hardly shocked at it; the older man seemed almost openly thinking about
something else, and neither had anything to suggest about a further pursuit of
the fugitive spy and murderer, in spite of the prodigious importance of the
documents he had stolen. When the detective had gone off to busy himself
with that department of the business, to telephone and write his report, when
Herries had gone back, probably to the brandy bottle, and the Prime Minister
had blandly sauntered away toward a comfortable armchair in another part of
the garden, Horne Fisher spoke directly to Harold March.
"My friend," he said, "I want you to come with me at once; there is no one
else I can trust so much as that. The journey will take us most of the day, and
the chief business cannot be done till nightfall. So we can talk things over
thoroughly on the way. But I want you to be with me; for I rather think it is my
hour."
March and Fisher both had motor bicycles; and the first half of their day's
journey consisted in coasting eastward amid the unconversational noise of
those uncomfortable engines. But when they came out beyond Canterbury into
the flats of eastern Kent, Fisher stopped at a pleasant little public house beside
a sleepy stream; and they sat down to eat and to drink and to speak almost for
the first time. It was a brilliant afternoon, birds were singing in the wood
behind, and the sun shone full on their ale bench and table; but the face of
Fisher in the strong sunlight had a gravity never seen on it before.
"Before we go any farther," he said, "there is something you ought to
know. You and I have seen some mysterious things and got to the bottom of
them before now; and it's only right that you should get to the bottom of this
one. But in dealing with the death of my uncle I must begin at the other end
from where our old detective yarns began. I will give you the steps of
deduction presently, if you want to listen to them; but I did not reach the truth
of this by steps of deduction. I will first of all tell you the truth itself, because I
knew the truth from the first. The other cases I approached from the outside,
but in this case I was inside. I myself was the very core and center of
everything."
Something in the speaker's pendent eyelids and grave gray eyes suddenly
shook March to his foundations; and he cried, distractedly, "I don't
understand!" as men do when they fear that they do understand. There was no
sound for a space but the happy chatter of the birds, and then Horne Fisher
said, calmly:
"It was I who killed my uncle. If you particularly want more, it was I who
stole the state papers from him."
"Fisher!" cried his friend in a strangled voice.