If Gerard Annesley had spoken the truth, Mabelle had not come to her room till at least half an hour later than he had done. Yet David Keeley had seen her going up those stairs. There were two other rooms occupied in that wing. There was Mrs. Graham's and there was her son's.
Her son's. But he and Madge--
Surely Madge would have guessed. But Madge wasn't the guessing kind. All the same, no smoke without fire--
Smoke!
Ah! he remembered. _A wisp of smoke curling out through Mrs. Graham's bedroom door._
He acted on impulse. Straight up the stairs he went and into her room. It was empty. He closed the door behind him and locked it.
He went across to the grate. A heap of charred fragments. Very gingerly he raked them over with his finger. His luck was in. In the very center were some unburned fragments--fragments of letters.
Very disjointed fragments, but they told him something of value:
_Life can be wonderful, Roger darling. I never knew--all my life has been a dream till I met you, Roger--Gerard knows, I think--I am sorry, but what can I do? Nothing is real to me but you, Roger. We shall be together, soon._
_What are you going to tell him at Laidell, Roger? You write strangely--but I am not afraid--_
Very carefully, Mr. Satterthwaite put the fragments into an envelope from the writing-table. He went to the door, unlocked it, and opened it to find himself face to face with Mrs. Graham.
It was an awkward moment, and Mr. Satterthwaite was momentarily out of countenance. He did what was, perhaps, the best thing, attacked the situation with simplicity.
"I have been searching your room, Mrs. Graham. I have found something--a packet of letters imperfectly burned."
A wave of alarm passed over her face. It was gone in a flash but it had been there.
"Letters from Mrs. Annesley to your son."
She hesitated for a minute, then said quietly, "That is so. I thought they would be better burned."
"For what reason?"
"My son is engaged to be married. These letters--if they had been brought into publicity through the poor girl's suicide--might have caused much pain and trouble."
"Your son could burn his own letters."
She had no answer ready for that. Mr. Satterthwaite pursued his advantage.
"You found these letters in his room, brought them into your room, and burned them. Why? You were afraid, Mrs. Graham."
"I am not in the habit of being afraid, Mr. Satterthwaite."
"No--but this was a desperate case."
"Desperate?"
"Your son might have been in danger of arrest--for murder."
"Murder!"
He saw her face go white; he went on quickly: "You heard Mrs. Annesley go into your son's room last night. Had he told her of his engagement? No, I see he hadn't. He told her then. They quarreled, and he--"
"That's a lie!"
They had been so absorbed in their duel of words that they had not heard approaching footsteps. Roger Graham had come up behind them unperceived by either.
"It's all right, Mother. Don't--worry. Come into my room, Mr. Satterthwaite."
Mr. Satterthwaite followed him into his room. Mrs. Graham had turned away and did not attempt to follow them. Roger Graham shut the door.
"Listen, Mr. Satterthwaite. You think I killed Mabelle. You think I strangled her--here--and took her along and hung her up on that door--later--when everyone was asleep?"
Mr. Satterthwaite stared at him. Then he said surprisingly, "No, I do not think so."
"Thank God for that. I couldn't have killed Mabelle. I--I loved her. Or didn't I? I don't know. It's a tangle that I can't explain. I'm fond of Madge--I always have been. And she's such a good sort. We suit each other. But Mabelle was different. It was--I can't explain it--a sort of enchantment. I was, I think, afraid of her."
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded.
"It was madness--a kind of bewildering ecstasy. But it was impossible. It wouldn't have worked. That sort of thing--doesn't last. I know what it means now to have a spell cast over you."
"Yes, it must have been like that," said Mr. Satterthwaite thoughtfully.
"I--I wanted to get out of it all. I was going to tell Mabelle--last night."
"But you didn't?"
"No, I didn't," said Graham slowly. "I swear to you, Mr. Satterthwaite, that I never saw her after I said good night downstairs."
"I believe you," said Mr. Satterthwaite.
He got up. It was not Roger Graham who had killed Mabelle Annesley. He could have fled from her, but he could not have killed her. He had been afraid of her, afraid of that wild, intangible, fairylike quality of hers. He had known enchantment--and turned his back on it. He had gone for the safe, sensible thing that he had known "would work" and had relinquished the intangible dream that might lead him he knew not where.
He was a sensible young man, and, as such, uninteresting to Mr. Satterthwaite, who was an artist and a connoisseur in life.
He left Roger Graham in his room and went downstairs. The drawing room was empty. Mabelle's ukulele lay on a stool by the window. He took it up and twanged it absent-mindedly. He knew nothing of the instrument, but his ear told him that it was abominably out of tune. He turned a key experimentally.
Doris Coles came into the room. She looked at him reproachfully. "Poor Mabelle's uke," she said.
Her clear condemnation made Mr. Satterthwaite feel obstinate.
"Tune it for me," he said, and added, "if you can."
"Of course I can," said Doris, wounded at the suggestion of incompetence in any direction.
She took it from him, twanged a string, turned a key briskly--and the string snapped.
"Well, I never. Oh! I see--but how extraordinary. It's the wrong string--a size too big. It's an A string. How stupid to put that on. Of course it snaps when you try to tune it up. How stupid people are."
"Yes," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "They are--even when they try to be clever."
His tone was so odd that she stared at him. He took the ukulele from her and removed the broken string. He went out of the room holding it in his hand. In the library he found David Keeley.
"Here," he said.
He held out the string. Keeley took it. "What's this?"
"A broken ukulele string." He paused and then went on: "_What did you do with the other one?_"
"The other one?"
"_The one you strangled her with._ You were very clever, weren't you? It was done very quickly--just in that moment we were all laughing and talking in the hall.
"Mabelle came back into this room for her ukulele. You had taken the string off as you fiddled with it just before. You caught her round the throat with it and strangled her. Then you came out and locked the door and joined us. Later, in the dead of night, you came down and--and disposed of the body by hanging it on the door of her room. And you put another string on the ukulele--_but it was the wrong string_, that's why you were stupid."
There was a pause.
"But why did you do it?" said Mr. Satterthwaite. "In God's name, _why_?"
Mr. Keeley laughed, a funny giggling little laugh that made Mr. Satterthwaite feel rather sick.
"It was so very simple," he said. "That's why! And then--nobody ever noticed me. Nobody ever noticed what I was doing. I thought--I thought I'd have the laugh on them."
And again he gave that furtive little giggle and looked at Mr. Satterthwaite with mad eyes.
Mr. Satterthwaite was glad that at that moment Inspector Winkfield came into the room.
* * * * *
It was twenty-four hours later, on his way to London, that Mr. Satterthwaite awoke from a doze to find a tall dark man sitting opposite to him in the railway carriage. He was not altogether surprised.
"My dear Mr. Quin!"
"Yes--I am here."
Mr. Satterthwaite said slowly, "I can hardly face you. I am ashamed. I failed."
"Are you so sure of that?"
"I did not save her."
"But you discovered the truth?"
"Yes, that is true. One or other of those young men might have been accused--might even have been found guilty. So, at any rate, I saved a man's life. But she--she--that strange, enchanting creature--" His voice broke off.
Mr. Quin looked at him.
"Is death the greatest evil that can happen to anyone?"
"I--well--perhaps--No."
Mr. Satterthwaite remembered--Madge and Roger Graham--Mabelle's face in the moonlight--its serene unearthly happiness--
"No," he admitted. "No--perhaps death is not the greatest evil."
He remembered the ruffled blue chiffon of her dress that had seemed to him like the plumage of a bird, a bird with a broken wing.
When he looked up, he found himself alone. Mr. Quin was no longer there. But he had left something behind.
On the seat was a roughly-carved bird fashioned out of some dim blue stone. It had, possibly, no great artistic merit. But it had something else.
It had the vague quality of enchantment.
So said Mr. Satterthwaite--and Mr. Satterthwaite was a connoisseur.
THE MAN FROM THE SEA
Mr. Satterthwaite was feeling old. That might not have been surprising since, in the estimation of many people, he _was_ old. Careless youths said to their partners, "Old Satterthwaite? Oh! he must be a hundred--or at any rate about eighty." And even the kindest of girls said indulgently, "Oh! Satterthwaite. Yes, he's quite old. He _must_ be sixty." Which was almost worse, since he was sixty-nine.