PART IX

WHAT PHILIP KNEW

I

The other day, accompanied by an engineer acquaintance, I was pottering

about certain new excavations in the heart of London, and came upon a

number of heaps of crushed and broken-up concrete, evidently the remains

of old foundations. Yet those foundations could not have been very old,

since I myself could remember the buildings of which they had been the

support, and these had been old-fashioned rather than old. One of them

had been a theater, another an hotel; and I stood there with my friend,

looking over the waste of rubbish and barrows and wheeling-planks and

thrown-up London clay, trying to evoke in my mind the exact plan of

those vanished streets of thirty-odd years ago.

I found it difficult. Had these streets been older streets there would

have been remembered records to help me. Prints would have jogged my

memory, maps and plans have come to my aid. The seventeenth or

eighteenth centuries would somehow have come nearer home than that

unnoteworthy period of hardly more than a generation ago. Particularly

when I tried to picture the huge new palaces of ferro-concrete that will

presently arise, that intermediate epoch seemed ephemeral and without

significance.

And so, even already, I find this record of our Case to be. There is a

strange blank, full (I know) of all manner of busyness and bustle and

restless effort, but without either the security of history nor yet the

full brightness of new discovery. The _Scepter_ action seems somehow

more remote than the Armada, the findings of this high-sounding

Committee or that farther away than Trafalgar. All is still too near to

be seen, and by the time the dust has settled another pen than mine will

have to take up the tale.

Indeed, I have more than once felt inclined to hand over the pen now,

for, when all is still to prove, a younger faith and vision than those

of my day are needed. For example, Cecil Hubbard tells me that the man

who nowadays does not know at least the elements of all this lore of

wave-lengths and directional wireless has no business to say that he

belongs to his age at all, and sadly I believe him. Yet Philip Esdaile

contrives to keep abreast, not by joining in the banging and burnt-cork

of so much contemporary painting, but by virtue of something else, often

temporarily hidden, that will still be quietly there when the whistles

have ceased to scream and the tom-toms to thud. He too maintains the

continuity, sharing with his forerunners that quality, whatever it is,

which makes the old centuries modern and the novelty of yesterday

afternoon musty and stale before the sun next rises.

Therefore, it should be understood that the rest is more theirs and less

mine than ever. In the _Scepter_ action Charles Valentine Smith,

speaking (thanks largely to my friend Glenfield) from the witness-box

and not from the dock, with wreaths and garlands and the glamour of his

Embassy adventure almost visibly about him, made this abundantly clear.

Easily, familiarly, and with pronouns all over the shop, he dealt with

matters so far above my head that I will make no attempt to report him.

If you are interested, there are _The Times_ Law Reports in which you

can read it all. And similarly with the whole crop of associated actions

and inquiries and investigations. My own interest in them is no more

than that something has been born in my time whose infant strugglings

and gaspings I witnessed, and about which I shall doubtless become

garrulous all too soon.

II

So that conjuror's passion-flower to which I have likened this case all

but folded itself up into its original pilule again. That it did not do

so was due to a series of small happenings which I will now relate.

The first of these was my leaving Santon before Mrs. Cunningham arrived

there. Mollie, despite her energy, did not discover her friend's

whereabouts so easily as she had anticipated. It took her, to be

precise, a fortnight, at the end of which time I had to leave. But so

narrowly did I miss Mrs. Cunningham that I believe her train passed mine

on the way.

But I did not leave Mollie without that sort of smiling salute that

accompanies a fencer's "en garde." If (I told her flatly) she held

herself free to accept information from me and to give nothing but

pitying looks of sex-superiority in return, I for my part should also

consider myself at liberty to do as I pleased should further information

come to light. What I had in my mind was that if she and Audrey

Cunningham were going to put their heads together in the country Rooke

and I might do the same thing in town. I may say that I was quite

conscious of the feebleness of my retort, and did not for a moment

expect that Rooke would have anything fresh to tell me.

"Very well," Mollie laughed gayly from the platform. "But you can tell

Monty from me that I'll look after this end of it. Don't tell him

anything about the ring though, or you may spoil it So long, my

dear--see you in September----"

And the waving hands of the Santon party slid past my carriage window.

I gave Monty her message, though strictly without prejudice to myself as

its bearer. He was not caught up into any sudden transport of joy.

Instead some cheerful confidence of his own seemed to envelop him.

"I fancy that will be all right now," he said.

"Do you? Well, I'm very glad. It's a great improvement on the last

time."

"Oh, I've had rather a bit of luck since then," he replied.

His "bit of luck" seemed to me slender enough grounds for his confidence

that all would yet be well. It appeared that he had been sent by a

weekly paper down to Hounslow to make certain sketches (he was in full

harness again), and there he had got into conversation with a ground

official, an ex-R.A.F. man. He had rather "palled up" with this man, and

had seen him several times since. Indeed, Monty was a little inclined to

impart recently acquired information with regard to the organization of

"dromes" and similar matters, and had quite a number of yarns that were

"absolute facts" to tell. His conversation also had become noticeably

slangier.

"You see," he remarked casually, "I think I'm on the track of why that

pal of Philip's shot the other chap."

I found myself staring blankly at him; but, as often happens in moments

of shock, I did not at first feel the full force of what he said. I

interrupted him.

"I say--I hope you haven't been talking too much about that?" (I knew

his weaknesses, and a perfectly open candor was one of the gravest of

them.)

But "Lord, no!" he instantly reassured me. "Talking about it? Do you

think I'm a----" the initials he used were those of the words "blind

fiddler."

"I'm glad of that," I murmured.

And then it was that the full weight of what he had said began to sink

into my mind.

"Then why did he shoot him?" I asked presently, when I was a little more

master of myself. This conversation, I ought to have said, took place on

the top of a bus going eastward down Piccadilly. I was on my way to the

office, and I had found Monty with a finished drawing which he also was

taking to Fleet Street. He looked away over the Green Park.

"Well, I'm not perfectly sure I'm right, of course," he replied, turning

to me again. "In fact, I might be miles out--right off the map. But I

_did_ see him on the roof that morning, you know, and I've been trying

to piece it all together again, and I must say it fits in pretty well."

"What fits in, and with what?"

He dropped his voice. "Well, you see, this fellow Smith waved his hand

the way I told you--like this----" On the bus top he made that same

aimless and wavering movement of his hand that I had seen him make in

Esdaile's studio, that I had seen Mr. Harry Westbury make in the Chelsea

public-house. "I think now he wanted the pistol back again, but of

course I didn't give it him."

"What did he want it for?"

"Might have wanted to shoot himself," Monty replied.

I pondered deeply, my eyes on the passing façade of the Ritz. Certainly

Monty, as the first on the scene that morning that now seemed such ages

ago, had the right to collate his original observations with anything he

might subsequently have learned, and the resulting conclusion would

probably be a strong one. But that Chummy had possibly wished to shoot

himself was no explanation of why he had shot Maxwell. Indeed, another

explanation was far more probable. Having realized that he had in fact

shot him he might merely have wished to take the shortest way out

himself, and I drew Monty's attention to this.

"I'm coming to that," Monty answered. "You see this fellow Wetherhead is

a jolly interesting chap. You remember the July push on the Somme? Well,

he was in that--Bristol Fighter--and then he went up the line to Wipers.

He told me that one time when they were in Pop--Poperinghe that is, you

know, and we'd a lot of heavy guns there----" (but I think I may safely

omit the rather lengthy second-hand recital of Wetherhead's movements

and experiences). "Extraordinary yarns he has to tell. Did you know that

a first-class pilot can drive another one down with the wash of his

propeller? He can, Wetherhead says. He gets above him, and maneuvers for

position, and then--I forget exactly how Wetherhead put it, but he

showed me with a couple of models they have there----"

"Yes, yes, but you were going to say----"

"So I was; I know I'm rambling a bit, but it's awfully interesting, and

you must meet Wetherhead. Well, when he was with the infantry (Northwold

Fusiliers) he says quite a number of their fellows used to carry little

doses of poison about with them, just in case. He'd heard awful yarns of

the way some of these Boches used to treat their prisoners. So they had

this poison to be ready for anything, like Whitaker Wright with his

cigar."

"Monty, if you don't come to the point----"

"Why, I'm there now; don't have a vertical gust, old thing. Well, just

in the same way Wetherhead says some of these pilots and their observers

had an arrangement that if one of them got it in the neck the other one

was to finish the job for him. And the other way round, of course. He

and his observer--he's going to introduce me to him--they had it all

fixed up, but luckily it never came to that. So it's not impossible that

these two fellows were like that. What do you think? It fits in with my

end all right, and you've been down there and seen Smith. What about

you? I'm inclined to have a bit on it myself."

_A bit on it!_ ... A bit! Instantly I would have had all I possessed on

it. Our bus was standing at the Circus end of Lower Regent Street when

Monty at last came out with it, but it had reached Waterloo Place before

I next became conscious of my physical surroundings. A bit on it!...

Look at Monty as I have tried to describe him to you. An unworldly and

lovable and gentle sort of donkey he was in some ways; now that he had

finished with his dummy trees and linoleum infantry he was apparently

beginning to learn a little about other aspects of the war; and

Wetherhead (whoever he was--already Monty had so crammed him down my

throat that I was resolved to put the width of England between us rather

than meet him) suddenly stood for the whole of the Air Force to him. But

behind all his sweet credulity Monty was no fool. He was aware of his

ground. He _had_ been the first on the roof that morning. He _was_ in

the last event capable of putting two and two together and of scoring a

bull. Do you know these flashes of the absolute and unalterable

rightness of a thing? One of them blinded Saul of Tarsus on the road to

Damascus; something of the same kind blinded me for the whole length of

Lower Regent Street. I had no longer one single shadow of doubt. Nay, I

had a certitude that even Monty didn't share. _He_ "wasn't perfectly

sure." But _I_----!

For what else could it have been? What else in the whole realm of man's

created spirit? For what other reason could Esdaile, up to then wavering

and swayed by doubts, have visited the hospital where Smith lay, have

been back in his own home again within half an hour, and then have

straightway borne his exonerated friend off into the midst of his

family? Why, from that moment, had he immediately set about to get his

own half-confidences to the rest of us back into his possession again?

Why, at Santon, had my own questions been met with a silencing stare? Of

all the things conceivable to have been told, could Smith have told him

anything but this?

And Smith's own demeanor on that uplifted Yorkshire headland? Was

not that too explained? I thought it was, and could only

marvel--marvel--that not as much as the smell of the fire had passed

upon him. That white and welding heat of war had not merely made his

pact with Maxwell a thing to be honored in the last emergency without a

further moment's thought, but it admitted no sigh nor compunction nor

regret afterwards. Compunction? Sigh? Regret? For what? It had had to be

done, and it had been done. As gladly would he have accompanied his

friend's spirit on that last flight of all, but, that denied him,

unsorrowing he remained behind, ground-officer henceforward to an angel.

What more than this is death to those who for four years have been

crucified all the day long? What else is life, their own life or that

other-own their friend's, when it is held at this instant readiness? The

coil about it all is not for them, but for us, who peer about for

bullets and cartridge-cases and holes in the floor. Chummy's every

breath would not have been his absolution had he _not_ laughed with

Esdaile's children and, with Joan perched on the carrier behind him,

cheerfully fouled the Santon roads with the stench of his exhaust. He

had _no_ burden to assume. He had, on the contrary, an urgent task to

carry on. And in the carrying-on of it he knitted his uncomprehending

brows over Maxwell's _Transactions_ and _Proceedings_ and carried a dead

man's portrait on his wrist.

III

Instead of going straight to the office that morning I waited in some

ante-room or other while Monty took in his drawing. Somebody else

waiting there, who may or may not have known me, observed that it was a

fine morning, but I am not sure that I replied. I was in no mood for

exchanging casual remarks about the weather.

For while I still marveled--and I need hardly say rejoiced--admiration

and joy must wait for the present. It might be some little time before I

saw Monty again (he had told me he was making business calls during a

great part of the day and working until late into the night), and

another point had struck me. This was his new confidence that it would

presently be "all right" between himself and Audrey Cunningham. I had

had a glimpse, if not yet the full revelation, of where Smith stood; but

I did not yet clearly see how this affected Mrs. Cunningham. Yet in

Monty's mind a connection obviously existed. He came out of the editor's

den again, folding up the brown paper that had enwrapped his drawing and

putting it carefully into his pocket.

"Brown paper's scarce," he said. "I've used this piece four times

already. And I undo all the knots in my string too. Well, which way are

you going?"

We left the office and, barely a hundred yards away, turned into the

Temple. Presently he resumed our previous conversation by asking me what

I thought of his guess; and I told him. I told him also my difficulty

about what his own engagement had to do with this.

"Do with it?" he repeated as we began to pace backward and forward along

King's Bench Walk. "It's a good deal to do with it--if that about

Smith's right, of course. You see, you hardly know Dawdy. She thinks you

don't like her very much----"

"Then I hope you'll take the first opportunity----" I began hurriedly,

but he waved his hand.

"Oh, don't you worry about it. I don't suppose she means it. And whether

she does or not it seems to me this is exactly where I come in."

"Then you see more than I do," I remarked.

"Don't you? I mean her taking sudden fancies of that kind. I'm not

superstitious myself--silly I call it--but she's a mass of it.

Theatrical people are, I've heard, and anyway she is. I think that beast

Cunningham started her off. When she used to sit up at night waiting for

him to come home she used to do all sorts of stupid things--sit there

counting slowly, and if he didn't come before she counted a hundred he

wouldn't come at all--counting the taxis that passed too--watching the

clock--beastly. Filthy time she had. I hope I'm somewhere near that

brute at the Resurrection."

Presently he swallowed his anger and continued.

"Well, about when Philip offered us that studio, that accident happened,

and everything was at sixes and sevens. Philip began it, stopping all

that time in the cellar and behaving like a lunatic when he did come up.

What his game was--well, you can search me. So first Philip starts

playing the goat, and then there was all that fuss about Mrs. Esdaile

going away, and Philip staying on day after day, always saying he was

going and everything was perfectly all right but never budging an inch,

mind you. Well, it began to get on Dawdy's nerves. And I began to catch

it too. She said _I'd_ something up my sleeve as well, and of course I

had, about that pistol. And then there was that time when we took her

wardrobe down into the cellar."

"Yes, tell me about that."

"Absolutely nothing to tell. That's all Dawdy's fancy too. If there'd

been anything funny he wouldn't have left the key in the door, would

he?"

"He took it out afterwards."

"It was there for some days anyway. In fact, I took another box of

Dawdy's down, but I came straight up again. You're all wrong about that

cellar."

"Hubbard doesn't think so."

"What does he say?"

"He doesn't actually say anything; he doesn't know; but he wouldn't be

surprised if it turned out Philip had some sort of a portable

installation down there. But don't take this from me. I know nothing

about these things."

"Wetherhead knows about them," Monty mused....

"Go on about Mrs. Cunningham."

"Well, as I tell you, it got on her nerves. She began to say she was fed

up with men and silly things like that. Didn't want to get married at

all; wanted to go and live with some girl. And then one day----"

But here he suddenly stopped, and for a reason I could easily guess.

Undoubtedly at this point she had made independent investigations, which

Monty either knew or suspected and didn't want to talk about. His

hesitation over, he continued.

"Well, so it dragged on, until one evening I met her after rehearsal,

and that was the finish. Absolutely done in she was; ten hours that day

and nothing but a bun and a glass of milk. Of course, I saw she was all

tuckered up, and I didn't want to take much notice of what she

said--just gave her something to eat and tried to calm her down. But it

was no good. When I called at Oakley Street the next morning she'd

gone--gone to stop with this other girl; and in a week the Company was

off."

In spite of Mollie's injunction I ventured to ask a question.

"Did she return the ring you gave her?"

"No, and that's one of the reasons why I think it might be all right

yet. But the chief reason's this. She's got it into her head that it all

started with that crash. Superstition, but there was no arguing with

her. Well, suppose I'm right in what I told you, and Smith didn't really

shoot that chap at all--didn't shoot him in the way we thought at first,

I mean. It would be just like Dawdy to say that took the bad luck all

off. She's always either up or down, poor darling. A rotten life she's

had."

I nodded, remembering Mollie's words: "She _would_ be just the woman to

take a hint of that kind." Although Monty didn't know it, Audrey _had_

lost her ring, _would_ regard the loss as an omen, and the loss had

probably taken place shortly before Monty had met her at the stage-door.

It _did_ seem to follow, even as Monty said, that with the removal of

the whole Case out of the regions of ordinary crime, there might be an

end also of the nightmare shadows that had oppressed Audrey Cunningham's

soul.

IV

This record has already taken so many turns and windings, anticipations

and doublings back upon itself, that I cannot see that one more

excursion will either make or mar it. Many pages ago I wrote that the

Case _was_ a Case, complete, self-contained, and independent of the

larger issues and forces in which it is nevertheless paradoxically

rooted and involved. And though the Case as an entity is approaching its

close, the outside influences continue. The _Scepter_ decision, for

example, is being appealed against, and Mackwith tells me that there is

every likelihood that it will end up in the Lords. The Press, from which

I shall shortly retire, seems to be attaining something like a real

policy with regard to the matters of which I have spoken, and,

encouraged by certain signs of Ministerial yielding, has taken still

better heart. Cairo to the Cape has for the present failed, and Charles

Valentine Smith did not succeed in becoming a member of that gallant

Expedition; but other great projects are in meditation, and this very

day the announcement is made of an impending flight round the world

itself, for which Cooks and Ansons and Drakes and Dampiers of little

more than half my age will eagerly flock to enter. The gloomy

forebodings of Hills, my fellow-clubman, that attack and defense will

presently become a matter of black typhus cultures do not at present

seem likely to be fulfilled, not altogether for the reasons publicly

given, but for quite other ones; but the chances are that he is right

about gas, and that one day we may have to carry fans and

box-respirators as we now carry umbrellas. What must come must come,

even as it came to our fathers before us, and we, like they, can only do

the duty of our day. The rest is out of our hands, and it is impotence

and vanity even to dream too far ahead. So to our immediate business, of

which my own present portion is the final putting to bed of our Case.

With the permission of Philip Esdaile, A.R.A., and the others, I bid you

to yet another breakfast. This time it is a wedding breakfast, and a

double one. Hardly an hour ago Joan Merrow, spinster, became Mrs.

Charles Valentine Smith, and Audrey Cunningham (_née_ Herbert) Mrs.

Montagu Rooke. Joan was married at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, and

wears her full bridal attire; but Audrey Rooke wears the gray costume

and the black satin hat (that sticks out on each side of her head like

the serifs of a capital "I") in which she walked from the Registry

Office. And there is present the same party, with the addition of

Chummy, with which this story opened.

V

Again the breakfast recess was full of charming light. About the walls

the love-making butterflies danced when carafes were moved, and only the

flowers on the table were different--for it was early in a halcyon

autumn, and the mulberry outside had already begun to turn. The faces of

the Esdailes and the Rookes were enviably brown, for Monty and Audrey

had spent three weeks at Santon and the whole party had returned

together; and Joan, who knows perfectly well that I adore her, had very

simply and sweetly come over to my side of the table and linked her

hands for a moment round my arm. Then, after a warm little pressure, she

had returned to Chummy again, who had risen. He was staying at an hotel

in Gloucester Road, must get out of his wedding garments, and would then

return to take Joan away.

"Don't change your mind and not come back," Joan called after him; and

he waved his hand from the door and was off.

"What about Joan? Isn't it time she was changing too?" Philip hinted.

Mollie gave him a sidelong look. It was understood that Philip was

willing at last to explain himself, and that look was Mollie's comment

on the situation. Mingled with its fondness were faint pity, irony,

wonder at us. It said, as plainly as need be, "That tiresome business

all over again! What a sex!"

But all she openly said was, "Come along then, Joan--you too,

Audrey--never let it be said we aren't properly submissive----"

And they too departed.

Instantly Cecil Hubbard swung round his chair to face Philip. Philip

gave a backward glance through the French windows. He seemed to derive

some reassurance from the sunlight that made vivid the garden outside.

"Well...?"

"Well...."

The words came simultaneously from the two men. As for the rest of us,

we were content for the present to let Cecil Hubbard make the running.

VI

"Well, you know what the first question is," said Hubbard.

"Let's have it," Philip replied. "Better not take anything for granted."

"Very well. About that other morning. What were you doing down below all

that time?"

"Moving furniture," Philip replied.

"Moving ... what for?"

"I'll show you that presently."

"Good.... Next, when you did come up again, what made you march straight

up to Rooke in the way you did?"

"Because he had that pistol in his pocket."

"How did you know he had a pistol in his pocket?"

"Because I saw him put it there."

"Because--you say you saw----?"

"I saw everything--practically everything that happened."

The blue eyes stared. "How ... but you say you're going to show us.

What's the next? Ah yes--After you'd fooled about with that candle and

liqueur-jar you went into the studio and we followed you. You hadn't

even put the candle out; I had to take it from you if you remember.

Well, the next thing you did was to tell us you were going to tell us

all about it. But you never did."

"Steady on, Cecil--that wasn't the next thing I did."

"What was, then?"

"I drew the studio blinds."

Hubbard nodded. "So you did. The police were getting those chaps down. I

remember."

"That wasn't my reason."

"Then what was?"

"Well, I'll show you that too presently. But let me make something else

clear first. I was all excited and upset, and really didn't know half I

was doing. I'd just seen that crash, remember, and one man shoot

another, and then another fellow altogether slide his hand out and pouch

the pistol. It was rather much to spring on a fellow without any warning

at all. I'd simply gone down to get something to drink, you know, not

to----" He failed to find words for it, and motioned to Hubbard to

continue.

"Next," Hubbard went on, "you packed your wife and children off but

refused to go away yourself."

"Naturally. When you get a downright facer like that you want to see it

through."

"And when Rooke here wanted to sweep up the studio you told him not to."

"I did. And not to go into the cellar either."

"But he went into the cellar later?"

"Later--yes. The blinds were drawn then."

"Then are people only to go into the cellar when the blinds are drawn?"

"Oh no, not necessarily. A rug--or a bit of paper or a halfpenny--would

do just as well."

Here Hubbard seemed suddenly to give it up. He leaned back in his chair.

"Here, somebody else carry on for a bit," he puffed, almost as if he had

been running; and instantly I took up the catechism.

"Of course, you mean the hole in the studio floor?" I challenged.

"That's it," said Philip, smiling. "So you discovered that, did you?"

"It had been discovered long before I discovered it," I said.

This time it was Philip's turn to stare. "By whom?" he asked quickly.

"Rooke's here. Ask him to ask his wife."

"Dawdy!" Monty ejaculated, wide-eyed.

"I imagine so. At any rate you might ask her."

"Good--Lord!" said Monty, puffing as the Commander had puffed.

"And," I continued to Philip, "I don't think the blinds were drawn then.

The key was in the cellar door too."

"The devil!" Philip breathed softly. "I didn't bargain for that! It did

occur to me, of course, but I chanced it--never dreamed--I had to do

something, and it seemed safest to be perfectly open...." And then

suddenly he gave an awkward little laugh and met my eyes. "Well,

evidently you know all about it?"

"Indeed I do not."

"What, you're as warm as all that and can't guess the rest!"

I frowned, a little annoyed. It is a little annoying to be told that

something is under your nose that you don't see.

"As for that bullet-hole in the roof----" I hazarded.

"Bullet-hole in the roof? There never was a bullet-hole in the roof. The

branch did that. Westbury had the bullet all right. By the way, I saw

him last Sunday morning. Going great guns. He'll end up as our first

Bolshevist Premier. Quite the biggest crowd in the Park."

Here Monty chuckled. It was he who had first discovered the final effect

of the Case on the House and Estate Agent. He had come upon him one

Sunday morning in the space just within the Marble Arch, standing on a

box and holding forth passionately on social inequalities and equal

opportunities for all. I am afraid he had never got over the unconscious

trouncing Billy Mackwith had administered on that coroner's jury, and

the collapse of his righteous cause, ending in Inspector Webster's

refusal to have him hanging about the Police Station any longer, had

completely upset his mental balance. He declaims from his box until the

opening-time of the public-houses, and then adjourns, box and all, to

the establishment near the Marble Arch Tube Station. Here he is as well

known as he formerly was in the King's Road; but whether he has his

private billiard cue there I do not know.

"Well, I give it up, Philip," I yielded at last. "I claim my single

point, though--that it was news to you that Mrs. Rooke knew."

Philip rose.

"Then come along," he said. "We must get it over before Chummy comes

back. Light the candle, somebody."

He led the way to the cellar door.

VII

"Why, you've changed it all!" was Monty Rooke's first exclamation as

Philip stood there with the candle held at arm's-length.

As for myself, I was looking round the dark, clammy place with a

positive passion of curiosity. That it had been rearranged I knew at

once from Monty's former description of it. The dust-sheeted furniture

and packing-cases had been pushed back against the walls, leaving the

middle of the floor clear, and once more the candlelight barely

penetrated into the gloomy recesses. It showed Philip's face, too,

serious, but not to the complete exclusion of a certain quiet

satisfaction and triumph. And in Hubbard's sailor eyes I fancied I

already saw the dawning of comprehension.

"No I haven't--that is, I've only changed it back again as it was,"

Philip replied. "I told you I'd been moving furniture that morning....

Well, do you want to lose a bet, Cecil?"

Hubbard spoke oddly quietly. "No. I'll win one," he said.

"Ah! Then you're barred.... Take this, somebody, and you fellows wait

here. I shall be back in a minute."

He thrust into my hand the candle, which he instantly blew out, leaving

us in sudden and pitchy darkness.

I confess to a light creeping of the skin of my face. This may have been

due to the chill, clammy air, to my stimulated imagination, or to both.

Nobody spoke, and so still were the others that I had no difficulty in

doing what in fact I was already doing--putting myself months back,

alone down there, as Esdaile had been alone when he had descended for

the jar of orange curaçao that morning. I seemed to myself to be

standing there waiting for a sound of splintering glass, the muffled

thud of two falling bodies, the faint murmur of half Chelsea running out

of doors. I was conscious that the candle shook in my hand, and suddenly

I wanted to relight it. I am not sure that my fingers did not go to my

pocket for a match.

But it was another light that irradiated us as we stood waiting there--a

soft bright cone that all at once spread down from the ceiling above. Up

went my startled eyes as if at some trick of thaumaturgy, some

imposition on my credulity. Down as if through a funnel streamed that

circular shower of pale brightness, outfanning from its small

orifice--the hole in the floor.

The hole in the floor! It was that to which my thoughts, following that

instinctive movement of my eyes, turned like a flash. The hole in the

floor! With my body still in the cellar, I seemed in some transcendental

way to be upstairs at the same time, stooping over that hole as Audrey

Cunningham had stooped before me. We seemed to be stooping inherently

together, yet at the same time independently, so that, I was able to

watch her. I saw her in my imagination pallid and hysterical, putting

forth one honeysuckle finger half-way to the hole, and then, seized by a

wild and baseless urge to put some torturing fancy to the test, changing

her mind and putting forth another finger--the finger that bore her

engagement-ring.

"_If he does not come before I count a hundred he will not come at

all...._"

"_If I thrust in that finger and anything happens I shall know what to

do...._"

And then her cry as the ring jammed and the finger was withdrawn without

it.

But understand that all this did not take a moment, and that I was still

down in the cellar, looking up at that hypnotizing cone of white light.

The glimpse suddenly vanished, and I heard Esdaile's voice. I had not

heard him come down.

"Stand back a bit," he said, his hand on my sleeve.

Then it was that my eyes fell on the floor.

VIII

On the floor? Rather on the roof itself, for, spread out over the floor,

was a perfect image of that glazed studio roof high above us. The

divisions between the panes were marvelously penciled there, and about

one of them, though not the one I had expected, the browning branches of

the mulberry crept and played. Something darted across and was gone--a

bird.

And it was too late to bet now, for the book was closed. By merely

seeing that the roof-blinds were open, and then pushing away a rug with

his foot, Philip had confounded us all. Again I hardly heard his words:

"House simply a big pinhole camera, you see...." Once more I was seeing

what he had seen that morning so many months ago.

His mild astonishment at witnessing that phenomenon for the first time

(for it was the first time)--

His interested realization of the cause of it as he had stood there with

the bottle of liqueur in his hand----

And then the half-heard shock and the light tremor of the house and the

whole astonishing scene instantly enacted before his eyes!

But I had little time to marvel anew. He was speaking.

"... so down they came, not at this end, but over there, in reverse, you

know. And of course I'd no idea then it was Chummy; didn't learn that

till the afternoon; I simply saw him point that pistol at the other man,

who crumpled up. That was a shock, you understand, but you could have

knocked me down with a feather when I saw another shape crawl across and

pick the pistol up!... Eh? Oh, with the light above they were

silhouettes more or less; we'll send somebody up and try if you like;

but I knew it was Monty the moment I came upstairs and saw him."

"And then---?"

"I'm afraid I can't give you any very clear account of it. Time didn't

seem to exist, if you know what I mean. But I know that all of a sudden

I was moving furniture about, to break up that beastly picture, a bit on

a box top and another bit on a sofa-end and so on. It didn't seem quite

decent, somehow, all spread out dead flat like that. But I don't wonder

you fellows were puzzled."

"But," said Mackwith presently, as we still stood looking at that

moonlike radiance spread across the floor, "why couldn't you tell us all

this sooner?"

"What for?" Philip retorted. "It didn't take me long to realize that I'd

told you a dashed sight too much as it was! I had to have it out with

Monty and Chummy, of course; but the less said after that the better.

Suppose it _had_ been a common Murder Case. I saw it, and could have

hanged a man straight away with a word. You didn't, so why fill you up

with a lot of hearsay? Don't you think I was right?"

"Hush! Listen!"

It was the tinkling of the street door bell. Chummy Smith was back

already.

IX

He had a taxi waiting, and the driver was getting the boxes on as we

reached the annexe again. Philip carried in his hand the jar of orange

curaçao.

"Get the liqueur-glasses out, Monty," he said, and the words sounded

remotely familiar.

"Where are my darling babies?" Joan cried, darting out into the garden

where the Esdaile boys played beneath the mulberry. Philip and Mollie

had decided that the best and cheapest thing to do with them was to pack

them off to a preparatory school, and for a month past Joan had been

impressing on them the dignity of this promotion.

As Philip busied himself with the jar of curaçao I found myself by

Audrey Rooke's side. It was a little on my mind that she had the

impression I didn't like her. Very charming and graceful indeed she

looked in her filmy black tulle, and the hat with the little jutting-out

serifs admirably suited her. The ring that I had prised out of the hole

in the floor with a screwdriver was on her finger again, above her

wedding-ring.

"May I say how sincerely glad I am this has all ended so happily?" I

said in a low voice.

She lifted the large dark eyes to mine, and I fancied I saw a grateful

look in them.

"Thank you," she said; and added, "Mollie told me what your share in it

was."

"The merest fluke," I said.

"But you were quick to understand," she replied; and we let it go at

that.

"Got those glasses, Monty?" Philip called. "Fetch Joan in, Mollie--there

isn't much time----"

We pressed about the tray of glasses filled with the pale liquid gold.

"Well--extraordinary good luck, everybody----"

"Here's how----"

"Cheerioh----"

"God bless," said Chummy, with a little jerk of his glass aloft. "No,

Alan, liqueurs are not for little boys--not till after their first

term----"

"The best of luck, Mrs. Rooke----"

The glasses were set down again, and we bustled into the little hall.

"Gear all aboard?"

"Right--so long, Mollie, and ever so many thanks----"

"Good-by, darling----"

"Good-by, Commander----"

"With your permission, Chummy----"

"Here, I say, let them get off--they'll miss their train----"

We flocked down the path after them, and Philip closed the taxi door.

"Paddington," he said.

Waving hands, handkerchiefs, blown kisses; and the taxi glided away. As

it did so it showed a tall figure in police uniform who had been

standing behind it.

"Good morning, Inspector," said Philip.

Inspector Webster gravely saluted.

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