Sir Henry Merrivale prowled among the graves, his big arms folded across his barrel chest.
"H.M.!" Cy spoke abruptly, and pointed to Manning. "How bad is it?"
"Blood clots f illin' the lung? Pretty bad. But he's got a chance."
"H.M., did you expect this?"
H.M. stopped and looked at him over the big spectacles.
"It's uncommon kind of you, son, to regard the old man as omniscient. Which the same I am not. No, burn it! I didn't expect this. But I can see now it's logical and—cor!—even inevitable."
"Presumably he didn't stab himself." Cy paused. "Murder?"
"Yes. As sure as guns."
The rank smell of the vegetation seemed to intensify.
"What kind of weapon? Or did you find a weapon?"
"No, I didn't see one. But d'ye know," scowled a worried H.M., taking from his trousers pocket the knife Bill had given him, and opening it, "I'd guess it was a thin blade about four inches long. A bit like this."
"You're not thinking that kid Bill...?"
"No, no! But is this a common kind of knife here?"
"If 8 a boy's knife. Or used to be. I was very proud of mine."
"Still, you could buy it and carry it without rousin' suspicion?"
"I suppose so." Again Cy indicated the grave. "One of Manning's relatives is buried here. Do you think it's a family graveyard?"
H.M. shook his head.
"No, son. There are other names on the graves. Besides, if Fred Manning had anything to do with it this place wouldn't be in ruins. I was just wondering if..."
He lumbered back to the grave. He looked at Manning. His eyes turned to the right
Facing them, only a dozen feet away, was the front of the blackened stone cenotaph or memorial. It had evidently been built at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was circular, with small circular pillars round it the roof a flattish dome. Lettering had been cut deep into a big plaque on the roof a little out from the door.
The first curled letters of the plaque were indecipherable. But as deep white carving will appear when it has been cut into darkened stone, even in that light they could read the rest
Major John Kedwick Manning, aetat lst May, 1734, Who perished at the Battle of Long Island, In the War for American Independence, 27th August, 1776.
The forgotten words crept into Cy Norton's heart, as at a stir of old bugles or ghostly drums.
"Manning would have been proud of that, wouldn't he?" H.M. rumbled softly.
"Yes."
"Then, why," raved H.M., "an 'abandoned' graveyard? Why this place o' skulls and weeds stuck down and lost between a baseball field and a modern road? In England you can't abandon a graveyard; it's church property. Why is it here, with no church at all? Who owns it?"
"I don't know!" Cy retorted. Gnats touched his face. He felt as though he were in the middle of the eighteenth century. "But Jean told us in the car, you remember, it's a place that 'nobody can touch because of laws or something.'"
"Stop a bit!" said H.M. "Gimme a match!"
Cy tossed over the box.
H.M. struck a match. Again with corporation trouble, he knelt down in the long grass beside the grave mound where Manning lay. Then he moved the match outwards, in the direction of the cenotaph.
"Uh-huh," he nodded. "That's got it. Blood drops. Blood drops leading in the direction of..." He nodded towards the cenotaph, whose door might once have been shining bronze. "One more shot!" added H.M.
Carefully, gingerly, he felt over Manning's inert body. From the right-hand side pocket of the coat he took out a very large key, brand-new. If it had not been so new, Cy thought, it might have fitted the lock of the cenotaph door.
"Again, I'm tellin' you, it's inevitable!" H.M. was arguing to a ghostly jury. He turned to Cy. "What time is it, son?"
Cy, consulting his wrist watch and reporting ten minutes past nine, suddenly remembered another wrist watch. Manning, when he plunged
into that pool had been wearing a wrist watch
H.M., with a ghoulish nod of understanding, watched Cy as the latter went round to inspect Manning's left arm. On the left wrist, when the palm lay upturned, he saw the brown strap of the wrist watch.
"Easy with that arm, now!" implored H.M., as Cy gently turned over the wrist
"Here's the watch," Cy said. "It's still so waterlogged you can see a drop or two under the crystal. Is stopped at nine thirty-six."
H.M. nodded, bending over to look.
"Right son. That's the time he dived into the pool. And he hasn't taken it off his wrist since."
"H.M.," Cy burst out wildly, "how the hell did he do it? Everything depends on that! He did do it, and yet..."
"Easy, Cy! Speakin' for myself, I'd like to hear some kind of explanation for the 'abandoned graveyard.'"
Whereupon two voices spoke out, one after the other, through that dusky hedge-walled place.
The first was Jean Manning's. "I can explain it'"
Stumbling from the direction of the fence, Jean carried a light whose beam swept past another stone angel hiding its face.
The second voice came from the top of the iron-barred gate in the eastern wall, where young Bill Wadsworth had swung himself up and sat with his white uniform outlined against a dark sky.
"The doctor," Bill shouted, "says he's going to operate here. He'll be here in two shakes."
H.M., stumbling in the grass, hurried out and intercepted Jean before she reached that inert figure on the grave mound. H.M. was upset. Much as he wanted to be the old man, loftily above human affairs, you would guess that he could not keep back sympathy and pity for the naive, loyal Jean.
So he barred her way and put his big hands on her shoulders.
"Where'd you learn this?" he asked in a low growl. "Did Davis...?"
The girl's light, an electric hand lamp, was now directed at the ground. But her face, with the broad mouth and blue eyes, was frantic.
"I haven't seen Dave," she told him. "But the rumours... Stuffy chased me all around the house, but I got away. I know it's Dad. Is he...?"
"No, my wench. That's straight. He's been hurt, but he's not going to die."
Outside the barred gate in the eastern wall, obscured by torn vines, flashed motor headlights; two cars ground to a stop.
"That's the doctor now," H.M. said woodenly. "And you're not going' to see..."
"I won't go away! You can't send me!"
Taking her by the left arm, signalling to Cy to get round on the other side, H.M. set his bulk against any view Jean might have of the grave mound. He marched her straight towards the small cenotaph.
‘I know a whole lot," Jean was still pleading. "I know why this cemetery can't be touched, but I didn't want to bother at the time. Ill tell you if you let me stay. I—I've even followed Dad sometimes. I followed him when he went to that place where they trace people. I even followed him when he went to visit—you-know-who. And what's more..."
H.M. had put away both large pocket knife and large key. He now produced the key, and nodded towards the cenotaph.
There's nothing to be scared of," he told Jean. "Nobody's buried there; if s a memorial you've probably seen a thousand times from outside."
"Of course. But why...?"
H.M. yelled over his shoulder at the white-clad figure still perched high on top of the iron gate.
"Will you tell 'em what’s what?" he yelled.
The figure waved assent, disappeared, and, from the ensuing sounds, appeared, to be smashing an old lock with a heavy stone.
Confidently H.M. took the large key from his pocket, and slid it into the lock of the age-crusted bronze door. Not only did the new key fit, but the lock was oiled. Cy Norton heard it snap.