Carter Dickson

(John Dickson Carr)

A Sir Henry Merrivale Mystery

A Graveyard to Let

MURDER MOST FOUL

The young man he saw running—slowly now, with panting breath—was one whose name or face Cy did not know. But he was one of the outfielders who had been sent to get a lost ball. He was now gasping out words like, "flashlight," and "doctor." He stumbled up to them, his eyes scared under the peaked cap.

"What is it, son?" H.M.'s big voice demanded.

"Out in that graveyard," the young man said between breaths, "the graveyard they don't use any more... on one of the tombstones..."

"Well?"

"Bill and I," the young man said, "found someone's body."

ZEBRA BOOKS KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp. 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016

Copyright © 1949 by William Morrow & Co., Inc. Copyright renewed 1977 by John Dickson Canr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

First printing: March, 1988

1

Not without reason did the late and great O. Henry refer to New York as Bagdad-on-the-Subway. Any kind of Arabian Nights' adventure can occur there, and very often does.

Indeed, considering the regrettable behaviour of Sir Henry Merrivale in that same subway...

But let us first indicate the paths of several lives which were converging, towards a point of irony, on that very hot afternoon of Monday, July 6th. Sir Henry Merrivale, himself, wearing a tweed cap and a suit of plus fours which would have inspired aesthetic agony even without his corporation or his countenance, arrived on the Mauretania.

The thermometer stood at ninety-eight. The skyline of lower Manhattan loomed in hard sparkle against a sky like milk on the boil. By the time the liner discharged her passengers, at half-past two in the afternoon, Sir Henry Merrivale had been almost too well photographed and interviewed. He held forth on the international situation with such fluency and lack of discretion that even ships' news reporters felt a qualm.

"Look, sir," interposed one of them. "You'll back this up, will you? If s not off the record?"

"Oh, my son!" said H.M., waving his hand in a disgruntled way. "I called a so-and-so a so-and-so, and he is. That's simple enough, ain't it?"

"Listen!" begged a photographer, who had been dodging back and forth behind his camera like a sniper in ambush. "You say you like this country, don't you?"

H.M. directed towards this man, through his big spectacles, a scowl of such horrible and terrifying malignancy that any such photograph ought to have borne the caption, "$5000 Reward." H.M. also removed his cap, so that the sun could heliograph more evil from his big bald head. The photographer pleaded again.

"Look! I want you to express pleasure!"

"I am expressin' pleasure, dammit!"

"What are your plans, Sir Henry?"

"Well... now," said the great man, "I got to visit a family in Washington."

"But aren't you staying any time in New York?"

"Y' know, I'd like to." Across H.M.'s unmentionable face crept an expression which Chief Inspector Masters, had he been there, would have recognized for wistfulness mixed with pure devilment "I'd like to visit a friend or two of mine. Or go out to the Polo Grounds, maybe."

"Polo Grounds?" yelped another voice. "But you're an Englishman, aren't you?"

‘Uh-huh."

"Do you know anything about baseball?"

H.M.'s mouth fell open, a wide cavern. It was as though you had asked the late Andrew Carnegie whether he ever heard of a free library.

"Do I know anything about baseball?" powerfully echoed H.M. "Do I know anything about baseball?" Hitching up his trousers, he opened and shut both hands to beckon his companions closer. "Looky here!" he said.

At about the same time the great man was being interviewed, one of the friends of whom he had spoken was no great distance away as the crow flies. Mr. Frederick Manning, of the Frederick Manning Foundation, entered the head office of the Token Bank and Trust Company, and went down to the safety-deposit vault

From there Mr. Manning emerged some twenty minutes later, with his brief case looking a good deal thicker than before. In lower Broadway the sun carved a glittering cleft, winking back at him from green and yellow taxies. Under the Corinthian pillars of the bank, Mr. Manning stood for a moment and swore mildly.

He did not like heat He was one of those men who merely turn lobster pink and peel. Frederick Manning, at fifty-one, was spare and lean, a little over middle height with silver grey hair and a pair of vivid blue eyes whose expression he tried to veil rather than to use. His reputation was that of a good businessman, although business he left to his lawyer. Frederick Manning was more man-of-the-world than businessman, and more scholar than either.

"Oh, well!" he said quietly. After this he apostrophized lower Broadway with a quotation from Milton which startled several passers-by. Then, unruffled, he hailed a taxi.

He was driven uptown to his club, where he had lunch alone. In connection with the whirl of ugly events which were to follow, it maybe mentioned that Mr. Gilbert Byles, the District Attorney of New York County, was a fellow member of the club. Mr. Byles, whom the press described as "our beat-dressed D. A.," several times glanced towards Manning across the dining room.

But Manning, evidently so preoccupied that he did not even notice an old acquaintance, hardly touched his food and never glanced up. He was doing sums in arithmetic on the back of an empty envelope. Finally, and with hesitation, he twice wrote the words "Los Angeles."

"Coffee, sir?" inquired the waiter.

"Not good enough!" muttered Manning, and scratched out the words.

"Then can I get you something else, sir?"

"Eh?" said Manning, and clearly wrote "Miami."

"If you don't want coffee..."

Frederick Manning woke up. The blue eyes, against lean pink face and silver grey hair, returned to the vividness of a strong and towering personality. He crumpled up the envelope and threw it aside.

"I beg your pardon," he said, with that engaging smile which had charmed so many. "Coffee, of course."

Shortly afterwards, under the hammering heat, he walked across to the Lubar Building at the corner of Fifty-first Street and Madison Avenue.

His suite of offices, on the twenty-second floor, had only one entrance. Its glass panel bore in small chaste gilt letters, The Frederick Manning Foundation. It brought to mind the Frederick Manning School at Albany, a school philanthropic and non-profit-making, which tried to teach the creative arts. Manning, they said, had only two passions in life, and one of them was this school. At the moment the air conditioning of the building soothed him, calmed him, quietened the emotion which few of his friends ever saw.

And yet trouble exploded as soon as he opened the door.

"Mr. Manning!" softly called the woman at the reception desk. She herself was middle-aged and looked rather like a schoolmistress.

"Yes, Miss Vincent?"

Miss Vincent was perturbed, which no receptionist should ever be. Yet her eyes rather than speech or gesture summoned him to the desk, where he punctiliously removed his loose-fitting Panama hat.

"I thought I'd better tell you," Miss Vincent added in a low voice, "that your daughter is waiting in your office."

"Which daughter?"

"Miss Jean, sir." There was a barely perceptible pause. "And Mr. Davis is with her." Manning, who had been leaning forward with both hands on the desk, straightened up. Miss Vincent felt rather than saw the blaze of anger which surrounded him as she said, "Mr. Davis," and she could guess why. But his eyes remained opaque, his voice steady.

"Is my secretary in?" he asked.

"Yes, Mr. Manning."

"Very well. Thank you."

At his left was a narrow soft-carpeted corridor -which ran past small offices like boxes with frosted-glass sides. It was all very cool, very modern, an incongruous background for Manning, who at the moment could have been called neither. At the end of the corridor was the door to his private office.

Manning, with a mouth of contempt, glanced down at the floor. Evidently to help the air conditioning, a marble bust of Robert Browning—the only ornament of its kind in Manning's office—had been used as a doorstop to keep the door part way open.

Manning, like one whose rage is shown only by murderous care, stepped softly over the bust as he opened the door, and closed the door on it with the same murderous care.

"Hello, Dad!" exclaimed the voice of his younger daughter—brightly and rather shakily.

"Good afternoon, sir," said the voice of Mr. Huntington Davis, Junior.

It was not Manning's arrival which caused tension there. Tension already existed. But it grew stronger each second afterwards.

Manning's office, large and square, was at a corner of the building; there were two windows in the wall on either side of him. But the Venetian blinds had their shutters more than half closed, turning the room dim. Its sombre grey furnishings, including a heavy sofa, were as uncompromising as the muffled carpet or the framed photographs of the Frederick Manning School and its achievements.

And still the silence lengthened, while Manning hung up his hat and sat down unhurriedly behind the big flat-topped desk in the angle of the window walls.

"Dad!" Jean Manning burst out uncontrollably.

"Yes, my dear?"

"I want to ask you a question," said the girl, "and you've got to answer me! Please!"

"Of course, my dear," assented her father. Not once did he glance in the direction of young Mr. Huntington Davis.

"Well..."

Jean braced herself.

She was just twenty-one, and badly upset. Wearing a white silk dress, she sat on the sofa with one leg tucked under her. Though Jean was very pretty, with her yellow hair worn in a long page-boy, she had not the stereotyped prettiness which makes so many girls nowadays look exactly alike: as though they had all stepped simultaneously from the same fashion magazine, and started to parade down Fifth Avenue.

Jean wore very little make-up, perhaps because of her very faint but healthy tan. Her blue eyes were direct and honest, if a trifle naive. When she flung out the question that had been torturing her, an older person might have found it something of an anticlimax.

"Is it true," she demanded, "that you've been running around with this dreadful woman? Just as they say you have?"

For a moment Frederick Manning did not reply.

A detached observer would have said this question, and this question alone, really startled him. For a moment there was a faint twinkle in his eye; then his jaw muscles tightened, and his nostrils distended.

"Aside," he said, "from the term 'running around,' which I hate, and the word 'dreadful, which is inaccurate..

"Oh, stop it!" pleaded Jean, and struck the arm of the sofa.

"Stop what?"

"You know what I mean!" Jean turned back again to the question of the woman. It was as though a spider had run up her bare arm "Are you—are you keeping her?"

"Certainly. I believe that's the correct procedure. It doesn't shock you, does it?"

"No, of course not!" Jean said instantly. She would have been outraged at the suggestion that anything could shock her, though in fact many things did. "It's just—I'm sorry, Dad!—that it seems indecent. For a man as old as you are!"

"Do you honestly think that, my dear?" smiled Manning.

"And that's not all. There's—well, there's mother."

For a moment Manning tapped his fingers on the desk.

"Your mother," he replied, "has been dead for eighteen years. Do you remember her at all?" "No, I don't! But..."

Jean, thoroughly miserable and almost in tears, lost in a romantic dream, did not notice that her father's face was almost as white as her own.

"But," Jean went on doggedly, "you've always told us how you idolized her. How you worshipped her. How you felt,"—Jean's eyes strayed towards the marble bust which served as a doorstop— "how you felt about her like Robert Browning felt about Elizabeth Barrett, even after she was dead?"

Manning closed his eyes..

"Jean," he said, "will you oblige me by not saying 'like' when you mean 'as?' Of all the detestable..."

"Dad! I don't understand you!" Jean cried helplessly. "What difference does it make how I say it?"

And now Manning's face flamed.

"Your speech, my dear, is the speech of Emerson and Lincoln, of Poe and Hawthorne." Manning spoke gently. "Don't debase it."

"Oh, Dad, you're a hundred years behind the times!"

"And yet far too modern, apparently, when I take up relations with Miss Stanley?"

"That woman..." Jean began vehemently. Then she stopped, attempting without great success to imitate the cynical and world-weary air of her twenty-four-year, elder sister, Crystal.

"Oh, I imagine people in the old days had their floozies too." Then her tone changed. "But you! And I still say, Dad, you're a hundred years behind the times! That's probably why your school..."

Again Jean paused, but this time with a different inflection.

"What about the school?" demanded Manning, with the blue veins showing at his temples.

He had seen his daughter's gaze stray towards the black brief case, obviously well filled, which lay on the desk at his right hand. Without haste Manning picked up the brief case, and, as though idly, shut it up in a drawer at the right of his desk.

"What about the school?" he repeated.

Jean looked round for help. "Dave!" she cried.

Mr. Huntington Davis, Junior, cleared his throat and got up from an easy chair at the far end of the room.

The office was so dark, with its sunblinds nearly drawn, that faces looked vague at a distance. Mr. Huntington Davis—the newest partner of his father's old-established brokerage firm of Davis, Wilmot & Davis—had more than the assurance of his thirty years. His black glossy hair, parted to a nicety, gleamed against the sunblinds as he strolled over to Manning's desk.

"May I say a word, sir?" Davis requested easily.

"By all means," agreed Manning. He looked the young man up and down without expression, as he might have looked at a canvas without any painting on it.

Davis smiled his pleasant, white, dental smile. He was of good height, a joy to his tailor, and with a passion for physical exercise which Manning (to say the least) deplored. Under Davis's black hair he was tanned to the colour of an Indian, his pale grey eyes showing light against it.

Negligently he leaned one fist on the desk.

"I'd like to ask you something, Mr. Manning," he said. "What are you really thinking about?"

"I was wondering," mused the other, putting his fingertips together, "why you and I dislike each other so much."

"Dad!" cried Jean.

Davis smiled, a white flash against the tan of the face.

"That's not true, Mr. Manning." he said earnestly. "I certainly don't dislike you. And you can't actually dislike me either."

"What makes you think so?"

Without taking his eyes from the lounging figure behind the desk, Davis extended his hand behind him and beckoned to Jean. Jean slipped off the sofa and hurried to take his hand, pressing it.

"Well!" smiled Davis, with humour wrinkling his forehead. "You don't object to my marrying' Jean, do you? You gave your consent without a murmur."

"I almost always consent," observed Manning, "to avoid fuss and bother. Jean's sister has been married three times."

"Look, sir!" said Davis. There was a note almost of desperation in his self-assured voice. "Jean and I are getting married in August. This is a family matter now. I want to help you! Look, don't you trust me?"

"Not one millionth of an inch."

"But why? Why do you dislike me so much?"

"I don't know, Mr. Davis. Call it instinct."

Davis made a slight gesture which sent Jean back to the sofa.

Then Davis, settling the shoulders of his well-tailored blue suit, drew himself up. He smiled. He was Young America Succeeding in Business.

"I'm afraid, Mr. Manning," he said in a stern yet kindly voice, as though addressing a child, "you don't appreciate what a bad position you're in. And I'd better tell you: you may get into serious trouble. What do you say to that?"

Manning raised his eyes briefly.

"Only, young man, that your effrontery would stagger an Egyptian mummy."

Davis lifted his shoulders carelessly.

"Have it your own way, then," he smiled. "But of course... you haven't heard the rumours that are going around."

"What rumours?"

Davis chose to ignore this.

"Mind you," he warned darkly, "I didn't have to tell you this. Maybe I can't help you, even as it is; probably not But I did want you to know I was a friend of yours, no matter how bad a jam you might get into."

"What rumours?" Now was the moment

"Well, sir, I'd better be frank with you. They say this Frederick Manning Foundation of yours"— Davis glanced round the room—"is in pretty bad shape financially. And that there's going to be a crash. And that you're in it up to your neck."

There was a silence. Manning slowly rose to his feet behind the desk. A stray gleam from the sunblinds caught his silver grey hair.

"You impertinent young swine,"he said.

Though Manning did no speak loudly, the last word had the thud of a thrown knife. In that moment he seemed to tower over Davis, to extinguish Davis into trumpery tailoring and paling suntan.

"It isn't true, is it?" cried Jean. "It isn't true, Dad? About the—business troubles?"

"Certainly not," Manning replied with dignity. Then he turned to Davis. "Get out!" he shouted. Get...

And then there passed over Manning's face one of those instantaneous changes which, to anyone who did not know his heart and his curious sense of humour, would have been inexplicable at the time. The look he directed at Davis was almost cordial. His bass voice sank to purring smoothness.

"Tell me, Mr. Davis," he pursued, "have you any engagement for tonight?"

Davis, by this time thunderstruck, could only stare back at him.

"If you haven't," said Manning, "could you come out to Maralarch and join us for dinner?"

"You couldn't keep me away," Davis said curtly.

"This morning I told Jean, as well as my daughter Crystal and my son Bob, that I had something very important to tell them at dinner tonight" Manning looked at Davis. "My lawyer will be there; and you will make a sixth. I also hope to have a rather distinguished seventh guest."

"Seventh guest?" repeated Davis. He was watching Manning as warily as Manning watched him. "Mind telling us who it is?"

"An old friend of mine from England. His name is Merrivale, Sir Henry Merrivale."

Jean, who was now standing in the middle of the room, made a gesture of dispair.

"Yes," she said in that same despairing tone. "And that's all we need now, isn't it?"

Her father frowned. "I don't quite follow you, Jean."

Jean's blue eyes looked at him steadily.

"You're going to tell up something horrible tonight, aren't you? Please don't deny it! I know you are! Dad, what are you going to tell us?"

Manning hesitated, an impressive figure even in his loose white alpaca suit.

"That can wait." He hesitated again. "But if you were shocked at anything I said this afternoon, Jean, you will be far more shocked tonight."

"Sir Henry Merrivale!" wailed Jean.

"Really, my dear, I still don't understand why..."

"Crystal," explained Jean, "is positively in raptures. She looked him up in Debrett. He's got a lineage as long as your arm, and a string of degrees after his name too. On top of everything, don't we just need an English baronet who’ll be so frozen and refined that we'll all be scared to talk to him?"

"Ah, I see," her father murmured. Then he glanced at his wrist watch, and got a real start. "Good God, that liner was supposed to dock at two-thirty! And it's three-thirty now! Just one moment."

Sitting down behind the desk again, Manning clicked the switch of the talk-back connected with his secretary's office in the next room.

"Miss Engels!"

The voice which answered sounded rather flustered. "Yes, Mr. Manning?"

"Miss Engels, you did send off that radiogram to the Mauretania early this morning?" "Yes, Mr. Manning."

"I sent Parker down there to meet the ship, and drag old H.M. here if he had to kidnap him. What's the matter? Isn't the ship in?"

"Yes, Mr. Manning. The ship's in. Mr. Parker - well, he called up about five minutes ago. But I—I didn't want to disturb you. As for Sir Henry, Mr. Parker couldn't get near him."

"What do you mean, couldn't get near him?"

"Well, it seems Sir Henry left the ship with a lot of reporters. They climbed into cabs and went over and started a poker game in the back room of a bar on Eighth Avenue. The bartender wouldn't let Mr. Parker in."

"A poker game?" echoed Jean Manning.

Whatever she may have said before, Jean's sympathies were quickly roused. She was passionately loyal to a friend, or even the friend of a friend.

"That poor, innocent Englishman!" she cried. "They trapped him into it! They won't leave him a cent to his name!"

"Be quiet, Jean!—Yes, Miss Engels?"

The talk-back switch kept on clicking, not always accurately.

"Mr. Parker waited in a drugstore, sir. In about three quarters of an hour," answered Miss Engels, "Sir Henry came out of the bar stuffing wads of money in his pockets. He said he had to go to Washington. He jumped into a cab and yelled, 'Grand Central Station.'"

Huntington Davis, who had regained all his self-assurance, intervened here.

"But he can't get to Washington from Grand Central! He's got to go to Penn Station! Didn't they tell him that?"

"Goon, Miss Engels!"

The secretary's voice grew apologetic.

"Mr. Parker says he's sorry, sir, but he can't go on with a chase like that While he was in the drugstore, Mr. Parker phoned a friend of his"— here Miss Engels obviously consulted notes—"a Mr. Cy Norton."

"Good!" beamed Manning. "Excellent!"

"Who's Cy Norton?" asked Jean.

"For eighteen years," retorted her father, "Cy Norton was London correspondent of the Echo. He knows Sir Henry far better than I do. I hadn't even heard he was back in New York." Manning turned to the talk-back. "Has Mr. Norton picked up the trail already?"

"Yes, sir. Hell phone you as soon as there's news."

"Thank you, Miss Engels. That's all."

Manning, in a kind of anticipatory fever, rubbed his hands together.

"But Grand Central..." Davis burst out.

"I have no doubt," Manning observed calmly, "that Sir Henry knew he was going to the wrong station."

"Is he crazy, sir?"

"Far from it. The best term to describe him is the good old American word ornery. He is ornery."

"But..."

"He must not get to Washington," Manning said fiercely. "He must be at Maralarch tonight and especially tomorrow morning. I swear it! But I wonder what he's doing now?"

2

Voices of many loud-speakers, hollow yet rasping, spoke their ghost message through the vastness of Grand Central Station.

"Sir Henry Merrivale." Slight pause. "Sir Henry Merrivale.''Slight pause. "Please come to the station-master's office on the upper level near track thirty-six.''

And still the old man didn't show up.

Cy Norton, smoking a cigarette near the information desk, kept swivelling round and round with his eyes on a comparatively small crowd.

Eighteen years ago, when he was first sent to London as correspondent for the Echo, he had not been impressed—as few sensible people are—by St Paul's Cathedral. He had written that St. Paul's looked exactly like Grand Central Station with an acre of folding seats.

Now, as he stood in the main hall on the upper level, amid a marbly shuffle-shuffle of feet, the old memory returned. So many memories, both ugly and pleasant! And always, of course, the face of a certain girl...

"Sir Henry Merrivale! Sir Henry Merrivale! Please come to the Station-master's office on the upper level near track thirty-six."

Again it echoed and died under the mutter of the crowd.

Standing there in an old grey flannel suit he had bought before the war, his dark blue tie hanging out over the double-breasted jacket, Cy Norton might have been a difficult man to plaice. He was very good-natured, and looked it. He had a lean sardonic face, with fair hair as thick as it had ever been. He was over forty, and showed it.

Yet, despite the battering of time and war, Cy retained an enormous and youthful zest He had not even sworn very much, a few weeks ago, when they politely booted him out of his job.

"We fear," they had cabled from New York, "that he is losing his American point of view."

And who the hell, reflected Cy Norton, wouldn't tend to lose his "American point of view" in all those years? Was it possible—Cy tried not to fool himself—that he could see things from too many sides, from too many countries? Or that he was at last writing real journalism, instead of his earlier antics? Or, most of all, that...

"Mister!" cried a hoarse voice, accompanied by the noise of running and dodging feet. "Mister!"

A grimy-faced boy of twelve or so, whose aid Cy had enlisted with money and with the flattering promise that he should play Dick Tracy, cannoned straight into him.

"He ain't there," the boy confided, breathless yet with a conspiratorial look round him. "They've paged him five times, and they won't do it no more. But he ain't there!"

Cy Norton's heart sank.

"That's bad," he said. "I thought he'd be certain to go there. I was counting on it'"

"Howdja mean?"

"He couldn't resist that loud-speaker! If he heard it, he'd want to go and use it himself and talk to the whole station."

"Cripes!" said the boy. His eyes opened to white disks at the majesty of this conception. "What madeja think of that?"

"Because," admitted Cy, "it's exactly what I've often wanted to do myself, only I haven't the nerve. I mean, they wouldn't really let him recite the limerick about the young girl from Madras. But he'd try."

"Mister, we gotta find him!"

Cy's feverish eyes sought the illuminated clock over the information desk. It was twenty-five minutes to four.

"If he didn't hear the loud-speaker," Cy decided, "either he's left the station or else he's in one of the shops in all these arcades. Probably a bookshop."

"There's lots of bookstores in this place," yelled the boy. "Come on!"

Beckoning, he raced off in the direction of the Vanderbilt Avenue side. Cy Norton, remembering with pleasure that he had not put on a pound of weight in fifteen years, plunged after him.

Lighted arcades loomed up and were explored, amid a rainbow profusion of goods which would have dazed a Londoner and still dazed Cy. Their footsteps clattered and echoed on marble until the boy, doing a graceful skid-turn at a last arcade, pointed ahead.

Well down on the left was another chaste Doubleday bookshop. They did not find H.M. there. But Cy, as he glanced at the line of glass doors to the subway which cut off the end of the corridor, and seeing who was beyond those doors, uttered a grunt of triumph.

"Here," he said, pressing another dollar bill into the boy's hand. "That's all, Dick. We've done it!"

And he hurried through one of the glass doors.

The warm, stale, oily breath of the subway blew round him. On his right, eight turnstiles—with new metal separations, painted dull green, since the fare had been increased to ten cents—faced an iron-shod staircase leading down to the shuttle service between Grand Central and Times Square.

On his left, against a white-tile wall, was a big money-changing booth with a grill over its aperture. In the open space between turnstiles and money-changing booth, but well back beyond both of them, stood a very large and very old Gladstone bag stained with ancient travel labels. On the travelling bag, with his arms folded like Napoleon departing for St Helena, sat Sir Henry Merrivale.

Facing him, fists on hips, stood a policeman. Now there are those who maintain that if Cy Norton had intervened then and there, before anything had happened, all yet would have been well. But to these Cy has a firm reply.

"The cop," he will point out, "wasn't on duty. He was a motorcycle cop, black leather leggings and all. Finally, he was in a good humour."

And so he was, when he first faced H.M.

"What’s the matter, Pop?" the policeman called jovially. "Haven't you got any money for your subway fare?"

H.M., bald head lowered and corporation outthrust, gave him a malignant look over the big spectacles.

"Sure I got money," he retorted, suddenly digging into his pocket and holding out a handful of change. On the tip of one finger was balanced a dime, on the tip of another a nickel.

"But for fifty years, burn me," added H.M., looking first at the dime and then at the nickel, "I've never understood why the little one is worth more than the big one."

"What's that?"

"Never you mind, son. I was just cogitatin'."

The policeman, who was young and a fine figure of a man in his uniform, strolled over and studied him.

"Say, Pop, who are you?"

"I'm the old man," said H.M., dropping the money back in his pocket and tapping himself impressively on the chest. "And I'm mad, too. I'm good and mad."

"No, but I mean: aren't you sort of English?"

"What d'ye mean, 'sort of English? I smackin' well am English!"

"But you talk like an American," objected the policeman, as though pursuing an elusive memory. "Wait a minute; I know! You talk like Winston Churchill. And he talks like an American. I've heard him on the radio. 'Course, in most ways," the policeman added carelessly, "he is an American."

H.M.'s face turned a rich, ripe purple.

"But look, Pop," the policeman continued in a persuasive tone, "why are you sitting here on your bags? And what are you so mad about, anyway?"

With a violent effort H.M. restrained himself. His voice, which at first seemed to come in a hoarse rumble from deep in the cellar, steadied itself. But he could not prevent himself from swelling up with a terrifying effect.

"I want to make a statement, son," he said.

"O.K.; make a statement!"

"I wish to state," said H.M., "that this subway, which you ought to call an Underground—that this subway, of all the subways in which I have ever travelled, is unquestionably the goddamnedest subway."

The policeman, though genuinely good-natured, was stung to the quick. Born in the Bronx and christened Aloysius John O'Casey, he felt his own temper rising.

"What’s the matter with this subway?" he demanded.

"Oh, my son!" groaned H.M., with a dismal wave of his hand. "I'm asking you, Pop: what's the matter with this subway?"

To Cy Norton, standing near the glass doors with his hat hiding his face to keep it straight, the policeman's question seemed justified. The rush hour had not yet come. Only a few persons hurried across, to a clank of turnstiles, and clattered downstairs. Near the money-changing booth lay a coil of rope left behind by workmen. Lights, red and white, winked in the cavern below; another train rumbled out

"I'm asking you, Pop: what's the matter with this subway?"

"I come in here," said H.M. "I put a dime in the slot beside that turnstile. I get into a train, as good as gold."

"All right so what?"

"The first station I get to," said H.M., "is called Times Square. Fine! I look out the window at the next station, and it says Grand Central. 'Lord love a duck,' thinks I, 'it must be confusin' as hell to have two stations with the same name.' The train goes hopperin' on, and burn my heavenly britches! if it ain't Times Square again. The next station is Grand Central."

Officer O'Casey spoke gently.

"Look, Pop. This is the shuttle! It only goes between here and Times Square!"

"That's what I mean," said H.M.

"Howdja mean-whatcha mean?"

"What in Esau's name is the good of a subway that only goes to one station?"

"But you can change for any place from there! It's a service, see? It's..." Officer O'Casey, swallowing hard, was seized with inspiration. "Listen, Pop," he pleaded. "Where do you want to go?"

"Washington, D.C."

"But you can't go to Washington by subway!"

H.M. extended his hand, palm upwards, in a lordly and insulting. gesture towards Officer O'Casey's subway.

"See what I mean?" he inquired.

"You're drunk. I ought to run you in," said the policeman, after a deadly pause.

"You see those turnstiles?" said H.M., leering up at him.

"I see 'em, all right! What about 'em?"

"I've just magicked ‘em," said H.M. "I put the old voodoo spell on 'em." Then he advanced his unmentionable face. "What d'ye want to bet I can't walk through any of the turnstiles and never drop a dime in the slot?"

"Now look here, Pop!..."

"Ho!" said H.M. "You think I'm kiddin', hey?"

He rose to his feet, the tweed plus fours adding more of a barrel shape. Majestically preceded by his corporation, he approached the nearest turnstile. Then, gracefully holding both arms in the air like a ballet dancer, he just as gracefully maneuvered his corporation against the turnstile. It clanked, and he went through.

"You come back here!" yelled Officer O'Casey.

"Sure," said H.M., instantly returning through the turnstile and just as instantly going back through another one—still without benefit of any fare.

"Voodoo," he explained with a modest cough.

For a moment the policeman stared at him. Then Officer O'Casey charged at that turnstile like a bull at a gate. But it held him.

"Y'see, son?" H.M. inquired pityingly. "You can't do it unless you know the voodoo words. And I expect," he pointed, "that feller in the money-changing box is just about having high blood pressure, ain't he?"

It was true, as Officer O'Casey’s glance confirmed. The young man who gave change was gibbering behind the bars.

"What the hell's going on out there?" he screamed.

The great man was paying no attention.

"I keep telling you," he rumbled patiently, "that they're all magicked. You can't get through without payin' unless you know the voodoo words."

Officer O'Casey's colour changed again. The .38 police-positive revolver shook in its holster against his hip. But his flaming curiosity was stronger than his instinct for law and order.

"Listen, Pop," he said in a low voice. "I’ll bite. I know it's a gag. But what are these voodoo words?"

"'Hocus pocus,'" H.M. said instantly. "'Allagazam. Cold iron and Robin Goodfellow.' That's all."

"But I can't say that!" "Why not?"

"I don't know," admitted the policeman, with a red colour coming up his face from under the uniform collar, "But it sounds crazy. It sounds..."

Then his whole tone changed.

"'Hocus pocus!'" said the policeman, extending his finger at the turnstile."'Allagazam! Cold iron and Robin Hood!'" He charged at the turnstile, and went through so easily that he nearly pitched headlong down the stairs.

But neither Officer O'Casey nor Sir Henry Merrivale had anticipated what happened next

A thunderous wave of applause, hand-clapping rising above the cheers, swept through that sour cavern and echoed back from its walls. Officer O'Casey had forgotten the crowd which can assemble in an instant, as though "magicked," at the least sign of monkey business. They poured down through the arcade from Grand Central, and through the two other entrances to the shuttle.

Office O'Casey was as red as a beet But H.M., whose worst enemy could not have called him bashful, assumed a dignity like Napoleon at Austerlitz and bowed as low as his corporation would permit He also raced in and out of two more turnstiles before the policeman collared him.

"Keep back!" shouted Officer O'Casey to the crowd. "I'm warning you now: keep back!"

Officer O'Casey was wearing a gun. They kept back.

"Jake!" he yelled to the consumptive-looking youth who kept the change booth. Jake hurried out being careful to lock the door behind him.

"Now look, Jake! There's something wrong with these turnstiles!"

"I tell you," Jake replied passionately, "there ain't nothing wrong with them' turnstiles! People been using 'em all day! You seen it for yourself!"

"It's voodoo, that's all," said H.M.

"Pop, you be quiet Jake, there's a coil of rope over there against the tile wall." The policeman pointed to it "You tie one end of that rope to the bars of your window, and the other end to the iron post at the end turnstile over at that side. Nobody gets through until... get going!"

Officer O'Casey, supervising the lying of the rope, was slowly losing his mind.

"Looky here, son!" H.M. told him in consoling tones. "Let's face it! If you know the password, you can get a free ride in the subway. You don't even have to crawl over or climb under."

It was unfortunate that H.M.'s powerful voice carried these words, or a part of them, out over a boiling and swaying crowd. Scattered words rose and were audible above the crowd, like the spurts of small skyrockets.

"What are they doin', anyway?"

"Didn't you hear it? The subway's hoodooed."

"You get a free ride in the subway," a voice was heard clearly to say, "if you care to leap the turnstile or crawl under it."

An electric tremor ran through the crowd. Though a dozen hoots and catcalls greeted the remark, the news spread.

"I assure you, sir," cried the little man who was honestly repeating what he thought he heard,

"you get a free ride in the subway!"

"That's gospel truth!" shouted a travelling salesman who wanted to get out of the mob. "If s a psychological experiment."

"And all you've got to do is get the hell over the turnstile?"

"Yes!"

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go!"

And the crowd, converging from two directions, crashed forward.

There are certain moments when the chronicler, accurate though he is compelled to be, would prefer to shudder and draw a veil. Besides, established facts here are meagre.

It was not a crowd; it was a tidal wave. As the rope broke, it yanked the grilled window out of the money booth with a clang like the gong for round one. Nobody could afterwards agree who started the fight, though interlocked bodies were rolling down the stairs from the first.

It is unquestioned that somebody dived through the open cash window and began to scoop up money. But all that could be seen of him was the seat of a pair of blue denim trousers, at which some old lady was savagely walloping with an umbrella. Officer O'Casey, swept backwards, tripped over H.M.'s bag and lay stunned. Sir Henry Merrivale (to quote his own words) was merely standing there, as good as gold, not bothering anybody.

What happened was that a sinewy hand, appearing out of the crush, gripped his arm. Under a squashed felt hat appeared the green

eyes of Cy Norton. "Come on!" said Cy.

"Well, lord love a duck!" thundered H.M., above the racket and din. "Son, I didn't even know you were here!"

"Within ten minutes," said Cy, "I can tell you where you’ll be. You'll be in the can, sir; and you'll stay for thirty days."

"I've got a travelling bag back there," protested the injured one, who was being hauled forwards. "I got a very valuable cap, too."

"We can get them later. Forward towards the arcade!"

And the double battering-ram, both heads down, plunged for the arcade.

When they emerged into it, another crowd - mere spectators—fortunately had assembled. It was easy to mingle innocently with it. But Cy, when he saw two more policemen hurrying towards the centre of riot, thought it best to drag H.M. into an adjacent drugstore with a convenient exit.

It was peaceful in the drugstore, despite a crowded soda fountain. Cy, restraining a natural sympathy, quieted the great man.

"Listen!" he urged. "Your valuable papers: passport, letter of credit, the rest of it—have you got them on you?"

H.M. significantly tapped his breast pocket

"Good! Then there's only the question of your suitcase. Do you know anybody who's influential in this town?"

H.M. reflected.

"I know the District Attorney, son. Bloke by the name of Gilbert Byles. He wrote me a letter before I left home. It began, d'ye see, with: 'How are you, you old s.o.b.?' So I knew, American style, it was friendly."

Cy Norton uttered a sigh of relief.

"Then you'll probably get out of this business," he said, "without any trouble. Ill just have to risk coming back and getting your suitcase later. In the meantime, before they send out a police alarm, I've got to get you to Maralarch instead of Washington. I've..."

Abruptly Cy stopped.

Facing them from a little distance ahead, with a hesitant look, was a slender girl in a sleeveless white silk frock. Her face wore a faint golden tan which heightened the intensity of her blue eyes and partly open mouth. Her hair, a natural gold and worn in a long page-boy, gleamed under lights and humming fans.

For a second Cy Norton was more than taken aback. He was shocked to the heart at her resemblance to... And here Cy shut up the thought in his mind. It wasn't a close resemblance. But it was there.

The girl, for her part, was looking at H.M. after the fashion of one who considers a carefully memorized description.

"I—I beg your pardon." She took a step forward. "Are you by any chance Sir Henry Merrivale?"

H.M. coughed and gave her a modest bow.

"Burn me, but you're a nice-lookin' wench!" he said in frank admiration. The girl, though she did not move, seemed to reel. "This country," added H.M., "Is full of nice-lookin' wenches, though half of 'em are so spoiled they ought to be walloped. You oughtn't to be walloped."

The girl seemed to restrain a wild desire to laugh in his face.

"Thanks awfully," she murmured. "I’m Jean Manning. My father sent me here to look for you, because Mr. Davis had to go back to his office." Her eyes grew concerned. "For some mysterious reason, he seemed to think you'd be in trouble. Are you in trouble? I've got a car here."

"You've got a car?" demanded Cy.

"Yes!"

"Where is it? I mean, can we get at it quickly?"

"I know a good deal about this station," said Jean in a curious tone. Then her tone changed at the urgency of Cy's manner. "For one thing, I know a passage off the mezzanine that'll take us out of here as far as Forty-sixth Street and Park Avenue."

"Then we'd better get started for Maralarch, Miss Manning. I'm sorry, but it's serious. If they send out a police alarm..."

"Police alarm?" cried Jean.

"Yes... Oh, no, you don't!" said Cy, seizing H.M.'s coattail just as the latter, his eyes fixed greedily on the soda fountain, was about to get away. "I’ll deliver you out there if it kills me. And you'll answer some questions on the way!"

"Oh, my son!" groaned H.M. "We're safe now. There's no possibility..."

Then, as though warned by telepathic instinct, his big bald head swung round.

Through the glass door of the drugstore, mouthing like an avatar of vengeance, peered the face of Officer O'Casey.

"Out the other entrance," shouted Cy Norton. "Run!"

3

H.M. answered no questions until the big yellow car, having maneuvered cross-town, was racing along the West Side Highway past the Hudson.

Jean, a red scarf round her head, was at the wheel. H.M., his arms folded and a mulish expression on his face, was squeezed in between Jean and Cy Norton on the outside. Cy made one trial effort

"Now look here, H.M. About your going on the razzle-dazzle this afternoon..."

"I'm bein' kidnapped," said H.M., staring malignantly at the windshield. "I got to visit a family in Washington."

The top of the car was down. Though the heat had lessened, its stickiness remained despite a cool breeze. On their left the expanse of the river was dark blue, stung with light points. On their right, far above, the apartment houses of Riverside Drive showed grey as Italian villas against green.

Cy, not a little uneasy, did not speak again until they reached the George Washington Bridge and raced on past.

"There's been no police alarm," he said. "Nobody there as much as glanced inside the car."

"I know!" nodded Jean. "But every minute I've been watching the rear-view mirror, and expecting to hear sirens behind us. And all because of "

"Now, H.M.!"

"Oh, for the love of Esau!"

"You're not being kidnapped," Cy declared violently, "because you never wanted to go to Washington at all."

"I dunno what you're talkin' about."

"And I'll prove it," persisted Cy, "on the basis of your own conduct. Now you knew perfectly damned well how that shuttle worked. Didn't you?"

"Well... now," muttered the great man uncomfortably.

"Somewhere, probably aboard a ship, you learned the trick of how to walk through a turnstile without paying your fare." Cy swallowed hard. Curiosity seared him as it had seared Officer O'Casey. "How did you do it, by the way?"

"Aha!" said H.M. The ghost of an evil glee stole across his face; then again he became the Iron Man.

"That trick's a beauty," he added as a teaser. "Maybe I'll explain how it works, and maybe I won't. But it's a beauty."

Cy restrained his wrath.

"So you couldn't wait," he pointed out, "to try the trick on somebody. You hared off to Grand Central, and sat on your bag like..."

"Like a spider," supplied Jean.

'That's it! You waited like a spider for some likely victim, and along came that motorcycle cop. It was all serene at first But he said Winston Churchill was an American, so you got mad and decided you'd really give him the business. Isn't that correct?"

"By the way," thundered H .M., "did I introduce you two to each other?"

"As a matter of fact you didn't," smiled Jean, with a sidelong glance.

"Think of that, now!" said H.M., as though by mere power of voice he could divert questions about other matters. "Well, this here is Jean Manning, the daughter of an old friend of mine. This feller here," he tapped the opposite shoulder, "is Cy Norton, who's been London correspondent of the New York Echo for eighteen years. There, now!"

"How do you do?" said Jean gravely. And, to tell the truth, it did momentarily divert Cy.

All the time he had been conscious of Jean, too conscious of her, because of that resemblance to someone else. Jean was younger, of course, and less sophisticated. But the memory of other years...

"No longer the Echo's correspondent," he said. "They fired me three weeks ago."

"What's that, son?" HJM. asked very sharply. Jean hesitated. "But why did they... let you go?"

Cy Norton looked wryly back at his life. "Probably," he said half seriously, "because I wasn't much good."

"I don't believe that!" declared Jean. "Why was it, really?"

The car hummed with softness and power. Cy was conscious that he looked older than his age, that he probably needed a shave, that the old soft hat he had bought years ago on Bond Street must look out of place—as he himself felt out of place-in his own country.

"Why was it?" insisted Jean.

"Oh, I don't know. While I was waiting to find the maestro here, I thought of several reasons. But there's still another."

It was one of the few things on earth which could make Cy Norton furious. He must remember, Cy reminded himself, to speak quietly.

"I hate the guts of the Labour Party," he said. "I didn't bother to disguise it The owner of the Echo, here in New York, is one of those 'liberals' who like to praise what they don't understand."

Then Cy grinned, the suffusion of blood retreating from his face.

"But it doesn't matter anyway," he added, "and I'm probably wrong. What I want is information from H.M. Look here, sir. Any traveller, let alone one who knows this country as well as you do, would have known how to get to Washington. Why weren't you playing your monkey tricks at the

Pennsylvania Station instead of at Grand Central?"

Unexpectedly H.M. lowered his defences.

"All right, all right,"he growled. "It wasn't that I didn't want to go to Washington. I've got to go there tomorrow. If d be impolite if I didn't Am I ever impolite to anybody, you stinkin' weasel?"

"No, no, of course not!"

"Well!" said H.M. "And isn't it at Grand Central that you get a train for this place called Maralarch?"

There was a long silence, while the hum of the car sang softly.

"Then you were coming to visit us all along?" asked Jean. A new expression, troubled and almost terrified, drew colour into her face. "Do you mind if I ask why?"

"Because," said H.M., "I got a radiogram aboard ship from your old man. Would you like to see it?"

Fumbling in a capacious inside pocket, H.M. produced the radiogram and held it so that both Jean and Cy could see. The letters seemed to jump out at them.

WHY NOT VISIT ME AT MARALARCH WESTCHESTER COUNTY ONLY TWENTY-ONE MILES FROM NEW YORK WILL SHOW YOU MIRACLE AND CHALLENGE YOU TO EXPLAIN IT.

H.M. Put away the radiogram. Cy repeated aloud the significant words. "Will show you miracle and challenge you to .

explain it" Then Cy whistled.

"I wonder!" he said. "I don't know whether you've heard it, Miss Manning..." "Jean, please."

"All right, Jean. I don't know whether you've heard it, but Sir Henry here is the English detective expert on locked rooms, impossible situations, and miracle crimes."

"Crimes?" Jean exclaimed suddenly. "Who said anything about crimes?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean that I was only making comparisons."

"But why did you say.. ."Jean stopped. Despite herself, she could not keep out the personal. "Do you know," she added, "you look a lot like Leslie Howard?"

Cy closed his eyes. "Oh my God," he murmured.

Jean stiffened. "Have I said anything I shouldn't, Mr. Norton?"

"No. And I wasn't desparaging Leslie Howard. Everybody in England felt a personal loss when he died. But that was because he was a great patriot and a good fellow.... It's these damned films. Must your whole outlook, your whole thoughts and standard of values, be governed by such cheap nonsense?"

Jean's face was flaming under the golden tan.

"But a great film, with real art in it..."

"Jean," he said gently, "the film in general bears about as much relation to art or integrity as a comic book bears to a Rembrandt Can you really swallow a standard of moralities called

'policy,' which would sicken Tartuffe?"

"But they've got to appeal to all types of mentality!"

"Have they?" inquired Cy with interest. "God love them!"

"Oh, you talk just like my father!"

"If that's true, Jean, it's a great compliment Your father is one of the finest men I've ever known."

"Is he?" demanded Jean. The steering wheel wobbled in her hands, and she blurted out "Oh, this is awful!"

"Easy, my wench," H.M. said quietly.

They were nearing the Henry Hudson Bridge over the Harlem River. By tacit consent, when Jean stopped the big yellow car, Cy Norton went round and replaced her in the driver's seat.

"Dad's changed!" said Jean, and put her hands over her eyes. "He's changed!"

"How has he changed?" asked Cy.

"In the first place, he's running around with an awful woman, and I mean a really awful woman, named Irene Stanley. And now—well, I don't understand business things, but they say he's been embezzling from the Manning Foundation, and they say he may go to prison."

Over the Harlem River the sky was blue-white, its edges touched with black. The smell of a thunderstorm, distant but stirring in this humid air, crept past them as they crossed the bridge.

"He thinks the world of you, Sir Henry," Jean observed suddenly. "What’s your opinion about the whole situation?"

And they were aware, as they looked across at H.M. now on the other side of Jean, that the atmosphere had changed too. This was no roaring figure who caused riots in subways. This was the Old Maestro.

‘I'see, my wench," said H.M., still holding the fluttering radiogram, "when I got this message today I thought it was a kind of joke, very fetchin' and fascinating. 'Ho?' thinks I, 'then Fred Manning thinks he can do a miracle?'"

"But what did he mean by that?" cried Jean.

"I dunno—yet. Anyway, I thought visiting him would be like visiting the Polo Grounds or (hurrum!) a friend of mine in the Bronx. But it's not that, my wench. It's dead serious."

Again there was a long silence.

"What do you think about..." Jean stopped. "Do you think Dad's really—oh, how can I say this!—that he's turned into some kind of crook?"

"No!" roared H.M. "I wouldn't believe it even if I saw him standing trial."

"Agreed." muttered Cy Norton.

H.M.'s sharp little eyes swung round behind the big spectacles.

"What's more, my wench, something's upset you and put you into this state of mind. What was it?"

Jean, evidently knowing she was with friends, poured out the story about the interview in Manning's office, up in that quiet place where even traffic howls could not penetrate. Something in it appeared to interest H.M. very much, though he did not comment.

"Robert Browning, hey?" he muttered.

Jean blinked. "Oh! You mean... well, twice a week when the school's in session Dad goes all the way to Albany to lecture. He's got one course in Browning, and another in the Victorian novelists. Of course he's a hundred years behind the times, but he loves it!"

H.M. put away the radiogram and ruffled his hands across his big bald head.

"How long has this funny behavior been goin' on?"

"Ever since he met—that woman."

"So. Have you met her?"

"Good heavens, no! But I've..." Jean stopped abruptly, as though swallowing.

"Y'see," rumbled H.M., again massaging his head, "Fred Manning was in England when I knew him. I knew he had a family, but not much else. Who are you people? Where d'ye live? What’s your background?"

"But there isn't anything to tell!"

"Sure. I know. You tell it just the same."

"Well, we live in this place at Maralarch. It isn't very big or pretentious. I—I suppose Dad's well-off, but not rich. I—I never thought much about it."

"If you never had to think about it, my wench, he's well-to-do. Uh-huh. Go on."

Jean puzzled to know what to say, groped in her mind.

"But there's a lot of ground round the house," she went on. "Dad built us a swimming pool at the back. Then there are some woods, and then Bob's baseball diamond—that's the end of our property—and then an abandoned graveyard that nobody can touch because of laws or something.''

Cy Norton, out of the corner of his eyes, watched Jean's short nose and broad mouth and the curve of her yellow hair.

"My sister," Jean rattled on, "is twenty-four.' Crystal's just got her third divorce. She's very pretty, not like me, and terribly clever. And she's very socially minded, which none of the rest of us are." Despite herself and her brimming eyes, Jean started to laugh. "Sir Henry, I can't wait to see her face when she meets you!"

H.M. somewhat misunderstood this.

"Well... now!" he disclaimed, with a modesty which would not have deceived a baby. "I got a natural dignity, d'ye see, which sort of overawes people until they know me. You were saying?"

"Bob, that's my brother, is the middle one," said Jean. "Bob is twenty-two. He's awfully nice. But he's not clever like Crystal. He's not interested in much except baseball and automobiles. He doesn't know what to do now he's left college. Sometimes Dad is in such a quiet fury with him that I—I could murder him!"

H.M. looked at her curiously.

"Which one could you murder?" he asked. "Your brother or your old man?"

"I—I meant Dad. Not really, of course."

"I see. Anybody else about the place?"

"No. Wait, except for old Stuffy! He's one of the three servants. He's supposed to be houseman, but he does everything from running the vacuum cleaner to massaging Dad's knee. Ages and ages ago he was supposed to be a great baseball player"—here H.M. gave a slight start—"but you'd have to ask Bob about that." Jean paused. Then her voice grew almost hysterical.

"What else can I tell you?" she cried. "We're just an ordinary family!"

H.M.'s gaze, which can be as disconcerting as the evil eye, was turned steadily on her.

"You can tell me this," he answered. "What are you afraid is goin' to happen?"

"I don't understand!"

"You do understand." H.M. spoke patiently. "After that row in your father's office, what are you afraid is going to happen?"

Jean smoothed her skirt over her knees. She looked upwards, as though for help from the sky, and then down again. Cy Norton was intensely conscious of the touch of her arm. Then Jean spoke.

"When Dave and I went to Dad's office this afternoon..."

"Dave," interposed H.M., "being this feller Huntington Davis? Your fiancé?"

"Yes. He's wonderful! He looks just like..." About to quote a film comparison again, Jean glanced at Cy Norton and gritted her teeth.

"Anyway," she went on, "I spoke to Miss Engels, Dad's secretary. She said he'd gone to the Token Bank and Trust Company, and wouldn't be at his office until after lunch. When he did get back, he was carrying a brief case that positively bulged."

"Well?"

Jean swallowed.

"Suppose he is in trouble?" she asked. "Suppose he's going to disappear with a lot of money, and take this dreadful woman with him?"

"But where would be the miracle?" demanded Cy.

"Miracle?"

"He's promised to show H.M. a miracle and challenged him to explain it. There'd be no miracle about running away. Unless," said Cy thoughtfully, "he means to turn into smoke and vanish before your eyes."

"Stop it!" cried Jean.

Cy begged her pardon. He could not imagine what had put that grisly image into his head. Yet it was so vivid that it lingered, like a phantom in the windshield, before three pairs of eyes.

"You take it easy, my wench," H.M. assured her. "I've seen a lot of rummy things in my time, but I've never seen that and I don't expect to see it."

"I'm not worrying about that," retorted Jean, "because it's silly. But tonight..." She turned to Cy. "You'll stay overnight with us, won't you?"

"Great Scott, no. I can't. I haven't got any clothes with me!"

"Neither has Sir Henry," the girl pointed out. "But Dad's always got plenty of spare toothbrushes and razors for guests." She silenced his protests with an appealing look he could not resist

"Because, as I told you," continued a half-hysterical Jean, "Dad's gathering us together for some kind of announcement he says will shock us. And if he makes a remark like that, he's not joking. He means it!"

"Uh-huh," said H.M. "And when is the shockin' due to take place?"

"Tonight!" said Jean. "At dinner!"

Cy Norton hunched up his shoulders. Westwards, the clouds faintly darkened with coming storm.

4

As another peal of thunder exploded over the house, some five minutes before a dinner arranged for eight o'clock, Crystal Manning paced up and down the drawing room.

Outside the rain was a deluge. The long, low frame house, painted white with green window trimmings, comfortable yet unpretentious, might scarcely have been visible through that rain to anyone who walked up Elm Road from the station. Maralarch, commuters may have noted, is the station between Larchmont and Mamaroneck on the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad.

Lightning threw a ghostly shimmer at the windows of the drawing room where Crystal Manning paced. All the lights were on here, as in the rest of the house.

"Now, really!" Crystal murmured impatiently.

She was shapely and not too tall, understanding well how to use the maturity of body which

accompanied a maturity of veiled dark blue eyes. Her hair was dark brown; under light it seemed black. The great Adolphe said he had created a hair style for her—though the average person, seeing the broad parting and hair drawn down almost past the cheekbones, would have said it was the style of our female ancestors a hundred years ago.

With the names of her three husbands we need not trouble. But we may follow some, if not perhaps all, of Crystal's thoughts.

"Oh, hell!" murmured Crystal.

She hoped, in this storm, that the lights wouldn't go out With a sense of humiliation she wished they had a butler. Admittedly there wouldn't be anything for a butler to do here; but it looked so well.

It was all Dad's fault, of course. Dad could have bought one of those estates which lay eastwards behind the house—beyond the swimming pool and the woods and the baseball field and the old graveyard—one of those estates facing out over the waters of the Sound.

Why not? Dad could afford it! Instead he had even cheated her out of seeing the guest of honour. She remembered meeting Dad on the staircase less than two hours ago.

"Of course," Crystal had murmured, as though mentioning an obvious fact, "we're dressing for dinner tonight?"

"No, my dear. Why should we? We don't dress ordinarily."

Crystal could have screamed.

"You may not remember' she said, half veiling the dark blue eyes, "that we're entertaining rather a distinguished guest?"

"Sir Henry? He can't dress for dinner anyway. I understand he lost all his clothes in a riot at Grand Central."

Crystal wished her father wouldn't make these tedious jokes. She remembered him standing on the stairs a little way up, his face lobster pink from the sun, a twinkle in his eye, his white suit outlined against the panelling.

"He's taking a nap, Crystal, and snoring like a lion full of luminal. Don't disturb him, please. I gave you your instructions over the phone."

Crystal's fingers, with their scarlet nails, began to tap on the newel post of the stairs.

"I don't in the least," she said, "mind acting as your hostess..."

"Thank you, my dear." (Irony there?)

"But I think you might give me a little more consideration than Jean. This—this Anglo-American newspaperman. He's socially presentable, of course?"

"He is," Manning replied grimly. "What is more, he loves books."

It was another sore point, which (thought Crystal) the impressive old devil had deliberately brought up. Across the broad hall from the drawing room was the library, three of its walls lined to the ceiling with second-hand books. If Manning had collected first editions, Crystal could have understood. But they were merely old and often half-ruined books, because her father said he could never be comfortable with a new book in his hands.

Crystal wondered what Sir Henry Merrivale would think of this horrible collection.

‘I shall dress for dinner," she murmured, "of course."

And she did. Crystal wore the black and silver gown which, with her inordinate sex appeal, would have disturbed a Trappist monk.

Now, with the rain sluicing down the windows, in the blue-and-yellow drawing room decorated by another kind of Adolphe, she was at the last point of wrath. She had distinctly let it be known that there would be cocktails and canapes at half-past seven. She had pictured a languid half-hour before dinner, while Sir Henry Merrivale, in flawless evening clothes, sipped a cocktail and spoke lightly of his adventures with tigers in the Simla.

And not a soul had yet turned up.

"Oh, so-and-so!" murmured Crystal, surpassing her previous efforts.

There was a clack of footsteps on the stairs outside in the hall. Crystal stiffened, and languidly settled her gown.

But it was only her brother.

Robert Manning, a pleasant-faced and rather too tall young man, with sandy hair and a touch of freckles, slouched into the room with an air of vague preoccupation. Bob had not troubled to dress for dinner, and the colours of his tie would have knocked out your eye at ten yards.

"Good evening, Bob."

'"Lo, Crys."

Crystal's sweet smile was not hypocritical; she really was well-meaning, but sometimes it grew strained. She indicated the big cocktail shaker, moist-gleaming, and the plates of canapes.

"Have a cocktail, Bob?" invited Crystal.

Bob considered this proposal for a moment.

"Better not," he decided, shaking his head gloomily. "In training, Crys."

"Then have a canape?" Crystal suggested sweetly. "Surely that won't prevent you from hitting a bunt for three hundred feet?"

"Look, Crys, don't you even know what a bunt is?" Bob asked. Automatically his fingers closed round the grip of an imaginary bat, and his brown eye gleamed. "You lay it down, like this, so that the runner on first can ..."

"One moment, dear!" said Crystal, and raised her hand. Her heart beat quickened. The guest of honour was arriving.

Three men entered the room. The first must be Mr. Norton, who (Crystal instantly decided) looked like Leslie Howard. She saw her father's silver grey hair, worn rather long but cropped up short beside the ears. Then...

At her first sight of Sir Henry Merrivale—in plus fours, with his spectacles drawn down on his broad nose—Crystal could not have been more startled if one of the Simla tigers had stuck its head round the corner of the door. But she was a clever and quick-witted girl. After all, she couldn't expect him to look like Ronald Colman. And the famous man, the scion of ancient lineage, was in her house.

"And this," her father was saying, "is my daughter Crystal. Sir Henry Merrivale."

Crystal allowed, her dark-fringed eyelids to droop, and smiled.

"Well, stab my bowels," said the scion of ancient lineage, in a voice which must have carried as far as the kitchen, "if you're not a nice-lookin' wench too! Fred, you got a monopoly on nice-lookin' wenches!"

"Oh, Crystal's not so bad," murmured Manning.

Crystal's voice stuck in her throat. She couldn't breathe. What restored something of her poise was what she imagined to be her father's disparaging remark.

"Then you approve of me, Sir Henry?" Crystal drawled.

"Approve of you?" yelled the great man. He leaned forward, and paid her what he believed to be a feverish compliment. "Lord love a duck, I'd hate to see you in an Algiers pub full of French sailors."

"Wh-wh-why?"

"Because," confided H.M., "they'd all cut each other's throats gettin' at you. And that's mass murder." His sharp little eyes fixed on her. "But wouldn't you like to have men killin' each other for your sake?"

Crystal gave H.M. a curious glance, and decided he was—interesting.

"By the way," H.M. confided. "Speakin' of a romp on the sofa..."

Frederick Manning cleared his throat loudly.

"And this is my son," he announced. Bob Manning, tall and gangling and sandy-haired, extended his hand with a sheepish smile. "How are you, sir?"

"I'm feelin' pretty fit, thanks. Looky here! Aren't you the bloke who's interested in motor cars and baseball?"

Bob's face came to life, pleased but astonished.

"Yes, sir. But—don't you play cricket? I mean, of course"—furtively Bob glanced at H.M.'s corporation—"when you were a little younger?"

A faint purplish colour was beginning to creep into H.M.'s face. But he spoke gently.

"We-el!" he said with a loftily deprecating gesture. "I did sort of toy with baseball, son, when I was a lot younger. Nothin' much."

Bob grew eager.

"Listen, sir! Could you come out to the field tomorrow? Moose Wilson's promised to be there." Bob spoke with awe. "The pitcher, you know. He's a grand guy. I know he'd throw you some easy ones if you wanted to practice hitting a little."

"And here," Crystal nodded brightly towards the door, "are Jean and Dave. How nice to see you again, Dave!" Crystal had just been introduced to Cy Norton, and thought him highly interesting— with possibilities. "This is Mr. Norton!"

Jean and Davis, neither in evening clothes, tried to make themselves inconspicuous. For some reason Jean was clutching Davis's arm. Cy Norton shook hands with Huntington Davis, finding him friendly and self-assured, the white teeth flashing against the deep tan—and Cy disliked the man at sight

"But I'm afraid.;said Crystal. Then her voice rose. "Dad!''

"Yes, my dear?"

"We must be very quick with the cocktails. I've ordered dinner for eight o'clock, and the cook is such a tyrant'"

"That doesn't matter, Crystal," said Manning. His low-pitched bass voice always caused silence and attention, when he used it as he used it now.

"Doesn't matter?"

"No, my dear." Manning spoke with polished courtesy. "/ have ordered dinner put back until nine o'clock. I have decided to thrash this matter out before dinner."

A long run of thunder rolled and exploded distantly, but with no less heavy rain. There was nothing in the least ominous in Manning's tone. Yet Jean gripped Davis's arm more tightly, and Crystal opened wide eyes of astonishment Bob, his expression wooden again, did not appear to listen.

"Will you all sit down, please?" requested Manning.

He moved across the blue and yellow room, with its heavy carpet and sat down in a chair under a reading lamp. The particular M. Adolphe who designed this room had included some very peculiar furniture.

Cy sat down not far from young Bob Manning. H.M. swelled his bulk from an out-of-shape armchair. Jean and Davis sat very close together at one end of a sofa; Crystal sat at the other end, near a lamp, so that the light could make the best of white skin and shadows against a low-cut black-and-silver gown.

"No," said Manning, as Crystal made a move. "Don't ring for Stuffy. We can omit the cocktails and canapes for the moment"

Cy Norton, remembering what they had talked about that afternoon, felt a stronger twinge of uneasiness.

"I address myself," said Manning, "to my three children. Naturally I should prefer to do so in private. But there is a reason, which I shall keep to myself, why we must have witnesses."

Manning put his fingertips together, and spoke like a judge from the bench.

"So I ask you three." He paused. "Do you consider that I've always been a reasonably good father?"

The question made Cy Norton want to crawl under a chair with embarrassment It had much the same effect on most of the others, always excepting Sir Henry Merrivale.

Rain spattered against the windows. Crystal was the first to speak.

"But of course!" she exclaimed, with open eyes of wonder under the wings of dark brown hair.

"Y-yes," said Jean, and turned her face away.

Bob Manning still sat and stared woodenly at the floor. At last, and with obvious effort, he contrived to mumble out, "Sure, Dad. You've been great."

"Another question," Manning continued relentlessly. "How many times have you heard of a really perfect marriage?"

"Oh, Dad," cried Jean, "are you going to start again about Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett?"

There was a twinkle in Manning's eye.

"You're quite right," he told Jean. "I might mention Browning or Elizabeth Barrett. But I'll put something else first. You've been kind enough all three of you"—his slight smile vanished instantly—"to give your opinion of me. Now let me tell you what I once thought of you."

He paused a moment

"When you were born, each of you," he went on, "I disliked you and at times I hated you. After your mother died, it took me years before I could become even mildly fond of you."

The shocked silence that followed was as though at the crack of a whip. Manning still spoke quietly.

"Has it ever occurred to you that a really happy marriage can be not spoiled, but badly hurt by these intruders called children? No! It hasn't occurred to you! The sugary sentiment of our day won't permit it

"In the sort of marriage I mean, husband and wife are all in all to each other. They're really in love. They want no intruders of any kind. If they need to have children to bind them together,' they were never happy in the first place. They know a perfect happiness. Well, your mother and I were like that"

There was a small clatter as Crystal upset a cocktail glass.

"My mother.she cried out.

Manning lifted his hand.

"Your mother," he said wearily, "felt much as I did. But she was conscientious. She was a good mother. Until..."

Here Manning glanced across at H.M., as though to explain.

"It was nearly eighteen years ago," he said. "We were on one of those river steamers. Happily alone for once, we thought There was a boiler explosion. Most of the passengers, including my wife, were drowned. I was left with the side of marriage which, rightly or wrongly, I didn't like."

(For God's sake stop! thought Cy Norton. Crystal wont actually care, whatever she says. Bob doesn't likeyou much any way. But Jean! Jean, with her hands over eyes and her look as though she had been struck with a whip!)

At the same moment Huntington Davis, all virtue and respectability, got up from the sofa and walked over to face Manning.

"Forgive me, sir," Davis said. "But are you sure you know just what you're saying?"

"Yes. I think so."

"When people have children," Davis floundered, "they have a duty..."

"I’ve done that duty, Mr. Davis. Three witnesses have just said so, though they're not quite sure about it."

"I mean"—Davis shook his head as though to clear it—"it's our duty to have children, isn't it? What would happen if the rest of the world

thought as you do?" Manning spoke dryly.

"Ah, the old question! Don't let it trouble your sleep." "I insist!..."

"Fortunately, most people are fond of children. Admittedly I am an exception and a bounder. And yet"—Manning whacked the arm of his chair—"if twenty thousand parents could hear my words now, how many of them wouldn't secretly agree with me?"

"You..." Davis began; then checked himself in time. Manning rose slowly from his chair and faced the young man. Both were as erect as grenadiers; they looked at each other, steadily, on dead-straight eye level.

"Dave, come back here!" cried Jean. "Please! There's something I've got to know! Come back!"

Davis complied. But he moved slowly backwards, to show he could still meet the older man's eye. Manning sat down again.

"Listen, Dad!" Jean begged. "All those lovely things you said about mother awhile ago—were they true?"

Her father's voice was gentle. "Every word, Jean. And please remember: I spoke of you all as young children. Not as you are now."

Then—I tried to ask you today, but you evaded it—why must you degrade yourself with this Stanley woman?"

"Because, Jean, eighteen years make too long a time of mourning. The flowers are dead. Miss Stanley is vulgar, yes." An odd, obscure smile twisted Manning's mouth. "But I find her stimulating. Shall I give you Browning?

"What’s a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day what his youth took a year to hold: When we mind labour, then only we're too old—

What age had Methuselam when he begat Saul?

"Though there will be no more begetting, I hope," Manning added politely that's rather out of its context, isn't it?" Crystal asked, with an effort at casualness. "Browning was a young man when he wrote it."

"And I am fifty-one," smiled her father. "Perhaps two or three years younger than your last husband."

Crystal's face went white. Both she and Bob had pretended not to notice when Jean referred to Irene Stanley.

"We all know, Dad dear," Crystal remarked lightly, "that we can't match you at repartee. But is it really necessary to insult us?"

"Insult you, my dear?" Manning was genuinely startled. "I was not trying to insult you, believe me."

"Then why are you telling us all this?"

"Because," answered Manning, "something will probably happen to me, by tomorrow at the very latest. I want to provide for your future, all of you, in case you never see me again."

5

Now there was dead silence, except for the swirling of rain.

Jean and Davis exchanged glances. Bob sat open-mouthed, looking up. Crystal regarded her father as though this were some sort of joke in bad taste.

"What on earth are you talking about?" asked Crystal.

"Never see us again?" Bob forced out the words incredulously.

"Forget I said that, for the moment," Manning urged. "Try to forget it! Mr. Betterton (you remember my lawyer?) has phoned to say he can't get here until nine o'clock. But we don't need him yet Let's concentrate on providing for the future."

Manning sat back in his chair, his fingertips together, his vivid blue eyes veiled yet his whole imposing presence concentrated.

"Let's take you first, Crystal. You're the oldest"

"Dad, I insist on knowing..." Crystal began shakily. There was a very faint gleam of tears in her eyes.

"I don't think," said Manning, "I need worry about you financially. You, or more probably your own lawyer, can show real genius at getting alimony. If you really want one of those estates at Sandy Reach on the Sound"—he nodded toward the back of the house—"why don't you buy it yourself?"

Crystal was startled. "Buy...?"

Her father laughed.

"You're quite consistent, Crystal," he said. "It has simply never occurred to you, never once in your life, to buy anything for yourself when you could get some man to buy it for you. And yet," he hesitated, "I may be misjudging you, even now. As for you, Bob..."

Bob, hands on knees and gaze on the floor, made an inarticulate noise.

"Look, Dad," he said with an effort. "You don't understand me. I don't understand you. Can't we just skip it?"

"Unfortunately, no. And don't use that damnable term 'skip it'" Manning's voice softened. "You're twenty-two. You must decide what you want to do in life. Why do you say I don't understand you?"

Bob's voice struggled in his throat

"Books!" he blurted out "Books and books and books! If somebody doesn't give a damn about books, you look at him as if he was dirt"

"I'm sorry, Bob. But we were speaking about your future. Do you think you could succeed as a professional ballplayer?"

After perhaps twenty seconds Bob raised a haggard face. "No," he said flatly. "I'm just not good enough."

What an effort it cost him to say that, perhaps only Cy Norton guessed. Cy wanted to blurt out something encouraging. But Bob had turned his face away.

"Then may I make another suggestion?" asked Manning. "Suppose I set you up in the most modern kind of garage, as sole owner and proprietor?"

Bob's gangling length turned round in his chair.

"You don't mean that!" he said incredulously.

"Shall any son of mine," Manning asked gently, "be too proud to work with his hands? I was so sure you'd agree that I've already bought the garage. Mr. Betterton is bringing out the papers tonight"

Bob opened his mouth and shut it again. He moistened dry lips. His face now seemed all wrinkles under the sandy hair.

"Look, Dad. I never thought..."

"Why didn't you ever come and speak to me?"

Bob shied away from this as he had shied away from the very notion. Yet evidently some other thought gnawed uppermost in his mind.

"Oh, forget the garage!" he mumbled. "What’s this about—not seeing you again?"

"Yes!" Crystal breathed quickly.

Manning ignored them both. He was again as cold and impersonal as a judge.

"And finally," he said, "we come to the future of the youngest Jean."

Huntington Davis, sitting bolt upright on the sofa, had his arm round Jean's shoulder.

"Forgive me, sir." Davis spoke with dignity. "But you needn't trouble about Jean's future. I can take care of that"

"Can you, now?" inquired Manning, with a good deal of sarcasm. "Knowing your position at your father's office, I doubt it"

"Well, but I happen to know your financial position, too. When you leave us forever..."

"Oh, stop this!" protested Crystal. She rose to her feet, bumping against the cocktail table. "You talk as though Dad were going to die!"

"Maybe he is," interposed a new voice.

Jean half-stifled a scream. But, when they turned towards the door to the hall, there was a very slight lessening of tension.

They had not heard a taxi drive up. They had not heard the front door open and close, or the noise of footsteps in the hall, or the shuffle-clink of coat hangers as somebody put away a dripping raincoat and hat

In the doorway stood a short stocky, square-built man in his early fifties. His thinning black hair, brushed back carefully, did not quite hide his skull. He gave an impression of hairiness, though his squarish face was clean-shaven, genial but uncommunicative, with a keen look over a pair of rimless pince-nez. Cy Norton would not have liked to play poker with him.

"Hello, Mr. Betterton," said Jean without inflection.

Howard Betterton, Manning's lawyer, smiled faintly.

"Sorry to be so melodramatic," he apologized. "But I felt I had to be melodramatic, considering what’s out in the hall."

For one terrifying instant, in the imaginations of several persons...

"No, nothing very frightening," Betterton told them dryly. He seemed immediately to sense their mood, of not its cause.

"What's in the hall?"

Cy could never afterwards remember who asked that question.

"At the foot of the stairs, where anybody can fall over it," replied Betterton, "somebody's left an old Gladstone bag plastered with foreign labels. And on top of it is a .38 revolver."

"A revolver!" exclaimed Crystal. "Thafs impossible!" .

All of them burst out protests as though the presence of a revolver were as impossible as that of a stray lion.

Sir Henry Merrivale, who throughout the whole conversation had remained silent, with the corners of his mouth drawn down, suddenly began to struggle out of his chair.

"Y'know," he said, "I expect that bag belongs to me. But how in Satan's name did it get here?"

"I don't know!" declared Manning, in reply to several glances. "What about the revolver?"

"H.M.!" called Cy, in a cold and significant' voice. "Hey?"

"This afternoon, during the—the affair in the subway," Cy demanded, "you didn't by any chance pinch that cop's gun?"

"Honest, son, I didn't," said H.M., with obvious truth. Then he looked somewhat annoyed with himself. "Y’know, I never thought of it."

And out he lumbered into the hall. Howard Betterton, in his conservative dark suit and black tie, moved softly across the room.

"What has been happening here?" he asked. "What's upset everybody?"

"I’ll tell you," said Jean. "I’ll challenge Dad, if nobody else will!"

"Jean!" her father said sharply.

But the girl could not be stopped. She stood now in the middle of the room, her golden hair trembling as her body trembled.

"He's going to run away with Irene Stanley." Jean's clear, light voice rose above the noise of the rain. "What's more"—the wild words of that afternoon leaped to her lips—"he's going to turn into smoke and vanish in front of our eyes."

Crystal looked round the room.

"The poor dear girl is drunk," Crystal observed offhandedly.

"Jean!" growled Bob. "Take it easy!"

"But that's just what he's going to do!" said Jean. She looked at her father. "Aren't you?"

This was the point at which Sir Henry Merrivale, to get more light, appeared at the door of the drawing room and examined a revolver. Cy Norton watched him, though nobody else appeared to do so. The revolver was not a Colt .38 police-positive, as Cy half expected. It looked like an old Smith and Wesson single action, in blue finish.

H.M., to get still more light, turned his back and opened the magazine. By the gleam of cartridge cases, you could see it was loaded.

"Aren’t you?" Jean challenged her father again.

"'Vanish in front of our eyes!' Really, now!" scoffed Crystal. But her soft chin trembled. She looked at Manning. "Of course this is all hysterical nonsense? It isn't true?"

"Yes, my dear," Manning replied. "What Jean says is true."

H.M. closed the cylinder of the revolver with a sharp click.

"You had better hear that," Manning continued, "in case you think I'm dead or hurt But if s all you will hear, unless"—his vivid blue eyes fastened on Jean—"you've guessed something more about my plans?"

"No, I haven't," Jean answered. She added, as the compelling eyes still did not move, "Really and truly!"

"Good. I think that is satisfactory," nodded Manning.

Slapping his knees, he got up from the chair and he looked round with a maddening smile.

"What I am going to do," he added, "is in one sense dangerous"—he flexed his muscles—"but in another sense absurdly simple. And nobody knows it except myself. The secret is locked up"— he touched his forehead—"here. Are you following me, Sir Henry?"

H.M., who had somehow managed to hide the revolver, watched him with fists on hips and a dubious scowl.

"Oh, I'm following you," he growled. "You challenged me, son. Tell me: where are you goin' to disappear from?"

"Ah!" Manning shook his head. "I'm afraid that would be telling too much."

"All right. When are you goin' to disappear?"

A rush of emotion surged into Manning's face. He repressed it immediately. But Sir Henry Merrivale saw affection, and hope, and even a kind of wistfulness, as he looked at the children of whom—whether he swore it or not—he was so obviously fond now.

"Oh, I shall disappear when you least expect it," Manning answered. "Shall we go in to dinner?"

6

"Mr. Norton! Mr. Norton!"

Cy awoke with a shock, from deep but troubled sleep, into daylight and brilliant sunshine. It took him a few seconds to realize where he was.

He was in a large bedroom at the rear of the house, wearing a pair of Manning's pyjamas and sharing the bedroom with Sir Henry Merrivale. There now stood, between Cy's bed and H.M.'s, a shortish broad-shouldered man in a white coat. The newcomer, with a broad grin, was holding out a large breakfast tray.

"I'm Stuffy," the newcomer announced, with the air of one willing to talk at any length. "I been with Mr. Manning, now, for twenty-one years. Yes, sir, he's my manager now. Here's yer brekfus."

"Thanks," said Cy, sitting up and taking the loaded tray across his knees. "What time is it?"

"Eight o'clock," warned Stuffy darkly, as though Cy had been sleeping until past noon.

You might have taken Stuffy for only a middle-aged man, with that leathery face and bright eye and enthusiasm, if rheumatism had not nipped him and if his close-cropped hair had not been pure white.

"Miss Jean," he went on, "says she'd like for you to go down to the pool, when you've finished yer brekfus." On the bed Stuffy threw a pair of black swimming trunks. Then he bent forward conspiratorially.

"Where's Hank?" he muttered.

"Hank who?"

Stuffy seemed convulsed by some hidden mirth.

"Lord," he said, "we didn't call him 'Sir Henry when I knew hm. That’d be (lemme see, now!) that’d be 12, 13, and 14. We was training at Jacksonville then. But s-h-sh! Don't say nothing to nobody! I'm keeping it quiet See you later;"

"Right! Deep secret!" agreed Cy, wondering what the secret was.

This must be the former ballplayer of whom Jean had spoken. Cy, in his own youth only a fair but fanatical school and college player, could not place the nickname. But as Stuffy went towards the door, a darting thought made Cy cry out - "Stuffy!"

The results, as regards Stuffy's agility, were sensational. "Mr. Manning!" said Cy. "Is he gone?" "Gone?"

"Has he disappeared?"

"Holy Moses," muttered Stuffy, reproachfully. "You hadn't ought to make me jump like that Mr. Manning's not gone, 'cause he didn't go to the office today. He's trimming the hedge on the south side now."

"Oh. I just wondered. Sorry."

The door closed.

Cy glanced across at H.M.'s bed. The covers were thrown back, and on them rested a breakfast tray polished clean of everything eatable. From behind another closed door, leading to a bathroom, Cy heard the sudden rush of a shower bath, followed by hoots and roars rather suggestive of Father Neptune. He had no doubt as to H.M.'s whereabouts.

Leaning back against the headboard of the bed, he wished they weren't in such a devil of a mess. Crystal had been nearly in hysterics, and Jean not much better, after dinner last night. Most distinctly he remembered Crystal's voice:

"If you're never going to see us again, what difference does it make whether it's only a vanishing trick?"

Or once again Manning's measured tones:

"I don't expect any affection from any of you. Why should I expect it?"

Other scenes Cy Norton, as he ate his breakfast, shut away from his mind. It still surprised him that you could get all the food you wanted in this country: bacon and eggs like these, and real white bread. As for Crystal, the infernally disturbing Crystal...

At this point in his meditations, the door of the bathroom opened. Out of the bathroom, in grandeur, stalked Sir Henry Merrivale in a bathing suit.

Cy took one look, and swallowed coffee the wrong way.

The bathing suit, of a pattern circa 1910, had horizontal stripes of alternate red and white. There was a suggestion of sleeve at the shoulder, and the trunks clung tightly to the leg nearly to the knee. H.M.'s arms and shoulders, still thick and powerful like his legs, carried forward his red-and-white corporation like Nelson's flagship going into action.

"Ahem!" said the great man.

He surveyed himself, over his shoulder, in a full-length mirror, coughed, and then assumed a majestic stance at the foot of Cy’s bed.

"I'm goin' for a swim," he announced.

"So I s-see. S-so..."

"What's the matter with you, son? Whaf s so goddam funny?"

"Well," Cy asked frankly, "did you keep that in mothballs for all these years, or do you get 'em made for you?"

"I get 'em made," said H.M. austerely. "I like the old ways."

He pointed to his Gladstone bag, whose name tag was a large cardboard label inscribed in red letters (doubtless to the pleasure of steamship companies) only with the word ME.

"It's a ruddy good thing," said H.M., "I got my bag back. I like my own razor."

"Yes," agreed Cy, looking him in the eye, "you got your bag back. But nobody knows how it came back. It was found in the kitchen, by the cook, and the revolver was on top of it. The maid (as maids naturally do) put it in the best place for somebody to fall over it. Nobody will acknowledge owning or even seeing that gun. The gun, by the way," Cy added, "being now put away in an unlocked drawer in the library."

"Well... now!" H.M. made a fussed gesture. "Are you goin' to stop in bed all day, or are you goin' to go down to the pool with me?"

"I’ll be with you," Cy promised, "as soon as I get a shave and a bath."

Pushing aside the breakfast tray, he went to one of the two windows facing eastwards and overlooking the back of the house.

Not a sound, not a movement, stirred in house or grounds. It was the softest of summer days, ripe with a fragrance of grass and trees, warm without yet being hot The close-cropped grass sparkled in places from a rain which had continued half the night.

Behind the house lay a grass terrace, with metal chairs. It was a shallow terrace, too. Only two steps led down to the close-cropped grass round the swimming pool itself. The pool, made of smooth grey stone rather than tile, was some sixty feet long by forty feet broad; its long side lay parallel with the back of the house. Beyond the pool, past another strip of grass, a high thick row of rhododendron bushes also ran parallel to the long side.

And a wide but short path, straight through the middle of the rhododendrons, led to a row of brown bathing cabins. Two very small finger posts, painted white, said Ladies to the right and

Gents to the left.

The eastern sun glinted on quiet, opaque water. At the northern end of the pool was a diving board. All else was green glimmer and fragrance of a thick wood that rose beyond the bathing cabins.

"We needn't hurry," Cy observed. "There's nobody there yet."

But they found somebody there, when twenty minutes later they approached the pool.

The efficient Stuffy had left them cork-soled sandals, with leather covers for the toes and a strap across the instep. Cy wore the black trunks. H.M., covering his unmentionable bathing suit with a white beach robe, now resembled one of the more evil-minded Roman Emperors. Leaving the house by a screened sun porch, they sauntered towards the pool and its long western side.

"Hello, there!" called Jean's voice.

The voices of Davis and Betterton added their greetings.

On the opposite side of the pool, down the broad path which led between the rhododendrons to the bathing huts, Jean Manning trotted like a swimming professional as she adjusted her cap. She was laughing. She wore a scant two-piece suit of a colour that suggested pink tinged with purple, and set off the faint golden tan of her skin. Beside her trotted Davis, lean and athletic and Indian-brown except for his scarlet trunks. Jean and Davis looked like figures from a magazine cover.

Behind them, in a brown bathing suit somewhat less old-fashioned than H.M.'s, trotted Howard Betterton with a water-polo ball in his hands.

Jean stopped on the broad strip of grass between the bushes and the long side of the pool. Though there were deep shadows under her eyes, it was as though nothing at all had happened last night to upset her.

"Remember, Cy!" she called across the pool. "There's only fifteen minutes for this now. Then tennis. Then maybe more swimming."

"And you remember," Davis said to her, "I'm taking a day off work to please you."

They did not trouble with the diving board at the northern end. Round the whole pool, set flush with the grass, was a broad stone coping and, below this, a handrail raised just above water level.

Jean sprang to the edge of the coping. She looked at Davis with frank love and understanding.

"Criss!" she challenged. ,

"Cross!" retorted Davis happily.

They took off together in a beautiful standing dive which clove the water with only a faint rush and ripple—no splash. The water was dark and opaque, due to the pool's grey stone sides. They disappeared as though swallowed up.

"I am more cautious, gentlemen," called Betterton the lawyer.

He threw the water-polo ball into the pool, and stood contemplating on the edge.

"What’s the idea of bein' so ruddy energetic?" yelled H.M.

"I don't know," the lawyer confessed. "To be bright and fresh for work, I suppose. Work is all, or so they tell us."

Betterton grimaced and then smiled. Short and stocky and hairy, he blinked a good deal without his pince-nez. Gingerly he touched the water with one foot, finding it satisfactory. Since last night, Gy Norton had been given reason to admire his tact and poker face.

"Ah, well!" Betterton said. "Tennis in fifteen minutes! Excuse me!"

Whereupon, gravely holding his nose with no loss of dignity, he stepped forward and jumped into the pool with a heavy splash.

"H.M.!" Cy said fiercely.

"Hey?"

"Manning," said Cy. "When's he going to disappear? Where's he going to disappear?" Cy glanced at the pool, and a wild thought occurred to him. "You don't imagine...?"

"I dunno, son!" snapped H.M. The Old Maestro himself, it was clear, was badly worried. "About your idea, I'd say no. Not in broad daylight just after breakfast. For that sort of thing you want shadows and hootin' owls. Like the Bronze Lamp case."

On the grass some half a dozen feet behind them, a little more than midway down the length of the pool, was a long padded swing with orange upholstery and a sun canopy. Neither Sir Henry Merrivale nor Cy now wanted to sport like Tritons, though neither would admit it. They sat down in the swing, facing the pool.

"Get ready!" called Davis, amid splashings.

He lashed out his arm. The water-polo ball, gleaming white, skimmed across the water towards Jean who now hung by one hand onto the edge of the diving board. Betterton was sedately treading water, like a musing ecclesiastic.

Cy, since he had seen Jean Manning's figure in a bathing suit, was less troubled by her resemblance to someone else. Jean was less mature, less... anyway, though the image still troubled him, since last night he had found himself thinking of the last person who should have dominated his thoughts: the spoiled and selfish Crystal.

"I say, son." H.M.'s voice shattered absent thought. "Where's Fred Manning this morning? Have you seen him?"

"No. But Stuffy said he was trimming a hedge. As to what else he's doing..."

"As to what else I’m doing," interrupted the voice of Manning himself, "I can assure you its very little."

He had approached so soundlessly from the southern side, in cork-soled sandals like those of H.M. and Cy, that his appearance was as startling as a ghost

But Frederick Manning was a very solid ghost. He wore his usual loose Panama hat and loose white alpaca suit. A light silk scarf was knotted round his neck and thrust into the opening of the jacket, full country gentleman style. He also wore cotton gardener's gloves, and carried a large pair of pruning shears.

Manning snipped the shears in the air, as though to behead a fly.

"I assure you," he added, glancing at his wrist watch, "that it will be several hours before you have anything to fear. Meanwhile, aren't you going for a swim?"

"Aren't you?" demanded H.M.

"No. Now why," asked Manning, contemplating the shears, "should any sane man want to act like a demented merman, when he could sit quietly and read? Or get his skin burned so that it's torture to wear his shirt?"

There were more splashings from the pool. Past Manning, who stood with his back to it and faced H.M., Cy caught a glimpse of Jean's face. Jean no longer smiled. She seemed puzzled and almost horrified. Then she struck out in a crawl towards the water-polo ball.

"Tell me, son," rumbled H.M. "Last night, during dinner, you had a long telephone call from New York. When you came back to the table, you looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. Is it within the rule—grr! rules—to ask what it was?"

Manning regarded him quizzically.

"If it comes to that," he retorted, "you put through a telephone call to New York instead of receiving one. I was (forgive me) curious to see the number you scribbled on the pad. It was a Bronx telephone exchange."

H.M. wore an austere, stuffed, out-of-this-world look.

"That's got nothing to do with this business!" he said. "Honest it hasn't! I was tellin' young

Norton, yesterday..."

"Great Scott!" exclaimed Manning. "Look there!"

He was staring at the back of the house, and he had moved past the side of the swing to do so. The others crowded after him.

Manning might have been pointing at a chair on the shallow terrace behind, among other chairs. He might have been pointing to a chair which looked—the horrible but probably nonsensical fancy occurred to Cy—like the electric chair at Sing Sing.

But Manning was pointing, in fact, to a figure which had just emerged from the door of the screened sun porch. It was Crystal, wearing a very light beach robe over her bathing dress, and carrying a cap.

From behind them, water slopped and slapped from the pool. For some reason, to be in a swimming pool makes people shout like Frenchmen.

"One more dive, Mr. Betterton," said Jean. "Then out we go. Ready Dave?"

"Almost," puffed Davis.

Manning was still staring at Crystal, against the long, low, white-painted house with its green window framings, polished now by the morning sun.

"Not since she was a girl," he vowed, "did I ever know that young woman to get up before half-past eleven in the morning. There's something wrong, I assure you. What's the attraction down here?"

Then things began to happen—and happen fast

And, since in a chronicle of this kind it must be established that somebody is telling the truth, we must watch that scene through the trained eyes of Cy Norton.

First he heard the noise. It was far away, somewhere beyond the house and probably in Elm Road, which led up from the railway station. The noise was a faint wailing, as of children; then it churned, and grew to a banshee howl. It swept closer and stopped, evidently near the front door of the house.

Frederick Manning, with a startled face, had backed away until he was almost at the coping of the pool.

It was evident that he knew the sound too. It was the sirens of police motorcycles.

"I fear," said Manning, snapping the big shears together, "that this is rather earlier than I expected."

Whereupon he turned to H.M.

"I want you to accept these," he said, very gravely pressing the shears into H.M.'s hand and closing the fingers round them, "as a small souvenir. I may not see you again for some time."

And then, fully dressed, Manning dived head first into the pool.

H.M. stood motionless.

For once Sir Henry Merrivale, the Old Maestro, had been caught off balance: clean-bowled by something he hadn't expected. His face seemed to distend, and his eyes bulged behind the big spectacles.

Manning's Panama hat somewhat coquettishly, floated up to the surface of the water. One of his cork-soled shoes followed.

Out of the pool, almost at the feet of Cy and H.M. where they stood at midpoint along its side, appeared the sputtering and blinking face of Howard Betterton, who clutched blindly at the handrail.

At the same moment, on the other side, Jean Manning and Davis shot up out of the water side by side, holding themselves with rigid arms and hands on the handrail, knocking their heads together happily.

"Time to get out Mr. Betterton!" Jean called over her shoulder.

Obviously none of the swimmers had heard the police sirens, or seen Manning's dive. Jean and Davis, sending water flying as they swept up on land, started to trot down the wide path towards the bathing huts just as Manning's water-darkened alpaca coat floated to the surface, followed by his trousers.

Howard Betterton plucked at Cy's bare ankle.

"It seemed to me," Betterton gasped, "that something rather naked-looking shot past me as I was exploring the depths. I was just wondering ..."

"Get out of that pool!" Cy yelled at him. "Get out of that pool!"

He looked up. Jean and Davis, who a glance told him were not yet at the end of the path, had already turned and were trotting back. Jean was removing her cap, shaking out the yellow hair, and Davis wiping the wet hair from his eyes.

Betterton, whirling water like a beaver, struggled up and sat down with a plonk on the coping, his feet in the pool.

Jean and Davis had stopped on the coping, looking round. At the same moment, Crystal Manning—her beach robe looking like a dark and flowered kimono—appeared at the southern end of the pool.

Then, suddenly, everybody realized what had happened.

The agitated water glittered under a firier sun. By some freak of movement, a cork-soled shoe floated on either side of the Panama hat, as though representing Manning himself. His other clothes, now including a sodden silk scarf and a pair of underpants, floated round them.

Five pairs of eyes were fixed on the clothes. Only H.M., whose gaze had been travelling round the edges of the oblong pool since the first, did not watch the clothes. But six persons stood motionless, as though paralyzed, in a hollow of silence.

It may have been Jean who first realized. She extended her arm to point But Betterton, breathing hard, spoke first and very quietly.

"This is it," he said.

There was a pause.

"What's more," said Davis, indicating the house, "the cops are here."

7

From round the side of the house, at the northern end towards which lay the tennis court, three men were approaching. The first was dressed in street clothes. The other two, who marched a little way behind, were in uniform.

Davis, evidently feeling he had been too casual or callous, tried to show a concern he could not feel.

"Maybe," he cried, "Mr. Manning's had an accident. Maybe he hit his head on the bottom. I'll dive in and..."

"Stay where you are, son!" H.M.'s voice was not loud, but (with one exception) it kept them all petrified in the same position. "I don't want any of you to say a word—got that?—until I give you the wire."

"My pince-nez!" said Betterton, sploshing out on land. "I left my pince-nez in the bathing cabin. We all left our clothes there so that we could change for tennis! I can't deal with them if I can't see them!"

And, a stocky hairy figure in his brown bathing suit, he hurried round to the other side of the pool as the newcomers approached.

Up to Cy and H.M., carrying his hat in his hand and with quietly affable presence, marched Mr. District Attorney Gilbert Byles.

Now this was Westchester County. For a second Cy Norton wondered why Mr. Byles, of New York County, had come where he had no authority. But Cy, still watching the pool like the others, gave only a swift glance.

"Our best-dressed D.A.," as the press had it, was neither fancy poseur nor stuffed shirt If he looked much older than he actually was, it was because he took his job with intense seriousness.

A tall, sallow man, whose dark hair had not yet retreated far enough to make him seem bald, he had black arched brows over narrow brown eyes with a restrained sense of humour in them. His sallow face was strong with a pointed chin. When he saw Sir Henry Merrivale, he stopped dead and his grim expression changed.

"H.M.!" said Mr. Byles, with a broad grin. "You old sinner!"

"Lo, Gil," said the old sinner.

H.M., now lordly again, with his beach robe open to show the dignity of his corporation in a candy-striped bathing suit, shifted the big pruning shears to his left hand and shook hands.

"I didn't know you were..." Byles stopped. His grin vanished as quickly as his astonishment His quick, narrow eyes swept round the motionless figures beside the pool. "Are you a guest here?"

"That's right, son."

"Can you guess why I'm here?"

"Uh-huh. In a general sort of way."

"I want to see Mr. Manning." Byles spoke with tight-lipped satisfaction. "We've got reason to believe he's embezzled a hundred thousand dollars."

Of all the persons there—H.M., Cy, Jean Davis, and Crystal—there was no sound except a gasp from Crystal. The subject of embezzlement had not been mentioned last night. But the ugly word stayed there.

"Mind you," said Byles, "I warned him."

"You warned him?" demanded H.M. "How?"

"I phoned him last night I said I would be here"—Byles consulted his watch, finding it accurate—"at half-past nine. I said"— Byles's tone became a mockery, wickedly satiric, of Manning's tone—"that probably it was infra dig of me to come in a car myself and take him for questioning. I realized it was ostentatious, in bad taste, to be heralded by motorcycle sirens. But I had my reasons for such unusual conduct."

Then Byles's tone changed in a flash.

"Where is he?" Byles asked.

H.M. looked bothered.

"Well, son, that's a bit of a poser. He dived into that pool there." H.M. pointed with the shears. "Sure, sure! Those are his clothes."

"I see. And when did he come out?"

"That's just it y'see. He didn't come out."

"How long has he been in the pool?"

"Well... now. About five minutes."

Again Byles's expression changed.

"Five minutes! There's no man alive who can stay under water for..Byles stopped. "I want an embezzler," he said. "I don't want a suicide."

"Oh, my son!" groaned H.M., and flourished the shears in the air. "If I'd thought it had been suicide, or accident, or anything but jiggery-pokery, we'd all have been down after him in two whistles and a hoot"

Then what the hell are you talking about?"

"He went smack-bang into that pool," explained H.M., with great earnestness. "And he didn't come out Lord love a duck! Here's a man five feet ten inches tall, and naked as a forked radish; if he'd climbed out of that pool anywhere, d'ye think I wouldn't have seen him? But..."

"But what?"

"Ill bet you a hundred dollars to an old shoe," H.M. retorted calmly, "he's not in the pool now."

District Attorney Byles stood motionless, looking at him with steady narrow eyes.

There were small beads of sweat on Byles's skull, where the black hair had retreated. His jaw was outthrust, and he moved his lower lip like one who considers many things. But the queer, disquieting humour had returned to his brown eyes.

"He's down in the pool, all right," Byles said. "But do you want me to believe in magic?" ... O'Casey!"

"Yes, sir?"

It was that voice, not the name, which made Cy Norton spin round. Two motorcycle policemen stood just behind the District Attorney. Cy, with a collapsing feeling in his chest, found himself looking into the eyes of the policeman who yesterday afternoon had been mobbed and knocked out during l'affaire du subway.

Officer O'Casey, in fact, for some time had been looking like a policeman who wants to shout but does not dare. His eyes had been fixed on H.M., who remained as bland and expressionless as a holy man from the East. When Officer O'Casey heard that word "magic," together with his own name, he could not restrain himself.

"Sir," his hoarse voice addressed the District Attorney, "can I see you in private?"

"Later, man, later! I want you to..."

"Sir, it's important!"

Byles, puzzled but endlessly patient, looked at him and yielded. With sinister beckoning gestures of both hands, Officer O'Casey drew him back about twenty feet

Soundlessly, running lightly on grass, Jean Manning and Huntington Davis ran round two sides of the pool and joined Crystal. Then all three of them hurried towards Cy Norton and H.M. All three were badly shaken, though perhaps for different reasons. They tried their best to speak in low voices.

"Suppose," said Jean, who was the most nervous of all and had tears in her eyes, "he did have an accident? And we didn't go down and save him?"

"Nonsense, angel!" protested Davis, though himself not easy in mind. "Besides, what happened exactly?" For perhaps the first time in his life, he showed deep respect for Manning. "And how in blazes did the old buzzard do it?"

Crystal, still wrapped in her black robe with the gold flowers, gave a curious, speculative glance at Cy, smiled in an obscure way, and then seemed to dream. "Did you hear that charge they made against my father?" she asked.

"Naturally!"

"If he ever stole as much as the contents of a toy bank," Crystal said quietly, "I'll give up men and enter a convent. If s absolutely ridiculous."

"Be quiet, can't you?" Cy urged fiercely. "I'm trying to hear what the cop is saying to the D.A.!"

Cy couldn't hear the policeman. He saw only frantic gestures. But Byles's well-modulated voice rose clearly, as he glanced back towards H.M.

"Well, suppose he did criticize the subway? Lots of people do!"

The gestures became more expansive. Byles was growing impatient

"What do you mean, he magicked the turnstiles?"

This time the pantomime was really impressive. Officer O'Casey made mesmeric passes; he struck pugilistic attitudes; his sweeping hand movement suggested kangaroos over hurdles; and then, with a rapid rotary motion of his arms round each other, he seemed to suggest that about a thousand people were rolling down the steps of the New York Public Library.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Byles. "Sir Henry Merrivale is a distinguished man of many achievements. He wouldn't be mixed up in a thing like that. And even if he were"—here an odd note suggested that Byles knew all about it—"I'm sure the city of New York would overlook it. Now come with me!"

He marched the speechless policeman to the group beside the pool.

It was Cy Norton who performed sketchy introductions. Byles nodded politely at each.

"Thank you. Many people, Mr. Norton, remember you as being the only foreign correspondent who never lost his head or grew hysterical. — O'Casey!"

"S-sir?"

"I understand," said Byles, "you're one of the champion swimmers in the Force. Take your clothes off and dive in and find Manning!"

Officer O'Casey's ears turned the colour of a tomato.

"Listen!" he gulped, trying to stave off the inevitable. "I read a story once..."

"So did I." Byles spoke patiently. "I'm always doing it."

"But, look! This was about a guy who disappeared from the swimming pool too!" "Oh?"

'Yes, sir. Only it wasn't daylight, it was night; and they couldn't see one end of the pool. This guy (I mean the murderer, now, not the other guy) got in and out in a diving suit."

Sir Henry Merrivale rolled his eyes to heaven, and then closed them.

"Y' know," he observed meditatively, "the most fetchin' image I can think of now is Fred Manning sittin' down there in a diver's suit and blowin' bubbles."

"If you think he's down there, O'Casey, go and get him. —Yes, yes, you can keep on your underwear!"

"I can lend him a pair of trunks," Davis offered good-naturedly.

Davis and O'Casey, the latter gulping with relief, hurried round the pool towards the bathing cabins. At the same moment a new voice struck in.

"Good morning, Mr. Byles," said Howard Betterton, his voice now suave. "I understand you wish to see my client?"

Betterton, fully dressed in tennis flannels, shirt, and sports coat, had adjusted his pince-nez. His skeins of black hair were brushed back over his head with a nicety.

"Good morning, Mr. Betterton," said the District Attorney.

It was as though two duellists had come to salute, or two chess players sat down at the board.

"But I'm afraid I can't see your client," Byles added. "The police will have to do that now."

"Oh, I don't know," Betterton remarked, frowningly critical.

"I'd better tell you we've taken over Mr. Manning's office..."

"Before I can permit you to do that," Betterton interposed smoothly, "I think it would be wiser if we discussed the legal aspect in private."

Byles nodded. "After this pool business," he said, his brown eyes narrowing still more, "I want to have a little private talk with Sir Henry Merrivale. Following that, I'm at your disposal. Will that do?"

"That suits me," agreed Betterton almost smugly.

"All right, O'Casey," Byles shouted across the pool. "In you go!" And in he went

The next fifteen minutes were perhaps the most nerve-racking of all. O'Casey's head would rear up, mouth gasping for breath, blond hair flung back, then he would go down headfirst again.

When you looked at that stone pool with its opaque water, Cy thought you realized it seemed no longer a hoax or a quirk of ingenuity. Manning's clothes—the hat and the shoes and the coat and the rest of them—were bobbing away from each other, as though Manning himself were disintegrating. It was not amusing; it was horrible. Everybody seemed to feel that except Crystal, who slid closer to Cy Norton.

"It's too bad, isn't it" she whispered, "that they probably won't let us go for a swim today?"

And, as though carelessly, she slipped off her robe.

Crystal's skin was that smooth white, tinged with pink, which has seldom been exposed to the sun. Her two-piece bathing suit black and gold, was probably the scantiest ever devised. She looked up at Cy in a secretive sort of way, dark blue eyes provocative and a half-smile on her mouth. Her hair, parted in the middle and drawn over the ears, seemed now a lighter brown. Cy could feel the intense nearness of her presence, even when he did not look at her.

(Damn you, thought Cy. Damn you for disturbing my life. Damn you for...)

Now, with a flop and splash, Officer O'Casey crawled halfway out of the pool at Byles's feet. He lay there panting and exhausted, face down.

"I've covered every inch of it," he gasped, still face down. "He's not there."

"But he's got to be there!"

"This is all there was," the officer reported. A golf ball fell outof his hand and trickled across the grass.

Again Byles's jaw came out Again his glance travelled round the group.

"I warn you," he said. "If there's been any conspiracy..." He stopped. "If any of you helped him, or you're all pledged to swear he went into that pool when he really didn't..."

"Will you let me answer that?" demanded Cy.

"You have the floor, Mr. Norton."

"Awhile ago," Cy answered, "you paid me a compliment about not losing my head. All right" He paused for a moment. "Mr. Manning did go in. There were then four persons in the pool. Only three of them came out"

He looked at Betterton, at Davis, and at Jean.

"When those three did come out," Cy went on, "I had them under my eye the whole time. They were never out of my sight There has been no conspiracy, and certainly none to swear Mr. Manning never dived in. All this is true, so help me God."

Cy stood there quietly, lean in his black trunks, the long white scar across his ribs. His voice carried such conviction that Byles's reply was quiet

"But that can't be," Byles assured him. "Why not?"

"Because it's impossible!"

"The old sweet song," observed H.M., in a voice like one who begins intoning a hymn. "Burn me, I'm haunted by it! I can't get away from it"

"Wait a minute." Byles spoke softly, and snapped his fingers. "This isn't in my department"—again human nature broke through his expression—"but I'm a little interested. There's an explanation so obvious that I never thought of it!"

Cy started. Officer O'Casey dragged himself up and trotted round the pool to put on his clothes.

"What explanation?" Cy asked.

"There's a secret exit out of the pool. Below the level of the water."

"Mr. Byles, there isn't!" exclaimed Jean. She had gone to her bathing cabin for a robe, and returned wearing it "There's only an inlet and an outlet The inlet has an iron grating and a filter. The outlet has an iron grating. And neither of them is more than eight inches across!"

"Forgive me, Miss Manning, but I wasn't thinking about inlets or outlets."

'Then what were you thinking of?"

"Now why," said Byles, with eyelids half-closed, "did your father have this pool built of stone and not tile?"

Jean shook back her yellow hair, a blaze under the sun.

"But... the pool was built ages and ages ago!" she answered. "I think the main reason was that we all liked underwater games. You throw in a handful of golf balls (the non-floating ones), and see who can bring up the most. Or there's a game called Tom-Tom-Pullaway, where two teams..."

"Is your father a good swimmer?"

"Well, he's all right," Jean said dubiously. "I mean, he can swim. But he hates exercise, except with dumbbells and things."

"Can you let the water out of this pool?"

"Yes! Easily!" said Jean. "Go up to the house"— she pointed—"and find a little old man named Stuffy, in a white coat. He's the houseman. He'll show you how."

"Ferris!" Byles turned round to the second motorcycle policeman, an alert young man who ached for action. "Find this man Stuffy, and have the water let out of the pool."

'Yes, sir!"

"And now," continued Byles, slapping his hat against his side, "I think I can imagine how this exit worked. Yes! You see, Sir Henry..." He stopped. "H.M.!" he said in a louder voice than he had ever used here. "Where the devil's H.M.?"

It did in fact appear, for a second or two, that H.M. had vanished like Manning. But he was only sitting in the padded swing with the canopy, deep in thought, with a malignant scowl fixed on the pruning shears, the blades of which he was absentmindedly snapping back and forth.

The shears, though not new, had sharp and polished blade edges. They were bone dry, though the hinge pin was oiled. In H.M.'s hands they looked like a weapon. Byles had to shout to wake him.

"Hey?" grunted H.M., lifting his eyes and putting down the shears.

"I have here"—Byles tapped his inside pocket— "a subpoena ordering Manning to turn over all his books—his accounting books, I mean—to the District Attorney's Office. Unfortunately..."

Howard Betterton, now smoking a cigar, was instantly beside him.

"I was going to ask you, Mr. Byles," said Betterton, "what authority you have in Westchester County."

Byles smiled. "That can wait for our conference. If s annoying, but not important, if I can't serve the subpoena myself..."

"It's annoyin' to you, is it?" bellowed H.M., with such a blast that both lawyers stepped back. "What do you think it is to the old man?"

"But why should Manning's disappearance ... ?"

"He flum-diddled ME," said H.M., using full capital letters as he drew himself up and tapped himself on the chest. "The blighter challenged me to watch him, and then hocussed me fair and square. Of course, last night before dinner, he told one thumping big lie—lefs call it a piece of misdirection—which same I was waiting for. But this morning! Oh, my eye!

"He sort of tenderly hands me these shears," continued H.M., "and says to keep 'em as a souvenir. And then in he goes. That's his idea of a joke. Now I'm mad. Now I am goin' to get him."

"That's good news," smiled the District Attorney. "I don't really think we'll need your help, H.M. but have you got the mystery solved already?"

With a faint noise like heavy suction in the pool, which was followed by just as faint a rattle and then a rush, the water level quivered.

"Well... no," growled H.M. "I haven't exactly solved it, y'see. But I've got at least three leads, whackin' great clues that'll unearth lots more clues if I use the spade right."

The water level in the pool was now slowly descending.

"What clues?" Byles asked sharply.

"To begin with," said H.M., ruffling his hands over his big bald head, "I was just thinking of a bust of Robert Browning."

The two lawyers looked at each other without enlightenment

"Really!" said Crystal Manning, and drew her robe close. "Will someone please tell my why Browning keeps butting into this? Couldn't we have Tennyson for a change?"

H.M. looked at her over his spectacles.

"You're a very clever gal, my wench," he said seriously.

Crystal made that sort of curtsey which used to indicate, "Thank you, sir." "When your old man quoted Browning last night"— H.M. pointed at her—"you spotted The Flight of the Duchess' straightaway. I wonder if you spotted anything else?"

"But of course not'" said Crystal, opening wide her dark blue eyes. "What on earth was there?"

"I think we can omit Browning," Byles intervened impatiently. "Forget Browning! What are these other clues"—his tone was not without sarcasm—"you seem to think are so important?"

H.M. Nodded towards the pool. Hat, shoes, gardener's gloves, coat and trousers, scarf, underpants were now swirling round as the water descended.

"I think," H.M. told Byles, "there's something in that pool." "What's that?"

"Easy, now! Lemme finish! When the pool's drained, there'll be a lot of paper bits, little things like that, clogged up to the mouth of the inlet."

"Well?"

"I want you to find me," H.M. considered, "a piece of paper, several times folded, about six inches long and about an inch wide. It may be longer."

"But why the hell do you want that?"

"Because I'm the old-man," said H.M. austerely. "It's awful important, son. Will you have 'em look for it?"

"All right I suppose so. Is there anything else you want?"

H.M.'s roving eye encountered the figure of Officer O'Casey, now fully dressed, as O'Casey marched straight towards them. Officer O'Casey, teeth gritted so that he would not look at H.M, approached Byles.

"Now you're a fine husky-lookin' feller," continued H.M., addressing Officer O'Casey as though he had never seen the man before. O'Casey stopped dead. "If the District Attorney approves, I'd like to give you some orders. Hey?"

"You'll take your orders from Sir Henry, O'Casey."

The expression on that policeman's face, as he looked at the serene H.M., would have interested many a painter.

"Our third clue," H.M. went on, "is these garden shears." He picked them up and extended them towards O'Casey. "Here you are, son. Take 'em!"

Officer O'Casey took them like a man hypnotized.

"Now you mayn't have noticed," H.M. pursued comfortably, "that one the southern side of this place there's a box hedge, about four feet high and about a hundred feet long. Son, I want you to go and trim that hedge."

There was a long silence. Then Officer O'Casey found his breath.

"The whole goddam hedge?" he yelled.

"O'Casey!" snapped Byles.

"But he ought to be in jail! He ought..."

"Never use profane language, son," admonished H.M., with all the air of a clergyman. Then he reflected. "No, not the whole goddam hedge. About twelve feet will do. Then bring the shears to me."

Under Byles's eye, the maddened officer, protesting quite accurately that there was no justice, could only lurch away.

"If I didn't know you so well..." the District Attorney began. Then he stopped, biting his underlip. "H.M., is that what you call a clue?"

"Oh, son! A whole lot may depend on it!" H.M. glanced up at the sky. "We've got to try an experiment, and we've got to try it quickly!"

"But what will it prove?"

With a kind of gurgling roar, like animal strangulation, the last of the water descended in a smooth cascade from the five-foot depth at the southern end to the ten-foot depth under the diving board. The sides of the pool, smooth and tightly fitted slabs of stone, were covered with a faint slime.

"Now well find it!" said Byles.

Nearly every member of that party jumped in to find the secret exit. And yet, five minutes later, they were all back on the coping again—staring at it without a word.

There was no secret exit of any kind.

But Manning was not in the pool, either.

8

Some time afterwards, in the library at the house, H.M. and Cy Norton and Gilbert Byles assembled for that private talk the District Attorney had requested. The library ran straight through the house, with two windows front and back.

It must regretfully be admitted that H.M., when deep in a problem of some kind, has no sense of the fitness of things. The library was hot, so he removed his robe. He sat there in his red-and-white striped bathing suit, his sandalled feet on the table, smoking a cigar.

Byles'3 offer of a Havana he had declined with disdain.

"This here," declared H.M., taking the cigar out of his mouth to sniff voluptuously, "is a real Wheeling stogy. In the good old days they were two for a nickel. What's on your mind, Gil?"

Cy Norton, who had dashed upstairs to dress after a fashion, arrived back just in time to hear this question. Byles absently waved him towards a chair. Then it was as though the District Attorney—tall and sallow, standing by the table—had been wearing a false beard and sinister crêpe hair, and that these slipped off like a disguise.

His eyes twinkled. When he whooped with mirth, as he did now, his whole face seemed to become broader and less pointed of chin. He sat down, still laughing. Mr. District Attorney Byles had relaxed, and he was enjoying himself.

"You know, H.M.," he said, "I wrote to you that you were an old s.o.b., and you are."

H.M. nodded.

"There were other endearin' terms," he said. "At home, if the Director of Public Prosecutions ever dictated a letter like that, they'd have had to revive his secretary with smelling salts."

"Oh, I wrote it myself on my own typewriter. But tell me. All this posing about 'three clues'—it isn't on the level, of course?"

"It's strictly on the level, Gil."

"A man dives into a swimming pool. He doesn't come up, but he's not there when the pool is drained. Thaf s carrying tilings too far."

"Burn it all, I can't help that! It happened!" "Come on, H.M." Byles's grin broadened. "Weren't you all just rallying round the flag? And telling a corporate lie to support Manning?"

"Oh, lord love a duck," breathed H.M. "NO!"

"Well, it doesn't matter," said Byles.

And he brushed it aside with a carelessness that raised Cy Norton's hair. Gilbert Byles rubbed his long chin, which would have been blue if he had not shaved twice a day. His expression grew serious.

"Instead of asking me what's on my mind, H.M., what's on your mind?"

"Ill tell you," replied H.M., blowing a smoke ring. "You don't like Fred Manning much, do you?"

"No, I don't like him." Byles clasped his big hands on the table. "We're members of the same club, and I've never liked him. The first time I saw that fellow, I knew he was a crook."

"How'd you know that?"

"He was too suave. Too dignified. Too smooth. I don't trust that kind of man and I never have. For weeks weVe heard rumours that his Foundation was rocky; but you can't act on that Never mind. Now," said Byles, clenching his hands more tightly, "now, by God, we've got him."

"So? How?"

"This Foundation of his..."

"Stop a bit, son!" interrupted H.M., making bothered gestures with his cigar. "They may have these 'Foundations' in England, but burn me if I ever heard of one. What are you talkin' about?"

Byles spoke with the same quietness, hands clenched.

"The Frederick Manning School," he said, "is a kind of extra-curricular support for the big universities. If s independent, but students get credit at the universities for work done there in writing, painting, music, and the rest of it The Manning School is supposed to be non profit-making, which it is for everybody except himself.

"He goes around to various very wealthy men— who are genuine philanthropists, interested in projects like that—and he persuades them to ladle out a lot of money. Can't you see Manning doing that? The Manning School has a lot of scholarships, and quite a number of fellowships. A fellowship here means almost the same as it means in England; a man both studies and teaches, and gets paid for it."

Byles leaned forward and tapped the table.

"Now I’ll give you facts, without names. Some time ago a young man in Michigan got a letter written and signed by Manning, who runs everything. 'We are pleased to inform you,' says the letter, 'that you have been chosen for the Heinrich Heine Fellowship in Satiric Verse.' I'm just inventing the terms, but you get the general idea?"

H.M. nodded drowsily.

"Yes, son," he said. "I'm following you."

"'This fellowship'" Byles continued his play of light mockery with the imaginary letter—'"carries a stipend of twenty-five hundred dollars a year. Unfortunately, our funds do not permit payment at this time. Would you consider accepting the honour and foregoing the stipend until the following year?'"

Byles paused. His eyes burned with the resentment of one who has had to work his way, and work hard, through college and law school.

"This poor devil in Michigan," he continued, "was between Satan and deep water. He'd got his B.A. and his M.A., and he was working towards his Ph.D. Men in the academic profession aren't there to make money; as a rule they know as much about business as I know about Sanskrit Here was a chance for him to study for a year without paying; and next year, it seemed, the 'stipend' too."

Again Byles paused, and smiled without amusement

"Uh-huh," nodded H.M. "And this bloke accepted?"

"Yes. You see the set-up?"

"The money," mused H.M., "goes straight into Manning's pocket? And the books show if s being paid out?"

"It's only a very small way," Byles admitted, "of milking the Foundation. There are far bigger ways. But this particular man in Michigan"—and Byles tapped the table—"got an anonymous letter. It said the whole business was crooked; and, if he didn't believe it, let him write to another man in West Virginia.

"Well, he did. The West Virginia man had received exactly the same letter, only this time it was the Something-Something Fellowship in music. They were mad. I don't blame them. They came straight to New York, and somebody sent 'em to the Complaints Bureau of my office. Now do you mind if I tell a little personal adventure?"

"About Manning?"

"Yes."

Byles got up, tall in the grey suit of "our best-dressed D.A.," against the three oak walls of old books, and the fiery sun at the two screened windows facing front Then he turned round.

"I told you, didn't I, that Manning and I belong to the same club?"

"Uh-huh."

"He had lunch there yesterday. He didn't see me, but I saw him. He had a brief case against his knee; didn't even leave it at the checkroom. During lunch,"—and Byles smiled a peculiar smile—"he was so absorbed with an envelope, writing or figuring, that the waiter couldn't wake him up. When the waiter did wake him up, he crumpled up the envelope and threw it away and hurried out"

"Well?"

"I was curious." Byles raised his eyebrows. "When I followed him, I did pick up the envelope. I found it had (among other things) a series of figures arranged for a profit of just over a hundred thousand. Ye-es, H.M.! It was time to move in."

"You knew he was going to do a bunk, hey? And a hundred thousand soakers..."

"Smackers," corrected the smiling Byles.

There was a terrible silence.

To correct H.M.'s American slang, which he believes to be more than merely perfect is a far deadlier insult than to say he has cheated atcards or been seen shaking hands with Sir Stafford Cripps. It was instantly smoothed over by the watchful, tactful Byles.

"Sorry, my mistake," the District Attorney assured him. "I believe the most up-to-date version is 'soakers, now I come to think of it" "Haaah!" breathed H.M., sitting back in his

bathing suit and continuing to puff voluptuously

at the stogy. "There's only one thing," said Byles, "I don't

understand." "What's that?"

"I can't understand Howard Betterton." Byles frowned. "Come on,H.M. You're a barrister. Didn't you notice it?"

"Oh, I might have. But your law, when it was founded on our law just before the British Common Law got changed for the better, has gone some very rummy ways. Be quiet, dammit! Tell me about Betterton."

Byles returned to the table, sat down, and again interlocked his fingers.

"Howard's shrewd," he admitted. "He was all fuss and feathers this morning. Buthe didn't even try to throw chairs in my way. Howard must have known"—here Byles tapped his breast pocket—"I got this subpoena through White Plains, in this county, so I could take the swindling s.o.b. to town in a way he wouldn't like. Howard must have known another subpoena was served, at nine o'clock this morning, on the man in charge of Manning's office in New York. And yet—no games."

H.M. merely grunted. But there was a curious look in his eyes which Cy Norton could not interpret.

"You were the one who phoned him last night, eh?"

"I did. But I hardly thought he'd make a break and admit he was guilty." A twinkle appeared in Byles's eyes. "Probably you can see why I don't give two hoots about your swimming-pool mystery?"

"Sort of dimly, yes. It's not your baby. It's the police's. But if they catch Fred Manning..."

"When they catch Manning," corrected Byles, "it won't matter a damn how he got out of the pool. There he is; I can stick him in front of a jury! But, my God, in the meantime! That's where you come in.

"Me?" exclaimed H.M., in sudden alarm. Gilbert Byles's voice became low and persuasive.

"The good public," he said, "won't care anything about Manning until he's caught. But this swimming-pool mystery—that’s different! That’s the public's meat Every city editor in town will be delirious."

"I thought you said," interposed Cy, "that the swimming-pool mystery was only a corporate lie."

"I still think it is. But if it isn't, all the better. Now listen, H.M.! You're pretty well known in this country as a locked-room buster and a debunker of miracles. The newspapers love you, - because you're good copy. Your job is to hold 'em off, and solve the mystery if you can."

"Now wait a minute!" bellowed H.M., and his feet came down from the table with a crash that shook the room. "I can't stay in New York, I tell you! Even as it was, I got kidnapped."

"What do you mean, kidnapped?"

H.M.'s voice became plaintive.

"Well, practically kidnapped. And as I keep telling everybody," he went on with deep earnestness, "I got to visit a family in Washington."

Byles smiled.

"H.M., this is really important." He continued in the same low tone, "If you phone these people in Washington, and explain the circumstances, I'm sure they'll understand." Byles was all for action. "What's their phone number?"

"I dunno the phone number," H.M. confessed. "But I expect you could get it. They live at a place called the White House."

"The White..."

For a moment Byles only stared at him. Then Byles put his elbows on the table, lowered his half-bald head, and knocked his knuckles against it

"Is this straight?" he presently demanded, looking out between his arms. "From what you said about the Labour Government, as quoted in last night's and this morning's papers, I shouldn't think they'd send you on a diplomatic mission. I should think they'd want to hang you."

"Oh, son! This is no diplomatic mission. I'm simply carryin' a letter to the President from an old friend of his in England. There's nothing secret about it; you could read it over the radio. Still, do you think it's polite to keep the President waiting"

Byles groaned.

"I tell you what I'll do, though," H.M. volunteered after a pause. "I'll make a little bargain "with you."

"Oh?" said Byles, raising his head with instant suspicion at any bargain proposed by H.M.

"I mean it, Gil. Have you got any accountants at your office?"

"Accountants? The District Attorney's office has a whole staff of accountants, six of 'em, just to deal with cases like this!"

"The Manning Foundation," said H.M., "don't look very big or very complex. Could you prove to me that Fred Manning's a crook in twenty-four hours?"

"Twenty-four hours! We-el! I..."

"Scotland Yard," sneered H.M., "could do it in one afternoon."

Now of all the whoppers he had ever told, and the name of them was legion, this ranked among the highest But it had its effect Gilbert Byles was stung as though by a rattlesnake.

"I should like to point out" he retorted coldly, "that American efficiency..."

H.M. got up and whacked the palm of his hand on the table. Byles also got up.

"Could you prove Manning's a crook in twenty-four hours?" demanded H.M., sticking out his unmentionable face. "I dare you!"

"Could you solve this mystery in twenty-four hours?" demanded Byles, also sticking out his face. "I dare you!"

"All right I'll do it!"

"So will I"

"Shake hands!"

"Shake hands!"

It was in this heroic if somewhat unusual attitude, like a group of statuary, that they were discovered by Bob Manning, followed by Jean and Crystal, who rushed into the library and stopped short

H.M. and the District Attorney somewhat guiltily dissolved their hand grip. But all three newcomers were too emotionally overwrought to notice anything, with the possible exception of Crystal. Bob, sandy-haired and gangling, in khaki shorts and an open khaki shirt seemed to grope for firmness and even fierceness. Jean and Crystal, the one still in her white beach robe and the other in her black, seemed to be urging him on.

"Now look!" Bob began in aggressive voice. Then he stopped and looked at Byles. "Excuse me, sir, but who are you?"

Byles introduced himself. He was as courteous, in a completely adult way, as he would have been to the Governor.

"What I want to say," blurted Bob, "is that-well, I'm the head of the family now." This, as Bob heard himself saying it seemed to make him completely incredulous until he rushed on: "And we—I thought if there's any kind of conference that concerns us, I ought to be there."

Byles was about to turn them away, smoothly and easily, when lie caught H.M.'s glance. Before the District Attorney could agree, Bob spoke again.

"First" he went on doggedly, "the whole place is full of cops. Down at the swimming pool." "I'm afraid, Mr. Manning," Byles soothed him,

"I had to phone the police at White Plains. Just answer their questions; they won't trouble you more than is necessary."

Then Bob's freckles seemed to stand out against his skin.

"Next," he said, "I didn't see what happened this morning. I was sitting up practically all night; I mean—thinking about something."

He had been thinking, Cy knew, about the garage—the garage he would now never have.

"But listen," Bob was continuing. He did not now seem sheepish; he looked formidable. "If there's any man who says my father took money," he swallowed, "and that includes those cops down at the pool too, I’ll knock his damned face off whenever I see him. And I mean that"

Cy sprung up. "Who's dealing with the cops at the pool?"

"Dave is," Jean answered promptly, and her fair complexion flushed with admiration. "I think it was magnificent, the way he just took charge of things. Commanding. I suppose it was the Army."

"I seem to forget, darling," lied Crystal, wrinkling up her brows. "Was Dave overseas?"

"You know he wasn't!" Jean said hotly. "He was in that department, you know, it's so terribly important nobody knows what it is. Did you ever see Dave in a uniform? He looks wonderful."

"Won't you all sit down?" invited Byles. "It's true this happens to be a secret conference"—Cy noted their instant response to this, and H.M.'s sour look—"but on this occasion I won't object You may even be able to help us."

Gingerly they sat round a long oak refectory table. Crystal, with a careless air, seated herself near Cy.

"What do you mean, help you?" Bob's voice was still hoarse.

"Oh, we can never tell. Information, maybe..."

"I know a good deal," said Jean, with her eyes far away. Then her broad mouth tightened against the faint golden tan. "But I'm not talking, thanks."

"Not even to me?" Byles's smile had the craft of the serpent

"No! Not to anybody!" cried Jean. "Because, even if Dad has taken all this money (oh, be quiet, Bob!), they'll never find him. Never!"

Byles hesitated.

Cy Norton could have sworn that his next remark was not guile, but an honestly sincere effort to prepare them.

"I wish you hadn't said that, Miss Manning."

"Why not?"

"Because I'd better warn you, so that you don't get a shock, They'll catch your father in a matter of weeks,; perhaps a little more. He can't get away. To show you I'm not bluffing, shall I tell you a few of the methods they'll use?"

"Yes!" said Crystal, with her eyes lowered.

"It's curious, but it's a fact," Byles went on, first looking at the table and then raising his head, "that most persons, when they bolt from New York, try to get as far away as they can. It's more curious, but still true, that most of them make for California or Florida."

"Y ou're not bluffing about that, either?" asked Crystal.

"No," Byles answered truthfully. "Now yesterday, at lunch, your father crumpled up and threw away an envelope covered with figures. It wais found. On this envelope he twice wrote, 'Los Angeles,' then he scratched out both and wrote 'Miami.'"

A rustle went round the group, evidently uneasy.

"Finally," said Byles, "let me tell you just one more of many things that will trap him. It will never occur to him; that's the beauty of it. Certainly it won't occur to you. Now take a look around you!"

Puzzled, three faces turned and twisted inquiringly. They saw the tall walls of books, the tapestry furniture; and, in the northern wall, the nearly closed double doors which showed the edge of a chess board beyond in Manning's study. The two rear windows were bright with sunshine; the front windows blue-white.

"I'm afraid I don't understand this one," Crystal murmured.

"You don't notice anything?"

"No!"

"Yet ever since I've know your father," said Byles, "he's haunted second-hand bookshops. All the books here are second-hand; he won't buy any other kind. He can no more keep away from those bookshops than a dipsomaniac can keep away from a bar."

Byles paused, letting his narrow eyes rove.

They'll circularize every second-hand bookshop in this country," he added. "With photograph, description, reward. Wherever he goes, and in whatever direction, they'll be certain to get him."

"Oh, no, they won't!" flashed Jean's triumphant cry. "They won't recognize him! The plastic surgery will..."

Dead silence.

Jean stopped dead, both hands pressed over her mouth, her light blue eyes full of horror.

"What plastic surgery?" asked Byles sharply.

(Pure accident, or merely guile?)

And at the same moment, shoulders very straight, officer. O'Casey marched into the library carrying a pair of large shears. Without deigning to look at Sir Henry Merrivale, he nevertheless placed the shears on the table at H.M.'s elbow, and spoke to Byles.

"I've got exactly twelve feet of hedge trimmed, sir," he said.

9

It was a ticklish and frantic moment.

H.M., who evidently wanted at once to examine the shears and yet to pursue this matter of plastic surgery, compromised by dropping the shears under the table where nobody could see them. Byles motioned to O'Casey, who stalked out.

"Jean, you fool!" said Bob. "They know who all the plastic surgeons are. They've only got to find the right one, and..."

"Will you excuse me for a moment?" murmured Byles, and went softly out of the room.

"He's heading for the telephone," said Bob, "to start the ball rolling already. Well, there you are."

"Just a minute, son," interposed the heavy, quiet voice of H.M.

Instantly Jean and Bob turned to the Old Man for help. Despite his murderous scowl, young people turned to him instinctively because they recognized a kindred spirit. For instance, he could quite see the reason why his ten-year-old

grandson must shoot Sir Esme Forthergill in the seat of the pants with an air gun.

Jean, her yellow hair hanging forward in utter despair, looked up quickly.

"You haven't given anything away, my wench," H.M. told her firmly, and with a gleam of real illumination in his face. "In fact, if s better like this."

"Better?"

Uh-huh. I've already got a dare with our foxy friend; honestly, he means well but his job comes first. I'd make a little side bet of ten soakers that your old man will never go near a plastic surgeon, and that the coppers won't learn anything if he's already done it. But don't tell Byles that! Let 'em round up all the skin grafters they can find."

"But it is true, isn't it," Jean whispered fiercely, "that a plastic surgeon can change a face out of all recognition?"

"No, my wench. Not in the way you mean. What they can do is..." H.M. stopped, as though inspiration were beating him like a mallet

"Don't worry, Jean," Crystal said gently. "We know your devotion, because you've been Dad's favourite child. It's even possible to understand, though that's harder, Bob's sudden devotion to him."

"He's my father," Bob explained simply. "And now they're saying he's a crook!"

"We-ell!" Crystal smiled tolerantly. Cy had never noticed how light blue Jean's eyes were compared with the very dark blue eyes of Crystal, who glanced up at him in a way that angrily disturbed him still more.

"Listen to me, dear," Crystal went on to Jean, with genuine sympathy in her voice. "Nobody in his senses could ever believe Dad is an embezzler. But, if he had got away with a hundred thousand I could almost admire him for it"

"You like high play, don't you?" Cy asked.

"All kinds of it," said Crystal, looking straight at him again. She turned back to Jean.

"This woman of his, I believe, is a bubble dancer or a fan dancer. She's young. She's attractive. Now don't clench your fists, Jean. And you, Bob, don't squirm with embarrassment every time the fan dancer is mentioned.

"The fact is," Crystal went on, "that men of a certain age—like Dad—sometimes go completely off the rails and do things that to outsiders seem foolish. They aren't foolish, if you only understand. For heaven's sake let Dad have his fling! This woman..."

The quiet easy voice of Byles spoke from the doorway.

"I think, if you don't mind," he said, "we'd better have this woman's name."

The carpets in this house were too think. Jean hammered her fists on the table. She and Bob regarded each other bleakly.

Byles went over and again sat opposite H.M. The fox and Foxy Grandpa faced each other.

"I wish you wouldn't touch this, Gil," H.M. said in a weary voice. "It won't help you. But if you've got to have the information, you'd better get it from me."

"Yes?" prompted Byle, getting out a very tiny notebook.

"The gal's name is Irene Stanley."

Jean regarded H.M. with loathing, ad though he had turned traitor^ Byles caught that glance, and was satisfied.

"Her address," continued H.M. "is 161 East 161st street,"

"Telephone number?" asked Byles, without looking up.

"It's Motthaven 9-5098."

H.M.'s glare was just in time to stop Jean, who apparently knew this was a flat lie and had almost betrayed it. Cy Norton also suspected a trick, since this was the telephone number in the Bronx to which H.M. had put through a long call last night.

"Her real name," growled H.M., "in case you're interested, ain't Irene Stanley. It's Flossie Peters. But you call her Irene Stanley, or else."

"Occupa— Oh, sorry!" smiled Byles, and put away his notebook. "Believe me," he added to the others, "it is better we know these things."

That was the point at which Howard Betterton, quiet but impatient and annoyed, appeared at the door. Two voices rang out simultaneously.

One was Betterton's. "It's about time I had that little talk with the District Attorney."

The other was Byles's. "Now, H.M.! Bring out those pruning shears, and tell us what the big clue is!"

Again dead silence. Even Betterton, who had opened his mouth for more impatient speech, closed it and hurried towards the table. On everyone there—except H.M.—the mystification about those shears had been frantic sandpaper to the curiosity.

H.M.'s stogy had burnt down, and he dropped it into an ash tray.

"All right," he said, reaching under the table. "Since I've got less than twenty-four hours (oh, burn me!) until I can get off to Washington, I'm going to show you every bit of evidence there is. I'm going to show you everything I see—if you can interpret it. I'm goin' to be straight."

Now in any matter concerning mystery, as Chief Inspector Masters could have testified, H.M. was about as straight as the average corkscrew. But then, for some reason, he seemed to take pleasure in misleading only Chief Inspector Masters. Cy wondered whether he would keep his word to Byles.

"This morning," continued H.M., "Manning was supposed to be trimmin' the south hedge. Stuffy, the houseman, said he was. Manning himself said he was, when he turned up at the pool about a quarter-past nine, and flourished the shears in my face."

"Well?"

H.M. scowled at an ash tray.

"When he turned up with the shears," H.M. went on, "they were just as you saw 'em a little later. Sharp, clean, polished at the edges, and bone dry. Take a look at 'em now."

And he dropped the pruning shears, blades half open, on the table.

The blades of the shears were wet. Tiny green particles of box hedge adhered to the blades and many were stuck at the handle joining. H.M. pointed to them.

"Y'see," he explained, "a thunderstorm began last night before eight o'clock, and it poured with rain for half the night. When I went out with Cy Norton, there were still pools of water on the lawn in the morning. Got it?"

"Then Manning," said Byles, "couldn't possibly have been trimming the hedge at any time this morning!"

"That's right, Gil."

"He told a lie. Is it important?"

"Oh, my son! He told an unnecessary lie. If he's concentrated on his disappearing act, why does he do all that hocus-pocus and flourish a big pair of shears—unless the shears are in some way vital to his trick? Find the answer to that, and you've interpreted our biggest clue so far."

"But what the devil does it mean?"

"I said I was going to show you the evidence, son," H.M. returned woodenly. "I didn't say I was goin' to interpret it"

Howard Betterton, brushing back the thin black skeins of hair across his skull, spoke impatiently.

"Mr. Byles! You promised to give me ten minutes, and I've got to be in my office this afternoon. I think—in the study over there, perhaps?"

"Yes," agreed Byles, consulting his watch. He was furious with H.M., though he did not show it "And our British friend must come with us, though he's inclined to be helpful."

Jean unobtrusively dug Bob in the ribs.

"As head of the family..." Bob began with dignity, and got to his feet

Betterton smiled at him.

"Certainly, my boyl By all means!" agreed the stocky little lawyer, patting the tall Bob on the shoulder.

"Now understand, Mr. Byles!" the stocky little man went on. "I don't defend my client's—er— ethical principles. But, if he's done what he has done, there are reasons which will hold up in court. Are you ready, Sir Henry?"

H.M. got up in his bathing suit, picking up his beach robe and plucking another stogy out of his pocket

"I'm ready," he said to Byles. "But I want something understood too. If I solve your ruddy case, I'm not goin' to yammer to the press until I do solve it. Not a word from me!"

"But I thought you liked talking to the papers!"

"Sure I do. When I've got something to tell 'em. And when I give 'em a story, Gil, the front page sizzles like a fryin' pan in hell." He looked with a kind of evil pleading at Cy. "Will you handle it, son? It's your job."

"But they'll be after you?’ Cy said. "What am I going to tell 'em?"

"Tell 'em I'm drunk," said the great man simply. "Anything you like. Only for the love of Esau keep 'em off me until I've got some kind of clear notion in my onion! Will you do that?"

Cy nodded despondently. The double doors opened, disclosing another book-lined room with brown leather chairs and a chess table. When Byles shut them again, they did not quite close-as double doors seldom will.

Now only Cy, Jean, and Crystal were left at the refectory table. He could feel a storm coming.

"Cy." Jean spoke very softly. "You think Dad's pretty low, don't you?"

He didn't want to hurt her, and he resolved not to hurt her.

"It's not that, Jean. I've known him for years and I always felt like cheering everything he said. He seemed to represent good manners, culture, a decent reserve: everything that's traditional and that I hold in reverence. Even this Browningesque devotion to—never mind.

"I don't care about the money. I don't care about the fan dancer. But it seems to me (I'm sorry!) he's not an ordinary poor-devil embezzler. He carefully gathered together and smashed, with a kind of glee, everything he pretended to represent."

Cy knew he had gone too far. He tried, physically tried, to stop the rush of words. When Jean looked at him, it was as though the colour had gone out of her eyes.

"You beast!" she said. "You insufferable beast1"

And now there was silence in the hot library of second-hand books, except for a faint mumble of voices in the adjoining study.

Crystal was now sitting at one end of the long table, leaning back, her beach robe open, her back to the two eastern windows. Cy, wishing to God he could recall what he had said to Jean, blundered over and automatically sat down at right angles to Crystal.

There was a long silence.

"Tell me," said Crystal in her soft voice. "Why are you so unhappy in life?"

"Unhappy?" He raised his head. "Damn it, I'm not unhappy!"

"Oh, I know," said Crystal. Her fingers, with the scarlet nails, tapped on the table. "You think this is my usual approach with men. Ask almost anybody if he's unhappy, and he'll say no but think yes. Well, I mean what I say. I'll show you."

Cy did not reply.

"Of whom," asked Crystal, "does Jean remind you so much?"

Cy started up, eyes wide open, with a crash against the table which shook its whole length. A pencil was about to roll off, and Crystal caught it deftly without looking at him.

Trust a woman, he thought bitterly, to see straight through the bandages and mufflings and blue spectacles we wear, like a new version of the Invisible Man! This girl, twenty-four years old, and—no, not flighty, you couldn't call her that-had read him as though he were as transparent as Huntington Davis.

Trying to appear casual, Cy sat down again.

"What makes you think Jean reminds me of somebody?" he asked.

Crystal's dark blue eyes, under the wings of brown hair, were not coquettish and not provocative; they were sombre.

"Last night, when I first met you," said Crystal, "I thought you were nice-looking and had," she grimaced, "possibilities. Later..."

"Later?"

"You were watching Jean all the time. It wasn't what they'd call a predatory look. It was, 'Jean's like her, and yet she's not like her; Jean's less vivid, less...' Oh, I don't know!" Crystal paused. "Who does Jean remind you of?"

Cy moistened his lips.

"My wife," he said. "She's dead."

Again there was a long silence.

"I'm sorry," said Crystal. "I didn't mean to hurt"

"Not at all. It doesn't matter." (But it did matter. It was like the stab of a physical pain.)

"Let's change the subject, shall we?" Crystal suggested brightly. "Where did you get that scar down your side? I—I noticed it at the pool. Did you get it in the war?"

"Not exactly. In an air raid."

"Oh? Were you in many air raids?"

"Most of them, like millions of other people. My wife was killed in one."

Again silence. Crystal sat rigid. Cy himself sought desperately to change the subject, but his eyes strayed towards what could be seen of Crystal's bathing suit

"How," he asked desperately, "does your skin stay so white if you do much swimming? Both you and Jean are fair-complexioned, but even Jean has a very slight tan."

"Oh, that's artificial." Crystal laughed, breathing quickly. "If s suntan lotion Jean gets from the druggist And (didn't you notice?) she always grabs a robe as soon as she's been in the water for more than a minute or two. I solve the problem by never getting into the sun."

"Or never doing much swimming either?"

"That's right. If s too strenuous. I..."

Both their nerves were on edge. From the adjoining room there was a crash, followed by a faint rattling and rolling noise. Both Cy and Crystal started when they heard it, followed by Byles's voice:

"Do you have to be so clumsy? Why upset the chess table?"

"Burn me. I didn't do it," retorted the voice of H.M. "This young feller here..."

"Sorry, sorry!" Bob's tones were hoarse. "But Mr. Byles said..."

Someone in the study moved towards the double doors and, with a wrench, snapped them shut. The noise seemed to affect Crystal so that she spoke rapidly, in a low tone, and could not seem to stop.

"Jean," she said, "told me a lot about you last night. We sat up until all hours. Weren't you awfully sick when you lost your job?"

Cy laughed, rather too loudly.

"No," he answered. "That’s the first time you've been wrong. If you mean money," and now he was speaking truth, "I have a private income. It'll keep my comfortably if I never do another stroke of newspaper work."

"You're not actually happy here in America, are you?"

"Crystal, don't talk nonsense! Of course I am!"

"You may think you are. You may have convinced yourself of that. But in your heart it's not true."

"Look here!"

"You want Europe, and especially England, as England was before the war. But those old days have gone forever. You know that, you hate it, and it's poisoning your life."

Crystal spoke steadily, breathing quickly, yet in a passion of words.

"You want a life of graciousness, and dignity, and a 'decent reserve.' Oh, don't deny it! I heard what you said to Jean awhile ago. That's why you've liked Dad, ever since you've know him. And you hate him now, because he's broken the pattern. As for your wife..."

"Crystal, for God's sake!"

"You're trying to cherish her memory, in the Browningesque way. And you can't do it; nobody can. But you hate Dad because—he couldn't"

Cy got up from the table.

He walked to one of the eastern windows, his back to Crystal, and stared out The broad lawns gleamed at noonday. There were several persons round, or in, the empty swimming pool. Beyond the pool were the rhododendron bushes; then, parallel with them, the bathing cabins; beyond these, the high green trees of the woods. Cy saw none of this; it was only a blur.

He took out a pack of cigarettes, lighted one with shaky hands, and returned to the table.

Crystal, no longer the posed hostess, all her affected sophistication gone, was huddled in the chair like a girl about to cry’

"You know," Cy said, "your ability to read minds..."

"Your mind, that's all. Don't you see?"

"... is uncanny and if s enough to scare anyone."

"You think I'm spoiled and selfish," said Crystal, looking up. "Well! Maybe I am. I never thought about it much. But one thing Dad said about me really shocked me, because it wasnt true!"

"Need we go into it, Crystal?" "Yes! We've got to talk this out!" "Why?"

"You know why as well as I do."

He did know. He was falling for Crystal Manning. When he looked down into the dark blue eyes, her physical presence again seemed to merge with and become a part of him, as though she were actually in his arms. What they both might have said then, or perhaps even have done, will never be known—because their idyll cracked to bits before the outside world.

Into the library walked two motorcycle policemen, Officer O'Casey following close on the footsteps of Officer Ferris. Officer Ferris, he of the alert eye and the wish for action, spoke in a voice of deep respect

"The old gent with the big bay window," he informed Cy, "said I'd probably find this in the pool. And I did."

Across the palm of his hand he held a sodden piece of newspaper, several times folded, but only about an inch wide by seven inches long. Seeking a place where the wet paper would not harm the table, Officer Ferris carefully placed it along one of the handles of the shears.

Then he stood back, as though about to salute.

"What a detective!" said Officer Ferris, with still more respect.

"I'm telling you, Slats!" said Officer O'Casey, with an air of nervousness yet determination. "I'm not even sore at him any longer. I'm not going to say anything, mind; I don't want 'em to think I'm nuts. But he's not human!"

"Aw, quit it!" snapped Officer Ferris. "Being a smart cop is one thing. But being..."

Officer O'Casey addressed Cy. "Can we see him, sir?"

While Crystal turned her head away and pretended not to be there, Cy had to drag himself back into a world of reality where policemen really existed.

"See him? Whom do you want to see?"

"The gent with the big bay window."

"He's in conference." Cy brushed a hand across his forehead to clear his mind. "I'm afraid he can't be disturbed. Do you want to give him a message?"

Officer O'Casey, pondering, did not even seem to hear the question.

"He magicked the turnstiles," said O'Casey. "Then he magicked the swimming pool. Now he's magicked the electric chair."

'The... what!"

In Cy's mind was a recollection from some time ago. Standing beside the pool, when Crystal made her appearance, he had looked back over the terrace and seen a grotesque parody of a chair. At the time Cy had believed it was only his imagination which likened it to...

Cy hurried to the right-hand window, and peered out with his cheek pressed to the screen towards the southern side of the rear terrace.

"I didn't notice it when I went to trim the hedges and came back," Officer O'Casey was saying. "Because I was sore, see, and I didn't notice anything. But look at it now!"

On the serene sunlit terrace, with metal headpiece and electrodes dominating what was there, some humorist had placed a life-sized replica of the electric chair.

10

Though it was still broad daylight, a long crimson band of sunset lay behind the railway station westwards, and a feeling of evening was in the air as Cy Norton faced the last charge of reporters on the front step of the house.

"No!" Cy called, amiably but firmly. "You cannot see Sir Henry. He is locked in the wine cellar."

The inevitable question shot back at him in many voices.

"Because he's drunk," replied Cy. (Sensation.) "Yes! D-r-u-n-k, drunk."

"But why is he cockeyed now?’

"Because," called Cy, "his brain won't work properly on a case until he's two-thirds paralyzed with alcohol. Surely you understand that?"

There was a hubbub, not unmixed with expressions of sympathy. The excuse was so frank and unusual, coming from a respectable home in Maralarch, that all except the most suspicious were inclined to believe it.

"Can we quote that about his being pickled?"

"Certainly," answered Cy, wondering how this news would look in Washington. Then he held up his hand. "Lieutenant Trowbridge has already given you the essential facts. I'm going to give you, with his permission, a few more. Now some of you know me. Don't you?"

There was a chorus of assent.

"All right! Then listen! I'm going to give you a real story!"

It was a story, and a beauty. But, as Cy had calculated, the basic part—that Frederick Manning had decamped with the funds of his Foundation—got completely lost in the shuffle. At first sight it appeared that, as the result of some sort of bet, Manning had dived into the pool and vanished like a soap bubble.

"What about that dummy electric chair?"

"Also a joke, it's believed. Several witnesses, who went down to the pool early in the morning, vaguely noticed some kind of chair with, quote, 'a cloth cover over it' Unquote. But they paid no attention. When the chair was uncovered we don't know. It was found by Police Officer Aloysius J. O'Casey."

Presently he got rid of them, at least so he hoped.

Cy closed the front door, and put his head against it

Again the house was a quiet as in the middle of the night dim with Venetian blinds half drawn. Betterton and the District Attorney had left for town in the latter's car shortly after lunch, a lunch at which there had been only random and desultory conversation.

As for Detective Lieutenant Trowbridge, from White Plains, he astonished Jean and Crystal and Bob though he astonished nobody else. They had expected to meet a fat ogre who could chew a cigar and yell. Instead they met a quiet, well-spoken man not yet forty, who merely took statements, and did not question them much about miracles. As for that replica of the electric chair...

"Put it in the cellar," Byles had ordered, "and don't let H.M. see it He'll have an apoplectic fit We don't want our horse going crazy at the starting gate."

And it was to the basement that Cy Norton, after cooling his head against the front door in the dim silent house, hurried now.

Where was Crystal? After lunch Crystal had locked herself in her room, in tears... Stop it! He must not think about Crystal.

Sir Henry Merrivale really was in the wine cellar, though not locked in. It was not dangerous to keep him there away from the press, since H.M., a whisky drinker only, disdained even good wines as slops. But he was in no mood of sweetness and light

Cy, hurrying across a dim basement which smelled of old whitewash, opened the door of the wine cellar. It was an oblong room, lined to the ceiling on every side except the door side with tiers of bottles set on their sides. In the middle, under a dusty electric bulb gleaming yellow, H.M. sat in an old chair and glared at four unopened champagne bottles which were set in a line on the floor in front of him.

"Shut the door," he growled, without looking up from his position as Rodin's Thinker.

Cy complied. "Any inspiration yet?"

H.M. merely grunted. He liked his bathing suit, and still wore it But the dignity of the Merrivales had prompted him to don trousers. These, supported by ancient braces over the red-and-white striped upper part, made him resemble one of the bulkier Bowery toughs in the eighteen-nineties.

"Y'see, I've got half of it," he said. "The other half ought to be easy? But..."

Brooding, he pointed to the four champagne bottles with their gilt tinfoil tops.

"The problem" he said, "is to turn four bottles into three bottles, and still have four bottles."

"That's going to take a long time, isn't it?"

"No, curse it! It oughtn't to. Lemme give you a hint"

"Thanks. I know your hints."

"I'm serious, son," pleaded H.M. "You don't even see all the mystery! What happened to Manning's socks and his wrist watch?"

"What's that?"

"When we met him by the pool," returned H.M., in a far-off musing tone, "anybody could have told you he was wearing socks. As for..."

"Wait a minute!" said Cy, translating memory into pictures. "I do remember the wrist watch. He looked at it, and said something to the effect that it would be several hours before we had to worry about his disappearance."

"Keepin' us still off-balance. Yes."

"Hold on!" muttered Cy. "I remember something else too. He was wearing a shirt too."

"Oh, no, he wasn't!" said H.M. very sharply.

"But I tell you...!"

"That," said H.M., pointing his finger carefully at Cy, "is just the kind of misdirection you got to look out for. Manning's a wizard at it. He wasn't wearing a shirt at all. But he talked about how the sun bothered him, and touched the scarf round his neck, and said, 'so that it's torture to wear this shirt.' You automatically assumed he was wearin' a shirt."

Here H.M. scowled.

"Son, all his other clothes were in that pool. What happened to the socks and the wrist watch?"

Cy didn't know. He could call only on his imagination. And that gave him a wild vision of . Frederick Manning—completely invisible-climbing out of the swimming pool while wearing nothing but a wrist watch and socks.

"Y'see," resumed H.M., "our friend Gil Byles is under the happy hallucination that to catch Manning is goin' to be easy." Traces of a ghoulish mirth appeared in his face. "Cor! When Gil was giving all those fancy statistics to the young people..."

"He sounded pretty convincing, H.M."

"In a way, yes. That trick of watchin' secondhand book-shops is a beauty. But statistics, which are mostly hoo-haa anyway, try to find the

average man. And if Fred Manning is the average man, then I'm Harry Houdini."

"Look here! What's the crafty game now?"

"Well," rumbled H.M. drowsily studying the four champagne bottles, "you take that crumpled and discarded envelope, with the figure and town names on it, which Fred sort of discarded..."

Cy jumped. "Are you saying that was a trick too?"

"Oh, my son! If you were a clever man ready to do a bunk, would you write every bit of it down in the dining room of your club, and so very obviously leave it there in front of a District Attorney who hates you?"

"It was—more misdirection?"

H.M. sniffed. "Sure it was. And Gil grabbed it."

"But Manning's real line of flight...?"

"However much of the rhino he pinched," said H.M., "it wasn't a hundred thousand dollars. And, wherever he's really goin', it's not Florida or California."

"Now that you're in a garrulous mood, can you tell me anything else?"

H.M. reflected.

Studying the champage bottles, he bent forward with some effort He touched one of the bottles, moved it forward, and then drew it back again like an informal chess player.

"You ought to guess by this time"—and H.M. sent at Cy an odd glance which ought to have had significance for Cy—"we can't trust a word that*s been said from the beginning. But bein' the old man, I will tell you something I heard from Jean this afternoon. The gal don't even know she told me."

"All right, what is it?"

"Fred Manning's got a phenomenally acute sense of hearing. In a radio play, d'ye see, he could hear background effects that nobody else could. They gave him that hummin'-fork test, and he was miles ahead of anybody else.

"But"— H.M. was now fiercely arguing to himself—"that wouldn't help him much in this case. Lord love a duck! He couldn't possibly..."

"Couldn't possibly what?"

H.M. looked up.

"I'm stiflin' to death," he said in accents of tragedy. "I got claustrophobia. How long have I got to stay shut up here like the Man in the Iron Mask? Haven't those press blighters cleared out?"

"Ye-es." Cy was hesitant. "Yes, I think so. But it'd be better if we could get to the woods."

"What woods?"

"Since you've noticed every microscopic detail, you may not have noticed there are woods behind the bathing cabins. Let's try it, anyway."

Creeping upstairs like a couple of burglars, they made their exit by way of the screened porch on the south-eastern terrace and a deserted lawn round the swimming pool.

"It's all right," Cy said.

H.M., hitching up his trousers after an evil glance round, waddled out. Then two things happened at once.

Bob Manning walked out of the kitchen door on the northeastern side, letting the screen door bang after him. Bob wore an old baseball uniform with the entwined letters M.T. In one hand he carried a fungo bat, in the other he juggled with three baseballs.

And, at the same time, a photographer with camera and flash gun came prowling round the northern side of the house as though stalking prey.

Sir Henry Merrivale, with astounding celerity, was suddenly trying to flatten himself behind the projection of a chimney. In this he succeeded. The photographer, after casting a slow and crafty glance over the landscape, melted away towards the front.

"Look!" said Bob, trotting over towards the other two. "What goes on here?"

"I don't suppose," said H.M. with dignity, "you got a tribe of Indians that could come whoopin' after me with tomahawks? Cor! That feller looked more like Hawkeye than anybody I ever did see. I got to hide!"

"Hide?" demanded Bob, catching the atmosphere. "Then come down to the field with me!"

"What field?"

"The ball field! Behind those trees over there! My team's out practising now. And"—Bob lowered his voice impressively—"Moose Wilson is there. Last night you practically promised you'd come out and try some batting."

"I know, son. I'd like to go. But I've got a lot on my mind, and..."

"Look, Sir Henry, there's nothing for you to be afraid of!"

H.M., who had opened his mouth for more explanation, stopped and looked at him.

"So there's nothin' for me to be afraid of, hey?" he asked.

"Not a thing! Moose Wilson will take it easy. If I tell him to, he'll serve them up so anybody could hit 'em."

H.M. gave Bob a long, slow look. Though it had been staved off last night, the purple colour was coming into his face like that of a man being strangled.

"Now that's uncommon handsome of him, son," said H.M. in a soft, cooing voice. "That's a fine sportin' proposition, that is."

"Where," H.M. asked with deceptive casualness, "did you say this field is?"

They hurried across the terrace, past the lawn of the swimming pool, and past the rhododendron bushes and the bathing cabins which lay in parallel lines with the pool. The woods beyond, cool as an old-time spring house, drooped with heavy leaves and shadow. Against a beech tree, and wearing black slacks with a chaste white blouse, leaned Crystal Manning.

"Are you taking them out to see the baseball?" she greeted her brother sweetly, without looking at Cy. "Would you mind terribly if I went too?"

Bob stared at her. "Would I..." he began, and stopped. He turned to his companions as though the end of the world had come.

"Last night," Bob declared patiently, "this woman thought a bunt was about the same as a three-bagger or a home run. And now she wants to watch."

"Have you any objections, Bob dear?"

"No, of course not! And, come to think of it"— Bob flushed slightly as he turned to his companions—"I'd better tear along ahead. The cover's started to rip on the only ball they have, and I've got three new ones here. Excuse me."

What he really wanted to do was tell his team, modestly styling itself the Maralarch Terrors, to treat the poor old duck like spun glass. Instead of using the broad path, Bob plunged off into the underbrush.

So the other three, with Crystal in the middle, walked down the path.

As soon as she was away from any member of her family, Crystal dropped all her airs and became the all-too-human being Cy knew. She gave him only one glance, of passionate reproachfulness, which said, "Why didn't you come and look for me this afternoon?" Then she turned away.

"Sir Henry," said Crystal.

"Uh-huh?" said the scion of ancient lineage.

"Why did you tell the District Attorney that awful lie this morning?"

(So she spotted it too, thought Cy.)

"Which particular lie, my wench?"

"When he was asking about this woman," said Crystal, with a wicked smile. "This popsy of Dad's. You deliberately gave Mr. Byles the address and telephone number of some woman called Flossie Peters, who isn't Irene Stanley at all."

"So? What makes you think I did?"

"Because I was watching Jean's face! I don't know where Irene Stanley lives, and I'm sure Bob doesn't But I'm quite certain Jean does know, and if s not at the address you gave. Isn't that so, now?"

"That's so, my wench " admitted H.M.

They were moving through a cool green twilight not untroubled by gnats. But Cy Norton's, swearing under his breath, called for a halt.

"Look here, H.M.! Are you trying to flummox the police here too? Just as you always try to flummox 'em in England?"

"Well... now. Maybe just a little bit, son. Not very much."

"Ill tell you what you did," said Cy with the certainty of conviction. "You phoned that girl in the Bronx last night. You told her what to do and say. If the police went there today, she was to say she was Irene Stanley and act like Irene Stanley as long as she could. It wouldn't fool the police for long, but it would put 'em off the track for hours."

H.M. considered this, his cheeks puffed out as they continued their walk.

"More'n a few hours, son," he decided1. "That gal can tell enough lies, and convincing lies, to stretch from 161st Street to the Statue of Liberty."

"Then you're not after Manning at all! You're protecting him!"

"I'm protectin' him like billy-o, yes. Until they can show Fred Manning's a crook. After that..."

But Crystal, her eyes dreamy and her expression demurely amused, did not seem to be thinking of this.

"Sir Henry." She spoke softly. "Who is Flossie Peters?"

"I kept telling everybody," retorted H.M„ with a lofty but wary air, "that I had a friend here. She's a nice gal," said H.M., as though critically considering a slight acquaintance, "yes, a nice gal. I go there and sort of talk to her once in a while."

"Sir Henry," said Crystal gravely, "you are a wicked old man."

H.M.'s expression of outraged virtue would have shamed St. Anthony.

"I dunno what you're talkin' about!" he bellowed.

"Sir Henry, you have a popsy in New York." "But it ain't true! I'm not staying here, am I? The..."

He paused abruptly. They had all emerged into the open, and many eyes were watching them from the field.

And, as he looked at that baseball diamond, something which had been dead asleep for years ran, like fire through the veins of Cy Norton.

(By God, he thought, it's the best amateur field I ever saw!)

After that hot day, the brownish dirt was dry and powdery. The diamond, the broad sweep of the outfield, gleamed in cropped green. The bases were newly whitewashed. Even the foul lines, newly painted and shining white, ran far into an outfield bounded by a high wooden fence with trees beyond. But it was the feel of it, the thrill of it, the quickening pulse!

Many of the team, in white uniforms with the vertical stripes, were scattered round the field while somebody knocked out practice flies from home plate. There, beside a line of bats near the dugout, stood old Stuffy in a uniform of the Philadelphia Athletics which was thirty-odd years old.

Stuffy, grinning at H.M., did a war dance as well as his rheumatism allowed.

Near him stood Bob Manning, ready to make an introduction. Bob wasn't quite sure how to do this, but on a ball field he felt at home.

"Men of the Maralarch Terrors!'' he shouted, in a voice somewhat between a toastmaster and a radio announcer. "Let me introduce our guest today, who is no other than—Lord Merrivale!"

Cheers and applause tore the air.

Bob, in thus elevating H.M. to the peerage, had only a vague idea that all British titles were much the same or at least interchangeable. When he went on, he told a story which he had now firmly fixed in his mind and believed.

"Lord Merrivale,'' he yelled, whether or not the outfield could hear him, "is a famous cricketer in England. He has never played baseball. But he'd like to hit a few, and show us how to do if

This time the applause was frantic above the cheers.

It was, as Cy knew, only a polite outlet to conceal one blast of laughter. The shortstop, doubled up with mirth, leaned on one knee and waved his glove. What intoxicated these youths, most of whom were much younger than Bob, was the spectacle of an English lord—though this was the oddest-looking English lord they had ever imagined—marching out to make a fool of himself.

Youth being youth, this was only natural. But Cy hated it. He wished the old boy wouldn't insist on making a fool of himself. And yet...

H.M., as usual, was basking in the spotlight In response to the cheers he first bowed, then he lifted both hands above his head and shook hands with himself, like a prize fighter entering the ring.

The Maralarch Terrors were now delirious.

Old Stuffy gave one more hop. On the line of bats near the dugout was a large mouth organ. Stuffy picked it up in some kind of arranged ritual.

"Hank!" he called in his cracked voice. "Stuffy!" thundered the so-called English lord. Then up to Stuffy's lips went the big mouth organ. And out came rolicking the old song.

" Take me out to the ball game, Take me out in the crowd...”

The man must be dead and buriable who can resist that. Cy, himself half-intoxicated, was remembering old days.

The confident feel of dirt rubbed into your hands! The dust and sun dazzle! The hard pads of the catcher's mask against your cheeks! To get the jump on the runner, with a long whip to second which—once or twice!—the second baseman picks off his shoelaces a second ahead of the driving spikes!

"Now what do you want, Hank?" Stuffy was anxiously asking H.M.

"You got a cap? Gimme a cap!"

"But what about your shoes? You ain't got..."

"Never mind the shoes. Just gimme a cap."

Bob, making a megaphone of his hands, was ordering the team into position.

"That's Moose Wilson who's been hitting flies," he told H.M. "Hey, Moose!"

The Moose, a rather older young man who looked as big and clumsy and amiable as his nickname, smiled and threw away the bat.

"Jimmy," called Bob, "you take first base for me. I want to watch this!"

"And so do I," drawled Crystal, amused that there should be so much fuss and excitement. "Really, these Americans!"

"What do you mean, these Americans?" angrily demanded Cy Norton. "Look here, Stuffy, do you mind if I catch?"

"You're kind of slight built for a catcher, Mr. Norton."

"I know that But if s what I always played, and always wanted to play!"

"Shoot" said the old-timer. "I'm a-gonna umpire this, myself."

Cy, who was buckling on chest protector and pads with the help of a stocky grinning catcher, felt as cold and excited as though this were a World Series. He thrust his fingers into the catcher's mitt while his companion tightened the mask. The stuff felt at once lighter and yet more clumsy than it used to feel. He hadn't had a baseball in his hand for more than twenty years. His throws would undoubtedly be wild, his timing bad.

But if this didn't bother H.M., who was old enough to be his father... well, then, he'd stand beside the Old Maestro or bust!

Cy dashed out to the plate. The Maralarch Terrors, still delirious, were trotting past him. He caught one or two voices.

"Tea and cricket, what-what?" chuckled one.

"Most frightfully what, don't-cher-know?" inquired another.

Cy looked after them curiously. Did these young fellows honestly think, as they must, that people in England really talked like that? Or said, Toodle-oo' and 'Pip-pip,' as though an American were nowadays to say, 'Twenty-three-skidoo'?

You couldn't do anything about it, he had found after years of trying. The damned films saw to that And if only H.M. wouldn't insist on making a..’

But H.M., goodly and great behind his stomach, was now marching towards the plate.

On his head the cap was pressed down partly sideways, giving him still more the look of a Bowery tough in the nineties. On his face was a lofty sneer. Carelessly he swung two heavy bats, and let one go as he neared the batter's box. Here he planted his feet, stuck out his behind, and glared at the pitcher.

Old Stuffy Tyler, once pride of the Athletics, knew pure happiness. Turning his cap round and pulling down a mask, he leaned forward towards his crouch behind the plate. As though they were beginning a real game, his cracked voice rang out. "Play ball!"

11

Well, thought Cy, here we go.

His view through the mask, behind the waggling bat, swept the field before it returned to Moose Wilson oh the mound. Crystal and Bob, standing by the dugout, had been joined by Huntington Davis and Jean, who were gleefully talking.

"Go on!" yelled Bob. "Get started!"

Moose Wilson, on the mound, woke up. He had seen mean-looking batters before. But never such a face as this big fat Lord Merrivale's, which glared at him with the murderousness of an African witch doctor. But the joyousness of his infield made him forget it.

"Toodle-oo, old thing!" the shortstop called happily.

"Pip-pip and all that," carolled the third baseman, trying not to be audible.

Moose grinned. He'd give the old boy an easy one, dead across the pan, but with just a little steam on it to show Moose Wilson took his work seriously and didn't kid much. Moose shifted his weight to his right foot, flexed his arms, and cradled the ball against his stomach.

Then down came the pitch.

Now here, it is to be feared, the subtle harmonies of Robert Browning would be out of place. Description must be more earthy. The ensuing noise, as H.M.'s bat lashed round, can be described only by the comic-strip word BAM.

It is of course not true, as legend now has it, that H.M belted that ball for a quarter of a mile. But it is true that the outfielders stood motionless, their back turned, and watched the ball as it flashed over fence and trees, whence it dwindled to nothingness against a darkening eastern sky.

"Not so bad, Hank," remarked Stuffy Tyler.

The heart and soul of Cy Norton danced a hornpipe.

Crystal, Jean, and Bob were all applauding.

Sir Henry Merrivale, now leaning negligently on his bat, addressed Moose Wilson.

"Come on, son!" he yelled, in a bored and expostulating voice. "Why don't you start pitchin'?’

Though the infielders called congratulations, they still grinned at this lucky fluke. On the face of the Moose there was now a curious look. Stuffy handed out another ball, which Cy threw back to the pitcher for some flat-hand shuffling with dirt

Moose, who might have written his name on every pitch, was now going through an elaborate wind-up. Cy knew what it was. It was the old roundhouse, a slow and wide-breaking out curve which made novices look foolish when they tried to hit it.

"So?" muttered Sir Henry Merrivale.

He shifted his feet, leaned across the plate, and pasted a screamer just inside first base. A simultaneous yell, going up from many throats, showed that mere practice had snapped into the tension of a ball game.

The first basemen, playing well off the bag, lunged left to spear it with his gloved hand, and fell flat on his face. The right fielder, his legs going like a white wheel against green, raced after the ball—until it curved outside the foul line. It thudded into grass, hopped high in the air, hopped again, and disappeared down the shaft of an abandoned well.

For a moment, dead silence.

"Whatfs the matter, son?" H.M. yelled at Stuffy behind him. "Haven't you got any pitchers in this neighbourhood?"

Crystal Manning uttered her low, rich gurgle of laughter.

Again it is not true, as legend has it, that puffs of smoke issued from Moose Wilson's ears. The Moose remained controlled. But the infield showed restlessness. This was sport no longer; it was going to be murder.

"Here's the last ball," shouted Stuffy in his cracked voice, and handed it to Cy. "You threw that ripped one away, so watch out for this!"

"I’ll watch it, Stuffy," the pitcher called back grimly.

Cy Norton, hot and sweating in his mask and pads, knew what they felt It was the sniff of baseball dust as heady as cocaine. The in-fielders, white figures against brown earth, were strung up, on their toes, eyes flickering towards every base at once.

Moose Wilson snaked his fingers out of his glove. He scrabbled in the dirt with both hands, snaked his fingers into the glove, and stood up with the ball.

A very unorthodox umpire spoke behind Cy.

"He's gonna give you the works, Hank," whispered Stuffy. "This is his fast one."

Moose, standing sideways to the batter, stretched out his arms and again cradled the ball to his stomach. Poising himself, he glanced towards an imaginary runner on first, then his arm lashed over.

The ball, a streak of unwinding white yarn, whacked into Cy’s mitt three inches below H.M.'s bat, which had not moved at all. Cy's right hand didn't come near the ball; the ball stuck in his glove.

"Strike—one!" yelped Stuffy, flinging up his right hand.

Cy, feeling the wires and cramps in his legs, stood up from the crouch and threw back to Moose. Moose Wilson grinned round at the infield, who grinned back and felt differently.

Yes, it was a fast one. Cy, crouching again with the front of his mitt automatically moving back and forth towards Moose, was as wild as the team had felt a moment ago.

(Let him belt just one more, Cy was praying. They mean well, but take the grins off their faces! Take...)

Look out!

Down came the pitch again, low and inside, but flicking a corner of the plate before it thudded into the glove. Cy, off-balance, almost fumbled it H.M., though his bat waggled, did not swing.

"Strike—two!" intoned Stuffy.

Cy's throw back to the pitcher was so high that Moose had to jump for it

Sir Henry Merrivale, his face wooden and with an expression of lofty unconcern, moved out of the batter's box. Shifting the bat from one hand to the other, he wiped his hands on the seat of his trousers.

Though ethics forbade them to laugh aloud, from the whole team of the Maralarch Terrors (except their absent catcher) rose a silent wave of amusement and derision. They liked the old boy again; they could pity him.

H.M. stepped back into the box again, resuming his murderous glare.

Moose Wilson, a man of one-track mind, was going to use his fast one again for the strikeout, and with every ounce of speed behind it. His spiked shoe pawed the dirt of the mound.

"Are you ready, lord?" he called with mock sympathy.

"I'm all right son," H.M. yelled back. "You just attend to your pitchin'."

The centre fielder, though he could not have heard this, was lying on his back in helpless mirth, waving his legs in the air. The second baseman sat down on the sack.

Again Moose grinned at his infield. He poised himself, his arm whipped over, and...

"Goddelmighty!" said Stuffy Tyler.

Hardly had the ball seemed to leave Moose's hand when there was that electrifying crack whose very cleanness sings of a line drive deep into the outfield. The ball, vivid white against brown and green, whistled over short with a slow rise between centre and left The centre fielder, caught flat on his back, rolled over and went crazy. The left fielder, calling on two names out of three in the Holy Trinity, tore towards the fence. Roused and stung, the centre fielder passed him.

But they hadn't a chance. Both, unwatchful, smacked headlong into the fence as the ball cleared it by several inches; it slashed and slapped through tree branches, and then rolled along bumpy ground beyond.

"No pitchers," said Sir Henry Merrivale.

"Not like our day," Stuffy agreed sadly.

"Nope."

"Which of 'em do you like best now, Hank? Matty? Old Pete? Walter Johnson? Bob Shaw-key?"

And then Moose Wilson, a professional, lived up to Bob Manning's description of him. Moose, though he stared long, did not fire his glove at the ground or kick out in a spike dance. He walked up to H.M., and extended his hand.

"Shake, lord," he said simply. "I don't know how the sweet Christ you done it at your age. But I've never been hit like that since I made the minors." The Maralarch Terrors were drifting in. Everybody realized that, in the spiritual sense at least, this day was over, A hint of darkness tinged the soft air; eastward it was already shadowy. Most people—led by Bob (still dazed), Jean (exultant), and Davis (tolerantly smiling)—were flocking round H.M.

"Not the House of Lords?" said Moose Wilson, inside that babble.

"No, son, no! Years ago, y’see, the treacherous hounds tried to blackjack me and stick me in the House of Lords. But I fooled 'em. If you've got to gimme a title, I'm a baronet."

"He's a so-and-so," croaked Stuffy, moaning. "Hank here was the greatest natural hitter that ever poled the old tomato. He trained with us three seasons, in the days when the A's was the A's. And do you know why he wouldn't sign up with us? Because he wouldn't take any money."

"He wouldn't... what?"

"It's something, in England, to do with amateur status," Stuffy said despondently. "I didn't get it then. I don't get it now. But if you ain't a amateur, you're a louse."

Cy Norton moved away.

Just over by the edge of the wood, also away from the crowd, he saw Crystal standing and watching him.

"Bob Manning"—Stuffy's voice again clove through the babble—"you send them outfielders back, you go with 'em, and get that ball Hank just hit into the old graveyard! There's a door in the fence, or you can walk around it! But we don't buy another ball until Saturday!"

"All right, Stuffy! All right!"

Cy pulled his mask back over his head, and dropped it on the grass. The obliging Terrors' catcher helped him off with his chest protector and pads. Cy felt cool and tired. He went straight to Crystal, who had backed into the woods, so that they stood in a deeper green twilight.

"You know," said Cy, "for a while there I completely lost my head."

"How very terrible!" said Crystal with a trace of bitterness. "Completely to lose your head, kick out your heels, and be a human being for once!"

Cy laughed, and seemed to sense an angry trembling from her.

"I didn't mean that," Cy told her. "But I liked Bob's Maralarch Terrors. They were as nice as pie to the poor duffer before he started making monkeys of them. Then they were frantic to get back at him. So the old sinner deliberately allowed two strikes and then lammed the third one over the fence. It was only a game, but how frantic those lads were to win!"

"But you've got to win! In anything in life! How else can you succeed?"

Cy, lost in memory, chuckled.

"When I was about fourteen," he said, "they sent me to a fashionable preparatory school where your business was to be a gentleman and pass the College Board exams. I'm still very fond of that school. But one thing always puzzled me."

"Oh?" Crystal was suspicious. "What?"

"Every time there was a sport event, some maniacs called cheer leaders always tried to puff up a fake frenzy, as though it mattered two hoots whether we beat Hotchkiss or Lawrenceville in a football game. Somebody had written songs full of the word 'honour.' We must win, we sang heroically, for 'the honour of the school.'"

"And what's wrong with that?" cried Crystal, who had been brought up on this philosophy herself.

"Everythings wrong with it, my dear. Unless somebody intends to poison the quarterback or bribe the referee—which I doubt—where does honour come into it?"

In that fragrant greenish dimness of woodland, where he stood so close to Crystal, he wondered why he was babbling these platitudes. But he had really angered her.

"Cy Norton, you're impossible! I don't see why I..." Her voice trailed off and grew small. "I've been throwing myself at your head in a way that's positively scandalous! Don't you care for me at all?"

"If you ask me whether I want to sleep with you," returned Cy, with a directness which made her gasp, "the answer is yes. If you ask me whether I like your company, the answer is yes. But—being in love! What is it? I don't know. When Anne was alive I was sure I knew. But..."

No woman, under the circumstances, could have refrained from Crystal's remark. "Shall I tell you about my three husbands?" she asked.

"No!"

"Why not?"

"Because," retorted Cy, "I'm so damned jealous of each one that I want to find him and murder him with a Florentine dagger."

And he put his arms round Crystal, and kissed her for a long time. But both were by way of being amatory experts; both realized the danger of their surroundings at such a time, and both moved back."

"It's f-funny," breathed Crystal, with a gasping laugh. "My ideas about being in love have always been the same as yours."

Cy at the moment couldn't speak at all, so he refrained from comments.

"But," said Crystal, "the real thing does exist. It must, whether we believe in it or not. As Jean will tell you so often, my father and mother..."

Again his arms closed round her. He touched her cheek and her neck, so smooth that the fingers scarcely seemed to brush. Then there was another violent minute or two, before Crystal put her head against his shoulder.

"How—how well do you remember your mother?" Cy managed to ask.

"Only dimly. I was six when she died. She was very kind, but for her there was nobody in the world but Dad; and we knew it Her hobby was painting. Dad..."

"Listen!" Cy said abruptly, and raised his head.

At first it was only a babble of voices, where the crowd still gathered round H.M. and fired questions beyond the edge of the wood.

"I was an amazin' fielder," H.M. said modestly.

"He couldn't field a flock of barns!" croaked Stuffy Tyler. "He was a ice wagon on the bases. But put him into bat, I'm telling you—they just backed the outfield into the next county, and ..."

"It's far past dinnertime!" said Crystal. "The cook will be..."

Cy seized her wrist and impelled her towards the edge of the wood.

And now he heard it

It was somebody's voice, crying far off and yet approaching out of the twilight The baseball field still held its colour and outline as far as the pitcher's box, where the soft dusk began to blur.

But that voice, crying indistinguishable words, had a note of anguish or terror. A white-uniformed figure was running towards them from the direction of the outfield fence. Cy's eyesight could dimly make out what looked like an open door in the high fence.

The white figure stumbled over second base, and fell in the dust Then it struggled up, wabbling, and came on. The first distinguishable word they all heard was the word dead.

It was as though a storm had struck that crowd round H.M. They struggled out, spreading into a line. Cy, still gripping Crystal's wrist, hurried to the front of the group.

The young man he saw running—slowly now, with panting breath—was one whose name or face Cy did not know. But he was one of the outfielders who had been sent to get a lost ball. He was now gasping out words like, "flashlight" and "doctor." He stumbled up to them, his eyes scared under the peaked cap.

"What is it, son?" H.M.'s big voice demanded.

"Out in that graveyard," the young man said between breaths, "the graveyard they don't use any more... on one of the tombstones..."

"Well?"

"Bill and I," the young man said, "found someone's body."

12

Only H.M., Cy, and Davis approached that outfield fence. All others—even Bob Manning, who had not gone out to look for a lost ball—were sternly kept near the dugout

The board fence, ten feet high and painted dull green, marked the boundary of Manning's properly. Jean, Cy remembered, had said that It loomed up with disquieting effect in the twilight, pierced by a door of ordinary size, now wide open, with a small bolt on this side.

"You two," growled H.M. to Cy and Davis, "follow me single file. Anybody got a torch?"

Nobody had. H.M., his baseball cap now discarded, grunted again and lumbered into the old graveyard.

It was in a ruinous state. The whole graveyard could not have occupied a space more than a hundred feet square, and, beyond the fence, it was bounded on its three other sides by heavy yew hedges almost eight feet high.

But the hedges were toppling and sunken inwards with trailing weight Almost obscured by the high harsh grass, many headstones-blackened or grey—leaned at angles as though peering through that yellowish-green grass. A small mausoleum, half-covered with hedge, showed its blackened door on the south side. On the north side, also encroached on by the hedge, stood a smaller cenotaph: though no burying place, it had a door and what even looked like windows.

Not a noise whispered in that crooked forest of graves. The clock had been stopped; there was not time past the later nineteenth century.

"This way!" suddenly called a nervous voice, and Cy’s skin crawled with the shock of it

Some thirty feet ahead of them, some dozen feet away from the old pillared cenotaph, a young man knelt in the grass. His uniform in the dusk had seemed merely a whiter headstone until he spoke.

H.M. led the way through the rustling grass. At one place a black headstone, wafer-thin, had fallen or been uprooted. There were many bird droppings, and at one place a black scar where someone (probably now dead) had tried to light a fire.

The young man in the uniform stood up.

"I'm Bill Wadsworth," he said, and pointed. "We—we found..."

"Yes," grunted H.M. "That's Fred Manning."

Half-sitting, half-lying with his back against a gravestone, Manning sat hunched with his silver grey head hung forward and his legs in the grass along the mound of the grave. They saw him now in a light grey summer suit, with white collar and blue tie. Bloodstains, darkening the coat a few inches under the left armpit, had soaked the shirt on his left side, and still faintly trickled.

H.M., with infinite effort, managed to kneel beside him.

"I—I tried to take his pulse," Bill Wadsworth blurted out "I think he's breathing. Couldn't we get a doctor?"

Cy Norton forebore to mention other cases, or say that the old devil's degrees included an M.B. in medicine.

"Slide him down on his back," H.M. was saying. "E-asy, now!"

He glared at them while they took Manning's weight, as gently as they could, and eased him along the mound of the grave.

A faint bloodstain ran down the headstone. The headstone, for this graveyard was comparatively new. Cy Norton found himself staring at its lettering, only a little defaced:

Sacred to the Memory of Frederick Manning.

The hedges seemed to extend their tentacles, the old gravestones bend in the grass. And then Cy wondered why he had been such an idiot. Under the lettering he saw the dates of birth and death,

1822-1886.

"Has anybody got a penknife?" growled H.M., carefuly turning back the coat.

Young Bill Wadsworth hastily produced from his hip pocket a penknife more like a small clasp knife. Its biggest blade was four inches long, the longest permitted by law. H.M. looked at it with sudden curiosity; then he began carefully to cut the silk shirt.

"Strike matches, all of you!" he ordered. "Keep on strikin' matches!"

Cy Norton and Huntington Davis, who was breathing quickly, had match boxes instead of paper books. The little spurts of flame snapped, snapped again, and followed each other until the red spark winked out. Though they bent close, they could see little except the back of H.M.'s big bald head.

"Uh-huh. That'll do!" he said, and propelled himself up. "Where's the nearest telephone?"

Young Bill pointed to the eastern hedge.

"That's Fenimore Cooper Road out there," he said eagerly. "There's a gas station and a cigar store just along it."

"Phone the nearest hospital," said H.M., shovelling out a handful of change, "and get the most available doctor. I want you to give him a message from another medical man; and for the love of Esau remember what I say! Can you do that?"

"I’ll try, sir."

"Tell him," continued H.M., "there are two stab wounds, one above the other, in the left side on a line round from the nipple. They're both lung wounds, and didn't touch the heart. Got it so far?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Tell him both wounds are 'sucking.' Sure, that's the word! All the same (tell him) the left side of the lung is probably fillin' with blood clots. If s ruddy bad place to operate here; you can explain that; but, if he wants to operate at the hospital, he'd better get an ambulance here in a hurry. Got that? Then repeat it!"

Bill did so, with surprising accuracy.

"Next, phone the police at White Plains. Get Lieutenant Trowbridge, and ask him to get here as soon as he can. That's all. Hop it!"

Bill maneuvered through the graves and patches of stinging nettles, towards a high iron-barred gate in the eastern hedge. You only noticed the gate when he tore away foliage, and climbed over like an orangutan.

"You son!" said H.M., and pointed to Davis. The Old Maestro was now so nervous that his hand shook.

Davis was not all celluloid film. Though he still stared incredulously at the motionless figure on the grave mound, he had himself well under control.

"You name it," he said. "I’ll do it" "Lieutenant Trowbridge, d'ye see, left one copper here on guard. I dunno where the copper is. But find him and bring him here. Oh, ah! And you might bring some electric torches or lanterns."

Davis nodded, and was about to turn away. But human nature could not endure it Davis clenched his fists. His black hair seemed lustrous even in twilight Yet something, perhaps the unexpectedness of seeing a man he believed had vanished forever, seemed to cloud his usual charm.

"I want to know how he got here!" Davis burst out. "I want to know how he got out of that pool and—and flew"—here the unconventional beat him—"I mean, and landed here fully dressed!"

"We all want to know that, Mr. Davis," said Cy.

Davis's own dress consisted of white flannels and a sports coat His face, modelled usually on what-the-successful-man-must be, suddenly grew human.

"I don't ask for my own sake," he added. "I know I'm not much valued here. But Jean is nearly going out of her mind."

"That's true, son," H.M. agreed sombrely. "And she's goin' to feel a whole lot worse when she learns about this. Don't tell her—yet"

"I..." Davis began clearly and stopped. "Sorry," he added. "I forgot I had an errand to do."

And, a man out of his element and now half out of his mind, he strode away through the rustling grass.

The evening air was thickened by a scent of vegetation and decay. Some distance away there was a grey stone angel, its neck so cracked that a shove would make the head fall off. And, Cy realized, Davis had sensed one thing without knowing it

This graveyard, as such, held no eeriness or unease. It all flowed from Frederick Manning. It all flowed from the sprawled figure on the grave mound, with is own name written above his head.

Manning should have been up and bowing to them, with his suave smile and his imposing airs and his adroitness at trickery, But he lay there with disordered hair and a white face, even his shoes so very new—Cy bent closer—that the yellowish polished soles bore no more than a few stains or scratches. With the mainspring gone, it was worse. Manning's re-appearance made the problem harder than his disappearance.

Sir Henry Merrivale prowled among the graves, his big arms folded across his barrel chest.

"H.M.!" Cy spoke abruptly, and pointed to Manning. "How bad is it?"

"Blood clots f illin' the lung? Pretty bad. But he's got a chance."

"H.M., did you expect this?"

H.M. stopped and looked at him over the big spectacles.

"It's uncommon kind of you, son, to regard the old man as omniscient. Which the same I am not. No, burn it! I didn't expect this. But I can see now it's logical and—cor!—even inevitable."

"Presumably he didn't stab himself." Cy paused. "Murder?"

"Yes. As sure as guns."

The rank smell of the vegetation seemed to intensify.

"What kind of weapon? Or did you find a weapon?"

"No, I didn't see one. But d'ye know," scowled a worried H.M., taking from his trousers pocket the knife Bill had given him, and opening it, "I'd guess it was a thin blade about four inches long. A bit like this."

"You're not thinking that kid Bill...?"

"No, no! But is this a common kind of knife here?"

"If 8 a boy's knife. Or used to be. I was very proud of mine."

"Still, you could buy it and carry it without rousin' suspicion?"

"I suppose so." Again Cy indicated the grave. "One of Manning's relatives is buried here. Do you think it's a family graveyard?"

H.M. shook his head.

"No, son. There are other names on the graves. Besides, if Fred Manning had anything to do with it this place wouldn't be in ruins. I was just wondering if..."

He lumbered back to the grave. He looked at Manning. His eyes turned to the right

Facing them, only a dozen feet away, was the front of the blackened stone cenotaph or memorial. It had evidently been built at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was circular, with small circular pillars round it the roof a flattish dome. Lettering had been cut deep into a big plaque on the roof a little out from the door.

The first curled letters of the plaque were indecipherable. But as deep white carving will appear when it has been cut into darkened stone, even in that light they could read the rest

Major John Kedwick Manning, aetat lst May, 1734, Who perished at the Battle of Long Island, In the War for American Independence, 27th August, 1776.

The forgotten words crept into Cy Norton's heart, as at a stir of old bugles or ghostly drums.

"Manning would have been proud of that, wouldn't he?" H.M. rumbled softly.

"Yes."

"Then, why," raved H.M., "an 'abandoned' graveyard? Why this place o' skulls and weeds stuck down and lost between a baseball field and a modern road? In England you can't abandon a graveyard; it's church property. Why is it here, with no church at all? Who owns it?"

"I don't know!" Cy retorted. Gnats touched his face. He felt as though he were in the middle of the eighteenth century. "But Jean told us in the car, you remember, it's a place that 'nobody can touch because of laws or something.'"

"Stop a bit!" said H.M. "Gimme a match!"

Cy tossed over the box.

H.M. struck a match. Again with corporation trouble, he knelt down in the long grass beside the grave mound where Manning lay. Then he moved the match outwards, in the direction of the cenotaph.

"Uh-huh," he nodded. "That's got it. Blood drops. Blood drops leading in the direction of..." He nodded towards the cenotaph, whose door might once have been shining bronze. "One more shot!" added H.M.

Carefully, gingerly, he felt over Manning's inert body. From the right-hand side pocket of the coat he took out a very large key, brand-new. If it had not been so new, Cy thought, it might have fitted the lock of the cenotaph door.

"Again, I'm tellin' you, it's inevitable!" H.M. was arguing to a ghostly jury. He turned to Cy. "What time is it, son?"

Cy, consulting his wrist watch and reporting ten minutes past nine, suddenly remembered another wrist watch. Manning, when he plunged into that pool had been wearing a wrist watch

H.M., with a ghoulish nod of understanding, watched Cy as the latter went round to inspect Manning's left arm. On the left wrist, when the palm lay upturned, he saw the brown strap of the wrist watch.

"Easy with that arm, now!" implored H.M., as Cy gently turned over the wrist

"Here's the watch," Cy said. "It's still so waterlogged you can see a drop or two under the crystal. Is stopped at nine thirty-six."

H.M. nodded, bending over to look.

"Right son. That's the time he dived into the pool. And he hasn't taken it off his wrist since."

"H.M.," Cy burst out wildly, "how the hell did he do it? Everything depends on that! He did do it, and yet..."

"Easy, Cy! Speakin' for myself, I'd like to hear some kind of explanation for the 'abandoned graveyard.'"

Whereupon two voices spoke out, one after the other, through that dusky hedge-walled place.

The first was Jean Manning's. "I can explain it'"

Stumbling from the direction of the fence, Jean carried a light whose beam swept past another stone angel hiding its face.

The second voice came from the top of the iron-barred gate in the eastern wall, where young Bill Wadsworth had swung himself up and sat with his white uniform outlined against a dark sky.

"The doctor," Bill shouted, "says he's going to operate here. He'll be here in two shakes."

H.M., stumbling in the grass, hurried out and intercepted Jean before she reached that inert figure on the grave mound. H.M. was upset. Much as he wanted to be the old man, loftily above human affairs, you would guess that he could not keep back sympathy and pity for the naive, loyal Jean.

So he barred her way and put his big hands on her shoulders.

"Where'd you learn this?" he asked in a low growl. "Did Davis...?"

The girl's light, an electric hand lamp, was now directed at the ground. But her face, with the broad mouth and blue eyes, was frantic.

"I haven't seen Dave," she told him. "But the rumours... Stuffy chased me all around the house, but I got away. I know it's Dad. Is he...?"

"No, my wench. That's straight. He's been hurt, but he's not going to die."

Outside the barred gate in the eastern wall, obscured by torn vines, flashed motor headlights; two cars ground to a stop.

"That's the doctor now," H.M. said woodenly. "And you're not going' to see..."

"I won't go away! You can't send me!"

Taking her by the left arm, signalling to Cy to get round on the other side, H.M. set his bulk against any view Jean might have of the grave mound. He marched her straight towards the small cenotaph.

‘I know a whole lot," Jean was still pleading. "I know why this cemetery can't be touched, but I didn't want to bother at the time. Ill tell you if you let me stay. I—I've even followed Dad sometimes. I followed him when he went to that place where they trace people. I even followed him when he went to visit—you-know-who. And what's more..."

H.M. had put away both large pocket knife and large key. He now produced the key, and nodded towards the cenotaph.

There's nothing to be scared of," he told Jean. "Nobody's buried there; if s a memorial you've probably seen a thousand times from outside."

"Of course. But why...?"

H.M. yelled over his shoulder at the white-clad figure still perched high on top of the iron gate.

"Will you tell 'em what’s what?" he yelled.

The figure waved assent, disappeared, and, from the ensuing sounds, appeared, to be smashing an old lock with a heavy stone.

Confidently H.M. took the large key from his pocket, and slid it into the lock of the age-crusted bronze door. Not only did the new key fit, but the lock was oiled. Cy Norton heard it snap.

"I've got some questions to ask you, my dolly," H.M. said to Jean, looking her in the eyes, "and they're awful important. Cy, you take the light That's it Now well try it."

The door opened with hardly a sound.

"Cor!" said H.M. in real astonishment.

No age-poisoned air thickened their breathing from inside. The air was close and stuffy, but little worse than in the graveyard. And, as the beam of the hand lamp moved round, Cy and Jean were just as startled at the transformation.

In the year 1802, according to a tablet on the wall, this smallish circular room had been painted round with a panorama of scenes from the Revolutionary War. By this time it should have been obliterated by age and dirt It was oil painting on very thick plaster. But someone— evidently recently—had washed it clean.

Despite heavy cracks and patches of damp, there stood out vividly the colours of a bad but zealous painter. Red uniforms were locked against buff-and-blue, amid cream-puff cannon smoke; Washington, at Yorktown, looked seven feet high.

"Cor!" muttered H.M., now in a thoughtful tone.

At waist height round the circular room ran a marble ledge. On this ledge stood three empty water buckets, an old-fashioned bowl and pitcher with two sponges, a metal bowl, and more cleaning material.

"Never mind that, son!" H.M. told Cy. "Turn that light under the ledge! And across the floor!"

Under the ledge stood a large and new pigskin suitcase, its brass brimmings a-gleam. Near the middle of the marble floor, which was comparatively clean, lay a .38 Smith and Wesson single-action revolver.

From that point one blood drop, then another, led towards the door.

"Easy, now!" said H.M., as Jean shied away. "Isn't that the revolver I found on top of my bag last night? Where's it been since?"

"As I reminded you this morning," Cy retorted, "Manning just put it away in an unlocked drawer. Where anybody could get it."

Disregarding his protest about fingerprints, H.M. climbed down on his knees in order to pick up the gun, and struggled to his feet

"Listen, son!" he said wearily. "I’ll simply tell you, as a crimonological fact that you never do get any usable prints of a gun except on the grip. And this grip is criss-crossed walnut wood that won't take prints."

After sniffing at the barrel, he explored the inside with a match stick.

"So!" he muttered. "This gun's clean. Hasn't been fired for some time. I wonder, now..."

Sudden inspiration seemed to distend H.M.'s cheeks, like an ogre in a pantomime. Breaking open the magazine, which showed the ends of cartridge cases, he plucked out one bullet He scrutinized it carefully, also weighing it in his hand. He did this, while Cy's nerves ached, with every bullet in the magazine; and shut it up again.

"So!" he repeated, dropping the revolver on the floor with an echoing clatter of marble. "Don't you see what this place means now!"

13

Cy, though certain he did understand, was nevertheless infuriated when H.M.'s mind immediately flew off at a tangent.

"Gimme that light!" said Sir Henry Merrivale.

His footsteps echoed, hollow and gritty. Though the bronze door had been closed since they entered, Cy could now see why the air had been at least breathable.

Round the circle radiating from the door, there had been set in the wall three small windows of very thick glass, so encrusted with dirt on the outside that they had hardly looked like windows.

The window at the back, facing the door, had been partly smashed in a diagonal line. It had been done recently; a faint glass splinter glittered on the marble ledge below.H.M. pressed the light close, swallowing everything else in darkness. Hedge tendrils pressed through.

On the ledge of the window, under the smashed section, there were darkish stains. H.M.'s lamp burned in his companion's eyes as he swung round; both Cy and Jean lifted a hand to shield their eyes. "So!" muttered H.M.

He directed the light towards the cleaning materials on the marble ledge.

"I expect," he said to Jean, "it was your father who cleaned these wall paintings?"

"Yes!" said the puzzled Jean. "He's beenat it, off and on, ever since I was eighteen. He didn't do it very often, of course. Sometimes he forgot it And then he had to sneak out..."

Even H.M. was taken aback. "Sneak out?"

"Yes! Because once old Mr. Van Sellers had him in court, and under the law there's absolutely nothing..."

H.M. pressed one hand to his forehead.

"Stop the bus!" he said. "For the minute, my dolly, well forget why this place has to be kept like a rubbish-heap. I got other concerns. Has your old man been cleaning the walls recently?"

"Yes, very recently! But what on earth ... ?"

H.M. the light bobbing so that painted soldier faces alternately peered out and vanished, examined the three empty buckets on the ledge. One was dry; two were very faintly moist. One sponge, inky black, was already dry; another, dark brown with a yellow edge, very nearly dry. In the big metal bowl were braces of whitish sediment Old cleaning rags, blackened towels...

Outside, Cy knew, the doctor and his assistants would be at work (or had they finished?) under lights in a grotesque graveyard.

Why was H.M. holding back? He wanted desperately to question Jean; but was he waiting for Manning's body to be removed?

Jean, a lithe slim figure in a green dress, kept her elbow partly raised as though to shield her eyes if the light struck them again.

H.M., after a meditative look at the ceiling and a careful study of the floor, turned round.

"Cor," he said to Jean, "how I admire your father!"

"For—for cleaning these pictures?"

"Not exactly," said H.M. "It concerns what I was askin' you awhile ago. Do you see what this place means?"

"May J answer that?" Cy cut in. "It was Manning's other house."

"Other house?" echoed Jean.

"Listen, my dolly," said H.M., holding himself as though for a very delicate surgical operation. "Your father was going to run away with his girl friend, Irene Stanley. He might never come back—no wincing, now!—or he might come back sooner than you think. But he had to make a lot of preparations he couldn't make in his own house. D'ye follow me?"

"What did you mean," Jean said quickly, "by 'sooner than I think*?"

H.M. ignored this.

"If you look at the soles of his shoes while he's lying out there, you'll see they're so new they've hardly been walked in. Now look"—the white light beam darted—"at the brand-new pigskin suitcase under the ledge. You'll find it full of new clothes, all unmarked, for his new life.

"Next," pursued H.M., "think of what happened at the swimming pool this morning. Fred Manning dived into the pool. Presently he crawled out invisibly...."

"How?" asked Cy.

"Shut up," said H.M., and looked back at Jean. "But when he left the pool, my dolly, he had to have clothes. And he didn't have 'em."

"Are you telling me," Cy was beginning to rave, "that Manning—in front of all our eyes—got out of that pool stark naked?"

"Practically speakin', yes. All he had was.,,"

"A wrist watch," said Cy. "And a pair of socks."

"Are you goin' to shut up, son?"

"All right, all right!"

"Now I see, my dolly, when your father left the pool, there's another thing he had to have. He had to find cover."

"Why did he need cover," demanded Cy, "if he happened to be invisible? Sorry, sorry! I won't say another word."

All their voices seemed to tumble and blatter in that little cenotaph. They were in near darkness, since H.M. directed the light at the floor. And Cy sensed from H.M. a fierce earnestness which kept him quiet.

"But getting to cover," H.M. wenton, "was easy. All Manning had to do was get inside the woods. Then he could skirt the tree-lined edges of a baseball field, where nobody would turn up until late afternoon or early evening. He next circles round the fence or goes through the door; he's through the graveyard, and here. Here, I repeat, where he can dress."

There was a silence. Cy could hear Jean breathing with slow respiration.

"If he did that"—Jean cleared her throat—"why didn't he go away?"

"Ah! Now we're comin' to it. Because he couldn't go away—yet."

"Couldn't?"

"I mean he had an appointment here." H.M. put down the lamp on the marble ledge. "He had an appointment for later in the day."

"An app—, with whom?"

"With somebody from your house," replied H.M.

(It's on the way, thought Cy. You can hear it coming like a flying bomb in the old days: that noise like a demented motorcycle which spurts to a roar or suddenly cuts out.)

"Y'see," H.M. explained patiently, "the person who was to meet your father couldn't follow him straightaway. The D.A. himself would be there, as your father well knew; so the other person's absence would be noticed. The police would be there. They'd be all over the place until late afternoon at least. So this person had to be there on deck for questioning at any given time.

"The only possible time for an appointment here," continued H.M. in the same tone, "would be early evening. There'd be baseball practice, further camouflage if the other person wanted to stroll about And, with all due respect to 'em, the Maralarch Terrors don't usually smack home runs over the fence."

The lamp on the marble ledge threw its white beam just above the waist of Jean's green dress. In the gloom above you could see the frightened, bewildered shine of her eyes.

"This person..." she repeated out of a dry throat. "But why an appointment with Dad here?"

"Two reasons," returned H.M., in a heavy, clear voice. "First, about a matter of an alleged hundred thousand dollars. Second, because this person meant to murder your father. And damned near succeeded."

Dead silence. Horror and shock and incredulity trembled in Jean's face, with incredulity overcoming the rest.

‘—murderer'!" She tested the word as though she had never heard it before.

"Yes."

"In our house last night?"

"Yes. Lemme tell you what I think happened here. The murderer came equipped with that revolver. There was—yes, I think a bit of argument Oh, my eye, wasn't there! The murderer fired point-blank."

"But look here!" Cy intervened. "Manning was stabbed; not shot As you said yourself, that gun

"No," said H.M.; and his voice lifted. "It can't be fired. Because the powder's, been removed from every cartridge case, and the cartridge case fitted back on the bullet with a bit of paper. Manning's work of course. He was treatin' that gun awful casually, to all appearances.

"But in the middle of last night, or whenever it was," H.M. continued, "he plucked the sting, that's all. He might have just pinched the cartridges or substituted blanks. But Manning knew his enemy was goin' to go for him. And the enemy might have discovered the gun wasn't loaded. It's very soothing to know you're facin' a revolver as dead as cinders."

"H.M.," Cy blurted out, "what happened here? Goon!"

H.M. looked sideways at Jean.

"The murderer fired. Maybe a couple of times, to a tune of clicks. Then Manning reached out for that person with his bare hands. Out came a knife, with a thinnish blade about four inches long...."

"Like that knife, you've got in your trousers' pocket not?"

"Oh, son! I don't know what kind of knife. All I know is it wasn't big, or Manning would be a goner now."

"Anyway," Cy insisted, with a shaking sense of relief, "the murderer couldn't have been a woman?"

"I'm not givin' my opinion. But an old-time copper in England would say: oh, ah, probably a woman. Next to poisoning, it's the woman's weapon."

Here H.M. made a sudden ghoulish gesture with his hands. Though he was only a shadow, big and distorted by near darkness, the other two stepped back.

"Suppose I'm Manning," he said, "coming at you with my hands. What are you goin' to do? You won't stab for the chest; here's the hand comin' out to grab your right hand with the knife. You'll make a feint with your left hand, and you'll go under his left arm to stab him in the side. It's happened before, and not with Dagoes either."

"So that's it!" said Jean Manning.

Her yellow hair seemed lifeless, all her understanding of people gone. She groped in a dead world.

"That's the reason for this third degree," she whispered out. Then her voice rose. "You think I tried to kill Dad ..."

"Oh, my dolly! No, no, no! I understand you're fonder of your old man than anybody else is. I know you wouldn't hurt him." H.M.'s voice sounded grotesque in its tenderness, because he was the old man and he wouldn't display such emotions. "That's why this has been so ruddy difficult!"

Jean released her breath in a gasp. Her mind darted out to protect the one she loved best.

"You weren't thinking of—Dave?"

"No again. He hasn't got the guts," said H.M. brutally, "and he hasn't got the brains." Again the voice softened. "But if you want him, my dolly, you can have him."

"He has got brains! He..."

"I've had to tell you all this," H.M. interposed, "because I want to ask you one particular question. You won't want to answer it. You think both Cy Norton and I are against you and your father"

"You are."

"You'll also be afraid,'' H.M continued wearily, "that the papers will get hold of the story, which they may, and it'll make you feel still worse. But, lord love a duck, it's vital!"

Jean braced herself. "What question is so vital?"

"Where," asked H.M., "does Irene Stanley really live?"

Jean had turned her head away so that even with the light shining across above the waist of the green dress Cy could tell only that she was trembling. Then the yellow hair whipped round.

"I won't tell you," she answered quietly.

"Listen, my dolly! Since your father's been attacked—and I warn you he may not survive this—everything's changed. I got to find Irene Stanley!"

"Why don't you ask your friends, the police?" "Because I'm protectin' your father, not chasing him!"

"That's the reason, I suppose—and don't deny it, because I was there at the pool!—why you swore you'd get him?"

"I was blazin' mad for a minute, my dolly! Because he hocussed me. I didn't mean it!" ' Jean laughed on a high quavery note near tears.

Cy, though he didn't understand why it was so urgent to find Irene Stanley, tried to help.

"Weren't you there," he asked Jean, "when H.M. gave the District Attorney a fake address and telephone number for Irene Stanley, to try to divert them? Surely that dirty-work is the strongest evidence of good faith?"

"I'm afraid you would say anything, Mr. Norton," Jean informed him with one shoulder lifted. Mercilessly she quoted Cy: "He carefully gathered together and smashed everything he pretended to represent' That's what you said."

"My dolly," said H.M., "we’ve got to find Irene Stanley tonight! Tonight! Where is she?"

"I won't tell you," cried Jean. "And you can't make me!"

Outside, on the front of the bronze door, there was a heavy knocking.

It dragged at nerves by the roots. Now here, it occurred to Cy, was courtesy. Here was delicacy! Who knocks at the door of a cenotaph in a cemetery full of dead bones?

But the illusion was destroyed when he opened the door. Davis, breathing hard from running, and holding a flashlight in his hand, appeared in the doorway.

"I had a devil of a time finding your policeman," he reported, "because he was smack-bang beside the pool, where he was supposed to be."

Then they saw the blue coat, the polished silver buttons. It was the policeman's night stick which had hammered that door. His face was middle-aged and intently serious. Beyond him there were no doctors, no figure on the grave mound-nothing except a heavy grey dusk.

"Are you Sir Henry Merrivale?" the law asked.

H.M. lumbered forward, Jean seized the lamp from him as though to protect herself from tears.

"Yes," growled H.M. "I'm the one who sent for you. Where is Mr. Manning? And how is he?"

"They've just left" The police officer nodded towards the barred gate. "He's pretty bad. Dr. Willard says the operation was all right; but you can't tell yet, he says. Crystal and young Bob," grunted the police, "made them take him to the house instead of the hospital."

"Has Lieutenant Trowbridge got here yet?"

"Not yet, sir. They can't find him."

"Officer," said H.M., "I've got absolutely no authority to give you instructions. But do you think you can trust me?"

The other looked at him and smiled. "I guess I could do that," he said.

"Here's the key to this cenotaph," H.M. went on, handing him the key. "Lock it and stand outside the door until the Lieutenant gets here. There's important evidence in here "

"Evidence?"

"That's right. Especially on the ledge and (unless I miss my guess) in that suitcase under the ledge. If Manning dies, it means the chair."

The police officer whistled.

"I want the Lieutenant to have somebody guardin' this door until seven o'clock tomorrow morning. I..." H.M. rubbed his hands over his head. "But maybe he won't do it. You got a notebook and pencil?"

"Always got 'em."

"Then come inside here, and I’ll write down my reasons."

The policeman moved inside, with Davis following. And, the moment that doorway was unblocked, Jean Manning darted out of it and ran frantically with the hand lamp.

"Jean!" exclaimed Davis, who had not see her. "Jean!"

H.M gripped him by the arm.

'I've got instructions for you, son," he declared, "that may bring some results." He looked at Cy. "After her, you ruddy fool!" he yelled. "Stop her! Get her somehow!"

Cy plunged out of that cenotaph into the deep grass. He could see her easily at the moment; she had to use the light in hurrying among the gravestones. Cy himself banged into more than one of them. The light disappeared, switched off, as Jean dashed through the open door in the fence of the baseball field.

The long dusk was not quite heavy enough to blur every outline. Jean, almost invisible in her green dress, ran with lithe grace across the outfield and the diamond, where bases still glimmered white. Cy kept up with her, though the pace jarred his heart. Into his lungs swept a fragrance of trees at evening.

("We've got to find Irene Stanley tonight" Why?)

Jean had reached the woods, and was again compelled to switch on the light

Got to overtake her! Now for a spurt!

Inside the trees, though she raced along the broad path, Jean now began to falter. The light wavered and swung. It was not lack of stamina, as Cy knew; it was only that she felt—wrongly, but with fierce absorption—complete helplessness and hopelessness.

"Jean!" he tried to shout but the word failed.

Out she darted from the trees to the open lawn. She was perhaps twenty feet ahead of him when she floundered as though trapped. On her left stretched the line of brown-painted bathing cabins, ten of them; a path ran in front of these through the parallel row of rhododendron bushes.

Jean, feeling only an animal instinct to yield but get out of the sight, faltered into that path and along it towards the middle. There she leaned drooping against the frame of a bathing cabin, arm along it, head on arm, half-crying.

Cy approached her very slowly. He did not attempt to speak as she pressed her closed eyelids still more defiantly against her forearm.

For it was an eerie place now, like a scene out of a child's magic book.

Westwards, behind the long house, remnants of a strong red sunset still lay along the dark horizon. Where the thick bushes lay parallel to the bathing cabins, the broad path through the bushes bisected them just at the middle of the pool's long side.

That path made an avenue to the pool which, for some reason known only to police, had been filled again. The dark, still water was touched with crimson gleams from the sunset. Faint light kindled the grass path to the pool.

Jean spoke first, her forehead still against her arm.

"What have I done to you?" she asked like a child. "What makes you dislike me so much?"

"I don't dislike you, Jean. And nobody else ever will, either." Then Cy laughed gently, in a way he knew she would recognize as sympathetic.

"What's so very funny?" Jean asked pettishly.

"I was just thinking," he said, "of George Washington in that Revolutionary War panorama. He looked at least seven feet high."

"He did, didn't he?"

"Also, they put in those little windows first. The patriotic artist, painting round them, managed to omit the heads of Lord Cornwallis and two other British generals."

Jean extinguished the lamp, dropping it on the ground. She turned round with a faintly ashamed air, and an ashamed smile.

"When you came out here yesterday," she told him, "I thought you were so—nice!"

"I hope you still think so, Jean."

Suddenly the girl seemed to realize where she was. She was looking straight down the grass path towards the pool, where dim red reflections trembled in the water. The high bushes were dark in silhouette against the reddish sky, like hedges.

"That's the place where..." she pointed ahead. Then Jean hesitated, scuffing the toe of her shoe in the grass. "Cy. They don't think I had anything to do with...?"

"No, no, no!"

"That's where you were, on the opposite bank of the pool, looking across it" Again she pointed. "With Mr. Betterton's head up out of the water underneath you. It looked awfully funny."

"His head looked funny? In what way?"

"Oh, I don't know. Like a water-polo ball or something." She frowned for a moment then dismissed the thought. "Here's where I was." Jean turned round, and stood about a foot from the right-hand end of the bushes facing the bathing cabins. "I was talking to Dave. In another second I'd have turned right, by this little white sign that says, Ladies. Dave would have turned left where it says, Gents. But you shouted, and we both turned around. I could see you, and a part of Sir Henry's face, and Mr. Betterton's head."

Why did Mr. Betterton's head keep butting into this? Cy knew he must make haste; he must get Irene Stanley's address while Jean was in a friendly mood; but one question tortured him.

"Jean, you were in the pool when your father came down to speak to H.M. and me. Did you notice his socks?"

"What on... his socks?’

"Was there anything unusual about them?"

"N-no. Just a pair of silk socks. Brown, the kind he usually wears. I only noticed them at all because he wears his trousers too short, and..."

"Was there anything peculiar about his wrist watch?"

The red tinges had almost faded from the water of the pool. The silhouette of the bushes began to melt into softness and fragrance of the night. Cy knew he must not press Jean too far, because she was trembling. She anticipated him, in an odd voice, and put her hand on his arm.

"Cy. I—I made an awful fool of myself—back there. It doesn't really matter about Irene Stanley. If I tell you, will you let me go so I can run to the house and be near Dad?"

This was the point at which Sir Henry Merrivale, very faintly seen, turned into the other path between the bushes and the bathing cabins. He heard the words, and hastened up.

That woman's in New York," Jean added. "If you want to know where..."

"I'm glad you said that, my dolly. Burn it all, the time's gettin' on! Is there any train to town I can get in a hurry?"

Jean drew back Cy's sleeve and consulted the luminous dial of his wrist watch.

"You could get the three minutes to ten if you hurry. But they go every half-hour. It doesn't matter."

"It does matter! You"—he tapped Cy's shoulder—"take the car and follow me with the two gals." Jean cried out in protest, but he went on. "I've got to do a bit of reconnoitering first. Bring Bob too, if you can find him. We'll arrange a meetin' place. —What's Irene Stanley's address, my dolly?"

Jean began to laugh. It was almost hysterical, until she recovered herself.

"Nobody on earth, except the police," Jean said, "would ever guess where she lives. She lives in Grand Central Station."

After a pause, Jean added with a wry smile, "Didn't I tell you when we first met, Sir Henry, that I knew a good deal about that station?"

14

In the main hall at Grand Central Station, the clock over the information desk in that cathedral said five minutes to midnight

In one of the arcades on the Vanderbilt Avenue side, many glass fronts were still open and lighted. One of these was a large room, lined with white tile and mirrors, over which hummed fans as big as the propellers of ocean liners. It dispensed such delicacies as frankfurters, hamburgers, and other foods which to one just arrived from England are as ambrosia of the gods.

Leaning against the marble counter, Sir Henry Merrivale had just polished off his fourth frankfurter and was considering the advisability of a further snack.

Aside from the paper napkin stuck into his collar, H.M. was decently and even properly dressed. On his head he wore a new loose-fitting Panama hat, bought on his arrival from Maralarch. In less than an hour and a half s time, he had accomplished much.

On his evil face there was still the look one who sees a long shot come home at sixty-to-one. But this did not predominate. Bafflement, hope deferred, even despair swelled his countenance into a look of malevolent suffering. The young man behind the counter, a square-headed youth whose name of Diedrich Brinker told of forebears in blameless Dutch graves, was concerned.

"Say, Pop," he inquired, "are you feeling all right?"

H.M., who would have got into conversation with a stuffed owl if there had been nothing else present, hastened to reassure him.

"It ain't the hot dogs," he said. "But I've got to get that 11:45 plane for Washington tomorrow morning!"

The other's face retreated. "No dough?" it asked coldly.

"Oh, I got plenty of dough," said H.M., producing a roll of bills which caused an electric start through other customers along the counter. "It’s a feller named Byles, Gil Byles.

"In the past hour and a half," pursued H.M., "I've had a long talk on the phone with a gal named Miss Engels, I've seen a gal named Irene Stanley and another named Flossie Peters..."

For his age, reflected the shocked Diedrich, this old boy was one heller with the dames.

"I’ve visited every chem—I mean drugstore— thaf s open. Oh, my eye! I know half of it! I've known half of it ever since I was in the wine cellar.

But the other half: I'm licked! If I could only…’

Here H.M. straightened up. He did see something. Reflected in the mirror opposite, from someone standing outside, was a vaguely familiar face. The man wore plain clothes, his pockets stuffed with newspapers; and then came recognition. It was the face of Officer Aloysius J. O'Casey.

"Now wait a minute!" urged Officer O'Casey, seeming to materialize at H.M.'s side in one bound. His tone was respectful and even reverent. "Will you listen to me, Sir Henry?"

(The inevitable term Pop, in addressing H.M., had disappeared from 0'Casey's vocabulary and even from his mind.)

"I'm not sore at you," O'Casey said earnestly. "I told Slats Ferris today, I said, I’m not even sore at him any longer. Because,' I said, 'he's not human.'"

"Well... now!" said the great man, considerably mollified. "Have a hot dog?" he invited.

"Thanks. One large frank and an orangeade!" yelled Officer O'Casey, and immediately lowered his voice, leaning conspiratorially with one elbow on the counter.

"Then I got to thinking again," he went on. "I don't go for this Yogi junk; see what I mean, Sir Henry? But I do go for brains. And I said to myself, 'Sir Henry Merrivale,' I said, 'knows more goddam tricks than any man alive.'"

The great man was still more gratified. "Hem!" he said modestly.

"'But,' I said to myself, 'there's one trick he hasn't guessed. And I have.'" Officer O'Casey now stopped quoting his thoughts. "I know how Mr. Manning got out of that pool."

"What's that, son?"

"I'm telling you," O'Casey assured him in a low voice. "And the secret is that water-polo ball."

H.M., as the other picked up the frankfurter roll and bit off a third of it, began to look still more bedevilled.

"Don't you remember there was a water-polo ball they were slapping around at first? What happened to it later?" demanded O'Casey, swallowing hard.

"Son, listen! I..."

"Mr. Manning's got the ball all prepared beforehand, see? So that nobody knows. He just dives in. He's got some contraption fixed up, see, so he can stick his head inside the ball and seal it up against water and breathe through the rubber. Then all he's got to do is tread water and look like a big ball."

H.M. gave Officer O'Casey a long, slow look.

"Uh-huh," he said. "But wouldn't it have been a bit embarrassin' if somebody smacked that ball while his face was inside? Or if we saw a water-polo ball climb up out of the pool and walk away on legs?"

"Cut the clowning," O'Casey said. "How long did you actually watch the pool?" "Hey?"

"For five minutes, maybe, before we got there.

The DA. asked you, and you said that. And for ten minutes after we got there, say. O.K.! So he's a gone goose, I admit, unless he's got protection."

"That's what I keep telling you, son!"

O'Casey shook his head.

"Look, Sir Henry." He tapped the counter after finishing his frankfurter. "There was one time, when you were sitting in that swing talking about Robert Brownfield and wet paper wads and pruning shears, that every single one of 'em crowded around you with their backs to the pool. Get it? That's the time when Mr. Manning crawls out of the pool in his headpiece and walks away."

"Listen, son. Will you stop addin' to my worries? You yourself dived in the pool and said he wasn't there!"

Officer O'Casey shook his head.

"Just remember, sir," he said, "I was swimming on the bottom of the pool. I was looking for a dead joe. If he'd kept his feet up, I wouldn't have noticed him."

And now O'Casey, to add mystery, bent forward and tapped H.M.'s shoulder.

"That's not all," he muttered. "How do you feel about the electric chair?"

Again Sir Henry Merrivale gave him a long, slow look.

"I feel," replied H.M., "that I don't want to sit in it Is there a general consensus of opinion that I ought to?"

"No, no! I mean the electric chair I found on the terrace at that house!" It was at this point that Cy Norton, who had heard every word of this conversation from outside, entered the hot-dog emporium.

Cy was just in time to see H.M., purple in the face, clutching with both hands at a wabbling hat.

"Gemme another hot dog," H.M. said weakly. "They're all scatty, but this feller's the scattiest. Oh, my eye! Electric chair!"

Officer O'Casey, deeply serious, addressed Diedrich on the other side of the counter. Diedrich, who had been consulting a newspaper under the counter, nodded back.

"I'm the discoverer of the electric chair," declared O'Casey, with galvanic effect on the other customers. "It says so on page 26 here. Didn't you know about the electric chair, Sir Henry?"

"Easy, son! What in the name of... ?"

"Read it," invited the other, whipping a newspaper out of his pocket and unfolding it to a marked column.

H.M., evidently adjusting his mental balance, took the paper and adjusted his spectacles as well. Though not a lead, this part of the newspaper story had a very fair amount of space.

"Well, whadd'ye know?" muttered O'Casey. "He didn't even learn about that chair!"

"He was too cockeyed," explained Diedrich, in sympathetic defence. "The paper here says he was all ginned up anyway."

For some reason an intense silence settled under the whirring fans. Most of the customers here had read their evening papers. They stared at him, motionless, as though expecting some kind of atomic effect

Slowly H.M. put down the newspaper on the counter. His mouth was open, and stayed open. He was looking straight ahead at the opposite mirror, without seeing it deep in rearranging evidence.

Then H.M. woke up. A moment later he found his voice.

"I’ve got it!" said H.M. "By the six horn's of Satan, I’ve got it!"

Cy Norton, who knew better than to intervene before then, darted forward and grabbed H.M.'s arm.

"Come on!" he said. "Bob Manning and the two girls are waiting at the information desk, where you told us to meet you! I thought you were on the loose again and probably trying to wreck the subway. Come on!"

"I'm comin'," agreed H.M. slowly.

But, before he put money on the counter and turned away, he shook Officer O'Casey's hand.

"Son," he said, "if anybody ever gets credit for solvin' this business about the swiming pool, most of it ought to go to you."

"You mean I'm right about the water-polo ball?"

What H.M. actually said was "No," but it was drowned by the cries of those who wanted explanations; and all the time, maneuvering with some skill, Cy was pushing him out of the place, away from it and finally into the main hall.

There H.M. stopped and turned round a countenance of wrath.

"Would you mind explaining to me," he asked,

"why nobody said a word to me about that ruddy electric chair on the terrace?"

Those were Byles's orders."

"Byles, hey? If that reptile's tryin' to do me in the eye..."

"He wasn't trying to do you in the eye," Cy protested. "He thought the dummy chair was unimportant and would only distract you."

"Distract me," said H.M., in a hollow voice like an oracle. "Oh, blow my kite to Egypt! Don't you see that dummy electric chair answers the other half of the mystery?"

"Are you serious?"

"What I said to the copper just now," returned H.M., raising his hand and crossing his heart, "was as serious as fallin' off the Empire State building. There were two halves to this problem; didn't I tell you that?"

"Yes!"

"I solved the first half; good! And why? Because I saw the principle of it was just the same principle I used myself when I hocussed the turnstiles in the subway."

"Do you mean that riot in the subway is in any way related to this?"

"It's got the same principle. A simple little trick you don't need a magician to do; anybody could do it."

"But you're not explaining a damned thing! You're only..."

H.M. held up his hand austerely.

"Now the second half of the problem," he argued, "looked easier but was much harder. It seemed impossible for Manning to time his trick. But, when you come to the fake electric chair or its equivalent, the sun shone out again. Anyway, it’s finished!"

Dismissing this, with new fever and flurry, H.M. dug into his pocket after money.

"I got an errand for you to do, son," he said. "Ill meet Bob Manning and the gals at the information desk. Then I'll take 'em"—he nodded up towards the immense dome, painted a faint blue—"up where we're goin'. In the meantime ..."

Now it was Cy who hesitated.

"We've had a devil of a time with Jean," he said. "She wouldn't leave the house until Dr. Willard practically threw her out. Crystal and Bob aren't exactly themselves either. Do you think this is the right time to...?"

"You trust me, son."

"I hope I can. What do you want me to do?"

"The Airways Terminus is just across the street Nip over there"—H.M. pressed money into his hand—"and book me a seat on the eleven-forty-five plane for Washington tomorrow morning. Tell 'em I’ll be driving from Maralarch. Then follow us to Irene Stanley, from Jean's directions."

"Have you got any luggage besides that Gladstone bag?"

"I got a trunk. But ifs been shipped on to Washington. Sling your hook, now!"

Cy slung it. He had only to cross Forty-second Street, and go up the escalator in the Airways Terminus. Though in point of time it did not actually take long to get the ticket, every second chafed him.

He had some parley with a girl who made mysterious phone calls, apparently designed by Dr. Fu-Manchu. No, Sir Henry would not leave from the terminus. No, he did not want the vehicle which airline companies persist in miscalling a "limousine,'' and look deaf or aloof when you firmly use the honest word bus.

A few minutes more, and Cy was back in the main hall at Grand Central. . His sense of foreboding, which had not yet failed, warned him now of disaster. Apart from anything else, there would be an emotional scene when the children met their father's girl friend. Cy knew that he gritted his nerves against it But why was it necessary to find Irene Stanley so quickly?"

"Stop it!" he said to himself. "No thinking!"

Cy glanced round the marble hall, with its immense windows set in every wall, and its marble mezzanine gallery. Skirting through the crowd, Cy made for the north-eastern side, where he found an arch with the words To Terminal Office Building cut above it

Inside a marble staircase led upwards, and then turned back on itself; he was in the broad gallery now. To his left Cy saw large glass doors, past the Tourists' Information Aid, and the carved lettering of Office Building.

Once inside those glass doors, he might have been in the foyer of an ordinary office building late at night. It was very quiet, except for the faint distant bustle below. On his right were three large elevators. One of them whisked up into sight almost as soon as he pressed the button.

"Top floor," Cy told the Negro elevator man, who wore a dark red uniform cap.

It seemed to excite no surprise. This building, Cy had been told, had six floors devoted to railroad offices; and a seventh, the top, devoted to private concerns which had no connection with the railroad.

The idea of somebody having an apartment here, Cy thought, was as grotesque as the idea of a luxury flat above Victoria or Paddington. The elevator fled upward, with glimpses through the glass of marble corridors and dark offices.

"Top floor," said the operator.

The elevator doors closed with a soft slam and descended.

"Something wrong here!" Cy said aloud.

If this were an apartment floor, it was the queerest one he had ever seen. His footsteps grated on a bare concrete floor. Overhead, a single naked bulb hung from a high ceiling.

Turning to the right, Cy walked with echoing footfalls along the passage until, at his left, a broad staircase of bare iron ribs ascended the wall and again turned right on a long corridor.

Clunk, clang rattled his footfalls on the iron-ribbed steps. Everything here was painted and varnished white down to breast height on the walls; below it was painted a fire-bucket red.

Now the broad long corridor loomed before him. A few more electric bulbs kindled the same decorative scheme. Concrete ribs and steam pipes were white, as in a silent and deserted garage. On his right he saw a line of doors, set at broad intervals apart, each door painted the same fire-bucket red.

Cy approached one door to see the gilt lettering on one of the doors.

"'Myron T. Kirkland,'" he read. Who the devil was Myron T. Kirkland? The next door bore the name of a well-known picture magazine. Cy, strolling slowly down the lofty corridor, noticed that most of these places seemed to house photographic studios or perhaps commercial artists.

Wrong! All wrong! And yet...

Why did H.M. need to find Irene Stanley in such a hurry? There were two possible explanations. Manning, according to H.M., meant to run away with the woman. In that case, she probably knew his plans. She knew of that appointment in the cenotaph, knew the person Manning was to meet there: she could be dangerous to the murderer.

On the other hand, Irene Stanely might be herself the murderer...

A rush and shuffle and clatter of footsteps, striking across Cy's nerves as well as his ears, woke him up. The three Mannings, Bob between Crystal and Jean, seemed to appear out of the right-hand wall, from behind a deep projection of this wall beyond.

"Cy!" Crystal appealed to him. Even her soft voice sounded too loud in that girdered place. "I'm glad you've got here! I can't hold these two in check!"

Jean spoke in a high voice, with attempted calm.

"I am going to be insolent," she said, "and show I mean it."

Bob, shuffling his feet, stared at the floor and clenched his big hands.

"Haven't you seen her yet?" asked Cy.

"No. If s like"—Crystal groped—"if s like waiting for the dentist. Look there!"

Where the projection ended, a deeper length of wall indicated smaller rooms now. The red door was inscribed in gilt letters, Stanley Studio.

"H.M., it seems, is having a preliminary conference," said Crystal. "That woman is..."

"For God's sake, take it easy!"

"Oh, I know." Crystal's eyes were a still darker blue in a white face. She tapped her foot on the floor. "I made all sort of civilized excuses, didn't I? I showed how inevitable it was."

Here she paused for a moment because she was breathless.

"But the plain fact is," Crystal went on, "that she's persuaded Dad to run away, she's let him smash his work, she's at least the indirect cause of why he's within an inch of death now. Do you expect us to be civilized about that"

Embarrassment, hatred, even a sort of fright, these swirled now like physical currents. Cy could feel them. Then H.M. opened the red door.

"Right," he growled. "Will you come in?"

Crystal marched first, with an affectation of poise. Jean followed swiftly, then the hesitating Bob. Cy, who dreaded scenes more than he dreaded death, held his shoulders stiffly and went after them. H.M. closed the door.

Cy, attempting to keep his gaze roving round the baseboard of the walls, had only the impression of a high but not too large room with some grey walls. But he was top shaken. He had to glance up briefly.

A soft and quiet-looking woman, with something of real beauty in her face, sat on a sofa against the opposite wall Her legs were tucked up under her; her hands trembled on an open book. There was no light except a lamp at her right, which left the other side of her face in shadow.

And, if a flood of embarrassment or fright poured out from the three Mannings, it was equalled by the embarrassment or fright of the woman.

Then each of the Mannings spoke out, instinctively, with what was in his or her mind. The words followed and tumbled over each other, struggling in an emotional sea. The first to speak was the inarticulate Bob.

There was Bob's blurted: "There's something wrong here. I thought..

There was Jean's high loftiness: "I want it understood I didn't want to come here at all."

There was Crystal's cold: "I'm afraid, Miss Stanley, we've intruded on..

And H.M.'s bellow: "Shut up!"

It was as though, in the middle of a symphony orchestra concert, every instrument stopped dead on a beat.

Then H.M. pointed to the woman sitting on the sofa.

"That's the woman," he said, "called Irene Stanley. That's the woman who was goin' to run away with your father. That's the woman you've though was so degraded. That's the only woman he's ever loved."

After a pause H.M. added, "That's your mother."

15

How long they stood there, stunned and incapable of speech, Cy could never afterwards compute. It seemed a very longtime, since his own wits took time to accept the situation.

Yet on his first glance at the woman, in the grey-draped studio with the one lamp burning, Cy had sensed a resemblance to somebody he knew. Now he saw it plainly. It was a resemblance to Crystal.

The same dark brown hair. The same dark blue eyes. Irene Stanley (to call her that) was taller than Crystal. Crystal's maturity was only a maturity of body. This woman, in her early forties, had that same quality together with a deeper, perhaps more attractive maturity.

And, of all the persons there, she was the most frightened and shy. She wore a plum-coloured silk dress, and a painter's smock was thrown over the back of the sofa. Through Cy's mind darted a remark Crystal had once made about her mother:

"Her hobby was painting." Irene Stanley, instinctively touching her left cheek and darting back her hand again, sat up on the sofa.

The book spilled out of her hands.

"I—I don't know what to say," she told them in her fine voice, helplessly. Hesitantly she looked from one to the other. "I'm terribly ashamed. And I'm terrified of you. Please! Won't any of you help me by saying you're embarrassed too?"

Something seemed bound to explode. And yet it -did not.

"I just don't understand," muttered Bob.

It was Jean, white as a ghost, who acted first. She turned round and pointed her finger at H.M.

"You knew it!" she cried. "You knew it all the time! You had no right to do this!"

H.M., who was standing there in modest pride with one fist on his hip, opened his little eyes wide.

"Well, lord love a duck," he breathed.

Whereupon, with an expression of acute martyrdom on his face, H.M.'s powerful voice rose as though from the dock.

"Will you just tell me " he bellowed, "why it is that I'm the one who's always being persecuted? I try to help people, so help me I do. Just a little. And then, when I do, they look at me sort of surprised-like, and they say, 'The old so-and-so! What's he doin' here? Kick him in the pants!

"Now I'm mad," said H.M., seizing his Panama hat. "I'm good and mad. I'm not going to stay here and..."

They were all, of course, taking it out on H.M. because they had to take it out on somebody, and they sensed that in his heart he probably wouldn't mind as much as he said. But it was Irene Stanley who stopped him. "Sir Henry!" she said.

Again she looked round at her children with that uneasiness, as though a touch would make her shy away. Cy Norton realized that in her own way she was dangerously more attractive than Crystal herself.

"I—want to show you something," she said. "It may help you to understand."

Irene Stanley paused for a moment, moistening her lips.

"You've seen the right side of my face," she added. "Now look at the left side."

Slowly, fearfully, she began to turn her neck, so that the lamplight on her right brought the other side of the face fully out of shadow. She was like an invalid who dares not try her first step. But it was anticlimax. The others looked puzzled.

"Well, what about it?" asked Bob. "What’s wrong?"

She whipped her head round.

"You don't see anything wrong?" she asked.

"No!" said Crystal. Yet Crystal was watching, watching steadily, restraining her feeling of sympathy.

A film of tears came over Irene Stanley's eyes. In her soul, if such a thing should happen to exist, she might have been laughing—and bleeding.

"They tell me, some of them," she hurried on, "that even in full daylight they don't notice it-much. Of course," she laughed, "they're just being kind. But three months ago you wouldn't have come near me. Oh, no! You think you would; but you couldn't have!"

Jean spoke softly, as though fitting together the past

"Plastic surgery," Jean murmured, and Cy too caught an echo of remembered words.

"I—I can't tell all this," the woman said, clasping her fingers together. "Especially since I'd be 'dead' to this day if Fred hadn't found me. Sir Henry!" she pleaded. "You're the only one who guessed. Tell them!"

H.M., about to fold his arms in aloofness, ended by adjusting his spectacles, glaring, and sitting down in an easy chair.

His look at the Manning children was ferocious.

"Well, my fatheads," he said, "it was the longest shot I ever made. I was scared green for fear it wouldn't come off. Because, d'ye see, I hadn't got the absolute smacking evidence I've got about the swimming-pool business. All I had was a kind of certainty, based on Manning's character, with a few other bits you've heard yourselves.

"Last night when he was reelin' off a fine oration in the library," continued H.M., "I had. rather a sour face. I did, for a fact I thought to myself, especially after hearin' about that conference in his office, I thought 'Son, this is all wrong. You're telling some truths mixed up with an awful lot of eyewash.'

"And the eyewash, I thought was mostly about his love affair.

"Mind, now!" H.M. continued. "I'm not saying any man, for eighteen years, could keep up a Browningesque devotion to a dead wife in all ways. He'd have an eye out, occasionally, for a neat bit o' goods. Oh, my fatheads! That happens"—H.M. coughed—"to the finest kind of men with—hem!—the best characters and the loftiest minds."

"But, "continued H.M., suddenly coming off the high horse and becoming reasonably human again, "I can tell you what Fred Manning wouldn't have done. This idealization of his, this Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, was a holy thing. It had burning sincerity. He lived for it. Ma'am," said H.M., "what's your real first name?"

The so-called Irene Stanley was sitting with her eyes closed. Tears trickled under the eyelids. "Elizabeth," she said.

Again emotions swirled, as palpably as currents. Jean sat down in an easy chair, putting her head in her hands.

"So I'll tell you," said H.M., "what Manning wouldn't have done—unless it was all hoo-haa intended to deceive. He wouldn't have made a splash, in front of his own family, by saying he was running away (probably forever) with a floozie whose vulgarity stimulated him so much. Who told you her name was Irene Stanley and all about her flooziness? He did. But do you remember his twisty smile when he said it last night? Oh, no! Fred Manning wouldn't have done that, unless it was hoo-haa. It simply wasn't in his character."

Jean, shaking with sobs, would not look up.

"Would anybody have thought it was in his character," she asked, "for him to—to embezzle money from that Foundation?"

"We-el! Regardin' that" H.M. frowned mildly, as though at some slight technical matter. "Has the District Attorney proved he did embezzle money?"

Again dead silence.

"Are you saying...?" Jean began.

"Shut up," said H.M.

"And last night," he went on, "he quoted Browning. He quoted Browning when he was (apparently) referring to his merry trollop. What's more, he quoted "The Flight of the Duchess.' That's the poem young Browning wrote, before he was married, to persuade Elizabeth Barrett to elope with him; and she did. Holy ground!

"And what had we just heard," inquired H.M., "about Fred Manning's dead wife? Only that there'd been a boiler-explosion aboard an old river boat; and she'd been drowned. The body, apparently, had never been recovered.

"But what does happen on one of those old boats, when a boiler explodes? What makes the boat go down? If s fire, y’see. If s fire. Now just suppose, for a minute, that Manning's wife isn't dead? Suppose the fire...

"Well, next day our little Jean handed me a walloper. Her father's been going to see a plastic surgeon. She thinks it means he’ll alter his appearance after he does a bunk. But that won't do, as I told you. Nobody, not even Ferguson of Edinburgh or Richter of Vienna, can quite manage that. Besides, he'd have to lie up after the operation, and the coppers would get him for certain.

"No, no, no! That’s miles wide of the mark. But what plastic surgery can do, if somebody's been burned..."

Jean sat up straight.

"Then that's why you told me," she said, "that I hadn't given anything away?" "Uh-huh."

"And why," Jean persisted relentlessly, "you said you'd bet Dad would never go near a plastic surgeon, and the police would never have a chance?"

"Sure, my dolly. If it had happened, it would have been all over. But you handed me the real wallop when you turned up in the graveyard tonight, and I was tryin' to keep you from seeing your old man on that grave mound."

"I didn't say anything at all!"

"Ho! Didn't you? You said you'd followed him when he 'went to that place where they trace people.' Trace people! That could only mean a big private firm, say Pursuit, Incorporated, whose record of failure is so small you could balance it on a pin point Suppose Manning had felt his wife wasn't dead? Suppose he'd been tryin', off and on, to trace her? And suppose, some months ago, they found her?"

H.M. shook his head, and gave a sniff of finality.

"That's all," he said apologetically. "It wasn't evidence. It was only supposition. But stab me, I had to try a shot at goal!"

"You made it," replied the present Irene Stanley, with a faint smile. "You were quite right As for what happened... no, please!"

Everybody had started talking at once. Irene Stanley lowered her eyes, from which all trace of tears had been surreptitiously removed. Then she looked up again.

"Please think of me as a stranger!" she begged. "I'm trying to think of you as strangers. We can't be at ease unless we do. Can you see that?"

"I think I can," Crystal murmured, "and from my heart I sympathize."

"When Fred and I were married"—never once did she use the words "your father"—"I was only eighteen. When that explosion occurred, "I was still very young. Perhaps foolish too. The fire, along the whole left side of my face..."

Swiftly she slipped her hand down between a parting in the sofa cushions, brought out a hand mirror, and held it to the right side of her face where the light could fall. She gave a faint gasp of reassurance. Back went the mirror, quickly. That mirror, Cy guessed, was always near.

"I don't mind discussing it," continued the woman, who clearly did mind, "because it was so long ago. One mustn't grow morbid. But, when they dragged me out of the water and I was in the hospital, I made a decision."

Jean cried out "You don't have to tell us..."

"Please, Jean."

"I'm sorry," said Jean, and lowered her head. The woman who was so like Crystal, yet who through years had developed at once a passion and a gentleness beyond Crystal's, hesitated again.

"I thought men value us (and perhaps it's true; I don't know) only for—physical charms. I thought I should be only horror to Fred. I couldn't face him. I couldn't!" Her voice went high, but she controlled it. "So I did what other women have done before me. I let it be known I was drowned."

She lifted her shoulders. She glanced down at the sofa, showing the fine line of neck and the dark brown hair.

"Older years," she said, "tell me that what I did was foolish and even cruel. King David knew that all is vanity. But I would do it again.

"I won't bore you with the middle years. I had to get work, but not in public, that is, where anyone could see my face. They wouldn't have my face. So it had to be in private: laundering, sewing, dressmaking; I was rather good at that. I took up my hobby of painting. After a long time—and I was very lucky, at that—I had a little success.

"Well!" smiled Irene Stanley, getting up from the sofa like a hostess at a cocktail party. "There's not much else, is there?"

"There's a great deal else," said Crystal. "But, please! Don't upset yourself!"

Her mother, a little taller, looked at Crystal steadily.

"I came to New York three years ago. A few of my paintings 'took' at the galleries. But I was (and am) a commercial artist; though I didn't dare ask for work at an agency because:.." She touched her left cheek. Her self-control began to shake again.

"Anyway," she added, "I'm a commercial artist. That's why I can rent this studio here. Do you like it?"

Seeing an opportunity to change the subject, they all jumped at it. They knew it could be for only a moment; they knew the devil was there, but they tried to screen him away with loud talk.

This studio, Cy reflected, might be bare white ribs and concrete underneath. But from ceiling to floor—except for two high and broad windows set very high up—the grey-velvet draperies swept down and round the windows on every side. The carpet was soft and dark. One wall of curtains swayed a little, suggesting that it made a partition with another room.

There were painting materials for both oils and water colour. Cy saw a number of canvases stacked along two walls. He saw the model's throne near the easel, and a commercial artist’s photographic equipment. Here you were in the middle of New York, with a faint white shimmer beyond the windows; yet it seemed as remote as some valley in the stars.

"I mean," Bob was asking, "do you actually live here?"

Irene Stanley laughed.

"Technically, no. For heaven's sake don't try to get an apartment here. They don't exist. But"— she nodded towards the unsteady wall of curtains—"I have a bed behind there, and a telephone in the name of Stanley Studio, and some primitive arrangements for a bathroom. If I want to sleep here, nobody bothers."

"But what about eating?"

"Oh, I'm not allowed to cook. That's against all the laws. But in the first months here..."

"Yes?" prompted Crystal.

"It was wonderfully lonely. Beautifully lonely! You could slip downstairs for a meal in a lunchroom, with some kind of odd veil across your cheek as though you meant it to be there. If s a great, thundery, hurrying city. Nobody noticed."

"But didn't you ever think of plastic surgery before?" cried Jean.

"Of course! In the old days I couldn't afford it Later—I thought the scars had been there too long to be treated."

Then Jean, the well-meaning, blurted out the one tactless question of all.

"While you were away from us, did you ever miss...?"

Jean stopped abruptly.

Irene Stanley, Cy always remembered afterwards, was just picking up one of the canvases against the left-hand wall—the picture a bright Venetian scene out of the sixteenth century. Irene Stanley, graceful and supple in her plum-coloured dress, straightened up against the grey drapery.

"Yes!" she said in a strange voice. "Yes, I did!"

The canvas dropped with a faint wooden rattle.

"Sometimes I could forget him, and you too, of course," she added hastily, "for six or seven months on end. Once it was nearly a year. And then something, the least little thing, would remind me. And I was in agony, sheer agony, as though I were doubled up with pain."

"Wait! Stop! I didn't mean ..."

"And shall I tell you," the woman went on, "what happened here, in this studio, when I met Fred—again? I didn't know his private-detective people had traced me. I was sitting here, cleaning some brushes, with the scarred side of my face to the door. And the door opened, and Fred walked in.

"He didn't hurt me worse by pretending not to notice what was there. He just said, 'Is this all that’s been troubling you, Betty? We'll have that gone in a week or two.' And I—I started to cry."

If heretofore there had been any anger in the voice of Irene Stanley, or Elizabeth Manning, it was gone now. She spoke simply, as of small matters.

"That was months ago. From then I began to live. Awhile ago, Sir Henry, you mentioned Richter of Vienna."

H.M., piled into the chair with his chin in his fist, merely nodded.

"Fred," she explained, "had him flown over here in a special plane. He"—she touched her left cheek-"did this."

"I was still thinkin', ma'am, that only two men in the world could have done it"

"As for Fred..." She stopped. Quickly she brought out, from behind the stacked canvases, one carefully hidden. It was a head-and-shoulders portrait of Manning, as vivid and alive as the man himself had been.

"He hadn't seemed to have grown a day older," said the woman, whipping the empty canvas off the easel and substituting Manning's portrait, "except that his hair was prematurely grey. His arms and shoulders and torso were like those of a man twenty years younger. He had grown up, but he was still as wildly romantic and—and foolish"—she smiled—"as when I new him last."

Slowly she looked round the group.

"You know, I think," she said, "what we intended to do. We were going away for a second honeymoon. We had all our plans made."

And then the devil jumped in, and would not be kept out.

"Y'see, that's just it," interposed the heavy voice of Sir Henry Merrivale. "We've got to hear all those plans before the coppers do. Will you tell me about 'em?"

Cy held his breath. Irene Stanley gave him a strange look. She moved over to the sofa again, and sat down and clasped her hands.

"It won't matter," she told H.M.

"Won't matter?"

"No. Tonight, Sir Henry, you came up here at not much later than half-past ten. You told me— with delicacy, I thank you—what had happened. Before that, I had seen the afternoon and evening papers, and only smiled at Fred's vanishing trick. Now you told me that someone had tried to kill him, with two stab wounds in his side. You asked me to wait for the children, and I did."

"All right, ma'am. Why do you say 'it won't matter?"

The dark blue eyes remained inscrutable. "If s gone on too long," she said simply. "If Fred dies, I die."

A suppressed cry, Cy could not tell from whom, rose up and was instantly stopped. H.M. stood up.

"Are you goin' to stop talkin' tommyrot?" demanded H.M.

"You wouldn't call it that"—she raised her eyes briefly—"if you knew my life."

"But this person who tried to kill him: don't you want that person caught and punished?"

"That person," she replied, "will never be caught or punished."

A cold chill seemed to settle in the studio, as though the grey draperies resembled the colour of Frederick Manning's face. Manning's portrait, with the amused eyes and the grey hair worn long but cropped up short under the ears, seemed to regard them in a different way.

"When you left here tonight, Sir Henry, I was frantic." Irene Stanley clasped her fingers more tightly. "I had to phone and find out how he was. I knew the servants wouldn't believe I was his wife. Then I thought of Stuffy. Stuffy's been there for twenty-one years: did he tell you?"

‘Yes," Cy Norton muttered inaudibly.

"Stuffy, at first, wouldn't believe me either. I convinced him by reminding him of things—well, an imposter couldn't have know."

"I see. And so?"

"Fred has been conscious several times tonight, detective, a Lieutenant Somebody, has been with him all the time."

Blood rushed into her face, despite her self-control, and now, for the first time, you saw a faint reddish mark at the corner of her left eye. There was another near the chin.

"Fred," she said, "refuses to name the person who attacked him. Or, rather, he says he doesn't know and swears to it. You see now? He's protecting somebody? Which of course means..."

Slowly she turned round. She looked first at Crystal, then at Jean, and finally at Bob.

Through the quiet studio, from behind that partition of a curtain wall, the telephone began to ring stridently.

16

Irene Stanley sprang up.

"That's Stuffy," she said. "He promised to ring me every hour, whether they had any news or not. Excuse me."

She disappeared through an opening in the curtains, while Cy studied three faces whose eyes followed her.

"She's wonderful," Jean breathed. "I'd always idealized her; I'd thought of her as being just like that. But I couldn't think it was true."

"Jean, are you crazy?" Bob asked in a fierce whisper. He was frightened through his whole gangling height. He seized Jean's wrist. "Didn't you get what she meant?"

"Meant?"

"She meant it was one of us who attacked Dad!"

All voices were lowered, because they could hear every word spoken by the woman behind the curtain. Crystal, in her sleek satin coat worn over a gold evening gown, approached Cy with veiled, shining eyes.

"Jean's right, you know," Crystal said. "She is rather fine. But I think she's a little mad. Cy!"

"Well?" asked Cy, who had taken from his inside pocket a pencil and an old begrimed letter.

"Do you believe the other thing she said?"

"She said a lot of things. Which do you mean?"

"That men value women simply for their physical attractiveness?"

"Lord, Crystal, I don't know!" he groaned. She herself made his judgment worse each time she was near him. "Probably it's true. Yes."

"Damn you," Crystal said softly.

"But I'll tell you this, my pet, if you think age matters. You're twenty-four. Your mother must be about forty-three. But if you both walked into a ballroom at this minute, there isn't a man who would look at you."

Crystal started to say, "Damn you," hesitated, and herself increased the nerve tension with tears.

"What are you doing," she asked fiercely, "with the back of that letter?"

Cy glanced over at H.M., who was now sitting and glaring at a stogy. Though it was no business of his as a reporter, he had sketched out a headline and a hanger, with quick notes below.

"You see Foxy Grandpa over there?" he asked.

"Wh-what about him?"

"I'm certain now I know the line he's working on: not only to solve the case, but to put everybody in the right place. There's one blank space in the middle: that damned swimming-pool puzzle. The rest I've got If we can anticipate things with a newspaper story..

"Thank you, Stuffy," rose a voice behind the curtain. "You will keep me informed, won't you?"

They heard the phone replaced on its cradle. Elizabeth Manning, now plainly Elizabeth Manning and not Irene Stanley, came out into the studio.

"He's just the same," she said. "No better, no worse." H.M. rose to his feet

"Now, ma'am, about these 'plans' you and Fred made..."

"Sir Henry, for God's sake!"

"You care a lot about your husband," H.M. told her. "Do you care anything about his reputation?"

"Reputation?"

"Lord love a duck, don't you know he's supposed to have robbed the Foundation and done a bunk with a hundred thousand dollars?"

"Oh, that's absurd!"

"So? You said you read the afternoon and evening papers. Didn't you catch any rumour of it?"

"No!" She reflected, with a shocked kind of look, her hand pressed to her forehead. "They said—or I gathered—Fred had disappeared because of a bet or something of that kind. Wait! There was one obscure little item..."

"Pretty obscure," said H.M. "The District Attorney's office won't let out a peep until they're sure. If somebody played a lost-in-the-shuffle trick with news, you can thank this feller here." He beckoned to Cy. "I say, we've been a bit informal about introductions. Me, I'm always proper."

The woman smiled vaguely. "Mr.—?"

"Mr. Norton," supplied Crystal, taking Cys arm. "Mr. Norton is my guest."

The tone of her soft voice made the meaning very clear. Her mother regarded her (those eyes that were so much alike!) and took a deep breath.

"I've followed you career," she said, "at a distance. Your last husband was some Balkan dignitary named Count Yummy-Yummy, or words like that. Did you love him?"

"No," replied Crystal. "But I don't use his title, you notice."

Cy, who hated this kind of talk, was enabled to slip the back of the letter into H.M.'s hand. H.M., with a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, at first tried to shoo him away. Then he glanced at what was written. Then he read it.

Cy watched him. Over H.M.'s face have gone many expressions, most of them baneful. But Cy saw, very briefly, what he hoped to see. It was the look of an urchin, entranced beyond glee, just lighting a large firecracker under the chair of the school principal.

"Is that the proper line, H.M.? May I release it to the press with your backing?"

"Son," the great man replied gravely, "you release it" He handed back the paper. "Not from the phone here, curse you! They'll all hear it! Outside!"

And Cy, with brief apologies, maneuvered his way out.

His footsteps echoed as he hurried along the broad corridor with the red-and-white walls. Cy's principles were New England or plain British: a decent reserve outside, the Old Adam always lurking inside.

At the end of the corridor, near the iron stairs, he found a telephone booth. At first he thought of rejecting the Echo, his old paper and a morning paper, and to hell with 'em! But old loyalties, though they swear and kick, do not die. He dialled the Echo's number, got through to the city desk, and spoke for several minutes.

"Now look," retorted a cold voice, "I didn't get you fired, Cy! That?s not my department. I'm all for you!"

"I know that, Zack. I know it!"

"So if this story is alcohol talking from a bar, and that's what it sounds like..."

Cy risked a chance with sixty-forty in his favour.

"If you want confirmation, Zack, get the District Attorney's Office. Then get Headquarters. You could even try White Plains."

And he hung up. Having now done his duty (somewhat), Cy rang the A.P., the U.P., and also several newspapers where he had a friend. Then he hurried back to the studio. When he opened the door, the first words he heard were those infuriating words, swimming-pool mystery.

Furthermore, the emotional temperature here had gone up to danger point.

Elizabeth Manning, seated on the edge of the sofa, had lowered her head and was plucking at the edges of the cushions. H.M., having thrown away his stogy, had drawn his chair close to her. Crystal, Jean, and Bob stood near them with white faces.

"Now look here, my wen—I mean, ma'am," said H.M., as though he were handling high explosives. "Have you got it through your head they do think he stole a hundred thousand?"

"Yes."

"And that they'll put you through the hoops because they think you're mixed up in it, unless I head 'em off?" "Yes."

"So are you willing to let me ask questions, short and sweet, and you'll answer 'em the same way?"

"I will," she told him, without lifting her head. The single light glistened on her dark brown hair, which had no trace of grey.

"You say you and Fred were going away for a second honeymoon. Where were you goin’?"

"Mexico City."

"When?"

"On a plane that leaves—or left, rather, at midnight tonight."

"Where were you goin' to meet before then?"

"Here. In this studio. Fred promised to be not later than nine o'clock."

"Did you know he intended to 'disappear for a while?"

"Yes. I knew that"

Elizabeth Manning sat up straight, her breast heaving. But she looked H.M. straight in the eyes. "Why was he goin' to disappear?"

Everyone present seemed to hold his breath. Elizabeth Manning gave a brief glance at Crystal and Jean and Bob.

"He said," she replied in a level voice, "that he'd never liked his children when they were young; I knew that, of course; and he hadn't been fond of them until they were grown up. Fred said they must know it or feel it, and, quite rightly, hate him for if

"Quiet!" snapped H.M., holding out his hand towards the group waiting behind him. He did not look at them, but at their mother.

"But she said, "that gave him the idea—don't you see how inevitable it is?"

"Maybe I do. Go on."

"Fred suddenly thought, years ago, 'If that's what my children think, what about other people?' He lived for his school and for his memory of—well, of me. He thought he probably hadn't a friend in the world.

"Then he found me. He was so exuberant about our second honeymoon that he decided to 'disappear,' as though he were a fugitive. Then he could find out whether anybody gave a curse whether he lived or died. In either case, he said, it didn't matter. Because he was bringing me home."

She stopped suddenly, and pressed her hands over her eyes.

Again H.M., with a gesture, silenced that shivering group behind him.

"It's a horrible thing," the woman added abruptly, and looked up towards Bob and Jean and Crystal, "to think one of them may have tried to kill him. If you did-well! If you didn't"-the face softened—"I humbly beg your pardon."

Cy Norton, standing a little way behind Crystal, glanced across at the painting of Manning on the easel.

He had no doubt that Elizabeth Manning's story was true. It was characteristic of Frederick Manning. It was Frederick Manning. Cy could have predicted it, if he had known what to predict It explained almost everything. Cy Norton felt a dizziness of gratitude that a man he admired had been cleared, or almost...

But H.M., not a muscle moving in his face, seemed ruthless and without mercy.

"Now about this money," he said, and a cold little shock fell again. "How much money was he goin' to take with him on your second honeymoon?"

Manning's wife sat rigid again.

"I didn't ask. I think he mentioned something about two or three thousand dollars."

"How long did he intend to stay vanished?"

"Not long! Two weeks, something like that"

"Uh-huh. But, if he intended to be even a fake fugitive, they'd be lookin' for him. I mean the police. How could he board an airliner, or make stops, or cross the Mexican border, without being recognized?"

Over her face went that smile, wry yet pleased, indicating her philosophy (and most women's) that all men are children.

"In my bedroom there," she nodded, "he had a— well, a kind of disguise. He said it would work. He was going to put it on here."

"You mean when he was supposed to get here at nine o'clock tonight?"

"Yes."

"Two or three thousand dollars. Is that enough money to make a brief case bulge?"

"I—I never heard anything about a briefcase." Her thin eyebrows drew together. "But I shouldn't think it would bulge, even with money in small bills."

"I agree. Did Fred tell you he was going to do a vanishing trick at the swimming pool?"

"Yes."

"Did he tell you how he was goin' to work it?"

"No. He said he would tell me later. It delighted him. Fred—Fred liked to mystify people."

"I’ve noticed that," H.M. said grimly. "He didn't tell you anything about it?"

"I don't think so. No—wait!" Here eyes seemed to grope, while someone in that group took a quick gasping breath. "Only that it was somthing to do with his hat"

(His hat? thought Cy Norton, now near frenzy. First his wrist watch and his socks, now his hat)

"Did he tell you"—H.M. hammered the questions without cessation—"he'd disappear at nine-thirty in the morning?"

"Not—exactly."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, the last time he phoned was yesterday, I mean Monday, morning. He said he'd probably 'vanish' on Tuesday morning. But he couldn't join me because he'd have to wait He had an appointment in—in the cenotaph of the old graveyard."

The woman's eyes grew hot with a kind of dry despair.

"I said eighteen years ago," she added, "there ought to be a 'To Let' sign on that graveyard."

"A graveyard to let? Why?"

Across that tension, once more with a sawing against nerves, clamoured the ringing of the telephone.

"That's Stuffy again," said Elizabeth Manning. "Please excuse me."

And she hurried towards the curtains. Cy had never seen H.M. look as he did then: as merciless as an executioner.

"Stuffy always was a terror with the phone," he snapped. "He'd get time wrong; he'd mix up messages; he'd butt in, like this, when you didn't want him. Ifs not been anywhere near an hour since..."

"Why can't you go easy on her?" asked Bob Manning, clearing his throat huskily. The Adam's apple worked in his long neck, and he sounded vicious. "Why have you got to talk like a cop?"

Jean did not speak; she turned away to look at the painting of her father. But Crystal intervened on Bob's side.

"You haven't any right to do this, Sir Henry! And you know you haven't!"

"Have I led you right so far?" snarled H.M.

Beyond the curtains they heard Elizabeth

Manning put down the phone. When she came out again she was pale, evidently with the long ache of waiting, and her body drooped. But she straightened up, with all her charm and smile.

"No change," she told them, and sank again on the sofa. "Just the same. Always just the same." She regarded H.M. vaguely. "You were saying ..."

"A graveyard to let," said H.M.

"Oh, yes!" Her manner became eager. "In the very old days, Sir Henry, about four families would club together and buy what they thought was a big burial plot for their dead. And then—oh, it might be almost a century!—it was all different. They found it wasn't big enough, or the family moved somewhere else. But they'd bought it in— what's the term?—in perpetuo.

"Even in my time a Mr. Van Sellars had bought all the burial plots from the original owners. They didn't bother. And it wasn't until we lived at Maralarch that Fred discovered some of his forebears were buried there.

"Fred wanted to tidy the place up. Mr. Van Sellars was furious; he thought it was picturesque. And he owned it, and nobody could do a thing. Fred told me, only recently, that Mr. Van Sellars once had him in court"

H.M. ruffled his hands over his head.

"But what’s this,"he persisted, "about a ‘To Let’ sign?"

"For murderers."

"So?Meanin' what?"

"God forgive me. I said that myself, a long time ago. You see, the Manning cenotaph and the Renf ield mausoleum, opposite it on the south side, were never opened. Nobody goes to that graveyard. If you had a key to a mausoleum, you could kill someone and lock him up there. And nobody would ever know it, except by accident"

"Yes," said H.M. "I told you, earlier tonight, your husband was attacked in the cenotaph."

Elizabeth Manning ran her tongue round her lips.

"You mean—I'm responsible?" she asked in horror.

"No, no! But..."

"You don't honestly think so?"

"Cross my heart, no! But you knew Fred was meeting somebody in the cenotaph. Did he tell you who the person was?"

"No."

H.M. was growing desperate. "Didn't he give you any kind of indication? Or hint?"

"No." She swallowed, and swallowed again. "Oh! Except that it concerned a member of the family."

"Which member of the family?"

"I don't know. But Fred wasn't joking. He was horribly serious. After he met the person..."

"After that?"

"Fred said it wouldn't take long. Then he said he would walk along Fenimore Cooper Road to Larchmont, and catch the three-to-eight train here. Then we should meet."

More than a shade of change had crept over Elizabeth Manning. Her speech and manner were those of a girl about Jean's age. It was as though she were retreating into the past, and living there.

"We should meet," she repeated.

Suddenly Bob Manning, with a noise in his throat, leaned across the back of H.M.'s chair.

"What's the matter with her?" Bob asked, with restraint and tenderness. "There's something wrong!"

The woman rose to her feet, and looked slowly round at her children.

"I'm sorry," she said gently. "I didn't tell you what I really heard on the phone. Your father is dead."

It was the first time she had said, "your father."

Amid a paralyzed silence, she tried to walk steadily towards the painting of Frederick Manning, stretching out her hand as though to touch it. She did not quite reach it. Her knees gave way, and she fell heavily on her side in front of the easel.

"What's the matter with her?" Bob asked again. "Has she fainted?"

H.M., stung out of whatever stupor or mind wandering had possessed him, was kneeling beside her.

"No, son," he said. "She's poisoned."

There was a crash as Jean, backing away, upset a small table of magazines. Jean was white to the lips, but her whisper carried.

"'If he dies, I die,'" Jean quoted. "She had it all ready! By the telephone."

H.M., as he tested the pulse, opened the mouth for scrutiny, and gently lifted one eyelid, seemed to be cursing himself with inner fluency. Cy gave a hand to hoist him to his feet After this H.M. lumbered straight towards the screen curtains, blundering there to find an opening. Cy found it for him, and they both went in.

They were in a long, narrow, curtained cubicle, with another partition which evidently screened off the bathroom. One electric light glared over a trim cot and a chest of drawers.

"That's the feller, son!" H.M. muttered.

On the bedside table, near the telephone, stood a five-ounce bottle, the cork out and lying beside it It was labelled, Mother Meera's Mixture.

"But that stuffs made in England!" muttered Cy. "You're supposed to take it in very minute quantities with a lot of water, for a cold. What’s it doing here?"

"I dunno, son. But do you know what's in it? If s loaded with tincture of aconite."

"Aconite," said Cy.

"The stuff," grunted H.M., picking up the bottle, "isn't as quick actin' as your famous prussic acid, but if s deadlier. It don't burn, but you take far longer to die."

"Can't you do anyting?"

"Oh, son!" H.M. lifted both fists. "Without a stomach tube? Without atropine and (lemme think!) digitalis? Without—which we may need-oxygen? Burn it I don't suppose we can get a doctor in a railway station?"

"We can try," retorted Cy Norton, and picked up the phone.

It appeared that they could not only get one doctor, but several. Dr. Jacobs would be on his way at once. For the first time Cy realized the smooth-working, effortless efficiency of this labyrinth below. H.M. introduced himself to the doctor on the phone and gave a quick explanation.

Then he appeared in the studio.

"Carry her inside and put her on the bed," he ordered Cy and Bob. They carried her in gently.

"When the doctor gets here, all of you keep out of this 'bedroom.' The sight's not pretty, and you won't be needed.

"H.M.," Cy spoke in a fierce whisper, "how much of the stuff did she take?"

"Son, I can't tell whether the bottle was full to begin with! If it was, about an ounce and a half."

"And thaf s pretty bad?"

That's worse than bad."

In five minutes, which seemed like a gnawing hour, Dr. Jacobs arrived with a porter to bring what he needed. Low-voiced and efficient, he disappeared with H.M. behind the grey curtains.

Afterwards came the long period of waiting in the studio.

In actual point of time, Elizabeth Manning had collapsed at just on a quarter to. one in the morning. There it was, incredibly, on Cy's watch. But more than incredible seemed the time which followed.

Crystal, removing the satin coat, sat vivid and flamboyant in the gold gown, and stared at the floor. As so often happens after breakdown in nerve strain, Jean had fallen fast asleep on the sofa.

Bob paced up and down so restlessly that they yelled at him to stop. But he could not be still. Finding a self-portrait of Elizabeth Manning among the canvases, he carried it under his arm like a talisman.

"I suppose the old romantics would say," Crystal once remarked, "that it's better for them to go together."

But Mrs. Manning, for some reason, had got into Cy’s heart, and he only snapped at Crystal.

Cy, smoking cigarettes endlessly, looked at his watch so often that at last he unstrapped it and dropped it into his pocket.

From the first, the mere noises beyond those grey curtains...

The curtains would sway and bulge as Dr. Jacobs or H.M. passed behind them. Much later Cy could faintly hear the low, muttered, impersonal voices. "I don't like this; digitalis now." "How much, son?" "Hundredth of a grain." And much later, amid a vacuum of time: "Oxygen; but we'll keep up the artificial respiration too."

The suction noise of the oxygen, barely audible, nevertheless beat in Cy’s mind like a huge bellows. Leaning back and closing his eyes, he tried to work out the position of this studio at the top of Grand Central.

' The high windows must face out, from the back of the flattened roof curve, across Forty-second Street and down Park to Fourth Avenut. If you went some distance down Fourth Avenue, say about Twelfth Street, you found a host of those second-hand bookshops of which Manning was so fond and Cy was fond, too.

The proprietors of these bookshops—like those in Charing Cross Road—didn't bother you or ask questions. You browsed and browsed, amid dust and the sudden unexpected leap of a title you wanted. Or a passage somewhere, or a line of

O lyric love, half angel and half bird...

No, damn it, that was Browning again! Cy, glancing over at Crystal, saw that she was cold and lonely, and he felt ashamed of himself. He went over, plucked Crystal out of her chair, and sat her down in his lap.

She did not speak. She put her arms round his neck and her head against his shoulder. Thus they remained, while Jean slept and Bob paced with the canvas under his arm.

Once Bob stopped, hollow eyed.

"Half-past seven," he asked cryptically, "was the time you and H.M. started out for the field, wasn't it?"

Cy absently agreed without bothering to think about it.

Always the oxygen. On and on and on! Lights looked brighter, faces more sharply outlined, with the dwindling night. Those windows up there should be whitening with dawn. Cy could hear his watch ticking in his pocket

Then the oxygen dwindled away and stopped.

After a whispered conference of what seemed some hours, H.M. stepped out from behind the grey curtains. It shows the great man's state of mind that he gravely searched for his hat, put it on, and turned towards the door; then a recollection struck him, and he turned round.

"It's all right, son," he told Cy in a heavy voice. "She's goin' to live."

Cy's arms, his back and shoulders, felt cramped and numb from holding Crystal. Crystal slowly stood up. Bob was motionless, his mouth open. And then, from behind the curtains, rose the shrill ringing of the telephone.

"You shut up!" H.M. took it out on somebody by turning round and bellowing towards the phone. "I'm not goin' to answer "

But Dr. Jacobs, it seemed, had already answered. The doctor appeared from beyond the curtains.

"It's for you, Sir Henry," he said. "It seems to be the District Attorney. Speaking from Maralarch."

"Byles, hey? And what does the reptile want with me?"

The dark-complexioned Dr. Jacobs, who had won an almost hopeless case against aconite, was himself under a strain.

"So far as I can gather," Dr. Jacobs answered, "he wants to put you in jail. I think you should speak to him."

The doctor came out from behind the curtains, dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. Cy took the wrist watch out of his pocket, finding with stupefaction that it was just five minutes past three. Slowly, like a tiger, H.M approached the curtains and the telephone.

Byles's voice sprang out of the receiver.

"Now listen!" said the District Attorney, with a cold and deadly jump.

"You listen!" H.M. bellowed back. Then he wavered. "Looky here, Gil. There's been some pretty nasty business here tonight The old man's not just exactly in the mood for sword crossin' now. Ever since we heard Fred Manning was dead..."

There was so long a pause that you might have wondered if the line had gone dead.

"Manning?" repeated Byles, in a startled and suspicious tone. "What are you talking about? Manning's not dead."

This time the pause was at H.M.'s end of the line.

"Manning's not dead?" he yelled.

From the studio there was a wooden rattle as of a picture canvas dropped. Someone, probably Crystal, cried out.

"When we got here," said Byles, "the maid told us what Dr. Willard said. Manning's out of danger. Hell have a bad time, congestion and fever, but hell be up in a month. If anybody's been worried..."

H.M.'s gaze travelled slowly down to the figure on the bed, now covered to the chin with a blanket

And here, it must be confessed, the old sinner was a little moved. H.M. stretched out his hand-he would have died rather than let anyone see it— and patted the shoulder of the unconscious woman.

"That's good news," he said to the telephone. "That's downright good news."

Whereupon, clapping his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, his shout to those outside the curtain indicated he hadn't believed a word of it.

"Didn't I tell you," he called, "that fool Stuffy was always gettin' messages mixed up?"

But the telephone was now coldly raving.

"And what," demanded Byles, "are you doing there at three o'clock in the morning?"

"Well, what are you doin' there at three o'clock in the morning?"

"I drove out here," Byles told him with loving murderousness, "for the pleasure of waking you up out of bed. I couldn't resist it. I want to tell you just how long I can keep you in jail."

H.M. half closed one eye.

"So you think you can chuck me in the cooler, hey?"

"At the present moment," said Byles, "I am nursing my wrath to keep it warm. I am getting all my dockets in order."

H.M. griped the phone, slowly lowered it as though he were bending over a prostrate enemy and holding the tatter's throat with one hand. But his hat fell off, somewhat marring the gladiatorial gesture.

"I warn you, Gill If you..."

"Also at the present moment," the cold voice pursued, 'you are in the apartment of the. real Irene Stanley." The voice changed. "Brother, what I'm going to do to you!" Again it changed. "Now get out here to Maralarch immediately!"

"Wait a minute! Has something else happened?"

"Happened?" groaned Byles. "Oh, my God! Now you get out here to Maralarch immediately!"

17

It was still pitch dark when the big yellow car left New York, with Jean—aroused, but now in happy sleep—in the rumble seat. Bob had stayed with his mother.

Cy drove, with Crystal in the middle, and H.M. outside. They had stopped only to buy a bundle of early morning papers, which they threw into the rumble seat The tall lamps gleamed along the West Side Highway; the river had only a scent and breath of morning.

Perhaps not ten words were spoken. But happiness, because of Manning and his wife in this world again, filled that car. And there was more.

Round the spectacles of Sir Henry Merrivale, indicating that he did not feel altogether tired or sleepy, hovered a certain evil anticipation. This same look, though in no sense evil, gave a faraway expression, as of a peak in Darien, to the face of Cy Norton. Crystal slept, her head on Cy's shoulder.

The car hummed on.

When they turned off Denford Avenue into Elm Road, at Maralarch, the sky was a faint ghostly grey. Outlines of trees were becoming trees. It was chilly, with a dampness of summer dew. In that stillness, the car seemed to roar as Cy swung it past the facade of the long white house, and into the driveway at the side.

Two sets of windows were lighted, one set on the left of the front door, and one on the right H.M. glanced towards the library.

"He's there, son."

"He is," agreed Cy. "Maybe with handcuffs."

In the long library, with its windows both front and back, District Attorney Gilbert Byles was waiting.

Byles showed no sign of fatigue or disorder. His arched skull, from which the black hair was receding, his watchful dark eyes and slight twisted smile, his face broadening at the jaw and then tapering almost to a point, all gave him the air of a patient Mephistopheles.

"Jean's still dead on her feet," Crystal called from the doorway. "Shall I put her to bed and then make some coffee?"

"An admirable idea, Miss Manning," Byles told her, and bowed suavely. "Do that, by all means."

Byles was standing against a wall of old books. Just behind the District Attorney's elbow, Cy noticed a gap in Lea's two-volume History of the Spanish Inquisition.

The second was in Byles's hands, and he was idly turning the pages.

"I’ve been looking," he explained, "for a few tips here. But I'm afraid they wouldn't be legal." And he sighed.

This behavior, especially considering the thin blue-gorged veins in Byles's temples, deceived nobody. He was a man who at any moment would let out a yell and jump all over the room.

"As for you, Sir Henry..."

"LO, Gil," said H.M., with surprising meekness.

"Sit down!" said Byles.

While Cy Norton deposited newspapers in another chair, H.M. seated himself, stuck his feet up on the table, produced and lit a stogy, at which he sniffed ghoulishly.

"We will begin," said Byles, fingering the Spanish Inquisition, with your behavior in the subway on Monday afternoon."

"Hadn't we better begin," struck in a new voice, "with something else?"

Cy jumped slightly.

He had not seen over there, by another book wall, the stocky well-dressed figure in the tapestry chair. It was Howard Betterton, his face serene and his pince-nez twinkling, also showing no fatigue or mussed clothes.

"Mr. Betterton," said Byles, with the blue veins standing out in his head, "well begin as I say. And don't tell me I'm in Westchester County. What I have to say concerns the city of New York."

"As you like," shrugged the other lawyer.

"You wrecked that damn subway!" said Byles, whipping round and pointing the Spanish Inquisition at HM. "That's a very serious offence. People were hurt..." "Who was hurt, son?"

"Money was stolen from a change booth. That’s still more serious."

"How much money, Gil?"

"The actual sum, thirty-seven cents, makes no difference to the law. Your offence is so serious ..."

"Looky here, Gil," H.M. interposed with a distressed air. "Why must you people keep bluff in' more than your hand is worth? I always think, 'God love you, do you want to make such a fuss about twenty dollars?' and I pay up. But this is different" "Ho! Is it?"

"You could stick me up in front of the beak, yes," said H.M., contemplating his cigar. "But in your law or mine, Gil, it’s still a misdemeanour and not a felony."

"Then you admit it!" Byles said quickly. "What really hurts me," he went on with an air of deep injury, "is the sheer ingratitude of your behaviour! Do you know who hushed the whole thing up? Do you know who returned your Gladstone bag? I’ll tell you: it was the police department"

H.M. looked meekly at his cigar.

Byles, now in full flood of eloquence, addressed Cy.

"You'd be surprised," he began, in the tone of a popular magazine article, "how many small things find their way to the desk of the Police Commissioner himself. This old reprobate's bag was opened. Aside from a number of articles modestly stamped ME, his name was all over the place."

"So you identified him?" asked Cy, with a wooden face.

"He's well-known. He's got a title. He's a friend of mine. That same afternoon, in the papers, he had achieved considerable notoriety by using the term 'bastard' in reference to the British Minister of Muddle."

"But that's what he is," H.M. complained querulously.

"So the Commissioner," said Byles, "thought we'd better forget the whole thing, and return the bag anonymously."

"How was it returned?" Cy asked quickly.

"It was just pushed inside the kitchen door here," retorted Byles, "when there was nobody in the kitchen. I didn't even know where H.M. was staying."

In his heart Cy thought the boys downtown had done a pretty decent job. H.M. appeared to think so too.

"I'm grateful about that, Gil. I sort of guessed

that's what it was "

"You guessed it?"

"Oh, son! This morning by the swimming pool, when that copper O'Casey had a fit and wanted me jugged, you soothed him down like a mother. Anybody but an imbecile would have seen you knew all about it; your voice showed it."

Cy’s memory moved back, and found this true. But H.M. was not interested in the matter.

"I wonder, Gil, if I could ask you a question about that bag?"

"Ask it!" Byles said menacingly.

"When you returned the bag, did you send a .38 revolver along with it?"

Byles closed his eyes. With powerful restraint he controlled himself.

"Well, no," he answered offhandedly. "We don't do that, as a general rule. Of course, if the suitcase belonged to some very important person, we might send a night stick or a tear-gas bomb." Then he exploded. "God damn it, did you expect a revolver?"

"Easy, Gil. E-e-asy! Keep your shirt on!"

"I've got my shirt on," returned the District Attorney, swiftly unbuttoning his waistcoat and dragging out about a third of the shirt as proof. "I've got my temper, too! But I'm not going to have it long!"

Then he pointed the Spanish Inquisition straight at H.M.

"You're crazy!" he said.

Still H.M. wore the look of a penitent dog.

"Sure, Gil," he agreed. "Can I ask one more question?"

"No! Wait a minute! What is it?"

"Your accountants," mused H.M., "finished their work on the books at the Manning Foundation about half-past eleven last night, didn't they?"

Byles, who was stuffing his shirt back into his trousers, looked up sharply. "How did you know that?"

'Well, I’ll tell you." H.M. savoured the cigar. "If you dare a Yank to do something in twenty-four hours, he won't stop at that He gets so mad he insists on doin' it in twelve hours, just to show you. I dunno why, but he does."

Byles started to speak, but closed his mouth again.

"When you didn't reach me by eleven-thirty last night—and you had the telephone number, 'cause I phoned your office—I guessed you'd finished that auditing. Eleven-thirty was the twelve-hour line from the time of our bet And I also guessed the news. Did you finish, Gil?"

"Yes!"

"Is Manning a crook? Did he pinch a hundred thousand? What's wrong with his books?"

With a short throat clearing. Howard Betterton arose from the tapestry chair and strolled towards the table as Manning's lawyer.

"That, I'm afraid," said Betterton, "is what's upsetting the District Attorney. There is nothing wrong with Mr. Manning's books."

"Not a penny missing?"

"Not a red cent."

"Cor, how you amaze me," breathed H.M., and put the stogy back in his mouth.

"In fact," Betterton continued, putting his fingertips on the table, "the Manning Foundation has never been in such excellent financial shape. Oh, one other thing! Sir Henry and Mr. Norton! I think you both heard about two young men, one from Michigan and the other from West Virginia?"

Cy nodded.

"They were given paid fellowships," he said. "One in verse and the other in music. Manning was supposed to have got 'em into taking the fellowships for nothing, and pocketed the money himself! That’s what stung the District Attorney into taking action!"

"Exactly. I have here"—Betterton produced, with something of a flourish, a flimsly typewritten sheet—"a copy of a letter sent by Mr. Manning to Mr. Digby Purcell three days before the former's disappearance. Mr. Purcell is the Michigan man. A letter to the other, just like it, is still in the files."

Betterton handed it to H.M., and Cy read over his shoulder.

Dear Mr. Purcell:

I am appalled to discover, following my letter of June 10th, that a clerical error had led me into an unfortunate mistake. I shall be happy to explain this when we meet But I can assure you that our funds are, and have been, at all times satisfactory. By way of apology I enclose our cheque for $2,500 (two thousand five hundred dollars) in a lump sum, rather than pursue our usual system of...

"Thank you," said Betterton, receiving the letter back and putting it into his pocket.

And now Byles was really dangerous. He had regained his poise and his Mephistophelian calm.

His black hair and eyebrows stood out against his sallow face. Riffling the pages of the book. Byles let his dark eyes rove around the group.

"You knew all about this!" he said to Betterton.

"I knew the Manning Foundation was in good shape, yes."

"And that's why you didn't try to throw chairs in my way!"

"I begged you not to do it, sir. However, if you insisted..."

The twisted smile curved round Byles's lips.

"Not a bad conspiracy," he said, and looked at H.M. "What's more, you're in it too!"

"Easy, son! Stop the bus! All I did was challenge you to investigate Manning, because I knew smackin' well he wasn't a crook."

"You wilfully and deliberately," said Byles, "gave me false information. You told me Manning's girl friend was a fan dancer..."

"I didn't say that, Gil. Manning said it. To Crystal who spread the report."

"You deliberately gave us a wrong address and telephone number. The police were led astray for practically a whole day..."

"By this girl friend, hey?"

"She was your girl friend, you old ghoul!"

"Oh, son! That's a shockin' thing to say."

"Another little charge against you. Not only did you obstruct the police in carrying out their duty, but you aided and abetted a criminal in escaping from the law!"

"By the way, son. What crime has Manning committed?"

"That," reported Byles, and his eyes glittered, "is what we're going to figure out"

He retreated a few steps, still riffling the pages of the book.

"I claim," he said, as though to a jury, "that this whole hullabaloo to arrest Manning was started by Manning himself. Who wrote those fellowship letters with a catch in 'em? Manning! Who, I'll swear, sent 'em anonymous letters that sic'd 'em on to me? Manning! Who started the rumours that the Foundation was rocky? Manning! Who practically challenged arrest? Manning! Who disappeared, making us think the charge was true? Manning!"

At each repetition of the word, "Manning," H.M. would nod in confirmation.

"Bull's-eye," he nodded. "Not an outer in the lot"

"But why!" demanded Byles. "Why the hell did Manning do it? He's not off his head. He can't want himself to be branded as a thief, even if the charge is wrong? There's a conspiracy, and you and Betterton are in it Otherwise, I ask you, why!"

"I can explain that, Gil." "Oh?" said Byles, making even his nose look suspicious.

"But I've got a 'why’ for you. Why are you so steamed up, wantin' to shove somebody in the clink no matter who it is? Why?"

Abruptly the District Attorney lowered his defences.

"All right," he snapped. "I'll tell you straight"

And Byles began to pace up and down the room.

"I'm in a jam," he said. "Maybe I oughtn't to have butted in, because I don't like Manning. Maybe I should have let Westchester handle it But I did butt in. I spread it all over the place. I charged into Manning's office, with twice as many accountants as I needed. I found nothing. Tomorrow, when I have to report, I've made a fool of myself.

"What's more, the Police Commissioner will be raving. The New York police aren't concerned in this, but every damn-fool newspaper reader now thinks they are. They're supposed to have the swimming-pool mystery, and look at 'em failing! Denials are not good! When there's trouble between the D.A. and the Police Commissioner, look out for City Hall!" Byles stopped his pacing. "And I'm the goat!" he added.

H.M. studied him curiously past the smoke of the stogy.

"So!" he murmured. "Then what you want, hey, is somebody to throw to the wolves?" "I didn't say that!"

"Well, son, you can throw me. I'm not goin' to make any defense, though I could. But just tell me, honest-Injun: are you actually going to shove me or anybody else into the coop?"

Byles hesitated. He stalked to the table. Drawing a powerful breath, he extended his arm and pointed the forefinger within an inch of H.M.'s nose.

"I could..." he began, and stopped.

Byles's arm fell to his side. He again paced up and down, the whitening daylight touching his long-nosed, pointed-chinned, uneasy face. He looked round at the bookcase. He stared at the windows. He examined the fireplace.

"Oh, the hell with it," said Byles, and flung the Spanish Inquisition into the fireplace. "No, curse your hide, I won't do that. I was just sore. Forget it."

And he went back to the table, sat down, and put his head in his hands.

"Somehow, Gil," H.M. spoke drowsily, "that's what I knew you were goin' to say. The trouble is, hey, that they'll jump over you for what's not your fault?"

"Yes!"

"And the Police Commissioner is wild?" "I told you that."

"YTcnow," said H.M., shaking his head, "I honestly think you ought to take a look at this morning's papers. No, don't start cursin' and swearin'! Cy, put 'em on the table in front of him."

Cy did so.

"Just pick 'em up," continued H.M. soothingly. "Read 'em slowly and carefully. Don't speak a word, and for the love of Esau don't blow your top, till you've finished every line."

The deathly hush of not-quite-dawn, with shapes still emerging faintly, pressed round the house. Cy wondered what had happened to Crystal, who was supposed to be preparing coffee.

Then strange noises began to issue from the throat of the District Attorney. Cy wished a candid camera could have recorded each expression. The last occurred when Byles stood up helplessly, his eyes bulging.

"Now keep quiet, son!" H.M. rebuked .him gently.

Getting his feet down from the table, H.M. dropped his stogy into an ash tray.

"I can't give it to you in American journalese, but it'll run something like this."

Then H.M. began to speak in a strange, high-falutin tone.

"The innocence of Frederick Manning," he intoned, "has been proved by District Attorney Byles, who never believed the few insinuations against Manning's honesty. 'Ill show you,' declared the DA. In the fastest piece of work ever done by the D.A.'s office..."

Byles uttered a noise like a ghost really getting down to business. Cy Norton prodded H.M. in the side.

"Swimming-pool mystery," Cy prompted. "Oh, ah! That ought to come first?" "Absolutely!"

"Swim Riddle Cracked!" intoned Sir Henry Merrivale.

"Officer Aloysius J. O'Casey, a plain New York cop and an Irishman to boot, solved the mystery of the Manning swimming pool. In doing this, he triumphed over the British detective, an old souse named Merrivale, who was baffled and has conceded defeat."

"Oh, my God," said Byles.

"Much credit for O'Casey's triumph must go

to District Attorney Byles' continued H.M. "The D.A. took his quick-witted Irish-American with him when he went to see the pool. O'Casey's quick eye noted a water-polo ball..."

H.M. broke off in reading an imaginary newspaper.

"In the first of the story, you've noticed," he said, "if s explained how Manning stuck his head inside a water-polo ball. He just trod water, and sneaked away while everybody was lookin' at me. In gettin' away, Manning was injured because he couldn't see; and he's confined to bed by the accident."

Byles, with a wild stare, shook a copy of the Record in the air.

"But none of this is true, is it?" he demanded.

"Oh, Gil!" protested H.M., as one might address a child. "Of course it ain't true. But tell me: what’s the name of the Police Commissioner?"

"Finnegan."

"And what's the name of the Mayor?" "O'Donnell."

"Well," said H.M., "I can't exactly see 'em gnashing their teeth over the story. Can you?"

Byles swallowed. "But this water-polo ball thing..."

"What about it?"

"It's nuts," the District Attorney said briefly.

"It's not nuts, Gil," H.M. assured him. "I had my doubts when I heard it, but I've been sittin' and thinkin'. If you can get your head inside that ball, and I think I see a way to do it, you can work it. I think," mused H.M., with an evil gleam in his eye,

"I’ll flummox 'em with it when I get home. Another British disappearin' mystery..."

Byles regarded him coldly.

"As a matter of fact..." Byles hesitated. "It's happened before," he said. "And it's American. Did you ever read an old book called The New York Tombs, published in 1874?"

"No, son. Should I have?"

"It's here," declared Byles, hurrying to one shelf and returning with a big volume bound in faded green. "In the old days there used to be a river or something of the sort behind the Tombs prison. One prisoner escaped with his head inside a wooden duck."

Cy Norton smote his fist on the table.

"Mr. Byles," he said excitedly, "where's your newspaper sense?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"This is our follow-up!" said Cy. "This is it! Years ago, from the old Tombs, a prisoner escapes with his head in a rubber duck..."

"A wooden duck!"

"We'd better make it rubber. That sounds better. Officer O'Casey, a keen student of crim-onology, remembers this case which has happened before. Everybody will believe it then!"

"Mr. Norton. Were you responsible for this somewhat memorable pack of lies?"

"It was only," Cy hesitated, "that I thought I knew the line H.M. was working on: that Manning was innocent, and had been proved innocent. As for O'Casey..."

"They say here," interrupted Byles, dropping everything to snatch up the Echo, "that O'Casey accosted the British aristocrat as he was drinking a magnum of champagne at the Stork Club."

"As a matter of fact." returned Cy, keeping a very straight face as all New Englanders should, "it was at a hot-dog counter at Grand Central."

"I see. You surpass Ananias, Mr. Norton. Well?"

"O'Casey," Cy explained, "gave his explanation in front of a lot of witnesses. Later H.M. shook hands with him and told him most of the credit for solving the case ought to go to him. O'Casey asked if he had solved it. H.M.'s 'No,' wasn't audible. Do you see?"

"Perhaps. Go on!"

"O'Casey really thought he'd rung the bell. I took a chance and guessed he'd be certain to rush off to his precinct station with witnesses. Possibly even to Headquarters. When I phoned again, before we left the studio, I found he'd done it."

Howard Betterton, smiling slightly, clapped the maddened District Attorney softly on the shoulder.

"It seems to me," said Betterton, still patting Byles's shoulder, "you'd better ring up and confirm these stories as soon as possible. Er— especially the part about Mr. Manning having had an accident Eh?"

"But I can't do that!" retorted Byles.

"Why not, son?" inquired H.M.

"Because there's not a damn word of truth in any of it! Besides, it's unethical and if s against the law!"

Oh, Gil’ said H.M., a little surprised. "How in the name of Esau are you goin' to get justice unless you do flummox the law?"

"Do you do this kind of thing in England? And never land in the can?"

"I’ve been in the police court The beak carried on awful. But I've never had penal servitude. Just you keep soothed and placid, Gil."

There was a long silence, while Byles's long arms and hands supported his weight on the table. His stare at H.M. was of too many emotions to be described.

"IVe told you twice," he said quietly, "you were an old B.o.b. But I never realized"—he might have been a scientist looking through a microscope— "what a remarkable s.o.b." Byles stopped. "Thanks," he muttered, glaring down at the table between H.M. and Cy. Then he sat down. "I'm in with the liars."

"Excellent!" beamed Howard Betterton.

Abruptly Byles's tone changed.

"But I still don't understand," he snapped, "why Manning played that trick! Why should he practically confess he'd stolen money when he hadn't stolen money? Why should he blacken himself when he didn't need to?"

"That’s what I'm goin' to tell you," replied H.M.

Taking out another stogy, H.M looked across at Howard Betterton.

"Crystal Manning," he said in a new, alert, commanding voice, "is a long time at that coffee. Would you mind goin' out and giving her a hand?"

Betterton frowned. "But surely, at a time like this..."

Cy had seen it happen before. As though by a snap of the fingers, H.M.'s drowsy lump of bone and flesh seemed to wake up, distend, and hit round him with the force of a battering-ram.

"Hop it, son," he said.

"As you wish," agreed Betterton, and went out very much on his dignity.

H.M.'s bulk, now seeming to overspread the chair, was bent forward against the table, facing Byles.

"Manning did that," he said, "because it was the only way to accomplish what he wanted to do. He wanted to expose and show up a person who's a very nasty bit of work: which same person tried to kill him."

Byles's eyes grew uneasy and suspicious.

"But they can't hang an attempted murder rap on anybody," he protested. "Have you talked to Lieutenant Trowbridge? If the victim won't testify, that's that!"

"I know. It's got to be all hushed up, I agree." H.M. lowered his voice. "But couldn't you and I and Trowbridge, strictly unofficially, make this person just as sick as mud?"

"Now wait a minute!" Byles said in alarm.

And, at the same moment, someone tapped Cy on the shoulder. It was Emily, the Mannings' maid, her face drawn with lack of sleep.

"Miss Crystal would like to see you," she whispered.

"Sorry, but I'm afraid I'm busy."

"Miss Crystal says it's very urgent." Emily gripped his shoulder.

If it had been anybody on earth but Crystal...

Cy, his very bones aching with curiosity, followed Emily out of the room. H.M. was attempting to bend forward across the table towards Byles, and muttering.

"But who is this attempted murderer?" Byles demanded. His voice rose up. "And how in Satan's name did Manning get out of that pool?"

"Listen," said H.M.

18

"Cy, who did it?" the voice asked.

Walking slowly towards the kitchen, Cy touched an aching head and eyes that seemed to be full of sand. Otherwise he felt almost abnormally strung up.

In the big kitchen, with all its implements white against clear, dawn from the eastern windows, Crystal sat by the table and smoked a cigarette. In front of her was a massive silver tray, with an equally massive silver coffee service.

"I made the coffee, all right," Crystal told him, after that initial question to which he offered no reply. "Then I just sat here, Thinking. The coffee isn't very hot"

"That doesn't matter. Want some?"

"No, thanks."

Betterton, Cy saw, had not come out to the kitchen; presumably that faithful watch dog had gone to take a breath of air. Cy picked up the coffee urn, poured a cup of black coffee, and swallowed it quickly.

"Crystal," he said, "your father's been cleared of every charge against him. Every single charge!"

"I know." She spoke with candour. "I heard most of it Listening outside the door." Crystal's eyes were fixed on him with a kind of fervour. "It seems you're pretty fast at your own job, too. And yet you seem so quiet'"

"That's fiction again," Cy said wearily. "A good reporter isn't a lunatic. Part of his job is to deduce what's going to happen just before it does happen, and then move like greased lightning. Did you ever hear of a man named Russell? Russell, of the London Times!"

"No. Who is he?"

"He was a stuffed shirt with whiskers, a hundred-odd years ago."

"Oh," said Crystal, her interest dying.

Crystal extinguished her cigarette on the white metal top of the table. Cy whacked his hand on the table beside it

"But he could, and did, scoop the pants off the whole world," said Cy. "He published the terms of Bismarck's secret treaty with Austria before the ink was dry on the treaty. He played hell in the Crimea. He... never mind. Nowadays, of course, they've practically eliminated the scoop."

"Oh, it wouldn't work!" Crystal cried unexpectedly.

"What wouldn't work?"

Crystal had changed into a bright-coloured housecoat. The morning light was kind to her intense eyes and her trembling mouth.

"I was thinking about us, of course!" she wailed, as though no other topic were possible. "You hate everything modern, and I love it. It just wouldn't work out, would it?"

"Probably not"

Crystal, who had expected him to pursue the matter, was evidently angry when he did not.

"As I say," Cy went on, "here's your father cleared of every charge! And even poor old Bob— your father wasn't joking when he talked about that garage. Bob will get it Or, rather, he's already got it."

"Bob's worried," Crystal brooded. "Do you remember, last night, he asked, 'Half-past seven was the time you and H.M. started out for the field, wasn't it?'"

Cy poured out another cup of coffee. He had forgotten what Crystal said, but it brought back with vividness the picture of that baseball field on Tuesday evening.

"Yes!" he admitted. "Half-past seven was the time, according to what your father told your mother, he had his appointment in the cenotaph. As you say, who did it? Who had the appointment?"

Crystal, dead tired but unwilling to admit it, looked at the coffee urn.

"It's no use rushing round and asking everybody: 'Where were you at half-past seven, or a little later, or maybe a little later than that?" Cy insisted.

"Why not?"

"Because everybody was milling round the field when H.M. made his triumphal entrance and began murdering the ball. You could get out to that cenotaph and back in a matter of minutes. Because, remember, the outfield fence extends only between the two outfield foul lines. You can walk around the fence and get there through a screen of trees. Just as H.M. said your father did when he left the pool for the cenotaph."

Then somebody could have been away from the field without being noticed?"

"That's it, I'm afraid."

"It can't be any of the family!" Crystal insisted. "It simply can't be!"

"That's what I think too. But your mother..."

"I can't get used to that 'mother,'" Crystal told him, her distress hunching up her shoulders. "When you've always thought of somebody as being a kind of shadowy presence, a—well, a ministering angel, and then you see her turn up so attractive she makes you look silly, just as you said...."

"I didn't say that'"

"You did! Don't deny it!" Crystal was pale, the Victorian style of her hair accentuating the pallor.

"If I did, I didn't mean it!"

"What’s more," Crystal went on, with intensity, "you saw how she treated my—my various marriages. I was just trying that because... oh, what the devil! It seemed it might be fun, and there was nothing else to do."

"Crystal, who started that crazy story about your mother being a bubble dancer or a fan dancer? H.M. seems to think it was your father."

"It was! He—he told me. I thought it was funny. Like a fool, I passed it on to Jean. She nearly fainted." Crystal flung away the subject. "My mother thinks there can't be any great love except her own. But there is! I know it, and I said so! Cy, listen. If you love me even as much as you say you do..."

Crystal rose to her feet So did Cy.

"Oh, not marriage!" Crystal spoke almost with repulsion. "The vows you take, which are real and true; and you only pretend to take them seriously! But if we went to Bermuda for a few months, and tried to find out if we did love each other...".

"Do you mean that?"

"Darling, yes!"

"If you're goin' to Bermuda for a couple of months," interrupted the dour voice of Sir Henry, who lumbered into the kitchen and glared at them, "then you'd better pay attention to what's happening now."

H.M. drawing up a chair to the table, staggered them by calmly producing a .38 police-positive revolver, which he had stuck into the waistband of his trousers like a pirate, and put it on the table.

"Do you know how to use one of these, son?" he asked Cy.

"I know how to use it, and I can handle it," returned Cy. "But I'm a rotten bad shot"

"Then you don't get one," said H.M., malevolently replacing the weapon in the waistband of his trousers. "But you'd better come along.

There's goin' to be a bit of shooting..." (his eyes wandered to the white electric clock on the wall, which pointed to a quarter to seven) "in about twenty minutes. No, no, not in the house!" His glare silenced Crystal, who had backed away. "Also, there'll be a bit of explaining about how Manning got out of the swimming pool."

"Look here," said Cy, and drank a cup of cold coffee. "Why in blazes can't you just tell us? ... Yes, yes, I know!" he added hastily, as H.M. began to draw himself up, "you're the old man! We understand that All the same, can't you give us an idea?"

"I told you last night," H.M. pointed out, "that Manning's trick was based on the same principle I used myself when I hocussed the subway turnstiles."

"And that tells me a hell of a lot, doesn't it?"

"No more can come out" H.M. said impressively, "than went in. You want to hear about that subway trick?"

"Yes!"

H.M., with a gleam of evil behind his spectacles, looked carefully round the kitchen before he went on.

"Well, now!" he resumed in a low rumble. "Imagine you're in any subway. For the sake of convenience, imagine that one at the shuttle: eight turnstiles with a good space in front of 'em. Hey?"

"I've got the picture, thanks. I was there."

"Ah!" said the old ogre. "But the whole trick is done before you work it, like a lot of good tricks.

"Now follow me. Before you're noticed, before you call attention to yourself, you just mosey along in front of eight turnstiles and drop a dime into (say) an assorted four of 'em, not using the turnstiles. One dime in each of four.

"Again listen close! People are using the turnstiles all the time. They keep clackin' and clatterin' all the time, before and after you do that. But there's always one extra dime in each of four turnstiles, no matter how many people me it Whatever its position is, the dime stays there for an extra fare.

"So you just call attention to yourself, by whoppin' down a big Gladstone bag on the floor and sitting on it. You wait like..."

"Like a spider," gritted Cy, remembering Jean's image. "Like a so-and-so lowdown spider!"

"Well—now!" said H.M., again deprecatingly modest. "Then you get your victim. You tell him you'd got 'em voo-doo'd, and bang you go through first one turnstile, then another."

"Wait a minute!" interrupted Cy, remembering back. "Officer O'Casey tried to charge after you, on the second one; and it held him. You said he had to utter the incantation. He did, and went through like Moses into heaven."

"That's right," agreed H.M. "But didn't you notice what I did just before then?"

"Just before then?"

"Sure. I said to good old O'Casey. 'That feller in the money-changing booth is just about having high blood pressure, ain't he?' And I pointed. The booth was behind him. Quite naturally he turned round and looked, and I dropped another dime in the turnstile while his head was turned. That’s all.

"Take it easy, now!" added H.M.

Whatever might have been due to him in the way of kicks or curses, H.M.'s expression had changed to one of grimness.

"You swat the old man," he said, "but take that lesson very seriously, my fatheads. That's the principle of misdirection. That's why so much of the evidence was shown bang in front of our eyes. And, up to a point, we never saw it."

Then he rose laborously to his feet

"Time's gettin' on, son," he told Cy. "Come along to a little party."

"What's going to happen?" Crystal's voice stuck in her throat. "You're going, Cy?"

"This is the showdown, my wench," said H.M. "I think hell go."

Cy went.

As they emerged first from the kitchen door and then from the screen door, they stepped into a white, clear dawn; but into a stillness so absolute that the screen door, banging behind them, sounded like a four-point-nine in an ack-ack battery.

The terrace, the lawn round the swimming pool, wore a shimmer of dew as clear as frost in midsumer. As they circled to the left of the swimming pool, they could hear their own footsteps in a dead world. On top of the rhododendron bushes far to the right Cy saw grotesquely the white shape of a water-polo ball.

Cy started to speak, but H.M. anticipated him as they passed the bathing huts towards the woods.

"No, son," H.M. assured him. "I told you before, that ball's got nothin' to do with it Somebody just slung it there, at one time or another, and it's been there ever since.''

"Where are we going?"

"Oh, to the graveyard," said H.M. And he touched with satisfaction the police .38 stuck into his belt

"And is this little shooting party necessary?"

"Well—not exactly necessary." said H.M., as though talking to himself. He puffed out first his cheeks and then his mouth. "It may not even come off. Burn me, no! But can you sort of recollect some instructions I gave last night in the graveyard? When that policeman joined us at the cenotaph?"

The green canopy of the wood, seeming lifeless even of birds, passed over their heads.

"You gave that cop," Cy answered, "the key to the cenotaph door. You told him to stand guard all night with the door locked, and not go off duty until..."

"Uh-huh? What are you stopping for?"

"Until seven o'clock this morning." Cy marched on. "You also left a long note for Lieutenant Trowbridge. Then you're laying a trap?"

"Which may not come off."

"But look here! You and Byles said this would-be murder was going to be hushed up! And there'd be no prosecution!"

"No prosecution," said H.M., again lovingly touching the .38 in his waistband, "under the law."

Cy did not speak again until they were almost at the other end of the baseball field.

Who, he was wondering to himself, had decided that the uncanniest hour of twenty-four was at dusk or in the night? Cy would have chosen the hush of morning, when nothing stirs, and the baseball field now looked as though no person had ever played there.

As they approached the dull green outfield fence, they saw that the door with the bolt(on this side) stood partly open. To the right against the fence there lay piled carelessly a canvas tarpaulin such as might have covered a car.

"If you are after somebody," Cy’s voice was a whisper, "won't we be seen?"

"No, son." The same whisper came back. "Our little friend will be comin' from another direction. That's dead certain."

Unexpectedly, H.M. whispered at the end of the tarpaulin near the door. "Don't bolt the door," he said, "until Larkin comes off duly. Got that?"

One fold of the tarpaulin moved as though in understanding.

Then they were in the graveyard.

Now doubtless, as an ordinary thing, it would have been inspiring to watch the spectacle of Sir Henry Merrivale crawling on his hands and knees. But to Cy, who had caught sight of his face and deduced the Old Maestro meant murder, it had no element of comedy. They crawled, making little sound because they were on sandy soil instead of in grass, along the fence at its inner side, a good distance towards the south.

Then Cy peered out from behind a blackened tombstone, with H.M. near him.

Nothing moved. Nothing.

There lay the graveyard, enclosed on three sides by the thick yew raggedness of hedge, its fronds like horns, which towered up nearly eight feet and then seemed to topple inwards by its own weight.

It darkened the graveyard. There was the harsh grass, over knee-height but not to the waist. There stood the stone angel with its neck badly cracked. There mourned the other stone angel, face hidden. There, faintly discerned, was a flat stone slab set up from the ground on four little legs. On the south side loomed the black bulk of the Renfield Mausoleum.

On the north, now diagonally opposite Cy...

There was still the same policeman, or it may have been another, on duty at the Manning Cenotaph. The cenotaph, round and blackish-coloured, its circle of black pillars supporting the flat-domed roof, seemed to be half devoured by the tall hedge pressing round it from behind.

Then at long last the policeman on duty moved, and consulted his watch.

Cy Norton did the same, the busy little ticking hammering in his ears.

"Just seven o'clock," he whispered to H.M.

The policeman's "A-h-h-h!" of a spreading yawn, as he stretched his shoulders, could clearly be heard in that hush. Except for a gas station and a drugstore some distance up Fenimore Cooper Road, there was no sign of life for nearly a quarter of a mile.

Hesitating, the policeman glanced at the big new vault key in his hand. He dropped it into his pocket. Then he walked away towards the door in the ballfield fence, his footsteps rasping and swishing with inhuman loudness.

The door in the fence closed after him.

Again silence, while the minutes crawled and Cy’s nerves seemed to jerk....

"It's ten minutes past seven," he whispered to H.M. "This plan, whatever it is, isn't going to work."

"Well, I didn't say it would," the querulous whisper returned. "Y'see, I got to get the eleyen-forty-five plane for Washington this morning.!"

He stopped abruptly.

From behind the cenotaph, in what seemed the hedge pressing against it, there was a crash. It sounded like a hammer against heavy glass.

Then, from the same direction, a revolver shot whacked out.

The birds, small as they were, whirred up from that graveyard with a noise like rocketing pheasants. The air seemed to be full of them. A man's voice, which Cy could not identify, shouted from outside the hedge beyond the cenotaph. ,

"Smashed the back window that was already broke ...if anybody tries to get out through this hedge..."

Two more heavy shots. There was a noise of someone frantically clawing or tearing at hedge branches, where they were much thinner along the left side of the cenotaph.

"Trying to get into the graveyard!" the same voice called.

And now—one against the eastern wall, two near the mausoleum southwards—Cy could see three blue-uniformed figures with Colt .38's.

There was slower, more careful tearing in the hedge tendrils, now close down to the ground against the black pillars of the cenotaph. A pause was followed by a sudden, short rip as someone began to crawl into the garden....

"Ho!" said H.M. He lifted his own .38 and fired.

And it was apparent that H.M., despite many boastings of his prowess in the past, couldn't shoot for beans.

A white chip mark sprang up high against a black pillar, with the whing of the ricochetting bullet Three more shots blasted out from two different directions. It was as though every sound were intensified by a mad loudspeaker.

A pause, and somebody fired again.

Then the quarry, unhurt, dived forward, slid like an eel, and disappeared amid the tall grass.

"There's not much wind," H.M. called out, and painfully stood up straight "Keep watchin' the grass! Wherever it starts to move, pump 'em in."

Cy Norton found his voice.

"H.M., are you as crazy as everybody else?"

"What’s that son?"

"This isn't a big place! If you want to rout somebody out, why don't you use tear gas?"

H.M., paying no attention, cut loose again. The stone angel with the cracked neck swayed without falling, but its head tumbled off grotesquely and thudded into long grass. Two more shots answered from the south. The top of a headstone flew to pieces.

"Got it!" yelled H.M. "Hold your fire!"

It was just after a fusillade from the south.

"You see that big flat stone held up on the little legs?" H.M. demanded. "Somebody's lyin' beside that, and may have crawled under. Move round and get down low, so we can all let go without hittin' each other when I count three. Ready?".

"I give up!" A voice screamed from the tall grass, weakly, but with gathering volume. "I give up!"

"Hold your fire!" H.M. repeated. "All right! Then stand up!"

The figure rose very slowly. It stood looking round in a dazed way, and then was violently sick.

"There!" said H.M., pointing. "That's the feller who was the accomplice in Manning's vanishing trick. That’s the feller Manning wanted to expose, for the sake of the daughter who was determined to marry him."

With a growl H.M. added, "That's Huntington Davis."

19

In the broad concrete corridor at La Guardia Airport, where few persons lingered and they could have privacy, Sir Henry Merrivale and his party were gathered.

In front of him stood Crystal Manning and Cy Norton. A little to one side stood District Attorney Byles, his blue chin as clean-shaven and his clothes as well-pressed as though he had not been up all night.

"Now listen, H.M.," Cy was saying, "will you look at that clock up there?"

"I know, son! I know! But..."

"It's now ten o'clock. Your plane doesn't leave until eleven-forty-five. You can't possibly miss it, you're here!"

The day outside was blue and brilliant, with kindling sunshine. Heat waves were already beginning to tremble in the concrete corridor.

"We already knew the whole framework of the story," Cy persisted, "as to what Manning intended to do up through what he did do or missed doing. What remains is that gap in the middle— the disappearance from the pool, and what happened between Manning and Davis at the cenotaph."

"Agreed!" said Crystal.

"The District Attorney, to judge by the way he's grinning," Cy continued, "already knows. But Crystal and I don't. Now tell us!"

"All right, all right," growled H.M. as though utterly weary. Actually he would not have missed this for worlds.

Again scorning a noble Corona Corona offered by Byles, H.M. produced and lit a stogy in defiance of rules. For a time he scowled over it

"Now I told you at the swimming pool," he went on, "that from the start we had three whackin' great clues, which would produce others. I’ll name them again. One: a bust of Robert Browning. Two, predicted and soon found: a piece of soggy wet newspaper, about seven inches long by an inch wide, folded over several times. Three: a big pair of garden shears."

"Wait a minute," intervened Cy. "Aren't you forgetting the wrist watch and the socks?"

H.M. regarded him sourly.

"Oh, ah. We'll include those. That makes four clues.

"Now for the moment he went on, chewing at the lighted stogy, "I’ll ask you to forget the bust of Browning. That's the real key to an important scene, when I wasn't there. The scene was played by Manning and Jean and Davis, in Manning's office after lunch on Monday. I heard about it from Jean when we were drivin' out to Maralarch the same evening. More important, last night I had a long talk on the phone (which same I told the hot-dog salesman) with Miss Engels. Miss Engels is Manning's secretary. That scene was so awful illuminating, in certain aspects, that we're goin' to put it aside for the moment." H.M. grunted.

"So we return to me," he tapped himself on the chest, "just after Manning took a header into the pool on Tuesday morning. I was as mad as a hornet and completely flum-diddled. But one thing did stick in my onion vaguely. When Manning dived into the water, why didn't his hat fall off!"

"His hat?" echoed Crystal.

"Crystal's mother," Cy blurted, "said last night the hat was connected with it. But what’s this about the hat not falling off?"

"It didn't fall," said H.M. He pointed at Cy. "You yourself can testify the hat came floatingup to the surface after Manning was out of sight And that's very rummy, if you just consider it

"Manning, as you all know, wore a loose-fitting Panama hat. Loose fitting! He wore it at the pool. I was so sort of intrigued that last night, in the way of experiment, I bought one myself."

Here H.M. touched his own Panama hat. He pushed it forward, then backwards, then sideways, a performance accompanied by a wicked leer.

"It's the kind, not uncommon, that hasn't got a sweatband. Last night, for instance"—here H.M. pointed at Byles, who grinned—"I was at the Stanley Studio talkin' on the telephone to you. I was mad again, and I got a good grip on the phone and just bent forward, and my hat fell off. But early in the morning (to go back to it) I wondered how Manning could take a header without losin' his tile.

"It wasn't reasonable to think he had stuck on his hat with glue or cement. So, just wondering, I remembered the makeshift we all use when we want to make a loose hat tight. A piece of soft newspaper, folded over a number of times, an inch wide by six or seven inches long, inside the brim of the hat

"I asked for it, and it was in the pool. Cor!

"Than Manning was ruddy well determined to make his hat stay on. It had meaning! It had to have meaning! It might mean this or that. But the first and likeliest of a trickster's dodges would be..."

"Would be—what?" prompted Cy.

"To cover up his hair," answered H.M.

"Next," continued H.M., silencing a burst of questions, "we had that whackin' great pair of gardener's shears. He flourished 'em in our faces. As I said then, he went out of his way to tell an unnecessary lie. He even told Stuffy to swear he was trimmin' the hedge.

"But he hadn't been trimmin' any hedge. The shears were dry, with no bits of hedge, and I proved it Why did he go out of his way to do that unless this was a part of his scheme too? Bein' prepared for misdirection, I could see the shears were only used to distract attention from something else—somethin' that was under our eyes, but we didn't notice.''

"Stop!" insisted Cy. "There wasn't anything under our eyes that we didn't notice!"

"Haven't you forgotten," demanded H.M., "that Manning also wore a pair of big white cotton gloves? Gardener's gloves?"

There was a silence, while Cy's memory brought back those gloves.

"First he's got to conceal his hair," H.M. went on, "and now he's got to conceal his hands.

"Then, only a little bit later, I got my real eye opener.

"I was talking to Gil here and a lot of people in the library. Good old Howard Betterton charged in. Betterton insisted on a conference with the District Attorney. I was dragged with 'em, and Bob Manning came with us, into the study next door. I was sitting there by a chess table. But the double doors wouldn't quite close, if you remember, and I could still hear what was being said in the library."

Crystal, vivid in a blue and white dress, stared at him.

"But Cy and I were in the library!" she said. "There wasn't anybody else, after Jean rushed out"

"Uh-huh," agreed H.M. "All the same while I was in the study a-drowsin', I heard a remark that took my scalp off. When the meaning burst in the old man's onion, I upset the whole goddam chess table—and had to blame it on Bob."

"But what did you hear?" asked Crystal. "And who said it?"

"You said it," retorted H.M.

"Y'see," he went on, "Cy here had been talking about Jean's slight tan. And you said. 'Oh, that’s artificial. Ifs suntan lotion Jean gets from the druggist'

"Now there really is, they tell me, one suntan preparation that won't come off in water no matter how much you swim. But we'll not trouble about that, because I didn't trouble about it then or later. Somethin' else rose up, like a collywobble out of a graveyard, and walloped the old man again.

"Manning, when he strolled down to the pool, had apparently been wearin' a pair of socks. At least, I thought so. But the socks weren't in the pool later! You"—and here H.M. pointed at Cy— "what colour were those socks?"

"I must repeat," said Cy, "that I didn't notice the socks; But Jean told me their colour afterwards. They were brown."

"Brown!" said H.M. "And now see the string of rummy facts which can't be coincidences!

"We've got Manning's glove-covered hands plus a scarf that hides all his neck plus brown socks that aren't there plus mention of a suntan lotion.

"Now if s notorious that Manning won't tan. He just turns lobster pink. That helped with the misdirection too. Suppose, for instance, that Manning had covered his body from feet to the very top of the neck with the ordinary, dark, plain suntan stuff you can buy anywhere? Suppose he'd put on two or three coats of it, a heavy and dark tan? That stuffs not water-proof, but it's strongly water-resistant It wouldn't come off in water if he stayed there only a brief time.

"Would it seem, to a casual glance, that he'd be wearing brown socks? Yes! Because if you think back"—again H.M.'s relentless finger stabbed at Cy—"the cork-soled bathin' shoes Stuffy gave us had leather caps to hide the toes. And Manning's, you saw, were just like 'em.

"But what would be Manning's game, in dressin' up like that under his white clothes, and making himself as brown as an Indian...

"Stop the bus! There's only one other person at that place who's tanned to the colour of an Indian; that's Huntington Davis.

"Is there any other resemblance between these two? Stab a pig's ear—there is! Davis is lean and athletic. Manning is also lean and wiry; he's twenty years older than Davis, but he's kept his figure. Last night in fact, Manning's wife said he had the arms and shoulders and torso of a man twenty years younger.

"And that's not all, my fatheads. They're both just the same height."

Crystal was completely taken aback.

"The same height?" she repeated.

"Will you cast your mind back, my wench," said H.M., "to Monday night in the drawing room, while there was a thunderstorm? Your old man and Davis were havin' a row. They were standing up facing each other: straight as grenadiers, lookin' at each other on dead-straight eye level. Ah, you got it now!

"But, there is one difference between those two—if, say, you saw 'em both from behind. Davis has glossy black hair. Your old man's hair is silver grey. And back we circle to the rummy fact that Manning, with a paper wadding inside his hat, has smackin' well determined to cover his hair.

"True. Now suppose Manning had dyed his hair black, again from any of those washes you can all buy from the druggist? Could he conceal the black hair? Easy! He wears his grey hair rather long; I but, as you'll have observed, he's got it cropped up beside the ears. So there wouldn't be a hint of sideburns. At the back he's got a mufflin' scarf together with a hat pulled well down.

"Finally, let's imagine he's got under his loose clothes a pair of scarlet swimming trunks.

"As an imaginary test, now, you take Fred Manning and Huntington Davis. You have 'em both the same height, the same build, the same colour of tan, the same black hair. You stand 'em side by side, with their backs to you, about forty feet away—which is the breadth of the pool. And I'd defy any casual acquaintance to tell 'em apart"

"Then there was some kind of substitution?" demanded Cy. "Uh-huh."

"But even so!" blurted Crystal. "How on earth...?"

"Easy as pie. You'll hear that. But now lemme direct your attention back to clue number one: the bust of Robert Browning. That'll show us the voices, the expressions, the feelings, the psychological clues on top of the physical, that led up to this."

In the corridor at La Guardia Airport, a luggage truck rattled past. A voice, hollow over a loud-speaker, made H.M. jump and fuss until District Attorney Byles told him to look at the clock.

"You've got plenty of time," the District Attorney pointed out "Go on."

"On Monday afternoon," snapped H.M., "Manning came back from lunch at a little past three o'clock, having left behind a hocussing crumpled envelope for you." And he looked at Byles, who remained unabashed.

"Manning went into his office. The receptionist called his name, and he went over to see her. She told him, uneasy-like, that Jean and Davis were in his office. He didn't seem to like it but he just asked whether his secretary was in her office.

"Now you can see the next through the eyes and hear it through the ears of that secretary, Miss Engels. She was sittin' in a cubicle next to his own office, a cubicle with glass sides which don't reach the ceiling. Or you can follow it as though it had been written down for you.

"Back Manning strides to his office. On the floor, proppin' the door a neat way open, is the marble bust of Browning. Why was it there?

"If anybody suggests it was there to help the air conditioning, that's eyewash. Air conditioning's the same in any room. Manning looks murderous when he sees that bust, looks a? though he hates seeing it If he hates it there, all he's got to do is pick it up and close the door behind him. But he leaves it there. Why?

"And why, again, did Miss Engels sound so flustered when he called her on the talk-back? Why did she say she 'didn't want to disturb him' with a phone call? Because of course, she'd heard everything they said—through that open door. Just as Manning meant her to.

"In other words," H.M. emphasized, sticking out his head, "that whole scene in the office was a fake: arranged, rehearsed, and intended to be heard. All three persons in the office were in on the scheme."

Crystal, fidgeting with her handbag, cut him short

"I've already heard," she hesitated, "that Jean was mixed up in it too. But it's impossible! Jean? If she happened to be mixed up in it..."

"Only innocently!" H.M. interrupted, with a malignant glare but a real and deep sincerity. "Jean hadn't any idea about dirty work. She really is honest and naive. She's a poor actress; and you may have noticed it in her behavior later. I had one pretty awful session with her when—wait! She thought she was only protecting her father.

"Here's a gal"—H.M.'s gesture conjured up Jean's image—"who's full of lofty romantic ideas. Next to Davis, her father's her idol. If he says to her he's ruined, he's embezzled a lot of money and has to run away with more—well, that's always happenin' in films. She’ll think it's only natural.

"The one mistake made with Jean"—here H.M. pointed to Crystal—"was to tell her about The Woman and call her a fan dancer. I don't think Manning realized its effect until she blurted it out in the off ice—which wasn't acting—and I think a detached observer would have sworn it took him off-guard.

"But Jean was loyal.

"And there's one thing more, in that office recital, which wasn't acting. Manning really hated and despised Davis, just as Davis hated him. That’s the secret

"That's why the recpetionist at Manning's office was so upset when she told him Davis was there. The whole office must have known, before any question of disappearance arose. Even at second hand, dye see, I can hear Manning's real feelings sort of burn and quiver through that scene.

"Oh, not when he stagily shouts, 'Get out!' No, my children! When he's quiet? when Manning's himself. 'I was wondering,' to Davis, 'why you and I dislike each other so much.' And to Davis's, 'Do you trust me?' we hear that almost whispered, 'Not one millionth of an inch.'"

Sir Henry Merrivale smote his fist on the arm of the bench.

"And that he declared, "was the crux of the whole plan. He'd got his wife back. Maybe he did have friends in the world! He'd be completely happy if he could do just one more thing. Gil there"—and H.M. pointed to the District Attorney—"kept asking the same question over and over.

"'Why,' Gil wanted to know in a ravin' way, 'did he pretend he'd stolen money if he hadn’t stolen money? Why blacken his name? Why this disappearance if it wasn't necessary?'

"The answer is short and sweet Huntington Davis.

"Jean, the favourite child, is in love with Davis. She wouldn't have listened to a word against him; you all know that. Manning was going to prove to Jean, prove beyond question, that her adored Young Hero was actually a smilin', crafty, worthless s.o.b."

"But if Davis knew Manning hated him..." interrupted Cy.

"Shut up," H.M. said sternly. "Because now we come to the explanation of the swimming pool."

His stogy had gone out but he put it in his mouth and chewed it

"Y'see, Fred Manning made his scheme foolproof for the disappearance. However the cards fell, however people behaved, he was ready for it On Monday night"—H.M. nodded towards Byles—"Gil phoned and said he was coming for Manning next morning, with sirens.

"But I'll just bet you," continued H.M., "if you hadn't rung him, he'd have rung you. Would you have gone after him?"

Byles tapped the glass of a window beside him.

"Yes," Byles admitted. "He had me almost as sore as you usually get"

H.M. ignored the insult

"Even if that hadn't happened," he went on, "it wouldn't have made any difference. Any kind of message would do to bring cops swoopin' down; Byles's suspicions about embezzlement would do the rest. It didn't even matter if the cops didn't arrive when Manning expected them, or much later.

"Because why? Because he'd have two unimpeachable witnesses—Cy Norton and yr-obt-servant—to swear he'd done a complete disappearance and a solid-gold miracle!

"Sure, we were the witnesses! He even put us in the same bedroom. A message from Jean, in the morning, said to get down to the pool, and Manning would have seen to it that one of us got there. It didn't matter whether we jumped straight into the water, or whether we didn't Because Manning could always get us out again, by beckoning and whispering of mysterious secret messages. He could get us to stand just where he wanted us—which later he did.

"So there we were, six of us, both in and out of the pool. Davis, Jean, and Betterton were definitely in the pool. Cy and I were sittin' in an orange swing on the long side. And up strolled Manning himself, with his suntan and dyed hair and red swimming trunks hidden under loose white clothes.

"But, before Manning could dive in, there was one thing he ruddy well had to do! He had to be sure that Davis got out of that pool unseen."

Crystal held up her hand.

"Wait!" she protested. "Davie had to get out of the pool—unseen? Why?"

H.M. regarded her dismally.

"Oh, my wench! When Manning was ready to dive in, Davis couldn't be there. There had to be only two persons in the pool, Jean and Betterton. Manning would make the third. But, after Manning dived, we were supposed to think there were four, or the trick wouldn't work.

"Lemme show you!

"Manning, to make Cy and me turn our backs to the pool, used the simplest kind of misdirection. Cor, to think I was off-guard! I used exactly the same trick on Officer O'Casey in the subway.

"If you remember, Cy, Manning pointed to the back of the house and said, 'Great Scott! Look there!' We got out of the swing and crowded after him, with our backs to the pool. He had to be pointin' at something that was dead certain to keep our backs turned and our faces the other way.

"He was pointing, in fact, to you," H.M. told Crystal venomously. "You were outside the sun-porch door, coming towards us."

"But I didn't have anything to do with it" Crystal protested.

"Sure. I know now you didn't But—lord love a duck! That was the second half of the problem, after I'd solved the first And it nearly drove me scatty until midnight last night"

"Why should it?" Crystal insisted.

"Why should it?" echoed H.M. in a hollow voice and with an expression like a dying duck. "Ill tell you, my wench!

"Cy here knows about your father's phenomenal acuteness of hearing. So, as I was stuck away in a wine cellar workin' out the first half of the problem, I knew one thing. He heard those motorcycle sirens a-whooping, and he heard 'em long before anybody else heard a whisper. Now was his time, if he wanted a spectacular show, to hit for a smasher.

"And he did. Without first takin' a glance or givin' any kind of signal, he turns round and says, 'Great Scott! Look there!' And you're already outside the back door. But it's dead quiet yet; only Manning could have heard the sirens. You couldn't have heard 'em. If you're an accomplice— the vital accomplice to keep our eyes away while Davis slipped out of the pool—how in blazes did he communicate with you?

Actually, he didn't You weren't an accomplice; you were there by accident What your father originally meant to indicate was that dummy electric chair.

"It's been there half the night, where he put it, on the south terrace. Nobody noticed it because several have testified there was a cloth over it When he walked down to us, all Manning had to do was slip off the cover and throw it under the chair.

"That was a dead cert. If you see what looks like a fully loaded electric chair sittin' on the lawn, it'll hold your attention, all right

"Manning's words, 'Great Scott! Look there!' were really the signal to Davis in the pool. Davis glanced round to make sure we weren't looking, puffed out some words so his voice would come from the pool, and slid like an eel over the coping on the other side. He hared down that short grass path between the bushes, bent low, towards the bathing cabins; he turned left at the end of the bushes, and was out of sight

"Crystal couldn't see him, because we three witnesses stood in the. way blockin' the view. But she was a new element she might dish the plan. So Manning, to make certain she wouldn't notice Davis, pointed straight at her instead of the chair, which meant she'd look at him when he spoke.

"As for Betterton, in the pool, he couldn't see anything. You noticed his twisted up and (literally) blinkin' eyes. A man with very poor sight, in water, is nearly blind. The first thing he did later, when he heard the D.A. had arrived, was to rush off for his pince-nez. As he said, he couldn't see without 'em.

"But lef s go back to the spectacular moment!

"The police sirens came screamin' up the road. They stopped. Manning backed towards the coping of the pool. Still speakin' with the usual hocus-pocus, he said he hadn't expected 'em so early. He handed me the shears, and took a header.

"Now follow it!

"For the life of me, my fatheads, I can't tell you how long I stood gogglin' at that pool. But it wasn't for long. Then Betterton's head appeared up out of water nearly under Cy's feet as Cy stood on the coping.

"On the opposite of the pool—forty feet away from us, with their backs turned—Jean and apparently Davis shot up out of the water, holdin' themselves rigidly by the handrail, knocking their heads together happily.

"That's the beauty of it! Who'd suspect this happy couple weren't really Jean and Davis at all? Who'd suspect they were Jean and her old man?

"If you recall, the fake 'Davis' never turned round or said anything. Jean turned and called, 'Time to get out, Mr. Betterton!' Then Jean and her companion trotted up the little path between the bushes towards the bathing cabins.

"What they did was beautifully effective, and easy to work. Remember: the real Davis, with his real tan, is waiting unseen round the left-hand end of the bushes. When they get to the end, Jean turns right towards Ladies. The fake Davis turns left towards Gents.

"Instantly—lemme stress instantly—Jean whips round and trots out again facin' the pool, as though she'd been called. On the other side, the real Davis merely passes the fake Davis and he runs out facin' the pool.

"They're both hidden for only the part of a split second. Both Jean and Davis returning makes it doubly secure. It's so fast, yet so easily done, that a person could be lookin' straight at it without noticing the switch. Miracle!"

He paused, because Cy Norton was making dissenting noises.

"I swore men, and I swear now," Cy told him, "I never had my eyes off those two. I might have been deceived, yes. But I still swear..."

A hidden amusement lay behind H.M.'s satiric expression.

"We were seeing the thing through your eyes," he said. "You sincerely believed what you said, while I was lookin' round the edges of the pool. But I could prove by your own testimony, if we had it written down, that what you swore couldn't possibly be strictly and literally true."

"How do you mean?"

"Betterton grabbed your ankle. (No, he wasn't concerned in the business!) He said something, and you yelled down at him. 'Get out of the pool!' or words to the same effect then, distinctly, you looked up.

"You looked up. Consequently, if 8 a flat contradiction to say you didn't ever have your eyes off Jean and Davis if you looked at Betterton and then looked up. I repeat it wouldn't have made any difference in the lightning switch. But, lord love a duck, you claimed something that was impossible. Also, d'you remember last night?"

"What particular part of last night?"

"When Jean ran away from the cenotaph? And you followed her, and caught her beside that same path through the bushes to the pool?"

(Dark crimson sunset, a low line, silhouetted against the sky. Red tinges in the pool. The tall bushes that looked like hedges.)

"Y'see," H.M. went on, "she practically told you the story then, if you'd listened properly. She's awful sympathetic towards you, son...."

"Is she really?" asked Crystal, with dark blue eyes flaming.

"Don't you remember," said H.M., "it was the first time she'd ever seemed furtive? She was scared, and all of a sudden was afraid we'd connected her with the disappearance. She scuffed the toe of her shoe in the grass, and asked you in a funny kind of voice whether they didn't suspect she was—and so on? Remember?"

"But how do you know that? You weren't there!"

"You mean you didn't see me. I was lurkin', and I showed up at the right time. Jean even told you she meant to turn to the right, Davis to the left, and stressed how they never got there. But remember: you didn't shout at Jean or Davis. You shouted only at Betterton. Why should they come back?"

"H.M., what about that damned wrist watch Manning was wearing?"

H.M. pushed back his Panama hat.

"Well, y'see.... Manning jumped into the pool with it. I wondered, bein' a silly dummy, why it didn't flash like a diamond when Manning (the presumed Davis) shot up out of the water on the opposite side.

"But one look-see at the watch—remember how we found Manning lying on the grave mound, and the inside of the wrist strap facin' up?—told me I could forget it. When the fake 'Davis shot up out of the pool, the insides of his wrists and hands were towards us.

"The watch, if you recall, had a dark brown strap with a dull buckle. At forty feet, against that brown suntan, it'd be completely invisible. And invisible when he trotted away. Manning just forgot the watch, that's all.

"But now we come to the graveyard. I'd been doing—hem—a modest little bit of ball-swatting. So, because I swatted one there, we found Manning on one of the grave mounds. Afterwards I went into the cenotaph, and..."

For a moment H.M. was silent, shaking his head.

"Son," he told Cy, "I said to Jean that I admired her father. And I did. Because there was the crownin' peak of his game.

"Now it's really true he did go out to that cenotaph, when he'd had a sudden fit of energy over a period of years, to clean up that battle panorama of the Revolutionary War. But, cor, how neatly he took advantage of it! He took advantage of all those cleaning materials to cover up the fact that he had to remove his suntan and hair dye before anybody saw him again.

"D'ye follow me?

"Jean quickly rapped out and said he'd been using the cenotaph 'recently’ to clean the panorama. But not as recently as that, for panorama cleaning. When we walked in there less than twelve hours after Manning disappeared, what did we find?

"Of three empty buckets, two were still moist on the inside. There were two sponges. One, inky black and clearly used on the walls, was bone-dry. The other, stained darkish brown but with a yellow edge to show the corner where somebody'd used it, was still damp. There was whitish sediment in a metal bowl. Finally, he'd smashed part of the back window; there were darkish stains on the ledge to show where a lot of coloured water had been poured outside.

"That was evidence! And more: I said there'd be certain to be evidence in the brand-new pigskin bag; there'd be a pair of swimming trunks.

"Manning had all the time in the world, and a hideaway nobody would think of. I told you awhile ago that ordinary dark suntan lotion, even several coats, ain't strictly water-proof; you can get it off with soap and water and hard scrubbing. The feller just stood up in that bowl from the big bowl and pitcher, and he sloshed himself down. He could mop up any water from the floor, and that burnin' sun we had all day would soon dry it.

'The hair dye wasn't so easy. But all he'd need to do was take a grey hair-wash (ask the druggists, as I did round Grand Central) and slosh it on over the black. Both of 'em would shortly fade. Meantime, he'd have a passable imitation of his original hair if you didn't see it in too good a light

"And then, when we found Manning dyin' and all this evidence of what really happened ... well, I had to deal with Jean.

'There she was, scared and wonderin' in the cenotaph, knowing what it meant and afraid even of a light in her face, smack-bang at my side. And I had to question her. With Manning apparently dyin' outside, I had to find out where Irene Stanley—Manning's wife, I thought—really lived."

Slowly H.M. drew a handkerchief from his hip pocket, wiped it across his forehead, and wiped the forehead again.

"Y'see, I thought Manning probably told all his plans to her. If she hears Manning's been attacked, shell know if 8 Davis and she may blurt out everything. But this’ll occur to the would-be murderer, too. Irene Stanley's not very safe. She's got to be warned before the newspapers warn her. Well, I was wrong. Even the old man"—H.M. coughed—"can be wrong sometimes. That's why I was sort of upset when I questioned her later.

"But the hair-raisin' difficulty of handling that girl Jean! There in the cenotaph, she asked questions about her father and then, very quickly, a question about Huntington Davis. D'ye still follow me?"

Cy nodded, in a dream.

"If Jean ever suspected her adored Dave had anything to do with an attempt on her father's life," Cy said, "she'd have gone off the deep end."

"Well, and so I lied to her," growled H.M. "I cleared Davis. I said he hadn't the nerve and hadn't the brains—which was very nearly true. But don't let anybody here say I was misleadin' you or misdirectin' you."

Slowly H.M.'s gaze travelled round the group, with a glare in it.

"I cleared Davis of suspicion," said H.M., "because I was speakin' to Jean and I ruddy well had to. Will any of you tell me, under the circumstances, what else I could have said?"

There was an uneasy silence.

"Now Davis," H.M. growled on, "wasn't all false front and celluloid, though he was more than half composed of it He'd never in two green centuries have had the brains to think of a scheme like

Manning's. But he could help carry it out. And he could improve it for his own self-help.

"By the way, Manning and Davis badly overplayed another rehearsed scene in the drawing room on Monday night. They were supposed to be havin' a row again. Davis heroically says he can support Jean financially. Manning couldn't keep back the contempt of: 'Knowing your position in your father's office, I doubt it' Davis fires back that he knows Manning's financial position too. But how could Davis have known it?

"That passage jumped out like tiger's claws in a drawing-room comedy. Davis was the man, all right. What's more, as I think I reminded you, Manning told one great big whoppin' lie that night, which the same I spotted. He said the secret of how he was goin' to disappear was known only to himself."

Again Cy intervened with a repeated question.

"But if Manning and Davis hated each other," he asked, "how could Manning persuade Davis to help, him in the scheme? And why must they 'pretend' to dislike each other?"

"Oh, my son! If in Manning's scheme Davis was an accomplice, in fact the accomplice, are people likely to suspect him if they think Manning doesn't like him or trust him?"

"Come to think of it, no."

"And Davis could see it, all right. He couldn't believe Manning or anybody could dislike him, though a good many of us instinctively did. As to how Manning lured him on and trapped him..." H.M. paused.

"I say, Gil," he addressed, the District Attorney in a tone of slight apology, "you may have heard of the shootin' party we gave for Davis in the graveyard this morning?"

Byles turned on him a cold and formal eye.

"Officially or unofficially," said Byles, "I never heard of it. You shock me!"

"Sure, sure. Lieutenant Trowbridge never heard of it either." H.M. looked at Cy. "But by now, son, you've realized..."

"I should have realized at the time," Cy retorted bitterly, "that nobody in the whole damn world could have been as bad a shot as you seemed, unless you weren't trying to hit him. And that was why you didn't use tear gas? And the cops were all crack shots who would be certain not to hit him?"

"Just scare him out of his wits," the old villain answered reassuringly, "and crack his nerve as it cracked once before. I said, Thank you, gents, that's all,' to the cops, and I marched a broken-up Davis back to the house, and got the truth.

"And how had Manning got him snaffled?

"Manning, some time ago, proposed a piece of apparently crooked work to Davis, and Davis didn't turn a hair. So Manning went further.

"If they were entering into dirty work as partners, said Manning, they had each to have a document which would absolutely damn the other if either side betrayed. So they wrote two copies, each one writin' an alternate paragraph in his own hand, to the followin' effect

"Frederick Manning, who intends to elope with a floozie, will pinch the sum of a hundred thousand dollars from the Foundation Funds. In consideration of Huntington Davis's helping him with his vanishing trick, Davis will receive fifty thousand provided he gives up all claim on Jean."

"And they both signed an agreement like that?" demanded Cy.

"That's it, son. Manning knew, as far as he was concerned, he was as safe as houses. Davis didn't mind that bit about Jean, even if this could ever be made public—which it couldn't. If Manning has gone broke, then Jean's no longer an asset to Davis.

"But the fellow's in love with Jean!" protested Cy. "I swear he is! His acting wasn't that good!" "Sure he's in love with her, son." "Well, then!"

"I'm afraid," grunted H.M., "you don't understand the wrong type of these Bound-to-be-Successful boys. Davis would tell you, with tears of sincerity in his eyes, that marriage to the daughter of a poor man wasn't good sense. His social background, his athletic record, his brokerage firm, all deserved something better."

"I see," snarled Cy Norton. "But you seem to think Manning now had him in a corner. How?"

"That'll be plain," said H.M., "if I just tell you the final scene of what I'm goin' to say. Last night, at half-past seven, Davis slipped away from the baseball field with what he thought was a loaded .38 revolver.

"Oh, ah! There's the question of how that .38 Smith and Wesson got mixed up with my luggage. You know now the cops returned that. Davis went out to Maralarch with the gun, because he had plans. Instead of puttin' it in his overnight bag, the silly dummy shoved it into a deep raincoat pocket. Then he realized he'd have to hang his coat in the hall cupboard, as Betterton did. He hurried to look for a place to hide it. He found the kitchen empty. Then, standin' there with the gun in his hand, he heard somebody comin— and panicked.

"It was pure instinct. But I don't suppose he could have got rid of it better than by puttin' it on top of my bag near the kitchen door. Servants, even if they think you're loopy, still think what they find on top of your bag belongs to you—like a tennis racket or golf clubs.

"Davis knew he could follow where it went, and get it again. He did. What he didn't know was that the cartridges were now duds; Manning saw to that.

"So, at seven-thirty next day, while I'm at bat, he whips out to that cenotaph.

"Manning, all dressed again and with his disguise off, was waiting for him. It was gettin' towards a blur of twilight. And what a showdown!

"It gives me a creepy kind of feeling to remember that Elizabeth Manning, when she talked about 'a graveyard to let,' actually imagined last night what Davis meant to do to her husband! Davis—if he could muster up the nerve—wasn't goin' to have any nonsense about dividing money. He'd kill the blighter. Manning, of course, had to carry the key of the vault Davis would lock up the body there.

Those places, if you put the metal protector over the keyhole, are pretty nearly airtight Nobody would discover that body. Manning, to everybody's mind, would have run away; they'd look for him everywhere except here.

"When Davis stepped inside that cenotaph and closed the door, he didn't notice the partly broken window. The sound of shots, normally, wouldn't carry as far as the outfield.

"'Have you got the hundred thousand?' says Davis.

"'It's in there,' says Manning, and nods toward the pigskin bag. Actually, all Manning had was a couple of thousand from his own bank account.

"Davis takes the gun out of his waistband, under a loose sports coat, and fires.

"And there's only a click.

"Davis, beginning to lose his head, fires again. Only a click. And there's Manning, with those blazin' eyes we remember, just watching him.

"'I'm glad you did that,' says Manning, in the silkiest kind of tone. 'Because of course you won't get a penny of the hundred thousand.

"'Didn't it occur to you,' says Manning, 'that I'm now a fugitive? That I've disappeared? Everybody will know it in a few days. And you can't denounce me with your copy of the agreement, unless you denounce yourself too.

"'As for my copy,' says Manning, 'that's in my safe. My secretary has orders to give it to Jean, sealed, at noon tomorrow morning. Jean knows there was money being stolen. But she doesn't know you're willing to throw her over for money. And she'll see it in your own handwriting. Now get out''

"And that's what Manning had really done with his copy. Its effect on an idealistic twenty-one-year-old gal like Jean...

"Of course Manning was still foolin' Davis to the top of his bent about the money. And that's what drove Davis crazy. In his pocket he had a big penknife of a kind (they tell me) you can buy without bein' noticed. In that half-darkness he could open it behind his back.

"And Davis went for Manning with the knife.

"And Manning went for Davis with his bare hands.

"Two stab wounds in the side. Some wounds you don't feel immediately; a lung-wound usually hits like a red-hot poker. Manning started to go down on one knee—and got up again. He was still comin' for Davis, knife or no.

"Davis, for the last time, couldn't face those eyes. His nerve broke, and he ran out of the door into the graveyard. Manning, proceedin' in a kind of ferocious apple-pie order, locked the door of the cenotaph, put the key in his pocket and started after Davis.

"But he couldn't make it He collapsed against a grave only a dozen feet away. Davis thought for sure Manning was a goner. He could go back and dispose of the body when...

"Of all the grotesque objects to drive a murderer scatty, a baseball came whackin' over the fence through the trees, and bounced and rolled.

They'd probably come after it Davis had just time to get back to the field and mingle with the crowd comin' to shower bouquets on me.

"That's about all. Of course Manning refused to prosecute or even name the feller who attacked him! But, of all people, he wasn't protecting Davis. He was protecting Jean from being involved in it.

"As for the little trap I set, postin' the copper in front of the cenotaph and hoping Trowbridge would keep him there all night, there was real evidence in it. You could prove Manning must have disguised himself as Davis..."

"And you thought," interposed Cy, "Davis would return to clear out the evidence."

H.M. looked startled. "Lord love a duck, no!" ' "No? But Davis was standing there at the time you gave the orders!"

"Sure. I meant him to hear. It wasn't the disguise business; that's not criminal in itself. But, if I had things worked out right before I got confirmation, don't you see what Davis thought was in that pigskin bag? A hundred thousand soakers! Wouldn't you have had a try for it, son? I thought he would. And he did. Finish."

Crystal spoke softly. "What about... Jean?"

"You know and I know," H.M. answered, "that Jean's goin' to get over this. No life is exactly ruined at twenty-one...."

"Or any other age," Cy said.

"And besides," added H.M., "we can't have any of our gals worshippin' these All-for-Success boys, now can we?" He gave her a straight,

curious look.

"Flight twenty-eight, "called a hollow voice from a loud-speaker, as Crystal had opened her mouth to speak. ''Flight twenty-eight Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington...."

Sir Henry Merrivale, giving a galvanized start, began to make fussed gestures as though searching for the bag which a porter had already taken. Together with others who had arrived by the alleged "limousine," they propelled the great man round into the main hall of the airport.

The formalities were concluded. Crystal, Cy, and District Attorney Byles watched from the front windows as H.M.'s plane, with the latter finally inside, wheeled round amid engine spurts and bumped over to take its place on the runway.

"He said that for me!’ Crystal breathed.

"Said what for you?" asked Cy.

"I kept saying you had to succeed," said Crystal tensely. "And I kept thinking it didn't matter two hoots how you did it! But I don't believe that now."

"For myself, angel. I prefer an easy-going life." he grinned down into her eyes. "Except, of course, in one respect."

"Two months in Bermuda?" cried Crystal.

"Two months in Bermuda!" And he put his arms round her.

Outside the silver plane, shimmering with light points, slid along the runway as its engines spurted, and then throbbed into a deepening roar. District Attorney Byles, elbow in one hand and chin propped against fist, looked at the scene in such odd fashion that Cy spoke.

"Anything wrong, Mr. Byles?" The roar of the plane deepened; gently the silver shape left ground. "Oh, no!" said Byles. "No, nothing at all. I ; merely felt a twinge of pity for a fine and handsome capital." "What's that?"

"I was just wondering," Byles said musingly, "what that old devil will be up to in Washington." The plane swept over the trees and was on its way.

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