"GREYMARSH."

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 49, 28 February 1927, Page 18

"GREYMARSH."

By ARTHUR J. REES,

Author of "The Mystery of the | Downs," "The Threshold of Fear," etc. CHAPTER X. Grey went closer, and bent over the body, then, after an instant lie rose to his feet. The deaf mute stood close to him in the twilight, his stone glance fixed upon liim, as though trying to communicate something to him without speech. "He has been found, Haldham. It is George liudsham. Creeke knows him —even now. Creeke knows the path across the marshes, and has volunteered to bring help. 1 have undertaken to watch the body until he returns. Yoti had better go on to Greymarsh before it gets quite dark." "I will wait too," I said. ■ ■ "No," he answered decidedly, 'T want you to go. I may be some time, for I shall accompany the body to the old Customs House, or wherever it is taken to. You can explain the reason to Templeton, and tell him he shall learn everything when I come." I went, but, before going very far, I stopped and looked back. Creeke had disappeared among the marshes, but Grey had not moved. He stood lonely in the fading twilight, with that dark object at his feet. The body lay now beyond the reach of the waves; he and Creeke mus.t have carried it ashore. They looked like two shadows, the living and the dead, on the dark and polished sands. For a moment my eyes rested upon them, then I turned towards Greymarsh again. I caught a glimpse of Linda as I entered, glancing forth from a half opened door. She came out to speak to me, but showed no curiosity, and after a brief greeting I went on. As I turned into the further corridor she was still standing there motionless, looking after me, an expectant figure on the lighted threshold of her room. But she had patience to wait. My uncle was waiting also, in the library, but patience was not a quality he possessed. The library door opened quietly and Cohvin Grey came in. I thought he looked white and rather tired, but his eyes were alert enough. My uncle started up as he entered, and his book

fell disregarded to the floor. "Mr. Grey!" he exclaimed impetuously; "what lias happened? Tell me, for pity's sake, if you have any news." Grey spoke in a detached kind of way, and chose his words with care. "The body of the man who shot Henry. T,iska,rd was washed up by the sea today, arid is now lying in a shed of the old Customs House, two miles across the marshes from here." "Thank God!" exclaimed my uncle excitedly; "thank God you have discovered that!" Grey looked at him reflectively. "There is one tiling that bothers me, though," lie ment on, "in what you have said." "What is it?" asked Grey. "It is this. Dick tells me that the body washed up is that of George Rudsham, but how could lie have been at Greymarsh that night? Let mc ask you in turn whether you have forgotten all the circumstanccs. Greymarsh was surrounded that night by the sea, completely encircled and cut off. Therefore ," "Therefore we must not go outside Greymarsh to look for the murderer Is that what you mean?" My kinsman nodded. "Precisely That-, at least is what I have beer thinking all along. Grev smiled faintly, for the first ant only time that night. "Like Lintwell. It was merely i question of elimination to find tin guilty person—looking at the crim< from his point of view. Lintwell actet on the principle of reductio ad absurdun in geometry. He aimed to reach tin truth by excluding all theories excep one, because he believed that 110 othei theory could exist. That 'would havi been all right if he had had a mora certainty to go upon, though he wa: almost justified for thinking that hi

had. Lint well's theory of Henry Liskard's murder, based on the theory that 110 one else had access that night to Greymarsh was only full proof of circumstance if it wholly excluded all other hypotheses, but it didn't—unfortunately for Lint well, and Sir Roger Liskard as well. There was another possibility, so remote as to seem incredible, and to Lintwell it appeared impossible at the time. I kept in view that remote alternate contingency from the outset, and the discovery of the revolver strengthened it in my mind. It was the young sailor who loved .Avis Ormond, and lie shot Henry Liskard because he had seen him kissing Avis that night on the bridger Hatred, jealousy and • suspicion—and darker thoughts still—filled his mind. He launched the boat, stepped in, and seized the oars. "What followed wlien that incredible journey was accomplished, and he reached Greymarsh safely at last? This much I know for certain: That he moored his boat to the outer wall. But what happened within the tower must remain conjecture, and nothing more. But, with Rudsham's departure, the deed accomplished, we return to the region of certainty again. Rudsham, speeding with stricken conscience back across the grounds to the outer wall, where he had left his boat was confronted by an overwhelming, and disastrous fact. The sea he had braved successfully had torn from him his sole hope of escape. One can see him, with white face, staring hopelessly into the night. For the boat was gone. "And now we must look back a little, to another phase of this dark, strange case. As we know, another pair of eyes besides young Rudsham's witnessed tlie loving parting on the bridge that night. The feelings of Lady Liskard as she looked down from the window of the studio, must have been bitter in

the extreme. "Henry Liskarcl probably pitied himself as he awaited Linda in his studio that night. What passed between them in that interview is immaterial. It must have been a painful scene—more painful, I fancy, to him than to her, because well-bred Englishmen have a horror ol such scenes. And as a man he was a( a disadvantage, besides being- in tlu wrong. ~ "The painful interview over, Linda left t-lie studio antl went down the spiral stairs', recalled to a world of conventions and social usages by ,the lateness of the hour. - . "That night, brooding over matters in the solitude of her room, she says she had a strong impulse to tell hei husband everything. It would' have been infinitely better if she had spoken: if she had gone to her husband and con fessed all things to him. He would have understood and forgiven; his great love for her would have pardoned all: Ilei silence—until it was too ..late—brojighi deep and bitter misery on-them both Sir Roger thought it was his wife wit

shot his brother. It was ho she saw as she was returning to the house that night. He had missed her, and gone into the grounds to look for her. And he saw her leave the tower in her hurried flight. "And now. let us look at Lintwell s investigation of the crime. Lintwell is a man of narrow dogmatic intelligence, with a passion for investigating things; a mind of the type which believes itself capable of anything —provided the opportunity is there. It is a kind of arrogance peculiarly English. Very little harm arises from this obsession, as a rule, because Scotland Yard is conservative, and does not welcome amateur aid. But at Greymarsh the sea vouchsafed the amateur detective his great opportunity. "His first move showed considerable skill, and Lintwell made the discovery that the nun oi the painting was a portrait of Lady Liskard herself. "It was an interesting discovery, but one into which Lintwell read too much. The great- thing for Lintwell was that Linda's visit to the tower was of a guilty character; that she had gone to the -studio for some special, secret purpose of her own—perhaps to destroy the painting. She did not attempt to do so—rather to his dsappointment, but went across the studio to the bedroom where the dead man lay. "As she did so Lintwell, within the death chambcr, made a startling discovery, and decided upon a course of action which has been responsible for everything that happened since. One thing is certain; he actually did see on the dead man's arm the bloodstained impression of fingerprints, aiid as Linda crossed the room lie determined to make use of them in 6uch a fray as to endeavour to extract some admissions from her.

"Then Sir Roger camc to the studio, and a situation full of complexities and cross purposes was the result. "Up to a point Lintwcll reasoned cleverly enough, if only his inferences had been right. But his intuitions and psychology were at fault. In the first instance he read too much into the meaning of the picture; in the second place, he did not allow for the depth of Sir Roger's love for his wife. But at the conclusion of the interview > Lintwell believed, as he told me afterwards, that he had been successful, and that Sir Roger would visit the tower Uat night. He was right, unfortunately, in this conjecture, but not for the reason that he supposed. Deliberately —it was part of his plan —he determined to spend the night in the death chamber, on the watch, convinced that the solution of the tragedy was within his reach. But his curiosity to probe this mystery was confounded by an unexpected factor; one sc sinister and mysterious that it overwhelmed him with horror, brought about disaster, and caused him to lose his nerve. If ever a human being was punished for officious interference in the concerns of other people, Herbert Lintwell is that man. He has told me, and 1 believe him, that the dreadful ordeal oi those hours in the darkness will sit heavy on his memory to his dying day, T« understand properly what happened that night, I must ask you to accompany me to the tower." CHAPTER XII. The three of us, a few minutes later found ourselves ascending the spira stair of the old Grcymarsh tower. \V< reached the fourth floor, crossed tin landing, and Grey opened the studic door. . "Not the studio, but the bedroom,' said Grey. He did not switch on the electric light

but used his electric torch to guide us across the sombre room. Through the window I saw a clouded moon scudding across a lowering sky; a veined silver disc struggling through maroon and steel-grey clouds. Its vague light, struggling in at the lofty window, lent a faint luminosity to the interior of the room, glinting the heavy furniture and the pictures on the wall. Grey crossed the floor silently, and drew the curtains, of the bedroom apart. I discerned the outlines of furniture, the smaller narrow window of the bed-chamber, and the bed. Grey spoke again. "Come closer —near the bed. Sit down, Colonel Templeton. Haldham, there's

a chair for you." It was by the bedside. I took it, guided to it by a shaft of light. Across the bed I could see through the narrow window, and the scene outside, v'fhe moon illumined the black emptiness of the marshes, the dark shadow of • Greymarsh, and a sobbing, receding sea. Within the room I could see my uncle seated near me, his face in alternate glow and shadow as he pulled vigorously perhaps for comfort—at his cigar. Grey was standing on the farther side of the apartment, between the window and the bed. Looking across the bed towards .us, he once more spoke. ' "Lintwell stationed himself in this room on the night following Henry Liskard's murder, in the expectation that the person who fired the shot would return to the tower again to remove the telltale fingermarks. As the light would have beaconed a warning he watched in the darkness, between the bed and the window, by the dead man's side. There is a widely held idea that to pass a night alone with a corpse requires a certain hardihood of disposition and iron nerves. Something of this strange effect of terror visited Lintwell in the course of his vigil in the tower that night. In his case it took the form that there was something else beside himself and the dead man in the silent room.

Each moment the feeling grew stronger, and grew, into conviction, that some other creatine shared his vigil with the dead in that dark room: some being, perhaps some intangible presence, who watched as he watched, and perhaps saw more than himself. Terror crashed through his brain like loud music. Another moment, and he would liave lied. But just then his attention was diverted by a distinct sound; a kind of shuffling, scraping noise, coming from somewhere outside. Someone was mounting to the bedroom by the ironholds outside. We waited. The scraping noise reached his ears with greater distinctness. and he knew that the visitor was near. Another moment, and the strip of sky vanished; the window darkened, as though a curtain had been dropped!' But Lintwell knew it was- not a curtain; lie knew what had blotted out the sky. The climber had reached the window, and was looking in. And, as Lintwell gazed, the window was thrust up, and a man's arm groped in. Lintwell shook oft Jiis lethargy, and gripDed it hard. A dire struggle followed. Lintwell did not know how long it lasted, but he has a vivid, memory of its unexpected end. For, as they still wrestled with convulsive moments, the stilness was broken by a loud and frightened cry. Not from outside the window—Lintwell would have understood that. That scream of terror rang out within: somewhere in the blackness of the room,

"Lintwell was petrified, and involuntarily released liis hold. The hand was plucked awav, and through the window he saw the sky. In the moment of release the visitor had slipped, and fallen from his precarious hold. His mind was submerged in fear; he stared wildly about the room. Then, an instant later, he heard footsteps—stumbling footstepsclattering down the stairs. "As his faculties gradually steadied, he asked himself whom it could have been? And that thought was instantaneously followed by a blinding flash of vision, in which his own folly and stupidity stood revealed. The sharer of his vigil was the actual murderer, hiding in the scene of the crime for some reason, and driven by fear to make his escape. "But he was aware that he had sought to trap two innocent people, and the knowledge filled his stricken soul with remorse. He told me something else which showed how complete the revelation had been. Before he left the tower there remained (he said) one thing for him to do. With the courage of his penitence he bent over the bed, and, by the feeble illumination of a match, removed the prints from the dead man's arm." (To be concluded.) •