Pons twisted down the corners of his mouth and looked mockingly over at the parcel in the far corner.
“Just peruse his entry in that current volume of Who’s Who, if you would be so good.”
I brought the weighty volume to my armchair and studied it. I soon found the item I wanted. McDonald’s entry was impressive indeed. He lived at Ardrossan Lodge near a small village about twenty miles from Inverness. I went down the article with increasing puzzlement.
“He is a scholar too, Pons.”
“Is he not, Parker.”
“Publications include ‘The Sphere and the Triangle’ (1914) and ‘The Dimensions of Ecstasy’ (1923),” I said.
Pons chuckled drily.
“Oh, yes, the Colonel has a great deal to him. ‘The Dimensions of Ecstasy’ indeed. He is as much at home among the shelves of the library and the higher philosophy as he is at a rough shoot or on one of the crags of his native heath.”
I put down the volume on the table.
“You intrigue me, Pons. This business is serious.”
Solar Pons looked at me sombrely.
“Serious indeed, Parker. It can only end one way or another. We have been conducting a struggle at long-distance for the past six years or so. I really must take up the challenge.”
I looked at him sharply.
“You have something in mind?”
“There is a matter in train which bears the unmistakable stamp of Master McDonald,” my friend went on. “I fancy he sent me the parcel because he wished to clear the decks before putting it in motion.”
His eyes were fixed somewhere up beyond me at the ceiling.
“I really would give a great deal to checkmate him.”
He broke off abruptly.
“Ah, there is Mrs Johnson’s motherly tread upon the stair. We will take up this matter again after lunch.”
2
My sick calls took me out again in the afternoon and it was not until the early evening that I once again set eyes on my friend. A thin fog was swirling about the streets and I was glad to get indoors. When I entered the sitting-room I found Pons in consultation with a tall, fair-haired girl of about twenty-five, whose pink cheeks and flashing eyes bespoke some degree of agitation.
“Ah, this is my friend and colleague, Dr Lyndon Parker,” said Pons, rising from his chair and effecting the introductions. “Allow me to present my client, Miss Jennifer Hayling of Wortley Hall, Norfolk, and Inverness.”
“Inverness, Pons!”
I could not resist an involuntary start and Miss Hayling paused in shaking hands, before favouring me with a brief smile.
“This is connected with Colonel McDonald, then, Pons?” I asked as I took off my overcoat and drew my chair up to the fire.
“Indeed it is, Dr Parker,” said the young lady indignantly, “though I cannot prove it. But a more thorough-going rascal it has never been my misfortune to encounter until now.”
I looked at her in surprise.
“I really must press upon you the necessity of telling your story again, Miss Hayling,” said Pons quickly. “That is, if we are to persuade the doctor to accompany us to Scotland for I certainly cannot do without him.”
My surprise grew.
“Scotland, Pons! Good heavens! It is a long way in such inclement weather.”
“It is indeed, Parker,” said my companion smoothly, “but it is vitally urgent that I travel there. It is a matter of life and death.”
I sat looking from one to the other for a long moment.
“I will certainly come, Pons, in that case. Though what my locum will say I cannot tell.”
“There will be time enough to make arrangements, Parker. We shall not need to depart until tomorrow.”
“Leave it to me,” I said, with a reassuring smile at Miss Hayling.
Our visitor, who was elegantly dressed in a well-cut overcoat with a fashionable fur collar, now resumed her seat at the fireside, removing her outer garment to reveal a full-fashioned figure clad in a thick jersey dress. On her head she wore a West End milliner’s version of what passes in the South for a Scottish lady’s tam-o-shanter with a knitted bobble.
The young lady smiled as though she had guessed what I was thinking.
“I have only just returned from Scotland, Dr Parker, and I like to give some token respect to the land of my adoption.”
“Certainly, Miss Hayling,” I returned. “I was thinking it most becoming.”
“You are extremely gallant this evening, Parker,” said Pons gravely. “But I fear these sartorial notations are coming between us and the young lady’s story.”
With a brief smile at both of us, our attractive visitor plunged into her tale without more ado.
“As I already told you in my letters, Mr Pons, I am an orphan, living mainly in the Norwich area. My mother was Scottish and the family once owned considerable estates near Inverness. During the time of my parents’ marriage they divided their time between Glen Affric and Norwich, where my father had business interests. Both my parents were killed in a tragic accident a little over a year ago.”
A cloud passed over her face and she paused, as though the recollection were painful to her.
“I am so sorry, Miss Hayling,” I mumbled, with a quick glance at Pons.
He sat with his brows knitted, as though concentrating fiercely, several sheets of paper, evidently his client’s letters, spread out on the table at his side. At the girl’s extended permission he lit his pipe and was soon contentedly wreathed in aromatic blue smoke.
“I would not have referred to it again except that Mr Pons seems to think the matter of some significance,” the girl resumed.
“It may be, Miss Hayling, it may be,” Solar Pons interjected. “There is a wealth of difference. Pray continue.”
With a shy smile in my direction, our visitor went on, “You would not, of course, know Glen Affric or the terrain thereabouts, but it is, as you might imagine, hilly, with steep winding roads, often little more than lanes. The road from the main gates of Glen Affric is extremely steep and winds down through rather forbidding pine forests. It is well enough in summer but in winter, especially during icy conditions, can be extremely dangerous.
“I had often told my parents to take the car and they usually did so but they were inordinately fond of driving about the neighbourhood in a pony and trap, as my father, who was not a Scot at all, loved to pose as a laird, which caused both him and my mother great amusement.”
The girl smiled reminiscently, as though she could see her dead parents’ images rising before her once again in the flesh and I must say I was touched at the warmth of her expression.
“The road turns at right angles across an old stone bridge, which spans a ravine through which a stream runs. It was there, just at the bridge entrance, that the accident happened. The shafts snapped on the turn, the pony went on, but both my parents and the vehicle crashed through the wooden guard-rail into the ravine below.”
Our visitor was silent as though re-living the horror of the moment and I broke the silence, tactfully, I thought.
“I see, Pons. In the wintry conditions, no doubt the horse slipped at the turn and the unwonted strain on the shafts broke the wood, thus precipitating the tragedy.”