PART IV

THE MAN IN THE PUBLIC-HOUSE

I

As an eager and passionate student of the Life of my day there are,

within limits, few places that I don't visit and few people I don't on

occasion talk to. I say "within limits," since I admit that there may be

grades at one end of the scale at which I draw the line, while at the

other end there may conceivably be those who draw the line at me. But

within these extremes, if not always familiarly, yet on the whole

without constraint, I sup at coffee-stalls or dine in quite good company

more or less indifferently.

I have found that the best strategic jumping-off-points for the

satisfying of this curiosity about the preponderating average of Life

are two. One--the Public-house--I have already mentioned. There only a

glass screen may divide you from the hawker who has left his barrow for

a few minutes in somebody else's charge, or from the gibused and

silk-mufflered figure who finds a glass of sherry a convenient way of

getting small change for his taxi. The other point of vantage is the

Club, where that same taxi is paid off, but where liveried chauffeurs

may stand for hours by the waiting cars.

I shall come to the Man in the Club by and by. For the present I wish to

return to the Man in the Public-house.

I won't say that I always love him, but I always recognize that I have

him very seriously to deal with. I am not thinking of him now either as

a reader of my journalism or as a potential buyer of my novels, but as a

larger phenomenon. I am thinking of him--loosely I admit--very much as

some political cartoonist might think of a generalized and consolidated

figure that turns a deaf ear to the Bolshevist and his sinister

whisperings on the one side, while the other ear is no less stopped to

the honeyed blandishments of the statesman who so frequently and

extraordinarily seeks to cajole him with flatteries that are both

out-of-touch and out-of-date.

He is Conservative, if Conservatism means that he cynically holds his

hand till he has seen what the next dodge is likely to be; and he is

Liberal in the sense of believing that if everybody looks after himself

then there will not be anybody who is not looked after. You have

overdone it, my good friends and representatives in Parliament. He no

longer believes a word you say. You offer him good and necessary things,

and he glances sideways at you, and his lips shape the words

"By-election." You try to keep him from rash and dangerous courses, and

he wants to know what _you_ are getting out of it. You ration him, but

he knows where to get sugar and butter while you make the best of

saccharine tablets and West African margarine; you de-control, and he

knows better than you do why hens cease to lay and rabbits to breed. It

is we of the cheaper Press who really have him in hand, and he cocks his

ears back at us occasionally. He did so when the _Daily Circus_ gave him

pictures of bathing girls instead of war news; he is doing so to-day

when--oh, lots of things--are pushed on and off the proscenium like

Monty Rooke's camouflage canvas trees and linoleum sentries. He sniffs

at all these things, says nothing, and calls for another glass of his

country's seven-times-accursed beer.

Yet he follows, if not his leader, his neighbor. This he sometimes does

to the most astonishing conclusions, just as he looks up at the sky-line

because he sees somebody else doing so, or is prepared to swear that he

hears a maroon because the man next to him says "Listen!" The vaguer the

rumor the greater is the scope for his self-and-collective suggestion.

He sees Russians, he knows that dead Field-Marshals are still alive. He

can tell you from private information that such-and-such a battalion has

been cut up or such-and-such a battle-fleet sent to the bottom of the

sea. And not one of these larger things is half so large to him as the

smaller thing that looms huge because it is in his own immediate

neighborhood. We on the _Circus_ provide pictures to give him at least

the photographic semblance of body for his belief. But what when the

very flesh and blood of the drama passes along his street every day?

What when he has spoken with the chief actor himself, knows who he

married, the number of his children and their names? What when he knows

the house he lives in, who lived there before, why he left so suddenly,

and the very words he is said to have said on leaving?

Do you see what I am coming to--those first faint whisperings of

something wrong--or if not positively wrong so much the better for

public-house debate on the point--with Philip Esdaile's house in Lennox

Street?

II

The first that Esdaile knew of all this was from the younger of Mollie's

two maids. Monty and Audrey had arranged to dispense with the services

of these two domestics, but Philip, still lingering on, had wanted the

younger one at least back. She had promised to come, but had not done

so, and Philip had sought her out. Thereupon she had said that she would

rather not come.

"Why?" Philip had asked; but she had given no satisfactory reason.

He had then turned to the second maid, but with no better result.

After all, it didn't matter. It was very little trouble for himself and

Monty to make their own breakfasts. They could take their other meals at

the Chelsea Arts Club, and there would be no difficulty in getting a

woman one or two days a week to clean.

Then, to his extreme astonishment, on the very day after Mollie's

departure for Santon, he left Monty to a sandwich-and-coffee luncheon in

the studio and came out of his house to find Lennox Street almost as

full of people as it had been on the morning when the parachute had

descended on the studio roof.

"What's the matter? Anything happened?" he asked the nearest loiterer at

his gate; but he did not learn what had really happened till he reached

the Club.

Certainly the joke, if it was a joke, appeared to be "on him."

Simultaneously two grinning fellow-members thrust into his hand that

morning's issue of the _Roundabout_. The _Roundabout_, I should say, is

the _Circus's_ (much inferior) rival.

It contained a photograph of Esdaile's house, with the spot where the

parachute had descended marked with a cross.

It was, of course, a thousand pities. No man likes the house he lives in

held up to the idle public gaze. Had the annoying thing been submitted

to my own paper I could have stopped it. Had it been a big thing I might

even have stopped its appearance in the _Roundabout_, for, while we cut

one another's throats in detail, we have our understandings in larger

matters. Hurriedly I scanned the rest of the paper to see whether any

letterpress went with the picture. None did. There was simply the

photograph, with a couple of quite innocent descriptive lines

underneath.

"Seems to me rather a stumer," I said to Willett. "Is Hodgson losing his

grip a bit?"

"Haven't noticed it," Willett replied. "Sound man Hodgson. Doesn't often

do things without a reason. I think we might go a bit slower on

actresses and mannequins. This is the crash we were talking about the

other morning, isn't it?"

"Yes. A wash-out I should have said."

"Perhaps he's playing the local-interest card. He's doing that just now.

I don't see why we shouldn't do more of it."

"I think we'll wait for a better story than that anyway," I replied.

"Well, let's get to work----"

But all that afternoon the thing worried me. It was a trifle, perhaps,

but it was a trifle on the wrong side. More, unlike some other trifles,

I already saw how dangerously capable of further development it was. I

have told you what the attitude of the Press was to this question of

civil flying. It was one of simply awaiting events. But all the time

events were fermenting, so to speak. High over our heads Olympian minds

were shaping and re-shaping policies and plans, and Argus eyes were

tirelessly watching for indications of the receptivity of the popular

mind. Had Hodgson heard something that we had not? As you sometimes see

an insignificant person's affairs, of no interest in themselves,

solemnly weighed by the Lords of Appeal because of some novel and

far-reaching point they raise, was something in the nature of a Test

Case now being sought? Had we on the _Circus_ been wrong in assuming

that the idea was simply to catch and make an example of the careless

joy-rider and the idiot who stunted over towns? Was some more important

point to be raised, and had Hodgson had wind of it?

I was inclined to think not, and for the reason I have just given. Make

a thing big enough, and we hang fairly well together; but take the whips

off, so to speak, and we go as we please. If it had been as important as

all that we should have heard of it. Willett, who is a youngster of

parts, was in all probability right. Hodgson was merely catering for the

local interest.

But still I was uneasy, and my uneasiness had nothing to do with the

annoyance the publication of the photograph of the house in Lennox

Street must cause Esdaile. I was thinking of far graver possible

consequences. Even the lightest measure of Publicity is not a thing

to be trifled with. Here I know what I am talking about. The merry

fellows of the Chelsea Arts Club might pull Esdaile's leg about his

haunted house, and want to know whether the White Lady dropped any

hairpins as she passed, or if the horrible shrouded figure with the

crimson-dripping hands would make a good film; but we journalists have

to take these things a good deal more seriously than that. Publicity,

sometimes of the most incredibly silly kind, is our meat and drink and

hourly breath. All day and every day our brains are on the stretch in

our endeavors to secure it. We bring our heaviest guns to bear on the

elusive thing, are sure we can't possibly miss it this time, let fly,

and lo! we have missed after all. Like a pithball on a fountain, it is

still dancing there untouched, and any penny peashooter may bring it

down when all our trained intelligence has failed.

And what would be the effects on our Case if it came down?

Well, you can see that for yourself. In obscurity lay our hope that the

thing might remain what on the face of it it appeared to be. Switch the

arc-lamps of the great papers on to it, with the whole power-house of

dynamic government behind them, and all was over. Not an aspect of the

Case would go unprobed to the very bottom, and the hungry newspapers

would find themselves, not with a mere aeroplane crash that could be

dismissed in a couple of lines, but with a really fine fat, first-class

Murder Case that would keep them merrily going for weeks.

And I can assure you that we all wanted very badly indeed just such a

Case. We wanted it for more reasons than one. We wanted it, as we always

do, in the ordinary way of our business, but much more we wanted it to

take people's minds off other matters. We wanted it for the same reason

that made us resolutely print those pictures of girls bathing during the

blackest days of the War. We wanted it because the Man in the

Public-house was restless and showed a disposition to pry into affairs

in which his interference is only wanted when a General Election draws

near. Bathing girls were very well in their way; a really high-class

line in Divorce Cases would have outstripped them easily, if I may be

permitted the unintentional expression; but the man who could have given

us on the _Circus_ the first Assassination in the Air could have named

his own price for it.

III

The flat in which I live with the old housekeeper who looks after me is

not in Chelsea at all, but a quarter of an hour's walk away, just round

the corner from Queen's Gate. It is exceedingly comfortable (as indeed

it should be considering the rent I am made to pay for it), I have my

own furniture, and on the whole I don't ask for a much better place to

work in. For, quite apart from my paper, I do work, and I don't want to

give you the impression that the whole of my leisure time is given over

to the investigation of what happens to my Chelsea friends.

I was, as a matter of fact, particularly busy just about that time. Day

after day I was getting up at half-past six in the morning, breakfasting

at my table as I worked, and continuing without interruption till it was

time for luncheon and the office. Since you are probably not in the

white-elephant line of business, I won't tell you which of my novels I

was at work on. I will only say that I at any rate was interested in it,

and, severe as was the strain of writing from seven o'clock in the

morning till midday, I sometimes hated to break off. Mrs. Jardine had

orders not to admit anybody whomsoever between those hours, and obeyed

them to the letter.

You may judge then of my surprise when there walked into my study at

nine o'clock in the morning, and not over Mrs. Jardine's dead body,

Billy Mackwith.

"Don't scold the old lady," he began without preface. "I suppose she

hadn't any barbed wire except that on her chin--it is rather like one of

the gooseberries we used to make on the old wiring-course. I had to see

you."

"Had breakfast? Have a cup of coffee?" I asked him.

"Nothing, thanks. Well, I think I saved friend Philip a certain amount

of trouble yesterday," he said, putting down his hat, stick and gloves.

I don't think Mackwith buys a glossy new silk topper every time he goes

out, but I do honestly believe he buys a new pair of lemon-colored

gloves.

"Oh? How was that?"

"At the inquest on that fellow," he replied. "And by the way, I saw the

_Roundabout_ too. I suppose it has its humorous side, but it's very

annoying too. I should go for 'em for libel. A house can be libeled, you

know. Anyway, it's a good job he's out of town."

I was on the point of saying, "A good job he's what?" when I checked

myself. If you remember, I had last seen William Mackwith, K.C., when I

had left him at Sloane Square Station an hour or two after that

confounded aeroplane accident. He and Hubbard had gone off to keep their

respective appointments, while I myself had followed our check-coated

friend Westbury into a public-house. Whether either Esdaile or Hubbard

had seen him since I didn't know. I now gathered that Billy at any rate

hadn't seen Esdaile.

"Yes?" I said. "What trouble have you been saving him?"

"Well, I told you--I saved him the bother of stopping for the inquest."

I had of course known that there must be an inquest, but I suppose I had

been busy and had forgotten it again. This began to be interesting.

"Tell me about the inquest," I said.

He took a cigarette from his case and offered me one. Then he continued

between puffs.

"Well, as a matter of fact there wasn't very much trouble. One man

seemed inclined to be cantankerous, but we brought it in Misadventure

all right. We----"

I imagine that at this point he caught sight of the expression on my

face, for he stopped suddenly.

"Esdaile did go out of town, didn't he?" he asked.

"I'll tell you about Esdaile in a moment. Go on about the inquest."

He seemed puzzled, but went on.

"Of course, that was my idea in speaking to that Inspector that morning.

It would have been a pity to upset the Esdailes' plans. So I explained

this to the Inspector and gave him my card--said I hadn't seen very

much, but as much as anybody else--result, I was made foreman of the

jury."

Here I had a little flash of illumination as regards Inspector Webster

too. Esdaile, if you remember, had said to him, "Yes, that was Mr.

Mackwith, the King's Counsel; didn't you know?" and Webster had

answered, "Was he indeed, sir?" My respect for the Inspector's powers

of giving nothing away went up several hundreds per cent. Apparently it

was the Inspector who had seen to it that Billy had been put on the

jury.

"Well, you were made foreman. You said one man gave trouble. Who, and

why?"

"Oh, some fellow or other--Westcott or Westmacott I think his name

was--I forget. Insisted on viewing the body. Wanted his money's worth I

suppose. He was sorry he did though."

This was more and more interesting. I asked what sort of a man this

Westmacott was.

"The sort of fellow who would be down in the cellar before his wife and

children when there was an air-raid on, I should say," Billy replied.

"Awful nuisance of a man. But he got his all right. He'll probably be

taking solid food again this day week."

"Then you did see the body?"

"Had to, if only to keep this fellow quiet. He stuck out right to the

finish too, but we got our dozen without him. Prima facie case, of

course. Death by burning, and what wasn't that was general smash-up."

"Was a doctor called?"

"The divisional surgeon was there, but he quite agreed, and I saw to the

rest in my capacity as foreman. There was only one man who wasn't

satisfied, and he was busy----" Billy twinkled wickedly.

You may imagine how I was beginning to relish all this. The Chelsea Arts

with its rags about haunted houses and White Ladies who dropped hairpins

was well enough in its way, but its humor could not compare for a moment

with the spectacle of a rising King's Counsel who practically forced

himself on to a jury-panel, got himself made foreman, and then burked

inquiry by shutting up the only juryman who had as much as a suspicion

of the dangerous truth--and all this in the whitest innocence and purest

good faith! I could have laughed aloud. Had he been a willing instrument

in the affair he could not have done his work more efficiently and

completely.

"Is the poor fellow buried yet?" I asked in a suppressed voice.

"Yesterday," said Billy.

"And he can't be dug up again?"

Mackwith gave me a sharp look. "What do you mean?" he asked quickly.

"Dug. Past participle of the verb to dig. I mean is he buried once for

all?"

"Short of an Exhumation Order from the Home Secretary he is. I don't

understand you."

"And that's rather difficult to get, isn't it?" I continued.

"I should say the North Pole was comparatively easy," Billy replied.

At this point my laughter really became too much for me. I remember

hoping that it didn't seem too rude, but I couldn't help it. Billy let

me finish, and then asked quietly, even gravely, "Now if you're feeling

better, will you please explain?"

I suppose my laughter had been just a little hysterical. As I have

already told you, I myself stand only on the verge of this Case; but not

so my friends, and Esdaile in particular. I remembered--and deep under

that rather remarkable laughter it moved me more than a little to do

so--the extraordinary range and sweep of emotions that had shaken

Esdaile in the course of a single day. I remembered the bright strained

tension of those first minutes after he had come up out of the cellar,

the shock of that telephone message from the hospital that had told him

what had happened to a friend. I remembered that black depression when

Hubbard and I had found him waiting alone in his house for Monty. I

remembered his ache on Joan Merrow's account, our later talk with Monty,

his nascent and grim resolve that in the teeth of all the world the

accident theory should be maintained, his dismay when he had realized

what a post-mortem examination might disclose. I ran over again his

whole day, from that merry breakfast-party to the appearance of

Inspector Webster in our midst at ten o'clock at night.... Well, one

peril was now safely past. In the absence of the Exhumation Order of

which Mackwith spoke, there remained no tittle of material evidence save

a battered bit of nickel-steel in Westbury's possession or in that of

the police. If only for Esdaile's sake, I felt as if a weight had been

lifted from me.

And, on the top of all, Billy Mackwith's innocent complicity must have

moved me to that inane outburst.

"Well, for one thing, Esdaile isn't out of town at all," I said, wiping

my eyes.

"Well, I thought he was. That isn't the joke, is it?"

"Not altogether. You see----"

"Do you mean that stupid _Roundabout_ thing?"

"No.... I beg your pardon, Billy. It came over me all of a sudden. Now I

think I can tell you----"

And so another was added to our nicely-lengthening list of Principals in

the Case.

IV

While I spoke Billy had risen, and was pretending to examine the prints

on my walls. I continued to talk; talking was, in fact, my morning's

work that day. I finished, and there was a long silence. I thought my

barrister-friend would never have done looking at those prints.

Then suddenly he crossed over to my table and stood leaning lightly on

his fingertips.

"Why wasn't I told this sooner?" he asked, his eyes brightly on mine.

For a moment I thought he meant that our neglect to inform him had

landed him into this equivocal position with regard to the coroner's

jury, and was beginning to explain that, being everybody's business, it

had also apparently been nobody's. But he cut me short.

"Oh, I don't mean that. Leave the inquest out of it for the present.

What I mean is that I could have saved our friend a good deal of mental

pain if I'd known--and you too," he added, "from the way you laughed

just now."

"How?" I asked.

"In this way," he replied, sitting down on the edge of my table and

giving his striped cashmere trousers a little hitch. "Say that a shot

has been fired.... Philip, I take it, has been worrying about the

consequences to this fellow Smith, and incidentally to Miss Merrow. Now

if I'd been there to ask Rooke a few material questions I think I could

have assured him that it's a thousand to one there won't be any

consequences."

"Why not?"

"The state of the body," he replied promptly. "Rooke saw it, you say, or

at any rate quite enough of it; I saw it too; and, shot or no shot, it

wouldn't have taken me two minutes to get out of Rooke that there was no

earthly possibility of proving that a shot caused death."

"You mean there were so many other good reasons?"

"Well, I'm not a doctor, but I should say at least a dozen. No wonder

that fellow Westbury--ah, that's his name, not Westcott--had to make a

bolt for it. Unless somebody can be produced who actually saw the shot

fired there won't be the ghost of a Case, and I'm inclined to think that

even then it would reduce itself to shooting with intent to kill or

wound--which is a felony, of course, but not quite the same thing as

murder. No, I think you can take it from me that there won't be any

consequences."

I pondered this for a moment. Then I saw the flaw in it. Every man to

his trade. Here was the advocate speaking, his whole acute mind trained

to one single end--the getting of his man off. But I myself work in a

different material and saw the Case from my own angle.

"One moment," I interposed. "When you say consequences you mean legal

consequences? In other words he'd slip through your fingers simply

because nobody actually saw him do it?"

"He wouldn't even be charged. That was practically a certainty before

the inquest. It's overwhelming now the other fellow's buried."

"But legal consequences are not the only kind of consequences there are

in the world."

"Oh, I'm not speaking of moral consequences. They're quite another

matter," quoth Billy.

"Not as regards Esdaile's having a rotten time over this," I differed.

"Let's look at it from another point of view for a moment. Neither you

nor I know Smith. But Hubbard and Esdaile do, and there's this

friendship between them. And mark you, friendship too isn't always the

same thing it was before the War. There were lots of men we called

friends then very much as a matter of habit; I mean it didn't often

occur to you to ask what kind of a man your friend would be when it came

to the pinch. We've all made new friends, and there are some of the old

ones whose names we never want to hear again. You see what I mean? I

mean the bond must be pretty strong for two men like Esdaile and Hubbard

to take instantly to the thought of shielding Smith like ducks taking to

water. I watched them--it was really exciting--you could read both their

faces like books. Very well. Up to this point we're both talking the

same language. When we say consequences we mean legal consequences.

"But here's where the difference comes in. I don't know what Hubbard's

views are, as I haven't seen him since that night; but I do know what

Esdaile's are. He's shielding Smith--but only till he hears what he's

got to say for himself. He doesn't want to condemn him unheard. I admit

that in the meantime he's taken certain rather risky steps, and my own

opinion is that he won't find it very easy if he wants to retrace them

again; the river'd have to be dredged for a pistol, for example, and

Lord only knows what sort of a reason he'd give for even having

interfered at all. But my point is that he's done nothing final yet.

Smith's got to satisfy him, and if he can't--well, it can't be quite the

same between them again after that, can it?"

"You mean their friendship's broken?"

"Well, that's not quite the way I should put it. It might break, or

possibly it might not. What I mean is that a friendship with a man who's

killed other men in battle isn't the same thing as one with a man who

murders another in peace-time. It may be as good for all I know, as I

haven't done either, but obviously it isn't the same."

"No, I suppose not," Mackwith agreed. "And as for retracing his steps, I

agree with you that the best thing he can do is to keep his mouth shut.

I certainly intend to about that inquest. Life's too short to go moving

for Exhumation Orders."

"Well, next there's Joan Merrow. Exactly the same thing applies to her.

Is she going to marry a soldier or an assassin? Is Esdaile going to let

her? He's her guardian for all practical purposes, and he's got that

question to answer."

The barrister laughed. "I don't think he need worry about that. Miss

Merrow strikes me as a young woman who won't stand any nonsense from

guardians. Well," he took up his hat and stick, "I must be getting

along. I didn't expect all this when I came in, but it seems to me the

Case is over now. Barring these moral consequences of yours, it

practically ended when I gave in our verdict yesterday."

"I hope you're right," I replied. "I thought so myself a few days ago,

though, and that evening a Police Inspector marched in."

He stopped at the door and spoke over his shoulder.

"Oh? You seem doubtful. Any reason?"

"None," I replied. "Only what women call a sort of feeling about it."

Mackwith laughed.

"We'll see about that when it comes," he said. "So long----"

V

The surface indications were of course of the very slightest. So far

they consisted merely of the photograph in the _Roundabout_, my

speculations whether Hodgson had anything up his sleeve, and similar

trifles. But others were pending. The danger of the coroner's inquest

might be safely past, but at least half a dozen other rocks loomed

immediately ahead. The Aiglon Company, for example, would want to know

what had gone wrong with their machine, and the manufacturers would be

even more interested. The same with the parachute people. The Aero Club

and the Royal Aeronautical Society both have their Accidents

Investigation Committees, and it was quite likely that claims against

various Insurance Offices had already been lodged. You cannot thrust a

finger into the close web of modern life without stirring up all manner

of complexities. I suppose it was these that I had already begun to

fear.

Perhaps most immediate of all was the question of unauthorized flying.

What had that machine been doing over London at all? Military machines

come and go under orders, but not commercial planes piloted by civilian

aeronauts. Setting such things as Murder and Manslaughter entirely on

one side, was it not probable that Smith would be called to book on

this account? From our point of view it was obviously most undesirable

that he should be brought into Court on any charge at all; but what if

we couldn't prevent it? What if, in the inhuman collision of powerful

business interests behind, the lawyers were to get to work--an Insurance

Company resist a claim, say, or the Aiglon people proceed against the

manufacturers on a point of warranty? You may think I was seeing lions

in the path, but it is never safe to reckon on meeting nothing more

formidable than a sheep. And I have nothing against lawyers as a class.

I don't think Billy Mackwith would pick my pocket of a single sixpence.

But I do believe they are like the road-mender with the stone. He hit it

with his hammer ten times without breaking it, and was then asked

whether he did not think he would have a better chance of splitting it

if he turned it splitting-edge uppermost. "How do you know I want to

split it?" he replied. I suspect even Billy of not wanting to split it

sometimes.

"Willett!" I called as I entered my office after lunch that day. "Just

get me out the latest thing about Air Navigation, will you?"

"Is the new one out yet?" Willett replied, walking to the big

glass-fronted cupboard where we keep the current papers of this kind;

the others are on the library shelves downstairs. "I think they were

withdrawn. I seem to remember sending to the Stationery Office and being

told there'd been a muddle of some sort."

"There must be something in force," I said. "I want that, whatever it

is."

"Just a moment--ah, here we are!"

Willett was both right and wrong. A certain issue of Statutory Rules

and Orders had as a matter of fact been withdrawn, but an amended

reprint was now available. He handed the slender white booklet to me. It

was dated April 30th, 1919, and had therefore been in force for some

days at the time of the Lennox Street accident.

I walked to my desk and settled down to the study of it.

I don't know that I was very much the wiser for my efforts. So much

seemed to be in the air in every sense of the word. The paper was not

even an Act, but an Order, and it seemed to me that its phrases about

"contravention of these Regulations" might in practice mean almost

anything. What, for example, did "stress of weather or other unavoidable

cause" mean? What would happen in case of a kind of accident expressly

excluded from the Order--"within a circle of a radius of one mile from

the center of a licensed aerodrome"? What about the special cases

permitted "by direction of the Secretary of State on the recommendation

of a Government Department"? I don't mean that the intention of it all

wasn't plain enough. The drafters of the Regulations had done the best

they could in a new and totally unexplored field. For all practical

purposes this new science was just as old as the War, and these detailed

points of law had not arisen during the War. But they were coming up

now, a whole body of practice still to make, and any youngster who chose

could loop the loop and what little proved Law there was at one and the

same time.

In fact, the only quite unmistakable paragraph I found was the one that

promised proper castigation "to any person obstructing or impeding the

authorities" and so forth--that is to say, Hubbard, Esdaile, myself and

the rest of our little gang of law-breakers.

And, before I pass on, bear with me for one moment while I ask you to

observe how all History began to loom behind our Case, ready at any

moment to drive it irresistibly forward. For that four-centuries-old

Upspringing of daring and glory and adventure that we call the

Renaissance is come suddenly and magically into our midst again to-day.

There are now to seek and to chart and to possess Indies and Orients,

not of the unembraced and bridal waters, but of the already defeated and

subject Air. Our age hears the old imperious call, and across four

hundred years of time the hands of a George receive Romance from those

of an Elizabeth. It may seem a far cry from this to the Man in the

Public-house, but it crept and lapped about our Case like a

slowly-mounting flood. Idle rumors brought with the milk to Chelsea

doorsteps; a Press eager to take its lead from any momentary whiff that

ruffles the popular mind; a Government that without that Press could not

govern for a week; and the radiance of this new sunburst over all--this

is the apparatus of our Drakes and Burleighs of to-day. And, so long as

the mighty thing went forward unimpeded, what did any individual matter?

VI

"Foreman? You may well say foreman! But he hasn't finished with me yet!

You've seen what it says in to-day's _Roundabout_, haven't you? Very

well, young-fellow-me-lad; you watch it! They laugh best that laugh

last. It isn't over yet!"

I was grinding my teeth behind my copy of the paper he had just

mentioned. The thick-headed fool had done it. I was not reading the

paper; I was merely using it to hide behind as I stood at the

Public-house counter with one foot on the brass rail.

"Over? It hasn't begun yet!" Westbury continued, his convex eyes glaring

from one face to another. "It's ventilation these things

want--ventilation in the public Press--and I tell you I haven't started

yet! I went into this Case out of public spirit--'Webster,' I says to

our friend, 'if you want me you know where to find me'--I'm a busy man

with my own private affairs to look after, but right's right and I'm not

the man to hang back when forward's the word--and if they think I'm as

easy stopped as all that they're mistaken, K.C. or no K.C.! The body was

viewed--some of 'em didn't want to, but I saw to that--but I contend

there ought to have been a proper post-mortem. And you may take it from

me that if there had been this Case would have gone forward."

"Do you mean to a Criminal Court, Harry?" a voice asked.

"I said gone forward; I didn't say what Court. We'll see about Courts by

and by. This Mister Smith or whatever his name is will be had up for

flying to the danger of the public, and we'll see what happens then!"

Once more I vehemently cursed him. It was half-past eight at night, with

nothing unusual doing at the office, and I had left Willett in charge so

that I might find Westbury. It was perfectly certain that after

Hodgson's leading article of that morning Westbury would not spend the

evening in the retirement of his home, but would be out for what young

Willett calls "gin-and-glory." As it happened, I had run him to earth

at my very first attempt, in the same Saloon Bar in which I had first

seen him.

You may know Hodgson's leading-article style. If we on the _Circus_

don't imitate it it is not that we deny that it "gets across." It is

allusive, rorty and familiar, and there is frequently common sense

behind it. If the Man in the Public-house likes his news served up in

that way you can't blame Hodgson for meeting his wishes. This is what he

had written, no doubt sending his Chelsea sales up by hundreds of

quires:--

"TOM, DICK AND ICARUS.

"Our correspondent Mr. Harry Westbury is some lad. You will find

his letter at the foot of the next column to this. Why, asks Harry,

in these days when you may consider yourself lucky to have a roof

over your head at all, should your head and that roof be brought

into sudden and violent contact? Not that Harry is a jumper; he

isn't going to challenge Joe Darby; but the ceiling and your

occiput can establish connection just the same if the former comes

down on the latter. What he really means is that aeroplanes,

subject to sudden syncopes of the engines, have no business over

Chelsea's pleasant roofs at all.

"H.W. does not claim that he personally suffered damage from the

crash we reported last Friday. But he is a respected House and

Estate Agent residing in the district and speaks feelingly. _C'est

son métier_, as our gallant and Gallic Allies say. He means, we

take it, that if civil aviation is to develop, corresponding

safeguards must be developed side by side with it. Here we are with

Harry all the way. Our Olympians may have burst a number of

brain-cells over the present Regulations, but they will have to

find a new wave-length. Tom, Dick and Harry we know, but we have

not yet been properly introduced to Tom, Dick and Icarus. No, sir,

not with building materials at their present price and the plumber

rolling up in his Rolls-Ford. The pilot who came down in Chelsea

last Thursday is said to have been employed by the Aiglon Company.

Nuff said. If the Aiglon or any other Company is out for public

support it knows what to do. In the meantime we hope Mr. Westbury

won't raise his house premiums. But that is another story.

"THE MAN IN THE PUBLIC-HOUSE."

That was the whole text of it. Was it fair comment on a matter of public

interest? Well, I don't say it wasn't. Was it a timely reminder that

high-spirited lads who had lately been praised for their dare-devilry

must now pull themselves together and fall into line with the new

conditions? Very likely. Was it a legitimate attempt to arouse interest

in the age's new wonder, or merely a political stick with which covertly

to beat some high official dog or other? I didn't know.

For my mind was occupied with quite other thoughts. From round the edge

of my paper I was trying to sum up Westbury--a young man, but

unexercised; seldom drunk, as a man in decent physical condition would

have been on half that he swallowed, but already habituated and inured;

probably quite well-to-do, in that mysterious way that causes tradesmen

quietly to acquire their own houses and to drive in their own

two-seaters to places of entertainment such as that I was in; and yet in

a sense a minor man of affairs as distinct from a tradesman, a cut above

the shirt-sleeves-and-counter business, if not exactly entitled to style

his occupation a profession. He had got over the first overweening stage

of the vanity of that day's publicity; he was now a little disparaging

what he wouldn't have allowed anybody else to disparage; was treating

Hodgson quite as a familiar, in fact, which as far as I was concerned he

was perfectly at liberty to do. A dangerous beast, I thought again, and

none the less dangerous now that Billy Mackwith, as foreman of that

coroner's jury, had got his back thoroughly up.

"Yes, Mr. Mackwith, K.C. or O.B.E., or whatever you call yourself," he

was muttering again, "they laugh best that laugh last. If he'd even said

to me, 'What's _your_ opinion, sir?' I won't say but what I should have

thought a bit more of him, but him and his silk hat and gloves ... you

wait a bit! There's a few will be surprised before this Case is over!"

It seemed to me that he scarcely took the trouble to veil what he really

meant. Nor was I surprised at the way in which his hearers evidently

took his words. For, looking from his cunning yet stupid face to the six

or seven other faces about him, I could make a guess at their attitude

too. Remember those first faint rumors that had found their way with the

morning's milk to Audrey Cunningham's doorstep. Remember what whispered

currency they must have had before they had come to Audrey at all.

Remember that photograph in the _Roundabout_ that had filled Lennox

Street with a gaping crowd that morning, a crowd that had taken a couple

of days to diminish and die away. Esdaile told me later, too, that for a

week he had been conscious of turning heads as he had walked along the

streets.... Oh, I could have made this Case of ours a thing of pistols

and parachutes only, but I wished to go a little farther than that. Not

that I have any particular views on mass-suggestion at large. My

business is simply to observe its working. And here I was, in a Saloon

Bar, observing it in a very curious form.

For I think that every single member of the group to which I was

listening behind my newspaper had more than an idea of what Westbury

really meant. I think they knew perfectly well that when he spoke of

flying to the public danger he meant very, very much more. I don't think

there was one of them who had not heard the story of Inspector Webster

and the bullet. Secretive as he was, he would be garrulous among his

intimates if garrulity enhanced his self-importance. I am perfectly

certain that every one of them knew all this, knew that he had been

thwarted in his legitimate demand for a post-mortem examination, and

knew in addition something else that I also was to know by and by.

Then suddenly something happened that placed all this beyond any doubt

whatever.

Besides their own party, I was the only person at that end of the room,

and I had been there long enough to have drunk three glasses of beer

instead of the one that still stood only half empty on the counter at my

elbow. As I listened the voices suddenly dropped. There was a minute of

whispering, during which (realizing a little late that eavesdroppers

must keep up appearances) I finished my beer and ordered a second glass.

Then Westbury's voice rose again.

"Yes, 'corresponding safeguards or words to that effect,'" he said. "I

gave my copy of the paper away. Er----"

The last was a sudden clearing of his throat, evidently intended to

attract attention--my attention. I half dropped the paper and saw the

convex eyes on mine.

"If that paper belongs to the house, sir, might I have a glance at it

just for one moment?" he said.

VII

I had bought that copy of the _Roundabout_ myself, but I knew that that

was in no sense the point. Without a word I handed it to Mr. Westbury.

My second glass of beer was placed before me, and as I half turned to

get a coin from my pocket I felt, positively felt, their eyes on me. I

also felt their removal as I took up my change and resumed my former

attitude. Westbury had taken the paper with a "Thank you, sir."

"Ah, it's open at the very page. Begin here, Tom," he said. "'If civil

aviation is to develop----'"

And he passed the paper to one of his companions.

I had not the least intention of leaving. I was perfectly well aware

that Westbury had not wanted that paper, but had wanted to see my face.

He was not likely to recognize it as that of the younger novelist whose

portrait appears publicly from time to time, since in order to maintain

that humorous status I have for a dozen years refrained from having my

photograph taken at all; but I knew enough of my man to be sure that

little had escaped him during that half hour or so when he had occupied

that position of privilege outside Esdaile's French window, and that he

probably remembered every face of that breakfast-party--Mackwith's and

my own among the rest. That was why I had no thought of leaving. He was

hardly the kind of man I should have had much to say to in the ordinary

course, but if he saw fit to challenge me, well and good. In fact, I

hadn't very much choice in the matter. I had only to picture to myself

what sort of glances would be exchanged among them were I suddenly to

finish my beer and walk out and my remaining became almost a necessity.

Nay, _he_ had already challenged _me_ when he had borrowed my paper. My

only doubt was whether, in view of that whispered conversation and of

the dimensions Rumor had now attained, they hadn't all challenged me.

The next moment Mr. Westbury had gone still farther. He had also chosen

the ground on which our duel, if there was to be a duel, was to take

place. The Public-house has its own punctilio. I wouldn't go the length

of saying that you can't ask a stranger for a match without offering to

buy him a drink in return, but such invitations are given on quite

slight occasions. I was not surprised, therefore, when Mr. Westbury,

catching my eye, acknowledged the loan of the paper by saying, "Will you

have a drink, sir?"

So I had in a sense either to eat his salt or refuse it. I did not

hesitate. Certainly that beer was salt enough.

"Thank you," I replied.

"And what is it, sir?"

"I'll have another glass of beer."

He ordered it. Then, "I think we've met before," he said.

The silence of the others was suddenly very noticeable. It was for all

the world as if some referee had ordered, "Seconds out of the ring."

"I'm afraid I don't quite----" I began.

"Well, I won't say it got as far as an intro," he took me up, "but

weren't you at a certain house in Lennox Street when an accident

occurred the other day?"

"I was, but I wasn't aware----"

"Oh, I wasn't inside the house. But I was able to be of some little

assistance outside," he replied. "A very curious affair, sir," he added

tentatively.

"Rather a sad one," I replied.

There was a pause. "Chelsea's very much interested in that accident," he

continued.

I answered that I didn't live in Chelsea.

Then suddenly he became almost amiable; but for all his amiability his

eyes were like the hard-boiled eggs on the counter, only a trifle

yellower.

"Well, that's two of you gentlemen I've met now," he said. "I haven't

the pleasure of knowing your name, but the other gentleman was Mr.

Mackwith."

There was a certain correctness about this opening that I had

reluctantly to acknowledge. He may or may not have known my name--the

chances were that he had already ascertained it--but I read his thought.

A few minutes ago, possibly before he had become aware of my presence,

he had spoken pretty freely of Mackwith; he was now obviously asking

himself whether I had overheard this. In all probability I had, but in

such cases the official attitude is the best. Had Mr. Westbury been an

administrator I could have imagined him penning a minute: "This does not

come within the knowledge of this Department."

"Yes," he continued after a pause, "I had the pleasure of sitting on a

coroner's jury with Mr. Mackwith the other day."

"Really?"

"Yes, and strange as it may seem, in connection with this very accident

we're speaking of."

"That's very interesting," I said genially. "I haven't seen Mr. Mackwith

since the occurrence. What happened at the inquest on the unfortunate

man?"

"The verdict was in the papers, sir. And my own views are in that paper

my friend is reading. They're twice over, as a matter of fact, once in a

letter of mine they printed and once in the editor's remarks on it."

"Ah, then you're Mr. Westbury!" I exclaimed with feigned surprise. "I

was reading both your letter and the article just now. I congratulate

you. I see you're in touch with both sides."

Mr. Westbury looked at me with mistrust. "What both sides?" he asked.

"With both the men who came down that morning," I replied. "You were at

the inquest on one of them, and you very properly call for an inquiry

into the other man's conduct."

"I do!" he said so vindictively that he might almost have been spitting

the two words into one of the sawdust-filled spittoons. "I do more than

call, Mr.----" he glared.

"Oh? But how can you do more?" I asked politely. "There are certain

prescribed forms in such cases, and if inquiry on those lines turns out

to be satisfactory I should have said there was nothing more to be

done?"

"Ah! If!" said Westbury, with the greatest intensity of meaning.

There was a palm in a copper pot behind him, and above his head a

picture of a huntsman holding up a fox over the baying pack preparatory

to drinking Somebody's Whisky. My eyes wandered reflectively to these

objects for a moment; then I took a further step. It seemed to me too

late to draw back now.

"But--well, since we are discussing this I wish you could be a little

plainer," I said. "You say all Chelsea's interested in this Case, and I

don't live in Chelsea. Why is Chelsea so interested?"

He replied promptly enough. "Because, sir, of certain things that don't

appear on the surface of which I happen to have some knowledge."

"May I ask what things?"

He echoed me.

"And may I ask you something, and that is whether you happen to be aware

that the police searched certain premises the other morning?"

"Do you mean the morning of the accident?"

"I do _not_ mean the morning of the accident. I'm speaking of last

Friday morning, at six o'clock, before anybody was about."

I considered a moment. Then, "But why not?" I replied. "Is there

anything unusual about that? Surely when an accident takes place the

police are the proper people to investigate it?"

I thought he would have jumped out of his chair with vehemence.

"Ah!" he cried. "Now you're talking! That's more like! The proper

people? So they are; you stick to that! And now I'll ask you this: If

that's so, why keep things back from them? Why this hushing up? Answer

me that. Or bring some of your friends to answer it. That's all I have

to say!"

And he flung himself back in his chair and continued to mutter softly.

It was evident that his choler against Mackwith had risen again. What

had passed between the two men was no less plain. If Mackwith was right

in his estimate of this fellow, air-raid nights spent in cellars are not

the best of training for duties so unpleasant as those a coroner's

inquest sometimes involves. Billy, on the other hand, did his bit in a

Field Company and is tempered metal throughout. In any contest of wills

between two such men there was no doubt which would be the victor. It

had hardly occurred to Billy that there was a contest. Innocently and

unconsciously, he had ridden roughshod over Westbury, and, if Westbury's

mutterings meant anything, was to suffer for it.

"But," I said presently, "I'm afraid I don't understand even yet. It

seems to me you're bringing a charge against somebody of interfering in

a very serious matter. If anybody has interfered I agree with you that

it's a public scandal and ought to be exposed. But I can't believe I've

understood you properly."

He did not reply.

"And not only that," I continued, "but, if you'll forgive my saying so,

you're neither bringing a charge nor leaving it alone."

Here, for the first time, a third person put in an aside.

"Tell him about that, Harry," a voice whispered.

(And, feeling pretty sure that I could guess what "That" was, I thought,

"Now for that wearisome bullet story all over again!")

"I need hardly say," I went on, "that if you have any such charge to

make there's not a single person who was there who won't gladly help

you."

("Tell him about that, Harry," the voice whispered again.)

Then it was that Mr. Westbury "went back on" that eager group of mutes

who had so scrupulously kept the ring for us. I saw their faces fall as,

with a little jerk of his head to me, he rose. Whatever the "That" was

they wished him to tell me, they apparently were not to be present at

the telling. Looking back on the scene, I don't think he had any

particular motive in this except more "gin-and-glory"; he would tell

them all about it, with embellishments, afterwards. He passed down the

bar and held the swing door open for me to precede him; then the door

gave a "woff woff" as he followed me out.

VIII

I ask you to notice several untenable points about the position I had

taken up. Twice at least I had flatly lied, once when I had told him

that I had not seen Mackwith since the morning of the accident, and once

when I had given him to understand that I knew nothing of the police

search of Esdaile's premises. I say nothing of the greater lie, that we

were all ready to help him in his efforts to get to the bottom of the

Case. I count that as more the natural momentum the Case itself had now

acquired than any personal untruthfulness on my own part.

Next, I now saw that as an eavesdropper my technique had been painfully

clumsy. I had attracted attention to myself. I had accepted Westbury's

hospitality, but (believe me, out of pure forgetfulness) had omitted to

return it. Several times he had given me an opportunity, which I had not

taken, of telling him my name, though I had admitted my knowledge of

his. These may seem small things, but there are ways and ways of

drinking a glass of beer. Within certain limits, I had a distinct sense

of social failure.

And if, over and above all this, I had given him and his associates

credit for too little intelligence, that I am afraid is rather a fault

of mine. It may even have something to do with my position as a younger

novelist. I constantly forget that one man is as good as another because

he is as many.

So here I was, a clumsy, unmannerly fellow with a guilty conscience to

boot, face to face with a very Chesterfield of the best licensed

establishments and the whole body of law and order and public duty

overwhelmingly on his side. We stood there under the unlighted

public-house lamp, while the violet light of the May evening slowly

faded from what Hodgson had called "Chelsea's pleasant roofs."

He was fully aware that he possessed what the correspondents used to

call the initiative. This showed in his very few first words. I, it

appeared, was to be forced to open the ball.

"Now, sir, you wished to see me, I believe," he said pompously.

I was on the point of reminding him that it was he who had made the

proposal to come outside when he put up a peremptory hand.

"No, no. I know what you're going to say, and that don't go down. When I

say you wanted to see me I mean you came here to-night for that purpose.

Specially. Well, here I am."

I suppose I should have been within my rights in answering that I had

entered those swing doors for a glass of beer and had not spoken to him

until he had borrowed my newspaper; but obviously that line led nowhere.

Moreover, from his comparative calm of manner now, I realized that while

the larger advantages lay with him, at least one small tactical

superiority was mine. He was quiet for the moment, but would probably

flare up again immediately at the mention of Mackwith's name. So I kept

Mackwith in reserve.

"Well," I said in a conciliatory tone. "I have a feeling that both of us

wished to see the other, and from what you've told me with very good

reason. Isn't that so?"

"How do you mean, what I've told you?" he said suspiciously.

"I mean that you've given me the impression that there's more in this

Case than meets the eye."

He grunted. "Impression's good!"

"That there's some sort of a misunderstanding that ought to be cleared

up."

"'Impression's' damned good!" he muttered again. "I like 'impression.'"

"Well, never mind the word. You reminded me a few minutes ago that we

were all there that morning, and so I take it that we're all interested.

Can't we talk it quietly over?"

I don't think I ever saw eyes capable of staring for so long without a

blink. Old Dadley had been right when he had said, "He stares you down,

he does." I awaited his pleasure.

"No, that won't wash either," he said curtly at last. "You came here for

a purpose. Specially. I won't say the place isn't free to anybody, but

it would be bad for trade if everybody stood behind a paper looking for

twenty minutes at a glass of beer. I don't think there's any need to be

plainer than that."

"Very well, have it that way if you like," I returned. "You tell me the

whole of Chelsea is interested in this Case. Well, as I was there when

it happened it's natural that I should be interested too."

"Hah!... Well, all I have to say to that is that nobody would have

guessed it at the time," he answered.

"Indeed? Why not?"

"Hah! Why not? It _is_ a bit of a puzzle, isn't it? But suppose we put

it this way: Here's two men come tumbling on a man's roof. Bit of a bump

they make, don't they? Say a thousand people watching, eh? It isn't a

thing that happens every day exactly, you'd think? Very well. _Now

where were all of you?_ Finishing your breakfast? 'Interested,' you say.

Well, you'd expect the master of the house to be a bit interested. But

where was _he_? Where were all the rest of you, except him that went up

on the roof? You seem to me more interested now than you did then.

That's the first point that strikes me."

It struck me, too, as being both stupid and acute, at the same time

hardly worth mentioning and yet unpleasantly significant. If his

suggestion was that at the time of the accident we were all whispering

together in some dark nefarious plot, it was too ridiculous to answer;

but if he meant that it was at least remarkable that not one of us

except Rooke, and Hubbard for one brief moment before his arrival, had

taken the trouble to step outside to see what had happened, I could only

reluctantly agree with him. You will remember that precisely the same

observation had struck Hubbard and myself at the time.

"Yes," he repeated, seeing my discomfiture, "that's the first point that

strikes me; where was Mr. Esdaile, for instance, that _he_ didn't come

out?"

I answered rather slowly. "I see what you mean. As a matter of fact that

_was_ very curious. I wonder if you'll believe me when I tell you that

Mr. Esdaile knew nothing of that accident till it was all over?"

He stopped for a moment in his walk. Without noticing it we had begun to

walk. "Why not?" he demanded.

"Because he was down in the cellar at the time. He'd gone down to fetch

a bottle of wine."

He resumed his walk. "But he came up again. I saw him."

"That was some time after."

"That's right," he confirmed, as if he had been testing my truthfulness.

"It was about half an hour after. Funny way to spend half an hour with

all that going on, wasn't it?"

As I was entirely of his opinion, I made no reply.

"So," he continued, "what strikes me about it is that you're more

interested now than you were then. Now we'll pass on to another point.

All the time this is happening you're all inside except one of you, and

he's on the roof. He's the only person up there till the police

came--has the field to himself so to speak. Then he comes down the

ladder in a very shaky sort of state."

"Do you wonder?" I interposed with a quickness that surprised myself.

"You were on that jury----"

"In a very shaky state," he repeated. "Nervous as a cat, as you might

say. That was the state he was in when he came down that ladder. Why?"

His manner changed suddenly to truculence. "Why? Hah! That's the

question, isn't it? Some of you'd like to make out you know nothing at

all about it, but they laugh best that laugh last, and don't you make

any error about it!"

Apprehensive as I was, I forced myself also to laugh.

"And you're doing your laughing in the newspapers? Well, do you know,

Mr. Westbury, I see very little in all this. Your letter certainly

raises a very interesting subject, and I'm quite of your opinion that

flying ought to be better regulated; but I wonder if you'd resent a

piece of advice from an older man?"

"Much obliged, I'm sure." Those were the words. The tone in which they

were uttered bore no relation to them.

"But let me give it, for all that. You seem to be on the point of

making charges against somebody for something or other. Well, that's

never a safe thing to do, but if I were you I'd certainly think twice

before I started with a rather distinguished barrister. They're usually

able to look after themselves pretty well in such matters."

I said it quite deliberately. It was abundantly plain that unless I

kindled his wrath again he might go on laughs-best-ing and

laughs-last-ing all night. I didn't want to hear his vague and muttered

menaces. I wanted to know whether that bullet was in the hands of the

police, and if so, what action was to be taken. So I produced Mackwith

from my sleeve.

"And another thing I'll tell you plainly," I said with something nearer

real warmth. "If I were to hear any annoying whispers about myself I

shouldn't have a moment's hesitation in taking any steps I thought

proper. As I see this business, you force your way into a private garden

under cover of an accident, pick up some cock-and-bull story or other,

go spreading it about, and then, when you're very properly put in your

place by a coroner's court----"

But I got no further. By this time we were in a quiet and dingy street

where almost every house seemed to have an "Apartments" card over the

door, and at the fury of his outbreak I expected every door to be flung

open and every blind to be drawn up.

"Hah! So _that's_ your lay, is it, Mister Man? We've got it at last,

have we? You think you can come it heavy like your blasted barrister

friend, do you? Oh yes, you're all in it together! _I_ knew what you

came for to-night! I forced my way into gardens, did I? And what about

those that force themselves on roofs before the police come, touching

things they've no business to be touching, eh? _I_ pick up cock-and-bull

stories, do I? And what does some others pick up? _I'm_ put in my place,

am I? We'll see what sort of a place some of you fine gentry's put in

presently! Trying to cod me one of you was in the cellar for half an

hour! A bit too much roof and cellar for my fancy! I was a shade over

the odds for one of you anyway! He had to come _down_ the ladder again,

hadn't he? And you hold a ladder when you see a man coming down it,

don't you? Very well, Mister Pry! You go prying somewhere else, and

drink your beer a bit quicker next time! _My_ kids aren't going to be

shot at and no questions asked! The questions'll come presently. They

laugh best that laugh last----"

And, as a neighboring door was opened, and a blind across the street was

drawn up, and a window-sash creaked somewhere else, it came upon me in a

moment what had happened.

Philip Esdaile's hands had not been the first to pat Monty Rooke's

pockets that morning. Westbury, holding the ladder, had been before

him.