"Looky here, Race. I told you the cyanide was in the knitting-bag, and if you arrest that sister-in-law…"
Pause.
"What do you mean, another case?…
"Race, I tell you I can't! Burn me, I got important work on hand. I'm dictatin' my..
"Well, if you think it's goin' to be embarrassing, why don't you call in Scotland Yard?…
"Oh, you're going to? Then why bother me?..
"What do you mean, another 'impossible’ situation?…"
The telephone appeared to be speaking at length. "Is that so, now?…
"And what's the name of this bloke who's been murdered?…
"Spell it. Oh! Fane! Arthur Fane."
Philip Courtney jumped to his feet. The pipe he had been filling dropped out of his hands on the table.
He had been through a variety of emotions in the past hour. First there had been the necessity to keep a straight face, and refrain from laughing into H.M.'s empurpled visage. -
Second, it seemed to him that a man must be dead and buriable who could not find pleasure in these memoirs, provided Courtney himself didn't go mad first and provided libel, scandal, and scurrilousness could be reduced to a minimum.
But now—
Again he listened as H.M.'s voice bellowed out.
"All right, all right, all right! Looky here, Race. I'll do it on one condition. The chap you want from London is called Masters. Chief Inspector Masters….
"Yes, that's it. You get him into this hot water, and I'll jump in too…
"I can depend on that, can I?..
"All right, then. Yes, I'll go over now, if you're so blinkin' hot about it. All right. Hoo-hoo. G'-by."
The receiver went up with a bang.
When H.M. plodded back into the library, he wore a somewhat guilty air which he tried to conceal under a truculent scowl. His corporation, ornamented by a large gold watch-chain, was truculent of itself.
"Get your hat, son," he said. "You're comin' along."
"Where?"
"Just up the road," insisted H.M., his truculence changing to honeyed persuasion. "A solicitor named Arthur Fane has been polished off by his wife—" "God Almighty!"
"But there seems to be some doubt about who did it." All of a sudden Courtney was conscious of sharp little eyes boring into him from behind the spectacles; they made him jump.
"What's the matter, son?" asked H.M. casually. "You don't know anything about it, do you?"
"No, but this autobiography—"
"Napoleon," said H.M., "could do five or six things at once. I can have a good shot at managin' two. You come along. I'll sort of look into this; and at intervals, I’ll sort of dictate to you over my shoulder."
Courtney, on the point of intimating that this was the craziest idea which even H.M. appeared to have had so far, checked himself and thought of Frank Sharpless. After all, why not?
"But I can't go barging in there!"
"You can," replied H.M. simply, "if you're with me. Colonel Race says his secretary's there. Gal named Ann Browning. Race says this gal's got her headpiece screwed on right, and knows a thing or two. That's all eyewash, naturally. There never was a woman who was any ruddy good as a secretary; except my Lolly-pop, of course, and she's different. But it might be interest-in' to see what this gal says."
"Well-"
"Get your hat," glared H.M., "and come on."
Courtney did not have a hat. But, as H.M. took a Panama of regrettable design from the hat-rack, he followed the lumbering figure down the hall into a hot, silver, moonlight night.
Passers-by in the elm-shaded street might have been startled by a voice which marched beneath the elms. It was a strange, throaty, self-conscious voice, like that of a prophet in a trance or a ventriloquist talking bass.
"I will now," it suddenly announced, "give my readers some idea of the political situation as it existed between the years 1870 and 1880; and of the close attention with which I followed it even then."
Seven
"Over here," said Frank Sharpless, pointing. "Put her down on the bed."
Whatever he had thought he might be doing at ten-thirty that night, Courtney had not imagined that he would be carrying the body of an unconscious woman upstairs in a strange house, while the police muttered below.
But he was.
When he and H.M. arrived at the square white house, whose unfortunate name, "The Nest," was woven into the ironwork of the gate, they saw that the front door stood open and a light burned in the hall.
Sharpless, bearing in his arms a limp figure in a violet full-sleeved and full-skirted gown, stood in the hall arguing with an inspector of police from the Gloucestershire County Constabulary.
"She can't run away," Sharpless was insisting. "At least let me take her upstairs and make her comfortable."
The inspector hesitated.
"Very well, sir. But come down again straightaway; you understand?" He turned to the newcomers. "You'll be Sir Henry Merrivale, no doubt?" At H.M.'s nod he saluted. "Inspector Agnew here. Colonel Race told me to look out for you. Will you come this way, sir?"
The plan of the house was simple. It consisted of two long rooms on either side of the halclass="underline" front and back drawing room to the left, with a kitchen built out at the rear. Inspector Agnew's gesture indicated the library. From the back drawing room came a murmur of voices.
"I'm not," H.M. said sharply, "goin' to question anybody tonight. That can wait till tomorrow, when Masters gets here. But I'd like to hear a little more about it from you, son. Lead on."
"Phil," said Sharpless quickly, "stay here with me for a minute."
H.M., after giving assent to this with a nod and a sharp glance, followed Inspector Agnew into the library. Courtney was left with Sharpless and his charge. If Sharpless felt any surprise at seeing his friend there, he did not show it.
"Take Vicky," he ordered. "I'll lead the way."
She was attractive, Courtney thought. Damned attractive. Clumsify, and with some embarrassment, he carried her upstairs while Sharpless went ahead turning on lights.
The upper floor, built on a similar plan to the one below, consisted of six bedrooms and two bathrooms. Sharpless opened doors and tested lights until he found what was evidently Arthur and Vicky Fane's room — a spacious room at the front, on the right-hand side facing forward.
It was a pleasant bedroom, though its mixture of masculine and feminine tastes warred badly. A small white stone balcony over-looked the front lawn. The furniture was maplewood, the fitted carpet brown, the curtains old rose.
"Over here," said Sharpless. "Put her down on the bed."
He closed the door as Courtney did so, and they looked at each other.
"Frank," Courtney began, "in the name of—!" "Sh-h!"
"Yes, but what's going on here? What did she do? If she's fainted, why not slosh some water on her and bring her round?"
Sharpless told him. A clock ticked on the table beside the bed; a bedside lamp, its shade of some pinkish glassy material over a mirror base, shed calm light on Vicky Fane's emotionless face; and a faint breeze stirred in the trees of the front lawn, moving the curtains. Sharpless neglected no detail of the story, while his companion stared.
"Look here, Frank, are you all mad?"
"No."
"You all swear none of you could have exchanged the real dagger for the rubber one?" "That's right."
"And yet you also know nobody could have come in from outside to do it!"
"Abo right. I proved it myself."
"Then," declared Courtney, "all I can say is you'd better begin to unprove it, and ruddy quick too."
"Oh? Why?"
"Man alive, listen! Get the fog out of your brain and think! Do you still love this girl?"