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Updated: June 14, 2025
"What a joke!" cried Sybil Venables. "There is no accounting for taste," remarked her sapient sister. "And he was belaboring them with a cushion, did you say?" added Rachel, with the slightest emphasis upon the noun. "Well, it looked like one to me," replied Langholm, "but, on second thoughts, it was more like a bolster in shape; and now I know what it was! It has just dawned on me.
"Oh, what a blessing you have come!" cried Morna, whose kind eyes discovered a tell-tale moisture. "Do please go up and convince Mrs. Steel that you can't be rearrested on a charge on which you have already been tried and acquitted!" "But of course you can't," said Langholm. "Who has put that into her head, Mrs. Woodgate?" "The place is hemmed in by police." "Since when?" asked Langholm, quickly.
At last there is the final ticking of inverted commas, and Charles Langholm inscribes the autograph for which he is importuned once in a blue moon, and which the printer will certainly not set up at the foot of the last page; but the thing is done, and the doer must needs set his hand to it out of pure and unusual satisfaction with himself. And so, thank the Lord!
Charles Langholm had not set up as hermit by halves; he had his own reasons for being thorough there. And it was more inspiriting than the champagne to feel that no fresh annoyance was likely to befall the Steels through him. "It's not so bad as I thought," said Langholm, throwing the newspaper aside as his companion, whose professional name was Valentine Venn, finished with the wine-card.
The hamlet of Westerkirk, with its parish church and school, lies in a narrow part of the valley, a few miles above Langholm. Westerkirk parish is long and narrow, its boundaries being the hill-tops on either side of the dale. It is about seven miles long and two broad, with a population of about 600 persons of all ages.
"Thank God you've got back, sir!" cried a Yorkshire voice in devout accents; and Langholm, turning, met the troubled face and tired eyes of the woman next door, who kept house for him while living in her own. "My dear Mrs. Brunton," he exclaimed, "what on earth has happened? You didn't expect me earlier, did you? I wired you my train first thing this morning." "Oh, no, it isn't that, sir.
Steel seemed disposed to discuss every aspect of the subject except that of the investigations upon which his very life might depend. Langholm glanced at him in horror as they walked. The broad brim of his Panama hat threw his face in shadow to the neck; but to Langholm's heated imagination, it was the shadow of the black cap and of the rope itself that he saw out of the corners of his eyes.
But it would be a difficult letter to write, and Langholm was still battling with the first sentence when he reached the Cadogan. "A gentleman to see me?" he cried in surprise. "What gentleman?" "Wouldn't leave his name, sir; said he'd call again; a foreign gentleman, he seemed to me." "A delicate-looking man?" "Very, sir.
The colonel endeavoured to obtain information from his father-in-law respecting his other son; and he told him all that his mother had said, of what she had spoken regarding the coachman, and also of what Charles had told him, in twice meeting one who so strongly resembled himself. "Colonel," said Mr. Sim, "I know the John Bell your mother speaks of; he now keeps an inn near Langholm.
"Nevertheless," said Langholm, grimly, "I have." "Anything worth finding out?" "I think so." "You don't mean to tell me you have struck a clew?" "I believe I can lay hands upon the criminal," said Langholm, as quietly as he could. But he was the more nervous man of the two. The other simply stood still and stared his incredulity. The stare melted into a smile.
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