Though it was still broad daylight, a long crimson band of sunset lay behind the railway station westwards, and a feeling of evening was in the air as Cy Norton faced the last charge of reporters on the front step of the house.
"No!" Cy called, amiably but firmly. "You cannot see Sir Henry. He is locked in the wine cellar."
The inevitable question shot back at him in many voices.
"Because he's drunk," replied Cy. (Sensation.) "Yes! D-r-u-n-k, drunk."
"But why is he cockeyed now?’
"Because," called Cy, "his brain won't work properly on a case until he's two-thirds paralyzed with alcohol. Surely you understand that?"
There was a hubbub, not unmixed with expressions of sympathy. The excuse was so frank and unusual, coming from a respectable home in Maralarch, that all except the most suspicious were inclined to believe it.
"Can we quote that about his being pickled?"
"Certainly," answered Cy, wondering how this news would look in Washington. Then he held up his hand. "Lieutenant Trowbridge has already given you the essential facts. I'm going to give you, with his permission, a few more. Now some of you know me. Don't you?"
There was a chorus of assent.
"All right! Then listen! I'm going to give you a real story!"
It was a story, and a beauty. But, as Cy had calculated, the basic part—that Frederick Manning had decamped with the funds of his Foundation—got completely lost in the shuffle. At first sight it appeared that, as the result of some sort of bet, Manning had dived into the pool and vanished like a soap bubble.
"What about that dummy electric chair?"
"Also a joke, it's believed. Several witnesses, who went down to the pool early in the morning, vaguely noticed some kind of chair with, quote, 'a cloth cover over it' Unquote. But they paid no attention. When the chair was uncovered we don't know. It was found by Police Officer Aloysius J. O'Casey."
Presently he got rid of them, at least so he hoped.
Cy closed the front door, and put his head against it
Again the house was a quiet as in the middle of the night dim with Venetian blinds half drawn. Betterton and the District Attorney had left for town in the latter's car shortly after lunch, a lunch at which there had been only random and desultory conversation.
As for Detective Lieutenant Trowbridge, from White Plains, he astonished Jean and Crystal and Bob though he astonished nobody else. They had expected to meet a fat ogre who could chew a cigar and yell. Instead they met a quiet, well-spoken man not yet forty, who merely took statements, and did not question them much about miracles. As for that replica of the electric chair...
"Put it in the cellar," Byles had ordered, "and don't let H.M. see it He'll have an apoplectic fit We don't want our horse going crazy at the starting gate."
And it was to the basement that Cy Norton, after cooling his head against the front door in the dim silent house, hurried now.
Where was Crystal? After lunch Crystal had locked herself in her room, in tears... Stop it! He must not think about Crystal.
Sir Henry Merrivale really was in the wine cellar, though not locked in. It was not dangerous to keep him there away from the press, since H.M., a whisky drinker only, disdained even good wines as slops. But he was in no mood of sweetness and light
Cy, hurrying across a dim basement which smelled of old whitewash, opened the door of the wine cellar. It was an oblong room, lined to the ceiling on every side except the door side with tiers of bottles set on their sides. In the middle, under a dusty electric bulb gleaming yellow, H.M. sat in an old chair and glared at four unopened champagne bottles which were set in a line on the floor in front of him.
"Shut the door," he growled, without looking up from his position as Rodin's Thinker.
Cy complied. "Any inspiration yet?"
H.M. merely grunted. He liked his bathing suit, and still wore it But the dignity of the Merrivales had prompted him to don trousers. These, supported by ancient braces over the red-and-white striped upper part, made him resemble one of the bulkier Bowery toughs in the eighteen-nineties.
"Y'see, I've got half of it," he said. "The other half ought to be easy? But..."
Brooding, he pointed to the four champagne bottles with their gilt tinfoil tops.
"The problem" he said, "is to turn four bottles into three bottles, and still have four bottles."
"That's going to take a long time, isn't it?"
"No, curse it! It oughtn't to. Lemme give you a hint"
"Thanks. I know your hints."
"I'm serious, son," pleaded H.M. "You don't even see all the mystery! What happened to Manning's socks and his wrist watch?"
"What's that?"
"When we met him by the pool," returned H.M., in a far-off musing tone, "anybody could have told you he was wearing socks. As for..."
"Wait a minute!" said Cy, translating memory into pictures. "I do remember the wrist watch. He looked at it, and said something to the effect that it would be several hours before we had to worry about his disappearance."
"Keepin' us still off-balance. Yes."
"Hold on!" muttered Cy. "I remember something else too. He was wearing a shirt too."
"Oh, no, he wasn't!" said H.M. very sharply.
"But I tell you...!"
"That," said H.M., pointing his finger carefully at Cy, "is just the kind of misdirection you got to look out for. Manning's a wizard at it. He wasn't wearing a shirt at all. But he talked about how the sun bothered him, and touched the scarf round his neck, and said, 'so that it's torture to wear this shirt.' You automatically assumed he was wearin' a shirt."
Here H.M. scowled.
"Son, all his other clothes were in that pool. What happened to the socks and the wrist watch?"
Cy didn't know. He could call only on his imagination. And that gave him a wild vision of . Frederick Manning—completely invisible-climbing out of the swimming pool while wearing nothing but a wrist watch and socks.
"Y'see," resumed H.M., "our friend Gil Byles is under the happy hallucination that to catch Manning is goin' to be easy." Traces of a ghoulish mirth appeared in his face. "Cor! When Gil was giving all those fancy statistics to the young people..."
"He sounded pretty convincing, H.M."
"In a way, yes. That trick of watchin' secondhand book-shops is a beauty. But statistics, which are mostly hoo-haa anyway, try to find the
average man. And if Fred Manning is the average man, then I'm Harry Houdini."
"Look here! What's the crafty game now?"
"Well," rumbled H.M. drowsily studying the four champagne bottles, "you take that crumpled and discarded envelope, with the figure and town names on it, which Fred sort of discarded..."
Cy jumped. "Are you saying that was a trick too?"
"Oh, my son! If you were a clever man ready to do a bunk, would you write every bit of it down in the dining room of your club, and so very obviously leave it there in front of a District Attorney who hates you?"
"It was—more misdirection?"
H.M. sniffed. "Sure it was. And Gil grabbed it."
"But Manning's real line of flight...?"
"However much of the rhino he pinched," said H.M., "it wasn't a hundred thousand dollars. And, wherever he's really goin', it's not Florida or California."
"Now that you're in a garrulous mood, can you tell me anything else?"
H.M. reflected.
Studying the champage bottles, he bent forward with some effort He touched one of the bottles, moved it forward, and then drew it back again like an informal chess player.
"You ought to guess by this time"—and H.M. sent at Cy an odd glance which ought to have had significance for Cy—"we can't trust a word that*s been said from the beginning. But bein' the old man, I will tell you something I heard from Jean this afternoon. The gal don't even know she told me."
"All right, what is it?"
"Fred Manning's got a phenomenally acute sense of hearing. In a radio play, d'ye see, he could hear background effects that nobody else could. They gave him that hummin'-fork test, and he was miles ahead of anybody else.
"But"— H.M. was now fiercely arguing to himself—"that wouldn't help him much in this case. Lord love a duck! He couldn't possibly..."
"Couldn't possibly what?"
H.M. looked up.
"I'm stiflin' to death," he said in accents of tragedy. "I got claustrophobia. How long have I got to stay shut up here like the Man in the Iron Mask? Haven't those press blighters cleared out?"
"Ye-es." Cy was hesitant. "Yes, I think so. But it'd be better if we could get to the woods."
"What woods?"
"Since you've noticed every microscopic detail, you may not have noticed there are woods behind the bathing cabins. Let's try it, anyway."
Creeping upstairs like a couple of burglars, they made their exit by way of the screened porch on the south-eastern terrace and a deserted lawn round the swimming pool.
"It's all right," Cy said.
H.M., hitching up his trousers after an evil glance round, waddled out. Then two things happened at once.
Bob Manning walked out of the kitchen door on the northeastern side, letting the screen door bang after him. Bob wore an old baseball uniform with the entwined letters M.T. In one hand he carried a fungo bat, in the other he juggled with three baseballs.
And, at the same time, a photographer with camera and flash gun came prowling round the northern side of the house as though stalking prey.
Sir Henry Merrivale, with astounding celerity, was suddenly trying to flatten himself behind the projection of a chimney. In this he succeeded. The photographer, after casting a slow and crafty glance over the landscape, melted away towards the front.
"Look!" said Bob, trotting over towards the other two. "What goes on here?"
"I don't suppose," said H.M. with dignity, "you got a tribe of Indians that could come whoopin' after me with tomahawks? Cor! That feller looked more like Hawkeye than anybody I ever did see. I got to hide!"
"Hide?" demanded Bob, catching the atmosphere. "Then come down to the field with me!"
"What field?"
"The ball field! Behind those trees over there! My team's out practising now. And"—Bob lowered his voice impressively—"Moose Wilson is there. Last night you practically promised you'd come out and try some batting."
"I know, son. I'd like to go. But I've got a lot on my mind, and..."
"Look, Sir Henry, there's nothing for you to be afraid of!"
H.M., who had opened his mouth for more explanation, stopped and looked at him.
"So there's nothin' for me to be afraid of, hey?" he asked.
"Not a thing! Moose Wilson will take it easy. If I tell him to, he'll serve them up so anybody could hit 'em."
H.M. gave Bob a long, slow look. Though it had been staved off last night, the purple colour was coming into his face like that of a man being strangled.
"Now that's uncommon handsome of him, son," said H.M. in a soft, cooing voice. "That's a fine sportin' proposition, that is."
"Where," H.M. asked with deceptive casualness, "did you say this field is?"
They hurried across the terrace, past the lawn of the swimming pool, and past the rhododendron bushes and the bathing cabins which lay in parallel lines with the pool. The woods beyond, cool as an old-time spring house, drooped with heavy leaves and shadow. Against a beech tree, and wearing black slacks with a chaste white blouse, leaned Crystal Manning.
"Are you taking them out to see the baseball?" she greeted her brother sweetly, without looking at Cy. "Would you mind terribly if I went too?"
Bob stared at her. "Would I..." he began, and stopped. He turned to his companions as though the end of the world had come.
"Last night," Bob declared patiently, "this woman thought a bunt was about the same as a three-bagger or a home run. And now she wants to watch."
"Have you any objections, Bob dear?"
"No, of course not! And, come to think of it"— Bob flushed slightly as he turned to his companions—"I'd better tear along ahead. The cover's started to rip on the only ball they have, and I've got three new ones here. Excuse me."
What he really wanted to do was tell his team, modestly styling itself the Maralarch Terrors, to treat the poor old duck like spun glass. Instead of using the broad path, Bob plunged off into the underbrush.
So the other three, with Crystal in the middle, walked down the path.
As soon as she was away from any member of her family, Crystal dropped all her airs and became the all-too-human being Cy knew. She gave him only one glance, of passionate reproachfulness, which said, "Why didn't you come and look for me this afternoon?" Then she turned away.
"Sir Henry," said Crystal.
"Uh-huh?" said the scion of ancient lineage.
"Why did you tell the District Attorney that awful lie this morning?"
(So she spotted it too, thought Cy.)
"Which particular lie, my wench?"
"When he was asking about this woman," said Crystal, with a wicked smile. "This popsy of Dad's. You deliberately gave Mr. Byles the address and telephone number of some woman called Flossie Peters, who isn't Irene Stanley at all."
"So? What makes you think I did?"
"Because I was watching Jean's face! I don't know where Irene Stanley lives, and I'm sure Bob doesn't But I'm quite certain Jean does know, and if s not at the address you gave. Isn't that so, now?"
"That's so, my wench " admitted H.M.
They were moving through a cool green twilight not untroubled by gnats. But Cy Norton's, swearing under his breath, called for a halt.
"Look here, H.M.! Are you trying to flummox the police here too? Just as you always try to flummox 'em in England?"
"Well... now. Maybe just a little bit, son. Not very much."
"Ill tell you what you did," said Cy with the certainty of conviction. "You phoned that girl in the Bronx last night. You told her what to do and say. If the police went there today, she was to say she was Irene Stanley and act like Irene Stanley as long as she could. It wouldn't fool the police for long, but it would put 'em off the track for hours."
H.M. considered this, his cheeks puffed out as they continued their walk.
"More'n a few hours, son," he decided1. "That gal can tell enough lies, and convincing lies, to stretch from 161st Street to the Statue of Liberty."
"Then you're not after Manning at all! You're protecting him!"
"I'm protectin' him like billy-o, yes. Until they can show Fred Manning's a crook. After that..."
But Crystal, her eyes dreamy and her expression demurely amused, did not seem to be thinking of this.
"Sir Henry." She spoke softly. "Who is Flossie Peters?"
"I kept telling everybody," retorted H.M„ with a lofty but wary air, "that I had a friend here. She's a nice gal," said H.M., as though critically considering a slight acquaintance, "yes, a nice gal. I go there and sort of talk to her once in a while."
"Sir Henry," said Crystal gravely, "you are a wicked old man."
H.M.'s expression of outraged virtue would have shamed St. Anthony.
"I dunno what you're talkin' about!" he bellowed.
"Sir Henry, you have a popsy in New York." "But it ain't true! I'm not staying here, am I? The..."
He paused abruptly. They had all emerged into the open, and many eyes were watching them from the field.
And, as he looked at that baseball diamond, something which had been dead asleep for years ran, like fire through the veins of Cy Norton.
(By God, he thought, it's the best amateur field I ever saw!)
After that hot day, the brownish dirt was dry and powdery. The diamond, the broad sweep of the outfield, gleamed in cropped green. The bases were newly whitewashed. Even the foul lines, newly painted and shining white, ran far into an outfield bounded by a high wooden fence with trees beyond. But it was the feel of it, the thrill of it, the quickening pulse!
Many of the team, in white uniforms with the vertical stripes, were scattered round the field while somebody knocked out practice flies from home plate. There, beside a line of bats near the dugout, stood old Stuffy in a uniform of the Philadelphia Athletics which was thirty-odd years old.
Stuffy, grinning at H.M., did a war dance as well as his rheumatism allowed.
Near him stood Bob Manning, ready to make an introduction. Bob wasn't quite sure how to do this, but on a ball field he felt at home.
"Men of the Maralarch Terrors!'' he shouted, in a voice somewhat between a toastmaster and a radio announcer. "Let me introduce our guest today, who is no other than—Lord Merrivale!"
Cheers and applause tore the air.
Bob, in thus elevating H.M. to the peerage, had only a vague idea that all British titles were much the same or at least interchangeable. When he went on, he told a story which he had now firmly fixed in his mind and believed.
"Lord Merrivale,'' he yelled, whether or not the outfield could hear him, "is a famous cricketer in England. He has never played baseball. But he'd like to hit a few, and show us how to do if
This time the applause was frantic above the cheers.
It was, as Cy knew, only a polite outlet to conceal one blast of laughter. The shortstop, doubled up with mirth, leaned on one knee and waved his glove. What intoxicated these youths, most of whom were much younger than Bob, was the spectacle of an English lord—though this was the oddest-looking English lord they had ever imagined—marching out to make a fool of himself.
Youth being youth, this was only natural. But Cy hated it. He wished the old boy wouldn't insist on making a fool of himself. And yet...
H.M., as usual, was basking in the spotlight In response to the cheers he first bowed, then he lifted both hands above his head and shook hands with himself, like a prize fighter entering the ring.
The Maralarch Terrors were now delirious.
Old Stuffy gave one more hop. On the line of bats near the dugout was a large mouth organ. Stuffy picked it up in some kind of arranged ritual.
"Hank!" he called in his cracked voice. "Stuffy!" thundered the so-called English lord. Then up to Stuffy's lips went the big mouth organ. And out came rolicking the old song.
" Take me out to the ball game, Take me out in the crowd...”
The man must be dead and buriable who can resist that. Cy, himself half-intoxicated, was remembering old days.
The confident feel of dirt rubbed into your hands! The dust and sun dazzle! The hard pads of the catcher's mask against your cheeks! To get the jump on the runner, with a long whip to second which—once or twice!—the second baseman picks off his shoelaces a second ahead of the driving spikes!
"Now what do you want, Hank?" Stuffy was anxiously asking H.M.
"You got a cap? Gimme a cap!"
"But what about your shoes? You ain't got..."
"Never mind the shoes. Just gimme a cap."
Bob, making a megaphone of his hands, was ordering the team into position.
"That's Moose Wilson who's been hitting flies," he told H.M. "Hey, Moose!"
The Moose, a rather older young man who looked as big and clumsy and amiable as his nickname, smiled and threw away the bat.
"Jimmy," called Bob, "you take first base for me. I want to watch this!"
"And so do I," drawled Crystal, amused that there should be so much fuss and excitement. "Really, these Americans!"
"What do you mean, these Americans?" angrily demanded Cy Norton. "Look here, Stuffy, do you mind if I catch?"
"You're kind of slight built for a catcher, Mr. Norton."
"I know that But if s what I always played, and always wanted to play!"
"Shoot" said the old-timer. "I'm a-gonna umpire this, myself."
Cy, who was buckling on chest protector and pads with the help of a stocky grinning catcher, felt as cold and excited as though this were a World Series. He thrust his fingers into the catcher's mitt while his companion tightened the mask. The stuff felt at once lighter and yet more clumsy than it used to feel. He hadn't had a baseball in his hand for more than twenty years. His throws would undoubtedly be wild, his timing bad.
But if this didn't bother H.M., who was old enough to be his father... well, then, he'd stand beside the Old Maestro or bust!
Cy dashed out to the plate. The Maralarch Terrors, still delirious, were trotting past him. He caught one or two voices.
"Tea and cricket, what-what?" chuckled one.
"Most frightfully what, don't-cher-know?" inquired another.
Cy looked after them curiously. Did these young fellows honestly think, as they must, that people in England really talked like that? Or said, Toodle-oo' and 'Pip-pip,' as though an American were nowadays to say, 'Twenty-three-skidoo'?
You couldn't do anything about it, he had found after years of trying. The damned films saw to that And if only H.M. wouldn't insist on making a..’
But H.M., goodly and great behind his stomach, was now marching towards the plate.
On his head the cap was pressed down partly sideways, giving him still more the look of a Bowery tough in the nineties. On his face was a lofty sneer. Carelessly he swung two heavy bats, and let one go as he neared the batter's box. Here he planted his feet, stuck out his behind, and glared at the pitcher.
Old Stuffy Tyler, once pride of the Athletics, knew pure happiness. Turning his cap round and pulling down a mask, he leaned forward towards his crouch behind the plate. As though they were beginning a real game, his cracked voice rang out. "Play ball!"