"Not so much as you might think--if you know that lady as well as I do, my lad," apostrophized Cleek as the boy sped down the passageway and left him alone. "Gad! here's a new outlook altogether. And that conversation actually took place! He wasn't lying, the straight young devil. And he never realized that he was plunging that precious brother of his deeper and deeper into the mire!... I say-- Cyril!"
The boy turned at the end of the passage and came slowly back to him.
"By the way, what size shoes do you take? Gad! your foot's pretty hefty for a sixteen-year-old, I must say! What's the number of those delicate little trotters?"
"They are rather huge, aren't they?" he replied. "But they're tens. Same size as Ross, you know, so that I can often borrow his shoes--and Captain Macdonald's as well. Funny we should all be the same size, isn't it?"
"Yes--deuced funny," returned Cleek, sucking in his lips suddenly and his face gone grim. "Tens--eh? Thought it was sixes for you and sevens for your brother."
"Who the dickens told you that fairy-tale, sir?"
"Oh, nobody particular. I must have dreamt it, I suppose," returned Cleek with a shrug of the shoulders. "And-- I say, Cyril. Your man Jarvis seems to have trotters, too. What size are his boots now, I wonder?"
"You must have made a mistake," he said in a surprised voice. "For Jarvis's feet are awfully small. Eights, I believe. Anyway, I can't get 'em on because I tried once. Stole his dress clothes and dressed up in 'em. But the mater was furious! Hello! there's the tea-gong. I must be off!"
Then he went off forthwith. Meanwhile Cleek, with his finger upon his chin, stood stock-still in the middle of the hallway and pinched up his brows.
"Now, why the dickens did she lie to me--unless she wanted to shield her precious brother?" he said ruminatively. "And why in heaven's name are they all so anxious to pervert Justice and to deny truth?"
But there was no one to give him any answer to that most difficult question, and he had perforce to possess his soul in patience for the present.
The rest of the day passed comparatively uneventfully for all those concerned in the drama of a night's doings, and save for a searching scrutiny of the library by Cleek, carried out under the noses of the village policeman, with Inspector Campbell very much to the fore as being in command of the local constabulary and anxious to make a good impression upon the Yard's Superintendent (with an eye to future promotion), and the discovery of one or two minor details which had passed even his searching eye before, Cleek's time hung fairly heavily upon his hands.