The Satan Bug

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dr. MacDonald was a big heavily-built man in his late forties, with that well-leathered and spuriously tough look you quite often find among a certain section of the unemployed landed gentry who spend a great deal of time in the open air, much of it mounted on large horses in pursuit of small foxes. He had sandy hair, sandy eyebrows, sandy moustache and the smooth, full, tight, reddish-tanned face indicative of a devotion to the table, a well-stocked cellar, a fresh Gillette every morning and an incipient heart condition. In his own rather arrogant and fleshy way MacDonald was a pretty good-looking and impressive character but, at the moment, he wasn't looking his best. Not that anyone would be when rubbing sleep from gummed eyelids and welcoming the unexpected caller at 6.15 a.m. on a pitch dark, raining and bitterly cold October pre-dawn.

"Welcoming" perhaps was not the right word.

"What the bloody hell do you mean by coming hammering on my door in the middle of the bloody night?" MacDonald demanded. He clutched a dressing-gown more tightly about his shivering bulk and managed to prop an eye wide enough open to identify me in the faint wash of light coming from the porchway behind him. "Cavell! What the devil's the meaning of this?"

"I'm sorry, MacDonald." Civility. Turning the other cheek. "Terrible hour, I know. But I must talk to you. It's most urgent."

"Nothing so damn urgent that you have to come hauling a man out of his bed at this time of night," he said furiously. "I've already told the police all I know. Anything else you can see me about in Mordon. Sorry, Cavell. Good night! Or good morning!" He took a long step back and swung the door in my face.

I'd no more cheeks to turn. The sole of my right foot caught the door before it engaged on the latch and I kicked it open. Violently. The sudden transfer of weight to my bad leg didn't do my left foot any good at all but it was nothing compared to what it did to MacDonald's right elbow, which was where the flying door must have caught him, for when I passed inside he was clutching his elbow with his left hand and doing a dervish dance with language suitably geared to the occasion: he'd packed in the plummy Debrett accent in favour of broad Scots. For what he had to say, it was much more impressive. It was ten seconds before he was properly aware that I was standing there.

"Get out!" The voice was half-snarl, half-shout, the face twisted in malevolence. "Out of my house at once, you—"

He got started on my forebears, but I cut him short.

"Two men are dead, MacDonald. There's a madman on the loose with the power to turn that two into two million. Your convenience doesn't enter into it. I want answers to questions. I want them now."

"You want them? And who are you to want anything?" The heavy lips were curled into an expression that was half-sneer, half-grimace of pain and the Oxford-Sandhurst drawl was working again. "I know all about you, Cavell. Kicked out of Mordon because you couldn't keep your big mouth shut. You're only a so-called private detective, but I suppose you thought there might be better pickings going here than in the dirty little divorce cases you people specialise in. God knows how you managed to push your way into this but as far as I am concerned you can push straight out again. You have no authority to ask me anything. You're not the police. Where are your credentials? Show me." To say that he was making no attempt to mask the sneer on his face, the contempt in his voice would have been understating the case.

I hadn't any credentials to show him so I showed him the Hanyatti instead. It might be enough, bluster is usually a facade that conceals nothing. But it wasn't enough. Maybe there was more to Dr. MacDonald than I had thought.

"My God!" He laughed, not one of those laughs with a silvery tinkle of bells. An unpleasant laugh. "Guns! At six in the morning. Whatever next? Cheap melodramatic rubbish. I've got your number now, Cavell, by God I have. A little ring to Superintendent Hardanger will soon fix you, mister cheap little private detective." Outside the demands of his job he was obviously no stickler for accuracy: cheap I may have been but I was a good couple of inches taller than he was and at least as heavy.

The phone was on the table beside me. He took two steps towards it and I took one towards him. The muzzle of the Hanyatti caught him just under the breast-bone and I stood aside as he jack-knifed and fell to the floor. It was brutal, high-handed, completely unjustifiable on the face of it and I didn't like it one little bit: but I liked even less the idea of a madman with the Satan Bug in his possession. I had to use every second I had. By and by, when it was all over, I'd apologise to MacDonald. But not now.

He rolled around for a bit, clutching his midriff with both hands and whooping in pain as he tried to drag air into his lungs. After a minute or so he quietened down and struggled to his feet, still clutching his stomach, breathing very quickly, very shallowly, like someone who can't get enough oxygen quickly enough. His face was grey and puffy and the bloodshot eyes held an expression that was pretty close to hatred. I didn't blame him any.

"This is the end of the road for you, Cavell." His voice came in hoarse gasps punctuated by half-sobbing inhalations. "You've gone too far this time. Unprovoked assault—"

He broke off, flinching, as he saw the barrel of the Hanyatti arching towards his face. Both hands were flung up in instinctive self-defence and he grunted in agony as my free hand caught him in the midriff again. He stayed down longer this time and when he finally dragged himself, trembling, to his feet, he was in pretty bad shape. His eyes were still burning mad but there was something else in them now as well. Fear. I took two quick steps towards him, lifting the Hanyatti high. MacDonald took two corresponding steps back then collapsed heavily on a settee as it caught him behind the knees. His face held rage and bewilderment and fear, lest I hit him again: It also held hatred for both of us, for me because I was doing what I was doing, for himself because he knew he was going to do what I said. MacDonald wasn't ready to talk but he was going to all the same and both of us knew it.

"Where were you on the night Baxter and Clandon were killed?" I asked. I remained on my feet, the Hanyatti ready.

"Hardanger has my statement," he said sullenly. "At home. I'd had three friends in for bridge. Until almost midnight."

"Friends?"

"A retired scientific colleague. The local doctor and vicar. Good enough for you, Cavell?" Maybe he was getting some of his courage back.

"Nobody more skilled at murders than doctors. And priests have been unfrocked before." I looked down at my feet, at the smooth grey sweep of a wall-to-wall carpeting: if a man dropped his diamond tie-pin in that nap he'd have to call in a tracker dog. I said with no particular inflection, "Fancy line in floor-coverings you have here, Doctor. Five hundred quid wouldn't have bought this little lot."

"Being clever or just insolent, Cavell?" He was getting his courage back. I hoped he wasn't going to be so foolish as to get too much of it back.

"Heavy silk drapes," I went on. "Period furniture. Genuine crystal chandelier. A pretty big house and I'd wager the whole house is furnished on the same scale. The same expensive scale. Where does the money come from, Doctor? You do the pools? Or just a bingo expert?"

For a moment he looked as if he were about to tell me to mind my own damn' business, so I half-lifted the Hanyatti again, not much, just enough to make him change his mind. He said stiffly, "I'm a bachelor with no dependants. I can afford to indulge my tastes."

"Lucky you. Where were you last night between nine and eleven p.m.?"

He frowned and said, "At home."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure." Apparently he'd decided that stiff indignation was his safest line.

"Witnesses?"

"I was alone."

"All night?"

"All night. My housekeeper arrives at eight each morning."

"That may be very unfortunate for you. No witnesses for last night, I mean."

"What the devil are you trying to tell me?" He seemed genuinely puzzled.

"You'll know soon enough. You don't run a car, do you, Doctor?"

"As it happens I do."

"But you come to Mordon on an Army bus."

"I prefer it that way. It's no concern of yours."

"True. What kind of car?"

"A sports car."

"What kind of sports car?"

"A Bentley Continental."

"A Continental. A sports car." I gave him a long look but it was wasted. He was staring down at the carpet, maybe he had lost a diamond tie-pin there. "Your taste in cars is like your taste in rugs."

"It's an old car. Second-hand."

"When did you buy it?"

He looked up abruptly. "What does it matter? What are you trying to get at, Cavell?"

"When did you buy it?"

"Ten weeks ago." He was giving the carpet the once-over again. "Maybe three months ago."

"An old car, you say. How old?"

"Four years."

"Four years. They don't give away four year old Continentals for box-tops. They give them away for about £5,000. Where did you get £5,000 from three months ago?"

"I didn't. I paid £1,000 down. The rest over three years. It's the way most people buy their cars you know."

" An extended credit scheme aimed at capital conservation. That's for people like you. For people like me they call it hire-purchase. Let's see your hire-purchase agreement."

He brought it: a quick glance showed that he had been speaking the truth. I said, "What's your salary, Dr. MacDonald?"

"Just over £2,000. The government is not generous." He wasn't blustering or indignant any more. I wondered why.

"So that after taxation and living expenses you couldn't possibly have as much as a thousand left at the end of the year. In three years, £3,000. Yet, according to this agreement, you're going to pay off close to £4,500—balance plus interest — in three years. How do you propose to accomplish this mathematical impossibility?"

"I have two insurance policies maturing inside the next year. I'll get them for you."

"Don't bother. Tell me, Doctor, why are you so worried, so nervous?"

"I'm not worried."

"Don't lie."

"All right, so I'm lying. I am worried. I am nervous. The questions you are asking would make anyone nervous."

Maybe he was right at that. I said: "Why should feat make you worried, Doctor?"

"Why? He asks me why." He glared up at me then went back to looking for his diamond pin. "Because I don't like the trend of your questioning. I don't like what you're trying to prove. No man would."

"What am I trying to prove?"

"I don't know." He shook his head, not looking up. "You're trying to establish that I live beyond my means. I don't. I don't know what you're trying to prove."

I said, "You've got the old tartan eyes this morning, Doctor, and if you don't mind me saying so you stink of stale whisky. You have all the signs of a man who had a heavy session with the bottle last night and is paying the price now — not, I suppose, that a couple of belts on the solar plexus improved matters. Funny thing is, you're listed on our books as a moderate social drinker. You're no alcoholic. But you were alone last night — and social drinkers don't drink alone. That's why they're social. But you were drinking alone, last night — drinking heavily, Doctor. I wonder why? Worried, perhaps? Worried even before Cavell and his worrisome questions ever came along."

"I usually have a night-cap before retiring," he said defensively. He was still staring at the carpet but his interest lay not in any tie-pin but in not letting me see his expressions on his face. "That doesn't make me an alcoholic. What's a night-cap?"

"Or two," I agreed. "But when a night-cap turns out to be the better part of a bottle of whisky, it ceases to be a nightcap." I glanced round the room then said, "Where's your kitchen?"

"What do you—"

"Damn it, don't waste my time!"

"Through there."

I left the room and found myself in one of those gleaming stainless steel monstrosities that started out to be an operating theatre and changed its mind at the last moment. More evidence of money. And, on the gleaming sink, more evidence that Dr. MacDonald really had had an extended night-cap. A bottle of whisky, three-fifths empty with the torn lead seal still lying beside it. A dirty ashtray, full of mashed-up cigarettes. I turned as I heard a sound behind me. MacDonald was standing in the doorway.

"All right," he said wearily. "So I was drinking. I was at it for two or three hours. I'm not used to those things, Cavell. I'm not a policeman. Or a soldier. Two horrible, ghastly murders." He half-shuddered: if it was acting, it was brilliant acting.

"Baxter had been one of my best friends for years. And why was he killed? How do I know the killer hasn't another victim lined up? And I know what this Satan Bug can do. Good God, man, I'd reason to be worried. Worried stiff."

"So you had," I agreed. "So you still have — even although I am getting pretty close to him. The killer I mean. And maybe he is after you next — it's a thought to bear in mind."

"You cold-hearted callous devil," he ground out. "In God's name get out and leave me alone."

"I'm just going. Keep your doors locked, Doctor."

"You're going to hear more of this, Cavell." Now that I'd announced my intention of leaving and had stuck the Hanyatti out of sight, he was recovering courage. "We'll see if you're so damned tough when you're up in court on an assault charge."

"Don't talk rubbish," I said shortly. "I never laid a finger on you. There's no mark on you. It's only your word against mine. Me, I'd take mine first any time."

I left the house. I saw the dark bulk of the garage where the Bentley was presumably housed, but I didn't give it a second glance or thought. When people want a nice, inconspicuous, unobstructive car for a stealthy and unobstructive mission, they don't go around borrowing Bentley Continentals.

I stopped at a phone box and, on the pretext of wanting Gregori's address made two unnecessary calls, to Weybridge first who couldn't, as I knew he couldn't, help me and to Cliveden who could and did. They were both pretty shirty about being disturbed at the crack of dawn, but they quietened down when I told them that I'd had to have the information immediately because my investigations had now reached such a critical stage that I might have the case tied up before the day was out. Both of them tried to question me on the progress I was making but I gave nothing away. That didn't take much finesse, for I'd nothing to give away in any event.

At 7.15 a.m. I was leaning on the doorbell of Dr. Gregori's house: more precisely the house in which he lived, a good-class boarding house run by a widow and her two daughters. Parked outside the front was a navy blue Fiat 2100. Gregori's car. It was still pitch dark, still cold and wet. I felt very tired and my leg ached badly so that I had difficulty in concentrating on what had to be done.

The door opened and a plump woman, grey-haired and fiftyish, peered out into the darkness. This would be the landlady herself, Mrs. Whithorn, reputedly a cheerful and happy-go-lucky soul of devastating untidiness and unpunctuality, whose boarding-house was the most sought-after in the area: her reputation as a cook was enviable.

"Who on earth is it at this time of morning?" Her voice held a good-natured exasperation. "Not the police again, I hope?"

"I'm afraid so, Mrs. Whithorn. Cavell is my name. I'd like to see Dr. Gregori, please."

"Poor Dr. Gregori. He's already put up with enough from you people. But I suppose you'd better come in. I'll go and see if he's up yet."

"Just tell me where his room is and I'll find out for myself. If you please, Mrs. Whithorn."

She demurred a bit, then reluctantly told me where to find him. Five yards along the big hall, down a side passage and I was outside his door — his name was on it. I knocked and waited.

I didn't have to wait long. Gregori must have been up, but only just. He wore a faded russet dressing-gown over his pyjamas and his swarthy face was swarthier than ever — he evidently hadn't yet got round to shaving.

"Cavell," he said. There was no particular warmth of welcome in his voice — people greeting the law at dawn are seldom in the most amiable frame of mind — but at least, unlike MacDonald, he was civil. "You'd better come in. And have a seat. You look worn out."

I felt worn out. I eased myself into the offered chair and looked around. Gregori didn't do himself as well as MacDonald in the way of furniture, but then it probably wasn't his furniture in the first place. The room I was in was furnished as a small study — his bedroom would be through the communication door in the far wall. A worn but still serviceable carpet, a couple of armchairs in the same category, one wall completely lined with bookcases, a heavy oak table with swivel chair, typewriter and piled-up papers and that was about it. In the stone hearth was the remains of last night's fire, smooth white ash such as you get from burning beech. The room, though cold, was rather stuffy— Gregori had obviously not as yet succumbed to the English madness of flinging open windows under any and all conditions — and I seemed to smell some peculiar odour in the air, so faint as to be unidentifiable.

"If I can be of any help to you, Mr. Cavell?" Gregori prompted.

"Just routine inquiries, Dr. Gregori," I said easily. "Most uncivilised hour, I know, but we feel that time is not on our side."

"You have not been to bed?" he said shrewdly.

"Not yet. I've been busy — visiting. I'm afraid my choice of visiting hours doesn't make me very popular. I've just come from Dr. MacDonald and I'm afraid he wasn't at all pleased to be dragged out of his bed."

"No? Dr. MacDonald," Gregori said delicately, "is a somewhat impatient man."

"You get on well with him? On friendly terms?"

"A colleague shall we say? I respect his work. Why, Mr. Cavell?"

"Incurable nosiness. Tell me, Doctor, have you any alibi for last night."

"Of course." He looked puzzled. "I told it to Mr. Hardanger in person. From eight until almost midnight I was at the birthday party for Mrs. Whithorn's daughter——"

"Sorry," I interupted. "Last night — not the night before."

"Aha." He looked at me anxiously. "There have been— there have been no more killings?"

"No more," I reassured him. "Well, Doctor?"

"Last night?" He half-smiled and shrugged. "An alibi? Had I known that an alibi would have been required of me I would not have failed to provide one. At what time, exactly, Mr. Cavell?"

"Let us say between 9.30 and 10.30 p.m."

"Alas, no. No alibi, I fear. I was in my room here, working all night on my book. Work therapy, you might call it, Mr. Cavell, after the dreadful experience of yesterday." He paused, then went on apologetically. "Well, not all night. From after dinner — about eight — till eleven. It was a good night for me in the circumstances — three whole pages." He smiled again, differently. "For the type of book I'm writing, Mr. Cavell, a page an hour represents excellent progress."

"And what type of book is that?"

"On inorganic chemistry." He shook his head and added wistfully: "it is unlikely that the citizens will be besieging the bookshops in order to buy it The reading public for my speciality is limited indeed."

"That the book?" I nodded at the pile of papers on the desk.

"It is. One I began in Turin, more years ago than I care to remember. Examine it if you wish, Mr. Cavell. Not, I fear, that it would convey much to you. Apart from the rather abstruse nature of the subject-matter, it is in Italian — the language I prefer for writing."

I didn't tell him that I could read Italian almost as well as he spoke English. Instead I said, "You type directly on to paper?"

"But of course. My handwriting is that of the true scientist — almost completely indecipherable. But a moment!" He rubbed a thoughtful palm across a blue and bristly chin. "The typewriter. It may have been heard."

"That's why I asked. You think it likely?"

"I don't know. My rooms were specially chosen because of my typing — must not disturb the other guests, you understand. There are no bedrooms either above or on either side of me. Wait now, yes, yes, I'm almost certain I heard a television programme next door. At least," more doubtfully. "I think I did. Next door is what Mrs. Whithorn rather grandly calls her television lounge, but it is very poorly patronised, I fear, chiefly by Mrs. Whithom herself and her daughters, and that not frequently. But I'm sure I heard something. Well, almost sure. Shall we ask?"

We asked. We went along to the kitchen where Mrs. Whithorn and one of her daughters were preparing breakfast. The aroma of sizzling bacon made my leg feel weaker than ever.

One minute was enough. An hour-long vintage film had been shown on television the previous evening and Mrs. Whithorn and two of her three daughters had watched the entire performance. The film had started precisely at ten and as they passed Dr. Gregori's door into the lounge and after that had sat down they could hear him typing on his machine. Not loud, not loud enough to be annoying, but perfectly distinct. Mrs. Whithorn had commented at the time that it was a shame Dr. Gregori should have so little time for leisure and relaxation but she knew he would be eager to make up for the time lost at her daughter's party, his first night off for weeks.

Dr. Gregori made no attempt to bide his satisfaction,

"I'm very much indebted to this elderly film shown last night. And to you, Mrs. Whithorn." He smiled at me. "Your suspicious at rest, Mr. Cavell?"

"I never had any, Doctor. But that's how policemen must work — by the elimination of even the most remote possibilities.".

Dr. Gregori saw me to the front door. It was still dark, still cold, still very wet indeed. The rain was bouncing high off the tarmac road. I was considering how best to introduce my now standard spiel about the remarkable progress I was making when Gregori himself said suddenly," I am not asking you to betray any professional confidences, Mr. Cavell. But — well, do you think there is a chance that you'll get this fiend? Are you making any progress at all?"

"More than I would have thought possible twelve hours ago. Investigations have led me pretty far in what I believe to be the right direction. Very far. I might say — if it weren't for the fact that I'm up against a brick wall."

"Walls can be climbed, Mr. Cavell."

"So they can. And this one will be." I paused. "I don't know whether I should have said what I did. But I know you will keep it strictly to yourself."

He gave me his earnest reassurances on that point and we parted. Half a mile away I stopped at the first call-box and got through to London.

"Been to bed yet, Cavell?" the General greeted me.

"No sir."

"Don't feel to badly about it. Neither have I. I've been very busy indeed making myself unpopular dragging people out of their beds in the middle of the night."

"No more unpopular than I've made myself, sir."

"I dare say. With any results?"

"Nothing special. Yourself, sir?"

"Chessingham. No record of a civilian driving licence having been issued to him at any time. This may not be definite — it may have been issued to him in some place other than his own country although this would be unusual. As for his Army record, it turns out, strangely enough, that he was in the RA.S.C."

"The R.A.S.C.? Then the chances are that he did have a licence. Did you find out, sir?"

"The only fact that I have been able to establish about Chessingham's Army career," the General said dryly, "is that he actually was in the Army. The wheels of the War Office grind uncommonly slow at any time but in the middle of the night they grind to a dead halt. We may have something by midday. What we do have now are some rather interesting figures supplied us less than half an hour ago by Chessingham's bank manager."

He gave me the figures and hung up. I climbed wearily into the car once more and headed for Chessingham's house. Fifteen minutes' drive and I was there. In the bleak half-light of dawn, the square-built house with its sunken basement looked more dreary and forbidding than ever. The way I was feeling didn't help matters. any. I squelched my way up the flight of worn steps over the moat and pressed the bell.

Stella Chessingham appeared. She was neatly and attractively dressed in a flowered housecoat and her hair was smoothly brushed but her face was pale and the brown eyes were tired. She didn't look very happy when I told her I wanted to see her brother.

"I suppose you'd better come in," she said reluctantly. "Mother's still in bed. Eric's at breakfast."

He was. Bacon and egg again. My leg felt weaker than ever. Chessingham rose to his feet and said nervously, "Good morning, Mr. Cavell."

I didn't wish him good morning back. I gave him my cold impersonal stare, the kind only policemen and head waiters are allowed to use, and said, "I have to ask some more questions, Chessingham. I've been up all night and I'm in no mood for evasions. Straight answers to straight questions. Our investigations during the night have opened up some very interesting lines of inquiry and the main line leads straight here." I looked at his sister. "Miss Chessingham, I have no wish to distress you unnecessarily. It might be better if I interviewed your brother alone."

She looked at me with wide-open eyes, licked her lips nervously, nodded and turned to go. Chessingham said, "Stay here, Stella. I have nothing to hide from anybody. My sister knows everything about me, Mr. Cavell."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that." The voice to match the stare. "If you wish to stay, Miss Chessingham, you may. Please remember afterwards that I asked you to go." Both were pale now and very apprehensive indeed. On the basis of my ability to terrify people I could have had a job with a Central European Secret Police at any time.

I said, "What were you doing last night, Chessingham? Round about ten o'clock, shall we say?"

"Last night?" He blinked. "Why do I have to account for my movements for last night?"

"The questions come from me. Please give an answer."

"I — well, I was at home. With Stella and Mother."

"All night?"

"Of course."

"There's no 'of course'. No visitors, no outsiders to testify to your presence here?"

"Just Stella and Mother."

"Just Miss Chessingham. At ten o'clock your mother would be in bed."

"Yes, in bed. I'd forgotten."

"I'm not surprised. Forgetting is your strong line. You forgot to tell me last night that you had been in the R.A.S.C."

"The R.A.S.C.?" He sat down at the table again, not to eat, and from the slight movements of his arms I could tell that one hand was gripping the other pretty strongly. "Yes, that's right. How did you know that?"

"A little bird told me. The same bird told me that he had seen you driving an army vehicle." I was sticking my neck out but I'd no option. Time was not on our side. "You said you couldn't drive."

"I can't." His eyes flickered to his sister and then back to me. "There's a mistake. Someone is making a mistake."

"That's you, Chessingham — if you keep denying it. What if I can produce four independent witnesses by nightfall who will swear to it that they have seen you driving."

"I may have tried once or twice. I'm — I'm not sure. I haven't a driving licence."

"You make me sick," I said in disgust. "You're speaking and behaving like a moron. You're no moron, Chessingham. Stop beating about the bush and making a fool of yourself. You can drive. Admit it. Miss Chessingham, your brother can drive, can't he?"

"Leave Stella alone." Chessingham's voice was high, his face pale. "You're right, damn you, I can drive — after a fashion."

"I suppose you thought it very clever to abandon that Bedford van outside your house two nights ago? On the assumption that the police would never believe anyone capable of doing anything so obvious?"

"I was never near that van." His voice was almost a shout. "I swear it I swear I was never near that van. I got frightened when you came round last night and I said anything I could to — to strengthen my innocence."

"Innocence." I laughed my nasty policeman's laugh. "The photographs of Jupiter that you said you took. How did you take them? Or did someone else take them? Or did you rig up an apparatus to take the pictures automatically while you were away at Mordon?"

"What in the name of God are you talking about?" He was getting frantic. "Apparatus? What damned apparatus? Search the house from top to bottom and see if you can find——"

"Don't be so naive," I interrupted. "Probably buried deep in the woods anywhere within fifty square miles of here."

"Mr. Cavell!" Stella Chessingham stood in front of me, her hands so tight that they were shaking, her face mad. "You're making a terrible mistake. Eric has nothing to do with — with whatever it is. This murder. Nothing, I tell you I, I know."

"Were you with him after half past ten the night before last? In his observatory? If you weren't, young lady, you don't know."

"I know Eric! I know he's completely incapable of—"

"Character testimonials are no good to me," I said brusquely. "And if you know so much perhaps you can explain to me how £1,000 comes to have been deposited in your brother's bank account in the past four months? Five hundred pounds on July 3rd, the same on October 3rd. Can you explain?"

They looked at each other, sick fear in their eyes and making no attempt to conceal it. When Chessingham managed to speak, on his second or third attempt, his voice was hoarse and shaking.

"It's a frame-up! Someone is trying to frame me."

"Shut up and talk sense," I said wearily. "Where did the money come from, Chessingham?"

He paused for a moment before replying, then said miserably, "From Uncle George." His voice had dropped almost to a whisper and he was glancing apprehensively ceiling-wards.

"Decent of Uncle George," I said heavily. "Who's he?"

"Mother's brother." His tone was still low. "The black sheep of the family, or so it seems. He said he was completely innocent of the crimes with which he had been charged but that the evidence against him had been so overwhelming that he'd fled the country."

I glared at him. Double-talk at 8 a.m. after a sleepless night wasn't much in my line. "What are you talking about? What crimes?"

"I don't know." Chessingham sounded desperate. "We've never seen him — he's phoned me twice at Mordon. Mother has never mentioned him — we didn't even know he existed until recently."

"You knew about this, too?" I asked Stella.

"Of course I did."

"Your mother?"

"Of course not," Chessingham said. "I told you she never even mentioned his existence. Whatever he was accused of, it must have been something pretty bad. He said that if Mother knew where the money came from she'd call it tainted and refuse it. We — Stella and I — want to send her abroad for her health and that money is going to help."

"It's going to help you up the steps of the Old Bailey," I said roughly. "Where was your mother born?"

"Alfringham." It was Stella who answered, Chessingham didn't seem capable of it.

"Maiden name?"

"Jane Barclay."

"Where's your phone? I'd like to use it."

She told me and I went out to the hall and put a call through to the General. Almost fifteen minutes elapsed before I returned to the breakfast-room. Neither of the two appeared to have moved from the positions in which I left them.

"My God, you're a bright pair," I said wonderingly. "It would never have occurred to you, of course, to pay a visit to Somerset House. What would be the point? You knew you would be wasting your time. Uncle George never existed. Your mother never had a brother. Not that that will be news to you. Come on now, Chessingham, you've had time to think up a better explanation than that one. You couldn't possibly think up a worse one to account for the £1,000."

He couldn't think one up at all. He stared at me, his face grimly hopeless, then at his sister, then at the ground. I said, encouragingly, "Well, there's no rush about it. You'll have a few weeks to think up a better story. Meantime, I want to see your mother."

"Leave my mother out of this, damn you." Chessingham had risen to his feet with such violence that his chair had gone over backwards. "My mother's a sick woman and an old one. Leave her alone, you hear, Cavell?"

I said to Stella, "Please go and tell your mother I'm coming up in a minute."

Chessingham started towards me, but his sister got in the way. "Don't, Eric. Please." She gave me a look that should have pinned me to the wall and said bitterly, "Don't you see that Mr. Cavell is a man who always gets his own way?"

I got my own way. The interview with Mrs. Chessingham took no more than ten minutes. It wasn't just the most pleasant ten minutes of my life.

When I came downstairs both Chessingham and his sister were waiting in the hall. Stella came up to me, big brown eyes swimming in a pale and frightened face and said desperately, "You're making a fearful mistake, Mr. Cavell, a terrible mistake. Eric is my brother. I know him, I know him. I swear to you that he is completely innocent in everything."

"He'll have his chance to prove it." There were times when I didn't find any great difficulty in hating myself and this was one of those times. "Chessingham, you would be wise to pack a case. Enough stuff to last you for a few days at least."

"You're taking me with you?" He looked resigned, hopeless.

"I've neither the warrant or the authority for that. Somebody will come, never fear. Don't be silly as to try to run. A mouse couldn't get through the cordon round this house."

"A — a cordon?" He stared. "You mean there are policemen round—"

"Think we want you to take the first plane out of the country?" I asked. "Like dear old Uncle George?" It was a good enough exit line and I left it at that.

The Hartnells were to be my next — and last — call before breakfast that morning. Half-way there I pulled up at an A.A. box on a deserted wooded stretch of road, unlocked the booth and put a call through to the Waggoner's Rest. By and by Mary came on the phone and after she'd asked me how I felt and I'd said fine and she'd more or less called me a liar, I told her I would be back in the hotel shortly after nine o'clock, to have breakfast ready for me and to ask Hardanger to come round if he could.

I left the phone booth and although my car was only a few yards away I didn't dawdle any in reaching it — the cold grey rain was still sheeting down. For all my haste, though, I suddenly stopped with the door half-open and stared through the rain at a character coming down the road towards me. From a distance of less than a hundred yards he appeared to be a middle-aged well-dressed citizen wearing a raincoat and trilby, but there all resemblance to a normal human being ended. He was making his way down the rain-filled gutter by hopping around on his right foot, arms outstretched to balance himself, kicking a rusty tin can ahead of him. With every combined hop and kick a gout of water went spraying up in the air.

I watched this performance for some time until I became conscious of the rain drumming heavily on my back and soaking through to my shoulders. Besides, even if he had escaped over a high wall, it was still rude to stare. Maybe if I were buried long enough in the wilds of Wiltshire, I, too, would take to playing hopscotch in the rain. still with my eye on this apparition I eased quickly into the driving seat pulling the door to behind me and it was not until then that I discovered that the purpose of the hopscotch merchant was not to demonstrate the standard of loopiness in rural Wiltshire but to distract my attention from the back of my car where someone had been biding crouched down on the floor.

I heard a slight noise behind me and started to twist but I was far too late, the black-jack must have been chopping down even as I heard the sound. My left foot was still on the wrong side of the steering column and, anyway, he was on my left or blind side. The black-jack made contact just below and behind my left ear with what must have been considerable force or accuracy or both for the agony and the oblivion were separated by only a hairsbreadth in time.