Bat Wing, Sax Rohmer [top 20 books to read .txt] 📗

What reply I should have offered to this astonishing remark I cannot say, but at that moment the library door burst open unceremoniously, and outlined against the warmly illuminated hall, where sunlight poured down through the dome, I beheld the figure of Inspector Aylesbury.

“Ah!” he cried, loudly, “so you have come back, Mr. Harley? I thought you had thrown up the case.”

“Did you?” said Harley, smilingly. “No, I am still persevering in my ineffectual way.”

“Oh, I see. And have you quite convinced yourself that Colin Camber is innocent?”

“In one or two particulars my evidence remains incomplete.”

“Oh, in one or two particulars, eh? But generally speaking you don’t doubt his innocence?”

“I don’t doubt it for a moment.”

Harley’s words surprised me. I recognized, of course, that he might merely be bluffing the Inspector, but it was totally alien to his character to score a rhetorical success at the expense of what he knew to be the truth; and so sure was I of the accuracy of my deductions that I no longer doubted Colin Camber to be the guilty man.

“At any rate,” continued the Inspector, “he is in detention, and likely to remain there. If you are going to defend him at the Assizes, I don’t envy you your job, Mr. Harley.”

He was blatantly triumphant, so that the fact was evident enough that he had obtained some further piece of evidence which he regarded as conclusive.

“I have detained the man Ah Tsong as well,” he went on. “He was an accomplice of your innocent friend, Mr. Harley.”

“Was he really?” murmured Harley.

“Finally,” continued the Inspector, “I have only to satisfy myself regarding the person who lured Colonel Menendez out into the grounds last night, to have my case complete.”

I turned aside, unable to trust myself, but Harley remarked quite coolly:

“Your industry is admirable, Inspector Aylesbury, but I seem to perceive that you have made a very important discovery of some kind.”

“Ah, you have got wind of it, have you?”

“I have no information on the point,” replied Harley, “but your manner urges me to suggest that perhaps success has crowned your efforts?”

“It has,” replied the Inspector. “I am a man that doesn’t do things by halves. I didn’t content myself with just staring out of the window of that little hut in the grounds of the Guest House, like you did, Mr. Harley, and saying ‘twice one are two’—I looked at every book on the shelves, and at every page of those books.”

“You must have materially added to your information?”

“Ah, very likely, but my enquiries didn’t stop there. I had the floor up.”

“The floor of the hut?”

“The floor of the hut, sir. The planks were quite loose. I had satisfied myself that it was a likely hiding place.”

“What did you find there, a dead rat?”

Inspector Aylesbury turned, and:

“Sergeant Butler,” he called.

The sergeant came forward from the hall, carrying a cricket bag. This Inspector Aylesbury took from him, placing it upon the floor of the library at his feet.

“New, sir,” said he, “I borrowed this bag in which to bring the evidence away—the hanging evidence which I discovered beneath the floor of the hut.”

I had turned again, when the man had referred to his discovery; and now, glancing at Harley, I saw that his face had grown suddenly very stern.

“Show me your evidence, Inspector?” he asked, shortly.

“There can be no objection,” returned the Inspector.

Opening the bag, he took out a rifle!

Paul Harley’s hands were thrust in his coat pockets, By the movement of the cloth I could see that he had clenched his fists. Here was confirmation of my theory!

“A Service rifle,” said the Inspector, triumphantly, holding up the weapon. “A Lee-Enfield charger-loader. It contains four cartridges, three undischarged, and one discharged. He had not even troubled to eject it.”

The Inspector dropped the weapon into the bag with a dramatic movement.

“Fancy theories about bat wings and Voodoos,” he said, scornfully, “may satisfy you, Mr. Harley, but I think this rifle will prove more satisfactory to the Coroner.”

He picked up the bag and walked out of the library.

Harley stood posed in a curiously rigid way, looking after him. Even when the door had closed he did not change his position at once. Then, turning slowly, he walked to an armchair and sat down.

“Harley,” I said, hesitatingly, “has this discovery surprised you?”

“Surprised me?” he returned in a low voice. “It has appalled me.”

“Then, although you seemed to regard my theory as sound,” I continued rather resentfully, “all the time you continued to believe Colin Camber to be innocent?”