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Title: The Man with the Squeaky Voice
Author: R A J Walling (1869-1949)
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Language: English
Date first posted: August 2009
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------------------------------------------------------------------------

Title: The Man with the Squeaky Voice
Author: R A J Walling (1869-1949)




PART I. THE MAN WITH THE SQUEAKY VOICE



I.


Tod Challenger, cutting off the end of his cigar, watched the Man with
the Squeaky Voice steer his way between the dining tables, glancing
nervously from side to side, and disappear through the doorway.

"By Heaven, Masters!" said he, "if ever I saw Fear in a man's eyes,
that's where."

"A strange, furtive fellow," said I.

"Furtive, is it? Your vocabulary wants a tonic, my son. He's simply
soused in Fear! He was even afraid of you! What better evidence do you
want?"

I flicked an almond at Tod, though he was by much my senior.

"He seemed quite chatty with you, Tod. Merely proof that I've the far
more formidable personality."

"He was chatty with me because I'm an American. The formidable element
in your personality, young Masters, was that you're an Englishman. And
at this moment Pasty-face is afraid of his fellow-countrymen. When he
heard your pretty Oxford accents, he just went green!"

Tod's picturesque account of it was roughly true. The dining-room at the
Antlers Hotel had been rather full, and a waiter had taken us to a small
square table at which already sat a man of middle age, who looked
annoyed at the disturbance of his solitude. A well-preserved man, with
hardly a gray hair, he wore a thick dark mustache. His figure was
athletic, but he had the sallowest complexion I have ever seen and the
squeakiest voice I have ever heard.

Challenger has the American capacity for intercourse highly developed,
and the charm that disarms resentment. So before he had eaten his soup
he had the squeaky-voiced man in amicable conversation.

He seemed a well-educated man, and, in spite of his peculiarities, would
not have been an unpleasant companion but for his furtive nervousness of
manner.

Then it was as Tod said. I had no sooner opened my mouth than he froze
up. He dropped his fork on the table and looked at me with a start of
alarm. His pallid face took on a literally ghastly hue. Presently he
rose, squeaked a word of apology, and was winding his way out between
the tables.

We did not see him again.

"That man," Tod summed up, "is living in Hell."

Tod Challenger and I had become friends in London. I was almost a
greenhorn in the office of the _Morning Telegram_, and Tod, a man of
forty, was a mature and even a famous journalist. His American paper
used the _Morning Telegram_ services and had an office in that new and
lordly building of ours which was one of the wonders of Fleet Street.
Having taken a liking to me, Tod had persuaded Allen, the news-editor,
to commission me for a series of articles on what he called "the
American scene." It simply meant a jolly tour of the United States in
Tod's company. Now, almost at the end of it, we had come down to
Colorado Springs to have a quiet day or two at the Antlers Hotel. And
here on our first evening we met the Man with the Squeaky Voice.

Yet even his curious voice and Tod's startling observation on him would
hardly have fixed the pallid traveler in my mind but for the reminder of
the following morning.

Tod met an acquaintance in the lobby as we were crossing it to get an
after-breakfast smoke on the terrace and gorge ourselves with mountains.
He began:

"Hello--!"

Then checked himself as the man passed him without speaking. But he came
after us and sat on the same seat five minutes later.

"Sorry to choke your greeting, Challenger," he said, "but I didn't want
my name mentioned aloud in the lobby. However--bird's on the wing, so it
don't matter now."

"Then allow me to make known to you Mr. Masters, of London. This is Mr.
Lennox, of Washington, Masters."

Though the name did not then convey to me so much as it came to do, I
had heard of Lennox as a top-notcher in the Secret Service.

"Masters is in my trade, Lennox, so he can be guaranteed not to ask any
indiscreet questions."

Lennox smiled.

"No harm done. In fact, I was looking for a Britisher, Mr. Masters. Your
Embassy's interested in him. But I'm an hour or so late. He went south
this morning. However, I've cabled Pueblo to keep up with him. Going to
San Francisco by the Rio Grande, I expect."

Tod made no comment, and I lived up to his character of me.

"Wonder if you hit his trail here? Queer chap with a face like a corpse
and a voice like a toy doll?"

"I guess I'd a talk with him over dinner last night, Lennox. All about
nothing. I said to Masters that the man was afraid of something--"

"Oh, he's not afraid of me," said Lennox. "He don't know me. All the
same, I'd give a dollar to see his dossier in Connecticut Avenue."

Tod told me a few things about Lennox after he had passed on. Lennox had
one of those indeterminate but exciting jobs which combine the detective
with the minor diplomatist. His opposite number in London was Barlow,
who had all the privileges and none of the responsibilities of Scotland
Yard.

"There must be something more than commonly queer about friend
Pasty-face," said Tod, "or Lennox wouldn't be chasing him. I wonder
what? I've got a sort of echo in my memory-box of a pale face and a high
voice, but I can't fix it. What have I heard about that in the past few
months? Something, Masters! No, I didn't hear it. I read it. I can see
the words in type. 'Pale face, high voice.' Must have been a police
description of somebody. Shake it up, Masters--"

Then all at once it came to me.

"Why, of course, Tod!" I cried, "it was in the Allenstein case--"

"Bullyboy! You've got it. The confidential clerk! Great Scott!--he's
pretty lively for a man who's been burnt to a cinder, isn't he?"

The idea that we had dined in Colorado Springs in April with a man who
had been incinerated in London in January seemed far-fetched. Yet it set
me thinking back over the facts of the Allenstein case.

It was one of the big sensations of recent times. Allenstein's Bank, a
trustee affair with premises in Bishopsgate Street, had been the subject
of an unprecedented outrage at the beginning of January. The only thing
comparable with it was the coup of the previous year at the Crédit
Bordelais in Paris. Barlow always thought the two things were not
unconnected.

The staff of Allenstein's had worked late on Wednesday the second of
January, as is customary for bank staffs at the New Year. The last man
left, or was supposed to have gone, about one in the morning. Before the
city went to work on Thursday, the premises of Allenstein's Bank did not
exist except as a heap of smoking débris. The fire had been noticed at
four o'clock by a constable patrolling Bishopsgate. The fire brigade
could do nothing with it. They had forced a way in, rescued the night
watchman badly injured, and then immediately an explosion had brought
down the whole place in hopeless ruin.

The night watchman, who had been found unconscious in a passage outside
the door of the Board Room, had come round at the end and cried out:

"Mr. Grice! Oh, Mr. Grice!"

Then he had died.

The significance of his cry lay in the fact that Mr. Grice was the head
clerk of the Bank, and was thought to have been the last of the staff to
leave. But Mr. Grice was never seen again; and it was concluded that he
must have been trapped in the burning building.

Exploration of the ruins revealed after three days that the fire was no
accident but a deliberate arson. The strong rooms had been forced,
presumably by explosives, every safe ransacked, and all tangible
valuables removed. One of the worst losses was a small safe within a
safe, which had contained the jewelry of Lady Vanstead, deposited for
safe keeping during her absence for the winter in the West Indies. The
jewels, which were of great price, included the Ramchunder Diamond, a
famous heirloom said to be of fabulous value.

The depredation spelt ruin for many people; but the chief sufferer was
Draycott Vincent, the chairman of the concern. This notable personality
had come to the rescue of Allenstein's Bank a year before when the City
had expected not exactly a smash but a reconstruction and absorption
into a bigger company on terms which would have left the stockholders in
a highly unfavorable position. Vincent, with a fortune recently acquired
in America, was induced to apply his money and his brilliant talents to
the revivification of Allenstein's. He had put into it everything he
owned. The disaster reduced him to beggary. After a few weeks spent in
scraping up what he could from the wreck of his fortune, his brief
career came to an end. London knew him no more. It was noticed in those
sorrowful days that the horrible death of Grice, who had been his
confidential right-hand man at the Bank, affected him even more deeply
than his personal ruin.

Now, Grice had been described, at the time when his fate remained
uncertain, as a man with a notably pale complexion and a very
high-pitched voice. And here was Tod Challenger suggesting that Grice
had dined with us at the Antlers Hotel and that Lennox had just left us
to pick up his trail!



II.


It was not until September in London that the Man with the Squeaky Voice
came into the picture again. About that time the Foreign Office had wind
up--one of its periodical fits of nerves.

We in the _Morning Telegram_ office, being used to scares in Whitehall,
did not put much on it. If two burglaries at the Foreign Office were so
cleverly done that the second took place under the very noses of the
people investigating the first, we were quite ready to exploit the
affair for all it was worth as a newspaper sensation.

It was a quarter past eleven. Four of us were in Allen's room looking
over the sheets of the _Telegram_ fresh from the press, when the door
opened to admit a brisk and sanguine man of forty, wearing horn-rimmed
glasses.

"Hello, boys!"

"Hello, Tod!" we chorused.

"Anything juicy for me to-night?"

"Only young Master's story of the dastardly plot against the honor and
safety of Old England, Tod," said Flaherty. He was our wild Irishman,
who wrote leaders. "Somebody's been in to have a look at the Foreign
Office silver, and young Masters, with the connivance of Whitehall and
Scotland Yard, has deduced from this simple fact--"

"Yes, Mike--I've seen it." said Tod. "So you boys don't give a damn for
the great plot? You don't reckon anybody would ever get up a plot in
England--"

"Not in London, Tod. It's not done. It's démodé. The last plot in London
was a fizzle. It happened on the fifth of November, 1605. Since then the
practice is frowned upon. Englishmen don't like to be made ridiculous.
Now, in Chicago, Tod--or in Dublin, for that matter--"

"Well, looks as if you've got a plot coming to you in London this time,
boys!"

His tone made us look up, inquisitive, and Allen dropped his pipe.

"What's in the wind, Tod?"

"Barlow."

"Yes, I know--but the Home Office puts Barlow on to everything these
days."

"Barlow and Fougère of the Sureté."

"Ah!--but Paris is just as nervous as London: sees a conspirator behind
every lamp-post."

"Barlow and Fougère--and Lennox."

"You mean Lennox of Washington?" Allen pursed his lips to a whistle.
Challenger nodded.

"You can follow up, Allen. Now if Masters is through for the night, I'm
going to take him along."

When in London, Tod lived in rooms at the Victoria Hotel. Having pushed
forward his long chair for me, dismissed the waiter, and foraged in his
sideboard for cigars, he asked the question which brought leaping back
to memory that night at the Antlers Hotel.

"Masters," he said, "do you remember the Man with the Squeaky Voice we
dined with at Colorado Springs?"

"Perfectly, Tod. And Lennox--good Lord! Anything to do with what you
said to Allen?"

I jumped up from the long chair.

"Hi! young man," he laughed, "sit still. There's no hurry. Just listen.
I was down in Whitehall the day of that first affair at the Foreign
Office--when was it? Tuesday week?--and I passed the squeaker on the
pavement."

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "Are you sure?"

"Couldn't mistake his pasty face--and what's more, I heard him speak.
No--he didn't recognize me. He called up a passing taxi and told the man
to drive him to Paddington. You can guess what I did--"

"Called the next taxi and followed him to Paddington," said I.

"Full marks for acumen. Have a cigar. At Paddington he bought a ticket
for a place named Kenwick. Know it?"

"No, but I've passed it in the train. Down in Berkshire."

"Yes--I didn't quite know whether it was Berkshire or Wiltshire. Anyhow,
that's where he went."

He contemplated the glowing end of his cigar for a moment.

"I wonder if Allen would give you leave, young man, on a roving
commission without wanting to know too much about it?"

"I daresay. Why?"

"I want some help. I'm on a stunt. I wouldn't share't with anybody
else--but I'd let you in because I could trust you. That cab ride to
Paddington started me on some comic experiences, Masters."

He told me the strange tale. Once seen again, the pasty-faced man had
fixed himself in his imagination and refused to be exorcised.

"Pasty-face--Paddington--Kenwick...they ran in my mind all night. And
Lennox. And the Embassy in Washington. And that look of fear--it was
still there when he dived into the taxi in Whitehall. So Wednesday
morning, I too went to Paddington station and took a ticket to Kenwick."

"You've found something!" I exclaimed. "Anything to do with--"

"Yes--with what?"

"Well, with Lennox and Fougère--and Barlow--with the plot you think is
coming to us?"

"Steady, young man," said Tod. "We won't cross the river before we get
there. I've found just nothing--only the possibility of a considerable
something. But I've met a bunch of grand people I'd like you to know."

"I can't get leave to go meeting jolly people, Tod."

"No, but you can to seize a chance of the best beat Allen ever thought
of in his dreams. Suppose you could solve the Allenstein mystery?"

I shook my head.

"You aren't hanging on that slender thread, are you, Tod? You'll come a
cropper."

"I'm not hanging on anything. I'm just digging. Pasty-face interests me.
He has a secret and I mean to get it, whatever it is. The grand people
are more or less incidental--or accidental. Just the accident that Mrs.
Anderson-Orr was late for her train and tumbled into the same
compartment with me."

"Translate a bit, Tod," said I. "You're getting too cryptic."

"Mrs. Anderson-Orr of Ferry Grange, Kenwick."

"Is she one of the jolly ones?"

"You've said it, Masters. She's just jolly. I shouldn't call her an
English type--not exactly. Nothing stilted or stand-offish about Mrs.
Anderson-Orr, _voyez-vous_."

I stared hard at Tod's quizzical face.

"At the same time, quite _comme-il-faut_, if you take me.

"Afraid I don't take you, Tod. What's the joke?"

"Well--a lady, tall, slim, dark, intense, most intense, dressed like a
wealthy woman of good taste, tumbles into the compartment just as the
train moves out. She's a bit breathless, and while she's getting her
bellows going I vet her. Forty-five, I should think--may be younger.
Good-looking in a striking way. Dark eyes--intense, as I said. Then
there's some business about letting windows up and down. Anyhow, I have
occasion to say a word or two, and she just squeaks with delight, 'Oh,
you're an American!' Can't tell how she thought it: you'd never guess I
was an American, would you, from hearing me say, 'Would you like the
window up, ma'am?'"

Tod twinkled...

"Mrs. Anderson-Orr simply dotes on Americans, and you can bet she'd
never have been so sweet to an Englishman as she was to me. Before we
got to Newbury, where we changed, I'd learned all about her. Widow of a
City man. One daughter. Lived at Ferry Grange not far from Kenwick.
Specialized in French fiction. Was a Proust fan. Dropped into French
tags on the slightest provocation. Had very advanced views--_à la mode_,
of course. When she heard I was going to Kenwick gave me a general
invitation to haunt Ferry Grange. Exchanged cards. And then, my dear
Masters, think of the luck of it--she talked about Pasty-face."

"Good Lord!"

"_Mais oui_, my dear Masters, Pasty-face, the veritable, _mon dieu!_
Ferry Grange is all agog about Parkinson--that's his name. Seems there's
very little society in that location, and when a man so striking as
Pasty-face comes as a paying guest in one of the few big houses of the
place, and then goes to ground, so to speak, the very little society
begins to gossip and speculate about him. He's a godsend. Something to
talk about. I stayed at Kenwick nearly a week. I heard a lot about
Parkinson."

"Where is he?--at Ferry Grange?"

"Holy Moses--no! He's been taken in as a paying guest by an old fellow
called Abbott at a house up the river, Morley's Holt."

I started and saw Tod looking at me intently.

"Where have I seen those names?"

"Ah, yes--where?"

"I know--in _The Times!_ A letter in big type this morning--about the
F.O. affair: inefficiency of the police, slackness of the aliens
regulations, peril of the nation, England for the foreigner, country
going to the dogs--a lovely bit of jelly-bellied flag-flapping! Signed
'Richard Abbott, Morley's Holt, Berks.'"

"Full marks for memory, young Masters," said Tod. "There's an
unconscious reflection of it in your F.O. story in the _Telegram_. And
what d'you make of it? Your jelly-bellied flag-flapper--though he's
nothing of the sort, by the way--advertises for a paying guest, and the
playful gods send him--Parkinson!"

"Why not?--unless--"

"Why not, indeed?--if the British Embassy in Washington was looking for
Parkinson to pat him on the back and commission him to write patriotic
letters, and if Lennox came over here to tell Barlow what a jolly dog
Parkinson is, and they called over Fougère from Paris to let him know
too--"

"Whew!--stop, Tod! Don't drown me in irony. You think--?"

"I'm thinking sixty seconds to the minute," said Tod. "I'm thinking if
we can dig out Parkinson we're on to the mightiest scoop ever. I'm
thinking you boys at the _Telegram_ are so blasé that you'd want your
lovely new office blown up before you'd believe the yarn this promises
to yield. I've seen old Abbott once or twice. He's friendly with the
Anderson-Orrs. He can't quite place his paying guest--thinks he's some
sort of morose recluse."

"Have you seen him down there, Tod?--Parkinson, I mean?"

"No, and I can't discover anybody but Abbott who has. But I mean to
unearth him. It's not easy: wait till you see what kind of joint
Morley's Holt is. That's why I want you. Are you game?"

"Yes, Tod, I'm game."

"We might have a rough house," he remarked. "Well--"

"And you'd better put your gun in your pocket."

"All right, Tod--but this is England, you know."

"Don't you come the superior Britisher over me, young man! I know you
all think a policeman's whistle is the most lethal weapon that a
self-respecting Englishman should ever carry. But anybody who goes
exploring Morley's Holt with me has got to have a gun."

And that was how I got started on the adventure that led me into so many
tight corners and creepy excitements--and made me acquainted with Janet
Anderson-Orr.



III.


There are more strikingly beautiful parts of England than the broad
valley through which the River Kennett flows in its journey from
Wiltshire to join the Thames, but few more interesting to lovers of
river meadows, park-like woods, hamlets of thatched houses, little
square-towered churches, and low misty hills on the sky-line. A bit of
real England, old, unspoilt.

I had often passed Kenwick Station in trains which never stopped there.
It was a mere station--a couple of platforms set in a solitary
countryside with no village in view. The railway, cutting across a big
bend of the river, had left Kenwick five miles away, but named a station
after it.

Tod and I were the only passengers who stopped off the slow train from
Newbury. A car stood waiting in the road outside. Its driver pitched
away a cigarette end as we approached him.

"Here you are, Usher," said Tod. "Got my cable all right?"

"I'm here, ain't I?"

His tone astonished me. The four words conveyed as plainly as if he had
said it: Why the deuce ask a tomfool question like that? Tod smiled as
though the curtness was not in the least distasteful to him. I looked
over its author--a vaguely dirty and disheveled figure in an engineer's
overall, very greasy, who wanted a haircut and had not shaved to-day. He
turned to the car, pulled out a soiled cardboard packet, tried to
extract a cigarette which was not there, and flung the packet from him.

"Have a Chesterfield, Usher," said Tod.

"American fags--three whiffs and a burnt lip!" he answered,
ungraciously; but he took one, and offered his burning match to Tod.
"Whereto? King's Arms?"

"No," said Tod, "not now. Drive us to Ferry Grange."

"That--!" He checked the epithet that came to his lips. "I never go near
the ruddy place."

"Well--go as near as you care to. Drop us at your place if you like."

"I'll drive you up to the gate, Mr. Challenger, but not inside. I can't
stand that woman. She gets on my nerves. Talk about the ruddy idle
rich--"

"Talk about 'em some other time, Usher," Tod suggested.

"Never did an honest day's work in their lives--"

Tod had got into the car.

"And treat a workin' man like dirt--"

I followed Tod.

"All right. Wait an' see, Mr. Challenger. When the bottom dog gets on
top--"

What was to happen in that contingency was lost as he went round to the
front of the old car and cranked up. We shattered the rich silence of
five miles of lanes, by meadows and little woods now glowing with the
colors of the Fall, and came out on a wider road running at right
angles. A signpost showed to the right "Kenwick 3 miles" and to the left
"Morley Ferry 3 miles." Some 300 yards before the junction we passed a
cottage. Usher waved his hand to a woman standing in the doorway. At the
junction itself an advertisement board announced that the Half Way House
garage was 500 yards down the road. I had then, of course, no idea how
important to me the position of these two buildings would become.

On the right of the main road as we drove there were occasional glimpses
of the river across the meadows. Half a mile beyond the corner the car
stopped at an open gate giving admittance to a drive.

"Here we are at the doors of the idle rich!" said Tod, jumping out. The
driver looked down his dirty nose with comic disdain. "You might get our
bags to the King's Arms for the afternoon, Usher."

"All right," said he, locked over his steering wheel, and spun the dust
of Ferry Grange off his tires.

Tod led the way into the drive.

"In the name of Dick Turpin, what sort of bandit have you picked up
there, Tod?" I asked.

"Bandit's the word--you've said it. He keeps a garage. But, my dear
Masters, try keeping a roadside garage yourself and then tell me what
you think of the Idle Rich and the Social Revolution in the Coming
By-and-by!"



IV.


Ferry Grange was chiefly remarkable because there was no ferry in the
neighborhood and it had never been a grange. Its builder had atoned for
giving it an inappropriate name by putting it down in a very lovely
spot. Passing through a drive fringed with tall rhododendrons, which
must have been a gorgeous blaze in early summer, we came upon it--a
long, low house lying in sunshine at the top of a lawn that sloped
gently to the river. A spot of vivid color in the green scene was a
large-spreading Japanese umbrella stretched above a deck chair and
against a dark bank of cedars.

"Mrs. Anderson-Orr knows how to choose her fixings--the _juste-milieu_,"
said Tod as we walked across the turf. Then I saw that the long chair
supported a long woman who was playing with the ears of a chow. A murmur
reached us in a low contralto.

"_Que veux-tu, petit chinois_?"

I looked at Tod. He was twinkling. An Englishwoman with a Scotch name
talking baby French to a Chinese dog under a Japanese umbrella.

I suppose she had been well aware of our approach, but she looked up
suddenly and seemed to catch sight of us. I knew by a flash of
divination that she was going to say "_Ciel!_" And she did.

_"Ciel!_ It's Mr. Challenger. Where have you been? And--?"

"This is Mr. Masters of London," said Tod, taking her hand. "I brought
him down to see Kenwick, and I hoped you'd possibly ask us both to
lunch."

"Of course. Delighted. We're only a few--Mr. Webb and Mr. Oddie; but I
rather think Mr. Abbott may be blowing in. I was just going to see about
things. You'll find the others down there."

She reached out her long arm and Tod pulled her upright.

Mrs. Anderson-Orr was a woman of notable mien. Tall--her dark eyes came
level with mine, and I'm not short--of a rich dusky complexion, with
lots of brown hair nearly black, she had a well-proportioned figure and
moved gracefully. She utterly belied the cheapness of her pose. Her look
swept quickly by me and Tod, but in that moment I felt as if I had been
categorized and labeled.

"So _au revoir_," said she, and passed towards the house.

"What an extraordinary woman!" I exclaimed. Tod grinned.

"Ferry Grange is a find," said he. "You'll see."

As I did, not long after. We strolled down to the river. Sounds of
shouting and laughter, splashing and sousing grew louder as we went.
Their authors burst into our view when we rounded a clump of willows and
stood on a gravel walk by the river bank. They were all in the water,
four of them, and the laughter sprung from the antics performed by a
little tubby man in a tight Oxford costume getting into an unsinkable
boat--his round, ruddy face shining with water, fun, and exercise. His
companions were a young man and two girls. They did not see us standing
on the bank for several minutes. When the tubby fellow caught sight of
us, he yelled, "I spy strangers!" and they all looked up.

"Good morning, everybody," said Tod. "We won't interrupt the revels of
the nymphs and dryads--"

"Coming ashore, sir," the tubby man said. "See you later."

One of the nymphs had, in fact, fled to the shelter of the boat house
already. The other, in a red cap, hung on to the side of the boat and
regarded us. The young man, a fair, athletic fellow, swam away. We had
broken up the party.

"Who are they, Tod?" I asked.

We turned back towards the house.

"The porpoise is Joshua Webb--lives at a place called Lorimer House,
down the river. Another of Bill Usher's idle rich. I believe he made a
fortune out of a patent hair-waver. I like Joshua. The youth is a
protégé of his, George Oddie. Can't make him out--bit of a spellbinder,
given to holding forth, a sort of polite Bill Usher. The girls are Janet
Anderson-Orr, the daughter--the one in the red cap, and Helen Adamson, a
friend of hers, stays--or lives, perhaps--with the Anderson-Orrs--a very
proper young person."

And what had we to do with this casual gallery of miscellaneous people?
Tod smiled at my question--that irritating smile which Forty so often
bestows on Twenty-five. They were, he said, our means of approach to
Parkinson and I ought to be mighty thankful it was so pleasant.
There were only three houses in the neighborhood except Bill
Usher's--Abbott's, Joshua Webb's, and Mrs. Anderson-Orr's. We must have
some sort of _point d'appui_--

"You're picking up Mrs. Anderson-Orr's tricks," I interrupted him.

He made a grimace at me. Well--we must have a location, and Ferry
Grange, being liberty hall for everybody, was the best base of
operations. I had to admit afterwards that Tod was right. Unforeseen as
the consequences were, we should never have come by any knowledge of
Parkinson and all that Parkinson meant if we had not been able to use
Ferry Grange.

Mrs. Anderson-Orr met us on the lawn and we were talking to her there
when the four amphibians came romping back from the river.

Mr. Webb came first with Miss Anderson-Orr. She was a straight, slim
girl. Her mother might have been like that when young, but the girl was
not so tall and she had an athlete's carriage. About two and twenty, I
thought...highly intelligent...a little reserved...a lovely
complexion, warmly dark...her eyes were very alert...there was a
spring in her...muscles taut...she had dark, cloudy hair...

It was my way to vet people like that, as Tod said--an irresistible
instinct. Possibly it made me seem rude. But Miss Anderson-Orr was
vetting me with equal persistence while she talked--weather, water, if I
liked tennis, America and Epstein's sculpture. Miss Anderson-Orr took
not the least interest in my opinions on these high matters; but she was
obviously curious about me. And about Tod. Her dark eyes seemed to be
divining the purposes of the two strangers who had suddenly shot into
the world of Ferry Grange.

By good luck I sat next her at lunch. We made quite a large party in the
low dining-room, for just as we were going in, a saloon car, driven by a
chauffeur in green uniform, swept up to the porch, and Mrs. Anderson-Orr
swept forward to greet the rather distinguished-looking man who got out.
It was Mr. Abbott.

He did homage to his hostess, greeted his acquaintances, shook hands
with Tod, and bowed to me when my name was mentioned. Abbott was as
little like the jelly-bellied flag-flapper of my imagination as Mrs.
Anderson-Orr was like an Eskimo squaw. A man of fifty, very quiet and
gentle, the paragon of courtesy to the women, he forced nothing in his
talk. I liked his style; I liked his strong, clean-shaven face under a
thatch of graying hair; and I liked his steadfast gray eyes. The only
disfigurement of a rather striking masculine fineness was a birthmark on
his right cheek.

He chopped opinions with Mrs. Anderson-Orr on French poetry, and was
quite prepared to believe, if she wished it, that the Expressionists
were great people, though he had so far had difficulty in getting past
the Symbolists and his real, old-fashioned enthusiasm stopped short at
the Romantics. Now, Victor Hugo...

We should never have got a glimpse at the English Abbott brooding on his
country's welfare but for Joshua Webb, who, at the other end of the
table, unconscious of the literary discussion, barged in--

"Hi, Abbott! That was a dam' fine letter of yours in _The Times_
yesterday."

"Glad you liked it, Webb."

He seemed a little disconcerted to be put out of his stride on Victor
Hugo.

"I should say so--what! Look around you here at Kenwick and see good old
England--and then think of these dam' Bolshies and what they'd do to it.
And London's full of 'em! When I was in business--"

Joshua launched upon a flood of picturesque denunciation of the alien
population of East London.

When he ceased for lack of breath, winding up with the opinion that all
aliens should be put on a ship and dumped overboard in deep water, Oddie
remarked:

"Joshua, you know you wouldn't kill a rabbit."

"Perhaps not--a rabbit's part of the English landscape. But don't you
talk to me, George! You're a Bolshy yourself," said he affectionately.

"I think we're going wide of the mark." Abbott drew all eyes to him by
the new tone in his voice. "I don't attack the Bolshies, as you call
them, Webb. The Bolshies will never hurt England. A more subtle menace
than that worries me. The trouble is, the Government won't see it, don't
believe it--any more than they believed in the German menace fifteen
years ago. Your supercilious Englishman, entrenched in Whitehall--Mr.
Challenger, you know the type--"

"I'm one of Mr. Webb's aliens," said Tod. "You can't expect me to have
an opinion."

"But you know the type. It's the ruling type in England. Until a
murder's committed it pretends there's no such thing as a gun. Then it
says, 'Dear me! What extraordinary people there are in the world!' The
existence of a very big and a very diabolical and a very secret plot
against the Empire is plain to anybody with more eyes than a mole.
There's menace in the very air! Look at the state of our gilt-edged
securities! What's it mean? A. clandestine attack on the credit of the
country--getting at the Empire in its heart--"

"You thrill me!" came the low tones of Mrs. Anderson-Orr's voice.
"No--I'm not afraid. I'm just thrilled!"

So there was, after all, a jelly-bellied flag-flapper concealed under
Abbott's polished exterior! It was like a scene in burlesque. I looked
at the girl beside me and had difficulty in keeping a straight face.
Then I looked beyond her to Tod and saw that he was staring intently at
Abbott. But surely there could be no relation between hard real
life--Barlow and Lennox and Fougère--and this comic scene in a riverside
villa?

The Great Menace was not the only thing that thrilled Mrs. Anderson-Orr.
To my surprise I caught a look of intelligence between her and Tod, and
immediately after, she said:

"But there's something that thrills me still more, Mr. Abbott--that
mysterious Mr. Farquharson, is it--?"

"You mean my paying guest--Parkinson?" Abbott frowned a little.

"Parkinson--yes," said Mrs. Anderson-Orr; "I'm never any good at names.
Mr. Parkinson--has anybody ever seen him?"

It appeared that nobody had seen him except Webb, who had come across a
man in a heated dispute with Usher at the Half Way House, and thought it
must be he.

"That terrible man!" exclaimed Mrs. Anderson-Orr. (It appeared that
Usher thrilled her too.) "I feel like a worm when he speaks to me--only
he doesn't now. He looks at me as if--brrr!--fancy Usher in a
revolution! _Á la lanterne!_--only there aren't any lamp-posts about
here, are there?"

We got back to Parkinson by degrees. Mr. Abbott thought he must be the
man Webb had seen quarreling with Usher. Parkinson had a repair done to
his car and Usher overcharged him--so he said.

"But on the whole I shouldn't call him a quarrelsome man. Quite
inoffensive. Very retiring. I just see him at meal times. Otherwise he's
in his room, or walking in the grounds. Occasionally he goes to London."

It sounded very mysterious, Mrs. Anderson-Orr thought. Truly thrilling
that a Mystery should descend upon Kenwick in answer to an advertisement
for a paying guest. And--

_"Juste ciel!_" she cried. "Suppose he should be--should have--but no!
It's impossible!"

It was at all events incoherent. But Tod, in his quietest way,
interpreted it.

"You mean--if he should have anything to do with what Mr. Abbott calls
the Menace?"

Mrs. Anderson-Orr thrilled visibly.

"I trust not," said Abbott, fervently. "In these sylvan glades? Good
God! I don't look for the Menace here. Poor Mr. Parkinson!--how
horrified he would be if he knew we were discussing him in this
connection!"

In the afternoon Mrs. Anderson-Orr and Tod and I watched lawn tennis
played by the two girls with Webb and Oddie. The rotund Joshua dashed
about the court with the same astonishing agility he had displayed in
the water. But the player of the party was Miss Anderson-Orr. She had a
service like a rifle shot and volleyed and placed the ball in the style
of a Wimbledon champion.

I was to learn that whatever Janet did was well done.

"Look here, Tod," said I when I was able to get a private word with him.
"Did you and the lady fix up that farce of drawing the old buffer at
lunch-time? And what was the game?"

"Parkinson's my game all the time," said he. "I admit that I've not
tried to repress Mrs. Anderson-Orr's natural curiosity about him. A
highly intelligent woman, that. But hist!--lo--she comes, and Joshua her
devoted slave. Got Joshua? Clodpate worshiping Minerva--and Minerva
being rather fond of him. Why do tall women like podgy men, and the
other way about?"



V.


I did not stop to solve Tod's problem. Oddie and Miss Adamson seemed to
pair off on any provocation. They now left Miss Anderson-Orr swinging
her racket alone as she came up from the court, and I repaired her
loneliness by asking her to show me the gardens.

I had a memorable half hour with her. She ticked off the rose garden and
the rock garden perfunctorily, and then led me to the path beyond the
boathouse along the river bank, which she said was her pet walk. She
listened to both commonplace and persiflage without much apparent
interest.

"Are you staying long at Kenwick?" she asked while we stood watching the
trout marking under some alders.

"As long as you'll endure me," said I.

She made a moue and looked me in the eyes.

"I'm a very matter-of-fact, straightforward person, Mr. Masters," she
said.

"Then--I don't know how long I shall stay at Kenwick. Challenger and I
are together for a sort of vacation, with no fixed plans."

"You're a journalist, aren't you? And Mr. Challenger too? Well, your...
sort of vacation's no affair of mine. But my mother is. I don't want her
dragged into your...vacation--you understand?"

I had a momentary impulse to pretend I did not understand, but her eyes
were on me, and, holding them, I found it impossible even to
prevaricate.

"Challenger's a very discreet fellow," I said.

"No doubt--but he's also very astute, and he's middle-aged, and he's
very keen, and he's wily, and he has rather a way with him. I thought of
tackling him last week when he was here; but I believe, if he wanted
anything very badly, he'd be likely to take no notice of a mere girl.
You're a bit different--I feel on more level terms with you."

I murmured--nothing articulate.

"Mr. Challenger does want something very badly, doesn't he? He wants to
find out about this Parkinson man. And he's playing up to my mother with
the idea that she'll be useful. I just won't have her used!"

"I'm afraid I can't--"

"Yes, you can! You can tell Mr. Challenger what I say. I _won't_ have my
mother used! If he wants to use anybody, let him use me."

"My dear Miss Anderson-Orr--"

She stamped her foot angrily.

"Don't Miss Anderson-Orr me! If you must call me something, call me Orr.

"Very well, Miss Orr. I don't know that Challenger wants to use anybody.
But you--!"

"Yes--I! Why not? I can tell Mr. Challenger more about Parkinson than
anybody in Kenwick. But I won't tell either him or you a thing until he
drops this nonsense with my mother."

"You know about Parkinson!" I exclaimed. "What do you know about
Parkinson?"

The suggestion hit me like an electric shock. But having roused my
curiosity to an intolerable point, this surprising girl turned on her
heel and said:

"Let's go back."

Tod and I walked from Ferry Grange after we had taken tea with the party
on the lawn, intending to call at Usher's and get him to drive us to
Kenwick and the King's Arms. Tod was tickled to death, as he said, by
Miss Anderson-Orr's outburst, which I dutifully reported to him. The
chick defending the hen! Nevertheless he was as curious as I about her
claim to knowledge of Parkinson.

"It needs exploring, Masters," he said. "You'll do it nicely--you're not
middle-aged, and you can pretend to be as dense as Salt Lake." Tod was
twinkling at me again. "You may tell her that I now and here forswear
any intention, desire or purpose to use her mother--what the devil did
she mean? Keen girl!--she's as nippy as a chipmunk."

I had seen chipmunks when I was in the Rockies with Tod, and though they
were very charming little creatures I did not think Miss Anderson-Orr
resembled a chipmunk even remotely. But I did not want Tod twinkling at
me again: he made me feel so extremely young when he did that. I was
telling him that I would see her and pass on his message, when we came
in sight of the garage.

"Hello!" cried Tod; "there's a public meeting!"

In fact there were three men standing by the petrol pumps in excited
talk over a newspaper. A car rested at the roadside.

One of the men, standing with a black cape around his shoulders,
examined the newspaper; the second gesticulated and spoke loudly--his
voice reached us fifty yards away; the third, attired in whites, stood
swinging a tennis racket.

"It's Oddie," said Tod, "and the bandit orating--and, yes!--friend
Abbott reading the paper."

A queerly excited little group, with two detached spectators--a
tow-headed youth in overalls greasier than Usher's, standing in the
doorway of the garage, and the chauffeur of Mr. Abbott's car, who sat
listening and looking with an amused smile on his face until he saw us
coming, and then composed his features to appropriate gravity. Usher saw
his glance towards us, and ceased his oration. The last words we heard
were "ruddy capitalists and lazy rentiers."

"Good afternoon," said Abbott. "On the way to Kenwick? I'm going in.
Glad to give you a lift." We thanked him.

"You haven't seen the evening paper? I was just showing it to Usher when
Mr. Oddie came up. Another outrage--private house of an under secretary
this time. Curious sequel to our talk at lunch. See what the paper
says?--here it is: 'The authorities can no longer afford to neglect the
warnings they have received that these things mean a determined,
organized, deliberate attempt to undermine the foundations of the
country's credit. We call attention again to the thoughtful analysis of
the correspondent who wrote to _The Times_ yesterday. Unless we are to
believe that the Government is supine and does not care whether the
Empire--'"

Abbott read on. It might have been a parody of the things he said at
luncheon.

Usher snorted whenever he came to the word Empire. Oddie swung his
tennis racket and looked bored. The chauffeur squared his striking jaw
and stared stolidly out under his black eyebrows.

"Ah, well," said Abbott, stuffing the paper in his pocket. "You've
filled up, Usher? How much?"

The bandit took the money of the lazy rentier sullenly and hid it away
somewhere inside his grubby garment. We got into the car, and rode
behind Abbott and his driver to the village.

"I shall be nervous about letting Parkinson see the paper," he said to
Tod. "He gets so depressed about these things. He'd almost give you the
impression that he was afraid of being attacked himself."

"Oh?" said Tod. "Is Mr. Parkinson greatly interested in public affairs?"

"Not greatly, I think. Only, when he reads this sort of stuff he gets
miserable. The other day, Paynter here was reading that letter I sent to
_The Times_, and he spoke to Parkinson about it. You've no idea of the
effect it had on him. Extraordinary! Was it not, Paynter?"

"Mr. Parkinson certainly seemed greatly disturbed, sir," the chauffeur
answered.

"Little bit--?" Tod pointed to his forehead.

"Oh, absolutely not, Mr. Challenger! I wouldn't give you that idea for a
moment."

He set us down at the King's Arms, the inn in the middle of the
straggling village street. Tod was greeted by the landlord as soon as he
stepped inside.

"Ah, Mr. Challenger--a telegram for you. Didn't know whether to send it
out by Usher when he came with the bags or leave it. Then I thought he
might miss you--"

Tod had already torn open the brown envelope. He whistled and handed the
telegram to me. I read:

_"Urgent. Must see you. Can you be in London tonight? Reply, Lennox,
Victoria."_

"That's put the lid on it, Masters. Your special leave and all--"

For a moment I thought Tod was assuming that because he had been called
back to London I too must go. Then I saw that he was twinkling again.

We looked up a train for him, found there was time to dine first, sent
off a telegram in reply, and settled down over a chop to plans.

"You'll stay and do that bit of exploration? Lucky dog!" said Tod. "I
haven't an earthly idea what Lennox wants--"

But surely, I thought, the message must relate to Parkinson.

Tod shook his head.

"Not a smell of must about it," he affirmed. "Lennox and I are old
friends. It might be anything. So Parkinson's up to you for the present,
young man. Explore hard. I'll probably be down again to-morrow. I did
want to get Parkinson for ourselves--think what a beat it would be! But
if it should happen that Lennox is trailing him still, there's only one
thing to do. We'll have to share him with Lennox--more's the pity."

I saw him off at the station. His last injunction was to cultivate the
chipmunk--and to "make it snappy."



VI.


I made it snappy by ringing up Ferry Grange in the morning and asking
for Miss Anderson-Orr. She seemed pleased when I told her of Tod's
undertaking, and still more so when I said he had gone back to London.

"I like Mr. Challenger," she remarked, "but he's too clever. I'm afraid
of him. Now, you--"

I assured her that on that score she had no reason whatever to be afraid
of me.

She asked me thereupon to take an elementary lesson in cleverness by
arriving at Ferry Grange not before three in the afternoon and saying
nothing to anybody about my program...The telephone went dead.

In the bright sunshine of that September morning, shining on the woods
and meadows and shimmering back from the windless surface of the river,
Tod and Parkinson and Lennox and the whole boiling of them suddenly
became of no importance whatever. It seemed a waste of money for the
proprietors of the _Telegram_ to have built a palatial office in London
just for the sake of accommodating people like Allen and Flaherty and me
and printing what we wrote about people like Lennox and Barlow. This was
the real thing--England!--where the Kennett kept on flowing from the
hills down to the Thames, and the clock in the church tower struck the
hours, and the woods turned from green to russet and black and back to
green for ever and ever.

I pulled up on the deserted tow-path and laughed aloud at myself. What
magic in the air had suddenly turned me to rhetoric, so that I went
along flicking the seeds off the tall docks with my stick and composing
flowery speeches to myself?

A girl's dark eyes, clear and candid and resolute. What did all the
Parkinsons and all the newspaper beats in the world matter so long as
you could hold those eyes honestly with yours?

There was no message from Tod before I set out in the afternoon to walk
by the river to Ferry Grange. A maid took me at once to the lawn, where
Janet lay in her mother's long chair under the cedar.

"Drag up that stool," said she. "Everybody's out. Mother's playing
bridge. I hate bridge. Helen's gone to pretend to play golf with George
Oddie. I hate--Well, golf's more congenial to their habits than tennis.
Also more propitious to their frame of mind--which as you must have
noticed is sticky. They ooze sentiment. I hate sentiment worse than I
hate bridge, don't you?"

I professed a strong dislike of sentiment, and put up a silent prayer to
be forgiven for lying in a good cause.

"Well, that's all right. We shall get on. Now tell me what's the clever
Mr. Challenger's game? What's he want with Parkinson? And why did he
bring you down here and fling you at our heads?"

She was a disconcerting young woman, but those honest eyes assured me
that we could have a fair deal.

"Tit for tat," said I; "if you'll tell me what you know about Parkinson,
I'll disgorge in turn all I know."

"Are you friendly to Mr. Parkinson? Or--"

"Neither friendly nor unfriendly," I interrupted her. "Challenger and I
met Parkinson only once. We're interested in him only as journalists,
and there's not the least personal feeling about it. The thing began
this way--"

And I told her about the episode at Colorado Springs, Tod's encounter
with Parkinson in London, and the suspicion in his mind that Parkinson
might be at the bottom of a business that had long puzzled the
authorities. As I talked and she regarded me with her level impartial
look, it became increasingly difficult to put even a gloss of reason and
respectability on our proceedings.

I felt how much better Tod would have dealt with it, and my story tailed
off lamely.

The criticism of her eyes exploded in one contemptuous sentence:

"I think it's just beastly!"

I had no reply to that. It reflected the thoughts that had come into my
mind as I spoke. She looked away from me towards the river.

"I shan't help you," she said. "I hate it all. I'll keep my promise to
tell you what I know, but on conditions. You're to promise you won't use
it to annoy Mr. Parkinson, and you're not to tell Mr. Challenger about
it unless he gives the same promise."

In the mood which had begun in the morning and was deepened now that I
sat on this quiet lawn with her, I would have promised her anything.

"I can't speak for Challenger," said I. "As for me, I wash my hands of
it. You can tell me or not, just as you like. I shall be content. I'll
go back to London, tell Allen there's nothing in it, and end my leave."

"You'd do that! Really?"

There was a momentary doubt in her look, but I met it steadily, and she
sat up and leaned towards me.

"If you'd do that," she said, "you might do something else--"

I waited.

"You might help me--and Mr. Parkinson." She did not seem conscious of
having flung a bomb at me.

"You!--and Parkinson!" I cried. "What have you to do with Parkinson?"

A dozen disquieting thoughts flashed through me. The signs of
intelligence which I thought had passed between Tod and her mother. Her
passionate demand that her mother should not be "used."

"I've got your promise," she said. "You wash your hands of Mr.
Challenger's schemes, whatever they are. Now, come for a walk, and I'll
tell you my tale."

It was a strange and in one part a moving tale that she told me as we
walked up and down by the alders on the river bank.

In a tiny community like theirs, Parkinson, who came out of the blue in
answer to Abbott's advertisement for a paying guest, had been a nine
days' wonder. Nobody ever saw him. Abbott himself was puzzled about him.

"Why did Abbott want a paying guest?" I asked. "He doesn't look like a
lodging-house keeper."

"Not a bit, does he?" she laughed.

But Abbott was apparently not a wealthy man, and Morley's Holt was a big
house. He made no secret of the fact that the money was important to
him. It wasn't easy to get paying guests to stop at a place like
Morley's Holt--remote, deep-buried in woods, and almost encircled by the
river. Not a gay place. But for anybody who wanted perfect retirement
the ideal place. Parkinson seemed to want that. He had not been seen in
public except on the one occasion when Webb found him in altercation
with Usher at the garage. When he left Morley's Holt it was in a closed
car. He drove away on the London road. Abbott supposed that he went to
London. "Never by train?" I asked.

Since Tod Challenger had seen him enter a train at Paddington, he must
have used the train at least once. But she knew nothing of that.

Parkinson in a few weeks was established as a Mystery Man and the most
exciting topic of conversation over the luncheon table, either at Ferry
Grange or at Lorimer House.

Then one evening Janet met Parkinson.

"I've never told anybody else," said she, her eyes seeking mine, "not
even mother. I couldn't. I don't know why I trust you--"

"But you do. Carry on. I'll keep the trust."

It happened on Tuesday of the previous week.

"Ah!" I exclaimed. She looked her inquiry. "That was the day Challenger
saw him in London."

"That explains it!" she said. "He must have walked back from Kenwick
Station and cut across the fields to avoid being seen on the road..."

She was fond of the river, and spent much time on it. That day her
mother was in London. Helen Adamson and Oddie had gone off together on
an excursion. She was alone. About six o'clock, she took a boat, as she
often did, and pulled up the river, under the bridge at Morley Ferry and
so on by the long and lonely reaches towards Morley's Holt. The stream
took a great bend a mile above the bridge, curving first south and then
north again and enclosing the thickly wooded peninsula which formed the
Morley's Holt estate. On the South side, the river was bordered with
willow and alder backed by level meadows stretching away towards the
railway and cut by no road except the one over which we had driven from
the station.

Janet set this topography out for me quite clearly. And I could imagine
the startled look in her eyes when, opposite the thickest part of the
Morley's Holt woods, the branches of an alder tree parted and through
the September dusk a white face looked out at her not three yards away.

She twisted away from the bank and stopped rowing to stare at the
apparition. The face looked long and earnestly at her, and then a hand
went up to the mouth and patted the closed lips. Then it beckoned to
her.

Janet's first impulse was to call out, "Who are you? What do you want?"
But something in the expression of the face checked her. She said it was
a terrible, hunted expression, a look of numb fear. There was appeal in
it, too.

A girl might have been excused for pulling away and losing sight of such
a spectacle. Janet instead pulled in to the bank.

"What is it?" she asked in a half whisper.

"Look up and down the river, young lady. Is there anything in sight?"

She was astonished by the squeaky old-mannish voice that came from the
bushes. The face had not seemed an old face.

"There's never anything on the river," said Janet.

"And over there, in the woods--did you see anything moving?--any one
watching?"

"Nothing," said Janet. "Why should any one watch?"

"You look a kind young lady. Will you do me a kindness?"

"Of course--if I can."

"Will you row me across the river and then forget all about me--and
never tell any one you saw me here?"

"Why not?" said Janet. "There's nobody about. But you can't get in from
there without wetting your feet. Move round to the other side of the
clump, and I'll take you off."

So it went. He crouched in the stern of Janet's boat while she took the
few strokes across the river. He landed and stood against a tree trunk.

"Don't go for a moment," said he. "Let me think...You have honest eyes,
young lady--"

How it startled me to hear in another man's words the thought that had
been in my mind ever since I looked into Janet's eyes!

"You have honest eyes. You might be willing to do a kindness without
reward and without question. I wonder."

"What do you want me to do?" asked Janet.

"Wait, wait--wait a moment!" he answered in his hoarse squeak, then
stole from trunk to trunk of half a dozen trees, peering into the gloom
of the wood behind.

"First," he said, coming back to the bank, "I want you to believe I'm
not mad. You've got imagination and courage, young lady, and you can
understand that a man may do strange, eccentric things without being
mad, can't you?"

"Of course. It's not very eccentric to ask for a ferry across a river
where there's no bridge."

He gave a funny little snickering laugh.

"Why now, that's so!" said he. "But all the same, you'll forget it,
won't you? That's one kindness. But there's another--a big thing. I must
think about it. Are you often up the river? I've seen you sometimes. Do
you come up every evening? Could you come to-morrow evening?"

"I daresay," said Janet. "Any particular time? About this time?"

"Between the lights--yes. I shall be here, on this spot. If anyone is in
sight or hearing, pull on. Do not look for me. It's lonely here--but you
never know. I will think about the big thing and be ready. I won't keep
you. You shall get home for dinner."

"You know who I am?" said Janet, surprised.

"Yes, young lady, I know who you are. And you know who I am, but you're
not to mention my name. You are kind. You would not wish to do me an
injury. You'll wait till I tell you why?"

"All right," Janet assured him.

"Then to-morrow evening---seven o'clock. _Au revoir_, and God bless
you."

As he spoke he had darted away among the trees.

The figure of the furtive Parkinson, his voice, his tremulous
nervousness in that long-gone dinner hour at the Antlers Hotel, came
back to me as Janet told her story. But it was Parkinson with a
difference. He had been hardly more than a lay figure--a pawn in the
exciting games that Tod Challenger and the secret service people played.
Now, in Janet's interpretation he became a human being highly sentient.

She kept the appointment next day, and their interview was not
interrupted. Parkinson was calmer, more coherent. Apparently he feared
no intervention now, for he asked Janet to pass him the painter of her
boat and tied it to a branch. Himself, he sat on an overcoat which he
threw down on the bank. There as the dark came down over the woods and
river, he made his confidence and preferred his request.

"I'm an unhappy man!" So he began. "Perhaps the unhappiest man in the
world. You, young lady, are honest and unafraid. You go and you sleep in
peace. I never have a moment's peace asleep or waking. Do you know the
story of Frankenstein's Monster? Yes. But you can't conceive what it is
to have made a Monster, to carry him on your back, never to be able to
shake him off, to see him every time you look over your shoulder,
driving you here, there, everywhere. Could you conceive of a man who
hadn't a friend on earth--not one? If you could, you'd know me. And then
you'd say, if there is such a man, why doesn't he make a hole in the
water and have done with it? But what if that man had left in him a
sense of duty and there was a duty undone, and he couldn't see a way of
doing it? Think, young lady, what such a man would feel if suddenly it
occurred to him that there might be somewhere in the world a possible
friend--a person who wouldn't want to ask questions about the past, but
would say, 'Here's a human being in trouble; let's lend him a hand
simply because of that'?"

"There must be many such persons," said Janet.

"Ah, yes--you say that because you're young and generous. You don't know
the world."

"Anyhow, I'm here. I don't want to ask questions. I'll lend you a hand
myself."

"You! My dear young lady, you don't know what you say. Listen!--I'm
beset by an enemy so that I dare hardly raise my voice above a whisper.
Desperate enemy. Clever enemy..."

This self-raised idea, Janet said, brought his terrors on him again. He
bent his ear to the woods, listening, and when he resumed it was in a
softer murmur than before.

"If there was so much as a suspicion of this talk with you--" He
shivered. "But a thought came to me once or twice when I watched you in
your boat, and again yesterday. If you in your world so far away from
mine knew a man--who would do a thing, discreetly, secretly, without
asking questions, taking you on trust, just like doing a thing for the
love of God--"

"What sort of thing?" Janet asked. She began now to have doubts about
his sanity, she said.

"A simple thing, but not easy," he replied. "To take and pass on some
information without seeking to know the source of it. To accept
responsibility for it. To stand by it to the end and act on it, however
impossible it seemed and whatever the consequences."

Janet said it was very vague and puzzling, and he answered with a
startling clairvoyance:

"You think I'm mad!"

There was a little silence. Then he observed calmly: "It was a dream. A
mad dream. There is no such man. I ought not to have spoken of it to
you. But your eyes--so clear and friendly...Now you must forget it.
Forget me. I'll dree my weird alone. Perhaps if you hear ill of me
you'll understand, a little. No word of this to anybody--your mother or
any of your friends here--that's agreed?"

"I know very few men," said Janet. "I can't think of any I could treat
in--in the way you suggest. If I can't help you myself--"

"No, no," said he, rising and untying the painter.

"If I should think of anything--" Janet began.

"Pull up the river about dusk. I shall know if you are here. But better
forget it. Yes, I beg you, forget it entirely--"

Then, Janet said, he stood stock still with the rope in his hand, as if
a sudden idea had come to him.

"Could you memorize a date, a name, and a place?" he asked eagerly.

She said of course she could. And without noting it on paper? Very
well--

"The date is the Fourth of October. That's easy to remember."

He hung onto the branch and leant over the boat to whisper:

"If you should hear of my death before the First of October, will you
get this message to Mr. Herbert Lennox?--got the name? Lennox--at the
Victoria Hotel in London. These are the three things: Fourth of October,
Herbert Lennox, Victoria Hotel. Got them all?"

"Yes," said Janet, "I can remember that."

"And the message--bend over. I don't want the trees to hear." He
whispered at her ear. "Tell him, '_The people you want will be at the
Metropolitan on the Fourth of October_.' A letter if there's time,
or a telegram if there isn't. Do it anonymously. No need for you
to appear in it--but it'll be a good deed. Only, you've to take
my thanks for it now."

Telling it now, in open sunlight, Janet said, it seemed merely
fantastic--a piece of lunacy. There, in the darkness under the trees,
with Parkinson leaning over the boat and whispering in his uncanny
voice, speaking of his death in that frightened way--

"It must have been ghastly," I said.

She wavered between the idea of his madness and the possibility that his
fears were well-founded. One heard of such queer things--anything seemed
possible in that place at that moment.

"Good-by," said Parkinson. "I don't expect to see you again. I shall
know why if I don't. And I shall always be grateful."

He dropped the rope into the boat and was gone. She had not seen him
since. The next day, Tod Challenger arrived in Kenwick in tow of her
mother. At first she had suspicions about Tod. Was he the besetting
enemy? Tod was clever. He played the part of the casual acquaintance
perfectly; and Mrs. Anderson-Orr saw nothing ulterior in his
performance. But with the knowledge she had, Janet put her own
interpretation on Tod's manifest interest in the gossip about the
Mystery Man of Kenwick, and it was not very favorable to Tod. That
feeling passed away when she realized his true object--and she had
vigorously expressed to me her opinion of that.

Now, she demanded, what did I make of it?

I did not know what to make of it except one thing--that by giving my
promise to Janet I had killed a great chance of doing something for
which the _Telegram_ would have emptied the bank and Tod Challenger
would have given his ears. For what question could there be that
Parkinson's secret, whatever it was, was also the secret for which
Lennox had crossed the Atlantic, and Barlow had called over the star
artist of the Sureté?

But walking there on the bank of the river with Janet, I had no
regret--only admiration for her nerve and courage. I put the
alternatives to her.

Parkinson might be a lunatic in spite of the circumstantial evidence
that his fears were warranted. To that she answered that he might be,
but she did not think he was.

Well, then, he might be a criminal, and the Frankenstein's Monster of
which he spoke might be what had provoked the search for him by Lennox.
Possibly, said Janet to that. But he did not seem like a criminal, and
if he was, no criminal had ever suffered more torture for his crime.

The fact was that, lunatic or criminal, Parkinson's helplessness had
appealed to some deep instinct in Janet. He was a human creature in a
tight corner who wanted assistance and she had chanced upon him: she had
a feeling of destiny in it.

It was characteristic of Janet that the most sensational thing in her
story--Parkinson's extraordinary message for Lennox--seemed of small
importance to her. I saw some of its implications though not all. But
she was concerned only with the fact that Parkinson went in daily
terror, that he seemed to fear his death within a few days, and that he
had asked her for help.

The meaning of the joyful little cry with which she received my promise
had been dawning on me--"Perhaps you'll help me and Mr. Parkinson!" I
was the predestined man, the person whose existence Parkinson doubted,
the possible friend! It all led up to this.

We had thrashed it out. Janet's eyes said to me, What about it?

"You haven't been up the river since?" I asked.

"No. It was useless. I had no hope to give him. There wasn't a man. Only
Joshua, who'd have forty fits at the notion of doing anything
unconventional. And George Oddie--I don't like George Oddie."

"I suppose you wouldn't care to go up this evening?" said I, casually.

Her eyes lit up and she caught me by the hand.

"You would? Really? Honest-to-goodness?"

"There doesn't seem to be any other way about it," said I, "if I'm to
get into your good books."



VII.


Thus about half-past six that evening; I launched myself at once upon
the River Kennett and a sea of trouble.

Janet insisted on taking the oars. She said she was used to the river
and knew its tricks. I was to go easy with the rudder and leave the
navigation to her.

By a quarter after seven, when we were rounding the bend by Morley's
Holt, darkness had almost come--and, as the boat slipped in and out of
the dense shadows, a darkness so eerie that I looked in wonderment at
the girl who had described those two strange scenes to me. She swung
to-and-fro to the quiet, competent strokes of the oars as easily and
steadily as though we had merely come for an evening promenade. But she
spoke little.

At the place where the river seemed to run narrowest she pointed to the
Southern bank. A large clump of alders showed black against the dim sky.
But all was still and silent. No sign of a human figure. Parkinson did
not appear...

Janet pulled evenly on round the bend and into the straight reach beyond
it before either of us broke silence. It was lighter here, where woods
gave place at last to meadows and the sheen of the last evening glow was
on the water.

"Nothing doing to-night," said I. "Let me row you home--I'd like to."

We changed seats. I pulled gently down stream. As we approached the
narrow place where the trees of Morley's Holt seemed to tower over the
river, Janet said, softly:

"Let her drift now."

I ceased rowing and we fell down with the current, both gazing intently
into the fringe of the woods.

No sound, no movement but the gentle swirl and lap of the water. We
floated past the point where she had ferried Parkinson across, and we
had given up hope of any issue to the voyage when Janet leaned forward
and caught my arm, with a warning, "Sh-sh--d'you hear?"

There was a rustle and a crackle among the undergrowth. Somebody was
moving there. We strained eyes and ears.

Then, like the fall of a thunderbolt, came a dazzling flash and roar.
Janet squealed, her hand gripped my arm tight, and instinctively I
dropped the port oar and pulled her down into the shell of the boat.

"Keep down, for God's sake!" I cried. "Hold on to the tiller and pull
the port string hard. Keep down--keep down, Janet!"

For unfortunately, when I grabbed at her, the oar had slipped out of the
rowlock and was lost. I pulled with the left. The crackling and crashing
through the undergrowth sounded loud and close. There came to me at that
instant a memory of what Tod had said about a rough house. Some excited
impulse made me, still furiously pulling with the left hand, drag the
revolver out of my hip-pocket, and when, three seconds later, the next
shot came I let fly at the flash.

In my frenzy I pulled too hard for Janet to correct the course of the
boat, and she slammed into a tangle of bushes under the bank. A lucky
accident as it happened, for the third shot, whose flash I could not
see, went overhead and splashed into the water. I had blundered into
perfect cover.

We lay there still and breathless for several minutes, listening to the
crunching of feet among leaves and twigs. There were no more shots. The
sound of tramping died away. We were left in absolute silence again but
for the sucking sound of the water against the boat's side and the
occasional plop of a fish.

But I did not move, nor did Janet, half crouching and half lying in the
boat between my knees, until complete darkness had come. Then I
cautiously pushed the boat out from the thicket.

Neither of us spoke. We let her drift the seemingly interminable
distance to the end of the bend and into the open reach before I shipped
the oar again and Janet got back to the stern seat. And even then we did
not speak till I felt water trickling around my feet and exclaimed about
it.

"Yes, I know," said Janet. "There's a hole here just above the thwart.
But I'm keeping my handkerchief stuffed in it. She won't hurt till we
get back."

"You mean a shot hole? My God! If you--"

"Lucky you mauled me down when you did," said Janet, quietly.

But I trembled all over.



VIII.


In Mrs. Anderson-Orr's well-appointed boathouse (electric light and
every modern convenience) the thing which had happened out on the dark
river half an hour before seemed like a preposterous dream. But when
Janet stepped out of the boat and switched on the light, and we had
hauled her up on the slip--there it was: a clean round bullet hole
through the side just over the coxswain's seat, and water up over the
bottom-boards.

The shot had passed across the boat downwards and gone through at a
point which, when she was trimmed and the coxswain in place, was just
below the water line. That was why we had not noticed a leak till Janet
got back in her place and depressed the boat at the stern.

And a moment or two before that hole was made Janet had been sitting
there. Even now that she stood looking at the damage and saying, "Well,
that's one good oar lost, anyhow," I could hardly control my quaking
limbs and speak with composure.

"Janet! If--"

I saw a queer little smile pass over her face. I was using her familiar
name on a very slight acquaintance. "Pardon--" I muttered.

"All right, all right," said Janet. "But we both hate sentiment, don't
we? We aren't very popular this evening, but our joss is good so far.
Let's be practical. What are we going to do about it?"

"I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to the police at Kenwick and
tell them that two persons in a row boat passing the woods at Morley's
Holt were fired at from the bank--and the rest is their funeral."

"Ye-es?" She hesitated over the word. "I wonder. I should think the
people in this are a touch smarter than old Sergeant Warren at Kenwick.
And if we draw attention to ourselves and them, what about Mr.
Parkinson? We give him up?"

"Damn Parkinson!" I burst out.

In the last half hour, Parkinson had become of no account to me. I was
obsessed by the thought that Janet might have been sitting on that
thwart when the shot came. Parkinson!--

But the persistent loyalties of women are quite beyond the masculine
comprehension. Janet had gone up the river to help Parkinson because he
was helpless. What had happened only intensified her conception of his
danger. He still existed for her as a living responsibility, whereas for
me he had ceased to exist--at any rate for that night.

We wrangled this out in two minutes while we made all secure and shut
the boathouse doors. I had to agree to do nothing till we could consider
it at more leisure. I was destined to agree with whatever Janet
suggested. Nothing was to be said to any one. Mrs. Anderson-Orr must be
told that we had been on the river and lost an oar--to explain why we
were late for dinner. I said I would not stay to dinner in that rig, but
she overruled me there also. I must be on hand to give color to an
otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

That dinner was a devastating experience. Mrs. Anderson-Orr was in her
best form. When she learned that we had been caught by darkness on the
river we had a whole romantic procession of _crépuscules, réflets d'eau,
nuits noires, fonds du bois_ and other Gallic wild fowl. But Janet was
splendid. It must have been excruciating for her, but she never betrayed
a hint of impatience. Her loyalty to her mother exceeded all her other
loyalties.

She only cracked when Oddie, who had brought back Helen Adamson from
their excursion, after a long and penetrating inquisition of us with his
eyes, began to ask questions. Her dislike of him came through when he
insisted on knowing where we had been, how far up the river, where the
oar was lost and why, and a multitude of things that did not concern him
in the least. She almost told him to mind his own business. The strain
was obvious to everybody but Mrs. Anderson-Orr. The Adamson girl looked
flushed and uncomfortable, and when we sat afterwards in the lounge
Oddie swallowed a cup of coffee, hurriedly excused himself, and went
off. Helen Adamson, with a flaming face, had said good night and retired
before I set out for Kenwick and the King's Arms, refusing Mrs.
Anderson-Orr's pressing offer to send for the chauffeur to drive me
back.

I had one word with Janet, who walked a yard or two down the drive with
me.

"Sleep on it," she said, "and come over in the morning. We may be able
to think of something."

I took her hard, firm hand.

"I can think of nothing but _Thank God_, Janet!" said I. She drew back
her hand.

"All right," said she. "Be as pious as you like--but don't talk about
it! Till to-morrow."

The interlude of dinner and (as Tod would have put it) the necessity to
play up to Mrs. Anderson-Orr had stopped any consecutive speculation on
the adventure. But when I walked down the drive between the rhododendron
hedges in the darkness, a monstrous, intolerable sense of outrage rushed
in. The danger was over. Janet had escaped. But the thought of it
enraged me.

I could conjure no meaning into it.

Would the hidden enemy of Parkinson, if he existed, dare to risk a thing
like that? If he was aware of the contact between Parkinson and Janet,
who could he be?

On the other hand, Parkinson himself--Parkinson, perhaps a madman,
perhaps a criminal...

What demon tempted me into the folly I committed that night I have never
been able to remember. Nerves had something to do with it, probably: I
was not quite my own man. But I remember being in an incandescent state
of fury in which the vitally important thing seemed to be to get at
somebody and do something.

At any rate, when I passed out of the Ferry Grange drive into the road,
instead of turning left and east to go down the river towards Kenwick, I
turned right and west, walking rapidly, crossed the bridge at Morley
Ferry, and plunged along the road which seemed to tunnel through the
trees of Morley's Holt.

There was a sort of song ringing in my head: "Get at it, get at it, get
at it!" Who was Parkinson that he should drag her into this sordid
violence? Parkinson was a furtive man running away from the consequences
of his past. Or Parkinson was a lunatic. "Get at it, get at it, get at
it!"

The road cut straight across the base of the peninsula formed by the
great bend of the river. Half a mile on, I caught a glimpse of the sky.
There was a clearing, and the road widened a little where the fences
fell back to a gate and a house--plainly the lodge at the entrance to
Morley's Holt. The house was dark and silent: I learned afterwards that
it was not used. The gate--white-painted wood just showing in the mere
hint of light--stood open.

"Get at it!"

I turned in unhesitatingly. I marched in dense darkness along a curling
road, zigzagging from fence to fence, but blinding on in a fury for
action. This drive wound through almost the whole depth of the
peninsula. I had gone perhaps three-quarters of a mile before I saw a
glimmer, and then I was close to it--the light that came through the
dusty panes of a semi-circle of glass above a door. The vague thudding
of a distant engine--probably a lighting set--was the only sound except
my own footsteps. The glimmer revealed a portico with stucco pillars. My
shoes clicked on the flagstones beneath.

Fumbling at the side of the door I found a long iron bell-handle
hanging, and pulled. A great clangor shattered the silence of the
woods--the bell was mounted in the portico above my head.

This, the first definite sound I had heard since I left Janet, seemed to
burst the congestion in my head.

What had I done?

I had come late at night to the house of a respectable and inoffensive
correspondent of _The Times_ to explode on him a preposterous story,
which he might or might not believe and I was forbidden to explain. I
might tell him that somebody had been using his woods to take pot shots
at a boat. And he would say, "Dear me--the police should be told about
this!" And I was forbidden to tell the police...

While I stood trying to invent some plausible reason for ringing that
alarming bell, at the same time I was conscious of a great curiosity as
to what would happen when the door opened. The answer was long delayed.
I began to hope that the bell had not been heard,--to consider the
wisdom of walking away through the woods again whether it had been heard
or not--

And then there was a shuffling on the stones inside, a bolt was shot
back, and the door opened.

The light had come from a hanging oil-lamp in a little lobby. In the
oblong of it was the silhouette of a man of middle height, who said:

"Yes, sir?"

"This is Morley's Holt?" I asked. "Yes, sir. Will you come inside? It is
very dark in the porch."



IX.


The man stepped aside for me to pass in. Then I saw that it was the
sharp-eyed chauffeur, Paynter, who had put off his uniform and wore a
nondescript suit of black clothes.

"Oh, it's you, sir," he said.

"Ah--yes, Paynter. Is Mr. Parkinson at home?"

In the light of the lobby, talking to a servant, I controlled my voice
and manner to a passable naturalness.

His eyebrows went up at the mention of Parkinson's name.

"I believe Mr. Parkinson is at home, sir. But doubt whether he will
receive any one. Name, sir? Mr. Masters, I think?"

"Mr. John Masters, of London," said I.

"Have you an appointment?"

His hesitations were no matter for surprise. A casual Mr. Masters of
London appeared in strange fashion, walking from nowhere, unheralded and
unannounced, at a late hour of the night--who would not hesitate?

I told him I had no appointment, but was slightly known to Mr.
Parkinson, though not by name.

"Mr. Parkinson," said he, "is a very difficult gentleman to see. He
dislikes visitors. But of course--"

"You might mention to Mr. Parkinson that I had the pleasure once of
meeting him at Colorado Springs."

"And where the devil is Colorado Springs?" The man did not say this. He
looked it. With his lips he said, "Very good, sir. If you'll be good
enough to wait in here, I will see about it. But I don't expect
much--especially to-night."

He went into a little bare room at the side of the lobby, struck a match
and lit a candle that stood on the mantelpiece. I waited in that room
with the fleeting, guttering candle throwing shadows about for a full
quarter of an hour. Once I heard his footstep in the lobby and the door
opened as though he were coming in, but it closed again. Silence was
intense. The house seemed dead.

My watch showed half past ten when the man came back, looking as though
he thought it the height of unreason for a casual caller to give him so
much trouble at that time of night. But what he said explained the dead
silence.

"Sorry to have kept you so long, sir. But everybody seems to be gone to
bed. I thought Mr. Abbott was writing in the library, but he wasn't
there, and I had to wake up the maid and ask her if she knew where he
was. She said he'd just gone to his room when she went up. Still--"

"I've given you an awful lot of bother," said I.

"Not at all, sir. Only Mr. Abbott seems to have retired. He doesn't
answer my knock. He dislikes being disturbed. I hardly care to--"

"Oh, by no means disturb him," I said. "Mr. Parkinson himself--?"

He hemmed and hawed a little.

"I could try. But I'm afraid it's no good, sir. The fact is, Mr.
Parkinson is busy preparing for a journey to London. He's catching the
midnight train at Newbury, and he hasn't too much time."

Parkinson going to London in a hurry--after what happened in the
evening!--

"I'm an awful nuisance," I admitted, "but if I could speak to Mr.
Parkinson for a few moments--"

"I'll see, sir. I don't much fancy--still, I'll try."

Again I spent ten minutes in the bare room with the flickering candle.
If I should see Parkinson, I hardly knew what to say to him; but at
least I should be able to judge what manner of man Parkinson was.

I had a certain comfort in the feel of the revolver in my hip pocket.

The man returned with another apology for delay and a worried expression
on his face. He had found Mr. Parkinson in the garage, he said, almost
ready to start. Mr. Parkinson just about bit his nose off, and refused
to see anybody.

My mood had cooled in this half hour of waiting. No longer did the need
to "get at it" seem so imperative. It was impossible to force myself on
Parkinson in this house if he declined to see me. Once more I excused
myself to Paynter for the trouble I had given him, and presently I found
myself in the drive again, almost feeling my way through the darkness.

I had gone perhaps about half way to the lodge when I heard the motor
and suddenly the woods sprang to life in the powerful lights and my
shadow on the road was elongated to infinity. I leaped aside and stopped
for the car to pass. But it did not pass. Instead it pulled up alongside
me.

In the glare of the lights I could see nobody, but a high voice made
itself heard over the noise of the engine: "Mr. Masters?"

"Yes," said I.

"Is that Mr. Parkinson?"

"It is. Are you going to Kenwick? Can I give you a lift?"

A momentary coldness of caution came over me: a ride in a car through
those woods with Parkinson, who might be a madman...

But after all, I had gone to much pains to see Parkinson, and now that
he offered himself--I did not hesitate.

"Thanks," said I. "I wanted to see you rather urgently, or I shouldn't
have come at this time of night."

He opened the door on the near side, and as I got in I caught a glimpse
of a dark mustachioed face.

"Never mind the hour," said he in his piping way. "I know what you
fellows are. Night and day is all the same to you. But I had to be on
the move."

He had started the car again.

"What is it you wanted to see me about? You're a newspaper man, aren't
you? Or so Mr. Abbott told me. I've got nothing to say to newspaper
men--nothing whatever."

The streaming headlights illuminated the curling drive, and then the
deserted lodge, and then the boles of the trees along the main road.
Petrol and electricity put all the mystery and whispering silence of the
woods to flight. But not more completely than Parkinson put to flight
the theories I had formed and the character I had conceived of him.

"Well," said he, when we were in the straight road, "so you saw me at
Colorado Springs. I don't remember you."

I recalled the dinner table.

"Ah, yes--" He searched his memory. "And another man with you. But look
here, Mr. Masters, you oughtn't to try to spring these tricks on people.
You aren't interested in reminiscences of Colorado Springs. Why not be
candid?"

Why not, indeed? But the question left me speechless.

"You're down here with Tod Challenger to try to run a mystery to earth,
eh? For God's sake drop it! Or go and try somewhere else. You don't want
to have a tragedy on your hands, do you?"

Why not candor? But for the life of me I could not bring myself to
candor. His manner took my breath away.

"It's all very well from your point of view. You want copy. But it's the
very devil for me! Why am I rushing away at this time of night? Because
of you and Mr. Challenger. You come down here and begin to be curious
about me, and then--by God!--"

The car swerved across the road as a lurching figure sprang into the
light and we almost ran it down.

"Phew! The drunken swine!"

Parkinson stepped on the accelerator, and the car rushed forward at a
furious pace. For a thousand yards he was silent, intent on driving.

"Was he drunk, do you think?" he whined. "Or was it?--phew! I've got
nerves...You come down here--and then, instead of being safe in this
God-forsaken hole as I thought, they're after me in a few hours. I've
had one narrow squeak to-night. How many more?--for heaven's sake leave
me in peace. I'd hoped to have done with the life of the Wandering Jew.
But now!--I see a gun behind every bush..."

Was it real? Or extraordinary good acting? This Parkinson, piping out
his complaints to me in the queer voice that had impressed itself on my
memory at Colorado Springs, was hardly the same Parkinson who had taken
such remarkable precautions for secrecy with Janet. And yet, now that
apparently the secret of his hiding place had been revealed to his
enemies, why not?

"The narrow squeak to-night--?" I asked him.

"Ah, never mind--I got away in the dark. So far so good; they won't try
again that way."

"Are they--many?"

"Who knows? What are you fishing for? I tell you there's no copy in me.
Ah!--did you see that?"

He turned his head quickly and the car swerved again.

I had seen it. A man by the roadside, who, as soon as the headlights lit
his face, clambered over the fence and disappeared into a field. We had
already crossed Morley Ferry Bridge and the entrance to Ferry Grange and
were approaching Usher's garage. The man was Oddie. I had seen him, but
I did not say so.

"It looked to me like--" He checked himself suddenly. "Ah, well, Mr.
Masters, I want petrol here--at Usher's garage, do you know the place?"

He slowed up and came to rest at the junction of the road with the lane
through which we had come from Kenwick Station the day before.

"The garage man lives a little way down that lane. I wonder if you'd
rout him out for me? I don't want to leave the car."

"You'll be all right here?"

"Yes--too public here for...for anything. Risk of cars coming up. All
right here. But I don't want to get out of the car. Usher's is a little
house on the right hand side of the road."

I already had the door open.

"Very well," said I, "I'll fetch the bandit."

"Bandit! Ha--that's good. Bandit?--I should think so!"

He was amused by the title Tod and I had bestowed on William Usher, and
his squeaky laughter followed me as I went into the lane. "I'll wait
here and we can drive him down to the garage--that will save time," he
called.

I have already said that Usher's cottage was three hundred yards in from
the main road, and the garage five hundred yards from the junction. It
took me, I judge, three minutes to reach the house. Usher himself opened
the door to my rapping.

"What the 'ell--!" he began, and stopped when he saw me. He was in shirt
and trousers and had his boots off.

"Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Usher, but petrol's wanted."

"Oh, it's you! I'm closed for the night. I suppose you ruddy well think
the workin' man's got no right to a night's rest?"

"I don't think anything of the sort, Mr. Usher," I said as persuasively
as I could. "But business is business. Car wants a fill up--"

"Whose car? Where's the car?"

"Mr. Parkinson's car--and he's waiting at the corner to drive you down
to the garage."

"Oh, Mr. Parkinson, is it? And he's waitin' for me, is he? Well, he can
ruddy well wait!"

I had difficulty in being patient with him. His truculence, so amusing
by day, was trying just now. However, I said:

"Well, Mr. Usher--there's me as well as Parkinson, you know."

"Gentlemen are known by the company they keep," he snorted, "and I don't
think any the more of you for being with Parkinson."

"Come now--"

It was a tedious business. At last I persuaded him. But on no account
would he ride in Parkinson's car--his feud with Parkinson had made his
sky darker than usual, I supposed. He said he would cut across by the
field path to the garage, and Mr. Ruddy Parkinson could ruddy well bring
his ruddy car along by himself.

I escaped from the torrent of abuse, and returned to the corner to tell
Parkinson. I looked at my watch at Usher's door: it showed a quarter
past eleven. Parkinson would have to drive hell for leather to get to
Newbury by midnight.

And when I came to the corner, Parkinson was not there. The road was
silent and deserted.

First it occurred to me that he might have been irritated by the delay,
feared to miss his train and gone on without me, trusting to luck to
pick up petrol somewhere on the road. Then that he might have supposed I
could get no answer at the cottage and that Usher was at the garage. In
either case there was nothing for me to do but to walk on.

I padded off on the five minutes' walk to the garage. But long before I
reached it, I saw the red rear light of a car, and knew that Parkinson
had driven there on the chance of finding Usher.

As I came up I heard the engine running, and saw Usher unlocking a
petrol pump. He stopped with his hand on the pipe when he saw me come
into the light.

"Ullo!" said he, "where the 'ell have you been?"

I said Mr. Parkinson had driven on and left me to walk down.

Usher went to the rear of the car and unscrewed the cover of the tank,
holding the nozzle of the petrol pipe in his left hand.

"Ask the blighter how much juice he wants," he growled.

I went round to the off side of the car. Parkinson was not in the
driver's seat. He had apparently left it to lean out of the window on
the side of the garage.

"How much petrol shall he put in?" I asked.

Parkinson did not answer. I called louder above the murmur of the
engine. Still no answer.

Some rigid motionlessness in the figure of Parkinson as he leaned
towards the window made my heart jump.

"Well, what's he say?" The gruff voice of Usher came from the back of
the car.

I leaned into the car, stretching across the driver's wheel and
scrutinized Parkinson. There was only the light reflected from the walls
of the garage. It was very obscure. But I leaped back with a cry.

"What's up?"

Usher came, trailing his petrol pipe. I pointed in.

He put his head through the window, uttered an inarticulate noise, and
fetched an electric torch out of his pocket. He shone it on the features
of Parkinson. They were a livid white. There was a red hole in his
forehead, blackening.

"God! he's got his!"

Usher stood away from the car and pointed the torch into my eyes.

"What's this?" he shouted, and grabbed me by the arm. "What's the game?"

I shook him off angrily, and stepped back. He came after me.

"What's the game?" he repeated.

"Don't be an ass!" I cried. "There's been a tragedy--a crime."

"Yes--can't I see there's been a ruddy crime? But who did it? What's the
game?"

There was nobody to see the horrid ferocity of that scene on a dark road
where two men dodged each other, fearful and panting, in and out of the
rays of a car's headlamps and a dead man sat in a rigid,
helpless-looking bundle beside the wheel.

We seemed to grasp the foolishness of it at the same moment. We stopped
and stared into each other's eyes.

"This is a mug's game," said Usher, at last. "I'm going to call the
police."

"Of course," said I.

"You come with me." He jerked out the words. "Of course."

"Coming and asking for juice--and never sayin' a word about havin' a
corpse' in the car," he grumbled.

"Good heavens, Usher! You don't suppose--"

"I don't suppose nothin'," he said. "But he's dead, ain't he?"

"But you don't suppose I'd play that trick on you? He was all right when
I left him at the corner to go and fetch you out."

"Aw, well--talking won't mend nothin' nor bring him to life. All that'll
have to be seen into. You come with me, and I'll ring up the police."

He unlocked the door of the garage and switched on a dim light. I
followed him in, and stood by him on the oily floor while he telephoned
to the police sergeant at Kenwick. While we waited in stony silence,
with resentful eyes on one another, I heard the engine of the car
outside still ticking over as though ready for Parkinson to put his foot
on the accelerator.

Usher noticed it at the same moment. He shuddered.

"Stay where you are," said he. "I'll go out and stop the dam' thing in a
minute."



X.


From the moment when Usher's voice broke harshly into the silence,
calling, "Hello! Is that the police?" to the arrival of a car bringing
the Sergeant from Kenwick was perhaps half an hour. An interminable,
unendurable half hour, while I sat on the running board of a car under
repair and looked across two or three yards of oil-stained concrete to
the disagreeable figure of Usher, who stood with his back to a
disintegrated van, smoking gaspers and glowering at me. Out of his
overalls (he had pulled an old khaki jacket over his shirt) he seemed
shabbier than ever.

I made only one remark after he put up the telephone. "Did you hear a
shot at all?" His answer was startling.

"There's no call for you to talk to me. Say anything you've got to say
to the police."

Usher was regarding himself as my jailer and his garage as my temporary
prison.

The sound of an approaching motor, traveling fast, was the first relief
from the suspense of waiting. The car pulled up outside.

An elderly man in dark blue uniform came stooping through the
wicket-door. He stopped and swept a look round the place. He was a
bearded old gentleman with grizzly hair showing under his peaked cap. He
had a rather benevolent expression.

"Well, Usher--what's this? what's this?" he said, briskly.

Even in the presence of Authority, Usher did not shed his surliness.

"I dunno. That's what you got to find out. Look in that car out there."

The Sergeant frowned, glanced from Usher to me and back, then strode to
the entrance and squeezed himself through the little doorway. From where
I sat he could not be seen. But I heard his exclamation and his sharp
summons:

"Lewis!--come here--quick!"

The door of a car slammed. There were running footsteps and a duet of
exclamation. Presently the Sergeant bent his head to enter the garage
again, looking less benevolent.

"Usher!" he barked, "what's this mean? What the devil do you mean by
it?"

His face was white and angry; the old gentleman had received a shock.
Over his shoulder I saw a helmet, and a younger face peeping into the
grimy garage.

"What's it mean? 'Ow the 'ell should I know? Ask him."

Usher pointed his cigarette at me. The Sergeant flicked a look at me.
But he finished with Usher first. With a menacing step towards him, he
said:

"Look here, my man!--don't you take that tone with me. Stop using foul
language. And throw away that beastly fag. Act decently. You know
there's a dead man in that car. Now then?"

The old gentleman deflated Usher completely and instantly. Such is the
power of a uniform in earnest.

"I dunno any more'n you, Sergeant. He brought 'im--" Usher threw down
his cigarette end and trod on it as he nodded towards me.

"You--! Brought him--?"

The Sergeant swiveled round to me.

"That's not quite correct," I said. "I didn't bring him: he brought me."

The Sergeant stared as at a lunatic.

"If you wish," I added, "I'll tell you--"

"One moment!"

He pursed his lips and pulled at his beard. "Lewis!" he called.

"Sir?" The Constable stepped over the sill of the door.

"Take the car and go back to Kenwick. Get the doctor. And bring out
Farthing." The Inspector looked at his watch. "Farthing will be at
Kenwick Bridge at half past twelve: I was to have met him there. You'll
just do it. Hurry!"

The Constable saluted. We heard him start up his engine and leave.

"Now, sir," said the Sergeant to me.

"I left him alive in the car to go and knock up Usher--" I began.

"One moment."

The Sergeant stood pulling his beard and looking down on me where I sat
on the running board.

"You realize this is a serious matter? You're volunteering a
statement--"

And then in a flash the absurdity of the whole scene broke on me. It
must be nearly an hour since Parkinson was killed--an hour in which the
people who killed him must have got clean away. And I had been
intimidated by an oaf like Usher half the time, and now I was going to
enter on an endless argufication with an elderly country policeman. I
ought to have said, "Get out and scour the country, call up every police
officer for thirty miles around, and tell them to comb every square yard
of the country for the desperado who's got Parkinson, because there's no
knowing what he'll do next."

But it was no use saying a thing like that to this Sergeant. He had the
body. He had two men who knew something about it.

"You should be careful what you say," he was warning me. "It looks as if
this man's been murdered. I ask you no questions for the present. Except
one--no, two. First, who are you, sir?"

I gave him my name and London address.

"You're staying in Kenwick? I think I saw you this morning. At the
King's Arms, aren't you?"

"Yes, since yesterday."

"The other question--who is that?--I mean in the car?"

"It was Mr. Parkinson," said I.

"Ah--the Parkinson?--the man at Morley's Holt that all the gossip's
about?"

"He'd been living at Morley's Holt for some weeks, I think."

The Sergeant sent a look to Usher, who nodded in confirmation.

"Usher says you brought him here. Go on--you want the truth out, I
suppose? But you needn't incriminate yourself. You speak or not--as you
please."

"Of course I want the truth, Sergeant," said I. "I can't incriminate
myself. You'll see."

It was a fairly foolish boast. I did nothing but incriminate myself--at
any rate in his eyes. In that wretched place, nerves frayed to rags, but
still retaining a fatuous sense of superiority over the surly Usher and
the country policeman, I had lost my perspective. I failed to perceive
that unless I told the whole story from the beginning, with Tod and
Janet in it, and gave the Sergeant the atmosphere of the whole thing, my
account of the night's events would seem to him, who knew nothing of me
or of Parkinson, a farrago of clumsy lies.

And I would not bring in Janet.

Some inhibition lay upon me: I could not endure the idea of dragging her
into this sordid affair--perhaps of compelling her to tell to a
policeman or in a court of law the story she had told me.

And I would not bring in Tod. I feared to think what Tod would say of my
proceedings.

So I started in a way that made plausibility impossible, and I could see
the Sergeant, as he listened silently, ingeminating, "Liar--oh, what a
liar you are!" I started with my call at Morley's Holt to see Parkinson.

Why did I want to see Parkinson? Because I had met him at Colorado
Springs. Yes, it was true I had been in Kenwick two days, and did not
make my call at Morley's Holt till late at night on the second day. Yes,
it was a queer place to visit late at night, when everybody was going to
bed. Well, I did not go there earlier because I had been dining at Ferry
Grange with Mrs. Anderson-Orr. No, I did not mention to any one at Ferry
Grange that I was going to Morley's Holt. It was a sudden impulse. True
it must have come upon me immediately after I left Ferry
Grange--otherwise I should have gone to Kenwick, which was in the other
direction...

"Mr. Masters," said the Sergeant, "it seems to me you had better say no
more for the present."

"Oh, but I want to tell you, Sergeant--" I floundered on to the end. And
at the end I would not bring in Oddie. There was the same inhibition on
me. To have brought in Oddie would have involved Ferry Grange. And I
meant to keep Ferry Grange out of it at all costs.

He did not believe a word of it--except that part which Usher's story
confirmed. What he thought had happened--why he thought (if he
ratiocinated at all, which I doubt) I should kill Parkinson and then
fetch Usher to see what I had done--I could not imagine. But that was
what he did think. I saw the suspicion growing in his eyes as I spoke.

The Constable, Lewis, returned at one o'clock with another helmeted man.
The doctor was not available for another hour--had gone to attend a
confinement in the country.

"Not that it matters much--he's dead as a door nail," said the Sergeant.
He pulled at his beard, reflecting. "Lewis--you can drive that car?
We'll put him in the back. You and Farthing can take him to the
mortuary. Get the doctor there, when he returns, to have a look at him.
He'll do the examination to-morrow. Usher--you keep quiet about this. I
shall want you in the morning. You, sir"--he turned to me--"you'll
accompany me."

The simple words sounded ugly as he said them.

"Certainly," said I. "Where do you want me to go?"

"I'll consider that," he replied, shortly.

While they were opening doors and making shuffling, grunting,
nerve-jarring noises outside, Usher and I faced each other in the
garage. I still sat on the running board; he leant against the van. Our
eyes sought each other with hostile looks. There seemed something
sardonic in his sullenness. He once drew a dirty cigarette-packet from
his pocket, looked at it, glanced to the door, and put it away again.

"Usher!"

The Sergeant's shout made us both jump.

"There's no petrol--the tank's dry."

Then I noticed that the engine had ceased to tick over: how long it had
stopped I could not guess. Usher had forgotten it, too, in the intensity
of our duel of the eyes. Now he went out. There was a clanking of metal,
and a rush of liquid.

"A gallon or two will do," said the Sergeant.

The starter whirred, the engine revolved, the gears hummed. Parkinson
was gone.

The Sergeant put his head in.

"Now, sir--if you'll come with me--"

Usher stood by the petrol pumps as I passed out, his ramshackle figure
lit up by the headlights of the police car. I stepped in beside the
Sergeant. We moved off.

The car had come from Kenwick and was facing towards Morley Ferry. The
Sergeant drove straight on. I asked no questions about our destination.
He was silent. Thus I traversed the road along which Parkinson had
driven me two or three hours before: past Ferry Grange, where Janet was
sleeping, over the bridge, into the woods--and through the gateway by
the deserted lodge, and along the curling drive.

He pulled up before the portico. No light shone over the door. The house
was in perfect darkness. The Sergeant got out and pulled the clanging
bell. Its loud tongue startled birds; there was rustling and twittering
long after its vibrations ceased.

In a minute or two, I heard a window sash raised and a woman's voice
asked:

"Who's there? What do you want?"

The Sergeant had stepped out into the light of the headlamps and looked
up.

"Can you see me?" he called.

"Yes, sir; it's Mr. Warren."

"Then rouse Mr. Abbott and say I want to speak to him."

"I'll tell Mr. Paynter, sir," the voice came, and the window was shut
again.

We waited long minutes, I in the car, Sergeant Warren--I remembered that
Janet had mentioned the name--under the portico. Then a light fluttered
into being over the door, bolts were moved, the door opened, and Paynter
stood there in a dressing gown holding a candlestick.

"Sorry to turn you out, Mr. Paynter," said Warren. "But I must see Mr.
Abbott--and at once."

"What's the matter, Sergeant? Anything serious?"

"Very."

"Come inside, then. I'll call him. He won't like it. But--"

"I've a passenger in the car," Warren interrupted. "May he come in too?"

"Certainly, certainly. I'll light a lamp."

Paynter, having stood on a chair to light the lamp in the lobby, stepped
down and almost dropped his candle when he saw me.

"Good God!--I beg pardon, sir. You startled me. Wasn't thinking to see
you again so soon--"

His eyes passed from me to the Sergeant with a puzzled look.

"What shall I tell Mr. Abbott, Sergeant?"

"Tell him--but wait a moment, Mr. Paynter. You saw this gentleman
to-night?"

"Yes. He called to see Mr. Parkinson."

"So he says. Well--tell Mr. Abbott--prepare him, you know, to hear bad
news of Mr. Parkinson."

"Bad news? What bad news?" Paynter asked, staring with raised eyebrows.
"Do you mean there's been an accident, Sergeant?"

"Ye-es--a sort of accident. Mr. Parkinson's--"

"Not--you don't mean--?"

Warren nodded. "Better break it to Mr. Abbott by degrees," he said.

"Did you see the accident, sir--or, you weren't in it?" Paynter spoke to
me.

"Don't ask any questions now, Mr. Paynter," Warren urged him. "We'll get
through it once and for all when we can see Mr. Abbott."

Paynter looked strangely at us, turned into the little room, lit the
candle on the mantelpiece as before he had done for me, and asked us to
wait there.

The Sergeant had not addressed me since we left Usher's garage, nor did
he speak now that we were alone in the waiting room. I caught his eye
once or twice surveying me with a bothered look. But he sat quite still
and silent awaiting Paynter's return. In ten minutes Paynter came and
conducted us upstairs to Abbott's dressing room, where we found the
eloquent correspondent of _The Times_ in his dressing gown, with his
gray hair tousled, very worried and not too good-tempered.

"Ah, Sergeant," said he, "this is a sad surprise. Paynter has led me to
fear the worst. Where did it happen? And how?--a collision? Mr.
Masters"--he shook hands with me--"Paynter tells me you called to see
Parkinson, and he was bearish about it. Were you--"

"Excuse me, sir," Warren broke in. "It's even worse than you think. May
Mr. Paynter remain for a few moments? Thank you. You've been prepared
for the worst. So I can tell you at once that Mr. Parkinson is dead. It
was no accident--it was foul play."

Abbott drew back with a jerk, his face grew pale and the birthmark on
his cheek stood out livid.

"Foul play! Good heavens!--Paynter. it was no hallucination, then?
They've got him!"

"They!--"

The Sergeant's face was a picture of bewilderment.

"Got him, sir? Do you mean you know anything of this?--expected
anything?"

"No, Warren. I can't say I expected anything. I hardly believed in it.
But Mr. Parkinson undoubtedly feared something. He was always
nervous--always on the jump. And last night he came to Paynter with such
a strange story--he was nearly frantic. Tell him, Paynter."

Even now I had no inkling, no fore-vision of the diabolical luck that
was overtaking me.

"Well, Sergeant," said Paynter, "Mr. Parkinson was certainly afraid of
something: he showed it a hundred ways. I took the liberty to say to Mr.
Abbott more than once that he was here at Morley's Holt to hide. He
hardly ever went out of the grounds except in his car."

"Who was he? D'you know anything about him, Mr. Abbott?"

"Nothing at all. He answered an advertisement I put in _The Times_ for a
paying guest. He was the only one who answered it by coming to see me. I
liked him: quiet, gentlemanly sort of man, if a little peculiar. Paynter
liked him too, didn't you, Paynter? Although having another person here
and another car to look after meant more work for you. There was
something about poor Parkinson--"

"Indeed, sir, there was something about him," said Paynter. "As for the
extra work, it was nothing. In spite of his peculiarities, I was much
attracted to Mr. Parkinson, and, if I may say so, I think he was
attracted to me in a way."

"Poor Parkinson," Mr. Abbott mused. "With that thin, high voice of
his--did you ever see or hear him, Sergeant?"

"Never saw him till to-night--and as for hearing him--"

Mr. Abbott shivered.

"I can hardly believe it even now," he said: "I'd not seen him since the
morning, when he told me he was going to London to-night. I'd no idea
until this moment of what Paynter says happened this evening."

Warren looked at Paynter.

"He was out in the grounds this afternoon," Paynter continued his
narrative. "He'd often go out and wander away in the deep woods for
hours. Generally took a book with him. This afternoon he was longer than
usual. He didn't come in till after dinner, when Mr. Abbott had gone to
the library. Then he came rushing. Pale!--he was always pale; but now he
was a ghost, all of a tremble. I asked him what was the matter. Says he,
'They've found me out!' 'Who?' says I. But he didn't answer--looked sort
of suspicious at me. Then he said, 'I've been fired on from the river.'"

I do not know who was the more startled by this statement--Warren or
myself. He uttered a cry. My pulse missed a beat.

Still, even at this eleventh hour, I did not see where it was leading. I
thought of Janet--she might be dragged into the limelight after all if
the tale of our trip up the river should have to come out.

"...He wouldn't tell me anything about it," Paynter went on. "He merely
said people dangerous to him had got to know he was at Kenwick, and they
might have better luck next time they tried for him, and he must go. He
was so strange I doubted whether anything at all had happened. He
wouldn't dine. He went to his room, and he stayed there till just before
this gentleman called. He had a suit-case in his hand and said he was
going to get the car ready. I asked him to let me do it, but he wouldn't
have that. When you asked me to see whether he would receive you, sir, I
found him with the petrol stick in his hand swearing because his tank
was nearly empty and there weren't any tins in the garage. He said he'd
have to stop at Usher's and see if he could get a fill-up there. He was
in a state of excited temper, and when I spoke of Mr. Masters and said
he'd met him at Colorado Springs he said Mr. Masters and Colorado
Springs could go to hell. Mr. Masters went away, and about ten minutes
afterwards Mr. Parkinson started. And that was the end of it."

The Sergeant, sitting on the very edge of a chair, was pulling his beard
hard. Clearly he was surprised to find Paynter's story corroborating
mine in every detail so far as it went.

"That's not quite the end of it," he said, "for Mr. Parkinson picked up
this gentleman in the drive and took him on towards Kenwick."

"Oh!" said Abbott, with a curious look at me. "I don't want to
interfere, Sergeant, but you haven't told me how--"

"I wish I could, sir. I've only this gentleman's word for it--and it's
the most unbelievable story I ever heard."

"Oh--but Mr. Masters would not--"

There was a world of wonderment in his voice.

"I don't say he would, sir. But I told him just now he'd better say
nothing at all than tell such a story." I opened my mouth to protest,
but the old fellow went on, "And I tell him so again now. Mr. Parkinson
was found shot in his car outside Usher's garage. Nobody knows who shot
him. That's what we've got to discover. Would you mind leaving it at
that, sir?"

"Extraordinary!" Abbott said, with a hint of impatience. "I don't see
why I can't know. But still--if you say so, Sergeant, your word is law.
Mr. Masters, I'm sorry you've been let in for trouble--but of course it
will all be cleared up. Is there anything else you want to know here,
Warren?"

"His room--"

"You'd like to examine it?"

"I think not to-night, sir. But I'll seal it if I may."

It was while Paynter took the Sergeant away to do this formality that I
hurriedly told Abbott, in answer to his questions, what had actually
happened. He listened agape.

"Terrible luck for you," he said. "But I shouldn't worry. You know what
the country police are. As soon as the story of the shooting from the
river comes out and they find out something about Parkinson--"

He shook me heartily by the hand when Warren returned and asked if I was
ready to go.



XI.


The avalanche of my misfortunes roared down upon me at half past two in
the morning. The clock in Kenwick church tower chimed just as Warren
brought the car to a standstill before a house in the same street as the
King's Arms. There was a lamp over the door on which were printed the
words "Berkshire Constabulary." A light shone in the ground floor
window. A constable stood in the doorway.

"Will you be good enough to step inside?" said Warren.

I followed him into a room fitted as an office and decorated with police
notices. I had seen a hundred such rooms, but I never entered one less
joyfully. The Constable came in after us.

"Well, Lewis?"

"The doctor's had a look at him. He was tired and didn't want to do a
post mortem to-night--so I told him what you said. We had a run through
his clothes. No papers at all. A wallet full of notes--so it wasn't
robbery. The most curious thing was this--"

The Constable put on a glove and took from the desk a revolver which he
laid before the Sergeant. Warren leaned down to look, but he did not
touch it.

"On him?"

"In his hip-pocket. So it couldn't have been--and anyway its fully
loaded: hasn't been fired."

"Put it away carefully, Lewis. I'm told he had a suitcase."

"Yes--in the back of the car. Here 'tis." He picked up a leather bag
from the corner of the room. "Keys in his pocket. Nothing in it but
linen and shaving gear."

He threw open the cover and revealed the privacies of Parkinson's
toilet. But nothing in all this afforded any clew to Parkinson's fate.

Warren turned to me where I stood on the other side of the desk and
invited me to sit.

"I'm puzzled about you, sir. Mind, I'm not accusing you, and I'm not
asking you to commit yourself," he said.

"You've been fairness itself, Sergeant," I assured him.

"What Mr. Abbott and Mr. Paynter said about an affair earlier in the
evening makes a difference--perhaps. Would you like to tell me where you
were at that time--say about seven to half past? If you could account
for your movements between six and eight--"

The first rumble of the avalanche.

"Let me think," said I, while my skin turned hot and cold. Thinking,
cool thinking, while I sat with those two uniformed men looking down on
me with grave and curious eyes--impossible!

Having made the mistake of omitting to begin my story with the incident
of the river, could I now go back to it?--impossible!

Janet--I could rely on Janet. But there was her mother, who knew we had
been on the river. And there was Helen Adamson.

And there was Oddie! Oddie, who had been so inquisitive about it, almost
offensive. Oddie, whose figure had been lurking in the back of my mind
for the last three hours. Was it not Oddie who ought to be sitting in
this chair devising explanations of his conduct, and "accounting for his
movements"? But everything I had done and omitted to do made my position
impossible.

It might all have to come out. Well--let them drag it out. I would say
nothing to-night.

"I'm afraid, Sergeant," said I, "that before I make any statement at all
I'd better consult my friends."

A lame conclusion to so much thinking. The Sergeant seemed to think so.
He looked disappointed. He was truly puzzled. A kindly old boy--he
wanted to find some excuse for believing me.

"You know best. Perhaps you're wise," he said. "But I shall have to
detain you for inquiries. I'm sorry. That's all. You'll have to make
yourself comfortable here for the night. You don't want any messages
sent? It would hardly be well to wake up the King's Arms now."

Hot and cold!--I knew now how unfortunate people felt who were "detained
for inquiries."

"Very well, Sergeant--if you think it necessary, of course--"

"As a matter of form I ought to search you. But if you'll just turn out
your pockets--"

The avalanche crashed down and overwhelmed me. I had completely
forgotten it--the thing which would turn the kindly old gentleman
cudgeling his brains into a stern and inexorable policeman with a
perfect case.

There was one moment when I had a wild idea of taking advantage of his
courtesy and concealing it. Happily that passed. I turned out my
pockets.

Handkerchief, pipe, pouch, cigarette case, card case, wallet, keys,
pen-knife, fountain pen: the whole fancy shop that a man carries about
with him. I laid them down on the desk.

"Oh, and there's this," I said, pulling the revolver out of my
hip-pocket.

The Sergeant, like a man in a daze, stretched out his hand slowly and
took it from me. He looked at it as if it had been a poisonous snake,
and held the magazine under the light to examine it.

In the same slow fashion he turned his eyes back to me. They were no
longer kindly: they were hostile and accusing. He said:

"By God, you're a cool customer!...Lewis!"

"Sir?"

"This gun's got one barrel empty."

"I expected it, sir."

"Take a pen and sit there, Lewis. Now, Masters, what's your name?"

"John."

"John Masters, I charge you with killing and murdering one Parkinson, by
shooting him with a revolver, in a motor car, between Morley's Holt and
the Half Way House Garage in the parish of Kenwick, between the hours of
ten and twelve P.M. on the 25th of September, 1929. And I caution you
that anything you say in answer to the charge will be taken down in
writing and given in evidence against you."

He waited, holding the pistol on the palm of his hand.

"I've said all I want to say, Sergeant. I certainly did not shoot
Parkinson, and what I told you at the garage was exactly what happened."

Lewis's pen scratched along the paper. Warren took up the sheet.

"You say you did not shoot Parkinson, and what you told me at the garage
is true."

I nodded.

"Do you want to communicate with any one?" I reflected for a moment.

"Yes. Will you ring up the _Morning Telegram_ office in London? There'll
be a man on duty in the news room. Ask for him. Tell him what you like
about--this. But tell him to let Mr. Allen know and get hold of Mr.
Challenger and ask him to come down as early as he can in the morning."

He made some demur against the proposal to ring a newspaper, but the
regulations said nothing on that point and I insisted. There would be no
"big beat" for the _Telegram_ such as Tod had predicted--but at any rate
it would be first with the news that one of its own staff was charged
with murder!

The answering ring came soon. There was not much traffic on the wires at
three in the morning. Warren spoke.

"A message to be sent to Mr. Allen and Mr. Challenger, urgent...Never
mind who I am...Speaking from Kenwick, Berkshire, on behalf of Mr.
Masters...Mr. Allen to be told that he is at present unable to
communicate...Mr. Challenger to come to Kenwick as early as possible
this morning, call at No. 23, Fore Street, and ask for Mr. Warren...
Yes, I know it's very late...Urgent? Of course it's urgent or I
shouldn't ring at this time of day...No, I can't tell you...Ring
off!"

Wily old bird! So there was not even the satisfaction of a minor scoop.

"You might have told them what had happened, Sergeant," I said.

"I might. But I didn't," he replied, gruffly. "Lewis--see to a rug and a
cushion on that sofa. You'll stay here to-night, Masters. Lewis--you
stand guard till six, and tell Farthing to come on at six."

Waking and dozing, I spent the remnant of the night on Sergeant Warren's
very hard horse-hair sofa. Every time I opened my eyes they fell on a
row of bright buttons down the front of the blue tunic worn by the man
who sat on a chair in front of the door.




PART II. BARLOW TAKES A HAND



I.


"Did willfully and of malice aforethought kill and murder..."

However conscious of innocence a man may be, however certain that he
stands in no real danger, it is a horrifying experience to be accused of
murder, to observe the professional interest of the police in you--a
less pleasant interest, even, than that of the surgeons as they come in
and see you on the operating table--the staring eyes of the curious
morbidly anxious to look upon the face of a man who may have killed his
fellow. The word Murder has a nasty sound always; it falls with a
peculiar ugliness and menace on the ears of the man who stands in the
dock.

Or it did on mine when the dry, formal voice of a Petty Sessions Clerk
read it out to me...

"That you did between the hours...in the parish of Kenwick...
willfully and of malice aforethought kill and murder..."

It was a queer little scene--something like a large family party. By
fatality, the ordinary meeting place of the Kenwick Petty Sessions was
the Assembly Room of the King's Arms--a long, dusty, disheveled room,
with faded paint and grimy windows, where apparently a hop was
occasionally held. There was a row of pretentious chairs around the
wall.

To get there I had to walk between Sergeant Warren and the yawning
Constable, Lewis, a few yards down the street and through the passage of
the King's Arms, gaped at by the servants and reproachfully regarded by
the landlord.

The news of the affair at Usher's had not yet spread far, and there were
few persons in the room. I looked around for Tod. He was not there.

But of all the people in the world, there was Janet!

I caught my breath when I saw her, sitting on the first of the public
benches--Janet, with a touch of red in her hat setting off her dark
hair, her eyes signaling bravely to me.

I was the only business of the day. When two magistrates and the clerk
walked in, and all the people rumbled to their feet, it was like a scene
on the stage: I almost expected the audience to burst into an opening
chorus. But that mood quickly passed when my name was called and I stood
up in front of Janet between two constables and heard those words--

"Did willfully kill and murder..."

The hearing was over in three minutes.

Sergeant Warren said he would give evidence of arrest only and ask for a
remand till next day, Saturday, when he would probably be able to
outline the case sufficiently to justify a longer remand. How queer it
was to hear the old fellow intoning this jargon after the experiences we
had been through a few hours before!

He then took the oath. He said nothing about the case. He began:--"I saw
the prisoner at three A.M. to-day at the Police Office, Kenwick. I
charged him on this charge and cautioned him. He replied, 'I did not
shoot Parkinson, and what I told you at the garage is true.' I had
previously seen him at the Half Way House Garage. If your worship
please, that is all the evidence I propose to offer to-day."

The familiar ritual followed. I did not want to ask the Sergeant any
questions. I had nothing to say in objection to the remand. I was
remanded.

Janet's eyes were still signaling when I was marched out between the two
constables and taken back to the Police Office. There Challenger waited
for me, cool as ever.

"Hello, young Masters!--what's your trouble?" was his greeting as I
escaped through the doorway from the scrutiny of the knot of people who
had gathered in the street.

"Hello, Tod!...Sergeant," said I, "this is Mr. Challenger. You
remember I sent a message to him--"

"One moment--" It was a pet exclamation of the Sergeant's. "Lewis and
Farthing--you can wait outside. Have the car ready to catch the twelve
ten train."

Now that he had got through the preliminaries of his job and had me
safely tucked up with an order from the Court to convey me to Reading
Gaol, the Sergeant lost some of his acerbity.

"I take it," he said to Tod, "you're not the prisoner's legal
representative?"

"Nothing so grand, Officer. He's just a friend--one of the boys. But, as
I sort of feel responsible for getting him into this joint, I'm
naturally anxious to get him out as soon as convenient to you."

The Sergeant stared pityingly at the ignorance that imagined the majesty
of the law in Kenwick could be dealt with thus.

"It's a bit more difficult than that, Tod," said I. "If the Sergeant
would allow us to have a talk--?"

"You know you can't talk to anybody but your lawyer except in the
presence of a constable. You can say what you like while we're waiting
for the car. But if you'll take a bit of good advice, the best thing Mr.
Challenger can do is to go and get a lawyer for you and leave it to
him."

I caught a wink from Tod.

"Quite so, Officer," said he. "I understand he's got to spend a day or
so in jail while you have a look round. He might want to send his love
to his landlady or something, though."

"You've heard what happened, Tod?"

"Yes--and a big mouthful more," he laughed. "I understand you took old
Parkinson for a ride, as they say in New York, shot him into the next
world, and then asked our prize bandit to come and admire your
handiwork! I call you a perfect mutt, young Masters. But never mind
that--every murderer to his own taste! What lawyer will you have to
squander your estate after you're turned off? And leave me your ukulele
in your will--don't forget. And is there anybody I can say good-by to on
your behalf?"

Sergeant Warren looked with manifest disapproval on this levity; but it
had an extraordinarily cheering effect on me.

"There's lots to say to the lawyer, Tod," I answered. "I don't much care
who 'tis--any good man. Tell Allen I'm sorry to have let the _Telegram_
in for this sort of notoriety. And, oh--I saw Miss Anderson-Orr in
Court. I wonder how she got to know about it so soon?"

"My precious innocent!--do you think you can do a great deed like this
and hide your reputation under a bushel?"

"I thought it curious that she should know so soon..."

If Tod was to be any use to me, the first thing for him to do was to get
in touch with Janet. But I could not tell him so in the presence of
Sergeant Warren. Tod would see the significance of it if I stressed her
name.

"I dined there last night," said I. "Perhaps if you could apologize for
me to Mrs. Anderson-Orr and her daughter for tumbling out of their
dining-room into--this?"

"Certainly--it's a deal. I'll see the girl and try to persuade her that
all murderers are not as black as they're painted. You'll hear from me
what she says about it--through the lawyer."

Whereupon Tod turned to Sergeant Warren and entertained that astonished
old gentleman with a lurid recital of the horrors of the electric chair,
reproaching the English authorities with great vigor for their slowness
in taking up with modern scientific inventions.

He contrived a way, before I was summoned to leave the office, to
whisper in my ear, "Look out for Barlow!"

Tod was great. He was a godsend. He was a cocktail, tonic and bromide
all in one. The thought of Tod bustling about in my behalf sustained me
through that pernicious journey in a slow train to Reading with a
policeman sitting on each side of me, and through the nerve-tearing
experience of hearing the iron gates clang behind me inside those dingy
brick walls.

Prisoners on remand do not undergo the fiercest rigors of prison
discipline. But prison is prison, and a man charged with murder is the
object of special attention from his warders. The business of reception
and registration, of searching and signing, of sitting down, getting up,
walking and stopping to order, the sense of lost personality, vanished
liberty, perfect helplessness, and at last silent lonesomeness in a
cell--this is prison, even for a prisoner on remand.

I remembered that in English law, a man is presumed innocent until he is
proved guilty. I was therefore presumed innocent, since I had not been
proved guilty. I wondered whether Allen would one day take a front page
screed in big type about the rewards of innocence as illustrated by the
lot of a prisoner on remand in an English jail.

But Tod was in my mind--and especially what Tod had said about Barlow.
If Barlow got on to this, he would soon make short work of the
pedestrian assumptions of the country police. Slow-speaking,
lackadaisical Barlow was a good friend of mine. I had been a good deal
with Barlow, who looked and talked like a rather tired curate, but was
the stand-by of Whitehall in politico-criminal matters. I had even tried
to tap Barlow on the affair at the Foreign Office the other day...

"Look out for Barlow!"...Tod did not say that without intention.

I slept quite well that night. The bed was hard. A pestilent fellow with
a torch opened the little hatch in the cell door twice and shone the
thing into my eyes and woke me up. But I was thoroughly fatigued. The
second day, I itched with anticipation of the visit of a lawyer with
messages from Tod, and perhaps news of Janet. Nothing happened till late
in the afternoon, when the key sounded in the cell-door.



II.


I jumped up, expecting to see some strange face looking at me with the
same beastly curiosity that everybody had displayed since Wednesday
night. A dark uniform, plentifully decorated with white metal and a
chain with keys--

"Here you are, sir."

A slight figure passed it and slipped into the cell. The door clashed.

"Barlow!" I cried.

"Well, young man--what d'you suppose you're doing here?"

His presence seemed to push out the walls of the cell. I was in contact
with the world again.

"Tod promised to send a lawyer," I said.

"Well, you can have a lawyer if you like--but what about trying me
first?"

How good it was to hear Barlow's parsonical drawl!

"Tell me all about it. I've heard what the police know, and what they
say you said and did. Tell me the rest. And why you didn't tell them.
We've got to get you out of here as quick as possible. So make it
snappy, Mr. Masters."

"You've been talking to Tod," I said. "You're picking up his vernacular.
How much has he told you--as to why we came down to Kenwick?"

"Down to Kenwick trying to be two smart Alecks and put one over on me
and Lennox! I wouldn't have thought it of Mr. Challenger. Serve you
right if you did swing! What I know is that you met this fellow by
chance at Colorado Springs when Lennox was after him, and his features
and his voice were so peculiar that when Mr. Challenger met him in
London he recognized him, trailed him here, found he was hiding, and
brought you down with the idea of doing a bit of amateur sleuth-work."

"You knew Tod had a fancy that Parkinson might be in something big that
you were interested in?"

"Yes--and I've got a bone to pick with him there. Let's settle with you
first. Mr. Challenger gets a call back to London to see Lennox about
some American business--nothing to do with this. The next thing we hear
is that you've shot Parkinson and been arrested for murder."

"We hear? Who's we?" I asked.

"Well, I hear."

"When do you hear?"

"I hear, to be exact, at four A.M. yesterday."

"From--?"

"From the Yard, of course. You don't think we allow cub journalists to
go round murdering people and hear nothing about it, do you? But I
suppose you really didn't shoot Parkinson, by any chance?"

"Certainly not."

"Well, you do your best to make folks think so. You dine at that
double-barreled woman's house--what's she called?"

"Mrs. Anderson-Orr."

"You dine with Mrs. Anderson-Orr. Then, instead of going home to bed
like a good Christian, you turn off the other way, walk down to that
house, pitch up a yarn about Colorado Springs, and go off with
Parkinson. Why on earth?"

I gazed at Barlow, astonished. He had heard nothing of our adventure on
the river.

"Have you seen Tod since?" I asked.

"Yes--I was with him most of yesterday. In fact, I went with him
yesterday morning, and I was in the offing when he saw you at the Police
Station. He has a little sense left. As soon as he heard you were in the
soup, he rang me up."

"How did he know I was in trouble? The Sergeant wouldn't have anything
said to the _Telegram_ office about it."

"I reckon he guessed you were the sort that would get into trouble--and
he guessed right! But, of course, they aren't all goofs at the
_Telegram_. They told him there was something fishy in a message they
received in the small hours--and he got busy first thing."

"I'm fair game, Barlow. I'm a goof all right," I admitted. "I know
'twon't be easy to justify that visit to Morley's Holt. I was in an
ungovernable temper, though not with Parkinson in particular, but with
things in general. Do you know whether Tod had seen Miss Anderson-Orr
before you left him?"

"He had. So had I."

And yet he had not heard of the river trip to Morley's Holt. I could
understand that Janet would say nothing of it lest it should push me
deeper into the mud. But her mother--Helen Adamson--Oddie, especially
Oddie. If they had all been silent about it--

Barlow, in his lazy way, looked quizzically at me.

"Miss Anderson-Orr is quite well and bearing with fortitude the prospect
of your execution, if that's what you want to know," said he.

"Don't be a silly ass, Barlow," said I. "I want to think a moment."

It was evident that Barlow must be told everything, and if any of it
seemed incomprehensible to him explanation would have to wait on events.

"You didn't shoot Parkinson," said he. "But do you know who did?"

"Of course not."

"What about the story of an attack on him earlier in the evening? Did he
tell you anything of that?"

"Nothing much--he just said he'd had a narrow squeak and got away in the
dark. But, Barlow--"

"Half a tick. I want to fix a few things in my mind. According to the
story you told the police, you left him at the corner of the lane--what
time?"

"It took me about three minutes or less to walk up to the cottage, and I
suppose I was two minutes talking to the bandit--"

"The what? Oh, Mr. Bill Usher--queer fish, that. Well--five minutes."

"And just as I left the cottage to walk back, I looked at my watch and
it showed quarter past eleven."

"Then it took you seven minutes to get back to the garage--at least, it
took me that when I did it this morning--twelve minutes altogether. You
left Parkinson alive and kicking in the car at ten after eleven. Between
that and twenty-two minutes after, the car had been moved down to the
garage and Parkinson had been shot--or conversely, Parkinson had been
shot and the car moved down to the garage. I wonder which?"

"I can't guess. But, Barlow, I must tell you something--"

"In a minute. Usher cut across from the cottage to the garage by a field
path out of his garden. It's a hairpin corner, and this is a very short
cut. In fact, it's exactly 250 yards as compared with 800 by road. Usher
says he was in his socks when you left him. He had to put on his boots
and a coat and find his keys. Say two minutes. Three minutes to walk
across. And he's there two minutes before you, perhaps more as you
probably hesitated a while at the corner wondering what had become of
Parkinson and the car?"

"Yes, I did. I couldn't quite make up my mind whether he'd got impatient
and gone off altogether. But the garage was on my way back to Kenwick
anyhow, so I walked on."

"Well, when Usher got to the garage, the car was standing in the road
outside, and he thought you were in it. That cuts down the possible time
of the murder by two minutes."

"You can cut it down more than that, Barlow," I said. "The tail light of
the car was visible to me for at least three minutes before I came up to
it."

"Then, between ten past eleven and nineteen past eleven, the car was
moved and the murder done. Nine minutes. Narrows it down, eh?"

"Yes, but, Barlow--there's something I must tell you--"

"About that narrow squeak in the dark? Yes, I thought so. Well--out with
it, young man. Confess!"

I gave a startled glance at his half-closed eyes.

"What d'you mean--confess?"

"Well, it's fairly obvious, isn't it? You go down there in an
ungovernable temper, as you say, and you've been itching for the last
three minutes to tell me why, and a blind worm could see that you know
something about Mr. Parkinson's rough house. Also--you seem to have an
awkward habit of forgetting revolvers. They should always be remembered.
The expert criminal never forgets how talkative revolvers are. So, young
man, I can have an easy bet with you--that if you didn't shoot at
Parkinson you shot at somebody else. Two tips for you: don't get in
ungovernable tempers, and never forget revolvers."

"Goof is the word!" said I.

"Another tip: when the police ask you a question tell 'em the truth--all
of it, if you can, but never anything else. Why in the name of common
sense didn't you tell the Sergeant the truth about your gun?"

It took me a good ten minutes to put the whole story before Barlow, from
the first interview with Janet to the arrival of Sergeant Warren at
Usher's garage.

He sat on my bed listening with his eyelids down. He did not once
interrupt or comment. But twice his eyes opened wide--when I told him of
the message Parkinson had given Janet for Lennox, and when I mentioned
having seen Oddie in the road between Ferry Grange and Usher's.

I had discharged myself of all the facts. Barlow sat silent for a minute
or two.

"I've heard a good deal about the way of a man with a maid," said he,
"but what gets me is the way of a maid with a man. Goof!--I should say
so! I never heard anything like it. How does it feel, young fellow, to
be responsible for a man's death?"

"For God's sake, what do you mean, Barlow?" I cried.

"Just that. I calculate that if you and Miss Whatser-name between you
hadn't seen to it, Parkinson would be alive now. Not that it matters
much. For he was going to get his, as Usher said, sooner or later. But
that you, a young man of the world, and the newspaper world at that,
should allow a girl to switch you off the promising line Mr. Challenger
laid out and get you into this mess--well, it simply beats the band!"

It was hopeless to try to make Barlow see Janet as I saw Janet, or
convey to him the atmosphere of Janet's pity. I did not try.

"All right, Barlow--I'm a goof. I've said it."

"But that young woman--she's a quick mover: I've a great respect for
that young woman. See this? Lennox posted it to me last night."

He passed to me a telegram, handed in on Thursday afternoon at
Hungerford:

_"To Lennox, Victoria Hotel, London.--The people you want will be at the
Metropolitan on the Fourth October."_

So Janet had kept the promise she made to the unhappy man who trusted
her because she had honest eyes. That was like Janet.

"Did Lennox know what the message meant, Barlow?" I asked. "Or was it a
touch of madness? There was something queer about Parkinson, you know.
Even in the few minutes I had with him--"

'T daresay--quite so. But you're asking and I'm not answering. I'll tell
you one thing--that but for your story we'd not have known the message
came from Parkinson; so you may have earned your keep from the
Government in this hotel after all. Some day I'll tell you the rest. Now
then, Mr. Masters, who killed Parkinson? Let's stick to the problem."

"I should say the people who had already attacked him in the woods--or
accomplices of theirs,"

"Yes," he said with his eyes closed. "And twice five are ten. But who?"

"I'm not a detective, Barlow. Nor a wizard."

"And yet you've got something at the back of your mind that you won't
bring forward. Why?"

Barlow was at his astutest when he sat thus, his eyelids down and an
expression of intense boredom on his face.

"What's at the back of my mind?"

At all events if it had to come out, Barlow should drag it out.

"Question for question: what would the first common or garden fellow who
heard your story say? You know as well as I do. He'd say, 'Why didn't
the dam' fool tell the police what he'd seen and put 'em on the trail at
once?'"

"You mean--?"

"Come off it, Mr. Masters! Trying the ingenuous on me! You ought to know
better. I mean Oddie, of course. You've had Oddie in the background all
the time. For some reason you wouldn't even suggest what would have
occurred to a babe in arms. Why?"

"I told you all about it."

"But why not the police--or even Usher--at the very time, when the scent
was hot?"

Again it was hopeless to make Barlow understand my mixture of motives,
including a sense of fair play. Oddie's conduct was open to more than
one interpretation.

I'd just been through a rather petulant scene with Oddie. And I could
not forget the flaming face of Helen Adamson.

"I can't say why, Barlow. No particular reason."

He sighed.

"More girls, I suppose. However, I'd heard about Mr. Oddie already. So
that's that. Now--"

Barlow was uncovering his wrist watch.

"Heard what about Oddie?"

"Can't stay to discuss it. You weren't the only person who saw
Oddie--lucky for you! Now, I'm due off. Don't worry. We'll have you out
in no time. But you really should be kept under lock and key for your
own safety."

Barlow's handshake belied his words.

"I'll tell Mr. Challenger you're making a will in his favor, and Miss
Thingumbob-Whatsername--ah, but she won't believe anything I tell her.
Good-by, Mr. Masters."

As if by some magic understanding the door opened, there was a glimpse
of white buttons and chain. Barlow was slipping out as he slipped in;
but before the door closed again he turned to say:

"By the way, I can't give your kind regards to Mr. Oddie--he's left the
neighborhood!"



III.


The next time I talked to Barlow was twenty-four hours afterwards in
more pleasant surroundings.

In the end of my brief unpleasantness with the police I rather
sympathized with old Warren. His world of ideas had been suddenly blown
to bits.

When I came into Court that morning on remand I stood for the last time
between two constables. Warren immediately got up with a worried look on
his face, told the two magistrates that he did not propose to call any
evidence, and asked that the charge might be withdrawn. The magistrates
had been primed--evidently; they merely nodded their assent to Warren
and told me I was discharged. The two constables moved away from me. And
that was all.

Nobody could remember when anything like it had happened before. The
public had no particular grudge against me, but it was puzzled and
annoyed--and poor old Warren came in for the brunt of the attack.

"Here's a monstrous crime. The police as usual arrest the wrong man,
waste precious time in chasing a will o' the wisp, while the real
culprit gets clear away under their noses..."

Some such thing as this the public said, and the newspapers said it in a
dozen different keys and in much more ornate language during the next
few days. Warren never had a chance to present the evidence on which he
had arrested me. Some oracle in the background forbade him to carry the
case an inch further. I was to be discharged and the public was never to
know what had passed in Warren's office when he asked me to clear out my
pockets. It was to forget me as soon as it could--and it succeeded in
doing so in two days.

Barlow had effectively wiped the slate before beginning to write his own
version on it. He was helped by the new and growing practice of
permitting the police to use the coroner's court as a place of
preliminary examination of accused persons and the Coroner himself as a
kind of _juge d'instruction_ on the French model. The Coroner in this
instance had opened his inquest on the Thursday afternoon, taken
evidence of identification from Paynter, and then adjourned for a month.
The slate was clean.

I had gone back to the Police Office after the hearing to collect my
property. They handed me a note:

_"Meet me at Ferry Grange this afternoon. But don't let on about me. I'm
a friend of Mr. Challenger--nothing more. Most important_.--_J_. _B_."

I found at Ferry Grange that Barlow had been taken there by Tod, just as
he took me, and had apparently become one more inmate of Liberty Hall.
He was listening to Mrs. Anderson-Orr talking about it and about,
enjoying her thrills at second hand, and admirably playing the part of a
week-ender mildly interested in the local sensation. Or so I thought and
Barlow thought.

We sat on the lawn, myself the center of a group of women--Mrs.
Anderson-Orr, Janet, Helen Adamson--With Barlow lounging in a garden
chair and veiling his eyes against the sunshine. Tod, having special
work at the week-end, was back in London.

Janet and I had grasped hands hard.

"Thanks!" I said to her under my breath.

"I'm glad," said she.

Nothing more: I was immediately involved in explanations of the tragedy
which thrilled Mrs. Anderson-Orr even more violently than Mr. Abbott's
speeches. Everything in the story thrilled her--especially my most
unconvincing account of the reason why I had gone to Morley's Holt after
I left them and landed myself in jail instead of in bed at the King's
Arms.

_"Mon Dieu!_" she exclaimed, when I described the walk through the woods
and the clanging of the bell and "_Mon Dieu!_" when I came to the
discovery of Parkinson's body--_ "Mon Dieu--quelle horreur!"_

But I noticed that Mrs. Anderson-Orr never once made any reference to
our maladroit trip on the river. Nor did Helen Adamson, sitting quiet
and demure, and paler than her wont.

Barlow lay back in his chair, his look lazily traveling round the group
while Mrs. Anderson-Orr speculated on the great question: Who killed
Parkinson? She was rich in suggestions; in particular she turned over
with much relish a theory she had invented of an unhappy love affair and
what she called a _crime de passion_. And she sighed, "_Ah, l'amour,
l'amour_!..."

I leant to Janet and said a word. She got up.

"Coming for a walk along the river?" she invited me.

"May I come too?" said Barlow. "I'd like to see the river."

Butting in like that!--I threw a look of rage at Barlow. But his eyes
warned me of a special purpose. When we reached the brink of the stream
out of sight and hearing of the lawn, he said:

"Don't think me a pig, Miss Anderson-Orr. I really do know my manners.
But I wanted Mr. Masters to explain me to you."

"Good Lord!" I cried. "What a life!"

"Only just tell her I'm not really a lounge-lizard or a
curiosity-monger."

"Well," said I to Janet, "Barlow paid me a visit in Reading Gaol
yesterday afternoon and it's because of him that I'm not in Reading Gaol
now."

"Oh!" said Janet. "Oh, splendid!" with a look at Barlow which I envied
him. And then after a moment: "All Mr. Challenger's friends seem to be
anything but what they are, don't they? And I suppose Mr. Barlow
knows--"

"Everything," I answered; "everything that you and I know. Also,
everything we did."

"Then, as I was the person who got him into Reading Gaol, thank you, Mr.
Barlow, for getting him out."

"I don't know about that," said Barlow, softly. "Let's wait and see
whether he reforms. And you, young lady, too!" Janet raised her
eyebrows. "But of course you couldn't possibly know what you were
barging into; so, as the message you sent to Lennox yesterday may be
very important--"

"The message I sent! You know about that?"

Janet pulled up in astonishment.

"Tell her," said he to me.

I explained Barlow to a bewildered Janet--his position and his job, his
relations with Lennox, their search for clews to the Allenstein outrage.
Her eyes opened wide.

"You think what happened to poor Mr. Parkinson may have something to do
with this?" she asked.

Barlow nodded. "If we found in the pleasant parish of Kenwick the key to
the thing we're after I shouldn't be paralyzed with surprise. Deep
waters for you, young lady! But you jumped in yourself, you know. I may
want your help now that we've saved Mr. Masters from the gallows. Since
he says he didn't kill Parkinson, we must find somebody else to fit the
halter on--somebody who, in a certain nine minutes of time on Wednesday
night, was between Usher's garage and the corner of the lane, shot
Parkinson dead, and got clear away while Usher and Mr. Masters were
glaring at each other in the garage and waiting for the police."

Janet shuddered.

"We're up against a queer and rather terrible thing, young lady. If you
can help us to get to the bottom of the facts, you'll be solving a much
more important question than any of the international mystery plots Mr.
Masters specializes in--lord, what tripe these fellows do write! This is
just crime--sordid, common crime. But crime organized by a super-brain,
perfectly cold, unscrupulous, calculating, secret and relentless. And
damned successful!" Barlow exclaimed; an unusual outburst for him.

"We want to get at the owner of that brain. He's dangerous. The brain
which probably conceived and brought off the coup in Paris and certainly
got away with the Allenstein business is not going to be satisfied with
two big crimes. There will be others unless we can snaffle him. We've
never had any luck in London. The people at the French Sureté are
certain he's not to be found in Paris--and I believe 'em, because their
methods are remarkably thorough and they don't stick at much. Lennox
thought he had a snip once this Spring, when the British Embassy passed
on to him a request from us, and he almost caught up his man at Colorado
Springs, as Mr. Masters knows."

"I remember Lennox saying that he'd wired along the line and was pretty
certain to get him," said I.

"Yes, but he didn't. He expected to intercept him at some place down the
line--I've forgotten the name--"

"Pueblo."

"That's it. But when Pueblo got a squad ready to search the
train--nothing doing. He wasn't there. Elusive!--just like trying to
catch a streak of greased lightning in a basket of eels. And, young
lady, how curious it would be if we had to come to sleepy Kenwick and
Miss Anderson-Orr for the real stuff, the thing that's baffled--that's
the orthodox newspaper word, ain't it, Masters?--baffled three secret
services for a year?"

"I?" Janet looked her bepuzzlement.

"Perhaps," said Barlow. "The only little shred of a clew we have is a
pallid face and a squeaky, high-pitched voice. Now that's gone. But
let's consider who killed Parkinson, and when we've got the
answer--well, we're home."

"Your super-brain was the enemy who beset Mr. Parkinson? That was what
terrorized him?"

Barlow nodded to her. "But why was he afraid? Why did he come down here
and hide? Why didn't he come to us and say straight out what he said to
Lennox through you? Why was that message only to reach Lennox after his
death? There's the problem. I can guess at reasons. But I want all the
light I can get."

"Have you thought," Janet asked, "of his Frankenstein's Monster?"

"Yes, young lady--but how and why and where did he make that Monster?
Either he had some share in the Allenstein business, or he had complete
knowledge of it. And the Allenstein outrage was not only burglary and
robbery but constructive murder."

"I don't think he was a man who would consciously have anything to do
with murder," said Janet. "He didn't seem that sort of man to me."

"It would be very hard to say what sort of man may or may not have
something to do with murder," Barlow observed. "As a matter of fact, I
think you're right. But he was in the swim."

"Then," Janet pursued, "if he regretted it wouldn't he be quite likely
to try and find a place where he could lie secure from enemies or
accomplices and watch for a chance of putting things right? And then, if
they suspected his intention and found him at Kenwick--"

"Well?" said Barlow, as she paused.

"I'm certain his meeting with me must have been spied on. The attempt to
meet him again certainly was--and prevented. They didn't get him then.
But the next time they made quite sure."

"Yes--well argued up to a point. It looks as if the attack on him in the
woods on Wednesday evening was brought on by your presence in the
neighborhood. And that in turn may have made murder inevitable. But
there are snags--"

"As, for example," said I, "the question whether the attack last
Wednesday evening was an attack on Parkinson at all."

I was thinking of the hole in the boat and Janet. Barlow brooded over
it.

"Well, possibly. But there's a bigger snag. I can't get over it--the
theory that Parkinson was hiding. How can we say he was hiding? He went
freely to London. An enemy could have popped him off in London more
easily than anywhere else. Also, if he could be definitely identified
with the queer-voiced man in the Allenstein business he would be in far
more danger in London than here. But undoubtedly he does appear to hide,
and when he moves about he goes furtively. He's as mysterious as the Man
in the Iron Mask. When he leaves the house, it's in a closed car. He is
seen--and heard, don't forget that--by hardly anybody. On the one
occasion when we know him to have gone to London by train--Warren has
found that it was because his car was out of order--he comes stealing
back across country, and I suppose if you hadn't happened to be on the
river in your boat, he'd have swum over. Doesn't it show that
Parkinson's cause of Fear was here? That he didn't come down to hide
from it but to keep watch on it?"

This was indeed a new and startling light and opened up ugly
possibilities.

"Here?" cried Janet.

"Yes--let's discover the person hereabouts, however well camouflaged, of
whom Parkinson was afraid. Can you help? I suppose you know everybody in
the place?"

I watched Janet's face while Barlow put this. It showed nothing but her
bewilderment. But as for me I had cold shivers when I saw where he was
tending.

"You don't suggest that your superman is a parishioner of Kenwick, do
you, Barlow?"

I put the foolish question with some equally foolish idea of staving off
the shock I saw was coming to Janet. He looked at me in surprise.

"If you haven't got some reason of your own for asking a damfool
question like that," he said with unaccustomed sharpness, "you're
treating a serious job with too much levity."

"Sorry, Barlow," I answered, "but I couldn't see where you were
leading."

"You know very well where I'm leading," he declared, mercilessly. "We
can narrow this thing down to a very fine point--the people who could
have murdered Parkinson must have been within a few hundred yards of
Usher's garage at any time between eleven and half-past on Wednesday
night. We know Parkinson was afraid of some person or persons, visible
or invisible in Kenwick. I think I already know all the visible people
in Kenwick who could have been within five hundred yards of Usher's
garage between eleven and half past, but I'm not quite sure, and I want
Miss Anderson-Orr to help me if she can."

"Oh, but I--"

Janet's cry, stifled in an instant, was a cry of distress, and she
impulsively grasped my arm as she shrank away from him.

"Let's tick them off," said Barlow. "There's Usher--"

"Usher!" I exclaimed. "Why Usher--"

"Why not Usher? He was one of the people who were within five hundred
yards in the stipulated time. I don't at present think Usher is the man.
But he could have done it. By cutting across the field-path, he reached
the garage at least a minute before you, perhaps two if he hurried. What
about Usher, young lady? How long has he been there?"

"Only a few months. I don't know much of him, except that he's a rough,
violent-tempered man of extreme opinions, and that he doesn't like my
mother. But I'm sure, Mr. Barlow--"

"We mustn't be quite sure until we know," said Barlow.

"But if that shot had been fired while I was walking up the road,
Barlow, I should have heard it," said I.

"Leave it at that. Such things are deceptive. We also know that within
five hundred yards of the garage at that time was--"

"Barlow! You can't!" I almost shouted.

"Can't what?"

"You can't say what you were going to say. Miss Anderson-Orr has no
idea--"

"But she's got to have an idea, Mr. Masters. You don't think a thing
like that can be hushed up? I told you yesterday."

"At least, let me tell her. Janet--there's a nasty thing to be told,
which may affect you and your mother indirectly."

The trouble in her face was intense, but she said, "You'd better tell
me."

"I saw the person Barlow was going to mention. In the light of the car
lamps, just before we reached the corner of the lane. It was Oddie."

She looked up at me, as if expecting me to add something, waited a
moment, and said:

"Oh? Oddie?"

The tone of relief in her voice was marked. Barlow noticed it and sent
her an inquiring glance.

"That's curious," she resumed. "I expect he was going home to Lorimer
House--it's not far away, you know."

"But you remember that Oddie left here for home even before I'd
started." Somehow I knew that I could go on with the story and Janet
would not be distressed. "Of course, I expect it's all right, and
there's a perfectly good explanation. But Oddie acted in a funny way. As
soon as the headlights showed him up, he jumped over the fence and into
the field, and I saw no more of him."

Janet's brain was working well, as Barlow admitted afterwards.

"Did Mr. Parkinson see him?" she asked. "Because if he did--well, did he
say anything?"

"Parkinson saw something, but he was driving, and I don't think he
actually recognized Oddie. He was startled. He said to me, 'Did you see
that? It looked to me like--' and then he switched off without saying
any name. And I didn't tell him."

"So you see," said Barlow, "we must count in Oddie. What's more, he was
seen after the murder getting out of a field into the lane near Usher's
Cottage. There's a youth, George Bunbury, an assistant at Usher's, who
lives with him. He was coming home from Kenwick where he'd been spending
the evening, and in the lane a man jumped out from the hedge almost on
top of him. He was startled and swore at the youth. He hasn't any doubt
it was Oddie. He knows him well. Oddie, I believe, is sort of adopted by
Mr. Webb, isn't he?"

"He lives with Mr. Webb," Janet said.

"How long?"

"He's been there I should think nearly twelve months."

"So? Well now, there's another person--"

The trouble came back to Janet's face, but at that moment, to my
gratitude and hers, we heard a voice calling, "Hello, you people!
_Venez, donc!_ Don't you want some tea?"

And there was Mrs. Anderson-Orr waving to us from the bottom of the
lawn. Barlow waved back. But as we turned he came between us and said in
an undertone:

"You two don't seem to realize that you're up against a desperate thing.
You're in personal danger, both of you. Keep your eyelids lifted--and
suspect everybody!"



IV.


I had not a moment alone with Janet to discover the cause of her
trouble. It was bad trouble. The way in which she flinched from Barlow
when he came to close quarters with the question of times and
persons--there was something Janet knew and could not tell, but Barlow
would ferret out.

What?

The question drummed in my head while the four of us walked back to the
cedar tree where two maids were setting a tea-table and Joshua Webb sat
talking to Helen Adamson. Mrs. Anderson-Orr prattled away in her
accustomed style, but she stuck close to Janet. There was a subtle
difference in her manner and about the whole scene a chilly air that did
not seem proper to Ferry Grange. The formerly boisterous Webb was a
strangely quiet and serious Webb, who merely nodded to Barlow when Mrs.
Anderson-Orr introduced him, and, turning from his talk with Helen,
drank tea silently. The hostess made no effort to harmonize us. It soon
became apparent that they longed for us to depart.

There was a crow among the seagulls, and it was Barlow.

He talked politely for a few minutes with Janet and her mother while I
vainly tried to get a few words out of Helen: she almost visibly
flinched from me.

"Well, Masters," said Barlow, with a look that was a command, "I'm ready
to drive you back to Kenwick if Mrs. Anderson-Orr will forgive us for
deserting this lovely place."

The look quelled my impulse to rebel, but I contrived to say one word to
Janet in the fuss of departure. "Steady!"

She gripped my hand.

"To-night if I can," said I. "If not--"

"I shall go to church at Kenwick to-morrow morning," said Janet, as
Barlow turned to me and asked, "Ready?"

In Barlow's car I sat silent by his side until we were out of the drive
and on the main road. Then he pulled up.

"Now, young man," he began, "it's time for us to come to an
understanding."

"Good Lord, Barlow! Why this air of tragedy?"

I spoke more lightly than I felt.

"Tragedy be damned!" said Barlow. "If you're going to put spokes in my
wheel, you go back to London tonight, 'toot sweet' as that extraordinary
woman would say. I'd better have left you in jail. You'd have been
safer."

"I'm not conscious--"

"You make me tired, Masters. Finicking about. Godswot!--d'you think I
was born feeble-minded?" I never saw Barlow in such a temper. "She's a
nice girl and a clever girl--a dam' sight cleverer than you. Get on with
it and good luck to you--at the proper time. But that's not now. I take
you into my confidence in a big thing, and you're actually thinking of
going back on me. It can't be done--either for your sake or hers or
mine. Understand that!"

He fired all this at me leaning with his elbows on the wheel and his
face within twelve inches of mine.

"All right, Barlow," said I. "You're angry about something. Where've I
gone wrong?"

"Not that you've gone wrong--but you were about to go."

He relapsed into his seat and his normal manner.

My intellect, he said, was not working full time, for even now I did not
seem to sense the strength of the thing we were up against. I asked
asinine questions. I affected to doubt whether there was any exceptional
person in the case. It wasn't enough for me that a thing like the
Allenstein affair had been followed by a desperately cruel and hideously
clever murder. I made infantile jokes about Barlow's discovery of
super-brains among the parishioners of Kenwick. (That seemed to have
stuck in Barlow's throat.) I had just got to cut it out and give serious
attention to what Barlow said, and jolly well look out for my own
precious skin.

"Look here, young man," he wound up his sermon, "I don't talk about
super-brains without meaning it. I've got no such great respect for
other people's brains as to give 'em more credit than they deserve. But
I think I do know whose is the brain behind this. No--I'm not going to
tell you: I may be quite wrong. But whether he's here in Kenwick,
camouflaged among your acquaintances, or hiding in secret, or operating
at a distance--these crimes are his, and I mean to get at him. I've got
my first glimpse of him, and I'm not going to have any hanky-panky from
you because you think that young lady may be annoyed. So chew that
over."

And then he put the conclusions he had reached at Ferry Grange. All
these people, he said, were hiding up something--the double-barreled
woman, the mousy girl, the Webb man. Barlow thought he knew what it was.
He thought he knew why they were hiding it. Hadn't Webb got a
matrimonial eye on Mrs. Anderson-Orr? At least, Warren said so. And the
little mousy girl, hadn't she paired off with the man called Oddie? And
wasn't Oddie an intimate of Webb's?

"Oddie's the secret," said Barlow. "Oddie in the road before the murder,
Oddie jumping over the hedge after the murder, Oddie disappearing in the
morning!--"

"How disappearing?"

"Leaving by the first train for London."

"But he's in business in London--Webb's old business. He goes up three
or four times a week."

"That may be; but this time he don't arrive there so's you can see him.
At Kenwick they say, 'Oddie's at his business in London.' His business
in London says, 'Nothing of the sort--he's at Kenwick.' Now, Masters,
that queer bunch of folks on the lawn know where Oddie is and why. They
are aware that I'm curious to know also. But you noticed that when I
mentioned Oddie, the girl didn't seem to get much of a jerk?"

"I did--but that didn't surprise me, Barlow. She wasn't particularly
fond of Oddie."

"No, I guess not. But she was mighty scared about the next person I was
going to mention, wasn't she? Went all dithery. So there's somebody else
in this besides Oddie. Bet you I know who it is."

I stared amazed. "You! You mean you guess?"

"No--I know. Bet you I know why they're scared, too. Your girl's fond of
her mother, isn't she? And her mother's fond of Mr. Webb? Well--the next
person I was going to mention was our friend Webb!"

I was staggered.

"Joshua!" I articulated, stupidly. Surely Webb, that portly little
bundle of joyousness, could not be in the swim?

"Josh? Is that his name? God bless his godfathers!--they knew how,"
Barlow exclaimed with his first smile. "Yes--Josh, however surprising it
may seem. I'm not ruling out anybody who was abroad in the neighborhood
at the time of the crime. I don't accuse him. But he's put himself where
I want to know a lot more about him. See what happened just now. D'you
think if I went and said, 'Josh, where were you such and such a time on
Wednesday night?' he'd tell me? Not on your life!"

"But where was he, Barlow?"

"I'll take you there directly. But--mind, no spokes in the wheel. I'm
getting to the bottom of this, and I don't care whom I dig up. I won't
be interfered with--not for anybody's beautiful eyes."

The suggestion behind Barlow's words left me speechless. He drove on. We
had not gone far when a klaxon sounded behind us, Barlow moved in to the
near side, and a large car ran by. The chauffeur sitting by the driver's
side touched his cap as he passed. Immediately in front, the car pulled
up and signaled to us to stop. Barlow drew up alongside.

"Anything the matter?" he shouted.

But there was nothing the matter. It was Mr. Abbott who leaned out of
the window to speak to me, and Paynter who sat beside him.

"How do you do, Mr. Masters?" said Abbott, in his old-fashioned formal
way. "Paynter said it was you in the car, and I thought I must stop to
say a word. What an experience, yours!--though, thank God it was
not--er--protracted. Of course, dear old Warren's idea was absurd on the
face of it. Nevertheless I congratulate you on getting out--er, getting
out of it so quickly."

"You're very good," I acknowledged. "It wasn't nice. But it's all over."

"You know poor Parkinson's funeral was this morning? I went--a
melancholy hour. The morbidity of the public!--even in our quiet
village. Warren tells me they have a clew. But they always have. I hope
it will be a more plausible one this time."

"I hope so, indeed."

"You know, when I saw you last you gave me a great shock [I recalled him
in his dressing gown] and I'm afraid I wasn't very hospitable."

"One doesn't expect lavish hospitality at three in the morning," I
smiled.

"No--but I might have thought of asking you to come under different
circumstances and look over Morley's Holt. Rather unkempt, but worth
seeing. Will you do me the pleasure?"

"Delighted," said I.

Abbott had given an occasional glance at Barlow while he was speaking. I
brought him into it:

"This is Mr. Barlow, of London, a friend of Mr. Challenger's. Mr.
Abbott, of Morley's Holt, Barlow. I burst into his dressing room at the
heels of a policeman on Wednesday night."

"How d'e do, Mr. Abbott?" said Barlow. "I remember the name. I think I
saw a letter of yours in _The Times_ recently."

Abbott literally bridled with pleasure.

"Ah, yes--a small contribution on a big subject. By the way, Mr.
Masters, I'm returning to the charge--on the authorities'
stone-blindness to the plainest pike-staffs. I've got the letter here in
fact. [He tapped his pocket.] It's apropos of Parkinson. The waste of
time in arresting you instead of getting on with the real business.
Though I confess I'd not have believed that such a thing could happen
here. You remember I scouted the idea that we'd anything to fear in
Kenwick? Well, when will you come to see me?--Monday? Are you staying
till then?"

"I expect Challenger will be down on Monday," I told him.

"Oh, do bring him along. And your friend, Mr.--?"

"Barlow."

"Mr. Barlow--if you've nothing better to do?"

"Thanks. It'll be a pleasure," said Barlow.

"Then, Monday. Come over to lunch. Say one o'clock."

The car slipped away.

"Seems a genial old boy," said Barlow. "Not at all the kind of man I
pictured writing that letter."

"He's far more intelligent than his letters," I answered. "But there's a
strain of the J.B.F.F. in him--it comes out if anybody so much as
whispers the word Empire."

"J.B.F.F.?--what in the name of Mike is that?"

"You know--in _Stalky_--the jelly-bellied flag-flapper. He flapped just
a wee bit when I met him at Ferry Grange."

"Perhaps we can draw him on Monday. That's a good egg, by the
way--Morley's Holt. We can go and see where that shooting was. I suppose
you haven't thought out what may have happened then?"

I had thought a great deal, but could get no light on it. It was all so
sudden and confused. "Just flashes in the dark, you know, Barlow. And
there was Janet--Miss Anderson-Orr--"

"You thought they were firing at you?"

"Yes--what else could I think? For a time I had a wild notion that it
was Parkinson himself--mad. That was why I went there that awful night
to put the notion to the test. One shot went through the boat. Another
hit the water just beyond it. Enough to make you think you were being
fired at! But of course Parkinson's story put a different complexion on
it. The shots might have been meant for him and reached us by accident."

"I'm thinking of possible traces at Morley's Holt," said Barlow. "We'll
see--if Warren hasn't spoilt it all before then."

He switched round into the lane that passed Usher's cottage and drove
quickly by it in the direction of Kenwick Station. About a mile beyond
the cottage, a youth stood in the road. As Barlow stopped the car beside
him I recognized the tow-haired superintendent of the petrol pumps at
Usher's garage.

"Jump in behind, Bunbury," said Barlow. "When must you be back?"

"Seven o'clock, sir."

"Good. I'll land you here at half-past six."

He drove on till he came to a long, straight stretch of the road about
half way to the Station. There he pulled up.

"Just a precaution," said he. "Bunbury and I don't want anybody but you
to know we've had a chat this afternoon...Now, Bunbury, out with
it!--the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, my lad. And
not a word to anybody else about me or this gentleman. A lad who was
where you were on Wednesday night stands a good chance of putting his
head through a noose if he isn't very careful what he says."

"S'elp me, God, sir--" the boy began. He was hardly more than a
boy--about nineteen.

"Never mind about taking the oath now," said Barlow; "later on,
perhaps."

"I only meant I'd no more to do with it than an unborn baby, sir."

He was in a sweat of apprehension.

"So you say, and I'll believe you if you can account for every
minute--all you did and all you saw between, say, ten and twelve on
Wednesday night. Go on. Ten o'clock: you were at the King's Arms tap in
Kenwick. You left at closing time. How many had you had?"

"So near's I can remember, five pints, sir."

Barlow gave me a wink.

"Stout fellow!" said he. "Not more than that?"

"Only five, sir, I swear," declared Bunbury, oblivious of any irony in
Barlow.

"Let me see--five pints, four per cent, say nearly a gill of pure
alcohol. Quite sober? Not a bit squiffy? Didn't see double?"

The boy hung his head, ashamed.

"I said I'd tell the truth. I was drunk, sir. Just rolling, like. I
could stand up and walk, but it's true I did see double. I seen two of
Mr. Oddie. And before that I seen two cars and two Mr. Parkinsons--and I
scarce knew which to dodge."

I conjured up that lurching figure just escaping the wing of the car.

"Well, never mind. Go on. Ten o'clock you leave the King's Arms--"

"I went straight home--straight as I could. I mean, I didn't stop
nowhere, not to speak of. I remember going past the garridge--"

"Just a minute, Bunbury," said Barlow. "How about the garage? See
anything or anybody there?"

"No, sir. It was all closed up and dark."

"All right. You passed the garage--"

"And then I must have missed the turning into the lane, because I comes
to Morley Ferry Bridge. I says to myself, 'Damn it, George, you're
drunk,' and I turns back--"

"Easy all!" Barlow interrupted him. "How long after you saw the car did
you get to the bridge and turn back?"

But this was beyond him. He could only remember that he had seen the
car, and did reach the bridge and realize his error. He then returned,
and this time he did not miss the lane.

"I can tell you, Barlow," said I. "He was not far this side of the
bridge when we passed him--just outside Ferry Grange."

"That's under a mile from the corner of the lane. Twenty minutes? About,
for him. Well, Bunbury, did you see anything or anybody else before you
turned into the lane?"

"No, sir, not till I was down the lane. I was a bit far gone, and I
leaned up against the fence to rest for a minute, and I s'pose I must
have dozed, for, next thing, I feels somebody jerking the wire, and
wakes up, and somebody jumps into the road close beside me, and says,
'Shsh!--keep back!' And I says, 'I can't keep back no further, Mr.
Oddie'--because I recognized his voice. And he says, angry like, ''Ell!
you're drunk. Get on home!' And so I goes home."

"Are you sure it was Oddie?" asked Barlow. "You couldn't see his face."

"No, 'twas too dark, and there were two of him. I was sort of looking
between him. But I knows him well enough by his voice--and his manner of
speaking."

"Wait a minute, Bunbury..."

Barlow, leaning over the back of the seat, closed his eyes for a few
seconds.

"Is all this gospel?" he asked presently.

"May I die, sir, if--"

"All right--you'll die sure enough if you tell me a single thing that
isn't true. You say you went home. Did the two Mr. Oddies stay there?"

"Don't know. I went home, and I never seen or heard any more of him."

"And where was it he came through the fence?"

"As near as I can tell, about half way from the corner of the lane to
Mr. Usher's house."

"Could he get home to Lorimer House that way?"

"He'd have to climb the fence the other side of the road, cross two
fields, and get in at the back."

"Could you show me the place?"

"Near abouts, I think I could."

"Very well, Bunbury, you shall. And then, after you'd left Mr. Oddie,
you got home. What did you expect to find?--Mr. Usher up?"

"Yes--and a clout on the head for keeping him up."

But he weren't up--leastwise, I thought he weren't. I thought he'd gone
to bed and left the door on the latch for me."

"You don't know what time that was? No? Well, what did you do?"

"I found a lamp lit in the kitchen. I weren't too sure about climbing
the stairs, so I sat down there, listened to the clock ticking, and went
to sleep."

"And then?"

"I waked up with the door opening and people talking. I seen Mr. Usher's
back in the doorway, and heard somebody outside speaking."

"Hear what they said?"

"Yes. The man outside said, 'So that's all right, Usher--not a word
about me, mind.' And Mr. Usher says, 'All right,' and shuts the door and
comes in and sees me."

"And what about the clout on the head?"

"There weren't no clout. He stares a bit, and then comes over and looks
in my eyes for a long time. And he says, very quiet like,
'George--you're drunk. Go to bed.' Just like that. And I went."

"Did you know the time then?"

"Yes, sir, it was a quarter past one by the kitchen clock. I reckon the
sleep must have done me good, because I seen only one of Mr. Usher, and
I seen the clock quite plain."

"It was unusual for Usher to come in at one in the morning. Did he say
anything to you about where he'd been or what happened at the garage?"

"No, sir, he only said the words I've told you."

'And who was the man Usher talked to at the door, Bunbury?"

"It was Mr. Webb, sir."

"Sure?"

"Certain sure."

Barlow threw a look at me. He had done with Mr. Bunbury for the time. He
turned the car, drove back and discharged him at the place where we had
picked him up, and said:

"Now, Bunbury, I suppose Mr. Usher don't get up very early on Sunday
mornings?"

"No, sir, he lies in bed with the paper and does crossword puzzles."

"Well, then, to-morrow morning I shall be at the corner of the lane at
seven o'clock. You're to meet me there and show me where Oddie came over
the fence. And, on your life! not a word to any one."

We left him, standing open-mouthed and crestfallen in the road.

"Useful lad, that! What did I tell you, Masters? Don't we require to
know a little more about Josh? And aren't we getting warm? Now we're
going to put it across Usher--and then I think we'll deserve some
dinner."



V.


We found Usher tinkering with the car on whose running board I had sat
through so nerve-racking a scene three nights before. Barlow's way with
Usher was an intensification of his way with the tow-haired youth. This
appeared to be his second visit to the garage, and I judged that at the
first Usher had shown off his paces in the fashion that so highly amused
Tod Challenger.

Usher looked up as we entered. He dropped his spanner on the floor with
a clang when he saw me.

"Now, my man--" Barlow began.

"Don't you 'my man' me, my man!"

Usher at his surliest! He glared ferociously at Barlow.

"If you give me any of your damned impertinence," Barlow drawled, "I'll
put you where you probably belong--in jail! I've a warrant for your
arrest in my pocket--and damn me if I don't execute it unless you're
civil."

Usher had put one foot forward with a threat. But Barlow's show of
authority deflated him just as old Sergeant Warren's did. He drew back,
said:

"Warrant? What for? Who are you?"

"My name's Barlow. I told you that yesterday. I have all the necessary
authority to deal with you, my man. So just listen to me. When I came
here and asked you some commonplace, polite questions, you didn't answer
but began blowing off your Bolshy opinions about your neighbors and
mankind in general. I don't stand for any more of that. Have you got me?
You can stand on the soapbox as long as you like when I'm not there.
Provided you keep out of jail. Soap-boxes not allowed in his Majesty's
prisons."

Usher's expression was a comic mixture of anger and nervousness.

"If you're a policeman, why didn't you say so?" he asked. "I don't want
any trouble with the police. Warrant? Arrest? What for?"

"If you don't know what for, so much the better for you, my man. We'll
see. You can't bulldoze me--I know too many of your sort. You just
answer a few questions, and answer truthfully. Come into your office
with us and shut the door."

When, in the untidy matchboard shanty that served for an office, he had
cleared enough room for us to sit and himself mounted a stool with an
overalled leg on each side of it, Usher was an image of sullen
wretchedness.

"You know," said Barlow, "that Mr. Masters here was wrongly arrested for
the murder of Parkinson and has been discharged. It's my job to arrest
the right man. It may be one of several people--and you're one of the
several, Usher."

"Me! How the 'ell--"

He stopped as Barlow raised a warning hand and said: "I advise you not
to argue about it. I'm not charging you--and therefore I couldn't make
any use of what you say if you were charged afterwards. But it's quite
evident that you could have done it, Usher, you know. You were here some
little time before Mr. Masters came up. Why did you cut across the field
path when you could have come in the car?"

"I couldn't have come in the car. The car was here already."

"But you didn't know that?"

"I didn't. But anyhow, it ain't so far across the field to the garage as
'tis to the corner of the lane."

"But that's not why you came across the field."

"No, it ain't. I don't mind telling what is. I didn't like Parkinson,
and wouldn't ride in his ruddy car. I had a row with him about some
repairs I did."

"That all?"

"Yes, that's all. I only saw him alive twice--when he brought the car
here and when he took it away. Squeaky little pimp!--"

Usher's temper was running away with him again.

"Well, anyhow, you had, say, two minutes alone with him Wednesday night
before Mr. Masters came up. And every minute of everybody concerned has
to be accounted for. I want to know all that you did and saw and said
between the time you left your house and the time you got back again.
When you reached here the car was standing outside?"

"Yes it was. I thought Parkinson had got tired of waiting for him"--he
nodded towards me--"or didn't care a curse what happened to him, or
thought the garage might be open: the devil knows what a batchy old fool
like him would think or do. Anyhow, there he was."

"How do you know it was Parkinson? You didn't go to speak to him?"

"Me speak to him! Not likely. If it hadn't been for obliging him"--he
nodded my way again--"Parkinson could have waited till now before I
turned out to sell him any gas. I--well, I just saw the car there--and I
was opening up the pump when you came up: you saw me."

It did not need a brain so keen as Barlow's to note the slight
hesitation in Usher's voice, a sort of catch when he said he just saw
the car there. It struck even me. Barlow jumped in instantly.

"You've forgotten something, Usher," said he, quietly.

"Eh? What have I forgot?"

"What you saw at the same time when you saw the car and before you went
to the petrol pump."

"I didn't see anything--not to be certain of."

"Heard, then--come now!" Barlow spoke sternly.

"Well--I heard footsteps in the road."

"Ah! Were they coming, going--or what?"

"How could I tell?"

"Of course you could tell. Don't shuffle!" said Barlow.

"In the end they went away," said Usher, with a baleful eye on his
tormentor.

"Yes--but in the beginning," Barlow persisted. "If they went away
afterwards, they must have come first."

"I didn't hear them coming."

"Then you must have heard them start. Now, Usher--where did they start
from, eh?"

"I can't tell you. All I know is I heard them just as I came up to the
gate."

"Close at hand then--yes? But hurrying--yes? Well, why not say straight
out: 'Somebody was at the car when I came through the gate and startled
them, and they hurried away'?"

Usher didn't stand it well.

"If you're so dam' certain about it," he broke out, "why ask me?"

Barlow took no notice of the interruption.

"Usher," he said, "you knew who it was. You saw him, or you saw
them--even if they did try to keep out of the light. Tell the truth.
You'd better--because I know it!"

"I didn't see clear enough to be sure--and I shan't put a name to 'em. I
ain't going to land any one in trouble--and you can do what you dam'
well like about it."

Barlow considered the lowering face for a minute or two, and said more
gently:

"Well, we'll leave that. If you didn't see clearly, did you hear
anything else?"

"Yes--I heard a car start and stop."

"A car?--sure?" Barlow seemed puzzled.

"Sure enough. I know the sound of a motor."

"Where was it?"

"Couldn't make out. Near by. But not in sight."

This was plainly as new a fact to Barlow as it was to me. He worried it
from all sides with a sharp fire of questions. There was only one road
and the car must have been on it not far from the garage. In which
direction Usher could not tell. He thought it was not as far away as the
lane--and there was no car in the lane, or even on the road between the
lane and the garage, or I should have seen it. Therefore it must have
been beyond the garage in the direction of Kenwick. It started and
stopped--almost immediately. He did not hear it restart. But that was
not surprising, for he was soon preoccupied with the discovery of
Parkinson's body.

In his own rough way, Usher drew a striking picture--himself standing by
the gate that led from the field path into the road shielding his eyes
from the glare of the headlights with his left hand and peering into the
darkness beyond their range, trying to make out two figures which he had
glimpsed. Then hearing the noise of an engine. Then turning to the
pumps, and presently seeing me come up from the opposite direction.

Barlow pondered it for a moment, gazing hard into Usher's eyes.

"Yes--that's all very well," said he. "But when you came through the
gate and saw the car, you must have thought Parkinson was there waiting
for petrol. Everything was normal so far as you knew. Why did you stand
breathless looking down the road to see those two people who had hurried
away?"

Usher snapped a surly jaw.

"You ain't going to get it out of me that way," he growled. "I've told
you I won't put a name to 'em."

Barlow contemplated him silently, their eyes battling, but he did not
pursue the question. Instead he asked:

"How long after you got to the gate did you hear the car down the road?"

To that Usher answered that he might have stood at the gate a minute or
less. And he drew the inference that the people he had seen had reached
the car, started off in it, and then stopped for some casual reason. He
went to unlock the pump, and I came up. After that he thought no more
either about people or car.

"Well," said Barlow, "go on now--to the time when the policemen had
taken away Parkinson's body, and Warren had gone with Mr. Masters, and
you were left alone to lock up. It was near one o'clock in the morning.
Somebody came--"

"How the 'ell--!" Usher pulled up short in his favorite imprecation.

"Somebody came," Barlow repeated calmly. "One of your friends among the
idle rich--one of the blinking bourgeoisie you love so dearly. Not so,
Usher?"

"Well--what about it?" He tried to keep a brave face.

"One in the morning!--strange time for him to be blowing in for a chat,
wasn't it? What about that?"

"I didn't ask him to come."

"I know--but didn't you think it queer that he should be prowling about
that time of night?--that particular night?"

"I did think it queer. I told him so."

"And then you had a little talk, I suppose, about what had just
happened--and perhaps he walked along with you after you'd shut up the
garage, and you came to an agreement to keep your mouth shut about what
you'd seen. Profitable agreement, Usher? How much of his idle riches did
you get, or are you going to get?"

Usher paled under the grime of his face and flinched.

"That's my business. What Mr. Webb pays me for what I do for him is
between us, ain't it? I look after his car."

"Afraid not, Usher. If you knew a bit of law you'd understand that
there's a nasty name for that sort of trade. They call it conspiracy."

"I can't help what they call it," the man said doggedly. "No money's
passed between Webb and me--and you can't prove anything."

"What I can prove will be seen all in good time," said Barlow. "I'd like
to have a look at the bill you were going to send in to him for repairs!
Now--this is how we stand, Usher. You saw Oddie and you saw Webb. I'm
going to suppose that at first you'd no idea there was anything wrong,
and that afterwards you were persuaded by Webb that nothing really was
wrong in spite of appearances. You see--I'm being charitable. But listen
to this, my good fellow--I shall leave off being charitable the minute I
find you're crossing me, and I won't have any mercy on you."

Barlow got up and signaled to me.

"Just two words, Usher. Nothing to be said to anybody about me and my
inquiries. Instant obedience if I ask for any further help or
information. Is it a deal?"

"You've got the cards," said Usher. And that was his submission.

It was like Barlow, having apparently done with the man, to turn
suddenly as he was leaving the office, and explode a fresh question on
him.

"By the way, Usher, how did you spend the evening?"

Usher's brows lowered against this new attack.

"I was here working," said he.

"Till when?"

"Don't know exactly. Till I went home and had a bite--not long before he
came to the door," and he nodded in my direction.

"Anybody come while you were here?"

"No."

"Anybody helping you?"

"No. George Bunbury went off at six, and spent the evening in
Kenwick--and got drunk."

Barlow frowned over this piece of gratuitous information.

"Who's George Bunbury?"

"He's my apprentice."

Barlow considered George Bunbury for a moment. Then he turned away.

"Very well," said he. "That's all for the present. But remember--no
chin-wagging about me, on your life!"

Barlow took with me at the King's Arms the dinner he had earned, myself
the object of much whispering curiosity among the servants. But before
he could get it he was obliged to spend half an hour deciphering a long
telegram in code from Lennox. He showed me the decoded message:

_"Full inquiries Oddie. Not known in connection with X .."_.

"Who's X?" I asked.

"Algebraical symbol--the unknown quantity, our superman. We call him X
until we can equate him."

_"...Reddish opinions. May be tool. But no traces found. Business man.
Son of late H. G. Oddie, former partner Joshua Webb, manufacturer, High
Street, Southwark. Adopted by Webb. Noted for extreme views at
University. College. All time and movements accounted for except he was
expected London Thursday and did not arrive. Not seen since. Convinced
if Oddie leads to nothing some other clew will be found at Kenwick."_

Barlow said he would like to spend a quiet evening smoking a pipe over
the case and go to bed early. "I'm going, to be an early riser
to-morrow." It was a hint to me to make myself scarce. I was not averse
from the idea of an early bed-time. I had last slept in Reading Gaol,
and it seemed a long while ago. But there was Janet...

"I think I shall go for a walk before I turn in, Barlow," said I.

"Go for a _what?_" he cried. "Is there a lunatic asylum near by? If so,
turn in there and ask them to lock you up."

Barlow had risen and glared at me. "What's the uproar?" I asked.

"It must be congenital," he said. "You mean to say you don't realize
even now that you're for it the first time they sight you? You've
slipped through their hands once. Give 'em another chance--" He shrugged
his shoulders. "If you must go to see the girl, take my car and drive
like hell both ways."

"If you think it would be unwise to go--"

"That's a fatuous question. Is it unwise for a moth to fly into a
candle? It is. But you can't stop him. You're grown up. I'm not your
nurse. You ought to be all right in the car. But for heaven's sake be
careful. And tell the girl to be careful too. They'll probably leave her
alone anyhow. But you never know."



VI.


"Janet!"

The headlights lit up her figure standing in the drive as I swept up in
Barlow's car.

"Hello! I just came out on the off-chance you might turn up," said she.
"Too much of a crowd in there...the three of 'em, still chewing over
Mr. Barlow."

I was not sorry to be saved from Mrs. Anderson-Orr and Joshua to-night.
We walked a little on the road.

So they had not been deceived about Barlow? Janet smiled. Nobody could
deceive her mother, she said--not a dozen Barlows, not a hundred
Challengers. But, as it happened, no astuteness of hers had been needed
to unveil Barlow: Joshua had done that. Barlow must have rather thrown
himself around she thought, in the two days of his stay at Kenwick; for
Joshua knew all about his being a policeman and forming a theory that
George Oddie was in the Parkinson affair. So you see--

"Janet--I can call you Janet, can't I?--"

"Anyhow it's better than Miss Anderson-Orr. You can call me Janet if you
don't presume on it. And I'll call you Adolphus if you won't presume on
that."

Janet was throwing out her defenses against sentiment again--and perhaps
stalling off a part of the talk we must have.

"If you call me Adolphus, I shall retaliate with Hortensia or
Ecscholzia, or something botanical," said I.

"But if you call me John, as my relations used to, all will be well."

"All right, John. And what were you going to say before you began to be
personal?"

"I was going to say I thought we two might be perfectly candid with each
other."

"Well, although I've only known you about five days, two of which you
spent in jail--all right."

I began to display my candor at once. I said she must have perceived
that Barlow would stick at nothing to get to the bottom of the Parkinson
affair (although a murder was not exactly his pigeon) because he thought
he could get at the bigger thing through it, and perhaps in the end find
his way to the Unknown Quantity.

I told her how far Barlow had gone after the Oddie clew, and how Joshua
had been dragged into it. I said it looked like being unpleasant for the
people at Ferry Grange, and I hated the thought of unpleasantness for
her. And finally I came round to the thing that really perturbed me.

What had the cry of alarm meant?

What was going to hurt her if Barlow had gone on to the next person on
his list? I knew that he would have mentioned Joshua Webb next. Was that
going to affect Janet--

"John--" she interrupted me (and it was the first time she had used the
name in earnest) "I'm afraid you'll have to trust me."

There was no difficulty about trusting her. That wasn't the point: what
did Janet fear?

"You wouldn't understand. And perhaps the fear was a chimera. I think
it's quite absurd that Joshua Webb should be under suspicion, but,
although he wants to be my stepfather and I rather like him, it wasn't
Joshua that made me cry out. I don't think I can tell you, John. You'll
have to trust me."

"All right, Janet. We'll drop it. If anything Barlow does worries you,
or anybody--your mother for instance--remember that, though I'd like to
see this cleared up, I shall be with you and against him. The deuce of
it is that he noticed your anxiety about that name--"

"Never mind," said she. "I shall know how to deal with Mr. Barlow next
time we meet. Now tell me about Reading Gaol..."

Barlow had already gone to bed when I returned to the King's Arms.

I sat with a pipe before the fire in the coffee-room indulging in an
imaginary orgie of sentiment all the more violent because Janet would
none of the real thing. What a girl she was! What a paragon of
girls!--how open-minded, strong-winded, loyal, frank, clear-eyed,
splendid, yes--and beautiful, unquestionably in a clean-run way--the
dark eyes and the fine skin, the nervous, resolute hand--

And then I seemed to hear Janet calling me a fatuous sentimentalist and
saying I ought to have been christened Adolphus! I knocked out the pipe
and went to bed.

That night was an infernal carnival. I passed it between vivid dreams
and startled awakings--dreaming some grotesque and horrible aspect of
the Parkinson case, waking to dispel it. In one dream I killed Parkinson
myself. Janet reproached and spurned me. Oddie and Webb and Barlow and
Usher sat round and put me through the Third Degree. Usher, swollen to
the dimensions of a giant, like some absurd caricature of a hairy
Bolshevik, abused me profanely and threatened to brain me with a
Brobdingnagian spanner.

And always there was the figure of Mrs. Anderson-Orr in the background
saying _Quelle horreur!_ or bursting into the circle crying _Je sais
tou_!

Mrs. Anderson-Orr persisted remarkably in these nightmares, seeing how
small was my acquaintance with her. So clear was her figure and so real
her voice that in the last of them I woke right up, her words ringing in
my ears--"I know everything! You clever men can't bulldoze me."

I jumped up and lit the candle--the King's Arms boasted no other bedroom
light. To lie looking at the sporting prints on the wall and see the
comforting, solid old furniture was better than going off into that
realm of horrible fantasy. Now I was able to read logic into it. Mrs.
Anderson-Orr, who had seemed a merely gushing and eccentric person on
first acquaintance, had impressed Barlow with her cleverness, and Barlow
was a good judge of character. Janet had said nobody could deceive her
mother, and Janet was a good judge too. That sudden translation of Mrs.
Anderson-Orr from a mere _poseuse_ into a woman to reckon with had
somehow made a deep impression on my sub-consciousness.



VII.


Curiously, the first subject of Barlow's talk when I met him at a very
late breakfast was Mrs. Anderson-Orr. He had been out to keep his
appointment with George Bunbury at seven o'clock. He came back hungry,
zestful, and in high spirits.

"That's a dam' clever woman, Masters--that woman with the two-pronged
name. Sorry!--I oughtn't to use monosyllables on a Sunday. A mighty
clever woman. If you marry her daughter--"

"I say, Barlow--there's a limit of decency! I've known the girl less
than a week."

"What the deuce does that matter? I state a hypothetical case. Note the
'if.' I say if you marry her daughter, you'll have a mother-in-law in a
thousand. A clairvoyant, a thought-reader! Gosh!--get this, Masters:
young George turned up a bit late at the trysting place this morning. We
went down the lane. He wasn't as positive as the Pope about the spot he
looked for. But when he'd sort of fixed it, who should come strolling
down the lane but Mrs. Something-or-Other. Now, how did she know we had
an appointment there, young George and I?"

"Don't be absurd, Barlow! Why should she know? She lives not far away.
Webb's house is close by. She's friendly with Webb."

"M-m--yes. Not long after seven o'clock in the morning, remember.
There's a limit, as you might say, of friendship. But, perpend, my young
friend. She don't show up till George has taken his bearings and settled
where he had his nap, and we're having a look at the fence. Then she and
I, watching each other like cat and dog, catch sight of the same thing
at the same time. I don't say anything about it to her, nor she to me.
She's expressed her surprise at meeting me. She's said, 'Well, George,
how are you?' She's mentioned the weather and the crisp morning air and
a few other things, and said, _'Quel beau matin!'_ And she's preparing
to pass on when she brings off her masterpiece. Gosh!--what a work of
art. She lifts the top wire of the fence--a top strand of barbed wire it
is--and stoops and gets through into the field. I rush over to help keep
up the wire. She says, 'Thanks--it's liable to catch in one's clothes,
isn't it? I sometimes cut across this way to Lorimer House. Only the
other morning I tore my dress. Safe this time. Good morning, Mr. Barlow.
_Merci bien!'_ And away she goes. A perfect masterpiece! Can you beat
it?"

"Shouldn't think it a very difficult feat for an active woman to climb
through a wire fence, Barlow," said I.

"I return your compliment: don't be absurd. This is the thing we both
saw at once," he said, dropping his toast to pull out a pocket book,
from which he extracted a scrap of damp rag. "That's the place where she
tore her dress one of those often mornings when she took a short cut to
Lorimer House. When one hasn't got a cavalier like you, Mr. Barlow, to
hold up the nasty wire for one, one's liable to tear one's dress, isn't
one? Quite so, dear lady. And if, Mr. Barlow, you come across that bit
of stuff while you're prying and poking around this way, you'll know
when and how it got there, won't you, Mr. Barlow? Quite so, dear lady.
Can you beat it, Masters?"

"It seems a bit far-fetched," I ventured.

Barlow shook his head.

"I can see 'em yesterday at Ferry Grange, after we left. I can hear 'em.
'That fellow Barlow's going to be a nuisance, Amelia,' or whatever her
name is. _'Je te crois_, Joshua!' 'He'll be nosing about everywhere,
Amelia; he'll be getting at that drunken young swine, George. He'll go
down there and see what he can find.' _'Mon Dieu_, Joshua, I ripped a
bit off my dress! If it should still be there he'll find that, Joshua!'
'Yes, Amelia, and the ground being very soft just there, he'll also find
footprints.' 'So he will, Joshua! _Que faire?'_ 'Damned if I know,
Amelia.' 'But I do, Josh--I'm a resourceful woman, I am. I'll go down
there first thing in the morning before he's likely to get at it. Sunday
morning--nobody about. I'll find whether that bit of my dress is still
there, and I'll see what can be done about the footprints.' 'Oh,
Amelia--you _are_ a resourceful woman. Let me kiss you!'"

I got a laugh out of Barlow's farcical fancy. But it was only momentary.

"If there's anything in your highly imaginative theory, Barlow--"

"Oh, come off it! You aren't writing a leading article, Masters.
Anything in it? Why it yells at you! Remember the girl? Now--why was she
scared stiff when I Went through that catalogue of people who were in
the danger zone on Wednesday night? Because she knew who one of 'em
was."

"But it's preposterous!" I cried.

"Can't see anything preposterous in it. Not that I think any ill of Mrs.
Kellbo-Matta. I've a great admiration for her. But I'm not so sure of
the prophet Joshua. Josh is fishy. Josh has got wind up. I want to know
a lot more about Josh. And if Mrs. Echo-de-Paris can tell me some of it,
she's got to."

Barlow's fertility in nicknames for Mrs. Anderson-Orr was exhaustless.
He seemed to have a real dislike for double-barreled names, and
especially for Anderson-Orr.

"What d'you mean, Barlow, by 'Got to'? Third Degree stuff?"

"Far from it, my precious innocent. Can you see me applying the Third
Degree to that woman? Why, she'd revel in it. The thrills she'd get out
of it--without being the least bit of use to me! No, she will tell me
unawares--"

"Because, Barlow, if there was to be any Third Degree stuff with Mrs.
Anderson-Orr, I should have to quit."

With what mock horror Barlow received the possibility of my desertion I
need not relate. He implored me not to leave him in the lurch and
indulged in many other pleasantries; but he did make it plain that he
intended nothing whatever to discommode Mrs. Anderson-Orr: he would
leave her to discover her secret to him by her own action.

Whether it was Barlow's perspicacity or whether it was sheer chance, the
very next day seemed to provide exactly the kind of action that would be
most luminous to Barlow.

We kept our luncheon engagement with Abbott. There were only two of us:
Tod did not arrive at Kenwick in time. The place was "unkempt" as Abbott
had said--but how friendly and cheerful in the daylight compared with
its aspect on Wednesday night!

As Barlow steered along the untidy curling drive, he said, "Shan't have
time to go down to the river after lunch. The old boy's sure to want us
to go--but cry off, will you? I've got to get back. And it don't matter,
because I had a good look at the place on my own yesterday."

"Oh?" said I wonderingly.

"Yes--while you were philandering I came up the river. I didn't go to
the house. A little essence of Abbott goes a long way with me. Can't
stand frequent doses. Journalists are bad enough, but--"

"Find anything?" I asked.

"Oh, just trampled undergrowth here and there--but in a big wild place
like that, talk about needles in haystacks! No--nothing significant.
Here we are--Gosh! that's been some house in its day," said he, as we
swung round alongside the tall portico.

The luncheon was a simple affair, waited on by the girl who had shouted
out the window to Warren. The man Paynter, who seemed to be one of those
jacks-of-all-trades you find in moderate country houses, served wine and
kept a general eye on arrangements.

There were only two topics--Parkinson and my ill-luck, and Abbott's
letter to _The Times_. I asked him whether they had found anything in
Parkinson's room that threw light either on Parkinson or on his enemies:
but he evidently had some doubt whether he ought to discuss these
matters in the presence of a stranger like Barlow--so at any rate I
gathered from the polite glance he gave somewhat askance. He said merely
that Sergeant Warren had fully examined the room and sealed it up again.
What was discovered he had not heard, but, he gathered, nothing to
elucidate the events of Wednesday night.

I caught a lift of Barlow's eyebrows and a twinkle of his eye while he
listened to these sententious periods.

But they were nothing by contrast with the discourse we heard when
Barlow mentioned the letter to _The Times_. Abbott got right into his
stride, raised his banner, and flapped nobly until we had come to the
end of the cigar and it was time to go. We were given to understand that
the second letter, when it appeared, would flap even more vigorously.

The old fellow was disappointed that we could not have a look over the
place. We must come again when the shadow of the dreadful tragedy had
faded away ..

Barlow, during this hour or so, had appeared to labor under uneasy
constraint. I put it down to the fact that he was playing a part, since
Abbott might be supposed not to know his real character. I said
something of this as we drove back. Barlow shook his head.

"Oh, no!--the old gentleman knew very well. In fact, everybody within
five miles knows very well that I'm the Police Commissioner in disguise,
and you're the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, still
better disguised," he said, grinning. "He's only too polite to mention
it. Quite the thing to maintain an air of mystery. Didn't you see his
anxious look at me when you spoke of Parkinson's room? But look here,
young man, this joy-riding and bean-feasting is a fearful waste of time.
There's bigger business doing. I want to see Challenger, and then I'm
going to ask you both to get busy."

Tod was at the King's Arms waiting.

"Got your message, Barlow," said he. "What's in the wind?"

"Great activity on all fronts," Barlow replied. "Large pieces of
camouflage hung over the landscape in all directions. I'm hanging some
of them myself. Much movement going on behind. I've got a line on Oddie.
I've been to a magistrate and got a warrant for his arrest--"

"What for? Are you charging him with the murder? Got as far as that?"
Tod asked, while I stared at Barlow, amazed that he had said nothing of
this to me.

"Not quite so far. Charge?--being concerned in the death, etcetera. The
charge don't matter much. It's Oddie I want. The police are on it. Hue
and cry. Everybody will know this afternoon. All on the look out for
Oddie. But, you know, Challenger, the warrant is only the salt and you
have to get hold of the bird before you can put it on his tail. And
Oddie's a fly bird."

Tod seemed rather overwhelmed by Barlow's loquacity.

"And all this means--just what, Barlow?"

"A job for you and Masters--to watch the activity on one of the fronts.
Here's the association of ideas for you: when you think of Oddie you
think of the prophet Joshua, and when you think of Joshua, you think
of--what is it you call 'em over there, Tod?--his sweetie. Now, I think
it looks as if Josh is trying to put one over on me. Probably Mrs.
Arc-de-Triomphe invented it: rather too clever for a solo effort by
Josh. But, pull devil, pull baker. I want two volunteers to go over the
top."

"The man's gone potty, like Parkinson!" said Tod. "What the dickens are
you getting at, Barlow?"

"I want two sleuths, each to glue his nose to the trail. It's like this.
The prophet Joshua leaves for London by the 4.07 train this afternoon.
It's the first time he's been to London since June. Enough to make you
curious, isn't 't? Mrs. Cote-d'Or will depart for an unknown destination
by motor car about five o'clock. I think her intention is that I should
follow one of these trails--which one she probably does not much
care--while things happen on the home front. I judge so by the infinite
pains which have been taken to spread these plans before my innocent
eyes. On the other hand, Mrs. Kensington-Gore may be even more subtle
than that: she may have argued with herself that I should see through a
single cross and put up a double one. Anyhow, I'm going to stick to the
home front. Are you two willing to do the scouting?"

I was certainly not willing to spy on Mrs. Anderson-Orr. Tod, however,
had none of my compunctions--thought he might enjoy trailing her.
Distasteful as the whole scheme was to me, in the end I agreed to keep
an eye on Webb, and I traveled to London in the same train with him.

At Kenwick Station you cannot lose yourself in the crowd, which consists
of only one porter, and thus remain hidden from your fellow passenger.
Joshua and I therefore traveled in the same compartment. I was smitten
with helpless astonishment when I found not the morose and standoffish
Joshua of Saturday afternoon but the jolly Joshua of the bathing party,
indeed a more effusive Joshua than ever. If somebody had that morning
left Joshua a great fortune or told him a supreme joke he could not have
been in higher spirits.

I almost resented it. How could one get into a sleuthlike frame of mind
if his quarry would sit in the opposite corner of the carriage and laugh
and quiz and slap him on the knee, and insist upon being frank to the
verge of impertinence? Something had happened to restore and even
heighten Joshua's native hilarity. I suppose Barlow would have said that
Something was what a first-class sleuth would discover--but I found
myself instead rather enjoying Joshua, thinking what a rollicking sketch
one could write of this almost spherical human container of merriment,
and even sharing in the laughter which he raised at the expense of
Barlow!

It appeared that Barlow had excited Joshua to exhausting fits of
amusement by dogging his movements.

"You know, I oughtn't to do it--I feel that," said Joshua. "After all,
though I only saw Parkinson once in my life, a murder's a nasty thing,
and this one's very grim and mysterious. Nobody knows that better than
you, eh? But, 'pon my life, I can't help being struck comic when I think
of that chap! Coming down here and pretending--as if everybody who ever
was in London didn't know all about Barlow! I'm always disappointed in
great men when I see 'em. Never come up to expectations. And here's the
great Mr. Barlow, who's supposed to know all the secrets of the
world--and, what do you think, Mr. Masters?--I feel certain _he believes
I murdered Parkinson!"_

Joshua bent over (this was one of the times when he slapped me on the
knee) and went almost into an apoplexy of laughter.

"God bless my soul!" exclaimed Joshua, when he had recovered from this
paroxysm, "this is what we pay a quarter of a million a year to the
Secret Service for--so that Mr. Barlow can discover that Joshua Webb
killed Parkinson!"

And he went off again.

What could the most determined detective do with a man like this? Before
we ran into Paddington he had tickled himself into more paroxysms with
anecdotes of Barlow prowling about the lanes looking for pins the
murderer might have dropped, Barlow peeping through the hedges at the
back of Lorimer House, Barlow gathering pearls of priceless information
from the lips of that young scapegrace George Bunbury. But Joshua never
mentioned Oddie. Nor Usher. And I was correspondingly mute on both
subjects.

And what can the sleuth do with a quarry who insists on taking him in a
taxi anywhere he wants to go? The proper course would have been for
Joshua to take one taxi and me another, and for me to say to my driver,
"Follow that cab--not too close, but for heaven's sake don't lose sight
of him." But Joshua, not knowing in what capacity I accompanied him,
would not be denied the privilege of driving me to any point I selected
between Paddington and Southwark Bridge, he himself being on the way to
the factory of permanent hair-wavers which he had created and Oddie was
now running.

I had to choose quickly. So I elected for Fleet Street (which gave me
access to the land of Alsatia where the _Morning Telegram_ lived) and
trusted to luck. I bungled my first trail very badly. By the time I had
pretended to dodge, across the street and succeeded in finding another
taxi, Joshua was hopelessly lost. The taxi driver no doubt thought me
insane when I told him to go to the _Telegram_ office which I could have
reached in sixty seconds by walking.

The reception I had from the boys, Flaherty's torrent of words, Allen's
command to write a series on "How It Feels to be Charged with Murder,"
the buzz of excitement in the office--all the demonstrations that made
me realize myself as a national celebrity (for three days only)--are
nothing to the point of the narrative. That came an hour afterwards when
the quarry rang up the sleuth, asked him if he was at a loose end this
evening, and whether he would dine and go to a show!

I went to my rooms and bathed and changed, and I dined with Joshua at
his hotel. He favored the Effingham, in Howard Street, one of those
several small hostelries in the quiet streets between the Strand and the
River, near the Temple, which I believe still pay tribute in the form of
rent to the Majesty of the Law. We dined well. Joshua dined very well.
He got lit up. He spoke with emotion of the joys of the country, but, as
he said, with a sparkling eye, London was London after all. Just once in
a while, you know, my boy; now and then; occasionally. Joshua was in the
repetitive stage of illumination. Finally, replete, seeing the world in
a roseate light, we leaned back lordly in a taxi on the way to a West
End Talkie. But before that Joshua had said:

"I'm an old fashioned fellow, Masters, my boy; I like the old ways, I
do. Nothing like the old ways. What would you say if I gave you a
toast--just a little sentiment--over the last glass? What would you
say?"

What I did say was that the idea struck me as an excellent one.

Joshua delicately raised the basket in which the cobwebby bottle
reposed, and filled my glass and his. He held the wine up to the light,
and it glowed hardly more intensely than the rich color of Joshua's
shining face.

"I give you," said he, "a Woman in a Thousand!"

"I drink to the Woman in a Thousand!" I replied.

For a moment I thought Joshua was going to maudle.

"Masters, my boy!" said he. "You're a nice young fellow. Choose your
friends well, my boy. There's a lot to it. I don't want to be personal,
but when I think of that chap Barlow--"

Whereupon, instead of maudling, Joshua had another spasm of mirth. In an
instant he became solemn again.

"Shall I take you into my confidence, young man? I'm nearly old enough
to be your father. I've been a widower twenty-five years. Twenty-five
years is a long time. You can't be more than twenty-five. But I like
you. Come on. Let's go to a show together. Make a night of it..."

Whatever confidence Joshua contemplated giving me evaporated and sailed
away with the perfume of his port and the smoke of his cigar. At
midnight, the sleuth brought the quarry back to his hotel and went up in
the lift with him to his room and saw that he was in the fair way to a
suit of pyjamas and a comfortable bed. And before he left, the quarry
had vowed the sleuth to eternal brotherhood and engaged him to breakfast
at nine in the morning.

Not being a seasoned vessel like Joshua, I had been quite unable to keep
his pace, and was not so sorry for myself when I woke up as I imagined
he must be. A little cool reflection not only convinced me that
sleuthing was not my predestined mission in life, but also induced some
doubts about the conclusions I had formed on Joshua the night before. He
was truly a seasoned vessel and I was a greenhorn. There might be a
measure of subtlety, hitherto unsuspected, in his attitude towards
Barlow and his convivial treatment of me.

Came Tod, surprisingly bursting into my bedroom at half past eight, to
confirm the suggestion that this farce had something more than a comic
purpose.

"Hello, Tod!--thought you were trailing a lady in a motor car--"

"I am--or I have been--_pardieu!_" said Tod with a grimace. "By gum,
young man, Barlow is the goods. No flies on Barlow!"

This testimonial to Barlow, coming on top of my morning reflections,
still further impressed me with my tender verdancy. Under the jolly
influence of Joshua, I had been quite convinced by midnight that Barlow
was a highly overrated person. Now--

Tod had, with infinite precaution, tracked Mrs. Anderson-Orr in a very
straightforward journey in her own motor-car, driven by her own
chauffeur, to London. She stayed at the Melbury, a private hotel in
Bloomsbury, and the chauffeur garaged the car near by. Mrs. Anderson-Orr
did not leave the hotel during the evening. She was there now, and the
car was still in the garage. With the aid of a little palm-oil Tod had
been able to ascertain that she had ordered the car for 9.30, and he had
rushed round to the Adelphi on the off-chance of finding me and
comparing notes. The same lubricant had released into his hands two
facts--

That Mrs. Anderson-Orr had rung up the Effingham Hotel in Howard Street
at ten o'clock last evening and had rung off again immediately.

That she had repeated the call at 7.30 this morning and held a
conversation lasting six minutes.

Upon this Tod had paid a visit to the Effingham Hotel and consulted the
register.

"And found that Joshua is staying there," said I.

"That's what I call real sleuth-work," Tod remarked, with mocked
admiration.

"I'd greatly like to have heard what Mrs. Anderson-Orr said to her
powder-puff last night when she rung up Joshua and found he wasn't
there, Tod," said I. And I told him the epic story of the sleuth and his
quarry. I also said I was just setting out for the Effingham to
breakfast with Joshua.

"Barlow is the goods, though, what say?" said Tod. "You and I, dogging
the movements of a sentimental middle-aged couple who've agreed to have
a razzle together in town! A sight for the gods. Wonder what Barlow's
idea was? Wanted to be rid of us for a day or two, you bet. He's getting
on to something. I shall have to oil up the jolly old typewriter soon.
Now I'll walk along the Strand with you and say Hello to Joshua."

But when we arrived at the Effingham and asked for Joshua, the girl at
the desk said:

"Mr. Masters? There's a note for you."

I opened it, and glanced at the signature--"Joshua Webb." Tod and I read
it together:

Effingham Hotel, W.C. 2,

September 1929.

DEAR MR. MASTERS,

I am sorry to have to ask you to excuse me this morning. I find your
friend B. has been a little more attentive than I like to me and my
affairs. I will assume that you, whose company I enjoyed so much, were
quite unaware of the extremely absurd and impolite conduct of B., and
that another friend of yours will in due course realize that what he has
done in respect of a certain lady is a poor return for the hospitality
he has received. As I shall not, be returning here and expect to be
absent from Kenwick for some little time, I imagine we are hardly likely
to meet again.

Yours, etc.,

JOSHUA WEBB.

Tod and I looked sorrily at each other.

"Punctured!" said Tod. "What a woman! I could have sworn she never saw
so much as an eyelash of me. Come on, Masters! Bloomsbury's our last
hope."

But the quarry had escaped from Bloomsbury. The Melbury knew her no
more. Mrs. Anderson-Orr had given fresh orders. A gentleman called for
her at half-past eight, and they went away in the car together.

"Breakfast at nine, my boy. Bring an appetite. I like you. I have
confidence in you. But that chap, Barlow--he tickles me to death.." I
could see Joshua swaying about as he pulled off his clothes.

On the steps of the Melbury, Tod and I exchanged condolences.

"Good old Erasmus!" said Tod. "Let the cobbler stick to his last, eh?
Shall you go down to Kenwick again and face Barlow?"

I did not much care whether I faced Barlow or not. But I was certainly
going down to Kenwick--by the next train.



VIII.


I read Abbott's letter in _The Times_ on the way down. It had the honor
of large type and a place in the middle page, and was headed "The Murder
in Berkshire."

Abbott began by saying that as his name had been necessarily mentioned
in the reports of the tragedy at Kenwick he wrote reluctantly; but he
felt an urge of public duty to point out how this case reénforced the
arguments he had used in his previous letter. Rumors, he said, suggested
a remote and mysterious motive for the murder of Mr. Parkinson. He could
not discuss that, but he wanted to point out how the unimaginative
traditions of the police, etc., etc...unfortunate arrest of a young
man who obviously could not have any motive whatever for murdering Mr.
Parkinson, involving concentration on a false clew while the real clews
no doubt fade out, etc., etc...

"This," said Abbott, "is not mere slackness. I would be the last man to
accuse our painstaking official world of slackness. It is just lack of
imagination--the continuance of that outworn but persistent insular
tradition that nothing really untoward can happen in England--and
certainly nothing which has never happened before!..."

And having finished his peroration Abbott added a sort of postscript
inviting people of like mind with himself to communicate with him, with
the object of forming a kind of Vigilance Committee to watch these
matters and bring pressure to bear on Parliament.

When I faced Barlow at Kenwick, he was almost as hilarious as Joshua.
Several things conspired to make him merry. He had read Abbott's remarks
about the Official Mind. He knew already the story of Joshua's binge
down to the last detail. Our discomfiture that morning was no secret to
him.

No, he said--he had not been talking to Tod on the phone...

"Then, Barlow," I protested, "you must have had professionals on the
job, and why the deuce did you make fools of us by sending us off on
that wild-goose chase?"

Barlow was not only hilarious. He was excessively secretive, chuckled
over the London adventure, said we'd wrought better than we knew, done a
jolly good day's work, and so forth, told me he was hot on the track of
Oddie, and left it at that.

As he seemed to have no need and little desire for my company, I went
off after lunch on foot to Ferry Grange. There that afternoon began the
most sinister of all the developments of the Parkinson case.

The lawn at Ferry Grange was deserted. A maid came to me in the hall
when I rang. She was dressed with hat and coat, and had been apparently
just on the point of going out. Mrs. Anderson-Orr, she said, was not at
home. Nor Miss Anderson-Orr. Mrs. Anderson-Orr was in London. Miss Janet
was out. She did not know when Miss Janet would be in.

The maid spoke strangely, spasmodically, almost pantingly. I hesitated a
moment or two.

Did she know where Miss Janet had gone? No? Then I thought I would wait
on the lawn till she came back.

"Very good, sir--of course."

The girl looked so agitated that I said:

"Everything all right? You don't seem too well."

"Oh--Sir!" She broke down utterly, grabbed me by the lapels of my coat,
and hung on, sobbing. Something queer here. My own pulse began to beat
up.

"Better now? Calm yourself. What's up?" I said encouragingly.

"Oh, sir, I'm sorry. But--"

And then it came out in a torrent.

The mistress was away, and had taken Geeson, the only man about the
place, to drive the car; and, in the absence of Miss Janet, only herself
and the cook were left, and they could do nothing with her--

"Nothing with whom?" I asked, sharply.

"Miss Helen, sir. I do believe she's gone mad, and the telephone won't
work, and we can't call the doctor. I was just going--"

"Where is she?"

"In her room asleep now. I was just going--"

"Never mind where you were going. Out with it, my girl: what's the
matter? Where's Miss Janet?"

"I really and truly don't know, sir."

She was a young girl, very nervous, almost hysterical.

"Go and fetch the cook. Bring her to me. I'll wait here. Hurry!" I
adjured her.

I was not kept waiting a minute. The cook came, breathless, eager: so
glad I'd come--she'd been on the point of sending for the doctor--

"Where's Miss Janet?" I interrupted her impatiently

"I really don't know, sir."

"She's not with her mother?"

"No--Mistress went to London yesterday. Miss Janet was to have stayed
here. She was here last night--"

"Yes, yes--don't beat about the bush, Cook. What's happened?"

My temples were thrumming.

"But this morning she wasn't here, and Miss Helen--well!--"

"What do you mean by wasn't here? Where was she?"

One asks silly, unanswerable questions under stress, and the pressure of
the presentiment I felt about Janet was intolerable. But I might have
asked questions till Doomsday and the cook could have told me nothing
that mattered. All her information came from the maid, and it was this:

Miss Janet and Miss Helen had dined together, sat in the drawing room
reading till ten o'clock, and then gone to bed. As there was no man on
the premises, and Ferry Grange was a rather lonely house, and the
terrible affair at Usher's garage had got on their nerves, Cook and the
maid went round the house together and carefully bolted every window and
shutter and locked every door till they felt quite safe in their
citadel.

Cook slept undisturbed. Not so the maid. She heard noises in the
night--could not say when, nor could she say what sort of noises: simply
that sounds of some sort awakened her. It was still very dark. She stole
out of bed and opened her door. Then she detected voices in the room
below, which was Helen's. She recognized the voices--Janet's and
Helen's. She thought she must have awakened soon after going off to
sleep, and the two girls were having a last chat before retiring to bed;
so she softly closed her door and got between the sheets again.

In the morning she was surprised when eight o'clock passed and Janet had
not come down: she usually appeared at half past seven, and took a turn
in the garden before breakfast at eight. At half past eight the maid
went into her room. Janet was not there. She went to Helen's room. Helen
was partly dressed and lying half on the floor and half on the sofa at
the foot of her bed, and the bed was undisturbed.

The maid, greatly frightened, touched her shoulder. She turned and
screamed out "George!" She looked so wild that the maid thought she had
gone mad and rushed away to the cook, who returned with her to the room.
Helen was demented, raving. She shrieked with laughter when they asked
if she knew where Janet was. She could answer no questions. She was
uncontrollable--apparently in high fever.

Cook ran down to the telephone to ring up the doctor at Kenwick, but
could not get the exchange: the thing was out of order. The maid would
not leave Cook in the house alone, and would not let Cook leave her. The
morning passed in attempts to pacify Helen and make her go to bed. Cook
tried her with aspirin. She would take no food and no medicine. At last
they had persuaded her to drink a cup of tea. Cook had bethought her of
two tiny pills left from some prescribed to make her sleep during a bout
of neuralgia. She had dissolved both pills in the cup of tea, and in an
hour Helen was sleeping like a log. They had lifted her on to her bed,
covered her up, and the maid was about to set off for Usher's to ring up
the doctor from there when I arrived.

I listened to all this with such patience as I could muster.

Helen was ill. But Helen could have a doctor. Whereas Janet--

"What can have become of Miss Janet?"

They goggled at me. Neither of them had any idea of what might have
happened to Miss Janet. I had to take this into my own hands.

"Show me the telephone," I said.

But the telephone would not work. I tinkered with the terminals to no
purpose. The telephone was dead.

"Stay here and keep guard," said I. "Touch nothing. I'll be back very
soon."

With a hard-pumping heart I ran and loped the half mile to Usher's
place. He looked up from his endless job on the dismantled car and
scowled. I collected enough wind to say:

"Sorry to trouble, but may I use your telephone? Urgent."

He growled out, "If it's Barlow you want, he's down at Webb's."

"Webb's!" I stared down on him. "I understood Mr. Webb was away--"

"All right. I daresay he is"--and the surly devil turned back to his
work and took no further notice of me. I would certainly not be obliged
to him for even a telephone call. Anyhow, whether he was right about
Barlow or not there would be a telephone at Webb's. I resumed the lope
along the road and turned in for the first time at the gate of Lorimer
House, wondering what Barlow could be at, but too pre-occupied with my
fears for Janet to think hard about it.

Webb's drive was a straight road across a large meadow, fenced with
wire, and the house was sheltered from the North and concealed from the
road by a plantation of firs. I had passed through the little wood and
come in sight of a walled garden and a low pitched roof beyond it when I
saw Barlow come out of the stable yard opposite the garden. I shouted,
but he had already seen and waited for me.

"Well run!" said he. "Training for a Marathon?"

"Don't play the goat, Barlow!" I pumped out. "Listen!"

Leaning against the wall of the stable-yard I told him breathlessly what
I had found at Ferry Grange. He heard me out without interruption. Then
he said, "I'll go over with you. Wait here a moment. Sit down!--you're
all in. Get your breath."

He went back into the yard and was absent three or four minutes.

"Save your wind, Masters," he advised me as we started. "It's a mile.
I'm not going to run--don't think it, not at my age. And I'll answer all
the questions you're going to ask me. First, I don't know what's
happened to your girl and I can't guess. Next, I took advantage of the
absence of Josh to do a little perquisition on his premises, with
interesting results. Next, I'm hot on the scent of Oddie. And next, the
sudden and mysterious illness of Miss Adamson makes the scent livelier
still. And finally, I have hopes of a great coup--if nobody will
interfere with me and all my friends will do exactly what I ask 'em. Got
that?"

"If you mean me, Barlow," I answered, "I'll not interfere in the least
so long as you put no obstacle in the way of finding out what's happened
to Miss Anderson-Orr. And I'll do anything you ask--barring another
asinine expedition like yesterday's."

"You're worried," he said, soothingly. "I'll ask nothing unreasonable.
But, on your honor, if you detect any special suggestion in anything I
do, don't even blink an eyelid over it. I'm reaching a crisis...Now,
about your Janet--has it occurred to you that there may be a very simple
explanation? If you were still trailing Joshua and his inamorata, you
might also find yourself trailing the girl, you know."

"You don't mean to insinuate, Barlow, that she--"

"Keep the foils on, young man!" he exclaimed. "Don't mean anything to
any one's discredit. I just suggest that you may be getting wind up
about nothing. Let's keep cool."

But even Barlow lost some of his complacency when we went into the
question at Ferry Grange--and I had a striking lesson in his methods.

He first ingratiated himself with Cook and the maid (she was called
Bessie), told them what plucky women they were, and succeeded in three
minutes in getting their tails up.

A bit of a psycho-analyst in his way, Barlow! It was wonderful what a
change came over them when he had rid them of their inferiority complex.
Then we were able to get a lucid story of the night.

First he asked to see Helen. We tip-toed into her room. She slept under
an eider down, as still as a dead girl, her face perfectly calm.

"Powerful dose you gave her, Cook!" said Barlow. "Best thing you could
have done. Two pellets, eh? M-m--...twenty grains of hydrate of
chloral, I shouldn't wonder. Probably she won't wake up for hours.
She'll be all right, I expect--so don't trouble about doctors till
then."

Helen's room revealed nothing: its disorder was Helen's own doing.

Janet's room--I remained on the threshold while Barlow explored Janet's
room. And it was as he stood there and looked around long and patiently
as if he would photograph every detail on his memory, that Barlow's
complacency changed to anxiety. What I myself could see was chaotic
confusion everywhere except on the white bed, which was neat and
untouched. Clothes were scattered about the floor, chairs out of place,
a wardrobe door half open--

Bessie began to apologize for the state of the place: she would have
tidied up but for the trouble with Miss Helen.

Barlow turned sharply on her and asked: "This is how the room was when
you came in this morning?"

"Yes, sir."

"Miss Janet a tidy young lady as a rule?"

"Why," said Cook, "she's what I call finicky! Never a thing out of
place."

"You were too flustered about Miss Helen, I suppose, Bessie, to give it
a thought?"

"Yes, sir."

"Never seen the room like this before?--No? Now step across here and
don't touch anything, but look in the wardrobe and tell me what's
missing. I suppose you know Miss Janet's things, more or less?"

"Yes, sir."

The maid stood by Barlow's side. "Well?" said he.

"Her big blue coat's gone, sir."

"Any dress that you can remember?"

"No, sir--all the hangers are full."

"That frock on the floor there by the foot of the bed--did she wear that
yesterday?"

"She had it on last evening, sir."

"Those shoes?"

"Yes, she wore those."

"Don't see any walking shoes," said Barlow.

"I take them downstairs, sir, every evening."

"Now, Bessie, go back to the door. Don't touch anything."

He fished out of his pocket a pair of thin rubber gloves. "The
window--always open by night?"

"Yes, sir."

"Like that--down at the top? What's outside?" He stepped across, looked
hard at sash and glass, and with gloved hands raised the lower half of
the window and leaned out. "Sheer wall. Garden bed underneath. Your
bedroom window above, Bessie?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well--we'll go up there...Very nice room, and so tidy," said
Barlow. "You keep your window open same way, Bessie, I see. And that's
where you woke up when you heard a noise. Don't know what noise?--you
just woke up. Then you heard voices. Women's voices. And you went
outside on the landing and heard the young ladies talking. Nothing
strange in that. So you went to bed again. Didn't hear anything else? No
moving furniture or bumping about in Miss Janet's room?"

"No, sir, nothing."

"Let's go downstairs," said Barlow.

We trooped down after him to the hall where the telephone stood on a
side table.

Barlow picked up the receiver, listened, and put it on again. He walked
out to the terrace, looked for the telephone wire coming across the
grounds and traced it to its insulator on the eaves. Below that the wire
hung loose. It had been snicked near the tube which led it into the
house through the corner of a window frame. He glanced at me.

"Steady!" said he. "We'd better restore communications first."

From the same capacious pocket that held the rubber gloves, he produced
a regular burglar's outfit of tools and a bit of flex. He had soon
joined the ends of the wire. Back in the hall, he told Cook to ring up
the exchange.

"Say nothing about this, nothing about me. Just say the telephone's been
out of order all day and you want to know whether anybody's been calling
you."

We stood round while Cook obeyed this instruction. We heard her say,
"Trunk call? Where from? Bristol? Thank you..."

Barlow put his hand over the mouth of the transmitter.

"Now ask her what time the call came from Bristol and the name of the
exchange," he whispered.

There was a wait this time.

"Yes?" said Cook. "At 12.15 from--what did you say?--Pilton?--No? F for
father--oh, yes, Filton."

Barlow signed to Cook to ring off.

"Now, who opened up the house this morning?" he asked, his look flitting
between the two women. "Or anyhow, who opened the hall door?...You, I
see, Bessie!"

A blazing color had rushed over the girl's cheeks.

"If Cook had opened it, she'd have noticed that the bolts were all drawn
and the chain off--"

The cook uttered an astonished cry and collapsed on a chair beside the
telephone. The girl hung her head.

"Why didn't you tell the truth at the beginning?" Barlow said, not
unkindly. "Then you'd not have been obliged to act a lie all day. You
didn't wish your young mistress any harm, did you? No--you didn't guess
what it meant at the time. But you must have guessed this morning."

"Oh, sir!" She began to cry.

"That's enough," said Barlow. "Stop that. It won't mend things. Was this
the first time you'd let him in?"

"Oh, sir," she sobbed. "I didn't let him in. Indeed I didn't. Only she
was afraid if she went to the door after we'd locked up, Cook might see
her. And she begged me to go down and put it on the latch."

"Well? And then, when you woke up with the noises--if ever you'd been to
sleep, which I doubt--you knew there was a man down there talking, and
you knew who the man was. All right up to now--I don't say you meant
anything wrong. But this morning--why didn't you tell the truth then?
Eh? Come now--why not?"

"She was in such a way, sir--and I'd heard--"

"Yes?--what had you heard?"

"I'd heard what they said about him and the murder of Mr. Parkinson,
sir, and I didn't believe it, and she--"

Bessie broke down finally.

I expect my face had offered the same vision of bewilderment as Cook's
during this scene. Cook sat with her head against the wall and her eyes
almost bolting as Barlow questioned the shaking maid. I stood transfixed
with alarm.

"You've done a lot of harm," said he, taking her by the shoulder with a
jerk, "and you'll have plenty of time to be sorry for yourself. Now be
sorry for other people a minute or two and answer a few straight
questions. Had Miss Helen seen Oddie here before?--I mean since
Saturday?"

Between her spasms of sobbing she said she believed Miss Helen had
talked to him out of the window on Sunday night. Did Miss Janet know of
that? She thought Miss Janet did, and that it displeased her.

When did she go down and put the door on the latch? As soon as Cook was
in her bedroom.

What time was it when she heard Oddie talking on the floor below her
room? It was half past twelve.

Was Miss Janet speaking angrily? Very angrily. She was afraid, indeed,
that Cook would hear the quarrel. She got panic-stricken and went back
into her room and locked the door.

Did she listen again? Yes, but not till she had waited a long time. How
long? Perhaps an hour. All that hour she heard nothing. Then there was a
sound of bumping about below, and she was afraid--she could hardly say
what she was afraid of--just afraid. She got out of bed and crept on to
the landing. But then everything was still and dark. And that was all.

But such an All!

"Barlow, for God's sake say what you think has happened to her!" I
begged him.

"Think! What the devil's the good of thinking?" he cried, savagely for
him. "I'm going to find out."

We had left Bessie to the tender mercies of Cook, and were walking hot
foot along the road to Usher's. I was curious to know why Barlow was
without his own car. He said gruffly that he wanted to prowl about that
afternoon without being bothered with a car.

At the garage, "Now, then, Usher!" he ordered, "get a move on. Drive us
into Kenwick--and start now."

Usher was absolutely submissive. He dropped his job, cranked up his old
car, and within three minutes we rattled and bumped past the gate of
Lorimer House and on towards the village.



IX.


It was easy to see that Barlow had been greatly upset by the discovery
at Ferry Grange. It had dislocated his ideas and interfered with his
plans. His facetiousness of the morning had given place to a cold
ferocity. He was even ferocious with me. For me alarm about Janet
transcended everything else I felt. But he looked upon it, if not with
annoyance, certainly with impatience.

Talking about Janet (and I could talk of nothing else) distracted him.

"For God's sake--"

More than once he began some such outburst and pulled up short. At last
he said:

"Masters, I quite understand your anxiety, but I can't talk across the
noise of this damned rattle-trap. I'll not lose a minute. We must find
her, of course. But let me do a bit of thinking."

At the inn, when we pulled up, a group of men stood waiting for the door
to open at six o'clock. They ceased an excited conversation as Barlow
jumped out of the car. They looked askance at Usher as Barlow paid him
and he swiveled the old car round the square. But I heard the name Oddie
passing between two of them. To my surprise, Barlow, who had heard it
too, stopped and spoke to one of them.

"What's that I heard? Any of you seen Oddie?"

"No, sir," a spokesman replied. "We were talking about Sergeant
Warren--how he should say Oddie was the man they wanted for the
murder--and how that Oddie was supposed to be hiding somewhere about
here and he'd never gone to London at all."

"Ah, I've heard that too," said Barlow. "Now if any of you men should
get hold of any information about Oddie and his whereabouts, it'll be
worth a bit if you take it to Sergeant Warren or bring it to me here."

Whereupon he strode into the inn and I followed him.

"Why'd you do that, Barlow?" I asked. It was such an extraordinary thing
for Barlow to do.

"I do nothing without good cause," he said, with another touch of his
bad temper. Then he suddenly relented. "My dear fellow--you must be
patient with me. I've had a set-back. Fact is, I want a great hue and
cry for Oddie now. I want the whole district on his track, and all the
help I can get. I've wired to Challenger to come down. When he does come
I shall put him on to help Warren. This business at Ferry Grange will
keep me out of it for a time; but everybody else must comb the
countryside for Oddie..."

He got almost excited about it as, during the next three hours, he laid
an intricate web of wires to trip the feet of Oddie. He called in Warren
and urged him to get assistance from neighboring police divisions--to
watch the woods and the river, to keep a sleepless eye on Usher, whom he
did not trust, and to beat up the whole region. He spent a fortune on
the telephone. He spoke to Lennox in London, told him how things stood,
and made some obscure allusion to a coming coup which Lennox seemed to
understand.

But the most thrilling thing he did, so far as I was concerned, was to
ring up the police at Bristol. Having procured the chief of the
detective staff, he declared himself.

"I shall be at Bristol at nine in the morning," he said. "In the
meantime will you do two things for me? First, discover the source of a
telephone call put through the Filton Exchange to-day at 12.15 t0
Kenwick 57?...

"Right. And then, keep a watch on any aeroplane leaving the Filton
aerodrome between now and then? If a young woman answering the
description I'll give you in a minute attempts to leave by aeroplane, or
is taken to the aerodrome, stop her and detain whoever may be with her?
What? Yes--you can call it abduction. Legally, she's too old to be
abducted, but any port in a storm..."

"Now, Masters"--he handed the receiver to me--"describe her."

It was a puzzle, on the spur of the moment, to put Janet into the
categories that the voice at the other end of the wire demanded.

Age--about 22. Height--about 5 feet 6. Figure--wiry, athletic.
Hair--dark. Complexion--dark. Eyes--dark. Voice--a rather deep musical
voice. (The other end of the wire boggled over this: it did not seem to
fit the official idea of a police description.) A lady--yes. Dress?--

"Give me the thing," said Barlow, taking the telephone. "We're in a
difficulty about dress," he called. "We think she may be wearing a big
blue coat--yes, dark blue. Shoes--we can't say. I'll tell you about it
in the morning. But you can see the sort of girl. High-stepper of the
right sort. Stop any such girl. Stop all the girls you can find! What?
No--I've nothing to go on about the aerodrome. It's only an idea. But
important. Thanks. See you not later than nine."

"Barlow!" I exclaimed when we got back to his room. "You think that call
from Bristol--"

"No, I don't go so far as to think. But I'm not missing any chances. It
may have been Joshua or Mrs. You-know-her-name calling up. On the other
hand it's not unlikely that the person who cut that telephone wire
wanted to find out whether it had been restored--and if so, whether the
wretched Adamson girl had recovered from her hysterics, and how much, if
anything, was known yet about his damnable conduct. And the upshot of it
is that I mean to spend a few hours to-morrow having a look at Bristol,
and I don't think it'll be wasted time. Like to come along?"

"If I'd like, Barlow--!"

"Very well. We'll have a bit of supper. And then you go to bed. We start
at six in the morning. We'll have some breakfast left ready for us. Get
as much sleep as you can."

He had almost to push me into my big wainscoted bedroom at the last.

Be ready to start at six in the morning: very good. Get some sleep
meanwhile: not so easy. Barlow had no personal interest in Janet. But
I--

Sleep was out of the question.

Or so I thought till, the church clock having struck twelve, I did not
hear it again till it struck two. I had slept.

And I could sleep again if it were not for that confounded rat or mouse
which scratched and gnawed behind the wainscot or under the floor or
wherever it was. I turned over, the bed creaked, the noise ceased. I
dozed. But not soundly. The scratching and gnawing began again. I
reached for a slipper and banged it on the floor. The vermin desisted.

These old houses, with their wooden walls--very handsome, but how they
nurtured vermin! And--

Damn it all! I was awake, wide awake now, and why should I sleep, how
could I sleep, when Janet--?--and I lay still wondering about Janet.
Barlow was so certain that even the worst desperado--even a man who had
committed murder--would do no harm to Janet. But how did Barlow know? He
didn't know everything--

And there were those damned rats again! I turned over and made the bed
creak. They stopped. I lay still. Immediately they began afresh.

But were they rats?

They were not rats! I suddenly became acutely conscious of the fact that
they were not rats. There was a difference in the temperature of the
room. I felt moving air upon my face. Rats could make no aperture large
enough to produce that change of climate. In the pitch blackness of the
room I knew as surely as if I saw it that the door was opening.

The door pierced the wall about six feet from the head of my bed, which
stood just clear of the wall running at right angles, with enough room
for a little bed table between. I had locked the door before getting
into bed: the rats had unlocked it.

Half a dozen guesses as to what it meant, half a dozen things to do,
passed through my mind like flashes of lightning.

To yell!--to raise the house: but the purpose for which the door was
being opened would be accomplished long before a sleeping house could be
raised at three in the morning.

To strike a light--I felt that a light was the last thing the
door-opener desired: but it would make an easy target for him.

To slip out of bed and stand behind the door as it opened. To jump for
my revolver, which I had left on the dressing table--

What I actually did first was to gain a little time by moving in bed and
making it creak. The draught which had been passing across my face
between door and window subsided. The door had been pulled close.
Whoever was there meant not to enter till he had satisfied himself that
I was sleeping soundly.

What I did next was to slide out between the bed and the wall, tiptoe to
the dressing table, feel for my revolver, and finally creep under the
bed. I lay there with my heart thumping so that it seemed to hit the
floor audibly. But it was audible only to me. To the person listening
outside the room was evidently silent, for a cold wind began to blow
upon me again.

To lie there passive, breathing lightly, pulses throbbing and ears
straining in the dark, while something moved noiselessly across the
carpet, so stealthily that I was not aware of it till I heard the little
sound it made as it reached the bedside, was a fierce ordeal.

Lungs and head were already bursting, and the gasp I gave and the thud
of a heavy blow above me occurred at the same moment, and instantly
after, the swish of two quick steps on the carpet. In a second I was
out, sprawling head and shoulders beyond the bed hangings, and raised my
gun to fire at the door in the dark--

But brain worked quicker than hand. I did not pull the trigger. I waited
an instant, then scrambled up, pistol in hand, and groped my way to the
door.

It was open. I passed into the corridor, and along it to Barlow's room,
three doors away. He had locked it. I tried the handle. I suppose Barlow
slept with an ear open, for he was on the other side almost as I
knocked, saying, "Who's there?"

"Quick, Barlow!" said I in a whisper. He threw open the door, pointing
an electric torch at me.

"What's up?"

But Barlow seemed to grasp the thing before I had said six words. He
took his revolver from under his pillow, and, switching off the torch,
ran downstairs to the little lobby, I at his heels.

The door of the house was open. Barlow held it ajar, peering into the
dark street. Then he closed and locked it noiselessly, and said, "No
hope of catching him. Come up with me. Don't disturb the house."

By the light of Barlow's torch we examined the door of my room. The key,
which I had left in the lock, had been turned from the outside with fine
steel pliers. The bite of the steel on its shaft could be seen.

Barlow threw his light on the bed. He caught his breath and uttered a
little painful sound in his throat.

As for me, I turned cold as he lifted the counterpane and showed a slit
in it an inch wide--and in the blanket underneath another, and in the
sheet, and in the pillow cover--

"Gosh!" said Barlow.

I had known what that thudding blow meant. But not till these dumb
witnesses testified did I realize my escape--and my limbs shook
uncontrollably.

Barlow patted me on the shoulder.

"Nasty jar," said he. "Get on some clothes and come to my room. I'll
wait for you. It's serious: he meant--that!"

Had I done right? Should I have shouted or fired?

Righter than I could have hoped if I'd studied the question for ten
years, said Barlow. Still, it was just God's mercy I had thought of it.

"But, Barlow, I never thought of it. Sheer funk, it was. I expected
something very different--perhaps a shot. I thought he might take a shot
at me and I might be able to fire at his flash--"

"Never mind about funk," said Barlow. "Everybody funks getting killed--"

He had locked his door and we sat whispering, he on the edge of his bed
and I in the chair beside it.

"Funk? Funk be damned! But why'd you think he'd shoot? Not that clever
gentleman? Attracting unnecessary attention to himself? Oh, no!"

"Who was it, Barlow? And why?"

He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment or two. He seemed to weigh his
words.

"Didn't see him, Masters. Therefore can't say. But I think it was the
same gentleman who paid a visit last light to the girl at Ferry Grange.
And why? For the same reason--Parkinson. Parkinson's the reason. He
knows you've both been in touch with Parkinson. Therefore you are
dangerous to him. Parkinson may have told you something--"

"Barlow!" I exclaimed, as a horrible thought struck into my brain, "if
he--"

"Steady!" said Barlow. "Think it out. As a matter of fact Parkinson did
tell you something--or he told Miss Janet, which happened to be the same
thing. Do you remember that it's the Fourth of October next Friday?"

"Barlow!" My agony would out. "If they'd attack me like--like that, what
about Janet?"

"Now, young man, no nerves!" said he. "Miss Janet's a very different
proposition from their point of view. They couldn't get you the way they
got her. Let the worst come to the worst, if I fail altogether--and I
fancy not, this time--we shall get Miss Janet after Friday if we don't
get her before. Can we blow 'em up before Friday? That's the question.
Masters!--I'd give a thousand pounds to have solved the riddle of
Parkinson's death before Friday."

For me the riddle of Parkinson and the great coup that Barlow wanted to
bring off were of no more importance than a rotten apple. I was in a
panic about Janet, and all Barlow's assurance could not get me out of
it. But, having contemplated for three seconds the glory of arriving at
both solutions before Friday, he suddenly said the best thing I'd heard
from him.

"Pull up your socks, young man! I'll do my best to find her. And I'll
have a bet with you--that before we go to bed again she'll be safe and
sound wherever you can induce her to go--only I bar Ferry Grange or any
place within fifty miles of it."

Did he really mean it? Or was he only feeding me a cocktail? He did mean
it, he said very positively, and if it didn't come off, the best
calculation he ever made would be a beastly stumer. Tod would come down
and keep guard on that triangle--Ferry Grange, Lorimer House, and
Usher's garage--and we would go questing.

"Buck up, Masters!" he said. "Think as well as you can of yourself!
Remember the Live Donkey and the Dead Lion. Well--no more sleep for poor
William Barlow to-night, I suppose. A bath, the breakfast that's
waiting, and then, hey for the road!"

If it was a mere cocktail, it worked. I felt far less miserable when,
before sun-up, we were bowling along the road to the West.



X.


Bristol is nearly sixty miles from Kenwick as the crow flies--rather
more by the road mounting the skirts of the Wiltshire Downs and crossing
into the watershed of the Avon by Bath. We were among the heavy traffic
in the Eastern suburbs of the big city before nine o'clock, crawled
along with tramcars and lorries to the maelstrom of Bristol Bridge, and
so entered the quiet and dignified streets of that curious enclave which
is the old Bristol of Cabot.

At the police headquarters, the detective inspector who had spoken to
Barlow on the telephone awaited us. He received Barlow with deference.

"Traced your telephone call," he said. "An ineffective call--from a
public call office."

"It would be, of course," Barlow grimaced. "But don't say it was a
kiosk!--no, it couldn't be--they don't take trunk calls from the
kiosks."

The call, said the chief, had been made at a little shop in Filton by a
man--

Barlow's eyes twinkled in expectation.

He was disappointed. Unfortunately, the woman who kept the shop was busy
serving customers at the time and the man just gave the exchange and
number and went into the silence box to wait. She put in the call. In
about three minutes the Filton Exchange told her there was no answer.
She threw the information to him across a customer's head and he went
away. She had taken no particular notice of him, and was so utterly
unable to describe him that she could not say whether he was young or
old. He was just a man who had failed to get a telephone call.

That was the first baulk.

The watch on the aerodrome proved that no young woman had left or
attempted to leave, and no young woman of the description of Janet had
been on the ground.

That was the second.

Well, said Barlow, it seemed pretty hopeless, but we would go to Filton
and spy out the land if we could have a guide. The chief willingly lent
us the man who had made the inquiries at Filton the evening before, a
young plain-clothes officer, Duckham by name, and we left Bristol by the
North for the vast bare plateau which is almost monopolized by the big
aerodrome and the railways.

The shop in Filton village which contained the telephone call box was a
characteristic village shop. It sold a wonderful miscellany of goods all
up the gamut from greengrocery to drapery. Barlow sat in the car and had
a good look at it. No use to ask further questions about the man who had
tried to make the call? The detective thought not.

Then, said Barlow, we would take a trip round Filton and the
neighborhood. He drove through every road where houses were to be seen,
returning in half an hour to the village street.

"That," said Barlow, "seems to be the only shop of the kind in the
place."

"I think it is--sort of pemmicanized department-store," the detective
smiled.

"Would the woman tell you the truth about anything you asked her?"

"Oh, I think so."

"Then do you mind finding out whether anybody yesterday bought one of
those very charming and quite moderate dresses for ladies, marked
'Latest Paris Style'?"

I started--and the detective opened his eyes wonderingly.

"And if so, ask her to tell you privately who bought it and where it
went--if she knows?"

The detective got out and crossed the street on his curious mission.

"Just a shot into the brown," said Barlow in answer to my look. "He took
her off in a great hurry--probably just threw the coat over her,
and--well, we shall see."

In two minutes the detective came hurrying back.

"Very queer," he said. "I wish you'd come and see the woman. There's
nobody in the shop now."

Barlow's eyes gleamed under their half-closed lids.

We found a ruddy-cheeked Gloucestershire woman behind the counter,
looking flustered. She did not quite know, she said, whether she ought
to answer questions about her customers' affairs.

Barlow's manner with her was perfect. He assured her that it was quite
in order for her to give this information, and that if she only knew the
romantic story which lay behind that simple transaction in her
shop!--well, if the result was as happy as he expected, he would come
back and tell her all about it. Barlow at his most seductive. Her qualms
evaporated.

She had never been mixed up in any police affairs, she said.

"And I assure you, madam, that we aren't going to mix you up in any such
unpleasantness," said Barlow. "What you tell us is for these four walls
alone."

And so she told us. The blue frock had been bought by an occasional
customer, a woman who lived in a cottage up by the aerodrome.

"A woman?" he said, with a hint of surprise in his tone.

Yes, a woman. Not that the frock was for herself. She was too old to
wear a thing like that. She explained that it was a present for her
daughter's birthday.

What sort of woman? A working-class woman--the latest Paris frock to be
had in the Filton Emporium was undoubtedly just the sort of thing such a
woman might buy for her daughter's birthday. There was nothing unusual
in the transaction, and that was what made the rubicund good lady think
police inquiries about it rather queer.

Barlow seemed disappointed. And no wonder. His clew was sinking with all
hands. But he stuck to his questions.

Was the woman accustomed to buy drapery at the shop? The rubicund lady
could not remember that she had ever bought any drapery before. Yes, she
could give us precise directions about the cottage. It was a mile or
more away, between the aerodrome and the great triangle formed by the
railway tracks. She knew it well, because it had been formerly occupied
by a farm-hand whose wife did all her business at the Emporium. The
present people had come into possession not more than a year ago.

"Ah!" said Barlow, reviving.

He thanked her, repeated his promise to tell her a romantic story if his
expectations were fulfilled, and suggested that for the present it might
be desirable not to share it with anybody else.

"Looks like a wash-out," he said to the detective when we were in the
car again. "But we'll try on. Show us the way."

"It would be a thousand pities if such a clew didn't work," said the
eager young man. "But I'm rather curious, Mr. Barlow--"

"Simplest thing in the world, my dear fellow. Case of abduction--or
rather of forcible removal. The girl was taken off as she was undressing
to go to bed--"

"Good Lord!--in her own house?"

"Yes--a cheeky performance. We weren't quite sure--were we,
Masters?--but it looked as if she'd been rushed off with a coat round
her. When the cheery old lady said a woman had been to buy the frock I
saw my little theory going West; for to tell the truth I'd thought of
the girl as being in the custody of men or a man. However, we'll see."

"Damned neat, anyhow!"

But Barlow was not having any compliments at present. When his young
friend had been in the game as long as Barlow, he'd realize that there
was no limit to the eccentricity of coincidence, and that we were quite
likely to find ourselves on a false trail. "But you'll have guessed,
discreet young man as you are, that we're chasing a clew to that most
atrocious murder at Kenwick--"

The detective nodded: "Of course."

"And we can't afford to neglect the slightest hint. So we'll explore
this one right away if you don't mind."

Our instructions took us to a point on the high road about a mile from
the shop. There were few houses in the neighborhood. The hangars of the
aerodrome made a sky-line far away to the left. The network of railways
was on our right. We had to leave the car at a white gate opening on to
what had been a farm-track, and walk across two fields. The cottage came
into view as we entered the second field, at a distance of four or five
hundred yards. It was an insignificant place, apparently not very old,
and quite undistinguished--a brick box with a slate roof. But it was in
a curiously isolated position, out of sight of any other building, in a
corner of the field, with the railway embankment towering higher than
its roof, and some distance beyond it an accommodation bridge pierced in
the embankment, under which, I supposed, cattle passed from one meadow
to another.

We kept our eyes fixed on the house during the few minutes of the walk
across the field, but saw no movement of any sort. Barlow pushed open
the small wooden gate of the garden and we passed up to a tiny porch.
Barlow did a postman's knock on the door.

"You two talk," he said. "I want to watch."

He got behind us.

Almost immediately the door was opened by a woman of middle age and
shrinking manner, who waited for one of us to speak. The detective
stepped over the sill of the door as he said, "Good morning. We've come
to see the young lady."

She gave way to him reluctantly. "What young lady? There's no young lady
here. You've made a mistake, young man."

"I think not, ma'am," he rejoined. "I mean the young lady who came
yesterday morning."

"I tell you there's no young lady here," she repeated.

But Barlow had not needed to watch long. It was evident even to me that
the woman was in a state of panic.

"That'll do!" Barlow exclaimed, coming forward. "Now, my good woman,
you're for it, you know--and you'd better not tell any more lies. Go
inside."

The door led into the kitchen place, and we crowded upon her there.

She sank to a chair, pale-faced and trembling.

"Now," said Barlow, "are you going to tell the truth?"

"There's nothing to tell," she said, dully.

"Very well." He stepped to the door, locked it, and put the key in his
pocket. "I shall search the house. I give you one more chance to own up.
It'll be better for you."

Her lips moved without speaking.

"Stay with her," he said to the detective. "Come on, Masters! No time to
waste."

It was a small house of five rooms. A few moments were enough to explore
it from floor to roof. The woman who sat trembling in the kitchen was
the only human being in it besides ourselves; but in a small back
bedroom Barlow found what he wanted. It had been recently occupied. The
bed was not yet remade. A teacup stood on the box that served for
dressing-table. It was half-filled with tea, still warm.

Barlow strode into the front room and looked from the window across the
field we had traversed.

"How long did it take us to walk from that gate?" said he, pointing.
"Three or four minutes? Time enough for a getaway..."

He rushed back to take one more look round the back room. It contained
nothing, so far as we could see, to indicate who had drunk that half cup
of tea. But when Barlow got down to grovel on the floor and look under
the bed, he cried out in triumph, reached in to the wall and produced a
pair of blue bedroom slippers that had been kicked there. He descended
the stairs two at a time, and held out the slippers to the woman.

"Now," said he, "will you tell the truth?"

"I--don't know what you want me to tell you," she faltered.

"Who was with you here five minutes ago?"

"My husband."

"Where is he now?"

"He's gone out."

"He took the young lady with him. Where did he go?"

"How can I tell you?" Barlow leaned over her angrily.

"Are you a fool as well as a crook? Where are they? Do you know this is
a hanging matter? There's murder in it--"

"My God!"

The woman collapsed. Her pale face went white as paper and she closed
her eyes. Barlow took her by the shoulder and shook her.

"Wake up!" he growled. "Faint afterwards. Where are they?"

"I don't know," she gasped, looking fearfully into Barlow's frowning
face. "They went out--somewhere--just to hide--till you'd gone."

Barlow relinquished his hold and pushed us out of the house. He looked
around. In the little time that had passed since we entered the field
nobody could have gone very far--it seemed almost impossible that they
could even have got out of sight in that wide featureless landscape.
Indeed they must have kept close to the house until we were inside, or
we should infallibly have seen them. Barlow handed me a whistle.

"Masters--hop over that embankment. Blow hard the moment you see
anything. Come on, Duckham, we'll take one each side of that lane."

The lane was a narrow road coming down from the direction of the
aerodrome between thorn hedges--evidently the normal way of approach to
the cottage. It followed a slight depression of the ground. Barlow and
Duckham had separated, one each side of the hedge, dividing out the
country, before I reached the top of the embankment and crossed the
rails. I found myself then contemplating a vast triangle of pasture land
with similar embankments on all three sides. Every object within it was
clearly in view--and the only objects to be seen were a few cattle with
their tails to the breeze, browsing on the now scanty grass. No
fugitives had passed that way for in the hurried moments of our stay in
the house (I suppose we were not more than three minutes) it was
impossible for anybody to have reached either of the other embankments.
But just one possibility occurred to me. I walked north along the track.
A locomotive whistle shrieked behind me and a South Wales express came
thundering down the line, passing with a flash and a roar. I could see
Barlow and his companion scrutinizing the lane and its hedges, going
away from me at a tangent. My own idea took me along the railway until I
reached the point where that low accommodation bridge passed beneath
it--a mere exiguous passage through the base of the embankment. There I
dropped silently inside the triangle, and, half stogged in the soft
ground trampled by cattle, peered cautiously into the opening. The
embankment being lofty and broad-based, and the arch not more than eight
feet high, this bridge had the darkness and dampness of a tunnel. I
could see only the arc of daylight at the other end. Nothing was visible
in the tunnel beyond the first few yards.

But though I could see nothing within, any person concealed there could
have seen me plainly enough in silhouette. Therefore I put my head
beyond the brickwork only far enough to look, and listened for any
sound. Nothing came but the occasional drip of water from the incipient
stalactites in the arch.

Perhaps a minute had gone when there arose a half-squelching,
half-crackling sound, greatly magnified in that hollow megaphonic space.
Continuing to peer, I saw the black figure of a man against the
semi-circle of light, diminished to minute proportions in the long
perspective. It disappeared.

The next instant I was plowing through the mud and darkness, with water
dripping on me from the roof, stopping every few yards to listen. If my
guess was right, he, knowing nothing of what had happened at the
cottage, and supposing that if the three men he had seen coming over the
field sought Janet, they had found no trace of her at his house, had
gone to reconnoiter. In that case, he had left Janet in the tunnel. I
estimated that he would crawl up the embankment to get a view of the
house, and that then he would see Barlow and Duckham dividing the
country about the lane. What he would do then there was no time to
speculate. I calculated the chances of sound reaching him in the open. I
risked it. I called in a moderate tone of voice:

"Janet!"

It was as though a giant had shouted her name. It reverberated for
several seconds. I listened with agonized intentness. As the noise I had
made died down, a sound which was part cry, part sob joined on to it.
Janet was there!

Then I threw caution away, and crying "Janet!" I plunged on, in a sweat
of wonderment why she did not call or come to me.

I found her in the middle of the beastly place. My eyes having become
used to the faint gray light that pervaded it, I saw her huddled on the
reeking ground with her back against the wall.

"Janet!"

No answer. In a fever of apprehension, I struck a match and bent down to
her. Eyes closed, face ghostly, hair bedraggled, body limp. But she was
not quite unconscious. Just as the flickering light went out I saw her
eyelids move. One sane impulse came to me in the excitement. I took
Barlow's whistle from my pocket and blew three or four long blasts which
shrieked through the tunnel with ear-splitting fury.

Then I stooped and lifted her. She was supine, but could just stand on
her feet. By instinct, not deliberation, I began half-carrying and
half-dragging her the way I had come. It was, I imagine, a sub-conscious
desire for light and a sub-conscious calculation that I should have more
time if the man came back on his tracks through the tunnel after me than
if I went towards him.

Though, as they told me afterwards they did not see him, he must have
seen Barlow and Duckham running towards the embankment as soon as the
whistle had sounded, and, realizing that it was impossible to get away
in the open, dived into the tunnel again. For, as I labored slowly with
my burden, I heard him crashing and splashing after us. He came at four
times my speed. I had still several yards to go to the end when he was
upon us.

"Get out if you can!" I said to Janet, releasing her.

I turned to face him. He was now in a half light that enabled me to see
him better than he could see me. A rough-looking fellow, unkempt as
Usher, and now bespattered with mud from his run through the slush. I
gave a half glance over my shoulder. Janet was going on with her hand on
the wall.

"Out o' the road!" he yelled, crouching.

"If you come a step further--" I began; but he was on me already. In a
flash I had seen the blow aimed at my eyes, stooped and caught him by
the legs. I had not played Rugby for nothing. He took a terrific purler
on to his face in the mud. I scrambled on to him and tried to pin him
down by the shoulders; but he was a hefty brute in a desperate rage. He
grappled me, tried to use boots and teeth, and for a few horrible
minutes we fought fiercely, rolling in the mud that blinded and half
choked me. I got a grip on a bristly throat. With a jerk of his head, he
bit into my arm. I struck him in the face. The obscene violence of it
was only ended when Barlow and Duckham came plunging through the tunnel
and pulled us apart.

He was a deplorable sight when Duckham, having slipped handcuffs on his
wrists, hauled him to his feet--caked with mud from hair to heels,
thoroughly tamed. No doubt I made an equally lamentable appearance.

"Is she here?" Barlow asked. I pointed to the open. We found her sitting
faint and bemused at the foot of the embankment. She was dressed in the
famous one-piece frock with her blue coat buttoned over it. She was
hat-less, and on her feet were a pair of heavy shoes, now a mass of
mire. She had not spoken, and was now unable to speak--hardly conscious
of what happened. She seemed faintly to recognize me--no more.

Barlow pulled out a whisky flask and fingered it doubtfully.

"No," he said, "probably do more harm than good. Duckham, go on with
this fellow. We'll bring the girl."

So Janet, still in a state of limp stupefaction, was carried back to the
cottage by me and Barlow. Half an hour afterwards an astonished doctor
stood by the bed where we had laid her and asked who had prescribed
ethylic aldehyde for her. I had no acquaintance with this particular
hell-broth, but Barlow seemed to know all about it, and as soon as it
was mentioned he began to hunt the house, while I stayed watching the
doctor's ministrations. It was a full hour after I found her in the
tunnel when Janet got back full consciousness. Barlow then stood by,
frowning, with a large phial in his hand. She smiled feebly when we came
into her perception.

"Hello, Miss Janet! That's better," said Barlow. "Now we'll have you
right as a trivet in no time."

"Hello, Mr. Barlow!" said she. "And you"--with a wan smile at me--"I'm
afraid I've got you all into a bit of a mess!"



XI.


Within another hour, the fellow with whom I had scuffled in that foul
tunnel, cleansed of all the tokens of battle except the black eye which
so greatly disfigured his manly beauty, was on the way to the lock-up in
Bristol on a provisional charge of assault--and I was on my way to
London with Janet.

I had never before seen Barlow in an incandescent rage like that of this
hour. His delight in the rescue of Janet was soon forgotten in the
ferocity engendered by the sight of the hulking liar, calling himself
Jim Williams, who coolly, insolently, confidently defied him. He told a
ready-made story of having found Janet the previous morning lying
unconscious and half-dressed in the field near his cottage and of having
acted the Good Samaritan to her--even to the extent of attempting to
hide her when he saw us coming to the house, fearing that we might be
the gang which he supposed had dumped her at his doorstep!

His effrontery was equal to a Good Samaritan explanation of his wife's
purchase of the little blue frock, and to a complete denial of any
knowledge of the phial of dope which Barlow brandished in his face.

"Who hired you, you scoundrel?"

Barlow shot the question at him every minute, exhausted his armory of
threats, tried every trick he knew to trip him without avail, and at
last, in a fit of nausea, bundled him off to Bristol in Duckham's
custody.

It was only a vague and unsatisfactory story, too, that he could get
from Janet. She had been so heavily drugged that her mind was still in a
fog. She remembered having been suddenly smothered in some sheet or
blanket as she was undressing in her room at Ferry Grange. Then she
recalled nothing more until she came to a dim consciousness in the
wretched little bedroom. She had been ill all the day, only just able to
comprehend the story the man and his wife put up about having found her
in the field. Even now she had no idea where she was.

Barlow would not allow her to be pestered with cross-examination. He
seemed to have a great urgency to get her away. He took me aside and
explained it.

"Disappear, both of you!" said he. "You're dangerous to me; you only
complicate things here. Take her away to safety--anywhere but Kenwick.
Forget Kenwick and let it forget her and you too. London for choice. Is
there a place where you can keep her lying doggo in London?"

There was only one place--my cousin Bertha Newsome's in Maida Vale.

"Very well. That'll do. You'll both be handy for the Fourth if you're
wanted. It's next Friday, you know. And before Friday I'll have torn the
heart out of Ananias! Just the one slip 'X' has made--this kidnaping of
your girl. If you wouldn't punch my head I'd say it was worth it,
Masters. It's given me something to bite on, and by gosh won't I bite!"

He hurriedly outlined his plan. With Ananias under lock and key, he'd
have Sapphira eating out of his hand in no time. The discovery had been
quick and secret, known to none but ourselves. He would not have to wait
long before some communication was made to Williams--and then!--

"But the essence of the matter is--keep away from Kenwick. Let Kenwick
sleep. Give me the London address, and let Lennox know as soon as you
get there. Get away, Masters, and leave me a clear deck. Be on hand for
Friday--that's all."

So in the afternoon I sat with Janet in the train. We had bought shoes
and stockings and some sort of hat in Bristol. We had cleaned the mud
off her coat, and she had dished up her appearance in the dressing room
at the station. She was still in a miz-maze, but passively content, I
thought, to have me with her. The first sign she gave of throwing off
lassitude was a sudden curiosity about her destination. We had caught
the afternoon express for London. I had secured a compartment and
coerced her into taking some tea. Then it was as though she woke up all
at once.

"This train--" she said; "it doesn't go to Kenwick?"

I had to break it to her: Barlow would not hear of her going back to
Kenwick. I was to take her somewhere in London where she could hide up
for a day or two while Barlow brought off his great coup.

"It was finding you at Filton, Janet, that put him on to it," I said. "I
verily believe he's rather glad you were kidnaped--!"

She smiled at that--a momentary gleam.

"Anyhow, I've got to take you to my cousin in Maida Vale. She's got a
big flat, a tame husband, and a telephone all complete. You're to wait
there till further orders from Barlow."

She seemed to accept the inevitability of it. But she looked very
thoughtful.

"I hope Mr. Barlow's on the right track," she said.

Her gravity and the hidden intention in this remark puzzled me for an
instant. But happily I checked the question that sprang to my lips: I
had forgotten Joshua and her mother! Knowing that if Barlow had to
trample on his own mother in the chase for evidence he would not
hesitate, I kept silence on that. Instead I drew out of Janet by degrees
the story of her last night at Ferry Grange.

It was not easy. Janet wanted to gloze over the part Helen Adamson had
played.

"You must be very fond of that girl, Janet," I ventured.

"Helen's a fool--but she's my only girl friend," was her answer to that.
Just one more of Janet's loyalties.

Nevertheless Helen had tried her high about Oddie. She had never liked
Oddie, and her mother only tolerated him because of Joshua. But
something in his dour, fierce, gloomy character had infatuated
Helen--appealed to the timidity in her. And something in Helen's
timorous nature had fascinated Oddie. His introduction into Webb's
household had been the one fly in the ointment of the little society at
Kenwick.

"Still, I never thought any great evil of him," said Janet. "I just
disliked him--that was all. Till that night--when we came back from the
river..."

But from that time onward, there had been something terrifying in the
air, and the terror increased unbearably when Oddie vanished immediately
the news of the murder came out. The cold-blooded crime, done almost at
the door of Ferry Grange, seemed to poison the air. Her mother and
Joshua Webb went about as though burdened with intolerable secrets.
Helen Adamson lived on the verge of hysteria.

"But your mother--" I began. And then I remembered Janet's alarm when
Barlow was reciting his category of the persons who were within reach of
Parkinson that night, and young George Bunbury's story of a scramble
through a wire fence. Janet appeared not to catch any significance in my
silence.

"Mother?" she said. "Joshua's anxiety worried her. There was a special
reason--" She hesitated.

"Yes, Janet?"

"Well, she didn't want any worry just then--nor did he." But she did not
enlarge on this. She went on to the scene at Ferry Grange on the night
of Oddie's visit. The maid's story that she and Helen went upstairs
about ten o'clock was quite accurate. Janet, in Helen's room, giving her
a dressing down about her foolishness over a fellow like Oddie, found
her excited and intractable. She left her about eleven. In her room, she
made up the fire and sat reading for half an hour or so--she could not
say how long--and then was suddenly petrified with astonishment when she
heard a sound of uncontrollable sobbing in the corridor and the rumble
of a man's voice.

Janet made out her candles, opened the door, and looked. In the light
that came from the open doorway of Helen's room she saw the girl in
Oddie's arms. She was crying bitterly, and he consoling her.

"A disgusting spectacle!" was Janet's surprising remark--I supposed for
my special benefit.

Considering Janet's own emphatic opinions about necking and
sentimentalizing, her conduct in the next minute was quite in character.

She coughed, marched out of her room and confronted them without
speaking. She caught Helen by the arm and pulled her away from the
indignant Oddie, pushed her into her bedroom and shut the door on her.
Then she pointed to the stairs.

Oddie began to bluster.

"The dirty dog!" said Janet. "Know what he said to me? He said I seemed
to think I could go and keep any appointment I liked with any stray man
and put up an excuse, but he couldn't so much as peep at Helen unless I
poisoned him with hatred--and so on. So I said that if he wasn't out of
the house in twenty seconds I'd ring up the police! He looked for a
moment as if he'd strangle me there and then. But he thought better of
it, and went. I was following him down to see him off the premises when
Helen rushed out, crying 'George!' I gave her George! I shoved her back
to her own room, and heard the house door close behind Oddie. The wonder
to me was that the row didn't wake the house."

"It did," said I. And I told her how we had painfully extracted the
truth from Bessie. Janet called her a "bleating hussy" and registered
some resolutions about her to be put into force as soon as she got back
to Ferry Grange...

Oddie gone, at any rate temporarily, Janet spent ten minutes in Helen's
room which must have been highly distressing for that love-lorn maiden.
This was not the first time Helen had seen Oddie since the murder of
Parkinson.

"I read the Riot Act to her!" said Janet.

"What you _should_ have done was to go down and lock the door after
Oddie," I suggested.

"What need? It was a spring lock."

"Only the bleating hussy had put it on the catch," said I.

"Well, I didn't know that, and anyhow it would have taken more than a
spring lock to keep him out if he wanted to come in, wouldn't it?"

I admitted that logic.

Janet then faced--on her own account--the question at which I shied:
Knowing that Oddie was at large in Kenwick, that he had probably never
been away from Kenwick, and that his alleged disappearance was a
pretense to bamboozle the police, should she not have rung up the police
on the instant?

Perhaps--but her answer was another loyalty: she disliked Oddie, but
Helen loved him; Helen was a fool, but she was Helen. Joshua was a fool,
but he was Joshua.

"What," I asked, "did you think could have induced Oddie to run the risk
of an escapade like that?"

"I hadn't got to think," she replied. "I knew. He wanted Helen to go off
with him--and it wasn't the first or the second time he'd tried. Don't
ask any questions about it--John," she said looking me straight in the
eyes as I bent across the compartment towards her, following her story.
"Shan't answer them if you do. Helen's a whimpering fool, but she's
modest and she's honest. You'll have to make the best you can of that."

I could make exactly nothing of it...

In her own room at last, Janet leisurely prepared for bed, never, of
course, giving a thought to the possibility of a second invasion of the
house.

It happened as she was undressing. A little sound, a sense of a presence
in the room, and then her arms were pinioned and she was half smothered
in the folds of some heavy thing thrown over her head.

The attack came so suddenly and the sequel was so rapid that she thought
she never uttered a cry. She remembered being lifted off the ground.
Then she felt stifled and lost consciousness. She knew nothing more till
she came to a sort of dazed realization of herself in bed at Filton,
which was probably six or seven hours afterwards.

She had evidently been drowned in chloroform fumes from the cloth thrown
over her head. But it was not enough to account for the long hours of
unconsciousness. Ananias and his phial had seen to that.

"What's it all mean, John?" she asked, quietly.

"Barlow says it means fear," said I.

"Fear of me? Why should he or anybody fear me?"

"As to you, Janet--wouldn't it be enough that you had surprised him like
that?"

"Not unless he had really--"

She shuddered instead of completing her sentence. We both shirked the
horror of Parkinson's murder.

"There's more than that," I said. "There's fear of both of us, not
because of--what happened that night at Usher's, but because of our trip
on the river. Janet!--we stumbled into a hornets' nest. We're both
suspected of plotting with Parkinson against the hornets. Listen to what
happened last night.."

As I told her of my adventure, Janet's face portrayed every lineament of
horror and alarm. I recall that the train was rushing through Reading
Station as I finished and she cried out:

"John!--" and impulsively leaned over to grasp my hand.

It took all my self-control to avoid a forbidden demonstration of
sentiment when she did that.

"John! he _can't_ have--"

But the lamentable fact was that whether he could have or not, there
were those cuts in the bed coverings, and there was Barlow's theory, and
it stood till somebody produced a better one. I could tape it all off
neatly enough:

Parkinson in possession of the secret of the person whom Barlow knew as
"X"; Parkinson known to have met Janet secretly; a strange young man
coming on the scene and exploring the river with Janet...

Parkinson has suddenly become dangerous. Henceforth Parkinson and the
secret of "X" cannot live in the same world together. Parkinson is
removed...

Janet is watched for a day or two. She does not act as though she knew
that secret. But they cannot be sure. Obvious reasons for being
economical of crime in the case of Janet. But she surprised Oddie at
Ferry Grange when Oddie was supposed to be far away: Janet must be put
out of action till after the Fourth...

No such compunctions about me...I had better be put out of action
permanently!

"Desperate and damnably clever," Barlow said of the kidnaping of Janet.
If the trick should accidentally be discovered before the Fourth, to all
appearances Janet would have been just dumped casually at the doorstep
of a perfectly innocent house. A car comes up before daylight. Janet,
bundled up in her blue coat, is deposited.

If nothing had happened to disturb the plan--if there had been no
Barlow--Janet would probably have remained too ill to be moved from
Filton till after the Fourth.

But now, with Barlow on the spot, the damnably clever scheme was on the
point of collapse. He had the strings in his hands and it was the too
damnably clever scheme that had presented him with the last of them--Jim
Williams would infallibly lead him to the center of the web.

Janet listened quietly while I stated the theory in as orderly a way as
I could. But her eyes were full of trouble. She sat silent till the
train ran into Paddington.



PART III. IN THE DARK ALL CATS ARE GRAY



I.


In Bertha Newsome's admirable flat in Alderstone Mansions, Janet was
received with the minimum of curiosity and the maximum of kindness.
Bertha and her lawyer husband, who invariably treated me like the
Prodigal Son on the rare occasions when I troubled their serenity, had
made a half-comic protest against the enormity of my conduct in dragging
the family's name through the police courts. But they both fell
straightway in love with Janet. She soon entirely recovered from the
drugging; though the trouble remained in her eyes.

On Thursday (which was the Third of October) I had an astonishing letter
from Barlow, still at Bristol. He calmly announced that he could not be
in London on the Fourth, that he had asked Lennox to look after anything
that might happen at the Metropolitan, and to call on me and Tod
Challenger for any help he wanted.

That Barlow should treat thus lightly the possibilities of the Fourth
puzzled me to amazement. If there was a chance of getting a firm clew to
Parkinson's death, surely it must be on this day and in this place,
which Parkinson, with the shadow of death on him, had nominated? But
that was what Barlow seemed not to think.

"I'm hot on the trail of X.," he wrote. "We've got the thug Williams
remanded for a week--on the charge of assaulting the police in the
execution of their duty! Any port in a storm! I've been devoting myself
to the tearful lady who has the felicity of being married to a real Cave
Man, and I think I'm well away with it. The truth will surprise you--it
always does surprise a newspaper man. I'm lying low for a visitor from
Kenwick, whom I expect to give the show away. But for heaven's sake,
don't go near Kenwick, or let Tod go: I want Kenwick to forget us all.
Don't be surprised if you hear of the arrest of Oddie at any moment; but
don't go off the deep end about it. In fact don't be surprised at
_anything_. Follow Lennox's instructions till you hear from me again."

Lennox's instructions were the cause of the following disposition of
things on the following morning:

Lennox had temporarily joined the clerical staff of the Metropolitan
Hotel and busied himself with a typewriter behind the great smooth
counter in the lobby;

Tod sat in a taxi outside in Northumberland Avenue;

I smoked a cigarette and concealed myself behind a newspaper on a lounge
in the lobby, with the entrance in full view.

We all watched ceaselessly for something. It might be for some person or
persons we knew. Or it might be, Lennox said, something which would
betray itself in a Teutonic accent and Semitic features. If a person
with those characteristics appeared in the lobby and seemed to be
keeping or waiting for an appointment, these were the arrangements:

Lennox would contrive to be present at the appointment unseen;

I was to watch for the return of the person who had kept it, and signal
him to Tod;

Tod was to follow him wherever he went and ring up Lennox as soon as
possible at his rooms in the Victoria.

The theory on which Barlow seemed to have based this plan was of the
slenderest. It assumed a connection between the meeting at the
Metropolitan and the Allenstein case. A great deal of the Allenstein
booty had been liquidated--bearer bonds kept turning up from New York
and Paris. But so far as could be found no attempt had yet been made to
liquidate one of the most valuable parts of it--the diamonds of the
Vanstead collection. That was why we were on the look-out for a person
who might appear to have arrived recently from Amsterdam.

Parkinson's obscure message assumed some knowledge in Lennox which would
put him wise to what was going on: neither Barlow nor Lennox could get a
closer guess than this.

When I suggested to Lennox that trained detectives would be far better
for such a job than greenhorns like us, he said it was precisely our
greenness that made us valuable. If so much as the smell of a policeman
hung about the place, there would be nothing doing.

Yet our vigil at the Metropolitan was in vain. The lobby buzzed with
people; there was a constant procession in and out of the revolving
doors; but we saw neither any person we knew nor any person with the
stigmata prescribed by Lennox.

It was getting on for noon when Tod came hurrying through the doorway,
glanced about and made straight for me.

"Tell Lennox," he said in a breathless whisper, "that Joshua Webb has
just walked by, and Abbott's driven up in his car and gone into the
Northumberland Hotel."

And Tod, having exploded this on me, rushed out again.

Lennox was taken on the hop. He scratched his head vigorously as I
leaned over the counter to give him the news. "Divide et impera," he
said, looking thoughtfully at me. "That looks like a wise guy's dodge. I
guess I shall stay here, Mr. Masters. You go and see what's happening.
Lie low if you can, and use Tod as a messenger if you want him."

"You don't for a moment think--"

"No time for thinking," he interrupted me. "This'll be a quick job. Get
busy, will you?"

I got busy in great perturbation of mind. Joshua Webb, perhaps--but
Abbott! It was preposterous. Still, Lennox was imperative, and I slipped
out and on to the Northumberland, only a few yards distant. Abbott's car
was drawn up near the door. Paynter saw me pass, smiled and touched his
cap. In the lobby I played the same role as before--sitting on a lounge,
with a newspaper ready as a protective screen.

Five minutes passed. I heard a clock strike noon. Then:

"Good morning, Mr. Masters!"

I jumped round and swore softly to myself. There was old Abbott smiling
down on me. Putrid luck--to have been taken unaware. I greeted him as
politely as my feelings would allow.

"Remarkable thing to find you here," said he. "You hadn't heard about
the meeting by any chance?"

I felt my hair rising.

"Meeting? What meeting?" I babbled.

"Ah, no--of course, you wouldn't have heard. All came out of that last
letter to _The Times_--you know, where I said I should be glad to hear
from people who shared my views. I did hear from several. Lord
Lesterfield was one, and he suggested a meeting to discuss what could be
done to bring the authorities to their senses--"

I groaned inwardly. At such a moment to have to endure an oration from
Abbott on the old theme--But he did not go on.

"You would not like to come?" he asked.

"Afraid it's impossible, Mr. Abbott."

"A pity--you'd be interested. Lord Lesterfield wrote a good deal about
you--the victim, he said, of the crass stupidity and red tape of the
official system--"

I kept my eyes on the door and prayed that Lord Lesterfield or some
other flag-flapper would come quickly and take him away. And then he
brought my attention back to him with a jolt.

"And, Mr. Masters, there'll be a friend of yours: I met Mr. Webb at the
Charing Cross corner just now, and told him about it. He was waiting for
a lady"--the old gentleman smiled archly, with a lift of the
eyebrows--"but he's coming to the meeting--"

I daresay Abbott went on enlarging on the subject, but I can remember
neither what he said nor any comment of my own. Possibly I just gaped at
him. For suspicion and alarm descended on me in a flood.

Joshua! Janet's reticence: Janet's refusals...Janet knew of this
meeting from Parkinson. Did Janet know of it from any other source?

Then, in the midst of the mental turmoil which Abbott had stirred in me,
I saw Joshua himself come through the door.

In an instant he had perceived me standing with Abbott. He checked
perceptibly in his brisk walk. For a moment I thought he would turn and
go out again. But having realized that I saw him, he came forward.

"Well, well!" said Joshua, holding out his hand as cordially as if he
had never written that curt little note to me, "who'd have thought of
seeing you here? Regular meeting of the clans, ain't it? How are you?
And how's Mr. Challenger? Did you come for Mr. Abbott's meeting?"

All these questions of Joshua's meant nothing at all. He paid no
attention to Abbott. He did not want to know anything about my health or
about Tod. Joshua was scrutinizing my face so closely that I almost
flinched from his intent eyes. What Joshua was saying to me silently
was, "Why the devil are you here? And what do you know? And is there
anybody else here who knows anything? And what's the thing for me to
do?"

I had said I was sorry to be unable to attend Mr. Abbott's meeting.

"Ah, well--I suppose it won't be a very long affair, will it, Abbott?
Half an hour or so? Are you at a loose end for lunch? Would you care--"

The invitation seemed like a challenge. There was a diamond-cut-diamond
look in Joshua's eyes as he spoke.

"I'm afraid--" said I.

"Oh--if it's inconvenient, some other time. Well, Mr. Abbott--"

But Abbott had moved away to the door. I had seen him beckoning. Paynter
had come up, touched his hat and received an instruction. Abbott now
returned to us.

"We'll go up if you're ready," said he. "Good morning, Mr. Masters.
Remember me to Mr. Challenger when you see him."

And they went away to the elevator.

The collocution left me in a state of bewilderment. After all, the idea
of pure coincidence in the assemblage of these people at this hour and
in this place was incredible. Yet, if it was not coincidence, what was I
to believe about it? I resumed my seat and the newspaper and pondered on
it, watching the door, for ten minutes. I went outside and looked up and
down the street. Paynter sat at the wheel of Abbott's car, looked up at
me and smiled. Tod's taxi was still in place. I returned to the lobby.
It was a little boring. I was making up my mind to go to Lennox and tell
him the presence of Abbott could have nothing to do with our vigil,
since he was there for a flag-flap and, whatever might be the truth
about Webb, for the present he was safely tucked up under Abbott's wing.
And then Lennox himself came in, almost on the run. He pulled up on
meeting me and said, hastily:

"Have you seen him? Where is he?"

"Abbott?--yes, he's gone up in the lift with Webb."

"Abbott?--no, not Abbott! Van de Jacobstein, or whatever he is--the man
with the nose and the sombrero."

I stared at him.

"'No such person has been here, Lennox."

"Bet you he has. Wait a second."

Lennox strode to the elevator, waited for the descent of the cage, and
had a short colloquy with the attendant. Then he beckoned to me.

"Room 330, you say? Take us up, please."

Discharged into the soft carpeted corridor of the third floor, we found
ourselves quite alone.

"Tod saw him," said Lennox by way of explanation.

"Crawling along the pavement, looking and waiting. He passed close to
Tod, came along here and disappeared. It's a bit too plain to miss,
ain't it? They're not taking any chances. They argue: 'Parkinson may
have blown the gaff. Therefore we'll change the venue.' Anyhow, I'm
going to see."

"What's in Room 330, then?"

"Abbott's precious meeting."

"But surely, Lennox, you don't--"

"Yes, I do. Three-seventeen," said he, looking at the numbers--"it'll be
round this corner..."

Lennox omitted even the courtesy of a knock on the door. He tiptoed up
to it, turned the handle, and he first, and then I, burst in upon
Abbott's indignation meeting. I gave one sweeping look round. No
gentleman who could possibly be named Van de Anythingstein was in the
room. Half a dozen people sat round a table. They were all looking up at
us with astonished faces.

"Ah!" said Abbott, seeing me, "so you've come along after all, Mr.
Masters--and--?"

Lennox was quick in the uptake. He made a little bow, and I said, "Mr.
Lennox--a friend. I suppose we're very late?"

Abbott was on his feet, dragging up two chairs to the table.

"Rather late. In fact, we'd just passed a resolution to form ourselves
into a committee. However, Lord Lesterfield--you'll be interested to
meet Mr. Masters. He's the young man who was arrested so stupidly in the
affair of Parkinson."

The tall silver-haired man at the top of the table inclined his head,
and as soon as Lennox and I were seated he began a speech...

The whole thing was absurd. How long it would have lasted if Lord
Lesterfield had not either been very hungry or anxious to keep an
important luncheon engagement I can't guess. But having held forth for a
minute or two in "Ercles" vein and out-Abbotted Abbott in his sentiments
about Officialdom, Lord Lesterfield proposed that we should be added to
the committee and broke up the meeting.

Absurd!--and the person who best understood how absurd was Joshua. He
bent on me all the time that intent eye of his, and there was extreme
amusement behind its intensity.

But Lennox bore me away and we were the first of the party to reach the
lobby. Lennox rushed out as he had rushed in, and tore down the street.

"Damn!" he cried as we came to the porch of the Metropolitan.

Tod's taxi was no longer there.

The "goldarned eel" had given him the slip again. And it was so simple.
To divide our forces, and then lay a false trail--

"I'd give ten dollars and then a bit to know which of the bunch invented
it!" he exclaimed.

"The bunch? What bunch?"

"Why, the bunch we saw in that room--the dam' committee: who else?"

"Good Lord, Lennox! You don't s'pose that Lord Lesterfield--"

"Don't know a thing about Lord Lesterfield," he interrupted, testily.
"May be his lordship's as big a fool as the fool speech he made. May be
he's a decoy. But one of the bunch is in it. Just shrieks at you. Ask
yourself!"

I did ask myself, and the answer I got was that it was impossible to
believe anybody in the "bunch" was the murderer of Parkinson or a
criminal of any sort.

Lennox continued to fume. How he did hate to be the victim of a simple
little trick! I reminded him that even if he had burst in upon what he
thought to find, he would have been helpless without the police.

"Helpless? All I wanted," said he, "was just one look at the fellow that
son of Abraham came to meet--that's all! Just one little look, and I'd
know how to help myself to him. But whoever did it, the thing was
finished before we got there. Dam' slick performance! Now Tod's our one
white hope. If Tod can trail him."

As it happened, Tod had trailed him. His message came on the telephone
to Lennox's rooms in the Victoria almost as soon as we reached there.
Lennox leaped up at the sound of the buzzer.

"Tod?...That you?...Where?...Hatton Garden?...How far?...Ten
minutes if we're lucky?...All right. We'll be there. Freeze on to him.
If we miss you we come straight back, and you ring us up here again...
Got it?...Good boy."

Hatton Garden, the little cul-de-sac off Holborn consesecrated to
eminent lawyers and fabulously rich diamond merchants, sounded
promising, though it was not easy to believe that any Jacobstein would
lay so plain a trail. And there was no getting to Hatton Garden in ten
minutes in the middle of the day. It took nearly half an hour, during
which I thought more than once Lennox would run amok. But when we turned
in at the gates of Hatton Garden, there was Tod's taxi standing by the
curbstone near the entrance, with two policemen manifesting a close
curiosity about him.

It was like a moving picture.

Our cabby, instructed by Lennox, stopped behind the first taxi. The
policemen gave a signal to the man at the gate and closed up towards us.
People behaving suspiciously in Hatton Garden!...Lennox leaned out at
the window and summoned one of the constables. He gave him a card, and
said:

"The gentleman in the cab ahead is Mr. Challenger, a friend of mine. We
are all on business. Very simple. We want to see a man who's gone into
one of these offices. You'll oblige us by not appearing to be interested
in us."

"Sold you a pup," said the policeman, nonchalantly.

"Eh? Who has?"

"Looking for an old bean in a dago's cape, aren't you?"

Lennox nodded.

"Well--he's gone."

"Gone!"

"That's so. While your friend goes to the telephone kiosk, his driver
thinks he may as well have a drink--and me gentleman thinks that's the
proper time for him to do a bunk. Which he does. We've been waiting to
see what would happen."

What did happen was that Lennox bolted out of the cab and addressed some
highly colored reproaches to Tod's driver, who had himself a varied
vocabulary but was no match for Lennox. He drove away, with his exact
legal fare, past two grinning policemen.

Hatton Garden was as big a sell as the Metropolitan Hotel. Lennox went
into the building which the Semitic gentleman had visited, but could get
no trace of him there. The clerks of the three firms who occupied it
with one accord affirmed that they could not identify a client on such a
slight description.

The fox had gone effectually to earth.

On the pavement outside, with the two policemen in the offing, Tod told
his tale. After he had warned me about Abbott and I had gone into the
Northumberland, he saw Joshua ascend the steps. Then he saw Abbott come
out and call up Paynter to speak to him. Paynter returned to the car.
For some time there was nothing to note. Nothing until a manifestly
Semitic personage had arrived on foot, stood outside the Metropolitan
and looked up and down the street. He walked along to the Northumberland
and did the same thing there, but after a moment went in.

"He never came in while I was there," said I.

Well, Tod declared, he appeared to go in. Tod then summoned Lennox, and
Lennox followed. Almost immediately afterwards the man in the sombrero
came out, went to the edge of the pavement and cocked his finger to the
driver of Abbott's car, apparently under the impression that it was a
taxi. He put his head in at the window and spoke to Paynter, who
apparently undeceived him, and then stood on the curb until an empty cab
came along, stopped it, and got in. Tod followed him to Hatton Garden.

And that was all.

Whatever meeting Parkinson had in mind had either not taken place, or
had been contrived so skillfully that it had been held unobserved almost
under our noses.

"So," said Lennox, "some one knew all about us and our plan, and we've
been fooled to the top of our bent."

And, while Lennox blew off his disappointment and disgust, the
impression of Joshua's amused smile was uncomfortably strong in my mind.
The great day on which we had put so much was a depressing fiasco--a
Black Friday. The depression endured for three days. Lennox sat tight at
his hotel to be in quick communication with Barlow, who appeared
suddenly to have lost all interest in the famous Fourth. Tod went off
about his week-end work. I solaced myself by haunting Maida Vale.

I was at Maida Vale on the Monday afternoon, and Bertha Newsome was
giving us tea when Lennox rang up with an urgent message from Barlow. We
were to catch the 5.30 train for Kenwick, where he wanted us urgently.
Tod was with Lennox when I joined him at Paddington Station. He was in a
curious mood of excitement and elation. Things were going to happen. He
pushed an evening paper under my eyes and pointed to a paragraph "from
our own correspondent" at Newbury:

THE MURDER IN BERKSHIRE

ARREST PENDING

The police are believed to have obtained important information about the
mysterious murder of a Mr. Parkinson in a motor car on the road near
Kenwick, in Berkshire, and it is expected that an arrest will be made
immediately. It will be remembered that a warrant is out for the man,
George Oddie, who has been missing since the night of the crime.

I could not share the elation of Lennox. Oddie was odious, and if Barlow
had succeeded in fastening his guilt upon him--well, that would not
grieve me. But I was glad to feign pre-occupation with the darkening
landscape as the train sped westward and I worried at the possible
consequences in the Ferry Grange household of Oddie's arrest. Joshua,
Janet, her mother, Helen Adamson--how would they all be affected if,
when the truth was told, it should be found that Oddie was not only the
murderer of Parkinson, but also the secret desperado for whom the police
had been searching for nearly a year?

Joshua especially--with his coincidental presence at the Northumberland
Hotel, and that queer smile of his...



II.


The Constable, Lewis, was at the station to meet us with the police car
and an air of large importance. Lewis, having lived through some trying
hours with me in the firm belief that I was a blood-stained felon, had
ever since been eager to atone for that aspersion.

"Coming to grips at last, sir," he managed to say, aside. "And none too
soon," he added, in a still more mysterious whisper.

That cryptic remark was explained in the first consultation on Barlow's
message. It took place in the room where Warren had roasted me so
fiercely on the night of the murder.

"Coming to grips at last--and none too soon," said Warren. From which I
concluded both that the Sergeant had a habit of repeating himself and
that my friend Lewis was an unconscious plagiarist.

"I see the newspaper says you're thinking of pinching George Oddie,"
said Lennox.

"The newspaper--!" The concentrated essence of contempt which Warren
contrived to distill from this word! Tod and I smiled. "The newspapers
never help. They always get in the way. But they're right this time:
we're going to take Oddie--to-night, I hope. And quite time--"

Though the old gentleman took no credit, his innocent Vanity was rather
sore about it; Oddie had been discovered not by him, but by Barlow. And
where, if you please, did we think Oddie was--and had been all the time?
We had not the least idea. Then he would surprise us: Oddie had just
simply been at home at Lorimer House!--and when Sergeant Warren had
settled Oddie's hash, we were given to understand, there would be a
pretty little bone for Warren to pick with Mr. Joshua Webb, make no
mistake. He would have the highly gratifying duty of pinching Mr. Joshua
Webb for obstructing the course of justice, for harboring and
comforting, for being accessory after the fact--Warren recited a long
list of the legal variants of the charges he would make against Joshua
Webb. (Joshua's queer smile and the trouble in Janet's eyes came rushing
back into my mind.) It was true that Warren had suspected Oddie's
presence in the neighborhood almost from the first; but at Webb's--! It
just showed how human depravity lurked in the unlikeliest places and
proved the truth of the old hard saying that a policeman should distrust
everybody always.

However, he concluded, Barlow had done the trick, and now we should see
what really was the cause of the queer things that were going on at
Abbott's.

"Oh?" said Lennox. "Something fresh?"

We all pricked up our ears.

"Yes, sir--fresh is a very good word," the Sergeant declared, acidly. "I
never heard of such colossal impudence."

With a little patience we extracted from him the sequence of events
which, no doubt, had led up to Barlow's present volcanic outburst of
action.

They began on Friday, Warren said, when Mr. Abbott returned to Morley's
Holt from attending a meeting in London. He reached home about seven,
just as it was dark. His man Paynter was putting up the car when he
caught sight of a fellow slinking away from the house. As there was no
other manservant about the place than himself, he knew this must be an
intruder. He shouted and the fellow ran.

"Paynter went after him, but he got away into the woods the other side
of the drive--you know how thick 'tis there, Mr. Masters--Paynter close
on his heels. Then my beauty turns on him--and fires! Lucky for Paynter
it was a blind shot. It didn't get him. But naturally he'd had enough.
He went back to the house."

Warren paused, enjoying the sensation his narrative visibly made upon
us.

"Naturally," said Lennox. "I should keep out of the way of gun practice
in the dark myself as a matter of principle. And then, Sergeant?"

"And then Paynter told Mr. Abbott, and Mr. Abbott was worried, but said
it only bore out what he'd always held--that there was some conspiracy
or vendetta going on, and Parkinson had been the center of it."

"Parkinson! But he's been dead many days," Lennox objected.

"Yes--but Parkinson lived at Morley's Holt. And suppose the man with the
gun wanted something that Parkinson was supposed to have?"

Warren put forward this fresh and startling suggestion with much
complacency.

"Go on, Sergeant," said Lennox. "Suppose he did--but this is more than a
hunch. You know something--"

"Well--Saturday night, Paynter locked up, and he thought he'd have a
look round the place. But this time he took a gun for himself--and a
torch as well. He didn't find anybody in the yard; but at the end of the
house--to the left of that portico, Mr. Masters--he stumbled against a
ladder and thought he heard a footstep. He switched on the torch and
again he saw a man dash across the drive for cover. And he up and fired
at him. He must have missed him, because the next instant there was a
flash and a shot from the wood, and Paynter skipped back round the house
to safety."

"Ah!" said Lennox. "I begin to see. The ladder--"

"The ladder was up against the window of the room Parkinson had
occupied."

"By gosh!"

"And though Paynter didn't think so, I'm pretty sure the man that
scooted across the drive was Oddie."

A kind of horrible fascination began to creep over me as the net of
circumstances closed in. Warren had it all pat--Oddie with a secret
vendetta against Parkinson, attacking him in the woods and failing,
waylaying him on the road and succeeding, hiding himself and biding his
time protected by Joshua Webb, seeking some secret concealed in
Parkinson's room, or perhaps the destruction of some piece of evidence
so far undetected, trying on Friday night to get into the house and
failing, trying a new way on Saturday and being scared off by Paynter--

"But, Sergeant," said I, "what could he have expected to find at
Morley's Holt? You'd examined Parkinson's room before you sealed it."

"I took a general inventory. But that may mean little. Who's to know
what he expected? Anyhow he tried his damnedest to get into the room,
and didn't--simply because Paynter disturbed him just in time. I went
out yesterday when Mr. Abbott rung me up. The window was still fastened
on the inside. I broke the seal on the door and inspected the room to
make perfectly sure. Nothing was disturbed. So I just sealed it up
again. But I'm sorry for Mr. Abbott. If Mary wasn't a particularly
well-plucked maid--"

"What's she got to do with it?"

"Well, if it weren't for Mary the old gentleman would be absolutely
alone in the house now. Paynter simply wouldn't stick it any longer. He
waited till I got out there yesterday. Then he said Mr. Abbott had
better come into Kenwick and stay at the King's Arms till it was all
over, or else I'd better send out some police to look after him. He
declared it was a policeman's job to be fired at by criminals or madmen,
not a chauffeur's. He was going. And he went."

"I guess I don't blame him," said Lennox.

"Nor I. I tried to get Mr. Abbott to shift, but he wouldn't hear of
leaving--he's a stubborn old gent. And that girl--would you believe
it?--she just cocked up her nose at Paynter and said she wasn't afraid
of fifty Oddies! So I posted two men last night, one outside and one
in--and nothing happened."

There was a lovable naïveté in the professional pride with which he said
those three words.

"In fact, Oddie's number's up. I could have had him here now, only Mr.
Barlow's instructions are very full and explicit--things to be done at
certain times and in certain ways."

"Oh?" There was a world of curiosity in Lennox's voice.

"Yes--Mr. Barlow was very firm about it. When I said I'd go and take
Oddie at once, he wouldn't hear of it. No--we must do exactly as he
said, or we should spoil everything. Can't make sense of it myself.
These are his orders: let everybody in Kenwick know that we're on
Oddie's track and going to arrest him. And then sit tight and do nothing
till--well, I suppose there's an idea at the back of it--"

"You bet!" said Lennox, in the same awakened way. "Till when, Sergeant?"

"Till further orders, which may come any time to-night. And as for you,
Mr. Lennox--you're to be at the King's Arms in case he should want to
speak to you."

If Lennox could see an idea in these strange dispositions of Barlow, it
would not come either to Tod or myself.

But we were not left long to speculate about it. We had just eaten a
scratch dinner at the King's Arms when Barlow rang through to Lennox.

"The play's about to begin, boys," said he as he came back to us from
the telephone. (I saw no special significance in the phrase at that
moment.) "First Act: Mr. Challenger and Mr. Masters go to bed right away
and get a few hours' sleep. They will be called at 2.30. Second Act: the
Sergeant and as many men as he can scrape up will call for Messrs.
Challenger and Masters at 3 A.M. and they will depart with him. Third
Act: arrest of George Oddie at Lorimer House."

"Has Barlow gone batchy, do you think?" Tod inquired.

"Seems a bit mad," Lennox confessed. "But knowing Barlow, I'll say
there's method in his madness."

"What's your part in the play?" I inquired. "Or do you sit in the
stalls?"

Lennox reminded me that he was technically an alien and had no business
anyhow to interfere in a police matter in England. But he was to sit on
the telephone and wait for another message. Full of wonderment at
Barlow's eccentricity, Tod and I thought first of sitting up; but Lennox
would not hear of it, and in the end I did get three hours of good sleep
before Lennox shook me by the shoulder.

Old Warren, when he came, was like an emancipated boy. He had something
to bite on now. No elusive detective business--just a straightforward
police job after his own heart. His quarry was corralled. Half a dozen
men, silence, speed--the thing was done.

Excellent old optimist!...

He had expected Lennox to make a third recruit to his army of four
constables, two of them withdrawn from the guard at Morley's Holt.
Lennox smiled his refusal.

"No, Sergeant; guess I'm out of this: no locus. I'll stand by here and
wait for news from Barlow. Good luck. Looks as if you'll get the goods
this time--but he's a whale of a vanisher, ain't he?"

Lennox's manner was something strange, but I put it down to diffidence
about meddling in an English police affair, and in the excitement of the
next hour I thought no more of it.



III.


Warren had two cars, which, within twenty minutes, disgorged us all in
the road outside the gate of Lorimer House. The new moon had set. It was
a still, dark night. Warren switched off the car lights, assembled us
all inside the gate and issued his instructions.

No talking--every movement as silent as possible--such and such a man to
post himself here or there--Mr. Challenger and Mr. Masters to keep guard
in the roadway between the house and the stable-yard--Lewis and Farthing
to follow Warren.

"According to Mr. Barlow," he said, "Oddie's in the range of the old
stable buildings. So far as I know there's only the one entrance,
through the yard. But he may have found a window or trap-door, so you
four men posted on the outside keep a smart look-out. I expect to get
him inside. Possibly asleep. If so, all the better."

Excellent old optimist!...

We crept down the straight open drive along which I had hurried to
Barlow with my news of Janet. We groped our way to the high wall of the
stable-yard. Joshua's house, among its trees and shrubs, was dark and
lifeless. The gates of the yard stood wide open. The little light in the
sky enabled us to see the roof line of the buildings round, and that was
all. This peaceful country scene looked as little like the haunt of a
desperate criminal as anything on earth.

Warren waited while his four sentries stole away to their posts on the
outside of the wall. Tod and me he placed in the drive, one on each side
of the gateway to the yard. And, then, with his two henchmen, he
assaulted the citadel.

It was a quick workmanlike job. One flash of his torch showed him the
only vulnerable door--that at the top of an outside wooden staircase.
From where we stood Tod and I could not see what he did, but we heard
the thud of his footsteps as he ran up the stairs, a clink of iron, a
crunch of wood, a door flung open. Then a light sprang up. We saw the
forms of Warren and his two men moving inside. There was a hollow bang,
and the light flickered away.

Sounds of various movements reached us. The light gleamed for an instant
in a window on the ground floor. It shone under a door, flitted here and
there.

Ten minutes passed.

"Drawn blank!" Tod said, softly.

Tod was right. Presently Warren and his two men were descending the
staircase, no longer careful of silence or darkness. They moved with the
torch round the yard examining doors. They came at last to the gateway.

"Not there," said Warren, lugubriously. "Been warned. Can't have gone
long."

"Found his spoor, then, Sergeant?" Tod asked.

"Spoor! Like to come and see?"

The old gentleman was excusably petulant. We followed him across the
yard. The door at the top of the wooden stairway gave access to two
rooms over the stables, evidently the residence of a coachman in former
days. But lately the abode of Mr. Oddie! No doubt of that. And, as
Warren had said, not more lately than a few hours. In fact, Mr. Oddie
had supped there that evening. In the first room were the remains of his
supper on a table, and the embers of a fire in the little grate. He had
furnished his retreat quite comfortably with chairs and rugs from the
house--presumably with the connivance of Mr. Webb, as Warren
vindictively pointed out. There were books and newspapers on one of the
chairs. In the room beyond, a bed was neatly made, and some of Mr.
Oddie's clothes hung over the foot of it.

Mr. Oddie had an old-fashioned drawing room lamp on an iron stand behind
his chair, and had been able to pursue his literary occupations at night
without observation because boards had been nailed over the window. It
was a very neat cache.

The banging we heard had been caused by Lewis lifting a trap-door in the
corner of the outer room, which revealed a ladder to the premises below.
But small need to ransack the place. Plainly, Warren said, Mr. Oddie had
been led to expect an attack on his citadel and had evacuated it in
perfect order and safety. He was distinctly not there.

These discoveries naturally produced a more disturbing effect in me than
even in Sergeant Warren. I had seen Barlow on this very spot the
afternoon when I rushed after him to report Janet's disappearance. Could
it be possible that Barlow had been within five yards of Oddie's hiding
place and not discovered it? Tod's voice broke in upon my reflections.

"More in this than meets the eye, Sergeant."

"A whole lot!" said Warren, with a wrathful frown. "More than one person
in the know--Webb and his servants too. Damn it!--I'll have 'em all for
collusion! Webb and his yarn about Oddie going to London on business as
usual! Webb not knowing where Oddie was! Let me get hold of Joshua Webb,
and he'll soon see--"

"What, Sergeant?"

We all leaped round as though a bomb had dropped in the room. Warren's
torchlight fell on the face of Joshua Webb standing in the doorway at
the top of the stairs--flitted over his figure (grotesque in a flowered
dressing gown that fell in billows over his ample anterior) and over his
bare feet in felt slippers, and then back to his face and his tousled
hair. On the platform outside was Lennox.

"What shall I see, Sergeant?" Joshua repeated to the astounded Warren.

"You!"

"The same," said Joshua, genially.

"What you'll see, Mr. Webb, is the inside of a police-cell unless you
can give me a satisfactory explanation of--this"--he threw a look round
the room--"but it'll take a bit of explaining, I shouldn't wonder."

Thus Warren, elaborately ironical, with Lewis and Farthing gaping over
his shoulder.

"Quite ready to tell you anything you want to know, Sergeant, but not--"

"There's only one thing I want to know from you, Mr. Webb," Warren broke
in, "and that is--where's Oddie?"

"Quite so, Sergeant--quite so. I can tell you a lot about Mr. Oddie, but
if you aren't particularly keen on talking in a draughty place like
this--what about coming across to the house now? Mr. Oddie's not here
and he's not coming back here."

"You're doing a dangerous thing, Mr. Webb--you're accessory--"

Warren stopped short at a signal from Lennox.

"Two words with you, Sergeant," he said, beckoning him to the doorway.
Warren stalked round Joshua to speak to Lennox. Joshua at once assailed
us.

"Why!--it's Mr. Masters and Mr. Challenger. Fancy meeting you here!
Excuse my undress, gentlemen. And how do you do?"

I forget what Tod said or did. As for me I never felt such a fool. I
think an inane smile was my only answer to Joshua. Certainly his
response was a deliberate wink. There was time for nothing more. Warren
stepped back into the room and called to his constables:

"You can go out and bring the cars up to the house. Call off the men
outside, and stand by for orders. Now, Mr. Webb--"

A little procession, with Warren's flickering torch lighting its way,
went through the dark yard and across to the house. There the torch was
unnecessary. A door stood open and rooms on the ground floor were lit
up. Warren, Lennox, Tod and I trooped in after Joshua.

I had been putting two and two together and was more or less prepared
for a surprise; but dear old Warren must have narrowly missed an
apoplexy when in Joshua's drawing room he saw Mrs. Anderson-Orr leaning
forward in a chair before the chimney-piece and trying to encourage a
dying fire to revive. Mrs. Anderson-Orr, like Joshua, was in a dressing
gown, but unlike Joshua she looked extremely well in it.

The rest of us pulled up short near the door, but Joshua went across to
her as she dropped the poker exclaiming:

_"Mon Dieu, quelle joule !_ What! Mr. Challenger--and Mr. Masters?
_Tiens, tiens!_ How extraordinary! Pardon my deshabille. How are you
all?"

"How do you do?" Tod recovered first, and went towards her with hand
out. "You'll forgive us, Mrs. Anderson-Orr--"

"Tut, tut!" cried Joshua. "Not so--why, of course not so, Challenger.
How could you think that? Allow me to introduce Mrs. Webb! I'd have
preferred another sort of occasion, but still--on your head, Sergeant!"

I hardly perpended the comedy of this scene, in which a group of police
and newspaper men, hot as they thought on the heels of a murderer, had
burst in upon the honeymoon of a pair of middle-aged lovers.

I was too busy, during the few minutes it lasted, trying to wriggle out
of a net of misunderstanding and to read something like reason into
Barlow's behavior.

If, as it seemed, he had veritably sent me and Tod off on that day, as
Tod had said, to chase a sentimental couple who wanted only to be by
themselves...

And if, as I must suppose, Barlow had been well aware that Oddie was in
the coachman's rooms at Lorimer House...

I was just conscious of a conversation between Tod and Mrs. Webb. I
heard her say, two or three times, "_Comme c'est drôle!_" And then
Lennox had spirited us out of the house.

There seemed to be an understanding between him and Joshua. Warren was
left to extract his information about Oddie from Joshua in private: we
were, as the new Mrs. Webb would have said, _de trop_. But before we
went she had seized a moment to grasp my hand and wring it hard.

"I've heard all about Janet. Thank you, Mr. Masters," she said under her
breath. "And all about you. Thank God it was no worse."

Which was not the least surprising thing that happened at Lorimer House.



IV.


Outside, Lennox, hurried and excited, bundled us into the car he had
brought from Kenwick. There was no time then for me to adjust my
slower-moving mind to the flood of entirely new ideas that set in with
the discovery that the Webbs knew all about my adventures and Janet's,
of which they could only have learned through Barlow.

"Now, you boys," said Lennox, when we were on the road, "that wasn't the
play, after all--only the curtain raiser. The real thing's about to
begin. We're to meet Barlow at Morley's Holt. He'll be there at
daylight, and before that we've got to do a few things. The big show's
on."

We rained questions on him, but he could tell us little except that
Barlow had plotted and timed the whole thing to a hair--Warren's raid on
the stable-yard at Lorimer House, Lennox's visit to Joshua Webb, the
handing over of the Oddie end of the business to Warren and Webb to
settle between them.

"What did you tell Warren to make him alter his tune so completely?" I
asked.

"Just what Barlow told me--that he was to accept all Webb said on the
subject as true, that Oddie was in Webb's house, and could be arrested
at any moment if Warren thought, after he'd heard Webb, that he ought to
be arrested."

"Then," I said, still struggling with that re-adjustment, "Oddie's
not--"

"No, of course, he's not!" Tod broke in. "But ain't it time, Lennox, we
had a spot of knowledge about what we're after? Oddie's just a turnip
lantern, and he's never been anything else. He's got as much to do with
this as I have with making the sea salt. Barlow's been telling the world
about Oddie just to lull his man to sleep. But I think we ought to have
a show-down before we go any farther."

"Tell Barlow," said Lennox, shortly. "But it's up to us to keep the
contract, Tod. We can't let Barlow down now. He expects with our help to
take his man, and have him safe in jail before breakfast."

"All right--I don't want to spoil sport. But I don't like being asked to
go shooting in the dark. There's always a risk of winging the wrong
pigeon."

"Don't suppose there'll be any pigeon-shooting, Tod. Not if I know
Barlow. We've just got to keep watch. He wants us to get cover on the
river-bank opposite Morley's Holt before daylight, note everything that
happens, and wait for a signal from him."

The strangest part of Barlow's request was that Warren and the police
were to know nothing of our movements.

"Why not Warren?" we asked. "Doesn't Barlow need all the help he can
get?"

"I reckon he don't think Warren would help. Remember what I said about
the shot we had in London? The very smell of a policeman--and it's all
off. Barlow insists. So that's that. Which of you knows the location?
What's the best way to get where he wants us without alarming anybody in
those darned woods that might be curious about us?"

I laid the plan for that: to leave the car in the drive at Ferry Grange,
strike off the road by the bridge and skirt the water till we reached
the apex of the bend, opposite the point where Janet and I had been
fired on in the boat. There we could command a longish reach of the
river in each direction, and, if we split up, practically the whole
circuit of Morley's Holt.

I had in mind, of course, some such expedient on Barlow's part as a
beat-up of the woods which would drive any person hiding there towards
the river. Why he would not employ the police for this I could not
imagine. But Barlow was a law unto himself.

Lennox fell in with the plan. We parked the car between the rhododendron
hedges at Ferry Grange, and plodded through the damp grass of the
meadows. Lennox dropped out first and hid among the bushes where he
could command the river almost down to the bridge. Tod went on to a spot
that gave him a view of the northerly reach. I found a place at the
point of the bend where the stream was narrowest, almost opposite
Abbott's boat house. If Barlow was beating the woods towards the river,
one of us was bound to see anybody who broke cover.

There had as yet been hardly light enough to make a man visible three
yards away. But dawn broke as I crouched between the withes of a huge
willow. Somewhere here Janet had seen the white face of Parkinson
staring at her from among the branches. The sheen of the horizontal
light from the East appeared on the water. The black formless mass of
the woods on the other side was gradually fretted into the shapes of
trees. It was a windless morning, without sound, save for the occasional
and almost imperceptible plop of a heavy leaf on the water.

Any trampling of the brushwood across the river would certainly have
been heard. There was none. Straining eyes and ears, as no doubt Tod and
Lennox were doing in their places, I humped there till in the gray
half-light anything that moved on either bank would have been visible
and there was no further need for strain.

Then the first diversion occurred suddenly. My heart came into my mouth.
The sound of a footstep and the rustling of branches reached me, not
from the river, but close at hand.

"Sh-sh!"

A hand parted the withes, and Barlow's voice said, "Don't stir,
Masters."

I felt a great release of tension. Barlow crawled in beside me.

"I've seen Lennox," he whispered. "I'm going on to Tod. I think we've
got him this time. But for the Lord's sake don't stir or show yourself
till you hear from me. Got your gun? If you hear me shout or fire, jump
out and cover him. But not till then--no matter what happens."

A distant vibration caught his ear and mine at the same moment.

"Ah!" said Barlow. "Hear that? Remember--silence!--and don't budge till
you hear me. I must get on to Tod."

He was gone.

The vibration, just audible at first, grew steadily louder, and became
the roar of a motor. It increased incessantly till it reached a volume
far beyond the noise of an ordinary car and came very close. Yet no
public road was within half a mile and no racing car would take that
twisting drive through the woods of Morley's Holt at such a pace.

In three minutes the sound had risen to ear-splitting thunder high
overhead. I saw through the yellowing leaves the gray form of an
aeroplane race by.

The secret of Barlow's ambuscade was out--we were to hold up a getaway
by air.

Barlow's orders were precise. But I could not resist the temptation to
part those withe fronds enough to see the plane as it made two wide
circles over the great meadow.

It dropped all the time, and at the end of the second circuit flattened
out and was almost skimming the ground as it passed me a hundred yards
away. It came to rest in the middle of the field. Perhaps it was five
hundred yards distant--perhaps not quite so much--not too far, at all
events, for me to see the legend on the fuselage--GEB 0746--and the
movements of the pilot. A tall figure, bundled up in much clothing, got
lumbrously over the side of the fuselage and walked around the machine.
The aviator stood with eyes directed towards me and the river. I saw the
glint of a match and the smoke of a cigarette.

No sign came from Barlow. All up and down the river was silence, more
intense now that the roar of the engine had ceased.

I had watched the aviator moving around, stretching arms, leaning
against the machine, pulling a wire here and there, for perhaps ten
interminable minutes. My watch showed twenty minutes to six.

At exactly twenty minutes to six, the second diversion came--a sound
from across the river.

At last!

I turned to face the water again, peering through the willow to catch
the first glimpse of the person whose quick pattering footsteps I had
heard. He at any rate was not suspicious of watchers. He did not steal
along, but walked boldly and rapidly. I heard him clear his throat. When
his footsteps ceased they gave place to the rattling of an opening door.

He was at the boathouse.

If this meant that he was to cross the river, the supreme moment for
Barlow was at hand. I could not guess whether Barlow, from his position
with Tod, was able to hear these sounds or not; but if a boat put across
he would see it. I was on wires, watching for the opening of the
riverward door of the house.

But before it came, Barlow was at my side again, with a whispered
warning. He had moved so silently that his hissing "Sh-sh!" was the
first intimation of his presence. His eyes were wide open now, fastened
on the boathouse door. His right hand pressed down on my arm.

The noises from the boathouse came utterly devoid of care or caution.
Our presence was clearly unknown. A chain rattled. An oar clattered.
Then the door was shoved open, a boat's stern came out, and with a push
from the oar against the wall of the house, the boat leaped to the
middle of the river. A gray-headed man stood in it. With two strokes of
the oar canoe-wise he reached our bank, not three yards from us. And
then--

I was sorry for Barlow: the anti-climax was so tremendous. The man who
landed hurriedly and hitched the boat's painter round a pollarded willow
was Mr. Abbott! Abbott, in his familiar black cape. Abbott with his
grave deliberate movements.

The pressure of Barlow's hand on my arm continued. I hardly breathed.

Abbott climbed the bank into the meadow, pulled his cape round him, and
stood so close to our retreat that I could see the birthmark on his
face. He shaded his eyes from the Easterly light until he had located
the aeroplane. He gazed for a few moments, and then walked towards it.

"That's torn it!" I thought, but did not speak until Abbott was out of
all possible hearing. Then Barlow said, as if echoing my thought:

"Damnation! Why couldn't the old fool sleep on like a Christian?"

I did not know what was in Barlow's mind, but I reflected that the best
of all Christians would have to possess a very easy conscience to sleep
while that machine tore through the sky above the roof of his house.

"Curiosity is the curse of the human race," said Barlow. "Who'd have
thought an old man like that would turn out of bed to see an
aeroplane--even if it had landed in his own garden? But I guess the old
boy will be startled when he finds Usher there--and Usher--well, I'd
like to hear Usher's language."

"Usher!" I exclaimed, staggered. "You don't mean that's Usher?"

But Barlow did mean it. He would tell me all about it later on. For the
present, just watch--watch for the passenger for whom the plane had
come. There was a forlorn chance that he might still show up if old
Abbott got off the stage in time. Not much of a chance--

Thus Barlow in a whisper, with his eyes on the 'plane and its pilot and
the somber cloaked figure approaching it. Usher! Usher in this galley
deranged all my ideas. But if Barlow was depending on an assignation
with Usher, and Mr. Abbott's presence prevented it--what of Usher? Was
he to be allowed to fly off again undisturbed?

"Suppose he takes alarm, Barlow?" I asked in a murmur. "Are you going to
let him go?"

"Of course. He don't suspect we're watching. If Abbott butting in spoils
it this morning--it'll be for another day. I'm not worrying about Usher.
We can take him any old time. It's Usher's employer I want...
Ah!--Abbott recognizes him."

The cloaked figure had reached the plane, and presently Abbott was
engaged in a lively conversation with the aviator. There was much
gesticulation. The conversation appeared to develop into a controversy.
Abbott was pointing--we could see his cloak waving. Abbott was ordering
Usher to depart!

Our hope of seeing the assignation kept and getting at last to the
bottom of Parkinson's case melted away in the gray light: Usher obeyed
Abbott. He went to the nose of the plane and swung the propeller. A
crackle like machine-gun fire split the air. Usher climbed into his
cockpit.

The next second, with a profane exclamation, Barlow leaped out of the
willows, fired his pistol in the air, and began to run towards the
machine. I dashed out after him, and right and left saw Tod and Lennox
running too.

For Abbott had immediately climbed into the machine behind Usher, the
engine had accelerated to a fearful scream, and the machine had moved.

We ran a hundred yards and stopped dead. It was hopeless, even if Barlow
had been prepared to fire.

The plane taxied quickly down the meadow, gathered pace, reached fifty
miles an hour in a few seconds, and took off. It made a great circle and
came back climbing, came back insolently over our very heads, and raced
away to the South. The sun came up as we stood gaping after it, and
shone yellow on its wings. They flashed in the light. For a few minutes
it was a flaming torch in the sky; for another few minutes a diminishing
speck; and then it had gone.

The four of us looked in each other's faces dumb-foundered.

"Abbott!" said I, to break the silence. "Well, I'm damned!"

"What's that?" Lennox cried. "Did you say Abbott?"

"Yes--didn't you see it was Abbott?"

Lennox made no reply. He looked hard at Barlow, and Barlow looked hard
at him.

"Are you surprised, Lennox?" said Tod. "I didn't think you would be. I'm
not."

Barlow suddenly awoke from what had seemed like a stupor.

"We won't talk a lot of damned nonsense, if you please! I left my car
the other side of Morley's Holt so as to make no noise down here. You
fellows have one. Where is it?"

We told him.

"Then, action! Challenger, hurry on and get the car, will you? Bring it
back to the bridge. I want to go to Lorimer House and send a telephone
message."

"Well!" Tod exclaimed a quarter of an hour later, as the car slid away,
"give me Barlow for vaudeville! Can you beat it, Lennox?"

Lennox's face wore a faint smile.

"Quick-change stuff," said he.

"Barlow's taken a nasty knock. He hadn't guessed Abbott."

"Who could have guessed Abbott?" I demanded.

"I could," said Tod. "I did. He was my first guess. The shooting of
Parkinson shook it up, but I've been coming back to it since."

"Good Lord, Tod! It's absurd. How could Abbott have shot Parkinson?"

"Usual old way," said Tod--"with a gun. Think it out, young man."

"I shall have to think a long time before I can see Abbott shooting
Parkinson," I retorted.

But of course I began to think at once. Abbott, the old gentleman who
wrote letters to _The Times_ and made patriotic orations! Impossible...

And then the sinister possibilities began to breed like flies--for all
the time since Tod and I took that first journey to Kenwick, Abbott had
known or could have known all we knew ourselves and all we did. He was
aware of our movements and our sentiments. He was hovering round the
Metropolitan on the critical day. But the begetter of the Allenstein
outrage, the most daring and best concealed crime of modern times, the
kidnaper of Janet, and the stealthy visitor to my bedroom--this
apparently benevolent and likable, if cranky, old gentleman? What an
actor! To have devised and carried out the cold-blooded murder of
Parkinson--

But that was where I boggled. I could not see how, Whatever degree of
cunning and cruelty one attributed to the apparently gentle Abbott, he
could possibly have been at Usher's garage or near it when Parkinson was
shot...

Lennox was very silent. He answered all Tod's speculations in
monosyllables, and Barlow came back alone in the car before we had made
any sense out of these events.

He seemed more composed.

"That was a bad break, you fellows," said he. "Knocked me off my perch!
But I've spoken to Fougère. Every policeman in France will be on the
look-out for him. And every policeman in England too--not that I expect
him to land in England. Well!--old Abbott--!"

I looked triumphantly at Tod. If I had not been clever enough to suspect
Abbott, neither had Barlow.

"I'd just as soon have suspected my own brother," said Barlow. "It don't
seem feasible, Lennox."

"Well, it's mighty queer," Lennox admitted. "But we knew our man was an
artist, Barlow."

"Artist? I should say! Here we've been waiting for the Unknown to
materialize--and I thought we had him this morning--and all the time old
Cheat-the-Gallows has been putting it over on us. How he must have
laughed up his sleeve at our maneuvers! Artist!--why he deceived even
Mrs. Anderson-Orr, and she's not what you'd call an ingénue, is she?"



V.


His first annoyance passed, Barlow stood the ruin of his hopes very
well. Bad joss, he said; but he had no doubt that a few hours would
reverse it. The two scoundrels had gone off in the fond delusion that
their departure was unseen and its method unknown. They would soon be
jolly well undeceived.

We were "tearing a herring" (Tod's picturesque description of our
much-needed breakfast) at the King's Arms when Barlow told us how and
why he had laid his ambuscade. It originated in the discoveries he had
made at Filton.

He found the wretched woman who had the misfortune to be the wife of the
thug Jim Williams, like many such women, sturdily loyal to her husband.
Barlow had vainly exercised all his ingenuity for days to trip her into
some admission. She never betrayed herself to him. She probably had no
actual fore-knowledge of the kidnaping, though she must have had
suspicions.

So it was not at the cottage but at the aerodrome that he got on the
track of Jim Williams's secret and of the reason why Janet was spirited
away to Filton. In fact, the aerodrome itself was the secret, as he had
guessed that afternoon at Ferry Grange. In one of the hangars stood a
privately owned Moth, registered as GEB 0746, which had never been in
the air since it was placed there in March. It had, however, been
visited and inspected once by its owner, and its engine had been run up
several times to keep it in condition.

The person who, at the owner's instructions, looked after the engine was
a mechanic named Jim Williams, who lived in a cottage by the railway
triangle. The owner was no other than Mr. William Usher, of the Half Way
House Garage, Kenwick! On the one occasion when Mr. Usher came to
Filton, he stayed with Mr. Williams at that Cottage.

Now Barlow had come to the conclusion that, whoever doped and abducted
Janet, the man who drove her to Filton was Usher. And he estimated that,
Mr. Williams being hors de combat and unable to communicate, it would
not be long before Usher, receiving no news of Janet, would put in an
appearance at Filton himself. Hence Barlow's letter to me and his
decision to stay there.

As it happened, he had not to wait for Usher's arrival. Usher sent a
herald in advance, in the shape of a letter to Williams. It never
reached its addressee because it was delivered to Barlow instead. He
showed it to us--a scrawl without address or signature:

"You've got to run her up and have everything ready by Monday evening.
We're leaving here at daylight on Tuesday whether we've got the goods or
not. Take a good look at wheels and under-carriage. She'll have to come
down in a meadow by the river, rather rough. When I've gone you're to
clear. Leave the girl food and money. He will get in touch with you and
settle later on."

That intercepted missive made Barlow's way easy. He posted Duckham at
the aerodrome, and, as soon as he heard that Usher had arrived and was
going over the machine on Monday afternoon, laid the plan which we
carried out. He then himself started for Kenwick. Greatly respecting the
astuteness of his opponent, he had staged the arrest of Oddie as a
blind, and kept the police and all of us out of the way till the last
moment.

"I'd got to reckon with a master-mind," said he. "I'd exploited Oddie
all along for two reasons. The first was to lull Usher into a sense of
security--"

"If you knew the Bandit was in it, why didn't you get the bracelets on
him at the start, Barlow?" Tod interrupted. Tod had taken a kind of
humorous delight in the lurid Usher, and even now he seemed hardly to
credit the patent facts about him.

"Why? Because if I'd even so much as blinked an eyelid about Usher, Mr.
X would have been off--pst! like that--and good-by to all hope of
getting at the bottom of things. I'd good cause to be wary of a fellow
that could lie low in a little place like Kenwick and keep us all
guessing so long, hadn't I? He'd certainly know instantly of every step
we took. The remotest hint of the truth and it would all go phut.
Whereas a demonstration about Oddie might dope him. But who the devil
could have guessed old Abbott? He upsets the whole theory I'd formed
about the hidden crook--and how the devil could he have been in the
Allenstein business?"

"Tod says he guessed him from the first," said Lennox. "I'd thought of
him too, but I couldn't see a chink through which he could have shot
Parkinson. I don't now."

"Nor I," Barlow confessed.

"There's a missing link somewhere. Somebody's overlooked something
essential. May be Masters--he was naturally highly excited that night.
Or you may have."

"I think not." Barlow was emphatic. "I had a hunch about the murder
which I should have tested if we hadn't been diverted to Filton. Then,
there seemed to be a chance of killing the Allenstein bird and the
Parkinson bird with one stone, and getting at the solution by a short
cut. So I didn't go on with it. But now--"

"What's the theory?"

"Abbott upsets it. If Abbott--but even now I can't see Abbott in it. I
based my theory on the fact that Parkinson's car was not out of sight
for a single moment after he left Masters at the corner of the lane--not
a single moment, mind you--and yet nobody saw or heard the shot that
killed him."

We gaped at him.

"Not a single moment? I thought there were several minutes," said
Lennox. "What's the new evidence?"

"Oddie's. Oddie saw the car stop to let Masters go up the lane to
Usher's house. He saw the car move on. He walked in the same direction.
He had the red light in view all the time. Nobody interfered with the
car. He did not hear a shot. He reached the garage before Usher came. He
looked into the car. Parkinson was there--and Parkinson was dead!"

"Oh--but that's preposterous, Barlow!" cried Tod. "Dead men can't drive
cars. Oddie puts a strain on my credulity. Why didn't Oddie come forward
and own up?"

"Oddie said nothing at first to anybody but Joshua Webb--for motives
perfectly honorable to himself. And afterwards he said nothing because I
told him to say nothing."

"Then Oddie," said I, "was not alone." For I recalled the vision of
Usher standing at the field gate and peering into the darkness down the
road, and hearing footsteps, and a car starting.

"No, Oddie was not alone, and that's corroboration of his evidence. My
dear Masters--I'll bet your Janet never had any illusions about Oddie.
You ask her. Smart girl, your Janet. Almost as smart as her mother.
You're right, Lennox--there is a missing link. I thought I should have
picked it up this morning. But Abbott's got me beat."

"Ye-es?" said Lennox, with a long drawl, and a long pause, looking at
Barlow intently. "I should say there's nothing to do but get at that
theory of yours, Barlow. Down there--at the house?"

What they expected to find at Morley's Holt I had no idea. The mental
processes of Barlow and Lennox seemed to work on converging lines to the
same end without speech between them.

What we did find was startling enough.

Half an hour after breakfast Barlow was rattling us past the empty lodge
and down the derelict drive to the door of Abbott's house.

The maid came to the door in answer to Barlow's resounding peal on the
big bell. She opened it a few inches on the chain.

"What do you want?" she asked, peeping through the aperture.

"It's all right, Mary," said Barlow. "We are police officers. Please
open the door...Why were you nervous of us?" he asked her as she stood
in the lobby staring her surprise at the invasion.

"Enough to make a person nervous," she answered, a little resentfully,
"after what's happened, and all the tales going round--"

"What tales?"

"Tales of people hiding in the woods, and shooting, and all the rest of
it. As I said to Mr. Abbott, if it wasn't that he was a nice old
gentleman and a good master, it's not many girls would stand it. And
what's the matter now?"

Barlow looked her in the eyes a moment or so before he spoke.

"Well, Mary, I agree with you. It's not many girls--By the way, who's in
the house?"

"Nobody but me."

"No other servants?"

"No, Mr. Paynter wouldn't stand it any longer after he saw that devil
prowling about the place, and it's two days now that me and Mr. Abbott
have been here alone."

"Ah," said Barlow, "and everything's all right so far? Not been
disturbed since?"

"No."

"And where's Mr. Abbott now?"

"Out about somewhere. He went out to see some aeroplane he said he
thought had come down in the meadows."

"Oh? What time was that? Did you see him go out?"

"No--I wasn't up and I didn't see him go out. It was just before six.
Why?"

"How did you know he'd gone?"

"He came up and knocked on my door, and called through to tell me he was
going out, and said he'd want his breakfast a bit earlier than usual."

Barlow took a long look at Lennox. A moment later we were mounting the
staircase which I had last trodden with Paynter and Sergeant Warren.
Both dressing room and bedroom were locked. Barlow did not hesitate.
From his poacher's pocket he drew a long jemmy. In ten seconds the door
of the bedroom was wrenched open.

We stepped into an obscure air, alarmingly drenched with the scent of
burned material. Barlow, with an exclamation, groped his way across to
the window, threw back the curtains and shutters and let in the gray
morning light...

We stared around upon a scene of destruction.

Every door of every cupboard was open and every drawer; the floor
littered with scraps. In the great fireplace a heap of black flakes
showed where papers had been burned. The bed was disordered: Abbott had
apparently slept in it at any rate for a part of the night. Barlow
picked up a few of the bits of paper from the floor, looked at them and
threw them down again. He took a bedroom candlestick from the dressing
table. The candle had guttered into a shapeless mass, and there were
paper ashes in its tray. Then Barlow and Lennox stood staring at the
bed. It seemed to fascinate them. Their eyes met while Tod and I
watched.

"Well?" said Barlow.

"Gosh!" said Lennox.

Barlow walked round the room. He examined the lock minus a key. He
passed through the communicating door to the dressing room, and we
followed him. It was in perfect order.

"Cool!--to go to bed, wake up to do this long job, wait for the noise of
the 'plane, lock up, and be in the meadow at daylight"--Barlow reckoned
it all up in a meditative way.

"Cool? It's the whole frigidaire!" said Lennox. "Too arctic to be true."

Their eyes met again and held.

"Think we'd better have a look round?"

"Seems so, Barlow."

Barlow went out into the corridor, and shouted through the echoing
house, "Mary!"

The girl came running up.

"Don't get flurried, Mary. We want to go into every room in the house.
Have you the keys?"

"No, but the rooms are all open--except Mr. Parkinson's room, and Mr.
Warren's got the key of that," said Mary.

"Ah, yes--then we'll just see them one by one. You can stay here on the
landing. I'll call if we want you."

Then began a complete peregrination of Morley's Holt. The room Parkinson
had occupied was at the end of the corridor. The red seal with which
Warren had secured it was intact over the keyhole. Every other bedroom
on that floor was open. Only two contained any furniture. One was
obviously a spare room that had long been out of use. The other, at the
opposite end of the corridor from Parkinson's, showed signs of recent
occupation. It had a low truckle bed, now tidily made, and some cheap
bedroom fittings; a trunk, packed and corded, stood in a corner.

"Whose room is this, Mary?" Barlow called to the girl.

"That was Mr. Paynter's room," said she. "Mr. Abbott liked to have him
on the same floor."

The second floor--the top of the house--contained a range of rooms for
servants, and only Mary's own was in use. On the ground floor we walked
quickly after Barlow through all the apartments--even into the kitchen
quarters--a seemingly aimless ramble; but Tod and I were impressed by
the haste and gravity of these two who had such an uncanny understanding
and so much urgency in their mien.

The only pause they made was in the library, evidently the omphalos of
this strange house. Here there was comfort and a sense of occupation. It
had French windows giving on a little lawn at the western end of the
building. Everything was in perfect order. The flat work-table in the
middle of the room was piled on either side with neat bundles of papers,
pamphlets, documents tidily arranged. Barlow picked up from the blotting
pad some sheets of foolscap with a neat handwriting--the task on which
Abbott had been engaged during the evening.

"Well, I'm damned!" he exclaimed, handing the sheets to me.

They were apparently the first draft of a further letter to _The Times_
in which Abbott gave an account of the meeting which he had attended
with Lord Lesterfield, and cited the resolution that had been passed.

"That puts the lid on it," said Barlow. "The old hustler was game to the
last!"



VI.


Abbott's sudden leap into the limelight did more than derange Barlow's
plans. It upset the whole train of his reasoning.

He could no longer be certain, indeed, of the very foundation from which
he had started--the link between the Allenstein outrage and the murder
of Parkinson. If we were to assume that Abbott's flight meant a guilty
association with the Parkinson case--that he was in fact the god in the
machine of Usher's letter--the link snapped. For Abbott had been at
Morley's Holt several years and was well-known to everybody in Kenwick;
his life up to the time of Parkinson's arrival there was an open book.
Whereas both Barlow and Lennox had in their mind a person of very
different stamp, whose life was anything but an open book. They worried
out the argument as we stood round Abbott's neat table.

"He couldn't have been X," said Lennox.

"I wonder," Barlow mused. "He's an artist, as you said yourself,
Lennox."

"Yes--but he'd have to be some artist to be in Kenwick and the West End
of London at the same time. We've missed something somewhere."

"It's difficult, certainly. But if you're right, there must be a third
man."

"I've always thought there were three," said Lennox. "Don't seem to me
two could have handled it."

"There's just one way two could have handled it," Barlow replied. "We'll
see directly."

He stepped into the hall and called again to the girl.

"Mary," said he, "listen: Mr. Abbott has gone away without warning. You
may hear strange things. I want you to talk to nobody but me or Mr.
Warren. You'd better not remain here. We shall send a policeman to look
after the place. I suppose there's somebody in Kenwick you can stay
with? Very well. Now, tell me, do you know Usher?"

"Yes."

"Did he come here much?"

"Not a lot--just to do things to Mr. Abbott's car, and lately to Mr.
Parkinson's."

"Were he and Mr. Abbott friendly?"

"Not that I know of, sir," said Mary. "You'd hardly expect it. Mr.
Abbott was always the grand gentleman, though a very nice gentleman, and
Usher's such a rough customer--"

"I see. Not specially friendly--just a squire and a tradesman, eh? How
about Usher and Mr. Parkinson?"

"I didn't see much of Mr. Parkinson myself. Don't know that I ever saw
them together. But I did hear Mr. Paynter say not long ago that Usher
and Mr. Parkinson had a flaming row about some car repairs."

"Ah, well, we've heard about that. Now, when was Usher here last?"

Mary's answer took our breath away. She boggled over it at first.

"I can hardly say, sir...I don't like to say."

Barlow's eyes and his voice hardened.

"You've got to say. Out with it, Mary. Every bit of it! Wasn't Usher
here the night Mr. Parkinson was murdered?" She flinched.

"I don't know for certain...I thought he was. And then I thought I
must have made a mistake."

Barlow gazed relentlessly into her eyes, but he was very patient--even
gentle.

"Yes, Mary? Well, tell us why you first thought he was and then thought
he wasn't, will you?"

It came out in snatches--how she had imagined she heard a car and looked
through the kitchen window into the yard. It was very dark, and no car
was to be seen; but she fancied a man passed quickly across the yard in
the light from the window and she thought he looked like Usher. But
nobody came to the house. She mentioned it to Paynter, who came in
shortly after (he was in the midst of serving Mr. Abbott's dinner).

"Oh!" said Barlow, in a puzzled, questioning tone--"so early in the
evening?"

About half past eight, Mary thought. Paynter knew nothing of Bill Usher
being wanted, and said she was probably mistaken and there was nobody in
the yard at all. Then he cried out, as if he'd suddenly thought of
something, "By gum!" and told her Parkinson had come in complaining of
being molested down in the woods, and had shut himself up in his room.
Paynter thought Mr. Parkinson a bit queerer than usual, and didn't take
much notice of it at the time, but now he said he'd better go and see if
he was all right. Mary didn't give another thought to Usher after that
till the story of the murder at the garage came out next day. Then she
asked Paynter if she ought to say what she fancied she'd seen the night
before. Paynter's idea was that if she couldn't swear to Usher she'd
better say nothing. He said Usher was a silly d--- fool, but he didn't
believe he was a rogue. If there was anything against Usher, the police
would soon find it.

So Mary took Paynter's advice and held her tongue.

"If you couldn't swear to him, Mary," said Barlow, "what made you think
it was Usher walked across the court?"

"I don't know--something about him. He seemed a slouching greasy chap.
But it was only a sort of flash. I really couldn't swear anything on my
oath."

Barlow stood reflecting for a space.

"Half past eight," he muttered. "What time was it when you knocked up
the house, Masters? Between ten and half past, wasn't it? Mary--you
remember that night. Wasn't it you who told Paynter Mr. Abbott had gone
to bed when this gentleman called? How did you know that?"

"Mr. Paynter knocked at my door and asked if I'd seen Mr. Abbott since
dinner. I said I'd met him in the hall not long before with his candle
in his hand going up to bed."

"And between half past eight and half past ten you'd seen and heard
nothing unusual?"

"No, sir," said Mary. "Afterwards I heard engines running in the yard,
and that was unusual; but, of course, it was only Mr. Parkinson going
off."

Barlow was silent, hesitating for a few moments with half-closed eyes.
He opened them to meet Lennox's glance, and again some telepathic
intelligence seemed to pass between them. Barlow dismissed the girl.

"Now, you fellows," said he, "set about it quick! Usher was here that
night. He's concealed the fact. Problem: what part did Usher take in
the murder of Parkinson?"

I raised the points that counted against Mary's story. Usher seemed to
have accounted for his time. He was working at his garage all the
evening until he went home, and when I called he was preparing for bed.

"Nobody saw him working at his garage," Barlow objected.

That might well be, I suggested, because there was not much traffic on
the road and nobody had any particular reason for noticing whether he
was there or not.

"And George Bunbury," said Barlow, "declared that the garage was closed
when he went by."

George Bunbury, I pointed out, was drunk. He was so drunk that he saw
two Oddies, two Parkinsons, and two cars!

"So he did," Barlow admitted. "That's a point, Lennox?"

"It's a whale of a point!" said Lennox.

Then, I asked, encouraged in my argument, how could Usher possibly have
killed Parkinson before he opened his cottage door to me, seeing that I
had left Parkinson in the car only three minutes ago? And how could he
have killed him afterwards, if Oddie had seen Parkinson dead in the car
before Usher reached the garage?

"That's a fact," said Barlow. "And yet Usher was here: I feel sure Usher
was here. And Usher has fled for his life."

"May I ask Masters a question, Barlow?"

We turned to Tod, who had hitherto been a spectator.

"It may be a fool question," said he, "but here it is. Usher's garage
isn't as big as the Coliseum, Masters. You described how you sat there
waiting for the police--on the running board of a car under repair--and
how Usher stood up against the side of an old van. Did you notice
whether his flivver was in the garage?"

Lennox and Barlow immediately displayed the liveliest interest in this
question.

"Ah!" they exclaimed, together, and looked expectantly at me.

I had not taken special note of the contents of the garage. But I
started as another memory came to me.

"That engine!" I exclaimed.

"What engine?" said Barlow and Lennox together.

"Never gave it a thought till now--but when I came to the house that
night I heard the thudding of an engine, rather dull and faint. I
thought it was an electric light machine, but I forgot all about it,
even when I found Paynter lighting up the place with lamps and candles."

"The flivver!" cried Barlow. "The flivver for a dollar! Can you remember
whether the flivver was in the garage that night? Think hard, Masters."

I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up a picture of the place as I saw
it that night--the dull yellow electric lights, the oily concrete, the
discolored wood, and the walls of corrugated iron. Certainly no flivver
entered into the picture. The space in front of the big doors, where the
flivver usually stood, was empty: Usher looked malevolently at me across
it.

"I couldn't put anything on it," I told them. "Maybe the flivver was
there, but I don't remember seeing it."

I recounted what I did recall.

"Tod's on the mark!" Barlow exclaimed.

"Right there," said Lennox.

"If Usher's flivver was not in the garage, it was at Morley's Holt. It
brought him here. The girl heard it. Some other car took him back. Don't
that light things up, Lennox?"

"It's a flood-light, Barlow."

"Shall we go and see what car it was?"

"I'll say we will."

They spoke excitedly. At present no light flooded my obtuse
intelligence--only a thicker obscurity. Barlow once more called the
girl.

"Show the way to the garage, Mary."

She led us through stone-flagged passages to the back of the house, took
a bunch of keys from a shelf, walked across a cobbled yard, and swung
back the great doors.

The garage was occupied by two large closed cars of different makes but
very similar appearance. The essential distinction between them was that
one had black bodywork and the other dark blue.

The light began to dawn on me.

"Thanks, Mary," said Barlow. "We're going to take a look round. Which is
Mr. Abbott's car and which was Mr. Parkinson's?"

"The blue one is Mr. Abbott's," she answered.

"That'll do then, Mary."

Barlow watched her walk back to the house, and then turned to me.

"There you are, Masters--now in which of those two cars did you ride
from Morley's Holt to Usher's garage?"

I walked round, looking into both, scrutinizing them closely. But for
the life of me I could not answer Barlow's question. It might have been
either. There were little differences--in the rake of the steering
pillars, the dashboard arrangements, and so on. Nothing that I could fix
as characteristic.

"Impossible to say," I admitted.

"Not that it matters," said Barlow. "In the dark all cats are gray. But
whichever one you rode in, Masters, you can bet your last dollar Usher
drove in the other, and got to the garage before you."

"That may be, Barlow--but I don't see how it helps. Parkinson was
certainly with me, and if Usher got to the garage before we arrived--"

"Remember that in the dark all cats are gray." Barlow repeated the
proverb. "In the dark all cars are alike. In the dark--what about men?"

"Men?--do you mean--?"

I did not complete the sentence. The possibility that Barlow was
suggesting suddenly broke in upon me.

"I mean that I've always wanted two cars and two drivers to explain the
murder of Parkinson, and I've never had 'em till now. There was a sort
of ghostly and unconvincing second car in the offing. You recall Usher's
yarn? But I suspected that Usher had invented that car _ad hoc_. It was
a convenient way of accounting for things he couldn't explain. Very
first idea that would occur to him. He cockers up some unknown criminals
who escape in an unknown car and we're left to guess that they were the
same people who'd already had one go at Parkinson. A bit too perfect. So
I didn't believe in that kind of car--I wanted another. And here 'tis."

"Why'd you want another, Barlow?"

"Because the one you rode in wouldn't do. Parkinson couldn't have been
killed in it. That car was under observation almost every moment of the
time; also, a shot couldn't have been fired into that car without being
heard by every one within a quarter of a mile. But nobody had under
observation the car that Usher drove. Here we've got two cars, so much
alike that you can't say which of the two you rode in. If the car you
left at the corner of the lane was not the same that you found
afterwards at Usher's garage it all becomes as plain as a cement wall
and the mystery of Parkinson's murder is solved. Don't you agree,
Lennox?"

"Looks that way," said Lennox.

"And you, Tod?"

"I think you've got it, Barlow."

"And you, Masters?"

But I hadn't got it. Either I was blind or I looked at the thing from a
perverse angle.

"Sorry, Barlow," said I. "You said once before I was a goof. Very likely
you're right; but I still can't see how Parkinson could have been
shifted from one car to the other, or why he should be shifted."

"Of course you can't. Neither can I. Because he wasn't."

I shrugged my shoulders and gave it up. For the third time Barlow said:

"In the dark all cats are gray." He paused.

"And cars look alike--and men," said I. "But how that will account for
Parkinson being alive in one car and dead in another beats me."

"I quite understand how it beats you," he replied. "You've got a fixed
idea--the idea that Parkinson was shot at a particular time--between ten
minutes and twenty minutes past eleven. Suppose that idea's wrong?
Suppose Parkinson had been shot a while before that?"

"Before--?" I gasped out the word, looking from one to the other of
their three faces. "Then--am I really mad?"

"Not at all, Masters. You've only got a fixed idea. But you'll admit
that if Parkinson was dead in the car that Usher drove from Morley's
Holt before you left, the notion of dropping you before you reached the
garage, arranging for that ten minutes when nobody would see a car and
anything might happen, and leaving you to jolly well explain how you
came to be in charge of a corpse--it was all a damned clever invention."

"I should say it was far too clever to be true, Barlow."

"No doubt, but you'd be wrong. Lennox and I would not say it was too
clever to be invented by the person we have in mind--eh, Lennox?"

"No--I guess it's about up to his form," said Lennox.

"But you see what it involves, Barlow?" I persisted. "The man drove me
from Morley's Holt. He talked to me most of the way. He spoke of his
narrow squeak earlier in the evening. He urged me to stop all inquiries
we were making about him. He was full of fear and nervousness--"

"I know all that," Barlow interrupted. "It's what's given you your fixed
idea. But just think. What did you know of Parkinson? You'd seen him
once for an hour months before--in circumstances which could hardly have
fastened him in your memory. You knew he had a dark mustache and a pale
face and a squeaky voice. Admit, Masters, that any man with those three
qualifications could have been taken by you for Parkinson."

"Well--?"

"And then remember that we're dealing with a criminal genius, a
consummate actor, a master of disguise, a man who sticks at nothing.
Why--it's simple! I can see him just gurgling with laughter when you
disappeared down the lane, moving on as soon as you were out of hearing,
saluting poor Parkinson's corpse as he passed on his way home to
Morley's Holt and safety--"

"Old Abbott? Barlow--it's impossible!"

"I'd have said so myself till this morning. Abbott took me in, I'm not
ashamed to confess it. But what other explanation is there? All those
delays at the house while you were trying to see Parkinson...just to
let Usher get away with it...picking you up on the road planting...
the corpse on you...exactly the kind of devilry, subtle, daring,
impudent, to appeal to the man who'd acted the role of the benevolent
and foolish old gentleman writing letters to _The Times_ denouncing his
own crimes and scolding the police for not catching him! The paltriest
disguise and the most elementary mimicry would do to bulldoze the young
tenderfoot who was matching himself against the craftiest man in
England."

If this truly was the explanation of part of the puzzle, it only
deepened another part.

"But, Barlow," said I, "when did he kill Parkinson if your theory's
right? And why did such a cynical genius have to kill Parkinson so
crudely and land himself with a corpse to get rid of at all?"

"That's a cute question," said Barlow. "When was Parkinson killed? I
don't know. Why was Usher at Morley's Holt? I'll speculate. Do you
remember what I said to you before we'd got very far into the case? I
said you and your Janet had put Parkinson's number up. He'd have been
killed some time or other, no doubt, but the reason why he was killed
that particular day was evidently the fear of a meeting between him and
Miss Anderson-Orr. Can't you see Abbott dogging Parkinson, watching him
in the woods day after day, till your boat comes up--then having a shot
at him, and afterwards at you? And if he'd got you--can't you imagine
the letters he'd have written to _The Times_ about it?"

I witnessed with horrified fascination the building of Barlow's
structure on the facts.

"He didn't get you, thank your lucky stars! But you'd been there, and he
had it in for you. Clearly he summoned Usher soon after that. What was
in his mind, and how and exactly when Parkinson left this world, I can
only guess. He must have been killed not long before you got to the
house. Paynter saw him come in after dinner time, when he went to his
room to prepare for his journey--"

"But, Barlow," said I, "Paynter also saw him in the garage while I was
there."

"I think not. I think Paynter, who could not find Mr. Abbott--you
remember all those delays?--ultimately found the same pseudo-Parkinson
that drove you to Usher's. I think that if you hadn't turned up by a
kind of lucky miracle at Morley's Holt, the pseudo-Parkinson would have
wished Paynter good night and have driven away ostensibly for Newbury,
and the body of the real Parkinson would have been found in his car
somewhere on the road a long way from Kenwick next morning. But Mr.
Masters arrives at the house at the perfect psychological moment. That
interfering person delivers himself into our hands. Keep your mind on
those delays--all that waiting while Paynter was searching first for
Abbott and then for Parkinson. Abbott must have become aware of the
visit long before Paynter found him in the garage--"

"By Jove--yes!" I exclaimed.

"What?"

"While I was waiting in that little room--the door half opened: I
thought it was Paynter--"

"Well!--there you are," said Barlow. "Here's Masters ready to our hand.
If we can plant Parkinson's corpse on him, we provide ourselves with a
perfect alibi. It's a rich idea; we like it immensely. So come along,
Usher! Stuff the body in the car! Off with you--"

"Barlow!" I cried; "it's too horrible!"

"Well," said Barlow, "murder's horrible anyhow, isn't it? The most
horrible thing about murder is the murdering. You can't hurt a man when
he's dead, however roughly you handle him. So, Usher--off with him! Stop
outside your garage. Nobody will take any notice of a car outside a
garage, even if anybody sees it. Then get away home. We'll see to it
that somehow Mr. Masters is planted...We get our own car. In due
course we take Mr. Masters on board. We amuse ourselves with a pretty
piece of play-acting on the road. We appeal to Mr. Masters's better
nature. We arouse his sympathy. We do a bit of dramatic stuff about
shadows in the road. And how we chuckle! We even call out to him in our
squeaky Parkinson voice when he goes down the lane. And Mr. Masters is
_planté là!--"_

"Old Abbott, Barlow? All that invented by old Abbott? Even now I simply
can't believe it."

And I spoke the absolute truth. I could not believe it.

"Well--is it sound reasoning, Lennox?"

"Seems to be the goods, Barlow. One or two things I'd like to masticate
some. But that'll be for after."

But, Barlow and Lennox notwithstanding, my fixed idea persisted. I could
not fit old Abbott into that picture.



VII.


Nor could Janet get Abbott into the picture.

While Barlow waited all that day for a vibration from one of the
tentacles he had spread out in every direction, it was agreed that I
might escort Janet back from London.

She met me in Janet-like style--held me at arm's length; but at the end
of the arm was a hand that grasped mine firmly, and she greeted me as
"John."

She met my news with equal forthrightness. She said:

"Rot!"

Old Mr. Abbott was just old Mr. Abbott. Not for nothing had she known
him all this time and met him constantly. He was rather a nice old
man--a bit footling when he rode his conspiracy hobby, but a gentleman.
And that settled it.

"Why," exclaimed Janet, "his servant girl's a better judge of character
than all your Barlows! You watch it, John. I'd as soon suspect Joshua."

Which led me to confess to her the vague suspicions of Joshua that had
flitted through my mind from time to time. I even told her of the
farcical adventure of the Effingham Hotel and my night out with Joshua.
It amused her. But not so greatly as her account of the reasons for the
adventure astonished me.

"They'd arranged long before to be married that Tuesday in London. Got a
special license--fixed it all up. When the murder of Mr. Parkinson threw
everything into a muddle, Joshua said they'd better put it off. But my
mother wouldn't hear of it. You know her--or, if you haven't got the
hang of her yet, I can tell you, John, it's pretty hard to put her off
her stroke."

"I don't know her as well as I hope to," said I, "but I think she'd make
an ideal mother-in-law."

Janet did not deign to notice this impertinence.

"But," she went on, "your clever Mr. Barlow had found out a good deal
about things before the Monday when they were to start. He'd found
George Oddie in hiding, and why he hid, and he'd put a pistol at
Joshua's head."

"Why did Oddie hide, and why was Joshua in collusion?" I asked.
"Barlow's never told me that--except that Oddie had a perfectly
honorable motive."

"Oh!" cried Janet. "That's what he calls it? I hope you've got different
notions of honor, John." His tribulations had not modified Janet's
dislike of Oddie. "Getting a soft-hearted and soft-headed girl into what
she thought a compromising position and then being forced to lie like a
gas-meter to save her face. Honor!"

"Helen?" said I. "Was it Helen with Oddie that night?"

"Yes. Mawkish, isn't it? Disgusting! He'd been trying to persuade her to
elope. The little fool was too prim to elope and damn the consequences,
and too weak to refuse to play about with the notion. D'you remember his
bolting off in a hurry after dinner, and Helen going upstairs with a
face like red flannel? She was to meet him and toy with his proposal a
bit more. Filthy philandering! And it got them into this mess, for they
were on the road when the car went by and just after they saw Mr.
Parkinson dead in it outside Usher's. And then Helen threw a fit--not
because poor Mr. Parkinson was killed, but because, if Oddie should let
on about what they'd seen, she'd be dragged into it and people would
know she'd been out with a man late at night! Phaugh! Did you ever?"

"Oddie must be very much in love with her, Janet," said I.

"Love! I hope you don't call that love. I call it sickly. If he'd
spanked her and jerked her along to the police and told the truth--I do
hate lying! And then they must drag good-natured old Joshua into it.
Crawling across fields like a pair of poachers! Scrambling through
fences and tearing their clothes. Scared out of their silly wits, they
bumped into a drunken oaf! Afraid Usher had seen them. Afraid the boy
would remember them. Getting Joshua to go and see Usher, and fish about
to find out what Usher had seen, and stop Usher's mouth with a bribe. I
admired Mr. Barlow. The way he cut through it all was fine. I'll bet he
put it across George Oddie!"

Apparently Janet was not aware of her mother's share in the attempt to
delude Barlow. I said nothing about it.

That "Phaugh!" dismissed the topic of Oddie and Helen Adamson. On Abbott
she was absolutely dogmatic.

"It's absurd! Mr. Abbott shooting people, going about cutting telephone
wires, playing that trick on me, trying to kill you! I ask you--!"

And yet Abbott had undoubtedly got up that morning, kept an appointment
with the bandit and gone off in his aeroplane--and the police of Europe
were now on the lookout for Abbott. She didn't care for that. When Mr.
Abbott re-appeared, Barlow would have to think again. It was absurd.

Barlow next day camped at the end of the telephone wire: he had received
in the morning a message telling him to expect news from Fougère. I took
Lennox after lunch to make the acquaintance of Janet. He wanted to thank
her for passing on Parkinson's message.

Ferry Grange was for the time deserted, and Janet was with her mother at
Webb's. Thus it came about that I got my first glimpse of Oddie since
the night when I had seen him in the road by the light of Parkinson's
car. One of the most curious things in my experiences at Kenwick,
perhaps, was the fact that I knew practically nothing of Oddie. He had
been in the background of Ferry Grange--a rather unsympathetic figure.
Janet disliked him, and therefore I disliked him too, for no special
reason except his queer behavior on the hectic night of our adventure on
the river. I had not been in his company ten minutes in Joshua's smoking
room before I realized that Oddie was just nothing. The fond child of
Joshua's imagination was a dour and sour-tempered fellow, who had only
one distinction--his passion for the mousy girl. He could no more have
murdered Parkinson, or kidnaped Janet, or tried to kill me than he could
have composed the Ninth Symphony. It was one of the most whimsical
tricks of human eccentricity that Joshua had a profound fondness for him
and that Helen Adamson loved him almost more than she loved the
conventions. It was no wonder that Janet found him intolerable and her
mother thought him an unsuitable match for Helen.

The genius who had found some substantial use for Oddie was Barlow--who
made of him the stalking horse behind which he hunted his prey.

Appropriately enough Oddie faded away soon after we had been received by
Mrs. Webb in the drawing-room with a "_Soyez le bienvenu!_" Helen faded
with him.

"Now, Mr. Lennox," said the new chatelaine of Lorimer House, when the
introductions were done, "do tell us the truth about all this. What do
you and Mr. Barlow really think?"

"We think we're up against it, Mrs. Webb. But we're expecting to hear
that Abbott and Usher have been arrested in France."

"You thrill me! How many more people are you going to arrest? There was
Mr. Masters first, and then George Oddie, and now dear old Mr. Abbott! I
really feel that I may be arrested myself at any moment."

"I'm afraid," said Lennox in his smiling drawl, "you've got to miss that
thrill. You wouldn't fill the bill. Unless you can honestly confess that
you were the person who robbed Allenstein's Bank and caused the death of
an unfortunate servant; and first quarreled with Parkinson about the
loot and then killed Parkinson; and that you were also the person who
played a nasty trick on Miss Janet, and just missed sending Mr. Masters
to kingdom come--"

"Oh, oh--! What a catalogue of horrors!" she cried. "And do you and Mr.
Barlow truly believe that our friend Mr. Abbott could have done all
this?"

"He certainly could, ma'am," said Lennox. "As to whether he did--well,
time will show."

"Time is certainly a wonderful detective," Mrs. Webb remarked; "but I
don't think even time will show that Mr. Abbott was clever enough or
wicked enough to be such a man as that."

"If you'll excuse me, ma'am, that's not quite the point. The question is
whether the man who was clever enough to do all that and get away with
it was also clever enough to be Mr. Abbott."

We all stared at Lennox for a perceptible instant, trying--at any rate I
tried--to divine the subtlety of his saying.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Webb, breaking the pause. "There's that, Janet, eh? You
wondered about that."

I saw Lennox's sharp glance in Janet's direction.

"Never mind me, mother. Let Mr. Lennox tell us about the man who could
have been clever enough to be Mr. Abbott. You will, won't you?"

"Certainly," said Lennox. "The man Barlow and I have in mind, and have
had in mind all along, is clever enough not only to be Mr. Abbott, but
anybody else he pleases. He's a superman. He may have called himself
Abbott or anything else. The name by which we know him best is Draycott
Vincent--"

"Good Lord, Lennox!" I ejaculated. "Draycott Vincent? Why--"

"You want to remind me that Vincent was a partner in Allenstein's Bank
and one of the greatest losers by the disaster? Quite so. It looked like
that. And people missed Vincent and sympathized with him when he
vanished out of the world. But Vincent is the man Barlow and I have been
seeking for many months. He is the reason why you, Mr. Masters, got out
of Reading Gaol so quickly. He is the reason why Barlow induced Mr.
Webb--"

"Induced!--it is a beautiful word," murmured Mrs. Webb.

"Induced him to play up to the Oddie motif. He is the 'X' of our
problem. Barlow traced him to Paris immediately after the robbery, and
there lost him. We've never had a real trace of him since that till now.
But last spring we got a hint. Vincent had a confidential clerk who was
supposed to have been burnt to death when the bank went up. His name was
Grice. He was a pale-faced man with a high-pitched voice. In March
Barlow got a request through to us in Washington, by means of the
British Embassy, to try to trace a man with a pale face and a
high-pitched voice and an English accent. A passenger on a liner on the
way to New York had thought he recognized Grice. He wrote home to a
person who had suffered by the crash of Allenstein's, and the rumor had
come to Barlow's ears. I was put on the trail. I lost it at Colorado
Springs, as Mr. Masters will remember."

"Was it Grice?" asked Mrs. Webb.

"As sure as I'm Lennox."

"And Grice was Mr. Parkinson?"

"As sure as Parkinson's dead."

"But Mr. Parkinson went often to London. Surely he would run a risk of
being recognized there?"

"I'd give a whole lot to know why Parkinson went to London on and off. I
give a guess--that he was torn between two kinds of fear, and could
never make up his mind to do what he wanted to do, which was to go to
Barlow or to Scotland Yard, and say, 'Here it is.'"

"It? What?"

"The big diamond of Lady Vanstead's collection. That's the one bit of
the Allenstein loot that's never been traced. So you can see Parkinson
with two kinds of fear--fear of his tyrant, Vincent, and fear of the law
if he defies Vincent. We'll never know the exact part he played in the
Allenstein affair. His name was on the lips of the poor fellow that
died. That may mean nothing. But he went in terror of Vincent. You know
in what awful terror, Miss Janet. I suspect that when he found himself
chased out there in Colorado, he thought Vincent was trailing him, and
not the police."

The haunted eyes of the man at Colorado Springs came back to me. It was
a poignant drama that Lennox suggested--this subsidiary sinner
struggling in the grasp of his master.

"I don't know," he said, "how Vincent drew him back after he had got
clean away into the wilds. Why he didn't go and lose himself out
there--with all Arizona and New Mexico open to him, after I'd missed
him, I can't imagine. But he was drawn back. A shared crime is a fearful
thing. They hate each other, but they can't keep apart."

Janet and I looked at each other, recalling the Frankenstein's Monster
of Parkinson's story.

"I still can't see Mr. Abbott in all this," said Janet.

"Why?"

"It isn't in his character, that's all."

Lennox smiled upon this feminine angle of vision.

"Not in the character of the Abbott you know, of course," he said. "But
for a job like this we'd got to have a man of extraordinary character--a
kind of Protean man. Miss Janet, believe me, this fellow was the most
accomplished actor in the world. I don't wonder at your doubts. But the
evidence is all here--"

"If he is so talented an actor as you say"--the deep tones of Mrs. Webb
broke in--"Mr. Lennox himself may have been deceived, _pas possible?"_

This was a new point of view with a vengeance!

"Mr. Lennox says he is superlative, Protean, wonderful. It occurs to me
that he may be even more wonderful than Mr. Lennox thinks. _C'est inoui,
mais_--"

And she ended with a shrug of the shoulders. The casual way in which she
knocked Lennox off his perch!

"Now, let us stop dipping into the well of truth," she said, "and have
some tea instead. It's pleasanter. Janet, will you see about it?"



VIII.


Janet was handing round teacups when the maid came in with a telephone
message from Barlow that he was on his way over. Evidently there was
some new development. We had meant to drop the whole subject and relax
over our tea; it was pleasanter, as our hostess suggested, but _que
voulez-vous?_ This vague message started us all going again.

It was Lennox who directly revived the main argument.

"Well, ma'am," he said, "you were saying just now something that has
stuck in my mind. You wondered whether the mystery man wasn't clever
enough to have deceived us twice over--or something like that? What's
the little point you think we've missed?"

"Oh, it's just an idea, that's all. I couldn't dream of putting it up
against your professional views. Besides--it isn't mine. Janet--_c'est à
vous!"_

We all fixed our eyes on Janet.

"It's true I've an idea. But it may be worthless," said she.

"My dear young lady," said Lennox, "I shall welcome any intelligent
outside viewpoint."

"But it seems absurd for a girl to have a theory when--"

"When the lords of creation are up against a blind wall? Do me the
justice to think I'm a bit more modern than that!"

"Well, then, the man Vincent was a criminal genius. He had urgent
reasons for hiding himself away till he had settled up the Allenstein
affair--and he couldn't do that until he had settled with Mr. Parkinson.
When I say hiding himself away, I mean his identity. It was not so much
his person. He had to conceal his brains, his personality, and his
wealth."

"All that," said Lennox.

"We know he was here at Kenwick. And we know he couldn't have done what
he did unless he had been quite familiar with things here--knew Mr.
Abbott and all of us--if he wasn't Mr. Abbott himself--and our houses
and our ways. If not, he couldn't have played that trick on me, for
example."

"You're going to assume that if he knew us in that way we must have
known him? I don't see--but go on, Miss Janet."

"At any rate, he must have been able to dog Mr. Parkinson continually.
He knew all about Mr. Parkinson's talks with me. Mr. Parkinson was not
here of his own free will. He must have compelled Mr. Parkinson to come
here, although he seemed to have come in answer to an advertisement for
a paying guest. Therefore he must have known about the advertisement.
That's clear, I think?"

Lennox, with knitted brows, nodded to her. "Go on," he repeated.

"It must be somebody we haven't accounted for during the time when he
was driving Mr. Masters from Morley's Holt to the garage, during the
night when he took me away, and during the night when he attacked Mr.
Masters."

"Certainly."

"He must have known of the appointment at the Metropolitan Hotel--and
kept it."

"Kept it?" Barlow raised his eyebrows. "You think so? Well--?"

"He must have been able without anybody's knowledge to lurk around
Morley's Holt those nights when Paynter detected the attempt to get into
the house, and discovered the ladder outside Mr. Parkinson's window, and
was fired at from the woods."

She was a little flushed as she stated her case and approached the
climax.

"Yes, Miss Janet," said Barlow. "Produce a man who can fulfill all those
conditions--and--"

"It's a very serious thing to say, Mr. Barlow. I know that. But I think
there is such a man."

We strained our attention to her, all leaning over the table waiting for
her next words.

"The man is Paynter himself," said she, quietly.



IX.


"Paynter!"

We cried out the name in a chorus of astonishment. "Paynter! But--"

The chauffeur, the man of all work, undistinguished, insignificant--this
trivial, inconsiderable figure the redoubtable "X" of Barlow's equation?
It was grotesque, impossible. Hard enough to accept the mild, scholarly
old Mr. Abbott in such a role, despite the evidence of our own eyes. But
Paynter? Oh, never, it was too absurd.

"Well," said Janet, "if I couldn't see Mr. Abbott in all this, as the
rest of you do, I had to look around for somebody else in whom Mr.
Barlow's super-criminal could have absolutely hidden his identity and
camouflaged his brains and completely lost his personality.
Insignificance was the strong card of his suit. What better cloak for a
personality than the uniform of a servant?"

A strong question: Lennox saw that it was.

"But," said he, "it would have been a pretty tough job for this
personality to conceal itself in broad daylight and in constant touch
with all of us. So far as I know, Paynter never for an instant appeared
to be anything but a servant."

"A superior servant," said Janet.

"Yes--but superior servants are not uncommon. Still, go on, Miss Janet.
Let's have your answers to the obvious objections, not forgetting that
Barlow and Masters both saw Abbott fly off with Usher last night--and
Abbott and Usher are still missing!"

"Oh, what you men think you see!" retorted Janet. "Mr. Masters thought
that he rode and talked with poor Mr. Parkinson hours after the murder!
And as for Mr. Abbott being still missing, how about Paynter? Has any
one seen him to-day?"

"Paynter has disappeared too!" Barlow had quietly arrived and now
entered the doorway. "That is the latest development. What were you
saying about him?"

Janet's astounding new theory was briefly summarized.

"I always thought there were three in it," admitted Barlow. "But Paynter
as the man of mystery--no, no, my dear Miss Janet, unless you have
something up your sleeve, some special fact unknown to the rest of us?"

"No, I've no such facts. I told them it was just an idea."

"Well, then, suppose Paynter was merely masquerading as a chauffeur--by
the way, how long had he been with Abbott?"

"He was engaged in February. Mr. Abbott had been advertising for a
chauffeur and handy man."

Barlow noted the date and cast a glance at Lennox.

"We'll assume he had been able to deceive Abbott all these months--that
he found this a good place to lie low in' and the character of a servant
a good disguise. That's possible, Lennox?"

"Quite--even likely," said Lennox, who had followed Janet's case with
rapt attention.

"But then he gets Parkinson here. How does he do that?" Barlow asked.

A sudden light came to me.

"Barlow," said I, "when Abbott was answering Warren's questions about
Parkinson that night, he said something to the effect that of all the
people who replied to his advertisement for a paying guest Parkinson was
the only one who came to see him."

"Gosh!"--Lennox's favorite exclamation--"that's a point, Barlow. If
Paynter was the crook, he'd have ordered Parkinson to come. And there
are ways a servant can influence his boss in a thing like that."

"There's something else, Barlow," I put in. "Abbott said at the same
time that Paynter was rather fond of Parkinson, and Paynter said he
thought Parkinson was also rather fond of him--'attracted to him,' I
fancy was the phrase he used."

"Attracted to him! He said that? If..." Barlow paused. "What a colossal
nerve if..."

He stopped and stared hard at Janet first and then at me.

"Do I remember rightly, Masters? Didn't it appear from what Abbott said
to you and Warren that it was Paynter who told him about Parkinson's
adventure in the woods?"

"Yes."

"Abbott hadn't seen Parkinson himself that evening?"

"No--Paynter said he rushed in after Mr. Abbott had finished dinner and
gone to his library. Parkinson locked himself in his room and
immediately began preparing for his journey."

"It might be, Lennox, mightn't it? Masters saw nobody but Paynter. There
were all those delays. He might have been working out his plan and
getting Usher away--just as we thought Abbott had done. I suppose he had
ten minutes after Masters had left--time enough for a disguise. It might
be. It'll fit so far."

"What about Usher? When did the bandit first begin to infest these
pleasant scenes?" said Tod. "If he was here before Paynter came, the
interesting theory breaks down."

Barlow shook his head.

"I've been thinking of that. No--Usher took over the derelict garage at
Lady Day--end of March, after Paynter had started his job at Morley's
Holt. And he surprised the owner by paying six months' rent in
advance--and in cash. The dates are significant, Lennox, eh? You
remember February--the hint from Paris, and the failure there? There was
something in the newspapers about my visit--rumors that the Allenstein
affair was approaching a crisis. If he determined to dig himself in as a
chauffeur in a God-forsaken village in February because of that, and to
have his satellite in overalls handy, and his infernal air machine ready
for a last throw--there's no difficulty about that. But after--when
Parkinson had been killed and all those other things happened? Can we
fit Paynter into them?"

"The abduction of Miss Janet, for example," said Tod.

"No difficulty there. That was Usher. He'd been the go-between to
Filton."

"And the attack on Masters?"

"Nor there. It was in the small hours of the morning. He'd never be
missed from the house. I'm thinking rather of the appointment at the
Metropolitan--and one other thing."

"Lennox!" cried Tod. "You remember what I told you about Jacobstein in
Northumberland Avenue? The only man I saw him speak to was Paynter. You
know--I thought he mistook him for a taxi-driver!"

"Gosh! So you did, Tod."

I pictured Paynter as I had seen him sitting there smiling, touching his
cap--behaving like the Compleat Chauffeur...and, if Janet's idea was
right, laughing in his sleeve as he observed all our maneuvers, telling
the Semitic gentleman who put his head in at the window that there were
no diamonds for him to-day, thank you--perhaps suggesting that a little
later on!...

"But," said I, "it would be too big a strain on coincidence that Abbott
should fix his meeting for that very day in that very street."

"It would," said Lennox, "unless Paynter counted for something in
Abbott's selection of date and place."

"As clever as that?" I remarked, incredulous.

"Well--he wasn't much of a mutt, was he? But how he must have smiled at
the meeting of the clans! You and me and Tod and Webb--for he saw us
all, of course."

"Webb?" I exclaimed. "But Webb had been roped in by Mr. Abbott."

"Nobody more surprised than me to find Abbott in the neighborhood," said
Joshua, speaking for the first time.

"Then how--?"

"I hadn't led him to expect Abbott, because I didn't know myself that
Abbott would be there."

"You, Barlow?" I exclaimed. "Then Webb was another plant of yours?"

"You can call him a plant if you like. I've found him very useful all
the way through. He was naturally anxious to help, and Mrs. Webb too,
once we'd tuned our flutes. So he agreed to hang on to the skirts of
chance that day. But I'd not divined either Abbott or Paynter."

But--we went on arguing out the Buts. The only one of any consequence
was Barlow's second point--that Paynter to all appearances was the man
who had discovered and announced the attempts to get into Parkinson's
room. Yet, who knew anything of those attempts save Paynter
himself--Paynter there with an innocent old gentleman and a very busy
maid? It was a simple thing for Paynter to keep up the legend of a
nefarious outsider who was trying to burgle Morley's Holt, easy to go
out and fire a shot or two, pile on the evidence in readiness for his
last desperate throw and his getaway, and then pretend to quit on the
pretense that he was fed up with Morley's Holt and its mysteries.

"Miss Janet," said Barlow, "it's a possible solution. If it proves right
I'll say it's the best bit of induction I've heard of in a month of
Sundays. Kick me, Lennox, will you?"

But Janet would have no credit for a theory that might still prove to be
wrong. It was only an idea, she insisted. Besides, if she had guessed
right, there was still one mystery left: What had become of poor Mr.
Abbott?

We looked at one another in startled awareness fast changing to
consternation. So intent had we been on Janet's theory, fitting the
clews together like some intricate mechanical puzzle, that what it boded
for Abbott had escaped us; our minds had failed to function.

"Barlow!" Lennox's exclamation was a note of real alarm. "Barlow!--it
may be a long sight worse than we thought."

"You've said it. Let's get on."

But they were met in the doorway by the maid with a missive for Barlow.



X.


Barlow tore it open and ran his eye over it hastily.

"News at last," he said, "a long telegram from Paris, retransmitted by
Fougère. Listen, all of you."

It was in French, rather mutilated by the British telegraph machine, but
quite comprehensible. Barlow translated roughly:

"Aeroplane GEB 0746 landed yesterday at eleven hours ten kilometres from
Corville, Manche. Not reported till evening. Aviator walked into
Corville for supplies of essence. Supplies taken out by automobile.
Aeroplane in stubble-field (so I translate _chaume_). Police visited
this morning. On their arrival, aeroplane hurriedly started, made bad
ascent, struck tree and crashed. Pilot and passenger both dead.
Passenger does not correspond your description. Medium height, golden
hair brown eyes. No birthmark. Well dressed. No papers except two
hundred pounds English notes. Have sent two agents from Sureté."

"The plane's a sure thing," said Lennox.

"Yes--but the man--? Miss Janet wins, I think."

"He was good at disguises, Barlow."

"I know. But there's something you're not aware of. Did you ever notice
the color of Abbott's eyes, Masters?"

"Yes," said I, "they're gray."

"Noticeably gray. Well--you can disguise nearly every other feature of
the human body, but you can't change the color of your eyes. 'Golden
hair, brown eyes'--that wipes Abbott clean off the slate. Miss Janet,
what was it that first put you on the trail?"

It was just one phrase of Parkinson's, she explained, during that
strange talk on the river bank: he spoke of piercing eyes which could
bore through a wall, let alone a coppice. She cast about in her mind for
some person whose eyes would scare her if she had any reason to fear
their owner. Had we any of us ever noticed Paynter's eyes?

"Yes, Janet," I said, "more than once I noticed them--dark eyes,
brilliant."

"Bold, dark, knowing eyes!" she said. And when the vision of them came
to her, she set about trying to fit Paynter into the facts of the case,
and she found that he fitted everywhere.

But Barlow had not waited for her to finish. He was out and starting his
engine; and Lennox followed suit. Two cars rolled once more over the
bridge, through the woods, and down the twisting drive of Morley's Holt.
No Mary there now. A policeman sat on the plinth of one of the
pilasters, reading a newspaper. He saluted as Barlow jumped out. It was
Lewis.

"Ah, Lewis," Barlow said. "We're running through the house again. We may
want you. Keep within call."

He and Lennox hurried in with Tod and me on their heels. This time there
was no aimless ramble. They made for the staircase, and presently we
were all crowding into Abbott's room.

Nothing had altered. The same gross disorder prevailed. Only the smell
of burning had gone. Barlow collected all the scraps of paper on the
floor, examined them, and put them aside on the dressing table.
Apparently he found nothing that he wanted. The former telepathy between
him and Lennox was renewed.

"There's only one possibility, Lennox."

"But the seal's still on the door, Barlow."

"I know. Still, what may this mean? I saw it yesterday--but then it had
no meaning."

He picked up the candlestick from the dressing table, blew away the
paper ash, and pointed to some spots of red adhering to the edge of the
tray.

"By gosh!" Lennox exclaimed; "it may be!"

"We'll see whether it is. Warren has the key; but--"

He walked quickly down the corridor, applied his jemmy to Parkinson's
door, and burst it open.

Lennox, who was behind him, uttered a cry. Tod and I looked over his
shoulders into the room, and I fell back faint and trembling.

The room was a wreck. The bed had been torn to pieces, the mattress
ripped open, its hair stuffing strewed the place. But it was not this
chaos that made me feel sick...

Lying on the floor, broad on his back, wrapped in his dressing gown, was
Abbott. And Abbott in Parkinson's room was unquestionably as dead as
Parkinson...

He had died in the way it was intended I should die.

I looked on in a daze while Barlow and Lennox groveled about the room
for a full ten minutes, and at the moment I hardly realized the
significance of the cry that Lennox gave when, from among the mountain
of rubbish that strewed the bed he pulled a tiny wash-leather bag,
untwisted the string and poured into his hand a little stream of
diamonds.

It was a necklace, whose center stone was a great gem which, even in the
dull light of Parkinson's bedroom, sprayed around it a rainbow of
dazzling color.



XI.


Abbott's death, its terrible circumstances, the unexpectedness of its
discovery, shook up every one. It affected Janet deeply, though she was
proud that he had not failed her faith in him.

It took Barlow nearly a week to reach and return from the little Norman
town of Corville, satisfying all the requirements of the French
authorities in the meantime. And then he left, feeling that at last he
had got to the bottom of the Parkinson mystery.

He told me how he looked down on that golden head in its coffin, not
doubting that he looked upon the head of the man who had been known to
the world for a brief moment as Draycott Vincent. But he realized that
without Janet's clew he would have failed to place the pallid features
among those of the possible murderers of Parkinson. He could have sworn
that he had never seen that man before.

Usher he had marked down from the first as an accomplice--the
inevitable, the necessary accomplice of the master-mind--and he had left
Usher undisturbed, sure that sooner or later the underling would bring
him to the principal.

"Why inevitable and necessary, Barlow?" I asked.

"Because the Allenstein affair could not have been brought off without a
mechanic--and a cool and skillful one. It was a mechanic's job to get
into the safe that held Lady Vanstead's jewels. We had to assume him to
account for the physical neatness of the job. That's where I placed
Usher. Just the surly, disgruntled type to be the tool of a Draycott
Vincent."

But if Barlow would not have known the fair-haired man, the officers who
came from the Sureté in Paris knew him. They declared at once that he
was a bank robber, Bartholomew Dexter. They took his finger prints and
compared them with the Bertillon records in Paris to make sure. The
Sureté up to now had held Dexter to be unique among criminals. This
polyglot person--nobody could determine his nationality--had done what
no other man of his type had ever before done within their experience.
Having served two years in prison for a minor robbery, soon after his
release he had made a great coup at the Crédit Bordelais in Paris, and
had then disappeared entirely from the ranks of criminals. They lost
sight of him as completely as though he had never existed. They looked
upon him as their ewe-lamb--the one thief who had vanished from the
world of thieves to enjoy his plunder and had not come back.

But (Barlow surmised) the Sureté must now yield up their ewe-lamb: he
had certainly used the spoils of the robbery in Paris to make a great
figure for a few months in London while he plotted a much bigger
thing--the ruin of Allenstein's Bank.

The Allenstein Bank outrage startled the world at the beginning of
January. Before the end of the month, Draycott Vincent, apparently
crushed to earth by the blow, disappeared from London. Barlow, who had
been put on to the case at the instance of other banks affected by the
crash, examined the meteoric career of Vincent with something more than
cynicism, for he could find no traces of him in America, whence he was
supposed to have brought the fortune on which he based his operations in
London. A hint came from Paris. Certain bearer bonds were being
negotiated which suggested that the same sort of mind had been at work
in Allenstein's that had designed the coup at the Crédit Bordelais. If
so, he knew that he had to deal with no ordinary crook, but with a
master of guile. He determined to conduct his hunt in secret, for the
Paris clew evaporated as soon as he began to look into it. Some
indiscreet journalist talked of pending "developments" in the Allenstein
case. The realizations ceased immediately. Barlow was at a dead end till
April. Then business commenced in America, and the tip came that Grice
might still be alive and at work across the Atlantic.

In the meantime, Vincent had dug himself in down here at Kenwick, with
his slave, Usher, at hand and everything ready for the final
transformation.

In April Parkinson (I stick to the name by which we had all known him)
had been a fugitive in Colorado. And he had the Vanstead diamonds with
him. With them he had fled to America. And he brought them back from
America when, with what threats it is easy to imagine, his master
summoned him. In August he came to Morley's Holt to live the strange
brief, harried end of his days.

How deep he was in the Allenstein crime was a secret destroyed by the
roar of the gun in the woods. But deep, very deep. Deep enough to cause
him to come, terror-stricken, to Morley's Holt at Paynter's command. And
he was, up to the last, the possessor of the Vanstead diamonds. One can
picture him, after his return, hesitating between the consequences of a
confession to the police and the consequences of resisting Paynter's
demand that he should yield up the loot. His terror mingled with remorse:
he had worked himself up, just before his death, almost to the pitch
of confession, as his talk with Janet showed.

What agonies of fear, of perquisition, of persecution, he must have
suffered in that house, with Paynter menacing, demanding surrender of
the jewels, and Usher hovering in the background as a subsidiary spy!
There evidently came a time when an ultimatum was given. He was to
disgorge before the Fourth of October, for on that day the jewels were
to be negotiated in London. If before the Fourth Parkinson alive had not
parted with them, Parkinson dead would not be able to defend them. As it
happened, before that day came Paynter's hand was forced. Parkinson had
been in touch with outsiders secretly. Parkinson had to die. And he was
killed with no more compassion than a rat.

In the further inquisition which he made immediately at Morley's Holt,
Barlow discovered that which turned Janet's idea into a certainty. He
went straight for the corded trunk, left in Paynter's room (as Mary told
us) to be sent to him "as soon as he had got another situation." Its
chief content was a large and handsome case, with a silver plate
engraved: "Lamarck, Perruquier, Passage Michel, Paris." A complete and
various collection of materials of theatrical make-up filled it. There
were grease paints and pencils, brushes and pads. There were admirable
wigs of black and auburn hair. There was a set of highly convincing
mustachios. The dark wig was unquestionably the principal element in his
disguise as Paynter, the chauffeur and servant. We all recognized its
sleek blackness.

This by itself would have been enough to prove Janet's intuition sound.
But, as if ironically to overwhelm him with riches of evidence when his
man had escaped him by the final and irretraceable road, Barlow found in
the case a crammed envelope into which a grease pencil had been dropped.
It bore a United States three-cent stamp, was postmarked at Clovis in
New Mexico, dated the 5th of May, and addressed in a precise, clerkly
hand, to "Mr. Paynter, at Morley's Holt, Kenwick, Berkshire, England."

"That settles it," said Barlow.



XII.


The homage of Barlow and Tod and Lennox to Janet was complete. But she
expressed intense relief when they had all gone back to London on their
several lawful occasions. She then reverted to her former attitude. She
declared that we had all been debauched by sensation, that it was very
bad for us, and that we required toning up. Especially I.

Her prescription for my complaint was tennis _à l'outrance_, as Mrs.
Webb called it, in which she was always to be my opponent. She declined
to be on the same side of the net with me, and quoted as a horrible
example the kind of game that Oddie and Helen played when they were
partners.

I live in hope. Both Joshua and Mrs. Webb hold up my arms.

We dined at Joshua's the night before I returned to Fleet Street. When
the ladies had gone to the drawing-room, Joshua said, with a grin,
holding up his glass to the light:

"My boy, what would you say if I gave you a little sentiment? Here's to
a Woman in a Thousand!"

"With all my heart," said I. "Here's to a Woman in a Thousand!"

"Masters!" cried Joshua, reaching across to dig a finger into my shirt
front, "you're a dam' fraud! You don't mean the same woman."

"Perhaps not, Webb," I confessed; "but she's a near relative."



THE END


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