
* A Project Gutenberg Canada Ebook *

This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few
restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make
a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different
display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of
the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please
check gutenberg.ca/links/licence.html before proceeding.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be
under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada,
check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER
COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD
OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.

Title: Darkness at Pemberley
Author: White, T. H. [Terence Hanbury] (1906-1964)
Date of first publication: 1932
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Victor Gollancz, 1932
Date first posted: 12 March 2015
Date last updated: 12 March 2015
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1240

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






[Frontispiece: Diagram of Old Court area]




  DARKNESS AT PEMBERLEY

  by

  T. H. WHITE





NOTE

When this book was in page proofs it was suggested to me that the
rather obvious local identification with a real college was
unfortunate, not so much on account of possible libel against
particular members of the college (for no real person in the college
could possibly be identified with anybody in this book) as because it
might tend to give a curious idea of the college in general, to those
who were not acquainted with it.  It therefore seems best, although it
scarcely seems necessary, to state explicitly that the only connection
which the college in this book has with reality is the local one.  No
person in the real college would be in the least likely to write
incriminating letters, or to take drugs, or to commit blackmail or
murder.  These are the figments of the detective story convention.
Imaginary characters and events were grafted upon a real place because
it seemed amusing to plan a fiction within the local limits of a fact.





PART I




CHAPTER I

Mr. Mauleverer stood in the middle of the Old Court and shouted upwards
to the occupier of C4.  The latter poked his head out of the window and
answered: "Coming!"  Then the head disappeared; the light swallowed
itself with a leap; footsteps echoed on the wooden stairs.  Mr.
Mauleverer was taking the occupier, an undergraduate named Weans, to
the Festival Theatre.  He was also taking Mr. Beedon, the history don
whose rooms were on A staircase.

As they moved up the court Mr. Mauleverer said: "There's a light in
Beedon's room.  Just run up and see if he's ready."  Weans ran up the
stairs and turned to the right at the first landing.  Mr. Beedon's
rooms were on the first floor, with windows looking over the court on
one side and across Copper Street on the other.  The landing opposite
Mr. Beedon's door was very narrow and unlighted.  Weans could scarcely
make out the white letters MR. BEEDON above the door.  The door was
sported, and he knocked.  There was no answer.  Weans conscientiously
said the Lord's Prayer and knocked again.  After a minute he clattered
down the stairs to Mr. Mauleverer and said: "Mr. Beedon's door is
sported.  I can't make him hear."

The two stood on the cobbled pathway opposite the lighted window and
shouted "Beedon!" in unison.  Still no reply.

"How very remiss of him," said Mr. Mauleverer.  "I do think he might
have remembered an invitation to the theatre.  I expect he's in his
study: the one with the window on the other side."

Weans asked helpfully: "Shall I go round to Copper Street and shout
from there?"

"No, no!  We'll go up and see if we can't make him hear through the
door."

Two pairs of footsteps clumped up the stairs again and halted in the
darkness of the tiny landing.  Mr. Mauleverer called "Beedon!  Beedon!"
and thumped the door with his umbrella.  He stooped down and tried to
pull the door open--there was no handle--by inserting the tips of his
fingers into the T-shaped keyhole.  But it was locked.

"What a nuisance!" exclaimed Mr. Mauleverer.  "How very boring!  One
more shout together":

"Beedon!  Bee-don!"

In the silence which followed, a gramophone began to play inside the
room.

"Really!" said Mr. Mauleverer, "if we can hear his gramophone he can
hear us.  How stupid!  I suppose he's forgotten all about the theatre
and thinks this is a rag or something."  Then, raising his voice and
giving another bang with his umbrella: "Beedon!  What about the
theatre?"

The gramophone went on playing without interruption.  Muttering
something about rudeness, Mr. Mauleverer led his companion down the
stairs again: started for the Festival Theatre in an irritable frame of
mind.

The serious undergraduate in the rooms above Mr. Beedon's shut his book
with a sigh, switched off his light and came lumbering down the stairs.
He had worked nine hours and felt that a walk to Grantchester before
eleven would do him good.  He knew that he must be careful not to
overdo it.  There was a car in Copper Street, and a small crowd of
people.  He passed by on the other side, since he disliked accidents,
and tramped the boring road to Grantchester, thinking about Byron's
"Don Juan" and its Relation to Restoration Comedy.

The Master of the college pottered into the Old Court five minutes
later and made for Beedon's rooms.  He stood on the dark landing for
some time, wheezing a little, and slipped something into Beedon's
letter box.  There was silence inside the room, except for a thin
scraping or swashing noise, like somebody mowing rhythmically with a
scythe, only fast and quietly.  The Master tiptoed down the stairs,
looked out under the archway, and, seeing nobody about, walked quickly
to the centre of the Court.  There he resumed his shuffle and
disappeared in time towards his own Lodge.

At about half past ten the Chaplain, biting his fingers nervously, made
his way up the stairs and stood opposite Mr. Beedon's door.  He did not
knock.  As he waited, the telephone bell rang inside.  There was no
answer.  The Chaplain looked over his shoulder and, taking his sport
key out of his pocket, fitted it into Mr. Beedon's lock.  It fitted.
The Chaplain opened the door half an inch, so that a beam of light
struck across the landing.  Apparently intimidated by this, he stood
hesitating for a moment.  Then, closing the door again with infinite
precaution, he also tiptoed down the stairs.

Finally, at midnight, the porter Rudd went round to turn off the lights
on the staircases.  He did not content himself with turning off the
light at the bottom of A staircase, but went up to the landing and
stood for a few moments opposite Mr. Beedon's door, in silent
reflection.

      *      *      *      *      *

Some four hours earlier the telephone had rung in the local police
station.  The Inspector took off the receiver, and answered briefly.
After the thin voice had trickled and clattered for a minute he said:
"What address?"  His pencil moved over a pad which he had drawn towards
him.  The tinny voice stopped, and the Inspector repeated: "23 Copper
Street.  Right.  I'll be over."  He replaced the receiver and reached
for his hat.  Considering that he had just been told of the discovery
of a murdered man, the Inspector's phlegm was admirable.  His seamed
muscular face betrayed no excitement; the jaw set with no more than its
usual taciturnity.  Inspector Buller moved through his duties as a
policeman without faith in his fellow men, and with some doubts of the
world in general.  He had seen so many witnesses shaken that he
believed the testimony of his own senses only with difficulty.  He had
been told there was a murder.  Very well.  There might be, and there
might not.  He would be sure of it when he had seen the murderer hang.
Meanwhile he reached for his hat, tersely summoned a sergeant and two
constables, and drove to Copper Street.

The constable in charge saluted respectfully, and the Inspector gravely
returned the salute.  "Well," he said, "what happened?"

The constable opened his note book and began: "When passing over Copper
Street bridge on my beat at 8.3 p.m. this evening I was accosted by a
woman who gave her name as Mrs. Button, lodginghouse-keeper of 23
Copper Street, who stated that there was a dead body in her house.  I
immediately accompanied witness to the above address and found the
deceased as stated.  I proceeded to lock the door of the room in which
the body lay and telephoned the police station from the provision
merchant's at Number 24 Copper Street.  Whilst awaiting the Inspector I
stationed myself outside the door of the deceased's room, having
cautioned Mrs. Button not to leave the house."

"A very good report," said the Inspector.  "Did you 'phone for a
doctor?"

"No, sir.  I deemed from the condition of the deceased that it would be
unnecessary."

"Very good.  Go and 'phone for the police surgeon now.  Where is Mrs.
Button?"

"Mrs. Button is weeping in the dining-room, sir."

"Well, we'll give her time.  Where is the body?"

The constable opened the door behind him.  The group of men, who had
been standing on the first floor landing, filed in carefully.  The body
was lying on the floor, huddled and suddenly collapsed.  On its face
was an expression of surprise and fear, accentuated by the blue hole of
a bullet directly between the eyes.  The back of the head lay neatly
upon what remained of its brains, barely staining the carpet.  Nothing
in the room seemed to be disordered.  There was no weapon.  Buller
locked the door with the key which the constable had left, and went
downstairs to the dining-room.

Mrs. Button was a small straggling woman, much more like a bedder than
a proprietress in a prosperous thoroughfare like Copper Street.  She
had dried her tears by the time the Inspector came down and, though
still slightly hysterical, was agog with curiosity.  However, she made
an effort to remain distressed.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Button," said the Inspector, "to have to trouble you
with questions after a shock like this, but we must get to the bottom
of it.  Can you give me a little information?"

"I'm sure I'll answer anything as I can, sir, for the poor young
gentleman's sake.  He was a real nice spoken young man, and never gave
no trouble for a moment.  Whoever can have had an interest in doing
away with him is more than I can say!"

"Ah, no motive," Buller replied tactfully.  He pretended to make a note
of it.  "Now I gather from his things that he was an undergraduate from
St. Barnabas.  What was his name?"

"He was a Mr. Frazer.  These was his first lodgings."

"A freshman called Frazer from St. Barnabas.  Now would you tell me how
you found him?"

"Oh, Inspector!" exclaimed Mrs. Button tearfully.  "It do seem like a
judgment, for I was out at the Crown Arms just round the corner for a
drop of brown ale!  Mr. Frazer, he would have been to first Hall, and
I'd heard him come back quite usual, something after half past seven it
must have been, and go up to his room!"  Mrs. Button dissolved into
tears again.  After a patient pause the Inspector prompted her.

"Well, what happened?  You went round to the Crown Arms."

"I can't have been there more than twenty minutes, for I had it on me
mind that Mr. Frazer's fire needed seeing to, and he wasn't one that
remembered to put the coal on himself.  So I only had a glass of brown
ale, for I remember Mr. Rudd remarking on it, and came right back at
once to take up the scuttle.  I had it on me mind to go back again
afterwards, if need be.  And then, when I took it up, there was no
answer to the door, and I found the poor fellow lying there horrible.
Did he kill himself, Inspector?"

"That's what I want you to tell me, Mrs. Button.  Had he any reason for
doing so?"

"Not the least in the world, he hadn't," said Mrs. Button.  "He was
that cheerful always, and that respectable!  Why, I'd as likely kill
myself!"

"Had he a revolver, or anything of that sort, do you know?"

"That he hadn't.  I know, for I did all his drawers for him."

"He hadn't anything of a queer shape, had he?  Anything like a flat
sort of revolver with a contrivance on the end of it?"

"He hadn't an automatic with a silencer, if that's what you mean,"
replied Mrs. Button, with the dignity of a confirmed cinema goer.

"Oh," said the Inspector.  "What sort of friends had he?"

"Just the usual sort.  Only two or three.  He was a freshman."

"Nothing strange about him, or them?"

"Nothing at all."

Nor did the Inspector gain any further information from Mrs. Button.

      *      *      *      *      *

Inspector Buller was ushered into the senior tutor's room at St.
Barnabas.  When he had told the senior tutor the news, and given him
time to recover his balance, he asked for information.

"Did you ever meet the boy's parents?" he asked.

Mr. Witherspoon, the tutor, had resumed his air of a hostile solicitor.
"No," he said, "I never met them.  I corresponded with them.  Colonel
Frazer was in the Indian Army.  I believe they were both quite ordinary
people."

"No chance of a vendetta, or a diamond stolen from the idol's eye, or
anything of that sort?"

"Not in the least, I should think.  They live at Croydon.  Frazer was
reading Agriculture."

"Well, it seems a most extraordinary crime, Mr. Witherspoon.  There is
no weapon, and the police surgeon says he can't have shot himself from
the nature of the wound.  He seems to have been a perfectly normal
young chap, and nobody can give me any motive for a murder.  Have you
any theory or suggestion which would help us along?"

"I was not trained as a detective, Mr. Buller."




CHAPTER II

Mrs. Grigg, the senior bedder of A staircase, allowed herself the
prerogative of arriving nearer seven than six o'clock.  The college
gates opened at six, when the bedders were supposed to arrive, but Mrs.
Grigg had been a servant of the college so long that she was allowed a
little latitude.  Thus it fell to the lot of Miss Edgeworth, Mrs.
Grigg's help, to perform the preliminary ministrations alone.  Her
routine was to begin with the fireplaces, starting at the bottom of the
staircase.  She reached Mr. Beedon's room at twenty past six, put down
her brushes, and fumbled with the key.  At twenty-one minutes past six
a horrible scream swept through the sleeping court, followed by a
clattering of feet and the debouch of Miss Edgeworth on the cobbles, in
hysterics.

Mr. Beedon was sitting in his favourite chair, stone cold, with a
bullet through his head.

      *      *      *      *      *

Inspector Buller, whose night had been a sleepless one, stood in the
room on A staircase and listened to his sergeant.  The latter was a
slow speaker, like the Inspector, but a more ardent theorist.  He was
younger, and open to conviction.

The sergeant said: "But doesn't this clear it all up?  The surgeon says
it was probably the same weapon."

"Suppose you tell me what happened," said the Inspector.

"Well, sir, I wouldn't rush to any conclusions, but I see it this way.
The wounds were inflicted with the same weapon: the automatic with
silencer on the table there, which was found in this man Beedon's hand.
Both men died at about the same time, as near as the surgeon can make
out.  Beedon's wound seems to have been self inflicted; it was fired
from close up, and from his right side, with the muzzle against the
temple.  The boy Frazer was shot from a distance of some feet, so he
couldn't have been the one who shot himself, quite apart from the fact
that a dead man couldn't have brought the automatic back to Beedon's
room and put it in his hand.  There are no fingerprints on the stock
except Beedon's.  If the shots were fired from the same weapon then
Beedon must have fired them.  He shot Frazer and then himself.

"We don't know," the Inspector pointed out, "that the shots were fired
from the same weapon.  We shall have to have a microscopic report on
the bullets."

"Mark my word, sir, it'll turn out as I say."

"It may do," said the Inspector.  "You never know.  Why should he have
done it?"

"We don't know the motive yet.  It'll crop up.  You get some queer fish
in these universities."

"Well," said the Inspector, "you may be right.  I suppose I shall have
to see the Master."

The Master was in his study at the Lodge.  He rose courteously from his
writing-table as the Inspector entered.  In appearance everything that
a Master should be, patriarchal and benevolent, he constantly gave the
impression that he had just laid aside a treatise on the Hebrew
gospels.  He shook hands with his well-known hospitality and feebly
motioned the Inspector to a chair.

"Well, Mr. Inspector," he said, "this is a terrible shock to all of us.
I hope you will be able to throw some light upon it."

"I'm sure it's a dreadful thing to happen in a college," replied the
Inspector sympathetically.  "I was hoping you might help us clear it
up."

"Everything in my power to tell you, Inspector, I shall hasten to say.
I only hope it will throw no discredit upon poor Beedon.  He was such a
nice fellow, though a little reserved from the other members of the
college."

"You don't know of any oddity which he may have had, anything which
might have proved a motive for killing himself?"

"No," replied the Master with the slightest perceptible hesitation.
"No.  He seemed to live in a very respectable way."

"There is some sort of theory that he may have killed this
undergraduate from St. Barnabas, and then shot himself.  Would you
agree with that?"

"I should think it unlikely," said the Master honestly.  "Mr. Beedon
used to go up to London every Friday.  I believe he was
not--ah--unsusceptible to the charms of the other sex."

"There might be any number of motives.  You don't know whether he was
acquainted with this undergraduate?"

"As far as I can say, he was not.  I have looked it up, and find that
Mr. Beedon had no pupils from St. Barnabas.  He was not a man who met
many undergraduates except with regard to their studies."

"This makes it much more difficult.  You don't know whether he knew the
boy's parents?"

"He may have done.  I am not in the habit of concerning myself with the
private affairs of the Fellows of my college.  But he did not know them
to my knowledge, so far as that goes."

"Well, we shall have to follow the usual routine and interview anybody
who may have called on Mr. Beedon last night.  Thank you very much,
sir, for your assistance."

The Master detained him as he rose to go.  "I called on Mr. Beedon
myself," he said, "at about eight o'clock.  I meant to give him some
papers, but the door was sported, so I posted them in the letter-box.
I expect you'll find the envelope there."

"Did you hear anything, or notice whether the lights were on?"

"The lights were on.  Yes, I certainly noticed them."

"You heard nobody talking?  It must have been somewhere round eight
o'clock that Mr. Beedon died."

"I heard nothing," said the Master, "except--there was a sort of
swishing noise, I fancy.  It may have come from somewhere else.  I may
have been mistaken."

"What sort of swishing noise?" asked the Inspector.  "Could you be more
definite.  Was it a noise like heavy breathing."

"Oh no, a much more mechanical noise."

"Like a carpet sweeper?"

"No," said the Master.  "It was soft and regular, and there were no
bumps.  Swish, swish, swish!"

The Inspector cast his mental eye round the room as he remembered it.
"Was it a gramophone running down?" he enquired.

"Yes!" exclaimed the Master.  "That was what it was.  The needle on a
gramophone disc after it had finished the music!"

"Somebody must have been alive within five or six minutes of that
anyway.  Could you give me the exact time?"

The Master said: "It must have been about eight o'clock--within a
quarter of an hour either way."

"What time did you dine?"

"I dined in the Lodge on Tuesday.  I was feeling rather tired.  Dinner
would be at half past seven."

"It wasn't late, by any chance?"

"No, Anson gives me my meals very punctually.  I don't take much at
night."

"How long does it take you to dine?"

"Not more than forty minutes.  I had some soup, then fish, chicken and
then custard.  I was alone.  My wife was in London for a meeting of the
Child Welfare."

"Very well, say you finished dinner at ten past eight.  What did you do
then?"

"I went into the study for a cigar.  When I was lighting it I
remembered Beedon's papers, so I took them over."

"Immediately after dinner?"

"Not quite immediately.  I opened a new box of cigars.  I don't move
very quickly nowadays, Inspector."

"Say you left the Lodge at a quarter past eight, then?"

"Yes, that would be about the time.  I daresay it was twenty minutes
past before I got to Mr. Beedon's rooms.  I walk rather slowly."

"So somebody was alive inside as late as fourteen minutes past eight,
or thereabouts.  Thank you very much, sir.  That will help us a great
deal."

"I wonder," said the Master as Inspector Buller was going out, "if you
would let me have the papers back which are in Mr. Beedon's letter-box:
as soon as you've finished with them, of course."

The Inspector came back into the room.  He said: "By all means, sir,
only we shall have to look at them first as a formality: that is, if
you don't object.  Nothing private, I hope?"

"Not at all, Inspector; look at them as much as you like.  Simply
papers relating to a pupil of Mr. Beedon's."

The Inspector hesitated.  "Would you take offence, Master, if I asked
your permission to look at your glasses?"

The Master gave him a startled look and took them off.  "A regular
Sherlock Holmes!" he remarked pleasantly, handing them across.  The
Inspector turned them over absently and passed them back, looking the
Master in the eyes.  "Thank you very much," he said.  Then he wished
the Master good morning and walked out into the wintry sunshine.

Back in A4, he addressed the sergeant: "We shall have to see everybody
who came up this staircase last night.  The Master had some evidence
which bears out your theory to this extent, that somebody--presumably
Beedon, but it might be his murderer--was alive in this room when we
were looking at the dead body over the way.  Will you give me that
envelope in the letter-box?"

The sergeant fetched it and watched it carefully opened.  Inside was a
blank sheet of paper.

"This is from the Master," the Inspector said.  "He told me that it
contained papers relating to a pupil of Beedon's."

"I suppose the old geezer slipped the wrong sheet in by mistake."

"Very likely.  Will you go to the Lodge now, give him my compliments,
and tell him what we've found.  Ask if we could see the actual papers."

The sergeant came back with three or four printed forms, a syllabus of
a revised Tripos examination torn from the pages of the University
Register.

"Well," said the Inspector.  "These might apply to a pupil of his, I
suppose.  But I see Mr. Beedon took in the Register himself, and who
would put a single sheet of paper into an envelope, in mistake for
three or four?"

"You might," replied the sergeant.  "If you were unconscious enough to
make a mistake at all, you might just as well make a big one.  These
old gents all get rather loopy."

"Yes, I daresay they do," answered the Inspector wistfully, looking at
his blunt nails, "what with knowing such a lot.  But would they write
their names in invisible ink before they enclosed the paper by mistake?"

The sergeant looked suspiciously at the piece of paper which was held
out to him.  There, in the middle, was a ghostly signature, faint and
blue.

"This is the cheap sort of ink which they sell to amuse children in toy
shops like Hamley's.  You just warm it by the fire.  I suppose dons are
rather children.  They never stop being at school all their lives.
First Nanny to protect them in the nursery, then the governess and the
head master and finally the Vice-Chancellor.  A guinea-pig, now, is
independent of its parents after three days."

"Are you getting at anything," asked the sergeant resentfully, "or is
this just uplift?"

"I don't know.  You never can tell.  Children have games and are
sometimes naughty.  Now would you say this was one of the Master's
games, which we've come across by mistake, or would you say he was
being naughty?"

"After all, the old man may be senile or something.  He may have a
passion for playing with invisible ink.  It might be a joke.  It might
still be a mistake.  Perhaps he wrote his name on it and forgot, and
then put it in by mistake as we said.  If you asked him, he would
probably explain it quite easily."

"So I won't ask him, sergeant," said the Inspector, with a smile, whose
point the sergeant missed.  "We'll have to steal a clean sheet of paper
from the Lodge when it comes to giving this back.  Have the
photographers finished?"

"Yes."

"Just have them microphotograph the catch and tone-arm of the
gramophone.  I suppose they've done the door?  Send the search-party's
tabulation to my room.  I'll be there directly.  Oh, and ask the
surgeon whether anything else besides narcotics would contract the
pupil of the eye?"

At the Porter's Lodge, Buller borrowed a pen and paper.  He asked the
porter to display his notice on the screens.  It read:

"Will any person who attempted to visit Mr. Beedon on Tuesday night
after seven o'clock be so kind as to offer his evidence at the police
station?  The matter is urgent."

Then he went to the nearest call office, and 'phoned the Chief
Constable with the request that the matter should be turned over to
Scotland Yard.




CHAPTER III

A well-tailored young man in a green hat came down from London, driving
an 8-litre Bentley.  He was very polite to the Inspector, and agreed
absent-mindedly with everything he said.  The Inspector laid before him
lists of everything found in either of the two rooms, a rsum of the
evidence up to date, and the surgeon's report.  The young man decided
to supplement the latter by calling in Sir Loftus Boneface.  He also
interviewed Mr. Mauleverer and the undergraduate Weans, who came
forward in response to the Inspector's notice.  Next day he drove away
again, having instructed the Inspector to ask for a verdict of murder
and suicide against Mr. Beedon.  He apologised for not being able to
stay for the inquest, which was fixed for two days later, but promised
that Sir Loftus would come down again to give evidence--which would
ensure everything going off satisfactorily.

Mr. Beedon, according to his reconstruction, had shot Frazer for
reasons unknown (and, considering the strength of the other evidence,
unnecessary) at five to eight.  He had then returned to his rooms,
played a record on the gramophone whilst Mauleverer was shouting at him
through the door, and shot himself at about 8.15.  The conclusive
evidence in favour of this theory was provided by Sir Loftus, who
proved that the bullets were fired from the same weapon, which was
found in Mr. Beedon's hand bearing no fingerprints but those of Mr.
Beedon.  It was decided that the Master's invisible signature was a
mare's nest, or at least a matter unconnected with the crime under
consideration.  Sir Loftus pointed out to the Inspector that evidence
must be discriminated.  A lot of evidence, he explained, would always
crop up without relevance, and it was the mark of the great detective
to be able to separate the germane from what was not.  Among matters
set aside by Sir Loftus as irrelevant were: The Master's signature, the
photographs of the catch and tone-arm of the gramophone, a set of
unidentified fingerprints on the door, and a tiny piece of
typewriting-paper ash still clinging to a piece of coal in the dead
fire.  The Inspector saw Sir Loftus off by the mid-day train, after
thanking him very much indeed for his assistance.

Then he went back to his room in the police station, where he was
coldly received by the sergeant, and sent for the police surgeon.

The two men were old friends.

"Well," said Dr. Wilder, "I suppose his highness has cleared everything
up?"

"Sir Loftus is very quick on the uptake," said the Inspector
defensively.

Dr. Wilder smiled affectionately and offered a cigar, which Buller
refused.

After a pause, "Did you agree unconditionally with Sir Loftus's
post-mortem?" asked the Inspector.

"I think so."

The Inspector pushed the photograph of the tone-arm across.  "Why," he
asked, "did Beedon put on that gramophone without leaving any
fingerprints on the catch or arm?"

"There must be some sort of mark."

"The arm has been carefully wiped, finishing with a single sweep which
leaves an unbroken grain along its whole length.  A cloth has been
pulled down it from top to bottom to finish off.  Underneath, this
grain is disturbed by a very slight smudge.  The catch has been wiped
in the same way, and is also marked underneath (and on the two narrow
sides) but this time by a distinct line.  This line is about an eighth
of an inch thick.  The catch was released by means of a piece of
string.  How the arm was lowered I don't know."

"Very well."

"Why," pursued the Inspector, "did the Master, who is a drug addict,
post a letter to Beedon containing a blank sheet of paper with his
signature in invisible ink?"

"Actually," said the surgeon, "I knew the old man took cocaine.  But
how did you?"

"His eyes struck me as curious, so I got him to take his spectacles off
and had a good look at him.  The pupils were contracted to pinpoints."

"People who take drugs are sometimes very cunning," put in the doctor
reflectively.

"I know."

"Did he do it?" asked the surgeon humbly.

"How am I to know?  How am I to know anything?  That isn't half the
evidence."

"Well, go on."

"Who went to the door after Mauleverer, and probably opened it with a
key?  And why hasn't he come forward?"

"Did somebody?"

"The three latest sets of fingerprints are Weans's with Mauleverer's
over them, and then an unknown man's on top of Mauleverer's."

"Anything else?"

"Ten or twelve million things, I suppose, but Sir Loftus tells me you
have to discriminate.  So, cutting all of them out, there's one more
thing which may be on my mind.  Who has been busy spring cleaning in
A4?  Because whoever it is has a queer method of doing things.  The
keys of the typewriter in the study looking over Copper Street are all
printed with Beedon's fingers.  But the little wheel thing which you
turn to make the roller revolve has been wiped like the gramophone.
All waste papers, notes and so on have been torn once across and
dropped in the wastepaper basket--just the day's correspondence, you
know.  And yet one piece of typewriting-paper has been burnt in the
fire and carefully powdered.  Lastly the automatic.  It is as clean as
the tone-arm except for a smudge on the barrel and one clearly defined
set of fingerprints as transferred by the hand in which we found it.
The smudge on the barrel really resolves itself into a second wiping
which does not quite correspond with the grain of the first one.  But
the extraordinary thing is the single sharp definition of Beedon's
grip.  If you had carried an automatic across the street, shot
somebody, put it down to play the gramophone, picked it up and shot
yourself, would you have left only one set of prints?"

"He may have wiped it for some reason or another between playing the
gramophone and shooting himself."

"Quite likely.  I think if I were going to shoot myself I should nurse
the gun, and wipe it, and think it over.  But even then, when I picked
it up for the last time, I should change its position in my hand--to
get a grip of it, you know, and that sort of thing.  This stock has
only been gripped once, and in one position."

"Well," said the surgeon, "now tell me who shot them both?"

"You be damned," replied the Inspector crossly.  He went out of the
room.

      *      *      *      *      *

But that afternoon he was still talking to the doctor.  There was
something excited now, straining under the reserve of his tired face,
and something which made him look younger and enthusiastic.  He was
almost garrulous, and talked on to his friend without paying him much
attention.  Nor was he attending principally to what he was saying.
His attention hurried on in advance of his words, like somebody
hastening through a big untidy warehouse matching coloured cloths just
beyond the lantern's circle of radiance lighting those who followed him.

"Why!  Why!  Why!" he exclaimed.  "Why did Beedon play the gramophone
when Mauleverer was outside the door?  If he didn't want to go to the
theatre, and wanted Mauleverer to go away, why should he advertise his
presence by putting on a record?"

He did not wait for an answer.  "Why," he continued, "did Mauleverer
take the trouble to go up those stairs with an unbiased witness?"

The doctor felt it was his duty to break in.  "Mauleverer went up to
see why Beedon wasn't ready for the theatre.  He went with Weans
because they were on their way to the theatre together.  That's
natural, isn't it?"

"Quite natural.  It gives Mauleverer an absolute alibi, for the
gramophone proves that somebody was alive inside the room when
Mauleverer was outside it, bound for the theatre.  By the way,
Mauleverer admits that he was with Beedon at about seven o'clock, so he
would have been the last person to see him alive if it wasn't for this
gramophone--that's supposing that the man who played it was Beedon's
murderer.  Mauleverer gets out on the ground floor either way--on
Boneface's explanation.  Either Beedon was alive and playing the
gramophone when Mauleverer started for the theatre between 8.10 and
8.15--in which case he can't have killed him--or else there was
somebody else in the room, who had come there since Mauleverer left.
The gramophone proves either that Beedon killed himself, or that
somebody else did who was in the room while Mauleverer was on his way
to the theatre."

The Inspector puffed fiercely at his pipe until it sparked.  "Why do
people start gramophones with string?" he asked.  "String," he answered
himself after a pause, "is the basis of mechanics.  Pulleys, ropes,
chains, cranes.  String is also used for fastening and for operating
from a distance.  We pull a string to discharge a cannon or to work
marionettes.  In this connection string is a link between the operator
and the thing operated.  A link may exist in order to join or to
separate.  If to join, then the string was used because the operator
could not make contact with the thing operated by other means, i.e. he
could not reach it.  This is the principle embodied by people who shoot
themselves with rifles and have to reach the trigger by means of
string.  On the other hand, if the link was used as a separator rather
than as a joiner, then the person who started the gramophone didn't
want to touch the catch.  He wanted to leave no fingerprints.  But it
would have been easier to push the catch sideways with a pencil or
something of that sort?"

The Inspector wrote on his pad:


    (_a_).  Inspect the room for traces of mechanism, i.e. screws in
    wall, etc., over which string might be passed to form some sort of
    rigging, e.g. the sort of rigging that some people put up in their
    bedrooms so that they can switch off the electric light by the door
    without getting out of bed.

    (_b_).  Inspect the whole gramophone very carefully, not only for
    traces of apparatus.  How did the tone-arm come down after the
    catch had been pulled with string?  (If it was.)


The Inspector read this through distastefully and then said: "I don't
believe the gramophone had anything to do with it."

"What about the third visitor?" asked the doctor.

"Yes.  What about him?  Why hasn't he come forward?  Three possible
reasons.  One, he hasn't seen the notice.  This would mean that he
wasn't a member of the college.  A member of Christchurch, for
instance, might very well have visited Beedon and equally well might
not have seen the notice on the screens at St. Bernard's thereafter.
Two, his visit to Beedon--though not necessarily connected with the
murder--was one which he would rather not have talked about.  Three, he
was the murderer.  Beedon need not have been killed before Mauleverer
left, or even before the Master's visit at 8.20.  What a pity the
Master left no super-imposed finger-prints when he posted that letter!
We could have timed the visits then.  As it is, we don't know whether
the unknown came before or after 8.20.  We only know he came after
Weans and Mauleverer."

The Inspector made another note:


    (_c_).  Enquire at Porter's Lodge, for information about people
    seen in Old Court between eight o'clock and midnight.  N.B.
    Autopsy shews that Beedon could not have died later than nine
    o'clock.


"I suppose undergraduates can do murders just as much as anybody else,"
ventured the doctor.  "The boy below Beedon's room was out dining in
Mary's, and didn't come back till midnight.  His alibi's sound and
natural.  But this fellow above says that he went for a walk to
Grantchester, starting at a quarter past eight.  We have no check on
him."

"It comes to this," said the Inspector, "you can suspect anybody once
you entertain suspicion.  It's an extraordinary thing how remote human
beings are from one another.  We go here and there like cats, meeting,
fraternising, diverging.  Sometimes we have alibis and sometimes not.
But always, inside, everybody is incalculable and secret, always locked
up and impenetrably alone.  The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked."

"You ought to have been a poet," said the doctor.

"Not nowadays," replied the Inspector, and shook his head.

The telephone thrilled startlingly at his elbow and he took off the
receiver.  He listened, replied "Speaking," and listened again.  Then
he said "Right" and hung up the receiver.  "Well," he said, "that's
that.  The Master of St. Bernard's went up to London to-day and I had
him shadowed.  We lost him absolutely."

"Do you mean that he's got out of the country?"

"No.  I should think it very unlikely.  He'll be back to-night or
to-morrow morning.  I shall have to go and see him."  The Inspector
looked round the room and added: "Meanwhile I think I'll go and see
that porter."  At the door he turned round and smiled pathetically.

"I wish you'd think over that post-mortem again, doctor," he said.
"Any little thing, you know.  I don't understand this case at all, not
at all, and anything may mean anything.  I'm dead sure Boneface is
wrong."  He came back and sat on the table by his friend's chair.
"Listen," he said.  "I'm not keeping anything back---that sort of
thing's all bosh.  I haven't any theories, and I'm lost.  But those men
were murdered, both of them, and I don't stand for cold murder like
that.  I don't want to catch the man for the sake of my reputation.  I
want to catch him because he's all wrong.  I don't care whether he
ought to be punished or pitied, and I don't know whether murderers
ought to be hanged.  But I want to catch him because I've a feeling for
England, and that's an odd thing to say.  This case is all ends up, and
anything may be significant or nothing, So I should just like to be
sure of that autopsy, like everything else.  There may be something we
ought to have noticed and haven't.  Perhaps one or other of them was
poisoned and shot afterwards.  I take it that Sir Loftus confined
himself to the local wounds.  Perhaps one or other or both or neither
was dead before he was shot.  In fact, perhaps anything.  So I'd like
you to be very careful, would you?  If you could, I should like you to
look into it again.  Don't take offence at me.  The man who did these
murders was a scientist."  He stopped abruptly and got off the table.

"Mauleverer," he said, "is a lecturer in chemistry."




CHAPTER IV

Rudd, the porter who had been on duty on Tuesday, was off duty when the
Inspector called at the Porter's Lodge.  He ran him to earth in the
under-porter's cottage on the other side of the river.

The two men sat solemnly in the parlour, shaded with aspidistras,
bowered with lace.  Between them was a red serge table-cloth.

The Inspector said: "I've called because I want you to give me some
information.  Were you on duty between seven and midnight on Tuesday?"

Rudd was a stout surly man with an expression not altogether pleasant.
His eyes were close together and evasive.  He was above the common
height.  When the Inspector asked him this question he replied with
another: "Who said I wasn't?"

"Nobody did," replied Buller patiently.  "I was asking you a question."

"Well, I was," said the porter.  "It's my duty."

"You were in the Porter's Lodge all the time?"

"See here, mister, what are you getting at?  Are you accusing me of the
murder or asking for information?  I don't know as you've any right to
pry into my private affairs without a caution, nor I don't know what
reason you could have for wanting to.  If you think it's me I can tell
you you're wasting your time."

"I don't think it was you, Mr. Rudd.  I asked because I want
information about the people who passed through the Old Court between
seven and midnight, and naturally I wondered whether you were there all
the time first."

"Well, I was," said Mr. Rudd defiantly.  "But if you want to know who
went through the Old Court you can get a college list.  Why, both Halls
would pass through between them times."

"What time are your Halls?"

"Six-thirty and seven-thirty."

"Well now, between seven-thirty and eight you can help me; for the
second Hall would be in just then and few people about.  Can you
remember anybody in the courts between those times?"

"Nobody went through the Old Court at all."

"Not a soul?"

"Not a soul!  I was there, wasn't I?"

"You couldn't by any chance have missed anybody?"

"I tells you I was standing in the gateway all the time!"

"What happened after eight?"

"The second Hall came out, that was all."

"You didn't notice any dons?"

"The Fellows of the college was having their coffee in the Combination
Room till half past eight.  That is, all except the Master.  Come to
think of it, I seen him come into the Old Court about twenty past, but
I never seen what he did there for I had to go for something in the
Lodge.

"You didn't see any of the other fellows?  Mr. Meacock?  Mr. Bell?  Mr.
Mauleverer?"

"I tells you the Fellows was in the Combination Room!  And Mr.
Mauleverer wasn't in college anyway."

"How do you know?"  The question came out like a palm slapped upon the
table.  Rudd paused, and amended weakly:

"He didn't come out of the Combination Room with the others in any
case."

The Inspector suddenly got up and said pleasantly: "Well, thank you
very much.  That will help me a lot, I think."

The porter seemed no longer at ease.  "I could tell you some more," lie
said, "about Mr. Beedon.  He had a quarrel with the Chaplain on Tuesday
morning, according to the Chaplain's bedder.  And I saw the Chaplain go
to Mr. Beedon's room at about half past ten.  I noted the time, for I
put a telephone call through to Mr. Beedon just then.  He didn't answer
it.  The Chaplain was there five minutes."

"What was this quarrel about?" asked the Inspector.

"Mrs. Duckworth only heard the end of it.  She heard Mr. Beedon say, as
he came out of the Chaplain's room: 'And don't you try to threaten me,
because I should have no more qualms in squashing a creature like you
than in squashing a white slug!'  That was the very words."

"I suppose I shall have to see Mrs. Duckworth.  Was there anything
else?"

"Nothing else about the Chaplain," said Rudd, as if he were sorry to
admit it.

"Anything else you can remember before midnight?"

Mr. Rudd paused.  "I went up to Mr. Beedon's landing myself," he said,
"when I was doing the staircase lights.  His lights was on."

"What made you go up?"

"I don't know," said Rudd slowly.  "I hadn't seen him about, and I
wondered why his light was still on."

The Inspector said "Ah!" a little encouragingly.

Rudd made up his mind and assumed a virtuous air.  "There was something
up between the Master and Mr. Beedon," he explained with rather
nauseating candour.  "I happened to come across----"

"I know all about that," said the Inspector unexpectedly.  "So when you
saw the Master in the Old Court you guessed he was bound for Mr.
Beedon's room with the usual letter.  I expect you hid and spied on
him, and you thought you might be able to make a little out of it?  A
little blackmail, perhaps?"

"I never thought of such a thing, Inspector, and you've no right to say
it!  If there's a law in this land----"

"O.K.," Buller put in.  "The point is, did you or didn't you make up
your mind to do anything?  I needn't ask.  You were thinking of trying
to work it out of the letter-box, but the light being on put you off?
So you just stood there and then went away.  Thank you.  I'd like to
see you again later, if I may.  Try to cast your mind back to eight
o'clock."

"I tell you I was in the gateway!" shouted the porter, but shouted in
vain, for the Inspector was making his way sedately back to college.

      *      *      *      *      *

Before calling on the Chaplain, Buller waited to collect himself.  He
stopped on St. Bernard's bridge and, taking out his little note book,
began to write, resting it on the wooden edge.

He wrote:


    Frazer, undergraduate, St. Barnabas: dead: not known to be
    acquainted with anybody in this college.

    Beedon, Fellow of St. Bernard's: dead.

    Master of St. Bernard's: drug addict: ordered drugs through Beedon
    (?)

    Mauleverer, Fellow of St. Bernard's: alibi rather pat: No motive
    yet.

    Chaplain of St. Bernard's: quarrelled with Beedon.  Why not come
    forward?

    Rudd, porter: blackmailer: but why lie about people in Old Court?

    Weans: party to Mauleverer's alibi.

    Undergraduate in A5: why should he?

    Undergraduate in A2: alibi.



Then he wrote down in block capitals: "FEAR, ENVY, GAIN," scratched
everything out, rolled the page into a ball, and tossed it impatiently
into the river.  The sluggish flow carried it slowly away.

      *      *      *      *      *

The Chaplain received Buller with the laboured surprise of one who had
been expecting him.  He was a sallow man in the early forties, whose
brown eyes hesitated before Buller's and fled away.  He asked the
Inspector to sit down, in a voice calculated to be hearty, but
miserably without success.  Then he walked nervously round the room,
cleared his voice to speak, and broke down entirely.  He looked at
Buller, pleading mutely for mercy, for a lead in conversation.

Buller said sharply: "If you tell me everything at once, it'll do you
good and help me.  The inquest is on the day after to-morrow, unless I
have to put it off, and the verdict won't be murder and suicide against
Mr. Beedon.  I take it you're sensible enough to prefer some other kind
of charge to a charge of murder."

The tonic acted effectively.  "There is no possible charge against me.
What I have to say might damage my reputation or tend to lose me my
position, but no legal evidence exists which could put me on a criminal
footing.  You will have the goodness to bully somebody else."

"That's better," said the Inspector.  "That makes it much easier for
both of us.  If there had been any crime of fact, outside the sphere of
the present case, I should have been forced to follow it up.  But if as
you say it's an extra-legal matter of reputation, there can be no harm
in making a clean breast.  It goes no further."

The Chaplain looked at him calmly.  This aspect of the situation had
made him brave again.

"I don't require a confidant."

"Very well.  And I don't require confidences.  Will you explain why you
have not come forward in response to my notice on the screens?"

"My visit to Mr. Beedon was in no way connected with his death, and I
have no evidence which bears upon it."

"You must kindly convince me of that, sir."

The Chaplain was in difficulties again.

"I called on Mr. Beedon over a private matter..."

The Inspector stood up and shook his head.  "I'm sorry," he said, "but
you must be a little more explicit.  I must warn you that I know
something about your experiences on Tuesday, and I don't propose to
tell you what.  If you are going to fabricate a story, fabricate it so
that it bears a close relation to the facts.  Then I may not know
anything to contradict it."

The Chaplain swallowed.

"You must swear not to say anything about what I am going to tell you
to anybody."

"I won't swear anything of the sort," replied the Inspector.  "But if
you are criminally in a safe position it makes me unable to say
anything.  There is a law of libel, you know."

"Well, I shall have to begin at the beginning.  I suppose I've no
choice."

"No," said Buller.  "You haven't.  I don't believe you had anything to
do with the murder or I should have to warn you.  But I do believe you
can clear one or two things up.  Now go ahead."

"Beedon was a very difficult man to get on with, for clergymen
especially.  He had no principles and his own kind of vice.  He always
made his ideas very painfully clear.  Although he was not a religious
man himself he believed that clergymen ought to be.  He felt contempt
for us if we were--er--religious, and greater contempt if we were not."
The Chaplain paused and added: "This is very painful to me.  Can't you
accept my assurance that I know nothing about it?"

"Just give me the outlines of the story."

The creature plucked up courage: "Briefly," he said, "a letter written
by me came into Beedon's possession by a stupid accident.  On Tuesday
morning he brought it to my room and behaved very ratingly.  Er--he was
very cutting and contemptuous.  He was an Irishman and we had never got
on with each other.  I believe he was delighted to have the
opportunity."  The Chaplain stopped speaking.  The scene was repeating
itself behind his eyes.  "I hated him," he added, and his white hands
clutched and unclutched themselves on his lap.  "He was an intransigent
man, and thought he was God Almighty.  He came with the definite
intention of taunting and humiliating me, and he tortured me past
bearing.  Besides, I was frightened because I didn't know what he would
do with the letter.  I became hysterical, I think, and threatened his
life.  After all, one isn't a worm."

The Chaplain's eyes followed the course of events again in silence.
"In the evening," he resumed, "I went to Beedon's rooms to end the
suspense.  I still didn't know what he meant to do with the letter.  I
meant to ask him, or to apologise, or to do anything that might suggest
itself rather than remain in uncertainty any longer.  I didn't notice
from the Court whether his light was on or off.  When I got to his
landing the door was sported.  You may or may not know that the sport
keys sometimes fit different locks.  I tried my own and it opened his
door.  I found that the electric light was on.  I had only opened the
door a fraction and the light daunted me.  I swear that I closed the
door and went away again without doing anything.  I swear that,
Inspector, by Jesus Christ our Lord."

Buller felt disgusted.  "There's no need," he said.  "There's no need.
It's a plausible story already."

The two men faced each other in silence.

Buller said: "There was no such letter among his effects."

"When I got back I noticed the white of an envelope in my letter box.
It was a letter from Beedon enclosing my own letter.  He must have
delivered it himself after tea, when I was out."

"So everything fits in beautifully," said the Inspector.

"Oh God!" exclaimed the Chaplain.  "You don't believe me!  But I swear
it's true."

"I suppose you burnt the letter?"

"I did!  Oh, you won't believe me, but I did!  It was natural, wasn't
it?  I didn't keep the covering letter either.  Why should I?  It was
beastly."

The Chaplain suddenly became calm and urgent.  "Listen," he said, "what
I've told you is true.  If you don't believe it you must face other
facts.  I didn't visit Beedon till half past ten.  Whoever told you
that they saw me must have told you that.  I read detective stories.
Surely your autopsy proved that Beedon died before or after that hour?
The coincidence would be too cruel otherwise.  And then, am I the sort
of person that would go about committing murders?  Does it strike you
that I have the nerve?"

The Inspector said: "Everybody says that.  But it isn't a question of
nerve, it's a question of nerves.  However, I believe you.  If it
hadn't been for the autopsy I wouldn't."

He stood up abruptly, and took his hat off the table.  "You said that
Beedon had his private vice.  Will you tell me what it was?"

The Chaplain stared in the fire.  "No," he said.  "I don't believe it
had anything to do with it and I refuse to get people into trouble."

"Thank you," said the Inspector.  "I believe your story.  Anyway I
shall see the Master as soon as he comes back."  His stern face
suddenly melted a little.  "Good night," he said.  "I'm glad you got
the letter."

When he had gone the Chaplain walked slowly into his bedroom and knelt
on a rather ornamental prie-dieu.

      *      *      *      *      *

After this interview the Inspector realised that it was time for dinner
and that he had had nothing to eat all day.  Without calling at the
police station, he went back to his rooms.

Buller was in many ways a strange man.  He was a man without education
in the university sense, and yet he was tactful and perceiving.  Most
curious of all, although he was an ordinary policeman and the son of a
pork-butcher (perhaps because?) he had a private income and knew how to
spend it.  He loved his work and did it for that reason only--a boast
open to few.  He was what is so very misguidedly called a self-educated
man, and yet he was neither bumptious nor insincere.  He played the
flute with sentiment and execution, because he enjoyed it.  His flat,
looking over Parker's Piece, was furnished for comfort and for beauty.
Very few people had ever been inside this flat, not because Buller was
falsely diffident or secretive, but because he preferred solitude like
an animal.

He did not write poems or literary biographies or abstruse books on
matters of vertu, nor was he addicted to solving his cunning problems
in a flowered dressing gown with the aid of narcotics and a violin.
Actually he seldom had the opportunity to solve a problem.  The
criminal scope in Cambridge has not, until recent years, been wide.
Buller was that almost unique phenomenon: a man of sincerity and
restraint who enjoyed being alive, was too sensible to worry about
being dead, and who was not defeated by his own company.

He let himself into his flat, glanced at the dinner-wagon which his
charwoman had left ready for his meal, and wandered into the
sitting-room.  There he looked at the clock and put a record on the
gramophone.  It was Myra Hess, playing "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."
In the middle of this he went out to the kitchen and poured two fingers
of whiskey into a tumbler of milk.  After drinking this he turned the
record over and listened to the Gigue.  His hands curved in front of
him, wrists upwards, over imaginary reins.  When the record had
curveted in half a dozen paces from a trot to a stand he switched it
off and stood still, looking about the room.  He picked up his flute
and began to play without intention.  What he played was "John Peel."
Then he put down the flute, dragged the dinner-wagon into the
dining-room, and began to eat ravenously.

His meal took him ten minutes, after which, without conceding a moment
for digestion, he rang up the Porter's Lodge at St. Bernard's.  He
asked whether the Master was back, and was told that he was.  He gave a
message asking that the Master should see him in a quarter of an hour.
He lit a cigar, which he cut with a penknife produced rather
unexpectedly from a pocket at the back of his coat, and started for the
college.

The Master received him in the long gallery, apologising for being
late.  He had only just finished his dinner.

The Inspector said: "I hope you had a good day in London, Master."

"It was a beautiful day.  Quite warm for the time of year, and I really
believe the plane-trees were budding.  But I expect you haven't come to
discuss the weather."

The Inspector sighed.  He was faced by an antagonist whose powers were
not inferior, like the Chaplain's.  He decided not to beat about the
bush.

"In a case like this, Master," he said, "a lot of cross-currents crop
up which have no bearing upon the matter in hand.  I daresay it must be
so everywhere.  If we suddenly burst into any room where there was a
gathering of people we should find troubles and secrets abounding, all
irrelevant to the mere fact of our entrance.  A murder makes an
entrance, and we spend our time clearing away the cross-purposes which
don't apply to it.  Now, I will be perfectly frank with you, because it
would be useless to be anything else.  Why did you sign your name in
invisible ink on the sheet of paper which you delivered at Mr. Beedon's
door?"

"Since you've already tried to track my movements in London, Mr.
Inspector, I suspect that you are rather interested in this question?"

"Yes."

"But you must concede that my private behaviour belongs to myself, and
that it might be against my wishes to explain a course of action to you
which I have already attempted to hide?"

"You leave me in a difficult position, Master.  Either you must choose
to explain your actions in private--but without the assurance that it
won't be made public--or you must be content to make your explanation
before the Coroner.  If your actions have been illegal and I can prove
it, then I shan't hesitate to prosecute them, whether you tell me about
them or not.  If on the other hand, I can't prove it, then it might be
to your advantage to explain your methods of getting cocaine, to me
instead of to the Coroner."

"I'm an old man, Inspector," said the Master, "but I must assure you
that I've seldom met a person with more perception than yourself.  You
put the matter precisely, and yet broad-mindedly."

"Not at all," replied the Inspector.

"And since you've had me followed once without catching me out, I
daresay you might do so again."

"If I might return a compliment, your evasion was positive disproof of
your claims to age."

The conversation began to bore the Master.  "Very well," he said,
"we'll stop all this talking.  You want to know why Beedon shot
himself, and I'm afraid I can't tell you."

("I don't believe he did," the Inspector put in parenthetically.)

"Whether he did or not, I know nothing about it.  Now I am sorry to put
you under an obligation, for I can perceive that you are a man who
appreciates them.  I don't give you an explanation of my conduct
because I fear to give it to the Coroner.  Between you and me,
Inspector, I could invent satisfactory explanations for any Coroner
between now and the day after to-morrow.  I give it you simply because
I should like to help you with your case."

"If you will excuse my interrupting," said the Inspector, "how would
you explain your signature to the Coroner?"

"I have a daughter," answered the Master cheerfully, "who teaches in a
Sunday-school.  The little boys there are very fond of invisible ink.
It's a sort of craze just now.  She bought some as a present for one of
her pupils and I had the curiosity to experiment with it.  I must have
written on more sheets than I noticed.  In any case, the blank sheet of
paper which I inadvertently enclosed to Beedon must have been
overlooked when I warmed the others to bring out the signature.  This
is perfectly untrue, but it is what I should tell the Coroner.  The
point of it is that I have got a daughter who does teach in a
Sunday-school where invisible ink is a craze.  You see, I started the
craze."  The Master smiled at Buller without rancour.

"Go on," said the Inspector.

"Having established that point I'll proceed to lay you under my
obligation.  Actually, there's no earthly reason why I should trouble
to explain at all.  And if I do explain, I expect you not to pester my
future activities as a result of the information which I shall myself
give you as vaguely as possible.  It is true that I am addicted to
opiates, and for that I don't answer to anybody but my Maker.  Beedon
was, too.  Since I'm no longer so active as I used to be, it seemed
convenient that Beedon should order my stores for me.  The ordering,
you see, entailed going up to London and making a rather circuitous
journey in which I was fortunate enough this morning to evade your spy.
But you will have heard that persons addicted to my habit are inclined
to be unscrupulous in obtaining stores for themselves.  There was
nothing to prevent Beedon, for instance, giving my name in order to get
a double ration.  Cocaine is difficult to import, you know, and has to
be rationed carefully among old customers.  So the retailer used to
prefer that Beedon should bring with him some token from myself, and
then the stuff would be sent to me direct.  It made for honesty on all
sides.  Hence my signature.  I used invisible ink as a sort of reserve
against mischances such as the present.  Also it ensured the
authenticity of the token, for anybody could cut my signature in
ordinary ink out of a letter.  My enclosure to Beedon was in the nature
of a sign that I was running out of stores; and I did run out of them.
Beedon having failed, poor fellow, I had to go up to London myself
to-day."  The Master stretched his legs luxuriously, in token of an
errand well performed.  He waited for Buller to go away.  The
Inspector, however, had other questions to ask.

"Your story confirms my own theory, Master.  It was kind of you to
explain everything so clearly.  Now may I ask you a few questions?"
The Master nodded.

"Do you think that Beedon's death could have had any connection with
the drug-traffic?"

"No.  He was always able to keep himself in stores, and would have had
no reason for killing himself through scarcity."

"Suppose he didn't kill himself.  Can you tell me frankly whether there
is anybody else who was equally addicted, and who might have plotted to
kill Beedon over some imbroglio connected with the drug?"

"Actually, Inspector, I should have doubts about betraying my peers to
you if there were any.  But there were not.  As you know, cocaine is
scarce and illegal.  We hardly have the opportunity to form coteries of
devotees.  Mr. Beedon and I were the only people I know of in this
University who dealt with my particular retailer."

"Very well, Master.  I can't see daylight at all.  Mr. Beedon was
murdered, I'm sure of it.  Have you any theory whatever which would
account for the motive?"

The Master put his finger-tips together and stared thoughtfully into
the fire.

"Beedon," he said, "was a quarrelsome man.  He made enemies easily,
because he seemed unable to say anything but what he thought.  So there
is the possibility of murder in hot blood, carefully re-staged
afterwards.  Unfortunately there is nobody in this college whose blood
would be hot enough to commit a murder of that sort.  Then there's the
drug theory, but we've ruled that out.  Except for these two I can
think of no motives peculiar to Beedon's case."

"You mean that the motive will have to be one of those common to the
human race?"

"Exactly.  And what are they?"

"What would you say they were?" countered the Inspector.

"Hatred," replied the Master, counting on his fingers, "due to sexual
causes: money matters or thwarted ambition.  Greed, due to sexual
causes, money matters or general ambition.  Fear, due to sexual
imprudence, financial imprudence or imprudence about the reputation.
Madness.  One could go on splitting one's subdivisions for hours.  It
boils down to love, finance and reputation.  That is, if we exclude
madness.  You haven't felt, by any chance, that Beedon may have been
killed by a maniac?"

"No," Buller answered.  "This is the murder of the century, so far as
premeditation is concerned."

"I know nothing about Beedon's sexual affairs," said the Master.  "His
finance and prospects of reputation were rather interwoven.  Beedon was
a very rich man, so far as dons go, and though he was not what you
might call a popular man his monetary position made it likely that he
would--er--step into my shoes.  So he may have been murdered for his
money.  (I suppose you will look into his will.)  Or he may have been
murdered by my friend Mr. Mauleverer, who was the second favourite for
the Mastership until Beedon's death.  And now, Inspector, I really must
ask you to let me go to bed: or the Mastership will be vacant before I
intend it to be."

The old man shook hands and bowed him out of the Long Gallery.

      *      *      *      *      *

Buller did not go home.  He walked slowly across the Old Court to A4,
and let himself in.  The constable on duty threw away his cigarette,
stood up and saluted.

The Inspector said "Carry on, constable, I just want to take a look at
this gramophone."

[Illustration: Floor plan sketch]

The gramophone was a cabinet model, standing open just inside and on
the right of the door.  To the right of the gramophone again was a sort
of oak dresser ornamented with glass, china and two calceolarias in
pots.  Beyond the dresser was the door of a cupboard.  This door
reached the end of the right hand wall as you went in.  The next wall
in rotation had two stone windows opening on to the Old Court, with a
high bookcase between them.  Under each window was a table with a bowl
of bulbs on it.  Beedon seemed to have been fond of flowers.  The next
wall had two doors, with a piano between them: that nearest the Old
Court leading into a bedroom with a tin tub in it, and the other one
leading into a small study.  The latter was entirely taken up by a
large desk and chair, the former carrying a typewriter and various card
indexes.  This little room had a window opening over Copper Street.
Coming out of the study again one reached the last wall of the sitting
room, which had two more high bookcases and a fireplace between them.
The floor space of the room was taken up by two easy chairs and a sofa
round the fire, and by a large table further back with six chairs
grouped about it.  It was at this table that Mr. Beedon's pupils had
been accustomed to sit during supervisions.

The Inspector looked round this room for the twentieth time in silence
before he moved over to the gramophone.  He glanced first at the chair
in which Beedon had been found--the armchair nearest the study door.
Then his eye travelled over the four walls: there were only two
pictures, a reproduction of Blake's Canterbury Pilgrims and a portrait
of three buxom dairy maids by some Swedish artist.  There was neither
hook nor nail visible, for the pictures were supported by a rail.
That, thought Buller as he turned towards the gramophone, rules out the
idea of a string and pulley system.

The gramophone stood as it had first been discovered.  The tone-arm was
across the face, with the needle resting on the trackway into which it
would naturally run at the end of the record.  On the left hand side,
by the speed indicator, was a small pool of water which corresponded to
a couple of pools under the calceolarias on the adjacent dresser.
Whoever had done the watering must have done it promiscuously.

The Inspector tried the handle and found that the engine was run down.
Whoever put on the record had not taken it off.  This confirmed the
Master's story.  The record had been set going by means of a piece of
string (though it was difficult to say how the tone-arm was
lowered--for both Mauleverer and Weans had been emphatic that the
record started abruptly, not with the slow groan which would have
resulted if the catch had been released whilst the needle rested on the
disc) and had gone on running until the engine was exhausted.  The
tone-arm was the crux of the situation.  The catch shewed the marks of
the string and was therefore accounted for.  But how could the tone-arm
have been lowered without being touched?  The evidence of Mauleverer
and Weans shewed that it must have been lowered.  And yet it was clean
from beginning to end, carefully wiped.  It would not be possible to
wipe it effectively after it had been lowered to play the record.  The
only time at which it could reasonably have been wiped was after the
record had been played.  In which case, if there was somebody waiting
to wipe it, why did he wait till the engine had run down?

The Inspector peered at the thing again.  The grain of the wiping was
unmarked, top and bottom, except for a single blur underneath, where a
small drop of water splashed from the calceolarias still hung.  That
seemed to mean that the calceolarias had been watered after the
tone-arm had been wiped: not that it led one very far.

Buller sat down in the dead man's chair and stared at the gramophone
with baffled curiosity.  Then he dragged himself to his feet and went
into the study, from whence he stared through the window at No. 23.
Mrs. Button had pulled down all the blinds.

The Inspector was so pre-occupied that he left Beedon's rooms without
acknowledging the constable's parting salute, an omission of which he
had never been guilty before.  The night air failed to clear his head.
He ploughed his way back to the police station through a miasma of
conflicting evidence.

In his own office he found a mass of papers waiting on the table.  His
sergeant had employed the day nobly.  There was a copy of Beedon's
will, leaving everything to his sister without preamble or admonition,
and a dossier of the sister as far as her local police could provide
it.  She lived in Devonshire and grew roses.  There was a note from the
sergeant saying that she had arrived that afternoon by the 4.15 train
and might be interviewed at the University Arms.  Pinned to this note
was a brief history of Mr. Beedon as she had detailed it to the
sergeant.  Beedon, it seemed, had never done anything extraordinary.
He had gone straight from the University to the War, in which he had
acquitted himself with ability as an intelligence officer on the staff,
and straight from the War back to the University.  His financial
affairs were sound and enviable.  He was in the habit of passing his
vacations with his sister.  She could throw no light upon the tragedy.

A pile of papers next door to this dealt with the undergraduate Frazer.
His father and mother had come up in the morning.  Frazer, so far as
their knowledge extended, had never met Mr. Beedon.  He was a normal
and healthy boy, whose letters had so far dealt only with the prospects
of his College fifteen and with a few clumsy opinions of his tutor and
the University in general.  There was something pathetic about the
brevity of this dossier, its childish particulars of school
achievements, even in comparison with the not very wide experiences of
Mr. Beedon.  Buller read everything through carefully and replaced the
files.  Then he switched off the light and made for his flat.  In the
middle of Parker's Piece the chimes of the University assailed him from
all sides, counting the hour of twelve.




CHAPTER V

The Inspector was early up the next morning and found the surgeon at
the police station, waiting in his room.

The Inspector said: "I'm sorry I worried you about all that, doctor,
there's nothing in it.  I was a fool to think I knew more than Boneface
and the big bugs from London.  Beedon shot the boy and then himself.
There's no evidence for any other conclusion, and very little reason
why there should be.  Beedon must have wiped the automatic just before
he shot himself, and for some reason he didn't alter his grip.  As for
the gramophone, there must be faulty evidence somewhere.  It _must_
have been started with the needle resting on the record, and I suppose
Beedon used a piece of string to start it, so that he could have music
to die to, whilst he was sitting in his chair."  After a pause he
added: "Though God knows what he did with the string!  I suppose he
swallowed it."  He glanced at the surgeon with a look of ironic misery
and shrugged his shoulders.  "I shall just have to learn to
discriminate."

The police surgeon patted him on the arm.  "You're very selfish about
this," he said.  "You haven't asked what I was doing all yesterday."

Buller's eyes leapt to his companion's face.

"I even had to buy and brutally slaughter a live pig," continued the
surgeon, "though his epidermis was not characteristically human."

The Inspector said: "Well?"

"You'd better come to my rooms and I'll show you.  I'll explain on the
way."

"First of all," pursued the surgeon as he walked along Scroope Terrace,
"I've got rather a piece of news for you.  Beedon was shot before
Frazer.  I can corroborate that statement from the microscopic
examination of the bullets alone.  There is a faint mark on the Frazer
bullet which does not correspond to any on Beedon's.  The firing of the
bullet which killed Beedon made a fresh mark on the bore of the
automatic which has transferred itself to the bullet which killed
Frazer.  But the marking is infinitely small and too dubious to impress
a jury.  Luckily there's another point which bears it out.  I've
re-dissected both wounds and found twice the percentage of oil and
cordite in Frazer's that there is in Beedon's.  This means that the
barrel was already fouled when Frazer was shot.  It's a complicated
question, for the bullets were fired from different distances.  The
bullet which shot Frazer was discharged from a distance of several feet
and had already outstripped its gasses.  Beedon was shot with the
muzzle against his temple, so, since the gasses were still in front of
the bullet we should naturally expect more of the waste products inside
the wound.  And they are present in great quantity.  But the fact that
the barrel was stopped up, as it were, by Beedon's head evidently
tended to foul it more than usual and when the second bullet was fired,
although the distance prevented it from carrying its gasses with it
into the wound, Frazer got the benefit of this extra fouling.  If
Frazer had been shot first, and from a greater distance, we should
expect his wound to be much less fouled than Beedon's.  Whereas the
actual fact is that, although Beedon was shot absolutely point blank,
Frazer's is the dirtier wound.  This left no doubt in my mind that
Beedon was shot first.  However, I thought it best to make a practical
demonstration and you must come and see my dead pig."

The Inspector allowed himself to be led into the house and stared
uncomprehendingly at the animal's corpse.

"I shot it dead first of all at a distance of four feet.  Immediately
afterwards I shot it point blank without cleaning the automatic--(by
the way, I used one borrowed from the armoury).  These wounds I call in
order A and B.  Then I cleaned the weapon and shot it first of all
point-blank and again, without cleaning, at four feet.  These wounds I
call in order C and D.  D was more fouled than C, B more fouled than A.
That is to say, in each case the second wound was fouler than the first
no matter what the distance of the discharge.  They vary comparatively,
but that is not important.  The point is that the fouler wound is the
second, and that Frazer's was the fouler.  Beedon was shot first."

The Inspector came out of his trance and thumped the doctor on the
back.  However, he was still not completely jubilant.

"Can you convince Sir Loftus when he comes down to-morrow?"

"I shouldn't try to for a moment," replied the surgeon.  "I shall show
him my experiments as if I didn't quite understand where they led and
ask for his opinion.  Then I hope he'll explain it all very carefully,
compliment me on my able work and tell the Coroner all about it.  You
don't understand how to manage these things."

"Well," said the Inspector.  "That settles that.  Now we'll sit down
and talk it out.  Let X be the murderer...."

      *      *      *      *      *

Mr. Mauleverer lectured from ten till eleven; then he walked back
across the Courts to his own rooms, his gown flowing out imposingly
behind, and deposited his paraphernalia in the study.  His rooms were
less luxurious than Mr. Beedon's.  Instead of the old glass, china and
statuettes which ornamented the dead man's dresser (with the
calceolarias) Mr. Mauleverer had a medium priced tea service and a
tobacco jar with his college arms on it.  The college had been George
Augustus Hall.

Mauleverer went to a cupboard in the sitting-room and fetched out a
bottle of sherry with some biscuits.

He turned round as Inspector Buller knocked on the door.

"Come in!"

Buller said: "I have a grave matter to discuss with you, Mr.
Mauleverer.  May I see you for some time in private at once?"

"Certainly.  Come in and have some sherry."

"Thank you, I'll do without a drink."

"As you like," said Mr. Mauleverer.  "I hope you won't mind if I drink
myself.  I've just been lecturing, and it makes one thirsty."

He proceeded to pour himself a liberal glass, looking at Buller over
the top of it with an inscrutable expression.  Buller fidgeted with his
hat uneasily.  After a pause he said awkwardly: "I scarcely know how to
begin.  All this is very irregular.  I ought not to have come to you."

"Well," said Mr. Mauleverer pleasantly, "now you've come I hope we'll
have a pleasant chat."

"I believe," said the Inspector, enunciating his words with difficulty,
"that you are the murderer of Mr. Beedon."

"My dear Inspector!  What an idea!  What an unwarrantable remark!  I
hope you don't go about saying this sort of thing to everybody?"

"I'm sorry.  I shouldn't have come."  Buller rose to his feet.  "I
thought you might have taken it differently.  I'll go away at once."

"Well, I'm relieved at least that you haven't brought a constable--even
if it is irregular.  And oughtn't you to have warned me?"

Buller was quite red with mortification.  "I'm sorry, sir," he said
(but stiffly).  "I had no right to speak with you.  I apologise for my
remark.  If you wish to, you can report me to my superiors."

"Now don't go off like that.  I don't take any offence, but I insist on
an explanation.  You can't go about accusing people of murder without
telling them why.  Are you free for an hour?  We might take a little
walk towards Grantchester while you explain yourself.  I haven't any
pupils till twelve o'clock."

"Why," said Buller, "I have nothing which will come to any good by
explanation.  I've made a great mistake in coming."

"Nevertheless," replied Mr. Mauleverer, "you won't retrieve it by
going.  You must explain yourself, you know, in common decency."

"I have no common decency, not in my profession.  I'm afraid I shall
have to leave it as it is."

Mauleverer said persuasively: "Come along, just a short walk.  If you
expected to get something out of me in conversation when you first
came, why shouldn't you expect to get it still?"  He walked to the door
and looked out, as if he expected someone to be outside.  But the
landing was empty.  "Come, take your hat," he said.  "I have something
to tell you after all."

In Copper Street Mr. Mauleverer said to the Inspector, without change
of tone: "I'm sorry to have had to drag you out.  Walls have ears, you
know (have you seen the ear in the dungeons at Hastings Castle?), and
we scientific criminals get to be a little pernickety.  This constant
attention to minuti has the effect of making one over-careful.  I'm
sure it's a fault, really.  Eventually one will get to the point of not
seeing the wood for the trees.  What a lot of proverbs!"

Buller was at a loss for reply, but Mauleverer ran on.  "Even now," he
said, "I'm suspicious of a trap.  Could you have a microphone in your
button hole, for instance, with all the Roberts at Scotland Yard
listening to my little confidences?  I hardly think so, and, besides,
conversation heard over the wireless hasn't yet been admitted as
evidence in a court of law.  One would be sure to get it suppressed."

Buller was still silent.

"You'll admit, however," Mauleverer went on, "that I had to get you out
of doors before we could really talk.  After all, you might have had a
constable listening on the landing.  I could hardly, in those
circumstances, have agreed with your accusation enthusiastically."

Buller said: "You were unwise to drink that sherry."

"Not at all," replied the don.  "My loquacity is due to other reasons
than a mere glass of sherry.  I have been ready to talk to you since
last night, and I've nothing to hide.  Perhaps the _gaiety_ of my
_tone_ may be attributed in part to the intoxicant (though of course
it's mainly nervous reaction) but you may be sure I'm not putting
myself in any difficulties."

"I understand," said Buller halting.  "Now I'm going home."

"Don't be a fool."  Mr. Mauleverer laid his hand on the Inspector's
arm.  "You cannot allow a personal and illiberal dislike to tear you
away just when you might be able to pump me advantageously.  I gather
from your behaviour that you haven't the evidence to convict, since you
haven't even warned me.  Your call was just an effort to startle an
advantage.  Well, go on with it.  After all, there may be something to
be gained, if only in studying my mentality as revealed by
conversation."

Buller made no reply.

"Besides," added the other, "I enjoy pulling your leg."

"I don't enjoy," replied Buller evenly, "having it pulled.  Good-bye."

"What a waste of time!  Now that you've dragged me out on this
pointless walk I insist on talking to you.  I shall tell you exactly
how everything was done.  I suppose you've established the priority of
wound by the autopsy?"

Buller grunted non-committally.

"You'd never have thought of looking into that so closely if it hadn't
been for an accident."  Mr. Mauleverer sighed with what seemed an
almost genuine regret.  "It was that wretched tone-arm and catch," he
added and began to justify himself with vehemence.

"I wanted to kill Beedon because I believed the Master was getting
shaky.  Beedon would have got the Mastership if he'd survived the
Master.  Now I shall get it.  I'm poor, you know--by damned fortune.
That's your motive.  I wanted to make it a suicide.  Beedon had a
faintly shady past, and suicide would have gone down all right.  I went
over to Holland and got an unregistered Belgian automatic.  (You know
they have a type manufactured with a silencer.)  It might just as well
have belonged to Beedon as to me.  Then, about a fortnight ago, I
called on Beedon in the evening and got talking about typewriters.  He
let me try his.  I wrote on a slip of his own paper: "I am sick of it.
Good-bye," and slipped it in my pocket.  He didn't notice.  He was in
the other room, making coffee.  I had asked to try the typewriter just
when the milk began to boil."

"Then I made my plan about the gramophone.  I proposed to prop the
tone-arm up on a thin tripod made of ice--standing on the record, so
that it would be knocked over when the record started.  Then, if the
engine was fully wound up, one only needed to release the catch for the
needle to fall on a record which was already revolving fairly fast.  It
is the initial drag which slows records up when released with the
needle lowered.  I was to release the catch by means of a loop of
string through the T keyhole of the sport door.  (When released you
merely let go of one end of the string and pull the whole length out.
Then you burn the string.)  Your companion has heard a record being
played inside the room, with you outside it, and he can swear you were
with him all the rest of the evening.  Ergo, somebody was alive inside
the room when you were at the Festival Theatre, and there's a
bullet-proof alibi which isn't likely to be required in any case.  For
you shot Beedon with the automatic pressed to his temple, you have left
no finger marks on the weapon except Beedon's, and the slip of paper is
in the typewriter.

"The gramophone would have borne a very close inspection, for I
proposed to touch no part of it except with a pencil or the string
itself (which would only mark the under surface of the catch, and you'd
have had no reason to be suspicious enough to look there).  And--this
is the important point--I proposed to leave Beedon's own finger marks
on both catch and arm.  I did not propose to give them that suspicious
wiping, as I was later compelled to do.  The thin ice-bridge on which
the arm rested was made by myself in the University laboratories so
that it would melt in twenty minutes.  Beedon's room had a fire in it.
To account for the water on the gramophone which the melted ice would
leave I put the calceolarias on the dresser by its side and watered
them clumsily.  I used the same water for both bridge and watering, so
you won't prove anything by analysis.

"And that was the whole of my operation orders at zero-hour.  But the
best-laid schemes, etc.  I went into Beedon's room and shot him
according to plan.  He was more surprised and vexed than anything else,
and couldn't believe his senses--whilst he had them.  Then I turned at
once to the arrangement of the gramophone.  Perhaps rather morbidly I
had myself given Beedon the record which I proposed to play for his
funeral march.  But my main reason in giving it him--a couple of days
before--was to encourage him to play the gramophone and make nice fresh
fingerprints.  The record itself didn't matter in my calculations for I
proposed to wipe it before putting it on with a silk handkerchief.  You
see one often wipes gramophone records.

"Well, I went to the gramophone to put the record on and so forth.  I
found it was on already.  This made me look at the tone-arm through my
magnifying glass--I was doing the thing scientifically, you must
admit--and I was horrified to find my own fingerprints.  That wretch
Beedon actually had not touched the machine since I gave him the
record, and played it to him myself, two days before.  I recognised my
own fingerprints because I have studied them.  Many people can tell you
what colour their own eyes are, but few are familiar with their
fingers.  I think this is an omission.  Anyway I was confronted with
Beedon dead and my own prints irreparably on the instrument.  It would
have been impossible to carry him across and make prints then and
there, for what with the blood and other matters liable to microscopic
examination I'd have messed up the verisimilitude too much.  So I just
had to wipe the arm and catch altogether.  I still don't think you'd
have noticed it but for the other miscarriage of plan.  Both
miscarriages, I claim, were unforeseeable.

"Having wound up the handle--allowing it to turn in my palm so as to
blur beyond recognition even such imperfect prints as one gets from the
main body of the hand--and set up the tone-arm on its ice rest, I went
to the little study which faces Copper Street in order to put the
typewritten sentence into the machine.  I had picked up the automatic
as I went, and carried it in my hand, putting it down by the
typewriter.  The paper was already in place and I had wiped the wheel
which turns the roller--of course I had been forced to get his
'confession' typed some days before, so that Beedon should have used
the machine after me and thus left his own prints on the keys--when I
picked up the automatic and glanced out across Copper Street.  That
unfortunate undergraduate was standing at the window of his rooms, on a
level with myself, staring at me open mouthed.

"I went straight out--I had to chance it--walked into Number 23,
climbed the stairs, and found his room.  He was waiting for me with an
expression of horror and expectation.  I shot him dead.

"I went back to Beedon's rooms--there was nobody to be seen in the
Porter's Lodge on either trip--and took the slip out of the typewriter
again.  I put it in the fire.  Then I took a last look round, wiped the
automatic, and put it in Beedon's hand, holding it by the barrel with a
silk handkerchief as I did so.  Afterwards I gave the barrel a second
wipe to make sure.  I went to the door and fixed my piece of string
round the catch so that both ends just came through the keyhole.  Then
I sported the door and went to find Weans.

"When we were outside Beedon's door together I pulled the loop under
the pretence of trying to open the door.  The catch was released with
the engine at high pressure; the record revolving overset the ice prop
and dropped the needle on the disc, which started playing with the
slightest perceptible groan.  I noticed it, but Weans didn't.  He
wasn't on the look-out for it.  It is dark on that landing and neither
my actions nor the string were visible."

Mr. Mauleverer paused abruptly and looked at the Inspector.  "That's
all," he added.

Buller said, rather cheerfully: "Well, if you've finished I'll be
going."  He turned round eagerly and began to walk towards the college.
Mauleverer called him back.

"You should have seen that porter before," he remarked.

Buller looked at him with horror.

"He saw me coming out of Number 23.  I saw him too, though for some
reason I thought he hadn't noticed me.  He was coming out of the Crown
Arms, where he ought not to have been.  You see, he was on duty at the
time.  I expect you interviewed him and found him reticent on the
subject of his whereabouts at eight o'clock.  He didn't mention that
he'd seen me for two reasons.  First, because it implied that he must
have left the Lodge when on duty--he did so because everybody was in
Hall--and second because he had not actually connected me with the
crimes: his mind was full of the Master's imbroglio with Beedon, and
with the Chaplain's quarrel.  He was a stupid man.  In any case he
thought best not to mention it: I may say fortunately, for his would
have been the one tangible piece of evidence you could have offered
against me at a trial.  Without his evidence, even on the full
reconstruction which I've offered you, you will realise that of course
no jury will convict.  Now the evidence is negative only."

"Now?" enquired the Inspector, with his first trace of emotion.  He
looked as if he could strike Mauleverer to the ground.

"Yes," replied Mauleverer, "now.  But don't let me keep you from going
to see him."

"What have you done to him?" Buller said, rather than asked, in a voice
of cold passion.

"Tut, tut!  Run along and see."

Buller turned on his heel and made off towards the college.
Mauleverer's voice called after him triumphantly.

"Don't hurry," it cried.  "Don't hurry!"




CHAPTER VI

Buller turned in at the back gate of St. Bernard's, a wrought iron
contrivance which led into the part of the college on the Grantchester
side of the river.  Here was the Fellows' Garden, with some decaying
lecture rooms and the cottages which lodged the senior college
servants.  The Inspector made for Rudd's cottage.

At the door he found a constable.  Inside, talking to Mrs. Rudd, among
the aspidistras and bowers of lace, were the police surgeon and the
sergeant.  Mrs. Rudd was in tears.

The surgeon took Buller by the arm and led him into the passage.  "I
came along," he said, "in the hope of seeing you.  Did you get the
sergeant's note?"

"No," said Buller.  "I've been walking to Grantchester with Mauleverer.
What's the matter?"

"Rudd hasn't been in all night.  His wife didn't let me know before
because apparently he's done the same thing once or twice already.  She
seems to think he has a girl in Swavesey.  But this morning one of the
gardeners found a lot of blood on some clothes which he leaves in the
gardening shed on the Backs, and she got frightened.  She sent for us
just after you left."

[Illustration: Grounds of St Barnard's]

The Inspector called the sergeant out of the room.

"Talk to Mrs. Rudd quietly," he said, "and find out everything you can
about her husband.  Try particularly to get her talking about the
Beedon murder.  I want to know if Rudd happened to mention to her that
he saw Mauleverer coming out of Number 23 at about eight o'clock.  I'm
going to see this gardener."  He tapped his teeth for a moment and then
turned to the surgeon.  "And I wonder if you," he added, "would 'phone
up for reserves from the station?  Tell them to bring something to drag
the river with."

      *      *      *      *      *

When the surgeon got back from the telephone he found the Inspector
standing half way down the path which bordered the Backs.  St.
Bernard's bridge was a hundred yards to their right, and Queen's bridge
about the same distance on the other side.  In front of them, across
the river, rose the crumbling red brick of the Master's Lodge, and
behind them dripped the early spring foliage of a dense grove of trees
traditionally planted by Duns Scotus.  Since the schoolman's initial
effort very little care had been lavished on this part of the grounds,
so that the two men seemed to be standing between barbarity and
civilisation.  The bowers and weedy thickets behind them crept untidily
towards the University with something of a tropic surge.  The trees
hid, somewhere in their bosky heart, the brick wall of the Fellows'
Garden (mainly vegetable) and, with their Copper Street wing, the
outbuildings of the college.  These included the lecture rooms, bicycle
stores, porters' cottages, and two or three seedy tennis courts.  It
was a desolate spot, seldom frequented except in summer.

Buller was standing on the river bank, looking down at his feet.

"Look at this," he said, when the surgeon came up.  "I suppose it's
blood?"

There was a wide and murky stain, rusting the blades of grass, which
spread down the bank to the stone parapet of the river and trickled
down to the water in cracking rivulets.  The surgeon bent down and
investigated with his finger.  He plucked a blade of grass and tasted
it.  It was blood.

"Don't move about," said Buller.  "There are plenty of footprints and
so on.  It was a damp night."  He seemed inert and uninterested.

The surgeon asked helpfully: "Shall I 'phone for Chambers to make a
plaster cast?"

"Yes, and send the sergeant to keep people off.  I want to see that
gardener's shed as soon as I can get away.  You'll find me there."

The gardener's shed stood beside the cottages, at the edge of the
stretch of gravelled drive where the Fellows left their cars.  The
place was at the very fringe of Scotus's plantation, just outside the
walls of the Fellows' Garden.  The surgeon, after he had completed his
errand, found Buller talking to the under-gardener.  On the potting
table lay a coat, an apron and a pair of heavy boots: all bloodstained.
Buller was looking at them without interest, whilst the gardener told
his story.  The latter was a black-haired Welshman with the expression
of a baboon.

"Indeed, sir, yes," he was saying, "a change of vestment I keep
throughout the winter months.  The clay in these parts is very
clinging, look you, and I am a poor man sir, look you, indeed, so that
I must needs cover my outward parts with a beggar's raiment, yes, and
preserve my decent apparel against the Sunday, look you, yes, indeed!"

"You left your working clothes hanging up here last night," said the
Inspector, "and found them in their present state this morning?"

"Morning or no morning," said the gardener, "look you----"

"Is that so or not?"

"As I was saying----"

"Well, I'm afraid you'll have to leave them for the police."

"I am a poor man, sir, in an alien country----"

"However poor you are," answered Buller grimly, "you'll have to wear
your decent apparel on weekdays as well, till after the inquest.  Or
else get some beggar's raiment off the next scarecrow you see.  I'm
sorry, but there it is."

Buller folded up the exhibits and walked out of the shed.  In the drive
he bundled them into the police car and sat down wearily on the step.
The surgeon sat down beside him and lit a pipe.  He waited for his
friend to break the silence.

"Well," said the Inspector at last, "now we're up against it.  We shall
have to look into everything, of course, according to routine.  But if
I know Mauleverer there won't be anything to find."

The surgeon made a noise to indicate his sympathy and attention.

"I went for a walk with Mauleverer," said Buller, "and he confessed to
both murders.  He detailed the whole proceedings to me in full.  There
isn't a scrap of evidence which would carry weight against him in
court--not a scrap of positive evidence at all, and even the negative
evidence is equally applicable to the undergraduate Weans or even to
the Chaplain and the Master.  There was only one loose end which he'd
left over, and that was this porter Rudd.  Rudd was coming out of the
Crown Arms, where he'd been paying an illicit visit, as Mauleverer came
out of Number 23.  They saw each other.  I guessed something of the
sort, and I intended to get a signed statement from Rudd this morning.
Now Mauleverer has tidied up."

"Perhaps you will be able to get Mauleverer over this second affair?"

"Too neat.  The inhuman swine!  Three poor blighters turning into
worms, without guilt or preparation."  The Inspector stared moodily at
the ground.

"How did he do this last one?"

"They'll find Rudd's body in the river, there, I suppose.  We can't be
sure till we've seen it.  But it's fairly clear.  Some time after dark
last night he must have let himself out with his Fellow's key and
hidden himself in the plantation.  Then, in the darkness, he changed
his clothes for those left by the under-gardener.  I expect he wore
nothing else but the coat, apron and boots.  He wouldn't have wanted to
risk even the smallest splash on his own things.  I can imagine him
there, like an animal in the shade of night, half naked, waiting....
Rudd was on duty in the college.  When he came out, over the bridge,
Mauleverer whistled to him.  I don't know about the whistle, but he
induced him away from the drive on to the path by the river.  Rudd was
a little on the shady side himself.  Perhaps he thought it was his
bookmaker or his fence or an accomplice or a victim in blackmail.
(They don't like to meet their vampires very publicly.)  We shall never
know.  Anyway, he got him to the path and slit his throat like a
butcher--coolly, like a snake with a fascinated rabbit.  Poor devil!
This last one has upset me more than the others.  I should have stopped
it if I'd been sharp.  Imagine that gross wicked man quivering before
Mauleverer in the damp darkness.  Mauleverer slit his windpipe at the
same time, so he didn't make a human sound.  Then he rolled him into
the river, warm and dead, and probably chucked the knife in after him.
It will have been a Woolworth production, bought for sixpence along
with the thirty thousand facsimiles which must have been purchased in
this country last year.  Quite untraceable, and carefully wiped.

"After that Mauleverer will have gone back to the potting shed and
changed into his own clothes."

"But surely," the surgeon said, "we must be able to find _some_
circumstantial evidence?"

"I fail to see how.  The plaster cast now being made will show Rudd's
footmarks and those made by the gardener's boots.  The knife won't help
us.  Nobody saw or heard the thing done."

"Even if Mauleverer wore the gardener's boots from the shed to the
path, he must have worn his own boots to and from the shed.  That's
something, isn't it?"

"Unfortunately not.  The shed stands here at the edge of the drive,
which is gravel and won't hold footprints.  Nor will the bridge.
Mauleverer reached the shed without leaving a trace, and from the shed
to the bank he left only those of the gardener."

"At least he can't have an alibi!"

"Unfortunately you can't hang people for that.  Mauleverer will say
that he spent the evening reading quietly in his rooms.  He won't need
an alibi, for there's nothing to connect the business with him."

As Buller stopped speaking there was a hail from the river.  The two
men got up and walked towards the scene of the murder.  Over the path
and grass where the bloodstains had been found lay a white coat of
plaster of Paris.  Next to this was the wet bundle which remained of
Rudd.  His head was nearly severed from the body, and rolled to one
side over a bloodless wound, with bloodless lips coloured by the river.
The sergeant held an object in his hand, which he offered to the
Inspector.  It was a cheap razor, marked from Woolworth's.

"Here's the weapon," he said.  "Rudd never told his wife anything about
Mauleverer.  Shall I arrest that gardener?"

Fortunately the gardener had an alibi.




PART II




CHAPTER VII

A fortnight later Inspector Buller was making a comfortable dinner on a
westbound train.  The spring was drawing on, and the panorama of sunset
over the English fields soothed and elated him.  He was free.

The telegram which lay in his pocket had surprised the post office
officials.  It read simply: "Can you fight next week end zero Saturday
noon Darcy," and was addressed from Pemberley in Derbyshire.

Two years before, Inspector Buller had been taking a holiday near
Derby.  He was driving his car at the lowest possible speed along a
rutty deserted lane at the back of Pemberley, when, with a rather loud
explosion, something blew up under his off fore tyre.  At the same time
a voice spoke from the other side of the old brick wall which bounded
the lane.

"Kingdom," it said, "look over the wall and see if you've killed
anybody."

A stately head, ornamented with white walrus moustaches (uncommon in a
butler), dawned solemnly over the brickwork, surmounted by a bowler
hat.  The whole creation slowly became a deep scarlet and disappeared.
There was a whispered colloquy, and a new head popped up.  This one was
fair haired and fine drawn, the head of a man in the early thirties.

"I beg your pardon?" it said.

"I didn't speak," said the Inspector in an amused voice.

"Then why don't you go away?"

"Well," said the Inspector, "one of my front tyres has just blown up,
and my spare wheel is punctured."

"What a relief!" exclaimed the fair haired man.  "I thought Kingdom had
shot you with a 5.9."

"Probably he has.  I don't see why the tyre should blow up otherwise.
It was a perfectly good tyre.  In fact it was brand new.  It was my
spare wheel half an hour ago, until I had a puncture and changed
wheels."

The blue eyes considered the Inspector solemnly, and then suggested,
"If you would care to come in and have a drink I could send somebody
round to see to it."

Buller accepted the suggestion with alacrity.  He was of an enquiring
turn of mind, and wondered who could be firing 5.9's in a private park
during the piping times of peace.  His host explained that one of the
gates was a little further down, and began to walk on the inside of the
wall whilst Buller trudged along the road.  The Inspector heard him
address a parting remark to the butler.

"Kingdom," he said, "go and fetch Smith from the garage.  You might
have killed that gentleman.  In future I shall discharge your pieces
for you myself.  And don't go prying at my positions whilst I'm away.
Remember you're on your honour, Kingdom."

And Kingdom replied: "Very well, Sir Charles.  Shall I fall out the
Welch Fusiliers or leave them out till after tea?"

Whilst they were walking up the drive Sir Charles Darcy made his
explanation.

      *      *      *      *      *

Sitting in the restaurant car and watching the careful allowance of gin
slopping in his glass, Inspector Buller thought about Sir Charles.  He
had pieced out the story from Elizabeth Darcy--the Christian name had
been in the family since the famous Elizabeth in 1813--and it was an
odd one.  The present baronet had been married in 1918 to a beautiful
and charming wife.  With the War ended, almost as soon as he had found
himself pitchforked into it, and with the broad acres of Pemberley in
which to beguile his wife, Sir Charles had had cause to suppose himself
a fortunate man.  He was gifted and irresponsible, and consciously
happy.  The wildness of the years immediately following upon the
Armistice delighted him.  The newly married couple stayed little at
Pemberley, which was dull even in peace time, but amused themselves
perseveringly in the lights of the metropolis.  They hoped that they
were completely immoral.

One night Charles was rather drunk in a night club.  His wife was
sober.  One of their acquaintance, a fat man who was said to be
something in the City, came over to their table and talked to Charles
in whispers.  He knew that Charles was a sport, he said, and he had a
job of work for anybody who had the guts to do it.  It was dangerous,
he said, and just the sort of thing for anybody who was out for a bit
of fun.  He and some friends of his, to put it shortly, had smuggled a
small cargo of liquor from Holland.  It was now lying at Tilbury,
waiting to be taken away.  They wanted a really fast car, in case of
trouble with the police, to run it up to town.  Was Charles game to
call for it in his Benz?  Of course it was quite illegal, but everybody
was doing that sort of thing nowadays.

Charles and his wife were delighted to undertake the adventure.  After
all, there was nothing nasty about liquor: it wasn't one of the things
which were "not done."

The fat man explained to Charles that he and his friends were afraid
the police were more or less "on to" their own car.  They believed,
indeed, that the police would be on the look out for the cargo in any
car travelling the necessary route that evening.  It was vitally
necessary that the stuff should be fetched at once, before the police
traced it to where it lay.  Charles would have to keep his wits about
him on the return journey, and go by a route which the fat man
explained to him.  The fat man himself would be unable to come, as he
had to make things ready at this end.  He gave the directions for
locating the cases at Tilbury, and a sort of countersign for the man
who would be waiting to deliver them there.

Charles's wife insisted on coming too, and drove the car down herself,
as he might have driven rather erratically.  On the return journey,
when he was more sober, Charles took the wheel.  He was volleying along
at sixty miles an hour when he came round a slight curve at Purfleet
and found a police car drawn across the road.  Four policemen with
lanterns were waving him to stop.  It had been raining.  Charles had a
confused idea of the interior of his own car, of the road and policemen
swirling to the left and then to the right, of the dark police car
rushing at him broadside on.

When he woke up he was in a hospital ward with a policeman sitting
beside him.  Lady Darcy had been killed outright, and the cases in the
wrecked car contained many thousand pounds' worth of cocaine.  Nothing
was ever seen again of the fat man, and nobody believed that he
existed.  Charles went to prison for two years.

When he was released, he came to live at Pemberley with his sister
Elizabeth.  It was not a very pleasant life, for the usual country
pleasures were impossible.  The county no longer consented to attend
his shooting parties, and it was impossible to hunt.  The
unpleasantness of his first day made that abundantly clear.

He laid out a stiff point-to-point course in his own grounds, and rode
round and round this for hours, trying at first to break his neck.  But
he broke the neck of his favourite grey mare instead, and gave up his
crazy riding out of shame.  He still went round the jumps every
morning; but now he was riding, instead of charging his fences.

As time went by, the curious neighbours heard that he was getting
decidedly crochety.  He amused himself by launching a miniature fleet,
electrically controlled, on Pemberley Lake.  With these he fought noisy
engagements, which were heard for quite a distance round, until they
were all too battered for action.  Then he turned himself to warfare on
land and elaborated a game which had some of the interest of chess.  He
used the most realistic lead soldiers imported from France, and
miniature artillery specially manufactured for him by Bassett-Lowke.
These pieces fired real shell, made of china, and had a very natural
effect.

The battle ground was divided by a high canvas sheet into two halves,
and on either side of this sheet the combatants--Charles and Elizabeth,
or the butler--entrenched their armies for two days prior to the
battle.  At zero hour the canvas was removed, and, after tossing for
the initiative, the battle began.  The rules became increasingly
elaborate.

The contending armies moved in turn, each turn being reckoned at
twenty-five points.  These points were controlled by a table of
movements.  Thus for the loss of one point one cavalryman could advance
ten yards, or one infantryman could advance three yards.  The discharge
of a howitzer cost five points.  The white army might select to expend
its turn by discharging five shells from the howitzers, and the black
army might reply with a ten yards charge by twenty-five dragoons or a
five yard charge by fifty.  Or either side might split up its points;
firing one shell, advancing five cavalrymen ten yards, and fifteen
infantrymen three yards.  The adjustments became more and more
delicately balanced, and the rules of capture more and more
specialised.  The impetus of the attacking force was allowed for in a
charge.  Moves could be commuted and saved up for a mass attack.
Tanks, machine guns, mines, flammenwerfers and even poison gas were
introduced.  Elizabeth and the butler found that protection was
necessary.  The combatants operated thereafter from behind triplex
screens.

It was to one of these actions, as Charles explained while they were
walking up the drive, that the Inspector owed his introduction to
Pemberley.  It was not entirely to these actions that he owed his
continued reception there.  Sir Charles had taken a quiet fancy to him,
it is true, and enjoyed a change of society.  They were soon fighting
battles with concord and interest; but the Inspector would not have
gone back to Pemberley solely on that account.  He went back because he
had instantly fallen in love with Elizabeth Darcy.

He knew that a match between a police inspector and the hostess of
Pemberley would be an impossible one, but he managed, as most lovers
will, to justify himself in seeing her at any rate.  She must be
lonely, he argued, seeing nobody in that vast mansion: and she seemed
to enjoy talking to him.  It was his plain duty to cheer her up; not
expecting anything, of course--in fact carefully retreating from the
intimacy which he longed for.  Inspector Buller conscientiously saw her
not more than fifteen or twenty days in a year; and thought about her
on all the other days from the safe distance of work in Cambridge.

Elizabeth was worth thinking about.  She was tall, with mouse-coloured
hair.  Her lips were Louis Philippe, and she was lovely--a natural
champion of the divided skirt.  How she could put up with the lonely
splendours of Pemberley was more than Buller could understand.  At
first-nights, driving fast cars with a white cigarette between those
formal roses, at house parties and grouse moors, hunting in
Leicestershire, bored at Cowes, or chattering in the Royal Enclosure at
Ascot, she would have been indistinguishable.  And she might have
stayed in all these situations.  Her brother's disgrace need not after
all have affected her.  Yet she had followed him to exile.  She was a
natural creature, and she loved him.  She also loved Inspector Buller,
and had done, from his second clumsy visit; but he was not the man to
suspect that startling coincidence.

      *      *      *      *      *

The Inspector reached Pemberley at ten o'clock, and was bundled off to
bed almost at once in preparation for the morrow's action.  All the
next day was spent in fortification and planning of trenches.  Nobody
mentioned his affairs until the table had been cleared after dinner.
Then Charles looked guiltily at Elizabeth, cleared his throat and began.

"Liz was reading in the papers," he said, "about this case of yours in
Cambridge.  I hope there's no truth in this talk about your
resignation?"

"Miss Darcy is right.  I resigned before I came away."

"But why?" exclaimed Elizabeth impatiently.  "It isn't your fault if
you can't catch the murderer.  Besides, you can't be expected to find
out who did it straight away!"

"The trouble is, Miss Darcy," replied Buller, with the old fashioned
respect which drove her nearly to desperation, "that I have found out
who the murderer is, and I can't prove it."

"But why resign?  They can't have kicked you out for that, can they?"

"No, I've not exactly been kicked out.  They weren't best pleased with
me, for I've saddled them with an Unsolved Murder Mystery when the
affair might have passed off quietly.  They don't want any more
unsolved murders at present.  But I could very well have stayed if I'd
wanted to."

"Why," asked Charles, "did you resign then?"

"General disgust."

"What at?"

"At my profession, I'm afraid I've been a fool.  It's a good profession
and it probably does quite as well as it possibly could.  In fact it's
a magnificent profession, and I have been a fool.  What really drove me
to it was disgust with myself."

"You must tell us about it," said Elizabeth.

"I suppose I resigned because I might have saved this last victim, the
porter, if I'd acted promptly.  At the time I thought I was resigning
from general despair, because we couldn't bring it home to the
murderer.  But that would just have been pique, and I hope it wasn't
the reason."

"Do you mean to say," asked Charles, "that you know who the murderer
is?"

"Yes."

"And he got away?"

"No, he's there in Cambridge.  We can't prove anything against him."

"Do tell us about him!"

"Well," said Buller, "I'm not a policeman any more, and I can trust
you.  You're my friends and won't repeat it, I know.  Why shouldn't I?
The three men were killed by a Fellow of St. Bernard's, a man called
Mauleverer.  He says he did it (only to me, mind you; he'd deny it to
anybody else or in a court of law: but he admitted it to me privately,
to gratify his vanity) in order to get the Mastership of his college
when it falls vacant.  The don whom he killed stood in his way, and the
other two got tangled up and had to be finished off.  But that's all my
eye and Betty Martin really.  He did it because he's a born murderer:
just for its own sake.  He's as clever as hell, and self centred.
Beedon did stand in his way and the idea must have occurred to him that
he could get rid of him by murder.  It's a curious thing, and we
generally refuse to admit it, but most of us have had thoughts like
that.  Only we dismiss the thoughts, through idleness and timidity and,
I suppose, through inherent decency--whatever that may be.  Mauleverer
thought this out, and decided that there was no such thing as any
problematical decency about it.  He decided that we don't commit
murders, because we're afraid to.  He wondered if he had the brains to
match himself against the Yard.  Also, it struck him that there might
be a great deal of myth about the fear of consequences which deters
most of us.  He figured it out that the murderers who don't get found
out don't get heard about.  Perhaps half the people who get doctors'
certificates of death from natural causes have really been murdered.
Quite a neat little percentage of the population may be murderers, and
nothing known about it, while the small number of persons hanged
imposes on us the belief that murder is too dangerous a pastime.
Having got this far, and being naturally vain and cruel, he was too
proud not to murder Beedon.  If he had refused to chance it, it would
have looked like squeamishness or timidity.  Besides, he had a
tremendous belief in his own cleverness.  He set to work to plan it out
with the crazy enthusiasm of a maniacal chess-player."

Buller considered a moment and then added: "Well, I'm afraid he's
pulled it off.  We can't bring it home to him."

"But what a wicked state of affairs!" exclaimed Elizabeth.  "Do you
mean to say that in this country, in this century, a man can be known
to be a murderer and not be punished?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Then I think you were perfectly right to resign.  If that's all the
law and the police can do, then I'm glad you're not a policeman!"

"I think you're wrong about that, Miss Darcy.  Things must be proved to
the hilt before we can hang a man.  Otherwise think of all the poor
wretches who might be hanged innocent.  It's better that a hundred such
as Mauleverer should get away than one man should suffer without
deserving it.  No, my only excuse for resigning is that I might have
saved that porter."

Charles interrupted.  "Tell me," he said, "some more about this
blighter Mauleverer."

"Well, what would you like to know?"

"More about him, himself."

"Oh, I don't know.  He's a small man, rather petty and neat, with a
sharp face.  I daresay he feels inferior about his personal appearance
and that contributed to his motives--to re-assert himself physically,
you know.  It's partly on account of his unappetising physique that
he's so vain about his mental powers.  Rather a common little man.  I
should think he bullies his pupils.  I'm not good at describing people."

"He doesn't sound very much fun," said Elizabeth.

"No.  Not very nice."

Buller added: "Do you know I really hate him--quite personally.  I've
never noticed it with anybody before.  Perhaps it's because he's scored
off me.  I don't think so, though.  He reminds me of a snake or a
vicious boar, both malevolent and obstinate.  What I'm afraid of is
that he'll do it again.  He's the sort of creature who'd get a craving
for the excitement and the mental stimulus.  And he'll feel much safer
too."

There was a lull in the talk, till Buller took it up again anxiously.

"You mustn't think I'm so bitter about it for personal reasons.  After
all I don't think I do really hate him as a man.  I ought to be sorry
for him.  I don't hate him.  I'm afraid of him, because he isn't human.
You see, if he does do it again he'll keep on with it: he'll be a
maniac.  That's where I'm afraid of him: it's the tiny light of
insanity, of incomprehensible chaos behind his eyes, that frightens me
into primitive loathing.  He's so much cleverer than I am.  Oh, I can't
explain it, but he's _wicked_."

"Some men are wicked," said Charles quietly, and suggested a game of
billiards.




CHAPTER VIII

Next morning Buller was awakened by Kingdom in person.  After Charles's
disgrace the footmen had given notice--they were a post-war generation
in any case--and there was no valet.  Nobody had troubled to engage new
ones, since Kingdom, who had been a groom when Charles's father was a
boy, preferred to gather the duties on himself.  Next to Elizabeth he
had been his master's greatest stay.

"Miss Elizabeth's compliments, sir," said Kingdom, putting her back
into the nursery pinafore by vocal powers alone, "and if you would care
to ride before breakfast the horses will be ready in half an hour.
Miss Elizabeth wanted to speak to you particular about Sir Charles."

Elizabeth was beautiful, in a blue jersey and red lips.  Buller never
ceased to be delighted that she did not ride astride.  She was mounted
on a horse called Vitty Kerumby--a name deviously derived from
Webster's White Devil--a huge white mare with a bold eye who leapt her
fences like a battleship, and had been round Olympia with half a fault.
Buller's mount was a kindly hunter, who had never refused anything, but
was gone a little in the wind.

As they rode through the park, Buller waited for Elizabeth to speak
about her brother.  But she seemed inclined to let the matter wait.
Buller would never have understood that she wanted to enjoy her ride
with him, without perplexing discussions.  So they rode down to the big
field in an awkward silence, and there forgot about Charles entirely,
for an hour of delight.

While the horses walked home side by side, Buller asked: "What is this
about your brother?"

Elizabeth said: "Oh, it's nothing.  I don't know.  Let's wait till
after breakfast."

Charles was not at breakfast, and the two, after a hearty meal, stood
side by side on the thick carpet in front of the fire--glutted with
kidneys and coffee, arrogant with early rising and exercise.

Elizabeth said: "This about Charles.  My dear, I believe he's gone to
murder that don of yours."

"Why do you think that, Miss Darcy?"

"Well, after you went to bed last night he came to talk to me in my
room.  He always does when he's worried.  He sat on the bed and talked
round and round the subject, edging up to it from every side and
refusing at the last moment.  Now, this morning, Kingdom tells me he's
gone off.  It's the first time he's been outside the grounds for eight
years."

"Do you mean that he told you he was going to kill Mauleverer?"

"Oh no.  He didn't say anything about it.  He said that he was bored
with life: that he had nothing to live for, no friends.  That there
were too many crooks going scot free nowadays."

"But surely he isn't mad enough to take the law into his own hands?  He
wouldn't be such a prig as to elect himself the instrument of justice.
He's never struck me as a person who would be smug enough to do that."

"Well," said Elizabeth, "this Four-Just-Men business is pretty
conceited, I admit.  But then Charles's motives aren't puritanical.  If
I'm right, he hasn't gone off because he believes in justice, though he
may think he has.  You mustn't forget that he adored and still thinks
about his wife.  She was murdered, to all intents and purposes, by that
swine who wanted the drugs smuggled.  Charles personally hates all
crooks.  It's quite painful sometimes to see him read the newspapers.
And then he's sick of life here.  He wants something to _do_...."

"Even then, I can't see him turning to murder as a pastime."

"No.  I hope not.  I don't think he could murder anybody.  But still,
I'm frightened.  He hasn't been away for eight years."

Buller puffed his pipe in silence.

      *      *      *      *      *

Charles came back in the evening and Buller caught him in his
dressing-room before dinner.

"Well," he said, "did you tell him you were going to kill him?"

"Yes," said Charles.

"Would you mind," Buller asked, "telling me all about it?"

Charles looked guilty, obstinate and embarrassed.

"I suppose I've been a fool," he said.  "It seemed possible last night.
Now I don't know."

"What happened?"

"I went straight to St. Bernard's and asked to see him.  He'd only just
finished breakfast."

"Well?"

"Well, I just told him what you'd told me and one or two of the things
I thought about him.  He was surprised at first.  Then he began to get
angry.  I can be rude at times, and that warmed me up.  He was
sarcastic and I was more so.  We had quite a tiff."

"What did you tell him?"

Charles suddenly looked cast down.

"I told him that I should kill him at the end of a week."

"What did he say to that?"

"He went absolutely mad."

"And then?"

"Then I went away."

"And now you're not so pleased with yourself?"

"I had a lot of time to think it over in the train."

"And now what are you going to do?"

"I don't know," said Charles, "it wouldn't be impossible in a fair
fight.  He's an utter little cad.  But I can't just hide behind a bush
and pot him sitting.  And if I don't do it secretly I shall get caught
and hanged at once.  I don't know how to manage it."

"He plotted to murder people without a fair fight.  Wouldn't it be fair
to do the same by him?"

"It would be fair enough.  But I can't do it."

"So now you're stuck?"

"Yes.  You seem to like rubbing it in."

"Oh, I'm delighted of course.  The best fun will be explaining to my
late colleagues how you came to be murdered."

"What do you mean?"

"If you want a fair fight, my dear man, you're going to get it.  Only
it won't be fair.  Great heavens, man, do you think you can go and talk
that sort of stuff to a homicidal maniac and get away with it?  There
won't be any trouble about potting him sitting, if that's any
consolation.  You say he went absolutely mad.  What exactly did he say?"

"Oh, some balderdash or other.  He was actually frothing at the mouth:
little bubbles at the corners, which slurred his utterance--the first
time I've ever seen it, except in a man who was slightly drunk.  He
called me a bumptious little puppet and told me to make my will.  He
was rather fine about it, in a way.  He certainly believes in himself."

"And has it occurred to you that he may have meant it?"

"I don't think so.  He was angry."

"Listen," said Buller.  "Mauleverer is a killer.  He has committed a
triple murder with complete success, and has no reason to believe that
he will be caught if he commits another.  He enjoys his success.  He
would be delighted to increase it.  He is a man of tremendous vanity.
A young man whose intelligence--I hope you won't mind my saying
so--cannot have impressed him, arrives out of the blue and announces
that he proposes to execute him in a week.  He is also very rude.
Don't you realise that, even apart from his pride, Mauleverer is
actually looking about him for somebody to kill?  He's tasted blood."

"If you think that the fellow will try to kill me, I'm very glad to
hear it.  It will make it much easier.  But I don't believe it.  Full
term ends to-morrow, and he'll sneak off to hide himself somewhere on
the Continent."

"May you long continue to think so.  I must send a telegram."

Buller stumped out of the dressing-room in a very bad temper.

      *      *      *      *      *

Next day it poured with rain.  Elizabeth was jumpy at luncheon and
Buller taciturn.  Charles had been out to the stud farm--he still bred
his own horses though he never ran them in any race--and was in a good
humour.  He was sipping a glass of light madeira when he remarked to
Buller, a propos of nothing:

"By the way, your friend Mauleverer nearly got his chances spoilt for
him this morning.  A tile came off the stable roof just as I was
passing.  It missed me by inches and broke in eight pieces at my feet.
They're heavy things.  It must have been coming at a tremendous bat."

Buller walked straight out into the rain without a coat on.  He came
back in ten minutes.

"I must ask you," he said, "now that you've got yourself into this
position, to listen to me sensibly.  This is for Miss Darcy's sake as
well as your own.  I got a ladder and looked at that roof.  The tiles
are as sound as they were when they were first put on, and the single
tile which came down hadn't the least excuse for doing so.  Are you
going to insist that the thing happened by accident, and be dead
to-morrow morning, or will you face the position as if there were
something going on?"

"Really," said Charles, "on the strength of one tile----"

"Now be sensible, Chiz," Elizabeth interrupted.  "Let's hear what he
has to say."

"I've got nothing to say except what I told you last night, and what I
told you after dinner, Miss Darcy.  Charles has raised a hornet's nest
and I don't know what we can do about it.  All we can do at the moment
is to guard him as if he were the Bank of England."

Charles said: "I absolutely refuse to be coddled on the off chance that
a miserable maniac may be after me.  And I don't believe it."

"Very well, then," replied Buller, "I shall leave by the next train."

All three were conscious that he did not mean it.

"What have we got to fear?" Elizabeth asked.

"My friend Mauleverer told Charles to make his will.  He is now busy,
somewhere, arranging to make it necessary.  How he will do it, now that
the tile effect didn't come off, God only knows.  We know that he's
somewhere in the neighbourhood at least."

"What are we to do?"

"Well," said Buller, "I'm afraid it's a question of psychology.  We've
got nothing to go on except our very hazy idea of what's inside
Mauleverer's mind.  As soon as I heard Charles's story last night I
sent Mauleverer a telegram apologising for the threat and saying that I
had notified the police.  The apology won't do anything, of course, but
the second half of the message was its _raison d'tre_.  If Mauleverer
thinks that the police know of the feud between him and Charles then he
will have to be extra careful that Charles dies without any possibility
of implicating himself.  The mere fact that Charles does die may be
suspicious.  So Mauleverer will have to kill Charles in some way which
leaves himself beyond suspicion.  This narrows his field.  Charles will
have to be killed----  I hope, by the way, that you don't find this a
depressing topic, Charles?"

"Not at all.  I get quite a kick out of it."

"Charles will have to be killed, as I was saying, either so that he
seems to have died a natural death, or by an accident which might
happen to anybody (such as tiles), or by murder at a time when
Mauleverer possesses an alibi.  Now Mauleverer has already worked the
alibi racket, and he probably won't be interested in it.  He's proved
his ability as an alibi-framer with Beedon's gramophone, and he'll be
out for fresh fields to conquer.  So I should plump for the natural
death or the act of God.  Do you agree with me so far?"

"My dear," replied Elizabeth, "I suppose it will be all right when one
gets accustomed to it."

"Either these things happen or they don't, Miss Darcy.  It's a mad
world when they do, but we've got to live in it.  Remember nobody will
ever understand people like Mauleverer.  You can't argue normally, or
there wouldn't be any murders at all.  But there are murders.  We shall
just have to pretend we're in a detective story."

"Granting that the situation is as you say," Charles interrupted, "what
are you going to make me do about it?"

Buller replied with another question.

"Are you going to do it?"

"Please do, Chiz," said Elizabeth.

"Let's hear it first."

"No.  Listen, Charles.  I've been a detective for a long time and I've
had the pleasure of frank conversation with Mauleverer.  I swear I'm
not vapouring.  Either you must believe me and consent to act under
orders, or you must go your own way."

"Very well.  I utterly disbelieve you.  I hope you won't force me into
mutiny."

"Not if you want to go on living.  You're going to do as you're told?"

"Go on, for heaven's sake, and don't bully."

"Right," said Buller.  "The first thing we're going to do is to search
the house and grounds.  The second thing is that you're going to be
locked up in your bedroom till further orders, with a guard inside and
outside it."

"Splendid.  I hope I shall be allowed out occasionally: every third
Armistice Day, or something of that sort."

"Seriously," said Elizabeth.  "We can hardly keep the poor thing locked
up for ever."

"I know," said Buller.  "He deserves to be, but we can't.  And the
trouble is that we ought to.  Mauleverer may kill him to-morrow, or
this time next week, or in ten years' time."

"So what is the solution?"

"Well, to begin with, Mauleverer would probably prefer to kill you
within the week at the end of which you said you were going to kill
him.  That would strike him as a neat joke.  We shall have to be doubly
careful for the next six days.  And after that, if you're still alive,
we shan't be any nearer the solution.  He has the patience to wait for
years."

"So you do propose to keep me locked up for the rest of my natural
life?"

"No.  After this week we shall have to do what you said."

"And what was that?"

"Kill Mauleverer."

Elizabeth said urgently: "Mr. Buller, I can't let you be mixed up in
this."

Charles said: "Fancy a suggestion like that coming from an ex-minion of
the law!"

Buller exploded.  "Damn it, Charles!  Do you think I want to kill the
man?  Do you think I want a skeleton like that in my cupboard?  Do you
think I haven't seen enough of the seamy side to hate being mixed up in
it myself?  You poke your stupid head into a hullabaloo like this and
then refuse to believe in it, or make ridiculous jokes.  What else can
we do but kill him, God damn it all?"

"There doesn't seem to be much else, granted that the tile didn't fall
off by itself," said Charles reflectively.

"No, there isn't.  You go about the country lightheartedly telling
murderers that you're going to kill them, and then you damn well have
to if you want to go on living yourself.  Don't you see you've let
yourself in for it properly?  If you don't kill him now, he'll kill
you."

"But you can't kill people," exclaimed Elizabeth.  "You can't be a
common murderer."

"Apart from the fact that it isn't done," said Buller coldly, "it's a
hundred to one we shan't pull it off, and it's in self-defence when you
come to consider it."

"You can't do it!"

"Remember he's murdered these people in cold blood."

"That doesn't make it right for you to do it."

"Remember that if we don't do it he may murder your own brother, Miss
Darcy, any day for the rest of his life."

"Even then, it's nothing to do with you.  Chiz must do it himself.
It's his funeral, not yours."

"A precious lot of good that is to anybody!  So long as I'm privy to it
I might as well be in at the death."

"That's a lie.  You needn't be privy to it.  You could always swear
that you thought Chiz was joking."

"If Charles tries to do it alone there'll be another lot of death
duties on Pemberley.  He isn't safe with a pop-gun."

"Thank you," said Charles.  "I'm going to find Mauleverer now, alone,
to kill him with my bare hands."

He got up.

"Don't be a fool," said Buller.  "This isn't a theatre.  All this
argument about who's going to kill him can wait.  The first thing is to
prevent him killing you.  Let's search the house."

Charles consented out of politeness to his guest.




CHAPTER IX

The staff at Pemberley had diminished almost yearly since Charles's
imprisonment, and nobody had troubled to engage new servants.  All that
could be assembled in the hall, including Charles, Elizabeth and
Buller, was a party of sixteen.  The gamekeeper, the cook, the
boot-boy, and Smith the chauffeur, stood marshalled with the gardeners,
grooms and maids under the dignified patronage of Kingdom's white
moustache.  Buller took command of the whole party.

The house was dealt with first.  Each one of the innumerable rooms in
its Georgian faade was entered in turn.  The cupboards and
hiding-places searched.  Then the windows were fastened and the door
shut and locked.  Every room was thus secured, except the few bedrooms
actually in use, three living-rooms, and the servants' quarters.
Throughout the search Kingdom stood on guard in the big hall; the
gamekeeper waited on the principal landing upstairs; and a maid stood
on each of the two main staircases.  Nothing was found, nothing stirred.

When the house had been combed thoroughly Kingdom was left to guard it
and the party beat the grounds, posting sentries at favourable
view-points in case the quarry should break back.  Again nothing.

Buller had been walking with Elizabeth.

"All this searching," she asked, "does it mean that you think
Mauleverer is in the house?"

"No.  I don't think anything.  All I know is that Mauleverer was on the
stable roof this morning, or I'm a Dutchman.  It's best to make sure he
isn't in the castle before we pull up the drawbridge, so to speak."

      *      *      *      *      *

Meanwhile darkness had fallen.  Kingdom had stood alone in the
gathering dusk of the old house whilst the great hall sank about him
imperceptibly through waves and waves of gloom.  The invisibility
welled up from the distant corners and sank downwards from the domed
ceiling, gradually stealing its last glints from the chandelier.  At
last only the silent ghost of a white moustache hung suspended in the
night.

Kingdom had made a mistake in not turning on the lights.  The old man
had lived at Pemberley all his life, and knew the house like his life
itself.  He was part of it, soaked in its feelings and not at enmity
with its ghosts.  He enjoyed its quiet dusk.  All this locking of doors
and the supposed danger of his master was at variance with the feeling
of the house.  He did not believe in it.  There was no occasion for
alarm, no need to live by electric light and peer in corners.  Such
things could not happen at Pemberley.

Upstairs the gloom was equally peaceful.  Down the long corridors of
the closed faade there was perfect silence and a faint smell of
pot-pourri.  In the oldest part of the house, at the back, where
Charles's bedroom was, the darkness was deeper.  Here the walls were
panelled and the ceilings low, giving little purchase to the dying
twilight.  The locked doors were mute sentinels of darkness.  Only in
Charles's dressing-room there was a faint click, the rattle of a
toothbrush against a glass.  Then, to eyes accustomed to the darkness,
a deeper darkness seemed to move across the room.

Kingdom was never able to give, to the end of his life, any account of
the attack upon him--or no coherent account.  He said that he had been
standing silently in the middle of the hall, thinking about nothing,
when a pair of white hands appeared before his face.  There was a soft
but unpleasant chuckle of laughter, and something cold was thrust
between his fingers.  He ran at once for the switch of the electric
light and wheeled round as he snapped it on.  There was nothing in the
room.  Only, on the floor where he had instinctively dropped it, was a
white tooth-brush.

Kingdom opened the front door and shouted to the search party, which,
on its way back, was already halfway up the drive.

Buller arrived at the double and asked what was up.  When Kingdom had
told him he swore softly and turned round to the others.

"We shall have to search the house again," he said.  Then, turning back
to Kingdom: "Was the front door open when you came to call us?"

"No, sir, it was locked on the inside."

"Go round to all the other doors on the ground floor and see if any of
them are open, or could be opened from the outside without a key.  And
you, Smith, go round the outside of the house with a torch and see if
any of the windows are open."

The search of the house was begun again.  The villagers of Pemberley
who could get a glimpse between the trees saw the whole house starting
into light.  Every window blazed uncurtained, from floor to roof, and
the green lawns were rayed outwards with yellow beams.  Inside the
house, doors banged, keys turned in the locks and footsteps plodded
along the passages.  As each corridor was cleared the searchers called
out to Buller on the main staircase.  Kingdom came back from his
inspection of the downstairs doors, and reported that they had all been
locked and bolted.  Shortly afterwards Smith came from his outside tour.

"All the downstairs windows were shut," he said.  "But Sir Charles's
window, and yours, sir, and Miss Elizabeth's, were open at the top."

Nobody was found in the house, and the doors were locked again as
before.  Charles took the keys.

Buller drew Charles and Elizabeth into the morning-room.

"Do you think Kingdom is prone to hallucinations," he asked Charles,
"or are you going to believe me now?"

"It looks as if you were right," said Charles, "but why the toothbrush?"

"Why, indeed!  Have a look at it."

Elizabeth exclaimed: "Why, that belongs to Chiz!  Doesn't it, Chiz?"

"Yes," said her brother.  "When we were looking through the rooms I
found mine had gone.  Why on earth?"

Buller said: "I'll send this to a friend of mine if you don't mind.
The sooner we can get it done the better.  I wonder if Smith could take
it over to Cambridge in the car and be back before breakfast to-morrow?"

"Certainly, if it's important.  Smith won't mind.  He's a good fellow."

Smith was sent for, and set off without delay.

"Now," said Buller, "we've started in earnest.  I'm going to sleep in
your room, Charles, and we'll take it in turns, four hours at a
stretch.  You, Miss Darcy, must go and live in the village."

"I certainly shall not."

Buller became quite agitated.

"Now don't be heroic," he begged.  "There's nothing to stay here for.
It'll only make it worse for everybody----"

Elizabeth was quite final.  "Of course I shan't go.  I should be
terrified in the village."

Buller was at a loss for reply.

"If I leave the house," she added reasonably, "I shan't know what's
happening and I shall be scared into fits.  I'm not in the least
nervous whilst I'm here," she tried to say "with you" but it turned out
as--"with everybody."

Buller said, "Well, you must lock your door and keep the window shut.
This fellow's a cat burglar or a ghost.  Either he got in by a second
floor window to get the toothbrush, or he filtered through the wall.
By the way, are there any secret passages or such like?"

"Not that I know of," said Charles.  "I should think it was very
unlikely.  There's the priest's hole, of course, but you've seen that.
It's now the little cupboard off the library."

"Have you any literature about the house?"

"There's a bit in Blundell's _Relicks_ and one or two county histories.
It's not the sort of house that would have secret passages.  All this
part is very old, of course, much older than the front, which was done
up in about 1750.  But there aren't any legends to speak of, and it
never was a priory.  No secret entrances to the nuns' quarters half a
mile away, or anything of that sort."

"Any ghosts?"

"I don't think so.  It's a singularly peaceful house.  We don't feel
our ancestors at all, although some of them were a queer lot.  They've
died in all manner of ways here, but we never feel conscious of them."

"I don't see," said Elizabeth, "how Mauleverer could know about any
secret passages if we don't know about them ourselves."

"Well, it's very unlikely I admit.  But then you may not have studied
the history of the house, and he may have done.  He might have spent
yesterday afternoon at the British Museum and turned something up which
the family itself has quite forgotten.  Still, it's unlikely.  It's
only in story-books that houses have secret passages."

Charles asked: "How on earth did the blighter get in an out again so
quick, if he had to climb out of the bedroom windows?  Shouldn't we
have noticed him as we came up the drive?  And Smith was sent round
outside at once.  How did he get away?"

"Don't ask me.  It was possible to get in and out of those windows, I
suppose.  But he must be a very slick mover."

"The interesting part," said Elizabeth, "is the white hands.  Why
didn't Kingdom see a white face as well?"

      *      *      *      *      *

Before dinner Buller made a last attempt to persuade Elizabeth.

"Miss Darcy," he said, "won't you go away just for a week in case
anything nasty crops up?  I don't want to be unkind, but you can't
possibly be useful, and wouldn't it be much better if you weren't here?
I don't mean in case anything happens to Charles--if it happens, it
doesn't matter where you are--but in case we get a chance of potting
Mauleverer?  I don't want you mixed up in a murder."

"No, I'm sorry: I absolutely couldn't go.  I should be perfectly
wretched.  And besides, you know you can't try to kill Mauleverer even
if you do catch him."

Buller said gruffly: "Well, if you can't go you must stay."  In his
heart he was delighted.

      *      *      *      *      *

They sat down to dinner amicably and were just dipping their spoons in
the soup when Buller made an exclamation.

"No," he said.  "Don't touch it.  What a fool I am!"

The candlelight shone on two spoons half way to two open mouths, and
four startled eyes looking at him over the rims.

"I'm sorry," he added.  "It might be poisoned, you know."

The spoons descended slowly to the plates.

Charles suddenly exclaimed: "Damnation take it!  This is the twentieth
century.  I'm to be locked up in my bedroom in my own house because a
tile falls off the roof, and then I'm not allowed to have my dinner
because my butler says he's been given a toothbrush!  The soup can't be
poisoned."

He seized his spoon, splashed his shirt-front and swallowed a vigorous
mouthful.

"Well, we shall see now in any case," Buller said pacifically, and
watched his host.  Elizabeth tried to take some too, but he held her
wrist firmly against the plate.

Charles began to splutter into his napkin and turned round furiously on
the butler.

"Kingdom!  What the devil is in this soup?"

"I couldn't say, I'm sure, sir.  Cook made it as usual, I believe."

"What does it taste of?" enquired Buller.  "If it's strychnine you'll
have an agonising pain in about five minutes, and if it's a large dose
of cyanide, your head will begin to curl over backwards till it touches
your heels."

"Blast you!  It's soap."

Charles began spitting in his napkin and frothing between oaths.  Then
he drank successive glasses of brandy, gin, lemonade, and anything else
that appeared to have a taste.  He sat down furiously and said:

"Well, what do we do now?"

"We might go on with dinner," said Buller.  "Unless you want some more
soup."

"I'm not going to have _any_ more dinner.  Ask cook to come up."

Mrs. Bossom arrived in a state of agitated indignation.

"I didn't put no soap in your soup, Master Charles," she said.  "I've
been in service in this house since ever you was born, and I never done
such a thing!"

"Of course you didn't, cook," said Elizabeth.  "Nobody thought so for a
moment.  But do you know who can have done it?"

"I made that soup," said Mrs. Bossom, "from the very best stock, such
as I'm always using.  There's nothing in that soup but what was in my
kitchen all day, under my very nose; except when we was trapesing about
a-looking for the burglar."

"I wonder if we could see the stock?" Buller asked.

When it was brought he tasted it, and asked the cook to do the same.

"Well, upon my word!" she exclaimed.  "If some ruffian hasn't been
putting soap in it!"  She dredged about in the bowl with a spoon and
brought up the remains of a cake of that commodity.

"Good," said Buller, "now we might as well go on with dinner?"

"But is it safe?"

"I should think so, perfectly.  Unless there's cascara in the petits
poussins.  This is in the nature of a joke and a warning.  If
Mauleverer meant to poison us he wouldn't have given us the hint.  I
should think the rest of the meal would be perfectly harmless."

When Mrs. Bossom had retired grumbling to her den, Buller went on:

"This incident is rather a relief in one way.  It may mean that
Mauleverer doesn't wish to kill Charles by hole-and-corner methods.
He's just saying: Look how easy it would have been to poison you, but
I'm not going to do that, I'm going to get you properly, on the wing."

"I suppose he got into the kitchen whilst we were stumbling round the
grounds.  That's three places he visited: the kitchen, my bedroom and
the Hall."

"Chiz," said Elizabeth, "this is awful.  It didn't seem real before
this.  What a horrid joke!  Why, it means we aren't safe anywhere, at
any moment.  If we sit down we may be sitting on a poisoned pin."

"Exactly," said Buller.  "Now you begin to understand why I want you
locked in your bedroom.  No more meals downstairs, Charles, and, just
as a precaution, we'll feed you on tinned foods from now on."




CHAPTER X

Immediately after dinner Charles, who was now ready to submit to Buller
meekly, commandeered a parcel from the Times Book Club and announced
that he was ready to be incarcerated.  Buller had a word with Elizabeth
before they went up.

"When you go to bed--and I wish you'd go now," he said, "lock your door
and sleep with the window latched.  It'll only be for a week.  Don't
open the door unless you're sure who is outside.  Promise me to do
this.  There isn't any danger, but I like to know that everybody is
acting according to schedule.  Good night, Miss Darcy."

When she was gone he added to Charles: "I wonder if you realise that
this scrape of yours may embroil your sister as well?  It isn't only
you that can drink soapy soup or sit on poisoned pins.  And if I know
Mauleverer, it's fifty-fifty whether he doesn't decide to get at you
through her.  He's the sort of man who might murder your whole
household, one by one, saving you till the last."

"I'm sorry, Buller," said Charles stiffly, "that I've muddled you up in
this annoyance.  But after all you needn't stay."

Buller laughed.  "I apologise," he said.  "Don't get grumpy.  I might
be in love."

      *      *      *      *      *

Four hours later, just before two o'clock in the morning, Buller was
sitting in Charles's dressing-room with the door into the bedroom
standing open.  He was reading _Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour_.

There is an odd stillness and definition about the hours before
sunrise, when the body is at its ebb.  The electric light seemed to
acquire a personality of its own, something aching and attentive;
motionless, but imperceptibly stealthy and indued with sound and
movement.  The floor boards creaked under its watchful footfall.
Charles's breathing from the next room sounded strange and irregular:
the movement of a being removed from human thought by sleep.

The night life of things surrounded Buller in widening circles, focused
upon his light.  He was in the middle of the room, under the down beam
of the lamp shade.  Immediately about him was the green silence of the
carpet, tired and ashy from his cigarettes.  A wider circle of
consciousness brought him to the inhuman patience of the clock, on his
right, and to the weird breathing from the other room: equally inhuman.

Then, outside, was the silence and tangible darkness of the passage,
leading, further off, to the hall's absorbing void, and to all the
great and little deserted clocks of the household, ticking in separate
persistence: unwatched, tenacious, uninforming.  All the wainscots of
all the rooms concerted about him in their stealthy rustle.  The heart
beat slower and slower.  At tedious and regular intervals the brown
hand moved mechanically up the right hand page and turned it over: the
blue eyes flashed up, skirted the room, dwelt on the doorway and the
clock: then they dropped to the left hand page and recommenced their
timeless to-fro sidling.

A chapter ended like a cycle of ages, and the clock's hands stood at
five past two.  Buller shut the book with a startling noise, and stood
up, breaking the charm.  He went into the bedroom and shook Charles by
the shoulder.

In Elizabeth's room the windows and doors were secured according to
order.  The curtains were drawn, so that the room was as dark as pitch.
There was a faint smell of scent, the suggestion of feminine proximity.
Otherwise nothing, except the softest regular breathing, and a gentle
scraping from the dressing-table.  The mirror creaked, ever so little,
and a greasy surface squeaked against the glass.

In the absolute blackness an acute and trembling ear might have
imagined that it detected a second ghostly breathing, a footstep upon
wool.

      *      *      *      *      *

Buller rang for Kingdom to relieve him in Charles's room, and went
downstairs to breakfast.  The short but heavy sleep of the night had
put him back into the mood of old campaigns, and, after a cold bath, he
felt elastic and looked rosy.

Elizabeth was waiting for him.

"Come to see my room, would you?" she said.  "I've got something to
show you."

"What is it?"

"Come and look at it.  I locked my door and bolted my window last
night, as you told me to.  Also, on my own account, I looked in the
cupboards, under the bed and up the chimney.  I was absolutely
terrified, but I did.  That was the only kick I got out of it until
this morning.  Then I got this one."

She opened the door into her room.

On the cheval glass of her mirror was a rough sketch drawn in lipstick:

[Illustration: Lipstick sketch of face]

Buller walked over and examined it dispassionately.

"Were your door and window still fastened when you woke up this
morning?" he asked.

"No.  The door was open, but the key was still under my pillow."

Buller stood biting his thumbnail.

"It isn't very nice for you," he said.

"No.  It made me feel horrid when I first found it.  That man walking
about in my room and drawing pictures in Louis Philippe!  It's the
other things he might have done--perhaps did do....  But any way we're
still alive.  How on earth did he get in?"

"I don't know.  Locked doors can always be unlocked, you know.  He may
have a master key, or be clever with his fingers.  He may have hidden
himself in the rhododendrons when we searched the house for the second
time last night, and let himself in again later on.  We shall have to
have bolts put on all the doors to-day, and from to-night onwards we'll
set guards in the passages and in the hall.  Will the servants stand
for it?"

"Yes.  All that remain now are devoted to Charles, and wouldn't leave
him for anything.  We've gradually let the staff whittle itself down to
the ones who would still be here after an earthquake.  Does this little
picture mean anything in particular?"

"No," said Buller.  "Let's get down to breakfast.  Perhaps we'd better
rub it out first, for the sake of the servants--though I suppose your
maid has seen it already?"

"Yes.  We didn't say anything, though.  She may have thought I did it
myself."

Buller took his clean handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the
glass.  This red stuff, he reflected, is Liz's lipstick: I shall be
able to kiss my handkerchief because it shares the same colour with
those lips.  Out loud he said: "The picture is simply an attempt to
make our flesh creep.  We mustn't let it.  I don't think it applies to
you at all.  The man simply wanted to rub it in that he could get into
anybody's room with impunity.  Now for some breakfast."

They were just finishing their coffee when a knock was sounded on the
door and Smith came in with the police surgeon from Cambridge.

"Hullo, Lucifer," said the latter.  "I thought I'd come and see how you
were doing since you fell from heaven."

Buller said: "Miss Darcy, this is Dr. Wilder, a very old friend of
mine.  He's the fellow I sent the toothbrush to."

"How d'you do?" said the surgeon.  "As a delicate hint I thought it in
rather bad taste."

"Won't you sit down and have some breakfast?" Elizabeth asked.  "You
must be absolutely exhausted.  And you, Smith, you'd better go and have
something to eat too, and a rest, you've been splendidly quick."

Smith shuffled off looking proud of himself, and the surgeon proceeded
to fill his mouth with bacon.

"There's nothing like driving through the dawn, and that sort of
thing," he said, "for giving one an appetite for bacon.  Now what about
the toothbrush?"

"What about it?" asked Buller.

The surgeon drank a large cup of coffee.

"You can't have expert opinion," he said, "without fee.  Your chauffeur
told me something about the excitements going on here whilst we were on
the way.  If I tell you about the toothbrush I insist upon being let in
on the ground floor."

Buller said: "I'm afraid the excitement isn't public property."

"If you're going in for bootlegging or murder, you can confide in
Uncle.  I'm on holiday."

"It isn't my secret," said Buller.

"Well, the toothbrush is mine and unless there's a fair exchange it's
likely to remain so.  Forgive my abruptness, Miss Darcy, but Buller's
so punctilious that he has to be stampeded into everything."

Buller said slowly: "Actually we're terribly short-handed if it's going
to be a question of guards in the passages.  I think you'd better come
and see Charles."  He drew Elizabeth aside.  "Wilder's a good man," he
said.  "He might be useful if you don't object.  Do you think you could
put him up?"

"Why, certainly, if he'd like to stay.  But this isn't exactly a
house-party."

"If it was," said Buller, "he wouldn't stay."

"Now that you've arranged it," remarked the surgeon cheerfully from the
sideboard, "let's hear about the toothbrush.  Is Miss Darcy the
murderess or are you?"

There was such a twinkle in his eye that Elizabeth couldn't resist him
for long.  "My dear," she said, "the whole house is a shambles."

"Splendid!  Naturally I shall give everybody a certificate of death
from natural causes."

"Don't talk so much," said Buller, "and finish your breakfast.  I want
to take you upstairs to see Charles."

"Whilst I'm eating, you might give me an outline of the position.  You
forget that I don't even know whom you are proposing to murder."

Buller looked at Elizabeth and, receiving her nod, proceeded to explain.

When he had finished, the surgeon drummed on the table, with a grave
face.  "We'd better go and talk to Sir Charles," he said.

Charles was standing in the dressing-room, staring moodily out of the
window.  He was delighted that Wilder should join the garrison.

"Stay and talk to me," he said.  "You can't imagine what hell it is
being locked up in this piffling little room."

"Actually," said Wilder, "there are several things to talk about.
First of all that toothbrush was simply crawling with diphtheria.  Now
why was it given to the butler?"

"It was given," said Buller, "as a hint.  It was Charles's own
toothbrush taken from this room.  Mauleverer meant us to realise that
he might much more easily have simply left it here for Charles to use
and possibly die of."

"It's extraordinary," said Elizabeth, "how Mr. Buller mentioned the
death-from-natural-causes kind of attack when we were talking it over
yesterday, before the search."

"You don't think," said Wilder slowly, "that this man may have heard
you talking it over?  He seems to be pretty well at home in this
house...."

The house seemed to stand still and catch its breath about them.

"If he had overheard," Wilder went on in a lower voice, "the procedure
might have been a little different.  I'm inclined to think that he had
already treated the toothbrush and left it for use.  Then he heard
Buller vapouring about his probable methods and very naturally changed
his mind.  He was too proud to give Buller the chance of saying: I told
you so.  So he went back and took the toothbrush away again and gave it
to the butler to show what he could have done."

"But it's preposterous," said Charles.  "How can we have been
overheard?"

"How can the man get into any room he likes, with all the doors locked?
You haven't been told about Miss Darcy's looking-glass."

They told him.

Charles said: "Liz, you've got to go away at once."

Elizabeth said: "If you turn me out I shall walk about the grounds in
my nightgown, and if you turn me out of the grounds I shall sleep in
the road outside the gates.  Wouldn't it be safer to stay?"

Her tone of voice made further argument useless.

"What I can't understand in you, Buller," said the surgeon, "is why you
don't plump for police protection."

"Simply because we can't.  I'd give my soul to be able to, but the
circumstances are peculiar.  You know what police protection is, and,
even if we could get it on our flimsy story, it would only work for a
few days.  The nation can't afford to support a posse of constables
simply to protect Charles.  They would have to let up sooner or later
and then the man would step in and finish it off.  Mauleverer has the
patience to wait for any length of time, and the ingenuity to kill
Charles safely in the end even if the police knew that he was trying to
kill him.  I sent a telegram to Mauleverer saying that we had informed
the police--though we hadn't--so as to make him be careful at any rate.
We've got the moral protection of the police, in so far as he won't
dare simply to shoot Charles from a distance, unless he's worked up an
alibi, but that's all we can afford to get."

"Actually," put in the surgeon, "I doubt if he would want to shoot Sir
Charles from a distance.  From what you've told me of him, I should
think he would be very keen on letting Sir Charles know that he was in
his power before he died."

"Quite so.  But to get back to this police protection business.  We
should have a couple of country Roberts sitting about the place, and we
should have the moral support of Mauleverer's knowing that he would be
suspected if Charles died.  That's all we should have.  The Roberts
would have to go and Mauleverer would work out an assassination which
couldn't possibly be connected with himself, even on presumptive
evidence.  Then the real snag crops up.  If we ask for police
protection and _Mauleverer_ disappears, Charles will be suspect.
Protection makes it impossible for us to protect ourselves by the only
hopeful method--that of polishing off Mauleverer before he finishes
Charles.  You see, we're up against a man who has the tenacity of a
viper and is more or less above the police.  We get a regular medival
feud forced upon us by the special circumstances of our adversary."

"So our late detective is going to countenance an attempt to murder a
Fellow of St. Bernard's?"

"Yes.  It comes down to that.  About murdering Mauleverer I haven't the
least compunction.  It's a case of self-preservation, not a social case
at all."

"And how do you propose to get him?"

"That's absolutely beyond the horizon so far.  The bait is here in
Charles, and if we can make it a trap we must do.  We can only sit over
the bait and hope that Mauleverer will betray himself."

"I don't object to being a bait," said Charles, "not in the least.  But
I do find it boring being shut up in this cursed room, away from all
the fun.  Also it's bad for the nerves, you know."

"Nerves!" exclaimed Buller.  "In a couple of days nobody will be able
to hear a door slammed without screaming."

As if to confirm his statement a door slammed in the hall and they all
jumped.

"Couldn't I get out a bit?" pleaded Charles.  "I should be just as good
a bait in a motor-car every afternoon, or taking a short walk round the
grounds."

"Too good a bait, I'm afraid.  We should find the cheese gone and the
trap empty.  Seriously, Charles, you won't see what you're up against.
You are thinking about murders with knives and pistols and that sort of
straightforward stuff.  You forget that you've got a madman against you
who is also a recognised intelligence at one of the leading
Universities.  As Wilder says, Mauleverer will probably prefer to get
you in some way which will leave you time to understand perfectly that
you've been beaten and by whom.  And I should think, myself, that he
will probably try to get you in some bloodthirsty way.  You see, he was
blooded over this unfortunate porter.  But, if he can't get you like
that, he has the whole of modern science to play with.  He can induce
blood poisoning in several ways.  The whole world is a potential
arsenal of things that might puncture or poison you: of tetanus, and
meningitis and chronic diseases.  He may gas you, or electrocute you or
even blow you up like Darnley.  I'm trying to put the wind up you
because it'll do you good.  You're too lazy about it.  I wish you'd
realise that when you light a cigarette, or cross your knees, or turn
over in bed, you may be touching off the spring.  The only safe
position for you is lying flat on your back and motionless.  And then
you'd be in grave danger.  Yet you talk about strolling round the
grounds."

"You don't make great efforts to improve my morale."

"No, and I won't till you realise that you're not safe in this room
even.  It isn't pleasant to have to say these things in front of Miss
Darcy, but you make me."

"Why don't we go away?" asked Elizabeth.  "Surely Chiz might be safer
travelling about, instead of sitting still where the man can lay his
traps just where he's sure to catch him."

"I've thought of that.  But it isn't so really.  Charles would be on
the move, certainly, and it wouldn't be so easy in one way to locate
him for the _coup de grce_----"

"You don't, if I may say so," put in the surgeon, "stint yourself of
expressions likely to encourage the invalid."

"--I'm sorry.  There it is.  We must face it.  But as I was saying, it
might be better to keep Charles moving except that he has to move in a
large space.  The bigger the crowd which Charles shoulders through, the
easier Mauleverer can hide in it--with a little pin.  If we took
Charles to London, for instance, imagine the increased chances of
ambush!  No, he's safest in the smallest room, with somebody inside it
all the time.  Of course we could take him to greater safety--on a
yacht, for instance.  In the middle of the ocean even Mauleverer might
find it difficult to bump him off.  But then, I take it that you don't
want to live in the middle of the ocean for the rest of your lives.
The yacht plan, and all others like it, would merely defer the crisis.
Mauleverer would be there when you landed.  There is only one course
open to us, and that is to stay here with Charles as a bait.  We must
guard him to the top of our bent, but still keep him faintly exposed.
Then Mauleverer will have to attempt him, and may give us a chance to
strike back and end the suspense for good."

"I agree," said Wilder, "that there doesn't seem anything better to do."

Buller looked enquiringly at Charles, who nodded.

"Very well, then.  Wilder and I will take it in turns to sit with you,
day and night.  Kingdom will keep an eye on Miss Darcy.  Would you,
Miss Darcy, send somebody for tinned provisions from Derby--everything
we can possibly need for a week?  We won't eat anything which doesn't
come out of a sealed vessel.  You'd better order Vichy or Tonic water
to drink.  Also would you get somebody up from the village to put bolts
on all the doors.  After that I think we'll have done all we can do and
it'll just be a question of waiting."

Elizabeth looked nervously round the room.

"I'm afraid I'm going to be a nuisance," she said, "just as you said I
would.  But I should be worse out of the house.  I couldn't bear it.
You'll have to put up with me."

"My dear Liz," said Charles, "you'll be as good as anybody else."

"Or better," said Buller, with a great effort.

Elizabeth gave him a grateful smile.

"It's the waiting," she said, "that's so awful.  That and not
knowing--whether it won't happen----  Now!"

The next second there was a swish behind them, and they all spun round.




CHAPTER XI

"It's only some soot from the chimney," said Buller guiltily.  "You'll
have to have your chimneys swept, Miss Darcy, if we're going to keep
sane."  The tense atmosphere gave place to one of slight hysteria.

"My dear!" said Elizabeth.  "Actually they've just been swept.  I did
my spring cleaning early when I heard you were coming to stay."  She
giggled weakly.  Wilder began to whistle the Spring Song and they all
laughed--nobody knew why.

      *      *      *      *      *

The mellow old brickwork and peaceful scenery of Pemberley seemed to
take on an air of menace and exhaustion under these new conditions.
The three men became secretly tiresome to one another.  Charles began
to find the continued presence of one or another of them a memento
mori.  Elizabeth could have screamed when, for the hundredth time, she
came upon the white moustache of Kingdom discreetly hovering just
outside her range of occupation.  It was not that there was any
antipathy between the members of the beleaguered garrison, but that
each reminded the other, simply by his presence, of an unpleasant
doubt.  The silence was sinister with possibilities.

Buller, when it was the surgeon's turn for duty upstairs, could bear it
no longer.  He went in search of Elizabeth.

"Here," he said, "I can't stand this.  Let's go for a drive or
something.  I don't think anything can happen during the day in any
case.  We're not really needed here, and we owe our nerves a rest."

"Where shall we go?"

"Anywhere, so it be out of this whispering."

      *      *      *      *      *

Elizabeth had insisted that Buller should drive, though it was her car;
and he did drive: at a pace which was hardly in keeping with his usual
solemnity.  The beautiful engine huskily purred beneath his foot.  The
roads were shining with rain, the sun was out, and the drenched buds
unclasped themselves in green and bursting ecstasy.

"This is better than stuffing at home, isn't it?" asked Buller.  He
thus temperately expressed the sensation of driving a powerful coup
through the spring sunlight, with his heart's sun and moon sitting
alone beside him.

"Yes, isn't it?" replied Elizabeth, in the attempt to phrase adequately
the melting of her limbs.

Beyond these declarations the rest of the drive was uneventful.

      *      *      *      *      *

The day dragged itself out in futile discussion.  They dined together
in Charles's room, and there made their last dispositions.  It was
arranged that the sleeping quarters of all four of them should be
confined to a single passage, into which, though it was in the old wing
and by no means straight, all the doors opened fairly conveniently.  In
this passage Buller and Kingdom were to remain by four-hour spells.
Wilder was to sleep that night with Charles.  He would change places
with Buller every other night.  Smith, the chauffeur, was instructed to
sleep in the passage outside the maid-servants' rooms in the other
wing.  The gardeners and gamekeeper had to look after themselves in
their own cottages, though one or another of them was to be about the
grounds all night.

"Wouldn't it be a good idea," asked Elizabeth, "if we got some of the
dogs inside the house?"

This was done.

Meanwhile the early spring twilight had come down in rain again,
bringing the battlements of neutral clouds to brood over Pemberley.
The darkness which had never weighed upon the house before, in four
hundred years of English weather, gathered above the eaves and crept up
the great staircase.  The clocks began to steady themselves for their
lonely concerts of the night, and the less durable human creatures took
themselves with a final clatter to their beds or vigils.  The house
congealed again into silence and the life of things.

Charles, who was taking the first watch this time, sat in the
dressing-room where Buller had sat the night before.  He also was
reading a book, but with different mannerisms.  His progress through it
was less absorbed, the movement of his hands and his attention to the
duties of his guard less measured and automatic.  His eyes would stray
from the page before he was ready to turn over.  He played with a
paper-knife.  The electric light poured down, not upon an absorbed or
taciturn and efficient watchman, but upon a restive manhood: upon a
yellow head which moved perpetually like a bird's, and a frame which
rose and walked to the windows each time that the silence seemed to
gain an ascendancy.  There was nothing to be seen outside the windows,
for it was as dark as pitch.  Charles would stare gloomily at his own
reflection, stamp about the room for a moment and drop back into his
chair with a disgruntled sigh.  He would open his book, shift in his
seat, read a few sentences, and shift again.  Round this restlessness
the same room that had surrounded Buller's absorption pursued its
identical interests.  The clocks counted as usual, and Wilder's
unconscious breathing sounded from beyond the human mind.

At two o'clock the guards changed over.  Charles heard Kingdom
whispering to Buller in the passage outside, and woke Wilder.  In five
minutes the house was still again.

The passage was L-shaped, leading at one end to a staircase, at the
other to the upstairs morning-room which had another staircase beyond
it.  Down one side of the longer arm were four bedrooms.  On the other
side a series of large windows looked across a leaded roof to the
sundial of the formal garden, and, beyond the garden, to the windows of
the opposite wing.  The back of Pemberley was shaped like an irregular
U with a very long base.

Buller walked up and down this passage quietly.  He was a man who
gained in dignity by being alone.  In the unwinking glare of the
electric bulb and the stillness of the house, he seemed at home, and
satisfied with his own devices.  He walked along the passage steadily,
halting opposite the pictures for a lengthy and attentive examination.
He stopped opposite a lacquered cabinet, and, after a minute, put out
his hand to stroke the surface.  One could almost see him thinking.  He
read the titles of the prints, in French and English, and to whom they
were dedicated.  Opposite each of the family pictures, especially the
women, he stood for a long time.  Elizabeth's distinctive feature was
her profile, and all of these were full face.  He turned away from the
last of them with the ghost of an untheatrical sigh.  The Georgian
grandfather downstairs boomed out the quarter and left an accentuated
silence.  Buller sat down in a brocaded chair and tapped his upper row
of teeth with a fingernail.

Except for the tiny movement of his finger he was absolutely
motionless, his eyes fixed in front of him on a pot of flowers.  The
clicking of the fingernail stopped, and he was listening.  He stood up
as the scream split the silence.

He was across the passage in two strides as a window in the opposite
wing was thrown up.

The screams came in an unfaltering succession, like gasps for breath,
but fierce and piercing.

Buller could see the bright square of the window opposite, framing the
cook in a flannel nightgown, clutching the window ledge and panting
between yells.

He threw open the door of Kingdom's room--the old man was already
struggling with a dressing gown--and said quietly: "Stay here.  Tell
Dr. Wilder to stay with Sir Charles."  Then he took to his heels.  The
lights sprang into being as he raced through the rooms.  The cook's
door was still locked when he reached it, with Smith outside holding a
poker.  He tapped, and said in a normal voice: "Open the door, Mrs.
Bossom.  It's all right."  There was no reply.

He put his shoulder to the door and, taking the handle, drew back to
the stretch of his arm.  He grunted as he rammed it.  The door shook.
He drew back, and, with the heavy heel of his boot, kicked downwards
and forwards at the lock.  It was a beautiful kick and the door
shuddered open, with bolt and lock wrenched away.

Mrs. Bossom was lying at the foot of the window in a tousled heap.  He
turned her over, felt her pulse, splashed cold water on her face.  Mrs.
Bossom began to mutter.

Buller stood up and looked at Smith.  "Only a faint," he said.  "Now
why----"

Smith pointed at the end of the bed.  An ancient and peaceful-looking
skull was perched on one of the uprights.

Mrs. Bossom came to at that moment.  Her first thoughts were of
decorum.  "What's this?" she said, and, struggling to her feet,
invested herself in a quilted dressing gown.  Buller had slipped the
skull under the bedclothes.

"Why, Mrs. Bossom," he said cheerfully.  "You screamed so, we thought
you were being murdered.  What was all the fuss about?"

Recollection came back to Mrs. Bossom.

"He's gone!" she said.  "His teeth was gleaming from the grave!"

Buller said to Smith over his shoulder: "Get Mrs. Bossom a glass of
brandy; and just slip over to the other wing and tell the others it's
all right."  Then he turned back to the cook.

"Now come, Mrs. Bossom," he said.  "Somebody's been playing a joke on
you.  What happened?"

Mrs. Bossom said: "Oh, my poor heart!  He was a dreadful one, I can
tell you!  I woke up in the dark of night feeling the cold of death
upon me, and there he stood in all his cerements, a-gnashing of his
teeth and glittering with his eyes."

Buller shook her by the shoulder.

"Wake up, cook," he said.  "Don't tell me these fairy stories.  You
woke up and saw a skull.  Here it is.  Just an ordinary skull from the
museum, with a printed ticket pasted on the top.  Now tell me what you
can remember?"

Mrs. Bossom eyed the exhibit with aversion, but seemed heartened.  When
Smith came with the brandy she was coherent and even vivacious.

"It was a little noise that woke me, I think," she said.  "I took it
for the clicking of his teeth, but it might have been that he was
knocked against the bedrail.  I'm a light sleeper.  Then I sat up in
bed and switched on the electric torch as Laura gave me for Christmas.
The very first thing I caught in the beam was _him_,"--she nodded to
the skull--"a-staring at me face to face, so to speak.  So I turn on
the lights, and he is still there.  Then I run to the window and shout
blue murder."

"Your door was locked and bolted when we came to it."

"I bolted it myself, sir, before I went to bed--and the window too, for
I had to undo it with that thing a-grinning at me from behind.  I
thought he'd leap upon my back."

"You didn't see or hear anybody in the room when you switched on the
torch?"

Mrs. Bossom was doubtful.

"Nothing that you could speak to.  But I could take my Bible oath
somebody'd been here.  The darkness was a-moving."

Buller said: "Well, it's all over now.  You'd better go and sleep with
Laura.  And, Smith, light fires in all these rooms, will you?  Now,
Mrs. Bossom, I must get back to see Miss Elizabeth.  There's nothing
more to be frightened about to-night."

Mrs. Bossom was declaring that she'd never sleep another wink when he
departed.

      *      *      *      *      *

Buller found everybody awake when he got back.  Kingdom was in the
passage.  Elizabeth was sitting with Wilder and Charles in the latter's
room.  She was in green pyjamas and a man's thick blue dressing gown.

Buller said heartily: "Well, how are the refugees?"

"Perishing and terrified," said Elizabeth.  "What was it all about?"

"More fun and games.  Our friend has just entered Mrs. Bossom's room
with the door and window bolted and deposited one of the skulls from
the museum (also locked and bolted, for I did it myself yesterday) on
the bedrail.  Mrs. Bossom is of a nervous temperament."

Charles had lost all his restless incredulity.

"I don't believe in ghosts," he said.  "But you seem to have been right
about this creature.  How did he get in if everything was bolted?"

"In the same way," said Buller cheerfully, "as he got into Elizabeth's
room last night.  Now will you two keep in this room to-night, and get
Kingdom to light a fire?  I want to have a long talk with Wilder, and I
don't know when I'll be back."

He took Wilder by the arm and led him into the passage.  Then, instead
of halting in the morning-room, he took him straight through and down
into the hall.

"Get a coat," he said, "we're going for a walk."

They crossed the drive and made their way across the tennis courts to a
green garden seat.  The sky was a little lighter with the approach of
dawn.

Buller said: "You were right about being overheard.  Of course one
can't be sure of saying a word in that house with secrecy.  So I
thought we'd better come outside.  He can't get within range of this
seat at any rate, without being seen."

"I gather that you suspect the chimneys?"

"Yes.  Look at them."

Against the ever so faintly paler sky the four towers of brickwork were
visible.

"It stands to reason.  Up till now there's always been a door unlocked
or a window open: always the chance that he may have got in by
legitimate methods.  But that cook's room was hermetically sealed, and
yet he got into it.  He must have got in by the only other entry, and
that's the fireplace."

"I admit they're large," said Wilder.

"Large!  Why the whole house was designed so that you could roast an ox
in your bedroom.  Even the tops haven't got pots on them.  This is the
only house I've ever believed in Father Christmas in."

"We ought to be able to catch him on the hop somehow, if we know where
he is."

"That's just the trouble.  You see we can't muster more than twenty
beaters and there must be at least three times that number of
fireplaces--not all of them negotiable, I admit.  The fact is that the
place is too much of a warren, even apart from the chimneys, for us to
comb through properly.  We should want three people to go up each of
the four chimney stacks (to explore the side entries properly) besides
a person in each room to see that he didn't bolt, and a complete ring
round the house outside to pot him if he made for the roof.  It's
impossible without a regiment."

"Well, what's the object of this conference?"

"I was wondering if you could suggest anything.  You see, now that he's
located--unless we've guessed wrong--we have the chance of taking the
initiative.  This is the moment when we change defence into attack, if
only we can think how."

"I have a friend near Manchester," said the surgeon slowly, "who is an
experimental chemist working for the government.  He's a good fellow
and would trust me."

The two men drew at their pipes in silence.

"We can't use a real poison gas," said Buller eventually, "for we don't
know where it will go to after it's been through the house.  We don't
want to wipe out the whole of Derby owing to a change of wind."

"No.  We should have to use laughing gas, or tear gas, or something of
that sort.  Preferably something lighter than air.  That would go up
the chimneys well, and dissipate itself without spreading destruction
or annoyance in the neighbourhood."

"Well," said Buller, "if you could go and see this fellow to-morrow?"

"I'm sure he'd give it me.  We were in the same regiment."

"In the meantime it's vitally important that Mauleverer shouldn't smell
a rat.  We won't mention chimneys indoors, and we must be careful not
to lower our voices if we want to say anything important.  We just
mustn't say it.  Mauleverer must go on thinking he has us puzzled, and
the more he eavesdrops the better, for we can fill him up with
misleading information if the occasion arises.  So can I leave it to
you to tell Elizabeth"--the name slipped--"before you go to-morrow, and
_out_ of doors, what tack we're on?  Give her the same instructions,
and tell her not to act as if there was any suspicion of the chimneys.
We'll discontinue this business of keeping fires going to-morrow
morning.  You can leave Charles to me.  I shan't be able to whisper to
him, for if Mauleverer overhears a whisper he may guess that we have
reasons for whispering.  I'll write my message to Charles and give it
him with a finger on the lip.  After all, even if chimneys are good
places for acoustics you can't see from them."

As they rose to go indoors a figure detached itself from the bushes on
their right.

"Whilst you gentlemen was talking," said the gamekeeper with a kindly
smile, "I thought I'd keep an eye around in case of eavesdroppers."




CHAPTER XII

Next day Buller conveyed the news to Charles as he had said he would.
Then, after luncheon, leaving Kingdom to keep his master company, he
took Elizabeth into the garden.

As they walked towards the lake, the wildfowl left the lawn and took to
the water, paddling distrustfully away towards the overhanging
vegetation of the further shore.

"Wilder gave you my message before he went, didn't he?" he asked.

"Yes."

"There's one thing we can thank our stars about, and that's
Mauleverer's vanity.  He's set himself to break Charles's nerve before
he finishes him off, and all this child's play with skulls and pictures
on your looking-glass is calculated to do it.  Fortunately he's given
us time to locate him--for I'm sure I can't be wrong--before he's done
any real harm.  What I mean is that if he'd chosen to polish Charles
off without a preliminary fanfare we wouldn't have stood a dog's
chance.  Now, as it stands, Wilder ought to be back before dinner with
enough poison gas of one sort or another to clean the place up by
to-morrow afternoon."

"Couldn't we use it to-night, as soon as he comes back?"

"I'm afraid it will be too dark.  You see, we must do it by daylight so
that if he bolts we can pot him."

"You aren't really going to kill him?"

"Yes.  We are.  Honestly, Miss Darcy, neither you nor your brother
really believe in this man.  You think to yourselves that a skull drawn
in lipstick on a mirror and a practical joke played against your worthy
cook are not sufficient reasons for panic.  But I've seen three dead
bodies behind him, and he's told me about them.  He's having a
preliminary flutter just now: a little harmless enjoyment before he
comes to the big spectacle.  And I honestly assure you that if we don't
knock him off first your brother is as good as dead.  Will you believe
me?"

The urgency of Buller's pleading had brought them to a more intimate
pitch than he could ever have reached on his own account.

Elizabeth said doubtfully: "Well, if you say so..."

"But I do," said Buller.  "It's our only hope."

"I wouldn't believe anybody else."

The suddenness, and, as far as he could expect, patent hypocrisy of
this statement threw Buller into confusion.

"Er--yes," he said.  "Yes--quite."  And then with a hurried change of
topic: "The problem is how much the servants will stand for, and how
much they can keep their mouths shut.  When we do use this gas,
whatever kind it may be, and supposing that Mauleverer does bolt--as I
suppose he must--we shall have to have a cordon right round the house.
Charles, Wilder, Smith, Kingdom, the gamekeeper, the gardeners and
myself: we shall all have to be armed, and we shall have to shoot on
sight.  Will your people do that, and will they keep their mouths shut
about it afterwards?"

"They'll do it, even if it's rank piracy.  You see we have a very close
feeling with what remains of the staff.  They've all stayed with
Charles, through his imprisonment and everything, and they all love him
as a sort of martyr.  When he came out of prison he got them all
together, told them the story of the fat man in the night club, and
offered them three months' wages if they wanted to leave.  Those that
will ever leave us left then.  They'd do anything he asked them.  As to
their keeping their mouths shut afterwards, I don't know."

Buller said grimly: "The best reason for keeping one's mouth shut is
self-interest.  Once they'd helped in the hunt they'd have that, for
they'd be accessories to the fact."

"I think it's very unfair on them," said Elizabeth.

"Not only is it unfair on them, but it's an act of banditry which may
get me personally hanged.  We've got to chance that."

Elizabeth said inadequately: "It's very sweet of you to stay and help.
I'd much rather you didn't."

This also, together with the remark about not believing anybody else,
Buller stored away in his bosom, to be puzzled over in the hours of
night.

"The question of firearms is rather difficult," he said.  "Wilder and I
have got our revolvers, and I understand that Charles's father used to
shoot big game.  Smith could have one of the rifles and the
gamekeeper--he'll be the marksman of the party--ought to have the
other.  Do you know, by any chance, whether Charles has a revolver for
himself?"

"He has his army revolver somewhere."

"That's good.  That means five of us will have something pretty lethal.
The gardeners will have to carry the shotguns in case of accidents.
Even then it's a difficult house to surround with such a small party.
However, anything that gives Mauleverer a sporting chance is welcome in
one way.  My God, I do hope he'll put up a fight."

Elizabeth turned on him suddenly.

"Look here," she said.  "If the gas does bolt him you've got to catch
him alive.  You can't kill him.  I'd rather he killed Charles."

"But, Liz----" Her eyelids flickered.  "But, Miss Darcy----  It would
be suicide.  What could we do with him if we did catch him?  I assure
you he wouldn't repent and promise to live happily ever afterwards.
He'd be much more furious than ever.  He'd never sleep again until he'd
wiped off the defeat."

"I don't care," said Elizabeth, her chin sticking out defiantly.  "I'd
rather have Charles murdered, and I'm sure he would too, than have the
master of Pemberley taking to cowardly murder himself.  If it's in
self-defence that only makes it worse."

This side of the question struck Buller for the first time.

"Well----" he said.

Elizabeth went on excitedly.

"I'd rather," she said, "that you were murdering him for revenge or
hatred, or just for fun, than that you should be compelled to kill him
at a distance out of fear that he will kill you."

      *      *      *      *      *

When Wilder got back from Manchester in the evening he found Buller
waiting for him in the Hall.  They walked out into the twilight.

"He'll give it, all right," said the surgeon, "but he has to make it.
He hasn't got any on hand.  We shan't be able to use it before
to-morrow afternoon.  He's bringing it down himself by the first
possible train."

Buller asked: "Is it a poison or an irritant?"

"It's an irritant of his own invention.  In fact he invented it for us
on the spot, this morning, when I outlined our requirements.  By the
way, I thought it only fair to tell him what it would be used for--I
knew I could trust him--and he's completely callous.  In fact, I think
he's delighted to have a chance of human experiment.  He says he's
making some stuff which will go upwards, instead of rolling along the
ground, and which won't go up too quick.  Then there won't be any fear
of damage in the neighbourhood."

"You're sure it won't do Mauleverer any permanent harm?"

"No," said the surgeon, looking a little surprised, "the fellow said
that if Mauleverer stayed in it he'd choke, and finally be rendered
insensible.  But he said it wasn't a lethal gas at all."

"Why I ask," said Buller, "is because we've now decided that Mauleverer
must be taken alive.  Elizabeth thinks, and I suppose she's right, that
we can't kill the man in cold blood.  You see, the point is that we
don't _want_ to kill him: we're being stampeded into it out of funk,
when you come to think of it."

"But I do want to kill him, and I'm sure my friend the chemist does.
What's the good of gassing him out if we don't?  He'll simply come back
again."

"I know," said Buller wearily.  "If we had any sense we'd kill him, of
course.  But other things enter into it.  Elizabeth has all sorts of
loyalties and decencies which one can understand.  In the last resort
she'd rather be killed herself than kill somebody else for fear of it."

"Then she's a fool," said the surgeon.

"No," said Buller.  "Or if she is, so am I."

"Naturally."

"In any case, it's definitely decided.  We're going to chase him out of
the house alive, and let the future look after itself."

There was a tone in Buller's voice which left the surgeon no other
course except to shrug his shoulders helplessly.

"I've been thinking," Buller continued, "that we might be able to do
without the gas attack altogether.  That creature has been living in
the chimneys for two days.  I don't suppose he has any provisions with
him, and he can't have brought sufficient water.  He hasn't needed to.
He's had access down the kitchen chimney to all the provisions of the
household, and any one of a dozen taps in different sinks and bathrooms
can keep him watered.  Water's the main problem after all.  He may have
brought some concentrated form of food, as far as that goes, but the
water he can't have brought.  It's a hundred to one that he comes
through the fireplace into one bedroom or another, every night, and
goes through the side door into the bathroom for a drink.  What I
suggest is that we should lay for him to-night, and then perhaps we
shall be able to do without the gas to-morrow."

"And when we catch him what do we do?"

"Knock him on the head with a thick stick, I suppose, and turn him out
into the road."

"And what then?"

"Don't ask me.  I suppose the family goes off in a yacht and becomes
nomadic until they hear of his death.  It's a wretched situation, but I
agree with Elizabeth."

"Well," said the surgeon, "if it's got to be done it's worth trying.
But we haven't enough people to watch all the bathrooms."

"No.  We shall have to trust to luck.  We'll need two in each room, and
we'll have to pick on the most likely.  Charles will have to look after
himself for once.  We'll give him a fire and tell him not to sleep a
wink.  If you don't mind, we won't tell Elizabeth.  She'll be better
sleeping as usual, with Kingdom in the passage outside.  She'd better
have a fire too.  And we'll leave one of the gardeners outside the
maids' bedrooms.  That'll leave you; Smith; the gamekeeper; two grooms
and myself.  We'd better leave the rest to take turns out of doors."

"It seems an inadequate number for watching all the taps."

"Actually, I think we've got a good chance.  We'll leave you and Smith
in the kitchen.  That's a likely spot because there's food there as
well as drink.  Then I'll make a little tour, now, before dusk, in the
best approved style with my detective's magnifying glass.  Although the
chimneys have just been swept, and whatever precautions the man may
take, he can't move about indefinitely without traces of soot.  He
probably cleans up mighty carefully after him, but its beyond human
possibility for him to be absolutely clean.  I ought to be able to pick
up some signs or other in the bathroom or rooms which he generally
favours.  We'll post the other traps according to that.  Any
suggestions?"

"No.  Except that if he chooses the kitchen he's going to have a
headache."




CHAPTER XIII

The third night of darkness at Pemberley found the garrison as silent
as the house which surrounded them.  Buller's search had revealed three
suspect areas besides the kitchen: one for each main chimney stack.
One of these was a bedroom and bathroom which were not in use, within
three doors of Charles's own room in the same passage.  This area
seemed to Buller the most likely after the kitchen, and he selected it
for his own post, taking the gamekeeper to watch with him.

The two grooms were posted at the far end of the faade, the bedroom
known as Queen Caroline's room, over the museum.  This left a
suspicious sink in the servants' quarters unguarded; but, as Buller
said, it was three to one that the fox would visit one of the other
bolt-holes.

Wilder and Smith sat in the kitchen, in wooden chairs on either side of
the wide fireplace.  The chairs were solid and comfortless, but they
were too strongly built to creak.  So the two watchers in the darkness
were able to alter their positions every twenty minutes or so, when the
cramp became intolerable.  The cockroaches scuttled over the brick
floor undisturbed, giving to the black stillness a pianissimo
background of miniature life, and a tabby cat crouched over a possible
mousehole in taut and patient attention.

The kitchen clock--half an hour wrong, as usual--ticked out the minutes
with a tinny noise, and Mrs. Bossom's own alarm clock on the dresser
answered antiphonically.  The two separate counters combined in
Wilder's head, making endless rhythms and varied reiterations.  He
remembered the train wheels of his childhood, which had always repeated
"I-think-I-can.  I-think-I-can," on the up grade, and
"I-thought-I-could.  I-thought-I-could.  I-thought-I-could," as they
came down hill.  Mrs. Bossom's clock now mentioned to him "Per-haps
He-will.  Per-haps He-will.  Per-haps He-will" through the interminable
hours of the night.

Buller, in the bathroom upstairs, was in a worse plight.  He had
nothing to sit down on but a bathroom chair with a rush bottom, which
sounded at every movement.  The gamekeeper, on the other side of the
door, had nothing to sit on but the rim of the bath itself, and this he
disdained.  He stood erect on his own feet for three hours, without
apparent movement.

The plan of this couple was to lay their trap on either side of the
bathroom door.  Buller was afraid to wait in the bedroom itself, in
case some chance movement should discover them to the intruder before
he was fairly away from the fireplace.  He wanted Mauleverer to come
right across the room and into the bathroom for his drink, before they
chanced their leap upon him.

The two grooms were in the same position at the other end of the
faade.  They conversed in whispers about Vitty Kerumby and how she had
been a waller before Elizabeth took her in hand.

      *      *      *      *      *

Mauleverer happened to visit the kitchen first.  He came down the
chimney as silently as death and reached one foot over the cooking
range.  He was within two feet, on either side, of the seated figures;
but he did not see them.  Neither did they see him.  He sat on the
range for a moment, making some adjustment.  Then he stepped off on to
Wilder's toe.

Wilder moved it with a jerk and a muffled exclamation.  Smith whispered
quickly "What is it?"

Wilder hissed: "Did you touch me?"

"No."

The light of a torch sprang through the darkness, picking out the
kitchen range and chimney.  There was nothing to be seen.

      *      *      *      *      *

The grooms were still confabulating about horses.  One of them was
telling some story about a former master.  "Ah, he says, Chippy, you
get up on 'im while they're a-holding of his 'ead (and mind, I'm
telling you, he was a nappy one: a-waltzing round of us the 'ole time
like a primer balleriner and all but a-bitin' of 'is own tail) and then
when yore up, Chippy, 'e says, I'll 'and you this 'ere soda water
siphon afore 'e gets away.  Yes, 'e did, the old so-and-so.  Them very
words.  Mincing-like, you might say.  So I thinks to myself: All right,
me old cock, we'll see who's who--Hullo!  So I touches me cap,
respectful-like, and when I sees me chance I'm up on the old barstad
before he know'd what'd 'it 'im.  And the old man, 'e's 'opping round
like a turkey, clasping this 'ere siphon to 'is bosom and 'ollerin' to
me to catch a hold.  Which I did before we begins to buck: and then
hoy-hullo! round that tan we goes like the fox in the 'en 'ouse.  Well,
when we'd cleared the air a bit we fetches up in front of the
gov'ner--'e was up in the 'arf-a-crown seats by then, you may
imagine--and 'e yells out as if he was dying: Chippy, 'e's going to
rear!  Get the siphon ready, Chippy, 'e says, and when I shouts out
Now! give 'im a squirt.  Don't do it before I says, 'e says, or you'll
ruin the 'ole experiment.  So then this 'orse--'e was a raking great
skewbald with an eye like a rhinoceros--this 'orse begins to stand up
for 'is country, and the gov'ner 'e squeals out Now! and I ups with the
soda water siphon and catches 'im a fair beauty.  All over 'is silk
'at, it was, and down behind 'is spectacles.  That was the only
experience I ever 'ad of curing an 'orse with soda water."

The darkness outside the bathroom door became a shade less dense, and
the smallest wisp of soot fell shortly afterwards in the chimney.

      *      *      *      *      *

Buller had been motionless for forty minutes.  His limbs, he found,
sooner or later passed the period of sensation and petrified into
agony.  The discomfort became less unbearable when one had forgotten
what comfort was.  He interested himself in the drip of water from the
bath tap, trying to discover if there was any complicated temporal
relationship between the drops.  He counted between the drops.
Twenty-one.  Nineteen.  Seven.  Nine.  Nineteen....  There seemed to be
no equation.  One would have to count all night, if the recurrent was
widely spaced, before one could hope to establish a sequence.  And yet
there ought to be.  His mind wandered off among capillary attractions,
and water pressures at the reservoir.

A vague shape came through the door.  He waited and it pressed his
shoulder.  It was the gamekeeper.  How on earth, Buller wondered, did
he get out of the room in the first place without my noticing him?

The gamekeeper talked softly into his ear, without whispering, but as
quietly as the wind of night.

"Something stood in the doorway, sir," he said, "a moment agone.  I
waited for 'im to come in, but he cleared again.  I've just been into
the other room, but there's nothing there."

Buller whispered: "Are you sure?"

"I couldn't make him out," said the keeper, "but he was there right
enough.  His hands was there as plain as day."

"If you're sure you saw him----"

"I saw him plain, his hands before him in the darkness and his eyes
big: big like an owl's.  He'd be a black creature, seemingly?"

"But why did he go again?"

The keeper moved deprecatingly in the dark: "That chair, sir," he said,
"he's a difficult one to be silent with."

Buller said: "Well, if we've scared him away from here, there are still
the others.  Perhaps he'll visit them.  And again, he may not have seen
us at all.  He may have gone away for something else.  After all, he's
got no reason to be suspicious and he can't see in the dark any more
than we can.  Are you sure you saw him?"

"He was a black creature," said the other slowly, "in the black of
night."

"Well, we'll stay in case he comes back."

      *      *      *      *      *

In the kitchen Wilder was muttering to Smith: "God knows what it was.
It might have been the cat, I suppose.  Anyway we'll wait here.  We
don't want to go clattering about the place.  Even if it was him, and
we've scared him away, he may try one of the other traps; and we don't
want to queer their pitch."

      *      *      *      *      *

In the far wing the grooms were still talking.  Their voices had risen
now beyond the last vestiges of concealment.  The rise and fall of the
monologues was audible, not only in the other room as it had been
before, but even in the passage.  "--and 'e said: That 'orse is lame in
the left 'and front leg, I seen it as it was passing through the
square.  Oh, is it, I says, and I 'as 'em all out in the yard and walks
'em up and down in front of 'im.  Now, I says to 'im, in a civil tone
of voice you understand, would you know the 'orse as was lame in 'is
near fore?  I says..."

      *      *      *      *      *

"Something dragging.  Hark....  It's stopped now."

Buller started to his feet.  "This is no kind of game!" he exclaimed
out loud.  "Either you've got nerves or I'm wasting my time."

He threw open the door into the passage, and started back, jerking his
hand nervously above his pocket.

A figure was sagging in the entrance, sharply outlined against the
electric light.  It was propped up against the door jamb.  The head
hung forward over the chest, while something dripped monotonously from
the collar, dripped into a wide and sluggish pool which spread and
spread along the passage.

The keeper moved over to Buller's elbow and breathed quietly, in his
ear: "There's somebody been moving about outside, in the passage."

Buller answered: "Kingdom's there: outside Miss Elizabeth's door."

"Kingdom never moved like that."

"What is it then?"




CHAPTER XIV

Buller lowered Kingdom's body gently to the floor, and stepped over it
into the passage, wiping his hands.  He was feeling sick, but conscious
that the keeper was watching him for a lead, wondering what they ought
to do.  There was nothing to do.

Buller made a noise as if he were clearing his mouth of a foul taste
and said:

"Help me to clear this up."

They fetched pails and did their best, laying the body inside the
bathroom in case Elizabeth should wake and come out of her room.

On the bathroom door four words had been smeared in blood--smeared, as
Buller realised, whilst they had been sitting inside.  The message was
cryptic:

  NO WATER DRINKS BLOOD


Buller said: "Faugh!  An old man like that!"  He wiped the door clean
viciously, and added: "Dabbling about like a muck-puppy!"

Charles had heard them moving about, and opened his door cautiously.
He looked at Buller with an expression of enquiry.  Buller nodded
sourly towards the bathroom door and Charles went across.

The old man's throat had been cut like the porter's.  He looked
shrivelled and useless, horrid not because of his connection with
humanity but because of that connection tragically wasted: because what
had once been human was now a grotesque thing.  Charles stayed there so
long that Buller went in to see what he was doing.  He had folded the
old man's hands and smoothed the twisted face into a picture of
dignity.  Charles was as white as the dead man.

He said: "How did this happen?"

Buller said: "I don't know.  We'd better collect the others."

He sent the gamekeeper to call in the watchers at the other traps.
Wilder came and made his report.  The grooms reported nothing.

Buller said: "Mauleverer must have visited the kitchen first.  When he
blundered into Dr. Wilder he nipped up the chimney in a second.  That
put him on his guard and he was just as much on the _qui vive_ as we
were.  I expect he visited the grooms' post, and the keeper here says
he visited ours.  He twigged before we did.  Kingdom was alone in the
passage.  This was his idea of reprisal."

Charles said: "Kingdom was sixty-nine years old."

The party stood round in an atmosphere of constraint.  They were all
thinking of the stealthy footfalls in the passage, under the unwinking
electric light; of the mad face grinning with expectation, and the
knife.  Nobody would mention these things, however.

Buller said: "Now is the moment when we call in the police, or not.
Elizabeth said yesterday that we were not to kill Mauleverer, and I
agreed with her.  But this makes a difference."

Charles looked round the circle of faces.  He was grim now and almost
cheerful.

"I think we are agreed," he said.  "Is there anybody here who would
rather have the police?"

Buller added, unnecessarily: "If we get in the police now, Mauleverer
may have cleared out for fear that we should do so.  You see, he will
realise that if we do call them in we shall be able to search the house
thoroughly, and the chimneys.  As like as not, he's cleared off.  Then
we shouldn't find him.  There would be endless trouble.  Like Sir
Charles's fat man in the night club, he wouldn't be believed in.  Even
if we were fortunate enough to get out of it without one or other of
ourselves being hanged--remember this is an ex-convict's house--we
should be no nearer Mauleverer.  He has an alibi pat you may be sure.
Then the police would know that there was some sort of a feud between
Sir Charles and him, and we should never be able to get him afterwards.
If he came back we shouldn't be able to act with freedom.  The
disappearance of Mauleverer, even if we were fortunate enough to pull
it off, would automatically throw suspicion on Sir Charles.  And Sir
Charles would still be in exactly the same danger from Mauleverer----"

Charles cut him short.

"You have all seen poor Kingdom," he said.  "I don't think we need
argue about it."

But Buller added: "It's only fair that everybody should understand
exactly what we are in for.  If we don't call in the police we can't
get a doctor's certificate and we shall have to bury Kingdom secretly
in the grounds.  If we are not able to explain this and keep it quiet
afterwards we are all bound to get into very serious trouble, perhaps
even the gallows----"

Wilder interrupted.  He said: "I will give a doctor's certificate."

"That is absolutely unfair on you," said Buller.  "It can't be done."

"Nevertheless, I'm going to do it.  I can lay him out, too, so that he
looks all right in a coffin.  After all, if he was sixty-nine nobody
can be very surprised about it."

The gamekeeper said: "Begging your pardon, Sir Charles, but whatever
way it's settled I think we should all be agreed on doing without the
policemen."

Smith said: "Yes, sir."  They were surprised to note that he was crying.

      *      *      *      *      *

By the time Elizabeth woke up--she possessed the virtue of sleeping
soundly--the passage was clear again and Kingdom was decently laid in
one of the bedrooms.  Wilder had dressed him in a white sheet, which
curved about his neck, hiding the gash.  The coffin was ordered, and
the measurements enclosed, from Derby.  Charles went into her room and
broke the news before breakfast.  She said nothing for a time and then
asked:

"I suppose it was sudden?  He couldn't have known what was happening?"

Charles hastened to assure her.

"He hadn't even time to cry out," he said.  "Buller was within a few
yards of him all the time and heard nothing."

Elizabeth exclaimed suddenly: "What an inhuman beast!  What a devil!
Poor old Kingdom.  Chiz, I don't remember a time when there wasn't
Kingdom at Pemberley!"  She began to cry, with bitter dry sobs.

Charles said: "Liz, darling, he was sixty-nine.  He couldn't have lived
very much longer.  Don't cry, Liz."

Elizabeth stopped crying as if a tap had been turned off.  "Of course
we shall go for him, now," she said.  "You haven't told the police or
anything?"

"No.  We'll do it ourselves."

"Of course."

Charles told her about Wilder's arrangements.

"Thank goodness," said Elizabeth, "that we aren't popular in the
village.  That's one good thing about your drug business, darling.
Pemberley's been a place apart ever since then, and I don't think any
of the servants have much truck with the local people.  There'll be no
interest or servants' gossip at any rate."

Charles assented.

Elizabeth returned to an earlier subject.

"Kingdom was with daddy," she said, "even when daddy was young.  He was
more a part of Pemberley than any of us."

"Don't worry about him, Liz."

"No, I don't.  Even although it was our fault.  This would never have
happened to him if it hadn't been for us.  But I know he wouldn't mind
that.  He'd be glad.  Our business was his.  Well, now his business is
ours.  Chiz, I know we shall kill that man now.  I'm not afraid of him
at all."

Charles said softly, looking out of the window: "We're going to get
him."  There was an odd accent on the penultimate word.

They sat in silence for a moment; then Elizabeth rose to go down to
breakfast.  She spoke in an even voice, almost with a note of wonder.

"One of the first things I remember," she said, "was a white moustache."

      *      *      *      *      *

Wilder rang up his friend in Manchester before breakfast.  He said:
"Hullo, is that Edgeworth?"

"Hullo, this is Wilder speaking----

"Yes----

"Yes----

"Look here, I wonder if you can make an alteration?

"Can you make it lighter than air _and lethal_?"

      *      *      *      *      *

Mr. Edgeworth arrived by an afternoon train.  He was a leathery man
with a drooping moustache who smoked endless cigarettes.  His fingers
were yellow, and the cigarette hung from his lower lip.  He wore steel
spectacles from behind which a pair of baleful eyes twinkled
benevolently.

He said: "Your last minute alteration held me up a bit, but it makes it
more amusing.  Now where are these rats?"

He insisted on referring to Mauleverer as "rats" during his whole stay,
to such an extent that Elizabeth asked Wilder whether he really knew
what they were after.

"Of course," said Wilder.  "I told him the whole story.  It was only
fair.  But this is his way of showing he can be discreet about it."

"But isn't this rather cold-blooded of him?  After all, it isn't his
quarrel."

"He knows what he's up to, and he wouldn't do it without thinking about
it first.  He doesn't say anything about it, but he's thought it out.
He's a queer fellow: most people think him a little mad.  He has a
different way of looking at things, and he trusts me.  That's all there
is to it."  Wilder added after a moment: "Actually, he's a genius.
Half his reason for coming here, I suppose, is the desire to
experiment.  It's an extreme form of vivisection.  Ordinarily he has to
work with guinea-pigs: when he's lucky he gets a monkey: but a man's a
positive windfall.  He's thinking in terms of science, you see, and
Mauleverer's a unit in some equation."

Elizabeth said: "I don't like men who apply their science to making
murderous weapons of war."

"But you'd like Edgeworth.  He's the sincerest man, really, and an
idealist.  I gather that he doesn't believe in peace and does believe
in nationalism.  But for God's sake don't let's start an argument.  I
like Edgeworth personally, and he likes me.  The main thing is to get
Mauleverer."

Meanwhile Buller was talking to the assembled male members of the
staff.  He had selected the Wren summer house for his staff-lecture.

"I want you to understand the position," he said, "because it's only
fair that you should know what you're in for.  The man who did these
Cambridge murders which you've read about can't be connected with them.
I told Sir Charles who it was, and he decided to take the law into his
own hands.  He visited the man and told him he was going to kill him.
He didn't realise at the time what that involved.  Now the man has
decided to kill Sir Charles, and that's what all the rumpus has been
about in the past few days.  We believe that the man has hidden himself
in the chimneys.  He has tried to kill Sir Charles with a tile from the
stable roof, and he has been trying to scare the staff by putting a
skull in Mrs. Bossom's bedroom and by drawing a skull on Miss
Elizabeth's looking-glass.  Last night we tried to trap him by posting
guards in three of the four places where he usually seemed to go for
water.  He visited all these places without being caught and killed
Kingdom where he was guarding the passage alone, as a reprisal.  We
have not informed the police, and Dr. Wilder has given a death
certificate.  The object of this is that we may revenge Kingdom
ourselves, not entirely from animosity but so as to be sure of it.  If
what we have done leaks out to the police we are all liable to
imprisonment, perhaps worse.  I understand that you are all agreed to
stand by Sir Charles?"

Smith, speaking for the household, said: "We are all agreed, sir, and
we want you to understand that there is nobody here who would not
rather go to prison than let Sir Charles down or Mr. Kingdom go to his
grave without being paid for."

The others murmured encouragingly.

Buller went on: "Very well.  Sir Charles and Miss Elizabeth were quite
sure that this was what you would say.  In fact we have chanced it, for
we have committed ourselves already.  It was hoped that we could keep
you out of it, more or less, but now that's impossible.  What I want
you to do now is to keep your wives out of it as much as possible.
Cook and the maids are to go to the North Lodge this afternoon and we
shall take tea and dinner there.  We hope that you will be able to make
them believe, or at least leave them _able_ to believe, that Kingdom
died from an infectious disease and that the house is being fumigated.
It's a poor story, but it will have to do."

Buller took a breath and went on: "Dr. Wilder has brought a friend down
who is an expert on poison gas.  We are going to close and bolt all the
windows and doors and then Mr. Wilder's friend will release this stuff
in the hall and in all four of the main chimney stacks.  The gas is
lighter than air and will go upwards.  You, meanwhile, will be posted
in a cordon right round the house so that if this man tries to make a
bolt for it you can stop him.  I want you to shoot him dead.  If he
comes to a window to open it, let him have it.  If he breaks from a
door, bowl him over.  Those of you who have to use shotguns wait till
you can get a close shot and don't aim low.  Shout if you get him, and
I will finish him off if necessary.  This is the most merciful thing.
We do not wish to attack him with hatred, for he is mad.  It is useless
to do anything on account of Kingdom now; revenge will do him no good.
We are doing this for the sake of Sir Charles's safety.  Does everybody
agree and understand?"

Everybody said: "I agree," the male voices making a steadfast and quiet
rumble.

Buller added: "Just one thing more.  We are afraid that the man may
have escaped already.  That was an additional reason for not calling in
the police.  In case he has we shall have to be prepared to carry on
the defensive perhaps for a long time.  He may come back again.  In any
case we shall give him the gas for two hours to make sure of him, if he
is there.  I hope he is, and I hope you will shoot straight if
necessary.  Sir Charles will issue the guns in an hour or so, when the
gas cylinders arrive.  They are coming by road.  Does anybody wish to
ask any questions?"

There was a restless movement of feet, but nobody spoke.

"Very well," said Buller.  "When the lorry comes I should like to have
you all here.  In the meantime, keeper, you might post a couple of
look-outs just in case the man tries to bolt before we get going."

Buller left them and went in search of Elizabeth.  It was the first
time he had seen her alone that day, and he could not do without her.

"Come for a drive," he said.  "Nothing can happen for a couple of hours
yet.  It will do you good."

Elizabeth asked: "What about Chiz?  He oughtn't to come out of his room
like he did this morning till we're sure, ought he?"

"Somebody had to break it to you," said Buller, "so I let him.  But
he's back there now, with a fire, and he won't come out till we start
the gas."

"Is he alone?"

"Yes, Wilder's talking to his friend.  But it's all right.  Nobody can
get at him with the door and window bolted and the fire going.  He's
quite capable of looking after himself since last night.

Elizabeth said: "Well, I should love a drive."

As the car left the park gates Buller remarked wearily: "We've got out
of that place for a bit, anyway."

"Thank God.  Don't let's talk about it."

"It's a fine house, for all that.  What have you been doing there all
these years since Charles lost his wife?"

"Waiting about, I suppose," replied Elizabeth.  She took the cigarette
from her lips with a sharp movement of her hand and looked out of the
near window bitterly.  Buller's eyes were on the road in front of them.
He pressed the accelerator a little more.

"Well, I must say you're making up for the lack of excitement now."

"Yes," said Elizabeth

"It seems silly to say you're being very brave about it.  That's the
sort of thing one says to children.  You don't give one the impression
that there's any reason why you shouldn't be.  Women are different from
what I was always given to understand they were."

"You should study them."  There was no irony in Elizabeth's voice.

"I don't understand them."

"You aren't interested in them is what you mean."

"I suppose not," said Buller loyally, to the only thing in which he was
really interested in the wide world.

The speedometer crept to sixty.

      *      *      *      *      *

When they got back a lorry was standing in the drive, with Edgeworth
beside it talking to a bright little man in horn-rimmed spectacles.

Edgeworth said: "This is my assistant Hankey.  He is going to help us
get rid of these rats."  He added with a trace of significance: "Hankey
has an open scientific mind like my own."  Wilder had evidently been
talking to him.

Buller said: "Well, if you'll start getting the windows closed and so
forth I'll assemble the emergency rat-killers."

He went off to the summer house, where the men were sitting patiently,
smoking their pipes.  They put them in their pockets deferentially, and
stood up.

The gamekeeper came forward, touching his hat.

"I beg pardon, sir," he said, and waited for encouragement.

"Yes?"

"Sir Charles has given out the guns, sir, and what with the keeper's
guns and the gardeners--we all does a little bit of rabbiting--there's
something for everybody.  Shotguns and that.  But it's these two
express rifles I was thinking of, them and the revolvers.  Sir Charles
was saying that there was three revolvers between us.  That and the
expresses makes five, and there's six doors on the ground floor in the
main building.  I was thinking, sir, that you, sir, and Dr. Wilder
could watch the two doors on this side the house with your revolvers.
Sir Charles was wanting to take the front door with his, and Smith and
myself, sir, if you was willing, could cover the three doors on the
stable side easy."

"You know the lie of this place better than I do," said Buller.  "You'd
better post the men yourself.  We can put the shotguns further back, at
the corners, as a reserve line."

He left the rest of the dispositions entirely to the keeper and went
back towards the lorry.  Elizabeth was still in the coup.  He leant in
at the window and said:

"Wouldn't it be a good idea if you saw that the maids were behaving
themselves at the North Lodge?"

Elizabeth replied, with pardonable irritation: "My dear man, where on
earth do you get your ideas about women from?  Your period's about
1850.  I'm going to stay here and see the fun.  Why should I be bundled
off to the Lodge any more than you?"

But Buller was adamant, and, for him, surprisingly guileful.

"It isn't a question of not being allowed to watch," he said.  "I want
you to go over there for just the reason I gave.  We don't want to have
the maids butting in on us and I'd like to be sure of their keeping to
the Lodge by sending somebody there to keep them.  After all, it's more
in your line than anybody else's."

Elizabeth said petulantly: "But I shall be worried out of my life if I
don't know what's going on."

"Well if you haven't the guts," said Buller, wondering if he could
allow himself that word, "I'll send for one of the gardeners."

Elizabeth said: "Curse you for saying that."  She turned the car and
drove off towards the Lodge.

The cordon was drawn up and the two scientists came out of the front
door.

Edgeworth came up to Buller rubbing his hands.

"The windows are all shut," he said, "and the cylinders are in the
grates.  I've put one in the billiard room as well as the hall, to make
sure, for there looks as if there might be a different vent.  Now, if
your men are ready, Hankey and I will go in and set them off.  If we
give them two hours the house will have been permeated from cellar to
attic.  (I've put one in the cellar by the way.)  You must tell your
men not to come within the length of a cricket pitch, let's say, for
the stuff is practically colourless.  Actually there's no danger
outside, with the windows and doors closed, for it won't spread as much
as that.  It'll go up.  I hope nobody will elect to fly over Pemberley
just now."  He looked up cheerfully and bustled off to put on a gas
mask.

Buller stood on the lawn opposite his own door and waited.  He kept his
hand in his pocket, stroking the triggerguard of his revolver on the
outside.  About twenty yards away, on the opposite side of a yew tree,
he occasionally caught glimpses of Wilder moving about.  Wilder had
lighted a cigarette, and seemed nervous.

Buller was nervous too, but he stood quite still, watching the door and
windows.  For a few moments he saw Edgeworth, or his assistant, moving
in the drawing-room.  The mica goggles and tubular snout made it
impossible to recognise the man, gave him an inhuman feeling of danger
in the pit of his stomach.  There was death in that quaint intent
figure, a still suggestion of operating surgeons and silent
overtakings.  Buller sniffed the air with a faint nausea.  He felt sure
that he could hear a minor hissing, scarcely tuned to human ears.  He
cocked his head a little to one side.  The air smelt queer, he was sure
of it.

He restrained an impulse to retreat another ten yards for safety's
sake.  He stood still, three at least of his five senses at a high
pitch.

Soon Edgeworth and the assistant joined him.  They stood silently in a
group, watching death trickle from the chimney pots, whilst Buller
squeezed and squeezed, gently, at the outside of his triggerguard.




CHAPTER XV

After two hours Edgeworth snapped his watch shut with a click and
turned to Buller.

"That's that," he said.  "If the rats are at home they're dead.  Still,
I should have liked to see a bolt."

Buller moved restlessly.

"So should I.  What do we do now?"

"Hankey and I will go in and open all the windows.  Also we'll light
some fires on the ground floor to get an upward draught.  It's six
o'clock now.  If you dine at eight in the Lodge the house will be ready
for you after dinner."

"You'll be staying to dinner, I hope?" Buller asked.

"No.  Thank you very much.  I should like to be back in Manchester
to-night."

      *      *      *      *      *

They were still discussing the situation after dinner.

Charles asked: "I suppose this stuff of your friend's was definitely
lethal, Wilder?  There couldn't be any mistake about that?"

"No.  That's quite sure."

"It means, then, that either Mauleverer had cleared off last night or
early this morning, for fear of the police, or that he's dead somewhere
in the chimneys?"

"It's not like Mauleverer," said Buller, "to be caught napping.  One
would have thought that he'd have heard all the bustle of shutting the
windows and getting the stuff going.  On the other hand, he must sleep
sometimes.  He's been doing his work at night, so perhaps he sleeps
during the day time.  He may have died in his sleep."

"I can't understand," said Elizabeth parenthetically, "how he could
find anywhere to sleep in, in a chimney, still less how he managed to
get about in them so well."

"The chimneys aren't all straight up and down.  The four main shafts go
straight up, and you can see the sky if you look up them.  But the
other rooms come into them at various angles.  In fact there's a
regular tissue of passages all through the house, with ledges and
turns, just like the sewers or catacombs of big cities.  He would find
plenty of nooks to sleep in.  It's more difficult to understand how he
gets about in the sheer drops than how he can find a ledge."

"You speak as though he was still there."

"I hope he is there--dead.  We shall have to make a thorough search for
the body to-morrow, when it's light."

Wilder said: "Well, he had a good death if he died sleeping."

The talk took a more general turn.

"I don't think so," said Elizabeth.  "Poor wretch, I'd rather do
anything than die in my sleep."

Wilder was interested.  "Why?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know.  You wouldn't be ready.  It would catch you just
between wind and water."

"But you wouldn't know anything about it."

"Oh yes, you would."

Charles said: "Death is an extraordinary thing.  I've thought about it
a lot.  I've even decided what the best sort of death is."

"And what would that be?"

"I was an observer just at the very end of the War.  Somebody could
write a very interesting war book about observers.  Imagine trusting
yourself to a separate person, in a machine which might go wrong at any
moment, in a situation which meant almost certain death if it did go
wrong--and that quite apart from the dangers of actual combat.  The
observers were much braver than the pilots.  It used to be interesting
to see the old observers looking over the new pilots, wondering how
safe they were.  But this is apart from what I was trying to tell you.
I never got to France, but I knew an observer who did.  He was a
shrivelled little man with bright eyes, like a bird's.  His pilot was
shot through the chest one day, over the lines.  The man flew the
machine back and landed his observer safely, a perfect landing.  He was
dead when the machine came to rest.  That's a man I shall always envy.
He had something to do when he was dying.  He had a fight for it, and
he pulled it off.  He was busy and striving with death to the last
moment, and he died in his triumph."

Wilder said: "And according to you, if the machine had crashed in the
end, the observer's death would have been the worst kind--for he
wouldn't have had a chance to fight it?"

"Yes."

"I'm not sure that I agree with you.  He had no responsibility.  I can
imagine that observer, if he was a brave man, leaning back and getting
quite a kick out of it.  Also, of course, there's an odd satisfaction
about trusting people.  I don't know."

"The kind of death I should like," said Elizabeth, "is rather like
Chiz's.  Only Chiz wants to die fighting and I want to die enjoying
myself.  I should like to be killed instantaneously, hunting.  I
suppose if I were Cleopatra or Faustine, I should choose some other
form of death by enjoyment, but as it is I should like to break my neck
at a double oxer.  One can get quite close to what it would be like by
thinking of the falls one's had.  Joy till the last moment, and then a
split second's anxiety, instinctive self-preservation: the faculties
moving too quickly for emotion.  One's last word would be 'Damn!'"

Wilder said: "Buller, what's your contribution to this question?"

"I think it's a very silly question.  I don't want to die at all.  I
want to go on living for ever, with more joy and more experience every
day.  I want to put my arms right round the world and never, never
leave go."

"My dear Buller!" said the surgeon.  "I told you you ought to be a poet
once before."

      *      *      *      *      *

Pemberley was again in darkness, but the darkness was less hostile.
Buller had wanted to keep up the system of watches for one more night,
but his doubts had been overruled.  "If the man's dead," Wilder had
said, "he can't do us any harm, and if he did a bunk yesterday it's
highly unlikely that he'll come back to-day.  If he's bunked he'll come
back, but not immediately.  The danger of his coming back will increase
as the days go by.  To-day its at it's minimum.  Anyway it's ten to one
that he's dead in one of the chimneys, caught sleeping.  We deserve a
rest."

Buller, tired by his lack of sleep in the past few days, and worried by
his own problems, had assented.  But he could not sleep.

Too tired for immediate rest, and falling between the stools of two
questions, his mind revolved in the darkness with aching concentration.
His brain resembled that fabulous and legless bird, circling wearily
about the perch, but defeated by its own structure of any hope of
peace.  In the south of France, he seemed to remember, the enthusiastic
Latins would employ a decoy pigeon: a live bird tethered by the leg to
a sharply pointed pole, round which it would flutter till it died,
unable to perch because of the sharpness of the point.

He wondered if Mauleverer were dead, but could not believe it.  He
wondered when he had left the house, and how soon he would come back.
He wondered how long the net of protection which he had drawn round
Charles would stand the strain, and where it was weakest.  He felt
thankful, at least, that he had himself lit Charles's fire this
evening, as a last concession to his fear that Mauleverer might be
there.  If there should be a secret chamber, he thought, and if
Mauleverer had found it and hidden in it, would it have been airtight
enough to keep the gas out?  Edgeworth had assured him that there was
not a padlocked cupboard or closed drawer in the house which would not
have been permeated.  And if Mauleverer had been hidden in some secret
chamber, and had died there, perhaps they would never find the chamber
or his body.  To-morrow's search might well reveal no corpse among the
chimneys, and that would prove nothing.  Mauleverer might moulder in
his secret room till the end of Charles's life, without being
discovered.  The shadow of uncertainty would never lift from Pemberley.

Concurrently with these thoughts Buller's mind was circling round
Elizabeth.  He wondered how much was behind the convention which
forbade her to marry a policeman.  He wondered at what point of
affection the compensation of marrying the person one loved would
redress the balance of this contrary convention.  Above all he wondered
if she possibly could love him.  She had said such curious things,
which in the old days would have been construed as being affectionate.
But nowadays that counted for nothing.  These bright young people
called each other _darling_ remorselessly.  He was afraid.  He did not
understand.  He was miserably in love.

Lying on his back in the darkness, amid a tangle of pillows, Buller put
up his hand and felt the short hairs at the back of his neck.  His
fingers strayed over his face, tentatively, pressing the cheeks and
feeling under the eyes.  He was middle-aged, he supposed, and he had
never been handsome.  He felt his hardening skin anxiously.  He turned
over in bed and pushed a pillow on the floor, exasperated.

Elizabeth's hair was mouse-coloured, and her lips were red.  He got out
of bed, saying to himself "I am a fool"; and fetched the handkerchief
with which he had wiped her mirror.  He sniffed it, put it under the
remaining pillow, and lay down again.  Like a child who has been
allowed to take his newest toy to bed with him, Buller felt comfortable
again at once.  Her eyebrows had a trick of lifting.  It was
indescribable.  Buller snuggled his middle-ageing head deeper into the
pillow.  There were certain things, in short, that he would like her to
like him to do to her.  Buller was asleep, almost before he had reached
the end of this complicated sentiment.

Elizabeth had been lying awake under similar problems.  It was
unmaidenly, she decided, to ask a gentleman's hand in marriage: but
then she had never been a lady.  She would ask Buller at once if she
thought he wanted to and was afraid.  But she was proud, too.  She had
dropped hints, cast straws to see which way the wind blew.  There had
been no wind, no response.  She dared not believe that Buller was in
love with her; and, if not, she dared not face the situation of a
proposal.  Or dared she?  Nothing venture, nothing have.  This kind of
love must be worth risking a rebuff for.

She felt her arms in the darkness.  They were empty.  She was getting
old, she supposed.  She was getting fat.  She must bant.

At this moment she became conscious that there was somebody in the
room.  Not only in the room, but by the side of her bed.  She had
thrown out her arm and touched something which moved.

She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand closed over it.  Nothing
came but a sort of exaggerated snore.  She struck out with her arm, and
it was caught.  It was held between two knees.  She tried to roll over,
but as she moved there was a faint stab above the elbow in the held
arm.  She struck with the free arm, struggling for breath.  The man was
hurting her nose and she was suffocating.  Her knuckles struck him in
the face, but against something hard, which cut them.  Then her free
arm was caught too, and a body lay across her, pinning her down.  She
struggled to throw it off.  There was an interminable pause, whilst her
mind battled on the brink of consciousness, and then her arms were
cautiously released.  She would get up and shout for help.

Her body would not move.

She became conscious that she must be dead.




CHAPTER XVI

Buller dreamed that there was a gas attack in the trenches, and he was
suffocating.  The Germans were black men with white hands, whose
bayonets were as sharp as razors.  They were swarming over the parapet,
and surrounded him with their cutting points in deadly attitudes.  He
had been wounded and was paralysed.  But he must sound the gas alarm.
The gong was a shell case hanging from the trench wall.  He could reach
it by crawling on his stomach, if he moved without being observed.  He
crawled between their black legs, stealthily, dragging his paralysed
spine behind him.  Evidently his back was broken, but he could move his
arms.  They saw him as he reached the gong, and sprang to stab him.
But he reared up like a broken snake and beat it with the butt end of
his pistol, in agonising measured strokes.  It sounded thrillingly
through the house; for each trill the black men stabbed him in the back.

Buller woke up in a muck sweat to the last stab of the telephone bell
downstairs.  The bed-clothes swept to the right and his legs to the
left in the same moment.  He did not wait to thrust his bare feet into
slippers even, or to snatch a dressing-gown.

Wilder's tousled head looked over the banisters as he reached the
instrument.

"Hullo?"

"Yes."

"Hullo?  Hullo?"

"Yes, what is it?"

"No.  When?"

"Which way did he go?"

"To Burton.  Right.  Which car did he take?"

"Will you get the others out at once, and running?"

Buller slammed down the earpiece whilst the small voice was still
rattling, and came up the stairs three at a time.

Wilder said: "Well?"

"It's Smith, from the garage.  He says the Bentley has just gone out,
and wanted to know if it was all right.  About five minutes ago."

He was past Wilder and through the morning-room before the latter could
speak.

Charles threw the door open with a jerk as he tapped on it.  He had his
revolver in his hand.

Buller said: "Good.  Ask Wilder."  And was away down the passage before
Charles could open his mouth.

He tapped on Elizabeth's door, but there was no answer.  He tapped
again, quietly.  He must not frighten her.  And yet, and yet, why
didn't she answer?  He kicked the door noisily and cried "Elizabeth!
Elizabeth!"  It was the second time he had ever addressed her by her
Christian name.  The room was horribly silent.

He threw his shoulder against the door, as he had done with Mrs.
Bossom's, but the lock and bolt held it.  He kicked it, but hurriedly
this time and without success.  The bolt held.

Buller immediately became quite calm.  Wilder had come up, and the two
of them lifted the lacquered cabinet which stood outside, bodily, and
crashed it against the door with their combined weights.  The cabinet
went right through one of the panels of the door, losing a leg in the
process, and the door still held.  It must have been a strong door.

Buller put his hand through the broken panel and drew the bolt.  The
key was fortunately in the lock: he turned it.

The room was empty.

Wilder moved across to the curtains, and glanced at the fastenings of
the window, whilst Buller cast his eye over the bed.  Charles stood in
the doorway.  There was a split second of arrested movement.

Buller said: "In the car, obviously.  He can't have a quarter of an
hour's start of us.  Perhaps only eight or ten minutes, if we hurry.
Get coats, sweaters, trousers--anything warm."

He was out of his own room, dressed after a fashion, before either of
them.  He stood in Wilder's doorway.

"Charles had better come," he said.  "It's safer that he shouldn't be
left alone, in any case, and besides we shall want all three cars if
we're going to explore the crossroads.  I think there's a good chance.
I want the Chrysler coup, and you can take the Daimler if you can
drive it.  I never knew what these people had all these cars for, but
thank God they've got them.  Charles will have to take the Studebaker.
You're more useful than he is.  The Bentley went towards
Burton-on-Trent.  If he's going any distance there aren't any important
turnings before that.  At Burton-on-Trent I want you to turn east and
explore the Ashby-de-la-Zouch road, and Charles must go north to
Uttoxeter.  Stop anybody you see, except policemen, and enquire.  I'm
afraid there won't be many about at three in the morning.  If the worst
comes to the worst, stop a policeman: so long as you can make up a
convincing story--something about a bet.  Say it's something to do with
this controversy over average speeds on long distances at night.
You're a judge, or something, and have missed one of the entrants.  You
want to know which way he's gone.  Speed Charles up and tell him all
this.  I'm off.  Remember you're for Ashby and Charles for Uttoxeter.
I'm going straight through to Lichfield."

Buller was clattering down the stairs as Charles came out of his room.

Smith was standing by the three cars, with their engines running.  He
had taken them out on to the drive and left them abreast, as if for the
start of a race.  He looked at Buller with such a pleading look that
Buller said: "All right.  Jump in."

The drive sloped gently away from the house and Buller started off in
second whilst Smith was still on the footboard.  He glanced at his
wristwatch as they shot round the curve in a roar of small pebbles.  It
was one minute to three.

"Tell me more about this," he asked.

"There's nothing but what I told you over the telephone, sir.  Mrs.
Smith woke me up at quarter to three, saying there was somebody moving
about in the garage down below.  I got out of bed to see if I could see
anything from the window and saw that the big doors was open.  I was
just putting on my slippers to see who it was when I heard the engine
started--it was a still night--and, going to the window, I hears the
Bentley come out without lights.  I thought there might be something
queer, so I stays at the window to see which way the car went if I
could.  From the top windows of that garage, sir, you can just see the
lodge gates.  Well, the car had no lights, and I was just thinking that
'twas no good watching any more when I see the lights turned up on the
road outside, moving off between the trees towards Burton.  He must
have driven down the drive and opened the lodge gates in the dark, not
trusting to his lights till he was well out on the road."

"I suppose we're not short of petrol?"

"Full up, sir.  I filled up all three of 'em when you spoke to me over
the wire."

Buller said: "You're a stand-by, Smith.  You're sure it was a quarter
to three?"

"Certain, sir.  I looked at the alarm clock as I got out of bed."

"That gives him about fourteen minutes start; less than that, really,
for he had to feel his way down the drive.  I think we might do it,
with luck.  What do you think?"

"He has the legs of us, if he chooses to," said Smith, "but not by
much.  And he probably doesn't know that we're after him.  I don't
suppose he'll be pushing her along."

Smith looked back through the small window as a light came through,
making the windscreen opaque.  The broad fans of light from the two
following cars dazzled him.

"Here's the other two coming," he said, "I'll shut the flap."

      *      *      *      *      *

As the Bentley drew out of Lichfield, Mauleverer looked over his
shoulder.  His pale face showed thin in the faint light from the
dashboard, but his eyes were bright.  The light concentrated in them,
so that they seemed to gleam with their own lustre.  Scarcely more than
half a mile behind him he could see a broad fan of light sweeping
between the trees, catching them alternately, like an errand boy
running his switch along a stretch of iron railings.

He smiled softly and stepped on the accelerator.  The Bentley gathered
speed with a succession of squattering detonations, and stormed up the
hill.

      *      *      *      *      *

Buller glanced at his watch as they came out of Lichfield.  It showed
thirty-seven minutes past three.  There had been a loss of time at
Burton-on-Trent, where he had waited to make sure that Charles and
Wilder followed his instructions.  He had been rewarded by seeing the
two lights flit away, right and left handed, according to plan.  In
spite of this check he had averaged a little under thirty-eight miles
an hour.

Smith said phlegmatically: "He's less than three quarters of a mile
ahead."  This startled Buller, for he had seen no lights.  The
chauffeur pointed them out and Buller trod on the gas.

Smith said: "He's going at a good lick.  He must have been going slow
before, for us to have caught up on him like this.  He must have seen
us."

Buller said nothing, but drove.  Their bore of light seemed to tunnel
through chaos, creating and abandoning its tiny universe in the same
moment of time.  The tunnel world of leaning trees and telegraph poles
hurtled or poured towards them, snuffing itself out behind their backs
in instantaneous night.  The strip of road streamed under them, a
resistless river of speed between the deep gorges of the dark.

The fork roads at Sutton Coldfield were blind.  The Bentley reached
them sixty seconds in advance of Buller, and almost smashed into a car
coming from Birmingham.  The Birmingham car went on, right handed,
towards Tamworth, and the lights of the Bentley suddenly disappeared.
Buller arrived a moment afterwards, in time to see the red light of the
car from Birmingham vanishing up the road.

Smith said: "He's doubled back for Tamworth," and Buller brought the
car round as quickly as he could, but it was a sharp corner and he lost
time.  He drove hell-for-leather, saying: "With luck we might catch him
between two fires.  If Wilder has discovered he didn't go through
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, he'll most likely have turned south, to try and
strike our line again.  In that case he'll be coming through Tamworth,
towards us, on this road."

This was exactly what had happened.  Wilder had found a constable
outside Ashby, who fell for his story about the average-speed test, and
told him that no car had been along that road in the last forty minutes.

At five minutes to four Buller saw Wilder's light coming towards him,
on the far side of the car he was chasing.  The latter was only a
couple of hundred yards ahead.

Buller signalled by switching his headlights on and off, rapidly,
without decreasing speed.  Wilder replied in the same way.  As the two
opposite courses converged, the quarry in the middle became brightly
illuminated.  It was a harmless Sunbeam, bringing back its slightly
drunken owner at top speed from a dance near Birmingham.  The latter
was to give up champagne for quite a week, because he said that it made
headlights look as if they were doing the morse code afterwards.

Wilder and Buller drew up on opposite sides of the road and held a
hurried conference.

Buller said: "I chased him to Sutton Coldfield for sure.  Nothing but
the Bentley could have kept up the speed of our last mile.  Then he
must have switched off his lights and gone on to Birmingham, whilst I
followed the only lights visible--this other car.  We'd best make for
Birmingham as quick as possible.  It may not be too late."

"There's a choice of three roads after Birmingham," said Wilder, "and
we shan't catch him before."

Buller thought quickly.

"Look," he said, "will you 'phone from Birmingham to Pemberley with a
message for Charles in case he has the sense to ring up?  He's
north-west of this road somewhere.  Leave a message for him to bear
south and explore the Birmingham-Wolverhampton road.  We shall just
have to leave that one to chance and hope for the best.  Then, if
you'll go on towards Worcester, I'll bear south-east for Warwick.
Report whenever possible to Pemberley by 'phone.  Is there anything
else?"

"No.  That's O.K.  Good luck."

Buller turned his car in a fever of impatience, but Wilder was almost
out of sight before he could get away.

      *      *      *      *      *

Mauleverer saw Buller's car slew left on the track of the red herring
from Birmingham, and smiled faintly.  He decelerated to thirty and
drove on comfortably, smiling and smiling.

      *      *      *      *      *

Wilder leapt out of his Daimler in Birmingham, and threw himself on a
telephone box.  He got through, much to his surprise, very quickly, and
left the message with Mrs. Smith.  She appeared to have been up and
waiting.

"Hullo, is that you, Mrs. Smith?  Good.  Will you take this message
very carefully.  It is for Sir Charles, in case he rings up.  Will Sir
Charles kindly bear south and comb the Birmingham-Wolverhampton or
Birmingham-Shrewsbury roads?  Tell him the time of the message.  Thank
you."

He hung up the receiver and ran across the road to the car.  He had
seen Buller roar past in the Chrysler as he stood in the box.

Wilder's average from Birmingham to Ombersley was good, for he arrived
there at 4.51, and caught a market gardener's lorry making for
Birmingham.  He stopped it, repeating the story of the bet as quickly
as possible.

The driver of the lorry was a young man who personally owned a motor
bicycle, and knew about cars.  Yes, he had seen the Bentley not ten
minutes ago.  In fact it had stopped and the driver had asked him the
way to Tewkesbury.

Wilder was doubly fortunate at Ombersley, for there was a telephone box
as well.  He got through to Pemberley.

"Yes, this is Dr. Wilder.  Has Sir Charles rung up?  No?  Well, here's
another message--for Mr. Buller, this time.  Don't muddle them.  Tell
Mr. Buller that the Bentley has certainly taken the Worcester road and
that I am going on to Tewkesbury.  Tell Mr. Buller to come back
westwards.  Have you got that?  Right."

Wilder drove for Worcester as fast as he could go, but in an unhappy
frame of mind.  Mauleverer was a cunning devil, and had almost
certainly stopped that lorry on purpose.  The hint that he was going to
Tewkesbury was valueless.  But it was impossible to weigh up how far he
would work the double-cross.  He would probably guess that his pursuer
was sensible enough to see that the question about Tewkesbury might be
a blind.  He might carry this further and conclude that his pursuer,
guessing so far, would decide to take the Malvern road instead of the
Tewkesbury one.  In this case he would go to Tewkesbury just as he had
said.  But he might carry it further still, and expect the pursuer to
follow the argument even as far as that.  Then he would go to Malvern.
Eventually it became merely a matter of chance again.

Wilder reached Worcester at two minutes past five, and the sky was
already lightening.

In Worcester he had an idea and tried westwards towards Leominster, in
case Mauleverer had meant neither Tewkesbury nor Malvern.  In a couple
of minutes, however, a new thought struck him.  He remembered the
strategy of flight as laid down in the Universities.  When pursued by a
proctor with his bulldogs (that is, by more than one person) the
undergraduate is recommended to fly as nearly as possible in a straight
line.  Then his speed may help him.  If he dodges to left or right he
is wasting his forward lead, for the bulldogs are said to be trained to
run on parallel courses on either side of the line of flight.  By
doubling sideways he may simply run into the arms of a pursuer who has
been running forward all the time, on a side course.  Much the same
thing was happening with the present chase--Sir Charles was west of the
line and Buller east--and Mauleverer probably realised it.  He would be
likely to keep straight on.

So Wilder turned back, and was making for Tewkesbury five minutes
later.  The complicated red and green traffic lights of Worcester had
received short shrift, even when they stood at CAUTION.

      *      *      *      *      *

Buller reached Warwick at five minutes to five and telephoned to
Pemberley.  He received Wilder's message and decided to take the
Oxford-Worcester road.  He was in a tearing bad temper, now that he was
definitely off the trail and Wilder on it, and drove like a demon for
Chipping Norton.  He averaged fifty miles an hour exactly, and turned
west.

      *      *      *      *      *

Wilder reached Tewkesbury at 5.40, in broad daylight, and found a
belated milkman who could swear positively that no private car of any
sort had passed through in the last hour.  The milkman also directed
him to a telephone, and he got through to Pemberley, after much delay,
for the third time.

"This is Dr. Wilder again.  Another message for Mr. Buller.  Yes, Mr.
Buller.  Will you tell him that the Bentley has not gone through
Tewkesbury but perhaps through Malvern and is probably making for Ross.
Yes.  R.  O.  S.  S.  I am going through Ledbury.  Mr. Buller had
better make for Ross through Gloucester.  Yes.  Will you repeat it?
Right.  Has Sir Charles rung up?  If he does you must tell him we're
somewhere round Ross.  The other message is no good by now."

Five miles out of Ledbury Wilder had a puncture.  He leapt out of the
car, cursing like a maniac, and began to change wheels.  As he had no
notion where the tools were kept and was not accustomed to Daimlers,
besides having had no breakfast and very little sleep, his time of
eight minutes was brilliant.

He reached Ledbury at 6.8, and turned south for Ross.

      *      *      *      *      *

Buller made bad time from Chipping Norton to Broadway, and 'phoned from
there at six o'clock.  He received Wilder's message from Tewkesbury and
made straight across to Gloucester, through the most beautiful country
in England.  But the country was beautiful in vain, for by now Buller
was nearly mad.  He was miles and miles from the line and every minute
might be taking the field further away from him.

He reached Gloucester at half past six, having averaged fifty-two miles
an hour on roads which were no longer deserted.  He was surprised to
find that the muscles of his jaw had set so tightly that it required a
mental effort to unclench his teeth.

Meanwhile Wilder had reached Ross at twenty-eight minutes past six and
had 'phoned to Pemberley.  Buller got on to Pemberley within two
minutes of the message, and received it from Mrs. Smith.  "Yes," she
said, "another message from Dr. Wilder, sir.  'E says that the Bentley
'as gone to Ross for certain, for 'e's spoken to a garage there where
it filled up about 'alf an 'our ago.  'E can't find which way it's gone
since Ross and is making south for Monmouth.  'E said as 'ow, if you
was coming in on the Gloucester road, and 'ad seen nothing there, you
might cut across, sir, on the Abergavenny road, and try there."

When Buller got back to the car Smith was sitting in the driver's seat.
As he had been driving for three and a half hours he made no comment.

"Ross," he said, "and then Abergavenny."

For the last two hours their conversation had been in monosyllables.

They reached Ross at ten to seven and cut straight across without
stopping.

Buller said: "Our scent's cold, but it's surprising that we've kept it
so long.  We can't keep it much longer in daylight.  Now that there are
other cars on the road we shall be lucky to get news of the Bentley.  I
wonder what luck Wilder's had towards Monmouth?  If we don't do
something in the next hour we shan't do anything at all."

Smith said: "Well, he wasn't on the Gloucester road, sir, and Monmouth
and Abergavenny are the only other main roads.  We've got a car on
each, sir.  I don't think the chances are bad.  The only other things
he can have done would be to take some side turning and cut across
country--or he may have doubled back to Hereford."

"Unless he keeps to the main roads," Buller said, biting into his
pipe-stem, "it's a needle in a haystack.  I can't think why he's kept
to them so far."

They reached Abergavenny at 7.20 and spent ten minutes in fruitless and
hurried enquiry.  Buller was getting desperate when the chauffeur
suggested ringing up Pemberley.

Mrs. Smith's news was to be as bad as it could be.

"Dr. Wilder's rung up, sir," she announced, "and Sir Charles.  Sir
Charles has given me a number and is waiting to speak to you.  I've
given 'im Dr. Wilder's last message, sir, so if you care to talk to Sir
Charles 'imself no doubt 'e could give it you in the course of your
talk."

She gave the number--in Ludlow--and Buller got through.

Charles's voice came distantly, mechanised and apologetic.

"I say, Buller," it said, "I'm sorry I didn't think to ring up before.
This has been an awful waste of time.  No, of course I ought to have
thought of it.  Yes, I'll tell you at once.  He's come to an absolute
check in Monmouth.  No, nobody seen the car at all.  Yes, he did leave
a message.  He says he's coming back to Ross and then on to Hereford.
He says the Bentley may have broken back that way.  He was hoping that
you'd find at Abergavenny, but he thought best to stop the earth at
Hereford in case you didn't.  No, I realise that you haven't.  No, he
didn't say anything else.  Well, I'm at Ludlow.  I've been through
Newcastle-under-Lyme and Shrewsbury.  I didn't know what to do.  Yes,
sickening.  Yes.  Well I thought I might cut down to Hereford in the
hopes.  You see, he _may_ have cut back towards Hereford, and there's
nothing else we can do.  That is if Gloucester, Monmouth and
Abergavenny are blank as you say.  Yes, of course if he's cut off on a
bye-road we're done.  There seems nothing else for it.  Right-oh.  Then
we'll meet at Hereford.  Let's say the post office."

Buller went back to the car.

"Dr. Wilder's drawn blank at Monmouth," he said, "and it's no good
here.  Nobody seems to have seen him.  The only hope is that he's
doubled back towards Hereford, and Wilder's following him there.  The
swine must have an hour's start besides the distance, if that's the
case.  Actually, it's much more likely that he's taken some side
turning and given us the slip altogether.  But we might as well try all
the possibilities before we give it up.  At least we're certain that he
was at Ross somewhere about six o'clock."

Smith asked: "Where do we go next, sir?"

"There isn't anything we can do here, so we might as well make for
Hereford too.  We ought to get there twenty minutes or half an hour
after Dr. Wilder.  And the Bentley may be round about there.  We might
be useful.  Sir Charles is making for Hereford also."

"There's a second-class road according to the map," said Smith, "from
here to Hereford, through Pontrilas."

"Take it."

At the tiny village of Llanvihangel Crucorney, Buller said: "This is
wild country.  He might well have been making for Wales."

Smith said: "We might stop at Pandy, sir, to buy a bit of chocolate and
cup of coffee.  If we're lucky enough to keep this chase going we might
be glad of it."

In the small grocer's at Pandy, where Buller was making his purchase,
it suddenly occurred to him that there would be no harm, at any rate,
in enquiring after the Bentley on the off chance.  They were only
twelve miles from Hereford, and about the same distance from Ross.
Mauleverer had disappeared at Ross, so he might be anywhere.  He asked,
casually, as the old lady handed him his change.

"Why, yes," said the old lady, "there was a gentleman in not an hour
ago, buying chocolate just the same as you.  In one of them long open
motor cars.  Black it was, I think."

Buller asked, in a voice which he was scarcely able to control, what
the gentleman looked like?

A medium-sized gentleman, she thought, just the ordinary sort of
gentleman.

Was he clean shaven?  Yes, so far as she could remember he was clean
shaven.  Not very well shaved, perhaps.  Had he glasses?  Yes--here she
was definite--he had horn-rimmed ones.  And, now she remembered it, he
was very dirty.  Buller raced out of the shop, checked himself on the
step and demanded:

"Which way did he go?"

"He asked the way to Longtown, to be sure," said the old lady.

      *      *      *      *      *

Buller found the village post office and rang up Pemberley.  "Tell
either of them," he said, "that the Bentley was seen at Pandy an hour
ago.  He asked the way to Longtown, which is on a small road leading to
Hay."  He slammed down the receiver almost before Mrs. Smith could open
her mouth, and picked it up again at once.  He asked for the post
office at Hereford.

"Now could you be an angel," he said flirtatiously, "and give a message
to two friends of mine if they happen to enquire?  You might see them
waiting outside, in a Daimler and a Studebaker.  I was to meet them at
the post office.  Could you tell them that Mr. Buller's had a breakdown
near Pandy, and can't come?  Tell them to come here, or better still,
to ring up Pemberley."

He waited to see that the girl had got it right, and to ensure that she
would remember to give the message by making himself pleasant to her.
Then he scrambled into the car and they spun round the side turning
towards Longtown.

      *      *      *      *      *

When they had covered eight miles on a sad road, and passed Longtown
without seeing anything, Smith remarked:

"Lonely bit of country this, sir."

Buller had been studying the map.

"There's not a village," he said, "between Longtown and Hay--or not
that you could speak of.  Certainly not a church, anyway.  That's
getting on for nine miles."

"All them mountains," remarked Smith, jerking a thumb towards Twyn Du.
"It's pretty, I daresay, but what a country for dark deeds."

Buller said: "You're romantic, Smith.  They're called the Black
Mountains, certainly, but I don't think you'll get many dark deeds in
Wales.  Not beyond lechery, swindling, and toll gates at every turn."

Smith opened his mouth to make some defence of a possibly maligned
people, but he got no further.

The gallant Chrysler groaned inwardly, made a grinding noise with its
wheels, and lurched clumsily to rest.

Smith said: "Puncture," and got out to look.  Then he added: "All
four," and began to walk back along the road.  Buller joined him, and
they stood together, looking down at what must have been quite half a
crown's worth of excellent nails.




CHAPTER XVII

Buller said: "That's dished it."

Smith added, unnecessarily: "It's a put up job, of course."

"Yes.  It's the sort of thing an urchin would do in this god-forsaken
country.  But this time it's not an urchin."

"I suppose there's nothing else but to try and mend them?  They'll be
shot to pieces, but it might be possible."

"I think you'd better," said Buller.  "As far as I can see this is the
end of the chase, and it's now merely a question of getting the car
home.  We must be seven miles at least from the nearest garage.  In the
meantime I'm going to walk back towards Longtown.  The others should be
following and we may be able to do something about it.  He had an
hour's start to begin with, but still..."

Buller thought for a moment, then added: "No, I'm afraid it's hopeless.
I'll stay and help with the tyres.  If we hear the cars coming one of
us will have to run back and warn them."

"Or preferably," added Buller, in a final afterthought, "sweep the
road."

Whilst they were working, Buller soliloquised.  "God," he said, "he
chose a marvellous place to maroon us in!  Now why did he want to
maroon us?  Obviously he's just led us here, by the noses, like little
pigs.  If he'd wanted to he could have slipped off at any small turning
and lost us at once.  And on top of that he had the fastest car and ten
minutes start.  He must have waited for us, almost, every time we lost
the scent, and left little hints all the way.  He can't have been
averaging more than thirty, except in that sprint from Lichfield to
Sutton Coldfield, or he'd have been here hours ago.  That's it.
Whenever we were hot on the trail he pushed her along, and when we were
lost he waited for us.  Now why?"

"Would you think, sir," Smith suggested, banging at an obdurate tyre,
"that he wanted to entice us away from Pemberley?"

"That's it, of course.  I suppose he thought I should come away alone,
or with Dr. Wilder, leaving Sir Charles unguarded.  Then he hoped to
finish him off."

After some time Buller added: "Though why he should expect us to come,
and not Sir Charles, is more than I can fathom."

"Perhaps he thought it was worth chancing, sir, just to see what
happened.  And as far as he can know, sir, it's what has happened.  Sir
Charles hasn't been with us since Burton-upon-Trent.

"Don't you think, sir, as how he's probably now making back for
Pemberley as fast as that Bentley can run?"

"My gosh!  You're right as usual, Smith.  When he saw us at Lichfield
there was only one car following him.  He'll think that Sir Charles is
still at Pemberley, and now's his chance!"

"Except," said Smith, "that he wouldn't know who was in the car
following.  For all he knows it may be Sir Charles that's chasing him
and us that's staying at home."

This was a poser.

"Actually," said Buller, "he may have hung about in Ross to see us go
by.  Then, whilst Wilder was off to Monmouth and we were trying
Abergavenny, he slipped up here through Bagwy Mydiart and Pontrilas.
He'd know then that Sir Charles wasn't in the hunt."

They banged the wheel in unison and then Buller remarked:

"I think you're right after all, Smith.  He wasn't trying to get Sir
Charles left alone.  This is what happened.  He had Miss Elizabeth on
his hands, and he wanted to get her away.  The best place to hide her
was somewhere here in Wales.  Out of pride, and to humiliate us--that's
typical--he's lead us right out into the wilds as far as he can afford
to let us come.  Then he's cut us off like a lot of babies.  Miss
Elizabeth will be somewhere out here, in some filthy little cottage of
his, where she'll never be found.  There's the Mynydd Eppynt or the
Forest Fawr--a hundred thousand places where we'll never get at her
without ten miles of beaters."

Smith said: "There's ports in Wales, too, sir.  What price Cardiff?"

Buller suddenly sat down on the tyre and, in a curiously strangled
voice, made the time-honoured protestation.

"Smith," he said, "what does he want with her?  What is he going to do
to her?  What's he done to her?  God, if that so-and-so's hurt a fibre
of her body I'll wring his bloody neck till his head comes off."

      *      *      *      *      *

The job was easier than it had threatened to be.  By the time that the
two following cars roared over the hill-brow from Longtown it was
finished.

Charles and Wilder got out stiffly, and walked over.  They heard the
news in silence.

Charles asked: "What do we do now?"

Buller replied: "I don't know what we can do.  It's no good carrying on
with this chase any further.  He might be eighty miles away by now.
There's nothing to do at all, except, I suppose, to go back to
Pemberley."

"But he must be somewhere about here.  He wouldn't have come here
otherwise.  What's the sense of going back again?"

"I admit that he's probably within an eighty-mile radius, but even
that's not certain.  He may have led us here in order to double back
himself, by train perhaps, in exactly the opposite direction.
Elizabeth may be gracing a wild-fowler's hut on the Wash by this
evening.  We just don't know why he's brought us here or where he is.
There's nothing to do, so we might as well go home."

"But we can't _give up_?"

"Not finally.  But we must for the moment.  Sooner or later we shall
hear from the police that the Bentley has been found abandoned in the
Mynydd Nallaen or left in a car park at Swansea or something of that
sort.  They'll identify it by the registration number.  You'll write
back and say: Thank you very much, I left it there by mistake.  You'll
have to pay the fine.  When we know where it was left we may be able to
get something by making enquiries in the district.  On the other hand,
probably we won't."

Buller looked dejected and added slowly: "But the main hope is this.
Mauleverer must have kidnapped Elizabeth for a purpose.  If he'd done
it merely out of spite against you it isn't likely that he'd have gone
to the trouble of kidnapping her.  He'd have murdered her and saved a
lot of bother."

The voice faltered.  "He's a devil," he concluded, "and of course he
_may_ have kidnapped her in the realisation that the uncertainty would
be almost worse than finding her dead.  He may," and here Buller spoke
with an unnatural precision which deceived nobody, "he _may_ have
killed her and hidden her to prolong the agony.  But what we must hope
for is that he's taken her as a hostage.  He hasn't been able to get at
you, Charles, in the past few days.  So he may intend to deliver some
sort of ultimatum."

"You mean that he'll ring us up or send us a note saying that unless I
go to a certain spot alone at a certain time Elizabeth will be done in?"

"Something of that sort," said Buller.  "And in that case we shall have
a hint of his whereabouts at any rate.  We may be able to think
something up by then."

"Which all points," Wilder summed up, "to our getting back to Pemberley
as quickly as possible, so that we can be available to his telephone
message and to the police notification about the finding of the car."

      *      *      *      *      *

At Pemberley they had a late luncheon and Buller spent the afternoon in
the garden.  He walked restlessly about the tennis courts, sat down on
garden seats, and got up again almost before he had crossed his legs.
The wildfowl on the lake retreated to the further shore as he
approached them, and had no sooner ventured out when he approached
again.  He smoked pipes in an endless succession, filling and lighting
them nervously, with jerky movements of his hands, and relighting them
absently as they went out.

At teatime he came in with a determined air and took Wilder by the
second button of his coat.

"Look here," he said.  "We can't let this go on.  We must notify the
police and get a wide net out at once."  He looked at Wilder anxiously.

"I've thought about all that," he continued, before the surgeon could
reply.  "Even if there are enquiries and an awkward situation about
Kingdom I can take the responsibility.  If they don't believe in
Mauleverer--as I'm afraid they can't--we ought to be able to work out a
story which holds water.  I don't mind saying that I killed Kingdom
myself.  In half an hour we could get everybody word perfect to back up
my confession----"

Wilder broke in good-humouredly.

"You forget," he said, "that my burial certificate is already out.
Have I got to be hanged as an accessory?"

Secretly Buller had hoped that he might offer to be.

"Well----" he said.

Wilder dashed his hopes to the ground.

"I don't want to be hanged at all."

"Listen," he added, and took Buller's arm.  "You're upset about this,
old man, and I don't blame you.  Everybody's noticed you and Elizabeth.
But you mustn't let yourself get rushed by your feelings.  If we get
the police in now we're all in a criminal position.  Everybody's in it.
It isn't only you or I.  It's Charles and the servants and even more or
less unconnected people like Edgeworth and Hankey.  There isn't a hope
for your concocted confession.  For one thing nobody would back you up.
If anything's going to be told we'll tell the truth.  And then, on top
of that, all your arguments against police protection are still
operative, and, finally, the police may not be able to do any more good
than we can."

He paused for emphasis and then continued:

"If we must get the police in we can do it to-morrow.  By then we may
have received Mauleverer's ultimatum.  We must give the present
situation a chance of development.  It may turn out, when we hear from
Mauleverer--as we're bound to--that we can do without the police after
all.  We may be able to ambush him whilst he's ambushing Charles at
whatever rendezvous he appoints."

Buller said: "But it may be too late by to-morrow."

"Now, be sensible.  If it's going to be too late by to-morrow, it's too
late to-day.  If Mauleverer meant to kill Elizabeth, since we must face
it, he'd have killed her already: and if he has killed her, it's no
good running our heads into nooses simply for the satisfaction of
finding her body a little sooner.  You're off your head with worry, old
man, and I don't blame you.  But you mustn't be rushed into hasty
action on that account.  If Elizabeth's dead, wouldn't you rather make
him pay for it yourself?  And if she's alive, you'll save her best by
giving the enemy time to reveal his position."

"But think what he may be doing to her now."

"Bosh.  Elizabeth's able to look after herself.  You're jealous.  Come
and have tea, and don't be a fool.  I tell you what.  If we don't hear
from Mauleverer in the next two days I'll back you up in any confession
you like to concoct and we'll swing together."

With this concession Buller had perforce to be content.

The subject was not re-opened at tea or dinner, and the household went
to bed in sad disquiet.

      *      *      *      *      *

Buller lay in bed.  He was far too tired to sleep, had forgotten almost
how to.  His brain was swinging in his head, whilst the imagined roads
of last night's chase swung to left and right before his smarting eyes.
He was driving a car, endlessly, at impossible speeds, along roads
which forked and turned in every direction.  The crossroads leapt at
him, filled with approaching cars, and reeled backwards menacingly, to
be succeeded immediately by equal dangers.

Buller decided that he would soon be mad.  In all the cars Elizabeth
was huddled, her face pale, her red lips bloodless.  She sagged beside
the maniac at the wheel, impotent, enigmatic, possibly dead.

Buller wrenched his mind from the nightmare, laid his body straight out
on the bed.  He tried to relax his muscles, to lie quietly, to think
visually instead of problematically.  If only he could apply his mind
to some subject of the eye alone, to the recollection of a view or the
design of a picture, he might be able to sleep.  And sleep he must, if
he were to help Elizabeth to-morrow.

With the repetition of the name her whole body and action solidified
before him, a compost of a thousand words and gestures, so that he
writhed in the bed and started up, cursing.

He must do something.  He must think.  He must review his strategy, or
anything, rather than be haunted by that image, in lovely flesh and
undecided danger.

First of all, he had been a fool not to insist that somebody should
sleep with Charles wherever Mauleverer might be.  This was the third
night that Charles had slept alone.  It had all been inaugurated by the
necessity of watching the bolt-holes on that fatal night when Kingdom
had been butchered.  But on the two succeeding nights he had seen to it
himself that Charles kept up a fire.  To-night he had been too worried,
and if he understood Charles the latter would have been too forgetful.
It was a warm night, for the spring had come at last, and Charles would
probably have decided against a fire even if he had remembered it.

Buller got out of bed creakingly, put a hand to his forehead in a
gesture of utter weariness, and shuffled with his slippers.  He
struggled into an ancient coat and padded off along the passage.

Charles's door was not locked or bolted.  The day's confusion had
broken down all precautions.  Buller swayed slightly in exhausted
annoyance and opened the door.

The light was on.  Charles was lying motionless on his back.  At the
foot of the bed, leaving him like a surprised and reluctant vampire, a
black figure writhed already towards the fireplace.  It was clad from
head to foot in black: in a black high-necked sweater, long black
stockings, and black drawers.  The feet were in black beach-shoes, the
head in a black mask with mica goggles and a nozzle.  The hands were in
white kid gloves.

Even as Buller sprang forward the figure melted into the great
fireplace, the thin black legs jerked for a moment in an upward leap.
It had moved across the pile carpet as soundlessly as death itself, and
vanished like the shade.




CHAPTER XVIII

Buller was across the room in two strides, and stared down at Charles
for a divided second.  The man's eyes were open and he appeared to be
breathing.  Buller seized his wrist and felt for a pulse.  He found it.
He did not wait to undo the buttons of the pyjama jacket, but tore it
open, sending the buttons flicking across the room to fall soundlessly
on the carpet.  There was no visible wound.

Buller acted callously, but his mind was racing to a new idea.  He felt
in Charles's pockets on the chair and snatched his revolver.  Then,
turning in the same movement from the bed, he was across the room and
peering up the chimney.

The fire had never been lighted, as he feared.  Within the stretch of
his arms was a blackened ledge.  He rammed the revolver in the pocket
of his coat and jumped.

The sooty brickwork crumbled and cut painfully into his hands.  His
knees barked against the uneven ridges of the mortar, tearing his
trousers as he jerked spasmodically for a hold.  He had forgotten his
weariness now and was ready for all comers.

He gained the ledge, finding it was a horizontal platform which led
back to a sheer drop.  Evidently the chimney of Charles's room came
into the main vent at a right-angled bend over this platform.

He moved forward, stooping cautiously in the pitch darkness, through
the oily smell of soot, until his hands touched the corner bricks where
the flue of the side passage entered the vertical shaft.  Here he
paused, carefully yet quickly feeling the surface all round.

He knew that there was a vertical drop before him, right down to the
fireplace of the main dining-room.  He was not sure of the breadth of
this shaft and dared not trust himself forward into the void.

If it were narrow enough he could support himself, and work himself
upwards with his back against one side and his feet against the other,
like a mountain climber in a fissure.  He tried to guess its breadth by
picturing the dining-room fireplace, but he could not remember, and the
breadth of the chimney might alter between that point and this.  All
this time Mauleverer was presumably making his escape.

Buller sat down and reached out across the shaft with his feet, hoping
to touch the other side.

He touched nothing.

He rose to his full height and did the bravest thing he had ever done.
He did it without the faintest doubts and was not afterwards able to
see that it required any courage.  In fact, it probably did not, for it
was a means to reach Elizabeth.  He would have leapt off the Eiffel
Tower for that object, without qualms, for the object dimmed any
consideration of possible consequences.

Buller slowly launched his body forward into the empty well of night,
throwing his hands in front of him as if he were diving.  For a
terrible second there was nothing, and then they rasped against the
brickwork.  His shoulders reached the opposite side.  He slipped down a
couple of feet and righted himself.  The main shaft was narrow enough
to work himself upwards.

Buller began to wriggle furiously, gaining six inches at a time.  He
worked as nearly as possible in silence, quelling his laboured
breathing with an effort, though the soot and smoky reminder of last
night's fires left him gasping for breath.

He had covered a few feet, carrying his revolver pocket in his
straining lap to prevent it banging against the walls, when his hand
touched hemp.  A rope dangled down the main flue beside his elbow.

He tested it softly, trusting only a small part of his weight to it at
a time.  It held.

Buller began to work himself upwards more quickly, hand over hand, but
still keeping his back to one wall and his feet to the other.  He
passed an opening in the chimney where a side flue came in from one of
the bedrooms.

After a few more yards his head struck an overhanging ledge, where the
chimney narrowed, apparently to admit the large sloping shaft from the
morning-room.

He had to abandon his horizontal pressure of leg and back in order to
negotiate this, and was trusting himself entirely to the rope when the
rope gave.

The man above him must have severed it at the critical moment, as if he
could see in the dark.  But Buller had one arm over the ledge, and
clung there, kicking with his feet against vacancy whilst the rope
rattled past him.  A coil flicked against him, almost dislodging his
precarious hold.  He kicked himself into safety, his jaw set in
determination: even in grim relief.  At least he knew that the man was
there.

He sat on the ledge panting silently, trying to still the thunder of
his heart so that he could listen.  He remained absolutely motionless
till he could hear the soft sifting of the falling soot.  He wondered
if Mauleverer would believe that he had fallen.  There was the faintest
hope that he might, if he gave no sound, although the body would
presumably have raised a great clatter as it crashed into the
dining-room fireplace.  He tried to imagine the sound that a body would
throw up a forty-foot shaft by striking the bottom of it.  The rope had
given a sweeping thump.  Would that be enough?

Buller sat perfectly still for nearly five minutes, straining his ears
in the darkness, differentiating with anxious attention between the
small sounds of night.

He could be sure of nothing.  The darkness itself seemed to have a
sound: the welling void sound, almost, of a seashell lifted to the ear.
It oppressed and engulfed him, weighing him down into the abyss.

Buller secretly and patiently stretched out his legs to reassume the
upward tussle.  He moved now with infinite caution, slowly winning his
progress, inch by inch, as silently as a bat.

A new flue gave him some difficulty, and he paused beside it, listening
intently.  He must not pass his enemy and let him take him in the rear.

He stayed beside it until he had picked out the crepitation of every
brick and could swear nobody was breathing, no heart beating except his
own.  Then he crawled upwards into the night.

He kept his head back, peering intently at the faint square of
starlight above him.  The morning-room ledge had blotted it out before,
but now he could distinguish the faded heaven, pricked into being by
two stars, unnaturally bright.  If anybody should move across that
background he would fire.  The revolver weighed heavily on his thighs.

After an eternity of motion, when his heart would burst, Buller reached
another shaft which sloped in at a gentle angle from a bedroom in a
higher storey.  The last storey before the dormers of the attic.

He paused here, as before, and waited for his pulses to allow the
silence.  There was no silence.  There was breathing within an arm's
length of his ear.

      *      *      *      *      *

Buller remained motionless, holding his breath to make sure that it was
not his own.  The breathing seemed to stop.  Almost certain that it was
an echo, he breathed again: the echo seemed to start before him.  He
took a deep respiration, the other breath seeming to inspire at the
same moment, and held it as long as possible.  But he was short of
breath from his exertions and had to let it out.  In the middle of the
expiration his ear seemed to catch the outlet of the other.

Buller made a great effort and prolonged his breath, listening
intently.  Within reach of his hand a different person quite separately
inhaled.

He drew the revolver from his pocket and weighed it in his hand,
altering his position so that his shoulder was against the bricks and
his head inclined over it towards the opening of the flue.  It would be
a simple matter to thrust the revolver sideways into that dark lair and
with one percussion end the breaths for ever.  But a wild guess
restrained him.  He slewed round slowly, so that his back was against
the adjacent wall of the chimney and the opening of the shaft lay on
his right hand.  Then, holding his revolver pointed in his left, he
softly stretched his right arm into the gap.

His hand touched soot, gently grated on the rough surface of bricks,
then descended full on a warm face.

Buller started perceptibly, but the face remained without movement.
His hand slipped up and felt the hair.  It was fine--and soft--and long.

He slipped the revolver back into his pocket and wriggled sideways like
an eel, climbing into the side shaft feet foremost till his body lay
side by side with the silent body, and his hands were fluttering over
it in a fever of impatience.

Elizabeth was lying on her back, breathing regularly and deeply.  He
felt her all over with a sort of shamefaced tenderness and anxiety.
There were no cords or bonds of any sort to account for her stillness.
She was alive, loose and apparently insensible.

Buller, with an ungovernable impulse, and under the supposition that
she would never know about it in any case, laid his head beside hers
with an audible sigh of gratitude and kissed her nestling ear.

From that moment he became insane.  Fortunately he had no matches or he
would have struck one to make sure.  He felt her face with trembling
fingers, like a blind man reading in Braille, straining his mind to
recollect her profile as it would appear to the sense of touch.  He
convinced himself that it was she.

He felt and kissed her cold hands, whispering in her ear an incoherent
message of encouragement.

Then bumping his head sharply against the ceiling of the shaft, he
turned over on hands and knees and crawled for the main chimney.

He grinned in the darkness with savage triumph and determination.  He
was ready and bursting to pay off all scores with Mauleverer in a
single blow.  He drew his revolver and crawled with it in his right
hand, cocking it as he went.  The hammer came back with a vicious snap
which spilled the darkness.  He reached the main shaft and stretched
out his left hand, feeling against the wall for a purchase.

His hand fell on warm cotton, which moved.  He swung his revolver round
as a strange hand fell on his shoulder, tilting him forward into the
well of the chimney.

The life preserver wrapped itself round the base of his skull with an
almost silent thud, and he felt himself pitching forward into the
tunnel of night.

      *      *      *      *      *

Mauleverer caught him as he lurched on the brink, and thrust him back
into the hole.  From far below came the clatter of the revolver, as it
struck the fender of the dining-room.

The startled house resumed its silence instantly, like a surprised
guest who has laughed at the wrong joke, and Mauleverer began to move
with the unseen agility of a spider.

He had been propped sideways in the chimney, supporting his weight
between legs and back, waiting for Buller to emerge.  Now he quickly
scrambled round and sidled feet first into the same flue which
contained the two bodies.  But he slipped out again in a moment, and
made a quick upward journey, to return almost at once.  The journey was
repeated and followed by another in the opposite direction, downwards,
to the dining-room fireplace.

In these hurried activities, more than ever in the darkness, he was the
gloating and eager spider: running to and fro along its web,
strengthening the meshes, binding in a gleeful haste the captured
trophies in an increasing filament.

As he slid into the sloping flue again for the last time, the darkness
of Pemberley was animated by a trilling chuckle.




CHAPTER XIX

Buller's head felt as if it would cave inwards under the tight hoop of
pain which banded it.  He opened his eyes in the darkness, wondering if
he were dead, and smelt the stink of soot without reflecting on the
corollary of hell fire.  He moved his shoulders experimentally and
grunted as the pang stabbed at his skull.

He could do no more than grunt, he discovered, for a gag drew the flesh
of his cheeks cruelly backwards.  He could do no more than move his
shoulders, for his feet were bound together with the ankles crossed;
and his hands were tied behind him.  His fingers throbbed and his toes
ached, but the pain in his head was enough to make him sick.

At his second groan a soft voice fanned the darkness by his ear.  It
was a low voice, modulated to an exaggerated music.

"Inspector Buller," it said, "my dear Inspector Buller.  Are you
conscious, are you in great pain?"

It paused for an answer, and then:

"But of course you can't speak.  That cruel gag.  I must really, really
apologise for all this suffering.  Really, it is against my nature.  I
suffer for you, Inspector Buller, I assure you I do.  But you thrust it
upon me.  How can I loose you when you carry a revolver to take my
life?  How can I ungag you when you would so impetuously seek to rouse
the household with a yell?"

The question was rhetorical.

"That blow on the head," the voice trickled on, "it cost me a pang to
give it.  I'm sure your head must ache so dreadfully.  And yet it was
calculated with such anxiety.  I said to myself: If I strike too hard I
may crack the skull, I may preclude for an eternal future all
possibility of conversation with my dear friend Inspector Buller.  And
yet, I said, perhaps--and I do so beg of you to excuse the indelicacy
of the remark--perhaps the Inspector's skull is _thick_.  Perhaps the
Inspector--but of course I was only joking--is a bonehead.  I must be
sure to strike him hard enough to be certain of insensibility.  You do
see my dilemma, I feel so sure?  Yours is a forgiving and honest nature
which will overlook an action, a distasteful action, thrust upon me by
the hard necessity of circumstance?"

"But I trifle," added the douce voice, "I plague you with questions
which I know you cannot answer.  Forgive my importunity."

There was a faint sigh in the darkness, and the voice ran on
conversationally:

"I have been looking forward to this quiet chat, Inspector, for a
variety of reasons.  Hearing you talk over my affairs, in the various
rooms of this fine house, so often lately, I have longed to correct
your theories: to put in that word of explanation which will so clear
them up, so relate them to one another in a connected whole.  My
attachment to you, Inspector, has been one of which I daresay you would
never have dreamed.  We murderers have our pride.  Fame for us must be
anonymous--such are the sad rules of society--and yet we seek our fame.
You are the only living being who has been permitted to follow my whole
career.  I had hoped to treasure you as a sort of live repository for
my successes.  Then, when I felt lonely in my achievements, when the
necessary neglect of my trophies by the wide world weighed upon me, I
could think to myself that one man at least was following my career and
appreciating my triumphs.  It was vain of me, I know, but that was my
desire."

Mauleverer sighed again.

"I had hoped for a living chronicler, a sort of inverted Dr. Watson who
could never prove anything against me and who would be actionable for
libel if he tried.  And now circumstances have combined against me--at
least so it seems, at least so I fear--and my living repository must
become a mausoleum.  This is a sad setback to all my hopes.  I shall
have to seek a new disciple and begin all over again.  Perhaps Dr.
Wilder would be eligible."

He considered this idea for some time in silence.

"In the meantime," he continued, "I owe it to you that the whole of my
tactics up to the present should be explained.  I can at least satisfy
myself in this.  I can be sure that you understand everything that has
happened so far.  I shall pour into your brain the full realisation of
every situation up to the present moment, and then, with the casket
full, the safe, I might say, stocked to the last shelf, I insert my
little key and lock it.  I lose the combination and leave the treasure
house, full, perfected, and never to be ransacked.  I often think that
even the dead brain, like a gramophone record without the machine to
play it, retains its impressions in an eternal secrecy."

Buller moved restlessly, conveying to the maniac's mind some feeling of
contempt by this fettered shrug.

Mauleverer continued briskly: "Come now, Mr. Buller, you have always
been rude to me.  Now you must really consent to pay attention.  I
cannot be responsible for your death unless you are a perfect record.
Besides, you ought to be interested."

The voice became angry.

"You have bungled your affairs sufficiently, I should hope, to be
interested in the real course of events.  Don't you think you have
danced on my strings long enough to wish to know how they were pulled?
Now listen to my story.

"When that young fool the baronet downstairs first came to call on me I
was annoyed.  I decided to kill him at once in some manner which could
be attributed to the act of God.  Naturally I thought at once of tiles,
and tiles mean roofs and roofs are best approached by chimneys.  I
looked up Pemberley in a guide to Derbyshire, and was delighted to
find, I must admit by a stroke of luck, that the chimneys here were
highly suitable.  I set about providing myself with an outfit suitable
for chimneys.  Black, of course, so that one would not be noticeable at
night.  And then the other adjuncts.  People who move about in chimneys
are liable to be dirty, and dirty people leave traces.  I brought with
me, to counteract this tendency as much as possible, a plain oil-cloth
cover such as is used to protect tennis racquets from the damp.  In
this receptacle I packed a clean white pair of gloves, white so that I
could see at once when, where, and if they began to be dirty; a change
of light rubber-soled shoes; a _soft_ clothes-brush; and certain
chemical accessories.  Whenever I left a chimney for a room I used to
brush myself in the grate (I was doing that when I sat for some time in
the kitchen grate between your friends Wilder and the chauffeur: the
soft brush was fortunately quite silent), change my shoes and don my
gloves.  I was further assisted in my efforts at cleanliness by the
lucky circumstances that our hostess here had caused the chimneys to be
swept in her spring cleaning before you arrived.  So much for the
oddities of my costume, which I also made as athletic as possible so
that I might have freedom of movement.  I only brought two other
things: a rope and a gas mask.  Let us pause a moment on the latter.
You tried, my dear Inspector, two days ago, to rid yourself of the
brooding genius of Pemberley by using gas.  Cudgel your brains for a
moment and consider whether this was logical.  In me I believe you
recognised a person of some small intelligence, and you believed that I
had taken up residence in your chimneys.  Has it occurred to you that
chimneys are sometimes, I might even say frequently, connected with
smoke?  With the fumes of coal gas at least, and, if coke is used,
possibly of carbon monoxide?  Would it not have seemed likely to you,
if you had given the matter that penetrating consideration which has
always so distinguished your activities, that a wise person who came to
establish himself in a chimney might bring a gas mask?  Your gas attack
was futile from the start.  I had not fled the house or hidden in an
air-locked secret chamber.  It may interest you to know that I slept
through it, on this very ledge.  I have been short of sleep in the past
few days, and the gas was an admirable opportunity.  It ensured that I
should not be disturbed, since you all had to keep outside the house."

Mauleverer rested for a moment.

"I don't claim," he went on, "to have outwitted you by forecasting your
use of gas in advance.  For one thing I hoped you would never realise I
was in the chimneys.  But I do think that you might have given me
credit for the sense to bring a gas mask, simply against the chimney
fumes.  But I must go on with my story.  I arrived here, fully
equipped, on the night of Sir Charles's visit to Cambridge.  This was
quick work, for I had been forced to motor to Wales that day, before I
came back.  I arrived in the early hours of the morning, left my
ordinary clothes in a neat bundle in a culvert outside the grounds, and
found no difficulty in effecting an entrance through the postern door
into the old smoking-room.  I brought my ropes and arranged a neat
system of rapid communication down all four of the main stacks.  Next
morning, as you know, I made my way to the stable roof in a heavy storm
of rain (which, I hope, washed away any small traces of soot that I may
have left) and dropped my tile.  I missed him, but it was not a bad
shot when you reflect on the difficulty of sighting when the mark is
hidden by a gutter and moving as well.  Then, later in the day, I had
the pleasure of listening to your forecast of my probable methods of
execution.  That forecast, as Dr. Wilder so penetratingly remarked, put
me on my mettle and made me decide to adopt none of the methods which
you had mentioned.  I decided on a little preparatory amusement and
indulged myself with those little jokes of the toothbrush, the lipstick
and the skull.  Over the last I was unfortunate.  You must realise by
now, Inspector, that I am not a lucky man.  Remember those fingerprints
on the tone-arm and the coincidence of that young puppy at the window
in Copper Street.  Trials are sent to me so that I may triumph over
them.  In this case the unlucky chance was the light sleeping of Mrs.
Bossom.  She woke at the very moment that I touched her bed with the
skull, and I only had time to nip up the chimney before she was yelling
the house down.  I had no time to open the door.  You will remember
that in each case, prior to that, I had been careful to leave some
entry open so that you would not be forced to conclude that I had
entered from the chimney.  But now, by ill luck, I had positively
forced the chimneys on your attention.

"The next night you attempted to trap me at my drink, and I was
compelled, so much against my will, to give you a warning lesson.  I
was by no means daunted, as you will by now have realised, although the
discovery of my line of communications, forced on you by the accident
of the cook, made you think to keep up a fire in Sir Charles's room.  I
could have reached him fairly easily before, when I was in playful
mood, but now it was impossible without strategy.

"On the next day you tried your amusing gas attack.  Although this made
no difference whatever, in itself, I was quick to realise that you
would institute a thorough search of the chimneys, to find the supposed
body, as soon as it was light enough next day.  I could easily have
slipped away from this search, for you lacked the numbers to guard all
the bolt-holes, but it would have meant taking down my ropes (they were
attached by hooks, I may mention) and much inconvenience.  If I had
fled it would have given me all the trouble of coming back again, and
then by no means with the certainty that Sir Charles's room would be
without a fire.

"And so, my dear Inspector, I had recourse to a little experiment in
psychology.  I reckoned that you would expect me to be gassed or gone,
and it turned out that I had reckoned rightly.  The sweet Miss Darcy,
here, had omitted to light her fire.  It was a warm night--rosy cheeked
spring, you know, is here--and I suppose she was feeling stuffy.  I had
no difficulty in entering her room and treating her with an innocuous
drug.  You will have noticed that she lies limp and apparently
unconscious.  But she is not unconscious.  She is enjoying our
conversation just as much as you are.  My little drug is a first cousin
to stovaine, and much more easy to administer since it can be injected
into the blood-stream instead of into the spinal fluid.  Its effect is
to paralyse the higher centres of conscious motion.  Miss Darcy is at
present suffering from total paralysis, although she is perfectly
conscious."

At this point Buller blushed deeply at an unfortunate recollection.
Mauleverer was running on without a pause.

"When Miss Darcy was quite relaxed I managed to get her up the chimney
to this ledge, though with great difficulty, by means of ropes.  I then
made my way to the garage, after picking up my outdoor clothes, and
took the liberty of borrowing Sir Charles's Bentley.  I had no qualms
about leaving Miss Darcy, for the drug is potent for ten or twelve
hours.  I need not go into details of the chase.  I believe that it
will have dawned on you by now that had I chosen to I could have shaken
you off in the first ten miles.  And yet I led you as far as the Black
Mountains before I found it necessary to lose you.  I may say that I
had the greatest difficulty in keeping you on my track.  At Worcester
particularly, when the Daimler went off to Tewkesbury and you were
careering about further east than ever, I thought you would never catch
up again.  I had to leave a very definite clue at that garage.
However, all's well that ends well (excuse the proverb), and I managed
to get you all beyond Longtown.

"I wonder if you have any inkling of my motives?  First of all, and
most important, I had to take you away from Pemberley before you
instituted the search for my asphyxiated body.  Secondly, I needed one
more night (to-night) in which to finish off the baronet.  Thirdly,
though this is a minor point, I had a little shopping to do and an
alibi to tend.  Why, you will ask, did I take the trouble to lead you
all the way to Pandy?  The answer is simple.  I wanted to waste your
day.  I did not want you to go back and start prying about the house.
I was afraid that you might start looking for Miss Darcy (I fear I
over-estimated your intelligence) if you had a whole day of idleness
before you.  But that was not my main reason.  You will realise that I
had to _re-enter_ Pemberley, and for that reason I preferred that you
should not be here.  Now it was essential to me that I should reach a
certain spot in Wales--I'll explain why later--and get back before you.
So, remembering that delightful stretch of road between Longtown and
Hay (which was close to my destination), I took you with me and
marooned you when we were nearly there.  I executed my business and was
back long before you.  The Bentley is in a garage at Hay.  I came back
by train and taxi, and got in whilst the servants were having dinner.

"Now think it over.  Before I started this wild goose chase I was up a
chimney which you would search in a few hours.  After I had finished it
certain benefits had accrued.  To begin with, you knew that I was alive
and thought that I had abducted Miss Darcy to Wales.  So you would be
unlikely to search the chimney.  But there were other benefits.  I had
laid in another dose of Miss Darcy's little drug (my shopping) and I
had paid a visit to Dreavour (where my alibi lives).  Also I had got
back whilst you were still pulling nails out of your tyres.  And the
last benefit of all (this was where my incursion into the realms of
psychology justified itself): the defence was disorganised.  You
thought I was well away, or at least Sir Charles did, and there was no
fire in his room to-night.

"But about that alibi--my reason for wanting to visit Wales.  It's a
poor alibi, but then it's difficult to prove that one's in a different
place for days at a stretch.  I'm ashamed of that alibi, and yet it was
the best I could do in a hurry.  I told you that I had to visit Wales
on the day I first came here.  I drove to Dreavour with my humble
Morris Oxford, and a tent, which I erected.  I took with me a supply of
empty condensed milk tins (I had emptied the condensed milk down the
sink in my gyp room) and other open tins of salmon, meat, fruit, etc.,
the contents of which I threw out of the car on my way.

"Dreavour is a lonely place, where one can camp for days without seeing
a soul.  But one's tent would be noticed.  At a pinch people would be
ready to presume that one had been staying there, what with all this
hiking.  Colour might be added to the story by the empty tins of
provisions.  It was a poor alibi, but at any rate it was a possible
one.  It was better than not being able to explain where one had been
at all.  And it would be considerably strengthened if one could be seen
in the village the day before the murder--just at the time when one was
supposed to be hiding in the chimneys here.  You see; I was seen to
arrive and I wanted to be seen once in the interim.  Hence my trip to
Wales, to buy eggs from the nearest farm house.

"But we'll dismiss that subject as quickly as possible.  As an alibi
it's disgracefully fallible.  It will just do as a weak way of
explaining where I was, if necessary.

"We have got back to Pemberley.  I gave Miss Darcy another dose and
waited for the household to go to bed.  As I expected, you were tired,
bluffed and disorganised.  I went down to Sir Charles's room, was
pleased to find no fire, and gave him a little of his sister's
medicine.  He will be able to think things over on that bed for the
next few hours.  I was just having a chat with him when my bad luck
cropped up again and you blundered into the room.  However, that's been
remedied, and a stitch in time saves nine (I beg your pardon).  Since
making you comfortable here, I've been down to the room again and
corrected my mistake in not locking and bolting the door.  To tell you
the truth I never suspected the baronet of being such a fool as to
leave the door open in the first place, besides forgetting to light the
fire."

Mauleverer took a deep breath and relapsed into silence.  The faint
rancid smell of coal enveloped them.

The voice broke out again suddenly, but now with such a harsh and
brutal intonation that Buller almost started.

"But time passes, my fine Inspector, and there's much to do.  You've
had the stupid impudence to pit yourself against me, and you'll learn
your lesson.  Listen now to what's in store.  That puppy down below is
helpless, waiting for the knife.  It will be the knife.  I've had the
pleasure of telling him so, and now he's had the pleasure of waiting.
Let him wait.  I've something still to tell you.  What shall we do with
you and your pretty lady, that's the question?"

The words stirred close to Buller's ear.  The breath touched his cheek,
smelling slightly of cachous.

"That's the question," it repeated, and a gentle hand stroked lightly
at his hair; stroked, twisted round a lock, and softly, increasingly,
brutally pulled.

"That's the question, my mannikin, that you lie there in your silence
meditating upon."

The pressure on the lock was loosened and the voice went on
enchantingly:

"Do you remember, my pretty policeman, a little talk which you once had
with your lovely Elizabeth about the ghosts of Pemberley?  She said
that the house was not haunted.  That the dead Darcys pressed very
little upon it?  We shall see now whether the mysteries of Pemberley
may not be increased by a little, whether the memory of me, her only
genius, may not be kept green by a few succeeding generations.  I
should like the story of a lover and his lass to add amongst the
others."

The banter dropped and the voice became fiercely urgent.

"Listen, Buller, to what I have in store for you.  Because you have
been the witness to my endeavours since they started I am disinclined
to kill you.  Your mistress shall share your immunity.  It is Charles
only that I am teaching.  But I cannot let you go.  So I have thought
out a clever plan for you, a little joke of my own devising.  It's in
the nature of an experiment, or an offering to the goddess of chance.
The flue in which we lie so comfortably leads to the fireplace of an
upstairs bedroom which has long boasted no fire.  There are no noxious
gases here to hurt you.  But I am going to carry you down now, one at a
time, and hang you in the kitchen chimney.  Not so as to strangle you,
you know.  There is a convenient ledge where I can truss you.  Miss
Darcy shall be tied as well.  I wish I could do you the favour of
letting you share her injections, but my little tennis bag is not an
inexhaustible cornucopia and the last dose was used for Charles.  I
shall leave you together above the kitchen.  The cook will light the
kitchen fire, I suppose, some time before the household rises and long
before Dr. Wilder becomes anxious about Sir Charles.  They say that the
good witches and warlocks who were burnt in the old days usually
suffocated in the smoke before the fire reached them.  That's a matter
of conjecture.  You will be able to make sure.  I don't suppose the
fire itself will burn you, though it's a large fire in a large grate
and it may roast you very uncomfortably.  Your deaths, I should say,
would take place within the hour, and from suffocation.  If they search
the chimneys when Charles's body has been found they ought to find you
dead.  You may survive long enough, one or both of you, and then you'll
be fortunate.  That is why I say it's an offering to the goddess of
chance.  But on the other hand, even if you do survive, they may never
search the chimneys, and then you'll starve to death.  I like to make
the situation quite clear to you.  They will have no reason to think
that Buller is up a chimney.  Nobody saw him go.  In whatever case, I'm
quite contented.  You will die not by my hands but by the hands of your
own cook, lighting her fire, or by the negligence of your servants in
leaving the chimneys unsearched.  You, Miss Darcy, will have the
satisfaction of dying in your own home, surrounded by your own
servants.  They will be within a few yards of you on every side,
searching for you or going about their own business.  If you were not
to be gagged, how easily you could call to them!  If you were not
bound, how few steps would take you to safety!  And both of you will
have the satisfaction of dying in one another's company.  Lastly I
shall have the very great poetical stimulus of reflecting upon the new
Glamis legend of Pemberley, and of thinking of the old sooty bones
wedged safely, but forgotten, in the bosom of this lovely house."




CHAPTER XX

Buller lay on his back with his eyes open, staring blindly upwards and
listening to the preparations of Mauleverer.

The voyage to the kitchen chimney entailed a passage over the roof, for
the kitchen was beneath the servants' wing at the other corner of the
U.  Mauleverer would have to drag them up the main chimney stack off
which they now lay, would have to carry or trundle them along the sharp
edge of the V-shaped roof above the dormers, and would finally have to
lower them down a fresh stack.  It was an effort which required
preparation and forethought.  He was busy at the moment bringing in the
ropes from the other two chimneys to aid him in his task.

He scuttled about his business cheerfully, humming to himself in
tuneless amusement and sidling in every few moments, to pay Buller a
visit where he lay.  He was delighted with Buller and could scarcely
bring himself to leave him.  Now he would come back to turn him over
and feel the knots about his wrists; now he would wriggle in with an
idea which had just struck him, to whisper it in his ear.  "Smoked
bacon," he whispered, on one of these visits.  "Think of it!  You may
be preserved.  Like a haddock or something.  Not sooty bones but the
fair flesh itself, shrivelled but recognisable, for the generation
which discovers the secret of Pemberley!"  And another time: "Charles
is still waiting, still wondering.  I shan't go near him till I've
taken you both to your tomb."

Buller waited patiently, chafing his hands behind his back to keep the
circulation.  At last the system of ropes was ready and Mauleverer slid
in for the last time.

"It's getting late," he said.  "I shall have to be off in a hurry as
soon as all this is settled."

He stroked Buller's hair affectionately.

"I should like to put off my parting with you, Inspector, to the very
last moment.  Old acquaintance, you know.  I can't think why, but I
have a feeling of real affection for you which makes me want to see you
to the last.  When I was a boy I always used to leave the best parts of
the fruit salad till the end.

"I think," he added reflectively, "that I shall take Miss Darcy to the
kitchen first, and then pay my final visit to Sir Charles.  Then I can
come back for you and tell you all the news, whilst we're on our way.
Charles's last moments, you know, and how he enjoyed them.  My little
mausoleum, my house of fame, my finished gramophone record, would be
stocked up to the last moment in that case.  Yes, that is what I shall
do.  And after that I shall really have to be going."

He busied himself with a rope beneath Elizabeth's armpits, and hauled
her out backwards, remarking, as his voice echoed in the main shaft:

"Ladies first, if you'll excuse the proverb."

      *      *      *      *      *

Buller tussled in the darkness for three minutes.  He arched his body,
supporting himself between his heels and the back of his neck, and
fumbled upwards behind his back with his bound hands.  He grunted and
sawed for a moment, and his hands were free.  He sat up in the
darkness, and bumped his head, but took no notice.  He was working
against time.

The cords binding his ankles were off in a moment, but the circulation
was gone from his feet and he could not stand.  He kicked his heels
violently against the brickwork, and rubbed his insteps fiercely,
pawing downwards, away from the heart.  He was rewarded by agonising
pain, succeeded by pins and needles, but he worked with redoubled
energy.

After the three minutes he was free and could move.  The stiffness
would work itself off whilst he was busy.

Buller's brain had been calculating at top speed as he moved.
Mauleverer was away with Elizabeth.  He could not accomplish his task
of moving a second body up and down those chimneys, and along the roof,
in less than five minutes.  But he knew the ground he was working over,
and had arranged his system of ropes, so it was not safe to expect that
he would take longer.  In about five minutes from his exit he would
return to slit Sir Charles's throat.  Three of those minutes were
already gone, and Buller was unarmed.  The revolver which had clattered
from his senseless grip into the dining-room fireplace had been
appropriated by Mauleverer.

The only way in which he could get another would be by scrambling down
the chimney through two storeys to Sir Charles's room, by letting
himself out of that--it would be locked on the inside--and fetching the
weapon from his own bedroom.  The advantage of this course would be
that he could raise the alarm on the way.  He could not reach his room
through the empty bedroom above which he lay at present, for the door
of that room, like all the others in the house, was locked: and Charles
had the key.

Buller had taken off his wrist watch when he went to bed.  Time was a
matter of guess.  He could not be sure that he had not taken more than
three minutes in freeing himself.  He had no time to waste in making
decisions.  Given that his calculations were correct, he had two
minutes to reach his own bedroom through Charles's, _and to get back
again_.  He must catch Mauleverer, if possible, at a point when he
would be too far from Elizabeth to return and do her a mischief, and he
must be between Mauleverer and Charles.

Buller decided that he had no time to get the gun.  He would have to do
without the alarm, and to surprise Mauleverer, unarmed, on his way back
from the kitchen stack.

Buller was not entirely unarmed.  He had a small penknife.

He opened both blades of this, holding it by the ivory in the middle,
and thrust himself out into the main flue.  Mauleverer's ropes were
useful, and he worked himself upward silently, a black panther in the
night.

The stars were out, and the tang of the wind before dawn freshened his
matted hair as he rose above the chimney.  The faint starlight just
illuminated the sliding planes of the grey roof, picked out the other
three stacks as they loomed upwards, leaning to heaven.  The smell of
the young leaves in the park ran with the soft wind, and, far below
him, a silver glint slept on the lake.  A few drowsy birds were
stirring, and, from the distant stable, sounding tiny in the stillness
of the night, came the sharp clatter of a hoof moved restlessly in a
single stamp.

Buller writhed out of the chimney with a deadly motion, and curled
himself behind it like a snake.  His hands fluttered to his throat,
raising the collar of his dilapidated coat so as to show as little
white as possible.  Mauleverer would be much more invisible than he,
for his pyjama trousers were of a light material and his face
uncovered.  Fortunately he had made a firm acquaintance with the soot.

Buller waited, glaring round the base of the chimney stack with an
intent and animal concentration.  His body was firm and lithe; his
broad chest nestled the brickwork.  The little blades in his right hand
pointed upwards.

There was not long to wait.  The chimney at the other angle of the U
seemed to move, definitely grew taller and subsided.  Mauleverer was
stepping along the roof towards him.  The chimney gave him a
background, so that it was difficult to make him out.  Buller was
seized with an agony of apprehension lest he would not be able to see
him well enough to strike.  He trembled with excitement, as he had done
in the butts at his first drive, waiting for his first covey to come
over.  He must calculate his moment, not leap too soon.

Mauleverer came to the chimney chuckling.  He puts his hands on the
ledge and sprang upwards, leaning forwards to catch his body on the rim.

Buller was on the other side of the chimney and could not see the
movement, but he guessed it.  He rose to his full height and the two
men were face to face.

Although Buller was prepared, Mauleverer moved more quickly.  He
slipped backwards even as Buller lunged, and dropped with a soft thud
on the other side.  He was clawing at his pocket as he landed, and the
starlight ran at once with a dull gleam along the barrel of his
revolver.

He dodged to the right of the chimney at the same moment that Buller
dodged to his left.  The two men were again face to face.

Buller made no attempt to stab him this time (he had dropped his
knife), but plunged in a kind of falling rugger tackle, to muffle the
revolver.  Mauleverer was raising it as he closed, and a detonation
seemed to burst between the two of them, holding them motionless in its
shuddering crash.

Buller felt no pain and did not hear the singing in his ears.  He
hugged Mauleverer like a bear, falling forward on the slope of the roof
and bringing Mauleverer to his knees.  The man was as slippery as an
eel, and worked the revolver round even as they fell, so that it
pointed full at Buller's chest.

But however quickly one may swing a revolver round, it takes time to
pull the trigger, especially the stiff trigger of an old Webley.  For
the first shot the hammer had been cocked, for the second it had to be
brought back by the action of the trigger.  Buller caught the magazine
as the hammer reared to strike, and slewed it away with his right hand
over his right shoulder.  The percussion burst in his ear, like a
physical slap, almost stunning him in a roar of light and thunder.  He
was dogged now, half insensible and wholly mad.  He caught the revolver
arm before Mauleverer could level it again; but he was no longer
attempting to prevent him.  His object ceased to be to disarm the
madman.  He did not mind how often he was shot.  He was not trying to
prevent Mauleverer shooting him, but to achieve the revolver so that he
might shoot Mauleverer.  The gun became his objective, not something to
be feared.

The change from the defensive to the offensive touched Mauleverer as
well.  He felt the body in his arms stiffen and swell with purpose,
felt its gain in power and his own corresponding loss.  The revolver
was being twisted from his grasp.  It became no longer a weapon of
attack, but a desirable object, to be retained if possible: something
which was passing beyond his reach and must be striven for.  Mauleverer
felt the touch of panic.  The pale face looming in the starlight thrust
nearer and nearer to his own, the hot breath panted triumphantly on his
neck.  The mica goggles of his mask flashed before it, his eyes behind
the goggles narrowed with terror and hate.

It was useless to pull the trigger now, for the barrel pointed
outwards, far over the tennis courts in front of the house.  The hand
over his own hand was crushing the fingers cruelly on the butt.

Mauleverer made a desperate change of tactics.  He abandoned the
revolver to the crushing hand, and, twisting his body sideways with a
sudden writhe, sent Buller sliding down the incline of the roof.  He
was on his feet in the same moment, and running for the other chimney
along the sharp edge of the roof.  He ran crouching and sure-footed,
like a creature of the night.

Buller slid--there was something slippery which helped him--but without
caring whether he slid or not.  He caught the brow of the roof
automatically with his left hand and levelled the revolver with the
other.

The first explosion tore his heart with fury and despair.  It was a
miss.  Mauleverer was already leaping for the chimney down which
Elizabeth lay.  Buller knew at once that he would kill her as he fled.
His head cleared with the knowledge and his shaking hand steadied at
once.

Mauleverer's black shape rose against the starlight, clearly outlined
as he crouched over the chimney for his downward plunge.  Buller aimed
deliberately and fired.  He did not hear the explosion.  The black
shape hung still, as if arrested.  Buller raised the muzzle again and
pulled the trigger.

The figure dissolved before his eyes.  The upper part of the body
collapsed to the right, the lower part to the left.  The whole crumbled
from its eminence and tumbled to the roof.  It bounced slightly, in a
strange attitude, rolled sideways with a gathering impetus, and shot
out over the edge.

Dr. Wilder who, at the first shots, had rushed out into the garden and
was now prancing about in an agony of impotent anxiety, was nearly
crushed by it, as it crunched on the gravel within a few feet of him.
He leapt aside with a startled exclamation, and the wild recognisable
voice filtered down from the chimney pots:

"Got 'im, by God!  Got 'im!  Got 'im!"

      *      *      *      *      *

They found Buller at dawn, after a painful and dirty journey up the
chimney, sitting across the brow of the roof with one leg on either
side.  His left leg was numb and roughly bandaged, the tight soaked
trouser glistening with blood.  He was in tearing spirits and greeted
Wilder's dishevelled head with a recitation of the "Ode to the Skylark."

They lowered him down the chimney and Wilder examined the wound.  It
was the result of the first shot.

Wilder said: "Well, that's not much.  There's a muscle torn, that's
all.  A close shot though.  It was cauterised as it was made."

Buller was not interested.

"I had a bright idea on that roof," he said, "whilst I was waiting for
you.  It's an extraordinary thing how one thinks of things in the
morning.  You know that little mare's nest of the Master's drugs which
we stirred up in Cambridge?  Hasn't it struck you that it might lead us
to Charles's fat man if we followed it up?"




CHAPTER XXI

The day after Kingdom's funeral Elizabeth took Buller for a drive.
This time she had to drive the Chrysler herself, for his leg was still
useless.  They were talking about the excitements of the past few days.

Buller said: "We buried Mauleverer in the grounds, or rather Wilder and
Charles did, yesterday.  Till then we kept him locked in Charles's
bathroom and nobody knew about it.  I told Smith that I'd missed him on
the roof.  Wilder managed to rake up some quicklime from somewhere, so
it'll be all right.  I told him to be careful it wasn't slaked.  One of
my murderer friends once buried a body in lime, to get rid of it, but
he got hold of slaked lime by mistake.  And that's an excellent
preservative."

"But surely he'll be missed?"

"He'll be missed all right, but then he's been at great pains to
manufacture his alibi at Dreavour, and that's where he'll be looked
for.  It's very bad for your engine not to change down when it's
knocking."

Elizabeth changed down obediently.

"I've wanted to know one thing very much," she said.  "How on earth did
you get yourself undone in that chimney?"

Buller laughed.

"It was rather a swindle, I'm afraid," he said.  "I don't claim to be a
Houdini, though there is a way of holding your hands when they're going
to be tied which forces the tier to use a certain knot which makes the
ones on top of it useless.  Any way I was stunned when he triced me up,
so I didn't have a chance of that."

Elizabeth prompted him.

"Well?"

"The explanation is, I'm afraid, that I've always been incurably
romantic.  I used to read detective stories far too much, and the hero
always gets tied up in them at one time or another.  It occurred to me
that all heroes ought to have a little pocket in the jacket of all
their suits, in the lining at the back, in which they could conceal
penknives."

"And do you mean to say you had that?"

"Yes," said Buller defensively.  "It wasn't ridiculous.  I've always
liked to work alone and one gets into queer positions doing that
sometimes.  I liked to think that I was prepared for emergencies.  Why
shouldn't a detective think out a useful easy equipment just as much as
somebody going on a walking tour?  As a matter of fact I once amused
myself by inventing all sorts of little improvements on my suits.  I
always wear my cigarette case in a waistcoat pocket over my heart, even
now--silly, I admit, but look at that governor or somebody that they
tried to assassinate in India--and I have had occasion, once, to strap
an automatic under my armpit like they do in America.  When one worked
on one's own, one liked to have little dodges of one's own.  It made
one feel more equipped to meet the unexpected.  In my sleeve, for
instance, here, there used to be a key which fitted the usual brand of
handcuffs--sewn in at the cuff."

Elizabeth said: "I didn't know that detectives behaved like that."

"They don't.  I'm afraid I've never been able to use any of my little
dodges before.  They were a sort of talisman, really, to keep my
spirits up.  And, as you see, there was no harm in my romances.  The
long shot came off for once.  The lucky thing was that I slipped on my
coat instead of my dressing-gown.  The dressing-gown was at the other
side of the room and I was too tired to fetch it."

Elizabeth said: "Well, I think it all sounds very improbable."

"As regards the ordinary murder, yes.  No ordinary murderer or thief
would think of tying you up.  But I used to have to deal as well,
sometimes, with gangs of racing toughs--vicious young limbs from
Glasgow, who carry razors and stab you with broken bottles and call
themselves "The Bloody Hand" or something of that sort.  They are the
people who are likely to tie you up.  They're nourished on penny
dreadfuls and behave as such.  I served my apprenticeship in Glasgow
before I went to Cambridge.  That's where I had the old coat made which
I was wearing."

Buller added apologetically: "I haven't got a back pocket in this one.
It was made in Cambridge."

Elizabeth seemed mollified and started on a new tack.

"There's one more thing," she said, "which I want an explanation of."

Buller wilted in the pause.

"What," she demanded, "were you doing to my ear?"

"When?" asked Buller weakly.

"You know perfectly well."

Buller said: "Oh, I was--I was _whispering_."

"What about?"

"About?  How do you mean what about?"

"About what?"

"Oh.  Yes.  About Mauleverer."

"What did you whisper about Mauleverer?"

"Well, I didn't whisper.  I--I hadn't a chance."

"Why?"

Buller said: "Well--I----"

"If you wanted to whisper anything else," said Elizabeth, "my ear's
still there."

For a detective Buller was obtuse, but he rose to the occasion.

      *      *      *      *      *

After a bit he said: "Couldn't we stop for a minute and have a talk?"

      *      *      *      *      *

After the talk the base voice in Buller said: "Wouldn't it be
marvellous if we could be married?"  The weak voice of timid morality
added hastily: "Or something?"

Elizabeth said: "Well, I'd _rather_ be married."

      *      *      *      *      *

On the way home Elizabeth said, "Do you know, I don't even know your
Christian name?"

"I know, Liz, but you see----"

"What is it?"

"Leonidas Jeremiah Buller."

"I shall call you Buller," Elizabeth said emphatically.




THE END






[End of Darkness at Pemberley, by T. H. White]
