The Hunt Ball Mystery Part 12

"I certainly don't want you to be in too great a hurry," Gifford returned calmly.

"But why? Why?"

"I feel it is a mistake."

Kelson laughed. "You are not going to suggest we don't know our own minds."

"Hardly. But why not wait till the family returns? Of course it is no business of mine."

"No," Kelson replied with a laugh of annoyance; "and you can't be expected to enter into my feelings on the subject. But I think you might be a little less grudging of your sympathy."

"You quite mistake me, Harry," Gifford replied warmly. "It is only in your own interest that I counsel you not to be in a hurry."

"But why? What, in heaven's name, do you mean?" Kelson demanded, vaguely apprehensive.

"It is a mistake to rush things, that is all," was the unsatisfactory answer.

"If I saw the slightest chance of danger I would not hesitate to take your advice," Kelson said. "But I don't. Nor do you. Since when have you become so cautious?"

Gifford forced a laugh. "It is coming on with age."

Kelson clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't encourage it, my dear Hugh. It will spoil all the enjoyment in your life, and in other people's too, if you force the note. I promise you I won't hurry on the wedding more than is absolutely necessary."

"Very well," Gifford responded, and the subject dropped.

They had finished dinner, at which the absorbing subject of the tragedy at Wynford Place was the main topic of their conversation, when the landlord came in to say that Mr. Gervase Henshaw, who was staying at the hotel, would like to see them if they were disengaged.

Kelson looked across at his friend. "Shall we see him?"

Gifford nodded. "We had better hear what he has to say. We don't want him worrying Morriston."

"Ask Mr. Henshaw up," Kelson said to the landlord, and in a minute he was ushered in.

With a quick, decisive movement Henshaw took the seat to which Kelson invited him.

"I trust you won't think me intrusive, gentlemen," he began in his sharp mode of speaking, "but you will understand I am very much upset and horribly perplexed by the terrible fate which has overtaken my poor brother. I am setting myself to search for a clue, if ever so slight, to the mystery, the double mystery, I may say, and it occurred to me that perhaps a talk with you gentlemen who are, so far, the last known persons who spoke with him, might possibly give me a hint."

"I'm afraid there is very little we can tell you," Gifford replied. "But we are at your service."

"Thank you." It seemed the first civil word of acknowledgment they had heard him utter. "First of all," he proceeded, falling back to his dry, lawyer-like tone, "I have been to see the medical man who was summoned to look at the body, Dr. Page. He tells me that, so far as his cursory examination went, the position of the wound hardly suggests that it was self-inflicted."

"Is he sure of it?" Kelson asked.

"He won't be positive till he has made the autopsy," Henshaw answered.

"He merely suggests that it was a very awkward and altogether unlikely place for a man to wound himself. Anyhow that guarded opinion is enough to strengthen my inclination to scout the idea of suicide."

"Then," said Kelson, "we are faced by the difficulty of the locked door."

Henshaw made a gesture of indifference.

"That at first sight presents a problem, I admit," he said, "but not so complete as to look absolutely insoluble. I have, as you may be aware, made a study of criminology, and in my researches, which have included criminality, have come across incidents which to the smartest detective brains were at the outset quite as baffling. Clement's tragic end is a great blow to me, and I am not going quietly to accept the easy, obvious conclusion of suicide. I knew and appreciated my brother better than that. I mean to probe this business to the bottom."

"You will be justified," Kelson murmured.

"I think so--by the result," was the quick rejoinder.

Gifford spoke. "What do you think was the real object in your brother coming down here?"

Henshaw looked at his questioner keenly before he answered. "It is my opinion, my conviction, there was a lady in the case. May I ask what prompted you to ask the question?"

Gifford shrugged. "Some idea of the sort was in my own mind," he replied, with a reserve which could scarcely be satisfying to Henshaw.

"Perhaps," he said keenly, "you have also an idea who the lady was."

Gifford shook his head. "Not at all," he returned promptly.

"Then why should the idea have suggested itself to you," came the cross-examining rejoinder.

"Your brother was not a member of the Hunt, and it seemed to us--curious."

Henshaw took him up quickly. "That he should come to the ball? No doubt.

I will be perfectly frank with you, as I expect you to be with me. It is perhaps not quite seemly to discuss my brother's failings at this time, but we want to get at the truth about his death. He had, I fear, rather irregular methods in his treatment of women. One can hardly blame him, poor fellow. His was a fascinating personality, at any rate so far as women were concerned. They ran after him, and one can scarcely blame him if he acquired a derogatory opinion of them. After all, he held them no cheaper than they made themselves in his eyes. That note I looked at which came from his pocket was written by him to make an a.s.signation."

"Was it addressed?" Gifford put the question quickly, almost eagerly.

"No," Henshaw answered. "I wish it had been. In that case we should be near the end of the mystery."

Kelson was staring at the glib speaker with astounded eyes. "Do you suppose a woman killed your brother?" he almost gasped.

"Such things have been known," Henshaw returned with the flicker of an enigmatical smile. "But no, I don't suggest that--yet. At present I have got no farther than the conviction that Clement did not kill himself. I mean to find out for whom that note of his was intended."

"Not an easy task," Gifford remarked, with his eye furtively on Kelson, who had become strangely interested.

"It may or may not be easy," Henshaw returned. "But it is to be done. The woman who, intentionally or otherwise, drew my brother down here has to be found, and I mean to find her."

Kelson was now staring almost stupidly at Gifford.

"Neither of you gentlemen saw my brother dancing?" Henshaw demanded sharply.

"I saw nothing of him at all in the ballroom," Gifford answered, "as I did not arrive till about midnight. Did you see him, Harry?" he asked, as though with the design of rousing Kelson from his rather suspicious att.i.tude.

Kelson seemed to pull himself together by an effort.

"No--yes; I caught a glimpse of him, I think, with a girl in green."

"You know who she was?" Henshaw demanded.

"I've not the vaguest idea," Kelson answered mechanically. "I did not see her face."