The Midnight Mystery

Roy Glashan's Library
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BERTRAM ATKEY

THE MIDNIGHT MYSTERY

Serialised as "The Mystery of the Axes," in
The Elks Magazine, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec 1927

First book edition: D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1928

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2024
Version Date: 2024-07-05

Produced Roy Glashan
Proofread by Gordon Hobley

All original content added by RGL is protected by copyright.

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ABOUT THIS BOOK

Prosper Fair, vagabond sleuth, has set up his current temporary home and campsite in the forests of Wolf's Head. Shortly after building a fire and settling in for the night he encounters a mysterious figure clothed only in an animal skin, mounted on horseback, and galloping past him in a fury. Prosper's pet dog chases after the man on horseback and returns with an object in his mouth apparently dropped by the fleeing rider. Upon closer inspection Prosper discovers a prehistoric ax made of flint and a rough-hewn wooden handle, the stone blade is bloodied. Has murder been done in this dark midnight forest?

Chapter I. The Ax Of Flint
Chapter II. The Black Goat
Chapter III. Murder At Wolf's Hold
Chapter IV. The Lady Crystal Sheen
Chapter V. The Man From Scotland Yard
Chapter VI. The Black Bloodhounds
Chapter VII. The Scared V.C.
Chapter VIII. The Cataleptic Man
Chapter IX. The Second Ax
Chapter X. Night-Rider, Ax-Thrower, Killer
Chapter XI. "Far In The Dark..."
Chapter XII. Prosper Goes To Town
Chapter XIII. After The Galloping Specter
Chapter XIV. The Night Of Watching Eyes
Chapter XV. The Ax Of Bronze
Chapter XVI. Queer Customer, That!
Chapter XVII. Trust Prosper
Chapter XVIII. A Free Hand For The Major
Chapter XIX. The Ax Of Steel And Silver
Chapter XX. Run Down
Chapter XXI. The Solution
Chapter XXII. The Lazy Duke! Who Says That?
Chapter XXIII. Move On

CHAPTER I
The Ax Of Flint

THE big battleship-gray caravan, hauled with rather contemptuous ease by a big battleship-gray elephant, came rocking through the rain along the ruts of a road across an area of New Forest moorland, and lurched to a standstill on the brow of a shallow slope, at the foot of which a block of woodland stood up like a giant palisade.

With the elephant was a small gray donkey, huddling close under the lee of the caravan; under the vehicle ran a three-legged terrier; and on the quarterdeck, as one may be allowed to express it, sat the proprietor of the outfit, his Grace the Duke of Devizes, with whom we shall all be much more comfortable if we call him by those two of his Christian names, Prosper Fair, which he always used when on these little wayfaring holiday tours of his.

"But three days, my littles," said Mr. Fair, peering between wet lashes at the thunder weather confronting them, "but three days ago we left Derehurst Castle in glorious August. Yet it is now less charming than wild November!"

Apparently to prove it, a bolt of lightning launched itself out of the heart of the pouring black canopy overhead, rived a small lonely oak tree some yards to the right of the little company with a violent concussion illuminated by a greenish, extremely evil-looking flash and, leaving the tree smoking in the rain, was gone.

The thunder drowned further civilities, the elephant trumpeted a little wildly, and Mr. Fair jumped down and went forward, bearing the half of a coconut filled with brown sugar which he had been holding in reserve for just such an emergency.

"It may be politic to remove ourselves to a less well illuminated spot, Joseph," suggested Prosper. "We shall find it forward, I believe—yes, forward."

By the time they reached the belt of woodland—mainly ancient oaks and beeches, with great blocks of pines trailing their dark and ragged plumes dejectedly under their burden of drops, the rain was no more than a thin rearguard to the main downpour moving north.

"Not too bad, my littles—by no means too bad!" said Prosper Fair cheerfully. He roved an experienced eye around for possibilities, selected a site, and continued in the merry tone of one who knows that supper time is at hand—"Here we will camp and here will sup, very heavily and long, and here we will sleep, very deeply and soon, this night!" He announced it again, threw off his white rubber mackintosh, and grew brisk.

By the time he had picketed the elephant and spread a very wholesome supply of eating materials before him, lit a fire with dry wood from the caravan, fed the donkey—"Patience," he called her—and encouraged the dog, which though no larger than a small suet pudding, appeared to bear the formidable name of Plutus, with meaty bones, he was ready for his own meal.

Away to the westward the sun, which had seemed to be studying them with a watery and rather bloodshot regard, under black brows of shredded cloud, appeared to lose interest in them and went below. Then the shadows that haunt the corners of the Forest even in the brightest daylight, emerged from under the old, old trees, closing in on the little camp—crowding more and more densely until they were sheer darkness.

A fox yelped uncannily far back in the deep bracken, wood owls began rather weirdly to broadcast the net results of a day's dreamy reflection, a rabbit close by, inexorably trailed by a blood-seeking stoat, gave up hope—as rabbits will—and began to wail a forlorn farewell to the night.

Prosper, his rather thin, but firm and well cut face clear in the flame of his camp fire, looked across at the old elephant, who was staring uneasily into the dark towards the sound of the rabbit's brief misery.

But the cry died out as the stoat struck, and the holiday maker relaxed, lit a cigarette, took a pull at his enameled tin pannikin of tea, and resumed his study of the map upon which he had engaged himself.

He was a good-looking person, this Prosper Fair, and even in the shifting firelight one could have judged from his face that the noises of the nightly trafficking of the Forest were not seriously likely to work upon his nerves to any extent.

It would have been a good guess. Prosper looked one of those unaggressive, polite, almost self-effacing persons, who are frequently said by the short-sighted to be devoid of personality. As, indeed, in their polite way, they are—until personality is called for, when they miraculously produce it in large and frequently uncomfortable quantities. And these parties are not easily distressed by the normal sounds of the normal events of the darkness.

Presently he nodded over his map and addressed his elephant, his ass and his remains of a terrier.

"Wolf's Hold, my little companions," he observed in the curious, half whimsical manner which seemed to characterize two-thirds of his conversation, "that will be it.... We have drifted ourselves, with the kind cooperation of Stolid Joe, into a camping site on the edge of that wood which is named Wolf's Hold.... Unquestionably there were wolves in plenty here in the days of good King Rufus—and I have no doubt that they were subjected to the diligent attentions of the hounds of that auburn monarch. But that was many years ago—and there are no longer wolves in this place awaiting destruction. So you may lie down again, Plutus. The place is totally wolfless."

He smoked in silence for a moment—a quiet, youthful-seeming citizen, in rather shabby plus fours, enlivened but partially with a once brilliant but now faded pullover.

"A thousand years must bring its changes," he told them musingly after a moment. "In the days of Rufus it is probable that few adventured into Wolf's Hold unarmed, unaccompanied and unafraid. Nowadays, of course, people picnic here, probably in large numbers—when the weather is suitable....

"Once upon a time, there were mastodons—a family connection, in a way, of yours, Joseph, roaming the Forest areas. And on the flanks of the great herd, no doubt the wolves—distant relatives of yours, Plutus—drifted and flickered and followed. But those mastodons were wild ones, ignorant, primeval, uneducated pachyderms, and, unlike yourself, Joseph, but ill trained to haul a gentleman's holiday caravan. Moreover, they were unprotected quadrupeds—whereas you have Plutus to protect you—"

At the sound of his name the semi-terrier glanced up from the large mutton bone upon which he was performing with some zest, perceived that his owner was, as usual, joking and so grinned and continued his solo appassionato upon the shoulder bone.

In the checkered and changing light from the camp fire his lean, brown face was entirely expressionless as he folded his map, continuing his monologue—raising his voice a little.

"No. There are no wolves in Wolf's Hold—but there are soft-footed gentlemen, who close in on the camp fires of strangers silently, coming down wind, and there, just outside the zone of light, lurk and linger, listening intently to a wandering tourist's converse with his littlings!"

A tall man, in the clothes of an official forester, came forward out of the encircling shadow land.

"That's all right, sir," said the newcomer quietly. "I wasn't spying. To tell you the truth, I was wondering if that elephant was safe. Don't often see them in the Forest."

"If you haven't got a permit, I'm afraid I shall have to trouble you to move on," he said. "It's the regulations! No campers allowed in the Forest, no fires allowed to be started, without permits, except in the registered gypsy sites....

"Where, indeed?" he continued. "Don't vex your eyes trying to read that thing in the firelight, forester. It's a proper pass, issued by the Chief Verderer—or is it the Lord Warden?—of this very fine Forest. Call in the daytime if you will, and study it. Meantime, smoke with me." He offered a cigarette case.

"No, thanks, I'm a nonsmoker." The forester returned the pass. "Be careful with your fires, sir," he warned, moved back into the shadows and was gone.

"The man, of course, is right," Prosper told his comrades. "He does his duty! Good fortune follow him!"

He smoked alone for a while, then rose, yawned a little, and went down to see that all was well with the elephant. Joe was half asleep. The little donkey, Patience, who once, in the modest days, had carried Prosper's touring kit, was quite asleep near the caravan.

"Ah, well, one last cigarette, Plutus, I think, then the blankets," suggested Prosper.

Behind the last cigarette he strolled to the edge of his camp and looked across the plain of bracken.

A blanched moon was sailing rather insecurely behind ragged clouds, throwing an uncertain and wavering light over the Forest, which Prosper loved so well that there were not lacking critics of the Duke of Devizes who maintained that he would have been more in his element as an explorer with next to nothing a year than as a Duke with something near a hundred and fifty thousand pounds per annum. Even harsher critics suggested that, considering his passion for issuing forth on these tours down the wander ways, there to mix more or less fraternally with Everyman, he should have been a tramp.

"There are those who would call me insane, thus strugglesomely to make my way through such evil weather to a spot so cheerless as this place seems to-night, hound of my heart," he said absently to Plutus. "Yet to-morrow is altogether another day and the sun will probably take a hand in the matter. Then we shall be very..."

The distant report of a gun jarred the night, and he broke off suddenly, peering intently in the direction of a tiny spot of yellow light some distance away to his right. That small square of light was no more than the lamp-lit window in the hut of one of those small holders of the Forest usually called squatters—lonely men who extract miraculously a bare existence from the grudging soil of the Forest.

Plutus, the terrier, was staring that way, too, his nose as high in the air as he could raise it.

Hurrying hoofs were thudding down the long, narrow, irregular strip of turf which divided the bracken plain from the edge of Wolf's Hold.

"Somebody going for the doctor, should you say, Plutus? Only a very reckless or desperately anxious person would gallop at such a pace over this rabbit-holed ground in such a poor light, methinks. I shouldn't care to, I assure you," murmured Prosper, staring. "Or maybe it's a stampede of Forest ponies...."

The tattered skirts of a cloud slid clear of the moon as a big pony swung down wind, snorting, and flew past. One on the flying animal's back uttered a queer hoarse cry of encouragement to the pony as they passed.

A black shadow that might have been a big dog was pouring itself along the ground on the heels of the pony. The beast must have scented Plutus in the instant that it passed, for they heard it growl as it went.

Prosper saw all that the fitful light and the speed of this night-rider allowed him to see—and he did not understand it at all.

"... No, not at all, Plutus mine," he observed as he peered after the rider. "What? Do the folk of the Forest go for the doctor riding bareback, naked except for a species of skin cloak, brandishing the carcass of some small dead animal, trailed by a dog that might almost be a wolf... and yell hoarsely as they ride, with wild eyes that gleam in the light of the moon? I have not heard that this is a common custom, here, in this very civilized little Forest, Plutus."

"Yet, unless my vision is strangely out of order, that is what we have just seen....

They had often tried to stop him from soliloquizing in this fashion, but it was incurable and, as he freely admitted, entirely his own failing and his own fault.

He noticed that Plutus still kept his nose pointing up wind in the direction from which the crazy rider had come.

The terrier whined, crept forward, looked back, whined and fretted again. Speech could not have made plainer the dog's wish to go out into the night, presumably to investigate something which he had scented.

"Why, Plutus, what is this? Prying into other people's affairs? Gadding about in the dark!" reproved Prosper. "Still—you may go...! Seek, Plutus!"

Prosper waited on the edge of his camp for a long time, but the dog did not return.

The far-off square of yellow light in the squatter's hut was blacked out, the moon abandoned her aimless peep-and-hide, and retired behind a big cloud bed, and except for the low half drone, half sigh of the wind pouring steadily through the invisible tree tops, the woods and the plain were silent.

Prosper moved back to the embers of his fire, threw on a few sticks, and settled down on the ground sheet to smoke and puzzle after some sort of meaning to the incident he had just witnessed.

Unless it is very bright moonlight indeed the Forest folk do not customarily waste cartridges at 11 p.m. in efforts to collect rabbits or pheasants, or even one of the fallow deer that still range the Forest.

But here Plutus backed himself rather laboriously into the zone of light thrown by the fire. He was half carrying, half dragging something—a species of stick, Prosper thought. He rose alertly and took it from the dog.

It was a small ax—a stone ax of an age which passed many thousands of years ago—the Paleolithic. The sharp wedge-shaped flint was bound in the cleft of a short length of tough, smooth wood, rather like the handle of a modern hatchet. And this handle was wet.

Prosper's face was rather grim as he drew out and flashed a powerful electric torch on to the thing—and on to his own hand.

Prosper sat for a full five minutes considering the stone ax before he perceived that the indefatigable Plutus was fretting for permission to venture forth again.

He refused permission, rose and very carefully put the peculiar weapon in a safe place inside the caravan.

Then he looped a length of cord through the collar of the terrier, quietly instructed the elephant to remain where he was, and turned to Plutus.

"Now, we will issue forth in company, friend of my more or less declining years," he stated. "Forward, my brave!"

CHAPTER II
The Black Goat

BEFORE Prosper had taken twoscore steps into the night he had completely made up his mind that the pony-rider was mad or drunk, or extraordinarily ignorant. For the narrow stretch of turf down which he had galloped was so liberally sown with rabbit burrows that no sane inhabitant of the Forest would have risked his neck galloping there in broad daylight. Twice Prosper sank abruptly to the knee, as he followed Plutus through the darkness.

"Nothing but one of those—afflictions—would account for it, unless he were crazy with fear," he told himself. "And he had marvelous luck in any easel... There is something wrong—something ugly about Wolf's Hold and its environs to-night. Gun reports! Mad riders! Shadowy hounds! Bloodstained axes... all the delicacies and ingredients of a detective story, one might say!"

But his tone was less light than the gentle irony of his words seemed to call for.

Normally, there is no more peaceful spot in the world than the New Forest. In the days of the Red King there were red deeds—for where the Norman Conqueror had the eyes put out of those who dared to kill one of the tall deer that he loved like a father (with hounds), or lopped the hands off the poachers of smaller game, his son, Rufus, substituted the death penalty for all poachers and, for that matter, all local critics of his game laws or, not to put too fine a point on it, for almost anybody else who felt disputatious, or unseasonably facetious. But those days were dead a thousand years, and had long buried their dead. Though if there were ghosts, and if the places they loved in life had power to attract them bade, one would meet at midnight many a spectral archer hying on phantom hounds on the slot of will-o'-the-wisp red stags....

But that gentle-mannered, whimsical friend of Everyman, Mr. Prosper Fair, was concerning himself less with specters than with real perplexities.

He followed the small white terrier through the darkness almost as far as the ragged fence with which the squatter endeavored to keep the Forest out of his tiny reservation of tilled soil.

Plutus stopped just short of the fence and nosed about, whimpering a little, scratching.

He flashed the torch on the ground round about the spot which so intrigued his tike.

The white disk of slowly moving light slid slowly hither and yon, and stopped suddenly, revealing a glistening spot which varied in appearance with the wetness of recent rain.

The lean face of Mr. Fair moved for a moment into the circle of light as he stooped to examine the spot; a long, sinewy finger seeming very white in the ray of light, touched the dark spot.

"Blood!" said Prosper softly, and patted the terrier. "One sees why you were so very sure of your way, Plutus."

"Oh, very well!" said Prosper, and let him out a little. He stopped two yards farther on, sniffing loudly.

Beside it the white eye of the torch picked out a tiny circular disk of pale-hued felt, rather more than half an inch in diameter.

Ignoring the goat Prosper picked up the felt disk and smelt it. The thing was strongly impregnated with the odor of burnt gunpowder. It was the wad of a shotgun cartridge which had been fired within the past hour.

Prosper slipped it in his pocket and studied the carcass of the goat. It was not a pretty study. Somebody had killed it very completely—but even more inexpertly and untidily.

"Yes," said Mr. Fair at last, "it would require a paleolithic-worked flint ax to make quite such a bungling affair of it as that.... Poor little beast!"

But there was genuine relief in his voice. He admitted at once to Plutus that he was relieved.

"I expected—something else, Plutus. Something very different from this.... I am glad beyond words, old man, that I have Sherlocked myself all the way for only a dead kid! Some petty thief of the Forest fantastically revenging himself on his neighbor, don't you think? Yes, that would be it."

But still Plutus seemed unsatisfied. He was sniffing again—though more uncertainly now—and in the light of the torch Prosper saw that his hackles were standing up stiffly.

Plutus was every sort of villain but a liar. If he said that something was wrong Prosper would always have believed him.

And he said, as plainly as he could make it, that there was something in the wind to-night—here, in the shadow of Wolf's Hold.

Something strange and evil in the wind—something that was more ominous and sinister than the odor of the blood of a fresh-killed kid.

Prosper had sensed it—that was why he had not been able to laugh with any real conviction when he turned back towards his camp.

For a moment or two Prosper watched the dog and realized that while Plutus sensed that there was something wrong, yet he was unable to guide his owner to the place where that which was wrong might be discovered and, maybe, put right.

"Yes, I know—I think I know, old chap. But there's nothing much we can do—in this darkness, in these great spaces," said Prosper presently. He slipped the cord, called the dog to heel and slowly made his way back to his camp—groping in his mind for the reasons why any person of that neighborhood, desirous of killing a goat, should select for his instrument a flint ax, which quite obviously had been worked by some prehistoric craftsman. Almost any modern tool or weapon would have been better than that rare and almost perfect museum specimen of paleolithic workmanship....

"It does not seem a very serious matter after all, Plutus, my brave," said Prosper, back at his camp. "But somehow I am not quite satisfied."

"Neither—" indicated the small dog from the back of his throat, glaring and bristling at something unseen out in the windy darkness, "neither am I."

CHAPTER III
Murder At Wolf's Hold

THEY were astir at the camp by dawn and were breakfasting long before the dense dawn mists had begun to move.

"Again a cheerless day, I suspect," said Prosper to no one in particular as, having spent a busy half hour attending to his assorted company's breakfasts, he began to fry an astonishing number of bacon slices for his own.

It was, on the whole, a silent meal. A camp breakfast in the fog is a very different affair from breakfast in sunshine, and the events of the previous night were rather deeply etched on the buoyant spirit of Mr. Fair.

He was not the type of wanderer who allows himself to be depressed—but, as he put it to his small company, if he had been he might have indulged himself this morning with a slight wallow in the blues.

"There were strange doings in the shadow of Wolf's Hold last night, my littles," he said presently, through the first tobacco cloud of the day. "And I have a premonition that Plutus and I achieved nothing for all our pains.... Nothing.

"And that is not good, for I am haunted by a feeling that with better fortune we might have done a great deal of good."

He began slowly to fold up the ordnance survey map, from a study of which he had been inscribing indelibly on his mind the details of the surrounding Forest land. Many a time, in the course of his travels down the wander ways, he had found that custom useful.

He threw away his cigarette end, then cleared and washed up after the meal. He did this as thoroughly and far more expertly than any of the many well paid servants that he maintained at Derehurst Castle could have done—just as he looked after Stolid Joe as well as the old menagerie proprietor, Mr. Mullet, for a quarter of a century the owner of the elephant, and now basking in the luxury of a pension at Derehurst, could have attended to the big, battered, good-natured old beast.

It was his fixed notion that this sort of thing was a holiday from being a respectable Duke—and possibly he was not far wrong....

It was just as he put away the last of his cooking and eating utensils that he noticed all three of his companions were staring towards the woods.

He smiled, as Plutus, having made quite sure, bounded with excessively vociferous ferocity towards a thick-stemmed beech tree on the very edge of the camp.

Prosper directed him to return—which he did, as a man came out from behind the tree and moved towards Prosper.

He was a burly, middle-aged person, of about six feet, dressed in quite neat plus fours, with a soft felt hat. His upright, almost imposing carriage, his florid cheeks and something about the cut of his mustache suggested an old army man—possibly a retired major.

"Good morning," he said, rather quickly, as he faced Prosper. "A dull day for—um—camping out."

"I was rather taken aback at sight of the elephant," explained the major-like man. "So I lurked a little—behind the tree. One does—with strange elephants—don't you find? One hardly expects, in these regions, to run full tilt upon an elephant during one's early morning stroll," he added.

"No, indeed," agreed Prosper. He had caught a faint, far flicker in the deep but rather hurried voice, that suggested an uneasiness, a nervousness, and, though the gray eyes of the man met his squarely enough, they seemed to waver ever so slightly.

"I have found that one of the few disadvantages of using an elephant to haul one's caravan," admitted Prosper. "Really he is quite a good-natured old Uncle George sort of person, but few recognize that at sight."

"Naturally." The newcomer agreed politely. "Unexpected. I have had something to do with elephants in my day, too. In India."

"A little on in years. But he has been a fine elephant in his day. Yes, very fine."

He uttered a little Indian at Joseph. But Joe had long ago forgotten his native tongue.

"Quite so," said the visitor, and produced a card rather deftly from an upper waistcoat pocket.

Prosper took it, glanced at it and discovered that he was making the acquaintance of Major Giles Wakeling.

There was no engraved address, but in pencil was a neat entry, "Mark Beech Cottage, Normansrood."

"On a caravaning holiday," echoed the major. "An enviable position, Mr. Fair. I wish I were in your place—instead of hanging about a forest village trying to tighten up a rather shaken nerve."

Looking into those queer wavering eyes, with the incipient pouches under the lower lids, Prosper knew that Major Wakeling spoke the bare truth. He was not a fit man, though he was of such an imposing, even distinguished, appearance that it called for more than a casual observer to see that he was what he himself might have called "nervy."

But Prosper liked him, and since, in his life, he had met and privately appraised very many men, he had no hesitation in acting on his judgment.

They chatted, amicably enough, for a few moments before it occurred to Prosper that Major Giles Wakeling was endeavoring, rather clumsily, to learn about Prosper rather more than he was prepared to tell about himself.

Harmless enough little questions, they were, but—unnecessary, unless one had a purpose in asking them.

Prosper became a little more alert than he seemed to be—alert enough to evade without effort the major's queries, too alert to ask any questions in return.

But the big, nervous man persisted—more awkwardly now that it became more difficult.

Why had Prosper come to Wolf's Hold to camp? How long had he been there? Did he turn in early, when camping? Had he any friends living in the neighborhood? Considering what a sparsely populated district it was, there were quite a number of charming girls about. Possibly, Prosper had friends among them, eh? Well, well, he was young himself once. Speaking of girls, did Prosper know the folk up at King's Halt Hall—just across the plain—Sir Gatsby Thorburn's place? There was a girl there—a governess—that he, the major, personally speaking, thought the loveliest little soul he had ever set eyes on? Did Prosper know her? No? Never met her...?

Prosper's face hardened a little as his level gaze concentrated on the wavering eyes of Major Wakeling. The questions were coming just a little fast, too pressing, too much like a quick-firer to please him. And the major's handsome old face had gone a queer, pale-yellowish tint. Moreover, unless Prosper misjudged it—there was something near to horror in the man's tired eyes. And his hands were jerking rather curiously.

"Just a moment, Major Wakeling," he said, slowly. "Aren't you putting me—rather inexplicably—under a rapid-fire cross-examination? Perhaps we shall be all the better friends if we make haste a little more slowly."

The major deflated—and a look of dejection so profound that it touched Prosper, came into his eyes. He dropped his gaze to the ground like a scolded child.

"I beg your pardon," he mumbled, "I—it never occurred to me—only I—well, in a way, it was to your own interest to speak frankly about that poor little pretty governess I mentioned—Miss O'Mourne—Molly they called her at King's Halt."

Prosper was sorry for him—his blundering questions, his abject air of apology. He smiled.

"Why, Major, that's all right. I confess it occurred to me that you were a little—er—searching. And as for Miss Molly, it is my loss that I have never met her, my misfortune that, until this moment, I have never heard of her."

"My God, my boy, I am glad to hear that," he said, very emphatically, "for I liked you before we'd exchanged a dozen words."

"But, my dear Major, why? Why? Does it matter so much that a—stray wanderer—a vagabond camper, like myself—hasn't yet had the privilege of meeting pretty Miss Molly?"

"Because Molly O'Mourne was murdered last night within a hundred yards of this camp," said the major—and he was trembling as he spoke.

Here, then, was the confirmation of that uneasy boding, borne out of the sinister atmosphere that had hung about Wolf's Hold on the previous midnight.

"A girl murdered near here last night?" he said slowly, his thoughts on the ominously stained weapon concealed in his caravan. He reflected swiftly.

Then he said, "But surely I should have heard something of that. I pitched my camp here last evening—in daylight! She must have cried out—made some sound."

Major Giles Wakeling moved his hands in a vague, uncertain, almost defensive gesture.

"I don't know. She was only found an hour ago and—they say that she had been struck from behind by a club or something of that nature. Terribly—brutally. She could not have had even time to cry out."

A huge man with two blazing eyes set in a pallid face was striding towards them—a man in forester's khaki, carrying a shotgun in the crook of his arm.

He halted less than a yard away, and stared with eyes that glittered with excitement, or anguish, or fearful anger, into those of Prosper.

"Who are you? Where are you from? What's your name?" he demanded, with a species of snarling undernote in his voice. "Why are you camped here? Did you leave this camp last night? What did you do after I inspected your pass last night?"

Prosper studied the man, without answering, and realized that he was laboring under—was possessed by—an emotion so tremendous, so overwhelming, that he was dangerous.

Prosper had read many faces in his time, and he saw that at its gentlest, this man's face was that of one with a naturally fierce disposition. A man I with the banked fires of ferocity always within him—smoldering—ready to break into roaring eruption at the first hint of real or fancied provocation.

This man was not in a mood for fair words—and he was armed. Still—Prosper believed he could see in the glaring eyes, the wrung and haggard hawk face, something that was closely akin to great misery, even heartbreak. And Prosper was a man of infinite compassion, great patience, and with an enviable gift of quick sympathy.

He let the insult in the man's tone, the mad, implied charges in his words flick past him like arrows.

Balanced and ready, light and lithe as the trained and formidable boxer he was, he faced the man and spoke in a quiet, steady, equable voice.

"You go too fast, my friend," he said, "too fast for me. Let us take your questions one by one—quietly, sanely and without passion. You shall ask them all again—and if you can first establish your right to ask them, believe me, I shall answer them."

The crazy eyes burning into his slowly searched him from head to foot and back again. They took in the shabby plus-fours, the worn and unpolished shoes, the faded pullover, and so returned to the lean, brown, boyish face of Mr. Fair. For a second they bored into Prosper's eyes and the jaw of the big, dark forester thrust out a little farther in an ugly and menacing movement. Prosper noted it.

"When—" he repeated, quietly, "you have established your right to ask me such questions, forester."

Something like warning, even a remote challenge, for Prosper Fair, though a white man, was not a saint, flickered now in his blue eyes.

Maybe the forester saw that, or maybe the momentary pause had steadied him. However that may have been something of his air of threat and imminent attack fell away from him.

"Somebody murdered Molly O'Mourne last night, sir, and I want to get my hands on the hound that done it!" he said, like a man suffering an intolerable agony. "I—I'm ready to accuse my own brother of it!"

Evidently the forester had been a suitor, perhaps the accepted suitor, of Molly O'Mourne.

"Yes, yes, Hambledon—we know, too—but there's nothing to be gained by going about hurling accusations right and left. Hambledon! You'll only hinder things that way—it'll be thrashed out...."

The forester was quick-witted; at any rate, he pulled himself together at the major's words and turned to Prosper.

"I oughtn't to have talked that way to you," he said, still with an undertone of savageness. "I own it. I beg your pardon—if you're innocent."

"But God help the man who's guilty of it...! It will come out! In the end, I'll get him!"

"Take no notice of that, Mr. Fair," he advised, nervously. "The man's beside himself. He was an admirer of Molly O'Mourne!"

"I'd better go with him—look after him—he's in a queer state of mind," he continued. "We shall see more of each other, I hope," and giving a stiff little salute, followed the forester.

Prosper stared after them, but his mind was concerned less with them just then than with the stained stone ax.

He thought for a few moments, then went to his caravan, and packed the ax with scrupulous care, ready for postage to London where the exact nature of those ugly stains could be ascertained by one whose business it was to solve such grim problems.

CHAPTER IV
The Lady Crystal Sheen

THERE was nothing hostile in the reception which Mr. Fair and his "little" friends received from those they met and did business with in Normansrood, a tiny Forest village about a mile from the camp.

Stolid Joe attracted his share of attention, but since in addition to being stolid he was extraordinarily gentle, eternally patient, absolutely obedient and, above all, one of the most amusingly blandishing, indomitable and philosophical beggars that ever accepted an alms which he could not possibly need, he was very little trouble. Children could play with him, and did. There was nothing children could do to him to equal hardships he had known in perhaps eighty years or so of up-and-down circus and menagerie life.

If he evinced a desire to mind a baby, it was quite certain that baby was going to be safer than with her mother, wherever she was or whatever she might be doing.

Moreover, although this was the first time Prosper had ever encamped near Normansrood, he had toured the Forest before, and people knew of him. A man who goes gayly with friendly eyes, a ready laugh and even readier purse, into a lonely village and buys quantities of goods suitable for eating purposes by: (1) a hungry man, (2) a hungrier elephant, (3) a petted, even pampered donkey, (4) an appetite on three legs that looks like a semi-terrier, makes few unfriends.

It was with friendliness rather than the more usual merriment that Prosper conducted his purchase of supplies, for the whole village had known Molly O'Mourne, and her tragic end had shocked everybody. Moreover, there was the grim question that, so far, few of the quiet, shy Forest dwellers cared to ask above a whisper: "Who did it?"

Prosper noted that there were theories in the eyes of some of them—theories that never came to their cautious lips.

He told his people so as he went back to his camp, strolling by Stolid Joe, rather heavily burdened with his next meal or two.

"That poor soul must have been an unusually charming and extremely pretty little woman, Patience, my dear," he said to the gray donkey. "Some of those people were near tears when they spoke, and all were undisguisedly shocked. She had many admirers—considering the neighborhood," he said as they turned the corner of the big wood on to the strip of bracken-bordered turf that would lead them back to the camp.

"And we will stay here for a little, to do what we can. It is possible that we may do no good, but it is certain that we shall do no harm. And there are indications that this affair is not quite the type of which one occasionally reads in the newspapers! That ax... I'm glad that thing is safely in the post office. With any fortune we should hear from London about those stains very soon...."

He checked, as a girl, mounted on a magnificent chestnut hunter, rode at an easy canter out from behind a dense thicket of holly.

The horse threw up his fine head, plunging at sight of the elephant, and swerved widely to the right, his stamping hoofs flinging bits of turf back at the wayfarers.

His rider allowed him to swing wide through the bracken, then steadied him and brought him round in a circle.

Prosper, who had experience of these matters, sent the stolid one on with Patience with instructions to wait for him a hundred yards on. (If, later, one had measured the distance at which, obediently, they stopped, there would not have been a discrepancy of five yards.)

Prosper walked back a little way, prepared to apologize. Men who take elephants casually about Merrie England require to be of an extremely polite, courteous and pliant disposition.

But as the girl forced her horse round, apparently with the firm intention of getting him steady at elephants, and returned, Prosper perceived that no apologies would be required. The rider was Lady Crystal Sheen, sister of the youthful Earl of Eastminster, and cousin to Prosper, a man of many cousins, as most English Dukes are.

"You know, I guessed it was you the instant I saw the elephant," she called. "And when I saw a donkey...."

"You were, of course, perfectly certain," said Prosper, shrugging with an air of resignation.

He began to gentle the horse, absently, mechanically, like a man who understands horses.

"You ride extremely well, cousin," he said, looking with genuine admiration and affection at the girl.

It was not difficult to look at her, for although nobody of discernment would have called her pretty, equally nobody of taste would have denied that she was beautiful in rather an unusual way. She was tall and dark, with great black eyes, a clear, olive skin, perfectly chiseled aquiline nose, and she carried herself with an unconscious hauteur that to those who did not know her, must have seemed too like sheer arrogance to render her attractive. She might almost have been Spanish. Somewhere in the Eastminster genealogy there must have been a woman from the Latin countries, or even further south or east.

"I don't forget that you had something to do with teaching me anything I chance to know about it," she said. "Do you remember the rides we used to have as kiddies at Derehurst, Prosper?"

"You know, I don't think there is anybody I would sooner have met at this moment in this place," she said, rather slowly, her big eyes intent on him.

"I am very glad to hear that—though it's rather unexpected to meet you here. How does that happen, cousin?"

"Why, Alan's here—living near here. Didn't you hear that he had been ordered to stop working and leave London for a long rest in the country?"

Lady Crystal spoke of that immensely successful playwright, Alan Byrne, her fiance.

"Oh, yes, I read that. And so he has chosen the Forest for his holiday? But he always had wonderful taste. Where is he living?"

"In rather a charming little place quite near here called Tufter's Wait. Tufter's Wait! There's a Forest name for you. The tufters are the hounds that are specially selected to put the stag out of cover, they say. I am riding over to see him. I am staying with the Thorburns."

"Yes. If you are at King's Halt you must have known that poor little soul, Crystal?"

"Known Molly! Why, of course! The children at King's Halt adored her. Everybody there liked her. Some loved her, Prosper. I was one.... There was something about her so fresh and somewhat sweet!" The clean-cut, sensitive lips of the girl quivered slightly, then tightened. She never moved her great eyes from Prosper.

"Oh, it is too tragic. I would have no mercy on the brute who killed her.... It was like killing a little beautiful thing, like—like a friendly squirrel, or a pigeon, in some brutal way...."

"No. To her own home—her own people. They have a little place not far from here. Constance Thorburn thought that would be kinder.... Though all King's Halt is hers to-day, if that were needed."

"But the brute that did it will be taken. Gatsby has sworn that he shall be—he telephoned to Scotland Yard this morning and one of their best detectives is coming."

"Ah, that was wise," approved Prosper. "Have any of the people who knew her any idea or suspicion about the matter?"

"I have heard nothing. She was extremely pretty, you know, and naturally there were admirers. It is thought that somebody waylaid her on the walk back to King's Halt from her home. She had last evening to herself and she said she was going home for a few hours, and then walk back along the Forest path, as she usually did. As a rule one of her admirers walked back with her. But, for some reason, she left home alone last night—though her mother believes she expected to meet somebody at the cross track a few hundred yards from her home...."

"Are you going to stay here, camping, a little while, and interest yourself in it, Prosper?"

"I wish you success. Oh, run him down—catch him, Prosper! Everybody knows what you can do with those brains of yours—though you always pretend to be so guileless and quiet. And everybody is anxious to see her bitterly avenged. Is there anything that might help which you wish to ask me—or the Thorburns—or their staff? You know Constance and her husband, I think. They would do anything to help!"

Then Lady Crystal spoke again of the playwright to whom she had affianced herself.

"You will go over and see Alan a good deal while you are camping here, won't you, Prosper? You will be a godsend to him. I am going back to town to-night, and I think he is sometimes lonely. There is nobody with him at Tufter's Wait except his Japanese valet, a cook and a groom."

"It would mean more to me than perhaps you guess to know that you were seeing Alan rather often," she said, earnestly, watching him.

She had the true aristocrat's control over her expression but, even so, he saw something in her great, dark eyes that caught his interest.

"Why, of course, I will do whatever you wish," he said, lightly. "You are not worrying about his health, are you?"

"No. Still, I wish he improved faster. But the doctors seem satisfied. Perhaps I fuss too much. He varies rather oddly."

"I don't think I would allow myself to worry, Crystal," he said. "Byrne came quite perilously close to a complete nervous breakdown and retreat from that particular abyss is usually a slow affair. Patience is about the idea, don't you think? Meantime," he laughed gently, for he was fond of this darkling cousin, "meantime, I'll haunt the man and his house and generally keep an eye on him."

"Now, go and see him, my dear. No need to waste valuable time on an old fogy like me!"

"Old fogy!" the black eyes flashed. "Really, Prosper, you oughtn't to talk like that about yourself! You know, the more you say it the more you'll believe it!"

"True, oh, Crystal Sheen!" smiled Mr. Fair. "I had forgotten that. Well, well—I withdraw 'old fogy'—think of me instead as a young harum-scarum!"

"It would be nearer the truth," she said. Prosper smiled a little as he watched her canter away.

He was really fond of this cousin of his, and he knew that she was deeply in love with the good-looking playwright.

Just as he was about to turn she stopped again, this time to speak to another man.

They were too far off for Prosper to be quite sure, but he had an impression that the man was the distinguished-looking Major Giles Wakeling.

She leaned down from her saddle, seeming to engage in earnest conversation.... Once she looked back, but by then Prosper was moving on after his comrades. He greeted and commended them for their patience for waiting so steadily, and together they headed for the camp again.

For some minutes he strode between the elephant and Patience in silence—rather an unusual practice. But he justified it very completely when presently in his curious half-playful way he began to tell them things—his method of thinking aloud.

"Oblige Prosper by accelerating somewhat your very respectable bulk across the fair face of this Forest, Joseph mine," he began. "For we have much to do, and comparatively little time in which to do it."

In response to the nudge accompanying this statement the old elephant enlivened his steps.

"I am anxious to get into touch with Sir Gatsby Thorburn before the police arrive to get in touch with me, as most assuredly they will.

"And I confess freely that if I were a detective, or even a simple rural policeman of these parts, I, too, should be inclined to question with some minuteness any rather shabby wanderer who, in company with a rather shabby elephant, spent the night so near the scene of last night's crime. That seems rather an obvious thing to do, does it not? Therefore, since we happen to know that it would be waste of time—both mine and that of the police—we shall do wisely to call upon Sir Gatsby who, as a magistrate, a member of parliament, and a master of foxhounds, might be accepted as a reliable—um—guarantor of the bona fides of even a vagabond like Prosper Fair! How say you, vagabonds all?"

"Also it is imperative that I have speech with the squatter who presumably is the owner of that dead goat," he continued softly. "For it will be interesting to learn why that shot was fired, and who fired it."

"And, if possible, the girl herself—little Miss Molly—whom the children adored and everybody loved!"

Under the pity and tenderness in his voice there ran now a steely note, so that his animals looked at him sideways.

It was a fixed belief—some called it an eccentricity—of Prosper Fair, that women needed all the camaraderie and tenderness from men that they could get. He knew many women—and various—and it was his opinion, won of wide experience, that the things of this world are not shared by men and women in like proportion, and never have been. "Sixty to the men, forty to the women if they are lucky—that is how I apportion the division, Joseph, my friend," he would say, on occasion, to the elephant. "Or, not to put too fine a point on it—not, as it were, to haggle—call it sixty-five to thirty-five! What's a mere five to a lady, after all, my pachyderm! Therefore one should hold ready at all times for an effort to adjust, as well as one may, that discrepancy."

Acquaintances, possibly envious or piqued at the trust which most women instinctively reposed in him, as readily and naively as children, sometimes described him as a sentimental man.

But those who knew him more intimately would have said that it were better for the murderer of Molly O'Mourne to have had a hunting tiger on his blood trail than that gay and airy and mild-mannered friend of Everyman, Mr. Prosper Fair.

That may have been why his "little" friends glanced sideways upon him when they heard that new note of latent menace in his voice.

"Yes, there is enough to do to-day," he said. On the edge of his camp he stopped, eyeing them all.

"Strictly, I should send you all home," he mused aloud. "Especially you, humbug of my heart..." he punched the old elephant in the ribs. "And you next, little one!" he added to the silver-gray donkey. Both looked a little anxious about that.

"Still—we shall see. Perhaps the squatter has a barn. If so, and if, moreover, he is a good squatter, something might be done about boarding you out, Joseph mine.... We shall see. Fortunately, you are too venerable to desire to get into mischief or trouble or anywhere but your dinner time and siesta. Kneel, then, Joseph, and be unpacked!"

CHAPTER V
The Man From Scotland Yard

IT was at the cottage of the squatter at the east corner of Wolf's Hold that Prosper and his people stopped first when, after a very early lunch—so early that it was, more exactly, a second breakfast—they set out.

They were fortunate, for Prosper found him to be a squatter after his own heart—a very old gypsy who, born in a New Forest tent, had wandered for threescore years, hither and yon, looping, returning only to set forth again, north, east and west, skirting the sea to the south, up through gray Wales to Scotland, the land of rocks and rainbows, and, so, recoiling home again to the south, to heather that knew more sun, bracken that bowed to softer breezes, deer that were less wild, ever and always down the old wander ways to the old place that was the beginning, and inevitably would be the end.

Aided by a little money, compelled by much rheumatism, old Eli Lovell had made his last halt in the shadow of Wolf's Hold as a swallow returns to the place of its birth there to build its last nest. Prosper Fair, Duke of Devizes, at his own good pleasure, and old Eli Lovell, retired gypsy, greeted civilly, looked at each other, and knew that they were of one spirit.

And Stolid Joe cast his tiny-eyed but penetrating scrutiny upon old Eli, and the gypsy returned it—and by the magic of the shuffled-up dust of many a thousand miles of steadily tramped highway and byway the two fraternally understood each other.

And Patience the donkey was a donkey, and Eli was a gypsy. Donkeys invented gypsies....

What Eli wanted by way of rent Prosper was prepared to double and pay on the spot. A gypsy understands cold cash. The credit system has never really sunk home to the gypsy mind. Eli approved this proposal with great readiness.

"And the old bull will know if I knows about bulls before he been here a hour," said Eli. "He knows now. I toured with a menagerie, off an' on, for twelve year. An' I never had trouble with the bulls. Tell him he'll be lodgin' along with me."

Patience, for her part, guessed. And Plutus was not consulted. His idea was to stay with Prosper, or to escape to Prosper if attempts were made to detain him.

Prosper was his boss. That was perfectly clear in the mind of the semi-terrier. He belonged where Prosper was—never mind about any temporary foolishness on the part of Prosper or anybody else.

Prosper and Mr. Lovell talked a little, and Prosper wondered, in audible inquiry, if Lovell had heard a shot over night.

"I fired it," said Eli, readily, and with feeling. "I shot at a man that killed two goats of mine pegged out just outside my bounds. One he takes, and one he leaves. He rides in the night, Mr. Fair, comes up out of the dark all of a sudden, kills, and goes. It's twice he's been, and twice he's killed. First time he took a white goat—left me no more than a mess o' blood. I watched out for him after that, but he come no more for a month, and I got careless with my watching. Still, I pegged out my two black kids in range o' my bedroom window. And he come again last night—a man nigh naked, he seemed to me. If he's a man at all, which ain't sure.... He comes as quiet as a ghost or a grass snake, though he goes away like the wind. I was half asleep when I heard him hit the first kid. Then t'other baaed an' I shot at the sound. I must ha' missed him, for next minute I heard him running to a pony he must ha' had in the bushes. He rode like a crazy thing.... I found the one goat next mornin'. T'other he took. Ten year ago I would not have waited till mornin' to look for 'em. But I'm too full o' this rheumatics to go down and fight in the dark with a man who kills goats—and maybe more, Mr. Fair—with an ax."

"They tell me that what killed that poor child from King's Halt was some such thing as that man o' the dark uses, Mr. Fair," he said in a low voice. "I dunno—but it looks as if that man killed more in the Forest last night than what he killed here."

The old man gripped Prosper's arm, and limped to his fence. He pointed a gnarled, leathery finger at a distant clump of dark, humped holly bushes that stood like a small herd of motionless buffaloes flank deep among the tall bracken just outside the eastern edge of Wolf's Hold.

"In there," he said. "Jack Hambledon, the forester, found her there in the gray o' the mornin', an' carried her home."

Prosper asked no more then. He took certain notes from his case and passed them to the old gypsy.

"That will settle for the elephant and donkey for a fortnight," he said. "I shall be here pretty often. Are you satisfied?"

"For the fust time these fifty years," he admitted. "An' th' bull will be as safe along with me as ye'll be down on the edge o' th' wood!" he added. "Look out o' nights, Mr. Fair—look out—keep a watch out for the man o' th' dark. He comes like a quiet snake and he goes like a startled deer! Mind that. It's old Lovell tell ye that...."

He turned to Stolid Joe and in a reedy but professional tone invited him to the barn. Prosper supplemented the order. Stolid Joe reflected, understood, and obeyed. He half filled the barn.

Prosper talked to him a little, speaking well of Eli Lovell, and the "little" seemed satisfied.

Patience joined her comrade with something of the air of a good but rather wistfully reluctant child.

It was just off the rough, sandy forest track through the heather and bracken, and, rather unexpectedly, Prosper found the place deserted. That was a little surprising, for to the average nonthinking human, the scene of any crime or accident possesses a strange and morbid fascination.

"Hambledon was intelligent, Plutus," said Prosper. "He has kept the exact whereabouts of the spot from the gossips of the village—until the police can see it." He moved into a small clearing, densely shut in by the irregular ring of holly bushes.

One large stain on the short, pony-cropped turf was the only indication of the exact spot at which the forester, Jack Hambledon, had found the body of the girl, and it was this spot that Prosper studied silently for a long time before searching the full area of the clearing and the way into it from the track.

He found nothing except the shoe prints of the girl on the sandy track, and one or two heel marks on the turf, evidently those made by Hambledon as, with his pitiful burden, he left the clearing that morning.

That did not help much—unless there was any value in the knowledge that whoever killed the girl had left no footprints, accompanying hers, on the sandy track.

"He may have been waiting for her at these hollies and she stepped off the track to join him here," said Prosper. "Or she may have been attracted to the clump by some trick to arouse her curiosity or interest. A Forest-bred girl would hardly be too nervous to walk off the path a few yards to investigate any small thing slightly out of the ordinary. We must find out whether she was nervous alone in the Forest at night. Very few town-bred girls would come to this clump at night in wild moonlight unless they knew who was awaiting them. And in almost any case, it would be the other way round—the man would naturally await the girl by the track. Ye-es. That may be worth remembering, Plutus mine."

He continued his search, but passing feet leave no more trace on rough, short heather, mixed with tall bracken, than on water.

So he gave it up. There were no more footprints, nor any signs of struggle round or near that drying stain in the clearing. Nothing had been dropped or left behind that might help an investigator.

"It is as if one were waiting among these hollies for the poor girl to pass, called her, killed her when she came, and went away, quietly, carefully, instantly," said Prosper. "Come along, Plutus."

He was on the point of stepping into the open when, through a bush, he caught sight of the figure of a man approaching.

Prosper watched him for a moment. He came on slowly, looking about him like one who seeks a certain spot, or who wishes to assure himself that his movements are unobserved.

Then, warning his small dog to silence, he drifted silently back into a recess between several hollies, probably formed by some forest pony forcing his way into the thickets for protection from the tormenting summer flies, as these ponies do.

The newcomer arrived silently—almost uncannily so, for Prosper, with Plutus in his arms, heard no sound of his steps, no rustle of bracken or heather, from the moment he first viewed the man till the moment when he stopped suddenly in the center of the clearing—stopped so sharply that for a moment he stood with one foot poised lest he should tread on that ominous bloodstain.

He stepped back one pace, softly as a retreating cat, staring down—and he could not have stopped in a better position for Prosper to inspect him.

For a full minute he stood motionless there, staring down, and in that minute Prosper Fair took him in from head to heel.

He was little and slender, clad in black, with thinnish boots, a severe white wing collar, a black tie and a black bowler hat.

Under the hat his face was pallid with a yellowish pallor. He was clean-shaven, broad-nosed, with pronounced lips, and his eyes slanted, the lids folding over heavily like those of a man tired, worn with sleeplessness or fatigue to the point of breakdown.

"A Japanese!" Prosper breathed it within himself, pressing warning fingers on the dog. "A Japanese—in the heart of the New Forest."

Then he remembered what the darkling Crystal Sheen had told him. This Japanese could only be that one of whom she had so casually spoken—the valet to Alan Byrne.

Presently the man shook himself out of the trancelike stillness into which the sight of the stain seemed to have frozen him, lifted his slanting eyes and thrice made a singular gesture—a gesture strange to Prosper, but, for all that, one which seemed strangely and rather wonderfully to express many emotions—grief, anger, hatred, despair and a remote triumph.

Then he seemed to stiffen himself. He glanced round the clearing once, moved silently clear of the bushes and looked carefully about him. He came back and began to search the ground about the stain, eagerly, hungrily, closely, trotting to and fro with short steps, very silent, so that he was remotely like a hound puzzling out a difficult scent.

But, in a few minutes he ceased, listened, and moved quickly towards the track side of the clearing. He stopped sharply just as he reached the limit of Prosper's field of vision, stooped to a thorn bush and picked from it something that Prosper could not recognize.

"Something I missed..." said Mr. Fair bitterly, came out and hurried to the thorn bush while he was sure of it.

There was nothing on it except a few stray hairs, possibly from the mane or tail of one of the rather unkempt Forest ponies. Such hairs are to be seen in almost any thicket frequented by the cattle.

Prosper, without much enthusiasm, took a few of these hairs—dark, reddish brown in color—and put them away in his note case.

"... That's in case of accidents, Plutus mine," he said. "Though I am not sanguine enough to regard it as a very valuable example of what are usually called 'important clews.' What seems to be more important is the fact that our Japanese friend knew so very fairly well the place where Molly O'Mourne died. If Jack Hambledon has told nobody except Lovell—how did that one know? But we shall meet him again when we call to see Cousin Crystal's Alan. Yes. And now, I think, we will go to that poor girl's home...."

Prosper's face was rather sad as he left the holly clump. The Fates had treated him so well at the beginning of his life, and he had been so lucky in his efforts to deal with the real rather than the artificial things of his life, that it always depressed him to come into contact with those who had been less fortunate or sane. The thought of little Miss Molly O'Mourne, well beloved by many, lay like a dark shadow across his spirit. And her fate, though he had never met her, had magically transformed his gayly planned holiday with what he quite absurdly and willfully called his "littles" into a slow and patient, but stern and deadly tenacious quest to which he would cling grimly, unshakably, inexorably, with all his talents, and, if need be, all his immense wealth—giving never a sign that he was more than carelessly interested and casually or superficially grieved at this sudden, violent ending to a young, happy, pretty and probably quite innocent life.

For as long, now, as there existed any trail or any phantom of a trail, any sign or any faint and fading suspicion of a sign of the way along which that destroyer of innocent beauty had passed, there was bound to come, clinging, indomitable, tireless, like a haggard sleuthhound, mutely nosing, puzzling out, searching, prowling forward with a deadly and untiring intent, this gay, blue-eyed, hawk-faced, kindly-spirited wanderer, Prosper Fair, Seventh Duke of Devizes, and friend of all who needed friendliness....

But he was to suffer certain hindrances before he could go to the house of the O'Mournes, for even as he walked clear of the hunched hollies, his terrier flickering, by order, so close at heel that he might almost have been a white handkerchief attached to his owner's shoe, Prosper was aware of a group of men bearing down upon the spot he had just left.

They came from the northeast, and evidently these were the cause of the sudden disappearance of the Japanese.

So he sat down on a heather-grown mound close at hand, pulled out his worn pouch, rolled a cigarette and awaited them, watching interestedly, as a casual sight-seer might be expected to watch.

There were, he saw, five mounted men, five on foot, and two black dogs. The sun struck silver rays of light from the burnished chain leads of the dogs—dogs that moved forward with a prowling, avid and stealthy gait and action so that as they came nearer Prosper recognized them as hounds—black bloodhounds.

The group halted by the hollies and one of the men on foot moved clear of the others, showing the way. Prosper recognized him as Hambledon, the forester. Two men with the led hounds followed him to the edge of the clearing, and waited there while three of the horsemen dismounted.

Prosper, who knew something of bloodhounds, rose to move across and watch them laid on.

But he never joined the group, for as he rose, two of the men on horseback, and three of the men on foot, moved towards him.

There was a certain air of purpose in their approach. Two were in police uniform—an inspector and a sergeant. The two mounted men were apparently civilians.

It was one of the latter, in plain clothes, who dismounted and advanced a little to address Prosper. He stopped a couple of feet away—a burly man of middle age, with a big, square, oddly flat face, and cold, hard, expressionless eyes.

Without speaking, this one studied Prosper with a scrutiny so intent, so deliberate and searching, that any man might excusably have been angry at being subjected to it.

But Mr. Fair was a man of equable temper, plenty of patience and some self-control. He waited, watching the other with an appearance of mild interest.

"You are the person with the elephant caravan—Mr. Prosper Fair—who camped on the edge of Wolf's Hold last night?"

"You put a small package in the registered mail at Normansrood post office about three hours ago, addressed to a man called John Morrison?"

The air of latent menace about the man changed suddenly into one of force and authority.

"I am Detective-Inspector Meek of the Criminal Investigation Department, Scotland Yard, and I detain you for inquiry concerning the death of Mary O'Mourne in this place last night," he said.

Again he subjected Prosper to a stare from those pale eyes. There was now in that glare a gleam of triumph and certainty.

"Do you wish to say anything, Fair?" asked the detective, adding in a low voice, "You can save us a lot of unnecessary trouble if you like." He jerked his hand indicating the watching group with the bloodhounds. "Tell me the truth now, take it quietly and I'll make it as easy for you as I can."

"Very well—go your own gait, my man." He signed to his police, who closed in again, while he stepped back to the man on horseback—the Chief Constable of the county. They conferred together in low tones for a moment, then the Scotland Yard man came back, one hand ominously in his pocket. Evidently he had changed his mind about the detention for inquiry and intended to take a chance and arrest Prosper outright.

CHAPTER VI
The Black Bloodhounds

EVIDENTLY impatient to get to work with the hounds, and attracted by the delay which the detective's curt dealings with Mr. Fair was causing, one of the riders touched his horse and came over, joining the Chief Constable just as Detective-Inspector Meek was about to make sure of his prisoner.

The newcomer started as his eyes took in Prosper, and he spoke very quickly indeed.

"Good God, Inspector, what do you think you are doing?" he barked. "You're not arresting this gentleman?"

"Well, I'd strongly advise you to think again," snapped Thorburn. "At any rate, until you are sure of his identity."

An extraordinary change came over the Chief Constable's face and he called the detective to him.

"I withdraw my sanction to this arrest, Inspector Meek," he said and dropped his voice, whispering, "and I advise you neither to arrest nor detain Mr. Fair. Do you know who he is?"

"Don't you? Well, Mr. Fair is the Duke of Devizes on a holiday tour. You may have heard of him. Before you arrest him for a crime of which he is incapable and for which he can have no conceivable motive, I'd suggest that you telephone to Scotland Yard for special instructions."

The detective thought. If he was angry or disappointed or puzzled he gave no sign.

But he was no fool. On the contrary he was one of the best if most ruthless detectives in Scotland Yard and though, as it chanced, he had never seen Prosper, he, like most of the big detectives, knew a good deal about him, and his common sense told him that the odds against the Duke of Devizes being the man he sought were colossal.

"I've come pretty near making an error of judgment, Mr.—er—Fair," he stated concisely, with no suggestion of regret or apology in his voice. "But a man who travels under a name that isn't his proper name takes risks. I am an official detective and I am paid to do my duty. I don't intend to arrest you, but I'd like to point out to you that you, too, have duties as a member of the public, and it's your duty to explain how that ax came into your possession, and why you were posting it away so quickly from the place where it seems to have been used."

"Quite so, Inspector," he said and added, quietly, "perhaps it would have been a little more efficient to have thought of asking that before you jumped so very violently to your conclusions. Have you the ax here?"

The detective produced the parcel, torn in several places, so that the end of the wooden haft and part of the sharp stone head were exposed.

"There is a law relating to the abstraction of parcels from the mails without the expressly obtained permission of the Postmaster-General," Prosper said. "Detectives who do that without authority do so at their own risk. However, since you have taken that risk, Inspector, I will aid and abet you."

"This thing is badly bloodstained," said Prosper crisply. "My dog brought it into my camp last night. If you will read the letter inclosed with it, you will see that in it I request Mr. John Morrison, a well-known analyst, to test these stains and telegraph to me his report. I do not believe them to be human bloodstains at all. Indeed, I am satisfied that they are not."

"I see." Inspector Meek scrutinized the ax for some time, using a magnifying glass.

"Quite," said Prosper. "That is why I was sending it for an analyst's examination."

The Chief Constable broke in. He was a bluff, burly, red-faced, white-mustached man well past middle age—and rather obviously an old army man.

"Well, that's that—and let me remind you, Inspector, that the sooner we get the hounds laid on the likelier we are to find the right scent!"

"Fair, please, my dear Thorburn. Yes, I'm tremendously obliged," said Prosper. "Though I should have sent across to you—or Crystal Sheen, whom I met this morning—in any case."

"Good." Thorburn's eyes wandered across to the hounds. "This is a tragic business. But between us all we ought to run down the savage that killed this poor girl."

"Yes. I fancied I recognized their action. The grandparents of both were bred at Derehurst...."

"By Jove, yes, of course. I'd forgotten. You have a kennel of them there. Why, you're a bloodhound expert, of course. Well now, will you help us over there—Floyd Sterne is on the continent and it's his kennel man in charge—a good man with the hounds at home, but not an expert at the tracking."

"I can't help you much," said Prosper. "Nor, for that matter can the bloodhounds."

"But, my dear chap, how can they know which trail that will be? Don't you see, there are, certainly, three trails leading to or from the spot where the body was found—all, with probably one exception, made this morning. There is the trail of the murderer, obviously the first made, some hours ago, and therefore the faintest. Next there's the trail left by Hambledon, the forester, when he carried the girl away from the spot to her home. I see he's one of the party over there. Next there is my trail coming from my camp and to this spot. And for all we know there may be others"—he did not mention the Japanese. "None of us—not even the severe Meek—knows the murderer and he seems to have dropped nothing that will give the hounds a start which will send them off on the scent of the person who dropped the article. If the murderer had dropped say a handkerchief, which would, normally, bear his individual scent, then there might be just a chance that they could pick up out of that crisscross of tracks the scent pertaining to the owner of the handkerchief and follow it up...."

"Ye-es—there's that. Queer, that never occurred to anybody. Sterne would have known, of course."

"The dominating scent on the ax will be the scent of drying blood," he explained. "And the scent of blood is the one scent which is, of all, most likely to foil the powers of the bloodhound. Even if the ax were carried away by the murderer, it would leave no scent for the hounds to trail. It would reek of blood—not necessarily that of the dead girl. Moreover, since the moment when it was first stained it has been mouthed by my small tike, handled by me, handled by Meek and maybe others—all scents superimposed upon that of the murderer, which, in any case, must be superimposed by the blood scent."

He was absently rolling one of his shabby cigarettes as he explained. Thorburn was watching him, listening open-mouthed.

"And, further, my dear Thorburn," continued Prosper, half absently, as if he were thinking of more pressing matters, "I think I can assure you that there is no human blood on that peculiar ax at all. Unless I am mistaken it will be found to be the blood of an animal—a goat, a black goat, which belonged to Eli Lovell, and was killed last night."

"It seems to me that you should be the detective in charge of this affair instead of that half-curbed brute, Meek," he said.

"Oh, no. But while I am here naturally I mean to—er—keep my eyes open. In an amateur sort of way—without making myself a nuisance, of course."

"I see. Well I hope you'll look on King's Halt as open house to you at all hours of the day or night while you are camping here. Everything's at your disposal there."

But Prosper shook his head, smiling. "Forgive me, Thorburn, but I assure you that to ask those hounds to track the murderer is akin to asking a painter to paint without colors and brushes. I can do more good, I think, in—another direction!" he said.

Thorburn touched his horse and rode over to the hollies, muttering as he went. A Master of Foxhounds does not love lessons about scent—even though he is sportsman enough to realize their value.

"Always a man who went his chosen way without consulting others or sharing his thoughts—until he was ready," he said. "Yes—for all his charm he was always like that—cool customer—a splendid friend—and I should say a keener and more dangerous follower of a trail than any bloodhound."

But the shabby, bareheaded, baggy-kneed Mr. Fair was moving away in the direction of the house of the O'Mournes, his "small tike" flickering at his heels.

In that wide expanse of moorland he looked a small and lonely figure—almost insignificant, compared with the group of stamping horses and intent and serious men anxiously watching the couple of black and sinuous hounds nosing about the stain in the clearing.

But Prosper was to see the bloodhounds again that day. It was nearly two hours later, when he was almost at the end of the fairly long walk from his camp to the cottage of the resting playwright, Alan Byrne.

He—and Plutus—were walking along the edge of a small stream that passed the hill called Tufter's Wait, on the brow of which Byrne's cottage was built, when from behind and to the left he heard the faint far note, muted by distance, of a bloodhound. It brought his head round with a jerk.

He shortened his glance to the middle distance, waiting. Within a few seconds both hounds came running out from behind a patch of heather, moving swiftly, with noses to the ground, heading, as it seemed, directly to him.

For a moment his brows knitted, then he smiled, and sat on the low bough of a stunted tree, one of a few lone firs standing on the slope down to the stream, to watch.

"There is, friend Plutus, in the sight of a bloodhound running a trail, something which strikes cold on the stoutest and most innocent heart," he observed. "That is one of the uneasy things which we have inherited from the dark days, my little. But there is no harm—trust Prosper and all will be well. All will be very well...."

A voice, remotely familiar, spoke softly behind him—so unexpectedly that he started a little.

The tall and portly form of Major Giles Wakeling, come apparently from nowhere, ranged alongside. But though the major addressed Prosper he did not look at him. He was staring intently at the riders.

"I heard the note of a hound," he said nervously, and then his eyes picked out the black hounds gliding across the turf between the heather patches on the slope to the stream.

"Bloodhounds!" said Major Wakeling, with a tremor in his voice. "Eh—bloodhounds, by God—they're bloodhounds, man!"

Prosper said nothing then. He was watching intently. Once he turned to look at Tufter's Wait Cottage, slewing his head a little with half-closed eyes, like a man trying to align things from a difficult angle.

He must have satisfied himself, for suddenly his brows disengaged and he smiled a little.

"They're hot on a scent—somebody's trail..." ejaculated Major Giles Wakeling, his big hand quite unconsciously gripping hard at Prosper's shoulder. "What's this—what's this I Whose trail are these hounds running, man?"

The bloodhounds checked at the water, threw up their great heads, nosed the trail again, broke across the water, quested eagerly about the bank, hesitated, faltered and were beaten.

"Yes. But fine hounds—splendid hounds," said Prosper, in the tone of one who soliloquizes. "They hunted a trail, three hours cold, to the water—and a craftsman's trail at that—a craftsman, yes...."

He rose. A drift of the changing unstable wind bore their scent down to the hounds who threw up their heads, baying uncertainly, and came on.

"By God, they're after us!" said the major in the voice of a frightened child.

"Oh, no—but they're baffled. And they're a gentle strain. Nothing to be startled about. Just stand still!"

The big hounds came up, nosing them uncertainly, but without attempting to harm or to hold them.

Close behind came the riders, Detective-Inspector Meek, wallowing in an unaccustomed saddle, at the head of them.

"And who are you, sir?" he demanded, hardly attempting to conceal the threat of force, of brutal menace, of cold ferocity and conscious authority that was ever latent in his voice, and which he had probably found effective.

Prosper felt the hand of Major Giles Wakeling trembling as it gripped his shoulder.

"No need to be noisy, Inspector Meek," he growled. "I will answer for this gentleman—Major Giles Wakeling...."

"Eh?" broke in the detective, sharply. "Major Giles Wakeling—the private inquiry agent of Savoy Chambers, Strand, I believe!"

"Inquiry agent be damned. I know nothing of that—this gentleman is Major Giles Wakeling, V.C., D.S.O., and M.C., late of the Coldstream Guards—desperately wounded and badly shell-shocked in France. I tell you that I will answer for Major Wakeling—bloodhounds or no (qualified) hounds!" said the Chief Constable, an old soldier, and nodded reassuringly.

But Meek was a man of the world and he, too, had seen something of France in her less attractive period.

"Didn't connect you and him somehow, sir!" he said, harshly as ever. "I'm sorry—but every trail leads nowhere to-day!"

"That's all right—quite all right—assure you—quite all right," said the major nervously.

If Major Wakeling had crossed the stream that day it had not been anywhere near the spot where the man whom the black bloodhounds had tracked crossed it.

"Why, no, I crossed a couple of hours ago by the footbridge near the village path to the main road, a mile higher up," said the major.

But he smiled as he agreed, for he was well convinced that he knew who had made—and, at his own leisure, had broken—the trail that had baffled the hounds.

To the mind of Mr. Fair the trail which the bloodhounds had chosen to follow was clearly that of the Japanese he had seen in the clearing among the hollies, and whom he expected presently to find was valet to Alan Byrne. This did not prove the Japanese to be the murderer—but the ease with which he had broken his trail certainly proved him to be a man of foresight, and one equal to emergency.

"A craftsman," said Prosper to himself, as he watched the bloodhounds' quest in vain for the trail. "Yes. But we shall see."

"Well, Major, an interesting if slightly awkward episode," he said. "I am going up to ask my friend Byrne for some tea. I believe he will welcome us both. Shall we go?"

"With pleasure, Mr. Fair!" said the major. "Mr. Byrne is a great friend of mine, too."

CHAPTER VII
The Scared V.C.

FOR a few moments they walked in silence. Then, with that air of embarrassment which characterized him, the major spoke.

"By the way, Mr. Fair, I'd feel obliged if you would—er—dismiss from your mind the remark of that—um—infernal detective. I mean, what he said about my having a private inquiry agent's business in Savoy Chambers."

Prosper reassured him very heartily. "Why, certainly, Major. No business of mine. It was a lie—well, say a mistake, of course?"

"And if you'd oblige me even further, I'd be—well, terribly grateful to you. Would you mind forgetting—or rather, not referring to those—er—things—well, decorations—the Chief Constable—old Colonel Swayne—rather harped about? What I mean to say—that—er—V.C. and—um—so on."

Prosper did not answer that immediately. But in a few seconds he stopped and half turned, facing the major.

"Forgive me, Major," he said, "if I do not hasten to promise that.... But it happens to be a cherished conviction of mine that any man who is entitled to write after his name the letters V.C. is, or should be, exempt from much—from most—of the uncharitable criticism to which we are all liable. Because he has probably earned such exemption by risking his life to save another and perhaps less valuable life. It chances that the Fates who deal the hands with which we are all provided at birth, dealt to me, in the hand I was destined to play, an excellent memory, and I happen to remember something of the circumstances in which by a sheer cold-blooded, self-sacrificing courage, which I am not ashamed to say I envy, you won your honors. Why do you want me to help conceal the fact that you area V.C.?"

"Well, you see—do I behave like one?" stammered the major, agitated. "I was given—they gave me—the V.C. out there, it's true. But to tell you the truth I'm scared nowadays—scared all the time. You don't know, Fair—you can't realize, I assure you. What? Damn it, you know, it took every ounce of pluck I'd got just to walk into your camp—a stranger—this morning. I would have sooner given you a miss. Yes. I had to drive myself at it. Drive myself. I tell you, Fair—you're a good chap, a decent sort of chap and you understand things—it's just hell to me, this Forest work. Eh? The owls. Prowling about this Forest in the way I have to. I tell you, Fair, it's hell for me... my nerve's gone. I tell you, sometimes I've been watching at night down in the valley, or in Wolf's Hold, or by this hill, the sudden cry of an owl has chilled my blood! Eh? That sounds queer to you, doesn't it? Just a damned owl hooting overhead all of a sudden in some pit of darkness in Wolf's Hold, and where's Major Giles Wakeling, V.C., private detective, et cetera? Sweating with fear—underneath the owl's bough! Eh?"

"Eh? Would you believe that? It's true, Fair. And what about the man in skins? He comes like a ghost and goes like a startled deer. Half naked! With his game on his back and a wolf at his heels and riding like a madman...! You need some courage if you're going to be much about Wolf's Hold these days. And me—I'm no good. Lady Crystal doesn't know it. Alan Byrne doesn't know it. Nobody seems to see it—though old Swayne guesses it—but the truth is, Fair, that since I was caught in those mines in France I'm no good. It was the mines—I've been up twice in the mines—heaven high, my God! I could stand the shells, but it was the mines—the ground under your feet going up—that broke my nerve. Mr. Fair—I haven't the pluck of a barnyard fowl. Not nowadays. And it seems to me that everybody that looks at me knows it. I shall have to do something about it. Why—those black-jowled hounds—they frightened me. I was scared of them. I thought they were after me. If you hadn't been there it would have been pretty serious—it..."

He broke off abruptly, as he caught sight of two people on the veranda of the big bungalow close by.

"But never mind all that now—never mind..." he said hurriedly. "There's Lady Crystal—and Byrne—they're looking...."

Prosper gave a queer little gesture that was remotely like a gesture of despair.

It was his habit and his hobby to go about doing good, or what he sincerely conceived to be good. But daily it seemed to him that he encountered fresh evidence that he was trying to dam back a tidal wave with spadefuls of sand thrown by a child's spade.

"Why, that's all right," he said. "People understand, you know, Major. Everybody knows what nerves are nowadays. Half the world is living on its nerves. We'll chat it over some time. Just a question of time—building up. Meantime, they're beckoning us."

Something in his gay and confident and comrade-like tone steadied Major Wakeling, who shook his head, seeming by that abrupt action to clear his mind a little.

"Yes, yes, quite—oh, quite. I see that, Fair," he said. "I think you're right. Come along, then."

It was Lady Crystal Sheen and Alan Byrne awaiting them, but the girl was drawing on her riding gloves and a groom was bringing her horse round as they stepped on to the veranda.

"Alan, here is Prosper come to see you as I told you he would. He's camping near here for—for—oh, a long time—and he says he means to come in and see you just as often as he can. You'll like that, Alan? Of course. You have lots in common, you two. I wish you could have been here an hour ago, Prosper. I must go—I shall be lucky if I catch my train to town."

The two men were shaking hands and she dropped both hers on theirs and held them so for a few seconds.

"Be good pals to each other, you two, please—my two best pals. It will be rather jolly for me to know that you and Prosper are getting on well together."

"If to call in on a man as often as I propose calling in on Alan—pretty often, that is to say—is going to make you happy, cousin, you may be quite sure that I shall do it. If Alan can stand so much of me!"

"This place shall be open house to you—and I shall be grateful for every second of your company you can spare," he said, rather dully. "I—I have had a baddish time since I saw you last—er—Fair—but you will forgive a certain dullness in a convalescent?"

"One has to be half a gypsy to escape an occasional spell of dullness in the Forest—" he said lightly.

Lady Crystal broke in. "Oh, you understand each other—you're not strangers—and now I must go—good-by...."

Major Wakeling muttered something about a short stirrup leather, moved quickly towards the horse, and a second or two later Crystal Sheen was in the saddle.

The major, apparently still busy with the stirrup leather, walked by the side of the horse for a few yards, Lady Crystal bending down, talking quickly and rather urgently to him.

He answered with some eagerness. The girl nodded, then, as the major stood clear, touched her horse lightly with her heel and galloped away across the Forest en route to King's Halt Hall.

The major stared after her for a few moments, then came slowly back to the veranda, walking rather wearily.

"Give me a whisky and soda, Byrne," he said. "The Forest air is good, but it's a tiring country to walk in."

"Tiring?" echoed Byrne. "That's true enough, Major. I have not spent a waking minute in this place when I was not heavy with fatigue—or seemed so."

"That's because you're both a bit run down. You'll pick up, I assure you. We shall get a different air in the Forest—an east wind pouring under a blazing sun comes over the Forest occasionally—and it's wine—and tonic;—and healing all in one."

For the playwright had changed greatly, almost terrifyingly, from the man, flushed and gay with great success, that Prosper had last met some four months before.

Perhaps thirty years old, something over six feet tall, proportionately broad, beautifully balanced and symmetrical, with a lean, handsome face, a quick and happy wit and a ready, infectious laugh, Alan Byrne had then been a man of great attraction and charm.

But since then he had suffered something like a nervous breakdown—and that had changed him rather shockingly.

Except for a keener leanness of the face, and a singular quenching of the brightness of his eyes, he had altered very little in appearance. But in spirit he seemed to have changed terribly.

He was dull and heavy, sleepy and almost witless. A slow, almost uncomprehending smile had taken the place of his quick laugh, and a species of absent-minded moroseness had blotted out his charm.

He was like a man desperately anxious to be left alone to sleep, but too mechanically polite to let his desire manifest itself too plainly.

And, somehow, behind all that, Prosper Fair, trained and experienced, a "mixer," accustomed to all kinds of men, sensed, or seemed to sense, a great misery, a secret sorrow, even terror.

"Yes—terror!" said Prosper to himself. "But it is a different terror from that of Major Wakeling. No wonder Crystal is uneasy and..."

As he expected, it was the Japanese he had seen in the little clearing among the holly bushes that morning.

"Yes, sir," said the Japanese, softly, deferentially, and moved, velvet-footed as a cat, to the tea table.

His black eyes passed over the major and Prosper in one darkling, expressionless sweep as he moved forward and quietly carried out his duties. The semi-terrier, Plutus, he did not seem to see at all.

Yet Plutus, his bright eyes fast on Asana, moved slowly towards Prosper, and settled down, his small body pressing against Prosper's ankles. He remained quiescent—his eyes following every movement of the Japanese.

CHAPTER VIII
The Cataleptic Man

FOR half an hour the three chatted—and said nothing throughout that time which was not a commonplace of conversation.

Byrne spoke, drearily, of his nerves; Major Wakeling spoke, resentfully, of his; Prosper advised yet a little patience and, as a result, prophesied for both restoration to their normal.

The major, as is usual in cases of his kind, fidgeted a good deal, wandering about from his chair to a table of periodicals, to the window and back again—whereas Byrne sat still, heavily, talking with a sort of half-concealed effort, like a man lightly drugged.

Prosper, talking quietly, easily, about obvious things, watched both. And Plutus watched the door through which the Japanese had disappeared.

Presently, Major Wakeling, at the window, stiffened a little, staring out rather intently.

Prosper, talking about Byrne's last play—a big success, still running—saw that, and continued talking.

Then, rather abruptly, the major turned, crossed over to Alan Byrne and said that he must be going.

"A good fellow, Wakeling," said Prosper. "Though he paid a heavy price for his magnificent war record."

"Yes—so heavy that he thinks—he has said to me—he would—just as soon have remained in France," murmured Byrne dreamily.

He moved his chair round so that he could look out across the heathery moor squared off at corners by the heavy blocks of woodland, Wolf's Hold looming darkly away to the southeast.

"Quite," said Prosper. "But that's a form of depression. Some day he will be amazed that he ever entertained that idea."

"I wonder—Prosper Fair," he said oddly. "There are strange things that happen to—in—the human mind—strange things." His speech dragged. "Some men—many men—myself—myself among them—would be better dead—I wonder—better dead—yes—dead—myself—dead—like Molly—Molly—O'Mourne—"

But Prosper, watching him intently, saw that his eyes were wide—wider even than normal—and he was staring with a strange and remotely dreadful fixity across the moorland.

His long, sinewy-fingered brown hands were lapped in a tight grip over the ends of the arms of the lounge chair in which he sat, and his whole body had become rigid.

Prosper sat silent for a few seconds, studying him. Plutus, the small dog, turned his gaze from the door to Alan Byrne, glanced up at his owner, then resettled himself, his lower jaw flat along the floor, to watch the door through which the Japanese had passed.

"When one is suffering from mental or nervous fatigue it is, of course, conceivable that one should imagine strange things," said Prosper slowly, very distinctly, and a little more loudly than he usually spoke.

Mr. Fair began quietly to roll himself another cigarette, lit it, and turned again to the playwright.

"Yet a little rest, a little patience, and you will be as well as ever you were, my dear Alan," he said.

"Tell me, Alan, why did you bring in the name of Molly O'Mourne just now—in connection, more or less, with that of Major Wakeling and yourself?"

Byrne neither moved, nor answered, nor shifted his fixed stare outwards over the moor. He would have been like a tranced or cataleptic man but for the fact that Prosper could see the slight quiver of those hands strained over the ends of the chair arms.

He turned slowly with the air of one who listens intently. His gaze did not meet Prosper's, but seemed to be directed over his shoulder in a blindish stare. He muttered the name to himself, in a low, rather hoarse voice, with a queer, coarse, slurring pronunciation.

Prosper drew back. He went to the window and looked out, thinking hard. As he stared out absently it occurred to him that something stirred slightly in the heather growth that ran right up to the outbuildings—a garage, stables and a small house that contained the electric lighting and water pumping engine. He picked up a pair of binoculars that lay on the top of a bookcase close by, and focused them on the spot.

"Somebody crawling through towards the house..." he told himself and waited, watching.

Thanks to the binoculars, he was able to recognize it at once as that of Major Giles Wakeling. He was staring intently, not at the house, but towards the stables.

Byrne ignored him—as a deaf man ignores one who speaks too softly. Prosper touched the bell.

It was answered by a woman servant, a superior-looking person, who evidently had once been a beauty, but now had become passée and haggard. Evidently the cook-housekeeper.

"It is one of his attacks," she said composedly. "They come—and pass. The doctor knows about them and we have instructions to leave Mr. Byrne quietly to himself when he is—taken so. It is a kind of trance, sir."

"My name is Fair and I am a close friend of Lady Crystal Sheen, and of Mr. Byrne."

"Yes, sir—I have heard of you," she said, with a strange flash from her smoldering eyes.

Prosper went silently out, moved soft-footed along the veranda, paused at the corner of the house and, screened by a big evergreen shrub, looked towards the small yard between the house and the buildings—the spot, as nearly as he was able to judge, at which the major was looking.

But he caught a faint murmur of low voices from the small porch at the back door of the bungalow, and he moved very quickly and silently down to this porch. There was a small window of irregular glass bits set in a thin, vein-like pattern of lead and through this he peered.

Through the tiny triangle of clear glass he selected Prosper could see quite plainly that the stranger was engaged in passing over to the Japanese bank note after bank note, counting softly as he did so.

They were, Prosper thought, ten pound notes, and over twenty of these passed while he watched. He strained his ears:

"... Twenty-nine—thirty. That's three hundred, Asana. And that's the wind-up of a very sweet little bit of New Forest chess," said the stranger, in a hard but educated voice.

The voice of the Japanese dropped low, so low, that some of the words were indistinguishable. But some were not, and among them Prosper caught these:

"O'Mourne... girl... murder... ax... ax... chess ... move... careful... money... tact... craft... Lady Crystal... Byrne... bloodhounds... operate... patience...."

Somebody whistled from behind—a clear shrill whistle. Prosper turned like a cat. Nobody there, though he fancied he had just caught, as he turned, a hazy, shadow-like flicker as if one had withdrawn sharply behind the corner of the house.

Prosper turned back to face both men who, evidently disturbed, or warned, by the whistle (of the housekeeper, Prosper suspected) had darted out from the porch.

"Asana, I have been seeking you. Come quickly—Mr. Byrne is ill," he said anxiously, in the manner of one flurried.

The rigidity of the Jap's face seemed to relax infinitesimally, and he veiled the sudden cold glitter of his eyes, half closing his oblique lids as he bowed.

The stranger spoke, eyeing Prosper with an easy, half-smiling regard that was neither definitely bold, indifferent, nor insolent, but which seemed to blend all those qualities.

"I fear I have detained the Japanese from his duties," said the man, carelessly, with something of the air of one who snaps his fingers. "I am sorry," he continued, "for I know of these curious trancelike attacks to which Mr. Byrne is subject. You see, until recently, I was his secretary."

"That is so"—Mant smiled—"and you, I believe, are the Duke of Devizes—probably touring under your favorite nom de route—shall we say? of Prosper Fair. I hope that you will have a delightful holiday and that the weather will keep fine for you!"

He looked past Prosper for a second. Then his face hardened, and his cold, steely eyes returned to Prosper's.

"And—if I may venture upon the familiarity of proffering advice—I would suggest that it is extremely improbable that you will add to the enjoyment of your holiday by spying upon the valets and the ex-secretaries of your friends."

A curious wild glare lit itself in Mr. Dillon Mant's pale eyes, an almost mad light that is rarely seen in the eyes of any but the dangerously criminal, or those who are berserk.

"You have witnessed me in the act of repaying that little Jap money borrowed from him during the period I acted as secretary to Mr. Byrne, before your relative, Lady Crystal Sheen, deigned to notice me, to dislike me, and to procure for me the Order of the Boot from Byrne. Very well. I do not know—nor do I care—what the views or feelings of Asana may be. But this I do know, Mis-ter Pros-per Fair," he added, his thin lips writhing back in an ugly and menacing smile, "let me discover you prying and spying upon me again and I will empty a magazine into you before you have time to guess I am armed."

His pocketed hand moved and the pocket shaped itself into a peak as the muzzle of the concealed weapon was thrust a little forward.

"You are evidently in an aggressive mood this afternoon, my bloodthirsty friend," he said quietly, glancing aside towards the garage and motioning almost imperceptibly with his right hand—much as one signs a well trained dog to heel.

Mant's mad eyes instinctively followed Prosper's—and Prosper's fist took him on the angle of the jaw in a swift and smashing punch that sent him down half stunned.

A bullet tore past Prosper's head, seeming to roar as it went, so close was the explosion, chipped a reddish puff of brick dust from the corner of the house, and went whining malevolently out across the heather.

A half inch nearer and the interest of Mr. Fair in the case of Molly O'Mourne would have been forever checked.

Prosper stooped quickly and disarmed the man. He was all but unconscious—making a peculiar snoring sound. Prosper bent over him, feeling to ascertain if his jaw were broken. Prosper's face was quite pitiless, for he had seen in those pale glaring eyes enough to know that the man was a natural killer, the more dangerous because he was perhaps just a shade abnormal.

Hurrying footsteps sounded close behind him, and Prosper rose, speaking half to himself.

"Yes—I had to hit. The man was really dangerous," he said, and found himself facing five people hastening down on him. Two of these were Asana, the Japanese, and the thin, hawkish, passée housekeeper, who evidently had hurried out at the sound of the shot. Another running across the yard was the old groom who had held Lady Crystal's horse.

From the direction of the moor two men were running—one was Major Wakeling, the other, carrying a gun, was Hambledon, the dour and gigantic forester, who evidently had detached himself from the party with the foiled bloodhounds.

CHAPTER IX
The Second Ax

BUT it was no intention of Mr. Fair to permit anything in the nature of a prolonged inquiry.

He faced the little crowd as they came with rather cold and very steady eyes. He was completely self-possessed and rather authoritative.

"You had better take your friend into the kitchen, Asana. He is suffering from a temporary indisposition due, I suspect, to a rush of blood to the head—or possibly he has had a shock of some kind. One rather wonders which."

For a second or two the man glared at Prosper, evidently meditating an attack. But he thought better of it. Normally gentle-mannered, Mr. Fair had not spared his punch—and he was a trained and skillful boxer.

"Be wise, my friend, and learn something—even a little—about controlling yourself, if you really care about avoiding a truly unattractive and probably extremely sudden end to your career."

"No, no," he said. "You haven't quite the kind of temperament which goes well with loaded pistols. You had better apply at the nearest police station—where, in due course, I will leave the thing."

Mant hesitated, then yielded, and went with the Japanese and the woman into the house.

The groom hung fire for a moment, peering inquisitively at Prosper, then touched his cap, muttered something and moved back to the stable.

"Anything I can do, sir?" he said. His dour face was less dark and grim than it had been that morning at Prosper's camp. "We're supposed to help keep order in the Forest, sir—though God knows we don't always manage it."

"No thanks, Hambledon," he said. "It was just a small misunderstanding. Nothing to bother about. Did they have any success with the bloodhounds?"

"No, sir—worse luck. They didn't have much of a chance. But there's time yet—there's more kinds of bloodhounds than one, sir."

"Should like to apologize for the things I said to you this morning, sir. I understand more about you now. I was—dazed like...."

"I know—I understand—why, man, don't give it another thought," said Prosper quickly.

"Thought I'd like to explain, sir," muttered the forester, turned again, and headed for the heather.

"Not a bad fellow that, at heart..." said the major. "A quiet, reserved, taciturn customer—but not bad when you know him."

"It was a race between him and young Berkeley Morris for Molly O'Mourne—and the struggle worried him."

"But where's Byrne?" asked the major—making no reference to his own curious tactics in the heather.

Prosper explained, and the major promptly set his mind at rest by corroborating all that the housekeeper had said.

"Queer things, these trances—if you can call 'em that. Poor Byrne gets them a good deal—not so often as he used to, but they last longer," he explained. "The doctors know about them. It's something pretty complicated to do with the mental strain he's been through. But they say it will pass—with mental rest. Queer how it takes people. Personally, I think Byrne had a very narrow escape from real trouble. But he's recovering. There's nothing much to do but to leave him to himself—quiet, tranquil. It's better than worrying him. I've found that—I've seen him in this state before. There's nothing physical about it. Presently he will be himself again. Asana and the housekeeper know exactly what to do. They'll leave him be—leave him be. It frets him to fuss. They'll just keep an eye on him in an unobstrusive sort of way."

"Well, I'll be moving back to my camp," he said. "It's been an unexpectedly sensational day for me. Shall we go?"

The playwright was still sitting in the same place. But now he was leaning back in his chair, restfully, with his eyes closed, seeming asleep. He was breathing quietly, and his strong, nervous hands were still.

Prosper moved silently out again and halted on the edge of the veranda, listening.

All was quiet at the back, save for the occasional stamp of one of the horses in the stable. The major had vanished.

He stood there thinking for a few moments, then sauntered off the veranda to the moorland track that wound a serpentine course across the heather towards Wolf's Hold, Plutus trotting at his heels....

Then he half turned, carelessly, casually, bending to pluck a fern frond as he turned.

In that quick glance back he saw that there were at least three people on the veranda of the bungalow—all watching him.

At that distance he could not identify them—but he could guess. He straightened up, smiling, without much amusement in his smile.

"We are the cynosure of all eyes, Plutus—don't you think?" he murmured, and sauntered on to Wolf's Hold, moving like a tired man.

It would have been excusable if he had been really tired, for, as he took occasion to observe to Plutus, it had been, on the whole, a long and tiring day after an extremely short night's rest.

"A tiring and ill-fed day, Plutus of my heart," he said, rolling one of his cigarettes as he went. "And so we will go home now and eat great quantities. And rest a little and smoke and try to get our brain clear enough to deal with this bitter problem."

"Who destroyed the lovely little life that was being lived by Molly O'Mourne, Plutus...? It seems to me that almost half the people we have met to-day might have done it. Motive—do you say, 'Motive,' Plutus mine? Well, what motive can any sane person have for the destruction of beautiful, harmless and completely innocent life...? We shall give that aspect of it our attention in due time, small tike. Motive implies the existence of a person, and we have met many persons to-day. Perhaps, therefore, many motives. Yes. Presently we will make a list of them and study each according to his merit.... Who would have imagined that we, seeking to establish ourselves in a quiet corner of a quiet countryside for a few days, should settle down side by side with murder and mystery?"

"Yet we have done that, carnivore," said Prosper. "Murder and mystery of the most complicated kind."

He threw away his cigarette end, moving into the shadows of Wolf's Hold. The watery sun was dropping low in the west, and already it was shadowed and still under the tall trees.

"We have not eaten—seriously eaten—from dawn to well-nigh dusk this day, Plutus. Everything but a square meal has happened to us—we have been highly craftsome and most detective-like, we have been all but arrested on a charge of murder, we have been bitterly threatened. Yes. We have been bayed by bloodhounds, menaced by pistols, we have sat with cataleptic men. Yes, again. We have seen deep sorrow, and beauty lying pale and tranquil in death, and tears and trouble, and beauty vivid and alive, yet anxious and boding. We have seen a brave man confess himself cowardly, a man of intellect behave like a man without sense, we have seen money passing, and heard it described as the end of a game of New Forest chess. We have seen almost everything but food—we have done almost everything but eat."

They moved into their camp—it was oddly lonely looking without Stolid Joe and Patience.

Prosper built his fire anew and brought forth oil stoves and accessories from the caravan. He needed no more than a glance to discover, as he expected, that the caravan had been searched, rather obviously, by Detective-Inspector Meek. "Lord knows what he expected to find," said Prosper, shrugging.

Slowly the veils of night unfurled themselves over the little camp at the edge of the dark wood. The ruddy gleam and flicker from the fire grew more brilliant against the shadows, the pallid blue flame of the oil stove shone more ghostly, as Prosper Fair and his "carnivore" took their long leisure over their deferred meal.

The owls were calling before Prosper had quenched his stove, washed up, and settled again before the wood fire to roll cigarettes and to talk to the miniature dog who sat, facing the wood fire, close by his side.

"You will bear witness, Plutus mine, that I have not been utterly idle to-day," said Prosper. "Yet, for all my industry, for all my many meetings with new acquaintances, ever my mind returns to our friend of yesternight—the galloping man in skins, who raids the live stock of the humble squatter—the goat-killer—the wielder of paleolithic stone axes....

"There are strange things that take place under cover of the darkness of night—and the darkness of life, Plutus. In the nighttime those things which seem to be but shadows in the twilight take shape and—for all I know—live and enact life as seems most fit to them.... Strange things, Plutus. One makes ready for them...."

He opened his palm, studying pensively the short-barreled, blunt-nosed, blued automatic pistol that lay upon it....

"... Makes ready for them, yes," repeated Prosper, and swiftly closed his hand, moving it back to his pocket, as the shadows enlarged a silently moving man who stepped into the zone of the firelight, stopping by Prosper's side.

"Good evening, Mr. Fair," said the visitor, in a voice which held the faint, far tremor of discomfort.

"Good evening, Inspector," he returned, "you work late o' nights. Let me find you a seat and a cigar."

"No. Decidedly I do not, Inspector. I feel that I could stand practically anything but any more apologies. You were inclined to arrest me this morning. You considered the available evidence and decided not to arrest me. That is all. There is no need for apology."

"On the contrary, you were extraordinarily quick in the matter of the ax, Inspector...."

"Well, to be truthful, that was but a bit of a fluke, Mr. Fair. I looked in at the Normansrood post office—useful places, post offices, for detectives—before I'd been in the village five minutes, and the postmaster pointed out a registered parcel to me. It had been worried by his dog—the paper torn—you know the casual way these remote village post offices are run, Mr. Fair—probably yours was the only parcel in the office. The dog had torn the paper, and the ax head, with its stains, was showing. The rest—finding you—was easy enough. I was wrong, I've no doubt. You say the stains are not human bloodstains and no doubt the test will prove that. Very well, I am satisfied. You say your dog picked it up and brought it into your camp?"

"Let us wait until the stains are tested, Inspector," he advised. "When one knows definitely what they are not, one might be able to guess what they are.... And if they should prove to be human bloodstains then I think I can tell you at once who the murderer of Molly O'Mourne is."

"Can you—could you? I'd be glad to know that," said the detective, his harsh, rather brutal voice vibrating. "Well now, assuming those stains to be human, who would you say?"

"I should say it is the person—human, ghost, or devil—who, half naked, prowls on horseback or afoot, about the Forest at night, for reasons best known to himself."

"I have. Last midnight he passed me, riding as though he were pursued by wolves."

"Yes? Well, that mightn't be so long. You're interested in solving it, Mr. Fair?"

"Well, I wish you luck," he said. "I'm hoping to solve it myself. But the sooner somebody solves it the better I shall be pleased."

"This Forest work is new to me," he added. "And the more I see of it the less I care for it."

"Evidently you are a townsman, Inspector. Yet it is a fact that the deepest, darkest, most remote, most eerie spot in the heart of Wolf's Hold is safer than almost any locked and bolted room in the heart of any crowded city."

"As a rule, maybe it is. But there are exceptions, Mr. Fair, and this is one of them."

"Cats' eyes—the power to see in the dark—that's what a man wants on a case like this. Eh?"

He stared with a certain measure of unease and distaste at the darkness that piled and hunched and massed itself in ever deepening profundity under the whispering trees.

"Very likely. But I think I'll rely on my torch to light me back to the village," said the detective. "Nothing to beat a reliable and powerful flash, Mr. Fair."

He broke off as Plutus dropped his bone with a queer little snarl of surprise, sprang up, and stared into the all but complete darkness surrounding the camp, growling.

Something hummed by his head, whizzing between him and the detective, flew clean across the camp, and thudded against one of the encircling pine trunks.

Even as he turned in the direction from which the missile came Prosper noticed that, curiously enough, Plutus was glaring in the direction in which the thing had vanished.

"What the hell was that?" snapped Meek, lurching to the edge of the camp, a drawn pistol in his hand, peering out into the dark.

Footsteps thudded swiftly through the darkness on the south side of the camp—there was a wild flurry of hoofs on the north side, a hoarse yell, and the hoofs steadied to a gallop.

Then the night was shocked by the violent, banging reports of both barrels of a shotgun—the flames from the muzzle spouted through the darkness in a pinkish glare; the hoof beats died out and Prosper and the detective ran together to the spot where they had seen the flame spouts from the gun.

But the man who had fired was no longer there. Prosper checked the barking of Plutus and they caught for a second a faint sound that might have been the thud of boots on the yielding turf.

"This Forest is like a place haunted by ghosts—or devils. Things that move in the dark. If I could have caught as much as a glimpse...."

He was no longer uneasy—evidently it was inaction rather than action which, with the lonely darkness, fretted his nerves.

The detective watched him reach for an object high up on the pine trunk, dimly lit by the camp fire.

In the white blaze from the Scotland Yard man's torch they saw that it was another ax of a prehistoric age.

But, unlike the first, this was an ax of the Neolithic—its head was made of glassy, keen and beautifully polished obsidian!

CHAPTER X
Night-Rider, Ax-Thrower, Killer

Then the detective spoke, in a metallic voice, harsh with something that was akin to fury.

"By God, Mr. Fair, if that thing had been a foot or so more to the left or the right, it would have put paid either to Detective-Inspector Meek of Scotland Yard or to the Duke of Devizes!" he said.

"It came out of the dark like a shell. The man—or ghost—or devil—that slung it at one of us was no weakling. It would pretty near have scattered your brains—or mine—over your camp fire."

"You'd think they don't use ordinary iron hatchets in this part of the world, wouldn't you?" he went on.

"Hardly that, perhaps," he demurred. "You see, they're always coming across these prehistoric relics in this neighborhood. There are any amount of barrows—prehistoric burying places—round about here. Why, Meek, they can trace history back for thousands of years by the relics they find in the south of England alone."

"Any day, you may find—if you are in luck, and interested in that sort of thing—worked arrowheads just outside any rabbit hole in these barrows. Arrowheads that were chipped by some savage ancestor of ours thousands of centuries ago...!"

"Very likely. I've seen 'em in museums," agreed Meek, acridly. "But very few modern murderers use them for choice. I don't see why a man who wants to kill somebody hereabouts should use these stone tools. Damn it, he could always steal an ax from any woodshed—and I'd back a good, steel-edged timber ax for effectiveness against these—these antiques...! It's a madman behind all this, Mr. Fair."

Prosper nodded, his eyes on the ax. He took it from the detective's hand and studied it minutely.

"Yes, a madman," continued the detective, scowling as he puzzled the thing over. "That's pretty clear. But who was the man who fired that gun—and why? He wasn't aiming at us—couldn't have missed us, if he had been. We were what the shooting swells call a very pretty 'right and left'—one barrel for me the other for you."

"Oh, yes—he was firing at the man who threw the ax. That's perfectly clear," agreed Prosper absently.

"And who do you think he might be?" demanded Meek, violence latent, as ever, under his harsh voice.

"Why, that's an impossible thing to guess," he said, "I suppose every man within a radius of ten miles owns, and can use, a gun. Every Forest dweller finds it worth while to keep a gun—if only for the chance of a stray fallow deer at dawn, not to mention the rabbits, or the pheasants. He may have been a poacher waiting for the moonlight...."

"Oh, yes—but a poacher wouldn't have shot at that invisible man with the horse—and the ax!" objected the detective.

"Yes, that's possible. But why should he—the gun man—disappear? I can understand that the man who murdered Molly O'Mourne might think it a good idea to kill me—a Scotland Yard man—or even you, an amateur sleuth! A madman, say. But why the man who tried to save us from a second bit of axmanship, say, should vanish into this infernal darkness instead of coming into camp, beats me.... I shall have to think things out."

He stared into the blackness again, listening to the vociferations of the owls back in Wolf's Hold.

"What's a torch and a pistol in a pit of darkness eighty thousand acres big?" he grumbled. "Anybody who's lived this damned wild Forest life from their youth could play with me like children with a blindfolded man. Eh? A swing of an ax out of the darkness—a touch of a trigger in the blackness behind a man's back—and where is he? What good are his brains—unless he's got the eyes and feet of a cat...? Question o' taste, I suppose—but I'd call it easier to take a crazy murderer single-handed under the gas lamp at the end of some London alley than to chase shadows through the shadows of this night land...!" He shrugged.

"Not that what I prefer matters," he added. "I'm here to get one man and I'm going to get him... if he doesn't hand me mine from behind some tree one night!... Well, I'll be moving. I'll take that ax thing, Mr. Fair."

"And if I were you," continued the detective, "I'd sleep light—if you mean to sleep out here at all. Light as a sharp dog. For, to my mind, you're asking for trouble, sleeping out here, Mr. Fair. Take a tip from an old hand—and get your rest o' nights under a proper roof. At any rate, till this mad murderer is nailed."

Then he said, rather abruptly, "Good night!" laughed in his remotely snarling way, added, "Happy dreams!" and stepped from the zone of the firelight. The Forest night received and swallowed him up in an instant.

But he was safer than Prosper Fair. In the darkness Inspector Meek was no man's certain target—but Mr. Fair, moving about in the firelight, was an easy mark.

This he realized, and explained in his airy way to Plutus, who had long since returned to his bone.

"Because our prehistoric night-rider missed his aim just now—and was very obligingly chased by the unknown with a flair for firearms—it does not follow that the axman will not return. If, indeed, it is myself that he requires to slay, Plutus mine. One should take precautions, I think. Yes. Simple ones, to begin with. An alarm, don't you think, tikeling?"

He retreated to the caravan and busied himself with a long cord, certain forked sticks, and a couple of the petrol cans he used to hold part of his water supply....

When, presently, he put out his fire and retired to the caravan for the rest he had well earned, a trip-cord encircled the camp in such a way that no night prowler could approach the caravan without creating a clatter of falling petrol cans by Prosper's bunk that would almost wake a drugged man.

For some minutes he lay musing aloud—apparently to the small dog, crouched on the floor of the caravan.

"A long day, hound, and not without its thrills and mysteries," he said. "But that second ax has helped things forward quite extraordinarily. For, as you doubtless observed, oh Plutus mine, the head of that ax was otherwise than the first ax. Very much otherwise."

"The first ax was a genuine paleolithic worked flint, to-night's ax was of neolithic polished obsidian. Now, an ax head of polished obsidian is such a vastly different matter from an ax head of prehistoric flamed flint that the appearance of these two implements of slaughter in this place points very definitely to one fact: no man ever took from a prehistoric burial place in the New Forest, or neighborhood, ax heads of worked flint and of polished, glassy obsidian. The things do not go together, Plutus—on the contrary, great gulfs of time and distance divide the man who made that flint ax from the man who made the obsidian ax—very great gulfs. We must remember that, tike-like one. The professor of detection, gentle Mr. Meek, failed, I suspect, immediately to notice the significance of the axes—though it is certain that it will probably soon be pointed out to him by those who know more of these matters... though possibly too late. Great is knowledge, Plutus, and fortunate its possessors—such as Prosper and his dog...."

He laughed quietly in the dark, but there was the fading note of fatigue in his quiet laughter.

But Plutus whined softly—to show Prosper that he had caught the faint tinge of satisfaction behind the laugh, and was pleased that Prosper was pleased. A man and his dog get to understand each other.

Then Plutus yawned, and settled down again to listen to the rustle and mutter of the Wolf's Hold trees all about them.

"Who killed Molly O'Mourne? And why? Why does that half-curbed scoundrel Dillon Mant return with money for Asana the Japanese, who speaks of Molly O'Mourne in the tone of one who speaks of great good fortune? Why does Major Giles Wakeling, V.C., haunt Wolf's Hold and Tufter's Wait? Why were the little black goats of Eli Lovell killed with a stone ax—who was the target of the obsidian ax... and who the target of to-night's shotgun...? All these things—all these 'whys,' Plutus?"

"How can I hope to succeed in this wild and lonely place, where even a man like that forester, Hambledon, who knows every sprig of heather, every fern, every blade of grass and every stunted bush, is baffled...? To-morrow we must see Berkeley Morris—the boy who writes the poetry that Molly loved to read.... That was what her mother said, I believe—was it not, Plutus...? Was there ever a sadder visit to pay than our visit to that lonely and distraught mother of Molly, this morning...? Or a sight more saddening than that of Molly herself—paler and lovelier than the pile of white roses that Berkeley Morris had brought to be placed with her...? Never mind... never mind. To-morrow we will think a little... one does not... think when... weary...."

"Who is this night-rider, prowler, ax-thrower, killer?... To-morrow. Yes, Plutus—and that poor fellow Byrne... we must do something for him... if we can. Crystal's... sake... and Hambledon... lonely work ... sad... sad...."

It seemed only ten seconds later that the crash of falling petrol tins and the shrill barking of Plutus roused him.

CHAPTER XI
"Far In The Dark..."

PROSPER sat up, awake instantly, one hand curling round the butt of the weapon under his pillow. He peered out of the small window in the side of the caravan just above his head to see that the first pearl-gray sheen of the misty dawn was paling the darkness. But it was not the dawn which interested Mr. Fair just then. The little window of the caravan faced directly the site of the camp fire, and so he was able, dimly, to distinguish the slender figure of a youth who was bending over the ashes of the dead fire. Evidently this was the person who had "thrown" Prosper's modest alarm, and, as evidently, he had heard the sound and was aware of it, for his movements were swift and remotely furtive.

He was stooping to drive a short, slender stick into the ground. This stick must have been cleft at the top for, a moment later, Prosper saw the slim stranger affix in the cleft a white oblong that could only be an envelope.

This done, the stranger turned to the caravan, stared at it through the mist for a second, then moved quickly out of the camp.

Should he follow this man—pounce on him? Or would it be wiser to wait until he had read the contents of the oblong envelope?

If he had been a professional detective Prosper would certainly have flashed out and collared both the man and the envelope. But he had seen the face of the stranger quite distinctly, and he had recognized that this was not an ordinary Forest dweller. He was slim, youthful, hatless so that his thick, curly hair was noticeable, and he had a pale, delicate face, like a girl's. Under a soft collar flowed a big tie.

Because he guessed the identity of this youth almost at the instant he saw him, Prosper decided to respect his obvious desire to go as he had come—unchallenged, unaccosted.

"Berkeley Morris—Molly's poet!" said Prosper to himself. "I can find him again if I need to."

So he decided to wait a few seconds until the poet should have got clear—as he so evidently wished.

All his life Prosper regretted that decision—for all his life after that moment he felt about Berkeley Morris as a man might feel who had neglected to warn a child that it was walking too near the crumbling edge of a dangerous cliff....

He slipped on a few clothes, opened the door, went across and took the envelope from the cleft stick by the cold camp fire.

In the wan light of the slow dawn, veiled by the opal mist, Prosper read the address inscribed in minute, beautiful, craftsmanlike handwriting:

"It seems hardly worth while adopting a nom de route, nowadays, Plutus," he murmured. "Everybody seems to penetrate it with perfect ease, don't they?"

He opened the envelope, took out the sheet enfolded within it and read as follows:

This from one who knows of you, but of whom you have never known. They say that you seek to avenge Molly. Though she cares nothing at all for vengeance now, yet, because the ill deeds of the living must ever be the concern of the living, I name to you now the only man in all the Forest that Molly feared and tried ever to shun—Asana, the Japanese servant of Alan Byrne.

I wish we were dead together to-day—
Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight,
Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay,
Out of the world's way, out of the light;
Out of the ages of worldly weather,
Forgotten of all men altogether—
As the world's first dead, taken wholly away,
Made one with death, filled full of the night.

How we should slumber, how we should sleep,
Far in the dark with the dreams and the dews,
And dreaming, grow to each other and weep,
Laugh low, live softly, murmur and muse,
Yea, and it may be, struck through by the dream,
Feel the dust quicken and quiver and seem
Alive as of old to the lips, and leap
Spirit to spirit as lovers use.

And that was all—just the name of the man that Molly always dreaded and the two verses from Swinburne's "Triumph of Time." Two verses that Prosper knew—full of a weariness too great, a despair too profound for the wild hope that leaped in the second of the verses to lessen or to lighten either.

Prosper reflected, momentarily caught more by the name of Asana than by the passion of grief that only too obviously had inspired the poet to quote those particular verses.

"That's valuable," said Prosper staring absently at the paper. "If Molly dreaded the Japanese she probably had a very good reason!"

He recalled that curious gesture of Asana at the holly-encircled clearing the day before.

"Asana may have been another admirer of Molly—even a suitor—though the mother said nothing of that to me," he mused. "Yet, it might fit!"

He wished now that he had decided to confront Berkeley Morris before the youth had been able to leave the camp.

Even more he wished that he had been able to find time to call and see Morris on the previous day.

Forearmed with the item of knowledge which the poet had given him, he might have made more of Asana.

"If the boy can tell me this much, he may be able and willing to tell me more—much more about Molly's dread of the Japanese."

"Though she cares nothing at all for vengeance now, yet because the ill deeds of the living must ever be the concern of the living—" He stopped abruptly—like a man faced by some unsuspected menace, some sudden specter....

"Must ever be the concern of the living!" read Prosper, and paled, turning to stare over his shoulder in the direction which Berkeley Morris had taken. He glanced back to the verses.

"I wish we were dead together to-day—
Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight..."

Prosper crammed the sheet in his pocket, turned and ran as he had never run before—flying through the opal mists, calling the name of the handsome little poet as he ran.

The grim detective, Inspector Meek, would have thought him mad if he could have seen that wild and urgent racing.

But Prosper knew—and his feet were winged by what he had divined from that heartbroken cry of the boy.

He headed with a strange, quite instinctive confidence through the mists, and it flashed into his mind that he was hastening to a spot already made tragic—that place within the circle of hunched and dark and motionless holly bushes which he had visited the day before.

Long before the hollies loomed through the lacy mist he heard a far report, fog-muted but ominous.

Then, as he ran, a muffled crescendo of hoofs drummed before him, and the mists seemed to project a horse, furiously ridden, moving swiftly, coming down upon him at a tremendous speed.

It was upon him instantly, passed him at full gallop not more than ten feet to his right.

Though he did not cease to run at his greatest speed, Prosper turned his head as he ran and saw that the rider was a man, naked except for the great furry skin of some animal slung about him. He flogged the big pony furiously like a man pursued. He turned his head to glare at Prosper as he passed, and a great, grayish dog, running like a wolf at the heels of the pony, turned also to snarl as they passed.

Preoccupied, intent on Berkeley Morris though he was, yet born of his knowledge and experience of things, two thoughts pierced Prosper's mind like arrows as he went on. One was that the pony was too big and with too stylish an action to be one of the coarse-bred Forest ponies, and the other thought was that the racing, wolflike dog was no ordinary Forest lurcher.

But these thoughts led him, even as he ran, to another—a chilling and monstrous deduction—incredible.

He cast it out—or temporarily aside—as he raced up to the holly clump, between two great bushes, into the clearing. Even as he swung into the place he knew what he would find there.

The body of Berkeley Morris lay, quite still, on the short turf in the exact spot where, only a few hours before, Hambledon, the forester, had discovered Molly O'Mourne.

Close by lay a medium-bore revolver—rusty, of a type long obsolete—a thing which once had been known as a "bulldog," and had had its period of popularity in the days before the automatic pistol was known.

His hands clenched, bitterly railing at what he chose to call his "slowness," Prosper looked down at the pale, handsome face of the boy.

Not long before he had looked down on the still, white face of Molly O'Mourne—and it wrung his heart to realize now what a perfect little couple these two children made. Meant for each other, matched for each other, born for each other—and now dead, both dead. Too young—too lovely to have died so soon....

There was a mist that was not of the morning in the eyes of Prosper Fair as the lines came back to him....

Far in the dark with the dreams and the dews
And dreaming, grow to each other and weep,
Laugh low, live softly, murmur and muse,
Feel the dust quiver and quicken and seem
Alive as of old....

Very carefully Prosper studied the wound, the position of the revolver, and the ground about the boy.

For a long time Prosper tracked these hoofprints in both directions, poring over them.

He stopped at the edge of the clearing to glance back at the motionless figure behind him.

Plutus accompanied him uneasily—twice the terrier half halted, turning to stare back at the clearing, whining uncertainly.

"That's quite all right, old man," said Prosper. "No harm can come to that boy now—no harm. It suits—it fits in—to leave him so. We are living too near the edge of suspicion to invite it unnecessarily—and there are other reasons why it must not be Prosper who announces his discovery of that—reunion.... Leave it to Prosper. Heel, Plutus."

"There are, close at hand, those who will say that Berkeley Morris was murdered by the prehistoric-style man, for those hoofprints are ominous—or will seem ominous to any one who has not studied them with some care," mused Prosper, aloud.... But as he approached Lovell's place, he threw off his preoccupation. That was as well, for everybody came out to welcome him—Stolid Joe bulkily foremost, prying with a diligent trunk tip about Prosper's pocket.

"Yes, yes, old humbug, I know," said Prosper. "Take it then—take a man's last apple if you have the heart to do it."

There was one for Patience also. Both the elephant and the donkey were calmly confident that, on the whole, apples grew in Prosper's pocket.

Eli Lovell, beady-eyed, interested, obviously great friends with the stolid one, was very ready for prolonged conversation, but Prosper with a very convincing air of regret disengaged himself as quickly as possible, explaining that he was imperatively called to London that day and had only looked in just to see that they were all right and to deposit Plutus with Eli until called for.

Ruefully they all accepted this and, gayly promising to bring them all a present from London if they were good, Prosper left them immediately, heading back to Normansrood in hope of engaging the antiquated hire car at the village inn to take him to Brockenhurst, where he might catch the morning express to London.

CHAPTER XII
Prosper Goes To Town

SO furiously did the village hire-car rattle him over to Brockenhurst that Prosper had time to send off a few telegrams before the train arrived.

Then, alone in a first-class carriage, he settled down to think over the many questions which were calling loudly in his mind for answer. There was, for example, that nervous V.C., Major Giles Wakeling. At first he had been in the nature of a puzzle to Prosper, hovering, in his anxious, half-embarrassed way, between Wolf's Hold, Normansrood and Tufter's Wait. Of course, he had explained quite frankly on the occasion of their first meeting, that he had taken apartments in Normansrood village in the hope that the Forest air and the quiet peace of the hamlet would help tauten up his unstrung nerves. But Prosper no longer believed the whole of that.

Long since, the major by act and word had inadvertently explained himself and his presence there.

Prosper was quite sure that Major Wakeling was retained by Crystal Sheen, his duty being to act as a sort of unobtrusive guard to Alan Byrne.

The statement made in a moment of chagrin by the ferocious-mannered Meek, to the effect that Major Wakeling ran a detective agency at Savoy Chambers, Prosper believed to be true. Probably, the major had lost his money (if he had ever had any) and, desiring to supplement his retired pay, had conceived the idea of achieving that by running a gentlemanly private inquiry office. It was quite the sort of thing that a retired major might figure himself succeeding at—just as a sailor might, and frequently does, esteem himself likely to be a great success as a farmer; or a town bank clerk appraise himself as cut out by nature for a champion poultry raiser. Whatever the major's reason, Prosper was prepared to believe Inspector Meek on a point of that sort.

And if Crystal Sheen had been so anxious and uneasy about Alan Byrne that she felt she would like to engage a secret guard for him—one who, without his knowledge, should always be more or less at hand to intervene between him and danger, then such a man as Major Giles Wakeling would appear—to Crystal—the ideal man for that task. He was famous, decorated for sheer courage, big, of imposing appearance, a gentleman.

"She would have him at any price. She'd hardly realize the condition of his nerves—thinking mainly of Alan's."

"Well, not such a bad choice—nerves or no nerves.... But that leads us to another and more important point. Cousin Crystal believes Alan needs protection—and, being rich and very much in love with him, she provides it. Very wise. But that implies an enemy—a dangerous one. Who is the enemy?"

"Dillon Mant for one—obviously. We know that she did not like him—probably with reason—and influenced his discharge from Alan's employment. Wisely, in my opinion...."

"Yes, Dillon Mant is the enemy Crystal fears. And it was Mant whose arrival the major, on his belly like the serpent of the dust, was watching from the heather yesterday. Asana, the Jap, and that hawk-faced housekeeper, Crystal evidently trusts, or she would not leave Alan to them. And the old groom there.

"But I—yea, even little Prosper—I know that Dillon Mant gives Asana much money; and I know that Asana visited, behaving curiously, that tragic clearing among the holly clumps, and, further, I know that although, when alone, Asana regards the murder of Molly O'Mourne with bitterly mingled feelings, yet, in company with Dillon Mant the Japanese speaks of that tragedy as a man might speak of an unexpected stroke of good luck. And Dillon Mant agrees with him—and is so venomously annoyed at the thought that he has been overheard in conspiracy with Asana that, about as logically as a disturbed and striking puff adder, he is prepared to shoot a possible listener.... To complete the puzzle, Alan Byrne observes in the tone of one half drugged, that Molly O'Mourne is, in a way, to be envied. And Molly and Byrne—if Molly's mother is to be believed—were unacquainted—had never met each other...!"

"That is the murder as reflected—to one purblind and groping—in the mirror of Tufter's Wait at present..." he said, and was silent, thinking, for a long time.

"Berkeley Morris shot himself because life seemed not worth while living without Molly. That is the murder as reflected in the poet's mirror.... Though there are those who unaware of that boyish note to me might believe that he was killed by the night-rider...!"

"The night-rider—what picture of the murder is to be seen in his dark mirror...?

"He is a man of blood—a killer. A creature of the darkness—a horseman who chooses to ride upon his errand in the shifting half lights of a wild moon. A skin-clad specter that kills as he goes and throws away his weapons—weapons a hundred thousand years old.... From this one it would seem that nobody is safe—neither the goats of Eli Lovell, nor Detective-Inspector, nor Prosper Fair. Nor Molly O'Mourne? I wonder.... He appeared first in the neighborhood of Wolf's Hold about two months ago, but nobody cares to pursue him—except Jack Hambledon, whose duty requires him to investigate such—apparitions. The wild trample of a hurrying horse's hoofs passing through Normansrood at night starts bolts shooting home, door locks grinding. Nobody cares to go out—yet nobody has cared to make a fuss. That's because they're oversensitive, these shy, reserved, forest folk."

"Well, Molly O'Mourne would have been an easy prey to this one—if he sought easy prey.... If the analyst finds human bloodstains on that first ax—then it is merely a question of time before the night-rider is taken.... A madman—a man possessed? Presently, we shall see."

Prosper smiled faintly—for among the telegrams he had sent off had been one to Captain Dale, his agent at Derehurst Castle and the great estate surrounding it, asking Dale to send to Brockenhurst Station by that evening a certain polo pony of Prosper's.

"If it had not been for that polished ax last night I should not have believed the night-rider to be a man-stalker," mused Prosper. "But that weapon certainly was aimed at Meek, at me, or at some unknown on the edge of the firelight—some one listening, perhaps, to Meek and myself.... And if he killed Molly, it must have been without warning or premeditation—for if she had dreamed of such danger she would never have walked alone across the Forest at night!"

"Suppose the rider were Dillon Mant—certainly the least well-balanced person I've seen or heard of in the neighborhood so far—why should he murder Molly? Except for sheer wantonness. But a man who kills for wantonness is not normally a man to count money so very nicely and precisely as Mant had counted to Asana yesterday. No....

For the rest of the journey, he sat silently in his corner, with closed eyes. If he had not rolled cigarettes at intervals, dropping them half smoked, one might have thought he slept.

But there was nothing sleepy about him when presently, at Waterloo Station, he walked with Lady Crystal Sheen, to the big Daimler in which she had come to meet him....

She was awaiting him at the barrier of the ticket-collector, but she was questioning him before they reached her car.

"Tell me, Prosper, why did you come up to-day? Why did you telegraph that you wished to see me—for me to meet you? I am coming back to the Forest to-morrow—I told you. It—it doesn't mean that you have bad news?"

Prosper, wholly regardless of the railway crowd, hurrying, like ants, about them, boyishly slipped a shabby arm round her expensively clad shoulders and tightened it reassuringly. "My dear Crystal—what a notion! Bad news travels far too fast for me to endeavor to accelerate it in person. No. There's no bad news. I have business in town. I have to see my bank folk. Ludicrous, that, isn't it? But, as you should know, people who own estates have to find the money to keep them up. They've long ago ceased, in Merrie England, to be self-supporting. And I understand that there is a scheme—probably shark-like—afoot, whereby a few selected investors may heavily enrich themselves. I am about to be inducted on to the ground floor. That's all. If you like I'll persuade them to let you and your Alan in, also. If you wish to have a flutter—and if the thing is sound."

"Why, is that all! Just money? Oh, Prosper—that's not like you somehow. Still...."

"No—I know. But times are hard for the idle rich... one may as well be sane, Crystal. I'll get you and Alan in—if my people approve the scheme. Who are your respective bankers?"

"Perhaps you'll hear from them, if the thing's any good. There! That's that. Business first, cousin—and thank God, it's finished."

He began to wind himself up a cigarette that would have looked quite chic at an East End coffee stall, but was hopelessly out of place in the boudoir on balloon tires that Crystal called her car.

"Still, I know men very much worse. He will be all right—with a little patience. Nerve, really. What on earth made him work so hard, Crystal? He has plenty of money—and so have you. Why do people work themselves into ill health for just pride—or something?" asked Prosper.

"There's a kind of Duke—a relative of mine—who could answer that question. He—he's the type of lunatic that would work himself into a hospital for sake of a Ludgate Hill hawker with a sick wife, if he felt it called for," replied the Lady Crystal dryly.

"He's that kind of an ass, is he?" said Prosper, fluently. "Dukes often are, I've noticed... but seriously, Crystal, I don't understand!"

"Oh, Alan was contriving a special sort of play—a big thing. Really big. He was desperately serious about it. He thought it would matter—a play with a purpose. He studied the thing—the materials—trying to do it well—to the very verge of a breakdown. And, luckily, I, in league with the doctors, stopped him just in time."

"I see. That was—timely, Crystal," said Prosper, adding, as an afterthought and very casually indeed. "What was the subject of the play—the—er—theme?"

But presently she turned, setting her great black eyes in an even, very steady stare at Prosper.

"It was a superstition of Alan's never to divulge the subject of the plays until his plays were finished satisfactorily. So, you see, I can't tell you that, Prosper?" she said, her voice quivering.

"Can't you? Can't you tell me that—a little thing like that? Better tell Prosper. He's not your enemy, you know. No. He hasn't got a subtle, dangerous, deadly conspiracy against your happiness. Eh? Not Prosper—that silly ass of a Duke. Why should he?... Better tell Prosper, cousin. Come on—tell Prosper."

"No, no—I won't. I can't. Oh, Prosper, please don't press me—only, please, please, use all your brains and all your skill to—to help me...."

"I'm afraid..." she sobbed. "Why, Crys—Crys—all right! It will be all right!"

"I am a fool—I know very well what an utter fool I am to be upset—but Alan isn't well and I don't know what to do to help him.... I engaged the very bravest man, Major Wakeling, a V.C. and everything, to do his very best, but it doesn't seem any use, Prosper. And Asana is as devoted as a man could possibly be—and Juliet Grey, the housekeeper, would do anything for him. Peter Light, the groom, is one of our own grooms from Eastminster, absolutely trustworthy—and yet, somehow, Alan doesn't get on. It's as if he were somehow haunted, Prosper...."

"I knew—oh, I knew very well when I went away yesterday that Alan wasn't well," she said, hopelessly. "I knew quite well that you and the major would not find it very amusing to be with Alan for tea—or whisky and soda—or whatever it was. I am quite sure that he went into one of his rigid moods—blindish and frozen and deaf and dumb-cataleptic! I've seen him like that dozens of times—though nobody ever knew!"

"No, no—how should they? I mean about Alan. Just a temporary hitch in the old brain!" said Prosper, comfortably. "It's a common enough trouble—almost as common as catarrh," he added, blandly untruthful.

"Why, it's obvious enough. People are so queer about it. Skin can go temporarily wrong, mucous membranes can go temporarily wrong, almost anything can go temporarily wrong, and people say casually, 'Send for the doctor to write a prescription—it'll be all right.' But let the brain—the most delicate and perfect, the most exquisite, the milli-microscopic—good word that, Crystal, full-choke in both barrels—organ of the whole lot, go temporarily wrong, and the cry is, 'Away with him! Bats! Belfries! Mice! Cupboards! Hide him! Deepest dungeon reserved!'... They just don't understand, Crystal. But cousin Prosper does—so hadn't you better tell old Prosper?"

"All right, Crystal. I understand—and I don't suppose it will matter much. But there's another matter. I suppose you have access to Alan's house? Would you mind terribly if I asked you to let me look over it—if it's unoccupied."

"There's a butler and his wife there," said Crystal Sheen. "Yes, of course you may. But I can't come with you. I will telephone Waytes and he will show you over."

"Thank you, Crystal. It may be rather valuable to me—more so to you and Alan."

He glanced at his watch, seemed surprised at the hour and declared that he must hurry to the city forthwith.

"You and Alan and I will ride together in the Forest in a day or two, cousin—I'm having a pony sent down there for me," he said, reminded her that she must telephone the butler, Waytes, at Alan Byrne's house in Hanover Square, pressed her hand, stepped out of the car, and was gone.

Ten minutes later he was walking into the head office of the Metropolitan Bank, of which he was one of the many attractively betitled directors, though he did painfully little in the way of directing. Before he left that office he was aware that Alan Byrne, who banked with the Metropolitan, had drawn checks in favor of Dillon Mant, during the past two months, to the extent of nearly three thousand pounds.

Some hours later he was to be seen at the door of Alan Byrne's house, in conversation with a cheerful-looking butler—who was holding a folded five pound note in a plump but prehensile hand, obviously well adapted for the holding of such treasure.

"Not at all, your Grace, pardon me—a great privilege to show your Grace over the house, thank you!" said the butler, and bowed deeply as shabby, plus-foured Prosper swung over the threshold, smoking a cigarette that would have looked well in a taxi driver's case—that is to say, the space between his ear tip and his skull.

Three hours later he was riding a beautiful bay polo pony across the Forest from Brockenhurst Station to King's Halt Hall, where after a stroll with Sir Gatsby round the big place, he dined....

At ten o'clock that night he was at Eli Lovell's place, eating bread and cheese and drinking cider with Eli....

And half an hour later he was sitting in his caravan, studying through a magnifying glass a minute scrap of paper about one inch long by a quarter of an inch wide that bore on it a few letters of minute writing in ink which had become so faded and rusty that it was well-nigh indecipherable.

Tethered to a wheel of the caravan was the big pony, well-rugged, but saddled and bridled, so that at a moment's notice, and with only the fractional pause needed to tighten the girths, slip the rope halter, and slide in the bit, Prosper could be away pursuing whatever might seem to him to be worthy of pursuit.

CHAPTER XIII
After The Galloping Specter

FOR a long time Prosper studied that minute scrap of paper, picked up out of the fringe of a carpet at Byrne's house in town. Occasionally he looked up and brushed finger tips across the misted window, peering out to see whether the moon was up.

Presently he put the paper scrap in an envelope, and the envelope in a drawer, and sat again to study a number of slips containing a list of dates, of names, and of figures. On another blank slip he made some notes, then pinned this slip to the others, and placed these with the envelope. Next he added to his board a page torn from a notebook bearing the titles of a number of books.

Then he made a list of names—the names of everybody he had met since he arrived at Wolf's Hold, including that of Lady Crystal.

Some of these names he crossed out, and sat studying his list with absent eyes for some minutes—until the moon won clear of the high banks of heavy clouds which had been eclipsing her.

Then he threw the list into the drawer with the air of one who throws away something of little value, and stood up.

Plutus, who had accompanied him from Lovell's Place, rose, too, with his customary eagerness, but Prosper wiped what might be termed the smile off the semi-terrier's face with one word.

"No, old warrior—I fear not. Not to-night," said Prosper. "Sorry. Yours it is this night to guard the hearth and home—while Prosper and Charleston roam the shadowy plains.... The fact is, tike, that I may find myself confronted with the necessity of having to put my best foot extremely foremost in order to avoid extensive alterations to the shape of my skull (such as it is, Plutus, such as it is) by a stone ax, a flint club, or some such matter—wielded by a master wielder of such implements."

He stooped, patting the dog, talking in the half absent, half idle way he affected with his animals.

"We are going a-hunting after the galloping specter with the prehistoric complex—and that is no fit pastime for small tikes."

"Plus fours and spurs—truly an affrighting combination! Never let it be known, Plutus, or we should be sent to the Tower of London by order of the House of Lords, escorted by and handcuffed between the editors of the Tailor and Cutter and Men's Wear!" He laughed gayly at his small joke.

"No—but, seriously, hound, we may quite easily find ourselves with the choice of bolting from the night-rider or of shooting him in sheer self-protection. And as we shall naturally prefer bolting to bloodshed, where, in such a case, would you be, lion-heart? In the jaws of that great, sliding, wolflike beast that appears to attend our axman on his prowlings! And nothing could save you then. So—guard the home fires, friend of my loneliness, and all will be well."

He had spoken airily, for that was his way, but his face was grave and his eyes were sad and boding as he left the caravan, locked the door behind him, and moved round to the big pony.

Like all his many animals—and Prosper maintained a considerable menagerie at Derehurst—the pony seemed to adore the quiet-spoken, gentle-mannered Mr. Fair. And, indeed, Charleston, as Prosper had playfully called him, doubtless because of his fidgety feet (though in polo circles he was known as Jack-in-the-Box), had no reason to dislike or dread his owner for, being by far the best and most uncannily intelligent of Prosper's polo ponies, he had never known anything but kindness and, within sane reason, encouragement.

Prosper believed him to be faster than the flying pony of the night-rider and, he hoped, as sure-footed and quick-eyed.

If any horse could avoid the rabbit holes that sieved the ground in the neighborhood of Wolf's Hold, Charleston could, though, as Prosper very well knew, no man could hope to gallop in half darkness about that neighborhood long without coming to grief—a broken leg for the horse, a broken neck for the rider. The chances were about equal for horse and rider—probably Prosper would not have risked throwing away one of the best and brainiest polo ponies in the country on any other terms. A fair chance for each and the devil take the shirker was about Prosper's unspoken motto in these matters.

"It will be either a rather dull or a rather ugly night's outing for us, Jack, my friend," said Prosper, as he cinched up. "What I mean to say, there will be no half and half business. No.... Gently, lunatic! That's only a moon—just a common or garden moon. Did you think it was a cheese on fire?... Right! All right!"

He laughed softly, a little thrilled himself, as he steadied the dancing, rather excited pony with a powerful and practiced wrist; patted a pocket to make certain that he carried a seven-shot last argument, in case a desperate solution of his puzzle was forced on him; took the heavy riding crop from under his arm, and cantered quietly out into the patchy light of the cloud-harried moon.

Charleston danced happily along, too charmed with this novel nocturnal outing to fret much because he was held in so steadily—though once, within three minutes of leaving the camp, he was reined in remorselessly, and forced to be still, while Prosper, turning in his saddle, listened intently to a strange and rather puzzling sound that came down wind to him.

"If I had not had the experience of Stolid Joe that has fallen to my lot, Jack, and consequently did not know him to be obedient and placid and prone to remain close to where he had his supper and expected soon to have his breakfast, I might believe that Joseph was loose and wandering, talking to himself as he wanders."

"No. I think not. I'm glad of that, Jack Charleston, for it would not have answered at all. Not at all. An elderly elephant on a spree in the Forest to-night decidedly would not have suited anybody's arrangements."

Prosper had no real expectations of meeting and, with luck, following the night-rider, but there was just a chance that he might do so. He had very little to guide him in his search—though, even so, he had rather more than Meek or, he believed, anybody else in the neighborhood.

But he was prepared to be patient, and to ride out for many a night's watching and waiting and listening.

He was convinced that there was a vital connection between the prowlings of the night-rider and the murder of Molly O'Mourne—though this was an instinct rather than a serious judgment founded on solid facts. Yet, curiously enough, he was certain that the first ax bore no stain but that of the kids belonging to the old gypsy, Lovell.

It was his intention to-night, or if not to-night, then whenever he chanced to sight the prehistoric man, to close with him and get at least a clearer idea than the foggy dawn of Berkeley Morris's suicide had given him of what he looked like, and to discover why he indulged in these rides, even, if possible, to identify him.

It was a chancy business, for Prosper had satisfied himself during his talk with Sir Gatsby Thorburn that there were at least twenty men in the neighborhood who owned a pony of sorts, and every man in the whole district owned at least one dog.

And any one of these might be the rider—finding some queer satisfaction in his moonlit ranging. One cannot watch twenty men at once and, aided to his decision by a few scraps of knowledge he had already picked up, Prosper was tolerably certain that his method was the one likeliest to prove effective—even though he might ride the Forest for many nights without success....

He believed that he was already much farther along the road which would lead to the discovery of the murderer than anybody else—not excluding Inspector Meek, or Major Wakeling, or any of the local police....

But that he was not the only one on the watch to-night was proved to him as he passed out of the shadows of Wolf's Hold at the Normansrood end.

CHAPTER XIV
The Night Of Watching Eyes

CHARLESTON shied, half seriously, half playfully, as a man stepped out of a block of deep shadow at the extreme western corner of Wolf's Hold and ran a few paces forward, snatching at the bridle of the pony with his left hand, and thrusting the automatic pistol in his right hand forward at Prosper.

"Halt, you! Who are you? Where are you going—and where are you from?" came a truculent demand in Inspector Meek's harshest and most metallic voice. He thrust himself closer.

"Come on, now! Don't you try to play the fool with me, man. Get off and explain yourself. In the name of the law, you!"

As, no doubt, he intended it to be, the detective contrived to make it sound quite a little menacing. And, as Prosper instantly realized, he was well entitled to do that, for if as Meek apparently believed, Prosper had been the real night-rider, then the detective was seriously in danger of getting one of those ugly stone axes buried in his skull before he could press the trigger of the weapon in his very ready right hand.

Moreover, Meek was nervous and jumpy in his unaccustomed surroundings—and pistol accidents happen easily and very quickly.... Prosper had no ambition to figure as the casualty in a pistol accident and did not delay an answer to the savage challenge.

"I am Prosper Fair!" he said sharply, then laughed a little. "Why, Inspector! Do you introduce yourself so formidably to everybody you meet after dark in this jolly little Forest?"

"You think this is a fairly good place to lie in wait for our prehistoric friend?" he asked.

"I do," said Meek dryly. "He's galloped this way often enough—and as it's easier than galloping over tall heather I shouldn't be surprised if he gallops this way again. You're out after him, too, I suppose?"

"Why, hardly that. I am taking a big circle round on chance—I shall try to skirt close to as many places where cattle and goats and so on are pegged out as I can. But it's quite at random. I fancy you've as good a chance of meeting him here as I have of running into him out there—" Prosper's gesture indicated a great area of the blue-black moorland.

"Well, you'll stand a good chance of riding him down if you sight him, for—as near as I can tell in this light—you're on a mighty good bit of horse-flesh!"

"Well, good hunting, Mr. Fair..." he said, just a shade grudgingly. "We ought to get the blackguard before long. We need to. You know young Berkeley Morris has been murdered—on the same spot as Molly O'Mourne. We've had the bloodhounds out again...."

"Yes—I knew about Berkeley Morris, before I went to town to-day," said Prosper quietly. "Did you have better luck with the bloodhounds to-day?"

"Well, they found a trail and ran it to a finish. It was a bit puzzling, Mr. Fair. We went back to the beginning and they ran the same trail—to the same place."

"That was rather interesting of them..." said Prosper. "Is it permitted to ask whose trail it was, and where it led?"

"Why, I don't quite know that I can answer that just at present. I'm working on it. Later on, perhaps, Mr. Fair. Maybe we'll be able to swap information."

"Oh, quite. As you say, Inspector. I didn't wish to pry. It was just a careless question."

"Well, good hunting, Mr. Fair—good hunting!" His tone was almost effusive—extraordinarily unlike its normal harshness.

He was clear now of the cliff-like looming of Wolf's Hold. The strip of turf was narrower here, running along between the heather and the small stream that wandered through the shallow valley. He reined the pony in to a walk now, for silence's sake, and kept every sense taut and ready.

Five hundred yards on from the spot where Detective-Inspector Meek waited in his ambush of shadow, a man ran out swiftly from a clump of thorn bush, and snatched at the bridle. His left arm, seeming immensely swollen, he threw up as though to guard his head!

The huge arm fell as though it had been touched by a red hot iron, and the major laughed ruefully.

"I came back to-night, Major.... Did you mistake me for our prehistoric phantom?... But what's the matter with your arm?"

Prosper peered close, sparing a flash from his electric torch. Unlike Meek, the major seemed completely unarmed.

"Oh, just a precaution—a bit of rug wrapped round and round..." he explained uneasily. "Useful in case of an ax blow—or an attacking dog!"

"Yes, indeed," agreed Prosper. "A man doing a single-handed patrol in this neighborhood cannot be too careful. I met friend Meek some distance back. He, too, is out on duty to-night. I gather that he's had a hard day—with the bloodhounds."

The major did not answer immediately. And when he spoke it was almost in a whisper.

"If I were you I would not discuss it very freely with Inspector Meek," said the major.

"Yours—from the body of that boy to your caravan. Meek seemed very impressed—possibly it fitted with some wild theory of his own.... Forgive me, Fair—but—as a matter of fact—I believe Meek is secretly obsessed with the idea that you are deeply implicated, and he still hopes to fasten something on you. It's absurd—but it can be awkward. You should be careful."

"Thanks, Major—it's good-natured of you to warn me. But Meek's quite hopelessly wrong. That poor lad Morris shot himself—and the trail the hounds picked up was his trail.... I can prove that easily.... If I had been just a shade quicker—more intelligent—I could have saved Berkeley Morris from himself. But later will do for that."

"By the way, Major, I saw Lady Crystal in town to-day. She explained everything about her arrangement with you concerning Alan Byrne. She's my cousin, you know... we'd better have a chat about that to-morrow. I think we understand each other. But this isn't quite the place—or time—don't you think. To-morrow—come and share a vagabond's breakfast at the camp. Will you?"

"Right. Be careful, my boy—things are queer about here these days—queer—too queer..." muttered the major, who moved clear of the horse and instantly was absorbed by the dense darkness about the thorn bush.

"The forest is full of eyes watching from the dark nooks and crannies of the night, oh pony..." murmured Prosper.

Just as a couple of pale squares of light swung slowly into view away on Prosper's right front—the windows of Tufter's Wait—Charleston shied to the left with a bound so violent and unexpected that Prosper was all but thrown. Even as he was twisting back into the saddle yet another man rose up out of a clump of bracken.

Prosper saw a gun go up and swung his heavy riding crop at the long barrel like lightning. That saved his life by a hair's-breadth. He felt the hot blast of the charge rush past his head—if he had not been so close to the would-be killer nothing could have saved him. But the charge of shot from an ordinary sporting gun does not issue from the muzzle in a fan-shaped cloud. It remains packed in a compact mass for some feet after it leaves the muzzle, then begins to scatter.

Balanced on the rearing pony like the practiced rider he was, Prosper beat down the gun before his assailant could bring it to bear again, shouting as he struck.

The gun fell to the ground. Prosper heard the forester's ejaculation of dismay as he pulled the pony round.

"Good God, sir—I—I thought that you were this murdering night-rider—I—I might have killed you, sir! Never dreamed for a minute it could be anybody else! He's out to-night—he's on the move! We've all got to watch out to-night, sir. He's out!"

"All right, Hambledon, don't worry! You're not the first that's mistaken me for the rider, to-night. It's all right—but, my man, you are rather dangerously impulsive with this firearm of yours! Here you are—take it. But you must be a bit more—restrained. You've got no right—not a shadow of right to shoot the man at sight. Why, there's nothing proved against him at all—except possibly the death of old Lovell's kids. You can't shoot on suspicion—why, if you killed him, and it was shown that he had nothing to do with the murder, you'd be lucky to get off with a long sentence for manslaughter—they might even make a murder charge of it—you must exercise better judgm—"

He broke off suddenly, as some distance back, seeming to come from the dark corner of Wolf's Hold where the detective lurked, watching, a long and dreadful scream—the wild panic cry of a horse in fearful danger, or in agony—came piercing through the night.

Then came another sound that made Prosper start—the distant trumpeting of an angry elephant!

"It sounds as if the impossible has happened! That's the elephant—angry, furious! And he's loose!" snapped Prosper.

Then out of the black and white shadowland before him came the sharp report of a pistol.

Prosper reined in at the corner of Wolf's Hold to see Detective-Inspector Meek, a flashlight in one hand, a pistol in the other, bending over a dark form writhing on the ground before him.

CHAPTER XV
The Ax Of Bronze

IT was only for a few seconds that Prosper imagined the dark shape on the ground at Inspector Meek's feet to be human.

Even as he slid from his pony the thing gave a queer, rather dreadful snuffling howl, then, after one final convulsion, lay still.

Prosper saw that it was a big Alsatian dog. "One of those big wolf dogs, Mr. Fair," jarred the Inspector, sourly. "I've just put him out of his misery! There wasn't a chance for him—he was smashed—and the horse only escaped by a miracle. I never saw such a sight in my life—why, if the elephant had spotted me I'd have been...."

"The elephant! Which way did he go, man? Was he loose? Alone, I mean! Was old Lovell with him?" Prosper rapped out his questions as quickly as he could speak.

"Go? Back along the edge of Wolf's Hold, towards your camp—and he seems to me as if he's gone killing mad or something. You'd better go easy—if you're following him—easy. I tell you he swung that dog up heavens high and flung him yards—yards—I thought he had the horse, too! Didn't you hear that horse yell—it turned me cold for a...."

But Prosper had swung on to his pony and was gone. All the detective heard was a shout—trailing, as it were over Prosper's shoulder as Charleston shot away.

"He may be a fool—or a Duke—or just an eccentric young ass, but there's nothing the matter with his nerve!" muttered the man from Scotland Yard—a judge of nerves.

His face was white and he started a little, wheeling like a flash, his automatic pistol thrust forward, as he heard quick steps coming up on his left.

"Right! All right, Inspector! This is Wakeling—Major Wakeling! D'ye want any help—I heard a shot!"

"Did you see the galloping man, Inspector? He passed me like a man on a runaway. Was it Fair—or the night-rider?"

"I heard a horse scream—and, unless I'm fancying things, an elephant was trumpeting!"

"Sure it was—his elephant. Came within a foot of smashing me, that monster of his!" grumbled Meek. "I tell you, Major, I've seen a sight tonight...."

"Where is the elephant? He was upset—he may be dangerous, man—something wrong, if I know anything about elephants—which way did he go?"

Detective-Inspector Meek hesitated, glanced at the dog, fumbled for a moment, unbuckling the collar, which he crammed into his pocket, then followed the major.

"I'm wrong—I know it. I'm here to catch a man, not to chase crazy elephants! And our man is lurking round about here somewhere—unmounted, for once in a way."

The detective moved along in the dark shadow of the palisade-like edge of the timber, slowly and very quietly, listening as he went, his pistol ready for instant use.

"Not quite so dashing as our hell-fire, fear-nothing amateur, or even our nervy major," he muttered once, rather acidly. "But then headquarters don't pay me to dash about—they're paying me at present to find and arrest the murderer of Molly O'Mourne!"

He was entirely right. Detective-Inspector Meek had long since had his natural "dash" disciplined and throttled down to an extremely controllable level.

He did not like elephants—indeed, after what he had seen that night he hated and feared them. But, nevertheless, like any other first-class Scotland Yard man, if he had seen the man he wanted sheltering in the middle of a herd of elephants he would have gone to get him—grumbling and scared, perhaps, but stubbornly resolute.

He was anxious to hear from Prosper about the gunshot he had heard away to his left, "if the elephant leaves anything of him...." he growled as he padded silently along.

A few moments' quick riding—too quick over the rotten, rabbit-bored ground—had brought Prosper to his camp.

As he slid from the pony he heard Stolid Joe complaining and snuffling somewhere over by the caravan. He knotted the reins over a bough, switched on his torch, threw an armful of his stored twigs and dried brushwood on to the embers of his fire, kicked them into flame, and turned to the elephant.

Stolid Joe was groping gingerly at the base of the caravan door, snuffling, as though whispering to the whining and excited Plutus inside.

Prosper stood where he was, and called across to him: "Joe! You Joe there! Here! Come over here, Stolid Joe!"

"Huzoor! Come here, you!" said Prosper sharply, using the old elephant's strictly official name.

Joe rolled over to him, grumbling softly. He stopped a few feet away, towering over Prosper. Then he curled his long trunk up and back, saluting politely and, as Prosper, used to him, realized, rather apologetically.

Then, without awaiting an order, he slowly knelt, still mumbling that queer, deep-down note of complaint. His trunk swung slowly round to his left shoulder with exactly the air of one who points, saying:

Prosper went to him and the white ray of his torch settled on the trunk tip and the spot it was pointing to.

Prosper saw that the trunk was bleeding slightly from a tear some inches back from the tip. Just under the shoulder was a bigger wound—an ugly gaping cut, still bleeding, which could only have been inflicted deliberately, and that by a man armed with a heavy and keen-edged weapon.

"Why, you poor, humble old chap, no wonder you lost your temper for a few minutes...! Let me just look at that closer...! Yes. That's the hall mark of our prehistoric friend, or I am much mistaken! All right, old man. There is nothing so bad that it might not be slightly worse—stay so, Joseph mine, and we'll apply healing matters to this, beginning with coconut and brown sugar—for a balm to your more intimate personal feelings."

Moving quickly, Prosper lit lamps, found, shelled and filled with sugar a couple of coconuts—Joe's favorite comfit—and produced certain other succulent matters of a vegetable nature. To these small affairs he invited the elephant's attention.

Then he washed and dressed the wound—a deep clean cut—precisely the kind of cut which might have been inflicted by one of the peculiar weapons in which the night-rider appeared to specialize.

It was just as he finished rinsing the gash that a crackling twig outside the camp brought Prosper's head round.

"A little briskness to-night, Fair, hey?" he said. "It might have been uglier, I fancy...."

"You're neat with your hands," he said. "That's some more of the ax-thrower's work, I suppose. No wonder the elephant lost his temper!"

"You'd better have this, Fair, I think, and please yourself whether you let Meek know of it or not, just as you think fit. I would advise—don't quite know why, but feel that way—yes, I would strongly advise that you keep it to yourself—for the present."

"I almost tripped over it coming along—it was sticking in the turf. It's pretty clear that this is the thing that did the damage to—eh?—your little elephant, as you call him!"

The major chuckled nervously, watching Prosper's lean face in the lamplight as he bent over the weapon the major had brought in.

It was a short-handled, sharp-edged ax of dull bronze, almost small enough to be called a tomahawk, but far heavier—a thing that was capable of crushing a man's skull like an eggshell.

"I mean," said Prosper equably, "that it seems to indicate to me, without much possibility of any mistake, the identity of the ax-thrower."

He touched his lips with a finger in a gesture of warning as Detective-Inspector Meek emerged from the shadows.

They seemed to understand each other extremely well, Prosper and the nerve-shocked V.C.

CHAPTER XVI
Queer Customer, That!

IN spite of the fact that the night-rider had been so close to capture, and yet had evaded it, the detective was in quite an affable humor.

"A little nearer and we should have had him," he said as he came. "Even now, if we had a good dog, we'd get him." He jerked a hand, indicating the moorland.

"He's out there—dismounted and maybe hurt—now. We only need a few more men on the watch—and we'll get them," he said. "And anyway we've learned something to-night—we've got his dog and we know his pony—eh, gentlemen?"

"Yes, and I've a notion that I've seen that chestnut pony before," said the major, thoughtfully. "And not far from here, either. Let me see—just where have I seen a chestnut pony with two white forelegs before...?"

"Eh? A chestnut with two white forelegs?" Inspector Meek's tone was puzzled. "The horse I saw hadn't any white forelegs—and I saw it in full moonlight!"

"It passed me within three feet, and unless I am very much in error it was a light bay, with a queer white splash on its near shoulder. None of its legs were white, I believe, and I have seen it before—in a better light, although it was foggy."

"And I was hoping you gentlemen could help me identify the pony again!" he said bitterly. "Yet here we are all differing about the color of the beast. I thought it was a plain chestnut, the major says it was a chestnut with two white forelegs, and you, Mr. Fair, claim that it was a kind of piebald!"

It was clear from the disappointment in his tone that he had been uncertain himself and had hoped to get a clearer idea from them.

"Oh, well, there's the dog. I oughtn't to have any trouble finding the owner of that...."

He drew the collar from his pocket and held it so that the light of Prosper's lamp fell on the small brass plate which the law requires to be engraved with the owner's name and address.

"But that's impossible!" said the major. "No ordinary woman could throw axes like that...."

"Probably not—it's an extraordinary woman I'm looking for..." snapped Meek. He read from the collar. "Miss Claire Sinclair, Bracken Hall, Beechenhurst, near Lyndhurst...."

"Beechenhurst, Lyndhurst, did you say?" he asked, as yet another figure walked into the camp—the towering figure of Forester Hambledon.

"I question if you will find her at Beechenhurst, Inspector," suggested Prosper mildly.

"Because there is no such place as Beechenhurst in the whole of the Forest," said Prosper.

"Possibly!" Prosper rose, with a final touch at the elephant's wound. "But, of course, anybody can invent a name and have it engraved on a dog collar!"

"Very likely—but they very rarely do." He turned to Hambledon. "You could settle this for us, Forester—where's Beechenhurst, near Lyndhurst?"

"No," snarled Mr. Meek, irritably, "nor do I mean Blastenhurst, man. Beechenhurst—Beechenhurst. That's plain English, isn't it? Somewhere near Lyndhurst? Just exactly where is it, Forester?"

"I've lived in the Forest all my life and I know every place with a name for miles around—but I've never heard of Beechenhurst. There's no such place."

"Bah!... We'll see about that..." said the Inspector acidly. "Some new name, maybe—they're always inventing names for these holiday villages—camps. We'll see to that!"

"There was a shot fired further down the stream—somewhere about where you might have been," he said. "Did you hear it, Mr. Fair."

"Eh, you shot at the rider?" interrupted the inspector. "Good God, man, you can't go shooting at suspected folk in that way.... But did you hit him?" His tone was unexpectedly mild.

"Hit him, sir?" echoed the forester. "Thank God, no—why, it was Mr. Fair! I thought it was the rider—but it turned out to be Mr. Fair!"

"Turned out to be Mr. Fair! D'you hear that, Mr. Fair?" The detective laughed oddly. "He thought it was the rider, and shot at him and it turned out to be you!"

"Well, well, it's a puzzle, isn't it...? What started your elephant going, Mr. Fair?"

"That," he said. "I imagine the madman we call the night-rider threw an ax—possibly with some insane idea of attack, or possibly with the idea of self-defense. Then the elephant charged the pony and missed it—probably worried by the dog which was attacking it...."

He spoke to Joe, who reached out a snaky trunk. Prosper pointed out one or two deep abrasions.

"See that—the dog must have done that. No doubt that's why the elephant caught up the dog, and smashed him.... Either the night-rider was already dismounted—or the pony threw him as it shied and bolted!"

Detective-Inspector Meek thought for a moment. "Yes—you've hit it, Mr. Fair. The rider was dismounted before the elephant was wounded. It all happened within a few yards of me, and it's as you say. You couldn't have described it better—no, not even if you had been there!"

His flat tone was friendly enough, but in spite of the seeming friendliness there was a remote hint of peculiar satisfaction in it. His eyes were on the chestnut Charleston as he spoke.

"Fortunately—except for the dog which seems to have paid for the elephant's unnecessary wounds—no harm has been done to-night, Inspector," he said lightly.

"And now," he said, "I think I will be getting along to Lovell's with the elephant. He is a temporary boarder—in Lovell's barn, you know. Tomorrow, of course, I shall send him home."

"Send him home? Why? If he seems to attract this nighthawk with the axes?" asked the detective.

"Because, I should be sorry—very sorry indeed—for him to get within reaching distance of the night-rider again."

"Why not?" barked the major, who knew elephants. "Because it is quite likely that the elephant would knead him into pulp!"

"Certainly. But to inflict a wound like that on him is not the best way to encourage any beast to stay tame—at least not a beast that has the intelligence and memory and sense of justice of an elephant."

"But if he'd know the night-rider again—by scent or by sight or whatever it is—he might be useful," said the detective.

"Possibly. But he is an old friend of mine. If he killed the night-rider the law quite possibly would condemn him as dangerous. I don't think I quite care to expose him to that risk, do you see, Inspector Meek—an old friend and companion, you understand."

He spoke lightly, laughing a little as he spoke, but there was in his tone a marked invitation to discontinue the subject.

So the inspector discontinued it—he was a hard-shelled customer, but not sufficiently so to demand, in the name of the law, the use of a private citizen's private elephant for the purpose of identifying a murderer—if, and when, arrested.

Prosper produced a bottle of whisky and a syphon, which he gayly notified them they needed against the dews and fogs of the Forest in this, the smallest of the small hours, and showed the major where to replace these articles when finished with. Then he tethered and rugged Charleston, invited the old elephant to accompany him, bade them all good-night, and set out on his short journey to Eli Lovell's barn.

They watched him go—a slight, jaunty figure, strolling along under the lee of his gigantic pal.

"Unusual, perhaps, but a good fellow. Thinks of almost everybody before himself—most unusual," said the major dryly.

"That gentleman has got a nerve I've never seen the like of before," he said. "My charge went so close it must have scorched his face—but he never minded it no more than a butterfly!"

He drank half a glass of straight whisky, collected his gun, said good night, and was gone, moving silently, as woodsmen do.

CHAPTER XVII
Trust Prosper

PROSPER slept late on the following morning, waking to a windless day, and a succession of days of glorious sunshine that transformed the Forest, seeming, in some sort, to ameliorate even the dense green gloom of Wolf's Hold.

And the magic of the sun appeared to touch the people of the place as well—to chase away, for a little, the shadow that had tinged the spirits of the dwellers in and about Normansrood, except for those in two houses in that district, each of which had lost all of youth it had. The sun could bring, as yet, no gayety into the houses where Molly O'Mourne and Berkeley Morris slept.

It was even as though, somewhere in his unknown retreat, the ax-thrower must have responded to the genial sun, for he lay quiescent.

There was a double inquest, with an open verdict in the case of Molly O'Mourne, and, for Berkeley Morris, a verdict of suicide tempered with the customary charitable addition that insures consecrated ground for the overdriven of these times.

The little couple, one of the gentlest and prettiest pairs that ever lived and loved in Normansrood, were buried together, under many flowers—including a magnificent pile of lilies and beautiful blooms that had come from Derehurst Castle—and so were left to sleep—"far in the dark with the dreams and the dews"—even maybe, who knows, to "laugh low, live softly, murmur and muse... spirit to spirit as lovers use...."

An ancient and weatherbeaten person who looked like what he was, a retired menagerie proprietor, and who answered readily (considering his age) to the name of "Mister Mullet" arrived from Derehurst Castle in a motor, and took charge of Stolid Joe, much as a wise and sober man arrives to take charge of his twin brother who has regrettably been getting into mischief....

The sunny days went by, like girls in golden silk wandering dreamily over the heath, and Normansrood recaptured something of its olden immemorial peace.

Major Giles Wakeling responded to the brightness and comported himself a steady old hunter, riding a good deal, seeming to spend much of his time between the camp at Wolf's Hold and the bungalow at Tufter's Wait.

Detective-Inspector Meek hovered like a hawk during those days; ever ready, but never finding a quarry upon which to swoop.

There were several remotely official but un-uniformed men who came to Normansrood, resting much in the daytime and unobtrusively issuing forth at night, watching, but seeing nothing, so that presently they returned to the place from which they came.

Sir Gatsby Thorburn grew noticeably more silent when the murder of Molly O'Mourne was mentioned. Hambledon, the forester, walked the heather and the woodlands as dourly as ever, interfering with none who kept the Forest rules, allowing none to interfere with him.

Like the major, the inspector, Sir Gatsby and others he would drop in at the little camp for an occasional chat with Prosper Fair, but he was not much of a talker and Prosper found him heavy on his hands, though he suffered him as gladly as he could.

And Prosper, between visits to Tufter's Wait and King's Halt Hall, lay serenely doggo, friendly with everybody, foolish with none....

It was at Tufter's Wait that he spent much of his leisure time. Almost daily he would ride there with Lady Crystal. She would call for him on her way across from King's Halt, and because, with the return of the mellow summer days, Alan Byrne's spirits seemed to improve, things were brighter, too, at Tufter's Wait.

Prosper, by sheer chance, was able to brighten them still more on the day after Crystal Sheen returned to King's Halt. Walking down to the village early that morning, he had come upon Inspector Meek, peering at a long tress of coarse, brownish hair with a fragment of thick hide attached to it, that was hanging on a clump of heather.

"Horsehair—probably a couple of ponies have been quarreling—snapping at each other," he said, without much interest. "One got a mouthful of mane, probably more by chance than intention. You see these evidences of pony life all over the Forest. They have nothing to do but graze and get into mischief."

The detective nodded, turning to a stranger who was approaching him with a telegram in his hand. He was one Jackson, the only remaining man of those left to watch at night.

The inspector read it, smiled, and curtly instructed his assistant to arrange for the village motor to be ready to take him over to Brockenhurst Station to catch the London express.

"Good news—if one may judge from your expression, Inspector. I congratulate you," said Prosper in his easy, pleasant way.

"And a good guess at that, Mr. Fair," declared the detective with unusual cordiality. "A dangerous slippery customer I was after when the Forest case cropped up has been arrested—thanks to the man who took the case over, when I was sent down here, having sense enough to follow exactly the plans for a trap which I left him! You'll hear of the case before long—bad blackmail of a society woman—by a clever scoundrel called Mant. A feather in my cap, Mr. Fair. I have to go up on a point that requires explaining—a good point for me—eh? One that will do me a bit of good with the Chief...."

"Mant. Mant," said Prosper in the tone of one who muses. "I've heard the name before somewhere or other."

"Dillon Mant—a reckless, dangerous brute. Educated man—a bit of a star in the night-club circles that the average man doesn't hear of. A cocaine specialist, too."

"Well, he'll be safe for the next few years," he said, nodded, and turned back to the village.

Prosper waited a second, then snatched the tress of horsehair, stuffed it in his pocket, and hurried back to his camp.

Nearly there, he rode behind a clump of thorn, some four hundred yards from the house, dismounted, and settled down to watch the front of the bungalow.

Within a quarter of an hour old Peter Light, the groom, appeared from the stable yard, leading two horses, with which he waited by the veranda. A few minutes later Crystal Sheen and Alan Byrne appeared, evidently about to go riding. Probably Lady Crystal had ridden over for breakfast with Byrne.

Prosper mounted and rode out from the thorns, timing himself to meet them just as they started off. This he did.

They greeted and talked for a few minutes. Crystal was in splendid spirits, obviously because Byrne seemed much better. He was looking less tired, and there was a touch of unaccustomed color on his lean brown face.

Presently Prosper reined bade a pace or so and studied them in an odd little silence for a few seconds. Then he smiled, nodding.

"Prosper is pleased with you," he said, with the air of a grandfather, "and so he will give you two small presents which will help you to enjoy your ride. The first of these is an item of news—secret and confidential—namely, that your old secretary, Dillon Mant, has been arrested on a serious charge of blackmailing some person—a lady in London—and will inevitably soon go to penal servitude for some years."

"That may mean something to you, Alan," he said. "Or, again, it may not." He affected not to notice the sudden relief that flashed to both Crystal Sheen's and Byrne's eyes.

"And the second present is in the nature of a little good advice and a promise. The advice is: 'trust Prosper;' the promise is: 'and all will be well.' There have been queer things—puzzles and complications, doubts and terrors for you both during the past few weeks. Prosper knows that—and even though you couldn't quite bring yourselves to confide your troubles to him, yet he is shortly going to chase them all away—yes, all away! That's a promise."

"Now, go and ride," he said, half turned, then appeared to think of something and spoke again.

"Oh, Alan, I want to write a few letters. May I borrow some of your paper and scribble them in your room?"

"Why, of course...." Byrne called to the housekeeper, Mrs. Grey, who appeared on the veranda, and instructed her to see that Prosper had everything he required.

"She will fix you up as well as Asana could—he's taken a telegram to Normansrood for me," explained Byrne.

Then, thoughtfully, he rode round to the stables and left his horse with Peter Light. He chatted with the old groom for a little, inspected Byrne's second horse, discussed his points and value with the groom, then leisurely made his way into the house, and to Alan Byrne's desk.

There he wrote steadily for a time, then rose, listening. He could hear the housekeeper busy clearing things up after breakfast.

He smiled and returned to Byrne's room, turning the key in the lock as he did so....

When, half an hour later, the housekeeper went into the room he was gone. She went to the French windows and looked out across the Forest, with intent and suspicious eyes. Prosper was nowhere in sight, but Asana, the Jap, was approaching the house.

The woman stepped on to the veranda, beckoning, and Asana came to her there. She told him swiftly of Prosper's visit. The Jap nodded, his face darkening, and he went quickly to the desk, examining the blotting paper, testing the drawers, and minutely scrutinizing every article on the desk. But the blotting pad was clean, the drawers locked, everything in its place.

He scowled round the room, then went over to a huge oak corner cupboard. This was locked. Asana peered intently, anxiously examining the keyhole.

"It is all right," he said in his soft, deferential voice. "That one is brave, yes—a meddler, yes—but he has no sense. It is all right."

He took one of Byrne's cigarettes, lit it and went off to the kitchen with the passée housekeeper.

CHAPTER XVIII
A Free Hand For The Major

BUT Asana was wrong. During the short half hour he had been in the bungalow the gentle-mannered Prosper Fair, moving very swiftly and silently, had learned so much that he was now in a position to explain most of the mystery of axes, and its connection with the murder of Molly O'Mourne.

His face was hard and serious as he took over his pony from the groom and rode slowly away from Tufter's Wait toward Wolf's Hold.

Before he had ridden out that morning he had arrived at what he considered the only possible solution to the mystery of the axes and the ax-thrower. And it had seemed to him then that the murder of Molly O'Mourne had a vital connection with the nocturnal activities of the night-rider.

But now he had learned that it was otherwise. Half the distance back to Normansrood he rode like a man unconscious, or a mechanical thing.

He knew now that he must act swiftly and ruthlessly, even, if necessary, play a little daringly with the law, and it was imperative that he should get help.

"I could manage, I think, with two men. The major would be one, of course. The second...?"

Nothing loath, the pony "went to it," so enthusiastically that within five minutes Prosper was at Major Wakeling's apartments in the village.

The major had just come for what he called his morning tonic—a pint of old beer in a silver tankard. Prosper joined him heartily enough.

But it was not till they were riding quietly back to the little camp by Wolf's Hold that Prosper spoke of what was in his mind.

"Well, Major, the mystery that has darkened this corner of the Forest is about to be—dispersed—that's the word, 'dispersed,' isn't it?—to-night."

"Dispersed! But that's—there's nothing—what I mean to say, I don't understand. Do you mean that you have solved the whole thing?"

"You mean—you definitely mean—that you know who murdered Molly O'Mourne?" demanded the major.

The major's voice was so curiously even and forcedly casual that Prosper glanced at him with a touch of surprise in his face.

"I should not care to say that," said Prosper quietly. "We shall see that to-night, I think."

"I want our friend Meek to do the arresting—and he cannot be here till to-night," explained Prosper.

"I'll tell you presently," said Prosper as they pulled up at the camp. "We'll get together something resembling lunch first, don't you agree?"

Presumably rendered zestful by his recent tonic the major found it extremely easy to agree. He did not regret it, for Prosper was something of a master of the art of camp catering.

It was not until they were smoking a cigarette after the meal that Prosper spoke again of the mystery.

"Well, he's a good valet and all-rounder, I believe; he seems attentive to Byrne and I imagine he's trustworthy enough. A little too thick with that ruffian Dillon Mant—at least, I used to think so, but I gather that, when Mant comes here, as he does occasionally, it's mainly to see that housekeeper, Mrs. Grey. They are some sort of distant cousins, I believe. Maybe she's an old flame of his. But I think Asana's pretty good—reliable—as manservants go."

"Well—better. Much better. Er—practically gone." He hesitated, then went on. "As a matter of fact, Fair, now that we understand each other, I haven't any particularly desperate nerve trouble—though my nerves aren't quite what they should be. But I exaggerated it a good deal as a sort of—call it disguise. I am a pretty rotten detective at my best, and it seemed to me that if I assumed the part of a nervous wreck it would help blind people to the nature of my work, the work Lady Crystal engaged me for, down here: looking after Byrne. I know now that I'm not cut out for this particular way of earning my daily bread, but, on the whole, I've not done too badly, I think. Byrne's been well looked after, and he's improving..." he broke off as Crystal Sheen rode up to the camp.

But now she was very different from the almost feverishly gay and high-spirited girl who had cantered away with Alan Byrne so joyously. She threw herself off her horse and came to Prosper, her face pale and troubled.

"No. I've just sent him off to bed. We had a lovely ride, and he was so much fitter and jollier up to the moment we were nearly back at Tufter's Wait again. Then he began to—be queer again—to—to cloud over in that blurred way I hate. I could see that he was going to have another of those queer, tranced, blindish attacks of his. So I got him to promise that he would go to bed and just rest and think of nothing. He was quite good. I've told Asana and Mrs. Grey and he will be well looked after. And Asana will send Peter Light over to King's Halt Hall to-night to say how he is.... Oh, I think I've seen to everything—only I'm so wretched, Prosper."

"But, my dear, this won't do. This isn't complimentary at all. Didn't I—not three hours ago—specifically promise you that all will be well? Do I break my promises, Crystal Sheen, or do I not? Are not those Devizes idiots every conceivable kind of idiot but the kind that tells lies—liars, in fact? Yet you begin to worry! Why? Supposing Alan does have a—bad spell? He is improving nevertheless. He had had them before—will have them again. But he will gradually cease to have them. You've got to face that, my dear. Old Prosper is truly sorry for you and everything shall be done to help Alan—and presently all will be well, as I observed before. But you must be patient. Why, at the very moment you rode up, the major and I were perfecting our plans to make quite and absolutely and definitely certain that Alan Byrne should be cared for as no other man in this Forest is cared for! Is that so, Major?"

"Certainly it is so," said Major Giles Wakeling, V.C., D.S.O., in a semi-parade voice that was more convincing than pretty.

"Oh, thank you so, Major, and you, Prosper dear. Of course if you say you will do a thing, then it will be done. Everybody knows that. I am a fool—I know very well that I am a fool to fuss about Alan so—and I shall steady myself somehow or other—only—it's rather wretched for anybody, you see—I mean, when they forget for a moment that you and Major Wakeling and so many good friends are—are—"

"Yes—that's it, standing by. That's exactly it—that is what you're always doing—standing by. You go about doing it! Oh, I know.... It's all right, now."

"Why, of course! Don't fret. Just enjoy your little dance at King's Halt to-night—and say to yourself, 'Alan wouldn't mind—and he is all right, and even if he weren't, the major and Prosper are standing by looking out for him!'"

"Forgive me, Major, if I say that you have not had the good fortune—the sheer luck—to gain the insight into the character of Byrne's Japanese that I have gained—through no particular cleverness of my own!"

"This man Asana is the vilest, most treacherous, cold-blooded and cunning scoundrel I have ever encountered in my life—and we have to deal with him to-night, Major. Later than to-night will be too late. His confederate, Mant, has been arrested and Asana will vanish the instant he learns of the arrest! It is absolutely vital that he should not vanish—that he be pinned."

Prosper was smiling upon the major, and his voice was serene, yet with a steely tone underrunning his words that made the major stare.

"And yet it is equally important that Detective-Inspector Meek is not permitted to blunder in and arrest Asana!" said Prosper.

"That is to say—the man must be in our power, but safe from the law!... And that is vital and desperate. For the sake of Alan Byrne—of Crystal Sheen and—in a kind of way..." he laughed quietly, "for the sake of my word given to Lady Crystal.... Old fashioned that, Major?"

"I would be grateful—and you would be doing a tremendous thing for all concerned—if you could contrive to make a prisoner of Asana to-night, Major.... The woman Grey—a confederate—Peter Light, the groom, will deal with. I have spoken to Peter. He will not fail."

The major's face had changed oddly. It was no longer jovial. On the contrary it was set in lines of such complete and inflexible determination that it was almost cruel.

"I want you—if you are agreeable—to make a prisoner of the Japanese to-night. We will go together to Tufter's Wait just before moonrise. Peter Light will be waiting. Some time about moon-rise I shall leave you. That will be your signal to take the Japanese—as best you can. You will have the whole of the night to work in, if you need it—and Peter will attend to the woman.... Be careful of the Japanese, Major—he is quick-witted, physically swift, entirely unscrupulous, and he will be extremely dangerous. It may even be your life or his. I want you to hold him until I come—or send for him."

"Please repeat that—the instructions! Never mind the warnings—they're noted, Fair. But I must be clear about the orders. Don't mind putting 'em bluntly. I've commanded men and I've always succeeded in exacting obedience from them because I have learned how to obey. Just repeat, please."

Prosper repeated in cold unadorned language that seemed, oddly, to please the major.

"I am sure that you will," said Prosper. "Just as I am sure that you will not overlook the fact that if Asana shows fight he will not attempt to fight fair—as one expresses it. Don't expect anything but tricks, deadly ones, from Asana when he's cornered, Major."

The major relaxed, and selected another cigarette. He was happy now. He knew where he was. He was required to effect a definite, clear-cut order. That was good. There were no frills, no side issues, nothing complicated, no possibility of interference, of badgering, of bewilderments from H.Q. or elsewhere. He was instructed to get Asana the Japanese—and he could "get" him in his own way at his own time during the night.

He beamed on Prosper, and thought well of him. The fact that to arrest Asana would probably prove to be about as safe and easy a matter as arresting a wounded leopard did not seem to bother the nervous V.C. to any extent. Like most majors, what Giles Wakeling appreciated was that which most folk love so well and are given so rarely—a free hand.

CHAPTER XIX
The Ax Of Steel And Silver

PROSPER'S face was grave when, at nine o'clock that evening, the major, punctual to a second, rode into his camp.

"Something wrong?" asked the major, quick-eyed and alert—strangely altered from the nerve-racked man he had appeared to be a few days before.

"Nothing wrong—though things may be just a little more awkward than I expected. But—" he laughed—"one expects the unexpected if one is wise—and sufficiently a conjurer. I had rather banked on having the inspector with us to-night. There's a task for him after his own heart. But he's not to be found. Apparently he has not returned from town yet."

He stared absently across at the pony Charleston, which stood ready, saddled and bridled, by the caravan.

The major waited. He was concerned with tactics to-night and not with the general strategy.

"You see, Major, the ax-thrower will be out on the moor to-night. I am quite sure of that. He would ride to-night even if-the Forest were packed with watchers—even if those watchers were armed and instructed to shoot him at sight. I think he suffers from a superiority complex, don't they call it? And I hope to be able to ride him down—I must. It's almost as important as the taking of Asana...."

"Not quite so urgent—but still urgent enough! The difficulty is that I want to be in a place some distance away from where I should expect to meet with the night-rider. I want to be in two places at once when the moon rises—in about an hour's time! I had banked on Meek's return from town to-night."

For some time, Prosper thought. The gray dusk was closing down on the Forest, darkening fast. Back in the denser parts of Wolf's Hold it was already dark, and the owls were awake and weirdly talkative.

"I must be in Wolf's Hold at about moonrise tonight—but I must also be at the place where I am sure to meet the night-rider. In any case you must be at Tufter's Wait, Major. Your part is still exactly as we arranged it after lunch...."

He rolled himself a cigarette, scowling at the embers of his camp fire which glowed more and more redly in the increasing darkness. The pony fidgeted, his bit jingling faintly. Plutus, sensing where he would spend the night, stared at the caravan with distaste, and the major stood by his old hunter, absolutely still, waiting. Prosper decided.

"There are three men to be detained to-night. All three are really dangerous. We can only be sure of taking two. Well, so be it. The third—and that's the murderer of Molly O'Mourne, Major—we will take in company with our friend from Scotland Yard to-morrow. He will not run away."

Prosper sighed with the relief that a definite decision usually brings. He glanced at his watch.

"I come with you, Major, though I shall probably leave you quickly enough when the time comes."

He consigned the disgusted Plutus to the caravan, mounted Charleston, and, with the major, rode out into the falling darkness.

They headed down the strip of turf that led past Tufter's Wait, one following the other, and both keeping well in the deeper dark immediately under the line of trees, walking their horses. By the time they arrived at the clump of thorns before Tufter's Wait—a clump that Prosper had used as cover once before—the moon was rising.

The major nodded, appreciatively. It was a good choice, for the long strip of comparatively clear ground was, in spite of the risk of trouble with the rabbit holes, a favorite route of the night-rider.

"Whichever direction he comes from, he must pass you—if he uses the strip of turf at all," muttered the major.

"Let's see—three windows—Byrne's bedroom, the lounge hall, kitchen—and the stable light. Right. Well, I'll be off, Fair."

"Right! Good luck, Major," said Prosper. "Forgive me if I remind you that you're not dealing with a man who obeys any rules of—say—war. He's a wild animal when the mask's off—teeth and claws—listen!"

From somewhere back along the route they had just ridden came faintly the soft, distance-muffled thud of hoofs.

"My man! He's cut in from the heather!" said Prosper, who listened a second longer to assure himself from the hoof beats whether the rider was approaching or going away.

Prosper pulled his pony round and rode out. Somewhere in the moonlight ahead of him was the night-rider—the man he had sworn to himself to ride down.

He pressed forward at a gentle canter, as quietly as possible. Not till the black block of woodland that was Wolf's Hold loomed near did he see the man he was hunting, and even then, only as a dark moving shadow in the moonlight. He might not even have caught that glimpse but for a sudden, pallid flicker of light that flashed for a second and was gone—a pale glitter that might have been the swift ray struck by the moon, reflected in some article of polished steel. For example, the blade of a sword—or the head of an ax.

That was well, for a moment later the rider turned almost at right angles, and vanished down a rough track which led through the heart of Wolf's Hold.

In the steady and inexorable light of a splendid autumn moon the entrance to this track yawned under the overhanging tree tops like the black mouth of some dark cavern seen in a dream. The heavy foliage of the ancient oaks which stood like pillars on each side of this entrance in Wolf's Hold arched, merging and intertwining, some fifteen feet above the ground. It was remotely like the entrance to some region of dreadful mystery and untellable things—or like some colossal and fantastic jaw, opened to receive that which the fates sent it out of the moonlight.

Any man on a mission devoid of danger might excusably have felt a qualm at the thought of passing into the all but blind blackness that lay beyond the mouth of this track, and Prosper's mission within this wood was appallingly dangerous. He was following, with the resolve of capturing him, an armed and formidable prowler of the night, whom even the simple but, within their limits, clear-sighted forest folk of the neighborhood united in declaring a dangerous madman. And there was another peril. Prosper knew that within this wood was the murderer of Molly O'Mourne—also armed and ready to receive intruders.

Two of them—an armed madman and an armed murderer, prowling somewhere in the gloom beyond the great arch of ancient oaks.

But Prosper tightened his off rein a little, the pony turned, and at an easy canter passed in on the trail of the night-rider.

In the overgrown wood it was only possible to keep to the track by watching sharply the loom of the solid walls of blackness on each side of him.

He rode easily, knowing that the man in front could not hurry, or turn off to the right or left, without instantly losing himself in a tangle of pathless undergrowth. On the far side of Wolf's Hold was an area of short heather and plain-like country, on which, when he emerged from the wood, the night-rider must be visible for some distance.

For some minutes Prosper rode through the darkness. Then a tiny square of pale light swam on the gloom ahead—the glow from the window of Hambledon the forester's cottage, set in a big clearing in the heart of Wolf's Hold.

Evidently Hambledon was at home, though at this hour he was usually out on his night round.

That was as well, for even as he did so the square of light was temporarily eclipsed by a blur.

He slipped off his horse, roughly knotted the reins round a sapling that had struggled to life between two great oaks, and ran softly forward.

Even as he ran the door of the cottage was flung violently open. In the outpouring of light Prosper saw Hambledon rush out, throwing his gun to his shoulder. There was the roar of an explosion, a thick jet of pinkish flame. Then almost simultaneously with the report something flashed for a second in the light from the door. A deep yell of pain jarred across the darkness; a hoarse shout that held something like brutal triumph; a flurry of hoofs, and two pistol shots in swift succession.

Prosper, guided by the flashes, ran at the man who fired these shots—but even as he seized him, recoiled at the sound of his voice.

"All right, Inspector—I'm following the rider," he said swiftly. "But who's this?"

"Hambledon! It's Hambledon—and the rider's got him! Look!" He snatched something from the writhing figure.

There gleamed in the light the haft of a small ax—a haft that looked like steel, heavily damascened with polished silver. The head of this ax had been buried just above the left breast of the groaning forester. Prosper snatched up Hambledon's gun, broke it open and pulled out an empty shell.

"Mark that, Meek—the ax was used after Hambledon's first shot—I'll come to you here again as soon as I can, or send aid. Meantime, I'm after the rider!"

He ran back to his pony, tore the reins free, flung himself into the saddle, drove in the spurs and vanished at a crazy gallop down the dark track that led out to the open plain.

CHAPTER XX
Run Down

IT was to Prosper Fair as if the flying Charleston shot out of the far end of the tunnel-like track through Wolf's Hold into broad daylight—for so, by comparison with the black glooms which they had just traversed, the silver-blue moonlight seemed.

He was not ashamed of the sigh of relief that escaped him as the hoofs pounded at last on clean turf on the south side of the wood, and it was with the feeling of a man who has escaped destruction by no more than a hair's-breadth that he strained his eyes over the open moorland before him.

It had not been due to him that the clever, quick-witted pony he rode had escaped destruction in the wood. A false step, an error of judgment, one second's faltering or failure of the instinct which had kept the pony from collision with the gigantic oaks between which he had galloped, and nothing could have prevented them from crashing into disaster so ugly that it might have meant their deaths.

Prosper crouched forward to pat the neck of the courageous little animal as they drummed out into the open.

"There he goes, pony! After him! We've got to get him before he does any more mischief!" said Prosper—the reins so loose that Charleston knew he could go at his own pace—which, with him, always meant his fastest.

But, good as he was, the night-rider was mounted on a pony that seemed almost his equal, and he was riding with no less complete disregard for his own neck than Prosper.

Fortunately the area of open country on this side of Wolf's Hold was extensive and, by riding dead straight for that moving shadow, with complete disregard for any and every risk, Prosper was able to gain ground. That was as well for, aware that he was pursued, the night-rider, to make himself safe, need only reach any one of the blocks of timber—the plantations started centuries ago when the Forest was expected to be the main source, for ever, of oak for the British Navy—on the dark horizon.

If he were far enough ahead then, he could enter the wood to the depth of a few yards and there stay perfectly still and silent.

But Prosper was alive to this danger, and Charleston was equal to his task. The pony's frantic burst of speed across the clear country brought him within forty yards of the night-rider.

Prosper saw him turn as the pounding of Charleston's hoofs mingled with that of his own pony.

In the silver flood of light Prosper saw the man's arm fly up as he shook his fist, yelling a hoarse word of defiance and contempt. Then the fugitive seemed to crouch lower, driving his pony even more desperately than before.

But that was enough apparently to rattle the man in front. He had been heading for a distant block of trees, but suddenly he began to swing to the left.

Prosper swung, too, trying to cut the wide sweep of the turn just a shade finer.

But before he had gone far he had to pull out again to avoid racing into a herd of Forest cattle that were lying, like shapeless dark mounds, by a small shallow pool. Only a wild swerve by Charleston, that all but swung him out of the saddle, saved them from crashing into a cow on the edge of the herd.

Prosper's lips tightened a little—as it were in acknowledgment of the trick which had nearly succeeded.

This man knew the Forest, or at least this part of it, better than he did, and he had eyes that were better accustomed to the night. Prosper, his brain cool and quiet, realized that he would have to be very quick and very alert. The night-rider continued his swing to the left. In this direction the ground began to fall away in a long gradual slope at the foot of which gleamed water.

Prosper attempted no cut here, though a little farther along the night-rider wrenched his pony round almost at right angles. He seemed to reel in his stirrups as he turned. Prosper, thirty yards behind, followed his track exactly.

That was well for him, for as he whirled round on the patch of softer turf, deeply scarred by the first pony's feet, and raced on along the new line, he saw from the tail of his eye, a pallid green gleam from a roughly circular patch of smooth, level turf. It was only a few yards to his left. But that smooth green circle was not turf—it was a bog, dangerous as the most deadly quicksand. Nothing could have saved Prosper if he had attempted to cut this corner. He saw the sinister green surface quiver as Charleston's hoofs splashed on the firmer ground bordering it.

The night-rider jumped the narrow brook to firmer ground on the rising slope of the other side and gained a little.

Prosper spurred for the first time since they had shot away from Hambledon's cottage, and Charleston flew the stream like a hunted cat.

And now Prosper could see plainly that, with ordinary luck, he would win this midnight race.

There was something wrong with the man ahead. He swayed as he rode, and twice he turned to scream something indistinguishable. But it sounded now as though these cries held more of terror and panic than of anger and defiance.

A few yards on they struck one of the better grade roads that cross the Forest. The fugitive raced along this at a pace ruinous to the legs of any horse.

But now the slight difference in stamina between the two ponies began to tell. Charleston had the measure of the flying animal just ahead.

The man in front was yelling as he rode. Prosper's face paled and his brows knitted at the wild fear so plain in this outcrying.

"Something must happen at this pace!" he said—aloud, though he did not know it.

Then, ahead, the lights of a big country house danced and wavered through the shrubberies screening the front of the house from the road.

"King's Halt!" muttered Prosper, recognizing the white painted gate that, owing to a sharp curve of the road, seemed to face them almost squarely.

It flashed in on Prosper that the madman in front would attempt to jump this gate! Although it was not the main entrance gate, nevertheless it was high, heavily built, considerably higher than the ordinary five-barred gate of the countryside—and Prosper knew that to drive a tired horse of polo pony size at it in the tricky shadows thrown by the trees at each side of it, was sheer suicide.

The death of this man was the last thing Prosper desired, and he began to pull up his horse.

Even as Prosper tightened rein he saw, with an icy thrill of horror, the pony in front rise at the desperate leap.

It hit the top bar and spun over in a shocking somersault, flinging the rider far into the thick shrubs just clear of the road.

Prosper just swung clear of disaster at the gate, pulled round and leaped down. He was over the gate, past the groaning, writhing pony, in a flash.

With the frenzy of one mad with terror he had struggled clear of the shrubs and was reeling across the wide lawn towards the big door of the mansion, shouting wildly as he went.

Prosper raced after him, but the check at the gate had given the fugitive a few yards' advantage.

He seemed to aim himself blindly at the blaze of light from the open doors. It seemed somehow shocking to Prosper that the sound of music should be issuing from those doors at this moment.

The hunted man reeled into the light—a strange and fantastic figure, clad only in a great, furry skin. He was crying out hoarsely as he ran, and his right arm and leg were almost scarlet with blood.

The servants in the hall shrank back appalled, and, even as Prosper ran over the threshold of the main door, the hunted man darted through the open door of a big room on the left. It was in this room that people were dancing.

Prosper reached the threshold just as the dreadful, stained figure lurched the whole length of the room, through the recoiling people, stood staring wildly for a moment, then turned blindly to a girl who cried in a heartbroken voice:

The hunted man swayed, staring, reaching out to her with trembling hands, with something oddly and most movingly akin to the gesture of a child reaching out to some one it trusts utterly, and then collapsed slowly on to his knees, moaning, clutching at Crystal Sheen, so that her frock was smeared with a frightful stain, then toppled forward on his face and lay still.

For a second the girl stood over him, staring fiercely at the man who had hunted Byrne to her. For a second she seemed unable to recognize Prosper. Then she broke free from her bewilderment.

"You, Prosper—you!" she said in a quivering voice, and then forgot them all, falling on her knees beside the unconscious man at her feet.

Gently she raised the bespattered head, slipping her arm under in an action of infinite compassion and tenderness, and kissed the white lips.

Prosper stepped into the room, glanced round, then closed the door and very deliberately locked it.

"A complicated business, my dear Thorburn!" said Prosper quietly. "I shall explain."

He stepped quickly to the side of the unconscious night-rider—Alan Byrne. A gray-headed man, with a thin, intellectual face, was probing hastily with long, white fingers at the red shoulder of the senseless form on a couch by the wall.

"Byrne was wounded by a shotgun—fired by the murderer of Molly O'Mourne," said Prosper.

"Because," came Prosper's voice, cool and clear, and very steady, "because, before he could fire his second barrel, Alan felled him! It was sheer self-defense! Detective-Inspector Meek was a witness!"

There was a flash of silk, and Lady Crystal was facing Prosper, her eyes blazing with excitement and wild relief.

Thorburn threw it open. It was the butler. His discreet voice was heard by everybody in that still room.

"There is a person inquiring for you, Sir Gatsby. He brings a message from an Inspector Meek requesting that you should go to Hambledon's cottage in Wolf's Hold, where a dying man wishes to make a confession in the presence of a magistrate!"

It seemed no more than a few seconds before the hoofs of his horse went pounding down the main drive.

But that was only Prosper and the head groom putting Byrne's pony out of its pain. The courageous little animal had broken its back in its frantic effort to clear the white gate.

Promising that everything should be explained, he had obtained a promise from the guests there—all belonging to the small circle of the Thorburns' more intimate friends—that they would keep secret the events of the evening, the identity of the night-rider, and particularly his strange nocturnal activities.

Alan Byrne, in his panic, could not have fled to a better haven than King's Halt. For Crystal Sheen was there and a doctor, many good friends, and sympathetic servants.

He had a right to yawn, for he had not had a real night's rest from the day he had emerged from the thunderstorm to camp at Wolf's Hold.

"Oblige me by entering into the spirit of the thing, old man," he requested the pony as they headed over the heather. "I'm not anxious about the major—but I shall be glad to see without delay how things went with him...."

CHAPTER XXI
The Solution

PROSPER need have felt no anxiety on behalf of his aide. Major Giles Wakeling, V.C., was a man with some experience of the form of physical enterprise which he had been committed to carry out that night. And he was thorough by nature as well as by training.

Prosper found him sitting in Alan Byrne's lounge, smoking one of Byrne's cigars (military folk on duty are prone to commandeer according to requirements), looking with severity upon Asana, the Japanese, who was sitting in a high-backed, solid, antique chair facing the major. He was attached to the antique by means of a cat's cradle of stout cord, so generously enwound and ingeniously knotted about him that it would be impossible for the human mind to devise any greater futility than an attempt to escape.

For a moment Prosper watched them through the open door, smiling a little. He observed that they were not talking. The major was not a man of much blandishment with prisoners that deserved their fate. Prosper had not a shred of sympathy with the Jap—but, in the major's place, he would have been chatting to the man, trying to get at his point of view.

"None. I knocked at the door, Asana opened it, and I knocked him out as he opened. I thought it best—after your hint. I took those things from him while he was groggy!"

He indicated a small but effective-looking pistol, and a short, stumpy, broad-bladed, heavy-looking dagger, sharp at both edges—an evil thing, capable of inflicting a bad wound with considerable shock, but unlikely to kill unless it struck an artery. Clearly a weapon designed to stop a man rather than to kill him.

"Light has reported that he has her safe—locked in the harness room. How did you get on?"

"Oh, fairly well. The business is finished, I think. Alan Byrne was the night-rider—Hambledon murdered Molly O'Mourne. The forester is dying, and Byrne is in the care of Crystal Sheen and a doctor at King's Halt Hall."

Prosper took an extremely illegal looking bunch of skeleton keys from his pocket, and, with even more unlawful-looking ease, opened the central drawer in Byrne's writing desk.

"This prisoner of yours, Major, in partnership with the woman and Dillon Mant, has blackmailed Byrne to the tune of nearly five thousand pounds in the last two months. Most of that we shall recover, Asana."

"From you, Asana," explained Prosper pleasantly. "Dillon Mant is already in jail in London on another charge."

Prosper turned again to the drawer and lifted out a thick packet of manuscript paper. He showed the major the first few sheets. These were covered with minute, beautiful handwriting.

"This is the opening of the first act of the great play which drove Alan Byrne to the edge of a nervous breakdown. It deals with a prehistoric age—the Neolithic. I fancy Byrne intended it to be his masterpiece—a play with a purpose—revolving round the first faint gleam of the idea of religion, interwoven with the daily life of the neolithic man. It's complicated, but I suspect it's great. Or might have been. But his tremendously tense and exhausting study of that period broke—no—tired Byrne's mentality—look!"

He showed the major the last few pages of the unfinished manuscript. The neat writing had degenerated into a scrawled maze of corrections and incoherencies.

"That's where he stopped—on the edge of breakdown. The other drawers of this desk are crammed with notes. And at his town house he has dozens of books dealing with prehistoric subjects."

He went over to the big carved cupboard, which he unlocked, swinging back the door to display the contents.

It was full of weapons of all the early ages—mostly prehistoric, flint ax heads, spear-and arrowheads, flint knives and scrapers, bronze weapons and tools, arrow-and spear-heads of obsidian, antler tips, and quartz, a small collection of such things, but one that was without order or method. Some of the things were genuinely prehistoric, some were as nearly modern as the heavy little silver inlaid ax, the work of some Indian armorer a century dead, which had struck Hambledon down.

"He collected these things—at first carefully, then, as his strained mind became oversaturated with the 'prehistoric' idea, more aimlessly. When he came from London for his rest here he brought this collection, too. Nobody in this locality knew of them except, perhaps, Crystal Sheen, Asana, Mant and the housekeeper, Mrs. Grey," continued Prosper. "I picked up a tiny label from one of the axes, which had become entangled in the fringe of a carpet in Byrne's London house. One of these," he pointed to the small label on a flint spearhead, familiar to all visitors to museums or curiosity dealers, "I discovered on the same day that Byrne had paid large sums to Mant—and I knew that Mant shared with Asana." Prosper broke off.

"I am inflicting all this on you, Major, in order to clear my brain a little. It's all rather interesting. Do you mind?"

The major was emphatic in his desire for more. He knew Prosper well enough now to understand that this was probably the only detailed explanation of his part in the affair that Prosper would ever give—except, perhaps, some day privately to Crystal Sheen, and maybe, if necessary, to the Scotland Yard authorities. For, in spite of his knowledge of the world—or perhaps because of it—Prosper could never be otherwise than modest about himself. It was entirely characteristic of him that he should choose for his audience the quiet Major Wakeling, in this quiet room, in preference to the crowd of curious people at, for example, King's Halt Hall.

"It is kind of you to listen, Major," said Prosper, politely, and continued. "Now, we will go back to the beginning—to the murder of Molly O'Mourne. I found, on that night, the flint ax, the carcass of the dead goat, and I caught a glimpse of the night-rider. The same night, not far off, that poor girl was murdered. You will find that Hambledon's confession will probably make it clear that she had finally rejected him in favor of the little poet, Berkeley Morris, and that he had seen red when she had the courage to tell him so. She may previously have gone too far with him—unwisely, but does one look for wisdom, for the nicest calculation, in a child of her age? Next morning he seemed to accuse me. He was a good, a desperate actor, and he succeeded in throwing suspicion off himself. Temporarily only, for Meek must have been on his trail—to be watching his cottage tonight. Hambledon was a man of iron nerve—for example, he helped with the bloodhounds who were brought out to find, if they could, his own trail! Leave Hambledon, for a moment. Nobody could have suspected him then—everybody must have suspected the night-rider.... Meek suspected me for a short time.... On the morning after the murder Asana secretly visited the scene of the crime, and was watched by me. Quite how he knew so soon where the crime had been committed, I don't know. He must have gleaned it from Byrne—perhaps from some almost incoherent mutterings in his sleep—for Alan Byrne witnessed the murder!"

"Asana's manner was odd, his looks seemed to express conflicting emotions, and his actions were—illuminating. He thought himself alone—and his mask was off."

"I received an impression that Asana was an admirer of Molly O'Mourne, and that he was shocked at her death—and his actions persuaded me, almost, that he intended to avenge her. He took from a bush a few horse hairs and went away. Then I, in my turn, found a few horse hairs on the same bush—and also went away....

"That afternoon we visited Alan Byrne in company, Major. I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity of learning that, in conspiracy with Dillon Mant, whom you were watching, Major, Asana purposed not to avenge Molly O'Mourne, but to profit out of her death. But how? That puzzled me, I assure you. But I have watched Alan Byrne very carefully when he went into the peculiar trance-like state, which was an unusual accompaniment of his mental illness—stress, shall we say?—and, Major, I formulated a very wild—almost outrageous—theory."

"Yes, a theory—exactly like a fiction detective. I theorized that Alan Byrne was the night-rider—who dressed himself like a prehistoric man.

"I think it was Crystal Sheen's queer reserve and obvious uneasiness about Byrne that helped me to evolve it. She gave an impression that there was something odd—inexplainable—unconfidable.

"I was well prepared to abandon it, I assure you, but, first, I played about with it a little. After all there was a prehistoric sort of man—with a fast pony and a dog. It had to be somebody. And, obviously, whoever he might be, he almost certainly was—a little queer mentally.

"That was all dim—blurry—out of focus—at first. I looked in at Byrne's stables one day. He had two ponies there, several dogs. There never was any secret made of these. Most residences in the Forest have horses and dogs.... I found that the horsehair on the bush matched the hair of the tail of one of the ponies (it was killed to-night). That made it look as if Alan Byrne might have been very near the scene of the murder that night. I knew already that the night-rider had killed goats and dropped his flint ax near by at about midnight....

"Berkeley Morris left a note at my camp before he shot himself. It did not help much, but it mentioned Asana. And I was becoming interested in Asana.

"I went to town and learned things there which brought everything leaping into focus. Byrne had paid Mant and Asana much money; Byrne had made a collection of prehistoric weapons, possessed many books on prehistoric times. I bribed his old butler heavily to get this. It began to look as if the play which had broken Byrne down dealt with a prehistoric subject.

"If so it seemed conceivable that Byrne might be mad on the subject—that is to say, to be liable at intervals to a species of hallucination—as of self-hypnosis—whatever you like to call it, Major. How say you?"

"I had guessed that Byrne was the rider," said the major. "But I had put it down to—well, just queerness. Lady Crystal guessed it, too. Neither of us quite knew what to do about it—except to try to keep him out of harm, until he got fit—and rid of it again."

"What else? Well, if I'd had the brains and imagination I might have done what you did."

"You're too modest, Major.... Well, I had arrived at something that looked like truth—namely that Byrne at intervals believed himself to be a prehistoric man—the trick of a tormented brain—and acted so. He would slip on a skin cloak, take a weapon, a pony, and range the Forest looking for prey. He killed Lovell's goats—that must have been an adventure. Later, he encountered my elephant—picture the thrill of that, Major. No doubt his temporarily disordered mind figured Stolid Joe as a mammoth of olden time. Certainly he had the courage to attack the elephant—there was no cruelty, for he was acting in—well, in good faith. I marvel that the elephant did not smash him. The dog must have saved him. Joe tore a bunch of hair from the pony's mane—just missed his grip, I suppose, owing to the dog worrying. I have the hair and patch of skin—and you can see the place it came from on the pony in the stable now. Joe turned on the dog and smashed the poor brute.

"Well, things were clearing. One saw, of course, that Byrne could not range the Forest so without the knowledge of Asana, the housekeeper, or Peter Light. None of them spoke of it to a soul. But Asana drew large sums of money from Byrne—through the bolder rascal Mant."

"That made blackmail seem obvious. In his normal moments Byrne was probably grateful enough to be allowed to buy the silence—even the aid—of the Japanese. A famous playwright would not care to have such dubious nocturnal adventures made public....

"The focus was becoming clearer still, Major, and the broken, hurried conversation I had overheard between Mant and Asana suddenly took on a new significance—a rather terrible one.

"Suppose the gold mine of which they spoke was to be found in blackmailing Byrne more heavily yet—accusing him of the murder of Molly O'Mourne and selling him their silence. Remember the horsehairs and the goats—the goats proved he was near the scene of the crime, the horsehairs seemed to prove that he had been actually on the scene—they would be easily caught in the thorns if a horse were backed sharply, for some reason, into a thorn clump.

"Suppose, further, that Byrne's recollection of what he did when under the influence of his hallucination was hazy when he was lucid! That would make him an easy prey for these blackmailers. What would he answer to Asana if Asana came to him and said, 'Last night during your ride—your expedition—you killed Molly O'Mourne. Pay me to be silent?'

"What could Byrne do but pay? They did that and he paid. Only this morning he wrote a check for a thousand pounds payable to Dillon Mant—no doubt it was posted by Asana to-night. Fortunately Mant is in jail—we can stop that check, Major.

"It looked now as if Alan Byrne really had committed the murder—even though he had no motive—at least, not in his lucid hours....

"I think it was the arrival of the second ax, the one with the polished obsidian head, which set me thinking of another possibility. (That ax, by the way, started my suspicion that the wielder of these axes had a collection of old weapons, and the bronze ax, later, merely confirmed it.)

"The response to the hurling of that obsidian ax came out of the darkness about the camp almost instantly in the form of a shotgun report. Neither Meek nor I saw who fired it. But as nobody could have missed either of us, sitting in the firelight as we were, obviously it was fired at the thrower of the ax. By whom?

"Assuming for the moment that it was Hambledon who fired, didn't that rather imply a feud between Hambledon and the ax-thrower—some business of tracking, dodging, hunting, evading, maneuvering for an opportunity in the dark—Hambledon believing that the prehistoric man killed Molly and grimly determined to avenge her, the prehistoric man defending himself from, even attacking—as with the obsidian ax—his relentless pursuer?... It seemed feasible.

"Hambledon was obviously a good deal too ready with his gun—even though he used it on the night-rider. He was shooting at sight, but he knew quite well that one must not, in this country, shoot on sight, even a suspected person. Even an ignorant person would not do that—and Hambledon was an official forester well acquainted with the rules about firearms.

"It seemed to me that Hambledon was much more anxious to kill the night-rider than to capture him. Why? He was bound to be caught sooner or later, and if he were guilty of the murder of Molly O'Mourne, he would be hanged. Surely Hambledon could content himself with that. I thought a good deal about that during that quiet spell of sunny days.

"Even now I am not definitely certain why Hambledon wanted to kill the night-rider outright, though for some days I have suspected that my theory about this is correct. The confession will probably make it clear. The theory I tried out was this. Suppose Hambledon had killed the girl, silently, with his gun butt, and discovered a few seconds later that his crime had been witnessed by a mounted man who had come up quietly through the moonlight—the rider. He reaches for the gun lying on the ground near his victim, but the rider tears his pony round, ramming it back into a thorn-bush—the hoofmarks tally with that idea—and gallops away! If that were so, then it furnishes a perfect reason for the grim intensity of Hambledon's purpose to kill the rider. He does not know the rider's identity—to-night's events prove that theory right. Byrne, in a prehistoric—fit, shall we say?—went to the forester's cottage either to ascertain where he was and so be more easily able to avoid him, even, maybe, with intent to attack him. But Hambledon was too quick. He got in the first shot, hitting Byrne. And Byrne retaliated before Hambledon could pull the second trigger. Major, he buried an ax head in Hambledon's chest! If he had not the forester would have shot him dead with his second barrel.

"Meek appeared—amazingly. He is cleverer than I thought. He must have had a purpose there, watching Hambledon, I imagine. I left the wounded man to Meek and went after Byrne. It was rather a wild ride, stupid, perhaps, to press him so close, certainly it was more than sufficiently risky. I did it for three reasons. I was afraid he might kill himself. He had been entertaining the idea; there's a scrawled note about it in his desk; I wanted to be quite sure he had no more freedom to-night, freedom to do harm. He had given Hambledon a death wound, and in his condition it was not safe to leave him free to-night; and further, I hoped that being ridden down fairly would come in the nature of a shock to him, a shock that would startle his mind awake from the prehistoric obsession—somewhat, say, like waking a sleepwalker. Risky, perhaps. Yes, perhaps I shouldn't have done that. But I did not want him shot, nor, above all, did I want the detective, Meek, to capture him. Everything would have had to come out; now, with a little luck, it needn't—I mean, the truth about his hallucination. You see, he has done no harm—except to kill Eli Lovell's goats, for which Eli will be charmed to receive double their value, and, in defending himself, to kill a self-confessed murderer. That will be dealt with at the inquest, of course. The coroner will probably accept the evidence of the inspector, his assistants and myself without inquiring too closely, for example, how Byrne was dressed at the time, what kind of ax was used, or where it came from. Meek will get the full credit of the discovery of the murderer—the confession probably will be in Meek's writing from Hambledon's dictation. Meek is not likely to complicate what his superiors will naturally consider a very clean-cut bit of work. So all should be well."

"You know, to my mind, you've done rather a brilliant bit of detective work. I couldn't have done it for a fortune."

"But what about that dog collar? You didn't explain that. And how about Peter Light? He must have known the ponies and one of the dogs were being used at night. And how did you know that the night-rider would be out to-night?"

"Yes, those are all good points, Major," he said. "Well, the dog collar bore a completely fictitious name and address. Asana no doubt had that done. He did not want Alan Byrne tracked down or identified as the night-rider. He simply substituted the false collar for the right one when Byrne looked like night-riding. As regards Peter Light, he knew all about Byrne's nocturnal, jaunts. He knew that it was not a thing to be made public—Asana and Dillon Mant had no trouble in persuading him that it was to Byrne's interest to keep things quiet. Which was true, though not in the way Asana meant it. Peter is loyal and can keep his employer's secrets. But I guessed the rider would be on the moor to-night when Crystal Sheen told us at lunch-time that Byrne was in for another of his attacks."

"Yes, I see. That's all clear. But Byrne's bedroom was lit up to-night when we reached this house."

"By Asana, who naturally preferred that any one—Meek, or you, or myself—who knew that Byrne was ill should see that he appeared to be in bed."

"Yes. It's complete. Absolutely complete. A fine bit of work, fine! I congratulate you...."

"Me! No, congratulate Byrne," said Prosper. "I have a hope that his experience to-night will frighten his prehistoric complex clean out of him...."

"I think we'll leave that to Crystal Sheen and Byrne, if he's well enough. It may be better to let them go. If Asana will disgorge, I may be able to arrange for him to get out of the country with a clear start before putting the police on his trail. That will serve to keep him out—won't it, Asana?... You will not be anxious to return to a country in which your description has been circulated to every police station, every police constable, will you? If you don't mind hanging on for a little longer, Major, and will continue in charge of these two prisoners until I can get back here again...."

CHAPTER XXII
The Lazy Duke! Who Says That?

SIR GATSBY THORBURN and Inspector Meek were just about to leave the cottage in the clearing when Prosper rode up.

"Well, I have just been congratulating the inspector here on a very fine piece of work, Fair," said Sir Gatsby. "I shall state as much to the people at Scotland Yard. There is no longer any possible doubt about the murder of Molly O'Mourne. Hambledon, before he died, confessed in detail. It seems that she had definitely rejected him in favor of that boy Morris and he—saw red. It's not for me to speak ill of him, but he was just that kind of man. Morose—brooding—liable to break out. Still, the less said now, the better."

"I congratulate you with all my heart, Inspector," he said, smiling faintly. "I really had begun to fear that you suspected me...."

"Oh, that!" he said. "That was just a—um—a sort of blind, Mr. Fair. I was always aiming at..." he jerked his head at the bedroom of the cottage.

"It was a tremendous surprise to me to see you and your assistant spring apparently out of nowhere to-night," said Prosper.

"Oh, we were watching, waiting to search the cottage when he went out. I was pretty sure of him some days ago."

"Yes. And the confession explains the whole thing better than I could do it myself."

Prosper suspected that the detective was extremely glad about that, but he only said that he was quite sure the inspector deserved all that would be coming to him as a result of his efforts and success.

Prosper asked what would happen about the night-rider. Sir Gatsby had already told the detective who the rider was. The inspector did not take the matter of the night-rider very seriously.

"Well, he killed Hambledon in sheer self-defense. That's easily proved. He simply saved me the trouble of arresting the murderer. There will be an inquest, and I don't suppose the coroner will fuss about anything much in face of the confession. It was pure self-defense, as it was in the matter of that other ax that was flung across your camp. Hambledon admitted that he feared the night-rider saw him commit the murder, and so he was always trying to silence him. It's all in the confession. And that boy Morris shot himself. Perfectly plain sailing. Mr. Byrne will have to appear if he's well enough—if not—if it's a long illness, my evidence and yours and Detective-Sergeant Jackson's will probably be enough. I don't want a lot of irrelevant detail dragged in—nobody does. This is a fine, clean-cut case, topped off with a confession, and there's no sense spoiling it with outside detail."

He rode as far as the high road with Sir Gatsby, giving him an abbreviated version of his adventures and the facts concerning Alan Byrne, as they went.

"But it is astounding—all that. Why, do you know, that detective literally hasn't an atom of knowledge about all that. Why—why, my dear chap, it's to you that all the credit should go. Why, if Meek hadn't got that confession from Hambledon he would have no case—no case against him at all. I believe he only intended to search the cottage on the off chance of finding some clew—on the strength of a faint suspicion...."

"Oh, hardly that, surely," demurred Prosper. "In any case, what does it matter? He's not a bad fellow under his rather savage manner. Let him have what credit there may be in the business. Any credit due to me I present to him with great cheerfulness."

"The fact is, Fair, you make people forget rather easily that you're a Duke, you know. Many people would love the notoriety which a successful bit of amateur detective work like this would give them...."

"Why not—if they happen to care for that sort of thing? It's very human to imagine notoriety means something to its possessor. It just doesn't happen to be one of my many failings, I suppose."

"Well, I'll leave you here. You'll have Byrne on your hands for a time, I'm afraid."

"Oh, that will be all right. Crystal Sheen will revel in helping to nurse him back to health—and incidentally my brother will be staying in the house for a month, which will be useful. He's a gray-haired chap who looked at Byrne's shot wounds—George Thorburn of Harley Street. A goodish doctor, George, so they tell me. He's down for a rest and some riding. Soon put Byrne on his feet again.... Well, good night!"

"Good night," said Prosper, and turned back to the Wolf's Hold camp. He gave the pony a rub down and feed, found a snack for Plutus, released at last from the caravan, cooked himself some breakfast, washed up, shaved, and so forth, and turned to greet the sunrise with eyes that glittered with fatigue.

"Time to relieve the major, methinks, oh, Plutus mine," he said, and strolled off to Tufter's Wait.

"Confessions seem to be fashionable, tike," he said, as he went. "So we will accept a confession—and a return of his loot—from Asana, in full settlement. I will leave him in charge of the major and Peter until I can arrange for him to deport himself—with assistance.... The woman can go—probably she'll fly to aid the entirely unaidable Dillon Mant, whose dupe or victim she rather obviously has been, God help her. And then, Plutus, we shall have little more to do—which will be rather jolly for us, don't you think...?

"We must try to contrive something for the major, though. It is not good that a V.C. who has had the misfortune to lose his money should have to get a meager living as a private detective—quite the last business the major is cut out for. There should be something for him somewhere—what say you, Plutus?"

"That place of ours in Argyll, Plutus. Perhaps he would care to take on the management of that: see that the shepherd sees that the hill sheep behave themselves; see that the loch trout don't increase too greatly in size and numbers; keep an eye on the keeper that keeps an eye on the grouse and salmon; and study the stags on the hilltop. Quite frequently, go down south to report and enjoy a little dry weather for a change! Yes, that ought to suit the major better than waiting in an office in the Strand for unattractive cases that never come!"

"Something in being rich—sometimes—between ourselves, old gypsy. Nothing like having a little sinecure to spare for a friend, Plutus—eh, or a rat or two to hand over to a pal! Half the battle of life, this giving. Or, would you say the whole of life—eh? Whisper it then, tike, for if they hear us say things like that they'll put us in one of the homes provided at great expense for the likes of us!"

As was to be expected Asana leaped at the opportunity which Prosper's anxiety to spare Alan Byrne and Crystal Sheen painful and useless publicity gave him. His guarantee to disgorge and quit England forthwith was so sincere that it was almost frantic. Dryly, Prosper quieted him, promising him that the private deportation should be promptly and very faithfully attended to.

Prosper gleaned from the Japanese that she was Dillon Mant's wife—one of them, poor soul. Asana ventured to advise Prosper that she had no plunder to disgorge, and, elated at his own fortunate escape, he went so far as to say that she was more to be pitied than punished....

It was while Prosper was talking to the major that he saw her passing down the pathway towards Normansrood village, a forlorn and lonely figure, quietly dressed, walking like one weary, carrying a suitcase. No doubt she had asked Peter Light to have her trunk sent on.

Prosper sprang up and hurried after her, caught her up, and they talked for a long time.

The major, watching from the veranda, saw Prosper proffer something, saw her decline it, hesitate, accept it, and pass on.

"Weak—very weak—fear she's no good..." he muttered. Maybe the major was a judge, but he said nothing about the five pound note—one of his last—which he had given her not a quarter of an hour before, to pay her expenses back to town. One of these strong, silent men, Major Giles Wakeling, V.C.

But, indeed, he seemed very far from strong when, a little later, Prosper proposed his acceptance of the Scotch stewardship. His hands trembled just a mite as he capitulated.

"But—do I understand that you wish—that you really wish me to go to the moor, supervise the shepherds, the keepers, look after the grouse, the trout in the lochs, the deer on the hills, at the salary you suggest...?"

"I do, indeed," smiled Prosper. "You see, the place happens to be in need of somebody like yourself, and it occurred to me that you would prefer it to—to Savoy Chambers?"

"Prefer it! Man, you're offering me a pension in Paradise! I accept it with both hands, Fa—, your Grace!"

"Gatsby told me all that you told him, Prosper," she said, her eyes shining. "I just wanted to say that I knew somehow you would put things right the moment I met you the first time with the elephant.... You'll tell Alan and me the whole story some day, won't you? It was a great thing you did for us, Prosper—Dr. Thorburn says the shock of last night will wash out the other thing—the dual personality—hallucination—whatever it was. The prehistoric play will be abandoned and we shall go on a long sea voyage. He is sure Alan will be well soon—and so am I—and thank you, Prosper, thank you with all my heart—it means so much to me—you don't know how I have dreaded things...."

She was holding his hands, but now she released them, to cover her face with her own hands.

"Why, Crystal, what's this...? Emotion!" There was a species of affectionate raillery in his tone, but it was very gentle. "Is it possible that my cousin Crystal Sheen weeps because by sheer good fortune something useful seems to have been achieved by the peculiar person—that gypsy-minded vagabond—the lazy Duke—isn't that what they call me?"

"The lazy Duke! Who says that? How dare they say that! Only an ignorant or envious...."

"Oh!... I might have guessed you would be like that. But all the same you oughtn't—no, really—seriously, Prosper—with your gifts, you oughtn't to decry yourself so...."

"A secret, cousin...." he whispered. "My own opinion—strictly between ourselves, and only that because I must defend myself—my own private opinion is that I am a truly remarkable young cove!"

Somewhere out in the bracken Plutus nearly laughed his head off—though, naturally, he pretended he was merely barking at a rabbit that had the insolence to arrive at its hole one inch ahead of the semi-terrier.

CHAPTER XXII
Move On

IT was at noon, exactly a week later, that the new forester, appointed in the place of Hambledon, stepped into Prosper's camp.

All had gone well. The inquest on Hambledon had produced nothing more awkward than the possibility of great glory for Detective-Inspector Meek; Alan Byrne was progressing perfectly; and the major had dealt well and truly with Asana.

Prosper and his gypsy friend, old Eli Lovell, had just finished a farewell lunch together, and were hitching to the caravan the horses which had been sent from Derehurst for Prosper.

Patience, the donkey, well named, was waiting, close to Prosper, and Plutus was, as usual, out in the bracken breathing a few kind words of farewell down the hole of an ancient and craftsome rabbit he knew of....

He was a brand-new forester in that district, having been transferred from somewhere down by the Lymington edge of the Forest, and nobody had told him anything about Mr. Fair.

"Shall have to trouble you to show me your permit?" said the new forester—a youngish, smartish forester.

"Your permit to camp and light fires in the Forest. No camping or lighting fires allowed without permission—except in the gypsy sites, and then only for two days."

He produced a rather dirty and crumpled slip of paper, which the brisk forester examined with sharp eyes.

"This permit expired yesterday," he said, eyeing Prosper without much admiration. "Shall have to trouble you to move on."

"I say I shall have to trouble you to move on!" repeated the forester, a shade more loudly.

THE END

BERTRAM ATKEY

THE MIDNIGHT MYSTERY

ABOUT THIS BOOK

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I The Ax Of Flint

CHAPTER II The Black Goat

CHAPTER III Murder At Wolf's Hold

CHAPTER IV The Lady Crystal Sheen

CHAPTER V The Man From Scotland Yard

CHAPTER VI The Black Bloodhounds

CHAPTER VII The Scared V.C.

CHAPTER VIII The Cataleptic Man

CHAPTER IX The Second Ax

CHAPTER X Night-Rider, Ax-Thrower, Killer

CHAPTER XI "Far In The Dark..."

CHAPTER XII Prosper Goes To Town

CHAPTER XIII After The Galloping Specter

CHAPTER XIV The Night Of Watching Eyes

CHAPTER XV The Ax Of Bronze

CHAPTER XVI Queer Customer, That!

CHAPTER XVII Trust Prosper

CHAPTER XVIII A Free Hand For The Major

CHAPTER XIX The Ax Of Steel And Silver

CHAPTER XX Run Down

CHAPTER XXI The Solution

CHAPTER XXII The Lazy Duke! Who Says That?

CHAPTER XXII Move On