.38 Automatic

Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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E. CHARLES VIVIAN

.38 AUTOMATIC

First published by Ward, Lock & Co., London, 1937

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2024
Version Date: 2024-12-02

Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan

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Part One
Chapter I. Brought to the Door.
Chapter II. Evidence of the Driver.
Chapter III. A Man with a Gun.
Chapter IV. Not Mrs. Dickson.
Chapter V. "Find Clifford Oliver".
Chapter VI. Concerning Albert Tanner.
Chapter VII. Jeanne Ray's Tale.
Chapter VIII. Denham is Doubtful.
Chapter IX. Jaggers.
Chapter X. Search.
Chapter XI. History—and Little Else.
Chapter XII. Shots in the Night.
Chapter XIII. Potts.
Chapter XIV. Analysis
Part Two
Chapter XV. The Element of Chance.
Chapter XVI. The Gamecock Club.
Chapter XVII. Headlights.
Chapter XVIII. Eliminating Oliver.
Chapter XIX. Jaggers Accuses.
Chapter XX. Closing In.
Chapter XXI. The Up-Stream Side
Chapter XXII. Motive.

PART ONE.

Chapter I
Brought to the Door

MR. FREDERICK GUDDLE, who had a one-roomed office over at Crandon, where he traded under the style of Guddle and Cheek, Estate Agents and Valuers, stopped his ancient two-seater car outside the Duke of York Hotel in Market Street, Westingborough, and, leaving the vehicle by the kerb, entered the lounge of the hotel and made his way to the bar.

Having secured and paid for the drink, he took a sip, put down his glass, and looked at the other occupants of the lounge, all of whom, like himself, were up at the bar: it was then near on seven o'clock of a February evening, and, though every window of the lounge was closed, the lace curtains draped in the bays moved as the gale that roared and whined along Market Street found ingress between the window sashes.

"Evening, Mr. Head," said Guddle, observing the tall, well set-up figure of the inspector on his left.

"Good evening," Head answered, with no cordiality at all. He had once met Guddle over a case, and knew from that time that there was no need for a partner named "Cheek" in the business, for all that quality was embodied in Guddle himself.

"It's the sort of evening," Mr. Guddle pursued, "when you wouldn't turn a dog out. That is, unless you had a grudge against it."

"I haven't," Head said, and, shifting his glass along the counter, also moved himself a pace more distant from the estate agent.

"D'you mean you haven't a dog, or haven't a grudge, Mr. Head?" Woods the grocer, nearer to whom Head had moved, asked.

"Neither," Head answered, and looked hopefully toward the lounge doorway. He was waiting here for Superintendent Wadden, who had promised to look in on his return from Carden, a village some eight miles distant which was under his charge. Both Guddle and Woods reflected gravely over the reply, and failed to find any way of continuing the subject. Then Guddle cleared his throat noisily, took a sip at his drink, and spoke again.

"I dunno if it's your business, Mr. Head, or who I ought to tell about it," he said, "but there's an elm blown down across the road to Westingborough Parva. I was driving out there and had to turn back."

"Then of course it's my business," Head said with a note of irritation. "Whereabouts is this—how far along the road?"

"It'll be about two hundred yards past the gateway to Long Ridge, Mr. Neville's place," Guddle answered. "I had to turn about and come back. I stopped Mr. Denham, the architect—he was headed for Westingborough Parva too—and told him about it. He said he'd go on and see for himself whether he could get through, though I told him he couldn't do it. Then I reckoned I'd just look in here for one on my way—"

But, ignoring the rest of his story, Head went out from the lounge to a telephone box in the hotel vestibule, and put through a call which would ensure speedy removal of the fallen tree. There would be very little traffic along that road to-night, he knew, but it must be cleared, all the same.

As he came out from the telephone box, Superintendent Wadden literally blew into the vestibule from the street: for, opening the entrance door, Wadden brought with him a gust of the February gale that caused three or four shattering bangs as its pressure struck on opened doors within the hotel. The superintendent gazed fiercely—his gaze was like that, usually—at his inspector, and blew, as was his habit when he wished to express disapproval of anything or anybody.

"Uh-huh!" said Wadden. "How many people have made that remark to you in here, Head?"

"Do I remember Guddle!" Wadden apostrophised softly. Then he blew again, far from softly. "Blast that man Potts!" he said.

"Shall we—er—have one?" Head inquired, inclining his head toward the lounge entrance, and maintaining a soothing inflection.

"No, several," Wadden assented, and, moving with surprising rapidity for one so apparently fat and elderly, preceded Head into the lounge and leaned against the bar, at a good distance from Guddle.

"Usual, doubled," he grunted to the girl behind the bar. "Inspector Head will pay, but the drink is for me."

"Y'know, Head," he observed, after half the drink had disappeared and he had smacked his lips, "that man Potts is a perfect pest. I'm as sure he's out poaching to-night as I am of retiring to grow tomatoes under glass before I'm many months older. Over at Carden, complaint after complaint, and yet he's never caught. The slyest, slickest, sneakiest, sharpest, stealthiest—"

"Mind my— Oh, don't be funnier than God made you, man! It's so damned unnecessary. Otherwise, Carden's a happy spot—but I'd like to lay Mr. Potts by the heels. And then—hullo!"

The final exclamation, uttered in an undertone, was for Head's ears only, and very confidential at that. For the door of the lounge opened and there entered one Hugh Denham, a young architect of the town, who, Wadden knew, was not the type of man to frequent the lounge of the Duke of York at this hour of the evening—especially as Denham had recently married. He came straight to the pair.

"I don't know whether I ought to hand this information to you, Superintendent, or to you, Mr. Head," he said, with obviously cold dislike for both of them. "I've just come in from trying to drive to Westingborough Parva, and there's a tree blown right across the road, about a hundred yards beyond the gateway leading to Long Ridge."

"The last estimate I had, Mr. Denham, was two hundred yards," Head said gravely, eyeing his man as he spoke.

"It should be in process of being cleared away shortly, if not already," Head assured him. "I have given instructions."

"Very well, then. I looked in at the police station, and was told I might find you here. Your sergeant in charge seemed to disregard what I told him, so I thought I'd find you and tell you."

"Very good of you, Mr. Denham. The sergeant already had his instructions, you see. I'm sorry you had all this trouble."

"Greater love hath no man than this," he observed softly. "Head, that chap would lay down your life cheerfully, if he could do it when nobody was looking. You seem to be a bee in his marmalade pot."

"Next time," Head dissented. "You see, my wife's gone to see her sister for the day, but I'd like to have a good fire going for her when she comes in. Not that it's cold, but with this gale and the rain she'll be all damp and unhappy when she gets back—"

"And you don't want her to make you unhappy too," Wadden completed for him. "Well, maybe. Besides, I've got some catalogues to look over, from a firm that makes glass houses for tomato raising, and there's a new fertiliser I want to study, too. I tell you, Head, I shan't stick uniform much longer. Once let me get the sort of ground I want for building—like that patch down by the river I lost when Randall Bell changed his mind about selling—and you won't see me for dust."

"Who's trying? Come on, man—I'll get in trouble now over being late. And nothing whatever from Carden to tell you about, except that Bill Potts wasn't at home, as usual. He'll be home to-morrow, and so will about a dozen cock pheasants, but we'll never catch a feather within a mile of him. I love that man Potts!"

Together with Head he went out from the lounge and carefully unlatched the outer door of the hotel vestibule. It blew in on him, and he had to lean forward to resist the pressure the wind put on it. The pair went out, and Head closed the door with difficulty.

To uninstructed sight, the vehicle in question, which had just drawn to a standstill outside the police station across and a little way up the street from the hotel entrance, would not have appeared as a taxi. For it was a Rolls-Royce car, of which some five did duty as taxis in Westingborough, as, in Chichester and other cities, they are employed for such work. But the superintendent's was not an uninstructed eye; it missed little, and he had caught sight of the taximeter.

"Passenger's inside," Wadden said dissentingly. "Gone to sleep, too. Oh, Lord! Another drunk, on a night like this!"

The wind hit them as they crossed the street and approached the stationary Rolls-Royce before the police station. The driver had already got down, and, instead of entering the police station, stood awaiting their approach, as if he recognised them. He touched his peaked cap as Superintendent Wadden faced him, Head standing back a pace to let the man report to his chief.

"Hell, what a night!" Wadden observed, so softly that the words were almost blown away by the wind howling along the street.

"Exactly, sir. I picked him up at the station off the seven twenty-three, to take him to Hartlands, on the way to Westingborough Parva, and there was a tree blown down across the road—"

"Oh, I know Hartlands—next to Mr. Neville's place," Wadden interposed. "Look here, are you sure he's dead?"

"Quite dead, chief." Head had looked into the lighted interior of the car, and now turned to make his statement. "The bullet hole is visible without opening the door—it went through this window, too. I think—I don't think I'll light that fire at home to-night."

"I'd say you won't!" Wadden exclaimed, and blew a gale equal to the one roaring down the street. "How the hell do you come to get here?" he demanded, turning to the taxi-driver again. "I mean—look here, we've got to have a statement. This, as the girl told the soldier, is so sudden."

"Very good, sir," the man said meekly. "I thought it best to bring him here, as I couldn't get through to his home."

"Oh, yes. The road to Westingborough Parva. Of course. Well, probably you did the wisest thing, though my dinner—never mind, though. You'd better go inside to make your report. Head, go and get a man to come out here and keep an eye on this, and tell Wells to ring through and get Doctor Bennett along. Here, you—don't go inside. Drive this car down that alleyway out of sight from the street, alongside the station. Drive it into the courtyard and wait there till a constable comes along to take charge, and then come inside the station. Off you go, now. Off you go, now! Oh, Lord! What a night!"

Meanwhile Head, instead of instantly obeying the superintendent's orders, hurried inside the police station, removed a telephone receiver in the charge room, and gave a number. Presently he got his reply.

There was very little delay before Miss Cummins, better known to Westingborough as Little Nell—she was over six feet in height—took the receiver and announced her identity.

"Miss Cummins—Inspector Head speaking. You'll find a man named Guddle in the lounge, I think—Guddle of Crandon, estate agent. If so, tell him to come over to the police station at once—I want him here. That's all—thanks very much. Good-bye—sorry to trouble you, but it's very urgent. Don't let him go without that message, please."

"Now, Wells, get Hugh Denham, the architect, and tell him he's wanted at the police station at once, or sooner. Then ring Doctor Bennett and tell him it's a dead man in a car, shot, and we want him for preliminary examination of the body at once. It's Dickson, from Hartlands, on the way to Westingborough Parva. And—oh, Lord! Somebody's got to tell Mrs. Dickson about it! All right, Wells, carry on with that. I'll think of something else presently."

"What's the idea of getting Denham?" Wadden, in the doorway of the charge room, asked. "If he'll come here, that is."

"The idea is that both he and Guddle were driving along that road to-night, and both went as far as the fallen tree." Head answered as Wells began dialling. "I conclude Dickson was shot through the car window somewhere along that road, and either of those two may have seen someone connected with the shooting, or something that will give us a line of inquiry. This—the driver, now. In your room?"

They went into the superintendent's office, and there stood silent for a minute or two. The gale rattled the window of the room.

"You'll get nothing out of either Guddle or Denham," Wadden prophesied. "What could they see? It's as dark as a stack of black cats."

"I was thinking—Mrs. Dickson," Head said. "Whether to telephone and tell her—no, though. A bit too brutal, that."

"Rather like going there and inquiring for the Widow Dickson," Wadden suggested. "You mean—you'd rather go out there?"

"I mean— Oh, what a damned fool I am!" He hurried out without explanation, and again faced Wells in the charge room.

"Wells, send a man out at once to where that tree lies across the road—tell them to stop work on it, if they've started. Not to touch it or confuse wheel tracks or footprints till I get there. Get him off at once, and heaven send he isn't too late!"

"Very good, sir," and Wells pressed a bell-push that would summon the man he wanted for the task. "Mr. Denham wanted to know what it was all about, and said he'd be here about nine o'clock."

"We may be ready for him then. Oh, Mr. Guddle"—for Guddle, arrived from the Duke of York, was looking in rather apprehensively from the doorway of the charge room—"about your drive along the Westingborough Parva road to-night. There has been a tragedy of sorts along that road, and I want to know—what other cars did you see on the road, or did you see anyone at all?"

"Mr. Denham, as I told you before," Guddle answered. "I signalled him and stopped him, but he decided to go on and find the tree for himself, to see if there was any way round it. I'd told him there wasn't."

Guddle shook his head. "Not a soul, as far as I could see. It's the sort of night when you wouldn't—" But there he broke off, realising that he had already said it once.

"As far as I know," Guddle said sulkily. "When you've got to drive a car on a night like this, you don't watch much more than the road ahead, and my headlights don't give me much more than that. There might have been dozens of people sheltering behind tree trunks alongside the road for all I know. If there were, I didn't see 'em."

"You'll take oath, if called, that Denham, driving his car, was the only person you saw along that road?"

"Why, yes." Guddle looked rather impressed, now. "You mean, Mr. Head, that it's as bad as that? You may want me for evidence?"

"Well, that's all for now. Oh, Borrow"—the constable who had answered Well's summons appeared—"here at last! Get on a bicycle, and make the best time you can along the road to Westingborough Parva till you come to a tree fallen across the road. Tell the men at work on it to stop work at once—if they've got there and begun, that is. If not, wait for them and tell them not to confuse footprints or wheel tracks there, and you stay there yourself to see that nobody else does any confusing till I get there. Off you go, man! And don't lose a minute on the way."

"Now, Mr. Guddle"—Head turned to him again—"thanks for coming across here so promptly. Apparently you've told me all I can ask you for the present, so I won't keep you any longer."

"Quite a lot, possibly," Head answered. "I think that's—yes, it is." He stepped out into the corridor, ignoring Guddle henceforth. "Good evening, doctor. I want you to come and look at a car in the courtyard, and see what you make of it. Sorry to turn you out like this."

He gestured along the passageway toward the back entrance of the station, and Doctor Bennett, black bag in hand, followed him.

"Usually," Head said, "we have to go out and look for our cases, but this one"—they were beyond Guddle's hearing, then—"was brought to the door for us. Dickson of Hartlands, shot dead through a taxi window as he was being driven home, and since there was a tree across the road the taxi-driver came back here with the body."

He opened the door leading into the courtyard, and the doctor reached up to hold his hat on his head as the wind struck him. In the darkness of the yard they saw the outline of the Rolls-Royce; its interior light, the only one left on, revealed the body of a man slumped limply along the back seat, and revealed, too, the hole in his temple which justified Head in assuming that he was dead.

"I'll leave you to it for the time, doctor—I shall be in the superintendent's office inside. Jeffries"—he turned to the constable who stood silently beside the car—"where's the driver gone?"

"Right. Now you turn out my two-seater, and have it ready outside the front entrance. You won't mind making your examination alone, doctor?" He turned to Bennett with the question.

"Good. Get all you can—direction of the bullet, and everything else possible. Light—you'll need light, of course?"

"I've got a big electric torch, and that interior is pretty well lighted, too. If I need more, I'll let you know."

Chapter II
Evidence of the Driver

Superintendent Wadden looked up to make the remark as Head entered his office. The taxi-driver also looked round at the inspector, with a suddenness that had in it a trace of apprehension, and Head gave the man a long look, one which took in every detail of his personality and attire. He was standing, then, at the side of the superintendent's desk, his peaked semi-uniform cap in his hand.

He was a tall man, with greying hair, a toothbrush chestnut moustache and carefully trimmed, chestnut-coloured, torpedo beard. Down his left cheek ran a long, disfiguring scar, an ugly mark that drew the flesh tight over his cheek-bone and distorted that side of his face. A black shade covered away his right eye—if the eye itself remained behind the shade—and, altogether, he was an arresting personality, though his heavy blue overcoat revealed little of his figure. It showed, though, that he had a paunch which spoilt his outline in front: probably his work, involving as it did his remaining seated for the greater part of his time, had ruined his figure.

"Why, yes," Head assented thoughtfully. "If you wouldn't mind pushing that bell—I sent Jeffries to turn out my two-seater, but he ought to be available in a few minutes. Wells will send him in as soon as he's finished over that, I think. Meanwhile"—he turned to the driver—your name is Tanner, I think?"

"Yes, sir," the man said. "But—" He looked from Head to the superintendent, and back, doubtfully.

"Well, Tanner," Head said, "I have to warn you that anything you may say here will not be used as evidence against you. You appear to be giving us all the help you can, and—well, taking your statement may help still more. Sit down—we won't keep you longer than is absolutely necessary. By the way, those scars—war service?"

Tanner shook his head. "No, sir. The Ambleham explosion. I was employed there—the Ambleham explosive works, you may remember. I was in the big explosion they had, about four years ago."

"I had a bit saved up, and bought my Rolls—second-hand, of course. Reckoned I'd take it up—I always liked driving."

Tanner smiled. "No trouble at all, sir. I passed all the tests satisfactorily—it's only at first that there's any difficulty about getting focus with only one eye. You get used to it."

"I make a living." Again the man smiled. "Do all my own cleaning and running repairs, and—well, I make a living."

"Wells"—Head turned to address the sergeant, who had answered Wadden's ring—"we want Jeffries in here as soon as you can get him, to take down a statement. He's getting my car out, at present."

"And"—Head turned to the taxi-driver again—"you don't find a Rolls too expensive to run, for hire work like yours?"

"It's the cheapest car of any," Tanner said. "You've got there the perfect mechanism—as nearly as anything of the sort can be perfect. The upkeep costs are next to nothing, and the petrol cost isn't much more than that on cars that involve heavy maintenance charges all the time. The fact that there are five working in the town is pretty good proof that they pay to run on taxi work."

He stripped off his overcoat and laid it across the back of the chair on which he had already thrown his hat. This, he knew now, promised to be a long business—there was Denham to be interviewed, after they had finished with this man. Wadden, seated in his swivel chair, thoughtfully filled his pipe: he was used to Head's ways, and knew that this preliminary questioning of Tanner was intended to put the man at his ease, as well as to give Head anything he could learn of the business of taxi-driving. For the inspector never missed a chance of picking up information of any kind: it might come in useful, and, if not, might prove interesting.

"The Ambleham explosion," he observed thoughtfully, slipping his hands into his pockets and stepping up beside the superintendent. "A rather sticky business, as nearly as I remember it."

"Well, I don't know much about what happened to me, sir. I saw the flash, and that's about all, till I came round."

"Yes, naturally." He appeared reflective over it. "And, after that, you weren't much in love with explosive works."

"The explosion—yes. Ah, here you are, Jeffries! Mr. Tanner, here, is going to give us an account of what happened to-night, and we want a transcript of it. Before that, though, aren't you friendly with somebody at Hartlands? I seem to remember something of the sort."

"Yes, I thought that was it. Well, before you begin here, I want you to get on to the telephone in Sergeant Wells's room—the charge room—and tell Miss Ray that Mr. Dickson will not come home any more because he's dead. Don't amplify it—just that. And ask her to break the news to Mrs Dickson just as gently and decently as she can, and refuse to answer questions about it, if she gets any. She won't be able to answer, because you'll tell her simply that Mr. Dickson is dead, and nothing more. You get that, Jeffries?"

"Yes. Well, off you go, Jeffries, and tell her just that. Then hurry back here to take down this statement."

They heard Jeffries' hurrying footfalls along the corridor. The superintendent took out a pocket-knife and, with a spike which formed part of its furniture, rearranged the packing of his pipe.

"Eventually, chief," Head answered. "My car is all ready, but I don't see any hurry. It's pitch dark, and the man who fired that shot is not going to sit by the side of the road and wait for me. I'll learn all I can here, first. We've got the body. When I do go, I'd like you to go out with me, Tanner, and explain all you know on the spot. You won't be able to use that car again to-night."

"Quite true, sir," the man answered gravely. "In fact, I'm wondering if I'll ever be able to use it again for taxi work."

"In a place of this size," Tanner pursued, "everybody knows everybody and everything, and people won't care much for riding in a car that's had a body in it. The whole story will have to come out."

"There is decidedly something in that," Wadden averred. "Meanwhile—and what the hell is keeping Jeffries, I don't know!—meanwhile I'll have your full name and address and all the rest of it." He took up a pen and drew a pad toward himself. "The name, now?"

"Oh, no! I have two furnished rooms there, with a Mrs. Adams. It's her house. And I hire a lock-up garage at the end of the Close—the far end. It's a cul-de-sac, as perhaps you know, sir."

"I can't get through to Hartlands, sir. It appears that there is no telephone connection left between here and Westingborough Parva."

"That tree has taken the wires down with it," Head suggested. "I think—yes, you take that pad and we'll have Tanner's statement, now. Hartlands must wait for the news. This is more important. Now, Tanner"—as Jeffries, seating himself, took the pad which Wadden pushed across the desk to him and uncapped a fountain-pen—"begin at the beginning. You picked up Mr. Dickson where and when?"

"Oh, no! I drove him home one night last autumn, and again just before Christmas. He had Mrs. Dickson with him, that second time."

"Yes, sir. Out from the town, down the hill, and along the Westingborough Parva road. At the foot of the hill Mr. Denham stopped me by keeping the middle of the road and flickering his headlights. I pulled well in to the side of the road, got down, and went to hear what he had to say. He told me the road was blocked by a fallen tree."

"Opened the door of my car and told my passenger—Mr. Denham went on toward Westingborough, leaving me there after telling me. Mr. Dickson asked me to drive him as far as the tree, if I couldn't get past it, and said he'd walk the rest of the way."

"I got back into the driving-seat and went on, very slowly—the road is in a bad state, and it was raining hard."

Tanner shook his head. "Nobody at all, sir. He was well away behind me before I shut the door on Mr. Dickson and got back to the driving-seat, and—if this is what you want to know—Mr. Dickson was quite all right then. After that, as I say, I drove on slowly, and naturally I didn't look round to see what happened inside the car. I was concentrating on the road, and keeping a good look-out for that tree. And I saw nobody at all till I got to it and stopped."

Again Tanner shook his head. "Nothing to—to make me think anything was wrong. You see, sir, it is a wild night, as Mr. Dickson remarked to me when I picked him up at the station. And there's the river running not a score yards from the road, parallel with it all the way, in flood now and fairly noisy. Then there was the noise of the car on a bad road, and I wasn't noticing anything but my driving—not thinking anything would be wrong, naturally."

"Possibly," Head agreed doubtfully. "Carry on, Tanner. You got as far as the fallen tree, and stopped there?"

"Yes, sir. Stopped, got down, and went to open the door for Mr. Dickson to get out. My headlight showed me the tree was lying the whole way across the road, and it was impossible to go any farther."

"I saw the hole in the window, and saw him lying along the seat as he was when I got here. I opened the door to make sure—"

"You didn't fear that whoever shot him might shoot you too?" Wadden asked. "After you saw him lying like that, I mean?"

"No, sir. The bullet hole in his head was conclusive. I thought at first of getting to Hartlands somehow, but realised that to do anything of the sort I should have to leave the car with the body in it, which seemed wrong, somehow. So I shut the door again, backed into a gateway, and drove straight back here to report as I have done."

"Nobody at all, till I'd driven up the hill and back into the lighted streets of the town. On that road, not a soul."

"Dickson was shot, then, after Mr. Denham had warned you about the tree and driven away, and before you stopped where the tree had fallen," Wadden asserted. "What was the time when Denham stopped you?"

"I couldn't say for certain, sir. About twenty minutes to eight, I should think, if the train were ten minutes late as it usually is."

"He must have done. I heard it leaving the station just after I'd shut my door on Mr. Dickson and was going out from the yard."

"And what was your rate of travel after Denham left you, until you got to where the tree lay across the road?"

"I couldn't say for certain, sir. Ten—fifteen miles an hour, probably. Not more than fifteen, I should say, though. A bad road as I said before, and the farther I got along it the slower I went, because I knew I must be getting near the tree."

"You're absolutely certain you heard nothing in the nature of a shot?" Head insisted, after a moment's reflection.

"As certain as I can be, sir. You see, the river's a trifle noisy now it's in flood, and then I felt bumps in one or two bad potholes in the road, and the gale was roaring in the trees—"

"Yes," Head interrupted, "but a shot would have a different sound from things of that sort."

"Well, sir," the man said calmly, "I'd suggest you try driving that road yourself in this gale, with the rain pelting on your windscreen. I don't think you'll find yourself very much alive to outside sounds."

"Silenced, almost certainly," Wadden put in. "To score as clean a hit as that at a moving car, that shot wasn't fired from any greater distance than the side of the road. On top of that, Head, it was fired back into the car, if you remember the position of the bullet hole in the side window. An angle of about forty-five degrees backward in relation to the direction of the car's travel. Which means that the muzzle of the weapon would be pointed well behind Tanner's head, and if it were silenced it would be a mere pop, to him. Quite possibly not noticeable, with the row there is going on—listen to it."

For seconds they listened to the whine of the gale, the rattling of the window in the room, and the surr-surr of rain driving against the panes. It was in truth a wild night, as the dead man had said.

"The bullet went through the offside window—that's your blind side, I see," Head pursued. "Now, with you driving slowly, if the assassin had come out from the side of the road alongside the car, you would not have been able to see him on that side, would you?"

"Well"—Tanner hesitated—"normally, I think I might have noticed him—I keep as good a look-out as I can with my left eye. But to-night, concentrating on the road as I was and looking out all the time for the tree, he might have come alongside. But then, I ought to have heard the shot, if he'd been as near as that."

"So good," Head put in, "that I feel practically certain it was done while the car was at a standstill. Either while—Tanner, I want you to come with me, when I'm ready to go, and point out to me where Mr. Denham stopped you, as nearly as you can. Not that I think it took place there, for he wouldn't know the car was going to stop at that point. He might know—I must find out just when that tree fell, if I can. He might have been waiting at the gateway of Hartlands, and come back to the tree after it fell, knowing that—how far would you say the tree is from Hartlands' gateway, Tanner?"

"Then even if it fell after dark he'd hear it. More than that—if he expected Dickson to come off the seven twenty-three, he wouldn't post himself before dark. I suppose he—" He broke off, thinking.

"Does a man sit about on a night like this firing rifles or pistols on a lonely road for fun?" Head queried caustically. "And if he does, what about the ten-millionth chance of a stray bullet going through a taxi window and exactly into the brain of a certain man. I certainly don't see it as accident, or sudden impulse. The weather's against it, chief. I assume a good shot, posted probably behind the trunk of that tree. Another point, Tanner. As you face toward Hartlands on that road, is the trunk of the tree on your near or off side? I mean, on which side of the road was it rooted—do you remember?"

"The trunk was on my off side, and the branches to the near side," Tanner answered. "I stopped well on the near side, because it looked that the only chance of getting through would be there. That is, if there had been any chance. There wasn't."

"Did you get down on the off or near side, when you went to open the door for Mr. Dickson to get out?"

"On the near side. I could see by the headlights that he'd have to get up on the bank, that side, to scramble through the branches."

"You got out with a view to opening the near side rear door for him, so that he could get down nearest the bank."

"Did you close your own door—the one from the driving seat—after getting down to open his?"

"Then the slam of that door and the shot may have been simultaneous," Wadden suggested thoughtfully.

"I don't think so, sir," Tanner dissented respectfully. "Else, I should have seen Mr. Dickson sitting up on the seat—he'd have been falling to lie like he was after I slammed my door. And he wasn't—he was laid along the seat just as when I got here."

"Probably, but not certainly," Head answered. "I take it you're a single man, Mr. Tanner?"

"Why, yes, sir," Tanner answered, in evident surprise at the question. "Living in rooms as I told you."

"That's all right, then—I've no compunction over asking you to wait and go as far as that fallen tree with me. Now I'm going to have a look at that car, and Doctor Bennett too. Make a full transcript of all you have there, Jeffries, and let Mr. Tanner have a copy of it. If he looks it over, he might think of something he could add that might help us. We shall probably be rather late over starting—I want to hear what Denham has to say about this before we go."

Chapter III
A Man with a Gun

SINCE the sole occupant of the room was standing, facing the mantel and frowning slightly as she gazed at the clock, rather as if doubtful of its veracity, she showed as slenderly tall, though full-breasted, and, as to figure, attractive; when she turned to move, first, to press a push-bell beside the fireplace, and then to seat herself in a big armchair set well back from the fire—since the night was not cold—she revealed a face also attractive, though inclining to hardness in expression. Her bobbed black hair and dark eyes bespoke other than English blood—a Spanish admixture, probably: her straight nose was a trifle too long—and her mouth indicated possibilities of passion. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees and her chin in her cupped hands, gazing into the coal fire and entirely unheeding the storm that raged outside the cosy room, giving evidence of its fierceness in booming gusts of wind and spatter of rain on the curtained window.

It was not a large room, nor was it over-furnished: the prevailing tone was a pleasing green: there was a green-covered divan heaped with cushions, a green armchair, and the carpet was green. A writing-table was faced with green leather: such wood as showed was dark oak, and one incongruous note was struck by the armchair in which the woman had seated herself, for it was upholstered in dull orange and brown shades, yet it was not discordant with the rest of the furniture, but rather a relief to the eye. A wireless set and a cabinet gramophone, a filled bookcase, and a tall oak cabinet and rush-seated oak-framed armchair practically completed the furnishing of the room, except that there were enlargements of a couple of very artistic photographs on the walls for decorative effect, and flowers in vases on the mantel and the top of the bookshelves. The big vase of preserved autumn leaves on a stand just inside the door, too, could not be called furniture: it was decorative, but not useful. Altogether, a woman's room.

She sat erect as the door opened, and a maid in cap and apron—in figure and to a certain extent in face a smaller edition of herself—entered and stood waiting.

"You can bring me my dinner in here, Jeanne," she said. "Just a slice off the breast of the fowl with vegetables—nothing else. And tell cook to keep things hot for Mr. Dickson. He has missed the seven twenty-three, evidently, and will come by the nine-forty."

"Oui, m'dame," the girl said meekly. "That's all, Jeanne. A tray for me. Oh, and open a bottle of the Laurier and put it on the tray, please."

"And, Jeanne, please answer me in English—you can speak it, you know. I'm rather tired of telling you about it."

"M'dame—pardon me—m'sieu might arrive yet. Jaggers say there is big tree blow down on the road. P'raps it stop m'sieu."

But the seated woman shook her head. "Twenty minutes past eight, Jeanne—no. He will arrive off the nine-forty, and be here about ten. Dinner must be kept hot for him, tell the cook."

But, when the girl had gone out, it occurred to the woman that on such a night as this trains might be running late, and, with the thought, she went out to the entrance hall of the house and removed the telephone receiver, intending to ring up Westingborough railway station to make inquiries. The unresponsive deadness of the instrument convinced her that she could not get through, after two or three attempts, and with a little shrug of annoyance she replaced the receiver, went back to her armchair, and waited patiently till the girl Jeanne appeared with the tray of food as ordered.

She had no premonition, no thought of disaster pending or accomplished, but ate her dinner slowly and as one who enjoyed the food, sipped the wine with appreciation of its flavour, and, ever and again, smiled at her own thoughts as she sat alone. Pleasant thoughts, evidently: memories, possibly, or, equally possibly, anticipations.

She glanced up at the mantel again. Nine o'clock: Freddy would not be back for another hour yet. She went to the bookcase and selected a volume, one of a thin-paper edition of Mary Webb's works. Then, putting the tray aside but not troubling to ring for it to be removed, as yet, she settled to read in comfort by the fire, while outside the storm raved menacingly yet—for her—unimpressively.

In the courtyard of the police station Doctor Bennett put on his waterproof, which he had removed while he inspected the body in the car, and, without switching off the inside light, turned in time to face Head after closing the car door. An extra flurry of rain prompted the doctor to turn up the collar of the waterproof.

"One shot, and the bullet still in his skull," Bennett answered with equal laconism. "It hadn't force enough to emerge. I expect the glass diminished the force of it."

"Well, if you're dead set on getting wet through," Bennett responded rather tartly. He turned to his bag, which he had put down on the running-board of the car while he donned his coat, and produced the torch, which Head took from him and switched on.

"I want the direction of that shot, and you're well protected," Head told him. "Would you say he was sitting up all unsuspecting when it struck, from what you could see of the body?"

"The direction indicates that—as nearly as I can tell. I'd say he was looking toward the near side of the car, and the bullet came in through the off-side window and caught him squarely in the right temple while he sat erect, or nearly so. Then he collapsed toward the near side of the car to lie along the cushions as he is now."

"Not to-night. I'm just going to look round the off side now. I'd like you to wait—you can stay here out of the wind, if you like."

For this near side of the car afforded protection from the wind which swept down into the courtyard and sent the rain driving in noisy gusts against the glass of the vehicle. Ignoring the absence of his overcoat, and the fact that he was momentarily absorbing more of the driving moisture, Head went round the back of the car with the torch to make his inspection of the side through which the bullet had entered. After a very brief survey by the aid of the torch he called:

At that, Bennett joined him, and gazed at the point toward which the ray from the torch was thrown. It revealed a splintered gash in the woodwork, below the framing of the windows, at the junction of the door with the bodywork of the car.

"A second shot, you see," Head observed. "Was it a second, though, or was it the first, and the mark on the woodwork gave him better aim for his second attempt—the one that went into Dickson's brain?"

"A second shot," Bennett surmised. "Else he wouldn't have been sitting upright and looking the other way when the other struck him. He'd have turned his head toward this side after the bullet hit the woodwork—the noise would have startled him into looking that way."

Head opened the door and looked carefully at the point where the bullet had struck. It had pierced the metal sheeting of the car, and lodged in the wooden framing of the door: the flat rear end of the missile was visible by the light of the torch, deeply embedded in the wood. The inspector closed the door again, to prevent rain from driving in, and then, moving forward, got into a position which lined the clean little hole in the safety glass with the middle of the rear seat.

"Well, it's possible. We're fairly sheltered, here, but hark to the wind outside. And what it would be on a country road, with the trees creaking and cracking and the noise of the car as well—"

"Well, I'll get you the one out of his brain, but as for the other—well, I'm not a carpenter, you know."

"I'm sorry. Now we'd better get in out of the wet. Fortunately it isn't cold. Is there much blood on that seat?"

"Well, you go along inside, if you like. I want to listen to that engine before I come in. And—yes. The car had better be driven to the mortuary for removal of the body—you can make your full examination and get me the bullet there—and then fetched back here for the present. But I'll just hear what the engine says."

He opened the front door and got into the driving-seat, noting that there was a glass partition behind him, and a speaking-tube for communication between the driver and his passengers, but no sliding panel in the glass. Then, while Bennett crossed the yard to get full shelter inside the police station, he switched on the ignition and started the engine: it picked up with the quiet sweetness that characterises Rolls-Royce engines, and even when he put down the accelerator to half-throttle remained next to noiseless: the mechanism was evidently in very good tune. He switched off again, and, getting out, closed the door and crossed the yard, following Bennett into shelter and making for Wadden's room, to which the doctor had gone.

"Slightly," he assented, and looked at his wrist watch. "What about Denham? It's nine o'clock—any news of him yet?"

"Waiting in your room," Wadden told him. "But—well, isn't it a bit unusual to send for a man like him to come here, instead of going to see him at his own home? I mean—he seemed to resent it."

"Quite possibly he did," Head said rather drily, "but in his case there are what I might call compelling circumstances. And if I go along and see him there, I can put on a dry coat."

"There was a second shot, but I think the shooter's foot slipped when he fired it, or something. And"—he turned abruptly to Tanner, who sat waiting, cap in hand, until he should be asked to move—"you tell us you heard neither of those shots, nor felt the shock when a bullet struck and lodged in the bodywork of the car?"

Tanner stared up at him, his one visible eye registering surprise. "Did that happen, sir?" he asked, after a distinct pause.

"Well, sir, if you're going out there, you'll see what it's like with this wind blowing, and the road in the state it is."

"Yes—get me that bullet, doctor, and I won't trouble you any more to-night. Tanner, I want that car back here after it's been to the mortuary to deposit the body. I want to look it over by daylight."

"No—wait here. You're coming with me to where that tree lies across the road. I won't be long before I'm ready now."

"And Mrs. Dickson, Head?" Wadden asked, as Head turned toward the door. But, at the question, he turned back again.

"She's not important, yet," he said. "Anything I can get that bears on the actual shooting is. Denham may know something."

With that he went out and made his way to his office, where Hugh Denham, whose marriage had been one of the social events of the district some six months before, waited with every sign of impatience. There was cold dislike in his stare as the inspector entered the room.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Denham," Head remarked coolly. "I'll just put on a dry coat, if you don't mind—"

"What's all this about, Inspector?" Denham fired out angrily. "I turned out from my home at your request, surprised as I was at it, and now—what's the object of it? Why drag me here on such a night?"

Very deliberately, Head hung his sodden lounge coat on the rack in the corner of the room, took down a dry one, and turned to face his questioner. And, under his gaze, Denham's expression changed: the angry light died out from his eyes to be replaced by—was it remorse, or was there in it a trace of fear? For Head, and no other, knew a secret of this man's life which formed what he had just called a compelling circumstance: compelling it was, evidently.

"Not so very long ago, Mr. Denham," he said quietly, "I might have dragged you much farther, when a very brave lady chose to die rather than be dragged anywhere. I asked you to come here to-night for a very good reason, and I have not much time."

"About your drive along the Westingborough Parva road to-night," Head said, putting on his dry coat as he spoke.

"Yes, what about it?" Denham asked. "I told you about the fallen tree in the Duke of York—and got snubbed for my pains."

"I'm sorry," Head said frankly. "I was feeling a bit irritable at the time, and didn't know that there was any significance about that tree—as I know now. I want you to tell me—whom did you see along that road to-night, Mr. Denham?"

"I met a car on my way back, and stopped it. A Rolls taxi, and Mr. Dickson was inside—going home from the station, I suppose, since otherwise he'd have been in his own car. I told the driver about the tree, and then drove on my way back."

"Yes, I saw him open the car door and speak to his passenger. And that was all I saw—I didn't hear what he said, because I was at the wheel of my own car, and even if neither engine had been running it would have been impossible to hear anything, with the wind roaring in the trees and the rain rattling on the cars' roofs and sides. I'd given warning that the road was blocked, and after that I just drove on."

"Not particularly. It was Mr. Dickson, if that's what you mean. I recognised him. My headlights were on, and shining full at him."

"Why, yes—why not? He looked rather annoyed, I thought, but that was only natural, since the man was telling him his way home was blocked. I could see by the movement of his lips that he was speaking."

"No—wait a bit, though. I caught a glimpse of a man on foot, by the fallen tree. But I didn't see him distinctly."

"A man on foot, eh?" Head gave no sign of the significance he attached to this revelation. "Can you give any description of him?"

"I didn't notice him particularly, except to see that he was carrying what I took to be a gun, slung in the crook of his arm—"

"It would be—yes, he had his back to me, so it would be his left arm. I got only the back view. He was in front of the trunk of the tree when my headlights picked him up, and I saw him dodge under the trunk, and then practically lost him on the other side of it."

"Dressed how?" Head asked. "Did you get clear enough sight of him to say what he was wearing?"

"I'd say a soft felt hat pulled well down on to his head—as it would be in that wind—and a slaty-coloured waterproof or rainproof, a long coat. It would look longer, though, because he was stooping to get under the trunk of the fallen tree."

"Then he would be on the right side of the road as you drove toward him—on your off-side, that is?"

"Why, yes, he would. Then you know already that the tree fell from that side—from the right side looking toward Westingborough Parva, I mean? Because that's how it did fall."

"Yes, I know, Mr. Denham. But this man—you're sure he was carrying a gun in the crook of his arm?"

"Not sure, but I took it for a gun. I mean, it looked like a gun. I saw the sheen of the light on what looked like a gun barrel."

"Well, that's asking. What on earth would a man be doing out on that road with a rifle? This isn't big game country, is it?"

"It was, to-night, which is why I'm questioning you like this about it," Head said grimly. "The biggest game of all, in fact. Can you give me any description at all of this man, beyond his hat and coat as you've already described them?"

Denham shook his head doubtfully. "I had only the vague impression before the tree trunk hid him," he said. "My impression was of a poacher sneaking away out of the range of my lights, and carefully preventing me from seeing his face. Probably using the tree trunk as cover—"

"Well, I'd say a tall man—probably about my own height. Mind you, though, this is only my impression, and it may be wrong. On the shabby side, as regards the coat and hat, though again that may be wrong, if one saw him in daylight. The hat appeared greyish to me, a darkish shade of grey. He may have been wearing leggings, and I think was, but can't be sure of it. And that's all."

"You have no idea where he went after he dodged under the trunk of the tree, I suppose?"

"None whatever. As I say, I took him for a lurking poacher, and was more interested in my own business than in him. I'd wanted to get to Westingborough Parva, and felt pretty disgusted when I saw it was impossible. Guddle, the agent from Crandon, had told me it would be, but I'd hoped he was wrong—he stopped me on the road near where I stopped the taxi with Dickson in it, I ought to tell you, so you may count him as one of the people I saw along the road, if it interests you. But there, by the tree, I merely glimpsed this man with what I took to be a gun, lost sight of him, and began to consider turning round to come back without giving him another thought. He may be there yet, for all I know, though I don't think it likely."

"I wonder," he went on after the pause, "whether I can ask you to come out to that fallen tree with me—and another man—and point out for me the exact spot—as nearly as you can—at which you saw this man with a gun, or what you took to be a gun."

"Well, it's nearly half-past nine," Denham pointed out, with obvious desire to avoid anything of the sort, "and my wife's alone."

"So is mine," Head retorted softly, "and I'm likely to hear about it when I do get home—if ever. Mr. Denham, Mr. Dickson was shot dead in the taxi that was taking him home to-night, and I'm inclined to think, now, that you saw the man who did the shooting."

"Just that," Head assured him. "You see, I'm not asking this of you on a mere flimsy pretext. The body was brought to us far too late for me to get directly on the track of the man who did it, and so I've delayed here to get all I could—including finding out anything you might know. Even Mrs. Dickson doesn't know yet that her husband is dead, for what I could learn here seemed to me more vital than anything there, especially as I've sent a man to see that nothing near the tree is disturbed. Now I'm going to see what there is to be seen on the spot where I believe the shooting was done—and I believe it still more after what you've told me. Will you come out there?"

"Of course I will," Denham answered unhesitatingly. "Can I ring my wife from here to tell her, though?"

"Not the—oh, of course! I see. No, I'll just tell her I may be detained an hour or so, and then I'm ready to go with you."

"Right." He pointed to a telephone instrument on his desk. "You get the charge room with that. Ask Sergeant Wells for exchange, and then you can get your own number."

"Inspector, anything I can do for you—count on me. And—and bury that hatchet you hold over me. I know I didn't play straight over—over the death of that brave lady, say, but there were reasons, and I will play straight and help you all I can, now."

"There's no hatchet, Mr. Denham," Head said with a smile, as he took the offered hand. "I wanted you in a hurry to-night, and in a case like this my work stands first—I take the quickest way, and take advantage of anything I can. Now get your call while I get out some necessary things and then we'll go. I'll come back here for you."

He went along to Wadden's room, and at his entry Tanner, who had remained seated there with the superintendent, stood up.

"I have reason to believe I've found something, chief," Head said. "Mr. Denham is coming out as far as that fallen tree with me, and probably I'll get as far as Mrs. Dickson before eleven o'clock—if I'm lucky. Tanner, you're coming with us. I won't turn out the saloon—the three of us can crowd into my two-seater. Chief, I think that body had better be deposited in the mortuary for Bennett to-night, and the car fetched back here—Jeffries can drive it. I take it you want me to carry on with the case?"

"Who else?" Wadden growled, and blew a gusty draught. "Sacred tomatoes! What a night! And that poor woman at Hartlands, waiting—"

There was a brief pause. Tanner put on his peaked cap as he stood, and looked at Head.

Chapter IV
Not Mrs. Dickson

AS he led the way toward the police-station entrance, Head could feel his trousers unpleasantly damp about his knees, but, he reflected, he had on a dry coat under the waterproof he had donned, and the trousers would dry on him, eventually. He turned back before opening the door to address Denham and Tanner, who were following him out.

"It's only a two-seater," he said, "but I think the three of us can crowd in. We haven't very far to go."

"Oh, we'll manage it," Denham assented. "You wouldn't put a dog in the dickey, on a night like this."

He went out to the car and took the wheel. Denham came next him, and Tanner crowded in on the near side. The hood and side-curtains of talc in metal framing were up, and even here, in the half-shelter from the wind afforded by buildings, gusts struck on the car with such force as almost to drown the sound of the engine after Head had started it. He drove up the slope of the street, away from the river bridge, and, turning right nearly at the boundary of the town, went down the hill on to the road leading to Westingborough Parva. Crossing a bridge at the foot of the hill, he had the river Idleburn on his left, some twenty to thirty yards beyond the hedge which bounded the road on that side. The road itself was of no more than two-vehicle width, running between low hedges in which old trees were set at frequent intervals. To the left, beyond the river, the ground sloped up toward the height known as Long Ridge: to the right lay fairly level meadow land, across which, after they had come beyond shelter from the height on which the greater part of the town was built, the gale swept at its full force to strike in intermittent, tremendous gusts against the side of the car. Its strength was such that Head could feel the effect on the steering as he drove.

Now, experiencing it, he absolved Tanner from not having heard the two shots at the Rolls, or failing to feel the shock when the second bullet struck the door framing. Absolved him, too, from not having noticed what went on inside the car, for he himself had to concentrate all his attention on the road before him, and ignore his two passengers altogether. The rain, beating on the talc beside him, roared in his ear: the car rocked and bumped on the road, which was easily the worst in the district; there was a project before the local council for widening it, and apparently, until that matter had been settled, the necessity for repairs was being ignored. Coming from slightly ahead, the wind drove rain at the screen in a way that occasionally made it difficult to see in spite of the wiper, and ten to fifteen miles an hour was all he could do. The drive convinced him that the man had not exaggerated his difficulties, though in the police station they had sounded improbable.

"About the same, I think," Denham answered. "The rain seems lessening, I think. It should blow itself out before morning."

"The next tree on the left," Denham dissented. "I remember that tree. Yes"—as they drew abreast the tree—"just here."

The headlights revealed wheel tracks where the road metalling joined on to a narrow grass verge by the hedge: Head did not stop.

A faint blur of light, high up on the slope to their left, revealed the position of the house known as Long Ridge, an old mansion where Raymond Neville, who owned the dye works which formed Westingborough's chief industry, lived. Hartlands, as Head knew, was about a mile farther on, also set up on the slope with a drive leading to it, but at this point its lights were not visible. They passed the gateway giving access to Neville's home, and now, with his two passengers silent, Head was deep in thought, though he did not relax his attention on the road and on all that the headlights showed.

There was, on the face of it, nothing wrong in the behaviour of this man Tanner: on the contrary, all that he had done had been absolutely correct, but, Head questioned of himself, had it been too correct? He had no adequate reason to suspect the man of having murdered his fare, of course, but the imperturbability with which Tanner had driven the corpse to the police station and reported his experience appeared strange to the inspector. One had to take into account, of course, the time taken by Tanner in driving back with the corpse, which might have enabled him to get over any shock he might have felt in discovering that a man who meant nothing to him was dead: at the same time, he had been so callously unconcerned over it as to set Head thinking over him: assuming that Dickson meant no more to him than the price of the journey to Hartlands, there was no reason why he should evince any grief, but he ought not to have been so utterly controlled, surely? Again, there might be nothing in it: he had appeared slightly worried over the possibility of people being disinclined to use a taxi in which a man had been shot dead; there might be nothing more wrong with him than extreme selfishness, in which he could be unmoved by all that did not directly affect himself and his means of living.

Still, a little quiet investigation into the man's past life might be advisable: as the only person proved present at the time of the murder, so far—for Head did not hesitate to class it as murder—he certainly came under suspicion, frank and helpful though he had been.

They passed a small copse which, standing in the meadow land to the right of the road, gave shelter and comparative silence for a matter of seconds: then, emerging beyond it, Head felt the car quiver at a violent gust that struck with a smack against the off-side talc curtain, and knew that at that moment he himself would not have heard a shot, even if he had been listening for it. Beyond the range of his headlights showed a tiny glimmer which, as the car went on, revealed itself as a bicycle lamp, and beside the machine to which it was attached stood Constable Borrow, with his hand upraised. Head braked to a standstill beside the man, and got out.

"I got here in time, sir. The men are sheltering under that copse a little way back, and they've got two farm horses to drag the tree alongside the road after they've cut the branches off it, just to clear the road for the night. But they haven't been near it—I stopped them as they were coming from Westingborough."

"Well, you stay here in case anyone does come, and stop them till I've finished with the tree, if they do."

Crowding into his seat again beside Denham, he drove on very slowly, and presently saw the tree, a huddle of bare branches crushed down on to the road surface for three-quarters of its width, with, to the right, the dark bulk of the trunk extending back to the line of the hedge of hawthorn stubs. It was an elm that the force of the gale had torn out by its roots, and with them had come up a monstrous flake of turf and clay, which now reared high above the level of the hedge, and showed as a dim mass at the edge of the ray thrown by the car's headlights. Within about ten yards of it, Head stopped the car.

"Stay here for the time, Tanner," he bade. "Mr. Denham, will you come with me for a minute? I want you to show me your find."

He glanced at Tanner with the last sentence. The glow lamp on the dash gave little light, but enough to show that Tanner was entirely unaffected by mention of a find—Head had purposely put his statement in that form, in order to see the man's reaction—but there was none. He got out, and Denham followed him, sidling past the steering wheel, after which he closed the door on the man they had left inside.

"Now I'd like you to show me exactly where you saw your man with a gun," Head asked. "I wouldn't state it plainly until we were alone."

Denham led on toward the right side of the road, where the bare trunk was held about a yard clear of the ground by the roots at one end and branches at the other. He looked down for footprints, but in vain, for the rain had washed the flinty metalling clean at this point, and there were tiny rivulets running down from the crown of the road to its grassy verge. He laid a hand on the wet bark and turned to Head with certainty in the gesture, and in the gesture.

"Here," he said. "I think he had his back to the tree when I first caught sight of him, but am not sure. If so, he turned before my lamps fully picked him out. All I actually got was a back view of him as he stooped"—he illustrated this by stooping himself and thrusting his hand under the trunk—"and wriggled under. I saw the gleam of what I took to be a gun barrel on his left side, as if he had it slung in the crook of his arm, and after he had passed the trunk I lost him."

"No more at all. You see, I was not interested, then. He meant nothing to me, and I scanned the whole length of the tree to make certain I couldn't get past it, and then reversed and turned to go back."

"Yes, of course." And, with that, Head took out the electric torch he had brought with him, switched on its light, and, leaning against the tree trunk, threw a ray on the road surface on the far side. As he had anticipated, there was no chance of a footprint remaining on the surface there, and he withdrew the torch and switched it off. Then, backing away until he was almost level with the front of his car, he gazed at the point Denham had indicated. The shadow thrown by the trunk prevented him from seeing other than puzzling alternations of light and shade beyond the fallen tree: assuming that Denham's headlights had been equal to these, they would not have revealed anything of the man with the gun, after he had passed under the tree trunk. Assuming that he kept to the road, he would have to pass through Westingborough Parva village: the river would prevent him from getting to the left, but there was nothing at all to prevent him from getting over the right-hand hedge at any point and making his way across country to Westingborough Magna—or anywhere else he chose."

"Then that's that," Head remarked to Denham. Now, if you don't mind getting a trifle wetter with me, I want to get Tanner moving."

Going round to the near side of the car—incidentally, it was also the lee side—Head opened the door and looked in on Tanner.

"Well, then, I want you to back it—on your own, while we two stay outside—back it till you can hardly see this mess in the road. Then drive forward as if you were driving your own taxi and still had Mr. Dickson inside it, presumably alive, and as nearly as possible exactly as you were driving him. I want you to go through all your movements as nearly as you can remember them, finding that he was dead in the car, and all you did after that till you drove back to the police station. There may be nothing in it, but I want to see what you did, before the tree is moved out of its present position there. Can you do that?"

He closed the car door. Tanner started the engine and, reversing, backed until he had almost reached the point where Constable Borrow stood. Then he drove forward again, stopped at about twenty yards from the fallen tree and sat as if surveying the wreckage to ascertain if the road were fully blocked. Again he came on, stopped with the radiator almost touching the huddle of branches, got out on the near side, and slammed the door. There he stood, gazing through the talc—since the two-seater had only one side window instead of rear and front windows—as if petrified, for some seconds: eventually he opened the door, leaned in and so stood, holding the door handle, for some more seconds, after which he closed the door again. He went forward of the car and gazed away to the left, to where the lights of Hartlands showed through the rainy darkness as a yellow blur. He looked back at the car, and then again at the lighted house: it was excellent acting, for the two watchers could divine his indecision, whether to go to the house and inform its occupants of the tragedy, or to go back to Westingborough as he eventually did. With a shrug of his shoulders, as revealed by the headlights shining full on him, he gave it up, turned back to the car, opened the door, and got in, slamming the door after him. Head stepped forward and opened it again.

"Backed to the gateway on the right of the road, sir," Tanner answered. "I could turn this car here, but I wouldn't risk a Rolls' wheel-base in this width of road. Not on a night like this, at least."

"I hadn't heard the shots, sir, and concluded they must have been fired while I was away back—some time after Mr. Denham stopped me."

As, Head knew, they might have been fired. A good shot might have lurked invisibly anywhere along the road, and the slow rate of travel to which Head himself had been forced told him that such a marksman might have got Dickson in the head while the Rolls was in motion.

"Well," he said, "I think that's all I want of you here, thanks, though I'm fairly certain to want to see you again in the morning. Now I'd like you to drive Mr. Denham back to his home, and then fetch this car back to the police station. See Sergeant Wells there, and ask him to send Jeffries out here with the car and tell him to wait here with it for me—unless by that time I'm back here waiting for him. Can you do that for me?"

He turned to Denham and explained the plan for taking him home. Then with a handshake Denham got into the car, and Tanner reversed it round and set off. Heedless of the rain, Head stood watching its red tail light until it was almost out of sight, after which he took out his electric torch and sent a series of flashes at Borrow, who, understanding the signal, came up to the fallen tree.

"We'll just look along both hedges for a bit, Borrow," Head told him. "Not that I expect to find any footprints, but you never know. I want you to come with me and look too—four eyes being better than two for a game of this sort. Along here, first—it was the off-side window that he fired at, whoever he was."

He rayed the torch along the right side of the road, but vainly. The soil under the grass, as he found by treading on it, gave only the very faintest of impressions, and the falling rain would have obliterated any such prints as had been made an hour ago. Then, going back to the tree, both men stooped and got under the trunk: on its far side a branch that was little more than a twig had been recently broken, and now dangled by its bark in the light of the torch. The point of breakage, a few inches away from the trunk, showed as fresh.

"Confirmation," Head observed. "Probably it stuck into his face, and he reached out and snapped it in pushing it away."

On this side of the tree, as on the other, no footprints were visible, and after a thorough search of both sides of the road Head snapped off the light and turned to the constable.

"You can go back and get those men to start work," he said. "They needn't wait by that copse earning overtime any longer. And you yourself can get away back. Report to the superintendent—or, if he's gone home, to Sergeant Wells—that I've gone on to Hartlands to see Mrs. Dickson, and shall come back here for Jeffries to drive me home when I've finished there. I shall look in at the station before going home. That's all, Borrow—thanks for what you've done."

The woman in the armchair had laid aside her volume of Mary Webb, and lay back gazing placidly into the fire when Jeanne, the maid, opened the door and entered. At that, the woman started to her feet.

"The master is home?" she asked, though without any great display of pleasure over the prospect of meeting him.

"Non, m'dame," Jeanne answered, evidently forgetting the injunction concerning speaking English. "It is a inspector of poleece—the name is 'Ead. Oui, Inspector 'Ead, 'e tell me, and 'e ask for you."

Passing her, the woman went out to the hall, where Head stood in his dripping waterproof, hat in hand. She faced him composedly.

He had seen her before, more than once, driving or riding with Dickson, but this was the first time he had spoken with or been quite near her. Now, in his initial gaze he summed her up, and decided that she was not of the type that breaks down over bad news: there was strength, as well as hardness, in her face.

"To tell you that Mr. Dickson has met with an accident," he said. "I'm not much good at errands of this sort, I'm afraid, and hardly know how to put it. On his way back from the station to-night."

"Very badly," he answered, and felt that the reply was basely hypocritical. "In fact, Mrs. Dickson—" But then he broke off, and stood gazing full at her, unable to find words with which to tell her all.

"I know," she said. "I can see, from the way you look. He is dead. Tell me—what was it? No, come into my room—take off your coat and put it down—and come into my room."

He slipped off the coat and dropped it and his hat across an oak chest that stood in the hall: then he followed her into the green-and-oak room she called hers. She went to the fireplace and, with one foot on the fender and her arm laid along the mantel, faced him, even more composed than he had expected.

"I said he was dead, and you have not denied it," she said evenly. "Now you may tell me anything else you wish."

"It was on his way here, in a taxi," he said slowly. "It was—not an accident, as nearly as I can tell—"

"Wait!" Again she interrupted him, and, dropping her arm from the mantel, stood erect before him. "I see now—I shall have to tell you. I am not Mrs. Dickson."

Chapter V
"Find Clifford Oliver"

THROUGH a long pause these two faced each other, the woman composed and watchful, with a hint of challenge in her expression, and Head equally watchful, while inwardly he felt that he had met a new type, one which, for the present, he could not comprehend. She had realised that Dickson—presumably her husband—was dead, yet she showed no sign of grief. At last he spoke.

"Since—since two years ago last April," she amended. Then—"I'm going to sit down. This—it is a shock to me."

But for the statement, he would have said that she had not felt the shock. She backed to the big armchair and seated herself in it.

"If you'd rather let everything wait till the morning—" Head suggested. "I mean, to give you time for anything you wish to ask, or to tell me. I have little doubt that Mr. Dickson was murdered, I may as well tell you now, and possibly you may be able to help me—by what you can tell me—to find the murderer."

He waited, and after another interval that seemed very long she spoke, slowly, as if choosing her words with care.

"I told you—what I have told you, because it will have to come out. I realised at once it will have to come out. You see, my real name is in his will. No, I don't think it is any use letting things wait. I must—well, face it, mustn't I?"

The rather sad half-smile with which she put the question altered her entirely, made of her an appealing, very human entity. Yet Head refused to be influenced by the change: here, he felt, was one who lived so much in and to herself that her first thought over the death of the man with whom she had lived as wife was this material fact that her name was in his will. It appeared a monstrous, heartless selfishness, something altogether outside his experience.

"As you wish," he said. "You say you are not Mrs. Dickson, yet you have passed under that name since you came here as his wife, nearly three years ago. If you feel like telling me all you can now, I must know first—who are you? What is your real name?"

And now the expression that had made her so very human vanished: instead, she appeared guarded, intent on revealing only just so much as she chose. She was utterly self-centred, Head decided, one who weighed the results of this catastrophe to herself, and deferred thought of the murdered man or emotion over his death. There might be depths, of course, but if so, she hid them well. He fired a sudden question at her.

She looked up at him, and now he saw fear in her eyes. "I don't know," she said. "I—I left him, for Freddy. For Mr. Dickson, that is. Before I came here, three—yes three years ago."

"Then"—he spoke after another long pause—"I have no right to ask you anything else, Mrs. Oliver."

He accented the name, and after another brief pause she rose to her feet and gripped the edge of the mantel with both hands.

"One does these things," she said, and for the first time he heard real emotion in her voice, but could not divine its nature. "All my life I have lived by instinct. All my life—I don't know why I'm telling you this. And now—you don't know who killed him?"

"Leaving Clifford—my husband—Mr. Head—" She dropped her hands and stood gazing down into the fire. "Yes, I've heard your name, of course. I'm holding on to myself, trying—it's no use your asking me any more, now. I—I hate myself too much."

"I told you—I have no right to ask you anything else," he said. "But if you wish me to tell you anything—"

"I don't know. Not to any great extent, I should say," he answered. "You were not directly connected with Mr. Dickson's death, and if—I must put this plainly, Mrs. Oliver—if it appears that your husband is responsible for it, then probably you know you cannot be compelled to give evidence against him. That is putting it quite plainly."

He gave a little shrug of annoyance: an unusually violent gust of wind, striking on the curtained window, brought to him a mental picture of the fallen tree lying across the road, of Tanner acting the scene of finding Dickson dead in the car, and Denham and himself watching in the rain: by contrast, all this present experience was unreal, almost fantastic. And this strangely composed woman was fencing with him, fending him off, possibly, in the hope of tiring him of trying to learn anything from her. Yet, oddly, he found that he was beginning to be attracted by her: it was all wrong, yet there it was.

"I am a policeman, madam, not a metaphysician," he said curtly. "I conclude you have told me all you mean to tell?"

"I have told you my real name, because I knew you would soon learn it, and nothing else," she answered. "And up to now I can't believe what you have told me. Do you understand? I don't realise it."

"Mr. Head"—she spoke with nervous abruptness after a long pause—"I know your name—I know what you did in the Forrest case, which concerned Long Ridge, the house nearest to this. I know you are a very clever man. What have I told you?"

"Yes. You say you are no metaphysician, but I should call you a psychologist, and no ordinary one. What have I told you?"

He spared a moment for reflection. The more he could impress her, he felt, the more he would learn—and, if he did not learn all he could to-night, by to-morrow realisation of Dickson's death might have changed her beyond his learning more. He realised that she had spoken simple truth in saying that she did not realise it: inability to comprehend the extent of this sudden loss, and not hardness or utter selfishness, was responsible for this calmness of hers.

"You have told me that you left your husband for this man, probably quite against his wish and with very little real cause—or no cause at all beyond your own caprice," he said slowly. "You have told me that you regret either the act or its consequences to others, and that you fear, now, lest the motive for this crime—as I believe it to be—is revenge, which would mean that of two men who have figured in your life one has already suffered, and the other will suffer. And you have told me that you foresee lasting remorse if this is so, because probably for the first time in your life you are faced by terrible consequences arising out of a purely selfish act. You fear—"

She almost shouted the interruption, and, covering her face with her hands, dropped back in the armchair and lay rather than sat in it. Again Head realised this scene as sheer fantasy, rather than reality.

"Oh, you frighten me!" she whispered. "Now—tell me how he died. What you know of it. Was he—was it very terrible?"

"He took a taxi from the station, off the seven twenty-three," Head said evenly. "The driver was stopped on the far side of Long Ridge gateway from here, and told that a tree had fallen across the road. He told Mr. Dickson, who asked him to drive as far as the tree if he could get no farther—I haven't got that conversation exactly, but that appears to be the gist of it. When the man got down to open the car door after reaching the tree, he saw Mr. Dickson lying dead on the back seat, with a bullet wound in his head visible and proving him dead. He drove back to Westingborough police station with the body. That is all."

Head glanced at the clock on the mantel, and then at his watch. "And, now, since there is no more I can tell you, and you can't help me any farther—" he said, as she sat gazing into the fire and apparently ignoring his presence in her pained reverie.

Again she stood up. "Mr. Head, you have been very kind, and very patient, and very understanding," she said. "I—I'm all in the dark. You see, I did a great wrong—I see it now, too late—and I don't want to make it greater. I think—will you understand when I say I think it is not for me to help you over this?"

"Perfectly," he answered. "But, if you wish, you may look to me to help you, if you feel any need of it."

He smiled. "I have a fellow-feeling for—what was it Omar called them? Yes—children stumbling in the dark—because I stumble so badly myself, at times. If you need help of any kind—"

"And I thought you only a policeman!" she said, as he did not end the sentence. "Over the Forrest case, I mean. Just painstaking, clever, patient—now I begin to see! I wish—oh, I wish—" She broke off, and, turning away, took a pace along the hearthrug and turned towards him again, gazing at him with earnest intentness.

"It's hardly the time to offer advice, yet I do," he said gravely. "Just this—don't dramatise your life to yourself—don't enjoy other people's emotions as you do. Quite useless to advise that, perhaps."

He saw her breast heaving, her parted lips expressing more emotion than he had deemed her capable of revealing. She gripped the mantel edge with both hands, as if to save herself..

"No more," she said, breathing heavily, "I can't stand any more. You're too—too diabolically clever, Mr. Head. Please go."

He went out to the hall, retrieved his waterproof and hat, and set off. The wind was dropping, and now, in spite of its shrieking through the trees and over the sodden country, it would be possible to hear a shot, even in a car, if that shot were directed at the car. But a silenced pistol—or rifle, if a rifle could be silenced?

The gale was certainly abating—it was little more, now, than a strong winter wind. Even if he could get hold of a silenced pistol—or rifle—it was too late to make the experiment.

He went on down the drive from Hartlands. Jeffries would be waiting for him by this time with the two-seater, beside the fallen tree.

"Nothing definite, that is. One thing, though. Mrs. Dickson is not Mrs. Dickson—and her husband is still alive."

"Gosh, man! You say there's no news! Pass that item out to Westingborough, and then listen to the hum! No news, says you!"

"Well, I had an interview with the lady. What one might call a revealing interview. She did the revealing—most of it, that is. Our problem, it appears to me, is—find Clifford Oliver."

"Aren't you—well, mixing your terminology a bit?" Wadden queried. "If you've got any more shocks for me, trot 'em out, young feller."

"Now I'll explain," Head promised, and seated himself at the superintendent's desk, facing its rightful occupant.

"That's good," Wadden commented, and blew a wrathful gust. "I've telephoned my wife, and I've telephoned your wife, and explained it all to 'em both. Do they believe a word of what I said? Do they hell! You're for it, and I'm for it—and past eleven o'clock already! Now get on with your explanation—I'm waiting for it, as I have been for hours seeing that we've got yet another murder in the offing."

"This one, man," Wadden said testily. "We'll have to get that poster out. 'Come and live in the Westingborough district. Huntin', shootin', fishin', and murderin'. Every facility for all four.' I tell you, Head, my resignation goes in the next time I see the Chief Constable, and I'll settle peacefully to growing tomatoes under glass. Find my little bit of land and build—but you were going to explain."

"What there is to explain," Head assented. "This woman, Mrs. Oliver, obviously thinks her husband did the shooting, though she told me he is not in England—"

"She didn't tell me, and I didn't ask. On her supposition, I felt I had no right to ask, and further to that she'd probably have lied if I'd put the question, to shield him. So already we have him, and an unidentified man with a gun whom Denham is prepared to swear he saw lurking by the fallen tree and keeping out of sight—and that man and Clifford Oliver may be one and the same. And then there's Tanner."

"There certainly is Tanner," Wadden agreed. "I've been thinking him over, hard. Did you notice how he said 'cul-de-sac' when he mentioned Church Close? The average taxi-man says 'blind alley'."

"Quite so. There's a spot of old school tie about the man—more than a spot, in fact, and looking into his antecedents appears to me one of the prime requisites of the case. At the same time, he's been driving that taxi about Westingborough for the best part of two years, and short of being Clifford Oliver in disguise I can't see why he shot Dickson. He didn't impress me as a homicidal lunatic. Then again, I put one or two small tests on him, to watch his reactions, and he simply didn't react at all, where almost certainly a guilty man would have reacted to one or other of them."

"Glimpsed by Denham—only glimpsed, but certainly there when Denham got to the fallen tree and turned about to come back. Certainly, that is, unless Denham is suffering from delusions, which I don't admit as possible. Waterproofed or rainproofed, with a hat pulled well down over his ears—as it would be on such a night—almost certainly with a gun under his arm, and apparently anxious to get out of sight as soon as possible. Denham got only a back view."

"Knowing, say, that he was on his way back from London, and prepared to wait till he did come along that road. You'd say he would have waited till Dickson got out of the car and there was no chance of the driver hearing the shot and being a possible witness, but set against that the almost impossibility of hearing any shot to-night, out there—unless it were fired right in your ear—and also the chance of missing in the dark, while in aiming at the lighted car he'd have the foresight of his weapon clearly outlined. And even if Tanner had heard the shot—shots, rather—that man could have got over the hedge and into one of those copses along the road before Tanner could get down from his driving-seat, assuming that he had the courage to go chasing a man with a gun in the dark, which isn't likely. Also, when I was there with Denham, I could see for myself that the man with the gun would be as good as invisible on the far side of the fallen tree."

"Not a chance. Nothing whatever, except for a broken twig, probably broken by him when he dodged under the tree trunk to get out of sight of Denham. At present, I'm inclined to think he waited by Hartlands' gateway—there are trees and brushwood there to hide him, you may remember—waited there for Dickson to come back till he heard and possibly saw the tree fall. When he saw how it had fallen, saw the road completely blocked by it, he knew the car with Dickson in it would have to stop there. The trunk was just the right height to make an aiming rest for him, and if the interior light of the car were on—as it was—he had every chance to get his man there when the car pulled up. On top of that, the position of the bullet hole in the window in relation to that of Dickson's body in the car indicates that the shot which killed him and the one that struck the woodwork were both fired diagonally toward the car from its front, exactly as would have been the case if they were fired by a man behind the tree trunk, on the right side of the road as you look toward Hartlands from here."

"Oh, I know that's hard to believe, here," Head countered, "but if you'd been out there to-night with me, you'd understand it as more than possible. He wasn't listening for a shot, and with the roar of the wind and rattle of the rain he wouldn't hear a shot, if it were fired from a silenced automatic pistol, say. And the fact that one bullet is still in Dickson's head and the other in the bodywork of the car points to a pistol having been used—rifle bullets would have had far more impetus, and one of those bullets would have gone right through Dickson's brain instead of stopping in it, while the other would have gone through that bodywork and out at the back. A silenced thirty-two or thirty-eight automatic, chief, would make just a pop that Tanner might easily not have heard. Two pops, in fact."

"No, I'm not, until I know more about him. But if he had been the murderer, firing from close beside the car after getting down from his driving-seat, why that second shot—for it was the second—making a wild miss on to the bodywork of the car, somewhere about the level of Dickson's knees, or below them? Having got his man with the first shot through the window, why risk discovery by the noise of a second, or by stopping to fire it? It looks far more likely to me that someone behind the tree trunk pulled his trigger a second time, and possibly spoilt his own aim by dodging the ray from Tanner's headlights."

"Go to bed—there's nothing more to be done till morning in connection with the case," Head answered, equally practically. "Then, get what I can of Dickson's past life, to find if he had any enemies—look for motive, that is—and investigate the antecedents of Albert Henry Tanner till I know all about him."

"For which you'll overhaul the explosive works of Purkis and Weddel, at Ambleham, and make a note of 'em," Wadden suggested. "And this—Mrs. Oliver, I think you said her name was?"

"Margaret Oliver. Yes. I'm chary of asking for help there, and in any case she's not likely to tell me or anyone her precise relations with her husband and Dickson. It would be futile asking. But there's that maid—Ray, her name is—and Jeffries smitten with her. I don't know if the girl knows anything, but if she does we might get it."

"Exactly that," Head concurred, unmoved by the implication. "Mary Jane always knows more about her master and mistress than they know themselves, and some of it may be not only true, but useful. Also, chief, in a case of murder I don't care how I get my information, as long as I get it—Mary Jane or anyone else can give it."

"It isn't that, altogether. I've no right to question her, as you know, if it means procuring evidence against her husband, but apart from that she would reveal nothing that she could hold back—I feel sure of it. And to-night, she's revealed a lot—all I'm likely to get from her own lips."

"Umm-m! As you say, we'd better go to bed. It's too early for any definite conclusion, of course—" He broke off, thoughtfully.

"The key to the solution—not the solution itself, perhaps. But—just this. Find Clifford Oliver."

Chapter VI
Concerning Albert Tanner

THE night's gale had stilled when, early the next morning, Head made his appearance in Wadden's room at the police station: there was a softness in the air that promised spring, a deceitful invitation for buds to swell—in order that March winds might nip them. Wadden put down the pen with which he had been filling in an official form.

"Oh, make it this afternoon, if you can get Payne-Garland then," Head answered. "I ought to be back here by three, easily."

"The idea—I thought it over instead of going to sleep—is to eliminate Tanner from the case as far as motive is concerned, or else find the motive. I'm not happy about him, chief."

"I think of driving over to Purkis and Weddel's explosive works," Head explained. "I want to know if a man named Tanner was actually employed there as a lorry driver at the time of the explosion four years ago, and if so, what became of him. To start there, and trace him from that point to last January twelvemonth."

"Yes, I know," Head answered the gesture, "but it isn't good enough for me. I want his history in full, to clear or catch him."

"Well, you do as you like," Wadden said. "I'll get on to Payne-Garland as soon as I feel sure he's out of his bath, and see if we can make it this afternoon. And we shall want—how many of 'em?"

"Guddle—yes, you'd better have Guddle—and Denham—Tanner of course, and Doctor Bennett. Identification?"

"Ought, yes," Head agreed, "but I'm willing to bet that short of a subpoena you won't get her to attend."

"I s'pose not," the superintendent conceded thoughtfully. "She's not next-of-kin—she's no kin at all, apparently, and she's going to dodge standing up in a coroner's court and owning she wasn't Dickson's wife, if there's any way at all out of it. Well, subpoena, then."

"I don't think so, chief. You know what Payne-Garland is, and if she puts his back up he'll go for her and antagonise her for when I want information, and there's been enough fuss lately about coroners turning their inquests into police-court proceedings. Ask for her by all means, and get somebody else if she won't attend. I know! Send Jeffries, and tell him to make a point of seeing his lady-love, the little French girl at Hartlands. Tell him we're after Mr. and Mrs. Dickson's past history, and tell him, too, that she isn't Mrs. Dickson, but he's not to know it unless the French girl tells him. That girl could identify the body—better still, they keep a chauffeur, and almost certainly he drove Dickson to the station yesterday morning. He'll do for identification, and possibly for information as well."

"Well, I'll get it. And now I'm off. Any time after three for the inquest—it's not more than sixty miles to Purkis and Weddel's place, two hours each way. See you later, chief."

He went out to his car and drove off. His way lay through Westingborough Parva, and he bumped and jolted along the valley road over which he had driven with Denham and Tanner the preceding night, past Long Ridge gateway to the point where men were still working on the fallen tree. They had dragged the trunk on to the grass which edged the right side of the road, and were busy cutting up the larger branches for transport and stacking them on the left, as close to the hedge as possible. Head braked to a standstill, and Sergeant Wells, swinging a reflex camera by its strap, came over to the car.

Wells shook his head. "The superintendent sent me out, sir, and I've got a few pictures, but they tell nothing useful, as far as I can see. I've had a good look for footprints, but there's nothing to make them—that grass doesn't give prints, and the road's washed too much by last night's rain. I could see where Tanner turned in the gateway after backing, as he said in that statement Jeffries took last night. Mr. Wadden spoke of looking for the gun or pistol, in case it was thrown away, and—well, I hadn't to look far. I don't know if you'd think it worth while to drag, on the chance of fishing it up."

Head glanced over the left-hand hedge, as the sergeant indicated, and saw the muddy waters of the Idleburn, swollen to flood level by recent rains—heard them, too, as they glucked and swirled ten yards or less beyond the low hedge. He shook his head.

"I don't think so," he said. "He wouldn't have been such a fool as to throw it there in the dark—he might have missed the water and landed it on the bank. And dragging, probably, wouldn't fetch it up if it were there. It's a stony bed with holes and pockets between the stones, not flat mud. No, I think dragging would be a waste of time."

"So do I, sir," Wells concurred. "He had a good night for it, whoever he was. Good from his point of view, that is."

"And the tree was sheer luck for him," Head concurred. "Otherwise, it would have been in the gateway to Hartlands. Well, I think you'd better get back. I don't see you getting anything useful here."

He drove on, thoughtfully. It was odd, on the face of it, that Margaret Oliver had been able to pose as Mrs. Dickson for nearly three years without discovery of her real identity, but, on analysis, there was nothing odd about it. For years Hartlands had been occupied by Mrs. Dickson, an old widow lady, with, except for the French maid Jeanne Ray, practically the same staff as at present, and it had been common knowledge that Mrs. Dickson had a son somewhere abroad. Then, three years since, she had died, and the man who had been shot last night had come to live at Hartlands with the woman who had been considered and received as his wife. They had been apparently quite well-to-do, but had not mixed in with the society of the district to any great extent. Neither of them had ridden to hounds, and Dickson had appeared rather unsociable, by all accounts of him that Head could recall.

Suicide was out of the question, accident almost equally so. And, considering it as crime, it had been well-planned by somebody who knew that Dickson would be travelling along this road, either in his own or in a hired car, after darkness had fallen the preceding evening—it was unlikely that the murderer would have risked a daylight killing, or would have been waiting there by daylight. All this, of course, was on the supposition that Tanner could be eliminated from any list of suspects, or cleared sufficiently to justify Head in looking elsewhere for the man who had fired those shots. The fact that Denham had seen a man with a gun on the spot when he had reached the fallen tree went far toward eliminating Tanner, but did not go all the way, for a second inspection of the Rolls taxi that morning, before going in to see the superintendent, had convinced Head that the bullet stuck in the door framing had been fired from an automatic pistol, and not from a gun. But then, Denham had been very vague about the nature of that gun.

Reflecting over the various aspects of the case, and coming again to the conclusion that finding Clifford Oliver would take him a long way toward his solution, Head reached the works and offices of Messrs. Purkis and Weddel, set as they were a good four miles distant from a big manufacturing town, and consisting of an administrative block, one-storied, round which were set at a considerable distance a series of what looked, at first, like earthworks of a defensive nature. For all the sheds in which dangerous processes were carried on had mounds raised round them, to minimise the danger in the event of an explosion. Head drove up to the main doorway of the administrative block, and faced a commissionaire who sat in a glass box inside the doorway.

"Travellers," said the commissionaire severely, "are not seen here. You'll have to go to the London office, like the rest of 'em."

"I'm sorry, sir," he said, as he looked up again. "Who might you be wanting to see? Inspector Head!" He breathed and lengthened out the name, very softly, and gazed hard at its owner.

"I want to inquire about an explosion you had here some four years ago," Head answered. "About the men concerned in it, from somebody who was here at the time. Now who will be the best man for that?"

"Well, sir"—the man reflected over it—"I'd say you couldn't do better than have a word with Mr. Cleeve, the works manager. He's been here as long as anyone, and he ought to be able to tell you all about it. I'll send your name in to him, shall I?"

The commissionaire put the receiver of an inter-communicating telephone to his ear, and Head waited, gazing at the nearest mound-encircled shed and wondering what would happen to him if it blew up while he remained standing there. Then the commissionaire replaced his receiver and spoke through the opening in his window.

So Head followed him inside the building, and in a comfortably furnished room shook hands with a grey-haired, keen-eyed man who invited him to seat himself and produced a cigarette-case as a preliminary to whatever the business might be that brought this visitor. Head took a cigarette and a light, and seated himself.

"There were only four," Cleeve told him. "We shall never find the cause of the tragedy—the three who could have told us anything about it were blown to fragments, and most of the windows in this building had to be replaced, too. No, we shall never know why. We have indicators to tell us of any rise in temperature in any of the sheds, and an elaborate system of alarms, too—you see that bell, there?"

Head looked at the bell high up on the wall facing him, and saw under it a series of glow-lamps set on an oblong board. He nodded.

"Well, that's part of the alarm system. Each of those bulbs under the bell represents a shed, and if the temperature in any shed rises to a certain point—well below the danger mark, too—the bulb representing that shed comes alight, and at another point below the danger mark the bell rings. But I hadn't even a light to warn me when that shed went up—we had no warning at all. And as I say, the three men who might have known what happened didn't exist after it had happened."

"The lorry driver—yes," Cleeve agreed. "But he was outside. He'd driven there to bring away a load—the men inside the shed did their own loading, and he'd driven to the entrance and pulled up just as the shed went up. He hadn't even got down out of his cab, which cost him his eye—his right eye. You see, the cab had glass windows, as all our lorries have, since they have to do long runs in all weathers, and the explosion blew the glass in on him. He was a terrible sight when we got to him, his cheek laid open—the left cheek—and the eye. Yes, a terrible sight."

"Specially about him. All you can tell me about him, in confidence. I don't want the fact that I'm inquiring to get known."

"Umm-m! Wonder what he's been up to?" Cleeve surmised. "Not my business, you'll say. Very well, Mr. Head, I'll tell you all I can. You'd better tell me what it is you want to know, I think."

"Before the accident, a good-looking chap. Tall, about your height, and I estimate you at six feet or so. Somewhere in his thirties—I couldn't give you his exact age—and a well-built man."

"Oh, no! A single man, living with our foreman—lodging there, you understand. His people had been tenant farmers not far from here, but his father made a mess of things—went bankrupt, and Tanner had to go to work to earn his living. So he came to us as a driver, and a very good driver he was, too. They have to be, for our work."

Cleeve shook his head. "Not interested in women, if you ask me. You see, the sort of work he was doing was a come-down for him. He kept very much to himself, and was always studying—I don't know what for, but there it was. You could tell when you spoke to him—he talked more like a public school man than a lorry driver. I think he meant to lift himself out from what he was to what he wanted to be, whatever that was, and put all his spare time into working for it. A nice chap, very quiet, and willing at his work. Nothing was too much trouble for him, and he had brains and initiative. The sort to decide on the best thing to do, and then do it without being told."

Like, Head thought but did not say, deciding that it would be better to drive back to the police station the night before, than to leave the taxi with a dead body in it while he went to Hartlands, since the fallen tree made driving there impossible.

"I'd say not in the least. That's as nearly as I can tell, of course. You'd need somebody who knew him better for certainty over that."

"Oh, yes! Kerling—that's his name—he'll be with us till he either dies or retires. Most of our men come to stay."

"If you ask the commissionaire on your way out, he'll point out the roof of Kerling's house. It's visible from our main entrance."

"Thanks. Now about this man Tanner, after his accident. He didn't choose to stay on with you, I gather?"

"No—and on the whole, I don't wonder at it. He was over five months in hospital, and then went away to the south coast for another three months—at the firm's expense, of course. We're pretty good to our men in the rare cases of the kind that happen. They paid all his expenses till he was completely recovered, and then gave him the choice between twelve hundred pounds compensation and suing for what he could get out of them. Being a wise man, he took the twelve hundred."

Cleeve shook his head. "I believe he went to London," he said, "but I'm not sure. Kerling's wife might know, if you care to ask her. But he didn't communicate with the firm after leaving—after he came back from the south coast, that is, and took his twelve hundred, so I don't really know what became of him."

Head paused to make a mental calculation. The explosion had occurred four years ago, and Tanner had spent five months in hospital and another three convalescing, which brought him to within four months of the time when Dickson and Mrs. Oliver had come to settle at Hartlands. It began to look as if he could be eliminated from the list of suspects in the case, but it would be as well to make certain.

"Does the name Oliver mean anything to you, Mr. Cleeve?" he asked abruptly. "Do you know anyone of that name?"

"Oliver? Oliver?" Cleeve repeated in a puzzled way. "Except for making me think of Cromwell, it leaves me cold."

"We've got a Miss Dixon, a typist—spells it with an 'x'. And that's all the Dixons I know, Mr. Head."

Cleeve shook his head. "No, and I don't know where you'd get one. What has he been doing, if I might ask, Mr. Head?"

"To be quite honest about it," Head answered, "I don't think he's been doing anything he ought not, but quite possibly you'll see his name in your morning paper in a day or two. At present, as nearly as I can make out, he's a taxi-driver—when he's at work."

"With only one eye. London wouldn't have licensed him, of course, but our county authorities are not so particular. And he's been at it the best part of two years without an accident."

"Well, he was a very good driver—a very good driver indeed," Cleeve observed. "A queer chap. Meant for better things than lorry or taxi-driving. There was—well, breed in him, if you'll get that."

"Yes, I get it." Head rose to his feet. "Thanks very much for your kindness, Mr. Cleeve. I'll go and look in on this Mrs. Kerling, and see what she can add to this you've told me about the man."

Instead of leaving it to the commissionaire, Cleeve himself went out to the entrance with his visitor, and showed him the roof of the foreman's cottage in the distance, after which they parted with a handshake, and Head, going on his way, found Mrs. Kerling at home. She was a woman in the late fifties, well under five feet in height, and almost as broad as she was long. Her daughter, a stout lass of fifteen or so, showed Head into a pegamoid and plush front parlour, in which Mrs. Kerling chose to receive him; she spoke with a suggestion of shortened breath, a sort of panting uncertainty over-reaching the end of a sentence without stopping to rest midway.

"Mr. Cleeve sent you, sir—yes, sir. Won't you take a seat? And you say it's about Tanner—or p'raps I ought to say Mr. Tanner. Bert, we always called him. Quiet, he was, never gave no trouble—most like a son to me. The way he used to help Millie with her lessons—I always said it was him got her through her exams. And then that fearful blowin' up! Cost him an eye, it did, not to speak of the way it spoilt his looks. Why, when he come back here for his things before he went off for good, I was shocked, I was. Really shocked. A tragedy, if ever there was one. Yes, it was rough on poor Bert, that was."

"He went to London, sir. Went to—let me see! He give me the address, and I've still got it somewhere. Millie?" She lifted up her voice, and the corpulent girl appeared after a brief interval.

"I'll tell your father about you, my child," Mrs. Kerling threatened. "Your ears want clipping, and you get 'em boxed too if you're not careful. Run up to my bedroom and fetch me the tea caddy off the mantelpiece in there. I want a paper out of it."

The girl went out, and returned with an old-fashioned wooden tea caddy, an ornately inlaid and polished Victorian trifle. Opening it, Mrs. Kerling took out a sheaf of letters and papers, and from among them selected one which she handed to Head.

"No, he told us the address, and my husband wrote it," she answered. "That's where he'd got rooms, he said, in case any letters happened to come here for him, but they never did. And he never wrote to us, either, after he'd gone. Millie was disappointed about that for a long while—used to look for a letter from him—didn't you, Millie?"

"Well, now, there's a story about that," Mrs. Kerling answered. "It'd be a good five years ago when he was walking out with Peggy Henson—yes, a good five years ago, it'd be." She paused to reflect.

Peggy—Margaret—for the moment Head saw a link. Then Mrs. Kerling spoke again, and speedily broke the link.

"She was in the office—the same place Miss Dixon's got now," she said. "Bert fell in love with her, head over ears in love. Worshipped the ground she walked on, as the saying is. And I'm not saying she wasn't in love with him, though not so much. He didn't say a lot, but you can always tell how it is. He'd used to spend all his evenings in studying, up to then, studying and writing things to send to the papers. But he went right off that after him and her got walking out. It went on—let me see!—from somewhere about the end of May of that year up into the September, and then all at once she went off and got married to Harry Perks, a man that keeps a dairy farm not more than a mile along the road. Never said a word about it beforehand, and they were married by licence. Fair did the dirty on Bert, she did. I remember him as white as a sheet, and he said to me: 'I don't mean even to so much as look at another girl, Mrs. Kerling.' And I told him: 'You're quite right, Bert, you are,' I said. 'They're all alike nowadays, and don't know a decent man when they see one.' For Harry Perks drinks like a fish, and after the dirty trick she served Bert I'm glad to say she's as miserable as she can be, now. Serve her right, I say. Bert would have been good to her, if she'd had sense."

"It sounds bad," Head agreed gravely. "And did he look at any other girl, after that?"

"Him? No, not him! He took to his books again and went on studying, as he used to before he fell for her. Used to get great big books out of the free library over in the town—and he read French as well as English books. Always studying to improve himself, and he told me one day he meant to write—to be a real author. He did get something printed in some paper, a London paper, it was. That was not long before he had his accident, when the explosion was. But Peggy Henson cured him of wasting any more time over girls."

"Ah! Thanks very much, Mrs. Kerling. You'll like to keep this address of his, I expect."

"No, I don't want it, sir. He's not likely to write to us now, and if he did he'd send us his address, I expect. Most likely he's left that place before now."

Head left her, and set out on his way back to Westingborough. He decided that he would not try to trace Tanner any farther, for the present. A wild theory that Dickson had run off with the man's wife, and that the murder was a simple case of revenge, went by the board, now. Tanner would hardly have fallen in love again, married, and been deserted by his wife, all in the space of four months—which was the interval between his leaving the Kerlings' and the Dicksons' arrival at Hartlands.

The inquest might prove revealing, though as yet its promise of revelations was utterly indefinite. Head recalled his own words to Wadden, and felt that he must act on them, since—almost—he could dismiss Tanner from his mind, now.

Chapter VII
Jeanne Ray's Tale

Wadden looked up at Jeffries, who stood in the doorway of his room. He pursed his lips as if to blow, but did not blow.

"Tanner, eh?" he reflected. "It'll be about the car, I expect. Right, I'll see him. Wait a bit, though, Jeffries."

He glanced up at the clock: Head had been gone nearly two hours, and the morning was wearing on. Jeffries stood, waiting patiently.

"Come inside, man, and shut the door," Wadden admonished. "It won't hurt Tanner to wait a minute or two. Look here, what staff is there at Hartlands—in addition to Mrs. Dickson and her maid, I mean?"

"There's a cook and housemaid, and a parlourmaid," Jeffries answered, colouring slightly. "And then there's Jaggers, the chauffeur."

"Smart young feller, aren't you?" Wadden suggested darkly. "But you've missed out one, surely?"

"Oh, yes, you have! Cook, housemaid, parlourmaid, chauffeur, personal maid to Mrs. Dickson—and follower. Follower's a rozzer, smart young rozzer. Going to marry her, Jeffries?"

"Don't look so worried about it, man! I'm just going to give you the rest of the morning off to go and see her—if she'll see you."

"To go along to Hartlands, and say we want Mrs. Dickson to identify our corpse at the inquest at three o'clock this afternoon. But I don't think we'll get her. She'll cough up some excuse, and I don't want you to insist, in that case. Warn the chauffeur to attend, instead of her. The identification is purely a formal business, and we want him in any case. You know why Mrs. Dickson won't turn up?"

"Because she isn't Mrs. Dickson, and having told Head she isn't, she'd have to give her real name at the inquest if she did turn up. Your little French lady hasn't told you that, eh?"

"Ah! Well, you're off duty, apart from going to Hartlands, till two o'clock—nominally, that is. In reality, Jeffries, I want you to spend as much of that time as you can with this girl, and let her tell you all she likes about the Dicksons—encourage her to tell you about 'em. You won't be doing the dirty on either of 'em, because he's dead and she didn't kill him—you'll be giving us a hand in tracing who did kill him. You won't be doing the dirty on your girl either, unless she killed him. Can you get her story and bring it here?"

"Right. Now mind you, Jeffries, this is an important piece of work I'm entrusting to you, and I want you to do your best. On top of that, Inspector Head and I had a talk some while ago, and you came into it—this is in confidence. Y' see, Jeffries, I'm going to retire soon, and then there'll be a lot of changes here."

"Yes, sir," said Jeffries rather uninterestedly. Like Head, he had heard so much about the superintendent's impending retirement as to have little faith in it. In fact, all Westingborough knew that Superintendent Wadden yearned to shed his uniform and grow tomatoes under glass, knew it so well that "when Wadden retires," and "one of Wadden's tomatoes," were synonyms in the town for the Greek kalends and nothing at all.

"Whaddye mean, man?" the superintendent demanded, and blew fiercely at his subordinate. "Whaddye mean, saying 'Yes, sir,' like that?"

"Well, don't say it as if you were in a dream, then," Wadden snapped. "What I was going to tell you is that Inspector Head and I have our eyes on you for plain-clothes work, if you go on behaving yourself. Now you can be off and test yourself out on this job I'm giving you, only push that man Tanner in here first. Then cut off to Hartlands—cycle it, I'd say, and report back here at two o'clock with as much of the history of the Dicksons as you can get. The lady's real name, by the way, is Oliver—Margaret Oliver, but you don't know it when you get talking to your future wife. French, isn't she?"

"Don't let her do that too much. We get quite a few foreigners here at times, and you'll find French useful, quite likely. Now push Tanner in here—is Sergeant Wells back yet?"

"Right. That's all, only tell him you're going, and he needn't bother about warning anyone at Hartlands. Report back at two."

Presently, Tanner stood by the superintendent's desk, peaked cap in hand, his disfigured face placidly immobile.

"Well, no, sir," the man answered. "I had a lot to think about, which is why I'm here to see you, to a certain extent."

Wadden shook his head. "I don't know," he said slowly. "No, I really don't know, Tanner. It's your livelihood, of course, but—" He broke off, and again shook his head gravely.

"Four hundred—two years ago. I've looked after it well, and it's in perfect condition. Apart from what happened in it last night, that is. The back seat will have to be re-covered."

"Ye-es," Wadden agreed, very thoughtfully. "And—yes, you're right. Even then, people who know it won't want to sit on the seat where a man was shot dead. And you'll get another and carry on?"

"I don't know, sir," Tanner answered. "People might not like to be driven by a man who's driven a passenger to his death—there are a lot of odd prejudices, and I've been thinking of what I'm up against. I haven't decided what to do, as a matter of fact."

"There's one born every minute, they say," Wadden half-soliloquised. "Well, it's no use asking me at this stage when you can have the car, for I can't tell you. You're sure you saw nobody along that road last night, Tanner? It might be useful to you if you did, you know."

"Meaning," the man said slowly, "that it might help to draw suspicion away from me. But as I told you last night, sir, I neither saw anyone nor heard the shots. They must have been silenced."

"Not a lot, except that it can be done, sir. I was with Purkis and Weddel till that explosion happened, and where they make explosives they talk about ways of using them. That's all."

"Simply because I must have heard either one or both of the shots, if it hadn't been. I've been round and had a look at the car, sir—I hope you don't mind my doing that—just to see what wants doing to it before I put it up for sale, and by the angle of those shots I'd have heard them if they'd been ordinary reports, even with all the row the gale was causing along that road. And I didn't hear them."

"Umm-m! Well, Tanner, I can't tell you when that car will be available for you. Mr. Head may be able to give you some information on the point, to-morrow, say. If you're giving up taxi work here, as you suggest, what do you intend to do instead?"

"No, of course not. Has Sergeant Wells warned you for the inquest at the Corn Hall this afternoon?"

"If they come to you before the inquest, tell 'em you'll spin your yarn there in full. If after it, tell 'em you spun it there. You can give 'em your life story and your political views if you like, but keep off last night's happenings. I'll let you know about the car as soon as I can, and if I can hurry it back to you, I will."

With his bicycle leaning against one of the Georgian pillars that dated Hartlands, Constable Jeffries rang the bell at the front door and waited. Presently the door swung open and revealed Ellen James, parlourmaid, capped and aproned and unwelcoming.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" she observed. "I thought we'd have had dozens of you up here before now. Who do you want to see?"

"Well, you can't see her. She won't see anyone. The doctor's been, and after he went she said she couldn't see anyone at all."

"Will you go and tell her she's wanted as a witness at the inquest this afternoon?" Jeffries asked, unmoved by the statement.

The girl hesitated. "You'd better come inside and wait," she said at last. "I never thought of that. Yes, I'll go and tell her."

He entered the hall, and she closed the door. "Just wait while I tell her," she said, and turned away.

"At three o'clock, in the Corn Hall at Westingborough, tell her," he added, and she paused to nod comprehension and then went on.

In this luxuriously furnished entrance hall, no sound reached him after the girl had ascended the staircase. The quiet of the place had in it an ominous quality, as if, broodingly, the house itself realised what had happened to its master. And Jeffries thought of that master as he had known him by sight: a quiet, slinky sort of man, he had always seemed, one who would steal about noiselessly rather than walk as did others: deeply bronzed by years abroad—he had been out in the East, it was understood, until his mother's death here, and since his return had not been a popular figure as was, say, Raymond Neville of Long Ridge, or other residents of equal standing in the district. A wealthy man, certainly, for his mother had left him some fifty thousand pounds and this estate, but neither he nor his presumable wife had entered into Westingborough life to any extent, nor, as far as was known, had they entertained friends from outside. The fact that the woman was not his wife might explain it all: if they had mixed in with others and taken part in social functions, the truth about her might have come out: someone might have recognised her.

A slighter, smaller form than that of the parlourmaid came silently down the stairs, and Jeffries wakened from his brooding to smile at the girl as she faced him, smiling too.

"Ah, Phileep!" She spoke her welcome in little more than a whisper. "Ellen tell m'dame what you want, an' m'dame send me to tell you. She will not come to your inquest—no! The doctor say she is not well—'ysteric. The shock of what 'appen. She will not come."

"Like that, eh?" he observed thoughtfully, remembering his instruction. "Well, if she won't, she won't. Which doctor was it said she wasn't fit to give evidence—do you know?"

"Doctor 'Arris. She send Jaggers for 'im very early, for we 'ave no telephone till they mend the wire. So Jaggers say."

"I see. Well, I think I'd better warn Jaggers to attend instead. Do you think you could find him for me, Jeanne?"

She took his arm and smiled up at him. I am glad they send you, an' not any other," she added as she impelled him across the hall. "I think I do not see you much more, for a time. M'dame tell me this morning I must go, because she will not want me any more."

"Why, yes—m'dame 'erself leave too, now. Soon. After things is all settle down—no, settle up, you say. An' she say she will not want me any more. I 'ope I find a place somewhere near, Phileep."

"Wait—then we talk. Yes, through the kitchen—Jaggers is in the yard, I think. You tell 'im, then we talk—yes?"

Following her, he crossed a paved yard at the back of the house to a garage in which an elderly, sedate-looking man in shirt-sleeves polished an already clean saloon car: it appeared that he looked for infinitesimal specks of dust in the absence of any more vital employment, and he ceased his labours to look up at the constable.

"Very sad, Mr. Jaggers," Jeffries assented. "I've come to tell you that you'll be wanted to identify Mr. Dickson's body at the inquest, at three o'clock this afternoon in Westingborough Corn Hall."

"Well, I s' pose I'll have to be there, then," Jaggers said. "I've worked here thirty year come August, an' I never reckoned it'd come to this. Have they caught the man that done it yet?"

Jeffries shook his head. "They haven't, but I'm afraid it's not my place to talk about it. You'll be there at three o'clock then?"

And Jeffries returned across the yard with Jeanne, who maintained a silence until they reached the entrance hall again. There, with a glance round to make certain that they were unobserved, he took her in his arms to kiss her, and so for a minute held her.

"Phileep," she said, "I think of something. You wait 'ere, an' I go an' see m'dame. You are not in a 'urry—no?"

She went with noiseless haste up the staircase, and Jeffries waited what seemed to him a long time. Then she returned, clad now in outdoor garb, a dainty, attractive little figure.

"You see, I ask 'er can I go out till the afternoon, an she say I can—she sit in 'er room an' look at the fire, an do not want anything. It is grief for 'erself, I think, not for 'im. But that is nothing to us. You say you 'ave all the morning, so we walk back to Westingborough together—yes? I walk with you, Phileep?"

"So we go, Phileep, only—one leetle kiss, where nobody see. Ah, big, strong Phileep! An' per'aps I get some place quite near, to save more for the dot—you know what he is, hein?"

"Ah, you know him! An' for the leetle Phileep or the leetle Jeanne, if we 'ave them. So! Now—one more leetle kiss, then we go."

They went out into the mild, still February morning. There was hazed sunlight over the sodden parkland through which the drive curved down and over the river bridge to the road. Beyond the bridge, to which they had walked almost in silence, Jeanne held the bicycle while Jeffries lighted a cigarette, and then they walked on.

"M'dame tell me this morning, it must all come out, so I can tell you, Phileep," she said. "She was not marry to 'im."

"No. Now she say 'er real name must be known, so she will go away from 'ere, though 'e leave 'er nearly everything. She tell me she will sell the 'ouse an' go, but not go back. She talk like one that is most un'appy, yet I think it is all for 'erself."

"Phileep, I do not think so," she dissented. "I was with 'er—it is a long story, but we 'ave a long walk, so I tell you—but not till we get past these men. She is strange, that woman, yet I think I understand. There is some women like that—like she is."

They came to the men working on the fallen tree, and Jeffries exchanged greetings with them as he had done on his outward journey. Then, beyond their hearing, Jeanne went on with her tale.

"It was four year ago when I go to the agents that find me work—you see, up to then, I 'ave a place with a lady, but she is killed in a motor accident, so I 'ave no place, an' again I go to the agents. They send me to see a Mrs. Oliver—she is this woman you think is Mrs. Dickson, because she call 'erself that. You see?"

"Not then, because she was with 'er 'usband. It was a suite in a 'otel, the Savoy 'Otel. I see 'er, an' she engage me. They 'ave not been married long, an' all the time they stay in the suite, because they was going on a cruise to the East, an' 'er 'usband give 'er everything she want, so she must 'ave a maid to go too. An' she engage me. I think, then, they 'ad been married per'aps four or five months, not more, an' there was no one thing in all the world that she ask that 'e do not give 'er. So much did 'e love 'er, that man."

"I said that was the name. An' we go on the cruise, 'im, an' 'er, an' me. Me in the second-class, but I 'ave a nice cabin to myself."

"Phileep, I tell you—that woman take always, when it is the man, and give never. She is made like that—it is not to blame 'er, unless you would blame me because my eyes is brown an' not blue. It is the nature of 'er, an' she know no other way to live. Per'aps for a time she think first of the grand passion is wear away, then she turn where she will, an' no man, no matter what 'e is, can 'old 'er. She is like that."

"No! Because I tell you it is not 'er fault, but so she is made. I know 'er for four years, an' so I know 'er very well. An' soon after I take that place she know she can trust me, an' so she like me very much, an' talk to me more like friend than maid. So she always talk to me, an' so I know—all I know. All I tell you now."

"Except that I tell you of 'er ways, all the rest is what everybody will know, she say, so why should not I tell you, Phileep? We go on the cruise, Algier, Tunisie, Egypt, an' then the Red Sea. Phileep, I know what 'ell is like—it is to go through the Red Sea, for I 'ave been through twice, once to go an' once to come back, an' I do not know which time was the worser. 'Ell is the Red Sea, in a ship."

"'Ot, yes. All that time—did I say they 'ad not long been married—yes. All that time it was well for those two, for as yet she was not tire of 'im. Then the ship call at Colombo in Ceylon, an' go on—an' catch fire on the way to Penang. Per'aps your remember—the Castilian Empress, she go on fire at that time."

"It was the finish of the cruise. I think there was not anybody 'urt, but they put us all in the boats an' we go to Penang, an' the ship she is burnt too much to cruise any more that time. I think she sink, but I do not know. We come to a 'Otel, an' there we stay, an' m'dame buy new clothes an' Mr. Oliver too—"

"'E 'ad plenty of money—yes. I do not know what 'e was or 'ow 'e get 'is money, but assuredly 'e was a rich man. I think something in London, per'aps a bank, or a big company. I do not know. But we stay there in Penang, an' there in the same 'otel was this Mr. Dickson. An' she meet 'im, an' from that day I see the change. She do not tell 'er 'usband that she 'ave met Mr. Dickson, an' I think she keep them from meeting each other all she can, but to 'er 'usband she is changed, an' make excuse to 'im about it—we was to wait for a ship to go on to Japan, then, an' it was not possible at first to get the three passages, an' she do not wish to go without me. So we wait there, an' she turn from 'er 'usband because of this Mr. Dickson."

"Not then one year—no. But it is to 'er—always the new sensation. Mr. Oliver was good to 'er—there is nothing she ask 'e do not give 'er, an' 'e never quarrel with 'er. But she is like that. As might be a small child that tire of one thing an' desire another. So with 'er, an' all the time she is troubled, for so she deceive 'erself. So much that she say to me one day—'Jeanne,' she say, 'I 'ave lost the power to make 'im 'appy.' And I—what can I say? She let 'er thought an' 'er desire go where it will, all 'er life she do that."

"Yet if you know 'er, my dear, you do not say that," Jeanne demurred. "For she is a very sweet nature, that one, an' all the time it is that she do not think what she do—she do not understand, when she 'erself change, that the other do not fit to the change. I know 'er so well, I know it is that she do not understand, and is much distress because of what she do—yet she do it. She tell me—'I cannot make myself care for 'im any more. I am sorry, Jeanne, so very sorry for 'im, but I cannot. All that flame in me is dead.' so she say it to me, an' there is that in 'er voice which make it sound true. Because, an' this is the wrong, she live always to 'erself, an' in 'erself. So it was there in Penang, an' she grieve because of 'er 'usband, but not less she wish to go to this other man."

"An' went to 'im," Jeanne assented. "It was the day before the boat for Japan come to Penang, an' we was to go in it. But we do not go, not all. For in the evening before, Mr. Oliver send for me, an' 'e tell me—she is not to 'im any more, but to go to this other man, Mr. Dickson. An' 'e tell me 'e wish I go with 'er, because 'e will give 'er all she wish, still, so much do 'e love 'er. An' 'e tell me, when first 'e say to 'er that she would like to keep me with 'er, she think 'e want me to go to be spy on 'er an' tell 'im, so 'e say 'e promise 'er never to 'old any communication with me at all, after that I go with 'er whereever she go, an' I must not try to 'old no communication with 'im. But 'e know she like me an' trust me in all things, so she would like me to go an' still be with 'er. An' 'e tell me with the tear in 'is eyes, that night—'You be good to 'er, Jeanne, as I would be always good to 'er, but she will not let me any more.' An' 'e say, too—'She will not always want 'im, any more than she want me, for I know if I was not enough for 'er, then 'e cannot be. It will end, an' then I 'ope you will be with 'er still, because you understand an' so do not so much blame.' This 'e say to me, an' I promise that while she wish it I stay and do just so much as I can for 'er, not because I am 'er maid, but because she is woman, like me—"

"Non, not all like me, for I think I live more in other life than in my own. 'Er life, an' if the little Mother of God will 'ave it for me, your life soon, my Phileep, because it is a very great love I 'ave grown in me for you, big man—no, it is the road, an' you must not kiss me 'ere, but I kiss you inside myself, hein? But that is the story, an' we come 'ere, an' life is dull for me till I meet you. An' for 'er, at first it is not dull, an' I think because—you see, Phileep, Mr. Oliver love 'er too much, an' give 'er everything, so she do not value 'im. What you 'ave all the time with no trouble, you do not value. 'E was foolish to give all, like 'e did, for if 'e 'old back a little, an' not let 'er know so truly she is all 'is world, she would not so soon tire. I do not say she would not tire, since it is 'er nature, but not so soon. An' this man, Mr. Dickson, 'e is not the same. 'E ask more than 'e give, quarrel sometimes with 'er, an' so she do not so soon tire, because she is not so sure of 'im. But in the end she tire as Mr. Oliver tell me she would, an' now, if it was not for the terrible thing that 'appen an' make 'er afraid, I think it would be relief to 'er that 'e is no more to trouble 'er."

"Afraid—yes. She blame 'erself—she is not 'appy, that woman, for she know she is wrong, inside of 'erself. An' afraid of I do not know what, unless she think it is because of 'er Mr. Dickson is killed."

"Per'aps—I do not know. Last autumn she go to London for a fortnight an' do not take me—she go alone, to stay with a friend she know in London, a girl she knew before she was married. Since then she is not the same to Mr. Dickson, but now she is older than when she was married she pretend to 'im, an' 'e do not see—I think 'e did not see. Per'aps 'e is used to 'er, an' there is not any more the new passion of the first beginning, so 'e do not notice. But she is different, an' she look for letters an ask me if there is a letter to see she get it when 'e is not there, if it is in the 'andwriting of that friend with which she go to stay last autumn. An' every week there is a letter which 'e do not know of. That, I think, is the next man for 'er, the one to which she would go from Mr. Dickson as she go to 'im from 'er 'usband. Only, Mr. Dickson is dead."

"It looks to me that the sooner you get away from a woman like that, Jeanne, the better," Jeffries said with some energy. "Else, we shall have you doing a series of hops from one man to another, soon."

"You do not in your 'eart think I am like that, Phileep, else you would not ask me to marry you as soon as you are promote. You know I am not like that. An' you blame 'er because you do not know 'er. She is not bad, like you think. No! I tell you, she is not! She know 'erself she is foolish, but it is because always she live to 'erself, an' ask that the world go round for 'er. I tell you 'ow little she see what she do. There was many things Mr. Oliver give 'er, an' still she keep them all about 'er. One day Mr. Dickson ask 'er—'Why do you wear that bracelet—it is the one Oliver give you, is it not?' An' she say—'Why should I not wear it? I like it.' Now, to me it would be impossible that I should keep things from one man when I go to another, for it would shame me to see them, an' remind me of 'ow I 'ad per'aps 'urt that man as I know she 'urt Mr. Oliver. But she cannot see, she cannot feel that. Only what she 'erself feel, not what other people feel. That time at Penang, I 'ear Mr. Oliver speak to 'er about leaving 'im, an' she say—'I am so sorry, Cliff.' For that is the name she call 'im. Yet it is not true—she cannot feel sorry only for 'erself, not for anyone else. An' yet she is very sweet."

"I'm afraid I don't understand, Jeanne," Jeffries said. "How the devil you can think anyone like that sweet—" He gave it up with a little cluck of impatience. "Damned selfishness, I call it."

"You think I make excuse for 'er, because you do not know 'er, Phileep. Well, per'aps I do make excuse. Say that she cast a spell, an' I cannot 'elp it. But you are not angry with me?"

He looked down and met her gaze. "You're far too sweet yourself for that, my dear," he answered. "Hullo! Who's this? Tanner, by gum! Nothing else to do, I suppose."

They had come as far as the bridge by which the road crossed the Idleburn, at the foot of the hill leading up into the town. Tanner turned from gazing over the parapet as they neared him.

"Nothing else to do till I get my car back," Tanner said disgruntledly, and turned, as they passed, to lean over the parapet again.

She looked back momentarily. "Poor man! Some time, I think, 'e was shot too. The face—it is not good to see a man like that."

"An' so 'e cannot work, poor man. So one thing lead to many, is it not? Phileep, I go with you into the town, an' then I leave you to see is there a agent's place where per'aps I can find another place, so I do not go away when m'dame go. You would like that?"

"Oh, Phileep, that will be lovely! Only then I must 'urry back, after lunch, catch the first omnibus. But we 'ave lunch together."

"You can catch the five-past two 'bus," he promised. "Come straight along after you've finished what you want to do, Jeanne, and if I'm not in, tell the landlady you're to wait for me. I'll be there first, though, probably."

"If not, I wait. Phileep, I am not like my m'dame. My love is for always, not to come and go away again."

"Jeanne, you shouldn't say things like that in a public street, where it's impossible to kiss you."

Chapter VIII
Denham is Doubtful

"YOU see, Mr. Head, Miss Ray has got a lot of common sense about her, and I felt a bit dubious about passing on to you what she'd told me practically in confidence," Jeffries explained at the end of his story. So when she came to lunch with me at my landlady's place, I put it to her that what she'd told me might be useful to you, and though she was a bit reluctant at first, she finally consented to my telling you the whole story on condition that it didn't become general knowledge."

"Which, of course, it won't," Head promised. "But about your seeing Tanner while you were with her. He spoke to you, you say?"

"Yes. Commented on the change in the weather, and when I remarked on his being there he said he had nothing else to do till he got the car back. He was lounging on the bridge, leaning against the parapet."

"Quite natural," Head observed reflectively, "and yet did Miss Ray hear what he said to you quite clearly?"

Head thought, but did not say, that in this he saw the most conclusive reason that had yet appeared for dismissing Tanner from his mind as the possible author of the crime. For the story Jeffries had told showed that Jeanne Ray had known Clifford Oliver fairly well, and if this man had been in any way connected with Oliver she would surely have recognised his voice, while she had given no sign of recognition of any kind.

Then his telephone bell rang, and he removed the receiver. "All right, Jeffries—it's a helpful story. Yes?"—to the instrument—"Purkis, Westingborough Parva—what is it, Purkis?"

"Superintendent Wadden's call through this morning—I recognise your voice, Mr. Head. The information is for you, I suppose?"

"Of course it's for me, if it bears on last night's shooting, man. What have you to tell?"

"A man on a bicycle, wearing a long greyish waterproof and soft felt hat, cycling through the village street here at about a quarter to nine, seen by Tom Mullins of the Dewdrop Inn here. Tom went outside to fasten a flapping shutter just as the man was passing."

"No, sir, nor was there any sign that the man was carrying a gun of any sort. Tom says he had his head well down over the handlebars, and had come from the direction of Hartlands. Since he was cycling practically into the wind, and the rain was driving at him, he would have his head well down, of course. Tom doesn't know what became of him after he passed the inn. We're not too well off for street lighting here, as probably you know. I questioned Tom particularly as to which road the man took at the fork just past the inn, but he couldn't say. The night being what it was, he took no particular notice, but finished with his shutter and hurried in out of the wet."

"All there is, Mr. Head. Nothing distinctive about the bicycle, and—oh, yes, it was a long coat, because Tom thought the tails of it might easily get mixed up with the spokes of the back wheel and throw the rider off; but nothing of the sort happened. A waterproof, because it glistened."

"Well, see if you can get any indication of where he went—which road he took at the fork. Meanwhile I'll inform Carden and tell them to get busy there, in case he went that way. All right, Purkis."

He replaced his receiver: beyond the Dewdrop Inn at Westingborough Parva, the road branched west over Long Ridge to come down into the valley in which Carden village nestled on the other side of the hill, and north-east—this latter a narrow, little-used lane—to join on to the main London road some three miles north of Westingborough Magna. If the cyclist had gone this latter way, there was little chance of his having been seen, for traffic along that lane on such a night was hardly a possibility. Neither, for that matter, was it likely that he would have been seen between the Dewdrop Inn and Carden village if he had taken the left-hand fork, for nobody who could possibly avoid travelling would be out in such a storm, the worst known for years in the district. On the other hand, somebody might have seen the man.

Then there was the story of Margaret Oliver and her husband awaiting consideration. A lamia of a woman, she must be, since, knowing all that Jeanne Ray did, the girl would not condemn her mistress completely over what appeared an utterly selfish and inconsiderate impulse, nor, apparently, had Oliver condemned her, since even when she left him he thought of and for her. Had he, in ripened, determined bitterness against Dickson, cycled as far as the fallen tree in order to kill the man? If so, whence had he come, and where gone after the killing?

It being then fifteen minutes short of three o'clock, Head closed his desk and went off to the corn Hall, for the inquest was at three.

Reporters' pencils worked furiously as Albert Henry Tanner told his story at the coroner's bidding. There was a straightforward sincerity about the man that impressed Payne-Garland, the coroner, favourably, and went far to dispel an initial impression that Tanner might be implicated in or responsible for the crime.

"And you say you heard nothing whatever which might have been the report of a gun or pistol?" Payne-Garland asked at the end of the tale.

"By the noise of the storm and rattle of rain on the car—it was coming in gusts. Also, I think a silenced pistol must have been used, for in spite of the storm I should probably have heard an ordinary report, judging by the direction the bullet took."

"And you saw nobody between the time when Mr. Denham stopped you to tell you about the fallen tree, and your discovery that Mr. Dickson had been shot when you stopped at the tree?"

"Nothing at all, sir. I'm afraid I was too much concerned over finding that Mr. Dickson was dead to look carefully at first. Not that I did look carefully at all, because it seemed then that he must have been shot on my way to the tree, while the car was travelling."

"It may have been, sir, for all I know. In fact, I went along the road this morning, looking for shells ejected from a pistol. I'd had a look at the car and seen the bullet lodged in the woodwork, and it looked to me like a pistol bullet. I know the ejector on an automatic pistol throws the shells some distance, and thought if I could find them it might fix the place where Mr. Dickson was shot."

"Didn't it strike you that the police would have made a similar search, and that they would have found those shells if it had been possible, Tanner? Why should you attempt to search?"

"Because, sir, for one reason I'm bound to come under a certain amount of suspicion over this—over Mr. Dickson's death—till it's cleared up, and in addition to that, I've worked long enough in an explosive factory to know something about the ways of an automatic pistol. I mean, my experience gives me an idea of where to look for exploded shells—I know how a pistol ejector throws them."

"But I understood you were a lorry driver at those explosive works until your accident, and not a tester or anything of that sort?"

"Quite true, sir, but I've seen a lot of testing on different kinds of explosives and with different types of gun and pistol. I'm not exactly what you'd call a layman over it."

"I see. Now you said that you hesitated, after finding that Mr. Dickson was dead, as to whether to report his death to the police. Why was that? Surely it was your duty to report the occurrence?"

"I didn't hesitate over reporting it, sir, but over leaving Mrs. Dickson at Hartlands in ignorance of what had happened. Then, since I couldn't drive past the fallen tree to Hartlands, I decided to come straight back to the police station here at Westingborough and report as I did, leaving the police to communicate with Mrs. Dickson."

"To the extent of having driven him home twice before, and no more than that. He generally took a taxi from the station yard when he came off a train, and twice he picked me."

"Once back in the autumn, sir, and once about Christmas time—before Christmas, it was. Mrs. Dickson was with him, that time."

"You are quite positive that you neither saw nor heard anyone or anything that might help in discovering how Mr. Dickson was shot?"

"You say you are not exactly a layman over the use of a gun or pistol. That being so, Tanner, where, in your opinion, did the shot that killed Mr. Dickson come from?"

"It's very difficult to say, sir. If it were fired from the side of the road when the car was passing, it would have been a very good shot indeed who fired it, though I was travelling slowly, as I told you. More likely it was fired from behind the tree trunk, after I'd stopped the car, or just as I was stopping it, and fired out of a silenced automatic pistol. Then there would be only a mere popping noise which I might not hear with the rain beating on the car in gusts, as I said, and the noise of the wind as well."

Following him came Hugh Denham—it was not the first occasion on which Denham had had to face Payne-Garland as witness at an inquest, and his previous experience rendered him rather stiff over his initial replies. But the coroner led him on to tell how he had driven as far as the fallen tree, turned about on discovering that he could go no farther, and stopped and warned Tanner on his way back to Westingborough at, as nearly as he could tell, between eight o'clock and a quarter past. He had driven on while Tanner and his passenger were talking, and was quite sure Dickson was uninjured then.

"Well, first of all I saw the tree itself laid across the road. A Mr. Guddle had met and warned me it had fallen, just as I met and warned the taxi-driver, and in consequence of that I kept my speed down as soon as I caught sight of the tree. The rain was driving on to my windscreen so that I couldn't see anything clearly, but I did see a man toward the right side of the road, in front of the tree trunk and facing toward me. At least, when the headlights picked him out, I had the impression that he was facing me, though I can't be sure of it. If so, he turned his back almost at once—"

"Yes, but not enough to be certain of it, with the rain clouding my windscreen as it did. My first really clear sight of him was with his back to me, stooping and diving the tree trunk—it was raised up off the road enough for him to get under it."

"A hat, not a cap, pulled well down over his head, and a long greyish or fawn waterproof or rainproof—my impression was that it was a rubbered waterproof, but I'm not sure of that. A tall man, I think, but again I can't be sure. And he might have had a gun under his left arm, or a pistol in his left hand."

"Why do you say a pistol? It isn't usual for men to carry pistols on lonely country roads in this district, surely?"

"No, but I've been thinking over it since last night," Denham explained. "Then, before I knew what had happened, I thought the man had an ordinary shotgun in the hollow of his left arm, because all I got was the glint of steel in the ray of my headlights. But now I know bullets were fired there, I realise it may have been a pistol in the man's hand and not a shotgun at all."

"And may not even have been a pistol," Payne-Garland suggested. "In fact, may not have been a weapon of any kind?"

"May not," Denham conceded, "but I don't know what else in the form of metal the man could have been carrying, to give that unmistakable gleam of a line of steel of some sort to the left of him."

"Not definitely. I say I took it for a gun or pistol, and think it more likely to have been that than anything else."

"I haven't the slightest idea. I couldn't tell, at the time, that his movements would become interesting—would become relevant to anything of this sort, that is. To the shooting of anyone, I mean."

"Yes, because I troubled no more about him. I merely made certain that it was impossible to get any farther along the road, as Guddle had told me it would be, and then reversed round and came back to Westingborough, meeting and warning the taxi man on the way."

"I saw Guddle before I reached the fallen tree, saw this man dodge under it too soon for me to identify him in any way, and saw the taxi and stopped it on my way back. But nobody else whatsoever. It was the sort of night when nobody would be out except under compulsion."

"An old servant very ill at Westingborough Parva—I wanted to go and see her, if I could. This morning I had news that she is dead."

Thomas Jaggers, who had already given evidence of identification of the body, was recalled, and stated that he had driven Dickson to the station in the morning, and had seen him enter an express train which would not stop between Westingborough and London. Dickson had said that he was uncertain as to what train he would catch for the return journey, and therefore Jaggers need not turn the car out in the evening to meet him. He would take a taxi home from the station.

"Pretty much, sir. Generally he went to London of a Wednesday like that, and most times he come back by taxi from the station."

"Yes, sir. It was just on dark when I took some letters to post, but not so dark that I couldn't see it—somewhere between five and half-past, it'd be. I went so far as the pillar-box, and then come back, reckonin' to ring up or get someone in the house to ring up and tell about it, but we couldn't ring up anyone. The tree broke the wires an' the telephone was out of action."

"Well, I reckoned the police ought to know. They'd know who to get on to to clear the road, I thought, if we told 'em."

"Well, Jaggers, did you see anyone along the road when you went as far as the post-box and back?"

"Not a soul, sir. It was the sort of night when you wouldn't turn a dog out, with the wind a-roarin', an' the rain drivin' down heavens hard. I felt glad I hadn't got to turn the car out."

"Well, I reckon you could hide most anywhere you liked, sir, either our side or opposite. Lots of trees and plenty of undergrowth, but I wouldn't care to go in among 'em last night. Too wet, it was."

Payne-Garland smiled, then frowned. The frown was caused by the report from Doctor Harris which had been handed to him at the beginning of these proceedings, in which it was stated that Mrs. Dickson was not in a fit state to give evidence.

Then he reviewed the evidence for the benefit of his jury, of which Woods, the leading grocer in the town, had been elected foreman. Woods followed his summary with straining intentness, and from time to time cast a glance at Tanner, as if he hoped the coroner would give some pointers which would justify them in proclaiming him the culprit. But the hope was vain.

"You have evidence that this man was killed by a bullet fired, as Inspector Head has deposed when he produced the bullet, from a thirty-eight bore automatic pistol, and passing through the window of the car in which the deceased was seated, to lodge in his brain. Suicide is out of the question. The possibility of accident must not be ruled out, but automatic pistols of thirty-eight bore are registered in police records, and the chance of a local owner of such a weapon having been along that road on such a night, and firing the weapon at random, is very nearly, if not quite, ridiculous. Which leaves us the probability of a shot carefully aimed and fired with intent to kill. Mr. Denham has told you the little that he saw of the possible—and in my own opinion probable—author of this crime. It appears to me that we shall serve no useful purpose in adjourning this inquiry for further evidence, though I must admit a regret that certain evidence which I had hoped to get, and which Mrs. Dickson might have given, is on medical report unavailable. This, gentlemen"—he fixed Woods with his gaze at this point, and spoke slowly and impressively—"is in my opinion a case of deliberate and carefully planned murder, with the circumstances of the tree fallen across the road aiding the murderer in carrying out his plans, though, if there had been no tree, an almost equally good opportunity would have been provided for the assassin when the taxi-driver got down to open the gate leading to the drive to Hartlands. You may question why the driver did not hear the shot, but I myself heard enough of last night's storm to realise that if a silenced pistol were used, as appears to have been the case, there was every possibility that he would not hear it. Beating rain, possibly rattling windows in the car, and the roar of the wind, together with the fact that the man would not be listening for a shot nor expecting anything of the kind, are enough to account for his hearing nothing unusual. This seems to me a case of murder by a person, seen but not identified by Mr. Denham, and therefore unknown. You may therefore return a verdict in accordance with the established facts."

Return it they did, and Woods mouthed it finely. But, being the man he was, he added a rider to the effect that he couldn't see what the authorities were thinking about when they let one-eyed taxi-drivers have licences, and, if Tanner had been a normal man with two eyes, he might have seen something that would help the police. For, he pointed out, the shot had come from the right of the car, and it was Tanner's right eye that was incapable of seeing anything. He wished it put on record that the jury recommended the man's licence be withdrawn, and that only physically fit men be admitted to drive taxis in Westingborough for the future.

To which Payne-Garland responded acidly that this was the first, and probably would be the last, occasion on which anyone had been shot in a taxi in the district. Tanner had passed all tests, and was entitled to earn his living by driving a taxi until proved incapable of so doing—and from what he, Payne-Garland, had seen and heard of the man, there was no evidence of incapacity. He himself had engaged Tanner to drive him on more than one occasion, and would not hesitate to do so again. He requested Woods to withdraw the rider.

Withdrawn accordingly. Verdict—murder by some person or persons unknown. And thus the inquest terminated.

Chapter IX
Jaggers

BACK in his own room after the conclusion of the inquest, Wadden looked gloomily at Head, and blew gently.

"He would have been if he'd found them," Head answered. "They were my first thought when I got there last night, and I took Borrow with me when I searched the sides of the road for footprints. I don't know what Tanner's expert knowledge amounts to, but I do know I looked over every foot of that right bank on both sides of the tree, and my electric torch isn't exactly a glow-lamp. Brass shells from a thirty-eight automatic would have showed up if they'd been there."

"The man who fired the shots took good care to collect the shells after the pistol had ejected them," Head said with certainty. "I'd say he had an electric torch, too, and his area of search for them was not nearly as big as mine—he knew where to look. All automatics throw to the right, as perhaps you know."

"I ought. Here, does it strike you that Tanner went a trifle too far in bringing in those shells in his evidence? Quite gratuitous, it was. What about running him in and charging him without any more fuss? He's too plausible altogether, for my liking."

"I don't see the necessity, yet," Head dissented after a thoughtful pause. "He's much too wise a bird to attempt running away, and we haven't settled anything about that man with a gun or pistol that Denham's so sure about. By the way, have you looked up the firearms' register for thirty-eight automatics in the district?"

"I'm not quite daft," Wadden retorted, and blew a wintry gust at the implication of neglect over such a thing. "Three. Raymond Neville's got one, and you know you can rule him out. Young Tom Baker's got one, and he's laid up with a broken leg. The third belonged to Frederick Dickson as long as he lived, but I can't tell you how he disposed of it in his will. I'm telling you that in case you thought you could get out of going to Hartlands again, and taking it all round, I wonder you didn't begin worrying about it before."

"Have a heart, chief!" Head begged. "Some twenty-four hours ago, Dickson was alive in the train coming back from London. I simply had to go over to Purkis and Weddel's and make that inquiry about Tanner, and what time have I had for anything else? But Dickson had a thirty-eight, eh? That puts a different complexion on the shooting."

"How?" Wadden asked interestedly. "Just bear in mind that the pistol intended for illegal use is never registered. Murderers and burglars who carry guns always omit the formality."

"Never registered by the illegal users," Head amended, "but they may be illicitly borrowed from the people who did register them. And as for going to Hartlands again, I'm going there now."

"Run it in your own sweet way," Wadden advised caustically. "Don't blame me if Tanner bolts and you have to chase him half-way round the world. It wouldn't enhance your reputation if he did."

"I told you all I learned of Tanner's past history, chief, and it's a fairly lucid account, on the whole. Show me one scrap of motive for Tanner to kill Dickson, and I'll run him in and buy you a new hat as well, before I start for Hartlands."

"And I want a new hat, too," Wadden half-soliloquised. "Sorry, Head. You'd better buzz off—it'll be dark before you get there as it is. If I think of a motive before you get back, can I have that hat?"

It was dusk, but not yet dark, when he drew up in front of Hartlands and, leaving the car, went up the steps into the porch and rang the bell. By the morrow, he knew, that bell would become a source of annoyance to the inmates of the house, but so far the hounds of the Press had not got their noses down to this trail, and the old house drowsed in the quiet of late evening, a stillness that seemed impossible if one remembered the roaring, raging storm of twenty-four hours earlier. While Head stood waiting, an elderly man whom he recognised as Jaggers came round from the side of the house to its front, looked at him, and retreated out of sight. Then he faced the opened door and Ellen James holding it.

"Well, you can't," the girl replied snappishly. "Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. Inspector Head, isn't it?"

"That is the name," he assured her blandly. "Will you tell Mrs. Dickson I should like to see her for a minute?"

Something in a name, Head thought as he entered and the girl closed the door. She indicated a seat in the wide entrance hall, and left him. After a rather long interval she returned.

He followed her to the same room in which he had first interviewed the woman who was not Mrs. Dickson. Again he saw her, seated in the big armchair that was, and yet was not, incongruous with the rest of the room's furnishings: there was a cheerful fire in the grate, and its light—for apart from it the room was unlighted—revealed her mobile, sensitive features, and possibly modified what would have been a paleness in a normal, colder light.

"To ask, Mrs. Oliver," he answered, and saw that she started at the name—flinched from it, he would have described the movement. "I want, first of all, an automatic pistol belonging to Mr. Dickson, and apart from that I want to go through all his effects very carefully, either with you or anybody you choose to appoint as witness, or alone!"

She considered it. "Have you any right to ask this?" she demanded at last. "I mean, can you compel me?"

"A man has been killed," he said inexorably. "It is my business to find the one who killed him. I am looking, now, for enough of his life to find from it who might have killed him, and for that I would do anything. Don't think of me as a man, Mrs. Oliver, but as a machine set working by what happened last night."

As he spoke, her figure drooped more and more in the chair, until she was no more than a backward-slanting, indistinct figure—for now such light as came through the window was failing fast, and Head himself was no more than an outline beside the big chair. He could hear her hurried breathing, and the firelight revealed her twitching fingers.

Again she sat erect. "To—to go through all he left," she said harshly. "Do you realise, Mr. Head, that you have given me time to go through everything myself, and destroy—destroy anything I liked?"

The darkness in which he stood concealed his smile. "You haven't dared, Mrs. Oliver," he said. "You're clever enough to know that there might be outside indications of things missing, if you destroyed them. As very possibly there are. Now, have I your permission to go through everything belonging to this dead man, or must I act without it?"

"Must you act?" Again her voice dropped to a whisper for the question, and she kept her face back in the shadows.

"I have spared you all I can," he said quietly. "I might have insisted on your appearing at the inquest today, or asked for an adjournment at which you would have to appear. I don't even know myself why I've spared you, but I have. Now, I ask."

She stood up, and still he could not see her face. "All I can do," she said, with a new note in her voice. "Yes, everything. And you were right—I haven't touched anything of his. But the pistol—I didn't know he had it. I didn't even know he had it."

"It would be Jaggers, if anyone," she said after a pause for thought. "Jaggers has been here so long—I've only been here a little while, compared with him. And—and he doesn't like me."

Head registered the confession in his mind, but kept to his errand. "Then I'd better see this Jaggers," he suggested.

"Just as you like," she assented. "Oh, do what you like! I won't interfere. Search where you like, ask what you like. I'm—it's all so terrible. Even if—" But there she broke off, as if realising that she had been about to say too much.

"Answer me one question, first, Mrs. Oliver," he asked. "Just this—where were you married to Clifford Oliver?"

"Married to him? At Chelsea registry office. Opposite the town hall in King's Road. Why? Do you think I wasn't really married to him? Why do you ask that—I was married there?"

"Thanks—that's all I wanted to know before going to look for this pistol. And now—how do I find this man Jaggers?"

Passing him, she found a bell-push and pressed it, with what seemed to him uncanny certainty in the darkness which by this time had grown in the room. Then she switched on the lights, and he saw her, very white of face, staring at him intently.

"After, I'm coming back to go through all Mr. Dickson's effects, as far as I can," he said. "I don't know if you feel like helping, or hindering. You can choose which attitude you will adopt."

With her confession that she was not Dickson's wife, he knew, he had her cornered: she would not—she did not—dare refuse to aid him.

"To help you." Again she whispered the reply, and the faint sound fitted less with the lights than it had with the preceding darkness.

"Oh, Jeanne," Mrs. Oliver said. "I want you to—to find Jaggers. This is Mr. Head—Inspector Head—and he wants to know about an automatic pistol. Jaggers may know something about it—I don't. After that, I want to see Mr. Head here again. Find—no, take him where he can talk to Jaggers about this, and then I will see him again."

"Vairy good, m'dame. Per'aps you will come to Jaggers with me, m'sieu? 'E will be in 'is room now, I think."

He followed her as, earlier in the day, Jeffries had followed, out through the kitchen, where the cook paused in her work to regard him interestedly, and across the yard to the garage, over which was a lighted window at which Jeanne pointed.

"There, m'sieu," she said. "You walk up the ladder, an' there is the door beside the window. 'E is in, you see. 'E live there."

"Thanks," he said. "Before that, though, you told Constable Jeffries a story to-day, which he passed on to me with your permission, I understand. You came here with your mistress, didn't you?"

"Ah, comme Ã§i, comme Ã§a," she said with a shrug. "Not so much, per'aps. I talk to him not much."

"Me? Non, m'sieu. But"—she leaned toward him, sudden fear in her voice—"you think 'e kill M'sieu Dickson?"

"I say 'e did not!" she declared with energy. "For if 'e would do that, it would 'urt 'er. An' not for all the world would 'e 'urt 'er, not if for 'im it meant to lose 'er for evermore. 'E did not!"

"I do not know. I 'ear nothing, see nothing, since I leave 'im in Penang to come back with m'dame as 'e ask me. I do not know if 'e is yet alive. I do not know anything."

"They were staying at the Savoy Hotel when Mrs. Oliver engaged you, I think you said to Jeffries?" he asked.

"They was. Because 'e would not take a 'ouse before they go on the cruise. Not long after m'dame engage me, we go on the cruise."

"Not—only that 'e said when the cruise was ended they would go back to Chelsea—I think 'e meant they would 'ave a 'ouse there. But I do not know where 'e was before m'dame engage me."

She stood at the foot of the outer staircase leading to Jaggers' quarters over the garage, and watched him ascend. On that ascent he added to one thing he had learned from Mrs. Kerling a point he had gained from this inquisition: Clifford Oliver had married his wife at Chelsea registry office, which might have indicated that either of the two had lived there prior to their wedding, but this declared intent of Oliver's, of going back to Chelsea, if what Jeanne had said were true, indicated that he had lived there before going to the Savoy. And Mrs. Kerling had furnished an address in Smith Street, Chelsea, as that to which Tanner had gone after leaving the explosive works. There might or might not be a connection: it was worth inquiry, at least.

Wadden, Head knew, was already half-convinced that they had not to look beyond Tanner for the solution of the case: when he heard of this possible link between Tanner and Oliver, he would be far more than half-way to belief in Tanner's guilt. And a suggestion of his, to the effect that Tanner's walk as far as the bridge that morning had been taken to make certain by daylight that he had thrown the automatic pistol into the stream, and not on the bank, the night before, took on a greater probability, now. Yet Head was reluctant to believe the man responsible for Dickson's death. Even if he had made contact with Oliver in Chelsea, either before or after Mrs. Oliver had left her husband, it would not afford him a strong enough motive to commit a murder. To credit him with being in love with the woman was too long a shot altogether, while that he should have any other motive for killing Dickson appeared impossible. To that might be added the favourable impression he had given at the inquest: it was perfectly natural that, realising himself as likely to come under suspicion, he should search for the exploded shells from the automatic pistol. If, on the other hand, he were guilty, he was possessed of coolness and cleverness to a degree rare even in a determined and calculating murderer.

Take away Denham's man with a gun or pistol, and Tanner became the only suspect left, up to this point. With that as a conclusion to his swift train of thought as he ascended the ladder and stepped on to the little platform at the top, Head knocked at Jaggers' door.

A voice called to him to come in, and he opened the door and saw Jaggers standing faced toward a work bench at the far side of the room, and thus unaware of the identity of his caller, since his back was toward the door, and he was intent on what he was doing at the bench.

"If it's a paper, I ain't turnin' out again to-night," he said, with patent irritation. "One of you girls can bicycle in after it—nobody's likely to be waitin' to shoot you along the road."

At that the man dropped a file and a piece of steel on the bench, and faced about as they clattered from his hands.

"Well, I'm jiggered!" he declared, after a lengthy pause in which he stared at Head. "An' what might you be wantin'—sir?"

He added the title doubtfully. Head moved into the room, which was part living-room, part bedroom, and part workshop—it was a big apartment, probably occupying the greater part of the space over the garage. An aged but evidently comfortable armchair was drawn up beside a fire in the grate at one end, and before the bars of the grate a kettle steamed gently. Over the fireplace was an enlarged photograph of a young and rather strikingly pretty girl in a black frame: it was the only visible ornament in the room: all the rest was plain, serviceable furniture. Here was comfort, but no taste.

Jaggers himself, relaxing from his momentary surprise to normality of expression, revealed himself as a sturdy man of medium height, probably in his late fifties. Already, as token of respect for his late master, he had tacked or had had tacked a band of crape on his sleeve. Recognition of his visitor, possibly, caused him to set his lips in a way that indicated his determination to say as little as he could about the tragedy—he had made a remark at the inquest in Head's hearing, to the effect that he did not see why he should be dragged into it and put to inconvenience. A difficult man to tackle, Head decided, and one who would have to be handled carefully to make him yield results.

"Mrs. Dickson sent me to you, Jaggers, because I want to find out where I can get hold of the automatic pistol that belonged to Mr. Dickson. She told me you would know where he kept it."

"Well, that's so, Mr. Head," Jaggers admitted. "He useter get me to clean an' oil it up sometimes, an' I always got it outer the bottom drawer on the right-hand side of the desk in the dinin'-room, an' put it back there. A Webley, it is, with a sort of tube fittin' over it so it don't make hardly any noise—not like they generally do."

"A silencer, you mean?" Head concealed his surprise at the information. It began to appear that Dickson's own pistol might have been used by his slayer, for silencers are very rare accessories to firearms outside America. Yet the fact of Dickson's pistol being fitted with one might be no more than coincidence.

"Well, he used to take it out an' practise sometimes. Said he wanted to keep his hand in on it. Once a month, maybe, or per'aps not so often. He didn't use it a lot."

"Burglars, I reckon. He brought it with him when he come back to England an' come to live here, an' he said once that he'd been in places while he was away where you had to have one, an' he'd got so he felt more sorter comfortable with it than without one."

"Cert'nly I will, Mr. Head. I said what I did about not turnin' out again, before I knew it was you, because them girls sometimes want me to go an' fetch 'em an evenin' paper, an' I reckoned they'd be sure to want one to-night. An' I've got the car jacked up an' a back wheel off, because I want to fit an oil washer to the axle soon as it's daylight again. Yes, I'll come along, Mr. Head."

"Thanks. That's a very charming portrait you have over the mantel there." He made the remark with a view to finding the identity of the original, but did not wish to ask outright.

"I'd no idea you had been married," Head remarked, with an affectation of surprise that was more than half a question.

"Not here," Jaggers explained. "It was when I was in the Army—I joined up for the war an' Mrs. Dickson kep' my place for me till I come back. No, she was never here with me, she wasn't."

"It's a black frame, as you can see." The man moved to open the door. "I thought it was Mr. Dickson's pistol you come about, Mr. Head?"

"I don't see why you should want to pry into my business," Jaggers said sulkily, after a perceptible pause. "If she wasn't, it wouldn't be a black frame, would it? An' she'd be here, wouldn't she?"

"I'm sorry if I've upset you over it," Head remarked, and followed to the door. "Yes, we'll go and get that pistol, and thanks for coming to show me where to find it."

But, as he followed the chauffeur down the ladder, he added another point to the mystery with which he was faced. It was by no means certain that Mrs. Jaggers was dead: in fact, her husband's evasions pointed rather to her being alive, although she was not in evidence here, and according to him never had been. If she had deserted him, it was only natural that he should term her dead rather than living, whatever the truth might be. Assuming that she was alive, did she come into this case, and, if so, in what connection?

With this fresh query in his mind Head followed the chauffeur into the house and along to the dining-room, already lighted and with its table laid for a meal for one, but vacant of human presence until these two entered. Jaggers went to the far side of the room from the door, where heavy curtains concealed a window bay. He drew back the curtains, revealing a kneehole writing-desk behind them, and, opening the single shallow drawer over the kneehole while Head stood watching beside him, lifted some papers and from under them took a small key. Then, kneeling, he used the key to unlock the right-hand bottom drawer, and, having opened it, let escape him a long, whistling breath.

Head dropped on one knee beside the man. He could see the full length of the drawer, which contained a thin layer of sheets of notepaper, a packet of envelopes, and an oblong cardboard carton with a label stating that it contained fifty .38 bore cartridges made by the Union Metallic Company. But of the automatic pistol Jaggers had said the drawer also contained, there was no sign whatever.

Chapter X
Search

SINCE the drawer which, according to Jaggers, ought to have contained the pistol was the only locked one, search of the others was a simple matter, and, as Head expected, it yielded no result. When he had closed the last drawer he turned to gaze at the chauffeur, and saw in the man's eyes a look that might have been fear, and equally might have been a stubborn sort of defiance. It was not an easy face to read.

"Now, where else could he have kept it?" Head asked thoughtfully, almost as if speaking to himself rather than to the other man.

"I dunno, sir. It was always there when he told me to get it out an' clean it for him. He shew me, the first time after he come back here, where he kep' the key an' where to find the pistol."

"I dunno that either, sir." Jaggers did not hesitate over bestowing the title in his replies, now. "The maids'd know, I reckon."

"What time did you say you went out to post last night, Jaggers?" Head inquired with a casualness that did not and was not intended to conceal the implication behind the question.

"Did you or did you not come straight back here?" Head demanded sharply. "A straight answer, man!"

Through an interval Head reflected over the missing pistol, and as his thoughts proceeded an initial irritation deepened to anger. Mrs. Oliver had denied any knowledge of the existence of the pistol even, and this man—assuming that his statement as to his whereabouts during the time the crime must have been committed could be proved correct by the cook—was not the one who had abstracted the weapon for the commission of the murder. Jeanne Ray, the housemaid and parlourmaid, Mrs. Oliver herself. Then Jaggers spoke:

He went over to the fireplace and pressed a bell-push there. Then he went back to the window recess and waited until Ellen James appeared, and stood waiting in the doorway with an air of surprise.

"Then you have finished with me, sir?" Jaggers suggested as the girl went off on her errand.

And Jaggers stayed. Presently the woman whom he had remembered to call Mrs. Dickson to her servant entered, and Head knew that, if ever he had seen fear in a woman's eyes, he saw it in hers then.

"Mrs. Dickson," he said evenly, "Jaggers has shown me where the automatic pistol belonging to Mr. Dickson ought to be and is not. I think you disclaimed all knowledge of his possessing one?"

Glancing from her to Jaggers momentarily, Head saw that in the man's expression which convinced him that she was lying. But he gave no sign of having perceived anything wrong with her reply.

"You realise the importance to me of finding this pistol?" he asked her, and made almost an accusation of the question.

Quietly though she spoke, there was defiance of him in the reply. Paradoxically, the fear she felt—and he knew that she felt it—was giving her courage to defy him, and to go on concealing whatever it might be that she knew of Dickson's murder. For, now, he felt convinced that she knew more than he could compel her to tell.

"It is vitally important," he said, "and I propose to take what may seem to you a high-handed action over it. I want every occupant of this house to come in here at once, and stay here till the whole place has been thoroughly searched. You can refuse this, if you like, but if you do I shall draw my own conclusions. What do you say?"

She pondered it, and he saw from her changes of expression that she was weighing the probable results of her reply. Then she spoke.

"Ellen—that is the parlourmaid, I should say—told me it was put right again at four o'clock this afternoon," she answered.

"Thanks." But, instead of going out, he went to the bell-push and, pressing it again, stood by it until Ellen James answered the ring.

"I want everybody in the house to come into this room, now," he said. "Will you tell them, and come back yourself?"

The girl stood looking from him to her mistress, questioning the order, evidently. Mrs. Oliver confirmed it.

The girl went out, and the three in the room waited in silence. First to respond to the order was Jeanne Ray, who went straight to her mistress and gazed at her in a frightened way. Mrs. Oliver smiled.

The other three, parlourmaid, housemaid, and cook, entered together, and stood just inside the door waiting, until Head spoke.

"By Mrs. Dickson's permission," he said, "I am calling you all in here, to stay in this room while the house is searched for an automatic pistol—that is, unless any one of you can tell me where to find it."

He looked from one to another of them, questioningly, but won no reply, except that Ellen James and the cook shook their heads vaguely.

"You realise that, Inspector?" Mrs. Oliver asked, with a tinge of mockery in her voice.

He went out and closed the door on them. The telephone, he saw, was on a small side table between him and the front entrance of the house. He took off the receiver.

"Oh, Wells, Head speaking, from Hartlands. Tell Jeffries to turn out the saloon at once, come here with him yourself, and bring your finger-print outfit in case there's any need for it. Pick two more good men to come with you, and tell the superintendent I'm here to see if it's possible to find Dickson's automatic pistol and question everyone here separately before I come back—the pistol is missing from where it ought to be. Have you got all that clearly?

He replaced the receiver and went back into the dining-room. Mrs. Oliver had seated herself in an armchair by the fireplace, where she appeared resigned and patient, and Jeanne Ray stood beside the chair. The other four had grouped themselves on the other side of the room, with the laid table between them and the fireplace, in which a coal fire burned cheerfully. Head glanced from one to other of their glum faces: they were hating him, he knew—and might go on hating him!

"Inspector, is it quite necessary that the dinner should be spoiled?" Mrs. Oliver asked after a long pause, without turning to look at him—she had gazed steadily into the fire since his entry.

"Quite," he answered, "unless somebody can tell me where to find that pistol. It alters everything, by being missing."

"You mean—" she turned her head to look at him, then—"because it's possible to prove whether the bullet you have was fired from it?"

She nodded, and turned to gaze at the fire again. And, waiting, Head wondered how many of these six people knew that a fired bullet can be proved by ballistic experts to have been fired from a particular weapon? The absence of the pistol had certainly altered the possibilities of Dickson's murder, for that Tanner could have got hold of the weapon was practically out of the question. Then, from beyond the closed door, sounded the ringing of the telephone bell. Mrs. Oliver rose to her feet, but Head stopped her with a gesture.

He went out again and took off the receiver. It was not difficult to recognise Wadden's voice at the other end of the wire.

"They're away. I rang to tell you. Look here, Head, if that gun is really missing, did Dickson take it with him?"

Wadden blew a heavy gust into his transmitter. "If there's any leakage, I'll find it," he threatened. "Anyhow, your little party should be there in a quarter of an hour or less. When do I expect to see you back here?"

"Oh, with the milk," Head answered rather wearily. "Is that all you want to tell or ask me?"

"Except that you'll have to ring me at home if you want me for anything. I'm going after my dinner. But before I go I'll bet you that new hat you don't find what you're looking for."

The slam of the receiver answered him. He went back to the dining-room, where the cook and housemaid were now talking together inaudibly as he entered. None of the others appeared to have moved. He went to the chair in which Mrs. Oliver sat by the fire.

"It was," he assented. "I'd like to tell you, after we get one room searched, I'd like to use it for interviewing everyone here separately. Have you any objection to my doing this?"

"None at all," she answered. "You might—yes, my own room, the one you know. There's so little in it that you'll be able to finish searching there very quickly. It's all necessary, I suppose?"

Again, as she looked up at him, he saw the hint of defiance in her gaze. There was something she knew and would not tell, and from her expression it appeared that she felt she had him beaten before the beginning of this search and inquisition.

Through an interminable period of silence he waited, and then the clanging of the front-door bell sounded into the room. At that he glanced across at the parlourmaid.

The green room that Mrs. Oliver regarded as her own special sanctum had been proved innocent of containing anything in the least resembling a pistol, and there Head took post with Jeffries beside him while he questioned the inhabitants of Hartlands. Since Wells and the man he had to assist him, expert searchers though they were, would probably take the greater part of the night to investigate all the house, Head took his part of the night's work in a way more thorough than speedy. Not only had the disappearance of the pistol shifted the possibilities of the crime, but his certainty that Mrs. Oliver had lied in telling him she did not know that Dickson had possessed such a thing rendered him determined to learn all he could before leaving here. He directed the pair of searchers to finish with the kitchen first. An automatic pistol almost certainly still fitted with a silencer was not such a small thing that it could be easily overlooked, and, Head decided, the places where it was least likely to be must be cleared as soon as possible, to cause as little upset as he could manage in the household.

For his own part, he bade Jeffries summon Jeanne Ray to the green room as soon as it was at his disposal. The girl entered and faced him in a frightened way, but it was not the fear consequent on guilt, he knew. He directed her to a chair, and she seated herself, while Jeffries, notebook and pencil in hand, looked uncomfortable.

"Now, Miss Ray," Head said encouragingly, "you have already been very useful over what you have told about Mr. Dickson's past life and how the lady whose maid you are comes to be here. First of all, I want you to tell me whether you knew that Mr. Dickson had an automatic pistol or no?"

She considered the question. "I think she know," she said at last. "Yet per'aps she do not. I do not know that."

"No. She never say nothing about it to me. She do not talk to me about it, ever. So I do not know if she know."

"'E was in the yard at the back, talking to Jaggers, an' 'e 'ave it in 'is 'and. I did not take much notice."

"Oh, per'aps nearly a year. It was in the summer-time, last year. A long time ago—I do not know what part of the summer."

"Miss Ray"—he shifted the grounds of his questioning abruptly—"where were you from seven o'clock till eight, last night?"

"Las' night?" Momentarily she looked puzzled. "Oh, yes, the big storm! I was in the 'ouse—I would not go out in such a night, not even if there was anyone to go out for"—she glanced at Jeffries in a way that indicated him as a cause for going out on ordinary nights—"so I was in the 'ouse all the night."

"Seven and eight? I think a minute, you permit, m'sieu? I think I was—yes, it was a little past seven I come in 'ere to m'dame, who is sit 'ere in the big chair. It was to be dinner at eight because m' sieu should be back then. M'dame an' I say what a night, an' then for a time I am in my own room. Then m'dame send for me an' say she will 'ave 'er dinner in 'ere, an' the cook is to keep some for m'sieu because 'e is not come in the train we think, but the later one. So we think then, because we do not know anything 'appen to 'im."

"It was by the clock there twenty minutes past eight, because I remember m'dame look an' say it was that time."

Head took out his watch and compared it with the clock on the mantel. The clock, he saw, was five minutes fast.

"Was madame in this room from a little past seven till twenty minutes past eight, do you know?" he asked.

"I think so," Jeanne answered doubtfully. "She was 'ere both those times when I come in, an' she 'ad on the mules she wear when she do not wear shoes to walk. I do not think she went out."

"I would know by the clothes, m'sieu. If she go out in that frock last night, it would not be fit to wear to-night—an' she 'ad no other frock an' no other clothes in this room. If she go to get any other clothes, I should know when I see them that she 'ad been out in them. The shoes, the coat, the 'at. She did not get any other clothes."

"I am very quite sure, m'sieu. She wait in this room for m'sieu to come back, except that I see 'er try to telephone, an' there was no telephone. I was on the stair when she come out an' try, but I do not speak to 'er an she do not see me."

"Thanks, Miss Ray. Now you can go along to the kitchen, and stay there, please. Jeffries will take you along, and leave you there."

"You won't be alone there more than a few minutes. Jeffries, get the housemaid to come in here with you, when you come back."

Thus Gladys Maltby, housemaid, appeared next. She declined Head's invitation to be seated, and remained standing with her hands folded primly over her apron, and dislike for this questioning plainly implied in both her attitude and her expression.

"Since September," she answered, and closed her lips as if she feared lest another word should escape by accident.

"Since September, eh?" He made it a conversational, easy rejoinder. "Did you ever see Mr. Dickson carrying an automatic pistol?"

"I don't know. You'd better ask her about that. She don't tell me what she know or don't know about things."

"Well, since Mrs. Dickson didn't tell you, and Mr. Dickson didn't either"—he risked this second assumption—"how did you get to know where the pistol was kept?"

"Do you make a point of prying into every drawer in the house that's supposed to be locked to keep your hands out of it?" he asked.

"I—I don't see why you should insult me," she replied indistinctly. "I didn't do no harm, even if I did—" She broke off then.

"Because, if you do," Head pursued calmly, "you might be able to give me some indication as to where to look for this thing, since it isn't in that drawer as it ought to be. You know it's not there, having heard me say it isn't. How long have you known that?"

"Sure you didn't go and take a look in that drawer as soon as you heard Mr. Dickson had been killed? Don't hesitate to tell me if you did, because that pistol is far more important than anything you may have done, and I merely want the truth about it."

"I haven't looked in that drawer for weeks," she answered, and by her tone he was convinced that she spoke the truth.

"Well, we'll leave it. One other point. Do you know if anyone went out of this house after dark last night?"

"Unless Mrs. Dickson did, I'm sure none of us others went out. It wasn't a night when you'd want to go out."

With that last, she gave the silent Jeffries a glance, as if to hint that he might be able to account for Miss Ray's movements.

"Now," Head said, "Mr. Jeffries will escort you to the kitchen, and you will stay there with Miss Ray till I say you can leave it. I won't keep you longer than is necessary, but you must stay there. I'll take Miss James next, Jeffries."

Ellen James, next to appear, seated herself and looked up trepidly. Head varied his procedure slightly with her.

"Miss James," he said, "I wonder if you could recollect, enough to tell me, where you were last night between six and, say, eight-thirty?"

"Why, yes, sir," she answered rather eagerly. "It was supposed to be my night off, and if it'd been an ordinary night and I wasn't going out, I should have stopped in my room. But it being such a fearful storm, I stayed down in the kitchen, reading."

"Yes, I was. The wind was howling, and it was so dreary up in my room, and there was the fire in the kitchen to sit by—"

"Cook was there, of course. And Gladys was in and out all the time—she laid the table in the dining-room, you know, sir."

"I do know," Head admitted. "Now about this pistol—where was it kept, can you tell me?"

"In the writing-desk in the dining-room window—in the right-hand bottom drawer of the desk it was. I saw it there."

"No, sir—" She broke off, realising certain implications in her confession of having seen the pistol. Then—"No, she didn't."

"It was—it was Gladys. I don't want to make bad feelings, sir, but she pries into everything, that girl does."

"Don't worry about the bad feelings," he advised. "How long is it since she showed you this pistol in the drawer?"

"I heard him tell Jaggers to get it and clean it, because he'd taken it out to do some practice shooting, he said."

"No. It was one morning when I'd gone out to the garage to speak to Jaggers about the car. Mr. Dickson came out and told him there."

"I really couldn't say, sir. She wouldn't talk about things like that to me. I never heard her mention it."

"Why didn't Mr. Dickson get the pistol out himself and take it to Jaggers for cleaning? It isn't usual to tell a chauffeur to go into your dining-room and unlock a desk to get something out, is it?"

"Oh, but Jaggers has been here so long, sir," she protested. "He was here with the old lady, and she trusted him with everything. Besides, Mr. Dickson wasn't the sort to do anything if he could get somebody to do it for him—God forgive me! I forgot he was dead for the minute, or I wouldn't have said a thing like that about him."

"The more you say about him, the better I like it," Head observed with scant respect for the sentiment. "How long have you been here?"

With that he sent her off in charge of Jeffries to join the other two in the kitchen, and, before Jeffries could return with the cook, whom Head wanted to interview next, a knock at the door of the room announced the presence of Sergeant Wells.

"To tell you, Mr. Head, we've been through all the rooms upstairs, except the servants' bedrooms. There's only one staircase up to the attics, and I'm satisfied the door at the top of it hasn't been opened for weeks, by the dust on the handle."

"And the result?" Head asked—but he knew the main result without asking. Not for a minute did he believe the pistol would be found.

"As far as Dickson's belongings are concerned, sir, he kept no letters or papers upstairs whatever. Neither did Mrs. Dickson—I've overhauled her belongings thoroughly. And no sign of the pistol."

"No, there wouldn't be," Head observed. "Carry on downstairs, now—I'm willing to bet you she's destroyed any papers that might have helped us. She's had a whole day for it. But first, before you get on inside the house, go out at the back and search Jaggers' room over the garage—and have a look through the garage itself for the pistol, though I'm fairly sure you won't find it there. What I want most are letters, written either by or to either of them."

"I'm growing more and more inclined to believe she knows where it is," Head said reflectively. "Carry on, Wells, and take your time over it, but take Jaggers' room and the garage first."

He had just time to complete the sentence, and then the door opened to admit the cook, who was followed by Jeffries. Then Wells went out to resume his search, while Head settled to his interrogations again.

Chapter XI
History—and Little Else

"YOUR name, I understand, is Barnard," Head began on the middle-aged, sharp-featured woman whom Jeffries had ushered in to him. "Is it Mrs. or Miss Barnard, please?"

"Miss Barnard," she answered, and added: "Florence," as an after-thought to complete the information.

"Fourteen years, sir. I stopped on as caretaker when old Mrs. Dickson died—the solicitors asked me to—and then when Mr. Frederick came home he engaged me as cook again."

"Yes." But Head did not see, yet. "Now, Miss Barnard, let's get on with last night's happenings, first. You, I take it, were in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Is that the case?"

"Yes. Do sit down, Miss Barnard. I merely want to learn all I can about last night, and about Mr. Dickson and his movements—incidentally, I want to know all I can about everybody's movements at Hartlands too, in case anyone was in a position to see the man who killed Mr. Dickson. You may be able to give me quite useful information without realising it as useful. You were in the kitchen—yes. Who else was there—say from six o'clock onward?"

She seated herself on the very edge of one of the armchairs—not the big one that Mrs. Oliver used, but the green-covered one—and looked full at him, frowning a little as she reflected over the question.

"Well, sir, except for Miss Ray and the mistress, we were all there, off and on, after six. It was supposed to be Ellen's half-day off, but the weather being what it was she wouldn't go out, so she brought a book and sat in the kitchen. Gladys was in and out getting on with her work till the mistress sent word by Miss Ray for me to let her have her dinner on a tray in here, and keep things hot for the master, since she reckoned he'd come by a later train—"

"Oh, yes, sir. I'm quite sure she didn't go outside. Who would, in a storm like that?"

"Yes, sir. He came in about half-past six, and said the wind made his chimney smoke too much, so if I didn't mind he'd put in the evening with us. I didn't mind, so he stayed."

"Oh, up to nearly nine o'clock, I'd say. I know he was still there when I got dinner for the mistress on a tray, and after that."

"Just a friendly little party of you, eh? Yes. Now, Miss Barnard, what do you know about this automatic pistol I'm trying to find?"

"No, sir, I wasn't. I know gentlemen who go abroad have those sort of things, and it didn't seem strange to me that Mr. Dickson should have one."

"The little I saw of him, I did. It was very little, though. I took my orders from the mistress, and of course he didn't come into the kitchen, in a general way."

"Not at all, sir. It's been as quiet since they came here as it was in old Mrs. Dickson's time. They both went to London a good deal."

"Well, he went nearly every Wednesday, and sometimes the mistress went and stayed away, though not lately. It was in the autumn when she went last. And they went about in the car a lot."

"Without him, sir. They'd go off for the day two or three times a week. Mr. Dickson was a good driver, Jaggers thought."

"Oh, no, sir, not at all. They quarrelled, you see, sir, and she was a proud lady. I think she'd liked to have had him back, but wouldn't own it. Very lonely, she was, after he went off."

"It'd be about a year after I got here. It was about—about a girl, I understood, but I don't know what it was about her. P'raps he wanted to marry her, and the old lady didn't want him to—but I don't know really what it was. Only the girl who was maid to old Mrs. Dickson at the time told me they had a frightful quarrel, and then he went, and as far as I know they never had anything to do with each other from that day until she died."

"She couldn't help it, sir. She had a life interest, but then it all had to come to him by his father's will."

"Six weeks after, it was, sir. He had to come home from somewhere in the East. It was rather a surprise when he brought a wife with him, though since he didn't write to his mother we couldn't tell whether he was married or single. But we didn't expect it."

"You'd never seen or heard anything of the present Mrs. Dickson until she came here with him, I suppose?"

"No, I suppose not. What time did you say it was when Jaggers came into the kitchen last night, Miss Barnard?"

"A little after six, sir. P'raps it was a quarter past. He went out to post somewhere about five, and then I expect he tried to make the fire draw in his room and it wouldn't, so he came into the kitchen and stopped there with us till quite late."

For a few seconds Head reflected: it was becoming not merely probable, but certain, that whoever had abstracted the pistol from the drawer in the dining-room had not used it on Dickson, unless Mrs. Oliver had found some way of stealing out from the house without being detected. If she had not shot the man, why was the pistol missing?

"Thanks very much, Miss Barnard. You've been most helpful, and I wish everybody were as frank and truthful in answering questions. I want you, now, to go along with Jeffries here to your kitchen, and stay there till I give you leave to move out of it. You won't mind my asking this, I hope?"

"Not in the least, sir. I'm sure I never thought I should be mixed up in a murder case, and I know you have to tell the police all you can. And when it's a gentleman like you, Mr. Head—"

She left it at that as she rose to her feet, and Head felt that, if Dickson's own pistol had been used on him, he had at least one reliable witness when the case came to trial. But he had to find the person who had used it, yet.

"Very flattering of you, Miss Barnard. Jeffries, see that everyone is in the kitchen as ordered, and fetch Jaggers back with you."

He waited, musing over the scant facts he had so far collected, until Jaggers appeared, rather apprehensive by the look of him, and also indicating a surly disinclination to talk. But Head opened on a line that the man did not expect, and thus loosened his tongue.

"Now, Jaggers, sit down if you feel like it. I suppose you drove Mr. Dickson to the station yesterday morning, didn't you?"

"I did." Jaggers seated himself as had the cook, on the edge of the green armchair's seat. "To catch the nine-twenty—sir."

"Well, he didn't take anything, except a waterproof coat, and he chucked that inside the car before he got in himself—I was holdin' the door for him. I know by the way the coat dropped it hadn't got anything as heavy as that in the pockets, an' if he'd had it in any of the pockets of his suit it'd have stuck out a mile. Besides, the wind was already gettin' up, an' his jacket flapped as it wouldn't do if there'd been anything heavy in the pockets."

Jaggers shook his head. "No, sir, he couldn't crowd that pistol with the silencer into a hip pocket, nor yet into any trouser pocket. You couldn't carry it in a pocket, unless in an overcoat. It's too big, too clumsy. I'm sure it wasn't on him."

"Supposing he put the pistol in one pocket and the silencer in another?" Head suggested again.

"Then he'd want a tool kit to put 'em together again," Jaggers retorted with conviction. "I'm quite sure he didn't take that pistol to London with him, as sure as that I'm sittin' here now."

"Well, that's that," Head observed, as if satisfied over it, "and it only makes the fact that the pistol is missing more significant. I believe you've been here longer than anyone, Jaggers, haven't you?"

Jaggers shook his head. "I didn't want responsibility, sir. I could see too many fools takin' it on when they wasn't fit for it."

"That's all over an' done with," Jaggers said rather sullenly. "Besides, it's nothing to do with what you want to find here."

"Of course it isn't," Head agreed soothingly, though with no inward conviction on the point. "It was after the war that Mr. Dickson and his mother had that quarrel over a girl, wasn't it?"

Jaggers stared in silence for quite a long time over this question. Eventually he growled a question in reply.

"Merely that I have information about the quarrel, and about the girl," Head told him easily and conversationally. "I'm merely asking you for confirmation of what I already know."

"And—and what might that be, sir?" Jaggers asked, suddenly humbled and apprehensive.

The man watched Jeffries' pencil move over the page of the notebook he held, and come to a stop.

"Nothing of the sort," Head assured him. "I have to warn you before I can use anything you say. In addition to that, I'm satisfied that you were in the kitchen here at the time Mr. Dickson was killed—satisfied of it before you tell me. I don't suspect you of having killed him. Now, supposing I outline a little story to you, may I?"

"No? We'll leave this murder alone, for the present, Jaggers, and if I go wrong in what I say you can stop me. I'm going to imagine a faithful servant—one like you, say—joining up soon after the war broke out, doing his bit as a man should, and coming home on leave from time to time. I'm going to imagine him meeting a very charming girl, and marrying her, in the hurried way that such marriages happened during the war period. Then I'm going to imagine that faithful man's young master looking him up while on leave, meeting him and his wife, and the faithful one going off and leaving—"

"Ah, by the Lord God!" Jaggers broke in, and the words made a shrill cry. "It's a lie, Mr. Head! Thirty year I've served the family, and if I'd thought that—it's a lie, I tell you!"

"She's living," Head asserted swiftly, his face thrust at that of the man he had broken down by his story.

"I neither know nor care. She was—no good. I knew that soon enough. An' yet I could never look at another. They're like that, I reckon. They get into your blood—oh, what the hell am I talkin' about? But it wasn't him—he wasn't sixteen then, not old enough to fight before the war finished. You've guessed what happened, but you put him in it an' he wasn't. There was some other swine, but I don't know who he was. When I come on my next leave she'd gone, an' Mr. Fred was home here, not even old enough to join up. He wasn't in it with her, Mr. Head, so don't you think it. I know he wasn't."

"I don't know," he said at last, sullenly. "No, I don't know. She'd left me—how should I know? She went her own way."

He saw Jaggers force his thoughts back from that old wreckage of his life to this present time, almost felt the groping for an answer to the question, as if it were difficult to realise its import. Then:

"It'd be between five an' half-past. I was back an' in the kitchen by a quarter to six. I didn't take much note of the time."

"I was." Jaggers stared again at the repetition, as if he would insist on a quarter to six as the time of his return.

"And you say quite definitely that you were back there by a quarter to six, by the clock in the kitchen?"

"Jeffries"—Head looked up at his man—"take Jaggers back to the dining-room for a few minutes, and then get Miss Barnard to come here from the kitchen. I want to see her."

"A quarter to six, I understand, Jaggers, flatly and finally. We will leave it at that, for the present. This is not an official inquiry, you understand, but just a few questions I want answered."

He went himself to open the door, and Jaggers went out with an angry frown on his face. Then Jeffries returned with the cook.

"Just one point, Miss Barnard," Head asked her. "A small matter of time. I want to get at when Jaggers came into the kitchen last night after going to post, and you were a little vague about it. First you put it at half-past six, then a little past, and finally a quarter past. I'm not doubting you in any way, but could you give me something more definite than that, please?"

"I'm sorry, sir," she answered frankly. "Now I remember, it was more than a quarter past, because when he came in Ellen was sitting there and he said something about her not going out to-night. And I looked at the clock and remarked that if she'd wanted to catch the twenty-past six bus to Westingborough, it was too late—the bus that goes past the gate at twenty past, I mean. She'd have to be out of the house by a quarter past to catch it, and it was over the quarter when I said that, which was just after Jaggers had come in."

"And having come straight back after going to post, I suppose he was very wet and muddy, wasn't he?"

"He wouldn't come wet and muddy into my kitchen, sir," she answered firmly. "He'd taken off his coat and wiped his boots first."

Nothing more to be learned there, Head reflected. Again he thanked the woman and let her go back alone to her kitchen.

"I make it somewhere about half an hour that he doesn't want to account for," Jeffries answered. "He says and sticks to a quarter to, and she's sure it was a quarter past."

"And since Dickinson couldn't leave the station till seven twenty-three, what bearing has Jaggers' concealment of his half-hour on Dickinson's death?" Head queried. "Well, we shall get somewhere if we stick at it long enough, even if we don't find the pistol to-night. Now you go and shepherd Jaggers into the kitchen with the rest and then fetch Mrs. Oliver back here, but tell our fourth man to wait on in the dining-room till Wells gets there. We may get something out of that writing-desk, and I don't want anyone to get a hand on it since it's been brought to our notice by the missing gun. You've got notes of all that's been said, there?"

"Good. Don't miss anything that Mrs. Oliver tells me. I'm fairly certain that the missing pistol is somewhere between her and Jaggers."

He thought, but did not say, that she was the only person in the house who might possibly have used the pistol to kill Dickson. All the others were located during the time in which he must have been killed, but, in her there was a doubt. Jeanne Ray had minimised it all she could, but had not eliminated it from Head's mind: he felt sure, from the girl's attitude, that she would shield her mistress all she could.

"Now, Margaret Oliver!" he said to himself as the door opened again to admit her.

Chapter XII
Shots in the Night

SHE crossed from the doorway of the room to the big armchair and there seated herself, this woman with whom, Head felt sure now, more than with Clifford Oliver, lay the solution to the puzzle of Frederick Dickson's death. She leaned toward the side of the chair, her elbow on its arm, and thus regarded him, warily, watchfully. Composed and resolute, she would be difficult, he knew, yet as he returned her gaze he considered it impossible that her hand had been the one to send the bullet into Dickson's brain.

"Kept till last," she explained. "I suppose all the others have been questioned—with your man there waiting to take down the answers. Aren't you being rather theatrical over this?"

"I might say the same of you," he retorted. "If we are to come to personalities, it strikes me that you dramatise all your life to yourself, and manage to enjoy the tragedy as well as the comedy—"

"Is it?" he rejoined coolly. "Not more than yours, I think. My business is that of finding out who killed Frederick Dickson. I wonder if it has occurred to you, Mrs. Oliver, that legally you have no more right in this house than I have, at the present moment? Until something turns up to show that the dead man gave you a right to be here, you have no standing whatever—you are not a relative, not even a connection of his. And since you told me that his will gives your real name, I conclude that you benefit by his death. I might draw a further conclusion from that—or jump to it, say."

She drooped from her erectness, and again placed her elbow on the chair arm and, so leaning, gazed at him—and spared a glance at Jeffries' pencil, travelling with no concealment over his paper.

"And anything I say is to be used as evidence against me," she observed. "Taken down and used as evidence against me, isn't it?"

"I haven't warned you to that effect," he answered. "If I want reference to anything said in this room to-night—by anyone—it is for my own purposes, to check one statement against another. Perhaps you can see the uses of that, the chance of sorting out the truth from the lies. I've already caught one blatant lie, and I want it on record. You may enable me to detect others in what I have heard."

"Why adopt this attitude?" he asked. "Surely this dead man meant enough to you to make you anxious to solve the puzzle of his death—or didn't he? Do you want to force me to the conclusion that he did not? Because you seem very indifferent about it."

"With a police inspector questioning me, and a man there taking down every word I say. Of course I seem indifferent! It's so—so cold and impersonal, not as it was when you came here last night alone, and I told you—what did I tell you, though? Not much, I think, but you imagined a good deal. Perhaps you are right about my dramatising my life—I don't know. And now, you want me to convict myself of having killed the man I was living with—is that it?"

"I want information," he answered, and concealed his amazement at the hardihood of her question.

"I know you told me that," he retorted, in a way that indicated utter disbelief, "and still I want information about it."

She shook her head. "When he was going, I took down his waterproof from the rack in the hall, and handed it to him. You may remember it was almost a spring morning, not cold, and he said the waterproof would be enough—the wind hadn't begun to rise then. And he had on—I expect you saw the suit he was wearing, though. If he'd had a pistol in any of the pockets I should have seen it."

She leaned on the arm of the chair, gazing at him. "Oh, you're clever!" she said softly. "You wanted me to say it wasn't a very small pistol. But since I didn't know he had one, I can't say it. I can tell you, and this I know is true, he hadn't anything of the sort."

She shrugged her shoulders. "Dressed as he was—when your wife puts her arms round you to say goodbye—" she said, and did not end it. Then, intensely—"I tell you, he did not take anything of the sort with him. On my honour—on my oath, if you like. Now will you believe it? I am telling you absolute truth."

"Since you are so certain the pistol was not on him, you know where it was when he left here," he accused.

The sudden and swiftly concealed look of fear that she gave him revealed her instant conclusion that Jaggers might have betrayed her knowledge of the existence of the pistol. It was fleeting, a momentary revelation, and then she was on guard again.

"I don't know what you mean," she said. "The chauffeur—a friend of mine? I see, though. Jaggers has been telling you—" She broke off, and her lips set in a firm line.

She pondered it, and her relief was evident. "Then why ask that?" she demanded. "Surely you don't think I'd make a friend of him?"

"I told you that to convince you that I'm playing fair," he answered. "This inquiry—I can't use any of it, don't wish to use any of it. In a case of this sort, I follow my own intuitions, Mrs. Oliver, and as a rule they lead me rightly. I'm questioning you for help—and, frankly, I don't think I shall get it out of what you tell me. I'm far more likely to get it out of what you won't tell me, and that is what I'm after. But—look here!"

He crossed to the window, drew back the curtains, and revealed a pair of french doors giving on to the night. Thrusting down the handle of the bolt that secured them, he drew them inward, revealing a strip of pavement which gave access to a hard, gravelled path. Then he turned back to address her.

"You might have taken that pistol, last night, and gone out this way, down the drive—the rain would have washed out every footprint between here and the fallen tree—and shot Frederick Dickson dead in the taxi. And yet I don't believe you did."

"For my own use only. Disregard him, Mrs. Oliver. If I were American, I'd advise you—come clean. It will save trouble, in the end."

She sat erect again. "Is there anything else you wish to know, Inspector?" she asked, as if to end the interview.

"Something else," he answered. "For one thing—where to find a man named Clifford Oliver. You might be able to tell me."

"I'd advise you to look in the London telephone directory. Not that you are certain to find his address in it, but he was never given to concealing his place of abode, as I remember him."

"As you remember him." He echoed the phrase thoughtfully. "When did you last see him, Mrs. Oliver?"

"Then what makes you say I shall find his address in a London telephone directory? Has he written to you?"

"I destroyed the letter. But—when you came to tell me Freddy—Mr. Dickson was dead, I remember your saying that you had no right to ask me anything else, as if—as if you wouldn't try to make me incriminate my husband. Yet isn't that what you are trying to do now?"

"The field of inquiry has widened since last night," he answered. "Let me tell you, Mrs. Oliver, that Frederick Dickson was almost certainly shot with a silenced pistol, and a silenced pistol is missing from this house. The chances that your husband got hold of that missing weapon are about a million to one against. When I find it, as you know, it is a comparatively easy matter to prove whether the bullet that killed Frederick Dickson were fired from it or no. It was what is known as a thirty-eight automatic—and the bullet that killed Frederick Dickson was fired from a thirty-eight automatic. And I tell you frankly that your whole attitude over this leads me to believe that you know either who took the pistol, or where it is at the present time. Take that as an accusation if you like."

"You please yourself," she said with a trace of weariness. "Because I have lived here with—with him—for nearly three years, do you think I tried to find out all his affairs? My position here prevented such a thing—as you said a little while ago, I have no real standing here, no legal right. Consequently, I did not ask—"

"You didn't know that he took the pistol out and practised with it from time to time?" he interrupted sharply.

"Quite. You have just told me it was a thirty-eight automatic, and I know enough to realise that that must be a fairly large thing—fairly heavy, too. If he had had anything of the sort in his pocket—in any pocket—when he said goodbye to me yesterday morning, I should have known it. And he was carrying nothing but the coat I took down and handed to him—I should have known if he had had anything heavy in the coat pockets, and he had not."

"Mrs. Oliver"—he fired out the question harshly—"why did you tell me last night that your husband is not in England?"

She leaned back in the chair, averting her gaze from his, but he could see how her colour deepened at the implied accusation. He waited a long time, but she did not reply.

"You see," he explained, "by telling me that last night, and now saying that I can find his address in the London telephone directory, you make it impossible for me to believe anything you tell me."

"Last night," she said after another long pause, "I thought he—Clifford—was the man, and wanted to stop you from looking for him. I felt—two deaths through me—I couldn't bear it. Now—"

"If you know who fired that shot, and conceal the knowledge, you render yourself an accessory after the fact," he reminded her.

"I don't know," she said earnestly. "I don't! Only—last night I hadn't had time to think, to—to realise that Clifford would never do such a thing. I know now he wouldn't, and so if you do find him I don't care. He won't know anything."

Alternatively, Head reflected, had she realised that Oliver was certain to be found, and that insisting on the lie of his being abroad was useless? His only certainty, so far, was that she was withholding some knowledge vital to the discovery of the murderer—unless he might add to it the fact that she was not only a liar, but a clever one at that. Momentarily he glanced at the curtains hiding the french window. Had she gone out into the storm with the silenced pistol?

"Socially, I believe"—he went off at a tangent, to divert her from this persistent concealment, if possible—"neither he nor you had much to do with the people in the district. Is that the case?"

"Very little indeed," she assented. "When we first came here, we had a few invitations, but he had been abroad too long to keep in touch with people here, and local gossip didn't interest me."

"Well"—she sat forward in the chair and gazed into the fire—"I was one, you may realise. Trout fishing was another. Then he had interests in two Malayan tin-mining companies, and became a director of one of them. Yesterday—yes, it was only yesterday—he went to London for a board meeting, he told me."

"I don't know," she said slowly. "He was not—not the sort of man to make many friends. He didn't tell me of any."

"Relatives?" he queried, after a pause in which he reflected that Dickson's association with her, perhaps, had prevented him from making friends in the district, and quite possibly elsewhere too.

"He told me once that his mother was an only child, and his father had only one brother who died a bachelor, while he was an only child too. So there couldn't have been any very near relatives. It was in Penang he told me nobody cared much whether he lived or died."

The final statement sounded as if Dickson had been angling for her sympathy when he made it. Head refrained from comment.

"Do you know of any possible enemies?" he asked, as if, all through this questioning, her replies had been sufficiently truthful to permit of his believing her now.

"I don't," she answered slowly. "I wouldn't—wouldn't say that my husband was his enemy, even. No, I don't know of any."

But then he understood—she had managed to lead him away from discussion of the thing she wanted to conceal, and not for the life of him could he divine its nature. He could sense her relief over being asked questions which bore on other things, and felt that, for the time, he could learn no more from her. Little as he liked to own it, even to himself, she had beaten him: there was no way of proving that she had lied concerning the pistol, and, in her present mood of strenuous watchfulness, no chance of making her trap herself into an admission of any kind that she did not wish to make. He gave it up.

"Very well, I will except him," he said gravely. "And by this time, I expect, you will be glad to be let off further questioning. I'm going, now, to the dining-room, to make certain for myself that the pistol is not there. Do you wish to witness the search?"

"No," she answered, and shook her head, wearily. "You may search where you like, question whom you like. I'm—rather exhausted."

Unsatisfied, angered at his own failure to ascertain what it was that she was determined to conceal, rather than at her, he gestured Jeffries out from the room and himself followed, closing the door after them. At the dining-room doorway he paused.

"You'd better go along to the kitchen and set the rest of them free," he said. "We can drop this pretence at a search, now—I've got all it's possible to get, and that, I think, is exactly nothing."

Yet, as he entered the dining-room and saw Wells turn from examination of the desk in the window bay at sight of him, he knew that he had opened up at least two lines of inquiry, either of which might prove fruitful when he had had time to pursue it.

"We're twenty-four hours late, that's the trouble. I should have had you all out here last night, not to-night. My fault, Wells. Now you can all pile into the saloon and Jeffries can drive you back—I'll drive myself in my own car."

"Something that looks perilously like a hatful of the superintendent's tomatoes," Head answered rather grimly. "Ah, here you are, Jeffries! You can start back now—I'll drive myself. Get all your notes typed out as early as you can in the morning. By the way, what was your impression of the lady by the time we'd finished with her?"

"Well," Jeffries said deliberately, "I'd call her a very skilful liar, but a liar all the same. She knew about that pistol."

Having driven the police saloon through the gateway of Hartlands, Jeffries waited for Head to follow through in his two-seater, and then closed the gate and went back to his driving-seat. Head, at the wheel of his car, made no attempt to pass the saloon before it went on again, but pulled up and sat surveying as much as the night would let him see of the thicket of laurels and larches which darkened this entrance from the road to Hartlands. The fallen tree had not been such an advantage to Dickson's slayer after all: here, among the shrubs, would have been better cover in which to wait, and the driver of the car would have had to stop in order to open the gate. The chances of his finding the murderer—assuming always that he had the courage to search, which was unlikely—were negligible: the thick growth extended fifty yards or more on either side of the gateway, parallel with the road and behind the low hedge of hawthorn stubs.

It was, Head felt irritably, a business of groping in the dark, and, from the point of view of the criminal, it appeared almost a perfect crime. He might accuse the woman at Hartlands of having committed it, but he could prove nothing against her: Jaggers had cleared himself on the grounds of time, in spite of the half-hour between a quarter to and a quarter past six, during which he was so anxious to conceal whatever it was he had been doing.

Tanner as a murderer had practically faded out of the picture since the conclusion of the inquest, at which he had given the impression of a man who had nothing to hide, and certainly that of one without the guilt of murder on his conscience. There remained Denham's man with a glint of steel by his left side as he hurried under the tree trunk to get out of sight, and that cyclist whom Tom Mullins had seen passing the Dewdrop Inn—possibly Denham's man, by Tom's description.

Possibly, but not certainly. Head eased his car out to the road, swung to the right, and felt the bumpiness of the unmended surface. He was abreast the fallen tree, of which the trunk still lay along by the hedge, when the pull of his steering-wheel warned him of a punctured near front tyre. Although the cover had not burst, the sudden drag on the steering told him that the tyre had gone flat in a matter of seconds, and he drew in to the side of the road, with both near wheels on the grass, and, stopping, switched off his headlights and got out after stopping the engine. The tail-light of the saloon which Jeffries was driving was a mere speck far ahead: summoning that car back was out of the question, and, nearing midnight as it was by this time, Head felt that he would not have stopped the saloon if he could, for changing a wheel was a one-man task, and those men needed sleep as much as he did himself.

Using a small electric torch from the side pocket of the car, he got out the jack and hoisted the damaged wheel off the grass. Getting the spare off its stand was a simple matter, and then he found the brace with which to detach the wheel with the punctured tyre, damning the foul state of this road most heartily the while. The five securing nuts came away easily, and he put the damaged wheel up in place of the spare, which latter he pushed on to the stub until his torch showed him the ends of the bolts ready for replacing the five nuts. He spun each of these on by hand, ready for tightening with the brace, and even as he reached for the brace, which he had put down on the running-board, suddenly jerked to erectness to listen.

Faint, and muffled by distance, a shot had sounded to him. It appeared to have been fired on the opposite side of the road from Hartlands, though, as it had been utterly unexpected and he had been bending over his work, he could not be sure whence it had originated. The meadowland on his left was dotted with groves of trees, which might deflect or throw back sound in a way that would render placing it a difficult business, unless one were waiting for it as he was now.

The night was starlit, but faintly, by reason of a light haze, and very still—an utter contrast to the roaring turmoil of its immediate predecessor. He stood listening, hearing in the silence the beating of his own heart—and then came the second shot!

From his left—from the big grove that was almost a wood. He laid the brace back on the running-board of his car, and stole along toward the gateway into which Tanner had backed his taxi to turn about after seeing Dickson lying dead on the seat.

Chapter XIII
Potts

SO still was the night that now, as Head paused in the gateway leading to the marshy meadows, he could hear the clank and puff of a shunting engine in the Westingborough yards, which he knew must be nearly two miles away. The softness of the air rendered it more like a late spring evening than near on midnight in late February—it was a break in the winter for which the following month would probably demand reparation, an abnormal state for the time of year. There was a slightly luminous quality in the haze that lay low over the meadows so that the big copse toward which he faced, and from which he concluded the shots had emanated, appeared as a black island in a still, dull grey sea. He set out toward it, and heard his own footfalls squelch in the sodden grass, coarse, tussocky stuff usually given up to grazing sheep—all this land was owned by Squire Martin of Westingborough Parva, whom Head knew by repute as a bad-tempered autocrat with distinctly feudal ideas concerning the preservation of game, but hampered by dwindled income and ever-increasing taxation to a point at which he could not maintain enough keepers to guard his preserves effectively.

He had the best part of half a mile to go, and, before he reached the copse and saw its bare branches and twigs clearly against the night sky, his feet were sodden and his trousers clung wet about his calves. There, at the boundary of the wooded area, he came against a seven-or eight-stranded wire fence—it was not barbed wire, he found—designed to keep sheep and cattle from getting in among the trees and undergrowth, and paused by it, listening.

A minute or more he stood thus, and then came the sound of someone thrusting a way through to the left, away from the point at which he had reached the fence. At that he too moved to his left, pausing at intervals to listen, and assuring himself that the man or men he had come to find maintained the same direction. There was no attempt at concealment of sound in the mode of progression inside there, which went to prove that his own presence was undetected. And, although the branches which reached out beyond the circuit of the wire fence were bare, they cast enough shadow to place him in utter darkness.

A strand of the wire beside which he felt a cautious way quivered with a faint resonance against the iron post supporting it, and at that he hurried forward: somebody was climbing the fence to get out from the copse to the meadow land.

He was in time to dart forward as a dark shape showed emerging, and to get a grip on a double-barrelled shotgun before the man holding it could turn on him. A yelp of dismay followed his forward leap, and then he wrenched the gun from its holder and, gripping it by the barrels, lifted it threateningly.

"Stop there!" he bade. "It's no use bolting—the gun will identify you. Now, are you coming quietly, or do I hit you?"

"I—I reckon I'd better own it a fair cop," the other man admitted sadly. "Blimey, this ain't half a go!"

"Face about and march, then," Head ordered sharply. "Make for the gate, and if you attempt to bolt you'll get the butt of this gun on your skull. I'll risk its being loaded."

"I ain't such a fool as to git over a fence with a gun loaded," the man protested in an aggrieved way. "If you'd only—"

"That's enough!" Head interrupted, realising that his quarry was temporising with a view to finding some way of escape. "Face about and march as I told you, and don't try any tricks on the way."

Even in the darkness the man's reluctance to obey was apparent, but he turned and plodded slowly away from the fence in the direction that Head had bidden him take.

As he emerged from the deepest shadows to the open meadow land, the cause of his meek surrender became apparent. He was clad in a long waterproof overcoat that would have hampered him in any attempt at resistance, while, as he had probably seen, Head had shed his own overcoat to change wheels on his car, and thus was able to move freely and quickly. Further to that, the fact that Head had got his gun away from him rendered flight useless, as well as giving his captor an efficient weapon against any attack: even if he escaped, the gun would identify him, he knew.

They plodded on toward the gate: half-way there, the man stumbled and dropped to his knees, and Head stood over him with the gun lifted in readiness to strike while he got on his feet again. Seeing the butt over him, he resumed his progress with a weary groan, and, stooping swiftly as he followed, Head picked up a dark object that proved to be a dead cock pheasant, not yet cold.

"All right—I'll carry this one for you," Head told his man. "If you got one with the second barrel, though, don't trouble to drop it like that. Two won't get you a longer sentence than one."

With something between a curse and a groan the man led on: he had apparently abandoned all thought of resistance, but Head held the gun handy for striking, and took no chances. They emerged through the gateway to the road, and Head, mindful of his man, omitted the formality of closing the gate after passing through.

"Turn right," he bade. "Stop alongside the car you see standing there—go to the offside, and open the door by the steering-wheel."

Meekly enough, the man complied: it was, as Head knew, the fact of having had his gun taken away that prevented him from trying to escape: in addition to this, he was a smaller man than his captor, and freedom of movement was denied him by the long coat he was wearing.

"Get in and sit down," Head ordered further, "but don't shut the door. Now turn your head the other way."

The lifted gun-butt emphasised the command. The man obeyed it, and, thrusting his free hand in the pocket of the door after dropping the dead pheasant down beside the car, Head took out a pair of handcuffs. Then he felt free to lean the gun against the side of the car, and, having both hands free, got a grip on the man's arm and snapped one cuff on to a limply unresisting wrist.

There was no resistance: the man was surprisingly docile, and, having him safely manacled, Head bade him move over to the passenger's seat, while he himself put the gun and dead bird in the dickey of the car, and returned to take his brace and tighten up the securing nuts of the wheel he had fitted. His passenger sat still until the task was concluded and the brace put away in the dickey.

"You can send for it in the morning," Head told him cheerfully. "Now tell me one thing before we get going. You know, I expect, that a tree fell across this road last night?"

"Well, you won't increase your sentence by answering my question truthfully, and if you're really helpful I may be able to get it reduced for you. What time last night were you near that tree?"

"I couldn't say exactly, mister. I got along this road last night about six, an' I was by that tree maybe an hour an' a half later when a car come along an' I had to hide, quick."

"And you dodged under the tree trunk with the gun under your arm when that car came along the road from Westingborough, eh?"

"One more question, first. Apart from that car, did you see anyone along this road last night? Think carefully, now."

"I did. It was blowin' heavens hard an' rainin' like the very devil, but I seen someone in the gateway a little way along the road, sorter shelterin' among the trees there—"

Rather than go to the trouble of removing the jack from under the front axle by means of its handle, Head released the hand-brake, and the car moved backward until the jacked-up wheel dropped on to its tyre. He placed the jack in the dickey with the other things, and got in to start up the engine. Here, he felt, was a matter that demanded more than a mere wayside questioning, and he himself had had enough of investigating the case of Dickson's murder for one day.

"Where are you a-takin' of me to, mister?" Potts inquired, as Head engaged a gear and set the car in motion.

"Where you'll have a nice, quiet night's rest, after you've interviewed the sergeant in the charge room at Westingborough Police Station. I'm surprised at you, Potts, trying a second night in the same place, after being seen on the road with a gun the first night."

"I reckoned nobody'd look for me there to-night—wouldn't think I'd have the nerve to come back. Blimey, but my luck's out, mister!"

Head made no reply as he drove on. A woman sheltering by the gateway of Hartlands at somewhere about six o'clock—if in truth it were a woman. He had discovered—and with surprising ease caught—Denham's "man with a gun", and, so far as guilt was concerned, had virtually eliminated him from the case, for that gun was incapable of sending a thirty-eight automatic pistol bullet into Dickson's brain, or anywhere else with deadly effect. But, in disposing of this one figure in the case, he had merely revealed another.

"Potts, did you cycle home through Westingborough Parva last night, past the Dewdrop Inn at about a quarter to nine o'clock?"

"I did, mister. I reckoned it'd be a good night for gettin' 'em, but it wasn't. I could see 'em against the sky to-night, clear enough for a shot, but last night it was hopeless."

So that was that, and it left the direction in which the woman had gone undetermined. But, dead tired as he was, Head left all the rest of his questioning for the morrow, and drove on to lodge his prisoner in safe custody, unexamined, for the night.

"I will not deny that you made a busy evening of it," Superintendent Wadden observed when Head faced him in his room the next morning, "and the bag appears to consist of this stack of stuff you got Jeffries to take down for you, and one poacher. I've been wanting Bill Potts for years, and I'm grateful to you for landing him at last. But I don't see how he's going to help you over your case."

"On the other hand, he may," Head dissented. "He was there the night before last. I didn't analyse him fully last night, but he appears to have been Denham's man with a gun. And if what he says is true he was not the only person out on the road last night apart from the three cars—that is, Guddle and Denham and Tanner."

"Oho!" Wadden sat up in his chair and frowned thoughtfully. "Yet another bee in our marmalade pot, is there? Well, what's the procedure? I've been wading through this stack of Jeffries' typing—good lad, Jeffries—and I suppose you'd like to go through it with me, eh?"

"We might have a word with Potts first," Head suggested. "Then we shall have all the information there is before discussing any of it. I don't like this case, chief. It's too much a business of groping in the dark. There's nothing I can grip and hold in it."

"It's drifting away from him," Head protested rather impatiently. "That missing pistol at Hartlands—"

"You didn't think you'd find it by getting four men to go out there and ransack the house, did you?" Wadden interposed.

"Find it? Not a hope in Hades! All I wanted was the pretext of the search, to give me enough men to shepherd those people at Hartlands while I questioned them—prevent the unquestioned ones from getting at those I'd finished interrogating. And I didn't want them to realise that as my main object. Hence the search."

"Well, you've unearthed a pretty collection of lies, by the look of the replies here. But if we're to complete by hearing Potts, we'd better have him in." He pressed his bell, and ordered the man who answered the summons to get Potts sent in to him. "Did he give you much trouble?" he inquired, when his man had gone in quest of Potts.

"Not any at all," Head responded. "I managed to steal up and get his gun away from him while he was getting over the fence—before he was clear of it—and after that he caved like a landslide."

He sat silent, then, and Head stood thoughtful at the far side of the room until a large constable appeared in charge of Potts, who limped slightly as he entered the room, thus giving evidence as to why he had not attempted to bolt when Head had captured him. His guard marched him round the desk at which Wadden sat, so that he faced the superintendent as he stood, unkempt and unshaven after his night in a cell, corduroy-trousered, and wearing a shabby old jacket of which each side pocket would easily contain a hare, let alone a pheasant.

"Shouldn't go poaching in that state," Wadden admonished him, with an appearance of kindly concern. "Two nights running, too, I hear, and the same place at that. Do you know you're going to get an honest gamekeeper the sack?"

"It wouldn't be. But pheasants at this time of year! It's unprincipled, man! It's outrageous! Whaddye mean by it?"

"Oh, is there?" An ominous note came into Wadden's voice, and he fixed his piercing gaze on the man in a way that made him wilt—there were those who compared the superintendent's eyes to gimlets, boring into the very thoughts of offenders. "Well, we'll take care you don't supply that market for some time to come. And that's not all, my lad. You owned to the inspector here that you were out on that road, near a tree that had fallen across it, the night before last. You hid behind that tree when a car pulled up in front of it, unable to go any farther. And when the next car that pulled up there arrived, a man was shot dead in it. What have you got to say about that, eh?"

There was a long pause. Then: "Nuthin'," Potts answered sullenly. "I warn't there then. I heerd about it, but I'd gone before it happened."

For a long time the man stood silent. Then he shook his head, miserably, as if to admit that he could find no proof.

"Now, perhaps, you realise the mess you've got yourself in," Wadden observed quietly. "We've got a witness who saw you dodge out of sight under that tree, a few minutes before this man was shot dead in the car. You'd better begin to understand that there's a possibility of your hanging by the neck till you're dead, over this—"

Wadden leaned back in his chair. "Take the witness, Inspector," he said gravely. "It's your case. As for you, Potts"—he made his voice as impressive as he could—"you may get back to your cell without being charged with murder, if you're careful. You're due to appear before the justices in a couple of hours or thereabouts, and for your own sake I'd advise you to tell the inspector the absolute truth as to what you were doing on that road the night before last."

Head moved round until he stood beside the superintendent, and gave Potts a steady, appraising scrutiny. He saw the type that no amount of punishment would deter from poaching: there was gipsy blood in the man's veins, and he would hunt game for sport as much as for profit, would match his wits against those of gamekeepers and police for the sake of outwitting them. Of such as he were the outlaws of old time, men who took to the woods and defied authority: he lived with a wife and two children in a little cottage on the outskirts of Carden, the village behind Long Ridge, but family responsibilities would never obliterate his leaning to poaching. It was, for him, the expression of centuries-old resentment against a possessing class, an inherited refusal to recognise an artificial law. Such men still exist in country districts, descendants, perhaps of members of such a mediÃ¦val band as caused the legend of Robin Hood to become current.

But, as Head saw, this was a degenerate descendant. His almost ignominious surrender of the night before had stated him as such, and his attitude now proved it. Yet, over this last, his ignorance of the processes of the law had to be taken into account: he was badly frightened over the possibility of being held to account for the murder of Dickson, and did not realise that, in the event of his being accused of such a thing, his accusers had to prove his possession of an automatic pistol. He knew only that he had been seen with a gun, and a man had been shot: there, to his mind, was evidence of possible guilt, though clear thought would have told him that the pellets from his gun would have rattled harmlessly on the window of the car that held the murdered man, or at the worst would have merely cracked the glass.

Wadden, to express it in his own way, had him rattled. Now Head took him in hand, to get such information as he could.

"Potts, what time did you leave home the night before last?" he asked, and rendered the question solemnly impressive.

Potts gave him a long look. This was a different being from the fierce-eyed superintendent: an inquisitive, dangerous, clever being—yes, but he did not look as if he meant any harm, and Potts, ignoring the result of confessing to poaching for the time, in view of the fact that he was in danger of a far graver charge—and also that the inspector had picked up one dead pheasant that he had tried to drop and hide, while another had been discovered in his overcoat pocket—decided to resort to the truth as his best friend, for once.

"In bits. I'd broke it down—butt i' one pocket, barrels in t'other. I went on me bike, an' hid it i' Hartlands' gateway."

"Left home between half-past five and six, reached Hartlands' gateway at what time? I want that particularly."

"Sixish, then. Somewheer about six, an' maybe a bit after. An' when I got theer, I reckoned on leavin' the bike. I was goin' arter the birds—it's the solemn truth I'm tellin' ye, mister."

"You'd better keep to it," Head said drily. "Reached the gateway of Hartlands at something past six. Was it dark, then?"

"No, it warn't dark, but gettin' darkish. An' all them frees hangin' out over the road made it darkish, more'n it would be where 'tis open. An' there was somebody just comin' out through Hartlands' gate, a woman, it was. I didn't take no notice, but went on."

"Being afraid to hide your bicycle there for the woman to see—yes. You're sure it was a woman, now?"

"'Twas a woman, sure enough, but I didn't take much notice. The wind was blowin' heavens hard, an' when she see me she sorter backed away, as if she didn't want me to see her—"

"Not to see who 'twas, I mean. I see her back away, an' she went back up as if she'd changed her mind an' wanted to go back to Hartlands up the drive. So I went on a little an' then got off an' looked back, an' sure enough she was a bit o' the way up the drive, wi' her back turned to me, so I shoved the bike in under the laurels since she warn't lookin', an' snuck away."

"You told me last night she was sheltering in the gateway," Head pointed out accusingly. "What about this solemn truth of yours?"

"She was sorter shelterin' when I first seen her," Potts protested earnestly. "Leastways, she'd come through the gate, an' she was under one o' them fir trees—got back well under it as if she was shelterin' till she see me. Then she started to go back."

"Well, lemme see. Looked like a lady, not too short an' not too tall—just ordinary height, like. Got a thin waterproof on—it flapped about in the wind. An' a hat tied down with a darkish sort of handkerchief or somethin'—there was somethin' bound over it an' tied under her chin, as if she was afraid o' gettin' her hair wet."

"Carrying anything?" Head demanded. "A handbag or anything of that sort, did you see?"

"No, I said she went back a bit o' the way along the drive. I didn't stop to see whether she went all the way back to the house. I went off on me own business, seein' as she wanted to dodge me seein' her, I reckoned it didn't matter about her seein' me."

"I dunno. I didn't know the time. But it was rainin' heavens hard, an' the wind was a-blowin' so you couldn't hear a thing, an' I warn't thinkin' much about her, bein' after what I was after."

"Well, it warn't a steady wind so's you could hear things above it. It come smack at you, and then stopped down low, an' then come at you again—wop! An' the trees was creakin' an' you had to bend against it, an'—well, you just couldn't hear nuthin'."

Confirming Tanner's description of the night, Head thought but did not say. Confirming his own impression of it too, for that matter.

"Well, I warn't near enough to her to say properly. Tallish, not short. An' yet not over tall, if you know what I mean. Not short."

"No, I wouldn't say, because I warn't near enough to be sure. About that high, I'd reckon." He lifted his hand to a height of five feet six or seven inches from the floor by way of illustration. "But I ain't sure. She might be taller'n that, but not shorter."

"I left my bike there an' went on to the end o' Long Ridge drive, Mr. Neville's place. I went over the river by his bridge an' up into the woods back o' his house. Ord'nary weather, I wouldn't risk goin' up there, but I knew nobody wouldn't hear my gun in a wind like that. But there warn't nothin' worth goin' for when I got there—not a bird could I see. So I reckoned it'd be stiller down on the marshes, an' come back, to try where you caught me last night, mister."

This excursion, Head reflected, would fill in the time between Potts' seeing the woman by Hartlands' gateway, and the moment in which Denham caught sight of him by the fallen tree.

"But you didn't go straight to the copse on the marshes?" he suggested. "After coming out from Mr. Neville's gateway, you went back toward Hartlands, didn't you?"

"That was so, mister. Y'see, I changed me mind for a bit, an' went back to where I'd left the bike, countin' on givin' it up for the night an' goin' home. Then, when I got where I'd left the bike, it seemed a lot stiller—maybe it was stiller for a few minutes—so I told meself I might as well go an' have a try on the marshes, in case I could sight a bird against the sky. So back I goes again, an' I'd got past the tree when along comes a car. So I dodged back to get outer the light from the lamps, got under the tree, an' waited while the driver found he couldn't go on an' turned about an' went off. Then I went to where you caught me last night, mister, but in about ten minutes I could see it warn't any use. If there'd been a thousand birds up in the branches I couldn't see any of 'em, for the wind was got up again, if ever it'd gone down, and the rain was comin' down in sheets. I found a leanin' trunk an' sheltered a bit till the worst of it was over, an' then I come back through the gateway, just in time to dodge a pack o' men with a couple o' horses comin' along the road, an' they put the wind up me for the minute. But I got off, under the tree trunk again, an' found my bike all right."

"And went off through Westingborough Parva, past the Dewdrop," Head completed for him. "At what time was this?"

"I didn't go straight off, mister. I sheltered down there by Hartlands' gateway a long while, an' then when I did start off I had to walk a goodish bit till I got on the level. The wind was a reg'lar hurricane, an' with me gun in me pockets in two bits—stock in one coat pocket an' barrels in the other—I just couldn't get on to me bike on the hill. So it'd be nineish when I got as far as the Dewdrop, I reckon. It was near on ten when I got home, soaked through an' with nuthin' to show for me night's trouble."

"Reckon I c'n stand six weeks or so for ownin' to trespassin' after game," Potts said firmly, "as long as I make you two gents understand I didn't have nuthin' to do with killin' nobody. Because I didn't, I'll take my oath any time. I don't go about killin' people."

"Except for this woman, the man with the car, and the men with the two horses, did you see anyone along that road at any time?" Head asked.

"A shot? Nuthin' of the sort. But you'd have had to fire a gun within twenty yards for anyone to hear it then, along there. I tell you, the wind was comin' in smacks like gunshots, nearly."

And, Head reflected, if it struck on the side of a big saloon car in that way, there was little likelihood of the driver hearing the reports of a silenced pistol. An ideal night for a murder!

Chapter XIV
Analysis

"Remanded till Tuesday, and since he can't find a surety he remains in custody," he observed. "Then, of course, he'll get twenty-eight days hard."

"Oh, blast the Dickson case!" Head retorted angrily. "So far, it's a business of groping in the dark. Utterly in the dark. That woman—Mrs. Oliver—and now this mystery woman hiding somewhere among the shrubs by Hartlands' gateway, if we are to believe Potts, and I don't see why we shouldn't. Jaggers, with a half-hour that he wants to conceal—even that French girl, Jeanne Ray, a possibility! And not a ray of motive anywhere—unless this woman Potts talks about had one. If so, how am I to find her, after forty-eight hours and more?"

"Y'know, Head, you're not being your usual bright self over this case," Wadden observed thoughtfully. "I've brought you up, as I might say, from a mere rozzer, and transformed you into the brightest lad that ever let daylight into trouble. How the hell d'you think I'm going to hand in my resignation and start on tomato-growing if I can't trust you to carry on without me? Now let's get down to this business and summarise it—see what we've got so far. What say? I've got an hour to spare. We may get somewhere—or may not, of course."

"Well, let's have the benefit of your superior intellect, then," Head said, but without enthusiasm.

"Superior hell!" Wadden retorted, and blew for emphasis. "I just want to clarify what you've done up to this present moment, and sort out the list of possible suspects while the sorting's good. What say? Do we make a summary up to date, or don't we?"

"We do. Right. Now I've been through all this script that Jeffries typed out—the results of your inquisition last night—and I find a few points in that. But let's begin at the beginning. A man, Dickson, comes off the seven-twenty-three in one of the worst storms that has ever happened here, takes a taxi at the station, and gets shot on his way home. What do we know about him, eh?"

"Living with another man's wife, well-off, and not likely to have been murdered for any mercenary motive—unless she did it to stop him from altering his will," Head completed.

"Well, his solicitor will be along to tell us about that, either to-day or to-morrow, and it's a cold trail anyhow," Wadden observed. "But, on the face of it, the taxi-man shot him. Did he?"

"Motive?" Head responded questioningly. "If Tanner had had any grudge against Dickson, almost certainly Dickson would have recognised him and not employed him—"

"Hold on, man!" Wadden cautioned. "When the average person, man or woman, wants a taxi, does he or she study the personality of the driver? Surely you take a taxi-driver for granted, just as you do a waiter or a railway porter. You simply say: 'Drive me to Oomph,' get in, and when you get to Oomph hand over the fare and don't observe whether the man's cock-eyed or brother to the Venus of Milo."

"And looks a pretty hopeless one, to me," Head said. "The only possibility I could see at the start—the one that made me so anxious to get away to Purkis and Weddel's and check up on his history—was the possibility of this being another case of impersonation. Whether Tanner were in reality Oliver—and he isn't."

"I got him in profile, chief, and it's just possible to glimpse what's behind that eye-shade he wears. It's as well he does wear it, too—I'd say that empty socket isn't a pleasant sight. And I'm prepared to swear the scar on his cheek is genuine, not painted on as in the case of Herr von Helsing, whom you may remember. And since he is Albert Henry Tanner, earning his living here for twenty-two months as a law-abiding taxi-driver, why should he suddenly up and shoot a man whom I see no chance of connecting with him in any way?"

"Not altogether, because as I see it he had the best chance of shooting Dickson. But why? What's the motive?"

"Add to that the man's whole attitude from the start. He fetches the body here for us, and I could see nothing whatever in his demeanour to give me cause for suspicion. When I took him out in my car and got him to go through the motions of his stopping with his Rolls in front of the fallen tree, there wasn't a thing that led me to think him other than innocent. And you'll admit it was a pretty severe test."

"If guilty," Wadden admitted again, "almost certainly he'd have made some slip. I dunno. Well, let's pass on, and consider what you got while Wells was making that fake search last night. Out of that, you get three suspects, as I see it."

"Precisely. These three check each other as to the essential time, about seven thirty-five, say, to eight-ten or thereabouts. But Jaggers—I'm not so sure of him. First of all, you get his determination to conceal what he was doing between five forty-five and six-fifteen, when he says he was in the kitchen, and the cook says he was not. I know he couldn't have shot Dickson during that time, because Dickson hadn't got to the station by then—but why conceal it?"

"Not such a long shot, my lad. Now look here. When you tackled Jaggers with that little story about Dickson having tempted her away from him, he broke out with an excited denial and said Dickson was only sixteen at the time. And here we have Dickson's present age as forty-three. Therefore, in 1918 he was twenty-five, not sixteen."

"I've had time to study these depositions—you haven't," Wadden said consolingly. "But on that—on Jaggers' frantic and lying denial of anything between this wife of his and Dickson eighteen or nineteen years ago—we bring him very much into the limelight as a suspect—"

"Was he?" Wadden turned over the typed sheets. "Let's take the statements about him in their order. First, his own at the inquest—'It was just on dark when I took some letters to post, but not so dark that I couldn't see it'—the fallen tree that is. 'Somewhere between five and half-past, it would be,' he said in evidence. Further to that, he knew the tree had fallen across the road, the telephone wires were down, and Dickson would take a taxi back from the station. He had free access to the silenced pistol in that desk in the dining-room. He tried to bluff you into believing that his wife is dead, and in that storm, with the tree down, he had such a chance of getting his own back on Dickson as he'd never have again."

"Is that a certainty? Let's take these depositions as Jeffries recorded them. Jeanne Ray can tell us nothing on the point—she was not in the kitchen at all, it appears. You asked Gladys Maltby who was in the kitchen from six to eight, and she says—'There was cook and Ellen—I don't know where Miss Ray was.' Not a word about Jaggers being there—I wish you'd pressed her on that point, Head. Next comes Ellen James, in the kitchen reading. She says—'Cook was there, and Gladys was in and out all the time,' but no mention of Jaggers being there. You'd think she'd have noticed him enough to add his name to these other two. Then the cook, Florence Barnard. You asked her whether she saw anything of Jaggers, and she said—'He came in about half-past six, and said the wind made his chimney smoke too much, so if I didn't mind he'd put in the evening with us. I didn't mind, so he stayed up to nearly nine o'clock. He was still there when I got dinner for the mistress on a tray, and after that.'"

"For the later part of the time. When Barnard got that dinner on a tray, Dickson had been dead some time. Jaggers was so inconspicuous in that kitchen that neither of the two maids noticed him enough to tell you he was there at all, the cook says he came in half an hour later than the time he insists on, and was there the rest of the evening. But she was busy, in and out about her work, probably. If he'd timed the arrival of the taxi at the fallen tree, he might have gone out for a quarter of an hour—plenty long enough for his purpose—and got back without her noticing it. No, you've not been as bright as usual, Head. You ought to have had his presence stressed far more than you did."

"Don't you damn well poke fun at my tomatoes, young feller!" Wadden advised, and blew a wrathful gust. "Nor do we call in anyone—all this business will straighten itself out if you stick to it. So far, we've pinned Jaggers down as a likely suspect, but now—supposing the mystery woman by the gate was his missing wife?"

"If Jaggers, not having done the shooting himself, knew she might go gunning for Dickson—hell hath no fury, and all that—and knew she got him, then he's concealing that half-hour to shield her, trying to prevent us from knowing he met her when he went to post, and in fact, trying to keep us from knowing that she was there at all."

"Not so near, my lad. First, he tries to persuade you she's dead and doesn't exist. Then he lies nine years off Dickson's age to convince you Dickson never had anything to do with her, and then he lies away the half-hour in which he met and talked to her—told her, perhaps, that Dickson was coming off the seven twenty-three and would come home in a taxi, which couldn't bring him farther than the fallen tree. Potts saw her go up the drive after Jaggers had gone back and into the kitchen. Supposing she went up to Jaggers' room, found the silenced pistol there, and took it out and used it on Dickson?"

"And by concealing his knowledge of her being there, you mean, Jaggers becomes accessory to the crime, to a certain extent?"

"No, as to his own movements and the whereabouts of the pistol. Oh, leave that part of it—it's law, and I hate legal complexities. But that gives you two reasonable suspects, doesn't it?"

"Suspicion's easy," Head retorted. "Finding that pistol and checking the bullet out of Dickson's brain with the rifling of the barrel looks not so easy, to me."

"Well, now we've got two more to consider. Jeanne Ray, for one. She admits being out of sight of anyone during the essential time—or at least a good part of it. In the house or out of it, but not in the kitchen or where anyone could confirm her presence."

"Doubtful," Wadden admitted. "Hardly a suspect, in fact, and I doubt her ability to aim a pistol in the way that one was aimed. You can rule her out, if you feel like it."

"I'm not ruling one of them out," Head said with energy. "That, in fact, is the trouble of the case. Too many suspects."

"Spoil the broth, eh? Well, supposing Mrs. Oliver happened to be dead sick of her life with Dickson. Supposing she felt, as most murderers feel, that there wasn't the slightest possibility of the crime being traced to her? Head, she knew he had that pistol, and knew where he kept it, too. That sticks out a mile in her replies to you."

"A conviction that she didn't kill the man. I've had it from my first sight of her. Why she's lying about the pistol is altogether beyond me, but I feel absolutely certain she didn't use it on him."

"Umm-m! Well, if you've got that feeling, it takes a lot of getting over. But why lie like that about the pistol? On the face of it, Head, the bullet that came out of that pistol killed Dickson, and she knows who pulled the trigger."

"On the face of it—yes. But short of arresting and charging her with being concerned in the murder, we can't do a thing about it beyond what I have done, and on the flimsy evidence we've got I don't see a chance of getting a warrant for her arrest."

"Now," Wadden said thoughtfully, "the last and likeliest suspect, as far as the actual shooting is concerned. For when you come down to brass tacks, Head, it's next to a certainty that a man aimed the pistol that killed Dickson. It was a good shot, in any case, and it was one hell of a night to go out shooting. And then, a plain motive, too."

"You've got to look him up, my lad—and don't forget that both he and Tanner have some connection with Chelsea, and so possibly with each other. They might have swapped identities."

"For which, Oliver would have to be short of an eye and plus an ugly scar like the one Tanner wears," Head pointed out. "I don't see him sacrificing half his sight and all his beauty even for revenge on Dickson, and the chance of his having had a similar accident is about one in ten million. Still, as you say, there's the motive."

"No-o. Too fond of Potts to take the risk—and incidentally too fond of roast pheasant. Well, that's your list, by the look of things. You may unearth another dozen or two people who happened to be hanging over Hartlands' gate or round that fallen tree at the right time for shooting Dickson, but you've enough to go on with, I think."

"You'll just have time to bid your wife a fond farewell and catch the midday train up," Wadden replied. "Do I see you back to-night, to-morrow, next week, or when?"

"At present, it's when. I don't know how long he'll take to find, even, let alone the business of investigating him."

"Good luck, laddie. It's a rotten case so far, I know, but you may run against something. If not, come back and arrest Jaggers. I'm off Tanner as the shootist, now, but my faith in Jaggers grows every minute. Don't you feel like going out to Hartlands and getting some more evidence as to where he was during the vital time, before you hare off to London in quest of Oliver?"

"Right you are. Don't get depressed, and—oh, I know! What about that car, the Rolls? Do you still want it there cluttering up our back yard, or shall I tell Tanner to take it away?"

"Let it stay there a bit longer. Till I get back, say. I might possibly want to give it another look over after seeing Oliver."

"Are you quite sure you're right in worrying about him for the present? The actual shooting is two days and a half old, now, so if he'd meant to go he'd have gone—that is, if he came down here and did it. And it looks to me as if you've got a far stronger case against either Jaggers or the mystery woman than you're likely to get through going after him. Why not clear them or catch 'em?"

There was real concern in the superintendent's voice. Only once before had he seen his bright lad, as he called Head, at a loss as he appeared to be in this case. But Head only smiled slightly.

"I'll go after him first," he said. "Jaggers won't run away, and the idea of a woman—any woman—going out in that storm to wait for a man and shoot him when he turns up doesn't appeal to me. If I can eliminate Oliver as a suspect, I'm one up—the field is narrowed by that one. Then, if I can eliminate Tanner, and Jaggers, and Potts, I'll turn my attention to the women—unless, of course, eliminating the men may have uncovered a few more. Quite possibly we haven't even got near the one who actually killed Dickson, yet."

"Exactly, and that's what makes the case so damnably irritating. I haven't got and can't get—so far—enough against anyone to justify my inviting him or her to come here and make a statement, let alone enough to justify arrest. You know how it is, chief—move one inch too far in trying to get evidence, and the hullabaloo about third degree and unfair police methods leads to questions in Parliament and another crippling order to make our work more difficult. In common fairness to ourselves, I ought to run that woman Margaret Oliver in and charge her with conspiring to defeat the ends of justice, for she lied if ever a woman did when I questioned her about that pistol, and she isn't even a clever liar, but a damned bad one, in my opinion. But what can I do about it? What can I do about Jaggers and his patent lies? About that missing half-hour, I mean? I've nothing at all beyond mere suspicion, as far as the actual crime is concerned—"

"All right, laddie," Wadden put in gently. "Go at it in your own way and wipe off your suspects one at a time, and don't get all the tail of your shirt out because you can't put the handcuffs on your man or woman two days and a half after the bumping off. If you get your man during the next fortnight he'll be jugged and sentenced in nice time for you to take a decent summer holiday—which is what you need!"

"You'd miss that midday train, whatever it is you want to tell me," Wadden interrupted firmly. "Head, my lad, if you don't watch your step I'm going to get all upstage and official, and order you about. And how d'ye like the idea of that?"

"I'll catch that train, chief," Head responded, and made for the door. "See you again—when."

"Yes, that's when," Wadden fired after him. "Good luck, and be a bright boy till I see you next."

PART TWO.

Chapter XV
The Element of Chance

Thus, seated in the corner of his compartment in the big express train, Head reflected as, some eight miles beyond Westingborough, the train drew to a standstill alongside the platform at Crandon, and porters went along beside the coaches calling—"London only! London next stop!" Here a farmerish-looking individual got in and took the corner of the compartment diagonally opposite to that which Head occupied, and, remarking that it was very mild weather for the time of the year, unfolded a newspaper and settled himself for the three-hour run to the terminus. Head, having assented to the proposition about the weather, went on looking out of the window.

Few people joined the train here. The slamming of three or four doors sounded over the voices warning passengers that London was the next stop, and then followed comparative silence, broken by the hiss of air in the brake mechanism. The guard, watch in hand, stood on the platform nearly opposite Head's compartment, and was just lifting his whistle when a slight commotion at the barrier arrested his movement. A big man, carrying a heavy suitcase, literally plunged on to the platform, and following him came a woman with a smaller case. They had ten yards or less to traverse in order to reach the train, and Head noted that even in that short distance the woman drew level with the man, although he was making the best time he could. A woman with a good figure, inclining to slenderness, and of medium height, evidently well-muscled and active, though past her youth. And her face—in the few seconds for which it was within his line of vision Head knew he had seen it somewhere.

He saw the guard step toward the train and reach out to open a compartment door for the pair. The door slammed on them, the guard blew his whistle, and the train began to move. London only!

The big man, Head felt certain, was one whom he had never seen before, but the woman... something about her face, some trick of expression, perhaps, made him sure that he had seen her somewhere. Crandon people went over to Westingborough, of course, and she might be somebody he had observed casually in the streets while she was shopping or calling on friends in the town. And yet—

For some minutes he puzzled over her as he sat watching the countryside, and then, moving with such abrupt impatience that his fellow-passenger in the compartment looked up from his paper in surprise, he got to his feet and went out into the corridor. The man and woman had got into the same coach, two or three compartments forward of his own, and he moved along slowly, noting that the outer windows of the coach mirrored faintly the compartments beside them. Presently he was in a position to see both the man and woman, seated facing each other, but the mirroring effect was not strong enough to give their faces clearly. Head lighted a cigarette, stuck his hands in his pockets, and sauntered past their compartment; and, as he passed, he looked in.

The man had his suitcase open, and was counting money. He had two little piles of silver laid out on the upholstered seat in front of the case, and had just emptied another bag of coins into his hand. Both he and the woman looked up at the tall figure passing the sliding door that shut them off from him, and then the man went on counting, as if he cared nothing at all whether he were observed at his task or no. Head went on to the forward end of the coach, stood there awhile looking out, and then returned slowly toward his own compartment. As he passed the one in which he was interested, the woman looked up and met his gaze fully: the man had finished his business of counting, and had closed his suitcase again. He was gazing rather glumly at the woman, and took no notice of Head's passing.

Superintendent Wadden, Head reflected as he seated himself again in his corner, had an axiom to the effect that, if you did your best and went on doing it, no matter what the task might be, chance came to your aid sooner or later. Here, apparently, was proof of the axiom—but how could the chance be used? To enter that compartment and tackle the pair would only put them on their guard: on the other hand, it would be rank folly to let them go, and lose themselves from his sight in London. He considered ways and means as he sat.

The other man in the compartment put down his newspaper and opined that this mild weather, comin' so early, was deceitful. That's what it was, deceitful. It'd swell the buds, and then there'd come frosts to blight 'em, sure as you're born.

"Very probably," Head assented. "I wonder if you'd mind my having a look at your paper—if you've finished with it?"

Head took it and turned over the pages—it was the Crandon Sentinel, he saw, one of a chain of local papers which had their headquarters in Westingborough, devoted three or four columns each to its own locality, and, for the rest, were identical in make-up. He turned to the pages devoted to Crandon affairs, and found there what he sought, no less than two columns devoted to the opening of the "Crandon Elysium", a new cinema theatre which, according to the Sentinel, was not merely up-to-date but a few years ahead of the times, a veritable palace of refined entertainment in which the Very Latest and Best was provided for discriminating patrons, with a complete change of programme twice weekly. In addition to two super films, the programme for the opening included a stage performance by the world-famous comedy artistes and jugglers, Golden-Voiced Eleonora and Artful Arturo. Lady Ashford of Carden Hall, supported by the Mayor of Crandon and other local worthies, had taken the stage for the opening ceremony, and was reported at length.

Then Head took a glance at the half-page advertisement which faced the report of the opening and description of the Elysium. There, centred in the text, he found what interested him most, a rather dingy and smudged halftone of the Golden-Voiced Eleonora and Artful Arturo. Eleonora, on the right of the picture, stood with a long-barrelled pistol levelled at Arturo, who balanced on his head what looked like three billiard balls, one over the other. According to the report, they were three apples, which Eleonora shot away one after another, before entrancing the audience with her rendering of "Mother Wears the Pants", in which all the richness of her golden voice was displayed to such perfection that she had to sing "Dangers of the Gloaming" as an encore. After that, Arturo rendered the storm from the William Tell overture on a xylophone, and the curtain came down amid tumultuous applause.

All in order, Head reflected as he folded the paper and handed it back to its owner with a word of thanks. The reporter had missed the delicate irony of an audience tumultuously applauding the fall of the curtain: probably they wanted to get rid of Eleonora and Arturo in order to settle to enjoyment of Mae West. However that might have been, Arturo now sat counting silver—or rather, had finished counting silver—three compartments ahead, having finished his contract with the Elysium, and Eleonora—Golden-Voiced and also Dead-Shot Eleonora, sat opposite him and watched the proceeding.

Past dispute, investigation of Clifford Oliver must wait awhile. These two must not be permitted to get away unquestioned.

Out on the platform at the terminus, Head waited until the pair in whom he was interested began to walk toward the exit, and then he followed. The woman was on the left of her companion, and thus Head edged over to his left, until he was almost abreast of her. Then he spoke, only just loudly enough for the words to reach her ears—

She stopped so suddenly to face him that her companion was two paces ahead of her before he stopped too. Deathly pale under a liberal coating of make-up, she stared at Head, and found her voice.

Smiling slightly, he shook his head. "Oh, no, I'm not," he dissented, "and you know quite well why I—"

"Here, what do you mean by it, interfering with this lady?" the big man broke in heatedly. "What do you want—who are you?"

"A police officer, from Westingborough," Head answered him calmly, "and I want to ask Mrs. Jaggers a few questions."

"Well, you can't! You've got no business to interfere with us." The big man had gone as red with indignation as was his companion white with alarm. "You leave this lady alone and get off about your business. We've done nothing to justify your interfering with us."

"Your mistake," Head snapped back. "I'll give the lady the choice between a quiet talk and coming to a police station to make a statement. Here's my card—Inspector Head—if you wish to see it."

Some few of their fellow-passengers by the train glanced curiously at the trio as they went their way toward the exit. The man leaned toward Head to scrutinise the card, and then looked at the woman.

"But—but you can't do a thing like this," he protested, though with a note of doubt in his voice. "This lady—"

"Is Mrs. Jaggers," Head completed for him. "I don't know your name, but I will, shortly. I am investigating a case of murder, and for that I have the right to question whom I choose—"

"Are you accusing her—?" the man broke in, and again left it an incomplete sentence. He cast a glance at the exit as if he contemplated making a run for it, but evidently thought better of the idea.

"Not at present," Head answered coolly, and saw the woman flinch at the reply. "Now where can we go? There should be a tea-room or something of the kind—or is it to be a police station?"

"You'll see," Head told him firmly. "Don't stand here arguing about what can't be helped, but come along. You lead the way, madam."

A moment more of hesitation, and then she complied. Each carrying a suitcase, the three delivered up their tickets and made their way to one of the station tea-rooms, a big apartment in which round tables were dotted about, and most of the chairs were vacant at that hour. Head indicated a corner table at which there was little chance of their being overheard, and the big man put his suitcase down beside a chair and turned to make one more protest.

"Is it?" Head drew out another chair and gestured to the woman to seat herself as he made the quiet rejoinder. "By the way, I want to know your name. Sit please, and don't make a fuss—that is, unless you wish me to make one too."

"Arthur Tompkins is my name, and I'm not ashamed of it," the big man said sullenly, and slumped down in his chair as if he had a grudge against it. A waitress approached the table.

"Tea for three, I think," Head suggested, glancing from the woman to the man. As neither spoke, he gave the order, and the waitress went to execute it, so that they sat beyond hearing of any other.

"Inspector will do," Head told him. "I want any information I can get that bears on the death by shooting of Frederick Dickson, of Hartlands, Westingborough Parva, last Tuesday evening, and I have good reason to believe that Mrs. Jaggers here was—"

"Half a minute, if you're going to ask her questions," Tompkins broke in. "I know a little about law and how far you can go. Listen here before you speak, Len"—he turned to the woman—"he can ask you any questions he likes, since it's a murder case, but he can't compel you to answer him—"

"And if I make an arrest," Head interrupted in turn, "I am not permitted to question the arrested person at all."

Then they sat silent while the waitress brought the tea and retired. The woman stared at the teapot on the tray, but made no move to pour out. Observing her, Head decided that she was not much like the portrait he had seen in Jaggers' room at Hartlands: age had changed her, and only a momentary trick of expression as she had sat in the train had revealed her identity to him. The expression appeared again as she gave Tompkins a brief glance, of appeal, perhaps.

"When did you last see your husband, Mrs. Jaggers?" Head asked her quietly, and noted her fearful start as he spoke the name. And, with the question, he had a momentary thought of the Cavalier child and his Puritan interrogators. The words had a banal sound.

Head stood up. "I must ask you to come to the nearest police station, madam, and give a statement there," he said. "Then we can get rid of Mr. Tompkins till I need what he has to say—"

"No! No!" She broke in hurriedly, fearfully. "I'll tell you. When did I—it was Tuesday night—Tuesday evening."

Head sat down again. "Yes, the night Dickson was killed," he commented. "Where did you see your husband that night?"

"At—where he lives. He met me—I'd telephoned and asked him to meet me at six o'clock. He met me then."

"And although it was the worst storm for years, you kept the appointment and met him at Hartlands. Whereabouts? Did you go to his room at the house, or meet him somewhere outside?"

"It was at the gate—where the gate shuts the house off from the road. He said not at the house. I waited there for him."

Tompkins, Head saw, was exhibiting signs of angry impatience at the inquisition: his hands worked nervously, and he almost snorted with indignation as he breathed. But Head ignored him.

"I left it back—back near the village. Just outside the village. Westingborough Parva, I mean. He said nobody was to see."

"Oh, tell him, then!" he said harshly. "Don't be scared, Len. He can't hurt you. Tell him—it ain't anything criminal."

"I wanted him to divorce me," she said. "Because—because Arthur and I could get married then. But he wouldn't."

"What else?" She gave him a look in which surprise and fear were blended. "I didn't want to see him about anything else."

"Of course she didn't, Inspector!" Tompkins put in, and managed to make his final word a term of utter derision.

"No, she hasn't," Tompkins put in for her. "It's gone on ahead with the rest of our props, luggage in advance."

"I can. A long-barrelled revolver, twenty-two bore, and the ammunition's specially loaded for us. If a bullet did hit my head at ten yards, it wouldn't kill me, only hurt a bit and maybe stun me."

But, Head knew, there was a thirty-eight bore silenced automatic pistol missing from Hartlands. He turned to the woman again.

"The last year of the war," she answered. "I—I wasn't much more than a child, then, and—and it didn't last." She glanced at Tompkins, as if she would excuse herself to him for having been married at all, and he shook his head impatiently.

She stared at him, her expression indicating a question as to how much he knew. Remembering Jaggers' agitation over her, he went on:

"And left you to yourself, of course. Now tell me, was it before he went back, or after, that you met Dickson?"

The long pause that followed told him his shot had gone home. She gave Tompkins an appealing look but now he stared at her tensely, curiously. This was an episode, evidently, that she had concealed from him, and he was as interested in her reply as was Head.

"How long were you and Dickson together?" Head fired out the question with ruthless swiftness.

"He—it wasn't long," she answered haltingly, tremulously. "Because Jaggers found out when he came on his last leave before the war finished, and he—Jaggers—must have told the old lady—old Mrs. Dickson, I mean. Because there was a quarrel between her and Freddy—Mr. Dickson—and then he—he just left me. He was cowardly—"

She broke off, and Tompkins breathed a "My God!" into the pause which told that he had known nothing of this.

"Why—why yes! He—he said he'd forgive it—overlook all of it if I'd go back to him. But I wouldn't. He—he was impossible. I ought never to have married a man like him, and knew it. But it was the war-time, and—and just an impulse on my part—"

Although she answered Head, she was gazing at Tompkins all the time, an appealing gaze that he would not meet. He stared steadily at Head, not with vindictiveness, but in a curious, intent way, as if he wanted to know what was coming next. And, seeing the pair of them as he did, Head hated his task, but went on with it.

"What did you do after you had seen your husband on Tuesday evening, Mrs. Jaggers?" he asked.

"Do? Went back to Crandon, of course," she answered. "We were on at eight—on the stage at that cinema, I mean."

"Yes. But I didn't go straight back to the car. There was a man with a gun, a suspicious-looking sort of man, lurking in the bushes round the gateway after my husband left me, and so I walked a little way up the drive as if I meant to go to the house. It was practically dark then, and I walked away to make him think I was going to the house—it wasn't the sort of night when you'd think anyone would hang about, but he seemed to. So I walked along the drive, and then came back, and couldn't see anything of him. I knew I hadn't any too much time, because we had to be on with our act at eight, but I just managed it, and took the car back to the garage after the act."

To do this, Head knew, she would have had to begin the journey by twenty minutes to eight, at the latest, even if she had gone straight on to the stage after getting out of the car. And, with the storm of that night beating on her, she would have been in no state to go on the stage without changing. He looked at Tompkins.

Tompkins nodded. "I'm sorry if I was rude to you, Inspector," he said, with a hint of weariness in his voice. "Yes, she got into her kit and all ready to go on at eight. We were a bit depressed—she'd been so sure she could persuade that swine of a Jaggers to divorce her, but he was afraid of the stink it would make among people he knew round there—most of 'em never knew he'd been married to her, it seemed, and he's all for respectability. Old-fashioned, fanatic over it, I gather. But this other business, Len"—he turned his gaze on her with the words—"you never told me anything about it."

"Long ago, Arthur—all long ago," she said, almost sobbingly. "And—and he let me down so badly, afraid of his mother as he was—"

"By cripes, I'm glad somebody shot him!" Tompkins exclaimed gratingly. "You—all right, Len. Of course, you were just a kid—eighteen years ago, nearly. Don't worry about it any more, only—don't keep things back from me. We'll just carry on with the old act, and maybe that swine Jaggers'll drop dead one day, if we're lucky."

Head thought, but did not say, that it began to appear exceedingly probable that Jaggers would drop dead very soon—a fourteen-foot drop, or thereabouts, through a trapdoor adjacent to a condemned cell. He turned to Tompkins.

"You say Mrs. Jaggers changed for your act, and you were both on the stage at eight o'clock?" he asked.

"I do," Tompkins answered positively. "Y'see I get the drift of all this now—I didn't to begin with, and that's why your stopping her on the platform like that made me wild. She got back about ten to eight, and had to make a rush of it to get changed in time for the act. Y'see, that was the opening day, and we had to make it smart for 'em. I tried to get a week's booking, but they wouldn't have it, and that's why we're here to-day. Out of a job till we go on another cinema booking, next Monday week. Times are none too good for us."

"Paid in it, laddie—Inspector, I mean. The mouldy place took all silver, I reckon, and they wouldn't give me a cheque. And since we wanted to catch that train, I hadn't time to go to a bank and change it up. I'm being perfectly frank with you—we've nothing to be scared about, either of us. But if time's of any importance, you just go to the manager of that Elysium and ask him—he'll tell you Len came in looking like Noah's flood and no drainage, about ten to eight. That means she got away from Jaggers by half-past seven at the latest—not got away from Jaggers himself, but dodged that joker with a gun, did her little walk back up the drive and come down it again, and got to the car by half-past seven. Is that any help to you?"

Reflecting over it, Head decided that, if the woman had got to Crandon by ten minutes to eight, she must have covered the ground at a far faster pace than he could do it in his own car. The distance was eight miles at the outside, but they were tricky miles, and for most of them a rate of thirty miles an hour was verging on danger.

"I'm going to get in touch with that manager, I warn you," he said, "for time is of importance in this case."

"That goes with me—Len wouldn't hurt a fly, and I know it." Tompkins reached round to his hip pocket, and produced a bulky-looking flask, from which he unscrewed the stopper. "Len, before that tea gets quite cold, pour us a cup apiece, will you? And I'm going to lace yours out of this, to put some real colour back under your face paint. Maybe you'll have a spot in yours too, Inspector?"

"I will not, thanks," Head dissented, "but we may as well drink the tea. Mrs. Jaggers, what time was it actually when you started on your way back from Hartlands, after seeing the man with a gun?"

"I can't be sure, but it couldn't have been much past seven, if any. I had to get back to where I'd left the car, you see, and keeping away from the man with the gun had already delayed me longer than I'd intended to stop. I suppose it was something after seven when I started the engine and drove off, but I'm not sure of the exact time."

"All right, we'll say it was between seven and half-past, as nearly as you can tell. Except for your husband and that man with a gun, did you see anyone from the time you left the car till you went back to it and drove away?"

She shook her head. "Nobody at all. I don't know if you remember what sort of night it was."

"Oh, yes, I remember it," he said. "No sugar in my tea, thanks. Now, if you'll let me have your address—one that will find you if I need to communicate with you, that will be all I need ask of you."

She gave the address at which she lived, and also that of the cinema at which they were due to appear next, while Tompkins handed over a card without being asked. Glancing at it, Head saw that it bore the address the woman had already given: marriage to Tompkins, of course, would give her a definite hold over him, which was why she had been so anxious to get Jaggers to divorce her.

It was unlikely, Head felt, that he would ever need these addresses, though he could not be certain over it. And, although the result of this inquiry had been negative, it had advanced him a definite step along his way, for he had eliminated one of the suspects—provided, of course, that the management of the Crandon Elysium confirmed the statement of these two that they had been on the stage at eight o'clock on the night that Dickson died.

Chapter XVI
The Gamecock Club

RENDERED expansive, probably by the fact that Eleonora had virtually cleared herself of any responsibility for Dickson's death, Arturo insisted on paying for the tea, shook hands warmly with Head at parting, and informed him that he would always be welcome if he dropped in at their little shack down Fulham way, where, he added as an inducement to visit them, there was always a bottle on the sideboard. Then the pair went off toward the Underground entrance, leaving Head alone and thoughtful over this new twist in his investigations.

Coincidence had sent the pair his way, and the woman—Potts' mystery woman of the night of the murder, past question—might now be eliminated from the list of suspects. Past her youth as she was, she began to feel the need of some such security for the future as marriage with Tompkins could give her, and wanted to forget all about her brief association of nearly two decades ago with Dickson. That she had taken the risk and trouble of murdering him was a patent absurdity: as she had revealed herself to Head, she was a woman with a fund of practical common sense, and not the intense, brooding type that might revenge itself on an old lover who had deserted her.

But—Jaggers! For a minute or so, as he reflected over what he had learned, Head felt inclined to abandon this quest of Clifford Oliver, who after all was only a remote suspect, and go back at once to amplify his knowledge of Jaggers. For in him Head realised one who might brood for years over a wrong, waiting his chance to strike just such a secret blow as this; he had lied flagrantly over Dickson's age in order to give the impression that anything between him and this woman had been impossible, he had had access to the silenced pistol that had vanished from the drawer in the desk at Hartlands, and still, as he had revealed to Head, he kept the memory of the wife who had left him eighteen years ago in his mind, and, either out of a desire for revenge or a fantastic hope that she might yet come back to him, had refused to divorce her when she asked it.

There was another possible reason for that refusal, of course: Tompkins had put it down to a fear of scandal on Jaggers' part, and, knowing how tongues wag in a country district, Head had to admit this as a motive, equally with the other two. But, as to the murder, Jaggers had had both motive and opportunity: he might well believe that the crime could never be proved as his, and even now Head saw himself far from getting any proof against the man, assuming that he had been the one who fired the two shots of which one had killed Dickson.

It was all a vilely irritating mass of conjecture, and, Head knew well, he had no business with conjectures. Nothing short of proved facts would satisfy a jury, and, unless the cook at Hartlands had been mistaken about Jaggers' presence in the kitchen on the night of the murder, he was as incapable of having committed it as this wife of his who had been on the stage of the Crandon Elysium at eight o'clock. And, if Jaggers had a motive for the crime, so had this Clifford Oliver, who might prove an equally brooding, revengeful type of man.

Acting on Mrs. Oliver's suggestion, Head consulted a telephone directory, and found the name, with, as address—"Hardham Mans., S.W.3." Somewhere in the Chelsea district, evidently. He made for the Underground as Eleonora and Arturo had done, and booked to Sloane Square, where, emerging to surface level again, he walked thoughtfully along King's Road until he saw a policeman. Yes, Hardham Mansions—third—no, fourth on the left. Big block of flats—you can't mistake it.

It was a big block, with an exterior resemblance to a workhouse or hospital, as is the rule with these rabbit warrens even in the most exclusive and expensive districts of London. But, entering, Head found himself in a great marble-pillared hall, faced by a uniformed individual of surprising magnificence and vast superciliousness, one who eyed him and his suit-case with unconcealed hostility.

"Touts of all sorts," the being interrupted loftily, "is not wanted in this block, let me tell you." He cast another glance of utter disdain at the suit-case which Head had packed against the possibility of spending a night in London. "They're a nuisance, that's what they are. In this block, we 'ave heverything, let me tell you—"

He broke off to gaze at a card which Head had flicked from his vest pocket, and now held up so that its lettering was plain to the man's gaze.

"Looking for a Mr. Oliver," Head told him calmly. "Mr. Clifford Oliver. One of your residents here, I believe."

"Mr. Hol—Oliver. Yes." The being swallowed hard, and took a long breath. "Eighty-three—third floor. If you'll step this way, sir. The lift. I'm sorry, sir, but we get so many touts, an' I get into trouble about 'em worryin' our gentlemen and ladies."

Head followed him toward the lift. "Do I look like a tout?" he inquired, as the porter thrust back a grille glittering with chromium.

"Hardly classy enough, reely," the man replied. "Mostly, they're old school tie all over, blinkin' aristocrats from the word 'go', if you get me, sir. The tonier they are, the more I distrust 'em—lords an' dukes, the 'ole blinkin' lot of 'em. It ain't no disrespect to you that I mistook you for one of 'em, sir. Vacuum cleaners are the worst of all. You'd think they howned the universe."

The lift went up. Head recognised in the man a character who might be of use to him—if Clifford Oliver were of any use.

"Well, I dunno, they look 'appy enough at it, but I s'pose they 'ave to. They've gotter live, of course, like the rest of us." He thrust back the grille at the third floor and stepped into a cubistically decorated corridor, softly carpeted. "It'll be the fifth door along there, on the left 'and," he directed. "But if I might be so bold as to arsk, Mr. 'Ead—Head—you're not—Mr. Holiver, I mean?"

"I might see you later," Head told him, and went his way toward the fifth door in the direction indicated. The lift grille whirred gently to its closure, and with a click the uniformed porter began his descent as Head stopped before an ornately panelled door on which the chromium-plated numerals "83" looked more like vast spiders nailed in position and then plated than mere symbols of the Arabic system of notation. He found a bell-push in the heart of a chromium-plated rose, pressed it, and waited. Presently the door swung open, and a bleary-eyed, tall man in a dressing-gown of gorgeously-flowered, brocaded silk faced him.

"I had an idea—oh, come in! You see, I'm interested in police work, to a certain extent—yes, my name's Oliver, and now if you'll tell me yours we can consider ourselves properly introduced. Yes, in here. Don't mind Apollo—he's perfectly harmless, like me."

A big Alsatian stood up, yawned, and then moved slowly across the room into which Oliver had ushered his visitor. He sniffed at Head, opened his jaws to emit a long "Aaoh!" of a yawn, and closed his teeth in a very gentle and friendly way on Head's fingers, releasing them to look up for recognition of the gesture. Head scratched his neck, and his tail indicated approval. He leaned hard against this visitor.

"The honour's mine," Oliver said, and went to a beautiful old sideboard. "Let me see. The Forrest case, and then there was that business at Castel Garde, and the aeroplane pilot—Gatton, I believe his name was. Oh, I've read you up, Inspector Head, and as soon as I heard this had happened at Westingborough I told myself it was a ten to one chance I'd be seeing you in the flesh pretty soon. As we say in Tooting—if we're so damned unlucky as to be compelled to live there—pleasetermeetcher. Now what'll you have? I can recommend this whisky—pure mountain dew, straight from the North."

Oliver turned toward him, glass in hand. "You've come here to ask me what I know about shooting Dickson," he accused. "You're going to ask me questions—isn't that the idea?"

"Ah! Same here. Mr. Head—or Inspector Head, if you like that better—you can start asking me and go on asking me till you're black in the face, and not a word do you get out of me! You can hale me off to a police station, and if you do that you'll have to charge me with something, and then you can't ask me anything! I've got you, stone cold. Now, what are you going to do about it?"

With a tumbler a third filled from a decanter on the sideboard he faced about. Then, as Head made no reply, he lifted the tumbler and drank off its contents, to turn again and reach for the decanter to refill it. The Alsatian rubbed his head against Head's knees, asking for a share of attention as more whisky glucked into Oliver's glass.

"You're two years and more too late," Oliver responded, and this time he half-filled the tumbler before turning to his visitor. No, I'm not drunk—yet. I shall begin to be drunk somewhere about seven o'clock. Till then—but do sit down, won't you, even if you won't have a drink? You've come here with a preconceived notion that I went out in a howling gale and shot that swine Dickson, haven't you? Even if I did, it wasn't murder, but honourable execution. Now do sit down and be reasonable. Apollo likes you, I can see, and I'm prepared to be intensely interested in you—unless you run me in right away, that is. Because, if you do, I shan't be able to get drunk by seven. Here's to the fire that's roasting Dickson, and the man who sent him to his frizzling. Please sit down! You look so damned tall."

He swigged this second drink as if it had been water, and then stood by the sideboard, tumbler in hand, blinking at Head. Then he cackled, a laugh entirely without mirth.

"Perfectly sober, so far," he said. "Don't get scared—yet. If I were tight, I might tell Apollo to go for you, and then where'd you be? Police! Inspector Head! Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? I'm not, and I'm prepared to lead you up the garden till the weather breaks. Run me in, and you'll look sillier than the second tail on a pig—but do have a drink while you're making up your mind!"

"Having met you," Head retorted cuttingly, "I don't wonder at your wife leaving you for another man—any other man."

"Ah! You'd rub it in, would you?" Oliver exclaimed, and again laughed that harsh, ugly laugh. "But I wasn't like this then. D'you know"—he leaned forward, tumbler in hand, and spoke with an odd sort of earnestness—"I made a god of that woman—goddess, I mean—and when she did the dirty I made up my mind I'd drink myself to death. Deliberately—why the hell should I go on living, with the one thing I want denied me? There's no reason for going on living. I'm no blasted use—I've got an income that lets me live here, or buy a mansion in the country, or do what I damn' well like. I'm one of the parasites that live on dividends, if you know what that means; and when you come down to common-sense thinking there's no real reason why I should live at all. D'ye see? But this damned stuff—I drink two bottles a day now, and I can't even get delirium tremens out of it. Too tough, maybe. D'ye get me? Do have one with me!"

"Right! Then I'll have another on my own, before you arrest me and cart me off for—how would it go?—firing a pistol at Frederick Dickson—no, Freddy, blast his soul wherever it is in hell!—firing a pistol at Freddy Dickson with deliberate intent to— Oh, hell! why don't you arrest me? Did you ever meet anyone like me? Honestly now—did you ever meet anyone like me?"

"Apollo?" Oliver angled the decanter until his tumbler was again half-filled, and then replaced it on the sideboard. "A friend, Apollo. And when I say a friend I mean a friend. Dogs don't let you down. But look here, Inspector—or Mr. Head, if you like that better. You know, standing there like the wrath of God you look so damned awe-inspiring I'm beginning to like you—dogs—now, then, what was I saying? You can get over losing a woman, at a price—and the price happens to be this very good whisky, which isn't unpleasant—but if I lost Apollo, now—well, d'ye understand? There's lots more women, but only one Apollo. The dog of dogs. Apollo? There, d'ye see? He doesn't make any bones about it—just comes along—get down, you idiot! But that dog—if I set him on you he'd die for me! Where's the woman would lose the price of a lipstick over me—or over any man, as far as that goes? Why the hell? You think I shot Freddy Dickson. Well, prove it, and you'll save some other poor blighter from swinging by the neck. But for the love of Mike, man, have a drink! Here's me sinking the contents of this decanter deliberately and conscientiously, and a wooden god's a mere bath compared with you!"

By way of reply, Oliver emptied the tumbler down his throat again. Then he replaced it on the sideboard, thrust his hands in the pockets of his dressing-gown, and turned to face his visitor.

"Y'know, you're a most unsociable blighter," he remarked, and leaned against the edge of the sideboard while he scratched Apollo's head. "You simply won't have a drink—I dunno if you're a teetotaller, but if you are, that makes it all the worse. I knew you'd find out Margaret was my wife—I knew you'd come on here after me—can you possibly visualise a more exciting situation?" He laughed, this time a brief, barking cachinnation of real amusement. "Roaring gale, deluded—no, not deluded, but say deprived husband out gunning—gets his man! Can you imagine anything more picturesque? And you've come here to ask me all about it, and get me to give myself away. Not on your life! Why, man, I'm not nearly drunk enough for that!"

He turned to refill his tumbler yet again. The dog came slowly to Head, looked up at him, and held up a paw for shaking. With the tumbler half-filled, Oliver replaced the decanter stopper and faced about, leaning against the sideboard.

"No, not nearly drunk enough," he said. "Y'see, I want to puzzle you. Perhaps I shot Dickson, and perhaps I didn't—you can't tell whether I did or no. And as long as you're kept guessing, nobody gets hurt for bumping him off. I'd hate anyone to get hurt over it—whoever did it, myself or anyone else, is public benefactor number one—I ought to have done it in Penang, but I had a soft streak in me, then. Chivalry, eh? It'd have hurt her. So I came back on my own and settled in here—not a bad spot to settle, and here I am! And here you are, as I felt sure you would be! Inspector Head, of Westingborough. Possibly I know who shot Dickson, possibly I shot him myself. Possibly I didn't do it, and possibly I don't know who did. But I won't talk, won't tell you a thing about it. Run me in if you like—give me time to get properly dressed first, though—and you'll be no further forward than you are now, for as soon as there's a third person present I shut up so tightly that an oyster beside me would look as if it were yawning. I wish you'd sit down and have a drink!"

But, making no reply, Head turned about and opened the door of the room. He went out, and as he reached the outer door of the flat heard Oliver shouting with laughter. Closing the door on himself, he ignored the lift and went down the carpeted staircase, to find the uniformed attendant idly keeping guard over the ground floor.

"Well, it ain't my business to talk about the tenants, but if 'e don't mind 'is step, 'e won't be a tenant much longer. 'E was all quiet an' droopy when 'e come 'ere first—you know, sad, like. An' then 'e took to this." The man made a gesture of lifting a glass to his mouth. "Sometimes 'e gives parties up there, an' the sort that come to 'em—lumme, you'd 'ave to see 'em to believe. Real hot stuff bits o' skirt, an' young fellers I wouldn't be found dead with. Where he gets 'em, I can't think! Pots o' money, 'e's got, too. But it ain't my business to talk about the tenants."

He gazed doubtfully at the two half-crowns which Head had taken from his pocket, and then closed his fingers over them and winked.

"I'll drink your very good 'ealth when I go off, sir," he said. "Was there anything particular you wanted to know about 'im?"

The man shook his head. "Might, an' might not, sir," he said. "There's three entrances to the block, an' 'e don't 'ave to come out through 'ere if 'e don't want. But unless 'e's got a party on, which 'appens about once a fortnight, 'e generally sozzles up there in eighty-three alone, an' gets far too tight to go out, by night-time. It's a shame, that's what it is. A real nice gentleman ruinin' 'isself as 'e's doin'—for you couldn't meet a nicer, when 'e's sober. Round about ten in the mornin', before 'e's properly got down to it."

"No, I don't know, but as I say there's three entrances, an' nobody to see whether he went out or in by the other two."

"Did own one, a Bentley, but some time last autumn they fined 'im twenty pound an' took 'is licence away for a year, bein' in charge of it drunk. So then 'e sold it."

"Friends—well! There's them lads an' lasses that come in for 'is parties an' kick up hell's delight all hours o' the night, but you wouldn't hardly call them friends, I reckon, if you took a look at 'em. An' it'd be about a couple o' months ago, I think, when 'e was goin' out one afternoon, an' e' stopped after gettin' outer the lift an' passed me a quid—a pound note. 'I got to go out, George,' 'e says. 'There's blue devils all over the flat, an' I'm so desperately lonely.' An' I felt real sorry for 'im, the way e said it."

"Couldn't say, reely. Tuesday was my day off—I get one once a month. 'E was in all right Wednesday mornin', because the woman who chars for 'im told me what a bad temper 'e was in. If it's important, my mate'll be on tomorrow mornin' up to twelve o'clock. 'E could tell you if 'e knew whether Mr. Oliver was in or hout that day. Mind you, 'e mightn't know, but 'e could tell you if 'e did know."

"Tell 'im George told you to ask 'im, if I ain't about," the man suggested. "I'll be down in the biler-room though, most likely."

Oliver's whereabouts on Wednesday morning, Head reflected as he made his way back to King's Road, would be no guide to his movements on the Tuesday evening, though, since he was prevented from driving a car, it was very unlikely that he had gone to Hartlands' gateway and back—for such a secret visit, he would not be such a fool as to get someone else to drive him. But, leaving the question of ways and means alone for the time, there was little doubt that Oliver was the type of man who might have shot Dickson. Unbalanced, drink-sodden, "desperately lonely"—it was possible that his hatred of Dickson had boiled up to a point that determined him to make an end of the man. But then, in that case, how had he known Dickson would take a taxi from Westingborough station to Hartlands, and the time at which he would set out on the journey? On the face of it, an impossibility.

Into these cogitations sounded an amazed "Hul-lo!" and, facing him on the pavement, Head saw Eleonora and Arturo, minus their suit-cases now. Arturo stretched out his hand.

"Don't talk about coincidences!" he exclaimed. "We were just talking about you, too. Now what about coming along and having one?"

"Oh, you don't know Chelsea! We always drop along to the Gamecock about this time—club, you know, not pub. It'd interest you, I'm sure—meet all sorts of interestin' people there. All the latest gossip about everybody and what they're doing—haven't you got a minute to spare? If so, I'd be delighted to introduce you."

It might be worth while, Head reflected, to hear some of the gossip, and, since he had decided to stop the night and see George's mate in the morning, he had plenty of time on his hands.

"That's very good of you, and I'll accept the invitation," he said. "But on one condition—forget that I'm an inspector."

"Leave it to me, laddie," Arturo told him. "Come along, Len, and we'll give him an insight to the way the artistic section of the community makes whoopee. Quiet whoopee, you understand, Mr. Head."

Passing the outer portals of the Gamecock Club without the formality of "signing in" his guest, Arturo led the way to a basement room in which a dozen or so men and women occupied high stools before a long bar. An overpainted lady in a crimson sweater and black silk pyjama trousers swung on her stool at their approach.

"Button up your pockets, people!" she shouted. "Tommy and Len, back from the wilds! Going to buy me one, Tommy?"

And, eyeing her and her companions, Head felt that Oliver was not the only oddity he had encountered here in Chelsea. On the face of it, he saw little possibility of profit resulting from his visit here, and for the moment wished he had refused Arturo's invitation and gone his own way.

"Now don't I always buy you one, darling?" Arturo answered the girl. "This is Mr. Head—Nancy—now consider yourselves introduced. And what's your poison, Mr. Head?"

Chapter XVII
Headlights

"O-O-O-OH!" The girl whom Arturo had introduced as Nancy breathed rather than uttered the exclamation. "Do come and sit next to me, Mr. Head. You—you look so divinely normal, and I know I'm going to like you. 'A trouser worn upon either leg, while boots adorn the feet'—do you know your Chesterton, though? Yes, Tommy, gin and lime—that's right! Oh, Len, did you get him to say he would?"

"I did not," Mrs. Jaggers answered as she perched herself on one of the high stools. "Not a hope of it."

"Never mind, dearie," Nancy said consolingly. "Living in sin is much more amusing, really. There's no kick in marriage."

The remark was uttered by a youth who sat at the far end of the bar from her, an unshaven being attired in crumpled flannels and a violently-patterned pullover. It caused a laugh in which all but Head and Nancy joined, one through ignorance of the allusion and the other through vexation. Arturo leaned toward Head.

"That's Potter, that youngster," he whispered. "Wonderful caricaturist—works best when he's drunk. All sorts of interesting people belong here."

"Including a man named Oliver?" Head risked it as a long shot: he had begun to feel this place and the people were useless to him, and to regret having accepted the invitation to come here, but, possibly, he might learn something by mentioning the name.

"Clifford Oliver?" Nancy, on the other side of him from Arturo, heard his query, and spoke with a certain eagerness.

"Gives perfectly ravishing parties in his flat—I wouldn't miss one for the world," she declared. "Do you know him?"

"Used to come here quite a lot, when I first knew this place—that was donkey's years ago, of course. He's simply rolling in money, but absolutely without side. He tried to paint, once, but couldn't. I got to know him through studying in the same classes."

"Bit of an eccentric, if you ask me," said a pasty-faced youth who leaned on the bar and guarded a glass of beer.

"But I didn't ask you, Peter," she said, "and the only people who count as eccentric here are the non-eccentrics."

"Rotten!" said Peter. "You couldn't coin an epigram if you tried all day, Nancy. And Oliver is eccentric. He's gone all woolly."

"Means he'll end up in a home for inebriates, pretty soon," Peter answered with conviction. "We all drink—it's a natural function—but when a man starts drinking on his own—well! And that's what Oliver does. I looked him up the other night, and found him all alone in his flat. He managed to stagger to the door to let me in, but he was too sozzled to talk sense, and I came away again."

"Gold-diggers," he retorted viciously, "always judge others by themselves. And you're no exception to the rule."

"Mr. Head"—she turned her back on Peter—"you're a stranger among us, aren't you? I mean, this is your first visit to the club?"

"Absolutely the first," he assured her. "I'd never even heard of it fifteen minutes ago."

"Most people call it frankness, I believe," he said. "But I was interested in hearing about this man Oliver. You know him fairly well, I gather, since you go to his parties?"

"Yes—not to borrow money from him." She threw the explanation over her shoulder at Peter, who snorted at it. "I've known him ever since he came back—you see, I do a lot of designing, and arranged the decorations of his flat for him."

Nancy shook her head. "I dunno," she answered. "One day he just wasn't, and I've only seen him once since, but not to speak to him. Some time in the new year—he turned down toward Hardham Mansions as I was going along King's Road, looking as wall-eyed as ever."

Nancy ignored him. Head, feeling that the chance of meeting Arturo and Eleonora was leading him with uncanny ease along the way he wanted to go, no longer regretted having accepted their invitation to visit this place. Here, possibly, was a link that he had been seeking.

"Search me," she answered. "One eye and a scar on his face, and as solemn as an owl. I think Clifford befriended him in some way—"

"Befriended him," Mrs. Jaggers interrupted. "I saw it. The man has only one eye, so he didn't see a car coming, and stepped off the pavement in front of it. Mr. Oliver jumped out and pushed him into safety, and got knocked down himself. He was badly bruised, too."

"And after that," the unshaven man at the end of the bar put in, "they were inseparable for a time—till wall-eye disappeared. Which means—if you want to make a friend of a man, do him a good turn. I mean, if you want him to make a friend of you. The bloke was a nobody, and he clung on to Oliver like wax—like some others I know."

"Look here, Brian!" Nancy spun about on her stool again. "Is that nasty insinuation meant for me?"

"Because, if it is, all I've ever had out of Clifford Oliver is pay for the work I did for him, and what drinks he likes to provide at his parties—and that goes with all of you! I've never yet sponged on man or woman, and I'm not beginning. Also, since Mr. Tompkins has brought a guest among us, you might keep your beastly insinuations to yourselves. If you made acquaintance with a bath and a razor once in a while, Brian—you too, Peter—you might both get asked to Clifford's parties. As it is, your bodies are as dirty as your minds."

Nancy struck him, a swift, flat-handed box on the ear that smacked loudly in the low-ceilinged room, and sent him staggering back from the bar. Before he could recover balance to come back at her, she was on her feet, an empty glass in her hand poised for throwing.

"Just as you'd be afraid to hit a man," she retorted. Then, turning her back on him again, she replaced the glass on the bar and laughed rather shakily as she looked at Head.

"What were we talking about?" she asked. "I'm sorry, this place used to be decent. Mr. Tompkins, do forgive me, but I've got to keep my end up, and things like that rile me. What were we talking about?"

"Someone you described as wall-eyed, I think," Head answered her. Half-amused, half-disgusted at the scene between her and the two men—if men they could be called—he felt more in sympathy with her than with them, and at the same time, since he had come here, determined to make the most of the chance the place gave him of obtaining information. Tanner had lived in Chelsea, and one-eyed men with scarred faces were not plentiful enough to render it impossible—to say the least of it—that there was some link between him and Oliver.

"Yes. He used to live somewhere round here, and Clifford was decent to him." She pursued the subject, evidently for the mere sake of talking, a sort of bravado to show Brian and Peter that she had not lost poise over them. "Before—before Clifford pushed him away from being run over, we used to see him mooning about and looking miserable all alone, but after, they used to be seen about together, and I saw him driving Clifford's car quite a lot. But let's talk about something else. What are you doing here? What do you do?"

"One of us, evidently," she commented, and laughed. "As you see, our manners are bad and we haven't any morals, and altogether we're not 'nace', but some of us are quite nice. I am, for one, though you might not think it. Are you staying down this way?"

"For a time," he said—which, although the time might be counted in hours, was quite true. He knew he would stay the night, though possibly not in this district.

"Then I shall look forward to seeing you again—not necessarily here," she observed. "Nancy Adlett—you'll find me in the telephone directory. Always in in the evenings between eight and nine."

"Many thanks for the invitation," he responded, "and you've reminded me. Is there a telephone here that I could use?"

Arturo and Eleonora were engrossed in conversation with a mannish-looking woman who had just come in, and Head got past them and out of the room with no compunction at all over thus deserting them. He had learned that there was a link between Oliver and one whom he decided would prove to be Tanner, and felt that he had little chance of learning more in such a place. And, if this were bohemianism, he told himself, the less he saw of it the better: Nancy was altogether too blatant; and yet his time had not been altogether wasted.

Ignoring the first door on the left, he hurried up the stairs and made his way to King's Road, where he turned and walked westward to the post office. Within five minutes, closed in a telephone box, he heard Wadden's voice in the receiver at his ear.

"No man, make it a sale of work or a mothers' meeting. Bazaars are not in our line, especially—"

"Biz, not baz!" Head interrupted in turn. "Bizarre, unearthly—hellish, in fact. You'd have to see to believe. But I want you to do something for me, since I shall not be back to-night."

"Turn the car out and run over to the Crandon Elysium. See the manager, or as many people as necessary, to make certain that an actor and actress, jugglers or acrobats or something, were on the stage at eight o'clock on Tuesday evening. They call themselves Arturo and Eleonora, and were doing a stage turn between films."

"Weigh those names out again, young feller. What are these people, anyhow—Chinese, or merely difficult?"

"If you want to know, their real names are Arthur Tompkins and Mrs. Jaggers—Jaggers, if you get it! I want to know if she told me the truth when she said she was on the stage at eight."

"I get it—leave it to me, and the information will be waiting when you arrive. Checked and certain, too, not like yours about where Jaggers was during the vital time. D'you want me to have a shot at checking up on that for you as well?"

"I think not, chief. I'm on another line which may lead me in a totally different direction, and whether it does or no I expect to be back to-morrow, some time in the afternoon."

"I'll leave it, then. What did you say those two called themselves for their act? Arturo and—?"

"Eleanora," and Head spelt it out after giving the name. "Not that it matters much—there wouldn't be more than one stage turn—I saw the advertisement of the Elysium, and there were only those two."

"Eight o'clock—right. Yes, that time would clear her, unless she's got wings. Are you feeling any happier now?"

"Not much—too many twists in it, yet. And if you'd been where I've just left, you'd understand that happiness is purely relative."

"Alongside his mother at Westingborough Parva, at three o'clock on Monday afternoon. There's a solicitor down from London making all the arrangements, and I've had a word with him. Is that all?"

"Well, if you look in at that bazaar again, don't forget some sort of present for your wife, and any small trifle that would appeal to me would be appreciated, y'know. Now I'll hop over to Crandon."

He replaced his receiver with the last word, and Head went out from the telephone box to stand thoughtful on the pavement for a few seconds. He had a cousin, Detective-Inspector Byrne, who might have facilitated things, since—as Head had proved in other cases—Byrne had an uncannily complete knowledge of practically every district of London, and at the least would have been capable of finding somebody who could reveal far more concerning both Tanner and Oliver than the talk in the Gamecock Club had yielded up. But, as Head knew, Byrne was away on a case, and might not be back for days.

No, he must see it through alone, as far as inquiries here in London were concerned. And, standing here, reflecting over Oliver, he saw that the man's learning of Dickson's movements to an extent that would place him by the fallen tree at the time of the shooting was not such an impossibility as it had seemed, if "wall-eye" were in truth Tanner. For on at least one occasion this year, according to Nancy Adlett, Tanner had been to visit Oliver, and the two might have got talking about Dickson by design on Oliver's part.

It was quite within the bounds of possibility that Tanner, who knew in all probability that Dickson went to London every Wednesday, had revealed the fact to Oliver without knowledge of the latter's animosity against the man who had robbed him of his wife. Oliver might have kept track of Dickson—he had money to pay for shadowing, if he wished—and might have known that he had only to wait on the road between Westingborough and Hartlands. He might have learned that Dickson, this week, had chosen to go to London on the Tuesday, and have gone himself to Westingborough and out on to the road to wait in the storm for his man.

Such a theory needed rounding off, and needed proof at every point—again Head felt that he was letting himself be tempted into conjecture, and that on the very slightest of premises. All he had gained, in reality, was some connection between Oliver and Tanner. An accidental acquaintance, at the outset—but what else?

Day's end was changing from dusk to darkness as he stood there cogitating. A big car, about to reach the end of Manor Street and turn into King's Road, suddenly vanished, as far as Head was concerned, in a dazzling glare, for the driver had switched on his headlamps momentarily. He switched them off again, leaving only side lights showing, but Head blinked and saw yellow spots for some time after. He turned toward Sloane Square, considering yet another angle of this unsatisfactory case, and, because of the effect of the car lights on his eyes, failed to perceive Arturo and Eleonora in time to avoid them.

"Aha, Mr. Head!" said Arturo. "Didn't like our little club, eh? Well, you've left Nancy desolate. She's taken a tremendous liking to you. I looked round, and there you weren't."

"I had to telephone," Head answered, and tried to make the excuse sound convincing. "I'm sorry—you were busy as I went out."

"Oh, it's quite all right. But that man Oliver you were asking about—is he connected with this business of yours in any way?"

By that time the yellow spots that swam in the air had faded from Head's eyes enough for him to see his questioner, and he made a look serve for answer to the question.

"As far as I know, Mr. Oliver has no connection with any business of mine, Mr. Tompkins," Head said deliberately. "Why, what gave you the impression that he had?"

"Well, I thought—of course, now you say he hadn't—hasn't—" Tompkins broke off uncertainly, and looked uncomfortable.

His companion thrust her arm through his. "Come along, dearie," she urged caustically. "Don't shove your foot in it any further. All right, Mr. Head, just leave him to me. Never was there a man with such an absolute talent for being tactless. And, of course, you didn't like that club—I wonder myself why we ever go to the place since it's got like it is. Good night, Mr. Head."

She drew Arturo along with her, and the pair went their way, leaving Head inclined to kick himself since his interest in Oliver had been evident, if only to this one man. He questioned whether he were losing his grip, for here he had been investigating this case for three days, and still was without a definite line to follow.

Ten minutes later the door of 3b Smith Street opened in reply to his ring, and a little, grey-haired woman looked at him inquiringly.

"'Fraid you couldn't, mister," the woman answered. "He's been gone from here a long while—quite a long while."

"Gone?" He made the monosyllable sound incredulous. "But when—how long is it since you last saw him?"

"He's been gone—let me see—it'd be two years, quite, and maybe more. I can't remember exactly when it was he left."

"I've seen him—yes. One day—last January, it'd be—last month, you know. He'd come up to London, he said, to see a friend of his, and he looked in for a word with me."

"Quite a friendly sort," Head ventured, seeing that she was inclined to be talkative, and with intent to lead her on.

"Well, I haven't seen him for some time—haven't been in London myself in fact—so I thought I might look him up," he hedged.

"Ah! Well, you won't find him here. And I don't know his address, either, so I'm afraid I can't help you at all."

"But this friend he came up to see—he might be able to help me to find Tanner," Head suggested. "Do you know who it is?"

"Why, yes, that's Mr. Oliver—but I don't know where he lives, either. Somewhere round here, I think. They used to be together a lot when Mr. Tanner lived here with me—Mr. Oliver used to call for him, but generally it was with his car. So I don't know—" She broke off doubtfully, evidently willing though unable to help in discovering the whereabouts of either Tanner or this friend of his.

"Well, I'm sorry to have troubled you," Head remarked, feeling that there was little possibility of learning more from her.

"No trouble—oh, I know!" she exclaimed as a new thought occurred to her. "You go to the police—they'll tell you how to find Mr. Oliver. I saw in the papers not long ago he'd been fined twenty pounds for being drunk with that car of his, so they'd know his address. And then you could get him to give you Mr. Tanner's address, of course."

"But"—she gave him a searching look—"you are a friend of his, I hope? Of Mr. Tanner, I mean. It isn't bills, or anything of that sort, is it? I mean, you're not after him?"

"Well, that's all right, then. As long as you're not one of them easy-payment men, or something of that sort."

"I'm not, I assure you," he told her, and smiled. "But you should have thought of that before, surely, if you don't trust me."

"I dunno—somehow you looked the sort I could trust, and so—well, people always tell me I let my tongue run away with me, so if there is any harm in what I said it's done now, and it's no use crying over spilt milk, is it? Not that I think there is any harm in it."

"There isn't," he said. "I think I'll go and see what I can do about finding this Mr. Oliver. Thanks very much, madam. Good night."

He left her standing in her doorway, gazing after him, and apparently still rather uncomfortable about the slight revelations she had made to an utter stranger. But she had told him little, in reality, merely confirming what he had already heard in the Gamecock Club.

He stood awhile at the corner of Smith Street and King's Road, gazing towards the comparative darkness of Markham Square, while the rush-hour traffic rumbled and rattled past him. And, as he stood, the noises of the busy street transformed themselves in his mind to the roar of storm about a fallen tree on a country road, with rain beating down in noisy gusts and the darkness about the tree changed to fantastic alternations of light and shadow by the headlights of a car—just such headlights as had, for a little time, dazzled him as he had stood faced toward the end of Manor Street. It was a vision of seconds only, but when it had passed he knew the way he had to go to reach the end of this case. After that vision had come and gone, he knew this pause as his turning-point, a reversion from blind groping to sight and certainty. Yet, he knew, his own certainty was not enough. Now, with the knowledge that had so suddenly come to him—and ought, he knew, to have been his long before—he could allege, but for completion of his case he must prove. To others, his knowledge would appear as no more than belief, and only fact would convict the man who, as Head was sure, now, had fired two shots at that car by the fallen tree.

Thus, even with this certainty of the identity of the murderer, he would not change his course in any way, but would go on with this process of elimination. For there was plenty of time: in fact, the longer he left his man in suspense, the more possibility he saw of that man breaking down to a point that would yield some confirming evidence of this new knowledge—not breaking down altogether, but implicating himself...

He walked toward Sloane Square, deciding to look for a hotel somewhere nearer the centre of things for the night: what he had seen of Chelsea, so far, did not appeal to him: it was altogether too bizarre for his uncultivated tastes. Dinner, and a show afterward, perhaps, to take his mind off this unusual case and permit him to come fresh to it in the morning... There was nothing more that he could do to-night.

Chapter XVIII
Eliminating Oliver

"AN' if you arsk me," said George, "it ain't goin' to be so long, now, afore eighty-three's to let. This bloke 'Ead didn't exactly tell me 'e was after our Olly, but 'e as good as said it."

He stood in an inconspicuous doorway which led from the entrance hall of Hardham Mansions to the "biler-room." Clad in a nice, clean dungaree suit, he appeared about half the size of himself in uniform. Interestedly facing him was a similar being to himself in the full rigout of hall porter, gold-laced, chromium-buttoned and altogether dazzling. He fingered a forest of a moustache, thoughtfully.

"Maybe Olly's been goin' for a drive, an' forgot his licence is hung on the wall for a year," he suggested.

"No, it didn't sound like that to me," George dissented. "If it was that, why would this bloke come all the way up from the country—West-something-or-other? 'E'd put it on to the 'tecs up 'ere, though it'd be too simple to be a 'tec's job, any'ow. If you arsk me, Tubby, our Olly's for the 'igh jump, an' it wouldn't do 'im any 'arm, neither. Six months off the booze'd make a different man of 'im."

"'E was like five bob to me, Tubby, an' I'll buy you one outer it if you 'appen into the Commercial about 'alf-past twelve, like. Unless, of course, 'e coughs up another five to you, an' in that case we wishes each other luck over our own pints. Decent sort o' bloke, 'e is, mighty quiet in 'is ways, but I wouldn't care to 'ave 'im arter me, if looks go for anything. Got a nye like a nawk."

"We might, an' we might not," George responded cryptically. "If I don't mistake no mistakes—yes, that's 'im, just comin' in. Speak 'im fair, an' 'e'll treat you like a lamb. See you later."

He withdrew into the passageway and closed the door between him and the entrance hall. Tubby executed a military slow march toward the main entrance, and faced Head some three paces inside the door.

"Do I look like a pudding?" Head retorted acidly: the phrase always annoyed him. "Are you George's mate? Like a fool, I forgot to ask him the name—he told me his mate would be on duty this morning."

"That's me, sir. Jordan, my name is, but everybody calls me Tubby, so I'm used to it."

"'Cause my real name's Jordan," Tubby explained. All Jordans are Tubbies. I dunno why, but they are. I am, though I ain't."

"Exactly," Head agreed. "Though you may be, you're not. George tells me you were on duty here last Tuesday—the latter part of the day. Up to what hour were you on duty here, Jordan?"

"Do you know whether Mr. Oliver had gone out that evening, or was he in the building? Did you see him, say, between six and eight?"

"I did, sir. Mr. Oliver was seein' a lady out, a Miss Adlett what had called on 'im, as she very often does call on 'im. She come in this very door about 'alf-past six, an' Mr. Oliver come down in the lift with me an' 'er somewhere about 'alf-past seven. So I did see 'im that evenin', an' I know for certain 'e was in."

"Not giving a party, was he?" Head inquired—though with little interest in the reply, since he knew now that Oliver could not have been at Westingborough to shoot Dickson on Tuesday evening.

"Miss Adlett was all the party 'e had that night, sir," Tubby answered. "An' I will say this for 'er, though you mightn't think it the thing for 'er to go an' see 'im alone like that, if you was at all narrer-minded, she do manage to keep 'im off 'is booze when she do turn up. Generally, round about 'alf-past seven, 'e's as tight as a rabbit's Sunday weskit, but that night 'e was plumb sober when they come down an' said good-night to each other in this 'all."

"How long have you been here?" Head inquired abruptly, yet not so abruptly as two half-crowns appeared between his finger and thumb.

"Best part o' three years, sir—thank ye, sir. We're all ex-service men on this job. I'm mostly in the biler-room, but George takes that when it's 'is 'alf-day. An' 'e always gets Sunday afternoon off, bein' one o' the lucky ones. I only get every other Sunday."

"Mr. Tanner? Tall bloke, one-eyed, an' 'is cheek slashed from top to bottom. If I may say it, sir, you're a deep 'un. Mr. Tanner ain't been seen round 'ere for two year an' more, an' yet you pick 'im up as if it was everyday. George told me you was police, but—well, lumme! Thang Gord me conscience's clear, that's all."

"The description of him is beautifully accurate," Head said drily. "But are you sure he has not been seen for two years?"

"Not sure, but I ain't seen 'im. He might of looked in when I wasn't on—when George was on—or he might of dropped up, as you might say, by one o' the other entrances, where there ain't nobody on. But—well, it useter be nearly every day he come round, an' that's what I mean stopped—well, two year an' more, I'd say."

The misnamed Tubby nodded. "Thick as thieves, they was, reg'lar brothers, you might say. 'Scuse me a minute, sir—I'll have to go."

For the lift buzzer was sounding imperatively. Tubby moved over to the grille, and Head went with him.

"Ar!" said Tubby, as if he saw deep significance in it. Emerging into the third-floor corridor, Head went to 83 and rang the bell. A stout, red-faced woman opened the door to him.

Then Oliver himself appeared in the doorway of the room in which Head had interviewed him a few hours before.

"Again," Head confirmed him, and, as the stout woman stood back, entered. Oliver, in a different dressing-gown, stepped out from the doorway to face him.

"Don't be so sure," Head counselled composedly. "I've got a good deal already, both out of you and about you."

"It's such a pleasure to see you." There was amused irony in the reply: the stout woman, evidently in the flat to do her daily char, retired past Oliver and disappeared through another doorway.

A puzzled, questioning expression appeared on Oliver's face. As Head had divined, the man had not been so sober the preceding evening that he could remember all he had said.

"Cliff!" A whisper, not intended for Head's ears, came out from the room from which Oliver had emerged. "Get rid of him!"

"Oh, Lord!" Oliver said disgustedly, as he saw Head's slow smile. "That's ripped it! I was getting rid of him—and he heard you!"

A head of hair, tousled as Oliver's own, appeared in the doorway. Head recognised Nancy Adlett, and the dressing-gown which Oliver had been wearing the preceding evening.

"Then the rest doesn't matter," she said. "Morning, Mr. Head. I waited in till nine last night, but as you didn't ring I came round here. And now I'm terribly intrigued."

"Look here!" Oliver said angrily. "Will you go out, or shall I ring and have you thrown out?" He took a step forward as he spoke.

"I shouldn't do that, Cliff," Nancy put in. "Let's find out what it's all about, first. He was in the Gamecock last night, and I never guessed he was thirsting for information about you."

"I know what it's all about," Oliver declared, "and he'll get nothing out of me, so he'd better go."

"Your trouble is that you don't know what I have got out of you already," Head observed. "And this present attitude of yours may land you in worse trouble, at a later stage of this business."

"No, I find enough without making any. But the public prosecutor might, if you persist in withholding information."

"Withhold hell!" Oliver retorted angrily. "You can prove absolutely nothing against me, and if I made a friend of Tanner—if I did all I could for him when he was lonely and hadn't another soul to care what became of him, that's no more business of yours than is finding this girl here with me. You're bluffing, Mr. Head from Westingborough."

"The place where your wife was living with Dickson," Head fired out, and saw the girl start as she heard the statement.

"Well, then, say I suggested it, if you like. An idea of having somebody there who could give me news of her from time to time—and Tanner owes a lot to me. There's not much he wouldn't do for me."

"You may make what you like of it. I've got all I want from you now, Mr. Oliver, so you needn't trouble to ring and have me thrown out."

"No, wait, Mr. Head!" Nancy broke in. "Is that true—was his wife living there with the man who was shot in a taxi?"

"Still is living there," Head answered. "Was when I left, that is, and that was only yesterday. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, Cliff!" she exclaimed, ignoring the question, and there was a suddenly compassionate note in her voice. "So that's why you went on the drink and began spoiling yourself! Well, I've managed to keep you off it for one night, and—and she can't mean quite everything to you, now. I mean, if she did—"

"No," Oliver said, with more of seriousness than Head had heard before in his voice, "but I'd made the habit over her, and—well breaking it is another thing. Not an easy one."

Head turned to go: he had finished with Oliver, he knew. Looking back after he had opened the door that gave access to the corridor, he saw that Nancy blew him a kiss.

"Just as well you didn't ring up last night," she called. "I shall have my work cut out here, but I'll do it."

And, closing the door between them and himself, Head felt inclined to believe her, He remembered her attitude in regard to Oliver in the Gamecock Club, and felt that she had grit and determination enough to save the man from himself. Perhaps! It was a story of which he would not see the end, for, having eliminated Oliver from his list of suspects, he had no more interest in the man.

Yet one thing more remained to be done, and, since this was Sunday, he could not do it himself. And, thinking over ways of getting it done, he remembered yet another thing to be done. Within a quarter of an hour he had introduced himself to the officer in charge of the nearest police station to Hardham Mansions, and explained his reason for being in London in connection with the murder of a man at Westingborough.

"And since I want to get back to-day, and no offices are open," he ended, "I want to ask you to get some information and send it on to me, if I may trouble you to that extent."

"A copy of the certificate of marriage between Clifford Oliver and Margaret—I don't know her maiden name—at Chelsea registry office, somewhere about four years ago. Four years or a little more. I think it costs half a crown"—he put down the coin. "Then, whether there is any record of this Clifford Oliver having registered a firearm of any description at any time. Not that he used it in this case I'm investigating, for I know he didn't, but whether he ever had one."

"That's easy. How do you want this information? Telephone, telegraph, or will ordinary post be quick enough?"

For he ranked these as routine inquiries, on a level with Wadden's ascertaining that Arturo and Eleonora actually had been on the stage of the Elysium at the time they had stated. There was little doubt that Oliver and the woman who had posed as Mrs. Dickson had been married, and little likelihood of Oliver having owned and registered an automatic pistol of the calibre of that which had killed Dickson. But it was essential to be certain, on both these points.

Sergeant Wells deposed, rather with the air of a hostile witness undergoing his examination-in-chief—it was his Sunday on duty, and he always resented Sundays on duty—that the superintendent had looked in for a few minutes, but had gone again. Yes, home, probably, the weather being what it was. He hadn't said.

Therefore, Head knew, the superintendent had gone home, since, if he had been going anywhere else, he would have stated his destination and the time of his return. Himself rather in the mood of a hostile witness after his dragging journey in a train that had stopped at every station between London and Westingborough, after the manner of Sunday trains, Head took up his suit-case and tramped the wet streets to Wadden's home, arriving there at about half-past four. Mrs. Wadden admitted him, and told him he was just in time for tea. The superintendent appeared in the doorway of his sitting-room, and blew at her.

"Come in, Head," he invited. "There's only four crumpets, so we'll have to toss for the odd one. Had a good time?"

"We will not toss for the odd one, for I'm going home to tea," Head responded. "And I wouldn't call it a good time, except that I've cleared two off my list, one of them by pure luck."

"I think we may consider him out of it," Head assented, and glanced at Mrs. Wadden in a way that indicated his reluctance to discuss his trip and its results in her presence.

"Come in here for a minute." Wadden opened the door of a small room that he kept for semi-official use. "You can make the tea, old lady. I'll throw him out before the crumpets go leathery."

Safely closeted in his room, he listened to the recital of Head's adventures, and at the end shook his head gravely.

"If you miss out Tanner, who seems to live a normal sort of life," he observed, "there ain't enough morals among the people concerned in this business to cover a threepenny bit. Never did I hear of a gang so positively devoted to borrowing each other's wives and belongings. Dickson and Mrs. Oliver; Jaggers sitting there dog-in-the-manger fashion over a woman he's seen two or three times in eighteen years; Oliver and this Nancy bird—gosh, man, it's a barnyard crowd."

"I'm not fretting about that," Head said. "The way they arrange their lives is their own affair. It's when they begin arranging deaths that my trouble starts. One thing—has Tanner been after that car again yet, do you know?"

"No. Well, he'll probably be after it to-morrow or the next day. When he does, I want you to see him—not to see him myself—and to get him to help in catching the man who killed Dickson."

"Now tell me the rest," Wadden bade, "and I don't care if the crumpets do go leathery. What have you got?"

"Something that convinces me, but wouldn't carry enough weight with a jury. First of all, I want to borrow your fishing waders."

"Now, to take away with me. As for telling you the rest, let it wait till to-morrow morning, before I go over to Hartlands to see Mrs. Oliver and Jaggers again. Till I've done that—"

"One automatic pistol, silenced, and the same bore as the one that shot Dickson," Wadden observed. "Missing. Did Dickson know a silencer is an illegal attachment in this country, I wonder?"

"Oliver, I should say. And kept the silencer on so that Mrs. Oliver wouldn't hear him when he went out to keep his hand in with it. That's the only construction I can put on it. Far-fetched—yes, but Dickson didn't want to use that pistol for criminal ends, as I see it. He had a belief—a fear, call it—that one day Oliver would come to Hartlands for the purpose of putting an end to him, and from what I saw of Oliver there may have been some justification for the fear, up to quite a short time ago. But now—no. Oliver's got over it, as I see him. All that, conjecture on my part. The whole trouble of the case is lack of evidence, absence of the possibility, even, of getting proof. And I don't see how we are to get it."

"Force a confession. If I fail in that, then the Dickson murder becomes an unsolved mystery. I see no other way out, though."

"Umph!" and Wadden thought it over. "I think I see, and if I'm right, it's one devil of a risk you're taking."

"We'll leave it at that, chief, till I've done my bit of fishing with those waders of yours. I don't want to voice my belief—knowledge, I'd call it myself—even to you, for the present."

He returned after a brief interval, and held out an untidily wrapped and tied brown-paper package, which Head took and tucked under his arm.

"Well, think of something better before I go to Hartlands to-morrow morning," Head advised. "If you can't, I make an experiment in histrionics. It may succeed, and it may not."

"A cold, if I'm unlucky. It's no use, chief—I'll keep it all under my own thatch till we meet to-morrow. And now I'm off—there may be crumpets waiting for me too."

Chapter XIX
Jaggers Accuses

IN mid-morning of Monday, as Head descended from his car in the forecourt of Hartlands, he saw that all blinds in front of the house had been drawn down: Dickson's body, he knew, had been brought here from the mortuary in readiness for the funeral that afternoon. He went to the front door, and had reached out for the bell-push when the door opened, and confronting him stood a tall, very thin, elderly man, a clean-shaven, pimply-faced, unhealthy-looking being dressed entirely in black. Holding the door as if to forbid entry, he gave Head a cold stare and the monosyllable—"Well?"

"Oh, that alters things." The other man stood back and drew the door wide. "My name is Beddoes, of Beddoes and Elkington—we have charge of Mr. Dickson's affairs. I should say the late Mr. Dickson's affairs. I am, in fact, his executor. Whom do you wish to see?"

"Spades are spades, of course," Beddoes observed drily, and opened the door of the dining-room, holding it for Head to precede him. "The chauffeur here, Jaggers, said he wanted to see you. In fact, he said he had some information for you, and intended to go to Westingborough to see you, after the funeral."

Momentarily surprised at the news, Head hesitated. Then—"He can wait, for the present," he said. "I'll see him before I go. Meanwhile, anything you can tell me about Mr. Dickson will be welcome."

"Yes. Yes, of course. It may interest you to know that Mr. Dickson told me he feared he would die a violent death."

"So much so," Head retorted, "that I should like to know why you kept back information of that kind up to this moment?"

"If I had considered it of any value," Beddoes said coldly, "I should have communicated it—to you, I suppose, since you appear to be in charge of the investigations. But since it was a remark made to me with no indication of the source of this possible violent death, I did not see how it could assist you. He mentioned no source, gave no name nor hint of what he feared. For all I know, he might have meant that he anticipated being killed in a car accident."

"He was—well, he always appeared to me as of a nervous disposition," Beddoes explained. "A shy, retiring type of man."

"Ah! I see you know—well, that the lady residing here is not his wife. But has it occurred to you, Inspector, that she may have taken the initiative? In the first place, I mean."

"Quite probably. And beyond that he said he feared a violent death, he gave you no cause to assume that he knew who might kill him?"

"None whatever. It was a single remark, to which I made no reply, made in the course of conversation over his will."

"It is very simple. There is a legacy of five hundred pounds to me as executor, and bequests of ten pounds for each year of service to all in employ here, with an additional bequest of five hundred pounds to the chauffeur, Jaggers. All the rest is bequeathed unconditionally to Mrs. Oliver. He had, I may observe, no near relatives."

"And obviously was very much infatuated with Mrs. Oliver," Head remarked. "How long is it since this will was made?"

"It would be about a month after his return to England—a month, that is, after he came to live here with Mrs. Oliver."

"Yes. Yes." Head reflected over it. "At the beginning of their association, or whatever you choose to call it. But I wonder—did he ever give you any idea that he might change his mind about leaving her practically everything? Of late, say?"

"I see the implication," Beddoes said gravely. "You are, I conclude, leaving no stone unturned. But apart from a remark he made to me some weeks ago, to the effect that he might wish to make alterations in the will, he gave me no instructions."

"None. Like the other remark concerning the possibility of his dying a violent death, it was a casual sentence in the course of conversation, as if, so to speak, it were a detached thought which he would not follow up at the time. He had resigned a directorship in a company in which he held large interests, and had come to me with instructions for the sale of all his holding in the company."

"No. Oh, no! That was long before—at the time that he gave the instructions for this present will, in fact."

Beddoes smiled slightly. "Because of the possibility that he might have been contemplating making another."

"Contemplating making another," Head echoed thoughtfully, and gazed across the darkened room at the writing-desk in which, according to Jaggers, Dickson had kept his silenced automatic pistol. Then he roused to alertness again. "I wonder if you could tell me," he asked, "what did this man do? Apart from his life here, which seems to have been rather purposeless, what were his contacts?"

Beddoes shook his head. "Singularly few, I should say," he answered. "Two directorships—recently, only one—but I never heard or gathered that they brought him into personal contacts. After his return to England with Mrs. Oliver, he appears to have devoted himself to her, and the—well, the irregularity of their association, if I may put it in that way, prevented him from making normal friendships."

"Therefore," Head surmised, "he began to think of putting an end to the association, as is implied by his thinking of altering his will."

"I cannot confirm that supposition in any way," Beddoes said stiffly. "It is pure supposition on your part, Inspector."

Just for a moment Head felt that he would like to take this solicitor by the shoulders and shake him out from his precise, didactic way of talking to something more nearly approximating to ordinary humanity: he was, it appeared, entirely emotionless, more machine than man, weighing each word before he uttered it, and Dickson's death, or the fact that the man had been murdered, meant no more to him than the signing of a document.

"Well, it concerned a woman—not Mrs. Oliver, of course," Beddoes answered guardedly. "A youthful indiscretion, say."

But, Head felt certain, Beddoes knew the identity of the woman. Since he himself knew it, he would not press the point.

"It was. During her lifetime, Mrs. Dickson had full control of all the revenue from her husband's estate, though she could not touch the capital. After the quarrel, she made her son an allowance—a fairly generous allowance—on condition that he kept out of England during her lifetime, and he accepted the condition."

Again Head felt that he wanted to shake the man, and felt, too, that the reply was typical of such a one. He tried one last question.

"None whatever." There was uncompromising finality in the reply, as if, even if Beddoes had an idea, he would not disclose it. His attitude was neither hostile nor friendly: it indicated that the discovery of the murderer was Head's business, and meanwhile he, Beddoes, would mind his own, and interest himself in nothing else.

"Thank you," Head said gravely. "If there is anything you wish to tell or ask me, I shall be here for an hour or more, yet. I'm going, now, to hear what Jaggers has to say to me."

"And I," Beddoes said with equal gravity, "shall be here till after the funeral, but I think it extremely unlikely, Inspector, that I shall have any reason to ask you or tell you anything at all."

"Oh, you might!" Head retorted, and with that went out from the room. He knew his way about this house, now, and went out at the back, where he saw that Jaggers signified his respect for his dead master by a blind drawn down at his window above the garage. Ascending the outside staircase, Head knocked at the door of the chauffeur's quarters, and entered in response to an invitation from within.

At a first glance, he would have said that the room was unaltered from his first sight of it, but then he noted that the black-framed portrait which had revealed to him the identity of the woman who now called herself Eleonora had been removed. Jaggers, in a rusty black suit in anticipation of the afternoon's ceremony, caught Head's glance at the mantel, and interpreted it aright.

"I've put it away, Mr. Head," he said. "It's not often I take it out to look at, anyhow. An' now, I think it's put away for good."

Then a bell rang, and Jaggers went to a wall telephone beside the fireplace, removed the receiver, and said "Hullo!" morosely. Head heard the shrilling of a woman's voice from the transmitter, but could distinguish no words. Jaggers spoke again.

He listened to what was, as nearly as Head could gather, an expostulation. A curious smile grew on his face, and he spoke again.

"Not another yard—not another inch," he said grimly. "I'm stoppin' to see him laid away, an' then I'm off. Don't want my pay, don't want anything. Just off, that's all."

"Told her off proper," he remarked in a satisfied way. "I said nuthin' about you bein' here, though. Now, Mr. Head, you go an' put the handcuffs on her, the woman that shot him."

"That's a deadly serious accusation, Jaggers," Head said gravely. "What are your grounds for making it?"

"I been waitin' to make it," Jaggers said. "If you hadn't come to me, I'd have come to you—to tell you she shot him."

"She told you she didn't know he had a pistol—an' I've seen her an' him out at the back together when he had it in his hand—she's a liar to you over that. An' she wasn't his wife only a woman he picked up an' brought here—I know that, now. An' she had the chance, that night. All us others in the house was in the house when he was shot, but she had the chance to go out an' come back with nobody to see, from that room of hers. It leads straight out into the garden, an' she could go an' come back with nobody knowin'. Bad all through, she is, an' she's the one that killed him."

"You dislike her pretty strongly," Head remarked, ignoring the accusation for the time.

"Hate her!" Jaggers answered with fierce energy. "Never liked her, from the day he brought her here. An' when I found out they was not married—yesterday, I happened to go in an' hear her talkin' to that French girl, sayin' she'd never go back to her husband—she stopped talkin' as soon as she heard me, but it was too late, because I'd heard that—then it all come to me, like. She killed him."

"Why?" Jaggers echoed angrily. "How should I know? Unless maybe they'd got tired of each other, an' she reckoned he'd change his mind about leavin' her everything he had. 'Cause it'll be nigh on two year ago, when they was like a pair o' turtle doves an' I was drivin' 'em one day, I heard him say—'Everything'll come to you if anything happened to me.' An' she said it wasn't money she wanted him for. An' now, with all that worn off, if he'd turned her out as he could, most likely it'd have been with nuthin'. So she made sure that night. Else, why make herself a liar about the pistol to you?"

"Leaving that for a minute, Jaggers," Head said, "why did you make yourself a liar to me over what you were doing that night?"

"Insisting that you went into the kitchen at a quarter to six, when your wife—your wife, Jaggers!—was with you by the gate leading to the road at that time, to my knowledge."

"Oh, so she's been blabbin', has she?" Jaggers observed sullenly. "Well, if you want to know, it was for her sake I said that, to keep you or anyone from knowin' that she was anywhere near where he was killed. Because I know she's a good shot with a pistol, an' it's part of her act on the stage to shoot, an' I didn't want to bring her into it, because she might—she didn't, I know now—but she might have been the one. There was cause, I knew."

"And lied when you told me Dickson was too young during the war for cause to be possible," Head reminded him.

"To save her from bein' brought into it—I didn't care what I said then, as long as I saved her from that. Because, till I knew this, it looked ugly for her. He was—he was the man."

"That was because of his mother," Jaggers said. "In her time, I did more'n look after the car. I looked after things for her too. She thought a lot of me, did the old lady. An' when she knew her time was up, she sent for me an' got me to promise I'd do as Mr. Freddy wanted when he come back. She was sorry, then, she'd been so hard to him, makin' him stop out of the country—she wished she could see him again before she died. An' when he did come back—with this woman that I know now wasn't his wife at all—me an' him had a long talk, an' he said since I'd been here so long he didn't want to turn me out unless I wanted to go, an' I remembered the old lady sayin' about doing good to them that despitefully use you, an' all that about my Nell goin' off with him was years back, an' I thought him an' this woman was married to each other, an' on top of all that it ain't so easy for a man my age to get a place like this. So I didn't go."

"Stayed on as servant to the man who had stolen your wife," Head observed. "The wife you still refuse to divorce."

"There ain't no such thing as divorce, properly," Jaggers retorted doggedly. "'Till death do us part,' it says—I said it, when I married her. Whatever she does, she's my wife, till death do us part."

Head made no reply. There was fanatic determination in the set of the man's lips as he ceased speaking, and it showed in his eyes too. He waited, as if expecting some further question.

"An' now," he said, as none came, "I'm only a plain workin' man an' you're a police inspector, Mr. Head, but if you don't go an' put the handcuffs on that woman an' arrest her for killin' Mr. Dickson, I tell you I'll shout it from the housetops—I'll go to the funeral an' shout it there! I'll make sure she shall be punished—"

"You will not!" The prohibition cut across his threat and silenced him. "One word of that sort outside this room, Jaggers, and you find yourself in a prison cell, waiting trial for the murder of Frederick Dickson, and damning a woman to conceal your own crime!"

"What—me?" Blank fear showed in the man's eyes, and he caught at the edge of his work-bench for support. "Me? Kill him?"

"Think it over, Jaggers," Head advised. "You've lied enough to give me a case against you, you've admitted a motive, and admitted that you hate this woman enough to damn her if you can. One single word spoken against her outside this room means your instant arrest. Remember it."

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and went out, only to see Beddoes crossing the yard toward the garage. They met at the foot of the staircase leading up to Jaggers' quarters.

"I conclude the chauffeur is in his room?" Beddoes inquired in his formal, precise way.

"The conclusion is fully justified," Head answered: the solicitor's manner irritated him, and he could not resist the slight irony.

"Mrs. Oliver has asked me to see him," Beddoes explained. "It appears that he is—er—well, mutinous, and refuses to drive her to Westingborough. She spoke to him on his extension telephone."

"I heard his end of the conversation," Head said. "Do you mind telling me why she wants to go to Westingborough?"

"She has decided to leave before the funeral," Beddoes answered. "Quite naturally, I think—in fact, I agree with her over it. There is certain to be some talk as soon as the facts concerning her living here become known, and this man's refusal to drive her—"

"You may save yourself the trouble of seeing him," Head interrupted. "Mrs. Oliver will not leave this place to-day."

For a moment or so Beddoes appeared ruffled from his utterly unemotional placidity, but he regained it before he spoke.

Through a long pause he met Beddoes' gaze steadily: there was, in that fixed regard of each other, a definite clash of wills, and the solicitor was first to give in by averting his gaze.

"I'll risk it," Head answered curtly. "Also, I'll see Mrs. Oliver and tell her myself that she is not to leave."

"Then," Beddoes said, "as her legal representative, I insist on being present at any interview you may have with her. Your attitude over this, I may say, admits of only one interpretation, Inspector."

He emphasised the title in a way that almost—but not quite—indicated contempt, but Head kept his temper.

"There may be more than one," he said. "Whether you are present or no is a matter of entire indifference to me."

"Look here!" Beddoes said, with more than a trace of anger. "As I understand it, in pursuit of your inquiries in a case of this kind you are entitled to question whom you choose, but you have no right to forbid or restrict anyone's movements, short of arrest."

"And come perilously near American third degree methods," Beddoes snapped back. "On what ground would you offer such an alternative to this lady, short of charging her with the actual crime?"

"There is no reason why I should tell you, but I will. On the charge of wilfully concealing an automatic pistol, illegally fitted with a device known as a silencer, and of the same calibre as the weapon with which the shot that killed Dickson was fired."

Waiting while Beddoes pondered the reply, he saw Jaggers open his door at the top of the stairs and look out, and then draw back, closing the door again. Then Beddoes gave a little, formal cough.

"And I have already told you it makes no difference to me," Head answered. "Will you come along with me now, or do you still want to see Jaggers about his mutiny?"

"No. I will accompany you," Beddoes said. "In fact, I should prefer to see Mrs. Oliver first and tell her you wish to see her."

"A chance to put her on guard, eh?" Head suggested, with just a trace of amusement. "Well, I have no objection."

"One moment, Inspector. That—er—that charge you outlined just now might serve as a prelude to one of far greater gravity, I realise. And in the interests of this lady, as my client—"

"Realise what you like," Head interrupted impatiently, "but interviewing Mrs. Oliver is not all I have to do here, and my time is not unlimited. See her first if you wish, but do it now."

Chapter XX
Closing In

AT about the time that Head reached Hartlands that Monday morning, Superintendent Wadden leaned back in his swivel chair to look up at Tanner, who stood, hat in hand, beside his desk, a fine, erect figure of a man: before the explosion robbed him of an eye and scarred his face, Wadden decided, he must have been a good-looking youngster.

"About the car, Superintendent," he said. "I don't want to bother you unduly about it, but—well, I think I can get an offer for it."

"Ye-es?" Wadden said questioningly. "I take it, then, you've finally made up your mind to sell it?"

"Definitely," Tanner assented, as if the question were unnecessary. "I don't think it would be any good trying to run it for taxi work any more, and in fact I wouldn't care to run it for that."

"And so, without hurrying you in any way, if you want it for further investigations, I've come to ask if you'd mind my fetching a possible buyer here to have a look at it, and give it a trial run if he wants that. I'll fetch it back at the end of the run, of course, if you still want it, and leave it till you say it can be taken away."

"Well, we should have no objection to that, as long as you don't attempt to fake either of the bullet holes," Wadden said thoughtfully. "That cushion at the back—you could turn it over if you like, to hide the bloodstains. If it happens to be reversible, that is."

"Yes, it is. Then if you haven't finished with it by Wednesday, I shall be glad if you'll let this man see it."

"We shall make no difficulties. Have you made up your mind as to what you're going to do? Whether you'll get another and carry on?"

Tanner shook his head. "I'm not carrying on," he said. "One experience of that sort is enough. With what I make out of the car, I ought to have enough capital to open a small shop of some sort—one-man business. Papers and tobacconist, or something of the sort."

"Yes. Slow sort of life, though. But—you've come here to ask me this about the car, Tanner, and I've something to ask you."

"And that is, Superintendent?" There was just a shade of eagerness in the question, a difference in the tone of the man's voice.

"You remember, I expect, that Inspector Head got you to go to the point where he thinks the shooting took place, and show him exactly how you stopped there and what you did when you found Dickson dead?"

"I want you, if you will, to do exactly the same for me," Wadden said calmly, "but to go in this car of yours."

As nearly as might be gathered from the expression on the face of a one-eyed man, Tanner's liking for the idea was negligible. He considered it through an interval in which Wadden watched him intently.

"No—oh, no, I couldn't make it to-day. Nor to-night. I want it to be after dark—you see, Inspector Head is rather at fault over this case, and I want to see what my own impressions would be in the exact situation that car was in when the shots were fired—that is, the situation Inspector Head thinks it was in when they were fired. I want to reproduce the conditions as nearly as possible, and form my own conclusions, and the only way to do that is to get you to drive me to the spot and show me just how you stopped and what you did."

Again Tanner considered it. "It's not a small thing to ask, Superintendent," he said at last. "For me, not a pleasant thing."

"It's no pleasure to me to ask it," Wadden countered, "and I know it's not a thing you'd like doing. But—well, there it is."

He waited, knowing full well that Tanner dared not refuse to comply with his request. And, watching, he saw the thoughtful frown that implied a weighing of all the implications of this errand.

"To-morrow evening, say? If we left here—I want to take a man to ride in the back of the car, just as Dickson rode, to complete the identical conditions of that night—if we left here at about half-past seven, it should bring us to the spot at the same time you got there and found Dickson shot in the car—exactly a week before, it will be then. And I'm free, then. Can you manage to-morrow night?"

"All right. At half-past seven." As if, having assented to the proposal, he was now anxious to see it through and be finished with it.

"I'll be waiting here for you then, and you can turn the car out. I don't drive myself. And if you've got a buyer, fetch him along by all means. I expect we shall be able to release the car this week."

"But, as he sat alone and thoughtful after Tanner had gone, he shook his head gravely, doubtfully.

"No," he said to himself. "No, laddie, I don't see it coming off. It'll give about as much result as that fishing trip of yours. In fact, all you'll get out of it is one of my tomatoes."

Which went to prove that he knew the saying concerning himself and his retirement, and accepted it with little or no resentment.

"There is, I understand, Mrs. Oliver, some question with regard to a pistol, an automatic pistol," Beddoes said in his formal, precise way. "The inspector here will no doubt tell you or ask you what he chooses, to satisfy himself on this and—er—and on any other subject that he deems relevant to his investigations. Meanwhile I felt that in any interview he might hold with you, any questions he might ask you, it would be as well for me to be present."

Standing before the fire in her room, Margaret Oliver gazed past the ponderous-voiced solicitor at Head.

"But I want to get away," she said. "There is none too much time if I am to catch the midday train. Did you see Jaggers, Mr. Beddoes?"

"The inspector said—I fear I did not," Beddoes answered, slightly at a loss and rather embarrassed by the question.

"I told him it was unnecessary, Mrs. Oliver," Head interposed. "I do not wish you to leave this place until—well, say, until that missing pistol is accounted for or found."

"And I have already told you that I know nothing about it," she retorted defiantly. "And to stay here, now—" She broke off.

"From Jaggers!" she asserted with evident anger. "Yes, Jeanne told me you had gone to see him. The man has hated me ever since I came here. And he—did you tell him not to take me to the station?"

"Well, what do you—" She broke off and began again as a thought occurred to her. "He accused me of using the pistol—is that it?"

"Of murdering Dickson—yes," Head said with brutal directness, and watched for her reaction to the statement.

"To save his own skin!" she exclaimed, with a sort of triumph. "Oh, it needed only this to prove what I thought of him—what I have been thinking of him since that night. Crawling like the hypocrite he is to Freddy when we first came here, talking of letting bygones be bygones, and then waiting his chance to go out and shoot Freddy down."

"Mrs. Oliver!" Beddoes interposed hastily. "This—unless you have proof of some kind, you must not accuse the man—"

"I do accuse him!" she interrupted in turn. "Isn't it proof when he accuses me—proof that he wants to throw suspicion away from himself? What cause had I to harm the man who loved me? And he—Jaggers—had cause—Freddy told me all that old story. A sullen, evil, revengeful nature, and he waited for such a chance as that night gave him. The tree across the road, the silenced pistol from the desk—"

"I did not!" she exclaimed fiercely. "How many times must I tell you? And how dare you try to prevent my leaving here?"

"You may advise Mrs. Oliver," Head told him, "but don't attempt to advise me. Advise her, if you like, to tell the truth."

"I advise you not to insult her by accusing her of untruth," Beddoes retorted tartly. "This is no way to conduct an investigation." I have cause to believe she is not telling the truth about this pistol, and therefore I do not insult her," Head persisted. "And since you describe yourself as her legal adviser, you might advise her that when all the facts of this case are plain she may find herself in a very dangerous position through this wilful suppression of fact."

"The present whereabouts of the pistol you took out of the desk in the dining-room, in an attempt at shielding the man you thought killed Dickson," he answered deliberately, and watching her as he spoke.

He saw nearly all the colour fade out from her face that had, up to this point, been flushed by the anger to which he had roused her.

"No, perfectly reasonable," he dissented. "You knew, as most people know, that any fired bullet can be proved to have been fired from a certain weapon, if the weapon can be produced. While that pistol cannot be produced, and unless the one that was actually used can be produced, it is impossible to prove that the bullet which killed Dickson did not come from the barrel of his own pistol. Thus—I accuse you now, Mrs. Oliver—thus you attempted to divert suspicion from the user of another pistol by concealing this. Now tell me—where did you conceal it?"

For a long time she stood with her gaze averted from him. Then she raised her head and looked him squarely in the face.

"In that," Beddoes observed in a satisfied way, "you are within your right, Mrs. Oliver, but I venture to point out—"

"Nothing!" she interrupted him. "I advise—advise you, Inspector Head. Go back to Jaggers, arrest him, and make him tell you what he did with this pistol after he had used it on—on Mr. Dickson."

"Then you decline to tell me what you did with it?" Head asked, almost—but not quite—smiling over the way in which she and Jaggers had accused each other of the murder.

"In that case," he said, "I can only warn you that any attempt on your part at leaving here will involve your arrest—"

"That will be stated at the time of arrest, if it is necessary to make one," Head told him. "In the meantime, I am merely warning Mrs. Oliver not to leave this place for the present—"

"Certainly not before Wednesday," Head answered unhesitatingly. "That is, unless she chooses to change her mind about revealing the present whereabouts of the automatic pistol."

For nearly a minute he stood, gazing full at her as if to emphasise his command—for the way in which he had spoken made it no less. He saw her expression of angry defiance change to one of irresolution, and then suddenly she turned to Beddoes.

After a pause which indicated his reluctance, he turned and went out from the room, closing the door. For a minute or more after he had gone she stood silent, and Head waited.

"Inspector," she said at last, "now—now that he has gone, nothing I say to you can be used against me—since you have no witness, I mean. That is the case, isn't it?"

"Witness or no witness, nothing you say can be used against you unless I first arrest and caution you," he answered. "Still more so, now, for if I allege that you say anything at all, it is my word against yours. I can prove nothing."

"Your own way!" She repeated the words thoughtfully. "Now I know Jaggers killed him, there is no need for me to—"

He left the question unanswered. "You were going to say—there is no need for you to—what?"

"Lie to you any longer," she completed calmly. "You're—too much for me, Mr. Head. When you explained why I hid the pistol, my exact reason for doing it, you made me afraid."

Inwardly, he felt an intense satisfaction over erasing one more from his list, but gave no sign of it. "I knew you were lying, from the start," he said. "You jumped to a conclusion, and only because you think now it was unjustified—"

He waited, but she did not end the sentence. "Wish what?" he asked at last. "There are no witnesses to what you say, remember."

She seated herself and looked up at him. "You see, I don't know anything about pistols," she said. "I had never held one in my hand before. I was going to say I wish I had opened it and looked—if you opened it and looked, you could tell whether it had been fired, couldn't you? Tell that Jaggers had used it and put it back, I mean?"

"In a disused well at the far end of the kitchen garden," she answered. "I took it and threw it in there when I knew the result of the inquest, thinking then that—that it wasn't Jaggers who killed him."

She shook her head. "I know, now," she said. "That's why I am telling you this. What I thought—you know, some of it."

"Is there any water in that well?" he asked. By her last reply, she had added strength to the belief that had come to him as he stood at the corner of Smith Street, and he had had enough experience of her evasions to realise the uselessness of trying to get from her anything more explicit on that point. Thus he turned to one more practical.

Which, he thought but did not say, meant either pumping out the disused well, or the use of a strong magnet at the end of an insulated cable. An electro-magnet—there was power enough in the house to supply a current that would lift the pistol.

She rose to her feet again. "I'm sorry, now—sorry I did it, I mean," she said. "More so, because you've been kind to me over this. And now—are you going to arrest me?"

"No," he answered. Though he knew she had made herself an accessory after the fact by what she had done, he knew, too, that any good defending counsel could render it almost impossible to secure a conviction against her. And, until he had made good his case against the principal in the crime, he did not want accessories.

"And I may leave—go to London?" she asked again. "When we have recovered the pistol—not before," he answered.

"Probably to-morrow—possibly this afternoon. "But—I thought—the longer you leave it there, the more it will rust in the water," she urged. "And then—if it's rusted, you may not be able to prove that Jaggers used it—that the bullet out of it was the one—the one you must have found."

"Sound reasoning, Mrs. Oliver," Head said gravely, "but I am not interested in the pistol to that extent. Jaggers did not use it, and the bullet that killed Dickson came out of another pistol."

Through a long pause she stared at him, voicelessly, while fear grew in her eyes. She clutched at the back of the chair from which she had risen, and he saw her sway as she stood.

"You— Oh, you've tricked me!" she said indistinctly. "I told the truth, confessed it to you because—because—"

She crumpled down beside the chair in a faint, but Head did not move to help her. He backed to the door, put his finger on the bell-push beside it, and kept the button pressed in until the woman beside the chair stirred and moaned. Then the door opened, and Jeanne Ray appeared, but, since Head stood in the doorway she could not see her mistress. She looked up at him in rather fearful inquiry.

"I think Mrs. Oliver needs you—somebody," he said, and as he stood aside she rushed to help her mistress to her feet.

"Oh, m'dame, what 'as 'e been doing to you?" he heard her exclaim, before he closed the door.

Beddoes, waiting in the big entrance hall, turned at sight of Head, and then hurried toward Mrs. Oliver's room, giving the inspector a baleful glance as they passed each other. Head went on to the kitchen: one thing more remained to be done in this house.

"I won't keep you a minute, Miss Barnard," he told the cook, who turned from the big kitchen range as he entered. "You may remember my questioning you about the night Mr. Dickson was killed?"

"Possibly you remember telling me that Jaggers came in here at about a quarter past six, and spent the whole evening in here?"

"Well"—she hesitated—"here and near here. I might have gone up to my room—I did go up to my room for a bit, after I'd got the dinner going, and some part of the time I was in the scullery. But in a general way I was in here all the evening."

"I couldn't say exactly, sir. Not more than ten minutes, I should think. You see, sir, I had the dinner to look after."

"Quite so, but you're not absolutely certain Jaggers was here in this room all the time, are you?"

"Not absolutely, but he was here all the time I was here, and he didn't look as if he went out at all. I mean—p'raps you remember what a night it was, sir. He'd have got wet, if he had."

"I expect she'll be in the drawin'-room, where the coffin is," she said. "I'll go and tell her you want her, sir."

He waited, wondering slightly whether necessity or merely a morbid taste caused Ellen to locate herself in that room. Then she appeared, a trifle breathless, and seconds ahead of the cook, who followed her in and returned to her work at the cooking range.

"About the night of Mr. Dickson's death," Head explained as the girl faced him questioningly. "When I asked you about it, you told me you were here in the kitchen the whole evening, reading."

"Yes, so I was," she answered. "I sat there"—she indicated an armchair not far from one end of the range—"all the evening."

"Yes, the whole of the evening, from six o'clock onward." There was unhesitating decision in the reply.

A moment or two she reflected. Then—"No, I didn't move out of the chair before eight, I'm sure."

"Or might have been so engrossed in your reading as not to notice it," he suggested.

"No, Mr. Head, I'm sure I wasn't. He'd have to pass me to get to the door, and he didn't, not till he said goodnight to go out to his place over the garage, and that was after nine. I'm quite sure he didn't go out before then."

"It's too long a shot, laddie," Wadden said gravely, when Head faced him across the desk in his room that afternoon. "In fact, it looks to me as if all you've done so far is make long shots, over this. I appreciate your difficulties, as the thrush told the worm, but all through this business you haven't been sound. I've always told you too much imagination is your trouble, and by gosh! laddie, you've let it rip in this case!" He blew heavily for emphasis.

"To some purpose," Head observed thoughtfully. "I risked telling Mrs. Oliver why she disposed of that pistol, and it came off. I felt sure it would. Chief, I'm not so much using my imagination in this case as playing on other people's minds—travelling from point to point on other people's minds. I admit it's unsound, terribly so, and if there were a possibility of obtaining one atom of proof I wouldn't do it. I'm gambling, you may say, and that's always bad—but can you show me a better way of getting what I want?"

"I told you he came in, and I fixed it for seven-thirty to-morrow night," Wadden answered indirectly. "Head, that man's one block of wood. If you think you're going to make him quiver, your next think should be black-edged as a last token of respect to this one."

"Don't overlook the fact that, if I fail, it leaves me exactly where I was before," Head pointed out. "I can't lose over it, and I may—I don't say I will—but I may win."

"Except that you put him more than ever on his guard," Wadden observed. "Oh, yes, I know! You've rubbed 'em out one after another—and there's been one large streak of luck, your falling against Mrs. Jaggers. All you've got left are Potts and Tanner—and you've not got one scrap of evidence against either of 'em, except that Tanner brought the body to our door as a good citizen ought, and Potts was there or thereabouts with a gun which couldn't possibly have shot Dickson. And another thing, Head! They're the only two really moral characters in your original bunch of suspects. All the others—Mrs. Oliver, Mrs. Jaggers, Oliver himself—and even Jaggers, the blasted dog-in-the-manger over a woman who'll have nothing to do with him, so I don't leave him out—tomcat morality, the whole blasted lot of 'em. But that's no more to do with the case than a mule has with a dress suit, as you might say. The fact remains that you're gambling unsoundly, and how the hell I'll ever hand in my resignation and grow tomatoes under glass with an easy mind is more than I can see, if you handle your cases in this fashion."

"All I ask—in addition to it—is that you play your part in the melodrama to-morrow night as we've talked it out, and—"

"Here, what about my waders?" Wadden interrupted suddenly. "I didn't give 'em to you, you know."

"End of the week, say," Head promised. "I might go fishing in them again before then—in daylight next time, I think."

"Umm-m!" He looked up at the clock and blew an Ã¦olian breath at it. "Five thirty-three, and I had tea early. Supposing we go over and see Little Nell, and hear what the Pressmen are saying about the murder? There'd be more of them than anything else at the funeral this afternoon, and they'll all be in there by this time, spouting about the murder and what they call clues. Pressmen always talk shop."

"I'll buy the first," Wadden promised, "and then you can persuade me to have another. D'you realise that in about twenty-six hours from now you'll be either a fool or a hero? And I know which I think you'll be, too."

"Twenty-six and a half hours, chief. You won't be able to call me a fool before eight o'clock—with any justification, that is."

"I'll concede the half-hour," Wadden promised. "Lemme get my cap—where the devil did I put that cap? Ah, here it is! Let's go."

Chapter XXI
The Up-Stream Side

WITH his boots and his trousers up to the knees liberally decorated with greyish mud that had had time to dry, Sergeant Wells entered Wadden's room late on Tuesday afternoon, bearing a newspaper-wrapped package. His sleeves and the front of his tunic bore patches of green that indicated contact with damp-mouldering wood, and his face was none too clean. But Wadden nodded approval at him.

"And a filthy job it was, sir," the sergeant answered as he put the package down on the desk. "It's all right—I've wiped it off a bit. Also we got about two feet of chain that had been down there years, the remains of an iron pail, and three old cans. Electro-magnets don't discriminate between guns and other things."

"No?" Wadden began unwrapping the package. "And what was your electro-magnet like, Wells?"

"Oh, quite a small piece of steel—much smaller than I thought it would be. Parham's garage provided it. The foreman told me they made it to use because a mechanic once dropped a spanner into the clutch-pit of a car while he was tightening the springs, and since the spanner got under the flywheel a magnet was the only thing to get it out. Also they provided two reels of flex, each of a hundred yards length, and a plug. We plugged in on a power switch inside the house, and took the flex along to the well, and fished. This came up after we'd got the pail and cans and length of chain."

While he made his report Wadden got the package unwrapped and, crumpling the soiled paper into as small a compass as possible to drop it in his wastepaper basket, revealed a Webley automatic, to the barrel of which was attached a length of metal tubing. He took it up by the grip, sighting it across at the far wall of his room, and then examined it, turning it over in his hand.

"Damned clumsy thing to use—balance all wrong, with that attachment on it. Loaded, do you know, Wells?"

"I don't know, sir. I got Jeffries to wipe it, and then wrapped it and brought it for you to examine."

"Umm-m! Very little rusted—far less than I should have thought. Find some tools and get this silencer pipe off the barrel, and bring me a cleaning rod with some white cotton waste. If it's been fired since it was last cleaned, the fouling will show on the waste."

Then Wadden extracted the magazine from the butt, and saw that it was fully loaded. Pushing out its contents with his thumb and examining them, he ascertained that they were all Union Metallic cartridges, similar to those found in the drawer of the desk at Hartlands. Then, working the recoil mechanism, he found another Union Metallic cartridge in the chamber ready for firing, and shook his head.

"If I'd pulled the trigger," he told himself, "I'd have had a hole in that wall over there. And he kept it all ready for use, did he? Well, not much use having the thing if he hadn't."

With a jerk at the trigger-guard he dismantled the weapon, so that the barrel with its attachment came free of the recoil cover and firing mechanism. It was now possible to sight through the barrel, but mud and slime from the well in which it had lain prevented him from seeing whether the grooves were fouled by firing. Then Wells returned with a tool roll, and took out a screwdriver and adjustable spanner. Wadden handed the barrel to him.

"Merely clipped on by those two little bolts," he observed. "Get it off, Wells. I could have had him socked good and heavy, for this, if we'd known he had such a thing fitted on his pistol. Did you see anyone while you were fishing it up?"

"Well, sir"—Wells smiled as he fitted his spanner over a nut—"that Miss Ray spotted Jeffries with me, so, of course she came out to see what we were at. And while we were winding in the flex after we'd finished, a solemn-looking old chap who told me his name was Beddoes came out to us. He wanted to know whether Mrs. Oliver could leave now, and I told him we had no instructions about it."

"Yes, he rang through to me here," Wadden observed, "and I told him she'd have to wait till we'd had a look at the pistol."

"And Miss Ray told Jeffries that Jaggers had left—gone to a cousin of his at Westingborough Parva after cursing Mrs. Oliver to her face." He attacked the second bolt and nut, and Wadden waited until he slid the length of piping away and handed over the pistol barrel. "And this," he added, examining the piece of piping, "is ordinary exhaust piping off a motor-cycle, I'd say. It's an amateur's job, anyhow."

"It would have to be," Wadden observed. "Since they're illegal, you couldn't get one made anywhere about here. Probably, though, he brought that back with him from the East. And now I think I know why he wanted to practise with the thing. It's far more difficult to get a sight with it than with an ordinary automatic—one without a thing like that on the end of it. Hand me that cleaning rod."

Wells passed it to him, and took a wad of white cottonwool from his tunic pocket. Passing the rod through the barrel from the muzzle end, Wadden attached to it a good-sized pad of the cottonwool, and drew it through. Then both he and the sergeant bent over it.

"Mud, grease, and the remains of what I think was a young water-beetle," the superintendent remarked. "And no fouling. Which merely proves that it was properly cleaned and greased after use, and doesn't tell us when, naturally. But all the ammunition's Union Metallic stuff, and the bullet Bennett dug out of Dickson's skull for us isn't. I think, Sergeant, we're quite safe in saying this isn't the pistol used by the man who shot Dickson, even before we get the bullet from his head compared with this rifling."

"A comprehensive survey, call it," Head suggested as he advanced toward the desk. "I've been giving Jeffries his instructions for to-night. Principally, to fall when he sees you strike a match."

Wadden glanced at his window. "If this rain keeps on, I shall have to shade the match to strike it," he said.

"The conditions," Head observed, "look like being ideal—if this rain will keep on. I'd have liked a stronger wind, of course—"

"Liked to have us all drowned and then blown away," Wadden interrupted. "Are you interested in this gun at all?"

"So little that I don't think it's worth while to check our bullet with the rifling. But I've something of far greater interest to show you, chief—my reason for not stopping to see you before I went off this morning. Not conclusive, but—take a look at it."

He unfolded a slip of paper that he had taken from his pocket, and put it down on the desk. Wadden inspected it, and whistled softly.

"Gosh, man! Bachelor—spinster—what the hell? Bigamy and falsification! I'll say you won't let her go, now!"

"His sister, chief, not his wife—she can go when she feels like it now we've got that pistol. I don't even want her for evidence in the case. That's why I've been away all day, looking up birth registers. You see, you can't prove that she knew a thing."

"Oh, hell!" Wadden exploded, and blew a tornado of wrath. "Can you prove anything in this blasted case?"

"Nothing whatever," Head assured him quietly, "which is why, if we hadn't already arranged to-night's excursion, I'd have gone fishing again. And that fishing has got to be done, as it is."

"Because I've got faith in my own histrionic powers," Head answered. "I believe, given the conditions we look like having—"

"It's unsound, it's irregular, and it smacks of third degree," he said. "If it doesn't come off, your name's not merely mud but poisonous mud. Histrionic mud, in fact. I tell you, I don't like it."

"And after," Wadden said, and blew another cyclone, "I'll tell you exactly what I think of you. Since I'm backing you up in it, I shall probably have to resign too."

"Then," Head said very softly, "you can grow tomatoes under glass, chief. I think I've heard you speak about doing it."

"Wells"—Wadden spoke equally softly—"you'd better go and get cleaned off—all that mud and stuff. Don't bother about this tool roll, for the minute. In half an hour or so, Mr. Head has got to go off again, ready for to-night, and I want a quiet word with him first."

Wells managed to keep a straight face until he had got outside and closed the door. He came on Jeffries, already busy at cleaning off the stains of their joint excursion.

"Finished with it," Jeffries remarked, and handed over the brush. "What did the supe say?"

"Nothing at all, compared with what he's saying now," Wells told him. "As long as he blows, you're all right, but oh, man! when he goes quiet! He's gone quiet now, and Head's in there with him."

"I've only seen him go quiet once," Jeffries remarked reminiscently, "and then I thanked my lucky stars it wasn't me."

"Ah! Well on time, Tanner," Wadden observed, glancing at his wrist watch. He got up from his desk, went to the stand in the corner of his room, and took down his uniform overcoat. "Still raining, eh?"

"Just as it was a week ago to-night—no, don't trouble." He got the coat on before Tanner, moving toward him, could help him with it. Then he donned bis cap. "A week ago to-night—it'll be a week to the minute, almost, by the time we get there."

He went toward the door, and Tanner followed him out into the corridor without reply, unless a sharply indrawn breath at the reminder of what had happened a week ago could be counted as one.

"This way," Wadden directed, gesturing along the corridor, "I got my man Jeffries to open up the garage and get the engine running, to save time. He's coming with us." He swung about with an abrupt, disconcerting movement, and saw Tanner's nervous start. "Is that all right?" he asked sharply. "You don't mind his starting up?"

"But you'll drive," Wadden said, turning to go on again. "I'll want you to drive as you did a week ago to-night."

He opened the door at the end of the corridor, and the wind drove rain down on them as they emerged to the yard. Inside the lighted garage stood Jeffries, clad for this excursion in just such a suit as Dickson had been wearing on the night of his death, with a light waterproof over it and a soft felt hat in his hand. Entering the garage, Wadden turned to Tanner, again with that oddly abrupt movement.

"I want to reproduce all the conditions as nearly as I can," he said. "In fact, I've posted men to keep that section of the road clear for us for twenty minutes or so, in case anyone happens to be coming along it. He looks rather like Dickson, don't you think?"

He opened the rear door of the car, disclosing the back seat with ugly brown stains on the Bedford cord covering, over toward the near side. The lighting of the garage revealed the stain, but it showed far more plainly when Wadden reached up and switched on the interior light. Then he took a newspaper from his overcoat pocket, unfolded it, and placed it carefully on the seat, well over to the off side.

"That was his paper, lying practically exactly like that," he observed. "Together with the position of the body it gives us the position of him at the time he was shot—you didn't move the body in any way, though, did you, Tanner?"

"No, I thought not. Now, Jeffries, in you get. There—sit where he sat. Put that hat of yours down on the newspaper—yes, so! Now it's exactly as it was a week ago, isn't it, Tanner?"

For the third time he turned abruptly to face his man as he literally fired out the question, and saw that Tanner's face was utterly devoid of colour as he gazed at Jeffries in the car.

"Then we'll get going," Wadden suggested, apparently indifferent to or ignorant of the other's agitation. "The only difference between now and a week ago is that I want to sit beside you in front while you drive. And it's time to start—let's go."

He went round to the near side to enter while Tanner took the driving-seat. They went out from the garage and across the yard to the passageway giving access to the street, and Tanner switched on the powerful headlights to give warning of his approach. When he had turned the car toward the descent to the Westingborough Parva road, he clicked the dimming switch and lowered his lights until another car had passed them. After lifting the lights to centre again, he set the tandem wind-screen wiper working, and with the almost-silence of sweetly running mechanism the Rolls dropped down the hill, and the Idleburn bridge showed ahead of them in the radiance of the lights.

Tanner released the accelerator, and slowed to less than twenty miles an hour as they went over the bridge. "It is now," he said.

"But then, of course," Wadden said softly, "the rain was driving much harder, though the wind is in the same quarter. Yet that wiper keeps the screen quite clear, and it's astonishing how far ahead you can see details. Tree trunks and all the rest—would this be where Denham stopped you to tell you about the tree across the road?"

They rocked over the unevennesses of the bad road, and, before they reached Long Ridge gateway, a uniformed figure stepped out to the middle of the road and stood with upraised hand.

When Tanner braked to a standstill, the uniformed man came to the near side of the car, and Wadden lowered his window to speak to him.

"All right, Wells," he said. "It's us. Now let nobody else pass you till we come back—a quarter of an hour, or less."

"Yes, go on," Wadden bade, and raised his window again. Tanner let in the clutch, accelerated to a bare twenty, and held well to the middle of the road as he drove.

"You'll see two faggots of wood, one on each side of the road," Wadden told him. "They represent the fallen tree. When you see them, I want you to drive up as if they were the fallen tree, and stop the car as you stopped it a week ago, as nearly as possible in the same position. Make it as exact as you can."

Tanner gave no sign, even, that he had heard, but Wadden did not repeat his instructions. Thus they came to where the two faggots lay, each placed out from the grass verge and on the metalling of the road. Between them stood a tall man in a waterproof coat rendered shiny by the rain, a soft felt hat pulled well down on his head, and wearing goggles that showed black in the light of the car's headlamps.

"Couldn't miss seeing him, could you?" Wadden remarked very softly, as if he did not expect a reply. "Now—as nearly as possible in the same position as it was that night—by the tyremarks left then."

Well over to his near side, now, Tanner stopped the car. The man who had been waiting came up to the off side of the car, opened the door, and took off his dark goggles, revealing himself as Inspector Head. He slipped his goggles in his pocket.

"Evening, Superintendent," he said. "I put those glasses on to save myself from getting dazzled—yet. Good evening, Tanner."

"Then you didn't use your dimming switch when you stopped?" Wadden asked, taking no heed of Head's salutation.

"No." But Tanner leaned on his steering-wheel and sat silent for quite a long while before he answered.

"Quite right," Wadden said. "If we're to make this reconstruction perfect, it's as well for you to think what you did that night."

"But you told us you got out by the near side door," Head reminded him as Wadden descended to stand beside them.

"I—he—the superintendent was sitting that side," Tanner stammered. "And—and you told me to get out."

"No! Oh, no!" Head denied. "The superintendent asked you to carry on, and told you we wanted all as then."

Tanner opened his mouth as if to speak, and looked back at Jeffries, who sat, hatless and waiting, in the middle of the back seat.

"Yes." The whispered reply was scarcely audible above the sound of the wind and softly purring engine.

"I want you to get it in line with the head of that man inside, and then back away from the car," Head told him.

"Who else? To keep the line—you'll understand why we're doing it. You needn't do it unless you choose, of course, but that's what I'd like you to do. And the superintendent wishes it too."

After a little while Tanner moved as Head had asked, backing away in a diagonal that took him toward the grass verge of the road. When Head said "Stop there," he had one foot on the grass, and still was ten feet nearer to the car than the faggot placed to represent the fallen tree. Wadden, a box of matches in his hand, moved beside him.

"Ye-yes," Tanner answered, and they heard his teeth chatter as if with cold, though he was well-clad and the night was mild.

Wadden struck a match, but, as he did not shade the light, the glow of it lasted only a fraction of a second. Then Jeffries in the car swayed over to the near side, falling, and his head vanished below the level of the window. As he fell, Wadden flashed another match.

"The second shot, to make sure of him," he said. "But it was pulled too low down, and stuck in the woodwork."

"Is the car as it stood that night, as nearly as you could place it, Tanner?" Head asked, taking no notice of the man's agitation.

"Then—no, don't let this mere acting trouble you, man—then you are standing as nearly as possible on the line along which that shot was fired—the first shot, the one that killed Dickson. I don't know if you realise it, but you're a good three yards nearer to the car than the trunk of the fallen tree. Whoever shot Dickson, Tanner, stood out in front of that fallen trunk, not behind it."

All three faced about, and saw the dimly-outlined mass of earth and torn-up tree roots that reared far above the level of the hedge.

"That heap of stuff is a direct continuation of the line of fire," Head said. "The shot could not have come from behind the hedge. The hole in the glass was level with the head of the man inside the car, and if it had been fired over that lump it would have been a dropping shot. Now do you see why we asked you to do this?"

"To prove to you that the man who fired the shot could not have been behind the hedge, and could not have been behind the tree," Head explained patiently. "Now—one other thing. You say you did not dim your headlights when you stopped the car that night?"

He led the way past the faggot laid as a marker, and both Tanner and Wadden went with him. In the full light of the lamps he stopped.

"The tree trunk was between this spot and the car, that night," he said. "If it were here now, we should be close against it. Tanner, is that man in the car sitting up again, or not?"

"Which means, I want you to realise, that the man who shot Dickson must have been on the other side of the tree trunk, because the glare from those lights is so strong on this side that he couldn't have seen how to aim, here—like you—couldn't have seen whether there were anyone in the car or no. And we've proved that he must have been in the road, not behind the hedge. So, making every allowance for the roar of that gale and the way the rain was driving down, the shot must have been both visible and audible."

"And you see, now, the line on which the murderer must have stood, by your own placing of the car for us?" Head asked him.

Tanner made no reply. Wadden moved past the faggot, and kicked it on to the grass as he went. Head made a gesture, and Tanner followed. So, with Head coming last, they came to the car, and Wadden looked in at Jeffries lying slumped on the back seat like a dead man.

There was light enough about them, reflected back by the headlights and from the interior lamp in the roof of the car, to show that even Tanner's lips were pale, now, and that there was a moisture on his forehead, other than that of the rain which had driven down on the three of them during the enacting of their scene. And his one eye was glaring wide as he stared in at the crumpled figure on the seat.

"We'll go," Wadden said, as Tanner did not reply to his question. He got in past the steering-wheel, leaving the off-side door open, and settled himself against the other door. "Room for three—you come next, Tanner," he called out. "The inspector wants to drive."

Thus they arranged themselves, and the superintendent's bulk made of them rather a cramped trio when Head had shut the door on himself, with Tanner between him and Wadden. Putting in reverse, he backed the car along the road to the gateway in which Tanner had turned it when Dickson's body had lain inside, and there turned about to return. They passed Wells without stopping, and, as they neared the Idleburn bridge and Head slowed to a crawl with the brick parapet showing, Tanner's breathing became audible above the sounds of the car.

"We stop here," Head said, disengaging the gear and pulling on the hand brake. "The river, Tanner—do you know it?"

"I—yes—the river." It was easy to tell by his voice that the man was near breaking point.

"Not as I know it," Head told him. "I've lived here all my life, and as a boy I used to play about this river, bathe in it, learn every foot of it. That side of the bridge, the up-stream side, makes good bathing for a boy in summer, Tanner. Hard, smooth sand for a good fifty yards up-stream from the bridge, and even now it's in flood there are not more than three feet of water where it's deepest. Firm, level stuff, that sand—if you throw anything in on that side, it doesn't get buried deeply as it would on the downstream side. But then, if you stop the car here and get out, it's between you and the downstream parapet—it's much quicker and easier to slip over to the up-stream side and throw whatever it is—a pistol, say—over that side."

"You—you can't prove—" Tanner gasped thickly, beaten utterly by this relentless reconstruction of his own acts on the night of Dickson's death. "I didn't stop here—I didn't throw—"

"The pistol that killed your sister's lover," and, as Head completed the sentence, his left hand dropped on Tanner's right wrist and gripped it, while Wadden clutched and held the man's left wrist. "I arrest you and charge you with the murder of Frederick Dickson, Tanner, and warn you that anything you may say may be taken down and used as evidence against you."

"Let me go!" It was a shriek, only just coherent. "My God, and she betrayed me! I should have killed her too!"

When they had gyved him with the handcuffs Wadden took from his pocket, Head drove on.

Chapter XXII
Motive

"I'll tell you for certain, chief, after we've raked up the one he threw into the river—and we can count it sheer luck that Jeffries saw him leaning over the bridge parapet that morning, and marked it as the up-stream side. If we have to have a dozen men raking that river bed, we've got to get the pistol."

"When we do get that one," Head pursued indirectly, "I think you will find this is the serial number on the barrel." He put down a slip of paper on the superintendent's desk. "When I went over to Ambleham this morning to look up Tanner's pedigree, and found that his sister's name was Margaret, I saw Cleeve again—the manager of the explosive works where Tanner lost his eye. You may remember my telling you three men were killed in that explosion—the men who worked in the shed that blew up. Tanner was very friendly with one of them, and both he and this man who got killed used to shoot on the butts belonging to the Ambleham works—you know, spare-time amusement. Sometimes rifle shooting, and sometimes pistol practice. Two thirty-eight automatics were missing after the explosion, but enough pieces of one of them were found later to identify it. No trace was ever found of the other. I think it's the one Tanner threw in the river."

"It amounts to that, of course, and that would account for his not registering a firearm in his possession," Head assented.

"Umm-m! It's worked out according to your plan, and with that remark of his after cautioning, about her betraying him and killing her too, you'll get your verdict. But it was one hell of a risk you took. What made you think of it?"

"The utter absence of proof," Head said frankly. "And in London a car blinded me for a minute or so with its headlights—it came to me in that minute that nobody behind the fallen tree could have seen Dickson inside that car clearly enough, that is, to get him with a first shot. Whoever shot him must have been in front of the tree, so it could only be Tanner. He'd have seen anyone else. But I had to prove to him that I knew he did it, and then frighten him by making him believe I knew far more than I did."

"And, by gosh, you did!" Wadden said fervently. "It was horrible, hearing you bend that man till he broke. The—the devilishness of it!"

"My only chance of getting him, as I saw it," Head half-apologised. "You might draw plans of what actually happened for a jury till your arm ached, but short of taking them all there and acting it for them in the dark with the car, they wouldn't see it as a closed case. A good defending counsel could shake it to pieces, and might get him off even if we do recover the pistol. You see, it wasn't his wife, but only his sister, and that makes the motive so terribly weak."

"M'yah," Wadden assented, rather wearily. "Well, it's all over for to-night. Do we go home, or do we go home?"

"I blame myself badly over this." Head took no heed of the question, but spoke almost as if to himself. "I ought to have seen it from the first as I saw it in London, when those car headlights hit at me and dazzled me. But he was so cool and—innocent-seeming."

"Even if you had seen it, you'd have had to clear all those others out of the way to perfect your case against him," Wadden pointed out. "And even now you've not cleared Potts."

"Tanner's remark about killing her too saves me the trouble," Head said. "It was made after I cautioned him, remember."

"Well—home," Wadden decided, and stood up. "That is— Oh, come in, then!" For a knock on the door sounded to them. "If anyone's killed anyone else to-night, I'll murder 'em!"

"I wish he wouldn't choose this time of night, even if he does want to make things easy for us," Wadden growled. "All right—send Jeffries here to take him down and have him brought in. We'll go home with the milk, Head, by the look of it."

He seated himself again. Later, with Tanner ranged under escort before him, and Jeffries seated with pencils and notebooks, he too drew a writing-pad and pencil toward himself, and looked up.

"I understand you wish to make a statement, Tanner," he said. "If so, it is of your own free will, and you must understand that you need say nothing at all which might incriminate you. You know this?"

"I want to ask you a question," Tanner answered. All the agitation to which the ordeal of going to the scene of Dickson's death had driven him had vanished. He was again the cool, steady being they had first seen—a strong man, Head decided anew as he listened.

"Did my sister give me away to you?" Tanner asked, with an eagerness that proved how vital he considered the answer would be.

"Your sister," Wadden said, addressing Tanner, "has not even mentioned your existence to us."

"Then..." Tanner made a long pause after the word—"I know—I've given away too much. You made me—he made me!" He gave Head a momentary glance from his one eye. "But there's somebody I've got to clear—I care nothing about what happens to me. I want you to understand that my brother-in-law knows nothing, isn't in any way connected with—with this. Do you understand that?"

"You may say what you choose," Wadden replied noncommittally, "and need say nothing more, unless you wish."

"But you've got to understand that!" Tanner insisted. "Else— Oh, what's the use—I know what's in front of me, now. Listen! After I got caught in that explosion at Ambleham—when I got back enough sense to think—I knew I'd never have any more use for life. I went to London and brooded alone, and made up my mind to end it altogether. Only, I was going to make it look like an accident, get in front of something travelling fast. I tried it, and it was my brother-in-law who saved me. And from then on my life belonged to him. Do you see? Whatever I could do for him, even to life. It'll be that, now, I know. He turned up at that moment by a miracle—it was a miracle that he should be the one who saved me. And that wasn't all. A broken man himself, he gave up time to me, made himself the best friend I'd ever known—the only real friend I've ever had. And told me—told me my own sister had spoilt life for him. Do you see?"

"I'm not implicating him in what I've said," Tanner insisted earnestly. "I did tell him, at the finish, that I was going to take up taxi work here, if I could, but nothing more. Nothing more! It had to be somewhere in the country—London would never have passed a one-eyed driver like me. And as far as she was concerned—my sister—I knew she wouldn't recognise me—who looks at a taxi-driver twice, in any case? And the explosion had made me unrecognisable, on top of which I grew this beard. It was six years and more since she'd seen me, too, and mine is not an uncommon name, even if she did hear there was a taxi-driver of that name here. Which she wouldn't. I don't want anyone brought into this but myself, which is why I am telling you—making this statement. And when I went to London at the beginning of the year and saw how my brother-in-law—the only friend I'd ever had—when I saw how he was wrecking himself—killing himself!—and all because of her—my sister!—you see, life was no use to me in any case, a one-eyed wreck as I am, compared with what I was. And I was sure—there was only one weak point. How you found out she was my sister I don't know, and I felt sure you'd never find it out. If you hadn't, you'd never have—except for that, I knew myself safe."

"No—this too. You've got me, and I know the consequences. I'll face them, right to the end. I've cleared her way back to him, and as I told you, my own life or what happens to me is nothing—nothing at all. If it means happiness for him—if she goes back as I believe she will, now—I'm glad I did what I did. My life for my friend—and that is all."

"Nothing more. Except you say she—my sister—is not concerned in your tracing me. Neither is he—my brother-in-law—in any way concerned in what I did. He had no knowledge of it—no idea that I thought of such a thing. If that is quite clear to you, it's all."

"Then we will have this statement typed, and you can read it over, make any alterations you think fit, and sign it." Wadden told him. "Jeffries, get it typed at once."

"A queer character," Wadden observed, as he waited with Head for the typescript to be brought in.

"It doesn't pay, really, to deviate from the normal," Wadden remarked gravely. "If you deviate from it again as you have in this case, you'll see me walking up the wall and laying eggs—unless I've settled to growing tomatoes under glass in the meantime. There's only one bright spot, and that's Potts. Catching Potts. He's been a positive thorn for years, and I thought we never would catch him at it. But Oliver—well, you never can tell, can you?"

THE END

E. CHARLES VIVIAN

.38 AUTOMATIC

First published by Ward, Lock & Co., London, 1937 This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2024 Version Date: 2024-12-02 Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan All content added by RGL is proprietary and protected by copyright. Click here for more books by this author

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE.

Chapter I Brought to the Door

Chapter II Evidence of the Driver

Chapter III A Man with a Gun

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Chapter IV Not Mrs. Dickson

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Chapter V "Find Clifford Oliver"

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Chapter VI Concerning Albert Tanner

Chapter VII Jeanne Ray's Tale

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Chapter VIII Denham is Doubtful

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Chapter IX Jaggers

Chapter X Search

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Chapter XI History—and Little Else

Chapter XII Shots in the Night

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Chapter XIII Potts

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Chapter XIV Analysis