Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 4, No. 1. Whole No. 8, January 1943

The Leopard Lady by Dorothy L. Sayers

We didn’t think it fair to include in this issue (as we have) a parody of Dorothy L. Sayers without giving you a story by Miss Sayers herself So here is “The Leopard Lady,” of which we will say merely this; Read the first three pages. If then you can put the story down, you are suffering from hardening of the imagination.

“If the boy is in your way,” said a voice in Tressider’s ear, “ask at Rapallo’s for Smith & Smith.”

Tressider started and looked round. There was nobody near him — unless you counted the bookstall clerk, and the aged gentleman with crooked pince-nez halfway down his nose, who stood poring over a copy of Blackwood. Obviously, neither of these two could have uttered that sinister whisper. A yard or two away stood a porter, wearily explaining to a militant woman and a dejected little man that the 5.30 having now gone there was no other train before 9.15. All three were utter strangers to Tressider. He shook himself. It must have been his own subconscious wish that had externalised itself in this curious form. He must keep a hold on himself. Hidden wishes that took shape as audible promptings and whisperings were apt to lead to Colney Hatch — or Broadmoor.

But what in the world had suggested the names “Rapallo’s” and “Smith & Smith”? Rapallo — that was a town in Italy or somewhere, he fancied. But the word had come to him as “Rapallo’s,” as though it were the name of a firm or a person. And “Smith & Smith,” too. Fantastic. Then he glanced up at the bookstall. Of course, yes — “W. H. Smith & Son”; that must have been the point from which the suggestion had started, and his repressed desires had somehow pushed their message past his censor in that preposterous sentence.

“If the boy is in your way, ask at Rapallo’s for Smith & Smith.”

He let his eye wander over the books and magazines spread out on the stall. Was there anything — yes, there was. A pile of little red books, of which the topmost bore the title: “How to ask for What you Want in ITALY.” There was the other factor of the equation. “Italy” had been the match laid to the train, and the resulting spark had been, queerly but understandably enough, “Rapallo’s.”

Satisfied, he handed a shilling across the stall and asked for the Strand Magazine. He tucked his purchase under his arm and then, glancing at the station clock, decided that he had just time for a quick one before his train went. He turned into the buffet, pausing on the way to buy a packet of cigarettes at the kiosk, where the militant woman was already arming herself with milk-chocolate against her wait for the 9.15. He noticed, with a certain grim satisfaction, that the dejected man had made his escape, and was not altogether surprised to encounter him again in the buffet, hurriedly absorbing something yellow out of a glass.

He was some little time getting served, for there was quite a crowd about the bar. But even if he did miss his train, there was another in. twenty minutes’ time, and his odd experience had shaken him. The old gentleman with Blackwood’s had drifted up to the door by the time he left, and, indeed, nearly collided with Tressider in his shortsighted progress. Tressider absently apologised for what was not his fault, and made for the barrier. Here there was again a trifling delay while he searched for his ticket, and a porter who stood beside him with some hand-luggage eventually lost patience and pushed past him with a brief, “By your leave, sir.” Eventually, however, he found himself in a first-class carriage with four minutes to spare.

He threw his hat up on the rack and himself into a corner seat, and immediately, with an automatic anxiety to banish his own thoughts, opened his magazine. As he did so, a card fluttered from between the leaves on to his knee. With an exclamation of impatience directed against the advertisers who filled the pages of magazines with insets, he picked it up, intending to throw it under the seat. A line of black capitals caught his eyes:

and beneath, in smaller type:

He turned the card over. It was about the size of an “At Home” card. The other side was completely blank. There was no address; no explanation. An impulse seized him. He snatched up his hat and made for the door. The train was moving as he sprang out, and he staggered as his feet touched the platform. A porter sprang to his side with a warning shout.

“Shouldn’t do that, sir,” said the man, reprovingly.

“All right, all right,” said Tressider, “I’ve left something behind.”

“That’s dangerous, that is,” said the porter. “Against regulations.”

“Oh, all right,” said Tressider, fumbling for a coin. As he handed it over, he recognised the porter as the man who had jostled him at the barrier and had stood behind him at the bookstall talking to the militant woman and the dejected man. He dismissed the man hastily, feeling unaccountably uneasy under his official eye. He ran past the barrier with a hasty word to the ticket collector who still stood there, and made his way back to the bookstall.

“Strand Magazine,” he demanded, curtly, and then, thinking he caught an astonished expression in the eye of the clerk, he muttered:

“Dropped the other.”

The clerk said nothing, but handed over the magazine and accepted Tressider’s shilling. Only when he was turning away did Tressider realise that he was still clutching the original copy of the Strand under his arm. Well, let the man think what he liked.

Unable to wait, he dived into the General Waiting Room and shook the new Strand open. Several insets flew out — one about learning new languages by gramophone, one about Insurance, one about Hire Purchase Payments. He gathered them up and tossed them aside again. Then he examined the magazine, page by page. There was no white card with the name “Smith & Smith.”

He stood, trembling, in the dusty gas-light of the waiting-room. Had he imagined the card? Was his brain playing tricks with him again? He could not remember what he had done with the card. He searched both magazines and all his pockets. It was not there. He must have left it in the train.

He must have left it in the train.

Sweat broke out upon his forehead. It was a terrible thing to go mad. If he had not seen that card — but he had seen it. He could see the shape and spacing of the black capitals distinctly.

After a moment or two, an idea came to him. A firm that advertised itself must have an address, perhaps a telephone number. But, of course, not necessarily in London. Those magazines went all over the world. What was the good of advertising without a name or address? Still, he would look. The words “Smith & Smith, Removals,” in the London Telephone Directory would steady his nerves considerably.

He went out and sought the nearest telephone cabinet. The directory hung there on its stout chain. Only when he opened it did he realise how many hundred firms called “Smith & Smith” there might be in London. The small print made his eyes ache, but he persevered, and was at length rewarded by finding an entry: “Smith & Smith, Frntre Removrs & Haulage Cntrctrs,” with an address in Greenwich.

That should have satisfied him, but it did not. He could not believe that a firm of Furniture Removers and Haulage Contractors at Greenwich would advertise, without address, in a magazine of world-wide circulation. Only firms whose name was a household word could do that kind of thing. And besides, in that second Strand there had been no advertisement.

Then how had the card got there? Had the bookstall clerk slipped it in? Or the militant woman who had stood beside him at the tobacco kiosk? Or the dejected man sipping whisky and soda in the buffet? Or the old gentleman who had passed him in the entrance? Or the porter who had waited behind him at the barrier? It came suddenly into his mind that all these five had been near him when he had heard the voice of his repressed wish whisper so persuasively, and so objectively:

“If the boy is in your way, ask at Rapallo’s for Smith & Smith.”

With a kind of greedy reluctance, he turned the pages of the Telephone Directory backwards to R.

There it was. There could be no mistake about it this time.

with an address in Conduit Street.

A minute later, Tressider was hailing a taxi outside the station. His wife would be expecting him, but she must wait. He had often been detained in town before. He gave the taxi the Conduit Street address.

It was a small place, but had nothing sinister about it. Clean, white-draped tables with individual lights and a big mahogany bar, whose wide semi-circle took up nearly half the available floor-space. The door closed behind Tressider with a comfortable, chuckling click. He went up to the bar and, with an indescribable fluttering of the heart, said to the white-coated attendant:

“I was told to ask here for Messrs. Smith & Smith.”

“What name, sir?” asked the man, showing neither hesitation nor surprise.

“Jones,” said Tressider, uninventively.

“Maurice, have we any message for a Mr. Jones from — whom did you say, sir? Oh, yes. From Messrs. Smith & Smith?”

The second barman turned round and enveloped Tressider in a brief, searching glance.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Quite right, sir. Mr. Smith is expecting you. Will you step this way.”

He led Tressider to the back of the room, where a stoutish, middle-aged man in a dark tweed suit was seated at a table eating an American sandwich.

“Mr. Jones, sir.”

The stout man looked up, revealing small, chubby features beneath an enormous expanse of polished and dome-like skull. He smiled pleasantly.

“You are magnificently punctual,” he said, in a clear, soft voice, with a fluting quality which made it very delightful to listen to. “I hardly expected you to get here quite so soon.” And then, as the barman turned away, he added:

“Pray sit down, Mr. Tressider.”

“You look a little unnerved,” said Mr. Smith. “Perhaps you had a rush from the station. Let me recommend one of Rapallo’s special cocktails.” He made a sign to the barman, who brought over two glasses filled with a curious, dark-coloured liqueur. “You will find it slightly bitter, but very effective. You need not be alarmed, by the way. Choose whichever glass you like and leave me the other. It is quite immaterial which.”

Tressider, a little confounded by the smiling ease with which Mr. Smith read his thoughts, took one of the glasses at random. Mr. Smith immediately took the other and drank off one-half of the contents. Tressider sipped his. The liqueur was certainly bitter but not altogether unpleasant.

“It will do you good,” said Mr. Smith, prosaically. “The boy, I take it, is quite well?” he went on, almost in the same breath.

“Perfectly well,” said Tressider, staring.

“Of course. Your wife takes such good care of him, doesn’t she? A thoroughly good and conscientious woman, as most women are, bless their dear hearts. The child is six years old, I think?”

“Rising six.”

“Just so. A long time to go yet before he attains his majority. Fifteen years — yes, a considerable time, in which very many things may happen. You yourself, for instance, will be hard on sixty — the best part of your life at an end, while his is just beginning. He is a young gentleman of great expectations, to quote the divine Dickens. And he is starting well, despite the sad handicap of losing both his parents at so early an age. A fine, healthy youngster, is he not? No measles? mumps? whooping-cough? that sort of thing?”

“Not so far,” muttered Tressider.

“No. Your almost-parental care has shielded him from all the ills that youthful flesh is heir to. How wise your brother was, Mr. Tressider. Some people might have thought it foolish of him to leave Cyril in your sole guardianship, considering that there was only his little life between you and the Tressider estate. Foolish — and even inconsiderate. For, after all, it is a great responsibility, is it not? A child seems to hold its life by so frail a tenure. But your brother was a wise man, after all. Knowing your upright, virtuous wife and yourself so well, he did the best thing he could possibly have done for Cyril when he left him in your care. Eh?”

“Of course,” said Tressider, thickly.

Mr. Smith finished his liqueur.

“You are not drinking,” he protested.

“Look here,” said Tressider, gulping down the remainder of his drink, “you seem to know a lot about me and my affairs.”

“Oh, but that is common knowledge, surely. The doings of so rich and fortunate a little boy as Cyril Tressider are chronicled in every newspaper paragraph. Perhaps the newspapers do not know quite so much about Mr. Tressider, his uncle and guardian. They may not realise quite how deeply he was involved in the Megatherium catastrophe, nor how much he has lost in one way and another on the turf. Still, they know, naturally, that he is an upright English gentleman and that both he and his wife are devoted to the boy.”

Tressider leaned his elbow on the table and, holding his head propped on his hand, tried to read Mr. Smith’s countenance. He found it difficult, for Mr. Smith and the room and everything about him seemed to advance and recede in the oddest manner. He thought he might be in for a dose of fever.

“Children…” Mr. Smith’s voice fluted towards him from an enormous distance. “Accidents, naturally, will sometimes happen. No one can prevent it. Childish ailments may leave distressing after effects… babyish habits, however judiciously checked, may lead… Pardon me, I fear you are not feeling altogether the thing.”

“I feel damned queer,” said Tressider. “I — at the station today — hallucinations — I can’t understand—”

Suddenly, from the pit in which it had lurked, chained and growling, Terror leapt at him. It shook his bones and cramped his stomach. It was like a palpable enemy, suffocating and tearing him. He gripped the table. He saw Mr. Smith’s huge face loom down upon him, immense, immeasurable.

“Dear, dear!” The voice boomed in his ear like a great silver bell. “You are really not well. Allow me. Just a sip of this.”

He drank, and the Terror, defeated, withdrew from him. A vast peace surged over his brain. He laughed. Everything was jolly, jolly, jolly. He wanted to sing.

Mr. Smith beckoned to the barman.

“Is the car ready?” he asked.

Tressider stood by Mr. Smith’s side. The car had gone, and they were alone before the tall green gates that towered into the summer twilight. Mile upon mile they had driven through town and country; mile upon mile, with the river rolling beside them and the scent of trees and water blown in upon the July breeze. They had been many hours upon the journey, and yet the soft dusk was hardly deeper than when they had set out. For them, as for Joshua, sun and stars had stood still in their courses. That this was so, Tressider knew, for he was not drunk or dreaming. His senses had never been more acute, his perceptions more vivid. Every leaf upon the tall poplars that shivered above the gates was vivid to him with a particular beauty of sound, shape and odour. The gates, which bore in great letters the name “SMITH & SMITH — REMOVALS,” opened at Smith’s touch. The long avenue of poplars stretched up to a squat grey house with a pillared portico.

Many times in the weeks that followed, Tressider asked himself whether he had after all dreamed that strange adventure at the House of the Poplars. From the first whisper by the station bookstall to the journey by car down to his own home in Essex, every episode had had a nightmare quality. Yet surely, no nightmare had ever been so consecutive nor so clearly memorable in waking moments. There was the room with its pale grey walls and shining floor — a luminous pool in the soft mingling of electric light and dying daylight from the high, unshuttered windows. There were the four men — Mr. Smith, of the restaurant; Mr. Smyth, with his narrow yellow face disfigured by a scar like an acid burn; Mr. Smythe, square and sullen, with short, strong hands and hairy knuckles; and Dr. Schmidt, the giggling man with the scanty red beard and steel-rimmed spectacles. And there was the girl with the slanting golden eyes like a cat’s, he thought. They called her “Miss Smith,” but her name should have been Melusine.

Nor could he have dreamed the conversation, which was businesslike and brief.

“It has long been evident to us,” said Mr. Smith, “that society is in need of a suitable organisation for the Removal of unnecessary persons. Private and amateur attempts at Removal are so frequently attended with subsequent inconvenience and even danger to the Remover, who, in addition, usually has to carry out his work with very makeshift materials. It is our pleasure and privilege to attend to all the disagreeable details of such Removals for our clients at a moderate — I may say, a merely nominal — expense. Provided our terms are strictly adhered to, we can guarantee our clients against all unpleasant repercussions, preserving, of course, inviolable secrecy as to the whole transaction.”

Dr. Schmidt sniggered faintly.

“In the matter of young Cyril Tressider, for example,” went on Mr. Smith, “I can conceive nothing more unnecessary than the existence of this wearisome child. He is an orphan; his only relations are Mr. and Mrs. Tressider who, however amiably disposed they may feel towards the boy, are financially embarrassed by his presence in the world. If he were to be quietly Removed, who would be the loser? Not himself, since he would be spared the sins and troubles of life on this ill-regulated planet; not his relations, for he has none but his uncle and aunt who would be better for his disappearance; not his tenants and dependents, since his good uncle would be there to take his place. I suggest, Mr. Tressider, that the small sum of one thousand pounds would be profitably spent in Removing this boy to that happy land ‘far, far beyond the stars,’ where he might play with the young-eyed cherubim (to quote our glorious poet), remote from the accidents of measles or stomach-ache to which, alas! all young children are so unhappily liable here below.”

“A thousand?” said Tressider, and laughed, “I would give five, gladly, to be rid of the youngster.”

Dr. Schmidt sniggered. “We should not like to be rapacious,” he said. “No. One thousand pounds will amply repay the very trifling trouble.”

“How about the risk?” said Tressider.

“We have abolished risk,” replied Mr. Smith. “For us, and for our clients, the word does not exist. Tell me, the boy resides with you at your home in Essex? Yes. Is he a good little boy?”

“Decent enough kid, as far as that goes.”

“No bad habits?”

“He’s a bit of a liar, like lots of kids.”

“How so, my friend?” asked Dr. Schmidt.

“He romances. Pretends he’s had all kinds of adventures with giants and fairies and tigers and what not. You know the kind of thing. Doesn’t seem to be able to tell the truth. It worries his aunt a good deal.”

“Ah!” Dr. Schmidt seemed to take over the interview at this point. “The good Mrs. Tressider, she does not encourage the romancing?”

“No. She does her best. Tells Cyril that he’ll go to a bad place if he tells stories. But it’s wonderful how the little beggar persists. Sometimes we have to spank him. But he’s damnably obstinate. There’s a bad streak in the boy somewhere. Unsound. Not English, that sort of thing.”

“Sad,” said Dr. Schmidt, sniggering, so that the word became a long bleat. “Sa-a-d. It would be a pity if the poor little boy should miss the golden gates after all. That would distress me.”

“It would be still more distressing, Schmidt, that a person with a failing of that kind should be placed in any position of importance as the owner of the Tressider estates. Honour and uprightness, coupled with a healthy lack of imagination, have made this country what it is.”

“True,” said Dr. Schmidt. “How beautifully you put it, my dear Smith. No doubt, Mr. Tressider, your little ward finds much scope for imaginative adventure when playing about in the deserted grounds of Crantonbury Place, situated so conveniently next door to your abode.”

“You seem to know a lot,” said Tressider.

“Our organisation,” explained Dr. Schmidt, with a wave of the hand. “It is melancholy to see these fine old country mansions thus deserted, but one man’s loss is the gain of the little boy next door. I should encourage little Cyril to play in the grounds of Crantonbury Hall. His little limbs will grow strong running about among the over-grown bushes and the straggling garden-beds where the strawberry grows underneath the nettle. I quote your Shakespeare, my dear Smith. It is a calamity that the fountains should be silent and the great fish-pond run dry. The nine men’s morris is filled up with mud — Shakespeare again. Nevertheless, there are still many possibilities in an old garden.”

He giggled and pulled at his thin beard.

If this fantastic conversation had never taken place, how was it that Tressider could remember every word so clearly. He remembered, too, signing a paper — the “Removal Order,” Smith had called it — and a cheque for £1,000, payable to Smith & Smith, and post-dated October 1st.

“We like to allow a margin,” said Mr. Smith. “We cannot at this moment predict to a day when the Removal will be carried out. But from now to October 1st should provide ample time. If you should change your mind before the Removal has taken place, you have only to leave word to that effect at Rappallo’s. But after the Removal, it would be too late to make any alterations. Indeed, in such a case, there might be… er… unpleasantness of a kind which I should not care to specify. But, between gentlemen, such a situation could not, naturally, arise. Are you likely to be absent from home at any time in the near future?”

Tressider shook his head.

“No? Forgive me, but I think you would be well advised to spend — let us say the month of September — abroad. Or perhaps in Scotland. There is salmon, there is trout, there is grouse, there is partridge — all agreeable creatures to kill.”

Dr. Schmidt sniggered again.

“Just as you like, of course,” went on Mr. Smith. “But if you and perhaps your wife also—”

“My wife wouldn’t leave Cyril.”

“Yourself, then. A holiday from domesticity is sometimes an excellent thing.”

“I will think about it,” said Tressider.

He had thought often about it. He also thought frequently about the blank counterfoil in his cheque-book. That, at least, was a fact. He was thinking about it in Scotland on September 15th, as he tramped across the moors, gun on shoulder. It might be a good thing to stop that cheque.

“Auntie Edith!”

“Yes, Cyril.”

Mrs. Tressider was a thin woman with a strong, Puritan face; a woman of narrow but fixed affections and limited outlook.

“Auntie, I’ve had a wonderful adventure.”

Mrs. Tressider pressed her pale lips together.

“Now, Cyril, think beforehand. Don’t exaggerate, dear. You look very hot and excited.”

“Yes, Auntie. I met a fairy—”

“Cyril!”

“No, really, Auntie, I did. She lives in Crantonbury Hall — in the old grotto. A real, live fairy. And she was all dressed in gold and lovely colours like a rainbow, red and green and blue and yellow and all sorts of colours. And a gold crown on her head and stars in her hair. And I wasn’t a bit frightened, Auntie, and she said—”

“Cyril, dear—”

“Yes, Auntie, really. I’m not ’zaggerating. She was ever so beautiful. And she said I was a brave boy, just like Jack-and-the-Beanstalk, and I was to marry her when I grew up, and live in Fairyland. Only I’m not big enough yet. And she had lions and tigers and leopards all round her with gold collars and diamonds on them. And she took me into her fairy palace—”

“Cyril!”

“And we ate fairy fruit off gold plates and she’s going to teach me the language of birds and give me a pair of seven-league boots all for myself, so that I can go all over the world and be a hero.”

“That’s a very exciting story you’ve made up, darling, but of course it’s only a story, isn’t it?”

“No, ’tisnt only a story. It’s quite true. You see if it isn’t.”

“Darling, there couldn’t be lions and tigers and leopards at Crantonbury Hall.”

“Well…” the child paused. “Well, p’r’aps I was ’zaggerating just a teeny, weeny bit. But there was two leopards.”

“Oh, Cyril! Two leopards?”

“Yes, with golden collars and chains. And the fairy was ever so tall and beautiful, with lovely goldeny eyes just like the leopards’. She said she was the fairy of the leopards, and they were fairies too, and after we’d had the fairy feast the leopards grew wings and she got on their backs — on one of them’s backs I mean — and flew right away over the roof.”

Mrs. Tressider sighed.

“I don’t think Nannie ought to tell you so many fairy-tales. You know there aren’t any fairies, really.”

“That’s all you know about it,” said Cyril, rather rudely. “There is fairies, and I’ve seen one, and I’m to be the King of the Fairies when I’m bigger.”

“You mustn’t contradict me like that, Cyril. And it’s very naughty to say what isn’t true.”

“But it is true, Auntie.”

“You mustn’t say that, darling. I’ve told you ever so many times that it’s very nice to make up stories, but we mustn’t ever forget that it’s all make-believe.”

“But I did see the fairy.”

“If you say that any more, Auntie will be very cross with you—”

“But I did, I did. I swear I did.”

“Cyril!” Mrs. Tressider was definitely shocked. “That is a very wicked word to use. You must go straight to bed without your supper, and Auntie doesn’t want to see you again till you have apologised for being so rude and telling such naughty stories.”

“But, Auntie—”

“That will do,” said Mrs. Tressider, and rang the bell. Cyril was led away in tears.

“If you please, ma’am,” said Nannie, catching Mrs. Tressider as she rose from the dinner-table, “Master Cyril doesn’t seem very well, ma’am. He says he has a bad stomach-ache.”

Cyril did seem feverish and queer when his aunt went up to him. He was flushed and feverish, and his eyes were unnaturally bright and frightened. He complained of a dreadful pain under his pyjama-girdle.

“That’s what happens to naughty little boys who tell stories,” said Mrs. Tressider, who had old-fashioned ideas about improving the occasion. “Now Nannie will have to give you some nasty medicine.”

Nannie, advancing, armed with a horrid tumblerful of greeny-grey liquorice powder, had her own moral to draw.

“I expect you’ve been eating them nasty old crabapples out of the old garden,” she remarked. “I’m sure I’ve told you time and again, Master Cyril, to leave them things alone.”

“I didn’t eat nothing,” said Cyril, “ ’cept the fairy feast in the palace with the leopard lady.”

“We don’t want to hear about the leopard lady any more,” said Mrs. Tressider. “Now, own up, darling, that was all imagination and nonsense, wasn’t it? He does look feverish,” she added in an aside to Nancy. “Perhaps we’d better send for Dr. Simmonds. With Mr. Tressider away, one feels rather anxious. Now, Cyril, drink up your medicine and say you’re sorry…”

When Dr. Simmonds arrived an hour later (for he had been out when summoned) he found his patient delirious and Mrs. Tressider thoroughly alarmed. Dr. Simmonds wasted no time with liquorice powder, but used the stomach-pump. His face was grave.

“What has he been eating?” he asked, and shook his head at Nannie’s suggestion of green apples. Mrs. Tressider, white and anxious, went into details about the child’s story of the leopard lady.

“He looked feverish when he came in,” she said, “but I thought he was just excited with his make-believe games.”

“Imaginative children are often unable to distinguish between fact and fancy,” said the doctor. “I think he very probably did eat something that he shouldn’t have done; it would be all part of the game he was playing with himself.”

“I made him confess in the end that he was making it all up,” said Mrs. Tressider.

“H’m,” said Dr. Simmonds. “Well, I don’t think you’d better worry him about it any more. He’s a highly-strung child, and he’ll need all his strength—”

“You don’t mean he’s in any danger, Doctor?”

“Oh, I hope not, I hope not. But children are rather kittle little cattle and something has upset him badly. Is Mr. Tressider at home?”

“Ought I to send for him?”

“It might be as well. By the way, could you let me have a clean bottle? I should like to take away some of the contents of the stomach for examination. Just to be on the safe side, you know. I don’t want to alarm you — it’s just that, in a case of this kind, it is as well to know what one has to deal with.”

Before morning, Cyril was collapsed, blue in the face and cold and another doctor had been called in. Tressider, when he hurriedly arrived by the midnight train, was greeted by the news that there was very little hope.

“I am afraid, Mr. Tressider, that the boy has managed to pick up something poisonous. We are having an analysis made. The symptoms are suggestive of poisoning by solanine, or some alkali of that group. Nightshade — is there any garden nightshade at Crantonbury Hall?” Thus Dr. Pratt, a specialist and expensive.

Mr. Tressider did not know, but he said he thought they might go and see next day. The search-party was accordingly sent out in the morning. They discovered no nightshade, but Dr. Pratt, prowling about the weed-grown kitchen garden, made a discovery.

“Look!” he said. “These old potato-plants have got potato-apples on them. The potato belongs to the genus Solanum, and the apples, and sometimes even the tubers themselves, have occasionally given rise to poisonous symptoms. If the boy had happened to pluck and eat some of these berries—”

“He did, then,” said Dr. Simmonds. “See here.”

He lifted a plant on which a number of short stalks still remained to show where the potato-apples had been.

“I had no idea,” said Tressider, “that the things were as poisonous as that.”

“They are not as a rule,” said Dr. Pratt. “But here and there one finds a plant which is particularly rich in the poisonous principle, solanine. There was a classical case, in 1885 or thereabouts—”

He prosed on. Mrs. Tressider could not bear it. She left them and went upstairs to sit by Cyril’s bedside.

“I want to see the lovely leopard lady,” said Cyril, faintly.

“Yes, yes — she’s coming, darling,” said Mrs. Tressider.

“With her leopards?”

“Yes, darling. And lions and tigers.”

“Because I’ve got to be King of the Fairies when I grow up.”

“Of course you have, darling.”

On the third day, Cyril died.

The expert’s analysis confirmed Dr. Pratt’s diagnosis. Seeds and skin of the potato-apple had been identified in the contents of the stomach. Death was from solanine poisoning, a remarkable quantity of the alkali having been present in the potato-apples. An examination of other berries taken from the same plants showed that the potatoes in question were, undoubtedly, particularly rich in solanine. Verdict: Death by misadventure. Children, said the coroner, were very apt to chew and eat strange plants and berries, and the potato-apple undoubtedly had an attractive appearance — like a little green tomato — the jury had no doubt often seen it in their own gardens. It was, however, very seldom that the effects were so tragic as in the present sad case. No blame could possibly attach to Mr. and Mrs. Tressider, who had repeatedly warned the child not to eat anything he did not know the name of, and had usually found him an obedient child in this respect.

Tressider, to whom nobody had thought to mention the story of the leopard lady, showed a becoming grief at the death of his little ward. He purchased a handsome suit of black and ordered a new saloon car. In this he went about a good deal by himself in the days that followed the inquest, driving, on one occasion, as far as Greenwich.

He had looked up the address in the telephone-book and presently found himself rolling down a quiet riverside lane. Yes — there they were, on the right — two shabby green gates across which, in faded white lettering, ran the words:

He got out of the car and stood, hesitating a little. The autumn had come early that year, and as he stood, a yellow poplar leaf, shaken from its hold by the wind, fluttered delicately to his feet.

He pushed at the gates, which opened slowly, with a rusty creaking. There was no avenue of poplars and no squat grey house with a pillared portico. An untidy yard met his gaze. At the back was a tumble-down warehouse, and on either side of the gate a sickly poplar whispered fretfully. A ruddy-faced man, engaged in harnessing a cart-horse to an open lorry, came forward to greet him.

“Could I speak to Mr. Smith?” asked Tressider.

“It’s Mr. Benton you’ll be wanting,” replied the man. “There ain’t no Mr. Smith.”

“Oh!” said Tressider. “Then which o£ the gentlemen is it that has a very high, bald forehead — a rather stoutish gentleman. I thought—”

“Nobody like that here,” said the man. “You’ve made a mistake, mister. There’s only Mr. Benton — he’s tall, with grey ’air and specs, and Mr. Tinworth, the young gentleman, him that’s a bit lame. Was you wanting a Removal by any chance?”

“No, no,” said Tressider, rather hastily. “I thought I knew Mr. Smith, that’s all. Has he retired lately?”

“Lord, no.” The man laughed heartily. “There ain’t been a Mr. Smith here, not in donkey’s years. Come to think of it, they’re all dead, I believe. Jim! What’s happened to old Mr. Smith and his brother what used to run this show?”

A little elderly man came out of the warehouse, wiping his hands on his apron.

“Dead these ten years,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Gent here thought he knowed the parties.”

“Well, they’re dead,” repeated Jim.

“Thank you,” said Tressider.

He went back to the car. For the hundredth time he asked himself whether he should stop the cheque. The death of Cyril could only be a coincidence. It was now or never, for this was the 30th September.

He vacillated, and put the matter off till next day. At ten o’clock in the morning he rang up the bank.

“A cheque” — he gave the number — “for £1,000, payable to Smith & Smith. Has it been cashed?”

“Yes, Mr. Tressider. Nine-thirty this morning. Hope there’s nothing wrong about it.”

“Nothing whatever, thanks. I just wanted to know.”

Then he had drawn it. And somebody had cashed it.

Next day there was a letter. It was typewritten and bore no address of origin; only the printed heading smith & smith and the date, 1 October.

The sweat stood on Tressider’s forehead.

“How did they know I had studied chemistry?”

He seemed to hear the sniggering voice of Dr. Schmidt: “Our organization—”

He burned the papers and went out without saying his customary farewell to his wife. It was not until some time later that he heard the story of the leopard lady, and he thought of Miss Smith, the girl with the yellow eyes like cat’s eyes, who should have been called Melusine.