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Updated: June 6, 2025
McConachan thought we were in front of him. Sir David was with me, and Lord Ashiel was fearfully angry with him, and said he'd no business to let me get in a place where I might have been killed. He was rather cross with him for the next few days, though I told him it was my fault; and then the other day, when Sir David annoyed him again, there was a frightful row."
He put it down after a few minutes, however, and began fidgeting about the room. Then he went and conferred with the second of the two policemen, and as he was talking to him the General and the inspector reappeared. "I think," said Gimblet, coming towards them, "that we will not wait any longer for Lord Ashiel."
Well, Ashiel must have met her on his way out, and would in that case at least be able to provide the information as to who she was. Still, more people might know Ashiel than Ashiel knew, and it was possible that that hope might fail.
To a mournful dirge on the pipes, Ashiel was laid in his rocky grave, and the throng of black-garmented people was ferried back the way it had come. Gimblet, wrapped to the ears in a thick overcoat, and with a silk scarf wound high round his neck, shivered in the cold air, for the wind had veered to the north, and the first breath of the Arctic winter was already carried on it.
"He was devoted to his first wife, this girl told me," said Lord Ashiel. "You never knew Lena Meredith, Gimblet, or you would not be surprised that people kept their promises to her. She was my wife's friend, as I told you, and I only saw her once, but I don't think I shall ever forget her.
They do it, I believe, to keep in practice for trials, you know, where they have to make the witnesses say what they don't mean, poor things. And what I shall have put into my mouth by them, if I'm called as a witness against poor David, doesn't bear thinking of. But the Lord knows what Ashiel did with the will, and, as I was saying, it can't be found."
Poor child, she's the ghost of what she was a few days ago. Half-drowned, too, when it happened, which made it worse for her." "She must have had a narrow escape," Gimblet remarked. "What was the name of the man who pulled her out of the river?" "Andy Campbell. He had been stalking with Mark McConachan." "Was young Lord Ashiel with him?" "No, he was on ahead.
"I am going out," said his master, taking up his straw hat. "If anyone calls, say I could not wait any longer. Ah, there's the front-door bell. Just see who it is." He retreated to his sitting-room while Higgs went to the door of the flat. A minute or two later Lord Ashiel was ushered in. "I'm very sorry I'm late," said he, as the door closed behind him, "but you know what kept me."
Still Gimblet had liked the dead peer, and could not get the pale aristocratic face and tired, feverish blue eyes out of his head. Surely he might have found some way of preventing this catastrophe. He found a telegram at his flat. It was signed Byrne, and ran: "Please come immediately to investigate death of Lord Ashiel certain some mistake." It had been sent off at four o'clock that day.
With a groan, and fortifying himself with chocolates, the detective sat down to write a long and full account of his failure to keep what had been confided to his care, for the space of one hour. In a couple of days he had an answer. Ashiel did not seem much perturbed at the loss of the cipher. "It is a nuisance, of course," he said.
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