As I walked on alone, with the dark line of woods crowning the hill-top before me, the scene of that double tragedy, I again calmly reviewed the situation.  I longed to go to the hospital and see Hylton Chater, yet when I recollected the part he had played with Hornby on board the Lola, I naturally hesitated.  He was allied with Hornby, apparently against Leithcourt, although the latter was Hornby’s friend.

What, I wondered, had transpired in the library of that gray old castle which stood out boldly before me, dark and grim, as I plodded on through the rain?  How had Leithcourt succeeded in rendering his enemy insensible and hiding him in that cupboard?  Did he believe that he had killed him?

If I went boldly to Chater, then it would only be the betrayal of myself.  No.  I decided that the man who had smoked and chatted with me so affably on that hot, breathless night in the Mediterranean must remain in ignorance of my presence, or of my knowledge.  Therefore I stayed for a week at Greenlaw with eyes and ears ever open, yet exercising care that the patient in the hospital should be unaware of my presence.

Mackenzie saw him on several occasions, but he still persisted in that tantalizing silence.  The inquiry into the death of the unidentified man in Rannoch Wood had been resumed, and a verdict returned of willful murder against some person unknown, while of the second crime the public had no knowledge, for the body was not discovered.

Time after time I searched the wood alone, on the pretense of shooting pigeon, but discovered nothing.  When not having sport on my uncle’s property, I joined various parties in the neighborhood, not because Scotland at that time attracted me, but because I desired to watch events.

Chater, as soon as he recovered, left the hospital and went south—­to London, I ascertained—­leaving the police utterly in the dark and filled with suspicion of the fugitives from Rannoch.

I longed to know the whereabouts of Muriel, hoping to gain from her some information regarding their visitor who had so nearly escaped with his life.  That she was aware of the object of his visit was plain from the statements of the servants, all of whom had been left without either money or orders.

One day I called at the castle, the front entrance of which I found closed.  Gilrae, the owner, had come up from London, met his factor there, and discharged all the late tenant’s servants, keeping on only three of his own who had been in service there for a number of years.  Ann Cameron, a housemaid, was one of these, and it was she whom I met when entering by the servants’ hall.

On questioning her, I found her most willing to describe how she was in the corridor outside the young mistress’s room when Mr. Leithcourt dashed along in breathless haste with the telegram in his hand.  She heard him cry:  “Look at this!  Read it, Muriel.  We must go.  Put on your things at once, my dear.  Never mind about luggage.  Every minute lost is of consequence.  What!” he cried a moment later.  “You won’t go?  You’ll stay here—­stay here and face them?  Good Heavens! girl, are you mad?  Don’t you know what this means?  It means that the secret is out—­the secret is out, you hear!  We must fly!”