PART III

WHAT THE WOMEN DID

I

For a great number of years past, innumerable reviewers have been so

kind as to class me as "one of the younger novelists," and with the

passing of time I have acquired a certain affection for the status. But

I have to confess myself unlike my brethren in this--I don't know all

about women. Indeed, twenty Philip Esdailes poking about twenty cellars

are clearer to me than some of the mental processes of such a person as

(say) Miss Joan Merrow. For instance, she once told me that she would be

terrified to go up in a machine. She told me this (as I subsequently

learned) within a very few hours of a side-slip at a few hundred feet

that had fairly "put the wind up" Chummy Smith, her companion in this

(by Philip) strictly forbidden adventure. Some chance remark of her own

revealed all this to me weeks later, and our eyes met, mine sternly

accusing, hers of limpid periwinkle blue. Then she had the effrontery to

take me aside, to put her arm inside mine, and to whisper that she knew

she could "trust" me!

"Trust," indeed!

So, as far as Miss Merrow is my informant for the part of our Case I am

now coming to, you are warned what to expect.

II

Since it was I who discovered Philip Esdaile's painting-cottage for him

I think I may claim that I know the Santon country fairly well. It is a

vast and skyey upland east of the Wolds, and its edge drops in four

hundred feet of glorious white cliff sheer to the sea. Everything there

is on the amplest and most bountiful scale, from the enormous stretches

of wheat and barley to the giant barns and huge horses and the very

poultry of its farmyards. The only tiny thing about it is its church,

and this stands in the middle of a daisied field, not by any means one

of the largest, but that can hardly be less than a hundred acres. There

is a shop-post-office, a short street mostly laithes as big as

airship hangars, an opaque horse-pond, and a single telegraph wire the

posts of which can be seen for miles diminishing away over the Wolds.

The few trees are mostly thorn, all blown one way by the wind and as

stiff and compact as wire mattresses.

And Joan herself fitted into all this Caldecott spaciousness as if she

had been bred and born there. Half a mile away across the young corn you

saw her white sweater at the cliff's edge, and it seemed part of the

whiteness of the screaming seabirds, of the whiteness of the awful

glimpses of chalk where the turf suddenly ended in air, of the crawling

whiteness of the waves far below. And on the shore--but any young girl

is a Nausicaa on any shore. Esdaile has drawn and painted her a score of

times--young neck, fair thick yellow hair, the none-too-small white feet

with the sand disappearing from them as she waded into the anemonied

pools. Sometimes it was no more than a cryptic pencil-line, that, as

you looked at it, suddenly became her uplifted arm and flank, or the

balance of back and hips as she moved across the unsteady white stones.

Sometimes the jotting was more abbreviated still, just a dab or two of

color that placed her against fawn-colored sand or ribbon-grassed water.

But always it was Joan romping as it were her last between the little

Alan and Jimmy she mothered and those other dream-stuff children that

did not call her mother yet.

I feel fairly certain that it was not in the very least on Philip

Esdaile's account that she had given instructions at the Chelsea

post-office for the readdressing of letters. Neither was it, as she had

falsely said, "to save Mr. Rooke the trouble." Both Philip's stupid

letters and Monty's convenience were very minor matters. The really

important thing was her own letters. Some little delay her change of

address was bound to entail; but if, after "1," "2," and "3" there must

be a short pause, "4," "5" and the rest would arrive all in one blissful

bag. And, pending her receipt of them, there was no reason why she

should cease to write letters.

So, accompanied by the letter-case with the new lock on it, down to the

shore she took the children on the first two mornings (which is

something of a journey, by the way), and back in the afternoon she came

to high tea at half-past four. On the first day she did not even trouble

to walk on to the little post-office-shop. But on the second day she

did, returning empty-handed to boiled fowl and white sauce, tall piles

of Santon bread and Santon butter and Santon jam, pints of hot tea from

the luster pot under the haystack cosy, and the children's clamor:--

"I saw a jellyfish as big as a cart-wheel!"

"'N Jimmy found seven starfishes!"

"I found _eight_ starfishes!"

"'N I waded out till the water came right up to here!"

"'N I saw a polar bear----"

"Oh, Jimmy, what a story! You've just made that up this minute!"

This last in bell-voiced reproof from Joan. At twenty she still

corrected and disputed with them as a rather larger equal.

III

They had arrived at Santon at half-past eight on a Thursday night,

and after tea on the Saturday Joan walked up to the little

coastguard-station on the hill. Aeroplanes were not unknown on that wide

uplifted promontory, and it would not in the least surprise her if

presently, say in another week or so, Chummy, finding himself within a

mere fifty miles, were to drop in unannounced. He had in fact said so,

in the last letter but four. He had not been able to see her off at the

station because he had had a new machine to take up with a fellow she

didn't know. On Friday he was chasing off to the Midlands, where he

might have to stay the night, and he did not expect to be back in London

till Saturday afternoon. So he would not be within fifty miles, and even

if a plane did happen to pass over it could not possibly be his.

As a matter of fact a plane did happen to pass over, and she pretended

that it was his. She stood watching, eyes shaded with her hand, lips

smiling and parted, and the young throat long as the flower-trumpet at

the pit of which lies the nectar. Though she had been in a plane (and

"trusted" me not to tell), I don't think that in her heart she regarded

aeroplanes as apparatus at all. They were not things of wood and steel

and oil and petrol that carried a load as a motor-car might have carried

a load. All was the particular skill and daring and unaided cleverness

of that Chummy of hers. I suppose he simply thought of her and flew....

But her little pretense ended in a light sigh when the plane did not

circle, but with unfeeling purposefulness followed the telegraph wire

over the Wolds and was lost to her sight. The young chauffeur of the

air, whoever he was, knew nothing of the kiss that went after him. She

returned to the cottage and the letter-case and began "7."

She knew nothing of the letter that Mollie Esdaile had already received

from Philip, fortunately during her absence with the children. Nor did

she know that Mollie, still in her absence, had run immediately to the

shop-post-office and had telegraphed "_Wire fullest particulars

immediately most anxious_." Chummy (Philip had written) had had a slight

accident, nothing serious, but enough to keep him in bed for a few days.

It would be better (his letter had continued) if this could be kept from

Joan until she, Mollie, heard further from him. If Mollie could also

glance through the newspapers before Joan got hold of them, that also

Philip recommended. For the rest, he had said nothing whatever about

when he himself might be expected at Santon, and Mollie further wondered

whether it was to create a reassuring impression that he had passed on

to tell her how he was having old Dadley round about some

picture-framing, and ended with similar trivial matters. That letter had

come on the Friday afternoon. Saturday had brought neither letter nor

reply to her telegram. She was glad that there was a Sunday delivery at

Santon, which usually awaited them on their return from Church.

(I may say now, by the way, that Philip's caution about the newspapers

was needless. The paper that found its way to Santon about midday was a

London paper, but a Northern edition. Minor accidents in Chelsea are

seen in perspective from the North, and no account of that Chelsea

accident ever did appear.)

Only Joan and the children went to Church on that Sunday morning. Mollie

made some excuse about helping the village girl to prepare the midday

meal. Perhaps she preferred not to read letters and have her own face

read by Joan at the same time.

In the summer, when the door of that diminutive Church usually stands

wide open all through the service, you can see from the back pews the

postman pass on his way to Newsome's, the farthest farm. So there in

Church Joan sat, watching the bees that droned in and out of the open

door, the butterflies that hovered, the cattle that tried to crop inside

the little wire fence. The whiteness of the daisies was faintly shed up

among the old rafters, and the curate's singsong rose and fell

peacefully. The postman passed with the Newsome letters, and repassed

with his empty bag. Then the sluggish old harmonium droned forth the

last hymn, they knelt for the Benediction, and Joan and her charges were

the first to hurry forth out into the sunshine again.

And this time there was a letter for her.

But her brows were already contracted even before she opened it. She

stood, in the white frock and buttercupped hat, against the musk and

geraniums of the sunny window, already wondering what the quite strange

handwriting of the envelope meant, already half afraid to ascertain.

"Is this all----?" she began.

Then with a nervous jerk she tore open the envelope, and a cry broke

from her. The blue eyes were wide frightened rounds.

For if the handwriting on the envelope was strange, that of the shaky

penciled scrawl inside was not quite familiar either. Yet it was

Chummy's. He had had a bit of a spill, he said, but nothing to hurt.

Rather shaken, but nothing broken. She was not to come up, as he would

be out and up again before she could get there.

And that was all. There was no address at the head of the letter, and he

did not say who had addressed the envelope for him, nor why.

"Oh, Mollie, he's hurt!" broke agitatedly from Joan.

Mollie was writing a letter at the little round table where the

workbasket stood. Quietly she rose and passed her arm about the girl.

"Yes, darling, but he's quite all right," she calmed her.

"Have you heard from Philip, then? What is it? What does he say?" the

words came with a rush.

Mollie had not heard from Philip that morning. That was why she was

writing her letter. But she said she had heard from him. She meant the

letter she had received on Friday afternoon.

"And somebody's had to write the address for him!" Joan's voice became

more unsteady still. "Oh, that means he's badly hurt! I must go at

once!"

"Nonsense, dear. Anyway, there are no trains on Sunday. May I see what

he says, or----?"

Joan thrust the weak scribble into her hand. She read it, passed it

back, and then began to unpin Joan's hat.

"Well, that's nothing to be alarmed about," she said. "He says just the

same as Philip. And he tells you you're not to go up. We shall hear all

about it to-morrow."

But she did not tell Joan that it was precisely because there was so

maddeningly little in the letter she had received from Philip on Friday

that, despairing of getting anything plain out of a mere man, the letter

she was now writing was to Audrey Cunningham.

IV

I hope you haven't got the impression that I didn't like Mrs.

Cunningham. Indeed, if half I presently learned about her was true, it

would have been a hard heart that had not shown a very real and

compassionate consideration for her. Young as she was, she had had a

wretched story. As far as I know it it was this:--

The late George Cunningham, having contracted the dangerous habit of

going to bed every night comparatively sober and waking up in the

morning very drunk, had one day arrived at the point when something had

had to be done about it. I assume that he had tried the usual specifics

to no purpose, since he had presently found himself with only two

alternatives left. The first of these was to have done with specifics,

to go boldly forward, and to trust to the strength of his constitution

to land him high, and still dry, among the seasoned octogenarians. The

other was to marry, and to trust that the pure love of an innocent young

girl might work its traditional miracle.

Unfortunately, instead of choosing he had tried both courses at once. An

unjailed criminal of a father had either suggested the match himself or

had failed to throw Cunningham out of the window when it had been

suggested. So at seventeen-and-a-half Audrey Herbert had become the wife

of a man-about-town of forty-two, with a roomy house in St. John's Wood,

a considerable private fortune, and a hole in every one of his pockets.

It had not taken Mrs. Cunningham long to discover that a man who goes to

bed sober and wakes up drunk, frequently does so in other beds than his

own. But her father, to whom she ran, advised her to continue to

exercise her influence for good. He seems to have thought that as long

as Cunningham did not actually strike her the rest must be accepted as

part of marriage-as-it-is. He had passed out of the world in that belief

a couple of years after his daughter's immolation.

Cunningham never struck her. Nor, while it lasted, did he starve her of

money. Twice, when housekeeping debts had pressed, he gave her blank

checks which the bank duly honored. The third time (one of his

mistresses appears to have been the occasion) he gave her a considerably

wider permission.... No, he had never struck her. Instead he had merely

dragged through the mud of alcoholism and unfaithfulness the hope and

belief in men he had found her with, and after five years of it had

died--not a day too soon, as she had discovered on going into his

affairs. When his debts of honor, dishonor and at law had been paid,

about a hundred pounds had remained. With this, her clothes, a few

pieces of furniture bought in from the sale and her experience of

married life, she had become her own mistress again at twenty-three.

Most of the hundred pounds had gone in fees at a School of Dramatic

Art. She was now twenty-seven and on the eve of her second marriage.

I am telling you all this because of the part that Mrs. Cunningham

presently came to play in our Case. I think her unhappy history partly

explained certain things. I would not go so far as to say that with the

exception of Monty Rooke she disliked and distrusted all men, but I

think that the sense of sex-hostility was latent and instinctive in her.

This never took the form of gloom. Quite the other way. Lest it should

be thought for a moment that she mourned for the cur with whom she had

been kenneled, she was rather histrionically bright. She fell naturally

into beautiful attitudes and gestures, which beauty her art enhanced. I

think I mentioned the care she bestowed on her manicuring; in the whole

of her person and dress she was the same, as if to wipe out some

soilure. She was undoubtedly much in love with Monty--who at any rate

was a teetotaller. And, except as I have qualified, I think she liked

the rest of us well enough. But the history was always behind, and, in

my experience, if you like with however natural a reservation, there is

something of the same reserve in the liking you inspire.

So in this sense I was prepared to like Mrs. Cunningham, and without any

qualification whatever was sorry she had had so ghastly a time and

hopeful that her marriage with Monty would expunge the memory of it.

V

And so we come to the episode of the wardrobe that Audrey Cunningham had

bought in from the St. John's Wood sale.

This wardrobe, with a number of dress-baskets and other articles, formed

part of the furniture of the bed-sitting-room in Oakley Street that she

was now on the point of leaving, and it had been Philip Esdaile himself

who had suggested, some time ago, that there was plenty of room for

these belongings in his cellar. Nothing had since been said about it;

Philip says that the matter had entirely slipped from his memory; and

Mrs. Cunningham, having no reason to suppose that he had changed his

mind, had as a matter of fact had the wardrobe put on a light cart and

brought round to Lennox Street the day after the aeroplane accident,

that is to say on the Friday afternoon. Philip himself, coming along the

street at that moment, had found the cart at the gate and Monty and Mrs.

Cunningham considering the best way of getting the wardrobe in.

"Ah, so you've got it round; good," he said. "I don't quite know where

you're going to put it, but we'll find somewhere. Let me give you a

hand."

"I thought you said it was to go into the cellar?" said Mrs. Cunningham.

"Eh?" said Philip. "Did I? I believe I did. Well, let's get it in first.

We can settle that afterwards. Has Dadley come?"

So the wardrobe was got into the hall, where it was left for the present

among Philip's corded and labeled painting-gear.

"Has Dadley come?" Philip asked again.

"Yes. He's been waiting for you for ten minutes in the studio," Monty

replied.

"Bon. I don't suppose I shall be more than ten minutes, but don't wait

for tea. I've had a cup as a matter of fact."

"Can't say I think much of old Daddy as a framer----" Monty was

beginning; but Esdaile was already at the studio door, which he closed

carefully behind him.

You may remember the name of old William Dadley. It was he who, when Mr.

Harry Westbury had held forth in the Saloon Bar about the danger to

property from the air, had ventured to suggest that lives too had their

value. His shop was the little one in the King's Road with the alleged

Old Master in the window, one half of it black with ancient grime, the

other pitilessly restored; and, as Monty had said, artists who were in

any hurry to see their pictures back again seldom took their framing to

old Daddy. Unless they went farther afield, they were more likely to

patronize the up-to-date establishment across the road, kept by the two

pushing young men in the Sinn Fein hats and black satin bows and little

side-whiskers and hair bobbed like girls'.

And now for the discussion on picture-framing that took place between

Philip Esdaile and William Dadley, behind the closed studio door.

VI

"Was he drunk?" Esdaile asked. He was walking about, head down,

frowning.

The old man stroked his grizzled beard.

"Well, I won't say he hadn't had a few. I saw him have two or three

liqueur brandies. And he's a crossish sort of man when he's at home,

especially when it's wearing off a bit, but he isn't easily bowled over,

isn't Harry. Well, as I was telling you. He gets home about tea-time

that day, and the first thing he sees is one of the children playing

with something or other in his mouth. He was popping it in and out. You

know what children are, Mr. Esdaile--everything goes straight into their

mouths. So Westbury asked the child how much oftener he wants telling

about putting things into his mouth, and takes it away from him. And

what do you think it was, Mr. Esdaile? It was a bullet!"

"A bullet?" said Esdaile with a show of astonishment.

"A bullet. And it had been fired, because it was all out of shape. Well,

you don't find bullets everywhere, like leaves off the trees, do you?"

"Where on earth did the child get it?" Esdaile asked.

"Ah, that's what Harry wants to know!" The gray old head was wagged a

few times. "Shouts for his missis, and there's a bit of a scene. The

child says he found the bullet in the bedroom. How did it get there?

Harry wants to know. It seems the window was wide open to air the room a

bit. Then Harry asks what the child was doing in the bedroom, and what

time he went up, and what time he came down again, and I don't know what

else. Then he has a bit of a sleep and a cup of tea and a wash and goes

off out again. I believe he went straight to Inspector Webster with the

bullet, but he won't say either Yes or No. He's very mysterious about

it. A man told me, though, that he'll be an important witness when the

Case comes on."

"What Case?" Esdaile asked.

"Well, Westbury he looks at it like this, Mr. Esdaile: If that bullet

came in at his window it might have hit somebody, he says, and he's

great on the window being just opposite this house of yours. And he's

worked it out, from the time it was when his wife cleaned the bedroom

and where the children were and all that, that the bullet must have come

in at the same time that accident was."

"But what's a flying accident got to do with a bullet?"

"Ah, that I can't tell you; but he's very mysterious. And I know he's

written a letter to the papers about dangerous flying, because I heard

him reciting bits of it. He says he'll make a Case of it or his name

isn't Harry Westbury."

"What paper has he written to?"

"I can't remember the name just for the moment, but it's one of the

papers. And I heard him reciting one bit about three million pounds'

damage. I don't suppose he's written to the papers about the bullet;

that's the tit-bit, that is, and he's keeping that to himself, except

for Inspector Webster. Westbury's a difficult sort of man once he gets

started on a thing. Stares you down like. You say you don't know him by

sight? It was him brought that ladder into your garden--he was there

when Mr. Rooke went up on the roof----"

And that (to pass on) was the gist of the discussion on the framing of

Esdaile's _fêtes-champêtre_.

VII

A few minutes' reflection would have shown Esdaile that there was no

immediate reason why he should have hesitated to have that wardrobe

carried down into his cellar. He himself admits this. But it is easy to

think of these things afterwards, and he was caught off his guard. He

did allow reluctance to appear.

"Why not move this desk and let it stand here?" he said, pointing to the

writing-table with the mignonette-shaded lamp on it. "It's not a

bad-looking piece at all. Pity to hide it. What is it--Jacobean?"

It was either genuine Jacobean or else a passable copy, but, placed

where Philip proposed to place it it would have been a little in the way

of anybody passing to the French window. Mrs. Cunningham pointed this

out.

"Do you think so? Let's measure it," Esdaile replied.

Measurement of the piece confirmed Mrs. Cunningham's view, and Philip

next suggested that it should go into the large studio.

"Why not have it where you can get at it and use it?" he said. "I

thought women complained they could never get hanging-space enough. Or

what about upstairs in Mollie's room?"

But Audrey Cunningham's frocks, which she made quite wonderfully

herself out of almost nothing at all, were few, and Mollie had left her

plenty of room for them. Besides, there were the dress-baskets. These

would hardly add to the beauty either of the annexe or the studio. For

the baskets at any rate the most convenient place was certainly the

cellar. And it was at this point that Philip, recognizing that further

objection would look rather like obstinacy, yielded.

He confesses that he felt awkward about the whole situation. Either he

had lent his house or he had not. If the former, Monty and his fiancée

should have had the complete freedom of it; if the latter, or if for any

reason he regretted his generosity, the position was even more obscure.

To say that until the marriage he had lent it to Monty only and not to

Mrs. Cunningham was mere quibbling; he had made the offer in entire good

faith, and had not made a lawyer's matter of it, with clauses and

reservations about this, that and the other.

Yet here he not only was, but here very much master of the house whether

he wished it or not. Audrey Cunningham would of course be very nice

about it, but he could see very plainly how it must strike her. He did

not even pretend to be working. He was merely hanging on, for a reason

unexplained and unexplainable to her. Monty knew his reason, of course;

but the reason she supposed to be the truth (for she had been told that

one of the men who had crashed was their friend and Joan Merrow's more

than friend) by no means accounted for everything. It did not account

for a quarter of his eccentricities; it did not even account for his

latest inadvertence, of proposing any place in the house except the

cellar for the bestowal of that nuisance of a wardrobe. What an ass he

had been about that! The cellar could be made _perfectly safe_ at an

instant's warning; as a matter of fact it was _perfectly safe_ at that

moment. There was no reason whatever why Audrey Cunningham should not go

down there.

But things would get worse as time went on. Presently Audrey would be

living here, as Monty's wife, and it would be difficult for Philip to

delay his departure after that. A honeymoon is a honeymoon even when it

is spent in a borrowed studio, and newly-married couples don't commonly

take in fussy and fretful lodgers. Within a week or so he or they would

most certainly have to clear out.

Philip could have stated what had actually happened in one short

sentence. He had offered them one house, but was now called upon to hand

over to them the possession of quite a different one.

But this was impossible to explain without dragging in the thing of all

things that he wished to keep from Audrey, from Mollie, and above all

from Joan--that beastly episode of the pistol, with all it involved.

And here at any rate he was quite firm. Chance what might, that must be

kept the men's affair only. As far as the women were concerned at

present the accident was a pure accident. Well, an accident it must

remain.

But what about that Police Inspector who had appeared so suddenly in our

midst the night before, and for all Philip knew might be round again at

any moment? Audrey Cunningham had been told nothing about that. She

might have many opinions about Philip's delayed departure, but about a

series of domiciliary visits by the police she could have one only,

namely, that the loan of a studio wasn't worth it. In suppressing this

piece of information Philip was actually doing his best to keep her in

Lennox Street. To have informed her would have been much the same thing

as asking her to leave.

And what exactly had passed when Philip's tenor voice, interrupting the

Inspector's deep one, had said, "Well, perhaps you'd better come in"?

VIII

Of the four of us sitting there I alone had instantly realized what must

have happened. Our Nosey Parker of a Westbury had been at work already.

I remembered the dull insistence of the man and how he had said in my

hearing that he and Inspector Webster "would be having a bit of a talk

that evening." I recalled also the stupid but dangerous cunning with

which he had repeated over and over again that Rooke had been the first

on the scene of the accident. Well, he hadn't lost very much time. The

Inspector had stood there in the doorway, and neither Esdaile, Hubbard

nor Rooke had had the least idea why.

Now there are a good many of the commonly-accepted views on physiognomy

that I for one don't share. One of these is about rather narrowly-set

eyes. Webster, who was a very big red-and-black man, had these eyes

under a sort of bison-front of close-curling hair, but I did not

associate them with meanness and slyness at all. On the contrary, they

had rather a kindly glint, and they reminded me of the infinitesimal

slight cast that at certain moments makes some women irresistible. No, I

did not set Inspector Webster down as a bad sort. At the same time there

was no nonsense about him, and I should have thought twice before

trying any tricks with him.

I was more thankful than I can tell you that Philip also, in spite of

the emotional gamut he had run that day, still had resilience enough to

sum the Inspector up very much as I did. There was no bland "Well,

Inspector, and to what are we indebted for the pleasure of this visit?"

nor anything of that kind. Perhaps that dangerous pistol, X-raying

itself so plainly in our minds through the top of the escritoire, had

forbidden any such attitude. I now know, as a matter of fact, the

life-line on to which he had immediately and instinctively laid hold.

Inspector Webster, whatever he had come for, was to be treated exactly

as the women were to be treated, and the accident-theory was to hold the

field.

So this is what had happened:--

The Inspector, after a few conventional remarks about being sorry to

trouble us gentlemen for the second time that day and so on, had come

down like a hammer straight upon our weakest point. This was the part

that Monty Rooke had played in that morning's events. First of all he

wanted (with our permission) to put a few words to Mr. Rooke. I think he

used the word "permission" in good faith, and not as any kind of a

veiled threat.

I saw Monty moisten his lips. He has since explained the swiftness with

which he also was able to come into line and to play up so really nobly

as he did. Philip, if you remember, had forbidden him pretty gruffly to

say one word about all this to Audrey Cunningham; it is no light matter

to dictate to another man what he shall say and what he shall not say to

his fiancée; and this it was that saved the situation. If Monty was to

be ordered to keep his mouth shut before his fiancée he was jolly well

not going to be pumped by an outsider, Police Inspector or no Police

Inspector. On such hairs do our actions hang sometimes.

"Fire away," he had said.

"Well, sir, to begin with, would you be so kind as to tell me in your

own words exactly what you saw on the roof this morning?"

"Certainly," Monty had replied.

And he had launched out.

From the point of view of the things he omitted I can only describe his

performance as brilliant. Camouflage was certainly Monty's war-job. Not

one single word was there about bullet-holes, cartridge-cases or

pistols. Had there been a polar bear or a pterodactyl on the roof it

might have been worth mentioning, but a pistol--no.

My only fear was lest he should be so pleased with his own performance

as to undo it again out of sheer satisfaction presently.

"Thank you very much indeed, sir," said the Inspector. "I asked you for

your own words and you've given them. Now I wonder if I might be allowed

to ask you one or two questions?"

"Fire away," said Monty again.

But here the Inspector himself had seemed to be in some slight

difficulty. Apparently for some reason he wasn't very anxious to speak

of pistols either. Polar bears or pterodactyls, yes; but not pistols. I

have since thought that, as a man of some penetration, he also might

have had his private opinion about Mr. Harry Westbury, and thought it

best to act on anything Westbury said with caution.

Nevertheless, the series of questions that had followed had all been in

the very close neighborhood of pistols, so to speak. I itemize what

struck me as being their real, if unuttered trend.

"About this man that's dead, Mr. Rooke. You saw his face, of course?"

(_Item: Had Maxwell been shot through the head?_)

Yes, Monty had seen his face, but so, he ventured to remind the

Inspector, had he himself.

"Well, say I had other things to attend to and didn't particularly

notice. You'd say he was--pretty bad?"

(_Item: So bad that there might have been a little hole on one side of

his head and a big one on the other without your noticing it?_)

"Rotten," said Monty with an unaffected shiver.

"Bleeding much?"

(_Item: Or anything else scattered about?_)

"No."

"Clothes singed?"

(_Item: If not through the head, perhaps through the body?_)

"Yes. Badly. Bits of the parachute too."

"From where you were on the roof lots of people could see you?"

(_Item: If you'd done anything you'd no business to do, for instance?_)

"Any number of people I should say," Monty had replied rather faintly.

"But I don't see what you're getting at. You were up there too. What is

it all about?"

And here Philip had seen fit to intervene, rather quickly.

"Yes, that's what I'm wondering, Inspector. Is it a proper question to

ask? And is it proper to ask you if you'd like a glass of whisky, by the

way?"

The narrow eyes had twinkled. "Not supposed to, sir----"

"Right. Say when----"

And so our healths had been drunk.

"You see," Philip had resumed presently, "I understood from Mr. Mackwith

this morning--you knew that was Mr. Mackwith, K.C., you were talking to,

didn't you--the tall man in morning-coat and spats?"

"Was he indeed, sir?"

"Yes, that was Mr. Mackwith, and I understood from him that you had said

you had all the evidence you wanted?"

The Inspector had been sitting with his cap on his knees and the glass

of whisky inside it like a flowerpot in a vase. He had ruminated.

"Well," he had said suddenly, "the fact is that that was this morning,

gentlemen. Since then a certain piece of information's been laid in

connection with this affair. I'm not at liberty to say what this

information is, nor whether we shall act on it or not, but the Law's for

the protection of us all, gentlemen, and I take it all of us wants to do

our best to maintain it. Even if it meant the inconvenience," he added

deliberately, "of a warrant for the search of these premises."

Here the sorely-tried Philip had given a wild laugh.

"Search these premises! Search 'em now if you like. But in God's name

what for?"

"Accidents aren't always what they seem, sir," Inspector Webster had

replied.

IX

And now (to come out of this winding of the story into the open again)

here was Audrey Cunningham with dress-baskets and a wardrobe for which

the most suitable place was certainly the cellar.

"All right," Esdaile said suddenly. "Let's do it now. Monty and I can

manage it if you'll hold a candle for us."

And he lighted and put into Audrey's hand the same candle he had himself

used when he had gone down into the cellar to fetch the orange curaçao.

He was still kicking himself that he had made such a fuss. Now at last

he saw that, although only a trifle stood between revelation and perfect

concealment, this trifle was as firm as the rocks of which the mountains

are built. A short flight of steepish stone steps, with a rather awkward

right-angled bend half-way down, descended ten feet or so, and there was

no cellar door. You stepped from the bottom step, which was a little

worn and concave, and there you were, with nothing more to do but to put

the wardrobe and the dress-baskets inside and to come out again.

The wardrobe was at the turn of the stairs. Mrs. Cunningham stood just

above it, holding the candle for the two men to see.

"Gently--don't knock it," muttered Philip, "and mind the edge of the

steps--they're pretty old----"

The wardrobe cleared the bend, and Audrey Cunningham followed it into

the cellar.

It was only natural that she should look with some curiosity at the

place in which Philip Esdaile had spent that unaccounted-for half hour

on the morning of the day before. I did the same thing myself at a

later stage. But all that she saw was the most ordinary of cellars.

Hubbard himself, who seemed to have cellar-on-the-brain, would have

found nothing remarkable in it. This is all that was to be seen:--

A roomy, gloomy, clammy place, with old plastered walls, and neither

door nor window of any kind nor other means of entry than that they had

just used. Its air hit skin and nostrils like that of a grave. The light

of the single candle seemed lost in its obscurity. When Audrey held the

candle up above her head a couple of heavy beams could be seen,

necessary for the support of the largish area of the studio floor; when

she held it to one side it showed in a corner a couple of gas-meters

with the usual pipes, and underneath them the improvised rack in which

Esdaile kept his modest stock of wine. When she held it to the other

side its light hardly reached the farther wall, but wavered over the dim

objects that half-filled the floor-space. These were merely the

furniture for which Esdaile had no present use, and consisted of a large

couch covered with a dingy dust-sheet, a few oddments of chairs, a

number of packing-cases, and in fact the usual miscellaneous collection

of household lumber that one day seems hardly worth keeping and the next

looks just too good to throw away. Nearest to hand on the wine-rack

stood the bottle of curaçao, just where Esdaile himself had replaced it.

And that was all.

"Well, where will you have it, Audrey?" said Philip. "What about over by

the sofa there?"

Mrs. Cunningham was once more holding the candle over her head. Any

young woman's face by candlelight always seems singularly attractive to

me, especially if she is a dark-eyed woman, and she was a slight and

graceful thing to have endured so much. Had Joan been holding that

candle up she would have given you the impression of a statue, but Mrs.

Cunningham was just the opposite--all warm and fleeting and impermanent

charm, a creature depending on the varying accidents of color, even when

that color was only the sooty black of her home-made dress, the

candlelight on her face and the tiny reflections in her large and

lustrous eyes.

Suddenly she gave a shiver and a nervous laugh.

"I don't think I should like to be shut in here alone," she said.

"Why not?" Philip asked.

But the "why not" hardly needed saying, with that same candlestick in

her hand and, as she once more moved it, that same jar of curaçao

seeming to advance a little out of the shadows. These things brought the

shock and dread of that other morning all too plainly before her again.

It was within these chill sweating walls that Philip Esdaile had done

the "wool gathering" he had spoken of. What wool? She saw none. Then

why, up to that very moment almost, had he shuffled so? Why had he

seemed so anxious that the wardrobe should be placed anywhere rather

than in the place where they now stood? Here she was. She could not

imagine any kind of cellar, however earthy and tomblike, that so changed

its nature or properties that at one moment it must be jealously guarded

and the next thrown open for her to look as much as she pleased. She was

free to look. Monty also was wandering about in the farther corner

there, as greedy for knowledge as she. The only check on her freedom was

that she felt that Philip at the same time was covertly watching her.

Then all at once something seemed to give way in her. She put the candle

down on one end of the sheeted sofa and turned to Philip. Her hands were

clasped at her breast, the honeysuckle fingers interworking.

"Oh, please tell me!" she begged. "What is it makes this place so queer?

There's something--I can feel it--like eyes on me--I've a being-watched

sort of feeling, as if something was wrong----"

Philip took up the candle. "Then let's go upstairs," he said promptly.

But something almost like hysteria seemed to take her. Her voice rose.

"No, I want to know! I don't feel I can come to this house unless I

know! I don't want to come here if it's going to be like this! You don't

want to tell me--I know you could if you wanted! Oh, I wish Mollie was

here!"

"Come upstairs," Philip repeated gently. "Bring her up, Monty."

But she went on with even less and less control.

"Oh, I think it's cruel! You're all cruel! You never think of us! Joan's

to go on being told nothing, and Mollie's kept in the dark--oh, I know

she is--and I'm made to feel that I'm not wanted here.... I want to go

back to Oakley Street, Monty. I can't stop here. I won't. Everything's

been wrong ever since that accident. It's horrible. I'm going away. I

dare say they'll let me keep my room on; if they won't I must find

somewhere else. Please take me away."

Upstairs, she became a little calmer, but she still wanted to be taken

away. Monty was soothing her where she sat on the little Empire sofa,

and Philip's face was distressed as he walked up and down. Then, though

there was little heart in his attempt, he tried gently to laugh her out

of it.

"But of course you'll go back to Oakley Street," he said. "You're there

for three days yet, aren't you? It will be all right by that time. It's

just a little bit of a complication we're in. It won't be long now. Then

you'll get married and come along here, of course. Pull yourself

together, my dear. It's all right. There, you're feeling better now,

aren't you?"

He felt a perfect brute, he says, but he didn't see what else he could

do. Even if he had had the right, he doesn't see that it would have

helped to tell her that, after tying herself up with a drunkard, she was

now going to make a second experiment with a man who had no more sense

than to go and get himself mixed up in an affair that might bring the

police round at any moment. He had no such right. Just as before he had

been unable to explain to Hubbard and myself until he had spoken to

Monty, so now he couldn't take any further step till he had seen Chummy

Smith. It might be hard on Joan and Mrs. Cunningham, not to mention his

wife, but what other course could he take? When you set about to burke

inquiry into a capital Case the fewer people you take into your

confidence the better. Besides, who knew yet that it was a capital Case?

Suppose twenty words from Chummy should somehow explain it all? Suppose

some ridiculous mistake had been made? Suppose our elaborate pretenses

to ourselves were in reality no pretenses at all, and that the thing

really was what it seemed--just an aeroplane accident with nothing more

to be said about it?

Yes, in spite of all the evidence, he would have been glad at the moment

to have believed that.

"Look here, Audrey," he said at last, "I feel absolutely rotten about

all this. I know I'm in the way and I oughtn't to be here at all. When I

turned over this place to you I hadn't the faintest idea of stopping on

like this. I'd go straight into rooms now if I could, but that wouldn't

do. Don't ask me why, there's a dear. For one thing I've got to see

Smith. They tell me he can be seen in a few days now. Then I'll just

stop for the wedding and clear right out afterwards. Whats the matter

with that?"

The matter with that appeared in Audrey Cunningham's next words, which

she spoke slowly and with her eyes on the floor.

"It isn't just you. It's Monty as well. He could tell me if he wanted,

but he doesn't want. I don't think I want to get married," she said.

X

The letter she wrote crossed Mollie Esdaile's Sunday morning one. It was

written on Saturday, and missed the Santon Sunday morning delivery by a

post, arriving there on Monday.

"Please don't think me ungrateful," Mollie read, "but all sorts of

things seem to be happening, and I'm so afraid of hurting you after all

your kindness. Perhaps I'd better come to the point straight away and

explain afterwards. I don't think I can accept your offer of Lennox

Street for Monty and myself after all."

Mollie was standing in the porch of the cottage as she read this. It was

immediately after breakfast. The postman could be seen in the middle

distance, climbing the stile on his way to Newsome's. Joan was

upstairs, getting the children ready for the shore.

Mollie thrust the letter into her breast. If Joan knew that the postman

had been she would come flying downstairs, and in any case Mollie did

not wish to be seen reading a letter. This from Audrey Cunningham was

all there was for her. For Joan there was nothing at all.

Quietly she slipped into the cottage, picked up a floppy print

sunbonnet, and slipped noiselessly out again. The back of the cottage

had no windows. Like a malefactor she skirted the palings of the little

front garden and gained the security of the back. But even this was not

far enough. The path up the field led to the Coast-guard Station, and,

with one furtive glance behind her, she took it. She would finish

Audrey's letter there.

Mollie Esdaile is still a young woman, but she looked every minute of

her age that morning. She had not slept. The room adjoining hers was

Joan's, and the wall between them might just as well not have existed,

so little a barrier had it been to the restless mental ticking of the

girl on the other side of it. A soft and tortured toss, then the

creaking of the bed, then the sounds of Joan moving about her room; the

striking of a match, a long silence, and then the creaking of the bed

again--all night it had gone on. Mollie had not gone to her; what had

there been to do or say? A hundred times she had promised, as if it had

lain in her power, that there should be a letter in the morning. None

had come. She felt a coward. She simply could not face Joan.

There was a merry morning wind, that ruffled the fleeces on the sheep's

backs and set the halliards of the Coast-guard's mast cracking and

rattling. Mollie tied the strings of the print sunbonnet under her plump

chin and walked with her head a little averted in order to see round the

print blinker. Beyond the waving grass-heads the sea appeared, a wide

silver glitter. You cannot see the shore from that hill. The sands and

the mile-long rollers lie far below that cliff's edge over which the men

are let down by ropes to gather the eggs from the awful ledges.

Then, in the little sunken way that runs down to the Rocket-house, she

sat down and took out the letter again.

"I don't think I can accept your offer of Lennox Street for Monty

and myself after all. Our engagement is not definitely broken off,

but I can't stand things as they are, and am back in Oakley Street

again. They say I can stay on, but I may have to pay a little more.

Monty is still at the studio."

"I _knew_ it!" broke from Mollie with soft conviction. "I knew that if

Philip stayed that wedding would be put off! I told him so----"

Frowning, she turned to the letter again.

"I'm trying to think it all over quite calmly," the letter went on.

"Perhaps it isn't Monty after all. Perhaps it is just that men

worry me. I don't know really whether I'm a man's sort of woman.

Their ways seem so queer and roundabout to me. Lots of them don't

seem fair. I don't want to marry and make a mess of it a second

time, and I don't think Monty sees this as I do. Of course, I don't

want him to tell me every little thing he does and everywhere he

goes or anything of that kind, but I hate being kept in the dark

as I know I am being. It all seemed to start with that horrible

accident. Nothing's been the same since. Of course, they've told me

about Mr. Smith and poor darling Joan, but if it was only that I

could understand it. I know there's something else. I'm afraid I'd

rather a breakdown yesterday, when all three of us were in your

cellar putting that wardrobe of mine away. There's something

uncanny about that place. Monty thinks so too, but says he doesn't

know what it is any more than I do. But there is something he does

know and won't tell. And now it's all over Chelsea that something

not quite right has happened. Mrs. Cook hinted at it this morning

when she brought my milk up, and she said the milkman had told her.

I really think that if the milkman knows I might be told. The fact

is that just at present I don't feel much like men and marriage.

You'll understand this, because I've told you heaps of things I

should never dream of telling Monty----"

Mollie's gaze wandered to the twinkling silver sea. She remembered some

of those things that would never be told to Monty. It was perhaps not

altogether fair to Monty that he should have to restore the whole of the

credit of his sex that the late George Cunningham had so let down, but

she knew how Audrey felt about it. Men _were_ trials sometimes. "Queer

and roundabout?" Mollie not seldom called them infants outright. Such

little things pleased them, such even less things caused them to dig

their hoofs into the ground and refuse to budge. Whatever Philip's

tremendous reason for remaining in Chelsea might be, Mollie brushed it

aside as a trifle compared with Audrey's marriage. For a moment she

almost forgot Joan's distress. Philip, with his curaçao and

candle-sticks, postpone Audrey's wedding? It was nonsense--not to be

thought of. Mollie wouldn't hear of it. All this mystification should be

put a stop to if she had to do it herself. Audrey, to be sure, was a

highly-strung creature; lying there among the warm grasses and with the

wind ruffling the silver sea, Mollie could afford not to take too

seriously Audrey's broken sentences about uncanny cellars and whispered

hints that ran all over Chelsea; but it seemed to her that there were

two birds to be killed with one stone. If she were to go up to town she

would be able to ascertain for herself what this Audrey-Monty trouble

was all about, and also why newspapers were to be kept from Joan and how

it was that Joan had first heard of Chummy's crash from Chummy himself.

She looked at her wrist-watch and scrambled to her feet. She could not

go without letting Joan know she was going, and Joan would already have

started with the children for the shore. There was a train at midday.

She would have plenty of time to intercept Joan, to tell her she was

going to leave her for a couple of days, to return to the cottage,

change and pack her bag.

And she did not think it necessary to warn Philip of her intention

either.

XI

"But, darling--oh, don't go on like this! Can't you see that if I go I

can clear up everything in half an hour? It's _much_ the best!"

Joan's manner was stony and impregnable. She stared straight before

her.

"I don't mind being left quite, quite alone," was her reply.

"But I shall be back again on Wednesday, foolish child, and I'll wire

you everything immediately if it costs me the whole of my quarter's

pocket-money. Anything's better than this!"

"Just as you like," came the expressionless response.

Not finding her on the shore, Mollie had climbed the precipitous zigzag

path to the cliff-top again and had sat down to rest, fairly blown. Then

she had seen her a quarter of a mile away, sitting motionless on a

rounded sky-line over which a hawthorn hedge straggled. The children

were stolidly watching her, and she as stolidly was watching nothing.

The boughs under which she sat were a custard of white bloom, and white

was the sun-flecked sweater in the shadow of them, and white as snow the

battlemented clouds overhead. Her eyes were dry and quite consciously

enduring, and Mollie was alternately comforting and scolding her.

"I shall catch the midday train, and I shall be back on Wednesday," she

repeated firmly. "If the mountain won't come to Mahomet or whatever it

is, very well. And _do_ try to be a little cheerful, darling. I heard

you last night. That does no good."

"I know you haven't had a letter this morning, either," came the dull

voice.

"I haven't from Philip, but I have from Audrey. She sends her love. Of

course, she knows about Chummy, and it's quite all right."

"But you won't show me the letter," Joan replied, steadfast in her

misery. "I know you won't. Nobody shows me anything. I saw him fall--I

was the only one who did--but nobody tells me anything."

"You shall hear every word the moment I get there."

"I saw him fall," Joan repeated obstinately. "You were all indoors, but

I was in the garden. But of course I didn't know who it was----"

"Don't, darling--just to please me," Mollie begged, distracted.

"He fell like a stone, crash into the tree. You can't realize that. You

haven't been up. I have. I know what it's like."

"But you've had a letter from him!" Mollie protested. "Really you talk

as if he was killed!"

"I don't know where the letter came from, and I can't write to him,

except to the Aiglon Company, which I've done, and there's no reply, and

somebody else had to address the envelope for him. I ought to go, not

you. I saw him fall."

To Mollie's touch on her shoulder she was quite unresponsive. Mollie

could have shaken her. It might have been the best thing to do.

"Do run away, you boys!" she said crossly instead. "Go and pick some of

those blue flowers; Auntie Joan's a little tired. Now, Joan, I'll tell

you what I'll do if you're good, but not unless. He's in a hospital or a

nursing-home, I expect, and I shall go straight to him; and then if he's

fit to move, as I expect he is by this time, I shall bring him straight

down here. Will that do?"

"I know he's not fit to move. I saw him fall. I saw him falling all last

night."

"Now you're naughty and just trying to make the worst of it. That's

simply willful. It's like Alan when he wants smacking; when you're as

old as I am you'll look on the bright side and be thankful it's no

worse. Now do try. I'm going to bring him down here, and we'll keep him

for a month. A whole month--it will be lovely! Why, you've only seen

him in London and Richmond Park!"

"I've been to Chalfont Woods with him four times."

Mollie seized gratefully on the diversion.

"Joan! How _could_ you! You never told me that!" she scolded. "And you

never told me you'd been flying with him either! Philip would be furious

if he knew! And now I'll tell him, and about Chalfont too, and all those

other times as well, if you don't try to be reasonable. A month in this

lovely place with him, and nobody to interfere--why, you'll be glad he

had a little bit of an accident!... Now get up and we'll all go back.

You'll have to get dinner ready, and I shall want a few sandwiches.

Alan! Jimmy! We're not going to the shore. You can play on the see-saw

instead. Run ahead, boys--and you come along, darling----"

And Joan of the cinemas and cliffs, of the secluded tea-shops and the

noble Santon shore, rose, still as naughty and obstinate as ever, but

obediently. Already Mollie, bustling the children on ahead, was shaping

in her mind the dressing-down she intended to give Philip that very

night.

XII

There was no help for it, Philip has since told me. He simply had to

tell her everything. She was, in fact, in possession of the whole story

long before any of the rest of us.

But even she had to wait yet a little longer. When, at half-past nine

that Monday night her taxi drew up at the wrought-iron gate in Lennox

Street, Philip was out and the place was in darkness. She had no key.

"Go on to Oakley Street," she ordered the driver.

Audrey Cunningham was at home. Mollie found her, alone, in her

first-floor bed-sitting-room, already on the point of going to bed.

"First of all give me a cup of cocoa or something," was Mollie's

greeting. "I've been half the day in the train with only a few

sandwiches, and I shall drop if I don't have something."

Mrs. Cunningham lighted the little gas-ring and fetched water from an

adjoining room. Then, opening a little cupboard, she mixed cocoa-paste

in a cup, got out bread and margarine and a plate of macaroons, and set

them on a little chintz-covered stool before Mollie.

"I've an egg if you'd like one," she said.

"No, thanks. I got your letter this morning. Have you got the one I

wrote yesterday?"

"No; but I don't think the last post's been yet."

"Well, it doesn't matter now. I've come to see for myself. Philip

doesn't know I'm here yet, but he will presently. Now first of all,

what's all this about you and Monty? What's happening?"

Her tone was that of a woman who intended to stand no further nonsense

of any kind. She was dog-tired, already angry on Joan's account, and the

resigned and hopeless air of the slender creature before her completed

her resolve to get to the bottom of things.

But nothing appeared to be happening about Audrey and Monty. Mrs.

Cunningham was still of the same mind, or no mind, that had prompted her

letter.

"Where is he now?" Mollie demanded.

Audrey did not know.

"Is he with Philip?"

She did not know that either.

"And aren't you going to Lennox Street?"

"I don't think I can."

Mollie's eyes went round the room. I myself have never been in Mrs.

Cunningham's bed-sitter, but I have been in many others and can picture

its frugality--the gas-ring, the little cupboard with the bread and jar

of marmalade in it, the chintz-covered grocer's box on which Mollie's

cup of cocoa stood, probably a slightly fresher wallpaper-pattern where

the Jacobean wardrobe had stood. Lennox Street was positive luxury by

comparison, yet here was Audrey preferring this. Then there was Audrey

herself, heavy-eyed, drained of energy, probably thinking of George

Cunningham and wondering whether any experience was worth repeating.

With Joan for breakfast and Audrey for supper, poor Mollie had had about

enough of it for one day.

"About this marriage," she said abruptly. "Of course, it's not going to

be put off. _I_ shall see to that. I shall have a talk with Monty too

when I've finished with Philip. You're simply run down and want a

tonic."

"Oh, it isn't that," Audrey replied, sinking into an old wicker chair.

"I've thought it all over. I don't think they tell young girls enough

before they get married. They ought to tell them lots more. They ought

to tell them quite plainly, 'You'll have to be prepared for this and

that and the other. You'll have to expect to sit up half the night in

the dining-room with dinner on the table wondering where he is. You'll

have to learn that he hasn't really been run over or anything of that

kind and that it's only their way. You must expect telegrams and

telephone calls and excuses, and you mustn't be surprised if he brings

somebody else with him when he does come. They're like that. And when

they come home in a beastly state----'"

Here Mollie peremptorily interrupted her.

"Leave that brute in his grave," she commanded. "We're talking about

Monty, not him. And I'll see Monty. Now what's all this rigmarole about

milkmen and cellars and all the rest of it? Tell me as I undress you.

I'm going to put you to bed."

But little that was fresh was to be learned here either. Audrey thanked

her again and again for the offer of the house, but she thought she

would rather be here with her gas-ring and cocoa and chintz-covered

sugar-box. Mrs. Cook thought she could arrange it--it would only be half

a crown more.

"Well, I'll see Mrs. Cook too while I'm about it; may as well do the

thing thoroughly. Let me unlace your boots--why, your feet are cold, and

on a night like this! Never mind your hair; you can do it in bed. And

drink the rest of this cocoa. Really I do think I live in a helpless

sort of world--there isn't enough of me to go round--there ought to be

half a dozen of me. Now into bed with you, and you'd better stay there

till I come round in the morning. I'm not going back till Wednesday."

She packed up the cocoa-cups and turned off the gas-ring, opened the

window and wound up the little Swiss clock. As she moved about the room

folding Audrey's clothes and setting things to rights her own letter of

Sunday morning was brought up, but she placed it on the mantelpiece by

the side of the clock, forbidding Audrey to read it till the morning.

Letters didn't matter now that she was here in her own capable,

practical person. Letters took too long. She was going to have things

done much more quickly or know the reason why.

XIII

Philip himself opened the door to her. She gave her cheek to be kissed

and then walked straight in.

"Is Monty here?" were her first words.

"No. I think he's gone out for a walk."

"A walk, at this time of night!"

Philip shrugged his shoulders. "What brings you here, Mollie?" he said.

She was busy untying her veil. "What do you suppose? Everything, of

course."

"Have you had dinner or supper?"

"I had a cup of cocoa at Audrey Cunningham's, and don't want anything

else. Now why didn't you answer my telegram, and why didn't you write

again as you promised?" She threw the hat and veil on the table and her

gloves after them and stood before Philip.

"How are the children?" he asked.

"Perfectly well."

"And Joan?"

Her only answer to this last was a long look. Then she walked to the

little Empire sofa and sat down. He might stand if he wished.

"Well?" she said at last. This was after a full minute, during which

time he had stood by the table idly fingering her veil. Then suddenly

his fingers pushed the veil aside, and he crossed to the sofa and sat

down by her.

"What is it you want to know, darling?" he asked.

"Everything--every little thing from beginning to end," she replied.

"You've seen that I don't want to tell you?"

"Yes, I've seen that."

"And that I probably have my reasons?"

"Oh--reasons!"

"Reasons that are stronger than ever at this moment?"

"Will they go on getting much stronger? If so I can only warn you that a

breaking-point will come."

"Yes. I'm very near it."

"And so am I, Philip."

There was no mistaking her tone. It did not mean that if he continued to

shut her out like this she would do anything violent--live apart from

him, become merely his housekeeper, or anything of that kind. It meant

enormously more than that. Where confidence and trust are, there are few

divergences that do not presently right themselves, few differences that

cannot be resolved; but where these are absent nothing is right. Every

word is possible peril, every silence a hanging sword. In all my

acquaintance I know of no happier marriage than the Esdailes'. You never

go into their house and feel that the air is still charged with some

scene that your arrival has interrupted, you never leave wondering what

weapons will be picked up again the moment your back is turned. Philip

is not without his tempers nor Mollie without her own purposes, but it

stops at that. The rest is brave decencies, with I know not what

tenderer stuff behind. This it was that seemed for the moment to be in

peril.

But suddenly she put her hand on his. She did not speak; the hand spoke

for her. The next moment his other hand had fallen on hers again, so

that both enclosed it. Then their eyes too met.

"It would be an awful thing to risk, Phil," she said quietly.

His eyes begged her. "Won't you let me carry it a little longer alone?"

"I don't believe you can. And if you can," she added, "I don't see what

we got married for."

"But it will be rotten for you too."

"When have I shrunk from that?" she asked.

"Never," he replied in a low voice.

And so Mollie Esdaile too took her portion of the burden.

"Well, where shall we begin?" he asked, with a sigh that it must be so.

"You know best. But tell me first why you didn't write."

"I hadn't seen young Smith. I haven't yet as a matter of fact. But----,"

he drew her head to his breast, and there were some moments during which

he whispered into her ear.

For all his care and guarding it was not possible that she should not at

least tremble. But she did not start within his arms. The tremor passed,

and her dry lips repeated--

"Shot him!"

"For some reason or other. I don't think either of us can quite tell

Joan that, can we?"

"Shot him! Chummy!"

"There's no doubt about it. It was Monty who picked up the pistol.

Neither you nor I can very well tell Audrey that, can we?"

"Monty found the pistol!"

"And I picked up the cartridge-shell myself. The police were round here

at six o'clock on Friday morning looking for them."

"The police! Here!"

In spite of all, Philip could not restrain a little laugh. "Oh, they

didn't find anything. They don't when they've given you warning the

night before. By that time both pistol and case had been at the bottom

of silver-flowing Tamesis for six hours. I dropped 'em in myself from

the middle of Albert Bridge. Do you begin to see what you're in for, my

poor darling?"

It was doubtful whether she yet did. She could still only repeat,

"Chummy shot him! Does that mean----?" Her horrified stare finished the

question.

"Oh, I don't think so," he answered quickly, "at any rate not yet.

Naturally both Hubbard and I have got to stand by Chummy for the

present."

"Then somebody saw Monty pick up the pistol?"

"For the police to know anything about it, you mean? Well, as a matter

of fact that's the purest bad luck. There happens to be a fellow called

Westbury, confound him, and that beastly bullet seems to have fetched up

somewhere in his house; he lives just across the way there. That's all

the police have to go on now that the other things are safely in the

river mud."

Slowly it was sinking into her mind. Her eyes closed for a moment as she

felt the first faint strain of the weight of it. This came with the

thought of Joan.

"But--but----" she said faintly, "--that poor child----?"

"Joan? I suppose she is wondering what's happened?"

"Wondering what's happened.... You may as well know, Philip--it's a

mere trifle at this stage--that they're most awfully thick--far more

than you've been told. You know what boys and girls are nowadays. And

now comes this horrible silence, except for that one little note from

him----"

"Has she had a note from him?" Philip asked quickly. "From the

hospital?"

"There was no address on it. I suppose it was from the hospital?" she in

her turn asked in quick alarm.

"Yes, it wasn't from a prison. When did she get this note?"

"Yesterday morning."

"Did she show it to you?"

"Yes. It simply said he'd had this spill, but was all right, and she

wasn't to be alarmed."

"He didn't mention incidentally that he'd shot a man?"

"Of course not. I don't believe he had."

Philip passed this last point.

"Well, as he's written once I suppose he'll go on writing. He's heaps

better as a matter of fact. So it won't be too hard on her. Anyway,

she'll have to grin and bear it."

"I did hold out hopes that I might be able to take him back with me,"

Mollie ventured.

"You won't be able to do that," said Philip with decision. "Quite apart

from his being fit to travel, we've only gone a certain way in all this,

you know. He'll still have matters to explain. And till he does, I'm

afraid Audrey Cunningham will have to make the best of things too, like

Joan. It wouldn't do her any good to know that Monty was liable to

arrest at any moment."

"But is he?" said Mollie, startled.

"Of course he is. So am I. So are you. So would she be."

"But why?"

In spite of his explanation, I don't think she understood. I don't think

she understands to this day. I don't think that at the bottom of her

anti-social heart any woman does. A delayed wedding or a post without a

lover's letter is a far greater thing than a capital charge in which all

who conspire are principals.

Then, in spite of her fatigue, her skeptical common sense came to her

aid. Philip might involve himself in a web of unelucidated stuff of

which one-tenth perhaps was fact of sorts and the rest pure speculation;

but she knew Chummy. The thought of Chummy as a murderer was absurd

beyond words. Whatever the explanation might be it certainly was not

that. And, yawning as she rose, she told Philip so.

"And that's that," she concluded. "Now do let's go to bed. Of course, if

you think Chummy's a murderer I quite see why you didn't write and why

you don't want to tell Audrey and all the rest of it, but you'll find

it's all a mistake. There's something you don't know, or else there's

been an accident of some kind. If you seriously want me to believe that

Chummy Smith.... What's the matter, darling?"

The last words were a quick, startled cry. She did not know what it was

that lurked at the bottom of the eyes that were looking so deeply and

somberly into her own, but she feared already. His head was slowly

shaking from side to side.

"Philip! What do you mean?" she cried in agitation.

Still the head shook. It was impossible for her mind not to fly back to

that moment, now nearly five days ago, when he had stood blinking in

the doorway with a candle in one hand and a jar of liqueur in the other.

"Tell me quickly what you mean, Philip!" she cried again.

"I saw it."

She fell back. "You----?"

"It wasn't an accident, and there isn't anything I don't know."

"You----?"

The slow sideways shake changed to one single nod. The next moment his

arms were about her and he was leading her to the sofa again. He sighed.

There was no help for it now. If she would have it she must have it all.

"It's the only thing I haven't told you. We may as well get it over," he

said.

Nor did he whisper this time. He spoke in his usual voice, using the

plainest English he could.

But what it was that Philip Esdaile told his wife you must guess for a

little while longer. She was the first living soul to know. And it was a

very different thing from that which she had left Santon to hear.

For it was this overwhelmingly extraordinary yet stupendously ordinary

thing that sent her round to Audrey Cunningham the next morning, but

without comfort for her, with no plans for settling the wedding out of

hand.

It was this same thing that took her back to Santon on the Wednesday,

without Chummy, without help for Joan.

It was this same thing that puzzled Monty Rooke's brain as he took his

midnight walk that night down Roehampton Lane, driven from Audrey

Cunningham's company and sick of the sight of Philip and all his works.

And it was this and nothing else that Cecil Hubbard so much wanted to

know when he knitted his honest brows over hydrophones, sound-ranging,

or whatever other mysterious apparatus it was that Philip Esdaile might

have hidden away in his cellar.