"Now you're a fine husky-lookin' feller," continued H.M., addressing Officer O'Casey as though he had never seen the man before. O'Casey stopped dead. "If the District Attorney approves, I'd like to give you some orders. Hey?"
"You'll take your orders from Sir Henry, O'Casey."
The expression on that policeman's face, as he looked at the serene H.M., would have interested many a painter.
"Our third clue," H.M. went on, "is these garden shears." He picked them up and extended them towards O'Casey. "Here you are, son. Take 'em!"
Officer O'Casey took them like a man hypnotized.
"Now you mayn't have noticed," H.M. pursued comfortably, "that one the southern side of this place there's a box hedge, about four feet high and about a hundred feet long. Son, I want you to go and trim that hedge."
There was a long silence. Then Officer O'Casey found his breath.
"The whole goddam hedge?" he yelled.
"O'Casey!" snapped Byles.
"But he ought to be in jail! He ought..."
"Never use profane language, son," admonished H.M., with all the air of a clergyman. Then he reflected. "No, not the whole goddam hedge. About twelve feet will do. Then bring the shears to me."
Under Byles's eye, the maddened officer, protesting quite accurately that there was no justice, could only lurch away.
"If I didn't know you so well..." the District Attorney began. Then he stopped, biting his underlip. "H.M., is that what you call a clue?"
"Oh, son! A whole lot may depend on it!" H.M. glanced up at the sky. "We've got to try an experiment, and we've got to try it quickly!"
"But what will it prove?"
With a kind of gurgling roar, like animal strangulation, the last of the water descended in a smooth cascade from the five-foot depth at the southern end to the ten-foot depth under the diving board. The sides of the pool, smooth and tightly fitted slabs of stone, were covered with a faint slime.
"Now well find it!" said Byles.
Nearly every member of that party jumped in to find the secret exit. And yet, five minutes later, they were all back on the coping again—staring at it without a word.
There was no secret exit of any kind.
But Manning was not in the pool, either.
8
Some time afterwards, in the library at the house, H.M. and Cy Norton and Gilbert Byles assembled for that private talk the District Attorney had requested. The library ran straight through the house, with two windows front and back.
It must regretfully be admitted that H.M., when deep in a problem of some kind, has no sense of the fitness of things. The library was hot, so he removed his robe. He sat there in his red-and-white striped bathing suit, his sandalled feet on the table, smoking a cigar.
Byles'3 offer of a Havana he had declined with disdain.
"This here," declared H.M., taking the cigar out of his mouth to sniff voluptuously, "is a real Wheeling stogy. In the good old days they were two for a nickel. What's on your mind, Gil?"
Cy Norton, who had dashed upstairs to dress after a fashion, arrived back just in time to hear this question. Byles absently waved him towards a chair. Then it was as though the District Attorney—tall and sallow, standing by the table—had been wearing a false beard and sinister crêpe hair, and that these slipped off like a disguise.
His eyes twinkled. When he whooped with mirth, as he did now, his whole face seemed to become broader and less pointed of chin. He sat down, still laughing. Mr. District Attorney Byles had relaxed, and he was enjoying himself.
"You know, H.M.," he said, "I wrote to you that you were an old s.o.b., and you are."
H.M. nodded.
"There were other endearin' terms," he said. "At home, if the Director of Public Prosecutions ever dictated a letter like that, they'd have had to revive his secretary with smelling salts."
"Oh, I wrote it myself on my own typewriter. But tell me. All this posing about 'three clues'—it isn't on the level, of course?"
"It's strictly on the level, Gil."
"A man dives into a swimming pool. He doesn't come up, but he's not there when the pool is drained. Thaf s carrying tilings too far."
"Burn it all, I can't help that! It happened!" "Come on, H.M." Byles's grin broadened. "Weren't you all just rallying round the flag? And telling a corporate lie to support Manning?"
"Oh, lord love a duck," breathed H.M. "NO!"
"Well, it doesn't matter," said Byles.
And he brushed it aside with a carelessness that raised Cy Norton's hair. Gilbert Byles rubbed his long chin, which would have been blue if he had not shaved twice a day. His expression grew serious.
"Instead of asking me what's on my mind, H.M., what's on your mind?"
"Ill tell you," replied H.M., blowing a smoke ring. "You don't like Fred Manning much, do you?"
"No, I don't like him." Byles clasped his big hands on the table. "We're members of the same club, and I've never liked him. The first time I saw that fellow, I knew he was a crook."
"How'd you know that?"
"He was too suave. Too dignified. Too smooth. I don't trust that kind of man and I never have. For weeks weVe heard rumours that his Foundation was rocky; but you can't act on that Never mind. Now," said Byles, clenching his hands more tightly, "now, by God, we've got him."
"So? How?"
"This Foundation of his..."
"Stop a bit, son!" interrupted H.M., making bothered gestures with his cigar. "They may have these 'Foundations' in England, but burn me if I ever heard of one. What are you talkin' about?"
Byles spoke with the same quietness, hands clenched.
"The Frederick Manning School," he said, "is a kind of extra-curricular support for the big universities. If s independent, but students get credit at the universities for work done there in writing, painting, music, and the rest of it The Manning School is supposed to be non profit-making, which it is for everybody except himself.
"He goes around to various very wealthy men— who are genuine philanthropists, interested in projects like that—and he persuades them to ladle out a lot of money. Can't you see Manning doing that? The Manning School has a lot of scholarships, and quite a number of fellowships. A fellowship here means almost the same as it means in England; a man both studies and teaches, and gets paid for it."
Byles leaned forward and tapped the table.
"Now I’ll give you facts, without names. Some time ago a young man in Michigan got a letter written and signed by Manning, who runs everything. 'We are pleased to inform you,' says the letter, 'that you have been chosen for the Heinrich Heine Fellowship in Satiric Verse.' I'm just inventing the terms, but you get the general idea?"
H.M. nodded drowsily.
"Yes, son," he said. "I'm following you."
"'This fellowship'" Byles continued his play of light mockery with the imaginary letter—'"carries a stipend of twenty-five hundred dollars a year. Unfortunately, our funds do not permit payment at this time. Would you consider accepting the honour and foregoing the stipend until the following year?'"
Byles paused. His eyes burned with the resentment of one who has had to work his way, and work hard, through college and law school.
"This poor devil in Michigan," he continued, "was between Satan and deep water. He'd got his B.A. and his M.A., and he was working towards his Ph.D. Men in the academic profession aren't there to make money; as a rule they know as much about business as I know about Sanskrit Here was a chance for him to study for a year without paying; and next year, it seemed, the 'stipend' too."
Again Byles paused, and smiled without amusement