Chapter XIII

This is a voluntary statement. It includes all the facts within my knowledge regarding the Ealing murder, and covers the time from the night of Monday, January 15th, when Alexander David Kinloch came to my house in Albany Road, Ealing, till the 26th day of April following, when I saw him for the last time.

Kinloch was brought to my house by a constable about 8.30 on the date given. The officer said he had found him loitering, and that he claimed to know me. He pushed him forward for inspection. The darkness of the night was intensified by a thick fog, and I requested the constable to put his lantern close to the man's face. The moment this was done I recognized Kinloch. He looked in a deplorable condition, his clothing torn and spattered with mud, and himself nervous and shaken like a man labouring under strong but suppressed excitement. But as soon as the light was thrown on his face it was demonstrated to me that something had happened to him since we had last met. He was different. The next moment I saw what had happened. The glare from the officer's electric torch went full into his face, and yet he stared back into it with unwavering eyes. When the officer thrust a walking-stick into his hand I didn't need to be told what had happened: the man he had brought to me was blind.

Kinloch had been an old friend of mine, though I had heard nothing of him for some years. He had come to me that night for help. That he came unwillingly I deduced instantly from the fact that he had not sought me out earlier, but had put off till he had fallen to the state in which he stood before me, in the last extremity of want.

He was with me about four hours. But he left my house without receiving any help from me. We disagreed on a matter unconnected with this case. We had often disagreed before. Indeed, it might be said that to disagree was part of our friendship. But no previous disagreement had ever made any rupture in our relations to each other.

When he had gone, however, I sat down filled first with perplexity and then with remorse. For a long time I sat bewildered by the suddenness of the rupture. Had he become more touchy? I asked myself. Had I failed to make allowances for the hammerings of misfortune which he had endured? Or was the change in myself? Which, I asked myself, has the worse effect on a man's character--prosperity or adversity? Then the remorse came when I saw I had taken a too high-handed line with a man who had come to me unwillingly and ashamed. I want to make this clear. Many men I have met who eye and appraise a new acquaintance from the standpoint of their own interest and advantage. Kinloch was not of that sort. He never tried to make _useful_ friends. And then, just when I was thinking with increased shame that he certainly had not made one in me, I heard the telephone bell ring up in my bedroom. It was a welcome interruption; a night call on the most trivial case would be better than being left to my present thoughts. I remember glancing at the clock in the hall as I passed through to mount the stairs: it showed twelve minutes to two.

But it was not the plaintive voice of some long-suffering attendant on a querulous patient that awaited me on the other end of the wire. The voice of the station sergeant came, gruff and hasty:

"Tookworth Avenue, number 15, case of stabbing. Quick as you can go, sir."

"Ambulance?"

"No."

Knowing from this what instruments and dressings to take, I packed a bag and ran. At the entrance gate of the house which I recognized as that of Ponsonby Paget as soon as I sighted it, I met Inspector Green and two constables approaching as quickly as myself from the opposite direction.

"Not Ponsonby Paget?" I said.

The inspector nodded breathlessly. We entered together.

In the long oblong room into which we were shown by a white-faced maid we found a constable and two men. Ponsonby Paget lay on the floor near his writing-table. But as soon as I got down to examine his wound I knew he was beyond my help. The position of the wound was clearly revealed by the puncture showing on his pleated dress shirt, and the stroke from the knife was one that must have gone through the arch of the aorta. No need to tell the inspector the man was dead. Green whispered to me to have a look at the two occupants of the room, who appeared to have been detained there by the constable in charge when we entered. One was an elderly man, who turned out to be the butler; and the other, a young, fair-haired fellow, seemed rather restless and excited. But a cursory look was enough to show me that neither could have administered that wound within the previous half-hour and got rid of the traces from their persons. It was in fact a mere formality to look at them. So Green took it, for he had already taken his keen eyes elsewhere.

Then the shock came. Green, who had been poking delicately about among the wreckage of furniture, pulled out a walking-stick from beneath an overturned table. After looking at it narrowly he brought it across to me, and held it out, putting some question to me. But the moment I had it in my hands I recognized the stick. It was Kinloch's stick. It was the stick the policeman had handed back to him on my doorstep a few hours earlier. And of course I remembered it the better because Kinloch had not put his walking-stick into the hall-stand when I led him in. A blind man and his stick are inseparable, and I had seen him with it lying across his knees all the time he had been in my study. So I inferred that Kinloch had gone to call on Ponsonby Paget after I had failed him.

What I said and did while the stick was in my hands with Green and the journalist looking on, I do not know; but I got away somehow. And the next I remember is finding myself sitting in my study in the dark. My whole thought kept revolving round one fact and its consequence: I had practically turned Sandy Kinloch out of my house; he had found his way into another, and now a man lay dead in that house. And I who had, as it were, pushed him into that room had been called into it to witness the consequence of my act. That was the awful thought that obsessed me. Kinloch had been a man of kindly nature, with something of more than average capacity for human sympathy, I argued. Yet hardship hardens, and I had seen traces of bitterness in him that night. Not that I thought his was the hand that had given that expert thrust to the heart. No; such a blow could only by a miracle come from a blind man's hand. Still, he had been involved in the affair; there was the stick to prove as much. However innocently he might have got into that room he was in danger, and--this was the thought that kept recurring--I had pushed him into it as really as if my hand had gone to his back.

The inquest on Ponsonby Paget still further disturbed my peace of mind. It is true that, when after giving my own medical evidence I stayed on to hear the verdict, nothing came out against Kinloch. What did come out from the butler's evidence was that the dead man appeared to be constantly in touch with a considerable number of very dubious people. And there might have been comfort for me in that but for one fact. All along I had cherished the hope that Kinloch's stick might have got by accident into that room. He might have lost it, or had it taken from him, I argued. The criminal might have brought it into the room, or even the dead man himself, for it was certainly proved by the police that he had been, unknown to the butler, out of the house after he had dined that night. But this possibility was dispelled by what I saw in the ante-room to the court. For among the exhibits, and preserved between two botanical glasses, there was shown something found in the fatal room--a wisp of black hair which I was able to certify had been violently torn from some one's head. Still, nothing came out then to connect Kinloch directly with the murder.

Of course I was aware that the police do not disclose all they know at an inquest. So when I met Inspector Green a few days afterwards I made a cautious reference to the case, trying to get him to talk. He did not prove to be communicative. The chief, he explained, had called in Scotland Yard, and he himself was no longer working on it. I knew that even so he would know a good deal of what was going on; but I dared not risk appearing too curious about this particular case. Green's reticence I put down to his irritation or disappointment at being elbowed out of a big case by the Yard. Yet, though polite enough, he was certainly rather short with me.

Thus denied any inside knowledge of what was going on, I had to rely on the newspapers. They certainly were full enough of the case. I took them all and read everything. It was a case that excited more than the masses. People hardly talked on anything else. At every turn, in train, bus, street or restaurant the wildest rumours circulated, the most far-fetched theories as to the cause of the murder, and its perpetrators, were advanced. My own patients, I found, wanted to discuss the Ponsonby Paget murder with me--even the old maiden ladies whom I had never before known to show the least interest in anything in heaven or earth beyond the symptoms of their own, mostly imaginary, diseases. My nerves suffered badly.

"Doctor," one of them sighed, "we may all be murdered in our beds."

"Well," I said, exasperated, "it's quite a good place to get murdered in."

That was a patient I lost.

Then in the outside world beyond Ealing interest in the case began to slacken. This could be detected from the newspapers. Progressively the space allotted to the Ealing murder grew less. Presently one of my papers one day had no reference to it. A little later and the case had dropped out of several--it seemed for good. After that I told my newsagent to stop my extra supply. Soon I found myself--no, not ceasing to think of the Ealing tragedy, but able to think of other things as well.

One morning, on leaving the hospital, I ran into Inspector Green. He had been in about some road accident, he told me.

"Nothing doing on the Ponsonby Paget affair?" I said, so much at ease now that I could refer in an off-hand way to the case.

"No, not much to tell," he said. "Of course you know the Yard took it over."

When I saw he was now willing to talk of the affair, I inferred that he had got over his sense of injustice at being pushed aside when the Yard was called in.

"It has dropped out of the newspapers," I remarked.

"Except the _Record_."

"And you fellows have dropped it too, without exception," I said banteringly.

He looked back at me humorously.

"I wouldn't say that, doctor. The police never give up a case, you know." He sighed softly. "Queer case, wasn't it? It wasn't as if we had nothing to go on; the room was scattered with traces--even to first-class finger-prints. Hardly ever seen a case with so many good exhibits--seven, no less."

"Eight," I corrected him promptly.

Green shook his head.

"Wrong, doctor. I remember the number well, for I remember saying to myself there was one for every day in the week."

"Eight," I persisted.

"Oh, but no. Listen, here they are: overcoat with fur collar, pair of dress shoes, broken whisky glass, the decanter, the paper of finger-prints, the envelope with the wisp of black hair, and the wedge-shaped splinter of a mirror. Seven, I think."

"Yes, seven," I admitted, "but--"

"But what, doctor?" Green turned in surprise.

I felt vaguely uneasy. I'd rather he had forgotten any other item than that walking-stick.

"You've forgotten the stick," I blurted out.

Green, after a moment of discomfiture in which he stared at me in a comically intent way, laughed most heartily.

"Fancy me forgetting the stick--me, who found it," he said.

And I laughed too. It was a relief that the stick could be forgotten. Evidently Green, at least, attached little importance to it.

"But what was I saying?" he resumed thoughtfully. "Oh, yes, I was saying I'd never known a case with so many apparently promising clues; and yet"--with a shrug he threw out his hands in a gesture eloquent of helplessness--"there were so many people to whom these same clues pointed. You heard the butler's evidence, didn't you? About Ponsonby Paget's numerous nightly visitors, I mean. Well, with all sorts coming in secret to see him Snargrove's job needs time."

"Snargrove still on the case, then?"

"Why, yes, of course he is. And I don't envy him. Trying to trace a score of those visitors who for reasons quite unconnected with the murder don't want to be found."

We had reached my house by this time; but the inspector had opened up a new vista for thought, so I paused with my hand on the gate.

"Mostly women, Brown said his visitors were."

"Yes, doctor, women--from the lady's maid to the lady herself. But they all came on the same errand--to sell him society scandal for his paper."

"I see. Snargrove is after them all, then?"

"Got to. And they're not coming to meet him half-way, as you might say," Green nodded, sweeping his hand in a parting salute.

* * * * *

It was the feeling of security I had received from my talk with Inspector Green that led me to reply to Selwyn & Smith's advertisement. But for now knowing that the authorities were busy tracing those women I should have been too cautious without knowing much more about Selwyn & Smith than I did when I went to see them. This is the notice I found in a chance newspaper, picked up while waiting in a house:

ALEXANDER DAVID KINLOCH will hear something to his advantage by
communicating with Messrs. Selwyn & Smith, Devon Chambers, Chancery
Lane.

One peculiarity of the thing caught my attention. For it was mighty queer, I thought, that they should, as the wording implied, be unaware that he was blind, and yet know his full name. Was it a bait set to catch him? For several days I did nothing--nothing except read the successive reappearances of that advertisement each morning. I did not know what I could safely do. On the sixth day the notice had disappeared. That troubled me. Had something happened? Two more days and, finding ignorance unbearable, I went up to see Selwyn & Smith, determined to find out if anything had happened, but resolved to be very cautious.

"You are advertising for one Alexander David Kinloch," I said, on being shown into the manager's private room.

Mr. Spencer, a little, round-faced man, looked up, eyeing me narrowly, over the top of his eyeglasses at the end of his nose.

"Are you Mr. Kinloch?"

"What if I am?" I replied defensively.

Mr. Spencer's eyebrows lifted.

"We shall certainly require proof of your identity," he said dryly.

"For what purpose?"

He got nettled by my wariness.

"Come, come, sir," he said, "let us have no more of this fencing. Your question is not reasonable. For all I know you may have wandered in off the street, after seeing our advertisement, to impersonate Mr. Kinloch."

Well, when I heard that I knew at least that it would be some advantage to be Kinloch. But when he saw me hesitate his hand went to the bell, and it was clear he no longer took me for Kinloch. Hastily I placed my card on the desk and said:

"Will you give me your word that it really is for something to his advantage you want him? You see," I added lamely, "I want to find him myself."

He had been scanning my card while I was speaking, and now stared hard at me.

"And will you give me your word to the same effect, doctor?"

"That I will. Indeed, sir, if I could be certain you meant him equally well, I'd leave you happier than I've been for many a day."

The fervour with which his question had made me speak seemed to surprise him. His manner changed.

"I am a busy man," he said, "and since it is clear we both mean well by the young gentleman, I do not understand why you beat about the bush. You say you want to find him. So do we. What do you know about him? We had almost concluded he must be dead."

"No, he is not dead, at least he was alive on the 15th of January when he called at my house in Ealing."

"Dear me, if only I had known! Strange he didn't once see our advertisement."

"It would be stranger if he did. Kinloch is blind, Mr. Spencer."

"Blind--oh, how sad! Dear me, not totally and permanently, I trust?"

"Totally, but not, I hope, permanently. That is one reason why I am so anxious to find him. He suffers from _corneitis_, a form of blindness once regarded as incurable, but not so since the war."

Mr. Spencer was deeply interested, and while he sat polishing his eyeglasses I explained that Kinloch had not come to me about his sight but because I was an old friend, that I was not an oculist, and had enquired into the new treatment for _corneitis_ only since learning of my friend's affliction. I wound up by saying that I was ready myself to bear all the expense of taking him to Edinburgh for treatment by the famous surgeon whose war experiences had taught him how to perform this new miracle of ophthalmic surgery.

"Well," he said, "that's very good of you, very good. Still, as to expenses, Mr. Kinloch ought to be able to meet them himself."

I almost laughed.

"It's very evident you know little about Kinloch," I said. "He's quite destitute. He hasn't a penny, and so even if he had his sight I doubt if he'd have seen your advertisement. You see," I felt bound to add, "he came to my house that night in rags almost, a broken man, and--well, we quarrelled. It was all my doing. I don't want you to take me for what I am not; and it is the base truth that I let him go away unhelped. That is why I want to do something for him now--something beyond price, beyond all his hopes."

Mr. Spencer bent forward and touched my knee.

"Dr. Dunn," he said, "I understand your feelings, your mental distress, and I am sure if you can do this for him it will more than make amends, without meeting the expenses, which he does not now need you to do."

"Not need me--" I said.

"Did Mr. Kinloch ever mention the purchase of any shares to you?"

"Yes, some worthless shares which another of his friends swindled him into buying," I said bitterly.

The little man smiled.

"I'd like to be swindled in the same way," he said. And he went on to tell me the story; a complicated story it was, but the gist of it seemed to be that Kinloch, a babe in financial affairs, had been induced by some one to put his every penny into the worthless shares of some tea company. Then the unexpected had happened. Some financial genius had evolved a scheme to get the output of tea restricted, with the result that an artificial scarcity was created and prices had soared. But Kinloch, who had left his holding in the hands of Selwyn & Smith when he discovered he had been swindled, knew nothing of the sudden rise in their value.

"And you mean he is rich now?" I asked.

"Rich is a relative term," he replied, "but at least I'll venture to assert he is comfortably off."

Well, I left that office keener than ever to find Sandy Kinloch. And I fancy what Mr. Spencer had heard about him from me made him keener too. But there were difficulties in the way of which Mr. Spencer knew nothing. It would have been better if I had told him something of the Ealing murder. But I had kept silence on that subject; it was not my secret, for one thing; and, for another, I was too wary to blurt out such a confidence to any man at a first meeting. Yet, as things turned out, it would have been wiser to have risked a little in the way of frankness with Spencer. For in his new keenness he began advertising again for Kinloch, recasting the words in consequence of the facts I had supplied, and now inserting the thing in the papers read by the masses. The only paper of that type I had kept on taking in was the _Record_. It I still saw because it never ceased hammering away at the Ealing murder. And the moment I read Mr. Spencer's latest advertisement I felt we were in for trouble. It ran thus:

ALEXANDER DAVID KINLOCH, last seen at Ealing on the night of
Monday, 15th January. Will any person in a position to supply
information as to his present whereabouts kindly communicate with
Messrs. Selwyn & Smith, Devon Chambers, Chancery Lane. Liberal
reward.

Then the mistake I had made became clear. I should either have taken Spencer into my confidence or at least have supervised the terms in which the new advertisement was to be recast. All the way up to town I kept hoping against hope. But my first words with Spencer seemed to make disaster certain.

"No replies yet?" I asked, inwardly praying for his assent.

"But, yes--three," he said almost cheerfully.

"Three!"

I was aghast. It was almost as if the earth had begun to tremble under my feet.

"Oh, don't be too hopeful. None of them were very promising, I fear." Mr. Spencer polished his glasses meditatively. "You see," he continued, "all three came to make enquiries about our young friend."

"You didn't tell them anything?" I interjected.

"Dear me, no! But they were rather troublesome. I had to point out to them that they had misread our notice: we desired to _receive_, not to _give_ information."

"Do you know who they were?"

"No, and I didn't trouble to enquire. An offer of a reward brings all sorts buzzing in, as we know from experience. Still," he continued, "these three didn't exactly conform to type, so to speak. That's why I saw them, and wasted my time." He paused. "You don't know if Mr. Kinloch had a judgment summons out against him?"

"No. Why?"

"Well, one of them, a burly, fresh-complexioned and muscular fellow with a heavy moustache, looked as if he might be connected with the law."

"Connected with the law?" I said in sudden apprehension.

"Oh, well, I don't necessarily mean the criminal side of the law. Debt, you know. And this fellow did look as if he might be a bailiff's man."

Swift as light there had come back to me the memory of a man who tallied with the description Mr. Spencer had so off-handedly given--the Scotland Yard man at the inquest, Inspector Snargrove. But who could the others be?

"And the two others?" I said.

Mr. Spencer stroked his chin reflectively.

"Well, one was a tallish, rather hawk-eyed fellow with a very close clipped black moustache, who held himself--well, rather like a soldier out of uniform. Thought he might be an old comrade of Kinloch's. And the third man--he hasn't been gone more than half an hour--was wiry too, but clean-shaven. Unlike the others he did not look as if a uniform would fit him. Looked rather like a medical man; and he was certainly a fellow-countryman of yours."

The last two men I could not "place" at all. And I think it was the uneasiness that inability roused in me that made me there and then resolve to take Mr. Spencer into my confidence. So, after a hurried moment or two of thought, I said:

"Since they didn't tell you why they want Kinloch I'd better tell you--"

Mr. Spencer with a hasty ejaculation shot out his hand, cutting me short.

"They didn't need to," he said. "I guessed it from what you told me of Mr. Kinloch's financial circumstances--they were all after money; the bailiff's man, the old comrade of the war, he was either after a loan from Kinloch or seeking repayment of one; and the Scotch doctor--nosing after an unpaid bill, eh?"

He laughed. But I shook my head.

"Much more serious. Kinloch is innocent but--"

"Oh," he cut in again, "of all the witless--" He broke off to search for his eyeglasses which had fallen to the floor. Utterly taken aback, I stared in silence. After fumbling about a little he sat up rather red from stooping, and went on as if he had not heard me. "Of course the bailiff's man said he would find the means to open my lips at the proper time. But it was easy for me to show him that if I had the least notion where Mr. Kinloch was I would hardly be offering a reward for the information."

So that was it! At last I understood. Spencer did not want to know lest he should have to tell. My respect for him went up. He was as honest as I had been stupid.

"They will come back, though--these men," I said.

"Oh, no doubt," he replied, cheerful again, "but not till we discontinue that advertisement." Then, as if to make sure I understood, he added knowingly, "I have paid in advance for quite a series of insertions. Foolish, perhaps, for the notice will possibly be appearing for some time after we have found Kinloch."

* * * * *

But as the days slipped past and nothing was heard of him I began to think we had heard the last of Kinloch. The frequent visits I paid to the office in Chancery Lane were always blank. Spencer, however, was invariably confident. When pressed for his reasons all he said was:

"Doctor, money never goes long a-begging. Never has this firm advertised like that in vain. Sooner or later it draws a response."

One day later he surprised me by a question:

"Doctor, do you ever look behind?"

Not comprehending, I merely re-echoed his query, and he beckoned me to the window.

"Look there--that man in the grey overcoat and black bowler on the opposite pavement, sauntering." And as I peeped out he put the question: "Ever seen him before?"

I could not recall the burly figure.

"Ah--there--you see!" Spencer cried.

For the man opposite had just taken a swift glance up at our window, and catching sight of us moved on again, affecting interest in the traffic.

"He blundered that time," Spencer murmured.

"Who is he?" I asked, not liking this at all.

"Oh, I thought you'd better have a hint you are being shadowed, doctor. He's been seen out there waiting for you on your last three calls. If you've been up to anything--well, look out."

After that I ceased my calls at the office, and we arranged that Spencer would telephone or wire if he wanted me. For, if I was being shadowed on Kinloch's account, it would be well to let it be supposed from ceasing my visits to Selwyn & Smith's that we now had no hope of any reply to the advertisement.

And, indeed, hope on my part had sunk into despair by this time. Yet in the end Spencer's confidence was proved right. One morning my telephone rang, and as soon as I picked up the receiver Spencer's voice sounded in my ear:

"That you, doctor?"

There was elation in his voice. I knew something had turned up.

"Yes, what is it?"

"News."

"Not--"

In my surprise I was almost betrayed into an indiscretion.

"Hush. Come and see me. It may be a hoax."

When I reached the office he laid this scrap of writing before me:

If Messrs. Selwyn & Smith will send some one to Mr. Keiller, now
staying at the Aberlundy Arms, Gart, Argyllshire, they can obtain
full information about Alexander Kinloch.

"Well?" Spencer queried as soon as I had finished reading.

"This is no hoax," I asserted.

"You think this Mr. Keiller knows something?"

"I think this Mr. Keiller may turn out to be Kinloch himself. Anyhow, this was written by a blind man. You can see how he used the parallel rulers to guide his pen. See, each line is straight in itself but rises towards the right because the ruler was not set straight across the paper."

"Are you sure?" Spencer asked. "I wouldn't care to go so far on a wild-goose chase."

A closer scrutiny of the handwriting increased my conviction. I had never seen Sandy's handwriting since his blindness; and I was aware what a difference is made by blindness. But even now, although all individuality is taken out of writing so slowly and painfully achieved, I could detect in the formation of certain letters a resemblance to his former hand. These I indicated to Spencer.

"I'll tell you what," I said finally, "I'll send you an old letter of his and you can judge for yourself."

"Right," he said. "In any case I can't go before to-morrow night."

Neither could I, since I had to arrange for a man to look after my practice. But that I did arrange before returning to Ealing. And apparently Spencer convinced himself from the letter I sent when I got home, for next morning a wire reached me:

Euston midnight to-night.

The rest of the day went in making preparations for getting away. Unusual preparations they were to me. If the truth must be admitted, I was keenly ashamed that Spencer had to prove to me I was being shadowed. And yet, though a medical man is a trained observer, his line of observation lies in another world than that of a man in Spencer's position. I loathed the notion of peeping round corners, turning round to watch who might be behind me, or pausing at shop windows to see who passed. And in fact, even after he warned me, I never did one of these things. But that day I took precautions. And with the result that never have I approached any railway station by a route more circuitous than I reached Euston that night. In fact I began by undressing, turning out the light and getting into bed at 10.15. There I lay for three quarters of an hour, when I rang up the hospital and so alarmed a night nurse with enquiries about one of her patients that I got myself summoned to an urgent case. At the hospital door I left the taxi standing for ten minutes while I soothed the nurse, and then returned to tell the driver to come back in an hour when the operation would be over. After that I passed through the building, and getting away by a back exit, took the 11.25 to Paddington. From there a taxi down Marylebone Road landed me on the Euston departure platform at three minutes to midnight. Spencer was there, standing near the ticket collector at the gate. He had booked to Glasgow.

"For a novice, a first-rate performance," he said approvingly.

He saw I did not comprehend.

"Look," he said, "if there is any one on your heels they're not close enough this time."

The ticket collector had just shut the gates with a rolling clash. And I had been the last man to enter.

* * * * *

Night was closing in as our train drew up at Gart. All the afternoon, ever since we had left Callander behind, and while the engine patiently nosed its way round the flanks of mighty mountains, and over hissing torrents, we had talked of Kinloch. For Spencer was now as eager to hear about him as formerly he had been unwilling. This surprised me at first. Then I came to see the reason: in his profession, unlike my own, one must know either nothing or everything about a case. And now that he could no longer honourably say he knew nothing it was safer to know all. And that is what I told him then, as the train laboriously climbed among the hills. But, nearing Gart, we had fallen silent as I watched the lights twinkling brightly from cottage windows down in the valley. My thoughts had turned on our approaching meeting with Sandy Kinloch.

Stiff with our long journey, and cold in that sharp northern air, we took our directions from Gart's solitary porter, and made our way to the "Aberlundy Arms." A long, whitewashed, two-story house, as soon as I discerned it in the dusk I knew the sort of hotel it was--busy perhaps in the fishing season and in summer, but likely to be quiet enough now. So it proved. The landlord, a big tub of a man, rosy of face but obviously lazy and soft, gaped with surprise when we entered with our bags.

"Come to see Mr. Keiller," Spencer greeted him briskly.

The big man, recovering, shut his mouth to open it again for speech.

"Ay, I was thinkin' somebody ought to turn up afore long. Losh, gentlemen, I'm right glad to see ye."

"Anything wrong?" I asked sharply.

He turned to examine me before replying.

"Och, no. No catastrophe, if that's what you mean. Not a bit of it, sirs. He's just been"--dropping his voice to a confidential whisper--"drinking a bit. A blind man, ye ken--it's no quite safe for a blind man to get verra drunk."

My heart sank. I heard Spencer's voice as in a dream.

"Ah, and is--is this Mr. Keiller frequently the worse for drink?"

"Hoots, no, not him. Not once have I seen him fou. That's just what bothers me. He seems to have something upsettin' on his mind that robs my whisky of its natural effect."

"Take us to him," Spencer said brusquely.

"Say nothing at first of my presence," I whispered to him as we were led down the passage.

The landlord threw open a door at the far end.

"Gentleman enquiring for you, Mr. Keiller," he called out as if to a deaf person.

At first I thought the man had shown us into an empty room; but as I peered about in the gloom I saw a face lifted from the table at which a man sat with outstretched arms. It was Sandy Kinloch. I knew him as he turned his sightless eyes in our direction. Thus it was I saw him next, sitting alone in the dark like a hunted animal.

"Good evening, Mr. Keiller. We--we have come to see you on business," Spencer said.

"Business?" Sandy echoed hoarsely.

"Yes; if the landlord will switch on the light for us."

"I'll bring ye a lamp," the big man said, reluctantly going out.

I slid into a chair close to the door as Spencer took a seat opposite Sandy.

"We are searching for a Mr. Kinloch really," he said.

"So I thought! And it's not difficult to guess your business with him," Sandy interjected.

"You surprise me. I thought Mr. Kinloch alone would know about the tea shares."

"Tea shares?" came blankly.

"Yes; about tea shares."

There was a moment's silence, and then Sandy burst into wild laughter--laughter that was, however, quite mirthless and which stopped as abruptly as it started.

"Excuse me," he said, "but your pretence of being here about tea shares was more humorous than you could know. As it happens, Kinloch did put a lot of money into tea shares; and he let them lie with the agents, because they were worthless."

"Worthless!" said Spencer. "My dear sir, do you suppose I'd come all this way about worthless shares?"

"No, I don't," Sandy rejoined. "That's why it's easy for me to tell why you have come. Let's have done with pretences: I am Kinloch, and you are a policeman. And it's not for tea shares you want me but for the Ealing mur--"

I smothered the last word by kicking over a small crockery-laden table by the door. But I was just in time, for I saw the advance light of the lamp which the landlord was carrying along the passage. He entered, much perturbed by the crash, to find all three of us on our feet. He surveyed the damage with dismay.

"Och, sirs," he cried, "hae ye been quarrelin' already? If ye'd waited for the lamp it maybe widna' hae been so expensive."

"Macfarlane," Kinloch almost shouted, "who are these men--what do they look like?"

In the light of the lamp now set on the table I saw Sandy's face glisten with beads of sweat. The landlord, trying to soothe him, examined us with a critical eye.

"They're no that ill-lookin', Mr. Keiller," he pronounced, "nothing out of the ordinary. I've seen better, and I've seen waur."

"But do they look like policemen?"

"Polismen?" Macfarlane laughed the suggestion to scorn. "Them polismen? Losh, no; they're no' near big enough--for this district onyway, unless they were to go about in threes or fours."

He winked across to me as if to convey his apology for this libel on my physique. At last I mastered my feelings sufficiently to speak.

"Sandy," I said, going over to him, "Sandy, lad."

He started violently, and his feverish hand came out to seek my own.

"Peter!" he whispered. "My God, Peter--you here? What have you come here for?"

"Just to find you, Sandy."

And while he gripped my hand I turned to get rid of Macfarlane, who was lingering on.

"Is this a private sitting-room?" I asked.

"No, sir, though it's just as good as one at this time o' the year, for there's naebody but mysel' to come into it."

"Let's have a quite private one, then," I said to him meaningly.

He replied, stiffening at my tone of voice, as he turned to go:

"Certainly sir; but, mind you," he said, lifting a forefinger warningly, "it's an extra, with use of the piano."

Of all the incongruous things I have ever heard, this mention of a piano at such a moment remains unexcelled, even by a patient under an anæsthetic. Spencer even smiled. But Sandy seemed stimulated to the pitch of light-headedness by the word. At least that was what I supposed when he began to hum the refrain of a Scotch ballad:

"Roy's wife of Aldevalloch,
Roy's wife of Aldevalloch,
Wot ye how she cheated me
As I cam' ower the braes o' Balloch....

"Did she? Or did I cheat myself?"

He shook his head wearily, like one who repeats a question he had already found unanswerable. I could have answered it for him! And that without knowing the story. For, as I said to Spencer later, if there was one of these women in it there was not much doubt as to who had done the cheating.

Kinloch was in a much healthier mental condition next morning. When I went into his room, the daylight streaming in by an east window as he sat up, it was possible for me, while we talked, to see his eyes fairly well without letting him know what I was up to. The scarification certainly was severe. Before the war his case would have been called hopeless. But now I wasn't sure. So I resolved to avoid all talk on the Ealing affair till he had been seen by Fyffe, the Edinburgh specialist. The first thing was to get him into a healthier, happier condition. And for that I had set great store on the news Spencer had to give him. But that morning he seemed to have forgotten Spencer.

"You haven't yet told me how you found out where I was," he said.

"Spencer let me know."

His face showed wonder.

"Spencer--I thought he was a mental case you were in charge of."

"Why?"

"Well, from his nonsensical babble about those shares. He'd heard you mention them, no doubt."

"He was right about your being here."

"That's true, though how he knew--"

"He was right about the shares also. You can sell for forty-one shillings to-day."

"Hmp--for the lot, I suppose."

"No, each. Mr. Spencer, as a partner of Selwyn & Smith, knows what he is talking about."

"Selwyn & Smith!" he cried. "Oh, I didn't know."

I could see he believed me. A faint flush swept over the pale worn face. He was silent for a long time, and I wondered into what queer world his thoughts were speeding.

* * * * *

It was on a Sunday morning that I first talked openly to him of his eyesight. Spencer having finished his business had gone. Kinloch was not so elated over his news as we had expected. To me it was clear that Sandy, as the landlord said, had something on his mind. But I put no questions. I was there not to gratify my curiosity but to help a friend. So on that Sunday morning while the hills behind re-echoed the church bell, I suddenly took the plunge, as tactfully as I could.

"You mind that man at Bethsaida, Sandy--him that was blind and had his eyes opened?"

"Yes," he said after a slight pause. He was very quick with his ear, and maybe my voice was not under perfect control.

"You mind how they asked him if he saw anything and how in his delight he cried out, 'Yes, I see. I see men as trees walking'? He was so content with only that--to see men dimly like walking trees."

"Content? He--he went on his knees, if I remember."

"So he did. Most of us would not, I suppose, be content with so little."

His hands clenched as I watched him.

"God--how little you know," he burst out. "To see men as trees, even to distinguish the light from darkness--promise a blind man that, and he will go down on his knees to you too."

Well, I could not promise him even as much as that, but I talked to him of Fyffe's operation.

He shook his head hurriedly.

"No, no. Things like that don't happen, Peter. The world isn't made like that. Think of my luck with those shares. Luck isn't showered on a fellow like that."

"Sandy," I said, "I wouldn't call you a lucky man. Precious little you've had up to now. But sooner or later there's such a thing as compensation--a levelling up of things--long overdue in your case, I think."

He said no more.

And all I need say here of what followed is this: the operation for _corneitis_ was performed by Sir Donald Fyffe in Edinburgh, and one week later Kinloch got his first glimpse of the light again, that light which he had not seen since he was buried by a high explosive during the advance on Remy in the last six weeks of the war. It was in the sitting-room, the quite private sitting-room which I had insisted on having, that the first experiment was made. I removed the bandages, in semi-darkness, with only a glimmer of weak lamplight in the room. But when I saw Sir Donald had made another success--well, I felt like making use of that piano after all.

Yet the first use, the very first use, to which Sandy put his eyes made me think he had gone crazy. He whipped off his jacket and looked at the lining, staring at a spot just below the collar. The queer thing was that there was absolutely nothing to stare at, so far as I could see in that light. Yet he shook with excitement. After a little he said as if to himself:

"Now when was that done?"

"When was what done?" I asked.

He held out the jacket.

"See, some one has clipped out the centre of the tab with the tailor's name and address on it. That was clever--damn clever.... 'Wot ye how she cheated me ... Roy's wife of Aldevalloch....' Really _smart_, you know."

Hearing this, I trembled for his sanity, thinking that in the shock of his recovery his mind had become unhinged. For the coat had been in no way damaged.

In the next few days, however, his physical improvement grew so steadily that I began to think of my practice. Indeed, had he become equally well mentally I should have returned to Ealing much earlier. But he did certainly show symptoms of mental unrest not at all to my liking. And into this I knew I must probe before I went. That the trouble had a connection with the murder I did not doubt, and to diagnose a woman behind the trouble was still easier. But it was the latter belief more than the former that made me broach the matter with the utmost circumspection.

We had climbed up the hills and were sitting among the bracken and gorse, with a wide prospect down the valley.

"You'll get better every day here," I said. "The air is like wine. A month or two--"

"I go next week, Peter," he interjected.

"Go next week--where to?" I asked, amazed.

"Town."

"To London?"

He nodded assent without looking at me. Following his long condition of sightlessness he hadn't yet recovered the habit of looking at those he was speaking to, I noticed. But I was horrified by his intention.

"London isn't safe for you--yet," I said meaningly.

"Oh, surely a little smoke won't hurt," he replied, thinking I had referred to his eyes.

When I said nothing he did turn his face my way. Then I said:

"I meant--the Ealing affair."

He in his turn was thunderstruck. For a moment he could say nothing.

"So you know about that," he said at last. He began to breathe quickly. "Well," he added, "if you know much about it you know I had no hand in it."

"No, Sandy, you hadn't; but you had--well, a stick in it, so to speak."

"Dunn," he cried, "do you mean to say you have known this all along, and have never once spoken of it?"

"You said nothing to me, Sandy; and I force no man's confidences."

He didn't like that. Pulling up a strand of the dried bracken he began to twist it round his finger mechanically, his thoughts elsewhere.

"Peter," he said after a while, "I owe you more than can ever be repaid. Few men can ever have done so much for another as you have done for me; but there's things about this affair I cannot tell you, for there's--there's some one else to whom I owe more even than I owe to you."

"Roy's wife, I suppose."

"You can if you like," he said, taking the gibe in the same quiet tone.

This put me on the high horse instantly.

"And what kindness might ye owe to her?" I enquired, adding in pretended haste, "But perhaps the question is indiscreet."

I rejoiced to see his colour rise.

"My debt there is like what I owe you, Peter," he replied patiently, "in this, at least, that it is more than I'm likely to be able to pay her."

"If ye'd said pay her _out_, it would be understandable."

In the old days this would have been the point where we would have quarrelled. And even then, seething with indignation over his foolishness, I myself would have been ready enough for a quarrel. But Kinloch still held himself in check. Instead of firing up he said nothing. And for a little, as I saw his eyes fixed on the outstretched valley at our feet, I thought he meant to say nothing at all to my outburst. Then he turned towards me, and I knew he had been considering not the landscape but what he might reply to me.

"Peter," he began almost wistfully, "there was a time when I could have agreed with you about that. About paying her out, I mean. There was a time when I hated her. Really hated her, you understand, exactly as I now hate the man whose murderous attack on me she stopped. I would have scoffed at the notion of being grateful, for even when she carried me away I knew it was all done to save not me but him. At no time did I have any illusion about that. But there was a time when I behaved like a cad in that house. You remember that night I came to your house? What did you think of me--that I had become coarser, less scrupulous, harder? Yes, you did, and it was true too. Insensibly I had taken on the colour of my surroundings. For two years I hadn't, as you might say, touched a clean hand till you took mine that night. Yet it was not you who lifted me out of that pit, much as you've since done. It's only as I look back that I see what life with her in that lonely house really did for me."

"And how," I asked pointedly, "did this happy home come to be broken up?"

"The old woman who came to do the housework found out I was there. One night to get rid of me she came back with a cock and bull story about having seen some man wandering about the common as if watching the house, affecting to believe him to be Stella's husband. The trick would have failed but for the fact that it coincided with a newspaper item about an impending arrest in connection with the Ealing murder. We thought we had been traced and had to fly, and fly far. But even then, Peter, that girl was fine, you understand. Broken as she was by the old woman's imputation on her honour she first got me out of the house and then herself returned to prepare for our long journey and if necessary face the unknown man we suspected to be really a policeman--face him while I sheltered in that haystack."

"And all this she did for you out of a pure disinterested kindness? You never came to doubt that, did you?" And to rub the question home I began to whistle the tune, "Roy's Wife."

He flushed at once.

"What if she did cheat me?" he cried. "Hadn't I been trying to outwit her myself?"

"And you lost."

"As I deserved," he rejoined. Then, after a minute of silence he turned to me, bending forward. "Peter, I told you I behaved like a cad in that house. That was true. But the most caddish thing came at the end. We had travelled here by night in her little car, sleeping in it all day in some out-of-the-way corner of a field or in a wood. It took us five nights to reach this place. Then, before I let her go away, I made her kiss me."

"Ah, here enters the love interest," I said sarcastically. "Is it possible the hussy spoils this very romantic story by refusing?"

"No," he said quite seriously, "she didn't refuse. At first I thought she was going to. But when she did--"

"You knew she wasn't--" I helped him out.

"But when she did," he went on, "I found her cheek was wet with tears."

It wasn't what I had expected to hear. And, though I felt it would have been saner to scoff, I somehow couldn't find the right words in which to do it. His childlike notion that the woman had cried over his brutality in making her kiss him simply turned me dumb. There was nothing left that I could usefully say. But this extravagant notion of Sandy's prepared me for what was to follow. And for what followed at once I certainly needed preparation.

"What made you communicate with Selwyn & Smith?" I asked. "You didn't remember they held the shares?"

"No," he said. "I thought the police were behind that advertisement and I wanted to give myself up."

"To give yourself up! What for--the murder?"

"Yes."

I could scarcely believe my ears. Of all the silly, quixotic acts ever recorded this seemed the maddest. Give himself up indeed! Yes, but the very foolishness of it gave me the measure of this unknown woman's hold on Kinloch. Cleverly indeed she had done her work, abandoning him at Gart just when he was sufficiently bewitched to make him keep his mouth shut, or even, if it came to that, to play the part of willing victim. And as I perceived this, it was not only anger I felt, but something like awe, that a woman could so dominate such a man as Kinloch.

"You see," he went on, "to give myself up seemed a way out, an escape from life. I had got rather tired of life before, you know. My hold on it was purely parasitic--just an existence, a crawling about in the dark." He looked over at me with something in his eyes that glowed. "But you have made all the difference, Peter. You have given me back my interest in life, and now I can see how mad it was to think of giving myself up like that."

This was so far satisfactory. But it was still far short of what I wanted.

"But," I said, "to go to London with the police on the look out is just to give yourself up in a different way. They'll be on you like hawks, from what I've seen."

"I'm not afraid. And I've got to find her, now that I can do something," he said stubbornly.

"But are you sure she wants to be found?"

I had him there, for he looked more sure she did not from the way his face fell. To push home this discovery I went on:

"Was it her name you took when you came here?"

"I don't know her name," he admitted.

"Then it was to hide your own name from her you called yourself Keiller?"

"No, she knows my name."

"No doubt! And all about you; while you only know as much about her as she chose to tell, which seems to have been nothing."

Then a thought burst in on me.

"Why, you don't even know what she looks like, for of course _you've never seen her_."

"No," he admitted, "if you were to place her photograph in front of me I wouldn't recognize her."

"And you don't even know so much as her name, or where she lives, or what she looks like. Why, man, the search is hopeless--a needle in a haystack is nothing to it."

After that I let the matter drop, for I saw he was weary. We descended the slope and passed through the pine wood almost without speech, even when we came out on the highway at the bottom of the valley, where talk would have been easy.

* * * * *

It is unlikely that I would ever again have reverted to Kinloch's project had he himself not done so a few nights later. We were sitting by the fire, smoking an after-dinner pipe. I was to leave Gart next morning. He began by desiring my advice, showing great deference to my opinion. Of course I knew he was merely trying to smooth down my ruffled feelings. But when he went a step farther, and proposed to tell me his plans, I cut him short. What he meant to do, where he intended to go, were, I told him, things it was safer to keep to himself. That he had some plan of action, some wild-cat scheme for finding the lady I already divined. But it did not interest me; and, in view of his confessed ignorance of the most essential facts about her, I knew he must fail. Had he been willing to help the police to lay the man by the heels the situation would have been simplified. For I did not doubt now, that, provided he came forward voluntarily, he could, with the help of Spencer and myself, clear himself from complicity in the murder. But this he would not do. He would not lift a finger to help the authorities till he knew how the man's arrest would affect the woman, a position which put him on the wrong side of the law, and which might well jeopardize his own safety if the police got their hands on him. It was this that filled me with an exasperated despair. For he knew his danger by this time. He had been poring through his tinted glasses, longer than was good for his eyes, over a file of old newspapers in which the fullest details of the murder, and the various theories as to its perpetrator and his motives, were given. So I firmly refused to listen to his plans for finding out where that woman had gone. But it was only at Gart Station, while waiting for my train to start, that I told him why I refused.

"You see, Sandy," I said, "if anybody should ask me where you are, or what you are doing, I can truthfully say I know nothing."

What I had in mind now that I was about to return to London was the difficulty experienced in getting away from it. And I had not forgotten the man who had watched me in Chancery Lane, nor the three who called at the office there.

"Oh," he said hastily, "of course I can't expect a friend to lie for me."

"Certainly not," I said. "He has no right to undertake the duty unless he can do it really well."

It was good to see him smile back as he gripped my hand. I think he understood.

But it saddened me to part with him, not knowing what his plan was for finding the lady. Yet it was some satisfaction that we had parted friends, in spite of great provocation, given and received.