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Page 107
"You'll never forgive me, Bill," he said. "You'll never come
clue-hunting with me again."
"What do you mean?"
Antony sighed.
"It was a fake, Watson. I wanted you out of the way. I wanted
to be alone. I'd guessed at my x, and I wanted to test it--to
test it every way, by everything we'd discovered. I simply had
to be alone just then. So--" he smiled and added, "Well, I knew
you wanted a drink."
"You are a devil," said Bill, staring at him. "And your interest
when I told you that a woman had been staying there--"
"Well, it was only polite to be interested when you'd taken so
much trouble."
"You brute! You--you Sherlock! And then you keep trying to
steal my matches. Well, go on."
"That's all. My x fitted."
"Did you guess Miss Norris and all that?"
"Well, not quite. I didn't realize that Cayley had worked for it
from the beginning--had put Miss Norris up to frightening Mark.
I thought he'd just seized the opportunity."
Bill was silent for a long time. Then, puffing at his pipe, he
said slowly, "Has Cayley shot himself?"
Antony shrugged his shoulders.
"Poor devil," said Bill. "It was decent of you to give him a
chance. I'm glad you did."
"I couldn't help liking Cayley in a kind of way, you know."
"He's a clever devil. If you hadn't turned up just when you did,
he would never have been found out."
"I wonder. It was ingenious, but it's often the ingenious thing
which gets found out. The awkward thing from Cayley's point of
view was that, though Mark was missing, neither he nor his body
could ever be found. Well, that doesn't often happen with a
missing man. He generally gets discovered in the end; a
professional criminal; perhaps not--but an amateur like Mark! He
might have kept the secret of how he killed Mark, but I think it
would have become obvious sooner or later that he had killed
him."
"Yes, there's something in that .... Oh, just tell me one thing.
Why did Mark tell Miss Norbury about his imaginary brother?"
"That's puzzled me rather, too, Bill. It may be that he was just
doing the Othello business--painting himself black all over. I
mean he may have been so full of his appearance as Robert that he
had almost got to believe in Robert, and had to tell everybody.
More likely, though, he felt that, having told all of you at the
house, he had better tell Miss Norbury, in case she met one of
you; in which case, if you mentioned the approaching arrival of
Robert, she might say, 'Oh, I'm certain he has no brother; he
would have told me if he had,' and so spoil his joke. Possibly,
too, Cayley put him on to it; Cayley obviously wanted as many
people as possible to know about Robert."
"Are you going to tell the police?"
"Yes, I suppose they'll have to know. Cayley may have left
another confession. I hope he won't give me away; you see, I've
been a sort of accessory since yesterday evening. And I must go
and see Miss Norbury."
"I asked," explained Bill, "because I was wondering what I should
say to--to Betty. Miss Calladine. You see, she's bound to ask."
"Perhaps you won't see her again for a long, long time," said
Antony sadly.
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