Barrant hastened from the room downstairs to the front door. From the open doorway he saw Charles Turold advancing across the rocks in the direction of the house, and he ran swiftly down the gravel path to intercept him.
Charles looked up and came on as if there was nothing to turn back for. His clear glance dwelt on the figure by the gate without fear--with seeming gratification. Barrant was amazed. He had been prepared for an attempt at flight, but not this welcoming look. Never before had he known a man show joy at the prospect of arrest. The experience was so disturbing that he went across the intervening space to meet Charles, and laid a hand upon his arm.
"I suppose you know you are wanted by the police?" he said.
"I am aware of it," was the quiet reply. "I was going to give myself up."
"Did you come back to Cornwall for that purpose?" asked the detective, shooting another puzzled glance at him.
"I came back to try and discover the truth."
"About what?"
"About my uncle's death."
"And have you discovered it?"
"I have."
Barrant did not understand the young man's attitude, or the tone of heartfelt relief in which he uttered these words, but he felt that the conversation in its present form had gone far enough.
"Do you propose to tell me the truth?" he asked, with a slight cynical emphasis on the last word.
"I do."
Barrant's surprise kept him silent for a moment, but when he spoke he was very incisive--
"In that case it is my duty to warn you--"
"There is no need to warn me," Charles quickly interrupted. "I know. Any statement I make will be taken down and used against me. That's the formula, isn't it, or something to that effect? Let us go into the house--my story will take some time in the telling."
He made this request as a right rather than a favour, and Barrant found himself turning in at the gate with him. In silence they walked to the house, and it was Charles Turold who led the way to the sitting-room.
"It was here it began," he murmured, glancing round the deserted apartment, "and it seems fitting that the truth should be brought to light in the same place."
"Provided that it is the truth," commented his companion.
Charles did not reply. They had been standing face to face, but he now drew a chair to the table and sat down. Barrant walked to the door and locked it before seating himself beside him.
"You can begin as soon as you like," he said.
"I think I had better tell you about my own actions, first of all, on that night," said Charles, after a brief silence. "It will clear the way for what follows. I was up here that night--the night of the murder."
"I know that much," was Barrant's cold comment.
"You suspected it--you did not know it," Charles quickly rejoined.
He remained profoundly silent for a moment, as if meditating his words, and then plunged into his tale.
The account of his own visit to Flint House on the night of the murder he related with details withheld from Sisily. The visit was the outcome of a quarrel between father and son over Robert Turold's announcement about his wife's previous marriage. Charles was shocked by his uncle's decision to make the story public, and had wandered about the cliffs until dark trying to decide what to do. Ultimately he returned home and asked his father to use his influence with his brother to keep the secret in the family. His father called him a fool for suggesting such a thing, declined to offend his brother or blast his own prospects by such damned quixotic nonsense. On this Charles had announced his intention of seeing his uncle and telling him he would leave England immediately and forever unless the scandal was kept quiet. That made his father angry, and they quarrelled violently. Charles cut the quarrel short by flinging out of the house in the rain, to carry out his intention of interviewing his uncle. He walked across the moors to Flint House. The front door was open, the downstairs portion of the house in darkness, and his uncle lying upstairs in his study--dead.
He hurried over all this as of small importance in the deeper significance of Thalassa's story. That was to him the great thing--the wonderful discovery which was to clear Sisily and put everything right. He believed that the plan which had brought him to Cornwall was working splendidly. The chance encounter with the detective was really providential--a speeding up, a saving of valuable time.
The possibility of disbelief did not dawn upon him. He overlooked that his listener was also his custodian and judge--the suspicious arbiter of a belated story told by one whose own actions were in the highest degree suspicious. His overburdened mind forgot these things in the excitement of hope. He talked with the candour and freedom of one young man confiding in another. When he had finished he looked at his companion expectantly, but Barrant's eyes were coldly official.
"A strange story!" he said.
"A true one," Charles eagerly rejoined. "Thalassa has been walking along the coast ever since in the expectation of finding this man. He will kill him if he meets him."
It was Barrant's lot to listen to many strange stories which were always true, according to the narrators, but generally they caused him to feel ashamed of the poverty of human invention. He was not immediately concerned to discover whether Thalassa's story was true or false, or whether it had been concocted between him and Charles with the object of deceiving the authorities. The consideration of that infamous brownfaced scoundrel's confession could be postponed--if it had ever been made. The present business was with Charles Turold. There was something infernally mysterious in his unexpected reappearance in that spot. He had gone to London when he disappeared--he admitted that. What had brought him back? To see Thalassa, as he said, in order to try and get at the truth? Nonsense! He--Barrant--was not simple enough to believe that. What then?
Barrant was not prepared to supply a ready answer to that question. But his trained ear had detected many gaps in the young man's own narrative which, filled in, might give it. Turold knew more than he had said--he was keeping things back. Again--what things? Behind him stood the shadowy figure of the girl and her unexplained flight. Barrant's instinct told him that Charles was shielding her. He turned to the task of endeavouring to reach the truth.
"Let's go back a bit," he said casually. "You've left one or two points in your own story unexplained. What about the key?"
"The key?" Charles started slightly. "You mean--"
"I mean the key of the room upstairs. You said you found the key in the passage outside. You must have locked the door after you and taken it away with you."
"I did," replied the young man, in some hesitation.
"For what reason?"
Charles realized that he was on very thin ice. In his intense preoccupation with Thalassa's story he had forgotten that his own impulsive actions on that night must be construed as proof of his own guilt or bear too literal interpretation of having been done to shield Sisily. He saw that he was in a position of extraordinary difficulty.
"I was hardly conscious of what I was doing, at the time," he said.
"You took the key away with you?"
Charles nodded with the feeling that the ice was cracking beneath him.
"And how did it get back into the room afterwards?"
Charles paused to consider his reply, but the detective supplied it.
"The inference is fairly obvious," he said. "The key was found inside the study after the locked door was burst open. It was your father who found it, on the floor. At least, he pretended to find it there. It was your father who started the suicide theory." He paused, then added in a smooth reflective voice, "Really, the whole thing was very ingenious. It reflects much credit on both of you."
Charles spoke with an air of sudden decision.
"My father did these things to shield me," he said. "I did not want to reveal that, but I see that concealment will only direct unmerited suspicion to him. When I returned from Flint House that night I let myself in with my latchkey and went straight to my bedroom. My clothes were wet through, and I lit a fire in my room to dry them. As I was spreading them out in front of the blaze the key of the study dropped out of the waistcoat pocket on to the floor. I had forgotten all about it till then. I picked it up and placed it on the mantel-piece.
"Some time after I was aroused by my father entering the room. He had come to tell me of my uncle's death--the news had just arrived from Flint House. His face was very white. 'Your uncle has been found dead--shot in his study,' he said. I had jumped up when he came in and was standing in the centre of the room. As he spoke his eyes travelled past me to my wet clothes in front of the fire, and then returned to my face with a strange expression. 'Did you go to Flint House?' he asked sharply. I could only nod. 'And did you see him--your uncle?' was his next question. On that, I told him the truth--told him what I had found. I told him about locking the door, and showed him the key on the mantel-piece. He slipped it in his pocket, then turned and gave me a terrible look. 'I am going over to Flint House,' he said, 'but you had better stay here.' And he left the room."
"What time did you reach Flint House that night?" asked Barrant.
Charles Turold realized that the critical moment had come. He had foreseen it when he saw the detective standing at the gate of Flint House. The relation of Thalassa's story to Barrant had carried with it the inevitable admission that Sisily was at Flint House on the night of her father's death. The point Charles had to decide was whether he should divulge the additional information that he had seen her leave Flint House with Thalassa on that night. 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 was standing outside, considering what I would say to my uncle, when the door opened and she and Thalassa came out."
"Did you not speak to them?"
"I went to do so, but they disappeared in the darkness of the moors before I could reach them. I hastened after them, but I got off the road track and wandered about the moors for nearly half an hour before I could find my way back to Flint House."
"And found the door open and your uncle lying dead upstairs?"
"Yes."
"Why have you not come forward with this story before?"
"How could I expect any one to believe a story which sounds improbable in my own ears? Even my father refused to believe it--then, or afterwards."
"Still, you might have cleared Miss Turold on the question of time. There was the stopped clock, you know. You reached Flint House shortly after half-past eight, and went upstairs thirty minutes later."
Charles Turold was subtle enough to see that this remark covered more than a trap. It suggested that Barrant discredited the whole of his story. The hood clock in the dead man's study had pointed to half-past nine on the night he was killed. Thalassa's story, as it stood, proved that Sisily must have left the house long before then. But Charles's story threw suspicion back on to Sisily by suggesting that the police had been misled about the time of the murder, which must have been committed at least half an hour earlier than they assumed. Charles did not attempt to point out this supposed flaw in the detective's reasoning. 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. "According to the story told you by Thalassa, he and Miss Turold left the house shortly after half-past eight. Thalassa could not have returned until after half-past nine. He found the house in darkness, his wife lying unconscious in the kitchen, and his master dead upstairs. Thalassa, retracting his previous statement that he was not out of Flint House that night, for the first time tells of some mysterious avenger who, he thinks, killed Robert Turold while he was out of the house with Miss Turold. Thalassa now suggests (if I understand you rightly) that this man Remington, wronged by Robert Turold many years before, was lurking outside in the darkness, and seized the opportunity of Thalassa's absence to enter the house and murder the man who had wronged him. Have I got it right?"
"Yes," said Charles, "you have it right."
"The story rests on Thalassa's bare statement, and Thalassa is a facile liar." Barrant's tone was scornful.
"He is not lying now," returned Charles, "and there is more than his bare statement to support his story. Thalassa found his master cowering upstairs with fear in his study shortly before he met his death. He then told Thalassa he had heard Remington's footsteps outside. Thalassa laughed at him, but undoubtedly Remington was out there, waiting for his opportunity, which he took as soon as he saw Thalassa leave the house. If I had not followed Thalassa and Miss Turold I might have seen him."
"It's rather a pity you didn't." Barrant's tone was not free from irony. "For then you might have secured the proof which at present the story lacks."
"There are other proofs," Charles earnestly continued. "There were the marks on my uncle's arm, and the letter he wrote to his lawyer under the influence of the terror in which Thalassa found him--the fear caused by overhearing Remington's footsteps. Thalassa posted that letter."
"Did he tell you so?" asked Barrant quickly. Then, as Charles remained silent, he went on--
"How did you find out about the marks on your uncle's arm?"
Charles hesitated before replying in a low voice--
"I paid a visit to Flint House on the night after the murder."
"For what purpose?"
"To see if I could find out anything which might throw light on the mystery. I got in through a window and went upstairs. I saw the marks ... then."
"Did you discover anything else?"
"No; the dog started to bark, and I left as quickly as I could."
"I see."
Barrant's voice was non-committal, followed after a pause by a quick change of tone.
"I shall investigate this story later," he said coldly. "Meantime--"
"Why not investigate it immediately?" asked Charles in a disappointed voice. "Thalassa will be back directly, or I can take you down to the cliffs were I left him."
Barrant was reminded of the flight of time. It would be as well to remove Charles before Thalassa returned. Time enough for Thalassa's story later! At that moment it seemed to Barrant that the final solution of the mystery was almost in his hands. Mrs. Thalassa had been wiser than he. The single game of patience suggested the solution of the problem of the time. It did more than that. It seemed to provide the key of the greater problem of Charles Turold's actions on that night. He had endeavoured to shield Sisily by altering the hands of the clock. The rest, for the present, must remain mere conjecture. One more question he essayed--
"Can you tell me where Miss Turold is to be found?"
"I know, but I am not going to tell you."
Barrant's eye rested on Charles.
"You must come with me," he said.
Charles nodded. Despairingly he reflected that the interview had not turned out as he expected. There were other means, and he must be patient.
