The Dalehouse Murder

Chapter I.
I Go to Merchester

“Dear Francis:—

“It will be jolly to see you again. For your partner in the mixed I have only missed the most perfect peach by the skin of the pips. (Do peaches have pips, I wonder? See how poor we are!) However, Margaret Hunter, the girl you are to play with, is really very nice, and—let me warn you in time—has a devastating attraction for men. She is a Merchester girl, but has been away for some time teaching in Sheffield, and as the aunt with whom she lives is away, she is staying with us for the tournament week. I have reported fully on your great personal charm—so beware!

“The girl I just missed for you is Stella Palfreeman—one of the prettiest girls I ever set eyes on. I met her at the Camford Tournament last week. She is to stay with us too. Then there will be Kenneth and of course Ralph Bennett, who, by the way, were articled to the same solicitor in Sheffield—a regular house-party for the event.

“Daddy has had a sort of nervous breakdown and has gone to Folkestone with mother. They are to be there for a month and The Tundish is looking after the practise. I wish daddy could get him for keeps—he needs some one badly.

“You’ve never met The Tundish, have you? I wonder how he will strike you. He is quite old—older than you by a year or two, I should think—but like you, jolly in spite of his age and graying hair. He can tell the most thrilling yarns about his experiences in China.

“So you see I shall be acting as hostess and I can tell you we are going to make things buzz.

“Yours ever,

“Ethel.

“P. S.—Can you come on Saturday? All the others will be here then excepting Stella, who hails from London and will not arrive until midday on Monday.”

It was Monday, June the fifteenth—the opening day of the Merchester Lawn Tennis Club’s annual open tournament at which I had played regularly for the past few years. My sister Brenda and I were finishing an early breakfast and I was rereading Ethel Hanson’s letter.

I should explain that I am chief engineer to a firm in the little Midland town of Millingham, where, since our father’s death, my sister and I have lived happily together. Wisely, we spend our holidays apart, and I, when I can, take mine in small doses. It suits my business arrangements to do so, and I spend such periods of leisure as I can snatch from my work in playing in the lawn tennis tournaments at the neighboring small towns. Given kindly weather, I challenge any one to name a more enjoyable little holiday.

It is five years since I first went to Merchester, and my friendship with the Hansons dates from then. Ethel, I remember, had not left school, but had obtained a special holiday for the event. You will see that in her letter she refers to my age and gray hairs, but she is one of those intensely young things to whom anything over thirty is well on the downward slope. I am thirty-eight, moderately good at my work, and hardly that at games. I know that I am quiet, and I believe that my friends count me dull. Indeed, I can lay claim to only one exceptional quality of any kind whatever, and that, my remarkably acute sense of hearing, is nothing but an accident of birth.

At times, though, I am almost uncanny, and when playing tennis I can generally hear most of my opponent’s private comments. “Play everything on to Jeffcock and we shall be sure to win,” is the sort of remark I hear more often than I like.

The summer was one of the hottest on record, and no drop of rain had fallen since the latter end of April. Day after day the sun shone unclouded. Grass and gardens were scorched and brown, and even the larger shrubs and trees began to droop and wilt.

Nearly every one was feeling the unusual heat, and on Thursday I had caught a chill and had had to give up all idea of accepting Ethel’s invitation for Saturday. But when Monday came I decided that I was well enough to risk it, though Brenda did her best to alter my decision. Had I known then of what the week held in store for me, I think I should have needed no persuasion of hers to make me stay away.

Brenda—dear good soul that she is—had got the car round before we sat down to breakfast, and shortly after half past eight I started out on my forty-mile run. It was scorching hot before I finished my journey, and having made good time I drew in to the side of the road under the shade of a tree, in order to light my pipe.

A slight rise in the ground gave me a wonderful view of Merchester Cathedral from where I sat. It is built of a pale red sandstone that seems able to reflect every shade of light and color. That morning it looked as though it were wrought in pale gold; with the windows ablaze as they flashed back the sun, and the lower part of the building and the top of the hill on which it stands hidden by a summer morning haze, it might have been some fairy structure floating in the air. It seemed to dominate the whole countryside.

The city lies huddled round the base of the hill on which the great cathedral and the close are grouped, odd streets straggling out—like the roots of some great tree—into the surrounding flats. I imagine there can hardly be a point in the whole city from which the cathedral can not be seen towering up above, and at the hour and at the quarters, every street reverberates with the boom of the chimes from the central tower.

The doctor’s house stands just at the foot of the hill, and the long garden behind it lies dead level at first and then rises steeply at about half its length. The garage stands on a tiny plateau leveled off at the top of the slope. There is the shortest of wash yards and then a double door leading on to the narrow lane that runs the length of the garden and enters the main road at the side of the house. The narrowness of the lane and the abrupt little hill make a very awkward entry and my old two-seater still bears the scars of my first attempt to negotiate it.

The house itself is built of a dull red brick and is of the Georgian period. There is something in the proportions and the setting of the windows that gives it a quiet air of character and strength. It is far too large for the doctor’s needs, and the attics and some of the upper rooms are never used. At some time or other a one-story wing which is of stone with a flat-topped roof had been built out at the back on the side next the lane. This, Hanson has turned into a private business wing complete with consulting-room, dispensary and waiting-room. A small hall with a door opening on to the little lane—Dalehouse Lane it is called—and another passage connecting it to the house itself, make it a really convenient arrangement.

The strip of garden in front of the house and the large garden behind are alike surrounded by a ten-foot wall, buttressed at intervals, and built of the same red brick as the house. This wall—it must be some eighteen inches thick and is tiled at the top like the roof of a house—has made a very secluded spot of the doctor’s garden, and there is an air of quiet secrecy about the place that in some subtle way is enhanced by the fact that the front door-bell is rung from a door in the outer wall.

Yes, sheltered and shut in is the right description for the old garden, with its red buttressed walls, that lies behind Dalehouse, and when after dinner we used to take our coffee on the lawn—Hanson and I with our pipes and perhaps Mrs. Hanson and Ethel with their sewing and their books—I used to think it must be the most peaceful spot in all the world.

One night on my last year’s visit I particularly called to mind. Hanson and I were alone, and we sat almost silent while the light faded and the moon crept over the top of the wall and up the sky till it cleared the cathedral tower. It was then that he first told me of his friend Dr. Wallace—The Tundish—and I gained the impression that he would not be disappointed or surprised if Ethel and he were to make a match of it together. And now, only a few weeks ago, she had written to tell me that she was engaged to Kenneth Dane. He must have carried her off her feet pretty quickly, for I had seen the Hansons only a month or so before—I know them well—and until I received her letter I had never even heard his name.

As I sat dreaming and wondering what manner of man I should find him, the slight change in angle as the scorching sun moved round had caused the lights in the cathedral windows to flicker and fade away, and the color of the stonework to change from pale gold to a gold of a darker shade. I had dallied long enough, and, starting up my engine, I slipped in the clutch and set out on the few remaining miles that separated me from the end of my journey. The cathedral clock was chiming ten as I rounded the corner from the main road into Dalehouse Lane.

I found Ethel and two of her guests under the old cedar tree that gives grateful summer shade to one side of the lawn. Whatever her faults may be, and I could list several, beginning with a reference to a rather hasty little temper, she is entirely unaffected and honestly cordial. Indeed, I know of no one who can show at once so gaily and sincerely that she is pleased to see her friends, and as she met me I was gratified to feel that in spite of her engagement I still held my old place in her affections. She introduced me to Ralph Bennett and then to Kenneth Dane.

To paint a word picture of any human being is a hazardous undertaking, but in the case of Kenneth Dane I feel that the risk attached to the attempt is a little less than usual, for I summed him up at once, and my later experience proved me correct, as one of those downright souls who carry their character plainly written all over them for each and sundry to read. Black for him, I felt certain, was always black, and white was always white, and that there simply were no intervening shades of gray. No, there could be no subtle grays for Kenneth. Tall, his broad sloping shoulders made him appear of medium height until you stood against him. With fair brown hair of that close crisp wavy kind that it is a thousand pities providence does not keep exclusively for girls, eyes of a rather bright pale blue, a straight aggressive nose and a firm mouth and chin to match, he was a fine example of athletic British manhood. The grip he gave to my hand, nearly making me cry out, and his deep pleasant laugh as he acknowledged my congratulations, were both in keeping with his vigorous appearance.

In Ralph Bennett, his friend, I found an entirely different type. Slim and dark, with rather unusual dark brown eyes, you had only to see the two together—and I soon found that they were almost inseparable—to recognize that while Kenneth might be the better equipped with character and determination, Ralph was more than his match so far as brain power and intelligence were concerned. But he was so quiet and reserved that one almost overlooked him, and later I was often to wonder on what foundation their friendship had been built.

At Merchester play is scheduled to start at ten o’clock, and though they are lenient to a fault about such matters, it was agreed that Ethel and the two boys should go on to the club, leaving me to garage my car, change into flannels and follow them as soon as I could. I understood that Miss Hunter, my partner, had already left for the ground when I arrived. The doctor’s garage was occupied, for young Bennett, whose people were of considerable wealth, had brought a splendid Daimler with him that entirely filled it, and so I had to find accommodation for my car at the rear of a neighboring inn. It was already intensely hot and I felt dizzy on reaching my bedroom, which, although the blinds had been drawn against the sun, was like a baker’s oven.

Having rested for a short time, I bathed my face and changed and came down-stairs to meet Dr. Wallace at the bottom. How he came by his nickname of “The Tundish” I have never yet been able to fathom, but we introduced ourselves, no one being present to perform the ceremony for us. He was kindness itself in the way he questioned me about my cold, made me go back and pack up a couple of spare shirts, promise to change after each match, and vowed that when we returned in the evening he would take me in hand and not only have me fit to play next day, but able to enjoy myself as well.

Although I have no use for faith healing, or any buncombe of that description, there is no doubt that the personal equation does come into play where doctoring is concerned. When I had sat on my bed holding my head in my hands I had begun to think that Brenda had been right after all, and that I had been a fool for coming, but it needed only a few of the doctor’s short decisive sentences, when, hey presto! I was feeling a little better already, and there was nothing so very much amiss.

While I liked him from the outset, even at the beginning of our acquaintance I think I felt that he was not exactly abnormal, but that he possessed hidden qualities that differentiated him from the rest of us. Of medium height and a thick-set build, his black hair showed just a powdering of gray at the temples, while his pallid regular features seemed a mask through which his deep-set, twinkling eyes looked at you derisively—mocking you and defying you to guess what manner of man it really was that lay beneath.

He took me with him into the dispensary to get some capsules to take with me to the club. It lies to the left of the passage that runs along the garden side of the doctor’s wing. The consulting-room is at the end of the passage and both rooms have doors opening on to the little hall or lobby that forms the patients’ entrance from Dalehouse Lane. A further door connects the two rooms. Beyond the lobby is a small waiting-room.

I was leaning against the table in the middle of the room, while the doctor, humming a gay air, was finding a pill-box to put the capsules in, when I heard some one laughing—a woman most certainly—in the waiting-room. Not a matter for comment, you may think, but you should have heard the laugh. It was very low, and apparently did not reach the doctor’s less sensitive ears, but, oh, how mean and cruel it was! You know how a certain sound, or the scent of a flower say, may recall to life some vivid scene of childhood’s days? When we were children at home there was an old forbidden book describing the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition and in it there was one illustration depicting a young girl stretched out on the rack with a woman standing by her side laughing at her, which had impressed my young imagination, and had caused me many hours of secret grief. It was an old woodcut, crudely drawn, and I had not thought of it for years, but the woman laughing in the waiting-room brought the gruesome little picture back to life.

The laugh came twice, then there was the sound of an opening door, then whispering in the lobby.

“Who was that, Miss Summerson?” the doctor asked, as the door connecting the dispensary with the lobby opened and a pale nervous-looking girl wearing a white coverall came in—the dispenser, I gathered.

The doctor was fiddling about with my pill-box as he spoke, but I was looking at her as she came in through the door and I could have sworn that she was startled when she saw that we were there—and if she were startled, I was surprised when she answered the doctor’s question.

“There wasn’t any one,” she said. “I’ve been changing the water in the waiting-room and I shut the outer door as I crossed the lobby. Some one had left it ajar.”

Both her look and the rather over-elaborate nature of her explanation convinced me that she was lying. Too, I could have sworn to that laugh, to the whispering, and to the fact that some one had been there besides Miss Summerson herself. At the time I thought very little about it, however; some one—some one with a most amazingly repulsive laugh—had been to see her and she didn’t want the doctor to know of the visit. That was no business of mine, and I was just making my way toward the lobby—the club lies at the end of Dalehouse Lane—when who should come out of the consulting-room but Ethel. She had been to the club and as she was not required to play for a time she had come home for some rubber tape to wind round the handle of her racquet. As soon as her wants had been supplied we returned to the ground together.

On our way I felt half inclined to tell her of Miss Summerson’s little act of deceit. Then, how very easy it would have been. Later it was to become more difficult, but that I could not foresee.

No sooner had we reached the club than I heard the names, Miss M. Hunter and F. H. Jeffcock, being shouted down the conical sound-muffle which the secretary is pleased to call a megaphone. We were to play on court number ten and I found that both my partner and our opponents were waiting for me there.

My partner looked a jolly girl. Pink and white and well rounded, with the bluest of sparkling eyes and her hair tightly braided in two little close packed coils—pale gold shells hiding her pretty ears—she had somehow missed real beauty. For a proper chocolate box lady all the ingredients were there, but there was a certain slight heaviness about her features, that just, and only just, spoiled the picture she made, and inexplicably led me to the conclusion that her mother was fat. Perhaps, however, that was due to the fact that while the modern girl looks like a boy in a smock, she seemed unwilling to disguise her pretty femininity.

I found her an excellent partner and we won our first match. Yes, so far as playing went, Miss Hunter and I got on very well together, but she was just a little annoying in the way she constantly reiterated “Sorry, partner,” whenever she missed a shot, and found it necessary to make some little remark or other whenever the opportunity occurred. Then I was still to learn that her conversational ability was prodigious if volume alone were taken into account, and that she beat every one I ever met for platitudes and proverbs.

No doubt Ethel’s description of her caused me to look out for something of the sort, but I could not help thinking that her rather pronounced physical attractions were deliberately assisted in their deadly work by all those little wiles that a girl who sets herself out to captivate knows so readily how to use. A coquette and a minx?—no, certainly. A little immodest then?—no, certainly not, again, but somehow in a way that I can not account for, her very modesty itself seemed suggestive of everything that modesty ignores. But in spite of the fact that I saw through her, and was just a little annoyed with myself for feeling her attraction, none the less, we got on very amicably, and I was quite satisfied to have missed the beautiful Miss Palfreeman, who had yet to arrive from London.

She arrived at lunch-time, Ethel and Ralph going to meet her while Margaret and Kenneth and I reserved a table in the refreshment tent and started our meal. Ethel had not exaggerated her beauty. Tall and slim, her coppery brown hair, which later I was to learn was of the “kinky” variety, almost concealed by a little hat that matched it exactly, it was the light in her amber eyes and her complexion that added more than anything else to her general loveliness. More than one head turned in her direction.

The tent was almost unbearable, but we were a gay little party; the liquid butter, the peculiar physiognomy of one of the waitresses, the hat of one of the competitors, and such like trivialities were each in turn the excuse for jest and laughter.

The Tundish joined us in the middle of one of our bursts of merriment, and had made the remark that it was obviously time that a steadying element was added to the party before we knew that he was there. I happened to be looking at Stella when he first began to speak in his distinctive tone of voice, and to my surprise I saw her suddenly and unmistakably turn pale and the glass she was lifting to her lips slip from her fingers to the ground. She stooped to pick it up and recovered her composure so quickly that I imagine none of the others noticed it. They were introduced, and I half fancied that she hesitated for the fraction of a second before holding out her hand, but I could see no disturbance on the doctor’s placid face and the greeting he gave her was suavity itself. I did notice, however, that although I made room for him between Stella and myself, he squeezed himself in between Margaret and Kenneth, where the arrangement of the table dishes made it a much less convenient position.

Ralph was obviously impressed with Stella, and I was not a little amused to see how readily and openly he showed it. I gathered that Margaret’s thoughts were running in the same direction, for I saw her glance at Stella and a little smile—a mixture of amusement and appreciation—flicker across her rather full wide mouth. It was unkind of me, perhaps, but I could not help imagining that there was self-satisfaction in her smile as well, and that it might be the result of some such thought as: “Yes, very beautiful indeed—there’s at least fifteen between us, but where men are concerned——!”

Cigarettes were alight and we were on the point of leaving the table, when Ethel with characteristic suddenness decided she would like another ice.

“No, please don’t—I think not—I’m sure you’d be better without it,” The Tundish warned her.

“Ethel goin’ ’ave another ice,” she laughed emphatically, I imagine mimicking some childhood saying.

“Ethel’s doctor says she mustn’t.”

Kenneth sprang to his feet saying: “Why, of course, she can. It’s just the weather for ices,” and he went over to the buffet and fetched her the pinkest and largest he could procure. She waded through it quizzing The Tundish with every spoonful she ate, and Kenneth seemed aggressively and absurdly pleased that he had persuaded her to ignore the doctor’s wishes. But in some subtle way, The Tundish, sitting with impassive face and twinkling eyes, seemed to turn his rebuff into a moral victory, and while he appeared satisfied and pleasant, they had the air of being a little ashamed of what they had done.

Why this little incident should have stuck in my memory I can’t quite explain, except perhaps that it was the forerunner of so many similar little incidents between Kenneth and the doctor, but without opening his mouth he had made them both look like naughty children disobeying their nurse, and I think that it was about from this time that I began to suspect that, somehow, somewhere, there was something amiss with our party. Although we still continued to laugh and be jolly, I could not help feeling sensible that the pace was being forced, and that it was only by effort the ball was kept rolling.

I wondered whether it was due to the arrival of The Tundish, and if so why. Or whether it was due to the fact that my cold was making me feel depressed, and that while I was approaching the forties, the rest, with the exception of The Tundish himself, were all young and in their early twenties.

Chapter II.
The Chinese Poison

That evening the four younger members of our party went to a scratch gramophone dance and The Tundish and I were left to our own devices. He had tried to persuade them not to go on account of the heat, and had been particularly emphatic so far as Margaret was concerned. Stella did look a little fagged and pale, but my partner seemed in the best of spirits, and I could not understand why he should think that she especially required rest.

Supper was late, as they dressed before they had it, but they did get away at length, and we went into the dispensary to get some medicine for my cold. While he was measuring it out I wandered aimlessly round the room glancing at the bottles on the shelves. The labels were written in so neat a hand that I asked him who had done them.

“Oh, that is one of Miss Summerson’s jobs,” he replied.

“And does Miss Summerson deal with the high finance in addition to her other duties?” I asked, standing in front of what looked liked a heavy safe.

“That is the poison cupboard,” he laughed, and taking a small key from his waistcoat pocket he opened the door.

I was astonished at the number of bottles it contained. On the lower shelves were the larger ones which I assumed held the poisons more commonly used, but the top shelf was packed with diminutive bottles of uniform shape and size. There was one, however, that differed from the rest, and that was the most peculiar little bottle I have ever set my eyes on. It was like a miniature flagon of Burgundy in shape, but it had an exceptionally long and slender neck that was fitted with a large glass stopper of a flat irregular design, giving it the appearance of some delicate imitation toadstool rearing its head above its little neighbors.

“What an extraordinary number of poisons!” I exclaimed. “Surely all these are not the normal requirements of a country doctor’s practise?” And I took up the funny flagon as I spoke to examine it more closely.

“Be careful—put it back—put it down, man,” he almost shouted at me, and banging the door shut as soon as he had seen me restore the weird little bottle safely to its old position, he dragged me to the sink and made me rinse my hands in some strong disinfectant.

I should have been amused, had he not been so obviously alarmed, and I protested that I might have been handling a bomb that had the fuse alight by all the fuss he made about it.

“A bomb’s a plaything for a baby in a pram compared with that dear little bottle,” he laughed, and went on to explain that Hanson was by way of being a bit of a specialist in the study of poisons, and that the little flagon I had handled so carelessly contained a very deadly and almost unknown poison, that he, The Tundish, had been fortunate in securing for his collection from central China.

The tiny bottle apparently contained enough to finish off the whole of Merchester, and as yet they had not succeeded in finding any antidote to its action. A colorless fluid with a distinctive taste and smell, it was immediately narcotic, but it engendered a sleep from which no one ever woke. The body of the victim looked exactly as though it had passed out of a peaceful slumber into death, except for the eyes; and they, in addition to the usual contraction of the pupils due to a narcotic, were horribly suffused with blood. It seems that had any of the poison got on to my fingers from the side of the bottle and had I then allowed them to touch my lips, so deadly was the stuff that he might have been unable to save my life.

All this he told me as I disinfected my hands at the sink, and by the time he had finished I began to think that I had had a lucky escape and I was no longer inclined to laugh at his considerate alarm. My hands properly rinsed and dried, we went back into the drawing-room to finish our pipes before going to bed; The Tundish told some interesting tales about his life in China, where he had gone out to live with an uncle when he was twenty-four and had only returned a few years ago. Then our conversation turned to tennis and the tournament, and I was telling him of the interest Miss Palfreeman had aroused as she joined us in the tent at lunch-time, when he interrupted me.

“You know it’s a most extraordinary coincidence—” he began, with something akin to excitement in his usual level voice, and then instead of telling me what the curious coincidence was, his statement dwindled into indecision and he sat thoughtfully watching the blue smoke spirals that curled to the ceiling from his pipe.

“Well?” I asked after a pause, turning to look at him in surprise.

But there he sat staring vacantly at nothing, his face an expressionless mask, his eyes introspective and dead. They regained their normal twinkle as I watched, and he continued, “Oh, nothing really—nothing at all—only something that something you said reminded me of. Now I’m sure it’s time that you went off to bed.”

We said good night at the bottom of the stairs, and with my foot on the bottom step I asked him what on earth had made him say that Miss Hunter in particular looked as though she needed rest. I can not think what made me ask the question, and it had no sooner crossed my lips than I realized how indiscreet it was. He looked at me quizzically. “Should a doctor tell!—eh?”

I apologized profusely.

“Well, there is no harm done, and I don’t mind telling you—no, after all, I think that perhaps I had better not.”

I thought how annoying his little habit of starting out on some interesting confidential statement and then breaking off in the middle of it was, but obviously I could not press him, and I said good night again and went up-stairs to bed.

To bed but not to sleep. For interminable hours I checked the quarters chimed by the great cathedral clock. And when sleep did come it was thin and dream-streaked. Once more I was in the dispensary standing in front of the poison cupboard with the murderous little bottle of poison in my hands. The Tundish—not the placid kindly man to whom I had said good night, but a man with the face of a devil enraged—came rushing at me round the table in the middle of the room. “Put it down, you damned fool,” he yelled, and seizing me by the arm he twisted it back until my hand was thrust inside the safe. Then in a flash his anger was gone, The Tundish was masked and placid again, and, looking at me with a pleasant quiet smile, he said in the friendliest and silkiest of voices: “Poisoned, I fancy, my dear Jeffcock—better have it off,” and he closed the heavy door with a crash, severing my hand above the wrist.

I heard a tinkle of broken glass as the baby flagon dropped among its deadly little comrades, and then a plop as my own severed hand reached the bottom of the safe and I awoke with a start to hear a door really banging in the hall below. Then giggles, and Stella’s carrying, high-pitched voice: “Oh! for heaven’s sake don’t make me laugh any more, my sides are sore and aching as it is.” Next a noisy laugh from Ralph, and Kenneth whispering—he meant it for a whisper—and urging him not to wake up Jeffcock and The Tundish.

The dancers were back home and coming up-stairs to bed. They laughed and played about on the landing, and made as much noise again in urging one another to stop. I thought how selfish and inconsiderate they were. Then I heard Stella and Ralph go up to the landing above and their doors bang shut. It was nearly three o’clock when at last I fell into a quiet and untroubled sleep.

I woke surprisingly refreshed and got down-stairs to find The Tundish seated in lonely state at the head of the breakfast table. He greeted me with his friendly smile, asking whether I had been able to sleep through the dancing party’s united efforts to keep one another quiet. He told me that the thermometer had already beaten the record of yesterday at the same time, and that we were in for a frizzly time at the club.

Stella came in just as we were finishing our last cups of coffee and I noticed at once how wretchedly tired and pale she looked. The doctor remarked on it too, and she told us that she had hardly slept and had wakened almost too weary to dress. On learning that she had been sleeping badly for some nights he promised to put up a mild narcotic for her to take that night. He was kindness and tact itself in that he made no reference to the dance and his own neglected advice, but Stella almost snubbed him for his trouble, and hardly bothering to thank him turned to me with some casual remark or other.

Ethel, with Kenneth and Ralph, came in as the doctor was talking to Stella, and Margaret, pink and white and full-blown, Margaret smiling to herself, followed them a moment later. I was looking at her as she came in through the door, and whether I unconsciously stared a little I don’t know, but the pleasant smile vanished, to be replaced by an unpleasant frown.

The Tundish was right. We had a very warm time at the club that day, but in spite of my cold I enjoyed the tennis and in spite of her conversation I enjoyed my partner. She and I had lunch alone together, and Stella was one of the many subjects we discussed.

“Do you think that she is very bewitching?” she asked.

“She is certainly more than ordinarily pretty,” I replied, “but as to being bewitching that is another matter.”

“Oh! Don’t make any mistake of that sort. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s one and the same thing. A pretty face and a good figure seem to meet the case with most men.”

“I did not know we were discussing a case at all,” I laughed.

But she closed the conversation by adding: “Fine feathers make fine birds,” and she said it very impressively, though for the life of me I could not see the connection.

I played a number of matches during the day, and I did fairly well, but tennis has nothing to do with this story and there is only one little incident that I need describe. It was just after tea and I was in the umpire’s chair. I had to keep my attention closely on the game, both of the men having a service that was difficult to follow, but as I sat perched in my lofty seat, I noticed Ethel and The Tundish conversing very earnestly together.

A few minutes later I heard Ethel say: “Well, it’s spoiling everything, and I certainly wouldn’t have offered to put her up for the tournament if you hadn’t been so insistent.”

They were the full width of the court and then another space away, but the whispered words came to my sensitive ears with every inflection of Ethel’s voice distinct and clear. I could hear the annoyance in it as though it were to me she had whispered and not to the doctor away across the court. I wondered to which of the two girls she referred—my partner or Stella—why it, whatever it was, was spoiling everything, and why The Tundish should have to suggest that either of them should be invited to Dalehouse. The more I thought of it the less I understood it, but Ethel was quite right about our party, there was something the matter with it—something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on was just spoil——

“Wake up, umpire.”

I did with a jerk, to find that they had played two unregistered points while my thoughts had wandered. It was a long, three-set match and when I took the result in to the referee’s tent, although it was getting late he put me on to play, and I was the last of our party to leave the club.

By the time I reached Dalehouse the others had nearly finished supper. There was a sudden lull in the conversation as I came into the room and I felt certain that I had been the subject of their talk; I quickly gathered from their subsequent remarks that Ethel had felt that one of the other two men should have waited for me at the ground. It was quite absurd, of course, but her quick little temper was easily roused, especially so if she imagined that one of her friends had been slighted, and apparently she had not hesitated to lay down the law on the matter.

I did my best to smooth things over, but if at lunch-time on the previous day I had felt that the gaiety of our party was forced and rang false, I had no doubt at all on this occasion, that the general feeling of irritation was genuine enough. The very flies seemed to have caught the disease and to be more persistent than usual in their attempts to annoy.

The Tundish was the only one of us to make the least attempt at general politeness, and he, I believe, was secretly amused at our united and childish ill-humor. Stella was positively rude when he reminded her of the medicine that he had had sent up to her room. First she refused to take it at all. Then she would take it at once, and there was another little scene before she could be persuaded to obey the doctor’s wishes and wait for an hour after her meal.

The two boys had left the room while we were pacifying Stella, but when Ethel suggested that the four of us should have a quiet game of bridge while The Tundish did some work in the dispensary and she and Margaret descended to the basement to tackle some ironing, the boys were nowhere to be found.

Ethel seemed absurdly put out over so trivial a matter. She went into the dispensary with The Tundish and I overheard her say: “It’s abominably rude of Kenneth to leave Francis alone with nothing to do, and I shall tell him so when he gets back,” and I must admit that I was childishly gratified that she should care enough about my comfort to risk having words with Kenneth. Truly, along with the rest, I was feeling the heat.

My ears must have been in a hypersensitive condition, for I had heard Ethel in the dispensary quite plainly, and a little time later as I stood at the telephone in the hall trying to get a connection through to Brenda, I heard The Tundish talking to Stella in the drawing-room though the door was half closed. It was a moment before I realized that I was listening to a confidential conversation and then it was too late.

It was the doctor speaking in his most persuasive voice: “Look here, Stella, I am most truly sorry about it, but until I saw you at the club, I really had no idea that the Stella Palfreeman Ethel spoke of was the ‘Dumps’ I used to know in Shanghai.”

Then I got my connection and heard no more for a short time, but Brenda was out and my conversation with the maid was brief, and they were still talking together when I put the receiver up. It was Stella speaking this time and she was not so clear. Her voice came and went in broken snatches as though some one were opening the door and closing it again; a few words clear and distinct and then a blank.

“——it’s as well I came . . . the Hansons certainly ought to be told . . . your abominable share . . . father’s death . . . I shall tell them!”

Evidently it was the end of the conversation, for as I was hurrying away from my embarrassing position, The Tundish came out of the drawing-room and met me in the hall on his way back to the dispensary. He smiled at me pleasantly, appearing quite unmoved by the words I had overheard, and I thought to myself that whatever else he may have learned by his long residence among the Chinese, he had certainly acquired their proverbial bland impassivity.

I wandered into the garden, where long evening shadows were creeping across the lawn, and sat down in one of the wicker chairs that stood beneath the cedar, my thoughts turning naturally to what I had overheard. Now I began to understand better why Stella had dropped her glass. The little scene in the luncheon tent came back to me. Stella’s momentary hesitation when the doctor held out his hand; the doctor, suave and unperturbed, taking the less convenient seat.

Then I remembered what I had overheard between Ethel and The Tundish as I sat in the umpire’s chair and endeavored to connect the one conversation with the other. Had Ethel referred to Stella when she said that she would not have asked her unless he had persuaded her to do it? But they had met only the week before at Camford—or was it possible that he had seen Stella’s name in the paper and had written asking Ethel to invite her to Dalehouse? In that case Ethel probably knew something about the mystery—if mystery there was—and the doctor had lied when he spoke to Stella in the drawing-room. And if the reference had not been to Stella, then it must have been to Margaret, my partner, and that was equally inexplicable, for what possible reason could Ethel have for saying that Margaret was spoiling everything? True, there was her rather inane conversation, but they were old friends, and Ethel must have known all about that. No—I decided that she must have meant Stella, and no sooner had I come to the decision, than I felt equally convinced that the doctor did not look like a liar.

Miss Summerson had lied in the dispensary—the place seemed full of lies and ill temper. As I sat pondering under the cedar with its far-spread boughs black against the sky, a couple of bats went fluttering in the fading light and somehow their floppy uncertain flight seemed symbolic of deceit and lying too. The half-hour after nine came floating across the still calm air from the clock in the cathedral tower. Looming big and white over the black of the shadowed garden wall, it looked ghostly, I thought, and seemed less real than the bats and the shadows themselves. I rose and went back to the house full of a vague uneasiness and wishing that I was home.

Stella was still tucked up on the settee immersed in a book and obviously desiring neither company nor conversation, so I picked up the daily paper.

I could not have been seated for more than five minutes when the bell at the consulting-room entrance began to peal, and a few moments later Ethel appeared at the drawing-room door asking me if I would go to the doctor in the dispensary. There had been a motor accident and he required my help. I found a small boy of about eight stretched out on the couch. He had been badly cut by the broken glass and his poor little face made a pitiful sight as the tears trickled down through the blood. It fell to Ethel’s lot to look after the parents, who were distracted to incapacity, and to mine to hold the child while the doctor swabbed and stitched and bandaged.

I was astounded at the way he handled that small boy. His deft fingers moved at such lightning speed that the bandages seemed to fly into place of their own volition, and all the time he worked he was chatting kindly to the boy and giving me instructions. How can I describe it—unadulterated genius—magical—a superman at work on work he loved. Anyhow, incredible as it may sound, the job was completed and he was lifting the patient into the taxi that Ethel had sent for, as the cathedral clock chimed ten.

Have I described The Tundish as impassive and imperturbable—a man with a face like a mask that nothing could move? That was not the man who had bent tenderly over the morsel of damaged humanity that I had held in my arms. No nurse could have been more gentle; no mother more anxiously loving. Night and day, ice and fire, could not have differed more.

I was alone with Ethel for a moment while the doctor was talking at the side of the taxi, and she asked me with an amused little flicker of a smile whether I had been impressed.

“Why, the man must be a marvel,” I replied. “Please don’t spoil it by telling me that all G. P.’s can manage such things with similar proficiency.”

“My dear old thing,” she laughed, “did daddy never tell you about our Tundish? He is supposed to be one of the best surgeons in the country, and with children he is almost uncanny. When he left Shanghai they broke their yellow little hearts in dozens. Now he is resident doctor at a large children’s home in London, merely because he is so passionately fond of them and has money enough to do as he likes. But here he comes, and he wouldn’t thank me, or any one else, for singing his praises.”

Ethel returned to Margaret and the ironing, and the doctor and I went back to the drawing-room where Stella was still reclining on the settee. He told her that she could take her draft any time she liked, said good night to us both and went up-stairs to bed. Stella answered all my attempts at conversation with a disheartening “yes” or “no” and after pottering about for a time, I left her too, intending to follow the doctor’s example.

I met the boys in the hall, however, and we all three proceeded to the basement to find out what progress the laundresses were making. The hot weather had played havoc with our things, and they had kindly undertaken them. We were vastly amused at the results of their labors, a few pairs of socks and a badly scorched shirt of my own apparently representing the work of something over an hour. They pleaded the interruption of the accident, a defective electric iron, the stained condition of the socks which they had had to rewash, and lastly that they had dealt with several garments of the feminine gender which their maidenly modesty did not allow them either to mention or produce.

Ethel retaliated by asking for details of Kenneth’s and Ralph’s movements since supper-time and refused to be satisfied with the reply that they had been for a stroll to get cool. She asked them to state specifically where they had been, and they looked, I thought, not a little confused. Kenneth definitely reddened, and she was unkind enough to call our general attention to the fact, and to say that his efforts to get cool must have sent a rush of blood to the head. We stood chafing one another pleasantly in this way for some little time, and I dare say it was after half past ten when I left them at it and went to bed.

I switched on the landing light from the bottom of the stairs, and when I got to the top I found that The Tundish had written out a notice and had stuck it up above the landing switch, so that we should all see it on our way to bed. It read:

Please let a fellow get some sleep to-night and don’t wake him up by telling one another to be quiet.

Sgd., The Tundish.

I took it down and going into my room I found that the ink in my fountain pen was identical in color—as I half expected it would be, having filled it only the previous day from the ink-well in the consulting-room—and that by writing with the back of the nib I could imitate the thin strokes with which the doctor had written, I quickly added the words:

dark deeds are done at night

and stuck it up again in its old position. I made what I thought a very creditable copy of the doctor’s print, having imitated to a nicety his flat-topped a’s and sloping d’s. My forgery completed, I got into bed.

The others came up before I got to sleep and I heard them discussing it in whispers and then a little later calling out to one another to “Just come and look here,” with a great deal of laughing and running about from room to room. Next I heard Kenneth say: “Shall we go and pull him out of bed?” and Ethel reply that she believed it was I and not The Tundish at all. This was followed by a declaration that, whoever it was, they would deal with him to-morrow, and the household gradually settled down into silence and sleep.

Next morning, Wednesday, I was up betimes and out in the garden before breakfast. The Tundish joined me there. We were just going in in answer to the gong when he said: “By the way, your addition to my little effort of last night was remarkably apt, for I played Old Harry with all their bedrooms before I went to bed.” He went on to tell me that he had made a realistic skeleton with the aid of a bag of golf clubs in Kenneth’s bed, sticking the clubs down the legs and arms of his pajamas and utilizing a pair of shoe trees for the ears. Ethel’s bed he had peppered with tennis and golf balls carefully placed beneath the under blanket, and Margaret’s and Ralph’s had also received treatment.

In spite of the merry twinkle in his eyes, such a practical joke seemed to be entirely out of keeping with his character, and although I am sure I gave no visible signs of my surprise, he might almost have read my thoughts, for he said at once, “Yes, I surprised myself too, but I fancy that I must have been a trifle fey last night. I shall have to look out to-night though, for they are sure to attempt revenge.”

I told him of the whispered conversation I had overheard on the landing, and he suggested that as I might be going home before night, we should attempt to make them believe that I had really been the culprit. We both of us agreed that a too nice adherence to the truth was not essential in the matter of a practical joke. “No, we will both of us lie like troopers,” he said as we took our seats at the table, and whether I succeeded or not, he certainly kept his promise to the full.

We arranged that we would both make out that we knew nothing about either the notice or the raided beds, but that my denials should be less assertive than his so that their suspicions would gradually turn in my direction. We had great difficulty, however, at least I had, not to give ourselves away by laughing when the others came into the room. They came in procession, marching solemnly round the table, Kenneth chanting, “Oyez! Oyez! a trial will be held.” Ethel led the van bearing the notice on a large tray held out at arm’s length. Then came Ralph carrying Kenneth’s pajamas and the golf bags and clubs, together with a collection of tennis and golf balls and other evidence. Kenneth followed, arrayed in an old cap and gown of Hanson’s, and Margaret brought up the rear as train bearer to Kenneth.

They drew up in a row in front of us and said in unison—there had evidently been a rehearsal, “There sits the culprit,” but we noticed with secret satisfaction that while Margaret and Kenneth pointed at The Tundish, Ethel and Ralph were pointing at me.

It seems that up to this point in telling my story I must be constantly detailing trivial matters which can have no possible interest taken by themselves, and yet which have a real bearing on the more important later events. Kenneth’s inquiry into the doings of the previous night was amusing at the time, and I don’t mean it unkindly, but I am sure he enjoyed showing Ethel how acute an inquirer he could be, but it is not a matter of sufficient apparent importance to set out at any length. And yet I think we were all of us to go over every word that was spoken at the breakfast table, time and again in our minds afterward, wondering what possible bearing they could have on the terrible tragedy that was so soon to befall us.

I was sitting at right angles to The Tundish, who was at one end of the table, and Kenneth handed him the notice and took his seat at the other side of the table opposite to me, saying, “Well, a confession won’t earn a free pardon, but it may certainly incline us to temper justice with mercy.”

The Tundish turned the paper round and round, pretending to examine it with surprise and care. “And what may this be?” he said at last. “I see that it has been written in my name, but apart from that it seems to be reasonable enough, and it expresses what I actually felt very aptly indeed.”

“You didn’t write it, then, and stick it up on the landing?”

“My dear boy, I am really far too old for that sort of childishness. Besides, I ask you, if I had been the author, should I have bothered to print my name at the bottom instead of signing it in the ordinary way? No, I think we shall find that the guilty party is seated immediately to my left, and if you haven’t foolishly smudged it all over, we shall probably find his fingerprints.” He was sprinkling the notice with salt and blowing it off again into Kenneth’s bacon as he spoke, while I protested loudly that I could not understand what they were all of them talking about.

Am I doing Kenneth an injustice, I wonder, and do I exaggerate his ill temper and puerile behavior? Then, I had not realized how jealous he was of the doctor, and could make no allowances for it, but oh! how easily he “rose” and how absurdly he showed his dislike! He resented the “My dear boy,” and he did not like the salt being blown into his bacon, but he endeavored to imitate the doctor’s bantering tones.

“My dear Tundish,” he said, “I happen to know that rough paper of that description does not show fingerprints.” It was a poor imitation—as well might a cow pretend to be a swan—and even then he could not maintain the role he tried to play, adding with some heat, “You may be a very good surgeon, but you’re a very good liar too. Do you mean to tell me that you didn’t upset all our beds last night?”

The Tundish never turned a hair as he replied, “I never did anything of the sort. Was your bed upset, Jeffcock?” He could certainly lie magnificently and he looked the essence of simple injured innocence.

“Of course his bed wasn’t touched,” Ethel chipped in, endeavoring to save Kenneth from making a complete fool of himself, “for the simple reason that he upset the rest.”

I in turn denied her accusations and that I had any knowledge of the affair. I pointed out that the inquiry was entirely irregular, inasmuch as Kenneth himself, who was acting as the judge, and the others who presumably represented the jury, were all claimants in the action as well, which was a manifestly absurd position. My chief concern, I went on to add, was on account of Ethel, as it went to my heart to think that she was the affianced bride of a young man who had so little knowledge of the world that he could be duped by the statements of such an obvious liar as The Tundish, but I am such a duffer at acting that quite unconsciously my denials only emphasized my guilt, and I did more to confuse them than the doctor himself.

Kenneth, who had regained some of his usual equanimity, next produced paper and pencils, and asked us both to repeat the notice from memory, but this gave no very definite results.

I tried to visualize the doctor’s rather peculiar printing. I remembered his sloping d’s and flat-topped a’s and made my attempts as much like the original as I could, but I went badly astray over some of the other letters. The Tundish, on the other hand, did his best to repress his normal style, but just failed to succeed, with the result that both our duplicates held certain resemblances to the one that had been placed over the switch, and neither was quite like it.

It was The Tundish who pointed out that any of the party in addition to ourselves might equally have been responsible. That either Ethel or Margaret might quite easily have slipped up-stairs from the basement during the evening, and that as a matter of fact their poor performance as laundresses was probably due to their absence and not to the reasons they had alleged. That Miss Palfreeman had been left all alone while we had been engaged with the injured child. That Kenneth and Ralph had pretended to spend a whole evening strolling about to get cool, but that they obviously had some hidden secret and were unwilling to give any details of their movements. And finally that whichever of them had done it, he or she would certainly have upset his or her own bed as a blind for the rest of us and that the fact that neither his bed nor mine had been touched was a most important piece of evidence in our favor.

In the end, after much argument, carried on pleasantly by all of us with the exception of Kenneth, who seemed incapable of differentiating between an argument and a dispute, they had to admit that each one of us had had the opportunity of spending at least a quarter of an hour up-stairs without being missed by the rest, and though suspicion remained divided, we had lied so well that they were not only in doubt as to which of us was guilty, but they really began to wonder whether we were either of us responsible at all.

When we had concluded that no conclusion could be reached, Ethel got up from the table saying that she would run up-stairs and find out whether Stella was getting up or whether she might not like her breakfast sent up to her room. She was back in a couple of minutes and although I was seated with my back to the door I could tell at once by the way she almost stumbled into the room, that there was something serious amiss. She hardly had breath enough to speak, but at last she managed to get out:

“Tundish, I’m frightened—do come and look at Stella—oh! I’m so afraid.”

The Tundish jumped to his feet saying, “What on earth is the matter?” and hurried after her out of the room, leaving us to wonder what could have caused her extreme agitation. He returned in less than five minutes and stood in the doorway looking at us as we sat round the table. I have said, looking at us, but I very much doubt if he saw us at all, for he stood there in the doorway like a man in a trance, muttering away to himself again and again:

“I can’t have made a mistake. No, I simply can’t have made a mistake.”

I can see the scene again all as clearly as this paper I am writing on. Ralph, who was seated next to me with his back to the door, looking over his shoulder, held his cup of coffee in mid-air. Kenneth, on the point of lifting a piece of bacon on his fork, held it poised. Margaret, sitting opposite, looked pale and scared, and we were all looking first at the doctor and then at one another, while he stood muttering in the doorway and gazing into space. It was almost as though some magician had suddenly thrown an evil spell which we none of us could break.

He seemed to come back to life quite suddenly and to realize the amazement with which we were watching him, then, after a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Stella is dead and I’ve every reason to believe that she’s been poisoned. Please all of you stay here for a few minutes until I come back.”

There was one wild, piercing shriek and Margaret burst into half-hysterical sobs. It was horrible. First the silence while we waited, amazed, for the doctor to speak, then the appalling words he spoke in his quiet level voice, and then the sudden piercing shriek that filled the sunlit room.

Chapter III.
Stella Murdered

Stella dead! Stella poisoned! I think that, apart from Margaret, who sat silent after her one piercing cry of alarm, we none of us quite realized the horror of the situation, and I am sure that we none of us understood the doctor’s muttered references to a mistake, or gave any thought to the manner of her death. Nothing in the scene before us suggested tragedy. The sun shone in at the three long windows which were open wide, and one of the two family cats sat leisurely washing her face on the sill, the drowsy hum of the bees at work in the garden border below making a fitting accompaniment to her deliberate graceful movements. The breakfast table was in the homely disorder of a completed meal and we sat round it in flannels, prepared for tennis. Kenneth was still arrayed in cap and gown. The golf clubs, the shoe trees, and the tennis and golf balls collected from Ethel’s bed lay heaped together in one of the two armchairs. None of these things suggested tragedy and death—but poor beautiful Stella lay dead up-stairs.

Only yesterday I had watched her playing vigorous tennis and one little picture stood out clearly in my mind. She had stooped low to the ground to reach the ball, her bare arm sweeping gracefully at its fullest stretch; her lovely pose, as, lightly poised, she held her balance with one white-clad shapely leg reaching out behind, tip of toe and finger-tips of her free hand just touching the ground; her coppery hair showing little pools of sun-kissed ruddy gold; her amber eyes alight with pure enjoyment as she gave a little involuntary cry of pleasure when the ball, curving low, just skimmed the net; all made a vivid picture of joyous slim agility. And that was only a few hours ago, but now, while we had been fooling round the breakfast table, she lay stiff and cold and dead.

Kenneth took off his cap and gown, but for once Ralph was the first to speak. “Look here, we can’t just sit round the table gaping! What did The Tundish mean by a mistake? Where is he and where on earth is Ethel? I’m going out to find some one.”

I tried to persuade him to wait a few minutes as the doctor had so particularly asked us to stay until he came back, and we sat silent again.

Then Ralph wondered, “Why on earth didn’t he want us to leave the room?” and Kenneth made for the door saying that he for one wasn’t going to be told what he could and he couldn’t do at a time like this. Fortunately, Ethel came back before he reached it and added her request to mine. She told us that the doctor was in the dispensary, examining the bottles from which he had made up Stella’s sleeping draft, and that he would be with us in less than five minutes. She went over to Kenneth and put one hand on his shoulder as she spoke, saying, “Oh! it is all too dreadful! We must try to help The Tundish all we can—it is simply terrible for him.”

“Do you mean that he has made a mistake then?” Kenneth replied, and I was surprised to hear how hard and harsh his voice was. No hint of sympathy softened the bluntness of his question, and Ethel’s hand fell slowly from his shoulder.

The door opened and The Tundish came in. He stood in the doorway for a moment looking at Kenneth with as sad a smile as ever I wish to see.

“No,” he said, “I don’t think that I have made any mistake, but I have very serious news for you all. Will you please sit down?”

He took the chair at the end of the breakfast table again as he spoke, motioning to Ethel to come and sit beside him. His arm was resting on the table, and I saw her put her hand against it with a timid little touch of sympathy which he acknowledged with a smile of thanks.

Kenneth saw it too and reddened and said in an unnaturally formal voice, “Now, Doctor, we are very anxious to hear what you have to tell us.” I could have kicked him for the way he said it, and I think that that was the first time that it crossed my mind that he might be jealous of The Tundish.

The doctor took no notice of his remark, but proceeded immediately to tell us in a calm friendly voice, that, as we already knew, he had made up an ordinary sleeping draft for Stella the night before. The medicine had been taken up to her bedroom and placed on a little table by her bed, by the maid, Annie, just before supper. It had consisted of a mild narcotic taken from one of the bottles that stood on the lower shelf of the poison cupboard, to which he had added one or two other ingredients which it was not necessary for him to specify, as they were entirely harmless in their action. Every prescription, he explained, was registered in a special book kept for the purpose in the dispensary, as soon as it was made up, and this he had done in the usual way. The draft was a mild one and there was no possibility that it by itself, could have caused death or have had any harmful action. He had just roughly checked over the contents of each of the bottles he had used and they each of them contained exactly what they were alleged to contain.

He told us how the poison cupboard, in addition to the stock poisons that were placed on the lower shelf, held a number of rare and some of them very dangerous poisons, collected by Dr. Hanson over a long period in connection with his research work, on a shelf at the top. These were seldom touched and it had not been necessary for him to handle them in making up the sleeping draft for Stella. As far as he could tell they had not been disturbed. Here he turned to me, saying, “But you may be able to help us there, Jeffcock, for you saw them with me only the night before last. You had better come along and tell me if, as far as you can remember, they are still placed as they were then.”

We trooped into the dispensary, and he opened the heavy steel door of the cupboard, with the little key which he took from his waistcoat pocket. The bottles, apparently, were in the exact positions in which I had seen them only two nights before, the tiny Chinese flagon lifting its long slender neck with its queer flat stopper above the diminutive bottles that surrounded it. As far as I could recollect, it was in the identical place in which I had replaced it when The Tundish had so urgently begged me to put it down, but, as I explained, any of the other bottles might have been changed or moved about, for they were all identical in shape and size, and I had not taken any note of the names and formulæ on the neatly written labels.

“As far as you can see then, the Chinese flagon has not been moved?” The Tundish asked. “Do you think that you would be prepared to swear to that?”

I hesitated before I replied, “No, I don’t think I could swear to it, but I could state on oath that if it has been, it has been put back again in very nearly the exact position in which I saw it last.” I pointed out, however, that unless some of the other bottles were moved as well, it would be practically impossible to have put it down anywhere else, and I finished up by asking him if the Chinese flagon were particularly important.

“Yes,” he said, “it is. I am convinced that some one or other has added some of the contents of that little bottle to the draft that I made up for Stella, and that that is the cause of her death.” He spoke in his quiet precise voice as though he had been making some trivial statement in general conversation, but the rest of us were too astonished to say anything at all.

“Come, time presses,” he added after a pause, “let us go back to the dining-room.”

As soon as we were seated again in our old positions he repeated to the rest what he had told me with regard to the history of the weird little Chinese bottle, and the action of its deadly contents. He explained to us how, in China, he had seen a man who had been poisoned by it, that Stella’s appearance was exactly similar, and that he knew of no other poison which produced even approximately similar symptoms. He feared, although he had of course only had time for a very brief examination, that there was little if any likelihood of his opinion being incorrect.

We sat nerved and taut, as one sits looking for the lightning flashes in a violent storm, and it was Margaret who first broke the silence. I noticed that she was holding to the table edge, and her finger-tips were white with the pressure of her grip.

“Did Stella know of the Chinese flagon?” she asked.

“No, not to my knowledge,” he replied, “besides which, it is difficult to see how she could have got at it had she wished to do so. There are only the two keys to the cupboard—mine and Miss Summerson’s. Mine I can answer for, and Miss Summerson left the dispensary yesterday afternoon at three o’clock in order to go over to Millingham to see some friends of hers. I gave her special leave for the purpose and she is not to return until midday to-day. She always carries the key on a chain attached to her waist and is a model of care in such matters.”

“Then you really do suspect foul play?” I asked. “But who could have done it and what motive could they have had?”

“Yes, I suspect foul play, murder in short, to use the horrid word, but I am not able to answer the rest of your question. The position as I see it is this. Besides the six of us sitting here at this table there were only the two maids in the house last night after the medicine was taken up-stairs, making eight in all. Of the eight, obviously suspicion falls most readily on me as I made the medicine up, but I can assure you most positively that no mistake was made with the prescription. So far as I know, Annie, who carried it up-stairs, does not even know of the existence of the little flagon, and I think that we can probably rule her out of it. Of the rest of you, suspicion points most readily to you, Jeffcock, for I told you all about the poison only the night before, and to you, Ethel, who already knew about it from your father.”

He put his hand over hers and smiled at her as he spoke, but Kenneth sprang up at once crying out angrily, “How dare you make such a suggestion about Miss Hanson?”

“Don’t be a fool, Kenneth,” she replied tersely, “and I was ‘Ethel’ to The Tundish when you were a little boy at school.”

The doctor stood up, all pleasant serenity. “I do think I was very careful to say that suspicion pointed most readily to me, but we are delaying too long and there are things that must be done. The police must be informed—they will have to investigate the matter—and so this is perhaps the last opportunity we shall have of talking quietly together. Stella has been killed unmercifully and in cold blood—it seems impossible to believe, but terrible if it is true—that the murderer is probably here with us in this room now. Possibly you are wondering, even as I am talking to you, whether I am the murderer and whether I could have nerve enough to face you all like this. Well, I want to beg and pray of you that you will put all such thoughts on one side, for if we once allow our imaginations to run riot and let our suspicions get the better of our friendships and beliefs, these next few days may grow memories that we shall all look back on with nothing but shame and regret. I do solemnly swear to you that I did not do this horrible thing. If I am arrested on suspicion, remember that suspicion may still fall on you. We shall all be questioned again and again by the police. If any information should come to light to ease my own position, then it may equally throw suspicion on one of the rest of you. I don’t for one moment suggest that we should do anything to hinder their investigations, but apart from that, for God’s sake let us keep our heads and admit no one guilty until his or her guilt has been actually proved.”

I think that we were all of us impressed by the earnest way in which he spoke, and Ethel went up to him and kissed him there in front of us all. “Of course you didn’t do it, Tundish dear,” she said, “and no one who knows you could think so for a moment.”

Kenneth said, “Oh, yes, that’s all very well, but doesn’t it apply equally to us all?”

“Why, of course it does. Who suggested that it didn’t.”

“But unless the doctor is mistaken about the poison, one of us must have done it. You simply can’t get away from that.”

I said, “I am sure that the doctor is right, the less we think about who it may have been the better.” But I was already thinking of the conversation I had overheard between Ethel and the doctor at the club, and what he and Stella had said in the drawing-room last night. The words, “Your abominable share . . . father’s death . . . I shall tell them,” came whispering in my ears.

Ethel had taken her chair again, and I saw the tears well up in her brown eyes as Kenneth was speaking, and then suddenly she buried her face in her arms. The Tundish put his hand on her shoulder, saying, “Now we must waste no more time. First the servants must be told. Ralph, please ring the bell. And I must telephone or wire to Stella’s people. What is her address, Ethel?”

“It’s in Kensington. She lives with her uncle, Mr. Crawford, but she told me only yesterday that he is away and that the house is shut. I haven’t the least idea where he has gone to or what his address is now. Whatever shall we do?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. The police will see to it for us. Very likely she may have some letter stating where he is. We will tell them directly they come.”

Annie, the maid who had taken the fateful medicine up-stairs the night before, appeared with a tray to clear away the things. She was a nice quiet girl of about twenty-eight who had been with the Hansons a good ten years. She put the tray down on the sideboard, saying, “Why, what’s the matter with. Miss Ethel? There’s no bad news from Folkestone, I hope, sir?”

“No, Annie, but run down-stairs and tell cook that I want her here at once. Come back again yourself.”

The cook was an acquisition of about six months. I suppose that it really is impossible for the mere male to appreciate the value of a good servant, and to understand how easily the mistress of a house may be willing to allow efficiency to pardon defects in appearance and manner, but I felt that, for myself, I would sooner live on perpetual bread and cheese than suffer the Hansons’ cook. Ethel had told me more than one story of her selfish unreasonableness, but had added that she was a good cook, and that they preferred to put up with her, rather than risk a month or two of cooking and washing up with possibly something more disastrous still at the end of it.

She came back with Annie, standing just inside the door with her arms folded and her beady black eyes darting from one of us to the other, as she took in the scene. Her face was unhealthily pasty and her small shapeless nose tilted upward from a mouth that seemed ever to be posed in a disagreeable smirk.

The Tundish explained that Miss Palfreeman had been found dead in her bed, and that, as there was some uncertainty as to the reason for her death, it would be necessary for him to call in the police, and for an inquest to be held.

Cook, who had been christened with the inappropriate name of Grace, was all alarm and anger in a moment. “What! The police in this ’ere house,” she said, “and the master and mistress away as well! Not if I have anything to do with it, by your leave, sir! I come here with a good character to cook, I did, and if I am to be questioned by the police I’d better pack and be off at once, by your leave, Miss Ethel,” and she gave her head a nasty little shake and stood with her arms folded and a smirk on her pale unwholesome face, as she waited for the doctor and Ethel to unite in begging her to stay.

But she hadn’t bargained for The Tundish. “Very well then, Grace, you had better go and pack up your belongings at once, for the police will be here in less than half an hour. I warn you, however, that they will look on your action as being very suspicious, and that they will take you to the police station and ask you any questions they may want to in public, instead of quietly here in private. You can go. And you, Annie?” he added, turning to the younger woman.

“Oh, I shall stay, sir.”

“Well, look here, Annie, I may as well warn you that we are all in a pretty mess. Miss Palfreeman has most certainly been poisoned, and I don’t see how she can possibly have poisoned herself. I shall be the object of most suspicion, as it was I who made up medicine for her last night, but you will be suspected too, for you took it up-stairs to her room. But neither you nor I will have anything to fear, if we answer truly all the questions we are asked. Now be a good girl, and get the table cleared quickly, while I ring up the police.”

The telephone is fixed just outside the drawing-room door on a little bracket in the hall, and he went to it as he finished speaking, but before he reached the instrument the bell rang sharply. Somebody was calling us.

The doctor lifted the receiver and we could tell at once by his tone of voice as he replied that he had been listening to serious news. “Oh, dear, I am sorry. Yes, of course I’ll come at once. I’ll put a few things together and be with you as soon as I can.” He replaced the receiver and stood thinking deeply. Then he explained to us that he had been called to an urgent case—a case that he could not possibly hand over to another doctor, at least not without seeing him first. He could do nothing for Stella, and it was his obvious duty to go. Would I ring up the police? “And by the way,” he added, “you, Ralph, had better run up to the courts and scratch all your names from the tournament. You need not give too much information. Tell them that Miss Palfreeman is ill and that the rest of you have decided to scratch on account of the heat. We can then be guided by the police when they come. We must all of us remember that this is going to be none too good for your father’s practise, Ethel. You ring up the police, Jeffcock, while Ralph goes to the club. I must go at once. There are other people in trouble besides ourselves.”

He turned at the door to give one look at Ethel, who still sat at the table with her face buried on her arms, “You look after her, Kenneth,” he said kindly. But Kenneth looked straight back at him with his lips tight shut and a scowl on his handsome young face, and said never a word in reply. The Tundish shrugged his shoulders, made a little grimace, and went off down the passage to the dispensary. I went to the telephone.

Now, I had some difficulty in getting my connection, and I dare say I may have stood for a full five minutes at the instrument with my back to the hall and the receiver pressed to my ear. The heat was already oppressive and the delay irritating in itself. My hand I found was trembling slightly as I held the receiver. The cathedral clock chimed out ten as I stood, and I had to look at my watch to make sure that I hadn’t missed a chime, for it seemed incredible that only a little more than an hour had passed since The Tundish and I had sat down to breakfast, and we began the farce of the mock inquiry about the notice that he had stuck up over the landing switch. To look back to the earlier part of the morning, was, I felt, like looking at the sunshine receding across the valley as one sat perched on a mountainside with the rain clouds and the thunder drifting up behind.

I heard Margaret say that she would go to the basement and fetch something or other for Ethel, and she passed close behind me just as the exchange was putting me through to a wrong number. I had to shout and it was some time before I could persuade whoever it was speaking to me to hang up his receiver. The girl at the exchange seemed to pay no attention to my repeated attempts to attract her attention, then just as I did get the number I wanted at last, I fancied that I could hear some one coming softly down the stairs behind my back, but my attention being all for my message I did not turn round to see who it was. Fortunately, I got through to the station superintendent himself without any further delay. I told him briefly how one of the doctor’s guests had been found dead in bed, and that Dr. Wallace, the physician in charge of the practise, had asked me to ring him up and tell him that he strongly suspected poison. Would he please send some one round at once along with Dr. Jeffries, the police surgeon, if he was available? He promised me that they would both be round in less than a quarter of an hour.

I put down the instrument with a sigh of relief. A step, however small, I felt, had been taken toward knowledge and away from uncertainty and indecision.

I turned round to find The Tundish standing close behind me in the hall. I was surprised, because my hearing is so acute that I am not often taken unawares. I wondered how long he had been standing there quietly behind me. He explained that he had come back to ask me to make quite sure that in his absence no one went up to Stella’s room before the police were on the scene. He ought to have locked the door, but had forgotten. I promised him that I would see to it, and he went back down the passage to the consulting-room and out into Dalehouse Lane, his patient apparently living in that direction.

Margaret came up the stairs from the basement, carrying a tray, as we concluded our brief conversation, and I stepped forward to take it from her. Somehow or other I felt every bit as sorry for her as I did for Ethel. She was so soft and feminine and there had been such a note of horror in that one shrill cry of hers when The Tundish had told us so calmly that Stella was dead, and now that she had recovered from her first alarm she seemed all concern for Ethel, her blue eyes shining brightly, her deep breast rising and falling and her hands fluttering against mine as we stood with the tray between us.

“How splendid he is,” she whispered, looking back at The Tundish as he disappeared through the baize door at the end of the passage. “How awful when they arrest him, and what will poor Miss Summerson do?”

“Miss Summerson!” I echoed in surprise, but she gave me no explanation—just shook her pretty golden head and turned into the dining-room to rejoin the others.

We found Kenneth standing awkwardly in front of Ethel. She had been very brave and was recovering again from her little collapse. Margaret sat down at her side, and made her drink and did her best to comfort her. “It may be a mistake about the Chinese poison, dear,” she said caressingly, “doctors do make mistakes, you know.”

I remembered the doctor’s words, however, and how he had described a death like a peaceful slumber—a slumber rendered horrible by staring bloodshot eyes and narrow contracted pupils. There could be no mistaking such a death, I thought.

The front door-bell rang from the outer gate in the garden wall, and we could hear the tread of feet along the garden path. Annie came up to open the door. We were face to face with the situation at last.

The three men who were shown into the room were of strikingly different types. The foremost, Inspector Brown, introduced the other two to us with a wave of his hand. With his flat-topped peaked hat, his dark blue uniform braided with black, and his ruddy, healthy, none too intelligent face, I thought him typical of that section of the police who have been promoted from the helmet and the beat to higher spheres of action. He spoke briskly, however, and to the point.

“Dr. Jeffries you know already, I think, Miss Hanson,” pointing to a thin elderly gray-haired man. “But I have been fortunate in bringing with me Detective Inspector Allport of Scotland Yard, who happens to be in Merchester, and was, as a matter of fact, with me in my room when your message came through.”

Now we must all of us have painted some sort of a mental picture of the detective of fiction, even if we have never seen the real living article in flesh and blood, but I am not willing to imagine that Detective Inspector Allport of Scotland Yard could hold a place in anybody’s mental picture. Without exaggeration he was the ugliest little man I have ever set eyes on, and yet, scanning him feature by feature, I was only astonished that the tout-ensemble was not even more grotesque. Little and undersized, his pale watery eyes bulged after the manner of those of a great many extraordinarily clever people. His forehead was broad but sloping, and if his skin had not been of such a visibly coarse unhealthy-looking texture, this would have been his one redeeming feature. His nose was bulbous, his mouth slopped all over the place, and his little chin was bunched up into a kind of irregular prominence which was rendered interesting by reason of an unbelievably regular, circular dimple in the middle. I gazed on him, fascinated, and thought at once that for a man so handicapped to be anything higher in the social scale than a lavatory attendant, must argue a character and mental equipment to be reckoned with, and I very soon found out that if perhaps I was inclined to exaggerate his apparent deficiencies and defects, I altogether underestimated his brain power and those hidden qualities that compel attention and respect.

He took charge of the situation at once, speaking rapidly in a voice of markedly pleasant tone.

“Dr. Wallace, I presume?” he said, turning to me.

I explained the circumstances of The Tundish’s enforced absence, and how we had been unable to wire to Stella’s uncle. Ethel gave him the uncle’s address.

“I will look after that—as you suggest, there may probably be information as to Mr. Crawford’s present whereabouts among the unfortunate young lady’s papers. If not they will soon find it for me in London. You can leave it to me and need not bother further. But the doctor! It is very unfortunate that he has been called away, but I suppose that he will be back before long. He has no doubt left a note of the address to which he has gone?”

I had to confess that I didn’t think he had, and Ethel, on being questioned, could only state that so far as she could gather from what she had heard of his conversation on the telephone, it might be one of three.

He pulled down a corner of his funny little mustache and stood biting at it, obviously annoyed. “Strange, very strange, that he should have left the house,” he muttered angrily. “However, Doctor, you had better examine the unfortunate young lady yourself in the meantime. Perhaps Miss Hanson will be kind enough to show us up to her room. The rest of you will kindly oblige me by not leaving this room until my return. Please call up the servants and keep them here as well.”

He asked Ethel if the room had been locked up and everything in it untouched, and I explained what The Tundish had told me about how he had left the door unfastened and the instructions he had given me.

The little gargoyle frowned his disapproval, turned on his heel and left the room, Ethel, Dr. Jeffries and the inspector following. I rang the bell for Annie and cook.

“Little swipe,” was Kenneth’s comment, and I think we all of us felt that we could endorse it. The maids came up at once. Grace, clad in her outdoor clothes, sat down ostentatiously on the edge of a chair with the feather in her atrocious hat nodding her disapproval and independence. Her whole attitude showed that she considered her term of service to be at an end, and that, far from taking the doctor’s advice, another minute would have seen her out of the house. I saw Ethel give a wry little smile. Annie stood respectfully against the wall.

Grace—God save the mark!—and Annie had barely settled down when we heard footsteps on the stairs. I imagined that it would be Allport and Brown returning with Ethel to ask us the questions we all expected to have to answer, but to my surprise Dr. Jeffries came in with them as well.

Allport came in first, rudely stepping straight in front of Ethel, and his bulging eyes seemed more prominent than ever as he asked me angrily, “Where is the key? You told me Dr. Wallace said that the door of the room was unlocked.”

Chapter IV.
Detective Inspector Allport

Ralph, evidently, had not heard what I had said about the key to the bedroom and neither could he have heard Allport correctly, for he asked Kenneth in a loud whisper whether he was talking about the key of the poison cupboard. Allport gave him one swift glance, but then he turned to me, waiting for my answer to his question.

“Surely you must be mistaken,” I answered at length when I had conquered my astonishment. “Dr. Wallace told me most definitely that he had forgotten to lock the door and he came back on purpose to ask me to prevent any one from going up-stairs until the police arrived to take charge.”

“Oh! I must be mistaken then, of course, if you say so. The key is in the door all the time and we all came down-stairs again for the sake of a little exercise.”

My reply seemed to have angered him beyond all reason, and he stuck his ugly little apology for a face over the edge of his stiff stand-up collar and glared at me as he spoke.

Then he turned to Ethel. “You are quite certain that the key was in the door?”

“No, I am not.”

“But you told me just now that it was.”

“I beg your pardon, but I said nothing of the kind. What I said was that the key was generally in the door. You don’t suppose that I stopped to make an inventory?”

I could have clapped her on the back for standing up to the little spitfire, and as a matter of fact, he seemed rather to enjoy it himself, for he smiled quite amicably and turned to Annie, asking her if she could give him information on the subject.

“No, sir, as Miss Ethel says, all the bedroom door keys are usually on the inside, and I should expect that Miss Palfreeman’s would be there like the rest.”

“Did any one else hear the doctor tell Mr. Jeffcock that he had forgotten to lock the door?” was his next question. No one replied, and I answered rather stiffly that I should have thought that my statement would have been enough, but “I dare say,” was all the comment he made.

This, I felt, was not a very auspicious start and argued ill for the more detailed questioning to which we should have to submit, and I wondered what attitude he would take toward The Tundish on his return if he could behave so abominably to the rest of us now. However, there seemed to be nothing to gain by remonstrance, so I merely shrugged my shoulders and picked up the morning paper which was lying on the table. I think that neither Dr. Jeffries nor Inspector Brown relished their association with the boorish little man.

He was undoubtedly master of the situation though, and he asked, or rather I should say told, Inspector Brown to have the bedroom door broken open immediately, and to send a plain clothes man to the three addresses at which it was most probable the doctor might be visiting. He got Ethel to write them down on a slip of paper. The man was to come back at once if the doctor was not located. If he was, then he was to be told that he was wanted back at Dalehouse as urgently as possible, and the man was to wait and escort him home.

His instructions were rapped out without the least consideration for our feelings, and I for one felt certain that The Tundish would be arrested on suspicion directly he set foot inside the house. Having packed off Dr. Jeffries and the inspector, he crossed the room to where Ethel was standing, a picture of unhappiness, gazing out of the window at the sunlit garden. I think that even he was touched.

“I am truly very sorry, Miss Hanson, to cause all this bother,” he said, “but it simply can not be avoided. My temper may be at fault, but there is really no time on such occasions for niceties of conduct. As soon as I am satisfied that Dr. Jeffries can make his examination, and if it confirms Dr. Wallace’s opinion that Miss Palfreeman has been poisoned, then the house must be searched from top to bottom before anything else is done. I will have the kitchen premises dealt with first so that the maids can return to them, and then the drawing-room, so that you can use it in addition to this. Later on, when my search is completed, I shall require you all to tell me everything you can think of that might have a possible bearing on the case. That may be quite a lengthy business, and I can allow no delay for any reason whatsoever. Will you please, therefore, arrange for an early lunch and I shall hope to be ready shortly after twelve.” He made a stiff little bow, and without waiting for any reply, he left the room.

I heard him run up-stairs, and a little later a crash as the door of Stella’s room was broken in. Then he came down to the telephone, and I heard him asking for additional men to be sent from the police station. To my astonishment, I next heard him ask for the clerk in charge at the exchange, and after explaining who he was, tell her to take down in full and report immediately to him any messages that came either to or from our number until further notice. I suppose it was quite an ordinary precaution, but it brought home to me, as nothing else had, the terrible plight in which we all were.

Apparently I was the only one to overhear his message, and I went over to Ethel, who was sitting in the window-sill with writing-pad and pencil. She told me that she was writing to her father and mother, but did not know whether she ought to post it, on account of her father’s health. I felt that our letters would probably be intercepted and opened, and I told her of the conversation I had overheard.

“But it’s preposterous,” she exclaimed angrily, and it seemed to me that there was a note of alarm in her voice. “Surely he has no right to do a thing like that, and oughtn’t he to have a warrant before he searches the house?”

I explained that he could most certainly get one if The Tundish’s diagnosis proved correct, and that we should gain nothing by delaying matters or by being awkward.

She bent to her letter again, saying, “Oh, how I wish he would come back.”

Kenneth was standing against the mantelpiece talking to Ralph, and I heard him mutter gruffly, “If he ever does come back!”

Ethel gave him one angry look, but she made no reply. I could not understand Kenneth at all. Even if he did believe the doctor guilty he seemed to have nothing to gain by his behavior. He knew that The Tundish was a very old friend of Ethel, the girl to whom he had quite recently become engaged, and yet his love seemed to be of such poor stuff that he could not hide his feelings for her sake. Ralph looked pale and wretchedly ill at ease, and I could more readily have understood it had he shown ill will toward the doctor. He had fallen head over heels in love with Stella, and whether his feelings went to any depth or not, it must have been a bitter blow for him. The evidence was certainly heavy against The Tundish; it seemed to me inevitable that Ralph should feel antagonistic toward him, and I thought that in the circumstances he was showing a very creditable forbearance. With Kenneth, on the other hand, there was no apparent reason for such uncontrolled hostility, but I had overlooked the ready jealousy of a young man in love, and was yet to learn that weeks before poor Stella’s death, Ethel had already sown the seeds from which many unhappy moments grew, by singing the doctor’s praises.

Clean cut in his own opinions, he altogether failed to understand that while engaged to him, Ethel might yet have a very real affection for The Tundish. I believe that every action of hers showing loyalty to her old friendship added fire to his hot resentment. Having once decided in his own mind that the doctor was guilty, then he was a murderer and no longer a human being in need of sympathy and understanding. Kenneth’s love was overwhelmed by his jealousy, which in turn was fed by Ethel’s loyalty to her friend and his own utter inability to compromise or look at a situation through any eyes but his own. That she could distress herself over a man who in cold blood had taken the life of a young girl, a girl staying in her own home at the time, and that she could brazenly kiss such a man in front of us all, was to him proof positive that her feelings were stronger than those of friendship alone.

But in spite of his unreasonable behavior, I was truly sorry for Kenneth, though it was incomprehensible to me that he could stand aloof and frowning, while Ethel sat alone, wretched and distressed. It was bad enough for us all, but for her, with her father and mother away, it was a truly devastating experience.

Never, I think, shall I forget that half-hour’s wait in the Dalehouse dining-room. We could hear the police moving about as they searched the rooms. Any intimate conversation was impossible by reason of the presence of the two maids. The cook sat with folded arms, insolently defiant, sniffing loudly at intervals. Annie stood with quiet tears rolling down her cheeks. They neither of them spoke a word. Ethel pretended to write. I leaned over the table with the morning paper spread out. But we were all of us listening—listening to the police and for The Tundish to return, wondering what the disagreeable little detective would do when he did come back—and thinking which of the rest of us it could be if the doctor were acquitted. Across my own mind as I leaned over the table gazing with unseeing eyes at the paper I was pretending to read, there flashed a succession of little scenes—Ethel and The Tundish sitting close to each other, earnestly conversing, two courts and more away from where I sat perched in the umpire’s chair—The Tundish talking to Stella in the drawing-room and the sound of threat in her high-pitched voice—The Tundish meeting me in the hall directly afterward, pleasant and serene—and lastly, the sound of a woman laughing, in the waiting-room, suddenly reviving my childhood’s terror-fascinated memories, pale Miss Summerson lying elaborately to the doctor in the dispensary, and Ethel, who was supposed to be up at the club, appearing surprisingly from the consulting-room, having returned to get some tape for the handle of her racquet.

The heat alone, apart from all other considerations, was almost more than we could bear. While the clock on the mantelpiece ticked the seconds away with a regular monotony, time seemed to stand holding its breath. Our nerves were so on edge that when at last the door was briskly opened there was not one among us that did not give a little jump.

It was Allport. He asked Ethel to go with him up-stairs and tell him who had slept in the different rooms. She was with us again in five minutes, and told the maids that they could go down-stairs, and that we, if we wished, could use the drawing-room once more. I felt as though we had been imprisoned for hours, but it was barely half past eleven.

Ethel and Margaret and I moved into the other room at once, but Kenneth and Ralph stayed where they were, talking in low tones together. Ethel hesitated at the door, and I wondered if she were going to ask them to join us, but she thought better of it and followed Margaret and me. She was about at the end of her endurance, and for her sake alone I dreaded the impending conference.

The drawing-room had been turned topsy-turvy. The carpet had been rolled up into the middle of the floor, and the furniture, including the heavy piano, had all been hurriedly moved. The music, the book-shelves, the chair covers, they had all been searched and scattered. We had expected nothing so disturbing and thorough, and the state of the room took us all three by surprise, but I for one was secretly glad to have something active to do in putting things to rights.

Margaret, I thought, was wholly admirable in the way she unselfishly suppressed her own feelings and helped to steady Ethel.

As we had crossed the hall I observed that a policeman had been stationed at the end of the passage to the doctor’s wing, standing in such a position that he could command a view both of the stairs to the landing above and to the basement below. I wondered what our neighbors must be thinking of all this police activity and how long it would be before we had to bear with newspaper publicity in addition to our other troubles. My imagination grew busy with the head-lines.

Early as it was, Annie was already setting out a cold lunch in the dining-room, and Ethel explained that Allport had particularly asked her again to hurry it up, saying that directly their search was completed he would want to begin his preliminary inquiry.

I could not understand the desperate hurry, but she said he had told her that speed was everything; that he could do nothing until he had all the available information at his finger-ends and that such a detail as a meal-time could not be allowed to interfere with his plans. He improved, she thought, on better acquaintance, but I agreed with Margaret when she said that it would be difficult to imagine him doing anything else.

We had barely finished our little conversation, and it was a great relief to talk, when the telephone bell rang in the hall. I opened the drawing-room door. The policeman still stood on guard at the end of the passage, but although the instrument was only a few yards away from where he stood, he asked me to answer it for him. He evidently had very strict instructions not to move from his position. It was the police station calling and asking for Inspector Brown. I promised to tell him to ring them up at once, and after consulting with the sentry, I went up-stairs to find him. There was no one about on the landing, and full of curiosity as to what was going on, I ascended the stairs to the floor above.

The room in which Stella had slept is so placed that any one going up the stairs can see right into it when the door is open. It was open on this occasion, and as my eyes reached the level of the upper landing I found myself looking straight at the nightmare face of the hideous little detective. For a moment I could not understand how it could be at such a level, but on moving up a few steps I realized that he was kneeling on the floor in the middle of the room.

He had just taken a small envelope out of his pocket and as I watched he allowed what looked like two tiny fragments of glass to trickle into it out of his hand. He was evidently deep in thought and entirely lost to his surroundings, for I had taken no precautions to move quietly, and he neither saw me nor heard. There he knelt immovable, the envelope in one hand, a perplexed little smile on his shapeless protruding lips.

I moved forward, but it was not until I was right up to the bedroom door that he realized that he was not alone. If not actual abuse, the very least I expected was some sarcastic remark about my intrusion, but he merely lifted up his hand for silence, for all the world like some diminutive father admonishing his child. I could hardly refrain from laughing at the grotesque little scene, until I looked beyond him at the bed with its white sheet covering all that was left of poor Stella. A single wisp of her kinky coppery hair came curving over the edge of the sheet.

He waited a minute in thought and then asked me what I wanted, moving out on to the landing and closing the door, which still hung on its hinges, reverently behind him. “This is a sad, strange business,” he said.

I told him about the call for the inspector, and he said he would go and find him at once, but the inspector saved him the trouble, for he came up the stairs as we were speaking together. He was carrying a coat, and he was evidently in a state of some excitement.

“Well, we have found the key, Mr. Allport, at least I believe we have,” and he put his hand into the side pocket of the coat and brought out an ordinary bedroom door-key. It fitted without any trouble, although the lock itself had been almost wrenched from the woodwork when the door was broken open. He handed it over to his superior.

“Where did you find it?” he asked, holding out his hand for the coat as well.

“Among the other coats on the pegs in the hall.”

It was a thin Alpaca house coat that The Tundish had been using during the hot weather. I recognized it at once and remembered that the doctor had been wearing it only that morning at breakfast time. My heart sank. It was difficult to believe that in the excitement he might have locked Stella’s door and then have forgotten all about it. On the other hand, I could think of no reason, even assuming I were willing to admit him a liar, why he should so deliberately come and tell me that the room was unlocked, with the key with which he had locked it in one of his own pockets all the time. The detective asked me to whom the coat belonged, and I had to tell him.

We stood silently on the landing, the three of us, Allport holding out the key in front of him as if it were some astonishing specimen, instead of an ordinary key to a bedroom door. I remembered how, as I stood at the telephone when ringing up the police, I had thought that I heard some one on the stairs, and how a few moments later I had been surprised to find The Tundish standing close behind me, but puzzle my brains as I might, I could see no reason why, even if he were guilty, as both the detective and the inspector obviously thought him, he should run secretly up-stairs to lock Stella’s door, and then go out of his way to tell me that he hadn’t. While it did not seem to me to add much to the real evidence against him, it was certainly one more item for him to explain away on his return.

Now my thoughts had been so absorbing that for a time I had forgotten both my companions and my whereabouts. However, a gentle chuckle from the inspector brought me to my senses, and, looking up, I found that if my thoughts had been interesting, the detective was still gazing at the key as though he had been hypnotized.

“That is strange—very strange—very strange indeed,” he whispered at last.

“Well,” said the inspector, “both of you two gentlemen might have been crystal gazing, but there seems to me to be nothing very extraordinary in Dr. Wallace locking the door, putting the key in his pocket, and then forgetting that he’d done it.”

“Oh!” was Allport’s comment, and he shrugged his shoulders in a manner that must have riled the inspector, for his shoulders said “Poor fool” as plainly as shoulders could, then smiling at me he added, “And so you found it rather intriguing also, my friend? Now I wonder why?” And he looked at me appraisingly as though I had suddenly gone up in his estimation.

Then he stood thinking deeply again, and I thought for a moment that he was sinking into another reverie, but he went back into Stella’s room and looked out of the window which was immediately over the flat-topped roof of the doctor’s wing. Next to the house the roof is of plain cement, but at the end away from it it is covered thickly by a large-leaved ivy which runs riot a good foot deep. I went up and stood beside him, but I could see nothing that might have aroused his sudden interest, or which could have any possible connection with the key that had been found in the doctor’s pocket.

He shut the window down again saying, “Well, we are wasting time. Inspector, you are wanted on the telephone. Mr. Jeffcock, and you, Inspector, as well, I want you both to promise me most solemnly that nothing we have spoken of together, and nothing you have seen, Mr. Jeffcock, shall be mentioned to another soul. Neither the finding of the key, nor anything else must be spoken of.”

I gave him my promise.

“I thank you, it is of great importance, and now I shall be obliged if you will return to the rest.”

What on earth could he have seen that was so important in the finding of the key in the doctor’s coat? Why did he go back into Stella’s room and look out of the window, and what were the little pieces of glass that I had caught him so carefully preserving? These were the questions I asked myself as I went back to the drawing-room, but I agreed with Ethel that the little man was inclined to improve as one got to know him better.

Ethel and Margaret, had, I found, completed the straightening out of the furniture. I was afraid that they might ask me for the reason of my prolonged absence, and I had no answer ready to give them, but although I fancied Margaret watched me with a kind of half-eager expectation, they neither of them asked me any questions.

Annie came to tell us that lunch was served.

It was a sad meal. A place had been set for Stella by mistake. The Tundish had always said a short grace before our meals; it was a practise of Hanson’s which he kept up while he was away. Ethel began to say it in his absence, but she broke down after the first sentence and had to retire to the window while she regained her self-control. What little we ate, we ate in silence. Any attempt at general conversation seemed out of place, and the thoughts that occupied all our minds were too painful for speech. Yes, and too secret for speech—for I am sure that in spite of the doctor’s appeal we were each one of us busy with conjecture. The Tundish—and if not The Tundish, then who?

We were about half-way through our meal when he returned. We heard him tell the man stationed in the hall to let Inspector Brown know that he was back, and then he opened the door.

Ethel got up at once with a little cry, and went to meet him, her arms half extended. We were all forgotten. “Oh, Tundish, I’m so glad—so glad that you’re back again,” she said, and there was such pleasure and trust in her voice, and such sympathy in her looks that it was no wonder Kenneth bit his lips and turned the other way.

The doctor looked tired, and little beads of perspiration glistened on his forehead, the result of a hurried return, I surmised, and not of fear or panic, for his eyes were steady and his look self-confident and calm.

“You goose,” he laughed, putting his hand gently on her shoulder. “But where is my thin coat? This one is well-nigh unbearable. I thought I left it hanging in the hall.”

Ethel told him how the whole of the house was being searched and how Stella’s door had had to be broken down. I was observing him very closely, as indeed I think we all were, but he showed no trace of embarrassment. His astonishment seemed both spontaneous and genuine, and to have no appearance of being overacted or forced. I concluded that it was altogether too natural to be simulated, but then I remembered how, within half a minute of his conversation with Stella in the drawing-room on the previous night, he had met me in the hall with a pleasant smile and a face that showed no trace of either trouble or concern.

Now again he was not perturbed, and he spoke quietly and without emphasis. “But I know for a fact that I did not lock the door. I intended to go back and do it and then the telephone call came through and put it out of my head. You are sure that you didn’t run up-stairs and lock it after I spoke to you in the hall?”

I assured him that I had not, and he stood for a moment obviously puzzled. I glanced round to see what the others were making of it. Kenneth sat looking straight at the doctor, fierce and grim. Ralph, his face pale and his head bent, was playing with a little heap of crumbs. Margaret was looking at Ralph.

“Ah well, that will be another little mystery for our friends the police to explain.” And he took his seat at the end of the table.

“It will be for you to make the explanations,” I thought to myself as I remembered where the key had been found, and I must confess that I longed to break the solemn promise I had only just made.

Directly the doctor took his seat, Kenneth got up from his with deliberate ostentation, though he obviously hadn’t finished his lunch, asking Ethel if she would go with him into the drawing-room. She followed him reluctantly, and The Tundish went on with his meal, but I could see that his thoughts, like mine, were busy with the subject of their conversation.

Shortly after they had left us Allport came in followed by Inspector Brown. The Tundish, bland and dignified, rose at once to greet them. “I am so sorry that I have put you to all the trouble of sending out a man to track me down,” he said, offering his hand to the inspector, with whom he was evidently acquainted, “but I must confess that I deliberately omitted to leave my address—my case was a serious one and I had no wish to be interrupted. But now, gentlemen, I am entirely at your disposal.” He turned to Allport with hand outstretched, a quick look at Inspector Brown inviting an introduction.

The detective took his hand at once, saying, “That’s all right, Doctor, though I admit that you have caused me some anxiety. Now I should like you to take me into the dispensary and show me the poison cupboard which up to now we haven’t disturbed.”

The Tundish asked if I might accompany them, explaining how I had been with him when the cupboard was last opened, and that I could testify to the position of some of the bottles. Allport agreed, and I went along with them.

The safe was opened, and for a time he stood silently looking at the collection of bottles; I could see how immediately the Chinese flagon attracted his attention. The doctor told him which bottle he had used in preparing the fatal draft. Allport grunted, and asked the inspector to fetch him his bag from the hall. From it he took a pair of rubber gloves, and putting them on, he picked up the bottle, and placed it carefully in a box containing cotton wool at the bottom of the bag.

Next, he asked The Tundish from which bottle he thought the poison had been taken, assuming that an addition had been made to the sleeping draft in the manner he suspected.

“That is undoubtedly the bottle,” The Tundish replied, pointing to the little flagon.

“You say—undoubtedly—how can you be so sure that it was poison from that particular little bottle, and not from one of the others? There are many to choose from.”

“I am sure about it, first, because of the peculiarly bloodshot eyes, and second, because of its very unusual smell. I smelled the dregs at the bottom of the medicine glass when I went up-stairs immediately after breakfast to make my first examination, and having smelled it before I can not be mistaken.”

“Does it taste?”

“Yes, even in extremely dilute quantities it is bitter.”

Allport took the fragile little bottle between finger and thumb of his gloved hand and held it up to the light. He held it up, looking at it absorbed in thought, and then quite suddenly I saw him give a little start as if he had noticed something of particular interest, and he smiled to himself as I had watched him smiling on his knees in Stella’s room. I turned from him to the bottle he held in his hand, but I failed to see what it was that had quickened his attention.

“But this little bottle is very nearly full,” he said after a pause, “the neck is exceedingly narrow and the liquid is less than half an inch from the bottom of the stopper.”

Once more The Tundish explained how he had obtained the poison, telling the detective exactly what he had told me only two days ago. He ended by saying that a single drop, added to Stella’s medicine, would have been quite sufficient to kill.

“Can you tell me, from the position of the liquid in the neck, exactly how much of the poison has been used?”

The doctor thought for a moment and then replied, “Not with any very great accuracy, of course, but I should say not more than two or three drops at the most. I brought two similar bottles with me from China, giving them both to Dr. Hanson. They were both of them full to the stoppers and I had them sealed before my journey. Hanson used about half the contents of one bottle in the course of his investigations, with which I helped him. The remainder he sent away for further examination and test to a chemical society to which we both belong. Of the contents of the second bottle, we used exactly one cubic centimeter in an experiment we made together the last time I visited him, which would be about six months ago. As far as I can remember, we left it with the liquid in practically its present position. I asked Hanson if he had done any further work on it the day he left for Folkestone, and he told me that he had not. You will understand we were interested together. That is why I can state with a considerable amount of certainty that at the most only two or three drops have been used.”

Allport stood turning the tiny flagon this way and that, but obviously listening attentively to the doctor’s statement, which had been made in a voice that showed not the slightest tremor or concern. Then he turned round quickly and asked him, “You would be surprised then if I were to find any recent finger-prints of yours on the bottle?”

“Yes. Any more recent than six months ago.”

“Has it occurred to you that whoever added the poison to Miss Palfreeman’s medicine—providing you are correct in your assumption that it has been taken from this bottle—must have been closely familiar with its properties? He or she evidently intended to kill, or else why add poison at all? Yet, on your own showing only two or three drops were added. It was known to the murderer that that would be enough. He was familiar with its action.”

The four of us stood in silence, then he added very quietly, “That, you will agree, narrows down the field of inquiry somewhat?”

The Tundish neither paled nor turned a hair as he replied, “Yes, oh yes, it certainly narrows it down. As far as I can see it reduces it to either me, or Jeffcock here or to Miss Hanson. To my knowledge we are the only three people in the house having information about the poison.”

“To your knowledge? Why do you say that—to your knowledge?”

“Because it is always possible that the maids or some one else may have overheard Hanson and myself talking together about it.”

“Miss Summerson, for instance?”

“Oh, Miss Summerson knows all about it, in fact she has helped us with some of our experiments. She left the house, however, before the draft was made up and she has not yet returned.”

“To your knowledge,” Allport added.

“Why, whatever do you mean?” The Tundish said, showing some little excitement at last.

“Miss Palfreeman’s room looks on to the flat-topped roof of the surgery wing and an entry could have been made from it with the greatest ease. The window, I take it, would be open on a night like last night?”

“Yes, it was open wide at the bottom, when I went into the room after breakfast, but Miss Hanson had been into the room before me. But it is possible. So far as I know, Miss Summerson and Miss Palfreeman were complete strangers to each other.”

“To your knowledge once more,” the detective laughed, “but if you had had my experience, you would know that it is by no means safe to assume that apparent strangers are strangers in fact.”

Again I saw that The Tundish was moved and his eyelids gave a flicker. Did the little man notice it too, I wondered? And did he know of the doctor’s previous meeting with Stella in China—or was it a shot in the dark?

He seemed to be entirely absorbed in the little bottle, and to be carrying on the conversation as a sort of accompaniment to his examination of it. It almost appeared as if he thought that if he were only to look at it long enough and hard enough he might wring its secret from it. And all the time he looked his face held its puzzled smile.

“Well, let us return to the dining-room,” he said at length, and he laid the Chinese flagon carefully in the box in his bag along with the other.

We were just leaving the dispensary when a sudden thought occurred to me. “Wait a moment,” I cried. “Surely it is not safe to assume that only two or three drops of poison have been taken from the bottle. Any one would almost certainly fill it up again to its old level from the tap which is all handy at the sink, before they put it back in its place in the cupboard.”

Allport turned round with a smile of amusement at the excitement I had shown. “Exactly so,” he said, “but I must confess that I have been expecting the doctor to call my attention to the possibility.”

“I never thought of it,” said The Tundish.

“I am glad,” was the rather surprising reply.

Chapter V.
Allport’s Alternatives

Without further remark, Allport turned and led the way back to the dining-room, the inspector following immediately behind him, The Tundish and I bringing up the rear. As we walked along the passage the doctor decreased his pace, so that after the other two had passed through the dining-room door, he and I were alone for a moment in the hall. He whispered to me hurriedly, “Jeffcock, you must do all you can to keep the peace between Kenneth and Ethel. You can see for yourself that I can do nothing. What with her hot temper and his subconscious determination to make his conduct match his mouth and chin, we shall have their young love-affair on the rocks before we know where we are.” He gave my arm a squeeze of thanks as I promised to do whatever I could, and we were at the door of the room with no more time for conversation.

It was patent that Ethel and Kenneth had quarreled. They were standing a little apart in one of the windows at the far side of the room. She was fondling the cat which still lay on the sill, basking in the blazing sun, and he stood looking at her, dour and sullen.

She turned and spoke to him as we came into the room, and I feel almost certain she said, “Very well then, Kenneth, there’s no more to be said. If your love for me depends on my deserting a friend in his trouble, it’s the sort of love I don’t want.”

Allport broke in on them before Kenneth had time to make any reply, saying that he wanted to make the position clear to us all before he took any further steps in the task he had before him.

“I have two alternative courses of action before me,” he explained, “and the one I adopt will rest entirely with you, though I can hardly think that you will show any hesitation in making your choice. Dr. Jeffries, I must tell you, agrees with Dr. Wallace that Miss Palfreeman met her death by poisoning. He is unable to state the nature of the poison used, which tends to confirm Dr. Wallace’s suspicion that an addition was made to the sleeping draft from the small flagon that I now have safely in my bag. That, of course, will be looked into more closely as soon as a proper post-mortem examination can be made.”

He paused for a moment to wipe the perspiration from his face. It was nearly midday and the room was suffocating. The sun shone straight on to the three long windows which stood wide open, but the dark green blinds drawn half-way down prevented the least movement of air. A bee, which had become trapped between one of the blinds and the window, buzzed away unhappily. I took advantage of the detective’s pause to ask him if there could be no possibility of suicide.

Ralph scowled at me for my pains and it was only then that I remembered that my suggestion would be casting a slur on poor Stella. It seemed to me, however, that that would be a comparatively happy solution, bearing in mind that the only alternative was cold-blooded murder. Murder too, not by some unknown outsider, but in all probability by one of us now in the room listening to the little detective making his suggestions. The Tundish, Ralph, Kenneth, or one of the two girls—it seemed equally absurd to associate any one of them with such a crime.

Allport soon settled the point, however. “Suicides don’t usually throw away the glass from which they have drunk,” he said, “and in addition to that, there are other points which preclude any such possibility.”

I had given no thought to the glass from which the poison had been taken. The references seemed to rouse The Tundish. He was sitting on the end of the table, apparently entirely at his ease, his legs swinging idly, as he lighted a cigarette. The match burned down and scorched his finger-ends, making him start, so absorbed was his attention in the detective’s remark. Ethel had seated herself on the window-sill, where she was pensively stroking the cat, her mind occupied, I felt sure, more with her quarrel with Kenneth than with the matter immediately in hand. She turned round quickly, however, directly the glass was mentioned, and burst out with, “But the glass——” Then she paused uncomfortably, reddened, and resumed her caressing of the cat.

“Yes? But the glass——?” Allport queried.

It was The Tundish who completed the broken sentence, however, calmly lighting another match as he did so. “Miss Hanson was going to say that the glass was on the little table at the side of Miss Palfreeman’s bed when she first went up to her room. It was still there when I went up a few minutes later to make my hurried examination. The glass was one of the usual graduated taper measures. I lifted it from the table, saw that there were a few drops of liquid at the bottom, which I smelled, and then I put it back on the table again. When I came down-stairs I meant to lock the door but forgot to do so, and as I have already explained, I asked Mr. Jeffcock to see that no one went into the room just before I went out to see my patient. That is all I can tell you about it.”

None of us spoke a word. The detective was deep in thought. He was half-seated on the arm of one of the two heavy armchairs that stood at either side of the fireplace. Margaret and Ralph were leaning against the mantelpiece, which is backed by a long, low looking-glass framed in oak. She was half-turned toward it and I could see her full face reflection as I stood against the door. Kenneth stood by the table. Ethel was still in the window-seat a little way behind him. The Tundish seemed the least disturbed of any of us and was obviously enjoying his cigarette. The bee, which was still buzzing behind the blind, escaped from its trap, and the sudden cessation of its hum somehow marked a period and plunged us into silence.

At last the detective spoke, “And the key was found——” He spoke with a slow emphasis, turning toward The Tundish, and tilting his chair. Then he stood up suddenly, his sentence incomplete, and his chair righted itself with a bang, that came like a blow to our straining nerves.

Margaret uttered a little startled cry, and he was immediately profuse with redundant apology. He seemed to have forgotten all about the key. At one moment he had us all tense with excitement as though we were waiting a verdict, and the next he could find nothing better to do than talk about his own clumsiness in partly overturning a chair. I could not understand him at all and I saw an amused smile play across the doctor’s face as he repeated, “And the key was found——”

“Oh, I don’t think that matters very much for the moment,” was the amazing reply. “That can all be gone into later. Please don’t divert me from the proposition I was about to put before you.

“Miss Palfreeman has been poisoned without the least shadow of doubt. Suicide—put that idea right out of your minds. It—is—murder. My first duty is to secure the murderer, and it must be obvious to you all that the facts, as we know them at present, point very definitely indeed to Dr. Wallace. I think that even he will agree with me that that is not an exaggerated statement.”

The Tundish nodded his head and murmured, “Quite so,” with an air I can only describe as one of pleasant acquiescence, and the little man proceeded with his harangue.

“On the other hand, a very long experience has taught me that these definite first impressions are often quite misleading. Either owing to a chain of unfortunate coincidences, or by the design of some one else, suspicion fastens on the innocent. That may seem a banal statement to make but it is a possibility that is often overlooked. In this case, already there are apparent several pieces of conflicting evidence, which it will take time and further investigation to appraise at their proper value. One clue—which I am not going to specify—distinctly indicates that the murder may have been committed by some one quite outside your house-party here. I propose to follow that up immediately myself, and it will mean that I may have to be away for a day or two. I don’t want to raise any false hopes, however, and I may as well tell you quite candidly that my opinion, formed on the balance of the facts, is that the murderer is listening to me now.”

He paused impressively. Ethel half stifled a sob.

“Now, here are my proposals to you,” he continued. “Either I must arrest Dr. Wallace at once on suspicion, and your statements as to the events of last night must be taken down in the usual way, or alternatively, you must all promise to obey my instructions to the letter, however absurd and unreasonable they may seem to you to be. Among other things I shall want your promise that you will none of you leave the house.”

Saying that he had one or two things to attend to which would take him about half an hour, and that it would give us a convenient opportunity for making our decision, he gave us a stiff little bow and left the room.

The Tundish was the first to break the awkward silence. “And if you don’t mind, I think I’ll follow our little friend’s example and leave you to it.” As he reached the door, he turned and smiled at us, all geniality and unconcern.

Five very uncomfortable people were left. There could be no doubt about which of the two alternatives we should choose. I think there was no doubt about that in any of our minds before a word was spoken. It was the tremendous difference between the reasons that led to our decisions that made our unanimity nothing but a mockery, and created an atmosphere that was thick with jealousy and distrust. As we stood about the room, it seemed to me that we were like the atoms of some unstable molecule, momentarily in unhappy association, but ready to dissociate and fly off on some course of our own, should the least provocation arise.

It was Ralph, for once, who took the initiative and broke the unpleasant little silence. “Well, of course we must agree to do what he tells us, though it seems to me that it is only prolonging the agony, and if I were in the doctor’s place, I should be glad to be gone and have done with it.”

I could see that Kenneth was ready for an outburst, and it came directly Ralph had completed his remark. “I can’t understand you. I can’t make you out at all. Murder might hardly be criminal from the way you seem to take it, and even a detestable murder like this—a girl poisoned in her bed—something to be borne in silence! I can hardly keep my hands off the brute, and the rest of you seem quite willing and even anxious to be friends.”

“Kenneth, how can you! Oh, how can you be so cruel! Suppose that you were in The Tundish’s place, how would you like it if we all of us turned against you and were ready to believe the worst? You seem almost as though you were anxious to believe that he did it.” Ethel had spoken quietly at first, but her sentence ended on a note of bitterness.

“That is a grossly unfair thing to say,” Kenneth answered hotly. “I might just as well say that you don’t care whether he did it or not, and I begin to think that I shouldn’t be far from the truth if I did say that. Everything proves that he doped the draft, and you can kiss him and fondle his hands! You don’t even reserve your judgment and say this man may be a vile murderer—you just flaunt your absurd hero-worship in front of us all. If he had a spark of decency in him he would give himself up.”

“Oh, yes, I know that is exactly what you would do. I can just see you doing it. I suppose you haven’t given a thought to what this will mean to daddy’s practise.”

“Why, what on earth do you mean? Surely he is not implicated in any way? It can’t make any difference to him.”

“Oh, can’t it!”

It was horrible to hear them quarreling, and I tried once or twice to interrupt them, but in their anger they ignored us entirely and might have been alone. At last I did manage to get in the remark that “Every one should be considered innocent until his guilt has been proved.”

It was a fatuous remark—worthy of Margaret herself—and Kenneth sneered that I seemed to have rather funny ideas on the subject of innocence. It was Margaret, however, who ultimately turned the discussion in a more pacific direction. She pointed out that Ethel knew the doctor about ten times as well as the rest of us, but even so she didn’t see how any one could be expected to ignore entirely all the evidence against him. “However,” she concluded, “Mr. Allport as good as said that he thought that he probably did it, but that there may be just an outside chance that he didn’t. Well, for my part, I am quite willing to wait until he has investigated that outside chance,” and she turned to Ralph, asking him what he thought about it.

Ralph paused perceptibly before replying, “There is nothing to be gained by beating about the bush. Allport would not have said what he did if he had much real hope from his outside clue. But, for your sake, Ethel, and because of your father’s practise, I am willing to agree to anything he asks us to do. Honestly, though, as far as the practise is concerned, I can’t see that it makes much difference. This sort of thing can’t be hushed up, you know!”

I protested that if the outside clue proved relevant, it did make all the difference in the world. Then, none besides ourselves need know how heavily Dr. Hanson’s locum-tenens had been involved, and, endeavoring to carry out The Tundish’s request, I concluded with, “For my part, whether this clue leads to anything or not, I shall take a lot of convincing before I can believe that either he or any of the rest of you are poisoners,” but even as I said the words, I was wondering, “If the doctor hasn’t done it, then which of the others has?”

“Right, then now we all know exactly where we are,” Kenneth grumbled. “Ethel and you have quite determined that he is a hero, I know that he’s a blackguard, and the other two know that he is one, but don’t quite like to say so. You had better let the little man know. I can only hope that it won’t be for long, and that you won’t insist on my pretending to be friends.”

“No one but a fool would think you capable of pretending anything,” I retorted, and went in search of Allport.

I had heard him busy with the telephone while we had been making our decision, and I found him talking with the inspector in the drawing-room. He was balancing himself on the curb round the fireplace, and I imagine he had been laying down the law to the local official, who looked annoyed and uncomfortable, and emitted a grunt of emphatic disapproval as I entered the room. Allport was grinning at him, his grotesque little face puckering up in his amusement, and as he came toward me he patted the big man on the back, saying, “Well, that, my big friend, is what I am going to do whether you like it or not.”

The drawing-room at Dalehouse is an exact duplicate of the dining-room, as far as its dimensions are concerned, and with its long Georgian windows, it must, I imagine, have been a difficult room to furnish. Mrs. Hanson had done her best with it, but the deep armchair: and comfortable settee always looked to me out of place and a little apologetic, like a party of chorus girls, who, going to a night club, have landed in a bishop’s palace by mistake. A grand piano stood at right angles to the inside wall. It was little used, and on the top were several family photographs in frames.

I had told Allport that we were ready for him when I interrupted his conversation with the inspector, and he came toward me smiling. I could not help thinking that he was pleased with the inspector’s opposition. When he reached the piano, something caught his eye, however, and I saw his amused expression die away and one of astonishment take its place. Then, to my surprise, he picked up one of the photographs, and after scrutinizing it closely, took it out of its frame and examined the back. Inspector Brown stood watching him from the hearth-rug, and I gazed at him from the doorway. We exchanged an amused glance, his, I fancied, tinged with despair; but, quite unconcerned, Allport put the photograph back in its frame, replaced it carefully on the piano, and bowed to us each in turn with a whimsical smile.

“That is another little puzzle for you,” he said.

I told him of our decision.

“Good, and was it unanimous?”

“We have all decided to do whatever you tell us to,” was all I replied.

As soon as we had rejoined the others he sent one of his men to find The Tundish, and then he made us promise individually that we would do exactly what he asked without any reservation, and that we would tell him everything we knew that had any bearing on the matter. We took our places round the table, he at one end, and The Tundish at the other.

I felt that the doctor’s ordeal had begun, and I wondered what he would say about the key, and whether he would make any statement about his quarrel with Stella the night before her death. But we were to be interrupted again. The man who had been stationed in the hall came in and whispered a few words in Allport’s ear. Allport nodded.

“Yes, show her in at once,” he said, and turning to the doctor, “Miss Summerson has just returned.”

The plain clothes man must have told her something of what had happened, because, though she looked anxious and worried, she expressed no surprise when she came in and found us sitting round the table. She had already put on her white coverall, and as she stood just inside the door, with her hands clasped in front of her and her fingers working convulsively, I thought she made rather a lonely, piteous little picture.

Somehow or other, Miss Summerson both surprised and intrigued me. Neither the lie she had told in the dispensary on the morning of my arrival, nor her general pallid, hesitating appearance seemed to be in keeping with the character The Tundish had painted and the neat precise print I had been compelled to admire on the doctor’s bottles. She ought, by all the rules, to have been dark, decisive, efficient and fifty, and there she stood against the door—about twenty-three, I thought—nervously clasping and unclasping her hands, her colorless hair scraped back into a kind of bun, her pale blue eyes with their fair lashes turning first to the doctor and then to Allport, and her white face and coverall all helping to complete a picture that could represent incompetence and fright. I argued to myself, that if normally she was efficient, then now she was afraid, and that if on the other hand she was not frightened now, then she could never be careful or precise, but to that conclusion the writing on the labels gave the lie, so I guessed that she was badly scared.

We were soon to learn one reason for her embarrassment, however, for before Allport had time to ask her any question she said in a voice that trembled with emotion, “Doctor, I’ve lost the key to the poison cupboard. What can I do? What shall I do?”

“Please tell us all about it, and if you can, when and where you lost it,” Allport questioned, in his iciest tones.

“I didn’t miss it until I got to——” she stammered, and then to our general discomfiture she reddened to the roots of her pale hair, put her hands to her face and burst into tears. Ethel got up and went to her, while the rest of us waited unhappily for the flood of tears to abate.

The detective looked angrily over his shoulder at the clock.

“I never went at all,” she sobbed at length, turning toward The Tundish. “I told you an untruth about going to Millingham—I—I—w-wanted the time off and thought that you would be more likely to let me go if I gave some definite reason. I am so very sorry.” She dried her eyes, and having made her little confession seemed to regain some of her composure.

“But what has all that got to do with your losing the key?” Allport snapped. “Please do answer my question.”

She explained that she carried the keys in a special pocket that she wore underneath her skirt. They were apparently secured to a chain attached to some part of her underwear—five or six on one ring, and the key of the cupboard, being especially important, on a ring of its own, connected to the rest by a piece of leather lace. When she had opened the cupboard on Tuesday morning she had noticed that the leather was becoming frayed, and had made up her mind to have it renewed. The key was there when she locked up the cupboard at three o’clock the same afternoon, and she had put it back in her pocket as usual and had then gone home. She didn’t notice that the lace was broken, and the ring with the key gone, until she undressed on going to bed.

“What did you do then?”

“Nothing, what could I do? It was eleven o’clock.”

“But surely you ought to have come and told the doctor first thing in the morning—it was rather an important key to lose, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but I thought that most likely it must have dropped out on to the dispensary floor. I don’t use the pocket for anything but for the keys.”

“Where were you this morning? In Merchester?”

“Yes, first thing.”

“And yet you didn’t come to make sure that the key was safe?”

“No,” and after some hesitation, “I couldn’t.”

“Now, why couldn’t you?”

“Well, for one thing I had told Dr. Wallace that I was going to Millingham for the night when I wasn’t, but it wasn’t altogether that.”

“What was it then?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“But, my dear young lady, you must tell me. This is not a game of clumps, it’s a serious matter. Come now, what is it that you don’t want to tell me?”

“I—got engaged this morning.”

“Oho! Yes, but surely you could have spared just half an hour to ask about the key?”

“But you see I didn’t know that I was going to get engaged. My fiancé came to stay with us yesterday afternoon. He was going away by car first thing this morning, and we had arranged beforehand that I was to go as far as Boston with him, and then come back by train. We started at half past six. I was upset about the key but I wasn’t going to give it all up. It—you see, it meant too much to me.”

“And quite right too,” came emphatically from The Tundish, and, “Yes, I should think so indeed,” from Ethel.

“Then it amounts to this,” continued Allport, who seemed quite callous to the girl’s obvious and natural embarrassment, “you had the key at three o’clock yesterday, and you missed it at eleven o’clock when you went to bed. I suppose you made a thorough search of all your pockets and your bedroom and so forth?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, will you please go into the dispensary and write down very carefully and in full detail exactly what you did and where you went, between three and eleven o’clock yesterday? That’s all I want for the present.”

Miss Summerson had barely reached the door, however, when he called her back again and asked her to show him the other keys. She fumbled about underneath her coverall and produced a small bunch of keys on a ring at the end of a chain.

“Tell me exactly how the other key was fastened to these.”

“It was on a little ring by itself fastened to this ring by a short piece of leather lace.”

“But what a most extraordinary arrangement! Why didn’t you keep it on that ring along with the rest? It would have been safer, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose so, but these are my own keys, and I wanted to keep the other separate.”

“Why?”

Miss Summerson made no reply, but stood miserably in front of him, fiddling with the bunch of keys.

“You are sure that all this about the leather lace is not imagination?”

“No,” almost inaudibly; then, “I mean to say yes, there was a lace just like I’ve said.”

“Have you ever seen this queer arrangement, Doctor?”

The Tundish, I thought, hesitated for the merest fraction of a second, then he said pleasantly, “No, I don’t think I have. I knew that Miss Summerson had the key secured to a chain, somewhat in the way she has described, but I never had any reason to handle her keys or ask her exactly how they were attached.”

Allport sat drumming with his fingers on the table for a time, then he shrugged his shoulders, and told her curtly that she could go, adding, “Please be careful to be exact in the report I’ve asked you to write out.”

Miss Summerson hurried from the room.

Chapter VI.
The Inquiry in the Dining-Room

“No one has found the key, I suppose?” was Allport’s first question as soon as Miss Summerson had shut the door. “The maid would have reported it if she had found it when she swept out the dispensary this morning, I suppose, Miss Hanson?”

“Yes, but if you like I will go and ask to make sure,” Ethel replied.

“No, don’t bother to do that.”

Then, after a pause, he asked, “And which of you were in the dispensary last night after Miss Summerson locked the cupboard at three o’clock? Were you?” He asked each of us the question individually in turn, and it transpired that Ethel and The Tundish alone had passed from the hall into the dispensary itself, though I had been in the consulting-room at the time of the accident to the boy.

I began to think that the inquiry would be a lengthy one if each question were to be repeated so monotonously, but he seemed to take an enormous interest in our replies, and to wait with a kind of ghoulish excitement after each, “And were you?” as though he were hoping to catch us in the admission of an indiscretion. I have often thought of that hour in the stifling dining-room at Dalehouse as the most tense and exciting of my experience. The little man, seated at the end of the table, was angrily determined to search out the truth. In deadly earnest he looked at each speaker as one by one we answered his numerous questions, but he found time to glance swiftly round the table now and again to see what impression this question or that had made on the rest of us—then back again, like some hawk with its prey. While he seemed to have no method or order in framing his questions it soon occurred to me that a great many of them were put, not so much for the purpose of getting any answer, or even information, but rather to see what the effect of the question itself on the rest of us might be.

The doctor sat bland and impassive through it all. Nothing disturbed him. His replies came out suave and sure. Never once did he hesitate; not once did he give the impression of being on the defensive. And I think it was this quality in his replies that rather accentuated the feelings of all of us as we sat unhappily round the table. To Ethel, I feel sure, and to me as well, his calm and his dignity were splendid. To Kenneth, I am equally sure, they were nothing but an additional proof of guilt. I could gage his every thought—no one but a villain could keep thus collected in the face of such suspicion—innocence, surely, would have shown more concern. And Ethel, how could she? She seemed to hang on the doctor’s every word. From him to Allport, as answer followed question, she turned her pretty head—hurt when the questions were brutal and direct, proud and glad for the dignified reply. He a murderer, a poisoner, and she the girl whom he loved—I believe his soul was sick with jealousy.

And Margaret and Ralph, I could see, thought him guilty too—but they were more aloof—they did not condemn and they had some sort of feeling of pity.

There we sat through a long, long hour, the blinds drawn against the streaming sun, the pleasant garden noises coming in through the open windows. The clock ticked the time slowly and leisurely away, and once there was the sound of tramping feet on the stairs, as they carried Stella’s body down to take it to the mortuary. The room was at fever heat and our pulses raced as Allport tortured us each in turn.

“And your key, Dr. Wallace, where do you keep it?”

“Here in my waistcoat pocket.”

“Not a very safe place surely?”

“I have always found it so.”

“You are sure it has not been out of your possession?”

“Yes, I could swear to that.”

“What do you do with it at night?”

“I don’t do anything with it. I leave it in the pocket.”

“And you really think it safe to carry a key of such importance loose in your waistcoat pocket?”

“Yes, I think it is as safe there as it would be anywhere else.”

“Humph, and now I want you to tell me about these,” taking out his pocketbook and unfolding the notice The Tundish had printed and the two duplicates he and I had printed later on at breakfast.

He turned to the doctor for information and was told in detail about the practical joke, about our conversation in the garden, and about Kenneth’s inquiry at the breakfast table. The Tundish spoke simply and to the point, omitting nothing, not even our arrangement to lie like troopers in our efforts to mystify the rest.

“Humph, it all sounds rather extraordinary, you know, Doctor, not what I should have expected of you somehow. I take it there was no ulterior motive?”

“No, it was a practical joke and nothing more.”

“You don’t think it necessary to tell the truth then, I gather, on every occasion?”

“No, I don’t,” The Tundish answered pleasantly. “Come now, Mr. Allport, you know that that is not quite a fair implication. I maintain that any one might have arranged the joke, and then have agreed to bluff it out as Mr. Jeffcock and I did. You might just as reasonably call a man a liar and a cheat because he was fond of a game of poker.”

But Allport took no notice of his protest and turned to Kenneth. “You, I understand, conducted this inquiry. The doctor has confessed that he was responsible for the notice and for the disturbed beds. How was it that you failed to find him out? What did you find out?”

“We came to no definite conclusion at all, but I wasn’t then aware that the doctor and Mr. Jeffcock only tell the truth when it happens to suit them,” Kenneth answered with an ugly sneer. “We were divided, but we all felt sure that it was one of the two. I think it is rather significant, however, that Dr. Wallace took good care to point out in great detail that any one of us had the opportunity to be alone up-stairs at some time or other during the evening without being missed. He went out of his way to prove it, and now I know why,” he added, turning to the doctor with a scowl.

Ethel half sobbed, “Oh, how abominable of you,” but Allport would brook no interruption, and rapped the table with his knuckles directly she opened her mouth.

“You think he stressed the point?” he asked, turning once more to Kenneth.

“Yes, I do.”

“And what have you got to say about it, Mr. Jeffcock?”

I replied that I considered that The Tundish had made an entirely accurate statement about the whole affair, and that while I agreed with Kenneth that it was he who had pointed out that we all had the chance of doing it, it was in my opinion the natural outcome of our plot to confuse the rest, and that I could not agree that any particular emphasis had been given to the point.

I was surprised to see that Allport paid really serious attention to Kenneth’s horrible suggestion. He sat frowning, drawing little squares and designs in a note-book he had placed on the table before him when the inquiry began, and in which from time to time he had jotted something down, while we sat round the table watching and anxiously waiting for what he would say.

“Yes, I think it is rather important,” he said at length, looking up from his book and down the table to where The Tundish sat facing him, his chair tilted back and his knees against the table edge. “Would you mind repeating the arguments you used?”

“But I’ve already admitted that it was I who stuck up the notice and played the silly practical jokes.”

“Yes, you have, Doctor, but that is not the point. The implication is that first you poisoned Miss Palfreeman, then you played the practical joke, as you call it, and that at breakfast time this morning you went out of your way to prove that any of the rest of the party also had the opportunity to play the joke, in order to establish it clearly beforehand that any one of you could have added the poison to the sleeping draft as well. Now please repeat, as nearly word for word as you can, what you said at breakfast time that has caused these strange and unpleasant fancies to come to Mr. Dane.”

At first I thought the doctor was going to refuse—he seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second—and then, leaning forward with his elbows on the table, he repeated the bantering arguments he had adopted earlier in the day. He not only repeated the words, but he seemed to create the atmosphere of the earlier scene as well. He put the clock back somehow. We were all sitting round the breakfast table again and he was teasing Kenneth—I could almost smell the coffee and the bacon.

Even little Allport was impressed. “Yes, that certainly sounds realistic, and innocent enough,” he laughed, but he went over it all again, nevertheless, pausing to make notes in his book, and asking each of us in turn to corroborate the statements the doctor had made. It was ultimately established that he had given Annie the medicine to take up-stairs immediately before he joined the other five—Stella, Margaret, Ethel and the two boys—in the dining-room for supper. I had been alone up-stairs while I changed, and could have added the poison either then, or later, when as a matter of fact I was wandering about in the garden just prior to the accident. Kenneth and Ralph had been together the whole evening—at least so they both said. It transpired that the two had gone to a neighboring hotel for a drink, an admission they made with some little shame, pleading the heat as their excuse. Hanson, I should explain, is rather a strict teetotaler and alcoholic drinks are taboo at Dalehouse. Ethel was alone in the surgery wing for about ten minutes after the accident, clearing up the mess. Margaret had been left by herself in the basement all the time that Ethel was occupied up-stairs.

Having sorted out all our movements to his satisfaction, and having completed his notes about them, he got up and rang the bell at the side of the fireplace behind him. When Annie appeared to answer it, he surprised us all by asking her whether the little heap of washing he had noticed on the dresser, when he had searched the basement, was the clothes that had been ironed the night before, and whether they had yet been put away.

“No, sir, they’re still on the dresser.”

“Fetch them.”

She brought them and put them before him on the table, and he turned them over one by one, including the undergarments about which Ethel and Margaret had both been so modest. “It certainly does not look like a two hours’ job even allowing for the iron and the accident—I agree with you there, Doctor—not on piece-work pay anyhow,” he concluded as he came to the socks at the bottom of the pile.

“But where is the brother to this?” he asked sharply, holding up an odd sock that I recognized as one of mine. It was marked on the inside and he noticed it at once. “F. H. J.; which of you two ladies ironed Mr. Jeffcock’s socks?”

We all looked at Ethel and Margaret, and they at each other. Neither of them spoke and then they both began to speak at once. “You did, I thi——”

Finally, though neither of them seemed very certain about it, it was agreed that probably Ethel had ironed that particular pair, though she denied most emphatically having either brought the odd sock up-stairs, or put it away. The Tundish agreed that she had not brought it up with her from the basement by accident, when he called for her to help him with the boy, and both Annie and cook on being called and questioned asserted that they had neither of them touched it. At length Allport gave up in disgust his attempt to locate it, and picking up the heap of clothes, threw them angrily into one of the armchairs that stood at the side of the fireplace.

Having done so, he seemed to make a new start, and turned to me. “Now I want you to tell me honestly, Mr. Jeffcock, weren’t you just a little surprised when the doctor told you what he had done? Didn’t you think it rather peculiar that a man of his age and position should play tricks of that description?”

I had to confess that I had.

“And what made you add what you did to the notice—‘Dark deeds are done at night’?”

“I don’t know why I made the addition.”

“But it seems to me such a peculiar thing that you should have picked on those words. Did you know then that the bedrooms had been upset?”

“No.”

“Did you know that Miss Palfreeman was dead when you made the addition?”

“No, we none of us knew till breakfast time this morning.”

“Possibly not—possibly one of you did.”

I could have twisted his ugly little neck.

“You knew that Dr. Wallace had lived in China?”

“Yes.”

“And Miss Palfreeman?”

Now I had been wondering whether I ought to disclose the conversation between Stella and The Tundish that I had overheard, and whether I was right or wrong, I don’t know, but I had made up my mind that I would say nothing about it—at any rate for the present.

In the first place, it seemed to me that if it were deceitful of me to keep my knowledge from the police, it would be still more dishonest to tell them what I had heard. It was a private and confidential conversation, which quite unwittingly I had been able to overhear by reason of my abnormal powers. I had promised Allport to keep nothing relevant hidden, along with the rest, including The Tundish, but how was I to know that it was really relevant? Might I not have misinterpreted what I did hear? Those gaps in Stella’s speech, in how many different ways could they not be filled? Again, was it my business or part of my undertaking to report half-heard remarks? If it had been something to do with Stella’s death, then surely it was a matter for The Tundish, and he, God knows, was heavily enough involved without my going out of my way to add to his burden by ranging myself at the side of Kenneth.

And so, right or wrong, I decided to keep the overheard conversation to myself, but I did not quite realize that my resolve would necessitate the lie direct. I soon found out, however, that it did, and that as soon as I had told the first I had to back it with another.

“I don’t know whether she knew it or not,” I ventured, in reply to his question, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Please don’t play with me, sir!” the little man almost shouted. “You know perfectly well that I was asking if you knew that Miss Palfreeman had lived in China.”

“No, I don’t know that!”

“That I was asking if you knew that Miss Palfreeman had lived in China?”

“No, that she had ever lived in China,” I lied as boldly as I could.

“Did you know that they had quarreled?”

“No,” I lied again.

He stared at me and I was not surprised, for even to me it had sounded too loud a denial and somehow unconvincing. He continued to stare, and I could feel the questioning glances of the rest, as I kept my gaze defiantly on his, but he made no further comment.

“Perhaps you will tell us about it, Doctor?”

“No, I don’t think I shall,” The Tundish replied pleasantly. “All I can tell you is this. Miss Palfreeman’s father was in Shanghai for two years while I was resident there. He was representing the Foreign Office in a political mission. We became acquainted and our acquaintance grew into friendship. Then we quarreled. In fact it was largely on account of our quarrel that I left China when I did. But I never at any time had any difference or quarrel with Miss Palfreeman. She naturally enough took her father’s side in our dispute. I don’t know whether she knew any of the facts—the facts, I mean, from her father’s view-point. Of the true facts only myself and one other were ever aware. Anyhow, she quite incorrectly thought that I ruined her father, and she disliked me accordingly. We only referred to the matter once during her visit here, and that was on the evening before her death, when I tried to persuade her to forgive the past. Her father committed suicide, but if necessary I can prove conclusively that I had nothing whatever to do with the trouble that came to him. All I can tell you now is that I made a certain solemn promise that I intend to keep. That promise makes it impossible for me to tell you more than I have already.”

“We are to accept your word for it then, Doctor, that this time, at any rate, you are telling the truth?” the detective sneered.

“That, I must leave to your own discretion,” The Tundish answered with a pleasant smile, quite impervious to the little man’s insinuations.

Then there followed a battle royal between the two of them, and the ugly little spitfire was for a full ten minutes persuasive, cutting, rude, and threatening in turn, but the doctor sat unmoved through it all. He refused even to answer “Yes” or “No” to the many leading questions that were put to him, and beyond saying that he had no idea that Miss Palfreeman was the girl he had known in Shanghai until he met her at the club, and that she was about eighteen years old when he returned to England, he replied, “I have nothing more to say” to every question.

Eventually Allport gave up the unequal contest and turned his attention to Ethel. How long had she known Dr. Wallace? Did she know that he knew Stella before she asked her to stay at Dalehouse for the tournament? Some of his questions were brutal, I thought, and seemed to be framed with a view to causing the maximum of annoyance, and I felt that it was only the realization of the danger in which the doctor stood that made her able to bear the ordeal.

“I understand you are engaged to be married to Mr. Dane?”

“No.”

“No? But I certainly understood that you were.”

Ethel crimsoned and was silent, and Kenneth burst out with an angry, “But I say, that can’t have anything to do with Miss Palfreeman’s death.”

Allport held up his fat podgy little hand in angry protest. “That you must please leave for me to decide. Either you must answer my questions or we must deal with the matter in a more formal manner.” This he said with a threatening glance at the doctor.

There was silence, and he continued.

“Come now, Miss Hanson, why did you break off your engagement?”

Poor Ethel was very near to tears, but she started her answer bravely. “We differed over Dr. Wallace—Mr. Dane objected—oh! But I can’t tell you.” It was too much for her and she put her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands. It was all ghastly, and I felt that a public inquiry could not be worse than these intimate exposures. But Allport was immovable, inexorable.

“You are very fond of Dr. Wallace, then?”

Ethel nodded, but did not look up.

“Very fond? Does that mean you are in love with him?”

“No,” she whispered.

I could bear it no longer. “Murder or no murder,” I said, “you’ve no right to ask questions like that.”

Allport held up his hands in despair. “You don’t understand—you simply can’t understand the position you are all of you in. Yes, all of you. Suppose Dr. Wallace were brought to trial, what sort of questions do you imagine the counsel for the defense would ask you? Isn’t it better to talk to me here privately? You don’t imagine I enjoy this kind of thing, I suppose?”

I heard Kenneth mutter, “I’m not so sure of that,” but The Tundish pacified him with a genial:

“Yes, Mr. Allport, you are right of course, but you can’t expect us to enjoy it very much either. I am sure you had better tell him anything you can,” he concluded, turning to Ethel.

“But you are not willing to follow your own advice, Doctor?” Allport snapped.

“I told you all I was at liberty to tell you. I didn’t resent any of your questions.”

The little detective shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, then, Miss Hanson, I’m to understand that you broke off your engagement with Mr. Dane because you differed from him over this unfortunate affair, and that you are very fond of the doctor here, but that you are not in love with him. Is that correct?”

“I suppose it’s near enough,” Ethel whispered.

“Now I want you to answer this very carefully. Had you noticed anything between the doctor and Miss Palfreeman? Had you any reason at all to suspect that while she disliked the doctor, he might have had other feelings with regard to her?”

“No. It’s quite absurd. He hardly knew her.”

“Pardon me, he has just informed us that for two years her father was one of his most intimate friends. You are not asking me to believe that he hardly knew the daughter, who was eighteen at the time?”

Then leaning over the table, and speaking very slowly, he asked her, “Did you know where the Chinese poison was kept? Exactly which bottle it was in, I mean?”

“Yes.”

“And roughly what its action was?”

“Yes.”

“So that if you had found the key Miss Summerson says she lost, you would have had no difficulty in getting at it and using it in—the—way—it—has—been—used?”

“No, I suppose not,” Ethel replied bravely but going as white as a sheet.

Next he turned quite suddenly to Margaret. “And, what were the papers you burned in your bedroom grate, Miss Hunter?”

“I didn’t burn any papers.”

“Oh! Please think carefully now. Surely you did burn something. I found the charred pieces there, myself, and Annie has told me she cleaned out the grate only the morning before. What was it that you burned?”

“I didn’t burn anything.”

“Not a photograph, for instance?”

“I didn’t burn anything at all. I really didn’t.”

“Then you expect me to believe that some one else went into your room for the purpose of burning paper in that particular grate?”

Margaret made no reply to this, and Allport went on to question her closely about where she had lived in Sheffield. At which school had she taught? Why did she leave it? Did she have to work for her living? Then there followed a whole string of rapid questions concerning her previous knowledge of Ralph. How far apart did they live? Did they belong to the same tennis club? Did she see him once a month? Once a week? Once a day? Had they ever been engaged to each other?

If he had been brutal to Ethel he was like a dog with a bone over poor Margaret, and after ten minutes or so she was white-faced too, and holding on to the edge of the table. Ralph was barely able to contain himself, but the little man almost growled at any interruption. “I will have the truth. I will have the truth!” he cried, and he paused only when he had reduced her to tears. A sigh of relief went round the table. The Tundish lighted another cigarette. I hoped that we were nearing the end, but he started off again quite pleasantly, his anger and excitement apparently having evaporated as quickly as they had arisen.

He questioned Kenneth and Ralph and then me again, and at the end of his questions, I think that there was nothing in connection with our friendship with the Hansons, or our knowledge of one another that he didn’t know.

“And now about the key of Miss Palfreeman’s bedroom,” he said, looking at the doctor, when he had satisfied himself that he could extract no more information from me. “What made you lie about it to Mr. Jeffcock?”

“I beg your pardon, I did not lie,” The Tundish replied with twinkling eyes.

“You are prepared to swear, then, that you left the door unfastened with the key in the lock?”

“I certainly left the door unlocked. I know nothing about the key.”

“And yet when Dr. Jeffries went up-stairs the door was locked and the key to it gone.”

“So I understand.”

“Some one must have locked it, you know.”

“Why, yes, certainly.”

“And you still ask me to believe that you didn’t?”

“I can only repeat that I didn’t.”

I was sitting next to Allport and at right angles to him round the table corner. I felt his foot pressing gently against my leg, and I looked up at him in surprise. Kenneth sat directly opposite to me and the little man was turned toward him, a malicious smile on his ugly clever face.

“And you didn’t lock the door by any chance, I suppose, Mr. Dane?” His foot pressed hard against my leg again, and I suddenly realized that he could not reach my foot but that he sat perched in his chair like a child with his tiny legs a-dangle.

“Good lord, no!” Kenneth said. “Whatever makes you ask me that?”

“Oh, only because I happened to find the key in your bedroom underneath the pillow.” He gave my leg another little dig to remind me again of the promise I had made him on the landing when the inspector brought him the key that had been found in the doctor’s pocket.

I must always reflect with shame on what followed, but I think that to some extent the heat of the room and the misery of all we had been through must have thrown us off our balance. We had gone beyond the limit of our endurance.

There was a deathlike silence after Allport had made his startling, and to my knowledge alone, untruthful statement. Kenneth was too taken aback to speak. His jaw dropped open in his astonishment. He might have seen a ghost. A wasp flew in through one of the open windows and buzzed angrily over our heads, and I remember thinking to myself, “Lord, here’s another wasp.” Then Ethel gave a little half-hysterical titter, and there must have been something infectious in its quality, for Margaret followed suit with a high hysterical laugh, and before I knew what had happened, and I swear without any conscious effort of my own, I was laughing at him too. Ralph joined in, and there we sat round the table like mad people. It was unspeakably horrible and grotesque—murder and misery and death in the air, and the four of us locked in the grip of helpless laughter. Margaret’s was true hysteria—peal of shrill horror followed peal. Ralph rumbled out a deep bass, and I shook helplessly in my chair, the tears streaming down my cheeks. Allport sat at one end of the table, his diminutive face puckered up into a disapproving frown, The Tundish at the other, placid and unconcerned.

Kenneth went white as death and then the blood rushed back, flooding his face with an angry crimson as he rose slowly and unsteadily to his feet. “You lie, you lie,” he gasped in a low voice husky with rage. “You put it there, you murderous bloody cad,” he shouted furiously, pointing a shaking hand at the doctor. Then before we realized what he was about or could do anything to stop him, he turned round and picking up his chair by the back he swung it over his head and hurled it down the table.

He was strong and his uncontrollable rage added to his strength. The chair hit the table a foot or two in front of The Tundish, who instinctively put up a hand to ward it off. The back caught his lifted arm, and the weight of the heavy leather-covered seat swung it round as if it were on a pivot, one of the legs catching Ethel as it swiveled round, with terrific force, straight across the mouth. There was a startled cry and a flash of blood. The chair crashed to the floor between them. The Tundish jumped to his feet in a second, and half led, half carried her out of the room.

Kenneth stood rigid, his face still scarlet, his rage still holding him, “You turned it on her, you poisoning cad,” he yelled, as the doctor vanished through the door. Then he seemed suddenly to regain control and added in a low voice, “My God, what have I done?”

Allport sprang to his side and dragged him down into his chair. “You had better sit down there, my friend,” he said, and then, turning to me, he asked me to go and see if the doctor wanted any help.

I ran along to the consulting-room to find Ethel flat on her back on the couch, and The Tundish bending over her. “Ah, thanks, Jeffcock,” he said as I came up to them, “I want a little help.”

I fetched him basin and water and cotton wool, and he was soon at work with his deft and steady fingers. There was something bordering on the unnatural in his unruffled calm. It was not only that he was undisturbed, but it was the idea he gave of hidden reserves that impressed me so much. Nothing, I felt, in heaven or earth, natural or supernatural, could move this quiet, pleasant man, and as I watched him tenderly at work, I remembered the fearful danger he was in. I pictured him actually on the scaffold—the rope about his neck—the hangman ready to pull the fatal bolt and drop him to God alone knows where. My fancy even led me to the length of wondering how he would stand. With folded arms and bended head? No, too melodramatic that. Smoking a cigarette perhaps? No again, that would savor too much of braggadocio. Finally I decided that he would in all probability be blowing his nose.

I suppose that my little flight of ghoulish fancy can not have lasted for more than a second or so, but he looked up at me amused, almost as though he had guessed whither my thoughts had wandered. “Come, Jeffcock, you had better go back and tell them there isn’t very much amiss. They will be anxious, you know. A badly cut lip, and a couple of loosened teeth are the extent of the damage.”

He was sitting on the edge of the couch, and as I closed the door behind me, I heard Ethel whisper softly, “Oh, Tundish dear, what a rock you are. What should I do without you?”

Was it my fancy? Had my hearing for once played me false? Or did he really reply, “Well, why should you, Ethel darling?”

Chapter VII.
I Argue with Kenneth

Up to this point in my story, while, as was only natural, I had some doubts about The Tundish, he certainly had all my sympathy. If Ethel was his most outspoken champion, I was more than ready to endorse her opinions. While she showed by every possible action and by every look that she was sure of his innocence, desolated by his awful plight, and ready to take his part against those of our party who were less inclined to ignore the evidence against him, I was less demonstrative and I think more tolerant of the opinions held by Kenneth and, to a less degree, by Margaret and Ralph. But I was quite eager to feel as sure as she was about his innocence. I was ready to set down the finding of the key in his coat pocket, his unsatisfactory account of his dealings with Stella’s father, and all the other evidence that indicated his guilt so strongly, as nothing more than a string of coincidences, mere unfortunate accidents of circumstances, that time and patience would be sure to explain away.

Indeed, when I look back, I am always astonished at the way the doctor dominated our little party. He made no effort to clear himself—he accepted all the damning facts that told so heavily against him, without either attempting to belittle or explain them away—and then he simply ignored the whole uncomfortable position. Kenneth and Ethel quarreled openly, Margaret, Ralph and I were worried and ill at ease; he, in danger of immediate arrest and the end of his medical career, alone remained calm and undisturbed.

But somehow, I did not like the idea of his falling in love with Ethel or at any rate making any open declaration of his feelings. It was not only that I felt that it added yet another note to the general discord. It was unseemly and inopportune—it was deliberately inconsiderate. And it was from this time that I began to wonder if Kenneth’s attitude were not more reasonable than I had at first supposed it, and that my admiration for the doctor began to be more troubled in its quality. I admired him still, but I had the uncomfortable feeling that just conceivably my admiration might be misplaced.

I returned to the dining-room and reported on Ethel’s condition. Kenneth sat at the end of the table in the chair that little Allport had been occupying. His own still lay on the floor where he had hurled it. He was looking straight before him, a picture of glum despair.

It has often occurred to me that people of a quick and ready temper must be altogether lacking so far as any sense of humor is concerned—that these hot bursts of passion must leave such a feeling of ridicule and shame that only those insensible to both could afford to indulge. Kenneth, however, was not of the hot-tempered type, and as I saw him seated morosely at the end of the table, I was both sorry and concerned; sorry for him, whole-heartedly sorry, concerned for the future. How were we to get through the next few days, I wondered, with the doctor and Ethel and Kenneth all confined within the ten-foot wall that circled Dalehouse and its secluded sun-baked garden? Barely six hours had passed since Ethel had left the breakfast table to waken Stella, and yet here we were, all at loggerheads and enmity—Ethel’s and Kenneth’s engagement broken, probably beyond repair; the doctor making love to Ethel, if my hearing had not played me a trick; Kenneth giving way to violence and the hurling of chairs; each one of us busy with his own dark thoughts and conjectures. How were we to get through the hours that lay ahead?

Allport was writing up some notes in his note-book, and looked up as I made my statement. “Well, that’s a mercy, at any rate,” he grumbled; and with a glance over his shoulder at the clock, “Will the doctor be long before he is back? I want to see him again, and I must leave the house by three o’clock; would you mind telling him, and ask Miss Summerson to bring me the statement she has been writing out.”

I had forgotten all about Miss Summerson, but I hurried back along the passage to the consulting-room to give The Tundish the detective’s message. Ethel was still on the couch, lying on her back with the lower part of her face heavily bandaged. She raised her eyebrows by way of a smile of greeting—it was all she could do, poor girl—and in answer to my question as to the doctor’s whereabouts she pointed to the door of the dispensary.

I found him standing against the desk, holding a sealed envelope in one hand. To my astonishment he was humming a gentle air. “Here is Miss Summerson’s report,” he laughed, “but where, oh, where, is Miss Summerson herself? I don’t think our little friend will be overpleased, will he?”

“Do you mean to say she has gone?”

“Yes, and after all she wasn’t definitely told to stay. However, let us take her report to Allport and hear what he has to say.”

We found the little man, watch in hand. “Oh, here you are at last,” he said. “I’ve got exactly five minutes left, and these are my instructions:

“You, Dr. Wallace, can go on your rounds as usual—it might appear too extraordinary did you not—but one of my men is to act as chauffeur. I’ve already arranged it with Inspector Brown. If any one asks questions, as no doubt they will, you are to say that Miss Palfreeman died in her sleep and that the police are arranging for a post-mortem to find out the cause if they can. You can say it’s a mystery—as indeed it is—and you need mention neither suicide nor murder. ‘I don’t know,’ will be your best answer to most of the questions you are likely to be asked.

“Apart from the doctor, none of you is to leave the house and garden, and you are not to make any mention of Miss Palfreeman’s death either over the telephone or by letter. Miss Hanson, for instance, is not to write to her father or mother about it. There will be a formal inquest the day after to-morrow which you will have to attend, but I am arranging it so that practically no questions at all will be asked you. It will be a purely formal affair, postponed until after my return.” Then he added after a brief pause, “I have been wondering whether you should like one of my men to sleep in the house—what do you say, Miss Hunter?”

Margaret looked at him wide-eyed. “Surely that is hardly necessary,” she said.

“It shall be as you wish, if Miss Hanson and the others agree. I will ask Miss Hanson myself. How do you feel about it, Mr. Dane?”

Kenneth looked stonily ahead and refused to answer.

Allport shrugged his shoulders, saying, “Well, if you feel safe, and the doctor here agrees as well, Miss Hunter shall have her way. I don’t imagine you are likely to have any more trouble, at least no trouble that any man of mine could prevent. And now where is Miss Summerson?”

“She has gone,” said The Tundish. “I found this addressed to you on the desk in the dispensary just now.”

“The devil she has.” He tore open the envelope and hastily read the contents, a sarcastic smile twisting his sloppy mouth. Then he included us all in a stiff formal little bow and left the room. A few minutes later we heard the front door bang, and we were alone once more and left to our own resources. Another devastating silence—a silence which, awkward and uncomfortable as it was, it seemed yet more awkward to break—settled down on us. Kenneth made no movement, and we four stood tongue-tied looking first at him and then at one another.

The doctor was the first to speak. “A cold bath and a change is the proper prescription for all of us, I fancy, but if the inspector can lend me a body-guard I have one or two patients who will be feeling neglected! Ethel ought to go to her room and lie down; Margaret, will you try to persuade her to? She is to keep the bandage on until I come back, then a piece of plaster will be all that is required. You needn’t feel that she is badly hurt, Kenneth.”

“Go to hell!” was Kenneth’s comment.

“I’ll go to my patients first,” The Tundish replied pleasantly. “I’ll order tea for half past four, and as this room is so hot I’ll tell Annie to set it in the garden.”

I was glad when he was gone. I could see that his good-tempered tolerance acted like a red rag to a bull as far as Kenneth was concerned, and I feared another explosion. Margaret departed to see after Ethel, and I went to the telephone to explain my lengthened holiday as well as I might to Brenda. I got through promptly, but I found my talk more difficult than I had anticipated. The line was clear and she was full of awkward questions.

“Are you in the finals, then?” she queried in a jesting voice that was anything but complimentary.

“No, but I am staying on over Thursday and perhaps until the end of the week.”

“But I thought you were to be in London on Friday?”

“That will have to be postponed. I can’t help myself. I shall get back as soon as I can, but it may not be till Saturday.”

“You do sound mysterious and not a bit as if you were enjoying yourself. What on earth’s the matter?”

“There’s nothing the matter and I’ll let you know more exactly when I shall be home as soon as I can. You must hold your curiosity in check until you see me.”

“Oh! I say,” and then with a giggle that sounded doubly inane over the wire, “have you gone and done it at last?”

I put the receiver down with a bang. Why on earth did Brenda always imagine that I was on the brink of a matrimonial adventure? She was nearly as bad as the diminutive Allport.

A bath and a change of clothes brought some relief from the depressing heat, but I had an encounter with Kenneth which went very far to nullify it, and I came to the conclusion that I had better leave matters alone and that peace would be attained only if those of us who differed could keep apart. He was coming out of the bathroom as I came out of my bedroom to go down-stairs, his dark blue dressing-gown open at the throat, and showing the splendid proportions of his chest. I asked if I could come along with him and have a chat while he dressed.

“Why, yes, of course,” he answered pleasantly enough. He found me cigarettes and matches, and pulled out a wicker armchair.

“Look here, how are we going to get through the time until Allport releases us?” I began with some little hesitation. “Can’t we arrange some sort of a compromise?”

“Surely we have compromised—at any rate we have agreed to put up with him for a couple of days.”

“Yes, but that’s not much good if you and he are going to quarrel whenever you meet,” I ventured. “Won’t you try to believe that he may be innocent until Allport has gone into it a little further?”

“No, I won’t. You mean well, Jeffcock, I know, but it’s no good. You think I’m unreasonable, but just ask yourself how you would like it if you were in my place. He commits a cold-blooded murder and then takes advantage of Ethel’s absurd hero-worship to persuade her to break off her engagement with me. Ever since I first knew her she has been singing his praises.”

“But you can’t be as certain as all that,” I insisted, “and I don’t believe he has said a single thing to try to persuade Ethel to break away from you. In fact he asked me to do my best to keep you together—to prevent your falling out over him, and besides that, even if most of the evidence points to him, we are all of us pretty well tarred with the same brush. I knew all about the poison and so did Ethel. The key of the bedroom door was found under your pillow, you know,” I added rather maliciously.

“Yes, and who put it there?” he burst in. “Why, he did. Of course he did. And the rest of you are willing to believe every word he says. He’s only to ask you ‘to keep Ethel and me together,’ damn his impudence, and you immediately believe that he is a paragon of unselfish piety—a sort of martyr sacrificing himself for others. Do you honestly mean to tell me that you have no doubts about the man yourself?”

“I can’t conceive it possible that either he or you or any of the others could have done such a thing.”

“But Stella was murdered, you know. You simply can’t get away from it. Opportunity, motive, everything points as clearly as it can to the doctor. It’s impossible to overlook what he said, or rather what he didn’t say, about his quarrel with her father—and then she’s found poisoned the day after her arrival. And quite apart from all that, the way he allows Ethel to slop over him is sufficient to damn him in my opinion. No real man would encourage it when she was engaged to me. Then he puts the key under my pillow so that she may begin to have doubts about me.”

“Nonsense!” I cried. “Ethel hasn’t any ideas of the kind. Even I know her well enough for that. As for the key, any one of us could have put it under your pillow, and after all we have only the detective’s word for it that it was found there at all.”

“Oh, don’t be a fool, of course it was found there. You can talk about it until you are blue in the gills, but I shall still believe him a poisoning——”

He was lacing up his shoes, and one of the laces broke with a snap. It was the last straw. “Curse him,” he cried. “You say how are we going to get through the time till Allport comes back? He’ll be damned lucky if he gets through without a broken neck.”

“And in heaven’s name what good would that do you?” I asked.

“Good, why the same sort of good that it does me to tell you that you’re nothing but a blinking fool. Clear out!”

I went. I felt that I was doing more harm than good, and that I almost deserved his description. My original estimate of his character had been correct. There were no grays for Kenneth.

On the landing I stood for a moment considering whether I would go back to my room and sit there till tea-time, or try to find some shady spot in the garden. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think. But there was another little surprise awaiting me. As I stood I heard a swishing noise on the stairs leading up to the floor above. It was too intermittent to have been made by one of the maids sweeping down. A shuffle and then a gentle pad-pad-pad and then another shuffle. My curiosity was aroused. I couldn’t make it out. I tiptoed along the landing to the foot of the stairs. It was Margaret; she was down on her hands and knees searching for something. She was patting the pile of the stair carpet and that had made the padding noise that had attracted my attention. There was a something feverish and urgent about the way she searched.

“Hello! lost anything?” I called out.

She stopped her search quite suddenly, and did not answer me at once. The pause was perhaps no longer than a second—but it was there. “Why, yes, I’ve dropped a sixpence—it’s so unlucky on the stairs, you know—and I think it must have rolled into a crack. I’ve just been up to tell Annie that Ethel wants her tea in her room. Never mind it, I’ll tell Annie to keep her eyes open for it.”

We went down-stairs, she to her bedroom, and I to the hall below, where I nearly ran full tilt into Annie at the top of the basement stairs.

I sauntered out into the garden and lighted my pipe. I had paced once along the lawn in the shade of the cedar and was retracing my steps toward the house, when Margaret came to meet me. “Have you seen Annie anywhere?” she queried.

“Yes, she came up the basement stairs as I came down just now.”

“Oh, did you tell her about Ethel’s tea?”

“No, I thought you had been up to the top landing to tell her that.”

“I did but she wasn’t in her room. I’ll just run in and tell her and then come back to you. I do so want a quiet talk with some one sensible and sane.”

She hurried back to the house and I opened a couple of deck-chairs and sat down to await her return. How I wanted an opportunity for an hour’s quiet thought! But the heat and the midges were terrible. They were all-pervading; they swamped thought and everything else.

There must be, I thought, some pernicious influence at work. On my previous visits I had always been impressed with the calm and ordered life at Dalehouse. I had enjoyed sitting out in this lovely sheltered garden after dinner with Hanson, pipes going, conversation natural and unlabored, while the light faded away, to leave the great cathedral silhouetted in black against the sky. The cathedral still towered up above the garden wall but that was all of calm and peace that remained.

Even before the awful discovery of Stella’s death I had sensed an uncomfortable restraint in the air; and now every little incident and every simple conversation seemed fraught with some hidden meaning and double purpose. I could not even accept Margaret’s simple assertion that she had lost a sixpenny bit on the stairs without wondering why she should have been handling money on the way to speak to Annie. Could she have pulled it out with her handkerchief? I began to ponder on how and where girls carried them. I found that I was very vague about it, but I had a general impression that pockets no longer existed and that even if they carried purses at all, they did not have to extract them when a handkerchief was required. What did they do with their money? No, it somehow did not seem natural and reasonable that she should have dropped a sixpence on those stairs, but why she should lie to me about it, or for what else she could have been looking so urgently if she had lied, I could not guess.

Thinking over our conversation, I found that I could not remember whether she told me she had actually given Annie her message or not, but I most certainly had the impression that Annie was up-stairs in her room, or why should I have been so surprised when I ran into her a moment later at the top of the basement stairs?

Margaret came and sat down in the deck-chair beside me. She had brought out a red parasol with her, and as she lay back in her chair, it heightened the rosy color in her pink and white cheeks, and tinted her golden hair a ruddy bronze. She heaved a little sigh of satisfaction as she settled down against the cushions. Rather like a cat she was, I thought, where cushions and comfort were concerned—she made a luxury of them.

“I wonder how long this is going to last,” she said pensively, and then after a pause, “You know, I have a sort of feeling that it’s this awful heat that is making things so terrible. It gives to everything a feverish unnatural kind of air. I am so glad to hear they’re having prayers for rain in the cathedral.”

I assented and continued to puff away silently at my pipe. Annie came out with a tray and began to set out the tea things on a little table in the shade of the house. The cathedral chimed the quarter after four, and so hot and still was it that the last fading note left the air pregnant with unvoiced vibrations. The clash of clapper on hot metal in the high cathedral tower—the dull boom of the note—and then the air thick with the ghosts of sound. It came to me that there was some similar quality in the embarrassed silences that seemed to stand out so sharply from all our conversations. The air was full of the thoughts we were all afraid to voice.

“Mr. Jeffcock,” she continued, after a time, “I want you to promise not to be vexed, but I do so long to ask you a question.”

I nodded.

“You are sure you won’t mind—promise?” she repeated, holding up one finger with a coquettish air.

“I promise I won’t show it, anyhow,” I returned.

“Well,” she continued, “you remember—tell me—did you put the key under Kenneth’s pillow?”

I was aghast. There was a little puzzled frown on her face. I looked at her closely, but she gave me look for look. “I did no such thing, what on earth made you think that I did?” I replied, trying to keep my voice pleasant and unconcerned.

“Why, I have been thinking it over, and it simply can’t have been any one else—oh, it is all so thrilling! You remember, just before Dr. Wallace went out to see his patient this morning, I came up from the basement with some things for Ethel, and met you in the hall?”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“Well, you know how the basement stairs go down under the main staircase up from the hall to the first landing? I don’t know if you have noticed how plainly you can hear any one on the stairs just above, but I could swear that as I came up from the kitchen, I heard some one tiptoeing down them over my head. I did really, Mr. Jeffcock. Then I found you in the hall. Wasn’t it queer? Do you really mean to say that it wasn’t you?”

“No, it most certainly was not I. I was at the telephone until just before you appeared, and I never left the hall at all.”

I hesitated whether to tell her how I too had fancied that I heard a stealthy tread on the stair. But a good five minutes must have passed between what I heard and the time when she came up from the basement, for I had continued to speak to the police station, and then I had spoken to The Tundish after that. Could the noise I thought I had heard have been some one creeping up the stairs—not down them? But in that case who could it possibly have been? Every one, including The Tundish, could then be accounted for. I decided to say nothing at all about it. Instead, I asked her as pleasantly as I could:

“And have you conveyed your rather unkind suspicions to any of the others?”

“No, oh no,” she replied, “and I really did not mean to be unkind. But the whole affair is so puzzling. Things happen and there’s no one to make them happen. There’s no good solid reason for anything.”

Then after a little pause, she added, “Do you think, then, that Kenneth threw away the medicine glass? I suppose that he must have done it, and then have locked the door to Stella’s room and put the key under the pillow in his own, meaning to throw it away as well a little later on! But why, oh, why, should he do it?”

“He can’t have done it,” I reminded her, “he was in the dining-room with Ethel and Ralph all the time. Don’t worry your head about it. Leave it to Allport. Here is Annie with the tea.”

Annie put the tea-pot on the table, and was just on the point of returning to the house, when she turned round and called out good-naturedly, “Oh, please, miss, I found your sixpence.”

“Thank you so much, Annie, where was it?”

“On the landing, miss.”

“Oh! It must have rolled down then after all. I am so glad—it is so unlucky on the stairs.”

It was the first time I had heard the theory that ill luck followed the dropping of money on a staircase, but Margaret was famous for such quaint little superstitions, about ladders, umbrellas, the moon, and so forth, and she was continually throwing salt over her shoulders, or doing something equally silly, to save herself from catastrophe. She was half a generation behind the times, I think, but she was so good-natured and simple over it all, that we readily forgave her absurdities and the many conversational bricks she dropped.

Anyhow, I thought to myself, that solves the mystery of “The girl who searched the stairs in fevered haste,” and I wondered how many of the other little incidents on which I had pondered, and how many of the intriguing remarks I had overheard, might not be capable of explanation in a similarly simple manner.

We found that the table had been laid for three, Kenneth and Ralph, doubtless with a view to avoiding the doctor, having decided to stay indoors for their tea. We moved the little table from the back of the house to the shade of the cedar tree, and The Tundish joined us just as we were sitting down. I envied the easy way in which he kept the conversation going, without once touching or obviously appearing to avoid, the unhappy subject of all our thoughts. There had been a stack fire at the Cattersons’ farm, a mile or two out of the city. A horse had been burned to death. Canon Searle had been nearly drowned on holiday at Bournemouth—cramp when he was swimming out of his depth. So on and so forth, for a full twenty minutes. It was a relief to hear some one talking naturally and lightly about nothing in particular. And then he pulled up sharply in the middle of a sentence.

I looked up to see what had caught his attention. Two men were coming in through the door in the wall at the end of the surgery wing. Each held one end of a ladder. They proceeded to rear it up against the coping of the flat-topped roof on to which Stella’s bedroom window looked. Then they produced a pair of shears and a small saw and began to clip the tangled mass of the large-leaved ivy.

“Are they gardeners?” Margaret asked.

“Police,” The Tundish replied laconically, and added, “pruning for glass.”

Margaret emitted a little “Oh!” We heard the telephone ring faintly in the hall, and the doctor left us. We two continued to watch the “gardeners.” The “thing” that we longed to forget was back with us again.

Chapter VIII.
Dr. Hanson’s Case-Book

For pleasure or comfort of any sort it was too hot in the wall-girt garden, but merely to be away from the house brought a certain sense of ease and rest. Sitting under the old shady cedar it was easier to keep dark thoughts away, and difficult to realize that the homely looking red-brick house was a shelter for murder and crime. Difficult to realize that at some hour during the previous night the little Chinese flagon had been secretly lifted from its place on the shelf among its almost equally deadly little neighbors. Lifted, oh! so gently, and the queer flat stopper quietly removed from its fragile slender neck. Then just a tilt, and drip, drip, drip, a few drops added to the contents of a tapering glass, and at some hour of the hot still night, poor Stella had slipped out of sleep into death.

Whose hand, I wondered, had set that murderous little bottle back in its place? Was it a hand that trembled and shook? Or was it steady and deft like the hands I had seen so swiftly busy with the bandages round a small boy’s face?

Inspector Brown’s two gardeners were making laborious work of their search. The end of the roof where the ivy grew was full in the blaze of the sun, and coats and waistcoats were in turn discarded. There were intervals for chatty little rests and the mopping of faces. In three-quarters of an hour a very small bit of the roof had been dealt with, and I calculated that it would be dark before the whole could be cleared unless Progress was speeded up.

The inspector was evidently of the same opinion, for he came in while we were watching and we soon heard his loud-voiced complaints across the lawn. A little later the party was increased to three.

They cleared the roof methodically, a foot at a time. When the main strands of the tangled growth had been cut and disentangled, they were carefully shaken out and thrown to the lawn below. The loose leaves on the roof were examined and put into a bucket. These having been removed, the smaller bits were collected together and riddled through a sieve. The siftings were swept aside and the remainder carefully searched. Then another few strands were cut and the process repeated.

Margaret and I watched them idly as we sat, their clippings and the noise of the bucket as it was handled up and down from the roof punctuating our desultory conversation. I fancy we were both meditating with lazy inconsequence on the day’s events and our few remarks reflected our meditations.

“We are sure to have some of them down from the club to make inquiries this evening,” I said.

“Yes. It will be rather awkward, won’t it?”

A long pause in which I puffed away leisurely at my pipe and she lay back gently rotating her red parasol.

“Don’t you think we ought to have some definite understanding about what we are all of us going to say when callers do appear? We are sure to have no end directly it gets about. The Hansons know nearly every one there is to know in Merchester and I can assure you from my own experience, that we simply can’t be beaten where curiosity is concerned.” She moved her chair round as she spoke to get a better view of the surgery wing.

“I think that you are right,” I said, knocking the ashes out of my pipe. “I’ll have a word with the doctor about it.”

“He would deal with them better than any of us,” she agreed, “but he may not be here all the time, and I can’t imagine that either Ethel or Kenneth would excel at the job. They are both too——” She paused for a word.

“Exactly,” I laughed, “they are both of them too—— and you can leave it at that.”

We fell back on our meditations, and I thought what a peaceful drowsy scene it would have made if only the men at work on the roof had been gardeners indeed, and Margaret and I the remnant of some pleasant social gathering. Gardeners pruning an ivy tree for next year’s more vigorous growth—hope for the future and life! Plain clothes policemen searching for a piece of poisoned glass—murder and death! The cathedral chimes rang out again and roused us both. It was six o’clock. We had sat in the garden for nearly an hour. We got up and went back to the house, she to go to Ethel, and I to find The Tundish.

He was in the dispensary—the coolest spot in the house—his feet on the desk in front of him and his chair tilted back to a dangerous angle. He was scowling at a manuscript in which he was deeply engrossed.

Now, I had anticipated his pleasant, “Hello! Jeffcock,” but I was met with a frown and a curtly spoken “Well?” It was the first time I had seen him either bothered or abrupt. The heat of the past few days, which had prostrated the rest of us and made us irritable and touchy, had not been sufficient to sap his energy or sour his sweet temper. I remembered that, in addition to facing the appalling position in which he found himself here at Dalehouse, he had had to rush away directly after breakfast to some other scene of illness and distress. He had hurried back through the sweltering heat to meet the aspersions of Allport and the angry attack of Kenneth. Throughout the fevered day he had been calm, kindly and unruffled. A “rock” as Ethel had whispered, for all of us to lean on.

I was surprised, therefore, to find him frowning and sharp-spoken, and he either saw my surprise or else he read my thoughts, for he closed the book with a bang, took his feet off the desk, and stood up saying, “Sorry, Jeffcock old man, but I’ve got an incipient hump.”

“In my opinion, you’ve been through enough to turn you into a veritable dromedary, so far as humps are concerned,” I answered.

“Oh! that—you mean my strong position as favorite for the gallowsstakes? No, my dear Jeffcock, to be perfectly truthful, that bothers me not at all. Death is a friend we shall all have to shake by the hand. It’s this depressing little record of unwholesome happenings and disease that nearly gave me a fit of the blues.”

I looked at the book with interest.

“It’s Hanson’s case-book,” he answered my unspoken question. “Such books should be burned. Burned and then the ashes scattered at sea, for half the world’s unhappiness springs from the disorders that we doctors write up so secretly in our case-books and keep hidden away under lock and key.” He flicked the pages between finger and thumb with a look of sad disgust as he spoke.

“Ugh!” he said, as he replaced the book in a drawer in the desk, which he pushed home with an angry bang.

I asked him what he thought we ought to say to any callers who might come, and whether we had not better have some agreement among ourselves as to how much information we were to give them when they came.

“Why, yes, of course we must,” he said pleasantly. “I hope that I shan’t have to go out again to-night, and probably I had better see any one who calls while I am here. I shall be able to choke them off more easily than Ethel would, and it will appear quite natural for me to explain that she has gone to lie down and rest. Then at supper-time we can decide together what to say to all the Merchester busybodies to-morrow. It surprises me that we have not been pestered with callers already. It is all over the city, I know, for half a dozen of my patients found it difficult to hide their curiosity, when I was out on my rounds this afternoon. You will see that quite apart from the kindly concern of Hanson’s more intimate friends, half Merchester will be calling or ringing us up during the next twenty-four hours. They will come for subscriptions, to borrow books, and to be treated for imaginary complaints. Anything, in fact, that will give them a chance to satisfy their ghoulish curiosity, and here is the first of them now, unless I am very much mistaken.”

The bell had begun to ring as he was speaking, and Annie announced Rushton, the secretary of the tennis club. He was asking for Ethel. We had him shown into the dispensary.

After shaking hands with us and refusing to sit down, as he wanted to get back to the club as soon as he could, he came to the object of his visit with commendable brevity. He hoped that it was not true that Miss Palfreeman was dead, but that she was merely ill, as Mr. Bennett had told them when he called at the club to scratch our names in the morning. He was a rather nervous little man, at the best of times, and it was obvious that he was not enjoying his visit.

“It is unfortunately only too true,” The Tundish replied. “She died at some hour during the night, and Miss Hanson had the shock of trying to wake her up this morning.”

“Oh! I say, I am so sorry. And is it true that there is to be an inquest?”

“Yes, that is true too. No one was with her when she died, and I am unable to certify the cause of her death. We have consulted the police, and they tell us that an inquest can’t possibly be avoided.”

Rushton stood embarrassed, and muttering, “Oh dear, how sad! How very, very sad!” Ill at ease, he was tracing half-circles on the cork matting with the toe of his shoe.

“Look here, I don’t want to add to your troubles,” he said, looking up suddenly, as though he had made up his mind to go through with an unpleasant task, “but I thought I ought to tell Miss Hanson about it at once. I wanted to see her and tell her. There are all manner of things being whispered about at the club.”

He hesitated again uncomfortably, and then went on with a sort of nervous rush. “They are saying that the police have been in and out of the house all day long. That Miss Palfreeman was murdered, that you have all of you been detained, and that you, Dr. Wallace, were seen being driven off to the police station itself under escort. There are all sorts of whisperings, and each that I have overheard has been a little more gruesome than the last. It’s beastly unpleasant news to have to give you, but I really felt that some one ought to come and let you know of the things that are being said.”

“It has been exceedingly kind and considerate of you,” The Tundish reassured him. “From the questions I was asked and the looks that I got—looks that I could almost overhear!—when I paid a few professional visits this afternoon, I guessed that some such stories must be afloat. The facts, however, are as I have told you. Miss Palfreeman’s death is at present a mystery to us all. She was rather overtired, but otherwise in normal health when she retired for the night. The police have moved her body to the mortuary so that a careful examination can be made. There is to be an inquest, and Mr. Jeffcock here, and the others, have been asked to remain in Merchester until it is over. That is really all that we can tell you. We are nearly as much in the dark as any one else. It is a very painful position without exaggeration, and if you can help to thin out some of the rumors that are thickening the air we shall all be not a little grateful.”

“Oh, I will. I most certainly will. I’ll do everything I possibly can.” He retreated nervously.

The doctor, I felt, had not been overconvincing. Rushton, I am sure, really came to us out of kindness and because he felt that some one ought to warn us of what was being said, however unpleasant the task might be. But if he had no suspicions of his own before he came, the doctor’s so-called explanations would most surely have aroused them. A doctor in the house—a mysterious death which the doctor would not certify—a body removed to the mortuary by the police, and an inquest—an unpleasant string of facts to have to admit! Add a little imagination, a dash or two of spite, and a misunderstanding here and there as the details are whispered by one scandal-loving cathedral matron to the next, and it is easy to realize that the final story might even outcrimson the actual facts. The Tundish had done his best, but it was very evident that until the whole abominable business was properly cleared up, and Stella’s murderer discovered and caught, nothing that we could say or do would silence the gossip that was about.

“That is the first of a great many kindly people who will make it their business to call because they felt that we ought to know of the awful things that are being said,” The Tundish remarked, with a wry grimace.

“Don’t you think that he really did feel like that?”

“Oh yes, yes! And so will many of the others who come for the same purpose. But they will one and all go away to strengthen the rumors of which they came to warn us. I’m not blaming them—it’s human nature. We shall find it rather trying, though, I fancy. It’s half past six. I’ll just run up-stairs and find out how Ethel is getting on, and then if it is not too hot for you I’ll join you in the garden for a stroll.”

I agreed, and went out through the front door, round the end of the house, and into the garden behind. The heat was still devastating. Not a leaf was astir. Not even a stray wisp of cloud broke the pale blue of the sky, a blue that faded imperceptibly into a misty white above the top of the high garden wall.

Inspector Brown’s three men were still busy with the ivy on the roof, and the heap on the lawn had grown to a goodly size. Nearly three-quarters of the roof had been cleared. The inspector himself stood watching them at work, peaked hat in hand, his red round face looking like a damp boiled beet-root from underneath his handkerchief, which he had knotted at the corners and placed on his head for protection against the sun. He beckoned to me as I rounded the end of the house, and I went and stood by his side.

“You’re making good progress,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Have you found what you were looking for?”

“Yes.”

“But you are going to clear the lot while you are about it, eh!”

“Yes.” And looking at me queerly, and mimicking the little exclamation with which I had finished my own sentence, he added, “There might be something else, eh!”

He continued to stare, his eyes looking for all the world like a couple of bright blue buttons stuck in his big red face, and then he surprised me by asking, “Do your initials happen to be F. H., Mr. Jeffcock?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

But I never got an answer to my question. He turned abruptly and walked away, ignoring me rudely and completely. I half thought of following him to make further inquiry, but his broad solid back and his thick bull neck both looked unresponsive, so I mastered my curiosity, and crossing the lawn to the cedar tree, sat down in the shade to wait for The Tundish.

I was beginning to think that he must have forgotten me, when Margaret hurried to me. “He wants us both in the dispensary,” she said, before she reached me, and turned quickly back to the house beckoning me to follow.

He got up from the desk as we entered, and placed the prescription book, in which he had been writing, on the table that stood in the middle of the room. Then he took three bottles and a taper medicine glass from the shelves over the bench, and put them on the table by the book. He was solemn and portentous. Margaret and I were silent as we stood and watched him.

“I am going to prepare some medicine for Ethel,” he informed us when he had got everything ready, “and in the circumstances I feel that I should like you to see me make it up. I can’t explain my wish in so many words; in fact, I really don’t quite know why I want you to be here. If I wanted to poison Ethel, I could of course do it with the greatest ease while you both stand looking on. For instance, you can check the prescription which I have written out in full, and you can check the bottles with the prescription, but you can’t possibly be sure that I haven’t already tampered with the bottles. So you see it is all rather farcical, and yet I do very definitely feel that I should like you to witness me making it up.”

I was aghast at the horrible suggestion his words contained, but he stood smiling at us pleasantly, imperturbable, inscrutable.

“I think that I can understand your feelings a little,” Margaret said inaptly, “you’re afraid it might somehow happen again. Is Ethel really ill then?”

“No, oh no, not exactly ill, but the bang on her mouth has loosened one tooth and some of the others have had a nasty jar. It has given her neuralgia and I want her to have a comfortable night if she can. We still have some unpleasant hours ahead, I fear.”

He was making up the medicine as he spoke, pouring first from one and then from the other bottles—a series of simple acts which he seemed to invest with some quality of magic. The glass lightly held between finger and thumb might have stood on a slab of stone for steadiness. Each ingredient trickled quickly yet surely to fill it to within a hair’s breadth of the graduation mark against which he had placed his thumb. Not once did he have to make an addition or adjustment, and so quick and precise was it all that he had finished while he was answering Margaret’s question, and the simple every-day movements took on the aspect of a conjuring trick.

We initialed the labels of the bottles he had used and the prescription he had written in the book after checking the one with the other.

Margaret, too, had evidently been impressed by his sleight of hand, for she said, “And now shall I sit on a broomstick, and whisk it up-stairs to Ethel?” It was the most original remark I had ever heard her make.

“No thanks, I’ll take it up myself.”

Margaret reddened, but he smiled at her coolly, adding, “I want to have a chat with her,” and he picked up the glass and was gone.

We didn’t say anything, but if looks could speak——? I think we were both of us wondering why he should have bothered to ask us to see him prepare the medicine, and then having had us for witnesses, have refused to let Margaret take it up to Ethel. He could have gone up with her for his little chat. It was queer and extraordinary. I could not understand it.

Chapter IX.
Kenneth and the Tundish

Ethel did not come down to dinner, and altogether it was an unsatisfactory, unsatisfying meal! Jaded and worn out, we were really in need of food. But the meat was neither hot nor cold—the potatoes uncooked and uneatable—cook being evidently too overcome to attend to such every-day affairs. Annie, poor girl, looked tired out and not a little ashamed at having to set such dishes before us. Indeed she nearly broke down altogether when she informed us that she was sorry but cook had made no pudding.

“Why on earth not, Annie? Whatever is she thinking of?” The Tundish exclaimed.

“She says she’s all of a flutter, sir. You know how she goes on. I’d have made you something or other myself, only she told me nothing about it until it was too late.”

“You’re a good girl, Annie, and it’s no fault of yours. I’ll see cook afterward.”

Margaret looked her amusement, and as usual managed to bring in one of her proverbial sayings. This time it was passably apt, however. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” she said, glancing round the table brightly.

Kenneth’s lips curled. The doctor was interfering again.

The telephone bell rang a good half-dozen times before we had finished, and each time The Tundish got up to answer it without murmur or protest. I could hear his end of the conversation, which ran almost word for word alike on each occasion.

“I’m sorry, but she’s gone to lie down and I don’t want to disturb her.”

“Yes, very sad indeed.”

“Sorry, but I can’t hear what you are saying. This line is very indistinct. Hello! I’ll let her know that you rang her up.”

Then the receiver was put up and he would return looking amused. “It’s easy work on the telephone,” he laughed.

“It’s all far too easy,” was Kenneth’s comment.

After dinner we sat about uncomfortably, Margaret curling herself up like some large cat in one of the big armchairs and busying herself with her interminable knitting. I felt that, somehow, it would have been in keeping with her had she produced black wool, but it was still a pink jumper which had appeared at many odd moments before that engaged her attention. The two boys strolled up and down the garden for a time, and then they tried a game of chess.

I went out into the garden with a book and sat under the cedar with The Tundish. We hardly spoke. He was really reading, I think, from the regular way he turned the pages of his book, but try as I might, my own thoughts would wander from the printed page and revert to the day’s events. But I could not think consecutively. Ethel had set the seal of terror on us all when she had burst in on us at breakfast time with her “Do come. I’m afraid,” and from that moment, while the sun had blazed and scorched, we had passed from distress to distress. Now the shadow under the garden wall was broadening out across the lawn toward us. Would that darker shadow, that seemed to threaten this unruffled man reading so calmly and so peacefully at my side, with its steady inexorable encroachment, darken his life and then blot him out forever? Or would a door in the high wall open, slashing the shadow with a path of light down which he would pass?

Perched high on the center post of the arch that spans the garden walk where it pierces the hedge of yew, a thrush was filling the air with its limpid song, and when the deeper notes of the chimes came booming down from the cathedral tower, he would stop a while, bright head cocked, alert and listening. Then as they died away he would throw himself back, and with throbbing throat, fill the air again with pure ecstasy. The long hot day of death and horror was closing on a note of peace.

That was my hope, as I sat in the mellowing evening light, but the sun was not to set before I witnessed yet another angry scene between Kenneth and the doctor.

He and Ralph came round the end of the house as the thought crossed my mind. Catching sight of us, they halted, talking urgently together. Even from where I sat, I could see that Kenneth was obstinately overriding advice that Ralph was giving. He stood with his legs wide apart, his hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets, his chin stuck out, stolid and determined to have his own way! Then they hurried toward us, Ralph lagging behind a little, half reluctant. I wondered what new trouble had arisen.

It was the medicine The Tundish had given to Ethel. Margaret had told them about it.

Kenneth was furious. “I say, is it true about your giving some medicine to Ethel?” he asked, planting himself straight in front of the doctor’s chair.

“Yes, quite true. Have you any objection?” The Tundish replied, gently closing his book, keeping his place with inserted finger, and looking up with a slow smile and a twinkling eye.

“Objection! I should think I damned well have! I, for one, don’t care for your way of making up prescriptions.”

“No? Well, if you should be taken ill, Kenneth, and I have to prescribe, the medicine shall be made up at a chemist’s and delivered in a sealed bottle. Now, if you will excuse me, I should like to get on with my book.”

“But Margaret says she has just been up-stairs to find out if Ethel wanted anything, and her bedroom door is locked and there was no reply when she knocked,” Ralph urged, looking anxiously up at Ethel’s bedroom window, in which the blinds were drawn.

“My dear young friend, I told her to lock it myself. I do hope that Margaret hasn’t waked her up. Now please be sensible and let the poor girl have what rest she can get. You can do no earthly good by making any bother. If I have poisoned Ethel’s medicine—which I take it is the friendly suggestion you are both of you making—she is dead by now, and nothing that you or any one else could do would save her. If I haven’t, then isn’t it rather a pity to wake her up merely to satisfy your curiosity? That’s the logic of the position, but if you feel it to be your duty, go and have a word with Inspector Brown about it. He is just packing up his treasures prior to departure.”

This, I felt, was taking things a little too calmly, and I could understand the frown that had gathered on Ralph’s dark face while the doctor was speaking. Could not his behavior, which I had described to myself as calm and unruffled, perhaps be more aptly labeled callous and cold-blooded? And if so, what revision of ideas and estimates of possibilities might not then be necessary? Kenneth had turned round and called out to the inspector at once as he was on the point of opening the door into Dalehouse Lane. Ralph was hesitant, but Kenneth took him by the arm and dragged him across the lawn.

While I watched them talking to the inspector, wondering with interest what that stolid individual would advise them to do, The Tundish had returned to his book. He was absorbed immediately—lost to the world. He had given them his advice and that apparently was the end of it as far as he was concerned.

After a few minutes’ conversation Inspector Brown departed. A brief consultation between the two boys followed, and then Kenneth came back to us alone.

“We have decided to do as you asked us,” he said tersely.

“Thank you. I’m very glad to hear it.”

Kenneth came a step nearer. “But if anything happens to Ethel—I’ll—I’ll kill you.” He spoke very slowly and leaned over toward the doctor. His fists were clenched, and for a moment I thought that he was going to strike. The Tundish never moved a muscle.

“Do the hangman out of one job, and give him another? That the idea?” he laughed pleasantly, and returned once more to his interrupted reading.

Kenneth controlled himself with difficulty and strode away. A boy went whistling down the lane. The doctor continued his reading. I looked at him slyly as he sat quietly engrossed by my side.

“I can’t help sympathizing with Kenneth and Ralph, you know,” I said. “It isn’t that I suspect you of having had anything to do with Stella’s death, but——”

“But——?” he interrupted quizzically.

I did not know how to finish my sentence; how to put into words that would not offend, the feeling I had that there was something foreboding, something suggestive, in his having made up medicine for Stella one night, and then again after the terrible disaster for Ethel. The circumstances were too much alike. Two taper glasses. Two——

“Come, Jeffcock,” he said kindly, when he saw my hesitation, “for heaven’s sake don’t let the hot weather get on your nerves too.”

“That’s all very well,” I reminded him, “but you must have had some very similar feelings yourself, or why did you want us to witness your making up of Ethel’s prescription?”

He looked at me and laughed outright. “Wrong again, I never felt a qualm. I wanted you and Margaret in the dispensary for a very different reason.”

I am sure that my astonishment was obvious, but he ignored my surprise and closed his book saying, “Now I’m going to bed. Thank God, this awful day is over.”

It was evident that I should get no further information from him as to his real reasons for our presence in the dispensary, even if I pressed him. The subject was closed. We walked slowly across the brown scorched lawn and back to the house.

In the hall we met cook, dirty: and unkempt, a wisp of greasy hair straggling across her pasty, unhealthy-looking face. She was on her way up-stairs to bed. The Tundish was as good as his word and asked her rather sharply why the dinner had been so badly cooked.

She folded her arms across her floppy ample bosom and leered at him offensively.

“Come, Grace, I want an answer to my question.”

She tilted back her ugly pasty face, half closed her beady eyes, and nodded slowly backward and forward, the greasy wisp of hair waving ludicrously with every movement that she made. The leer became an ugly smile, and then she laughed aloud—a low disturbing laugh. Fat red arms folded against her untidy dress, she looked revolting as she stood there nodding at us, leering and laughing in turns.

The doctor gazed at her solemnly, unmoved, showing neither annoyance nor the disgust that I felt myself. His steady eyes were disconcerting. Her laughing ceased. Then she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, stuck her head forward at the doctor, and whispered hoarsely, “I knows what I knows, Dr. Wallace.”

She waddled away unsteadily. I turned to The Tundish to see how he would take it. He was standing immovable, unseeing. Only that same morning had I seen him standing thus in the doorway as we were having breakfast—his brain so deep in thought that his eyes, while open wide, were blind, inanimate and uncontrolled. Then he had muttered, “I can’t have made a mistake. I simply can’t have made a mistake,” but now he whispered, nearly inaudibly, “I wonder what she knows, now I wonder what she knows.”

He came back to life with a start and a smile of amusement at his own abstraction, told me that he was going straight to bed as he half expected that he might be called out in the early hours to a case of indisputable first-aid, and then with one foot on the bottom stair, he turned to me and said, “And by the way, Jeffcock, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll lock your bedroom door to-night.”

Then he said, “Good night,” and was gone.

Chapter X.
I Analyze the Position

I moved across the hall into the drawing-room. The two boys, I learned, had already gone to bed, but Margaret was still curled up in a chair by the window placidly knitting. She looked pretty, I thought, with the fading evening light from the window shining on one tight little coil of golden hair, the graceful curve at the back of her head emphasized by the parting that ran down the middle. Her occupation, somehow, seemed proper to the setting and enhanced the pretty picture that she made. Ethel knitted jumpers too, but she went at them with a rush. With Margaret it was all leisurely movement and grace, and I imagined her feelings when knitting, as those of a cat, which sits in the sun and slowly and endlessly washes its face. She greeted me with a sleepy smile, stifled a yawn, and proceeded to gather her belongings together, but her scissors could not be found though we searched the floor together and felt down the hidy-hole between the back and the seat of her chair. Finally we had to give them up for lost, though she was sure that she had had them only five minutes before, and she bade me good night, and left me.

I was alone. The house was very still and quiet. It was yet daylight, but the light was fading rapidly and I switched on one of the electric lamps. The high red wall sheltered us completely from the road—there was no need to draw the blinds. The windows stood wide open, but so stifling and quiet was the air that they might have looked out on to some huge overheated greenhouse instead of an English garden.

Tired out, I yet had no desire for sleep. For the first time during the long trying day I was absolutely alone, unobserved, and with time and solitude for thought. I paced up and down the room for a full half-hour, pipe in mouth, busily rehearsing first this incident, then that, in a vain attempt to achieve some reasoned explanation, some possible solution, of the mystery that surrounded Stella’s sudden death.

Alone and away from the influence of his calm assurance, my instinctive, unreasoning belief in the doctor began to weaken and give way under the combined bludgeonings of evidence and argument.

Seeing a writing pad lying on one of the window-seats, I drew up a chair to a small occasional table, and taking a pencil out of my pocket I proceeded to make out a list of all who were in the house on the previous night, setting down every piece of evidence, every possible relevant fact, in an attempt to clear my mind and analyze the situation. At the outset I came to the conclusion that on the important question of motive I should not only have to consider the obvious and the possible, but also the unlikely and the grotesque. The murder must have been premeditated, cold-blooded—an abnormality. It would not be surprising therefore, should the motive—the root from which the evil deed had sprung—be found, if ever unearthed, as something twisted and rotten.

I kept the rough notes that I made, and on referring to them I see that I was methodical enough to add my own name to the list. They are detailed and tedious and I will only quote in full the remarks I wrote down about the doctor on that hot sultry night in the Dalehouse drawing-room. Here they are:

Dr. Wallace

The poison.—The Chinese poison, on which he and Dr. Hanson had been working would leap to his mind at once did he wish to kill by poisoning. Its action is difficult to diagnose. But would he then have called Allport’s attention to its peculiar taste? Would he have stated that he found the glass at Stella’s bedside with a drop at the bottom of it, and that he suspected the Chinese poison at once by reason of its smell? Yes, he might. He would know that he would be suspected at once, and he might reasonably argue that by calling attention to the Chinese poison himself he would be creating a favorable impression. An impression that would be strengthened when it was found that the medicine glass had been thrown away. (But the key in his own pocket?) Could he not have poisoned her equally easily at any other time? Yes, but what better time could he have had? He was making up medicine for her. He had just been threatened with some sort of exposure. Then he played the practical joke on the beds and took care to have it clearly established that we all of us had the chance to be up-stairs and alone on the evening of the murder.

The cupboard key.—Had his own all the time.

The medicine.—Yes, both knowledge and opportunity.

The bedroom key.—He could have thrown the glass away after Ethel came down-stairs, have locked the door, and have put the key in the pocket of his thin coat which he was wearing at the time. But why should he then come and tell me that he had left the door unlocked? Obviously to make it look as though some one else had locked it. But in that case he would surely have placed the key in a position incriminating some one else and not himself? A possible explanation is that he intended to do this, but either had no easy opportunity or forgot. Then just as he was going out he remembered and came back to make the omission good, only to find me turning away from the telephone, having completed my conversation, and his coat with the key in it hanging up straight in front of me. He certainly must have come up behind me very quietly. What would he do in those circumstances? Would he tell me that the door was unlocked and then go calmly away to his patient leaving the key in his own pocket? Would he take that enormous risk? A man of his undoubted ability could surely have found some excuse to get me out of the way—have made some opportunity of getting at the key? Or might he not decide on a double bluff as it were? He told Allport that the glass was at the side of the bed, the dregs smelling of the poison. He told me that he had left the door unlocked. The door is found to be locked, and when it is broken open the glass is gone. Some one else, the murderer, has been up and thrown the glass away and locked the door. Where would such a one put the key if he wanted to throw suspicion on another? Why, in the doctor’s pocket, of course, the man who made up the medicine. And so he would decide to leave it where it was. If Margaret and I really heard any one creeping on the stairs could it have been the doctor? The time that elapsed between what she heard and what I did is not known accurately enough to be certain, but probably it might have been he.

Motive.—Obvious, and for a potential murderer, sufficient.

Notes.—(a) Would Allport have left any man with such evidence against him at liberty for even an hour, unless there are points in his favor that I have either overlooked or have had no opportunity to learn about?

(b) Why did he call Margaret and me into the dispensary when he made up Ethel’s medicine this evening?

(c) Why did he tell Ethel to lock her door and warn me about mine?

(d) What did cook’s “I know what I knows,” portend?

(e) What is the truth about his quarrel with Stella’s father?

(f) The practical jokes with the beds were quite out of keeping with his character. It not only struck me forcibly at the time, but he anticipated my surprise and gave an explanation of his actions before I had said a word to him about it.

(g) Had he killed Stella, could he have spoken to us as he did when we were collected together at the breakfast table? Could he have brazened it out? Most emphatically—Yes.

Conclusion.—Every real established fact that has come to light incriminates the doctor. Opportunity, motive, knowledge of the poison, and ability to face the rest of us with undisturbed indifference—all indicate the doctor.

In the same way and under the same headings I went through each member of the household, including Miss Summerson, Annie and cook. Definite knowledge as to the exact whereabouts and action of the poison could only be ascribed to Ethel, Miss Summerson and myself, in addition to The Tundish. But Annie, or Kenneth, or indeed any of us might either have been told about it or have overheard some conversation.

As to the key of the poison cupboard, Miss Summerson had her own. She might have taken the poison out of the cupboard before she lost it, and any of the rest of us might have found it when she had. Probably, Ethel alone of the party, however, would know it for what it was.

I had real difficulty in my efforts to find reasonably plausible motives for the crime—that is, apart from the doctor. He was easy enough. I see that I made Ralph kill her because she had refused to marry him—hot work for even those hot days, to fall in love, propose marriage, be rejected, grow mad with jealousy and slay, all in the space of some fifty hours. But that was the best I could do for the quiet Ralph. I made Ethel kill her because she was jealous of The Tundish; Margaret, because she was jealous of Ralph; Kenneth, because he wanted to fasten the blame on the placid, aggravating doctor whom he hated so much; but for one reason or another, each more fantastic than the last, they each in turn, according to my notes, slew Stella.

Thoroughly absorbed in my writing, the moths which blundered with blind persistence against the solitary shaded lamp above my head, and the cathedral chimes with their insistent repetitions, had alike been insufficient to disturb or distract. My list at last completed, I heaved a sigh of relief, and straightened out my back.

How still and quiet the big room was. Still and quiet as death itself.

The table at which I was seated stood against the inner wall and toward the end of the room nearest the front of the house. The piano jutted out immediately before me, and over the top of it I could see the large French window that looked on to the garden from the other end, paneled in silver-gray by the moonlit sky, while between it and my own little circle of warmer light there lay a belt of shadows and dim uncertainties.

The faint tick, tick, of the dining-room clock was the only sound to reach my ears. The curtains hung in the open windows, limp and still. I felt myself on the brink of fear.

Fear! Afraid of what? A grown man afraid of a quiet room at night! Ridiculous! Absurd, do you say? Then you know nothing of fear. To you a soft step and a shadow that moves mean naught. “Children’s Terror” has never held you in its grip. Fear! The anticipation of something unknown and inexplicable, intangible, shadowy and unreal—can not be argued and defined. Give it a name, know it well enough to name it, define and analyze it, meet it face to face, and fear—true bloodcurdling fear—evaporates at once. But leave it vague and shadowy, unexplained and undefined, then a still room at the dead of night, the quiet tick, tick, of a distant clock, the creak of a board in an old, old house, and an ever-increasing desire to look furtively behind, may be enough to make the bravest pulses race, when nerves are on edge and imagination plays its part.

Must I name myself a coward then, because I sat with quickened breath, listening for I know not what, when bravery itself is nothing but a knowledge and a crushing down of fear? For what agonies of bravery may not be endured in the making of a coward’s reputation! What lack of sensibility and imagination may not go to the winning of a hero’s fame!

But, coward or no, when I saw the door which was just ajar, swing slowly open to a wider angle, my flesh crept—my heart skipped a beat. It was the big tabby Tom. As he rounded the corner of the piano and saw me, he gave a little squawk of pleasure, and jumped up on my knee, purring with satisfaction, and expressing his appreciation of my caresses, by the digging in of his curving claws.

He had broken the spell. I leaped to my feet, and pulling down the other switches, flooded the room with a rosy glow from the shaded lamps. I relighted my pipe, and perching the cat on my shoulder, I began to pace the room again.

I had set out to come to some reasoned understanding with myself as to the doctor’s innocence or guilt, and my fit of nerves conquered, I would finish my self-appointed task. When with him, how steady and kind he seemed to be—his unalterable calm, the natural outcome of his hidden strength. But away from him, and here alone in the quiet of the night, how damning the evidence against him, and how easy to revalue that self-same unalterable calm and label it afresh—cynical, cold-blooded, sinister or callous!

I had to confess that I had not succeeded in my attempt to play the role of an impartial critic logging up a list of facts. I knew it even as I wrote my notes. Horrible as it may sound, I had found myself longing and searching for some further possible evidence against Miss Summerson—something that might incriminate Annie or cook—anything, however trivial and absurd, that might in some small measure relieve the doctor of the burden of suspicion that weighed him down, and help to take the guilt of murder further away from the members of our little party.

Impartial? No, I had not been impartial. While I had endeavored to disperse and lighten the dark shadows that were gathering ever more closely round the figure of the impassive doctor, I had eagerly sought out every evil and distorted possibility to place among my scandalous notes about the rest. And my list of motives! God save the mark, how absurd they all of them sounded. I had turned dear old Dalehouse, with its honest square red face, into a veritable “Abode of love,” honeycombed with unacknowledged love-affairs, unrequited passions, and murder-urging jealousies.

I returned once more to my little table. However absurd, I would complete my analysis of the situation. I took a fresh sheet of paper and proceeded to add to the notes I had already made the following list of points, which I felt had some real bearing on the problem, and yet which could not very well be allocated to any particular member of the household.

(a) What were the two small fragments of glass that Allport found in Stella’s room—minute fragments that he had treasured so carefully and that had given him food for such furious thinking?

(b) What could have given rise to Inspector Brown’s peculiar manner when he had asked me if my initials were F. H., and why on earth should he have asked me that question so suddenly then at that time?

(c) Once again, why did Allport pretend that he had found the key in Kenneth’s room? As he was aware that I knew of its correct hiding-place in the doctor’s pocket, did it imply, that as far as he was concerned, at any rate, I was considered free from suspicion?

(d) Who was it who had laughed so disturbingly in the waiting-room on the morning of my arrival. Miss Summerson had told a lie then. Was there any connection between that and the murder?

(e) Why had Allport shown such a sudden interest in the photograph on the piano?

I felt that if only I had the answer to some of these questions, I should at any rate have some sort of insight into the little detective’s extraordinary behavior—some explanation of his reasons for leaving us to our own devices so suddenly, while he followed up a clue which he admitted held out little or no hope of leading him to the murderer. Surely one of his assistants could have chased this shadow, leaving him free to deal with the obviously more urgent problem that still remained unsolved here in Dalehouse.

I got up and carefully examined the photograph that had roused his sudden attention, but I could find nothing either suspicious or illuminating. It was a cabinet photograph of Ralph taken, I should imagine, a couple or so years before. I took it out of its frame as Allport had done. My guess had been correct. It was signed across the back in a rather boyish hand, and dated. I replaced it wondering. It was an absolute mystery. He had been walking toward me after his little tiff with Inspector Brown. The photograph had suddenly caught his eye, and some bright idea had dawned on him. He had been unable to hide his satisfaction. Inexplicable!

My notes were now complete, and I read them through, determined to come to some sort of conclusion based on what I had written down. At length, after many trials and much crossing out, I drew up the following table:—

I had to make several attempts before I got the various numbers to my liking. For instance, if the chances that Annie had information about the Chinese poison were to be represented by the figure three, was it just that the figure two should be set down against the cook? Or should they not be five and four respectively? Then I had to look back through my notes again to see what I had written down against the others, and perhaps alter all the figures in the column, before I reached what I considered was an estimate that was fair and just to all of us.

I, of course, appreciated at once that it was only a very rough measure of possibilities, that it might give me the wildest of results, and that it was entirely unjust to count up the totals in the way I had done. But it did compel me to make detailed comparisons. It did give me some sort of an index figure against each member of the party. It showed me immediately that The Tundish and Ethel stood in a category apart from the rest of us in that they had a score of five or over under every head in the table. I was again surprised to notice how heavily Ethel was involved. No wonder Allport had been so persistent in his questions. Of the rest of us, Miss Summerson, Annie, cook and myself, were all roughly alike with a score lying between twenty and thirty, and we were alike too in that we had no score at all under the important heading “Motive.” Margaret, Kenneth and Ralph were, all three, practically equal at the bottom, but for each of them there was a conceivable motive.

I must have sat pondering over my notes for more than an hour, and it amused me to wonder what the clever little Allport would have said of my efforts. Time had passed almost unheeded, and when the cathedral clock registered a deep-noted one, I was surprised to find that it was the half-hour after midnight instead of half past eleven as I had expected. The cat had been seated, blissfully happy, on my knee while I wrote, and perching him on my shoulder again, I got up with a sigh, my mind quite made up that The Tundish must be guilty. No other explanation seemed capable of being twisted and molded to fit the whole of the facts.

The windows were still open and I went round the room shutting them one by one, At the big French window I stood for a time looking out on the moonlit garden. Then I decided to go out and see if I could find any ladder near the surgery wing that might have been used for getting on to the flat-roof top. I would finish my job. I opened the window and stood for a time on the narrow asphalt path that ran round the back of the house.

It was almost painfully beautiful, and I remember that as I stood looking at the quiet garden scene, I fell to wondering what quality it held that filled me with such unutterable sadness. Not a leaf was moving. A motorcycle passed along the road at the front of the house with a sudden roar—a splash in the pool of silence. Then the ripples died away and all was glassy calm once more.

From the high cathedral tower what a view there must be on a night like this—first the houses of the city huddled round the base of the hill, a study in shady blacks and steely blues as the moon’s pure light picked out this old house in light and shade and played on the sloping roof of that—then for miles around, the undulating countryside, billowy sea of misty gray and blue.

And in all the scene, I thought, city and countryside alike, there could be no roof that sheltered such unhappiness, as the roof of the old red Georgian house underneath whose shadow I stood.

The cat still cuddling comfortably up against my neck, I walked across the lawn toward the surgery wing. The end away from the house lay deep in the shade, but there, plain enough, slung across two stout iron hooks, was a short wooden ladder. It was short, but, I calculated, long enough to allow of any fairly active person reaching the roof and gaining access to Stella’s bedroom window.

I looked up at the house. I could just make out the white framed windows from the surrounding shadows. The moon rode clear between the chimneys and over the old red roof. Then as I watched I saw a light shine in the window that lights the stairs between the first and second floors. Just a faint but steady glow. It came and went again as I stood wondering what on earth it could be.

The light might have come, I decided, from either the first or the second landing, but it was not the light I should have seen had any one switched on either of the landing lights. It was not nearly bright enough for that. Had some one struck a match? No, for that it was too equal and steady. Or some one perhaps had opened the door of a lighted room, and the reflected light had given that momentary steady glow to the staircase window? No, and that didn’t quite meet the case either, I thought. Had it been the light from an open door, surely it would have faded away more gradually as the door was closed? Quickly, perhaps, but not with a sudden jerk like the light I had seen at the window. That had gone out with a click. A click! Yes, that was it. Some one had been using an electric flash-light on one of the landings.

I returned to the warm light of the drawing-room and quietly relocked the door. Then out into the hall, where I stood for a minute listening. Not a single sound could I hear from the landing above. My childish fears began to crowd round me again, and the cat, which was still on my shoulder, must have caught the feeling from me, for I felt his neck suddenly stiffen, as we gazed together up the darkened stairs. Then he jumped from my shoulder and disappeared. I switched on the landing light, and treading as quietly as I could, I crept up-stairs.

Chapter XI.
On the Landing at Midnight

With quiet stealthy tread on the heavy carpet I attained a position half-way up the flight of stairs. Not a sound had I made. Not a board had creaked. No movement or noise was anywhere in all the quiet house. Then with a quick catch in my breath I halted, suddenly motionless, my fears redoubled.

There just above me, stuck up above the switch and shining white in the light from the landing, was a square piece of paper similar to the one I had found in the same position only the night before when I came up-stairs to bed.

I fancy, that, somehow or other, my own stealthy movements had engendered in me a condition, keyed up and ready tuned to vibrate in response to any sudden nervous shock, for, uncontrolled, my heart went pounding and a sickening chill went shuddering down my back. To steady myself again I had to grasp the hand-rail.

Last night just such another piece of paper to which I had made my unfortunate and imbecile addition—but Stella dead when the morning came. No possible connection between the two? How could there be when, innocent, I myself had committed the more pertinent part of the folly? And now again to-night another piece of paper standing out clear and white against the landing wall. What did it all mean? What could it mean? Was some fresh disaster lying hidden undiscovered just ahead? Or was it nothing but another stupid joke? But, in God’s name, I asked myself, who, either sane or sober, would perpetrate such a joke, or any joke, so soon after Stella’s death and the day’s events. And if not a joke, then——?

Full of apprehension, I mounted the remaining stairs.

It was a plain post-card, I found, with the address, “Dalehouse, Merchester,” printed neatly in the top right-hand corner. I had observed similar cards standing in a case on the top of the doctor’s desk. Across the middle of it had been pasted the words:

dark DEEDS are Done in Dalehouse at Night.

Just for a brief moment I did not quite grasp the reason for the irregular appearance of the message, but I soon tumbled to it, that the sentence had been built up by cutting out odd words and letters from a newspaper, and then pasting them on to the card. A faint pencil line had been ruled to keep the wording level. A neat and careful hand had been at work.

I suppose that in even the most sheltered and uneventful lives there are some little scenes that, for one reason or another, stand out with illogical precision from among the million of tiny impressions that are daily transferred from retina to brain. Childish memories, perhaps, that stand out clear and unfaded by the passage of time, while the settings of life’s more important crises become fogged and indeterminate. For me, however, there will always remain an unfaded mental picture of that quiet dimly lighted landing, the tracery of the pattern on the carpet, the shadow of the hand-rail on the stairs, the high lights and shadows on the metal of the double switch, and the plain white card with its ominous little message. I have but to close my eyes to recall each minute detail at will, and see myself standing hesitant at the center of the picture, miserable, and incapable of action.

Since breakfast time, a century ago it seemed, each long hot hour had been fraught with some fresh horror or distress, and now, fagged out, my brain refused to work—my faculties failed to function. I gazed at the card in stupid amazement. I felt my eyes grow round and goggle. What should I do? What ought I to do? Should I obey my first impulse and arouse the decisive doctor, in spite of the fact that a space of minutes only had passed since I had labeled him the logical answer to our riddle in the dark? Should I knock up Kenneth and Ralph and precipitate yet another repetition of the earlier angry scenes? Should I ring up the police? Or should I allow myself to drift, come to no decision at all, go to bed, and lock my door? Each alternative in turn I pondered twenty times and then rejected. To go calmly to bed, leaving the others ignorant and unwarned of such an open threat against their safety was unthinkable indeed, yet try as I might, make up my mind I could not, to any other course of action. There I stood, yes, and might have stood till dawn of day, turning the wretched card ever over and over in my hands, hot with self-shame and fuming at my incapacity. Then I heard a gentle muffled sound of movement on the landing up above, which brought me back to life once more and quickened me to action.

I pushed up the switch as gently as I might and stood in the dark, alert at last and listening. Yes, some one moving cautiously above—faint but unmistakable. Testing each board as I trod it against a sudden creak, step by step, soft and slow, I crept along the stairs that led to the upper landing and poor murdered Stella’s bedroom.

The door of the fatal room was standing wide, and as my eyes reached the level of the topmost step they met a beam of white electric light. Low and level it made a track of light that cut the darkened room in two, and crouching down against it, there was somebody kneeling.

It was The Tundish. I recognized him at once in spite of the dim light. The big white tassels at the end of his dressing-gown cord and those thin but steady hands of his gave him away.

I negotiated the remaining steps and gained the head of the flight without a sound, unless my thudding heart was really audible. Then I stood absorbed. To his right on the floor there lay a small electric torch. That was the light I had seen as I mounted the stairs. In the narrow path that it slashed across the shadows the doctor’s sensitive hands were moving methodically over the carpet. He was stroking the pile this way and that, his white taper fingers ever probing and searching. Then he pushed the light a pace farther on and repeated the process. I watched as he moved his position half a dozen times or so, then from the landing below there came the unmistakable distinctive click of a closing door.

The Tundish heard it too. I saw him jerk up his head to listen. His hands ceased their restless searching and lay quiet and still in the band of light. What would he do, I wondered, if he thought that there was some one awake and moving about on the landing beneath? What would he do if he knew that I stood there in the dark just behind him watching him at work?

He switched off the electric torch. I flattened myself against the wall.

“What is it, Jeffcock?” he whispered. “Did you hear a door shut down below?”

I jumped like a frightened horse, so sudden and unexpected came the whispered question from out of the quiet, darkened room. Not once had he turned his head or glanced in my direction. The landing was inky black. I could have sworn that I had not made a vestige of noise as I crept up the stairs to find him. Yet, not only did he know that he was being watched, but he knew that it was I.

Had we both been seated comfortably at the breakfast table, he might have questioned me as to a second helping of bacon in just such a casual tone of voice. Astonishing and imperturbable, could nothing shake him? Did he see nothing incongruous or bizarre in my standing there on the darkened landing at dead of night while he made his secret search on the floor by Stella’s bed?

“What on earth are you doing and how did you know I was there?” I asked in a shaking voice that I failed to control.

“Hush! Speak more quietly, man! Did you think you heard a door shut? Come along in and close the door.”

Since, I have often thought, and I must confess with not a little shame, that there could have been no better illustration of a strong man’s personality dominating that of a man less strong. There was I with my suspicions all aroused—suspicion backed by evidence and based on solid reasoning—suspicions, which in spite of my instinctive liking for the doctor, would not lie dormant and disregarded—yet he only had to whisper, “Come along in and close the door,” and I go to him in a darkened room without thought of harm or danger. One minute I write him down a murderer, the next, unhesitating, I place my life in his hands. I find him creeping furtively about the house at night with an electric torch, and it is he who quietly asks me what I am doing and what it is that I want.

In the dark we stood with straining ears for a little time and then he opened the door and listened again at the top of the stairs. I remained alone in the room, still troubled as to what line of action I ought to take. Should I show him what I had found and tax him with having put it where I found it, or let matters run their course and see what happened next? I could just make out the outline of Stella’s bed. Dark deeds are done in Dalehouse at night. I still held the card in my hand.

He came back to me, shutting the door carefully behind him. He switched on his flashlight again, taking care to keep the beam directed away from the window, in which the blind was undrawn. “What is it, Jeffcock? Is anything the matter? What made you come up here?” he whispered quickly.

“I heard you moving about. What were you looking for?”

He hesitated.

“Look here, Jeffcock, I really am most awfully sorry, but I can’t tell you. I was merely following up a little idea of my own—doing a little private detective work.”

I believed him implicitly and at once. So much for my labors in the drawing-room! I showed him the revised edition of the notice. So much for my voluminous notes and my absurd little table of final reckoning!

“What do you think of that?” I asked, watching his face as closely as I could in the light of the electric torch.

“Where did you find it?”

I told him. He whistled softly. He held the light up close to the printed words. Black shadows and a small bright circle of light. A strong white hand holding a small white card. As I looked I felt my suspicions revive again.

But directly he spoke I was reassured. “I don’t like it,” he said after a pause. “I don’t like the look of it at all. It means the devil of a disturbance and a fuss, but we must wake the others up and make sure that all of them are safe. This little message can not be ignored. We will leave Annie and cook until the last—come along down-stairs.”

Side by side we made our way down-stairs together, and only just behind us there came the quiet pad, pad, pad, of another pair of feet. I put my hand on the doctor’s arm to stay him and we stood together holding our breath and straining to hear.

Our follower also stopped immediately; he or she must be standing a little way above us on the darkened stairs. The Tundish flashed on his torch and sent its white beam searching up and down. Not a soul was to be seen. All was empty and quiet and still.

To say that I was badly scared would be an understatement. The unhealthy heat of the interminable day—the shock of the morning’s discovery; the ordeal of little Allport’s inquisition; Kenneth’s violent outburst—these and all the other events that had followed one another with such sinister regularity—each in turn had sapped my strength until now I stood a bundle of tortured nerves. I could have turned and fled.

“Well, that beats the band,” The Tundish whispered. “You did hear a step?”

“Yes, I could have sworn to it.”

He sent his light flashing to every corner again, then keeping it alight, we continued our interrupted descent. It came again at once, the gentle following tread of slippered feet. My hair fairly bristled. Then to my astonishment I heard the doctor chuckle.

He twisted round and pointed his light at the steps immediately above him. “There’s the ghost,” he said, pointing to the tassels at the end of his dressing-gown cord, which was undone and dragging down the stairs behind him. He shook with silent mirth. “What a priceless pair of fools we are,” he gasped, but I had been too much upset to enjoy the humor of the situation.

Arrived on the bottom landing again, he switched on the light. It was an old lamp retired from one of the rooms to do more humble service and it gave but a dim and feeble light. It was very quiet. “Well, here’s for it,” he said, “you go and rout out Kenneth and I’ll attend to Ralph.”

I turned the handle of Kenneth’s door and was not surprised to find it locked. Soon, we both of us were knocking loudly with our fists. There was no longer need to be quiet, and the noise that we made went echoing, like a challenge, through the silent house. Dark-deeds-are-done-in-Dalehouse-at-night. I thumped it out on Kenneth’s door.

He was very sound asleep and I heard the doctor talking to Ralph before I could wake him up. When at length he did unlock his door, I told him to slip on his dressing-gown, and soon the four of us were gathered in a group under the landing light. The two boys were full of questions, but The Tundish asked them to wait with what patience they could while he roused the girls and made sure that they both were safe.

Ethel’s door swung slowly open on its hinges even as he moved toward it, and, clad in a pretty smoke blue dressing-gown, she stood in the doorway before us, swaying slightly, only half awake, a hand against each post to give herself support. She had switched on her bedroom light and its brighter glow shone through her ruffled curly hair. Senses quickening gradually, seeing us grouped together, her sleepy long-lashed eyes grew wide and her poor bruised face and swollen lips blanched and twitched, as her wakening fears increased. She tried to speak and failed.

The Tundish hurried toward her.

“What it is? Oh, what is it, Tundish dear?” she whispered.

He reassured her with a quiet, “There’s nothing to fear.” He held himself well in check, but I could see how he longed to take her in his strong safe arms and kiss her fears away. It was pitiful to see them standing there together, their love for each other so evident to us all. To Kenneth it must have been wormwood and gall. Ralph fetched her a chair from his room and we showed her what I had found.

Margaret was the last to be roused, and we had to knock on her door repeatedly before we could wake her up and then she was some minutes again before she joined us. Her eyes too, seemed heavy with sleep, but in contrast to Ethel she looked alert and awake. A pink dressing-gown, open wide at her full white throat, showed the creamy texture of her curving breast. She put up a hand to the pretty gap as with a giggle she said, “What a sight I must look.” However unsuitable the occasion, I thought, she must always have her femininity on parade. We none of us made the sought-for reply and she went and knelt by Ethel’s chair, holding and patting her hands.

While we were waiting for Margaret, the doctor had gone up-stairs again to find out about Annie and cook. Annie evidently was already wakened by the noise we had made and I soon heard him talking to her. Cook, however, he could not rouse, though we heard him pounding and banging away on her door. There was something altogether ghastly in the noise he made while we waited whispering below. Thud, thud, thud, and then a pause, and before the echoes had died away, a fierce thud, thud again. Thud-thud—thud—death—for surely the dead and only the dead could sleep through such a thudding!

He rejoined us, placid and unconcerned.

“I can’t wake her, but I am sure that I can hear her breathing,” he told us. “If she has been drinking though, it might take more than mere noise to rouse her. She has locked her door and left the key in it turned so that I can’t push it out.” He was the only one of us, I noticed, to speak above a whisper and in his usual voice.

“But what on earth is it all about?” Kenneth asked. “You were pretty sarcastic, I remember, this afternoon, when I suggested waking Ethel.” He overpitched his voice in an attempt to copy the doctor’s equanimity. Poor Kenneth!

“Yes, yes, but then you see I knew that she was safe, and this little Satan’s love note had not been found.”

“I don’t understand it. What were you both doing about the house at this time of night?” Kenneth asked, turning to me. “If you found it, why did you wake up the doctor, of all people, before the rest of us?”

I looked at The Tundish. Not a word had I said as to where I had found him, and I wondered what he would tell them, but he never hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Oh, I imagined that Jeffcock would have told you all there is to tell while I have been up-stairs,” he replied. And then he proceeded to tell them everything. How I had sat up late, and going into the garden for a stroll, had seen a light shine from the landing window. How I had found the notice behind the switch and him, with his flash-light, searching the floor of Stella’s room. The only thing he omitted to mention was the door we both heard shut with a click on the landing below. When he had finished he turned to me to corroborate his statement.

I could not understand him. Why should he confess so readily to being abroad at night, in circumstances so suspicious, and then ignore the one salient point that stood out so clearly in his favor? I nodded my assent. It was his business after all, and I would not interfere.

His explanation was received in silence—a silence tense with incredulity and disbelief.

Ralph asked him what he was doing in Stella’s room and he gave the same explanation that he had given to me a little time before. His voice held not a trace of emotion or concern. We were all of us looking at him, Ethel with friendly trust and approval, the two boys and Margaret with suspicions they either could not, or did not bother to conceal. For myself, I hardly knew what to think. He faced us all unmoved. He smiled reassuringly at Ethel.

“Either of you two then, could have put this up behind the switch?” Kenneth asked.

“You could have put it there quite as easily yourself,” I answered him angrily.

He shrugged his shoulders. “It just happens that I didn’t,” he said very stiffly. The man was insufferable—a fool.

“We might any of us say that,” Ethel rejoined, up in arms at once directly The Tundish was attacked. “Besides,” she added, “if either Francis or The Tundish had done it, wouldn’t they have printed this one like they did the last?”

“No, of course they wouldn’t. It would have given them away at once. I, or any of the rest of us might have tried to copy the doctor’s printing—just as you did last night, Jeffcock—but either of you two would obviously have to adopt, well, something like this,” he finished rather lamely, pointing to the card.

The Tundish looked amused. “All very pretty up to a point, Kenneth, but don’t you see that what you say applies quite equally to all of us? It was an easy matter for Jeffcock to copy my printing in the first place, and he did it well enough for the purpose, but you don’t really suppose for one moment that his attempt would have hoodwinked an expert? If this means anything at all, the author would never dare to write it out by hand. No, you may be certain of this, that whoever put this card where Jeffcock says he found it, put the poison into Stella’s glass and killed her, and in my opinion, once again, the opportunity has been equally open to us all.”

“No one will admit having done it? We all, including the doctor, deny having had anything to do with it, I suppose?” Kenneth queried.

The Tundish thanked him for the special mention, and we each denied it in turn.

Ethel sat limp in her chair, Margaret kneeling beside her. We four men stood round them, the dim light overhead casting our distorted shadows across the floor and up the landing wall. The Tundish, unruffled and pleasant, his hands in his dressing-gown pockets, rocking himself gently backward and forward on heel and toe; the two boys glum and dour; myself nearly dead with fatigue. A long silence closed down on us again. Liar! Murderer! Poisoner! went whispering through the silence. Six denials and one of them a lie. Who of the six was lying?

The doctor, as ever, broke the pause. “Well, we can do no more now, and in the morning we must tell the police of this new development. You two girls hop back to bed while we make sure about cook.”

“Hush it up as long as we can? All go to bed good friends! I’ll take damned good care that the police know all about it in the morning, but before I go to bed I should like to know where the paper is from which the words have been cut? You won’t object to our searching your room?”

It was Kenneth, of course, who spoke, and Ralph nodded his agreement. “We ought to search all the rooms,” he said.

Almost beyond hearing any more, I burst out with, “For God’s sake do let us go to bed and leave Allport to do his own dirty work!” I spoke querulously and with more feeling than I really intended. My voice was out of control. I felt the others looking at me in surprise.

The Tundish hesitated. “Well, it’s just a chance, but I don’t think we gain very much if the paper is found. I know that if I were guilty it wouldn’t be in my room that any one would find it.”

They were persistent, however, and while Ethel was too tired to take any interest, Margaret seemed inclined to agree with the boys. The doctor assented good-naturedly, and I gave way with the best grace I could.

We dealt first with the rooms belonging to the girls, so that they could complete their broken rest. Kenneth proposed that they might be allowed to deal with each other’s, but the doctor would have none of it; moreover, he insisted on our all keeping together as the rooms were searched in turn. “One of us is a liar and worse than a liar and not to be trusted alone.”

We unmade the beds. We pulled up all the carpets and turned out all the drawers, scattering the clothing on the floor. Nothing was neglected, saving modesty, and nothing incriminating found. Ethel went back to bed. We heard the key turn in the door of her room, and then we moved across the landing into mine.

I stood in the doorway watching the others at work, with Margaret, who said she was sure she would never get to sleep again, at my side. “Isn’t it all too fearfully thrilling?” she whispered confidentially clutching her dressing-gown together with exaggerated modesty. I could cheerfully have slain her on the spot.

Before a bare couple of minutes had passed, Kenneth, who was emptying my few belongings out of the chest of drawers, held up a news sheet above his head in triumph. “I knew we should find it. I knew I was right,” he cried triumphantly. “What have all of you got to say to that?” He might have spotted a Derby winner.

We crowded round him. He held the paper up to the light and we could see at once where here and there odd words and letters had been cut away. That this was the paper that had been used there could be no shadow of a doubt.

They turned to me with questioning glances. Margaret whispered an audible, “Oh! You!”

I had nothing to say, no explanation to give, and stood stupidly tongue-tied before them all. I was too astounded to speak or protest, but I remembered that the doctor had been awake and abroad in the quiet house while I was down-stairs and the rest were locked in their rooms and asleep. His and mine were the only two unoccupied. To make up the notice—place it over the switch and then step into my room and deposit the paper where it had been found—what, I thought, could have been easier for him to do than that? Had he not just stated that if he were guilty that was what he would do? But afterward? Would he have gone up-stairs to Stella’s room and have allowed me to find him there? Or was his search and his private detective work all a pretense and was he really on some murderous errand which I had interrupted? “I knows what I knows,” cook had said. Besotted, drunken cook, what did she know, I wondered? Was she really up-stairs snoring, or had she too, like Stella, made her last adventure and opened the door at the end of the passage?

These were the thoughts that flashed across my mind as I stood stupidly turning the paper this way and that. When I did look up I found Margaret gazing at me with ill-concealed horror; The Tundish, half amused and wholly sympathetic. Kenneth was making a further search and he soon produced another card like the one that had been completed, a tube of paste, and then a pair of scissors.

The paste came from the doctor’s desk, the scissors Margaret claimed as hers. They were the ones she had missed when she cleared up her work to go to bed, and she did not fail to remind me how we had looked for them together.

“Well, it certainly smells a bit fishy.”

“And did you smell fish when the key was found under your own pillow, Kenneth?” The Tundish asked him quietly.

“Yes, I did, and as you’ve asked me the question, I believe it was the same piece of fish.”

“Meaning?”

“Why you, you damned liar, of course.”

The doctor laughed. “You’ll win yet, Kenneth, for you’ll certainly be the death of me! Anyhow you take charge of the treasure trove. Margaret, off to bed with you! We can do no more here and now.” He was in command of the situation once more, and to me, at least, it seemed quite natural that he should be.

Kenneth insisted, however, that we should go up-stairs and verify the doctor’s statement that cook’s snores could be heard through the door, and though I could hear her distinctly and could confirm his opinion, Kenneth pretended that he was not sure and Ralph, of course, followed Kenneth’s lead and was not certain either. The Tundish was willing to convince them and fetched a stout screw-driver, with which, after some little delay, the lock of the door was pried open.

She was lying fully dressed on the top of her bed, her head rolling about grotesquely in time with her heavy breathing. The windows were tight shut and the room reeked of spirits.

The doctor, steadying her head with one hand, raised an eyelid with the other. She never stirred. “Dead drunk, but not dead,” he pronounced. He opened the window and we filed away down-stairs.

The boys disappeared to their rooms. The Tundish and I were alone. “It’s uncanny the way the evidence against me grows,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“Against you! Surely I am the more implicated over this?”

He smiled broadly. “No, indeed. All the other doors except yours and mine were locked. You would never have left such a clue at large and unprotected. It would have been your first care and concern. On the other hand, how exactly it fits with what I might have done myself. You must believe me, though, when I assure you that I didn’t.”

I believed him. Ridiculous as it may sound, I believed him implicitly, and I told him so. We stood alone on the dimly lighted landing. The great cathedral clock was chiming two. We could hear Kenneth barricading his door.

“And you believe in me?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Have you any suspicions at all? Why should any one go to such trouble over such a mad joke?”

“Mad! Yes, but diabolically clever too. Don’t you realize how it has emphasized last night’s notice and helped to link it all up with Stella’s murder?”

“Yes, but mine was the vital part of that. It meant nothing, surely, until I printed my asinine addition?”

“Surely it did. Think how I called attention to the fact that each of us might have been alone up-stairs last night. Think how odd and out of keeping the whole silly practical joke must appear to Allport. Why, you thought so yourself, you know you did! And now this second notice, me caught prowling about the house at night, and the newspaper found in the only vacant bedroom. Whether any further crime was intended to-night or not, nothing could have told more heavily against me. Remember, too, how at Allport’s inquiry Kenneth stressed——”

His sentence trailed away to nothing, and he stood gazing into vacant space, a puzzled frown on his clear-cut pleasant face. “Well, off you go to bed,” he said, breaking through his reverie, “I may yet get my call to that young citizen’s reveille.”

I staggered to my room and tumbled out of my clothes and into bed. My brain refused to tackle further problems, but my last conscious thoughts were of Kenneth. Could I imagine him guilty? Kenneth a murderer—yes, just possibly—perhaps. But Kenneth diabolically clever? No, most emphatically no!

Chapter XII.
Janet Arrives on the Scene

A beauty gazes with a smile of pleasurable anticipation into some distorted mirror, to start back in horror from the grinning image that greets her so unexpectedly. But were little Allport to gaze into a distorted mirror, what then! What unthinkable monstrosity might he not see depicted! And so it was with my dreams and the way they reflected my already gruesome waking thoughts as I dreamed and woke intermittently through what remained of that hot, airless night. If the day had seemed long, those few hours of dream-disturbed sleep were like a slice of eternity itself. An eternity which I occupied in playing tennis at the club, serving through an interminable game, first with the baby flagon of Chinese poison and then with my own severed hand, which Margaret handed to me on her racquet like a ball; in racing frantically from room to room, to find Ethel, then The Tundish, then each of the others in turn, lying dead on their backs with staring bloodshot eyes—all dead, and myself alone with the dead—alone and tearing desperately from one room to the next to find a sign of life; thumping madly on resounding doors; crouching, shrinking down outside them; opening them in fear and banging them to again in terror when I saw what there was within; looking furtively behind me to see little Allport standing there, grinning sardonically, leering at me, dangling a pair of bloodstained handcuffs before my starting eyes, and asking me in a way that left me gasping for breath if my initials were F. H. An eternity which I occupied in overhearing Ethel and the doctor callously plotting together to poison Kenneth, and in creeping on hands and knees down mile-long dimly lighted corridors, to and from a succession of scenes of horror.

Finally I woke to see the sun shining in at my window and to the dull realization that some of my dreams at any rate came uncomfortably near to the truth.

Down-stairs I found The Tundish—unshaved and unabashed—at one end of the breakfast table with a medical journal propped up in front of him, and Kenneth and Ralph at the other, each with a morning paper. I saw the doctor’s eyes twinkle with amusement as I took my seat next to him, and he told me that he had been called out of bed again at four and had only just returned.

“And what about the escort, did he accompany you?”

“No, I rang up the police station yesterday evening telling them that I expected the call, and they trustfully allowed me out on parole.”

This fresh negligence on the part of the authorities seemed to rouse Kenneth’s ire, for he jumped up from his breakfast and rang up Inspector Brown, reporting the finding of the notice and the doings of the night in aggressive carrying tones that we could none of us fail to hear. Apparently his news did not meet with quite the expected reception, for, “Will you please repeat what I’ve told you to Mr. Allport as soon as you can, and ask him to let me know when this abominable farce is going to end,” were his final words, and he returned to his interrupted breakfast, glaring offensively at the doctor, as much as to say, “Damn you, now you know what I think about it.”

Then Margaret came in, and after a moment’s obvious hesitation, which seemed to underline and emphasize her choice, she too moved to the end of the table away from the doctor and took a chair next to Kenneth and Ralph. Thus we started out on the second day after the murder already divided into opposing camps. The Tundish and I at one end of the table, Margaret and the two boys at the other—an uncomfortable accusing gap between us. And in our different ways we each of us, except the doctor, showed the embarrassment we felt. He conversed with me very much at his ease, tapping the open journal in front of him with his egg-spoon to emphasize his forcible remarks, decrying the sins of the anti-vaccinationists and glibly labeling them as nothing but a gang of murderers, as though the word murder held no terrors and was the most natural word in the world for him to use, when the chances were that a murderer sat at the table and I alone of the four believed him anything else.

I saw the three exchange glances, and Margaret murmured, “Murder will out,” though what she meant by it exactly was not quite clear—but words held a fascination for Margaret apart from any meaning they might convey. Had her pretty head been equipped with brains she would surely have been a poet.

Folding up his paper, the doctor rose from the table, asking, “Has any one seen anything of Ethel—is she coming down for breakfast?”

“I haven’t heard a sound from her room,” Margaret replied; “still sleeping, I expect, after her broken night, which is not surprising. I’ll run up and find out how she is.”

We heard her knock twice, and again. Then she came back and stood in the doorway. “I can’t make her hear,” she told us, with a queer little catch in her voice.

Now Ethel had been safe when we woke her in the middle of the night, and we had all heard her lock her door when she returned to her room, but when Margaret made that simple statement it sent our thoughts back to yesterday’s breakfast when Ethel herself had come tumbling into the room with her white face to tell us that she couldn’t waken Stella. We looked at one another in dismay. Kenneth pushed back his chair and rose slowly to his feet. The doctor sprang to the door and raced up the stairs two at a time, and like an echo from the night before we heard him hammering on her door. Then to our infinite relief we heard him asking, “Are you all right, Ethel? Would you like your breakfast sent up-stairs?”

I saw Margaret’s eyes brighten unnaturally, and a tear roll down her cheek. “Oh, how absurd of me!” she said, and hurried away to hide her emotion. Kenneth and Ralph went out into the garden. The doctor returned and rang the bell for Annie, giving her instructions about Ethel’s breakfast, then he turned to me, “So, you’ve had a fright, have you?” he asked quietly, and I felt myself redden under his penetrating gaze.

“I did too,” he added, mopping his forehead. “What a ruffian I must look, Jeffcock. I must bathe and shave and get to work. Thank God, I have a busy day ahead.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “you certainly have the advantage of us there, for we have nothing to do but sit about and jag one another’s nerves. How on earth are we going to get through another day of this—possibly two or three?”

“It may all end sooner than you expect,” he answered enigmatically, and with that he left me and ran up-stairs.

How was I to get through the day, I wondered. Sleep, smoke, write letters, slink about the garden, avoiding Ethel so that she should not learn of my ever-increasing doubts about the doctor! But there were twelve weary hours to while away. I would have gone into the garden and adopted Kipling’s cure for the hump, “Dig till you gently perspire,” but I was doing that already. My thoughts traveled with longing to the tingling crystal air of the Yorkshire moors—that was where I would like to be on such a day as this—off for a twenty-mile tramp with my pipe for company. But that was not to be, and, with a sigh of distaste, I collected writing materials and proceeded to the shade of the cedar to write some letters. Presently Ethel joined me; her face was still swollen—the bruise beginning to blacken. She looked tired too, and I imagined had been crying, but her eyes lit up with something of her old smile, as she came toward me, a letter in her hand.

“Do listen to this,” she cried. “Isn’t it just like mother? She’s sending us a visitor. A visitor now of all times, and some one we’ve never seen before at that!”

Mrs. Hanson’s incoherent hospitality was a family joke. Visitors she must have. She had no discrimination in the matter of individuals and occasions and the way they might jar or mix. She would think nothing of bringing home a perfect stranger, august or otherwise, and feeding him on kindliness and cold mutton. And I will give hes credit for this—the visitor, august or ordinary, the cold mutton, the kindliness and the occasion would generally mix to a pleasantly affable blend. My own friendship with the Hansons dated from one of these haphazard invitations, so I smiled at Ethel reminiscently as she stood by my side with the letter in her hand.

“A good thing too, perhaps,” I said, “we shall have to sit up, mind our manners, and behave. Tell me more about it. What is it to be—rich man, poor man, beggar man or thief?”

Ethel began to read me bits of the letter.

“You remember we were expecting to see my cousin, Bill Kenley, when he got home from Rhodesia—we were to look out for him next week on the Channel boat—well, rather to our surprise he arrived this week, yesterday in fact. And he surprised us still more by bringing with him a wife; they’re on their honeymoon—such a jolly girl—we both of us like her immensely. But poor things, while we were having lunch, a cable arrived for Bill ordering his immediate return—some native unrest that they fear may develop into serious trouble, and he must be on the spot. So he sails back again to-morrow. Meanwhile, what is his wife to do? She has no relatives here. I should have liked her to stay on here with us, but dad takes all my time and he doesn’t want to be bothered with any one else. So it occurred to me: why not send her down to you? You need a chaperon, you know. It’s all very well while the whole lot of you are there together, but after the tournament, you can’t go on keeping house for The Tundish without the Merchester pussies getting their claws into you. So you may expect Janet—that is her name—soon after this letter. You’ll be nice to her, I know—my family are really very good to me about backing up my wild invitations! But she is really very nice and you will enjoy having her on her own account. Dad is steadily getting more like his old self. He tells me to say how sorry he is to miss Francis. I hope you are having a good——”

“Oh well, that is all that matters,” Ethel finished, sitting down and fanning herself with the letter. “How am I to explain the situation to her, Francis, when she arrives? Just imagine coming to a strange house and finding yourself in the thick of all this!”

It certainly was rather a facer for Ethel, but I could not help seeing that the situation had its points. “She sounds better than your Aunt Emmeline anyhow, and that is what you would have had to come to. As your mother says, you can’t go on indefinitely without some older woman, and your aunt is the obvious elder.”

Now the said Aunt Emmeline was a sister of Hanson, ten years his senior, a spinster devoted to good works, and most uncomfortably and obtrusively High Church. When Aunt Emmeline fasted, the recording angel and the cook were not the only ones to know it, and she managed to cast a gloom like a London fog over even the cheerful Dalehouse family. In short she was one of those good women whose men-folk make friends with the devil.

Ethel began to smile. “Yes, Francis, as you say, there may be something to be said for the idea, but I don’t relish the job of explaining the explanations.”

“Oh, well, if she’s a good sort she’ll see you need help; if she isn’t she’ll help herself off, so it really doesn’t matter.”

We left it at that, and after sitting with me for a while Ethel went into the house to make ready for her guest. Apparently Margaret stayed indoors to help Ethel for I hardly saw her all the morning. Kenneth and Ralph paced slowly up and down in the shade at the side of the house. They paid very little attention to me, and I gathered from their manner that they were going over the facts of “the case” much as I had done the night before. They would stand talking earnestly together, and then, resume their walking, only to stop and talk again a minute later. Once or twice they glanced in my direction. Then Ralph pulled a note-book out of his pocket and they disappeared behind the garage. Kenneth was shaking his head emphatically as they went, and I could guess that he was deriding any suggestion of Ralph’s that did not involve the doctor.

I wondered if the two girls were carrying on a similar conversation, and thought how much happier we should be if the boys would behave more as Margaret did. She suspected The Tundish, and to a less extent, I think, she suspected me, but like an ordinary reasonable mortal she kept her suspicions to herself, until they were confirmed.

Rather shamefacedly, I got out my own notes, and went over them again. Everything that had taken place since their compilation went to confirm the conclusion I had come to—and yet I was still unwilling—there was something fine about the—— I put my papers hurriedly away. The boys were coming from the garage. They stopped in front of my chair and I told them of the unexpected addition to our party.

“Oh, lord!” said Ralph, “and a bride too, she’ll smirk and say ‘my husband’ in every sentence.”

“You needn’t worry, Ralph,” was Kenneth’s comment, “the bride will remove herself at once when she realizes the awful company she’s in. Meanwhile—well, it’s a diversion anyway! And talking of diversions, Jeffcock, would it outrage the proprieties, do you think, if we rigged up a Badminton court over there, and had a knock or two? We could telephone for shuttlecocks.”

“Best thing you can do,” I told him. “We can’t sit about all day like this, we must do something.”

“Here’s Margaret,” said Ralph. “Come along, Margaret, and help us to make a Badminton net. We’ve got some old strawberry netting—can a gentlewoman’s hand accomplish the rest with the help of a bit of clothes-line and a needle and thread?”

“Right,” said Margaret, brief for once, and she retired to fetch her tackle. But just then the front door-bell rang loudly. Through the open door and windows, we heard plainly enough an authoritative voice alternating with a faintly protesting one. Evidently there was an argument between Annie and the owner of the commanding voice, the latter prevailing, for we heard it bearing down on us and we looked at one another in dismay.

“Good lord! It’s the Wheeler-Cartwright woman,” Ralph said, aghast. “Coming to be a mother to Ethel, and incidently to lap up all the scandal she can.” The voice was upon us now and we rose to greet the owner, whom I recognized as the mother of a meek and depressed little girl I had met at the tennis club. I had seen the mother on previous occasions too—never once had I seen her silent. The irreverent called her Mrs. Juggernaut-Outright, behind her back.

“This is terrible, terrible,” she breathed heavily. “I only heard the news last night and I felt I must come round as soon as I possibly could to express my sympathy with Ethel. Poor dear girl, how she must be longing for her mother! And tell me, is it really true that there is to be an inquest?”

“I’m afraid it is,” I murmured.

“But, Mr. Jeffcock, what really has happened? The wildest and most disturbing rumors are flying about; did the poor girl take an overdose of something; surely, surely, it wasn’t, it couldn’t be suicide?”

“The police are inquiring closely into the whole matter, and honestly I can’t tell you much about it,” I parried.

“Mr. Jeffcock,” she whispered, hoarsely impressive, and standing so close that I could feel the glow from her purple face, “is there any reason to suspect—anything—worse—still?”

“Really, I can not tell you,” I replied; and, mimicking her pauses. “The police are very reticent, and they have asked—us—to—be—equally—so.” And with that I stared her straight in the face.

Mrs. Wheeler-Cartwright took a deep breath, and slowly her face acquired a yet more fiery tinge. For obvious reasons, she had not adopted the modern fashions—she grew and spread. There was an ominous silence.

“I see,” she boomed majestically. “I see, then it is as I feared. And now where is Ethel? Where is the poor child? This is no place for a young and unpro——”

“She is resting, I believe,” Kenneth interrupted, “and she wants to sleep, I think,” he added hastily, as Mrs. Juggernaut turned and made for the back door, with the obvious intention of proceeding forthwith to Ethel’s room. She waddled and puffed like a tug on the Thames, and in a couple of strides Kenneth was ahead, barring the way. “I’ll tell her you’ve called.”

Mrs. Wheeler-Cartwright was defeated, but she retired in good order. “Good-morning, then, gentlemen. I had intended to ask Ethel to come and stay with me for a few days—a young girl alone—people will talk you know.”

“Whisper indecently, is what you mean,” I said, my manners succumbing to my anger, “but Ethel has a married cousin coming to stay with her to-day, so that’s a little pleasure they’ll have to do without.”

I thought she was going to burst. Ralph escorted her to the door into Dalehouse Lane. Ethel came through the drawing-room door and joined us. “Heroes!” she laughed. “If she’d caught me alone I should have had about the chance of a sickly sardine doing battle with a whale. She’d have packed up my things and carried me off to purer spheres. And now she is going the rounds of Merchester? the old ghoul!”

Kenneth, I noticed, had nothing to say to Ethel. She kept her face turned from him and ignored him completely. I felt intensely sorry for them both. A broken engagement—a building bird’s nest wantonly destroyed—in all conscience an unhappy enough event! But in their case, what added distresses! And they were deprived of the solace of work and other grief-killing outside interests.

Margaret appeared with her work-bag and retired with the two boys to the proposed Badminton court. Ethel and I took refuge from the sun under the kindly cedar, she with the Times on her lap, I pretending to write.

“Busy, Francis?” she inquired presently, and I knew she was going to ask me the question I wished to avoid.

“No, only killing time,” I answered grudgingly.

But she did not take the hint. She threw down the paper and sat forward so that I could not see her face, her hands clasped round her knees. “Francis, what do you think of it all really? Honestly, you don’t, you can’t, believe The Tundish capable of such a thing?”

“I can’t answer you. It’s no and yes at once,” I replied reluctantly.

Her dark head bent lower. “You against him too,” she whispered.

“No, that I am not. I find it desperately difficult to associate him with murder, an association, however, that I find equally improbable when I think of you or any of the rest of us who were in the house that night. That’s the trouble, Ethel. The evidence against The Tundish is so very much the strongest. I try not to believe that he did it. I know that I didn’t. And that leaves—— And I can’t make out a case against one. So, like a circle train on its dismal round of repetitions, I come back ever to the doctor. The circumstantial evidence is pretty deadly. A prosecuting counsel would make a good deal of his previous acquaintance with Stella, and his reticence on the subject. We know that he quarreled with her father—the prosecution would suggest that she had knowledge of some disgraceful secret in his past, knowledge which, if published, might ruin his career in this country, and that he took instant measures to silence her.”

Ethel sat, a picture of limp dejection, with her dark head bowed, her hair falling forward—a screen to hide her face. My suggestions roused no sign of quickening interest, and in spite of the conversation I had overheard at the club, I came to the conclusion that she knew no more of the doctor’s quarrel with Stella’s father than I did myself. And yet, that conversation! What was it she had said? “I certainly would not have offered to put her up if you hadn’t suggested it to me.” A statement that surely must be pertinent to our pernicious tangle, and if so what tragic thoughts were filling that dark brown head?

“But surely, Francis, no one could suppose him to have done it so clumsily—a doctor could so easily, if he wished, find a way that would not point so obviously to wilful murder?”

“His own counsel would make the most of that point, of course. But anyhow, unless the real murderer is found, he will be under a cloud for the rest of his life.”

“It’s horrible, simply horrible,” Ethel shuddered, burying her face in her hands, “to think that a man who has never willingly wronged a soul can be put in the position he is in, by nothing but chance and ill luck.”

“I’m sorry if what I’ve said has made you feel still more unhappy, Ethel. Quite half the time I am convinced that he had nothing whatever to do with it, and then at times my convictions fail me. There is just one thing, however, that strikes me as being in his favor. Has it ever occurred to you, I wonder, as it has to me, that he has just a tiny suspicion himself as to who did it?”

Ethel turned in her chair and stared at me. “Do you mean that he suspects one of us in this house, you or me, or one of the others? What makes you think so?”

“I can’t tell you,” I answered. “It’s just an idea at the back of my head, perhaps so vague that I should not have mentioned it. I have the impression though, sometimes very strongly, that he could throw suspicion on some one else if he chose. Somehow, I don’t quite know why, I feel that he is waiting for something, biding his time.”

We sat a while in silence. A light breeze had sprung up, a breeze laden with heat and the sweet overpowering scent of syringa. A mowing machine droned a garden or two away. The air was saturated with summer scents and sounds, and we sat nursing our unhappy thoughts—thoughts more in keeping with the rotting leaves and sodden undergrowth of some November wood.

“What time does Mrs. Kenley arrive?” I asked after a prolonged pause.

“Mother doesn’t say, but I have been looking up the trains and there is one getting in just before lunch. The next good one is not till after four and I should think she will travel early to avoid the worst of the heat. Anyhow we can’t go and meet her.”

Annie crossed the lawn to us, salver in hand, “A telegram for you, Miss Ethel.”

“Arriving 1.10. Merchester. J. K.” she read, then looking up at Annie, “Tell cook that Mrs. Kenley will be here in time for lunch.”

Annie departed.

“What are you going to do about telling her the state of affairs, Ethel? Are you going to tell her?”

“Yes, I must, oh, surely I must. I shall wait until the afternoon though, I think, it might look as though I wanted to drive her away if I told her at once. But how I am going—oh, how I hate it all.”

Poor Ethel was on the verge of another breakdown, I could see by the way she leaned back in her chair and turned her face away. I had wanted to ask her if she too had heard some one laughing in the waiting-room, before she came into the dispensary on the Monday morning, when she came down from the club to get some tape for the handle of her racquet; and to question her regarding that intriguing conversation of hers with The Tundish, which had come to my ears so clearly across the courts as I sat in the umpire’s chair. I came to the conclusion, however, that she had enough to bear, and if she had answered me, I had by this time argued myself into such a condition of disbelief, that any reply she might have made would only have given rise to additional skepticism and doubt.

And so the unemployed and interminable morning wore on. I dozed in my chair and pretended to write. Ethel hardly stirred in her chair at my side. The two boys played Badminton, but after a time their voices ceased, and I concluded that they were too overcome by the heat to continue their game.

Margaret flitted past us several times, but she never once stayed to prattle in her usual way; she seemed preoccupied and worried.

Shortly before one o’clock The Tundish returned from his rounds. He joined us in the garden immediately and took a seat beside us. Ethel handed him the telegram she had received, without comment.

“And who, may I ask, is J. K.?”

“There’s to be another prison inmate,” Ethel replied rather bitterly, and explained in a few sentences what Mrs. Hanson had done. “And what am I to say to her?” she concluded, “and what will she do when she finds out all this?”

The doctor considered for a few moments. “When was the wire sent off?” he asked at length.

“Ten-thirty from London.”

“Then she had had plenty of time to see the morning papers, if not before she left the hotel at Folkestone, at any rate before she reached London.”

“The papers!” Ethel cried. “Is it in the papers already?”

The doctor pulled a folded sheet out of his pocket. “Not in the Times,” he said, “but the penny papers have lost no time in getting hold of it. Look at this.” He pointed out a paragraph to her. I read it over her shoulder. It was on the front page and was headed:—

Sudden Death of Young Tennis Player

A sad event occurred yesterday in the old cathedral city of Merchester, where the annual lawn tennis tournament is in progress. Miss Stella Palfreeman, a promising young player, died suddenly during the night of the sixteenth. There is reason to suppose that her death was due to an overdose of some narcotic medicine. Miss Palfreeman retired to bed in her usual health at night and was found dead by her hostess in the morning. We understand that the police are inquiring into the matter.

Ethel threw down the paper and shivered, her eyes filling with tears. “And to-morrow it will be shouted and billed all over the place! I shall never be able to hold up my head in Merchester again. Oh, I can’t bear it, I simply can’t bear any more!”

The Tundish took her hand in his and held it while he spoke, his other hand affectionately on her shoulder. “Ethel, you must not—you must not give way like that. It’s ridiculous! Hold up your head, indeed, what have you to be ashamed of? Come now, I know how brave you can be, and we are all going to need all the grit we’ve got in the next few days. Now about Mrs. Kenley, she may be with us any minute.”

“Here she is,” I said as the door-bell pealed.

Ethel dabbed her eyes hastily and ran indoors, and I heard her greet the guest in her usual pretty way. She took her up-stairs to her room and I remember even then noticing the tones of Mrs. Kenley’s voice and thinking to myself that they promised well.

A few moments later Ethel was bringing her to us across the lawn. I looked with interest to see what manner of person it was that fate had added to our unhappy household. Would she be capable of rising to the situation, or would she add yet another wrong note to our strident discords? Mrs. Hanson had spoken well of her in her letter, but Mrs. Hanson, I knew—and I don’t say it unkindly—would have found some traits to praise in the devil himself. True, he did put the best silver sugar-tongs in his pocket, but with what an air he had passed the sugar! I was reassured, however, as Ethel brought her guest toward us. I liked her at once. In a couple of hours I was definitely impressed, and—but I am going too fast. Now I don’t mind admitting that as a general rule, and quite apart from any question of sexual attraction, I greatly prefer girls to men, and there is a certain section of the sex—a stratum lying somewhere in between the fussy and the fast—that to me seems to contain the salt of the earth. How clean they can be, these gay good girls—clean in mind and body—their dainty clothes barely hiding their intriguing beauty in a way that causes my forty-year-old heart to thump in its cage to see. And why, I ask, should the good and the beautiful be hidden away? God bless their shapely pink silk legs. How brave and bright they can be. Look at them in the tram or the train on their way to work. Look at them coming home again at night. Look at them I say, and then look at a crowd of unshaved sheepfaced men with their fusty, dust-clogged, hideous and idiotic clothes!

Mrs. Kenley, I could see at a glance, was neither fussy nor fast. She was younger than I expected. Whether she had bought her clothes from Paquin, or through the week-end advertisement columns of the Daily Mail I do not know, but to my male inexperience she seemed to be beautifully, fittingly dressed. I had an impression of a short skirt and slim gray legs, then a pair of gray and extraordinarily wide-awake eyes held me mesmerized and I found myself being introduced. Was she beautiful? At the time I am sure I could not have answered that question, but I knew at once that she was brave and true.

The gong sounded before we had time for conversation, and we went in to lunch. Margaret and the boys followed and were introduced. I sensed at once that the presence of a stranger went far to lessen the feeling of awkward restraint that seemed to engulf us when we were all together. No reference was made to the tragedy during the meal, and we had as yet no idea whether Mrs. Kenley knew of it or not. I was dreading that she would ask some question about the tournament; she must have been rather surprised, I thought, to find us all at home for lunch and not in our tennis kit. The Tundish, however, seemed to have anticipated the difficulty, and guided the conversation with subtle skill to her life in Rhodesia and the voyage to England. She told us that she was not South-African born and had spent most of her life in England.

So the meal passed pleasantly enough. When it was over the doctor announced his intention of taking, if possible, a couple of hours’ sleep, and he advised us all to do the same. Ethel and Margaret retired to their rooms, Kenneth and Ralph to the drawing-room to play chess, and it fell to my lot to entertain Mrs. Kenley—a fate which I welcomed with secret enthusiasm. I took her to my favorite spot—the shade of the cedar—and Annie brought us our coffee there. We smoked cigarettes and for a time talked of nothing in particular. She was entirely at her ease, but I still felt the disturbance of that first look that had passed between her eyes and mine as Ethel had brought her to us across the lawn, and while I regarded her as closely as I could without appearing to be rude, I added little to the conversation. She smoked her cigarette in pensive contentment and I fell to wondering why one look from a pair of clear gray eyes should have set my blood a-tingle and made me wish for all manner of unpleasant happenings to overtake the unoffending Cousin Bob. Certainly Mrs. Kenley was charming, but I had met plenty of charming girls before. Margaret and Ethel were both that, and they both looked you straight in the eye without these disturbing results. Disturbing but very refreshingly disturbing, and I think that for the first time since the murder my thoughts wandered contentedly in pleasant places.

Mrs. Kenley put down her coffee cup on the grass by her chair, and hitching it round to face me more squarely, asked me in her low-pitched voice, “Now, Mr. Jeffcock, will you please tell me all about this terrible affair? Of course I saw it in the papers on my way here this morning, and one paper mentioned that Miss Palfreeman was staying with a Dr. Hanson. I can see that things are in a bad way here—you would naturally all have gone home by now if you could—so I suppose it means that you are being detained by the police, is that so?” I nodded and she continued.

“I wondered if I ought to change my plans and go elsewhere, but I remembered that Mrs. Hanson really seemed to want me to come and chaperon Ethel, and so I thought I would come on for one night at any rate, to see how things were. Tell me now, honestly, what do you think I ought to do?”

“I hope you’ll stop, Mrs. Kenley,” I answered promptly. “It would be a real kindness to Ethel if you will. I am sure she will ask you to stay when she gets a chance to have a talk with you.”

With that, I told her about the whole miserable affair from beginning to end: Stella’s tragic death, Ethel’s rupture with Kenneth, the ugly suspicion that had fastened on The Tundish and more or less shadowed us all; of the feeling of subtle distrust that seemed to fill the air, and all the wretched series of events of the past two days. True, Little Allport had instructed us to be reticent, but Inspector Brown had surprisingly agreed to our visitor, and if she were going to stay in the house, there seemed nothing to lose by telling her the facts, and little possibility of keeping them secret.

I was glad to have somebody to talk to, some one who by no possible juggling with keys and time and facts, could have had anything to do with Stella’s death. I was amazed at the ease with which she grasped the whole situation and at the pertinent questions she asked. At the end of an hour’s talk she knew all that I could tell her of the murder. Of other matters—of how charming I thought her—of how beautiful I thought the curved arch of her penciled brows over those wide gray eyes, of the adorable little trick she had of pushing out her dainty but determined chin when she wished to emphasize a point I could not tell her in so many words, and whether she guessed anything of my feelings I do not know, but I think that even then we both of us realized that the foundations of friendship had been well and truly laid.

We sat talking together until nearly four o’clock when Ralph and Kenneth, the former arrayed in a very grubby tennis shirt and ancient flannel trousers, dusters and a tin of polish in his hands, interrupted our tête-à-tête. “Going to polish up the bus,” Ralph explained, “and there are one or two little matters I want to look into as well. Are you interested in motoring, Mrs. Kenley?”

“Yes, I am. I used to drive for the Woman’s Legion during the war.”

“Really, and were you in France at all?” Kenneth asked.

“Not for very long. I drove an ambulance for a few months, and then I was drafted to London and drove for the War Office.”

I could see that Mrs. Kenley was not over-anxious to talk about herself, and she made a move toward the garage, as though to close the conversation. But the boys were interested and pressed for details, asking whom she had driven, and whether she had had any interesting experiences.

“No, nothing exciting at all—except just once, and then”—she paused and smiled reminiscently—“and then I hit a certain well-known general in the face.”

“Did you really, though? And why weren’t you shot at dawn?” Ralph laughed. “Please tell us about it, what did happen?”

“Oh, there’s really nothing to tell. I wish I hadn’t mentioned it. He was a little drunk, and—well, I suppose he took me for some one else. I was in an awful fright next morning, because I couldn’t afford to lose my job. But nothing happened all day, and at night when I took the car home, I found a big bunch of roses tucked away inside, with a note of apology. He was a sportsman, after all.”

“What was his name?” Ralph asked.

But Mrs. Kenley merely laughed and shook her head, “That, Mr. Bennett, I’m keeping for my grandchildren. Now please show me the car. I love to look at new ones with all the latest tricks.”

We went to the garage, and soon she and Ralph were deep in technicalities. The unventilated garage was stifling, and not being interested in young Bennett’s opulent car, I soon left them to it.

As I strolled back to the house I heard a raucous voice, proceeding apparently from one of the upper bedroom windows. It was cook, and cook in no amiable mood. At first I could clearly hear every word she said, then just as I was getting really interested in what I heard, she moved and I missed the rest. “So I says to meself, it may be orlright and may be not, and there ain’t no reason as how it should be wrong, but seeing what ’appened afterward the perlice might like to know what I saw if I was to tell ’em. But then I thinks ter meself it may be better worth yer while, cook, I thinks, ter keep it to yourself, and the perlice they ain’t no friends o’ yours, cook, I ses ter meself. Now then what do you think abart it?”

Cook gossiping with Annie, was my first conclusion. But Annie appeared with a tea-tray before I reached the house. I heard no more excepting a few slurred and indistinct half-sentences. I felt certain she was, if not drunk, not sober. But drunk or not, it was evident she had seen something of which she had not told Allport.

Intending to round the corner of the house and go to the door in the front garden wall to see if there was a newsboy in sight from whom I could purchase an evening paper, I approached the house pondering—a pastime at which I was fast becoming adept—pondering the question: “Which of our party could cook have been addressing with such drunken garrulity?” It certainly had not been Annie. And I had heard no answering voice. Her words had been spoken with a half-drunken lurching inconsequence. Was it just possible that she might have been talking to herself?

“Ethel, I’m sure it’s dangerous. There can’t be any real difficulty in getting rid of her. I’m sure we ought to take the risk.”

It was the doctor’s voice, and I walked full tilt into him and Ethel round the corner of the house. My shoes were fitted with rubbers which made no sound on the hot plastic asphalt path, and though I had heard every word the doctor said it was obvious that they had not heard me. He was standing with his back to the wall—she was facing him and very close—his hands on her shoulders affectionately, hers holding on to the lapels of his coat, her dark bobbed head tilted back and looking up adoringly to meet his downward gaze. I felt myself go hot with shame, yes, and anger too. The hussy! The inconsiderates. Had they no sense at all of fitness or time? Surely Ethel might have waited until Kenneth was out of the house even if her engagement to him had been a fundamental error—The Tundish her real mate. And if her conduct struck me as reprehensible, words will not describe the sudden surge of indignation that I felt against the well-balanced placid doctor.

Ethel sprang from his embrace, flushed scarlet, then paled to a sickly white. My own embarrassment almost equaled hers. The Tundish never moved a muscle or turned a hair. He greeted me at once, pleased to see me. “Hello, Jeffcock, you’ve just come in time to help us decide about the dismissal of cook. I’m for prompt measures. Ethel for to-morrow and delay.”

“But—but why should she go to-night, Tundish?” Ethel stammered, slowly recovering from the shock of my sudden arrival.

“Ye gods, Jeffcock, what won’t these women stand for the sake of having a thing labeled ‘cook’ in the house? Why should she go to-night? Why? And you can ask me that after all you’ve just been telling me? She’s near enough to being drunk, isn’t she? And, as I was saying, I’m sure there’s no risk of any row.”

Ethel said nothing. Her color had returned, but I thought she looked bewildered and confused. The doctor turned to me, explanatory. “She’s afraid that she might not consent to go without a fuss, that we might get a crowd round the house if we had to turn her out.”

“Yes, oh yes, I’m sure we should. And I couldn’t stand it. I can’t stand any more. I can’t stand any more!” Ethel cried hysterically, and slipped past me round the corner of the house.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “The sooner all this is over the better it will be for Ethel—about at the end of her tether.”

He took me by the arm. I wished him anywhere else except with me. Never had I liked him less or distrusted him more. I was still feeling the awkwardness of my unfortunate intrusion, uncomfortable, half apologetic, wholly angry and disturbed, but he, not only had he hidden his feelings—I began to wonder whether he had any feelings to hide. A rock, Ethel had called him, an iceberg rather. And like an iceberg, God alone knew what lay hidden away below; God and perhaps some poor devil of a steamer that strikes the cruel projections unawares! He went on talking to me. What did I think of Mrs. Kenley? He would feel happier about Ethel now that she was here. I barely heard him. But I did hear him saying again. “We must get rid of her, there isn’t any risk,” and then poor drunken cook, standing at the bottom of the stairs, nodding her head grotesquely, her greasy wisp of hair waving to and fro, “I knows what I knows, Dr. Wallace.”

The gong sounded for tea. We had it on the lawn under the cedar. Ethel poured. Ralph never spoke a word, throughout the meal, and for once Margaret was quiet. Mrs. Kenley and the doctor did the talking and made the conversation. They played catch with it, and Janet—Mrs. Kenley—was as good at the game as he was. Lightning work they made of it—vivid—and Kenneth represented the thunder—he glowered. And I felt like an invalid does when some friendly “mean well” stays too long. I wished them both—forgive me, Janet, but I really did—in, well, say anywhere. It was a ghastly meal—a meal to choke on.

The Tundish relieved us of his presence as soon as tea was over. The rest of us sat on, but the Ethel-Kenneth rupture still cast its gloom, and I think we all felt that Mrs. Kenley had been a godsend. She was telling us of some of the golf courses she had played on in South Africa, idly prodding the turf with the point of her parasol, when she suddenly bent forward, peered closely at the grass, then straightened herself, holding a tiny glittering fragment between finger and thumb.

She examined it carefully. “Any one lost a diamond?”

Margaret, who had sat so listlessly inert that I had glanced at her curiously more than once, sprang to her feet. “It’s mine,” she cried. “It’s mine, I lost it some time this morning and have been searching for it everywhere.”

“But what an extraordinary piece of luck to find it out here like that,” Ralph remarked; “you might have gone over the lawn with a tooth-comb a hundred times and not have found it.”

“Yes, but remember where I come from,” Mrs. Kenley laughed.

Ethel, who had been into the house, rejoined us at the moment and Margaret ran to show the diamond to her, and tell her of its recovery.

“Why, I didn’t know even you’d lost it, why ever didn’t you let us know? We would have organized a search party at once. I shouldn’t have been so quiet about it if I’d lost a stone that size.”

“I should have done that at any other time, my dear,” Margaret answered; “but it seemed so petty to make a fuss over the loss of a paltry diamond when things were so—you know what I mean.”

“Well, I’m awfully glad you’ve found it,” Ethel said, handing it back to her, “and now, Janet, if you can spare me a few minutes, I want to consult you about something.”

They went indoors arm in arm, and the four of us were left. Kenneth suggested bridge, and so we whiled away the time until dinner. That meal was so abominably cooked that we left most of the dishes untouched, and satisfied our hunger on bread and cheese, which Ethel, in high annoyance, told Annie to fetch. “What will you think of us, Janet, and on your first night too!”

“Oh, please don’t distress yourself on my account, I prefer bread and cheese to roast beef on a night like this.”

“It’s quite all right, Ethel dear,” Margaret soothed. “They say you don’t want so much meat in hot weather, don’t they, Dr. Wallace?”

Our dinner of bread and cheese completed, the doctor betook himself to the consulting-room again, and after a little maneuvering I found myself alone with Mrs. Kenley in the garden. As my doubts about The Tundish grew, I felt an increasing disinclination for conversation with Ethel and on the other hand I had no wish to ally myself in any way with Kenneth and his open hostility. Margaret, I shrewdly suspected, was more than half inclined to think that I might be the criminal myself, and it seemed that to Mrs. Kenley alone could I look for ordinary unhampered conversation. But I had no sooner succeeded in my object than Annie came to inform her that she was wanted on the telephone, and she hurried away indoors. I waited with what patience I could but she did not return, and after a quarter of an hour or so I followed in search. She was in none of the down-stairs rooms and I concluded that she must have gone to her bedroom. The boys were playing chess in the drawing-room. Neither the girls nor the doctor were to be seen, and after glancing through the evening papers I went back to the garden and its rapidly lengthening shadows.

I was nearing the garage when I heard voices. Ethel and Margaret, I thought at first. Then I recognized Mrs. Kenley’s pleasant low contralto. Then that the other voice belonged to a man—a deep mellow voice—a voice belonging neither to Kenneth nor Ralph, nor the doctor, but still half familiar. Surely not Allport, I thought! But it was.

As I rounded the end of the garage, there they were seated close together on the little bench at the far side of it, in intimate and earnest conversation. She was persuasive—leaning toward him. “Very well then, Janet, I’ll agree, but I’m not at all happy about it,” I heard him reply, then they looked up and saw me.

Mrs. Kenley blushed and withdrew a little along the seat. Then they whispered to each other and little Allport rose, said “Good night,” made a funny little grimace at me, and hurried off through the garage gates and into Dalehouse Lane. I was staggered.

Mrs. Kenley stood up, troubled, her gray eyes, full of concern, meeting mine unflinchingly.

“Has he been bothering you too then?” I thundered.

“Don’t make such a noise. I’ve something to tell you, Mr. Jeffcock,” she said, ignoring my question. “Come and sit down here where we shan’t be overheard.”

I went and sat by her side on the bench where only a moment before the ridiculous little man had sat, and I perceived that while she had sat close to him she kept her distance from me. All my original animosity against the conceited little detective returned.

Mrs. Kenley continued to look at me oddly. “I suppose you have guessed something about it?” she queried.

I stared at her. An idea was beginning to form at the back of my head, but it seemed altogether too fantastic. “You know Allport?” I ventured at length.

“He sent me here.”

“He sent you! No, I don’t quite—Mrs. Hanson——”

“Mrs. Hanson has never seen me. Listen, it’s like this. Mr. Allport wanted further evidence which could only be obtained by some one staying in the house—some one whom none of the rest of you could possibly suspect of having any connection with the police.”

“Then you’re not the wife of Ethel’s cousin, Bob Kenley at all? You’re a——”

“Yes, I’m a——” she said, quietly amused.

“But Mrs. Hanson’s letter—did he forge it?”

“Oh, no. She wrote it right enough, but at his request. He went down to Folkestone last night and sent me a wire before he started, telling me to hold myself in readiness. We came to Merchester together this morning, and he gave me full details on the way.”

“But he couldn’t have got to Folkestone last night in time for Mrs. Hanson to write——”

“Oh, yes he did, though. He went by aeroplane from here, explained the whole affair to Mrs. Hanson, and persuaded her to write the letter. That was why he made you all promise that you wouldn’t write to any one mentioning the murder. He was afraid Ethel and the doctor might think it peculiar if Mrs. Hanson didn’t come back from Folkestone, and he wanted you all to remain here just by yourselves and no further additions made to the household.”

I had to admit that Mrs. Kenley had played her part to perfection, but somehow I didn’t quite like the idea of our all being bottled up in Dalehouse for her to play the spy on, and I think she understood my feelings, for she turned to me with a deprecating little gesture. “I’m sorry, you do see that it was the only thing to do, and as for me—well, I had to obey my instructions.”

“And now, why does Mr. Allport want me to know?”

“He didn’t. If you hadn’t caught us together we shouldn’t have told you anything, though I’m not at all sure that it hasn’t turned out for the best. I may as well tell you that we are all in some danger. Mr. Allport wanted me to leave the house to-night and to break up the house party right away, but I persuaded him to let me stay until to-morrow.”

“Why does he think the danger greater to-night than it has been hitherto?”

“You know he took away the bottle of poison—well, the analyst has found it to be nothing but water!”

“Water! But Stella——”

“Yes, it was poison then, but the trouble is—where is the poison now? Was it thrown away? And if not—well!”

I could only stare at her stupefied, and the doctor’s words to Ethel about there being no risk in getting rid of cook seemed more sinister than ever. “Allport had no right to take such a responsibility,” I said at last.

“It isn’t quite so bad as you might think at first. The poison has a bitter taste and a strong smell. Miss Palfreeman, of course, took it unsuspectingly and would naturally think nothing of it if her medicine had an unfortunate taste. Besides, there is no real reason, so far as we know, why the person who gave it to her should harbor murderous designs against any one else.”

“I don’t understand it at all, it’s a complete mystery. I never could see why any one should have murdered her. Apart from the doctor, perhaps,” I added, remembering my own growing suspicions and his quarrel with her father.

“Well, I don’t think I am justified in telling you any more. I was to tell just as little as possible, but I am very glad to have some one at hand to help me at a moment’s notice if an emergency should arise.”

I sat for a time in thought. To say that I was surprised at the revelation would be to put it too mildly. I had been pleased to imagine this gray slip of a girl at my side as clean and free—a breath of sweet outside air refreshing the exhausted atmosphere of some hot unventilated room—a ray of sunlight piercing the shades of deceit and hypocrisy that seemed to have engulfed us, and here she was, with one unknown exception, more involved in the wretched affair than any of us. Never had I seen any one less like imagination’s picture of a woman detective, neither hard eyed, brazen and tight lipped, nor of the vampire siren type familiar to frequenters of the cinema.

“Well, I think that you must be very brave, and I’ll do my best to help you if I can. But tell me, is this sort of thing your regular work?”

“No, I’ve done a good deal of it from time to time, but I’m not officially attached to Scotland Yard. Mr. Allport lived next door to us when we were children and we grew up together. I can see that he’s not exactly popular with any of you here, but in many ways he’s very fine. I’ve seen a side of him that you have not. When my husband was killed, just before the Armistice, he was the best friend imaginable and has helped me ever since. When I was demobbed, I went on the stage for a time—I wasn’t much good—had a pretty hard time. Mr. Allport used to find me odd jobs in connection with his detective work; not very often at first, but lately I’ve helped him quite a lot.”

We sat behind the garage talking together for some little time, and I learned that her real name was Janet Player. She told me many things of Allport, always to his credit. She was loud in the ugly little fellow’s praises, and when I learned that he was married and the father of a family—I trust they took after the mother—I disguised my dislike, and apart from actually admitting him an Adonis, agreed to most of what she said.

The light was fading when we rose to go indoors. The sun had scorched its way across the sky and set, and now behind the house and over the northwest garden wall, the air was aglow with its last refracted golden rays. In the east the cathedral seemed to have advanced by half its distance, so clear did it stand with the paling green light behind it. Rooks were cawing their pleasing raucous lullaby among the neighboring trees. The thrushes were at even-song. The cedar stood out in dark but shadowless, enhanced relief against the dimming light. Did the quiet beauty of the scene make your heart beat a little faster too, Janet, I wondered, as we stood side by side at the top of the garden slope looking down at the old Georgian house with its wicked Borgian secret? This twilight half-hour, how even the ten thousand repetitions of experience fail to rob it of its mystery and subtle sense of calm bereavement! Day a-dying, night-engulfed. And were you wondering what the night might bring, Janet, as you stood like some slim gray wraith at my side? And did you vaguely guess that the man at your side—champion sob-stuff sentimentalist that he is—was all astir, quickened by the garden’s evening beauty, by your calm brave spirit, by the pity he felt for you fighting alone in this dangerous house, and that Cupid was fitting arrow to bow and preparing to shoot?

We were half-way down the slope, when she put her hand on my arm, and stood intent. “I thought I heard some one,” she whispered.

“Some one in the lane most likely.”

“No, no, it was quite near, a rustling of leaves, like some one brushing along against the hedge.”

We stood for a moment, her hand still on my arm, but not a sound disturbed the still air; there was no breath of wind to stir a leaf.

Janet shrugged her shoulders when I suggested that it might have been a cat, and that we had spoken so low that we could not have been overheard, and we walked across the lawn and went back into the house together.

We found Margaret, Kenneth, and Ralph sitting in the drawing-room.

“Ah! Here you are at last,” Margaret greeted us. “Isn’t the garden lovely in this light, Mrs. Kenley? Isn’t Ethel a lucky girl to have such a beautiful home?”

Ralph urged a game of bridge; there were five of us and Janet stood out, a letter to write, her excuse. At a little table near the open doorway we settled down to our game, Ralph partnering Margaret against Kenneth and myself. Margaret had the most astounding luck, and backed it with good play. Twice they made grand slam—rarely less than three tricks. They registered rubber after rubber.

“Never mind, unlucky at cards, lucky in love,” Margaret giggled.

Kenneth scowled, but she seemed to be blissfully unconscious of having dropped a brick, and added sentimentally, “I sometimes wish that I wasn’t so lucky at cards.”

I murmured something inane about there being plenty of time for luck to change. Kenneth yawned openly and suggested bed.

“Where can Ethel be all this time?” Margaret asked, as we gathered up the cards. “The naughty girl hasn’t been near us all the evening.” I should not have been surprised had she come out with, “Best to be off with the old love before you are on with the new,” but that we were spared, and, having collected her knitting, she went off to the consulting-room, saying, “I shall scold Dr. Wallace for keeping her so much to himself.”

Janet came down-stairs as we were going up to bed, and I took time to caution her to lock her bedroom door.

She nodded emphatically: “I will, and more than that, Mr. Allport has given me a bolt, a set of screws, and the wherewithal to fix them.”

Chapter XIII.
Accident or——?

I undressed and pulled aside the curtains to admit the moon’s pale, haunting light. My bed had been moved close up to the window and again there was little fall from the daytime temperature—the condition of heat and drought seemed stable and set forever. I propped myself up with the pillows and lighted a cigarette. Outside I could just see the top of the garden wall at the front of the house—a ridge of steel blue where the moonlight caught the tiles aslant—a barrier of black beneath. Moonlight!—sunlight speeding through the years, flung wide of the earth, and caught by a dead world and killed. Sunlight with the life sucked out of it. Flowers and bees, sparkling waves, ruddy basking babies, hot desert sands, and the light and the glow of the sun! Graveyards, tombstones, rotten creaking doors, deserted, derelict old houses, and sad lovers’ sighs in the pale cold light of the moon. How it has always disturbed me—this shadow light—even its beauty filling my heart with an ache and a pain. It came slanting in obliquely through the window, picking out the crockery on the washstand in ghostly white, making long distorted shadows on the floor and up the walls. Only two nights ago just such another band of light had pierced the dark of Stella’s room, to find her dead, and kiss her kinky coppery hair. And to-night Mrs. Kenley perhaps was listening for the gentle turning of the handle to her door, and for some one moving stealthily outside it. I hated to think of her alone in the night, perhaps depending for her safety on a single bolt. I hated to think of her, a woman, little more than a girl, alone in this dreadful house, her wits pitted against those of one callous enough to murder and face it out and threaten dark doings again. I wished she had taken me further into her confidence; who and what did she fear? Last night, in spite of the doctor’s injunction to lock my door, I had felt little sense of reality, little sense of any immediate danger. But to-night it came upon me, that somewhere in this old house, death might still be lurking; that some one who had stolen soft-footed into Stella’s room and out again, the cowardly deed accomplished, was still at large and perhaps even now hatching further deviltry.

That there was real concrete danger I had no doubt, or why had Allport brought her a bolt to fix to her door? She had told me that he was married, but how closely, almost intimately, they had sat together on the bench behind the garage—partly to enable them to whisper, no doubt, but was it only that, or was there something more? I thought of her clear gray eyes and brave straight carriage, and there welled up in my feelings, half pity, half jealousy, that should have told me plainly enough whither I was heading. Oh, yes, I was greatly interested in Mrs. Kenley—Janet Player! Gray-eyed, fearless Janet; planted in the middle of this tragedy by that ugly little gargoyle of a man to do his dirty work. Janet, alone and fighting against Stella’s murderer, perhaps the placid doctor. And if it were he after all, then God, how I hated him! A hundred little scenes and gestures flashed across my vision, scenes of cold deceit and gestures of hypocrisy, scenes and gestures void of truth, killed and sucked dry of sincerity by his placid impassivity, like those ghost beams of reflected sunlight that had been rifled of color and warmth by the equally placid moon. The Tundish in the dining-room begging us to bury our suspicions, at Allport’s inquiry, flicking the ash from the end of his cigarette, Allport’s insinuations having as little effect as water on a greasy slope, baiting Kenneth, talking of the murderous activities of the anti-vaccinationists with a cool effrontery before us all, making love to Ethel—The Tundish, impassive and callous and cruel, with his mask of a face and twinkling unbetraying eyes, these and other little pictures rose before my sleepless eyes. And if it were he, what chance had a girl against him!

I recalled the rustling in the hedge as Janet and I came from our secret talk behind the garage—had some one overheard us then? Was some other member of our household aware of her true identity and purpose? Stella poisoned one night, “Dark deeds are done in Dalehouse at night,” stuck up against the landing wall the next, a cool hand and a callous must have been the one that cut those words from the daily paper. Which of us besides the doctor would have the nerve for the venture? Fool, fool I was; of course it was he. No wonder Janet was afraid, for I saw a look of fear, when she heard the rustle in the hedge and realized that we might have been overheard. And now she was all alone in her room, protected, perhaps, by nothing but a flimsy bolt.

I jumped out of bed and opened my door. The landing was quiet, no sound reached my ears. I crept along to her room and listened outside the door. Should I knock and make sure that she was safe? And if the others heard me and were roused, cut away any ultimate chance I might have of being of service to her? As I hesitated, I saw another picture of the doctor, the doctor this time, not the man. Could that be hypocrisy too? God! what a vacillating doddering fool I was—doddering—doddering grass fluttering here and there in the fickle wind of my own imagination’s making. I went miserably back to my room and tried to compose myself for such sleep as my whirling thoughts might allow me. I endeavored to think of ordinary homely things—of my every-day work—of Brenda, but Brenda’s brown eyes turned to gray, those clear gray eyes of Janet’s that had held me with their look and set my heart a-flutter.

No doubt both my brain and nervous system were over-strained, for hardly once in a twelvemonth is my sleep disturbed by dreams, but again, as on the two previous nights, my subconscious mental activities were pronounced enough to be registered among my waking thoughts. This time I was down on the Romney flats that lie between Rye and the sea. I had once spent a holiday there. I was on a bicycle, an antiquated, heavy piece of ironmongery, pushing wearily along a winding road, making every yard with effort though neither wind nor hill barred progress. I was both urgent and belated. Rye must be reached before dark, and already swirling wreaths of mist like slim transparent shrouds were rising from the marshes to meet the falling dusk. But Rye must be reached before dark and my pedals clanked, Rye must be reached before dark, as they turned the rusty chain. Now when I looked down at the road, I only saw it dimly through the thickening mist—now I saw it not at all—nothing but undulating fleecy sheets of opaque cloud. Their legs completely hidden, the cattle on the marsh lands appeared to float on the top of the mist like huge grotesquely shaped ducks that floated on a pond. Now they loomed suddenly large, now they disappeared, as I pushed my way along the road. Rye must be reached ere the clock struck again in the church on the hill. And always the mist was rising. Now it was up to my chin, now I was completely engulfed, now my head was clear once more. I missed the road and dithered frightfully on the edge of the ditch. I regained my balance with a thrill of exquisite relief, but I could hear the preliminary whirring of wheels, the clock was about to strike. Too late, too late. I had failed. I ran full tilt into a gate across the road, there was a crash, and I woke with a start.

The moon had moved round and shone full on my bedroom door. Too late, too late, too late, went throbbing through my head like a dirge. I gazed stupidly at the door, still half asleep and wondering why the mist had so quickly lifted. But God, how I loathed the moonlight. Too late, too late—— Janet, brave lonely Janet, was she safe? Too late, what could these unaided repetitions portend?

I sprang to the door. The landing was black, and the moonlight through my open doorway lit it like a spotlight playing on a darkened stage. I sniffed the air, a sweet sickly smell greeted my nostrils. Half familiar, then I recognized it for what it was—the unhealthy enervating smell of escaping gas. Cook in her fuddled drunken state must have made some blunder when she turned it off down below stairs. There was no gas in the house above the basement, so it must be coming from there. I slipped on my dressing-gown and hurried down. When I opened the door that tops the basement stairs it met me in a pungent wave. I closed the door with a bang; no one could go down there in safety, that was obvious.

There were movements on the stairs above, and I switched on the light in the hall.

It was Janet. God bless her, how dainty she looked. The Tundish was following close at her heels, and I nearly cried out my alarm when I saw him just above her. How strange, I thought, that just those two in all the house should have been wakeful enough to hear.

“Hello, Jeffcock, we seem to take it in turn to prowl the house at night, and get caught in the act. What’s amiss?”

“Gas. Can’t you smell it? The basement’s full. We shall have to open a window from the outside before we can turn it off.”

The doctor ran toward the dispensary, and I unbolted the front door and ran out into the night, followed by Janet. We descended the area steps, and peered in through the kitchen window. We could see nothing. It was impossible to see.

“Here goes,” I said, kicking in a pane of glass. Slipping in my hand, I unlatched the window and threw it wide open. The reek poured out into our faces and we had to step back to let it disperse. The Tundish ran down the area steps, a bundle of wet towels in his arms.

“Smash in the other window,” he said; “cook may be still in there for all we know.”

I hastened to obey. By this time a policeman had entered the gate and stood behind us. “Anything wrong here?” he queried. “I heard a window smash, I thought. Oh, gas, is it? Anybody in there?”

“We don’t know yet!”

The constable produced an electric torch, and turned its beams into the dark kitchen, sweeping it from side to side.

“There!” we gasped together. By the table was seated a motionless figure, arms extended on the table, and head fallen forward on them. Already the doctor was wrapping a wet towel over his nose and mouth, and the constable and I hastened to follow his example.

“Two of us will be enough,” he said. “You stay here, Jeffcock, to give us a hand when we get her to the window.”

The policeman turned on his torch again, and we watched them run across the kitchen to the still figure in the armchair. The Tundish darted first to the gas-stove, then back to the woman; he and the policeman picked her up between them and staggered to the window. They set her down for a minute on the broad sill while they drew long breaths; then we lifted her out and laid her on the ground.

The constable played the light on her face. Her head and shoulders, set in the bright circle of light, made a ghastly black-framed picture—white face, blue lips, eyes half open showing glints of yellow whites. She looked like some giant jellyfish, washed ashore and fouling the beach, a mass of boneless flabbiness.

The doctor knelt beside her, loosening her dress and placing his hand on her heart. “There’s another flashlight on my dressing-table; would one of you mind fetching it?” he said looking up quickly, his question a command. “And some ammonia from the dispensary too.”

Janet and I sprang to obey; I ran to the dispensary, she up-stairs for the torch. We were both back in a few minutes. She held the light with a steady hand.

“Just alive,” the doctor said, looking up. “But a few minutes more——”

“A few minutes more,” the policeman echoed, “and there’d ’a’ been another inquest.”

“There may be yet,” said The Tundish in his pleasant conversational tones. He had unfastened her clothes and was slapping her bare chest with the wet towels, but there was no change in the livid upturned face. He poured ammonia on one of the towels and held it under her nose; there was no response to the treatment.

“We’ll have to try artificial respiration,” he said at length, “and, Mrs. Kenley, can you get me a hot bottle? The bottles are in the cupboard in the bathroom, and you’ll find a spirit lamp standing on the sideboard in the dining-room. Better not light the gas down here just yet!”

Janet handed her torch to me and ran indoors.

“I can take turns with you, sir,” the policeman offered helpfully. “I’ve had this job before.” He cast off his tunic and helmet as he spoke and rolled up his sleeves.

So the grim struggle went on in the moonlight. I watched and held the torch while they fought in turns for the drunken creature’s life. The half-hour struck and still they worked on. Was she going to slip away, I wondered, and take with her into the great unknown whatever it was that she knew of Stella’s death?

But at last I heard a gasping breath. The doctor stopped and wiped his brow. “Close call; now what about that hot bottle?”

Even as he spoke, Janet ran down the steps, her arms filled with blankets. We wrapped up the ungainly figure warmly; she was breathing now but still unconscious. The doctor still knelt by her side, holding her wrist.

“Better ring up the hospital, Constable, and ask for the ambulance. She’ll want more care than we can give her here. Drunkenness has not improved her chance of pulling through. The sooner she’s there the better.”

The policeman hurried indoors and soon I heard him at the telephone. I was surprised that none of the rest of our party had been roused by the banging of the basement door, the smashing of glass, the voices outside and the general running to and fro. But they were all of them young and healthy, I reflected, and the previous night had been a broken one.

The ambulance drew up at the gate, and two attendants came in with a stretcher. They lifted her gently and bore her away. We all drew a breath of relief as the car slid smoothly down the road.

The constable resumed his tunic. “Drunken old beast,” he said, “she’ll pull through, you see if she don’t and if she’d bin a good woman with a loving ’usband and three or four nice little kids, she’d ’a’ conked out. That’s the way it is, ’er sort takes a lot o’ killing. Well, sir, I’d better take a look round, then I must write up my report and be off.”

Janet ran down the steps as he spoke. “Come in and have some tea before you go, I’ve just made some in the dining-room.”

So we went in and sat at the big table. Janet had made the tea with Ethel’s spirit-lamp and had hunted up a tin of biscuits. Never was a midnight snack more welcome. But what a strangely assorted little group it was. The policeman, solid and comfortable in appearance, but amusingly ill at ease, fingering a note-book which he had extracted from the inner recesses of his tunic—what were the thoughts, I wondered, slowly penetrating the brain behind his good-tempered face, as he thanked Janet awkwardly for his biscuits and his tea! Janet, ah, Janet, how piquant and dainty you looked and what a contrast to that other horrible figure on which my gaze had been concentrated for the last half-hour or more; Janet might have been a lifelong inmate of the house and our tea an afternoon affair of gossip, maid-attended and cake-stand beflanked, so easily and pleasantly she chatted. But what were your thoughts, Janet, as you asked the doctor with a smile if his tea was as he liked it? The Tundish! If his thoughts could have been read, how eagerly I should have scanned the page, expecting to read of devil-driven treachery or heroic unselfish optimism, I know not which. And myself, distrusting the doctor and liking him at once, tolerant of the blue-coated limb of the law, wishing them both in Hades, Dalehouse and its recurrent gruesome happenings a thing of the past, and Janet and I alone together in some sheltered peat-scented nook on the moors where I might hope to stir in her an answering thrill to my own!

The constable set down his cup and rose.

“Thank you, miss,” he said, “that’s done me a power o’ good. And now I must have a look round and get back to my beat.”

We went down to the basement with him. Janet had set all the doors wide open while we had been working over cook, and the atmosphere was breathable once more.

“Was the kitchen door shut, miss?”

“Yes, and the door into the scullery too.”

We entered the kitchen. There was a kettle on the gas-stove, on the table an empty glass, and beside it an overturned whisky bottle. It was empty, except for a few drops, and the table-cloth was stained and wet where whisky had been upset.

“That was the tap that was turned on,” said the doctor, pointing out the one leading to the ring under the kettle.

“Good thing you’d electric light down here,” the policeman remarked. “If she’d ’a’ had a gas light there’d ’a’ bin a fine old bust up.”

He wrote up his notes laboriously, took my name and Janet’s, and went to the open window where he paused, his hand on the sill, to say, “No need to bother about all these windows and doors bein’ open—the place can do with a bit more air—me an’ my mate will see as it’s all right. I hope you won’t be ’avin’ no more disturbances, sir. Good night.”

The policeman having departed to complete his night’s vigil, the doctor picked up the wet towels, whisky bottle and glass, and we went up-stairs to the hall. There we paused to look at one another.

“Well, Mrs. Kenley,” The Tundish said quietly, “what do you think of the household you have come to? Pretty lot, aren’t we? Seriously, though, I am very sorry that you have been let in for this; it was bad enough before.”

Janet smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, never mind me. I’m used to a stirring life.” She glanced at her wrist watch. “Not half-past three yet, there’s time for sleep still, and look, it’s getting light already.”

We went to the open door, another day was spreading fast, already the east was growing pale and putting out the last pale stars. A little breeze blew in ruffling our hair, and the birds were sleepily tuning the first shy notes of their morning song. Whatever this new-born day might have in store for us, the black hours of another night had passed, and for the moment, at least, it was good to enjoy the pregnant morning stillness with its promise of brighter things to come.

“Well,” said The Tundish at last, “we had better turn in and get what sleep we can. I’ll just scribble a note for Annie explaining matters, or else, poor girl, she will get a shock in the morning.”

He went back to the consulting-room, taking the towels and the bottle and glass along with him. For a few brief moments Janet and I were alone.

“Are you all right?” I asked anxiously.

“Quite. Why shouldn’t I be?” She smiled at my look of concern.

“Oh, I don’t know, but I felt worried about you before I went off to sleep last night. I didn’t like to think of you alone. I wish my room were next to yours.”

“It’s just as well that I had a bolt, Mr. Jeffcock, for when I went to lock the door, I found that the key had disappeared! I am quite certain it was there this afternoon.”

“Look here, I shan’t go to bed. I’ll pretend to, and then come back and lie down in the drawing-room with the door open.”

“No, please, Mr. Jeffcock, I don’t want you to do anything that might call for comment. I shall be perfectly safe. No one will very easily get past that bolt, and I have a revolver with me as well. Here’s Dr. Wallace coming back. Please don’t fuss.”

The doctor came back holding a note addressed to Annie which he placed on the hall-table. “Now for bed,” he said.

We went up-stairs side by side. The doctor disappeared into his room, Janet into hers. I lingered outside my door until I heard her bolt shot home, then I turned the key in my own door, undressed and tumbled into bed.

Chapter XIV.
A Bird Bath and an Inquest

In spite of my succession of broken nights, I woke shortly after seven, and I got up as soon as Annie knocked at my door. No one was about when I made my way to the bathroom; the cans of hot water were still doing sentry duty outside the bedroom doors. I bathed and shaved at leisure and sauntered down-stairs to find the breakfast table being set, Annie hurrying to and fro. She spoke to me at once about the accident to cook.

“Have you heard what’s been happening in the night, sir? The doctor left a note on the table to say as how cook’s been taken ill and has had to be sent to the hospital. Such goings-on there must have been, the kitchen window smashed, and the doors standing wide open when I come down this morning. I don’t know what we’re all coming to, I’m sure. Do you know what it’s all about, sir?”

“Ah, you must sleep very soundly, Annie,” I answered. “Tell me now, what was cook doing when you went up-stairs to bed last night?”

“Me, sir? I’m sure I couldn’t tell you, sir. I kept away from the kitchen, I did. There’s all my washing up to do yet, but I wasn’t going near cook as she was last night if I could help it, and when I’d cleared away I went and sat by myself in the work room.”

“And where was cook then, Annie?”

“She was in the kitchen, sir. I locked the back door and fastened all the windows except the kitchen window before I went to bed, but I never heard her come up-stairs at all. What was it broke the window, sir?”

“She never went to bed at all, Annie. She must have been too far gone to get up-stairs, and apparently she turned on the gas at the stove and then forgot to light it, and nearly paid the penalty.” I told her exactly what had taken place during the early hours of the morning, but I could get no useful information in return. Annie had not gone into the kitchen and could not tell me anything of cook’s condition when she went up-stairs to bed.

“My goodness, sir, we might all have been exploded up in our beds. I told Miss Ethel it wasn’t safe to have her about the house,” was Annie’s comment, and she added rather maliciously, “She won’t get none of her whisky in the hospital.”

“No, Annie, you may be quite certain of that.”

“And my kitchen isn’t half in a mess with broken glass all over the floor. You don’t know what became of the table-cloth, do you, sir?”

“The table-cloth, Annie?”

“Yes, sir, I can’t find it nowhere this morning.”

Now, I remembered quite definitely that the cloth, a red one, was on the table when Janet and I had left the kitchen in the early hours of the morning. I remembered the large wet patch where the whisky had been upset. The Tundish had taken away the bottle and the glass, and had left us two talking alone together. The cloth was there then, and now, only a few hours later, it had disappeared. Clearly, either the doctor must have come back and annexed it, or the police had taken advantage of the open windows to return after we had gone to bed. It occurred to me that it had been a rather strange suggestion to make, that we should leave the window open. In either case it was interesting, and made me begin to wonder whether the accident to cook had been an accident at all.

Poor besotted cook, sitting drinking alone in the dark basement kitchen, slowly drinking herself to death, while all the time that more rapid certain death was swirling round her in the poisoned air. I pictured her pitching forward in the dark. In the dark——? It suddenly struck me how strange it was that she should have been sitting there alone without any light, and my doubt about it being an accident became a certainty that it was not.

“You’re sure that it isn’t there, Annie? You’ve looked everywhere, I suppose?”

“It isn’t in either the kitchen or the scullery, sir.”

I was puzzled, and decided to tell Janet about it at the first opportunity. Breakfast was not yet ready and no one was down, so I sauntered out into the garden. I was just in time to see Janet come in through the little door that leads into Dalehouse Lane. I was standing on the far side of the lawn, level with the end of the doctor’s wing, and somehow, from the way she looked about her, perhaps, I could guess that she had been out on some errand in connection with our mystery.

To every pair of lovers, I suppose, there must come some time when they quite suddenly realize that the word “friendship” can no longer express their growing interest in each other, and I know that it was as Janet moved the few short paces across the end of the surgery wing that I realized that I was head over heels in love.

She looked so solemn and reliable as she came in through the door, so utterly dependable and brave. She scanned the garden toward the garage, apparently to make sure that her return had been unobserved, a little smile flickering across her serious face, as though half amused at her own precaution. It was not until she reached the corner of the wing that she saw me, and it was then at that instant that I knew with an absolute assurance that she was the one and only woman in the world for me. Had an angel with wings sailed down from the cathedral tower and led her to me, saying, “Mr. Jeffcock, allow me to introduce you to your wife,” I could not have been more sure about the matter.

Laughing that she had not seen me before, she came forward to greet me, and my uneasy thoughts of whisky-stained red table-cloths that mysteriously vanished in the night vanished too, and I could have cried out aloud, “Oh, you darling, you darling, what have you done?” But instead, I stood awkward and silent, thrilled with the realization of her nearness and her morning beauty.

“You’ve caught me,” she laughed.

“Have I?” I whispered back, and I think that she must have felt that my words might hold some double meaning, for we stood looking at each other, her eyes meeting mine—unflinching, appraising, her level brows a little arched—puzzled and wholly adorable.

“Please don’t tell any one.”

“It shall be our special secret,” I replied.

She turned and ran to the house, and I lounged up the sunny garden, my pulses pleasantly a-throb, drinking in the morning freshness that seemed to reflect and emphasize the joy of my uplifting discovery.

At the far end and in the corner away from the garage, there is a little rose garden, enclosed on two sides by a sturdy hedge of wild white rose, and on two by the mellow red brick walls—a diminutive but formal square of lawn with a rose bed in each corner—a little place of peace and sanctuary to which I naturally turned. An archway gives entry through the white rose hedge and I passed through it musing happily—yes happily, in spite of all the horrors of the week—for it seemed that for me the darkness might lift to a golden dawn. In one of the corner-beds grew a lovely large white rose and I stooped to examine one of the buds, a thing of perfect beauty, the outer petals curling back to show the heart—layer on layer of closely folded purity.

Then just behind me I heard a tiny splash, and I turned quickly to learn the cause. I had been looking at beauty and thinking of love, while behind me the lawn was a place of broken hopes and death.

Dead birds lay scattered over the little square; sparrows mostly, but a robin with its vivid breast, and a cock blackbird with its gay orange beak were there as well, and they all lay stiffly on their backs with their little claws pathetically extended, for all the world as though they had been taken from some taxidermist’s show-case and scattered about the grass. Under the hedge lay Ethel’s tabby Tom, stark and stiff, a half-eaten sparrow between his outstretched paws.

In the center of the square there stood an old painted iron table on which Ethel kept a shallow dish of red pottery filled with water for the birds in times of drought. A thrush was in the middle of it, lying on its back, and it made one last dying flutter as I stood taking in the tragic little scene. A second thrush, its mate, I guessed, flew down from the garden wall as I watched, and perched on the edge of the dish, then catching sight of me, it gave one long, sorrowful, flutelike note and flew away.

I crossed over to the cat and turned him over with my foot. His eyes were wide and when I saw them I felt the hair go creeping across my scalp, for there was a yellow slit of iris and the rest was an angry red. I started back in horror and ran to the house for Janet.

She was coming down the stairs as I entered the hall, and I beckoned to her to come into the garden with me.

“What is it?” she queried. “Is anything the matter?”

“Yes, come and see what I’ve found.”

We hurried back to the rose garden.

“Oh, the poor dears, the poor dears! Oh, how horrible!” she cried when I pointed to the birds, her sweet low voice vibrating with a tenderness that it made my heart ache to hear.

“Yes, it’s the poison,” she agreed, when I showed her Ethel’s cat. “How horribly, oh, how wantonly cruel! Run in quickly, please, and telephone to Inspector Brown before the others get down-stairs. Ask him to come in by the side door and straight to me here at once, not to go to the house. I know he’s at the station. If Annie’s about send her to me here out of the way before you speak. If any of the others are about come back to me at once and we must hide them away without showing the inspector. The number’s forty-seven. I’ll be thinking of some excuse for wanting Annie.”

There was no one about but Annie and when I had sent her to Janet I got my message through to the inspector without any interruption, for once the telephone working according to plan. He promised to be with us in a few minutes and I hurried back to find Janet walking up and down the path behind the garage. What excuse she made for her talk with Annie I forgot to ask, but it was satisfactory, for Annie met me smiling broadly.

Janet was angry. Now that I know her so well I can better estimate how angry and disturbed she was. “It’s so stupidly cruel,” she almost sobbed, “to put it there where the birds come to drink. It seems an unsympathetic thing to say, but somehow it riles me more than the murder itself.”

“Don’t you think we had better tell the doctor,” I asked her, “he will be able to say more definitely if it’s the poison—the Chinese poison, I mean.”

She shook her head emphatically and looked at me rather queerly, I almost fancied, too. “No, no,” she said. “There’s nothing to be gained by telling any one else. Never tell any one anything, that’s Johnny Allport’s golden rule for detective work.”

At her suggestion we went back to the rose garden to await the inspector and to prevent any more birds from drinking the poisoned water. “He’ll have to take them away with him,” she said. “Did you tell him anything?”

“No,” I replied, “for once I obeyed the golden rule.”

“Well, we ought to be looking for something to put them in. Do you think you could get a clothes-basket or something without Annie seeing you, and a bottle or can for the water?”

I returned to the house once more to try my luck, but Annie was in the hall, and though I racked my brains I could think of no reasonable excuse for getting her out of the way. Then my eyes happened to light on the garage key that hung on a hook in the hall, and I remembered having seen an old wooden box that I thought might serve our purpose. It was there, but I could find nothing for the water, so I took what I had found across to Janet hoping that she might be able to make some other suggestion.

But she had already solved the problem by finding the watering can, and to my dismay I returned to find her tipping the contents of the bird bath into it. I hated to see her handle the deadly stuff, remembering the doctor’s alarm when I had only touched the outside of the baby flagon.

“It’s all right,” she replied cheerfully to my protest. “I haven’t touched a drop, and I promise to disinfect.”

Then very gingerly we picked up the birds one by one and put them in the box, leaving one bird and the cat, so that the inspector might see exactly how they had lain when he arrived.

He was with us before we had completed our task, more gigantic and phlegmatic than ever, I thought he looked, in the little formal garden. Janet quickly explained the situation and bustled him away with a competence that only went to increase my admiration for her, but we were not to be left alone as I half hoped we might. She would have none of it, but insisted that we ought to get back to the house at once, that breakfast must be ready and that we should be missed, and that the less we were seen together the better, though I did my best to persuade her to stay.

Idiotic of me, perhaps, but it was—no, I can’t explain it—if you who read need explanations then you are beyond me. I was in love, I had never been in love before, and here was my darling alone among the roses. I wanted to stay with her and keep her to myself, not share her with the rest.

But it was not to be, for up the garden path came The Tundish whistling the Marseillaise, his chin stuck out in a way that he had when he whistled and felt jolly, or rather I should say when he was willing that others should know he was feeling jolly, for only once had I seen him really depressed, and that was the time when I had caught him frowning over Hanson’s case-book. He was amazing, The Tundish, and the more I saw of him the more my amazement grew. Here we were at the morning of the inquest, and he could whistle away light-heartedly, just like any boy at home from school on the first day of the holidays.

If I was amazed, Janet was alert. “Your knife, quickly, Mr. Jeffcock,” and she was cutting roses and asking me about their names—of which I knew exactly nothing—even as the doctor stood smiling happily under the arch.

“Hello! Breakfast ready?” she greeted him.

“Yes.”

He was looking at the little table on which the bird bath had stood. “Where’s the bird bath gone to?”

Janet looked at him hard and I looked at Janet. “It has gone to be cleaned, Dr. Wallace,” she replied.

“Cleaned! Oh, Ethel’s taken it, has she? I came to see if it wanted filling. Come along in to breakfast.”

The others were seated at the table when we got back to the house, and although Janet said very little and I could see that her thoughts were busy with our discovery, her presence again seemed to break down the restraint of some of our former meals. Neither Ethel, Margaret, nor the boys had heard of cook’s experience, and their natural curiosity kept the conversation going, and helped us to avoid those appalling periods of silence that I was beginning to associate not only with our meals, but even with dear old Dalehouse itself. Silences they were that seemed beyond our control. Silences that seemed to close down on us from outside, while we sat with averted eyes, each busy with his own suspicious thoughts.

“What a night you must have had,” was Ethel’s comment. “I see now that I ought to have given way, and have allowed you to turn her out last night as you wanted to, Tundish; then you would all have been spared.”

“No, it was my fault, and I blame myself entirely for what happened,” he replied. “I ought to have looked round myself before I went to bed, knowing the state she was in. I’m only glad that the rest of you were not disturbed—especially you two girls—it was no pretty sight, I can assure you.”

“I’m thankful I didn’t wake,” Margaret joined in, “I shouldn’t have slept another wink all night. It makes me feel quite faint even to think of it now.”

The doctor smiled broadly, rather unkindly too, I fancied. “Well, if that’s what you look like when you feel faint——!”

We all of us laughed, for never had she looked more pink and white and golden, more full of vitality and less like a fainting lady. Both Ethel, whose bruise was still in evidence, and Janet looked pallid and worn by comparison.

As we were finishing breakfast a note came by hand for the doctor. Ralph had just said, apropos of the accident to cook, that the house seemed fated, and that, without meaning to be rude, he would be very glad to be back at work. The Tundish looked up from his note with a smile, as happy a smile as you could wish to see.

“Well, you’ll be able to gratify your wish. This is from the inspector. The inquest is fixed for eleven o’clock and we are all to be there. He is sending cars to fetch us. Moreover, our little pocket Hercules will be with us at four, and so you see, Ralph, you will be able to leave this evening, but whether I shall be here to see you off is, I imagine, more uncertain.”

He got up to leave the room as he spoke, but turned with his hand on the door-knob. “By the way, Ethel, what have you done with the bird bath from the rose garden? I’ll fill it up before I go.”

“The bird bath?”

“Yes, haven’t you had it? It’s missing from the table.”

“No, I filled it up yesterday morning and I’m afraid I haven’t touched it since.” Ethel looked round the table to see if we could give her information, but we none of us spoke, and The Tundish left the room.

When he had gone Margaret offered to take out another bowl of water, saying, “The poor little things will be parched,” and there was a discussion as to household duties, during which the two boys went off to the garden and I out into the hall where I pretended to be brushing my clothes. I wanted to waylay Janet.

She came out at last and I persuaded her to join me in the garden as soon as she could get away, and after an interminable half-hour she came to me there. “Just for two minutes,” she said uncompromisingly, but with the smile I had grown to look for and to love so much. “What do you want?”

“I want to know what you make of it all,” I asked her. “Wasn’t it just a little odd that the doctor should have come to look for the bird bath then?”

“I don’t know, and I can’t tell you what I make of it.”

“You mean you won’t. You don’t want to tell me.”

“No, it’s not that. I do want to tell you but I can’t.”

“Where did you go before breakfast?”

“To the police station.”

“What for?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“I’m rather a poor sort of confederate then, I’m afraid, if you won’t let me know what you are doing.”

“You’re not a confederate, you’re a protector should the need rise. Honestly, I can’t help it, Mr. Jeffcock, it isn’t my doing. Johnny Allport is my superior officer and I was to tell you nothing except who I was, and that I might possibly require your help. And that was only because you caught us together.”

“I see, a sort of sop to keep me good.” I was feeling childishly hurt.

We had been walking up and down the strip of lawn that lay between the house and the boundary wall, and at the end of one of our sentry goes she turned and faced me, the sun lighting up her dear face so that I could see the tiny gold brown hairs that straggled across the bridge of her delectable little nose. I wanted to help her and felt absurdly that I had the right to. I wanted endless consultations. Here we were, within an hour of the inquest, with the mystery that had bedeviled the Dalehouse atmosphere from cellar to attic as far from solution as ever, and while yesterday my head had been full of such thoughts as, “If he did this, then why did he go and do that?” now this morning I could think of nothing but Janet and how I might keep her near me.

“Do please be sensible,” she smiled.

“But how can I help you if I’m all in the dark?”

“It helps me just to know you’re there at hand. Now I must really go.”

She turned to go back to the house. The two boys were sitting out of earshot, under the cedar tree. “I say, do sit next to me at the inquest,” I called after her gently.

She laughed outright. “Certainly, sir,” she said, “only I’m not going.” She was gone, leaving me uncertain as to whether I was annoyed or pleased about what she had said. And I only remembered afterward that I had told her nothing of Annie’s missing table-cloth.

Two police cars came for us at a quarter before the hour, backing into Dalehouse Lane where we got into them without attracting the attention I had rather feared. Two men only observed us, and I heard one say to the other in passing, “Aye, that’s ’im, goes about the town as bold as brass,” a remark which made me appreciate the doctor’s bravery, or effrontery, in continuing to attend his patients.

I had never been to an inquest before and the only thing that really impressed me was the brevity of the whole proceeding. A room behind the mortuary was used for the purpose, a long room it was with a plain deal table running nearly the length of it, and with whitewashed walls that made the most of the rather inadequate light.

The jurors were all assembled when we arrived, a solemn uninteresting dozen, with, so far as I could judge, not one man of any personality among them. They were seated round the table. We were given seats against the wall, and the coroner, a very much younger man than I had expected, came in as we took our places.

He was business itself.

He asked the inspector to take the jury to view the body, filling up an official-looking form pending their return. And he then asked Ethel to explain to the jury exactly how she had found Miss Palfreeman on the Wednesday morning. There was no witness box and she was sworn and made her statement standing in front of her chair at the side of the room. She spoke clearly and well.

The doctor made a similarly brief statement, and was continuing to describe how he had prepared a draft for Stella the evening before, when the coroner pulled him up.

“Just at the moment I am only asking you to tell the jury how you found Miss Palfreeman when you went up-stairs at Miss Hanson’s request.”

“I have nothing more to add then,” the doctor replied.

“You were of the opinion that her death was not from any natural cause and decided that the police should be informed?”

“Yes.”

Inspector Brown next described how he had been called and went to Dalehouse along with Detective Inspector Allport and the police surgeon, and he concluded his few short sentences by asking that the inquest might be immediately adjourned while the police secured further evidence.

“How long do you want, Inspector?”

“I suggest Tuesday of next week, sir.”

“At the same time?”

“Yes.”

“Very well then, gentlemen, the inquest is adjourned and I am sorry to have to ask you to attend here again next Tuesday at the same time. A formal reminder will be posted to you. I understand that there have been rumors in the city with regard to this unfortunate affair, and there have been one or two most improper references in the press. It is your plain duty to shut both your ears and your eyes until we meet again, and to take care that you come to the adjourned inquest with your minds a blank. There has been talk of foul play. We shall know nothing of that. The unfortunate girl met her death in circumstances that require further investigation. That is the sum of our knowledge at present. We shall meet again on Tuesday to consider the full evidence that will be put before us, and, under my guidance, you will then decide together what was the cause of her death. Thank you.”

A tall, gray-haired, full-faced man whom I hadn’t noticed before came and stood at the end of the table, facing the coroner. “I have a statement, sir, that I think it is my duty to make. It’s with regard to——”

“Excuse me,” the coroner interrupted, “but whoever you are I can allow no statement whatever to be made.”

“My name is Crawford and I am uncle to the deceased, and what I have to say may, I think, ha——”

“I am sorry, Mr. Crawford, but I really can not allow any statement whatever to be made. The jury must hear all the evidence in proper order and at the proper time. If you have any information you feel you ought to impart immediately, then it is your duty to report it to the police.”

“Can’t I——?”

“No, really you can’t.”

The florid-faced uncle retired. I liked the look of the man, jolly I thought, and I wondered what it was that he wanted to say. Then to my surprise, just as the coroner was gathering up his papers, and the jurors were pushing back their chairs, Kenneth jumped to his feet.

“May I ask, sir, how much longer we are to be detained?”

The coroner looked up in some surprise. “We—detained? I don’t think I understand you. Who are you and to whom do you refer?”

“My name is Dane, sir, and I refer to my friends and myself and our detention at Dalehouse.”

The inspector stepped forward and whispered in the coroner’s ear. The coroner nodded his head emphatically and then he turned to Kenneth.

“No warrant has been issued for any one’s detention. I understand that you and your friends made a perfectly voluntary arrangement with Inspector Allport, and if that is so I think that your application is in very bad taste indeed. Neither I, nor the police, have any right to detain any one at present and you are at liberty to go when and where you will, but you will be wanted at the inquest on Tuesday and a proper notice will be served.”

Kenneth reddened and sat down.

Inspector Brown came forward and told us that the cars were available for our return, and we filed out into the dazzling sun. The dreaded inquest was over, but I realized that the next would be a far more trying affair.

At the door stood Mr. Crawford talking to the police surgeon, and he came forward and spoke a few words to Ethel in the kindest possible way, and then to my surprise he buttonholed the doctor, drawing him a few paces apart. They held a brief, earnest little conversation, at the close of which Mr. Crawford handed The Tundish a letter which he put carefully away in his pocketbook. They shook hands amicably and the doctor rejoined us. I could not help my curiosity, and I wondered what Stella’s uncle could have to say and give to the doctor and whether he had lived in China too, and they had met before. There was nothing to be gleaned from the doctor’s face, however; he was neither pleased nor perturbed, but just the same equable and placid Tundish, as inscrutable as ever.

We were back at Dalehouse before twelve o’clock, and my first concern was to look for Janet. She was not in the down-stairs rooms and I went up to change my coat for a blazer, prior to making a search in the garden. The Tundish and I happened to go up the stairs together, he to his room and I to mine. They were next door to each other, and as he opened his door out came Janet. Obviously a little astonished, he stood to one side to allow her to pass.

“Sorry, Doctor. I was finishing off some dusting for Ethel, and didn’t expect you back so soon,” she apologized.

He made some conventional remark and she went on down-stairs, but I noticed, and I wondered whether the doctor noticed it too, that she had no duster. She had been searching his room, I felt convinced, and I hated the whole business and Janet’s part in it in particular as I had never hated it before.

Lunch passed without incident—Janet did not look at me once—but afterward, as we were leaving the dining-room, with a whispered “Take this,” she handed me a folded note. I went up-stairs to my bedroom at once to read it.

“Dear Mr. Jeffcock,”—it ran—“I am going out this afternoon and shall not be back until four o’clock. If an opportunity occurs will you please tell Miss Hunter that you saw me coming out of the doctor’s bedroom before lunch; that you heard me tell him that I had been dusting, and that you noticed that I hadn’t any duster. Just tell her that you thought it rather curious. I don’t want to tell her myself, but I do want her to guess that I have been searching the doctor’s room. Please burn this.”

There was no signature, and I folded it up and put it carefully away in my pocketbook in spite of her request; it was my first letter from Janet and whatever its contents it should be preserved. As for its contents, I could not understand them at all. Think as I would, and I sat on the edge of my bed for a full quarter of an hour thinking as hard as the sweltering heat would let me, I could read neither sense nor reason into her request. If, for some reason or other, she wanted Margaret to know that she was working with Allport, why could she not tell her right out, instead of adopting this roundabout device? If, on the other hand, she still desired to keep her true identity hidden from the rest, why should she tell even Margaret that she had been searching the doctor’s room?

After a time, I gave up my attempt to follow the reasoning that led to the writing of the letter, and concentrated my attention on trying to carry out the instructions it contained. The two boys had been reduced to their chess again and were playing in the drawing-room. In neither the house nor the garden could I find Margaret, and I concluded that she had gone to her room to lie down, so I had perforce to amuse myself as best I might by reading the paper and by watching the two at their funereal game.

Three o’clock came and then half past three, and I was beginning to think that I should be unable to do as Janet wished when Margaret joined us and surprisingly asked me to go into the garden with her.

“Come up behind the garage,” she said, “I want to show you something.”

Full of curiosity, and wondering whether what she had got to show might not have some bearing on Janet’s strange request, I followed her up the garden and we sat down on the bench behind the garage where I had caught Allport talking to Janet.

“You remember that newspaper that was found in the chest of drawers in your bedroom?” Margaret began.

“Yes.”

“Well, you know, I always felt somehow that you might have put it there yourself after all—forgive me for saying so—and that it might have been you who put up the second notice over the switch, you see you found it and had such a chance to put——”

“You have no business to make such suggestions,” I interrupted angrily, as soon as I could conquer my first astonishment.

“Oh, please don’t be cross, you know what a way I have of blurting out whatever comes into my head. And, after all, it must be one of us, we must each of us be guessing and thinking these awful things about the rest. It was all very well, and natural too, perhaps, of the doctor to warn us against it, but it really isn’t human nature not to. However, it doesn’t matter now for just look here what I’ve stumbled across.”

She put her hand down inside the top of her jumper and pulled out a sheet of newspaper, handing it over for my inspection. Like the one that had been found in my chest of drawers, odd words and letters had been cut out here and there, and I gazed at it astonished.

“And look at this,” she added, passing me a smaller piece of paper.

I recognized it for what it was at once. It was a sheet torn from the memo tablet that stood on the doctor’s desk. On it there were some almost illegible pencil notes, about a prescription, I gathered, in The Tundish’s characteristic writing. And right across the middle of it, and pasted partly over the penciled words, had been stuck letters cut from a newspaper forming the first portion of the identical message that I had found on the card above the landing switch.

“dark Deeds ARE done in D”

“Where on earth did you find this?” I asked her.

“In the box-room up among the attics. I went up just now to look for a cardboard box to send some things away in. Annie told me there were a lot stored away up there and the first one I came to had a lot of rubbish and odd bits of paper in it and when I emptied them out, this”—she pointed to the memo slip—“fell face upward on the floor. Then I found the sheet of newspaper when I searched among the rest.”

“I can’t make it out, can you? Who could have put it there?”

“It looks fishy to me,” she said. “Kenneth’s bit of fish,” she added pensively after a pause.

“You mean you think that Dr. Wallace is—responsible for this.”

“Well, it does point that way to say the least of it. I’m sure that’s his writing on the pad slip. And listen. I went to Annie with the box to ask her if she thought I might take it, and this is what she told me. ‘Oh yes, miss, it was by the waste-paper basket in the dispensary this morning where the doctor always puts anything that he wants us to throw away, but it seemed such a nice box that I took it up-stairs instead.’ Now what do you make of that? I argue that he must have been trying what it would look like, when he was interrupted or something, and that he might have thrown them into the basket or on to the floor by mistake. The basket may have been full, perhaps, and then when Annie went to clean out she would naturally sweep them up into the box. Yes, and he would think that they had been burned, and wouldn’t like to make any inquiries when he missed them later on!”

“Yes, I suppose that is a possibility,” I replied meditatively, “but it doesn’t sound very characteristic of the doctor, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t, but I can’t think of anything more likely.”

We sat on the bench in thought for a little time, and then I gave her the information Janet had asked me to in her little note. I could have had no better opportunity.

“How very strange!” was Margaret’s comment. She sat frowning in thought, and then she turned to me, her eyebrows arched. “And so you suspect the doctor after all, do you? Or else why do you think that Mrs. Kenley, of all unlikely people, might have been searching his room? Come now, isn’t it more natural to suppose that she left the duster in the room? I think you’re almost as bad as I am, Mr. Jeffcock.”

“Well, one can’t help wondering,” I excused myself lamely enough; “but what are you going to do with these?”

“Give them to the police, I suppose. It’s no use showing them to the Kenneth-Ralph combination, and it would be unkind to say anything to Ethel. I think I shall just keep them to myself until Mr. Allport comes.”

“I think we ought to ring up the inspector at once, or show them to Mrs. Kenley,” I ventured, “she at any rate is impartial and has no bias.”

“You think her tremendously clever, don’t you? Perhaps I will.”

We got up to return to the house, my brain a-whirl with fresh conjecture, but as we drew level with the end of the garage and were approaching the little rose garden, I could have sworn that I heard movements in the hedge.

“Did you hear that?” I asked, holding Margaret back.

“No, what?”

“I’m certain I heard some one moving in the rose garden.” We went forward through the archway piercing the hedge as I spoke. At first we could see nothing and we were just coming away when Margaret grabbed me by the shoulder and pointed to the end of the hedge. Right at the end of it where it met the garden wall some one was standing—pressed well back between the hedge and the wall itself—apparently trying to hide. We went to see who it could be.

It was Miss Summerson.

“What is the matter? Whatever are you doing?” Margaret asked her.

She came a little forward out of the hedge and stood before us, her face scarlet, her breast heaving like a woman in a crisis in a picture play, obviously on the edge of tears, a pitiable object. There we stood, the three of us, Margaret and I exchanging glances of surprise, Miss Summerson looking first at one of us and then at the other and then at the ground, a study in furtive indecision.

At length she stammered, “I was trying to reach a rose in the hedge.”

I stepped forward to get it for her, pressing into the hedge where it grew thickly against the wall and where we had seen her standing, but no rose at all could I see.

“Whereabouts was the one you were after?” I asked, looking back over my shoulder to where she and Margaret stood.

“Oh, I’m—I’m—no-not sure that there was one really,” she stammered, looking at me beseechingly out of her timid tear-filled eyes. “I must really go now.”

And before we could say another word she ran away through the arch, leaving us alone with our astonishment.

“Well, and what are we expected to make of that?” I queried.

“You know, I wonder whether she really did lose the poison cupboard key!” was Margaret’s rather irrelevant reply.

“But what is—I don’t see the connection.”

“Oh, none, no connection exactly, but her behavior was queer, wasn’t it? And I’ve always thought she looked a little underhand. You see, if she did poison Stella, then it would be quite a good plan to lose the key, a little before the event, say on the afternoon before and in time for some one else to have possibly found it.”

“Oh, I say, how could she though, she wasn’t even in the house?”

“She could—she could have got in through the bedroom window while we were at supper. She may easily have known of the medicine there ready for Stella and handy for the poison. In spite of what he said, the doctor may have made it up before she left; or he may have told her about it; or he may have written himself a reminder on his pad, or—oh, I can think of several ways in which she might have got to know about the draft.”

“But why should she have done it?”

“Oh, you men, how blind you are. Do you seriously mean to tell me that you haven’t noticed that she worships the ground he treads on? Why, she can’t keep her eyes away from him when they are in the room together.”

“But even so, that’s surely no reason why she should murder one of Ethel’s guests?”

“Blockhead,” she laughed, “she was jealous. And I’m not so sure that she hadn’t good reason to be too, or why did Mr. Allport ask Ethel about it in the way he did?”

“But, my dear Miss Hunter, the girl is only just engaged to another man, you heard her tell us so yourself.”

“And, my dear Mr. Jeffcock,” she mocked, “it’s quite, quite possible to be engaged to one man and in love with another all the time—even quite, quite nice girls may find themselves in that position. If you doubt it I can give you a case near at hand, can’t I now?”

I had to admit to myself that she could, but our conversation was interrupted by the cathedral clock which boomed out the hour of four. Margaret seemed absurdly—I was going to say put out, but I think alarmed is more the word—that it should be so late.

“Why, that’s four o’clock,” she whispered. “Mr. Allport expected to be here by then, didn’t he? I must go, I must really go. I had no idea it was so late.”

We hurried off down the garden together. A subtle change seemed to have come over Margaret—in the rose garden and behind the garage, friendly and anxious to exchange her ideas and confidences with mine—now suddenly reticent and disturbed. I could hear her whispering to herself as we hurried along the path, “How late it is, how late it is, I had no idea it was so late!” It somehow brought a picture of the White Rabbit hurrying off to the duchess’s tea party before my mind.

“I say, they’re going to have tea in the garden, and it’s ready now; Mr. Allport may be here before we finish,” she said aloud in an agitated voice.

“Well, and why not?” I voiced my surprise.

“But I wanted to see Mrs. Kenley before he came, to show her the paper I found in the attic, you know, and now I shall have to wait until after tea and he may be here before we finish.”

The doctor was still away on his afternoon round, but Janet, who had returned, and the others were seated under the cedar having tea. It was a hurried, agitated, unhappy little meal: Ethel obviously nervous and on edge; Margaret, anxious to finish and buttonhole my Janet, hardly ate anything at all; Janet absorbed and I fancied a little worried; Kenneth morose, with Ralph, as usual, a sort of sympathetic shadow, myself thinking, thinking, thinking, of Margaret’s latest find and Miss Summerson’s odd behavior. And all the time as we sat under the cedar’s shade with the sunsplashed lawn before us and the rooks cawing dreamily overhead, we each had an ear alert and listening for the front door-bell, and Allport, and the breaking of the storm. No wonder that we finished rather quickly and that Annie, for once, had overestimated our requirements in the matter of bread and butter.

The two boys went off to the garage to make Ralph’s beloved and expensive car ready for the anticipated journey back to Sheffield as soon as Allport should arrive and release them from their parole. Ethel went indoors to aid the overworked Annie, and I think to escape from the rest of us. I saw Margaret turn and whisper to Janet as soon as Ethel had gone. They were seated next to each other, Janet next to me, Margaret in the chair beyond, and it just happened that I was looking at Janet’s hand as it rested on the arm of her wicker-chair when Margaret began to whisper. I was thinking how characteristic those hands of hers were—rather large for a woman—strong and gentle at once with fingers that tapered away like a dream; hands that were both manly and womanly at once. And then to my astonishment I noticed that the wicker of the chair-arm was bending beneath her grip.

She rose to her feet as I glanced at her in surprise—surprise which increased, when I felt her tap my foot with hers as she said, “I don’t suppose that I shall be gone for more than five minutes, Mr. Jeffcock—about five minutes, Mr. Jeffcock.” For all the world as though we had had some definite arrangement together and she were making some excuse. But she took Margaret by the arm and walked away before I could question her about it.

They went into the house together.

Chapter XV.
A Close Call

And now I come to the one part of my story that it gives me real pleasure to write, and that is the full admission of my precipitate and headlong falling in love with Janet, and how in a single day my liking for her broadened out and deepened into adoration. She had arrived at Dalehouse on Thursday morning and by midday on Friday I knew that if I failed to hold and keep her I should have missed the one important sign-post on the highway of my life.

True, I had already passed by this lane end and that, and, carelessly forgetting to examine the signs, I may have wandered down one here and there for an aimless mile or so, until, puzzled and disappointed, I retraced my steps. And other crossroads and branch roads doubtless lay ahead, some of them broad and safe and running in my direction. But this great road ahead of me here to the right, how clear it ran straight to the hilltops and the rising sun. What a road to tread with a friend at your side! What a clean straight climb to make with Janet!

What was it that Margaret had said? That a pretty face, a shapely figure, and love, were one and the same to men? A lie! What a damnable lie! Was that really then an accepted valuation? I thought of some of the married couples I knew. Could they ever have been in love? Could this bright clear light so soon die down to a guttering smoky flame? Or had they missed their way and turned down some by-road before their proper time?

And that other reason for marriage written down so inappropriately in the prayer-book service—an attribute of married love perhaps—but surely nothing to do with spiritual love and the plighting of troth in the church before God? What had such animal stuff to do with this hallowed uplifting ecstasy that filled my soul when Janet’s wide gray eyes met mine?

A sentimental fool do you call me for writing thus? Then if already married, you, my friend, have married a friend, or a mistress, or perhaps fortune has smiled on you and the mistress you have married is also your friend, but friend, or mistress, or both, you know nothing whatever of love.

Love at first sight then? Yes, of course it was, but doesn’t all true love come quick and sharp like that? Perhaps to friends whose friendship has stood stolid and unromantic through the years, there comes this sudden uplift, and the gray old tree has bloomed at last. Or perhaps the warm sun of a single day has rushed the growth through bud to flower.

However it may have been, whether I had somehow skipped a stage, or whether the peculiarly harrowing circumstances in which we had met had quickened my perceptions—I knew with an exhilarating certainty that I was in love with Janet.

Time stood still when I looked at Janet. The sunny garden became a drab uninteresting desert when Janet was away. Cut the rose from the tree and what an ungainly plant is left! Raze the great cathedral to the ground and what a mean little town of twisted narrow streets! Yes, I was in love with Janet. She was my rose and my shining tower.

Five o’clock came floating down as I sat there dreaming. She must have been gone for far more than the five minutes she had mentioned, for nearly half an hour. I would go and try to find her. Or was she coming to me now? Would she look at me, could I hold her eyes with mine again? My pulses quickened at the thought. But it was only Margaret who came hurrying toward me across the lawn.

“Mrs. Kenley wants you,” she said. “Oh, Mr. Jeffcock, please do come at once. We’ve found out something—something absolutely thrilling—it’s the end!”

“Where? How do you mean?” I asked her.

“I can’t tell you now, but Mrs. Kenley wants you up in the box-room where I found the paper this afternoon. She told me to come and find you. She said that you were to help her and would come.”

So Janet had taken her into our partnership. I don’t know what line of argument I took, or why I arrived at such a conclusion, but I remembered having an instinctive feeling that the curtain had been rung up for the final scene. What, I wondered, would be the setting and who the villain of the piece? Ralph? Kenneth? Ethel? Or The Tundish? I visualized my table and the numbers I had set down against each. Margaret at any rate seemed to have been correctly assessed or Janet would never have given away the fact that she and Allport were working together. No single thought of suspicion disturbed my dull and stupid brain.

As we made our way back to the house, she told me that I was to join her on the upper landing in a minute. If I met any of the others I was to pretend that I was going to my room. She was breathing quickly, and, looking at her sidewise, I could see how wildly excited and hot she was. She mopped her face as we walked along, and I could feel my own excitement welling up in sympathy with hers.

There was no one about when we reached the house and I succeeded in joining her on the upper landing a minute later without having attracted attention to my movements. I was aglow with the thought that I was to help and work with my Janet. Margaret was waiting for me at the foot of the little stairway that leads to the disused attics. She was smiling and held her fingers to her lips enjoining silence. Yet again I was impressed with her utter lack of feeling and her unconquerable desire to attract. Even at such a time she was looking arch, enjoying the situation.

“Now we must be very quiet. You mustn’t speak a word. At first you won’t be able to understand what has happened, but Mrs. Kenley will explain it when she comes. Remember that it’s her instructions which you’re obeying.”

We went up the creaking disused stairs to the narrow attic passage under the roof, and I followed her as quietly as I could. The passage runs the length of the house, and rises sheer to the tiles at their apex. It is lighted by an odd glass tile or two. Mortar droppings covered the floor and the hot unventilated atmosphere was heavy with the dry musty smell of accumulated dust. The attics themselves open out of the passage to left and right, but the doors were shut and we passed them all. I was following close behind her and she turned her head and giggled at me as we made our way along.

“Francis, you’ll be simply thrilled,” she whispered. She had never called me Francis before, and she lingered on the word, somehow drawing it out and caressing it as she spoke. Fr-an-cis, she said, and it made me feel uncomfortable.

There is a low door at the end of the passage, and she stopped in front of it, her hand on the knob.

“This is the box-room,” she whispered. “It’s pitch dark inside and you’ll have to let me guide you. Mrs. Kenley will join us in a minute. You mustn’t say a word though, for if you do, you’ll spoil the whole of the scheme she has made.”

She was a-quiver with excitement and I could feel her trembling like a leaf as she put her hand in mine when we got inside the stuffy darkened room. What fresh mystery was lurking here, I wondered. God, had I only known in time! She closed and shut the door behind us.

“You’ll have to stoop,” she whispered again, “for the roof slopes down in places, but you must follow me for Mrs. Kenley’s, for clever Mrs. Kenley’s sake.” I could feel her hot breath on my face, so close to me she stood. Not understanding what was afoot, but full of a vague uneasiness, I followed where she led. What else, I ask, was there that I could have done?

She still held me by the hand and we moved slowly across the room. First we went straight forward for a little way, and then we seemed to turn, but the blackness was so dense, and I so busy with conjecture, that soon I had lost my bearings. She told me when to stoop, and finally we drew up against what felt like a wooden partition. There she turned me round and told me to wait.

I heard her go back across the room again, and to my amazement she was laughing gently to herself—a low contralto throaty laugh, a laugh that so long as I live I shall never forget—a laugh that somehow filled me with dismay and foreboding as it came gurgling to my ears across the darkened air.

Suddenly she switched on an electric torch and I could see her dim outline some fifteen paces or so away from where I stood. What I had thought was a wooden partition was a chest of drawers, and I found myself wedged in a corner between it and a pile of trunks and the sloping roof. As my eyes became accustomed to the light I could make out a broken-down old bedstead on the floor between us. The bottom end was missing and it sloped from head to foot, the top end canting forward at an angle to the floor. A dirty dust-sheet covered it and on an upturned box at the side of it away from where I stood I saw a large glass beaker. Margaret was playing her light on it. It was three parts full of liquid.

“Now, Francis, remember that you’re not to stir and soon you’ll understand how clever Mrs. Kenley trapped the wicked doctor.” She began to laugh again—cruel and low—and then she continued in a singsong sort of drone, “You can see the beaker, Francis?”

“Yes, of course I can.”

“Francis, do you know what’s in it? Can you guess?”

“No, of course I can’t. But where is Mrs. Kenley, and what’s it all about?” I felt a growing anger. Every time she spoke my name she fondled it. I can’t explain it, but it seemed almost that she knew how I longed to hear Janet call me so, and that she was jeering at me for it. It angered me and hurt.

“Vitriol, Francis! Beautiful, burning, biting vitriol. I wonder if you know exactly how it blinds and corrodes?”

“In God’s name,” I cried, thoroughly disturbed at last, “what is all this foolery about?”

“Hush! Not so loud. And remember that you’re not to move any nearer. See what a nice lot of it there is. If I threw it: all over any one wouldn’t it blind them quickly! I emptied it out of the bottle into the glass so that I could throw it quickly all at once. Wasn’t that thoughtful of me, Francis? And, Francis, if you call out or move a single step, I will, Francis. Over your Janet, Francis. Just look at her, isn’t she a picture? You and your woman detective, you blundering fool!”

She stooped and jerked the dust-sheet from the iron bed.

“Don’t stir,” she laughed, “or I’ll spill it right away over her bloody face.”

Her laughter held her again as she stood holding the beaker over Janet. It was so big that she could barely span it, and her hand shook as she herself was shaken by her demoniac mirth. I stood helplessly looking at her from my dark corner, in an agony of apprehension.

And Janet! She was unconscious and lay gagged and strapped and bound to the bed. Her arms had been pulled back cruelly, her wrists tied behind her to the iron top. Her legs had been bound to the sides. A strap from one of the trunks passed over her waist and under the bed, and even in the dim light of the torch, I could see from where I stood how cruelly tight it had been pulled. Rags which had been stuffed into her mouth were held in position by a piece of cord, wound round her head and cutting across her mouth, pulling down her lower jaw.

“Do you know what she said, Francis, when I chloroformed her? Would you like to know? She said, ‘Fran-cis, where’s Fran-cis?’ And here you are to see her. Isn’t it shameless of her to let you look at her lying there like that?”

“You she-devil, take it away,” I cried, tortured beyond discretion.

“Ah! You would, would you? Fool, see what you’ve made me do. I’ve spilt some of it and missed her by a hair. Talk like that or move again and——”

Then she laughed and blasphemed in turns, while I stood horrified, peering out of my dark corner over the chest of drawers, perspiration gathering in beads on my forehead and streaming down my face. How short was the time since I had sat in the garden, breathing God’s free air, at the foot of God’s great church, the pleasant garden noises striking my listless ears as I dreamed and pondered of my love! And now I stood, trapped and tortured in this dark little chamber of hell, free yet afraid to move, while the dear one I loved lay helpless before me on the brink of blindness and death. On the sloping roof just over my head I could hear the sparrows chirping in the sun, while the dark stagnant attic air was filled with the jeers and obscenities of Satan—Heaven and Hell with a layer of tiles between them.

She tortured me. My God, how she tortured me!

She tilted the beaker till the liquid quivered on the lip.

I don’t know what I could have done. I thought of pushing over the chest of drawers and making a dash for it round the end of the bed, but nothing could prevent her if she really intended to carry out her fiendish threat.

I tried remonstrance and persuasion, but my efforts were met with nothing but laughter and jeers.

“That’s better, Francis, darling, now you begin to understand how clever stupid Margaret is. Why not try to enjoy the fun with me! Just think how it will burn her, death and decay all at once! With her face turned up like that, little pools of it will gather in the corners of her eyes. When the lids burn away how weird and funny they’ll look. And, Francis, think of the rags in her mouth! But the really priceless part of it all is, Francis, darling, that you haven’t yet seen the point of the joke!”

My one hope was for delay, and I thought that if only I could keep her in conversation, we might perhaps be missed and discovered by the others. Little Allport was to have arrived at four, and he would be sure to inquire for Janet.

“Yes, of course it’s only a joke, Margaret. Now do stop joking and tell me what it’s all about!”

“You poor silly fool,” she jeered. “They’ll think it was you; that’s the joke. I’ve arranged it all beautifully. What a joy it will be when I see you being handcuffed and taken away. Now it’s time we stopped this pleasant chatter. Janet wouldn’t like you being alone in the dark with me like this, you know. So here goes. One to be ready. Two to be ste——”

I could bear no more. Whether I did the right thing or not I have never been able to decide, but I had a heavy bunch of keys in my pocket, and before she could pour, I hurled them as hard as I could at her face.

And I missed my aim, may God forgive me, and how like me it was, but I missed her by an inch.

She gave a little chuckle, tipped the vitriol—a full quart of it or more there must have been—over Janet’s face and breasts, and was out of the room almost before I had time to stir.

I gave one agonized cry, and dashed round the end of the chest of drawers, only to collide full tilt with one of the beams in the roof. It caught me straight across the forehead and I fell like a log with a crash to the floor.

How long I lay there I don’t know—perhaps for only a matter of seconds—but when I did come round I was dazed and confused. Neither door nor bed could I find. I crawled dazed and helpless about the floor, colliding first with the sloping tiles and then with a pile of boxes. Almost as though it were some other person in distress I could hear myself whimpering and muttering a mixture of imprecation and prayer. How damnably dark it was. Christ, if I could but see!

After what seemed like an eternity of futile searching, I found the door at last, and it was locked. I banged on it weakly and tried to shout, but my head was singing so that I could hardly stand or raise my voice above a whisper. Then I crawled to the broken bed on which my poor tortured darling lay. With hands that shook I found the sheet and mopped her poor disfigured face and body. She was covered with a kind of filthy slime. Death and decay. Death—and decay.

I believe that I must have fainted. There was a crash and the room seemed to fill with a crowd of angry men. The Tundish, angry and fierce, was shaking me to and fro.

“You! Jeffcock, you! You infernal lying Judas!” he cried, and hurled me from him right across the floor. I fell against the wall and lay there weakly repeating again and again, “It was Margaret. Vitriol. She’s mad and threw vitriol. It was Margaret.”

At last I attracted their attention, and Ralph came and stood beside me. He stooped to hear what it was that I said. Then Kenneth and Margaret stood above me too.

“She did it. She chloroformed her and then threw vitriol over her,” I gasped, half sitting up on the floor.

“Oh, you liar—you wicked liar—how can you say such a wicked thing. Why, you were caught in here with the door locked!”

Even to me she sounded quite convincing. Then she bent down over me suddenly and putting her hand into the side pocket of my coat she pulled out a key.

“Why, here’s the key of the door in his pocket! Now what have you to say for yourself?” she cried.

Ralph stooped and picked something up from the floor. “And this, I think, is your knife, Mr. Jeffcock,” he said very coldly.

Margaret shrugged her shoulders and turned away toward the doctor, who was kneeling by the bed.

Numb with my grief, I sat propped against the wall, my head athrob, my soul sick with the horror of what I had felt and heard. Through the broken door the light from the passage showed up the dusty floor, with its scattered papers and boxes and its derelict household lumber. Our movements had filled the air with dust, which the pallid passage light turned to a ghostly beam, and through it like some distorted figure in a dream, the doctor loomed gigantic as he knelt by Janet’s side.

This then was to be the final scene to the drama of this devil’s week, with myself the villain, bludgeoned and broken, a murderer and a Judas, spurned by my friends and accepted by all as the hell fiend who had defiled beauty and truth in the person of my darling. This was the hilltop to which my broad straight road of love and life had led me. In this dismal attic was I to part from the woman I loved with my love barely born and wholly unconfessed.

The doctor looked up at last, and, without hope, I waited for the verdict—there were death and decay in the dust-laden air.

“What’s all this nonsense about vitriol?” he cried with amazement on his face. His words came cool and clear like a breeze from the northern snows.

Margaret answered him, “Mr. Jeffcock said that I threw vitriol; of course that’s absurd, and so I thought that it must have been vitriol and that he’d thrown it himself. The door was locked and we’ve just found the key in his pocket. Oh, it’s all too dreadful!”

“Well, we shall hear what Mrs. Kenley has to say about it in a minute when she comes round.”

“Comes round? Why, she can’t recover, can she—after all that—she must be burned to death?” There was a catch in her voice and from where I sat I could see her clasping and unclasping her hands nervously behind her back.

The doctor got up from his knees. He said not a word, but stood towering above her, looking sternly down.

“It wasn’t vitriol,” he said at length, in a slow measured voice. “As far as I can tell, it was medicinal paraffin, or something of the kind, and has done her no harm whatever.”

I dropped forward on my knees gazing at the doctor. A Judas he had called me, but I could have blessed him where he stood. Like some diver who has dived too deep and fills his bursting lungs with painful breath, my relief was almost more than I could bear.

There was a little time of silence, and then like some echo from the lost, came Margaret’s gentle laugh. Low at first, it grew in volume to an uncontrolled and piercing shriek that went reverberating through the empty attics, through the roof, and into the sunlit air. “I tell you it was vitriol,” she cried between her shouts of laughter. Then quite suddenly she ceased, while the doctor and the others stood looking at her aghast.

“Or else that harlot Hilda Summerson has tricked me, after all,” she burst out again, and before the doctor and the two boys could recover from their surprise, she darted through the door and went racing down the narrow passage, her arms waving wildly as she shouted and shrieked, “Hilda, you harlot, you harlot, I’m coming for you now.”

She ran like one demented, and in her madness overlooked the stair top when she reached it. But the stairs would not be ignored. We saw her disappear—there was a louder shriek and then a crash—a moan and then silence.

The Tundish, with Kenneth and Ralph close behind, hurried after her.

I dragged myself to where Janet lay. The Tundish had released her bonds and had covered her once more with the sheet. She turned and opened her dear gray eyes to find me kneeling by her side.

My hour of torture was over, but as I knelt, that other great doubt that, only lovers unconfessed can know, came surging round me.

Chapter XVI.
Explanations and a Challenge

A few hours later the sad remainder of our little tennis party was gathered in the drawing-room round one of the open windows, Janet and Ethel comfortably on the settee, The Tundish and myself perched each in a corner of the broad window sill, little Allport lolling back at his ease in one of the large wicker chairs. It was both wide and deep, and, entirely unconcerned as to his lack of inches, he sat well back, his legs stuck out straight in front of him, his diminutive feet barely projecting beyond the edge of the seat.

During the evening hours a heavy haze had gathered, to thicken later into definite cloud, and now a steady rain was falling. The air was heavy with sweet rain-washed scents released from thirsty soil and reviving plants.

The smoke from our pipes floated over our heads in swirls and snakelike twists that showed up gray and blue in the fading light. Through the open window there came the welcome patter of the rain. A thrush was singing his even-song. On Janet’s lap lay the surviving tabby cat, lazily indolent under her gentle caressing hands, A sense of tranquillity and brooding peace seemed to enfold us like some quiet blessing. “Peace on earth,” sang the thrush in the tree, and “Courage and hope,” throbbed my heart in reply, whenever I looked at Janet. She was facing the light, her eyes like two clear stars, that now and again would shine into mine, when the room and its occupants would fade away leaving us alone together for a blessed brief eternity.

She had not been really hurt by Margaret’s ill-treatment, and apart from the effects of the chloroform and a bruise here and there, she was none the worse for her experience. Cold bandages, a little brandy and a couple of hours’ rest had enabled me to recover from my own collapse, which the doctor attributed as much to shock as to the blow on my head.

Margaret’s headlong fall had broken a leg and had stunned her. She regained consciousness but never her reason, and she had been taken to a neighboring asylum babbling incoherently of paraffin and vitriol.

Kenneth and Ralph had returned to Sheffield together in the Daimler. I was lying down in my room when they left and can tell you nothing of the manner of their going, or of how Kenneth and Ethel parted from each other.

The Tundish had forbidden any reference to the day’s events until after dinner, and now, solemn and sad, but with feelings of unutterable relief, we sat waiting to hear what little Allport had to tell us.

He finished his coffee at last, put the cup on a table beside him, relighted his pipe, and with some hesitation at first as he paused here and there for a word or a phrase, began to give us the explanations we were each for our own special reasons so curious to hear.

“First of all, Doctor,” he said, “I think I had better tell you what I am able to, about your dispenser, Miss Summerson, for in a sense she has been the root cause, both of Miss Palfreeman’s death, and of all your later troubles. Had she only been more robust in character, this week might have come and gone, for all of you, like any other among the annual fifty-two.

“As you will know, Miss Hanson, the Summersons used to live in that row of little houses just beyond the end of the Hunters’ garden, and unfortunately for Miss Summerson, the two girls struck up—I was going to say ‘a friendship’—but what a word for it! The old fable of the wolf and the lamb is a sweet little springtime idyll compared with the tale of this comradeship of theirs. It began by Miss Hunter tricking the younger girl into some petty dishonorable act—I won’t specify it—and then persuading her to commit another to save herself from the first.”

The little man paused as though wondering how much he should tell us, and I saw a picture of a garden border with a tall frail flower in the clinging bindweed’s devitalizing grip.

“Miss Summerson has made a clean breast of everything to me, but I can only tell you that for the last two years she has been absolutely and completely in Miss Hunter’s power, and Mr. Jeffcock here at any rate, may be able to appreciate what that might ultimately mean for a nervous girl. She was terrified out of all sense of safety and proportion. It was a tyranny complete.”

I remembered the cruel laugh that I had heard in the waiting-room on the morning of my arrival at Dalehouse, and how poor Miss Summerson had lied to the doctor about it. How many similar lies had she told, I wondered, during the past two years; how many unhappy hours spent in self-recrimination! Ethel moved restlessly in her corner of the settee. We were silent for a little while. Then Allport, clearing his throat, proceeded.

“The key of the poison cupboard was never lost at all. It was handed over to Miss Hunter under threat of exposure to the man to whom Miss Summerson hoped to become engaged. She has told me, and I am inclined to believe her, that she thought that Miss Hunter wanted to help herself to some of the drugs, and that she had no idea that the poisons were to be tampered with or used, and very possibly there was no such intention when the key was first secured.”

“But why didn’t she demand what she wanted, instead of getting hold of the key, and running the risk of being caught at the cupboard? If she had Miss Summerson in her power in the way you’ve suggested, surely she could have asked for drugs or anything else at any time she liked?”

Allport shook his head. “No, Doctor, if you think that, then you don’t yet understand Miss Hunter—I do not myself entirely—there are still certain points that I can’t set down even a mad woman’s reasons against, but I do understand her better than that. You see, above everything else she was cruel. She knew well enough that Miss Summerson would be in an agony of apprehension until the key was returned, and it was that which gave her pleasure. It was typical of a hundred other cruelties that Miss Summerson has suffered, some of them merely petty, many of them worse.”

The Tundish seemed to be content with the explanation. I, too, had questions I wanted to ask, but I was too eager to hear the rest of his story to frame them, and the little man continued without further interruption.

“Well, that is how Miss Hunter secured the key. There was nothing actually criminal in the giving of it, but later, Miss Summerson’s reticence was of course a punishable offense. She has begged me to tell you, Doctor, that in spite of everything she would have come forward had you been arrested. I have told you, as I promised I would, and you must take it for what it is worth.

“However, if she endangered you all by the one act, she certainly saved your life, Janet, over the matter of the vitriol, When she asked for the key, which according to promise was already overdue, it was not forthcoming, and a bottle of vitriol was demanded against its return. Fortunately, and we all know now how very fortunate it was, they were interrupted before the exchange could be made, and it gave Miss Summerson an opportunity to decant the contents of an old sulphuric acid bottle and substitute medicinal paraffin for it.

“And now I want you to try to understand the difficulty of my position on the morning after the murder. There was ample evidence to have warranted the arrest of the doctor here. He made up the fatal draft; he knew all about and had access to the poison; and both he and Miss Palfreeman had lived in Shanghai and had almost certainly been acquainted there. There was a possible motive—after the inquiry an obvious one—the key of the locked bedroom door was found in his pocket.”

“What!” The Tundish exclaimed with unusual excitement.

“Yes, in the pocket of your indoor coat, Doctor. I had my reasons for saying it was found elsewhere. For one thing, I wanted to observe Miss Hunter when I made the statement, to see how she would take it. I wish now that I had thought of some other place in which to have said I had hidden it, but I could not have foreseen the consequences of my deception.”

“But China! How could you possibly have known at your round-table inquiry that I had lived in China and had met Miss Palfreeman there?”

“My dear Doctor,” the little man laughed complacently, “we live in civilized times—times of telephones and medical directories, for instance. Within five minutes of Mr. Jeffcock’s call to the police station on Wednesday morning, I was asking Scotland Yard to look up your record in the directory, and to find out if you were known by repute to any of the medical staff. Inspector Brown’s superintendent knew exactly which players in the tournament were staying with Dr. Hanson, and before we came to Dalehouse inquiries with regard to Mr. Jeffcock’s antecedents and the rest of the party were already on foot. We did not know Miss Palfreeman’s address, but you kindly furnished us with that before we even had to ask you for it. It was not a difficult matter for Scotland Yard to ascertain that Miss Palfreeman’s uncle had been for a time in Shanghai, that her father, who was a government official, had committed suicide there, and that you had lived there too and were almost certainly acquainted with all three of them.”

“Yes, of course. How perfectly simple! But the quarrel! What about that? Neither the medical directory nor the girl at the telephone exchange could help you there.”

“No. That was merely an instance of the nasty suspicious turn a detective’s mind instinctively takes. I didn’t know that there had been any quarrel. But I did assume for the time that you had murdered Miss Palfreeman, and if you had done so, then surely it was only logical to make the assumption of a quarrel too?”

“You did really suspect me then, and leave me at large? Surely that was a risk to take?”

“No, as you will see later I did not altogether suspect you. But I did when I was questioning you at my inquiry. When you treat a patient, Doctor, you diagnose the disease and then you treat him for it, and you work consistently on the assumption that your diagnosis has been correct until you find out definitely that you have made a mistake. You don’t make up your medicines to suit two or three possible ailments on the off chance that one of them may be correct. Well, my own experience has taught me that at an inquiry like the one we had round the dining-room table on the Wednesday morning, the only possible way to obtain exact information is to assume that the questionee is guilty. It is no good making up your mind beforehand that X is guilty and allowing that to color all the questions you put to Y. I believe that my success as a detective is due to the fact that for a time I can force myself into believing what I don’t really believe, more than to anything else. I questioned each of you as Miss Palfreeman’s murderer. As I questioned you I was convinced of your guilt. Then, when it was over, I was able to stop play-acting, and sift out the information I had secured.”

The conceited little fellow looked round brightly for approbation after the manner of some small boy who knows he’s said something rather smart. Self-satisfied little beggar! Just when I was beginning rather to like him too! The Tundish murmured something about a doctor’s diagnosis not always being quite the pig-headed business he’d described, and Allport, filling up his pipe again, continued.

“As I was explaining, it was inevitable that my first suspicions should turn to the doctor, but there were several points that led me to think it might be a mistake to make an immediate arrest without further investigation. On the floor, near the bedside table, in Miss Palfreeman’s room, I had picked up a tiny fragment of splintered glass and a good-sized diamond.

“The diamond had evidently fallen out of the setting on a ring or a broach—it might have belonged to any one—most likely to Miss Palfreeman herself, but when we came to search the bedrooms we found no piece of jewelry from which a stone was missing. It struck me as being rather strange that its loss had not been advertised. Annie had heard nothing of it and none of you had questioned her about its loss. It was possible, of course, that the owner might not have noticed that it was missing, but then I should have expected to find a damaged ring either among Miss Palfreeman’s belongings or in one of the other bedrooms. Not very much to go on, perhaps, but I felt it to be unnatural that a diamond of such considerable value should be lost and nothing said.”

It was my turn to interrupt, and unlike his previous attitude, the little man seemed now almost to welcome the interruption. I could see that he was in the throes of an exquisite—and I must admit a thoroughly deserved—enjoyment. He was like a child, I thought, sucking its favorite sweet, and making it last. I told him how I had caught Margaret searching the stairs for a sixpence that Annie found for her later on, and how my half-awakened suspicions had been allayed by the find.

Then The Tundish informed us that he too had seen her searching, but in his case on the floor of poor Stella’s room. He had been mounting the stairs to the upper landing. The door of the room was half closed, and he had seen movements within, or had fancied that he had. But when he had pushed the door open to see what it was, he had found Margaret kneeling devoutly in prayer at the side of the bed.

Once again I was amazed at the placid doctor’s powers of description. He was uncanny. He described the little incident in the fewest possible simple words, but like the bold strokes of a master they made the picture live. Margaret, on hands and knees, half frantic, searching the floor for her incriminating diamond—then a sudden creak on the stairs, and the doctor gently pushing open the door to find her kneeling in prayerful attitude at the side of Stella’s bed—an attitude, surely, to make angels weep and Sapphira jealous.

The little man smoked thoughtfully for a few minutes, rearranged the cushions at the back of his chair, and continued.

“Yes, it was very fortunate, very, that finding of the diamond on the bedroom floor. It might so easily have been trodden into the carpet. Luck was on the side of justice then. And again luck was with us when, quite by accident, I found that the little splinter of glass came from the stopper of the bottle of Chinese poison. Have you ever examined it carefully, Doctor?”

The Tundish shook his head.

“It’s a really wonderful piece of work. The glass is very thin and fragile and is doubled back underneath the curving irregular top, curling inward again close to the projection that fits the neck of the bottle itself. It was from this point that the tiny splinter was missing. By the merest chance, I happened to hold the bottle up to the light and look up underneath the stopper when we were in the dispensary together. Later I found that my little fragment fitted it exactly.

“I argued that had the doctor added the poison to the draft, the addition would have been made when it was prepared.

“Again, that bedroom key required explanation. You might just conceivably have returned up-stairs and have thrown the glass among the ivy on the roof, and having locked the door, lied to Mr. Jeffcock about it—it was possible that you might have done that in order to throw suspicion on to some one else—but I could think of no satisfactory explanation that would account for your leaving the key in your own coat pocket. An oversight, it might have been, but even at that early stage of our acquaintance, dropped bottle-stoppers and glaring oversights did not seem to fit you, Doctor.

“Anyhow, I decided that in all the circumstances I ought to give you the benefit of the doubt, but that was about all I had to go on when I secured your promise that you would submit to a voluntary confinement if I held my hand. It never occurred to me that I might be putting you all in danger. True, the key of the poison cupboard was still missing, but I had no reason to anticipate any general attempt at slaughter.

“Before the joint conference in the dining-room at which I succeeded in achieving such universal unpopularity, I became more than ever satisfied that my decision had been the right one, and the inquiry itself only added to my satisfaction. And if I had known what Miss Palfreeman’s uncle has since told me, the inquiry would hardly have been necessary at all.”

The Tundish, who had been sitting quietly in his corner of the window-seat, with his hands clasped round one knee, became suddenly alert. “And it was hardly necessary for Mr. Crawford to discuss my affairs. I very much wish that he had not.”

“Oh, come now, Doctor, a detective’s mind is chock-full of curiosity, and it was only natural for any one seated at that inquiry to wonder what it was that had caused Miss Palfreeman’s father to commit suicide, and what part he imagined you had played in his disaster. All that Mr. Crawford told me when I pressed him for information was that now that his niece was dead there was no longer any need for secrecy; that in his opinion it had been absurd, in the circumstances, to keep it secret at all, and that if matters went against you, he could and would give certain information that would throw a very different light on the affair.”

The Tundish hesitated. For once he looked disturbed and at a loss. “Yes, it is quite true that every one who could have been damaged by the story is dead, but even so, I do not like giving explanations of my own conduct at their expense. However, as briefly as I can, and in the strictest confidence, I will give you the outline of the unhappy story. Miss Palfreeman’s mother was a very beautiful and charming woman, and like all beautiful and charming women who are stationed at the world’s outposts, she was subject to more than her share of temptation. She was soon the center of the English-speaking colony in Shanghai. She got badly into debt and stole and sold some of her husband’s official papers in order to save herself from catastrophe. But she might have saved herself the trouble and have taken her debts to her Maker, for only a few days after the papers were missed she was taken seriously ill of the complaint from which she died. My friend, her husband, loved her. The papers were lost beyond recovery. Circumstances were such that though he suspected me of the theft he could not make any open accusation, or hope to substantiate it if he did.”

The doctor paused for a few minutes, obviously pondering what further details he should give us. The light had nearly gone, and I could just make out the strong outline of his clear-cut face from where I sat at the end of the window-sill opposite to him. The wind was rising and the rain was beating against the window now, the drops collecting in little rivulets and streams that wriggled down the panes. Then he added in his quiet, unemotional voice, “I attended her in her last hours, and at death’s door she confessed what she had done. For the sake of her peace of mind, and for the sake of my friend, I promised that her secret should be kept. I did not know until yesterday that she had previously made a similar confession to her brother in writing. Well, that, briefly, is the story, and that is why I could not be more explicit about the quarrel with Stella’s father and her natural dislike for me.”

Ethel, what did you think, I wonder, of the man of your choice, as you sat there on the settee by Janet’s side in the fast fading light. To me, it came in a sudden flash of enlightenment, the reason for the impressive power of the unemotional, unassuming man. Bedrock, fundamental, essential honesty was the one foundation of his quiet strength. A rock on which he stood deriding fear and all the petty evils that beset the half-and-halfer. I felt a flush of shame, that I could have allowed my amateurish reasoning to besmirch my belief in such a one. My sheets of notes, and my table of relative guilt, which I still carried in my pocket, scoffed at me aloud. But for you, Ethel, what a glow of happiness his words must have brought you! Of all of us you alone had trusted him through thick and through thin. You had overdrawn your account at the bank of blind belief, and your lover had met the debt and paid you back in full. No wonder your eyes were bright.

There was another little pause when The Tundish had finished speaking. We none of us made any comment and Allport again continued his explanations.

“As you already know, I found some burned papers in Miss Hunter’s bedroom grate, but you did not know that there was one unburned fragment among the rest. Quite unmistakably it was the corner of a photograph, and fortunately it was the corner bearing the photographer’s name. A little later in the drawing-room—you and Inspector Brown were there, Mr. Jeffcock—and once again by the sheerest piece of good fortune, I caught sight of exactly the same name across the corner of a photograph of Mr. Bennett that stood on the top of the piano.

“It had been taken in Sheffield by Parberry, and the letters r-b-e-r-r-y had straggled across the corner of the bit I had found in the bedroom grate, and allowing for the treatment it had received—the texture and quality of the heavy mounts were both the same—I could not be certain that the photo Miss Hunter had burned was a duplicate of the one on the piano, but somehow I felt that it might be, and I decided to find out more about it if I could, and as far as I might, the extent to which the two had been acquainted.

“I did find out a certain amount from my direct questions to Miss Hunter, but it was to Mr. Bennett that I was chiefly indebted, though I put no question to him. You will remember that one of the questions I asked you, Miss Hanson, was whether the doctor had ever shown any sign that he might perhaps be attracted by Miss Palfreeman?”

A quiet “Yes” came from Ethel’s corner of the settee.

“When I asked that question, Mr. Bennett quite unmistakably took a suddenly increased interest in the proceedings. I concluded that he had had a special interest in Miss Palfreeman himself, and I felt that there might still be a motive if Miss Hunter had committed the crime and not the doctor. Please don’t imagine that I actually arrived at my conclusions on such vague and shadowy material. I merely felt that the whole affair required further scrutiny.”

“But, even now, I don’t think I understand why she burned the photo. Why did she do it?” Ethel queried.

“She burned the photo because she didn’t want it to be found among her belongings. She would feel that it would be too patent that her old love-affair with Mr. Bennett still survived so far as she was concerned, and that if it came to light that Mr. Bennett had been obviously attracted by Miss Palfreeman, it might suggest a possible motive.”

“But she knew that both Dr. Wallace and I knew exactly how fond she has always been of Ralph,” Ethel objected. “She couldn’t count on our not telling you.”

“No, that is quite true, but I think that it was a reasonable action for her to take, all the same. For her to bring a photo with her on a short visit was a complete admission of her feelings. It was definite. The mere fact that the finding of the unburned corner did help to convince me that she was involved, proves that she was right in what she did, if only she had taken more care.”

Ethel nodded her agreement.

“I was dissatisfied, too, even then, about Miss Summerson. I don’t know whether it struck you in the same way, but to me, there was something unnatural about her behavior when she told us she had lost the key. I was convinced that she was keeping information back.

“Very much against the inspector’s wishes, then, I had made up my mind before the inquiry that I would not immediately arrest the doctor, and after the inquiry, and in spite of what came out about the practical joke and the quarrel with Miss Palfreeman’s father, I saw no real reason to alter my decision. I quite made up my mind to leave you undivided, and to put an unknown agent into the house who could not be suspected of having any connection with the police.”

I saw my darling bend her graceful head lower over the cat.

“What made you change your mind then?” Ethel asked.

“He didn’t change his mind,” Janet replied.

I had almost forgotten that Ethel and The Tundish were both of them unaware of Janet’s connection with Allport, and even after she had spoken they were a little time in grasping what her words implied.

It was The Tundish who tumbled to it first.

“Well, then, Mrs. Kenley,” he said pleasantly, “we are more indebted to you than ever. You relieved us of Torquemada here in the chair, you saved us from Aunt Emmeline, you probably prevented us all from cutting one another’s throats, and all the time you were solving the mystery that had entangled us in its meshes.”

“But I don’t begin to understand. You are Bob Kenley’s wife, aren’t you? You must be because of mother’s letter——” Ethel was properly bewildered, and took some convincing that Janet could be anything other than she had pretended, but ultimately all was explained, and I was relieved to see that Janet had not in any way lost prestige by what had come to light.

“With Mrs. Kenley safely installed in the house, I went over to Sheffield to make what inquiries I could. I was soon satisfied that there had been something in the nature of a love-affair between Miss Hunter and Mr. Bennett. I also learned that she had been asked to resign from the school in which she taught. That was on Thursday morning. In the evening when I got back here, I was met with the disturbing information that the Chinese flagon had been found to contain nothing but water, and that the poison itself was still in the murderer’s private possession. You will see at once that almost surely cut out the doctor, unless he was being very, very clever and had removed it just to make me come to the conclusion I did.”

“I had practically made up my mind to break up the party and rely on obtaining further evidence in some other way, but Janet overpersuaded me, and we took Mr. Jeffcock partly into our confidence so that she should have some one always at hand in case of need.”

When I remembered how I had caught them behind the garage, it amused me, his reference to taking me into their confidence. I smiled to myself, and I thought that Janet was equally amused, but I made no comment.

“This is what I imagine actually happened. Mr. Bennett’s obvious attentions to Miss Palfreeman aroused Miss Hunter’s jealousy. Who knows what castles she had built, on the foundation that they were staying in the same house and playing in the same tournament together? What hopes she may not have had with regard to their reunion? Perhaps at the psychological moment she heard the doctor tell Miss Palfreeman that her medicine had been sent up-stairs, or perhaps she saw Annie taking it up. The cupboard key she already had, and in spite of what you have said, Doctor, she probably knew a good deal about the poison. Remember her connection with Miss Summerson. I think that the poison must have been taken from the cupboard and added to the draft some time between six and seven on Tuesday. What made her decide to keep the rest, I can’t explain, neither have I found out where she put it. But it would be easy to hide. For instance, she could have put it in one of her scent bottles and have hidden it in the garden.

“On the Wednesday morning after the murder was discovered she probably lost her nerve to some extent, and thought she might add to her safety by throwing away the glass and putting the key to the bedroom door in the doctor’s pocket. As luck would have it, the doctor unfortunately drew particular attention to the fact that he hadn’t locked the door.

“When Mr. Dane stated at the inquiry, that the doctor had laid unnatural stress on the fact that you all of you might have been up-stairs unknown to the rest during Tuesday evening, that probably decided her later actions, and explains the second notice, and the hiding of the newspaper in Mr. Jeffcock’s bedroom.”

“That still puzzles me,” I exclaimed. “Why on earth didn’t she hide the paper in the doctor’s room?”

“I think that she wanted to spread the suspicion,” Allport answered me after a pause. “And it wasn’t a bad plan either. She had already put the medicine glass inside one of your socks before she threw it out of the window among the ivy on the roof. But for accidents such as the unburned corner of photograph, the splinter of glass and the diamond, we might have been sadly at sea, and it may interest you to know, Mr. Jeffcock, that for a period you were the prime favorite of our good friend Inspector Brown.”

“But why didn’t you suspect me in the same way that you suspected Margaret, just at first, I mean?” Ethel asked him.

“There was the photograph, for one thing, and then as we sat round the dining-room table it was quite obvious to me that—— Well, I think I shall leave the doctor to find out what it was that was so obvious by himself, if he doesn’t know it already.”

The little man actually chuckled.

“John, don’t be such a tease,” Janet admonished.

Allport was going up in my estimation again, but I did not like his frequent “Janets” nor Janet calling him John. Interested as I had been in what he had told us, I wanted to get ahead with that still greater mystery that concerned Janet and me alone, and already a half-formed plan of campaign was shaping in my head. I suppressed several questions that I really wanted to ask, but the others were not so considerate.

“Why did she attack Mrs. Kenley?” came from the doctor. “And by the way, Jeffcock,” he added, turning to me, “I still owe you an apology for my conduct in the box-room. But poor Margaret came to me in a great state, and told me that she had just seen you drag Mrs. Kenley along the attic passage and into the box-room at the end of it, locking the door behind you; and when I had broken the door down, there you were with the atmosphere reeking of chloroform.”

“Your mistake was both understandable and excusable,” I assured him.

“As to why she attacked me, I believe that she suspected me from the very beginning,” Janet said, picking up the cat and cuddling her up against her neck in the most distracting fashion. “To start with, I am almost sure that she overheard, or at any rate, saw me talking to you behind the garage, John. As Mr. Jeffcock and I came away, some one, I am certain, moved in the bushes near by. She probably coupled what she saw with the fact that it was I who had discovered her diamond with such surprising ease in the grass on the lawn. When she came to think about it, she would realize what a mistake she had made in claiming it as hers.”

“Didn’t you really find the diamond there then?” Ethel questioned.

“No, of course I didn’t. Mr. Allport gave it to me. Whether she may not also have seen me searching in one of your bedrooms, I don’t know, but she was very sly and she trapped me cleverly in the box-room. Just after we finished tea in the garden, she whispered to me that she wanted to show me something indoors. I was suspicious, but I still had a sneaking feeling that you might have been the culprit after all, Dr. Wallace. The incident of the bird bath had put me off the scent. It was odd that you should have come up to the rose garden and have noticed that the bath had disappeared so immediately after Mr. Jeffcock and I had found the dead birds.”

“Dead birds! Whatever are you talking about?”

“Yes, birds and a cat. Hasn’t John told you of our sad little find in the rose garden? Just before you came to call us in to breakfast this morning, we had found that the poison had been emptied into the bird bath. There were dozens of dead birds and one of the cats lying dead on the lawn. We rang up for Inspector Brown, and we had no sooner bundled him away than you appeared on the scene and began to make inquiries about the missing bath. Then, too, I did not quite like your taking away the whisky bottle and the glass from the kitchen table the night before.”

“I wanted to find out if they contained anything in addition to the whisky. And they did. The whisky had been heavily drugged.”

“Yes, we know it was. I took the table-cloth on which some of it had been spilled to the police station. Miss Hunter had drugged the whisky and then had turned on the gas, after cook had succumbed to its effects. She made a bad mistake when she forgot to turn on the light as well. But as I was saying, at the time it made me begin to wonder when I saw you go off with the bottle and the glass. You see, I didn’t appreciate that you suspected Miss Hunter too, and I thought that you were taking them to prevent any one else from knowing what they had contained. I was puzzled about it, and when she showed me a slip from one of your memo pads with the words pasted over it, as though you had been making a trial to see what it would look like, and a newspaper with odd words cut out of it, well, I followed her to the box-room eagerly enough, hoping that we might find something else. I was leaning over a box on the floor, when she came up behind me and held a pad soaked in chloroform over my nose and mouth. I hadn’t the ghost of a chance and couldn’t utter a sound.”

My darling finished her explanation, and I cried out, “Oh, what a fool I’ve been. What a blundering fool! You warned me. I see it now, and there I sat in the garden and left you without help.”

“No, no, indeed it wasn’t your fault at all. I ought never to have gone with her. You couldn’t have guessed. Any one might have missed it.”

“Look here, are you two talking some other language? What’s it all about?” Allport interrupted.

“You’re not to tell him, Mr. Jeffcock.”

“She warned me that she thought she might be in danger as clearly as she could, and idiot that I am, I’ve only just this minute understood.”

Then I went on to tell them how Margaret had shown me her alleged box-room find behind the garage, and of how we had found Miss Summerson hiding in the hedge and what she had said.

“Yes, Miss Summerson has told me about that,” Allport informed us when I had finished. “Miss Hunter had sent her there and had told her to hide in the hedge until she came to her. Then she took you along with her and Miss Summerson was too frightened of her tormentor to explain. She was in complete subjection.”

“But it was I who heard her moving,” I told him.

“Oh, she would have done it if you hadn’t.”

“And why did you want me to tell her about your dusting the doctor’s room, and that I had noticed that you hadn’t any duster?” I asked, turning to Janet.

“I wanted to know what she said. What did she say, by the way?”

I told her.

“Oh, if only I had known that, she would never have got me into that box-room alone!”

“But surely what she said was innocent and reasonable enough?”

“No, it was neither. You see, she and I had dusted the doctor’s room together directly after breakfast. It proved quite clearly that she knew something of who I was, and that she suspected me, and she would not have suspected me unless she had had a guilty conscience. Knowing that she had dusted the room with me it was a most unnatural thing for her to say. That was why I wanted you to tell her about it, only unfortunately I never had the chance of asking you the result of the little trap.”

“And cook! What about cook?” Ethel asked.

“Grace is a bad lot, Miss Hanson, and got no more than she deserved,” Allport answered. “I’ve seen her in the hospital, and I’ve looked up her record which is almost a record in itself. She told me that she actually saw Miss Hunter coming out of Miss Palfreeman’s room on Tuesday evening, but that she didn’t like to say anything because of the family honor! You should have heard her attempt at the old family retainer touch. What she really meant, was that she hoped to do better for herself by blackmailing Miss Hunter.”

“I wonder why she seemed to threaten you so on the landing that night then, Doctor—do you remember her ‘I knows what I knows, Dr. Wallace,’ ” I asked, turning to The Tundish.

“No, I can’t quite understand that either,” he replied thoughtfully. “It was silly, if she was really trying to blackmail Margaret, but after all she was half fuddled with whisky and doubtless resented my remarks about the dinner.”

I told them how I had heard cook’s threatening voice from one of the upper windows, and we concluded that it was to Margaret she had been speaking then.

The pauses in our conversation were growing longer. The thrush had finished his song and had gone to roost. Now I could barely make out Janet’s eyes, so dark had it become, though I could still see the clear-cut oval of her face; and the light having gone I could feast on what I saw. She should not leave Dalehouse, I resolved, before I had made some real attempt to secure an early further meeting.

“When did she get up-stairs to throw away the glass?” The Tundish asked, knocking the ashes out of his pipe and pulling the window to. “She can have had very slight opportunity after breakfast.”

“I can tell you that,” I answered him. “When I stood at the telephone trying to get through to the police station, Margaret came out of the dining-room. I thought that she went down to the kitchen, but she must have run up-stairs. I didn’t hear her, but the call was difficult and maybe I was shouting. A little later I did think that I heard some one come down, only I was too engrossed to look round.”

Then I told them of the conversation I had had with Margaret in the garden, and of how she had told me that she had heard some one on the stairs and had thought it was me and had directly accused me of hiding the bedroom key.

“That’s it then,” Allport said with satisfaction. “She was pumping you to find out if you had heard or seen anything that might have been dangerous to her.”

“I hate to think about her. What will happen to her, John?” Janet’s low voice was full of sympathy.

It was The Tundish who replied. “She will never come out of Highfield Asylum alive. Now she is neither living nor dead, but I believe no more accountable for what has happened than any of us here.”

“You suspected her all the time, didn’t you?” I asked him.

“Yes I did, but how could I say anything? What might not Allport here have thought had I attempted to put forward such a facile solution, and what would have been gained? Besides, I had nothing very much to go on and I could have proved her neither guilty nor insane. But her family history alone was enough to make me wonder. You caught me looking it up again in Hanson’s case-book that afternoon, Jeffcock. Hanson himself suspected her of taking drugs, and it was I who persuaded Ethel to ask her to stay here for the tournament. Ethel didn’t want to because young Bennett was coming and she knew that she still cared for him, and that unfortunately, from her point of view, he no longer cared for her. But I wanted her to come because I was interested in her case. I felt certain from the very first that it was she who had poisoned Stella, but I certainly hadn’t anything definite to back up suspicions and at times they weakened. For instance, when I caught you in the box-room, Jeffcock. I only had little things to go on. You remember when I asked her and you to witness me making up that medicine for Ethel? Well, you wouldn’t notice anything, but I was watching her closely—she was simply thrilled—the idea of another sleeping draft, the association was too strong for her to hide. It was horrible. I dared not allow her to take it up to Ethel. If you had been here then, Mr. Allport, I should have told you of what I suspected; I should have risked your possible misconstructions. I was terrified lest there should be some further catastrophe. As you know there were very nearly two, but I felt that it would have been quite useless for me to have made any statement to Inspector Brown. I felt that he would have locked me up on the spot if I had made any suggestions of the sort, and that until you arrived on the scene again I was better at large.

“I’ve been unhappy about Margaret, Ethel, ever since the time your father ran over that dog. About eighteen months ago, wasn’t it? The poor brute was in agony of pain when we got out of the car, and unawares I caught a glimpse of Margaret’s face. It bore a look of—no, there’s no other word for it—a look of simply hellish delight. In a flash it was gone and she was all womanly sympathy and sorrow. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and I remember your mother saying how tender-hearted she was.”

“Do you mean to tell us that she has been mad for more than a year without any one being the wiser?” Allport queried.

“No, not mad, but she was abnormal, wildly excitable, a borderland case. Anything might have pushed her over the line. There was insanity on both sides of the family.”

It was too ghastly for comment, and we were silent for a space. “And now I think it’s time we made our way to bed,” he added. “I for one have arrears to make good.”

“And to-morrow I suppose I must write post-haste for Aunt Emmeline,” Ethel said with an uncomplimentary sigh.

“Couldn’t I—would you like me to stay on for a few days?” Janet asked in her sweet low voice. “I should be really glad to, if you’d prefer it.”

“That’s very kind of you,” The Tundish said with his usual decision, “but it will be neither you nor Aunt Emmeline. I’m going to pack Ethel off to Folkestone by the first available train. I’ve already arranged it all over the telephone with Mrs. Hanson, and Annie can look after me.”

Now was my opportunity, I thought. It was a preposterous suggestion to make. Allport I had only met for a few uncomfortable hours, and Janet I hadn’t even heard of three days ago, but the darkness hid my embarrassment and I plunged. “I was wondering, Mr. Allport, whether you and Mrs. Player would care to come and spend the week-end with my sister and me at Millingham?”

There was silence, and I felt uncomfortably sure that the darkness alone hid the astonishment they felt. But the words were said, irrevocable.

“That would be very nice, but unfortunately I must report at Scotland Yard to-morrow morning. Janet though is unofficial and there’s no reason——”

“I should love to,” Janet interrupted.

We said our good nights and went up-stairs to bed. Stairs, did I say? There were no stairs. I floated up on air and the banisters were wrought of pure gold.

In the morning I woke to find the curtains blowing into the room, and a refreshing sense of movement and stir in the air that was invigorating after the stagnant heat of the previous days. Gray masses of cloud were chasing across a watery sky. Over the lawn, that looked like some sodden piece of toast, odd shriveled leaves went scurrying. It was a day for action, and dressing as quickly as I could, I went and fetched my car from the inn before the others were down for breakfast.

It had been arranged that Ethel and Allport were to travel together as far as London, and our meal was a hurried one as they wished to catch an early train.

I was on thorns lest Janet should receive some letter, or something unforeseen should occur to prevent her from coming with me, but nothing so disastrous happened, and soon after half past nine, we were saying good-by to the solitary Tundish, who came into Dalehouse Lane to see us off.

The placid, inscrutable Tundish—for that is how I shall think of him always—looked just the same steady Tundish of the previous days and not one whit relieved to find that his troubles had vanished.

“Good-by, Jeffcock!” he cried, and with a merry twinkle in his eyes. “Good-by, Mrs. Kenley-Player! Something makes me think that we shall meet again.”

Did he mean anything? Had I given myself away so completely then? Had Janet noticed, I wondered, but I dared not look at Janet, so I slipped in the clutch, and soon Dalehouse and Merchester were left behind, things of the past. The open country and the future lay ahead.

Was ever air so fresh and cool, or country scents so sweet? Was ever woman more perfect than this dear one so demure and quiet at my side? The road stretched straight and true ahead, and Janet and I were starting our journey together.

Under the tree, where I had stopped on my way into Merchester, I drew up again to take one last look at the cathedral. Like a plain white column—some gigantic Cenotaph, I thought—it stood out against the bank of gray cloud behind it.

We were kneeling on the seat looking over the back of the car, and after a time I turned to find Janet looking at me with a quiet little smile.

“A penny for your thoughts,” she said.

She looked distractingly bewitching. I had plunged when I had asked her to come to Millingham, and I made up my mind to plunge once again.

“My thoughts were with a certain unhappy general,” I prevaricated boldly, “and I was wondering whether you always treated your admirers so?”

There was a pause of a hundred years, and then, “I dare you to try,” she whispered.

From over the hedge, an old red cow, chewing her cud contentedly, gazed at us with solemn ruminative eyes. A field or two away there was a steady chop, chop, as some son of the soil chopped turnips for his sheep. Ahead of us and again behind, the road was deserted and clear.

I took my courage in my hands and accepted her challenge.

The End