“Yes. I suppose that’s true.”
“But take it the other way round!” argued Lamoreux. “Take that gang in their country house near Hampton Court. I don’t doubt Aunt Hester, at least, will get a large slice of dough when this marriage comes off. She’s been in France dozens of times — she’s cheering for matrimony like nobody’s business. All right! Then what motive has she, or any of ’em, to kill Jenny and lose the money themselves?”
Steve Lamoreux at last took a sip of tea, which so disgusted him he did not speak for thirty seconds.
“It’s nuts!” he said. “It makes no sense however you look at it.”
“On the contrary,” said Tom, “it’s got to make sense! That’s why you and I are going to see H.M. as fast as a taxi can take us.”
“But I can’t go there!”
“Why not?”
“Because Jenny’s there, and she might spot me. All the same, if you want to reach me at any time before seven this evening, call me up at this number. If you want me any time after that, here’s the number of my hotel near their house.”
With a little gold pencil he scribbled two telephone numbers on a sheet torn from a notebook, and handed it to Tom.
“Locked rooms!” said Lamoreux. “Whispering voices! No motives! Brother, I’d give my last dime to go with you! What’s the old — what’s Sir Henry going to say about this one?”
In little more than twenty minutes, Tom Lockwood found out.
“Y’see,” said Sir Henry Merrivale, with surprising meekness, “I’m sort of in trouble with the government.”
“How do you mean?” asked Tom.
“Well, sort of,” said H.M.
The old sinner, all sixteen stone of him, sat behind the desk in the familiar office, twiddling his thumbs over his corporation. His shell-rimmed spectacles were pulled down on his broad nose, and light from the windows behind him glistened on his bald head. On his face was a look of such martyrdom that it had won Jenny’s complete sympathy and only enraged Tom.
“Well, y’see,” H.M. pursued, “I’ve been abroad for maybe two or three years...”
“Ah, yes!” said Tom. “It was in New York, wasn’t it, that you wrecked the subway at Grand Central Station and nabbed the right murderer on the wrong evidence?”
“Oh, son! I dunno what you’re talkin’ about,” said H.M., giving him an austere look.
“And in Tangier, I think, you blew up a ship and let the real criminal escape just because you happened to like him?”
“Y’see how they treat me?” H.M. demanded, his powerful voice rising as he addressed Jenny. “They’ve got no respect for me, not a bit.”
“Poor man!” Jenny said warmly.
“Oh, Lord,” moaned Tom. Like most people, he could never resist the temptation to make fun of the great man; and then, to his astonishment, he found women sympathizing with H.M.’s most outrageous exploits.
“But why,” he persisted, “are you in trouble with the government?”
“It seems I spent more money than I should have, or burn me, than I can account for. It also seems — would you believe it? — I shouldn’t have had banking accounts in New York, Paris, Tangier, and Milan.”
“You didn’t know, of course, you weren’t allowed to have those banking accounts?”
“Me?”
“Never mind,” said Tom, smiting his forehead. “What happened to you?”
“Oh, Lord love a duck!” said H.M. “When I got back to England, you’d have thought I was Guy Fawkes and the Cato Street conspirators all rolled into one. They hoicked me up on the carpet before an old friend of mine. I won’t say who this louse is, except to tell you he’s the Attorney-General.”
“No,” said Tom. “By all means don’t breathe a word.”
“ ‘Henry,’ he says to me, ‘I’ve got you over a barrel.’ ”
“Did the Attorney-General actually use those words?”
“Well... now!” said the great man, making a broad gesture and giving Tom a withering look. “I’m tellin’ you the gist of it, that’s all. ‘Henry,’ he says, ‘on the evidence I have here I could have you fined a hundred thousand pounds or stuck in jail for practically a century.’ ” Here H.M. broke off and appealed to Jenny. “Was this just?” he demanded.
“Of course it wasn’t!” cried Jenny.
“ ‘However,’ he says, ‘you pay up in full, with a fine, and we’ll forget it. Provided,’ he says—”
“Provided what?”
“I’m to go back to my own office here, d’ye see? It used to be part of the War Office, before they messed everything about in the war. And I’m to be in charge of Central Office Eight of the Metropolitan Police.”
“Please,” said Jenny in her soft voice, “but what is Central Office Eight?”
“It’s me,” H.M. replied simply. “Anybody who calls it The Ministry of Miracles is going to get a thick ear. They had enough fun, curse ’em, with the late Ministry of Information. If anything rummy turns up at Scotland Yard — any loony case that doesn’t make sense — they chuck it at my head.”
Here H.M.’s expression changed.
“Y’know,” he said, “strictly among ourselves, I don’t mind so much. I’m gettin’ old and mellow now—”
“I’ll bet you are,” Tom muttered sardonically under his breath.
“— and it’s comfortable here, sort of. Well!” said H.M., sitting up briskly and rubbing his hands together. “The old man’s in business again. You got any miracles you want explained?”
“Have we!” said Tom. “Jenny! Haven’t you told him?”
He himself had just arrived, hurrying in to find H.M. pouring out his woes and tribulations. In the old dusty office, high above Whitehall, Tom and Jenny looked at each other.
That office, as H.M. had said, was comfortable. Above the fireplace still hung the Satanic portrait of Fouché, Minister of Police under Napoleon. There was a very impressive-looking safe, inscribed IMPORTANT STATE DOCUMENTS: DO NOT TOUCH! — but containing only a bottle of whiskey. The office had seen many strange things happen — it would see many more.
“I told him about what happened in the whispering gallery, yes!” said Jenny. “But I do not even know how I have come here at all! I hated to leave you in the tea shop, but Aunt Hester was so furious I could only run. Then, at the car, the chauffeur says that some Canadian gentleman—”
“That’s all right. I can explain later.”
“Some Canadian gentleman, who has been sitting with him in the car when we went into St. Paul’s, told him to drive me straight to this H.M. of yours. You have said so too, so I go.” Jenny’s brow wrinkled. “And I was so, so wrong about your H.M.!”
“Oh?” enquired Tom.
“Yes, yes! He does not swear or carry on or throw people out of windows. He is what you call a poppet.”
“Hem!” said the great man modestly.
“Frankly,” said Tom, eyeing the stuffed owl across the desk, “I shouldn’t call it a well-chosen word to apply to him. You’ll find out. However! When I’d chucked out Aunt Hester, with the aid of two counter-girls and a friendly cop, I thought I’d never get here. I was afraid some infernal thing or other had happened to you, and I might never see you again.”
“You may see me,” said Jenny, and stretched out her hands, “whenever you wish.”
“Oi!” interposed a thunderous voice.
The alleged poppet was now glaring at them with a malignancy which raised Jenny’s hair.
“There’s not goin’ to be any canoodling in this office, is there?” he demanded. “All my life I’ve tripped over young people with no idea except to canoodle. — Now listen to me, my dolly.”