The Judas Window

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE JUDAS WINDOW

CARTER DICKSON

First published 1938

Published In Penguin Books 1951

Reprinted 1955

PROLOGUE

What Might Have Happened

ON the evening of Saturday, January 4th, a young man who intended to get married went to a house in Grosvenor Street to meet his future father-in-law. There was nothing remarkable about this young man, except that he was a little more wealthy than most. Jimmy Answell was large, - good-natured, and fair-haired. He was just such an easygoing sort as people liked, and there was no malice in him. , His hobby was the reading of murder mysteries, like your ' hobby and mine. He sometimes took too much to drink, and he sometimes made a fool of himself, even as you and I. Finally, as heir to the estate of his late mother, he might be considered a very eligible bachelor indeed.

It will be well to keep these facts in mind during the murder case of the painted arrow.

Here are the facts behind his visit to Number 12 Grosvenor Street. During a Christmas house-party in Sussex, Answell met Mary Hume. Their love affair was sudden and serious. They were mentioning this subject as early as twelve hours after their first meeting, and by New Year's Day they were engaged. On the strength of it Answell's cousin - Captain Reginald, who had introduced them - attempted to touch him for fifty pounds. He gave Reg a cheque for a hundred, and did similar delirious things. Mary wrote the news of their engagement to her father, who wrote back congratulations.

This was gratifying. Mr Avory Hume, a director of the Capital Counties Bank, and formerly manager of the St James's office of that bank, was not a man to take such matters lightly. He might be said to be made up equally of integrity and suspicion, which he had shown since the time he began his career at a mill town in the north. Therefore, when on January 4th Jim Answell was compelled to leave the house-party for one day and go to London on business, he intended to call on his future father-in-law immediately. There was only one thing he could not understand. When Mary saw him off at the station at nine o'clock, he could not understand why her face was so white.

He was thinking about it on the way to Grosvenor Street, at a little past six o'clock in the evening. It had not been necessary for him to get in touch with Avory Hume. The old man had himself rung up Answell's flat that afternoon, and invited him to the house. He had been courteous, but of a freezing formality which Answell vaguely supposed proper to the occasion. 'Considering what I have heard, I thought it best that we should settle matters concerning my daughter. Would six o'clock be convenient?'

It was not exactly hail-fellow-well-met, Answell thought. The old boy might at least have invited him to dinner. Besides, he was late for the appointment: a raw white mist impeded the traffic, and his taxi had to creep along. Remembering Mary's scared face, he wondered. Damn it all, Hume couldn't be such a terror as all that I If he were, his obedient son-in-law was prepared to tell him exactly where he could get off; and then he told himself that this was nonsense. Why should he be nervous? For anyone to be ill at ease about meeting the bride's family, especially in this day and age, came to the edge of comedy.

It was not comedy.

Number 12 Grosvenor Street was just such a solid yellow-sandstone house, with inconvenient window balconies, as he had expected. A conventional butler admitted him to a conventionally solid hall, filled with the ticking of a grandfather clock whose hands pointed to ten minutes past six.

'My - er - name is Answell,' he said. 'Mr Hume is expecting me.' 'Yes, sir. May I have your hat and coat?' At this point, for no reason at all, Jim dropped his hat. It was a bowler, and it bounced clear across to the other side of the hall. He felt himself growing hot round the neckband, especially at the picture of himself standing like a great gawk among the sedate furnishings, and at the calm way in which the butler retrieved his hat. He said the first thing that came into his mind.

'I'll keep my coat on,' blurted Jim Answell. As he made this idiotic remark, his voice sounded almost savage. 'Take me to Mr Hume.'

'Yes, sir. Will you come this way, please?'

The room to which he was taken was at the rear of the house. As they passed the great staircase in the hall, he could see someone looking down at him, and he thought he could make out the not unpleasing face of a woman: in spectacles. This must be Miss Amelia Jordan, of whom Mary had spoken, who had been with her father for many years. He wondered if the old man's brother, Dr Spencer Hume, were also there to give him a formal inspection.

'- to see you, sir,' said the butler.

His guide opened the door of a high room which was furnished like an office, except for the sideboard. There was a modern desk-lamp burning on a modern flat-topped desk in the middle of the room. Another hint of an office (or even a strong-room) was in the two windows: both were shuttered, and the shutters looked like steel. The place had been fashioned out of a tall and rather chilly back-parlour of the last century, having black paper once patterned in gold, and a few grudging chairs. In the wall opposite the door was a white marble mantelpiece, ostentatiously devoid of ornament. The only ornament in the room had been fastened to the wall above this mantelpiece: three target-arrows arranged in the form of a triangle. They had once been painted in different colours, and seemed to have been inscribed with dates; but the three feathers attached to the end of each arrow looked crooked and dry. In the centre of the triangle was a bronzed plaque or medallion.

Mary Hume's father got up from behind the desk with the light on his face. He had evidently just closed a chessboard and put the chess-pieces into their box, which he pushed to one side. Avory Hume was a middle sized, heavy-boned man, vigorous at sixty-odd, with a heavy expression round the eyes. What remained of his greyish-black hair was brushed carefully across a big skull. He wore a grey tweed suit, with a high old-fashioned collar and crooked tie. At first Answell did not like the expression of his rather protuberant eyes, but this changed.

, 'That will be all, Dyer,' he told the butler. 'Go and | bring the car round for Miss Jordan.' His voice was non-committal. The look he turned on his guest was neither I; cordial nor hostile, but merely non-committal as well. “Please sit down. We have a great deal to talk about, I think”

Hume waited until the door had closed. Then he sat back in the chair behind his desk and inspected his hands.

The fingers were thick and blunt-tipped, but well kept, He added suddenly: 'I see you are looking at my trophies.'

Answell, flushing again and feeling that something was very much wrong, drew his glance back from the arrows on the wall behind his host. The bottom arrow of the triangle, he noted, was a dusty yellowish-brown, and inscribed with the date 1934. 'Are you interested in archery, sir?'

'When I was a boy in the north, we drew a forty-pound bow as boys here play cricket and football. Here I have found it fashionable.' The heavy voice stopped. Avory Hume seemed to consider every idea as though he were walking round it and inspecting it, like a man inspecting a house. 'I am a member of the Royal Toxophilite Society, and of the Woodmen of Kent. Those arrows are trophies of the grand target, or annual wardmote, of the Woodmen of Kent. Whoever first hits the gold -'

'The gold?' repeated his guest, feeling that there had been a sinister emphasis on this. 'The centre of the target. Whoever first hits the gold becomes Master Forester of the society for the-ensuing year. In twelve years I have won it three times. They are still good arrows. You could kill a man with them.'

Answell restrained a desire to stare at him. 'Very useful,' he said. 'But look here, sir, what's up? I didn't come here to steal the spoons, or to murder anyone unless it becomes absolutely necessary. The point is, I want to marry Miss Hume, and - well, what about it?'

'It is an honourable estate,' said Hume, smiling for the first time. 'May I offer you a whisky-and-soda?'

'Thanks, sir,' said the other with relief.

Hume got up and went to the sideboard. He drew the stopper of the decanter, splashed in the soda for two weak drinks, and returned with them.

'May I wish you prosperity?' he went on. His expression changed a little. ' "Mr James Caplon Answell",' he said, repeating his guest's name and looking at him steadily, 'I will be frank with you. That marriage would be advantageous - to both sides, I might say. As you know, I have already given my consent. I can find absolutely nothing against it' - Answell said something to the rim of his glass - 'I had the honour to be acquainted with the late Lady Answell, and I know that your family financial position is sound. Therefore I propose to tell you ... Man, man, what's wrong with you? Have you gone mad?'

Answell saw his host stop with his own glass half-way to his lips, and an expression of consternation on his face. But he saw it strangely. Something seemed to be burning his throat, and along his shoulders, and up into his temples. His head began to whirl, so that vision spun with it. The desk tilted forwards, and he knew he must be falling against it when he tried to rise. His last wild thought before he lost consciousness was a realization that his drink had been doctored; but even this was blotted out by the roaring in his ears.

A line of ideas was unbroken even in pain. 'There-was-something-in-the-whisky' kept swimming round in his mind, as though it were swimming back to life with him.

He sat up, feeling his back cramped in a hard chair. His head seemed to be rising towards the ceiling in long spiralling motions. First, before he could get back his eyesight, he must conquer this sickness at his stomach. It took some time, and the light hurt his eyes. He blinked at it. It was a desk-lamp in a curved green shade.

A moment of complete panic was succeeded by a vague realization of where he was. Then he got it all at once. As Hume had been in the act of giving a blessing to the marriage, something had knocked his guest out. Hume must have put something into the whisky. But that was nonsense. Why should Hume put anything into the whisky? And where in God's name was Hume?

Feeling suddenly that he had got to find Hume, Answell pushed himself to his feet. His head ached violently; and his mouth tasted as though he had been eating mint and slobbering a little. If he could only talk to someone he would be all right. This business was like missing a train, or watching the end of a procession disappear down the end of a street just before you could move. What had happened and how long had he been like this? He still wore his overcoat, which was clumsy when he groped inside after his watch. When he came into this house, it had been ten minutes past six. An unreal-looking watch in his hand now said six-thirty.

He put his hands on the desk and looked down at the floor to steady his swimming eyesight. That was how, glancing along the bottom of the desk to the left, he saw an old-fashioned laced boot and a few inches of tightly drawn sock. He stumbled over the foot when he walked round the side of the desk.

'Get up!' he heard himself saying. 'Get up, damn you!'

And again his own voice, more plaintive: 'Get up off that floor and say something!'

Avory Hume did not get up. He was lying on his left side between the windows and the side of the desk, so close to the desk that his sprawled right hand touched it as though he were trying to embrace it. Answell rolled him over on his back. Something rolled up and over with the body, so that Answell jerked back to avoid being touched by it. He also saw blood. A length of thin, rounded wood rose up to some height from Hume's chest. At the end of the arrow, which had been driven eight inches into Hume's heart, were attached three bedraggled and dusty feathers.

The man was dead, but still quite warm. In death the dour face looked surprised and angry; the high collar and tie were rumpled; there was dust on his hands and a cut on the palm of his right hand.

Trying to get to his feet and jump away at the same time, Answell almost fell over backwards. He felt then -though what it was he did not know until later-some sort of bulge in his hip pocket under the overcoat. It was impossible that Hume should be lying in the middle of his own carpet, skewered like a hen, with blood all over his coat. The desk-lamp shed a business-like light over the blotter, over the light brown carpet, and over the dead man's open mouth.

A very panicky young man looked round the room. In the wall behind him was the door. In the wall to his left were the two shuttered windows. Against the wall to the right stood the sideboard. And on the wall straight ahead of him hung the arrows - but there were only two arrows now. The one which had formed the base of the triangle, inscribed with the date 1934, had been driven through Hume's body. Painted a dingy yellowish-brown, it had three feathers; and half the central feather, coloured blue, had now been torn or broken off.

At the back of his mind he had known there was something wrong with this house from the moment he had walked into it. His interview with Hume had seemed fantastic. The grizzled butler, the great clock ticking in the hall, the woman leaning over the banisters, all seemed a part of a trap or an illusion. Someone had come in here while he was unconscious, and had killed Hume. But in that case where was the murderer now? He obviously was not here; the room was completely bare, without even a cupboard.

Moving back still further, he became aware of a loud and insistent noise somewhere in the region of his hand. It was the ticking of his watch. He put back the watch in his pocket, and went to the door; but he wrenched several times at the knob before he realized that the door was bolted on the inside.

But somebody got out of here I He went over more slowly to the windows. The steel shutters on each window were also locked, secured with a flat steel bar which had been shoved into its socket like a bolt. Then he began to hurry round the room. There was no other entrance. The only thing he had not previously noticed was a two-bar electric heater, set into the grate of the white marble mantelpiece. No way in or out by the chimney, either; the flue was only an inch wide and choked with soot which had not been disturbed. The fire seemed to throw out a blaze of heat, and made him conscious of how warm he was with his overcoat on. Also, he was walking fast. Had Hume killed himself? Had Hume gone mad and staged a weird dance of suicide in order to incriminate someone else: a situation very popular in his favourite form of reading? Nonsense! The only other alternative -

But surely nobody would believe he had done it? Why should he? Besides, he could easily explain: he had been given a drugged drink. It was true he had not seen Hume put anything into the glass; but the whisky bad been doctored somehow and by someone. He could prove it. With a flash of clearness he recalled that he had not even finished his drink. As the first black wave of nausea came over him, he had automatically put down the glass on the floor beside his chair.

He hurried over to look for it now. But the glass was gone, and he could not. find it anywhere in the room. Nor was there any trace of the whisky and soda which Hume had mixed for himself.

By this time in a collected, rather abstract state of fear, he examined the sideboard. On it were a cut-glass decanter of whisky, a syphon of soda-water, and four tumblers. The decanter was full to its stopper: not a drop of soda had been drawn from the syphon; the four glasses were clean, polished, and obviously unused.

He afterwards recalled that at this point he said something aloud, but he had no notion of what it was. He said it to cover his thoughts, as though by speaking rapidly he could prevent himself from thinking. But he had to think. Time was going on: he could still hear the ticking of the watch. If the one door and the two windows were both' locked on the inside, he was the only person who could have killed Hume."It was like his own favourite novels turned to a nightmare. Only, with the police of this material world, they did not believe in your innocence, and they hanged you. Also, it is all very well to talk of ingenious devices by which a door is bolted on the inside by someone who is actually outside the room - but he had seen this door, and he knew better.

He went back to look at it again. It was a good heavy door of oak, fitting so tightly into the frame and against the floor that the floor was scraped where it had swung. There was not even a keyhole for any flummery: a Yale lock had been set to the door, but it was out of order and stuck fast in the 'open' position of the lock. Instead the door was now secured by a long, heavy bolt so stiff from disuse that, when he gave it a tentative wrench in its socket, he found that even for him a powerful pull would be needed to move it at all.

From the bolt he found himself inspecting his own right hand. He opened the palm and studied it again: after which he went over to the light to get a better look. The fingers, the thumb, and the palm were now smudged with1 a greyish dust which felt gritty when he closed his hand. Where could he have got that? He knew for a certainty that he had touched nothing dusty since he had come into this room. Again he felt the bulge in his hip pocket; an unaccustomed bulge; but he did not investigate because he was half afraid to find out what it was. Then, from the hypnotic light of the desk-lamp, his eyes strayed down to the dead man.

The arrow, from hanging so long on the wall, had accumulated a coating of greyish dust: except for a thin line along the shaft where, presumably, it had hung protected against the wall. This dust was now broken and smudged in only one place. About half-way down the shaft, there were signs that someone had gripped it. When he bent down to look, even with the naked eye he could make out clear finger-prints. Answell looked back at his own hand, holding it out in front of him as though he had burnt it.

At that moment, he says, there came into his mind some faint notion of what might really have been meant by that telephone-call: of Mary's white face, and certain conversations in Sussex, and a hasty letter written overnight. But it was only a cloud or a ghost, a name that went by his ears. He lost it in Avory Hume's study, standing over Avory Hume's body, for there were other things to claim his attention.

No, it was not the sound of the blood beating in his own head.

It was the sound of someone knocking at the door.

AT THE CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT March 4, 1936

REX

V.

JAMES

CAPLON

ANSWELL

The Charge: Wilful murder of Avory Hume.

The Judge: Mr Justice Rankin.

The Counsel: For the Crown: Sir Walter Storm, K.C. (Attorney-General). Mr Huntley Lawton. Mr John Spragg.

For the Defence: Sir Henry Merrivale, K.C.

INSPECTOR MOTTRAM'S DRAWING, with notes:

1. X, position of body. Answell sat in chair y.

3. Two remaining arrows fastened to wall above fireplace; flat

against wall.

4. Side door in passage, leading to steps into brick-paved passage-

way between houses, found dosed but not locked. Probably nothing in this; back door unlocked as well.

5. Doors of sideboard in study locked, and keys in deceased's

pocket; but sideboard empty. (?)

'And True Deliverance Make -

'All persons who have anything to do before my Lords the King's Justices of Oyer and Terminer and general gaol delivery for the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court, draw near and give your evidence.

'God save the King, and my Lords the King's Justices.'

In Court-room Number One, the 'red' judge was taking his seat. Mr Justice Rankin was a very short plump man whose robe of scarlet slashed with black made him look even shorter and stouter. But he carried it with a swing of briskness. Under a grey tie-wig, fitting him as well as his own hair, his face was round and fresh-complexioned. His little narrow eyes, which should have been sleepy, had an alertness which gave him the air of a headmaster before a form.

To Evelyn and myself, sitting in the reserved seats behind counsel, the place had a look less of a court than of a schoolroom. Even the desks were arranged like forms. Over the court a big white-painted dome ended in a flat roof of glass, blurred with the light of a raw March morning. The walls were panelled to some, height in oak. Concealed electric lights under the cornices of the panelling threw a yellow glow up over the white dome; they made the oak look light, and turned the woodwork of the rest of the court to a yellowish colour. This resemblance to a schoolroom may have been caused by the brushed, business-like neatness of the place. Or it may have been the complete lack of haste or flurry, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

From where we sat - behind counsel - we could see of the barristers only the backs of their gowns and wigs: a few descending tiers of white wigs, with little ridges of curls like hair buttons. A school, bending towards each other and whispering. Towards our left was the big raised dock, now empty. Immediately across from us -. beyond the long solicitors' table in the well of the court - was the jury-box, with the witness-box beside it. Towards our right, the judge's bench showed behind it a line of massive tall chairs: the Sword of State suspended vertically over the chair in the centre.

Mr Justice Rankin bowed to the Bar, to the officers of the court, and to the jury. His bow was from the waist, like a salaam. The two clerks of the court, at the desk immediately below him, turned round and bowed in unison. Both were very tall men in wig and gown, and their deep bend together was in such sharp timing with the judge's as to give it the effect of a movement in a Punch-and-Judy show. Then the court settled down, and the coughing began. Mr Justice Rankin arranged himself in the chair immediately to the left of the Sword of State: never in the centre one, which is reserved for the Lord Mayor or one of the aldermen. Fitting on a pair of shell-rimmed glasses, Mr Justice Rankin took up a pen and smoothed flat the pages of a large notebook. Over the glass roof of the court, March daylight strengthened and then dulled. They brought in the prisoner at the bar.

You cannot look long at the prisoner, standing in that enormous dock with a policeman on either side of him. Or at least I can't. You feel like a ghoul. It was the first time either Evelyn or I had seen Answell. He was a decent-looking young fellow - almost anybody in court might have looked into a mirror and seen his counterpart. Despite the fact that he was well-dressed and freshly shaven, there was a certain air about him which gave the impression that he did not now particularly care a curse what happened. But he stood stiffly at attention. There were a few ghouls from the society columns sitting behind us; he did not glance in our direction. When the indictment was read over to him, he answered not guilty in a voice suddenly edged with defiance. Not an unnecessary word was spoken in the court. The judge seemed to conduct matters mostly by signs.

'I swear by Almighty God'-they were administering the oath to the jury - 'that I will well and truly try, and true deliverance make, between our Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the Bar, whom I have in charge, and a true verdict give according to the evidence.'

It was a schoolroom with a rope at the end of it when you left the headmaster's study. Evelyn, who was troubled, spoke behind her hand. She had been looking down over the blank rows of black-silk backs in front of us.

'Ken, I can't understand it. Why ever does H.M. want to go into court? I mean, I know he's always at loggerheads with people in the government; and he and the Home Secretary practically come to blows every time they meet; but he's hand in glove with the police. That chief inspector - what's his name -?'

'Masters?'

'Masters, yes. He'd take H.M.'s advice before he'd take his own superiors'. Well, if H.M. can prove this chap Answell is innocent, why didn't he just prove it to the police, and then they'd have dropped the case?'

I did not know. It was the one point on which H.M. had preserved a belligerent silence. Though the barristers in front had their backs to us now, it was easy to pick out H.M. He was sitting alone on the left of the front bench: his elbows out-thrust on the desk, so that his ancient gown made him look still broader, and his wig sitting strangely on him. Towards his right on the same bench, counsel for the Crown - Sir Walter Storm, Mr Huntley Lawton, and Mr John Spragg - conferred together. Their whispers were inaudible. Though the desk in front of H.M. was comparatively clear, the space before counsel for the prosecution was piled with books, with the neatly printed briefs, with the yellow booklets in which official photographs are bound, and with fresh pink blotting-paper. Every back was grave. Yet under the mask of studied courtesy which marks the Old Bailey, I felt (or thought I could feel) a certain ironical amusement under those wigs whenever an eye happened to stray towards H.M.

Evelyn felt it too, and was furious.

'But-he shouldn't have come into court,' she insisted: 'He took silk before the war, but Lollypop told me herself he hasn't accepted a brief in fifteen years, and they'll eat him. Look at him down there, sitting like a boiled owl! And if they begin to get under his skin he won't behave himself; you know he won't'

I had to admit he was not the most polished counsel who might have been selected. 'It would appear that there was some commotion the last time he did appear in court. Also, I think myself it was indiscreet to begin an address to the jury with: "Well, my fat-heads." But for some curious reason he won the case.'

A creaking and a muttering drone filled the court as the jury continued to be sworn. Evelyn glanced down past counsel at the long solicitors' table in the well of the court. Every seat was filled, and the table was piled with exhibits bound into neat envelopes or packages. Two other and more curious exhibits were propped beyond, near the little cubicle where the court shorthand-reporter sat. Then Evelyn looked up at Mr Justice Rankin, sitting as detached as a Yogi.

'The judge looks - tough.'

'He is tough. He is also one of the most intelligent men in England.'

'Then if this fellow is guilty,' said Evelyn. She mentioned the unmentionable subject. 'Do you think he did it?'

Her tone took on the furtive note with which this is mentioned by spectators. Privately, I thought Answell was either guilty or crazy or both. I was fairly sure that they would hang him. He had certainly done as much as possible to hang himself. But there was no time to reflect on this. The last of the jurors, including two women, had now been sworn without a challenge. The indictment was again read over to the prisoner. There was a throat-clearing. And Sir Walter Storm, the Attorney-General, rose to open the case for the Crown.

'May it please your Lordship, members of the jury.'

There was a silence, through which Sir Walter Storm's rich voice rose with a curious effect of seeming to come from a gulf. The woolly top of his wig confronted us as he tilted his chin. I do not think that throughout the entire trial we saw his face more than once, when he twisted round: it was long, long-nosed, and ruddy, with an arresting eye. He was completely impersonal, and completely deadly. Often he had the air of a considerate schoolmaster questioning slightly feeble-minded charges. In his course of remaining impartial, his voice took on a heavy and modulated e-nun-ci-ation like an actor's.

'May it please your Lordship, members of the jury,', began the Attorney-General. 'The charge against the prisoner, as you have heard, is murder. It is my duty to indicate to you here the course that will be followed by the evidence for the Crown. You may well believe that it is often with reluctance that a prosecutor takes up his duties. The victim of this crime was a man universally respected, for many years an official of the Capital Counties bank; and later, I think, a member of the board of directors of that bank. The man who stands accused of having committed it is one of good family, good upbringing, and of considerable material fortune, having a great many of this world's advantages denied to others. But the facts will be presented to you; and these facts, I shall suggest to you, can lead to no other conclusion but that Mr Avory Hume was brutally murdered by the prisoner at the bar.

'The victim was a widower, and at the time of his death was living at Number is Grosvenor Street with his daughter, Miss Mary Hume; his brother, Dr Spencer Hume; and his confidential secretary, Miss Amelia Jordan. During the fortnight of December 23rd to January 5th, last, Miss Mary Hume was absent from this house, visiting friends in Sussex. You will hear that on the morning of December 31st, last, the deceased received a letter from Miss Hume. This letter announced that Miss Hume had become engaged to be married to James Answell, the prisoner at the bar, whom she had met at the home of her friends.

'You will hear that, on receiving the news, the deceased was at first well pleased. He expressed himself in terms of the warmest approval. He wrote a letter of congratulation to Miss Hume; and conducted at least one telephone conversation with her on the subject. You might think that he had reason to be satisfied, considering the prisoner's prospects. But I must draw your attention to the sequel. At some time between December 31st and January 4th, the deceased's attitude towards this marriage (and towards the prisoner) underwent a sudden and complete change.

'Members of the jury - when this change occurred, or why, the Crown do not attempt to say. But the Crown will ask you to consider whether or not such a change had any effect on the prisoner at the bar. You will hear that on the morning of Saturday, January 4th, the deceased received another letter from Miss Hume. This letter stated that the prisoner would be in London on that day. Mr Hume lost little time in communicating with the prisoner. At 1.30 on Saturday afternoon he telephoned to the prisoner at the latter's flat in Duke Street. The deceased's words were overheard on this occasion by two witnesses. You will hear in what terms, and with what acerbity, he spoke to the prisoner. You will hear that, as the deceased replaced the receiver of the telephone, he said aloud: 'My dear Answell, I'll settle your hash, damn you."

Sir Walter Storm paused.

He spoke the words unemotionally, consulting his papers as though to make sure of having them right. A number of people glanced automatically at the prisoner, who was now sitting down in the dock with a warder sitting on either side of him. The prisoner, I thought, seemed to have been prepared for this.

'In the course of this telephone conversation, the deceased asked the prisoner to come to his house in Grosvenor Street at six o'clock that evening. Later, as you will hear, he told the butler that he was expecting at six a visitor who (in his own words) "might give some trouble, for he is not to be trusted".

'At about 5.15 the deceased retired to his study, or office, at the rear of the house. I must explain to you that - during this long term of service with the bank - he had constructed for himself a private office at home suited to his needs. You will see that there are only three entrances to this room: a door and two windows. The door was a heavy and tight-fitting one, fastened on the inside with a bolt. There was not even a keyhole: the door being fastened on the outside with a Yale lock. Each of the windows could be covered with folding steel shutters, which, as you will hear, were of a burglar-proof variety. Here the deceased had been accustomed to keep such valuable documents or letters as he had once been obliged to bring home with him. But for several years this study had not been used as a "strong-room"; and the deceased had not considered it necessary to lock up the room either with door or with shutters.

'Instead, he kept there only his "trophies". This, members of the jury, refers to the fact that the deceased had been a keen follower of the pastime of archery. He was a member of the Royal Toxophilite Society and of the Woodmen of Kent, societies which exist for the furtherance of this good old sport. On the wall of his study hung some prizes of the annual matches of the Woodmen of Kent. These consisted of three arrows - inscribed respectively with the dates on which they had been won, 1928, 1932, 1934 - and a bronze medal presented by the Woodmen of Kent for a record number of points, or hits, in 1934-

'With this background, then; the deceased went into his study at about 5.15 on the evening of January 4th. Now mark what follows. At this time the deceased called to Dyer, the butler, and instructed him to close and lock the shutters. Dyer said: "The shutters?" - expressing surprise, since this had not been done since the deceased had

left off using the room as an office. The deceased said: "Do as I tell you; do you think I want Fleming to see that fool making trouble?"

'You will hear that this referred to Mr Randolph Fleming, a fellow archery-enthusiast and a friend of the deceased, who lived next door: in fact, in the house across the narrow paved passage outside the study windows. Dyer followed the deceased's instruction, and securely barred the shutters. It is worthy of note that the two sash-windows were also locked on the inside. Dyer, making sure that everything was in order in the room, then observed on a sideboard a decanter full to the stopper of whisky, an unused syphon of soda-water, and four clean -tumblers. Dyer left the room.

'At 6.10 o'clock the prisoner arrived. You will hear evidence which will enable you to decide whether he was or was not in an extremely agitated frame of mind. He then refused to remove his overcoat, and asked to be taken at once to Mr Hume. Dyer took him to the study and then left the room, closing the door.

'At about 6.18 Dyer, who had remained in the little passage outside the door, heard the prisoner say: "I did not come here to kill anyone unless it- becomes absolutely necessary." Some minutes later he heard Mr Hume cry out, "Man, what is wrong with you? Have you gone mad?" And he heard certain noises which will be described to you.'

This time the Attorney-General's pause was of the slightest. Sir Walter Storm was warming up: though he remained fluently impersonal, and still read out quotations with the same painstaking articulation. His only gesture was to move his forefinger slowly at the jury at each word he read. Sir Walter is a tall man, and the sleeve of his black gown flapped a little:

'At this point, members of the jury, Dyer knocked at the door and asked whether anything was wrong. His employer replied: "No, I can deal with this; go away" - which he did.

'At 6.30 Miss Amelia Jordan came downstairs, on her way out of the house, and went to the study. She was about to knock at the door when she heard the voice of the prisoner say: "Get up I Get up, damn you!" Miss Jordan tried the knob of the door, and found that it was bolted on the inside. She then ran down the passage, meeting Dyer who was just coming into it. She said to him: "They are fighting; they are killing each other; go and stop them." Dyer said that it might be better to get a policeman. Miss Jordan then said: "You are a coward; run next door and fetch Mr Fleming." Dyer suggested that Miss Jordan had better not be left alone in the house at that moment, and that she herself had better go after Mr Fleming.

'This she did, finding Mr Fleming just leaving his house to go out. Mr Fleming returned with her. They found Dyer returning from the kitchen with a poker, and all three went to the study door. Dyer knocked; after a minute they heard a noise which they correctly believed to be that of the bolt being slowly withdrawn from its socket on the other side of the door. I say "correctly", members of the jury. That the bolt was indeed withdrawn at this moment, and that it was a stiffly working bolt which required some effort to draw, has repeatedly been acknowledged by the prisoner himself.

'The prisoner opened the door a few inches. On seeing them, he opened it fully, and said: "All right; you may as well come in."

'You may or may not think the remark a callous one under the circumstances. The circumstances were that Mr Hume was lying on the floor between the window and the desk, in a position you will hear described. An arrow had been driven into his chest, and remained upright in the body. You will hear that arrow identified as one which, when deceased was last seen alive in the company of the prisoner alone, had been hanging on the wall of the study: this, indeed, has been acknowledged by the prisoner himself.

'With regard to this arrow, we shall demonstrate by medical evidence that it had been driven into the body with such force and direction that it penetrated the heart and caused instantaneous death.

'You will hear, on the testimony of expert witnesses, that this arrow could not possibly have been shot or fired - as, that is to say, one might discharge it from a bow - but that it must have been used as a hand-weapon, as one might use a knife.

'You will hear from police officers that there was on this arrow (which had been hanging for some years against the wall) a coating of dust. This dust had been disturbed at only one place, where there were found clear finger-prints.

'You will hear, finally, that these finger-prints were those of the prisoner at the bar.

'Now, what happens when the prisoner opens the door of the study to Miss Jordan, Mr Fleming, and the butler? He is alone in the room with the dead man, as they establish. Mr Fleming says to him: "Who did it?" The prisoner replied: "I suppose you will say I did it." Mr Fleming says: "Well, you have finished him, then; we had better send for the police." Still, they proceed to examine the room: discovering the steel shutters still barred on the inside, and the sash-windows locked on the inside as well. The prisoner, it will be our course to demonstrate to you, has been found alone with a murdered man in a room rendered inaccessible in this fashion; and nowhere, we may say literally, can there be shown a crack or crevice for the entrance or exit of any other person. During the time that Mr Fleming searched the room, the prisoner sat in a chair with what was apparently complete calm (but you must hear this from the witnesses) and smoked a cigarette.'

Someone coughed.

It was an inadvertent cough, since every face in the court wore a strain of gravity; but it caused a stir. How most of the people had taken all this I could not tell. Still, such things have an atmosphere; and this atmosphere was sinister. Behind us in the seats of the City Lands Corporation were two women. One was good-looking and wore a leopard-skin coat; the other was plain, not to say ugly, and made up her aristocratic face several times. It is only fair to admit that they did not shift round or laugh or make their voices carry; the metallic whispers reached only us.

Leopard-Skin said: 'Do you know, I met him at a cocktail party once. I say, isn't it frightfully exciting? Just think, in three weeks he'll be hanged.'

Plain-Face said: 'Do you find it amusing, darling? I do wish they would give one a comfortable place to sit.'

Sir Walter Storm leaned against the back of the bench, spreading out his arms along it, and contemplated the jury.

'Now, members of the jury, just what does the prisoner himself have to say to all this? How does he explain the fact that he, and he alone, could have been with the deceased when Mr Hume died? How does he explain the presence of his finger-prints on the weapon? How does he explain (a fact which will further be presented to you) that he went to that house armed with a pistol? You will hear in detail the various remarks he made to Mr Fleming, to Dyer, and to Dr Spencer Hume, who arrived shortly after the discovery of the body.

'But most of these remarks are contained in the statement he made to Divisional Detective-Inspector Mottram at 12.15 a.m. on January 5th. The prisoner accompanied Inspector Mottram and Sergeant Raye to Dover Street, where he voluntarily made the statement which I now propose to read to you. He said:

'I make this statement voluntarily and of my own free will, having been told that anything I say will be taken down in writing and may be used as evidence.

'I wish to clear myself. I am absolutely innocent. I arrived in London at 10.45 this morning. The deceased knew I was coining, since my fiancée had written to him saying that I would take the nine o'clock train from Frawnend, in Sussex. At 1.30 Mr Hume rang me up on the telephone, and asked me to come to his house at six o'clock. He said he wished to settle matters concerning his daughter. I went to his house at 6.10. He greeted me with complete friendliness. We spent a few minutes talking about archery, and I then noticed the three arrows hanging on the wall. He said that you could kill a man with one of those arrows. I said, meaning it as a joke, that I had not come there to kill anybody unless it became absolutely necessary. At this time I am certain that the door was not bolted, and I did not have any kind of weapon on my person.

'I told him I wished to marry Miss Hume, and asked his consent. He asked me if I would have a drink, and I said I would. He poured out two glasses of whisky and soda, giving me one and taking the other himself. Then he said that he would drink my health, and he gave his full consent to my marriage with Miss Hume.'

Sir Walter lifted his eyes from the paper. For what seemed a long time he remained looking steadily at the jury. We could not see his face; but the back of his wig was eloquent.

'The Crown will indeed ask you to believe that the deceased invited him there to "settle matters concerning his daughter". You will have to decide whether you think this statement reasonable, or probable, on the face of it. He goes there, they fall to talking of archery as soon as the prisoner enters the room, and Mr Hume in the friendliest possible manner announces that you could kill a man with one of those arrows. You may think this extraordinary conduct, although it allows the prisoner to make his joke about murder. You may think it still more extraordinary that the deceased, having expressed before other witnesses such sentiments towards the prisoner as you will hear, should drink success to the prisoner and approval to the marriage. But what follows?

'I had drunk about half of the whisky and soda when I felt my head going round, and I knew I must be losing consciousness. I tried to speak, but could not. I knew a drug must have been put into that drink, but I felt myself falling forward, and the last thing I remember is Mr Hume saying: "What is wrong with you? Have you gone mad?"

'When I came to myself again I was sitting in the same chair, though I believe I had fallen out of it before. I felt ill. I looked at my watch, and saw it was half-past six. Then I noticed Mr Hume's foot on the other side of the desk. He was lying there dead, just as you saw him. I called to him to get up. I could not think what had happened. I went round the room, noticing that one of the arrows had been taken off the wall. I tried the door and found it was bolted on the inside. I also examined the shutters, and they were locked as well. It occurred to me that possibly I might be suspected of having killed him, so I went to look for the glasses of whisky that Mr Hume had poured out. I could not find them. The decanter of whisky was full again on the sideboard, and the syphon of soda did not seem to have been used. There were four clean glasses: but two of them may have been the glasses we used; I don't know.

'A short time after this I went over and looked at the door again. I then noticed that dust on my hand, as you called my attention to it later. I went back and looked at the arrow. While I was doing so, someone knocked at the door; and I saw there was nothing else to do, so I opened it. The big man you call Fleming came charging in, and the servant behind him carrying a poker, and Miss Jordan hanging about the doorway. That is all I can tell you. I never touched that arrow at any time.'

There was a rustle as Sir Walter flipped over the flimsy, typewritten sheets, and put them down. That rustle went through the court.

Leopard-Skin whispered: 'Why, he's as mad as a hatter.'

Plain-Face said: 'Do you really think so. darling? How terribly naive of you. That's what he wants them to think, I dare say.'

'Ss- t!'

'Members of the jury,' continued Sir Walter, spreading out his hands with a gesture of magnanimity and even perplexity, 'I shall not offer to comment on that statement, nor on such physical evidence as will be outlined by the witnesses and the police officers. What explanation can be made for these extraordinary statements, what interpretation will be placed on them by the prisoner or by my learned friend, it is not within my province to say. The contention of the Crown is that this man, finding in Avory Hume an angry, unexpected, and determined opposition to a cherished project, quarrelled with him and brutally killed an old man who had done him no harm.

'In conclusion, I need remind you only of this: The matter before you is to determine whether or not the evidence which the Crown will lay before you supports the charge of murder. That is your painful task, and your only task. If you think that the Crown have not proved their case beyond any reasonable doubt, you will have no hesitation in doing your duty. I tell you quite frankly that the Crown can supply no reason for the victim's sudden antagonism towards the prisoner. But that, I shall submit, is not the point at issue: The point at issue is what effect this antagonism had on the prisoner. The antagonism itself is a fact, and you may think a starting-point in the chain of facts we shall lay before you. If, therefore, you think that the case for the Crown has been fairly proved, you will not allow a weakness of character on the part of the prisoner to be turned into a strange link for his defence; and you must have no hesitation in condemning him to the extreme penalty of the law.'

2

'Look at Photograph Number 5'

THE Attorney-General sat down with some rustling, and a glass of water was handed up to him from the solicitors' table below. An officer of the court, who had been tiptoeing past the jury-box with his back bent down so as not to obscure the jury's view of counsel, straightened up. Mr Huntley Lawton, Sir Walter's junior, rose to his feet to examine the first witnesses.

The first two were official, and were speedily out of the box. Harry Martin Coombe, an official photographer, testified to certain photographs taken in connection with the crime. Lester George Franklin, surveyor to the Borough of Westminster, gave evidence as to his survey of the house, is Grosvenor Street, and produced plans of the house. Copies of all these were given to each member of the jury. Mr Huntley Lawton, whose manner had an innocent pomposity which seemed to go out into a beak of a nose, detained the latter witness.

'I believe that on January 5th, last, at the request of Detective-Inspector Mottram, you made an examination of the room called the study at Number is Grosvenor Street?’

‘I did.'

'Did you find any means of entrance or exit in that room except the door and the windows? That is to say, was there anything in the nature of a hidden entrance?'

'There was not.'

The walls were, in fact, homogeneous?' Silence.

The little judge looked round slightly. 'Counsel asks you,' said Mr Justice Rankin, 'whether there were any holes in the walls.' It was a soft, even voice: and you awoke to several things. You suddenly became aware of a sort of concentrated common sense, whittling down all things to their real values. You also became aware of absolute mastery, which the whole court felt. The judge, sitting perched out on the edge of his tall chair, kept his head round until the witness said: 'Holes, my lord? No holes'; then he blinked at Mr Lawton with some curiosity; and then the pen in his plump hand continued to travel steadily over his notebook.

'There was not,' pursued counsel, murmuring a formula, 'even a crevice large enough to admit the shaft of an arrow?'

'No, sir. Nothing of the kind.'

'Thank you.'

There was no cross-examination; H.M. only shook his head and humped the shoulders of his gown. He was sitting down there in the same immobile fashion, and you might hope that he was not glaring in his usual malevolent way at the jury.

'Call Amelia Jordan.'

They brought Miss Jordan into the witness-box, that narrow roofed-over cubicle which stands in the right angle between the jury-box and the judge's bench. Ordinarily she must have been a calm and competent woman. But she stumbled in going up the steps to the box, and was on the edge of a bad state of nerves when she took the oath. Whether nerves caused this stumble, or the stumble itself caused the nerves, we could not tell: but she flushed a dull colour. Also, she had manifestly been ill. Amelia Jordan was in her early or middle forties. She had the remains of solid, easy good looks shrivelled a little from their pleasantness by illness, but not detracted from by those stream-lined chromium spectacles which contrive to suggest that no spectacles are there at all. She had no-nonsense brown hair and no-nonsense blue eyes. Her clothes caused favourable comment from the two women behind us. She was wearing black, I remember, with a black hat whose brim had a peak like a cap.

'Your name is Flora Amelia Jordan?' ‘Yes.'

The reply came out in a quick throat-clearing, of her voice trying to find its proper level. Without looking at the judge or the jury on either side of her, she fixed her eyes on the soothing figure of Mr Huntley Lawton, who was putting forth his fullest personality.

'You were Mr Hume's confidential secretary?'

'Yes. That is - no, I have not been his secretary for a long time. I mean, he had no use for a secretary after he left - That is, I kept house for him. It was better than having a paid housekeeper.'

'My lord and the jury quite understand,' said counsel, with a gentle heartiness. Her last words had come out in a rush, and he was even more soothing. 'You were a sort of relation, I take it?'

'No, no, we were not related. We -'

'We quite understand, Miss Jordan. How long had you been with him?'

'Fourteen years.'

'You knew him intimately?'

'Oh, yes, very.'

The first part of Miss Jordan's examination was taken up with producing and proving two letters dealing with Mary Hume's engagement, one from the girl to her father, and one from her father to her. The first of these Miss Jordan had seen; the second, she explained, she had helped to write. Characters emerged. To judge by her letter, Mary Hume was impulsive, flighty, and a little incoherent, just as you would have imagined from the photograph of the blonde with wide-set eyes which had adorned the Daily Express that morning; but with a streak of strong practicality in her nature. Avory Hume showed himself as kindly and cautious, with a taste for preaching in pedantic terms. Above all, one idea seemed to delight him. 'I trust I do not anticipate the future too many years when I say that I am certain I shall one day have a grandson -'

(At this moment the man in the dock went as white as a ghost.)

'- and I am so certain of this, my dear daughter, that I mean to leave everything I have in trust for the son I know you will have; and .1 am certain that I can look forward to many years of a happy life in the company of all of you.'

There was some uneasy coughing. Answell in the dock sat with his head inclined a little forward, regarding his hands on his knees. Mr Huntley Lawton continued the examination of Amelia Jordan.

'Do you recall any particular comments Mr Hume made on the engagement in general?'

'Yes, he kept saying: "This is a very satisfactory business, I could not wish for anything better." I always said: "But do you know anything about Mr Answell?" He said: "Yes, he is a fine young man; I knew his mother, and she was very sound." Or words to that effect.'

'In other words, he regarded the prospect of the marriage as definitely settled?'

'Well, we thought so.'

'We?'

'The doctor and I. Dr Spencer Hume. At least I thought so; I can't speak for anyone else.'

'Now, Miss Jordan,' said counsel, and paused. 'Between December 31st and January 4th, did you observe any change in Mr Hume's attitude?'

'Yes, I did.'

'When did you first observe a change?'

'On that Saturday morning, the Saturday he died.'

'Will you tell us what you observed?'

She was calm enough now, under Mr Lawton's hypnotic manner. She spoke in a low but quite audible voice. At first she did not know what to do with her hands: putting them on and off the rail of the dock, and finally clasping them determinedly on the rail. When she spoke of the letter she had helped to write, her eyes had a dry and sanded look; she was keeping back tears with difficulty,

'It was like this,'-she began. 'On the Friday it had been arranged that Dr Spencer Hume and I should go down and spend the week-end with Mary's friends in Sussex. It was to congratulate Mary in person, really. We were to drive down; but we could not start until late Saturday afternoon, because Dr Hume is attached to the staff of St Praed's hospital, and could not get away until late. On Friday evening Mary rang up her father on the telephone from Sussex, and I told her about it. I must tell you all this because -'

Counsel urged her along gently. 'Was Mr Avory Hume to go with you and the doctor on this week-end?

'No, he could not. He had some business to do on Sunday, I think it was Presbyterian Church accounts or the like; and he could not. But he said to give everyone his regards, and we were going to bring Mary back with us.'

‘I see. And on Saturday morning, Miss Jordan?'

'On Saturday morning,' answered the witness, pouring out what had been on her mind for a long time, 'at the breakfast-table, there was a letter from Mary. I knew it was from Mary because of the handwriting. And I wondered why she had written, because she had talked to her father last night.'

‘What has become of that letter?'

'I don't know. We looked for it afterwards, but we could not find it anywhere.'

'Just tell us what Mr Hume did or said.'

'After he had read it, he got up rather quickly, and put the letter in his pocket, and walked over to the window.'

'Yes?'

T said: "Is anything wrong?" He said: "Mary's fiancée has decided to come to town to-day, and wants to see us." I said: "Oh, then we will not go to, Sussex after all" - meaning, of course, that we must meet Mr Answell, and entertain him to dinner. He turned round from the window and said: "Be good enough to do as you are told; you will go exactly as you had planned."'

'What was his manner when he said this?'

'Very cold and curt, which is a dangerous sign with him.'

‘I see. What happened then?'

'Well, I said: "But surely you will invite him to dinner?" He looked at me for a second and said: "We will not invite him to dinner, or anywhere else." Then he walked out of the room.'

Slowly counsel leaned back against the bench. The man in the dock looked up briefly.

'Now, Miss Jordan, I understand that about 1.30 on Saturday afternoon you were passing the door of the drawing-room in the hall?'

'Yes.'

'And you heard Mr Hume speaking through the telephone in the drawing-room?' ‘Yes.'

'Did you look into the room?'

'Yes. He was sitting over at the table between the windows, where the telephone is. He had his back to me.'

'Will you repeat, as nearly as you can, the exact words you heard him speak?'

The witness inclined her head calmly. 'He said: "Considering what I have heard, Mr Answell -"'

'You will swear to the words, "Considering what I have heard -?"

‘I will.'

'Go on, please.'

"Considering what I have heard, I think it best that we should settle matters concerning my daughter."

The judge turned his small eyes towards counsel and spoke in the same unhurried voice:

'Mr Lawton, do you propose to establish that it was the prisoner speaking at the other end of the telephone?'

'My lord, with your permission, we shall produce a witness who overheard both sides of the conversation on an extension of the telephone at the end of the hall; and will, I think, be willing to testify as to whether or not it was the prisoner's voice speaking.'

From the left side of the front bench issued a vast throat-clearing. It had an evil and war-hunting quality. Up rose H.M. leaning his knuckles on the desk. For some reason the tail of his wig seemed to stick up straight behind like a pigtail. His voice was the first human sound we had heard here.

'Me lord,' rumbled H.M., 'if it's goin' to save the court's time any, we're ready to admit that it was the prisoner speakin’. In fact, we're goin' to insist on it.'

After bows, and a curious feeling of wonder in the court, he thumped down. Under iron politeness the amusement among counsel communicated itself to Mr Lawton's grave bow.

'You may proceed, Mr Lawton,' said the judge.

Counsel turned to the witness. 'You have told us that the deceased said: "Considering what I have heard, Mr Answell, I think it best that we should settle matters concerning my daughter." What else did he say?'

'He said: "Yes, I quite appreciate that" - waiting, you see, as though the other person had said something in the meantime - "but this is not the place to discuss it. Can you arrange to call at my home?" Then: "Would six o'clock this evening be convenient?"'

'What was his tone when he said this?'

"Very curt and formal.'

'And what happened then?'

'He put up the receiver quite quietly, and looked at the phone for a moment, and then he said: "My dear Answell, I'll settle your hash, damn you."'

Pause.

'And how did he speak these words?' 'The same way he had spoken before, only more satisfied.'

'You gathered that he was talking to himself: that is to say, speaking his thoughts aloud?' 'Yes.'

Like most witnesses, when coming to tell a story or quoting actual words, she was on the defensive. She seemed to feel that each word she said might be picked up and used against her. Under the shadow of the black hat, with its brim like the peak of a cap, her faded good looks and fashionable glasses seemed to withdraw. If there is such a thing as a severely practical clinging-vine, it was Amelia Jordan. She had a singularly sweet voice, which gave even the mild expletive 'damn' a sound of incongruity.

"What did you do after you had heard this?'

'I went away quickly.' Hesitation. 'I was so - well, so shocked at all this sudden change, and the way he spoke about Mr Answell, that I did not know what to think; and I did not want him to see me.'

'Thank you.' Counsel reflected."Considering what I have heard" repeated Lawton, in a ruminative way, but with very distinct pronunciation. 'Was it your impression that Mr Hume had heard something against the prisoner which had caused him to change his mind so forcibly?'

The judge spoke without a muscle seeming to move in his face.

'Mr Lawton, I cannot allow that. Counsel has already stated that the Crown attempt to show no definite cause in this matter. You will therefore refrain from implying one.'

'Beg-lordship's-pardon,' said the other with hearty humility, and an immediate turn. 'I assure your lordship that it was far from my intention. Let me try again. Miss Jordan: should you describe Mr Hume as a man whose conduct was governed by whims?'

'No, of all people.'

'He was a reasonable man, influenced by reasons?' ‘Yes.'

'If (let us say) he thought John Smith an intelligent man on Monday, he would not think him a complete imbecile on Tuesday unless he had discovered some good reason for thinking, so?'

The judge's soft voice silenced every creak in the court.

'Mr Lawton, I must insist that you stop leading the witness.'

Counsel, in gentlemanly humility, muttered: 'If-yr-ludship-pleases,' and went on: 'Now, Miss Jordan, let us come to the evening of January 4th. At six o'clock on that evening, how many people (to your knowledge) were in the house?'

'There was Mr Hume, and Dyer, and myself.' 'Are there no other occupants?'

'Yes, Dr Hume and a cook and a maid. But the cook and the maid had the evening off. And I was to pick up Dr Hume in the car at St Praed's Hospital as near six-fifteen as I could, because we were driving straight down to Sussex from there -'

'Quite, Miss Jordan,' interposed counsel, smoothing away the volubility of nervousness. 'Where were you at about six-ten?'

'I was upstairs, packing up. Dr Hume had asked me whether I would put a few things into a suitcase for him, because he did not have time to come home from the hospital to get them; and I was packing my own valise -'

'Exactly; we quite understand. I believe that at about six-ten you heard the front-door bell ring?'

‘Yes.'

'What did you do?'

'I ran out to the stairs and looked over the banisters.'

'Did you see the prisoner come in?'

'Yes. I - I peeped through the lower part of the banisters,' said the witness, and flushed. She added: 'I wanted to see what he looked like.'

'Quite natural. Will you describe what happened?'

'Dyer opened the door. The - that man over there,' with a quick look, 'came in. He said his name was Answell, and that Mr Hume was expecting him. He dropped his hat on the floor. Dyer asked him for his hat and coat, and he said he preferred to keep his coat on.'

'He preferred to keep his overcoat on,' said counsel slowly. 'What was his demeanour then?'

'He spoke very angrily.'

'And after that?'

'Dyer took him down the hall, and round the bend of the little passage that goes to the study. He looked up at me as he went past. They went into the study, and that is all I saw. I went upstairs to finish packing. I did not know what to think.'

'Just tell us what you did, Miss Jordan; that will be sufficient. Let us go on to a few minutes before half-past six. Where were you then?'

'I put on my hat and coat and picked up the bags and came downstairs. Dyer had been told to bring the car round from the garage in Mount Street and put it at the door. I had been expecting him to call me, but when I came downstairs I could not find anyone. I went down to the study door to find out whether Mr Hume had any last messages or instructions before I left.'

'He had no "last messages", Miss Jordan,' commented Mr Lawton, with unscrupulous grimness. 'What did you do?'

'I was going to knock at the door when I heard someone behind it say: "Get up, damn you."' Again the word fell with some incongruity from her lips. She pronounced it self-consciously, as people do in public.

'Anything else?'

'Yes, I think it also said: "Get up off that floor and say something."' 'Was it a loud voice?' 'Rather loud.'

'Was it the prisoner's voice?'

'I know now it was. I hardly recognized it then. I associated it somehow with what I had heard Mr Hume say that morning -'

'Did you try the door?'

'Yes, for a second.'

'Was it bolted on the inside?'

'Well, I did not think about its being bolted then. It was locked somehow.' 'And then?'

'Just then Dyer came round the corner of the passage with his hat and overcoat. I ran to him and said: "They are fighting; they are killing each other; go and stop them." He said: "I will go for a constable." I said: "You are a coward; run next door and fetch Mr Fleming."' 'What were you doing then?'

‘I was dancing up and down, I think. He would not go; he said that I had better go in case anything happened, and with me alone in the house. So I did.'

'You found Mr Fleming quickly?'

'Yes, he was just coming down the steps of his house.'

'He returned to the house with you?'

'Yes, and we found Dyer coming from the back of the hall with a poker in his hand. Mr Fleming said: "What is happening?" Dyer said: "It is very quiet in there."'

'The three of you went to the study door, I understand?'

'Yes, and Dyer knocked. Then Mr Fleming knocked and hit harder.' 'And then?'

'Well, we heard steps, like, inside; and then someone started to draw the bolt.'

'You are positive that the door was then bolted, and that the bolt had to be withdrawn?'

'Yes, to judge by the sound of it. It worked about a bit, you know; and slid, and the door thumped a little.'

'How long a time should you say elapsed between the time of the knocking and the time the bolt was drawn?'

T don't know. Perhaps it was not very long, but it seemed like ages.'

'A full minute, should you say?'

'Maybe.'

'Please tell the jury what happened then.'

She did not tell the jury. She looked at her hands on the edge of the rail. 'The door opened a few inches, and someone looked out. I saw it was that man. Then he opened the door and said: "All right; you had better come in." Mr Fleming ran in, and Dyer walked after him.'

'Did you go into the room?'

"No, I stayed by the door.'

'Just say exactly what you saw.'

'I saw Avory lying beside the desk, on his back, with his feet towards me.'

'Have you seen these photographs?' He indicated. 'I think you nodded, Miss Jordan? Yes. Thank you. Just take that in your hand, if you will.'

-The yellow booklet was handed up to her.

'Look at photograph number 5, please. Is that how he was lying?'

'Yes. I think so.'

'Believe me, I deeply ... yes, you may hand it down. How near the body did you go?'

'No nearer than the door. They said he was dead.'

'Who said he was dead?'

'Mr Fleming, I think.'

'Do you recall anything the accused said?'

'I remember the first part of it. Mr Fleming asked him who did it, and the accused said: "I suppose you will say I did it." Mr Fleming said: "Well, you have finished him; we had better send for the police." I remember what I saw very well, but I cannot remember much of what I heard. I was not feeling quite right.'

"What was the accused's demeanour?'

'Very calm and collected, I thought, except that his neck-tie was hanging out over his overcoat.'

"What did the accused do when Mr Fleming spoke of sending for the police?'

'He sat down in a chair by the desk, and got a cigarette-case out of his inside pocket, and took out a cigarette and lighted it.'

Mr Huntley Lawton put the tips of his fingers on his desk, remained quiet for a moment, and then bent down to confer with his leader; but I thought that this was a conference for emphasis. The end of that recital was like coming up from under water: you could feel the air drawn into your lungs. At one time or another everyone in court, I think - except the judge - had glanced at the prisoner; but it was a quick and unpleasantly furtive look, which made you glance back from the dock again. Mr Justice Rankin finished making his neat notes, the pen travelling steadily; he looked up, and waited. The witness now had an air of feeling that she must remain in the box for ever, and of trying to prepare herself for that.

Mr Huntley Lawton had only one more thrust. A quick rustle, as of settling back, went through the court when he addressed the witness again.

'I believe, Miss Jordan, that soon after the discovery of the body you were sent in the car to bring back Dr Spencer Hume from St Praed's Hospital in Praed Street?'

'Yes, Mr Fleming took me by the shoulder and said to drive over there and get him quickly, because if he had an operation or anything they would not give him a message.'

'You are unable to tell us anything more of the subsequent events of that night?' 'No.'

'Is this because, on the way back from the hospital, you were taken ill with brain fever and were not able to leave your room for a month?'

'Yes.'

Counsel moved his hand over the white sheets of the brief. 'I ask you to consider carefully, Miss Jordan. Is there anything further you can tell us, anything at all, that you heard the accused say? Did he say anything when he sat down in the chair, and lighted his cigarette?'

'Yes, he answered something: a question or a statement, I think.'

'What was the question?'

'Someone said: "Are you made of stone?"'

'"Are you made of stone." And he answered?'

'He said: "Serve him right for doctoring my whisky."'

For a brief space of time counsel remained looking at her. Then he sat down.

Sir Henry Merrivaie rose to cross-examine for the defence.

III

'In the Little Dark Passage'

JUST what line the defence would take nobody could tell: there was a frail ghost in insanity or even manslaughter: but, knowing H.M., I could not believe he would try anything so half-hearted as that. It was possible that his first cross-examination might give some indication.

He rose majestically - an effect which was somewhat marred by the fact that his gown caught on something, probably himself. It tore with a ripping noise so exactly like a raspberry that for one terrible second I thought he had given one. He squared himself. However rusty his legal talents had become, it was in cross-examination, where leading questions are permitted and almost anything within reason may be brought up, that his usual rough-and-tumble tactics would be most deadly. But that was the trouble. This woman had won the sympathy of everyone, including the jury: to pitch into her would have been unwise. We need not have been uneasy. After one malevolent glance over his shoulder at the torn gown, showing the glasses pulled down on his broad nose, he addressed her as gently as Huntley Lawton - if a trifle more abruptly. His big voice put the witness and the court at ease. It was in a tone of sit-down-and-have-a-drink-and-let's-ta lk-th is-th i ng-over.

'Ma'am,' said H.M. off-handedly, 'do you believe Mr Hume heard something bad against the accused that made him change his mind all of a sudden?'

Silence.

'I don't know.'

'Still, though,' argued H.M., 'since my learned friend has sort of eased the question in, let's deal with it. As he said, if Mr Hume changed his mind, it must 'a' been because he learned something from someone, mustn't it?'

'I should certainly have thought so.'

'Yes. And, conversely, if he hadn't heard anything, he wouldn't have changed his mind?'

'I suppose not. No, certainly not.'

'Now, ma'am,' pursued H.M. in the same argumentative way, 'he seemed to be in the best of spirits on Friday evening, when he arranged for you and Dr Hume to go to Sussex next day? Hey?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Did he go out of the house that night?' 'No.'

'Receive any visitors?' 'No.'

'Did he get any letters, phone calls, messages of any kind?'

'No. Oh, except Mary's telephone-call in the evening. I answered the phone and talked to her for a minute or two; and then he came to the phone; but I don't know what he said.'

'And at breakfast next mornin', how many letters did he get?'

'Just that one, with Mary's writing.'

'Uh-huh. Consequently, if he heard anything against the accused, he might have heard it from his own daughter?'

There was a slight stir. Sir Walter Storm made as if to rise; but instead fell to conferring with Huntley Lawton.

'Well, I - I don't know. How can I?'

'Still, it definitely was after readin' that letter that he seemed to show his first tearin' antagonism towards the accused, wasn't it?'

‘Yes.'

'The whole thing seemed to start then and there?'

'From what I saw of it, I thought so.'

'Yes. Now, ma'am, suppose I told you that in that letter there wasn't one word about the accused except the fact that he was comin' to town?'

The witness touched her glasses. ‘I don't know what I am supposed to answer.'

'Because I do tell you that, ma'am. We've got that letter right here, and at the proper time we're goin' to produce it. So if I tell you there's nothin' in it about the accused except the bare fact that he meant to come to town, does it alter your view of Mr Hume's conduct?'

Without waiting for a reply H.M. sat down.

He left a much-puzzled court. He had not upset, or tried to upset, one thing in the witness's story; but he left a feeling that there was something in the wind. I expected Mr Lawton to re-examine; but it was Sir Walter Storm who rose.

'Call Herbert William Dyer.'

Miss Jordan left the box, and Dyer stepped gravely into it. It was evident from the first that he would make a good and convincing witness, as he did. Dyer was a quiet man in the late fifties, his head covered with close-cut greyish hair, his manner attentive. As though making concessions both to private life and to his employment, he wore a short black coat and striped trousers: instead of a wing collar, he had an ordinary stiff one with a dark tie. The man oozed respectability, without doing so offensively. As he passed between the jury-box and the solicitors' table, I noticed that he made a grave sign of recognition which was neither a bow nor a nod to a light-haired young man who was sitting at the table. Dyer took the oath in a quite audible voice. He stood with his chin a little tilted up, his hands hanging down easily at his sides.

Sir Walter Storm's heavy voice contrasted with the sharp and pushing tones of Huntley Lawton.

'Your name is Herbert William Dyer, and you were for five and a half years in the service of Mr Hume?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Before that I understand that you were for eleven years in the employ of the late Lord Senlac, and at his death you were left a legacy for faithful service?'

'That is so, sir.'

'During the war you served with the 14th Middlesex Rifles, and were awarded the D.C.M. in 1917?' 'Yes, sir.'

First of all he corroborated Miss Jordan's story about the telephone-call to the accused. There was, he explained, a telephone extension under the stairs at the rear of the hallway. He had been instructed to ring up the Pyrenees Garage to enquire about some repairs that were being done to Mr Hume's car, and to make sure the car would be ready for use that evening. At about one-thirty he went to the telephone, and heard the deceased speaking on the other wire. The deceased had asked for Regent 0055, had asked to speak to the prisoner, and a voice which Dyer could identify as the prisoner's replied: "This is he speaking." Making sure that the connection was established, Dyer had then replaced the receiver and gone down in the direction of the drawing-room. Passing the door, he had heard the rest of the conversation described by the first witness. He had also overheard the unfortunate soliloquy.

'When did Mr Hume next refer to this subject?'

'Almost as soon as he had finished telephoning. I went into the drawing-room, and he said: "I am expecting a visitor at six o'clock this evening. He may give some trouble, for he is not to be trusted."'

'What did you say to this?'

‘I said: "Yes, sir."'

'And when was the next occasion on which you heard of it?'

'At about five-fifteen, or it may have been a few minutes later. Mr Hume called me into the study.' 'Describe what happened.'

'He was sitting at his desk, with a chess-board and pieces in front of him, working out a chess-problem. Without looking up from the board he told me to close and lock the shutters. I must have expressed surprise, without meaning to do so. He moved a piece on the board and replied: "Do as I tell you; do you think I want Fleming to see that young fool making trouble?"'

'Was it his custom to explain to you the reasons for his orders?'

'Never, sir,' answered the witness emphatically.

'I understand that the windows of Mr Randolph Fleming's dining-room face those of the study across a paved passage between the two houses?'

'That is. so.'

The Attorney-General made a sign. From under the witness-box there was produced the first of the two curious exhibits: the steel shutters themselves, fastened to the inside of a dummy window-frame with a sash window. Some excited whispering greeted them. They were constructed after the French style, like two small folding doors, except that there were no slits or openings in them; and across the centre ran a Bat steel bar with a handle. They were hoisted up for the inspection of the witness and the jury.

'We have here,' continued Sir Walter Storm imperturbably, 'the pair of shutters from the window marked A in the plan. They were set up by Inspector Mottram under the direction of Mr Dent of Messrs Dent & Sons, Cheapside, who fitted them to the windows originally. Will you tell me if that is one of the pairs of shutters you locked on Saturday evening?'

Dyer inspected the exhibit carefully, and took his time.

'Yes, sir, it is.'

'Will you now lock the shutters as you did on Saturday evening?

The bar, which was a little stiff, snapped into its socket with a bump and clang which had a grisly effect in that legal schoolroom. Dyer dusted his hands. More than a window was locked away with the movement of that bar. Behind us the girl in the leopard-skin coat whispered conversationally:

'I say; they draw a bolt, don't they, when the trap goes down on the gallows?'

Dyer pulled back the bar, satisfied. He dusted his hands again.

'Outside these shutters, I believe,' the Attorney-General went on, 'there were two sash-windows?' 'There were.'

'Were these also locked on the inside?' 'Yes, sir.'

'Very well. Now tell my lord and the jury what occurred after you had locked the shutters.'

'I went round to see that the room was in order.'

'At this time did you observe on the wall over the mantelpiece the three arrows which were accustomed to hang there?'

'I did.'

'Did the deceased say anything to you at this time?'

'Yes, sir. He asked me, still without looking up from the chess-board, whether we had enough drink on hand. I saw that there was a full decanter of whisky on the sideboard, a syphon of soda-water, and four glasses.'

'Look at this decanter here, and tell me whether it is the same one you saw on the sideboard at about five-fifteen on Saturday evening?'

'It is the same one,' answered the witness. 'I bought it myself, at Mr Hume's order, from Hartley's in Regent Street. I believe it is a very expensive cut-glass decanter.'

'Did he say anything else to you at this time?'

'He remarked that he was expecting Mr Fleming there that night to play chess, and that we must always have a suitable amount to drink ready when Mr Fleming came. I understood him to be speaking in the way of a joke.'

'At ten minutes past six, then, you let the prisoner in at the front door?'

Dyer's account of this substantiated the first witness's. Then it grew dangerous.

'I took the prisoner to Mr Hume's study. They did not shake hands. Mr Hume said to me: "That is all; you may go; go and see whether the car is ready." I went out and closed the door. At that time Mr Hume was sitting behind his desk, and the prisoner in a chair in front of it I do not remember hearing anyone bolt the door after I had gone out I was not exactly alarmed, but I was uneasy. Finally I went back and listened.'

It is these shorn words of the court-room which seem to me most powerful. We seemed to see Dyer standing in the little dark passage outside the door. There was not much light in the passage even by day, he explained. At one end of it there was a door giving on the paved brick way between this house and Mr Fleming's, and there had formerly been a glass panel in this door; but Mr Hume's love of privacy had made him change that door for a solid one six months before. By night there was only the light from the main hall. Reduced to the form of a statement, Dyer's testimony would have run like this:

'I heard the prisoner say: "I did not come here to kill anyone unless it becomes absolutely necessary." I heard little of what Mr Hume said, because he usually spoke in a low tone. Presently Mr Hume began talking rather sharply, but I could not make out his words. At the end of it he suddenly said: "Man, what is wrong with you? Have you gone mad?" Then there was a sound which I took to be the sound of a scuffle. I tapped on the door, and called out to ask if anything was wrong. Mr Hume called out and told me to go away: he said he could deal with this. He spoke in a voice as though he were out of breath.

'But he had told me to go and get the car, and I did. I had to, or I should have lost my position. I put on my hat and overcoat, and went round to the Pyrenees Garage. It is about a three or four minutes' walk. They had not quite finished repairing the car, and said they had told us they intended to be even longer. I tried to hurry back, but there was a mist and this impeded me in driving. When I got back it was about six-thirty-two by the grandfather clock.

'Beyond the turning of the little passage that goes to the study, I met Miss Jordan. She said they were fighting, and asked me to stop them. There is not much light in the hall. Miss Jordan fell over a big suitcase belonging to Dr Spencer Hume; and when I said that it would' be more sensible to fetch a policeman, she kicked at me. I think she was crying.

'Then she went to get Mr Fleming, at my suggestion, while I procured a poker. All three of us went to the door. About a minute after we had knocked, the prisoner opened the door. There is absolutely no doubt that up to this time the door had been bolted on the inside.

'When the prisoner said: "All right; you had better come in," Mr Fleming and I did so. I went at once to Mr Hume, who was lying as he is in that photograph. The arrow you show me was protruding from his chest. I did not feel his heart, because I did not wish to get blood all over my hand; but I felt his pulse, and he was dead.

'There was no person hiding in the room. I went immediately and looked at the shutters, calling Mr Fleming's attention to them as I did so. The reason was that even then I could not associate a thing like this with a gentleman such as I had heard the prisoner to be. Both the shutters were still barred, and the windows locked behind them.'

Other eyes, other opera-glasses. The Attorney-General took him over confirmation of Miss Jordan's account.

'Now, Dyer, when mention was made of bringing in the police, did the prisoner say anything?'

'He said: "Yes, I suppose we had better get it over with."'

'Did you make any comment on this?'

'Yes, sir. I know I should not have spoken, but I could not help myself. He was sitting in that chair with one leg thrown over the arm of the chair as though he owned it, and lighting a cigarette. I said: "Are you made of stone?"'

"What reply did he make to this?'

'He replied: "Serve him right for drugging my whisky."'

'What did you make of that?'

'I did not know what to make of it, sir. I looked over at the sideboard and said: "What whisky?" He pointed his cigarette at me and said: "Now listen. When I came in here he gave me a whisky-and-soda. There was something in it, a drug. It knocked me out and someone came in and killed him. This is a frame-up, and you know it."'

'Did you go over and look at the sideboard?'

For the first time the witness put his hands on the rail of the box.

'I did. The decanter of whisky was just as full as when I had left it, and the syphon of soda was also full: there was the little paper fastener still over the nozzle. The glasses gave no sign of being used.'

'Did the accused exhibit any sign or symptom which led you to think he had been under the influence of a drug?'

Dyer frowned.

'Well, sir, I cannot say as to that.' He raised eyes of candour; he violated the rules, he was instantly corrected for it, and he drove a long nail into the scaffold of James Answell. 'But,' said Dyer, 'I overheard your police-doctor say the accused had not taken any drug at all.'

IV

'Either There is a Window, or There Isn't'

AT shortly past one o'clock, when the court adjourned for lunch, Evelyn and I went downstairs gloomily. The Old Bailey, full of those shuffling echoes which are thrown back from marble or tile, was crowded. We got into the centre of a crush converging at the head of the stairs to the Central Hall.

I voiced a mutual view. 'Though why the blazes we should feel so much prejudiced in his favour I don't know, unless it's because H.M. is defending him. Or unless it's because he looks so absolutely right: that is, he looks as though he'd lend you a tenner if you needed it, and stand by you if you got into trouble. The trouble is, they all look guilty in the dock. If they're calm, it's a bad sign. If they're wild, it's a still worse sign. This may be due to our rooted and damnable national belief that if they weren't guilty they probably wouldn't be in the dock at all.'

'H'm,' said my wife, her face wearing that concentrated expression which betokens wild ideas. 'I've been think-ing ..."

'It's inadvisable.'

'Yes, I know. But do you know, Ken, while they were stringing out'all that evidence, I kept thinking that nobody could possibly be as loony as that chap seems to be unless he were innocent. But then along came that business of his having taken no sleeping-drug at all. If they can prove that by medical evidence ... well... unless H.M. will try to prove insanity after all.'

What H.M. wished to prove was not apparent. He had subjected Dyer to a singularly long and singularly uninspired cross-examination, directed chiefly to proving that on the day of the murder Hume had been attempting to get in touch with Answell by telephone as early as nine o'clock in the morning. H.M.'s one good point concerned the arrow with which the crime had been committed, and even this was left enigmatic. H.M. called attention to the fact that half of the blue feather attached to it had been broken off. Was that feather intact when Dyer had seen the arrow on the wall before the crime? Oh, yes. Sure? Positive. But the piece of feather was missing when they discovered the body? Yes. Did they find the other half anywhere in the room? No; they had searched as a matter of form, but they could not find it.

H.M.'s last attack was still more obscure. Were the three arrows hung flat against the wall? Not all of them, Dyer replied. The two arrows making the sides of the triangle lay flat on the wall; but the base of it, crossing the other two, had been set out on steel staples about a quarter of an inch.

'And all that,' Evelyn commented, 'H.M. asked as quietly as a lamb. I tell you, Ken, it's unnatural. He buttered up that little butler as though he were his own witness. I say, do you think we could see H.M.?'

'I doubt it. He'll probably be having lunch at the Bar Mess.'

At this point our attention was forcibly called. Who the man was (whether he was someone attached to the courts or an outsider with a thirst for imparting information) we never learned. With an effect like a Maskelyne illusion, a little man thrust himself out of the crowd and tapped me on the shoulder.

. 'Want to see two of the Ones in the Big Case?' he asked in a whisper. 'Just ahead of you! That there on the right is Dr Spencer Hume, and that there on the left is Reginald Answell, 'is cousin. They're right amongst us, and they'll 'ave to go downstairs together. Ss-t!'

Back went the head. By the convergence of the crowd on the big marble stairs, the two men he indicated were swept to a stiff march side by side. The bleak March light showed them not too favourably. Dr Hume was a middle-sized, rather tubby man with greying black hair parted and combed to such nicety on his round head that it gave the effect of a wheel. He turned his head sideways for a brief look; we saw a nose radiating self-confidence, and a gravely pursed-up mouth. He carried, incongruously, a top-hat, which he was trying to prevent being squashed.

His companion I recognized as the young man whom I had seen sitting at the solicitors' table, and to whom Dyer had given a sign of recognition. He was a good type; lean, with a fine carriage of the shoulders and sharply defined jaws. The tailor had done well by him, and he was absently hitting the edge of his hand on a bowler hat.

The two took a quick look at each other, and descended with that shuffle-fall which is the march of the Old Bailey. They decided to notice each other's presence. I wondered whether the atmosphere would be hostile; but, as they spoke, they appeared to decide. The atmosphere between them, palpable and sticky as glue, was hypocrisy.

Reginald Answell spoke in that tone exclusively reserved for funerals.

'How is Mary taking it?' he inquired in a hoarse whisper.

'Pretty badly, I'm afraid,' said the doctor, shaking his head. 'Too bad!' 'Yes, unfortunately.' They descended another step.

'I didn't see her in court,' observed Reginald out of the side of his mouth. 'Are they calling her as a witness?'

'The prosecution aren't,' said Dr Hume in a curious tone. He looked sideways. 'And I notice they're not calling you?'

'Oh, no. I'm not concerned in it. The defence aren't calling me either. I couldn't do him any good. I only got to the house after he - you know, fainted. Poor old Jim. I thought he was made of stronger stuff than that, big as he is. Mad as a coot, of course.'

'Believe me, I quite appreciate that,' murmured Dr

Hume, looking quickly over his shoulder; 'and I myself should have been only too willing to testify - but there seems to be some doubt on the part of the Crown, and he himself, you know, says -' He stopped. 'No hard feelings?'

'No. Oh, no. There is insanity in the family, you know.'

They descended nearly the whole flight.

'Nothing much, of course. Only like a touch of the tar-brush a few generations back. I wonder what he's eating?'

The doctor was sententious. 'Ah, that's difficult to say. I expect "'He's drinking bitter beer alone,' the colour-sergeant said."'

'Why the hell,' asked the other quietly, 'do you bring up the army?'

They stopped.

'My dear fellow, it was only in a manner of speaking! Besides, I didn't know you were any longer concerned with the army,' Dr Hume told him, with an air of concern. They stopped under the great rotunda and dim mural paintings of the Central Hall; Dr Hume became gravely kind. 'Now let's face it. It's a sad business. I've lost a brother myself, you know. But there it is: the world must keep on, and men must work, and women must weep, as they say. So the most sensible thing to do is to get this unpleasant matter off our minds and forget it as soon as possible, eh? Good-bye, captain. I'd better not be seen shaking hands with you; it wouldn't look seemly, under the circumstances.'

He bustled off.

For they've done with Danny Deever;

you can hear the Dead March play;

The regiment's in column, and they're marching them away -

There is something about the atmosphere of this place which impels people to moralize in just the way those lines were going through my head. It was dispelled in a moment by the surprising and welcome spectacle of Lolly-pop, H.M.'s blonde secretary, pushing her way through the crowd towards us. Evelyn was beginning to say: 'For God's sake, let's get out of here -' with her very attractive face flushed, when she stopped.

'Hooray!' said Evelyn, expelling her breath.

'It's H.M.,' said Lollypop, rather unnecessarily. 'He wants to see you.'

'Where is he? What's he doing?'

'At the moment,' said Lollypop doubtfully, 'I should think he was breaking furniture. That's what he said he was going to do when I saw him last. But by the time you arrive I expect he'll be eating his lunch. You're to go to the Milton's Head Tavern, Wood Street, Cheapside - just round the corner, it is. Oh, dear.'

H.M.'s extensive knowledge of obscure eating-houses is due to his extensive knowledge of obscure people. Everyone seems to know him, and the more disreputable the better. The Milton's Head, tucked up into a crazy little alley off Wood Street, looked as though it had not had its little-paned windows cleaned since the Great Fire. There was now a great fire burning in the tap-room against the raw March cold, and artificial geraniums in the windows emphasized that cold. We were directed upstairs to a private room, where H.M. sat behind an immense pewter tankard and a plate of lamb-chops. With a napkin tucked into his collar, he was chewing at the side of one lamb-chop in that fashion which popular film-tradition attributes to King Henry the Eighth.

'Ar,' said H.M., opening one eye.

I waited, to see which way the mood would go.

'Well,' growled H.M., only half-malevolently, 'I suppose you're not goin' to keep that door open all day? You want me to die of pneumonia?'

'In the past,' I said, 'you've got out of some almighty tight places in the face of evidence. Is it possible that you can get out of this one?'

H.M. put down the lamb-chop and opened his eyes wide. Over his wooden face crept an expression of amusement.

'Ho, ho,' he said. 'So they think they've got the old man licked already, hey?' 'Not necessarily. H.M., is this fellow guilty?' 'No,* said H.M. 'Can you prove it?'

'I dunno, son. I'm goin' to have a very good try. It depends on how much of my evidence they'll admit.'

There was no raising of defences. The old man was worried, and almost showed it.

'Who's instructing you in the case?'

He rubbed his hand across his big bald head, and looked sour. 'Solicitor? There's no solicitor.* Y'see, I'm the only feller who'd believe him. I got a fancy for lame dogs,' he added apologetically.

There was a silence.

'What's more, if you're lookin' for any dramatic last-minute eruption of the hidden witness bustin' into court and causing a row, get it out of your heads. You'd no more cause a row in Balmy Rankin's court than you'd find one on a chess-board. It's all goin' to be on the table all the time - and that's how I want it. One quiet move to another. Like chess. Or maybe like hunting. You remember

*As a rule, counsel for the defence may appear at the Old Bailey only on instructions from a solicitor. But there are two exceptions to this: 'legal aid' cases, and 'dock briefs'. In legal aid cases, counsel is appointed by the judge for a prisoner having no money to employ it. When no legal aid is granted, it becomes a 'dock brief', or 'docker'; the accused has the right to be defended by any counsel, sitting in robes in court, whom he may select. In Answell's case there was, of course, no question of a lack of money. But since Answell -as will appear - refused to have anything to do with anyone except H.M., it became technically a dock brief. I am told that this procedure, though unconventional, is strictly legal. The ordinary dock brief is one of the best features of the impartial Central Criminal Court. Any counsel, however eminent, must serve if selected; it is a point of honour that he must put his best efforts into the defence; and his fee must be - neither more nor less - £1 3s. 6d.

the way the lines swing in John Peel

"From a find to a check:

from a check to a view:

from a view to a kill in the morning."'

'Well, good luck to you.'

'You could help,' roared H.M. suddenly, wishing to get this off his chest. 'Help?'

'Now, shut up, dammit!' insisted H.M., before! could say anything. 'I'm not playing any games now, or gettin' you thrown into gaol. All I want you to do is take a message, which won't compromise you any, to one of my witnesses. I can't do it myself; and I've got a suspicion of telephones since I've heard what they've done in this business.'

'Which witness?'

'Mary Hume ... Here comes your soup, so eat and keep quiet.'

The food was excellent. At the end of it H.M.'s tension had relaxed, and he was in such a (comparative) good humour that he had fallen to grousing again. There was a good fire in the dingy grate: H.M., with his feet on the fender and a large cigar drawing well, broached the subject with a scowl.

'I'm not goin’ to discuss this business with anybody,' he said. 'But if there's anything about it you'd like to know that won't concern what the defence knows or has had the gumption to find out - meanin' me -'

'Yes,' said Evelyn. 'Why on earth did you have to bring this business to court? That is, of course, if you could show the police -'

'No,' said H.M. 'That's one of the questions you can't ask.'

He sniffed, staring at the fire.

'Well, then,' I suggested, 'if you say Answell isn't the murderer, have you got any explanation of how the real murderer got in and out of the room?'

'Burn me, I should hope so, son! Or what kind of a defence do you think I'd have?' asked H.M. plaintively.

'Do you think I'd be such an eternal blazin' fat-head as to go chargin' in without an alternative explanation? I say, it's a funny thing about that, too. It was the girl herself -this Mary Hume - who put the idea into my head when I was dead stumped. She's a nice gal. Well, I was sittin' and thinkin', and that didn't seem to do any good; and then she mentioned, that the one thing in prison Jim Answell hated most was the Judas Window. And that tore it, you see.'

'Did it? What's the Judas Window? Look here, you're not going to say there was any hocus-pocus about those steel shutters and locked doors, are you?'

'No.'

'What about the door, then? Are they right in saying that the door really was bolted on the inside; and that it was a good solid door,, so that the door couldn't be and wasn't tampered with in any way from the outside?'

'Sure. They're quite right in sayin' all that.'

We all took a drink of beer. '1 won't say it's impossible, because you have been known to pull it off before. But if this isn't some kind of technical evasion -?'

Some inner irony seemed to appeal to H.M.

'No, son. I mean exactly what 1 say. The door really was tight and solid and bolted; and the windows really were tight and solid and bolted. Nobody monkeyed with a fastening to lock or unlock either. Also, you heard the architect say there wasn't a chink or crevice or rat-.hole in the walls anywhere; also true. No, I'm tellin' you: the murderer got in and out through the Judas Window.'

Evelyn and I looked at each other. We both knew that H.M. was not merely making mysteries', he had discovered ·something new, and he turned it over and over in his mind with fascination. 'The Judas Window' had a sinister sound. It suggested all sorts of images without a definite one emerging. You seemed to see a shadowy figure peering sin; and that was all.

'But damn it,' I said, 'if all those circumstances are true, there can't be any such thing! Either there is a window or there isn't. Unless, again, you mean there was some peculiar feature in the construction of the room, which the architect didn't spot -?'

'No, son, that's the rummy part of it. The room is just like any other room. You've got a Judas Window in your own room at home; there's one in this room, and there's one in every court-room in the Old Bailey. The trouble is that so few people ever notice it.'

With some difficulty he hoisted himself to his feet. He went to the window, his cigar fuming, and scowled out at the clutter of roofs.

'But now -' continued H.M. soothingly. 'We got work to do. Ken, I want you to take a letter to Mary Hume in Grosvenor Street: Just get an answer yes or no, and come back straightaway. I want you to hear the afternoon sittin', because they're first going to put Randolph Fleming in the box, and I've got some very searchin' questions to put to him - about feathers. Fact is, if you will follow very closely the testimony that has been given and will be given in court, you'll see just where I want to get my witnesses, and why.'

'Any instructions?'

H.M. took the cigar out of his mouth and contemplated it. 'Well ... now. Considerin' that I don't want you to get into any trouble, no. Just say you're an associate of mine, and give the note I'll write for you to Mary Hume. If the little gal wants to talk about the case, go right ahead and talk, because your knowledge is pretty limited. If anyone else tackles you about it, let your tongue rattle freely, and it wouldn't do any harm to spread an atmosphere of mysterious disquiet. But don't mention the Judas window.'

It was all I could get out of him. He called for paper and an envelope; he scribbled a note at the table - and scaled it. The problem seemed to be one of words as well as facts, in those three words of the Judas window. When

I went downstairs I had a confused idea of thousands of houses and millions of rooms, piled into the rabbit warren of London: each respectable and lamp-lit in its long line of streets: and yet each containing a Judas window which only a murderer could see.

V

'Not an Ogre's Den'

THE taxi-driver who set me down before Number 12 Grosvenor Street eyed the house with interest. It was one of those narrow dun-coloured places in whose windows there are nowadays many To Let signs, set up from the street inside a little paved patch of yard with an iron railing round it. A narrow paved passage separated it from the house on the left. I went up the steps to the vestibule, out of a raw wind that was raking Grosvenor Street at the turn of the afternoon. The trim little maid who answered the door-bell began to close the door before the words were out of my mouth.

'Sorry-sir-can't-see-Miss-Hume-ill -'

"Will you tell her I have a message from Sir Henry Merrivale?'

The maid darted away, and the door wavered. She had neither invited me in nor closed it on me, so I went inside. In the hall a great grandfather clock looked at you with a no-nonsense air, and seemed to rustle rather than tick. By an agitation of draperies on an arch to the left you could follow the maid's flight. There was a slight throat-clearing inside, and Reginald Answell came out into the hall.

Seeing him now face to face, an earlier impression was confirmed. His long-jawed and saturnine good looks seemed to give him a darkish tinge which did not go well with his light hair. Under a long slope of forehead his eyes were a little sunken, but completely straightforward. Though subdued, he was not now bowed down by that thick humility-before-death he had shown on the stairs of the Old Bailey, and I judged that ordinarily he would be engaging enough.

'You're from Sir Henry Merrivale?' he asked.

'Yes.'

He lowered his voice and spoke with some intensity.

'Look here, old chap: Miss Hume is - not very well. I've just come round to see about it. I'm a - well, I'm a friend of the family, and certainly of hers. If you have any message, I could easily take it.'

'Sorry, but the message is for Miss Hume.'

He looked at me curiously, and then laughed. 'By gad, you lawyers are a suspicious lot! Look here, I really will give her the message, you know. This isn't an ogre's den or a -' He stopped.

'Still, I think it would be best to see her.'

At the rear of the hallway there was a sound of footsteps descending the stairs quickly. Mary Hume did not look ill. On the contrary, she looked strung up under a sort of hard docility which you could swear was assumed. The newspaper photograph had been surprisingly accurate. She had wide-spaced blue eyes, a short nose, and a plump chin: which features should not make for beauty, but in her they did. Her blonde hair was parted in the middle and drawn to a knot at the nape of the neck, but without an effect of curtness. She wore half-mourning, and displayed an engagement-ring.

'Did I hear you say you had a message from H.M.?' she asked without inflection.

'Miss Hume. Yes.'

Reginald Answell had begun to rummage in a hat-rack. His face appeared round the ring of hats with a smile of broad charm.

'Well, I'll be pushing off, Mary.'

'Thanks for everything,' she said.

'Oh, that's all right. Fair exchange,' he told her with jocularity. 'It's all agreed, though?'

'You know me, Reg.'

During this cryptic little exchange she had spoken in the same tone of affectionate docility. When he had nodded and gone out, closing the front door with considerable care, she took me to the room at the left. It was a quiet drawing-room, with a telephone on a table between the two windows, and a bright fire burning under the marble mantelpiece. She took the envelope, and went close to the fire to break the seal. When she had read the brief message inside, she dropped it carefully into the fire, turning her head from side to side to watch until each corner had burned. Then she looked back at me, and her eyes were shining.

'Just tell him yes,' she said. 'Yes, yes, yes! - No, please; just a moment; don't go. Were you in court this morning?'

'Yes.'

'Please sit down for a moment. Have a cigarette. In the box there.' She sat down on the broad low seat round the fender, and tucked one leg up under her. The firelight made her hair look more fluffy. 'Tell me, was it - pretty awful? How was he?'

And this time she did not refer to H.M. I said he was behaving very well.

'I knew he would. Are you on his side? Do have a cigarette, please do. There,' she urged. I offered her the box, and lit one for her. She had very delicate hands; they were trembling a little on the cigarette, which she held with both hands, and she looked up briefly over the match-flame. 'Did they prove very much? How would you have felt if you had been on the jury?'

'Not very much. Besides the opening speech, there were only two witnesses, because the examinations were fairly long. Miss Jordan and Dyer -'

'Oh, that's all right. Amelia,' said Mary Hume with practicality, 'doesn't really dislike Jimmy, because she's too obsessed with love's young dream; and she'd like him even better if she hadn't liked my father so much.'

She hesitated.

‘I - I've never been at the Old Bailey. Tell me, how do they act to the people who go as witnesses? I mean, do they go and yell in their ears, and storm and rave the way they do in the films?'

'They certainly do not. Miss Hume. Get that idea out of your head!'

'Not that it matters, really.' She looked sideways at the fire, and grew more calm. But a long puff of cigarette-smoke blew out against the flames, billowing back again, and she turned round once more. 'Look here, tell me the truth before God: he'll be all right, won't he?*

'Miss Hume, you can trust H.M. to take care of him.'

'I know. I do. You see, I was the one who went to H.M. in the first place. That was a month ago, when Jimmy's solicitor refused to have anything more to do with the case because he believed Jimmy was lying. I - I hadn't been keeping anything back deliberately,' she explained incomprehensibly, but evidently thinking I knew. 'It was only that I didn't know or guess. At first H.M. said he couldn't help me, and raved and thundered; and I'm afraid I wept a bit; and then he roared some more and said he'd do it. The trouble is, my evidence may help Jimmy a little; but it won't get him out of that awful business. And even now I haven't the remotest idea how H.M. intends to do it.' She paused. 'Have you?'

'Nobody ever does know,' I admitted. 'Honestly, the very fact that he's so quiet about it means that he's got something up his sleeve.'

She gestured. 'Oh, I suppose so. But I can't feel easy about something I don't know. What good is it just to say everything will be all right?'

She spoke with great intensity. Getting up from the fireside seat, she walked round the room with her shoulders hunched and her hands clasped together as though she were cold.

'When I told him as much as I knew,' she went on, 'the only two things that seemed to interest him at all were things that simply made no sense. One was something about a "Judas Window"' - she sat down again -'and the other was about Uncle Spencer's best golf-suit.'

'Your uncle's golf-suit? What about it?'

'It's gone,' said Mary Hume.

I blinked. She made the statement as though it ought to convey something. My instructions were to discuss the case if she offered to do so, but here there was nothing to do but apply the spur of silence.

'It ought to have been hanging up in the cupboard, and it wasn't: though,' said the girl, 'I can not see what the ink-pad can have had to do with it, can you?'

I could quite agree with that If H.M.'s defence in some fashion depended on a Judas Window, a golf-suit, and an ink-pad, it must be a very curious defence indeed.

'That is, the ink-pad in the pocket of the suit, that Mr Fleming was so keen to get. I -I hoped you'd know something. But the fact is that both the suit and the ink-pad have gone. Oh, my God, I didn't know there was anyone in the house I'

The last words were spoken so low that I barely heard them. She got up, throwing her cigarette into the fire; and an instant later she was a composed, docile hostess turning on her guest a face as blank as a dumpling. I glanced over my shoulder, and saw Dr Spencer Hume had come in.

His tread was brisk but subdued, as though it became the situation. Dr Hume's round face, with its well-brushed hair having a parting that must have been a quarter of an inch wide, showed domestic worry as well as sympathy. His rather protuberant eyes - like those in the pictures of his dead brother - passed incuriously over me, and seemed to study the room.

'Hello, my dear,' he said lightly. 'Have you seen my eye-glasses anywhere?'

'No, uncle. I'm sure they're not here.'

Dr Hume pinched his chin. He went over and looked at the table, and then on the mantelpiece; finally he stood at a loss, and his glance towards me was more interrogative.

'This is a friend of mine, Uncle Spencer.’ ‘Mr Blake,' I said.

'How do you do?' said Dr Hume without inflection. 'I seem to recognize your face, Mr Blake. Haven't we met somewhere before?'

'Yes, your face is familiar, too, doctor.'

'Perhaps at the trial this morning,' he suggested. He shook his head, and glanced meaningly at the girl; you would never have recognized in her the vital personality of a few minutes ago. 'A bad business, Mr Blake. Don't keep Mary too long, will you?'

She spoke quickly. 'How is the trial going, Uncle Spencer?'

'As well as can be expected, my dear. Unfortunately' -I was to learn that he had a trick of beginning speeches with a hopeful assertion, and then saying 'Unfortunately' with knitted brows - 'unfortunately, I'm afraid there can be only one verdict. Of course, if Merrivale knows his job properly, he'll have medical evidence there to prove insanity beyond any doubt. Unfortunately - by Jove, yes! I remember where I've seen you now, Mr Blake I I think I noticed you talking to Sir Henry's secretary in the hall of the Old Bailey?'

'Sir Henry and I have been associates for a good many years, Dr Hume,' I said truthfully.

He looked interested. 'You are not appearing in the case, though?'

'No.'

'H'm, yes. May I ask (strictly between ourselves) what you think of this unfortunate business?'

'Oh, he'll be acquitted undoubtedly.'

There was a silence. Only the firelight illumined this room; the day had turned black and windy. What effect I was having in pursuing my instructions to 'spread a little mysterious disquiet' I could not tell. But Dr Hume thoughtlessly took a pair of black-ribboned eye-glasses out of his waistcoat pocket, fitted them on his nose with some care, and looked at me.

'Guilty but insane, you mean?'

'Sane and not guilty.'

'But that's preposterous I Utterly preposterous! The boy is mad. Why, his evidence about the whisky alone -I beg your pardon; I suppose I really shouldn't be discussing this. I believe they expect to call me as a witness this afternoon. By the way, I always had an impression that witnesses were herded together and kept under surveillance like jurymen; but I learn that this is so only in some cases. The prosecution does not think this is one of them, considering that the - er - issue is so clear.'

'If you're a witness for the prosecution, Uncle Spencer,' said the girl, 'will they let you say Jimmy is crazy?'

'Probably not, my dear; but I shall manage to suggest it I owe you that much, at least.' Again he looked at me meaningly. 'Now see here, Mr Blake. I quite appreciate your position. I know you want to give Mary all the comfort you can, and keep her spirits up at a time of great trial. But to encourage false hopes is - confound it, sir, it's heartless! That's what I said: heartless, and there's no other word for it. Just remember, Mary, that your poor old father is lying out there, dead and murdered and under ground; and that will be all the support you need.' He allowed a pause, after which he consulted his watch. 'I must be getting on,' he added briskly.' "Time and tide wait for no man," as they say. Er - by the way, Mary, did I understand you to be talking some nonsense about my brown tweed suit, that old suit?'

She was sitting on the fender-seat, her hands clasped round her knees. Now she looked up briefly.

'It was a very good suit, Uncle Spencer. It cost twelve guineas. And you want to get it back, don't you?'

He regarded her with concern. 'Now there, Mary, is a fine example of the way people will catch at trifles at a time of - of bereavement! Good Lord, my dear, why are you so concerned over that suit? I've told you I sent it to the cleaner's. Naturally, afterwards, I was not concerned with an old golf-suit when there were so many other things to think of! I simply neglected to call for it, and it's still at the cleaner's, so far as I know.'

'Oh! '

'You understand that, do you, my dear?'

‘Yes,' she said. 'Did you send it to the cleaner's with the ink-pad and the rubber stamps still in the pocket? And what about the Turkish slippers?'

There would seem nothing in this calculated to disturb anyone, though it was not very intelligible. But Dr Hume removed his eye-glasses and put them back into his pocket At the same time. I noticed that the draperies at the doorway had stirred, and a man was looking through. The light was not strong enough to see him well: he appeared to be a thin man with white hair and a nondescript face: but one hand was holding to a fold of the curtain, and seemed to be twisting it.

‘I suppose I must have done so, my dear,' said Dr Hume, in such an altered voice that it was like the sudden grip of that hand on the curtain. Yet he was trying to speak lightly. ‘I shouldn't trouble about it, if I were you. They are honest people, these cleaners. Well, well, I must be getting along. Er -? Oh, I beg your pardon. This is Dr Tregannon, a friend of mine.' 1

The man in the doorway dropped his hand and bowed slightly.

'Dr Tregannon is a mental specialist,' explained the other, smiling. 'Well, I still must be getting along. Good day, Mr Blake. Don't stuff up Mary's head with nonsense, and don't let her do the same thing to you. Try to get some sleep this afternoon, my dear. I'll give you some medicine to-night, and it will make you forget all your troubles. "Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care," doesn't Shakespeare say? Yes. Quite so. Good day.'

VI

'A Piece of Blue Feather'

THE man in the witness-box of Court-room Number One, Central Criminal Court, had a large and confident voice. He was in the middle of a sentence when I came creeping in.

‘and so, of course, I thought of the ink-pad. Like "precautions to take before the doctor comes", you know. Only this was a policeman.'

Mr Randolph Fleming was a large, burly man with a stiff red moustache which forty years ago would have been remarkable even in the Guards. He had a bearing of the same sort, and was not abashed. With the darkening of the day, the concealed lights under the cornices of the oak panelling threw a theatrical glow up over its white dome. But, crawling in some minutes after proceedings had begun, I thought not so much of a theatre as a church.

Evelyn glowered at me, and then whispered excitedly: 'Sh'hl He's just confirmed all Dyer said about finding the body, up to the time Answell swore he had taken a drugged drink; and they found none of the whisky or the soda had been tapped. Sh-h! What was the blonde like?'

I shushed her in reply, for heads were turning towards us, and that mention of an ink-pad had caught me. Mr Randolph Fleming took a deep breath, expanding his chest, and looked round the court with interest. His enormous vitality seemed to enliven counsel. Fleming's large face was somewhat withered, with a pendulous jowl dominated by .the stiff red moustache; his eyelids were wrinkled, and the eyes very sharp. You felt that there should be a monocle in one of them, or some sort of helmet on his stiff brown hair. At intervals in the questioning - when there was a cessation of movement like the clogging of a motion-picture film - he would study the judge, study the barristers, and look up to study the people in the gallery. When he spoke, Fleming's jowl moved in and out like a bull-frog's.

Huntley Lawton was examining.

'Explain what you mean about the ink-pad, Mr Fleming.'

'Well, it was like this,' answered the witness, drawing in his jowl as though he were trying to smell the flower in the button-hole of his pepper-and-salt suit. 'When we had looked at the sideboard and seen that the decanter and the syphon were both full, I said to the prisoner, I said - pause, as though for consideration - ' "Why don't you be a man and admit you did it? Look at that arrow over there," I said. "You can see there are finger-prints there; and they'll be yours, won't they?"'

'What did he say to that?'

'Nothing. Ab-so-lutely nothing I Consequently, I thought of taking his finger-prints. I'm a practical man; always have been; that's how I came to think of it. I said to Dyer that if we had an ink-pad - you know the sort of thing: one of those little pads that you press rubber stamps on - we could get a good clear set. He said that Dr Hume had just recently bought some rubber stamps and an ink-pad, and that they were upstairs in one of the doctor's suits. He remembered because he had intended to take the stamps out in case they soiled the pocket, so he offered to go upstairs and fetch -'

‘We quite understand, Mr Fleming. Did you get the ink-pad and take the prisoner's finger-prints?'

The witness, who had been thrusting out his neck with earnestness, seemed ruffled at the interruption.

'No, sir, we did not. That is, not that particular ink-pad. Dyer couldn't find the suit, it seems, or it wasn't there. But he did manage to fish up an ofd one from the desk, in violet ink, and we got a set of the prisoner's finger-prints on a piece of paper.'

'This piece of paper? Show it to the witness, please.'

'Yes, that's the one.'

'Did the prisoner make any objections to this?'

'Yes, a bit.' 'What did he do?' 'Nothing much.'