"I had a devil of a time finding your policeman," he reported, "because he was smack-bang beside the pool, where he was supposed to be."
Then they saw the blue coat, the polished silver buttons. It was the policeman's night stick which had hammered that door. His face was middle-aged and intently serious. Beyond him there were no doctors, no figure on the grave mound-nothing except a heavy grey dusk.
"Are you Sir Henry Merrivale?" the law asked.
H.M. lumbered forward, Jean seized the lamp from him as though to protect herself from tears.
"Yes," growled H.M. "I'm the one who sent for you. Where is Mr. Manning? And how is he?"
"They've just left" The police officer nodded towards the barred gate. "He's pretty bad. Dr. Willard says the operation was all right; but you can't tell yet, he says. Crystal and young Bob," grunted the police, "made them take him to the house instead of the hospital."
"Has Lieutenant Trowbridge got here yet?"
"Not yet, sir. They can't find him."
"Officer," said H.M., "I've got absolutely no authority to give you instructions. But do you think you can trust me?"
The other looked at him and smiled. "I guess I could do that," he said.
"Here's the key to this cenotaph," H.M. went on, handing him the key. "Lock it and stand outside the door until the Lieutenant gets here. There's important evidence in here "
"Evidence?"
"That's right. Especially on the ledge and (unless I miss my guess) in that suitcase under the ledge. If Manning dies, it means the chair."
The police officer whistled.
"I want the Lieutenant to have somebody guardin' this door until seven o'clock tomorrow morning. I..." H.M. rubbed his hands over his head. "But maybe he won't do it. You got a notebook and pencil?"
"Always got 'em."
"Then come inside here, and I’ll write down my reasons."
The policeman moved inside, with Davis following. And, the moment that doorway was unblocked, Jean Manning darted out of it and ran frantically with the hand lamp.
"Jean!" exclaimed Davis, who had not see her. "Jean!"
H.M gripped him by the arm.
'I've got instructions for you, son," he declared, "that may bring some results." He looked at Cy. "After her, you ruddy fool!" he yelled. "Stop her! Get her somehow!"
Cy plunged out of that cenotaph into the deep grass. He could see her easily at the moment; she had to use the light in hurrying among the gravestones. Cy himself banged into more than one of them. The light disappeared, switched off, as Jean dashed through the open door in the fence of the baseball field.
The long dusk was not quite heavy enough to blur every outline. Jean, almost invisible in her green dress, ran with lithe grace across the outfield and the diamond, where bases still glimmered white. Cy kept up with her, though the pace jarred his heart. Into his lungs swept a fragrance of trees at evening.
("We've got to find Irene Stanley tonight" Why?)
Jean had reached the woods, and was again compelled to switch on the light
Got to overtake her! Now for a spurt!
Inside the trees, though she raced along the broad path, Jean now began to falter. The light wavered and swung. It was not lack of stamina, as Cy knew; it was only that she felt—wrongly, but with fierce absorption—complete helplessness and hopelessness.
"Jean!" he tried to shout but the word failed.
Out she darted from the trees to the open lawn. She was perhaps twenty feet ahead of him when she floundered as though trapped. On her left stretched the line of brown-painted bathing cabins, ten of them; a path ran in front of these through the parallel row of rhododendron bushes.
Jean, feeling only an animal instinct to yield but get out of the sight, faltered into that path and along it towards the middle. There she leaned drooping against the frame of a bathing cabin, arm along it, head on arm, half-crying.
Cy approached her very slowly. He did not attempt to speak as she pressed her closed eyelids still more defiantly against her forearm.
For it was an eerie place now, like a scene out of a child's magic book.
Westwards, behind the long house, remnants of a strong red sunset still lay along the dark horizon. Where the thick bushes lay parallel to the bathing cabins, the broad path through the bushes bisected them just at the middle of the pool's long side.
That path made an avenue to the pool which, for some reason known only to police, had been filled again. The dark, still water was touched with crimson gleams from the sunset. Faint light kindled the grass path to the pool.
Jean spoke first, her forehead still against her arm.
"What have I done to you?" she asked like a child. "What makes you dislike me so much?"
"I don't dislike you, Jean. And nobody else ever will, either." Then Cy laughed gently, in a way he knew she would recognize as sympathetic.
"What's so very funny?" Jean asked pettishly.
"I was just thinking," he said, "of George Washington in that Revolutionary War panorama. He looked at least seven feet high."
"He did, didn't he?"
"Also, they put in those little windows first. The patriotic artist, painting round them, managed to omit the heads of Lord Cornwallis and two other British generals."
Jean extinguished the lamp, dropping it on the ground. She turned round with a faintly ashamed air, and an ashamed smile.
"When you came out here yesterday," she told him, "I thought you were so—nice!"
"I hope you still think so, Jean."
Suddenly the girl seemed to realize where she was. She was looking straight down the grass path towards the pool, where dim red reflections trembled in the water. The high bushes were dark in silhouette against the reddish sky, like hedges.
"That's the place where..." she pointed ahead. Then Jean hesitated, scuffing the toe of her shoe in the grass. "Cy. They don't think I had anything to do with...?"
"No, no, no!"
"That's where you were, on the opposite bank of the pool, looking across it" Again she pointed. "With Mr. Betterton's head up out of the water underneath you. It looked awfully funny."
"His head looked funny? In what way?"
"Oh, I don't know. Like a water-polo ball or something." She frowned for a moment then dismissed the thought. "Here's where I was." Jean turned round, and stood about a foot from the right-hand end of the bushes facing the bathing cabins. "I was talking to Dave. In another second I'd have turned right, by this little white sign that says, Ladies. Dave would have turned left where it says, Gents. But you shouted, and we both turned around. I could see you, and a part of Sir Henry's face, and Mr. Betterton's head."
Why did Mr. Betterton's head keep butting into this? Cy knew he must make haste; he must get Irene Stanley's address while Jean was in a friendly mood; but one question tortured him.
"Jean, you were in the pool when your father came down to speak to H.M. and me. Did you notice his socks?"
"What on... his socks?’
"Was there anything unusual about them?"
"N-no. Just a pair of silk socks. Brown, the kind he usually wears. I only noticed them at all because he wears his trousers too short, and..."
"Was there anything peculiar about his wrist watch?"
The red tinges had almost faded from the water of the pool. The silhouette of the bushes began to melt into softness and fragrance of the night. Cy knew he must not press Jean too far, because she was trembling. She anticipated him, in an odd voice, and put her hand on his arm.
"Cy. I—I made an awful fool of myself—back there. It doesn't really matter about Irene Stanley. If I tell you, will you let me go so I can run to the house and be near Dad?"