“No,” said Lucy unhesitatingly.  “Cook came up this morning to my room, and said that my father—­I mean my step-father—­had gone away with Cockatoo and with the green mummy.  I don’t know why she should have said that, as the Professor often went away unexpectedly.”

“Perhaps she heard rumors in the village and put two and two together.  I cannot tell.  Some instinct must have told her.  But I daresay Braddock and his accomplice fled under cover of the mist and in the small hours of the morning.  They must have known that the confession would bring the officers of the law to this house.”

“I hope they will escape,” murmured Lucy.

“Well, I am not sure,” said Hope hesitatingly.  “Of course, I should like to avoid a scandal for your sake, and yet it is only right that the two of them should be punished.  Remember, Lucy dear, how Braddock has acted all along in deceiving us.  He knew all, and yet not one of us suspected him.”

While Archie was thus comforting the poor girl, Gartley village was in an uproar.  Everyone was talking about this new crime, and everyone was wondering who had stabbed the unlucky woman.  As yet the confession of Mrs. Jasher had not been placed in the hands of the police and everyone was ignorant that Cockatoo was the criminal who had escaped in the fog.  Inspector Date speedily arrived with his myrmidons on the scene and made the cottage his headquarters.  Later in the day, Hope, having taken a cold bath to freshen himself up, came with the confession.  This he gave to the officer and explained the whole story of the previous night.

Date was more than astonished:  he was astounded.  He read the confession and made notes; then he sent for Sir Frank Random, and examined him in the same strict way as he had examined the artist.  Jane was also questioned.  Widow Anne was put in the witness box, so as to report about the clothes, and in every way Date gathered material for another inquest.  At the former one he had only been able to place scanty evidence before the jury, and the verdict had been unsatisfactory to the public.  But on this occasion, seeing that the witnesses he could bring forward would solve the mystery of the first death as well as the second, Inspector Date exulted greatly.  He saw himself promoted and his salary raised, and his name praised in the papers as a zealous and clever officer.  By the time the inquest came to be held, the inspector had talked himself into believing that the whole mystery had been solved by himself.  But before that time came another event happened which astonished everyone, and which made the final phase of the green mummy crime even more sensational than it had been.  And Heaven knows that from beginning to end there had been no lack of melodrama of the most lurid description.