Who Killed Gatton?

Roy Glashan's Library
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E. CHARLES VIVIAN

WHO KILLED GATTON?

TO F.S. RAINER
FRIENDSHIP,
THROUGH MANY YEARS,
HAS NOT FAILED.

First published by Ward, Lock & Co., London, 1936

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

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

But, a few years ago, I had occasion to visit a firm of constructional engineers remotely resembling the one described in this book. I had never before met any member of the firm, and my visit was of no profit to the business. Yet the reception accorded me was just such as is described as experienced by Inspector Head in the course of this story: I was shown everything I wished to see, entertained right royally, and sent on my way at the finish as if I had conferred, rather than received, all the benefit of my visit. It was an experience of one day only, but I have never forgotten it, and, if those who shared in welcoming me in such a way chance to see this work, I hope they will take what I have written concerning a purely imaginary firm as some expression of my gratitude to them.

Chapter I. The Supe's Day Off Begins.
Chapter II. Wreckage of the Day Off.
Chapter III. Sheba Bell.
Chapter IV. Y42. STR. E3.
Chapter V. Thomas Cosway, Cycle Agent.
Chapter VI. Enter an Alien.
Chapter VII. A Free Country.
Chapter VIII. Adjourned, Sine Die.
Chapter IX. Perjurers Both.
Chapter X. What Head Wanted.
Chapter XI. Jadis.
Chapter XII. The Estwick Problem.
Chapter XIII. At Estwick.
Chapter XIV. —And John Zalescz.
Chapter XV. At Fault
Chapter XVII. Fourteen Westingborough Citizens
Chapter XVII. Fourteen Photographs.
Chapter XVIII. Quade.
Chapter XIX. Sinister.
Chapter XX. Back to Estwick.
Chapter XXI. Back to Westingborough.
Chapter XXII. Nine Weeks Later.

Chapter I
The Supe's Day Off Begins

"TWICE," said Superintendent Wadden with solemn emphasis, "have I told the chief constable I mean to retire—on my laurels, or rhubarb if you like—and twice he has told me he didn't want me to do it. But this time, when I go along to see him on Saturday morning—"

"Will he? That's all you know, my lad! No—at the end of this year I'm going—definitely and finally, so make up your mind to it. You can step into my shoes—and I won't be so far away that I can't see you have 'em soled and heeled from time to time. I've got a chance to get in first on a bit of land, and I'm going after it to-day."

"Did I say Worcester sauce, or—or corn plasters? If so, I beg yours. Land! The stuff you wipe off your boots! Randall Bell is breaking up part of his estate, and as you know, my idea for my declining years is tomatoes under glass. If I step in early, ahead of the building speculators, I can have the very thing I want, about three acres of the best along the Idleburn valley, between here and Crandon."

"It'll be damp in winter, Chief, along that valley," he observed. "It's very little above river level."

"A good twenty feet, the bit I'm after," Wadden dissented. "Y'see, Head, there's Bell's own house, the last one on the right of the main road before you begin the climb for Condor Hill. Cross the road from his front gate, and—I don't know if you remember—there's that long beech copse shutting off sight of the river and the land between it and the road. Ah, I see you do remember, though!"

For Head was smiling: he had played truant on that quarter-mile strip of rich grassland between the road and river, in his boyhood; he knew all the country round about Westingborough for miles, as a fox knows his coverts or a lion his hunting grounds. He had gone bird's-nesting in that long beech copse more times than he could count.

"Well, you say damp. What's Westingborough itself, if you come to that? The High Street outside this very door flooded, only four years ago. Market Street under water for half a day last winter. And that ground I'm talking about, the bit Randall Bell means to sell, is a gradual downward slope all the way from the road to the river—which is a good ten feet below the bank level, except when it's in flood. And mark this, my lad! There's that beech copse practically west of the land, and the woods practically east, on the other side of the river. It's shut in from cold winds, sheltered like a nun in a convent—it's ideal for tomatoes under glass, and there isn't a richer soil for miles round than you get along that strip. I say, if you want rich soil, never look uphill. Go down into a river valley, like that one."

"Not a solitary pound of 'em do you get, you damned old sceptic, not if you go down on your knees and pray for 'em! And I'm not selling 'em locally, either. Covent Garden—that's my mark!"

"This will be after you've bought that three acres and put the glass houses up to grow the tomatoes, won't it?" Head queried.

"After... Look here, Head, you need a good raking down, and I haven't time to hand it to you. I'm taking the day off, since there's practically nothing doing. The poaching season's over, and nobody's stolen anyone's chickens for the last fortnight. Also there'll be no drunks worth speaking about till Friday night, and to-day's only Tuesday. I'm going back home to turn out my own car and take the missis with me to look at her future home—when it's built, of course. I told Bell last time I was out there I'd come along and see about it, and to-day's the day. I've got a tidy bit saved up, and I've been studying catalogues and things for the last twelve months and know I won't need to go to a building society for a penny."

"Well, good luck to you, chief," Head said sincerely. "I shall miss you here, if it really is coming off this time."

"Good to hear you say that, you damned old sinner. Yes, it's coming off this time, and I'm going to lay the foundation stone of my future this very day as ever is. There's nothing special in, is there?"

"Nothing," Head assured him. "I can look after things for you till to-morrow. There's a confidential about that lost aeroplane they put on the wireless last night, but it won't affect us."

"Lost aeroplane?" Wadden inquired. "What was this? My wife had a headache, and I never listen in if I can help it."

"According to the confidential, it's a hush-hush machine," Head told him. "The S.O.S. on the wireless didn't much more than ask for anyone spotting a stranded aeroplane anywhere to report at once to Barton and Peters' aircraft department at Estwick, telephone or telegraph, and take a ten-pound reward if the numbers proved it the right machine. Barton and Peters offered to pay all expenses as well."

"Estwick," Wadden reflected. "That's on the east coast, and over a hundred miles from here. Head, that machine didn't drop on land, but went and drowned itself out at sea. Ten pounds'd fetch a flea out of a pillow case, let alone find a lost aeroplane if it were findable. But you say there's a confidential in. What's it say?"

Head took up the slip of paper and handed it over. Wadden perused it, and read bits aloud as they impressed him—

"Umm'm! Barton and Peters—experimental type—Y 42, STR., E3, stencilled on sides in crimson. M'yes. Hullo! If located, adequate guard—prevent inspection. Oh, yes—that's hush-hush all right. Well, I hope it keeps fine for 'em. What's this? H. Gatton, pilot, flying solo. How do they know? He might have called for his best girl on the way. Test flight—m'yes. All right, Head—that's not going to stop me from taking a day off. I've told you where I'm going, but just remember I'm taking the missis with me. If you try to get me back for anything at all, I'll murder you when I get here."

He lifted sixteen stone of solidity out of the chair at his desk, and stood, with a roll of flesh bulging over the top edge of his uniform collar. As he stood, he pursed his lips and blew, gently, reflectively: it was a habit of his, and if he were perturbed, he would blow a gale, but this was no more than a zephyr. He directed the gaze of his keen, apparently fierce eyes at his inspector.

"Have you looked under the desk in the charge room?" Wadden inquired, moving slowly toward the door of the office as he spoke.

"Well, do. It might have crept into the kneehole and got behind the wastepaper basket. Man, I haven't heard a 'plane anywhere round here for weeks, and neither have you. That one's drowned, and what's his name—Gatton—with it. Ten pounds for nothing never blew my way yet, and never will. I have to work for my living. See you to-morrow morning, all being well—and I'll be a landed proprietor, then, all but getting the title deeds made out and signing 'em. S'long, Head."

He went out, and Head, taking the swivel chair at the desk, unfolded the morning paper and scanned it. He found and read a brief paragraph entitled "Money for Jam," in which was repeated the announcement that had been broadcast the night before, to the effect that Messrs. Barton and Peters, aircraft manufacturers at Estwick, would pay the sum of ten pounds to anyone giving information that would lead to the recovery of a machine bearing identifying marks Y42, STR., E3 stencilled on its sides, and would also pay all expenses involved in communicating with them. But the general public were told nothing about the necessity of guarding the machine from inspection, nor given any hint that it was a "hush-hush" type of craft. Barton and Peters, as Head knew vaguely, made many hush-hush machines for Air Force use, and, judging by the "confidential" sent out to all main police stations in the country, this was something of the sort.

It had met with disaster over the sea, of course—Estwick was not more than twenty miles from the coast. Had it fallen anywhere on land, someone would have heard the noise of its descent, or would have seen it, either intact or wrecked—an aeroplane is not a thing that can be overlooked easily, and the pilot would not run a Barton and Peters "hush-hush" machine into any hangar but that of its makers. As a bit of news, Head decided, the paragraph was interesting, but no more. He passed to consideration of a film star's fifth divorce, and, finding it decidedly uninteresting, turned to the stock market reports and ascertained that pigs were quiet and store cattle had an upward tendency.

Leaving Mrs. Wadden seated in the car beside the gateway of Condor Grange, the superintendent walked along the drive through the pretty garden to the front door and rang the bell. He had never had occasion to call here before, but had often seen the seventeenth-century frontage with its diamond-paned windows from the road, and had reflected that those windows would be enough to drive a cleaner mad, with their tiny, leaded panes. Apart from a ruined church tower on the hillside a quarter of a mile away, the Grange was all that was left of a one-time flourishing village, killed by the decline in agriculture and by the growth of Westingborough less than four miles away.

Randall Bell, the present owner of the Grange and of a considerable acreage of land round it, ran young store cattle over most of his holding, and such labourers and cattlemen as he employed cycled over from Westingborough, where they could enjoy cinemas in their spare time, have a choice of public bars, patronise the local bookmaker to his advantage and their detriment (as a rule) and enjoy all the amenities of fully advanced civilisation. Bell himself kept two good cars, one for his daughters' use and one for his own, and had four good hunters in his stables; he was a rather plethoric man, just past middle age, bald and white-moustached, whose appearance proclaimed quite plainly that he did himself well. Wadden had written him about the purchase of the land, and had met him once to see about it, but had postponed even mention of a definite agreement until "the missis" could take a look at it.

It was the right sort of day, he decided as he waited after ringing the bell, for the missis to take her look. Spring was about to merge into summer; the foliage on the belt of beech trees just across the road was at its wonderful best: up in heaven a lark was warbling, and many bees were busy about the flowers in the Grange garden; the air was softly warm, with the faintest hint of a breeze from the west, and little woolly white powder puffs for angels flecked the clear blue of the sky—or, Wadden reflected as he waited, these last might have been bleached sponges intended for the use of cherubs about to be bathed. The ideality of the day put him in a poetic mood.

The maid who eventually opened the door informed him that Mr. Bell was at home, and invited him to wait in the spacious, low-ceilinged entrance hall. Presently Bell himself appeared.

"Good morning, superintendent. You've called about that marsh land of mine, I expect?"

"Precisely, Mr. Bell," Wadden answered, and blew, ever so gently. He did not like to hear it called marsh land: the title suggested fogs and floods. "About the land," he amended after a pause.

"To take up three acres, wasn't it?" Bell pursued, ignoring the correction. "I think I understood you to say three, last time."

"And that, sir, is about as far as we got, I think," Wadden confirmed the surmise again. "We didn't get as far as your price."

Again Wadden blew, rather less gently. "Rather stiff, sir, for agricultural land," he suggested. "Good soil, I know, but—"

"But it isn't agricultural land any longer," Bell interrupted. "I may tell you, superintendent, that Mr. Denham—you know him, I expect, the architect at Westingborough—Mr. Denham came out to see me and make inquiries last week about buying the strip between the river and the road—over two hundred acres, altogether. His idea is to form a syndicate and make it a building estate for good class houses."

Wadden shook his head. "Then Denham's got big ideas," he said dissentingly. "There's not enough population in the district to justify a two-hundred-acre building estate. It won't happen."

"Don't you be too sure of that, superintendent," Bell counselled. "On the other side of the town, toward Westingborough Parva, you have nothing but big estates like Long Ridge, Mr. Neville's place, which won't be broken up for years to come. This ground of mine is the only available building land along the river valley—with the advantage of a main road frontage, that is. Of course, this scheme of Denham's will take some time to mature, and I told him you thought of taking up three acres almost at once."

"Merely that if you were going to build on it, he hoped you would employ him as your architect. And you couldn't do better."

"Certainly you can. You're first in the field, and Denham has decided nothing yet. You'll want three acres at the Westingborough end, I expect, to be as near your own town as possible?"

"That was my idea, sir. I've brought my wife out to look at it—she's outside in the car—our car. Could we—would you mind?"

Presently he accompanied his prospective purchaser out to the road, where, at her husband's invitation, Mrs. Wadden got out of the car—their car—and joined the two men for the visit of inspection. She was a small, alert woman, as thin as Wadden was stout; Bell greeted her courteously, and Wadden reflected that the man must be finding his expenses a little too much for him, since he was willing to see two hundred acres of ground fronting his lovely old house turned into a building estate. Well, he had no son to follow him here, and probably his two beautiful daughters were costly possessions to maintain: they ranked among the élite of the district, Wadden knew, and dressed and in every way lived fully up to the part.

Preceding his visitors across the road, Bell opened a gate which gave admittance to a rutted track, wide enough for the passage of a single farm cart, which curved through the belt of beech trees and provided access to the open grassland beyond. He waited to let the superintendent and his wife precede him along the track.

"I'm afraid we shall find the grass rather damp," he observed. "I shut it all up for hay—turned the last herd of yearlings off it at the beginning of April, and it will be ready for cutting in another three weeks or so. But we can keep along by the trees."

"It's well sheltered," Wadden observed for his wife's benefit. "A good fifty yards wide, this beech strip must be, and then you get the woods beginning the other side of the river. Nicely shut in, unless you get a wind from the north—the Westingborough end."

"Even then," Bell remarked, "the curve of the beech strip keeps the wind off. It's concave, and the river convex, as far as the land is concerned. Unless these trees are cut down, the whole area is perfectly sheltered from winds—and from observation too, for that matter. I'd like buyers to build back behind the beeches, and leave them standing—leave my outlook from the other side of the road unspoiled."

"Well, sir, I don't want 'em cut down, if I take up this three acres," Wadden told him. "I want all the shelter I can get."

Foremost of the three, he came to the end of the track and faced the tract of rich, open grassland that sloped gently down toward the river. Faced it only for a second before he turned about.

Bell came up beside him, and Mrs. Wadden moved up too to stand at gaze. They saw the machine lying close in under the trees, perfectly secure from observation. Bell shook his head.

"The remains of one, you mean, superintendent," he said. "It's got no undercarriage, by the look of it, and no propeller."

"Ten pounds," Wadden explained, "money for jam. And expenses," he added after a brief pause of exultation.

For he saw, stencilled roughly in crimson on the smooth side of the fuselage—Y42. STR. E3.

Chapter II
Wreckage of the Day Off

"STOP where you are, old lady!" Wadden commanded sharply. "Mr. Bell, would you mind coming round here for a moment?"

The three had gone along close under the trees until they were nearly abreast the wings of the odd-looking machine—wings that appeared disproportionately small for such a fuselage—and Wadden had gone alone round the propellerless front to the other side. He stood, now, looking down at the body of a young man, which was hidden from the other two by the machine as they stood. That it was only a body was rendered certain by an ugly bullet-hole just in front of the right ear, which, since the man lay with his face fallen to turn toward the aeroplane, and his head pointing in its direction of travel, was uppermost. As he looked down at the corpse, the superintendent blew a gust at gale strength.

"This," he remarked savagely, "is the sort of thing that would happen when I try to take a day off!"

But then the probability of acquiring ten pounds as money for jam for the first time in his life consoled him. Bell came round the nose of the machine and, standing beside him, looked down.

"Old lady!" Wadden gazed across the aeroplane at his wife. "Go back to the car, get in, and wait there for me. Go straight back to it from where you are, and I'll come soon and tell you what to do next."

She obeyed. From force of long habit Wadden took out his watch and registered the time as ten minutes past eleven. He turned to Bell.

"You know the man?" he demanded authoritatively. He was no longer the prospective purchaser of land from a man in a better social position than his own, but the alert and efficient police officer.

"Gatton—Harry Gatton," Bell said. "He called to see my elder daughter about eight o'clock yesterday evening."

"About half-past eight—yes, it would be about half an hour. About that, I think. But—but—dead like this. Shot—look!" He pointed.

"I have looked," Wadden told him. "He arrived in this." He made it an assertion, and pointed at the aeroplane.

"He couldn't," Bell dissented. "We should have heard it, as near the house as this. Besides, the propeller is missing, as you can see."

"And it'd be crashed, landing here with no wheels under it," Wadden added. "Yet I know he did arrive in it."

He looked back beyond the tail end of the machine, and then pointed in that direction. "It had wheels when it got here," he said. "Look at those tracks in the grass. Re— what do they call it?"

"That's it. Look here, Mr. Bell, you can take it. I'll buy three acres at fifty pounds an acre, and I'll pick my position at the Westingborough end when I can get another day off, if that'll suit you."

"I accept the offer," Bell answered promptly. "Meanwhile—" He looked down at the corpse again, and then at the superintendent.

"Meanwhile, I'm going to ask your assistance." He took out his note-book and pencil, and wrote. Then he tore out the page.

"I'm staying here on guard, for the present," he stated. "I want you to go and telephone from your house to Westingborough at once. Ask for police, and then for Inspector Head. He'll be in the office—I left him in charge there. Tell him to trunk call these people, Barton and Peters, and give them your address as the place where the plane has been located. Then tell him Gatton is lying shot dead beside it, and I want him out here at once, with Doctor Bennett, Sergeant Wells, and four men. He'd better turn out Jeffries with the big saloon, and drive himself in the two-seater. That corpse'll have to go back in the saloon. Can you remember all this, or shall I repeat it?"

"You needn't repeat it." Bell took the page from the note-book and looked at the writing. "Trunk call Barton and Peters, fetch out Bennett—he's my own doctor, by the way—and also Sergeant Wells and four men. Jeffries to drive the big saloon."

"Our regular duty car," Wadden explained. "And Head is to drive the two-seater—I expect he'll take Bennett in it. If you're sure you've got it all clear, Mr. Bell, off you go, and hurry it. Go round the front of the plane again, and if you see any footprints apart from what my wife may have made, for heaven's sake don't tread over them!"

He knelt beside the corpse of Harry Gatton as Bell hurried away. The clothing, he noted, was thin, summery stuff, not in the least like the outfit an aeroplane pilot might be supposed to be wearing. But then, looking at the machine, Wadden observed the open door in the side of the fuselage, and saw that its edges were rubber-padded, like those of his own refrigerator door at home. The cockpit, as nearly as he could see, was big enough for two occupants, and when that door was closed would be completely shut off from the effects of the outer air.

"He couldn't have been murdered for the sake of the propeller, surely," Wadden soliloquised as he turned his attention to the corpse again. "And yet, where is the damned thing?"

Head nodded assent. "It's in the saloon," he said. "Go and get it, sergeant. That door, and any likely parts of the fuselage."

"You two—" Wadden nodded at two of his men who stood, awaiting orders—"go and search among the trees for any footprints, and keep an eye out for an aeroplane propeller at the same time. It must have spun off into the copse—the machine couldn't have landed without one."

"It did," Head asserted. "Look for footprints, Williams, but don't bother about a propeller, because there wasn't one. Come here, chief."

As the two men went off, he took the superintendent to the front of the machine, and pointed toward where, in an aeroplane of normal design, the nose and propeller boss would have been situated. But, instead of either, they looked into an open, box-like aperture, the full width and height of the fuselage at its entrance, and tapering inward to its back end, which was closed by a forest of small metal blades about three feet back from the opening. Wadden stared into the thing.

"Very hush-hush," Head said, and glanced at Doctor Bennett, still on his knees and busy examining the body.

"Yes, but busted," Wadden expostulated. "The whole front fallen out, propeller and all. Look at it!"

"In other words," Head said, "by displacing air so that the aeroplane rushes forward in it. But don't you see—those blades in there act in the same way? Obviously they're put there to pull air into that cavity at an enormous pressure—to create a vacuum, practically, in front of the machine, and then the pressure of air behind drives it toward the vacuum. And I noticed two dark holes down toward the tail end of the fuselage, too. That's where the compressed air taken in here is pushed out, and helps the propulsion. An entirely new idea in construction, and of course the last word in hush-hush."

"Behind those blades, of course," Head answered with certainty. "They have to be in front of everything, to function fully."

"Oho! Have it your own way, then. Did you get through to Barton and Peters before you started to come here?"

"I did. They're sending for it at once—sending another pilot. I told them this one was dead. And—yes, doctor? What's the verdict?"

Head went and looked down at the body as Wells, returned from the saloon drawn up at the roadside, began working the powdering outfit to ascertain if any finger-prints could be found on or near the open door in the side of the machine. The inspector shook his head gravely.

"Nothing—nothing at all. Propeller fallen off. Have you finished with that cadaver? I mean, can I have it moved when I want?"

"Then we needn't keep you here any longer, doctor. Did Head drive you out here, or did you come in your own car?"

"I see. Well, you'll find my old lady sitting in my car by the Grange gateway. If you'll tell her I said she was to go back home, and take you with her, she can drop you at your own door and save you from wasting time hanging about here."

"Thanks, superintendent," and Bennett moved off slowly, but cast an interested glance or two at the odd machine as he went. Then Head stood up after making his inspection, and nodded at his chief.

"A clean kill," Wadden supplemented. "Or rather, a very dirty kill. Done last night, after he'd called on Miss Bell at the Grange here."

"Umm-m!" Head reflected. "Probably he was turning a trial flight into a love appointment. And now I come to think of it, I've never heard of either of those Bell girls interesting themselves in any of the men round here. Well, it may be a lead of sorts. Where's Bell?"

"At home, I expect. When he came back here after telephoning you, I gave him the two orders commercial travellers don't like getting."

"To go away and stop away," Head surmised correctly. "Anything on or near that door, Wells?" For the sergeant had turned toward him.

There were leather gloves, Head noted, on the hands of the corpse before him. He shook his head at the sergeant.

"No," he said. "His wouldn't be there, and if the man or men who shot him hadn't been wearing gloves, they would have left some mark in the vicinity of that door. Don't powder any more. Join the hunt for tracks among the trees, after you've put the outfit away again."

"They didn't go out to where the grass is long," he remarked. "Too wily for that. A footprint on that grass would show up like a miller in a coal cellar. Query, did they go along the track and out to the road through the gate, or keep among the trees till they were out of sight from the Grange? I think, myself, they'd do that."

"I don't think so. This belt of trees would have a muffling effect, and the Grange is a good hundred yards away. They'd take it for a motorcycle engine backfiring, or something of that sort."

"If anyone did, I'll know it before I leave here," Head said rather grimly. "Meanwhile, chief, will you tackle the inquest arrangements—get the body away and all that? My place is here for the present, I think, if you'll attend to that end for me."

"Yes—oh, yes!" Wadden assented sadly. "And this—this!—is my day off, a nice, quiet day out in the car—our car—with the old lady! And my tomatoes under glass no nearer than when I started!"

He broke off, for Constable Williams, emerging from the track leading to the road, approached him and saluted.

"Found the tracks, sir. Two sets, all the way through the undergrowth as far as the trees follow the course of the road, men's tracks. They got through a hole in the hedge, then on to the road."

"Right. Take post at that gap, and stay there till relieved. It's another lead, chief, but there's no hurry about it. I'm for the Grange and the people in it, before anything else. But I wonder—"

"Gosh, but they've been quick!" he remarked eventually, looking up into the sky. "There it is, chief—see?" He pointed up over the wooded tract on the far side of the river. "They've seen this plane, too, and are heading straight here. Well, it's good landing for them."

"What I want to know," Wadden said, "is how this cockeyed imitation of a real aeroplane managed to light here without Bell hearing it from the Grange. That one up there must be miles away yet, but we can hear it now. And he told me he didn't hear this one at all."

Head went on gazing upward for a few seconds. A shining dot against the blue, as the advancing aeroplane appeared, head on to them, was growing larger, but beyond question it was many times farther away than the distance between them and the Grange, and distinctly audible.

"If he did," Head said, "he got up after he was dead and went and threw the pistol in the river, and then came back and laid down here again. Have you seen any sign of a pistol anywhere?"

"Now kick me all the way to the gate," Wadden responded sourly. "I'm going, anyhow—going to find Wells and tell him to come and fetch this corpse. Oh, Wells?" He lifted his voice to a stentorian bellow, and a reply came back from under the beeches somewhere.

Head was quite content with the arrangement of affairs. In matters of staff organisation, and such details as the ordering of this inquest, Wadden was far better than himself, and he knew it; on the other hand, when it came to getting his nose down to a trail of this kind, Wadden yielded place to his inspector with no hesitation at all, and knew it better to do so. Thus, complementing each other, they made an admirable pair of workers, each necessary to the other.

"Take the corpse out to the saloon," Wadden bade, as soon as the sergeant was near enough to hear the order. "I'm coming along too. You do your stuff here, Head—I've seen aeroplanes land before, and you can tell me all about it if this one busts itself or catches fire, and then I'll make arrangements for all the inquests!"

"Hold on, Wells!" Head countermanded the order. "Just a moment, supe.—I'm not happy, yet. I want some pictures."

"You would!" Wadden retorted disgustedly, "and I'll have to wait and see that damned bumble-bee come down, after all."

For by this time the approaching plane, nearing them and circling, was somewhere over Westingborough, evidently with a view to following the course of the river and descending on the stretch of grass land near the machine by which the corpse lay.

"Get the camera out of the car, Wells," Head bade, waiting for no further permission from his superior officer. "Take me half a dozen good pictures of this body as it lies, then put a fresh roll of film in the camera and leave it here with me when you go."

"Very good, sir." And Wells went off to get the camera. He was an adept at using it, and Head knew he could trust the task to him.

Then, with Wadden and the one man remaining with them, the inspector stood and watched while the monoplane they had seen swooped down and made a perfect landing in the grass between them and the river, not more than a hundred yards distant from where they stood. The propeller ceased to revolve, and three men, all leather-coated and muffled, got out and came across toward them—and Head noted that they left plainly visible tracks, proving that no others had trodden in that lush grass since the man lying here had been killed.

"Lifted the head and put it down again—no more," Wadden answered. "The bullet is still in the skull. He'll do a post-mortem and get it out for you before the inquest."

"Then it was a revolver," Head asserted. "If it had been an automatic pistol, that bullet would have gone clean through. A thirty-two bore revolver, almost certainly. Small bore, anyhow."

They said no more, for now the three air-travellers neared them. A youngish, fair-haired, pleasant-looking man ahead of the other two looked at Wadden in his uniform, and then at Head in his well-cut lounge suit and soft felt hat, and spoke—

Wadden gestured at his inspector. "You'd better talk to him," he said. "Inspector Head, from Westingborough. I'm Superintendent Wadden, but I'm just off, and leaving the investigation here to him."

Of the two others, one hurried forward without speaking and peered through the open doorway in the side of the derelict machine into the cockpit; there were signs of anxiety in his hasty movement.

"Glad to meet you, inspector." The man who had addressed them held out his hand as he spoke. "And you too, superintendent," he added. "My name is French—but I'm not. Lancelot French, a director of Barton and Peters. That's Mr. John Zalescz, looking at his machine, and this"—he turned to the man behind him—"is Mr. Cartwright, one of our pilots. And it appears"—he looked at Sergeant Wells, focussing the camera in readiness to take his shots—"that poor Gatton was caught unawares over his unofficial landing here."

French shook his head very gravely. "We keep our experimental work as quiet as we can," he said, "but the existence of this machine must have leaked out. It was some foreign agent, almost certainly."

The man whom he had declared was Zalescz turned from his scrutiny of the cockpit and came to join them. In spite of his name, he looked English enough, Head decided, and he spoke with no sign of accent.

"Attempted theft of the machine," he said. "But Gatton had locked the ignition, and they couldn't start the engine. The key is in there on the driving seat. I think they killed him to get it."

He had removed his leather cap and goggles, and stood there, an inconspicuous-looking little man; yet, as Head knew, he was a genius of world-wide fame. He inclined his head at both Wadden and the inspector after addressing his statement to French.

"That reward, Mr. French," he said. "You can send it to me—Superintendent Wadden of Westingborough. I found the aeroplane. But I think—we'd better get you to stay here till after the inquest, if you will. Particulars of this man Gatton, and general information."

"Yes, I can stay," French assented, after a few moments of reflection. "Cartwright can take the monoplane back, and Zalescz will pilot his machine. The sooner he gets away with it, the better."

"We'll let him go as soon as we can," Wadden promised. "You didn't lose any time in getting here, by the way."

"We daren't lose time," French told him. "STR. E3 is supremacy in the air embodied in metal, and secrecy about it is vital."

"But is it still secret?" Wadden asked. "I mean—whoever shot your man Gatton may have taken the secret away—"

"It is not so simple as that, superintendent," Zalescz intervened. "I have seen enough to know the machine is untouched. Whoever they were, they hoped to fly it away and dissect it at leisure after killing Gatton—I think that was why he was killed. And all the mechanism is hidden—they were disturbed before they learned anything."

Head, peering into the cockpit of the strange machine, saw that it was just big enough to hold two persons in the air-cushioned, bucket seats, and was lined with rubber or some composition that would not take finger-prints; all the visible controls were vulcanite-handled, and the handles were serrated—there was no hope of obtaining a print anywhere. But, on what was evidently the driving seat, there lay a slender strip of white metal, rather like a long key for a Yale-pattern lock, which might possibly retain prints. He reached in and took it up gingerly by its edges between his finger and thumb, and brought it across to the waiting group, when he held it up.

He took a similar key from his pocket. "Come, and I will show you," he offered. "But it is understood that it is in confidence."

He followed to the door in the side of the machine. Zalescz, his key in his hand, got in and took the driving seat. "Look," he bade, and, switching on a light, pointed at the rubber-covered instrument board before him. "This little bronze plate."

It was a small oblong of metal, apparently screwed into the board by a stud at each corner. Head read the lettering on it—

ZALESCZ STRATOSPHERE 400 H.P.
No. 3 EXPERIMENTAL,
BARTON & PETERS, LTD., ESTWICK.

He pushed at the lower edge of the plate with his thumb, and it slid upward on the dash, revealing a hole behind it in which he inserted the key he held.

"A simple trick," he said. "You would say that plate is a fixture, unless you knew."

"She must not be taken out by any unauthorised person," Zalescz explained, "and we took care that she should not be. This, concealing the ignition, was Mr. French's idea—I do not think of everything."

Zalescz nodded and smiled. "As English as a man may be whose grandfather was a Pole," he answered. "English by instinct, say."

"And I you," Zalescz answered and smiled again. "The Forrest case, and the Strong Box murders—I followed them and realised how you do your work. But now—may I take my toy away?"

Leaning forward as he sat, Zalescz pushed the door wide and called: "Mr. French, do you go back with me, or in that noise-box?"

"In neither," French called back. "I'm staying here for the present. Tell Gardner I'll ring through during the day."

He worked a lever like a pump handle beside his seat, and gradually the strange machine rose up from the ground, disclosing two small, heavily-tyred wheels and a slender, tubular undercarriage. Then he turned his key, and instantly the grinding whirr of a self-starter began, and ceased again as the engine picked up. Zalescz looked out.

Then he shut the door. There was no more noise from the engine than from that of a high-powered car, but, in front of the plane, Head saw the beech boughs bend toward it as a tremendous rush of air sucked them down, and he heard the "surr-rr-rr" of the displaced air. Then the fabric slid forward on its wheels, and, as the fuselage passed him, an outrush of air from the vent near the tail end sent him staggering back two or three paces. He saw the machine swerve out from under the trees toward the river, and then it lifted, cleared the woods beyond the water, and grew smaller. And all the while there was no more noise than a well-kept, high-powered car might have made, and he knew how it was that Randall Bell had not heard Gatton land here.

He went back to the others. "It's a miracle!" he exclaimed, with awe in his voice. "No wonder you want it kept secret."

"Zalescz is the miracle," French responded. "He's not satisfied with it yet—says it's too noisy. But he's never satisfied."

"I've put a fresh film in, sir," he said, "and I'll get these I've taken developed and printed for you."

"Now get the body away to the car," Wadden bade, "and I'll come along. We've no more to do here. You carry on, Head."

Head reflected for a moment or so. There were other angles to the case, and he decided that French could wait awhile.

"Not quite yet," he said, "if you'll forgive me for keeping you waiting for an hour or less. I want—there's a lady in that house across the road who may throw some light on all this, after I've had a look at some tracks among the trees here. I won't be very long over either. Will you wait here, or shall I meet you in Westingborough? I mean, since you've consented to stay to give us information, you'll have to go there eventually."

"I'll wait here and go with you," French answered without hesitation. Then he turned to the waiting pilot just behind him. "Get aboard the bullet and take her back, Cartwright," he bade. "Unless I find my own transport, I'll telephone for you to come over again and fetch me when I'm ready. Report to Gardner after you land."

"That's another of Zalescz's designs," French observed to Head. "I don't want it to stand around here and get photographed. Now, where shall I wait while you see your lady and do all the rest?"

"You'll find a two-seater car just outside the gate at the end of that track," Head told him, and nodded toward the cart-track under the trees. "I'll join you there as soon as I can."

He went off to seek for the footprints Williams had reported as leading through the undergrowth among the beech trunks.

Chapter III
Sheba Bell

"AH!" Here you are, Williams!" Head came out at the Westingborough end of the strip of beech wood, and got through the gap in the hedge on to the wide, grass-grown verge of the main road. "What's doing?"

"Car tracks, sir," the constable answered, and pointed. "Stopped here, by the look of it. There's a plain mark for you."

Head looked down at the impress left by a car tyre, deeply sunken in the soft earth at the edge of the road macadam. Two wheels, of course, had passed over the spot, but the track of the rear tyre was plain, superimposed on that of the front wheel. It had been made, evidently, by an almost new tyre, of which the tread was composed of circular rubber studs—with one notable exception: for one of the studs was imperfectly formed, being almost diamond-shaped.

"It's a gift, Williams!" Head exclaimed exultantly, and began opening the camera he carried. "Two men—see if you agree this—left their car here while they went to kill that man and try to steal his plane, and they went along the road to do it—the tracks under the trees don't go there, but they came back here. Therefore the two went by the road to the gate, and came back through the beech strip."

"So I made it, sir," Williams assented. "You saw my feet too, where I followed them before reporting the tracks?"

"I couldn't miss your feet," Head responded, "but you did it neatly and left everything plain for me. One of them was about my own weight, judging by the depth of footprint where the mould was soft, and the other was a sort of Jimmy Wilde—a little man."

"Good for you, Williams. Now look here. About fifty yards along their trail—fifty yards back from here, that is—they had to walk across an open patch of soft leaf mould that gives their prints perfectly, and the fools kept beside each other instead of walking in single file. I expect you noted the place I mean?"

"Right. Now, Williams, I want you to go back there—I'll attend to this wheel track, and when I've got some photographs of it you can forget about it. Go back there, and sit there till I get to Westingborough and send Sergeant Wells back to take casts of those footprints. You're in for a long wait, I'm afraid, but it can't be helped. Sit over them, and take full particulars if anyone comes along sight-seeing, and arrest 'em if you feel like it. You'll have to starve till Wells comes and takes his casts, but I can't help that."

The man went off through the gap and vanished among the trees. Head focussed the camera, and took four consecutive snaps of the tyre-marks from different angles. His case, he felt, was shaping itself with amazing rapidity; it was, in fact, proceeding with such smoothness that he felt sure of coming up against some apparently insuperable obstacle to progress shortly. He closed the camera and went back along the road toward the Grange, and toward the car by which he had instructed Lancelot French to wait for him. But he was not ready for French, yet. He reached the car, nearly opposite the gateway giving access to the Grange garden. French, smoking a cigarette and seated on the running board, got up and advanced out into the road.

He went on, passing through the gateway of the Grange while French returned to the car and resumed his seat on the running board, where he lighted another cigarette and sat gazing thoughtfully at the wide, creeper-grown frontage of the old house. There was that in his gaze which might indicate more than interest in the architecture of Condor Grange, a personal feeling regarding it, perhaps.

Randall Bell himself opened the front door and bade Head enter. The inspector followed him through the wide entrance hall to a long, low-ceilinged room, a restful place in which was such an atmosphere as can only be gathered by generations of use; it had been said more than once, and not only in Westingborough, that, if Condor Grange and its contents came into the market when Randall Bell died, every antique dealer and art collector in the kingdom would be there, and it had also been said, though probably with exaggeration, that nothing inanimate in the house was less than a century old.

"Over my telling you that Gatton called here yesterday evening, I expect, Inspector," Bell opened before Head could begin on him. "Well, fire away, and I'll tell you all I know. First of all, though, I want to tell you I had no idea he came in an aeroplane. I didn't go out during the evening, and I thought he had a car outside."

"If you are called as a witness at the inquest, Mr. Bell, you will not be questioned on that point," Head assured him. It was his first encounter with the man, and he liked him on sight. A proud man, evidently, and with it an honourable man, distressed over this happening which indirectly affected him and his family, but willing and even anxious to help as far as lay in his power.

"I'll go straight to it," Head promised him. "First, at what time did Mr. Gatton call here last night to see Miss Bell?"

"Oh!" Bell looked a little perturbed. "So you know he called to see my daughter?" he half questioned.

"If you didn't want me to know," Head answered, "you should not have told Superintendent Wadden."

"In a minute or two, thanks—I'll see them all before I go. Did you have any talk at all with Mr. Gatton?"

"None at all. He was shown straight in to the room my daughters regard as their own. Only my elder daughter was there, and he was with her for about half an hour, and then went away again."

"I'll tell you frankly, Inspector. Gatton came here last night to see my daughter—I've had a talk with her since I saw his body, and got the whole truth from her—he came here last night to persuade her to change her mind about not marrying him, and failed. You see, there was a sort of half-understanding between them—Gatton was a good sort, and I had no objection to her marrying him, but she changed her mind about it a short while ago, and he's been here twice in the last fortnight on this same errand. Last night, she tells me, she dismissed him finally. When I said goodnight to him, he naturally looked rather dejected. Quiet and depressed, you understand."

"No. I closed the front door on him and came back into this room—sat down to read in here. My younger daughter was in here with me."

"This was his second call here within a fortnight, you say," Head observed after a brief period of reflection. "Do you know whether he came by air or road the other time—for the first visit?"

"I've no idea. He arrived about the same time, and possibly stayed a little longer than he did last night. I heard no aeroplane—I have heard no aeroplane near here for months, till that one landed on the marsh an hour or so ago and flew away again just now."

Head decided that the man was far from reliable as regards time. It was a full half-hour since the machine which Zalescz had called a noise-box rose from the marsh to return to Estwick.

"Yes, I saw it," he said. "Now, Mr. Bell, I'm going to ask a good deal of you before I go, with a view to clearing this affair up—"

"Thanks very much. First, though, after Mr. Gatton had left here last night, did you hear any unusual sounds from across the road—or from anywhere else, for that matter?"

"Not to notice it. You see, Inspector, we're about a hundred yards from the beginning of the rise leading to Condor Hill itself. Cars and motorcycles come down that hill with their engines idling, and just as they get near here they open out to keep speed up on the level, and then there's a backfire—in about one out of six cases, probably. But enough to make it highly improbable that anyone in this house would take any notice of it. We're too used to the sound."

"Yes, I see—thanks very much for the explanation. Now, Mr. Bell, I want you to permit me to see everyone in the house, one by one, and ask about that possibility of a shot being heard. And, last of all, I want you to let me question Miss Sheba Bell about Gatton's visit."

"Yes," he said, "but you'll have to wait if you wish to question my younger daughter. She went out for a long tramp with her two dogs before your superintendent called this morning, and hasn't come back yet. And I must warn you that Miss Sheba is terribly upset over Gatton's death. I realise that you want to know all you can from everyone, but I must ask you to go gently with her and spare her all you can."

"That is understood," Head assured him. "Now, if you don't mind my seeing all the other members of the household first, I'll do so. It will give Miss Bell all the more time to recover from the shock."

"I appreciate your consideration, Inspector. I'll have them in here for you, one at a time, and you can ask them what you like."

A Westingborough cynic who knew both Sheba and Jadis Bell by sight was responsible for the statement that the two sisters were so dissimilar in appearance that they could afford to be seen out together. Bell had had them both presented at court, and had given them two seasons in London, under the chaperonage of a distant, titled connection of his family, since their mother had died years before. She had come of an old Cornish family, which was, possibly, the reason for Sheba's almost eastern type of beauty: it may have been a throw-back to some Phoenician trader who sailed to the Cassiterides in pre-Roman days and left the impress of his race among the progeny of a Celtic tribe.

Evidence both of the beauty as such, and of its type, was provided when, during her second London season, Sheba Bell appeared at a big fancy-dress ball in the character of Salammbo, with the Canaanitish costume that Flaubert describes so well copied as far as decency and the exigencies of modern dancing would permit. Half-a-dozen or so of the weekly illustrated papers gave photographs of the beautiful Miss Bell in the garb of old Carthage, and Randall Bell went purple with pride over her when he saw them. But, in spite of this triumph, Sheba never quite forgave her sister over her being termed a typical English beauty by the leading portrait artist of the day.

They were utterly dissimilar, in looks, temperament, and tastes: Sheba was exotic, a freak in such a family as that to which Randall Bell belonged; Jadis was healthy-minded and bodied, an outdoor girl, fresh as the winds that beat on Condor Hill—a trifle hard, in the opinion of young men who sought and usually failed to find her, and, as might be expected, her father's favourite. Sheba kept herself too much apart from him, but Jadis compensated as much as a daughter could for the loss of his wife, and, incidentally, managed to stand between him and re-marriage. She fenced off would-be stepmothers very cleverly.

Westingborough of the class in which the Bells moved decided that the girls' names were quaintly attractive; tradespeople wondered what on earth their father and mother could have been thinking about, and the servant class voted them simply heathenish.

With her dark, heavy-lidded and long-lashed eyes inscrutable in expression, Sheba Bell entered the room in which Head waited after he had ascertained that no other member of the household had heard the shot that killed Harry Gatton—or, hearing, had not noted it as a shot—and had also been told, to his disappointment, that nobody had seen what became of Gatton after he left the house. He had not expected to find anyone reporting knowledge of the one or more responsible for Gatton's death; that one or more had probably taken care to keep from sight of the house, in going to, as well as in returning from the point at which the body had been found.

Now, seeing this tall girl, very conscious of her powers of attraction, evidently, and rather insolent in the way in which she seated herself and looked up at him, he felt that her father had been wrong in describing her as terribly upset by the tragedy. She appeared composed, even guarded in her manner, and antagonistic to this watchful, capable questioner, as she knew from his repute that he would prove.

"Mr. Head, my father tells me," she opened as he bowed to her. "I understand you wish to ask me about last night—Mr. Gatton's visit?"

"When did you first meet Mr. Gatton, Miss Bell?" Head asked curtly. He felt that, though she was very lovely, he did not like this girl.

"It would be—let me see!" She was quite composed, he noted. "Yes, at the beginning of last November. My sister and I went to stay with an aunt at Estwick, and I met Mr. Gatton at an Air Force dance while we were there. Why?"

"Can you tell me the date of that dance?" Head ignored her final query as he put the question.

"If you don't mind, Miss Bell, I'll do the questioning," he told her bluntly. "It may save you trouble at the inquest. Now—"

She had been leaning back as she sat in an armchair before him, but she sat erect, with fear in her lovely dark eyes, to interrupt—

"I am afraid you will," he told her firmly. "It appears, as nearly as I can tell at present, that you and your father were the last two people to see Mr. Gatton before he went to his death, and you know more about his reason for coming here than anyone else."

"We'll leave that point, for the present," he suggested quietly. "I am concerned now with yesterday, Miss Bell, not with to-morrow, and I tell you frankly I want your help. Will you give it?"

"Yes," she answered after a pause of hesitation, and again leaned back in the chair. Head had the impression that she yielded to an inevitability, but at the same time resented it.

"Thank you," he said, rather drily; her consent to help appeared too qualified by reservations for his taste. "About this Air Force dance, for a start. Do you remember if anyone else from Westingborough or from anywhere in this district was present at it?"

Again, momentarily, she sat up. "Why, of course not!" she answered. "If there were, what on earth difference does it make?"

He felt certain that, unexpected though the question might have appeared, she had expected it and been on guard against it.

"If there were anyone else—" she began, and stopped. He saw her lips close firmly, and knew he would have to seek elsewhere for information on the point, for this girl would say no more.

"Please sit down, Miss Bell," he asked quietly. "If you don't, you may find the coroner putting far more embarrassing questions than mine to you, and before an audience instead of in private."

"I am concerned," he said slowly, "with the cause of this unfortunate man's death, which is almost certainly a case of murder. I have no wish to pry into your feelings, Miss Bell, nor into his with regard to you—I have no wish to do anything beyond bringing the one who killed him to justice. Will you please understand that I intend to ask you only what I regard as necessary questions for that end?"

He liked her, then—for the moment—and realised how very attractive she could be if she chose. With that half-smile, and with her soft, dark eyes half-closed as they were then, he knew she could have made slaves of Harry Gatton and a hundred others.

"We'll go back a step, if you don't mind, Miss Bell," he said. "I suggest that Mr. Gatton was very much in love with you?"

"And you—your feelings with regard to him? Forgive me, I would not ask this if I didn't feel it necessary."

"I—" she hesitated. "Frankly, Mr. Head, since you insist, I liked him very much. Perhaps, for a little while—" she did not end it.

"You thought you really cared for him, and then found you didn't," he suggested. "And last night you told him you didn't?"

"But he's been here twice to persuade you to marry him," he pointed out. "Last night was not the only occasion."

"He has been here three times," she amended. "The first time he had leave, and stayed a night at the Duke of York, in Westingborough. I went over and had lunch and spent the afternoon with him."

"Well, then, I—I told him I was not sure. Don't ask me to put it more plainly, please. I wasn't sure. It's so difficult, talking about anything of this sort to a man like you. Then—you insist on knowing, I realise—then when I was sure, I answered one of his letters, told him plainly I couldn't think of marrying him."

"You're not an ordinary police officer, are you?" she said gravely, yet with a hint of coquettishness designed—perhaps—to throw him off his line of questioning by the flattery it embodied.

"He came to see you—twice," Head persisted, "to attempt to persuade you to alter that decision, and accept him."

"We won't consider me," he said gravely. "Miss Bell, did you hear the shot that killed Mr. Gatton last night?"

"No." The abruptness of the question put her on her guard again; as he saw and regretted, she was once more watchful, hostile. "If I did, I took it for a car engine. I didn't notice it."

"Whom have you told that Mr. Gatton came by air to see you?" he pursued, with as much of an air of thoughtful unconcern as he could assume.

With that admission, she betrayed that her reply to his preceding question had been a lie. She made him certain that someone other than herself had known that Harry Gatton would fly on his visit to her, but persistence, or accusation of lying, might rob him finally of the chance of getting at the truth. He did not attempt it.

Again she hesitated, and he knew that she was deliberating as to whether it would be safe to lie. She decided that it was not.

"Thank you very much, Miss Bell. I'm not going to trouble you to answer any more questions, and I may say you have helped me materially by what you have told me. I'm afraid it will be impossible to let you off appearing at the inquest, but I'll see what can be done over it."

She rose to her feet, and, as she stood facing him, her eyes were kind and friendly—lovely, soft eyes, with violet light in their depths. She was all allure, for the moment, as Head realised; for what stake, he asked himself, was the woman playing? For she was woman now, no longer merely girl.

"If possible, Mr. Head. I don't want to ask too much of you, and I know you must do your duty. But—we all know what you are—we're so proud of you in Westingborough, after the Forrest case and all the rest. I know you'll do your best to spare me, won't you?"

He watched her out from the room after opening the door for her. He would in truth do his very best—to discover who had killed Harry Gatton, whatever it might disclose with regard to this clever woman with whom he had fenced. Then, turning back into the room for a second, he looked through the window, remembering that he had left Lancelot French waiting a very long time. But what he saw through the window set his mind at rest concerning French. He went out to the entrance hall, and faced Randall Bell.

"I'm afraid, Mr. Head, you gave my daughter a bit of a gruelling," Bell said rather ruefully.

"I confined myself to absolute necessities for the case, Mr. Bell," Head answered. "I'm very grateful to you for the way you have put yourself and everybody here to trouble to help me."

"Not at all, Inspector—not at all. Only too glad to help over this distressing affair."

Head shook hands, since the other offered it, and went out toward his car and the man he had left by it—and one other.

Chapter IV
Y42. STR. E3

SEATED on the running board of Head's car—it belonged, in reality, to the Westingborough police force, but was devoted solely to Head's use—Lancelot French took out his case and considered a fourth cigarette, but replaced it and put the case back in his pocket. He was questioning what this very dilatory detective inspector would say if he himself annexed the car and drove off to Westingborough with it, when a silky-coated black spaniel came sniffing at him, and he looked up and then literally jumped from his seat on the board.

"I've been sitting here and sitting here, waiting," he told her. "I thought you were in there, and just wouldn't come out." He nodded at the gateway leading to the front door of the Grange.

He shook his head. "I'm waiting for a large policeman," he explained. "At least, rather a famous policeman, and rather a nice chap at that, from what I've seen of him. Inspector Head, in fact."

"I waited for him, and hoped for you," he said gravely. "Hope is a virtue, you know, and for once it gets its own reward."

"Very nicely put, but it doesn't sound right, somehow. Is this your car—did you come here in it?"

He shook his head. "It belongs to your inspector—the inspector, perhaps I ought to say. He asked me to wait for him, and I didn't mind a bit, because I thought you might take pity on me and come out to talk while I waited. It's years since we talked, you know."

"There's a song about it," he observed. "'Will you love me in November as you did in May?' But it's the wrong way round."

"And I didn't—you didn't— Oh, do let's talk sense, since you are here, Mr. French!" She accented the prefix to his name, and laughed again, and he realised her as tweed-clad, wind-blown from the breeze that swept over the crest of Condor Hill, sun-browned even thus early in the year, with laughter in her blue eyes and gleams of prisoned sunshine in her hair—Jadis Bell!

At that he remembered all that the unexpected sight of her had driven from his mind. "One of our pilots has been killed near here," he said. "Just there—on the marshes." He indicated the gateway opposite that leading to the Grange. "Inspector Head is inquiring about it from your father, I believe. In any case, I'm waiting for him."

He nodded. "Accident of some sort, I think," he said evasively. "Don't let's talk about it—the inspector will be out here after me in a minute or two. Miss Bell, I've got to stay here for the inquest on the man—in Westingborough, that is. Will it be possible to see something of you while I'm here?"

"Harry Gatton," he answered reluctantly. "I expect you remember him. At that Air Force dance where I first met you."

"Mr. Gatton—yes," she said. "He came to see my sister last night, and now you say—killed here! Oh, Mr. French, this is terrible!"

"I'm sorry I told you, now. But you'll have to hear all about it, of course. If I can spare you anything in any way—"

She shook her head. "No, she sent him away last night, for good. But still—sending him away, and then—it wasn't suicide, was it?"

"Comfort yourself on that at once," he adjured. "No, on my word of honour, Harry Gatton did not commit suicide—he wasn't that sort."

The black spaniel, standing and gazing up at him, sniffed and whined suddenly; Jadis' wire-haired terrier was away along the hedge, investigating rabbit-crossings while its mistress stayed here. French stooped to caress the spaniel, which licked his hand.

"Sam." She nodded at the spaniel. "Didn't you, Sam? Dogs are wiser than we think, and he's the wisest dog I know."

"All right, Sam," he said, "there's no harm coming to you, old chap—nor to your mistress, while I'm anywhere in sight of her. But seriously, Miss Bell, is there some chance of seeing you while I'm in the district?"

"Having carefully kept away for six months, you might call once, if the four miles isn't too much for you," she told him.

"Oh, but—don't be altogether icebergish, please!" he pleaded earnestly. "I only met you twice while you were at Estwick, and hadn't the nerve to write to you after you left. Please, Miss Bell?"

"Once," she said. "Then we can decide whether it can grow to twice, if you stay here long enough to make it possible."

"How nice of you! But we'll decide about the twice when the once happens, not now. Quiet, Sam! Leave the gentleman alone!"

"It isn't—I know what non sequitur means," he contradicted. "Don't try to get out of things by heaving Latin at me. And there's that darned inspector hurrying out here as if his life depended on it! Miss Bell—quick! Tea time this afternoon—yes?"

"Yes," she assented, as Head emerged to the road. "That will be once, and on the present arrangement you have only once more."

"I refuse to admit any arrangement," he said resolutely. "I may stay here months and months—"

"It was Humpty-Dumpty said that, wasn't it?" she inquired. "Or was it the caterpillar? I must read my Alice again."

"I don't think it was either. Well, Mr. Head—all finished?" He looked away from her to Head as the latter approached the car.

"I wish it were," Head said rather grimly, and lifted his hat to the girl. "Miss Bell, I think? I hoped to meet you before leaving."

"Yes?" She sounded decidedly cool. "Mr. French here has told me he was waiting for you, Mr. Head. What do you want with me?"

With his initial glance he had decided that he would get nothing from her. His questioning had meant much to her sister, but it would mean nothing to her; she was outside this case, apart from it.

"Only to ask if you heard a shot from beyond the beech trees across the road at any time after half-past eight yesterday evening," he said.

She shook her head. "I heard a car popping occasionally," she answered, "but we are used to that, here. No, I heard no shot."

"Did you see anyone—on foot, probably—out here, or going in among the beech trees here? Or waiting about in the road?"

"Nobody. I didn't look. I was with my father practically the whole evening. Why, Mr. Head? Do you suspect—?" She broke off, and looked from him to French and back again.

"Nobody—and everybody, at present, Miss Bell," he answered. "Except you, that is. Do forgive me for troubling you, please. Mr. French, we'd better get along to Westingborough, if you don't mind."

"I want to hire a car, Inspector," French remarked, when they were a good half-mile along the road and Jadis Bell had called her terrier to her and passed through the gateway to the Grange.

"I wish all I wanted were half as easy," Head responded rather sourly. "Parham's garage, not far from the Duke of York—your problem is easily solved. Mr. French, you're late for lunch anyhow, and so am I, and we're keeping a most worthy member of the force sitting hungry while he watches certain footprints under the trees to make sure they won't get damaged by anyone. But do you mind if I pull up and have a talk to you here, where nobody can hear us?"

"Carry on," French advised gravely. "I'll tighten my belt a hole or two, and do my best for you. But make it snappy—I'm a hungry man."

"You've got another driving you," Head said, and, slowing, drew in to the side of the wide road. "I'll be as quick as I can."

He swung the steering wheel until both near wheels were travelling on the soft, grassy verge of the made road; then he disengaged the clutch, pulled on the hand brake, and the car stopped. He released the clutch, and, since the accelerator was full out, the engine stopped.

He did not speak. He wanted all that French could tell him, but, since he had seen Gatton's body lying beside the mystery plane, events and impressions had rushed at him with such bewildering rapidity that he wanted time—time to give to each event its due weight, time to arrange his impressions and collect his inferences from each set of premises. A case against the murderer of Harry Gatton was beginning to shape itself, and he was beginning to see who the murderer might be, though as yet he had no idea of the man's identity or where to find him. The instinct which had led him to a successful conclusion in other cases was beginning to work, and he wanted to give it time to work, in spite of the man waiting rather impatiently beside him.

"If you'll forgive my making the remark, inspector," French observed after a rather long silence, "that was damned bad driving."

"Was it?" Head responded absently. "I'm afraid I wasn't thinking about driving. I believe I'm fairly good, as a rule."

"Well, when you start again, remember your engine is in gear," French counselled. "If you don't remember, it's rough on the starter."

Head moved the gear lever into neutral. "It'll be all right now," he said, and then sat silent as before.

French waited, and at last grew impatient. "I'm hungry," he said. "If you weren't thinking about driving, what were you thinking about."

"John Zalescz," Head answered rather dreamily, "and that noiseless, propellerless machine of his."

"Good God, man!" French exclaimed. "You don't suspect John Zalescz of having killed Gatton, surely?"

Head roused himself from his semi-abstraction, realising that the business of classifying his impressions must wait.

"As long as it doesn't last more than an hour," French responded rather wearily. "It's just on two, and I've an appointment at four-thirty. After lunch, that is." He added the last words caustically.

"After my lunch, too," Head assured him. "The story is quite short. A destroyer came into Portsmouth, and some members of the crew were given stalls for the pantomime running at the time. They went in charge of a petty officer, and the manager of the theatre, knowing what sailors are, had a word with the petty officer and asked him to see that the men didn't make comments on the show or misbehave themselves—it being Portsmouth, he knew that sailors don't care, you see."

"They took their seats, with the petty officer very much on the look out," Head proceeded. "Presently, as happens in most pantomimes, the good fairy came on, carrying a wand with a light in the tip, and she had a song beginning with the line—'What shall I do with my golden wand?' She'd got out only the one line when the petty officer sang out—'If any one of you chaps tells her what to do with her blinkin' wand, out he goes on his ruddy ear!' That's all."

"Merely that everybody who has come into this case, so far, is sitting in a stall, and I'm going to see that someone goes out on his ear—out to face a judge and jury, and plead 'Not Guilty' as they all do. My business is to watch them all, and that excepts nobody, neither Mr. John Zalescz, nor you, nor anyone who comes in it."

"You're a flattering sort of devil, inspector, aren't you?" French remarked caustically. "Zalescz is one of the straightest men on earth."

"You're inclined—then—" French's voice grew fierce—"look here! Do you mean you're suspecting me?"

Head laughed in a quiet way. "Cleared, both of you," he said. "If you'd been guilty, you'd have hurried to protest on your own behalf, instead of stopping to go bail for Zalescz. All right, Mr. French, I didn't really suspect either of you. But I want to pick your brains about John Zalescz and that miracle aeroplane of his."

"To tell me much—yes," Head agreed. "I understand quite well that with such an utterly revolutionary design, drawing air in instead of pushing it past, you can't tell me much without landing yourself in trouble. But I don't want to know much, only—"

"Just a minute!" French interrupted. "I can't tell you much because I don't know it myself, not because I'm officially bound to secrecy—as I am, of course. But we have made to Zalescz's designs, and have not made all, by a long way. For instance, we did not make the engine, nor what he calls the air rotors."

"The forest of little blades that pulls the air into the machine," Head suggested. "The ones you see when you look into the front."

"I have a thirst for things like that," Head explained. "It's safe with me, Mr. French—I'm nothing but a policeman, and my mouth stays shut, whatever you tell me. But I want to know everything when I get my nose down to a case like this—even the mechanics of the machine that caused the trouble. Zalescz has designed and perfected something that pulls air into itself and pushes it out again, instead of using a big propeller to push air past the outside. That is so, isn't it?"

"It is so," French agreed. "Also, since the main processes of displacement take place inside the machine, in a properly silenced series of chambers, he has achieved the noiseless aeroplane."

"Approximately, eight times the power of the Rolls car engine," French pointed out. "And what noise does the Rolls engine make? None, practically, as you know. I'll tell you something more about Zalescz, since you're really interested. When he came to design for us, the first thing he noted was the business of swinging propellers and calling for contact and all that, to start an aircraft engine. He said at once that that was archaic, and gave us a two-stage starting dynamo to fit to all engines on experimental machines—we make no others. He said that you don't swing the engine and call for contact on a good high-powered car, so why should you on an aeroplane? And we don't, any more. Also he said that since a car starts easily from cold, an aeroplane driven by a similar type of engine should start and run from cold. And E3 was cold enough when he started up and went off this morning."

"While the other started and went with no propeller swinging, I observed," Head added. "Another of his designs, you said."

"Just so—embodying his two-stage starter on the engine. Now, Mr. Head, Zalescz is heart and soul for us—and we are for our country, all the time. And we're doing things. Have you ever been to the Air Force display at Hendon—their annual show for the public?"

"Don't! Come to Estwick and let me show you some of our stuff instead—as long as you promise me not to say a word about it afterward. I assure you, the design of every one of those wonderful stunting machines to be seen at Hendon is at least two years old, and most of them are three or more years behind our practice. The best is never seen—you'll see scares in the press about the wonderful things other countries are doing while we do nothing, about how much better they are in speed and climb, but those other countries know we are not behind."

"I feel sure of it!" French exclaimed hotly. "Gatton had no business to come here, no business to land anywhere outside our landing grounds with Stratosphere E3, and somebody saw him land, or knew he was going to land, where he did. Somebody, I mean, who wanted to hand the design of E3 to a foreign power, and take the reward—somebody who knew it as the very last word in construction, a thing that means absolute air supremacy. For we know it is that."

"Zalescz is in existence," French pointed out. "And with the design perfected, he could hand plans to half a dozen firms like ours to begin building, in the event of sudden need. And don't think we shall stop at the one, either. Apart from what I've told you, probably you will never hear of the Zalescz Stratosphere noiseless fighter and bomber, for it isn't practicable commercially—the engine and compression chambers take up too much space and render it too expensive as a civil aircraft possibility. But it will be there, uniquely British."

"No. To anticipate it is to precipitate it, and in that sense I'm not. But a strong man armed—and very fully armed at that—is the only man who can count himself safe. The others are arming."

"Cheerful, aren't you? But now, about Zalescz. And more especially, about his friends. Did he give anything away?"

"No. When it comes to his work, Zalescz is one of the most secretive men I have ever known. He gloats, all by himself."

"Zalescz himself came and ordered Gatton out, and told him to be back by nine-thirty, which was the latest the machine could be safely landed by the last of the daylight. And Gatton was not to go anywhere on this earth. You note that I call the machine Stratosphere E3—experimental number three, which means that numbers one and two have been scrapped. Yesterday evening, when he left Estwick, Gatton was due for a stratosphere flight—perhaps you noted that the cockpit of the machine was entirely enclosed, to keep out the outer air when one gets up into rarefied strata. He didn't do it—the recording instruments would have told Zalescz if he had been up as he should—they record maxima and minima of height and temperature. He didn't do it—I've seen for weeks that Gatton has been all upset and unstrung, though I said nothing and let him carry on. He came straight over here—E3 is good for close on three hundred miles an hour. He landed to go and see Miss Bell—he met her last November at Estwick—and somebody, some other country's agent, saw him land, I feel certain. Somebody who saw a chance to steal E3 and hand her design over to another country, Mr. Head—that's where your investigations will take you, if you go all the way. Somebody—I've thought this out—who couldn't start the engine because the ignition was locked, and waited till Gatton came back with the key, and killed him to get it, and then couldn't find the keyhole on the dash, thanks to my device for hiding it."

"You're almost getting ahead of me, Mr. French," Head said. "In fact, I think you ought to have been a detective. Somebody who knew beforehand that Gatton would be there, and waited for him."

"I haven't the slightest idea," Head answered calmly, "but I have an idea that somebody—or more than one somebody—may lead me to the two I want to see in handcuffs."

"Now look here, Mr. French," and Head smiled at him. "You're a hungry man, and so am I. I've pumped you dry as far as my requirements are concerned for the present, and I shall do more pumping on you yet, I hope. What about a spot of food?"

"The engine, in case you have forgotten, is in neutral," French responded. "All you have to do is to press the button. Mr. Head, I can see I'm going to like you—and, by heck, I've got an appointment for four-thirty that I wouldn't miss for worlds."

"She's a very lovely girl," Head said as he pushed at the starter button, "and from that one little talk with her, I'd say one of the best. Is it in order to congratulate you?"

"Not yet," French said, frowning a little. "I'm afraid I rather missed the boat when I had the chance at Estwick, six months ago. But maybe I can make up my leeway while I'm here."

"Mixed metaphors," Head told him. "By the way, I want to know some more about the time when your Miss Bell and her sister—at least, I hope she will be yours eventually—when they were at Estwick. But I'll worry you about that later. There are so many things sticking out of this case already that I shall have a policeman starved to death under those beech trees if I'm not careful. Here goes for Westingborough, and please don't talk any more, for the present."

He drove on, and eventually drew the car to a standstill outside the Duke of York, the principal hostelry in the town.

"Excellent accommodation for man and beast," he observed. "I can recommend it, though not from experience, since I live here."

"If the man cares to look the beast up this evening, I shall probably be somewhere about," French said. "That is, when I get back from Condor Grange."

"If I do feel any need to see you again before the inquest, I'll make it very late to-night," Head promised.

French got out from the car. "And not a toothbrush!" he mourned. "But there are shops, I see. Any time up to midnight, Mr. Head—I do appreciate having met you."

Chapter V
Thomas Cosway, Cycle Agent

A PLATE of cold beef with potatoes and salad from the single men's mess had to serve as lunch for Head, and, while he waited, he telephoned his wife from the police station and assured her that he would be home again in time to get up the next morning. Having thus set her mind at rest, more or less, he summoned Sergeant Wells, and ate while he talked. As a beginning, he took out his handkerchief and, unfolding it, produced the key he had taken from the aeroplane seat, holding it carefully by its edges and putting it down on his desk.

"That for a start, Wells," he announced. "Finger-prints—I'll ask you about it when I'm ready for it. Meanwhile, take the dead man's prints, and if there are any on this, see if you get any correspondence with his. You won't, but it's best to be sure."

"Ball of thumb and forefinger, at the best, sir," Wells observed as he took up the key, quite as gingerly as Head had put it down.

"Oh, quite! A hangman's knot can be tied with very little more," Head said rather acidly. "Get that done, and then order out Jeffries and go along the London Road till you get to where the beeches begin at this end of the strip. I want casts of footprints and of a tyre mark too, if that's not been overtrodden or anything. If it has, I've got photographs of it for you to develop as soon as you get back. Take an outfit to get the casts, stop when you come to the gap in the hedge just where the beeches begin inside it, and shout like the devil for Williams. I left him to see that the footprints didn't get damaged before we get casts of them. Fetch him back with you and turn him loose in sight of a plate of beef like this. He'll do the rest."

"Right—I'll be along to see him as soon as I've finished here. Off you go, Wells—get the tyre marks first, if they're still available. A defective stud in the tyre tread is what I want particularly."

When he had gone, Head devoted his attention to his plate, and even scraped it to make certain that he missed nothing. Then he went along to the superintendent's office, and Wadden blew at him.

"I've got a devil of a lot," Head said, rather contentedly. "Anything doing at your end of the table, chief?"

So Head told the story of his morning, beginning with his scrutiny of the foot and tyre marks, coming on to his series of interviews at Condor Grange, and winding up with his initial interview with French—for he meant to have a second talk with the man before the inquest.

"Ah, humm!" Wadden observed thoughtfully. "So you think that Miss Bell—Sheba, not the one with the hell of a name who talked to French, I mean—you think she knows more than she'll tell?"

"So much so, that I want her put through the hoop at the inquest till she doesn't know which end she's standing on," Head retorted determinedly. "Here's this poor devil comes to see her and gets killed over it, and she— Oh, damn the woman! As cool as ice, watching me all the time like a thrush at a worm-hole, and about as concerned over Gatton's death as a housemaid over a broken teacup!"

"Slipped out of me 'and," Wadden quoted reminiscently. "Ah, well, you see the coroner to-morrow and give him his line. He's not a bad sort, old Payne-Garland. Case looks shaping quite nicely, Head."

"So nicely that I'm dead certain there's a catch in it somewhere," Head said with decision. "That woman—" He broke off.

"She was born old—old and sly," Head declared. "Oh, yes, I'll see Payne-Garland about her! And now what the hell! Look here, Johnson, pass it on to the sergeant in the charge room, whoever is on duty there." He addressed the police clerk who had knocked and entered. "Mr. Wadden and I have plenty on our hands, without minor inquiries."

But it doesn't seem to be minor, sir," Johnson half-apologised. "Mr. Thomas Cosway from the cycle shop particularly wants to see either you or Superintendent Wadden, about the body brought in to-day."

"Throw him in here—we'll both see him, Johnson," Wadden ordered before Head could speak. "Another lead, my lad!" He addressed Head as the clerk was out. "If you're not careful, you'll be calling the murderer under escort to give evidence at the inquest. This case is getting the devil's own move on, and there'll be no glory for you if it keeps on at this rate. Cosway! Tommy the hero! Well, well!"

Guided by Johnson, Cosway entered the room and stood before the superintendent's desk, and Head moved a little so as to have the man full in his view. He was a fair-haired, honest-looking youngster who had learned his business at Parham's garage, the leading car and repair depot in the town, and, some three years prior to this day, had set up as a cycle and motorcycle dealer in Westingborough, taking a lock-up shop in London Road, near its junction with Market Street. He was reputed to be doing well, and certain Westingborough damsels sighed after him both visibly and audibly, but so far without result.

"Well, Tom?" Wadden gave him a fierce stare of the sort that would disconcert any man not absolutely sure of his own innocence—and might perturb nervous ones who were sure. "What have you been doing?"

"Nothing, Mr. Wadden," Cosway answered. "At least—" He paused, and glanced at Head as if he did not like an auditor to his confession.

"Something to do with a body, Johnson tells me," Wadden pursued, and his even fiercer stare made an accusation of the statement. "What d'you know about any body? Who's been telling you about a body?"

"I saw the body," Cosway said, gathering courage somehow. "I saw Sergeant Wells and some of your men loading it into your big car this morning, just outside Condor Grange gateway. And I—"

"Hold on a bit," Wadden interrupted. "How did you come to be there at the time? Begin this tale of yours at the beginning, whatever it is you've got to say. How'd you get there just then?"

"Testing out a motorcycle—I've just had three new machines delivered to meet orders, and the machines have to be properly adjusted before I hand them on to the purchasers," Cosway explained. "And I was out testing one of them yesterday evening, and thought I ought to come and tell you—I heard a shot outside Condor Grange, last night."

"Stop there and wait a bit," Wadden ordered, and pressed a button on his desk. Presently Johnson, the police clerk, appeared.

"Ah! Got your book and pencil, I see," Wadden observed. "Take this down as it goes, Johnson. Now, Tom, don't take any notice of him, but just talk to me. You were out exercising a motor-bike last night?"

"Adjusting it after trial, Mr. Wadden. Condor Hill tries a machine out and heats up the engine properly for tappet adjustment—"

"Bless my soul, lad, this isn't a workshop! It's the entrance to earthly purgatory! Get on to your tale, about the shot and the body!"

"Sorry, Mr. Wadden. I'd been up Condor Hill with a new machine last night—yesterday evening, rather, because it was not eight o'clock when I started. I stopped at the top of the hill and took a micrometer gauge to the tappets while the engine was hot, and then came down, practically coasting, though I kept the engine idling, and stopped again at that gateway just opposite Condor Grange gate—"

Cosway coloured deeply at the interruption, and stared in an embarrassed way at his questioner before he answered.

"Because—well, because it's just after the end of the slope, Mr. Head. You've got just down to the level of the Idleburn valley, by the time you get there, and I wanted to look at the engine again before opening her out for the rest of the run back—"

"I can tell you that to a tick. It was twenty minutes to nine by the clock on the handlebars of the machine, which was two minutes fast by the clock over Parham's garage when I got back here. Twenty-two minutes to nine. I wanted to make sure the handlebar clock was all right too, before I handed the machine over to the buyer."

"Conscientious of you," Head observed rather drily. "Twenty-two minutes to nine—yes. Tom, do you always go up Condor Hill when you take a new machine out on a test of this sort?"

"Practically always," Cosway answered readily. "If there's a defect in adjustment or mechanism, that hill will find it out."

"Quite so," Head agreed. "And do you always pull up to make adjustments practically opposite the gateway to Condor Grange?"

"Generally." But this reply was not given nearly as readily as the one preceding it, and Cosway looked rather sullen over the question. "You have to open out your engine from somewhere about there." He added the explanation with a resumption of frankness, and looked hopeful that it would be accepted without further question. It was.

"Carry on with what you were telling the superintendent," Head advised. "We've got to your stopping opposite the Grange at eight thirty-seven, near where you say you saw the body loaded to-day."

"Yes. As I was saying, Mr. Wadden"—his resentment at the interrupting questions was evident by the way in which he addressed himself solely to the superintendent—"I'd got off there, and just got out my micrometer gauge when I heard a shot from the marshes beyond the—"

"Wait a bit." It was Wadden who interrupted this time. "Did you see anyone, either in the Grange garden or anywhere along the road? Anyone loitering about, or on foot, or looking interested at all?"

"Nobody at all. A couple of cars passed me, going toward Westingborough, but I didn't take any particular notice of them. One doesn't, you know, and I wasn't thinking about anything but the machine, then."

"You're quite sure you were thinking of nothing else, and particularly sure you were thinking of nobody else?" Head inquired gravely.

"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Head." Again Cosway flushed a deep red as he replied, and made it quite evident that he knew Head's meaning perfectly. "I was out testing."

"So was—somebody else," Head said with a certain grimness. "Never mind, though—carry on about this shot you heard."

"I heard it while I was trying the valve clearances," Cosway said. "A shot—there was no mistaking it. You know there's a belt of beech trees there, facing the Grange from the other side of the road. The shot came from the marsh land beyond the beech trees. Just that, a crack, and nothing else. I know I stood up and thought over it. You know, Mr. Wadden, poachers don't go out much this time of year, and it sounded odd, to me. So I cupped my hands and shouted towards the trees, called to ask if anyone were there. But I got no reply. I thought for a moment I'd go and see what it was, and even got the gate on to that cart track open—I wish I'd gone all the way, now."

"It was probably lucky for you that you didn't," Wadden told him. "What happened next—did you hear any more?"

"Not another sound. I stood there listening for quite a while, and then it struck me that Mr. Bell might be in there after blue jays, and after all it wasn't any business of mine. So I started up the engine and came along back to put the machine away—the chap who bought it took delivery this morning. And if it hadn't been for seeing your men loading the body into the car this morning, I should have thought no more about it. People do shoot blue jays in May."

"And ought to be shot themselves for doing it," Head observed gravely. "I want to ask you, Tom, have you told anyone else about this?"

Cosway faced him fully. "Yes, Mr. Head, I have—and that's why I'm here now. I went into the lounge of the Duke of York this morning to—well, to celebrate getting cash down for that machine I was trying out last night—and I met Mr. Faulkner in there. We got talking, and I told him about hearing the shot and seeing your men with the body. He told me I ought to come along to you and report what I knew at once, and I went and thought it over a bit, and—well, here I am."

"Gerald—Mr. Gerald Faulkner," Cosway answered readily. "He's been rather decent to me—put trade my way, and acted as—well, I might say been a patron to me. Especially this last six months. One of the best, I reckon him, a thorough gentleman. He said—come to you."

"And here you are," Head remarked, with a species of purring quietness, while Wadden sat frowningly thoughtful and Johnson's pencil moved rapidly over the page of his notebook. "Tom, you know where the long beech copse ends—where you can see over the hedge on to the marshes and all the way down to the river?"

"It may be," Head agreed. "Did you, on your way back last night, see a car standing just there where the beeches end?"

Cosway nodded a rather excited assent. "Yes, I did, Mr. Head," he assented. "Why—do you mean that car—?"

Cosway shook his head. "It was empty—a drop-head coupé Alvis twelve, with the top down," he said. "You know—one of those wide-bodied two-seaters with a big dickey. Lovely things, they are."

"And this one was idling entirely, when you passed it," Head suggested. "Did you stop and take a look at it?"

"No—I just glanced at it as I went by. Black—I think it had a thin red line along the bodywork and bonnet—yes, it had."

"It was YY—I did notice that. That's a London registry, end of 1932 and beginning of 1933, I believe—"

"Check up on that, Johnson, and see if it's correct," Head interrupted. "Yes, Tom—YY what? The number, I mean?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't notice the number," Cosway answered. "I believe there was a 9 in it, but I'm not sure even of that. But I did look back at the radiator and see it was an Alvis twelve—"

He broke off as Head moved to the desk and took up the telephone receiver, frowning in thought before he began dialling a number from memory. "I can't wait for Wells to get back," he said to Wadden, the receiver at his ear. "I'll get Boots'—they're good and quick at getting prints off negatives for you— Oh, is that Boots'? Yes. Inspector Head, speaking from the police station. Look here, I want a film developed and prints made at once—or even sooner than that. Yes... Can you send somebody round fast enough to catch fire on the way?... Oh, never mind—I want somebody who travels like lightning—have you got that?... Yes... Inspector Head. For heaven's sake, hurry it! All right—I'll have the roll of film waiting for you."

"All right, Johnson—if there's any more we'll store it in the halls of memory. Buzz along to my room and take that roll of film out of the camera—handle it as if it were gold. Hand it to Boots' messenger when he arrives, and then get those notes transcribed. Chief, do we want anything more from Mr. Cosway for the present?"

"That depends on him," Wadden answered. "What about it, Tom? Is your story complete, or did you see anything after passing that car?"

"Right! Consider yourself warned officially to attend as a witness at an inquest to be held in the Corn Hall at eleven a.m. to-morrow, and we'll get the coroner to turn you inside out and scrape the last word off you then. Thanks for coming along, and thank Mr. Faulkner for sending you. Good luck to you, Tom, though I wish you didn't sell motor-bikes. Evil things, motor-bikes. Don't forget—eleven a.m. to-morrow at the Corn Hall—accept this as the official intimation."

"Right you are, Mr. Wadden, I shall be there," Cosway answered heartily—and turned to Head with considerably diminished heartiness.

"Nothing whatever, Tom," Head assured him. "Thanks for coming here and telling us this. Whatever I want as analysis of your story will be put to you at the inquest to-morrow. Good afternoon."

"Gosh, chief, but it's moving! We'll get those prints of the tyre marks—I took four shots—and then get a confidential out. Black 1933 Alvis twelve drop-head coupé, London registry YY with probably a nine in the number, and that faulty tyre tread—a picture of it to go out with the confidential. Chief, we're coming up against one hell of a snag soon—it's all falling into our hands far too sweetly."

"Um-hah!" Wadden grunted. "What-for were you tousing that poor young feller about stopping outside the Grange, Head?"

"Meaning that old story? It's too old, man. If he does a spot of hero worship on her at that gate, it's only natural."

"Chief, I'm missing nothing," Head declared earnestly. "Especially am I missing nothing that may link up on to that woman and her damned secretiveness over this case. And that old story—you were here, and I wasn't. What's the full of it, in case it comes in?"

"I remember—I'd put you over at Carden at the time," Wadden said thoughtfully. "It was a bit earlier in the year than this—the Easter holidays, for kids. Sheba Bell'd be about eight years old, then, and she went out on the marshes and managed to fall into the Idleburn somehow. Tommy Cosway—he'd be twelve or thirteen at the time—he was playing down on the marshes, or fishing, or some damned foolishness that keeps boys amused, and he heard the kid squeal when she came up for air. He waded in and hauled her out, being a long-legged young devil, and carried her home to the Grange. Saved her life."

"Amount to that?" Wadden echoed. "Bell made huroosh and hurooar about it! Tommy was a hero, and nothing was too good for him. Bell went to old Cosway—he used to be timekeeper on the gate at Neville's works—Bell went to him and asked him what he'd like most for his son, by way of reward for saving the kid's life, and old Cosway, being a sensible sort of chap, said the best thing he could think of would be to put Tom into the grammar school at Crandon for his education, instead of letting him wind up as a council school boy. So Bell paid, and Tom went to grammar school. You noticed, when he was talking to us, he didn't sound like an ordinary mechanic."

"I did notice it," Head agreed. "And now, apparently, he makes frequent trips past the Grange, and stops outside the gate."

"Just in case Miss Sheba might come and say a kind word to her rescuer of childhood's days," Wadden suggested. "Well, ain't it natural?"

"Don't get het up about it," Wadden advised. "You've got all this Gatton case to keep you busy, for the present, and I don't see that Tom's sighing enough to sigh at the Grange gate, which we don't know—I don't see that it's going to help you to find Gatton's killer. Cut it out, man."

"Yes, I'd put you over at Carden, I remember," Wadden said reminiscently. "The youngest sergeant I ever put in charge of that district. I had my eye on you when you went there, and it was your last job before you handed in your uniform and started walking about all independent. You were a bright lad, even then."

"Eh, your head's swelled enough, these days, without my patting your back," Wadden said. "Don't let it swell till it makes you come a cropper, you damned old sinner."

"I'll try not, chief. And—I shall never forget how much I owe to you. All the way along, I have you to thank."

"We'll look in at the Duke before going home time, and you can give Little Nell the order," Wadden said calmly. "Head, I've toused you and licked you into shape—I'll claim that much credit—and I'm proud of you, lad. Damned proud of you. If ever the chief constable does let me go, and I realise my dream and get as far as successful hybridising, I'll name a tomato after you. That's what I think of you, my lad!"

"I'm all that, and then some," Wadden agreed, and blew a gentle breath. "Now what about framing that confidential? Find that car, and you're halfway home, by the look of it."

Chapter VI
Enter an Alien

HE announced, when faced by Johnson the police clerk, that he had gome off der zix-tventy, and vanted to zee der Herr Zuperintendent. Apoud der regisdradion of Chermans vat vant do move apoud. Jah! Bleaze. Der Herr Zuberintendent—Zuperintendent. Jah!

Johnson took the message to Wadden, who thought of his old lady awaiting him at home—this was the end of what should have been his day off! He blew a small cyclone, and glared at Johnson.

There entered in response to the order a tall, military-looking man, a trifle pouchy about the abdominal regions, but well set-up on the whole. His face was a brickish red, and on one cheek was an almost vertical scar—it was the right cheek—reminiscent of student duels of the old German days. It reached from near the corner of his eye to the level of his mouth, and had evidently been a frightful gash when made. He clicked his heels together and bowed from the waist, standing before the superintendent's desk. Then he came to military erectness again with such suddenness that Wadden expected to hear his backbone click—but, naturally, the superintendent was disappointed in that.

"Superintendent Wadden, in charge here. Whaddye want?" There was no politeness of any sort in the rejoinder.

"I haf mine bassbort, und mine babers, Herr Zuberintendent." He held out a sheaf which Wadden took. "I haf alzo der vish to rezide in your peautiful zity vor a leetle dime, und it is in orter dot I regisder minezelf mit der bolice. Helsing—Freidrich Helsing is my name."

He was so very suave that Wadden felt almost sorry for him for a moment—but then a memory of his old lady waiting to tell him what she thought of his idea of a day off obtruded, and spoilt the feeling.

"Sit down, Mr. Helsing," he bade curtly. "I'll just look through these papers, if you'll wait a minute or two."

Helsing bowed again, and seated himself stiffly in the indicated chair at the end of the desk. Wadden went through the papers carefully, found the passport and everything else in order, and looked up.

"All correct, apparently," he said. "And now, Mr. Helsing, what is it you want to do in our beautiful town?—and heaven save me if I ever heard anyone call Westingborough that before. What do you want here, and how long are you likely to stay?"

"I am a gemist, Herr Zuberintendent—a gonsulting gemist," Helsing answered with every appearance of frankness. "You haf in your peautiful zity der creat Neville dye vorks, hein? I vould gonzult, if it mide pe, mit der creat Herr Neville, apoud der vater of your peautiful river, der Idleburn, so dot maype ve can make der ersatz of dot vater for der anilinfabrik vat dell me I should gome look-zee. It was cheneral knowledge, Herr Zuberintendent, dot der vater of der Idleburn vas der zecret of der Neville dyes, und der cloths und der brocades mit der Neville colours is known all ofer der vorld. Der chenius of der great Herr Neville cannot be had in ersatz vor der anilinfabrik in Chermany, but berhabs I make der ersatz of der Idleburn vater, hein? Zo der anilinfabrik haf der petter colours, hein?"

"No, I won't say it," Wadden promised, in a tone of intense regret. "Your papers are all in order, Mr. Helsing, and I see you have Home Office permission—Home Office permission, God save us all!—to make any analyses of river water in this county that you like, as long as you get permission from the owners of the land where the water is."

"Dot vas zo," Helsing assented, and bowed gravely as he sat. "I do not gome to der vork dill I haf der bermit. Zo!"

"Go ahead," Wadden counselled, and handed him back his papers. "Go away and get on with it. Stop in the office on your way out, and tell the man there to register you as an alien staying here—tell him where you mean to stay if you know yourself yet, to give us your address."

"All right. Get the clerk to register you as staying there, and then go and fall in on your job at the Idleburn. And for heaven's sake fall in where it's deep, and nobody handy to fish you out!"

"I haf der honour to be crateful to you, Herr Zuberintendent," Helsing assured him gravely, and, rising, he bowed again from the waist. "Guten tag, mein herr. I vill obey der insdructions you haf so kindly gif to me." Then he clicked his heels again, executed an about-turn of more than military precision, and practically goose-stepped out.

"And now," Wadden soliloquised as the door closed on his visitor, "if you'll only be kind enough to tumble down the steps on the way out and break your blasted neck, I'll make a sandboy look miserable by contrast."

Then Head opened the door and walked in, with half a dozen or more sheets of typescript fluttering in his hand. Wadden glared at him.

"Look here, young feller, the missis'll skin me over the day out she didn't have, already! What d'you want to keep me here about?"

"Lots of things, chief," Head told him, with no dismay at all over such a reception. "But what's wrong—who's been upsetting you?"

"Plain larceny," Head commented. "You can't charge him with burglary, because it doesn't involve breaking in anywhere. How's he taking it away, though? Did he bring a suit case with him?"

"Oh, you're funny, aren't you?" Wadden retorted disgustedly. "A German, I tell you—it's no joke. I'll stop to tell you about it."

And, with many expletives, he related the particulars of Friedrich Helsing's visit. Head listened interestedly, and at the end nodded.

"If he's got Home Office permission, that ends it as far as we are concerned," he said, "though I'd have thought a thing of that sort came under the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries. Commercial espionage, of course. But Idleburn water has never been reproduced chemically yet, and never will, I think. Besides, Raymond Neville means far more in the production of Neville dyes to-day than that special water."

"Yes, and that Prussian thief is here to pick Neville's brains, if he gets half a chance. Well, I'm for home."

"Just a moment, chief! Can't we go through this first?" He held up the typed sheets for Wadden to see as he spoke, persuasively.

"Oh, well!" The superintendent sat back in his chair and looked resigned. "I'll get skinned when I arrive, anyhow. What is it?"

Head pulled forward the chair Helsing had occupied, and seated himself. "This, in particular, is Johnson's transcript of our interview with Tom Cosway. But that's not all. Things have pushed along so quickly to-day that I think we might begin to construct the crime and see what we really have got, before the inquest to-morrow. And if you and I go over everything, we shall know where we are."

"There's sense in it—yes," Wadden admitted. "And though you reported all you'd done to-day when you came in, you didn't give your conclusions from it. Fire away, Head—how do you construct it?"

"To begin with, two men were concerned in it. The footprints among the beeches tell us that. Wells has taken the casts, and one of them was about my weight, which makes him probably about my build. The other was a lightweight, and he takes sevens in shoes."

"That leaf mould was in exactly the right condition for us—it yielded nearly perfect impressions. Next point, they used an Alvis twelve two-seater, painted black with a red line, registry YY some number with probably a nine in it, and with a recognisable defect in the studding of the off back tyre—as set out in the confidential we sent out soon after Tom Cosway left us."

"And they had notice that Gatton was coming to see Miss Sheba Bell some time yesterday evening, by a noiseless aeroplane," Head pursued.

"Knew he'd flown here in it to see her during the last fortnight, and would probably come over in it again. The probability was strong enough for them to take a chance on getting away with it."

"Did you notice how anxious French was to get that machine away out of sight of anyone, chief? Far more anxious about that than he was about the dead man, and not happy till Zalescz had flown off to put it away in safety at Estwick. And naturally, too. If that design fell into the hands of any foreign power, as it was meant to do last night, Barton and Peters could count their work for the Air Ministry finished. It would have been the biggest loss to us since that Handley-Page landed behind the German lines during the war and handed an entirely new design to our enemies."

"An even bigger loss," Wadden assented thoughtfully. He had forgotten all about hurrying home, now, for he saw as did Head that they were engaged on something that transcended personal interests. "Head, how did those two jokers get to know the machine would be there?"

"That she meant to give them the information—no. We'll come on to that when we consider this transcript I have here. But before that, I think, we'll consider what happened by that machine last night."

"All right—let's have your version of it." He settled himself comfortably in his chair, all attention, now.

"Those two men knew Gatton was coming to see Miss Bell yesterday evening. We'll come to how they knew when we consider this transcript of Johnson's notes. But while I think of it, when I was questioning Miss Bell to-day, I asked her whom she had told that Gatton came by air to see her, and when she said she'd told nobody I knew she was lying. I didn't push her any farther about it, because I didn't know as much then as I do now. Let that rest for the present. The two men left their car facing toward Westingborough by the gap in the hedge—Wells has got me a cast of that defective back tyre, fortunately. They either got through the gap and went along on the short grass at the inner edge of the beech strip, to leave no footprints, or else they went along the road and in by the cart track opposite the Grange gate. I think they went through the gap, myself, for if they had gone by the road Tom Cosway would have seen them when he was on his way with that motorcycle to the top of Condor Hill. We can't be sure of that yet, though, and though it's important it's not utterly vital. They got to where they wanted to be, and waited hidden till the aeroplane came down, and Gatton left it safely out of sight of everybody, as he thought, while he went to have his interview with Miss Bell—at about eight o'clock. That exact time, again, is important but not vital."

"And then, you think, they tried to get away with the aeroplane while Gatton was interviewing Miss Bell at the Grange?" Wadden suggested.

"That's how I see it," Head agreed. "They were gloved, just as Gatton was—witness the absence of finger-prints of any kind on or near the door in the side of the plane, and that surface would have taken prints perfectly. Which means they were old hands at their game, taking no chances of any kind. But then they found they couldn't start the engine. They didn't want to damage the machine in any way—wanted to take it away complete and perfect to get a copy of the design, but there was no means of starting that engine, and not one man in a thousand would guess that an aeroplane engine started by simply turning the ignition key in its keyhole, while no man at all, I think, would tumble to it by looking at the thing that the manufacturers' name plate, an apparent fixture, would slide upward and show the ignition keyhole behind it. For that plate, chief, to all appearances was screwed solidly on to the instrument board, an immovable fixture till you took the screws out. It wasn't, though—it slid upward when Zalescz pushed it, and he simply put his key in the hole behind."

"So much so, that they decided to wait till Gatton came back, and then probably see how he started the engine—mind, until he did come back, it's almost a certainty that they thought it started by ordinary aeroplane practice, swinging the engine somehow by hand. They were going to watch how he started to swing it, then overpower him or perhaps kill him, start up, and get away with the machine—"

"Why not? Once they got that aeroplane across the Channel and home to where they wanted it, they never need come near Westingborough again or worry about the loss of a part-worn car. Or perhaps one of them would have flown the plane away, and the other gone off in the car."

"They waited for Gatton. I think, chief, he came along and opened the door with that key in his hand—his gloved hand, which would rub off any finger-prints of his that might be on it. I think one of those two saw from the other side of the machine that he was going to get in, with the ignition key between his fingers, and start up from inside and fly straight off. Mind, in relation to the trees, that open door in the side of the machine was on the side that would give the pair no cover when Gatton appeared. They had to be on the far side of the plane from him, to keep under cover while they watched what he would do to start the engine, and they divined that he meant to get straight in, shut himself in, start up, and fly off. Rather than let that happen, one of them shot him—you noted there was no struggle of any sort, and his clothes were not pulled about, nor even the pockets turned inside out or anything. That's why I say they saw the key in his hand."

"Precisely. And they were in a terrible funk, for somebody had heard the shot! Tom Cosway heard it from a point on the road almost opposite them, and shouted to ask if anything were wrong. One of them, I'd say, picked up that key from beside Gatton's body, got into the machine and tried all he knew to find that keyhole while Tom was standing beside his motorcycle in the road, wondering whether or not to go and see who was shooting in there at that time of the evening. But after a while Tom decided Bell was after blue jays, started up his motorcycle, and rode off—and they heard him do it!"

"Decidedly he wouldn't—they'd have shot him," Head agreed. "But now we come to their big trouble, chief. When they heard him start up the motorcycle after that fairly long interval, they concluded he'd seen them and gone off to get help—they couldn't see who or what he was, with the trees between them and the road. They decided how long it would take him to get back, and made frantic efforts to find the ignition keyhole, knowing they couldn't start the engine without finding it. They got so anxious over it that one of them took his glove off, probably to feel everything on the instrument board over and over again to see if anything would move and reveal the hole. He took his glove off chief, and gave me a good print of the ball of his thumb and the top joint of a forefinger, one on each side of this key!"

"By gum!" Wadden breathed, as he gazed at the strip of metal Head held up by its edges. "You've got 'em registered?"

"What do you think? You can wipe all that powder off the key, now, and I'll still have those prints safe. But I haven't finished with what that pair were doing, yet. They did their damnedest to find the keyhole, and failed, believing all the time that that motor cyclist and a posse of men would be back at any moment to capture them. They worked like the devil, but all in vain, and probably, when they thought he was about due back, they heard a car coming from Westingborough with the engine roaring all out—you know yourself how drivers go all out to start Condor Hill at the best speed they can make, if they know the hill. These two thought it was a police car doing all hell to get there and catch them, and they had to give it up and go, to avoid being caught and charged with the murder of Harry Gatton, and they left that ignition key on the driving seat of the aeroplane with the finger-prints on it as a gift to me. But even then the man who had handled it thought to put his glove on again before getting out, for there wasn't a print, as you know, on the door in the side or near it—which proves them old hands at their game. They must have dropped the key accidentally, for otherwise the man who took it in his bare fingers would have stopped to wipe the prints off. And they made their getaway along the middle of the beech copse, so that they couldn't be seen by those imaginary policemen coming to capture them, whether the police went to the spot by the road or over the grass between the trees and the river."

"And they found there was nobody near the car they'd left waiting, and got into it and went off," Wadden concluded.

"Just so," Head agreed. "And counted themselves safe, but daren't go back near that aeroplane any more. It would be getting toward dark, by that time, and they imagined police waiting under the trees to capture them if they did go anywhere near it again."

"Supported by the footprints under the trees, the tyre mark and Tom Cosway's description of the empty car waiting by the gap in the hedge, the finger-prints on this key, the thirty-two bore revolver bullet I got from Bennett this afternoon, and this transcript I got from Johnson."

"Oh, you haven't finished yet, then?" Wadden inquired. "What do we do—make a night of it? If so, I'm game. It seems worth it."

"Not quite, I think," Head said. "But now, as to how those two got their information. Sheba Bell told me she'd told nobody that Gatton was coming to see her yesterday evening—and it was a lie."

"Positive. And from the moment her father sent her in to that room for me to question her, she was on her guard, so concerned about concealing something that it overshadowed the fact that she'd sent Harry Gatton to his death—she wasn't nearly as concerned about that as about preventing me from finding out something. She waited for every question, weighed and measured it before she answered as if she were on trial for murder, chief. She gave away the fact that Gatton was coming by noiseless aeroplane to see her last night."

"Here, man, come off it! Randall Bell's daughter—and Tom's Tom to everybody in Westingborough! Unthinkable!"

"Are you aware, chief, that it pleased the beautiful Miss Bell to take to motor cycling about the end of last March?" Head asked.

"Which is about as reasonable, for a girl of her looks and tastes, in a general way, as a harem favourite going in for horse-breaking on bucking bronchos, you'll admit. But Tom Cosway supplied the machine."

"Just so—he did. And I've seen her with it at his shop, more than once. As if it were not going well and she took it back for him to look it over and put right—whatever they do to them."

"Quite so. Now, chief, if it had been Miss Jadis Bell, it would have been understandable. She's a thorough outdoor girl in every way. But when a girl like Miss Sheba Bell takes to something utterly incompatible with what she's always done, and fetches the machine along to Tom's shop herself instead of sending the chauffeur or somebody, what do you make of it? Just eccentricity, as it looked, or what?"

"I make it that Tom saved her life when she was a kid, and he's a good-looking young feller," Wadden said. "Yes, it's just feasible."

"She's seen to come up on the machine to his shop, very occasionally, but still enough for it to be remarked," Head pursued. "But you've got to bear in mind, chief, that you can get one devil of a long way toward quiet spots in the country, where nobody is likely to see whom you meet at the other end, if you've got a motorcycle. And Tom hands over to his assistant and takes some machine of his out on test, and since she's not had the machine two months, yet, their meetings away from Westingborough haven't been remarked, so Randall Bell hasn't gone purple in the face and blown up."

"Did you notice, when he came to tell us about the shot this afternoon, how annoyed he got when I wanted to know whether he always stopped just opposite the Grange to do his micrometer gauge stuff? Did you notice his colour over it? The fact that Sheba Bell is carrying on with him was not our affair till Gatton got killed, but it is now, and it was her desperate anxiety to prevent my finding out anything about this that made her lie when I asked her if she'd told anyone Gatton was coming here last night. She told Tom Cosway—all about it."

"I think she means to elope with Tom eventually, or something of the sort. I think—and this is pure theory—that Tom knew there was a sort of half-understanding between her and an air pilot from Estwick, and it was for his sake that she decided to turn Gatton down. She'd tell Tom, probably, that Gatton was coming over to see her one evening, and he'd ask her sarcastic-like whether the chap was going to stay the night at the Grange, and she'd say no, he'd come by air. Tom would want to know when, being jealous of a chap above him socially and anxious to know all about it, and she'd tell him. Probably he went up Condor Hill on a test run that evening—the first time Gatton came, not last night—to keep an eye and ear lifting for the arrival of the plane, and, being an engineer of sorts, or at least a very good mechanic, he'd be stupefied with amazement when he saw that machine come down, and perhaps saw it get up and go off again, without a sound."

"I get you, Head. And not being too tight-tongued about things as long as they don't concern him personally, he let slip to somebody that there was such a thing as a noiseless aeroplane in existence."

"Which information," Head carried on, "came to the ear of one of those two murderers last night, or to the ear of the man who gave them their orders. That man, knowing quite well the information was correct, derided it as a fairy tale. 'All right,' says Tom, 'if you like to keep an eye out, that same noiseless aeroplane will land on the marsh opposite Condor Grange next Monday evening, and you can see for yourself whether I'm speaking the truth or no!' For Sheba Bell got the letter telling her Gatton was coming to see her again, four or five days ago, and she promptly told Tom lest he should see the plane without her telling him, and be more jealous than he is now, if she let this other lover come and see her without his knowing about it."

"We're on conjecture over it, Head," Wadden observed thoughtfully. Tell me this—how did Gatton know it would be Monday evening so far ahead? Zalescz wouldn't have it all planned out like that, would he?"

"I take it," Head said, "that after Gatton came over here the first time with that machine, he reported certain adjustments or alterations as necessary, and was able to calculate just how long they would take. He'd know Zalescz would want the machine taken out for another test as soon as the alterations had been made, and knew it would be some time yesterday—yesterday afternoon or evening. As soon as he knew that, he wrote and told Sheba he was coming over for a last attempt at persuading her to change her mind, and she promptly told Tom Cosway—very probably showed him Gatton's letter, and assured him that she was his own and only. Tom leaked the information somewhere."

"I dunno, yet. It seems to me that loyalty to his highly-placed lady-love—highly-placed, that is, as far as he's concerned—will keep his tongue locked as to her ever having told him anything. He's not going to betray that they're intimate enough for her to reveal her appointments to him, if he can avoid it. But I'm going to get Payne-Garland to shake that woman up at the inquest to-morrow morning, and go on shaking till the earthquake makes her squeal."

"Likewise you'd better put him on to loosening Tom's spinal column till his mouth opens," Wadden advised after another pause for thought.

"That's understood," Head agreed. "And now, chief, since we're both due to be skinned as sheep and not lambs when we get home, I'm going across to the Duke of York to poison my drought in the lounge bar. By this time, the body and the inquest will be common talk, and it might be possible to hear something there. About a big man and a little one getting out of a car on the way to Condor Hill last night and acting all suspicious, or something like that. We might even get a description of them, if we keep our ears open."

"Oh, have a heart, chief!" Head pleaded. "You've got a ten-pound reward coming to you, remember."

"The missis'll snatch half that," Wadden observed sadly. "There's always some sort of gnat in my treacle. All right, Head, I'll come along and watch you while you make love to Little Nell. But only one each, mind, or I'll be skinned for an elephant, let alone a sheep."

He folded the typescript and pocketed it while Wadden got his cap, and the pair went out, crossing the road toward Westingborough's principal hotel.

Chapter VII
A Free Country

"A FAT lot you'll get here!" Wadden growled as he and Head entered the big lounge of the Duke of York. "That blasted alien's got the floor. Up there by the bar—the red-faced devil."

He paused as Head stopped to speak to Little Nell, as everyone called the hotel manageress. She was six feet in height, but was a well-proportioned woman who did not appear conspicuously tall, except by contrast when some short patron of the place was near her.

She confessed genially that business was not too bad—Head knew the value of keeping on good terms with her—and then the pair moved on till they were within hearing of Herr Helsing. A dozen or more men were leaning against the bar near him, listening to his remarks.

"I dell you, chentlemen, your gountry is too much free," he declared. "You loog-zee! I go in your bark in London—Hyde Bark, it is that you gall it, bud dere is novhere anyvhere in it to hide, begause I tried to find zome blace, and dere vas not any. Nefer mind. I go in dot bark, und in von gorner beobles dalk—I tell you, chentlemen, if any man dalk in Chermany like dose beobles dalk, he go in der goncendration gamp, und don'd gome out any more. Und I asg a boliceman, und he say it vas galled lunatics' gorner.' Bud I zay you are all lunatics, ze English, eltz dere voud not be no such gorner as dot gorner."

"In my gountry, dey vould be beheaded," Helsing affirmed solemnly. "I listen. I hear dreason to der ztate, und six different religions curse each other. Dere vas von man curse der doctors, und sell pills. Dere vas von voman—she should be beheaded in my gountry mitout no appeal—she advogate birth control—dreason to der ztate. If you haf birth gontrol, how you get der men to make der army in der next var, hein? Der gannon-fodder to die for der faderland?"

"I do not know." The tone of the reply indicated regret at having betrayed too much. "I do not know noding apoud dings bolitical. I am a gonsulting gemist to der anilinfabrik—der big gesellschaft."

"Aniline?" somebody else put in—four-fifths of Westingborough lived by and on the great Neville dyeing industry, and the mention of dyes of any kind put them on the alert. "What are you doing here?"

Head, listening, gathered that Helsing's audience were half-amused, half-contemptuous of this foreigner who was trying to tell them how to run their country and who now came to a particular in which they were all interested. He saw a sudden tenseness at the mention of anilines.

"I am gome," Helsing said solemnly, "to make der tests of der vater of your peautiful river, der Idleburn, to zee if in Chermany it is bossible to make der ersatz—how you say?—der zame vater dot you haf in your peautiful down. I make der analyzis, und I—"

"Mein herr, I haf der bermit from your Home Office," Helsing explained placatingly. "I do not gome mitout der bermit."

Helsing turned and beamed at him. "Dey haf done dot, mein herr," he said. "Vas it not dold a long vhile ago dot your beople vill alvays be fools? Der Home Office haf done dot."

"You were told at the same time that you would never be gentlemen," the tall man responded sharply.

"Ach! But dot vas of antiguity," Helsing protested. "A choke mit a beard—how you say?—vhiskers on it! Nefer mind. I make der analyzis of der river, und dake der rezult to Chermany mit mineself."

"You gan do nodings," Helsing retorted contentedly. "I haf der bermit from der Home Office, und if you dink you do anydings, I asg der brodection of der bolice. You gan do nodings."

"Good Lord!" somebody almost moaned the ejaculation. "And we're such damned fools in this country that he'll get it, too!"

"Tit I not zay chust now you vill always be fools?" Helsing observed superiorly. "Dot vas drue, now az vhen id vas zaid."

"And it's equally true," Faulkner retorted cuttingly, "that you personally haven't the decency of a gentleman, or you wouldn't stand there crowing over our damned folly of generosity as you do!"

"Hear, hear!" More than one voice sounded in the appreciation of Faulkner's denunciation, and there were some angry mutterings as well.

"Chentlemen"—Helsing sounded rather alarmed, "I do not vish to make you ankry. I am honest mit you—I dell you vhat vor I gome to your peautiful down, und I haf der bermit to make der analyzis. I—"

Helsing drew himself up. "Chentlemen, if you begin to drow, I drow alzo. Somepotty get hurdt, maype, bevore der drowing is all done."

"Gentlemen all!" Wadden took a step forward, and his voice was hard and sharp. "There will be no throwing of any sort—if there is, I'll throw the ones concerned in it into a cell apiece to think over it! Whatever you think of this man—and I'd hate to say aloud what I think of him—he's a guest in our country, given the freedom we're proud of in our country. Treat him as a guest while he's here, and let him do his damnedest. He can analyse himself black in the face, and still he'll never hurt the Neville works. Let him say and do what he likes."

"Ach! Der goot Herr Zuberintendent!" Helsing beaming as he uttered the exclamation, clicked his heels and bowed at Wadden, while the rest of the group by the bar stood rather shamedly silent. "It iz do der ovizial glass dot ve mustd loog to vind der sense dot makes der creat Cherman beoble, hein? Herr Zuberintendent, I am creatly crateful to you. I am honoured to haf sooch a shampion against der kind of beoble dot do not underztand dot lipperty is bad, und dot only vhen you keeb der beoble under der voot—"

"Now look here, Mr. Helsing," Wadden interrupted the harangue, "we don't want lectures on how you do things in your country, and we don't want your opinions on ours. You've had far too much liberty given you to bring to our town, and I'd warn you to be careful how you use it. We've got liberty, as you say, and by gosh we're going to keep it! Never mind about official classes and what they do, but take my advice and keep your mouth shut before somebody loosens your teeth for you."

"I underztandt, Herr Zuberintendent," Helsing answered rather meekly. "I vas chust going to write mine rebort to der anilinfabrik vhen a man ask me apoud der creat Herr Hitler—Heil, Hitler!—und ztop me from minezelf. Now I go to write der rebort."

He clicked his heels and bowed again, and then did his ludicrous goose-step out from the lounge and disappeared toward the main staircase of the hotel. Faulkner, a tall, pleasant-looking man, spoke.

"I would," Wadden answered determinedly. "But," he added, "I'd have seen that you had good mattresses, and eiderdowns too, if I could get 'em. Seriously, though, let the silly ass rant. It doesn't hurt you."

"Oh, blow your national pride! Keep your national sense of humour, and don't go doing things that give me trouble."

"That man"—Woods, a little dark man who owned the principal grocery establishment in the town spoke—"is what I've heard called an agent provocateur, if I know anything about him."

"No," Head joined in, "he's merely a fool, here on commercial interests. An agent provocateur works much more subtly than that."

"And if I hadn't been here," Wadden told him and the others, "you'd have been fools enough to let him, and put yourselves in the wrong."

"The supe's right," Faulkner said. "What'll you have, supe? I was as big a fool as anyone, so it ought to be on me."

"Well, Mr. Faulkner," Wadden responded judicially, "if you doubled a Haig and splashed it, there might possibly be a glass to wash shortly. But I'm rather in a hurry to-night—it's my day out, or was once."

"Since you're so kind, you can double the superintendent's double," Head answered, and moved close up to Faulkner. He waited while the order was given and executed, took his glass, and held it up.

Faulkner laughed. "I'll take care he doesn't ruffle me again," he promised. "But—well, having been connected with the Neville works as I was till the end of last year—it got me, naturally."

"Quite so," Head assented. He drew back a little from the rest, and with a gesture invited Faulkner to move toward him. "I have to thank you, Mr. Faulkner, for issuing some good advice to-day."

Faulkner frowned in a puzzled way. "I don't quite get that," he said. "Good advice? Not to our continental friend, surely?"

"Ah, I get you, now! Yes, I happened to go into Tom's shop for some insulating tape and got talking to him, and he first mentioned the affair and then told me all his story and asked my advice—as to whether to communicate with you, I mean. I pointed out to him that since he was on the spot last night and heard a shot fired then—he told me that, you know—I pointed out that he might find himself in serious trouble if he didn't tell you and somebody identified him as having been there!"

"It has been of material assistance to us, thanks to you," Head said. "Not that I should have been likely to suspect Tom, in any case."

"Well, I don't know about that," Head dissented. "Yes, I suppose I might say it is important. He fixed the time of the shot, almost exactly, and that may prove of very great importance if we get any line of inquiry at all in connection with the case."

He was safe in disclosing such a secret, he knew, for the coroner would hear Tom's evidence as to the time the shot was fired, and all Westingborough would know it, before the next noon.

"Ah, yes, I suppose it would," Faulkner said thoughtfully. "You make it—this is not another case of murder, is it?"

"I'll wait before saying anything about that," Head answered with an appearance of caution. "Possibility of suicide, you know."

"Or accident," Faulkner suggested. "I know nothing of what actually happened, of course. Only that Tom saw the body brought out."

"I don't think it was an accident." Head put a note of grave doubt into the assertion. "Still"—he brightened—"we'll wait and see what the coroner makes of it to-morrow. Excuse me—good night, Superintendent"—for Wadden was about to go—"I'll be on hand bright and early in the morning."

"Yes," Wadden responded drily, "try and be bright for once as well as early. Good night—good night, everybody."

"Fine old chap," Faulkner observed. "In all the eight years I've been in this town, I've never heard anyone say other than a good word for him. It'll be a loss to Westingborough when he retires."

"Eh?" Head roused himself. "Sorry, Mr. Faulkner. It was—well, the sort of thing you might put in Old Moore's almanac if you felt prophetic. I'm sorry, Mr. Faulkner—here's a man I want to see."

For he had seen Lancelot French come into the lounge, seat himself at one of the small tables under the window, and beckon to a waiter. As the waiter went off, French rubbed his hands in a gleeful way and smiled to himself. Head went over to him.

French looked up at him. "It wasn't either Humpty-dumpty or the caterpillar," he said. "They've got a first edition of 'Alice,' and she looked it up. It was the frog footman, and he said—'I shall sit here, off and on, for days and days.' I think that's right."

"If you hadn't already given an order," Head said gravely, "I'd ask you whether you'll have a drink or a strait-waistcoat."

"But— Oh, I am so sorry! Of course, you weren't there! You came out to the car after—look here, Mr. Head, I'm seven kinds of an ass, and most terribly sorry about it. Do forgive me, won't you!"

"You're in that state of mind when a man is to be forgiven anything and everything," Head told him. "Since you're a stranger in Westingborough, it won't get talked about. A good day, I gather?"

"A day to dream about," French responded solemnly. "In spite of—" with a different, deeper sort of gravity—"poor Gatton's death. But one can't go on mourning— Oh, well, you know! Life's made up of contrasts, and when you see your heart's desire in sight—look here, Mr. Head! No, damn it, I'm going to call you just Head! Head, whattle?"

"A mere mattress to put the blanket on," French insisted. "I shall be seriously offended, if you don't have one with me. Hold on, waiter, here's another order for you. Now, Head—whattle?"

"Right, and that's that. Now, did you want to see me about anything special? If so, stop and dine with me, and we'll talk."

"Sorry, Mr. French, but I must go home soon—my wife is waiting dinner for me, I know, and I'm late already. Just a few minutes is all I want to ask of you, now." He looked round, and assured himself that nobody was listening. "About this Mr. Harry Gatton. A few particulars of his life and character, and your impressions of him."

"A good man and a wonderful pilot," French said without hesitation. "Took his ticket to come to us, and I'd have trusted him with anything, until to-day. I can understand that, too. Ja— I mean Miss Bell has been telling me about him and her sister. He wouldn't believe she meant to throw him over—it was very nearly an engagement, you know. And he took every chance—even this chance he ought never to have taken while he was on duty for us—to win her back. Hopelessly, of course. Her mind was quite made up about it, though he couldn't see it. Poor chap, I'm more than sorry about it."

"Oh, you never can tell what she's thinking! So I found it, the little I've seen of her. Totally different from her sister. Now she, when you get to—" He broke off abruptly, and sat confusedly silent.

"You're a damned good sort, Head," French said fervently. "If you'd been the average silly ass, you'd have let me maunder and enjoyed it, instead of reminding me not to make a fool of myself."

"And never flew any machine but one of ours, to the best of my knowledge," French answered. "He'd got his M.Sc. The type we like to get hold of, not merely a man with a pilot's ticket."

"Did he— Oh, yes, I see, though! You mean did he loosen up his tongue and then blab? A year ago, he signed off alcohol altogether, and hasn't touched any since. He found it was beginning to get him down, and cut it out. I liked him for that—it takes doing."

"Yes, I agree with you. Here's health, Mr. French." He drank from the glass the waiter had put down before him. "Had he any entanglements? Not that you'd know if he had, but—"

"He's been singly and entirely devoted to Miss Sheba Bell since he met her last November. I—well, I think you see how it is, and why I'm a bit above myself to-night. Her sister's been kind to me to-day. I knew how Gatton felt about Sheba, and we talked about both of them at times, after that Air Force dance where we met them. He'd lost both heart and head to her, which was why he forgot his duty and dropped the plane outside our aerodrome to go and see her last night."

"The information that the plane was going to land there, then, did not come from him, apart from what he might have told Miss Bell?"

"Don't be silly, man!" French interrupted. "Indirectly, you've given me all I've found to-day. Ask anything you like."

"This Air Force dance you were speaking about—held on the tenth of last November. Was it a very big affair?"

"Rather a wow," French answered. "It's not really an Air Force do, but we call it that. My firm gives it every year for the Air Force officers stationed at Estwick—we get the commandant's wife to act as hostess, and their lads are our guests for the evening. Yes, I suppose you would call it rather a big set-out."

"Whoo-o! That's a big order, as long afterward as this. But—yes, I think you'd still get a complete list from Thorburn—he's in our counting house, looking forward to being manager. A bright lad who takes an interest in things of that sort, secretary of our works' cricket club, and heaven knows what else. He had the list and sent out the invitations—sort of assistant hon. sec. and all that sort of thing. You know the type—the growing lad you can't keep down."

"Mind, I'm not crabbing him—we think very highly of Freddy Thorburn. I do especially—he never minds doing things for me outside his work. We're a pretty happy family, on the whole."

"I think I'll try to find time to run over and see your works, some day soon," Head remarked thoughtfully.

"Do, by all means—but look out that I'm on hand to show you round. I wouldn't care for anyone else to do it."

"That's very kind of you. And at the same time, I'll ask this Mr. Thorburn if he can furnish me with that list."

"Well, he'll let you have a copy of it if he can, I know. Freddy never minds losing sleep to do somebody a good turn, bless him!"

Head finished his drink and stood up. "Thank you very much, Mr. French," he said with sincerity. "In case you haven't been told yet, the inquest is at eleven o'clock in the Corn Hall a few doors along this street. I shall see you again then."

With a hearty handshake—hearty on both sides—he went off to his long-suffering wife and warmed-up dinner.

Chapter VIII
Adjourned, Sine Die

BRIGHT and early the next morning—the morning was bright and Head was early—Mrs. Head came out to the tiny hallway of her home and shook her head at her husband when he told her he would try to be home in time for dinner: she had heard that statement far too many times to put much faith in it, especially when, as at present, he was on a case that engaged all his energies. She saw him take down from a peg his soft felt hat, which, like most seaside boarding-house landladies, had seen better days.

"Jerry, you can't wear that hat to-day!" she expostulated. "With that inquest, you'll be meeting Mr. Payne-Garland and all sorts of people. Do let me go and get your other one."

"P'raps you're right, dear," he said, "but there should be another two or three years of life in this one yet. I know! If you don't mind getting me the other one—I believe it's on the top shelf of your boot cupboard, but I'm not sure—if you'll get it while I rout out a paper bag of some sort, I'll leave this one for cleaning as I go along. It's only been cleaned twice in its life."

Presently he emerged from his home, swinging the bag containing the ancient hat as he walked briskly along Market Street on his way to the main police station. A voice arrested his progress.

He faced about and saw Woods the grocer, the little, dark man who had taken part in the argument with Helsing the preceding evening.

"It's that German," Woods said. "What he was saying about taking samples of the Idleburn water to reproduce it for dyeing in his own country. It's all over the town this morning."

"You've been out early, Mr. Woods," Head said rather drily. "Probably it will be all over the county by to-night."

"Well, I thought I'd just remark on it to you," Woods said, slightly disconcerted by the other's tone. "Feeling is running high about it from what I've heard said. They don't like it."

"If he takes the whole river, he'll never equal Neville products," Head said. "Sensible people know that Mr. Neville's genius counts for far more than the water. The special quality of that water as a factor in the quality of Neville products is a legend from the days before aniline dyes were discovered. Why worry?"

"I don't worry!" Woods answered, as if he prided himself on being one of the sensible people, "but we've got a lot of young hotheads in the town who might make trouble for the man—and themselves."

"And we've got rather efficient ways of cooling their heads if they make trouble for anyone," Head told him. "The German himself looks to me the sort of man who might not merely cool a head, but even crack it, if it got too hot. And since I've other things to attend to, I'll tackle trouble of that sort when it arises. Thanks for remarking on it to me, Mr. Woods—good morning."

He went his way, and reflected that there was a man who, almost certainly, took sevens in shoes, and would make just such shallow footmarks in leaf mould as he had examined the day before. Woods the grocer! Fairly prosperous, known as a hard master to his assistants and as a persistent busybody, and now, apparently, anxious to avert any trouble that might threaten the obnoxious alien in the town. Without definitely suspecting the man, Head felt that it might be worth while to ascertain what he had been doing between, say, seven and nine o'clock on Monday evening. Merely for elimination, of course.

In the interests of his older hat, he entered an establishment of which the window bore, in white enamel letters, the legend—ONE-DAY CLEANERS, SUITS! COSTUMES! HATS! OVERCOATS! WE CLEAN EVERYTHING! There was also a poster at the side, showing a man in a barrel, with his head and bare neck and shoulders projecting above the edge, and displaying the invitation—"Come and Sit in Our Barrel While We Clean and Iron Your Suit!" Ignoring all this, Head closed the door of the shop behind him, and found himself facing Gerald Faulkner, the proprietor of the business. Faulkner had been an employee at the Neville works until six months ago, but now had launched out independently.

Faulkner took it out from the bag. "End of the week, Mr. Head?" he asked, "or do you want it sooner?"

"Next week will do," Head assured him. "Treat it well, though. It's an old friend, and I hate new hats."

"I can see you do," Faulkner said, and, heedless of the feelings of the old friend, threw it over to the back of his counter. "All right, Mr. Head, it'll be ready if you look in or send any day from next Monday onward. I suppose you're busy over this inquest?"

"Yes, of course!" Faulkner laughed, and there was about him an assumption of the old school tie manner. "How perfectly asinine of me! But I meant the man who did it, you know."

"Ah! You're pulling my leg, I can see! Don't tell me, Mr. Head! After the way you've handled those other cases, too! I'll bet you've got it all under that hat you're wearing, and somebody is feeling most unhappy over knowing you're on his trail."

"All I've got under that hat at present is the need for a hair-cut," Head assured him, "and I won't have time to get it before the inquest, either. I must get along—I'll look in for the hat on Monday."

There, he reflected as he went the rest of his way, was the other one, the big man whose feet would make deep impressions in leaf mould. Put Faulkner and Woods together—Woods was all out to see that the obnoxious alien did not get disturbed on his nefarious errand, and Faulkner was anxious to know if there were any possibility of Gatton's murderer being traced—had even assumed murder, on no more than having heard from Tom Cosway that a body had been brought in and that an inquest was to be held. Head smiled as he thought of Wadden blowing fiercely if he himself suggested arresting the pair, and, still smiling, entered the police station and made his way to Wadden's office before going on to his own room to deal with letters and the like.

Wadden was smiling too. He held out a pink and white slip as Head approached his desk—a cheque for ten pounds signed by one Harold Gardner on behalf of Messrs. Barton and Peters.

"You'll be seeing that man French," he said. "Fall on his neck and kiss him for me. He must have rung 'em up yesterday to get it through—it was in my post when I came in. Great feller, that. It's what I call Business with a big B. No question—just pay."

"You're jealous, that's all." Wadden folded the cheque and put it away in his breast pocket. "But I'm going halves with the missis—she heard about the reward, and I can't help myself."

"Well, she buzzes some, at times," Wadden agreed, "but I can put up a pretty good hum myself, if—look here, Head, I went to sleep with this business in my brain last night, and it came into my mind that Miss Bell—if there's anything in what you said about her and Tom—"

"There is," Head interjected. "She indicated it, and Tom proved it to me. Near enough, that is, for me to feel sure of it."

"Well, then, she'd be all the more anxious to keep you or me or anyone from suspecting that she had anything to do with Tom. Else, you see, she gives away that he's got a motive for killing Gatton—jealousy. And probably she saw him when he stopped there with his motor bike—when he heard the shot, as he told us. She'd do her damnedest to keep us from knowing that she had anything to do with him."

"You would!" Wadden blew, fiercely. "I thought I'd got a new one on you. But another thing—what about the gun?"

"Not worth one second's glance," Head told him. "Think again, chief. Here you've got two men concerned in the murder, as we're practically certain from the evidence we already have. Not murderers for ordinary gain, as in the Strong Box business, nor murderers for passion as in the case of Hector Forrest. Two men, as I see it, determined on stealing that noiseless aeroplane, and in the end finding themselves thwarted with the dead pilot lying there and themselves—this is as I outlined it to you last night—in danger of attack by a posse of policemen as soon as that motor cyclist who had shouted to them could get back with help to arrest them."

"If it didn't happen that way, why didn't they stop all night and try to get the aeroplane away?" Head demanded. "Why was it all untouched, in such condition that Zalescz could get in and start up with his key without making a solitary adjustment of anything? If they had not been frightened or disturbed, even if they hadn't got the plane away they would have pulled it to pieces to discover the secrets of it, to take sketches of parts and get as much as they could."

"Chief, think again!" Head urged. "One of those two, if not both, was capable of flying the plane—if only he could have found out how to start the engine in time. That's obvious, or they wouldn't—"

"Not entirely. But if he did, why the two sets of footprints under the beeches? Why the car that he saw standing in the road, and the cast of the defective back tyre I got Wells to take? Mind, I'm ruling out nothing and nobody, yet, not even a grocer and a drycleaner. But to get back to these two, old hands at their game as the absence of finger-prints on everything but the key proves—and that key accidentally dropped, and they daren't go back for it when they found they'd left it behind. Bet your boots—and shirt!—that they had sufficient mechanical knowledge to take plans and rough drawings if they'd had the time, but Tom's shout and waiting a while before he went off scared them and sent them running through among the beeches to the gap where they'd left their car—the black Alvis twelve."

"All right—it sounds good, the way you put it. And you're sure they didn't chuck the gun away while they were running?"

"Would you, chief? Consider yourself a secret agent, detailed to steal that plane. Consider you've failed in your job, and had to run. You know quite well you've left a dead body behind, and if you're caught there's a rope round your neck and no question about it. You've got a thirty-two revolver in your hand, with five shots left in the cylinder—assuming it's a six-shot gun—and you're a dead shot, as that one hole in Gatton's head goes to show. Are you going to throw that gun away and leave it as evidence, or are you going to keep it in your hand and hope to down five policemen, one after another, if they try to stop you from getting away in the car?"

"I know I am, if ever I'm detailed to steal and have to shoot the pilot and then run," Head said decidedly. "I'm as certain as I can be that the man who fired that shot has still got the gun, and that he'll use it on me when I go after him if I give him half a chance. As soon as he's spotted, he's as good as dead, and knows it, and he's not likely to throw away any means of defence."

"All right," Wadden said resignedly. "I'm wrong again, and there's nothing unusual about it. What was that about a grocer and drycleaner, though? I know grocers are capable of anything, but—"

"Oh, just an illustration, that's all. They happen to be the right weight between them. Merely to indicate I'm missing nothing out."

"Woods for the little 'un, and Faulkner for the big 'un," Wadden decided instantly. "I wish it were half as simple as that. Think of it, Head! If we take your theory, here we've got two men running like all possessed back to that car, one big and one little—"

"They didn't run where the footprints are clear," Head interrupted to point out. "They walked. Long strides, but they walked."

"Yes—never mind! They were out of breath, by then. What I mean is that on your theory we can as good as see these two chaps getting a move on to get away from that plane and the dead body! We've got the blasted case complete against 'em, but we haven't got the men! Oh, run Woods and Faulkner in, and let's make 'em confess!"

Wadden lay back in his chair and roared. "And Faulkner!" he gasped, when he could speak again. "Can't you see him—old Rugby or old Borstal or something? All dignity and haw-haw, and suing us for wrongful arrest instead of shaking hands and calling it a day? Gosh, Head, we do see life here! Look here, though! If you want a word with Payne-Garland before the inquest starts, you'll have to hurry up."

"All right, chief. I went over it all last night, and all I've got to do is to give him a few hints and hand him the notes I made. He's a decent little feller when it comes to something really serious, like this. I'll see if there's anything in for me, and then go across to the Duke of York for a word with him. He's sure to go there."

"Oh, by the way!" Wadden stopped him with the adjuration. "Just while we're on things in general. I came up the London Road this morning, and our German was at work already, I saw."

"Exactly that," Wadden assured him. "He was on the bridge at the end of the town—you know, the big bridge, and he'd got one of those two-gallon tin cans—you know, the sort you use for paraffin—he'd got a perfectly new can standing beside him, and he was fishing over the parapet of the bridge with an ordinary milk bottle on the end of a long string. It was the funniest thing you ever saw."

"He stopped to click his heels when I came along," Wadden pursued, unheeding, "and called me der Herr Zuberintendent, just like last night. And he said—'I haf lowered der boddle dirty dimes alretty,' and I said—'Yes, dirty times, Mr. Helsing,' and walked on."

"But he did!" Wadden contradicted. "He did, man! I looked back when I got to this end of the bridge, and there he stood leaning over the parapet. I couldn't see his face, but his shoulders were literally shaking. He was having the laugh of his life."

"No—not the joke, but the man. I'm thinking—but never mind, I'll never be in time to see Payne-Garland if I don't get a move on. I'll go straight over to the hotel, and then on to the Corn Hall."

Head was still musing over the extraordinary circumstance of a stiff, Prussian-like being having laughed at a joke against himself—and a joke which he ought not to have seen, at that—when he found the coroner in the writing-room of the hotel. By that time, he had ascertained from Little Nell that Woods had been in the lounge on Monday evening at half-past eight, and that Faulkner had come in before nine, which rather disposed of his grocer and drycleaner, had he been inclined to suspect them seriously. He believed in tying all threads as he went along, as far as was possible: loose ends had a habit of becoming troublesome, as he had found in more than one case.

Payne-Garland, a slender, bald-headed, middle-aged little man—Head felt certain he took sevens in shoes and thus was eligible for arrest as the little man who had left footprints under the beeches—read the notes the inspector had made for him after hearing the story of the discovery of the body. And, as he read, he peered short-sightedly through his gold-rimmed pince-nez, and his bald pate shone in the late May sunlight coming through the window of the hotel writing-room. Eventually he looked up at Head from the notes.

"I do, sir," Head answered. "In fact, on what I've given you there, you can go as far as you like. Frankly, I want them worried."

"No, sir, if I may make the suggestion. I don't anticipate that either of those two knows anything, really, but I think that what they do know—if you'll forgive the Irishism—may be helpful."

Payne-Garland smiled. "Well, Mr. Head, we're getting to know your methods by this time, and your handling of other cases justifies me in acting on any hints you may put forward."

"Thank you, sir. As long as we're working together, I know I can rely on you to help my case along. That's all I want."

"Handsome of you, Inspector. This Miss Bell, though. You know, Inspector, I've dined there—Condor Grange, I mean. It's rather—well, the lady is not an inconspicuous figure in the district."

"And after all, duty comes first," Payne-Garland said rather pompously. "I'll—let me see! Yes, there's time to go over these suggestions of yours before we open. And after dealing with those two—don't take it any further. Sine die—that's what you want, isn't it?"

"Exactly, sir. Adjourned sine die. Probably only a matter of a day or two, but I'd like just that much investigation, and no more."

"But this aeroplane—you want it kept as quiet as possible, I see. Is it possible to keep a thing like that quiet? I mean, inspector, if it came over at least twice, as I see you have it here, hundreds of people must have seen it. There isn't so much flying over Westingborough that people wouldn't be interested in it."

Head smiled. "What makes you look up at an aeroplane, Mr. Payne-Garland?" he asked.

"Well—er—the noise, of course. You hear it, and then look up at it—interest in something still novel, of course."

"Just so, sir. But this one didn't make any noise, and unless people did happen to be looking up when it went over, they'd never know it went over at all. As long as you don't emphasise the noiselessness too much, I don't think we shall have any difficulty."

"Which is what I want you to prevent people from thinking, sir. Air Force construction—I leave it to you to refer to the aeroplane in a way that suggests there is nothing noteworthy about it. You see, its landing three miles and more away would suggest that it wouldn't be heard here, and you might gloss over the fact that it wasn't heard there, if it's necessary to refer to it at all."

"Leave it to me, Mr. Head—leave it to me. And these two especially—what about Mr. Randall Bell?"

"Well, sir, I'd say get the essentials of his evidence, and let him go. I don't see that what he says is going to help me to any extent. He merely identified the body as that of Harry Gatton, who came to interview his daughter, and then went back home. It's these other two I want examined to the limit of what they know."

"Very good, Inspector, I'll see what can be done with them. And then—adjourned sine die. Yes. Well, we shall see. I'll follow these notes of yours as far as possible. And now I must be getting along—and you too, eh?"

"Thanks very much, sir. I'd better let you go first, so as not to be seen with you."

He had a final cigarette, while Payne-Garland made his way to the Corn Hall, where Wadden was already in waiting.

Chapter IX
Perjurers Both

AS Head had remarked to Wadden, there would have been little or no cause for comment if Miss Jadis Bell had taken to motor cycling, for Jadis was the sort of girl who might try anything—once—as long as it took her out of doors. But when Miss Sheba Bell bought a motorcycle and—most amazingly—rode it, the whole town talked about it. She rode it, they said, even up to Tom Cosway's shop when she wanted anything done to it, just as if she were—well, nobody! And everyone in Westingborough knew what Randall Bell was, and how he held his head up and merely inclined it slightly when greeted by a tradesman—respectfully, of course, and even obsequiously. There was more than a trace of the feudal system left in the relationships between class and class in the Westingborough district, in spite of sly Communists who sought and failed to foment discontent among the employees at the Neville works.

Somehow it got out that Bell, and possibly his daughter Sheba, might be called to give evidence at the inquest. Possibly the fact that Tom Cosway had seen the body removed from the vicinity of Condor Grange, and had disseminated the intelligence, was responsible for the rumour: however that may have been, there was a packed audience in the Corn Hall when the inquest opened, and Superintendent Waddell, called as the first witness, deposed to having found a body lying beside a stationary aeroplane on the grassland—Wadden would not call it marsh land—which was hidden from the Grange by the belt of beech trees adjoining the road and sheltering the grassland—not marsh land!—between the road and the river. Wadden gave his evidence with the concise precision of one accustomed to making reports, and retired.

And, sure enough, Randall Bell was called next. Randall Percy Bell, as he gave his name when requested by the clerk to the coroner's court. He had accompanied Superintendent Wadden to inspect the marsh land, of which the Superintendent wished to purchase a plot of three acres, had seen the body, and identified it as that of a man whom he knew by the name of Harry Gatton—he could not amplify that name in any way, for he had known the deceased only by that appellation. He saw at once that Gatton had been shot, and identified him to the superintendent. He had, at the superintendent's request, taken Mrs. Wadden, who had also gone to view the plot of marsh land, back to her husband's car, and had left her there at the superintendent's further request, and gone back into his house—to wit, Condor Grange. As to the time of this discovery, he believed it was somewhere between eleven o'clock and twelve o'clock on the Tuesday morning. Gatton had called at his house several times—well, two or three times, to be precise.

"Please be a little more precise, Mr. Bell," the coroner interposed here. "How many times did the deceased call at your house?"

Doctor Bennett, the next witness, deposed to having examined the body, superficially as it lay beside the aeroplane, and thoroughly, to the extent of extracting a bullet from the skull, after it had been fetched to Westingborough mortuary in the police car. The deceased had been shot once, the bullet lodging in the brain and killing him instantaneously; this, Bennett stated without hesitation, had occurred the night before the discovery of the body, between the hours of six and ten p.m. There was plenty of evidence in the state of the body to indicate that it had lain all night in the same position. He had found no signs of struggle or discomposure on the part of the deceased: He was quite certain that Gatton had known nothing of his danger, and, probably, had died so nearly instantaneously that he had no idea of what had killed him. The position of the bullet in the brain indicated immediate paralysis of all the sensory nerves.

Lancelot James French, a director of the firm of Barton and Peters, constructional engineers, Estwick, related how the deceased man, Harry Gordon Gatton, a pilot in the employ of the firm, had taken out an aeroplane on test at the request of Mr. John Zalescz, the designer of the machine, at about six-thirty p.m. on Monday last. Mr. Zalescz had made certain adjustments to the aeroplane, which was of an experimental and—well, yes—empiric design, and had been requested—

"Not yet proved," French explained. "An experimental machine—Mr. Zalescz is still doubtful of its performance, and is still making alterations before passing it as fit for service."

"To take it out on test. With instructions, I must add, to land nowhere outside our own aerodrome, except in the event of a forced landing. The design embodies certain entirely new patents, as is the case with practically every experimental machine. I myself, together with our managing director Mr. Gardner, and Mr. John Zalescz, waited at the firm's aerodrome until past the time when Mr. Gatton should have landed, and then, fearing disaster, Mr. Gardner managed to get put on the wireless a S.O.S., giving particulars of the aeroplane and offering a reward of ten pounds to the person giving information that would lead to its recovery. The reward, I believe, has already been paid to Superintendent Wadden. I gave instructions to that effect."

"The offer of this reward led to the discovery of the aeroplane, you suggest?" the coroner asked.

French looked slightly puzzled. Head had insisted that, in accordance with police court and criminal procedure, no witness should be admitted to the Corn Hall until called to give evidence, and, naturally, French could not tell what Wadden had already said on this point.

"No, sir," he said at last. "The publication of the identification marks on the side of the fuselage caused Superintendent Wadden to identify the machine as ours at once, but I believe his discovering it was purely accidental. I understand he went to look at some marsh land with a view to purchase, and then saw the aeroplane."

"At some land," Wadden murmured protestingly, but not loudly enough to evoke comment from the coroner. "Not marsh at all."

"So I understand, sir, but as far as I am concerned that is only hearsay," French answered, and evoked a frown from the coroner at this implied correction with regard to procedure. "I received a telephone call at Estwick, put through, I was informed, by Inspector Head, and giving particulars as to where the plane had been found. I at once turned out another machine, and had it flown to the spot where the plane piloted by Mr. Gatton had been landed. Both planes were flown back to Estwick, and I remained here to give any evidence I could."

"Concerning Mr. Gatton's death—yes." The coroner consulted his notes for a brief while. "Mr. French, I want you to take your mind back for a moment to November of last year. Did you, on the tenth of November, attend a certain function at Estwick?"

"Why, yes, I did." French was plainly staggered by the unexpected query. "The Air Force dance was held on the tenth."

"No, given to the officers of the Air Force at Estwick—by the directorate of the firm to which I belong. We give one every year."

"He was fully trusted, if that's what you mean. A man whom we shall miss badly, and one whose services we valued."

"Ah, yes! I understand, Mr. French. Now, during the course of that evening, did you make the acquaintance of any ladies resident in this district—resident to your knowledge, that is?"

French stiffened, and his face hardened at the forewarning that Jadis Bell and her sister were to be dragged into this. "I did," he said, with profound and evident distaste.

"Is it in your knowledge that Mr. Gatton made the acquaintance of these ladies in the course of that evening, Mr. French?"

"Particularly I want to ascertain whether he made the acquaintance of the elder lady of the two, Miss Sheba Bell, on that occasion?"

"Thank you. I am asking you this with a view to getting further evidence from other witnesses, and will trouble you no more on the subject of these two ladies. Were there, to your knowledge, any other people who reside in or near Westingborough—say anywhere in this district—present at that dance on November the tenth of last year?"

"Not to my knowledge," French responded more easily. "In fact, I should say almost definitely that there were not."

"He was at Winchester when I was. He began his career with our firm, and unfortunately ended it with them. I regret it."

"Then, Mr. French"—the coroner suddenly grew stern—"how do you account for the fact that some enemy found him at a spot where, as you tell us, he ought never to have been, and there destroyed him?"

"I will not press you further on that point, Mr. French. You assert that, with this one exception, you have every confidence—had every confidence, rather—in Mr. Gatton's discretion with regard to his work for your firm? You placed absolute reliance in him?"

"You feel certain that, with this one exception at which you have hinted, he would not disclose the fact that he intended to land that aeroplane at any point outside your firm's aerodrome?"

Miss Sheba Bell, next to be called to the stand, came out from the room at the back of the hall in which, according to Head's instructions, such witnesses as would be required to give evidence waited in charge of a police constable and the woman who acted as caretaker for the Corn Hall. The girl, dressed in unrelieved dark blue, presented her profile to the crowd of Westingborough people who occupied the body of the long hall, and, svelte, clearly outlined against a window at the back as an almost perfect figure, she created a small sensation: there was a whispering and shuffling audible while she took the oath, and then a stillness more pregnant than the preceding sounds.

"I understand, Miss Bell," the coroner began ever so gently, that you were acquainted with the deceased man who is the subject of this inquiry, Mr. Harry Gatton of Estwick. Is this correct?"

"It is," she answered clearly, reassured by his manner from a slight initial nervousness over facing this ordeal.

"That would be"—he affected to consult his notes—"let me see! Was it on the tenth of November of last year?"

"And, after this initial meeting, did you and Mr. Gatton become—well, very friendly, may I say?

"I only stayed in Estwick a few days after the dance. He came to see me at home—at Condor Grange—after that."

"Sit down, Mr. Bell!" the coroner responded sharply. "That is, unless you wish me to order your removal from this court. I am here to extract such evidence as I see fit with the regard to the circumstances of this man's death, and will permit no such interruptions as yours."

"I apologise most profoundly for the impertinence, sir," Bell said, with the humility of a proud but just man who feels himself in error. He seated himself again, and the coroner bowed a stiff acknowledgment of his apology, while the crowded audience breathed freely again.

"Now, Miss Bell," the coroner resumed quite composedly, "when Mr. Gatton proposed marriage to you, did you accept his offer?"

"No. I told him I was not sure of my own mind. Later, I wrote and told him I could not accept the offer—could not marry him."

"Until you wrote that, you were undecided as to whether to accept or refuse his offer of marriage?"

"Did any special thing—any combination of circumstances, let us say—cause you finally to make up your mind to refuse the offer?"

"How long is it since you wrote and told Mr. Gatton that you could no longer entertain the idea of marrying him?"

"Well, were they clandestine meetings? Did you arrange them, or did he? Did you go to see him, or did he come to see you? The general circumstances under which the meetings took place?"

"Oh, I see! We met quite openly at my home, and he rang me or wrote beforehand each time to say he wanted to see me, and when I might expect him."

"Yes. By telephone the first time, and then I had two letters for the last two visits."

"Let us take the first visit, Miss Bell. How long before his visit did he telephone you? I am not being inquisitive, understand, but asking you things I think may be relevant to the cause of his death, although they may not appear so to you. How long interval was there between the telephone call and his arrival?"

"He put through a trunk call at about eleven in the morning, and arrived to see me at between five and six."

"Did he give you any idea, then, that he was using the aeroplane for this purpose without the knowledge of its owners?"

"He said it was an experimental machine, and he couldn't stay more than half an hour at the outside, as he had to land it before dark."

"Did you repeat your definite refusal of Mr. Gatton's offer, on the occasion of this first visit of his?"

"Shall I suggest that you went back to the previous status of uncertainty? That you gave him the impression your refusal had not been final, but that you might reconsider it after a while?"

"I feel I must thank you, Miss Bell, for giving me such clear and enlightening answers under what must be to you a trying examination. To resume, now. On that first occasion, Mr. Gatton stayed how long?"

"He had asked me to write to him, and I did not. So he wrote and told me he was going to fly over to see me again."

"He was intensely interested in the aeroplane, it seemed, and asked me to come out to the marshes—on the other side of the trees—to see it. He described it to me as—"

"I don't want the description of the machine, thank you," he coroner interrupted her. "Tell us, now, what was the result of this second visit, as far as your relations with Mr. Gatton were concerned?"

"Yes, but he refused to accept it as such, for on Thursday of last week I received another letter from him, to the effect that he would fly over again to see me some time on Monday evening, and try to persuade me to reverse my decision."

"No. I thought it better that he should see me, so that I could make him understand once and for all that it was utterly hopeless, and that nothing could ever change my decision."

"I suppose he came by air. Yes, because the plane was found there yesterday morning. He couldn't have come any other way."

"At your final refusal—yes. But he was not afraid—he gave no indication that he saw any danger before him, did he?"

"Did you see or hear anything of him, or get any indication that he met anyone, after he left you?"

"I neither saw nor heard anything more of him. I remained in my sitting room, which looks out from the back of the house."

"Did you hear the shot which, according to the medical evidence given here, killed Mr. Gatton?"

"No. Not to distinguish it. We hear many backfires from motorcycles coming down Condor Hill—and I have noticed them from my machine after coming down the hill. If I heard the shot, I took it for a backfire, and paid no attention to it."

The coroner consulted his notes, and saw, in Head's neat handwriting, the words—"Insist most urgently," in the margin opposite his next point of questioning. He looked up at the girl.

"Miss Bell," he said gravely, "I wish now to urge you as deeply and earnestly as if you were in truth on trial, instead of a witness in an inquiry, to remember that you are on oath, and to give full consideration to this question I am about to ask you. Did you tell anyone whatever, prior to Mr. Gatton's arrival on Monday evening, that he was coming to visit you?"

"I told my father, about half an hour before Mr. Gatton arrived," she answered after a long pause.

"Did you communicate your knowledge to anyone else whatever, between your receipt of Gatton's letter on the Thursday, and his arrival on Monday evening? Remember, you are on oath, Miss Bell."

"Miss Bell?" The question came out like a pistol shot, and she started violently. "When did you tell Tom Cosway Gatton was coming to see you on Monday evening?"

She started at the question, but almost reeled as she realised its import. Payne-Garland waited, then—as sharply as before:

"Some time"—she was recovering composure by degrees—"when I went to his shop. For repairs. To my motorcycle."

"I have never met him away from his shop," Sheba answered quietly, coolly. She was fully herself again, now. "The question is an insult, sir. I have never met him away from his shop."

She went and seated herself beside her father, and patted his hand and smiled bravely when he looked his anguish at her.

"Thomas Cosway!" the coroner called sharply, and the one local pressman in attendance sharpened yet another pencil while he waited. He had a story here that meant a good figure from the London agency to which he sometimes forwarded surreptitious items—when there was no agency man in attendance to rob him of his chance, as there was none here to-day.

Shepherded out from the room in which he had been held in waiting, Tom—as everybody in Westingborough knew him—saw Sheba Bell seated beside her father as he approached the witness stand, but her gaze was cast downward, and she paid no heed to his appearance. He took the oath, and, for the purposes of examination, had to stand so that she was almost directly on his left, and his profile was turned to her.

"Yesterday, witness," the coroner began, with the kind, almost purring gentleness that always masked his deadliest attacks in their beginnings, "did you go to Westingborough police station and give certain information to Superintendent Wadden and Inspector Head?"

On that, Tom detailed his testing ride to the top of Condor Hill and back, related how he had stopped, heard the shot, called loudly to the possible shooter, and, after waiting awhile, had decided for the blue jay theory and ridden on. He got to—"When I came to the end of the beech copse alongside the road"—when the coroner stopped him. For Head wanted no mention made of that waiting car, for the time.

"We won't go into what happened after you left the gateway opposite the Grange," the coroner told him. "About your stopping just outside the Grange, now, and hearing this shot. Did you, either on your way up or down Condor Hill, or while you were stopped outside the gate, see anyone either on foot or otherwise near that gate?"

"No, but when I was going up the hill a car with two men in it passed me coming the other way. It was about halfway down the hill—"

"Yes. The sun hadn't set by a long way. And on my way back, when I got to the last of the beech trees—"

Again the coroner stopped him. "Confine yourself to the facts bearing on this discovery of a body near the gate opposite the Grange, witness," he interrupted. "That is what I am questioning you about now. If it is necessary to know anything that happened nearly a mile along the road from that spot, I will ask you about it. Now you say you were testing a new motorcycle. Do you always test new motorcycles along that stretch of road, past Condor Grange?"

"Practically always," Tom answered. And, remembering how Head had already questioned him on this point, he foresaw the next question.

"Generally. It's at the foot of the hill—the beginning of the level, and the engine is at its coolest, then."

"I see. A matter of expansion and contraction of metals. Yes. Can you tell us the time at which you heard this shot fired?"

"Yes, almost exactly. I had just looked at the handlebar clock on the motorcycle, and it was twenty minutes to nine. That clock was three minutes fast, I found when I got back, by the clock over Parham's garage, so it would be twenty-three minutes to nine."

"Still full daylight, sir, but Condor Hill cut off the sunlight. It was beginning to look gloomy under the beech trees."

"And, although you heard what was undoubtedly a shot, you felt a little unhappy about going to investigate about it?"

"No, sir, it wasn't that. I thought it over, and came to the conclusion that Mr. Bell was out there shooting blue jays."

"Had you heard any blue jays? You know they always make a squawking noise if disturbed. Had you heard any such noise?"

"Well, I didn't know what else to think. For all I could tell, Mr. Gatton had got back into the aeroplane and gone off—"

The coroner's interruption came with a crash—"Who told you the deceased's name was Gatton?"

Realising how he had trapped himself, Tom made matters worse by turning to give Sheba Bell an appealing glance while he hesitated as to how to reply. Having been kept from hearing any of the preceding evidence, he could not tell what she had already said in examination.

"Where? It has not been mentioned in your hearing in here. Where was that name spoken—the name you speak so glibly yourself?"

"Witness?" The coroner's tone was harsh and sharp, now. "When did Miss Sheba Bell first mention Mr. Gatton's name to you?"

Again, and this time gambling on Sheba having already told the truth, Tom glanced at her. Then he answered, barely audibly—

"How long ago? Days—weeks—months? Be definite! How long ago was it since Miss Bell told you this man's name?"

"No, it wasn't." Tom took heart a little at being able to deny the allegation. "It wasn't till the beginning of this year."

"Over at Crandon—ten miles from here. And while you were there with Miss Bell, she told you this man Gatton's name?"

"Yes, sir." He was growing angry and defiant, now. The cat was out of the bag, and might run where it would, his attitude declared.

"Did you see Mr. Gatton arrive and land his aeroplane on Monday evening?" the coroner demanded, keeping his man on the run.

"No, I didn't." And, as soon as he had given the answer, Tom realised that he had as good as betrayed everything.

"You must have been fairly intimate with Miss Bell, witness, for her to confide to you that Mr. Gatton was coming to see her on that first occasion," the coroner said unkindly. "It was not the sort of thing she would talk about in everybody's hearing, and yet, although you say you did not see Mr. Gatton on that occasion, you know that he did come to see her then. Did Miss Bell tell you of it before Mr. Gatton flew over from Estwick to see her, or after he had been?"

"Miss Bell told you, the day before, that Mr. Gatton would fly over here to see her on that second occasion?"

"When did you know that he was coming to see her on Monday evening, this visit that resulted in his death?"

"Miss Bell," Tom said, not merely reluctantly, but with helpless wrath over being forced into this complete betrayal of himself—and of the girl who sat with downcast eyes on his left.

"Miss Sheba Bell told you on the Friday that Mr. Gatton would fly over to visit her on Monday evening. Did she say at what time?"

"Nobody!" Tom fired out that reply as if he had expected the question, as perhaps he had. And, if he had confessed to telling anyone, it would have revealed to Sheba that he had been talking about her to others, and—the coroner saw it clearly—ruined him in her estimation.

"I repeat, witness—and remember that you are on oath—whom did you tell that Mr. Gatton was flying to land here on Monday evening before sunset, or that he was flying here at all?"

Tom slunk, rather than stood down, from the witness stand. Sheba did not move from beside her father, and the coroner repeated sharply:

She came to the stand then, and, facing him, did not raise her gaze to meet his, though he waited some moments.

"Miss Bell," he said at last, very quietly, "do you still assert that you have not met Thomas Cosway away from his shop?"

"One other question, Miss Bell. In conversation with the witness Cosway, did you at any time describe the aeroplane in which Mr. Gatton flew here from Estwick to interview you?"

Abruptly, as she turned to go back to where she had been sitting, Randall Bell rose up from the seat next hers, and appeared about to address the coroner. But, before he could speak, he swayed and pitched forward on his face, to lie quite still.

There followed, almost instantly, a subdued uproar among the people who had crowded into the body of the hall; they stood up, tried to push forward to see what had happened, until Superintendent Wadden's stentorian command for "Silence!" stopped them. Before Sheba could reach her father, Bennett and French were kneeling one on each side of him, and in the sudden silence that resulted from Wadden's command French lifted Bell's head and shoulders and turned him face upward, while Inspector Head murmured in the coroner's ear. Then, clear and sharp, the coroner's voice rang out over the hall:

"This inquiry is adjourned sine die. Members of the jury and all witnesses will receive due notice of its resumption."

With that, being himself a doctor, he went to where Bennett was loosening the clothing of the fallen man. Bennett looked up:

The audience began to move, and presently they were trooping out to stand in groups and babble excitedly over such a bewildering series of events and revelations as seldom came their way. Presently came the clanging of the ambulance bell, and Sergeant Wells with two men kept a clear passage from the doorway of the hall to the back of the vehicle while Randall Bell, still unconscious, was brought out and lifted into the body of the ambulance. Doctor Bennett got in with him, and Sheba followed.

Chapter X
What Head Wanted

SINCE the door of the superintendent's room at the police station was not quite closed, Head knew he might enter. He walked in on Wadden, who, seated at his desk, glared fiercely at his inspector.

"Thought I'd like just a word with you before going out, chief," Head remarked. "To carry the case on together as far as we've got it."

"Yes," Wadden retorted severely. "A pretty hoo-hah you've made in the town with that inquest, haven't you? And what have you got out of it, I'd like to know? Apoplexy for poor old Bell over his daughter's meanderings, and nothing else, by the look of it."

"Bell was due for a stroke at any time," Head answered coolly. "He's done himself far too well for years—and besides, his father died of it. As for me, I've got what I wanted."

"What I might call the main foundation stone for the groundwork of my case against one of the two men who murdered Gatton," Head answered thoughtfully. "At least, I haven't quite got it yet, but I'm sure of getting it, some time this afternoon."

"I'm not following your line of reasoning over this case at all well," Wadden observed after a thoughtful silence. "Put that last statement of yours down on the floor, and let's sort it out. You've got what you want, and you haven't got it. But you've got a hope—and nothing whatever about faith or charity. Now, where are we?"

"I'll tell you, then, chief, since you don't quite see it. You know, we can both see those two men, hurrying off through the trees—under the trees, to be exact—because they felt sure that motor cyclist had gone off to bring police down on them. You can see them—I can see them. The footprints in the leaf mould and that waiting car tell us enough to show us the two men, and to tell us as well that one was a little lightweight and the other about my size."

"Seeing 'em so plainly," Wadden remarked sourly, "why don't you put a pair of handcuffs on each of 'em, and fetch 'em into the charge room? I'll take it all down if you'll recite it."

"Because I haven't the faintest idea, yet, as to who they are," Head confessed frankly. "I've one suspicion, but no more."

"Just this, chief. For a start, remember the number of that hush-hush aeroplane French was so anxious to get flown into hiding again?"

"Y 42. STR. E3." Wadden answered promptly. "I'm not forgetting, because I got ten pounds for remembering by the first post to-day."

"It stands for Experimental machine number three, chief. Which is to say that John Zalescz tried out two before it, numbers one and two. Without a doubt they had experimental flights, and without a doubt, too, Mr. Harry Gatton was the man who flew those two machines, as well as E3."

"French's description of Gatton as their star pilot, the one they trusted, a man who could put M.Sc. after his name, and knew his work."

"Somebody at Estwick, chief, knew that Gatton was flying those machines, and that somebody was one of the two who murdered Gatton."

"Because one of those two must have come from Estwick, and must be intimately connected with the firm of Barton and Peters, but probably has not got free access to the aerodrome of the firm, and certainly has no means of getting at John Zalescz's plans for the construction of this machine. If he had free access to the aerodrome, he'd have stolen the machine itself from there, gone off with it to his own country, and never been seen near Estwick again. If he could have got at the plans, he'd have gone off with them and not bothered about the machine. Are you with me so far, chief, or do you want to contradict?"

"Two men are going to call me worse names than that before I've finished handing them over to the hangman. We have that man—somewhere at Estwick, mind!—aching for the chance to get at Stratosphere E1, E2, and E3 in turn, knowing that if he could find some weak point in Harry Gatton, he might have a chance. A clever devil, chief, watchful as a cat at a mouse hole, and missing nothing. But not knowing how to get either machine or plans—till the tenth of last November."

"On the tenth of last November," Head proceeded slowly and carefully, "two exceptionally attractive girls attended the Air Force dance at Estwick. They were strangers, or very nearly so, in the town, and they had introduced to them Lancelot French, a director of Barton and Peters, and Harry Gatton, the firm's pilot and French's friend. To put it vulgarly, French fell for Jadis, the younger girl, and Gatton fell for Sheba, her sister—and Gatton fell very violently indeed. Violently enough to disobey his strict instructions with regard to landing that aeroplane nowhere outside the firm's aerodrome, and in the end to lose his life through landing it elsewhere in order to see Sheba Bell."

"Counsel for the prosecution," Wadden observed. "Good enough for his brief, anyhow, the way you're putting it. Carry on."

"I'll call our potential murderer at Estwick X, for convenience," Head pursued. "He had with him at that Air Force dance potential murderer number two, whom we will call Y for convenience, and who came from somewhere in or near Westingborough and knew those two girls—"

"Here, hold on a bit!" Wadden protested. "Tie that down before you go any further. It's flapping about too much for my taste."

"X, chief, on the look-out for anything to do with Gatton, in the hope of getting at one of those experimental machines eventually, saw how immensely Gatton was impressed by Sheba Bell. It must have been then that he asked his friend Y who the two girls were—or who Sheba was, in any case. 'Oh,' said Y, 'I know her quite well by sight. She lives near Westingborough, just as I do.' At which X, seeing the possibilities, kept an eye on the way Gatton got on with her during the evening. The pair must have got on very well even at that first meeting, for when she left Estwick, as we heard at the inquest this morning, only ten days or less later, Gatton had hopes of her consenting to marry him. So X, seeing how hard Gatton was making the pace, must have told Y to keep an eye lifting in case Gatton happened to come over to Westingborough to see this lady love of his at any time. Gatton might possibly fly over in an experimental machine worth stealing, he felt—and I'm quite sure there was no thought of murder in his mind, then."

"I feel sure of it, chief. Y came here and kept an eye on Sheba Bell, as nearly as he could, to find out if Gatton came to see her at all. One of the servants at the Grange might earn a few shillings by promising to pass on harmless information—it might be done in several ways. Quite possibly, keeping this watch, Y learned how things were between Tom Cosway and Sheba Bell. In fact, I think he did learn, which was why he was on hand to pump Tom when he knew Gatton had taken to coming over to see Sheba. When he knew that, he instantly communicated with X at Estwick—am I making it too complicated, chief?"

Head disregarded the caution, and went on. "X communicated with Y on receipt of this news, and asked him to strain every nerve to find out in advance when Gatton was coming over to see Sheba again, and to be ready to act. But Gatton only wrote two days in advance, that time, and Tom Cosway didn't get the news in time to blab—that is, in time for X and Y together to steal the aeroplane while Gatton was visiting Sheba Bell. X, being at Estwick, would know Gatton was flying the plane they wanted above all others to steal, and still there was no thought with either of them of murdering Gatton, except as a last resort. All they wanted was the design of that machine, to put some other country on a level with ours in air attack and defence."

"No. Secret agents of a foreign government—the sort of thing that goes on year in and year out. Let's get back to them, though. Tom Cosway learned last Friday that Gatton was flying over to see Sheba Bell last Monday evening, before sunset. In some way, probably innocently, he communicated that knowledge to Y, who passed it on to X, and X came over from Estwick to make the attempt at stealing the machine on Monday evening—and we know the rest. I'm not sure that he came direct from Estwick, for that two-seater Alvis twelve had a London registry, unless Tom Cosway lied about that as he lied at the inquest. But he had no reason to lie about the car, and I think he told the truth."

"Umm-m!" Wadden reflected over it through a considerable interval. "Pretty, Head, very pretty—but entirely unsupported by evidence that we could produce in court. What are you going to do about it?"

"Before I do anything, has any reply to our confidential with regard to that car come in yet, chief?"

"Have a heart, man! The YY cars run from 1 to 9999. That's one short of ten thousand cars registered under those letters, and they've got to search through all that lot to find out how many Alvis twelves were registered as YY something or other, then look out the two seaters, and then go for the colouring. And your man X may have bought that car second-hand when it was sky pink and had it repainted black, for all the original registration authority can tell. It's not as if you'd given 'em the number in that confidential. This means searching."

"He's denied saying anything about the plane to anyone," Wadden pointed out, "and what he denied on oath he'll stick to."

"That's just what I'm going to find out," Head answered quietly. "I'll be as quick as I can, chief—for my own sake as well as yours."

He went out, while Wadden shook his head gravely, and addressed himself to the task of filling in a form on which he had to indent for new constabulary boots. The bright lad, as Wadden was fond of terming Head, was doing his stuff, and the superintendent felt that he himself was far, very far behind his inspector in the genius for deduction spiced with imagination—and daring imagination at that—which had already made the name of Inspector Head known far beyond the confines of Westingborough. In fact, Wadden sighed a little for the peace of a tomato bed, under glass, on such rich soil as that under the grass where Harry Gatton had landed an aeroplane for the last time in his life.

Head went his way to Tom Cosway's cycle and motorcycle shop, where he found Tom, back into well worn working clothes in place of the nicely cut suit he had worn for the inquest, giving directions regarding some repair work to his only and very greasy mechanic. At sight of the inspector, Tom finished his instructions hurriedly and sent the man out to the workshop at the back, and then faced Head defiantly.

"If you wish," Head answered gravely. "It's entirely at your option, Tom. We'll say I came to see you about it."

"Well, carry on with it," Tom urged fiercely. "That gang outside has been expecting it ever since I got back here after lunch."

Head glanced through the shop window and saw the bunch of idlers who confidently expected Tom's arrest as a result of his evidence at the inquest. The information that he had murdered Gatton with jealousy as a motive was already all over the town, and some surprise was expressed over the slackness that let him out from the Corn Hall as a free man, while in response to the press agency report sent to London by the Westingborough Sentinel reporter, half a dozen men from various papers and agencies were already on their way to the town.

"They may be disappointed, yet," Head remarked concerning the group. "As I told you, Tom, it's at your option. You can tell the truth you did not tell on oath, or face trial for perjury. I hate approaching third degree methods even to such an extent as this, but I've got to have that truth, and if I don't get it I'll get you."

Tom's face set into a sullen mulishness that spoilt his normal good looks. "If it's to do with Miss Sheba Bell, you can arrest me out of hand," he said. "That coroner trapped me into betraying myself when I was doing all I knew to shield her, to keep her out of it altogether, and not one more word do I say about meeting her, to you or anyone. So—put the handcuffs on me. I'm ready to go."

"I'm not, Tom," Head said, almost commiseratingly—for the youngster's determination moved him, to some extent. "I want to know nothing whatever about your personal relationships with Miss Sheba Bell. I want to talk, and want you to talk, about a rather mysterious aeroplane that Mr. Harry Gatton flew here on Monday evening. That's all."

"About the plane, Mr. Head?" Tom brightened instantly, and looked almost hopeful. "Yes, what about it? I don't mind telling you that."

"Odd?" Tom echoed. "I'll say it was odd. Why, I wasn't two miles away from it either of the times I saw it land—or come down to land, rather—and the first time, it came right over me—not very high up, either. And I didn't hear a sound, though they were both still evenings when I saw it. Except for the sort of swishing noise wild geese make—not a sound. And the mechanism was all internal—an air chamber of some sort inside that sucked air in from the front, compressed it, and thrust it out behind to drive the machine. Pulled air through itself instead of pushing it past with a propeller—there was no propeller! The oddest looking thing, next to the pterodactyl type, that I ever saw."

"Very fast—but with a comparatively very low landing speed, I thought. You know, Mr. Head, I hope to go in for flying myself and take a pilot's certificate before I'm much older. I take every issue of The Aeroplane, and I've written one or two technical articles myself."

He had forgotten both sullenness and fear in his interest in the subject, evidently a fascinating one to him. And, animated as he was, Tom Cosway was an attractive personality, Head owned to himself.

"To get back to the ground, Tom"—it was a grave but not unfriendly reminder, "you told the coroner to-day that you hadn't mentioned this machine to anyone. And that, I am convinced, was perjury."

"It was." Tom admitted it quite frankly. "Miss Bell sat there listening to all I said, and I had the choice between perjuring myself over that, and letting her think I'd talked about her and the things she told me, spread them all over the town. I'd sooner perjure myself over a thing like that than have her think anything of the sort of me."

"Even though it happened to be in some measure true," Head said, in a cool, judicial tone that made his hearer squirm. "Well, Miss Bell is not listening to you here, Tom. To whom did you say that there was such a machine as that aeroplane in existence, and that it had come or was coming again last Monday evening to Westingborough."

"Well, I'll tell you exactly how it was," Tom promised. "You know the big lounge in the Duke of York, I expect? By the way, and in confidence to you, Mr. Head, Miss Bell had told me a good deal about this aeroplane before I saw it, because she knew how interested I am in any new design, and it appears that Mr. Gatton had told her—from what she told me. Well, I was in the lounge of the Duke of York an evening or two after she described this plane to me, and the usual gang was in there. That ex-jockey who keeps the training stables, Woods the grocer, Saunders, Faulkner, the two Smiths who run the saddler's shop—I expect you have a pretty good idea who make up that crowd, though. Woods got talking in the way he does, that pacifist stuff of his that I hate, and then Ted Smith began on the need for more air defence, and started running down the Air Force—said we were years behind in men and machines, and were due to get it in the neck when Germany had finished building her new air fleet. That got my goat—that and Woods' blather about disarmament being necessary, and I chipped in and told them our men had proved themselves top-dogs in the last war and would again if they had the chance, and told them that as far as machines went we had something Germany would give her ears to get, a totally new design better than anything they'd ever seen or heard of. Of course, somebody started guying me about it, and from time to time they went on guying me when I went in, asking me about the wonderful aeroplane that was going to conquer the world on a Saturday afternoon. They wouldn't leave it alone—you know what that crowd is, I expect. I looked in to the lounge last Friday night, and they got at me again, so, as I knew, I told them they'd only got to keep an eye out on Monday evening before sunset over the marshes between here and Condor Hill, and then they could see for themselves that what I said was true, because the plane I'd told them about would land there for an hour or less that night. I said just that—nothing at all about Miss Bell, but she'd have thought I had been talking about her if I had said this when that infernal coroner questioned me as he did. Which is why I perjured myself, and since it was for her sake, to save her pain, I'm prepared to suffer for it and not ashamed of it.

It was a long, long statement, made with hardly any pause, and by the time he came to its end Tom looked thoroughly excited. But, since Head brooded over it, he had time to cool down.

"I am not," Head answered quietly. "I am going to tell you to keep your mouth tight shut in future about this or any other unusual means of defence for your country, for talking can do no good and may do a great deal of harm. These things are secrets—don't you realise it?"

"If you had thought of that before," Head told him, "Mr. Harry Gatton would not be lying a corpse in Westingborough mortuary to-day. Now I want something definite from you, Tom. Cast back to the evening—last Friday evening, not so very long ago—when you stood or sat in the lounge of the Duke of York and told all and sundry that that aeroplane would land where it did land on the Monday evening. Who was there to hear you say it?—I want the name of every one present."

"I don't care if you have to get a Westingborough directory and strike out the names of those who were not there, as the quickest way of getting at it," Head insisted. He took out his note-book and pencil. "Now, start in. Begin with the first one you can think of, and carry on till you've given me every name. Take your own time, think carefully over them, and realise that you may be helping to bring a murderer to justice and doing a service to your country at the same time."

Impressed by the admonition, Tom thought hard, and then began the list of names. A quarter of an hour later, Head left the shop and told the augmented group of idlers that it was no use waiting, for there was and would be absolutely nothing to see or hear.

Chapter XI
Jadis

HAVING seen Randall Bell undressed and put to bed in his room at Condor Grange, Doctor Bennett left one of the ambulance men on duty there for the time being, and with the other returned in the ambulance to Westingborough. There he rang up the cottage hospital, summoned a nurse to hold herself in readiness, and with her drove out again in his own car to the Grange, where Jadis Bell received him—Sheba had retired to her room, and left the care of the unconscious man entirely in her sister's hands. It was symptomatic of the characters of the two sisters that Sheba, the elder, always did leave the management of household affairs to her sister as far as she could. Bell, being an easy-going man and never interfering with any arrangements the two sisters chose to make between them, was satisfied as long as his household was run smoothly and in a way that gave him no trouble.

"He opened his eyes about a quarter of an hour ago," she answered, "and I spoke to him. But he closed them again, and didn't answer me."

Bennett looked at his watch. "Past three o'clock," he observed. "He may be coming round, now. Don't worry over-much about it, Miss Bell. A first stroke is never unduly serious, and it may be years before he has a second. I'm going to see what can be done with chlorophyll treatment toward restoring the arteries to normal and getting his blood-pressure down, as soon as I can. Ought to have attended to it before, in fact, but I'd no idea the pressure was what it is. I'll go up and see him, and if you care to come too—"

She followed him to her father's room, and waited while he bent over the bed and carefully drew down an eyelid. At that, Bell spoke whisperingly and slowly, without opening his eyes.

"Don't do that, doctor," he said. "I have been lying here—came round quite half an hour ago. Leave my eyes alone."

"I'm afraid"—Bennett remembered the scene in the Corn Hall—"I'm afraid I can't allow you to see her yet, Mr. Bell."

"If you don't," Bell answered, slowly but with more strength than had been apparent in his first words, "you can get out of this house now and never enter it again. I will see her. Send her in to me, and leave me alone while I talk to her. Then you can come and tinker at me, if you think it will do any good."

"Get out, then," Bell told him. "I'll have a servant fetch her to me, and get another doctor to replace you. Get out!"

"All right, Mr. Bell—I'll send her in to you. But only for five minutes at the outside. I shall tell her that."

Bennett turned to Jadis, who stood back waiting. "Will you tell your sister her father wants to see her?" he asked. "Caution her that she is not to stay more than five minutes, please, Miss Bell."

When, after what seemed to Bennett a very long time, Sheba Bell entered the room and moved slowly, with all her accustomed grace, over to the side of the bed, the doctor went out, and faced Jadis outside the room. He saw the trouble in the girl's eyes.

"Thank you, Miss Bell. He's much better than I thought to find him on coming back here. In all probability you won't need a nurse in the house for more than a fortnight, at the outside."

Within the room Bell gazed up at his daughter, who waited in calm silence to hear what he had to tell her.

"I sent for you, Sheba," he said distinctly, but so slowly that it was as if he read his words from a manuscript which he found difficult to decipher, "to tell you that I have been thinking here for a long time. They thought I was still unconscious, but I was not. You have been a great disappointment to me, Sheba."

"You are not. You will never be sorry for anything that does not affect your life and yourself. But—three minutes. I want to tell you, whether you choose to marry a common mechanic, or become his mistress, is no concern of mine. You are of age, and do as you like. It is long since I made any attempt at controlling you."

He waited, but she did not reply, unless a slight hardening in the expression of her lovely dark eyes, and an equally slight stiffening of her figure as she stood gazing down at him, might be taken as reply.

"But," he went on in that slow, monotonous way, "when in my sight and hearing you publicly perjure yourself, and in public confess to perjury, you bring disgrace on not only your name, but my name too. You have an income inherited from your mother, small, but enough for you. It must be enough, for you will get nothing from me. I want you to leave this house, Sheba, and not return to it."

Jadis, he knew, had she been capable of inflicting on him such disgrace as he had suffered through her sister that day, would not have delayed her going one hour after hearing such words from him. But Sheba would sacrifice her pride to her own interest—even to her convenience, as was apparent to him now.

"That is all, then," he said. "Go, now, and do not let me see you again. I do not wish to see you again."

She went out, and the nurse whom Bennett had driven over from Westingborough, and who had been waiting outside the door, entered the room. At the foot of the staircase Sheba encountered her sister, also waiting for this—to her—mysterious interview to end. For Jadis had not gone to the inquest on Gatton's body, and, so far, knew nothing of what had occurred there: her father's illness had prevented thought of all else since he and Sheba had returned in the ambulance.

"Quite sensible," Sheba answered coolly. "I am leaving the house some time to-morrow, Jadis, for good."

"I expect your father will tell you all about it," Sheba replied, speaking as coolly as before. "He told me to go."

With that she went on, to her own room in which she had interviewed Harry Gatton before he went out to his death. Jadis went up to her father's room, and the nurse faced her as she opened the door.

"He's much better, Miss Bell—much better," she said brightly. "I don't think you'd better come in just now. He must be kept quiet."

"Let her come in, nurse." Bell's voice sounded faintly from the bed. "Come here, Jade."

"Sit down," he bade, and tried to smile. But he had not yet recovered full control of his facial muscles, and it was a poor wrinkling of the lips that he achieved. Jadis seated herself on the bed, and laid her hand on his left hand outside the coverlet. She felt that it was cold and limp, felt no response to her touch.

"That side, Jade," Bell said, and again tried to smile. "Nearest my heart, as you have always been. I can't feel your hand touching mine. There is no feeling at all, that side."

"It will come back, daddy," she told him, trying to speak as if she believed it. She would not let him see the fear that his helplessness and slow, strained speech gave her.

"The right hand—I shall still be able to sign my name," he said after a long pause. "Sheba is going—to-morrow, Jade."

Jadis made no reply. At first she was too stunned by the statement to speak, and then she remembered that he must be kept quiet.

He lay silent for a long time, while the nurse bustled about the room. Jadis sat still, her hand on his cold hand.

"I never liked the motorcycle," he went on at last, and spoke with long pauses between his difficultly uttered sentences. "She knew it, but it made no difference. I understand, now. Like her mother, secretive, selfish. You are a Bell, Jade. No secrets between us."

"If she had told me, I should have understood. It was natural. He saved her life when she was a child. I would have... accepted him, if she had told me. But.... secretive, selfish..."

Again he lay silent, and Jadis understood what her sister had done, but still could not understand his accusation of perjury. She would not question it: he must be kept quiet.

"Jade, I want you to write to that man for me. That man Wadden. Tell him I shall not sell the land. I am sorry, but I shall not sell the land. Write to him to-day and tell him, Jade."

"Till I get well, there will be nothing but thinking. And now there will be only you. Sheba has what her mother left her. Only you. This place, everything. I shall not sell the land."

The nurse came forward. "Excuse me, Miss Bell," she said firmly, having heard the emotion in the girl's voice, "he must be kept quiet, and not excited in any way."

She kissed him more than once, and kept back her tears till she got outside the room. The nurse came to the bedside.

"Nurse," Bell said, "I want you to ring my solicitor, Mr. Barham of Westingborough, and tell him he must come here to-morrow morning."

"Ring Barham," he persisted, "and tell him. A new will, at once. If I know you will do it, I'll keep quiet."

"I'll ring through to him the first time I go downstairs," she promised. "To come to-morrow morning, about a new will."

And he said no more, but watched her as she went about her ministrations in the brisk, impersonal way that nurses all acquire.

Down in the big lounge in which Head had interviewed the members of the household the day before, Jadis wrote to Superintendent Wadden as her father had asked, telling him that Mr. Bell regretted to inform Mr. Wadden that the marsh land forming part of the Condor Grange estate was now not for sale, and that Mr. Bell trusted the withdrawal of it from the market would not cause Mr. Wadden any inconvenience. Rather proud, in spite of her grief and anxiety over the day's happenings, of the businesslike tone of her letter, she sealed and stamped it ready for post, and then sat looking out from the window, seeing the shadow cast by the house lengthen toward the beeches on the far side of the road as the afternoon drew on. A maid brought in tea, and then, while the girl was still in the lounge, Jadis saw a car draw up outside the gate and recognised Lancelot French as he got out.

"Bella, show Mr. French in here when he rings," she bade, "and you'd better bring in another cup and plate, too."

"To inquire how your father is, Miss Bell," French told her as, shown into the room, he shook hands with her. "I saw Doctor Bennett an hour or so ago and heard what he had to say, but felt that I must run out and see you to ask, before going back to Estwick."

"That was very kind of you," she answered. "He is conscious, and able to talk to me for quite a long time—rather painfully, though. It is a first stroke, I understand, and the doctor says we can dispense with the nurse after a fortnight or so. Now do sit down and have tea with me, won't you? I've ordered a cup for you already."

French, who had hardly dared hope for such an invitation, accepted gladly enough. The maid brought in his cup and plate, and retired.

"Must. I've ordered one of our pilots to come over with a plane for me, and risked his landing it on your land on the other side of the road. I hope you'll forgive the trespass on your father's behalf."

"I thought—taking off from so near here"—he explained rather hesitatingly—"I might just call to make a final inquiry about your father before I go. If it isn't troubling you too much."

"Mr. French"—she gave him a steady look—"now you are here—you were at the inquest this morning, I think. I want you to tell me quite frankly, because there is nobody else I can ask, and I must know to-day. What did my sister do at the inquest?"

"Yes. She tells me she is leaving this house to-morrow, for good. I want to know the reason, and you can tell me."

"But I shall have to know, some time. It was—it was public, and I shall have to know. Mr. French, did she commit perjury?"

He inclined his head in silent assent after a long pause, knowing that any attempt at deceiving her would be useless: she would be able to learn the truth from newspapers in a very few hours.

Abruptly, after another pause, she put her cup down and stood up. French, too, started to his feet, and saw the agony in her eyes.

"Please go, Mr. French," she asked. "Please. Not— You understand, surely. Not because, but... Sheba—my sister!"

When he held out his hands she came close to him and put her head against his shoulder, sobbing quietly for awhile—he could feel her shaking as he held her and she reached up to put her arm round his neck and cling to him, as to a strength on which she could rely.

"Not yours, dear," French told her gently. "Jadis, may I take care of you? Hold you and take care of you?"

Her arm tightened about his neck, but she gave him no other reply. After another interval she looked up at him.

"Comforted," she said. "But—we can't have our happiness yet. You're going back to-morrow, and I—"

"Yes, come back to me. Sheba is going to-morrow, and I shall be alone, except for daddy. You're so—such a rock!"

"Daddy has ordered her to go," she interrupted. "I can't change him over it, I know. You see—he would never forgive that—perjury."

Remembering Bell as he had seen the man at the inquest, French knew she had good cause to say such a thing of him.

"Except—to take this place. I felt—may I tell you—I wanted to take it? Yesterday, when I saw you—is it wrong to tell you?"

"I love your telling. Dear, I know we mustn't have our happiness yet, but may I kiss you? Just once, Jadis?"

Mrs. Head put a saucepan of hot water over each of three gas rings, turned the gas low, and put the three plates containing her husband's dinner on the saucepans, one on each. She covered the plates to prevent the food from getting dry and spoiled—and Inspector Head, in the lounge of the Duke of York, waited patiently for the reappearance of Lancelot French, who had gone out during the afternoon but had not settled his account before going. Therefore, in Head's opinion, it was worth while to wait, and hear all about the trouble of warming up dinners when he got home. He knew he would hear about it.

The obnoxious alien, as Head had already decided to call Helsing, sat reading in a corner of the lounge, apparently cured of his propensity for advertising the advantages of Germany and the Hitler regime, for he took no notice of anybody. Woods the grocer was up against the bar, together with the two Smiths from the saddlery shop, Faulkner, Lucas Barham's head clerk, and some others. They were, naturally, discussing the inquest, and Tim Smith was offering evens that Sheba Bell would marry Tom Cosway within a month, not because she wanted to, but because after to-day she couldn't help herself. Faulkner said you never knew where a woman was concerned, and he thanked his stars he was a single man, and just then French appeared in the doorway of the lounge, entered and, pointedly ignoring Head's existence, went to a table on the side farthest from the bar, and as far as he could get from the obnoxious alien. Head went over to the table.

French looked up at him coldly. "What do you want, Inspector?" he asked, in a tone suggesting that whatever it was, Head would not get it, if French himself had anything to do with it.

"An introduction to your Mr. Thorburn, at Estwick," Head answered calmly. "I am going there to-morrow morning."

French took out his card case and a fountain pen. "I will write you one," he said curtly. "Is that all you require?"

"Unless you choose to give some explanation of this change of front," Head told him. "What has happened to cause it?"

"What has happened?" French echoed, looking round and keeping his voice low because of the other occupants of the lounge. "Didn't you put that infernal coroner on to badgering Miss Bell this morning? You know quite well you're indirectly responsible for her father's having had that stroke, and you have the impertinence to ask me what has happened! Damned impertinence, I call it!"

"You'll have to listen to me!" Head told him, and it was a stern order. "I know your interest in Mr. Bell and what he had to suffer at the inquest, but you can't hold me responsible for other people's frailties. My own are enough for me to worry over. I am an agent of justice. As such, I am determined to bring to trial and sentence the man—or the men—who murdered your friend Harry Gatton. And to that end I will use any just means that come to my hand."

"Was it just," French demanded—but Head could see that he was impressed, "to hound a girl who knew nothing of the crime in the way you did? To put her beside herself in the way the coroner did?"

"That girl tried to conceal one of the most vital pieces of information relating to this case," Head answered. "I had to get it."

"Mr. French, be sensible," Head urged. "You know what Stratosphere E3 is, and you know too that Harry Gatton died because your country's rivals wanted to steal it—or to steal the design. I've got to get the agents for that attempt, and there is no time to spare. It is not only a murder, but an affair of national importance—do you think I'd spare any person, myself or anyone with that at stake? You must be a bigger fool than I thought you, if you do."

"You mean—" French left it incomplete, and looked really impressed, now, as Head noted.

"I mean—but I can't tell you all, in a place like this. I've no business to tell you anything, yet. But if Miss Sheba Bell had your wife instead of your future sister-in-law, I'd have dragged that vital information out of her and Cosway, just the same. If it had been my own wife, it would have made no difference to me."

"No, you won't." French stood up. "If you'll let me, I'll fly you over to Estwick in the morning and make it a personal one. Head, I'm sorry. I take it all back, and you can count on me to help, if you will. Can't we drown the hatchet before you go, please?"

Head smiled. "I hated to see you like that, Mr. French," he answered. "I'll agree to give the hatchet a shallow internment with you, thanks, and it's very good of you to save my time by flying me to Estwick. Being a cross route, it would take me the best part of the day by train. Yes, a very small Haig splashed, thanks." For the waiter to whom French had signalled stood by the table.

"And now," French said, when the order had been completed, "I've got a small piece of information for you—purely personal information. Miss Sheba Bell is going to be my sister-in-law."

"Well, here's happiness to you and your future wife," Head responded, and took up his glass. "But it isn't information at all," he added as he put the glass down. "I could have told you as much yesterday morning, when I came out and found you with her by the car."

"The onlooker sees most of the game," Head observed tritely. "If I may ask, what time do you intend starting to-morrow morning?"

"Cartwright—our pilot, you know—will be over for me on the marsh opposite the Grange about half-past ten," French answered. "Will that time suit you, though? I'll have a car to take us out there."

"I must look in and say good-bye to Jadis—Miss Bell. Oh, hang it, Jadis! but that won't take a minute."

"No," Head agreed. "We shall probably get away by half-past eleven or so. I've been through it myself some years ago."

"Half-past... Oh, go on pulling! But there's no likelihood of her having much time to spare. Her sister is leaving to-morrow—"

French looked round, but the obnoxious alien was still engrossed in his reading, and the group by the bar were deep in argument: they knew better than to approach Inspector Head while he was talking to somebody. And both French himself and Head were keeping their voices too low for anyone to overhear them.

Head looked at his watch and reflected: if he delayed going to the Grange till the morning, Sheba Bell might have departed by the time he got there, and, as far as his warmed up dinner was concerned, he would hear no more about it than he was due to hear now, even if he kept it waiting for another hour or two. He finished his drink and stood up.

"Must," he answered. "I'm ever so grateful to you for that promised flight to Estwick, Mr. French. Will you look for me at the police station before you start in the morning?"

Chapter XII
The Estwick Problem

IN order to get to that warmed up dinner and waiting wife of his as soon as possible, Head chartered one of Westingborough's very few taxis from outside the Duke of York, and ordered the driver to take him out to Condor Grange and wait at the gate to bring him back. It was no more than a ten-minute trundle in the rather rickety conveyance, and, passing the end of Maggs Lane, which branched off at right angles towards the upper end of Market Street about half a mile after the taxi had passed over the Idleburn bridge, Head questioned inwardly whether one of those two men had driven the other toward Westingborough and along to the Market Street end of Maggs Lane before going off himself with the Alvis twelve.

He decided that that was what had happened, for one of those two was almost certainly a resident in Westingborough, and would have to come back after the failure of the attempt at stealing the aeroplane. Otherwise, his absence from the town would be noticed and would evoke comment from somebody. Yes, he would come back and mix in with his fellows, until he was ready to go altogether. The other, who must have been driving the Alvis, had just dropped him outside the town, and had gone to Estwick? Or back to London, as the registration letters of the car seemed to indicate?

Head had not decided this point in his unsupported theory regarding the flight of these two from the scene of their crime when the taxi stopped outside Condor Grange. He got out and, assuring the man he would not be many minutes, went to the door and rang. Bella, the parlourmaid who had admitted French that afternoon, opened the door and looked out at him: it was still daylight, but this eastern side of the house was in deep shadow, now, since the sun had set.

He entered, and waited in the big entrance hall for a very little while before Bella reappeared.

"Go back and tell her she must," he responded firmly. "Say that I'll wait till she does see me."

"I'm very sorry, sir, but Miss Bell told me to tell you she won't see you, not even if you wait all night, and I was to show you out."

"You go back," he said sternly, "and tell her that I'll give her one minute after you get to her to change her mind. Tell her if she's in bed I'll come and drag her out of it. I've no time to waste."

She took him through to the back of the house, to the dainty, rather over-furnished room that Sheba had made her own and converted to suit her tastes. Head entered, and stood before the tall, slender, normally lovely but now furious girl—or woman.

"To tell you," he answered calmly, "that if you attempt to leave this district without communicating your address to the police station at Westingborough, I will have you instantly arrested for perjury."

She shrank back a step from him, fear blending with the anger in her expression. "Who told you I was leaving?" she asked shakily.

"One of the people who might be a witness to your having perjured yourself, if you compel me to arrest you and charge you with it," he told her coldly. "If you are here, and available to give evidence at the trial of the murderer"—he used the singular designedly—"of Harry Gatton, I will take no action against you—"

"You've got him?" she interrupted, her whole manner changing. It was the first sign she had shown to anyone of real regret for Gatton's death, if pleasure in anticipating justice on his killer denoted that.

"I will take no action against you, in that event," he pursued without answering her sudden query. "If you attempt to disappear from the district, or even to move from this house, without telling us where to find you, you will be immediately placed where we can find you."

"I promise to let you know where I am going, as soon as I know myself," she said. "What—what evidence will you want me to give."

"You will have to say it," he insisted inexorably, "just as Cosway will have to say it. Not your relationship to each other, but your having told him of the arrival of this aeroplane on Monday night, and the day and time when you did tell him. That's what I want from you, and that I am determined to have, Miss Bell. Now remember—I have warned you fully. That is all I have to say. Good night."

He left her and went back to the taxi. Some hour or more after he had gone, she looked round this room on which she had spent so much, a room she loved, and the big tears coursed unheeded down her cheeks. For, in the knowledge that she was to be summoned again to public gaze, made to tell that story under circumstances which would put it in print for all the world to read, she saw her position here as absolutely and finally lost. Any faint hope that her father might forgive her some day vanished altogether now, and though, as Randall Bell had said, her mother had left her enough for her support, it would be a shoddy life that she must live, compared with this she had known.

Two hundred and fifty pounds a year—barely five pounds a week—less than five!—with which to meet all her needs. She had spent that amount and more each year on clothes alone!

She remembered how Tom Cosway had told her, at one of their stolen meetings, that when his business showed a profit of five pounds a week he would ask her to marry him—and she had smiled at the idea. But now, five—or a little less than five added to a little more than five—would be ten. What other course was left to her? She had been a sheltered idler of exotic tastes since her school days had ended: she saw herself as branded by her own conduct—but she put it that she had been pilloried unfairly by that hateful coroner—and ignored by the acquaintances whom, hitherto, she had termed friends.

There was no smile on Superintendent Wadden's face when Head walked in on him the next morning, with an attaché case packed in readiness for one night's sojourn at Estwick, if he found it necessary.

"Look at that!" Wadden barked, as he pointed at a letter he had sorted from the other papers on his desk. Then he blew so fiercely that Head had to reclaim the letter from the floor before reading Jadis Bell's statement of her father's decision not to sell the land.

"You did that!" Wadden barked again, as Head looked at him after finishing the letter, which he put back on the desk. "If you hadn't got Payne-Garland to make all that hoo-hah with the girl yesterday, I could still look forward to building a new home on my three acres."

"Cow? Cow be damned! What the hell has a cow got to do with my three acres? You know I was going to put it under glass for tomatoes! I've told you so often enough—and told the chief constable too!"

"Well, I expect you can find three acres somewhere else," Head said consolingly. "After all, probably Mrs. Wadden would have found it damp and chilly in the winter, being so near river level."

"Oh, yes, that's what you think! Besides, what the devil is the use of sending in my resignation till I've got my land?"

"What's the use of getting the land till you've sent in your resignation?" Head questioned in reply. "Chief, I haven't any too much time this morning. French is flying me over to Estwick—calling here for me at ten o'clock or a little later."

"The Estwick problem," Head said deliberately as he took his note-book from his pocket, "consists of getting the identity of the man who has been keeping watch here in Westingborough." He tore two leaved out from the note-book and put them down on Wadden's desk.

"And then, I suppose, you'll come here and find out who was acting at Estwick in collision with that man," Wadden suggested acidly. "Sort of long-distance detection—with a big telescope."

"Quite probably, chief." Head took the gibe imperturbably. "In the meantime, there are fourteen names—you'll recognise them all. They were in the lounge of the Duke of York when Tom Cosway published the fact that Harry Gatton would fly here on Monday night. Tom told me for a start that there were about a score, but either his memory was defective or else he over-estimated, for these were all the names he could give me when I tackled him and made him talk yesterday afternoon."

Wadden looked down the list. "Yes," he said, "you'll find that lot in the lounge there nearly every evening—most of 'em anyhow. And now whaddye want? Me to run the whole lot in on suspicion till you get back from Estwick to sort 'em out?"

Head laughed. "There'd be what you call a hoo-hah in Westingborough if you did," he said. "Fourteen prominent tradesmen—most of them are that, at least. No, chief—I want you to put on enough men to see that no one of those fourteen leaves Westingborough—I don't mean just goes for a walk, but looks like leaving altogether. Here are six of them in Market Street alone, so it won't take so very many men to keep an eye on the lot. I want them all watched till this case is ended—and then, I think, there'll be only thirteen left."

"Ooh-h!" Wadden sounded impressed. "As near the end as that, are you? And which one of this lot is going inside at the finish?"

"If I knew that, he'd be inside before I start for Estwick," Head answered. "But it's narrowing down. Now can I talk to Sergeant Wells in here? I want you to be conversant with everything."

Wadden rang his bell, and when Johnson the police clerk appeared, ordered Wells in. The sergeant appeared, looking rather trepidant at being summoned—apparently to go "on the carpet."

"No, sergeant," Head observed with a smile, "you're not for a wigging this time. Just look at this list of names, will you?"

Wells took the note-book pages and scrutinised the names. "Yes, sir?" he asked, glancing at the inspector again.

"Merely that I'm going away this morning, and shall be back either to-night or some time to-morrow," Head told him. "When I get back, I want you to hand me a good, recognisable photograph of every one of those fourteen men. If in evening clothes, so much the better."

"I see, sir. From local photographers or somewhere. But supposing any of them are not available? For one thing, you won't get a recognisable photo of Mr. Woods—I see you've got his name here. He shaved off his beard about three months ago."

"Where you can't get one, take one," Head bade. "Fix the tele-photo attachment on the lens of the camera, and hire a car and sit in it, or do it how you like without being caught at it. Get the lot—put any men you like on to it to help you. I must have them."

"That for one thing, sergeant. Now the next. I want to take with me three pairs of the photographs of you and your wife, each pair in a separate envelope and carefully cleaned. I think three will be enough. And the small finger-print powdering outfit—get me that too."

"Copy those fourteen names out and let me have those two pages of my book back." He looked at his watch. "If I think of anything else, I'll tell you when you bring them back here to me. Hurry it—I expect Mr. French to call for me at any minute, now."

"If all this theory of yours is right, Head," he remarked, "and these two are secret agents and old hands at the game as you think they are, Wells and his wife won't catch the one at Estwick. He'll know that trick—it's getting known fairly widely, now."

"He'll give himself away, in that case, by refusing to fall for it," Head pointed out.

The trick in question consisted in handing to a suspect two photographs, each highly glazed both on back and front, in succession, and asking if the recipient recognised either of the two people. By holding the two prints, probably one in the right hand and one in the left, the suspect would provide useful finger-print impressions. Sergeant Wells and his wife, both in fancy dress as they had appeared at a dance in Westingborough and therefore not easily recognisable as themselves, had been photographed separately to provide several sets of these prints for use when required: they made quite a good-looking pair.

Johnson entered on Wells' heels as the sergeant brought back the note-book pages and other items, to say that Mr. French had called for Inspector Head, and Head slipped his requisites into his attaché case and closed it. Then he held out his hand to Wadden.

"Make it a month, as long as you bring back the bacon with you," Wadden answered. "Good luck, you old sinner."

Then Head went out, and seated himself beside French in the taxi that had taken him to Condor Grange and back the night before.

"We're fairly early," French observed as the taxi moved off. "I haven't heard Cartwright go over to land, yet."

"It will not," French assured him. "You won't find her landing outside our aerodrome again in a hurry, I can assure you."

"Well, one can't have everything," Head observed philosophically. "Mr. French, how many people have you at Estwick who hold flying licences—who are qualified pilots?"

"Let me see, now," French reflected. "The four pilots—three, now that Gatton is dead. That leaves us Cartwright, Thomas, and Sykes—Cartwright is coming over for us this morning. Then I hold a licence, and so does my brother Paul. And Gardner, our managing director. He's got a licence, but hardly ever flies a machine. Oh, and Cortolvin, the aero works manager. I nearly forgot him."

"Yes, that's the lot—unless someone has a licence and hasn't disclosed the fact. It's all I know as holding licences."

"There might be others, then," Head surmised thoughtfully. "Were all these licence holders present at that Air Force dance last November, could you tell me?"

"I haven't the faintest idea why you want to know all this," French said in a rather puzzled fashion. "But they were all there—at least, all had invitations—except Cortolvin."

"Cortolvin?" French laughed. "Cortolvin at a dance? He was much more likely to be addressing a mothers' meeting, or canvassing for the League of Nations. Dancing is a fleshly, sinful dissipation, as far as he's concerned. He's a Plymouth Brother, or something of the sort, and the best man at his work you could find anywhere."

"Grown up with the firm—lives in it and for it—when he's not at a prayer meeting. Never been known to smile. A holy terror to slackers, and a great man in the shops. Oh, we'd go into mourning for the rest of our lives if we lost Cortolvin! You'll see him when we land, and he'll look at you as if you were just another vessel of wrath and tell you he's pleased to meet you—which he isn't."

"I know the type," Head remarked. Then he took out his note-book, and managed to inscribe the two names, "Thomas" and "Sykes" before the taxi stopped before the gateway of Condor Grange. Another car that he recognised was already there—Doctor Bennett had arrived for his morning call, Head realised at sight of the car.

French paid off his driver and turned to Head with a grin. There was a faint hum as of a distant aeroplane somewhere.

"I made it early, to get here before Cartwright, Head. You told me you'd been through it yourself, so you can guess why."

French left him to go to the house, and, looking up into the sky over Westingborough, he saw the plane that he had already heard, growing larger on its way to landing on the marshes. He was still watching it slant down toward him when Bennett emerged from the Grange and came out to his car. Head gave up watching the aeroplane.

"Oh, he'll be about again before you know where you are," Bennett responded. "Left side may be slightly affected, but it's only a first stroke. He ought to have come to me about blood pressure long ago."

"And didn't, of course," Head completed. "We never do. I'll get you to test mine, some time, before I get too old."

Bennett laughed. "You've nothing to worry about, by the look of you," he said. "Possibly you don't drink port after dinner every night or take wine at lunch. If you do, stop it."

"I haven't started," Head assured him. "Doctor, now I've got you, I want to know. How did you remove that bullet from Gatton's skull?"

"How? Trephined for it, of course—the man was dead. I knew you wanted it unmarked, as it wouldn't have been if I'd grovelled for it."

"Grovelled is good," Head said with a smile. "I just wanted to make sure, in case we recover the pistol it was fired from."

"To couple up the two," Bennett said. "Yes, I had that in mind. Wonderful what can be done in that way, nowadays."

"Yes, positive identification of a bullet with the barrel it passed through," Head remarked. "Sir Roden Symons has done a lot toward it."

"Which means, you'll have him as an expert witness against the man who shot this man Gatton?" Bennett suggested.

"When we've caught the man who did it and found his revolver," Head countered. "You're moving a bit too fast for me."

Bennett laughed. "You're pretty swift yourself, Inspector," he said. "I haven't heard of any of that business of calling in Scotland Yard on the cases you take up, so far."

"We can always get a specialist from there if we want one," Head said, "but mine is a sort of general practice, like yours. Don't you go underrating Scotland Yard—they've got some of the finest brains in the country there, available if we need them."

"All right—all right!" Bennett retorted, and laughed again. "Now I'll go and get on with my general practice, and leave you to yours. We shall be meeting officially in court, soon, I expect."

He stood waiting by the Grange gate while Bennett got into his car, turned about, and drove off. While the doctor and he had talked, the aeroplane he had heard and seen had dropped down until hidden by the strip of beech trees on the other side of the road, and, now that the engine had been shut off, was non-existent as far as he was concerned. If it had been that noiseless plane that Gatton had landed there, he knew, it might have dropped down out of the sky totally unobserved. One saw an aeroplane because one heard it first. No wonder Barton and Peters were anxious that Stratosphere E3, not yet perfect in its designer's opinion, should be kept secret from people who might advertise its existence as a new power in the air.

"Ah! Well, I hope you will, one of these days. And now I remember, I left a perfectly good suit of pyjamas and a toothbrush at that hotel, to say nothing of a new shaving kit."

"Not on your life! I'll be back here before the pyjamas have had time to grow cold. What do you think? Let's go!"

They went along the cart track under the beeches, and, as they came to its end, saw Cartwright standing beside his landed aeroplane, awaiting their arrival.

Chapter XIII
At Estwick

Head followed him out from the stationary aeroplane, and saw a dour-looking, middle-aged man observing him and his attaché case with grim disapproval. He looked at his watch. "Pretty good," he answered. "Under the hour. What's the distance from our starting point?"

"Oh, Cartwright?" French called as the pilot got out. "You weren't exactly wasting petrol, were you, on the run here?"

"Not nearly all out," the pilot—a small man who almost certainly took sevens in shoes, and thus was yet another eligible as the one who had left small footprints in the leaf-mould—answered. "About two-thirds her limit, I should think. You didn't ask me to push her."

"All right. Zalescz"—French turned to Head again—"designs things that go. We build 'em. Now this is our Mr. Cortolvin"—he indicated the dour-looking man who had approached them. "Inspector Head, from Westingborough, Cortolvin—I've been staying there."

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Head," Cortolvin said with a decided north-country accent—and fulfilled French's prophecy regarding him.

"It's airy up here." He glanced round the landing ground as he spoke, and noted the hangars directly before him, most of them with closed doors.

"Would you like to look over what we do up here before we go down into the town for lunch?" French inquired of Head. "There's time, I mean, if you would. For a brief inspection, that is."

"Thanks, but I think not," Head answered. "I'll get to the business that brought me here, if you don't mind."

"Well, if you have time this afternoon, when you've finished getting what you want—or put it in train—we might give you a run in E3 for a bit, if you'd care for it."

"No, ye won't, Mr. French," Cortolvin interposed. "Mr. Zalescz is busy on her again—not satisfied yet. An' besides, now Mr. Gatton is dead, there's nobody but himself Mr. Zalescz'd trust out with her, till he's taken one o' the other three up in her himself."

"That's off, then," French said. "You can't go against Zalescz. But I'll see that you're kept interested while you're here, Head, as far as I can. Have you got a car here for me, Cortolvin?"

"Mr. Paul said he'd be up from the town works," Cortolvin answered. "I told him what time to expect yes sir, but ye're a bit airly. Ah! Here's Mr. Paul, just drivin' in at the gate."

The car, a small sports model, as Head observed, bumped slowly over the turf toward them. Presently he was introduced to Paul French, a tall, pleasant-looking man with a strong resemblance to his brother.

He took the cramped back seat in the car, since the two brothers had much to say to each other after Lancelot's absence, and so was driven down from the open high ground on which the aerodrome was located, to the offices of a long range of works beside the river which flowed through Estwick, where all three got out. Lancelot French led the way to what was evidently the directors' room, judging by the big board-meeting table and ranged chairs round it.

"This," Lancelot said, "is where we have our squabbles from time to time. Do sit down and feel at home, Head. Will you have anything to make you happy after humming through the atmosphere?"

"Not a thing, thanks," Head answered. "I'd like to be introduced to your managing director, if you don't mind"—for he remembered that Gardner held a pilot's license—"and then, if there's time, put things in train for getting what I came for—a list of the people present at that Air Force dance of yours last November."

"Ah! You don't want Paul any more, then?" French asked, as he pressed a bell-push at the end of the big table.

"In the sense you mean, I haven't wanted him since I first saw him, any more than I want you," Head answered.

Paul French laughed. "Then forgive me for being busy, Mr. Head," he said. "I've been hanging round for arrest, but if you won't, I'll get back to my work. See you later, Lance, and you too, Mr. Head."

A clerk appeared, and Lancelot French bade the man tell Mr. Gardner that he was wanted in the board room. Then he turned to Head again.

"You won't like Gardner, at first," he warned him. "But, if you can, conquer your prejudice—I know the real man, and so will you, if you have time to discover him. As I told you, we're a happy family in this firm, and Gardner—well, he just wants knowing."

"And what could be fairer than that?" French observed as the door opened, and, as Head concluded before French spoke, the man of whom they had been talking appeared and looked suspiciously at him.

A small man—he, again, might take sevens in shoes, or even sixes, Head decided. A bald patch on the top of his head, sandy hair surrounding it, small eyes that peered rather than looked, as if he ought to be wearing aids to his sight, and a general air of initial hostility, as if he would begin his acquaintance with the man before him with suspicion of his character. An utterly unlikeable personality, on sight.

"This is Inspector Head, from Westingborough, Gardner," French said. "I expect you've heard of him. He's here to find out who killed Harry Gatton last Monday. Mr. Gardner, our managing director, Head."

They shook hands, and Gardner managed to make it the sort of ritual with which boxers precede the business of trying to knock each other into unconsciousness. Then he spoke.

"I hope you are successful, Mr. Head," he said. "Can I offer you a cigarette?" He took out a gold case and flicked it open.

"Thanks very much." Head took one, and Gardner offered the case to French and then produced a gold lighter with which he lighted all three cigarettes. "Just arrived, I take it?" he remarked.

"In the Bullet—the machine Zalescz considers not good enough for his reputation," Gardner added. "Well, Mr. Head, knowing your reputation, I expect you don't want to see me merely to hear me talk trivialities. But you've asked to see me. What can I do for you?"

It was a challenge, if ever there was one. Head turned to his attaché case on the board room table, opened it, and took out one pair of the photographic prints he had brought with him. He took them out from their envelope, being careful to hold them only by their top edges, and offered that of Wells to Gardner, who took it between his left finger and thumb, still holding his cigarette between the two fingers of his right hand.

"You can tell me if you have ever seen that man before, to the best of your recollection," he said, and remembered that the man who had left his finger-prints on the aeroplane key had almost certainly held it in his right hand, and removed only his right glove.

"No, I'm pretty sure I've never seen him before," Gardner said, gazing intently at the photograph. "It's a fairly distinctive face, and rather a good-looking man. If I'd noticed him anywhere, I think I should remember him enough to recognise this."

"Then what about this woman?" Head asked. "Can you recognise her as somebody you've met at any time?" He held out the second print.

Being between Gardner and the table, he felt pretty certain that the man must take this second print in his right hand, since his left was already occupied in holding the portrait of Sergeant Wells. But, passing him as he stood, Gardner put the first print down on the table, and then turned and took the second one with his left hand, still holding his cigarette in his right, and thus providing a pretext for his movement. He gazed at the woman's face with frowning intentness.

"I may have seen her," he said. "I'm not absolutely sure. Somebody who reminds me of her. I don't think it can be the same, though, for if it were I could call her identity to mind, and I can't. No, I won't say that I have, but think I haven't, on the whole." He laid the print down on the table, and turned to Head again. "Why, Mr. Head? Do you mean there's a woman in this business—this murder?"

"I wouldn't say that for certainty. I merely wanted to know if you could recognise either her or the man."

Gardner shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said coldly. "I'm afraid I can't help you, Mr. Head. Anything else I can do for you?"

"Yes," Head answered. "You might send your Mr. Thorburn along to me. I think there's time to see him before lunch, isn't there, Mr. French? I mean, I don't want to upset your arrangements in any way."

"Plenty of time," French agreed cheerfully. "If you don't mind turning Freddy Thorburn in, Gardner—perhaps we shall have time for a general chat with Mr. Head about this before he goes back to Westingborough, if he's not in too much of a hurry to leave us."

"I hope we shall," Gardner replied icily. "I'll send Thorburn in here. Good-bye for the present, Mr. Head—ask anything you want of me, either directly or through Mr. French here."

"Ah, you haven't seen the real man!" French told him. "We know our Gardner. You've got to get under his skin for that."

Head put his two photographs away carefully, holding them only by their edges while he slid them into the envelope. He put that envelope back in his attaché case, took out a second pair and put them in his breast pocket, and had just stowed them away when Fred Thorburn appeared, having evidently been sent to the board-room by Gardner as requested.

In him, Head saw the fourth—or was it the fifth or sixth?—small man who might have left footprints under the beeches. They were getting irritatingly plentiful, these men who might fit the lightly impressed footprints in the leaf mould. Both Head and French were still smoking as the little, rather nervous-looking man entered, and Head could have slain his companion here when he saw him take out his cigarette case as he spoke, rather jauntily.

"Have a cigarette, Freddy. And meet—as they say in America—the great detective, Mr. Head from Westingborough. Mr. Fred Thorburn, Head, our secretary for all good causes, and a few bad ones. General handy man if you want anything done without paying for it, as I often do. And as you do too—though he'll do it in the firm's time, I'll see. Cricket and football secretary, Air Force dance secretary—and that's what Mr. Head wants to worry you over, Freddy." He finished with a slightly questioning glance at Head, as if he would apologise for this rather fulsome introduction of his man, but wished the inspector to understand that here was one who was valued for his unremitting efforts to promote the social and sporting amenities of the firm.

"Glad to meet such a famous man," the little man said modestly, and offered his hand, a flabby appendage which Head took and dropped.

"Work? My dear man, don't you understand that while you're here you're a guest of Barton and Peters, and as such I'm going to see that you get thoroughly bored. I've nothing to do but make sure of that."

"Then there's nothing private about what I want from Mr. Thorburn," Head assured him. "It's very simple, Mr. Thorburn." He turned to the small, apologetic-looking man. "Mr. French has told me that you know what invitations were issued here for the Air Force dance last November, and are in a position to give me a list of everybody who was present: I want every name, and every address, if it can be done."

"Certainly I can let you have a complete list, Mr. Head," Thorburn answered—and his voice was reedy, thin as his person. "Do you want them at once? Because the book containing the list is at my diggings."

"I'll bring the book back with me when I go for lunch," Thorburn promised. "I sent out the invitation cards, so it will be complete."

"Well"—Thorburn smiled—"there are such things as gate-crashers, you know, even in a remote village like Estwick."

"Remote village is good," Head observed. "You should come and see what Westingborough is like, with only the dyeing industry to keep the whole town alive. You wouldn't decry a city like this, then."

"Perhaps I will, some day," Thorburn answered, "and I'm not decrying Estwick. But"—he looked at his watch—"it's just lunch time, I see. I'll get away and get you this list, and copy it out for you as soon as I get back. Any special people you want in it?"

"I've no idea, yet," Head told him. "I may tell you, though, that I want it in connection with Gatton's death, and that there is a woman in the affair—mixed up in it in some way."

There were two, he knew—the one Gatton had gone to see, and her sister—though Jadis was connected with the affair only in so far as that she was in love with French. He dropped the remark with a view to keeping Thorburn talking till he had finished that cigarette and set his right hand free to handle one of the two photographs: but a good two-thirds of the cigarette remained between Thorburn's fingers, yet, and, Head decided as he looked at it, he could leave that part of the business until Thorburn brought him the completed list later on.

"A woman in it, eh?" Thorburn remarked interestedly. "Well, I suppose there always is, in everything—though I manage to keep fairly clear of them, myself. Well, I'll get along Mr. Head, shall I?"

With an acknowledgment of the instruction, Thorburn went out. On his way back to his own room in the offices, he was stopped by Gardner.

"Oh, a list of everyone at the Air Force dance last November," Thorburn answered. "Mr. Lancelot told me to put everything aside till I'd got it done. The book of names is up at my diggings, so I'd going off to get it before seeing about my lunch."

"A list of everyone at the Air Force dance?" Gardner echoed in a puzzled, questioning fashion. "What on earth for, man?"

"According to him, somebody at that dance had something to do with Gatton's death last Monday night," Thorburn explained meekly.

"Possibly he's right—I don't know. But how he's to link it up after all this time?—no, I don't see it at all," Gardner reflected.

Gardner smiled frostily. "I seem to have heard that remark made before, somewhere," he remarked. "In fact, it sounds stale. Well, you carry on with the good work, Thorburn. Gatton's death is a loss to us, and the man responsible for it ought to be brought to justice."

With which trite comment he went about his business. In the board room, Head stood deliberating over a nice point that had just occurred to him, while French waited, realising that the inspector was considering some possible course of action. At that moment, Head was querying as to whether to mention the black Alvis twelve two-seater and find out if French knew anything about such a car: but he had very carefully withheld all mention of it in connection with the case, apart from confidential inquiry sent out from Westingborough, and decided that he would say nothing even to French, till the results of that inquiry came in. Having decided, he turned to French.

"When you gave me that list of people holding pilots' morning, Mr. French," he said, "you missed one out."

"I'm quite sure I didn't!" French exclaimed, surprised at the accusation. "The four pilots, myself and my brother, Gardner, Cortolvin."

"Well, I am a mutt! Of course! But—look here, would Zalescz murder a man to steal his own machine could fly off with it from here at any time he liked?"

"Meaning that you don't trust anyone," French commented. "Well, look here—Freddy Thorburn isn't likely to have that list ready for you much before four o'clock. What about your coming out to lunch with me, and then we'll run up to the aerodrome and you can have a talk with Zalescz? He's sure to be there, since he's still tinkering at E3 to make perfection yet more perfect. Will that suit you?"

"Guest of the firm—must look after you. Would you like anyone else to come and lunch with us—my brother and I usually lunch together? We don't go home for it—we both live with our mother, a good four miles out of the town, so we go somewhere nearer."

"Well, don't let me upset your arrangements. Besides, I liked your brother, and making a threesome of it will suit me."

"Right—I'll catch Paul on the way out and drag him along with us. Shall I get Gardner to come along too—do you want to talk to him?"

"I see. Gardner gets everyone that way, at first—as I told you, you've got to get to know him to realise him as one of the best. Well, let's go, and then Paul can run us up to the aerodrome, and fetch you back here in time to get that list from Freddy. All set?"

"Harry Gatton was my friend—you're doing what I'd do myself if I knew how. I'll help you in every way to get the man who killed him, and—I've got faith that you will get him. Especially after what you said to me in that hotel lounge last night, when I wanted to kill you over the trouble you'd made for Jadis Bell."

"I'm sorry about that—the indirect results of it, I mean," Head said as French opened the board door for him. "But it had to be done, to get what I wanted."

"I know, since you told me what you did. Wash all I said out of your mind. Ah, there's Paul, the old owl! Come along, Head."

Chapter XIV
—And John Zalescz

CERTAIN London morning papers, benefiting by the report which the Westingborough Sentinel man hastened to transmit to the agency for which he "covered" items of news at times, made a two column scream of the inquest proceedings on the body of Harry Gatton, and paid particular attention to the evidence extracted by the coroner from Sheba Bell and Tom Cosway. Thus Jadis was able to read the full account, and to realise what Sheba had done, after which she understood that any attempt at persuading her father to reverse his decision regarding her sister was utterly useless. Sheba had damned herself for ever, in his eyes.

For her part, Sheba had breakfast in bed that morning—she made quite a good meal of it, by the way—and ignored the papers while she planned her course of action. In mid-morning, dressing, she saw the aeroplane drop down beyond the beeches—for her bedroom window faced toward them, though her sitting room was at the back of the house—and saw, too, that Lancelot French and that hateful police inspector went across the road on to the marshes, after which the plane rose up and flew away. A half-hour or so after they had gone, she went down to the dining-room, locked the door, and took the telephone receiver off the instrument. She dialled a number, and Tom Cosway, in his shop at Westingborough, hurried to the back of the shop, removed his receiver, and inquired who was speaking.

At her tone, and especially at that last word, her heart gave a mighty leap. Then it reverted to normal: he might be purring before scratching—though Tom did not put it quite like that in his mind.

"My dear, you couldn't help it. They caught us unawares—it was that Inspector Head's doing—I feel I could kill the man! He came here to see me last night—I'm speaking from home—he came and threatened me as if I were a common criminal."

"Told me he'd arrest me if I tried to leave here. We've both got to give evidence at the trial of the man who killed Gatton—Oh, I wish I'd never let Gatton come here! Tom, it wasn't about that I wanted to talk to you. To ask you, dear—do you still want me, after all that happened yesterday?"

"Want you, darling? I haven't slept all night for thinking of you. Thinking how I'd let you down, and how you must be feeling over it."

"It's sweet of you to think of me like that, Tom, dear. Listen, now. Tom, I will marry you, when you like—are you alone there?"

"Yes, my man is out in the workshop at the back, Sheba—do you really mean that, in spite of everything?"

"I'd already thought of giving up the shop and getting out. I know a business in Crandon I could take over—I'd have to borrow some capital for it, but if you—if I had you, Sheba—"

"Don't worry about the capital, dear—I can arrange that for you out of what I have of my own. But Crandon—only ten miles away—" She thought over what it would mean. And yet, wherever she went with her now limited means, it would be difficult to escape recognition.

"You shall take the business at Crandon, Tom, and we'll defy people together—you and I. Let them say what they like, and as soon as somebody else has to defy them over something, they'll forget all about us. Listen, dear. You know our meeting place in Thorleyston woods?

She hung up, unlocked the door again, and found Jadis happily dreaming in the big lounge—until disturbed by her sister's entrance. At that, the happy look fled from Jadis' eyes, and she stood up.

"Don't disturb yourself," Sheba said coolly. "I merely wanted to tell you that I shall not be leaving here to-day."

If, as was probable, Jadis had felt inclined to sympathise with her sister, the cool hardness of that declaration drove out the feeling. Here was no word regarding their father, lying helpless in his room through Sheba's actions: Jadis saw only cold self-interest in her sister's attitude, heard only that in her voice.

"Exactly," Sheba agreed composedly. "I am meeting Tom Cosway this afternoon, to make final arrangements for marrying him—but I have not asked him to come here. And with regard to the idea of leaving here, Inspector Head told me last night he would have me arrested for perjury if I did anything of the kind until Gatton's murderer has been tried. He wants me available as a witness in the case."

"More publicity!" Jadis exclaimed bitterly. It could not be kept from her father's knowledge—and French, if his love for her were strong enough, would share the reflected odium of this.

"Can I help it, now?" Sheba asked harshly. "Would you have me try to run away and get myself arrested as that inspector threatened? You know as well as I do that the publicity of that would be far worse. I won't attempt to see your father while I'm forced to stay here—he told me he didn't wish to see me any more, and I don't wish to see him. I'll take care to keep out of his way till Tom is ready for me to go to him, and I'll take my meals in my own room to spare you the pain of looking at me while you eat. As soon as Tom is ready to marry me, you can forget my existence. That's all, Jadis."

"Sheba, dear!" Jadis protested. "What have I done to you to make you talk like this? I haven't said one word—"

"But you've looked it—when I came in here. I don't want sentiment and tears—Tom Cosway will provide me with all the sentiment I am likely to want, and I'll keep my tears for all I lose by being forced out of my home and place. As I said, that's all, Jadis."

She turned about and went out from the room—back to her own room, where she began packing the smaller things she could claim as her own. Jadis gave her up—there was no alternative, after that last bitter speech, for Jadis too had her pride, and the sisters, having little in common, had gone utterly different ways since their school days had ended.

With his brother beside him, and Head again cramped in the back of the little sports car, Paul French drove away from the offices of Barton and Peters on his way to the aerodrome outside the city.

"Careful how you go, Owl," Lancelot warned him, as he shot ahead of a motor bus and, cutting in, nearly scraped his near side wing.

"Of course I'll be careful! What would you, with a detective inspector aboard?" He just missed a milk float, and accelerated. "I'm being all peaceful and keeping the regulations, for once."

"Then heaven help your passengers when you don't, Mr. French," Head leaned forward to observe. "But, if I live long enough, I want to ask your brother—those other two pilots, Sykes and Thomas?"

"Shall we see them at the aerodrome—if this car holds together to get there with us, and we arrive conscious, I mean?"

Paul slackened pace a little, and laughed as he did it. "This is nothing to what I do sometimes," he said.

"Thomas is in a nursing home," Lancelot explained. "He had his appendix out the beginning of last week, and won't be available for some while—unless you like to go there to see him. Sykes is away on his honeymoon—when is he due back, Owl?"

"Not really due back for another fortnight," Paul answered, "but I wrote him yesterday asked him if he could cut the billing short and be content with an odd coo or two out of working hours. Told him he might take the rest as soon as Thomas is fit. With poor old Gatton dead, we've only got Cartwright for duty, now."

"Ireland, of all places," Paul answered before his brother could speak. "She's Irish—that's why. I think she's going to wear the trousers, when they shake down. I'd sooner manage a good car than be managed by a woman, any day—Whup!"

For, as he talked, he had unconsciously accelerated again. Head grabbed the side of the car to check his sway as Paul just missed an approaching lorry. They steadied again as he straightened out.

He steered them safely in through the gateway of the aerodrome, and Head noted the middle-aged man on guard there, saw him salute the two young directors of the firm as they passed in. Paul drove over to one of the hangars which had its sliding doors rolled back, jerked his passengers violently by pulling on his hand brake, and was over the side from the steering wheel and bowing as Head got out.

"You fathead, it was sheer luck!" his brother told him. "Owl, you'll get the firm a bad name, showing off like that in the city itself. Now, Mr. Head, you'll find Zalescz in there"—he gestured toward the interior of the hangar. "Do you want him to yourself?"

"No, come along by all means," Head answered, "if you wish, that is. I'm merely waiting till I can get hold of that list, and seeing Mr. Zalescz is interest and nothing more—not business, I mean."

"I'll sit here and smoke," Paul said. "You go along, Lance—I shall be perfectly happy on my own till you're ready to go back. If I stray, look for Cortolvin, and you'll find me."

They went in. Stratosphere E3, its undercarriage retracted into the recesses under the fuselage, sat down on the concrete floor of the hangar, and Head saw again its grotesque, hollow box of a nose, with the myriad of little blades just showing at the back of the box.

"Sort of combination knives and spoons," French observed. "Rather like the blades in a turbine rotor, really. You saw what they can do, when she went away from Westingborough with Zalescz driving her. Ah!"

For suddenly, as Head watched, the little blades disappeared, and gave place to a fuzzy haze, a sort of woolliness at the back of the box.

"He's idling the engine over for something or other," French said explanatorily. "Let's go and have a look at him."

They moved farther into the hangar, and came abreast the door in the side of the machine. Zalescz, catching sight of them, turned the key in the ignition slot, and leaned out. Head had scarcely heard the turning of the engine, but he noted its cessation. Zalescz nodded.

"That's better," he said. "I'll have it ready by to-morrow, perhaps. Except for the noise, I think he'll do, now. That's Mr. Head, surely!" He climbed out from the machine and offered his hand. "How are you, Mr. Head? Think you'll find your murderer here, eh?"

"So you're not quite the perfect detective, then? You ought to be subjecting me to the severest possible examination, surely. And you ought to arrest French too—in all the best mystery stories, the detective always arrests the wrong man first, to give himself a lead to the right one. Why don't you do that?"

"Because I'd go on the carpet for unnecessary expense to the county, and maybe lose my job if the damages for wrongful arrest were too heavy," Head answered. "I can't afford such luxuries, Mr. Zalescz. But if that engine of yours is noisy, what is a quiet one?"

"She was idling, my dear sir—idling. If I'd opened her out, then, I should have been over that hedge by now." He gestured at the tall hawthorn fence at the far end of the big aerodrome. "And you've only seen—and unfortunately heard too—this beauty at a thousand feet and under. That STR on her side stands for 'stratosphere.' I have to compensate her for varying air pressures as well as silence her, and let me tell you the variation amounts to something between sea level and forty thousand feet. It isn't a mere amateur job."

The man was a great genius, Head knew, but he was as unassuming as any employee of the firm for which he designed things like this silent aeroplane. "But I'll get it right yet," he added confidently.

"You have to justify yourself," Zalescz pleaded apologetically. He looked at Head again. "You know, Mr. Head, I read lots of mystery stories—it's the form of fiction I like best. And— I don't know if you can enjoy this as I did, though. I read one not long ago by a man named Mills, and he had a chap up in the stratosphere who fired a bullet at a car down on earth, and"—his voice rose to a shout—"HIT IT! Have you got that—do tell me you've got it! If I get worried over silencing E3, I'm going to think of that and get my courage back. He hit the car with a bullet, from the stratosphere!"

"Gospel according to this man Mills, he not only saw it, but hit it with a bullet, I tell you," Zalescz insisted. "Oh, I know! You couldn't see him, when he got to that height, and he'd have to turn to his instruments to locate his own position in relation to the earth. Even with the best instruments he could have aboard, a car wouldn't be as big as a flea, to him up in the stratosphere. Don't you see—that's why it's such a joyful thing to me? I love that man Mills."

"In other words, learn your job before you start work?" Head suggested. "As you know yours, I mean."

"Well, I know a bit, but one is always learning—is not one? Damned clumsy, that sentence—I always get tied up if I call myself one. And yet I am only one, unfortunately. Why aren't there twenty-six hours in every working day? Tell me that!"

"As they say in the Walworth road, don't you kid yourself!" Zalescz replied dissentingly. "I've got the loveliest and the most beautiful baby you ever saw, both waiting for me down in the city when I put the last spanner down and close these doors for the day. And—just in confidence, Mr. Head—I've got a mistress who means just as much to me as those two—if she doesn't mean more, really."

"Don't you believe him, Head," French interposed. "It's quite true about the wife and baby, but over the other he's pulling your leg, hard. He's always pulling somebody's leg like that."

"I assure you, Mr. Head, it would hurt me to see you with one leg longer than the other," Zalescz said. "I have got a mistress, and French here has her too—and I believe by the look of you you're in it as much as either of us. Her name, my friend—England."

"That is for her," Head said, and, pointing at Stratosphere E3, found his voice a trifle uncertain, for the moment.

"When it's good enough," Zalescz said quietly . "When I'm quite sure she'll give me a smile in return for it. You know, you may put your wife off with that tale of being late at the club, but you don't do things like that with your mistress, when she means as much to you as this one. Perhaps I'm a bit theatrical about it, but, you see, there was a war once, and my foreign name made people suspicious of me for awhile—I was only a boy, then, and it hurt me. People who didn't know how my grandfather found freedom in this country and loved it, and made his son English, which in turn made me all English as soon as I was old enough to understand. People like me—we become her truest lovers when we know her. Forgive my blathering, won't you?"

"Well, think of that chap up in the stratosphere aiming his rifle at the car on earth, and hitting it," Zalescz countered, and laughed quietly. "And now we've had this talk, I'll never believe in detectives again. Why, damn it, you're human! It's all wrong!"

"Not a bit, my friend—not a bit! When I want to find a real detective, I shall take up a mystery story, and enjoy it more than ever, now. I know I shall find there the real detective I can never meet in the flesh—especially the one who leads the police by the nose and jeers at them all the time—you know the one I mean, I expect. Works with a microscope and tells you how many measle-spots your cousin twice removed had after he's scraped a little of the polish off your shoe, and looked at it through the microscope, of course, without the formality of putting it in a slide. Where's your microscope, Mr. Head?"

"I ran out of slides," Head answered, enjoying the man's versatility and evident sense of humour. Here, he felt, was one who lived, in the very best sense of the word.

"I thought so," Zalescz said. "Human, and very little else, apparently. Which is why you will probably wind up this case as you have those others I've read about—successfully. You've got love of life and love of laughter—which is a damned difficulty sentence to say. Try it for yourself, if you don't believe me. And don't come to Estwick without coming to see me—ever. We're both specialists, and both moderately successful—if I may pat myself on the back for once. Now I'm going to doctor this lady a bit more, if you'll forgive me."

"Moderately successful!" Head remarked, as he went back with French to the waiting car. "When will he consider himself successful."

"Never," French answered. "He's never satisfied with anything." He made a trumpet of his hands and lifted up his voice in the direction of another hangar. "Ow-w-w-w-l?" he shouted. "Where are you?"

"Don't 'owl so much about it," his brother admonished, rising up from his seat on the farther running board of the car, and thus revealing himself. "I've been quite patient."

"I'll kill you for that, later," Lancelot told him. "D'you mind sitting in the back of the car again for the run down to the office, Head, or shall I take that place?"

"I don't mind anything," Head answered as he got into the back. "I've met such a man as I never hoped to meet, and I've met you two, men I'm proud to know. I don't mind anything, to-day."

"Lance, he's chucking bouquets," Paul said in a stage whisper. "D'you think he's safe, or will we arrive with handcuffs on?"

"Get behind that wheel, you oaf, and drive us back! That list he wants will be ready by the time you get there."

Chapter XV
At Fault

BACK in the board room with Lancelot French, Head read down the neatly-typed list of names and addresses which Thorburn had brought in when summoned to the room. He saw, without looking up from the list, that Thorburn took out his fountain pen and twiddled it in his hands, nervously, as if he feared lest alterations might be needed.

Eventually, Head put down the list on the table, and turned to Thorburn. "There's one name, I see, missing, Mr. Thorburn," he said.

"Missing?" In his agitation at being accused of such a thing, Thorburn dropped his fountain pen on the carpet, and had to stoop to retrieve it. "I—I'm sure there isn't, Mr. Head!"

"Oohh-h, yes!" Thorburn's expression was one of vast relief at being acquitted of deliberate intent to miss out a name. "You see, Mr. Head, I made out a card for myself, naturally—nobody was admitted except on presentation of a card. But I just slipped it in my pocket. I didn't have to address it to myself, so it didn't go in the postage account. That's why my name isn't there with the rest."

"Fill it in, will you?" Head asked, and gestured at the list on the table. "I want all the names, as it happens."

"To count up how many were present, I suppose?" Thorburn answered as he uncapped his pen, went to the table, and began inscribing his name and address at the foot of the last typed page.

Thorburn finished writing, recapped his pen, and went on twiddling it instead of returning it to his pocket. Head wanted that pen out of his hands, and was patient over it. The man turned from the table to reply.

"To tell you the truth, Mr. Head, I've never counted them. I had charge of the catering for the dance, in addition to sending out the invitations, and I estimated for two hundred. You see, lots of those cards were filled in—'Mr. and Mrs,' so I simply took the estimate and didn't count. Shall I do it now?"

"No, don't trouble." Head, still waiting for that pen to be put away, felt sure Thorburn would keep it out for use as a pointer if he had to go down the list to count. I shall have plenty of time to do that, on my way to Westingborough to-night."

"You'll go by London, I expect?" Thorburn suggested, still twiddling the pen, for which Head damned him inwardly.

"It's best," he said. "I'd never get there, changing all over the world by the cross rail route. It means down and up, but it will be quicker to get to London and take the last express."

And still he would not put the pen away. Realising that he would be still twiddling it in his hands, being the nervous sort of man he was, until he went out from the presence of one of the directors (one whom, by the way, Head had carefully warned to refrain from offering Thorburn a cigarette when he entered the room, though without explaining the request), Head took the envelope containing the two photographs from his breast pocket and withdrew that of Mrs. Wells.

"I think I told you, Mr. Thorburn, that there was a woman in this case," he said, holding out the photograph. "Now just take that and have a good look at it. Can you recognise that woman?"

Thorburn took the print in his left hand—the right being occupied with the fountain pen—and scrutinised it briefly.

"No," he said with decision. "I'm quite sure I've never seen her before, anywhere. If you saw a face like that, you wouldn't forget it in a hurry. No, she's a stranger to me, absolutely."

"Then have a look at this man and see if you can identify him," Head asked, and thrust the second photograph at his quarry—as he must regard the man for the purpose of this experiment.

Thorburn, still holding the fountain pen between the thumb and finger of his right hand, slid the woman's photograph between the second and third fingers of that hand, and, so holding it, took the second print in his left. He stared hard at Wells in fancy dress.

"I believe I have seen him somewhere," he admitted. "Somewhere—or someone like him. I know! It's very like a cousin of mine. A bit fuller in the face, but very like him, all the same. This fancy dress puts you off, you know. No, I don't know the man, I'm sure."

"I'm sorry," Head said, and the disappointment in his voice needed no feigning. He took the prints back as Thorburn held them out to him, and, returning them carefully to their envelope, replaced them in his breast pocket. "Well, that's all, Mr. Thorburn, thanks. And thanks especially for this list. I'll go over it thoroughly on my way back."

"Glad to have been able to help you, Mr. Head," Thorburn responded meekly. "If there's anything else, and you tell Mr. Lancelot here—"

"We'll get at you if there is, Freddy," French interposed. "Now, I expect, you're aching to get back to real work. I won't keep you from it. Ask my brother not to go out till I've seen him again, please."

He looked at Head, who was gazing absently at the list of names and addresses, as Thorburn went out. The initial scrutiny had shown that no one of them was identical with any of the fourteen names Tom Cosway had given him, nor was there any address in the Westingborough district. The Misses Bell, who appeared on the list, had had their card sent to an Estwick address, since they had been staying with a relative in the city at the time.

"If I'm not straining your patience, let me swear silently to myself for a few seconds," Head answered. "At myself, perhaps."

"I'm sorry, Head. I'm all with you in this, and wish you didn't look so disappointed over that damned list."

"All right," Head answered. "Give me just a minute to sort it out. Not this list, but everything since we left Westingborough."

French left him alone while he stood gazing down at the sheets of paper on the table, not seeing them, but thinking of many things. Was it worth while to remain here and go into Gardner's past life, or should he go back to Westingborough, pick up those fourteen photographs, and try with them to find the Westingborough one of the pair of secret agents who had murdered Harry Gatton in their vain attempt at getting away with Stratosphere E3? If Gardner alone had evaded giving prints of his forefinger and thumb on the photographs, Head would not have hesitated over it, but here were two men who, either of design or through his own impatience and lack of the right sort of cunning, had tricked him out of getting what he wanted—had failed, when presented with both prints, to leave the impress of right finger and thumb on either. And both those men were right-handed, which meant that either, if he had taken his glove off to handle the aeroplane ignition key, would have taken off the right glove, and placed right-hand impresses on the metal. He had the record of the prints on the key for comparison, but he had neither Gardner's nor Thorburn's right-hand finger-prints on the photographs.

Of the two, Gardner had most obviously evaded giving the right-hand finger-print. He had stopped, before taking the second photograph for examination, to put the first down on the table—had made the whole business noticeable. Thorburn—the nervous little worm of a man!—had transferred the first of the two photographs from his left hand to his right in a perfectly natural way, and, still having the fountain pen in that right hand, had slipped the photograph between his second and third fingers, also in a perfectly natural way. He had left no right-hand finger-prints that would be of use on the print—for assuredly, if he were the guilty one, he would not have held that key between his second and third fingers—but he had not confirmed any suspicion regarding him as Gardner had done.

And yet, by what he had done, he had in a way prevented Head from directly accusing Gardner of evasion. He had, in fact, proved that this business of the prints was faulty, a method to be discarded. Too many people knew about it: it was the sort of thing Zalescz might read about in his mystery stories, but as far as Head himself was concerned, Sergeant Wells might send all the prints there were in the Westingborough office to his friends, for Head would never want them again.

He looked up at French. "Didn't he—didn't Thorburn say something about a five-forty through to London?" he asked solemnly.

"He did," French answered with equal solemnity. "But he's wrong, as far as you are concerned."

"He's not," Head assured him. "I'll catch that, and it will get me back to Westingborough before morning. Meanwhile, Mr. French, I want to ask a favour of you, if I may."

"To begin with, you won't catch that train." French told him. "To follow that, ask anything you like, and it's yours, if I've got it."

"Gosh, what a friend you are!" Head exclaimed, really moved. "I only want to ask you—if either your Mr. Gardner or this Mr. Thorburn shows any sign of leaving the town, can you stop them? I'm trusting you to the very limit in asking such a thing, but if I'm to catch that five-forty and make Westingborough before morning, there's no time to go to your police here and ask them. I ought not to ask it of you at all, and in an official sense I'm altogether wrong in doing such a thing, but it's time that counts, now—"

"Look here!" French interrupted. "Lord love you, man, remember Zalescz up there in the hangar, and that mistress of his. Damn it all, with what we're facing and both know we're facing, why shouldn't we be as melodramatic as he was? It's for England, you silly old ass, not merely for catching the man who killed Gatton! And I tell you, though Freddy is nothing but the firm's handy man and you'd never pin anything on him in a thousand years, and Gardner is one of the best if only you'd known him long enough to realise it—I tell you neither of those two shall move a step toward a railway station till you give the word to go, and they'll both be watched so that you're perfectly sure of either if you want him. I give you my word on it, Head."

"That's good enough for me," Head said. "Never mind your melodrama—we'll take that in our stride. Now I'll get off—I don't know where you keep your railway station, and I want that five-forty."

"Sit down, damn you!" French responded. "Didn't I tell you that the five-forty was nothing whatever to do with you? I'm turning out Cartwright with the Bullet, after you've had tea with me and Paul, to fly you back. You'll be there in less than an hour after leaving here, and I'll ring through to the Westingborough police station as soon as you leave here and tell 'em to have a car waiting for you outside Condor Grange. Haven't you realised that you're a guest of the firm, and doing what we can't do ourselves into the bargain?"

"If you don't stop talking rot," French interrupted threateningly, "I'll punch you in one eye and get Owl to come in and punch the other, and neither of us has had a row with a policeman since he got sent down from Balliol. Now will you damn-well do as you're told?"

"No, and I can see why. What you want is some tea—good guzzle, tea." He pressed the bell-push on the table three times. "That'll bring it—then I'll get Owl to come in and have some with us. He is an owl, you know Head—I named him that, and he's so like one it sticks like—like a politician's reputation. No, though, a damned sight more consistently than that. Don't you worry about innocent little Thorburn and still more innocent little Gardner. They won't move out of somebody's sight till you've found the man I want you to find, though I know he's neither of them. Leave it to me."

"Did I ring that bell three times, or didn't I?" he demanded. "T.E.A., Wilkins, for three. And tell Mr. Paul his is in here."

"Temporary set-back, isn't it?" he observed. "You'll win, though—I've got faith you'll win. You have faith too, man."

"We shall meet again—you'll be more comfortable in that coat and cap than you were on the way here, with no more than a rug to keep the cold out." French had to shout the words as, with Head beside him, he neared the waiting aeroplane, for Cartwright, already at the controls, was roaring out the engine intermittently, and the wheels of the undercarriage were bumping at the chocks.

"Any time you like," Head shouted in his ear. "To give me a chance to thank you for all you've done."

French cupped his hands to reply, for they were at the side of the plane. "Shert up, man!" he roared, and then gave Head a hand up the side. The Zalescz Bullet had been built as a fighter, and had none of the refinements of comfort that characterise a passenger plane. Her occupants had a wide field of view, and little else, as Head had found when he shivered in his rug on the way to Estwick that morning.

He saw French run quickly backward to be clear of the tail plane as Cartwright opened out and the roar of the engine increased: he saw men jerk at cords to pull the chocks away from the landing wheels, and then, as French waved to him and he waved back, the Bullet bumped and jarred, the hangars receded, and the bumping ceased. The hawthorn hedge at the farther end of the long landing ground passed under them, earth grew to a bigger and bigger expanse and swayed crazily as Cartwright swung the plane to get his direction, and Estwick, map-like and growing smaller, passed under them, its castle a queer box-like thing on the hill and the cathedral recognisable in its valley.

There were earphones beside the pilot, but neither he nor Head had put them on, so that speech was an impossibility while the flight lasted. Nor did Head wish to talk, then: the day had been a kaleidoscopic series of changes, a rush of impressions, and he was glad of this opportunity of arranging them. The two brothers, Gardner, Zalescz—the man beside him was the last of those holding a pilot's licence, as far as Lancelot French could tell—the last, that is, who would have been in any way available to go to Westingborough and shoot Harry Gatton on Monday evening, for of the other two one was helpless in a nursing home and the other in Ireland. The brothers had been so certain of the whereabouts of those that Head had not even troubled to check their information: Lancelot French was as keen as himself to lay Gatton's murderer by the heels, and would not mislead him.

Of the two who had left footprints as they fled under the beeches, Head felt sure, one had been capable of flying an aeroplane. Of flying E3, and that one was far more likely to have come from Barton and Peters' works, too—than to have been on watch at Westingborough. Unless, of course, this theory of a pair of secret agents was utterly wrong, and Gatton had been killed by somebody with a personal motive, somebody interested in the man and not in E3.

Yet. Head reasoned, if that had been the case there would not have been two sets of footprints under the beeches, for the man who murders for any personal motive wants no witness to his crime: he kills alone, unseen by any except his victim—and, if the way in which Gatton had died could be taken as evidence, unseen even by the victim in this case. The fact that there were two sets of footprints held him to the theory he had formed regarding the crime, though, after this literally flying visit to Estwick, he felt himself at a dead end.

Gardner? Apparently the only possible holder of a flying licence for the commission of the crime—and Gardner had most carefully evaded giving prints of his right forefinger and thumb. But then, Thorburn also had evaded that test of identification—had Thorburn a pilot's licence which he had not disclosed? Of the two, Gardner appeared the more likely criminal—but Lancelot French believed in him. Yet, on the other hand, French was the sort of man who would believe ill of nobody, unless he were given evidence against him.

Now, with earth all distorted and unfamiliar beneath him, Head blamed himself for not having been more thorough in his investigations at Estwick: there was so much more that he might have learned. He had been so confident that he would find the name of the Westingborough man he wanted in the list Thorburn had given him, but it appeared from the list that he had been wrong about that man having attended the Air Force dance, and having there agreed with the other that they had found a weak spot in Gatton, one which they might turn to their own advantage. He, Head, would have to reconstruct his theory, now, on the supposition that the Westingborough man had not attended the dance. And that meant reconstructing the theory to such an extent that it might as well be abandoned altogether, and a new one built up from the evidence already available as to two men having been concerned in the murder.

Thought is swifter than flight through the air, and Head went over his theory again and again while he sat beside Cartwright in the Bullet. Cartwright himself as one of the pair of murderers? This fresh-faced, pleasant youngster—no! Yet, piloting the Bullet to the scene of the crime with French and Zalescz aboard on the Tuesday morning, this same man had known exactly where and how to land his plane. Head had seen him come down, dropping over Westingborough toward the marsh land, an unerring, certain descent. Was he the man from Estwick?

Abandon all thought of the problem—clear his mind of it, to come back fresh to it in a little while! To aid him in forcing it from his mind, he looked down at the earth, and, directly ahead, almost, saw Westingborough all distorted, and the gleam of the Idleburn in the late afternoon sunlight. The London Road bridge, Maggs Lane, the railway station with smoke obscuring it, Condor Grange a lonely group of buildings at the foot of the little mound which, when he reached earth, would resume the shape he had known from boyhood as Condor Hill. He thought of Zalescz and his quaint idea of the mistress he loved, perhaps more than he loved his wife and child: seen even as he saw it now, all its perspectives wrong, its trees and fields and meadows distorted and unfamiliar, England was beautiful, a mistress worth any man's love. Zalescz was a great man as well as a genius.

So Head felt rather than thought, and then Westingborough twisted and see-sawed madly as Cartwright swung the plane to land. The field of view grew smaller, rushed up toward the machine, and for just a moment Head felt the twinge of fear he had felt when Cartwright had landed him and French on the flying ground at Estwick. A jarring bump, another, a sickening sway or two, and then the fabric stilled with grass under it and the line of beeches on the right. The plane had come to rest almost exactly opposite the cart track leading to the road.

"I'm getting to know it," he said, and his voice sounded small and faint and strange after the roar of the engine and propeller. "If you don't mind, Mr. Head, I'll take the coat and cap and goggles." He slipped off his own cap and goggles as he spoke, and Head began unbuttoning the heavy leather coat he had worn for the journey.

"Well, I'm infinitely obliged to you, Mr. Cartwright," Head said as he handed up the coat—and his own voice, he found, was small and odd-sounding, though after the noise in the upper air the world about him seemed very still. "A splendid landing you made."

"An ideal landing ground, and getting familiar to me," Cartwright answered. "And now—I know I ought not to ask, but has it helped?"

"Yes. Has it? You know, Harry Gatton was one of the very best, man as well as pilot, and I'd like to think to-day has brought you nearer to catching the swine who did him in. That's why I risk asking you."

"If it's a step along the way," Cartwright said earnestly, "I'm glad. I can see him still in my mind, lying just there"—he gestured toward the trees—"with that hole in his head. I tell you frankly, I could have cried like a child when I saw it."

There was a sincerity in the statement that prompted Head to acquit this man as surely as he had acquitted Lancelot French. He handed up the flying cap and goggles, and picked up his attaché case.

"I think I understand," he said. "Mr. French described you all at Estwick as a happy family, and you've lost a member of it."

"Just that. We four pilots—and old Sykes will have to come back off his honeymoon, now Gatton is dead. And Mr. French and his brother, two of the very best, and Mr. Zalescz another good one."

Cartwright frowned, took out his cigarette case, and offered it. Head took one and produced his lighter. He reached it up, and Cartwright took a light and handed the lighter back.

"Thanks. I don't see much of Gardner," he said. "What I do see—well, it's enough. Queer chap. Moody. Not exactly one of us. He came to the firm when Granville's went broke. He was manager there."

"Probably you wouldn't—they weren't big people like Barton and Peters. They did a lot of aeroplane work during the war, and then gave it up and took to importing foreign stuff—German pumps, and that sort of thing. German engines, too. It was the imposition of tariffs killed the firm—damned good thing it did, from my point of view. All that importing helped to keep our own people out of work."

"Glad to help, over this business. And you make a good passenger. You sit quiet and don't worry. I'll hope to fly you again some time."

He reached down, and they shook hands. "Excuse the glove," he said, and then took up his cap and goggles to replace them. "Oh, and I saw a car in the road as we came down. I don't know if it's for you, but it was waiting just opposite the house, and looked empty."

French had not forgotten even this detail, Head realised as he emerged to the road after watching Cartwright take off to return, for here was a Westingborough taxi, and the driver advanced and touched his hat at the sight of the man for whom he had been instructed to wait. French must have telephoned through to Westingborough soon after the aeroplane had left, for the flight had taken less than an hour.

Yet, swift though the flight had been, this taxi seemed to travel much faster when Head had got in and the driver had started. Up there, one floated and the earth appeared to drag past lazily; down here, the beech copse and the hedges slithered past, though the taxi was no sports model, but a relatively slow old thing. When it passed over the London Road bridge where the town began, Head looked out and saw the obnoxious alien, just as Wadden had described him, with a milk bottle on the end of a string and a bright new can beside him. He was just emptying his bottle into the can before making another dip.

He paid off the driver outside the police station and made a mental note of the fare for his expense account. Then, entering, he made his way to Wadden's room and put his attaché case on the end of the desk. The superintendent gazed at him, fiercely.

"Somebody put a call through for a taxi to go out to Condor Grange for you," he said accusingly. "I thought you were going to Estwick?"

"Then—" Wadden leaned toward him eagerly as he sat. "If you've made all that hurry, it means you've brought the bacon back with you."

"Chief—" Head seated himself wearily in the chair at the end of the desk, "it was—yes, two days ago, and it seems two years. You told me not to get all cocky and swelled headed, I remember. And now I've been to Estwick and muffled everything. I've failed!"

Chapter XVI
Fourteen Westingborough Citizens

"CUT that stuff out, laddie," Wadden urged kindly—"you've had two flights to-day, and Lord only knows what you had to do at Estwick—till you've had a rest and feel fit to tell me all about it. You're all in, that's what's wrong with you, and when you get perked up again you'll have as much faith in yourself as I have in you. Go off home and have a good sleep, and start on it again in the morning."

"Can't be done, chief. I'm too sore over my own damned messing-up of this case to rest. Wells—where's Wells? Not that it's any use, but I'd better have him check up on the prints I did get—with the ones on that key. I feel too weary to do it myself."

"He's still out," Wadden told him, "trying to get shots of fourteen Westingborough citizens—or rather, the ones he couldn't get ready-made photographs for you. One devil's own shemozzle, and you've let me in for it with those fourteen. But if you want to carry on, let's hear your end first—mine's a barren one. What happened—did your man give himself away by refusing to give his prints?"

"Two men dodged it," Head answered, "the first one brazenly and unmistakably—don't worry, chief, if he tries to get away I shall hear about it at once and be able to stop him. I wish he would give me that handle against him, for I haven't enough now to justify running him in and charging him. Where was I? Oh, yes, he dodged it blatantly—I could see he meant dodging by the way he put one print down before taking up the other. And he's got a pilot's licence, French told me. The other, a poor little worm of a man, hasn't, as far as is known, and his dodging looked to me like sheer nervousness. I got left finger and thumb from both of them, and as they're both right-handed men the prints are useless. That man who tried to start only took off one glove to handle the key, I feel certain, and if he were left-handed he isn't one of those two. Still, Wells may as well have a look at these prints when he comes in, and make certainty absolute."

He opened the attaché case and took out the pair of prints he had tried on Gardner: then, feeling in his breast pocket, he withdrew the other envelope, containing the pair with which he had tried to get Thorburn's finger-prints. "Both sets, there," he added. "But we'll drop that trick, chief, I think. It's too well-known—worn out."

"And then," Head pursued, "I thought to see if I could get a line on the purposeful dodger, off the pilot who flew me back. Tried it when we landed just now, and got quite a history. The man's name is Gardner, and he's the managing director at Estwick. A little, unlikeable fellow, with suspicion of me in his eye directly he saw me. Cartwright, the man who flew me back, told me—this Gardner was with a small firm named Granville's till he went to Barton and Peters, and after the war they turned to importing German goods—and went broke when the tariffs were put on, thank heaven! But you see—direct communication with the people who'd give their ears for that plane—E3. And then, moving to Barton and Peters, where he could pass on information of real value all the time, and crown his work—as he thought—by getting away with E3. Holds a pilot's licence, too."

"It's the— I've been a blasted fool, chief! When Cartwright told me that, I knew I never ought to have come back here at all. I thought for a moment of asking him to fly me back to Estwick there and then, but realised that I daren't do it. If I had gone back like that, Gardner—if he really is the man we want at that end—Gardner would have realised that I'm after him, and would have been so careful that I'd never get a scrap of evidence against him, short of arresting him and taking those finger-prints by force. And I daren't do that till I've got more against him than this mere supposition."

"Yes, I know, but what would it look like when you brought him up in court—with a man like Calloway or one of his breed to tear it all to pieces? No, chief, we can only get one bite at a cherry like that, and when we do bite, the cherry's got to be behind our teeth and the stalk pulled off. I've got to have evidence, not mere suspicion."

He sat silent, brooding, and the cloud of disappointment that had lifted while he recited this tale of action settled on him again, heavily, as Wadden could see. Then he closed the attaché case and put it down on the floor beside his chair, after which he looked up.

"Quade—you know Quade and his training stables outside the town," Wadden began his tale. "Well, I put young Thompson on to see that Quade didn't try to run away—you know he was one of your fourteen citizens who mustn't leave. Quade got suspicious of Thompson hanging about in the road outside his place, and asked him what the hell he meant by it. I'm going to give Thompson the time of his life, later on when he comes in, for being such a perfect ass as he is. He tried to spin Quade some yarn about chicken stealers, which went down about as happily as a dose of castor oil—it was the very last bit of idiocy, for Quade doesn't keep any chickens there. That might have passed off, but poor old Wells couldn't get a photo of Quade for you anywhere in the town, so he put the telephoto attachment on the camera and went off in a closed car from Parham's to get you one, just as you told him. And Quade caught him at it! If Wells hadn't been a big man and Quade a little one, I believe there'd have been another murder out there in the road in front of the training stables. Quade turned his car out and came in here to me, and he was hopping mad! Spied on, illicitly photographed—what the hell did we think we were, molesting innocent people and getting whole hives of bees in our bonnets about nothing at all? Why didn't we go for that damned German down on the bridge stealing our river—yes, everybody's talking about that!—why didn't we go for him and leave decent people alone? Oh, he ramped and roared at me, and I hadn't a comeback on him! I had to say it was all some silly mistake, and he could have the negative of the photograph as soon as I could get hold of Wells and skin him—and he can have it, too, after you've got what prints you want off it. I had to tell him I'd reprimand Wells and flay young Thompson alive, and still he's going to write to the papers about it and consult his solicitor. I tell you, Head, I've been having a Time, with a big T."

He was glad to see that his account forced a smile from Head, but it was only a small one, and had no length of life.

"Oh, yes, he got it. That wasn't the only one he had to go after with the camera. His luck was a bit mixed. He managed to get nine of your birds in a group that was taken when they made the presentation to the retiring mayor last year, and those nine are being made into separate enlargements for you—all looking so smug and satisfied that you'll hate 'em like the devil when you see their mugs in the enlargements. Then poor old Wells sweated round the town—it's been tolerably warm here all day—and managed to pick up two more, which left him three to find, including that perisher, Quade. He fitted up the telephoto outfit to go after him, and got Quade as I've told you. Whether one of the other two has got him—with a shot gun—is more than I know, yet. He's still out. Oh, a day of days, I tell you!"

"That same man. He was in the group, but with his beard on. He didn't shave it off till after last Winter, you know."

"I know. I'll have the one in the group, though, as well as one without a beard—if Wells can get that. Queer devil, Woods."

"You've said it, laddie! Gets in with that gang in the Duke of York, and makes one glass of grape fruit juice last him a whole evening. Teetotaller, mixing in with publicans and sinners. In there every night, unless he's got a prayer meeting on. Don't understand him at all, unless it is that he likes the sound of his own voice and goes where other people have to suffer it as well. And argue—Lord help us! Pacifist, anti-vivisectionist, miser—and grocer!"

"And when you've got this national gallery all complete, what are you going to do with it?" Wadden persisted. "If you do put 'em up on show anywhere, you can't charge for admission. I'd pay to stop away, myself, unless Wells catches one of 'em in his bath."

"Take them—never mind, though, for the moment, now I've made such a fool of myself at Estwick. I shall have to think, replan."

"I know, but I'm not quite clear about it. There are so many readjustments to be made—I've got to clear my own mind about the case, and it looks as if I shall have to build a good part of it afresh. Till that's done, I can't see my way—give me a little time."

"Give you anything you ask, man. But about these fourteen freaks in trousers—or out. D'you still want 'em watched?"

"All right, but it's a strain on me. Six of 'em hang out here in Market Street, and it only takes one man off his regular work to keep an eye on that lot. But the others—Quade a good two miles out, and the rest scattered in a way I'd call indecent of 'em—it's as if they got as far away from each other as they could just to be spiteful. Seven good men have I got immobilised—at least, six good men and that idiot Thompson, who's going to wish he'd never been born before I've finished telling him where he gets off. Still, I'll keep them on for you till you give the word, and make do somehow for beats."

"I'm not nearly as sure as I was that one of those fourteen wears shoes to fit the casts Wells took under the beeches," Head said slowly. "In fact, I'm not nearly so sure of myself, or of anything, since I made that rotten mistake of coming back from Estwick to-day. But I think all those men ought to be kept in sight—and especially the one of them who may try to get away, eventually. That may be all wrong—I don't know, but if the right one were among them and he did get away, it would be far worse than putting you short of men for awhile."

They both sat silent, then, each reflecting in his own fashion, until with a preparatory knock on the door, Johnson, the clerk, entered.

"Of course I did, sir. He just slammed his heels together and told me his business was with the superintendent, and that he wasn't used to talking to underlings and didn't mean to begin."

"The blasted impudence of him! Go back and tell him he can tell you what he wants with me, or get out. And be uppish with him."

"We'll get him in when he's tamed," he observed. "He's a—a sort of break in the day, you'll find. Funny, damned funny. I'll bet Johnson'll larn him, the Prussian blighter! Underlings! My men!"

Head, relaxed in his chair, made no reply. The roar of the aeroplane engine and propeller was still echoing in his ears, and he felt dog-tired, yet would not take his mind off his case. Presently Johnson returned, and delivered his message—

"That's it, sir. He said—'feesh for vater.' I couldn't quite get what he meant, at first. He dangled a milk bottle at me."

"With a string on it? Oh, lovely! Show him in, Johnson, and I hope he brings the nice new can as well. Sit tight, Head."

And, sure enough, Herr Helsing appeared with all his outfit, the long string wound neatly on the neck of his milk bottle. He put down his bright new can, clicked his heels and bowed at Wadden, and then, turning a little, clicked and bowed again at Head.

"Der Herr Zuberintendent," he said. "Der Herr Inzbegdor. Goot efeving, chentlemen. Dot vas der gorrect form, hein?"

"Quite correct, Mr. Helsing," Wadden assured him. "What do you want now? Can't you fish enough river up from the London Road bridge?"

"From der pridge, Herr Zuberintendent, I dake up seex gans of vater," Helsing told him. "I analyze der vater each dime, und I vind it no divverend dan any oder vater. Und I dink und I dink. Und den I zee—id vas no goot, daking vater on der pridge."

"Ach—zo! Put you zee, Herr Zuberintendent, id gome indo my zhick head, py und py, dot dot vater dot go under der pridge haf been drough der vilter beds of der Neville dye vorks. Der vorks dake all der vater of der river drough der vilter beds. Und den, vhen der vater go under der pridge, all der vat you gall sbezial gualities haf been daken out, und id is chust like oder vater."

"I go to der vorks," Helsing told him. "I say—gan I zee der creat Herr Neville, der man vot make der Neville dyes known all ofer der vorld, A man zay—'Noh!' I tell dot man I gif him money to zee der creat Herr Neville. Und he zpit, on der ground, not ad me, und say I vas a tamned Cherman, und I can go to hell. Den I dink a leetle, und I gome to der bolice station, und ask vor you, Herr Zuberintendent!"

"Complimentary of you, Mr. Helsing," Wadden rasped out. "Blasted complimentary, in fact! And what the devil do you think I'm going to do about all this? Fetch the river in here for you?"

"Noh, Herr Zuberintendent—nein! I dink no sudge foolishness. I dink, you gif me your gard, und I dake it to der man vot zpit, und dell him—'Look! Here is der gard of der bolice zuberintendent, der ding vot mage you opey orters. Now, mit dot gard, you go to der Herr Neville dam guick, und dell him Herr Helsing vould zbeak mit him! Und mit dot gard he musdt go, for der bolice musdt be opeyed."

"Pretty— Oh, pretty!" Wadden observed sourly. "What it amounts to, Mr. Helsing, is that you want me to give you my card, so that you can get to Mr. Neville and force him, with the sight of that card, to give you permission to fish water out of the river higher up than the filter beds—where it flows through his grounds, in fact?"

"Dot vas all how it should pe, Herr Zuberintendent," Helsing assented, and beamed at the apparent removal of all obstacles.

"Well, then, let me tell you you haven't one hope in Hades," Wadden told him. "I've no authority to give you permission to fish water out of the river where it flows through Mr. Neville's property, and neither has anyone else apart from Mr. Neville himself. And my card would be about as much use to you as a plate of boiled cabbage to a man-eating tiger. No go, Mr. Helsing—no earthly go. And the next time somebody tells you to go to hell, don't come to the police station."

"I dought it vas der broper blace, Herr Zuberintendent," Helsing said, and Head shook in his chair. "Pud you mean to zay you gannot helb me? I must haf der vater from apove der vilter peds."

"Then steal it—heaven forgive me, I didn't mean that! Waylay Mr. Neville and get a word with him somehow—do it all yourself, but don't come here bothering me. If you go trespassing on private property without permission, and get into trouble, it will be your own fault, and I shall not be able to help you out of any trouble you make for yourself. And go carefully, Mr. Helsing, wherever you go. The town doesn't like this little game you're playing at, I happen to know, and I've got no men to spare to protect you."

"I don't doubt it. Go on fishing, where you like and how you like for me—you've got Home Office permission to dip that milk bottle. Count it enough. I'm not giving you any cards to take to anyone. And now, Mr. Helsing, if you'll look just behind yourself, please, you'll see a door. Open it, and you'll see a passage. Good evening, and mind the step when you get to the door leading to the street. Yes—good evening, Mr. Helsing!"

Helsing clicked his heels and bowed twice, once to Wadden and once to Head. "Der honour vas mine, Herr Zuberintendent," he said, and did his about-twirl, and goose-stepped out, closing the door on himself.

"Funny, but I think he overdoes it a bit," Head observed after the door had closed. "And he's forgotten his can, too." He observed the shining new can standing near his chair, and lifted it. "Empty," he added. "Well, I suppose he'll come back for it eventually."

"If he does, he'll overdo me," Wadden said. "I'll pass it out and leave it in the charge room for him, if he doesn't come after it before I go. Well, the end of a perfect day. Oh, come in!" For another knock sounded on the door. "After that can already, I expect."

But it was not Helsing. Sergeant Wells, helmet in hand, entered and closed the door. When he faced into the room, he saw the shining can on the floor, and shuddered, for he had seen Helsing at work on the bridge with his nefarious outfit. Then he took his handkerchief out of his helmet and mopped his face, which was in need of attention of that sort. Before he could speak, Head put up a monitory hand; the inspector looked alert and questioning—himself again, Wadden felt.

"Just one moment, sergeant. Chief, what is that man Helsing doing here? Let's consider him before Sergeant Wells begins."

"Doing? No, don't go away, Wells—stop where you are and cool off a bit. It has been hot to-day. Well, Head, I'd say he's trying to empty our river with a milk bottle on the end of a string, and finds he's taken on one hell of a job. That's why he wants to go higher up the stream, in the hope of there being less water there."

"Yes, but that fishing for water is no more than a pretext. The Idleburn has been analysed time after time, and the results published. It was proved long ago that the qualities of the water can't be synthesized, and the value of it as a dyeing agent isn't a tenth of what it was when Neville's started, before anilines came in. What's that man's real purpose in being here?"

"He's not, chief—it's a blind. Now I wonder—" he paused to reflect—"when did he first get here, though?"

"Umm-m!" Again Head meditated. "I wonder where he was on Monday, between seven and nine in the evening, say?"

"In London," Wadden stated promptly. "I went through his papers when he came in for registration as staying in the town, and they were in perfect order—passport—everything! And his permit was stamped in London at five o'clock on Monday evening."

"Which ties him up a bit," Head surmised, and thought again for a time. "Even with a fast car he could only just do it, and then he had to pick up the little man—if he happened to be the big one—before going to kill Gatton and trying to get the plane—"

"Man, you're surely not putting him in the case?" Wadden interrupted protestingly. "He's too obvious altogether, isn't he?"

"Might be being obvious to put us off," Head said. "And yet—no! Permit stamped at five—that leaves him just three hours. I don't think—and if he were the big man of the two, why on earth should he come back to this town on Tuesday evening? Too noticeable, too. Not the accent, because he may be overdoing that purposely, but the man himself. No, I don't think—and yet I feel sure he fits into this case somewhere, if only I could see where."

"Most true things are," Head responded quietly. Then he suddenly crashed his fist down on the desk before him as he sat.

"Oh, damn the case!" he exclaimed. "It gets more impossibly complex every minute, as far as I can see! And not a glimmer of light anywhere, except to show me what a fool I've been!"

"Let's hear your brief tale, Wells," Wadden suggested after a silence. "If you get it off your chest while Mr. Head is here to hear it, he'll understand that he's not the only one with a bee in his marmalade. Now, then, what have you?"

Chapter XVII
Fourteen Photographs

"AND so," Wells concluded the story Head had already heard from the superintendent, "I managed to get away without handing Mr. Quade the roll of film out of the camera—and I got a lovely clear picture of him, too. What he did after that I don't know."

"I do," Wadden said grimly. "I'm supposed, at this present moment, to be pouring boiling oil into the holes I've made in you, Wells. But I'm out of oil. Where'd you go next with your infernal machine?"

"Back here into Market Street, Mr. Wadden. The dry-cleaner, Mr. Faulkner, and Mr. Woods the grocer, were the other two I hadn't been able to find photographs of anywhere—that is, Mr. Woods without his beard. He was in the group with it, but I thought Mr. Head would want him as he is now. Didn't you, sir?" He addressed the query to Head.

"Both ways, sergeant. That will make fifteen photographs, altogether. No, though, I'm sorry you've had all that trouble about him for nothing. I'll have the one with the beard, and not the other. That will be fourteen—if you managed to get Faulkner."

"I did, sir. I'm glad you've told me about Woods without the beard in time. It'll save me the trouble of developing and printing from the negative. This time of night—evening, rather—I shall have to do it myself. Well, sir, I got Mr. Woods without any trouble at all, and then I had to go after Mr. Faulkner. I got the chap who was driving me in the car to go past his shop again and again, slowly enough for me to take a shot at him when he came into the finder, but he stuck at the back all the time, where the light wasn't half good enough to make a real likeness of him with the telephoto on. So I came in here and routed out Jeffries, and told him to go into Mr. Faulkner's place and ask him what it'd cost to clean paint out of a dress made of mozylean de swore—"

"Ten bob each way, and I'll take totalisator prices," Wadden said softly. "The bookies always do you in the eye, if you don't. Go ahead with the sad story, Wells, and may you be forgiven."

"That was the dress Mrs. Wells ruined at the fancy dress dance, sir, but after she was photographed for the finger-print sets," Wells explained. "Lovely, it was, but quite ruined by the paint. So I got Jeffries to go in and ask about it, and just as I thought, Mr. Faulkner came out to the door of the shop with him and stood there talking. I came along in the car, and Jeffries just moved so as to make Mr. Faulkner plant himself perfectly for me, and I've got a lovely one of him, I believe. It was well-centred in the finder, and I'll have bromide prints ready for you first thing in the morning, Mr. Head—unless you want them to-night. I could get 'em done, if you do."

"No," Head said. "Ten o'clock to-morrow morning will be time enough for me. And that's the whole fourteen, is it, Wells?"

"I hope they didn't," Head said gravely. "It spoils the value of the eyes, if they did. Now look here." He held out the two sheets belonging to his notebook. "You'll find all fourteen numbered, there. Put one number on the back of each print, and nothing else, and let me have this list back. Chief, I want you to take a copy of it, so that you can identify every man jack of them by his number, without any mention of his name, if I have to tell you about him over the telephone or anything of that sort. It may sound silly, but I'll do that."

"Lord save us!" Wadden ejaculated. "Now you've given 'em numbers, why not dish 'em out a convict suit apiece as well? Complete the job?"

"I still have hopes that one of them won't last long enough to need a convict suit," Head said gravely. "I've never attended an execution yet, but I believe they always hang a man in his own clothes."

"You're a thoroughly morbid-minded pair of devils!" Wadden exclaimed testily. "All right, Wells, since that seems to be the end of your perfect day, you can get along and pat yourself on the back over trapping your man with the moze-whatever-it-is. Don't stop to tell us again—we've only got one life to live. Oh, yes—come in!"

"Take it! Put a pint or two of vitriol in it and tell him to take a good mouthful! Carry it away, anyhow. All right, Wells—you've been a hero. Good night—don't dream about it. Have a whole picture gallery ready for Mr. Head by ten a.m., and consider yourself severely reprimanded—look like it, if you meet Quade anywhere."

"Very good, sir, and thank you." And Wells went out in company with Johnson and the empty can. Then Wadden gazed at his companion, who appeared to have sunk to brooding again. There was real affection in the old superintendent's eyes, and some anxiety as well.

"I've been thinking—about that land of Bell's, you know. P'raps it's just as well for me that he decided not to sell it, after all."

"The missus would have found it damp in winter, most likely," Wadden explained. "I kept on trying to kid myself it wasn't marsh land, but it is, and I saw the lower third of it flooded, one wet March years ago. And I'd as good as promised to take three acres of it—on the whole, I suppose I ought to consider myself lucky."

"Which," Head said as he rose slowly from the chair and picked up his attaché case, "is exactly what the other fox said."

In his own room at the police station, a half-hour later, Head closed down his desk after finishing the office routine part of his work, and looked round to see Wadden standing in the doorway.

"One devil of a long perfect day," Wadden remarked, "seeing it's well past seven already. But these light evenings, you don't notice it. There was one other thing I ought to tell you before we go, Head."

"About that car—the confidential we sent out about it. Not so much as a whisper from anywhere yet—no reply. It struck me this morning, after you'd gone, I'd try the Alvis people themselves, and I put a call through to their place in London."

"Enough to show me why we haven't had any official notification of the car yet. A chap at the other end—he was as nice as they make 'em, by his voice, and willing to help us all he could—he told me they'd had close on thirty of those twelve-horse cars registered under YY, themselves, and practically as many went out to agents and most probably got YY registry through them. Say fifty altogether under that lettering, at a reasonable estimate. Then, on top of that, 1932-3 ain't exactly yesterday. As far as they're concerned, it's a matter of hunting through old records—the very model of the car has been altered since and though it was a good 'un there's a better to-day. And fifthly, my brethren, the original buyer of a heliotrope car with sea-green pleats round the neck may have sold it to somebody who hadn't got art in his very soul, and had it painted black because he wanted to give his eyes a rest. So you see how complicated it all is as far as they're concerned. I told 'em to let up on it—why worry people just because they're nice and kind like that chap was, when you can get the same thing just as quickly through the official channels?"

"In the official time," Wadden said. "Some six months hence, or less, we shall have a complete record of all the YY black Alvis twelves there are—and do not neglect the thin red line, as Napoleon did at Waterloo. It'll come in, laddie, and we shall go out—I'm going, anyhow, now I've got the weight off my mind by passing this on to you."

"Just one second, chief, in case I go to Estwick again to-morrow, and in case, too, that one of those fourteen is implicated in Gatton's death—is one of the pair who left those footprints."

"There are three among that lot," Head pursued, "who had no photographs taken that Wells could find anywhere. The others—well, to put it the other way, I don't see a secret agent letting himself be photographed in a group you can get anywhere, though of course he might. I think, though, that it's most essential to keep an eye on those three and stop any one of them if he tries to bolt—Quade, Woods, and Faulkner. To make quite sure your men keep them under observation."

"They're all under observation, I assure you," Wadden told him. "Quade's the most difficult of all, because of that car of his—he'll break his neck in it one of these days, unless you find you can arrest him over having killed Gatton before he does it. Drives like a madman, as you know. The others are all tradespeople, mostly without fast cars."

"Have you given Thompson orders to stop Quade if he turns out and looks like going off in the car?" Head asked.

"No, I couldn't do that. If Quade comes this way and turns on to the London Road, I've arranged to have him stopped in the town and charged with driving to the public danger. It's safe to do that with him, though probably we'll lose the case. If he goes the other way after corning out of his gate—goes north away from London, that is—Thompson is to ring through to the two police stations he'll have to pass—I mean, he'll have to pass one of them, according to which way he goes where the road divides—and he'll be stopped there. They're both close on fifteen miles away from his place, so Thompson will have time to get calls through and have him pulled up."

But, over that, he was far too optimistic. For on the steps of the police station they both halted, and gazed towards the Duke of York hotel, some distance from them and on the opposite side of the street. Near its entrance was a group of roughly-clad youths, shouting and booing; just outside the door stood Herr Helsing, straight as a ramrod, his shining new can in one hand and his milk bottle in the other.

"I felt there'd be trouble over that blighter sooner or later," Wadden remarked. "Come on, Head—we mustn't let them get at him."

"It's that lad Filby," Head observed as they moved forward hurriedly. "Ever since he got turned out of the packing department at Neville's he's been a nuisance in the town. Hey—look there! It was Filby who threw it, too! He's got Helsing with it!"

One of the group had thrown a stone. They saw Helsing stagger and clutch at the pillar outside the hotel doorway, while his can clattered to the pavement. Blood began to trickle down his scarred cheek from the wound the stone had made, and Head began running. But another man, coming from the opposite direction toward the hotel, ran faster.

It was Faulkner, light-footed and moving with surprising agility for a man of his height and weight. He charged straight on into the group of youths, smashed Filby to the ground with the impetus of his charge behind his fist, and had two more held by their arms, one with each hand, when Head reached him. The rest of the young hooligans fled like the curs they were, and Wadden, coming on the scene, grabbed the dazed Filby by his collar and jerked him to his feet.

He dragged his man toward where Helsing still stood, wiping blood from his cheek. "Hold those two, Mr. Faulkner, just for a second," he bade. "Are you badly hurt, Mr. Helsing?"

"Ach, nein! I vas a harmless man. "I do not vant to charge nopotty. I vas a harmless man. Dot man dere, he vas fery prave. I dank him—I go and dank him now."

"Let that wait for a minute." Glancing round, Wadden saw that Head had relieved Faulkner of one of his captives, and there was no immediate trouble to be anticipated from them. "Are you going to charge this man who threw the stone at you with assault, or no?"

"Nein, Herr Zuberintendent." Helsing, appearing to recover all his normal poise after the partial stupefaction that the blow from the stone had caused him, retrieved his can from the pavement. "I do nod charge nopotty. I am a harmless man."

"Right! Here, Borrow!" Wadden turned to the constable who had reached the spot by this time. "Take this man and put him in a cell till I get there to charge him myself—creating a breach of the peace and causing grievous bodily harm. I'll larn him to upset people in this town! And you'll be subpoenaed as a witness in the case, to come before the magistrates at ten-thirty to-morrow morning, Mr. Helsing. Now I'd recommend you to go and get that cut bathed and dressed—and don't forget—ten-thirty to-morrow at the magistrates' court!"

"Bud I am a harmless man, Herr Zuberintendent!" Helsing protested, holding his handkerchief to his cheek. I do nod vant—"

"You'll be there, whatever you want," Wadden interrupted, and with the admonition, turned away, to where Head and Faulkner waited, each holding a frightened, shabby-looking youth.

"Gosh, but you did get a move on, Mr. Faulkner!" he exclaimed. "I like to see that sort of thing in the town, and if you'll turn up as a witness in court at ten-thirty in the morning I'll see that you get a word of thanks from the bench. I shall want you as a witness."

"I'll be there, Mr. Wadden," Faulkner promised. "I hate this sort of hooliganism in the town just as much as you do."

"It looks as if you did. And now these two"—Wadden glared first at one of the captives, and then at the other, and his eyes were gimlets boring into their brains—"I dunno. No, I dunno. They'll come to a hangman's halter apiece at the finish, I suppose. Can you two young fools see that you've been near sharing in killing a man to-night, or can't you? Speak, you young rats!" He thundered the command at the pair, heedless of the crowd that had gathered. "D'you know what you've done, or don't you—before I run you in and charge you?"

"Well, you get this one chance to behave yourselves in the town, and it's the last. I'll have you watched, both of you, and the first one that even tries to raise trouble can get into a prison suit and go to crack stones with Filby—hard labour, that's what you'll get! Let 'em go, Mr. Faulkner, and you, Mr. Head. When they see Filby sent up for six months hard or thereabouts, it'll larn 'em to behave."

Released at his bidding, the pair slunk away. The superintendent glared at the pack of people surrounding him on all sides, and they too began to move backward: he had a way of making unnecessary people uncomfortable with those eyes of his.

"I think that's all, for the present," he observed, "except that I thank you very much for what you did, Mr. Faulkner."

"A few more nothings of the sort won't do this town any harm," Wadden told him. He looked toward the hotel, and saw that Helsing had disappeared. Then he turned to Head, who stood waiting.

"Unless you really want to go looking for more excitement, I think we've finished for the day, now," he remarked. "That is, there's no reason why you shouldn't get off home and have a rest, though I shall have to go and charge Filby before I get away."

"No," Head said, "I'm perfectly sure I don't want to look for more excitement of any sort. Home is good enough for me."

"Half a minute, though," Wadden admonished, and gazed along the street. "By the sound of things, excitement is coming looking for us, and Filby will have to wait a bit. What the—"

He broke off, still gazing beyond the end of London Road, for the raucous "whoo-oo-op—whoo-oo-op!" of a hand-operated klaxon was growing louder and louder in that direction. And presently Tom Cosway on a motorcycle, but barely recognisable as Tom, whooped his way through the groups in the street, and, seeing the superintendent and inspector standing on the pavement, swerved and came to a standstill beside them, keeping his engine running while he stuck out a foot on each side of his machine to maintain it upright. And they stared at him, as well they might: there was blood—not his own—on his face and clothes; his right hand on the handlebar showed a gash round which blood had clotted, and from which blood still oozed, and there were clean furrows down his grimed cheeks, lines washed by perspiration, or perhaps tears.

"Mr. Wadden—Mr. Wadd—" he gasped with choking half-incoherence. "She—Sheba—Miss Bell—dead!"

Chapter XVIII
Quade

"TAKE your time, Tom—take your time," the superintendent bade kindly, and put a hand on Tom's shoulder. "If Miss Bell is really dead, there's plenty of time, and no man ever gained anything yet by getting flustered. Here, you people!" He raised his voice to the shout Westingborough knew. "Clear away! This is no business of yours! Now, Tom," he resumed his kindly tone, talking on to soothe Cosway and give him a chance to collect himself. "Don't be scared. We've nothing against you except an odd spot of perjury, so you're not likely to get hurt. Tell me plainly what's happened to Miss Bell."

"Killed—killed outright," Tom answered, a little more steadily. "That devil Quade in his car—up by Thorleyston woods."

"Quade did it. I—she'd met me, Mr. Wadden, along that narrow lane that goes down off the main road through the woods—you know the one. She met me there to-day—she—we were going to get married— Oh, God! He killed her! He's there now!"

"Come here, Head," Wadden bade. "Look after that machine—you know how to manage these things perhaps." Then, as Head took the handlebars of the machine to steady it, Wadden himself took Tom under the arms and lifted him clear of the saddle on to the pavement. Now, lad, pull yourself together. You were down that lane with Miss Bell, you say. Did Quade drive down it to where you were?"

"No. We—we'd arranged everything, and then she got on her bike and started up, and I followed her—there—there wasn't any reason why we shouldn't be seen together, now, she said. We both hooted coming out to the road—she was only a little way in front of me. And she wasn't going fast—you can't go fast in that lane—she wasn't going fast when she came out on to the road. She sounded her hooter, and I sounded mine behind her, too, but it didn't—it didn't make any difference. Quade came along driving all out as he always does, and caught her—caught her with his front wheel—threw her up over the front of his car and she crashed on the windscreen and cut her head to pieces. This—all over me—it's her blood—when I lifted her down!"

And, with the end of his story, Tom broke down and sobbed aloud, while Wadden held him with a protecting arm, heedless now of the bystanders who, if they were not near enough to hear, could see.

"I—I left her there and came straight in. Left Quade there too—he said he'd stay while I fetched you—somebody. She's quite dead—her—her head is all crushed and cut. Quade's car is there too—he bent—bent the front axle when he hit her machine."

"I'll see that he bends no more front axles for awhile," Wadden promised with ominous gentleness. "Head, you take Tom into the hotel and give him all the brandy he wants and get that hand of his dressed."

Wadden began to show his generalship, now, and Providence sent him Johnson the police clerk, and Jeffries, who acted as chauffeur when required, on their way home from the police station. He beckoned them as Head took Tom away into the hotel.

"Jeffries," he said softly, "the big saloon, and one man—any man, except the sergeant in the charge room. Tell him I'll be back to charge Filby with a breach of the peace and causing grievous bodily harm as soon as I can. One man, here, in the saloon. And for every second you waste in turning that saloon out, I'll dock a shilling off your pay, if it ruins you. Johnson, ring Doctor Bennett—tell him I want him here—just here—at once. If he's not dressed when he takes the call, tell him to come in his pyjamas—at once! Then ring again and get the ambulance turned out and sent to where that lane through Thorleyston woods comes out to the main road—they'll see a car broken down there, and they can wait till the doctor gets there. Oh, and tell him it's death—he needn't bring any bottles of tonic. That's all—move, man! I'll be waiting here with the saloon."

He was waiting on the pavement, and the saloon stood before him in the street with Jeffries at the wheel and one uniformed man on its back seat, when Head came out from the hotel with Tom Cosway. Tom's face had been cleansed and his hand bandaged, and he had steadied from his shaken horror at the accident to some extent, possibly by reason of the neat brandy Head had administered to him in the hotel.

"I shall be glad to have you," Wadden's tone was infinitely gentle. "You saw the accident, and you can give me full particulars on the spot before that car or anything is moved. Now you get into the car, Tom, and take things as easy as you can. I'm only waiting till Doctor Bennett gets here to go with us. In you go, lad, and take it easy."

He took Tom's arm and helped him into the car. Then he closed the door and turned to Head.

"It may be disastrous to my case," Head dissented. "I wanted Miss Sheba Bell alive—wanted to see her to-morrow morning over the case."

"Well, that's off," Wadden said, "and so are you—unless you think you ought to see her dead. For there's no doubt she is dead."

"They don't answer," Wadden said, and, momentarily, lifted his cap. "That being so, I'm not taking you out to Thorleyston woods to-night. You've had quite enough for one day, and I can see this through myself. Off you go, my lad, and tell your wife to take good care of you—though she'll do that anyhow. Ah, you're here at last, doctor! Now we can get away. Good night, Head—have a good rest."

Lifting one end of the rug which Quade had put over the body of Sheba Bell as it lay on the grass beside the road, Superintendent Wadden glanced down and hastily, yet gently, replaced the rug.

"Your affair, doctor. Take full particulars of the injuries, and then get the body away in the ambulance—better get them to take it to the mortuary, I think, with injuries like that, not out to Condor Grange at all. When you get it there, see what you can do toward making it less terrible before her sister or father sees her. But take me full particulars first, whatever you do. And then—can I leave it to you to go out to Condor Grange and tell them there that she was killed in a motor accident? Just that—and that Quade did it?"

"I'll go out, Superintendent," Bennett promised. "I'm attending Bell there as it is. He won't see the body—only her sister."

Bennett signed to the two men waiting with the ambulance behind the police saloon, and, advancing, they formed a screen between the pitiful thing lying on the grass and Tom Cosway, still seated in the saloon, when the doctor lifted the rug away to begin his examination. Then Wadden went forward along the road, and halted where a small saloon car leaned down to its near side at the edge of the macadam, and a crumpled and distorted motorcycle lay in the ditch. There he stood silent for awhile, and Quade, standing beside the disabled car—a frightened little man who took sevens or possibly even sixes in shoes—watched him furtively and at intervals shuddered, perhaps because of what he had seen here, or perhaps of what he had done elsewhere.

The car, a low-built thing painted blue, with black wings, leaned down to its near side not only by reason of the bent front axle, but because the near front wheel, too, leaned from its normal perpendicular position at an angle that rendered further driving impossible. All the tops of the scuttle and bonnet were spattered and splashed with blood, and there was a trail of blood across the crumpled near front wing and away from the car, showing how Tom Cosway had carried the body to put it down on the grass after lifting it off the car. And the near side of the windscreen was a mass of cracks and breakages, for the force of the impact had sent the girl's head through the safety glass and had bent the pillar that supported the screen.

He went back to where wheel tracks showed how the motorcycle had emerged from the end of the lane, and then, looking at the road, saw the long skid-mark which revealed how Quade had tried too late to pull up and avert the collision. Its length on the dry surface showed the pace at which the car must have been travelling when its driver saw the motorcycle come out from the lane. Wadden went back to Quade.

"What was your speed when you first saw that motorcycle, Quade?" he asked, and inwardly reflected on the difference between the man as he was now and as, bumptious and furious, he had come to the police station earlier in the day, to make his complaint concerning Wells and Thompson. He was hardly recognisable as the same man.

"You blasted liar!" Wadden said softly. "That skid-mark is twenty yards, if it's one, and still human flesh and blood and bone crashed through your windscreen! Jeffries, come here!" The man came and stood beside him. "Now, Quade, at what speed were you travelling when you first saw that motorcycle come out from the lane?"

"Witness to that, Jeffries," Wadden bade. "Thirty-five miles an hour. Now take the tape out of the saloon and measure the length of the skid-mark. We'll get the weight of the car and have the brakes tested before it's moved from here. Off you go for the tape, Jeffries. Now, Quade, where were you going when you killed this lady? To write to the papers about police stupidity, or to consult your solicitors? Come on, man—where were you going? Out with it!"

"Smiles, at Market Hadenford." Wadden opened his note-book, which he had already in his hand, and inscribed the name. "Never heard of him—is that his full address?"

"At thirty-five miles an hour, with that car. Hurrying! Is this horse-coper Smiles on the telephone, do you know?

"I don't care what he didn't or did," Wadden interrupted, and inscribed the number under the name and address already in his book. "I mean to ring him as soon as I get back to Westingborough with you, and check up on your reason for this gentle saunter you were taking along this road—at thirty-five miles an hour. And God be good to you if you've lied about it, for you'll need all that! Now, Quade, before anything apart from the body is moved from here, I'm going to have a complete set of photographs taken. Going to leave a man here in charge of that car and motorcycle, and leave the rug where it covered the body, and have everything photographed from every angle—including the skid-mark you left on the road. You know why?"

"As evidence against you. I, Superintendent Wadden, arrest you, Quade—I don't know the remainder of your name, yet—arrest you and charge you with driving to the public danger, and with manslaughter here at this spot, and I warn you that anything you may say in answer to the charge may be taken down and used as evidence against you. Will you go quietly, or with cold iron on your wrists?"

"I'll go quietly," Quade promised, with half a sob. "Very quietly," he added after a brief interval of reflection.

Wadden gazed back at the saloon, and at Constable Thompson standing beside it. He could oppose Quade's application for bail when the man came up to be formally charged before the magistrates on the following morning, and perhaps would be able to support the application with hints that would prevent Quade from regaining his liberty for a few days. In that way, he would get Thompson set free from the special patrol duty outside the training stables, and have one of his seven immobilised men available for ordinary work again.

Under Bennett's supervision, the two ambulance men were lifting a stretcher, on which they had placed the body of the dead girl, into their vehicle. Quade could go in the saloon, in the back between Thompson and the other man whom Wadden had brought out with him. Tom Cosway could come to the front seat with the superintendent himself and the driver, Jeffries, who was already winding in his tape after measuring the length of the skid-mark on the road.

"Come along, Quade. I want to send out and get those photographs taken before it gets too dark, and I've got another man waiting at Westingborough for me to charge him. Come along."

"Miss Bell, do sit down. Please sit down, I beg of you! It was an accident—your sister was on her motorcycle. But do please sit down, and I'll tell you anything you wish."

In the long room at Condor Grange—the room Head knew—Doctor Bennett took Jadis Bell by the arm and gently urged her to an armchair. She seated herself in it and gazed up at him, fearfully.

"Can I get you anything—a glass of water—anything?" Bennett urged. "I know it must be a fearful shock to you. Can I—"

"No, doctor." Collecting her faculties, Jadis spoke clearly. "If you'll tell me—just as much as I ought to know. Can I see her?"

"She is not here," Bennett said. "It was late, and we took her to the mortuary at Westingborough. You see, Miss Bell, your father is an invalid, and will be yet, for days. I thought it better to spare you that. And anything I can do to save you pain—well, you know."

"You are very kind, doctor." She spoke quite clearly, quite rationally, and he realised her attitude as was caused by the first numbness following on shock. She might storm and weep later, but for the present he would have no trouble with her: he had to consider things like this from a professional view-point, not let himself be emotionally influenced, and this cool acceptance of the tragedy that he saw was a relief to him. It was growing late, and his dinner was waiting at home.

"Not at all—you may rely on me to do anything I can. She was—it was where the lane comes out from Thorleyston woods."

So she knew that, did she? But the grave tone of her voice implied no condemnation of the dead girl, he noted.

"I—I believe so," he said. "She rode out from the lane on her motorcycle, and Quade—you know, the man who keeps training stables out along that road—Quade crashed into the motorcycle in his car—"

"Killed instantly. She couldn't have suffered at all, I assure you. It was instant—Quade is being held accountable."

"Not in the least! His wheel marks on the road show—and Superintendent Wadden arrested him on the spot. Your sister—"

He shook his head. "No. I went out with Wadden. No, Head didn't go. Wadden told him it wasn't his affair, and sent him home."

"I—it's useless, saying anything in such a case, Miss Bell. I want to feel I'm safe in leaving you, after telling you. If you wish me to tell your father, to spare you the pain of it—"

"No. I shall tell him, some time. I don't know when—is he fit to be told, doctor, lying there like that? When shall I tell him?"

"As late as you can possibly make it. I'd say, warn all the servants not to mention it, and keep it from him till he's farther along the road to recovery. There will have to be an inquest, and the funeral—I'll take all that off your hands, Miss Bell, if you like."

"Not at all, Miss Bell. I'll see that you have no more trouble over details than is absolutely unavoidable. And now, if I can feel quite safe in leaving you after telling you this—"

"Quite, doctor." She rose to her feet and stood facing him. "I—although I know you will do your best, I shall have to think—to plan and keep myself from seeing the tragedy of it, for awhile. Do you see? the—what is it?—the anodyne of action. Yes—that. I shall be quite all right, doctor. Now I'll see you to the door, for I know you wish to get home. All this is extra work for you."

She saw him out—a man admiring her for the courage she had shown him—and returned to the big room. Gatton dead, Sheba dead—she had felt, not so long ago, that Gatton might in the end win her sister and be happy with her. Looking into the twilight of the east, up over the beeches beyond the road, she wondered vaguely if, somewhere away there beyond the confines of earth, Gatton had already won Sheba, and the two souls had achieved the union Gatton had sought for them here. Night was approaching as she gazed, night quiet and serene as that night in which Gatton's body had lain out there—and now, on a mortuary slab, Sheba lay still as Gatton. Life... death... the Resurrection and the Life... He that believeth in Me...

Sheba, the dark loveliness of her—her wonderful, night-black hair and soft, beautiful eyes. Cometh up as a flower... a dark flower that now lay crushed and spoiled on a mortuary slab. Sheba, the elder sister who had ruled this younger one in their childhood, and drifted away with different tastes and instincts when they had grown older. Yet still, in their separateness, loving and happy with her sister at times, wayward, but with no evil in her. Different, but still loved.

"Oh, Sheba—my dear—Sheba! Can you understand, now? I did love you, dear! I did, really!"

Chapter XIX
Sinister

"AH, here you are, Head!" Wadden looked up as his inspector entered his room. "Feeling a bit more spry than you did last night, I hope? You look a bit more like yourself, I think."

"Feeling fit to tackle things and not weep over them, if that's what you mean," Head answered. "How about you, though?"

"Both hands and my feet full, so don't worry me more than you find absolutely necessary. Quade and Filby both to appear before the magistrates at ten-thirty this morning, and the inquest to arrange on that poor Miss Bell—all the witnesses to be warned, though that won't take me long to see about. And what's your day? The case?"

"Yes, I'm going out on it, after a word with you and when Wells brings me along those photographs. I may go straight to Estwick after doing what I want with them, so I came to see you before starting."

"I'll give you half an hour—no more. But I say, Head, I've been thinking your case over. It's a damned sinister business."

"Well, look at it! Gatton's body lying out there undiscovered all night—that's sinister to begin with. I mean, it's up against us in a way. And then, the way you put it, those two chaps sneaking off among the beeches and leaving footprints so that we can fairly see them there under the trees, and yet can't put our hands on them. If that isn't sinister, I don't know what is. And this Miss Bell—you say she might have given you vital evidence if she'd lived, and she ups and gets killed so you can't question her. As if fate itself had a down on you, for there's no reason why she should go and get herself killed last night more than at any other time. Really sinister, that."

"A little man, with a flying licence," Head said slowly. "A suspicious little man, questioning me with his eyes all the time. Wanting to know how much I wanted to know, querying if I were suspecting him."

The superintendent pressed the button on his desk, waited, and then told Johnson that he wanted Sergeant Wells—where was he? Presently Wells appeared, and put down a bulky package on the desk.

"Your photographs, sir," he said to Head. "Numbered on the back according to the list, as you asked. Fourteen of 'em."

Head took out his note-book and extracted the two loose pages, and then opened the package and revealed, at the top, the bearded face of Woods the grocer. He glanced at Wadden.

"You have a numbered list, chief?" he asked. "All right, Wells—thanks very much. I'll check them over with the superintendent."

"I have," Wadden assented. "Though why you want to play this stagey trick with them I can't see. We know the lot."

"Quite so. But suppose me at Estwick and you here. Suppose while I'm there I get the identity of one of these as the man we want—the big or little one who has shoes that will fit our plaster casts? I telephone you to put a certain number inside—that means arrest and charge the one whose number is on the back of a certain photograph, and he can't possibly get warned in advance in any way that arrest is coming to him, for the identities corresponding to those numbers aren't known outside this office. We're dealing with secret agents, chief, and don't know what sources of information they may have anywhere. I'm doing this to save both you and me possible trouble, if I'm right about one of those fourteen having been concerned in the murder of Gatton."

"Like all the rest of the business, it's got a sinister flavour," Wadden observed. "Still, p'raps you're right. We'll check up as you say, to make sure of not getting the wrong man if you ask me to shop him. You call numbers and names from the pictures, and I'll tick 'em off on this list. Then we shall be quite sure, both of us."

So Head called and Wadden ticked, till all the fourteen photographs had been turned over on their backs into a second heap. Then Head took them and checked them over again, to make assurance doubly sure, and finally repacked them and looked at his watch.

"Twenty minutes only," he said. "Any parting messages? I may not see you again to-day, if I have to go to Estwick."

"None, except to watch your step if you do get any proof that the right man is there to be grabbed. Don't forget that one of those two probably still has a thirty-two revolver on him—the one he used when he shot Gatton—and he'll use it on you if he's cornered."

"If I telephone you a number, or send it to you in any way," Head said, "use just that caution yourself. Not that I'm by any means sure of getting either of them to-day, for these photographs mean a last trial of my theory as it stands before rebuilding it all over again. If I send the number, you'll know the theory is sound, and the man at this end may be the one with the gun—to use on you, if you let him have time to get it out and point it."

"I'll watch that," Wadden promised. "Otherwise, the world'll be short of a potential specialist in tomato culture, and I'd hate that to happen."

They shook hands solemnly, as if it were a momentous parting, and then Head went and turned out the two-seater car which was generally reserved for his use. The car was getting old and rather shabby, and it had never been fast, but it served his purpose for driving himself round the district when need arose. He drove out and along Market Street.

Passing Faulkner's dry-cleaning establishment, he saw the obnoxious alien on the other side of the way, innocent, for once, of either new can or milk bottle. There was a patch of sticking plaster over the top end of the long scar on Helsing's cheek, and a dreamily reflective look on his red-brick face as he stood, apparently quite oblivious of Idleburn water and filter beds, for the time. Sight of him caused Head to release the accelerator pedal momentarily: an association of ideas brought to his mind the fact that he had forgotten to ask Wadden whether any reply to the "confidential" about the black Alvis had come in that morning, but then he reflected that Wadden would certainly have told him if there had been any news of the car, and drove on, his package of photographs on the seat beside him.

He stopped outside Tom Cosway's motorcycle and cycle shop, tucked the package under his arm for safe-keeping, and, descending from the car, entered Tom's shop. Tom himself, all ready in his well-cut, neat-looking suit to go to court and give evidence against Quade, came forward, red-eyed after a night of mourning over his dead lady.

"Is it about Miss Bell, Mr. Head?" he demanded before Head could announce his errand.

"No, Tom, it's not," Head told him. "Nothing whatever to do with that. About what I inquired of you before—"

"Because," Tom interrupted determinedly, "if it is anything to do with that, I'll have to ask you to excuse me, whatever you do with me. I'm warned to go and give evidence in court about it, and how I'll keep calm enough to talk when I see that black-hearted murderer Quade again and have to tell how he killed her—when I loved her so—"

"Quiet, Tom—quiet!" Head interrupted in turn. "Just remember, now, you'll only spoil the case against him if you start exaggerating like that. Quade is being accused of manslaughter to-day, not murder at all. You give your evidence quietly and reasonably, and you'll help convict him. Rant about murder, and you'll get him off."

"All right, Mr. Head. I know you're right, really, but it makes my blood boil when I think of it—see her. I saw it all, you know."

"Just put your blood on ice and keep it there," Head advised. "Now, Tom, I'm rather in a hurry, and I want to ask you a few more questions—one question only, perhaps, about the night in the lounge at the Duke of York when you spoke of a noiseless aeroplane. Or rather, all the nights when you spoke about it. Did anyone who heard you ask you questions, or show any special interest?"

"Look here, Tom! Be very careful you're not trying to damn Quade because he's responsible for Miss Bell's death. Are you prepared to state on oath that Quade showed more interest in what you told that party of men than anyone else? Think carefully, now!"

"It was Quade who asked me about it," Tom insisted. "He wanted to know all I knew, questioned me about the sound it made and all sorts of things about it. Not because of yesterday evening, Mr. Head, but because he did! He was hot on me about it."

"No, not specially. They just listened—they all seemed interested and listened to what I was saying. One or two may have chipped in with an odd question or two, just to keep me talking, but it was Quade who kept on trying to draw me out, I know."

"I really couldn't tell you. It was just an occasional remark or question from one or other of them. You know, when you get really interested in a thing like that, and people keep on talking, you don't really notice—if there's a lot of them as there were when I was talking about the aeroplane. I do know Quade kept on at me, both when I first mentioned it and after—especially the night when I told them it was coming to land opposite Condor Grange on the Monday. He seemed rather sceptical—ridiculed me, and pulled my leg about it."

"No, they just all pulled my leg about it. I don't recall any one in particular. Disbelief here and there, you know."

"That's all, Tom, thanks. Except—don't lose control of yourself in court this morning, unless you want to see Quade get off."

He went back to his car, and drove on, over the London Road bridge and along the road through the Idleburn valley, till he came to Condor Grange. There he drew the car in to the side of the road by the gate, and, going to the front door of the Grange, rang and waited. After a time, Bella the parlourmaid opened the door and looked out.

She admitted him to the hall, and he waited until she returned and opened the door of the big room he knew. "Please wait in here, sir," she asked. "Miss Bell told me to tell you she won't keep you long."

But, he found, fully ten minutes passed before Jadis Bell appeared and closed the door. She gave him a cold, hostile look.

"Then"—she drew herself up—"how dare you of all men come to this house—you who are indirectly responsible for her death?"

She saw him as French had seen him in the hotel lounge at Westingborough, he knew then, blamed him as French had blamed him. He had no power to compel her to the service he wanted of her, and thus he had to conquer her hostility as he had conquered French's—but the means he had used with the man would not serve with this girl, he knew.

"I dare to come here," he said, "and I deny that responsibility. I am here, not in connection with her death, but that of Harry Gatton. I ask your help in finding the men who murdered him."

"If it would save my own life, Inspector," she answered cuttingly, "I would not help you, after what you did to my sister." She turned and gestured. "There is the door," she added.

Then he saw his way to winning her. Zalescz had called it melodramatic, as had French, but melodrama was justifiable—everything was justifiable, to attain the end Head wanted, then.

"I mean that Gatton was killed by agents of a rival power which wants to beat England in the air," he said. "I want them not only for Gatton's death, but as part of my duty to my country."

"Melodramatics!" she exclaimed bitterly. "Go and get them—but do not come to me. Why should I help you?" She laid her hand on the door handle, but he stood so as to prevent her from opening it, yet.

"I'm going to tell you, before you leave this room," he said steadily and purposefully. "I know it's a terrible thing to intrude on you at a time like this, with your sister's death fresh in your mind, but I'm going to tell you why you must help me before you leave this room. Yesterday, Mr. Lancelot French"—he saw her expression change slightly as he uttered the name—"flew me over to Estwick, and turned out an aeroplane to fly me back, because he wanted to help me. And now I come to you, asking you to second what he did."

She made a little impatient movement, as if she would shake herself free of his persuading—free of him, too.

"Mr. French does as he pleases," she said. "I too will do as I please, and you have no right to compel me—to anything."

"I'm not going to compel you," he answered. "I couldn't compel you—anyone—to what I want to ask of you. First, though, Miss Bell, Mr. French turned out an aeroplane to fly me back here yesterday—did that for me. And I looked down from the machine as it flew."

"I looked down"—Head remembered how Zalescz had captured his imagination with that simile of a mistress, and strove to capture hers. "I saw the country under me—England. All lovely in the sun—wonderful. And I told myself—all this is mine. Never mind private ownership, it's mine, a part of my life—just as it's a part of yours, and more to me really than anything else. My land—my England!"

"What of that?" But, though she tried to speak as before, he could see that she was half won already.

"What of it?" he echoed, and smiled ever so little. "It talked back at me as I sat up there and looked down at it. It said quite clearly, as if in real words—'You're wrong. I don't belong to you—you belong to me. You're a part of me, just like millions of other little atoms—and you can find them in every part of the world—little atoms that look to me and believe in me—believe I'm great and protecting and lovely and wonderful—England! And,' it said to me up there over it, 'if you don't give all you are and all that belongs to you when I call for it—sister, wife, mother, sons—whatever I ask of you—then you're a traitor to me, no more worthy to be called my son. You've got to give yourself and everything when I as your great mother ask it, just as my sons gave their lives to make my victory and bring me peace, not so many years ago!' That's how it talked to me, Miss Bell, and—"

But with an impulsive movement she turned her head aside, passed him, and went to the window of the room. She stood there, and he saw her shoulders move a little, quiveringly, and knew he had only to wait a while and let her recover composure.

"I'm—upset already, Mr. Head." She faced about when she had herself under control, and the tears were still in her eyes. "Last night. My sister's death. Oh, I'm such a fool! You've made me see—please do forgive me!" She came toward him again. "I—what is it you want? For that—I do see, now! What can I do—for that cause?"

"Something very simple," he told her. "Something that may seem quite trivial to you, but only you can do it, and I assure you it is for that cause. Concerning the dance you attended at Estwick with your sister, last November. To see if you recognise someone who was there."

"Anything you care to ask," she promised. "I'll do it for you—for that cause you pleaded so wonderfully—I shall never forget your words, Mr. Head. Just tell me what I can do, will you?"

"These photographs." He put down his package on an occasional table, slipped off the string, and revealed the contents. "Will you take them and study them one at a time, please, and tell me if any one of those men, to your knowledge or even in your belief, was present at the Air Force dance at Estwick in November of last year."

She took up the top photograph of the pile and studied it intently. Then, still holding it, she looked at Head.

"No difference at all," he assured her. "Whether you know him or no is nothing. Was he at that Air Force dance at Estwick?"

She resumed her scrutiny of the pictured face. Then she turned the print over, and saw the number on the back. Again she looked at the face, and eventually handed the print to him.

So, one by one, she took and rejected eight prints in succession. Over the ninth she did not hesitate at all, but held it out to him after only one glance as she took it up.

Head turned the print over and saw the number on the back—"13." The original of that portrait had both been at the Air Force Dance and heard Tom Cosway's account of STR E3.

"Quite certain. Again, I know the man, and he was there. When I say know him, I mean by sight. Not as an acquaintance. He was there."

She studied them, and one by one handed them to him with a negative reply. He put the whole fourteen together and repacked them. There was no need to keep any one out—they had done their work.

"In view of what you are going through, I'm sorry I had to ask you that," he answered. "And for everything that has hurt you."

"But it is for England, you said," she reminded him. "Like—like melodrama on the stage, but not less real to us who believe in her. I do realise all you mean, Mr. Head, and—and thank you for telling me."

A far greater man than himself, he remembered, had told and taught him the real significance of the work he had set out to do. He saw in thought John Zalescz standing beside his creation, not yet satisfied—never satisfied, as French had said, because he wanted to offer still better and greater gifts to his mistress.

"You have been very good to me, Miss Bell," he said. "Now, with what you have told me, I must go. Good-bye."

On his way to the gate, he realised how much he needed her good wishes. He knew now that "13" had been at the Air Force dance, but what of it? Thorburn had somehow missed that name out from his list, as he had missed out his own—an oversight, perhaps, due to the name having been on a stray slip of paper somewhere, and not in the invitation list in the book. He, Head, knew the man, but what could he do with the knowledge now that he had it? There was nothing whatever in it to justify arrest and accusation of being concerned in the murder of Harry Gatton—in thought he heard his theory ridiculed in court, torn to shreds, and saw "13" walk out from the court in which he had been accused, a free man. One got only one bite at that cherry, and a clever counsel would reduce any prosecution on such flimsy, irrelevant evidence to an utter absurdity. All this new knowledge meant was that thirteen of the fourteen men at Westingborough could go unwatched, and Wadden would get back for ordinary duty all his immobilised men—except for one who must never lose sight of "13."

Thus Head realised his present position as he opened the gate and went out to the road. But then some movement along the road toward Condor Hill caused him to glance in that direction, and he stood and stared and stared at an approaching car. A black car—it was the first characteristic of the vehicle that he noted—a two-seater car, with its hood down and only the man at the driving wheel inside it. Nearer still, and the red inverted triangle at the top of the radiator declared it an Alvis car, black, with a thin red line running round the body. He looked down between the dumb irons and saw the number plate, saw as the car stopped, that the plate bore the letters YY, and that there was a figure nine in the number.

The car stopped, facing Head's own two-seater from the uphill approach to the Grange gateway, and Lancelot French got out.

Chapter XX
Back to Estwick

THERE was an unmeasured period through which Head saw French approaching him—for in such stresses of emotion time ceases to be measurable—and in it he felt that all the world was vile, since one who had appeared so staunch a friend and loyal a man could be such a hypocrite and villain as this one before him. But then he remembered—clutched at the remembrance and hugged it—that French had waited with Zalescz at Estwick on the Monday evening for Gatton's return with E3, and had been instrumental in the end in getting a S.O.S. broadcast in connection with the missing aeroplane. In his relief, he could have hugged the man himself as that thought came to his mind.

"Well, here I am again already, Head!" French called cheerily. "I told you I wouldn't let those pyjamas at the hotel get too cold."

"Mr. French, wait a minute! There's a lot you must know before you go in there, and a lot I must know too. To begin with, do you know yet that Miss Sheba Bell was killed in an accident last night?"

"Her motorcycle—a road accident. Run into and killed instantly. But before you go in there, there are more important things than that, from my point of view—from dead Harry Gatton's point of view—that I want you to tell me. Mr. French, whose car is that you have there?"

"No! For heaven's sake leave that for a moment! About the car—it's the key, practically, to Gatton's murder, and I want to know—I want to know about it, man! Yours, you say?"

"Yes, of course it's mine! I picked it up as a second-hand bargain nearly three months ago! And you say the key—it can't be! It's my own car. Head, let me go—with her father ill and her sister dead—"

"Yes, I know just what you feel about it," Head interposed, "but I've just left her, and I know she'd be the very last person to keep me from finding out all I want to know from you—before she sees you, too! Now listen! No—come here to the car. I want to get behind it, and you take the hand brake off and let it run forward slowly till I say stop." He went to the back of the car. "Ready? Let go!"

French eased off the brake, and Head watched the off back wheel as the car went slowly forward. Then—"Stop it!" he called, and French jerked the brake on again. "Now come here and look!"

French came to the back of the car, and then Head stooped and laid his finger on one of the rubber studs composing the tread of the off back tyre. All the rest of the studs were circular, but this one was misshapen, roughly quadrangular in shape.

"That proves it the car that those two men who killed Gatton had waiting for them on Monday night," Head said. "I've got a cast of that defective tread in the office at Westingborough. Unless—how long has this tyre been on the car, and where did you get it?"

"That tyre—I had the car reshod all round—all five wheels—directly after I bought it. The old tyres were down to the canvas. You're looking at that defect, I see. Well, Freddy Thorburn knows a place where you can get manufacturers' throw-outs at a little over half-price—stuff that's got some small defect in it like that misshapen stud or something, but just as good as the full-price article, really. All five tyres are like that—there's some small fault which makes no difference at all to their wearing quality. Now I've told you in full, and you can get on with it. You've told me Sheba Bell is dead, and—"

"Wait, man—wait!" Head pleaded desperately. "This car—it's going to give me the two men who murdered Harry Gatton—the one who murdered him and the one who saw it done! This is the car they had waiting—the one they got away in after Gatton was shot!"

"But it was, I tell you! I've got a plaster cast of that defective tread, and a witness to the fact that the car was standing on this road, at the other end of the line of beeches, on Monday night."

"This car," French insisted, almost angrily, "was in Estwick on Monday night—has been in Estwick since Wednesday of last week, till I came here in it to-day. It's just come out from overhaul."

"Catterby and Gittens, the people who run the garage where I bought it. The valves needed grinding in, and I thought the big ends would do with a shade of tightening, so I sent it in to Catterby and Gittens and told them to do it—on Wednesday of last week."

"No. Told Freddy Thorburn to run it round to them and tell them what I wanted done. Freddy took it in—he does all my odd jobs—"

The sharp ejaculation startled French, and, even forgetting for the moment that he had come to see Jadis Bell, he stared at the almost frightened-looking man before him. But, for the moment, Head did not explain: in the lightning flash of the fact that French had just revealed, the whole case of the murder of Harry Gatton was visible, from the point where Gatton lay dead beside E3 to that day when two condemned murderers should step down from the dock, and from sight of free men and women for ever. And he cast one glance at his own two seater car, which might take him to Estwick that day or might fail him on the road: he thought of the interminable, cross-country rail journey, or of taking the next express from Westingborough to London, waiting there for a train to Estwick: then he looked at the black Alvis, a very prince among twelve-horse cars, reconditioned, waiting.

"What the—have you suddenly gone mad, man?" French demanded, utterly astounded. "Why—I've just come from there!"

"I know. Listen. I got a list of people who were at the Air Force dance, hoping to find on it the name of the Westingborough one of that pair of murderers. I got the list from the one man who wanted to keep me from knowing that name! From your man Thorburn."

"On whose word do you tell me that? Did you see it there yourself? On whose word do you tell me, when I've got a cast of the print that tyre made beside this road on Monday evening? Who told you it was in Catterby's garage then, Mr. French?"

"Now will you see it? Thorburn is the Estwick one of the pair of men I want, and there's another in Westingborough who may see this car and take fright if it stays here. You've got to take me to Estwick in it—turn it about and start now. Come along, Mr. French."

"Well, let me see Miss Bell first, and tell her," French asked. And, though he saw the urgency of Head's demand, his dislike for the errand showed in his face and voice. "Surely you can find some other—" he began a belated protest, standing with his back to the Grange, but Head, facing it, interrupted him.

For Jadis, having recognised French as he got down from his car, had waited and waited while he talked to Head, and at last had come out from the house to learn for herself the cause of his long delay. He faced about, and hurried to open the gate for her.

"Jadis, dear," he said eagerly, "it's wonderful to see you again! Head's told me—your sister—dear, I've got the rest of the week off and come here to be with you, and now this man wants me to go straight back to Estwick—to drive him there at once."

"I'll ring through for a plane!" French interrupted eagerly, and then stopped with a look of exasperated disappointment. "But, no," he added. "I can't. Cartwright's gone over to Farnborough to-day with the only available plane. I daren't ask for E3."

"There is no other way, Miss Bell," Head told her. "It's for—for what I was talking about to you a little while ago. I demand him of you, for that. He'll come back—to-day, perhaps."

"For that—yes, I see." She withdrew her hand from French's hold, and placed both hands on his shoulders, knowing that Head both saw her action and heard her words, and heedless of the fact.

"My dear," she said, "I want you to go as he asks. Not looking as you look now about it, but giving him all your cleverness and all your strength. And glad—glad that you're allowed to give. Because—he told me—it's for something that means far more than just us two, and we should never forgive ourselves if we—if we didn't answer when we're called. Just as he asks you—go!"

French took her in his arms and kissed her. "I see, dear," he said. Then he released her. "I'm ready, Head."

But Head, his hat in his hand, stayed to take Jadis Bell's hand and lift it to his lips. "You had to say it, Miss Bell," he said. "I couldn't have told him—nobody else could have told him in that way."

Then he got into the black Alvis beside French, and Jadis, standing beside the gate, watched the car go back up Condor Hill and disappear in the cutting over the crest.

They came to Crandon, seven miles along their way, and French drew the car up beside a petrol pump outside a small garage.

"We should have to refill somewhere along the way," he said. "I may as well do it now, instead of running the tank empty."

A small, sleepy-looking man came out—it was the man from whom Tom Cosway had hoped to buy this business, when he had married Sheba Bell. French looked at his petrol gauge. "Eight gallons," he said to the man, "and get a move on over it, please."

"One second." Head got out from the car and spoke to the man. "Have you a telephone anywhere inside there?"

"The wall on the left as you go in, Mr. Head," the man answered, recognising his questioner and becoming rather more wakeful.

He went into the garage, and looked at his watch before he took off the telephone receiver. Wadden would be at the magistrates' court by this time, the watch told him, and he had to look up the number before ringing through to ask for the superintendent. When he came out after completing his call, French was back at the driving wheel, waiting for him. The garage man closed the car door on him.

"Right—keep it to yourself if you feel like it. And she said—Head, you want to get there, don't you?"

"No. Well, Owl put the wind up you driving up to the flying ground, but I'm going to show you what this car can do, to-day. You've asked for it, and now you're going to get it."

"It was you who showed signs of wind-up—I'm dead sure I didn't," Head answered. "Hoot for corners—that's all. Especially side lanes."

"I'll hoot—don't worry about that. It took me just over three hours to get here, but it's not going to take that going back."

He settled to getting the best that the car could give, and Head, beside him, knew that it was very good indeed as he watched the speedometer pointer and the road alternately. There were moments when French's apparent recklessness made him hold his breath, but he knew all the while that the driver's view of the road is different from that of his passenger—that French saw a safe chance in what might appear as a dangerous risk to himself. He spoke for the first time after losing sight of Crandon when, at long last, French slowed to pass the trolley-bus terminus just outside Estwick.

"Magnificent," he said. "Two hours and forty minutes from Condor Grange, including the stop for petrol and my telephone call. And—I didn't get wind-up very many times. Only a few."

"Now where?" French asked. "Straight to the office? But Thorburn will be out at lunch. He generally goes early, and gets back at two."

"Don't go there yet. Where is that garage—the one where he took this car for overhaul for you?"

French pulled into a big garage, out of sight from the street, and a man, recognising him, hurried up to the car.

"Like a—like a beer tap," French told him. "This gentleman here wants to ask you a few questions, though. Mr. Catterby, Head."

Head got out. "I am a police officer, Mr. Catterby," he said. "I want you to find and fetch here, without telling him a police officer has asked it, the man who had charge of the overhaul of this car."

"That'll be Perry, our chief workshop hand, sir," Catterby said. "Right you are—I'll get him here at once, if he's in."

He went off, and after a minute or two returned with the man, a stout being in a dungaree suit. Catterby nodded at Head.

"Now, Perry," Head opened on him. "When did you finish work on this car—when was it ready to take the road?"

"Then why did you let Mr. Thorburn take it out on Monday afternoon?" Head demanded sharply.

"He—I—he said he'd take it out and try it, sir," the man answered uncomfortably, "just to settle the valves after regrinding. Then he fetched it in for me to give 'em a final run-over for adjustment, an' took it back for good Tuesday afternoon—for Mr. French, here."

"Did you check his running on the speedometer before and after the run he took with it? To see whether he'd done enough to settle the valves in their seats, as you ought?"

"You, Mr. French, and you, Mr. Catterby, are witnesses to that statement," Head told them. "Perry, how much did Mr. Thorburn give you to say nothing about this trial run to settle the valves?"

"Witness to that, too, Mr. French and Mr. Catterby. That's all, Perry, except that if one word of what you've just told me, or that I've questioned you at all, gets out, it may take you some time to get out—of quod. I am a police inspector, and what you have told me now will be needed as evidence later on. Till then, keep it quiet."

After Head had got back into the car, French turned about to go out from the garage. "On to the office, now?" he asked.

French drove there, and waited while Head spent a few minutes inside. He saw two men—plain clothes men, he conjectured—go off on bicycles, and then Head emerged, looking quite cheerful.

"Now the office, Mr. French. All being well, Thorburn should be back from lunch by this time."

"Head, I still can't believe he took this car," French objected as he engaged gear to drive to the office. "The risk of it—once the car was seen, it could be traced as you've just traced it through Catterby's man. Suicidal—a plain trail to him. He couldn't have been such an utter fool as that!"

"But don't you see, if all had gone as those two planned, tracing the car would have meant nothing to them?" Head pointed out. "They would have left it standing there in the road and gone away in E3, and you'd have been accused of complicity in the theft—Gatton would have been disgraced for ever, too—while that pair would never have been seen in this country again. If they'd got E3, they wouldn't have cared who saw the car or what became of it."

"I get you," French admitted some distance farther along the street through which he was driving. "Do you think of everything?"

"If I had thought of everything, I should not have gone back to Westingborough yesterday without Thorburn," Head answered grimly. "Now tell me—how did he get leave from the office on Monday afternoon?"

"He went to Gardner just after coming back from lunch—Gardner told me before I went up to the flying ground to see Gatton go off with E3—he went to Gardner and said he had neuralgia fearfully badly, and wanted the afternoon off to go to a dentist. And he didn't come back—left the office some time before three, I think."

They reached the office in time to see the two men whom French had already seen leaving the police station; the pair were settling their bicycles against the kerb, and French, entering the office with Head and pausing to speak to the commissionaire on the door, heard one of them ask the man to keep an eye on those two machines till they could come and fetch them. Then he questioned his man.

"He'll be in his room." French turned to Head to make the explanation. "If I show you the door, will that do? I mean, I'd rather not be there when you—if you don't mind?"

"Just show me the door." And Head gestured to the two men to go with him. "Then, if you will, find me a closed car."

"You hear?" French turned back to the commissionaire. "A taxi—one with the hood up. Have it waiting here." For the day was warm and sunny, so much so that hopeful taxi-drivers might put their hoods down for people who liked fresh air.

Then he led on, and indicated a door next that labelled—"Managing Director," at sight of which Head realised how near he had been to going on this errand by way of that wrong door. He, opened the right door, and, remembering the revolver that had killed Gatton, took no chances, but advanced and gripped Thorburn by both arms as his two men entered, ready to aid him at need.

"Frederick Thorburn, I am Police-Inspector Head, from Westingborough. I arrest you and charge you with being concerned in the murder of Harry Gatton near Westingborough at eight-thirty-seven p.m. or thereabouts on Monday last, and I warn you that anything you may say in answer to the charge may be taken down and used as evidence against you." And, keeping his hold, he drew the little man's hands back behind him, while one of the two men produced a pair or handcuffs.

"Yes." Head nodded at his man. "Put the handcuffs on for safety—he may possibly have a gun on him. Then we can search him."

French went back to the main office and waited there. His throat felt dry and harsh, and he found that he was trembling a little. Quite vainly, he tried to convince himself that these things were effects of the long drive, the strain it had imposed on him. Presently Gardner, returning from his lunch, saw that his co-director in the firm looked rather pale, and paused to query it.

"You're looking terribly off colour, Mr. Lancelot," he said. "I thought you weren't coming in again till Monday, though?"

"But—is anything really wrong? What is it? Why do you keep on looking at my room?" Gardner asked sympathetically.

"Not your room—the one next it. They—Inspector Head—he's arresting Thorburn for the murder of Gatton in there."

"What?" Gardner made it an awed half-whisper. Thorburn—Head's proved it to me. He's the man."

But then he saw Thorburn emerge with the two men, and Head following. As the three foremost passed him, he saw that in Thorburn's face which convinced him as no words from French could have done. They passed to the taxi the commissionaire had summoned, but Head paused for a moment and held out his hand to French.

He saw Head go on and pass through the main doorway, saw him enter the taxi and go away. After a few seconds, he moved to the doorway, Gardner going with him, and saw the two bicycles leaning against the kerb, and the black Alvis with its radiator faced toward them.

"It's a lovely car to drive," he said aloud, "but I want never to drive it again—never to see it again. If I—yes!" He turned to Gardner. "Where's my brother, Gardner—do you know?"

"Gone, man—gone to the hangman's rope, I trust! As—as I once trusted him. Tell me—has my brother got his car with him?"

"To the usual place, of course. If I go there for a late lunch, I can just catch him. He can lend me his car and take the Alvis till I get back next week, and—yes, there's time. I can get back to her to-day."

Standing on the steps of the office, he saw a taxi approaching, and discerned that the meter flag was up. He began waving at the driver, eagerly.

Chapter XXI
Back to Westingborough

"IT'S Mr. Head, sir. He wants you on the 'phone. Told me to tell you he must speak to you, and he's got a number for you."

"Blast it!" But Wadden kept his voice low, for he was seated in court when the man spoke to him, having seen young Filby committed for trial at the county sessions, and now momentarily expecting Quade to be placed in the dock. "I've left that list of his locked in my desk—never expected to hear from him as soon as this. All right—I'll go."

He paused only to whisper to the magistrates' clerk that he would be back in a second, and ignored both that official's whispered remonstrance and the sight of Quade being guided to the dock, for he did not know under what circumstances Head was telephoning him. Outside, he took up the receiver which had been left off its hook for him.

"Yes, chief. Put number thirteen inside. I'm speaking from Crandon, and have no time to waste. Put number thirteen inside."

"Thirteen? Didn't I say it was all sinister? But look here Head, I've left my—"

"Click!" And Wadden after gazing at the transmitter, waggled the receiver hook furiously and then dialled "O".

"Inquiries. Look here, Miss! I've been cut off—a police call from Crandon! Police call—urgent—get the connection!"

"Hell and rattlesnakes! Quade in the dock and that list in my desk at the office! Well, he simply shan't have bail—that's all!"

He slammed the receiver back on its hook and went back into court, where, after his initial whisper to the clerk, both the accused man and the magistrates waited through a long, whispered colloquy. Eventually the clerk stood up and addressed the bench.

"Gentlemen, and madam, Superintendent Wadden, bringing charges of driving to the public danger and manslaughter against the accused in this case, has asked me to tell you that he wishes, for to-day, to produce only evidence of arrest, and to oppose any application for bail that the accused man may make, until to-morrow. Superintendent Wadden has satisfied me that he is fully justified in pursuing this course."

"Mind, I don't say he is, Mr. Barham," Wadden cautioned as Lucas Barham, clerk to the court, seated himself again.

And, since these members of the great unpaid took their cues from the clerk to the court, in matters of law, penalties to be inflicted—and practically everything else—Wadden had his way, and Quade, utterly frightened now as to his ultimate fate, was remanded in custody until the following day. When he had disappeared, Wadden got up and, leaving the court, went back to his own office.

"If it wasn't him, it was the one next to his," he told himself as he got out his keys to open the desk. "I'm not dead sure. But there's one thing about it—I can get my six men back to their jobs, now!"

"I want him, and two men. And a reasonably large pair of handcuffs. And bring me my automatic pistol—see that it's loaded and put the safety catch on. Hurry it—Wells and two men."

Less than two minutes later, he emerged to the street with his three aides, and with his hand grasping the butt of the automatic pistol in the right pocket of his summer tunic. He led the way to Faulkner's dry-cleaning establishment, and entered, as did Wells and the two men. A rather small, suddenly-frightened girl whom Faulkner employed to mind the shop faced them across the counter. Less than an hour earlier, Wadden knew, Faulkner had appeared as a witness in the magistrates' court, and had been thanked by the chairman of the bench for his conduct the night before.

"Where's Mr. Faulkner?" Wadden asked her. "Don't be scared—we won't hurt you. Where is he?"

Wadden looked at his watch, and saw that in fourteen minutes, if his time were correct, the fastest express of the day would pull out from Westingborough station on its way to London. He faced about.

There was not a taxi in sight, but Lady Barburam's Rolls-Royce, magnificent with uniformed chauffeur at the wheel, was standing on the opposite side of the street while an obsequious shopman talked to her ladyship through the window. Wadden went to the car and pushed the shopman away, so that his own fierce eyes gazed at the elderly knight's equally elderly wife, who opened her mouth at him, just as might a fish.

"I know, your ladyship." He opened the door. "You can have it back. Come out, please—I must have it."

"Here, Wells!" Wadden interrupted peremptorily. "Get in with me and throw her out. That man'll get away from us if you don't."

At that, Lady Barburam descended from the car, helped—yea, urged thereto!—by Wadden's hand; she began to talk to the world in general about outrages, her solicitor, what the world was coming to, and other things. But Wadden and his men were in the car, and he was speaking to the chauffeur, urgently.

"Now, my lad, you know me. You know I don't commit a breach of the peace like this for nothing. The railway station, faster than is safe, and I'll stand the racket for you if you hit anything. Step on it!"

The chauffeur obeyed, for, in common with most people in the district, he knew Wadden would do nothing without good reason. He took the curve into the station yard at a speed that would have turned Lady Barburam's hair whiter than it was already under the dye she used, and slithered the Rolls to a standstill outside the booking office.

"All right, thanks," Wadden said as he got out. "You can take it back to her and thank her from me—tell her to send the bill for the trip to me at the police station. We'll taxi back."

He entered the booking office, his men at his heels, and saw by the clock over the doorway leading to the platform that he had made the trip with seven minutes to spare—the London train would not be in from the north for another four minutes, yet. Beyond the doorway, standing on the platform and gazing pensively toward the booking hall, he saw Herr Helsing, with the patch of sticking plaster laid across the scar on his brick-red cheek. Then, ignoring him for the time, Wadden looked toward the ticket window on his left, and saw Faulkner inside the rail that fenced intending passengers toward the window, and raking in change after purchasing his ticket. Just outside the rail stood a large suitcase, and Wadden gestured one of his men toward it.

Faulkner, pocketing his change, moved forward beyond the guarding rail and saw Wadden advancing toward him with two other uniformed men, while yet another uniformed man reached down for the suitcase he, Faulkner, had left unguarded while he purchased his ticket for London. Instantly his hand went to his hip pocket—but, since he had not anticipated trouble of any kind here, he had buttoned down the flap of the pocket. He had barely got the contents of that pocket out when Wadden's fist, with Wadden's sixteen stone behind it, landed in his solar plexus—for he could not try to get the revolver out and defend himself with his fists at the same time. He slid down, an unconscious heap, by the booking office wall, and Wadden stooped and picked up the neat, blued-steel little revolver—the one that had sent a bullet into Harry Gatton's brain, as Wadden knew when he saw it.

"With the evidence on him," he remarked coolly as he stood erect again. "Drag him out, Wells, and stuff him into a taxi—I can't decently charge a man till he can hear what I'm saying, and he won't be able to hear for a minute or two. Put the irons on him, and we'll charge and search him when we get him down to the station."

He gazed rather longingly at Helsing, standing on the platform and thus witness of the whole scene. Wasn't there some way of running that damned alien in too, before he bolted by this or some other train? But Wadden decided that he had no evidence whatsoever against the man, and could not do it: a two-gallon paraffin can and a glass milk bottle would be no earthly use in obtaining a conviction against a man who had committed no crime (as far as the superintendent knew then) beyond that of fishing water by the pint out of a river containing thousands of gallons. With a distinct twinge of regret at his helplessness in that particular case, Wadden went out to the taxi in which Sergeant Wells and his men had already placed Faulkner.

"He would be thirteen," Wadden mused. "I might have known that, if I'd had any sense. That sinister number—damned sinister!"

In mid-morning of the following day, Superintendent Wadden and Inspector Head returned to the police station, having each given formal evidence of arrest and asked for and obtained a remand of seven days in the cases of Gerald Faulkner and Frederick Thorburn, charged severally and jointly before the bench with the murder of Harry Gatton on the Monday evening of that same week. Wadden remarked briefly that it was quick work as he went into his room, and Head, concurring with equal brevity, went on to his own room to look into affairs that he had practically neglected while occupied with the Gatton case.

Presently, in response to an order, a smart young constable appeared before Wadden, who favoured the man with his fiercest stare.

"Now, Benson—stop squirming, man! I haven't begun to eat you, yet. Whaddye mean by letting that man get away to the railway station yesterday morning without reporting it to me? Whaddye mean by it? Didn't I put you on watch over him and the others because I trusted you not to let me down over it? Come on—speak up! Whaddye mean?"

"Well, sir, it was Mr. Woods put me off this man Faulkner. He got on to one of his delivery vans with a trunk, and I didn't get there in time to hear him tell the driver where to take him—"

"My hat! And fried liver! D'you mean you missed where he went too—as well as letting Faulkner slip away?"

"There wasn't anything but the bike, sir. I got on it and managed to keep the van in sight. It stopped at the back entrance to the Temperance Hall—you know there's a big total abstinence meeting on there to-night, sir. I just managed to see Woods himself handing bottles of whisky out of the trunk to the caretaker of the hall, and then I knew what he was up to and got on the bike and hared back. But Faulkner had gone, then, and I rang your office and found you'd already gone after him, and came out of the telephone box in time to see Lady Barburam with a draper's assistant holding her up while she threatened to have the law on you. I'm very sorry indeed, sir."

"Well, don't do it again, Benson, and when you take a case into court make your report just like that. Incorporate all the facts, but don't dwell on 'em, and I'll say no more about this. That whisky—it'll be to liven up the speakers after the meeting, I expect—Woods is going to speak himself, I know. What about the bike?"

"Here, don't you stand there grinning at me like that! Whaddye think this town is—a nucleus for harems? Oh, you're not married, though. All right, Benson—let off with a caution, and when you keep that appointment with her, thank her from me for the bike. And if you really mean to go in for promotion, go on watching your step. I'm retiring soon, and that'll mean steps up all round."

But, Benson reflected as he left the presence, he had heard that tale so many times already—about the superintendent's impending retirement—that he regarded it now merely as fodder for marines' horses.

Wadden sat, ignoring work for awhile, and thinking of the events of what he would have termed—probably justly—the most lurid week of his life. He was musing rather sadly over Tom Cosway, breaking down and sobbing in the middle of his evidence at the inquest on Sheba Bell the preceding afternoon, when his door opened without any preliminary knock on the panel, and Wadden stared in utter stupefaction at the stiff figure of Herr Helsing, who clicked his heels and bowed after his fashion as he began—

"Who the Hitler let you in here? How the Mussolini did you get in without asking for me? What the other devil do you mean by it?"

"Sorry, Superintendent," the other man said in a normal English voice—quite a pleasant voice. He advanced to the desk and put a card down. "I felt I had to pull your leg just once more."

Wadden glared at the card. "Major Tyrrell—Travellers' Club," he gasped. Then he stared up at the obnoxious alien again.

Tyrrell followed suit. "You told me—told me—not to come to the police station when—when somebody told me to go to hell," he got out somehow. "How I—how I kept my face straight I don't know—" And then he gave it up and roared at Wadden, who roared at him, till the tears streamed down both their faces, and the superintendent's roar lessened to no more than a mere wheezy series of gasps.

"Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! How I ache!" He leaned forward and jabbed down the bell push on his desk. "Head's got to share this. Dirty times—and that blasted bottle and can! Oh, major—Johnson, tell Inspector Head I want him—major, I can't stand any more! Head told me you—you had something to do with the case—Oh, my poor sides! And yesterday at the station I was praying heaven for a chance to run you in! Lord, I haven't had a laugh like that for years!"

Then Head entered the room, and saw two men weary after much laughter. He saw, too, the card on the desk, and went to read the script on it. Then he turned to Tyrrell.

"I don't mean that. I mean for doing me out of that laugh. You don't often get a chance to share in a laugh like that, and both you and the superintendent kept it all to yourselves."

"Half a moment, Major Tyrrell," Wadden interposed. "Where do you come in? I don't see it, yet. Why the—well, why the milk bottle?"

"Yes—do sit down. You take a chair too, Head. He's in it—I agree with you now that he's undoubtedly in it—but how?"

So Tyrrell seated himself in the chair at the end of the desk and began, while Head fetched forward another chair and seated himself.

"It began, Superintendent, when that broadcast message with regard to Zalescz Stratosphere Experimental aeroplane Number Three went out on the wireless. If they had been sure she was a dead loss, there would have been no excitement, for we had E2, and Zalescz was still alive. And when they heard next morning from Barton and Peters that she had been recovered, and the design was still a secret, the sigh of relief that went up blew busmen's caps off a mile away from the Air Ministry. For the Zalescz Stratosphere—he's perfected it, really, but since he thinks he can make it better they let him try—it's supremacy in the air, and—and I hope you'll never see it in flight again to note the difference between it and other machines. For if you do, it will mean that the day has come when we must fight for supremacy in the air. Fight for our very existence as a nation, in fact."

"And so say all of us," Tyrrell concurred. "But, Superintendent—and you too, Mr. Head—when that machine was recovered, it was reported that it had been landed for awhile near Westingborough. I was immediately detailed to come here, and had my papers made out for it. Passport good enough to deceive more practised eyes than yours, permit to play with your river—everything. Playing with the river was my own idea. I remembered that legend about the virtues of the Idleburn water as a dyeing agent, and the way it made your town mad proved I couldn't have hit on anything better. And I loved you all, all the time."

"Dirty times as much as I deserved, Superintendent," Tyrrell told him. "Now let's go back a bit, to tell you why I came here at all. A few years ago, a German named Gerard Falkenhayn came over here and disappeared. That is, he thought he disappeared, for he shaved off a nice little beard, burned all his papers, and moved, one day. But a bit later, he started corresponding with the Fatherland—not directly, but through a foreign stamp dealer in London. A genuine foreign stamp dealer, but one who used a profitable business to act as a clearing house for his compatriots busy on commercial espionage. We traced Falkenhayn as busy on that in the Neville works, under the name of Faulkner, and decided to leave him there. He was learning nothing useful, and his letters home were interesting—intensely interesting to us. They gave away the whereabouts of many of his friends busy at the same game—an indiscreet agent, in many ways—and we decided to let him alone and go on collecting information from him."

"Knowing that," Tyrrell assented, "and able to arrest and deport him at any moment we chose, as an alien who had concealed his identity instead of registering properly. Then he left Neville's and set up as a dry-cleaner on his own, and was at that when Stratosphere E3 landed here and her pilot was murdered last Monday. I was detailed to come here at once. Faulkner's mails were watched, both ways, but we could not be sure that he had not secured some part of the design of E3."

"Not my affair," Tyrrell answered promptly. "A far more important agent than Faulkner, without doubt—not engaged on commercial espionage at all, but a modern exponent of Steiber's art, military espionage. I don't know who he is or what he is, but I'm willing to bet you'll find his first name is Freidrich, and his second name something to do with the thunder-god—Thorfier, or something of the sort. He knew Faulkner was here, and knew his identity. He knew Gatton would be here with that aeroplane on Monday evening—I think Faulkner told him—"

"Correct," Head interposed. "When you wish, I'll tell you the case from our angle. But carry on, please, from yours."

"I don't know nearly as much as you do, Mr. Head. My business was that of merely watching Faulkner and seeing that he didn't get away—even if you had not got to the station yesterday morning, Superintendent, he would not have boarded that express. I should have stopped him and handed him over to you. But I lost all fear of your not getting him when I saw that sergeant out with a telephoto lens on his camera. I felt sure, then, that I could leave the whole case to you—"

"Because you are police—I am intelligence service," Tyrrell responded. "You make a criminal arrest, secure a criminal conviction against two ordinary murderers—if your evidence is good enough—and they are hanged. There is an end. If you had failed, and it had to fall to me, then the full truth would have to come out—the real identity of these men, the existence of such a thing as E3—the whole story. And that, on behalf of those I serve, I want to avoid."

"To ask you—is your case strong enough to hang these two men without calling on us to supplement it? If it is, I simply disappear and leave you to secure their conviction and execution. If not, I and others like me will come forward and tell the truths we know, make it utterly certain that that pair do not escape their penalty—but in disclosing the reality of them we must also disclose ourselves to a certain extent, and a recognisable agent in my work is a useless agent. That pair must die, at all costs, but must I and my kind come forward to make certain that they do die?"

"No, major," Head said. "It was very good of you to come to us like this, but I assure you those men will hang as Gerald Faulkner and Frederick Thorburn—unless their government intervenes."

Tyrrell smiled. "Their government will not intervene for them, any more than mine would intervene for me if I were caught. Those two are patriots according to their lights—they wanted the machine, not to murder Gatton. To them, the murder was regrettable, an unavoidable necessity when they could not get the machine without killing him. But you say you can be certain of their conviction with no aid from me?"

"I'll tell you," Head said. "Superintendent Wadden took a pistol off Faulkner, and we have the bullet that passed through the barrel of the pistol to lodge in Gatton's brain. We have proof that Thorburn borrowed a car to drive over here on the Monday afternoon, and full and unquestionable identification of the car. We have casts of both their pairs of footprints near the scene of the murder with the very shoes that made them, and the clear print of Thorburn's forefinger and thumb of the right hand on the shank of the ignition key belonging to Stratosphere E3. We have Thorburn's absence from his office, Faulkner's absence from his shop and from Westingborough—at least, he can't prove his presence—until he appeared in a hotel lounge, rather breathless and with a beech leaf or two on his coat, at three minutes to nine or later—certainly not earlier. And all that is the day after arrest—before we begin to make inquiries and work up the case against them."

Tyrrell nodded. "They told me before I left London that I might safely leave it to you, Mr. Head," he said.

"Well, they say Mr. Head would be rather lost without you," Tyrrell admitted with a smile.

"You're wrong, chief," Head put in. "I would be lost. Blast your old tomatoes—leave 'em alone!"

"I am going to grow tomatoes under glass—some day!" Wadden announced sternly. "When I resign.

"Meanwhile"—Tyrrell looked rather puzzled—"I can conclude that you're satisfied with what I could give you, but don't wish to give?"

"You may conclude just that," Wadded told him. "Our bright lad has done his stuff, as usual, and the bacon is safely on the rafter."

"Well, then, that's all, I think," Tyrrell said cheerfully. "Except—will you both dine with me at the hotel to-night, and let me hear how it was done? Or is that asking too much?"

"I'm not disclosing my identity to anyone but you," Tyrrell answered. "I shall have to retain my scar and complexion and my—my abdominal redundancy, say, till I get away from here. But we can have a private room, and be ourselves after the waiters have gone."

"What say, Head?" Wadden asked. "They'll think we've got him down and are giving him third degree. Shall we?"

"Then that's agreed—I'll fix the room," Tyrrell said, and rose to his feet. "I would like to hear your story."

"You'll see what a fool I nearly was, then," Head observed. "But if I may ask a really insulting personal question, major, how did you get that scar?"

"In a bottle—from a druggist's," Tyrrell answered frankly. "You paint it on and let it dry, and then tint it to taste. Like the complexion. Soap and water won't touch either of them—you have to use a kind of spirit to get them off, and my hat, doesn't it leave the skin tender! Seven-fifteen this evening suit you, gentlemen?"

"It's very nice of you," Wadden promised. "Unless there's an earthquake, or another murder, count on seeing us then. But I think we've had plenty of excitement for one week."

He gazed at Head after Tyrrell had gone out. "Nice chap," he observed. "I wonder what he really looks like—without that tummy."

"Don't be so damned modest!" Wadden admonished him. "You're as good a man and as clever a man as he is, any day."

"A sight cleverer, I'd say," he added. "Now clear out of here. You've got a room of your own, and I've got work to do before going on this blind with you to-night."

At Condor Grange, Randall Bell looked up into the face of the man whom Jadis had brought to stand beside his bed. It was a long, questioning, and at first almost suspicious look.

"Yes," he said at last. "She's a Bell, and she's her own mistress. Don't drive her—lead her, if you want the best from her. You know, I had another daughter, once, but there's only this one, now. I told Jadis never to mention that other one to me again, and after this telling you, I shall never speak of her again. But I expect you read all about it in the papers, though, how she disgraced me."

"Yes, I thought so. Well, I don't know what's become of her, and don't care. She was always wilful, self-centred—"

"Eh, well! Have it your own way, Jade, but don't mention her to me again, after to-day. And you two had better go—she's her own mistress, French, so my consent is a mere matter of form—except that now I've seen you she'll have everything after I go. Come and talk to me again later—I can see it isn't necessary to tell you to talk to my Jade. One kiss, Jade, and then take him away with you."

"Oh, if only I'd told her, that last time I saw her! Told her I did love her! And now it's too late—too late!"

Chapter XXII
Nine Weeks Later

TWO people sat out on the slope of Condor Hill, and before their feet a silky-coated spaniel lay and panted, for high summer had come. A terrier nosed in tufts of grass not far from the pair and the spaniel, and sneezed as the blades tickled his nostrils. But he went on nosing, for he smelt rabbit as having been there before him.

"No, I don't mean that. This Lancelot business—it sounds like armour clattering when the knights ride out, and—you know, all pretentious. Not like you, really. You're just solid and real, no pretence about you. Isn't there another name?"

"No, not in that shape, but Jim. Jim! All homey and snuggly and comfortable-sounding. Doesn't anybody else call you that?"

"Well, it's going to be my name for you. Jim. Jim and Jade—hear how nicely they fit together!"

"If he'd been going to die, he'd have done it when you named him Owl. I think it's a terrible nickname. Lance—I mean Jim—daddy asked me if you could come and live here when we marry. He wants the Grange carried on—doesn't want the estate broken up."

"And a house like this—it would be a sin to disperse that wonderful furniture in it." French gazed down at the roofs of the Grange before them. "Well, perhaps," he added meditatively. "Two or three days a week at Estwick—I could fly over, and that land in front of the house—the marsh land beyond the beeches—it makes an admirable landing ground as near the front door as you'd get anywhere."

"At first. But when you've got little bits of jade tinkling among the old furniture there—"

"Keep it up, dear. You'll get it right in time. Look at me, Jade. I thought so. Lovelier than ever, when you blush like that."

Abruptly he stood up and took off his cap. Jadis, wondering, got to her feet and gazed at him questioningly.

"I had forgotten," he said, and his voice was almost as if he prayed. "Two men who died to-day. I trusted one of them, once. But not that—not anything personal at all. They killed, but they have paid the penalty. Their ideals were different from ours, their aim was not as ours. For none of us in this country aim at bringing up sons to send them to war—I want you to give me children, Jade, and want us two to lead them in ways of peace—that they may know peace all their days as we know it here on this hill. Yet those two in their fashion died for their country, and if mine should ever call me, I hope I shall be as loyal to her as those two were to theirs. To put it above all, to give all for it, even life, if that be asked of me."

"Two men," Jadis said very softly. "Two loyal men, in their fashion. My dear, I know, and I am with you—all the way."

THE END

E. CHARLES VIVIAN

WHO KILLED GATTON?

TO F.S. RAINER FRIENDSHIP, THROUGH MANY YEARS, HAS NOT FAILED.

First published by Ward, Lock & Co., London, 1936 This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2024 Version Date: 2024-12-02 Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan All content added by RGL is proprietary and protected by copyright. Click here for more books by this author

AUTHOR'S NOTE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter I The Supe's Day Off Begins

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Chapter II Wreckage of the Day Off

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Chapter III Sheba Bell

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Chapter IV Y42. STR. E3

Chapter V Thomas Cosway, Cycle Agent

Chapter VI Enter an Alien

Chapter VII A Free Country

Chapter VIII Adjourned, Sine Die

Chapter IX Perjurers Both

Chapter X What Head Wanted

Chapter XI Jadis

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Chapter XII The Estwick Problem

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Chapter XIII At Estwick

Chapter XIV —And John Zalescz

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Chapter XV At Fault

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Chapter XVI Fourteen Westingborough Citizens

Chapter XVII Fourteen Photographs

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Chapter XVIII Quade

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Chapter XIX Sinister

Chapter XX Back to Estwick

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Chapter XXI Back to Westingborough

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Chapter XXII Nine Weeks Later