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Page 43
Bill looked at him for inspiration, and, receiving it, said, "Oh,
just let's have one game, shall we?"
"Right you are," said Antony.
But Bill was much too excited to take the game which followed
very seriously. Antony, on the other hand, seemed to be thinking
of nothing but bowls. He played with great deliberation for ten
minutes, and then announced that he was going to bed. Bill
looked at him anxiously.
"It's all right," laughed Antony. "You can talk if you want to.
Just let's put 'em away first, though."
They made their way down to the shed, and while Bill was putting
the bowls away, Antony tried the lid of the closed croquet-box.
As he expected, it was locked.
"Now then," said Bill, as they were walking back to the house
again, "I'm simply bursting to know. Who was it?"
"Cayley."
"Good Lord! Where?"
"Inside one of the croquet-boxes."
"Don't be an ass."
"It's quite true, Bill." He told the other what he had seen.
"But aren't we going to have a look at it?" asked Bill, in great
disappointment. "I'm longing to explore. Aren't you?"
"To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow. We shall see Cayley
coming along this way directly. Besides, I want to get in from
the other end, if I can. I doubt very much if we can do it this
end without giving ourselves away. Look, there's Cayley."
They could see him coming along the drive towards them. When
they were a little closer, they waved to him and he waved back.
"I wondered where you were," he said, as he got up to them. "I
rather thought you might be along this way. What about bed?"
"Bed it is," said Antony.
"We've been playing bowls," added Bill, "and talking, and--and
playing bowls. Ripping night, isn't it?"
But he left the rest of the conversation, as they wandered back
to the house, to Antony. He wanted to think. There seemed to be
no doubt now that Cayley was a villain. Bill had never been
familiar with a villain before. It didn't seem quite fair of
Cayley, somehow; he was taking rather a mean advantage of his
friends. Lot of funny people there were in the world funny
people with secrets. Look at Tony, that first time he had met
him in a tobacconist's shop. Anybody would have thought he was a
tobacconist's assistant. And Cayley. Anybody would have thought
that Cayley was an ordinary decent sort of person. And Mark.
Dash it! one could never be sure of anybody. Now, Robert was
different. Everybody had always said that Robert was a shady
fellow.
But what on earth had Miss Norris got to do with it? What had
Miss Norris got to do with it? This was a question which Antony
had already asked himself that afternoon, and it seemed to him
now that he had found the answer. As he lay in bed that night he
reassembled his ideas, and looked at them in the new light which
the events of the evening threw upon the dark corners in his
brain.
Of course it was natural that Cayley should want to get rid of
his guests as soon as the tragedy was discovered. He would want
this for their own sake as well as for his. But he had been a
little too quick about suggesting it, and about seeing the
suggestion carried out. They had been bustled off as soon as
they could be packed. The suggestion that they were in his hands,
to go or stay as he wished, could have been left safely to them.
As it was, they had been given no alternative, and Miss Norris,
who had proposed to catch an after-dinner train at the junction,
in the obvious hope that she might have in this way a dramatic
cross-examination at the hands of some keen-eyed detective, was
encouraged tactfully, but quite firmly, to travel by the earlier
train with the others. Antony had felt that Cayley, in the
tragedy which had suddenly befallen the house, ought to have been
equally indifferent to her presence or absence. But he was not;
and Antony assumed from this that Cayley was very much alive to
the necessity for her absence.
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