It was not at Carninnish, however, that Lamont gave his statement to the inspector, but on the journey south. Dr. Anderson, on hearing what was mooted, pleaded for one more day’s rest for his patient. “You don’t want the man to have inflammation of the brain, do you?”

Grant, who was dying to have a statement down in black and white, explained that the man himself was anxious to give one, and that giving it would surely harm him less than having it simmering in his brain.

“It would be all right at the beginning,” Anderson said, “but by the time he had finished he would need another day in bed. Take my advice and leave it for the mean-time.” So Grant had given way and let his captive have still longer time to burnish the tale he was no doubt concocting. No amount of burnish, he thought thankfully, would rub out the evidence. That was there unalterable, and nothing the man might say could upset the facts. It was as much curiosity on his part, he told himself, as fear for his case that made him so eager to hear what Lamont had to say. So he bullied himself into some show of patience. He went sea-fishing in Master Robert with Drysdale, and every chug of the motor reminded him of the fish he had landed two nights ago. He went to tea at the manse, and with Miss Dinmont’s imperturbable face opposite him and an odd pepper-pot alongside the salt on the table, his thoughts were almost wholly of Lamont. He went to church afterwards, partly to please his host, but mainly to avoid what was evidently going to be a tête-à-tête with Miss Dinmont if he stayed behind, and sat through a sermon in which Mr. Logan proved to his own and his congregation’s satisfaction that the King of kings had no use for the fox-trot; and thought continually of the statement Lamont would give him. When the incredibly dreary noise of Highland “praise” had faded into silence for the last time and Mr. Logan had pronounced an unctuous benediction, his one thought was that now he could go back and be near Lamont. It was rapidly becoming an obsession with him, and he recognized the fact and resented it. When Mrs. Dinmont — Miss Dinmont had not come to church — reminded him as she was saying good-night that on the morrow the car would stop at the manse gate to allow them to say goodbye to Mr. Lowe, it came as a shock to him that there was more play-acting to be done before he departed from Carninnish. But things proved easier than he had anticipated. Lamont played up as he had played up during the fateful tea, and neither his host nor his hostess suspected that there was anything more serious amiss than the matter of his health. Miss Dinmont was not present. “Dandy said she had already said goodbye to you, and it is unlucky to say goodbye twice,” her mother said. “She said you had been unlucky enough already. Are you a very unlucky person, then?”

“Very,” said Lamont, with an admirable smile and as the car moved away, Grant took out the handcuffs.

“Sorry,” he said brusquely. “It’s only till we reach the railway.” But Lamont merely repeated the word “Unlucky!” as if, surprisingly, he liked the sound of it. At the station they were joined by a plainclothes man, and at Inverness had a compartment to themselves. And it was after dinner that night, when the last light was going on the hills, that Lamont, pale and rather ill-looking, offered again to tell them all he knew.

“It isn’t much,” he said. “But I want you to know.”

“You realize that what you say may be used against you?” Grant said. “Your lawyer would probably want you to say nothing. You see, it’s putting your line of defence into our hands.” And even while he was saying it, he was wondering: Why am I so punctilious? I’ve told him already that anything he says may be used against him. But Lamont wanted to talk, and so the constable produced his notebook.

“Where shall I begin?” Lamont asked. “It’s difficult to know where to start.”

“Suppose you tell us how you spent the day Sorrell was murdered that’s a week last Tuesday — the 13th.”

“Well, in the morning we packed — Bert was leaving for America that night and I took my things to my new room in Brixton and he took his to Waterloo.”

Here the inspector’s heart missed a beat. Fool! He’d forgotten all about the man’s luggage. He had been so hot on the false scent of the Ratcliffes and then on the trail of Lamont that he hadn’t had time to see the thing under his nose. Not that it was of supreme importance, in any case.

“That took us till lunchtime. We had lunch in the Coventry Street Lyons —”

“Whereabouts?”

“In a corner table on the first floor.”

“Yes; go on.”

“All the time we were having lunch we argued as to whether I was going to see him off or not. I wanted to go down to Southampton with him and see him sail, but he wouldn’t let me come even to the boat-train at Waterloo. He said there wasn’t any-thing in the world he hated like being seen off, especially when he was going a long way. I remember he said, ‘If a chap’s not going far, then there’s no need, and if he’s going to the other side of the world, then there’s no good. What’s a few minutes more or less?’ Then in the afternoon we went to the Woffington to see Didn’t You Know?”

“What!” said Grant. “You went to the show at the Woffington in the afternoon?”

“Yes; that was arranged a long time beforehand. Bert had booked seats. Stalls. It was a sort of final do — celebration. At the interval he told me that he was going to join the pit queue for the evening performance as soon as we got out — he had gone a lot to Didn’t You Know? It was a sort of craze; in fact, we both went a lot — and said that we’d say goodbye then. It seemed a poor way to me to say goodbye to a pal you’d known as well as I knew Bert, but he was always a bit unaccountable, and anyhow, if he didn’t want me, I wasn’t going to insist on being with him. So we said goodbye outside the front of the Woffington, and I went back to Brixton to unpack my things. I was feeling awfully fed up, because Bert and I had been such pals that I hadn’t any others worth mentioning, and it was lonely at Brixton after Mrs. Everett’s.”

“Didn’t you think of going with Sorrell?”

“I wanted to, all right, but I hadn’t the money. I hoped for a while that he’d offer to lend me it. He knew that I’d pay him back all right. But he never did. I was a bit sore about that too. Every way I was pretty fed up. And Bert himself didn’t appear to be happy about it. He hung on to my hand like anything when we were saying goodbye. And he gave me a little packet and said I was to promise not to open it till the day after to-morrow — that was the day after he sailed. I thought it was a sort of farewell present, and didn’t think anything more about it. It was a little white packet done up in paper like jewellers use, and as a matter of fact I thought it was a watch. My watch was always going crazy. He used to say, ‘If you don’t get a new watch, Jerry, you won’t be in time for kingdom come even.’”

Lamont choked suddenly and stopped. He carefully wiped away the steam on the window and then resumed:

“Well, when I was unpacking my things in Brixton, I missed my revolver. I never used the thing, of course. It was just a war souvenir. I had a commission, though you mightn’t think it. And I tell you straight I’d rather a thousand times be for it wire-cutting, or anything else like that, than be hunted round London by the police. It isn’t so bad in the open. More like a game, somehow. But in London it’s like being in a trap. Didn’t you feel that it wasn’t so deadly awful out in the country somehow?”

“Yes,” admitted the inspector; “I did. But I didn’t expect you to. I thought you’d be happier in town.”

“Happy! God!” said Lamont, and was silent, evidently living it over again.

“Well,” prompted the inspector, “you missed your revolver?”

“Yes; I missed it. And though I didn’t use it — it used to be kept locked in a drawer at Mrs. Everett’s — I knew exactly where I had put it when I was packing. Whereabouts in the trunk, I mean. And as it was only that morning I had packed, I was just taking things out in the reverse order from the way I’d put them in, and so I missed it at once. And then I grew frightened somehow — though even yet I can’t tell you why. I began to remember how quiet Bert had been lately. He was always quiet, but lately he had been more so. Then I thought he might just have wanted a gun going to a strange country. But then I thought he might have asked for it. He knew I’d have given it to him if he asked for it. Anyway, I was sort of frightened, though I couldn’t tell you just why, and I went straight back to the queue and found him. He had a good place, about a third of the way down, so I think he had had a boy to keep his place for him. He must have meant all the time to go back on his last night. He was sentimental, Bert. I asked him if he had taken my revolver, and he admitted it. I don’t know why I grew so scared then all of a sudden. Looking back, it doesn’t seem to be anything to be scared about — your pal having taken your revolver. But I was, and I lost my head and said, ‘Well, I want it back right now.’ And he said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because it’s my property and I want it.’ He said, ‘You’re a mean skunk, Jerry. Can’t I borrow anything of yours even when I’m going half round the world and you’re going to stay in little safe old London?’ But I stuck to having it back. Then he said, ‘Well, you’ll have a sweet time unpacking my things for it, but I’ll give you the key and the ticket.’ It was only then that it occurred to me that I had taken it for granted that he had the revolver on him. I began to feel small and to feel I’d made a fool of myself. I always did things first and thought afterwards, and Bert always thought for ages about a thing, and then would do exactly as he had intended to. We were opposites in lots of ways. So I told him to keep his ticket and the revolver too, and went away.”

Now there had been no cloakroom ticket found in Sorrell’s possession.

“Did you see the ticket?”

“No; he only offered to give it to me.

“Next morning I was late because I wasn’t used to doing for myself, and I had to make my own breakfast and tidy up, but I didn’t hurry because I had no job. I was hoping to get a clerk’s place when the ‘flat’ started. It was nearly twelve when I went out, and I wasn’t thinking of anything but Bert. I was so fed up with the way we’d parted and the fool I’d made of myself that I went to a post office and sent a wire to Bert addressed to the Queen of Arabia, saying, ‘Sorry. — JERRY.’”

“What post office did you send the telegram from?”

“The one on Brixton High Street.”

“All right; go on.”

“I bought a paper and went back to my rooms, and then I saw about the queue murder. It didn’t give any description of the man except that he was young and fair, and I didn’t connect him with Bert. When I thought of Bert, I always thought of him aboard ship by this time d’you see? If the man had been shot, I’d have been alarmed at once. But stuck with a knife was different.”

At this stage Grant looked with increduous astonishment at Lamont. Was the man by any remotest possibility telling the truth? If not, he was the most cold-blooded wretch Grant had ever had the unhappy lot to meet. But the man appeared unconscious of Grant’s scrutiny; he seemed wholly absorbed in his story. If this was acting, it was the best Grant had ever seen; and he deemed himself a connoisseur.

“On Thursday morning when I was clearing up, I remembered Bert’s parcel, and opened it. And inside was all Bert’s cash. I was flabbergasted, and somehow I was scared again. If anything had happened to Bert, I’d have heard about it — I mean, I thought I would have — but I didn’t like it. There was no note with it. He had said when he handed it over, ‘This is for you,’ and made me promise not to open it till the time he said. I didn’t know what to do about it because I still thought of Bert as being on the way to New York. I went out and got a paper. They had all big headlines about the queue murder, and this time there was a full description of the man and his clothes and the contents of his pockets. That was in black type, and I knew at once it was Bert, got on a bus, feeling sick all over, but meaning to go to Scotland Yard right away and tell them all I knew about it. On the bus I read the rest of the thing. It said that the murder had been done by some one left-handed, and wanted to know who had left the queue. Then I remembered that we had had an argument that any one might have overheard, and that I had all Bert’s money without a single thing to show how I got it. I got off the bus in an awful sweat, and walked about thinking what was to be done. The more I thought about it, the more it see............