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Page 26
"We are getting near the heart of the mystery."
"H'm," said Gatton, "I'm not so sure. The deeper we go the darker it
gets. A man has been scouring the neighborhood all day in quest of the
carter who delivered the crate to the docks, but so far without
results. I consider it a very important point that we should learn not
only how and when the crate was collected, but when and by whom it was
delivered at the garage."
"Another question," I said: "although I believe I know the answer. Was
it a man or a woman who ordered the cab?"
"Both in the case of Marie and in the case of the cab-rank," replied
Gatton, "it was a woman's voice that spoke."
"Thank God, one doubt is resolved!" I said. "It cannot possibly have
been Isobel in either of these cases!"
"Right!" agreed Gatton, promptly. "I am as glad as you are. There is
clearly a second woman in the case; yet I can't bring myself to
believe that this elaborate scheme was the work of a woman."
"Not of a _jealous_ woman?" I suggested.
"Not of any woman," he replied. "Besides--who put the body into the
crate? What kind of a woman would it be who could do a deed like
that?"
"In other words," said I, "you are still without a ghost of a clew to
the identity of the person who committed the murder, and to the means
employed?"
Resting his pipe upon an ash-tray, the Inspector took up from my
writing-table the little image of B�st and held it up between finger
and thumb.
"We always come back to the green cat," he said slowly. "I will
trouble you now, Mr. Addison, for the history of such a little image
as this."
"Yes," I replied abstractedly. "But there is a matter about which I
have not spoken to you hitherto because quite frankly I had doubted if
it had any existence outside my imagination; but every new development
of the case is so utterly fantastic that I no longer regard my
experience as being in the least degree outside the province of
possibility. Before we go further, therefore, into the purely
arch�ological side of the inquiry (and I have still serious doubt
respecting the usefulness of such a quest) let me relate a peculiar
experience which I had last night after I had left Bolton."
Gatton listened in silence whilst I gave him an account of that
evasive shadow which I had perceived behind me, and then of the great
cat's eyes which had looked in through the window.
His expression of na�ve wonderment was almost funny; and when I had
concluded:
"Well, Mr. Addison," said he, "if you had told me this story before I
had taken up 'the _Oritoga_ mystery,' for so I observe--" drawing an
evening paper from his pocket--"the press has agreed to entitle the
case, I should have suggested that your peculiar studies had begun to
tell upon your nerves; but this voice on the 'phone and this empty
house in which only one room was furnished, finally the green cat
painted on the packing-case and the green cat which stands there upon
the table have prepared me for even stranger things than your
adventure of last night."
"Yet," I urged, "there is no visible connection between the episodes
of the case and this strange apparition which I saw in the garden last
night."
"There was no visible connection between Sir Marcus's body in a
packing-case in the hold of the _Oritoga_ and the garage of the house
in College Road until we found one," retorted Gatton. "Anyway I am
glad you mentioned the matter to me; I will take a note of it, for it
may prove to provide a link in the chain. And now"--taking out a
note-book and pencil--"for the history of these cat things."
I sighed rather wearily as I crossed the room to my bookcase and took
down the volume of Gaston Maspero, the same which I had been reading
but had returned to its shelf as Gatton had been admitted.
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