Creighton waved good-night to him from the veranda and stepped back into the house to find the maid awaiting him in the hall.

"Your bag has gone up, sir. Shall I show you your room?"

"Thank you. By the way, what is your name?"

"Betty, sir. Betty Blake."

"Very pretty name, too." He motioned her to precede him up the stairs.

"Been with Mrs. Varr long?"

"About four months, sir."

"Are you a Hambleton girl?"

"Yes, sir, born and bred."

The room a.s.signed to him was one of the best in the house. It was next to Miss Ocky's own, he was to discover later, and like hers it had a small rounded balcony outside the tall windows. He glanced about him appreciatively. He could rough it with any man, but he vastly preferred to be comfortable. Here he would be, if his eye didn't deceive him.

"Native, eh?" he continued conversationally as the girl made to leave him. "Then you must know every one in these parts. For instance--do you know a young man called Maxon?"

"Charlie Maxon?" She tossed her head. "Yes, I know _him_!" Her accent was richly scornful. "Pity they couldn't keep him in jail!"

There was a writing table with note paper on it in one corner of the room, and as she finished speaking a sc.r.a.p of crumpled paper on the floor beneath it caught her eye. With instinctive neatness she went across the room and picked it up, steadying herself as she stooped by resting her fingertips lightly on the pile of paper.

"Is there anything more, sir?"

"Thank you, no," replied Creighton absently.

When she had closed the door behind her he went over by the writing table and stood looking down at the topmost sheet of paper. The maid's orderly spirit had given him a hint that he thought he might profitably employ. He picked up the paper and held it slantwise to the light of the window while he peered at its surface. Then he nodded contentedly.

He drew forth his pencil and made a neat number one at the top of the sheet, which he then dropped in a drawer of the desk. He found a clean page in a small memo-book that he carried and made a careful entry, "1.

Betty Blake."

"I'll get 'em all before I finish," he promised himself.

He went downstairs a few minutes later to meet the butler on his way up with the announcement that dinner was served; a welcome piece of news to a man who had had a long day on sandwiches only.

"Just the two of us," Miss Ocky greeted him as he entered the dining-room. "I'll pay you the compliment of admitting that the arrangement suits me perfectly. A crowd would have been terrible, but to have dined by myself would have been ghastly."

"Nothing could have pleased me better," said the detective as they seated themselves. "It has been growing increasingly clear to me that I must look to you for a great deal of information. Yours is the most authoritative voice around here."

"I'll play oracle within reason."

"Um. Don't let's start off with a reservation like that, Miss Copley.

You made a nave, but very wise, remark this afternoon when you said you might just as well tell me something, especially as I was bound to find it out anyway. Stick to that maxim. It will save me time and you trouble."

"Mmph!" said Miss Ocky.

"About there only being two of us for dinner," continued the detective, blandly ignoring the sniff, "there's a matter I'd like to clear up.

Where is Mr. Varr's son? Was the trouble between them so bitter that it is to be perpetuated after death?"

"I couldn't bring myself to speak about that until we were by ourselves," said Miss Ocky. She looked up at Bates with a friendly glance. "I know you won't repeat anything, Bates! The trouble between Simon and his son grew out of Copley's attachment for Sheila Graham. I like her extremely, so I found myself in opposition to Simon. I cast myself in the role of the heavy fairy G.o.dmother and took a hand in shaping the destinies of the young couple--a fond aunt has an inalienable right to barge into her nephew's affairs, hasn't she?"

"Second only to a grandmother's," he a.s.sured her.

"I persuaded them to elope," confessed Miss Ocky. "No date was set for it that I heard of. Yesterday Copley succeeded in finding a job on the Hambleton _News_ as a reporter--and the editor, Mr. Barlow, when he arrived here this morning to cover this story told me that the boy had immediately celebrated his getting a job by asking for a two-week vacation to attend to some personal business. He left Hambleton last night for parts unknown. Meanwhile, Sheila Graham had gone to visit friends in New York for a fortnight. If you're a good detective, Mr.

Creighton, you may make the right deduction."

"He started off on a honeymoon the very day his father was murdered.

Rather--unpleasant coincidence."

"It struck me that way. I've been keeping mum just on that account.

Norvallis was apparently satisfied with a statement that Copley is temporarily absent and that we are trying to get in touch with him."

"Norvallis is a very amiable gentleman; he has his reasons for being so, I think. As for Copley--well, a good many newspapers will carry the story of what happened last night and he will undoubtedly read it by to-morrow morning--possibly this evening. Then he will come home."

"Keeping his marriage--if there was one--dark, I trust. With the opposition--er--removed, I think it would be more suitable to have a public ceremony after a decent interval."

"Um. A matter of taste, perhaps. Personally, I've seen so much trouble caused by secret marriages that I'm inclined to eye them doubtfully. But--may I ask you a few questions about the less romantic adventures of the young man? Mrs. Varr declared this afternoon that her husband had driven him from the house. Was their disagreement--violent?"

"You must make allowances for my sister's nervous condition," answered Miss Ocky quickly. Her perceptions were instantly alive to whither this shift in the conversation might lead, and she resolved to limit the information she gave him as much as possible to the facts he would surely discover for himself. "Simon and Copley talked over the situation, night before last; Lucy naturally exaggerates the affair."

"Mr. Varr and his son quarreled. Isn't that the plain truth?"

"Doesn't a quarrel depend somewhat on the natures of the two people involved, Mr. Creighton? Simon was fearfully obstinate, and Copley is a little high-tempered--just to the extent that is becoming to a young man with any spirit--and I suppose that what might be merely a normal discussion between two such natures might--might seem like a quarrel to other people. Mightn't it?" she added, not very hopefully.

Despite himself, the detective was forced to grin at this ingenuous, or ingenious, argument.

"They quarreled," he summed it up, regaining his gravity. "If you will recollect, Miss Copley, when you came into the sitting-room a while ago you excused your sister's indisposition on the plea that she had been through enough the last _two_ days to wreck an Amazon. Why _two_ days, unless it was the quarrel between her husband and her son that worried her all of yesterday?"

"Oh, heavens! You're worse than a dictaphone!" Miss Ocky made a face at him. "There's no help for it--I must go into a silence."

"Please don't, until I've asked one more thing. You can answer freely, or the station master will. If Copley went to town last night, what trains were available?"

"Only one," she admitted slowly. "There's a through train from the West that stops at Hambleton for water--at midnight!"

"Ah," said Peter Creighton, then wished he hadn't.

A high-tempered youth--a pig-headed father--a balked romance--a quarrel--a murder at eleven and a train away at midnight. These facts paraded through Creighton's brain and to a certain extent got ready to parade right on out of it. He could think all around a given subject, as he had described the process to Jason Bolt, and he was no fool to commit himself to half-baked hypotheses. Any theory of Copley's guilt could be countered with the same objection he made to Krech's hasty indictment of Mrs. Varr; a boy like that might strike down a man in the heat of pa.s.sion but he would hardly set himself to calculated murder--or if he did, he would certainly arrange a better finish than a clumsy attempt at flight.

He became aware that Miss Copley was watching him anxiously while he meditated. He met her eyes--very nice eyes they were, he reflected--and it was too bad they should reveal fear, as they had since his monosyllabic exclamation.

"Are--are you suggesting--"

"Nothing, Miss Copley--nothing! Frankly and honestly! If you will permit me to say so, I think you are trying to make a mountain out of this molehill yourself. I haven't a doubt in the world that your nephew will turn up with every minute of last evening properly accounted for." He welcomed the slow reversion to normal of her expression. "Come, if I'm a dictaphone, let's pretend I'm turned off!

Shall we talk of something else than murder? One might as well dine to jazz!"

That brought a smile to her lips--a quavery, uncertain little smile but an augury of better ones to come.