The Ashiel mystery: A Detective Story, Mrs. Charles Bryce [red queen free ebook .txt] 📗

on which the castle was built. It was the morning of Friday, the day following the funeral, and clouds were settling slowly down on to the tops and shoulders of the hills in spite of the brilliant sunset of the previous evening. The loch lay dark and still, its surface wore an oily, treacherous look; every detail of the Inverashiel's tub-like shape was reflected and beautifully distorted in the water, which broke in long low waves from her bows as she swerved round to come alongside the pier.

As the few passengers who were waiting for her crossed the short gangway, a shower burst over the loch and in a few minutes had driven every one into the little cabin, except the two or three men who constituted the officers and crew of the steamer. One of these was in the act of slackening the rope by which the boat had been warped alongside, when a running, gesticulating figure appeared in the distance, shouting to them to wait for him.

Waited for accordingly he was; and in a few minutes Gimblet, rather out of breath after his run, hurried on board, and with a word of apology and thanks to the obliging skipper turned, like the other passengers, towards the shelter of the cabin.

With his hand on the knob of the door he hesitated. Through the glass top he had just caught sight of a figure that seemed familiar. He had seen that tweed before; the short girl with her back to him was wearing the dress in which he had seen her on the Wednesday night, searching among Lord Ashiel's papers in the library at the castle. It was Julia Romaninov beyond a doubt, and Gimblet drew back quickly and took up his position behind the funnels on the after-deck. In spite of the rain he remained there until the boat reached Crianan, leaning against the rail with his collar turned up and his soft felt hat pulled down over his ears, so that little of him was visible except the tip of his nose.

His mind, always active, was busier than usual as he watched the ripples roll away in endless succession from the sides of the Inverashiel—which looked so strangely less white on closer inspection—or followed the smooth soaring movements of the gulls that swooped and circled around her, as she puffed and panted on her way across the black, taciturn waters.

As they drew near to Crianan he concealed himself still more carefully behind a pile of crates, and not till Miss Romaninov had left the steamer did he emerge from his hiding-place and step warily off the boat.

The young lady was still in sight, making her way up the steep pitch of the main street, and the detective followed her discreetly, loitering before shop windows, as if fascinated by the display of Scottish homespuns, or samples of Royal Stewart tartan, and taking an extraordinary interest in fishing-tackle and trout-flies.

But, though the girl looked back more than once, the little man in the ulster who was so intent on picking his way between the puddles did not apparently provide her with any food for suspicion; and she made no attempt to see who was so carefully sheltered beneath the umbrella he carried.

At last they left the cobble-stones of the little town and emerged upon the high road, which here ran across the open moorland.

It was difficult now to continue the pursuit unobserved: and Gimblet became absorbed in the contemplation of an enormous cairngorm, which was masquerading as an article of personal adornment in the window of the last outlying shop.

From this position—not without its embarrassments, since a couple of barefooted children came instantly to the door, where they stood and stared at him unblinkingly—he saw the Russian advancing at a rapid pace across the moor; and, look where he would, could perceive no means of keeping up with her unobserved upon the bare side of the hill.

Just as he decided that the distance separating them had increased to an extent which warranted his continuing the chase, he joyfully saw her slacken her pace, and at the same moment a man, who must have been sitting behind a boulder beside the road, rose to his feet out of the heather, and came forward to meet her. For ten long minutes they stood talking, driving poor Gimblet to the desperate expedient of entering the shop and demanding a closer acquaintance with the cairngorm. It is humiliating to relate that he recoiled before it when it was placed in his hand, and nearly fled again into the road. However, he pulled himself together and held the proud proprietress, a gaunt, grey-haired woman with knitting-needles ever clicking in her dexterous hands, in conversation upon the theme of its unique beauties until the subject was exhausted to the point of collapse.

Every other minute he must stroll to the door and take a look up and down the road. A friend, he explained, had promised to meet him in that place; and though the shopwoman plainly doubted his veracity, and kept a sharp eye that he did not take to his heels with the cairngorm, she did not go so far as to suggest his removing himself from the zone of temptation.

At last, when for the twentieth time he put his nose round the doorpost, he saw that the pair had separated, and were walking in opposite directions, the girl continuing on her way, while the man returned to the town. He was, indeed, not a hundred yards off.

Gimblet plunged once more into the shop, and fastened upon some pencils with a zeal not very convincing after his disappointing vacillation over the brooch. The gaunt woman cheered up, however, when he bought the first seventeen she offered him, and, the stock being exhausted, finished by purchasing a piece of india-rubber, a stylographic pen, and a penny paper of pins, which she pressed upon him as particularly suited to his needs and charged him fourpence for.

By the time he issued forth into the open air, his pockets full of packages, the stranger had passed the shop and was turning the corner of the next house. To him, now, Gimblet devoted his powers of shadowing.

There was no great difficulty about it. The man walked straight before him, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and as he strode along the wet roads Gimblet noted with satisfaction the long, narrow, pointed footprints that were deeply impressed in the muddy places. He had no doubt they were the same as those he had noticed on the beach on the day of his arrival at Inverashiel.

The stranger turned into the Crianan Hotel, which stands on the lake front, fifty yards from the landing-place of the loch steamers. Gimblet passed the door without pausing and went down to the loch, where he mingled with the boatmen and loafers who congregated by the waterside.

He kept, however, a strict eye on the door of the hotel, and after a quarter of an hour saw the object of his attentions emerge with fishing-rod and basket, and cross the road directly towards him. Gimblet had not been able to see his face before, but now he had a good look as he passed close beside him.

He was a tall, fair man, evidently a foreigner, but with nothing very striking about his appearance. A pointed yellow beard hid the lower part of his face, and, for the rest, his nose was short, his eyes blue and close together, and his forehead high and narrow. He looked closely at Gimblet as he went by, and for a moment the eyes of the two men met, both equally inscrutable and unflinching; then the stranger glanced aside and strode on to where a small boat lay moored. The detective turned his back while the fair man got in and pushed off into the loch.

"Gentleman going fishing?" he remarked to a man who lounged hard by upon the causeway.

"He's axtra fond o' the feeshin'," was the reply, "for a' that he's a foreign shentleman."

Waiting till the boat had become a distant speck on the face of the waters, Gimblet made his way into the inn and entered into conversation with the landlord, on the pretext of engaging rooms for a friend. The landlord was sorry, but the house was full.

"If ye wanted them in a fortnicht's time," he said, "ye could hae the hale hotel; but tae the end o' the holidays we're foll up. Folks tak' their rooms a month in advance; they come here for the fishin' on the loch, and because my hoose is the maist comfortable in the Hielands."

"Indeed, I can well believe that," Gimblet assured him. "I suppose you get a lot of tourists passing through, though, Americans, for instance?"

"We hardly ever hae a room tae tak' them in. No, I seldom hae an American bidin' here; they maistly gang doon the loch," said the innkeeper.

"I thought," said Gimblet, "that was a foreign-looking man whom I saw a little while ago, coming out of the hotel."

"We hae ae gintleman bidin' here wha belongs tae foreign pairts," the landlord admitted. "A Polish gintleman, he is, Count Pretovsky, a vary nice gintleman. I couldna just cae him a tourist. He's vary keen on the fishin' and was up here for it last year as well. He has his ain boat and is aye on the water trailin' aefter the salmon."

"A great many sporting foreigners come to our island nowadays," Gimblet remarked. "Does he get many fish?"

"Oh, it's a grand place for salmon," said the inn-keeper with obvious pride. "And there's troots tac. And pike, mair's the peety," he added.

"Dear me," said Gimblet, "just what my friend wants. I'm sorry you can't take him in. I must tell him to write in good time next year if he wants a room."

As he parted from the landlord upon the doorstep of the Crianan Hotel, the Rob Roy—the second of the two loch steamers—was edging away from the pier, under a cloud of black smoke from her funnel The rain had stopped; the passengers were scattered on the deck, and in the bows of the vessel the detective caught sight of Julia Romaninov's tweed-clad form. She was leaning against the rail, and gazing at a distant part of the loch where a black speck, which might represent a rowing boat, could faintly be discerned. She had come back, then, from her moorland walk. It was as Gimblet had expected; and, though he chafed at the delay, he regretted less than he would have otherwise that he could not catch the Rob Roy.

The Inverashiel would be due on her homeward trip in a couple of hours' time, and meanwhile he had other business that must be attended to.

He went first to the post office, where he registered and posted to Scotland Yard a packet he had brought with him. Then, after asking his way of the sociable landlord of the hotel, he proceeded to the police station, a single-storied stone building standing at the end of a side street.

Here he made himself known to the inspector, and imparted information which made that personage open his eyes considerably wider than was his custom.

"If you will bring one of your men, and come with me yourself," said Gimblet, at the conclusion of the interview, "I think I shall be able to convince you that a mistake has been made. In the meantime there will be no harm done by a watch being kept on the foreign gentleman who is at this moment trolling for salmon on the loch."

The inspector agreed; and when the Inverashiel started, an hour later, on her voyage down the loch, she carried the two policemen on her deck, as well as the most notorious detective she was ever likely to have the privilege of conveying.

It was nearly three o'clock when they landed on the Inverashiel pier.

The weather, which for the last few hours had looked like clearing, had now turned definitely to rain; clouds had descended on the hills, and the trees in the valleys stooped and dripped in the saturated, mist-laden air. Gimblet conducted the men to the cottage, where Lady Ruth anxiously awaited them.

"If you don't mind their staying here," he suggested to her, "while I go up to the castle and consult Lord Ashiel about a magistrate, it will be most convenient, on account of the distance."

"By all means," said Lady Ruth. "I feel safer with them. I expect you will find Miss Byrne up there. She has not come in to lunch, and I think she probably met Mark