Out of the doctor’s smoking-room window you saw nothing but a field or two of bleached wintry grass, with a glimpse of grey sea beyond and that iniquitous pebble drive close at hand. That at least was all I could see on the blighting March morning after my tea with Jean Rendall. The chilly damp weather had given place to chillier hard weather. With the temperature below freezing and thin showers of dry snow driving up every now and then before a biting nor’east wind, there was little temptation to go abroad without excuse. My excuse was due in an hour’s time when Miss Rendall and Mr. Hobhouse proposed to encounter one another accidentally on the road, and meantime I was turning away from the window towards the fire when I heard the gravel crunch.

On general principles I turned back and looked out, to see a certain small farmer approaching the front door. I knew the man slightly and was not in the least interested in him. Presumably, I thought, it was a call for the doctor; and then my attention was sharply caught. He was carrying in his hand a fat little brown leather pocket book and in an instant I had remembered where I had seen exactly such a pocket book before.

A minute or two later it so chanced that as the maid was speaking to the man at the door, the amiable Mr. Hobhouse came out into the hall, and in his friendly way approached to see what the matter was; and very interested indeed he became when he heard. The pocket book, said the farmer, bore the name of James Bolton inside, and the maid was shuddering over a dull stain on the cover when Mr. Hobhouse appeared. The man went on to explain that he and a friend had been visiting the scene of the tragedy early that morning and had discovered the pocket book among the rocks close to where the body had been found. The local police had been in the island and visited the spot yesterday afternoon, he said, and he had meant to give his find to them, but now he heard that they had left again. They were coming back, and London police with them, people said, but meanwhile he thought the pocket book should be deposited either with the doctor or the laird (being Justices of the Peace), and he had called at the doctor’s first. Now, the doctor being out, he meant to take it to Mr. Rendall’s.

Hardly necessary to say, Mr. Hobhouse instantly took upon himself the responsibility of seeing that the doctor got the pocket book the moment he returned, and the farmer, glad enough to save himself a longer walk, handed it over. And then Mr. Hobhouse put a few very natural questions.

“Was the pocket book wet when it was found?”

“No wetter than she is now,” said the man.

“Then it must have fallen out of poor Bolton’s pocket before his body was thrown into the sea! Dreadful! Dreadful!” exclaimed the distressed gentleman. “And was it quite conspicuous⁠—easily seen on the rocks?”

“We saw it a’ right,” said the man.

“And yet the police never noticed it? Dear me, dear me! Well, well, I’ll give it to the doctor. Good morning, my good fellow, and many thanks; good morning!”

Over the smoking room fire I examined this discovery very thoughtfully. That it should have lain on the rocks all the time, and nobody, not even the police, noticed it till now, seemed strange. Still, when one came to think of it, the brown colour was very like the seaweed, and among that jumble of boulders such a thing might readily have happened. But certainly it had fallen out before the body was thrown into the sea, as its condition proved.

I glanced through the entries till I came to the very last the poor man had made; and then I sat up and opened my eyes very wide indeed. Plainly and distinctly these mems. were jotted:

• Proof positive O’B. or confederate.

• To be discovered whether O’B. himself⁠—or the other?

• Possibilities⁠—

  • Thomsons⁠—No

  • Scotts⁠—No

  • Scollays⁠—No.

The Thomsons and Scotts I knew to be tenants of seaboard farms like the Scollays, and after the Scollays came three other names, each with “No” written after them. A pencil mark also scored across all the six names.

So here was Bolton’s secret. Either O’Brien was actually in the island himself, or he had a “confederate” here, and since that entry was made, one of the two had crowned his series of crimes by murdering the man who was on his track. And who was this confederate? Or alternatively, where was O’Brien himself lurking? Obviously the six names were people definitely acquitted, in Bolton’s estimation anyhow; for the “No” and the line through their names could only mean that.

In this list certain names were not included⁠—I had got so far when I happened to glance at the clock and started to my feet. My appointment with Jean was already overdue.

No sign of her when I reached the road, so I set off to walk slowly towards her house, thinking, thinking, thinking. Of course the man most of all to be suspected was her own cousin. And if he were in it, I knew that any person of common sense would warn me to beware of confiding in his only relatives in the island. But I felt sure I knew better than any person of mere common sense. Still, I could scarcely ask her to abet me in convicting the doctor. Then I must not show her the note book. And that meant a breach in our confidence at the very start.

I had walked on till I was approaching her house, and still there was no sign of her ahead, nor was there any conclusion in my mind. And then I chanced to look round and saw her hastening after me, about a couple of hundred yards away. I wheeled round and on the instant leapt to one of my typical haphazard decisions. I would simply show her the pocket book and see how she took it.

She had evidently been running and met me half cross and half laughing and divinely flushed after her stern chase.

“I’ve been chasing you for miles!” she cried. “Why ever didn’t you look round?”

“But I thought you were coming straight from home!”

“I never said so, and I wasn’t! I’ve been somewhere else first.”

There seemed to be a hint of something significant in these last words, but I was so eager to come to the point that I never paused to question her.

“I am dreadfully sorry,” I said, “but I was thinking so hard I never thought of looking round. I have got some news for you.”

Her eyes sparkled.

“What is it?” she cried.

“Bolton’s pocket book has been found among the rocks, and this was his last entry before he was killed.”

I handed her the book open at the place and watched her face as she read. And one thing her expression revealed beyond any possibility of doubt. She was utterly and completely taken aback, and for some moments simply stared at the jottings in dead silence. Then I saw a sudden gleam in her eye, and a moment later she turned to me and cried,

“This wasn’t written by Bolton!”

It was my turn to stare.

“Not written by Bolton!” I exclaimed. “Let me look at it again.”

Standing there in the middle of the windy road, we quite forgot the temperature, and a passing snow shower even whipped us unnoticed.

“Look!” she said. “The writing is thicker and blacker and a little bigger than the other entries.”

“It was evidently written with a different pencil, or with a blunt pointed pencil. A man writing with a short blunt stump naturally writes a little bigger and blacker. But look at the t’s and the r’s, and the capital P; in fact, look at all the letters. They are exactly the same type.”

“Of course anyone trying to copy another man’s hand would make his letters the same,” she retorted, “but the character isn’t the same. Can’t you see?”

“There is a slight difference,” I admitted, “but I really can’t honestly say I see any sufficient ground for putting this down as a fake. Besides, what do you suppose it is⁠—a practical joke?”

“No, of course not. It was written by the real murderer to put people off the scent.”

I tried not to smile, but I am afraid I did.

“Another brilliant guess!” I said, and then hastened to add, “But a most ingenious one and quite possibly⁠—very probably, in fact, you are right.”

But she saw through my compliments, and I felt rather than observed an instant change in her.

“Oh, you may be right,” she said, and handed me back the pocket book.

“Or wrong,” I replied, “but I mean to try and discover which.”

Instead of asking me what I meant to do, as I feared and expected, she walked by my side very thoughtfully and in silence. I gave her a moment or two to put the question which never came, and then changed the subject.

“And have you discovered anything?” I asked.

“Not discovered⁠—only guessed,” she answered with a smile in her eyes, half defiant, half mischievous.

“And what have you guessed?”

“Oh, I won’t trouble you with more guesses. I must find something out first⁠—something really convincing, like that note book.”

I was a little piqued, but I merely laughed and said,

“Well, we’ll see!”

By this time we were quite near the house.

“Won’t you come in and have lunch with us?” she asked.

The temptation was strong, but the scent seemed too warm to lose, and I said I must be back for lunch at home. We stopped, and as she looked at me I noticed in her eyes what first seemed to be doubt and anxiety and a moment later to become resolution.

“Mr. Merton,” she said; her voice rather low, “which ever of us is right, I think we must be getting near rather a critical point. Don’t you think you had better send off that wire to Captain Whiteclett?”

I shook my head.

“Not quite yet,” I said. “You see it’s a serious matter dragging my cousin out here unless one is quite certain he will be needed.”

“But then he may not be in time!”

“I must risk that. But you may rest assured I’ll wire the very instant I know it won’t be bringing him out on a wild goose chase.”

For an instant she was silent again, and then she suddenly said,

“I’m sure that writing was forged!”

It seemed to me that I read in her exclamation a kind of whipping up of her unbelief, as though she needed to reassure herself.

“A pair of gloves on it?” I suggested.

I quite confess that it was not one of my most tactful suggestions. She froze up again at once. Not that there was anything unkind in her eye as we said goodbye, only it was clear that in the meantime we were each going our own way.

I set out at my best pace back for I was hot for instant action, and Jean’s doubts, though I dismissed them as quite unjustified by anything in the writing, nevertheless made me anxious to settle the question at once. The end might be very near indeed, I told myself, as I strode out with the last remains of my limp quite vanished. But what prompted those doubts; a genuine disbelief in the authenticity of the handwriting, or a perception of the logical consequences and a very natural shrinking from them? I wondered very much. The fact that she had refrained from asking a single question as to what I meant to do, suggested the second solution. And yet it was curiously unlike Jean Rendall’s fearless spirit.