Algy said “Help!” to himself. He had awful visions of the sort of witness that Sylvia was going to make, he had awful visions of what she might be going to say.
He asked, “What paper?” and with a complete sense of unreality heard Sylvia say,
“The one I took when I was staying with the Wessex-Gardners. I can’t even remember the man’s name.”
It was Gay who said “Lushington,” and it was Gay who saw the white line come on either side of Algy’s mouth. There was one of those silences which seem as if they might go on for ever. Then Gay put out a hand to stop Sylvia, and Algy said very quietly indeed,
“You took a paper from Mr. Lushington’s room,at Wellings a week ago?”
“He made me,” said Sylvia. “He said he’d give me two hundred pounds. And I’d lost it at cards, and Francis would have been so angry.”
It seemed a complete explanation.
Algy said, “He being Mr. Zero?”
Sylvia nodded.
“So I had to get the letters when he told me to.”
Algy said, “I see.” He got up and walked in the room. The window was open. Francis Colesborough had gone out that way. There was a drawer pulled out on one side of the writing-table, pulled out in a hurry and left. He stood looking down at it without touching anything. He wondered what had been taken from it in that last hurry, and saw a packet of cartridges lying there and thought, “It was his own pistol. He snatched it up and went out.” There was a sheet of paper on the blotting-pad, a letter just begun. You don’t read another man’s letters, but Francis Colesborough was no longer another man. He was “the deceased” in a murder case, and one of the first things the police would do would be to read this letter.
Algy bent down and read it as it lay a little crookedly on the pale yellow blotting-paper.
There was no beginning. That halted him, because there was something strange in a letter which discarded all the usual forms. The strangeness sounded a warning bell. The check was momentary, yet in that moment he had braced himself against what might come. Without any change of expression he read:
“You disturb yourself unnecessarily. Neither Zero nor the agent is under the least suspicion. This rests in quite another quarter. M.L. has decided-”
The writing broke off there.
Algy Somers went back to the butler’s pantry and rang up Montagu Lushington.
XXI
Colonel Anstruther leaned back in his chair and frowned at Inspector Boyce. He had been a Chief Constable for ten years without ever coming to closer quarters with a cause célèbre than the pages of his daily newspaper. He now found himself threatened with a sensational publicity from which no man in the British Isles was more averse. He had an exact and orderly mind, and disapproved of crimes which could not be immediately docketed and pigeon-holed. He drummed on the arm of his chair and said,
“The Home Office is sending a man down. You’ll have to take instructions from him as to the political issues involved. He will be present when the safe is opened, and so will Sir Francis Colesborough’s lawyer.”
“That was a very queer letter, sir,” said Inspector Boyce.
“Damned queer. Damned treasonable, if you ask me. Home Office report on sabotage missing, Lady Colesborough confessing she took it under instructions from a blackmailer who calls himself Mr. Zero, and her husband, who she thought was going to kill her if he found out, writing, ‘Neither Zero nor the agent is under the least suspicion.’ This means Francis Colesborough was in on that business, and lord knows what we shall find when we open his safe. ‘Neither Zero nor the agent-’ Now suppose Francis Colesborough was Zero-the agent very probably his wife. They were staying at Wellings when the paper was missed. She’s a pretty, silly woman. Suppose her husband put her on to getting the paper for him. Well, say she did it-what was she doing last night? She says-where’s that statement of hers?” He plucked it angrily from the desk and leaned back again. “Yes, here we are. She says:
“ ‘I went into the yew walk to meet a man who called himself Mr. Zero. I have never seen him, and I do not know his real name. He said my husband was keeping some of his letters, and he induced me to take them out of the safe in our London house and bring them down to Cole Lester. He said they were his property and would have his name on them. I found a packet which was marked “Zero.” It was this packet which I took into the yew walk. I did not take any pistol with me. I have fired a pistol, but I do not possess one. I am not a good shot. There is a window in the yew hedge. When I reached this window Mr. Zero was there, but on the other side of the hedge and behind it so that I did not see him. He asked me whether I had the letters, and when I replied in the affirmative he told me to hand them over quickly. I heard my husband coming on the outside of the hedge to the left of the window. Mr. Zero was on the right. They were both outside the hedge, and I was inside. My husband called out. He said angry things, and used language which I would rather not repeat. I don’t remember whether Mr. Zero said anything then. They began to fight. I had a torch. I saw a pistol in my husband’s hand. I think Mr. Zero got it away from him. They were fighting just outside the window, and I was very frightened. I heard Mr. Zero say, “Now what about it?” and, “Take that!” There was a shot. I don’t know what happened to the letters. I don’t know what happened to Mr. Zero. I thought I was going to faint. I thought my husband was dead. I picked up the pistol-’ ”
Sylvia and the official mind had obviously collaborated. The result enraged Colonel Anstruther. He repeated the last sentence angrily.
“She says, ‘I picked up the pistol.’ What does she mean? What’s the good of letting her make a statement like this? How could she pick it up if it was the other side of the hedge?”
Inspector Boyce gave a slight cough.
“She says it wasn’t, sir.”
“Wasn’t what?”
“Wasn’t on the other side of the hedge, sir.”
Colonel Anstruther glared.
“Does she or doesn’t she state that she was on the inside of the hedge and the two men on the outside?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that one of them had the pistol and the other got it from him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then how the devil could she pick it up inside the hedge?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Then why didn’t you ask her? If she says a thing like that she’s got to explain it, hasn’t she?”
Inspector Boyce stiffened and reverted to the extreme official manner.
“I did not omit to put that point to Lady Colesborough. She replied that she had no recollection of what occurred between the firing of the shot and the picking up of the pistol. If you will refer to the statement, sir-”
Colonel Anstruther referred to it with dislike. A most unsatisfactory document. He read in an annoyed voice:
“‘There was a shot. I don’t know what happened to the letters. I don’t know what happened to Mr. Zero. I thought I was going to faint. I thought my husband was dead. I picked up the pistol-’ ”
“Well, what about it? The pistol was outside, and she is inside, and she says she picked it up. What’s the thickness of the hedge? I suppose you’ve measured it?”
“Six foot thick mostly, sir, but this window affair is cut in and there’s not more than a four-foot thickness there.”
“What’s the size of the window?”
“Three foot high and six foot wide, sir. There’s a seat inside, put facing it to get the view, if you understand. And there’s this window, with a four-foot sill and the hedge jutting out beyond it on either side for a couple of feet. She says they were fighting just outside, but unless the man who had the pistol threw it in through the window after he had fired I don’t see how it got the same side of the hedge as Lady Colesborough, or how she picked it up.”