“I shall await you to-morrow afternoon.  Call and tell me everything, won’t you?”

I promised, and then she disappeared into the great stable-yard behind the castle, while I went on down the dark road and then struck across the open fields to my uncle’s house.

At half-past nine that night I pulled up the dog-cart before the chief police-station in Dumfries, and alighting at once sought the big fair Highlander, Mackenzie, with whom I had had the consultation on the previous day.

When we were seated in his room beneath the hissing gas-jet, I related my adventure and the result of my investigation.

“What?” he cried, jumping up.  “You’ve unearthed another body—­a woman’s?”

“I have.  And what is more, I can identify her,” I replied.  “Her name is Armida, and she was wife of the murdered man Olinto Santini.”

“Then both husband and wife were killed?”

“Without a doubt—­a double tragedy.”

“But the two men who concealed the body!  Will you describe them?”

I did so, and he wrote at my dictation, afterwards remarking—­

“We must find them.”  And calling in one of his sub-inspectors, he gave him instructions for the immediate circulation of the description to all the police-stations in the county, saying the two men were wanted on a charge of willful murder.

When the official had gone out again and we were alone, Mackenzie turned to me and asked—­

“What induced you to search the wood?  Why did you suspect a second crime?”

His question nonplused me for the moment.

“Well, you see, I had identified the young man Olinto, and knowing him to be married and devoted to his wife, I suspected that she had accompanied him here.  It was entirely a vague surmise.  I wondered whether, if the poor fellow had fallen a victim to his enemies, she had not also been struck down.”

His lips were pressed together in distinct dissatisfaction.  I knew my explanation to be a very lame one, but at all hazards I could not import Muriel’s name into the affair.  I had given her my promise, and I intended to keep it.

“Then the body is still in the glen, where you left it?”

“Yes.  If you wish, I will take you to the spot.  I can drive you and your assistant up there.”

“Certainly.  Let us go,” he exclaimed, rising at once and ringing his bell.

“Get three good lanterns and some matches, and put them in this gentleman’s trap outside,” he said to the constable who answered his summons.  “And tell Gilbert Campbell that I want him to go with me up to Rannoch Wood.”

“Yes, sir,” answered the man; and the door again closed.

“It’s a pity—­a thousand pities, Mr. Gregg, that you didn’t stop those two men who buried the body.”

“They were already across the stream, and disappearing into the thicket before I mounted the rock,” I explained.  “Besides, at the moment I had no suspicion of what they’d been doing.  I believed them to be stragglers from a neighboring shooting-party who had lost their way.”