"Mr. Norton! Mr. Norton!"
Cy awoke with a shock, from deep but troubled sleep, into daylight and brilliant sunshine. It took him a few seconds to realize where he was.
He was in a large bedroom at the rear of the house, wearing a pair of Manning's pyjamas and sharing the bedroom with Sir Henry Merrivale. There now stood, between Cy's bed and H.M.'s, a shortish broad-shouldered man in a white coat. The newcomer, with a broad grin, was holding out a large breakfast tray.
"I'm Stuffy," the newcomer announced, with the air of one willing to talk at any length. "I been with Mr. Manning, now, for twenty-one years. Yes, sir, he's my manager now. Here's yer brekfus."
"Thanks," said Cy, sitting up and taking the loaded tray across his knees. "What time is it?"
"Eight o'clock," warned Stuffy darkly, as though Cy had been sleeping until past noon.
You might have taken Stuffy for only a middle-aged man, with that leathery face and bright eye and enthusiasm, if rheumatism had not nipped him and if his close-cropped hair had not been pure white.
"Miss Jean," he went on, "says she'd like for you to go down to the pool, when you've finished yer brekfus." On the bed Stuffy threw a pair of black swimming trunks. Then he bent forward conspiratorially.
"Where's Hank?" he muttered.
"Hank who?"
Stuffy seemed convulsed by some hidden mirth.
"Lord," he said, "we didn't call him 'Sir Henry when I knew hm. That’d be (lemme see, now!) that’d be 12, 13, and 14. We was training at Jacksonville then. But s-h-sh! Don't say nothing to nobody! I'm keeping it quiet See you later;"
"Right! Deep secret!" agreed Cy, wondering what the secret was.
This must be the former ballplayer of whom Jean had spoken. Cy, in his own youth only a fair but fanatical school and college player, could not place the nickname. But as Stuffy went towards the door, a darting thought made Cy cry out - "Stuffy!"
The results, as regards Stuffy's agility, were sensational. "Mr. Manning!" said Cy. "Is he gone?" "Gone?"
"Has he disappeared?"
"Holy Moses," muttered Stuffy, reproachfully. "You hadn't ought to make me jump like that Mr. Manning's not gone, 'cause he didn't go to the office today. He's trimming the hedge on the south side now."
"Oh. I just wondered. Sorry."
The door closed.
Cy glanced across at H.M.'s bed. The covers were thrown back, and on them rested a breakfast tray polished clean of everything eatable. From behind another closed door, leading to a bathroom, Cy heard the sudden rush of a shower bath, followed by hoots and roars rather suggestive of Father Neptune. He had no doubt as to H.M.'s whereabouts.
Leaning back against the headboard of the bed, he wished they weren't in such a devil of a mess. Crystal had been nearly in hysterics, and Jean not much better, after dinner last night. Most distinctly he remembered Crystal's voice:
"If you're never going to see us again, what difference does it make whether it's only a vanishing trick?"
Or once again Manning's measured tones:
"I don't expect any affection from any of you. Why should I expect it?"
Other scenes Cy Norton, as he ate his breakfast, shut away from his mind. It still surprised him that you could get all the food you wanted in this country: bacon and eggs like these, and real white bread. As for Crystal, the infernally disturbing Crystal...
At this point in his meditations, the door of the bathroom opened. Out of the bathroom, in grandeur, stalked Sir Henry Merrivale in a bathing suit.
Cy took one look, and swallowed coffee the wrong way.
The bathing suit, of a pattern circa 1910, had horizontal stripes of alternate red and white. There was a suggestion of sleeve at the shoulder, and the trunks clung tightly to the leg nearly to the knee. H.M.'s arms and shoulders, still thick and powerful like his legs, carried forward his red-and-white corporation like Nelson's flagship going into action.
"Ahem!" said the great man.
He surveyed himself, over his shoulder, in a full-length mirror, coughed, and then assumed a majestic stance at the foot of Cy’s bed.
"I'm goin' for a swim," he announced.
"So I s-see. S-so..."
"What's the matter with you, son? Whaf s so goddam funny?"
"Well," Cy asked frankly, "did you keep that in mothballs for all these years, or do you get 'em made for you?"
"I get 'em made," said H.M. austerely. "I like the old ways."
He pointed to his Gladstone bag, whose name tag was a large cardboard label inscribed in red letters (doubtless to the pleasure of steamship companies) only with the word ME.
"It's a ruddy good thing," said H.M., "I got my bag back. I like my own razor."
"Yes," agreed Cy, looking him in the eye, "you got your bag back. But nobody knows how it came back. It was found in the kitchen, by the cook, and the revolver was on top of it. The maid (as maids naturally do) put it in the best place for somebody to fall over it. Nobody will acknowledge owning or even seeing that gun. The gun, by the way," Cy added, "being now put away in an unlocked drawer in the library."
"Well... now!" H.M. made a fussed gesture. "Are you goin' to stop in bed all day, or are you goin' to go down to the pool with me?"
"I’ll be with you," Cy promised, "as soon as I get a shave and a bath."
Pushing aside the breakfast tray, he went to one of the two windows facing eastwards and overlooking the back of the house.
Not a sound, not a movement, stirred in house or grounds. It was the softest of summer days, ripe with a fragrance of grass and trees, warm without yet being hot The close-cropped grass sparkled in places from a rain which had continued half the night.
Behind the house lay a grass terrace, with metal chairs. It was a shallow terrace, too. Only two steps led down to the close-cropped grass round the swimming pool itself. The pool, made of smooth grey stone rather than tile, was some sixty feet long by forty feet broad; its long side lay parallel with the back of the house. Beyond the pool, past another strip of grass, a high thick row of rhododendron bushes also ran parallel to the long side.
And a wide but short path, straight through the middle of the rhododendrons, led to a row of brown bathing cabins. Two very small finger posts, painted white, said Ladies to the right and
Gents to the left.
The eastern sun glinted on quiet, opaque water. At the northern end of the pool was a diving board. All else was green glimmer and fragrance of a thick wood that rose beyond the bathing cabins.
"We needn't hurry," Cy observed. "There's nobody there yet."
But they found somebody there, when twenty minutes later they approached the pool.
The efficient Stuffy had left them cork-soled sandals, with leather covers for the toes and a strap across the instep. Cy wore the black trunks. H.M., covering his unmentionable bathing suit with a white beach robe, now resembled one of the more evil-minded Roman Emperors. Leaving the house by a screened sun porch, they sauntered towards the pool and its long western side.
"Hello, there!" called Jean's voice.
The voices of Davis and Betterton added their greetings.
On the opposite side of the pool, down the broad path which led between the rhododendrons to the bathing huts, Jean Manning trotted like a swimming professional as she adjusted her cap. She was laughing. She wore a scant two-piece suit of a colour that suggested pink tinged with purple, and set off the faint golden tan of her skin. Beside her trotted Davis, lean and athletic and Indian-brown except for his scarlet trunks. Jean and Davis looked like figures from a magazine cover.
Behind them, in a brown bathing suit somewhat less old-fashioned than H.M.'s, trotted Howard Betterton with a water-polo ball in his hands.
Jean stopped on the broad strip of grass between the bushes and the long side of the pool. Though there were deep shadows under her eyes, it was as though nothing at all had happened last night to upset her.
"Remember, Cy!" she called across the pool. "There's only fifteen minutes for this now. Then tennis. Then maybe more swimming."
"And you remember," Davis said to her, "I'm taking a day off work to please you."
They did not trouble with the diving board at the northern end. Round the whole pool, set flush with the grass, was a broad stone coping and, below this, a handrail raised just above water level.
Jean sprang to the edge of the coping. She looked at Davis with frank love and understanding.
"Criss!" she challenged. ,
"Cross!" retorted Davis happily.
They took off together in a beautiful standing dive which clove the water with only a faint rush and ripple—no splash. The water was dark and opaque, due to the pool's grey stone sides. They disappeared as though swallowed up.
"I am more cautious, gentlemen," called Betterton the lawyer.
He threw the water-polo ball into the pool, and stood contemplating on the edge.
"What’s the idea of bein' so ruddy energetic?" yelled H.M.
"I don't know," the lawyer confessed. "To be bright and fresh for work, I suppose. Work is all, or so they tell us."
Betterton grimaced and then smiled. Short and stocky and hairy, he blinked a good deal without his pince-nez. Gingerly he touched the water with one foot, finding it satisfactory. Since last night, Gy Norton had been given reason to admire his tact and poker face.
"Ah, well!" Betterton said. "Tennis in fifteen minutes! Excuse me!"
Whereupon, gravely holding his nose with no loss of dignity, he stepped forward and jumped into the pool with a heavy splash.
"H.M.!" Cy said fiercely.
"Hey?"
"Manning," said Cy. "When's he going to disappear? Where's he going to disappear?" Cy glanced at the pool, and a wild thought occurred to him. "You don't imagine...?"
"I dunno, son!" snapped H.M. The Old Maestro himself, it was clear, was badly worried. "About your idea, I'd say no. Not in broad daylight just after breakfast. For that sort of thing you want shadows and hootin' owls. Like the Bronze Lamp case."
On the grass some half a dozen feet behind them, a little more than midway down the length of the pool, was a long padded swing with orange upholstery and a sun canopy. Neither Sir Henry Merrivale nor Cy now wanted to sport like Tritons, though neither would admit it. They sat down in the swing, facing the pool.
"Get ready!" called Davis, amid splashings.
He lashed out his arm. The water-polo ball, gleaming white, skimmed across the water towards Jean who now hung by one hand onto the edge of the diving board. Betterton was sedately treading water, like a musing ecclesiastic.
Cy, since he had seen Jean Manning's figure in a bathing suit, was less troubled by her resemblance to someone else. Jean was less mature, less... anyway, though the image still troubled him, since last night he had found himself thinking of the last person who should have dominated his thoughts: the spoiled and selfish Crystal.
"I say, son." H.M.'s voice shattered absent thought. "Where's Fred Manning this morning? Have you seen him?"
"No. But Stuffy said he was trimming a hedge. As to what else he's doing..."
"As to what else I’m doing," interrupted the voice of Manning himself, "I can assure you its very little."
He had approached so soundlessly from the southern side, in cork-soled sandals like those of H.M. and Cy, that his appearance was as startling as a ghost
But Frederick Manning was a very solid ghost. He wore his usual loose Panama hat and loose white alpaca suit. A light silk scarf was knotted round his neck and thrust into the opening of the jacket, full country gentleman style. He also wore cotton gardener's gloves, and carried a large pair of pruning shears.
Manning snipped the shears in the air, as though to behead a fly.
"I assure you," he added, glancing at his wrist watch, "that it will be several hours before you have anything to fear. Meanwhile, aren't you going for a swim?"
"Aren't you?" demanded H.M.
"No. Now why," asked Manning, contemplating the shears, "should any sane man want to act like a demented merman, when he could sit quietly and read? Or get his skin burned so that it's torture to wear his shirt?"
There were more splashings from the pool. Past Manning, who stood with his back to it and faced H.M., Cy caught a glimpse of Jean's face. Jean no longer smiled. She seemed puzzled and almost horrified. Then she struck out in a crawl towards the water-polo ball.
"Tell me, son," rumbled H.M. "Last night, during dinner, you had a long telephone call from New York. When you came back to the table, you looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. Is it within the rule—grr! rules—to ask what it was?"
Manning regarded him quizzically.
"If it comes to that," he retorted, "you put through a telephone call to New York instead of receiving one. I was (forgive me) curious to see the number you scribbled on the pad. It was a Bronx telephone exchange."
H.M. wore an austere, stuffed, out-of-this-world look.
"That's got nothing to do with this business!" he said. "Honest it hasn't! I was tellin' young
Norton, yesterday..."
"Great Scott!" exclaimed Manning. "Look there!"
He was staring at the back of the house, and he had moved past the side of the swing to do so. The others crowded after him.
Manning might have been pointing at a chair on the shallow terrace behind, among other chairs. He might have been pointing to a chair which looked—the horrible but probably nonsensical fancy occurred to Cy—like the electric chair at Sing Sing.
But Manning was pointing, in fact, to a figure which had just emerged from the door of the screened sun porch. It was Crystal, wearing a very light beach robe over her bathing dress, and carrying a cap.
From behind them, water slopped and slapped from the pool. For some reason, to be in a swimming pool makes people shout like Frenchmen.
"One more dive, Mr. Betterton," said Jean. "Then out we go. Ready Dave?"
"Almost," puffed Davis.
Manning was still staring at Crystal, against the long, low, white-painted house with its green window framings, polished now by the morning sun.
"Not since she was a girl," he vowed, "did I ever know that young woman to get up before half-past eleven in the morning. There's something wrong, I assure you. What's the attraction down here?"
Then things began to happen—and happen fast
And, since in a chronicle of this kind it must be established that somebody is telling the truth, we must watch that scene through the trained eyes of Cy Norton.
First he heard the noise. It was far away, somewhere beyond the house and probably in Elm Road, which led up from the railway station. The noise was a faint wailing, as of children; then it churned, and grew to a banshee howl. It swept closer and stopped, evidently near the front door of the house.
Frederick Manning, with a startled face, had backed away until he was almost at the coping of the pool.
It was evident that he knew the sound too. It was the sirens of police motorcycles.
"I fear," said Manning, snapping the big shears together, "that this is rather earlier than I expected."
Whereupon he turned to H.M.
"I want you to accept these," he said, very gravely pressing the shears into H.M.'s hand and closing the fingers round them, "as a small souvenir. I may not see you again for some time."
And then, fully dressed, Manning dived head first into the pool.
H.M. stood motionless.
For once Sir Henry Merrivale, the Old Maestro, had been caught off balance: clean-bowled by something he hadn't expected. His face seemed to distend, and his eyes bulged behind the big spectacles.
Manning's Panama hat somewhat coquettishly, floated up to the surface of the water. One of his cork-soled shoes followed.
Out of the pool, almost at the feet of Cy and H.M. where they stood at midpoint along its side, appeared the sputtering and blinking face of Howard Betterton, who clutched blindly at the handrail.
At the same moment, on the other side, Jean Manning and Davis shot up out of the water side by side, holding themselves with rigid arms and hands on the handrail, knocking their heads together happily.
"Time to get out Mr. Betterton!" Jean called over her shoulder.
Obviously none of the swimmers had heard the police sirens, or seen Manning's dive. Jean and Davis, sending water flying as they swept up on land, started to trot down the wide path towards the bathing huts just as Manning's water-darkened alpaca coat floated to the surface, followed by his trousers.
Howard Betterton plucked at Cy's bare ankle.
"It seemed to me," Betterton gasped, "that something rather naked-looking shot past me as I was exploring the depths. I was just wondering ..."
"Get out of that pool!" Cy yelled at him. "Get out of that pool!"
He looked up. Jean and Davis, who a glance told him were not yet at the end of the path, had already turned and were trotting back. Jean was removing her cap, shaking out the yellow hair, and Davis wiping the wet hair from his eyes.
Betterton, whirling water like a beaver, struggled up and sat down with a plonk on the coping, his feet in the pool.
Jean and Davis had stopped on the coping, looking round. At the same moment, Crystal Manning—her beach robe looking like a dark and flowered kimono—appeared at the southern end of the pool.
Then, suddenly, everybody realized what had happened.
The agitated water glittered under a firier sun. By some freak of movement, a cork-soled shoe floated on either side of the Panama hat, as though representing Manning himself. His other clothes, now including a sodden silk scarf and a pair of underpants, floated round them.
Five pairs of eyes were fixed on the clothes. Only H.M., whose gaze had been travelling round the edges of the oblong pool since the first, did not watch the clothes. But six persons stood motionless, as though paralyzed, in a hollow of silence.
It may have been Jean who first realized. She extended her arm to point But Betterton, breathing hard, spoke first and very quietly.
"This is it," he said.
There was a pause.
"What's more," said Davis, indicating the house, "the cops are here."