the dower house was a big, rambling, old-fashioned place which stood within large, enclosed grounds and gardens of its own, in the south-east corner of markenmore park, a little way out of the village, and about two hundred yards from the sceptre inn. nearly as capacious as markenmore court itself, it possessed a considerable range of stabling and outhouses, and was altogether a residence of wide extent and accommodation. blick took a rapid, estimating view of it and its surroundings as he walked up the drive; everything had lately been done up and put in order there; the dower house, he thought, was much more pretentious in appearance than the court. the ancient residence of the markenmore family was outwardly shabby, neglected, much in want of fresh paint; the dower house was spick and span; its lawn and gardens trim and carefully kept. and blick was not at all surprised when, in answer to his knock and ring, the door was opened by a very tall, supercilious footman, clad in a gorgeous livery. it appeared to be an effort to this person to bring his eyes down to the level of the caller’s face.

“mrs. tretheroe at home?” demanded blick.

“mrs. tretheroe is indisposed,” answered the footman. “she is not receiving today.”

blick pulled out his card-case.

“i am sorry to hear that mrs. tretheroe isn’t well,” he remarked. “but i saw her an hour or two ago, and i think she will give me a few minutes’ interview on very urgent business. just give her my card, if you please.”

the footman took the card gingerly, glanced at it, stared at blick’s youthfulness a little wonderingly, and backing away from the door, seemed to invite the caller inside. blick stepped into an outer hall.

“my orders were very precise,” remarked the footman, grudgingly. “but if it’s very important business——”

“it is!” interrupted blick. “very!”

“i’ll see mrs. tretheroe’s maid,” said the footman. “please to wait.”

he vanished into the gloom of an inner hall, behind a portière of heavy curtains, and blick, left alone, looked round him. the place in which he waited, alone, was small; an ancient oak press stood on one side of him; on the other, a big stand, wherefrom hung a medley of coats, cloaks, and outdoor wraps. and amongst them, the most prominent object was a smart raglan overcoat, of a brightish blue shade, which blick recognized at once. he had seen it at the inquest that morning—worn by the big blond-moustached man who had sat at mrs. tretheroe’s right hand throughout the proceedings.

with one of those rare flashes of intuition which are the very inspiration of genius in a man of his profession, blick moved like lightning to that coat and slid his right hand into the nearest pocket. he felt a pair of gloves—and beneath the gloves, a pipe. with his ears strained to the keenest tension and his eye kept warily on the folding curtains, he drew that pipe out and gave one glance at it. he would have chuckled with delight had he dared—for this was the pipe that grimsdale had found on the supper-table at the sceptre! there was no doubt of it—there was the slight chip in the briar-wood. . . .

“where is mr. blick?” demanded a woman’s voice, somewhere behind the curtains. “in the front hall?”

blick slipped the pipe back into the pocket, moved himself six inches, and was staring with much interest at a fox’s mark, mounted on the wall, when the curtains parted and a woman appeared. for a second he looked at her with suddenly awakened interest; and she was no ordinary woman, he decided. primly and somewhat coquettishly dressed in black, with a smart cap and an even smarter apron of spotless muslin, she looked more french than english, and as vivacious as she was undeniably pretty. but the prettiness was somewhat faded; this, decided blick, was a woman of thirty-five or so who had had affairs in her times; there were the signs of old fires in her brilliant eyes and about her lips; it seemed to him that she was the sort in whom secrets lie sleeping. and she was the sort of a woman, too, who could not look at a man without smiling at him: she smiled now as she glanced at the latter.

“mr. blick?” she said in a soft, demure voice. “you want to see mrs. tretheroe? she is not very well—that affair this morning, you know, and all the rest of it—nervous headache. but if it’s business——”

“it is, but nothing to distress mrs. tretheroe,” answered blick. “a question or two.”

the woman held aside one of the curtains and revealed a roomy inner hall, on one side of which rose a galleried staircase.

“come this way, please,” she said.

blick followed her up the stair. an open door at the end of the gallery showed him a drawing-room, and in it a grand piano; at the piano sat the blond-moustached man. he was singing, evidently to please himself, and accompanying his fine baritone voice with soft chords. his conductress glanced at blick and smiled again.

“the baron—singing italian love-songs!” she murmured. “he prefers that to shooting, or hunting, or golf! tastes differ—don’t they?”

“with nationalities,” said blick. he had already decided that mrs. tretheroe’s maid was a bit of a character, worth cultivating, and he smiled back at her. “i guess he’s not english, eh?” he suggested.

“german!” answered the maid knowingly. “all fat!” she laughed, paused before a door, tapped gently, and opening it, motioned blick to enter. “mr. blick, ma’am.”

mrs. tretheroe’s voice, somewhat languid in tone, bade mr. blick enter, and he walked into what he immediately took to be the boudoir wherein its occupant had held her tête-à-tête with guy markenmore after their meeting on the monday night. although it was still quite light outside, a rose-tinted lamp was burning in this luxurious nook, and by its subdued gleam blick saw mrs. tretheroe, negligently but becomingly attired, lounging on a sofa; if she was pale, he thought, she was perhaps the more striking. and whether she had a nervous headache or not, she was smoking; the room was heavy with the peculiar scent of fine turkish tobacco, and on a stand near its mistress’s sofa stood an open box of cigarettes.

“take a chair,” said mrs. tretheroe, glancing approvingly at blick’s good looks and smart clothes. “this”—she pointed to an easy chair close to herself. “have a cigarette, won’t you? i’m smoking to soothe my headache.—i got quite upset by all that business this morning. such an awful lot of talk about nothing, don’t you think?”

blick out of sheer politeness, took a cigarette, though he hated turkish tobacco like poison, and dropped into an easy chair.

“depends,” he answered tersely. “sometimes you have to do an awful lot of talking over things of this sort—no end of questions, you know, before you can get at one little bit of truth. but i don’t want to bore you with a lot of questions, mrs. tretheroe.”

“oh, that’s all right!” replied mrs. tretheroe, complacently. “rather interesting, after all; i suppose you do get a lot of interest in your work, don’t you? you ought to,” she added, giving her visitor a direct glance out of her half-shut eyes. “you’re so very young—a mere boy, i should think!”

“not quite such a chicken as i look!” retorted blick, with a laugh. “i’ve had twelve years of it. but now—business! i’m sure you won’t mind if i ask you one or two personal questions, mrs. tretheroe? well, first—i see that on the third finger of your right hand, you wear a somewhat curious ring.”

“this!” answered mrs. tretheroe. “you may look at it.” she stretched out her hand and laid it, a very slim and shapely member, in blick’s palm. “odd, isn’t it?” she added, as, after a moment, during which she turned her hand over, she withdrew it. “unusual!”

“it’s a very uncommon sort of thing, i should think,” replied blick. “now, do you know if the late mr. guy markenmore had a ring like that?”

“of course he had!” she answered. “it was he who bought both rings—years ago. he and i were once together in portsmouth, and in one of those queer old curiosity shops that you find in those sort of places, we saw these two rings. he bought them, for a pound or two, and we agreed to wear them for ever. poor guy!”

“was he wearing that ring when you saw him the other night?” asked blick.

“he was! he told me he’d never ceased to wear it—and i assured him that i’d always worn mine.”

“he had it on his finger when he left you?”

“certainly he had!”

“well—it wasn’t there when he was found next morning,” said blick. “that’s a fact!”

mrs. tretheroe started.

“that wasn’t mentioned at the inquest!” she exclaimed.

“no,” said blick. “i didn’t know of the ring’s existence until miss valencia markenmore told me—after the adjournment. she had noticed that her brother was wearing it when he called at the court before seeing you.”

“and—it was not found on him?”

“it was certainly not found on him.”

mrs. tretheroe threw away her cigarette. she frowned, and her eyes grew sombre.

“then—that’s another proof that harborough killed him!” she exclaimed.

“how?” asked blick.

“jealousy! he killed him out of jealousy, and took the ring from him when he was dead—mad with jealousy because guy had something on him connected with me!”

“you really believe, mrs. tretheroe, that harborough killed guy markenmore because he was jealous of him—about you?”

“yes, i do—i’m certain of it!”

“but,” said blick, “harborough said—you remember his evidence?—that he’d been cured of his—er—passion for you some years ago.”

“don’t believe it!” answered mrs. tretheroe. “if he had, then it all came back to him when he met me the other afternoon! i saw quite well that harborough was just as madly in love with me as ever! then—guy came along, and—and—well, as i said, he and i made it up quickly. and he met with harborough up there on the hill-side, and of course they quarrelled, and harborough killed him! i don’t care what you police people say, nor the coroner and his jury, nor the magistrates—i know!”

“then you don’t pay any attention to the evidence about the two men who were with mr. guy markenmore at the sceptre that night, mrs. tretheroe?”

“not a bit! a mere business meeting!”

“he didn’t tell you whom he was going to meet?”

“not at all—not one word! merely a business appointment. i wasn’t interested.”

“well,” said blick, after a moment’s silence. “there’s just another question i want to put to you. you had three or four more guests in your house, i believe, at that time; you don’t think it possible that some one of them was the second man who turned up at the sceptre?”

“certainly not!” exclaimed mrs. tretheroe. “of course, i know every one of them, well. not one of them as much as i knew guy! they were all military men—men i knew in india. they all had their wives here with them, except, of course, baron von eckhardstein—he’s not a military man, nor married. but until he came here, to my house-party, he’d never even heard of the markenmore family. why!—does somebody suggest this?”

“not at all!” replied blick hastily. “but in cases of this sort, when there are strangers about in a place—well, you’ve got to find out who they were, you know.”

“i’ve told you who my guests were,” said mrs. tretheroe. “of course, the mere idea that any of them went to the sceptre at that time of night is ridiculous. no—the meeting at the sceptre amounts to nothing. you concentrate on harborough—he did it! he was always a man of mad, unreasonable, ungovernable temper, or perhaps i might have married him, once.”

blick said nothing in reply to this. he rose to go, and mrs. tretheroe, with another approving look, gave him her hand.

“come and see me again—to tell me how you’re getting on,” she said. “of course, i’m awfully interested!”

blick made his way downstairs. the door of the drawing-room was still open, and the baron von eckhardstein was still softly singing sentimental ditties. at the foot of the staircase the maid suddenly appeared, and smiled. blick smiled back.

“i haven’t made your mistress’s headache any worse,” he remarked.

“the headache’s too much cigarette smoking,” she whispered, with a look. “i say!”

“what?” asked blick, whispering too.

“has anything—been found out?” she asked.

“what, yet? no!—too early,” answered blick. “why—do you know anything?”

“i? good heavens, no! merely curious! being a woman.”

“what’s your name?” enquired blick, with a smile.

“halliwell,” she replied quickly. “why?”

“miss or mrs.?” asked blick.

“miss!—what makes you ask?”

“just wanted to know,” said blick. “i shall be here some time, most likely, and i’m sure to meet you again.”

then, with another smile, he went away, and once clear of the house dismissed everything but one thought. that was an important one. von eckhardstein, on leaving the improvised court-room that morning, after the coroner’s adjournment, had possessed himself, in passing the table whereon it was laid, of the tobacco-pipe which had been left at the sceptre. now then—was von eckhardstein the man who had left it there?

blick had a trick of imagining possible reasons for anything: he began to invent some now. von eckhardstein might be one of those folk who have a mania for collecting objects connected with crime—he, blick, had come across more than one maniac of that sort, and knew that such would stop at nothing, not even theft, to achieve their desires. or, he might know the man who had left the pipe, and have quietly abstracted it, in the crush and confusion, with the idea of destroying evidence against a friend. but, anyhow, there the pipe was, in von eckhardstein’s pocket, where he had slipped it on picking it up from the table—and blick had seen and identified it.

“and if it’s his,” mused blick, “then he’s the man who went to the sceptre at two o’clock last tuesday morning, and left at three-fifteen with guy markenmore and the other chap! that’s a dead sure thing!”

he strolled back to the inn, and in due course sat down to his supper. grimsdale tapped at his door and came in, just as he had finished.

“there’s some of the rustics talking about this murder, in the kitchen,” he remarked, with a sly smile. “would you like to hear what they’ve got to say?”

“they wouldn’t talk before me,” said blick.

“i’ll put you where you’ll not be seen,” answered grimsdale. “come with me.”

he led the detective across the entrance hall, past the bar-parlour, and into a pantry which lay between a private sitting-room and the inn kitchen. the pantry was unlighted, save for a latticed window set in the kitchen wall; grimsdale motioned blick to approach and look through this.

“they can’t see you from their side,” he whispered. “but you can see and hear everything from this. listen!”

blick put his face near the lattice and looked through. half a dozen labourers, mostly middle-aged or elderly men, sat near a cheery fire in the old-fashioned kitchen. pots of ale on the tables before them, pipes of tobacco at their lips. they were all typical rustics, gnarled, weather-beaten, some dull of expression, some uncannily shrewd of eye: one such was just then laying down the law.

“ain’t no manner of doubt as how master guy was done to death felonious!” he was saying. “murder that is, and nobody can say as how ’tain’t, sure-ly! but who done that ain’t going for to be found so easy as some med make out. done in a corner, as you med say, and nobody ain’t the wiser.”

“somebody murdered he, all same,” observed another. “i ’low there ain’t no other way o’ considering the matter than that. but who he be i dunno, and i be mortal sure nobody else don’t know, faith!”

“well, ’tain’t in my conscience for to say as how i b’lieve master john harborough, up to greycloister, done it,” said a third man. “i can’t bring myself for to agree that a gentleman born ’ud be gettin’ out of his bed at three o’clock of a morning for to goo shooting at another gentleman! ’twould seem a ’nation queer sort of a christian privilege, would so! noo—i ain’t agoing to consider that, nohow!”

“then who done it?” asked somebody.

nobody spoke for awhile; then a dark-faced man, who up to this had sat silently smoking in a corner leaned forward.

“i reckon naught o’ these crowner’s quests and a pack o’ lawyers and police fellers!” said he, with decision. “allus goos a-huntin’ the wrong hare, they does! don’t us as has lived in these here parts all our lives know well enough that this young man left a pack o’ mortal enemies behind him when he went away, seven years it is agoo? ain’t there men round about here as had sweethearts and lassies whose heads he turned with his ways? wasn’t he allus a-making love to all the good-looking young women? doon’t ’ee tell me!—there’s more nor one man this side the downs as ’ud be glad o’ the chance of getting his knife into master guy markenmore—or a pistol-bullet, either! that’s how he come by his death, so i do think!”

there was a murmur of general assent. an old man’s voice arose out of it.

“the ways of providence be uncommon curious!” he piped. “shouldn’t wonder if what ben there say be of the nature of truth. revenge be a mighty strong weapon in a man’s right hand, and it do grow all the stronger wi’ keeping, like good ale. aye, sure, it med be a matter o’ revenge——”

blick presently went away, to think over this suggestion. grimsdale came to him again, looking mysterious.

“there’s a young man out there in the garden wants to see you—alone, in secret,” he said.

“who is he?” asked blick.

grimsdale gave him a knowing glance.

“one of mrs. tretheroe’s grooms,” he answered.