13

Cy, though certain he did understand, was nevertheless infuriated when H.M.'s mind immediately flew off at a tangent.

"Gimme that light!" said Sir Henry Merrivale.

His footsteps echoed, hollow and gritty. Though the bronze door had been closed since they entered, Cy could now see why the air had been at least breathable.

Round the circle radiating from the door, there had been set in the wall three small windows of very thick glass, so encrusted with dirt on the outside that they had hardly looked like windows.

The window at the back, facing the door, had been partly smashed in a diagonal line. It had been done recently; a faint glass splinter glittered on the marble ledge below.H.M. pressed the light close, swallowing everything else in darkness. Hedge tendrils pressed through.

On the ledge of the window, under the smashed section, there were darkish stains. H.M.'s lamp burned in his companion's eyes as he swung round; both Cy and Jean lifted a hand to shield their eyes. "So!" muttered H.M.

He directed the light towards the cleaning materials on the marble ledge.

"I expect," he said to Jean, "it was your father who cleaned these wall paintings?"

"Yes!" said the puzzled Jean. "He's beenat it, off and on, ever since I was eighteen. He didn't do it very often, of course. Sometimes he forgot it And then he had to sneak out..."

Even H.M. was taken aback. "Sneak out?"

"Yes! Because once old Mr. Van Sellers had him in court, and under the law there's absolutely nothing..."

H.M. pressed one hand to his forehead.

"Stop the bus!" he said. "For the minute, my dolly, well forget why this place has to be kept like a rubbish-heap. I got other concerns. Has your old man been cleaning the walls recently?"

"Yes, very recently! But what on earth ... ?"

H.M. the light bobbing so that painted soldier faces alternately peered out and vanished, examined the three empty buckets on the ledge. One was dry; two were very faintly moist. One sponge, inky black, was already dry; another, dark brown with a yellow edge, very nearly dry. In the big metal bowl were braces of whitish sediment Old cleaning rags, blackened towels...

Outside, Cy knew, the doctor and his assistants would be at work (or had they finished?) under lights in a grotesque graveyard.

Why was H.M. holding back? He wanted desperately to question Jean; but was he waiting for Manning's body to be removed?

Jean, a lithe slim figure in a green dress, kept her elbow partly raised as though to shield her eyes if the light struck them again.

H.M., after a meditative look at the ceiling and a careful study of the floor, turned round.

"Cor," he said to Jean, "how I admire your father!"

"For—for cleaning these pictures?"

"Not exactly," said H.M. "It concerns what I was askin' you awhile ago. Do you see what this place means?"

"May J answer that?" Cy cut in. "It was Manning's other house."

"Other house?" echoed Jean.

"Listen, my dolly," said H.M., holding himself as though for a very delicate surgical operation. "Your father was going to run away with his girl friend, Irene Stanley. He might never come back—no wincing, now!—or he might come back sooner than you think. But he had to make a lot of preparations he couldn't make in his own house. D'ye follow me?"

"What did you mean," Jean said quickly, "by 'sooner than I think*?"

H.M. ignored this.

"If you look at the soles of his shoes while he's lying out there, you'll see they're so new they've hardly been walked in. Now look"—the white light beam darted—"at the brand-new pigskin suitcase under the ledge. You'll find it full of new clothes, all unmarked, for his new life.

"Next," pursued H.M., "think of what happened at the swimming pool this morning. Fred Manning dived into the pool. Presently he crawled out invisibly...."

"How?" asked Cy.

"Shut up," said H.M., and looked back at Jean. "But when he left the pool, my dolly, he had to have clothes. And he didn't have 'em."

"Are you telling me," Cy was beginning to rave, "that Manning—in front of all our eyes—got out of that pool stark naked?"

"Practically speakin', yes. All he had was.,,"

"A wrist watch," said Cy. "And a pair of socks."

"Are you goin' to shut up, son?"

"All right, all right!"

"Now I see, my dolly, when your father left the pool, there's another thing he had to have. He had to find cover."

"Why did he need cover," demanded Cy, "if he happened to be invisible? Sorry, sorry! I won't say another word."

All their voices seemed to tumble and blatter in that little cenotaph. They were in near darkness, since H.M. directed the light at the floor. And Cy sensed from H.M. a fierce earnestness which kept him quiet.

"But getting to cover," H.M. wenton, "was easy. All Manning had to do was get inside the woods. Then he could skirt the tree-lined edges of a baseball field, where nobody would turn up until late afternoon or early evening. He next circles round the fence or goes through the door; he's through the graveyard, and here. Here, I repeat, where he can dress."

There was a silence. Cy could hear Jean breathing with slow respiration.

"If he did that"—Jean cleared her throat—"why didn't he go away?"

"Ah! Now we're comin' to it. Because he couldn't go away—yet."

"Couldn't?"

"I mean he had an appointment here." H.M. put down the lamp on the marble ledge. "He had an appointment for later in the day."

"An app—, with whom?"

"With somebody from your house," replied H.M.

(It's on the way, thought Cy. You can hear it coming like a flying bomb in the old days: that noise like a demented motorcycle which spurts to a roar or suddenly cuts out.)

"Y'see," H.M. explained patiently, "the person who was to meet your father couldn't follow him straightaway. The D.A. himself would be there, as your father well knew; so the other person's absence would be noticed. The police would be there. They'd be all over the place until late afternoon at least. So this person had to be there on deck for questioning at any given time.

"The only possible time for an appointment here," continued H.M. in the same tone, "would be early evening. There'd be baseball practice, further camouflage if the other person wanted to stroll about And, with all due respect to 'em, the Maralarch Terrors don't usually smack home runs over the fence."

The lamp on the marble ledge threw its white beam just above the waist of Jean's green dress. In the gloom above you could see the frightened, bewildered shine of her eyes.

"This person..." she repeated out of a dry throat. "But why an appointment with Dad here?"

"Two reasons," returned H.M., in a heavy, clear voice. "First, about a matter of an alleged hundred thousand dollars. Second, because this person meant to murder your father. And damned near succeeded."

Dead silence. Horror and shock and incredulity trembled in Jean's face, with incredulity overcoming the rest.

—murderer'!" She tested the word as though she had never heard it before.

"Yes."

"In our house last night?"

"Yes. Lemme tell you what I think happened here. The murderer came equipped with that revolver. There was—yes, I think a bit of argument Oh, my eye, wasn't there! The murderer fired point-blank."

"But look here!" Cy intervened. "Manning was stabbed; not shot As you said yourself, that gun


"No," said H.M.; and his voice lifted. "It can't be fired. Because the powder's, been removed from every cartridge case, and the cartridge case fitted back on the bullet with a bit of paper. Manning's work of course. He was treatin' that gun awful casually, to all appearances.

"But in the middle of last night, or whenever it was," H.M. continued, "he plucked the sting, that's all. He might have just pinched the cartridges or substituted blanks. But Manning knew his enemy was goin' to go for him. And the enemy might have discovered the gun wasn't loaded. It's very soothing to know you're facin' a revolver as dead as cinders."

"H.M.," Cy blurted out, "what happened here? Goon!"

H.M. looked sideways at Jean.

"The murderer fired. Maybe a couple of times, to a tune of clicks. Then Manning reached out for that person with his bare hands. Out came a knife, with a thinnish blade about four inches long...."

"Like that knife, you've got in your trousers' pocket not?"

"Oh, son! I don't know what kind of knife. All I know is it wasn't big, or Manning would be a goner now."

"Anyway," Cy insisted, with a shaking sense of relief, "the murderer couldn't have been a woman?"

"I'm not givin' my opinion. But an old-time copper in England would say: oh, ah, probably a woman. Next to poisoning, it's the woman's weapon."

Here H.M. made a sudden ghoulish gesture with his hands. Though he was only a shadow, big and distorted by near darkness, the other two stepped back.

"Suppose I'm Manning," he said, "coming at you with my hands. What are you goin' to do? You won't stab for the chest; here's the hand comin' out to grab your right hand with the knife. You'll make a feint with your left hand, and you'll go under his left arm to stab him in the side. It's happened before, and not with Dagoes either."

"So that's it!" said Jean Manning.

Her yellow hair seemed lifeless, all her understanding of people gone. She groped in a dead world.

"That's the reason for this third degree," she whispered out. Then her voice rose. "You think I tried to kill Dad ..."

"Oh, my dolly! No, no, no! I understand you're fonder of your old man than anybody else is. I know you wouldn't hurt him." H.M.'s voice sounded grotesque in its tenderness, because he was the old man and he wouldn't display such emotions. "That's why this has been so ruddy difficult!"

Jean released her breath in a gasp. Her mind darted out to protect the one she loved best.

"You weren't thinking of—Dave?"

"No again. He hasn't got the guts," said H.M. brutally, "and he hasn't got the brains." Again the voice softened. "But if you want him, my dolly, you can have him."

"He has got brains! He..."

"I've had to tell you all this," H.M. interposed,


"because I want to ask you one particular


question. You won't want to answer it. You think both Cy Norton and I are against you and your father"

"You are."

"You'll also be afraid,'' H.M continued wearily, "that the papers will get hold of the story, which they may, and it'll make you feel still worse. But, lord love a duck, it's vital!"

Jean braced herself. "What question is so vital?"

"Where," asked H.M., "does Irene Stanley really live?"

Jean had turned her head away so that even with the light shining across above the waist of the green dress Cy could tell only that she was trembling. Then the yellow hair whipped round.

"I won't tell you," she answered quietly.

"Listen, my dolly! Since your father's been attacked—and I warn you he may not survive this—everything's changed. I got to find Irene Stanley!"

"Why don't you ask your friends, the police?" "Because I'm protectin' your father, not chasing him!"

"That's the reason, I suppose—and don't deny it, because I was there at the pool!—why you swore you'd get him?"

"I was blazin' mad for a minute, my dolly! Because he hocussed me. I didn't mean it!" ' Jean laughed on a high quavery note near tears.

Cy, though he didn't understand why it was so urgent to find Irene Stanley, tried to help.

"Weren't you there," he asked Jean, "when H.M. gave the District Attorney a fake address and telephone number for Irene Stanley, to try to divert them? Surely that dirty-work is the strongest evidence of good faith?"

"I'm afraid you would say anything, Mr. Norton," Jean informed him with one shoulder lifted. Mercilessly she quoted Cy: "He carefully gathered together and smashed everything he pretended to represent' That's what you said."

"My dolly," said H.M., "we’ve got to find Irene Stanley tonight! Tonight! Where is she?"

"I won't tell you," cried Jean. "And you can't make me!"

Outside, on the front of the bronze door, there was a heavy knocking.

It dragged at nerves by the roots. Now here, it occurred to Cy, was courtesy. Here was delicacy! Who knocks at the door of a cenotaph in a cemetery full of dead bones?

But the illusion was destroyed when he opened the door. Davis, breathing hard from running, and holding a flashlight in his hand, appeared in the doorway.

"I had a devil of a time finding your policeman," he reported, "because he was smack-bang beside the pool, where he was supposed to be."

Then they saw the blue coat, the polished silver buttons. It was the policeman's night stick which had hammered that door. His face was middle-aged and intently serious. Beyond him there were no doctors, no figure on the grave mound-nothing except a heavy grey dusk.

"Are you Sir Henry Merrivale?" the law asked.

H.M. lumbered forward, Jean seized the lamp from him as though to protect herself from tears.

"Yes," growled H.M. "I'm the one who sent for you. Where is Mr. Manning? And how is he?"

"They've just left" The police officer nodded towards the barred gate. "He's pretty bad. Dr. Willard says the operation was all right; but you can't tell yet, he says. Crystal and young Bob," grunted the police, "made them take him to the house instead of the hospital."

"Has Lieutenant Trowbridge got here yet?"

"Not yet, sir. They can't find him."

"Officer," said H.M., "I've got absolutely no authority to give you instructions. But do you think you can trust me?"

The other looked at him and smiled. "I guess I could do that," he said.

"Here's the key to this cenotaph," H.M. went on, handing him the key. "Lock it and stand outside the door until the Lieutenant gets here. There's important evidence in here "

"Evidence?"

"That's right. Especially on the ledge and (unless I miss my guess) in that suitcase under the ledge. If Manning dies, it means the chair."

The police officer whistled.

"I want the Lieutenant to have somebody guardin' this door until seven o'clock tomorrow morning. I..." H.M. rubbed his hands over his head. "But maybe he won't do it. You got a notebook and pencil?"

"Always got 'em."

"Then come inside here, and I’ll write down my reasons."

The policeman moved inside, with Davis following. And, the moment that doorway was unblocked, Jean Manning darted out of it and ran frantically with the hand lamp.

"Jean!" exclaimed Davis, who had not see her. "Jean!"

H.M gripped him by the arm.

'I've got instructions for you, son," he declared, "that may bring some results." He looked at Cy. "After her, you ruddy fool!" he yelled. "Stop her! Get her somehow!"

Cy plunged out of that cenotaph into the deep grass. He could see her easily at the moment; she had to use the light in hurrying among the gravestones. Cy himself banged into more than one of them. The light disappeared, switched off, as Jean dashed through the open door in the fence of the baseball field.

The long dusk was not quite heavy enough to blur every outline. Jean, almost invisible in her green dress, ran with lithe grace across the outfield and the diamond, where bases still glimmered white. Cy kept up with her, though the pace jarred his heart. Into his lungs swept a fragrance of trees at evening.

("We've got to find Irene Stanley tonight" Why?)

Jean had reached the woods, and was again compelled to switch on the light

Got to overtake her! Now for a spurt!

Inside the trees, though she raced along the broad path, Jean now began to falter. The light wavered and swung. It was not lack of stamina, as Cy knew; it was only that she felt—wrongly, but with fierce absorption—complete helplessness and hopelessness.

"Jean!" he tried to shout but the word failed.

Out she darted from the trees to the open lawn. She was perhaps twenty feet ahead of him when she floundered as though trapped. On her left stretched the line of brown-painted bathing cabins, ten of them; a path ran in front of these through the parallel row of rhododendron bushes.

Jean, feeling only an animal instinct to yield but get out of the sight, faltered into that path and along it towards the middle. There she leaned drooping against the frame of a bathing cabin, arm along it, head on arm, half-crying.

Cy approached her very slowly. He did not attempt to speak as she pressed her closed eyelids still more defiantly against her forearm.

For it was an eerie place now, like a scene out of a child's magic book.

Westwards, behind the long house, remnants of a strong red sunset still lay along the dark horizon. Where the thick bushes lay parallel to the bathing cabins, the broad path through the bushes bisected them just at the middle of the pool's long side.

That path made an avenue to the pool which, for some reason known only to police, had been filled again. The dark, still water was touched with crimson gleams from the sunset. Faint light kindled the grass path to the pool.

Jean spoke first, her forehead still against her arm.

"What have I done to you?" she asked like a child. "What makes you dislike me so much?"

"I don't dislike you, Jean. And nobody else ever will, either." Then Cy laughed gently, in a way he knew she would recognize as sympathetic.

"What's so very funny?" Jean asked pettishly.

"I was just thinking," he said, "of George Washington in that Revolutionary War panorama. He looked at least seven feet high."

"He did, didn't he?"

"Also, they put in those little windows first. The patriotic artist, painting round them, managed to omit the heads of Lord Cornwallis and two other British generals."

Jean extinguished the lamp, dropping it on the ground. She turned round with a faintly ashamed air, and an ashamed smile.

"When you came out here yesterday," she told him, "I thought you were so—nice!"

"I hope you still think so, Jean."

Suddenly the girl seemed to realize where she was. She was looking straight down the grass path towards the pool, where dim red reflections trembled in the water. The high bushes were dark in silhouette against the reddish sky, like hedges.

"That's the place where..." she pointed ahead. Then Jean hesitated, scuffing the toe of her shoe in the grass. "Cy. They don't think I had anything to do with...?"

"No, no, no!"

"That's where you were, on the opposite bank of the pool, looking across it" Again she pointed. "With Mr. Betterton's head up out of the water underneath you. It looked awfully funny."

"His head looked funny? In what way?"

"Oh, I don't know. Like a water-polo ball or something." She frowned for a moment then dismissed the thought. "Here's where I was." Jean turned round, and stood about a foot from the right-hand end of the bushes facing the bathing cabins. "I was talking to Dave. In another second I'd have turned right, by this little white sign that says, Ladies. Dave would have turned left where it says, Gents. But you shouted, and we both turned around. I could see you, and a part of Sir Henry's face, and Mr. Betterton's head."

Why did Mr. Betterton's head keep butting into this? Cy knew he must make haste; he must get Irene Stanley's address while Jean was in a friendly mood; but one question tortured him.

"Jean, you were in the pool when your father came down to speak to H.M. and me. Did you notice his socks?"

"What on... his socks?’

"Was there anything unusual about them?"

"N-no. Just a pair of silk socks. Brown, the kind he usually wears. I only noticed them at all because he wears his trousers too short, and..."

"Was there anything peculiar about his wrist watch?"

The red tinges had almost faded from the water of the pool. The silhouette of the bushes began to melt into softness and fragrance of the night. Cy knew he must not press Jean too far, because she was trembling. She anticipated him, in an odd voice, and put her hand on his arm.

"Cy. I—I made an awful fool of myself—back there. It doesn't really matter about Irene Stanley. If I tell you, will you let me go so I can run to the house and be near Dad?"

This was the point at which Sir Henry Merrivale, very faintly seen, turned into the other path between the bushes and the bathing cabins. He heard the words, and hastened up.

That woman's in New York," Jean added. "If you want to know where..."

"I'm glad you said that, my dolly. Burn it all, the time's gettin' on! Is there any train to town I can get in a hurry?"

Jean drew back Cy's sleeve and consulted the luminous dial of his wrist watch.

"You could get the three minutes to ten if you hurry. But they go every half-hour. It doesn't matter."

"It does matter! You"—he tapped Cy's shoulder—"take the car and follow me with the two gals." Jean cried out in protest, but he went on. "I've got to do a bit of reconnoitering first. Bring Bob too, if you can find him. We'll arrange a meetin' place. —What's Irene Stanley's address, my dolly?"

Jean began to laugh. It was almost hysterical, until she recovered herself.

"Nobody on earth, except the police," Jean said, "would ever guess where she lives. She lives in Grand Central Station."

After a pause, Jean added with a wry smile, "Didn't I tell you when we first met, Sir Henry, that I knew a good deal about that station?"

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