Read Online Silent Nights by Martin Edwards - Free Book Online

quickest way to get rid of him.
    Gornay looked at the sheet with a not quite satisfied air. “I would rather have had something not written specially. Nobody ever writes quite naturally when they know that it is for this sort of purpose. You haven’t got an old envelope, or something like that?”
    Neither could supply what he wanted, and he went off, looking a little disappointed.
    â€œI wonder whether that was really what he wanted the writing for,” Kenneth remarked, suspiciously. “He’s a quick-witted knave. Look how sharp he was to see the right move in that game of chess. It wasn’t very obvious.”
    The chess-board was lying open on the table, where Churt had left it before tea. He glanced at it, casually at first, and then with growing interest. He took up one of the pieces to examine it, then replaced it, to do the same with others, his manner showing all the time an increasing excitement.
    â€œWhat is it, Ken?” Norah asked.
    â€œJust a glimmer of something.” He dropped into a chair. “I want to think—to think harder than ever in my life.”
    He leant forward, with his head resting on his hands, and she waited in silence till, after some minutes, he looked up.
    â€œYes, I begin to see light—more than a glimmer. He’s a subtle customer, is Mr Gornay, oh, very subtle!” He smiled, partly with the pleasure of finding one thread of a tangled web, partly with admiration for the cleverness that had woven it. “Would you like to know what he was really after when he came in here just now?”
    â€œVery much,” she answered. “But do you mean that he never had any argument with Sir James?”
    â€œOh, I daresay he had the argument all right—got it up for the occasion; but what he really wanted was this.” He took out of his pocket the envelope in which the bank-note had been discovered. “The character-reading rot was not a bad shot at getting hold of it, and probably his only chance. But no, friend Gornay, you are not going to have that envelope—not for the thousand pounds you placed in it!”
    â€œDo explain, Ken,” Norah begged.
    â€œI will presently,” he answered, “but I want to piece the whole jigsaw together. There is still the other difficulty.”
    He dropped his eyes to the hearthrug again, and began to do his thinking aloud for her benefit. “Churt’s reasoning is that Gornay must have been in here, watching the game, at the only time when the letters could have been tampered with, because he knew afterwards the move that was played just at the beginning of that time, and the move that was played just at the end. But why might not Winslade have told him about those two moves while Churt was letting me in at the front door? That would solve the riddle. I should have thought Winslade would have been too punctilious to talk about the game while his opponent was out of the room, but I’ll go and ask him. I needn’t tell him the reason why I want to know.”
    He came back almost immediately. “No, there was no conversation about the game while Churt was out of the room. Very well. Try the thing the other way round. Assume—as I think I can prove—that Gornay did tamper with the letters, the question is how could he tell that those two moves had been played?”
    He took up the chess-board again and looked at it so intently and so long that, at last, Norah grew impatient.
    â€œMy dear boy, what can you be doing, poring all this time over the chess?”
    â€œI have a curious sort of chess problem to solve before the Sherlock Holmes man turns up from Scotland Yard. Follow this a moment. If there was any way by which Gornay could find out that the two important moves had been played, without being present at the time and without being told, then Churt’s argument goes for nothing, doesn’t it?”
    â€œClearly; but what other way was there?