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Updated: September 13, 2025
The comedian who preceded Mr. Mackwayte and who was on the stage at that moment had said, "Hullo, Mac! Come to give us young 'uns some tips?" And even now the stage manager was talking over old days with her father. "You had a rough but good schooling, Mac," he was saying, "but, by Jove, it gave us finished artists.
That was how he went through life, a shy, retiring little man, quiet as a mouse, gentle as a dove, modesty personified. That is, at least, how Mr. Arthur Mackwayte struck his friends in private life. Once a week, however, he fairly screamed at the public from the advertisement columns of "The Referee": "Mackwayte, in his Celebrated Kerbstone Sketches. Wit! Pathos!
For a brief moment, he had a vision of that frail, clinging figure swaying up against some blank wall before a file of levelled rifles. Then again he seemed to see old Mackwayte lying dead on the landing of the house at Seven Kings. Had this frail girl done this unspeakable deed? To send her to the gallows or before a firing-squad was this to be the end of his mission?
I can see none except the highly improbable one of Miss Mackwayte being my confidential secretary. In that case why murder the father, a harmless old man who didn't even know that his daughter is in my service, why kill him, I ask you, and spare the girl? On the other hand, I believe the man Barney's story, and can see that Marigold does, too.
Marigold knew, the mortal remains of poor old Mackwayte had been laid to rest. He was rather surprised to see the girl back at work so soon. She did not speak to him as she showed him into the Chief, but there was a question lurking in her gray eyes. Mr. Marigold looked at her and gravely shook his head. "Nothing fresh," he said. The Chief was unusually exuberant. Mr.
"No, it's not for the letters," the Chief said to her as she came in with her notebook and pencil. "I'm going to give you a little trip down to the country this afternoon, Miss Mackwayte... to, Essex... the Mill House, Wentfield... you know whom it is you are to see, eh? I'm getting a little restless as we've had no reports since he arrived there.
Hence the Chief's unexpected tribute to him in the smoking room. "Well," said Desmond slowly, "there are one or two things I should like to know. What am I here for? Why did you have me followed last night? How did you know, before we ever went to Seven Kings, that Barney did not murder old Mackwayte? And lastly..." He paused, fearing to be rash; then he risked it: "And lastly, Nur-el-Din?"
There were some photographs and pictures hanging on the walls. The room was spotlessly clean and very tidy. Desmond remarked on this, asking if the police had put the room straight. Mr. Marigold looked quite shocked. "Oh, no, everything is just as it was when Mrs. Chugg found Miss Mackwayte this morning.
I don't mind telling you that he is swearing by all the tribes of Judah that he's innocent of the murder of old Mackwayte. He's got an amazing yarn... perhaps you'd like to hear it!" Mr. Marigold suddenly began to interest Desmond. His proposal was put forward so modestly that one would have thought the last thing he believed possible was that the Chief should acquiesce in his suggestion.
He scribbled a few lines on a writing-pad and tossed it across to the detective. "If your friend's innocent," he chuckled, "that'll fetch him to a dead certainty. If he murdered Mackwayte, of course he won't respond. Read it out and let's hear how it sounds!"
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