Hannasyde looked at him rather gravely. "Not quite in the way you mean."
Sir Adrian, rising from his chair, wandered across the room to take a cigarette from a box on one of the tables. "Ah, so it was Roberts himself, was it?" he said, mildly interested.
Hannasyde nodded. A stunned silence reigned for perhaps half a minute. Timothy had gone white and was staring at Hannasyde with his lips very firmly set.
Sir Adrian offered the cigarette box to Hannasyde. "Edwin Leighton?" he inquired.
"Yes," replied Hannasyde. "I don't think there's much room for doubt about that. We can't identify him for certain until we get his fingerprints from Melbourne, of course; but they'll be through almost any day now."
"Roberts?" Jim ejaculated. "But that's fantastic! Are you seriously suggesting that it was he who cut the hole in the Seamew and loosened the nut on my car?"
"Yes, I think so," said Hannasyde.
"But, good Lord, Superintendent, it was he who first warned me my life might be in danger!"
"Clever, wasn't it?" agreed Hannasyde.
Lady Harte got up from the card table and came to sit down in a chair opposite Hannasyde. "I insist upon being told the whole story!" she announced. "I freely admit I never suspected the man. How long have you known it?"
"I've had my suspicions ever since I first considered the Leightons as possible factors in the case, Lady Harte. I wasn't sure till this morning, when we found the gun with the silencer fitted to it and the length of fuse. That seemed to me to be fairly conclusive. I've been busy all the rest of the day collecting proof that the gun did belong to him."
"Tall order, that," said Lady Harte professionally. "A Colt .38, wasn't it? Did you manage to trace it?"
"Yes, we did, after a good deal of trouble. Scotland Yard got an answer from the States at 5 P.M. The American police cabled that the makers had sold that gun to their agents in Melbourne. The Yard then put through a radiogram to Australia. I've just heard the result. The gun was supplied to a retail shop in Melbourne and was bought by a man calling himself Oscar Roberts six months ago."
"Really, I call that marvellous!" said Lady Harte. "Here we are at 10.30 P.M., and since ten-thirty this morning you've been in touch not only with America but with Australia as well. When one considers the difference in time it seems hardly possible!"
"Well, you see, our cable reached the Melbourne police in the small hours, and they probably got the information we wanted as early as they could. As soon as the business houses were open, in fact. There was obviously no difficulty in tracing the gun, for Scotland Yard received the answer by radiogram just on ten o'clock. They rang me up at once, and I caught the ten-fifteen bus out here."
"Yes, very good of you," interrupted Jim; "but never mind about what the Australian police did! You say you've established the fact that the gun belonged to Roberts, and that settles that. He must have shot Clement, and I suppose he must be Edwin Leighton. But I can hardly believe it, all the same. It was he who started every scare we've had. While the rest of us thought my cousin Silas had missed his footing in the fog, he went about hinting that he'd met with foul play. He warned me to be careful—"
"He warned you to be careful," said Hannasyde; "but if you think back, you'll find that he never pretended to know anything until others were beginning to suspect it. The instant he realised that some, at least, of you felt that Mr. Silas Kane's death had not been investigated enough, he gave you to understand that he had thought so all along. When your motorboat sank and you, in company with everyone else, were convinced that your stepbrother had run her on the rocks, did he tell you he thought the boat had been tampered with?"
"No, he jolly well did not!" growled Timothy.
"No, not then," said Jim. "But when I told him that Timothy and Miss Allison had got the wind up about it—"
"He said that he had suspected it from the start," interjected Hannasyde.
"Well, yes," admitted Jim. "He did."
"Of course. It was quite safe once the idea of foul play had entered your head. He tried to make you—and incidentally me—think that Mr. Paul Mansell was the villain of the piece. He played his part very well indeed, but he slipped up yesterday. Up till that moment I had regarded him in the light of a somewhat tiresome amateur detective—we meet a good many, you know. But that slip of his made me sit up and take a certain amount of notice. You will remember that I came to call on you, Mrs. Kane, to find out what you could tell me about the Leightons?"
"Yes," said Emily. "Not that I knew anything about them."
"Roberts was present," continued Hannasyde. "My question must have jolted him badly, for he made a mistake. He hinted, very broadly, that Mr. Clement Kane had murdered his cousin and went to some trouble to demonstrate how unlikely it was that two such dissimilar murders should have been committed by the same man. Until that moment he had insinuated that Paul Mansell was responsible for both deaths."
"Quite true," agreed Sir Adrian. "One is led to suppose that he had not anticipated that you would look farther than the Mansells or—er—me, perhaps."
Hannasyde acknowledged this thrust with a twinkle, but Lady Harte said stringently: "I've had enough of that nonsense, Adrian! This whole case astounds me! I'm not squeamish: I've knocked about the world too much to be easily upset; but the idea of a man deliberately setting out to dispose of three people so that his wife would inherit a fortune absolutely appals me!"
Rosemary, who had till then been too much surprised to say a word, now made a contribution to the discussion. "I can believe anything of that man!" she said intensely. "I've had the most extraordinary feeling about him from the moment I set eyes on him. I didn't like to say anything about it, but my instinct is hardly ever at fault."
"So you've said before," replied Emily. "Don't interrupt!" She looked at Hannasyde. "I dare say he thought Maud was Clement's heir, eh?"
"Very probably," agreed Hannasyde. "I, too, find it difficult to believe that at the outset he contemplated the murders of three people. Two he might have got away with; the third, though inevitable once the first two had been committed, made the whole position very dangerous. He was gambling for a big stake; having gone so far, he couldn't think of giving up. So instead of being able to withdraw from the scene and to be next heard of as Edwin Leighton in Sydney, he was forced to remain here until he had succeeded in disposing of Mr. James Kane."
"Extremely hazardous," said Sir Adrian. "I suppose, had his wife indeed succeeded Clement Kane, he would have continued to be an errant husband until she was safely in possession of the fortune."
"I imagine so. Of course, we don't know whether she was aware of his plot. I hardly think she can have been; but from what Mrs. Kane told me, I gathered that once he elected to return to her she would do exactly as he told her."
"I dare say," said Emily scornfully.
Jim walked over to a side table, whereon Pritchard had set a tray earlier in the evening, and began to pour out drinks. "This has absolutely got me down," he confessed. "Of all the diabolical schemes!— He must have calculated to the last second the time it would take him to reach the front door from the study window. He even made an appointment to see Clement at three-thirty that afternoon. I suppose partly as a blind, partly to make it fairly certain that Clement would be in his study. If he hadn't been there, no doubt the murder would have been postponed. He must be a complete devil."
"No, not entirely," said Lady Harte. "He did rescue Timothy. I can't forget that."
"It's beastly!" said Mr. Harte violently. "He—he pretended to be trying to guard Jim, when all the time he was waiting to do him in! I think—I think it's the limit! I don't care if he did rescue me! I'd rather not have been rescued by him, and I jolly well hope you catch him!"