The Ashiel Mystery

Gimblet pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The place was evidently a tool-house, used by the gardeners for storing their implements. Rakes, spades, forks and hoes leant against the walls; a shelf held a quantity of odds and ends: trowels, seedsmen's catalogues, a pot of paint, a bundle of wooden labels, the rose of a watering-can, and a dozen other small objects. On the floor were piled boxes and empty cases; flowerpots stood beside a bag which bore the name of a patent fertilizer; a small hand mowing-machine blocked the entrance; and a plank, too long to lie flat on the ground, had been propped slantwise between the floor and the roof. Bunches of bass hung from nails above the shelf; and on the wall opposite, a coloured advertisement, representing phloxes of so fierce an intensity of hue that nature was put to the blush, had been tacked by some admirer of Art.

Five minutes later, when Gimblet emerged once more into the open, he carried in one hand a garden rake. With this he proceeded to thread his way through the shrubbery, keeping close to the line of the holly hedge. When he thought he had gone about fifty yards, he lay down and peered under the leaves. The hedge was rather thinner at the bottom; and, by carefully pushing aside a little of the glossy, prickly foliage, he was able to make out that the end of the rose-bed he had lately examined was separated from him now only by the dividing barrier of the hedge. With the rake still in his hand, he drew himself slowly forward, gingerly introducing his head and arms under the holly, till he was prevented from going farther by the close growing trunks of the trees that formed the hedge.

It took some manoeuvring to insert the head of the rake through the fence, but he did it at last, and found a gap which his arms would pass also. Between, and under the lowest fringe of leaves on the farther side, he could see the track of his own footsteps, where he had walked on the bed. They were all, by an effort, within reach of his rake, and he stealthily effaced them. He could not see whether the garden was still untenanted, or whether the peculiar phenomenon of a rake moving without human assistance was being observed by anyone from the castle. He fervently hoped that it was not: he did not wish the attention of anyone else to be called to the puzzling marks that had mystified him; and, as the only window which looked into the garden was that of the library, he thought there was a good chance that there was no one in sight.