Murder Most Merry

THE CASE IS ALTERED – Margery Allingham

Mr. Albert Campion, sitting in a first-class smoking compartment, was just reflecting sadly that an atmosphere of stultifying decency could make even Christmas something of a stuffed-owl occasion, when a new hogskin suitcase of distinctive design hit him on the knees. At the same moment a golf bag bruised the shins of the shy young man opposite, an armful of assorted magazines burst over the pretty girl in the far corner, and a blast of icy air swept round the carriage. There was the familiar rattle and lurch which indicates that the train has started at last, a squawk from a receding porter, and Lance Feering arrived before him apparently by rocket.

“Caught it,” said the newcomer with the air of one confidently expecting congratulations, but as the train bumped jerkily he teetered back on his heels and collapsed between the two young people on the opposite seat.

“My dear chap, so we noticed.” murmured Campion, and he smiled apologetically at the girl, now disentangling herself from the shellburst of newsprint. It was his own disarming my-poor-friend-is-afflicted variety of smile that he privately considered infallible, but on this occasion it let him down.

The girl, who was in the early twenties and was slim and fair, with eyes like licked brandy-balls, as Lance Feering inelegantly put it afterward, regarded him with grave interest. She stacked the magazines into a neat bundle and placed them on the seat opposite before returning to her own book. Even Mr. Feering, who was in one of his more exuberant moods, was aware of that chilly protest. He began to apologize.

Campion had known Feering in his student days, long before he had become one of the foremost designers of stage decors in Europe, and was used to him, but now even he was impressed. Lance’s apologies were easy but also abject. He collected his bag, stowed it on a clear space on the rack above the shy young man’s head, thrust his golf things under the seat, positively blushed when he claimed his magazines, and regarded the girl with pathetic humility. She glanced at him when he spoke, nodded coolly with just enough graciousness not to be gauche, and turned over a page.

Campion was secretly amused. At the top of his form Lance was reputed to be irresistible. His dark face with the long mournful nose and bright eyes were unhandsome enough to be interesting, and the quick gestures of his short painter’s hands made his conversation picturesque. His singular lack of success on this occasion clearly astonished him and he sat back in his corner eyeing the young woman with covert mistrust.

Campion resettled himself to the two hours’ rigid silence which etiquette demands from firstclass travelers who, although they are more than probably going to be asked to dance a reel together if not to share a bathroom only a few hours hence, have not yet been introduced.

There was no way of telling if the shy young man and the girl with the brandy-ball eyes knew each other, and whether they too were en route for Underhill. Sir Philip Cookham’s Norfolk place. Campion was inclined to regard the coming festivities with a certain amount of lugubrious curiosity. Cookham himself was a magnificent old boy, of course, “one of the more valuable pieces in the Cabinet,” as someone had once said of him, but Florence was a different kettle of fish. Born to wealth and breeding, she had grown blasé towards both of them and now took her delight in notabilities, a dangerous affectation in Campion’s experience. She was some sort of remote aunt of his.

He glanced again at the young people, caught the boy unaware, and was immediately interested.

The illustrated magazine had dropped from the young man’s hand and he was looking out of the window, his mouth drawn down at the corners and a narrow frown between his thick eyebrows. It was not an unattractive face, too young for strong character but decent and open enough in the ordinary way. At that particular moment, however, it wore a revealing expression. There was recklessness in the twist of the mouth and sullenness in the eyes, while the hand which lay upon the inside arm rest was clenched.

Campion was curious. Young people do not usually go away for Christmas in this top-step-at-the-dentist’s frame of mind. The girl looked up from her book.

“How far is Underhill from the station?” she inquired.

“Five miles. They’ll meet us.” The shy young man turned to her so easily and with such obvious affection that any romantic theory Campion might have formed was knocked on the head instantly. The youngster’s troubles evidently had nothing to do with love.

Lance had raised his head with bright-eyed interest at the gratuitous information and now a faintly sardonic expression appeared upon his lips. Campion sighed for him. For a man who fell in and out of love with the abandonment of a seal round a pool, Lance Feering was an impossible optimist. Already he was regarding the girl with that shy despair which so many ladies had found too piteous to be allowed to persist. Campion washed his hands of him and turned away just in time to notice a stranger glancing in at them from the corridor. It was a dark and arrogant young face and he recognized it instantly, feeling at the same time a deep wave of sympathy for old Cookham. Florence, he gathered, had done it again.

Young Victor Preen, son of old Preen of the Preen Aero Company, was certainly notable, not to say notorious. He had obtained much publicity in his short life for his sensational flights, but a great deal more for adventures less creditable; and when angry old gentlemen in the armchairs of exclusive clubs let themselves go about the blackguardliness of the younger generation, it was very often of Victor Preen that they were thinking.

He stood now a little to the left of the compartment window, leaning idly against the wall, his chin up and his heavy lids drooping. At first sight he did not appear to be taking any interest in the occupants of the compartment, but when the shy young man looked up. Campion happened to see the swift glance of recognition, and of something else, which passed between them. Presently, still with the same elaborate casualness, the man in the corridor wandered away, leaving the other staring in front of him, the same sullen expression still in his eyes.

The incident passed so quickly that it was impossible to define the exact nature of that second glance, but Campion was never a man to go imagining things, which was why he was surprised when they arrived at Minstree station to hear Henry Boule, Florence’s private secretary, introducing the two and to notice that they met as strangers.

It was pouring with rain as they came out of the station, and Boule, who, like all Florence’s secretaries, appeared to be suffering from an advanced case of nerves, bundled them all into two big Daimlers, a smaller car, and a shooting-brake. Campion looked round him at Florence’s Christmas bag with some dismay. She had surpassed herself. Besides Lance there were at least half a dozen celebrities: a brace of political highlights, an angry looking lady novelist, Madja from the ballet, a startled R. A., and Victor Preen, as well as some twelve or thirteen unfamiliar faces who looked as if they might belong to Art, Money, or even mere Relations.

Campion became separated from Lance and was looking for him anxiously when he saw him at last in one of the cars, with the novelist on one side and the girl with brandy-ball eyes on the other, Victor Preen making up the ill-assorted four.

Since Campion was an unassuming sort of person he was relegated to the brake with Boule himself, the shy young man, and the whole of the luggage. Boule introduced them awkwardly and collapsed into a seat, wiping the beads from off his forehead with a relief which was a little too blatant to be tactful.

Campion, who had learned that the shy young man’s name was Peter Groome, made a tentative inquiry of him as they sat jolting shoulder to shoulder in the back of the car. He nodded.

“Yes, it’s the same family,” he said. “Cookham’s sister married a brother of my father’s. I’m some sort of relation, I suppose.”

The prospect did not seem to fill him with any great enthusiasm and once again Campion’s curiosity was piqued. Young Mr. Groome was certainly not in seasonable mood.

In the ordinary way Campion would have dismissed the matter from his mind, but there was something about the youngster which attracted him. something indefinable and of a despairing quality, and moreover, there had been that curious intercepted glance in the train.

They talked in a desultory fashion throughout the uncomfortable journey. Campion learned that young Groome was in his father’s firm of solicitors, that he was engaged to be married to the girl with the brandy-ball eyes, who was a Miss Patricia Bullard of an old north country family, and that he thought Christmas was a waste of time.

“I hate it.” he said with a sudden passionate intensity which startled even his mild inquisitor. “All this sentimental good-will-to-all-men business is false and sickening. There’s no such thing as good will. The world’s rotten.”

He blushed as soon as he had spoken and turned away.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, “but all this bogus Dickensian stuff makes me writhe.”

Campion made no direct comment. Instead he asked with affable inconsequence, “Was that young Victor Preen I saw in the other car?”

Peter Groome turned his head and regarded him with the steady stare of the willfully obtuse.

“I was introduced to someone with a name like that, I think, ‘ he said carefully. “He was a little baldish man, wasn’t he?”

“No, that’s Sir George.” The secretary leaned over the luggage to give the information. “Preen is the tall young man, rather handsome, with the very curling hair. He’s the Preen, you know.” He sighed. “It seems very young to be a millionaire, doesn’t it?”

“Obscenely so,” said Mr. Peter Groome abruptly, and returned to his despairing contemplation of the landscape.

Underhill was en fête to receive them. As soon as Campion observed the preparations, his sympathy for young Mr. Groome increased, for to a jaundiced eye Lady Florence’s display might well have proved as dispiriting as Preen’s bank balance. Florence had “gone all Dickens,” as she said herself at the top of her voice, linking her arm through Campion’s, clutching the R. A. with her free hand, and capturing Lance with a bright birdlike eye.

The great Jacobean house was festooned with holly. An eighteen-foot tree stood in the great hall. Yule logs blazed on iron dogs in the wide hearths and already the atmosphere was thick with that curious Christmas smell which is part cigar smoke and part roasting food.

Sir Philip Cookham stood receiving his guests with pathetic bewilderment. Every now and again his features broke into a smile of genuine welcome as he saw a face he knew. He was a distinguished-looking old man with a fine head and eyes permanently worried by his country’s troubles.

“My dear boy, delighted to see you. Delighted,” he said, grasping Campion’s hand. “I’m afraid you’ve been put over in the Dower House. Did Florence tell you? She said you wouldn’t mind, but I insisted that Feering went over there with you and also young Peter.” He sighed and brushed away the visitor’s hasty reassurances. “I don’t know why the dear girl never feels she has a party unless the house is so overcrowded that our best friends have to sleep in the annex,” he said sadly.

The “dear girl,” looking not more than fifty-five of her sixty years, was clinging to the arm of the lady novelist at that particular moment and the two women were emitting mirthless parrot cries at each other. Cookham smiled.

“She’s happy, you know,” he said indulgently. “She enjoys this sort of thing. Unfortunately I have a certain amount of urgent work to do this weekend, but we’ll get in a chat, Campion, some time over the holiday. I want to hear your news. You’re a lucky fellow. You can tell your adventures.”

The lean man grimaced. “More secret sessions, sir?” he inquired.

The cabinet minister threw up his hands in a comic but expressive little gesture before he turned to greet the next guest.

As he dressed for dinner in his comfortable room in the small Georgian dower house across the park, Campion was inclined to congratulate himself on his quarters. Underhill itself was a little too much of the ancient monument for strict comfort.

He had reached the tie stage when Lance appeared. He came in very elegant indeed and highly pleased with himself. Campion diagnosed the symptoms immediately and remained irritatingly incurious.

Lance sat down before the open fire and stretched his sleek legs.

“It’s not even as if I were a goodlooking blighter, you know,” he observed invitingly when the silence had become irksome to him. “In fact, Campion, when I consider myself I simply can’t understand it. Did I so much as speak to the girl?”

“I don’t know,” said Campion, concentrating on his dressing. “Did you?”

“No.” Lance was passionate in his denial. “Not a word. The hard-faced female with the inky fingers and the walrus mustache was telling me her life story all the way home in the car. This dear little poppet with the eyes was nothing more than a warm bundle at my side. I give you my dying oath on that. And yet—well, it’s extraordinary, isn’t it?”

Campion did not turn round. He could see the artist quite well through the mirror in front of him. Lance had a sheet of notepaper in his hand and was regarding it with that mixture of feigned amusement and secret delight which was typical of his eternally youthful spirit.

“Extraordinary.” he repeated, glancing at Campion’s unresponsive back. “She had nice eyes. Like licked brandy-balls.”

“Exactly,” agreed the lean man by the dressing table. “I thought she seemed very taken up with her fiancé, young Master Groome, though,” he added tactlessly.

“Well, I noticed that, you know,” Lance admitted, forgetting his professions of disinterest. “She hardly recognized my existence in the train. Still, there’s absolutely no accounting for women. I’ve studied ‘em all my life and never understood ‘em yet. I mean to say, take this case in point. That kid ignored me. avoided me, looked through me. And yet look at this. I found it in my room when I came up to change just now.”

Campion took the note with a certain amount of distaste. Lovely women were invariably stooping to folly, it seemed, but even so he could not accustom himself to the spectacle. The message was very brief. He read it at a glance and for the first time that day he was conscious of that old familiar flicker down the spine as his experienced nose smelted trouble. He re-read the three lines.

“There is a sundial on a stone pavement just off the drive. We saw it from the car. I’ll wait ten minutes there for you half an hour after the party breaks up tonight.”

There was neither signature nor initial, and the summons broke off as baldly as it had begun.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Lance had the grace to look shamefaced.

“Astounding.” Campion’s tone was flat. “Staggering, old boy. Er—fishy.”

“Fishy?”

“Yes, don’t you think so?” Campion was turning over the single sheet thoughtfully and there was no amusement in the pale eyes behind his hornrimmed spectacles. “How did it arrive?”

“In an unaddressed envelope. I don’t suppose she caught my name. After all, there must be some people who don’t know it yet.” Lance was grinning impudently. “She’s batty, of course. Not safe out and all the rest of it. But I liked her eyes and she’s very young.”

Campion perched himself on the edge of the table. He was still very serious.

“It’s disturbing, isn’t it?” he said. “Not nice. Makes one wonder.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Lance retrieved his property and tucked it into his pocket. “She’s young and foolish, and it’s Christmas.”

Campion did not appear to have heard him. “I wonder,” he said. “I should keep the appointment, I think. It may be unwise to interfere, but yes, I rather think I should.”

“You’re telling me.” Lance was laughing. “I may be wrong, of course,” he added defensively, “but I think that’s a cry for help. The poor girl evidently saw that I looked a dependable sort of chap and—er—having her back against the wall for some reason or other she turned instinctively to the stranger with the kind face. Isn’t that how you read it?”

“Since you press me, no. Not exactly,” said Campion, and as they walked over to the house together he remained thoughtful and irritatingly uncommunicative.

Florence Cookham excelled herself that evening. Her guests were exhorted “to be young again,” with the inevitable result that Underhill contained a company of irritated and exhausted people long before midnight.

One of her ladyship’s more erroneous beliefs was that she was a born organizer, and that the real secret of entertaining people lay in giving everyone something to do. Thus Lance and the R. A. —now even more startled-looking than ever—found themselves superintending the decoration of the great tree, while the girl with the brandy-ball eyes conducted a small informal dance in the drawing room, the lady novelist scowled over the bridge table, and the ballet star refused flatly to arrange amateur theatricals.

Only two people remained exempt from this tyranny. One was Sir Philip himself, who looked in every now and again, ready to plead urgent work awaiting him in his study whenever his wife pounced upon him, and the other was Mr. Campion, who had work to do on his own account and had long mastered the difficult art of self-effacement. Experience had taught him that half the secret of this maneuver was to keep discreetly on the move and he strolled from one part to another, always ready to look as if he belonged to any one of them should his hostess’s eye ever come to rest upon him inquiringly.

For once his task was comparatively simple. Florence was in her element as she rushed about surrounded by breathless assistants, and at one period the very air in her vicinity seemed to have become thick with colored paper wrappings, yards of red ribbons, and a colored snowstorm of little address tickets as she directed the packing of the presents for the Tenants’ Tree, a second monster which stood in the ornamental barn beyond the kitchens.

Campion left Lance to his fate, which promised to be six or seven hours’ hard labor at the most moderate estimate, and continued his purposeful meandering. His lean figure drifted among the company with an apparent aimlessness which was deceptive. There was hidden urgency in his lazy movements and his pale eyes behind his spectacles were inquiring and unhappy.

He found Patricia Bullard dancing with Preen, and paused to watch them as they swung gracefully by him. The man was in a somewhat flamboyant mood, flashing his smile and his noisy witticisms about him after the fashion of his kind, but the girl was not so content. As Campion caught sight of her pale face over her partner’s sleek shoulder his eyebrows rose. For an instant he almost believed in Lance’s unlikely suggestion. The girl actually did look as though she had her back to the wall. She was watching the doorway nervously and her shiny eyes were afraid.

Campion looked about him for the other young man who should have been present, but Peter Groome was not in the ballroom, nor in the great hall, nor yet among the bridge tables in the drawing room, and half an hour later he had still not put in an appearance.

Campion was in the hall himself when he saw Patricia slip into the anteroom which led to Sir Philip’s private study, that holy of holies which even Florence treated with a wholesome awe. Campion had paused for a moment to enjoy the spectacle of Lance, wild eyed and tight lipped, wrestling with the last of the blue glass balls and tinsel streamers on the Guests’ Tree, when he caught sight of the flare of her silver skirt disappearing round a familiar doorway under one branch of the huge double staircase.

It was what he had been waiting for. and yet when it came his disappointment was unexpectedly acute, for he too had liked her smile and her brandy-ball eyes. The door was ajar when he reached it, and he pushed it open an inch or so farther, pausing on the threshold to consider the scene within. Patricia was on her knees before the paneled door which led into the inner room and was trying somewhat ineffectually to peer through the keyhole.

Campion stood looking at her regretfully, and when she straightened herself and paused to listen, with every line of her young body taut with the effort of concentration, he did not move.

Sir Philip’s voice amid the noisy chatter behind him startled him, however, and he swung round to see the old man talking to a group on the other side of the room. A moment later the girl brushed past him and hurried away.

Campion went quietly into the anteroom. The study door was still closed and he moved over to the enormous period fireplace which stood beside it. This particular fireplace, with its carved and painted front, its wrought iron dogs and deeply recessed inglenooks, was one of the showpieces of Underhill.

At the moment the fire had died down and the interior of the cavern was dark, warm and inviting. Campion stepped inside and sat down on the oak settee, where the shadows swallowed him. He had no intention of being unduly officious, but his quick ears had caught a faint sound in the inner room and Sir Philip’s private sanctum was no place for furtive movements when its master was out of the way. He had not long to wait.

A few moments later the study door opened very quietly and someone came out. The newcomer moved across the room with a nervous, unsteady tread, and paused abruptly, his back to the quiet figure in the inglenook. Campion recognized Peter Groome and his thin mouth narrowed. He was sorry. He had liked the boy.

The youngster stood irresolute. He had his hands behind him, holding in one of them a flamboyant parcel wrapped in the colored paper and scarlet ribbon which littered the house. A sound from the hall seemed to fluster him for he spun round, thrust the parcel into the inglenook which was the first hiding place to present itself, and returned to face the new arrival. It was the girl again. She came slowly across the room, her hands outstretched and her face raised to Peter’s.

In view of everything, Campion thought it best to stay where he was, nor had he time to do anything else. She was speaking urgently, passionate sincerity in her low voice.

“Peter, I’ve been looking for you. Darling, there’s something I’ve got to say and if I’m making an idiotic mistake then you’ve got to forgive me. Look here, you wouldn’t go and do anything silly, would you? Would you, Peter? Look at me.”

“My dear girl.” He was laughing unsteadily and not very convincingly with his arms around her. “What on earth are you talking about?”

She drew back from him and peered earnestly into his face.

“You wouldn’t, would you? Not even if it meant an awful lot. Not even if for some reason or other you felt you had to. Would you?”

He turned from her helplessly, a great weariness in the lines of his sturdy back, but she drew him round, forcing him to face her.

“Would he what, my dear?”

Florence’s arch inquiry from the doorway separated them so hurriedly that she laughed delightedly and came briskly into the room, her gray curls a trifle disheveled and her draperies flowing.

“Too divinely young, I love it!” she said devastatingly. “I must kiss you both. Christmas is the time for love and youth and all the other dear charming things, isn’t it? That’s why I adore it. But my dears, not here. Not in this silly poky little room. Come along and help me, both of you, and then you can slip away and dance together later on. But don’t come in this room. This is Philip’s dull part of the house. Come along this minute. Have you seen my precious tree? Too incredibly distinguished, my darlings, with two great artists at work on it. You shall both tie on a candle. Come along.”

She swept them away like an avalanche. No protest was possible. Peter shot a single horrified glance towards the fireplace, but Florence was gripping his arm; he was thrust out into the hall and the door closed firmly behind him.

Campion was left in his corner with the parcel less than a dozen feet away from him on the opposite bench. He moved over and picked it up. It was a long flat package wrapped in holly-printed tissue. Moreover, it was unexpectedly heavy and the ends were unbound.

He turned it over once or twice, wrestling with a strong disinclination to interfere, but a vivid recollection of the girl with the brandy-ball eyes, in her silver dress, her small pale face alive with anxiety, made up his mind for him and, sighing, he pulled the ribbon.

The typewritten folder which fell on to his knees surprised him at first, for it was not at all what he had expected, nor was its title, “Report on Messrs. Anderson and Coleridge, Messrs. Saunders, Duval and Berry, and Messrs. Birmingham and Rose,” immediately enlightening, and when he opened it at random a column of incomprehensible figures confronted him. It was a scribbled pencil note in a precise hand at the foot of one of the pages which gave him his first clue.

“These figures are estimated by us to be a reliable forescast of this firm’s full working capacity,” he read, and after that he became very serious indeed.

Two hours later it was bitterly cold in the garden and a thin white mist hung over the dark shrubbery which lined the drive when Mr. Campion, picking his way cautiously along the clipped grass verge, came quietly down to the sundial walk. Behind him the gabled roofs of Underhill were shadowy against a frosty sky. There were still a few lights in the upper windows, but below stairs the entire place was in darkness.

Campion hunched his greatcoat about him and plodded on, unwonted severity in the lines of his thin face.

He came upon the sundial walk at last and paused, straining his eyes to see through the mist. He made out the figure standing by the stone column, and heaved a sigh of relief as he recognized the jaunty shoulders of the Christmas tree decorator. Lance’s incurable romanticism was going to be useful at last, he reflected with wry amusement.

He did not join his friend but withdrew into the shadows of a great clump of rhododendrons and composed himself to wait. He intensely disliked the situation in which he found himself. Apart from the extreme physical discomfort involved, he had a natural aversion towards the project on hand, but little fairhaired girls with shiny eyes can be very appealing.

It was a freezing vigil. He could hear Lance stamping about in the mist, swearing softly to himself, and even that supremely comic phenomenon had its unsatisfactory side.

They were both shivering and the mist’s damp fingers seemed to have stroked their very bones when at last Campion stiffened. He had heard a rustle behind him and presently there was a movement in the wet leaves, followed by the sharp ring of feet on the stones. Lance swung round immediately, only to drop back in astonishment as a tall figure bore down.

“Where is it?”

Neither the words nor the voice came as a complete surprise to Campion, but the unfortunate Lance was taken entirely off his guard.

“Why, hello, Preen,” he said involuntarily. “What the devil are you doing here?”

The newcomer had stopped in his tracks, his face a white blur in the uncertain light. For a moment he stood perfectly still and then, turning on his heel, he made off without a word.

“Ah, but I’m afraid it’s not quite so simple as that, my dear chap.”

Campion stepped out of his friendly shadows and as the younger man passed, slipped an arm through his and swung him round to face the startled Lance, who was coming up at the double.

“You can’t clear off like this,” he went on, still in the same affable, conversational tone. “You have something to give Peter Groome, haven’t you? Something he rather wants?”

“Who the hell are you?” Preen jerked up his arm as he spoke and might have wrenched himself free had it not been for Lance, who had recognized Campion’s voice and, although completely in the dark, was yet quick enough to grasp certain essentials.

“That’s right, Preen,” he said, seizing the man’s other arm in a bear’s hug. “Hand it over. Don’t be a fool. Hand it over.”

This line of attack appeared to be inspirational, since they felt the powerful youngster stiffen between them.

“Look here, how many people know about this?”

“The world—” Lance was beginning cheerfully when Campion forestalled

him.

“We three and Peter Groome,” he said quietly. “At the moment Sir Philip has no idea that Messr. Preen s curiosity concerning the probable placing of government orders for aircraft parts has overstepped the bounds of common sense. You’re acting alone, I suppose?”

“Oh, lord, yes, of course.” Preen was cracking dangerously. “If my old man gets to hear of this I—oh, well, I might as well go and crash.”

“I thought so.” Campion sounded content. “Your father has a reputation to consider. So has our young friend Groome. You’d better hand it over.”

“What?”

“Since you force me to be vulgar whatever it was you were attempting to use as blackmail, my precious young friend,” he said. “Whatever it may be, in fact, that you hold over young Groome and were trying to use in your attempt to force him to let you have a look at a confidential government report concerning the orders which certain aircraft firms were likely to receive in the next six months. In your position you could have made pretty good use of them, couldn’t you? Frankly, I haven’t the faintest idea what this incriminating document may be. When I was young, objectionably wealthy youths accepted I. O. U. ‘s from their poorer companions, but now that’s gone out of fashion. What’s the modern equivalent? An R. D. check, I suppose?”

Preen said nothing. He put his hand in an inner pocket and drew out an envelope which he handed over without a word. Campion examined the slip of pink paper within by the light of a pencil torch.

“You kept it for quite a time before trying to cash it, didn’t you?” he said. “Dear me. that’s rather an old trick and it was never admired. Young men who are careless with their accounts have been caught out like that before. It simply wouldn’t have looked good to his legal-minded old man, I take it? You two seem to be hampered by your respective papas’ integrity. Yes, well, you can go now.”

Preen hesitated, opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it. Lance looked after his retreating figure for some little time before he returned to his friend.

“Who wrote that blinking note?” he demanded.

“He did, of course.” said Campion brutally. “He wanted to see the report but was making absolutely sure that young Groome took all the risks of being found with it.”

“Preen wrote the note,” Lance repeated blankly.

“Well, naturally,” said Campion absently. “That was obvious as soon as the report appeared in the picture. He was the only man in the place with the necessary special information to make use of it.”

Lance made no comment. He pulled his coat collar more closely about his throat and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

All the same the artist was not quite satisfied, for, later still, when Campion was sitting in his dressing gown writing a note at one of the little escritoires which Florence so thoughtfully provided in her guest bedrooms, he came padding in again and stood warming himself before the fire.

“Why?” he demanded suddenly. “Why did I get the invitation?”

“Oh, that was a question of luggage,” Campion spoke over his shoulder.

“That bothered me at first, but as soon as we fixed it onto Preen that little mystery became blindingly clear. Do you remember falling into the carriage this afternoon? Where did you put your elegant piece of gent’s natty suitcasing? Over young Groome’s head. Preen saw it from the corridor and assumed that the chap was sitting under his own bag! He sent his own man over here with the note, told him not to ask for Peter by name but to follow the nice new pigskin suitcase upstairs.”

Lance nodded regretfully. “Very likely,” he said sadly. “Funny thing. I was sure it was the girl.”

After a while he came over to the desk. Campion put down his pen and indicated the written sheet.

“Dear Groome,” it ran, “I enclose a little matter that I should burn forthwith. The package you left in the inglenook is still there, right at the back on the left-hand side, cunningly concealed under a pile of logs. It has not been seen by anyone who could possibly understand it. If you nipped over very early this morning you could return it to its appointed place without any trouble. If I may venture a word of advice, it is never worth it.”

The author grimaced. “It’s a bit avuncular,” he admitted awkwardly, “but what else can I do? His light is still on, poor chap. I thought I’d stick it under his door.”

Lance was grinning wickedly. “That’s fine,” he murmured. “The old man does his stuff for reckless youth. There’s just the signature now and that ought to be as obvious as everything else has been to you. I’ll write it for you. ‘Merry Christmas. Love from Santa Claus.’ “ “You win,” said Mr. Campion.