All at once he felt very tired and one of his shoulders hurt him,
for he had strained a muscle there rather badly.
His one desire was to rest, and he did not even trouble to go round
to the back of the house to see what had happened to Deede Dawson,
though indeed that was not a point on which he entertained much
doubt.
For a long time he sat there quietly, till at last his father
arrived in a motor-car from Wreste Abbey, together with a
police-inspector from the county town whom he had picked up on
the way.
Rupert took them into the room where Deede Dawson's chessmen and
the board were still standing and told them as briefly as he could
what had happened since the first day when he had left his home
to try to trace out and defeat the plot hatched by Walter Dunsmore
and Deede Dawson.
"You people wouldn't act," he said to the inspector. "You said
there was no evidence, no proof, and I daresay you were right
enough from the legal point of view. But it was plain enough to
me that there was some sort of conspiracy against my uncle's life,
I thought against my father's as well, but I was not sure of that
at first. It was through poor Charley Wright I became so certain.
He found out things and told me about them; but for him the first
attempt to poison my uncle would have succeeded. Even then we
had still no evidence to prove the reality of our suspicions, for
Walter destroyed it, by accident, I thought at the time, purposely,
as I know now.
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