CHAPTER XVIII

POSSIBLE EXCITEMENT

Meanwhile, Cleek, Mr. Narkom, and Dollops stayed on at the Towers for such time as it would take to have the coroner’s inquest arranged, and Merriton brought up before the local magistrate.

Mr. Narkom was frankly uneasy over the whole affair.

“There’s something fishy in it, Cleek,” he kept saying.  “I don’t like the looks of it.  Taking that innocent boy up for a murder which I feel certain he never committed.  Of course, circumstantial evidence points strongly against him, but—­”

“He’s better out of the way, at all events,” interposed Cleek.  “Mind you, I don’t say the chap is innocent.  Men of Wynne’s calibre have the knack of raising the very devil in a person who is under their influence for long.  And there’s Borkins’s story.”  The queer little one-sided smile looped up his cheek for a moment and was gone again in a twinkling.  He crossed to where Mr. Narkom stood, and put a hand on his arm.  “Tell me,” he said, quietly, “did you ever hear of a chap squirming and moaning and doing the rest of the things that the man said Wynne was doing in the garden pathway, when a bullet had got him clean through the brain?  Something ‘fishy’ there, if you like.”

“I should think so,” replied Mr. Narkom.  “Why, the chap would have died instantly.  Then you think Borkins himself is guilty?”

“On the contrary, I do not,” returned Cleek, emphatically.  “If my theory’s correct, Borkins is not the murderer of Dacre Wynne.  Much more likely to be Nigel Merriton, for that matter.  Then there’s the question of this I.O.U. that I found on the body.  Signed ‘Lester Stark’, and the doctor—­Gad! what a loyal friend to have!—­told me that Lester Stark, Merriton, and a little man called West were bosom friends and club-mates.”

“Then perhaps the man Stark killed him, after all?” threw in Mr. Narkom at this juncture, and there was a tinge of eagerness in his excited tones, which made Cleek whirl round upon him and say, accusingly, “Old friend, Merriton has won your heart as he has won others’.  You’re dead nuts on the youngster, and I must say he does seem such a clean, honest, upstanding young fellow.  But you’re ready to convict any one of the murder of Dacre Wynne but Merriton himself.  Own up now; you’ve a sneaking regard for the fellow!”

Mr. Narkom reddened.

“Well, if you want the truth of it—­I have!” he said, finally, in an “I-don’t-care-what-the-devil-you-think” sort of voice.  “He’s exactly the kind of chap I’d like for a son of my own, and—­and—­dash it!  I don’t like seeing him in the lock-up; and that’s the long and short of it!”

“So long as it’s only the long and short, and not the end of it, it doesn’t greatly matter,” returned Cleek.  “Hello!  Is that you, Dollops?”

“Yessir.”

“Any news for me?  Found that chap with the straggling black moustache that tried to do me in the other night?  I’ve not a doubt that you’ve discovered the answer to the whole riddle, by the look upon your face.”