He looked out into a small shrine. It was walled off from the courtyard and had a single small entrance some ten feet from the doorway. There were four _prie-dieus_--small kneeling benches--ranged in front of the doorway.

"If I may explain, your lordship--" Sir Pierre began.

"No need to," Lord Darcy said in a hard voice. "It"s rather obvious.

My lord the Count was quite ingenious. This is a relatively newly-built shrine. Four walls and a crucifix against the castle wall.

Anyone could come in here, day or night, for prayer. No one who came in would be suspected." He stepped out into the small enclosure and swung around to look at the door. "And when that door is closed, there is no sign that there is a door behind the crucifix. If a woman came in here, it would be a.s.sumed that she came for prayer. But if she knew of that door--" His voice trailed off.

"Yes, your lordship," said Sir Pierre. "I did not approve, but I was in no position to disapprove."

"I understand." Lord Darcy stepped out to the doorway of the little shrine and took a quick glance about. "Then anyone within the castle walls could come in here," he said.

"Yes, your lordship."

"Very well. Let"s go back up."

In the small office which Lord Darcy and his staff had been a.s.signed while conducting the investigation, three men watched while a fourth conducted a demonstration on a table in the center of the room.

Master Sean O Lochlainn held up an intricately engraved gold b.u.t.ton with an Arabesque pattern and a diamond set in the center.

He looked at the other three. "Now, my lord, your Reverence, and colleague Doctor, I call your attention to this b.u.t.ton."

Dr. Pateley smiled and Father Bright looked stern. Lord Darcy merely stuffed tobacco--imported from the southern New England counties on the Gulf--into a German-made porcelain pipe. He allowed Master Sean a certain amount of flamboyance; good sorcerers were hard to come by.

"Will you hold the robe, Dr. Pateley? Thank you. Now, stand back.

That"s it. Thank you. Now, I place the b.u.t.ton on the table, a good ten feet from the robe." Then he muttered something under his breath and dusted a bit of powder on the b.u.t.ton. He made a few pa.s.ses over it with his hands, paused, and looked up at Father Bright. "If you will, Reverend Sir?"

Father Bright solemnly raised his right hand, and, as he made the Sign of the Cross, said: "May this demonstration, O G.o.d, be in strict accord with the truth, and may the Evil One not in any way deceive us who are witnesses thereto. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

"Amen," the other three chorused.

Master Sean crossed himself, then muttered something under his breath.

The b.u.t.ton leaped from the table, slammed itself against the robe which Dr. Pateley held before him, and stuck there as though it had been sewed on by an expert.

"Ha!" said Master Sean. "As I thought!" He gave the other three men a broad, beaming smile. "The two were definitely connected!"

Lord Darcy looked bored. "Time?" he asked.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"In a moment, my lord," Master Sean said apologetically. "In a moment." While the other three watched, the sorcerer went through more spells with the b.u.t.ton and the robe, although none were quite so spectacular as the first demonstration. Finally, Master Sean said: "About eleven thirty last night they were torn apart, my lord. But I shouldn"t like to make it any more definite than to say between eleven and midnight. The speed with which it returned to its place shows that it was ripped off very rapidly, however."

"Very good," said Lord Darcy. "Now the bullet, if you please."

"Yes, my lord. This will have to be a bit different." He took more paraphernalia out of his large, symbol-decorated carpet bag. "The Law of Contagion, gently-born sirs, is a tricky thing to work with. If a man doesn"t know how to handle it, he can get himself killed. We had an apprentice o" the guild back in Cork who might have made a good sorcerer in time. He had the talent--unfortunately, he didn"t have the good sense to go with it. According to the Law of Contagion any two objects which have ever been in contact with each other have an affinity for each other which is directly proportional to the product of the degree of relevancy of the contact and the length of time they were in contact and inversely proportional to the length of time since they have ceased to be in contact." He gave a smiling glance to the priest. "That doesn"t apply strictly to relics of the saints, Reverend Sir; there"s another factor enters in there, as you know."

As he spoke, the sorcerer was carefully clamping the little handgun into the padded vise so that its barrel was parallel to the surface of the table.

"Anyhow," he went on, "this apprentice, all on his own, decided to get rid of the c.o.c.kroaches in his house--a simple thing, if one knows how to go about it. So he collected dust from various cracks and crannies about the house, dust which contained, of course, the droppings of the pests. The dust, with the appropriate spells and ingredients, he boiled. It worked fine. The roaches all came down with a raging fever and died. Unfortunately, the clumsy lad had poor laboratory technique.

He allowed three drops of his own perspiration to fall into the steaming pot over which he was working, and the resulting fever killed him, too."

By this time, he had put the bullet which Dr. Pateley had removed from the Count"s body on a small pedestal so that it was exactly in line with the muzzle of the gun. "There now," he said softly.

Then he repeated the incantation, and the powdering that he had used on the b.u.t.ton. As the last syllable was formed by his lips, the bullet vanished with a _ping_! In its vise, the little gun vibrated.

"Ah!" said Master Sean. "No question there, eh? That"s the death weapon, all right, my lord. Yes. Time"s almost exactly the same as that of the removal of the b.u.t.ton. Not more than a few seconds later.

Forms a picture, don"t it, my lord? His lordship the Count jerks a b.u.t.ton off the girl"s gown, she outs with a gun and plugs him."

Lord Darcy"s handsome face scowled. "Let"s not jump to any hasty conclusions, my good Sean. There is no evidence whatever that he was killed by a woman."

"Would a man be wearing that gown, my lord?"

"Possibly," said Lord Darcy. "But who says that anyone was wearing it when the b.u.t.ton was removed?"

"Oh." Master Sean subsided into silence. Using a small ramrod, he forced the bullet out of the chamber of the little pistol.

"Father Bright," said Lord Darcy, "will the Countess be serving tea this afternoon?"

The priest looked suddenly contrite. "Good heavens! None of you has eaten yet! I"ll see that something is sent up right away, Lord Darcy.

In the confusion--"

Lord Darcy held up a hand. "I beg your pardon, Father; that wasn"t what I meant. I"m sure Master Sean and Dr. Pateley would appreciate a little something, but I can wait until tea time. What I was thinking was that perhaps the Countess would ask her guests to tea. Does she know Laird and Lady Duncan well enough to ask for their sympathetic presence on such an afternoon as this?"

Father Bright"s eyes narrowed a trifle. "I dare say it could be arranged, Lord Darcy. You will be there?"

"Yes--but I may be a trifle late. That will hardly matter at an informal tea."

The priest glanced at his watch. "Four o"clock?"

"I should think that would do it," said Lord Darcy.

Father Bright nodded wordlessly and left the room.

Dr. Pateley took off his pince-nez and polished the lenses carefully with a silk handkerchief. "How long will your spell keep the body incorrupt, Master Sean?" he asked.

"As long as it"s relevant. As soon as the case is solved, or we have enough data to solve the case--as the case may be, heh heh--he"ll start to go. I"m not a saint, you know; it takes powerful motivation to keep a body incorrupt for years and years."

Sir Pierre was eying the gown that Pateley had put on the table. The b.u.t.ton was still in place, as if held there by magnetism. He didn"t touch it. "Master Sean, I don"t know much about magic," he said, "but can"t you find out who was wearing this robe just as easily as you found out that the b.u.t.ton matched?"

Master Sean wagged his head in a firm negative. "No, sir. "Tisn"t relevant sir. The relevancy of the integrated dress-as-a-whole is quite strong. So is that of the seamstress or tailor who made the garment, and that of the weaver who made the cloth. But, except in certain circ.u.mstances, the person who wears or wore the garment has little actual relevancy to the garment itself."

"I"m afraid I don"t understand," said Sir Pierre, looking puzzled.

"Look at it like this, sir: That gown wouldn"t be what it is if the weaver hadn"t made the cloth in that particular way. It wouldn"t be what it is if the seamstress hadn"t cut it in a particular way and sewed it in a specific manner. You follow, sir? Yes. Well, then, the connections between garment-and-weaver and garment-and-seamstress are strongly relevant. But this dress would still be pretty much what it is if it had stayed in the closet instead of being worn. No relevance--or very little. Now, if it were a well-worn garment, that would be different--that is, if it had always been worn by the same person. Then, you see, sir, the garment-as-a-whole is what it is because of the wearing, and the wearer becomes relevant."