The Plague Court Murders

Q. Did she like him?

A. (Hesitation). Yes; she seemed to. Quite a lot. Of course, Inspector, Marion's a strange kid; not quite developed, if you understand me. thought he would do her good, explaining her own emotions to her.

Q. Urn, just so. Did you introduce him to Mr. Halliday?

A. You mean Dean? Oh, Marion did; or Lady Benning. I forget which.

Q. Did they get on well together?

A. Well, no. You see, Dean's a very good fellow, but he's a little pre-war and (N.B. I think the word here is bourgeois, although it is strangely spelled in Masters' account).

Q. But was there any definite trouble?

A. I don't know whether you'd call it trouble exactly. Dean told him one night that he had a mind to smash his face and hang him on the chandelier for luck. You see, it was hard to quarrel with old Darworth. He wouldn't take fire. Sometimes, confound him!

Pauses and mutterings; witness pressed to go on.

A.Well, all I can say is that I should like to have seen that fight. Dean's the fastest amateur middleweight I ever watched. I saw him flatten Tom Rutger....

This sudden splash f honesty, I could see, brought the young man up in Masters' estimation. The questioning went on rapidly. Darworth, it seemed, had plunged almost at once into occult matters. At Joseph's first seance there was mention of the uneasy ghost' at Plague Court, and the spiritual agonies of James Halliday. When this was mentioned to Darworth, he had grown more interested and disturbed; had many long conferences with Marion Latimer and Lady Benning, "especially Marion"; had

borrowed Halliday's account in the form of the Playge letters; and, at the insistence of Lady Benning, the experiment was to be tried. Perhaps Masters made a mistake in dwelling too long on this. In any event, Ted had time to work himself into his old state of fanaticism. What loomed always larger, and swelled and assumed monstrous shapes, was the smiling figure f Darworth. It mocked us after death. We felt and fought, but could not break, the uncanny power he had exercised over these people: the grim old woman with her spites and dreams, the unstable young man sitting in the chair and glaring back at Masters.

The struggle grew, as question after question was flung at him. On one point, that boy was definitely mad. He rubbed his grimy face, he struck the arm of the chair; sometimes he laughed and sometimes he almost sobbed; as though it were Darworth who was the true ghost, standing at his elbow and prodding him to hysteria, in those chill hours before dawn. Masters was calling for full stage-thunder now.

Q. Very well! If you don't believe Darworth was killed by a human being, what have you to say to Joseph Dennis' statement that Darworth did fear somebody here - in this house - feared harm?

A. I say it's a damned lie. Are you going to take the word of a damned drug-addict?

Q. So you knew he was a drug-addict, did you?

A. I thought he might be.

Q. And you still believed in him?

A. What difference does that make? It didn't affect his psychic powers. Can't you see anything? A painter or composer doesn't lose his genius because of drugs or alcohol. God damn it, are you blind? It's just the opposite.

Q. Steady, sir. Do you deny that one of the people in that front room might have got up and gone out while you were all in the dark. Do you deny it? A. Yes!

Q. You will swear that nobody did? A. Yes!

Q. What if I told you that a chair was heard to creak in there, and the door open or close?

A. (Slight hesitation). Whoever says that is lying.

Q. Careful, now. Are you sure?

A. Yes. We might have shifted round in our chairs. Creakings! What's that, anyway? You sit in any dark room, and you'll hear plenty of creakings.

Q. How close were you sitting together?

A. I don't know. Two or three feet apart, maybe.

Q. But you did hear noises of some kind? So that one person might have got up, on a stone floor, and gone out without attracting attention?

A. I've just told you that nobody did.

Q. You were praying?

A. Rot! Absolute rot, like everything else. Praying! Of course not. Do I look like a pious Methodist? I was trying to establish communication to give, power to a mind exorcising the earthbound. I was focusing, as powerfully as I could. I-I could feel my brain almost bursting. Praying!

Q. In what order were you sitting; how arranged?

A. I'm not positive. Dean blew out the candles, and we were all standing up then. Then we started groping after the chairs that were already there. I was on .the extreme left of the fireplace, that's all I know. We were all flurried.

Q. But didn't you notice when you heard the bell, and you all got up again?

A. No. There was a lot of milling about in the dark. It was old Featherton who lit the candles, and he was swearing. The next thing I knew we were all going towards the door. I don't know who was where - or anything about it.

Masters let him go then. Masters offered to let him go home; but, although he was patently exhausted and on the verge of breaking-down, he refused to go until the others had gone.

The inspector brooded, his head in his hands. "It's a worse muddle yet," he said. "They were all exalted or hysterical, or something. If we can't get any clearer evidence than that. .." He wriggled his fingers, cramped from the note-taking, and then wearily told the constable to send in Major Featherton.

The examination of Major William Featherton, retired, 4th Royal Lancashire Foot, was very brief, and not till the end did it seem to grow informative. The major's earlier pompous manners were gone, and his rolling diction subdued into sharp, concise replies. He sat straight in his chair, as though at a court-martial; the eyes under the down-pulled, grizzled brows fixed Masters bluntly, and his words were interrupted only when he cleared his throat, or leaned his head on one side to brush his neck with a handkerchief. I noticed that, aside from Lady Benning, he was the only person there with clean hands.

He explained that he had known Darworth only slightly; that he was drawn into the affair only through his friendship for Lady Benning; that he saw and knew little of the man. He knew of nobody who had a definite animus against Darworth, though he understood the man had not been generally liked, and had been blackballed from several clubs.

Q. Now, about tonight, sir

A. Ask anything you like, Inspector Masters. I'm bound to tell you that your suspicions are nonsense, but I know your duty and mine.

Q. Thank you, sir. Exactly so. Now, how long should you say you were sitting in the dark?

A. Twenty to twenty-five minutes. I several times looked at my watch. It has a luminous dial. I wondered how long the foolery would go on.

Q. Then you were not concentrating, or anything? A. No.

Q. Then didn't your eyes get accustomed to the dark, so you could see?

A. It was confoundedly dark there, Inspector. And my eyes - not strong these days, confound it. No, I couldn't see much. Shapes, maybe.

Q. Did you see anybody get up?

A. No.

Q. Did you hear anybody? A. Yes.

Q. Ah, just so. Please describe what you heard.

A. (Slight hesitation). Hard to do. Naturally, at first, there was a lot of settling round and creaking in chairs. It wasn't that. It was more like somebody pushing back a chair a little, a scraping. Didn't notice it much, I'm bound to tell you. Later I thought I heard somebody's footstep somewhere. Hard to judge sounds in the dark.

Q. How much later?

A. I don't know. Fact is, dye see, I was going to call out and say `Hey!' But Anne - Lady Benning - had driven it into us that nobody was to speak or move no matter what happened. We'd all to promise that. First off, I thought `Somebody sneaking out for a cigarette.' Damned rummy thing to do, though, I thought. Then I heard a squeak out of the door, and felt a draft.

Q. As though the door had been opened?

A. (The witness here had a fit of coughing, and paused). Look here, say more as though the big door-the front door, d'ye see - opened. Not much draft in that hall to begin with. Wouldn't like to say, though. Now, see here, Inspector, I'm bound to tell you the truth. But, as a sensible man, come! You know yourself that it don't mean a tinker's curse, a thing like that. Somebody went out, and now is afraid to admit....

The major here for the first time was definitely perturbed, as though he had given the wrong impression or said more than he intended. He attempted to cover it up by pointing out that there were any number of noises in the dark; that he might have been mistaken on some of them. After some sharp wrangling, Masters dropped the point. I think he felt a shrewd suspicion that Featherton, in a coroner's court, could easily be made to swear to this again. He went on, swiftly to the question about the arrangement of chairs.

A. Lady Benning sat where she's been sitting: right hand side of the fireplace. Funny, too. I wanted to sit beside her, to - well, I wanted to sit there, but she pushed me away. Young Halliday sat down there. I know, because I almost tumbled in his lap. Ha. They'd blown out the candles, then, dye see, and I had to grope along. Miss Latimer was sitting beside him. I got the next chair. I'm pretty certain young Latimer was just the other side of me. He hadn't got up.

Q. When you heard this noise, which direction did it come from; the noise of the chair being scraped back?

A. Confound it, I told you you can't place noises in the dark! Might have been anywhere. Mightn't have been at all.

Q. Did you feel anybody brush past you? A. No.

Q. How far were the chairs apart? A. Don't remember.

The candles were almost burnt out by now. One of them leaped into a broad sheet of flame, wabbled, and puffed out just as the major rose from his chair.

"All right," Masters said dully. "You're free to go home if you like, major. I should suggest that you take Lady Benning. Of course, you must hold yourself in readiness for further questioning.... Yes. And please ask Miss Latimer and Mr. Halliday to come in. Oh, I won't detain them five minutes unless something turns up, um, important. Thanks, ah, thanks. Most helpful."

Featherton stopped in the doorway; and the constable stepped forward and handed him his hat, rather as though the major had just finished a victorious street-fight. It was a silk hat, which he brushed with his sleeve while he peered about the room. For the first time he seemed to observe me; I was sitting on a window-sill over in the gloom. Major Featherton puffed out his blue-veined cheeks. Fitting on he hat somewhat rakishly, he gave it a pat on top, and said:

"Ah, Mr. Blake! Yes, of course ... Mr. Blake, would you mind telling me your home address?"

I told him, subduing curiosity.

"Ah, yes, the Edwardian House, yes. If it's convenient, I'll call on you there tomorrow. Good night, gentlemen, good night."

Settling his coat on his shoulders with an air of mystery, he stalked out, and almost bumped into Sergeant McDonnell coming in.

XI

THE HANDLE OF A DAGGER

McDONNELL looked harassed, and there were sharp lines of fatigue drawn slantwise under his eyes. In one hand he carried a bundle of penciled notes, and in the other a big lantern which he set down on the floor.

For the first time I realized how chill it was in the room, how sleep was stiffening my eyelids and joints, how for the last half hour sounds had been dwindling in the yard outside until it was now silent. Voices and footsteps had passed; the gears of a car ground far away. It was the dead, misty hour when you could smell dawn in the air. The street-lamps still burned, but there were already faint stirrings from the city.

McDonnell's lantern made a cartwheel of light on the brick floor. It wove a little before my eyes; and above it was the sergeant's ugly, sharp-nosed, whimsical face. His greenish eyes contemplated Masters, who was sitting with knuckles pressed against forehead. McDonnell's hat' was plastered on the back of his head, and one strand of hair waved out grotesquely over his eye. He clinked his foot against the lantern to rouse Masters.

He said: "How much longer do you want me to carry on, sir. They've all gone now. Bailey said he'd be back for those pictures as soon as it was light."

"Bert," said the inspector dully, without looking up, "you had a line on Darworth. Who's Elsie Fenwick?"

McDonnell jumped a little. "Elsie-?"

"For God's sake don't tell me you don't know! I know the name; I know it's connected with Darworth, and also with funny business; but I can't remember how. You were right; we got it from Featherton. The first line on that paper was, `I know where Elsie Fenwick is buried."'

"What ho!" said McDonnell, and opened his eyes. He remained staring at the candles for so long that Masters slapped the work-bench. "Sorry, sir. But it's pretty significant, you see. It's a confirmation of funny business right enough. Elsie Fenwick," he said grimly, "is the reason why our people became interested in Darworth to begin with. That was sixteen years ago, and long before my time; but I got it out of the files when I was digging back on Darworth. It's been pretty well forgotten, but it was the bad odor of it that stirred up Number 8 Office when they heard Darworth was playing about with the occult. . . . Elsie Fenwick was Darworth's first wife."

"Got it!" said Masters abruptly. "Ha. Yes, certainly. I've got a notion I remember that case. Elsie Fenwick was the old woman, the very wealthy one, eh? She died, or something like that—“

"No, sir. At least, they tried to prove she was dead, and it would have been rather rough on Darworth if they had. She disappeared."

"Facts," said Masters. "Out with it. Story briefly. Come, now!"

McDonnell got out his notebook and leafed through it. "H'm. Dar - oh, yes. Elsie Fenwick was a romantic old girl, tied up with spiritualism, filthy rich, and no relations. She had a splay foot or shoulder, something to do with the deformity of the bones. At the tender age of sixty-five she married young Darworth. That was before the Married Woman's Property Act, so you can see what happened. Then the war came along. Darworth ducked out to avoid military service; he took his blushing bride, and a maid of hers, to Switzerland.

"One night about a year later, distracted husband phones doctor ten miles away. Wife taken with a seizure; afraid she's dying; explains carefully she has been troubled with gastric ulcers. Mrs. Darworth was tough, apparently, and was still alive when the doctor got there. By a stroke of luck, this chap was as shrewd as they make 'em, and also knew his business better than the distracted husband had hoped. He pulled her through, then had a talk with Darworth. Darworth said: 'Horrible. Gastric ulcers.' The doctor said, 'Tut, tut.' He looked Darworth in the eye and said, 'Arsenic poisoning."'

McDonnell lifted a sardonic eyebrow.

"Not as smooth," grunted Masters, "as he became afterwards, eh? Go on."

"There was trouble. A nasty scandal was only averted by the maid - Elsie Darworth's maid-swearing the old woman had swallowed arsenic herself."

"Ah! The maid. Good-looking girl?"

"I don't know, sir, but I rather doubt it. Darworth was too clever to play about when there was no cash in it."

"What did the wife say?"

"Nothing. She stood by Darworth; or forgave him, anyhow. That's the last we hear of them until the end of the war. They returned to England and settled down. One day Darworth, distracted again, walks in to our people and informs them that his wife has disappeared. They had a country place out Croydon way; the wife, according to Darworth, had simply taken a train to town to do some shopping, and never come back. He had a doctor's report to prove she had .been suffering from fits of melancholia, depression, and possible amnesia - he was learning. At first the Yard let it go at that, and instituted the customary missing-person inquiries. But somebody had a suspicious mind; dug into the past, found the arsenic-episode; and then there was trouble... I'll send you up the full report, sir; it's too long to go into now. The only result was that they never proved anything.... Masters hammered his fist slowly on the desk. He peered round at me.

"Yes. That's the part I do remember, though I'd have to refresh my memory. Old Burton was working on that business in '19. He told me about it. Ah, Darworth was the very living picture of outraged innocence, he was! Threatened to sue. Yes, I remember. H'm. Well, we'll look it up. What'd he do, Bert, apply for a court-order to presume her dead?"

"I believe so, but he didn't get it. He had to wait his seven years before it became automatic. Didn't much matter; he had the money."

"Yes," said Masters. He rubbed his chin. "I was only thinking you said 'first wife.' Has he got another?"

"Yes, but they don't seem to get on. She lives on the Riviera somewhere ... he keeps her out of the way, anyhow."

"Money?"

"I should suppose so-" McDonnell broke off. There was a shuffling of footsteps at the door, evidently to attract our attention, and somebody coughed.

Halliday and Marion Latimer were standing in the doorway. I became conscious, with that instinct we all have, that they had overheard a good deal of what McDonnell had been saying. The girl's face looked hard and contemptuous. Halliday seemed embarrassed; he glanced quickly at his companion, and then sauntered into the room.

Halliday said: "This, Inspector, is what you really call making a night of it. It's nearly five o'clock. I tried to bribe your constable into hopping out after some coffee and sandwiches from an all-night stall, but he wouldn't do it.... Look here," he frowned, "I hope you'll let us off quickly. We're at your service any time, and this place isn't exactly conducive."

Whether deliberately or unintentionally, Masters then did something which destroyed the police-court atmosphere and gave to everybody a sense of intimacy and ease. With his hand over his mouth, he brought up. one of the most prodigious yawns I have ever seen; smiled at them, and blinked his eyes.

"Ah-aha-h!" said Masters, waving the girl towards the chair. "No, by George! I shan't detain you. I thought I'd see you both at once; saves time. Besides, it's like this." He grew heavily confidential. "I'm bound to tell you that I've got to ask some questions you'll probably consider pretty impertinent. Funny, though; I thought if you both heard 'em, you'd both prefer it - eh?"

Marion had a severe brown hat pulled down on her yellow hair now; the collar of the coat was turned up, and she sat down with her shoulders hunched. The dark-blue eyes regarded Masters coolly. Halliday stood behind her, and lit a cigarette.

"Yes?" she said in a clear voice, with barely perceptible nervousness. "Ask anything you like, of course." Halliday grinned.

Masters briefly reviewed the evidence about everyone's acquaintance with Darworth. "So you knew him fairly well, Miss Latimer?"

"Yes."

"Did he tell you anything about himself?"

Her gaze did not waver. "Only that he had been married, a long time ago, to a woman he'd been very unhappy with. And that she was now - I don't know; dead, I gathered." Some faint mockery tinged the voice. "He grew quite sad-eyed and Byronic about it, really."

Now, Masters has his failings, but he is quick to turn every possible situation, even a bad one, to his advantage.

"Did you know he had a wife living, Miss Latimer?"

"No. Not that it was of great interest to me. I certainly never inquired."

"Just so." He switched, instantly. "Was it Mr. Darworth who suggested to you, miss, that - we'll say, that Mr. Dean Halliday's mind and future were - well, tied up at Plague Court?"

"Yes!"

"He talked about it a lot?"

"Always," she replied, jerking the word out. "Always! I-I've tried to explain to Mr. Blake how I felt about Mr. Darworth."

"I see. Did you ever suffer from headaches, miss, or nervous disturbances?"

Her eyes opened slightly. "I don't quite see.... Yes, that's true."

"Which he suggested he could cure through the proper medical use of hypnotic suggestion?" She nodded. Halliday twitched his head round, and seemed about to speak, but Masters caught his eye. "Thank you, Miss Latimer. Did he ever tell you, now, why he didn't exploit his psychic talents, say? You all believed he had great powers, for instance. But nobody ever inquired whether he was a member of the Psychical Research Society, or connected with any genuine scientific body of that nature; even whether he had any genuine associations.... I mean, miss, didn't he ever say why he hid his light under a bushel, or whatnot?"

"He said he was interested in savings souls and giving peace...."

She hesitated, and Masters lifted his hand inquiringly.

"He said that sometime his powers might be demonstrated to the world, but that he wasn't interested in that. ... He said he was more interested, if you want the truth, in setting my mind at rest about Plague Court." She spoke vacantly, but in a rapid tone. "Ugh! I say, when I remember-! He told me it would be horribly dangerous. But that he wanted my gratitude. You see I'm frank, Inspector. I-I couldn't have said all this a week ago."

She raised her eyes. Halliday's face was ugly and satirical; with an effort, he kept himself from speaking, and mouthed his cigarette as though he would jab it against his teeth like a pipe-stem.

Masters got up heavily. The room was very quiet while he drew out the end of his watch-chain, to which was attached a small, brightly polished object. He said, smiling: "It's only a new latch-key, Miss Latimer. One of those flat ones. I happened to remember it. If you don't mind, I'd like to try a sort of experiment. ..."

He went round the work-bench and picked up McDonnell's lantern. The girl flinched as he came towards her; she gripped the sides of the chair, and her eyes strained up at him. Close to her, he held the lantern high and steady over her head - a weird scene, with the shadow-barred glow streaming down over her upturned face, and Masters' bulk silhouetted against it. The key glittered a dazzling silver as he held it about three inches above the line of her eyes.

"I want you, Miss Latimer," he growled softly, "to look steadily at this key. . .

She started to get up, scraping back her chair. "No! I won't! I won't do it, I tell you, and you can't make me! Every time I look at that—“

"Ah!" said Masters, and lowered the lantern. "It's quite all right, miss. Please sit down again. I - only wanted to test something." As Halliday strode forward the inspector lumbered back to his work-bench, turned, and regarded him with a sour smile. "Steady, sir. You ought to be grateful to me. I've broken at leapt one ghost. That there's a part of Darworth's trick of making people believe him. If the patient's a good hypnotic subject....

Wheezing, he sat down. "Did he try to cure your headaches, Miss Latimer?"

"Yes."

"Did he ever make love to you?"

The question was shot out so quickly after the lazy tone of the preceding one that the girl had said, "Yes," before she seemed to realize it. Masters nodded.

"Ever ask you to marry him, Miss Latimer?"

"Not - not exactly. He said that if he succeeded in cleansing this house of evil spirits, he would ask ... I say! It-it sounds so crazy, and absurd, and-" She swallowed hard, and her eyes were hysterically amused. "I mean, when I think of it. He was like a Monte Cristo and Manfred rolled into one; gloomy and apart; like a cheap film, like- But you didn't know him, you see. That's the point."

"A rare sort of fellow, that gentleman," the inspector said dryly. "He had a different mood and character for everyone he approached.... But after all, you see, he was murdered. That's what we want to talk about now. It wasn't hypnotism or suggestion that let somebody walk through a stone wall or a bolted door and hack him to pieces. Now, Mr. Halliday! - I want to hear everything that went on in that front room from the time the lights were put out. Tell your story, and I'll ask Miss Latimer to confirm it."

"Right you are. I'll tell it exactly," nodded Halliday; "because I've been thinking of nothing else all night." He drew a deep breath, and then glanced sharply at Masters. "You spoke to the others. Did they admit hearing somebody moving around in there?"

"You're telling the story, sir," Masters reminded him, lifting his shoulders blandly. "But, um, didn't you have a conference among yourselves? All that time between witnesses, up there?"

"I don't know about the conference. We jolly well nearly had a fight. Nobody would admit what they'd told you, and Ted was a bit loony. Nobody would go home with anybody else ... they all left in separate cars. Aunt Anne wouldn't even let Featherton help her out to the street. Fine, sweet gathering. Never mind.. .

"This is what happened.

"Aunt Anne insisted on sitting round and concentrating, trying to help Darworth out. I didn't want to do it; but Marion begged me not to make a fuss, so I said all right. Also, I wanted to make up the fire - it had gone out. I didn't see any sense in sitting around in a cold room when it wasn't necessary. But Ted said the wood was green and damp, and wouldn't burn anyway, and was I a pampered little duckling to be afraid of the cold? Ha! Well! we got our chairs-"

The inevitable question followed. Both he and Marion verified the order of which he had been informed: Lady Benning on the right of the fireplace, then Halliday, Marion, Major Featherton, and Ted at the other end.

"How far were the chairs apart?"

The other hesitated. "A good distance. That's an immense fireplace in there, you know. I had to stand on tiptoe to blow out the candles on the ledge over it. I don't think any of us could have touched anyone else by stretching out a hand ... except" - he looked Masters in the eye "except Marion and myself."

The girl was staring at the floor. Halliday put his hand on her shoulder. He went on: "I'd taken good care to get my chair only a little way from hers; couldn't get too close, because Aunt Anne was watching like a hawk; and I didn't want to seem - oh, damn it, you know!

"I got hold of her hand, and we sat there. I don't know how long; and what was worse-I'll admit it-that darkness was beginning to get on my nerves. I don't care how matter-of-fact a man is" He looked at us defiantly, and Masters nodded. "Besides, somebody was whispering or mumbling, very low. The same words, over and over again, with a sort of rustling sound, and there was a noise like somebody swaying backwards and forwards in a chair. God, it was enough to make your hair stand on end!

"I don't know how long afterwards it was, but I had a feeling that somebody had got up...."

"You heard something?" demanded Masters.

"Well, it's hard to explain, but if you've ever sat at a seance you'll understand. You can feel movement; a breath, or a rustle, a sense of something moving in the dark. You can only call it a feeling of nearness. I did hear a chair scrape, a little before that; but I'm not prepared to swear it was - whoever it was that got up."

"Go on."

"Then I did definitely hear two footsteps directly behind me; but I've got pretty good ears, and nobody else seemed to notice it until-well, all of a sudden I felt Marion go stiff, and she pressed my hand. I admit I nearly jumped out of my skin. I felt her other hand come out towards me, and she was trembling all over.... It wasn't till afterwards that I found out what had gone past and touched her.... You'd better tell him, Marion

Though she tried to keep her former self-control, the old terrors were coming back. The lantern was at her feet, throwing spangles of light up across the white, lovely, tortured face as she slowly looked up.

"It was the handle of a knife," she said, "touching the back of my neck."

XII WHAT WAS MISSING AT DAWN

THE last candle on the work-bench had puffed out in a welter of grease. A faint, grayish light was stealing into the passage beyond; but the shadows in the kitchen were still thick, and the lantern burned at their core below Marion Latimer's dull face. It was the climax of the night's horrors, the last voice of them before they paled at cockcrow. I looked round at Masters, and at McDonnell, almost invisible back in a corner. But I thought, curiously enough, of a room situated high over Whitehall; and, in the midst of the sedate government upholstery, a fat man sitting with his feet on the long desk reading a cheap novelette. I had not seen that room since 1922....

"You see," Marion told us carefully, after a pause, "the idea of some one of us prowling like that was-was rather more ghastly than the other."

Masters expelled his breath. "How did you know it was the handle of a knife, miss?"

"It was feeling-it was the handle, you know, and then the crosspiece, the hilt, together: brushing past. I'd swear to it. Whoever had it must have been holding it by the blade, you see."

"As though the person holding it had tried to touch you?"

"Oh, no. No, I don't think so. It jumped back at once,, if you understand what I mean. It was as though somebody had gone in the wrong direction in the dark, and accidentally brushed me. . . . Anyway, it was after that - maybe a minute afterwards, though it's awfully hard to be certain - I heard the only footstep I could be sure of. It seemed to come from the middle of the room somewhere."

"You heard this too?" Masters asked Halliday.

"Yes."

"And then-?"

"And then the door squeaked. There was a draft along the floor, too. Hang it all," said Halliday uneasily, "surely everybody must have felt it! You couldn't miss."

"It 'ud seem so, wouldn't it? Now, sir, how long after all this did you hear the bell ringing?"

"Marion and I have compared notes on that. She estimates something over ten minutes. but I say nearer twenty."

"Did you hear anybody coming back?"

Halliday's cigarette was burning his fingers; he glanced at it as though he had never seen it before, and dropped the stump. His eyes were vacant. "Shouldn't like to swear to more than that, Inspector. But I should say there was a pretty definite noise of somebody sitting down. That was before we heard the bell, but I don't remember how long. It's all a matter of guesswork, anyhow...."

"When the bell rang, was everybody sitting down?"

"I can't tell you, Inspector. There was a rush for the door, and either Marion or Aunt Anne screamed

"It wasn't I," said the girl.

Masters glanced slowly from one to the other of them. "The door to that room," he said, "was closed while you were having your meeting. I saw that myself. When you rushed out as the bell rang, was it open or closed?"

"I don't know. Ted was first at the door, because he was the only one with a flashlight. Marion and I crowded after him - anywhere we could see a light we'd have gone, and he switched his on then. The whole affair was so confused that I don't remember. Except that Featherton got a match struck to light the candles, and shouted, 'Wait for me!' or something like that. Then I think we all realized the futility of dashing out that door - I don't know who started the rush in the first place; it was like sheep following a leader. So-" He waved his hand. "Look here, Inspector, haven't we told you enough for one night? Marion is dead exhausted...."

"Yes," said Masters, "yes. You may go." Suddenly he looked up. "Young Latimer - wait a bit!-young Latimer was the only one with a flashlight? Yours was broken; then Mr. Blake gave you his when we heard Miss Latimer calling in the passage?"

Halliday looked at him a moment, and then laughed. "Still suspicious of me, Inspector? Well, you're quite right to be. But, as it happens, I'm strictly innocent in the flashlight business. I gave that one to Ted, at his request. You should ask him, you know.:.. Well, good night." He hesitated, and walked over to me, putting out his hand. "Good night, Mr. Blake. I'm only sorry I dragged you into this mess. But I didn't know, you see. By God, we did start a hare, didn't we?"

... They went out the back door, and we remained in our separate and foolish positions; conscious of a city waking to daylight all around, and only the ashes of a haunted house. Presently McDonnell came over to the work-bench, beginning to sort out the penciled notes he had brought in.

"Well, sir?" Masters addressed me. "What about it? Brain working?"

I said that it wasn't, and added: "Of itself, the conflicting testimony may not be so inexplicable. That is, three people said there was somebody moving about in the room, and two people said there wasn't. But the two people who denied it, Lady Benning and Ted Latimer, were the ones who might be so rapt in concentration or prayer, or whatever it was, that they wouldn't hear it...."

"Yet they all heard the bell fast enough," said Masters. "And it didn't ring at all loudly, I'll swear."

"Yes. That's the part that sticks. . . . Oh, admittedly somebody was lying. And it was as expert lying as we'll probably ever listen to."

Masters got up. "I'm not going to hash the thing over now," he snapped. "Not with a dead brain. I'll forget even the great big snag in the business that's worse than people who can walk over soft mud without leaving footprints. I'll put it out of my mind. And yet I've a hunch - a hunch - I don't know - what is a hunch, anyway?"

"Well, sir," said McDonnell, "I've generally discovered that a hunch is what you call an idea that you're afraid is wrong. I've been having them all evening. For 'instance, it struck me-"

"I don't want to hear it. Lummy, I'm sick of the business! I want a cup of strong coffee. And some sleep. And - wait a minute, Bert. What about those reports you've got? If there's anything interesting, let's have it now. Otherwise let it wait."

"Right you are, sir. Surgeon's report: `Death of a stab wound, made by the sharp instrument submitted for inspection-that's the L.P. dagger-penetrating through...."'

"Where is the blasted thing, by the way?" interrupted Masters, struck with an idea. "I shall have to take it along. Did you pick it up?"

"No. Bailey was photographing it on the table; they set up the table after we'd taken the measurements and shot the scene as it was. It's probably still out on the table. By the way, its blade had been ground to a needle-point sharpness. Doesn't sound like a ghost there."

"Right. We'll pick it up. I don't want our 'man with his back turned’ messing about with it again. Never mind the doctor's report. What about fingerprints?"

McDonnell scowled. "Not a print on the dagger of any kind, Williams says. He says it had been wiped clean, or the chap used gloves; that was only to be expected.... Otherwise, the whole place is alive with 'em. He counted two separate sets of prints aside from Darworth's. The photos will be around this morning. Also a lot of footprints. The place was dusty. No marks in the blood, though, except half a footprint that probably belongs to Mr. Blake."

"Yes. We shall want to go over this house here, and try to match up the prints; take care of it. What j'you get out of his pockets?"

"Usual lot. Nothing enlightening. No papers of any kind, in fact." McDonnell took from his pocket a folded sheet of newspaper, wrapped round a small collection of articles. "Here it is. Bunch of keys, notecase, watch and chain, some loose silver: that's the. lot.... There was just one other funny thing...."

Masters caught sharply at the other's uncertainty. "Well?"

"The constable noticed it when we were raking out the fire, to see whether somebody might have got down the chimney. It was glass, sir. In the fire. Big fragments like a jar or bottle, maybe; but they were so splintered and burnt and softened out of shape that you couldn't tell.... Besides, it might have been there some time."

"Glass?" repeated Masters, and stared. `But wouldn't it melt?"

"No. It bursts and splinters, that's all. I thought perhaps-"

The inspector grunted. "Whisky-bottle, maybe. Dutch-courage for Darworth. I shouldn't worry about it."

"Might have been, of course," admitted McDonnell. But he was not satisfied. His fingers tapped his pointed chin, and his eyes roved about the room. "Still, it's dashed funny, though, isn't it? I mean, chucking a bottle in the fire when you've finished with it: hardly a natural action, is it, sir? Did you ever see anybody do it? It struck me that—“

"Stow it, Bert," said Masters, dragging out his words and making a wry face. "We've had plenty. Come along. 'We'll have a last look at the place in daylight, and then we'll dear out."

A cool wind blew drowsily on our eyelids as we went down into the yard. The gray light was uncertain and murky as though we saw the whole place under water; it looked larger than I had imagined it last night, and must have covered a good half-acre. Set down in the midst of decaying brick buildings, gaunt and crooked against the dawn, with their blind windows staring into it, this yard was uncanny in its desolation. You felt that no churchbells, or street-organs, or any homely, human sound, could ever penetrate it.

A brick wall perhaps eighteen feet high dosed it round on three sides of a rough oblong. There was a few dying plane trees straggling beside it, with an ugly coquettish appearance like the wreaths and Cupids on the cornice of the big house, as though they were dying in the mopping, mincing postures of the seventeenth century. In one corner was a disused well, and the crooked foundations of what might once have been a dairy. But it was the little stone house, standing out in the center and alone towards the rear wall, that carried the most evil suggestion.

It was blackish gray and secret, gaping with its smashed door. On the pitch of the roof were heavy curved tiles that might once have been red; the chimney was squat black, with a toppling chimney-pot like a rakish hat. Not far away grew the dead, crooked tree.

That was all. The stiff sea of mud about it, and only the broad squashy lines of tracks where many people had tramped up to the door in the same path. From this path, just two sets of prints - Masters' and mine-straggled close to the wall of the house towards the window at which I had held Masters up for his first sight of Darworth dead.

In silence we walked all around the house, keeping to the margin of the yard. The puzzle grew more monstrous and incredible as we stared at every blank side. Yet I have not overlooked, omitted, or misstated anything, and all was exactly as it seemed to be: a stone box, with door and windows solidly inaccessible, no tricks of secret entrances, and no footprints near it anywhere before Masters and I had gone out. That is literal truth.

It remained, to complete it, only for Masters to snatch at the only remaining lead, and to have that swept away also. We had got round to the other side of the house - the left side, looking towards it from the back door - and Masters stopped. He stared at the blighted tree, then back at the wall.

"Look here-" he said. The voice sounded strange and hoarse in that dead-silent place. "That tree. I know it won't explain the rest, but it might explain the absence of footprints ... a very agile man who got on to that wall might swing from the wall to the tree, and then from the tree to the house. It could be done, you know; they're not very far apart. . .

McDonnell nodded. He said grimly: "Yes, Sir. Bailey and I thought of that too. It was one of the first things we did think of, until somebody got a ladder round at the side, and I climbed up on the wall and walked round and tried to test it." He pointed up. "You see that broken branch? That's where I damned near broke my neck. The tree's dead, sir. It's as rotten as pulp. I'm fairly light myself, and I didn't do much more than touch it. It wouldn't support any weight. Try it for yourself.... You see, the tree has a different connotation."

Masters turned round. "Oh, for Lord's sake quit being superior!" he said raspingly. "What do you mean, connotation'?"

"Well, I was wondering why they'd cut down the rest of 'em, and left this one here. . . ." Pressing a hand over his eyes, the other looked puzzled and disturbed. His bleary gaze was turned on the ground at the foot of the tree: that slight plateau of which the house was the center. "Then I tumbled to it. That tree is where our good friend Louis Playge rests six feet under. I suppose they didn't want to disturb him. Funny, about superstitions. . . ."

Masters had strode out over the unmarked ground and reached up to test the tree. He was so irritated that his yank splintered off a branch altogether.

"Yes. It's funny, right enough. Ah, bloody lot of good you are, Bert!" He ripped off the branch and flung it on the ground; then his voice rose querulously: "Stow it, will you, or I'll heave this thing at you! This chap's been murdered. We've got to find out how, and if you keep on gibbering about superstitions-" "I admit it isn't much good for telling us how the murderer reached the house. But, on the other hand, I thought maybe--"

Masters said, "Bah," and turned to me. "There's got to be some way, you know," he insisted with a sort of dull persuasiveness. "Look here, can we be sure there weren't any footprints going out towards the place before we came? There's a terrible mess, you know, now, going up to the door.... "We can," I said with conviction.

He nodded. In silence we came round again to the front. The house kept its secret. In that drugged hour of the morning, it was as though we were not three practical men out of a sharp-eyed age; but that the old house had been recreated again, and that, if we looked over the boundary wall, we should see the doors of houses painted with a red cross below the words, "Lord, have mercy upon us." When Masters wormed his way through the shattered doorway into the gloom of the place, my thick head could only picture what he might see inside.

I tried to shake off these fancies as McDonnell and I stood outside, the smoke of our breath going up in the still air.

McDonnell said: "I don't think I shall get a look-in on this business. I'm district, you know; Vine Street; and the Yard will probably handle it. Still...." He whirled round. "Hullo! I say, sir, what's up?"

There had been a sound of thrashing about inside. It so fitted in with my distorted fancies that for a moment I did not look. Masters was breathing hard, and the beam of his flashlight darted about. The next instant he was in the doorway, very quiet.

He said: "It's a rum thing, but you know how you get a verse or a jingle or something stuck in your head, so that you can't get it out? - and you keep on repeating it all day, and try to stop yourself, but a little while later you forget, and you find yourself saying it again? Eh? Just so. Well-"

I said: "Stop babbling, and tell us "

"Ah. Yes." His head moved round heavily. "What I've been repeating to myself-don't know why; sort of consolation, maybe; repeating all night to myself-`Last straw that broke the camel's back.' Just like that. Over and over.

'Last straw that broke the camel's back.' By God, somebody'll pay for this!" he snapped, and brought his fist down on the iron bar. "Yes, you've guessed it. Wait for the newspapers, now. `Spare man with his back turned.. . Somebody's got that dagger again, that's what! It's not here. It's pinched - gone.... D'you think they want to use it again?"

He looked rather wildly from one to the other of us.

Nobody said anything for a full minute. Suddenly McDonnell started to laugh, but it was a sort of laughter exactly like Masters' mood.

"There goes my job," said McDonnell.

Then he walked away in silence, away from the place that had the look of a ballroom the morning after a party. There were pinkish hints in the sky now, and the dome of St. Paul's was looming out purple-gray against thin shreds of light. Masters kicked a tin can out of his way. A motor horn hooted raucously in Newgate Street, and the milk-carts were already bumping down below the gilt figure of Justice on the cupola of the Old Bailey.

XIII

MEMORIES IN WHITEHALL

IT WAS past six o'clock when I got back to my flat, and two o'clock in the afternoon before I was roused out of loggish slumber by somebody drawing the curtains and talking about breakfast.

That I had become in some measure a celebrity was evident from the presence of Popkins, autocrat of the Edwardian House's domestic staff. He stood at the foot of my bed, all chin and buttons like a Prussian junior-officer, with several newspapers under his arm. He did not comment on these newspapers, seeming to imply that they were not there at all when he insinuated them into my hands; but he was very careful about how I wanted my eggs, bacon, and bath.

Anybody who was in England at the time will remember the terrific, the enormous and ghoulish splash that was caused by "The Plague Court Horror." At the Press Club I have been informed that from a newspaper point of view this compound of murder, mystery, the supernatural, and a strong dash of sex, missed not a single element in Fleet Street's recipe for the ideal dish. More, it promised, bitter controversy for some time to come. Tabloid newspapers, in the American style, were not then so common as they are now, but a tabloid was first on the sheaf of papers Popkins gave me. Although the story had broken too late for the early editions, beyond brief glare in Stop-Press, the noon editions broke their front pages open with a double column of leaded type.

Sitting up in bed, on a gray drizzly morning with the electric light turned on, I read all the papers and tried to realize that this was real. And it was difficult. There was the prosaic sound of water running for my bath; watch, keys, and money laid out on the bureau as usual; the noise of cars bumping down the narrow hill of Bury Street, and the rain.

Pictures occupied the entire first page, which was headed: PHANTOM KILLER STILL HAUNTS PLAGUE COURT!

In an oval round the center-piece were ranged photographs of everybody (obviously old ones from the Morgue). One of those faces, which was set in a murderous leer, I recognized as my own. Lady Benning looked shy and virginal in a whalebone collar and cartwheel hat; Major Featherton's, in full army regalia, was a curious half-picture which made him look as though he were holding up and admiring a bottle of beer; Halliday was pictured as incautiously descending some steps with his head turned sideways and his foot poised in the air; Marion's alone was a passable likeness. There was no picture of Darworth, but inside the oval the artist had spread himself on a lively sketch intended to represent his murder at the hand of a hooded phantom with a knife.

Somebody had obviously been indiscreet. Scotland Yard can muzzle the press tolerably well; and there had been an error somewhere, unless - it suddenly occurred to me - Masters wanted to accentuate the supernatural side of the business for reasons of his own. The stories were all reasonably accurate so far as they went, though there was no hint of suspicion towards any of our group.

Curiously enough, these wild speculations about the supernatural tended to diminish rather than accentuate in my own mind the very suggestions they made. In the clear-headed morning after, away from the echoes and dampness of Plague Court, one fact became apparent. Whatever others might believe, nobody who had been in the house at the time could doubt that we faced nothing more than either a very lucky or a very brilliant murderer, who could be hanged like anybody else. But that in itself might be problem enough.

When I was still mulling it over after breakfast, the house-phone rang and they told me that Major Featherton was downstairs. Then I remembered his promise of last night.

Major Featherton was annoyed. Despite the rain, he was tightened into morning-dress, with a silk hat and a rather startling tie; his shaven jowls were waxy with grooming, but his eyes looked puffy. The aroma of shaving-soap was strong. On my writing-table, as he planked down his hat, he caught sight of the tabloid with his bottle-of-beer picture; and he exploded. Evidently it was familiar. He said things about lawsuits; he drew comparisons between reporters and hyenas, stressing the more exalted moral character of the latter; and he was full of wild references to something that had just happened "at the Rag." I gathered that there had been certain observations at the Army and Navy Club, together with some talk of presenting him with a tambourine for his next seance. It also appeared that a facetious brigadier had come up behind him and hissed, "Guinness is good for you."

I offered him a cup of coffee, which he refused, and a brandy and soda, which he accepted.

"I was salutin' the flag, dammit!" snorted Major Featherton, when he had been pushed into a chair with a consoling cigar lighted. "Now, confound it, I won't be able to show my face anywhere; all because I tried to oblige Anne. A mess. Devil of a mess, that's what it is. Now I don't even know whether I ought to go through with what I came to ask you about. Be in for a confounding ragging from...." He paused, and sipped his drink. He brooded. "I phoned Anne this morning. She was snappish last night; wouldn't let me take her home. But she didn't take my head off this morning, because the poor old girl's upset. I gather Marion Latimer had phoned her before I did; called her an old trouble-maker; and practically said straight out, both for herself and young Halliday, that the less they saw of her in the future the better they'd both like it. However-!"

I waited....

"Look here, Blake," he continued, after another pause. The old cough was racking him again, at intervals of minutes. "I said a lot of things last night that I shouldn't have; eh?"

"You mean about hearingnoises. in

the room?"

"Yes."

"Well, if they were true...."

He scowled, and grew confidential. "Certainly they were true. But that ain't the point, my lad. Surely you can see it? Point is this. We can't have them thinking what they're bound to think, sooner or later, and that's plain downright tommyrot. That one of us - eh? H'mf. Tommyrot! And it ought to be stopped."

"What's your own notion of a solution, Major?"

"Confound it, I'm not a detective. But I'm a plain man, and I do know this. The idea that one of us - baah!" He leaned back, made a heavy gesture, and almost sneered. "I tell you it's somebody who sneaked in unknown to us, or it's that medium. Why, see here! Suppose one of us did want to do that blighter in: which we wouldn't, mind you. Fancy anybody taking risks like that, with a whole room full of people all around! It's all nonsense. Besides, how could anybody do a thing like that without getting all smeared up with blood? I've seen the niggers trying to knife our sentries too often; and anybody who cut old Darworth up like that would've been soaked - couldn't help it. Bah?'

Some cigar-smoke got into his eye, and he rubbed it blearily. Then he leaned forward with great intentness, his hands on his knees.

"So what I suggest, sir, is this. Put it in the proper hands. Then it'll be all right. I know him well, and so do you. I know he's devilish lazy; but we'll put it up to him as a matter of of caste, dammit! We'll say, `Look here, old boy...."

Then there occurred to me what should have occurred , long before. I sat up. "You mean," I said, "H.M.? The old Chief? Mycroft?"

"I mean Henry Merrivale. Exactly. Eh?"

H.M. on a Scotland Yard case.... I thought again of that room high over Whitehall, which I had not seen since 1922. I thought of the extremely lazy, extremely garrulous and slipshod figure who sat grinning with sleepy eyes; his hands folded over his big stomach and his feet propped up on the desk. His chief taste was for lurid reading-matter; his chief complaint that people would not treat him seriously. He was a qualified barrister and a qualified physician, and he spoke atrocious grammar. He was Sir Henry Merrivale, Baronet, and had been a fighting Socialist all his life. He was vastly conceited, and had an inexhaustible fund of bawdy stories....

Looking past Featherton, I remembered the old days. They began calling, him Mycroft when he was head of the British Counter-Espionage Department., The notion of even the rawest junior calling him Sir Henry would have been fantastic. It was Johnny Ireton, in a letter from Constantinople, who started the nickname; but it failed to stick. "The most interesting figure in the stories about the hawk-faced gentleman from Baker Street," Johnny wrote, "isn't Sherlock at all; it's his brother Mycroft. Do you remember him? He's the one with as big or bigger a deductive-hat than S.H.,; but is too lazy to use it; he's big and sluggish and won't move out of his chair; he's a big pot in some mysterious department of the government, with a card-index memory, and moves only in his orbit of lodgings-club-Whitehall. I think he only comes into two stories, but there's a magnificent scene in which Sherlock and Mycroft stand in the window of the Diogenes Club rattling out an exchange of deductions about a man passing by in the street both of them very casual, and poor Watson getting dizzier than he's ever been before.... I tell you, if our H.M. had a little more dignity, and would always remember to put on a necktie, and would refrain from. humming the words to questionable songs when he lumbers through rooms full of lady typists, he wouldn't make a bad Mycroft. He's got the brain, my lad; he's got the brain...."

But H.M. discouraged the, use of the nickname. In fact, he was roused to ire. He said he was not animitation of anybody, and roared about it. Since I left the service in 1922, I had seen him only three times. Twice in the smoking-room of the Diogenes Club, when I was a guest; and on both occasions he was asleep. The last was at one of Mayfair crushes, where his wife had dragged him. He had slunk away from the dancing to see whether he could get a drink of whisky; I found him prowling near the butler's pantry, and he said he was suffering. So we waylaid Colonel Lendinn and got up a poker-game at which the colonel and I lost eleven pounds sixteen shillings between us.... There had been some talk of the old days. I gathered that he was tinkering with the Military Intelligence Department. But he said - sourly, flicking the cards with a sharp crrr-ick under his big thumb-that the glamour was gone; that these were dull times for anybody with a brain; and that, because the thus-and-so's were too parsimonious to install a lift, he still had to walk up five thus-and-so’d flights of stairs to his little office overlooking the gardens along Horse Guards Avenue.

Featherton was talking again. I only half-heard him, for I was remembering the days when we were a very young crowd, and juggled with our lives twenty-four hours in a day under the impression that we were having a fine time, and thought it great sport to 'pull a. tail-feather or two from the double-eagle that was Imperial Germany. The rain still slashed monotonously, and Featherton's voice rose

"-tell you what we'll do, Blake. We'll pick up a cab and go straight round there. If we phone to say we're coming, he'll swear he's busy, eh? And go back to reading his confounded shockers. What say? Shall we go?"

The temptation was too much.

"Immediately," I said.

It was raining hard. Our cab skidded down into Pall Mall; and five minutes later we had swung left off the stolid, barrack-windowed dignity of the Be-British Street, down a little, sylvan-looking thoroughfare which connects Whitehall with the Embankment. The War Office seemed depressed, like the dripping gardens that enclosed it behind. Away from the bustle at the front, there is a little side door close to the garden wall, which you are not supposed to know about.

Inside, I could have found my way blindfolded through the little dark entry, and up two flights of stairs past doors that showed rooms full of typists, filing-cabinets, and harsh electric lights. It was surprisingly modern in this ancient stone rookery, whose halls smelt of stone, damp, and dead cigarettes. (This, by the way, is a part of old Whitehall Palace). Nothing had changed. There was still a peeling war-poster stuck on the wall, where it had been for twelve years. The past came back with a shock, of men grown older but time stood still; of young fledglings clumping up these stairs a-whistling, with officers' swagger-stick cocked under one arm; and outside on the Embankment a barrel-organ grinding out a tune to which our feet still tap. That flattened cigarette-stump on the stairs might just have been tossed away by Johnny Ireton or Captain Bunky Knapp, if one hadn't been dead of fever in Mesopotamia and the other long disposed of by a pot-helmeted firing party outside Metz. I never realized until then how damned lucky I had been....

On the fourth flight you must pass a barrier in the person of old Carstairs. The sergeant-major looked exactly the same, leaning out of his cubicle and smoking a forbidden pipe. Our greetings were affable, though it was strange to be saluted again; I told him glibly that I had an appointment with H.M. - which he knew was a lie - and trusted to old times. He looked dubious. He said:

"Why, I dunno, sir. I daresay it's all right. Though there's a sort of bloke just gone up." His boiled eye was contemptuous. "A bloke from down the way, 'e said. From Scotland Yard. Ayagh!"

Featherton and I looked at each other. After thanking Carstairs, we hurried up the remaining and darkest flight of stairs. We caught sight of the bloke on the landing, just raising his hand to knock at H.M.'s door.

I said: "Shame on you, Masters. What would the assistant commissioner say?"

Masters looked first angry, and then amused. He was back in his old stolid placidity again, where he could feel the brick walls of Whitehall: well-brushed, and heavy of motion. Any reference to his unheard-of behavior last night would probably startle him as much as it startled me to think of it.

"Ah! So it's you?" he said. "Um. And Major Featherton, I see. Why, that's all right. I've got the assistant commissioner's permission. Now -"

In the dingy light of the landing, I could see the familiar door. It bore a severe plate which said, "Sir Henry Merrivale." Above this plate H.M. had long ago taken white paint and inscribed in enormous staggering letters: "BUSY!!! NO ADMITTANCE!!! KEEP OUT!!!" and below the plate, as though with a pointed afterthought, "This means YOU!" Masters, like everybody else, merely turned the knob and walked in.

It was still unchanged. The low-ceilinged room, with its two big windows overlooking the gardens and the Embankment, was as untidy as ever; as full of papers, pipes, pictures, and junk. Behind a broad flat desk, also littered, H.M.'s great bulk was sprawled in a leather chair. His big feet were on the desk, entangled with the telephone and he wore white socks. A goose-neck reading-lamp was switched on, but bent down so far that its light fell flat on the desk.. Back in shadow, H.M.'s big baldish dusty head was bent forward, and his big tortoise-shell spectacles had slid down his nose.

"Hullo!" grumbled Major Featherton, rapping on the inside of the door. "I say, Henry! Look here-"

H.M. opened one eye.

"Go 'way!" he rumbled, and made a gesture. Some papers spilled out of his lap to the floor, and he went on querulously: "Go 'way, will you? Can't you see I'm busy? ... Go 'way!"

"You were asleep," said Featherton.

"I wasn't asleep, damn you," -said H.M. "I was cogitatin'. That's the way I cogitate. Ain't there ever goin' to be any peace around here, so a man can fix his mind on the coruscation of the infinite? I ask you!" Laboriously he rolled up his big, wrinkled, impassive face, which rarely changed its expression no matter what his mood was. The corners of his broad, mouth were turned down; he looked as though he were smelling a bad breakfast-egg. He peered at us through the spectacles, a great, stolid lump with his hands folded over his stomach, and went on testily: "Well, well, who is it? Who's there? ... Oh, it's you, Masters? Yes, I've been readin' your reports. Humph. If you'd only let a man alone for a while, I might'a been able to tell you something. Humph. Well, since you're here, I s'pose you might as well come in." He peered, suspiciously. "Who's that with you? I'm busy! BUSY! Get out! If it's that Goncharev business again, tell him to go jump in the Volga. I got all I want now."

Featherton and I both started to explain at once. H.M. grunted, but looked a little less severe.

"Oh, it's you two. Yes, it would be. Come in, then, and find a chair.... I s'pose you ought to have a drink. You know where the stuff is, Ken. Same place. Go get it."

I did know. A few more pictures and trophies were added to the walls, but everything was in its old place. Over the white marble fireplace, where a dull heap of embers glowed was the tall Mephistophelian portrait of Fouche. Incongruously, on either side of it was a smaller picture of the only two writers H.M. would ever admit had ever possessed the least ability: Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. The walls on either side the fireplace were disorderly with crammed bookshelves. Over against one of those stood a large iron safe, on the door of which (H.M. has a very primitive sense of humor) was painted in the same sprawling white letters, "IMPORTANT STATE DOCUMENTS! DO NOT TOUCH! ! !" The same legend was added beneath in German, French, Italian and - I think - Russian. H.M. has a habit of ticketing, according to his fancy, most of the exhibits in this room; Johnny Ireton used to say it was like going through Alice in Wonderland.

The safe door was open, and I took out the whisky-bottle, the siphon, and five rather dusty glasses. While I was doing the proper offices, H.M.'s voice kept on in its same rumbling strain: never raising or lowering, always talking.... But he sounded even more querulous.

"I ain't got any cigars, you know. My nephew Horace - you know, Featherton, Letty's kid; the fourteen-year-old 'un with the feet gave me a box of Henry Clays for my birthday. (Sit down, dammit, can't you? And mind that hole in the 'rug; everybody who comes in here kicks it and makes it bigger). But I haven't smoked 'em. I haven't even tried 'em. Because why?" inquired H.M. He lifted one hand and pointed it at Masters with a sinister expression. "Eh? I'l1 tell you. Because I've got a dark suspicion that they explode, that's why. Anyway, you have to make sure. Fancy: any right kind of nephew givin' his uncle explodin' cigars!-I tell you, they won't take me seriously, they won't... So, d'ye see, I gave the box to the Home Secretary. If I don't hear anything about it by tonight, I'll ask for 'em back. I got some good pipe-tobacco, though ... over there.... "Look here, Henry," interposed the major, who had been wheezing and glaring for some time, "we've come to you about a dashed serious matter,"

"No!" said H.M., holding up his hand. "Not yet! Not for a minute! Drink first."

This was a rite. I brought the glasses, and we went through it, though Featherton was fuming with impatience. Masters remained stolid, holding his glass steadily as though he were afraid it might fall; but there was some new development on his mind. H.M. said, "Honk-honk!" with the utmost solemnity, and drained his glass at a gulp. - He relaxed. He adjusted his feet on the desk, wheezing. He picked up a black pipe. When he settled back in the chair, it was with an air of gentle benevolence wrapping him round. His expression did not change, but at least he looked like a Chinese image after a good dinner.

"Humph. I'm feelin' better.... Yes, I know what you came for. And it's a confounded nuisance. Still-" His small eyes blinked, and moved slowly from one to the other of us. "If you've got the assistant commissioner's permission.... "Here it is, sir," said Masters. "In writing."

"Eh? Oh, yes. Put it down,put. it

down. He'd always got pretty good sense, Follett had," H.M. admitted grudgingly. He grunted. "More than most of your people, anyhow." The small eyes fixed on Masters with that disconcerting stare which the old boy knew best how to employ. "That was why you got me, eh? Because Follett backed you up. Because Follett thought you'd tossed 'em a loose pack of dynamite, and at last you'd got a real upand-at-em Sizzler of a case?"

"I don't mind admitting that," said Masters, "or, as you say, that Sir George thought-"

"Well, he was quite right, son," said H.M., and nodded somberly. "You have."

During a long silence the rain splashed on the windows. I looked at the spot of yellow light made on the desk by H.M.'s goose-neck lamp. Among a litter of typewritten reports, spattered over with tobacco-ash, lay a sheet of foolscap sprawled over with notes in thick blue penciling. H.M. had headed it, "Plague Court." I was fairly certain that, if Masters had furnished him with all the reports, he knew as much as we did.

"Any ideas?" I inquired.

With painful effort H.M. moved his heel on the desk and struck the foolscap sheet. "Plenty of ideas. Only, d'ye see, they don't altogether make sense - just yet. I shall want to hear a lot of talkin' from you three. Humph, yes. What's more, and it's a blasted nuisance, I'm afraid I've got to go and have a look at the house...."

"Well, sir," Masters said briskly, "I can have a car at the door in three minutes, if you'll let me use your phone. We'll be at Plague Court within fifteen minutes...."

"Don't interrupt me, dammit," said H.M. with dignity. "Plague Court? Nonsense! Who said anything about Plague Court? I mean Darworth's house. Think I mean to get out of a comfortable chair to mess about in the other place? Bah. But I'm glad they appreciate me." He spread his spatulate fingers and examined them with the same sour expression. The voice grew querulous again. "Trouble with the English people is, they won't take serious things seriously. And I'm gettin' tired of it, I am. One of these days I'm goin' over to France, where they'll give me the Legion of Honor or something, and shout about me with bated breath. But what do my own flesh-and-blood countrymen do, I ask you?" he demanded. "The minute they learn what department I'm in, they think it's funny. They sneak up to me, and look round mysterious-like, and ask whether I have discovered the identity of the sinister stranger in the pink velours hat, and if I have sent K-14 into Beloochistan disguised as a Veiled Touareg to find out what 2XY is doing about PR2.

"Grr-rr!" said H.M., waving his flippers and glaring. "And what's more, their idea of sending me messages, and bribing Chinamen to call, and the cards that're sent up here... Why, only last week they phoned up from the downstairs office and said an Asiatic gent wanted to see me, and gave his name. I was so bloomin' mad I chewed the phone, and I yelled down and told Carstairs to chuck the feller down all four flights of stairs. And he did. And then it turned, out that the poor feller's name really was Dr. Fu-Manchu after all, and he come from the Chinese Legation. Well, sir, the Chink Ambassador was wild, and we hadda cable an apology to Pekin. And what's more "

Featherton hammered the desk. He was still coughing heavily, but he contrived to get out: "I tell you, Henry, and I've been telling you, this is a dashed serious business! And I want you to get down to it. Why, I said to young Blake only this afternoon, I said, `We'll put this thing up to Henry as a matter of-caste, dammit. Won't be any aspersions cast on the ruling classes of England, by Gad, if old Henry Merrivale"

H.M. stared, and literally began to swell. As an appeal to a fanatical Socialist, this was not precisely the way to draw a man out.

"He's ragging you, H.M.," I said quickly, before the storm broke. "He knows your views. What we did say was this. We agreed to try you as a last resort, but I pointed out that this was utterly beyond you - not in your line - foolish to think you could see through it-" "NO?" said H. M., and leered. "You want to bet? Hey?" "Well, for instance," I continued persuasively, "you've read all the testimony, I suppose?"

"Uh. Masters here sent it over this morning, along with a pretty first-class report of his own. Oh, yes."

"Find anything interesting, suggestive, in what anybody said?"

"Sure I did."

"In whose testimony, for example?"

Again H.M. inspected his fingers. Again the corners of

his mouth were turned down, and again he blinked. He grunted:

"Humph. For a starter, I'll call your attention to what was said by the two Latimers: Marion and Ted. Eh?" "You mean - suspicious?"

Major Featherton snorted. H.M.'s expressionless eyes moved to him; H.M. was locked up at last, in the cage of his own brain. Once enticed into the cage, you could let him alone to pad up and down noiselessly, until the door was opened and he pounced.

"Oh, I dunno as I'd call it suspicious, Ken. What do you think? ... Point is, 'I'd rather like to talk to 'em. I'm not going to stir out of this room, mind you. I'm not wastin' good shoe-leather just to give Scotland Yard a bouquet. Too much trouble. All the same-"

"You can't, sir," Masters said heavily.

There was something in the tone of his voice that made us all look at him. What had been on his mind, some new development that was worrying him, all seemed packed into those few words.

"Can't what?"

"See Ted Latimer." Masters leaned forward, and his placid tones got a little out of control. "He's bolted, Sir Henry. Done a bunk. Packed a bag and cleared out. That's what!"

XIV

CONCERNING DEAD CATS AND DEAD WIVES

NOBODY spoke. Featherton made a movement as though to protest, but that was all. The patter of the rain grew loud in the quiet room. Masters, drawing a deep breath as though he had at last got a weight off his chest, took out his notebook and an envelope stuffed with papers. He began to sort over the papers.

"Has he, now?" inquired H.M., blinking. "That's interesting. Might mean something, might not. All depends. I shouldn't jump at it, if I was you. Humph. What have you done?"

"What can I do? Swear out a warrant for murder without even being able to tell a coroner's jury how it was done?.. . . No, thanks," Masters said curtly. His face showed that he had not been to bed for twenty-four hours. He looked straight at H.M. "This is my official head, Sir Henry, if I make any more mistakes, and if I don't pull it off. The papers are saying, `While an inspector of the C.I.D. was amusing himself with the occult, it seems rum that a brutal murder should be pulled off under his nose; very rum indeed.' To top that, the dagger was pinched under my nose. To top that, the story got into the papers in spite, of me.... Sir George gave it pretty straight to me this morning. So, if you've got any ideas, I'd appreciate them."

"Oh, hell," said H.M. gruffly. He looked" down his nose. "Well, what the devil are you waiting for? Get started! Give me facts! Get down to business. - Tell me what you've done today."

"Thanks." Masters spread out his papers. "I've got a few things, anyhow, that may be leads. As soon as I got back to the Yard, I began rummaging the files about Darworth. Part of the information I've already sent you, but not this. You read about that scandal over his first wife, Elsie Fenwick's disappearance, following the alleged attempt to poison her while they were in Switzerland?"

H.M. grunted.

"Just so: Now, there was a woman mixed up in that business who might or might not've been important. That was the maid; the maid who swore old Elsie had swallowed the arsenic herself, and pretty well saved Darworth's bacon. I was curious about that maid, so I looked her up. And now," said Masters, lifting his dull eyes, "here are some names and figures. The alleged poisoning attempt took place at Berne some time in January, 1916, and the maid's name was Glenda Watson. She was still with the old woman when Elsie disappeared from their new home in Surrey on April 12th, 1919. Afterwards the maid left England.. .

"Well?"

"At eight o'clock this morning I cabled the French police for any information about Darworth's second wife. They keep tabs on everybody in the country, harmless or otherwise. This was the reply."

He shoved a cable-form at H.M., who scarcely glanced at it, grunted, and passed it to me. It said:

"MAIDEN NAME GLENDA WATSON. MARRIED ROGER GORDON DARWORTH, HOTEL

DE VILLE, 2ND ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS, JUNE 1, 1926. WIFE'S LAST ADDRESS VILLA D'IVRY, AVENUE EDWARD VII, NICE. WILL INVESTIGATE AND COMMUNICATE.

DURRAND, SURETE."

"Well?" inquired H.M., blinking placidly at me. "Make anything of it, son? - Y'know, Masters, I got a suspicion you're on a blinking awful wild-goose chase. I got an even darker suspicion that it ain't Glenda Watson who's going to figure in this; but somebody in nice high-up places that knew what Glenda knew. But you're right to keep kickin' the ball.... Well, Ken?"

I said: "The first of June, 1926. Seven years and a month-odd. They're devilish law-abiding people. They wait exactly the length of time until old Elsie is legally dead, and then rush into each other's arms...."

"But I don't see-!" protested Featherton, rumbling and drawing himself up. "I'm dashed if I can understand---"

"Shut up," said H.M. austerely. "And quite right they are too, son. Got to have it legal. And this raises the interesting point: was it worth it for the Watson woman? Darworth got any money, by the way?"

Masters smiled heavily. He was growing more assured now.

"Has he got any money? Ha! Listen, sir. Immediately after the splash in the papers, we got a phone call from Darworth's solicitor. Now it happens (and this I'll admit is a piece of luck) that I know old Stiller pretty well. So I hopped found to him straightway. He hemmed and hawed and looked out. the window; but it boils down to the fact that Darworth leaves an estate of about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Eh?"

The major whistled, and Masters peered round the desk as though well satisfied. But this information acted on H.M. in a rather different way than I had expected. He opened his fishy eyes wide. He pulled off his spectacles and shook them in the air. For a second I thought his feet were going to slide off the desk or his chair tip backwards.

"So it wasn't the money!" said H.M. "Burn me, it wasn't the money after all! Of course not. Humph." He rumbled with unsmiling satisfaction, and looked at his black pipe. But he was too lazy to light it, so he settled back again dully with his hands folded over his stomach. "Carry on, Masters. Carry on. I like it."

"What's on your mind, sir?" the Inspector asked. "I got it straight from Stiller. Darworth's got no other relations, made no will, and his wife will inherit. Stiller describes her as a what-is-it `statuesque’ brunette, not at all a servant-type...."'

"Chuck it," said H.M. "What're you insinuatin', son? That the woman came over and murdered Darworth for his money? Tut, tut. That's not fair detective-fiction, to go and dump down a mere name, somebody we haven't seen and that ain't connected with the business. Don't growl, now. Because why?" He pointed his pipe at Masters. "Because the person who planned this crime planned it exactly like a detective-story. It's skillful; even I'll admit that. But that locked-room situation is too rounded and complete, too thoroughly worked out and smacked down as a deliberate puzzle for us. It was staged for months. Everything led slowly up to just that situation, when just that crowd would be assembled under just those emotional circumstances. . . . They even provided themselves with a scapegoat. If something went wrong, we should fasten directly on good old Joseph. That was why he was there at all; he wasn't needed otherwise. Man, d’ye think he could really have pinched a needleful of morphine from Darworth without Darworth knowing all about it but pretendin' not to?"

"But—“ Masters protested.

"Humph. It's time to pry off a few layers of wrappin' in this thing. Joseph doped himself and slid out of the package; all right; but he was always there, and the British public always knows what to think when it finds a Dope-Fiend, especially if he can't give a coherent account of what he's been doing. When the Dope-Fiend is also that other figure of suspicion, a Medium - arragh! That's why you can stop lookin' for a mythical outsider, son, who dived into the pool after the water'd been all colored up nice and proper."

He was gabbling on as though sleepily addressing the telephone; a little more rapidly than usual, but with no change of voice.

"Hold on, sir!" said Masters. "Stop the bus! I've got to get this straight. You said, `They provided themselves with a scapegoat.' Then you said something about Darworth. And all this time you were talking about somebody who planned things to happen along the line of a detective-story.... "Right-ho. So I did."

"And have you any idea who it was that planned it?"

H.M.'s little eyes roved. They seemed amused, though he preserved his sour expression, and kept on twiddling his thumbs across his waistcoat. He blinked.

"Well, I'll tell you," he said, as though suddenly determined to impart a confidence. "It was Roger Darworth."'

Masters stared at him. Masters opened and shut his mouth. In the silence we could hear a door bang shut downstairs the honking of taxis outside on the Embankment. Then Masters bent his head a little, raised it, and said with the quiet air of one who is determined to hold to reason:

"Are you trying to tell me, sir, that Darworth killed himself?"

"No. A man can't give himself three good hearty stabs through the back and then finish himself with a fourth. Not possible.... You see, something went wrong...."

"You mean there was an accident?"

"Dammit, man," said H.M., "what sort of accident'll slosh a man about like that, hey? You think the dagger was workin' like a Ouija-Board or something? The answer is, NO. I said something went wrong. Which it did.... Can't anybody give me a match? ... Humph. Thanks."

"This," said Major Featherton, "is outrageous!" He coughed again.

H.M. looked at him blankly.

"I can tell you a little, Masters," he went on, "without being able (I mean yet, you understand; I'll get it presently) - what was I sayin'? - without being able to solve the thundering riddle of the no-footprints and the locked room. It's rather uncanny, by God, it is! And there're going to be a lot of people believe it was spooks, after all....

"Look here, son. You thought Darworth was going to put on a spiritualistic show last night. You were right. He was. If it had gone as he planned it, it would still have splashed him into terrific prominence in the world. It would also have got him Marion Latimer, awed, tied, and delivered for life; and that was what he wanted. Eh? I don't have to stress that to you, do I? Read the testimony, if you don't recall it....

. "Well, Darworth had a confederate. One of those five people sitting in the dark was to help him put on his show. But the confederate didn't play fair. Instead of doing what he or she was supposed to do, the confederate went out to that house and murdered him ... after Darworth had worked out the play and set the stage so that it could be done.... "

Masters leaned forward, his hands clenched on the desk.

He said: "I think I'm beginning to get this, sir. You mean that Darworth intended there to be a locked room?"

"Sure he did, Masters," H.M. replied somewhat querulously. He struck his match for the pipe, but it went out immediately. As though he were acting automatically, Masters struck another match and held it across the table. His eyes did not leave H.M.'s face as the Chief went on: "How else could he prove to the world that spooks had done - what he intended to have done?"

"And what," demanded Masters, "what did he intend to have done?"

Laboriously H.M. heaved his feet down from the desk. He took the light from Masters' match when it had nearly burnt the Inspector's fingers. The pipe went out, but he kept on puffing as though he did not notice. Putting his elbows on the desk and his big head in his hands, he brooded over the notes that lay before him. Outside it was nearly dark now, and the rain whispered faintly. Against grayish mist you could see the necklace of street-lamps winking out along the curve of the Embankment below, and the lights on the bridges making gleams in black water. Under pale trees - taller than the buses that shouldered past in shadows and sullen red flickers-traffic crawled with a firefly glitter. Startlingly near, the voice of Big Ben commenced to bang and vibrate high above us. It had struck five before H.M. spoke...

He said: "I was sittin' here this afternoon, thinking about those reports. And the key to the whole isn't difficult to find.

"It's this, d'ye see? Darworth's intentions towards that Latimer girl were what they call strictly honorable. That's the hellish part of it! They were strictly honorable. If he'd only a-wanted to seduce her, he could've done it long ago, and then there wouldn't be this mess. Bah! Then, after a while, he'd have got tired of his game with the Benning-Latimer circle, or got all the money he wanted from the old lady, and moved on to better game. Burn me, why couldn't it have been like that?"

H.M. spoke plaintively. He ruffled his hands across his head in an angry manner; he did not look up.

"It don't take much brains to see his course. First off, he was after the old lady to work on her bereavement. But it was pretty fair generalship; he learns how she's tied up with the Latimer-Halliday crowd, and goes after Ted – you know it all. I dunno whether he knew about the Plague Court legend at the beginning or not; but he finds that a perfect ghost-story situation has dropped into his lap for him to twist any way he likes through the spirit of poor weak-headed James. Then he meets the Latimer girl. Bang. The big hunt's started....”

"He means to get a wife out of this, d'ye see? He combs his whiskers, assumes his Byronic air, paralyzes her with every psychological trick in the bag - and watch him work. Son, he damn near did it! If it hadn't been for this chap Halliday, he'd have succeeded. As it was, he got round her with that `possession' nonsense. It took a long build-up, of course. He filled her head with ideas she'd never thought of before; he danced in front of her; bewildered, soothed, cajoled her; even tried hypnosis, and scared her nearly out of her wits. All the time, for one reason or another, the old lady was helping him.... Again H.M. knocked his hands against his head. Masters said:

"Ah! Bit of jealousy there, I should think. - But this business of 'exorcising' Plague Court was in the nature of his last big "

"Knockout!" said H.M. "A stinger. Have the girl exactly where he wanted her, if he'd pulled it off. Oh, yes."

"Go on, sir," prompted the Inspector, after a pause.

"Well, I was only sittin' and thinkin', you understand. It was probably a pretty dangerous stunt he was going to try. Had to be, you see. It had to be a stinger, or the whole scheme would fall through. It had to be a jolly sight more spectacular than makin' passes at a pretended ghost nobody else could see. The bell, for example. It might have, been for effect - or, it might have been because there was a real, grim, deadly danger. Eh? In any event, it indicated he expected 'em to be called out. He was locked in there with a padlock on the outside of the door. That smelled more like trickery, but when he also bolted and barred the door in the inside.... Why, he was going to stage a fake `attack' from Louis Playge, in a room where nobody but a ghost could have entered.

"As I say, I was sittin' and thinkin'....

"So I asked myself, `Here! First, how was he goin' to do it; and, second, was he goin' to do it alone?'

"I read your report. It said how you were outside yourself, and how you'd come round the side of the house a few minutes before you heard the bell. And you heard funny noises from the house. You said you heard his voice,

`as though he were beggin' or implorin' somebody, and as though he'd started to moan or cry.' Man, that don't sound like a violent attack. No sounds of a fight, mind you, though he was cut up with rather tolerable thoroughness. No yells or blows or curses, such as any ordinary person would make. It was pain, Masters. Pain! And he was simply standing there takin' it. . “

Masters ran his hand savagely through his hair. But he spoke in a low voice. "Do you mean, sir, that he deliberately allowed himself to be mutilated----“

"We'll come to the mutilation in a minute. Now, that. might or might not argue the, presence of a confederate. But it looked a good deal like it. Because what good were mere wounds in his locked-room scheme unless they were in a place where he couldn't have inflicted 'em himself?"

"Go on."

"Then I read all about that room, and I kept askin' questions. First, why was there so infernally much blood about? There was too much blood, Masters. Darworth might have been, one of your Messianic neurotics; might 'a' been willing to undergo more than usual jabs to make this piece of trickery ring in the world - to snare the Latimer girl - to feed his ego-I dunno what. Mind you, he was wealthy himself; it was partly the incense-drunk prophet, not able to resist the sound of his own voice, who let himself. . . . But I repeat, son, there was too much blood."

H.M. lifted his head. He spoke for the first time with a curious smile on his ponderous face; his little eyes fixed Masters. You felt the power of the man, growing steadily...

"And then I remembered two things," he said softly. 'I remembered that in the fire, where they had no business to be, were the smashed fragments of a big glass bottle. And in the big house, under the stairs, lay the body of a cat with its throat cut."

Masters whistled. The major, who had started to get up, sat down again.

"Humph," said H.M. "Humph, yes. I phoned through to your analyst, Masters.. I shall be a good deal surprised if most of that blood didn't come from a cat. It was part of the spectacular element. And you'll see now why there was so infernally much blood - without any marks or imprints in it, as there'd bound to be if the murderer had really chased round after Darworth cutting at him.

"And I also kept askin' myself, `Was that why there was such a very hot fire?' Darworth could have carried the blood under his coat in a flattish bottle, and it wouldn't be long till he could splash it round artistically on himself and on the floor: making a very effective picture. But it had to be kept warm in the meantime, so it wouldn't coagulate. Maybe it was the reason for the very hot fire, or maybe not.

"Anyway, thinkin' about that mess, I said to myself, 'Look here,' I said, `the man's clothes were torn scandalous, he was saturated with blood, and he'd accidentally smashed his glasses in his eyes when he tumbled over on the floor. But disregard the splendor and vividness of the stage-setting,' I said-"

"Hold on a bit, H.M.!" I interrupted. "You say Darworth killed the cat?"

"Uh," snorted H.M., glowering round near-sightedly to see who had made the interruption. "Oh, it's you, is it? Yes, that's what I said."

"When did he do it?"

"Why, when he'd sent young Latimer and poor old Featherton here out to set his house in order; they took enough time about it. He was only resting, d'ye see. Now shut up and –“

"But wouldn't he get blood on him?"

"Sure he would, Ken. A bloomin' good thing, too. He intended to splash himself later on, d'ye see, and the more evidence the better. Simply put on his overcoat and gloves to conceal it then (you'll notice he didn't go back in the front room where anybody could see him in a decent light, or examine him; oh, no. He rushed out and had 'em lock him in that house awful abrupt. Remember? That blood hadda be kept fresh). What was I saying ?"

H.M. paused, his little eyes fixed. He said, slowly, "Oh my-God," and put his fists down on the desk.

"I say, you chaps stimulate me, you do. I just thought of somethin'. Oh, this is bad. Very bad. Never mind. Let me go on. Where was I?"

"Keep to the point," rasped the major, knocking his stick on the floor. "This is all damned nonsense, but go on. You were talking about Darworth's wounds-?"

"So I was. Yes. Humph. 'Well,' I said to myself, 'disregard the stage-setting.' Everybody talked a lot about how terribly slashed up he was, after a good look at all the blood and slit clothes. But, leavin' out the good straight stab that killed him, just how serious were his injuries? Eh?

"Y'see, the point about that dagger is that it ain't a slashing weapon in the least. You can't cut with a straight-bladed awl, no matter how sharp it is. Old Darworth had to use it, to keep up the Louis Playge illusion. But what happened to him, actually? ... I sent over for the full post-mortem report, I did.

"There were three very superficial wounds in his left arm, thigh, and leg: the sort of thing a nervous person might do to himself, and get scared and not dig more than half an inch in. I think maybe Darworth screwed up his courage and did that himself; then got frightened and wanted to back out of his confederate sticking him from behind. That might account for some of his moanings. The exaltation must 'a' been wearing a bit thin by that time.

"Nervous strain. It couldn't have hurt him much. But the confederate had to give him wounds he couldn't have made himself. Thus: one cut high in the flesh over the shoulder blade. One that stabbed sideways, straight across his back and very shallow. And that was all the confederate WAS supposed to do to him..:."

H.M.'s desk-telephone rang stridently, and I think we all started. He cursed and shook his fist at it, talking to it for some time before he took down the receiver. Then he immediately said he was busy, protesting querulously about the fate of the British empire depending on it, and was interrupted by a strident voice. The voice went on speaking. A dour expression of satisfaction overspread H.M.'s face. Once he said, "Ehocaine Hydrochloride!" as though he were gloating over a delicacy.

"That settles it, lads," he said, replacing the receiver. His eye twinkled. "Doc Blaine on the wire. I might have guessed it. A section of Darworth's back was shot full of ehocaine hydrochloride; you know it as novacaine, if you've ever had a dentist sittin' on your chest.... Poor old Darworth! Couldn't stick the pain even in a good cause. Damn fool. He might 'a' stopped his heart. Somebody did stop it though. It's interesting to think of that suave, unctuous blighter knowing what he had to do to win everything he wanted, but scared green when the time came for the operation. Ha. Ha-ha-ha. Give me a match."

"The confederate," said Masters, who had been writing busily, "was supposed to give him those light stabs.... '

"Yes. And didn't. He cut loose suddenly with two deep ones, before Darworth knew what was happening. He stabbed through the back close to the spine, and then under the shoulder-blade-"

H.M. brought down a big flipper out of the air. There was something ghoulish, rather inhuman, about the expression of his face. His eyes seemed to know exactly what you were thinking, and I looked away from them.

"This is all very well, sir," Masters began doggedly, "but it doesn't get us anywhere! You've still got to explain the locked-room. If it was a confederate, I can understand how Darworth might have drawn the bolt and raised the bar and let him in, but "

"After," I said, "the confederate walking thirty yards of mud from the big house without leaving a footprint.. "

"Don't mix me up, now," growled Masters, making a fierce gesture as though he were balancing a pail of water on his head, "I said I could understand how Darworth let him in----"

"Steady on," interposed H.M. "Remember that there was a padlock on that door that had to be opened from outside. By the way, who had the key to that padlock?"

"Ted Latimer," said Masters.

There was a silence.

"Now, now," urged H.M. soothingly. "Might have been. But I shouldn't jump to conclusions - yet. That reminds me, you said something about his doing a bunk; and you haven't explained it yet. Oh, I want to hear a lot of things yet. Yet, yet, yet. . . ."

Masters squinted up his eyes. "If we could explain how the murderer went in and out of that house without leaving footprints-"

"I read a story once," volunteered H.M., like an urchin from the back of a classroom. "It was funnier than watchin' somebody sit on a silk hat. Feller committed a murder in a house with six inches of unmarked snow all around. How'd he get in and out? It appears he walked to and from the place on stilts. The police thought they was rabbit-tracks. Ha ha ha. Burn me, Masters, wouldn't it have given you a turn if you'd seen somebody staggerin' out of that place on stilts? Reasonable. Bah.

"Y'see, fatheads, the fundamental trouble with the locked-room situation is that it generally ain't reasonable. I don't mean that it can't be worked, any more than you'd deny one of Houdini's escapes; oh, far from it. I mean that, under ordinary circumstances, no real murderer would think of indulging in all the elaborate hocus-pocus we're required to believe at the end of the story.... Unfortunately, this case is different. We're up against Darworth: a man whose whole mind was devoted to hocus-pocus, and who was admittedly staging an unreasonable show for a very reasonable purpose. It becomes logical - devilish - logical, Masters. He didn't intend to be murdered; the murderer simply took advantage of a plan all worked out for him ... but, burn me, how?"

"That's what I was trying to say," retorted Masters. "If we could explain no footprints, we might explain the bolted and barred door."

H.M. looked at him.

"Don't gibber, Masters," he said austerely. "I detest gibbering. That's like saying that, after all, if you can only hang the roof of a house in the air first, there won't be any difficulty about putting up the walls. But go on. I want to see the fountains play and the star-shine of your brow... How do you explain it?"

The Inspector remained stolid. But he said: “It only occurred to me, sir - sittin' and thinkin' - that, after the murderer had gone, Darworth himself might have bolted and barred the door after him. That might have been their scheme, when Darworth only expected to be wounded. He mightn't have realized that he was really dying, and wanted the plan to go through as arranged."

"Man," H.M. replied, putting his head in his hands again, "I'll say nothin' of the fact he couldn't have moved three steps after the murderer stabbed him in earnest; that all he could do was grope for the bell-wire and then tumble down and smash the glasses in his eyes. I'll say nothin' of the fact that there was no blood-trail or marks from him to the door-as there must have been. We won't argue whether a man stabbed through the heart could have lifted a heavy iron bar and shot a bolt that it takes a strong man to move in the first place. All I'll say is, we've got to look for another explanation....”

"Facts! I want more facts, Masters. Now, about what you've been doing today, and about young Latimer. Let's have it all. Talk!"

"Yes, sir. I'll get it in order. Order's what we want. And it's getting late After I'd talked to Stiller, the solicitor, we both went round to have a look at Darworth's house. It's funny how houses have a habit of drawing people back. We'd no sooner got inside, than we met - "

Again sharply, almost in H.M.'s ear as he bent forward with a curious expression on his face, the telephone rang.

XV

A SHRINE OF GHOSTS

WITH the receiver at his ear, H.M. glared.

"No!" he said quickly "No! Wrong number! ... How do I know what number you want? My good man,. I don't give a gore-stained farthing of immoral habits what number you want.... No, this is not Whitehall 0007! This is Museum 7000. The Russell Square Zoo, you fathead.... Certainly there's a zoo in Russell Square. Look here... ." (A girl's voice, from the switchboard downstairs, cut in audibly). -"Hang it, Lollypop," said H.M. to the new voice, "why can't you shut off these blighters and not put 'em through to me...?" His voice became freezingly austere. "No, my good man, I did not call you 'Lollypop'.”

"I expect it's for me, sir," said Masters, rising hurriedly. "Excuse me. I left orders for calls for me to be transferred here. I hope you didn't -"

H.M. left off glaring at the telephone to look at him. The telephone tinkled, "Ha ha." It was still making derisive remarks when Masters dexterously got it out of H.M.'s hands.

"That was not," Masters said to it, 'a secretary being funny. That was Sir Henry Merrivale." The voice died in a gurgle. "I can't help what you thought. Get on with it, Banks! What do you want? ... Oh! ... When? ... In a cab, eh? Did you see who the other person was? ... Get the number of the cab?. Well, for reference. No, it probably isn't important. Nothing suspicious? ... No; I should just keep a sharp eye out. Get into the grounds, if it won't hurt your conscience.... Right...."

He seemed uncertain and rather disturbed as he rang off, and his hand almost went back to it. But he was distracted by all the other matters weighing on him; and H.M. was in a mood to lecture.

"There now!" said H.M., in a tone of gloomy satisfaction. He pointed at Masters. "There's a first-class example of the intolerable outrages that are perpetrated on me. And they call me `eccentric'! Imagine it! People simply. walk into my room when they like, or ring me up, and they call me eccentric! ... Pour me out another drink, Ken. I've tried every way of keepin' people out. I tried puttin' the most complicated Yale lock on my door. And the only person I ever locked out was myself, and Carstairs had to break down the door, and I still got a dark suspicion that somebody deliberately pinched that key out of my pocket. Bah.' And even my secretary, even little Lollypop, mind you; as nice a girl as ever mussed up my desk; she betrays me. I ask you, what's a man goin' to do?"

Masters, who had his hands crooked as though on the steering-wheel of a wildly skidding car, was trying to divert him. There was one way of doing it, not strictly fair. Thinking of Lollypop, I began to reminisce as though sentimental about old times. I began telling him of the day when Bunky Knapp and I had walked up unannounced, when Lollypop was with him and he was supposed to be dictating letters to her.... It was effective. He turned on Masters.

"If I'm not goin' to get any help from you, man, we might as well call this thing off. Go on! You were telling me about visiting Darworth's house. Get on with it."

He paused, peering up. Major Featherton had risen. The major had put on his top-hat with a sort of angry precision. I could only faintly see his face in the gloom round the desk-lamp; but apparently the major had groped his way through all the intricacies of which we had been talking, and he had now adjusted his thoughts to voice a coldly furious conclusion.

"Merrivale!" he said.

"Eh? Oh! Sit down, my boy, sit down.... What's the matter?"

"I came to you, Merrivale," boomed the major, with precise enunciation, "for help. By Gad, I did! And I thought you'd help us. And did you? You did not. You persist in this insufferable tommyrot about one of as - ?'

"I say, my boy," interposed H.M., wrinkling his brow, "how long have you had that cough?"

"Cough?"

"Cough. You know: whoosh! Huh-huh-huh! Cough. You've been blastin' up the dust all afternoon. Did you have it last night, for instance?"

Featherton stared. "Certainly I did," he replied, with such dignity that it sounded like pride in the achievement. "But, dammit, I don't see that this, is the time for discussing coughs! I don't like to admit it, Henry, but you've betrayed us. I don't think I care to hear much more. Gad! Confound it! I'm due at the Berkeley for a cocktail; past due. And I'll wish you all good afternoon."

"Sure you don't have a drink?" asked H.M. vaguely. "No? Sorry. Well-er-goo'by."

The door slammed, and H.M. winced. He blinked owlishly in that direction. Then he shook his head, curiously as though there were some puzzling thought which he tried to roll into place.

H.M. repeated suddenly:

“You are old, said the youth, as I mentioned before,

And have grown most uncommonly fat;

Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door –

Pray, what is the reason o f that?'

"What?" said Masters.

"Oh, I was just thinkin' . never mind. Let's see, I was born in '71. Yes, that would make Bill Featherton born in '64 or '65. There's energy for you, hey? He'll be dancin' at a supper-club tonight. `Si la jeunesse savant, et si-' Bah. Go on, Masters. You went to Darworth's house with the solicitor. Tell me about it."

Masters spoke hurriedly.

"Number 25 Charles Street. Stiller and McDonnell and I went there. Very quiet, dignified place, mostly shuttered. He's had it about four years. Only person there was a kind of butler-manservant; Darworth lived out, I gathered. He used to keep a chauffeur, but for the last few years he's driven his car himself."

"This butler, now-?" suggested H.M.

"N-no. Straight, I should say, sir. Excellent references.

In fact, he named somebody he used to work for, also in Mayfair, who'd called him up as soon as Darworth's death was in the papers, and asked him if he wanted his old place back. We verified it. It's true."

"Uh-huh. Sounds like my wife. Watch out for gossip, Masters. Well?"

"I gathered he'd only taken the place because there was so much time off. Get that, sir? I asked him about the visitors and the seances. He said he knew Darworth was interested in the occult. But, whenever there was to be a seance, he was always given the evening off.

"The house is dismal inside; like a museum. No fires, few rooms lived in, full of all those rummy pictures and statuary. We went upstairs to Darworth's bed-and-dressing room, and Stiller opened a wall safe in the dressing-room. There wasn't much that was revealing; Darworth had been very careful about his papers, or else he's got 'em somewhere else.

"Then we went to the seance-room." Masters looked amused and contemptuous. "It was a big room up under the roof. It had a black carpet as soft as feathers, and a curtained alcove for the medium to sit in. Ah, ah! And then, sir-well, I'll admit we had a bit of a shock. Coming on her suddenly like that, sitting in the chair with her neck twisted over the back and moving round like it hurt her, with just that dullish light through the windows - I tell you, I don't mind admitting . . ."

"Coming on who?" demanded H.M., and opened his eyes.

"That's what I was going to tell you, sir, when the phone rang. On Lady Benning. And she was moaning."

"Oh, yes. Yes. What was Lady Benning doing there?"

"I don't know, sir. She gabbled some nonsense about this being James's room, and for us to get out. Porter - that's this butler chap - swore he hadn't let her into the house. Then she started to curse us. Lummy, it was awful, sir! That is, her being a lady, and refined and all that - you know you feel embarrassed - and an old lady, too. That seemed to make it worse. Then I felt a bit sorry for her, because she got up, and was very lame. But she wouldn't let anybody help her, and sat down again.... Well, we hadn't time to waste, so we had to go to work on the room.... '

"Go to work on the room? How?"

Again the easy, tolerant, contemptuous smile. "I tell you, sir, of all the clumsy stuff I ever saw, this was the worst! How Darworth got away with it I don't know, unless it was his personality that carried him. Lord, he'd never court investigation.... The whole room was wired. Electric coils and magnet in the table for spirit-raps. Dictograph attachment in the chandelier, so every word spoken could be heard in another room - we found the little place, a sort of trunk-room, on the same floor, where Darworth could sit and control the whole seance. One of those home wireless-sets hidden in a panel behind the medium's alcove: microphone arranged, so Darworth could be all the voices. Gauze ectoplasm in those folding packets; a gauze panel on a sort of magic-lantern projection outfit for floating-faces; tambourines on wires; a rubber glove stuffed with wet tissue paper---“

"Never mind the inventory," H.M. interrupted irritably. "Well, sir, Bert and I went to work and ripped that room to pieces. And Lady Benning - it's funny how noise must affect some people. She watched us. Every time we'd tear out a wire or something, she'd stiffen up and shut her eyes. When I was pulling that dummy wireless-attachment out from behind the medium's alcove, I carried it over to the table. I saw the tears were running out of her eyes. ... Not crying like you think of people crying, just those tears and no blinking or anything. Then she got up and started to go out again; and I'll admit I was nervous. I ran after her (she let me take her arm then), and I said I'd take her down and put her in a cab."

The recollection disturbed Masters. He stroked his solid jaw, and he seemed annoyed with himself for giving what he would have called "impressions" instead of facts; for he pulled himself up and abruptly recited in a strange police-court fashion:

"I took the witness downstairs. Er - the witness looked up at me and said, 'Would you like to take the clothes off me, too?' She emphasized the word `clothes', so I - er -I didn't know what in lum's name she – er - what the witness was getting at, sir. She was wearing something fancy, not like an old lady at all, and had a lot of paint on

At H.M.'s gesture, I had already gone over to pour out our drinks; and both H.M. and I looked at the Inspector. The hiss of the soda-siphon seemed to affect him as a slur on his powers of understanding.

"Just so, sir. I got a cab and put the witness into it. She leaned out of the window and said.. " He picked up his notebook. "The exact words were, `I talked to my dear, dear nephew's fiancee this morning, Sergeant. I think you, ought to take a little interest in those people, you know. Especially since dear Theodore has seen fit to go away so suddenly."'

H.M. nodded. He did not seem much interested. I said:

"Hullo! Featherton spoke to Lady Benning on the telephone this morning, but she didn't mention to him-"

"Naturally that wasn't pleasant news, sir," Masters continued. "I hurried inside and phoned the Latimers. Miss Latimer answered, very upset. I was pretty sharp with her, but she couldn't tell much. She hadn't got back home (they live in Hyde Park Gardens) until past six this morning. He had got home before her, for she saw his hat and coat in the hall; but she didn't disturb him, and went to bed.

"When she woke up this morning, her maid gave her a note from her brother. All it said was, 'Investigating. Don't worry.' The maid said he had left the house with a traveling-bag at about ten o'clock. It was eleven when she got the note. I asked her why she hadn't let us know immediately, and she admitted she'd been afraid. She begged me not to take any notice of it; said it was another of his vagaries; and that he'd probably be back by evening. First she thought he might have gone to Lady Benning's, but she phoned the old Lady and he wasn't there. Since then she'd been calling everybody he knew, without result.

"It was close on time for my appointment with you here, sir. So I sent Bert round there to make inquiries. But I warned her that I would issue a writ compelling his presence at the inquest; that's the legally safe way of arresting somebody if he tries to bolt; that his description would go out through the usual police channels as 'wanted,' and over the wireless, and so on." Masters shut up his notebook. He absently took the stiff drink I offered him, put it down on the table, and added savagely: "Personally, sir, I think that kid is either guilty or stark mad. Bolting like that-! Mad, or guilty; maybe both. If I had a scrap of evidence, beyond his having that key to the padlock, I'd hold him for murder. But if I make just one more mistake. . .

He gestured. It was graphic enough.

"It could be," said H.M. "Yes. Humph. If he deliberately wanted us to get suspicious of him, now, and frame a charge - why, that's how he'd do it. I wonder. That all you know?" he asked sharply. His little eyes wheeled round.

"I've got a complete record, if there's anything else you want to know."

"Yes. There's something missing, son. It ain't what I want, somehow. Burn me, I've a feeling that. . . . Look here. Darworth's house, now. You sure there wasn't anything else you noticed? Let your imagination float. That's it! Quick, what were you thinkin' about?"

"Only Darworth's workshop, sir," answered the Inspector. He seemed taken back by H.M.'s uncomfortable habits of reading the most wooden poker-face. "But you. didn't want to hear about the fake spiritist devices, so I thought

"Never mind, son. You keep talkin'. If I seem to shut you off; that may be because I've got ideas all of a sudden."

"It was only a room in the basement where he manufactured his boxes of tricks. No magic supply-house for him, sir; too dangerous. He made 'em himself, and he was skillful with his hands. 'Quite. I - you see, I mess about with that sort of thing myself, just as a hobby, and there was the finest little electric lathe you ever saw; delicate as a razor-blade. I wondered what trick he'd been up to last, for there were little whitish powdery traces on it .."

H.M. stopped with his whisky-glass halfway to his lips.

"... and some calculations on a slip of paper, measurements in millimeters, and a few scribblings I didn't pay much attention to it. Also, he'd been tinkering with life-masks, and made a good job of it. It's quite easy; tried it myself. You vaseline the person's face, and then spread the soft plaster on it. It doesn't hurt when it hardens, unless it catches in the eyebrows. Then you remove the cast,

and fit over its inner side sheets of moist newspaper.... I was watching H.M. Now if, at this point, H.M. had dramatically slapped his forehead or uttered a startled exclamation, I should have known that he was off on one of his intolerable digressions. But he didn't. He remained very quiet, except that he was wheezing a little. Taking a deep drink, he removed his feet from the desk, motioned the Inspector to go on talking, and picked up the sheets of Masters' report.

"-and not only that," H.M. suddenly observed, as though he were continuing a discussion with himself, "but a heavy incense, spices of some kind, burned in the fireplace of that little stone room."

"I beg your pardon, sir?" said Masters.

"Oh, I was just sittin' and thinkin'," the other replied, twiddling his thumbs and blinking about him with a heavy lift of his shoulders. "And I've been askin' myself all day why there was heavy incense. And now - white powder. ... Well, I'm a ring-tailed bastard," he murmured softly and admiringly. "I wonder if it could be? Ha ha ha."

"Just so, sir. You were thinking?" demanded Masters.

"Ho-ho-ho," said H.M. "I know what you're thinkin', Masters. And you too, Ken. I read another locked-room story once. I read plenty of 'em. Mysterious fiend invents a deadly gas unknown to science, and stands outside the room and blows it through the keyhole. Feller inside smells it and instantly goes off his onion. Then he strangles himself to death, or something. Ha-ha-ha. Boys, I actually read one of them things where the feller smells it in bed, and is so enlivened that he leaps up and perforates himself by accident on the spike of the chandelier. If that don't take all records for the sittin' high jump, I hope I never read another....

"No, no, son. Get your mind off that. This was something that let our murderer, our X, get in and skewer his man as neat as you please." He scowled, remembering old injuries. "Besides, there ought to be a law against stories about gases unknown to science, or poisons that leave no trace. They give me a pain. If you're allowed to be as staggerin'ly fantastic as all that, you might just as well have the murderer drink something that would allow him to slide in and out through the keyhole instead of the gas.

"Now that's interesting!" said. H.M., struck with an idea. "Burn me, if I wanted to be poetic and figurative about this business, crawling' in and out through the keyhole, I should say that in a matter of speakin' it's exactly what the murderer did."

"But there wasn't any keyhole!" protested Masters.

H.M. looked pleased.

"I know it," he agreed. "That's the interesting thing."

"I've had about enough of this!" said Masters, after a long pause. With controlled wrath, he began stuffing papers back into the long envelope. "This is no joking matter for me, you know. I feel like Major Featherton. I came to you for help--"

"Now, now, don't get your back up," H.M. put in soothingly. "Man, I'm serious too. Word of honor, I am. Here's our problem, the problem we've got to solve before we can do anything else: how was the trick worked? Without that, we can he morally certain who the murderer is and yet be absolutely unable to do anything about it. You want me to sit here and mull over, `Was he guilty, or was she guilty, and what was the motive?'-and all the rest of it.... Now, don't you?"

"I certainly thought that if you had any ideas----"

"Right. Well, we'll do some chinning, then, if you want to. Before we do, I wish you'd order round that car you were speakin' about; I want a look at Darworth's house."

The Inspector muttered, with obvious relief, that this was more like it. He put through the call; and, as he turned back again, we all felt the new tension that had settled down. It had grown altogether dark now, and there was a bustle and clatter of people leaving the building.

"Now, then, sir!" Masters plunged straightway.

"Here's what I've figured out. We could work up a case against any one of those people-"

"Steady," said H.M., frowning. "Is there something new, or didn't I read it correctly? Accordin' to that testimony, you'd have to narrow it down to three people. Two have definite alibis. Young Halliday and the Latimer girl were sitting in the dark holding hands."

The other regarded him curiously. Masters' dogged alertness seemed to have struck a bump where Masters had least expected it.

"Good Lord, sir! You don't mean to say you necessarily believe that?"

"Son, I'm afraid you got a nasty suspicious mind. Don't you believe it?"

"Maybe, and maybe not. Maybe part of it. I've been trying to look at every side. Um. Just so."

"You mean they were together in a plot to puncture old Darworth's liver and then back each other up with a story like that? Eyewash, my lad; first-class, guaranteed - British eyewash. Besides, it's bad psychology. There are a dozen objections to it."

"I wish you'd try to understand me, sir. I didn't- say anything like that, What I mean is this: Miss Latimer, now, is completely gone on Halliday. More so than ever now. She was sitting next to Halliday. Well, if she knew for a fact that he'd actually got up - if it was he carrying the dagger that brushed her neck - and he urged her for God's sake to support him with that story; eh? They had a whole lot of time when they could have talked to each other just after the murder was discovered."

He was leaning forward rather fiercely. H.M. blinked.

"So that," he remarked, "is why you're not so eager to pitch on young Latimer? I see. So that's your solution?"

"Ah! Be careful there, sir. I don't swear it's the right one; understand that. As I say, I'm looking at possibilities. ... But I didn't like that gentleman's manner, and that's a fact! Too flippant; much too flippant; and I distrust that. I've had experience, and the man who walks up to you and says, `Come on, arrest me! It won't do you any good, but have a good time; come on and arrest me,' - well, in most cases he's bluffing."

H.M. growled: "Look here, have you realized one thing? Out of the whole crowd of suspects, you've unerringly fastened on the one against whom it'll be hardest to make out a case?"

"I don't follow that. How?"

"Why, if you accept my analysis of things (and apparently you have) then can you think of anybody on this broad green footstool who'd be less likely to be a confederate of Darworth than Halliday? ... Burn me, can you imagine Darworth saying to him, 'Look here, let's us put over a jolly good joke on all of them, what? Then I can prove I'm a genuine medium, and your girl will tumble into my arms.' Masters, the crystal busts with that vision. My murderer crawling through the keyhole is elementary beside it. I grant you Halliday might have pretended to help him put over the joke, in order to give it a whackin' exposure, if Darworth had ever asked his help. But Darworth would no more have asked Halliday's help than he'd have asked yours."

"Very well, sir, if you like. All I say is, there are deeps in this case we don't understand. . . . His bringing Mr. Blake and me to that house, just at that time and under those circumstances, looks very fishy. It looks like a put-up job. Besides, his motive. . . ."

H.M. stared disconsolately at his feet.

"Yes. Now we come to motive. I'm not tryin' to be superior at your expense; the motive beats me beyond all. Granted Halliday had a motive, then what becomes of poor old Elsie Fenwick? Dammit, that's the part that sticks me."

"I should say, sir, that the words `I know where Elsie Fenwick is buried,' and the way Darworth took them, made a threat of some kind."

"Not a doubt, not a doubt. But I'm afraid you don't see all the difficulties. It's like this—“

At this moment the inevitable happened. This time H.M. did not protest at the ringing of the telephone. He said grumpily, "That's the car," and with a series of painful efforts began to hoist himself out of his chair. He is actually only five feet ten inches tall, and stoop-shouldered at that! but his sluggish bulk, without any animation of face, makes him seem to fill a room.

Unfortunately, he insists on wearing a top-hat. In the fact itself there is nothing out of the way: it is the particular hat. He would, of course, scorn the customary glossy silk article, associating it with Toryism and grinding-thefaces-of-the-poor, as well as the comical aspect it provides. But this hat-high and top-heavy, worn by many years to a rusty indeterminate hue - is a mascot. So also is his long coat with the moth-eaten fur collar. He guards them jealously, with bitter resentment against slurs, and invents fantastic tales in defense of them. At various times I have heard him describe them as (1) a present from Queen Victoria, (2) the trophy of his winning the first Grand Prix automobile race in 1903, and (3) the property of the late Sir Henry Irving. Other things he takes without undue seriousness, despite his pretenses; but not, I assure you, this hat or coat.

While Masters answered the phone, he was carefully getting them out of a closet. He saw me looking, and his broad mouth turned down sourly; he put on the hat carefully, and assumed great dignity with the coat. "Come on, come on," he said to Masters; "stop jawing with the chauffeur, and---“

" . yes, I admit it's queer," Masters was saying to the telephone rather impatiently, "but ... What else did you find out? . . . Are you sure? . . . Then look here; we're going over to Darworth's house now. Meet us there, and let's hear all about it. If you can find Miss Latimer, ask her if she'll come along...."

After a long hesitation, Masters hung up the receiver. He looked worried.

"I don't like this, sir," he snapped. "I've got a feeling that-that something's going to happen."

The words sounded more eerie spoken by the practical and unimaginative Inspector. His eyes fixed on the spot of light from the desk-lamp. The rain flicked in little whips against the window-panes, and there were echoes in the old stone building.

"Ever since that damned dagger was stolen again!-" He clenched his hand. "First Banks a while ago, and now McDonnell. That was McDonnell. Somebody's been making queer phone-calls to the Latimers' place, and there was something about a - a 'horrible voice', or the like, talking to Ted early this morning. Look here, you don't think-? "

H.M. stood with his shoulders hunched, a huge silhouette in the top-hat and fur-collared coat. With his little eyes gleaming, his broad mouth and blunt nose, he looked like a caricature of an old actor.

"I don't like it either," he rumbled, with a sudden gesture. "I'm funny like that. Psychic. I can smell trouble. ... Come on, you two. We're goin'. Now."

XVI

SECOND STROKE OF THE MURDERER

LONDON was going home. You could hear the buzz of the liberated, that swelled in a calling from the dazzle of Piccadilly Circus: shadows moving on misty yellow-and-red sketches, cars jerking like the electric-signs, and their horns honking through it with a weary plaintiveness. This we could perceive up the long hill as the police-car nosed past the foot of the Haymarket. Waves of lighted buses rose at us and plunged past down Cockspur Street with a flying hoot; and H.M. leaned out and gave a very tolerable raspberry in reply. He did not like buses. He said they were required to put on extra speed just as they shaved round corners. That was why he gave the raspberry. By accident, at a break in the traffic, he delivered a very malevolent one into the face of a policeman on duty at Waterloo Place; and Masters was not amused. It was a police-car, and he said he did not want it thought that the C.I.D. sent people around doing that sort of thing.

But once up St. James's Street, through the crush in Piccadilly and into the quiet of the shuttered houses northwards, we were all silent. As we passed the Berkeley, I thought of Major Featherton sitting on a tall bar-stool and smirking in a fatherly way at a young lady who enjoyed his dancing: very much a contrast to the queer, bitter face of Lady Benning that would always hover at the back of any picture in which these characters were concerned. "Something's going to happen...." It was difficult to fit those uneasy words even into the rather sinister quiet of Charles Street. And yet it did....

Somebody was plying the knocker of Number 25, filling in the intervals by pressing the bell. As our car drew up, the caller came down the steps under a street-lamp; and we saw that once more McDonnell was waiting in the rain.

McDonnell said: "I can't make him answer the door, sir. He thinks it's another reporter. They've been after him all day."

"Where's Miss Latimer?" barked Masters. "What's the matter? - wouldn't she come, or were you too polite to use pressure?" (It was remarkable how the Inspector's manner underwent a change when he met a subordinate). "Sir Henry especially wanted to see her. What's happened now?"

"She wasn't at home. She'd gone out calling on people to see whether she could find Ted, and she hasn't got back yet. I'm sorry, sir ... but I waited half an hour to see her myself, after I'd got back from chasing all over Euston Station. I'll tell you about it. She and I were both mad good and proper over that telephone call---“

H.M. had been sticking his neck out of the car like a turtle, and somewhat damaging his hat in so doing; he was making remarks, not in an amiable manner. When the situation was explained, he said, "So' Painfully he climbed out and waddled up the steps. He roared, "Open the goddammed door, you!" in a voice that must have carried as far as Berkeley Square, and then hurled his full weight against it. This was effective. A rather pale, middle-aged man opened it, after turning on some lights. The middle-aged man explained nervously that reporters had been impersonating officers of the law

"That's all right, son," said H.M. in a voice abruptly turned dull and disinterested. "Chair."

"Sir?"

"Chair. Thing you sit in. Ah! Here."

The hallway inside was high and narrow, with `a polished hardwood floor, on which one or two small starved-looking rugs were laid out like hazards on a golf course. I could understand why Masters had said the whole place resembled a museum. It was swept and stiff and unlived-in, and there were too many shadows arranged as precisely as the scanty furniture. Faint concealed lights along the cornices illumined a piece of snaky-looking white sculpture towering up over a black-upholstered chair. Darworth had known the value of atmosphere. As an anteroom to the supernatural, it was uncannily effective. H.M. did not seem impressed. He spread himself out in the black chair, wheezing, and Masters went into action at once.

"Sir Henry, this is Sergeant McDonnell. He's under me in this business. I've taken an interest in Bert, and he's ambitious. Now, tell Sir Henry"

"Hey!" said H.M., with a powerful contraction of memory. "I know you. Knew your father, of course. Old Grosbeak. He was against me when I stood for Parliament, and I got licked, thank God. I know everybody, y'see. Last time I saw you, son..”

"Report, Sergeant," said Masters curtly.

"Yes, sir," returned McDonnell, bringing himself to attention. "I'll begin at the time you sent me to Miss Latimer's home and went to Whitehall for your appointment.

"They live in a big place in Hyde Park Gardens. It's too big for them, as a matter of fact; but they've lived there since old Commander Latimer died and the mother went to live with her people in Scotland." He hesitated. "Old Mrs. Latimer's not - not quite right in the head, you know. Whether that explains anything of Ted's erratic conduct, I don't know. I'd been in the house before, but, queerly enough, I'd never met Marion until last week."

Masters warned him to keep to the point, and the sergeant went on:

"When I went round this afternoon, she was rather cut up. She as much as told me I was a filthy spy-which," said McDonnell bitterly, "I suppose I was. But she forgot that, and appealed to me as a friend of Ted. It was like this: she'd no sooner got done talking to you, sir, than she got another phone-call...."

"Who from?"

"It purported to be Ted. She said it didn't sound like his voice, but that it might have been; and she didn't know what to think. `Ted' said he was at Euston Station, and not to worry: that he was after somebody, and might not be home until tomorrow. She started to tell him that the police were looking for him, but he rang off immediately.

"So naturally she wanted me to hop over to Euston Station; find out if he meant to take a train or had taken one; try to trace him, anyhow, and drag him back before he made a fool of himself. That was about twenty minutes past three o'clock. In case it was a hoax, she was going after some friends of his and try to trace him in that way "

H.M., who was stroking his plowshare chin, with his hat on the back of his head and his eyes half closed, interrupted.

"Hold on, son. Just a minute. Did young Latimer say anything about taking a train?"

"That's more or less the idea she got, sir. You see, he'd taken a bag with him when he went out this morning; and, since he was phoning from a railway station "

''More jumpin' to conclusions," observed H.M. sourly. "Seems to be a favorite sport. All right. What happened then?"

"I got over to Euston as fast as I could, and spent over an hour combing the place. It was a warm trail, and Marion gave me a good photograph; but no result. Only one remotely possible identification, when a platform-guard thought he might have gone through on the 3.45 express for Edinburgh; but I couldn't get any identification at the ticket-window, and the train had gone. I don't know what to think. It might have been a hoax."

"Dj'you wire the police at Edinburgh?" demanded Masters.

"Yes, sir. I also sent a wire to-" he checked himself.

"Well?"

"It was a personal wire. Ted's mother lives in Edinburgh. Hang it, sir, I knew Ted pretty well; I couldn't imagine what would have taken him up there, if he did go, but I thought I'd better warn him for God's sake to get back to London before he found himself in the dock.... Then I came back to the Latimer place, and found out the next queer thing."

McDonnell's eyes roved about the dim, harsh-shadowed hall. He said:

"One of the servants heard a voice talking to Ted at just about daylight this morning. They said it was high and queer and talking very rapidly. They said it came either from in his room, or the balcony outside."

There was something in those unadorned words which brought new terrors into the cold place. McDonnell felt it; even Masters felt it; and it conjured up shapeless images without faces. H.M. sat with his arms folded, blinking vacantly; but I felt that at any moment he might get up. Masters said: "Voice? What voice?"

"Couldn't be identified, sir.... This is the way it was. When I went to the house first, Marion had mentioned something about the servants' hearing things in the house that morning, and she wanted me to look into it. But I put it off until I returned from Euston. She had gone out, so I got the servants together and put the question.”

"You remember, Ted seemed a bit - well, shaky and upset when he left us last night. At about half-past four this morning the butler at Latimers', level-headed fellow named Sark, was awakened by somebody throwing pebbles at his window. I may mention that the house is set back from the street, with gardens around it, and a high wall. Well, Sark looked out the window (it was still pitch dark) and heard Ted calling to him to come down and open the door; he'd lost his key.”

"When Sark opened the front door, Ted fell inside on the floor. He was muttering to himself; Sark said, it gave him a turn to see him as dirty as a chimney-sweep, spotted with candle-grease and dazed-looking about the eyes-and with a crucifix in his hand."

The last detail was so weird that McDonnell involuntarily stopped, uneasily, as though expecting comment. He got it.

"A crucifix?" repeated H.M., stirring abruptly. "This is news, this is. Very religious turn of mind, was he?"

Masters said in a flat voice: "The boy's mad, sir; that's all. I could have told you.... Religious? Just the contrary. Why, when I asked him if he'd been praying, he flared out at me as though I'd insulted him. He said, `Do I look like a pious Methodist?' or some such bilge.... Go on, Bert. What else?"

"That was all. He told Sark he'd walked a good deal of the way back, and was in Oxford Street before he could find a cab. He said not to wait for Marion; she'd be back in good time; then he poured himself a big dose of brandy and went up to bed.

"The rest of it happened about six o'clock. There's a girl who gets up to start the fires, and she was coming down from the third floor past Ted's bedroom. It was very quiet and darkish outside, with a mist in the garden. When she passed the room she heard Ted mumbling something in a low voice; she thought he was talking in his sleep.

"And then the other voice spoke.

"The girl swears she never heard it before. It was a woman's voice, apparently of a quality ugly enough to scare the girl half to death; talking fast.... Then she recovered herself, and thought something different. It seems that one night about a year ago Ted had been pretty drunk, and he'd brought a girl-friend, also remarkably tight, back to the house with him; smuggled her up to the bedroom by way of a balcony, with a staircase, that runs all along that side of the house....”

McDonnell gestured.

"It was a simple enough conclusion; but when this girl heard the news about the murder later on, and what time Ted had got in, and all the rest, she got scared. And she told Sark. All she could say was that it didn't sound `like what I'd thought.' She said the voice was `creepy and crazy'."

"Did she get any words?" asked Masters.

"She was so frightened when I talked to her that I couldn't get her to make it clear. She made one remark (not to me; to Sark; but I got it second-hand) that's either startlingly imaginative or plain damned ludicrous, according to your conception. She said that, if an ape could talk, it would talk just like that voice. The only words she remembers are, `You 'never suspected it, did you?"'

There was a long silence. Masters discovered that Darworth's butler was listening; and, to cover the things we were all thinking, Masters thunderously ordered him out of the room.

"A woman-" Masters said.

"Doesn't mean a blasted thing, worse luck!" said H.M., opening and shutting his fingers. "You get anybody of nervous type all worked up, man or woman, and the voice will go into falsetto. Humph. That very curious and interestin' remark about an ape suggests something big - something - I dunno. And yet why does Ted rush off like that, with a traveling bag ... ? Humph." He brooded. His somnolent eyes moved round the hall. "All I can do for the time bein', Masters, is agree with you that I don't like it either. There's a murderer walkin' around this town that I wouldn't want to meet on a dark night. Ever read De Quincey, Masters? Remember that part about the one poor devil hidin' in the house, who'd got overlooked when the murderer butchered all the rest? And he tries to creep downstairs and get out, when he knows the murderer's prowlin' around in the room by the front door. And he's crouchin' on the stairs, scared to a jelly, and all he can hear is the noise of the murderer's squeaking shoes goin' around and around, and up and down, in that front room. Just the shoes....”

"That's all we're hearing. Just shoes....”

"Now I wonder- Ha." For a moment he leaned his big head on his hand, tapping at his forehead, and then he sat up irritably. "Well, well, this won't do. Work! Got to get to work. Masters!"

"Sir?"

"I'm not navigatin' any stairs, d'ye hear? I got enough stairs to navigate as it is. You and Ken go down to this Darworth's workshop. Get me that slip of paper you were talking about, with the figures on it; also scrape some of that white powder off the lathe and put it in an envelope for me." He stopped. He rubbed his nose thoughtfully. "And by the way, son. In case the idea occurs to you: I shouldn't taste any of that powder, if I were you. Just a precaution."

"You mean, sir, it's-?"

"Go on," the other commanded gruffly. "What was I thinkin' about? Oh, yes. Shoes. Now, who'd know? Pelham? No; he's eye and ear. Horseface! Yes, Horseface might. Where the devil's the telephone around here? Hey? People are always hidin' telephones on me! Where is it?" Darworth's butler, who had magically reappeared, hurried to drag open a cupboard at the back of the hall, and H.M. was consulting his watch. "Um. Won't be at his office now. Probably home. McDonnell! ... Oh, there you are. Hop to that phone, will you? Ring Mayfair six double-O four, and ask for Horseface; say I want to speak to him."

Fortunately I happened to remember who Horseface was, and passed the word to McDonnell as Masters led the way towards the rear of the hall. No misdirection was intended in the least. It would simply never have occurred to H.M. that there was anything strange about telephoning the home of Doctor Ronald Meldrum-Keith, possibly the most eminent bone-specialist in Harley Street, and inquiring for Horseface: either on his own part or McDonnell's. It is not at all that he dislikes the sometimes stuffed dignities into which the people about him have grown; it is that he is unconscious of them. What he wanted with the Harley Street man I had no idea.

But, as Masters opened a door at the rear of the hall, I got a definite notion that for the moment he wanted everybody else out of the way. He had got up, and was stumping towards a curtained door at the left.

Masters led the way downstairs, and through a cluttered cellar, turning on lights as we went. He very deftly picked the lock on the door of a boarded-off partition at the front; and, as I followed him inside, I could not help jumping a trifle. A dim green-shaded bulb made a sickly glow from the ceiling; the place still smelled of dead heat from an oil stove, of paint, wood, glue, and damp. It resembled a toymaker's workshop, except that all the toys were ghoulish. A number of faces stared at me; they hung drying on the walls above a clutter of workbenches, tool-racks, paint-pots, and thin sheets of wood stretched in frames; they were masks, but they were hideously lifelike. One mask - it was of a bluish skim-milk color, one eye partly shut and the other eyebrow lifted, peering down through a parody of thick spectacles - one mask I could not only have sworn was alive, but that I knew it. Somewhere I had seen that moth-eaten drooping mustache, that nervous cringing leer....

"Now, this lathe-" said Masters, laying his hand on it rather enviously. "This lathe-" He picked up a slip of paper from a steel shelf under it, and from the turning-blade scooped some whitish grains into an envelope; then he went on discussing the lathe's excellences. It was as though he were wrenching his mind away, with a sense of relief, from the riddles of the case. "Oh, you're admiring the masks, eh? Yes, they're good. Very good. I did a Napoleon once, to see how it looked, but nothing like this chap's stuff. It's - it's genius."

'Admiring,' I said, "isn't exactly the word. That one there, for instance...."

"Ah! You'll do well to have a look at that one. That's James." He turned away abruptly, asking me whether I had ever seen any gauze ectoplasm treated with luminous paint. "Can be compressed to a packet the size of a postage stamp, sir, and stuck on the inner side of the medium's groin. A woman in Balham used to do it like that; so that, she could be searched beforehand. Wore only two garments, above and below the waist; and manipulated 'em so quickly that they could swear they'd searched her beyond doubt. . . ."

Upstairs, the doorbell was ringing. I stared at that replica of James's face, at Darworth's canvas work-apron carefully folded over the back of a chair; and the presence of Darworth stood as vividly in the room as though I had seen him standing by that workbench, with his silky brown beard, his eyeglasses, and his inscrutable smile. These toys of sham occultism seemed all the more ugly for being shams. And Darworth had left one even more terrible legacy - the murderer.

Sharp in my mind was a picture, as I imagined it, of the servant-girl standing outside the closed door of Ted Latimer's room just before daybreak; and hearing the intruder's voice cry, exultantly, "You never suspected it, did you?"

"Masters," I said, still looking at the mask, "who, in the name of God-! Who got into that fellow's room this morning? And why?"

The Inspector said imperturbably: "Did you ever see the slate-trick worked? Look here. Lummy, I wish I dared pinch some of this stuff! It's expensive in the shops, much more than I can afford...." He turned round to face me. His voice grew heavy. "Who? I only wish I knew, sir. I only wish I had. And I'm getting worried, so help me. I only hope the person who called on young Latimer this morning wasn't the same person "

"Go on. What do you mean?"

He said in a low voice "-the same person who called on Joseph Dennis this afternoon, and was going up the walk leading Joseph to that house in Brixton, and patting him on the back.... "What the devil are you talking about?"

"It was the phone call; don't you remember? The phone call from Sergeant Banks, when Sir Henry talked all that nonsense about the Russell Square Zoo. He was making such a row about the call that I didn't have time to tell him then; and, besides, I don't think it's important. It can't be important! Blast it, I'm not going to get the wind up like I did last night!"

"What was it?"

"Nothing much. I sent Banks, who's a good man, out to get a line on that house, and the Mrs. Sweeney who runs it. I told him to keep a sharp eye out. There's a greengrocer's just across the street, it seems, and he was standing in the door talking to the grocer when a cab drove up.... The grocer pointed out Joseph getting out, with somebody else who was patting him on the back and leading him up to the gate in the wall around the house...."

"Who was the other person?"

"They couldn't see. It was foggy and raining, and the body of the cab was in the way. They could only see a hand urging Joseph forward; and by the time the cab had driven off the two were inside the wall round the house. I tell you, it's all bosh! It was only some caller, and what the devil could I do about it?"

He looked at me a moment, and then said that we had better go upstairs. I made no comment on the story; I only hoped he was right. On the stairs we heard a new voice coming from the hall. Marion Latimer was standing in the middle of that cold place, her face rather pale, and holding out a crumpled sheet of paper. She was breathing quickly; she started a little as she saw us emerge from the door at the rear of the hail. From somewhere close at hand we could hear H.M.'s voice booming over the telephone, though we could distinguish no words.