PART I

WHAT HAPPENED IN LENNOX STREET

A Case in Camera

I

The tale I am setting out to tell has to do with the killing, on a May

morning of the year 1919, of one young man by another who claimed, and

still claims, to have been his friend. The circumstances were

singular--perhaps even unique; the consequences affected a number of

people in various interesting ways and byways; and since the manner of

telling the story has been left entirely to me, I will begin with the

breakfast-party that Philip Esdaile gave that morning at his studio in

Lennox Street, Chelsea.

II

Philip had at least two good reasons for being in high feather that

morning. The first of these was that barely a week ago, with a

magnificent new quill pen, he had signed the Roll, had shaken august

hands, and was now Philip Esdaile, A.R.A., probably the most gifted

among the younger generation of painters of the pictorial phenomena of

Light.

I and his second reason for contentment happened to arrive almost

simultaneously at the wrought-iron gate that opened on to his little

front garden. We all knew that for many months past our barrister

friend, Billy Mackwith, had been tracking down and buying in again on

Philip's behalf a number of Philip's earlier pictures--prodigal

pictures, parted with for mere bread-and-butter during the years of

struggle, and now very well worth Philip's re-purchase if he could get

them into his possession again. (I may perhaps say at once that I don't

think Philip owed his Associateship to his pictures of that period. It

is far more likely that the artist thus honored was Lieutenant Esdaile,

R.N.V.R., sometime one of the Official Painters to the Admiralty.)

A carrier's van stood drawn up opposite the gate, and I saw Mackwith's

slim, silk-hatted and morning-coated figure jump down from the seat next

to the driver. Evidently Philip had seen the arrival of the van too, for

he ran down the short flagged path to meet us.

"You don't mean to say you've brought them all?" he cried eagerly.

"The whole lot. Fourteen," Mackwith replied. "Glad I just caught you

before you left."

Esdaile and his family were leaving town that morning for some months on

the Yorkshire Coast, and it was this departure that was the occasion of

the farewell breakfast.

The three of us carried the recovered canvases through the small annexe,

where the breakfast-table was already laid, and into the large studio

beyond. There we stood admiring them as they leaned, framed and

unframed, against easels and along the walls. No doubt you remember

Esdaile's paintings of that period--the gay white and gray of his

tumultuous skies, the splash and glitter of his pools and fountains,

the crumbling wallflowered masonry of his twentieth-century

_fêtes-champêtre_. There is nothing psychical or philosophic about them.

He simply has that far rarer possession, an eye in his head to see

straight with.

"Well, which of 'em are you going to have for yourself, just by way of

thank-you, Billy?" the painter asked. "Any you like; I owe you the best

of them and more.... And of course here comes Hubbard. Always does blow

in just as things are being given away, if it's only a pink gin. How are

you, Cecil?"

The new-comer wore aiguillettes and the cuff-rings of a Commander, R.N.

He was a comparatively new friend of mine, but for two years off and on

had been a shipmate of Esdaile's, and I liked the look of his honest red

face and four-square and blocklike figure. We turned to the pictures

again. I think their beauties were largely thrown away on Hubbard.

Somebody ought to have told him that their buying-in meant a good

thousand pounds in Esdaile's pocket. Then he would have looked at them

in quite a different manner.

In the middle of the inspection Joan Merrow's white frock and

buttercupped hat appeared in the doorway, and we were bidden to come in

to breakfast. Monty Rooke and Mrs. Cunningham had just arrived, which

made our party complete.

The little recess in which we breakfasted was filled with the sunlight

reflected from the garden outside. Everything in it--the napkins and

fruit and chafing-dishes on the table, the spring flowers in the bowls,

the few chosen objects on the buff-washed walls, the showery festoon of

the chandelier overhead--had the soft irradiation of a face seen under a

parasol. Little shimmers of light, like love-making butterflies, danced

here and there whenever glasses or carafes were moved, and the

stretches of shining floor almost looked as if trout might have lurked

beneath them.

And where the tall French windows stood wide open the light seemed to be

focused as if by a burning-glass on the two little Esdaile boys who

played beneath the mulberry that rose above the studio roof.

I don't suppose the whole of Chelsea could have shown a merrier

breakfast-party than we made that May morning. For, in addition to our

host's new Associateship and those fourteen wandering pictures safely

back home again, we had a further occasion for light-heartedness that I

haven't mentioned yet. This was the wedding, to take place that day

week, of Mrs. Cunningham and Monty Rooke. Philip was generously lending

them his house and studio for the summer. Monty we had all known for

years, but Mrs. Cunningham I for one set eyes on for the first time that

morning. Later I got a much more definite impression of her. For the

present I noticed only her slender and beautiful black-chiffon-covered

arms, the large restless dark eyes that seemed to disengage themselves

from under the edge of her black satin turban hat, and her manicured

fingers that reminded you of honeysuckle. The Esdailes had received her

"on the ground floor," so to speak, and it obviously pleased Monty that

Philip had called her Audrey straight away.

So we talked of the approaching wedding, and the Associateship, and the

painting-cottage in Yorkshire, and so back to the pictures again. On

this subject Commander Hubbard unhesitatingly took the lead.

"Well, it's certainly Art for mine my second time on earth," he

good-humoredly railed, the aiguillettes swinging gently on his breast.

"Fancy going out of town this weather! Taking away all that gear behind

the bulkhead there,"--he jerked his head to where Philip's painting

paraphernalia lay ready packed in the hall--"a few yards of raw canvas

bent on battens--and bringing it back again worth twenty pounds an

inch!"

Hubbard had a Whitehall job that summer, and loathed it. Esdaile

laughed.

"Can't see why they didn't make me a full Academician while they were

about it," he said.

"_And_ he's grumbling!" Hubbard retorted. "Perfectly revolting fellow.

That's too much lunching with Admirals. Listen, Mrs. Esdaile, and I'll

tell you the kind of thing we mere senior officers had to put up with. A

hoist breaks out from the flagship, and every glass in the Squadron is

glued to it. You'd think at least we were to proceed to sea immediately.

Nothing of the sort! It's the Admiral presenting his compliments to this

wretched wavy-ringed fellow your husband, and would he give him the

pleasure--would Lieutenant Esdaile, R.N.V.R., condescend--stoop--to take

luncheon with him! The Admiral, if you please! And that's what it is to

be an Official Painter!"

Esdaile laughed again. He was trying to remove in one unbroken piece the

paring of an apple for Joan Merrow.

"Give him a smile now and then and he'll eat out of your hand, Mollie,"

he said. "Now, Joan, the last little bit--this is where a steady hand

comes in--there!" He held up in triumph the wiggle of apple paring.

"Throw it over your left shoulder and see what initial it makes on the

floor. Here's my guess on this bit of paper under my napkin--'C for

Ch' ... Ah, clumsy infant!" The strip had fallen in two pieces. "There

goes your luck. Allee done gone finish. I'll have the apple myself;

you'd better go and write the rest of those labels."

The Esdailes had to all intents and purposes adopted Joan Merrow now

that she was alone in the world. On the day when Philip, half scared by

the risks he was taking, had informed his private pupils that their

tuition took up too much of his painting-time, he had not included Joan.

She had continued to prime his canvases and to make use of his models at

long range from odd corners of the studio; and then, during his absence

on Service, she had come to live in the house, had taught and mended for

the children, and had been companion and friend to Mollie. By an

affectionate fiction, her former fees were supposed to cover the cost of

her board, and a proper arrangement was to be come to one of these days.

She was twenty, had only lately ceased to have the stripling figure that

is all youth and no sex, and was already acquiring that mystery of

physical shape and of mind and emotion that causes men's heads to turn

behind and their lips to murmur, "Ah--in another year or so----"

There was still the faint echo of chattering schoolrooms in the repartee

that came from her pretty lips. Pertly and with little tosses of her

head she enumerated the duties she had discharged that morning.

"The labels are all distinctly written, with the name at the top, then a

space, and 'Santon, Yorks' quite at the bottom so you can tear it off

and use the label again for somewhere else. Both the taxis are ordered

for one-thirty, and Mr. Rooke won't have to send on letters because

they're all being re-addressed at the Post Office. The doors and windows

are all fastened, and I've shown Mrs. Cunningham where everything is

for after the wedding. And I didn't want the apple, and you've no

business to write things about me on your horrid bits of paper!"

And we all laughed as she suddenly twitched Philip's napkin away and

tucked the horrid bit of paper safely away into her bosom.

III

I have told the foregoing in some detail because I want you to see the

careless and happy party into which that morning's bolt dropped a

quarter of an hour later. I want you to see the contrast between our

homely light-heartedness and the complex tangle of all that followed. I

will now tell you what the bolt was.

Breakfast was over, and we men had gone into the studio again. Mrs.

Cunningham was helping Mollie to clear away, and Joan Merrow had joined

the children in the garden, and with them was looking up at an

aeroplane, the soft organ-like note of which had suddenly ceased. We

were having Hubbard's views on Art again.

"But that submarine sketch of yours is the pick of all you've done to my

mind, Esdaile," he was saying. "Old Horne at the periscope, eh? You

caught him to a hair; a snapshot couldn't have been better! And we

bagged that beggar ten minutes later, Norwegian flag and all," he added

with professional satisfaction.

Philip Esdaile gave a quick exclamation.

"By Jove, that just reminds me! The orange curaçao, of course! The very

thing after all that fruit--corrects the acidity, as the doctors say.

We'll have some."

The Commander gave him a sharp look. On the face of it there was no very

evident reason why the torpedoing of a German ship flying the Norwegian

flag should remind Esdaile of orange curaçao, but no doubt there was a

story behind that we others knew nothing of. If ships have to be put

down there is no sense in sending bottles of delectable liqueur to the

bottom of the sea also.

"What!" cried Commander Hubbard, R.N. "You don't mean to say that _you_

had the infernal neck to take your whack----"

A mere wretched wavy-ringed fellow to loot bottle for bottle with his

betters like that!

But Esdaile, with a wink, demanded the key of the cellar from Monty

Rooke, told him to get the liqueur glasses out, and was off.

It was at that moment that the crash came that seemed to bring the whole

of Chelsea running out of doors.

The shrill cry of "The aeroplane! The aeroplane!" was hardly out of the

children's mouths before it was upon us--I don't mean the aeroplane, but

the other thing. Judging from the harsh but muffled roar, the first

installment of the crash, so to speak, which was the plane itself, must

have been a quarter of a mile away; but between that and the second one

there was hardly time to take breath. Simultaneously, as it seemed,

there came a rushing of air, a loud cracking, and a nauseating thud on

the studio roof; and Joan Merrow ran in with the children, one under

either arm and her head down. The street outside was a sudden clatter

of running feet and short spasmodic cries.

"Good God, right on our heads!" the Commander muttered, his eyes aloft.

The next moment he was at the studio door looking for Esdaile.

Had he found him I should not be writing this story. Not finding him, he

assumed command.

"All right. All over now, little fellows. There won't be any more. Mrs.

Esdaile, you ladies will stay just where you are, please. Get on to the

telephone, Mackwith. You other fellows come with me."

He thought it better that somebody should investigate before the women

began to move about too freely.

IV

One order at any rate was superfluous--that to telephone to the police.

Aeroplanes do not crash in Chelsea in the middle of the morning

unobserved. Already the windows on the other side of the street were

packed with faces, and every face was turned in the same direction.

This was towards the torn fabric of a parachute that had lodged partly

on the studio roof, partly in the branches of the mulberry in the

garden.

Hubbard ran out through the French windows and looked up. Tapes trailed

and rippled and fluttered in the merry morning breeze, and the gray silk

ballooned and rose and fell. But the sound of running feet warned

Hubbard not to pause. He strode quickly down the flagged path, shot the

catch of the wrought-iron gate in the faces of the too curious, and

then hurried into the house again. He addressed Rooke, who stood by the

group of shocked women.

"Here, you seem to know this house pretty well. How do we get up there?"

he asked.

"Bathroom window, I should think," Rooke replied. "This way."

The bathroom lay at the end of a short passage on the floor above. The

three of us dashed upstairs. Rooke tried the bathroom door, but found it

locked. "Damn!" he muttered, and then I reminded him that possibly he

had the key of it in his pocket.

It was oddly irritating to watch him try first one key and then another.

We wanted to tell him to make haste, as if he could have made any

greater haste than he was doing. Then luckily he hit on the right one.

The door opened, we sprang across the cork-covered floor, and Rooke

began to tug at the window-catch. The window was one of these

late-Victorian windows with a colored border and white incised stars,

and already the tragic huddle a dozen yards away could be seen,

violently crimson through the red squares and morbidly blue through the

blue ones.

Then, as the sash flew up, all was sunshine again, and the wrecked

parachute and the two men enwrapped in its folds could be seen only too

clearly.

Monty Rooke had a new silver-gray suit on that morning, but already he

had thrown one leg over the sill.

"I'm not so heavy as you fellows," he muttered. "I'm not so sure about

this gutter--give me a hand while I try it. Then I can shin up that

spout over there."

Hubbard took the small, nervous hand in his own beefy fist and let him

down three or four feet. "All right," said Rooke, after a moment's

trial; and, spread-eagled out on the annexe roof, he began to make his

way towards the higher roof of the studio beyond.

"Tapes oughtn't to have fouled like that," I heard the Commander say

under his breath as we watched. "Parachuting's safe enough if you're any

height at all. This breeze, I suppose, and risking the double load.

Wonder they didn't go slap through."

It was, indeed, merely by inches that the two men had missed the

roof-glass. Apparently the parachute, the roof-frame and the mulberry

had shared the shock among them. Not that another fifteen feet would

have made much difference to the poor devils, I couldn't help thinking.

The street was now a densely-packed mass of faces, all watching Rooke's

progress. Even the whispering had ceased. Then cries of "Make way

there!" were suddenly heard. Fifty yards away a ladder, preceded by a

plump young man in a horsey check coat, was being passed over people's

heads. Every hand that could touch the ladder did so, as if out of some

odd pride of assistance. What anonymous mind had foreseen the need of it

none could have told. Down below Mackwith opened the gate; an Inspector,

followed by a couple of constables and the last relay that bore the

ladder, entered; and Mackwith closed the gate again. The ladder was set

up by the splintered mulberry, and the Inspector and one of the

constables joined Rooke on the roof.

Five minutes later Rooke was down again. Hubbard and I had also

descended. We met him as he came in at the French window.

"Well?" we both demanded at once.

He was agitated, as indeed he had some reason for being. He had had an

unpleasant task. Before replying he advanced to the breakfast-table and

poured himself out some water into the nearest glass. The glass knocked

unsteadily as he set it down again. Then he glanced down at his clothes,

made a movement as if to brush the grime from them, but gave a jerk to

his tie instead.

Nevertheless his news was not all bad. In one particular it was rather

astonishingly good. One of the two men, it appeared, was by no means

fatally hurt--was, indeed, quite likely to pull through.

"Do you know who they are?" Hubbard asked.

Again Monty seemed preoccupied with his clothes. Then we had his

tidings, jerkily and bit by bit.

The plane itself had come down somewhere by the Embankment, and was said

to have caught fire. Parts of the parachute seemed to be singed too.

Both men were civilian flyers; at least neither was in uniform. The

other poor fellow was killed. The ambulance had been sent for, and for

the present there was little more to be done. The police were seeing to

the rest. This was the sum of what Monty told us.

Then we heard the voice of Mackwith, who had come up behind us.

"That's so," he confirmed. "I've just been having a word with the

Inspector about that. He doesn't think anybody here will have to attend

any inquiry or anything; the police evidence ought to be enough. So I

was thinking, Mrs. Esdaile," he turned to Mollie, whose face was still

pale and drawn and who bit the corner of her lip incessantly, "that the

best thing for you to do is to stick to your program just as if this

hadn't happened. You'll do no good staying here. You didn't see

it,"--here Joan Merrow, from the little sofa, raised her head but

dropped it again without speaking--"well, I mean that even Joan didn't

see anything that five hundred other people didn't see just as well.

Rooke may just possibly be wanted, but anyway he'll be here. And as for

Philip----"

He broke off abruptly. Of a sudden we all stared at one another. We had

forgotten all about Philip. Where was he?

If you remember, he had gone down into the cellar to fetch a bottle of

wine. And in performing this simple errand he had been away for close on

half an hour.

Mollie Esdaile, all on edge again, turned swiftly to Monty Rooke.

"Where is he? He did go down there, didn't he? You did give him the

cellar key, didn't you? And nobody heard him go out of the house?"

Well, that was a matter that was very easily ascertained. Already

Hubbard had taken a stride towards the door that led to the cellar.

But he did not reach the door. A footstep was heard behind it and the

turning of a key, and Esdaile entered. In one hand he carried a stone

jar of Dutch curaçao. In the other, arrestively out of place in the

spring sunshine, its flame a dingy orange and its little spiral of

greasy smoke fouling the air, he held a lighted candle in a flat tin

stick.

V

For a moment we all gazed stupidly at that jar and candle; but the next

moment our eyes were fastened on Philip's face.

Now ordinarily Esdaile's face, clean-shaven since 1914, is quite a

pleasant one to look at, lightly browned, and with the savor of the sea

still lingering about it. Nor was it noticeably pale now. Indeed, you

might have said that some inner excitation made it not pale at all. But

there was no disguising the strained tenseness of it. At the same time

he was obviously attempting such a disguise. His features were set in a

would-be-easy smile, but the smile stopped at his eyes. These blinked,

though possibly at the sudden brightness after the obscurity below. And

he spoke without pause or preliminary, as if rehearsing something he had

had time to get letter-perfect but not to make entirely and naturally

his own.

"Did you think I was never coming up?" The mechanical smile was turned

on us all in turn. "I suppose I have been rather a long time. Just

wool-gathering. I apologize to everybody. Where are the

liqueur-glasses?"

There was a dead silence. Was it possible that he had heard nothing,

knew nothing of what had occurred?

Monty Rooke was the first to speak.

"Do you mean to say you didn't hear it?" he blurted out.

Then, as Philip seemed to concentrate that artificial smile suddenly on

him alone, he seemed sorry he had drawn attention to himself.

"And where on earth have _you_ been?" Philip demanded slowly. "What's

the matter with your clothes? Been emptying the dustbins? Here, let me

give you a clean-up, man----"

He got rid of the jar of liqueur, not by putting it down on a table, but

by the simple if unusual expedient of letting it drop through his

fingers, where it made a heavy thump, rolled over on its side, and came

to rest. He stepped forward.

But Rooke, for some reason or other, stepped much more quickly back. He

muttered something about his clothes not mattering--it was only a few

grains of dust, but damp--better let it dry before touching it----

It was at this point that I caught Cecil Hubbard's eye.

Hubbard's is a bright blue eye, with angular lids like little

set-squares and a tiny dark dot in the middle of the blue. That eye may

not know very much about pictures, but it knows a good deal about men

and their faces. Esdaile was taking risks if he hoped to play any tricks

with that eye on him.

Then, having caught mine for that moment, the eye was attentively fixed

on our host again.

You see how preposterous it was already. Esdaile apparently could notice

a trifle like the dust on Rooke's clothes, but he seemed to be both

blind and deaf to everything else--the soft surging murmurs of the crowd

outside, the voice of the Inspector in the garden, the shadows of

strangers across the French windows. He just dropped heavy stone jars to

the floor, talked about wool-gathering, and had not even thought of

extinguishing the candle that was melting and guttering in his hand.

Wool-gathering--Philip Esdaile, the least woolly-minded of men!

Already I was certain that he was deliberately acting, and acting far

from well at that.

It was little Alan, the elder of the two boys, who broke the spell that

seemed to have benumbed us all. He ran forward, his blue-and-white check

smock against his father's knees and his little face upturned.

"A naeroplane, daddy!" he cried eagerly. "Some men fell out of a

naeroplane close to Jimmy and me, didn't they, Auntie Joan? In a

parachute, bigger'n this room!" The little arms were outstretched to

their widest reach. "Do come quick and look, daddy!"

And he seized his father's hand.

Again I caught Hubbard's eye. Esdaile was at it again, this time with a

badly-exaggerated gesture of astonishment. He might have made just such

a gesture if Alan had told him that the Grandmother in the bed was

really a Wolf--good enough for children but not for anybody else.

Hubbard at any rate thought that this had lasted long enough.

"Do you mean to say that you didn't feel the whole house shake half an

hour ago?" he demanded.

Esdaile turned, but with a curious reluctance that I didn't understand.

"I did fancy I heard a noise of some sort," he admitted. "What about

it?"

Hubbard gave it to him plain and unvarnished, for all the world as if he

had been in the Admiral's office with a sentry with a bayonet at the

door.

"A plane crashed, and two men came down on your roof in a parachute.

One's living, the other's killed. Those are the police in your garden

now. That's all--except that you seem to live in a pretty

solidly-constructed house."

This time Esdaile made no demonstration. He stood listening for a

moment longer, as if he thought Hubbard might add something; then,

without a word, he released himself from Alan's hand and strode, not to

the garden where the voices were, but towards the studio door.

VI

The studio (into which Hubbard and I immediately followed him) was a

large oblong apartment, with a portion of one of its longer sides and

almost the whole of the roof glazed. More or less light could be

admitted by means of a system of dark blue blinds and cords running to

cleats on the walls. It was to the roof-glass that my eyes turned first

of all. One corner of it was darkened, as if melted snow had slipped

down its slope, but the irregular triangle thus made was not so dark but

that the shapes of the two heads could be seen, a little darker still.

Nearer up to the ridge one thick pane was badly starred, and in the

middle of the star was a small hole. This I judged to have been made by

the broken branch that still brushed and played about it. A couple of

pictures had fallen from the walls and lay face downward among their

sprinklings of broken glass on the floor. One or two others were

disarranged. Otherwise the apartment seemed to be undamaged.

Esdaile's behavior was now odder than ever. With those two men lying on

the roof just over his head and the police moving about the garden

outside, apparently he found nothing more urgent to do than to move

displaced rugs about and to push at the bits of broken glass with his

foot. And he did this with the candle, now a stalagmite of tallow, still

licking and flickering in his hand.

He made no remark when Hubbard took the candle almost roughly from him,

blew it out, and set it down on the table where the artist's tubes and

brushes usually stood.

"We'll be rid of that first of all," he said. "Unless it's a mascot.

Scaring 'em to death with that in your hand like a sleepwalker in

traveling-tweeds! Now what about it, Esdaile?"

There was sudden attention in Philip's attitude, though he still looked

down at the floor and pushed at a rug with his toe.

"What about what?" he asked.

"About this last half-hour."

"You mean where have I been? I went down into the cellar. I went to get

that liqueur."

"That doesn't take half an hour--and it certainly didn't take this

particular half-hour."

To this Esdaile made no reply.

"Come," said Hubbard again after a pause. "You admitted just now that

you thought you heard something."

The words came slowly. "Did I? Yes, I remember. But it was all muffled.

Honestly, I couldn't tell from the sound that it was--that it was all

this."

"Was that when you were down there, or as you were going down, or when?"

"I'd just got down, I think."

"But didn't you wonder what was the matter? What kept you all that time?

And what's the matter with you now that you have come up?"

"The matter?" Esdaile began once more to parry; and then suddenly his

manner changed. For the first time he looked up from the floor, and the

mask, whatever it was, almost dropped. "Look here, you fellows," he said

almost appealingly, "you might see I'm a bit worried. I've been trying

to hide it, but perhaps it wasn't much of an effort. Not so dashed easy

to hide. But if you're suggesting that I've been somewhere else besides

in the cellar I can only tell you I haven't. Couldn't for one thing;

Rooke's got every key of this house. I had to get the cellar one from

him. By the way, what's he doing now?"

"Looking out your next train. But what I want to know is----"

He broke off suddenly as sounds were heard over our heads. About the

snowslip on the roof other shadowy shapes could be seen. Feet shuffled

and moved, and the broken branch was dragged away. They were preparing

to get the two men down.

And until they should have finished our conversation ceased.

But in the meantime Esdaile did yet another trivial incongruous thing.

Moving towards one set of blind-cords he motioned to me to take another

set. With short sticking tugs we drew the blinds across a foot at a

time, and soon only narrow gold lozenges of sunlight showed among the

rafters. All below was a dark blue twilight, as if for an obsequy within

instead of for one on the roof.

Then, when from the cessation of sound all appeared to be over, Hubbard

made a fresh appeal. He took the painters arm.

"Now let's have this out," he said. "No good letting a thing get way on

when a few plain words will stop it. A perfectly ordinary thing's

happened. Simple parachute accident. No mystery about it whatever. The

mystery only begins when _you_ come in carrying your damned candles and

dropping jars and coming in here to tidy up instead of going outside to

see what's happened. That's where the answer begins to be a lemon, my

son. Listen to me. Whether you heard that crash or whether you didn't,

at any rate you know all about it _now_. Then why can't you be just

decently upset like the rest of us and have done with it?"

"Decently upset?" The words seemed to strike him. "Have I been behaving

any other way?"

"You were behaving damnably indecently when you came up out of the orlop

there--and that was _before_ you were told a word of all this,

remember."

At last Esdaile saw the point. His behavior _had_ been extraordinary for

whole minutes before the situation had been explained to him. One would

have thought that during those minutes he had been deliberately trying

to find out how much we knew about something or other before committing

himself. When next he spoke it was almost apologetically.

"I see," he said quietly at last. "Yes, you're perfectly right. That was

certainly the proper way to take it--just be decently upset. I see now.

I must have looked a perfect zany.... Now look here: I want to tell you

both all about it, but the trouble is that I can't just at this moment.

At present it's somebody else's affair, not mine at all. Must get that

cleared up first. I'm not perfectly sure of my ground either; you'll see

by and by. But as regards the accident--well, that's the whole point at

present. I mean anybody would say it _was_ an accident, wouldn't they?

It _looked_ like one, I mean? It would never occur to anybody who saw it

that----"

But here he broke off abruptly as his wife appeared in the doorway.

VII

Perhaps at this point I had better tell you who "I" am who write this,

and also how our little circle came to choose me for the task.

As a minor actor in these events you may set me down as a working

journalist. Among other things I am one of the sub-editors of the _Daily

Circus_. But that is not the whole of my life. I am also a novelist of

sorts. And one of my reasons for sticking to journalism when I could

manage at a pinch to do without it is that in this way I escape the doom

of having to produce two novels a year whether I have anything to write

about or not.

But that was not their idea in asking me to put into shape the mosaic of

differently-colored pieces that constitutes this Case. I believe their

idea was that my two capacities might supplement one another--that I

might hold fast (so to speak) to the bed-rock facts with my journalistic

hand while the other was left free for the less tangible elements. I

don't know that I altogether agree with this distinction. I happen to

have some experience of how much fiction people swallow when they take

up their morning papers, and also of how much mere hurdy-gurdy-grinding

they accept as "human nature" when it comes to them in the form of a

novel. But that is their look-out. I told them that with their help I

would do my best.

I had to have their help. Obviously I could not always be at the side of

this person or that, Rooke or Esdaile or Hubbard, throughout every

winding of a complicated chain of events. But I have known Esdaile for

twenty years, Rooke for a dozen, and most of the others long enough to

have a fairly reliable impression of them, and their accounts are quite

trustworthy. If I have any doubt about this I say so.

I cannot deny that we took a good deal of responsibility when we

conspired to hush up the facts of this Case. We have no more right to

come between the agents of the Law and their duty than any other set of

private persons. And, though many of the beaten tracks are lost in these

changing days, and new precedents are making whichever way you turn, I

for one don't like making new precedents, especially moral ones. I like

tradition to have my homage even when I am resolved to break it. But we

are dealing with a _fait accompli_. The Case _is_ a Case. It became so

in spite of laws and customs and institutions. First one person acted as

according to the laws of his individual being he had to act, and another

did the same, and then another and so on, until the phenomenon was

complete.

So, as my chief business in life is precisely those human accidentals

that make us all different beings destined to different acts, perhaps

they have chosen their historian more or less rightly after all.

One caveat (as Mackwith would say) I must enter, however. This is with

regard to my own Services in the War that is now over. Most of these

services, though as a matter of fact performed in belt and khaki, might

just as well have been discharged in a dressing-gown, so unadventurous

for the most part were they. Thanks to a "joy-ride," I did just see War,

but for the rest I went where I was told to go and did what I was told

to do. It is therefore just possible that from the point of view of

those who lived in the hell I only briefly visited, one or two of my

values may be a little "out." The North Sea cannot be quite the same to

me that it was to Esdaile and Hubbard, the air means just what it meant

to Maxwell and Chummy Smith. For this I am afraid there is no help. But

there is always the chance that if I have minimized, they might have

stressed a little unduly. For while our Case has nothing to do with War,

War is always antecedent to it, as for a generation to come it will be

antecedent to everything.

So, on this understanding, we may get on with the tale.

VIII

A slightly embarrassing little scene next took place in that

breakfast-room in Lennox Street, Chelsea. Rooke had put down the Time

Table, and Mollie Esdaile's face wore an expression of exasperation.

It appeared that Philip wanted to pack his family off according to

program but wished to remain behind himself. For this he gave no

reason--or rather he gave several reasons, all of the thinnest

description.

"But how tiresome!" broke from Mollie. "Why on earth do you want to

upset everything like this?"

Philip muttered something about the newly-arrived pictures needing a

thorough overhauling.

"And the children all ready, all but their hats!" Mollie exclaimed.

"Better hurry them up.... At least seven of them are to frame too."

"Then there's Monty and Audrey, what about them? When you offer people a

house----"

But at this one of Mrs. Cunningham's slender hands was imploringly

raised. Her small mouth was parted in appeal.

"Oh, please! Don't think of that! I should be miserable if I thought

that was going to make any difference!"

"But of _course_ it makes a difference!" Mollie declared. "All your

things will be coming here, all your things for the wedding, and anyway

you won't want Philip hanging about the place. Better never have offered

the house at all!"

"Oh--for a day or two--I shan't be in the way," said Philip uneasily.

But it was awkward for all that. If Esdaile had offered his house to one

of his more prosperous friends he would not have hesitated to say

frankly that he was sorry, but something unforeseen had happened, and

the hospitality must be considered "off." But this was different. It was

known that these two were the reverse of well-off. Monty as a matter of

fact had already given up his rooms in Jubilee Place, and I had gathered

at breakfast that Mrs. Cunningham only intended to occupy her

bed-sitting-room in Oakley Street for a very few days longer. There was

her story, too, which I shall come to presently. Philip's decision

certainly upset a number of minor arrangements.

"Oh, it's too ridiculous!" Mollie declared again with vexation. "If it

means that the wedding's to be put off I don't feel like going away at

all."

But Philip only continued to mumble soothingly that it would be quite

all right, and it wasn't for long, and nobody had said anything about

putting off the wedding. The situation looked rather like a deadlock,

and Mackwith already had his silk hat in his hand and the Commander's

white-topped cap was tucked under his upper arm. Whether Philip went or

stayed was a private family matter after all.

But as we were on the point of taking our leave yet another significant

little trifle was added to all the rest. And again Monty Rooke provided

the occasion.

Monty, I ought to say, is one of these fellows who, whenever any odd job

is to do, especially a domestic one, instinctively seems to take it upon

himself. I dare say his living in rooms and studios hardly big enough to

turn around in has made him methodical in his habits. It was Monty, for

example, who had looked out the train in the Time Table; it was Monty

who had picked up the jar of curaçao when Esdaile had let it fall to the

floor; and it was Monty who, just as the rest of us were leaving,

wandered off towards the studio, presently returned again, sought the

kitchen, and reappeared with a sweeping-brush.

"What are you going to do with that?" Philip asked, seeing him making

for the studio again.

"I thought I'd just sweep up that broken glass," Monty replied.

"Better leave it," Philip answered.

Monty carried the brush back to the kitchen again, and presently

wandered off to the studio once more. Esdaile must have had eyes in the

back of his head, for I, who was facing the studio, had not seen Monty

preparing to draw back the roof-blinds again.

"I wouldn't bother about that just at present," Esdaile called rather

loudly. "Just see if there's a train about tea-time, do you mind?"

Monty, once more returning, took up the Time Table again. Philip walked

with us to the door. Then another little exclamation broke from him.

Monty had put down the Time Table and had asked him for the cellar key.

"What on earth do you want the cellar key for?" Philip demanded.

"To put this jar of stuff back," Monty replied. "It won't be wanted

now."

Hereupon Philip broke out with a petulance that struck me as entirely

disproportionate, if indeed there had been any occasion for petulance at

all.

"Oh, we can do that any time. We've got all the rest of the day to

ourselves, haven't we? Sit down and smoke a cigarette or something;

you've done about enough for one morning----"

It was then that we left.