褐衣男子16

 Diamonds! 

I stared, fascinated, at the glassy heap on the bunk. I picked up one which, but for the weight, might have been a fragment of broken bottle.

“Are you sure, Suzanne?”

“Oh, yes, my dear. I’ve seen rough diamonds too often to have any doubts. They’re beauties too, Anne—and some of them are unique, I should say. There’s a history behind these.”

“The history we heard to-night,” I cried.

“You mean——?”

“Colonel Race’s story. It can’t be a coincidence. He told it for a purpose.”

“To see its effect, you mean?”

I nodded.

“Its effect on Sir Eustace?”

“Yes.”

But, even as I said it, a doubt assailed me. Was it Sir Eustace who had been subjected to a test, or had the story been told for my benefit? I remembered the impression I had received on that former night of having been deliberately “pumped.” For some reason or other, Colonel Race was suspicious. But where did he come in? What possible connection could he have with the affair?

“Who is Colonel Race?” I asked.

“That’s rather a question,” said Suzanne. “He’s pretty well known as a big-game hunter, and, as you heard him say to-night, he was a distant cousin of Sir Laurence Eardsley. I’ve never actually met him until this trip. He journeys to and from Africa a good deal. There’s a general idea that he does Secret Service work. I don’t know whether it’s true or not. He’s certainly rather a mysterious creature.”

“I suppose he came into a lot of money as Sir Laurence Eardsley’s heir?”

“My dear Anne, he must be rolling. You know, he’d be a splendid match for you.”

“I can’t have a good go at him with you aboard the ship,” I said, laughing. “Oh, these married women!”

“We do have a pull,” murmured Suzanne complacently. “And everybody knows that I am absolutely devoted to Clarence—my husband, you know. It’s so safe and pleasant to make love to a devoted wife.”

“It must be very nice for Clarence to be married to some one like you.”

“Well, I’m wearing to live with! Still, he can always escape to the Foreign Office, where he fixes his eyeglass in his eye, and goes to sleep in a big arm-chair. We might cable him to tell us all he knows about Race. I love sending cables. And they annoy Clarence so. He always says a letter would have done as well. I don’t suppose he’d tell us anything, though. He is so frightfully discreet. That’s what makes him so hard to live with for long on end. But let us go on with our matchmaking. I’m sure Colonel Race is very attracted to you, Anne. Give him a couple of glances from those wicked eyes of yours, and the deed is done. Every one gets engaged on board ship. There’s nothing else to do.”

“I don’t want to get married.”

“Don’t you?” said Suzanne. “Why not? I love being married—even to Clarence!”

I disdained her flippancy.

“What I want to know is,” I said with determination, “what has Colonel Race got to do with this? He’s in it somewhere.”

“You don’t think it was mere chance, his telling that story?”

“No, I don’t,” I said decidedly. “He was watching us all narrowly. You remember, some of the diamonds were recovered, not all. Perhaps these are the missing ones—or perhaps——”

“Perhaps what?”

I did not answer directly.

“I should like to know,” I said, “what became of the other young man. Not Eardsley but—what was his name?—Lucas!”

“We’re getting some light on the thing, anyway. It’s the diamonds all these people are after. It must have been to obtain possession of the diamonds that ‘The Man in the Brown Suit’ killed Nadina.”

“He didn’t kill her,” I said sharply.

“Of course he killed her. Who else could have done so?”

“I don’t know. But I’m sure he didn’t kill her.”

“He went into that house three minutes after her and came out as white as a sheet.”

“Because he found her dead.”

“But nobody else went in.”

“Then the murderer was in the house already, or else he got in some other way. There’s no need for him to pass the lodge, he could have climbed over the wall.”

Suzanne glanced at me sharply.

“‘The Man in the Brown Suit,’” she mused. “Who was he, I wonder? Anyway, he was identical with the ‘doctor’ in the Tube. He would have had time to remove his make-up and follow the woman to Marlow. She and Carton were to have met there, they both had an order to view the same house, and if they took such elaborate precautions to make their meeting appear accidental they must have suspected they were being followed. All the same, Carton did not know that his shadower was the ‘Man in the Brown Suit.’ When he recognized him, the shock was so great that he lost his head completely and stepped back onto the line. That all seems pretty clear, don’t you think so, Anne?”

I did not reply.

“Yes, that’s how it was. He took the paper from the dead man, and in his hurry to get away he dropped it. Then he followed the woman to Marlow. What did he do when he left there, when he had killed her—or, according to you, found her dead. Where did he go?”

Still I said nothing.

“I wonder, now,” said Suzanne musingly. “Is it possible that he induced Sir Eustace Pedler to bring him on board as his secretary? It would be a unique chance of getting safely out of England, and dodging the hue and cry. But how did he square Sir Eustace? It looks as though he had some hold over him.”

“Or over Pagett,” I suggested in spite of myself.

“You don’t seem to like Pagett, Anne. Sir Eustace says he’s a most capable and hard-working young man. And, really, he may be for all we know against him. Well, to continue my surmises. Rayburn is the ‘Man in the Brown Suit.’ He had read the paper he dropped. Therefore, misled by the dot as you were, he attempts to reach Cabin 17 at one o’clock on the 22nd, having previously tried to get possession of the cabin through Pagett. On the way there somebody knifes him——”

“Who?” I interpolated.

“Chichester. Yes, it all fits in. Cable to Lord Nasby that you have found ‘The Man in the Brown Suit,’ and your fortune’s made, Anne!”

“There are several things you’ve overlooked.”

“What things? Rayburn’s got a scar, I know—but a scar can be faked easily enough. He’s the right height and build. What’s the description of a head with which you pulverized them at Scotland Yard?”

I trembled. Suzanne was a well-educated, well-read woman, but I prayed that she might not be conversant with technical terms of anthropology.

“Dolichocephalic,” I said lightly.

Suzanne looked doubtful.

“Was that it?”

“Yes. Long-headed, you know. A head whose width is less than 75 per cent. of its length,” I explained fluently.

There was a pause. I was just beginning to breathe freely when Suzanne said suddenly:

“What’s the opposite?”

“What do you mean—the opposite?”

“Well, there must be an opposite. What do you call the heads whose breadth is more than 75 per cent. of their length.”

“Brachycephalic,” I murmured unwillingly.

“That’s it. I thought that was what you said.”

“Did I? It was a slip of the tongue. I meant dolichocephalic,” I said with all the assurance I could muster.

Suzanne looked at me searchingly. Then she laughed.

“You lie very well, Gipsy girl. But it will save time and trouble now if you tell me all about it.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I said unwillingly.

“Isn’t there?” said Suzanne gently.

“I suppose I shall have to tell you,” I said slowly. “I’m not ashamed of it. You can’t be ashamed of something that just—happens to you. That’s what he did. He was detestable—rude and ungrateful—but that I think I understand. It’s like a dog that’s been chained up—or badly treated—it’ll bite anybody. That’s what he was like—bitter and snarling. I don’t know why I care—but I do. I care horribly. Just seeing him has turned my whole life upside-down. I love him. I want him. I’ll walk all over Africa barefoot till I find him, and I’ll make him care for me. I’d die for him. I’d work for him, slave for him, steal for him, even beg or borrow for him! There—now you know!”

Suzanne looked at me for a long time.

“You’re very un-English, Gipsy girl,” she said at last. “There’s not a scrap of the sentimental about you. I’ve never met any one who was at once so practical and so passionate. I shall never care for any one like that—mercifully for me—and yet—and yet I envy you, Gipsy girl. It’s something to be able to care. Most people can’t. But what a mercy for your little doctor man that you didn’t marry him. He doesn’t sound at all the sort of individual who would enjoy keeping high explosive in the house! So there’s to be no cabling to Lord Nasby?”

I shook my head.

“And yet you believe him to be innocent?”

“I also believe that innocent people can be hanged.”

“Hm! yes. But, Anne dear, you can face facts, face them now. In spite of all you say, he may have murdered this woman.”

“No,” I said. “He didn’t.”

“That’s sentiment.”

“No, it isn’t. He might have killed her. He may even have followed her there with that idea in his mind. But he wouldn’t take a bit of black cord and strangle her with it. If he’d done it, he would have strangled her with his bare hands.”

Suzanne gave a little shiver. Her eyes narrowed appreciatively.

“Hm! Anne, I am beginning to see why you find this young man of yours so attractive!”