The Doctor examined carefully the body of the dead man. The face of the corpse was distorted and looked horrible in the candle-light.
‘Shot?’ said the Inspector laconically.
‘No,’ replied the Doctor.
‘Then how?’
‘I can’t say yet. It’s a queer case – looks to me as if he’d died from some shock – from a fright.’
‘Where’s the other corpse?’ said the Inspector. ‘And where’s the woman? She was a clever ’un that woman was.’ He took up the candle and walked to the cupboard. It was empty. In returning to the bench, he stumbled and fell; his foot had caught in a hole in the flooring, a board had been up and not replaced. ‘See that!’ said the Inspector as he re-lit the candle.
‘Yes; what does it mean?’
‘It means that pro tem we’ve been done. That was where the bilk was hidden, and I don’t like being done, even pro tem. Stanley, be off, and bring a couple of men to watch here. Then when you come back, you and I will go and search for that woman in the gulch. We must get her – she’s at the bottom of this. Will you come with us, Doctor?’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of this, I’m off home.’ After a little more talk with the Inspector, he mounted his horse and rode off. About a couple of hundred yards away he thought that he heard voices in the brushwood by the side of the road. He pulled up short. All was silent, and he rode on again.
If he had pursued his investigations further he would have found something. He would have found the dead body of Ned Peterkin, and on one side of it, seated with her knees drawn up to her chin, the Hon. Mrs Ralph Peterkin, and on the other side of it, Ralph Peterkin himself.
Even in the dim starlight the remarkable likeness which Ralph bore to his dead brother was noticeable. He, also, was seated on the ground, and beside him lay a spade, a clasp-knife open, and the dead man’s belt.
‘Curious,’ said Sarah, in a low voice, ‘that we two should be in partnership again.’
‘Husband and wife,’ said Ralph, shrugging his shoulders.
‘You can stow that,’ she retorted dryly.
‘It’s a bond between us,’ said the man. ‘You can’t get over it. Why did you send me word that Ned had played me false while I was down with the fever, unless it was because you were my wife?’
‘I wanted you to get back the stone because of Ida.’
‘What the devil had she to do with it? She went off in the end with Ned’s pal, Tom Ferris, the same that gave him the tip that I had got the better of the fever, and was likely to be suspicious. Ida wasn’t for Ned; no, and she wasn’t for me either.’
‘That’s true, but you were both after the woman. You quarrelled about her as you quarrelled about what share each was to hold in the diamond. If Ida had been good enough to go off with you, I had a notion that you would both die – to prevent any accidents, I would have seen that you both died myself. Well then, I should have been left a widow, and, as I thought you should leave your widow properly provided for, I was anxious that you should get back the stone. You managed your part of the business badly. You made a great noise and foamed at the mouth, and did nothing. It was a good idea of his to pass himself off as you. You missed the track of him at Dunkeld.’
‘Did I?’ said the man in a surly voice.
‘Yes, you did, and I took it up. It was your notion, I believe, that I wasn’t going to be on in this act, but I was. I came here by coach expecting to find Ned here; instead of that we found him lying in the road by Jenkin’s Claim. I didn’t let on that I knew anything about him. He had been drugged – that was what was the matter with him. Doctor was a fool, or he’d have seen it. When the Doctor took him on to Raynham’s I followed at a bit of a distance behind. The Doctor and Raynham went out, and I slipped in; I’d noticed the chain round his neck and guessed he had the diamond there, undoing his collar brought him round for a minute and I couldn’t do anything.’
‘You told the Inspector that you’d seen the diamond tonight.’
‘So I did. And I tell you that I couldn’t do anything. If you want to see that stone again you’ll take your orders from me, tell the truth, and ask no questions. To proceed. Just then Raynham came back with the medicine for Ned, and I hid myself in the cupboard. Ned seemed to have dropped off again. I saw Raynham steal the belt and murder Ned. I saw him hide the money where we took it from just now. Then the Inspector and the Doctor came in, and found me in the cupboard; you were listening outside and heard all I said then, I suppose.’
The man nodded.
‘And you were fool enough to push the door open. I saw you, and it scared me. I was afraid they’d take the light and look for you; so I dropped it, to create a diversion; and when they’d lit it again, I began a bit of melodramatic business that I had seen in the door the ghost of Ned calling on me to denounce his murderer.’
‘Yes, yes. I saw all that,’ said Ralph impatiently. ‘Then the shootin’ began. The Inspector went off to the gulch.’
‘Yes, he’s a one-idea man, that Inspector. He’s probably looking for me there now. Raynham went round to the back of his shanty without seeing me and dropped there, waiting. I came in then, and we lit the candle.’
‘But why was it that when Raynham came back – to get the belt and make off with it, I suppose – and saw me standing in the doorway, he just gasped and dropped dead like that?’
‘Simple enough. Raynham drank too much, and his heart had gone. He was already scared, and when he saw you he thought you were the ghost of the man he had murdered. He died of fright.’
‘Why did you leave him there, and make me carry Ned here?’
‘Don’t ask questions. When the dawn comes, you’ll know – and, if you do as you’re told, you’ll have the diamond back again. To speak more accurately, you’ll have a half-share in the diamond.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Very well; without me you’ll get nothing.’
‘All right,’ said the man, ‘I go under – always have.’
‘Now then, I’ll put a question to you. Who drugged Ned?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘That’s a lie. How came you here tonight at all?’
‘Don’t know. I was tramping about, miscellaneously.’
‘That also is a lie.’ Sarah smiled sweetly; she was playing the part of the person who, in a difficult situation has the whip-hand, and she enjoyed it. ‘And,’ she added, ‘you’d much better tell me the truth.’
The man pulled out his revolver. ‘Now then, you devil, I’ll have my turn. Tell me who took that diamond, or I’ll blow your brains out.’
Sarah laughed pleasantly. ‘This ain’t an enjoyable world,’ she said. ‘I’d think no more about leaving it than you would about puttin’ me out of it. You’ll get nothing from me that way. If you want a half share in that diamond you will hand me your revolver and tell me the truth.’
The man glared at her sullenly for a minute, and then handed her his revolver. ‘I lighted by chance,’ he said, ‘on Ned’s track two nights ago. I daren’t track him in the ordinary way, and I got a chap to give him drugged baccy. I was just coming up to him when that damned coach picked him up, and by the time that I got to Raynham’s shanty, the diamond was gone.’
‘That will do,’ said Sarah. ‘I’m going to sleep till dawn.’
‘I can’t sleep alongside of that,’ said Ralph, with a glance towards the corpse. ‘I’ll dig a hole and bury him first.’
‘No, you won’t. If you can’t sleep you may keep awake. It will only be for an hour. What are you frightened of? Dead men do no harm.’
In the end Peterkin did drop off to sleep. He was waked by Sarah touching him on the shoulder.
‘Get up,’ she said. ‘It’s time to get back the diamond. Ned swallowed it when he thought I was going to take it from him, and it’s there,’ she touched the body with her foot.
Ralph shuddered, picked up the clasp-knife, and threw it down again.
‘I can’t do that,’ he said. ‘I can’t hack open—’
‘You fool, don’t talk about it. That’s what makes it worse. I tried to do. it and couldn’t. You must. Here – I brought this from Raynham’s when we skedaddled last night.’
It was a bottle of whiskey. Ralph took a deep draught at it, drew a long breath, and then suddenly knelt down beside his dead brother with the clasp-knife open in his hand. Sally stood at a little distance, covering him with the revolver.
There was no necessity for it. In a few minutes Ralph rose and came towards her, rubbing something with a rag of the clothes that the dead man had worn. His knees were shaking; even if he had meant treachery, he would have been physically incapable of running away with the diamond. The body was buried and the spade and knife hidden in the brushwood. Then the two moved away together.
‘It’s halves, then?’ said Ralph.
‘In the stone and the belt – yes.’
‘If we get to England – that is.’
‘We shall,’ said Sarah confidently.