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As he covered the space which intervened between him and Barrant waiting at the gate, he decided that the moment had come to tell all he knew. "I know now that it couldn't have been much after half-past eight," he said in reply to Barrant's question. "Did you see Miss Turold there?" "I was coming to that.
I shut it up because it kept trying to get upstairs to his room. It's a queer surly sort of brute, but fond enough of him. He used to take it out for long walks.? "What kind of dog is it?" "A retriever." "So that's all that happened that night, is it?" said Barrant, in a meditative voice. "You have told me all?" Thalassa nodded.
His welcome was so perfect, his manners so gracefully unforced, that Barrant had an uneasy suspicion that he was being beaten at his own game, and was slightly out of countenance in consequence. Up to that moment he could not, for the life of him, decide whether Austin Turold's polished self-assurance was a mask or not. It seemed too natural to be assumed.
"Is it the Cornish savage from the churchtown him with the straw helmit?" said Thalassa, with a harsh laugh. The last shot had missed fire badly. The lawless spirit of the man was not to be intimidated by a threat of arrest a threat which the detective had reason for not putting into effect just then. Barrant moved towards the door with the best dignity he could command.
He confined himself to a reply which was a strict statement of fact, so far as it went. "Until I heard Thalassa's story to-day I had no idea of the time of my own arrival at Flint House on that night," he said. "The clock found lying on the floor upstairs was stopped at half-past nine," remarked Barrant with a reflective air, as though turning over all the facts in his mind.
Barrant dismissed young Turold's opinions about the case with an impatient shake of the head. "Who told him about the marks?" he said. It was the thought which had occurred to Mr. Brimsdown at the time, but he did not say so then. "How did you discover them?" he asked. "When I was examining the body. But Charles Turold had no reason to examine the body. Perhaps Dr. Ravenshaw told him.
But who would find the way to such a lonely spot to commit murder, if murder had been committed? Reaching the end of the long passage, he first turned towards the study on the right. The smashed door swung creakingly back to his push, revealing the interior of the room where Robert Turold had met his death. Barrant entered, and closed the broken door behind him.
When I came down again after trying the door she was lying on the floor in a faint, and I carried her in to her bed. It's floored her wits." "She's had a very bad shock," said Barrant gravely. He regarded her attentively, her vacant eyes, mouthing lips, trembling hands, her uncanny fixed glance which seemed to behold something unseen. Strange suspicions flowed through his brain as he watched her.
There was no reply, and a second ring passed disregarded. That was disconcerting and unexpected. He wondered whether Thalassa and his wife had left the place. Then he noticed that the door was merely closed and not shut. He lifted the heavy iron knocker, and knocked loudly. The repeated knocking sent the door flying open, and Barrant found himself looking into an empty hall.
Half-way down a pair of curtains stirred slightly and parted suddenly, revealing a narrower passage which led to the door of the kitchen. The curtains streamed horizontally, twisting and coiling like snakes. Barrant stepped quickly inside and closed the door. The curtains fell together again.
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