Part 17

“Well, since you ask me,” said Travers, with quite unnecessary dryness, “I never did think so.”

“Nor I,” said the colonel; “I thought from the first that was never my Bingo. Why, Bingo would make two of that beast!”

And Lilian and her aunt both protested that they had had their doubts from the first.

“Zen you pairmeet zat I remove ‘im?” said the Frenchman.

“Certainly,” said the colonel; and, after some apologies on our part for the mistake, he went off in triumph, with the detestable poodle frisking after him.

When he had gone the colonel laid his hand kindly on my shoulder. “Don’t look so cut up about it, my boy,” he said; “you did your best--there was a sort of likeness to any one who didn’t know Bingo as we did.”

Just then the Frenchman again appeared at the hedge. “A thousand pardons,” he said, “but I find zis upon my dog; it is not to me. Suffer me to restore it viz many compliments.”

It was Bingo’s collar. Travers took it from his hand and brought it to us.

“This was on the dog when you stopped that fellow, didn’t you say?” he asked me.

One more lie--and I was so weary of falsehood! “Y-yes,” I said, reluctantly; “that was so.”

“Very extraordinary,” said Travers; “that’s the wrong poodle beyond a doubt, but when he’s found he’s wearing the right dog’s collar! Now how do you account for that?”

“My good fellow,” I said, impatiently, “I’m not in the witness-box. I can’t account for it. It-it’s a mere coincidence!”

“But look here, my dear Weatherhead,” argued Travers (whether in good faith or not I never could quite make out), “don’t you see what a tremendously important link it is? Here’s a dog who (as I understand the facts) had a silver collar, with his name engraved on it, round his neck at the time he was lost. Here’s that identical collar turning up soon afterward round the neck of a totally different dog! We must follow this up; we must get at the bottom of it somehow! With a clue like this, we’re sure to find out either the dog himself, or what’s become of him! Just try to recollect exactly what happened, there’s a good fellow. This is just the sort of thing I like!”

It was the sort of thing I did not enjoy at all. “You must excuse me to-night, Travers,” I said, uncomfortably; “you see, just now it’s rather a sore subject for me, and I’m not feeling very well!” I was grateful just then for a reassuring glance of pity and confidence from Lilian’s sweet eyes, which revived my drooping spirits for the moment.

“Yes, we’ll go into it to-morrow, Travers,” said the colonel; “and then--hullo, why, there’s that confounded Frenchman again!”

It was indeed; he came prancing back delicately, with a malicious enjoyment on his wrinkled face. “Once more I return to apologise,” he said. “My poodle ‘as permit ‘imself ze grave indiscretion to make a very big ‘ole at ze bottom of ze garden!”

I assured him that it was of no consequence. “Perhaps,” he replied, looking steadily at me through his keen, half-shut eyes, “you vill not say zat ven you regard ze ‘ole. And you others, I spik to you: sometimes von loses a somzing vich is qvite near all ze time. It is ver’ droll, eh? my vord, ha, ha, ha!” And he ambled off, with an aggressively fiendish laugh that chilled my blood.

“What the deuce did he mean by that, eh?” said the colonel, blankly.

“Don’t know,” said Travers; “suppose we go and inspect the hole?”

But before that I had contrived to draw near it myself, in deadly fear lest the Frenchman’s last words had contained some innuendo which I had not understood.

It was light enough still for me to see something, at the unexpected horror of which I very nearly fainted.

That thrice accursed poodle which I had been insane enough to attempt to foist upon the colonel must, it seems, have buried his supper the night before very near the spot in which I had laid Bingo, and in his attempts to exhume his bone had brought the remains of my victim to the surface!

There the corpse lay, on the very top of the excavations. Time had not, of course, improved its appearance, which was ghastly in the extreme, but still plainly recognisable by the eye of affection.

“It’s a very ordinary hole,” I gasped, putting myself before it and trying to turn them back. “Nothing in it--nothing at all!”

“Except one Algernon Weatherhead, Esq., eh?” whispered Travers, jocosely, in my ear.

“No; but,” persisted the colonel, advancing, “look here! Has the dog damaged any of your shrubs?”

“No, no!” I cried, piteously; “quite the reverse. Let’s all go indoors now; it’s getting so cold!”

“See, there is a shrub or something uprooted,” said the colonel, still coming nearer that fatal hole. “Why, hullo, look there! What’s that?”