"I've got some questions to ask you, my dolly," H.M. said to Jean, looking her in the eyes, "and they're awful important. Cy, you take the light That's it Now well try it."
The door opened with hardly a sound.
"Cor!" said H.M. in real astonishment.
No age-poisoned air thickened their breathing from inside. The air was close and stuffy, but little worse than in the graveyard. And, as the beam of the hand lamp moved round, Cy and Jean were just as startled at the transformation.
In the year 1802, according to a tablet on the wall, this smallish circular room had been painted round with a panorama of scenes from the Revolutionary War. By this time it should have been obliterated by age and dirt It was oil painting on very thick plaster. But someone— evidently recently—had washed it clean.
Despite heavy cracks and patches of damp, there stood out vividly the colours of a bad but zealous painter. Red uniforms were locked against buff-and-blue, amid cream-puff cannon smoke; Washington, at Yorktown, looked seven feet high.
"Cor!" muttered H.M., now in a thoughtful tone.
At waist height round the circular room ran a marble ledge. On this ledge stood three empty water buckets, an old-fashioned bowl and pitcher with two sponges, a metal bowl, and more cleaning material.
"Never mind that, son!" H.M. told Cy. "Turn that light under the ledge! And across the floor!"
Under the ledge stood a large and new pigskin suitcase, its brass brimmings a-gleam. Near the middle of the marble floor, which was comparatively clean, lay a .38 Smith and Wesson single-action revolver.
From that point one blood drop, then another, led towards the door.
"Easy, now!" said H.M., as Jean shied away. "Isn't that the revolver I found on top of my bag last night? Where's it been since?"
"As I reminded you this morning," Cy retorted, "Manning just put it away in an unlocked drawer. Where anybody could get it."
Disregarding his protest about fingerprints, H.M. climbed down on his knees in order to pick up the gun, and struggled to his feet
"Listen, son!" he said wearily. "I’ll simply tell you, as a crimonological fact that you never do get any usable prints of a gun except on the grip. And this grip is criss-crossed walnut wood that won't take prints."
After sniffing at the barrel, he explored the inside with a match stick.
"So!" he muttered. "This gun's clean. Hasn't been fired for some time. I wonder, now..."
Sudden inspiration seemed to distend H.M.'s cheeks, like an ogre in a pantomime. Breaking open the magazine, which showed the ends of cartridge cases, he plucked out one bullet He scrutinized it carefully, also weighing it in his hand. He did this, while Cy's nerves ached, with every bullet in the magazine; and shut it up again.
"So!" he repeated, dropping the revolver on the floor with an echoing clatter of marble. "Don't you see what this place means now!"
13
Cy, though certain he did understand, was nevertheless infuriated when H.M.'s mind immediately flew off at a tangent.
"Gimme that light!" said Sir Henry Merrivale.
His footsteps echoed, hollow and gritty. Though the bronze door had been closed since they entered, Cy could now see why the air had been at least breathable.
Round the circle radiating from the door, there had been set in the wall three small windows of very thick glass, so encrusted with dirt on the outside that they had hardly looked like windows.
The window at the back, facing the door, had been partly smashed in a diagonal line. It had been done recently; a faint glass splinter glittered on the marble ledge below.H.M. pressed the light close, swallowing everything else in darkness. Hedge tendrils pressed through.
On the ledge of the window, under the smashed section, there were darkish stains. H.M.'s lamp burned in his companion's eyes as he swung round; both Cy and Jean lifted a hand to shield their eyes. "So!" muttered H.M.
He directed the light towards the cleaning materials on the marble ledge.
"I expect," he said to Jean, "it was your father who cleaned these wall paintings?"
"Yes!" said the puzzled Jean. "He's beenat it, off and on, ever since I was eighteen. He didn't do it very often, of course. Sometimes he forgot it And then he had to sneak out..."
Even H.M. was taken aback. "Sneak out?"
"Yes! Because once old Mr. Van Sellers had him in court, and under the law there's absolutely nothing..."
H.M. pressed one hand to his forehead.
"Stop the bus!" he said. "For the minute, my dolly, well forget why this place has to be kept like a rubbish-heap. I got other concerns. Has your old man been cleaning the walls recently?"
"Yes, very recently! But what on earth ... ?"
H.M. the light bobbing so that painted soldier faces alternately peered out and vanished, examined the three empty buckets on the ledge. One was dry; two were very faintly moist. One sponge, inky black, was already dry; another, dark brown with a yellow edge, very nearly dry. In the big metal bowl were braces of whitish sediment Old cleaning rags, blackened towels...
Outside, Cy knew, the doctor and his assistants would be at work (or had they finished?) under lights in a grotesque graveyard.
Why was H.M. holding back? He wanted desperately to question Jean; but was he waiting for Manning's body to be removed?
Jean, a lithe slim figure in a green dress, kept her elbow partly raised as though to shield her eyes if the light struck them again.
H.M., after a meditative look at the ceiling and a careful study of the floor, turned round.
"Cor," he said to Jean, "how I admire your father!"
"For—for cleaning these pictures?"
"Not exactly," said H.M. "It concerns what I was askin' you awhile ago. Do you see what this place means?"
"May J answer that?" Cy cut in. "It was Manning's other house."
"Other house?" echoed Jean.
"Listen, my dolly," said H.M., holding himself as though for a very delicate surgical operation. "Your father was going to run away with his girl friend, Irene Stanley. He might never come back—no wincing, now!—or he might come back sooner than you think. But he had to make a lot of preparations he couldn't make in his own house. D'ye follow me?"
"What did you mean," Jean said quickly, "by 'sooner than I think*?"
H.M. ignored this.
"If you look at the soles of his shoes while he's lying out there, you'll see they're so new they've hardly been walked in. Now look"—the white light beam darted—"at the brand-new pigskin suitcase under the ledge. You'll find it full of new clothes, all unmarked, for his new life.
"Next," pursued H.M., "think of what happened at the swimming pool this morning. Fred Manning dived into the pool. Presently he crawled out invisibly...."
"How?" asked Cy.
"Shut up," said H.M., and looked back at Jean. "But when he left the pool, my dolly, he had to have clothes. And he didn't have 'em."
"Are you telling me," Cy was beginning to rave, "that Manning—in front of all our eyes—got out of that pool stark naked?"
"Practically speakin', yes. All he had was.,,"
"A wrist watch," said Cy. "And a pair of socks."
"Are you goin' to shut up, son?"
"All right, all right!"
"Now I see, my dolly, when your father left the pool, there's another thing he had to have. He had to find cover."
"Why did he need cover," demanded Cy, "if he happened to be invisible? Sorry, sorry! I won't say another word."
All their voices seemed to tumble and blatter in that little cenotaph. They were in near darkness, since H.M. directed the light at the floor. And Cy sensed from H.M. a fierce earnestness which kept him quiet.
"But getting to cover," H.M. wenton, "was easy. All Manning had to do was get inside the woods. Then he could skirt the tree-lined edges of a baseball field, where nobody would turn up until late afternoon or early evening. He next circles round the fence or goes through the door; he's through the graveyard, and here. Here, I repeat, where he can dress."