"The ironmonger's willing to identify the person who bought it. That was a bad bloomer on our friend's part. But it always happens. These clever people will do it."
Masters put down the knife, and picked up an official cellophane envelope containing traces of a whitish powder.
"Finding the stuff itself, in the place where we did find it. Lummy! That's the best yet. So far as I'm concerned personally, or a jury's concerned, that's hanging evidence. But, sir, the case isn't complete. It's all very well to say, 'Write out your warrant.' We can't make out one, and the chief constable can't sign it, until we know how the ruddy knife was used, and how the person in question managed to exchange it with the toy one in full view of all the other witnesses."
"Oh, that?" murmured H.M., as though completely uninterested.
Masters pushed his chair away from the desk. His temper was simmering again.
"Oh, that?" he mimicked. "I suppose you don't think that's important?"
"It's important. Sure. But it's not difficult."
"No? You just tell me how it was done — tell me a practical way — and I'll have our friend in chokey before you can say Jack Robinson. The poison-in-the-grapefruit part of the thing, I admit, is easy. That's just what we thought it must be. But the dagger business has got me up a tree, and I don't mind saying so."
H.M. looked distressed.
"Oh, son, think! I thought you'd tumbled to it long ago. Especially considering what went on in that room that you've heard all about but haven't understood. And considering that most people's idea of usin' their eyesight and estimatin' time is rummy enough to interest J.W. Dunne."
"You're not going to tell me that the whole blasted crowd except one were blind?"
"No, no, no. Looky here. I'll do better than tell you how it was done. I'll show you how it was done, if you'd like to go out there again tonight."
'That suits me, sir!" declared Masters, with a breath of deep and wicked satisfaction.
"And me," said Agnew.
"Good. I sort of thought you might want a demonstration. So I asked Adams's chauffeur to…"
H.M. paused. His eyes opened, and then narrowed.
"Lord love a duck," he muttered. "Adams! And young Courtney!"
"What about them?"
H.M. looked guilty. "I haven't seen the young feller since this afternoon, when-we sent him and the Browning gal up to see Mrs. Fane. But I told him I was feelin' in fine fettle for dictation as usual tonight. I told him to be at Adams's house at nine sharp. He's gone out there in the pourin' rain, and it's past ten already. Y'know, I've got a sort of idea that I may have some explaining to do."
"Well, there's the telephone," said Masters impatiently. "Ring him up and explain."
The telephone was supported at the desk on one of those folding steel frameworks by which you can pull it out or push it back. H.M. put his hand on the receiver, but for the moment he was not looking at it. He blinked absent-mindedly at the articles on Agnew's desk, revealed with hypnotic clearness by the green-shaded lamp. They were the rubber dagger, the real dagger, the spoon, and the little rows of numerals on another equally important piece of evidence.
“They may have gone to bed at the Fanes'," continued Masters, taking down his raincoat from a hook. "But, I tell you straight, if I could see my way clear to putting a certain party under lock and key, I'd wake up the Assistant Commissioner himself. If—"'
There was an interruption.
"Gaaal" roared Sir Henry Merrivale.
He pushed back his chair with a hideous, chalk-like squeak on the bare boards which made his two companions jump. When they whirled round to look at him, he was regarding the desk with the expression of one whom during a bout of delirium tremens, has just seen another spider walk along the wall.
"The Haunted Man,' " said H.M.," 'or The Ghost's Bargain.' Masters, don't ever wish you were me."
"I never did," said Masters, "and, by George, I never will! What's all this foolishness now?"
"It's not foolishness," H.M. assured him with the utmost earnestness. "I'm being pursued. I wish you had the sense to see how you were bein' pursued too."
"Pursued by what?"
"Never mind," said H.M. darkly. He turned back to the telephone again. "Oi! Operator! Operator? Gimme Cheltenham double four, double four. That's right… So. Line's engaged." He banged back the receiver. "I wonder what that young feller's doin' now?"
Courtney himself would not have been pleased with this question. What he had been doing, up to a few minutes of that call, was sitting in Major Adams's library and listening to a long lecture on India.
It was being delivered by the major himself. And, since it was the second long lecture on India to which he had listened recently, he had grown a trifle fed up.
He preserved a Chesterfieldian politeness. Aside from his first visit to the house, he had not since set eyes on his host, whose habit was to play golf all day and bridge most of the night. But, in the absence of H.M., the major was now laying himself out to be agreeable.
The rain sluiced down. H.M. was an hour and ten minutes late. Courtney, having brought no raincoat to Cheltenham, had been imperfectly protected on the journey out by an umbrella he borrowed from the hall-porter at The Plough. His shoes and trouser-legs were soaking. Worse than this were the twinges of disquiet he experienced as the hour grew later.
"Rather odd experience, what?" inquired the major, comfortably pulling at a cheroot. "I'll tell you an odder. At Poona, in nineteen-o-nine…"
Out in the hall, the telephone rang.
Courtney jumped up.
"That's probably for me," he said. "You don't mind if I answer it?"
"My dear chap!" said the major. "Dammit. Not at all. Do."
When he took down the receiver, a female voice spoke. It spoke in a quick, stealthy whisper, shaking with terror so that the words were barely distinguishable.
"I want to speak to the doctor."
"Wrong number," Baid Courtney wearily. "What number did you want?"
The voice grew softly frenzied. "I want double-four, double-four. Isn't that double-four, double-four?"
"Yes, that's right. But there's no doctor here. Doctor who?"
"The big doctor!"
Light broke on him. "You mean Sir Henry Merrivale? Isn't that Mrs. Propper speaking?"
"Yes, yes, yes! (S-s-hh! Daisy, if you carry on like that we'll both get our throats cut!) Oh, my God."
"Mrs. Propper! Listen! This is Courtney here. Mr. Courtney."
"His secretary?"
"Well — yes. What is it? What's wrong?"
The voice grew even softer. "Sir, you've got to come over here. Somebody's got to come over here. There's a man in the house. A burglar. I saw him climb in through the winder."
Score another for psychic fits!
"Listen, Mrs. Propper. Can you hear me? Right! Go down and wake up Mr. Fane, Mr. Hubert Fane…"
"I wouldn't stir out of this room," said the voice passionately, "not if you was to give me all the money in the Bank of England."
"But where are you speaking from?"
"I'm speaking from my bedroom. There's an extension telephone here. Oh, sir, for God's sake send the big doctor over here. Or come yourself. I wouldn't go near them nasty police, after what they said to me today, not if you was to give me—"
"Right. I'll come straight away. But somebody's got to let me in."
There was a fierce, whispered colloquy with an even more frightened Daisy.
"When you get here," muttered Mrs. Propper, who was gratifyingly quick-witted as a conspirator, "give three rings on the doorbell — one, two, three — so's we'll know it's you. Then we'll run downstairs and let you in."
"Right. Good-by."
The tone of his voice, though he tried to keep it casual, was such as to bring Major Adams popping out of the library.