I recalled young Peter Scollay's stare and laugh when I suggested
that they were going to look at the ship, and it sounded to me now a very
sinister laugh.
And yet the more I thought over all this, the more objections I saw. In
the first place the body was not found where I had seen Jock. True, it
might have been moved if the murderer had been wily and suspicious enough
to think that the simple Mr. Hobhouse was capable of connecting the
harmless episode of the stones with his gruesome work, though even that
seemed to imply more than was likely; but a more formidable difficulty
was the evidence of educated cunning in every crime committed or
attempted by that hand. For "that hand" I decided I must certainly
substitute "those hands." I had always thought there was more than one in
it, and now I felt surer of this than ever.
With the back of my head, as they say, I heard Dr. Rendall go into dinner
and then come out again into the hall, and then I heard him, instead of
coming into the smoking room, open and shut the front door. He had
evidently gone out again and I was not sorry to be left alone.
A little later, in the same absent-minded way, I heard the front door
bell faintly ring and I only woke out of my reverie when the smoking room
door opened.
"Dr. Rendall is out, I hear," said a voice that made me jump up very
hurriedly.
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