CHAPTER IX. THE MYSTERY OF SHOLTO

We discussed our discovery pretty thoroughly on the way back to the house, and both agreed that it left no doubt upon one aspect of this strange affair—the man who stole Sholto was no ordinary thief.

The General was standing on the verandah, looking about for us, as we came up the beach path. I told him of Garnesk’s deductions and their interesting result, and the old man was greatly affected.

“I never dreamt I should live to see the old place abused in this shocking manner,” he grunted. “’Pon me soul, it’s—it’s begad disgraceful. I’ve lived here all my life, on and off, and I’ve never been troubled with anything like this, scarcely so much as a tramp even. I hope to God it’ll soon be over, that’s all.”

“Thanks to Mr. Garnesk, we’re moving along in the right direction,” I tried to reassure him. “And we have the satisfaction, in one way, of being able to tell Myra that Sholto is still alive, even if we don’t know where he is.”

“Seems to me, Ronald,” said the General, “you don’t know that, or anything about the poor beast, except that he has been stolen, and probably taken away in a boat. Judging by Mr. Garnesk’s theory, they probably threw him overboard in deep water.”

“No one who intended destroying a dog would take the trouble to wrench the name-plate off his collar,” I pointed out. “The dog is alive, and not unconscious. They need his collar to keep him in hand, but they are afraid the plate might give them away. Mr. Garnesk is right, I’m sure, and if we find the thief we find the cause for Myra’s terrible misfortune.”

“Where do you imagine they can have taken him to then? Seems to me we’re getting some pretty queer neighbours.”

“That is just what we have to find out,” said Garnesk, “and I for one will not rest until I do.”

“’Pon my soul, my dear chap,” said the old man warmly, “it’s very good of you to take so much interest in the affairs of total strangers. It is, indeed, thundering good of you.”

“Not at all, General,” laughed the visitor. “If you spent your life trying to cure fussy ladies of imaginary eye trouble, without putting it to them that their livers are out of order, you’d welcome this as a very appetising antidote.”

“Talking about appetites,” his host suggested, “who says breakfast?”

“I fancy we both do,” I answered, and we turned indoors.

During breakfast Garnesk announced his determination to devote as much of the day as necessary to an examination of Myra, and then catch the evening train from Mallaig, but the girl herself rose in rebellion at this immediately.

“You mustn’t do anything of the sort,” she declared emphatically. “Daddy, tell him he’s not to. The idea of coming up here, and looking at me, and then going away again! It’s ridiculous!”

“I assure you, it is ample reward,” declared the oculist gallantly, and everybody laughed at the frank compliment.

“But you must fish the river, have a day on the loch. Ron must take you in the motor-boat up to Kinlochbourn. Then you’ve simply got to see Scavaig and Coruisk—oh! and a hundred other things besides.”

Garnesk insisted that, much as he would like to stay, he felt bound to leave at once, but Myra was equally obstinate; and, as was natural, being a woman, she won on a compromise. Garnesk agreed to stay over the week-end. I was very glad that Myra liked my new friend. She had been very shy of Olvery, but she took an immediate fancy to the Glasgow specialist. She liked his voice, she told me afterwards, and on the second day of his visit she asked him if his sister was very much younger than he. Garnesk looked up in surprise.

“One of them is,” he replied, “nearly twenty years. What made you ask?”

“I guessed it by the way you talk to me,” Myra declared confidently.

“The detective instinct seems to be in the air,” I laughed.

So when I borrowed Angus’s ramshackle old cycle, and went into Glenelg along a road which is more noteworthy for its picturesqueness than its navigable qualities, I left Garnesk to his examination with the knowledge that he would do his utmost, and that she would help him all she could.

I wired to Dennis: “I can meet you at Mallaig Monday morning. Wire reply.—Ronald.” Then I sent a couple of picture postcards to Tommy and Jack, wishing them luck, and explaining that I had not returned to join them because Myra was ill. I was sure Dennis would appreciate the urgency of my message, but I worded it carefully, deliberately making it appear to be the answer to an inquiry, for the reason that it is always wise to do as little as you can to stimulate local gossip. Anything like “Come at once; most urgent,” despatched by one who was known to be a visitor at the lodge, would have set the entire country-side talking. So I jumped on to Angus’s collection of old metal, and jolted back again as fast as I could. Garnesk was still engaged with Myra, and I took the opportunity of a chat with her father.

“Would you care to see the discoveries we made this morning?” I asked, when I found him in the library.

“Yes, I should indeed, my boy,” he responded eagerly, and I think he was glad of the diversion. “I’ll come with you now.”

“There is one thing I want to say, sir, before we go any farther.”

“What is it?” he asked, looking rather anxiously at me.

“I want to tell you,” I said, “that in the event of Myra not regaining her sight I should like your permission to marry her as soon as she herself wishes it. As you know, I have a small private income, which is sufficient for my needs in London, and would be more than I should require up here. If Myra is to be blind, I should like to marry her in order that I may always be able to take care of her, and I should propose to settle down somewhere near you. I dabble in contributory journalism, and I could extend that as far as possible, and I might even do pretty well at it. Both she and you would know then that, in the event of anything happening to you, she would be cared for by someone she loves.”

“My dear Ronald,” exclaimed the old man, affectionately laying a hand on my shoulder, “I’m very glad to hear you say that. As a matter of fact, whatever happens, I don’t care how soon you marry my dear girl. She wants it with all her heart, and I have always been fond of you myself. The only thing that has held me back up to now is the question of money, and, possibly, a little selfishness. I’m not a rich man, as you know, and if it were not for my pension I couldn’t even live in my father’s house. But now my one desire is to see my poor little girl happy, and we’ll scrape together a shilling or two somehow. Shake hands, my boy.”

We both of us forgot all about the terrible war, and, naturally enough, the mysterious trouble which faced us then was sufficient for the moment. Having settled that question at last, I conducted the old man to the small cove where we had made our first discovery, but we began by visiting the coach-house. I daresay that to the trained eye there may have been valuable evidence lying under our very noses, but the only confused marks which we found on the surrounding ground conveyed nothing to either of us. Later, on our way back to the house, from what we now called “the embarking-point,” we came upon a spot where the heather had been cut off in fairly large quantities. The old man stood, and contemplated the shorn stumps for a moment, and shook his head solemnly. It was not that he had any sentimental regret for the heather which grew on almost every inch of ground for hundreds of miles round, but he objected to the sign of visitors, or, as he would have said, “trippers.”

“Who would want to cut heather here?” I asked, for I could not see the slightest reason for gathering anything which could be obtained at your door wherever you lived in the Highlands.

“Holiday-makers,” he said ruefully. “They take rooms in the village, and get it into their heads that the heather in one spot is better than anything else for miles round, so they walk out to that spot, and cut some to take away with them when they go back home. I wish they’d always go back home and stop there.”

When I showed the General the keel-marks in the cove and explained to him in detail how Garnesk had arrived at his conclusions, the old man was quite awed.

“’Pon me soul, he must be thundering clever, thundering clever,” he muttered. “But it’s not healthy, you know, Ronald; in fact, it’s begad unhealthy. I’ve always been a bit scared of these people who see things that are not there. Still, I suppose it’s the modern way; reading all these detective yarns and so on does it, no doubt.”

He was still marvelling at this new mystery when we got back to the house to find Myra sitting on the verandah with the specialist, who was keeping her in fits of laughter with anecdotes of some of his wealthy women patients.

He sprang up as he saw us approaching, and ran down to meet us.

“I’m certain of one thing,” he said excitedly, as he walked between us, and answered the General’s question. “We have got to solve the mystery, and she will see again. This is something new, but it has a very simple solution, which we must find out by hook or by crook. When I know how Miss McLeod lost her sight I shall very likely be able to find out how to restore it, and I shall also know something that perhaps no other oculist has ever dreamed of. There isn’t the slightest sign of any organic disease, which probably means that Nature will assert herself, and she will eventually regain her sight naturally. But we mustn’t wait for that. We’ve got to be up and doing. I tell you, sir, I wouldn’t have missed this for anything. Have you been exploring?”

“We’ve been having a look at those marks which meant so much to you and conveyed nothing whatever to me, although I was once considered something of a scout,” the General admitted.

“Did you find anything fresh?”

“No, only some trippers, as the General calls them, had been cutting heather,” I replied.

“That’s not likely to help us much,” the oculist agreed, “unless they were not trippers at all, and were cutting the heather as a blind. What were they like?”

“Oh, we didn’t see them. We only saw the results of their iconoclasm. The heather was recently, but not freshly, cut,” I replied, and the old man glanced at me with some slight suspicion, as if he feared I, too, was about to take up the deduction business.

“Recent, but not fresh?” muttered Garnesk.

“Now, why should a man who wanted——Good heavens! I’ve got it.”

“What are you dear people getting so excited about?” Myra asked, for by this time we had almost reached the verandah.

“We’ll tell you in a minute, dear,” I called, and waited for Garnesk to explain.

“Of course,” he continued, as if thinking aloud, “it’s obvious. The man came ashore in a small boat, picked some heather, and carried it in his arms. Anyone who noticed him would have noticed his load of heather. Then he stole Sholto, concealed him under the heather, and was still apparently only carrying a bundle of innocent heath. Why! they seem to have thought of everything, and made no mistake.”

“Except that the man was wandering about the country-side, gathering wild flowers, in his stockinged soles,” I pointed out.

“Still, it was almost dark, and he chanced that,” said Garnesk.

“What I don’t understand about it is this,” the General joined in: “Where did he come from to gather this heather? A man must know that if he is seen to come ashore and pick heather and get into his boat again he is doing a very curious thing. That boat can only have come from Knoydart or Skye at the farthest, and everybody knows you wouldn’t take heather there.”

“Yes, I’m afraid you’re right, General,” Garnesk admitted, with a sigh of regret, and I was compelled to agree with him.

“I know where he came from, then.”

It was said so quietly that it startled us all, though it was Myra who spoke.

“Where, then?” we all asked together.

“He must have come from a yacht.”