"Well, Mr. Carrington," said he, "don't trouble to look surprised. I guess you've seen right through me for some time back."
"Meaning--?" asked Carrington with his engaging smile.
"Meaning that I'm the unknown, unsuspected, and mysterious person who's putting up the purse. Don't pretend you haven't tumbled to that!"
"Yes," admitted Carrington, "I have tumbled."
"I knew my sister had given the whole blamed show away! I take it you put your magnifying glass back in your pocket after your trip out to Stanesland?"
"Well," said Ned, "that being so, I may as well tell you what my idea was. It mayn't have been very bright; still there was a kind of method in my madness. You see I wanted you to have an absolutely clear field and let you suspect me just as much as anybody else."
"In short," smiled Carrington, "you wanted to start with the other horses and not just drop the flag."
"That's so," agreed Ned. "But when my sister let out about that £1200, and I saw that you must have spotted me, there didn't seem much point in keeping up the bluff, when I came to think it over. And since then, Mr. Carrington, something has happened that you ought to know and I decided to come and see you and talk to you straight."
Ned smiled for an instant his approval of this prompt plunge into business, and then his face set hard.
"It's a most extraordinary thing," said he, "and may strike you as hardly credible, but here's the plain truth put shortly. Yesterday afternoon Miss Farmond ran away." Carrington merely nodded, and he exclaimed, "What! You know then?"
"Ah, I see. Did you know I'd happened to see her start and gone after her and brought her back?"
"No," said he, "that's quite news to me."
"Well, I did, and I learnt the whole story from her. You can't guess who advised her to bolt?"
"I think I can," said Carrington quietly.
"Either you're on the wrong track, or you've cut some ice, Mr. Carrington. It was Simon Rattar!"
"Tell me Miss Farmond's story first and I'll tell you how I guessed."
"Well, she spotted you were a detective--"
"Confound these women!" said he. "They're so infernally independent of reason, they always spot things they shouldn't!"
"Then she discovered she was suspected and so she got in a stew, poor girl, and went to see Rattar. Do you know what he told her? That I was employing you and meant to convict Sir Malcolm and her and hang them with my own hands!"