The Mystery of the Green Ray - William le Queux (ebook reader .txt) 📗

to me that our man jumps out of the boat, runs ashore, and his friend pulls away and picks him up elsewhere—probably nearer the house. It would look perfectly natural for a man who has apparently been giving a companion a pull across from Skye, say, to land him and then go back. The more I think of this the more it interests me. You see, if the top windows of the house can be seen from the bay, it means that the lower windows can be seen from the top of the cliff. If we can find where our thief lay in wait on the cliff and watched the house, probably with his eyes glued on the dining-room windows to see when we commenced dinner, if we can also find where he left his sea-boots while he went to the house, and then where he rejoined his companion, we are getting on.”

“What makes you say ‘sea-boots’?” I asked. “You can’t tell a top-boot by the footmarks.”

“Indirectly you can,” Garnesk replied, puffing thoughtfully at his pipe. “That boat was pulled in and pushed out by a man who exerted hardly any pressure, although the beach only slopes gently. His companion did not lend a hand by pushing her out with an oar; if he had done so we should have seen the marks, and I couldn’t find any. The only other way to account for it is that our friend, who exerted so little pressure, was wearing sea-boots and walked into the water with the boat. Had he been alone, the jerk of his final jump into the boat would have left a deeper impression on the beach. The tide was just going out; it would have no time to wash this mark away. I looked for the mark, and it wasn’t there; so I came to the final conclusion that two men arrived in the cove shortly after seven last night in a small open boat. One of them—a tall, left-handed man in sea-boots—pushed the boat out again and went ashore.”

I am afraid I was rude enough to shout with laughter at this very definite statement; but it was mainly with excited admiration that I laughed—certainly not with ridicule. Garnesk turned to me apologetically.

“I know it sounds far-fetched, my dear chap,” he said; “but we shall have to think a lot over this business, and I am simply thinking aloud in order that you can give me your help in my own conclusions.”

“My dear fellow,” I cried, “don’t, for heaven’s sake, imagine that I am laughing at you. It was the left-handed touch that made me guffaw with sheer excitement.”

“Well, I think he was left-handed, because the footmarks were going ashore on the right-hand side of the keel-marks, and going seawards on the left-hand side. Jump out of a boat and push it out to sea, and notice which side of the boat you stand by instinct—provided you were doing as he was, pushing on the point of the bows. The fact that his feet obliterate the keel-marks in one place proves that. So now we want to find a left-handed man in sea-boots who knew Sholto was blind”—and he laughed in a half-apology.

“What about these sea-boots,” I asked, “and the place we are to find where he left them?”

“We’ll look for that now; and if we find it we can be pretty sure our mariner stole the dog.”

“You seem to be taking it for granted already,” I pointed out.

“The easiest way to prove he didn’t is to satisfy ourselves that there’s no evidence he did,” said the oculist. “But I fancy he did.”

“From the way you’ve sized it up so far I should be inclined to back your fancy,” I admitted frankly. “I take it, from your diagnosis, that our nautical friend came ashore here, went up on to the cliff, and glued his eye to the dining-room window. When he saw we were at dinner, and it was getting dusk—in fact, almost dark—he took off his sea-boots and slipped up to the Lodge in his stocking-soles. So if we climb the cliff, we expect to find the spot on which he deposited his boots.”

“If we expected that,” Garnesk replied, “we should also expect to find his boots; and he wouldn’t be likely to leave such incriminating evidence in our hands as that. No, my dear Ewart; when he left the cliff he was wearing his boots, and he left them at some point on the path between the house and his embarking place. Come—let’s look.”

I was intensely interested in my friend’s deductions, and I felt convinced that he was right. So we climbed the cliff, he by one route and I by another, in order to see if we could find any traces of last night’s visitor. But that was impossible; the rocks were too storm-swept to harbour any sort of lichen which would have shown evidence of footmarks. Still, we were not disappointed when we reached the top, and Garnesk looked at me with a charming expression of boyish triumph when we came across a patch of ground where the heather had obviously been trampled about and worn down by someone recently lying there.

“I don’t think we’ll worry about tracing him from here just now,” said the specialist. “It would be a very difficult job, and we may as well make for the most likely spot to embark from.”

“Right you are,” I agreed. “I think there can only be one—that is a secluded little inlet, almost hidden by the rocks on the other side of the house.”

“Come on, let’s have a look at it,” my companion urged; and we blundered down the side of the cliff and hurried along the shore. But when we came to the small bay which I had in mind there was certainly some sign of disturbance among the rough gravel with which the shore was carpeted; and that was all the evidence we could find.

“It is such an ideal spot for the job that this almost knocks our theory on the head,” murmured Garnesk ruefully. “There are no boat-marks, or anything.”

“Which, in a way, bears out your diagnosis,” I cried, suddenly hitting on what I thought to be the solution of the difficulty.

“How, in heaven’s name?”

“Our old friend the tide,” I declared, with returning confidence.

“Of course,” he almost shouted. “I’ve got you, Ewart. The boat came in here while the tide was going out—when, in fact, it was some distance out, possibly nearly an hour after it ran into the other cove. Since then the tide has come in again and obliterated any marks the men may have made. If we find any evidence on a line running between this place and the house, we can call it a certainty.”

In feverish excitement we hurried towards the house, casting anxious glances to right and left, but the stubborn heather showed no sign of any recent passenger that way. At last Garnesk, who was some distance to my right, hailed me with an exultant shout. There, sure enough, was a broad patch bearing marks of recent occupation, much the same as the other at the top of the cliff. We were able easily to distinguish the exact spot where the thief had laid the unconscious dog while he put on his boots. The discovery of an unmistakable footprint in a more marshy spot, which could only have been imprinted by a stockinged foot, completed my friend’s triumph.

“My dear fellow,” I cried heartily, slapping my companion on the back, “I congratulate you. If you go on like this we shall have the dog and the thief in no time.”

“It will be some days, even at this rate,” he warned me solemnly, “before we get as far as that. Now, back to the embarking-point, and see if we can reconstruct the thing fully.”

So we retraced our steps, and studied the shingle once more, but failed to discover any marks of any value. Then we sat down, and the oculist drew a vivid picture of the journey the thief had made. At last, feeling more than satisfied with our work, we rose to go in to breakfast.

“Ewart, I want you to wire for that friend of yours before you do anything else. You may want him soon. I will leave by the morning train to-morrow, but I shall continue on this case till the mystery is solved. In the meantime, you will need someone you can trust at your side all the time.”

“I’ll go into Glenelg, and wire immediately after breakfast,” I promised. “Hullo, more reflections,” I laughed, and pointed to a small, bright object some distance away on the rocks, which was catching the glint of the sun.

“We seem to be surrounded by a spying army of glittering objects,” laughed my companion, as we strolled on. We had walked some forty yards when some instinct—I know not what—prompted me to investigate the affair. I turned back, and went to pick up the shining object, though for the life of me I could not have told you what I expected to find.

“Garnesk!” I bawled. “Garnesk! Come here!”

“What is it?” he shouted to me, as he came hurtling over the rocks.

“Look at it,” I replied tersely, and placed it in his outstretched palm. He glanced at it, and then at me.

“That settles it,” he said, and whistled softly, for I had found a small piece of brass, and on it was engraved:—

“Sholto, The Douglas, Invermalluch Lodge, Inverness-shire.”

It was the name-plate from Sholto’s collar.

CHAPTER IX. THE MYSTERY OF SHOLTO.

We discussed our discovery pretty thoroughly on the way back to the house, and both agreed that it left no doubt upon one aspect of this strange affair—the man who stole Sholto was no ordinary thief.

The General was standing on the verandah, looking about for us, as we came up the beach path. I told him of Garnesk’s deductions and their interesting result, and the old man was greatly affected.

“I never dreamt I should live to see the old place abused in this shocking manner,” he grunted. “’Pon me soul, it’s—it’s begad disgraceful. I’ve lived here all my life, on and off, and I’ve never been troubled with anything like this, scarcely so much as a tramp even. I hope to God it’ll soon be over, that’s all.”

“Thanks to Mr. Garnesk, we’re moving along in the right direction,” I tried to reassure him. “And we have the satisfaction, in one way, of being able to tell Myra that Sholto is still alive, even if we don’t know where he is.”

“Seems to me, Ronald,” said the General, “you don’t know that, or anything about the poor beast, except that he has been stolen, and probably taken away in a boat. Judging by Mr. Garnesk’s theory, they probably threw him overboard in deep water.”

“No one who intended destroying a dog would take the trouble to wrench the name-plate off his collar,” I pointed out. “The dog is alive, and not unconscious. They need his collar to keep him in hand, but they are afraid the plate might give them away. Mr. Garnesk is right, I’m sure, and if we find the thief we find the cause for Myra’s terrible misfortune.”

“Where do you imagine they can have taken him to then? Seems to me we’re getting some pretty queer neighbours.”

“That is just what we have to find out,” said Garnesk, “and I for one will not rest until I do.”

“’Pon my soul, my dear chap,” said the old man warmly, “it’s very good of you to take so much interest in the affairs of total strangers. It is, indeed, thundering good of you.”

“Not at all, General,” laughed the visitor. “If you spent your life trying to cure fussy ladies of imaginary eye trouble, without putting it to them