The Unicorn Murders

Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr)

Sir Henry Merrivale 04

CONTENTS

I. THE LION AND THE UNICORN 7

II. THE RED CAR 15

III. HOW WE FOUND BATTLE AND HIGH JINKS ON THE ORLEANS ROAD . 24

IV. HOW AN OLD FRIEND ENTERED WITH SOME ABRUPTNESS . . 34

V. THE HOST OF CASTLE QUEER . 45

VI. THE INCREDIBLE PASSENGER . . 53

VII. HOW A FOUNTAIN-PEN SERVED TO REMOVE A MASK 62

VIII. THE DEATH-TAPESTRY . . . . 69

IX. THE INVISIBLE WEAPON . . . 77

X. LIARS' LETTERS 84

XI. ADVENTURES OF A PORTABLE TYPEWRITER 95

XII. THE SECOND IMPOSTOR . . . . 104

XIII. How H.M. SPUN THEORIES, AND GASQUET WAS PERTURBED . . 113

XIV. THE HORN OF THE UNICORN . 120

XV. THE MAN SUSPECTED . . . . 130

XVI. LIARS WILL PROSPER . . . 139

XVII. ADVENTURES OF A BLACK BAG . 148

XVIII. THE LAST BATTLE 159

XIX. THE TRIPLE IMPERSONATION . . 168

XX. THE TRUTH 179

CHAPTER ONE

The Lion and the Unicorn

LET ME STATE a case to you, and ask you what you would do under the circumstances.

You are on a holiday in Paris, in the green month when spring has almost become summer. There is nothing on your mind, and you are utterly at peace with all the world. One evening towards twilight you are sitting on the terrace at Lemoine's in the rue Royale, having an aperitif. Then you see walking towards you a girl you have previously known in England. This girl - who has always struck you as rather a starched proposition, by the way-walks straight up to your table and very gravely begins to repeat a nursery-rhyme. She then sits down at the table, and proceeds to tell you what sounds like the most bewildering gibberish you have ever heard in your life. Well?

Yes, that is precisely what I did. I humored her. And thereby I became involved in a series of events which can still give me a retrospective shiver: not only because it was worse than any I ever met in the Intelligence Department . years ago, but also because of the deadly things that might have been caused by a good-humored lie. I was a fool - but then I was interested in Evelyn Cheyne. And Paris in springtime has a way of snaring you into any foolery.

When, a year or so ago, I was prevailed on by H.M. to write the story. of the Plague Court Murders, I never thought I should have to take it up again. But in a sense I am compelled to write this record, as you will understand if you care to follow it. Biographical details are hard going; unfortunately, a few are necessary here. The passport says: name, Kenwood Blake. Age, thirty-eight. Address, Edwardian House, Bury Street, St. James's. Occupation, none to speak of; I don't like work, and admit it. Hence the career has been anything but distinguished. I was intended for Diplomacy, and stuffed full of languages. In 1914 I went across as an attache of the British Embassy in Washington; and a year later, when I had got over the age limit, I contrived to wangle a commission in the Seagrave Highlanders. Nobody found out my incompetence, and I didn't do so badly for two years. I was hoping to get a battalion just before I walked into a four-point-two at Arras; and, when I was convalescent again, they shot me out as unfit for active service.

Then, one raw disconsolate day in London when I was feeling pretty low, I ran into H.M. I am not likely to forget him stumping down Whitehall, his unwieldy top-hat stuck on the back of his head, his glasses down on his nose, his overcoat with the moth-eaten fur collar flying out behind. He was lumbering along with his head down, shaking his fist and cursing certain government officials with an audible fluency which nearly got him mobbed as pro-German. I think he saw how things stood with me, although you would not have guessed it from his greeting. He dragged me up into his lair overlooking the Embankment - and thus I went into the Service: having no particular aptitude for it, H.M. said, except a lack of guile.

A lack of guile, H.M. said, was the most invaluable asset to a Secret Service man. The clever ones, he maintained, wound up before firing-squads or with knives in their backs; and that's not as foolish as it sounds, if you think it over. He gave me the usual lecture that I was outside the pale, and that he could give me no help whatever if I got into difficulties. There is nothing to be said about this except that it is a lie. I have known H.M. to upset a Cabinet and commandeer the whole resources of the Foreign Office in order to protect the lowest hired agent in his employ. There were his bunch, he said, and the old man was a-going to stand behind 'em; and if any so-and-so's didn't like it, they could go and do so-and-so.

I went from Counter-Espionage to Intelligence, which meant foreign work, and it lasted until the end of the war. This is not the place to tell about those adventures, or the good fellows who shared them. But I was thinking back to them when I sat on the terrace at Lemoine's in the rue Royale, sipping a Dubonnet, two days before King George's Silver Jubilee. -

It was, to be exact, the fourth of May - a Saturday. I was flying to London the next day for the Jubilee. The laziness of Paris had soaked me into a lethargy of good humor. Paris was in bud and blossom in the glow of fine weather, with those pale green leaves which look transparent against tall lamps; with the amber warmth of sunlight, with the hedges dark green past sidewalk cafes, and the drone and chatter in the air filled with the flat quack of taxis.

It was towards eight o'clock in the evening, just time to be thinking comfortably about dinner, and blowing up with what looked like an ordinary summer rain-squall. The awning thrummed over my head; whirls of dust blew newspapers like the white aprons of waiters. Bear in mind that for two weeks I had not looked at a newspaper, except to glance at the headlines. A newspaper scuttled past me in the gust, and I set my foot on it. Preparations for the King of England's Jubilee, said one headline; trouble in India, said another; but the biggest splash was something about two people who seemed to be named Flamande and Gasquet.

Now, this mildly irritated me in the way that a meaningless popular tag does before you have any idea of what it is about. Years ago people were going about saying, "Yes, we have no bananas," in reply to nearly anything before you heard where the thing came from or what it was supposed to mean. In the same way that you asked, "What the devil is this, `Yes, we have no bananas?' "I was now irritably curious to know who or what were Flamande and Gasquet. Everybody seemed to be talking about them. Even at that moment the sparsely filled terrace was a babble of talk punctuated by these names, and they filled Paris like the quacking taxis. I had got the idea, somehow, that they were rival boxers; or possibly even rival cabinet-ministers. Anyway, the headline of the story I was too lazy to read announced that one had sent a sinister challenge to the other; and added a lot of superlatives.

A waiter came hurrying over after the lost paper. Some spur urged me to ask a question at random as I handed the paper back.

"Are you," I said, "a friend of Flamande or of Gasquet?"

The result was rather startling. A passing agent de police stopped suddenly, hunched his shoulders as though he had been shot in the back, and slowly craned round his neck to look at me with one of the most sinister expressions of suspicion that ever knocked a man off-balance. Then he walked straight through the entrance to the hedge.

"Your passport, monsieur," he said curtly.

The waiter made vast, rumbling noises of deprecation. He leaned over and gave the table a brisk mop with his cloth, which is the waiter's way of announcing that he will begin to speak.

"But he meant no harm, this gentleman) It was only the way-“

"English," said the policeman, examining my passport. He made a noncommittal noise. "You have used, monsieur, words which might or might not be intended as a signal. I do not wish to interfere with a harmless traveler, you understand. But I -"

I was pacifying, because the law was speaking gruffly behind closed teeth, and fingering his mustache like an examining magistrate; but, I couldn't imagine what I had said. If this thing were a political business, like the Stavisky affair, then I might be walking very dangerously.

"It is probably my ignorance of your language, monsieur," I said, and bowed in that way which always makes you feel like a damned .fool. "To tell you the truth, I spoke without thinking. I have no wish to disparage your boxers or your cabinet-ministers "

"Our what?" demanded the policeman.

"Your boxers," I said, letting go a left at the air, by way of illustration, "or your cabinet-ministers. I have been given to understand that these gentlemen were either one or the other...."

I could see that the trouble was over, although we were attracting some unpleasant attention from others. The law suddenly guffawed behind closed teeth and kicked at the pavement.

"Now, that," he said, beaming, "that is good, eh? They make fun of you, our Parisians. They have bad manners, monsieur, for which I apologize. Excuse me for troubling you. A'voir, monsieur."

"But look here," I said, "exactly who is this Flamande?"

It was the law's instinct for the dramatic which started much of the difficulty just then. Swinging round to go, he looked back again.

"He is a murderer, monsieur," said the policeman. Then, hitching his shoulders, he saluted and swung away through the hedge as though he had delivered a curtain-line. I edged away to keep out of public notice; I waved the waiter off; and it was several seconds later that I suddenly realized that the policeman had walked away with my passport.

Then things began happening swiftly. I was not going to cut up a row, because I had already attracted too much attention. After the triumph of his dramatic exit had passed, the policeman would discover my passport in his hand and return it; in any event, the waiter would know his number and I could easily get it back. So I was just sitting down to recover a ruffled temper when I saw Evelyn Cheyne.

She had come in by another entrance, farther down in the direction of the Place de la Concorde. She must have seen, if she did not hear, the latter part of my interview with the policeman. My first reflection was that I must always be looking a fool in her eyes, even before surprise at finding her there. Seeing her against the gusty, darkening sky where lamps were beginning to twinkle in a pink afterglow, I got a kind of start. Not premonition or anything of the sort; it may have been surprise at her appearance and the way she was dressed. In fact, I could not be quite sure it was Evelyn.

If her reflection had jumped up to haunt me, it would not have been at all surprising. She was not an old friend; I had met her just four times before. Now, Evelyn has dark hair and hazel eyes, and I do not wish to be accused of unchivalrous speech when I say that in appearance she is the sort of thing the battalion thinks about when it is coming back from the line after three weeks under fire. But (previous to the time I write of) she would never admit her true metier. She said she wished to be valued for her Brain - and, like a fool, I believed it. Or almost. She was `taking up politics.' This meant that she would start as secretary to a prominent and noisy M.P., later get a constituency herself, and might in time become as notorious as Lady Castor: an awful thought.

However, she had such a confoundedly cool, casual way of talking about Progress and Service and the Future of the Race and similar ideals which seem to me pure hogwash, that I never knew what to believe. Evelyn blasphemed nature by wearing tailored suits and a little pince-nez with a chain going back to the ear.

This, as I say, is what I thought-until that evening at Lemoine's. I saw Evelyn as she always ought to have been. The girl across the terrace wore white, with some sort of white sports-coat, and one of those tilted white hats. Evelyn's skin glows with that brownish-gold flesh tint which is so seldom seen in real flesh. Her hazel eyes were fixed on me; they looked impassive, but she was rather nervously opening and shutting the catch of her handbag. Then she came across to my table, and I jumped up.

"Hullo, Ken," she said, as coolly as of old.

"Hullo, Evelyn."

Then, just as gravely; she spoke.

"The lion and the unicorn," said Evelyn, "were fighting for the crown:

The lion beat the unicorn all around the town . . :'

Now, if this sort of thing had been sprung on me some minutes before, I should have either laughed or asked what she was talking about. But it came too soon after the inexplicable business with that policeman. I was beginning to feel that my quiet holiday had taken an abrupt, weird turn towards mad events; that the compass-needle had switched and I must accept its direction.

"Let's see," I considered. "How does the rest of it go?

"Some gave them white bread,

some gave them brown;

Some gave them plum-cake

and drummed them out of town."

She drew a breath of relief and sat down with her eyes still fixed on me.

"Order me a drink, will you, Ken?" she said. "You know, I'm terribly glad it turned out to be you."

"So am I. Do you mind my saying, Evelyn, that you look exactly as you should?"

Still she did not smile. The hazel eyes still regarded me curiously, her eyebrows raised and her forehead a little wrinkled. "It's a relief," she answered in a low voice. "And perhaps we can get a number of things straightened out now. That last meeting - well, it all seemed to go wrong, didn't it?"

"It did," I admitted. "And the whole mess was my fault. If I hadn't made those remarks about your aesthetic 'friends..."

Evelyn grinned; not a smile, but an honest grin which lit up her eyes wickedly and reflected Paris. At that moment she looked so vibrant, so golden-skinned, and so full of the devil that I could have whooped with pleasure. Folding her hands, she allowed one eyelid to droop.

"I could have told you what I thought of my aesthetic friends," she declared, "if only you had given me some hint, Ken! If only you had told me you were still in the Service. You turned a blank face every time I tried to bring up the subject ... You see, I had to know. I even went to the point of asking H.M. whether you were. But I got no satisfaction out of asking him. All he would do was make lewd remarks about me, and how I ought to be married or something - oh, yes, and grouse about somebody named Humphrey Masters. But just now I've got to get back to business, and tell you ..."

Her face grew grave again. She looked round quickly, and then made the following rather bewildering statements:

"Sir George Ramsden is bringing the unicorn to London. We are to go to the blind man to-night, but I don't know why, because Sir George will come to Paris."

"H'm," I said. The compass-needle was jerking wildly now.

She delved in her handbag. "Sir George got to Marseilles yesterday. He will travel by the regular airlines, because he doesn't trust private planes. There are two French Air-Union planes from Marseilles to Paris to-day; he will travel by the second, which reaches Le Bourget at 9:15 to-night. . . . The last instructions I had were that you and I should drive to `The Blind Man' - it's an inn a couple of miles on the other side of Orleans - and be there by eleven o'clock. I gather that for some reason Sir George, as soon as he gets to Paris, is going to turn round and go straight to that inn. The signal to make yourself known, of course, is reciting the lion-and-unicorn verse and having it completed. But that's all I know about the whole thing. It's sealed orders all along. What were you told?"

To gain time I ordered two more Dubonnets and some cigarettes for Evelyn; and then I was very deliberate about lighting my pipe. It's easy enough to say afterwards that I shouldn't have burnt my fingers with the affair, and that I should have told Evelyn straight out I wasn't the man she had apparently been scheduled to meet at Lemoine's. Besides, if the real agent turned up . . . But the cussedness of the human soul does not run in sane grooves. I was glorying in this business; I didn't mean to let Evelyn get away from me; and, besides, I thought I could put up as good a show in the Service as the probably unsalted agent they had really sent out. Hence I was going to be that agent.

"And you don't know," I suggested, "what the unicorn is?"

"No! That's what I want you to tell me."

"Well . . . the fact is, Evelyn, I don't know myself."

She stared at me. "But surely - where do you get your instructions?"

"From H.M. himself. And you know him." (There was one consolation: H.M. would be too lazy to be in France for whatever fireworks impended, and unmask me. But, now that I was committed to this thing, I felt uneasy and cursed myself for the hoax. It wasn't fair play. But, human nature

being what it is, I consoled myself by thinking that I could tell her the truth - presently.) "Still, we've got to compare notes. Is there anything else you know, anything at all?"

"Nothing except what you've seen in the papers - that Flamande says he is going to be aboard that plane."

"Flamande!" I said, and burnt my fingers with a match.

"Yes. Ken, I'll bet you that's what has worried our people even before they knew he would threaten it. That's what makes it so horribly dangerous. I'll jolly well admit I'm frightened; but I feel better now I know you're here." She pushed back a strand of the dark hair, and smiled, although her eyes were wandering uneasily. "Oh, I know he's theatrical - too theatrical for our tastes - and likes his flourishes! But the ugly part is that he always does what he says he will. They say Gasquet will nab him this time. Well, I doubt it."

"Look here," I said, and dropped my defenses momentarily, "who are Flamande and Gasquet? Word of honor, they weren't mentioned in any instructions I ever got. No, I'm not joking. Who is this Flamande?"

She made a wry face.

“You ought at least to read the papers. Flamande, Ken, is the most picturesque criminal France has sported for years. And they love picturesque criminals; they're gleeful and boast about them even when they guillotine 'em. This duel is being discussed like a football match in England----"Duel?"

"Between Flamande, the super-knave, and Gasquet, the Chief Inspector of the Surete. Oh, don't be so stolid, Ken! - and don't laugh either. It mightn't happen in England, but it can happen here. It's wild, it's fantastic, but it's true." The sight of her grave face checked my mirth, and she went on with a sort of wild seriousness: "Nobody knows what Flamande looks like. But then, with the exception of a few intimates, nobody knows what Gasquet looks like either: that's his chief trump. Neither of them is what you'd call a universal linguist, but the snag is this. Each of them speaks three languages perfectly. I don't mean well, but perfectly, so as to be indistinguishable from a native. Those languages are French, English, and German. Either one, for instance, might pose as an Englishman or an American and deceive you or me. Finally, they're both chameleons who can play any part they like. I don't mean with false whiskers or wigs or anything silly like that. But, since nobody has ever seen Flamande to remember his face, what's to prevent him from being a doctor or a lawyer

"Or an archbishop or a ballet girl----“

She looked at me steadily. "Don't talk like that, Ken, until you've read his record. I think you won't joke when you've read that. And I'll take what you've said quite seriously. Yes, he might be an archbishop. I doubt if he could manage the ballet girl. You see, although nobody has seen him long enough to remember exactly what he looks like, they know that he's fairly tall and has rather a heavy voice-" She opened her handbag and took out a notebook. "Just glance over this, will you? No, I don't think you'll joke then."

In spite of myself I was beginning to feel uncomfortably impressed.

"Listen, Evelyn. These artists at disguise can never fool anybody who's had any experience with it. But you say the man's a murderer. .. "

She swung round. "I didn't say that, Ken. But you believe so, too? Then you did see that piece in the paper this morning, about the murder at Marseilles? Flamande did that, and he'll write to claim the credit presently. I know Flamande did that killing, although there's nothing to connect him with it. And it's the first time he's been forced to kill. He - " Her excitement dwindled as she stared at me. "I say, Ken, what's this? Why did you say `murderer?' Flamande hadn't killed anybody until yesterday. And nobody connects that business with him yet. Who told you he was a murderer?"

"A policeman," I said, and stopped.

Where was that policeman with my passport?

CHAPTER TWO

The Red Car

IT WAS PROBABLY a coincidence, it was unquestionably a coincidence, but it made me swear. It made me look up and down the rue Royale with refreshed interest, and a stimulus in this business that had not been there before. I was not going to tell Evelyn until I had made sure. So I said:

"A bit of gossip, that's all. I suppose they're willing to credit him with anything, including murder. . . . But what's this about a killing in Marseilles?"

It was strange to be talking to this Evelyn Cheyne, this new girl who was a member of H.M.'s department. She pointed to the notebook, where a newspaper cutting was stuck between the leaves.

"I cut it out of Paris-Midi to-day. There's not much, at its face value, to connect it with Flamande, but there's something to connect it with our job. It's - well, it looks unholy, Ken. I don't want to believe we've got into a world of horrors and fabulous animals. That happened last night. Read it"

There were adjectives in the headline, and the story continued in the same vein.

"A terrible and mysterious tragedy is reported to have been discovered last night in the park off the Promenade du Prado, at Marseilles. An agent of police, patrolling the paths just after dark before the evening strollers were out, saw a man sitting propped up at the foot of a lamp-post near the Hoche fountain. The agent approached, thinking the man was drunk, and found that he was near death from a terrible wound between the eyes.

"The victim's clothing was much torn, his body bruised, and his right arm broken. The principal wound between the eyes was at first thought to have been caused by a bullet, since the skull had been pierced in a wound the exact shape and size inflicted by a shot from a revolver of high caliber.

"The victim was taken to the Hospital of Our Lady, and died in the ambulance. He spoke once or twice, but repeated only one word in English. Dr. C. S. Melisse, who has an extraordinary command of that language, informs us that this word was `unicorn.'

"This was followed by the surprising discovery that the hole in the head of the unfortunate victim had not been made by a bullet. No bullet or missile of any character was in the wound. It was a clean puncture, penetrating into the brain to a depth of four inches.

"No weapon of any sort has been found. Indeed, Dr. Melisse informs us that no human strength would be sufficient to drive any variety of spike at such a depth into the head, and pull it out again. He states also that he knows of no firearm which could make a wound of that sort.

"In fact, Dr. Melisse facetiously remarks that the only thing which could have caused that frightful wound would be the long, sharp horn of an animal."

I looked up at Evelyn, who gazed back with a stare like a grave, frightened child. She was a white blur in the dusk behind the red tip of her cigarette. The strong white streetlamps flashed into glow among the trees, and all Paris suddenly had a pale radiance like moonrise; but a storm was coming. I heard thunder.

"We understand that these statements have been confirmed, though more guardedly, by Dr. Edouard Hebert, the police surgeon for the Department of Bouche du Rhone. We are also told that the findings of Dr. Hebert are so remarkable that he may go to Paris for consultation with the medical branch of the Surete.

"The dead man has been ascertained to be M. Gilbert Drummond, a solicitor, of London. In accordance with the directions in his passport, M. Drummond's brother in London has been notified of the sad affair. M. Drummond had been staying for three days at the Grand Hotel, having come to Marseilles from Paris.

"We are informed that the police are in possession of a valuable clue."

"Unicorns-" I said, and growled to stifle uneasy feelings. "Look here, Evelyn, the unicorn is a fabulous animal, but it's not quite so fabulous as this. Had this poor devil Drummond any connection with our job?"

"No. Not so far as I know."

"And Flamande?"

"Flamande dropped his familiar note to Le Journal last night, and it appeared this morning. All the papers have copied it, and the evening ones have a note from Gasquet. Mark this! Flamande's note was postmarked Marseilles, and went out at five o'clock yesterday afternoon. I can tell you word for word what it said. It said: 'I am interested in strange animals. To-morrow, good friends, I shall be among the passengers of the Marseilles-Paris air-liner before it reaches its destination. Flamande.' "

"What about the detective?"

She smiled. "He has his own sense of the dramatic too. His own was just a line scrawled like a comment on a hoarding. 'So, good friends, shall I.- Gasquet.' "

I met that grin, and we both felt better.

"Sent from Marseilles, too?"

"I don't know. That wasn't divulged; they're playing Gasquet's game and keeping it dark. But undoubtedly it was and a match applied, generated a temperature of two thousand degrees and melted any metal underneath. It was Flamande who first used a microphone to listen to the fall of the tumblers. It was Flamande who stole De Ruyter's emeralds in Antwerp; and who, when a comb-cordon of police was drawn round the country, nevertheless smuggled those emeralds out. They were concealed, in fact, under the fur of a great Newfoundland dog in the suite of the King of Belgium.

I could do no more than glance at Evelyn's notes. But out of them emerged a figure who combined two Latin extremes: a man who loved a flourish of audacity and spectacular devilment for its own sake, but who was at the same time hardheaded, slippery, and cruel as Satan. For instance, a police commissaire fulminated against the stupidity of his colleagues for not catching Flamande. Well, while he was raving, a `workman' entered the police-station to get some furniture for repairs, and walked out with the commissaire's favorite armchair under the eyes of a dozen constables. In the same way, Flamande pinched the clock out of the courtroom while that Commissaire was giving evidence during a trial. But, all the same, he half killed a watchman in Monte Carlo when he was interrupted during a raid.

The more I read, the more I became furiously convinced that I might have some grounds for thinking it had been Flamande who pinched my passport that evening. This Gasquet might be all very well. But I should like to see a duel between Flamande and Sir Henry Merrivale. You couldn't help admiring the fellow. All the same, for personal reasons, I would have given my right hand to do him down.

When I went downstairs, the storm had broken across the white forest of lamps in the Place de la Concorde; Paris had lost its night-shimmer under a bucketing deluge of water whose lightning had an ominous fire. It did not look like an ordinary spring storm, and we had seventy-five miles to go. I carry an international license, so I drove. We struck across the Pont des Invalides to leave Paris by the Versailles gate. It was ticklish work in that hooting traffic; we were both silent, listening to the steady tick of the windscreen-wiper against roaring rain. Evelyn, who bad taken off her hat and donned a waterproof, spoke at last.

"You read about-?"

"Yes."

"What do you think?"

"He's strong poison. What bothers me is whether this Gasquet is any match for him."

She laughed. She buttoned the side-curtain more firmly, and then leaned back so that the light of the dash-lamps shone in her quizzical eyes. She looked as comfortable as though she lounged at a curtained fireside.

"'M. I thought so. That's because you've read only one side of the evidence. If you had heard about Gasquet, you'd be ready to put your money on him. I haven't time to go into it now, because there's too much we've got to worry at until we understand it. But they call him 'the grinning Gasquet.' He's the sort who collars a murderer with an epigram and bows politely before he fires. He caught that powdered-glass murderer - well, he's as flamboyant as the other, in exactly the same way, and it ought to be a battle of the giants. You know, Ken . . ."

"Well?"

"Well, if I didn't have that feeling . . . I can't help it ... that it's much more horribly dangerous than we ever thought ... well, I could enjoy all this enormously. Here we go a-whizzing, nobody knows where or why or when we'll get back," - she made a pleased gesture "on a dark road to dark doings, you see? But why is the whole thing so dark? Neither you nor I have any idea at all what we're to do, and it's the first time I've known even H.M. to go so far as that. Why is Sir George Ramsden required to come to Paris, and then immediately run down to a little inn near Orleans? ... H'm. Ramsden! So far as I've been able to find out, discreetly, he's rather a swell in the Foreign Office. Do you know him?"

I did know him quite well, as it happened. He was conspicuous as a sporting baronet, but that was not his real work, and very few people knew how closely he was associated with the Foreign Office. Ramsden was a good man. He was one of those under-cover diplomats who work without (known) official sanction and do more good for the empire than any fanfare. In appearance he was the exact opposite of that usual Ambassadorial ideal of bloodless rigidity, and complete disinterest in anything, which has done so much to impress other nations and get us disliked. Ramsden was short, fat, and peppery. He had the mannerisms of a comic-paper colonel. He liked the ladies, he liked whisky and a fling at the baccarat tables and any kind of sport. But he could be British with the British, Moslem with the Moslems, and, for all I know, Zulu with the Zulus; because he always got the business quietly done. If Sir George had been entrusted to bring the unicorn to London, then the unicorn was devilish important.

"In which case," I added, "it seems to me we're neglecting the obvious lead if we want to find out what Whitehall is up to. Ramsden got to Marseilles yesterday. Where was he before then? Where did he come from?"

"From Athens."

"Athens? Trouble there?"

She reflected. "Plenty of trouble, old boy, but nothing that concerns us. Or that concerns Ramsden either, so far as I can find out. He has been on a holiday in Athens. That's all anybody seems to know."

For the moment we gave it up. I had to watch the road, which was none of the best when we left Paris by the Versailles gate and bumped up through cobbled villages with the river on our right. Instead of decreasing, the storm grew more lurid and thunder-split.

"We'll never make it at this rate!" said Evelyn, against the roar. "Can't you flog her up a bit?"

I tried. We shot left when we reached the Palace at Versailles, skimmed down a bad curve, and stepped up to fifty on a good road that was nevertheless being flooded out. I had to keep taut on that splash and dance, and feel the way when we hit a turn. The lightning now showed two endless rows of poplars thin and black against the sky. Nothing was on the road except a red Voisin, which passed us in the same direction just outside Rambouillet, and rocketed by at a clip that roused Evelyn's suspicions. But we lost it in the Forest, or else it turned off. We were following the main route to Chartres, which seemed to me a roundabout direction. Just outside Chartres the road abruptly dropped-it is the worst bit I know-and went down like a chute to the narrow entrance between the squat round-towers in the walls. Then I could have sworn I saw the red Voisin again, but I had to concentrate on letting our car have its head in a downward plunge through that gate, or we should have fetched up over the parapet into the Eure. Inside we banged on to cobbles again. The medieval houses leaned their gables as gray and twisted as a Dore engraving; a few anemic gas-lamps showed us the way up a cobbled hill to the Square. Beyond the miry windscreen I could see an open 'bistro, and headed for it after a hot drink.

"We've still got twenty miles to go," said Evelyn, who was fiercely trying to puzzle out the map, "even for Orleans.

And to find an inn on the other side ... Look here, there must be a shorter route! Ask them!"

Inside the hot bistro, a few frowsy wax-work figures were playing dominoes over their drinks in a damp fog of tobacco smoke. The proprietor, as he pushed across two steaming glasses of coffee and rum, was helpful. He sketched out a short route for me on the bar. Others eagerly joined in and muddled it, but I hoped I remembered. He also talked of floods, floods, and the rising Eure. Evelyn and I gulped our drinks, and bumped down again from the old town with its lush meadows and its cracked spires.

I let the car out. Evelyn said she could not find that road on the map, but it was straight and good despite its narrowness. We flashed through a long belt of woodland, got out through broad meadows, and increased the pace.

"Got it!" said Evelyn, after some minutes' scanning the map. "This is the way through Levai - the way we should have taken to begin with. Two more kilometers, and we ought to come out on the Loire river just below Orleans. There's a little bridge marked. That takes us straight across, and in two more kilometers we come to the inn we want without messing about in Orleans at all. Keep watching for that bridge. Near it, this says, there's a backwater in the river and a place called the Chateau de l'Ile. That ought to be a landmark." She was peering ahead. We were on a long downward slope through a sodden patch of woods, with thick banks on either side and tow aids our right a steep gully. We were gathering momentum, and I wondered whether I dared brake. Evelyn rubbed the windscreen futilely on the inside. "If that chateau's a big place, we ought to be able to pick up ... Look out!"

Round the bend and down, a red shape flashed out with blurred darkness against the headlights. I saw the Voisin pulled up broadside along the road, not thirty feet ahead, even before I saw the flashlight that somebody was waving like a lantern. Brake and clutch bumped the floor, and I yanked the hand-brake down hard. We felt the helpless swing of a skid, a bright flash of rain like the glimpse of a wreck; whirled right, left, right again, and slid like a man on skiis. Something jolted. The car rocked up on two wheels, and came down safe with its back wheels against the right-hand bank. Neither of us moved during a silence, a kind of quivering blankness while the rain drummed on the roof. I turned to look at Evelyn, who was white. The engine had stalled. There was no noise but our hard breathing, and the rain.

"One moment, please," said a voice like that of a polite secretary.

Something moved outside the blurred side-curtain. A hand reached under it and turned the catch of the door.

CHAPTER THREE

How We Found Battle and High Jinks on the Orleans Road

WE WERE DRIVING, in France, on the right-hand side of the road; so I, at the wheel of the car, was nearest the hand. Before I could move the door creaked open. Against the rain and the black woods, I could see only a shape; possibly the blur of a face when the man moved back nearer the right-hand bank.

But I thought I recognized that voice, though the rain muffled it and even the French syllables were not clear.

"What the hell do you mean by this?" I said in English, with a shout which was as much frayed nerves as anything else. "What "

"English," said the voice in that language, and in a way that might or might not have sounded like relief. It quickened. "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

Yes, that voice spoke remarkable English. I was looking out of the corner of my eye at the red touring-car in the road ahead. It was not quite drawn across; with a narrow squeeze, you might get past on the left.

"No. The question is, who are you, and why do you try to wreck people's cars?"

"Whoever I am," said the man, "I hold authority from the French police. There are two agents waiting in that car ahead." He spoke so calmly that for a second I almost believed him. Then he moved forward, and I saw that he had something in his hand. "Get out of that car. I want to see your passport."

"You got one passport off me this evening. Isn't that enough?"

"Get out of that car. Now." He moved closer, coming into the faint glow of the dashboard lamps, to move his wrist back and forth and show the gleam of black metal in his hand. But he should never have done that, because it showed that his gun looked too much like tin. If he pulled the trigger of that small automatic, the top of the barrel would rise gracefully; nothing more. We were being theatened, in fact, with a cigarette-case. And before me, at arm's length, was Flamande.

Now, I am far from being of the courageous sort; but, with a dummy pistol sternly pointed at my chest, I could tell even Flamande to go soak his head in the Loire. H.M. and I used to grin over those thrillers in which the unarmed, fearless, fat-headed hero goes charging at somebody's gun; a thing which nobody outside of a lunatic asylum would ever think of doing. But this was pleasantly different. First we had to find out what our host was trying to do. While I obediently climbed out of the car into the rain, Evelyn was giving a shrill and excellent impersonation of an outraged tourist. His flashlight was flickering over our car.

"Really, my good man," she said, "even in a country swarming with nasty foreigners, this is the worst insult I shall have to report yet to the British consul. My cousin and I were going to Orleans-"

"You get out, too," interposed the other, in that colorless voice which I was beginning to find eerie and ugly. "Stand beside him. Not too close. I want to see whether you're in this with him. Keep in the light, both of you. You," he looked at me, "put your hands up."

There was such a tired contempt in his tone that my temper went to the boil. But up went my hands. The rain was whipping and roaring through those trees, and sluicing straight down into our faces. Also, be had switched on his flashlight again, putting the beam in our eyes. But both his hands were occupied. But I thought that he was now talking curiously, as though there were something in his mouth to impede speech.

"Now you'll talk. Who are you?"

"Kenwood Blake. London. I'm a tea-importer." (What the devil put that into my head?)

"Do you pose as a member of Department CS of the British Intelligence Service?"

"No."

"What were you doing at Lemoine's this evening?

"Having a drink."

"You're going to regret talking like that," said the voice with a coolness now cracked across in fury, yet still with that unpleasant gobbling impediment in the speech. "You," he spoke at Evelyn. "Feel in his pocket and get me his passport, if he has any. If he hasn't, we'll take him along to Orleans and have him locked up. Don't argue with me, you. Do as I tell you."

"How do I know where he keeps his passport?" asked Evelyn. "I'm a respectable woman."

Momentarily his light snapped towards her.

"Shut up, you God damned traitor, he said to Evelyn - and then I went for him with a rugby tackle.

The man must have thought I had gone out of my head. For, you see, the thing wasn't a dummy pistol. I discovered that, with one of the worst shocks of my life, when the dummy exploded about two inches above my ear, and the flash singed the brim of my felt hat like a barber singeing hair.

The rest was confused; it still is in my mind. I remember hearing the bullet hit the side of our car, with a noise exactly like the klunk when you drive the edge of a tin-opener through the top of a tin of beans, just before my left shoulder caught the fellow above the knee. I missed a clean tackle in the slipperiness of the mud, and saved my life. But he had instinctively jumped backwards towards the bank; this gave us impetus, and we sailed. He couldn't have known we were so close to the bank. The beam from his flashlight spun up into his own face, showing something that gleamed like silver in his mouth, and which he almost swallowed. It was a police-whistle.

I heard that police-whistle, stuck sideways in his mouth, give a kind of agonized twitter. Then the sodden woods turned upside down and something banged me on the head as we cleared the edge of the bank. We must have fallen only a few feet - he was on the bottom, and got most of the thud when we struck, for the breath went out of him like a bellows - but we rolled several yards more. Though it was chiefly mud, something ripped and stung like wires. Something else caught me above the ear before we brought up against a log. Still uncertain what had happened, I struggled loose and groped up to my knees. But through a singing head hammered one terrible thought:

Crooks don't carry police-whistles. Good God, who is this fellow? And, incidentally, where are the police?

What partly quieted the bee-hive in my head, and stopped the bank from spinning, was the flashlight. It had accompanied us. It lay in an angle of the log, sending a valiant beam from the other side of my adversary. He was spreadeagled on his back, his thumbs turned upwards from bent arms, his mouth open, and his bowler hat crushed over one side.

I was so dizzy that I nearly went over when I bent to pick up the light. But there was nothing to fear when I examined the man. He was not dead; he was not even hurt, except for a bump on the head which had knocked him out. My sticky wits kept coming back to that whistle-which, I saw with relief, he had not swallowed. Who the devil was he? His ruddy face, smeared with mud as though from a paintbrush, was being washed by the rain which still seethed and roared through the silver birches of this hollow. The face looked English. It was large, square, unprepossessing: a man of forty-odd, with jowls and a brown toothbrush mustache. Why did he say, "You God damned traitor?"

Then I saw, under his open waterproof, what had tumbled out of his inside pocket. It was a small, square, grayish roll which he had fastened round under the clip of a fountain-pen. That slip bears the white cross on blue, your number and your chief's, the F.O.'s seal superimposed; but it is impossible to forge these things, because a member of the service knows this slip by its texture as a bank-clerk knows a good note. I knew this right enough. The man was a member of the British Intelligence Department.

More, I suddenly saw, he was the man Evelyn had really been intended to meet at Lemoine's. Holy gray angels, what a mess! And, when he saw me go away with her

All this, you understand, took a matter of seconds. But, even if it was a brief breathing-space, I had to take action again. Even above the downpour I heard voices far at the top of the bank. Two bull's-eye lanterns flashed white beams out over my head. Up there were the headlights of our car, and past them in silhouette ran a figure in the flat-topped cap and short waterproof of a policeman. My adversary had been telling the truth; there really had been two policemen waiting at that red car, and now they were on the view-halloo bellow after me. The trouble seemed to be that they could not spot the place where we had gone pinwheeling over into the gully. And, since from the road it looked like a black ravine, they were probably not anxious to make a blind leap over. No explanations were going to suffice - I should have to get out of this as best I could. My friend the enemy could be left for the policemen to take care of, provided I shook them off, but Evelyn had to be spirited out of this. She must take the car and cut for it while I drew off the pursuers.

But where was Evelyn? I couldn't see her anywhere on the bank, and meanwhile ... .

"You're not hurt, are you?" cried a small voice at my elbow, and something rose up in my throat. "You're not hurt? Sh-h! I slid down the bank behind you, or they'd have had me."

She ducked down quickly beside our unconscious friend, and gripped my arm.

"Turn off that light," she whispered. "Ken, I don't know exactly what it is, but we seem to have made some kind of awful mistake. We - look out! They've caught the light."

"They have. But hang on to my arm and we may both get out of this. No, wait! Stay here with the corpse. I'll draw 'em away with the light. When they come after me, scramble up that bank and run for it in the car. Don't argue, dammit! If I can get away from 'em, I'll pinch theirs and follow you."

The spirit of larceny, you perceive, was flaming brightly. I broke loose and stampeded through a whipping film of silver birches, the yells and the lights following me along the upper bank. Round my head in a wheel I swung the beam of my own torch.

"Whoo!" roared the erstwhile-dignified Mr. Blake, rather like a baritone owl. "Suivez-moi, you blighters! La barbe! Vive le crime! A bas la police!"

By their answering howl it was obvious that this had fetched them. They risked their luck and jumped from the edge. One came a cropper, but the other found that the descent was really easy and plunged like a landslide. I propped my light in the crook of a tree, facing towards them, as though I had turned at bay; then I doubled back as quietly as possible and tried a ventriloquial yell through the rain:

"Halte la ou je tire!"

Those lads had plenty of nerve. They didn't care whether I fulfilled my threat to fire; they were crashing straight for that beacon, and I hoped they would reply with bullets and smashed the light before they discovered that I was not behind it. One of them did fire, and whacked off a branch. But by that time I was scrambling up the bank like an ape. The fallen figure by the log, as I almost stumbled over him, was stirring and getting to his knees; but he was still too groggy to be a hindrance.

Evelyn had not gone. She was sitting at the wheel of the two-seater, its engine running (nearly as muddy a figure as her colleague) when I tumbled in beside her and slammed the door. While I gurgled for breath after that chase, we wormed out past the red car, shifted quickly, and tore off with a screeching of gears down the road.

Yes, it was like the old days, except that I was badly out of condition. I tried to speak between gasps, and had to hold my left side.

"Why didn't you go on, wench? Why didn't - "

"Go on? I like that! Besides, how would you have followed me? Not in that red Voisin, I can tell you."

"Why not?"

"Well, that old devil you knocked out still had his gun in his hand. So I simply pinched it and put a bullet through each of their tires. You don't want them to follow us, do you? And now they can't. The gun's on the seat behind you."

"You shot-oi!"

"Why do you say oi? I know we made a mistake, and apparently you pasted one of their police officers or something. But we haven't done any damage, and they'll never be able to catch us." Her voice rose to a chortle of pleasure. "Ken, it was grand! The way you ran through those bushes yelling, 'Vive le crime!' and - you know what they probably think? They probably think you're Flamande."

Now, this was a cheerful thought for you. I turned round to look at Evelyn at the wheel. She had not got quite the drenching I received, since she still wore the waterproof. Otherwise she was nearly as disreputable. She lifted a muddy hand to push the wet hair out of her eyes, which were glowing with a swashbuckling pleasure, and she wagged her head as though listening to a pleasant tune. But I had to tell her the cursed truth.

"Listen," I said, and took the plunge. "There's something I've got to tell you now. This is much more serious than you think. It's about-well - you know the identification-cards of the Service? That is-uh -"

I nearly flunked it. Then she pointed at me triumphantly.

"I know what you're going to say, old boy. And you can thank me for saving your bacon. You're going to say that in the fight with that chap your identification-card fell out of your pocket and you thought it got lost? Well, darling, it didn't. It fell beside the old devil. I saw it lying there when you had your light on him. So I picked it up when you left. And," said Evelyn, producing the real agent's fountain-pen with the gray slip still wound under the catch, "here it is back again."

This was the end.

"Look here," I said, when I could find coherent words. "I wonder - that is, he didn't see you pick it up, did he? He didn't know you found it? He hadn't come to, of course?"

"Yes, he was coming to. There was enough light from the car up on the road to see that. I was afraid he would grab me or go after you. So I simply landed him one on the head with the butt of that gun, and he relapsed again. He was making a grab for me, you know."

I said nothing; there was nothing to say. Staring at the spattered windscreen, I moved one shoe up and down on the floor and heard the water squish in and out of it. I listened to myself dripping, and tried to determine exactly where we stood. To begin with, that policeman this afternoon had been a real policeman who made a real mistake about my passport. But my half-witted mind had seen Flamande everywhere. Hence we had been lured into a set of hair-raising errors whose criminal total stood thus: I had assaulted and done damage to a member of the Intelligence Department on His Majesty's Service. Evelyn had pinched his identification-card, and, when he showed signs of recovering, had dotted him one with his own gun. Insults had been showered on the gendarmerie. The tires of a French police-car had been riddled with bullets, leaving three probably frantic men stranded some miles from any town in the worst cloudburst of the year.

There were two points to be deduced from this. First point: Whether or not they believed I was Flamande (which seemed probable), we should shortly be the object of one of the biggest police-hunts since Landru. We should have to take immediate measures. Second point: I was so deeply in trouble that I had to play the hand. I couldn't explain to Evelyn now. The only course was to accept that identification-card, and be the Intelligence agent until the "unicorn" mission was over.

Considering that I didn't like either the manners or the look of the sullen dog who had come a cropper back there, this had personal sympathy behind it. Also, the deception could be managed with that credential. Those identification-cards are not like passports: they bear no name, photograph, or description. Even in the very unlikely event that we met some departmental chief-there are eighteen departmental chiefs, indicated by letters of the alphabet, with your own number following the letter that indicates to which chief you belong-the imposture would not be spotted unless I met

the head who had directly commissioned this fellow. I began to feel soaring spirits, for this was a taste of the old days. If we could beat those lads in the red car ..

"They'll have to walk it, of course," Evelyn was saying. "And we've got enough of a start before they can turn in an alarm. From where we had that row, it was about two kilometers to the bridge where we're to cross the Loire. We must be nearly there. Orleans is on the opposite bank, about four kilometers up the river. They'll either go there after they've crossed, or follow straight on our own track until they find a telegraph office. . . . I say, look at that map again! There's no village near our inn, is there? I mean, where they could 'phone or telegraph? If they drop into our own tavern-"

I traced a muddy smudge down the map. Near a clump of dots labeled "Bois de la Belle Sauvage" Evelyn had drawn a cross to represent the inn. It seemed a wild part of the Orleannois, and there was no village for some distance.

"It isn't likely our inn will have a telephone," I said, "but, good God! It is likely they'll drop in to find out. Unless we can bribe somebody to say we're not there ..."

Then my dull wits met the insuperable difficulty, and I swore. The fat was flaring and sizzling in the fire now. Not only were we headed for that inn, but so was the real Intelligence man. He, like Evelyn, would have had his instructions to go there. Of necessity we were bound to meet with a bang; we couldn't help it. And, if I tried to outface him and swear he was an impostor, he had the police to corroborate him. But we had got to get to our rendezvous...

"Ken!" I woke up to the fact that Evelyn was crying out, and that we were skidding dangerously. Her arms shook, and she stared ahead. "You've got to take this wheel. I can't hold the road. We're getting into water or something----"

There was no room to change over in that dancing sway down a hill. "Don't try to shift gears," I said. "Keep your foot off the brake and let her coast till we get to the bottom. Then you can stop-"

"Right. But don't you hear anything?"

"It sounds like water, and pretty swift water. You said we were near the river."

"No, no! Behind us. It's like a motor. Don't you hear it? Suppose they've been picked up by a car?"

I opened the door to peer out. For a moment the sharp rain struck me blind, but there was little enough to see in any case. We are coming down through what seemed to be low, rolling meadows to the river, for you could hear its sullen, tumultuous rushing ahead. Some distance towards the right, where the ground looked flat, I thought I could discern lights among trees. It was a big building of some sort, though, oddly enough, the lights seemed to be reflected on water. The chateau Evelyn had mentioned, of course . . . on an island in a backwater there. We must be nearly to the bridge. I stuck my head up over our hood to look towards the left. Very faint and far away up on the farther bank of the river there was a pale twinkling. That was Orleans. And now we were flying straight down for a bridge whose location we did not know.

But I could hear the "motor" now. It was no car. That noise beat and throbbed with such sudden loudness over our heads, and seemed so close, that I involuntarily ducked. It gave a spit, fizzled away, pounded out again with increased loudness, and swept away to return again.

The one remaining motor could not have been two hundred feet above us. It was a passenger plane, and it was in trouble. First I could pick out the red port wing-light; then it disappeared into a black circling shape and a sickly flutter of a cough.

Evelyn spoke calmly.

"Hang on," she said. "I hope we can stop without turning over. - There's no bridge ahead."

True enough. We were into water now, for the swollen river had flooded out its banks. A broad mud runway seemed to end in a gap between the white palings, beyond which surged white flickers of the Loire turned to a millrace. But we did not shoot straight out into a cold bath, because the water itself checked us. The car sent up two waves like a torpedo, which slashed back on us just before the wheels sank in mud and churned to a stop at the top of the incline. Our headlights were full on the gap. Now it was obvious why Evelyn's instructions had been to go by the main road and not by this short-cut. There had never, pace the map-makers, been any bridge here. We could see the steel cables of a ferry, but no barge on this side. A big notice-board made defiant announcement that never would this ferry march after nineteen o'clock.

Which trapped us. The river, a good two hundred yards wide, was the only way we could go. There was no other road except backwards where the pursuers lay. And, in addition to the fact that our carburetor seemed flooded, it would need another car and a rope to yank us out of this mire. We were

bogged and sunk. The lads from the red car had us in a blind alley.

Evelyn began to laugh.

"I really don't see what we can do," she declared, rather hysterically. "Can you swim?"

"Yes. But take a look at that current."

"Well, I can't; not a stroke. And, anyway, I wouldn't if I could. That's carrying heroism too far. No, let's face it. We're not going to make that appointment at the inn now. We can't even go back and run the gauntlet. What I want now is a hot bath and change."

"Listen, wench. We're not going to be beaten now. We can take to the brush. There's a chateau over the way there. Then, if they do get on our track ..."

"Yes," agreed Evelyn. "And here they come now."

I kicked open the door and stepped out into water that was well over our running-board. At first there was a hope that the noise we heard might be the aeroplane-motor again, but it was not: it was a car on the road behind. Its headlights jumped round a bend at the top of the slope, and it came bucketing down towards us at a speed about twice our own. I swallowed hard.

"What are we going to do?" demanded Evelyn, cool again. "We've got a gun, of course. But, dash it all, I don't see that murdering a couple of policemen is going to help our case. I say, wait! I've got it!" She slid out beside me. "They may not know there's no bridge. They simply see us here. If we stand out and wave to them, they may shoot past us into the river; or at least they'll get stuck in the mud like us, and we'll be on an even footing again."

Personally, I did not see the nice ethical distinction between shooting policemen and drowning them. But there was no time to make a distinction: There was time for nothing but to act instinctively on the suggestion. I craned round from inside the car, shouting and beckoning - and the enemy came on.

My gestures had just the opposite effect. The driver of that car must have interpreted them as a warning, or else he saw the open gap just in time. I don't know precisely what happened, for the headlights were blinding. There was a grind and slam; the glare of headlights spun and flashed past, nearly at a dead halt, and a tidal wave swept in on us. The morass bogged that car when it was ahead of us only a few feet from the edge. But there was time to see that the car was a Citroen taxi, and that the car contained two people - neither of whom looked at all like our pursuers. It was almost broadside-on ahead of us. Somebody seemed to be shaking his fists in the back seat. Then the side-widow went down with a bang.

"What the goddamholyblazes do you think you're doin'?" roared a familiar voice in English. "You tried to murder me, that's what you did! That's the goddam thanks I get for tryin' to-"

It choked. A heavy fist was shaken at us from the window. Blinking at us behind spectacles down on its nose, with an ancient top-hat knocked to one side by the window, there peered at us the furious face of Sir Henry Merrivale.

CHAPTER FOUR

How an Old Friend Entered with Some Abruptness

H.M. HAD ESCAPED drowning by so narrow a margin that both Evelyn and I should have felt some qualms of conscience. But this was not uppermost. My chief feeling was relief. We had somehow blundered, of course, into the one person who would be certain to unmask me. And still I felt relieved. I was in for a blistering time, a bout that should scorch and sizzle for some days; but then H.M.'s most terrible threats, during those rages when he seemed to reach the point of apoplexy, always ended in a growl and the amendation that this was what he would do, burn him, if you ever let it happen again.

Meantime, he was still leaning out of the window and glaring.

"Who's there?" he bellowed. "It is you, ain't it? It's Evelyn Cheyne, hey? I ain't followed the wrong person all the way from Paris, have I? Speak up, curse you!"

We were leaning out on opposite sides of the car. "Hullo, H.M.," said Evelyn meekly. "Cheer-ho, Mycroft," said I.

He suddenly cocked his head. "Who was that last? Hey? Who? Speak up! Who said that? - Ken Blake? Good God, what're you doin' here?"

"Special service, H.M.," I told him. "I'm taking somebody's place, for the moment. But what are you doing here?" At this point there was an interruption, in hoarse and anguished tones, which seemed to proceed from the taxi-driver.

"Blast your beautiful taxi!" roared H.M. "Ain't we in enough trouble as it is, without you gabblin' about your beautiful taxi? Steady! Hey! Now, look here, Marcel. If there's any damage done, I'll buy it from you. You know, acheter - l'argent - the whole goddam cab. Got it?"

"Ah, ça!" breathed Marcel with satisfaction. He was a philosopher. He sat back comfortably and lit a cigarette while Evelyn appealed:

"Now that you're here, I expect it'll be all right. But will you please, please tell us what's going on; what we're expected to do and what all this is about? We've got into the most horrible messes, we don't know what we're doing. Exactly what were we to do, anyhow?"

H.M. hooked his arms on the window-ledge and took a sour survey of the mud. "Uh-huh," he nodded. "That's what I want to know myself. That's one of the reasons I followed you."

"What you want to know?" I repeated. "But, good Lord, doesn't the head of the whole Department know?"

He howled me down with some obscure remarks about ingratitude from the so-and-so's, and not taking his advice; then he went on:

"Humph. The one thing I can tell you, the only thing those swine at the Home Office would tell me (and I'll fix 'em, you see if I don't!), is that your mission is off. Out. Whatever you were intended to do, it's been canceled. And if you, my gal," he pointed at Evelyn, "had stayed at your hotel five minutes longer to-night, you'd have got the telegram cancelling it. It's a mix-up exactly like the Home Office would make, when they took it out of my hands - and I'm here to fix 'em. I came over to Paris just for that. I went to your hotel to find you, but they said you'd just gone. So . . . Looky here. That earwig of a car you got is gettin' flooded out. You must be up to your ankles. Come on over here with me, and I'll tell you what I do know, and we'll see if we can't work out a plan to fry them Home Office bunglers in their own grease. - I got some whisky here," he added helpfully.

We were shivering enough to appreciate that, although we had had no dinner. I lifted Evelyn out and splashed across to the other car, where H.M. had turned on the roof-light in the rear. Marcel was spinning the engine, in a forlorn hope of extricating the taxi, but - he got not even a cough. H.M. sat piled into one corner, his unwieldy tall hat stuck on one side, of his head to avoid collision with the roof; his big coat open to disclose the fact that he had again forgotten his necktie. There were sour lines drawn down from the corners of his broad nose; he blinked over his spectacles, and in one hand he held a thermos-flask and in the other a bottle of whisky. His presence was sanity and reassurance. Yet where was sane England now? Here we three sat, conferring about a unicorn and sipping whisky in a mired taxi by a rising river somewhere in the wilds of France; yet H.M. seemed as comfortably at home as though he sat with his feet on the desk at Whitehall. He opened his eyes, however, when he got a good look at us.

"Oh, love-a-duck! Look here, what've you two been doin', hey? You been in an accident or something?" "Yes. In a way."

"And something else I want to know," he growled, pointing the bottle with an air of inspiration, "is how you figure in this business, Ken? Unless the Home Office got hold of you behind my back - and oh, Archons of Athens, what I'm a-going to do to them!" breathed H.M. with a sinister hissing effect, displaying a heavy fist and closing the fingers slowly. "Burn me, they're going to wish they'd consulted the old man. I'm offended. I'm hurt, and I don't mind admitting it. But, as much as they condescended to tell me, the people they'd chosen for this job were the Cheyne gal here and Harvey Drummond."

"Who's Harvey Drummond?"

"Officially, feller who owns the string of race-horses. You know. He won the Oaks last year, and the St. Leger the year before. Bah! I wouldn't back any of his nags. Feller gives me a pain in the neck. H'mf. Also, he's the ex-Cambridge boxer who brags he can put to sleep anybody his own weight in less'n three rounds. Nasty customer, Ken. He-"

"I mean, what does he look like?"

H.M. sniffed. "Heavy-set feller. Thick jowls. Brown toothbrush mustache. Reddish complexion"

Evelyn and I looked at each other, and I saw horrified understanding in her eyes. That was the man who was howling somewhere behind us. I turned quickly to H.M.

"By the way, didn't you notice anything on the road before you got here? Didn't you meet anybody, for instance?"

"Aha, and that's another 'thing I" cried H.M., ghoulishly embarked on more grievances. "I just remembered. What kind of a blasted country is this, anyway, I ask you? Feller tried to hold me up. Not two miles back there he tried to hold me up. Bah! They chose a wood, 'a' course-walking along nice and unsuspicious, stranded travelers, but I could spot their car just the same. Stale trick, Ken! It was too dark to make out their faces, or, burn me, I'd have remembered. Tryin' games on me! When we wouldn't stop, one biggish feller tried to jump on the running-board "

"What did you do?"

H.M. blinked with sour pleasure. "Me? Oh, I just leaned out through the window and gave him a push in the face. It wasn't a gentle push, son. We were traveling pretty fast then, and he went across the road like he'd been fired out of a pub. In fact, I shouldn't be surprised if he went clear over the edge of the bank.... The noise that went up from his confederates was the most awful thing I ever heard, but we didn't stop to investigate. Uh-huh. It was a good shove."

"Un coup extraordinaire," agreed Marcel, amiably. He shot a vigorous stiff-arm through the open glass panel, by way of illustration. "Comme ça, monsieur!"

"Now we're all in it," I said. "That's the second time he's sailed over that bank to-night, and his temper must be in a ripe state by now. Before we go on, H.M., I want you to listen to the story of my derelictions. Since you say the mission's been canceled, it doesn't matter now anyway."

I made a full, if brief, confession, while H.M. shut the panel against a hurt Marcel. The rain, which had been dying away, quickened to a drumming on the roof; thunder began to mutter once more, and there was a flicker of lightning. Although I had expected some outburst from H.M., he sat silent, twiddling his thumbs, the fish-like eyes fixed on me. Evelyn was not outraged; on the contrary, she was almost jubilant.

"But why?" she demanded. "Ken, why on earth did you ever want to - ?"

"You know," I said, and saw that things were in excellent shape.

It was when I came to the affair of the red car that H.M. exploded. "O, Gawd lummy!" he breathed. "You mean it was Drummond you . . . uh-huh. And so did I. But I don't envy you, son. You've picked one of the worst people in England to make an enemy of. Ken, when he catches up to you, he's goin' to murder you. He's poison."

I was uneasily conscious of this. "All the same, we shall have to go back there and pick 'em up now . . ."

"Ain't you satisfied yet?" asked H.M. "What do you want to do: rush back and shove him over the bank again? No. Seems to me we're all three outlaws together, in more ways than one. Besides, how can we? Our cars are as dead as his; we can't move an inch unless we walk." He studied us; presently there fluttered up across his sour face something like the ghost of a grin. "Y'know, if you'd pulled that trick on me, nefarious impersonation of a government officer, and - uhhuh. But you didn't. You only flummoxed the Home Office, and I'm after their hides myself. As I say, we're all outlaws together." He sniffed. "Lemme explain. Do you know the real reason why I came chargin' over to France to begin with?"

"Well?"

"To get Flamande," said H.M. somberly.

"Flamande? But why? It isn't your pigeon, is it?"

"Oh, yes, it is, son. Because the Home Office said I couldn't. Because they thought this fancy joker would be too smart for the old man."

I whistled. H.M. remained very quiet, twiddling his thumbs. After a pause he grunted.

"Here's how the situation stands. Last Wednesday old Sq - well, we'll mention no names; somebody from the Home Office, anyhow - rang me up and said, 'Merrivale, I'm instructed to give you some orders.' 'Oho,' I said, 'and since when have you been giving me orders?' 'Let's not have any argument,' he says. 'Our office happens to be the head of the police, and this in its own way is a police job. We want to borrow two of your agents.' I said, 'So? Then why don't you go to Scotland Yard? They got a special branch for that sort of work.' Whereupon, as cool as you please, this feller says, 'With all due respect to you, Merrivale, there are two reasons. First, this is a diplomatic mission. And, whatever else your talents may be, they don't run to diplomacy. The French wouldn't understand 'em. But Scotland Yard might insist on consulting you. Second, we feel that the police side of the matter might be slightly better managed by other hands than yours. To cooperate with the people who will manage it, we should like to borrow Miss Cheyne and Mr. Drummond' "

Here H.M., who had been imitating an ultra-refined singsong, stopped and scowled malignantly.

"Haah! Y'know, children, I hadn't even time to, get mad. I said, 'Is that so, now? What mission, and who's managing it? He said, 'I'm sorry, but we are not permitted to disclose that yet.' . . . Well, now, you don't mooch about as much as I do without gettin' a trickle of information as to what's goin' on, and I'd have to be as fat-headed as old Squiffy himself not to put two and two together. So I grabbed the phone and said, 'No? Well, then, shall I tell you? George Ramsden's been sent on a mission, and he's just comin' back. Ramsden absolutely refuses ever to travel with any guard. So you want to put two people close to him, unbeknownst, to watch. First you want a good-lookin' gal, because Ramsden is an awful old rip; and second you want the toughest egg on two legs who's also what you call a Gentleman, in case there's ugly trouble. But,' I said, 'Ramsden's already on his way back, and why won't them two go with him all the way? Why bring in France? Why do you want 'em for France? I'll tell you that, too. Because the danger comes from France; because maybe the French government thinks Flamande is going to take an interest in Ramsden, and if your two departments workin' together can both protect Ramsden and nail Flamande for Gasquet, then there's goin' to be considerable bay-leaves crownin' both countries.' Hey?"

"I see," said Evelyn.

H.M. grunted. "Whereupon he says, just as cool as cool, 'You may be right, Merrivale, though of course you can't expect your opinions to be of interest to us. Will you send instructions to those two, without delay, to communicate with Colonel Taylor?' And rang off. Wild? Burn me, I was so wild I couldn't even talk. Then-"

"But what about the unicorn, and the mission to this 'Blind Man' inn?" asked Evelyn. "Do you know about those?"

"I don't know. But," said H.M., "I can give a thunderin' good guess. Well, I stewed and I chewed, and I sat and I thought, for a couple of days, and the more I thought the madder I got. The mercury bubbled out the top at noon to-day. I got a phone-call from the same feller. Y'see, they've had their knife into me ever since last October, for monkeyin' about in the Red Widow case, and Squiffy enjoyed givin' the knife a twist. Says he: 'Ah, Merrivale! It's been decided that we shall not need your agents after all. Unfortunately, they seem to have started. We don't know where Drummond is, but Miss Cheyne is at the Meurice in Paris. Will you see whether you can get in touch with them and tell 'em the mission has been canceled?'

"Uh. Well. I made a decision spur-o'-the-moment. 'No, I won't,' says I, 'but I'll tell you what I will do. I'm hoppin' over to Paris this afternoon, and I'm goin' to offer you Flamande on toast within forty-eight hours. How do you like that, hey?' I was so mad that the old man's usual caution had gone up the spout, but I had the satisfaction of hearin' him give an awful yelp. He says, `You've been warned not to interfere! You've got absolutely no authority, and you'll get none.' 'Squiffy,' I says, `you can take your goddam authority-' and I told him just what to do with it, and hung up while he was still bleatin'."

The old man was girded for war, and both Evelyn and I saw it.

"Did they try to stop you?" she asked.

"Sure. But I got the afternoon plane just the same. Oh, I may be asked to resign or somethin', if they can pull enough wires," said H.M., with a gleeful leer, "but in the meantime here I am. So I spent the journey over in sittin' and thinkin'. I knew I'd get no help from the French prefecture. But I had a theory. My first move was to try to get in touch with you, gal, to find out your instructions - that's why I came a-chasin' after you with Marcel here. I got on your track when they said at the hotel you were goin' to Orleans. At Chartres I picked you up again from a bar where you asked directions about a short-cut. And now, after bein' nearly murdered for my pains, I find you didn't have any instructions that could help me at all. No lead! No clue! Burn me," said H.M., screwing up his mouth with a malevolent honking sound from his nose, "what the devil do we do now? Unless, 'a' course, my original idea was right after all...”

I reflected.

"We may be a defensive alliance of outlaws," I said. "But we seem to be pretty thoroughly sunk at the start - at least, so far as getting after Flamande is concerned. Did you know, for instance, that Ramsden was coming to Paris by the evening plane from Marseilles? And that Flamande had threatened to be aboard?"

H.M. examined his hands. He had to keep his face very wooden to conceal the fact that he had lost his first trick. He did not even roar.

"No, I didn't," he answered. "D'ye think I'd have come chasing down into the wilds after you if I'd known that plane was to reach Paris not a very long time after I left it?"

Evelyn mused, her chin in her hand. "So - unless it's been delayed by the storm, that plane must have reached Paris some time ago. And here we are, stuck in the mud miles from the battlefield where ... what's that?"

It was almost a cry. What she heard was the aeroplane motor again, lower now and blowing out full blast. H.M. remained staring straight ahead for what seemed a very long time. Then, with a muttered exclamation, he switched out the roof-light and peered against the window.

At first we could see nothing. The noise had abruptly stopped; the engine was switched off. Then, a few hundred feet above the flat meadows towards our right-and not many hundred yards away beyond the poplars that fringed the road-two straight shafts of light slanted down from either side of the air-liner's cabin. She had switched on her landing-lights. She was circling down to a forced landing in those meadows.

"Y'know," said H.M., in a detached voice, "I thought Flamande might be up to a trick or two like that. I thought he might be going to see to it that that plane never got to Paris."

"You mean-" Evelyn muttered.

"Uh-huh. I'll be very much surprised if that ain't the Marseilles-Paris bus. Maybe delayed by storm, or hanky-panky, or anything you like. With George Ramsden aboard. With Gasquet aboard - and Flamande." We heard H.M. snapping his fingers in the darkness. "Burn me, the cards are arrangin' themselves. Burn me, I could get out and bow to the heavens! I'm goin' to play poker, son. With both Gasquet and F!amande, and never know which is which. I hope that plane don't crash; that's all I hope."

It did not crash. We saw the landing-lights swoop in a last plunge and glide; dip below the trees, and flicker beyond the poplar-stems. They flattened out and then joggled to a long run before they stopped. There was a pause. Then the cabin-windows glowed out yellow in the meadow.

"Done it," breathed H.M. with ghoulish jocularity. "Well, what about it? Shall we join 'em? I got a fancy to see what innocent travelers are on that bus."

"Look here, H.M.," I objected, "you surely don't think even if that's the plane we want, which is doubtful - that Flamande had staged a hold-up in broad air and brought the plane down?"

H.M. blinked. "Well, I s'pose you better take along that gun you pinched," he conceded, "just in case there's more of the trouble you've got so fond of. But I don't think so. Flamande doesn't pluck the chicken like that. 'Mf, no. More like!y there's been engine trouble; water in a feed-line, maybe, or some hanky-panky. Come on, both of you. I don't mind a little water in a good cause. No, no, Marcel! You restez là and buvez le whisky, mon gars. Quand nous reviendrons, vous serez dans les pommes ou tout de fait noir. Ne me pas poser un lapin, mon gars!"

Marcel thanked him, and said he was too genteel. It will be readily understood why H.M.'s French would not endear him in diplomatic circles. Although fluent to overpowering, it is chiefly composed of Parisian gutter-slang. Down he lumbered into the flood. He did not mind anything else, but he refused to wear his hat. He said it was a present from Queen Victoria, and he would not get it damp. So he rolled it under his coat, spreading a handkerchief over his head, and waddled ahead as the most curious figure of British respectability to be seen on a French road. Also, he was in a good humor. I had the foresight to borrow a flashlight from Marcel, but except for the mud the going was easy. We got through the line of poplars, and slogged across a nearly flat meadow whose confines were lost in mist. To our left, along the river bank, ran a long grove of beeches. Beyond them we could see lights.

But our attention was on the stranded plane. Its door had opened; a violent argument seemed in progress among a group of people gathered about it. One person seemed to be pointing. As we watched, four people detached themselves from the group and moved off towards our left. These, we could see as they passed the windows, were three men and a woman. The others continued to wrangle by the door. These were three more passengers, men; in addition there were two men wearing the uniform of the airline, and one with the white coat of a steward. H.M. lifted his great voice through the rain.

"Hallo! Is that," he bellowed in French, "the Marseilles-Paris plane?"

The words made more than a sensation. For the first time I was touched by that intangible terror, their own terror, which joined us the moment we entered the group. Every person spun round; the voices ceased as at the shutting of a lid. The passengers became crooked silhouettes, straining back from an unknown voice that caught them unawares. One of the men in uniform stood sideways on the light from the door, and I saw his hand whip to his pocket.

"It is!" he roared back, but his tones seemed to wabble nevertheless. "Who goes there?"

"Friends, friends! English. Travelers. We had an accident."

Another pause, while sheets of rain whirled across between.

Then one of the group on our left, a stocky short man with his neck thrust out, took a few steps forward.

"English, eh?" he demanded in that language. "Who the devil are you, then? Don't try any games. We're armed."

H.M. chuckled. "Ho ho!" he said. "I know that voice. Howdy, Ramsden. Don't get the wind up. This ain't Flamande, you know; it's Merrivale - Henry Merrivale. I got a couple of friends with me."

"By God, it is!" shouted Sir George Ramsden, as though with a sort of jumpy aside. "Hold hard, everybody; I know this fellow. He's all right."

"Are you sure you know him?" asked a tall man in a waterproof, who stood near the door of the plane. He spoke with a sort of genial mockery. "Flamande is notorious for his mimicry, you know. But if Flamande won't reveal himself, I think it's about time Gasquet did. We ought to know our protector, anyhow. Whoever is Gasquet - won't he speak up?"

"Don't talk damn nonsense, son," growled an American voice from behind Ramsden. "Somebody's been ribbing you."

While H.M. slogged up to meet Ramsden, whom Evelyn and I also greeted, I tried to study the seven passengers, but it was too dark to distinguish their faces. I had an impression that - with one exception -they were all either English or American. The exception was a middle-sized, rather fuzzy gentleman who had the stiff bearing of the French professional man; he was still hesitating in the door of the plane, as though wondering whether to injure the high gloss of his boots by jumping down. Meantime, there was Ramsden making his usual short, quick, hammering gestures like a steam-piston, sniffing the air as though he sniffed trouble, and peering round as his high voice bleated on:

"-smack down miles from anywhere. It's the blasted nuisance of it that annoys me. And, while I don't give that," he snapped his fingers, "for this Edgar Wallace crook and his threats, I do want to be comfortable. We can't stay in that ship; they won't even let you smoke in there. See there: where those lights are?" He pointed towards the left. "The pilot says that's some big pot's chateau, and that he'll probably give us shelter until we can start again." He addressed the pilot in excellent French. "Tell me, then: exactly what is wrong, and how long will it be before we can go on?"

The uniformed shoulders shrugged. "Ah! Monsieur sees that it depends. The engine-trouble can be put right, yes, and I do not think we have damaged our landing-gear. What actually brought us down was the mist." He pointed up. "That! Unfortunately, we have an old kind of avion, and we are not equipped for blind flying. Until the mist lifts, then . . well, we shall try to put the trouble right."

The tall Englishman by the door of the plane, who had been struggling to light a cigarette, looked up sharply. He only said to Ramsden:

"You people carry on to the chateau, sir. We'll follow if they seem hospitably inclined."

"Right," said another English voice near him, and the French professional man in the plane nodded. We trudged away with the other four, leaving the sound of some sort of altercation behind. The one woman among the passengers who had her arm through that of a man in a rakish traveling-cap, was eying Evelyn curiously. Since we were supposed to have had an accident, Ramsden was making clucking noises over Evelyn and being very gallant even though he could not see her. His jovial spirits warmed even that bleak place. I think we all felt better by the time we came in sight of the chateau. Only the last member of the party, a portly man whom Ramsden addressed as Hayward, had a tendency to stumble and swear.

When the grove of beeches opened out and gave place to a screen of willows, the Chateau de l'ille did not seem so much on an island as built straight out of the water itself. At this point the Loire made a deep inward curve, so that the chateau was a good sixty yards from any bank. A graveled carriage-drive, whose beginning we could not see, terminated in a high stone causeway across the gap. The overflowing river frothed white and roared round that island like a private tempest. The chateau was not actually a big place, but the conical peaks of its towers loomed gigantic in the rain, and the deep embrasures of its windows made remote the lights on the lower floor. We struggled across the causeway, where it made you dizzy to look down. A caught log was banging against the arches of the causeway in that mill-race; leaves blew wild and the wind whooped down on us.

"I hope he opens the door," said Ramsden chokily. "The pilot says he's a bit of a queer fish, this what's-his-name. A recluse. Seldom sees anybody-"

At that moment we got into the shelter of the walls, where there was a seething of vines. A low flight of steps led up to a big door; and, just as we set foot on the steps, an arch of light appeared on the darkness as the door opened.

"Please come in, messieurs," intoned a courteous voice. "The Comte d'Andrieu has been expecting you."

CHAPTER FIVE

The Host of Castle Queer

THE BIG DOOR thudded shut against the wind. When I had recovered my balance, it was with a feeling of waking up in a comfortable room after a bad dream. We were in a high stone hallway with a fretted roof; so arched and bare, with a row of stone pillars down each side, that it looked like the nave of a small cathedral. The stone was blackening, and not too well preserved against the damp. But a clean strip of red carpet was laid down the middle, terminating in a big stairway at the far end. On each alternate pillar were iron brackets for electric lights.

"He expects us?" Ramsden's startled voice was repeating behind. "Oh! I understand. You mean you saw us come down out there?"

"No, monsieur," the other replied blandly. He swam into my sight as a big man with a large mustache and brilliantined hair; he wore somewhat shoddy evening dress, and an air of tolerant composure. "I mean that monseigneur has been expecting you since yesterday."

"Good God!" said the man in the traveling-cap, and stared down at the woman who still clung to his arm. "You don't suppose -?"

"What was the fellow saying?" demanded the portly man called Hayward. "I could only understand a couple of words. Something about expecting us?"

"Precisely. You will perhaps," a new voice interposed in English, "permit me to explain?"

I had not seen our host come downstairs. But he was advancing up the red carpet, between slanting bars of shadow from the pillars; moving slowly, and giving us a polite scrutiny which was less a stare than a gesture of welcome. His hands clasped behind him, he seemed to take an amiable and refreshed interest in what he saw. We saw a lean man of probably sixty-odd, whose walk was saved from a dodder only by the humor in his eyes and the ease of his bearing. The eyes had a bright dark twinkle under pouched lids; there were wrinkles of amusement round them, and also in the forehead, as though he had a habit of lifting one eyebrow. His hair and clipped military beard were dark gray, but the mustache under a bony nose was still blackish. He wore a black skullcap stuck on the back of his head, and a Turkey dressing-gown over white tie. Down he came doddering, a genial little figure nodding to each of us, and holding up a bony wrist for silence. His English was tolerably good, if a little pedantic.

Said he: "Have no apprehension, my friends. This is not a trap of any sort, and I am not Flamande. Ha ha, no! My name is D'Andrieu. All I know of this situation is contained in the letter I had the honor to receive from M. Flamande himself. Er - which of you is Sir George Ramsden?"

He looked toward H.M., who would have been the most picturesque figure of our group even without the soaked handkerchief plastered across his bald head. H.M. was still in good spirits. Ramsden, whose boiled eye had been wandering about the hall, gave an almost guilty jump.

"Hoomf!" he said. "I am. Excuse me, sir; but, dammit, man, how do you know all that?"

"This letter will explain. Will you translate it aloud?"

Ramsden, with several fits and starts, took the sheet of notepaper our host handed him. He glanced down the sheet, and his sandy eyebrows went up under the brim of a dripping hat.

"I say, of all the infernal impudence-! Listen!

"'MONSEIGNEUR:

"'The name of M. le Comte d'Andrieu had always been known to me as that of a man who in the past enjoyed the stalking of wild game. In case he is still interested, I can offer M. le Comte some excellent sport. I can offer him a unicorn-hunt.

`Permit me to explain. This evening I have learned that a place has been taken on to-morrow night's Marseilles-Paris aeroplane for one Sir George Ramsden, an Englishman whose good heart I esteem, but at mention of whose intelligence I do not always spontaneously rise to cheer ..: "

"The letter, you see," our host put in, rather hurriedly, "was posted last night at Marseilles."

"'Rise to cheer-' " prompted H.M. "Uh-huh. Go on, Ramsden. What else?"

"'I am interested in Sir George and what he brings

with him. Therefore I have taken a place on the same aeroplane.

"'I have given much thought to its real stopping-place, and have at last chosen the isolated region near your esteemed chateau. At the proper time I shall take measures to ensure a forced landing. Since there is no other house within some distance, we shall probably call upon you. There I shall have time in which to work, although no great time is, of course, ever necessary to me. May I ask you, then, to have a light meal in readiness for the travelers? Unfortunately even I cannot tell you at just what time we shall arrive, or at this moment how many travelers will book seats in the plane. But a generous cold buffet would be suitable, and I need scarcely insult M. le Comte by saying I rely on his own good taste to see that the champagne is not too sweet ...' "

Ramsden made a noise like a man hit in the stomach.

"As for the champagne," said D'Andrieu, pursing his lips and gravely inclining his head, "it is a Roederer '21. I hope that will be satisfactory?"

"Fine!" said the stout American, Hayward, with ringing approval. Everybody turned round to look at him. His broad face, with its comfortable lines round the mouth, went red. "I only meant," he protested, plucking at the nose-piece of his shell-rimmed glasses as though to drive it in, "I only meant - oh, you know what I meant! Hah! Go on, Ramsden."

"'One thing, monsieur, I deeply regret. Among the passengers of this aeroplane, themselves doubtless dull enough, there is likely to be one of such conspicuous dullness that I should not inflict him on you if I had not half a mind to kill him. This is a fellow of low origins, calling himself Gasquet. I am not able, at this moment, to inform you what clumsy disguise this person is likely to adopt. But you will easily recognize him, monsieur, by the revolting size of his ears, by his mean, close-set eyes and shifty mouth, and by a nose which at twenty paces is almost indistinguishable from a tomato ...' "

The young man in the traveling-cap - the other American began to laugh. He had removed the cap now, and everybody turned round to look at him. He showed a face of good features, of imagination rather than sharp intelligence. His blond hair was plastered across his forehead; he had a genial brown eye, a broad nose, and a broad humorous mouth. Not abashed by any inspection, he scratched his nose reflectively. The woman, or girl, with him seemed disturbed. The letter both puzzled and bewildered her. So far as I could judge now, she was neither American nor English nor French. German or Austrian, I thought; probably Viennese. She was small, with the high breasts, very transparent skin, and dark red mouth of the Viennese. Having intense blue eyes and dark hair, she was by way of being a beauty. She wore a blue beret and an open leather motoring coat; underneath she was so well turned out that I noticed a thoroughly muddy Evelyn regarding her in no favorable mood. As the man laughed, she said something to him - rebukingly, it sounded in German.

"All right, Elsa," he conceded, subsiding to a grin. "All I can say is, I should like to see a reply written by Gasquet.!'

Our host's wrinkled eyes continued to twinkle. "And so you shall, sir, if you wish it."

"You mean you got a letter from Gasquet, too?"

"It came this afternoon. I find them an extraordinary and amusing pair of of" - he snapped his fingers - "micawbers. Also, I forget my manners. The ladies must be very uncomfortable. Please forgive an old campaigner." He bowed to them, a salutation which Evelyn returned by tipping her hand to her head, and the woman called Elsa with grave courtesy. None of this was lost on the affable, sharp old Anatole France doddering backwards before us. "I seldom entertain," he went on, "but you will find M. Flamande's `light repast' laid out for you. If you would care for a bath and change, my house is at your disposal. My servants can bring

your luggage –“'

Ramsden stared. "You mean to say you followed that fellow's requests to the letter?"

"Of course. He promised me good sport."

"And you didn't even communicate with the police about this?"

D'Andrieu frowned. "Certainly not, except insofar as he directs in the last paragraph. You have not finished it? Permit me." He took the letter from Ramsden's hands.

"'Although I should prefer that you did not communicate with the local police,, my acquaintance with their intelligence is such that 1 do not anticipate any grave difficulties. However, if you wish it, I have no objection to your communicating with the person Gasquet. I would wish him to have advance news of his defeat. Be so good as to write him - if you care to make the defeat more exciting - c/o the Surete both at Marseilles and Paris to make sure of finding him. To-night I write to the newspapers, saying that I shall be aboard the aeroplane to-morrow. He will see that. But for his private information you may tell him all I have told you.

"'Say to him, then: To-morrow the great Flamande will ride with Sir George Ramsden. He will wreck the night air-liner by the Chateau de l'Ile outside Orleans, he will steal the unicorn, kill any fool who gets in his way, and vanish as he has always done. You know when he will strike and where he will strike. Now stop him if you can.

FLAMANDE."'

"Hurrah!" said the blond young man, involuntarily. "That's the stuff to bring the audience out of their seats! Incidentally, what's the unicorn?"

"All this is nonsense," observed Elsa, frowning. "Dearest, do not chump so."

"He's a conceited old villain, right enough," Evelyn said meditatively; "all the same, I'd rather like to meet him."

Hayward cleared his throat and intervened pontifically. He said:

"My friends, my friends! Let us talk sense. That lad has got his nerve right with him," a gleam of unwilling admiration shone in his eye, "but your Flamande can't work witchcraft. Now, I ask you: Can he? And how can anybody tell exactly where a plane is going to go bust and come down, eh? Unless-" Hayward stopped. He ran his hand through a short, upstanding brush of clear white hair. Then he spoke in a very much sharper tone. "Of course, gentlemen. We might have thought of it. He bribed the pilot. Hell! That's not cleverness; it's plain dirty work that anybody might have managed, and it makes me mad to think we've been delayed just by ..."

"And yet," said H.M., "I doubt it."

There was an abrupt silence; nobody knew why, except that H.M. commanded such silences. He had mopped his bald head and polished his glasses. Now he was leaning shapelessly against a pillar, his old black pipe stuck in one corner of his mouth, and he was scratching his chin with the tall hat.

"Uh-huh," be repeated, - nodding vacantly, "I doubt it, Gents. First place, the co-pilot and probably the steward would've had to be in on the game. And has Flamande, the lone wolf, ever worked like that? Too bloomin' risky by half, I'd say, by the look of those fellers-"

"You and your friends, sir," asked D'Andrieu, looking at Evelyn and me, "were not aboard the plane then?"

"No. We had a bit of a motor-accident. H'mf. Second place, I do a good deal of moochin' about. I happen to remember the crew of that plane; I've traveled with 'em before. Burn me, I don't believe in any hanky-panky there. That pilot's name is Jean Morel; he's the crack man of the southern line, and pretty near above suspicion.... "

"I know that," said Ramsden. "They said they were assigning him to us. But it makes the thing worse. Hayward's right in this: How in Satan's name can anybody force a plane down exactly where he wants it to go? How could Flamande as a passenger hope to do that?"

D'Andrieu turned out his wrist. The pouched dark eyes were gleaming wickedly, and he was enjoying himself.

"For that matter, sir! How," said D'Andrieu suavely, "did he steal the Rembrandt out of Grossenmart's strong-room in Berlin? Or Madame de Montfort's sapphires at the President's Ball?-But Sir George may see now the reason why I did exactly as M. Flamande requested when he honored me with his confidence."

Then Ramsden showed that side of his nature which explained his popularity in other countries. Suddenly he slapped his hat against his leg and chortled.

"I never heard of anything so dashed sporting in my life!" he crowed. "Sir, we shall be very pleased to accept your hospitality. Let Flamande do his cussedest. If he's listening to me now, I hope he hears me say so, and I can't make it any fairer than that, can I?"

"Even though it entails great danger to yourself?"

"Danger be blowed! I'll risk that. I've risked worse," said Ramsden, chuckling. His brickdust-colored face, with the light blue eyes, beamed on us. "And, what's more, there happens to be somebody here who will queer Flamande's pitch quicker than Gasquet ever can. I mean - that 'un." He pointed at H.M. "I don't know how he got here, but he's here, and the Great Flamande had better mind his eye. By the way, let's get these introductions over. That's Sir Henry Merrivale. And ... ah, the ladies! This is Miss Cheyne. This one," he goggled round at the girl Elsa, "is Miss-Mrs."

"Middleton," supplied the man beside her, and his shoulders went back with pride. He beamed, and Elsa beamed back at him. "Mrs. Middleton. My wife."

"And Mr. Middleton," continued Ramsden. He hauled the stout man forward. "This is Mr. Earnest Hayward. We got into talk on the bus going out to the plane. He was in Washington when I was there, over twenty years ago during the first Wilson administration. And, now that I think of it, I believe Ken was, too." He looked at me. "Finally, this is Mr. Blake, a friend of mine, who looks as though he could do with a wash."

D'Andrieu bowed. "And are there no more passengers of the plane?"

"Three more to come. I don't know any of 'em-stop a bit! I believe one of 'em, tall thin chap, introduced himself to me as the Paris Correspondent of the London Record. Now, then, sir, if you'll ask our men to bring up some of our luggage . . . By the way, H.M., where's your car?"

The word luggage recalled me to what had been entirely forgotten. But I saw the realization come to Evelyn's eyes. By this time Drummond and his two avengers (unless some Providence had sent them in the other direction) must have come up to our bogged cars. What they would be saying to Marcel I could imagine. Also, it was clear that their next move would be to come straight here. Unless measures of some sort were taken, all three of us outlaws would be snaffled - H.M. included. For, as had been pointed out to him at Whitehall, he had no authority whatever. Whitehall might take a malicious pleasure in seeing him in trouble.

The realization sent my heart into my boots. But, before H.M. could speak, I threw the dice.

"M. d'Andrieu," I said, "our cars are down by the landing-stage at the river. But, before you take us in, it's only fair to warn you that we are being pursued by the police."

There was a silence.

"Now this is a nice respectable bunch we've got into!" growled Hayward, opening his eyes wide. "What have you been up to, young man?"

"Assaulting policemen. It was entirely an accident, I assure everybody! Sir George himself can vouch for ourrespectability. We thought they were hold-up men when they tried to stop our car. So I assaulted the leader. Then, when we were hardly out of sight, along came Sir Henry and assaulted him again. We meant no harm, but they must be convinced that we're all dangerous criminals...."

D'Andrieu examined me with refreshed interest.

"I am acquainted with the irrepressible spirits of the British, Mr. Blake," he assured me, clucking his tongue sympathetically, "and I am entirely at your service. What would you like me to do?"

"Of course you understand, sir," I pursued, and cast a fly to the liking of this particular trout, "that we don't mind being overtaken so far as we are concerned. We could easily explain. But, from your point of view, it might interfere with the sport to have the police on the premises. Flamande enjoins against it, and you are following his instructions . . . ? So, if they did get here, and you told them you bad not seen us "

"Auguste!" called our host in a sharp voice, and seemed to reflect. Up stepped the big major-domo with the curling mustache, giving D'Andrieu a military salute. The doddering little figure stiffened to parade-ground rigidity. "Please let us have a description of this leader, Mr. Blake."

Without pity or bowels I described Harvey Drummond, an agent of His Majesty's Intelligence Department. I said he was a plain-clothes man accompanied by two policemen. But, surreptitiously watching H.M., I saw an expression of something like contentment steal over that wooden face, while he silently drew at his empty pipe; and this was encouraging.

"You hear, Auguste?" D'Andrieu asked sharply.

"Perfectly, my colonel."

"If this fellow comes here and attempts to make unpleasantness, you know nothing. If he persists, it will probably be best to throw him into the river."

Hayward's jaw fell open a little. So, figuratively, did mine.

"You are the perfect host, M. d'Andrieu," I said. "But it need not be necessary to go quite so far as that. Besides, I must warn you that this man is a very tough proposition----"

"When, many years ago," said the little man in the skull-cap, dreamily cocking an eye at a corner of the roof, "I had the honor to serve the Republic as a Colonel of Spahis, I encountered many examples of what you call `tough propositions.' The modern sort do not impress me. Nowadays we have a tendency to believe that `toughness' consists merely in bad manners. That is, I think, an error; and I am not convinced that the poorer a man's grammar is, the stronger are his guts. As for Auguste, do not worry. Before he became my orderly and later my servant, he vas the heavyweight boxing champion of the French Foreign Legion. . . . You have your instructions, Auguste?"

"Oui, mon colonel," said Auguste happily.

"Then, my friends, if you will come to the fire in the library ..."

A sharp rat-tat-tat sounded on the big knocker of the front door. We all whirled round. Auguste straightened his shoulders, composed himself, and went to answer it. Inside stalked the prim, straight-backed Frenchman whom I had judged to be a professional man of some sort. He had a sharp, clean-shaven face, with a heavy jaw and small eyeglasses through which he regarded us sharply from under the brim of his black slouch hat. Under one arm he pressed a brief-case, and was tapping it impatiently with his other hand. Addressing Ramsden, he spoke in the slurred clipped speech of the Midi.

"I bring information. Insufferable information. This, monsieur, is an outrage. I am assured by the pilot that our aeroplane is damaged beyond repair, and that we shall be unable to proceed to-night."

CHAPTER SIX

The Incredible Passenger

IMPERTURBABLE during a babble of talk, our host led us out into the hall again. The electric lamps attached to the pillars seemed only to emphasize the somberness of that bare hall; things seemed to jump and quiver in the comers where the shadows gathered. I glanced nervously over my shoulder, then shook myself impatiently and turned again to D'Andrieu. He led us through a door on the left, and into a big room where the blaze of a huge log fire was grateful. It was a drawing-room of sorts, filled with that smell of coffee and curtains and furniture-polish which seems to haunt such rooms in France, and furnished in the square white and gilt lines of the Empire. But, in contrast to D'Andrieu's fastidious presence, it was blackened and ill-kempt in the damp of the place as though it had been shut up for years. This, I knew, was not D'Andrieu's real den. It was illumined by globes in wall-brackets with crystal flanges, and the river roared under its windows. There was only one incongruous thing: over the mantelpiece was mounted the head of a great Sumatran leopard.

Auguste took our sodden wraps; all but those of the latest comer in the eyeglasses, who remained stiff and black-clad by the fire.

"I thank monsieur for his courtesy in admitting us," he said to our host, "but the situation is truly impossible." He spoke in quick bursts, tapping the brief-case and squaring his shoulders each time. "The pilot says that we cannot move until tomorrow----“

H.M. intervened. Knowing his passion for slang and lurid exclamations, I was relieved to hear his French become comparatively shorn.

"But the radio-telephone, hein? What about that? He has a radio-telephone, hasn't he? He will already have told Paris what has happened. They could have a car sent for you from Chartres or Orléans, hey?"

"Yes, yes. He could, monsieur, if some scoundrel had not smashed the t.s.f. It is broken. I have seen it."

D'Andrieu's eye twinkled again. "Surely that is not too bad? Come, you must not insult me! And I shall be very much insulted, my friends, if you refuse to spend the night under my roof. Auguste! You know what to do."

The man with the eyeglasses turned. His face had a pale blaze.

"Again I thank monsieur for his courtesy. But that is quite impossible. It is imperative that I be in Paris early tomorrow morning. Allow me: I am Dr. Hébert, the police-surgeon for the Department of Bouche du Rhone, at Marseilles." He trolled out the words with some pompousness. "I go to Paris on official business, and delay would be inconvenient. But certainly it is not necessary to spend the night? You have a telephone?"

"Unfortunately, no. I neither like nor need telephones. Besides, it would be impossible to stretch the wires so far across-"

"But you have electric light."

"True, M. le Docteur. I said merely that we had no telephone," D'Andrieu answered suavely, but a film had come over his eyes. "The current is supplied by my own dynamo in the cellar."

"But surely you have an automobile?"

"No. I am a hermit, you see. Twice a week provisions are brought to me from Orleans in a cart. On the rare occasions when I go out, I ride horseback." He reflected. "At my stable just over on the-mainland, I have some good saddle-horses. Are you a horseman, monsieur? I should prefer not to let Thunder or Queen of Clubs go out in such weather, but of course if you insist ..."

"I do not ride," said Hébert violently. His eye lit up nevertheless; he turned round on the rest of us, stuttered, adjusted his speech, and broke out in English: "I appeal to the rest of you, gentlemen. One of you must be able to ride a horse, yes? Let him mount and go to the nearest town to dispatch a car. Surely somebody can ride?"

"I can," admitted Middleton, "but damned if I will. Honestly, Doctor, is there any real reason for this Paul Revere business? We have the perfect host - the perfect quarters - everything. Why kick? Besides, I want to see what happens. Eh, Elsa?"

Even Hayward nodded agreement. Hayward, who had piled himself in a chair with his knees wide apart, looked thoroughly comfortable. Except for his glasses and his short pompadour of silver hair, Mr. Hayward looked exactly like a butler in a drawing-room comedy. Also he had the same magisterial dignity and air of kindly firmness; though this was now tempered by something like a sly wink or chuckle of shrewdness. A butler, then, en deshabille. He wore a loose mustard-colored suit of plus-fours, with blue tie and stockings. Every time he smiled, the corners of his mouth seemed to go completely up like the corners of a moon, and he half closed his eyes. He was comfortably rolling a ripe cigar in his fingers. The persuasiveness of his pleasant voice filled the room.

"What I say is this," he declared. "I don't believe in all this business for one single minute. I repeat, Ramsden: somebody's ribbing you." He pointed the cigar. "I no more expect to meet this crook than I expect to meet-a unicorn, for instance." He looked curiously at Ramsden, who remained stolid with his jaws shut, and then he went on: "But, as Mr. Middleton says, why kick? We have an admirable host, cheerful company, and Roederer '21. Ahha, my friends, I'm satisfied." He put the cigar in his mouth with an air of finality. "Why, Dr. Hebert, are you so anxious to go?"

"I might inquire," said Hebert, becoming polite, "why you are so anxious to stay. But I let it pass. Ah, zut!" he barked fretfully. "Let's talk sense, yes? Do you know that a notorious criminal has threatened to be with us? It was in all the Marseilles newspapers to-night. Well?"

"We know more than that," grunted Ramsden. "Let him see the letter, M. d'Andrieu."

The doctor read it, and his face went sallow.

"Well, well?" he cried, shaking the letter in an agony of impatience. "And you have not done anything, any of you? Are you mad? Have you not called the police?"

Hayward shifted. "Listen, let's not go over all that again! Contrariwise, Doctor: if any police show up, the butler has instructions to fire 'em out on the seat of the pants. Is everybody happy?"

Young Middleton, who was teetering forward and backward on his heels, murmuring asides in German to a still bewildered Elsa, appeared to be enjoying himself almost as much as D'Andrieu. He pointed.

"Just to start the ball rolling," he volunteered, "I'll make a guess. For a starter I'll say that Mr. Hayward is Gasquet."

"Eh?" exclaimed Ramsden, craning round. "Why?"

"Because I write detective stories," said Middleton, with candor. "They're not very well known, and probably not very good. But I'd say he ought to be Gasquet."

Hayward chuckled, evidently rather flattered. "Well, I might be, at that," he agreed comfortably. "Though there was a, queer-looking bird in the plane I had my eye on - he hasn't shown up yet, by the way. Go on, son."

"Don't you see what we've got here? We're playing not only the usual game of `Find the criminal,'" said Middleton, excitedly tapping his finger into his palm, "but also the game of `Find the Detective.' Well, who is the detective? Take Mr. Hayward, for instance. He couldn't possibly be Flamande-"

"I'd like to know why not," said Hayward with some asperity, as though he rather resented this.

"- because he would be too easy. People would be suspicious of a character of his type right away as the criminal. I'll show you what I mean! Take a clergyman, for instance!" said Middleton, like a conjuror asking somebody to take a card. "It's easy enough to make a clergyman the murderer; so obvious that it occurs to everybody. The thing to do is not to make him the murderer, but the detective. You follow that?"

"Owen, I vill not haf you against the Church speaking!" said the lovely Elsa. "It iss not nice. If we stay here I should like a bath, pliz, somebody, yes?"

She had seen two footmen, under the direction of Auguste, bringing luggage into the hall. Then she and Evelyn went off to change. It was just as well they did, for Hebert spoke then. He had been warming his thin hands at the fire, holding himself in. Now he spun round.

"You think, I suppose," he said quietly - so quietly that we all turned to look at him-"this is a joke. You make jokes about it. I can laugh as well as anybody. But not at this. You see, I know something which you cannot know."

"Go on," prompted D'Andrieu, in the midst of a curious pause.

"That Flamande is really a murderer," replied the doctor. "It is the reason why I go to Paris. He murdered a man last night in Marseilles."

"And why," said D'Andrieu quietly, "should you go to Paris because a man was murdered in Marseilles?"

"Because of the way that this murder was done." Hebert extended two fingers stiffly, and then tapped them on his brief-case. "I cannot explain it. Perhaps, at Paris, it can be explained. But I do not believe so. You understand - it is the nature of the wound in the man's head." He had shifted into French, and spoke with level precision while the sharp eyes searched us. "This much I tell you frankly: I do not see how the hole in that person's head could have been made by any living man. Messieurs, I am not fantastic. But I tell you that it could have been made, so far as I know, only by the long, sharp horn of an animal."

Now for the first time terrors began to creep into that room of blackening gilt furniture: not only at the words of the sallow-faced man standing thin in his black coat against the firelight, but as though a physical presence had entered. We heard the loud rush of the river. Ramsden was prowling round the firelight, peering at Hebert. Ramsden, tubby and choleric, with his sandy hair and his baggy pepperand-salt tweeds, seemed the least impressed. In fact, he was grinning-but with a sour suspicion behind that grin. He spoke so politely that it was hard to recognize his usual bark.

"By a unicorn, doubtless?" he asked.

"No, I do not think so," the other answered, quite seriously. "You understand that I only state the fact."

"At last we come to the unicorn," murmured D'Andrieu, with relish. "That is the part which puzzled me most. I do not, of course, ask the obvious question as to what the unicorn is - "

"No," said Ramsden. "Let Flamande find that out for himself."

He was still smiling grimly. With great deliberation he took from a hip-pocket holster a Browning revolver, shook it open, spun the cartridge-drum with a squat forefinger, shut it up, and deliberately replaced it. He added: "I begin to wonder whether my sporting instincts have got me into a trap. Well! I am still ready."

D'Andrieu deprecated this. He stepped aside as a footman brought in a tray with aperitifs and two silver cigarette-boxes. D'Andrieu went on in English:

"But we have interrupted you, Dr. Hébert. Shall we go back to the man who was murdered in Marseilles? I am interested in that. (There, Mr. Middleton. You will find Virginias in that box, and Turkish in the other.) I am especially interested in it because of a legend-"

"Legend?" said Ramsden.

"I should have said superstition. Unlike most of my countrymen, I have traveled a little. I know one state where an unpleasant superstition is very strong. This is that to be gored through the head by a unicorn is always the fate of a traitor."

I looked slowly round the group. Hayward took the cigar out of his mouth and sat up. Middleton seemed possessed of a dubious excitement, as though he wished he could believe all this but rather thought it was a joke. Hebert scowled, with the gesture of one clearing away nonsense. Our host smilingly doddered over to hold up a glass for examination against the light. Ramsden had paused with his own glass half-way to his lips. And, occupying an Empire sofa, old H.M.- who had not spoken a word since we entered the room - remained as impassive as a poker-playing Buddha. The rush of the Loire shook tinglings from crystal pendants on the walls.

Abruptly Ramsden set down his glass and turned. "You'd better take charge, Merrivale," he said. "This fellow knows too bloody much."

"Uh-huh. Y'know, son, I was beginnin' to think it was about time I did." Dully H.M. contemplated Hebert, shifted, and pointed at him with his pipe-stem. "All the time I been listening like a mouse, it's struck me you've come to a very rummy Q.E.D. Doc. 'Flamande is a murderer,' you say. ''Why?' we say. 'Because,' you say, 'here's a man dead of a wound that couldn't have been made by a living man, but only the horn of an animal.' Why tack it on Flamande, then?"

The doctor hesitated.

"It is not a particular secret, no. It was published in the newspapers. You perhaps read it? I ask you that because" he folded his arms -"it might be of interest. The dead man was an Englishman."

And now the name in that newspaper paragraph flashed back on me. 'M. Gilbert Drummond, a solicitor, of London. M. Drummond's brother has been informed of the sad affair.' Drummond. Brother. Brother Harvey?

"His name, H.M.," I interposed, "was Gilbert Drummond. Would he be any relation to-?"

"Only his brother, that's all," said H.M. after a pause. He put his head down and ruffled the two tufts of hair on either side. "Oh, love-a-duck! I say, Ken, I don't wonder a certain person we know is pretty upset."

"What," said our host rather sharply, "is all this?"

"Oh, just a little personal matter. We'll go on-"

"You know M. Gilbert Drummond, then?" interposed Hébert, with gruff overacting of politeness. His eyeglasses seemed to shine. "One moment, sir! I think we go too fast, yes? Don't you think it odd that a man who admittedly knew M. Drummond should appear so - so fortuitously out of the dark when our aeroplane comes down?"

"You think I'm Flamande?" inquired H.M. comfortably. "Ho ho ho! Well, I got no objection. As for goin' too fast, no. I'm only patiently askin' you to expound my guilt. Why do you say Flamande must. have committed that murder, when you also say only an animal could have done it?"

Hebert folded his arms. "Because there was one detail, my friend, not given to the press. The report stated that the victim, before he died, kept repeating only the word, `unicorn.' That is not true. He spoke also three words in French just before he died in the ambulance. They asked him who had attacked him, and he answered in the distinct hearing of two people, 'It was Flamande.' They then said, 'Do you mean Flamande the criminal?' Well, he gave a violent nod and"- Hébert gestured-"did not awake again. It was a miracle he lived one minute."

The doctor went on in curt words to give the substance of the newspaper report. He described the man sitting propped up against the lamp-post in the park off the Promenade du Prado, his clothing ripped, his right arm smashed, and the blue hole between his eyes.

"I examined him. A bullet-hole? No!" declared Hebert, gruffly warming up. "No, no, no, no! I know the bullet-holes. First, the orifice was much bigger than any largest caliber of firearm. So big that any such penetration would have removed - " He touched the back of his head and made an expanding motion. "Second, I found no bullet in the wound. Third, I found evidence (yes, I will spare you unpleasant details) that, after it has penetrated, something has been pulled out of the wound. Well? Some clean spike has been driven in to penetrate exactly six inches."

"Good God!" said Hayward, and half got up out of his chair.

Our host said nothing. But his eyes were gleaming and his wrinkled face thrust out as though he were listening to martial music.

"Now I wonder," Middleton said quietly, "what I've got Elsa into. Would you mind telling us whether this is on the level?"

Hebert was contemptuous. "Whatever you mean, sir, it is true. Ah, bah!" He shrugged, turning to H.M. with his dry imagination excited again. "Let us see what we have now! Dr. Melisse is inspired. Because there is the establishment of a butcher at the other side of the park, he says: 'Might it have been done with a pole-ax?"'

I noticed that Ramsden was looking sharply into comers of the room.

"A pole-ax?" Ramsden repeated. "Look here, man, d'you mean one of those medieval things? You know, Richard the Lion-Heart, and-" He made an illustrative gesture. "In a public park? Rubbish!"

"I think Sir George means a battle-ax," said D'Andrieu thoughtfully. "It is almost the same thing. We have the head of the ax as the cutting weapon, but on the opposite side there was, I believe, an iron spike which could be used to advantage for close fighting. But I must agree in venturing also to call it rubbish. Tenez!" His eye twinkled. "Can you picture Flamande walking about in search of victims with a battle-ax over his shoulder? It is worse than impractical. It approaches the comic."

"It was not comic," said Hebert quietly. "It was horrible." The silence stretched unendurably ... "I only know, then, as I was about to say," the doctor went on, "that it was nothing of the sort. The wound was

much too large, it was far too deep, and a weight sufficient to drive it in would also have split the skull. This wound was clean. Further- " "Now, now," rumbled H.M. soothingly. "We can take it as

established, then, that all this funny business was not done with any form of ax or the like?"

A voice from the doorway said:

"We can, Sir Henry. I saw the body myself."

H.M. jumped and swore. He roared querulously while the newcomer advanced towards the fireplace, and the newcomer.

I recognized as the tall thin man who had remained behind with the plane. His shoulders were a little stooped, which gave him the air of peering up at you despite his height. He had wiry black hair, parted in the middle; a long face with a hooked nose, and very intelligent dark eyes under black brows meeting in the middle. With my mind still running on battle-axes, it occurred to me that he looked rather like a Norman villain in a medieval story. His accent was very broad Cambridge when he said:

"Sorry to jump in like this, sir. The fact is I've been lurking outside that door for some time, and I've heard a bit of what you were saying. You see, I wondered what brought the great H.M. down here . . ." He spoke so respectfully that, though H.M. snorted and roared, he looked a good deal mollified. "And I seemed to see the usual deep purposes working. You see, I know you by sight even if you don't know me." He turned just as respectfully to D'Andrieu. "I've been talking to Auguste, M. le Comte, and he's told me everything. Devilish good of you to take us in - and what a reward for a newspaperman! Flamande! My name is Fowler, sir; Kirby Fowler. I represent the Record in France."

Mr. Fowler was one of the young school who have taken to Fleet Street as they might have taken to social pastimes. He affected the striped trousers, hard collar, and short black coat; he had an engaging grin which had its effect on everybody except Hayward, who looked suspicious.

"You are welcome, Mr. Fowler," said D'Andrieu. "We have just been enjoying the game of attempting to discover Flamande. Or Gasquet. Er - do you happen to be either?"

"Sorry, no."

"What the devil were you doing on that plane?" demanded Ramsden.

"Following you, sir."

"Following me? Why?"

Fowler hesitated. "Well, rumors had been going, about, you see . . ." He turned a blank face. "By the way, sir, how is the Nizam?"

"So?" said Ramsden. His eyes were hard, but he barked out a chuckle. "Now, that's supposed to be a casual question, is it, which will get an answer? Bah, you young pups!" He shook himself. "Carry on, Merrivale. I'll be quiet."

"I don't see any use in goin' on with it at all," grumbled H.M., "unless we know where we stand and how many villains we got to pick and choose from. Is this the lot? Have we got everybody in the circle here now?"

"There's just one more," Fowler answered. "He's coming now, with the pilot. One more passenger, that is. Ah, here he is nowl Come in, Mr.-Mr.?"

I heard footsteps in the doorway, but I was studying Fowler and did not look round. Then a rather familiar voice spoke.

"Drummond," it said. "Harvey Drummond."

CHAPTER SEVEN

How a Fountain-Pen Served to Remove a Mask

THERE is in fiction a certain conventional phrase about people "shooting up out of their seats." It does not annoy me now, because I know how it is done. That phrase exactly describes your own feelings between the one moment when you are sitting placidly in your chair, and the next in which you discover to your own vague astonishment that you are on your feet. It is a blank emotional eclipse, and I had one.

There he was in the doorway, nemesis and checkmate. There was the surly eye, swiveling round to peer at each of us; the broad figure, the neck thrust forward, the brown toothbrush mustache slightly lifted. His bowler hat was under one arm, and his hands were jammed into the pockets of his waterproof as he stared round.

"Well, we seem to have picked a decent shakedown, anyway," he said. "Who's to thank for it?" I

It was not only these words which turned my brain topsy-turvy. But he had glanced at me, and looked away incuriously - with a blank gaze of non-recognition.

Moreover, although a good deal is required to disturb H.M.'s poker-face, H.M. shut his eyes briefly before he spoke.

"Drummond, he said heavily, "do you mind tellin' me where you came from?"

"Where I came from? What the devil do you mean? I came from the plane down there. Didn't you see me?"

"You mean you traveled from Marseilles in it?"

Drummond stared at him in growing anger. "Certainly I traveled from Marseilles in it. Why not? Is there a law against that?"

"Now, now, son, don't get your back up. But there's an awful piece of cussedness that we've got to straighten out before we can go on to any business. Look at that feller there." H.M. waved a big flipper towards me. "Ever see him before?"

"No. Not to my knowledge. Why?"

"Look here," I said. "You weren't driving a red Voisin touring-car along the Levai road about an hour or so ago? I borrowed your fountain-pen, if you remember?"

Drummond contemplated me. His color rose, but he looked back at H.M. and spoke quietly. "Merrivale, is this fellow raving mad, or is it your notion of being funny? What sort of blasted nonsense is this? Are you trying to tell me I didn't make that trip? Good God! Ask anybody here, if it matters!"

"Well, he certainly sat opposite me all the way up," volunteered Hayward. "But what's the debate?"

Fowler's quizzical dark eyes under their tangled brows were studying H.M. "Yes, you might tell us. As for Mr. Drummond, sir, he's been talking to me ever since the plane hit ground. We've been trying to repair that radio-telephone."

There was a silence.

"I have no wish, sir," D'Andrieu observed to me, with polished courtesy, "to doubt your word or your good faith in any respect. Least of all the word or good faith of Sir Henry Merrivale, of whom I have heard. Er - I will only say that you seem to have had more extraordinary experiences than customarily fall to those who travel the Levai road. First you assault policemen who try to rob you. Then you pause to borrow a fountain-pen (doubtless for some excellent reason) from a gentleman who is at the moment sitting somewhere up in the sky. Is there anything else you have omitted to tell us?"

I was not listening. Because, after even a brief study of the man who called himself Harvey Drummond, I saw the explanation. Whether or not he was the real Drummond, he was not the same man who had stopped us on that road.

Of this I could be certain now; and, incidentally, I was right. The man before us now was a copy: a good copy, but still a copy. Nor was the difference merely in small physical points - a leaner face, a lesser jowl, a higher skull under the thin brown hair-but the whole make-up had a subtler wrongness. The surliness was a thin mask; the rasp and swagger were assumed. Yet, curiously enough, what seemed to gleam through that mask was more dangerous-looking than anything that had animated Drummond of the Levai road.

I

It was intellectual power. You felt the man's hidden smile, and it did not make you easy.

The question was, which was the real Harvey Drummond? I did not believe that this man was, and the man back on the road an impostor, but we had to feel our way cautiously. This claimant was playing a part, a bluff dunder-headed unsuitable part. Flamande? In any case, the last thing we ought to do now was attempt to show him up for an impostor. Let him alone, and watch what he did. That is, if in the shock of seeing him there I had not put my foot in it so badly that I could not now get out.

I said: "Mr. Drummond, will you let me offer you sincere apologies? It was the surprise of the thing, that's all. I met back on the road a man who looked so exactly like you that - "

H.M. turned round to glare. "I'm glad you're beginnin' to realize that, son," he growled. "Sure this is Drummond. I ought to know, oughtn't I? Somebody back on the road was havin' you on----"

Drummond was staring at me curiously. His eyes seemed to weigh something.

"That's all right," he said, and made a curt gesture. "We'll forget it. Still, I'd like to have a bit of a talk with you this evening.... You say somebody back there pretended to be me?"

"No, not exactly. He didn't give his name"

"Where is he now?" the other asked sharply; just a little too sharply.

H.M. intervened with a sort of wooden chuckle. "That's part of the little mix-up, you see, son. We got every reason to believe he'll be makin' straight for this place to make trouble. D'Andrieu here gave orders to have him chucked out. But, under the circumstances, don't you think those orders ought to be altered, hey?"

"I do," D'Andrieu agreed with grave thoughtfulness. "They shall be altered. You have no objection to meeting this other man, Mr. Drummond?"

"Certainly not."

Our host's tone was still silky. "And, of course, you are prepared to prove your own identity, if it becomes necessary?"

"Of course. Hang it all, let's forget this mistake, shall we?

Then-" "Then," supplied our host, "I really think you had better do so."

This was a snag. I saw H.M. sit up, taking the empty pipe out of his mouth, and his mouth moved as though he were about to swear. D'Andrieu was still smiling, but he was staring straight at Drummond.

"Understand me: I do not judge, at the moment, between the stories of Mr. Blake and Mr. Drummond. They may not even conflict. But I think that they call for some explanation, even if Mr. Blake seems generously ready to acknowledge his mistake. You see, I could have sworn Sir Henry himself was a believer in Mr. Blake's story, until he too became suddenly generous-"

H.M. pointed at D'Andrieu with his pipe-stem.

"There's goin' to be trouble with you," he said. "I can see that comin'. Burn me, you want the old man to unlimber his heavy artillery at the start, do you? Or just what do you want?"

"Sport," said D'Andrieu, "You all agree with me, gentlemen?"

"Well, I can tell you that something's damned funny!" roared Sir George Ramsden. "I don't know that chap by sight," he nodded at Drummond with a kind of doggedness, "but I've heard about him and Henry says he's all right. But turn it round. I know Ken Blake, and I can tell you he's all right. There's something fishy somewhere, but what is it? What's all this foolery about policemen and fountain-pens?"

"You're certainly right," nodded Hayward, and thrust out his jaw. "You think you know these people, but suppose one of 'em is an impostor? If we're monkeying around with this Flamande---"

"Justement," said D'Andrieu. He turned to me. "Let us begin, therefore, at the obvious beginning. Of course you have a passport, Mr. Blake?"

I opened my mouth, and shut it again.

"Not," I said, "at the moment."

"But surely it is customary...? What happened to it, may I ask?"

"A policeman stole it from me."

D'Andrieu put his head on one side. I saw Middleton's eyes open wide as he looked round, and Fowler stroking a lean Norman chin.

"Ahl And that," suggested D'Andrieu, with an air of inspiration, "was why you assaulted him?"

"No. That happened in Paris this evening. It was another policeman."

"Who also tried to rob you?" inquired our host. "You were twice set on by policemen, if I understand correctly.

Please do not lose your temper, Mr. Blake. I only seek to comprehend. You then borrowed a fountain-pen from one of these villains, and may we see the fountain-pen, by the way?"

It was one question I had been uneasily anticipating, and, with my thumbs hooked in the upper pockets of my waistcoat, I had been working loose that gray slip from the pen. It was down in a corner of the pocket now, and I gravely handed out the pen: which was no French stylo, but a flamboyant gold Waterman. The slip of paper wound round it had concealed something until now. It had concealed the name "Harvey Drummond" in fine engraving down the side.

"Yours, sir?" asked D'Andrieu, politely handing the pen towards the man who called himself Drummond.

The latter had changed color a little. He took the pen, and turned it over in fingers that were not altogether steady.

"No," he answered gruffly. "It is not mine. I never saw it before." Ramsden stared, and then snorted. "This," he said, "puts a different look on the whole mess. Suppose we stop all this infernal politeness and get down to cases? You! Now, you're an impostor, or else you're not. We're going to find out which. For instance, I'm going to ask you about your own horses”

"Now, now, listen!" urged Hayward, waving his cigar with paternal scorn. "Excuse me, old man, but you've got it all wrong. I'm a lawyer, and I ought to know, oughtn't I? All right. The whole thing is a question of motive. Remember, always motive. Consequently-"

"Ah, zut! You neglect what is the plain thing!" broke out Hébert, and cast up his eyes in an agony of logic. "A man is murdered at Marseilles. Well? You have a similarity of names too obvious for neglect----“

Fowler and Middleton looked at each other, and seemed to have the same idea. The latter took a five-franc piece from his pocket and spun it into the air.

"Heads," said Fowler.

"Tails," said Middleton, examining the result with a sinister expression. "Tails it is. He's a fake all right." They shook hands.

I looked round the group, and the fast expert jugglery of the business was a little unnerving. In that group before me, each concealing his secret with amazing coolness and verve, were both Flamande and Gasquet. Which was which? The same thought seemed to strike the others, for the babble of argument fell away abruptly. We looked at each other. And into the pause struck H.M.'s sane, heavy, querulous voice.

"Good!" he said, and sniffed. "Now if all the sixteen cooks have stopped war-dancin' around the broth, maybe we can get down to business. Has everybody finished? Right, then." He blinked round at Drummond. "So, just to put everything in order, I can say I'd like to see your identification papers, son ..."

The other put his hand into his pocket. "My own passport-" he said, and H.M. interrupted rather wearily.

"No, no, no, son. I don't mean your `Harvey Drummond' passport, if you got one; I mean your real identification papers. You're Gasquet, ain't you?"

He spoke so easily that for a second most of us did not realize what he said, or thought it was a slip of the tongue. Then the implication came like a blow in the face. Hayward got up with an oath and twisted round to look.

"I know, I know. I apologize for bein' premature," pursued H.M., sniffing again as he examined his fingers, "and I'm afraid I broke up your own dramatic revelation. But, dammit, man, don't you see I had to? This accident of our bumpin' into Drummond on the road, and on top of it Ken's givin' you the most remarkable imitation of a loony ever seen on any stage, has got things so snarled up that we'll only keep rushin' around in a blind maze if we let things stand. Honestly, I think you better own up. It'll be the easiest means of doin' what you want to do; don't you think so yourself?"

For a moment "Drummond" stood motionless. He had got out pipe and pouch; his head was lowered as he punched tobacco into the bowl with a squat thumb, and we did not see his face. When he looked up, there was no alteration in the face except one of intelligence. Nor was there any alteration in the voice except a deepening and mocking note. But it changed the whole man completely.

"I congratulate you," he said, and several people jumped at that tone. He struck a match. "I also damn your penetration. No, my effect is not ruined. All I hoped to do was get aboard the plane without being suspected. As you say, I should have had to reveal myself-"

Ramsden recovered his senses with a kind of smothered yowl. The other interrupted his questions.

"Yes, I am Gasquet," he said. He lit his pipe comfortably, and the amused eyes moved over us. "If Drummond had followed my orders, and kept out of sight in Paris while I took his place, I think the whole thing would have been accomplished without M. Flamande knowing who I was until the end. As it is-" The heavy shoulders lifted.

"As it is-?" prompted D'Andrieu.

"It does not matter. He knows me. But then I know him."

Somebody whistled. Fowler came forward eagerly. "You mean that you've spotted Flamande, and that he's here after all? My God, sir, who is it? Do you know what this means?"

"Know what it means?" repeated the other savagely. A film came over his eyes. "You ask me if I know what it means? It means that a damned murdering mountebank has made a fool of Gasquet for the last time. It means triumph.

It means –

He snapped his fingers. The grin on his face grew to unholy and shark-like complacency, cracking the last mask of "Drummond," substituting something at once solid, dramatic, cocksure, and brilliantly intelligent. He was so excited that his gestures increased. When he borrowed matches from H.M. to relight his pipe, they were sulphur and made him cough; but still he did not look absurd.

"Ha! Yes. You will forgive me, gentlemen, if I seem elated. But if a grateful Republic chooses to bestow the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor "

"Sure, sure," H.M. agreed soothingly. "But let's get a couple of matters straight first. I've never had the pleasure of meetin' you before. Is this another of your blinkin' disguises? If so, I got to give you full marks for the art. You're the dead image of Harvey Drummond."

"Exactly. But, I regret to say, through very little disguise. It does not go quite so far. My mustache alone is not genuine. I took his place because I am naturally very much like him. And hence my idea...."

"Idea?"

He considered. "The chase is nearly over. I can tell you a little. Shall we say when we have washed and made ourselves comfortable, and I have procured certain papers from my bag?"

"But Flamande!" - cried Fowler, and the other turned on him.

"Flamande, my friend," he said, "shall stew in his own juice for a, time. He will wait my pleasure. And this time he will not get away. I don't wish to seem vindictive. I am simply practical. My men, as you say, will be here presently. We shall have a prisoner for them to take back to Paris; but in good time. Meantime," he snapped his fingers again, and his grin broadened still more, "I trust the interval will be a pleasant time of waiting for you, M. Flamande. - It now only remains to ask Sir Henry how he spotted me. As for myself, if I had not heard you sing out your name when you approached the plane, I should never have spotted you."

"There is just one little thing, M. Gasquet," said D'Andrieu, frowning, "which remains beside that ..:'

"Yes?"

"Your credentials. We may be unduly curious, but if you could offer some proof ...?"

"Aha, my credentials! Certainly. But at the moment I have no intention of satisfying everybody's curiosity: only that of the two gentlemen most concerned." He looked at Ramsden and H.M., and smiled grimly. "I have something to tell them. I will satisfy them of my identity, and I will do more. If you, gentlemen, will meet me in this room in fifteen minutes, I will confide in you the name M. Flamande is using to-night."

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Death-Tapestry

IT WAS NOT, I reflected as I changed into dry clothes in the room which had been assigned me, a time for sane thought. My watch showed that it was twenty-five minutes past twelve, and the fireworks had been going since eight-thirty; I was too confused by them. Further, I was so hungry that a tobacco-crusted piece of chocolate I found in one pocket was wolfed down immediately. D'Andrieu was in no hurry to produce that meal. He had conducted proceedings with a solemnity, and an outlandish formality, as unruffled as a formal reception at an English country house.

For instance, we all had separate rooms, although we could easily have doubled up. This was the more fantastic since (to judge by my own room, anyhow) the rooms were never used ordinarily, but had been swept and tricked out with fresh linen as a gesture to Flamande. I remembered our host's doddering upstairs to install us.

The Chateau de l'Ile was plain of design, except for the carving of the upper and lower halls, and the staircase. Two of its three floors alone were used. The third floor, formerly used by servants and with a separate stairway, had been locked up; and the doors to the towers also were locked. A broad gallery on the second floor where we were housed, similar to the hall below, ran the depth of the chateau. Each had a side gallery branching off in either direction half-way down, and making four squares of rooms. There were, D'Andrieu explained, no labyrinths, secret rooms, or sliding panels beloved of names splendid in villainy like Guise and Medici. Henri Quatre had never kept a mistress here, nor had Richelieu dropped anybody down an oubliette. It seemed to me rather an oversight, but D'Andrieu was emphatic on the point. Although it had been built in the middle sixteenth century, it had long fallen to emptiness and ruin (possibly through lack of enterprise in dirty work) until it was rescued and renovated along Empire lines by the first D'Andrieu, who got his title from Napoleon I.

Of the old line who flickered out here, there remained traces only in the chapel fretwork of the galleries and the carving of the staircase. This staircase affected me unpleasantly. It was at the rear of the hall, very broad and heavy and gloomy, of oak twisted to gargoyles. Ten steps went up to a landing, where it turned to the left at right-angles and ascended with ten more steps to the floor. On the wall of the landing there was a great tapestry, its red, black, and green colors now faded almost to an indeterminate brown, but with queer flashes of color as you looked at it from odd angles. There were still figures and faces on it, as faint as stenciling. The subject, of which I could make out little, seemed to be a wild-boar hunt or something of the sort. But it gave me an ugly sensation of shock as I went up past it.

Anyhow, I was installed in a room at the front of the gallery on the floor above, overlooking the causeway. It was frowsty with thick greenish hangings; a very smoky fire burnt in a marble fireplace over whose top there was a bronze bust of the First Consul; and a couple of white-globed lamps, innocent of electricity, gave the place a spectral radiance. But I found a fairly modern bathroom at the end of the gallery, and afterwards dry clothes changed the whole outlook.

Time now, I supposed, to go downstairs. The whole business was rather an anti-climax. By now Gasquet would be closeted downstairs with Ramsden and H.M. Anti-climax? More than that. It was too easy, so easy that it made me nervous. Presumably Gasquet knew his business; but it occurred to me that he had better do something before Flamande prepared a counter-blast. The house was very quiet, except for the eternal rain and the sullen rushing below. Mingled with it now I thought I heard a dull bumping or banging, for which I could not account.

Well, and what was H. M. doing? Would he, for instance, growl and retire beaten when Gasquet snaffled off Flamande first? I couldn't picture that, but then H.M. seemed to be doing nothing whatever. Above all, one obvious precaution had been neglected. Suppose Flamande decided to cut and run for it? Yet here was Gasquet smilingly giving him the freedom of the house .. .

What the devil was that noise? I opened the door and peered out. The gallery was deserted, and so quiet that I thought I could hear somewhere the ticking of a typewriter. The stone gallery, fairly well lighted, had a line of doors on either side running to the intersecting passages, and then on again to the staircase at the far end. That banging noise had not come from here.

I went to the window, twisted the catch, and pushed open the leaves against a howl of rain. Round whirled the curtains; and the bang of the gallery-door in the draft made me jump; but there was enough light from lower windows to see.

The causeway was down at well past the middle. It looked as though there had been wooden piles under the stone; the water was a white vortex upheaving with darkish shapes that banged and drove like a log-jam before they plunged past. Some had got stuck under the willow-bank. They were clogging the already furious rapids, and wheeling off to crash on our island.

I shut the window, but still stared out. Now that the river had bitten off our only means of communication, we were shut up in a box with Flamande. Gasquet could afford to taste triumph. He had the gentleman separated from shore by only sixty yards of water, but he had him fast. It was an odd fact that Gasquet, delayed, had been the last man to cross that causeway.

Yet why, if he knew Flamande, would he want the causeway down? If it was merely a matter of snaring a prisoner, why cut his own line of communication, too?

There was a knock at the door, and I whirled round. It was Evelyn, who had chosen to be resplendent in a white frilled dinner-grown; again golden-skinned and bright-eyed and full of the devil. She put one finger under her chin and very gravely curtsied.

"Meinherr," she said, "belief me, I vould not haf dress

up like a plush horse if it had not been for my friendt Elsa. -'M - yes. She began solemnly to climb into a number guaranteed to make all masculine eyes pop, so I had to do something. And, I admit, what a figure. That is, if you like 'em on the air-cushion style. Do you?"

As a matter of fact, I do. The problem was how to inform Evelyn that she herself had a tolerable share of this quality, and at the same time find a word more suitable to vers passionnel than "air-cushion."

"She has been telling me," pursued Evelyn, "the story of her life. Her English is difficult and her French worse, but I know a little German and got the whole story. She rather likes the idea of staying here. You see, she's horribly afraid of her husband”

"Afraid of Middleton? Why?"

"No, no. Not of Middleton. He's not officially her husband, yet. She's afraid of her present official husband (the third), who she thinks is going to come after them mit a saber. - And serve her jolly well right, too. Bah!"

"Now, now, let's omit the moral censure. Don't you approve of such ...?"

"Of course, if I do 'em myself," said Evelyn with candor. "So they're going to Paris to get her a divorce. Don't misunderstand me: I like her, really, and she seems tremendously keen on this chap Middleton, who looks quite a decent sort himself. But she does have so many grievances. Her third husband is a c-cad and a b-bounder who drinks and swears and gambles "

"What's wrong with that?"

"Well, some women don't like it. Though, personally, I ... but I was telling you. They lived at Monte Carlo, where he was dissipating the family fortunes. She ran away from him. She ran to Marseilles, because she thought it was the last place he would think of looking for her. There she met Middleton, who was on his way back from a trip to India. She's only known him a week, by the way. Then they decided to fly to Paris and get her a divorce "

"Look here," I said, "this isn't altogether an interest in gossip. What's on your mind?"

Evelyn studied the toe of her slipper, moved it round a little, and looked up.

"Just that Owen Middleton has been in the picture for only a week, and that he has just returned from India."

"What about India? Good Lord, you don't think Middleton is Flamande, do you? Or that she is?"

Evelyn frowned. "We'll come to India. As to Middleton, I don't know, though I think it's unlikely. And, after seeing her in the nude, I can take my oath she isn't. But there's .one odd thing I should rather like to know. Why should Elsa screech out and, almost faint at the sight of a copy of Balzac's 'Contes Drolatiques'?"

I led Evelyn gently over to the fire, pushed her into a chair, lit a cigarette for her, and asked questions with some asperity. She stuck out her tongue at me, but she was genuinely disturbed and restless.

"No, I'm not joking," she told me, glowering at Napoleon over the fireplace, "and I'm not being silly. It was like this. I was sitting in their room, talking to her, when Middleton came up with the rest of you-about fifteen minutes ago ..'

"Did he tell you what happened downstairs?"

He hadn't; I could see that by Evelyn's face. Her eyes widened as I gave a brief account, with a kind of incredulous laughter.

"Gasquet! Drummond turning into Gasquet! Brr! Ken, I'm sorry I missed it, but I should have gone through the roof when I saw that chap appear in the door." She stared. "You know, this makes my little two-penny evidence clink very small. I can't quite get it through my head. You mean, then, that it's all over but the handcuffs? What does H.M. say?"

"Apparently H.M. hasn't said anything yet."

"Wh-ew!" she said, considering. "And yet Middleton didn't tell us one word about it. Now I wonder why?"

"Probably didn't want to alarm you until the shooting was all over."

"'M. Maybe. 'Shooting,' you say. But you'll agree now, won't you, that I was right about one thing? I said Flamande murdered that poor fellow in Marseilles, and this doctor confirms it. Also - it's a very odd thing; you say our suave host caused a sensation by announcing he knew a certain state where to be gored through the head by a unicorn was always the fate of a traitor? Yes. Well, I believe I can supply another link."

"Steady, now, and keep cool. Get your evidence in order. What was this you were telling me about Elsa's fainting at the sight of a book by Balzac?"

"Not quite so bad as that. It was like this. Middleton came in very cheerfully, said how-de-do to us, picked up soap and a towel from Elsa's luggage, and went out scouting for the bathroom. I got up to go. Meanwhile, Elsa had been prowling about the room, and she came on something that shows our

friend D'Andrieu is the most fantastically perfect host who ever prepared to entertain strangers from a shortly-to-be-wrecked plane. There were even bedside books on the night-table to beguile the wakeful."

"Bedside books?"

"Yes. They must be in every room, because I nipped down to see what I must have overlooked in my own room before. And there they were. Didn't you get any?"

I picked up one of the white-globed lamps from the mantel and went over to investigate. There they were, on the small marble-topped table by the bed. Either by accident or with satiric gesture, I had been provided with Anatole France's, 'L'Ile des Penguins," and Maurice Leblanc's, "Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Cambrioleur." Evelyn was regarding them with an uncertain smile.

"He'd get pleasure out of distributing those books, D'Andrieu would," she said, and shivered. "He's certainly doing all he can to help Flamande. Ken, I don't like all this. It's creepy, and its muggy, and there's something wrong with it. I was telling you: Elsa had a copy of Balzac's, 'Contes Drolatiques,' and a French version of 'Robinson Crusoe.' While she was still talking, she wandered over, looked at a page or two of Crusoe, and then picked up the Droll Stories. She was glancing through it at the illustrations, which were of rather a warm variety. Then all of a sudden she let out a skelloch that scared me half to death. Brr! Down went the book on the floor, and she sat down on the bed as pale as that mantelpiece. When I tried to find out what was wrong, she only muttered something: I couldn't tell what. I picked up the book, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with it; nothing hidden or written or anything like that. I couldn't imagine she'd got that fright from the illustrations. But she took the book out of my hands, and said she had to be alone. Which is all I know. I was horribly sorry for her - I mean, Ken, I had no business to speak about her the way I did a while ago-but what does it mean?"

We both looked round the green-bung, vaguely sinister room as though the answer lay there.

"It doesn't do your nerves any good," I said, "when you do find a clue. Let's go downstairs.... "

"No! Wait a bit, please! There's something else I've been thinking about, which is probably nonsense, but it may be a clue for us: It's about this 'unicorn.' I've got a ghost of an idea. I'm not sure of it, because I want H.M.'s encyclopedic information. It may be only some foolish association of ideas. I want you to think not about practical things, but impractical things. What do you know about the unicorn in legend or in heraldry or anything of the like? Think!"

Very little, when I first tried to jog muddy thoughts, but she was in such desperate earnest that I tried hard. Unicorns? You might ransack for days in half-forgotten cupboards of the brain, and find only rags that suggested nothing. Of course there were the obvious associations. You thought of the two unicorns on the Royal Arms of Scotland, which had given rise to the traditional rivalry with the British lion, and inspired the nursery-rhyme. I remembered ancestral auld wives' tales.

"There's a Scottish superstition," I said, "that the horn of a unicorn, made into a drinking-cup, is a preventative against poison. But I don't see how that helps us. Also, there's a tale that the unicorn can make itself invisible at will. But – “

Outside in the gallery, somebody screamed.

The door of my room was not quite closed, and we heard it distinctly. We heard also a crash as of some heavy body pitched forward; a rolling and bumping noise which hesitated, stopped, thudded again, and rolled to end in a heavy jar. Then silence.

I threw open the door and ran towards the direction of that noise-to the staircase at the opposite end. The gallery, I should judge, was about seventy feet long. Doors were being opened in a confusion of people whose movements I did not follow. If anybody had been sensible at that wild moment, we might have snared Flamande then. But the gallery was now dark. Light came into it from only two doorways ahead, and a dull glow from the ball below.

There was a broad stone arch over the opening into the stair-well. Here the wide steps descended to a landing, and then turned at right-angles to go down into the hall. The staircase was dusky, since the carven banisters writhed so closely together that only a chink or two of light penetrated from the dull glow in the lower hall. At the top of the stairs stood Elsa Middleton, her head down, holding with both hands to the newel-post. Fowler stood a little way back, staring down.

But what you saw immediately was at the foot of the whole staircase in the lower hall. A man in a dark suit had gone forward on his face, and lay as spilled and shapeless as a laundry-bag. That man was the lately revealed Gasquet. Over him bent H.M. and Dr. Hébert, and I saw Ramsden come running from the front of the lower hall. H.M.'s powerful hands twisted up the head of the fallen man, and let it fall again.

Dr. Hébert looked up. In the silence his thin, shrill syllables rose with terrible distinctness.

"Another hole in the head," he said, "between the eyes."

CHAPTER NINE

The Invisible Weapon

FOWLER TURNED to Elsa Middleton. In the gloom his face was so pale that the dark eyebrows stretched across it like the top of a cross.

"You don't want to see this," he said harshly. "You'd better get to your room."

The woman's head sagged forward; I thought she was going to pitch across the banister, and I caught her up. Evelyn was just behind me.

Evelyn said with amazing coolness: "Fainted. I'll take care of her."

She pushed away Owen Middleton, who was on the other side of Elsa, and, as I plunged down the stairs, I saw behind me the faces of Fowler, Hayward, D'Andrieu, and the big major-domo Auguste. I heard them all clattering down behind me, so that Hayward cannoned into my arm and we both nearly went headlong over the body at the foot of the last flight.

They had turned him over on his face now, and he was dead. The wound, which was a little above the point between the eyes, was a clean round hole in the skull; but it turned me sick at the stomach, because the weapon had been drawn out of it and had left traces. And the expression of the face? Horror, I think, but above all a blasting surprise. This was the more grotesque because the sharply intelligent face had begun to lose its "Drummond" disguise; the thin brown line of mustache had been half pulled loose from the spirit gum that stuck it to the upper lip. It gave a note of something like pathos to that spilled body.

All I could hear was a noise of hard breathing. We were all gathered round, in fixed helplessness. Hébert was kneeling with H.M. beside the body. Fowler was hunched forward from his long shoulders, pales but fascinated. Middleton stood holding to the lower newel-post as Elsa had held to the upper one. Hayward leaned back against the wall, wheezing and making gestures like a querulous invalid. Auguste stood motionless. And, half way up the stairs, a motionless D'Andrieu in skull-cap and Turkey dressing-gown stood out against the carven gargoyles, tapping his fingers softly on the banister-rail.

D'Andrieu broke the hypnosis in a curious way.

"So I was wrong, then," he said. His footsteps were loud on the oak steps as he came softly down. "I thought he was Flamande pretending to be Gasquet."

H.M.'s big voice seemed to reach out and quiet incipient panic. It held us there.

"Stow that! Take it easy, boys; you hear me? We've had enough thinkin' in this business, and he's flummoxed us. We're goin' to act quickly, and you're all goin' to help.- I saw him hit the floor down here. Quick, now, before you've had time to forget: who saw what happened up there? I don't want to know who didn't see it! Don't anybody speak except whoever was there and saw."

Again the heavy voice rose as he peered slowly round, and quieted answers. It was Fowler who spoke, clearing his throat.

"I saw it," he answered. The man was badly rattled, and his voice husky. "That is, I was there. I think Mrs. Middleton was, too. But I can't swear exactly what happened. Just - just give me half a tick to get myself straight, will you?"

He passed a hand over his wiry black hair. He looked down furtively at the body, looked away, and turned back with an effort.

"It was like this. His room is up there nearly opposite the head of the stairs. My own room is diagonally across from his, on the other side of the hall towards the rear. I was standing in my door waiting for him to come out of his room "

"Why?" H.M.'s usual sleepy and half-disinterested growl had gone. He called nobody 'son.' He was as alert as Chief Inspector Masters, and his disconcerting stare never wavered. "Why waitin'?

"To-well, to ask him questions for publication when he came downstairs to talk to you and Sir George."

"Uh-huh. How long had you been waitin' there?"

"Well ... with the exception of a couple of minutes, ever since everybody went upstairs to their rooms about fifteen minutes ago. Everybody, that is, except you and Sir George down here. He," Fowler nodded down at the body, "he had gone up a few minutes ahead of us, you remember."

"Good!" said H.M. somberly. "So all that time you were watchin' what went on in the gallery up there? With your door wide open?"

"Lord, no! It was open just an inch or so; enough so that I could look across at his door." Fowler's face stiffened at the imputation. So, figuratively, did his lip. "I didn't happen to be spying, you understand. I simply didn't want to miss him."

"Uh-huh. Go on."

"About five minutes ago, every light in the ball went out. Not in the rooms - not in mine, anyhow - because they've got only paraffin lamps. But there are electric lights in the ball . . ."

D'Andrieu's cool voice struck in. "You have not been upstairs, Sir Henry? It has not been worth the trouble to install the electricity everywhere. The only electricity on that floor is in the gallery, the bathroom, and the three rooms I inhabit at the rear."

"Go on," said H.M., blinking at Fowler. "What did you do when the lights went out?"

"Naturally, I opened the door and looked out ..'

"Well? See anything?"

"No. It was too dark. My own bedroom lamp was burning, and that helped make things darker outside. I couldn't see anything except a kind of glow from down here in the lower hall; you could see it over the well of the staircase. Just then I heard a bolt being drawn and a door open straight across the gallery from me. I knew that was the bathroom door, though I couldn't see much. But I heard Middleton's voice from the bathroom say, 'What's the matter? Somebody blown out the fuses?"'

"That's right," said Middleton almost eagerly, and under his breath. "The light in the bathroom went out."

"I said to him, 'They seem to be on downstairs.' So he closed the bathroom door and went down towards his own room on the other side of the staircase. I saw him pass the staircase, and open the door of his and Mrs. Middleton's room: there was a lamp in there. And, at just about the same time, this chap – Gasquet - opened his door . . ."

Fowler had recovered himself : rather, it seemed, by fascination in the business than any effort of will. His dark gaze ways at once somber and excited. But something came back to him of that deprecating charm or assurance, that smile and spreading of the hands.

"It's a dashed funny thing, sir," he said musingly. "I boggled on that word `Gasquet.' It didn't seem right to say it. He was here and gone like a firework; he was only a couple of disguises; he didn't seem real. Do you understand?"

H.M.'s eyes narrowed, and became impassive. "Very interestin'. Now tell us what he did. You get a good view of him, hey?"

"Yes. There was a lamp on the table just beside the door, and he bent down to blow it out. He had in his hand one of those long brownish cardboard envelopes; a sort of miniature filing-case with pockets, if you know what I mean? Lawyers use them. He seemed a bit surprised to find the gallery dark. He hung back for a second; then he blew out the lamp and went straight for the stairs . . ."

"Dammit, don't hesitate! What then, hey?"

"I don't know. It wasn't exactly that my eye was distracted - you see, just then the Middletons' door opened, and Mrs. Middleton came out - because I don't think I should have followed it in any case. He was within a couple of feet of the staircase, and' I was just going to sing out to him when the thing happened.

"The best description I can give (it's only conveying a hint, really)," said Fowler, in an agony of literary precision, "is that something or somebody seemed to grab him in the dark."

Sir George Ramsden exploded.

"What the devil do you mean, `conveying a hint?"' he rasped. "You either saw somebody attack him, or you didn't. If you saw him, you ought to have seen somebody else. Well?"

"I was afraid I couldn't make it clear," said Fowler, lifting his shoulders. "Sorry to bring in anything - er - metaphysical...."

"Metaphysical be damned. Now that you've got us into this den of murderers," suddenly croaked Mr. Hayward, whose paralysis had evidently changed to a sort of shaky eloquence, "you might at least have the decency to say who hit that poor devil and stop all the foolishness that's been going on ever since we got into this den of murderers -"

"Merci," said D'Andrieu. "But perhaps we had better allow Mr. Fowler to proceed."

Fowler had been unable to wrench away his eyes from H.M.'s quiet, dull, disconcerting stare. He went on: "All right! All right! Just as you like! But I can't swear I saw anybody in the sense that's usually meant. I didn't. All I can say, I repeat," he smiled shakily, "is that something seemed to reach out and get him. He jerked, left and right, as though it had him. Then he let out that hellish screech just as his hands went up to his own forehead - like this. I don't think he screamed again, but he may have. He pitched straight forward down the stairs."

"Can't somebody cover that thing up?" asked Middleton, and pointed.

"Easy, son," grunted H.M. "Go on."

"I stood there for a second, hearing him hit as he went down. Then I ran up. Somebody was running from the other direction; Mrs. Middleton, I think. That cha - Gasquet, I mean-he bounced off the wall of the landing like a blasted sack, and flapped down the rest of the stairs right at your feet, Sir Henry, just as you ran up. I thought he was going to yank down the tapestry, but he must have been dead then. Anyhow, that's all I know."

There was a silence. I looked up towards the landing, where I could see the upper half of the great tapestry with its ugly brownish figures that might have represented a boarhunt, or the hunt of a monster with one horn. Fowler, as he caught my eye, seemed to think of it, too. He whipped round.

"Now, now," said H.M., "you let the fabulous monsters alone for a minute. What you're sayin' is that you didn't see any fight or struggle up there, such as might happen if he'd been attacked with a kind of sharp marlin-spike? Is that what's worryin' round in your mind?"

"Yes, I suppose so," Fowler admitted, after a pause.

"You ran for the top of the stairs, hey? Well, did any attacker duck past you, back into the gallery?"

"I didn't see anybody, but it was dark and he might have done that."

D'Andrieu's bright little eyes under their pouched lids had a momentary film. "Er - may I ask a question? Mr. Fowler! When the late lamented Gasquet cried out and clapped his hands to his forehead, in which direction was he facing?"

Fowler hesitated. "I couldn't tell you that exactly, sir," he replied, with a return of his early respectfulness, "except in the general sense that he was going straight for the stairs, and was just about to step down. So I should suppose he was – er - minding his eye, and looking where he was going. Especially since it was dark."

"Looking down over the stairs and into the hall below, then?"

"Yes."

"Ah! Now," said D'Andrieu, poking out his neck. "Let us suppose this! Let us suppose that, while he stands there, a bullet is in some fashion fired either from the hall below or from the other end of the gallery where he is standing. Wouldn't that produce exactly the result we have seen in every respect?"

"That's sense," said Hayward.

Dr. Hébert got up. He gave a curious impression of seeming to hop while he dusted his knees. And he refused to speak English.

"Bullets!" he cried. "Ah, zut! Look at that, and still you talk of bullets! I ask you, M. le Comte, if you have ever seen a bullet-wound like that? It would have taken out the back of his head. Also, there are signs of a weapon withdrawn. What caused it?"

"That's what we're goin' to find out," said H.M. woodenly. "It's time to begin movin' the troops. Is there somewhere we can put this poor feller decently while the Doc makes an examination? Back-library? Good! Auguste, you pick him up and carry him there. And take him easy, son," nodded H.M., in a curious vacant voice, "I'm beginnin' to think he's a better man than we ever suspected. I don't mean a detective; I mean a man. Then you come back here, Auguste. Doc, look him over - I'll have a go at it presently. You might see whether he's got in his pockets anywhere that miniature letter-file our friend Fowler was talking about, but I'll lay you a fiver to a cold kipper it's vanished."

He stood back while Auguste gravely and without difficulty hoisted up that heavy sack, with its mouth open and its threads of make-up still hanging. When Auguste's footfalls had died away among the pillars, H.M. fished out his pipe from a baggy coat pocket.

"H'm. We'll have a bit of a reconstruction, hey?" he continued, wheezing. "But there's something to be determined first. How many people are in the house at this minute? What about those three airmen, by the way?"

D'Andrieu frowned. "That, my friend," he said, "is something I genuinely regret. They are not here, and now they are not likely to be here. They stayed too long with the plane. And, when the water washed out our causeway, they were cut off-" He made an expressive gesture, and turned quickly. "You had not heard of that, gentlemen?"

Evidently Hayward, Fowler, and Middleton had not heard that the causeway was down. They said so with some violence.

"Nor I, I regret to say, until a moment ago," said D'Andrieu smoothly. "Auguste had just come up to tell me when this very unpleasant business occurred. Gentlemen, I am desolated, but I am sure we can make you quite comfortable until the difficulty is adjusted tomorrow morning. The airmen also should be able to make themselves quite comfortable in the plane. Er - where was I? Yes. As to the others in this house, there are my servants. There is Auguste, and Jean Baptiste, the cook. Joseph and Louis are to-night masquerading as footmen, although they are respectively my groom and (what is the word?) handy-man. That is all."

"Excuse me, monsieur," interposed Auguste, who was returning. "There is one other now. There is a taxi-driver who calls himself Marcel Celestin. He is very drunk."

H.M. looked us over.

"At one time or another," he went on, "you've probably all played the little parlor-game called Murder. We've got just the same kind of situation here, fully equipped with Lights Out and Scream. So we'll take advantage of it. I want everybody here to go and stand exactly where he was when he heard the poor feller yell. Take down here first. Ramsden, Hebert, and I were here. I was standin' in just about the same place I am now. Where were you, Ramsden, before you came runnin' up?"

"Outside the front door. I was trying," growled Ramsden, "to see how much of the causeway was down. H'm! You were starting upstairs to find out why friend Gasquet hadn't come down to meet us yet. . . . What about Hébert, by the way?"

H.M. blinked. His face wore an expression of ghoulish mirth.

"Hébert and I-uh-huh, we're all right. We can corroborate each other. He was down here too, comin' towards the stairs, and we were in each other's sight. Lucky, hey? Now, then, let's go upstairs and settle positions there. Stand back, all of you, and keep an eye out for that cardboard file. Humph." He stumped up the stairs, peering curiously at the banisters and making obscure noises in his throat. On the landing he stopped and looked at the tapestry. Swinging it to one side, he revealed a window in a deep embrasure.

"So-ho. This gets still more interestin'. This window's unlocked." He twisted and untwisted the catch and then peered round at D'Andrieu. "Do you usually keep it unlocked?"

Our host had bustled forward. His quick little eyes were studying the catch.

"To my knowledge, it is never left open. Eh, Auguste?"

"Uh-huh. What's outside? Straight drop to the river?"

"No. There is," said D'Andrieu, and tapped his nose, "a flat roof with a balcony railing. You can step out in it, if you do not mind getting wet."

"If you got out on there from here, is there any way back into the house without usin' this window again?"

"There is," replied D'Andrieu slowly. His eyes narrowed. "There is on either side a low buttress, leading up past a bedroom window on either side. They are the rooms now occupied by Mr. Hayward and Mr. Fowler. Any agile person could easily climb to either window. Shall we...?"

"Now, now, take it easy! Upstairs, and show me where you were standing. It's pretty dark up here, and that's a fact. I suppose a fuse was blown? Ken, you've got that flashlight you borrowed from the taxi-driver; hop down to your room and get it."

I groped my way down, fumbled, found the right door and took the flashlight from the table. Of course the thing would not work, and my fingers were too clumsy to repair it. But, when I hurried down the gallery, a reassuring call came from D'Andrieu. He and H.M. were inside a door opposite the head of the stairs - a linen-closet-and D'Andrieu spoke as I groped inside.

"This is the central point for the upstairs lights. Ah! There is nothing wrong with the fuses. The switch was merely thrown out of -"

"Stand still, everybody!" roared H.M. "Somebody just dropped something. Something white. I saw it go down. Stand where you are! Lights, now!"

The gallery sprang into light. We all crowded back, because we caught a glimpse of what lay on the dark-carpeted floor not far from the door of the linen-closet. On the white oblong of the envelope were typed the words, "For M. le Comte d'Andrieu."

CHAPTER TEN

Liars' Letters

H.M. SHOOK HIS FIST. "I've had about enough of this!" he declared. "This posin' and gibberin' and posturin' over a corpse may appeal to somebody's sense of humor, but it don't to mine. Burn me, if I didn't feel so blasted helpless-! More confidential communications, hey? More leers? You'd better read this." He handed it to D'Andrieu, who was no more surprised than though he had been given a letter in the ordinary post. "We won't go through the farce of asking who dropped that. Who was standing nearest it?"

"1 was," said Hayward, moving back. "I practically saw who did it

"Who?"

"I don't know. I mean I saw it dropped. My God, this isn't decent! The fellow's crazy! That is, if it's actually from-“

"Yes," said D'Andrieu very quietly. "It is from Flamande. And his tone seems to have changed. He does not make jokes now."

It was the first time I had seen D'Andrieu with a serious face. He looked hesitant, as though he were weighing something.

"Shall I read it to you, gentlemen? It is in English this time. If he is telling the truth, he has a!tered matters considerably.

"'MONSIEUR:

"'I write this because I must. A misunderstanding must be cleared up now. For this purpose I have borrowed someone's portable typewriter, which I found in the general luggage; the typewriter may be found now in the linen closet.

"'By the time you receive this, I shall have dealt with a fool who got in my way. I do not believe in murder unless it is absolutely necessary. This was necessary. The fool would have made trouble for me unless I removed him....' "

Now I remembered the ticking of the typewriter I had heard in the quiet gallery some minutes before the murder. H.M. peered round.

"Who's got a portable typewriter, by the way?" he asked.

"I have," replied Fowler. "I didn't notice whether it was among the rest of the stuff they put in my room. In the linen closet?" He strode over, glanced inside, and from under a shelf drew out a worn Remington and snapped open the clasps of the case. He added grimly: "This is it, right enough. He's even used the stationery I had stuck in the top of the case."

"Now attend, gentlemen!" said our host.

"'Now as to the important thing, which I warn you is more serious than any other. Yesterday you received a letter which purported to come from Flamande. I never wrote that letter. It is a plain forgery; I did not wreck the aeroplane, I bad no intention of visiting your house, and I had my whole campaign planned on very different lines which somebody has almost spoiled. Ask anyone who ever received a communication from me whether I am in the habit of indulging in any such nonsensical bombast. Do you wish proof? There is among you someone who in his newspaper capacity must often have seen my signature on letters. Let him study the signature and tell you whether it is genuine.

"'But I have a suspicion who did write it. My great satisfaction is that I can at this moment stretch out my hand and touch any of you, but you do not know me. I have a score to settle before I take the unicorn from Sir George Ramsden. That should be sufficient warning to him from

FLAMANDE."'

"Wow!" said Middleton, and looked round rather uneasily. "The trouble is that that thing sounds like real business. Can anybody tell just where we stand now? Why should anybody fake a letter from a criminal? By the way, is he right about that signature?"

D'Andrieu looked inquiringly at Fowler, who frowned.

"You've got me," the latter admitted. "I thought-that is, I wasn't just sure, but there seemed to be something rather fishy about that other letter. May I see both of them?" He took the two letters and studied them. His expression of bewilderment grew. "And yet I could have sworn these signatures were pretty much alike! I still don't know. If the first one is a forgery, then it's jolly good."

"Now there's a point," said H.M. to nobody in particular, "you fervid amateurs might fasten on and scrutinize from all angles. Suppose the first signature is a forgery. Where'd the forger get Flamande's signature to imitate? By the way, he's done a lot of writin' to newspapers. Has there ever been a photostatic copy of one of his signatures published, under the whole letter? It'd seem natural."

Fowler was pinching his long nose, frowning and muttering to himself.

"I can tell you that," he said. "I go through all the French papers of any importance at all - and there never has been a copy reproduced. The reason has been to avoid the possibility of what seems to have happened tonight. A photostat is printed. Well, some small-fry criminal gets a tracing or otherwise imitates it, cracks a crib, and then leaves a note to incriminate Flamande. There's been enough confusion without that. So they've had orders to lay off."

He paused as Elsa and Evelyn came out of the former's room and walked slowly towards our group. Elsa's small, plump face was very pale, so that the make-up stood out vividly, but she was composed now. Like Evelyn, she wore white: a low-cut gown gleaming with sequins. Her hands fluttered a little as she hesitated, and then appealed to D'Andrieu.

"Please," she said, "I am sorry I haf go bong like that. I am upset. I - I - what iss your name, please? I do not know the French names-"

H.M. interposed, addressing her in German, and she turned to him eagerly. My own knowledge of this language is confined to Schloss, Ausgang, and Bahnhof, words which no traveler in Germany can conveniently avoid learning; and I think most of us would not have followed the rattle of syllables if Evelyn and Middleton had not alternately translated like court interpreters. H.M. kept his wooden expression, but for the first time I saw (malevolently) a gleam of excitement behind his glasses.

She confirmed Fowler's story in its essentials. She had stepped out into the gallery, she said, just after Middleton had returned, on her way downstairs. The lights in the gallery were then out, but she did not know how long they had been out. She was just in time to see Gasquet, in his own doorway, blow out the lamp and go towards the stairs. She had noticed a light shining from Fowler's room; but she had not known this was his room, and did not see him there at that moment.

Then came the crucial points, given now as nearly as I can remember the translations.

H.M.: How well could you see him when he was near the head of the stairs?

ELSA: Not well, but enough to know who he was. There was a little light from downstairs. Yes, I could see him.

H.M.: Did you see anybody attack him?

ELSA: No; nobody came near him.

H.M.: Are you sure of that?

ELSA: Yes, yes, yes! Nobody came near him; there was nobody there. I could see it.

H.M.: What did happen?

ELSA: I do not know. It was as though he had run into something, like a man walking against a wall. He put his hands up to his head. Something horrible was happening to his head, but I could not see what. It knocked him over a little to one side, and then he began to scream. Then I did not see what happened, because he fell straight down the stairs. I think he screamed again, but I am not sure. It upset me very much.

At this point D'Andrieu insisted on asking a question, which was translated by Middleton.

D'ANDRIEU: As though he had been hit by a bullet, then? ELSA: I do not know, I do not know! Why do you ask me?

What do I know about bullets?

H.M.: Which direction was he looking just before it happened?

ELSA: Straight down the stairs. I noticed that. I thought he would turn to look at me, but he did not. Bah!

H.M.: (After exploding in English, "Burn me, now, I wonder-?") So that if any shot had been fired, it had to come from that tapestry facing him down on the landing?

ELSA: How do I know? I did not notice things like that. I hate things like bullets.

H.M.: Could you see the tapestry from where you were standing?

ELSA: I think I could see the upper half of it, that is all. The banisters hid the lower part and the stairs.

H.M.: Did you see the tapestry move, as though there were somebody behind it?

ELSA: No, I saw nothing like that. H.M.: And that is all you know, is it? ELSA: All!

After this complicating business, H.M. stumped round the top of the stairs, his little eye measuring distances. Nor did he show the perplexity which was evident in other faces. Ramsden, after a rather ugly glance between Elsa and Fowler, summed it up.

"One way or the other, Henry my lad," be declared, "this business don't make sense. There was nobody with him; right! Nobody attacked him; right! He was standing there by himself when something cracked him like a bullet. Well, say somebody was standing down behind that tapestry. He fired. After that, he climbed out of the window behind the tapestry on the flat roof. He climbed up and got into the house again either through Fowler's window on one side, or Hayward's on the other. In the dark and the general confusion, he mixed with the rest and came downstairs. Fair enough? But - '

Hayward, who evidently felt we were getting into legal waters again, had been loudly clearing his throat for silence. He seized the chance when Ramsden stopped to make a parliamentary point.

"Won't do," said Hayward. 'Won't do at all" Now, let's be sensible. That's all right, in its way, but you let me show you. It couldn't have been a bullet, for the simple reason that there was no bullet in the wound; now was there?"

This in itself did not strike me as so big a snag. I remembered one case in which I had been present with H.M., when murder bad been done with a soluble bullet made of rock-salt, and no trace was left of the weapon because it had melted. But I mentioned this, and H.M. shook his head glumly. Besides, Hayward - his face growing more red and his gestures broader as he glared round-very quickly cited the points that made this impossible.

"Look at it! First, we could all see for ourselves that something had been pulled out of that wound. It was used as a hand-weapon, and you can't yank a thing out of a wound unless you're there to do it. Finally, there's that doctor. He examined the other man in Marseilles. He says there's no gun of a caliber big enough to have made that hole, without blowing off the fellow's head. He says that's impossible."

D'Andrieu raised one eyebrow.

"I very much fear that he is right. I have had some small experience myself with the high-caliber firearms. . . . Eh bien, there remains the question of which of two impossibilities we prefer. Very well. He could not have been shot, because that is impossible. The weapon could not have been used like a dagger or thrown like a spear, since to do this the murderer must have been invisible. That is impossible, too. Personally, I prefer the first alternative."

"But look at it in another way!" exclaimed Middleton, afire with a new idea. He had his arm round Elsa, and he was shaking her as though to emphasize it. "We're forgetting a major clue. Can I have the floor for just a minute?"

H.M. waved his hand with sleepy affability. "Carry on, son. I like these theories. The more the theories, the greater the confusion, but I like 'em. When a person spins out a theory, it don't mean he's reasoning; it only means how he would have done the business. But it's mighty revealing with regard to people's characters. Let's have it."

"Well, you can now read my character," said Middleton. "Take it this way: It was dark up here, and there's the victim standing at the top of the stairs. The murderer is behind that tapestry. He comes out, but he's crouched so low down that Elsa-who can see only the upper half of the tapestry - doesn't see him. Could that have happened?"

"No, it couldn't," said Ramsden with some violence. He strode along beside the rail, squinting up and down it. "I know she's very small, but I'm no giant myself. And yet I can see everything except a foot or so at the bottom. The murderer would've had to be crawling on the landing. But go on."

"All right! The murderer," Middleton went on, excitedly pointing, "has got some heavy steel thing like a dagger. He throws it from there. The victim collapses, and goes down the stairs. Fowler says it was a second or two before he himself ran up and looked down the stairs. As the victim hits the landing, the murderer reaches out, pulls the weapon loose, takes that cardboard letter-file from the fellow's pocket, and ducks back behind the tapestry just as Fowler looks down. What about that?"

I looked round quick!y, and saw an expression come into Hayward's face as though he were about to seize on this idea and shout a compliment. H.M. was grinning.

"Anybody got anything to say to that, hey?" he prodded them.

Fowler was staring at Middleton. "Now, look here, old man," he said with deprecating benevolence. "I know it would make a damned good detective plot, but unfortunately it's wilder than any impossibility we've heard yet. First point, there's nobody alive who could throw a dagger of that kind hard enough to go six inches into a man's skull. Second point, I should have seen anything that was thrown. Third point, do you realize that when I looked down the stairs Gasquet was still rolling? In that little space of time, the murderer would have had to pull out the weapon - also a job for a strong man, and a long job-pick his pocket, and go behind the tapestry. And I'll take my oath there was nobody on those stairs. It's absolutely impossible." He turned to H.M., checking himself as though he feared he had spoken too heatedly. "You agree with that, sir?"

"Uh-huh. Oh, yes. I agree with it. The damage was done before then."

"Then suppose you tell us how it was done?" suggested Ramsden,. sticking out his neck. "If he was killed at the top of the stairs, he was either stabbed by an invisible man or shot with a bullet which pulls itself out of the wound and flies away. Well, we've got Left Wing and a Right Wing. Left Wing says he was shot. Right Wing says he was stabbed or otherwise struck. Left Wing says it was done from a distance. Right Wing says it was done from close at hand. What's your vote? Which of us is right?"

H.M. surveyed us. "Gents," he said, after a draw at his empty pipe, "I'm goin' to make you an answer which will seem very, very rummy. But it happens to be an absolutely true one all the same. It's this:

"Lads, you're both right. And at the same time you're both wrong."

We stared at him. He was almost affable.

"Are you serious?" asked Ramsden.

"Me? Oh, absolutely."

"But, damn it all, a man is either shot or stabbed, isn't he? It's got to be one thing or the other, hasn't it?"

"Not necessarily, y'see."

"I know," said Middleton glumly, after a pause. "He was really strangled, and the hole in the head was an illusion. It's all done with mirrors. But at least you'll have to give a definite answer on one point. We've heard that Left Wing says he was hit from some distance away, and Right Wing says he was hit by somebody beside him. What's the answer to that?"

"What I told you before," answered H.M. "That you're both right, and at the same time you're both wrong. . . . Now, now! These answers only seem rummy to you because you haven't thought of the one weapon in the whole wide green world that could have done it, and also the circumstances of this murder. I'm giving Flamande a hint, d'ye see? I wonder if he'll drop me a note this time." His eyes narrowed sharply. "Before you have my blood for this kind of talk, let's get to business. I want you to take up your places exactly where you were when you heard the poor feller yell. I'll stand here and watch. Ramsden will take Gasquet's place. When you hear him sing out, run out of your rooms and do just what you did then. First, though, we'll reconstruct what happened just before the murder."

Again he studied the gallery.

"H'm, let's see. Ramsden, you go in his room, light the lamp, and stand ready to blow it out and walk to the stairs when you get the word. Fowler, you stand inside your door where you were before. Middleton, you're for the bathroom –“

And then Hayward voiced a thought which must have been nagging at the back of all our minds. Excitement was washing away; the real deviltry of the thing had emerged, and I found myself twisting round quickly to watch my companions' faces. Hayward had lost his pontifical gestures.

"Listen, old man," he said sharply, and tightened the knot in his tie as though to find some use for unsteady hands. "I've got as much nerve as anybody, and don't forget it. But if we go through this monkey-business again, then we do it with the lights on. Can't you get it through your head that this man's here? He's dropping his billy-doos, he's doing just exactly what he wants to do in spite of you, and he's an ice-water killer if there ever was one. No, sir! You keep those lights on or there's nothing doing. - As for me, I was in my room, waiting for a chance at the bathroom, when I heard that yell. I don't know anything at all about it. But I don't see any point in giving this lunatic another chance. What do you people feel about it?"

"A chance at what?" inquired Fowler, rather curtly. "I shouldn't get the wind up, if I were you. Nobody has anything to fear except the man who forged that first signature; or else Sir George, who was being trailed in the first place. A little matter of turning the lights on or off shouldn't make much difference. Rest assured, if Flamande wants to find anybody, he'll find him whether the lights are off or..."

It was the wrong speech, especially from the tactful Fowler. He saw it, and his long face changed, for he was looking at Elsa. She had not moved or spoken. But the tears suddenly brimmed over her eyes, and she was shaking with a quiet hysteria. Middleton cursed.

"I say, I'm sor - !"

Middleton cut him off. "There's no objection, so far as I'm concerned," he said, "to going through this business. But Elsa's not going to. Anybody who tries to force her into it, I'm telling you now, is going to get himself into a hell of a lot of trouble."

I tried (and failed) to read the curious expression on H.M.'s face. Then H.M. nodded. "You're quite right, son," he agreed in a dull voice. "I haven't 'been thinkin' much, have I, of ordinary decency? It can't be a very nice business for the gals. And what I want to see can be acted by a few people, anyway. Look here! Middleton, you and Hayward take the gals downstairs. You know what's the matter with you; all of you? You've been through a couple of hours of having your nerves torn to pieces, without anything to eat or warm you or keep the goblins out. Ask D'Andrieu if he'll take you down and introduce you to that buffet supper we've heard about. Ramsden and Fowler and Ken and I will do a bit of pokin' about before we join you. I say, D'Andrieu, will you lead 'em to the grub? But come up here again, will you? I got somethin' rather important to ask."

"The suggestion is an excellent one," beamed our host, "and I shall return immediately. As a matter of fact, I have something rather important to answer. Remain here, Augu - guste. "

Evelyn raised her eyebrows with an inquiry as to whether she ; ought to remain. But I shook my head. She joined Elsa, Middleton, Hayward, and D'Andrieu as they went downstairs. H.M. remained motionless at the head of the stairs. The blackened stone hallway, with its fretted arches and strip of dark carpet under the electric candles, made a somber background for him.

"Well . . . now," he said, and stroked his plowshare chin.

"Are you likely," said Ramsden, with heavy sarcasm, "to be any more communicative now? What's on your mind?"

"Everything. Uh-huh, everything. Gents, I've known cases in which two or three points seemed to be wrong, but I never yet met one where every single blasted detail was wrong. 'Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When our common-sense we can't believe.' And my common sense doth shrink affrighted, if you follow me, from every speech, detail, and gyration that's gone on. We seem at first glance a fairly solid and sane group of people - but, oh, my hat, look at us! I feel like somebody with the D.T.'s seeing 'Peer Gynt' played backwards. Why is it all so wrong?"

"I don't follow this mysticism," I said.

"You ought to. Don't you talk," grunted H.M., "because to judge by your past actions to-night, you're the looniest of all. For instance, you know what this house reminds me of? I had a friend once, who had lots of money and an awful primitive sense of humor. He had one room fixed up in his house for a side-splittin' joke. There was a carpet on the ceiling; chairs and tables were bolted to it upside down. The floor was papered over, and out of it stuck the spike and globes of a chandelier. The windows were nearly to the ceiling, and the door was a good way – up - in short, it was an upside-down room. Well, he'd take a friend of his on a guzzlin' party. When the feller had slid under the table, he was carried to this room while he was asleep. The idea was to watch him next morning, when he woke up on the floor and had a good look around before the booze had evaporated. This humorous friend of mine said the drunk's first gesture would always be the same. He'd given an awful yell and make a grab for the chandelier. Y'see, he was afraid he would fall up to the ceiling. . . . Gents, I'm that poor souse. I'm momentarily afraid of falling up to the ceiling in this place. That's the way it affects me."

"Proving what?" inquired Ramsden, who was watching him shrewdly.

"Oh, provin' nothin'. Only, if we see another bit of lunacy-" H.M. wheezed. "Open Gasquet's door, son, and light the lamp."

It was Fowler who pushed open the door. Groping to the left, he found a white-globed lamp on a small table, struck a match, and kindled the wick. Like all the others, this room was large and high-ceilinged. Its furniture was white, with a great deal of shabby red plush; but over the fireplace in the left-hand wall hung a fine Napoleonic bivouac scene by Meissonnier, who happens to be my favorite artist. On the right-hand wall was a big red-velvet curtain, and in the wall facing us two tall windows. I was looking at the Meissonnier, so that I did not at first understand the reason for H.M.'s muttered profanity.

"You see anything funny about this?" he was asking the other two. "Look there. Where's his luggage? There's his hat and coat, across the back of that chair. But where's his luggage? Didn't he have any?"

There was a vast throat-clearing behind us. Towering up paternally, Auguste regarded us with amiable respectfulness and twisted the ends of his mustache. He bent forward with solicitude.

"Excuse me, monsieur," he said in French. "Did I understand that you asked about M. Gasquet's baggage?"

"Yes, yes. Absolutely, mon gars! Did he have any, eh?" "Ah, yes. He did have some baggage, monsieur. Two

valises, a brown and a black. Yes, he did have baggage-" "Well, what's happened to it, then?" "He threw it out of the window, monsieur," said Auguste

agreeably.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Adventures of a Portable Typewriter

FOR NOT THE FIRST TIME that day I wondered whether I had understood aright; or, if I had, whether this might not be some obscure kind of Gallic metaphor. But by the expression of H.M.'s face I perceived that be had taken the same interpretation. He folded his arms.

"Very, very extraordinary, mon gars," he observed, with that especial rumbling gruffness which always clipped his speech in this language, and he eyed the major-domo. "He threw his baggage out of the window, did he? And what was the matter with M. Gasquet? Did he go mad, also?"

Auguste reflected heavily, as though he considered this highly probable.

"Yes, monsieur, it did seem an imbecile thing to do, and not practical. But, you understand, he made much difficulty about that baggage-"

"How?"

"When he first came up here. Downstairs he said to, me, `Where is my baggage? I must have my baggage?' I said, 'It has been put into monsieur's room. If monsieur will follow me, I will show him to his room"

"And when was this? When he left us downstairs?"

"Yes, monsieur. Just as he was quitting the drawing-room. Well," Auguste made a gesture, "I brought him up here, where I myself had put the two valises. He looked at them and cried to me, 'My God, that is not all! There is an attache-case of brawn leather, with a lock. Where is it? I saw it downstairs. Find it! It must be found.' I went downstairs and looked. I also questioned Joseph and Louis. They remembered seeing it, but they did not remember where. It had been very carefully sorted for us by the steward of that plane, so that it should not become mixed one with the other's. Still, perhaps it was in one of the other rooms. I went upstairs, and found M. Gasquet just coming out of the room of-of-ah, bah!"

"The room of whom?" asked H.M. sharply.

"I do not know his name, monsieur. Of the American, the tall and stout American with the red face; you know?"

"Hayward?"

"Ah! Exactly," nodded Auguste, with a gusty breath of relief. "I said to M. Gasquet, `Ah, you were looking for it, monsieur; have you found it?' He looked at me queerly. `Ah?' he said. 'Er - no, I have not found it.' He looked very angry and a little out of breath. He said, `Look for it in the other rooms, and, if you find it, bring it to me immediately.' Then he slammed his door. I looked, but it was not there. Then it occurred to me, `Suppose it had been left behind in the plane when we brought the other baggage in?' So I went downstairs, just as all the other gentlemen were coming up to their rooms. All, that is," he said, with ponderous exactitude, nodding at H.M. and Ramsden, "except you two and the little doctor. Well, I went out to the front door. Then I discovered that the causeway had been washed out. I thought, 'Tiens, I had better tell the colonel of this at once.' I went upstairs again. In passing, I knocked at M. Gasquet's door"

Fowler, his head hung forward on bent shoulders, studied him through eyes that were nearly shut. He had been whistling through his teeth.

"That," he interposed abruptly, "is true. I saw him."

"Thank you, monsieur," said Auguste. He had a grave politeness which might have held a kind of paternal irony. He nodded again, and went on:

"I came in here, and told M. Gasquet what had happened. He was walking up and down, smoking a cigarette. He was furious. But he said, `Never mind; I have something in my valise that will do just as well. Get out.' So I went down to the colonel's rooms.”

"Did he say what he had in his valise?" interrupted H.M.

"No. He had not even looked at them. They were beside the bed; there. It was, you understand, as though he spoke to himself. But he looked worried. As I say! I went to the colonel's rooms at the rear of this gallery. I went there to lay out his evening coat, and other matters."

"What did he say when you told him that the bridge was broken?"

Auguste opened his eyes wide. "Why, monsieur, he said it was unfortunate, but that we could arrange matters in the morning."

"Continue."

"He gave me directions for a few minutes. He said the supper was to be opened at one o'clock. The colonel was cleaning a rifle in his study at that time. Then I had occasion to go into my own room, which is off his study, and has windows on the same side as this room.* All of a sudden," Auguste snapped his fingers, "the lights went out. Like that! You have heard that monsieur the colonel's rooms are wired for electricity?"

"Yes. You were there when the colonel told us."

"Exactly. Well, at the same time, when I happened to glance out of my window, because of the darkness I could see M. Gasquet leaning out of this window here. He seemed still very angry. I saw him lift up a valise and hurl it out. My window was open, and I distinctly heard him say, `Stolen!' From his study the colonel called out in some irritation, `Auguste, what is the matter with the lights?' I said, `See, my colonel, M. Gasquet is throwing his baggage out of the window.' He said, 'Tiens, is he? Well, Auguste, we must never interfere with the little pleasures of our guests.' And he chuckled. Meantime, out went another valise, and M. Gasquet slammed the window shut so hard I thought it must be broken. `Will you go, Auguste,' said the colonel, `and see what is the matter with the lights?' I heard him go out of his study, into his anteroom, and towards the bedroom on the other side. I looked a moment more, and then I went through the study, towards the anteroom and the door out into the gallery. M. Gasquet had left his room just after he had thrown his valises out. As I opened my own door, I was just in time to hear him scream and see him fall ..."

"You saw it, too?" Fowler asked sharply.

"Ah, but a very little, monsieur!" said Auguste, holding out his finger and thumb before his eye and pressing them together to emphasize how little he saw. "So little that I could not swear to anything. An impression! A flash! A scream and a fall; ah, my God, what drama, eh? I turned round." He swung now with a dramatic gesture. "There was the colonel at my elbow. `The commencement of Grand Guignol, eh, Auguste?' he said."

H.M. checked Ramsden, who was about to burst into excited questioning. H.M. seemed distrait. He lumbered about the room at his near-sighted waddle, peering and poking. I noticed that he stopped beside the table at the bed. It had one bedside book: Barbey D'Aurevilly's Les Diaboliques. The rain pattered lightly on the windows now; it was dying.

Then H.M. turned on Auguste, and spoke in English.

"Son," he said, "You've reported conversations pretty well to-night, but there's one thing I'm more curious about than anything else. . . . By what you've told us yourself, you've overheard and understood all along when we were speakin' English, didn't you? In fact, you speak English very well, hey?"

"Yes, I speak a little," admitted the other. For the first time he seemed wary. "The colonel has many English friends."

H.M. regarded him musingly.

"All the time Gasquet talked to us to-night," he went on, "he spoke English. He even spoke English after he'd revealed himself. Now that was natural enough, because it was the predominant language among our crowd, and we'd been holding the court in it. But when he went out and left us, I heard him still speaking to you in English. I'm goin' to venture a guess." He pointed. "I'm goin' to venture that he spoke to you in English all the time. Did he?"

Auguste bowed. At the same time, there was a quick light knock at the door. D'Andrieu doddered in. He had changed into full evening-dress; he looked like a grayish and amiable Mephistopheles while his quick eyes took in the situation. Then he grew very grave.

"Auguste, I fancy, has been telling you of the antics of our late friend," he stated rather than asked. "Our friends downstairs are now eating with good appetite, and I trust we shall shortly join them. But first.”

"Something on your mind?" inquired H.M. with a kind of leer.

"There are two things on my mind. One involves a personal question, and is not likely to be answered." He looked straight at Ramsden. "I should like to know the reason why, whenever the word `unicorn' is mentioned, Sir George smiles. He smiles! And he is not a fool, contrary to what Flamande apparently thinks."

"Thanks. I manage to get along," said Ramsden. Something nakedly shrewd peered out of his professional bluff manner as he returned the glance. "'Fraid I can't answer that question, though. What's the second?"

The lines in D'Andrieu's face tightened.

"The second is this. Flamande's first letter to me, gentlemen, was genuine. I happen to have proof that it was genuine. Then why should Flamande steal Mr. Fowler's typewriter, write a second note denying the genuineness of the first (that is, if he did write the second note), and drop it in the gallery? As I say, I have. tolerable proof that the first was authentic."

Ramsden swore. H.M. blinked satirically.

"Well, boys," he said in an offhand manner, "as young Middleton remarked, hang on to your seats. Here we go into the Crazy House again. This is the intriguin' exhibition where everything is exhibited upside-down. Just when you get accustomed to the state of affairs, it turns right side up again and makes you madder than ever.-So you got proof. What proof?"

D'Andrieu went over to a chair by the center table, sat down comfortably, and produced a cigar-case. He seemed annoyed in a mild fashion.

"Yes, yes, yes, reasonable proof. I am not a detective, gentlemen, but certain things seem obvious. Tonight, when I read you the first letter from Flamande, Mr. Middleton (I thank you for the reminder) said, `I should like to see a reply from Gasquet.' And I replied, `So you shall.' "

He offered the cigar-case round, still frowning.

"When I received that letter from Flamande, I did as I was instructed and forwarded it to Gasquet. I sent the original letter. The one I showed you to-night (need I say?) was a copy I made myself; I wished to produce a dramatic effect. But I was not so foolish as to send a copy to Gasquet: he might not believe me if he did not see the original.

"Now, Gasquet, who of all people should know Flamande's signature, wrote me a reply showing that he did believe it! Yet Flamande now denies that he did write the first letter. Why? The letter I showed you was a typewritten copy on which I had made a tracing of the signature, and Flamande could with truth deny that it was his signature . . . but how could he deny the genuineness of the letter itself? When you think it over, isn't it more reasonable to suppose that the first letter was the genuine one; and that the denial is either some trick or else was not actually written by Flamande?"

There was a pause, while Ramsden make flapping gestures of protest.

"And yet," said H.M. slowly, "and yet I think you got a deeper purpose in bringing this up now. Hang it, why try to bog us up and suggest complications unless you-? H'm. Just what's on your mind?"

D'Andrieu spoke calmly.

"This," he said. "I should like to know certain things about Mr. Kirby Fowler."

Fowler, who had been sitting on the bed contemplating his shoes in an abstracted way, jumped up.

"He was asked a short time ago," D'Andrieu went on, "to compare two signatures. One was the clumsy copy I had made, with a signature which would not have deceived a child who knew Flamande's handwriting; the other was the signature on the note dropped in this gallery a while ago. Well? He did not state flatly that my copy was a poor forgery. On the contrary, he said it was a very good forgery; so clever, in fact, and so like the real, that it would have passed inspection with anyone who did not know the real. It was a forgery, yes; but it was very good. That I knew to be untrue."

D'Andrieu held up his hand sharply.

"Please do not speak yet. When I opened my house to guests to-night, I did not bargain on murder. I am not aiding Flamande now. Since Gasquet is dead, I am going to do my poor best to catch Flamande and send him to the guillotine. Do you understand that, all of you?

"Very well. In the second letter, to whom were we referred as to whether the first was genuine? To Mr. Fowler. On whose typewriter was the note written, it being carefully pointed out the machine was stolen? Mr. Fowler's. But how could that typewriter have been stolen? All the luggage was placed in the rooms beforehand; but Mr. Fowler, by his own statement, was the first of all of us to go upstairs, since he wished to watch M. Gasquet's door. Which brings us to the final point:

"Shortly before the murder, the lights were switched off from inside the linen-closet, and the typewriter placed there. Mr. Fowler, by his own testimony, was watching the gallery all the time. You may have noticed that the door of his room is directly across the gallery from the door of the linen-closet. If he were in fact watching all the time, he could not conceivably have failed to see anyone who went into the linen-closet, carrying the typewriter, to turn off the lights. Well, did anyone go in there? You will notice that he has made no mention of that, although it would immediately have occurred to him. I suggest that at least it calls for some little explanation."

The rain continued to patter softly. Fowler, who had been standing with his fingers tapping just as softly on the foot of the bed, straightened up. You could tell by the way he cleared his throat, and the sallowness of his dark face, that he was nervous. But it seemed rather the nervousness of the

superior debater who finds himself unexpectedly pinned in a corner. His eyes shifted and shone. He was almost smiling.

"Indeed?" he said with a sort of polite contempt. "Vive la logique. All right. I'll try to be logical as well. And I'll give you explanations, possibly in a way you won't like. Do you have those two notes with you?"

"I did not anticipate that you would be likely to ask for them," said D'Andrieu. "But here they are."

He laid them on the table.

"In just a moment," Fowler went on, "I'm going to ask unprejudiced people to look at those signatures, and see whether they can tell much difference. Wait! In the meantime I'd like to try a little logic myself. I'm glad you brought up that business about the typewriter and the linen-closet, and my door being opposite. I was going to bring it up myself.

"You say that our luggage, including my typewriter, was put in our rooms. You say it was. When we hear about Gasquet's attache-case, I think we shall do a bit of wondering about that. Still, the important thing is that I was watching from the door of my room. I told you I had it open only an inch or so, not to make it too obvious, so that I could look up diagonally towards the door of this room. I was looking to my left while the lights were on. Got that? It means I could see everybody who passed back and forth in that direction, towards my left. I'll tell you the only ones who did, during all the time I watched. They were Mr. Blake, who went down to the bath, and came back again some minutes before the lights went out; and Middleton, who went down afterwards and was in the bathroom when the lights went out. Only those two. Got that?"

His face had a sallow blaze, but his voice was quiet. He went on in rising triumph, tapping the foot of the bed, as the whole picture seemed to take form in his mind and the swift words crowded to make it up.

"With the door of my room open only a couple of inches in that diagonal direction, I can't see the door of the linen-closet. Make the experiment, if you like. I didn't even know the light-switch was there. But I do know this: Anybody who came from the gallery towards my left, where most of the rooms are located, and went into the linen-closet, must have passed across my line of vision. I couldn't have failed to see. But nobody did.

"Are we being logical? Therefore the person must have come from the gallery to my right, from the part I couldn't see, and slipped into the linen-closet . . . It's a queer thing, it's a dashed queer thing, you know, but the only rooms located in that gallery on my right are all your rooms, M. d'Andrieu."

Ramsden, who had picked up the two letters on the table and was scrutinizing them, spoke querulously.

"I say, what's the game? Who started this new trouble, anyhow? I don't know what you mean by all this fuss, but so far as I can see these letters," he waved them angrily, "look as though they were signed by the same person."

"That," said D'Andrieu, "is because you know nothing about handwriting. I do. Mr. Fowler said he did also. I took him at his word."

"But, man, that's not the important thing! If Fowler's right about that linen-closet . . . What do you say, Merrivale?"

"Oh, this?" H.M. was abstracted. "Violent squall in a teacup, though there's one very interesting point. Very rummy. 'Quocumque adspicio, nihil est pontus et aer', yes, and funny-lookin' clouds it's got, too. The puzzling part is why our friend D'Andrieu brought it up at all. But you ask me what I'd like to see, and I say I'd like to see that letter from Gasquet."

For the first time there was something like rage in D'Andrieu's face. Fowler, who seemed to regret his outburst and had grown uneasily deprecating started to speak but thought better of it. From his inside pocket D'Andrieu drew an envelope, which he flung on the table.

"Postmarked Marseilles," he said. "And entirely handwritten. Since you seem to disregard all other letters, you may disregard this one also. But perhaps you are acquainted with Gasquet's handwriting?"

"Oddly enough, I am," said H.M. "And this is it."

He drew out a sheet of official notepaper and spread it out on the table. I looked over his shoulder while he read.

MONSIEUR:

I thank you very much. I think that in a very brief time we shall put this mountebank where he belongs. If you are really serious about entertaining our company in case he should fulfill his threat (which is possible), perhaps it would be just as well. I shall have him where I want him.

I cannot tell you how many people will travel by the aeroplane, but I am informed from the advanced bookings that the passengers will be nearly all English or American. So far these include the names of Sir G. Ramsden, MM. Drummond, M. Ernest Hayward, M. Kirby Fowler, and Dr. Edouard Hébert. There will probably be more. I can as yet give you no hint as to which of these personalities will conceal Flamande.

At the moment I am not permitted to divulge any hint concerning the unicorn you mention, except that it is something of great importance to Britain, and that the Home Office at London - with whom I am in communication - are anxiously awaiting it.

Yours,

GASTON GASQUET.

H.M. looked up. "So he is in communication with the Home Office," he grunted. "Yes. I thought so. You hear what he says about the unicorn, Ramsden. Got any comments?"

"Not now," said the other, and smiled again. "Not while there's any possibility of us being overheard. The thing is, is that a genuine letter?"

"Quite genuine, son."

"Then," said Ramsden, looking hard at Fowler, "just where does it leave us?"

"Holdin' a big slice of the truth, I think. What makes you so infernally cocky, Ramsden? You're a blasted sight more cocky than I am. I've got a piece of the truth, and still-!" Screwing up his face, H.M. craned round and asked D'Andrieu one of those weird questions of his whose import I, at least, never saw. "I say, D'Andrieu: have you got a big library?"

Clearly he had got our host off his balance. D'Andrieu had the air of one who can play an urbane game just so far, but begins to crumple once he has been bewildered by wicked bowling.

"A fairly large one, my friend. Does it interest you? I thought you were intent on a reconstruction of the crime."

"Oh, that!" said H.M., and waved a big flipper. "That's ancient history. I know how it was worked now. Flamande made one awful slip and bloomer, and a clue bumped down on my head as big as - as big as a typewriter. We don't need to reconstruct. What I need is grub. Comin', anybody?"

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Second Impostor

THAT MEAL, I suppose, marked an interlude in the mad business, as though between the two halves of a dance. Unfortunately, there was too much to think about.

Despite his characteristic gesture, H.M. had insisted on reconstructing the murder just the same. And, as we acted out our dumb-show, I found that beyond question we were tangled into another of those impossible puzzles with which the cussedness of human events seemed to reward H.M.'s grousing. It was not possible for that man to have been murdered; and yet he was.

H.M. was a realist. When he insisted that the victim in the reconstruction should really fall down the stairs (albeit gently), Ramsden declined the part; and, of course, I was substituted. The purpose of this latter move was to determine whether the crime could have been committed by a murderer on the landing, who first projected some missile and then drew it out (as well as stealing the letter-file) while the victim fell. The complete result of all these experiments was this:

1. It was definitely established that, under exactly the same conditions of light as during the time of the murder, nobody could have approached the victim in the gallery without being seen. Fowler stood in his old position while I took Gasquet's part, and Ramsden took the place of Mrs. Middleton. First, D'Andrieu, then Auguste, and finally H.M. tried to creep up near him without being seen; each was as big and obvious as an elephant to both Fowler and Ramsden and everybody else. Therefore the victim could not have been struck down by someone standing near him in the gallery.

2. On the other hand, it was also established that he could not have been struck down by a person anywhere else, either close at hand or far away. If the murderer had been anywhere on the stairs, he would have been seen. If he had been concealed behind the tapestry, and had so much as poked his nose out, he would have been seen either by Elsa in the gallery above, or by H.M. and Hébert in the hall below - unless, of course, he had been lying almost flat on his face on the landing. But, even in this unlikely position, the thing was still impossible. He could not have crawled up and struck without being seen. Nor could he have thrown some missile, then drawn it out as the victim tumbled past him, robbed the body of the letter-file, and pushed it on: all in the two or three seconds that elapsed before Fowler had a clear view of the landing.

So we were left with a flat impossibility, which seemed to bother everybody except H.M. H.M. was in a good humor, and in a better after he had something to eat. I hear people say, "Look here, will they sit down and make a hearty meal while in the next room there's a poor devil gored through the head in some fantastic way?" The answer is that they will, and feel the better for it.

It was a lavish business, at which in any other circumstances I could have grinned. There were hors d'oeuvres of a variety unknown outside the Brasserie Universelle; there was cold chicken, cold lobster with that sauce which Larne's know best how to prepare; and a finery of other indigestibles supported by Roederer champagne and a Chateau Haut-Paraguey Sauterne. It was laid out under the candles in a somber dining-room at the rear, and we wandered about helping ourselves. D'Andrieu had the most supreme art of the good host: he never inquired why you didn't have some of this, or insisted that you have some of that. He saw to only one thing - that Joseph and Louis kept our glasses filled. On H.M., who is a whisky-drinker only and regards all epicureanism with contempt, the Chateau Haut-Paraguey nevertheless worked its subtle magic.

It was something itself to watch the effect of comfort and warmed innards on the sodden group we had been before. Sodden and fearful: so that Flamande would have had easy pickings on poor nerves. There was still nervousness, but you could face it now. Ramsden opened like a brickdust-tanned flower, and chuckled into people's ears. Several times, I thought, he was about to make an announcement of some sort, but he checked himself. Elsa and Middleton grew steadily more affectionate. D'Andrieu and Fowler had lost their hostility; they were talking with great amiability, but I thought that for some reason both of them looked very puzzled. Hayward grew almost jovial, and told several stories whose chief feature was the expression on his face while he told them. Hebert alone remained rigid and silent, watching us sharply. He had a private talk with H.M., but his answers seemed to be monosyllabic.

So a mist of tobacco smoke began to rise, and I sat on the ledge in a window-embrasure with a very bright-eyed Evelyn. We clinked glasses.

"Ken," she said, and wrinkled one eyebrow, "I know it's been awful, and-and all, but still I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Would you? But there's one thing . . . It's what 'H.M. would call the blinkin' awful cussedness of things in general. I mean, we've got to be very, very careful about what we say."

“Say?"

She peered round. "Haven't we seen it working all the time? In this business, all you've got to do is to say something is ridiculous, and laugh ha-ha, and say it couldn't possibly happen. And before the words are out of your mouth, lo and behold it does happen. We saw it in Paris, and on the road, and here. Do you remember what we were talking about in your room just before Gasquet was killed? You were talking about legends and old tales about unicorns. You said there was a tradition that the unicorn could make itself invisible at will. And just then-"

"Drink up!" I said. "Don't think of that. You were telling me you had a theory of some kind about, it. What theory?"

"Wait! I don't suppose you've discovered anything from Ramsden?"

"No."

"Or thought of any more stories about the unicorn?"

I studied her, suddenly remembering the most pertinent of the stories. "H'm," I said. "There's a tradition (no, I'm not joking; this is quite true) there's a tradition in Scotland that the unicorn can be captured only with the aid of a virgin ..."

Evelyn opened her eyes. "So? What does she have to do?" she inquired, with interest.

"I don't know. But that," I pointed out, warm with inspiration, "is not the important thing. Now look at the moral to be drawn from it. An earnest student might triumphantly cry that at last there had been found some good reason for virginity. But is it a valid reason? That is, it must be small consolation for a girl - like yourself, for instance - to think that after all she could always rush out and help lasso unicorns. The desire to capture unicorns is comparatively infrequent, whereas ..."

"Quite true," agreed Evelyn, and seemed to remember something. "What I'm thinking," she added abruptly, with the air of someone uttering a talisman, "couldn't happen. It couldn't possibly happen! It couldn't cone "

"What couldn't happen?" asked that fool Middleton, and broke into the talk with Elsa just as I was going to make an appropriate remark. I swore, but Evelyn went on innocently:

"-just at this particular time, anyhow. We were talking about unicorns, in a way." She looked at Elsa. "Feeling better now?"

"I am absolute O.K., donk you," said the latter, who was flushed and smiling. "I wass chust a glass of champagne needing." She beamed on Middleton, who expanded his chest, 'and all of us felt pleased. "But Owen hass been talking nonsense ..."

"Not a bit of it!" said Middleton, with a kind of confidential violence. He finished his glass. Hauling out a chair in a conspiratorial fashion, he sat down and, with Elsa contentedly sitting on the end of his knee like a doll, he bent forward to impart confidences. "Look here, Blake; you'll understand this. They were talking about conducting investigations over there, and I made a suggestion to Sir Henry Merrivale. Here we are, cut off in this place beyond any kind of communication. Each person claims he's such-and-such - and there's no means of checking up on him, no possibility of routine police work. If anybody's to be tripped up, he's got to be tripped up by straight questioning. Now, how is that to be done?"

"Well?"

Middleton got out an envelope and a pencil. He began to write down names.

"We're a pretty mixed bag of nationalities, admitted. The only thing is for us to cross-question each other. Now, suppose somebody's playing a part? It's always struck me, - from what I've read, that when they catch hold of somebody in a Secret Service story they want to prove is a fake, they always go about the questioning in the wrong way. The spy always dresses up as a Polish traveling salesman from Lisbon who is an agent for scented soap, or an Arab chieftain, or some damn fool thing. By the way, it's a remarkable thing the number of native Arab dialects those fellows can speak perfectly. I have a hard enough time managing to get out, "Ou est la Madeleine?' But as I was saying "

"True enough," I admitted. "Still, in real life we always used to be Americans. We spoke like no Americans in heaven or earth, but it was necessary. Unless we'd worn straw hats, called ourselves Silas K. Entwhistle, and begun every conversation with, 'Say, bo!' nobody would have believed us and we'd have wound up before a firing-party."

Middleton looked thoughtful.

"So that's the reason for it, eh?" he said. "I suppose it goes along with our fixed idea that every Englishman says, 'Top-hole, old dear!' or `Gad, sir, the old school tie; eh, what, damme?' It's an odd thing about that. The comic Englishman was invented in England, for your own people to laugh at on the stage, and he's still considered outlandish. The comic American was invented in America. But both have been turned into national types, and it'll take a lot of spadework to root the idea out. Anyhow, take the example of somebody playing a part here.

"In questioning, the idea usually seems to be to ask the man all about himself, his business and family connections, what city he's come from and what city he's going to. All the things, in short, that any clever liar would have had pat and unshakeable beforehand. Agreed?"

"To a certain extent. But what sort of questions would you ask?"

"About the little things. The little things, the unimportant things that the person must know if he's what he pretends to be. I've been talking to Hayward. He comes from Ardmore - that's on the Main Line just outside Philadelphia. Right! You don't want to ask him about his family or his business connections. You want to ask him something like: What's the train fare from Broad Street Station to Ardmore; and is it before or after the first express stop? If somebody bungles a thing like that, he's a liar. I don't say Hayward is, naturally. Take myself. I live in Montague Terrace on Brooklyn Heights. Well, what's the nearest subway station to there? If you're crossing Brooklyn Bridge in a car, what street do you turn down to get to Columbia Heights? Understand the idea?"

"It would be all right," - I admitted, "provided you had enough information to check up on the answers. But suppose you haven't?"

"I think that among ourselves we could. Anyhow, it's the only possible way. . . . Damn it, otherwise we'll all look like a gang of crooks, and our stories won't hang together. That's the way it happens. Take Elsa, for instance! And myself "

Elsa looked round in alarm. She said she was not a crook.

"No, now! I don't mean anything like that. I was only thinking of one instance. Believe it or not, I don't even know her husband's name. Suppose they asked me that, and I couldn't answer?" He frowned. "Incidentally, Elsa, what is your husband's name; I mean the last one, that you were married to for three months?"

Elsa, on whom the champagne was now having a reverse effect, seemed to have grown terrified.

"You should not think of such things!" she cried. "And enyvay they alvays laugh at me when I pronounce it. It bass the hardest sounds in that language, they tell me. You think it iss needed? I could write it, yes?"

"All right, write it," said Middleton, and handed over pencil and envelope. "Of course," he appealed to me, "it's not very important, but you see what I'm getting at? It would look like a slip of some kind, and we'd both be in trouble. Then----“

He broke off. He had given a casual glance at the words she had written, and then he stared. Something starkly incredulous glared at that envelope; he looked back at Elsa, who nodded, and then he got slowly to his feet.

"Oh, my God," said Middleton.

"What's the matter?"

"Get your H.M.," he said in a low voice. "We've found an impostor right enough."

Before I could see the envelope we were going quickly but without fuss over to where H.M. and Hébert were talking beside the fireplace.

"I don't want you to think I'm crazy, sir," Middleton said, "but let's find a place where we can talk. I've got the goods on somebody now, and I can prove it."

H.M. knew when to ask no questions. Middleton's words had gone unheard under the babble of the talk in the room. H.M. only nodded sleepily at the cigar in his hand, and followed us out into the hall. We went down to the drawing-room, where Middleton outlined what I already knew.

"Elsa's husband," he went on, "is now at Monte Carlo. It's not possible for there to be a coincidence in names. Somebody has borrowed his name - but someone so unlike him that she never connected the two, and she never knew enough French to catch the right pronunciation of the name when it was given tonight. Once to-night she tried to ask him his name, because she'd got a horrible shock; but he didn't answer. The name she wrote on this envelope," said Middleton, holding it out, "is Raoul Cérannes, Comte d'Andrieu."

We heard the fire crackling in the long silence. Under the windows there was still a sullen rushing; but the rain bad died away, and the quiet of that damp ruined room made you want to look over your shoulder.

"Well?" said Middleton rather hoarsely.

H.M. nodded. He went over and laboriously sat down in a chair by the fire, where he remained staring at the tip of the cigar.

"Uh-huh," he said, "I thought so."

"You knew about it, and yet - ?"

"Keep your voice down! Easy, now!" Still with a wooden face, H.M. blew a smoke-ring and watched it curl up. He seemed to watch it for a hint as to what he ought to say. "H'mf, yes. Maybe it's best to straighten a few things out. I knew he was a fake three minutes after we were inside this place. That's what's so wrong with the house; why it has no reality, no personality, d'ye see, no air of being lived in. It's only a shell, or maybe I ought to say theater for a whole elaborate, rummy, crazy-fool comedy put on by one man's desire for the spectacular. Only we can't give D'Andrieu away."

"Can't give him away? Why?"

"Because he's the real Gaston Gasquet," said H.M., nodding as he blew another ring. "And it's his show."

Middleton, with a witless expression on his face, groped behind him for a chair. I also found one; we both needed them. H.M. remained hunched up and bent forward towards the fire. The light shone on his bald head, and on the satirical little eye he swung round towards us.

"Is it your turn to go crazy?" I asked, after an interval. "Gasquet? You yourself said that the poor devil who was murdered - "

H.M. nodded.

"Uh-huh. Point is, though, he was no more Gasquet than I am. . . . Ken," he said reflectively, "I've got to ask you to trust me even though I seem bogged and sunk in foolishness; though you think I ought to be put under restraint. Oh, I got reasons! I'll ask you to believe that I said to him, `You're Gasquet, ain't you?' - knowing quite well he wasn't, but prayin' he'd have the intelligence to see what I was drivin' at and say he was. He did. He was a clever feller. It was the only chance to preserve what I thought (and now know) be was tryin' to do; so help me, it was! But Flamande. . well, boys, I don't underrate Flamande now."

"You," I said, "let him get himself killed . .."

H.M. whipped up his head. "Let him get himself killed?" he roared. "Yes, yes, I know. It hurts. Will you believe me if I say there wasn't one millionth chance that he'd get hurt, and that it was much safer for him to pretend to be Gasquet? I was tryin' to get him what he wanted, and help him along. Everything was in order. The case might have been over by now. But Flamande, burn his soul-!" He knocked his fists against his temples. "The plain truth of the business is that Flamande was too smart for both of us.

"But who the devil was the fellow, if he wasn't Gasquet? And who . . . you say D'Andrieu is really Gasquet?"

"Yes. And this whole business was planned for our benefit: Now listen, and I'll try to tear some layers of wrappin' off this business. We need sanity! We need to straighten it out."

He was silent for a moment, shifting and muttering. Then he continued:

"Trace the tangle from the beginning, and you'll see. Start with the time we all arrived at this place, after that very convenient floppin' down of the plane in the next meadow. You and Evelyn Cheyne and I went in with the rest of the crowd. Down comes our bowin' and smilin' host, playing the part of the far-too-good-to-be-true perfect French host, who has had a letter from Flamande and is out to see sport. It didn't ring true; the whole business was too red-plush and Academie Francaise; it came straight out of a farce or a dream. Still, I might have accepted it. After all, it would be quite characteristic of Flamande to write a letter like that, and there might be a real character who would act as D'Andrieu did. But no sooner had D'Andrieu spoken to us, than something gave the show away with an awful bang.

"Think back, now. We all walked in there. We said nothing at all; we didn't have the chance. We were all muddy, we were all obviously a part of the same party, and the plane was wrecked a good quarter-mile away from this house. In fact, when we started discussin' the accident, I accidentally talked in such a way about the pilot and crew of that plane that it must have been taken for granted that you and Evelyn and I had traveled on it. Yet, with not a word said, D'Andrieu turns round to me and says, `You and your friends were not aboard the plane, then?'

"Lads, that was an awful slip of the tongue. How in the name of sanity did he know we hadn't been aboard? Everything, even my own talk, indicated that we had been aboard, hey? At a distance of a quarter-mile beyond those trees, with not a thing visible from here, how could he know who had come down in it? And the answer was, he did know exactly who would be aboard that plane - to the last passenger. He knew it beforehand.

"While that was wormin' about in my mind, it presented in itself the only possible explanation of the wrecked plane. What seemed the worst puzzle was really the easiest. Hayward, d'ye see, was quite right. That plane couldn't have been brought down as it was without the connivance of the pilot or the whole crew. Yet that seems impossible; first, because the pilot is the crack man of the air line, always used for responsible jobs; and, second, because Flamande always works alone. But that's only assuming the pilot had a criminal intent. Suppose that plane was brought down because he had orders to bring it down from the police, acting in cooperation with the company he worked for?

"You'd be surprised what a flood o' light that brought in! This pasteboard house, with its queer owner and unused rooms, begins to look very much like an elaborate trap. Elaborate, yes; but it's worth all the trimmings if they can snaffle Flamande.

"Well, how are they goin' to do this? What's the game? Before we go on to that, let's make sure it is a game. We come into the place, and what happens? Just as soon as we're all inside, tricked and timed with beautiful smoothness, down goes the causeway. Now, it's too much to assume the causeway acted for itself. But, if somebody cut its pins, who was the somebody? Would you take one look at that wood-and-stone affair, and imagine that a visitor out of the plane, one of our crowd, could have given it a kick and sent it to blazes? The thing was timed as carefully as a bomb. And that could've been done only by the cooperation of several people in this chateau itself. D'Andrieu, Auguste, Joseph, Louis . . . the brains and brawn of the Surete, so many eyes to watch for Flamande once they're sure they've got him shut up inside. Think over their every speech and gesture, while we go on to a few more points.

"Flamande has sworn he'll be aboard that plane; Flamande keeps his word. They're not sure what guise he'll take. They're only sure he'll be there, to rob Ramsden of - "

"What?" I demanded.

"Ask him," suggested H.M., chuckling. He nodded towards the door as it opened, and Ramsden hurried in. "Ask him, while I tell you the rest of a few very, very rummy clews to Gasquet's innocent plot."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

How H.M. Spun Theories, and Gasquet Was Perturbed

"WHAT'S up?" Ramsden demanded rather querulously. "Don't jump so, confound it! You all look as though you were guilty. By the way, Merrivale, D'Andrieu is looking for you. He says he's got further proof, and he's very anxious to show you that letter he got was really written by Flamande-"

"I bet he is," agreed H.M., and turned down the corners of his mouth. "Look here, son, you've got to hear this. Then maybe you'll understand why he wants us to believe that first letter was genuine, even to the extent of framing up a lot of accusations against Fowler. Y'see, if once we got to doubtin' the letter too seriously, it might blow the gaff. Sit down, Ramsden."

Middleton rubbed his forehead perplexedly.

"If blowing the gaff," he said, "means what I think it does, it strikes me that it's blown. And by you." He grinned. "That is, for all you know, I might be Flamande. If I am, you're just tipping me off."

"Uh-huh. Well, son, if you're Flamande," said H.M. imperturbably, "you don't need to be tipped off. You know already, because Flamande does. That's why he wrote that genuine note and dropped it in the gallery upstairs. And it's got Gasquet worried as hell. Flamande knows him, but he hasn't got the groggiest notion where to look for the slippery one. He's gettin' wild - that's partly the reason, too, why he hopped on Fowler. In other words, Gasquet's masquerade has gone bust. Besides, I don't see any real reason why Ramsden should be used as a stalkin'-horse by the French government."

Ramsden stared at him. "I've waited a long time," he said, with tense and sinister calmness, "to hear some sense in this affair. Will you, at long last, condescend to tell-“

H.M. did so, silencing the other's protesting yelps. from the beginning. D'Andrieu (let's call him that, to keep our names straight) has borrowed the name and the chateau of the real D'Andrieu, who lives at Monte Carlo and never uses this place . . ."

"Wait a sec!" cried Middleton, and snapped his fingers. "I'm beginning to get this now! Especially that business about the book."

"Book?" said H.M. "What book? What's this about books? Are you stealin' my thunder, curse you? I was just goin' to point out-"

"No, it's about Elsa. She got some sort of terrific scare to-night, and wouldn't tell me what it was. When I came back from the bathroom just before it happened to-night, she was looking at a bedside book-white as a ghost. She shut it and rushed out without saying anything. That was why she didn't wait for me, and was in the gallery in time to see the murder.... I looked at the book; it was a Balzac; and the only thing I noticed was D'Andrieu's name written on the flyleaf ..."

H.M. seemed in a better temper.

"Uh-huh. Written!" Again he pointed with his cigar. "She'd only been married to the real D'Andrieu for three months, you tell me, and didn't even know he had a place here. Comin' on that name would give her qualms." He blinked as Middleton's face flushed, and the latter glared at him. "Now, now, take it easy! Nobody here has moralist tendencies; and she's a nice-lookin' nymph, burn me but she is! By the way, those books in the rooms should 'a' told you something."

"Told us what, for instance?"

"Told you with strong repetition that he wasn't what he pretended to be. Now here's a feller so fastidious, and with such an eye for fancy detail, that he even puts out bedside books and makes sure of satiric titles. He knows in advance, even from the Gasquet - letter which he wrote himself, that nearly all his guests will be either English or American. He himself speaks remarkable English - in fact, when he gets excited and forgets the role he's supposed to play, he reverses the usual procedure by speaking perfect English. Now a man who's bilingual like that is bound to have at least a small selection of English books in his library. What'd be the natural thing, if you're goin' to be fastidious? It'd be to put out English books for us, wouldn't it? That'd be the crowning conceit. Since he didn't give us one book in English in the whole lot, it's reasonable to think that he didn't have

'em. And if he didn't have 'em, in a big library, it means that the library ain't his, and that he's posing as somebody else. He's posing as the sportin' gambler and ex-Colonel of Spahis, who is actually down whoopin' it up at Monte Carlo. Incidentally, our friend Auguste (Detective-Sergeant Auguste, if that's his name) added one touch that was a blazin' giveaway when he said the old man was sittin' in his room cleanin' a rifle. Any ex-colonel who can be found cleanin' a rifle when his ex-orderly is within call is a rarer bird than I've ever seen in the army.

"But you asked about the beginning of the whole scheme, and you're not yet at the beginning. Let's see if we can puzzle it out. You were the beginning, Ramsden. You were to be the stalking-horse."

Ramsden's face wore a faint smile. He dug his hands into the pockets of his baggy coat as though he were defying attack. He looked at the fire, looked back at H.M., and gave an indeterminate nod.

"Was I?" he said.

"Oh, we're just sittin' and thinkin', you understand. Let's say you were traveling home through France; let's say the French police and also the Quai d'Orsay were given a quiet request to look after you, because you had something valuable on your person, and you're one of these independent beggars who won't hear of any guard ..."

"That's always admitting," interposed Ramsden, "I carried something of value."

"Uh-huh. Sure. On top of that, the narks get wind that Flamande is somehow fully acquainted with what you're doing. Flamande is apt to be prowling your way. Wow! That," said H.M., pointing his cigar with such fervor that the ashes flew wide, "that's goin' to put the breeze up everybody, because this is an international matter. Flamande's already a government matter. And the voters have a nasty habit of cuttin' up rough. If Flamande pulls off anything like this, and word of it ever gets out, there's some little discomfort goin' to be due in several circles. There's one way out: they can set a trap for Flamande, baited with sugar and deep enough to hold him if he falls into it. Then everybody's happy. But there's one snag. They've got to have the consent of Whitehall, which might be more than a little difficult. And they've got to have a branch of the British police workin' with 'em, so as to make the whole thing official. In fact, I fail to see how they could very well have got along without your own consent."

He paused, opening his eyes. Ramsden seemed to study this statement.

"Ho! You intimate," said Ramsden, "that I knew what was going to happen to-night, eh?" He considered again. "Well, there's one thing I'll be prodded into saying. Word of honor, the things that have been going on in this place tonight are as much of a surprise to me as to any of the rest of us. That I'll even swear to! But you interest me. Go on."

"My guess," continued H.M., "is that two members of our own Intelligence Department were asked for. They were asked to act on blind orders, so that they didn't know (and at first going-off Whitehall itself didn't know) what they were supposed to do, except that it was in the laudable intent of guardin' Sir G. Ramsden. They got their first orders: to go to an inn on the other side of Orleans. My guess is that, as the plot was originally planned by Gasquet in charge of it, that inn was to be used exactly as this chateau was used tonight; the scheme wouldn't be so fancy, but a group of people would be wrecked in the plane near an inn in the wilds. Of course, when the two British agents arrived, Gasquet would take them into his confidence.

"But in the meantime two things happened. Whitehall learned what Gasquet's scheme was, and exploded. Now I got no regard for our own people - you just wait and see what I'm goin' to do to the Home Office - but even old Squiffy isn't entirely daft. The agents would be goin' to protect Ramsden, yes; after he had been deliberately run into a trap, while on a government mission of some delicacy, to catch a criminal whose doings were none of our business. I ask you, now! Would even Squiffy stand for a thing like that? He'd talk to the Foreign Office, and they'd absolutely refuse to touch or sanction it. The agents would be recalled. Only, d'ye see, they'd already started on their blind orders and nobody knew where to reach 'em.

"What does Gasquet do? Right, says he! We'll omit the British agents altogether, drop 'em and tell 'em nothing, but we'll go through with the scheme just the same. And the second thing that happened was that he decided to make the plan more fancy by using this chateau. I dunno how he came to decide this." HM. closed one eye. "Maybe Gasquet in Marseilles ran into his friend the real D'Andrieu, who was there chasin' his wife, and borrowed this place from him.

Maybe ---“

"Won't do," said Ramsden. "Hey?"

"I said, it won't do," replied the other. He folded his arms and struck a judicial attitude. "The analysis, if you can call it that, is sound enough except for one thing. That's got you, Merrivale. Do you think that, if our people at home had refused to sanction this trap with me as the tethered kid, Gasquet and his backers would ever have dared go through with it?" He jeered. "You can bet a tanner they wouldn't! Even the goat has some say in a matter like that. What about me?"

"Yes, I was comin' to that," muttered H.M.

Laboriously he hoisted himself up out of his chair, the dead cigar waggling between his teeth. He took a few paces back and forth before the fire.

"There are two points," he continued, as though talking to himself, "that give us the key. One is the unknown feller, the man who was murdered after he had lied in announcin' he was Gasquet. Who was he and why did he lie?"

"You mean," said Ramsden maliciously, "why did you persuade him to lie? Tethered kids! You don't need to be so rough on hunters who set out tethered kids to be slaughtered. You did it yourself."

H.M. became very quiet.

"Do you honest - blimey think that?" he asked in a curious voice. "Humph, yes. I dare say you got reason to. Burn me, why can't you see a little further into this business?"

"If it comes to that," snapped Ramsden, "why can't you see a little less? If it means getting a man murdered, I can't say I care to have good eyesight."

H.M. remained staring at the fire. "I see I've got to begin workin' and unwind the whole business," he said. "I've hesitated, because after all it's Gasquet's show and I can't bust it up. Particularly as you're the one who's most concerned; and, since I think you've given your consent "

"To Gasquet's show?"

"To Gasquet's show. Y'see, that's my second point in the key to the whole affair. You said it yourself: without some hint or tip-off to you, Gasquet's backers would never have dared let him hocuss that plane and drop you down here. You're no fool, though you've tried to act like one to-night. I don't think you knew who 'Gasquet' was going to turn out to be. I don't think you knew that the forcin' down of the plane would be Gasquet's work. But I do think there'd been a little whisper of some kind in your ear. Then why did you risk lettin' yourself in for it? Look here, you were entrusted to bring the unicorn to London, hey? You've acknowledged that?"

"Quite."

"Uh-huh. And what would you estimate as bein' the worth of that rare animal?"

Ramsden hesitated. Then he chuckled. "Right you are," he said in a somewhat different voice. "I've had enough of my own private mystification, eh? The whole confounded business will be in the newspapers to-morrow. You want to know about its value. In importance, that animal is worth literally a kingdom. In mere monetary value - well, possibly only a million pounds."

Ramsden looked right and left. He was enjoying himself.

"I think I'd better get out of here," said Middleton, in a tone of some uneasiness. "It strikes me I've heard more than is exactly healthy." After a pause he added in a hollow voice: "Only a million pounds. And you weren't afraid to walk into a thieves' kitchen with Flamande?"

"Not in the least," said Ramsden. "Because, you see, I haven't got it."

"Un-huh," said H.M. woodenly, while Middleton whistled and I swore.

"Glad to say," pursued Ramsden, "that it's now stabled and on its way to London in the middle of a 'squadron of Royal Air Force planes. It should be there by now, in time for the Jubilee reception tomorrow. If Flamande was meant to attack me, the plan's gone bust. I haven't got it."

"God in heaven," said a voice across the room, "must you tell it to everybody?"

The door was slammed shut, and we were looking at the cool, cynical, but no longer amiable face of the detective Gasquet who called himself D'Andrieu.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Horn of the Unicorn

H.M. GAVE a gusty sigh. "That's torn sit," be admitted. "Sorry, son. I'm afraid we forgot ourselves and talked with considerable frankness."

In D'Andrieu's appearance there was no change, except that he had lost his doddering gait and his slow speech. He was as immaculate, as Mephistophelian as ever, but not quite so unruffled. When he strode over to face us, he kept snapping his fingers in time to his speech, as though he were in front of performing dogs. You felt the tricky, wiry strength of the man's intellect. He looked from one to the other of us, sardonically.

"You call it frankness?" he said. "In case you don't know it, you were shouting like a Chamber of Deputies. Anybody in the hall could have heard you. I heard you." His eyes narrowed. "Well, gentlemen, it would seem that nearly every card has been put on the table. It may interest you to know that between the two of you you have succeeded in wrecking the whole plan. Exactly what chance have you given me to capture Flamande in the act?"

"In the act of what?" said Ramsden. "If you mean in the act of murdering me, no, thanks. Bit too much to expect, don't you think? What chance have you given me to escape him?"

"You agreed to cooperate."

Ramsden grunted. "In what? Mysterious chap from the Quai d'Orsay says, Would I mind taking part in a little police-trap to catch Flamande, of which I can't hear any details? He warns me, all fair and square, that Whitehall may not like it. He relies on my sense of cussedness, and," said Ramsden with candor, "my instinct for a bloody good row. I said I didn't mind. And here I am. But as for the unicorn. . ."

H.M. scowled. "Yes, it's a wicked maze we're treadin'. Still and all, I don't think you ought to feel so upset. You've got Flamande cornered even if you don't know who he is. He's here, shut up on this island with no way out. And he's got to be one of us. If necessary, you can always shove the whole lot of us into clink. I was goin' to suggest - "

"It will not be necessary," said D'Andrieu.

A gleam of amusement, of an exhaustless fervor and energy that was always alive to savor drama, showed in his face. Gaston Gasquet, or D'Andrieu, was one of those people who might be called eager cynics. I had an uneasy suspicion that he had some new nothing-up-my-sleeve trick waiting for us. He selected a chair, sat down with conscious effect, and studied H.M.

"Let us now consider," he said, "Sir Henry Merrivale." He waved his hand. "The masks are off now. You know who I am, and I can tell you what I think. Frankly, I wondered for some time. I wondered whether you were deliberately misleading me, or whether it was due only to your own muddle-headedness. On that matter of the man who called himself Gasquet . . . I know now that it was only muddle-headedness."

"Take it easy, Merrivale," urged Ramsden. "Dammit, don't you see he's only trying to make you fly off the handle? You'll have apoplexy in a minute."

D'Andrieu spoke sharply. There was something in his voice that made me even more uneasy.

"On the contrary, I am telling the truth. In this case, it happens to be vitally important. Yes, yes, I know he stumbled on my identity. What then? Was that difficult? Was it intended to be difficult? By accident, my friend D'Andrieu's wife turned up - " He snapped his fingers. "The point is that on the matter of the 'Gasquet' impostor he can consider himself responsible for a man's death. It is not likely that I can now consider any of his suggestions as carrying much weight. I am not trying to be insulting, my friend; I wish merely to make myself clear. And it is only fair to tell you that one of your colleagues, who should have some knowledge of you, recently described you as a well-meaning old lunatic. Come! No offense? Good! Then we can go on to business. In one thing, however, you are right. I am not upset. I have succeeded in exactly what I set out to do. I know who Flamande is.”

"Uh-huh. Do you mean that," said H.M., "or do you just mean that you've been writin' more letters to yourself?" D'Andrieu smiled.

"I mean that I have found the horn of the unicorn," he said. "I have found the weapon with which the murder was done, and I know exactly how it was done."

"And you know who used it?" asked Ramsden, while again that ugly silence settled down.

"I know who used it. I found it in the possession of a certain guest in this house. Did you say I had failed?" He rapped his knuckles on the arm of the chair. "Well, I have caught Flamande. Listen. A certain suggestion was put forward, and to the man who made it, it was merely a cloudy, wool-gathering guess to keep up his reputation. for shrewdness. That random guess was valuable, because it suggested something practical to me." His eyes were glittering now. He was a mountebank, but there was an uncanny power about him. "I freely admit that Merrivale's chance remark gave me the hint. It was no more than a nonsensical guess, since the latter part of what he said made nonsense. But the first part of it - What is the weapon that is not a pistol and not a dagger, and yet at the same time is both? That one grain of truth showed me. Can you read that riddle for me, gentlemen?"

"I shouldn't be surprised," said H.M. "Where'd you find it? In whose pocket?"

"That," said the other grimly, "is what I purpose to show to all of you. Auguste!"

Auguste, highly satisfied, opened the door. I noticed that in his inside breast pocket there was a long bulge, which he tapped as though to make sure of its pressure. D'Andrieu had resumed his amiable air.

"Will you ask all my guests," he said, "whether they will have the goodness to come in here?"

It was like a whip-crack. He was cool, he was assured, and something deadly had begun to gather in that room where the little grayish Mephistopheles sat smiling by the fire. I am not likely to forget any of it: the white-and-gilt room with its blackened cornices, the crystal pendants of the wall-brackets glittering and tingling to the rush outside, and up over the fireplace the mounted head of the Sumatran leopard showing its fangs over D'Andrieu as he smiled.

"Full-dress performance-" muttered Ramsden, and hesitated. He glanced at H.M. H.M. seemed groping to find the right words.

"Listen, son," he said at length, and in a low, heavy voice. "I may be a wool-gatherin' ass, or a drunk oracle that don't know what messages he's burblin', and anything else you say. Let that pass. The point is that, aside from bein' full of clotted nonsense, you're not a bad feller at all, and I'm on your side. That's why I warn you: for God's sake, be careful! If you let your instinct for the dramatic carry you too far, there'll be a blinkin' awful mess. I know you're smartin' under what this chap's got away with. So am I. But take it easy, or I tell you in all seriousness matters will be much worse. I mean it."

D'Andrieu smiled.

"So am I," he concurred. "You realize that I have found the weapon?"

"Oh, yes."

"I found it in the possession of one of my guests, and I can offer a logical explanation of how the crime was committed?"

"Well . . . now." H.M. rubbed his head. He seemed disturbed. "Logical, yes. I was afraid you were goin' to say the victim was in full view of two witnesses. It could not have been struck on the first flight of steps down, since Mrs. Middleton had some slight (though interrupted) view of those steps. It could not have been struck on the lower flight of stairs, since they were in full view of Sir Henry and Dr. Hébert.

"There remains the landing, and the landing alone. Objection is raised to this. First: that, though Mr. Fowler delayed several seconds before he ran forward to look, there would not have been time for a murderer hidden behind the tapestry to have plucked out a weapon wedged in a man's skull and rifled the body. Second: that Mrs. Middleton had a good view of the whole landing with the exception of a few feet up from the floor, and would have seen any murderer who ventured out.

"And that very word `exception' shows us that we do not have an impossible situation, or there would be no exceptions. There was only one place that was not in view: the extreme lower part of the landing. Therefore, since everything else is impossible, we are reduced to the logical certainty that the murderer must have been there."

Fowler, whose assurance seemed to be growing each moment, stirred in some impatience.

"I say, must we go over all that again? That was Middleton's idea. And we proved that no weapon could have been thrown from there, and then pulled out as - "

"Agreed."

"Well, then?"

"Let me show you," said D'Andrieu, "the weapon that was really used. Auguste!" The big major-domo stepped inside the door, and D'Andrieu went on: "The suggestion presented to me, I repeat, was a riddle. What weapon is neither a pistol nor a dagger, and yet at the same time is both? Then there came back to me the statement Dr. Hebert had made earlier in the evening, that not far away from where the man was murdered in Marseilles there was a butcher's shop . . . Let me have the little toy, Auguste."

From under his coat Auguste took as weird and deadly-looking a mechanism as I have ever seen. In general shape it was not unlike an automatic pistol, but it was larger, heavier, and more solid than the highest calibered gun. It was about eleven inches long, made of solid steel except for the wooden grip, and must have weighed four pounds. But no bullet or missile could be fired from it: the muzzle was flanged, and in the opening of the barrel we could see a sharp circle which looked like the end of a rod measuring about six-sixteenths of an inch in diameter. D'Andrieu, with a quick wrench, broke the barrel open sideways near the breech. Inside there was what looked like a chamber to contain one cartridge, set against a powerful spring mechanism in the barrel.

"You recognize it? This," said D'Andrieu, "is the butcher's Humane Killer of what is called the captive-bolt variety. It has superseded the pole-ax. By law, the slaughtering of animals must be done painlessly, instantaneously, and without possibility of bungling. The best theoretical means would be a bullet; but then there must be no bullet to be wedged in the carcass so that it has to be cut out. Hence this variation of the bullet-principle has been invented-a sort of pole-ax spike attached as a part of the gun, but propelled by the explosion of a cartridge against a spring mechanism. The rod is more powerful than any bullet. It makes so quick and sharp a puncture that it can be pulled out immediately, and the gun is re-set easily by pushing the bolt back into the barrel with the palm of your hand. This gun is of English manufacture . . . let me show you."

He turned round to Auguste, who handed him a small cardboard box. It contained what resembled very light blank cartridges, one of which he slipped into the breech, snapped the pistol shut, and pulled out a safety-catch at the rear.

"The 'K' cartridges," he said. "They are used for the hardest skulls, like those of bullocks. They seem very light; it is the spring mechanism, of course, which does the work. So-"

"Don't!" cried Elsa, who was hiding her head against Middleton and almost screaming. She put her hands over her ears. "I will not stay! You should not say such things!

You – “

"It makes very little noise, Madame," said D'Andrieu, with satirical kindliness. "Much less than a child's cap-pistol. However, if you wish it . . ." He opened the pistol, shook out the cartridge, and handed both to Auguste while a kind of paralysis held the rest of us. "We need not demonstrate.

*This model, which I have subsequently seen in operation, is the standard English humane-killer approved by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Its efficiency and power may be shown from the fact that through the skull of a bullock (which is about a quarter of an inch thick) the captive bolt often penetrates to a depth of four inches. K. B.

But you see now what the 'horn of the unicorn' actually was."

Middleton spoke shakily. "Yes, I think we can do without a demonstration. Put the thing away, will you? It's seeing it right there, and having you give all the gory technicalities, that makes the whole business so horrible. 'Humane-killer!' What a word! Is this straight? Do you mean a human being was killed with that thing?"

"Yes. You agree, Dr. Hebert?"

"C'est absolument vrai . . ." murmured Hébert, as though from awe. Then he struck his forehead and raised his briefcase high. "Ah, mon Dieu, que je suis bêtel Moi-méme, je suis bête comme un bceuf! Permettez-moi monsieur!" He came bustling forward to inspect it, and Hayward jumped out of his way.

"This," said Hayward, whose face stood out pallid and red-mottled, "looks like business. Don't stall us now! Quit the acting! Where'd you get the thing? Where'd you find it? Whose is it?"

D'Andrieu paid no attention. I glanced at Fowler, who stood with his shoulders humped and a bright blind glitter in his eyes, drawing in quick breaths at his cigarette without taking it from his mouth. He did not speak. Then I looked at H.M. So did D'Andrieu.

"And you agree, my friend?" D'Andrieu asked him.

"Uh-huh. Oh, yes." H.M. shook his head dully. "I mean, that was the weapon right enough. Point is, how do you think it was used? That gun has to be held directly against the victim's forehead, y'know. How do you think it was used against the feller who was killed, when nobody was seen near him?"

"That is what I purpose to explain. No, my friends, you will all be quiet," said D'Andrieu, turning and speaking in such a voice that we were all quiet. "Certain things must be made clear before I turn over a prisoner," he nodded towards Auguste, "to Detective-Sergeant Allain.

"This pistol, certainly, could only have been used by being held directly against the victim's head. Very well. I have already told you my logical reasons for believing that the murder could only have been committed on the landing. Since only this pistol could have been used - by the way, if you will examine the bolt itself, you will see adhering to it certain evidence proving it was used - and since nobody could have approached the victim up in the gallery above, it follows that at the time he put his hands before his face, screamed, and tumbled forward, he was not yet touched.

"Consider. Can any witness here actually swear that he or she saw a wound in that man's face before he tumbled down? No. What was seen? A person who instinctively put his hands before his face, screamed, and at the same time missed his footing as he was about to take the first step. He stumbled . . . why? Obviously because of something he saw down on the landing. Put his hands before his face and screamed . . . why? Obviously because he saw, down on that landing, his enemy. And in his enemy's hand was what he thought to be an ordinary heavy automatic, being aimed at him then.

"What happened is tolerably clear. Flamande was behind that tapestry, waiting for his quarry to come down. He stepped out a little too soon, before he should have done so. At the same moment, just as the victim appeared at the head of the stairs, Flamande also saw Mrs. Middleton appear beyond the balustrade in the gallery. It is clear that Flamande did an instinctive thing. He dodged, to avoid being seen; he dodged down towards the floor of the landing, in those few feet which Mrs. Middleton could not see. But the victim at the head of the stairs saw him, to all intents aiming a pistol at him. The victim threw up his hands just as he was about to take a step down, screamed as he missed his footing, and plunged. Flamande acted - before the man could go downstairs and betray him. Flamande was crouched so low that he could not be seen either from above or below. As the victim struck the landing in a stunned condition, Flamande put the muzzle of his 'humane-killer' to his forehead, pulled the trigger, and instantly drew out the bolt. On the landing lay the letter-file which the victim had dropped. Flamande swept it up as he gave the body on the edge a push, and he dodged behind the tapestry. All (considering the rapidity with which an actual pistol could have been used) the work of not more than three seconds. In the third second, Mr. Fowler had run to the top of the stairs; and by his own testimony what did he see? He saw the tapestry agitated as the dead man rolled past, which he attributed to the dead man's having seized it. But it was actually the movement made by Flamande in dodging inside."

The thing was brilliant, and it was possible, and I believed it. But the explanation was broken short as Fowler jumped forward.

"If you believe that," he said, and his mouth was so dry that the cigarette stuck to it; he burnt his fingers trying to pull it out. "If you believe I told the truth, then you don't really believe I'm guilty after all?"

"I never did believe it, my friend," replied D'Andrieu. "Shall I go on? I have almost finished. Flamande then works instantly. Before the dead man has rolled to the foot of the stairs, Flamande is out of the window behind the tapestry (which I beg of you to recall we found unlocked afterwards), and out upon the flat roof. In the next moment he is up the low buttress, and through the window of Mr. Hayward's room (on whose sill Auguste found not half an hour ago some very significant mud-stains), and out into the gallery about twenty seconds after he has fired his bolt."

D'Andrieu suddenly rapped his hand on the flat top of the mantelpiece.

"There is no use in going on. I have the man. That gun and the box of cartridges were found, a short time ago, in the false bottom of his own valise - where he hid them. He is Flamande, and he will go to the guillotine. You wish to know who he is and what he calls himself? With pleasure. He stands ... there."

And then this brilliant fool, with a gesture straight out of the Grand Guignol, turned round and bowed towards me.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Man Suspected

FOR A SECOND or two I could not even think of the business as a joke. It was a plain matter of the thing being beyond comprehension, like the first shock of a motor-smash. No feature of D'Andrieu's face was clear before me; the hooked nose, the. clipped beard, the gleam of triumph, all moved and wavered like images in water. In a way it was like being hailed in the street by a complete stranger - you turn and look over your shoulder to see whether there is anybody else behind you, as I did then. But such a thing never brings the sickening feeling that this did. I looked over my shoulder, round me, and back again. There was nobody. At the unexpectedness of the business, it is a curious fact that I (completely innocent) must have presented as convincing a picture of guilt as could be found at the Old Bailey. I shall remember this, henceforward, when I serve on juries.

D'Andrieu seemed to have had a pointing finger stretched out for a long time. I could imagine him thundering out, `Confess, guilty wretch!' And this turned the affair into a joke. I let out what I thought was a chuckle. To inflamed imaginations it might easily have sounded what is called hollow and unconvincing laughter.

"Are you crazy?" I said. "Everybody hereabouts has had one turn at going mad tonight; is this yours? Flamande!"

D'Andrieu was enjoying himself. "So you fight?" he inquired. "Well, let us argue the matter a little. You see, I have not only this evidence; I can prove that you were the only person in this house to-night who could possibly have committed the crime."

(Wow! And how was this to be done?) I tried to muster my wits. Then I heard H.M. groan. H.M. looked as though he were not sure whether he ought to grin or swear.

"I been afraid of this," he said. "Burn me, I been afraid of this ever since G. Gasquet walked into this room and all the time so carefully refrained from ever lookin' at you or castin' one word in your direction, Ken! He wanted his dramatic effect not to be spoiled. Look here, Gasquet - D'Andrieu: seriously, I got a suspicion you accidentally found that gun planted in Ken's room, and then you worked backwards to all these logical deductions and convinced yourself you'd reasoned it all out in advance. Oh, love-a-duckl Then, when you flung the accusation into Ken's guilty schnozzle..:'

"There's nothing guilty about my schnozzle," I said. "Let's straighten this out. What the devil do you mean, the only person in this house who could have committed the crime?"

"Exactly what I say. Come, I hold no animosity, my friend; can't you see that? Don't lose your temper, and I will demonstrate it to you. The gun again, Auguste!"

He was very persuasive. I think it was not the wicked grin on Auguste's face, but something very much like admiration in his eyes, which made me fully realize that these people honestly did believe I was Flamande. I did not look at the others.

"You see," pursued D'Andrieu, "it was Sir Henry Merrivale, in what it would grieve me to call his senile dotage, who gave you the opportunity to do what nobody else could have done. He has been most helpful to you all evening. ... Now look at this gun. It weighs four pounds, and it is of enormous size. A person, at a time of excitement when nobody looked at him with any care, might have concealed it under his coat for a very few moments. Not longer. It would be apparent to the most casual observer; it would have to be got rid of immediately after the murder, or as soon as could be managed without attracting attention. But who could have got rid of it?

"During every moment of the time after we discovered that body, every one of you has been under observation for every second, either by me, or by Auguste, or by my other three men. This was easier, inasmuch as groups of you always kept together, and can corroborate each other. From that time until this, not one of you had any opportunity to go to Mr. Blake's room . . . except Mr. Blake himself.

"Immediately after the murder, you recall, we all crowded upstairs in a body. A few seconds more, and the presence of the gun must have been suspected, for we were going to turn on the lights. Nobody left our group - except Mr. Blake. Sir Henry Merrivale very kindly sent him down to his own room to find a flashlight. He was gone for some moments ..."

(This is very bad. Keep cool, now.)

"I suppose you don't believe," I said, "that I was trying to find out what was wrong with a broken flashlight?"

D'Andrieu was polite. "I am afraid I don't, old friend. This gave him the opportunity to do two things. First he concealed the pistol. Then he put a portable typewriter under his coat; and, since it was not distinguishable in the darkness, he hurried down the gallery and entered . . . where? The linen-closet, you recall, where Merrivale and I were standing. You will remark that we three were the only ones who ventured inside that linen-closet? Yes. Exactly. When the typewriter was put down, he was able to drop his note ... where? Just outside the door."

Even H.M. blinked a little at this. As for me, to say that I was getting the breeze up is to put it mildly. For (though I still did not look at that silent group, whose breathing was now very audible) I glanced at Ramsden. He was regarding me curiously, as though something were dawning in his mind and he could not be quite sure.

"Then," resumed D'Andrieu, with a slight shrug and a turning up of one finger, pleasantly, "there is the question of shoes."

(They must all be looking at my feet now. So was I, guiltily. My shoes were not in the best condition after their mud-slogging that night, but they gave me an unpleasant suggestion. I sent a snaky and felon-like eye down round the circle of shoes. H.M.'s, Ramsden's, and Hébert's were muddy-but then none of them had gone upstairs to change, and all had perfect alibis. The rest of the shoes shone in my mind like some motion-picture director's effort at symbolism. There were Hayward's sport-shoes in brown leather and white buck-skin. There were Fowler's neat black ones, long, narrow, and polished. There were Middleton's brown, scuffed and disreputable, but not muddy. There were Evelyn's and Elsa's white high-heels.)

"Your error will already have occurred to you," said D'Andrieu. "You will be thinking of those mud-stains on the window-sill where you climbed back into the house. Everyone upstairs changed his shoes before the murder, since nobody has had an opportunity to do so since. Everybody has clean shoes . . . except, of course, yourself. You did not change."

"I only brought an overnight bag," I said, "and didn't have an extra pair with me. Otherwise - "

"Otherwise," beamed D'Andrieu, "you would have changed when you were sent down to your room after the 'flashlight'? Come, I am glad to hear that! My old friend, my unseen friend, I am glad to see that you supply the gaps in our knowledge and accept it in that spirit of sportsmanship which ... ah, you smile!"

"Ha, ha, ha," I said bitterly, and accented each ha. If I had done a fool thing that night, I was getting paid for it, but it didn't make me feel any better. How this wild collection of circumstances had gathered together I did not know; still, it had to be faced out somehow. For the first time I turned round to the rest of the group. "Well, what's the verdict? Do even you believe it, Ramsden?"

The first thing I saw was a gleam on the staring eyeglasses of Hébert. He was not hostile at all. He was only excited, and rapt with interest in a new specimen as he moved his head back and forth to contemplate me.

"What triumph!" he breathed in his own language. "Ah, name of heaven, what triumph! M. Gasquet, I salute you. .. Yes, faith, it is a true criminal type." He hopped. "Regard, M. Gasquet, the shape of his ears and the distinct malformation of the skull, in which – “

"Look here," I said. "Damn it all, that's going too far! Believe it or not, I am not Flamande. There is not a false bottom in my valise, nor are there any rabbits in my hat. I ask again, do you believe it, Ramsden?"

Hayward's querulous voice rose with a kind of yelp. "Well, what are you all going to do about it?" he demanded. "You're not just going to let him stand there talking, are you? This is the battiest bunch I ever got into! Suppose he makes a break for it? Aren't you going to put the cuffs on him?"

"Do you believe it, Ramsden?"

"Oh, shut up," Middleton said to Hayward. He looked at me curiously, clucking his tongue. "Blake, my lad, you're in a jam and there's no denying it. But against my better judgment I still don't think you're Flamande. There's something very, very fishy about the whole business. Besides, my room is the next one to Hayward's, where you were supposed to have come out. I think I'd have seen you if you had come out. My impression is that you ran past me from the other end of the gallery ..."

"Exactly," said Evelyn. She marched out with her face flaming, and stared at D'Andrieu.

"You old fool," she said.

"Mademoiselle?"

"Mademoiselle, bah! Listen to me - !"

"Take it easy, wench," I said, for a woman with her temper beginning to flare will say things that raise the hair of a conservative male. But she went instead to the other extreme, and I thought she was going to cry.

"I've got just this to say for your nonsense," she told him, and got control of herself. "Nobody seems to have asked where he was all this time he was supposed to be crawling in and out of windows. I'll tell you. He was with me. He was with me, do you understand? That's what's known as an alibi. He was with me. And, if you believe all you say, it would have to mean I was an accomplice, wouldn't it?"

D'Andrieu looked at her not unkindly.

"You force me to bring it up, Miss Cheyne. The fact is, I do regard you as an accomplice, and I have regarded you as an accomplice all evening."

"Oh, my eye," groaned H.M. "That's done it. So she's Flamande's beautiful, slant-eyed mistress, hey, who pinches the plans from Cabinet Ministers? Burn me, son, but accordin' to you I been guilty of some very rummy behavior to-night! Why don't you make a clean sweep of it and shove us all in clink?"

"Perhaps I will," said D'Andrieu, wheeling round. He had begun to lose his suavity a little. "If I were you, I should not presume too much on your real (or fancied) position in the British government. You must remember that I am in charge here, and I can give such orders as I please. Frankly, I do not care to hear any more of your suggestions. Your suggestions have already cost one man his life, and served nearly to ruin my entire investigation. You have done your persistent best to shield a man who has fooled your poor old fuddled wits into believing that his name is `Kenwood Blake.' Therefore - "

"Will you listen to me, you overgrown gnome?" suddenly yelled H.M., and brought down a blow on the arm of the chair that cracked the wood across. "God damn my scarlet socks and britches, but I've had about enough of havin' that business thrown in my teeth! Will you listen to me while I tell you one single, small, solitary thing? I'm tellin' you, I know which one of these fellers Flamande really is!

If you'll let me tell you what to do, just for a second

"Sergeant Allain," said D'Andrieu, and drew himself up curtly.

"Monsieur?" said Auguste.

"If Sir Henry Merrivale," D'Andrieu told him with cool politeness, "should feel it incumbent on himself to interfere any further, or suggest courses for us, you are to place him under arrest. Is that clear?"

"No, I'm damned if I'll stand for thatl" bawled Ramsden, as H.M. uprose like a volcano to suggest a real course. "Sit down, Merrivale! As for you, Gasquet, that's carrying things too far! If - "

At this point I felt that somebody ought to call for order. There seemed no way of doing it, since lung-power was of little avail, but the cocktail-glasses still on their tabouret gave me an idea. I picked up one and fired it down on the hearth. Its crash stilled the babble instantly. Whether or not it would be taken as a call for order, rather than the outbreak of an attack, seemed for a second doubtful.

"Excuse me," I said, "but there has been so chronic and general a losing of tempers in the last few minutes that maybe you'll now be willing to listen to a word from the crafty villain. Do you mind if I say something?"

"Well done," said Fowler. He spoke for the first time, with a sort of harsh approval. "You're Flamande, right enough, but you're keeping your nerve. I dare say you're keeping it just because you are Flamande. Why did you kill that chap, and who was he?"

D'Andrieu also had himself well in hand.

"I have been looking forward so long to this meeting," he remarked, "that I shall take pleasure in a talk. What do you wish to say?"

"I want a chance to clear myself, that's all."

"You still deny it? You are challenging me again? Very well. Sir George Ramsden: You told us earlier this evening that you could testify to the identity of this man. Are you sure you can testify to it now?"

"No, I'm not," replied Ramsden, and the ground went from under my feet.

He stood straddle-legged before his fire, his head down. He seemed trying to grope and pound towards the truth, with his piston gestures, while on his face there was only bewilderment. He spoke gruffly.

"Mind!" he insisted. "I think - no, blast it, I don't know! I never knew Blake very well. And a nodding acquaintance isn't good enough." He faced me. "Sorry if I'm doing you an injustice, but this is too serious a matter for me to make any rash statements. You could deceive me, you know."

"Oh, that's all right. But with regard to rash statements: Do you think I could deceive H.M., too, or do you only agree with D'Andrieu that he has become feeble-minded?"

Ramsden shut his jaws. "Think that's quite the right tone to take, in a man arrested for murder? I don't think you quite understood. You may be Ken Blake. You may not be. I don't make a decision there. What I do say is that, whether you're Blake or not, you did commit this murder. Can you deny the evidence of the murder? If H.M. says you're Ken Blake, I'll agree with it. But what about plain evidence?"

Unfortunately, I could see that coming. If I brought everybody in St. James's to swear to my identity, there was still a small matter of a murder charge. I glanced at H.M., who sat down again, quietly, and was as wooden as though he heard nothing, but there was a faint twitch about his eyelid which I could not interpret.

"Your defense, M. Fl - Mr. Blake?" prompted D'Andrieu, in a tone that stung like the devil;

"Right!" I said. "This foolishness is all based on the assumption that I hid behind the tapestry, climbed out of the window, and climbed back in again through Mr. Hayward's window. There seems to be something you've overlooked. If I climbed through that window, as you say I did; and if Mr. Hayward was in his room, as he says he was, he must have seen me. Have you asked him whether be can swear he saw me?"

Though I put the accent on `swear,' it was a long and wabbly shot. To judge from Hayward's previous frame of mind, he might be just as apt to rap out and say he had. I glanced over, to be both startled and reassured. Hayward was sitting back on the sofa, one arm along the back of it, studying me through half-shut eyes while he chewed at the tip of a cigar. His big glasses were a little mesmeric. Queerly enough, he seemed almost friendly.

After a pause he spoke.

"I asked you fellows a while ago," he said slowly, "why you didn't let a lawyer, who's used to this kind of thing, ask a couple of questions. I'll just do that now. But I've been sitting here figuring for a little, and I'll tell you something. If this man's guilty, he doesn't act like any guilty man I've ever seen. I'm beginning to be for him. Let's see!" He cleared his throat a couple of times, drew the air through a back tooth, and settled his head forward like one getting down to business. "About what you asked me. No, I didn't see you come through the room; but if they put me under oath I couldn't swear whether you did or you didn't. Understand, I'd turned out my lamp just about a second before I heard that scream."

"Turned out your lamp?"

"You're the one who's supposed to be answering questions," he corrected, making a little circle with the cigar. "But you might as well ask what you can and get the benefit. Turned out my lamp, yes. Nothing funny about that. I was going down to the bathroom, and then I was going on downstairs. Just after I turned it out, I heard that yell. I stood there in the dark wondering what to do - and not feeling any too good, I can tell you. I started to light the lamp again, and couldn't find any matches. So I ran and opened the door."

Out of the corner of my eye I was watching D'Andrieu, who seemed pleased at this. It stung still more.

"What did you do then?" I asked.

"Waited there until I saw a gang of 'em gather up at the head of the stairs. Yes, you were among 'em. When you all started down, I ran up and joined the crowd. Now come on, sonny! Ask away!"

"Good! I will! You waited there in the doorway, then, and so you know that nobody could have come from the room behind you and slipped out past you into the gallery?"

"Whoa there! That," said Hayward, and grinned sleepily, "is what you call leading the witness. No, 1 didn't stay in the door. I moved out in the hall, about four or five feet away from the door, so I could see better."

"I like these references to courts of law," remarked our host. "It will serve us admirably at the Palais de Justice when he is tried. Then you can't swear that nobody came out of the room behind you, and ran towards the stairs as though he were coming from his own room?"

"I have an impression that nobody did, mind!" insisted Hayward, raising one finger.

"Your impression, Mr. Hayward, will suit the law."

"Yet," I said, "wouldn't you have heard somebody, even if you didn't see him? Footsteps? Somebody opening the window, crossing the room, and coming out behind you?"

"N - no, not necessarily. The storm was making a good deal of racket, and the carpets are soft, and I was all eyes and ears hot on what was going on up in the gallery. No, I've got to admit ..."

The puzzling part of it was that, all the time he was battering down my last tangible proof, the man had an eager and chuckling air as though he were trying to help me. He bad the expression of one who is trying to give broad hints in a guessing-game. I could have sworn I saw his lips framing a furtive word, and still he grinned.

"There is no use going on with this," said D'Andrieu. "In fact, Mr. Blake's questioning has been good enough to supply me with the last point I needed to be certain of his guilt. . . . So Mr. Hayward turned out the lamp just before the scream? Excellent! I wondered why Flamande had dared to come in by the window and risk finding the occupant there. From below he saw that the light was out. He naturally assumed that the occupant had gone. Hence he climbed up without hesitation. I don't want to hurry you, M. Flamande, but we can't go into any more of this now. On the road to Paris, perhaps. You see, I have plans for you. You will be in Paris by daylight. So will your charming colleague, Miss Cheyne."

H.M., who had been very quiet, stirred. I saw that whatever plan he had been turning over had been wrecked by this announcement; and it struck my own incoherent schemes with an ugly shock of despair.

"I might 'a' known-!" boomed H.M.

"You might have known, of course," agreed D'Andrieu, who was affable again, "that we should never have thought of arranging this little trap without a way out of it. We even have a car. Very shortly I can promise Miss Cheyne and M. Flamande lodgings of a rather more austere kind than these, in the questioning-cages on the Quai des Orfevres."

Hayward sat up.

"Wa-ait a minute!" he urged. "Isn't this fellow going to ask me any more questions?"

"I don't think we've got time for it," I said. "But suppose we strike a bargain. If you agree not to connect Miss Cheyne with this business in any way”

"Take it easy, you dummy!" breathed H.M. out of the corner of his mouth. "That's what he's tryin' to get you to say. Ask Hayward the question he wants answered . . ."

"Just a quick one," Hayward was saying. "Blake, you'd make a rotten lawyer. There's an old habit I have-never go into a strange house and leave the room without doing it - sort of habit of mine-lots of people have it-funny thing----“

"What," I said, "did you do just before you blew out the lamp, Mr. Hayward?"

Hayward sat back with an expiring sigh.

"I locked the window," he said.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Liars Will Prosper

MY STOCK was rising. This last bit of evidence, if I could back it up, might weigh as heavily as that damning pistol, my absence from the group, and the muddy shoes. By one of those inexplicable swings of opinion which are as incalculable as a roulette-wheel, popular sympathy seemed to be slowly turning in my direction.

Evelyn crowed. "But that breaks down the whole case, doesn't it? If the window was locked, then he couldn't have got through it, could he? And all this business is based on his having done that." She looked at H.M. and spoke almost angrily. "Oh,, dash it all, why don't you say something? Why don't you point out all the things in his favor; you can think of ever so many more, can't you? I'm surprised, if you want the truth, and I'm disappointed. I never knew you to stay out of a scrum before. Are you really afraid of his threats about arresting you? Well, I'm not. If be's going to get one of us, let's all go to clink together."

"Et tu, Calpurnia," said H.M., and shook his head. "You let Caesar alone.. I got my reasons." He grew querulous. "Let him conduct his own defense - if he can. By the way, D'Andrieu, how were you intendin' to get out of this place?"

D'Andrieu, if possible, looked more cheerful than before. But he stared hard at H.M.

"If I didn't suspect that the old fox might not have entirely lost his legs . . ." he said, and frowned. "You might be up to a trick or two. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and think that you are now amenable to good sense. Besides, I fail to see what you could do." He chuckled. "You ask how I plan to leave here, with my prisoners? A collapsible bridge of army-engineering pattern. Joseph and Jean Baptiste will be at work on it shortly. In about half an hour the river will be running smoothly enough to risk laying it down."

"With your prisoners?" cried Hayward. "Hey, hold on there! What about this business of the window? Everybody admits he was running from the other end of the gallery when he came to that staircase, so he couldn't have got up through Fowler's window. Besides, Fowler's light was on. If he didn't get back through my window, how did he get back? Are you telling me I didn't lock that window in good faith?"

"No.,'

Hayward was so excited that he was growing truculent for the defense.

"Then just what do you think you are saying, governor? I'm willing to bet you can't burgle those windows. They haven't just got ordinary catches, like our windows. They're built like a little door, with a knob in the middle that runs a rod down into the sill when you turn the catch. You'd have to cut out a piece of glass or something "

"You see," interposed D'Andrieu, "I don't think you noticed that the catch of the window was broken."

Hayward sat back.

"Come, come, gentlemen!" urged D'Andrieu, with a slightly exasperated kindliness. "I don't think you give me credit for knowing my own business. Of course I thought of it. The closing rod does not fit into its groove in the sill. A slight push from outside, and the window opens. I have allowed this to go on because I wished to demolish it." He glanced at me, and rubbed his hands. "If my ears do not deceive me, I hear my friend humming. It seems to be an ancient tune entitled, 'Down Went McGinty To the Bottom of the Sea.' It is well chosen, M. Flamande." He burst out

into genuine laughter. "Let us close the business "By singing a hymn," said Middleton gloomily. "M. Gaston Gasquet, that's exactly what you sound like: a clergyman. And I still don't believe it! Look here, my room is just beyond Hayward's on the other side of the cross-gallery. I jumped out not very long after this scream, and if Blake had sneaked out of Hayward's room I think I'd have been certain to see him."

"Let us close the business by asking you about that," agreed D'Andrieu. "You are positive you would have seen him?"

"I think so."

"The gallery was not too dark?"

"No. I came out to my door as soon as I heard the yell. I stood looking down the gallery right past Hayward's room - until someone ran past me from behind (I know now it was Blake), and then I went for the stairs. All that time I was looking down the gallery, and I didn't see anybody."

"Precisely so," purred D'Andrieu. "It was so dark that you could not even see Mr. Hayward himself, standing a few feet out from his own door."

"Friends all," I said, after a pause, "the master-criminal is damned grateful for your good wishes, but would you mind not trying to give me any more assistance? Every time somebody tries to give me a helping hand, back I go deeper into the soup."

Middleton swore. "You're only twisting things round, Gasquet! I didn't say that."

"Let us see if we can discover what you did say. You change your mind now, and announce that you did see Mr. Hayward ahead of you?"

"Well, I suppose it must have been Hayward. There was somebody there - a kind of shadow, if you know what I mean----“

"Which might just as well have been Mr. Blake as Mr. Hayward. Thank you. It is only fair to inform you," said D'Andrieu, "that Louis, outside the door now, has been occupied for some time in taking shorthand notes of this entire conversation. You see, my friend, the real D'Andrieu, informed me that this room is constructed on the principle of a whispering gallery; it is why I chose it; and the smallest sound can be heard at the door. To round matters out, we will identify a few things. Louis!"

The door opened. One of the footmen, a squat bruiser in buttons, stuffed a notebook into his pocket as he looked in.

"You have," D'Andrieu said in French, "the valise of M. Flamande, which he says does not have a false bottom?"

"Yes, monsieur."

D'Andrieu turned to me. "Merely to make sure there is no mistake, will you tell us what you had in your valise? Thank you. Bring it here, Louis, and take the articles out as he names them. Pyjamas. Dressing-gown. Slippers. Socks. Shirt. Shaving