PART II

WHAT HAPPENED OUTSIDE

I

It may have already struck you that while Esdaile, a responsible

householder directly interested in any unusual occurrence on his

premises, had not once been into his garden to see what the trouble was,

I myself, a journalist with quite a good "news story" in the wind, had

shown little more eagerness. Well, I will explain that. In the first

place, we have our own reporters, who do that kind of thing far better

than I can. Next, however interesting things outside might have been, I

had found them quite interesting enough inside. But my real reason was

this:--

Rooke had said that both these aviators were civilians. Well, as regards

civilian flying, we on the _Circus_ had something that for want of a

better name I will call a policy. To speak quite frankly, this policy

was a supine one enough, and merely consisted in waiting for a definite

lead.

As you know, no such thing as a definite lead existed. Except for war

purposes, the future use of flying was at that time the blankest of

blanks. It is true we talked a good deal about it, but that was merely

our highly specialized way of saying nothing and filling space at the

same time. Nobody admitted this lack more readily than those who had

drawn up the provisional Regulations. These were merely experimental,

any accident might change them at any moment, and, in one word, all our

experience was still to be earned.

For this reason, I was just as much interested in opinion about the

facts as I was in the facts themselves, and already I was looking

forward to an exchange of views with Hubbard and Mackwith.

But time had flown. Both Hubbard and Mackwith had appointments for which

they were already late, the one at the Admiralty, the other in the

Temple. I therefore parted from them at Sloane Square Station, and,

being in no great hurry myself, turned back along King's Road. What I

was in search of was a representative public-house. We have all heard of

"the man in the street." You often get even closer to the heart of

things when you listen to the man in the pub.

I think it was the sight of a plumpish young man in a horsey brown coat

that settled my choice of pub. For a moment I couldn't remember where I

had seen that or a similar coat before; then it flashed upon me. A man

in just such a coat had preceded that ladder that had been passed over

the heads of the crowd in Lennox Street, and he or somebody very like

him had managed to get inside Esdaile's gate and to secure a privileged

position within a few feet of the mulberry tree in which the parachute

had lodged.

I followed this coat through two glittering swing-doors a little way

round the corner from the King's Road, and found myself in a

closely-packed Saloon Bar full of tobacco-smoke and noise.

II

I will venture to say that the man I followed was never shut out of a

tube-lift in his life, however crowded it was. He jostled through the

throng about the counter as if it had been so much water. I learned

presently that he had had no sort of interest or proprietorship whatever

in that ladder that had been passed along Lennox Street. Seeing a ladder

approaching he had merely pushed himself forward, had placed himself at

the head of it, and, with energetic elbowings and loud cries of "Make

way there!" had made it to all intents and purposes his own, squeezing

himself in at Esdaile's gate with such nice judgment that the very next

man had been shut out. He called this "managing it a treat," and I

further gathered that neat things like this usually did happen when

Harry Westbury was anywhere about.

The aeroplane accident had at any rate given the licensed trade a fillip

that morning. When I asked for a glass of beer I was curtly told, "Only

port, sherry and liqueur-brandy--three shillings." Yet many a three

shillings was cheerfully paid. Nothing so stimulates conviviality as an

undercurrent of tragedy. Apparently half Chelsea had given up all

thought of further work before lunch, and in my Saloon Bar there were

already signs that more than a few would make a day of it.

And so bit by bit I managed to edge myself nearer to Mr. Harry Westbury.

I dare say you know the kind of man. If the house had a billiard-room

upstairs no doubt he had his private cue in it, as well as his private

shaving-pot at the barber's round the corner. For all his freshness and

plumpness, there was nothing of the jovial about him. Either he had no

humor, or he did not intend that humor should stand in his way through

the world. His convex blue eyes were hard and bullying, and his rosebud

of a mouth never blossomed into a smile. Probably his wife had a thin

time of it. But she would have as good a fur coat as any of her

neighbors.

He was holding forth as I drew near on what he called this "Tom, Dick

and Harry sort of flying."

"And here you have the proof of it," he was saying, his fingers pronged

into four empty glasses and his hard eyes looking defiantly round. "Look

at the damage to property alone! What price these air-raids?

Three--million--pounds in the City in one night! That's my information

as an estate-agent. Three--million--pounds! And now everybody's going to

start. What I want to know is, is it peace or war we're living in?

That's what I want to know!"

He also wanted to know whether it was the same again--the three-shilling

brandy. He was "not to a shilling or two" that morning. It was only

right that as a spectator from the reserved enclosure he should "put his

hand down."

"I wasn't thinking of property; I was thinking of those two poor lads,"

a gray old man said from his seat near the automatic music-box. I

happened to know him by sight as old William Dadley, the picture-frame

maker--"Daddy" of the fledgling artists of the King's Road.

But Westbury would have no weak sentiment of this kind. There was a

blood-and-iron ring in his voice as he set the brandy down.

"Poor lads be blowed!" he said. "They know the risks, don't they?

They're paid for it, I suppose? What I want to know is who's going to

put his hand in his pocket if they start coming down on top of those

houses we're building in Wimbledon or where I live in Lennox Place

there? Let 'em break their necks if they want, but not on my roof! The

world isn't going to stop for a broken neck or two. I _don't_ think!"

"Well, tell us all about it, Harry," somebody said; and Mr. Westbury,

taking the middle of a small circle, did so.

I am not going to trouble you with all he said, but only with as much as

I saw fit to make a mental note of. At this stage of our Case he was

simply a vain and interfering busybody, who had had a rather better view

of things than anybody else. But first of all I noted the obstinacy with

which he dwelt on the fact that Monty Rooke had been first on the roof,

several minutes before the arrival of the police. There was, of course,

nothing in this, excepting always Westbury's dull insistence on it.

Next, he described in detail the bringing-down of the two men. There was

nothing remarkable here either, except that the living one had "kept on

moving his hand all the time like this"--illustrated by an aimless

fluttering of the right hand, now a few inches this way, now a few

inches that.

But I had an involuntary start when Mr. Westbury pompously announced

that he "had offered himself to Inspector Webster as a witness in case

he should be wanted." It was, of course, just what such a fellow would

do, if only out of vain officiousness, and I don't quite know why I

didn't like the sound of it. I had gone into that Saloon Bar to glean,

if possible, what people at large thought of flying over London, what

their temper would be if there were very much of this, and similar

things; but instead I had apparently hit on some sort of a human

bramble, who hooked himself on everywhere with a tenacity out of all

proportion to the value of any fruit he was likely to bear, and who

would scratch unpleasantly when you tried to dislodge him. There was

nothing to be uneasy about, but the whole of the events of that morning

were so far inexplicable, and to that extent intimidating.

"Yes, me and Inspector Webster will probably be having a talk about

things this evening," Mr. Westbury continued with hearty relish. "We're

neighbors in Lennox Place, the very street behind Lennox Street--you can

see right across from my bedroom window. So I had my choice of two good

views in a manner of speaking.... Five-and-twenty to two. Not worth

while going home for lunch now. May as well be hung for a sheep as a

lamb. I wonder if they've got a snack of anything here?"

If they had I have not the least doubt he got it.

III

Musingly I mounted an eastward-bound bus and sought my office. The more

I thought things over the less able I became to shake off the sense of

accumulating trifles, of gathering events. And it was as I passed

through Pimlico that yet another incident, temporarily forgotten, came

back into my mind. This was the curious way in which Esdaile had

snapped--it had been a snap--when Rooke had wanted to sweep up the

broken picture-glass, to draw the studio blinds back again, and to

return the bottle of curaçao to its place in the cellar. "You've done

enough for one morning," Esdaile had said. What had Monty done that was

"enough"?

Now I have known Monty Rooke, as I told you, for a dozen years, and in

that time I have learned not to be surprised at anything he does

provided it is sufficiently out of the way, unprofitable to himself, and

unlike anything an ordinary person would have done. I will give you an

instance of what I mean.

A year or two before there had arrived one night at his studio a bundle

of washing, fresh from the laundry. This bundle, on being opened, had

proved to contain a fully-developed infant girl of a fortnight old, no

doubt the pledge of some unknown laundrymaid's betrayed trust. As a joke

you will see the possibilities of this, particularly in the merry

Chelsea Arts Club; but don't imagine that Monty was a butt. What he did

was enough to dispel that idea. He had immediately wanted to adopt the

foundling, and would certainly have done so but for the strong

dissuasion of his friends; whereupon he had made a drawing instead, a

drawing quite singular for its wistfulness and emotion and depth, of the

infant just as it had arrived, with the newly-ironed shirts and socks

for its cot, deriving none knew whence, cast for none knew what part in

Life, save for Monty friendless, the close of one obscure drama but the

beginning of another.

That was Monty, our little friend of the warm, unprofitable impulses,

the shy and easily daunted manner, but also of the quiet persistence of

purpose that kept him afloat in his seas of petty difficulties and

enabled him once in a while to produce a drawing or a painting that you

returned to again and again, a bit of philosophy that cut clean down to

the quick of things, or--an indiscretion that it would hardly have

occurred to one in a million to commit.

What was there between him and Esdaile now?

IV

The moment I reached the office I rang up the _Record_, our evening

sheet. But their reporters were still out, and nobody could yet tell me

anything about the accident I didn't already know. Willett, my young

colleague on the _Circus_, did not propose to give the story exceptional

treatment.

"If the thing caught fire in the air we'll let it alone," he said.

"Fire's too much of a bugbear. We want the joy-riding idiot and the

lunatic who stunts over towns. I'm for letting it alone, but we'll wait

and see what the others do."

He was quite right. On its merits as Publicity it looked as if we should

hear little more of the Case. I settled down to my work.

I had not actually expected that Hubbard would ring me up, but I was not

greatly surprised when, at about four o'clock, he did so. He wanted to

know whether I could go round to the Admiralty at once. That we must

have a talk at the earliest possible moment was a foregone conclusion. I

therefore replied that I would be on my way in ten minutes, and, hastily

swallowing the cup of tea that had been placed on my desk and telling

Willett to carry on, I took up my hat and stick, sought the lift,

threaded my way through the _Record's_ carts and bicycles and boarded a

passing motor-bus in Fleet Street.

I had no very clear notion of the nature of the job that kept Hubbard in

town that spring, and that had caused him to envy Esdaile his luck in

being able to get away into the country. Indeed, I can tell you very

little about the organization of that mysterious Service that moves,

familiar yet isolated, in our midst. I understood that originally he had

been a torpedo man, but had later been drafted into the Inventions

branch. It is quite possible that the scope of his work had been

expressly left rather ill-defined. So many amazing extemporizations had

to be hurriedly made and applied.

Still, these war-improvisations have to be overhauled afterwards, so

that it may be seen which disappear with the emergency, and which are to

be permanently incorporated in the strategy of the future; and I knew

that one at any rate of Hubbard's tasks was to explain to a certain

Parliamentary Committee a number of technical and basic facts that have

a way of not varying very much however the political situation may

change.

I found him alone in his room on the third floor. The screen just within

the door was so disposed that, in the spot to which your eyes naturally

turned on entering, the officer you had come to see was not. They are

old in cunning in the Senior Service, and I had never seen Hubbard at

work before. His voice came to me from quite a different part of the

room, and I had the feeling that if I had been a stranger there would

have been a moment in which I should have been pretty thoroughly looked

up and down.

"Come in and take a pew," he said. "Hope I haven't fetched you away from

anything important. But I couldn't stop to talk this morning. I only got

rid of my By-election Blighters half an hour ago. Well----"

And, as I sat down in the chair at the end of his desk, he plunged

straight into the matter by asking me how long I had known Esdaile.

Now how long you have known a man, in the sense of how well you know

him, is not always simply a matter of time. I have told you how humdrum

my own War services were. They had not included those incredible moments

of intensified action that may more truly reveal a man to you than years

of desultory familiarity. It was plainly something of this kind that

Hubbard had in his mind now. He frowned as he trifled with a

paper-weight.

"No, it's absolutely unaccountable," he broke out suddenly, putting the

paper-weight down with a slap. "He's not that kind of man. It simply

doesn't fit in."

"His behavior this morning, you mean?"

"Yes. It was another man altogether. Why, before I knew Esdaile well I

remember I bet him a supper that he'd drop his palette on the

quarter-deck when the first shell came over. Well, it came, and half the

bridge was wrecked, and he never turned a hair. Just carried on with

that sketch of Hopkins at the range-finder. Absolutely undefeated

sportsman. So why should he behave as he did this morning?"

Hereupon--though not as throwing very much light on the question after

all--I told Hubbard of my own surmise with regard to Rooke. He looked

rather quickly up.

"What, little Queerfellow? He's--er--all right, isn't he? What about

him? Tell me about him."

This too I told him as well as I was able. And I may say that I noted

with pleasure, as perhaps the real beginning of a valued friendship,

that there did not seem to be any question in Hubbard's mind as to what

kind of man I was myself. He was quite content to accept my summing-up

of Monty.

"So it's between 'em, you think, whatever it is?"

"Or else I give it up," I replied.

"I wonder if you're right," he mused.... "But then," he added suddenly,

"what about all that time he spent in the cellar?"

From that point our conversation took for a time a curious little turn.

For Hubbard, while seeming to have no explanation that as a sensible man

he must not reject as fantastic, seemed nevertheless to be reluctant to

let something go. He seemed to hint and to dismiss and then to hint

again, to come to the brink of saying something and then to leave it

unsaid after all. And again I had the feeling that though he had known

Philip Esdaile for only two years as against my twenty, in some things

he might be the familiar and I the outsider.

Then again he seemed to decide to take a risk. He spoke to the

paper-weight in his palm.

"You don't happen to know anything about these new sound-appliances, do

you?" he asked.

"No. Which are they?"

"Oh, there are a lot of 'em," he answered again, half evasively.

"There's sound-ranging, of course. Then there's the hydrophone. And as a

matter of fact the best brains in the world to-day are trying to cut-out

sound--aeroplane propellers and so on.... What I mean is Esdaile's not

hearing anything. I suppose it's just possible that he didn't. All a

matter of where the sound-wave hits. You remember the broken windows in

the Strand when Fritz used to come over and drop his eggs? First a

broken one, then two or three whole ones, then broken ones again, all

along the street? Well, this might have been one of those dumb

intervals. Otherwise he _must_ have heard. And I should have thought

he'd have felt the vibration too."

"He's admitted he thought he heard something."

"Pooh, there was no mistaking it. If he didn't recognize it we can take

it he didn't hear it. If we believe him, of course."

"Don't you believe him?"

"Yes," Hubbard answered without a moment's hesitation.

"Then----?"

"Oh, I suppose it means I'm on the wrong track," Hubbard replied.

Naturally any track of that nature was totally unexplored by me; but I

was far from dismissing it on that account. Here again my ignorance of

modern War came in to humble me. For what is the good of saying things

are fantastic and far-fetched--sound-ranging and the selenium cell and

what not--when for a number of years the food we have eaten and the

clothes we have worn and the roofs over our heads have depended on just

such fantasies? Not for nothing were those clusters of listening cones

at Hyde Park Corner and on Parliament Hill, not for nothing those

wireless masts over our heads at that very moment. Their operation might

be unfamiliar to me, but these things were the daily business of

Commander Hubbard, R.N. He turned as naturally to them as I myself turn

to those equally mysterious things, a man's motives and the operative

emotions of his heart.

"For all that," said Hubbard abruptly, "I should like to have a good

look at that cellar of his."

I was silent. I didn't know whether his wish to see the cellar included

sound-experiments on the roof also.

"More than that," he continued slowly, "--by the way, did Mrs. Esdaile

and the children get away?"

That I did not know.

"Well, what about going round this evening to see?"

"The chances are that they did if I know Philip."

"I don't mean that. I mean what about going round to see that cellar,"

Hubbard replied.

I didn't say so, but I had a sudden wonder, quite new and born all at

once of I don't know what, whether Esdaile might want us to see his

cellar.

V

However, we went, and at a little after eight o'clock rang the bell we

had rung under such very different circumstances at breakfast-time that

morning. The parachute still waved in the mulberry, and a few policemen

were unobtrusively hanging about the street. Two of these did not move

very far from the gate. I supposed that in view of pending inquiries it

was important that the parachute should not be touched.

We waited so long for an answer after ringing the bell that I had almost

concluded there was nobody at home. We were, in fact, on the point of

turning away when Esdaile himself opened the door.

Poor devil! I learned presently that he had had callers enough that

afternoon to make him wish to disconnect his bell altogether--interested

parties of all sorts, a dozen of them at least. He had as a matter of

fact removed his telephone receiver from the hook. He said its ringing

had nearly driven him mad.

But even all this did not explain his weariness as he stood holding the

door open in the still bright light of the perfect evening. My first

glance at him made me wonder whether something even more untoward than

that morning's sudden drama had happened. Before, his manner, baffling

as it had been, had at least had a sort of hectic brilliancy, an

artificial excitement that had buoyed him up and kept him going. Now it

was as unlike that as possible. He was spiritless and played out. He no

longer seemed to wish to keep everything and everybody at arm's-length.

Indeed, we had his reason almost before he had closed the door behind

us.

"Of course, you've heard who it is?" he said to Hubbard in a dull voice.

"No. Who?"

"Chummy Smith."

Only the fanlight over the door let in the last of the day, but it did

not need light to reveal how the name Esdaile had spoken affected

Hubbard. To me this name conveyed nothing for the moment. I heard

Hubbard's indraught of breath.

"You don't say so! Good God! Which? The dead one?"

"No. The other. I happened to ring up the hospital to ask how he was

going on and learned that way. That was before I took that infernal

receiver off. Come in. I'm all alone."

"Your people got away, then?"

"Yes," said Esdaile. And I fancied I heard him grunt, "Thank God!"

"Who's the other chap?" Hubbard asked as we walked along the passage.

"Fellow called Maxwell. Never heard of him. Did you?"

"No."

"Well, come in. It's the devil, isn't it?"

I suppose it _is_ the devil when one of your particular friends comes

down like this on your roof; but it struck me even then that it would

have been still more devilish if he had been killed in doing so. Yet not

only had their friend Chummy not been killed, but, according to Rooke's

account earlier in the day, he was in a fair way for recovery. Hence I

didn't quite see the reason for Esdaile's utter dejection. I should have

understood it better had their friend been, not Smith, but the dead man

Maxwell.

You see, I had totally forgotten one pretty little incident of that

morning's breakfast. Perhaps you have forgotten it too. Remember, then,

that Philip had pared an apple for Joan Merrow, had told her to see what

initial the paring made on the floor, and had shaped his own guess with

his lips--"C for Ch"--as he had hidden his bit of paper under his

napkin.

Philip pushed up chairs for us and pottered about in search of whisky

and glasses. Then, having set out a tray, he dropped heavily into a

chair. For a time none of us spoke, and then I asked if Rooke was out.

"Yes. He's taken Audrey Cunningham home," Philip replied with marked

brevity, and the silence fell on us again.

If Hubbard had really come for the purpose of seeing Esdaile's cellar I

could see that all thought of this had now passed from his mind. The

first thing to do was to cheer Esdaile up. After all, Chummy was alive

and doing well. The news when Esdaile had rung up the hospital that

afternoon had been reassuring. It might be some little time before he

was out and about again, but certainly the occasion did not seem one

for gloom. I therefore kept silence while Hubbard pointed all this out.

And as Esdaile's spirits seemed to revive a little and things began to

seem not quite so hopeless after all, I began to rummage in my memory

for recollection of this Chummy Smith of theirs. I remembered now that I

had at any rate heard his name. And I confess that I am a little

curious, not to say jealous, about some of these intensive War

friendships. It interests me to note which of them survive the quieter

and more persistent pressure on the lower levels, and which fail to do

so. Not every one of them succeeds. It is one thing to wait in a Mess

for the overdue chum, trying not to look too often at the full glass of

gin-and-bitters that by this time he ought to have come in and claimed,

and quite another to meet that chum a year or two later and, as you ask

him what he will have, to know that you are making the swift mental

note, "Ah, _that's_ him in mufti!"

But this rubicon had been safely crossed in the case of Chummy Smith. I

began to piece together odd things I had heard. Philip, meeting him in

Coventry Street six months before, had stopped, spoken, and had

presently brought him home to a scratch supper. A fortnight later Chummy

had dropped in again unannounced. Thereafter he had continued to come at

fairly frequent intervals. He and myself had never happened to call at

the same moment, that was all.

"Who do you say he's flying for now?" Hubbard asked presently.

"The Aiglon Company. He's a goodish bunch of shares in it, I believe.

Knows his job, too. Ever see him zoom?"

He described Smith's performance of this terrifying maneuver, with the

fire of the Lewis gun reserved till the last twenty yards, then the

fiery bridge-clearing rafale, and the upshooting like a rocket as he

cleared the rail by a yard.

"Yes, he's a dashed good youngster," Hubbard agreed. "Thank the Lord

he's all right."

But Esdaile only leaned his head wearily on one hand and sat gazing

moodily at his whisky-and-soda.

Then it was that the probable reason for all this depression flashed

upon me. Then it was, in that moment, that I remembered that

apple-paring, Joan's adorable little schoolgirl's outbreak, and her

tucking away of that piece of paper into her breast. Philip Esdaile was

thirty-nine, young Smith twenty-four; that is a difference of fifteen

years; but a young man of twenty-four could be quite devoted to

Methuselah himself if there was a young woman anywhere about. Those

frequent calls after that meeting in Coventry Street simply meant that

Philip's leg had been pulled. Chummy Smith was no doubt very fond of

Philip, but he was even fonder of Philip's wife's help and companion.

And Joan had seen the crash.

No wonder Philip thanked God that she didn't know who it was she had

seen come down.

VI

I know now the exact point up to which I was right, and also where I

ceased to be right. Mollie Esdaile made a clean breast of the whole

guileful conspiracy of their courtship afterwards. Here it is, for your

edification and warning.

Mollie had several times been down to visit Philip in his billet at the

Helmsea Station. There it was that she had first seen Chummy. At first

she had not been able to single out Chummy from the rest of the

uniformed mob that led such a mysterious existence down there--a world

of womenless men, who paraded at all hours of the day and night,

suddenly vanished by the half week together, turned up smiling again,

danced with one another to the grinding of gramophones, played cards and

snooker, howled round pianos and swapped yarns, Kirchners and pink gins.

To Mollie their uniforms were of two kinds only, khaki and dark blue. In

course of time she had come to pick out Chummy as wearing both--khaki,

but with the rings and shoulder-badges of the other Service. The lad

made Philip ask him to tea, and the next time, in Philip's absence,

Chummy had asked her to tea.

And so to the sky-blue uniforms and the monochrome of mufti again, by

which time Chummy and Mollie were firm friends.

I believe she threw the youngsters together from the moment Philip first

brought Chummy home to Lennox Street. She says she didn't, and refers me

to Joan. I wouldn't hang a dog on what Miss Joan says on such a matter.

For who can believe in the candor of a young woman of just twenty who,

the very first time a young man is brought to the house, straightway

enters into a clandestine arrangement to meet him at tea the next day,

and presently can hold out her hand with a conventional "Good-by, Mr.

Smith," as if the last thing that entered her head was that she would

ever set eyes on him again? It takes the nerve of the modern young woman

to do that. The case of Mr. Smith, observe, is entirely different. Mr.

Smith, suddenly meeting the lovely young thing, may not be sure whether

his feet are treading a polished studio floor or whether they have

little Mercury wings on them that waft him through the empyrean; but

there is this to be said for Mr. Smith--that when he is in love he

doesn't behave as if he wasn't. He fidgets even if she goes out of the

room for a minute. He doesn't know that she herself couldn't tell him

why she has gone out of the room. He thinks she had something to go for,

and never dreams that she is just sitting on the edge of her bed,

knowing perfectly well that he will be leaving in half an hour, asking

herself what made her so suddenly get up and leave him, and yet not even

writing him a note.

The notes came later, at about the time she put a lock on her

letter-case. They were numbered "1," "2" and "3" to indicate the

sequence in which they should be read (a billet scribbled at seven

o'clock in the evening must on no account be read before one that is

dashed off at tea-time), and they were constantly on the wing.

Nor did these protégés of Mollie's choose tea-shops that Philip was

known to frequent, nor cinemas the kindly gloom of which might by any

chance have concealed him. Philip never noticed that his monthly

telephone accounts rose perceptibly higher. True, he did ask one evening

why the children had been put to bed while it was still broad day, but

he was not told that he might find the reason walking hand-in-hand under

the trees in Richmond Park.

It is no good asking whether Joan and Chummy were engaged. What is a

young woman's engagement nowadays? No doubt Joan's father had in his day

ceremoniously "waited upon" her maternal grandfather-elect and had "had

the honor" and so on, but Miss Joan always reminded me of the private

with the field-marshal's baton--she seemed to have come into the world

with a will of her own, a latch-key and her marriage-lines all

potentially complete. I remember she called an engagement an

"understanding." If by that word she meant what the Psalmist meant, she

certainly made haste with all her heart to get it.

Of course, Philip had sooner or later discovered what was going on under

his abused roof, and now knew all there was to be known about it. And it

must have occurred to him also that, with letters numbered "1," "2" and

"3" flying backwards and forwards all the time, any interruption of more

than a day or two would set Joan, away in Santon, Yorks, anxiously

wondering what was the matter.

You are now to see how far I was right in this.

VII

The lights he had switched on were a couple of standard lamps only, that

worked from plugs in the wall. Both had mignonette-colored shades, and

while one shade stood a-tilt near the syphon and glasses, the other

threw a soft light on Philip's little escritoire. As he sat the light

crossed his breast only, leaving his face in a half-transparent

obscurity. A few yards away the entrance to the studio made a dead black

oblong, so completely without trace of the evening light that must still

be lingering in the world outside that I judged that the dark-blue

roof-blinds were still drawn.

I suppose it was these roof-blinds, and Philip's apparent disinclination

to have them touched, that brought my surmises with regard to Monty

Rooke into my mind again. And somehow, back again under the roof where

the tragedy had happened, these surmises seemed to have grown a little

more threatening. Why this alteration of values should take place in me

I didn't know, but there it undeniably was, hovering (so to speak) in

the spaces above the unlighted chandelier, approaching as it were to the

very edge of the penumbra that crossed our host's breast, and

accumulated as in some dark power-house beyond the threshold of the

black studio doorway. And as this feeling grew on me lesser feelings

seemed by comparison to grow less still. My hastily-seized-on

explanation with regard to Joan seemed all at once insufficient. A shock

of some kind she would naturally receive; that was unavoidable in any

event; but what would be simpler than to write to her immediately, to

tell her what had been discovered since her departure, to promise to

send her daily bulletins, and to warn her that for the present, in the

absence of letters, these must suffice?

I didn't know to what extent I was supposed to be privy to the

Chummy-Smith-Joan-Merrow love affair, but in the circumstances I did not

let that trouble me. I just said what I thought. "She'll have to be told

some time or other," I finished by saying.

But for some reason or other he waved my words aside.

"Wouldn't do at all." His voice came from within the shade of the

mignonette-colored lamp. "Must think of something better than that."

"But she'll be expecting letters. And she won't get them. My way's much

the kindest. What's the objection?"

"Oh, heaps of objection," he answered evasively. "I don't know half of

'em myself yet."

On this I instantly fastened.

"Ah! Then you haven't seen the fellow yet you spoke of?"

I knew I had him. I could feel his mental wriggle.

"What fellow?"

"You said this morning it wasn't your affair, but somebody else's. The

fellow I mean is the somebody else."

He spoke slowly.

"Do you mean Rooke?"

"You didn't mention any name. I mean Rooke if it was Rooke."

This time we had to wait a long time for an answer, but at any rate it

cleared the air when it did come.

"It was Rooke. I don't remember very clearly exactly what I did say, but

I meant Rooke," he admitted.

"You say he's taken Mrs. Cunningham home. He's coming back, I suppose?"

With remarkable grimness Philip replied, "You bet he is."

"You mean you told him to?"

"Yes, and I told him to be pretty quick unless he wanted to drive me

crazy. I said I'd give him time for dinner at the Parrakeet, though. I

was waiting for him when you came in."

"Then--well, to put it plainly, do you want us to clear off?"

"No--at any rate wait a bit," he answered irresolutely. "I don't suppose

he'll be long now."

I don't know how much longer we should have continued to spar like this

had not Hubbard suddenly put a question. He had evidently been thinking

it over for some time, and he took care, with a preliminary "I say" and

a pause, that he had Esdaile's attention before putting it.

"I say," he said quietly, "about when you came up from below this

morning. Why did you want to brush Rooke's clothes?"

And that settled it. Esdaile began with one more "Did I?" but Hubbard

did not let him finish.

"Yes, you did," he cut him short. "It was the very first thing you did.

And he jumped back when you tried to touch him. Why?"

There was no further attempt at prevarication. Without even taking the

trouble to rise, Esdaile pushed back the lamp, opened the upper drawer

of the escritoire as he sat, and from the corner of it drew out and

placed on the table a 7.65 mm. Webley and Scott automatic pistol.

VIII

Honestly, I don't know whether I was surprised or not. On the whole I

hardly think I was. If he had produced another candlestick or jar of

liqueur I think I should have felt like getting up and walking out; but

here at last was something on the fuller scale. Thank heaven, we had

done with broken glass and sweeping-brushes and dark blue linen blinds.

We might now hope to get a little farther.

For a pistol is a pistol at all times and all the world over. No other

weapon has quite so exclusively sinister a meaning. Among the honorable

swords and rifles of war it is a low and sneaking thing, and in

peace-time an Apache's tool, something for the common garrotter to

shoot through his pocket with. Its proper place was the Criminal Museum

at Scotland Yard, not in a decent artist's studio.

So Philip put the revolting thing on his desk, and for a moment we sat

looking at its roughened grip, black as crape, and the glossy blackness

of the rest of it. Then without a word Hubbard took it up, glanced at

the safety-catch and slid back the breach. A cartridge lay ready in the

chamber. Then he withdrew the magazine. Six nickel steel bullets showed

through the perforations of the clip. The capacity of the W. & S. 7.65

is eight shots. One shot had therefore been fired.

Hubbard replaced the pistol on the desk.

"And where did _that_ come from?" he asked with pursed lips.

Philip shrugged his shoulders. Somehow the answer was "Rooke" as plainly

as if he had spoken the name.

"And where did he get it?"

"Up there." Philip's eyes made the slightest of turns up towards the

ceiling.

"From one of those two fellows?"

"I suppose so."

"How do you mean, you 'suppose' so? Don't you know?"

"I'm not perfectly sure yet. You see, just at that moment Audrey

Cunningham came in, and it isn't the kind of thing you discuss with

women there. I thought she'd gone, or I should have waited a bit."

"Well, don't you think it's time you told us a little more now?"

This is the narrative that followed, with that beastly object still

lying there in the silky light of the mignonette-shaded lamp.

IX

At first Monty had tried to get out of it by saying it was the keys.

Esdaile's is not a modern house; its keys are not of the Yale kind, of

which you can carry a dozen in one pocket; each of them is anything from

three to five inches long, and they weigh very few to the pound. In

handing over the house to Monty, Philip had given him eight or ten of

these; and so at first (Esdaile said) Rooke had wanted to say it was the

keys.

"I don't mean the keys," Philip had replied. "I mean the pocket on the

other side that you're nursing as if it had eggs in it. Why have you

been standing sideways and behind people all this time? And why did you

jump when I wanted to give you a dust-down this morning?"

Esdaile's face became animated as at last he warmed up to it all. He

spoke almost vehemently.

"You see," he said, "I wasn't going to have any more damned nonsense. I

had quite enough of that--hours of it--all this that I'm telling you

took place just after tea. So I was as short as you please. Pity I spoke

quite so soon, but I really thought Audrey'd gone. And the idiot hadn't

even put the safety-catch on," he added with disgust.

There was no need to urge him now. He was as resolved to tell his story

as before he had been reticent. The only unfortunate thing was that

until Monty should return he had so little to tell.

"So when he saw the key story wouldn't do he fetched out this pretty

little article," he continued, rapping with his knuckle on the

writing-desk. "Just like a kid caught stealing apples he was. I asked

him where he got it, and he said on the roof. Then he told me all about

you fellows going up into the bathroom, and how he'd been the one to

crawl along the gutter because he doesn't weigh as much as either of

you."

"But which of 'em gave it to him--Chummy or the other man?" Hubbard

asked.

"Well, I'm not so sure that either of them really 'gave' it to him,"

Esdaile replied. "He began to be a bit of a mule when I pressed him

about that. And of course I asked Monty all this before I knew it was

Chummy at all, and Monty doesn't know that yet, though I don't think he

ever met Chummy. No, as far as I can make out, the pistol was lying on

the roof, just out of Chummy's reach, and he kept pointing to it--moving

his hand like this."

The gesture Esdaile made was the very gesture I had seen Mr. Harry

Westbury make in the Saloon Bar earlier in the day.

"So he just picked it up and put it into his pocket?"

"Just that. Simple, isn't it?"

"And it's been fired?"

"As you see."

"Innocent young man. What did he do during the War?"

"Camouflage," Esdaile replied. "In Kensington Gardens there. Imitation

haystacks and dummy O.P. trees and gunpit-screens and painting tanks and

so on. Making anything look like what it isn't. Just what he would do."

"Does he know this thing's been fired?"

"That I can't tell you. Audrey came in then."

And that was the answer to all our further questions--Audrey had then

come in. Esdaile had as a matter of fact now told us all that had taken

place between himself and Monty Rooke. For further information we must

wait until Monty's return.

You may imagine, however, that I had now quite a lot of food for

thought. In the first place, Rooke had taken it upon himself to conceal

a highly material fact from the police. Whether Esdaile yet shared this

responsibility was at present debatable. Audrey Cunningham's

interruption half-way through Monty's story rather obscured the moral

aspect of this last. One does not set weighty machinery going for

trifles, and for all we knew Monty, when he arrived, might have a

complete explanation. In the meantime Esdaile was probably wise to hold

his hand.

A pistol, however, had undoubtedly been fired, and, as a further

examination of the barrel showed, probably recently. And, if you

remember, there was that small round hole in the starred roof-glass of

the studio that I had at first assumed to have been caused by the broken

mulberry branch. A pistol-bullet might have made just such a hole.

Next I remembered how Esdaile had been occupied when Hubbard and I had

followed him into the studio shortly after his return from the cellar.

He had been so engrossed in poking about the broken glass and mats on

the studio floor that he had seemed to notice little else. Had he been

looking for the bullet that had made that hole in the roof? And why had

he had the roof-blinds drawn, and broken out on Monty when he had wanted

to put them back again? This last, I admit, set me all at sea again. The

drawing of the blinds would certainly hide the bullet-hole in the pane

from anybody _in_side the house, supposing he wished to hide it; but

what about the police who had been on the roof itself at that very

moment? The drawing of the blinds inside would hide nothing from them.

Why seek to conceal from the rest of us something that if they cared to

investigate they could hardly fail to see?

One more thing. If that pistol had been fired on the premises, somewhere

there must be, not only a bullet, but a spent case also. I mentioned

this, and Esdaile gave a slight start of recollection.

"Of course!" he exclaimed. "Glad you mentioned that. I found the case in

the garden. Here it is. I'd honestly forgotten all about it."

And, as he fetched it out of his waistcoat pocket and put it down by the

side of the pistol, I as honestly believed he had.

"But there's no sign of the bullet?" I asked.

"I've looked high and low for it," Esdaile replied. "Low, I should say,

because naturally I don't want to go hunting about the roof in the

daylight. Too many eyes about. There's no trace of it."

"But it wouldn't be on the roof if it made that hole in the glass. It

would be in the studio. Or possibly," I ventured, "in the cellar."

But, as Esdaile was about to reply, a bell trilled in the kitchen, and,

with a "That's Rooke, I expect," Esdaile put the pistol and the empty

case back into the drawer, motioned us to remain where we were, and went

out.

X

Philip had described Rooke quite well when he had said that he had the

air of a naughty boy caught robbing an orchard. He had a hang-dog yet

defiant look as he entered, shepherded in by Philip as if we had been a

tribunal empaneled for his condemnation. But there was relief in his

face too--the relief of one who has got the worst over and hardly fears

the rest. And, as he threw his hat on the table and looked round in

search of a chair, he unconsciously emphasized his air of boyish guilt

by sitting down on a low stool that stood between the empty fireplace

and the escritoire.

Esdaile began immediately, as if Rooke had merely been out of the room

for a few moments.

"Well, to continue our chat, Monty," he said. "I've told these fellows

as much as you've told me. Shall we have the rest of it now?"

From the look on Monty's face I began to think that we might have some

difficulty in getting very much more out of him, for the simple reason

that, in picking up and concealing an incriminating pistol, he evidently

didn't see that he had done anything at all out of the way. He seemed to

think that was a natural thing to have done. I gathered also that there

was something further on his mind, something that had already begun to

dawn on my own and has doubtless occurred to you also. But we will come

to that presently.

So Monty merely repeated what we already knew, and then looked from one

to another of us as if to ask, "_Now_ were we satisfied?"

"Oh, we want to know a good deal more than that," Esdaile continued.

"First of all, did he speak? The man who pointed to the pistol, I mean."

"No. He'd taken too bad a toss for that," Monty replied. "He just

pointed, the way I showed you, and I thought perhaps he didn't want the

thing lying about, so I--well, I obliged him, so to speak."

"But it's been fired."

"I don't know anything about that. I didn't fire it, if that's what you

mean."

"It's been fired recently. Did you notice if it was warm?"

"No, I didn't," said Monty, ruffling up, "and it's all very well you

fellows talking, sitting down here with glasses of whisky in front of

you, but I'll bet if you'd been in my place you'd have done exactly the

same."

Here I struck in. I asked him what made him so sure of that. He turned

his earnest brown eyes to me.

"I mean you just would. If you'd seen him, I mean--seen his face. It was

the look in his eyes; I couldn't get it out of my mind for hours; I can

see it now. I tell you you missed a pretty rotten job by not having to

go up there, and here you go asking me if pistols were warm and who

fired them and all about it as if I'd been having a fortnight's holiday

up there."

I saw Monty's point. I suppose I have arrived at that stage of life when

I too trust my eyes more and more as time goes on. Men may have all

sorts of reasons for saying one thing and meaning another, but he is a

remarkable man who can control his looks with the same facility. I have

seen many eyes telling the truth while the lips beneath them have told

the practiced lie. So if Monty had taken his impulse from Chummy

Smith's anguished eyes in that moment, I for one did not feel inclined

to blame him.

"You've heard who it was, haven't you?" I said.

"No. Who?"

Philip told him. His eyes opened very wide.

"Not the fellow I've heard you talk about?"

Esdaile nodded gloomily.

"And you mean _he_ fired the pistol?"

There was an embarrassed silence. Nobody so far had ventured to express

his thought quite so nakedly. We had an obscure feeling of resentment,

as if Monty had been a little lacking in tact. He sat up on his stool

and pursed his lips into the shape of a whistle.

"I--say! _That_ makes it the dickens, doesn't it? Well, I know what his

eyes looked like, I can promise you that! Poor devil! Thank goodness you

were all too busy watching Philip when he came up from down below to

notice me much. Nobody noticed me except Audrey, and she----"

Philip sliced his words off like a guillotine.

"You haven't told her anything about this, have you?"

Monty stared at him. "No," he replied, "as a matter of fact I haven't;

but what if I had? I don't quite see----"

"Then you see you jolly well don't," Philip curtly ordered him. "Four's

quite enough. You understand?"

"Four's quite enough." Do you see what was already working in his mind,

and what a sudden jump forward our Case took when his lips uttered that

concluding word?

For he did not say "enough" for what. The What was only just dimly

beginning to appear. Perhaps I shall save time if I put what I mean into

the form of a single question:--

Why had Esdaile, who knew perfectly well that that pistol ought to be in

the custody of the police, not himself immediately handed it over?

Why indeed did he not do so now?

That is what I am getting at. He had not only _not_ handed the pistol

over, but he had drawn blinds and grubbed about floors and had sought

high and low, though so far in vain, for a stray bullet. Nay, he might

lecture Monty on the picking up of random pistols, but what else had he

himself done when he had found that little empty brass case in the

garden and had slipped it into his waistcoat pocket? He had pretended to

hold back until Monty should have told him everything. Well, Monty had

now told him everything.

There was a telephone in the hall. Ten seconds would suffice.

Yet Esdaile did nothing.

I was conscious of a curious quickening of excitement. The whole

atmosphere of our little gathering had already changed. Monty, sitting

on his stool, seemed somehow less of a culprit, Esdaile something much

more nearly in collusion with him. And above all it distinctly began to

appear--dare I say "providential"?--that Monty had picked up that

pistol.

Why?

Was it because Chummy Smith, instead of being a stranger who must be

left to take the consequences of his own acts, was Hubbard's and

Esdaile's friend?

XI

It is not for me to draw the hair-line that divides the heart's wish

from the conviction of the rightness of the act that follows it. We are

all prone to do what we want to do and to look for reasons afterwards.

That was for Esdaile and Hubbard to consider. I am merely stating the

Case. Personally you will always find me the broadest-minded and most

tolerant of men until these lofty qualities begin to react on my own

private affairs; after that I become a pattern of the narrow and the

hidebound. Whether in their place I should have done as Hubbard and

Esdaile did I have fortunately not to answer. What that was you will see

in a moment.

For it was now clear that we were looking, without very much dismay,

into the perilous face of Conspiracy. A pistol had been fired, and

humanly speaking could only have been fired by one man. If the pistol,

therefore, ought to have been handed over to the police, _a fortiori_

ought the man who had fired it.

But that appeared to be precisely the sticking-point. It was here that I

saw both Hubbard and Esdaile preparing to dig in. In a word, until they

(private individuals, mark you) knew more about it, Chummy Smith was not

to be given up.

Monty's attitude at about this stage began to be rather amusing.

Suddenly he left the stool of repentance and began to walk about. He

even swelled a little. It was he, after all, who had in a sense saved

the situation, and when the cartridge-case was produced (for Hubbard and

Esdaile had their heads together over the pistol-barrel again in search

of further minute indications) he became almost cock of the walk.

Incidentally he had one of those flashes of insight I told you he

sometimes had, or at any rate it was a flash with which I myself am not

without a certain amount of sympathy.

"Well, there isn't half enough murder in the world if you ask _me_," he

said. "Only they're the wrong people. If you could get somebody really

trustworthy to pick out the right ones no end of good would be done."

"Oh, shut up!" said Philip rudely; and happily the dangerous theory was

not pressed.

But Monty had used the awkward word "murder."

And if Monty was amusing, the state of mind of the other two was now

fascinatingly interesting. For you see their predicament. To put it

quite plainly, they were trying to screw up their courage. Esdaile in

particular was almost visibly hardening his heart. That was the

fascinating part--to see exactly how much and how little homage they

would pay to the decencies before they thought themselves free to go

ahead.

The stages of the comedy were rapid. The first of them came when Esdaile

wondered whether he oughtn't to go to the telephone, not to communicate

with the police, but to ask for the latest news of Chummy's progress.

"Seems funny to think of Chummy being laid out six months after the

War's all over," he said. "Remember the Jazz Band in the Mess, Cecil?"

"Red Pepper Two-Step on the Birds, eh?" said Hubbard.

(I am aware that this needs elucidation. The Helmsea Mess Jazz Band had

been a noteworthy improvisation, and the Birds had been Chummy Smith's

special department. They were stuffed Birds, set in cases round the

walls, and the glass fronts of the cases had formed Smith's tympani.

With drumming fingertips and softly-pounding wrists I learned that he

had got great variety out of his instruments.)

"And the cock-fight between the razorbills?" Esdaile continued.

I could also make a guess at the kind of rag that had been.

"And the night old Pike's motor-bike broke down?"

And though this reminiscence passed over my head, it was plain that they

were getting on. Very soon I might expect to be told outright that

Chummy Smith was Chummy Smith and a pal, and they would be damned if

they would see him in the cart till things were much clearer than they

were. So I simply leaned back and amused myself with mental pictures.

They were jumbled pictures, but I knew I was sharing them with the other

two. I seemed to see their East Coast Base, with planes homing in the

evening and the M.L.'s suddenly appearing out of the mists and dropping

anchor in the tideway. I seemed to see the rubber-coated and

white-mufflered figures striding up the jetty to that Mess they spoke of

and loudly demanding drinks and food and hot baths. I imagined the

mechanics filling up the tanks and the Duty Officer swearing at the snow

and slush as he stamped up and down the 'drome. And, faint and

ineffectual as my pictures were, they still had a little of the magic of

that life in which gayety and tragedy came so close and the chances of

life and death were so intertwined.

I also guessed what a purist in the matter of picking up pistols might

find himself up against if he pushed his purism inconveniently far.

Esdaile took the plunge even more quickly than I expected. I saw the

little effort with which he pulled himself together.

"Well, it's no good beating about the bush," he said. "We all know how

things are. The question is what's to be done."

I don't think he realized, as he pulled out his pipe, that that was now

hardly the question at all. Already the question was, not what was to be

done, but exactly how it was to be done.

XII

For, if he had realized, he could hardly have overlooked the immensely

important point he did overlook. It was left to me to draw his attention

to this point.

For when one man kills another, it necessarily follows that one man has

been, killed _by_ another. And it further follows that, if you decide to

shield the killer because he is your friend, you are inevitably forced

into an unfriendly attitude towards the victim. What about the victim

and his rights in the matter?

You may believe it or not, but until this moment I don't think this

aspect of the affair had occurred either to Hubbard or Esdaile. All had

been Chummy. More than this: so exclusively had Chummy occupied their

thoughts that they had forgotten the ordinary physical fact that a

bullet fired into a man's body makes a hole--the same ugly kind of hole

whether the person who makes it is your friend or not. Loyalty to

friendship in the teeth of the Law is not always the simple thing it

sounds. Among the various facts that faced us was one inescapable one,

namely, that a man called Maxwell was at that moment lying in a mortuary

awaiting a post-mortem examination.

Esdaile was frowning and clawing his jaw. The realization was sinking in

now all right.

"What had you thought of doing with the pistol anyway?" I asked.

"To tell you the truth I hadn't thought," he admitted. "I should say the

bottom of the river's the best place for it. But as you say, you can't

drop that poor devil's bullet-hole into the river. Does nobody know

anything about him?"

Nobody did. Maxwell might have been Chummy's best friend or worst enemy,

a good fellow, a rotter, any one kind of all the kinds of men there are.

"Chummy was in Gallipoli. Anybody ever hear of a Maxwell with him

there?"

Nobody had.

Then Esdaile took another line. For a moment it seemed quite a hopeful

one.

"Well, look at it this way." He tried to evade the inevitable. "It's all

very well for Monty to talk out of his hat about there not being murders

enough, but what earthly right have we to assume that this was a murder

at all? None, I say. Far more likely to have been an accident. Accidents

do happen. Chummy wasn't the kind of man to deliberately do another

fellow in. It must have been an accident."

But at this moment I remembered Philip's own words that morning in the

studio: "Anybody would say it was an accident, wouldn't they? It looked

like an accident, I mean? It wouldn't occur to anybody who saw it that

it wasn't?" Those were rather remarkable words. They had meant, if they

had meant anything at all, that even then Philip had had his reasons

for supposing it had _not_ been an accident. Now that a thunderclap had

revealed that one of the men who had come down on the roof was Chummy,

he apparently wanted it to be an accident again.

And by the way, how, at that particular moment, had Philip come to be in

possession of an opinion on the matter at all? This was the point I have

mentioned as being on Rooke's mind also. So far, in telling his story,

Esdaile had taken as his starting-point the moment when he had got

possession of the pistol from Monty; but what about the antecedent

mystery? How in the first place had he discovered that Monty had the

pistol? Why had he walked practically straight to Monty the moment he

had ascended from the cellar? The whole series of incidents, from first

to last, had passed while he had been still down in the cellar; how then

could he know anything whatever about them?

Then I remembered that only a series of diversions had turned Hubbard

away from his express purpose in coming to Lennox Street that

evening--the purpose of seeing Esdaile's cellar. First had come the

shock of learning that one of the men was Chummy Smith; then Joan

Merrow's implication in the affair had sidetracked us; and then had come

the pistol and Monty. These things were all very well, but they brought

us no nearer to the solution of the first puzzle of all. Why had Esdaile

behaved as he had behaved when he had rejoined us with a jar of curaçao

in one hand and a lighted candle in the other?

But for all this we had to wait. My speculations were suddenly cut

short. There was another ring at the door, and Esdaile rose. But before

going to see who it was this time he took the precaution of once more

putting Monty's pistol away in the escritoire drawer.

It was well for our Case, as a Case, that he did so. We heard voices in

the passage, Esdaile's own tenor and a deeper voice. Then I heard him

say, "Well, perhaps you'd better come in."

The next moment he stood holding the door open for a Police Inspector to

pass.