from London to arrest the man you had staying with you. He knew what I had come for when I came in at teatime, because he knows me by sight. But when he came with me as far as the top of the road he bolted. In the end he took to a boat, and it was in diving from the boat when we followed that he cut his head open.”
“And what do you want him for?”
It was inevitable. “He killed a man in London.”
“Murder!” The word was a statement, not a question. She seemed to understand that, if it had been otherwise, the inspector would have said manslaughter. “Then his name is not Lowe?”
“No; his name is Lamont—Gerald Lamont.”
He was waiting for the inevitable feminine outburst of “I don’t believe it! He wouldn’t do such a thing!” but it did not come.
“Are you arresting him on suspicion, or did he do the thing?”
“I’m afraid there isn’t any doubt about it,” Grant said gently.
“But my aunt—is she—how did she come to send him here?”
“I expect Mrs. Everett was sorry for him. She’d known him some time.”
“I only met my aunt once in the time I’ve been in London—we didn’t like each other—but she didn’t strike me as a person to be sorry for a wrongdoer. I’d be much more likely to believe she did the thing herself. Then he isn’t even a journalist?”
“No,” Grant said; “he’s a bookmaker’s clerk.”
“Well, thank you for telling me the truth at last,” she said. “I must get things ready for Dr. Anderson now.”
“Are you still going to look after him?” Grant asked involuntarily. Was the outburst of disbelief coming now?
“Certainly,” said this remarkable girl. “The fact that he is a murderer doesn’t alter the fact that he has concussion, does it?—nor the fact that he abused our hospitality alter the fact that I’m a professional nurse? And even if it weren’t for that, perhaps you know that in the old days in the Highlands a guest received hospitality and sanctuary even if he had his host’s brother’s blood on his sword. It isn’t often I boost the Highlands,” she added, “but this is rather a special occasion.” She gave a little catch of her breath that might have been a laugh or a sob, and was probably half one, half the other, and went back into the room to look after the man who had so unscrupulously used herself and her home.
Chapter 13
MARKING TIME
Grant did not sleep well that night. There was every reason why he should have slept in all the sublime peace of the righteous man of good digestion. He had finished the work he had come to do, and his case was complete. He had had a hard day in the open, in air that was at once a stimulant and a narcotic. The dinner provided by Drysdale had been all that either a hungry man or an epicure could have wished for. The sea outside his window breathed in long, gentle sighs that were the apotheosis of content. The turf fire glowed soothingly as no flickering bonfire of wood or coals ever does. But Grant slept badly. Moreover, there was discomfort in his mind somewhere, and like all self-analytical people, he was conscious of it and wanted to locate it, so that he could drag it out to the light and say, “Goodness, is that all!” and find relief and comfort as he had so often done before. He knew quite well how that uneasiness which ruined the comfort of his twelve mattresses of happiness proved on investigation to be merely the pea of the fairy-tale. But, rout round as he would, he could find no reason for his lack of content. He produced several reasons, examined them, and threw them away. Was it the girl? Was he being sorry for her because of her pluck and decency? But he had no real reason to think that she cared for the man other than as a friend. Her undeniable interest in him at tea might have been due merely to his being the only interesting man from her point of view in a barren countryside. Was he overtired, then? It was a long time since he had had a whole day’s fishing followed by a burst across country at a killing pace. Or was it fear that his man would even yet slip through his fingers? But Dr. Anderson had said that there was no fracture and the man would be able to travel in a day or two. And his chances of escape now weren’t worth considering, even as hypothesis.
There was nothing in all the world, apparently, to worry him, and yet he had that vague uneasiness in his mind. During one of his periodical tossings and turnings he heard the nurse go along the corridor, and decided that he would get up and see if he could be of any use. He put on his dressing-gown and made for the wedge of light that came from the door she had left ajar. As he went, she came behind him with a candle.
“He’s quite safe, Inspector,” she said, and the mockery in her tone stung him as being unfair.
“I wasn’t asleep, and I heard you moving and thought I might be of some use,” he said, with as much dignity as one can achieve in the déshabillé of the small hours.
She relented a little. “No, thank you,” she said; “there’s nothing to do. He’s still unconscious.” She pushed open the door and led him in.
There was a lamp at the bedside, but otherwise the room was dark and filled with the sound of the sea—the gentle hushzsh which is so different from the roar of breakers on an open coast. The man, as she said, was still unconscious, and Grant examined him critically in the light of the lamp. He looked better, and his breathing was better. “He’ll be conscious before morning,” she said, and it sounded more like a promise than a statement.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Grant said suddenly, “that you should have had all this—that you should have been brought into this.”
“Don’t worry, Inspector; I’m not at all fragile. But I’d like to keep my mother and uncle from knowing about it. Can you manage that?”
“Oh, I think so. We can get Dr. Anderson to prescribe south treatment for him.”
She moved abruptly, and he was conscious of the unhappiness of his phrase, but could see no way of remedying it, and was silent.
“Is he a bad lot?” she asked suddenly. “I mean, apart from—”
“No,” said Grant, “not as far as we know.” And then, afraid that the green growth he had burned out last night might begin to shoot again, and more pain be in store for her, he added, “But he stuck his friend in the back.”
“The man in the queue?” she said, and Grant nodded. Even yet he was waiting momentarily for the “I don’t believe it.” But it did not come. He had at last met a woman whose common sense was greater than her emotions. She had known the man only three days, he had lied to her every hour of these days, and the police wanted him for murder. That was sufficient evidence in her clear eyes to prevent her taking any brief in his favour.
“I have just put the kettle on the gas-ring in the bathroom for tea,” she said. “Will you have some?” and Grant accepted and they drank the scalding liquid by the open window, the sea heaving below them in the strangely balmy west-coast night. And Grant went to bed again quite sure that it was not Miss Dinmont’s emotions that worried him, but still uneasy about something. And now, writing triumphant telegrams to Barker in the golden morning, with the comfortable smell of bacon and eggs contending amiably with the fragrance of seaweed, he was still not as happy as he should have been. Miss Dinmont had come in, still in the white overall that made her look half surgeon, half religieuse, to say that her patient was conscious, but would Grant not come to him until Dr. Anderson had been?—she was afraid of the excitement; and Grant had thought that eminently reasonable.
“Has