The Ashiel mystery : $b a detective storyBryce, Marion
General
The Ashiel mystery : $b a detective story
Bryce, Marion
Detective and mystery stories; Fiction
Gimblet gazed at it intently, as if he had never seen a statue
before. In a moment his face cleared and he turned to Lady Ruth with
burning eyes.
"It is Pandora," he cried. "Curiosity! Pandora and her box. Is it
not Pandora?"
Lady Ruth stared at him amazed.
"I believe it is," she said, "that or something of the sort. I'm not very
well up in mythology."
"Of course it is," cried Gimblet. "Face curiosity! And here's the bull,
or I'll eat my microscope," he added, advancing to the side of the group
and laying a hand upon the pedestal.
Lady Ruth followed his gaze with some concern. She was beginning to doubt
his sanity. But there, sure enough, beneath his pointing finger, she
perceived a row of carved heads: the heads of bulls, garlanded in the
Roman manner, and forming a kind of cornice round the top of the great
rectangular stone stand.
Gimblet glanced to right and left, up the glen and down it. There was no
one to be seen. The sun had fallen by this time beneath the rim of the
hills; a greyness of twilight was spread over the whole scene, and under
the trees the dusk of night was already silently ousting the day. He
turned once more to Lady Ruth.
"Lady Ruth," he said, "can you keep a secret?"
"My husband trusted me," she replied. "He was judicious as well as
judicial."
"I am sure I may follow his example," Gimblet said, after looking at her
fixedly for a moment. "So I will tell you that I believe I am on the
point of discovering Lord Ashiel's missing will--and not that alone.
Somewhere, concealed probably within a few feet of where we are standing,
we may hope to find other and far more important documents, involving,
perhaps, not only the welfare of one or two individuals but that of
kings and nations. Apart from that, and to speak of what most immediately
concerns us at present, I am convinced that within this stone will be
found the true clue to the author of the murder."
"You don't say so," gasped Lady Ruth, her round eyes rounder than ever.
"I found some directions in the handwriting of the murdered man," went on
Gimblet, "which I could not understand at first. But their meaning is
plain enough now. 'Take the bull by the horn,' he says. Well, here are
the bulls, and I shall soon know which is the horn."
He walked round to the front of the statue, so that he faced the stooping
figure of Pandora, and laid his hand upon one of the curved and
projecting horns of the left-hand bull. Nothing happened, and he tried
the next. There were seven heads in all along the face of the great block,
and he tested six of them without perceiving anything unusual. Was it
possible that he was mistaken, and that, after all, the words of the
message did not refer to the statue?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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