For Murder Will Speak

Roy Glashan's Library
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J.J. CONNINGTON
(ALFRED WALTER STEWART)

FOR MURDER WILL SPEAK
(US TITLE: MURDER WILL SPEAK)

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Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software

A CLINTON DRIFFIELD MYSTERY

First UK edition:
Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1938

First US edition:
Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1938, as "Murder Will Speak"

This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2025
Version Date: 2025-11-04

Produced by Matthias Kaether and Roy Glashan

All content added by RGL is proprietary and protected by copyright.

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"For Murder Will Speak" is a classic Golden Age detective novel featuring Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield, who investigates the death of Hyson, a manipulative and self-serving man who seizes control of his office after his employer falls ill. His demise raises the question: Was it suicide or murder? The investigation is complicated by the recent suicide of Mrs. Telford and a rash of poison-pen letters circulating in the community, suggesting a deeper conspiracy.

Chapter 1. The Mice Will Play
Chapter 2. The Very Spice Of Life
Chapter 3. Worse Than The Sword
Chapter 4. Instruments Of Fate
Chapter 5. Affection's Sentinel
Chapter 6. Duncannon Of The I.B.
Chapter 7. Life's Unfinished Road
Chapter 8. The I.B. Again
Chapter 9. Gas
Chapter 10. A False Alarm
Chapter 11. Grandfather's Clock?
Chapter 12. The Defalcations
Chapter 13. The Arctic Fox
Chapter 14. Inspector Craythorn's Suspicions
Chapter 15. The Short-Wave Fan
Chapter 16. A Revised Version
Chapter 17. Laid By The Heels
Chapter 18. The Key Of The Fields
Chapter 19. With Most Miraculous Organ

Chapter One
THE MICE WILL PLAY

SITTING at his absent employer's desk, the chief clerk brought the telephone nearer to hand and dialled a number.

"Mr. Hyson speaking," he explained. "Can I speak to the nurse for a moment, please? What's her name? Spencer? Thanks."

"Mr. Hyson? This is Nurse Spencer speaking. I suppose you want to know how Mr. Lockhurst's going on?"

"He's doing very well," Nurse Spencer assured him. "There's been no recurrence of pain since the first attack, not so much as a twinge. He can breathe quite easily. Did Dr. Willoughby tell you about the electrocardiogram? It's quite satisfactory."

"Well..." Nurse Spencer's tone was cautious. "You can't predict definitely, in cases of this sort. But so far as one can see, there aren't any grounds for expecting further trouble at the moment. He seems to have stood the shock very well. His pulse is all right and his blood-pressure isn't much off normal."

"Oh, well, he can read if he wants to; and perhaps they'll let him smoke in moderation after a day or two if he goes on well. He's a very good patient: does exactly as he's told and doesn't get fretful."

"Before I forget," interrupted Hyson, "what's the trouble called? Clients have rung up to ask for him. As well to have the scientific name to give them. I said 'heart trouble' to one man, and he wanted to know 'What kind of heart trouble?' I didn't know one had assorted kinds of heart attacks."

"You can call it coronary thrombosis," said the nurse, taking pains to speak distinctly. "Shall I spell it for you?"

"Cor-on-ar-y throm-bos-is," repeated Hyson syllabically. "No, don't trouble to spell it, Nurse. Got it right, I think."

He made a jotting of the name on a piece of paper before him and then continued:

"His coronary artery has got blocked, somehow, and that reduces the supply of oxygen to the heart muscle."

"Complete rest, to give the blood stream a chance of finding fresh channels to the heart."

"Complete rest for how long?" demanded Hyson, with a certain eagerness in his tone.

"Twelve weeks, probably, to be on the safe side," Nurse Spencer exclaimed. "Twelve weeks in bed, I mean. After that, he'll probably be allowed to get up and sit about. But he won't be fit for much, after lying up for three months. He'll have to go very cautiously once he gets out of bed again. Especially in the matter of going up and down stairs. That tries the heart more than you'd suppose."

Hyson reflected that the office was on the second floor and that there was no lift in the building. For some reason, the idea seemed to give him satisfaction.

"Three months, then, or perhaps four?" he commented. "Well, we shall carry on here. Any chance of seeing him, if I came up to the house?"

"You'd better ask Dr. Willoughby. But it would need to be only a friendly call, Mr. Hyson. He mustn't be worried by business affairs just now. You understand that, don't you? Rest and quiet, physically and mentally, are what he must have at present, if he's to get well quickly and have no set-backs."

He leaned back in his chair and reflected upon what he had heard. Three months in bed, then another month, say, to pull himself together and after that it might be a week or two anyway before he could face those long flights of stairs up to the office. That meant a free hand for the best part of five months. Well, it had just come in the nick of time, Hyson mused. A nervous man might have shivered at the thought of peril escaped, but Hyson was of tougher fibre. Pity for his employer never crossed his mind.

"A damned good thing he didn't peter out in that attack, though," he reflected. "That would have meant auditors rushing in...."

As things stood, he felt himself on velvet. The old bird couldn't discuss business at present. He'd leave everything to Hyson and Hyson resolved to see that business was postponed as long as possible. Old Lockhurst was a nervous beggar. He'd follow doctor's orders to the letter. If he showed any inquisitiveness at all—which was unlikely—a hint dropped to Willoughby would make sure of keeping him quiet. Four months sure, five possibly. Time to turn round in, at any rate.

Well, the first thing to do was to put that fellow Forbury in his place. Hyson had no definite instructions from his employer, but that did not trouble him. One assumed these things; and if anyone ventured to ask an awkward question, one simply stared at him in stony silence for half a minute and then gave him an order. Forbury was getting on in years; he had a wife and three kids depending on him. He'd never dare to make any real trouble. Still, he had to be dealt with, and the sooner the better, before he had time to think.

Three white studs were let into the surface of the desk, each flanked by its ivorine label. Lockhurst had a mania for system in minor office affairs, Hyson reflected. Apparently he mistook it for efficiency; and yet when Hyson had pressed him to install that Moon-Hopkins machine he had hemmed and hawed and put off a decision. Worse still, he had asked Forbury's opinion about it. And of course Forbury had scented trouble; for if Olive Lyndoch took over the bookkeeping machine, Forbury would cease to be necessary. He had seen the sack in the offing and had opposed the scheme, tooth and nail; and despite all the talk about system and efficiency, old Lockhurst had dropped the notion. Olive had lost the chance of a rise in her screw, and that hadn't made her love Forbury any better.

He examined the three little ivorine plates. HYSON. Well, Hyson was at the other end of the wire now, so that button would be out of use for a while. FORBURY. Forbury would have to jump as usual when his bell rang, a bit quicker than before, perhaps. TYPISTS. One short ring for Olive Lyndoch; two short rings for Effie Hinkley; and three short rings for this new girl—what was her name?—Kitty... Kitty Nevern, that was it. A pretty little piece, with neat hips and nice hands. No engagement ring. Might be worth asking her out to dinner shortly. She'd be glad enough to come, by the look of her. Not like Effie Hinkley. "Yes, Mr. Hyson, I like dinners, but I don't care for dessert. Eve lost an estate by her taste in fruit, they say." A cool little brat, Effie. She'd wait for a while before she got another invitation, he could promise her. And, finally, one long ring for the office-boy. That was the really sound bit in old Lockhurst's bell-system. That long ring always made young Cadbury jump; it sounded bad-tempered.

Forbury seemed in no haste to answer the summons. A full three minutes and more passed before he had made his appearance. Hyson looked him over critically, taking in one by one the familiar points: the shabby office coat frayed at one sleeve, the old-fashioned collar which should have been replaced yesterday, the lined face with its loose mouth. The fellow didn't even know what to do with his hands when they were empty, he noted contemptuously. Efficiency! No wonder he opposed the introduction of labour-saving devices. Hadn't the brains to understand them, apart from everything else. All he was fit for was to jog along between well-known rails, like the extinct tramway horse. A uxorious fellow, too. Always spoke about "the wife" as if he possessed a unique specimen. Hyson had a wife of his own, but she was not the only woman in whom he was interested. He despised Forbury as he would have despised a man who dined invariably on chops.

On his side, Forbury was examining his superior covertly. He distrusted Hyson, and he had his private grievance against him. When the old head clerk had died, a few years back, Forbury had looked on the succession as a certainty. He and "the wife" had made all sorts of happy little plans based on the coming rise in salary. They had spent evening after evening building castles in the air. "And we'll be able to afford so-and-so," they had pointed out to each other, as fresh possibilities occurred to their simple minds. And then the blow had fallen. Old Lockhurst had a cousin who knew a man who knew young Hyson. Influence had carried the day, and Forbury had been passed over, with a ten-pound rise to sugar the pill. All the pretty visions vanished. It was "the wife's" disappointment that hurt Forbury most. He could still remember her face when he had gone home to blurt out the bad news.

And so this young brute—for thirty-seven seemed young to Forbury—this young brute had stepped over his head, right into the chief clerkship. A superior young sweep, he was, with his abrupt talk and his contemptuous airs, as if one wasn't good enough to work alongside of him in the same office. And, another bitter pill, he didn't need the money. He had a private income, Forbury had learned. Just an amateur, as one might say, taking the bread from the mouths of people who needed it. He lived in a nice big villa out in the best suburb, with a man coming once a week to look after the garden; while Forbury, who had a passion for flowers, had to make shift with a patch of ground ten yards by twenty, where nothing would grow.

The old chief clerk had been an approachable kind of man, drawn from the same social stratum as Forbury himself. But no one could get on good terms with this Hyson, with his freezing comments and his superior clothes. Time and again he'd passed Forbury in the street without so much as a look in his direction. Not good enough for him, outside the office, apparently. But he could be polite enough to the typists, Forbury had observed. He'd never noticed anything that one could take hold of between Hyson and Olive Lyndoch; but in the recesses of his respectable little soul he had a faint discomfort when he thought about those two. There was something, he felt, that "wasn't quite nice" in their relations, though he shrank from putting a name to it on the evidence he had.

"Ah, Forbury," Hyson said, as if he had at last realised that Forbury had appeared in the room. "Mr. Lockhurst won't be back at work for some months. I'm carrying on in his place. You'll keep to your own work. Miss Lyndoch and I between us will take over Mr. Lockhurst's share. I'll interview clients, when it's necessary."

Forbury, eager to see offence, read into this that clients would hardly care for his appearance and accent.

"I could take over the private ledger, if that would be any help," Forbury suggested.

But here he blundered in tact. The private ledger, by office tradition, was in the charge of the chief clerk alone. No one else had even access to it. There was no reason in the matter; it was purely a matter of office etiquette: but Hyson had no intention of allowing one of the symbols of his seniority to slip from his hands, even temporarily.

"No," he said, icily, "I won't trouble you to do that. You'll just go on as you've been doing. Is that clear? Very good."

Forbury heard the dismissal tone in the last phrase, but he braced himself to ignore it.

"How is Mr. Lockhurst keeping?" he asked, to show that he could stay there if he chose.

"What's that?" inquired Forbury, striving to assert himself by prolonging the interview.

"Artery in the heart's blocked. Ask a doctor if you want more," Hyson replied, picking up a document from the desk and becoming engrossed in it so as to give Forbury no further chance of delaying his exit. Then as an idea crossed his mind he added, "No use your calling at the house. He isn't allowed to talk business."

"Meaning that he wouldn't want to see me socially," Forbury interpreted to himself, as he turned to the door. "Well, likely he wouldn't. But sick-visiting's different."

Hyson put his finger on the TYPISTS button and pressed it thrice. It was getting near post-time and he had the day's letters to check. Kitty Nevern did not keep him waiting as long as Forbury had done. In a few seconds she came in, light-footed, with a sheaf of documents in her hand, which she laid on the desk before Hyson. She was a girl who smiled easily, and as she put the papers down she favoured him with a smile which brought out her dimples.

"I'm taking over Mr. Lockhurst's work while he's ill," Hyson explained with an answering smile and an appraising glance at the girl's figure.

He picked up the letters in turn, glanced through them, and signed "Allan Lockhurst, per pro. Oswald Hyson" to each before putting it aside. As he did so, it occurred to him that it might be as well to get a power of attorney from Lockhurst, if it could be managed. Not necessary for routine business, of course. Have to fake up some excuse about being able to act in emergency. It might be a handy thing to have. Best look up the point, before broaching it to the old man.

He signed two or three more letters, then something in the next one caught his eye and he glanced up sharply at the typist.

"What's this? When I dictated this letter about these American common shares, I couldn't remember the exact number of shares we held. How did you manage to fill in the figures?"

"I asked Miss Lyndoch, Mr. Hyson. She gave me the number of those that are to be sent up to London for marking."

His finger sought the TYPISTS button on the desk and pressed it once. This was the sort of thing he had no intention of passing over.

Olive Lyndoch was a tall handsome girl of twenty-five, with features tending to the aquiline type. Kitty Nevern was younger and prettier, but the elder girl's face had more character in it and she had a feline gracefulness of movement which Kitty lacked.

"Miss Nevern tells me you gave her the number of our holding in these American common shares. Where did you get it?"

"In the private ledger. You left it lying on the desk there when you went out, and I thought it would save time if I gave Miss Nevern the figure instead of waiting till you came back."

"You're not supposed to have access to the private ledger. You know that. I'm the only person to deal with it," he said sharply. "As a matter of fact, you've given Miss Nevern the wrong figure. These shares were bought in two lots, and you've given her the figure for one block only. Don't do that kind of thing again, please. You'll have to retype that letter, Miss Nevern."

He gave a nod of dismissal to Olive Lyndoch. For a moment she seemed inclined to argue the point further. Then, evidently recognising that she was definitely in the wrong, she made a non-committal gesture and left the room. Hyson caught her expression as she turned to go.

"She didn't like that," he reflected. "Be a lesson to her. She needn't think she can do as she likes with me. I'll make it square with her this evening. But she won't get away with it."

He turned back to Kitty; and, seeing her looking uncomfortable at her position, he reassured her with a smile which showed a gleam of white teeth.

"Might have been a bad slip, that," he explained. "Come to me always in cases of that kind, Miss Nevern. No harm done this time, but you see what might happen. I'm not blaming you in the matter."

He read and signed the remaining letters without comment. Then, as he handed them back to her, a thought seemed to strike him.

"By the way, Miss Nevern, I'd better make a note of your address. One never knows when one may need it."

Kitty shrugged her shoulders, a movement she had copied from her favourite star.

"Oh, go to the pictures sometimes, or go for a walk if the weather isn't too bad, or fill in the time somehow."

She had sized up Hyson from the way he looked at her and she expected an immediate invitation from him. But here she was disappointed. Hyson had sized her up in his turn and decided that she would be more eager if he did not move at once.

"Must be a bit dull for you," he replied briefly, as though he had lost interest in her. "Well, retype that letter, please, and let me have it to sign before post-time."

He dismissed her with an impatient gesture and turned back to the documents on the desk; but he followed her with a sidelong glance as she moved towards the door. Might be amusing, he reflected. A complete change from Olive, at any rate. No brains, and a different brand of looks. Olive had been just what he wanted while the first flush of enthusiasm lasted; but Hyson was a man who needed variety, and he had only a limited number of tricks in his love-making. He was coming to the end of them with Olive Lyndoch, and he foresaw the probability of the tedium of monotony creeping into their relations before very long. Besides, she had taken to speculating in a small way and insisted on getting his advice about her deals. A visit to her flat nowadays was like working an hour's overtime at the office. One couldn't get free from share prices. No, it was quite time that he found a substitute for Olive, and perhaps Kitty would serve his turn till he could look round for something better.

His musings were interrupted by a knock at the door and the entrance of the office-boy. Cadbury was an undersized youth with a complexion partly concealed by freckles and pimples, for he was at the pimply age. His fingers were invariably ink-stained, for he used a cheap fountain pen which leaked; and his tie always had a inclination to the N.N.E. He avoided Hyson's eye by looking at the desk and announced in a high voice:

Hyson lifted his eyes and examined Cadbury despitefully. Curious, that while the three typists always looked spick-and-span to the last hair, Forbury and the office-boy were a disgrace to the place by their untidiness. To a man so particular about his own appearance as Hyson, they were eyesores.

In a few seconds Cadbury ushered the client into the room. Miss Ruth Jessop was a plump little woman of about thirty-six, who had just missed prettiness by a very little. That slight deficiency, and one or two other characteristics, had so far prevented her from securing a husband, though she had tried hard. But her lack of success had not turned her into a misanthropist. She did her best to be pleasant to every man she met, with a certain effusiveness which would have better suited a girl in her teens than a woman in the thirties.

"Oh, good afternoon, Mr. Hyson," she began, as Hyson drew forward a chair for her, "I'm so sorry to hear about poor Mr. Lockhurst, so very sorry. He seemed so healthy, didn't he, Mr. Hyson? It was quite a shock when they told me outside that he couldn't come to business, Mr. Hyson. It's some trouble with his heart, isn't it, Mr. Hyson?"

He despised Miss Jessop wholeheartedly; her "young" airs and her gushingness irritated him as a connoisseur. How was it that some females were so completely lacking in that indefinable quality "charm"?

"Coronary thrombosis," repeated Miss Jessop slowly, evidently memorising the word for future use. "It sounds dreadful, doesn't it, Mr. Hyson?"—she gave an irritating giggle—"I'm afraid it makes me no wiser, really. Is it dangerous, Mr. Hyson? I mean, there's no chance of his dying from it, is there? Surely not, Mr. Hyson?"

"Oh, well, I do hope he'll soon be well again, and able to come back to the office again, Mr. Hyson. It's such a nice office, isn't it?" she said, glancing round as she spoke, with a certain inquisitiveness. "That looks a very comfortable big settee over there, Mr. Hyson. I don't remember seeing a settee like that in other businessmen's offices."

Hyson kept an unmoved face, but inwardly he cursed his visitor. Easy enough to see what the damned gossip-monger was hinting at. She'd bring out the old joke about "pressing business at the office," if she dared. And most likely she'd go round her friends now, saying how strange it was to have a settee in a private room like this. Dear little innocent, of course, merely struck by a passing thought. That was her way. But she was getting a bit too near the truth over that settee. Luckily he had his explanation ready, and it was correct, so far as it went, though it might not be the whole story.

"Mr. Lockhurst got it, six months ago," he explained coolly. "He used to feel very tired, towards the end of the day's work, and he lay down on it to rest. Probably his heart trouble was coming on, though he didn't realise it. That would make him easily tired, I suppose."

But apparently her mind was still following the same line, as her next remark betrayed.

"Are they?" said Hyson. "We're more concerned with their efficiency." He glanced rather ostentatiously at his watch. "You've come about some business, haven't you?"

"Oh, yes, of course," Miss Jessop admitted. "It's about those bearer bonds of mine that Mr. Lockhurst keeps for me, Mr. Hyson, in your safe. It's the time when I come to cut off the coupons for the dividends, now, you see?"

Hyson rose and went to the safe to obtain the bonds. Just like that woman, giving unnecessary trouble. Why couldn't she keep her bonds at her bank and let the bankers credit her account with the dividends when they fell due? Then it occurred to him that this would deprive Miss Jessop of a chance of talking to a man. She preferred to come here, making eyes and chattering about settees.

"These are your bonds, I think," he said, returning to the desk. "Better check them. And here's a pair of scissors," he added, taking them from the drawer.

Ruth Jessop seemed a shade chilled by this businesslike way of doing things. She picked up the bonds; fumbled with them for a moment as though seeking a fresh subject of conversation; then, finding no encouragement from Hyson, she reluctantly picked up the scissors and began to clip off the coupons.

"And how is Mrs. Hyson?" she demanded when she had finished her clipping. "Quite well, I hope? I haven't seen her for a few days."

"Quite well, thanks," Hyson replied. "You might check your coupons and make sure you have them all, please."

"Oh, yes, of course I should do that, Mr. Hyson. So good of you to remind me. Let me see: one, two, three... Yes, I've got them all, Mr. Hyson. And how is your sister-in-law? She's such a nice girl, isn't she? It's such a pity, I always feel, that she lives in that out-of-the-way suburb, Mr. Hyson. I see so little of her. It's really too far, except once in a while. Of course, if one had a car it would be easier, but when one has to go about in buses, it's really very tiring, Mr. Hyson."

Ruth Jessop gathered up her coupons reluctantly and began to stow them away in her bag.

"By the way, Mr. Hyson," she went on, evidently anxious to prolong the interview, "what's the name of that tall, dark-haired girl in the office outside? The one with the rather hooky nose, I mean. I've some faint recollection of having seen her somewhere or other. You know how one remembers people sometimes, even when one's only had a glimpse of them once, Mr. Hyson. I must have come across her sometime, and it always worries me when I can't remember things like that, you know. I often lie awake at nights puzzling and puzzling my head to remember."

"Miss Lyndoch, I expect. You must have seen her when you came to the office at other times. She's been here for a year or two."

Hyson knew perfectly well what Ruth Jessop was driving at. She wanted to pick up some scrap of information which she could retail in their circle. "Such a pretty girl, the typist in my broker's office. One really wonders what the men are thinking about. It's as well that Mr. Hyson is so devoted to his wife, for, really, that girl is almost too good-looking to be in an office. Her name's Lyndoch, by the way. Now I wonder if she can be any relation to that stout old woman who keeps the confectionery shop in Windmill Street. The name's the same." And, of course, the whole seasoned by little animated nods and meaning glances and silly gestures of the hands to emphasise the chief points.

Miss Jessop closed her bag and Hyson let out an inaudible sigh of relief. She would have to go now, surely. But at that moment Kitty Nevern came in with the retyped letter for him to sign. Miss Jessop waited till the girl had gone, and then started off again like a rewound alarm clock.

"What a pretty girl! Really, you seem to have a perfect harem of beauties, Mr. Hyson, a perfect harem," she declared with an arch nod to emphasise her opinion. "What is her name?"

"Nevern? A curious name. I don't think I ever heard it before. It doesn't sound like one of our local names, does it? Where does she live, do you know, Mr. Hyson?"

"Don't know, I'm sorry," Hyson lied blandly. "Outside office hours I've nothing to do with our typists. But if she's taken your fancy, I'll introduce you to her as you go out."

"Oh, no, no, Mr. Hyson. Don't be silly, Mr. Hyson," she protested with a giggle. "She's rather a common little thing, isn't she?"

"Not knowing her outside of office hours, I can't really say," Hyson answered with a slight frown. "Now, is there anything else I can do for you at the moment? We're rather pressed with business, you see, owing to Mr. Lockhurst's breakdown."

He made a gesture towards the papers on his desk, and to his relief she found the hint too plain to disregard.

"Oh, no, there's nothing more to-day," she admitted. "I really must go, now. Please tell Mr. Lockhurst that I was asking for him, and say I hope that he'll soon be well again, Mr. Hyson. It's such a pity that he's had this trouble, isn't it? You won't forget? Thanks so much."

She picked up her bag and gave a peculiar wriggle which ostensibly was meant to settle her clothes, but which she imagined was attractive to men.

"I suppose you'll be kept working late to-night, Mr. Hyson? And will these poor girls be kept here too? No? But what if you want something typed?"

He showed her out through the typists' room. Olive Lyndoch was apparently finishing up some work at her desk. Effie Hinkley was putting the cover on her typewriter. At the coat-rack, Kitty Nevern was carrying on a conversation with Cadbury about film stars.

Hyson returned to the private office, leaving the door ajar behind him. He heard Effie say good-night and leave the office. Then Kitty and Cadbury departed, arguing volubly as they went.

Chapter Two
THE VERY SPICE OF LIFE

A FEW seconds after the rest of the staff had gone, Olive Lyndoch came into the private office, dressed for the street.

"Very well. You go out first," Hyson suggested. "I'll pick you up in Arthur Street."

She agreed with a nod and left the room without adding another word. Hyson looked at the door through which she had vanished, with an unpleasant smile on his lips. He waited for five minutes, then switched off the lights, closed the outer door of the office and went downstairs. His car was garaged a few yards up the street and he got it out. He turned into Arthur Street and drove slowly, keeping a sharp look-out for Olive. Apparently she had walked more smartly than she usually did, for it was some distance beyond the customary spot that he came level with her. He pulled up the car and she slipped into the seat beside him.

Often, when she took her seat, she snuggled up to him for a moment once the car had started; but to-night she sat well over to her own side, almost obviously avoiding any contact. As if quite unconscious of her coldness, he let his free hand stray over till it rested on her knee. She shook it off with an impatient movement and drew if possible a little farther away from him. He withdrew his hand and his brows tightened in a frown; but he said nothing until he had driven some distance farther. When he did speak, it was only to utter a non-committal monosyllable.

"Well?" she answered, but on her lips the word expressed a good deal more than his had done.

Hyson had thought out his line of defence long before, but he preferred to disclose it gradually.

Olive hesitated between two courses for a moment. Should she go on sulking for a little while yet, or should she have it out with him at once and be done with it? She decided on the second alternative.

"You know quite well what it is, Ossie. You needn't pretend you don't. Why did you speak to me like that before Kitty Nevern? I won't be treated like that, understand? A bit steep, hauling me over the coals in front of a young chit that's just come into the office. I won't have it!"

"You know quite well that you're not supposed to have access to the private ledger."

"Well, you could have spoken to me about that when we were alone. There was no need to rate me, the way you did, with that little fool standing by to hear it."

"I see what you mean," he admitted frankly. "But, look here, Olive, I had to do it. Forbury was with me just before that, and he wanted to take over the private ledger. I put him in his place over that, quick enough, and no kindness wasted in the telling. Now suppose he heard that you'd been going through that ledger. He'd be bound to hear of it, in our office. Well, you can guess what would happen. He doesn't love either of us. He'd begin to put two and two together. 'Miss Lyndoch, of course, has special privileges. H'm! H'm! That's funny, isn't it?' We can't afford any ideas of that sort. I might as well bring the car round and pick you up on the office door-step at night. So, naturally, I had to make sure of stifling the business at the very start. That bit of play-acting in front of the Nevern was the safest move. See that? It meant nothing. Camouflage."

There was sufficient truth in his explanation for it to carry weight with Olive. She had not known about Forbury's offer and it threw a slightly different light on the episode. And it was perfectly true that their relations in the office must be made to appear normal. A hint of the real state of affairs would make things awkward if it got about; for these things can't be kept within four walls when people begin to talk.

"I see," she admitted, but rather grudgingly. "If that was what you were after, perhaps it was the best you could do. Still, you might have been a shade politer. I saw that little beast Nevern grinning when she came out of your office afterwards. I suppose she took it as a good joke, seeing me told off before her."

Hyson's hand crept over to her knee again and this time she did not shrink from it.

"It was the best I could think of, on the spur of the moment," he declared. "I hadn't time to do better. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, Olive. I thought you'd see the point. Of course I forgot you didn't know about Forbury's move. Stupid of me. You're all right now?"

"Oh, yes, all right," Olive said, though there was still a faint reluctance to abandon her grievance. "Only, don't do things like that again, Ossie. They're not... Well, we'll let it go at that."

She moved an inch or two nearer to him, and he could feel her knee quiver under the pressure of his hand. He knew how to handle her, he reflected with satisfaction. After all, she was keener on him now than he was on her, and that always gave a man a pull over a girl.

Very soon they reached the street in which Olive Lyndoch lived, a short, dingy, grey cul-de-sac lined with tall flats which had seen better days. The girl stepped out on the pavement and waited while Hyson locked his car. When he rejoined her, they had fifty yards still to go, for Hyson always took the precaution of drawing up his motor at some distance from the entrance to her flat. The chance of anyone noting his empty car was hardly worth considering, since most of his friends lived on the other side of the town; but he preferred to be on the safe side.

When they reached Olive's flat on the second floor, she made as if to open her bag, but Hyson took a key from his pocket and saved her the trouble of hunting for her own. He stood aside to let her enter the little hall. Then, with the door shut behind them, he put his arm round her waist and kissed her on the cheek. She suffered the caress rather passively, then, slipping out of his embrace, she walked into the sitting-room.

It was small, but comfortably furnished: a couple of deep arm-chairs by the hearth, a settee rather like the one in the office, a tiny dining-table with a cold meal set out ready and two chairs drawn up. The colour scheme of the room proved that Olive Lyndoch's taste in decoration was as sound as her taste in dress.

"Just wait a moment, Ossie, while I take some things off," she directed, as she passed into the adjoining room.

Hyson sat down in one of the arm-chairs, pulled out his cigarette case, then, thinking it hardly worth while to smoke since he knew Olive was quick in everything she did, replaced the case in his pocket. In a few minutes, she returned, and Hyson noted with a slight relief that she had changed into a silk thing which might have passed as either a boudoir gown or a dressing-gown. Knowing her moods, he inferred that this meant that she had got over her ill-temper. If she had intended to rake up her grievance, she would have sat down in her out-door dress. Since she was meeting him half-way, he looked up with a smile as she came in. She seemed to have forgotten their altercation on the way, for she made a gesture to show off her costume before she sat down at the table.

"Very pretty," Hyson said, letting his eye run over the supple figure which the clinging silk revealed. "You always manage to get things just right, somehow. Goes with your eyes, doesn't it?"

"It wasn't cheap," Olive confessed, "but when I saw it, I just had to take it."

"This the first time you're wearing it? Must put a threepenny bit into the pocket as a surprise for you. A handsel, they call that in Scotland."

"Well, come along and sit down. It's a ghastly hour for a meal, but you always have to leave so early in the evening."

Hyson seated himself opposite her, and as he did so, a faint touch of boredom came upon him. Variety was the very spice of life to him in his relations with women. A fresh conquest meant a whole new series of episodes and sensations. And here he was, sitting down to look at a girl across the same table, once a week, week after week. He might as well be married to her and be done with it, he reflected sourly. Was it really worth it? Still, he didn't propose to break with her just yet.

"By the way, Ossie," Olive began after a few minutes silence, "what about these International Nickels you advised me to buy a while ago? They don't seem to be doing much. Should I sell out and try something else?"

"Plenty of wild-cats, if you want a gamble. Advise you not, though. Lose your money, as like as not. And I'm not going to offer tips in that line."

Internally he fumed, though he kept a smile on his face. Overtime at the office, really, this advising her about her miserable little specs. As if his own didn't give him enough worry, without taking other people's troubles on his back. And once or twice, when his advice had gone wrong, she hadn't shown an understanding spirit. A girl in a stockbroker's office ought to have sense enough to know that one can't predict with certainty in the matter of market movements.

Olive was quick to see that she was boring him. She dropped that subject at once and turned to a fresh one.

"You're in charge at the office so long as Lockhurst can't get back to business, aren't you, Ossie?"

"Three months, at least. Four, probably, from what the nurse said. He'll not be fit to do any business for three, anyhow."

"Do you think you could manage to put through that reorganisation while he's away? Getting in the Moon-Hopkins machine, I mean, and making me bookkeeper. I've been looking into the system, and I could easily take it up if the chance came my way. It would mean a rise in screw for me, of course, and then you wouldn't need to help me with the rent of this flat. I'd rather not take money from you, you know."

Hyson paused before answering. When Olive had first attracted him, she had been living in a boarding-house. The office, after hours, had served for their meetings; but soon Hyson had felt that it was too risky as a permanent arrangement. She had scrupled about taking money from him; but he had insisted on paying her the difference between the cost of the boarding-house and the expenses of this cheap flat. And he had not been altogether averse to paying. It put her to some extent into his debt, and that was always a point in the game. He could afford it well enough, and he was not sure that he wanted to see her standing entirely on her own feet financially. She might get a bit too independent, in that case.

"A bit difficult to put that through, Olive. At least, as things are. It would mean sacking Forbury—I want to get rid of him anyway."

"Push the table into a corner and bring the settee forward, please, Ossie, while I take these things into the kitchen," she directed. "I want to have a talk with you."

He did as she asked; and when she came back again she joined him on the settee, nestling up to him with a little sigh of content.

"There! That's comfy," she said, turning to kiss him as he put his arm around her. "Now, I've got a surprise for you, Ossie. I've seen your wife."

Hyson's arm relaxed suddenly and he looked at her with a glint of anger in his eyes.

"The devil you have! How did that happen? You haven't been doing anything silly, have you?"

"I'm not a fool, Ossie. You don't suppose I went to your house, rang the bell, and asked to see her, do you? Make your mind easy. I didn't even go pretending to be a charity collector, as I might have done for the fun of the thing. No, no. It's quite all right, so you needn't panic. Last Sunday afternoon, I had nothing to do except go for a walk somewhere, and I'd nowhere in particular to go to fill in the time. It came into my mind that I'd like to see what she's like. No harm in that, so far as I can see. I've heard something about her, enough to make me curious, you know. Why not take a bus over there, stroll down your avenue, and take my chance of getting a glimpse of her? It was a hundred to one against seeing her and I really did it because I'd nothing else to do."

"Yes, she was sitting out on the lawn in a camp-chair. She's got fair hair, hasn't she? And she was wearing grey, wasn't she? I was pretty sure it was she. I'm not jealous of her, Ossie, not a scrap, for I know she's nothing to you nowadays. It was mere curiosity that took me there. She's very pretty."

"Oh, I suppose so," Hyson agreed. "I've gone off that style in looks, though, long ago."

Olive gave him an uneasy glance. That careless confession of inconstancy carried its sting; for if he had grown indifferent to his wife, he might well grow weary of herself in turn and go off in search of fresher attractions. She tried to put that out of her mind; but at odd, uncomfortable moments it cropped up, insistent, terrifying.

In the early days of their association, he had been the one to seek opportunities to meet her alone. Now it was she who had to plan and cajole and persuade in order to get him to herself for even these few hours each week. And the less eager he grew, the more imperious became her need of him. Even this poor simulacrum of married life had become something which she could not afford to lose, and she cast about desperately for the means to make it permanent.

But here she had come up against the limitations of his temperament. As a complete human being, compact of flesh, brain, and emotion, she hardly counted with him. He simply was not interested in her inner nature. She had tried to attach him more firmly by the subtler fibres of thoughts and feelings, and she had failed completely. Externals were all he cared for. And, inevitably, sooner or later, externals grow so familiar that they cease to yield the old thrill. "I've gone off that style in looks, though, long ago." There it was, in a nutshell. And her turn would come next, unless she could force their relations into some fresh groove. Anything rather than be left as a discarded mistress, a failure who hadn't even managed to keep a hold on the man she had chosen.

"I've just been thinking, Ossie," she said, after a pause. "Suppose she found out about us. If you're not fond of her now, she can't be getting much out of marriage. She would take proceedings if she had the evidence, wouldn't she?"

And if she would, Olive reflected, it would be easy enough to put Linda Hyson on the scent. A single letter would do that.

She felt it safer not to speak of a subsequent marriage. Ossie was in an awkward mood this evening and there was nothing to gain by looking too far ahead. She and he had always avoided the subject of his wife, and Olive knew hardly more than Linda Hyson's name until that glimpse in the garden had given her something concrete to think about. But Hyson's answer brought her up suddenly against an undreamed-of obstacle.

"Divorce me, you mean?" he said abruptly. "Wish she would. No chance of it. She's a strict Catholic. Divorce doesn't go, with them. She'd never think of it."

In all her dreams and speculations, Olive had thought of Hyson as like all the other men she knew. He was married, of course; but marriage was not necessarily a permanency. At the back of her mind, from the very beginning, there had been the idea of a divorce as a final clearing-up of the situation. And now, at a single stroke, she saw this solution made impossible in the way she had never anticipated. She had heard of so-called mixed marriages, but it had never occurred to her that Ossie's marriage might be one of that kind.

"They do. She does, anyway, and that's all that matters, so far as I'm concerned."

Olive Lyndoch had a quick mind, and almost instantly a fresh solution presented itself.

"There's nothing against you divorcing her, is there?" she asked. "I mean, if you could prove anything against her, it wouldn't matter about her being a Catholic, would it? You could get your decree?"

"Oh, yes," Hyson admitted. "But you can put that out of your head. She's not that sort."

"How do you know?" she demanded. "If there were anything, you'd be the last to notice it. You've no interest in her now. You're at the office all day. What does she do with herself then? Or when you come here in the evenings? You don't know."

"No, I don't," Hyson replied, rather crossly, as though the idea gave him a shade of discomfort. "But Linda's not that sort."

"I wasn't 'that sort' either, until you persuaded me," Olive retorted with more than a trace of acid in her tone. "Isn't there any man in her circle, or does she meet nobody except women?"

Hyson did not answer for some moments. Apparently he was thinking over her question. Then he shook his head decidedly.

"No, you're on the wrong tack. There's nobody in her crew who'd have the backbone," he commented scornfully. "There is a fellow who comes about the house. Nice little gentleman. What you call a tame cat. But he'd be no use. 'I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more.' And all that sort of thing, Barsett, his name is. But you can leave him out of the betting."

"What you really mean is that it couldn't happen to you," said Olive with a smile which seemed rather awry. "I used to think that myself, before I met you, Ossie. You never can tell."

"Well, you make other people jealous," Olive said incautiously. "It would be only fair if you suffered yourself."

"Who is it now?" he said, teasingly. "That new girl at the office, perhaps? What's her name... Severn... Oh, Nevern, that's it." Then, realising that this was likely to bring up Olive's grievance about the private ledger, he hurriedly continued, "Or Miss Jessop, maybe? You can make your mind easy. She gets on my nerves, that woman, with her continual 'Yes, Mr. Hyson,' 'No, Mr. Hyson.' "

"That woman might be dangerous," she said, soberly. "She's got a perfect itch for gossip. She was in the office lately when Lockhurst was busy and kept her waiting.

She spent the time trying to pick up all the information she could get out of me. It's not because she's interested. I could see that. It's just that she'll pick up any bit of news the way a jackdaw picks up anything bright. You be careful of her, Ossie."

Hardly were the words out than he cursed himself for his folly. That was the worst of thinking too much about Kitty; her name had slipped out before he knew what he was saying. And Olive was quick to read his mind. She drew herself free from his arm with a lithe movement and turned deliberately to look him fair in the face.

"That's twice you've mentioned her in the last couple of minutes, Ossie. She must be very much on your mind, surely, when you can't keep her off your tongue. Oh, I know you well enough! You think you can get round her, and it's likely enough that you could. But before you begin, just get this clear. You've dropped your wife, and she doesn't seem to mind that. But I'm not like her, understand that; I'm not the kind of girl you can pick up to amuse you and drop again when it suits you. Don't try to put her in my place...."

She stopped suddenly. When she began, she had no intention of saying as much as this; but her jealousy had carried her away and the words had slipped out before she could pull herself up. Now she looked at him, half-frightened, lest she should have done irreparable damage.

Hyson could think quickly also. With a certain roughness, he pulled her back to him.

"Don't be an ass, Olive. You're getting to the state where one can't say a girl's name without you flaring up. It's silly. I'm not bothering about Kitty Nevern. Engaged, for all I know, or care. What's the good of my coming up here at all if you're going to go on this way? I've known more amusing ways of passing an evening. Forget about it. I'm a bit worried, just now. Nerves on edge, rather. Don't know why. But that makes me tease people, without wanting to do it. Working it off on someone else, perhaps. I'm sorry it was you who got it."

Olive was only too eager to accept peace. And, looking at him earnestly, she did see signs of worry. Subconsciously she had noted them much earlier and she now recalled that to mind. Her voice was gentler when she spoke again.

"Don't let's waste time over it," he said, irritably. "It's nothing much. Give me a kiss, that's more to the point."

He drew her to him, and though she still resisted faintly, his attraction was too strong for her. She wanted him more than he wanted her, she recognised reluctantly. Anything to have his arms round her and forget things while she could.

When Hyson let himself out of the flat an hour or so later, his troubles attacked him again, bringing reinforcements to help them. He remembered Olive's face and the flash in her eyes when she had lost her self-control for a moment or two. She hadn't actually threatened him. Amounted to the same thing, though. And he knew her well enough to guess that the unspoken menace had been serious. She was past caring what happened if she once lost him. Dangerous, that, on top of his other troubles. And she had her weapon to hand, worse luck. If she blew the gaff to old Lockhurst, told him she'd been Hyson's mistress, then the old Puritan would boot him out into the street. The sack, with a month's salary. Suppose that happened to-morrow? Phew!

Further musings made the affair no brighter. Marriage was what she wanted. Just when he was growing bored with her, too. Well, thank heaven, that was out of the question, short of Linda going off the rails or dying. But to have a woman with a hold over you might be even worse than marriage in some ways. He wished he'd never set eyes on her! And now, of course, it wouldn't be safe to touch Kitty. Silly little fool, that girl, she'd never be able to keep the thing from Olive's eyes, in the office, if he once started. No, no good. Have to drop the idea. Another notch in the score against Olive. Why couldn't these women realise that a man wanted change? Curse them!

Chapter Three
WORSE THAN THE SWORD

WHEN Linda Errington's engagement to Hyson was announced, her friends were incredulous. Then they shrugged their shoulders and said it amazed one to see the kind of man a nice girl could fall in love with. But love was like that, of course.... When she married, they tolerated Hyson rather than hurt Linda's feelings by showing their real estimate of her husband. And when she herself waked up to a clear vision of the man she had married, she thought all the more of her friends for their behaviour. After all, Ossie probably had some good in him, like everyone else in the world.

Once he grew tired of her, he left her very much to her own devices; and she made no complaint. She merely set about filling the time which he might have occupied had things turned out differently. She had plenty of friends to see; she liked the cinema; she served on the Ladies Committee of a local hospital; she played golf in summer and badminton in winter; and bridge filled in any spare evenings when time might have hung on her hands. In fact, she much preferred to have small bridge parties at her house on the nights when she knew he would be out. Oswald Hyson's card-sense was rudimentary and he spoiled the evening for good players if he was at home and took a hand. Also, oblivious of his deficiencies, he was always ready to argue in defence of his play, which made things unpleasant.

On the night that Hyson visited Olive Lyndoch's flat, Linda had arranged a table: herself, Norris Barsett, Jim and Nancy Telford. They all played to much about the same standard, and none of them wanted to go higher than threepence per hundred. A very pleasant little evening, it had been, for luck had been fairly evenly distributed during the early rubbers. While the cards were being shuffled, Linda rose and went to switch on the electric kettle.

"We'll have to fend for ourselves," she explained. "Thursday is Cissie's night out. We'll go on with the game. These kettles take such a time to boil."

She sat down again at the table and the game proceeded. Half-way through it, the door-bell rang. Linda made a faint grimace as she put down her cards.

"Who can that be? Just excuse me a moment while I go. That's the worst of keeping only one maid."

She left the room. The others heard the front door open, then the sound of voices, and, after a minute or two, Linda ushered Ruth Jessop in.

"I happened to be passing and saw the light here, Linda," she explained effusively, "and I thought I'd just drop in, in case you were all alone, needing company. And then, as I came up the path past the window, I saw you had friends in and I thought of going away. But I just made up my mind I'd come in. I won't break into your bridge unless you ask me to cut in. I'll just sit quiet and watch you play."

Jim Telford glanced at the window. The blind was down, but it hung slightly askew so that Ruth had obviously been able to see through the aperture and note what was going on in the room. He rose to his feet and moved across as though to set it straight, but Linda called him back.

"It's no use trying to make that blind right, Jim," she said. "It always comes down a-slant, like that. I've been meaning to get it rehung for long enough, but I never remember about it at the right moment, somehow. I've got a memory like a sieve for things like that."

She was too good a hostess to show any sign that Ruth's incursion had upset her arrangements; but inwardly she was making rapid calculations. Ruth, poor thing, lived on the tiniest income and half-starved herself, despite her plump appearance. As a result, when she joined any friend at a meal she seemed determined to make up for home deficiencies and displayed an enormous appetite. At afternoon tea, she ate as though she did not expect to see another meal before breakfast-time. Linda's preparations had been based on a very different scale, and she reckoned up the result of Ruth's arrival with some dismay.

"Well, it'll mean cutting more bread and butter," she concluded, ruefully. "These sandwiches and cakes aren't half enough for her, even if the others ate nothing. And I'd like her to get all she wants. If only she wouldn't drop in like this!"

She did not reflect, though she might have done so, that Ruth Jessop "dropped in" more often than not. People, somehow, had fallen out of the habit of asking her to bridge. She would insist on talking while the hand was being played. Linda was sorry for her and would have invited her oftener; but one had to think of the other guests' feelings.

Ruth, with some characteristic fussiness, finally got herself installed in an arm-chair, and the game continued. But she could not restrain herself and she at once began to talk.

"Are you going to Mollie Keston's wedding, Nancy?" she demanded, turning to Mrs. Telford. "They sent me an invitation, and I'd such difficulty in getting a nice present for her. I chose a tiny toast-rack, finally. Just the thing for a bed-tray."

Nancy Telford looked round with a slightly irritable air. She was an old friend of Linda's. They had grown up together. Then Nancy had married Jim Telford and he had taken her off to Scotland, so that the two girls saw each other only when Linda went North or when Nancy came on a visit to her widowed father. This time, it was hardly a pleasure visit. Linda had been taken aback by the change she noticed in Nancy. Something had gone wrong with her health. She looked different, somehow, with a disturbing look in her eyes—a kind of haunted expression, as Linda described it to herself. She had sympathised with Nancy, and evidently Nancy needed sympathy badly. But what the trouble was, Linda had no idea. Nancy volunteered nothing about it. There were some things—like cancer—that one didn't discuss. Linda hoped that it wasn't anything of that sort; and since Nancy maintained her reserve, Linda kept away from the subject. It was something serious, she guessed; for Jim Telford seemed worried also, and he was a man who generally kept his troubles under. Whatever it was, it hadn't made them less fond of each other. Nancy seemed, if anything, keener than ever on Jim. He had come down for a week; after that he'd have to go back home and look after his business, leaving Nancy in the care of Dr. Malwood, a local specialist in whom they seemed to have implicit trust.

Linda, watching them, could find it in her heart to envy them despite their present trouble. They had got all that she and Ossie had missed. An ideal love-affair, a rapturous engagement not too prolonged, and complete happiness in their married life. Very few people had been so lucky in the things that really mattered. They were not rich, but they had all the money that they seemed to want. And they had complete trust in one another, as Linda knew. What a contrast to her own life since she had married Ossie.

"Yes, I'm going," Nancy answered Ruth's question about the wedding, and then turned back to her game.

"Mollie's quite passable-looking now," Ruth commented. "One would hardly have expected it, seeing what a gawky child she was. I don't much care for these tall thin girls, though."

"I think Mollie's very pretty, Ruth," Linda declared. "And you needn't talk as if she were a bean-pole. She's slim, but she's got a nice figure."

"That's a matter of taste, dear," Ruth retorted, evidently nettled by the implied criticism, "so we needn't argue about it, need we? By the way, who's going to be her bridesmaid?"

"Nina Alderbrook? I don't know her. Is she the daughter of Alderbrook the coal man who made a lot of money in the war? Oh, now I know who you mean, of course. Her grandmother used to keep a tiny little grocer's shop after her husband died, I believe. It's wonderful how some people come up in the world, in these days. But of course it's just money."

Ruth's father had been a general practitioner; and she had a habit of looking down on anyone connected with trade, no matter how successful they had been. If they had been less successful, she looked down on them still more.

"The classes are getting very much mixed up, since the war," she went on. "Now, in the old days, the Kestons would never have looked at the Alderbrooks. They were in a different stratum altogether. Their friends were among the country gentry. They still have some of them. I remember the last time I happened to go up to their house, I met a Mr. Wendover. He has a big estate."

"Yes," Linda confirmed. "He's a friend of the Chief Constable of the county, Sir Clinton Driffield. They're both coming to the wedding. Mr. Wendover's an old friend of Mr. Keston's. He used to have Mollie and a lot of other young folks to stay with him at the Grange. She looks on him as a kind of unofficial uncle."

"Who is Sir Clinton Driffield?" demanded Ruth. "Is he a baronet or just a knight?"

"He was abroad before he came here, in South Africa or Malaya or somewhere," Linda explained. "And he must have been pretty good, since they gave him a knighthood quite young, for something he did out there. Mollie thinks the world of him."

"The next three are mine," said Jim Telford, laying down his hand. He glanced at his wife with faint anxiety. "Feeling headachy, dear?"

"Not exactly. But I think tea would do me some good. That kettle's just come to the boil, Linda, if you don't mind my giving you a broad hint."

Ruth Jessop's mouth-corners turned down a little as she saw Barsett going for the tray. She could never get accustomed to Linda's easy naturalness with men. What an idea, letting a male guest bring in a loaded tray from the pantry! She ought to have gone out without saying anything, brought the tray into the room, and then let a man take it from her. Ruth Jessop had very definite ideas about what one ought or ought not to do.

Jim Telford cleared the cards and markers from the bridge-table. Ruth Jessop's eyes ran over the cakes and sandwiches appraisingly. She barely waited for them to be offered to her, but met the extended plate half-way. Linda always had nice things, she reflected, as she took her first bite.

Hyson, to account for his absences in the evening, had devised the convenient fiction that he belonged to a number of societies: Freemasons, Foresters, Oddfellows, political associations, and others. Linda had never troubled to discover whether he really did belong to anything of the kind. She found the story convenient when people like Ruth Jessop grew inquisitive.

"I saw him this afternoon, Linda," Ruth continued. "I had to go to the office to cut off some coupons. I always like to do that for myself, you know. What pretty girls the typists are. I saw them as I went through to the private office. There's one I hadn't seen before, a fair-haired one. Rather a forward little thing, I thought."

"I've never been in the office," Linda said, hoping to stem this flood of information.

"Never been there, Linda? I'm surprised, really. Aren't you interested in the place Mr. Hyson works in? Well, I can tell you the private office is beautifully furnished. There's a big settee in it that four people could sit on. It looks most comfortable. I wish I had one like it in my sitting-room, to lie on."

"I believe you're interested in wireless, Mr. Telford," Norris Barsett broke in after just the right interval of silence.

"I do a little on the short waves," Jim Telford admitted. "I've had a forty-metre licence for a while and lately they've allowed me to transmit on the ten-metre band. It's rather good fun."

"So I'd suppose, from what I hear occasionally on the forty-metre band with my receiver. You pick up a lot of—what does one call them?—correspondents, don't you?"

"A fair number. Sometimes it's rather funny. The other week I got in touch with a fellow in South America. He knew no English, and I know no Spanish, so we compromised on pidgin-French with wild hunts through the dictionary between sentences. I understood him, more or less, and I think he got about fifty per cent of my meaning, so we really did quite well between us."

"No, not yet. The fact is, I prefer to talk to British or American amateurs where one can understand the language. It's too much like work, haranguing foreigners when you don't understand what they mean by half their discourse. I've got a group of people who know the hours I'm on the air, and I can generally get hold of one or two of them when I want someone to talk to. That reminds me, Linda, I know two amateurs here. If we ever need to send you a message in a hurry, I can do it through them. It might be quicker than a wire."

"But not quicker than the phone, Jim," Linda reminded him. "At least, by the time your friend got the message and sent it along here the phone would have you beaten to a frazzle, even allowing for the wait for the trunk line."

"I'm not so sure of that," declared Jim. "This fellow Scarsdale, as it happens, lives just around the corner from here, in Vendale Road, so there wouldn't be much time lost in sending a message round to you. The other fellow's a bit off the track, I admit. He lives a couple of miles from here."

"Well, I'd rather you trusted to telegrams, Jim, if there's any special excitement."

"No use for wireless, evidently," said Jim, in a tone that showed he took the rebuff without offence. "But you don't know how useful it can be, Linda. I'm going to introduce Nancy to Scarsdale and his family. It's not supposed to be done, but he says he'll be glad to let her talk to me over his transmitter any time she wants to, once I go up to Scotland again."

"That will be nice," Linda admitted. "Much nicer than talking on the phone when you're always likely to be cut off because someone else wants the line. There's something to be said for the thing after all, it seems. But you can't ring up just when you want, can you?"

"No," Nancy answered for Jim, "but it's easy enough to fix a time beforehand and then Jim will be waiting for me to speak, you see."

Ruth Jessop paid little attention to this talk. She was busy making a hearty meal, and the sandwiches were disappearing rapidly. Luckily, she noticed, no one else seemed to want much to eat.

"Well, if I were in your shoes, the first thing I'd use the thing for would be to ask Jim to be careful in his boxing-class each time you ring up, or call up, or whatever the right word is," said Linda. "Do you really enjoy knocking these unfortunate newsboys about, Jim? Or, rather, do they enjoy it? I'm all for good works and that sort of thing, but making mites' noses bleed hardly fits in with my ideas of charity, somehow."

"But, dash it, Linda, the little cubs enjoy it. It's good for them. It makes them keen to get fit, you know. They do all sorts of exercises, just to improve their physique and make a better show. You should just see them; they're as keen as mustard. And if that isn't good works, what is? It knocks ideas of fair-play and sportsmanship into them, and it makes them fitter to look after themselves if they get into a scrap. There now, it improves them physically and morally; and after all, they don't get punched on the nose every round, at least not enough to make it bleed. You've got gruesome ideas, that's what's wrong."

"Something in what you say, perhaps, Jim," agreed Linda. "I hadn't looked at it in that way."

"It's better for them than playing pitch-and-toss at street corners or spending the evening over a shove-ha'-penny board," Nancy put in. "Jim's quite right, Linda. I've seen some of his protégés when he took them in hand and I've seen the finished article, and there's no denying the improvement he makes."

Inwardly she was reflecting that if Linda's husband spent his spare time as profitably as Jim, he would be of more use in the world.

"Don't you think there's far too much done for the working-class nowadays, Mr. Barsett?" Ruth Jessop intervened.

All the plates were empty now but for a solitary cake, and she had time for conversation.

"I can't say, really," Norris replied with the air of one weighing the question but unable to come to a conclusion.

"Well, I do, Mr. Barsett. Look at this thing of Mr. Telford's. Why should these ragamuffins get all this instruction for nothing, when people of our class would have to pay for it, Mr. Barsett?"

"They don't get it for nothing," Jim interrupted. "They pay a copper or two—it's as much as they can raise—towards the hire of the hall."

He was evidently put out by Ruth's criticism of his youngsters and though his tone was even, it was clear that he was annoyed.

"Oh, in that case, of course, Mr. Telford, it's all right, quite all right," Ruth hastened to assure him. "Still, I do think that the working-class are pampered nowadays. And we do have to pay for it. People don't value a thing when they get it for nothing, I always think, Mr. Telford."

"I shan't keep you a moment, Linda," she assured her hostess, "if you want to clear away the tray. I suppose you'll want to get back to your bridge, won't you? I mustn't ask to be allowed to cut in. I get so little bridge, nowadays, somehow, that I'm quite out of practice."

After this, it was impossible to avoid suggesting that she should cut in and overbearing her effusive protests.

"I'll take the tray, Linda, if you'll tell me where to put it," Jim Telford volunteered. "In the scullery? I know my way, don't you bother to come."

Again Ruth saw that Linda Hyson would never learn how things "ought" to be done. Fancy letting Jim Telford invade the scullery with a tray! Linda, however, never seemed to understand such matters. She allowed Telford to remove the tray without protest.

"Nothing smashed," he announced with a grin. "I thought it was a goner, though, when I lifted my elbow to switch on the light. By the way, Linda, I see you've still got the gas-cooker. I thought you were talking about putting in an electric one."

"So I did," Linda explained. "But Cissie knows the ways of the old cooker and didn't seem over-keen on learning about an electric one, so I dropped the notion. She'd have been peevish for weeks if I'd gone against her ideas. One has to humor these old family retainers, you know. They're not easy to replace, nowadays. I don't want to lose Cissie."

"I think it's dreadful," Ruth commented, "the way people are going and committing suicide with gas-ovens nowadays. One sees it in the papers almost every day. And motor-cars, too, Mr. Barsett. I'm sure half these accidents in closed garages are really suicides if one could only get the whole truth about them."

"Don't be so gruesome, Ruth," said Nancy, with a touch of irritation. "I hate people talking about death, and graves, and suicides. Think of something more amusing."

"Sit down, Jim," Linda broke in, anxious to smooth things over. "Suppose we cut, now? Oh, yes, of course you're coming in, Ruth. Don't be silly."

The cut excluded Barsett, and he rose to leave his chair free. He glanced round and selected a seat which allowed him a view of Linda's profile, so that he could look at her without attracting attention. At the end of the round, Ruth Jessop had thought of a fresh subject of conversation.

"Isn't it dreadful that they can't find out who's sending these awful anonymous letters?" she demanded. "It's a disgusting thing, Mr. Telford, isn't it?"

"Oh, of course, you won't know about it since you've only been here a day or two, Mr. Telford. It's really dreadful. Somebody has been writing the most awful anonymous letters and posting them to people round about here. You've no idea what dreadful things are in them."

"Do people show them around, then, after they've got them?" asked Jim Telford in a tone of faint surprise. "If I got anything of that sort, I think I'd bum it and say nothing to anyone."

"But that would never do at all, Mr. Telford," Ruth protested. "If everybody did that, how would the authorities ever catch the creature that's doing it, Mr. Telford? I tell all my friends it's their plain duty to help the Post Office people to detect the person who's doing it. You don't know all the harm that's being done by these things. It's... it's dreadful, Mr. Telford."

She stuttered with emotion as she concluded, and Jim Telford wondered why she seemed to be so affected by a thing of that sort. She caught his glance and continued, with an expression of violated modesty on her face.

"It's easy enough to say you'd burn one if you got it, Mr. Telford," she said heatedly. "But if you saw the kind of thing that's in these letters, you'd want the writer caught and put in gaol, I know you would, no matter what you say. They're... they're obscene. I mean it. They're... Well, if you ask me, I think they must be written by a lunatic."

"Yes, I have!" Ruth declared, pursing her lips. "I got the very first one, Mr. Telford. At least, I was the first person to take one to the Post Office people and complain. There may have been other people who got them before that and burned them," she said with an obvious sneer. "They say the most dreadful things, I can assure you. It's not just abuse. They take hold of something and twist it... . Oh, I can't tell you about it. Linda, you had one, hadn't you? Jennie Mason told me you'd said something to her about it."

"Yes, I had one," Linda admitted. "I handed it over to the Post Office. It wasn't pretty. Don't let's talk about it."

"And John Anderton had one," Ruth continued, disregarding the hint. "I believe that was what broke off his engagement, though perhaps that wasn't altogether a bad thing for they didn't really suit each other. And Mollie Keston got one, so I heard. A whole lot of people have had them."

"I had one myself," Norris Barsett confessed. "So had Sam Camplin and a man called Allardyce, I happen to know. There's certainly a perfect epidemic of them, Mr. Telford, and from what I've seen of them I'm inclined to agree with Miss Jessop. The only thing one can do is to give the authorities all the evidence one can, so as to get the writer run down before more damage is done. There's no saying how much harm might come of it if this sort of thing's let alone."

In Linda's circle, by tacit consent, bridge was allowed to end about midnight; and on this evening they finished a rubber a quarter of an hour before twelve o'clock struck.

"Not worth beginning another?" Jim Telford suggested, with a glance at his watch. "We'd better be moving on, Nancy."

Linda made no effort to detain them. She had enjoyed her evening, but she wished that Ruth Jessop had not come in to make a fifth. Still, if it gave the poor thing any pleasure, one shouldn't grudge that.

"Well, it's been quite a nice game," she said, adding with a gesture to the two men, "Have some more whiskey? I don't know what the motor-equivalent of a stirrup-cup is. You won't? Then you might tot up the score, Jim, and let me pay my debts."

They squared their accounts and her guests rose to leave. Nancy Telford, after a moment's hesitation, turned to Ruth.

Ruth had seen two cars on the drive as she came in. In her turn she glanced at Norris Barsett, hoping for an invitation from him. It would be more exciting to go home with a man alone, instead of with the Telfords. Ruth, despite disappointments, had never given up hope of securing a husband. One never can tell, she reflected optimistically. Norris Barsett, however, ignored her glance and she had to accept Nancy's invitation.

"Oh, it's so good of you," she declared, effusively. "It's not taking you out of your way, that's one thing. Thanks so much."

The Telfords showed no inclination to linger, and before Ruth could start a fresh subject of conversation and thus delay her departure, she found Jim helping her into her coat in the hall. And almost immediately she was in the Telfords' car, passing out of the gate.

Linda closed the door and turned back into the room where Norris stood waiting for her. She had wanted him to stay behind, and yet, in a way, she was sorry she had let him do so. Things were very difficult, she reflected. Norris was a dear, but the whole affair was simply a blind alley. There was no solution ahead, according to the rules of her game.

As she re-entered the room, Norris stepped forward eagerly to meet her and, putting his arm around her, he drew her down beside him on the chesterfield. She submitted, but reluctantly as though under protest.

"It's really no good, Norris," she said, rather sadly as he bent over to kiss her. "I shouldn't let you do this kind of thing. If I didn't care for you so much, it would be safe enough; but it's just playing with fire, as things are. It can't come to anything, you know, dear."

He drew her closer and for a few moments she clung to him. Then with an effort she freed herself.

"It makes me rage to think of your being tied to that fellow. Listen, Linda. Can't you divorce him and let us be happy? Why should we be kept like this, snatching kisses on the sly when we might be married? He's making you miserable, although you keep a stiff upper lip. And it's making me miserable to see you treated like that. Can't you change your ideas? You know I'd do everything to make it up to you. Can't you bring yourself to it? For me, if not for yourself."

"I can't," she said with a break in her voice. "I wish I could. I do wish I could, dear. But it's the way I'm made, and I'd be no good to anyone if I broke through that. I know it. You're not able to understand how I feel, Norris. You were brought up in a different atmosphere altogether and you simply can't see what I feel like about it. You look on divorce as a civil-court affair, nothing more. I can't see it that way, and I couldn't see it that way no matter how long I thought over it. You don't suppose I haven't thought hard enough about it from all sides? I'd give anything to see it as you do. But I can't, and that's all there is about it. I'm not happy now, except for what I get from you, dear. But I'd be more unhappy if I did as you want me to do. It would spoil everything between us. I'd lose even the tiny bit of happiness I have now. It would always be between us, keeping us apart. Please, please don't ask it, Norris. You see how even just talking about it spoils things for us. You can't understand, and you feel bitter because I can't see it your way. And before we know where we are, we're on the edge of a quarrel. Oh, I wish things weren't so hard!"

She choked down a sob, then put her chin on her hands and stared blankly before her, a picture of misery. Norris put his arm about her again, despite her faint movement of revolt.

"Very well, darling, we'll say no more about it just now," he agreed, gently. "Kiss and forget about it, shall we?"

"We shouldn't do this," she protested, even as she submitted to his caresses. "It isn't right. But it's no good my saying this must be the last time, for I know I'll give in again as soon as you ask me. I've got to do penance for every kiss you give me, Norris; but I simply can't do without them now and there's no use pretending, even to myself. You're all I've got, on that side of life. But I hate myself for it, afterwards, every time. I know I ought to send you away, and I know I haven't the grit to do it. Oh, what a muddle I've made of things! I should never have let myself care for you at all."

"Oh, yes, we could, dear. It's no good trying to shuffle off the blame onto the Universe. You shouldn't have let yourself fall in love with a married woman. It wasn't love at first sight or anything of that sort. We drifted into it. And I should never have let myself get fond of you. One can stop these things at the start, if one tries. You know that, quite well. It was our own doing, and it would be cowardly now to pretend that it wasn't. I'm not going to lie to myself about that. I try to be honest with myself, even in things like this. We should never have let ourselves get to this stage, where we can't go forward and it's too late to go back."

"Well, I don't see it as you do, dear, but if you won't divorce him or let him divorce you, can't you manage to separate from him? I hate to think of your living side by side with him, day after day. He jars on you at every turn, anyone can see that. Why not go off and take a house of your own?"

"That's no use, Norris. Suppose I did. You'd want to come and see me oftener than ever, and I haven't the backbone to prevent you. People would talk. No one could blame them if they did. And he might divorce me, if he thought it worth his while. What good would that do either of us? I'd lose my friends' respect—at least the respect of the only ones I really care about. They'd be quite kind and sympathetic, but still... I wouldn't be quite the same person to them after that. And I'd always be on the watch for slights. It's the way I'm made. I'd lose that, and I'd get nothing in exchange. Even if Ossie divorced me, I couldn't marry you, thinking as I do about it. We'd be just where we are, divorce or no divorce. It isn't worth while to be disgraced just to end up where you started. Oh, what a fool I've been!"

"Then, I suppose, you'll get free only if he dies?" he said at last, rather harshly. "It's a funny world, Linda. Six or seven thousand people, most of them decent souls, get killed on the roads every year, just snuffed out; and yet he's allowed to go on living, when no one would grieve for him if he were one of them. It beats me," he concluded, as though giving up the secret of the Universe as a bad job.

"Don't talk like that, Norris. I think of it often enough myself, and it's not the sort of thing one should let into one's mind. It's... it's dangerous, to brood over ideas of that kind."

"Well, don't let's waste the few minutes we have," Norris said. "Forget all about it, dear. Let's forget all about everyone but ourselves, just for a little."

"That's all I want," she confessed with a touch of shyness. "You're so good to me, Norris. I wouldn't need anyone else, if I had you all to myself. You mean everything to me, nowadays. It's all I can do to hide that, when I meet you amongst other people. Darling..."

She broke off suddenly at the sound of a car entering the gate. In a moment she had wrenched herself free from his arms, darted across the room, and seated herself in an arm-chair.

"That's Ossie," she whispered. Then, in a natural tone, she began to discuss the last game that had been played that evening.

In a moment or two, they heard steps passing the window, then the fumbling of a latch-key in the door. Norris threw a glance at the window, where the blind still hung askew; but he relaxed again as he recalled that the car had gone direct to the garage at the side of the house. By the time Hyson had passed the window, Linda had been in her new position.

Hyson took off his coat in the hall in a leisurely way and then came into the room. He showed no surprise at Barsett's presence. He had seen him through the window as he came up to the front door. So there was something in what Olive had said, after all, perhaps? Past midnight, and this fellow lolling there on the chesterfield as if he hadn't a home to go to. And all the others gone, probably long ago. There had been others, as the disordered cards on the table showed. Barsett hadn't had the field to himself all evening. No doubt he'd made the best of his opportunity, though, once the Telfords had cleared out. And now the pair of them were sitting there, hot and uncomfortable, no doubt, and trying to look as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. Wondering what he was thinking, probably. Well, if they were feeling hot, he'd roast them a bit, just for amusement.

"Hello, Barsett," he said, dropping into another arm-chair. "Keeping Linda company?"

"We've been playing bridge," Linda explained, with a nod towards the card-table.

"Double dummy?" Hyson said ironically. "I can think of more amusing games for two people."

"The Telfords were here," Linda volunteered. "They've just gone. Ruth Jessop was here, too. They gave her a lift home."

"Ah?" Hyson returned indifferently. "Very pleasant for everyone. Your friend Ruth was at the office this afternoon. Curious how a woman can't be left alone with a man without trying to vamp him. But I held her off. Not quite my style, somehow. You didn't think of offering her a lift home in your car, Barsett? No? Well, I guess you chose the better part."

Norris Barsett glanced at Linda and then rose to his feet. He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.

"It's pretty late," he said, as though he had just realised the time. "I must be getting along."

"Oh, there's no hurry," Hyson declared. "The night's young yet. Linda never goes to bed till all hours, and I'm not sleepy myself. Sit down. It's not often I see you. Linda's the lucky one."

"Have a whiskey and splash before you go," he insisted. "I'll join you. Just get us a couple of fresh glasses, Linda, will you?"

She brought them, and he poured out a couple of whiskey-and-sodas, handing one to his guest.

"Now we're comfortable," he continued, re-seating himself and leaning back in the deep arm-chair.

"How is Mr. Lockhurst?" Linda asked, before he could begin again. "Did you ring up to ask for him?"

"Oh, going on all right. Got coronary thrombosis, it seems. See I'm as sober as a judge, by the way these words slip off my tongue, Barsett. Beat British Constitution as an alcohol test, if you ask me. Old Lockhurst's all right. Just needs care and a pretty nurse to hold his hand if he gets nervous."

"Three months, or so, probably. Where were we, when you interrupted? Oh, yes. Talking about Ruth Jessop, weren't we? Nothing escapes that woman. She was greatly struck by the settee in old Lockhurst's private office. By the way, Barsett, I wouldn't lean too heavily on the arm of that chesterfield. It lets down on a hinge and the catch isn't very good. Linda lies on the thing a lot, so it's had wear. But most likely you know all about it."

"Miss Jessop mentioned the settee to-night," Barsett commented, in an indifferent tone.

"Between bites? Wonderful appetite she has. Does one good to see people so keen on their food. Did she bring any scandal with her? Or was she just hunting for some here?"

"She talked a lot about these anonymous letters that are going about," Barsett explained. "She seemed rather proud of having had one of the first ones herself."

"She didn't show you it, did she? No? I'm not surprised, to judge by one I got myself. Hardly the sort of thing one could paste up on a hoarding. Illustrated, too. And with people's names attached. Didn't tell me anything I didn't know before, though. I can see some things easily enough."

"You haven't forgotten Mollie Keston's wedding?" Linda asked, trying to get the talk on to other lines. "Now that Mr. Lockhurst's away, I suppose you'll be short-handed at the office. But you can get off for that, can't you? We ought to turn up there."

"Oh, yes. Always pleased to see some other man getting tied up. Why don't you look around yourself, Barsett, and find your ideal? A fresh sensation for you."

"No? Well, perhaps this wedding'll bring you up to scratch. It's the atmosphere does it. You begin to think of things. How happy you'd be with a home of your own and a nice girl to sit on a chesterfield with you, after dinner, and tell you how fond she is of you and how you're just the one man in the world, and all that sort of stuff. Just you think it over, Barsett. Plenty of pretty girls about. Linda knows quite a lot of the young ones: Nina Alderbrook, Vi Dagenham, Dorothy Campdale, a whole crew of them. Get her to show you round and put in a kind word for you with them."

Abruptly, Norris Barsett rose to his feet. Every word of Hyson's had carried its barb. One would almost suspect the man had been spying before he came into the house, but that was out of the question. And as he had felt each dart, Barsett had known that Linda must be wincing under it too. He would dearly have liked to come to grips with Hyson and leave his mark on him as the price of his sport; but to do that would be to drag the whole business into the open and make Linda's position impossible. A humiliating affair, having to sit down and restrain oneself while that gross brute used both of them as butts for his verbal shafts. But one just had to bear what one couldn't prevent. All he could do was to go, and thus rob Hyson of his amusement. Linda would understand his position, no doubt; but that did not make it less mortifying.

He succeeded in giving a fair imitation of a guest who is confused to find he has lingered too long and who fears he has overstayed his welcome. Hyson watched him sardonically as he did so, and accompanied him to the door.

"Come again soon," he said heartily as Barsett went down to his car. "Linda will always be delighted to see you."

Chapter Four
INSTRUMENTS OF FATE

"'BLEST be the bride on whom the sun doth shine,'" quoted Wendover with sentimental satisfaction. "If Herrick was anything of a prophet, Mollie should be all right, one would think. But what's become of the girl you were paired off with?"

Sir Clinton glanced up at the deep blue of the sky, across which rare clouds of silver fleece were drifting slowly; then his eyes came down to the lawns dotted with the bright dresses of the girl guests.

"I gather she wanted a few words with the bride, so I effaced myself tactfully. Your young friend seems to have given you the slip, too."

"Oh, I'm no spoil-sport," Wendover declared. "She did her best to entertain me while duty demanded it—and she's an amusing little thing. But afterwards one of these youngsters drifted up; and it was plain she'd more interest in him than in me, which isn't amazing. So I left them inspecting the rose-garden."

"Well, our responsibilities are off our shoulders, so we can look about us freely."

"Pretty sight, to see all these young people enjoying themselves," Wendover commented lazily. "Girls always look their best at a wedding. I don't know why."

"Touches the heart of a hardened bachelor, doesn't it?" Sir Clinton said slyly. "One can always tell what you're thinking, Squire, when you talk like that. You're wishing that they may all get married to young Adonises and live happily ever after. It's this wedding atmosphere going to your head."

He gazed slowly round and seemed interested in several strangers who were near at hand.

"I don't know as many people here as you do, Squire, but I'm always willing to learn. Who's that dark-haired man with the square jaw, talking to the first bridesmaid over yonder?"

"Barsett's his name," Wendover answered, after a glance at the couple. "If you're trying to infer whether he's a bricklayer or a shoemaker, Clinton, I'll save you the trouble. He's a sleeping partner in some firm, draws his profits, and does nothing much besides. Oh, yes, I believe he's interested in the Bacon-Shakespeare problem, and people say he means to write a book about it sometime. He employs a secretary, anyhow, a girl I know."

"Thanks, I hadn't got quite the length of inferring the secretary's name. What I did notice was that Miss Alderbrook's fidgeting slightly; and I infer that she's wondering if it isn't time for her to go and get photographed in the wedding group. There's no romance for you in that pair, Squire, take it from me."

"Oh, I like to see people enjoying themselves," Wendover admitted placidly. "There's trouble enough in this world, and it's a pleasure to see the other side, sometimes, for a change. And, talking of trouble, one never need go far to look for it. See that girl standing over there by the araucaria?"

"Well, monkey-puzzle, if you like it better. The tall fair-haired girl is the one I mean. Now there's a case of trouble. She married a fellow called Hyson. Not quite our sort, Hyson. I haven't seen much of him and I don't want to see more. He's a shade below her socially, just a shade, but it makes all the difference. When he got her, he tired of her almost at once. He's one of those fellows who can't leave women alone; and he doesn't even take the trouble to conceal it from her, I gather."

"Because she's a strict Catholic. I respect her for sticking to her code; but it's landed her in a very unhappy life. There's no denying that."

"Not even that to take the edge off it. Parents dead, too. Lucky she has her sister—that pretty girl beside her, the platinum blonde. Joan Errington—that's her name—is Barsett's secretary."

He broke off and turned to greet a girl in a grey coat and skirt with a grey fox fur about her throat.

"No. Jim had to go North to keep an appointment, unfortunately. One he couldn't get out of."

"Oh, I've heard of you," she volunteered. "My husband's a crime fiend and follows all sorts of cases in the papers. Gruesome taste, isn't it? But perhaps I shouldn't say that."

"Well, at least I can say that I don't go looking for cases," he said in self-defence. "They come to me, and I wish they wouldn't. I'd rather have a blank sheet so far as crime in this county goes."

Nancy Telford's only comment was a vague gesture. She seemed to be grappling with some problem which engrossed her and which had no connection with the conversation. Wendover, who had known her for some years, was perturbed by the change in her. She had been a bright little thing, always in good spirits and ready to laugh at any minor troubles which might assail her. There had been nothing of the introvert about her in those days. Now all that eager interest in the external world seemed to have faded. Instead of sparkling as they used to do, her eyes were sombre and there was a look in them as though she brooded continually on some obsessing idea which overshadowed her mind. And her tone, when she spoke, suggested that she was unable to give her whole attention to what she was saying and had only the slightest interest in what was said to her, though she did her best to mask this by a mechanical mimicry of attentiveness.

"Somebody told me that you've got a cottage up in Glen Terret," Wendover said, to break the pause which threatened to grow unduly long. "That's a fine bit of country."

"It's not really ours," Nancy explained. "We rent it from summer to summer, that's all. But we've been there for three summers now, and we don't get tired of it, so I suppose we'll go back and back for a while yet."

"Glen Terret?" interjected Sir Clinton. "I know it pretty well. I've been up there, fishing, once or twice. I wonder if you know Mr. Forrest, by any chance."

"Do you mean the Procurator-Fiscal? We've met him. Jim and he used to fish together now and again."

"I came across him in the same way," Sir Clinton explained. "We happened to be staying at the Cross Keys Inn—you know the place, where all the fishers go?—for a week. And, of course, we had more in common than fishing, in the evenings. He's a kind of opposite number of mine, to some extent, though he's got wider powers. They do things differently in Scotland."

"Yes, he acts as a kind of coroner, doesn't he, as well as director of prosecutions?" Wendover interjected.

Sir Clinton nodded but made no attempt to pursue the subject as Nancy Telford obviously had no interest in it. She fingered a pleat in her skirt for a moment or two and then surprised the Chief Constable by her next remark.

"Don't you find, sometimes, that people do things quite against their will, Sir Clinton? Commit crimes and that sort of thing, I mean. Don't they struggle against something, often, and then it gets the better of them, even though they know they're doing wrong? In kleptomania, for instance, don't they just have to steal, no matter how hard they try not to?"

"It's always possible," he said evasively. "But it's hardly within my province. If someone takes goods without giving an equivalent for them, my business is to establish the facts and then hand them on to other officials like Mr. Wendover here. It's their affair to settle whether it's a case of kleptomania or theft, not mine."

"Oh," said Nancy Telford in a faintly disappointed tone. "But that's you as an official, isn't it? Unofficially, don't you think there are such things as irresistible impulses, sometimes? I can't think of an example except kleptomania, but I do think that some people are driven to steal, although all the time they hate doing it and they know quite well it's all wrong."

"I never met a really convincing kleptomaniac," said Sir Clinton with a sceptical smile. "Still, I admit it's possible. I've had one homicidal maniac through my hands, and he simply couldn't help doing what he did. But then I doubt if he had wits enough left to know he was doing wrong, so that's not quite your case."

Nancy Telford shrugged her shoulders almost imperceptibly as though she found Sir Clinton's views unsatisfactory. Her eyes wandered to a group across the lawn and she seemed to seize the opportunity of leaving her two companions.

"I'm afraid I must run along," she explained. "I want to catch Miss Dagenham before she moves away."

And with a rather weary smile she left them and hurried across the turf to join the group she had indicated. Sir Clinton gazed after her with a slightly puzzled expression on his face.

"What's wrong with that girl?" he demanded, turning to Wendover. "She's all on edge. One would think her nerves had gone to pieces behind that mask."

"I don't know. She's changed completely since I saw her last. Pity, that, for she was a very attractive girl, then. Now she looks as brazen as..."

"I don't like the way she looked at me, anyhow," said Wendover. "It isn't vamping. It's worse."

"Let's change over to something fresh, Squire. We've had Mrs. Hyson's troubles and then Mrs. Telford's, within the last ten minutes. Think of something brighter, will you? Something a bit more suitable to this occasion."

"You're just in time, doctor," he hailed the newcomer. "Wendover here needs a tonic to buck him up to a level suitable for a wedding-guest. Can you prescribe something that acts like magic in ten seconds or so?"

Dr. Malwood was a tall thin man with slanting eyebrows which gave him a faintly Mephistophelian expression. An old friend of both Sir Clinton and Wendover, he took them as he found them. He glanced at Wendover, up and down, with a twinkle in his eye.

"Something the matter with his adrenal glands, obviously," he declared solemnly. "Adrenaline deficiency indicated by lack of power to rise to an emergency like a wedding."

"No specialist ever gets beyond his own specialty," complained Wendover. "If you'd been a surgeon, you'd have wanted to remove my liver, most likely, to cheer me up. A nose-and-throat sharp would have sworn I'd adenoids and tonsil trouble. And a chiropodist would have had my boot off by this time, looking for ingrowing toe-nails. With you, Malwood, of course it's glands, glands, glands, all the time."

"Of course," the doctor confirmed, only half-ironically. "Glands are the most important factor of all, so far as humanity is concerned. The proof is: I make my living out of them. And think how much poorer the world would be if it lost me!"

"I've often thought the same about criminals," said the Chief Constable with equal seriousness. "If it weren't for them, my livelihood would be gone. We can shake hands, Malwood. We're both too valuable to lose, and we'd be the first to admit it. Luckily our fields don't overlap."

"Don't be so sure about that," warned the doctor, with a cock of his eyebrows. "Suppose Wendover suffered from an excess production of adrenaline, it might key him up to the pitch of homicide, and then he'd be one of your patients, unless he managed to dispose of the body satisfactorily."

"That sounds interesting," admitted Sir Clinton. "Tell us some more about these things."

"Well, take one you're sure to have heard about: the thyroid gland. If a child's born with a defective thyroid, it turns into a cretin. If the thyroid in a normal person happens to shrivel up during adult life, the patient gets dull, apathetic, slow-witted, and his appearance alters. He grows puffy about the eyes, his hair falls out, and premature senility comes on. It's a case of myxoedema. On the other hand, if you get overgrowth of the thyroid, the patient is often tall, thin, with rather prominent eyes. The women in Rossetti's pictures are something of the sort. They may be literary, or musical, and they're generally intelligent above the average; but temperamentally they're always emotional and unstable. Removal of some of the thyroid sometimes brings them back to a more normal type."

"Something of the kind, if you put it so," the doctor agreed. "Of course, it isn't the gland itself that produces these changes. It's some stuff which the gland secretes and passes into the blood stream."

"Hormones, they call them, don't they?" asked Sir Clinton. "But are they real stuffs, or just some of these hypothetical affairs that you medicals conjure up when you don't really know what's what?"

"Oh, they're real enough," Malwood declared. "Take adrenaline, for instance. It's actually been synthesised and you can buy it if you want to. There's more there than just mumbo-jumbo talk, you'll admit? And the chemical people are pushing along with the structures of some others, so that very likely they'll be on the market in due course."

"I don't discuss my own patients," he pointed out, "but there's no harm telling you about a case that fell into the hands of a fellow specialist in my line. The patient was a girl, round about twenty, very attractive, quite feminine, and engaged to a decent young man. Then, in a very short time, she changed completely. She broke off her engagement—couldn't stand male endearments. Instead, she took to frequenting young girls, putting her arm round them, kissing them eagerly and so on. Finally she showed signs of an incipient moustache."

"It's all right. The story ends as happily as a fairy tale," Malwood assured him with a grin. "My colleague diagnosed trouble in the suprarenals and suggested an operation to find out the truth. They operated, found a tumor pressing on the suprarenal glands, and removed it. The girl changed completely after that. All these awkward pseudo-masculine characteristics disappeared. She lost her taste for girls. The hair on her lip died away. And the last I heard, she was engaged again and as keen on her old fiancé as anyone could wish."

"Sounds like a miracle," commented Wendover, rather suspiciously. "You're not making this up?"

"Not a bit of it. The suprarenal glands secrete a number of hormones which have influences on one's sexual characteristics. If the normal balance of secretion is upset, all sorts of weird things may happen. If I found a man suddenly going off the rails with women, I'd be inclined to suspect overproduction of one hormone. If he turned into a pansy boy, I'd suspect that he wasn't secreting enough of it. And conversely, if a girl begins to show masculine leanings, then one thinks immediately that there's something disturbing the normal balance of secretion and that the wrong hormone's getting the upper hand. And in the case I was telling you about, it was the pressure of the growing tumor on the glands that upset them and caused them to diverge from normal production."

"That all sounds damned unpleasant, if one can't guarantee that one's own glands will attend strictly to business," said Wendover thoughtfully. "But I suppose, if they get the length of synthesising these stuffs, you'll be able to inject enough to make up for deficiencies and keep the balance right?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that," said Dr. Malwood, doubtfully. "If you trace the thing back, you come to the pituitary gland. Its secretions act on the suprarenals, and they in turn influence the Graafian follicles, probably. The whole affair's more complex than it looks at first sight."

"In the case of overproduction, can't you remove some of the gland by operation and so cut down the output?" asked Sir Clinton.

"In some cases you might. But the pituitary's awkwardly placed and most people wouldn't thank you for the job of operating on it. There's a new method coming in which may help."

"Yes, but this new affair gives tremendous penetrating power. As a matter of fact, I think I've got the second outfit in this country. The first one was installed in a London hospital. That's the advantage of a private income, one can afford toys even if they're costly. And this one is very much so."

"Well, the X-ray tube itself is twenty feet long, and the drop in potential between the electrodes is about a million volts. You can imagine the acceleration one gets on the electrons as they pass from the cathode to the target under forces like that. Terrific. As a result, one gets an X ray of tremendous penetrating power. It seems to go clean through superficial tissue without damaging it, so that one can get right down with full effectiveness to deeper-seated tissues, and handle them with short exposures. In the old technique, the trouble was that one had to give much longer exposures and the superficial tissues got badly damaged in the process. Now we put the patient in a kind of lead coffin with an orifice just over the spot we want to attack. Then everyone clears out, the tube is switched on for the exposure, and we switch off before coming back. No one could stay in the place, unprotected, while the thing's working. Even the walls have to be specially built of barium-containing bricks, sheeted with lead plate. I'll let you see the thing if you come up to my place sometime. It's well worth having a look at."

"Thanks, I shall, when it suits you. And with this affair you reckon on practically blotting out a certain amount of a gland and so knocking it out of action while leaving the remainder intact to carry on? Is that the idea?"

"More or less. If it works out properly, you can see it would enable us to deal with excess production; and if the synthetic chemists can turn out these hormones in the laboratory we shall be able to make up deficiencies by injection. Between the two, it ought to be possible to produce something like the normal balance even in cases where the secretion has gone wrong. It'll be a blessing to some people, I can tell you."

"Oh, yes, it's a going concern. In fact, I've got a couple of patients for it just now, and I expect to have another later on."

"I know your professional secrecy," Sir Clinton said at once, noticing a slight hesitation in the doctor's tone as he gave this last information. "We'll curb our curiosity, Malwood. By the way, Squire, you remember that we got landed with one of these glands in one of my affairs—that racket at your boathouse? It was a case of a persistent thymus gland—if I've got the name right—producing what you medicals call status lymphaticus. Have you any stop-press news about the thymus gland, Malwood?"

"You'll have to call again the day after tomorrow, if you want to know about that," he admitted. "We haven't got its functions clear yet. It's fairly large in childhood, then about the age of fourteen it shrivels up in normal cases, and by the time a person comes to maturity it almost disappears in the main run of people. That suggests that it has something to do with the development of people up to maturity. But that's no more than a guess."

"So there's still more to come?" said Sir Clinton in mock horror. "If you medicals are allowed to monger about with these new things it's evidently going to be the end of free-will and all the rest of it. I can see that the next thing in Air Raid Protection stunts will be to serve out adrenaline to the population, so as to brace up their nerves in the emergency. And I suppose the eugenists will seize on that stuff—eucortone you called it—to sterilise all undesirable females by making them masculine. It'll be a funny world, if ever you medicine men get control."

"Oh, we've hardly started yet," said Malwood, with a laugh. "I haven't mentioned Steinach's operation. Tie up a duct and men are made years younger, apparently. They grow dark hair afresh, get back their hearing and eyesight if they've failed a bit, and generally renew their youth like the eagle. It's all very rummy and amusing."

"All this so-called progressiveness seems to be leading straight to damnation, if you ask me," Wendover complained. "I'm not ashamed to be a Conservative, Malwood. Can't you discover some gland that'll bring us back to the old days when there was some sort of security in the world?"

"Out of my line," the doctor declared. "I'm a specialist in the human body, not the body politic. Though I suspect there are a lot of analogies between the two, if you have the brains to look for them."

"I'll make you a present of one," said Wendover. "Don't bacteria excrete poisonous stuffs they call toxins, and when these toxins get into the blood stream they produce all sorts of ill-effects in the body as a whole? Well, that seems to me a pretty fair parallel to the trouble that's going about this district—this poisonous creature who's deluging the neighbourhood with anonymous letters. They're toxins in the body politic. And from all I've heard, they're doing a fair amount of damage. Somebody told me they've led to the break-off of at least one engagement; and no one knows how much other harm they may have done. Does my parallel fit?"

"I've heard about them," Malwood admitted. "But they seem to me more in Driffield's department than mine."

"Hardly my department either," the Chief Constable pointed out. "The Post Office organisation has a special branch to deal with that kind of thing, and we come in only if they ask for our help. If they can clear the thing up themselves, they pass their results to us and we handle the prosecution."

"Well, then, since you're not responsible, there's no harm in asking what you think about it," Malwood pointed out. "What kind of person is likely to take that line?"

"Someone with a general grievance, I'd say. Probably a miserable devil with an inferiority complex who finds compensation in making other people uncomfortable. It may start by his trying to pay off some specific score against an individual. Then, if he's not spotted, he begins to feel he's a bit of a power, through the trouble he can stir up. And so he launches out into a wider circle with his stuff."

"But half the time he must misfire," objected Malwood. "Unless people talk about the letters they get, he'll never know if he's stirred them up or not. Where's his satisfaction then?"

"I'll take a leaf out of Wendover's book, and give you a parallel," Sir Clinton said. "Ever hear of Neil Cream the poisoner? Wendover will see the point."

" I remember," Wendover confirmed. "He was hanged in the early nineties after several murders. He used to scrape acquaintance with poor drabs and persuade them to take 'long pills.' He posed as a friendly doctor, anxious to cure the girl of spots on her face or something of the sort. If she swallowed the 'long pill' she died of a huge overdose of strychnine—a horrible death."

"You've left out the point I wanted, Wendover," Sir Clinton explained. "Cream never saw one of his victims die. He left them before the pangs came on; and while the poor creatures were writhing in their death-agonies, he was walking the streets, gloating over the anguish they were suffering. To my mind, he's one of the most sinister figures in the murderers' gallery. He had no grudge against his victims, he had nothing material to gain by doing them to death. But he got a tremendous kick out of imagining every detail of the torments he brought on them. That was where he got his enjoyment. Pure imagination, building on what he knew would come of his 'long pills.' Well, Malwood, can't you guess that a poison-pen expert gets the same kind of kick from the letters he sends out? He can sit quietly at home and gloat over the effect that his latest effort is having. 'Aha! that fellow believed in his girl? And what's he feeling like, now that I've sent him this stinger about her? I bet I've brought his little castle about his ears for him.' The poison-pen pests are all of a piece with Neil Cream in intention. It's merely a matter of degree."

"I never heard it put exactly like that before," he said, "but it sounds likely enough. Ugh! We get some queer enough cases in my line, but one's sorry for them. I can't imagine myself being sorry for a person of the Neil Cream type, or a poison-pen pest, either, although obviously they're both gone in the brain department. Some things are over the score, even to a pathologist."

"There's another analogy between these physical and moral poisoners," Sir Clinton went on. "They get a feeling of power out of what they do. There was a Bavarian woman, Zwanziger, who came almost to worship arsenic because by its agency she felt she could break through every restraint, gratify any inclination, and determine the very existence of her neighbours. She called it her truest friend. I can quite imagine that your anonymous letter writer has the same kindly feeling for his fountain pen. It's his instrument of power, like Zwanziger's arsenic."

"I suppose you're right," Malwood agreed. "Only, our local pest doesn't use a fountain pen, or any other kind, I'm told. He cuts words out of the morning newspaper and gums them on to sheets of paper to make his pleasant messages."

Sir Clinton had caught sight of Nancy Telford, some distance away, talking eagerly to someone he had not noticed before.

"Who's that man over yonder, talking to Mrs. Telford, Malwood?" he asked incuriously. "She seems to be getting on better with him than she did with us."

"Wendover told me something about him," Sir Clinton said. "You don't seem to like him either, by your tone."

When Sir Clinton spoke again, some seconds later, it was to hark back to an earlier topic.

"All your talk about glands, hormones, and so forth, makes me think of the dictum of a Frenchman—Claude Bernard, I think it was. 'Virtue and vice are products, like sugar or vitriol.' You people seem in a fair way to prove that, if all you tell us is true, Malwood. Take a perfectly decent human being, knock one of his or her glands out of order, and you may get what the law considers a criminal. Or, at any rate, you may loose forces that the poor creature can't control. Is that right?"

"Sugar and vitriol," Sir Clinton repeated in a musing tone. "And suppose that you medicals manage to counteract the disease; and the patient gets back to a normal state again—to find that in the meanwhile the vitriol has burned into something vital? Not a pretty retrospect for your patient, to look back on all the damage he's done while the machinery was in disorder. Can you cure that, Malwood, with all your nice little synthetic products?"

"I suppose it would be," Sir Clinton agreed. "Well, I see some people moving towards the front door. It looks as if the bride and bridegroom might be going away any minute now. We'd better walk over and help to give them a hearty send-off. Come along."

Chapter Five
AFFECTION'S SENTINEL

OLIVE LYNDOCH sat at her desk, making a pretence of tidying it up for the night. Her fellow-clerks had already covered their machines and were preparing to leave. Olive scarcely noticed them, engrossed as she was in her own troubles.

In the earlier days of her liaison with Hyson, it had been he who pressed for meetings, begged for opportunities, all aflame to have her to himself; and at times she had taken a perverse pleasure in tantalising him by refusals, merely to assure herself of her power over him. These days had long gone by. Romance refused to be turned on at 7.30 P.M. on a fixed night per week, like water from a tap.

She strove hard to keep the old feelings alight and to spread the flame by arousing Hyson's interests in her feelings as well as in her looks; but the more she tried, the less she achieved. He had no desire to know what sort of woman she was or how she looked at life. It merely puzzled him that she should talk so much about things which left him completely cold. And now, as she had been driven to recognise, he was tiring of the sensations which she could give him. Even to a girl far less acute than Olive Lyndoch, it would have been clear that the sands were running out. It was impossible any longer to shut her eyes to plain facts. He was bored by their whole association. He wanted variety, something fresh to titillate his fancy.

Variety! Olive knew what that meant—another girl. She was not merely to lose him; she was to have the mortification of seeing some other toy adopted in her stead. And her jealousy assured her that she need not look far to find her supplanter. That little beast, Kitty Nevern, was the one he was after. Olive had no definite basis for this suspicion, but it needed little ground to take root on. Once before, he had shown signs of breaking away; and then he had pitched on the other typist, Effie Hinkley. But Effie "had no use for that kind of thing," as she herself phrased it; and she had snubbed Hyson when he made his first tentative approaches. Nor had she made any secret of the episode, so that it had come at once to Olive's ears.

"That Jessop freak hasn't turned up again, has she?" Kitty Nevern demanded. "Then what's to be done about this bag of hers that she forgot and left in the private office this afternoon?"

"Give it to Caddie to keep for her," Effie Hinkley suggested. "Caddie! Here's Miss Jessop's bag. Hand it over to her when she comes clamouring for it to-morrow. P'r'aps she'll give you a kiss in exchange. But don't let the thought of that treat keep you awake all night, my boy."

"I'll scream for help if she does; and mind you rally round and rescue me. You know my methods, Watson," he ended, using one of a series of meaningless catchphrases to which he was addicted.

Olive, still making a pretence of clearing up her desk, kept a watch on the rest of the staff out of the tail of her eye. At any rate, she would see that little Nevern beast off the premises before she went herself. Hyson was still in the private office, and she had a suspicion that his overtime work was merely a pretence to cover an ulterior purpose.

Though his motives were far apart from hers, Olive had an unconscious seconder on the staff. At Kitty Nevern's first appearance in the office, young Cadbury had fallen completely into calf-love. He was young enough to be ashamed of his feelings and to hide them with care, especially from Kitty herself. He assumed a perky tone to cover his nervousness when he spoke to her; and if at times he blushed till his ear-tips were crimson, no one noticed it, since he was at the age when youths suffer from uncontrollable reddenings of the face. In the privacy of his little bedroom, he talked to himself about her and held imaginary dialogues with her. In these, he addressed her as "Kitty," and even succeeded in throwing a yearning note into the dissyllable, which, after all, was no mean feat. But in the office she was "miss," like her fellow-typists.

Though no one would have suspected it from his exterior, Cadbury lived a vivid and intense inner life, and nowadays much of it centred round Kitty Nevern. Before her coming, his thoughts about girls had been tempered by awakening desires; but so far as his visions of her went, he might have been a junior Galahad. He saw himself, automatic in hand, rescuing her from gunmen, bandits, or kidnappers; and disposing of any opposition with one shot per skull, for in these dreams he was a supermarksman with all firearms. Or else, in his mental theatre, he performed for her delight marvellous feats in the air, afloat, or on the ice. (This was when skating films had become popular.)

Olive Lyndoch, glancing sidelong at him, found him fumbling in the recesses of his desk. She little guessed that he was waiting for the supreme moment of his day, the moment when he could go forward in an offhand fashion and help Kitty to put on her coat. That gesture was, in his stunted imagination, glorified into something akin to Raleigh's spreading of his cloak before Queen Elizabeth. Just to hold the thing up, to feel her arms slipped into the sleeves, maybe to guide one hand to its place, and then, if he could summon up courage, to smooth down the cloth to make it sit properly: that very ordinary courtesy made him thrill all over. Curiously enough, it never crossed his mind to kiss her, even when they were the last to leave the office. To him she was something far too rare for things like that. He might want to kiss some girls, but this was quite different. He felt that in his very bones.

"Well, thank goodness, that's another day over," said Effie Hinkley with a half-smothered yawn as she covered her typewriter. "It brings in bread-and-butter, and that's about all one can say in its favour."

"Headache," Effie explained. "Might be eye-strain and then I'll have to sport specs and look like a tortoise. I wish that new broom in there would clean the cobwebs off the windows. The light might be better in here then."

She had a cool contempt for Hyson which his promotion had done nothing to lessen, and it came out occasionally in occult references to various menial tasks which a "new broom" might be put to with advantage. She walked over to the rack, struggled into her coat, and then, with a cavalier nod, left the office.

Kitty Nevern finished tidying up her desk and rose to her feet. She threw a glance in Olive's direction.

"No, I'm just about finished," she said, making a pretence of jotting down some notes on a pad.

Kitty crossed over to the coat-rack and instantly Cadbury was out of his chair dashing clumsily to join her. He almost pushed her aside in his eagerness, unhooked her coat from its peg and held it out for her.

She smoothed down her coat with an unconscious gesture which Cadbury thought the most graceful movement a woman could make. Then she took her hat from its peg and put it on. A grey fur hung beside it, and Cadbury lifted it down and stood holding it ready. When he spoke to Kitty, it was always in a slightly impertinent tone with an aim at smartness.

"Where were you educated?" Kitty demanded, rather indignant at the slight on her newest possession. "Oh, Borstal, of course. I ought to have recognised the old school tie. No, smarty, it isn't imitation rabbit, whatever that is. Nor rabbit plain, either. It's Arctic fox, and that's something, I can tell you. Look at it."

She stood for a moment letting her fingers run over the fur as though the touch of it gave her a pleasant titillation. Then with a graceful gesture she put up her arms and adjusted it about her neck.

"Now have a look at it, and then you'll know a good fur when you see one again."

Olive Lyndoch looked up from her desk. Her glance took in the smart hat, the grey coat and skirt on the trim little figure, the chin buried in the fur at the throat. Arctic fox? And a fairly good one, too, if she knew her way about. Fifteen pounds, it must have cost. Who had paid for that?

"Come into a fortune," said Cadbury, in a stage aside. "We shall be losing her soon. Ahem! Shall I ask the chauffeur to bring up the Rolls, miss, or will you walk downstairs to the pavement? I hope you've got that fur properly insured. There's such a lot of bad characters about. Where did you get it, really?"

"A birthday present, since it might keep you awake to-night if you didn't know. I chose it myself, though. Goes well with fair hair, doesn't it? Well, your conversation's too thrilling for anything, but I must tear myself away. Good-night, everybody."

She walked to the door. Cadbury unhooked his hat, crammed it on his head, and darted after her, throwing a hasty: "Good-night, Miss Lyndoch," over his shoulder as he went. It was not often that he could summon up enough courage to join Kitty on the stairs and force his company on her as far as her bus-stop, but to-night he felt keyed up to the necessary point.

With their departure, Olive Lyndoch ceased to make any pretence of work. Her mind was full of that fair-haired little figure in grey with the fox fur at its throat. And that... that pert little beast... that was what Ossie was throwing her aside for? Well, men were funny, there was no denying it.

Then a question of Kitty's crossed her memory and became fraught with meaning: "Working late, to-night?" Why had she asked that? She had only to go to her memory to find an answer. In the early days of her association with Ossie, the office, after hours, had been their meeting-place and the excuse had been overtime work. She had gone out, got some sort of scratch meal, and come back to join him. And now, to-night, he was still in his room and Kitty Nevern had been anxious to know if the coast would be clear. That was what she meant by asking if Olive meant to stay much longer. Well, so much the better. She might as well make certain about the thing to-night. She rose and went into the private office where she found Hyson at the desk with papers outspread before him.

"Going to work late, Ossie?" she asked, making her tone as indifferent as possible.

"Yes. Lot to do. These clients calling this afternoon kept me back. Why haven't you gone?"

For a moment she felt inclined to reopen the question of their affairs, but bethought herself that it would do no good, especially in his present mood. Besides, she wanted to be sure about Kitty.

"Oh, all right," Hyson snapped. "Don't bother me now. I'm full up with this stuff."

Then, at the look on his face, she saw that she had crossed her Rubicon without knowing it. Hyson lifted his head and stared at her as though she were a stranger.

"You've no right to speak in that tone to me," Olive retorted, "I won't be spoken to as if I were a dog you were ordering out of the room. You might give me common courtesy, anyhow."

"It's been coming to this for a while," he said evenly, "and you may as well have it now as later, Olive. I'm tired of the whole business. Sick to death of it. These things never last, you know. You understood that from the start. Or you ought to have done, if you'd any sense."

"You mean... you mean..." she stammered, shrinking from putting the thing into words.

"Drop it? Yes. It was bound to come, sooner or later. It's come now, that's all."

"That's it, in a nutshell. No use going on. You'd get nothing out of it. Neither would I."

"Oh, damn!" he said wearily, and his tone gave her a sharper pang than she had yet felt. "Why can't you women face facts?"

So he was lumping her now with the other women who had been in his life before her, she reflected bitterly. She wasn't Olive Lyndoch to him, she was just "one of the lot." These six words were more revealing than anything else that he had said. This situation might be new to her; to him, it was merely a repetition of a scene he had gone through many times already.

He had struck so suddenly that she felt dazed, unable to cope with him. And he left her no illusions. The tone and the look on his face spoke far clearer than any words could have done. This was really the final scene in their association.

She did not trouble to answer, but as she closed the door of the private office she found herself trembling in every muscle. She walked unsteadily to her desk, dropped into her chair, and sat gazing unseeingly at the wall before her while she strove to bring some coherence into her ideas. If she had wept, it might have relieved her, but Olive Lyndoch was not of the type that cries easily in moments of stress.

She had lost him now, for good. She had seen it coming, had even pretended to herself that she understood what losing him would mean. Now she knew that she had merely been playing with the idea, deliberately avoiding the sharpness of its edge. "Oh, well, if I lose him, I lose him," she had said to herself with mock bravery. But all that had been mere make-believe, evading the steel. Now she knew what pain really meant.

But as she searched back in her memory she could find nothing salient which would mark the turning-point in their relations. She couldn't even say to herself: "If I'd done this, then, instead of that, it wouldn't have happened." No, the whole thing had been so gradual that she could not lay her finger on any episode as the first cause of the rift. He had just drifted away by imperceptible stages, week by week.

To escape from her emotions, Olive Lyndoch forced herself to think of everyday affairs. Anything to escape from this pain, even for a few moments. Her flat? She couldn't pay the rent of it without Ossie's subsidy; and that, she guessed, would now be cut off. He was not the man to waste money on an affair which had ceased to interest him, or on a girl who had lost her attraction for him. She'd have to give her landlord notice at once. And if she couldn't get a cheaper suitable flat, what about her furniture? Sell it, or pay storage?

But still she strove to concentrate on something definite which would drive into the background the real thing that mattered. What about her position in the office here? All these schemes about getting in the Moon-Hopkins machine would go by the board, now. Ossie would have no interest in helping her to a better position. Most likely, instead, he'd be glad to see her dismissed and so removed from his path. She felt a little creepy sensation as this aspect of things dawned upon her. She had no pity for Forbury when she had schemed for his dismissal; her sympathetic imagination went no further than her own affairs. But now that she felt herself threatened with discharge, all the terrors of unemployment rose up before her.

She had no allies on the staff, now that Ossie had thrown her over. Effie Hinkley, cold, self-sufficient, and cynical, would never lift a finger to help. All she would think about would be the succession to Olive's post and the consequent rise in screw. No help there. And no help from Forbury, either. He had no cause to like her, as she well knew. Far from it. So that left Kitty Nevern....

At the thought of Kitty, Olive choked suddenly and then, with an effort and a bitten lip, she pulled herself together again. Kitty was the last person she could approach, even though Kitty would be the most influential of them all for the time being. And at that she saw a picture of Kitty in Ossie's arms. What was that catch-phrase young Cadbury was always using? "You know my methods, Watson." Well, she knew Ossie's methods. She could guess how he'd get round that little fair-haired chit with her fox fur. There he was, in the private office, waiting for her to come back when the coast was clear.

One thing she must do: make certain about the two of them. It would be better to know than to suspect, she guessed, with clear insight into her own psychology. By this time she had convinced herself that Kitty would return that evening, once she was sure that all the staff had gone. It was what had happened in her own case. She would spy on the two of them, now, and get certainty, at any rate.

She took her bag from a drawer, stepped over to the little mirror by the coat-rack, and looked to her make-up. Then she put on her coat and hat, glanced mechanically round the office, switched off the lights, and went down the stairs. Some distance along the street was a tea-shop with an out-jutting window from which one could keep the office-door under inspection. That would be better than lingering on the pavement, where Kitty might notice her. And at least until closing-time she would be in shelter.

"This can't be true," she said to herself as she walked along with her eyes on the pavement, forgetting even to keep watch for Kitty. "It's a nightmare. I'll wake up and find everything's all right. I can't lose him. I simply can't go on without him. Oh, Ossie, I do want you!"

Mechanically she bought a newspaper from a boy. It would give her an excuse for lingering over the tea-table. She entered the tea-shop and was relieved to find that the window-seats were vacant. She chose the one which commanded the best view of the office entrance. It was a good way down the street and now the light was fading out of the sky; but she had no fears that anything would escape her. That grey coat and skirt and the grey fur would be plain enough even if she were further away.

She ordered tea and was glad of the delay before it came. So much time gained, she reflected.

"No, you needn't bother about more cakes," she told the waitress. "I've got a headache. All I want is a cup of tea."

"You look pretty bad, miss," the waitress said, sympathetically. "I've got some aspirin, if you'd like some. I get headaches myself."

Then she realised that she had a headache, a splitting one; but she shrank from an open reconsideration of her refusal. It would look silly. The waitress had no other customers, and, being a sociable soul, she attempted to begin a conversation.

"It's the stuffiness of this place gives me headaches, I think," she volunteered. "I'm always getting them. But they're easy enough to put away. It's this standing about that tells on you. I've got a varicose vein that's worse than any headache. Sometimes I don't know how I get through the day's work; and when I get home I'm fit for nothing but to lie on my bed. Not much of a life."

Olive scowled at her. Did the little fool think that headaches and a varicose vein were real troubles? Headaches! What would she feel like if the bottom suddenly fell out of her universe and left her where Olive was? Some people didn't know they were born, grousing about trifles like that.

"No, not much of a life," she replied unsympathetically, her eyes on the window. "Can you get me some more cream?"

When the waitress returned, Olive had entrenched herself behind her newspaper as a hint that she wanted no more conversation. The waitress put down the jug, stared curiously at Olive's face for a moment, then, evidently seeing that she would get no further entertainment from this customer, she withdrew and began talking to one of her colleagues at the rear of the shop.

Olive sipped her tea and made a show of reading her paper; but it was always the top of the column she looked at, and her eyes wandered over it every second or two, watching the long stretch of pavement which separated her from Lockhurst's office entrance.

Suddenly, far beyond the office door she saw a grey-clad little figure with a light fur come hesitatingly along the pavement. It was too far off for her to recognise the face, or even the gait in the failing light. It paused irresolutely at the office entrance and seemed to examine it for a moment. Then, with a swift movement, it vanished into the portals.

Olive sat up suddenly in her chair, all her muscles braced in an involuntary tension. So that was that. Now she knew exactly where they were. And now, she found, certainty was far worse than the uncertainty from which she had been so eager to free herself. It was all up. "You know my methods, Watson." Oh, yes, she knew them; and it was agony to know them.

She dropped her paper on the floor, got to her feet with an effort, and beckoned to the waitress for her bill. Then, with it in her hand, she made her way to the cash desk, paid, and went out into the street. The shops had closed earlier, and in only one or two office windows were lights showing that someone was still at work. As she came near the office, she crossed to the other side of the street and looked up at the façade. No lights burned in the outer office; but in the private room the curtains were drawn and she saw beams at the edges which showed that someone was using the place. Then, as she watched, this light went out also.

She fumbled in her bag for her handkerchief, and as she did so her fingers touched the office key, one which Ossie had got made for her in earlier days. She gripped it, undecided. Should she go up and confront those two? But almost as the idea came, she rejected it. What was the use? It would only be giving that little beast the chance to crow over her. Ossie would tell her off, if she ventured up there; and she would merely lose dignity by appearing as the discarded favourite in the presence of her supplanter. Anything rather than that. She glanced again at the unillumined window. They might be coming downstairs now, and she had no wish to be found hanging about the street if they did appear. She turned and walked swiftly away to her usual bus-stop, glancing over her shoulder as she went.

In the bus, she began to come to her bearings. That dullness of shock-anæsthesia wore off little by little, and as it went it was replaced by a cold fury as she thought over the events since the office had closed. Ossie had thrown her aside in a way which was in itself an insult, superimposed on the meanness of his treatment of her after all these months. She would make him pay for that, she reflected, cost what it might.

She got out of the bus and walked painfully up to her flat. She took off her hat and coat mechanically, and sat down on her settee to contrive ways and means of squaring her account with Ossie. She knew all about these anonymous letters which were causing so much trouble. Ossie and she had even laughed over one which he had received and shown to her. That was the weapon she needed.

She got up, went into the little hall, and found the newspaper she had brought in with her. Then she found a pair of scissors in her workbasket; and with these materials before her, she began to think out the message she could send. The shorter the better, she concluded; and soon she had clipped out the required letters from the newspaper. Then, taking some paste, she assembled the fragments she had cut out, and began to fix them in order on a sheet of notepaper. When she had finished, she read over the message:—

Hyson is using your private room to meet one of your typists after the office is closed for the night. After this you cannot pretend you don't know what is going on.

She held it in her hand, reading and re-reading it, delighting in what she had done. Then, with a smile of satisfied malice, she found an envelope and slipped her missive into it.

That would wake up Lockhurst, she reflected with a short laugh. Old Puritan that he was, he'd go in off the deep end when he found that on his breakfast-tray. It wouldn't be long before Ossie was out of a job, damn him! He wouldn't set up Kitty in a flat now, that was one thing made sure. And that little beast would be out of a job too. Two birds with one stone. And all at the cost of 1½d. Cheap at the money, as she pointed out to herself with another laugh. But the laugh ended in a choke, for she was coming as near hysterics as a woman of her type could.

She sat fingering the closed envelope, suddenly alive to a difficulty which she had not remembered before: the address. She would have to disguise her handwriting effectually. After a number of trials, she hit on the idea of supporting her right wrist with her left hand while she scribbled the address, and this method seemed to yield a satisfactory scrawl quite unlike her normal manuscript.

"Well, that's done," she assured herself as she stuck the stamp on the envelope.

She could not wait a moment longer, but ran down the stairs without troubling to put on her hat, so as to get the letter into the pillar-box as quickly as possible.

Chapter Six
DUNCANNON OF THE I.B.

"I'VE asked a man to drop in to-night, Squire," Sir Clinton explained after dinner. "If you don't want to meet him, you needn't show up. But I think you might find him interesting, if you can draw him out."

"I know the General Post Office when I see it, but I.B. is new to me," Wendover admitted.

"Investigation Branch," amplified the Chief Constable. "He's a sort of opposite number of mine in the Post Office. They have their own detective system, you know, quite independent of ours, and he's pretty high up in it."

"I've got some vague ideas about that, but nothing very clear," Wendover confessed. "What sort of things do they handle? And why do they need a special detective force of their own? Why can't they be content with the police?"

"For one thing, the Post Office operates all over the country and letters are posted in one police district while they may be delivered in another. If you tried to handle a system of that sort by calling in our localised City and County Constabularies, you'd have perhaps two or three separate investigations of the same case going on in different districts; and the coordination of them would be as much trouble as the case itself, probably. Whereas, with a special organisation under the G.P.O., you can send the right man down to any district to investigate and then pass on to any other region that may happen to be concerned in the affair. In case of need, he can always enlist the help of the local constabulary. Besides that, the G.P.O. problems are of a special sort which requires expert knowledge and a technique which doesn't come under the heading of ordinary police work."

"You'd better try to get that out of Duncannon himself," Sir Clinton retorted. "I don't profess to know his job. In fact, so far, except for some letter thieves, we've had very little to do with the I.B. hereabouts, until this accursed poison-pen affair started. But it's grown to such proportions now that it's becoming a case of all hands to the pumps. We must get it cleared up before long, or some really bad damage may be done."

"Not much, unfortunately. Ten pounds fine. Twelve months, with or without hard labour. My job's to execute the law, Squire, not to criticise it; but I agree with you that in some cases a bigger penalty wouldn't come amiss."

"It must be a queer kind of mind that produces that sort of stuff," Wendover mused.

"Better put that to Duncannon," the Chief Constable suggested. "He knows far more about the type than I do."

"It sounds like an interesting point in psychology," Wendover said, thoughtfully. "I'll ask his opinion."

"Well, you won't have to wait long. That sounds like someone at the door. I'll introduce you as a J.P. which may lull any suspicions that your appearance might arouse, Squire. Perhaps you'll succeed in winning his confidence and getting him to tell you a few things."

When Duncannon was ushered in, Wendover saw at a glance that he was different from the ordinary detective promoted from the ranks of the Constabulary. He looked wiry rather than powerful, and his inches would hardly have allowed him to scrape into the police force. Keen grey eyes with a twinkle in them, a high-bridged nose, a pleasant smile, and an easy manner, all combined to make Wendover's first impression favourable. "This man ought to be a good mixer, by the look of him," was his judgement; and in the rest of the evening he found it confirmed.

After they had exchanged the usual commonplaces with which strangers break the ice at a first interview, Sir Clinton seemed in no hurry to plunge into the actual business in hand. Wendover guessed that he was being given a chance to find out something about the work of the Investigation Branch, and he seized it without more ado.

"You're in the Investigation Branch of the Post Office, Driffield tells me, Mr. Duncannon. I suppose your work's mostly internal: thefts of letters, and so on. You don't come much in contact with criminals outside the staff, do you?"

"I shouldn't go that length," Duncannon answered with a smile. "In fact, my work's to a great extent outside our offices. We have a more or less routine method of trapping sorters and postmen who take to letter-stealing."

"How do you manage it?" inquired Wendover. "That is, of course, if it's a fair question to ask."

"There's nothing very secret about it nowadays," Duncannon replied. "Some of the methods have been put in print, so there's no secrecy so far as they go. Suppose we get complaints that a letter posted in a stated box at a certain time has gone astray. The first thing is to find out what officials should have handled it if it had followed its normal course. The collecting postman might have taken it, or a sorter might have pocketed it, or it might have gone astray when sent out for delivery. All these people come under suspicion immediately. If a number of letters have gone astray at different periods, a comparison of the lists of men on duty helps to narrow down the field a bit. If we suspect a sorter, we have means of watching him at work without his knowing he's under observation, and that often catches a thief in the act. If it's a case of the delivery postman holding back part of his letters, we sometimes use a 'test letter' to catch him red-handed. The most troublesome case is when a fellow confines himself to mis-sorted letters. Our system is nearly perfect in the G.P.O., but sometimes a letter by accident gets on to the wrong sorter's table or into the wrong postman's bag. If that's stolen, then we're rather up against it, obviously, because it has got out of the normal chain of communication. Still, we have our methods to fit even that case. Everything's cut and dried, so far as our own officials are concerned. It's when we come up against the outside criminal that the trouble really starts."

"What sort of thing happens there?" asked Wendover. "In the ordinary way, I shouldn't think there was much room for outsiders tampering with Post Office machinery. Mail-bag thefts one hears about now and again, of course."

"Here are one or two more," he explained. "There are people who specialise in forging Post Office Savings Bank withdrawal forms. Then there are parcel-stealers who help themselves to parcels left lying on the Post Office counters. All that lot are more or less small fry, but they give trouble. We can't afford to let that kind of thing go on in even the most modest way, or people would begin to lose faith in the G.P.O. as a safe means of communication. But there are more serious affairs than that, by a long way."

"Well, take letter-box thieves, for instance," Duncannon explained. "Suppose you have a big firm which takes in a lot of orders by letter, with postal orders enclosed in payment. The shop shuts at 6 P.M., say, but they have a big letter-box on the door to receive the letters which come in by the 7 P.M. post, for example. Now suppose an ingenious gentleman comes along with a neat contrivance which clips on to the inside of the big letter-slit. The postman shoves in his bundles of letters as usual, but they don't drop to the bottom of the firm's letter-box. No, they drop into a bag that the thief has clipped inside the box. Once the postman has gone on with his round, the ingenious gentleman comes back, hawks out his contrivance with the enclosed letters, and cashes the P.O.'s in due course. Some of them of course are of no use to him: the ones crossed with a banker's name and the ones with the firm's name filled in. Though even in that case he can do a bit with bleaching agents and take out the writing. In any case, when it's a big firm with a large post, he can be pretty sure of getting trade-union wages out of it. Well, he's one of the people we have to catch if we can."

"I suppose it would pay," Wendover conceded, "but I shouldn't care to be your friend when he's fixing his net or when he's taking out his catch. It must be an uncomfortable minute or two, if anyone heaves in sight."

"I'm not concerned with his sensations," said Duncannon, dryly. "The same game's sometimes played on pillar-boxes. Do you ever put your fingers inside the slit of a pillar-box when you post your letters? No? I thought not. Well, that shows you how easy it would be to have the same kind of thing fitted to the pillar-box slit. That's a much worse case than the letter-box trick."

"Why? Because in the case of the firm's letter-box, the only letters that can go astray are commercial things, just a matter of money. But take the pillar-box case. There the thief gets away with a whole lot of letters, say. One or two of them may have money in them. The rest may be ordinary letters, which the thief simply destroys as soon as he can, so as to have nothing compromising in his possession. Well, now, just take one example of what might happen. Suppose a fellow has quarrelled with his girl and, on second thoughts, he wants to make it up. He writes her a penitent letter. It never reaches her. The thief gets it and destroys it. The fellow expects an answer. Naturally he never gets one. He thinks his overtures have been turned down brutally. Why, you might have two people's lives spoiled by a thing like that, especially if they lived in different towns and didn't meet in the normal way."

"Yes, that's pretty damnable," Wendover admitted. "I hadn't thought of that side of letter-stealing."

"That's what makes me impervious to hard-luck stories when we catch a thief of that sort, whether he's an official or an outsider," Duncannon said. "One never knows, even when we've caught him, how much damage he may have done by his tricks. And if he reads the letters before destroying them, it may be worse still."

"Blackmail, you mean?" exclaimed Wendover. "I'd never thought of that. And yet it's quite on the cards. Lots of people might put things on paper which they wouldn't like to see published."

"Just so," Duncannon said curtly. "It's a beastly business. But to continue the catalogue, we have to deal with S.P. betting crooks."

"Well, I mean people who hand in their wire after they know the winner's name and yet manage to make it appear as if they'd telegraphed before the race finished. We've had a lot of trouble with them. Devilish ingenious, some of the schemes are. And, of course, the same thing applies to S.P. betting by letter. You seem to be interested in this kind of thing, Mr. Wendover. Here's a neat little problem for you. A bookmaker wisely has no letter-box on his door; the postman has to deliver everything by hand inside the office. A letter is delivered, postmarked long before the race, which contains a good swingeing bet on the winner. Actually, the writer knew the name of the winner before the letter left his hands. How's that done, do you think? The postman is not a confederate, I may say."

"I'll have to think that over," said Wendover with a smile. "It sounds impossible, but I suppose you've had a case of the sort."

"Oh, yes, it has been done. We're up against some very smart crooks, I can tell you, in our line. Now here's another game which most likely you wouldn't think worth the candle: breaking open the coin-boxes in public-telephone kiosks."

"It certainly doesn't sound like a line in which one could make a fortune," Wendover said with a smile.

"I don't know what you call a fortune," retorted Duncannon, "but to me £10,000 a year sounds quite a lot."

"As much as that?" exclaimed Wendover in amazement. "Good heavens, man, that would mean something like two and a half million pennies taken from the boxes. It's almost incredible."

"Believe it or not," Duncannon declared, "at one time it looked as if that gang might get away with double the figure, so you see it was quite a serious affair for the G.P.O. However, all's well that ends well. Between the Cartwright Buzzer and one or two other dodges, they were laid by the heels."

Sir Clinton evidently thought that Wendover had been given a fair run by this time.

"Now let's turn to the anonymous-letter business," he suggested. "It's what interests me chiefly at the moment. How do you go about your business in cases of that kind, Mr. Duncannon?"

"If you ask an enthusiast about his hobby, you're apt to get more than you want," Duncannon said, warningly. "And this hunting out poison-pen pests happens to be the line that interests me most of all."

"You won't bore us, if that's what you're suggesting," the Chief Constable answered. "Mr. Wendover takes a keen interest in criminology, I may tell you. We'll be glad to hear anything you can give us."

Duncannon leaned back in his chair and paused for a moment as if putting his facts in order in his mind before beginning.

"There are so many sides to it," he said at last with a gesture of mock discouragement, "one hardly knows where to begin. Take the routine method first of all. Suppose X receives an anonymous letter, and complains to us about it. We ask X to write down the names of all his or her acquaintances, and we may thus get a list of a couple of hundred, perhaps. If the letter was locally postmarked, we can weed out from the list a good many names of people living at a distance. If two people, X and Y, have been pestered by letters, we get a list from each of them and compare them. If there are names common to both lists, then the thing's narrowed down to those people."

"But the name need not necessarily be on either list," Sir Clinton objected. "Your poison pen may be attacking someone outside the range of personal acquaintance."

"That's very rare, in the early stages of a poison pen's career," Duncannon explained. "As a general rule, the method gives results. And, of course, the more lists we get, the more the thing is narrowed down. The next line is to try the handwriting. It's usually disguised to the best of their ability. But what they forget is this. You can make your handwriting look different from the normal, but it's much more difficult for a young girl to write like an elderly woman and vice versa. We can make a guess at the writer's age and that helps us to sift out our lists still further. Then the vocabulary comes in. It's impossible for an uneducated person to write like an educated one; and it's almost impossible for an educated person to imitate the language of the uneducated person's letter. It can be done, of course, but usually your poison pen is given away by some slip or other in any attempt of that sort."

"It means simply nothing. You see some dear old lady who looks as if an honest 'Damn!' would make her faint on the spot. And yet somewhere at the back of her mind she may have a vocabulary that would paralyse a navvy. Where they get it, I can't imagine. But I've learned that you can't go by language in poison-pen work."

"Doctors will tell you the same about the things some patients say in delirium," Sir Clinton confirmed. "It's stored up in the most unlikely people."

"In the subconsciousness, maybe," Duncannon suggested. "But that's off my beat. I only mentioned it to show you that you can't put too much stress on language of that sort in anonymous letters."

"What happens after you've got your suspects reduced to reasonable dimensions?" asked Wendover.

"Oh, well, after that, it's more or less routine. Very dull and tiresome. We simply put a watch on them, one after another, and if they post anything we have a special clearance of the box at once to see if we can find a poison-pen production in it. There are other methods, but I needn't go into them now."

"What's behind all this poison-pen business?" asked Wendover. "You've had a wide experience of cases. Are these people mentally askew?"

"Now you've put your finger on the really interesting part of the thing," Duncannon admitted. "Mentally askew, you say? No, they're not dotty, if that's what you mean. Morally, I'd say they were a bit off. You'll think it funny, but sometimes I've been sorry for them when we've got them trapped."

"Very funny," Wendover agreed, sardonically. "But this is one of these jokes which have to be explained to me before I see the point."

"Well, I'll give you an example," Duncannon volunteered. "It may make my point a bit clearer. Just imagine a servant girl, plain, unattractive, rather timid by nature, not able to make friends easily, very isolated in life. There are plenty of people like that in all classes of society, you know. And because they're naturally shy, they tend to brood over the way other people treat them, look for slights, and so forth. Well, then, suppose this maid thinks her mistress is treating her badly. She can't stand up for herself. She shrinks from looking for a new place, because she hates going among strangers. And at last she gets a brilliant idea—write an anonymous letter to her mistress and make it a stinger. Perhaps she's picked up some odd information that will lend the thing a real barb. She sits down one night in her kitchen, lonely, smarting from some fresh grievance, and she decides to launch her little arrow. She goes out and slips it into the pillar-box. Next morning, she sees it delivered and she can watch its effect. A great thrill, that, for a starved and repressed creature, burning with some wrong real or fancied."

"This picture's a shade more sympathetic than the one you drew for Malwood and me," he commented. "He made out that the poison-pen pest was blood-brother to Neil Cream the murderer, Mr. Duncannon."

"Well, he's not so far out there, I think," the expert admitted soberly. "Neil Cream used strychnine, didn't he, while our friend down town uses ink? One poisoned the body; t'other one poisons the mind. It might be hard to say which of them has caused most harm."

"Oh, yes. Well, you can suppose that this first letter gives its authoress a thrill. After that, it's just like a drug-habit. She wants the thrill again, so she writes another letter. Then she begins to spread herself. There are her mistress's friends coming about the house. She knows something about each of them. Why should they be happy while the maid's miserable? So she starts on them next, and each letter gives her another kick and fastens the habit still more firmly on her. She feels she's got power in her hands. She can make these opulent people writhe and squirm merely by putting pen to paper. So her circle widens, ring by ring. By and by, she goes into still further fields, writes to people she's never even seen, people she knows about only by hearsay, prominent personalities in the town. That's how it grows."

"Ugh! I can see it, but it's not pretty," Wendover confessed in a tone of deep disgust. "But surely you people in the G.P.O. could stop these things in the post, once the writing on the envelope has become familiar? What's the good of delivering these damnable epistles to people at all?"

"We can't do that," Duncannon explained. "Even if I were certain I had a poison letter in my hand I couldn't open it to make sure, unless I had the special permission of the Postmaster-General. You can't play tricks of that sort with people's letters, or all confidence in the postal system would be gone. No, once a letter's posted it has to go through the mill with all the rest, unless the P.M.G. gives you special authority to interfere with it."

"Suppose we get down to brass tacks," the Chief Constable suggested. "What about this local poison pen? You've more or less made a corner in information about that, Mr. Duncannon. We've passed on anything we came across ourselves, so you have all the threads in your hands."

Duncannon took a leather wallet from his pocket and removed some papers from it.

"I thought you might like to see some specimens," he explained. "They illustrate what I've just been telling you. Now here's the first one that came into our hands. It was addressed to a Miss Ruth Jessop."

"I seem to know the name," interrupted Wendover. "Wait a moment. I've heard it before.... Oh, yes, that's it, perhaps. The Kestons mentioned it once or twice. What's your Miss Jessop like, Mr. Duncannon?"

"Not a particularly good looker," Duncannon admitted. "A bit pudding-faced and well-padded about the figure. Very eager to please, I thought, and says 'Mr. Duncannon' about every fourth word when she speaks. Somewhere in the thirties, her age would be."

"Yes, that seems to be the same, so far as I can remember," Wendover declared. "I'm sorry I interrupted you."

"Well, here's what she got out of the lucky-bag," Duncannon pursued. "I'll read it to you:

"Why do you hang round Mr. Shinfield the curate so much? People are all talking about it. Better to marry than burn, says you. But it takes two to marry, and perhaps he's not so keen. Ha! Ha! Hope to see you at the Mothers' Meeting in due course.

"No bad language in that one," Duncannon pointed out. "I inquired who this Mr. Shinfield is. He's the curate at St. Salvator's and Miss Jessop attends the services there. I don't know if she's done anything to lend point to what's in the letter. She seems the kind of dame to fuss over any man who comes near her, I judge, from the way she dealt with me in an interview I had with her. Most likely she's the same with the curate. But that's by the way. The point is that this precious production wasn't written by hand. It was made up from words and letters cut out of newspapers and gummed on to notepaper. So there's not much to take hold of, there."

"Same thing. But that's where this poison pen slipped up. We put our sorters on the lookout for any more letters with that kind of address on the envelope. They reported the addresses to us, and I called on the addressees immediately after the letters were delivered and got a lot of information in that way. Otherwise some of the things would have been burned at once, I expect."

"Now here's the second one we were able to trace. It's addressed to the maid, Cissie Worgate, at the house of a Mrs. Hyson... Mrs. Oswald Hyson."

"Do you?" said Duncannon, apparently a shade taken aback. "Well, anyhow, here's the production her maid got:

"A nice house you live in! I know all about your master and mistress. He likes tarts; and butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, one would think, to hear her. Like takes to like, so they married and lived happily ever after, I don't think. Ha! Ha! You must be pretty queer yourself, if you can stand it. But perhaps you're a Catholic too.

"Not very much," Duncannon admitted. "She's a little, worried-looking thing, with a faint squint. Perfectly respectable, according to her record, but not very attractive. Hard to get much out of her, I found. As to the contents of the letter, she avoided the subject of Mr. Hyson, I noticed; but she was all up in arms about the insinuations against her mistress. Mrs. Hyson was very kind to her, she said."

"Maybe," said Duncannon sceptically. "But some people are ready enough to bite the hand that feeds them. We take very little for granted in my line. What's more to the point, perhaps, she's a church mouse, and never misses anything that goes on at St. Salvator's on her nights out. I led her on to talk about the vicar and the curate. The curate's her favourite. 'Such a nice gentleman.' Mrs. Hyson's a Catholic, I gather?"

"You sounded almost as if you were suspecting this maid," he pointed out. "You don't, do you? People don't write anonymous letters to themselves."

"Oh, don't they?" exclaimed Duncannon ironically. "Why, it's one of the commonest features of the whole business. Look here. I had one case where a woman was pestered by anonymous letters, a perfect stream of them, making the vilest accusations against her. No one else was bothered. She used to throw fainting-fits when any of the letters was delivered. That went on for a couple of years. She was fined a fiver in the end. Every one of these scurrilous things was written by herself."

"To make herself interesting, of course," Duncannon said with a laugh. "Get the sympathy of her friends, and all that sort of thing. She fairly revelled in it—while it lasted. Oh, no, Mr. Wendover, you can't assume that the writers of anonymous letters are so simple as all that. One of the first dodges that occurs to them is to write a note to themselves, expecting people to reason exactly as you've been doing just now. We've got far past the stage of overlooking that possibility."

He picked out another paper, looked at it doubtfully for a moment, and then continued.

"Here's a specimen of a later vintage. The percentage of bad language increases as time goes on. I'll read it, and put in blank cartridges instead:

A nice —— you are, comforting a married woman when her—of a husband's got pressing business at the office, as the old joke says. I've got my eye on you, mister, and on your Aholibah too. Just you ease off, you ——, or I'll blow the —— gaff on you both. So there! And where would the two of you be then? Ha! Ha!"

"Well, he more or less had to," Duncannon said with a wooden face. "You see, I called along with the postman who delivered it and perhaps I gave him the idea that we knew the contents already."

"Well, I shall have to give you a full list and the documents finally, when we catch the writer," Duncannon answered, after a moment's thought, "so it doesn't much matter whether you get it now or later. It was addressed to a Mr. Norris Barsett."

"Barsett?" repeated Wendover. "H'm! I'd have thought Mr. Barsett would have had the decency to suppress that production."

"He'd no idea what was in it," Duncannon explained. "When I told him it was one of these poison-pen productions, he refused to look at it. He just opened it formally and handed it over to me straight away."

"I suppose he'd no idea that anyone else would be mentioned in it," said Wendover. "I know something about Barsett, and I don't think he's the kind to give a woman away intentionally. Any more of these pleasing exhibits?"

"Well, here's one addressed to Dr. Malwood. I know he's a friend of yours, but he gave me permission to show you it and tell you his name. He seems to take it as a joke, so far as I could see. Laughed very heartily over it and said he'd like to have a professional talk with the writer.

"You and your psychoanalysis! Just talking —— smut to a lot of females, that's what it is. Ha! Ha! Hope you get a —— good kick out of it, old boy. Glands, says you? ——, says I. May your harem never grow less, Solomon.

"It would be interesting to know what Dr. Malwood would make of the writer after a heart-to-heart chat."

"Oh, yes, it came by this morning's post. I'm a shade more careful than Barsett, though. I've read it, and I'm not going to hand it over to you, because there's a name in it which I prefer to suppress. You may guess it, but that's your affair. Here's the production, apart from that."

He took out his pocket-book, drew a paper from it, and began to read, suppressing a name when he came to it:

"They call you clever. Set a thief to catch a thief. But you can't catch me, —— you! Ha! Ha! You old hangman's tout. Do you get a commission from him, you ——? Anonymous letters are great fun. One can say what one thinks in them, and I think you're a ——, no less. Not married, are you? And don't want to be? Then try your friend Mrs. Blank and put Barsett's eye out. Good-bye to you, old bluebottle. Kiss the sergeant from me."

"Bluebottle, meaning a policeman, is in Shakespeare, I believe. It came in again in the middle of last century with the blue tunic; but I haven't heard it for quite a while. Still, that's beside the point, at present. I take it that you selected these specimens to illustrate something, Mr. Duncannon?"

"Well, in a way, yes," Duncannon agreed. "There are three or four points. First of all, you get a preoccupation with sex running through the lot. But that's no great help. It's too common amongst poison-pen productions to be of much use. Then in the letter to Miss Jessop you get the accusation about the curate, which is obviously there because the writer is also interested in that curate and seems a bit jealous. But curates are common game in this line. All it suggests is that the writer has something to do with St. Salvator's. And even that isn't a cert. Curates go out into circles outside the church-folk at times. But still, it's reinforced by something else. You notice the quotation from St. Paul, and Aholibah out of Ezekiel, and the anti-Catholic animus in the one the maid got. The maid's a Protestant, by the way."

"I should take that as excluding the younger generation from suspicion to some extent," Wendover interjected. "They don't know their Bibles as well as we older people do."

"Some of them are still brought up strictly enough in that line," Duncannon objected. "You simply can't take anything for granted. Well, there's something further. Just notice the definiteness in the accusations in the three to Miss Jessop, the maid, and Barsett and compare it with the general abuse in Dr. Malwood's letter and yours," he nodded to the Chief Constable. "The one to Dr. Malwood's a nasty bit of work, but by comparison with the first three, it's almost genial. No real bitterness in it, I mean. Same with the one to you, Sir Clinton, if you don't mind my saying so."

"It certainly doesn't unveil any awkward secrets," Sir Clinton agreed with a laugh. "I take it that you mean the writer doesn't know much about me. I'm a target merely because of my official position. And Malwood's obsession with glands is a thing that the merest acquaintance might have heard about. That's your point?"

"And it's not so hard to see that you've narrowed down your suspects to a couple, otherwise you wouldn't have brought up just these particular letters to show us. Your basis is this, isn't it? Somebody connected with St. Salvator's—as suggested by the curate reference. Somebody churchy to the extent that they know their Bible. Somebody jealous of Mrs. Hyson—to judge by the letter to the maid. So it's either the maid herself or Miss Jessop? That right?"

"Put a watch on the two of them and clear the pillar-boxes whenever they post anything. And perhaps something else to 'mak sicker,' as the Scots say."

"We'll manage it, I think, without bothering you. But I wanted to tell you that we're putting a watch on these two women. Otherwise some of your flatties might be interfering with my men, thinking they were up to no good. You'll see to that? Only, don't go spreading the glad news, please. The best way, perhaps, would be for me to bring my men to you and you could show them to your fellows without telling them what's in the wind. Just that my men aren't to be nailed for loitering with intent or anything of that sort."

"I'll fix it for you," Sir Clinton assured him. "And you'll let us know how you get on? Good hunting! It's high time that sort of thing was stopped."

Chapter Seven
LIFE'S UNFINISHED ROAD

THE Chief Constable had invited Dr. Malwood to a tête-à-tête dinner in order to extract some information from him. But when they had settled themselves comfortably in the smoking-room, he did not come immediately to the topic he had in mind.

"Any more letters from your friend with the poison pen?" he asked with a smile. "You and I got off fairly lightly, in comparison with some other people, to judge by the samples Duncannon showed me a while ago."

Malwood smiled in return as he picked a cigarette from the box which Sir Clinton had placed beside him.

"My specimen struck me as rather jovial," he agreed in an amused tone. " 'Glands, says you?— says I. May your harem never grow less, Solomon.' I'm no bigot. Everybody's entitled to their own opinion on the importance of glands, even if they express it a trifle coarsely. And as my practice is very largely among women, I don't mind being likened to Solomon. With a thousand wives or so, he must have been a bit of an expert in feminine vagaries, and I've no doubt I could have picked up lots of tips from him if we'd ever come across each other."

"It was news to me that you'd taken to psychoanalysis," Sir Clinton pointed out.

"H'm! Then evidently the poison pen doesn't know you intimately either as a friend or a patient," Sir Clinton inferred. "Your gland mania's public property. Anyone might get to know about that."

"Perhaps you're right," Malwood concurred. "I certainly didn't recognise the style. By the way, has that fellow Duncannon got on the track of the writer yet?"

"Not yet, so far as a capture goes. He seems to have narrowed down his suspect list to a couple of sex-starved creatures; but the actual trapping of the right one is likely to be a troublesome affair, he tells me."

"Sex-starved?" echoed the doctor. "Females, then, I presume. I suspected something of the sort from the letter I got. How did your epistle run?"

"Oh, referred to my bachelor life and suggested someone who might be kind to me. The whole lot are simply variations on the same theme, you know. The writer harps on one string—can't get away from it."

"One or two of my patients seem to have been favoured also," the doctor volunteered. "I didn't ask to see the letters. It just came out incidentally when we were talking over some points in their cases. But I gathered that all these things centred round one subject, plus malicious gossip when any was available."

"I hope your patients aren't taking the stuff too seriously," Sir Clinton said thoughtfully. "It must be worrying to get things like that when you're off your balance a little, anyhow."

"Yes, the sooner this business is stopped, the better it'll be," he said in a more serious tone. "Duncannon's got a long row to hoe, from what he told me about the affair. But I hope he'll lose no time. You never can tell what damage may be done by one of these things landing on a woman who isn't quite normal."

"You know that side of it better than I do, of course," Sir Clinton replied, "but I can quite understand. One can only hope that Duncannon may be lucky enough to run the creature down quickly. He hinted that he had a card or two up his sleeve in the matter. I didn't get too inquisitive about that. We're all entitled to our trade secrets. And that reminds me, Malwood, that I asked you here to-night with the idea of getting you to reveal one of your own trade secrets. I wouldn't ask such a thing normally, but the case is a special one, and there's no question of your information being made public."

"No blank cheques," he said, bluntly. "I must know what you're after before I say anything. And I don't promise to say anything at all, remember."

"Then I'll put my cards on the table," he said. "In strict confidence, of course. You had a Mrs. Telford among your patients, hadn't you?"

"No, you wouldn't hear about it so soon. I've had a letter from the Procurator-Fiscal up North who's looking up the thing. They hold no inquests in Scotland, you know. The Fiscal goes into the facts of cases like this one and makes up his mind whether there's any charge to be brought against anyone. There's no public inquiry of any sort."

"Yes, and I'm applying to you. Strictly between ourselves, Forrest—that's the Fiscal, who happens to be a friend of mine—is just a shade doubtful about the affair. It might be suicide, or again her husband might be mixed up in it."

"Rubbish!" he declared at last. "I mean there's no question of Telford's having taken that line. I saw a good deal of the two of them, together and apart, in connection with her case; and they were devoted to each other. You can't take in a doctor so easily as the man in the street in some cases. You can take it from me that if anything happened to that girl, young Telford would be completely knocked out. He simply idolised her, Driffield. There's no other word for it. But the whole thing's impossible, I tell you. Her case turned out a complete success. She was cured when she left here and went back to Scotland. I had a talk with him when he came to take her home, just a few days ago, and if any man was glad at the way things turned out, it was young Telford. He'd had a rough time while it lasted, poor beggar, and his relief was tremendous."

"That's something for my Fiscal friend," Sir Clinton noted. "I don't say that he's particularly keen on the idea of a murder, but his job is to make sure, you know. Suicide looks much more likely, on the facts of the case."

"But suicide's just as unlikely," protested Malwood. "When she left my hands, she was as sound as a bell, physically. She'd nothing to worry about, so far as her case went. It was a perfect cure."

"Well, she's dead," said Sir Clinton testily. "It wasn't accident. So it must have been either murder or suicide."

"I can't understand it," the doctor said, definitely. "Tell me what happened. I won't let it go further. But perhaps I might be able to throw some light on it if I knew the facts. It's not likely, though, I must admit."

"It's damnably awkward for Forrest," Sir Clinton explained. "He was an acquaintance, if not actually a friend, of both Telford and his wife. The whole affair's in his hands at present. If it's a murder case, it's his business to get to the bottom of it regardless of personal factors. On the other hand, if it's suicide, then there's no point in advertising the fact. He can satisfy himself and then hold his hand with a clear conscience. It's happened in an out-of-the-way place and the only stir will be a local one, and small at that, for the Telfords were well liked and people will be sorry."

"It is. Now here's what happened. You probably know that the Telfords had a cottage up in Glen Terret where they used to go for week-ends and in the summer, for the fishing. They both fished a bit. That's how they struck up an acquaintance with Forrest, for he does a bit in that line too. Curiously enough, it was fishing up yonder that brought me in touch with Forrest myself."

"No. He writes to me because Mrs. Telford's been living here under your charge for a while."

"I begin to see what you're after," Malwood admitted. "But I'll have to hear more before I make up my mind. Go on with your story."

"Then don't interrupt so much," Sir Clinton said, rather restively. "Where was I? Oh, yes. After you discharged Mrs. Telford from your Institute, she went back to Scotland with her husband. You'd recommended fresh air and so forth, so they determined to settle down for a month or two at Glen Terret in this cottage that they'd rented. It's within ninety minutes' drive of Telford's office—at least if one drives at the rate he's accustomed to—so he was able to get back to the cottage every evening. She was left there alone all day, except at the week-ends. The maid they had took scarlet fever ten days ago and was whisked off to hospital, and they hadn't been able to get a substitute."

"Mostly farmfolk and the like. Nobody of her own type near at hand, if that's what you're after."

"H'm! It wasn't quite that I meant when I recommended fresh air," the doctor said, doubtfully. "However, go on."

"On the day of this tragedy, Telford went off as usual in the morning," Sir Clinton continued. "It seems that after he left his office he went to his house to pick up one or two wireless gadgets he wanted. He'd brought his short-wave transmitter to the cottage in Glen Terret when they settled down there."

"Off the grid," Sir Clinton explained with a smile. "They've rather spoiled the look of Glen Terret with the power plyons, but there's no doubt that current is a blessing to people in these out-of-the-way districts. The cottage had electric light, so there was no trouble about power for Telford's wireless stunt."

"Telford arrived at the cottage about eight o'clock. Usually, his wife came to the door when she heard the car, but this time she didn't appear. He took it that she was busy with the evening meal they used to have as soon as he came home. So he ran his car into the shed that served as a garage and walked into the cottage, expecting to find his wife. To his surprise, the place was empty. What's more, there had been no preparations made for supper. He began to feel uneasy, which was natural enough in a lonely place like that. There's always the chance of a tramp and if I'd been Telford I'd have had a dog in the house. But Mrs. Telford didn't like dogs, it seems.

"He hunted about and found a note which she'd left for him. No one but himself has seen that note. His tale is that he tore it up and threw it away a short time later. That's a pity, in the circumstances. According to him, it said that she'd gone for a walk, as he might be later than usual and it was a fine evening. He was to follow her up the Midwhaup. She wouldn't be far.

"Perhaps I'd better give you some notion of the lie of the land there. About a mile above the cottage in Glen Terret, another glen runs into the main one, bringing in a fair-sized stream to join the Terret Water. In dry weather, you can cross this stream—it's called the Midwhaup—on stepping-stones; but after rain the stepping-stones are under water and you can't get over dry-shod. The result is that anyone going for a walk from the cottage would stick to the nearer bank of the Midwhaup unless the stepping-stones were easily passable. As it happened, there had been a lot of rain a day or two earlier, the burns were pretty full, and no girl would have got across without the bother of taking off her shoes and her stockings, if she were wearing any. Obviously, then, Mrs. Telford would keep to the nearer bank. Now half a mile further up from the point where it joins the Terret, the Midwhaup leaps over a rocky ridge, so that there's a fall, perhaps fifty feet high with a deep pool at the foot. In a dry season, it's not much more than a trickle; but when the burns are in spate the Hart Lynn, as they call it, is quite a sizeable waterfall and drops sheer into the big pool below it with a roar you can hear at quite a long distance.

"Now to continue Telford's story. He followed the track by the Terret until he came to the stepping-stones. They were under water, so he assumed that his wife wasn't likely to have crossed on them, and he turned up the nearer bank of the Midwhaup. I forgot to say that the Midwhaup runs through a wooded glen, so one can't see ahead to any extent.

"Telford went on until he came near Hart Lynn, and then he turned aside from the track and approached the fall. Jutting out over the pool there's a big projecting rock which forms the best view-point for the fall. It seems he and Mrs. Telford often used to go to it when they took a walk in that direction; so he thought that she might be waiting there for him. He came out from among the trees, stepped out on this tongue of rock, and saw that his wife wasn't there. He was just about to retrace his steps to the path again when he happened to glance down into the pool below; and there he saw his wife's body swirling round and round in the whirlpool formed by the fall. He recognised it at once by the dress.

"Of course he scrambled down to the water's edge at once, and with the help of a long branch—you couldn't swim in a place like that—he managed to get the body ashore. It was too late to do anything. She was quite dead. What's more, she'd been pinioned with a strap round her ankles and another one round her wrists so that her hands were behind her back."

"A bad shock for anyone, let alone her husband," Sir Clinton agreed. "There was nothing he could do for her. So after a while he left the body on the edge of the pool and made his way hell-for-leather down the glen. There's a crofter's cottage near the junction of the two glens, and he went there, looking for assistance. The crofter and his wife weren't too keen on the business, it seems. It was near dark by this time, and they didn't want to go up to Hart Lynn. I can guess why. There's supposed to be a kelpie there."

"A kelpie? That's a water-spirit of sorts, isn't it? But no one believes in kelpies nowadays, surely," said the doctor.

"Not in Trafalgar Square, certainly. But you can take my word for it that in lonelier places there are still lots of folk who believe in the kelpie. They'll tell you it swells torrents and devours women and children. And as that burn was in spate, I'm not surprised that the crofter boggled a bit at going up there in the dusk, if he believed in kelpies. However, his kindliness got the better of his fears, and he and his wife set off for the Lynn while Telford hurried on to get his car and bring up a doctor and the police."

"I don't envy him his drive," the doctor commented. "In my line one gets inured to deaths, but not that kind of death. It must have been pretty ghastly for the poor devil. I know—none better—how he adored that unfortunate girl. It was touching."

"I'll go on," Sir Clinton said. "He picked up a doctor and a couple of policemen—one was a sergeant—and drove them back as near the Lynn as the car would go. By that time it was dark; and they had to go about their work by the light of a flashlamp. They got Mrs. Telford's body down to the car and so back to the cottage. The doctor drove the sergeant back to his home, so that he could make his report and then they could get to work next morning. The constable stayed the night at the cottage as company for Telford. He needed someone at hand, I gather, for he was completely shattered so far as nerves went. The doctor gave him a jag, probably, to let him get some sleep."

"The only thing that was certain, at that stage, was that it was no accident. The pinioning proved that beyond any doubt. So it was either suicide or murder. The crofter's wife deposed that a tramp or a tinker-body had passed her house in the afternoon, going up Glen Terret, so they set the machine going to trace him down. Beyond that, there was nothing more they could do until daylight.

"Next morning, a police surgeon and an inspector turned up. The doctor examined the body and found a slight fracture in the skull which seemed the most probable cause of death. But that really proved nothing, for there are rocks jutting up in the pool below the Lynn and it seemed quite likely that she'd struck one of them in her fall. The straps used to pinion her ankles and wrists were cheap things, such as you can buy in any chain store. Telford identified them as a pair he had bought himself for strapping some light stuff together in transit in the car. They had been lying about the cottage for a while, according to him. It seems that the strap round the ankles had been drawn tight, so tight that it marked the skin. The one round the wrists was far looser, a hole or a couple of holes short of the highest possible tension, they found."

"When it was light enough to make it worth while, the police got Telford to accompany them up to the Lynn. On the way up, he explained that he'd torn up the note which his wife had left for him and showed them where he'd pitched the fragments into the Terret. They hunted about, but could find nothing. That isn't perhaps surprising, seeing that the burn was in spate.

"When they got up to the crofter's cottage, they put the family through it to extract any evidence; but they got nothing out of that. No one had noticed Mrs. Telford passing. The tramp had come up to their door in the late afternoon, asking for a meal of sorts, but they hadn't liked the look of him and had sent him about his business. They were able to describe him clearly enough. But just to finish with him, I may as well say that he's out of the picture. He was run down and cleared himself completely when he was questioned.

"When they got up to the Lynn, the inspector began to keep an eye open. It had been rainy weather just before this, and the soil took imprints fairly well. The track itself offered nothing; but when they came to the place where one steps off to go to the Lynn there were plenty of softish bits free of grass, with footmarks showing clearly enough. There weren't many of them, and they were easily picked out from one another. The crofter was able to show them where he and his wife had gone on the previous night, so that eliminated two sets. The only other two were Mrs. Telford's walking shoes and Telford's town shoes. The tracks of both led down to the out-jutting rock and even appeared on some soil that had accumulated on top of it. The inspector made a careful examination and found that in every case of superposition, Telford's prints had been made after those made by his wife. That, of course, fitted his story completely."

"Suicide, then," the doctor concluded. "No signs of any struggle, were there, or anything like that?"

"None whatever. The inspector concluded that it was a clear case. She'd gone up there, put the strap round her ankles, then she'd put her hands behind her back and pulled the strap round her wrists as tightly as she could. You can't get a strap very tight, that way, as you'll find if you try. The strapping was to prevent herself struggling to save herself in the water, for it seems she was a good swimmer. Then she had gone down, and apparently her head struck a rock, so that she died without any prolonged agony. Then Telford had come on the scene. They could see where he'd torn out grass and undergrowth in his scramble down to the water's edge. It's very nearly a perpendicular slope and he'd taken a risk or two.

"So there was the whole affair straightened out, apparently. The inspector thought so. All he wanted after that was enough facts to put in his notebook for his report. And with that in his mind, he began questioning Telford, rather aimlessly I gather. Had Mrs. Telford been in her usual spirits that morning? Had she shown any signs of being out of sorts? Anything peculiar in her manner during the last week or so? Did Telford know of anything that might be weighing on her mind? And so on. Just the kind of questions anyone might be moved to ask in the circumstances.

"But it was just here that the trouble began, unfortunately. Telford, according to the inspector, behaved as if he'd something to conceal. What he was hiding, the inspector couldn't make out, but he certainly got the feeling that Telford was keeping something back. I gather that the inspector put Telford down as a liar, and none too clever a liar at that. As this suspicion grew, the inspector began to think things over afresh, and an awkward notion came into his mind. What about a suicide pact? Suppose the Telfords had made one; and that Telford, after letting his wife kill herself, had drawn back when it came to his turn? That kind of thing does happen, you know.

"Now that idea would fit the evidence well enough, as you can see, except the loose strapping of the girl's wrists. It doesn't conflict with the footprint evidence; for one can assume that they went to the Lynn together and that Telford walked behind the girl when they came to the path leading to the fall. And, unfortunately, the crucial bit of evidence that would side-track this theory has disappeared—the letter Telford said he found waiting for him at the cottage when he got home."

"Exactly. There's no proof either way, except Telford's word. The whole affair is worrying Forrest badly, I can see, because he happened to be a friend of the Telfords. It's a hateful business to even seem to suspect a friend of foul play. On the other hand, just because he is a friend of Telford's, he can't afford to let things slide. He's in a position of trust and he can't let even a suspicion arise that he's putting friendship before business. Naturally, he'd like to know of any evidence which might throw even a glimmer of light on it all. And, preferably, he'd rather have evidence that would clear Telford of any shadow of suspicion."

"I can understand that," admitted the doctor. "I rather like young Telford, from what I've seen of him."

"Then I'll come to grips with the business," Sir Clinton went on. "Forrest wants to know what was wrong with that girl when she came to you for treatment. I can see what he's thinking about: cancer, or something like that, which might prey on the girl's mind and make her afraid for the future. She's dead now, poor little thing, and nothing can harm her. But Telford's case is still in the balance. I don't know how far your etiquette allows you to talk, Malwood; but if you can say anything tending to clear Telford, it's purely for Forrest's hearing. It wouldn't become public knowledge without your consent. What about it?"

Dr. Malwood was not a person who could be rushed. He looked up at the cornice for some minutes without answering. Obviously he was weighing his decision carefully before coming down on one side or the other. At last he spoke.

"You remember how I ran across you and Wendover at Mollie Keston's wedding, and we talked a bit about hormones? I've some recollection of telling you something about them. Well, in one case there's apparently a rather complex relationship involved. The secretions of the pituitary gland act upon other glands and may stimulate them to produce a certain hormone which throws a woman off her balance, like dosing her with yohimbine. The actual sources of this stimulating hormone are the Graafian follicles. Knock some of them out of action with those highly-penetrating X rays I told you about, and you cut down the production of hormone to a normal output. Then the superexcitation of the patient would disappear."

"I see your point," Sir Clinton admitted, rather amused by Malwood's cautious and impersonal treatment of the subject. "If a patient came to you suffering from a mild attack of nymphomania, that's the treatment you'd try? And there's a chance of a cure?"

"It was giving the patient trouble. Putting an almost unbearable strain on her power of self-control."

"So far as cutting down the output of hormone went, it was a complete success. Physically, the patient became quite normal again."

"She regained self-control completely. I'm quite satisfied on that score. But I'll admit she seemed a little off her balance. I don't mean insane or anything of that sort. Still, I noticed that as she improved physically, she seemed to grow more and more worried about something or other. I'm not a psychoanalyst, you know, in spite of our friend the poison-pen expert; and she didn't confide in me so far as to discuss what her trouble was. Perhaps some reminiscence or other was troubling her. I'm merely telling you what any layman would have noticed in her at the time, I think."

"You needn't elaborate that," Sir Clinton decided. "Just one more question. You saw her and her husband together afterwards. Was she as fond of him as ever, and vice versa?"

"Every bit," Malwood answered promptly. "You can take that as definite. And he was just as keen on her, too."

"I don't think I need give Forrest all this. Put it in a nutshell, Malwood. You see no reason why they shouldn't have been a perfectly normal, happy couple, once she was cured?"

"I know nothing against it," the doctor declared, after a pause for consideration.

Sir Clinton noticed how carefully Malwood chose his words, but he abstained from comment on that point.

"Oh, none of us is omniscient," he said, lightly. "You can't bring yourself to say that she was of unsound mind, then? It would be useful to Forrest."

"Pity, that. It would have closed the business. But in any case, it's suicide on the face of the evidence, and I'm sure Forrest never believed it was anything else. He won't stir up mud by hunting for a motive. That's hardly his affair, so long as he's sure there's been no foul play."

"We medicals can't afford to spend too much sentiment on casual patients," he said at last, "but I'm sorry for poor young Telford. It's the devil's own business for him. I hate to think of it. She was such an attractive girl, and... Well, I thought I'd made everything straight for them."

"She was in your care for a while," he said. "Was she in your Institute all the time?"

"Oh, no," Malwood explained. "She lived with her father for a bit at the start. There was no need for her to be on my premises until we actually began the X-ray treatment. My place isn't gigantic, you know, Driffield. We can't take in boarders who might just as well be living in town. We have to keep our rooms for people actually under treatment."

"Naturally," Sir Clinton agreed. "So she lived with her father for a few weeks while you were going over the case. Yes, obviously."

Malwood was struck by something in Sir Clinton's tone which suggested that, having got his answer, he was paying no attention to it but was thinking of something further.

"I like that!" the Chief Constable retorted. "You charge three guineas for your thoughts, when a patient comes to you; and you expect to get mine for a penny."

"Well, call it three guineas," Malwood rejoined. "Then you'll find yourself with something we medicals often get landed with: a bad debt to collect. Seriously, what's in your mind?"

"Nothing to do with you," Sir Clinton replied at once. "I was just wondering whether there were two letters waiting for Telford when he got back to that cottage, or one letter, or no letter at all. I must get Forrest to check that up, if he can."

"I've played fair by you," Malwood pointed out, rather disingenuously. "Suppose you do the same here."

"How easily you rise to a fly, Malwood," he retorted in a chaffing tone. "I was going to say that the thing's obvious, but I forgot that Duncannon probably didn't give you the names of his poison-pen suspects. I'll tell you this. Both of them were acquainted, to some extent, with that unfortunate Telford girl."

"I see what you're after, I think," he declared finally. "You think that damned creature's hand's in the Telford case? When you talk about a second letter, you're thinking of that? Wait a bit, I see it now! You mean that Mrs. Telford may have had one of these infernal productions by post that day and it drove her to suicide? And when Telford came home he found that letter along with the one she wrote to him. Naturally he'd destroy the anonymous one...."

"And if her own letter mentioned the anonymous one, he'd have to destroy it also, or the whole affair would have come out. I don't say it happened. But it's a possibility. And in things of that sort one has to examine every possibility."

"Easy enough. Glen Terret's a lonely place. Very few people live up there. The postman won't have the slightest difficulty in remembering if he had a letter for her that day. He might even remember what it looked like. But that's Forrest's business. My part's merely to write him a confidential letter, putting him on the alert."

"Well, if you turn out to be right, they ought to hang that poison-pen expert," declared Malwood, bitterly.

"Then the sooner they begin to think about it, the better," said Malwood viciously. "I'd no notion that things like that could happen."

"Don't get so fierce about it," said the Chief Constable soothingly. "It's only an idea of mine, you know. There may be nothing in it at all."

"There's another thing I wanted to ask you about. Mere curiosity this time, and it's not one of your patients. Have you heard anything about old Lockhurst the stockbroker? I've met him once or twice. A decent old boy. Very likeable. I know he's gone down with a heart-attack, but I've heard nothing further. Is he going on all right?"

"He got over it wonderfully well," Malwood answered. "But two doses of that trouble at his age aren't much of a joke, Driffield. I'm told he's doing pretty well, as well as one could expect. But even at the best it'll be a while before he's fit for much."

"I'm very sorry," Sir Clinton said, sincerely. "I rather took to him, from what I've seen of him. If I hadn't a good stockbroker of my own, there's no one I'd like better in that line than old Lockhurst. I don't know where he gets his information, but I had a specimen of one of his predictions which surprised me more than a little."

"I deal with him myself," Malwood explained. "I'm no expert in stocks and shares, so I depend on his advice. He's never let me down. The younger generation are rather apt to put him down as an old fogey. He's a bit strait-laced in his moral views, you know. But it suits me."

"That fellow Hyson's in charge for the time being, I believe," said Malwood in a dry tone.

"You don't care for him, I remember," said Sir Clinton. "Well, I hope old Lockhurst will pull through safely. And now let's change the subject. What's the stop-press news about the endocrine glands? I'm always in hopes that you'll blunder into my field sooner or later, you know."

Chapter Eight
THE I.B. AGAIN

"YOU haven't netted your poison pen yet?" inquired the Chief Constable. "Otherwise we'd have heard from you, I take it?"

"No, not yet," he confessed. "These things are often a bit long-drawn-out, you know. Still, we'll get the writer, sooner or later. We never drop a case."

"Where have you got to, exactly?" Sir Clinton asked. "I have a reason for asking."

"To tell you the truth," he admitted, "we struck a false trail at one point. The thing's getting a shade more difficult for the moment, because our friend the poison pen has taken to new methods. No, thanks, I'd rather smoke a pipe if you don't mind."

He pulled out his pouch, deliberately filled and lighted his pipe, and then resumed.

"Most of our local postmen are, naturally enough, very keen on this affair. Some of them rather fancy themselves as Sherlocks; and although so far they've hardly justified the parallelism they've done their best. It means more work for me, sifting all the tales they bring in; but it's all in a good cause and one mustn't damp their zeal. The main point is, we've shown some of the envelopes of the genuine poison-pen stuff to a lot of them, so they have a good idea of what to look out for. They keep their eyes open for anything of the sort that passes through their hands, and we get the stuff reported every time before it's delivered. If it passes one sorter, another one spots it, or the delivery man recognises it as he goes his rounds."

"Yes. It's a pity you can't suppress the stuff as it passes through the P.O. But if you can't, you can't."

"Must play the game according to the rules," said Duncannon. "We can't go running to the Secretary of State every day or two for a warrant, you know. However, my point is that most of our men are on the look-out for any envelopes addressed in that way; and they get a good mark, naturally, if they report they've noticed a specimen. Well, a week or two ago, one of our men was clearing the pillar-box at the corner of Acacia Drive and Cowslip Avenue. You know the place I mean, perhaps?"

Sir Clinton recollected that the Hysons lived in Cowslip Avenue but he refrained from drawing attention to the point at the moment.

"Just as our man had got all the letters into his bag, a rough-looking customer lounged up with a letter in his hand and showed it to the postman. 'Here! Is this all right?' he asked our man. Our fellow looked at it and recognised the poison-pen technique at once. The letter was stamped, ready for the post, so he said to the fellow: 'Right! Shove it through the slit.' And he picked it out of the wire basket as it fell down."

"The point being, I suppose, that your postman could then swear it had passed through the usual channel and so, if any case came out of it, there could be no riding off on an informality?"

"Just so," Duncannon agreed. "Postmen aren't supposed to collect letters by hand, even if they're standing beside an open pillar-box. This man of ours saw the possibility of the technical point being raised, later on, so he made sure of his ground. He's no fool. Then, when he'd got his bag shut, he began to question the fellow who had brought the letter. By his way of it, he'd found it lying on the pavement, down Cowslip Avenue, and had brought it along to the pillar to post it. Somebody had dropped it, he supposed, naturally enough; and he was doing his Boy Scout act by posting it.

"Our man questioned him fairly tactfully, without giving away what he was after, and eventually got the fellow's address out of him by some stuff about a possible reward. The customer seemed quite straight, gave his address without hesitation; and our man jotted it down. He reported it at once when he brought in his bag of collected letters, and when we looked through them it was easy enough to confirm his suspicion that it was a poison-pen production that he'd spotted.

"Well, that was the first time we'd come up against a human being in the flesh in connection with the despatch of these things, and naturally we were all out on the trail immediately. It was just possible that this rough-looking fellow's story wasn't true and that the poison-pen expert had handed the letter to him to post. For all one could say, this beggar might have been the poison pen in person. So we had to check things up.

"We did. And at once we cleared the fellow. He was perfectly honest—and completely illiterate! We found that when he drew his unemployment pay at the Bureau he made a cross, for he couldn't even write his own name. Forgotten all he'd ever learned at school completely. It's not a common case, but he was considerably below normal in intelligence."

"That cleared him, then?" queried Sir Clinton, as Duncannon seemed to hesitate for a moment.

"Well, not completely," the Post Office expert admitted with his curious wry smile. "You can't bet on anything as a certainty in our line. Once we tracked a man for three years and when we ran him down at last he turned out to be illiterate, just like this fellow. And yet we got him, finally. He'd posed as illiterate always, but he could write well enough when he chose. So you see you can't take anything for granted. However, in this case we went into the man's character and reputation and he came through with flying colours. His story about picking up the letter was quite sound, so far as could be tested."

"Looks as though your poison-pen friend had tumbled to the fact that you watch the pillar-boxes," commented Sir Clinton. "That's going to make things more difficult for you. Any other cases of these letters being dropped in the street?"

"One other, so far," Duncannon explained. "Curiously enough, it was in the same district, just a day or two later. And, curse it, it let us in for a spot of trouble. You know we'd narrowed down our preliminary investigations to two suspects, and we were keeping an eye on their postings. One of them was a Miss Ruth Jessop. My men were keeping an eye on her, and they reported that she'd been seen posting a letter in the pillar-box near the other end of Cowslip Avenue. One of our men shoved a folded newspaper into the letter-slit as soon as she turned away, so that it opened out in falling down and covered everything that had already been posted. Then he cut off and brought a man from the nearest P.O. to open the box. Meanwhile my other man detained Miss Jessop. She made a devil of a fuss, not unnaturally. Went clean off the handle with rage at being mixed up in such an affair, my man reports. However, he got her to stay till the box was opened. Another couple of letters had been posted in the meanwhile, but they were on top of the newspaper and didn't count. Underneath the paper were half-a-dozen letters and one of them was a poison-pen one, so far as the address on the envelope showed."

"Anything but that," Duncannon admitted frankly. "And what was worse, she told the same tale as the out-of-work. She'd been coming along Cowslip Avenue after paying a visit to her friends the Hysons who live there, and she'd seen a letter lying on the pavement. As it was stamped ready for posting, she concluded it had dropped out of someone's hand unnoticed. She'd picked it up and posted it, quite as anyone might well do. So there we were! Nothing for it but to apologise and try to smooth her down—not with much success, I gather."

"You mean that the other suspect I had was the Hysons' maid?" Duncannon inferred. "That's just the bother. She might quite well have slipped out when the Avenue was clear and dropped these things on the pavement for the first comer to pick up. As, in fact, the fellow on the dole actually did."

"Did anyone see the letters being lifted from the pavement, by any chance?" asked Sir Clinton.

"As a matter of fact," he admitted, "we did get evidence of that in Miss Jessop's case. From one of your men, whose beat takes in Cowslip Avenue. It seems he was coming along about fifty yards or so behind Miss Jessop and he noticed her stoop down and pick something off the pavement."

"He didn't say anything about it at the time?" queried the Chief Constable. "Why didn't he, when he saw all this squabble going on at the pillar-box?"

"Because before she got to the pillar-box and posted the letter, he'd turned off out of Cowslip Avenue into one of the lateral roads, so he saw nothing to attract his attention. It was only afterwards that one of my men remembered having seen him coming along behind Miss Jessop. Then we got hold of him, and he corroborated her tale about the picking up of the letter."

"Losers know where to seek," commented Sir Clinton. "She might easily have sent the letter skimming ahead of her without the constable spotting what she was doing. Then when she came up to it on the pavement, she'd only to stoop down and pick it up in the most innocent way."

"That possibility didn't escape me," said Duncannon, dryly. "But be that as it may, we're no better off so far as proof goes. And this contretemps has rather dished us; for we've had to call off our watch on Miss Jessop after that fiasco. She'd have spotted it, now that she's been pounced on. So we're watching the other woman for a change, at present. If we get her, then well and good. If not, the resources of civilisation and the G.P.O. are not exhausted. But we must let things quiet down a bit in Miss Jessop's neighbourhood before trying anything fresh. Whether she's the poison pen or not, she'll be over touchy at present for us to risk an open row by playing any new tricks."

"It'll be a bit difficult if the pest confines operations to dropping letters about instead of posting them," opined the Chief Constable. "I don't know exactly how the thing stands, legally; but it might raise a ticklish problem. The offence is 'sending or attempting to send a postal packet' of a certain sort, isn't it? You might have to prove that dropping a stamped envelope in the street constituted 'an attempt to send,' before you could get a conviction. It looks a bit tricky to me. By the way, you're allowing these foul things to be delivered. Haven't you a section in the Post Office Act, 1908, which empowers you to detain such letters and still get a conviction eventually? The offence is in putting them into the post, not in their actually reaching the addressee. Why not stop them en route?"

"Because there's a fair chance that the contents may give us a clue, and although we can detain them we haven't the power to open them without a special warrant. For instance, I'm quite willing to admit that both Miss Jessop and the maid may be quite innocent. I may be barking up the wrong tree entirely. If we don't see the tenor of the things as they come to hand, we might well be missing some straight tip to quite another origin. We simply can't afford to neglect any possible clues whatever, in an affair of this sort."

"Sound enough, that," Sir Clinton admitted. "And now I think I may be able to put something in your way. Had you ever any complaints about poison-pen letters from a Mr. Telford or his wife?"

"Well, I have a suspicion in that quarter. Could you find out if one or more of these epistles found its way to the Telfords up in Scotland? They have a cottage in a lonely part of the country—here's the address—so that possibly the postman who delivered letters there might remember something about what he left for them since he can't have many letters to deal with on a beat like that. I've jotted the approximate date on the paper along with the address. If you sent one of the envelopes of the poison-pen stuff to the local postmaster, he could show it to the man who delivered the letters on that beat, round about that period, and probably the postman might remember."

"If you've got any inside information, I think you ought to let me share it," he said.

"I haven't any. It's just a notion of mine. Quite likely I'm sending you on a wild-goose chase," Sir Clinton admitted frankly. "Here are the facts. Judge for yourself."

And he proceeded to give Duncannon the story of Mrs. Telford's death so far as he knew it.

"That would be a damnable business if it turns out that you're right," the expert declared when he had heard the facts. "You mean that the poison pen had learned something about Mrs. Telford and the very thought of it coming out was enough to drive that wretched girl to suicide?"

"It's on the cards," was as far as the Chief Constable felt inclined to go. "Still, it ought to be sifted, Duncannon. It's a question of finding out whether it was suicide or not, for until that's established there's always room for ill-wishers to hint that young Telford had a hand in his wife's death. My friend the Procurator-Fiscal is naturally anxious to get down to the roots of the case; and I think your investigation, when you make it, might be of some help. You'll put it in hand as soon as possible, won't you?"

"The best thing would be for me to go up there myself," he decided. "I can get there in less than a day by car, probably quicker than by training it and waiting for connections. But first of all I'll get on to the local P.O. by telephone, so that no time will be wasted when I do arrive."

"Of course. But, frankly, I hope it's a mare's nest in spite of your forebodings."

"Because if you're right, I feel my responsibility for not having run down this poison pen before it caused Mrs. Telford's death. That's not a very pleasant thought to have on one's mind. If only we'd been a bit quicker..."

"The damage is done. It's no good worrying now. The thing is to get the creature before more harm comes of it."

"You needn't tell me that," retorted Duncannon. "I'll speed things up, now; you can count on that. And I'll let you know at once if I find anything up North."

Two days later, the expert of the Investigation Branch returned and laid his results before the Chief Constable.

"You were right enough in your suspicions," he declared. "I've been into the affair and the facts are beyond doubt. I got hold of the postman who takes letters up Glen Terret. He remembered all about it."

"Oh, it's quite all right," Duncannon assured him. "You're suspecting his evidence of being biassed by a desire to score a mark? Actually, it's a special case, where he had some reason for taking notice. The Telfords had a maid, and it appears that this man was a bit keen on her, though they weren't actually engaged. She took scarlet fever and went off to hospital. So naturally enough, when he went up Glen Terret on his round, he fell into talk with Mrs. Telford when she came out for her letters. There was only one, that morning; and he held it in his hand while he chatted with her about the girl. He was rather shy of Mrs. Telford, so he looked down at the letter while he was talking to her; and so he happened to notice the peculiarity of the envelope."

"There's only a single delivery in Glen Terret; about midday, he reached the cottage, he says."

"H'm!" commented the Chief Constable. "So that's two useful documents which have gone astray: the poison-pen letter and another one."

"You mean the letter she left for her husband?" Duncannon suggested. "Well, of course, we've nothing to do with that. It never passed through the post. There's been some talk about its disappearance, though, up there. It doesn't take much to make country-folk chatter."

"No objection to my passing your results on to the Procurator-Fiscal up there?" asked Sir Clinton. "He's anxious to get all the evidence in the case. Forrest's his name. Perhaps you came across him?"

"No. But you can do what you like in the matter of the letter. He can get hold of the postman if he wants him, easily enough."

"Thanks, I'll drop him a note. By the way, are you any further forward in the matter of the poison pen itself? I'm a bit troubled about the possible effects of these letters, after this Telford affair. No use offering you the services of our finger-print expert, I suppose? You've one of your own, no doubt."

"All the letters and envelopes smell slightly of rubber, and there are no finger-prints," Duncannon replied.

"Ah! Rubber gloves, eh? That will always be confirmatory evidence if we find a pair on the premises after you've spotted your quarry. No use in the meantime, though."

Chapter Nine
GAS

CISSIE WORGATE, the Hysons' maid, had Thursdays and Sundays to herself from three o'clock onwards; and Mrs. Hyson almost invariably allowed her to go out on Tuesday evenings as well. But had it not been for the cinema and the multifarious activities of St. Salvator's Church, Cissie might well have found her spare time hanging rather heavily on her hands. A shy, unattractive little thing, she had not the knack of making friends in this town to which she had come a few years earlier in search of a place. No man had ever given her more than a passing glance, and her only intimates were two gossipy old sisters of her own class who entertained her to tea once a week and spent the time in talking scandal about their neighbours.

The cinema was a godsend to her. She could sit there hour after hour for sixpence in warmth and comfort, gazing at screen-heroes and putting herself mentally in the place of the heroines they embraced. That gave her the few thrills which she ever experienced. Gangster films merely bored her. She could not put herself in the place of people like that. Romance, for her, meant hot kisses, passionate embraces, and the world well lost, if need be: everything, in fact, which never came into her own emotional life. The silver screen was a fairyland where dreams came true, something completely divorced from the ordinary, everyday code.

Balancing the cinema, St. Salvator's Church filled the rest of her time. It formed the centre of her social life, such as that was; but even there, though some of the congregation spoke to her casually, they seemed to have no desire to deepen the acquaintanceship. The Vicar was much too exalted a person for her to feel at her ease with him. For the curate, Mr. Shinfield, she cherished a passion which she knew herself to be quite hopeless. He was always kind, ready to chat with her after a church function, and quite devoid of any habit of "talking down" to her.

He occupied a good deal of her thoughts: a tall, handsome man in the late twenties, with a contented but not self-contented smile when he chose to use it. "He's so clean-looking," Cissie summed up his appearance to herself. Unmarried, of course. Cissie hated to think that he might even get engaged. All these young women, better-dressed than she—for St. Salvator's had a mixed congregation—competing for his attention. And some of them not so young, either. That Miss Jessop was always hovering round with her: "Yes, Mr. Shinfield," and "No, indeed, Mr. Shinfield," as if no one else should have a chance of speaking to him. Pudding-faced old cat! For to Cissie, thirty-five seemed well past the prime.

Her two acquaintances also attended St. Salvator's. And if Cissie's heaven was in the cinema, her purgatory came during her visits to them. Over their tea they would discuss the curate's matrimonial prospects in the frankest manner, changing the runners and betting from week to week in the light of fresh information laboriously acquired and stored up in their minds. "Miss Oliver, she's coming to the front now. He goes there once a week, I'm told. Visiting her invalid sister? Oh, I dare say. That's as good an excuse as any. But she'll find her nose out of joint, will Miss Oliver, for all her cleverness. Miss Buckland's got more sex appeal by a long chalk, and she knows how to dress, too. She's got her eye on Mr. Shinfield, as anyone can see. And then there's Miss Shalstone, with a nice little income of her own. I don't say he'd marry her for her money, but still, it helps. And besides them there's Miss Hargwyne, with her uncle a Bishop, able to give a young man a helping hand if he chose. It would be a step up for Mr. Shinfield to marry into that circle."

Poor Cissie had to listen to this and much more, conscious all the while that she had no looks, no sex appeal, no private income, and no social standing. That made it more difficult to go on with those dreams of hers, even though she knew they were but dreams. A hard world.

It was a Thursday evening. She had spent the afternoon at the cinema; and then, after a frugal meal at a tea-shop, had gone on to a meeting at St. Salvator's. Now it was time to go home. She nodded to an acquaintance, without venturing to stop and speak. Then she took her way to Cowslip Avenue.

There was a light in the drawing-room when she came to the gate. She was not supposed to use the front door, so she went round to the tradesmen's entrance at the back of the house. To her surprise, she saw a light in the kitchen. Apparently Mrs. Hyson must have gone in there to boil a kettle or do some other task. Cissie opened the back door, and as she did so she was met by a strong smell of gas. The kettle must have been filled too full and when it boiled some of the water must have overflowed and extinguished the gas-ring. Cissie had seen that happen, so she thought nothing of it. She pushed open the door, went along the short passage, and entered the kitchen. Then, with staring eyes, she shrieked in panic.

Asprawl on the floor lay the body of a man, with head and shoulders inside the gas-oven from which the fumes were escaping. Cissie recognised the clothes: it was Mr. Hyson. She shrieked again, involuntarily; then she rushed to the back door and screamed at the pitch of her voice. Then, with terror pursuing her, she fled round the corner of the house and down to the gate, screaming as she went.

For a while she lost track of events. People questioned her. Then a constable appeared, catechised her, made his way into the house and then returned, complaining that the telephone was out of order. She saw him run along the Avenue to a public-call kiosk. After that, with some gruff discouragement of by-standers, he retreated once more into the house and she heard the front door slam. And, meanwhile, the little crowd at the garden gate grew in numbers and strangers persisted in bothering her with questions.

Why couldn't they leave her alone? All she wanted was to be left in peace and to forget that ugly figure asprawl on the floor of her familiar kitchen.

When she recovered, she found that more police had arrived, among them a formidable-looking inspector who spoke in a rumbling bass and whose first orders succeeded in dispersing the group of Paul Prys at the gate. Then the inspector took her arm and, not ungently, led her up to the house and ushered her into the dining-room.

As she collapsed into a chair, his glance went to the sideboard, and after rummaging for a moment he produced a tumbler which he charged from a decanter.

She gulped down the liquor mechanically and then spluttered at the unaccustomed strength of the dose. It sent a glow through her and seemed to bring back some of her courage.

"Feeling better? Good. Now don't get nervous. You're all safe and in good hands. I'm Inspector Craythorn."

"Cissie Worgate," she managed to say. Then she put a question of her own. "Is he... is he dead?"

"Quite," said the inspector, with brutal conciseness. "Suicide. Made a clean job of it."

They heard a car drive up to the gate, and then, after a pause, voices in the hall outside.

"That'll be the police surgeon," Craythorn surmised. "Wait here a moment. Try to get your wits together. We need them. I'll be back in a jiffy."

He was out of the room for a few minutes. When he returned, he seemed less worried; and he sat down in a chair opposite to Cissie.

"Let's take it bit by bit," he proposed genially, pulling a notebook from his pocket. "First of all, whose house is this?"

"Mr. Oswald Hyson's, Mr. Craythorn. That's him in yonder." She gave a timid nod towards the kitchen.

"Sure of that? You didn't see his face, did you? Didn't move the body or anything like that?"

"Right! You're the maid here? Your night out?" He glanced at her dress as he spoke. "When did you leave the house?"

Cissie explained that she had left the house about three in the afternoon, gone to a cinema, had tea, and then gone on to a church meeting. Craythorn jotted down a note or two. Then his eye went to the table.

"What did you do just before you went out—after washing up the lunch-dishes and that sort of thing?"

"I set the table for supper. They have a cold supper when it's my afternoon off."

"They've had it," the inspector confirmed, with another glance at the table. "Two of them. That would be Mr. Hyson and... ?"

"Not that I know of," Cissie declared, after a pause for thought. "Sometimes there's a Mr. Barsett drops in of an evening, but I don't know if he was coming to-night or not."

"Barsett," repeated the inspector, making a jotting. "His address? Thanks. Friend of Mr. Hyson's, I take it?"

"Well, he used to come round often when Mr. Hyson was out, to see Mrs. Hyson. And he and Mr. Hyson never struck me as... I'm not good at explaining. I mean they didn't seem the sort of men who would be very friendly, when I happened to hear them talking. You know what I mean?"

"I don't," Craythorn said bluntly. "But we'll come back to that. What was Mr. Hyson's business?"

"He was in an office in town: Mr. Lockhurst's. The stockbroker, you know. I think he was the manager or something. Mr. Lockhurst's ill, just now."

"Three years, come Christmas," Cissie replied, glad to have a definite question to answer.

"H'm! Then you must have known the two of them pretty well. Get on with them all right? Obviously, or you wouldn't have stayed so long. You liked Mr. Hyson?"

"He wasn't... I mean, he never did anything to me that one could bring up against him. I just didn't like him."

"Then perhaps you didn't like him because of her?" demanded the inspector, shrewdly. "Didn't he treat her well?"

"No, he didn't," Cissie broke out. "He was a beast to her, always sneering at her and making her unhappy, as far as he could. Or trying to, anyway. She was far too good for him, and that's a fact, Mr. Craythorn. And he was a bad 'un, too. If all I've heard is true, she could have got a divorce easy enough, so she could. But she's one of them Catholics and doesn't believe in divorce, more's the pity. She'll be more than human, so she will, if she's sorry to see the end of him."

"Oh, no. She always seems trying to make the best of the world. That's her photograph there."

"Better-looking than most," he said. "Doesn't look a sad kind of face, certainly."

"I rang up for some things in the morning. I got potatoes and apples from the greengrocer..."

"Right! Don't bother with details. Did anyone use the phone in the afternoon before you went out?"

"When you went out, Mrs. Hyson was in the house? Yes? And Mr. Hyson was at the office, eh? When did he usually come home in the evening?"

"About half-past six, he usually came in. That is, when he wasn't at some meeting or other. Then he didn't come home till late."

"Oh, I dunno. Them Masonic affairs, or something like them. I don't know. He used to have one every Thursday evening for months on end, but that's been stopped, lately."

"Of course I do. I'll tell you why. Thursday's my afternoon off, as I've been telling you, and I set out the supper before I go. Well, for weeks and weeks it was always supper for Mrs. Hyson alone. He wasn't coming in. That's why I'm sure about it, see?"

"Just in the last few weeks. But he's been out a lot all the same, at nights, but not always the same day of the week, if you see what I mean."

The inspector nodded. This girl was turning out to be a better witness than he had expected.

"You've no notion where Mrs. Hyson's got to? No? Well, she's bound to come back sometime. They keep a car, don't they? Yes? Well, it's out to-night. The garage is empty and the door's open. Noticed that as I came in. She must have gone off in it. Back soon, perhaps. Does she often go out at nights?"

"Not what you'd call often. Not every second night, I mean. She has people here to play bridge in the evenings and she goes out to other houses once or twice a week, maybe."

"And probably on the nights when you're out, my lass, as well," Craythorn said to himself. "H'm! Once a week bridge here, twice a week elsewhere, Barsett calls, say, twice a week. Knock off the week-end when Hyson was at home, probably, and her nights are well filled up."

"I'm usually in bed when she comes in, but it's not what you'd call really late," Cissie explained. "Round about midnight or so. Not three in the morning."

"Then she ought to be back in an hour or two at the outside," Craythorn commented. "Have you any notion when the two of them used to eat their supper on the nights you were out?"

"About seven or so, I think," Cissie decided after reflection. "Leastways, when she has people in here to play bridge they come about eight o'clock; and the same when she goes out to play at her friends' houses. So she'd have to get her meal over early."

"They don't keep fashionable hours, evidently," Craythorn concluded. "And that tallies with what you say about them getting home round about midnight. You've seen some of these parties here. Do they play high—big stakes, I mean?"

"One'd hardly call that desperate gambling," Craythorn said with a grin. "No roulette—the thing you play with a spinning wheel, you know? Or poker? Nothing but bridge? Right! Now another question. Did Mr. Hyson bring his own friends to the house much?"

"I don't remember him ever bringing anyone here. It was always her friends that came."

"It would be round about a quarter-past ten; between that and ten past most likely."

"And you went straight out and screamed as soon as you saw his body? You didn't faint, or anything of that sort?"

"Right! Now another question. You're doing very well. Have you seen anything in Mr. Hyson's manner that made you think he was worried lately? Snappy, depressed, bothered-looking... you know what I mean."

"No," she said at last, "I can't say as I did. He looked just as usual, to me. He was never very nice, you know, about the house. Found fault with you as soon as look at you, always, if things weren't just to his liking. But bothered-looking... no, I didn't see it."

"Right, then," the inspector concluded, turning back a few pages in his notebook. "Now I'll read over what I've put down and you must sign your name at the end if it's all right. Listen carefully."

"Now, one thing more," he cautioned her. "Don't you go talking to all and sundry about this affair. See? There'll be an inquest, and if you begin talking to reporters and your friends, you'll end by getting all muddled up and then you'll make a mess of it when you come before the coroner. Keep your mouth shut and try to remember things exactly. Then you'll be all right. It's nothing to be afraid of."

"Now you'd better stay here for a bit. We'll have to do one or two things in the house, and you're safer in here. Mrs. Hyson ought to be back sometime, and then we can arrange whether you stay here or sleep out."

He left her and went into the kitchen where he found the police surgeon and a couple of constables. Hyson's body was on the floor and apparently they had been trying artificial respiration without any success.

"Oh, yes. Not a chance of pulling him round, but we had to give it a trial, for form's sake. We got his lungs filled with the proper mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide"—he nodded towards two steel cylinders on the floor—"but there wasn't the slightest sign of reaction."

"A couple of hours at most, at a guess," the surgeon decided. "The body-temperature's about 80°, but you know that doesn't mean much. Rigor hasn't set in to any extent, even in the orbicularis palpebrarium."

"He had a meal round about seven o'clock," the inspector said. "Perhaps his food made give you a tip in the P.M., doctor. It's not very important, really. No doubt about the cause of death."

"Carbon monoxide poisoning, as plain as print, apart from the circumstances," the doctor declared. "See the colour of his lips, and the foam about the mouth. And his sphincters have all gone slack, of course. I'll do a Kunkel test and have a look at the blood spectrum, but that's really supererogation, merely to show zeal."

"No marks on him, or anything of that sort?" asked Craythorn in a tone which showed he expected nothing of the kind.

"Nothing much. There's a bruise on the point of his chin which might have been caused by his head dropping when he became unconscious and hitting the floor of the oven. We may find more when we get him stripped at the mortuary, but there's no reason to expect it. It's just another of these gas suicides by the look of it."

"They're getting too common," the inspector grumbled. "What with running a motor in a closed garage or putting your head in a gas-oven, suicide's easier than winking, nowadays."

"If they'd put some of these sternutatory gases in the domestic supply," suggested the doctor with a smile, "it might do some good."

"Make 'em sneeze so much that they couldn't poison themselves, eh? No thankee, doctor. I don't want to be sneezing my head off every time the gas-ring's turned on in the kitchen. Think up something else. By the way, doctor, when you do the P.M., keep a look-out for an incurable disease, will you? I haven't struck a motive for this affair, yet, and every little helps. Must be some reason for his putting his head in the oven, surely."

"Oh, temporary insanity," suggested the doctor sardonically. "That's what the jury will say out of kindheartedness."

"Makes the burial arrangements easier," Craythorn pointed out. "Well, thank the Lord our coroner isn't one of those fussers who mistake themselves for a sort of Holmes-Hanaud-Thorndyke syndicate. He does his job and leaves other people to do theirs."

"Sound man," agreed the doctor. "He's a medical," he added slyly, "and he'll know a gas-poisoning case when he sees it."

"Well, I've got to look over the house," he explained. "We'll see about removing the body in due course. I'll be up all night over this business, curse it."

He went out into the hall, and as he passed along it his glance caught a letter in the wire cage of the letter-box. Without much interest, he lifted it out and laid it on the hall table for later examination. All he wanted now was some hint of a motive for this suicide, just to clear the whole thing up. Suicide it obviously was, even down to the fact that the dead man had left the lights on in the drawing-room and the kitchen. No one commits suicide in the dark.

He entered the drawing-room and glanced about him, but failed to notice anything amiss. An escritoire in one corner of the room was open and going over to it he found an unfinished letter addressed to a firm of London stockbrokers, giving some instructions about selling certain stocks. As he read it, Craythorn wondered if he had chanced on the motive behind the suicide.

"Got into a money muddle, maybe. Speculating, and got nipped. This might represent a last hope. And then, in the middle of it, he may have seen he was too deep in to get out again. Chucked the idea and went off next door to settle it another way. It's on the cards. Worth looking into, anyhow."

He put the unfinished letter into his pocket and made a further examination of the room, without unearthing anything suggestive.

"Suicide it is," he concluded finally. "And it'll be easy enough to find if there's been any financial hanky-panky. I may as well go through this desk and see if his papers throw any light on that."

He sat down before the escritoire, pulled open a drawer, and was about to begin his search when he heard a car reversing into the gate and coming up to the garage.

"That'll be his wife back home," he reflected. "I'll have to break the glad news. Dirty job."

Chapter Ten
A FALSE ALARM

INSPECTOR CRAYTHORN was an adept at breaking bad news. He met Linda Hyson at the front door, took her into the drawing-room, and laid the situation before her with far more tact and gentleness than might have been expected from his normal robust and staccato manner of speech. Having gained from Cissie a shrewd opinion of how matters had stood between Hyson and his wife, the inspector avoided showing too much sympathy for her at the loss of her husband. She reacted as he had expected. It was a terrible shock to her, naturally; but not so painful as it would have been if she had been fond of Hyson. The few details which Craythorn gave were apparently sufficient. She asked for no others, nor did she suggest seeing her husband's body.

"Now, Mrs. Hyson," Craythorn said, when he had finished his tale, "I know this is very hard on you in the circumstances; but we just have to trouble you, and it's better to get it all over at once. So you won't mind if I bother you with a question or two?"

"Ask anything you like," Linda answered. "But I really can't hold out much hope of being useful. I may as well be quite frank. My husband and I lived almost separate lives and I know very little about his doings."

Craythorn nodded sympathetically. He had trained himself to note, almost subconsciously, the main characteristics of anyone he met and now he took in at a glance the tallish graceful figure, corn-coloured hair, long-lashed dark grey eyes, straight nose, clean-cut lips. No jewellery of any sort, except a wedding-ring. Pretty hands and well-shaped feet, he added to his catalogue. A rum creature Hyson must have been to neglect a wife like this! Then, with a jerk, he pulled himself back into a more professional attitude of mind. Handsome is as handsome does. The question was: What had handsome been doing that day? He had no suspicions about Linda, merely a desire to be thorough in his work so as to be able to satisfy the coroner at the inquest.

"You can throw some light on to-day's affair, at any rate," he pointed out. "I've talked to your maid. She was in the house till three o'clock. You were still here when she left, she told me. You rang up someone on the phone before she left?"

Linda, rather to Craythorn's surprise, did not answer immediately. She seemed to be considering something. Then she made up her mind.

"That's quite true," she admitted after a moment or two. "I rang up a friend of ours, a Mr. Barsett."

Barsett? The inspector pricked up his ears. That was the man who used to drop in of an evening, the fellow who was a friend of Mrs. Hyson but not of her husband. And this was Thursday, the maid's night out. Had Mrs. Hyson rung up Barsett to ask him to drop in? No, not that, since Hyson was expected home to supper, as the table had shown. More likely that she rang up Barsett to put him off that night. Better get this cleared up. Every little helps.

"Oh, none whatever," she answered, with a certain chilliness in her tone. "I rang him up to remind him of an appointment next Tuesday, a golf appointment which was left indefinite."

"I see," Craythorn hastened to say, with the consciousness that he had antagonised her a little by this line of questioning. "What I'm anxious to find out is whether your phone was in proper order when you used it, that's all. When did you ring up Mr. Barsett?"

"About half-past two, I think, but I can't be quite sure. Why are you interested in the phone, may I ask?"

"Because it's out of order now. Our man had to go to the kiosk along the Avenue to get through to us at the station."

"Oh! Then that accounts for our not being able to get on this evening when my sister rang up."

"Let's take one thing at a time, please," he suggested. "We'll come to the phone by and by. Now what did you do with yourself after the maid went out?"

"I wrote a letter or two and did some sewing. Then I made myself some afternoon tea, about half-past four. Then I did some more sewing. That's all I can remember. I had the wireless on part of the time. No one came to the house, if that's what you mean."

"It must have been shortly after half-past six, I think," Linda answered. "I didn't hear him come in. I'd gone upstairs to change into this dress. That would be about half-past six, I think. When I came down again, he was in the drawing-room here, reading an evening paper."

"We didn't talk about anything," she declared. Then, seeing the incredulity on the inspector's face, she decided to explain more clearly. "Evidently you didn't understand me when I said that my husband and I lived almost independent lives. We had next to nothing in common, so when we were alone we hardly spoke to each other."

She gave the information in such a matter-of-fact tone that Craythorn found himself forced to accept it, though it made him wonder still more as to the kind of man Hyson had been.

"We came in here again," Linda explained. "My husband sat down at the desk there and began to go through some papers. I went on with my book. There it is over yonder, on the chesterfield."

"Not exactly. This is rather a queer affair, Mr. Craythorn. As I was sitting reading, the phone rang."

"Shortly before eight o'clock, I imagine. Ten to eight, perhaps. I didn't look at my watch, you know. I went to the phone and a man's voice spoke at the other end. It didn't give the name of the speaker, but said there was a message for me from my sister, Miss Errington. There had been a burglary at her flat and she felt rather nervous, being alone there. Would I go over and stay with her for a while? Then the connection was cut off abruptly before I could ask who was speaking."

"No... I can't say I did. It reminded me of someone, but it was very hoarse and not really like the voice I was thinking of. Just a chance likeness, and not very close at that."

"Unless it was a trunk call, it couldn't have been that voice. He lives at least a couple of hundred miles away."

"Is that really necessary?" Linda demanded. "There's nothing in it. The only explanation would be a practical joke, and Mr. Telford isn't inclined for practical jokes at present, I'm sure. He's just lost his wife. And I never knew him to play a practical joke on anyone. It was just my imagination."

"Very well," Craythorn said, since she was evidently quite positive on the point, "what happened after that?"

"Naturally I was rather worried by the message. My sister has a flat at 29 Sperling Road. You know where that is? On the other side of town. It's a service flat, but she lives alone in it. She's not a nervous person, really; but I could quite imagine that she might feel a bit worried if anyone had got into her flat, even if they'd been chased out again. I shouldn't feel very happy myself, in a case of that sort. So naturally I decided to go off at once."

"I went up and put on a coat. Then I came down again, opened the door of this room, and said to my husband: 'I'm taking the car.' He was still busy with his papers and didn't look up, but he made a sort of sound which meant that he didn't mind. So I shut the door and went off in the car to my sister's flat."

"Of course it was," Linda said rather sharply. "You saw me come back yourself, a few minutes ago."

"When I got to Sperling Road I walked straight in. The door's not locked and if you want the maids you have to ring. There's no lift. It's an old house converted into flats, and I don't think they had space to put in a lift. I went upstairs. My sister lives on the third floor, right at the top of the house. When I got there, I rang the bell and my sister came to the door. I could see she was surprised to see me, and that struck me at once as queer, after the telephone message."

"Of course I questioned her at once. And that made it queerer, for it turned out that she'd never asked anyone to ring me up. Of course I should have thought of that before. She's got a phone in her flat and wouldn't need to ask anyone to take a message. Then I asked about this burglary, and it turned out that there hadn't been anything of the sort at all. It must have been somebody playing a silly practical joke on us."

"If it was," the inspector put in, "it must have been someone who knew something about you and your sister. A stranger, taking your number from the directory, wouldn't have known about her or her flat."

"I dare say," Linda agreed, "but why they should think of such a stupid thing I can't imagine. It isn't in the least funny or clever."

"We talked it over, of course, and then Joan—my sister—had an idea. 'Suppose someone wants to break into your house,' she said. 'They ring up and get you to go out on this wild-goose chase. Then they ring up again and get Ossie'—that's my husband—'to go out as well. And there's the place empty for them.' It didn't seem very likely to me; but after all I had been sent off myself on a fool's errand. There might have been something in the idea. So my sister suggested ringing up this house, just to put my husband on his guard in case."

"No, your own phone's out of order, so we found. About what time did you try to ring up?"

"Oh, after that, I spent the evening with my sister. Since I was there, it seemed the best thing to do. I had nothing to do at home here."

Craythorn reflected that even incidentally Linda Hyson gave a dreary account of her married life. "Nothing to do at home" though her husband was there. Both of them reading at meals rather than go to the trouble of talking to each other. It all hung together.

"The phone must have broken down, then, shortly after you left this house," he commented. "I sent word for a man to come up first thing to-morrow to put it in order."

"Now just finish off your story, please. Did anyone call at your sister's flat while you were there?"

"Or ring up?" Craythorn persisted. "There was no further attempt at practical joking or anything of that sort?"

"No," Linda explained, "I happened to pass a friend of mine—Miss Dagenham—and I stopped to pick her up. She'd been visiting an old nurse of hers who's sick. Her car is being overhauled just now, so she had to go by bus out to her nurse's house. Of course I gave her a lift; and when we got to her house she asked me to come in for a few minutes."

"I can't say exactly. I didn't look at my car-clock. But it must have been shortly after ten. Then it took me about a quarter of an hour to get to Miss Dagenham's. She lives in Cadogan Drive."

"Right! We have to ask a lot of useless questions, you know, Mrs. Hyson. You mustn't mind that. Now another thing. Have you any idea whether your husband had money troubles or not? That's a matter he'd be almost bound to mention to you, if it meant cutting down household expenditure and so on."

"He never spoke of anything of the kind to me," Linda declared in a positive tone. "Certainly the house expenses have not been cut down lately. As for my personal bills, I pay them out of my own income. He had nothing to do with that."

"We'll have to go through his papers, you know," he pointed out. "He may have been speculating beyond his means, or something like that; and we must find out definitely."

"I've no objection to your going through his papers," Linda volunteered at once. "I quite see your point, Mr. Craythorn, and there's no reason why you shouldn't examine anything, so far as I'm concerned. Do exactly as you think best."

"Your husband was in a stockbroker's office, I think? A Mr. Lockhurst's. We shall have to make inquiries there too. Can you tell me anything about the staff?"

"I've never been in Mr. Lockhurst's office," Linda explained, "and I really know nothing about his staff. The only name I remember is Mr. Forbury's. He was cashier, or something like that, I think. I've never met him. Mr. Lockhurst himself I've met casually, once or twice, but he's only the merest acquaintance. He's ill, just now. Probably you'd better try Mr. Forbury."

No point in catechising her further on these lines, he reflected. She knows nothing about her husband's affairs. A run through Hyson's papers and a check-up at Lockhurst's office would be more likely to unearth anything there was to find. Probably there would be some signs of hanky-panky in Hyson's finances. That was the likeliest reason for a suicide, with a man of his position. He was about to terminate his inquisition when a thought crossed his mind.

"I found a letter in the letter-box," he explained. "You've no objection to my opening it, I suppose? We shall have to examine it anyhow, sooner or later, you know."

Craythorn stepped into the hall, picked up the envelope, and brought it back with him.

"I'll open it now," he decided. "You may be able to throw some light on the thing, if it needs it. I mean, if it's from a friend you can tell us who the writer is, and so on."

He opened the envelope with his penknife and extracted the contents gingerly so as to leave no finger-prints on the paper.

"Hullo! It's one of these poison-pen productions, Mrs. Hyson. Have you been troubled with them before?"

His upward glance caught a curious expression on Linda's face. There was disgust in it, but just for a moment he thought he recognised something else—a faint symptom of uneasiness or even fear. It was gone in a moment and she seemed to have made up her mind to let things take their course.

"Yes," she admitted frankly. "We've all had them: the maid, my husband, and myself. They're beastly productions, aren't they? But perhaps you haven't seen any of them?"

What a hugger-mugger family! You hug girls at your office after hours while Barsett hugs your wife at home, you mug. If you had spunk or decency you'd whip him. But perhaps he pays his way. Ha! Ha! A very mixed marriage you've made, you cuckoo, and I wish you joy of it.

Craythorn mechanically re-read the letter, thinking hard as he did so. No use taking poison-pen stuff too literally, he reflected. Still, one couldn't ignore things when they were thrust under one's nose. This production of a filthy mind certainly opened up fresh fields. Cissie Worgate, quite independently, had told him that Barsett was Mrs. Hyson's friend, not Hyson's. So there was the old triangle that so often led to trouble. And then, on the other hand, up came this insinuation about intrigues between Hyson and the office typists. Another triangle, or more than one. But since Hyson and his wife had drifted completely apart, why should any intrigue—on either side of the house—drive the man to suicide? Unless it was a case of blackmail, of course. That might fit. But blackmail means a threat of exposure. If Mrs. Hyson had already received one of these poison-pen productions, she must be quite well aware of the charges against her husband. Trust the poison pen for that! So where could exposure come in? That must be the wrong gum-tree, evidently. The inspector unconsciously shrugged his shoulders. Nothing in it. Some financial trouble was a much more likely solution of the business.

Craythorn hesitated for a moment. Without being squeamish, he had a distaste for putting it into her hand.

"You don't want it really, Mrs. Hyson," he temporised, beginning to stow it away again in its envelope. "It's just the usual sort of thing. Do you no good to read it."

"I want to see it, please," Linda declared in a tone so firm that the inspector was slightly surprised.

Why was she so eager to see this letter which could only shock and irritate her? Funny, that. Then he thought he saw light. She guessed that her name and Barsett's might be in it, and she wanted to know the exact accusation in case she were questioned about it later on. Let her have it, then, and see what happened next.

He made no further protest but handed the thing over to her, watching her closely as she perused it. Her brows contracted slightly as she read, but apart from that he could see no indication of her reaction to the contents. Evidently she had a firm grip on herself, he reflected. But then, was that extraordinary, after the training she must have had in living with Hyson that queer independent life under the same roof? He wondered what comment she would make on the letter when she handed it back to him. Would she deny the charge in it?

But when she had finished it she simply held it out to him without remark, and he was forced to take the initiative.

"You said you've had others of the sort before, Mrs. Hyson. Were they on the same lines?"

"They mentioned Mr. Barsett," Linda concurred. "I think it's only fair to myself to say that the writer's mistaken if he means to insinuate that I'm Mr. Barsett's mistress."

This was taking the bull by the horns! Craythorn had hardly expected such a blunt handling of the situation, and he looked at Linda with a certain admiration. She didn't look like the kind of girl to go in for unnecessary plain-speaking, and yet she had come down flat on the very danger-point without the slightest hesitation.

"He's a friend of mine, nothing more. He lives in this neighbourhood—at Ardenlea, Dartmouth Road. My sister acts as his secretary. He's a friend of hers and of mine; but he had very little in common with my husband so they saw next to nothing of each other, which I suppose is what you mainly want to know."

That sounded very frank and honest. All the cards on the table. No hedging, apparently. But an afterthought brought other possibilities into Craythorn's mind. Even if Mrs. Hyson was truthful in denying that she was Barsett's mistress, that didn't cover anything like the whole ground. A man may be head-over-ears in love with a married woman without the final step being taken. But just because the final step hasn't been taken, there might be a strong incentive to clear up the situation in one way or another. H'm! Was it suicide after all, or something else?

And if it was something else? Here was Hyson on the one side and on the other was the possible confederacy of three: Mrs. Hyson, Barsett, and this sister who acted as Barsett's secretary. What about the sister? Well, there was that rum tale about the telephone call, the practical joke. That might very well have been planned to give Mrs. Hyson an alibi while the job was being done. At the best, it didn't sound an altogether likely tale. Surely, if they had plenty of time to think things over beforehand, they could have hit on something more plausible.

Then again, this was Cissie Worgate's night out, one of the nights in the week when the coast would be clear. Why had Hyson's death happened on just that particular night? If it had been a case of suicide, then Hyson must have thought it out beforehand and chosen the evening when the maid was out of the kitchen and he could get at the gas-stove without interruption. Quite possible, of course, but it implied that Hyson's suicide was due to no sudden decision.

"Good Lord! What a tangle! And five minutes ago it seemed as plain as could be," Craythorn reflected indignantly, as he realised how much extra work all this would throw on his shoulders.

He turned the poison-pen letter over in his hands and then slipped it back into its envelope. Incuriously he glanced at the address: "Mister Hyson, Medina Lodge, Cowslip Avenue." Posted at 12.30 P.M. according to the office stamp. H'm! "Mister"? Was that an ignorant writer or was it an educated person deliberately avoiding "Mr." or "Esq." to suggest an imperfect education? Cray thorn decided to pass the thing to the Post Office expert, that man Duncannon who had charge of this local poison-pen case. If they could get hold of the poison pen, they might get some information about the relations of this quartette: the Hysons, Barsett, and this sister who had appeared on the scene.

"What's Mr. Barsett's profession?" he inquired, merely to prevent the silence becoming awkward.

"I don't think he has any," Linda answered. "I think he's a partner in some firm, but he takes nothing to do with the actual running of it."

Sleeping partner, Craythorn inferred. Lucky devil! No work to do and an income big enough to run a large house and keep a secretary as well.

The sound of a motor entering the gate caught his ear and interrupted his musings.

"That's the ambulance, likely," he explained. "I think you'd better stay in here for a minute or two, Mrs. Hyson. We're taking him away. You don't want to be there while we're doing that, I'm sure."

"No, I don't," Linda confessed. "I'll wait here. And after that? What do you wish to do?"

"I'll have to go through his papers. Take me an hour or two, I expect. No need for you to sit up, though, Mrs. Hyson. If you can sleep you'd better get to bed, hadn't you? Or perhaps you'd rather go to your sister's for the night?" he added, with a certain tact.

"But then, what about my maid?" Linda pointed out. "I could hardly go off and leave her alone in the house. And there's no friend's house where she could stay. I'd better stay here and keep her company so that she won't feel nervous. It's not pleasant, you know, Mr. Craythorn, even if one isn't superstitious. I'd much rather go to my sister's, but I can't leave Cissie here alone."

"She wouldn't be alone in the house," Craythorn pointed out. "Some of my people will be on the premises all night. There are things to do.... I hope we shan't disturb you. I'll give orders that they're to be as quiet as possible. I'll be here myself for a good while yet."

"Thanks. Still, I don't think it would be fair to leave her. I'll stay to-night. Perhaps to-morrow I can make some other arrangement. I could hardly blame her if she wanted to go elsewhere—for a day or two, at least."

Craythorn gave her a good mark for her thoughtfulness in very trying circumstances. Of course, it wasn't a case of losing a husband she was fond of. Happy release, more likely, in this affair. Still, it was a horrible position for a woman to find herself in, and she'd kept her nerves well under control, wonderfully well. Very cool indeed.

Then his suspicions began to creep back again. After all, it might not have taken her by surprise. She might have been braced up, ready for it. Well, in that case also, she must be a cool card.

Chapter Eleven
GRANDFATHER'S CLOCK?

HYSON had been one of those men who preserve even the most useless documents for a time, a habit which Inspector Craythorn cursed at intervals as he plodded his way through the mass of material which choked the drawers of the escritoire and encumbered the shelves of the dead man's private safe. It was well into the small hours before he had completed the examination and classification of it all, having found very little of real importance amongst the chaff. Next morning, armed with an empty suit-case, he went back to Cowslip Avenue to await the arrival of the Chief Constable with whom he had been in communication at an earlier hour.

"Anything fresh, Inspector?" Sir Clinton inquired as he came into the drawing-room.

Craythorn, looking rather heavy-eyed after his vigil, pointed to the escritoire on which he had ranged a series of packets of documents.

"I've got everything shipshape for you, sir, if you wish to look through the stuff. It never rains but it pours," he added. "There's been a burglary in Vendale Road. Scarsdale's the occupier's name. He and his family went off to the Continent last week and left the place empty. Not much harm done, luckily. The burglar must have been disturbed before he'd time to do his job thoroughly. There's nothing missing, so far as we can see. And we caught Joe Whitcher at his old game last night—stealing lead piping from an empty house in Westow Road. It'll cost the insurance people a tidy bit to repair the damage he's done."

"I'm afraid Whitcher's incurable," commented Sir Clinton with a smile. "He never seems to learn by experience."

"Even if we could sell all the swag he ever gets away with, sir, it wouldn't cover the cost of keeping him while he's serving his time," the inspector estimated sourly. "It'd be cheaper to pay him a pension. Much cheaper. I've rung up Miss Errington, sir, Mrs. Hyson's sister; and she's come over here so that you can question her if you want to. We've got the photographs of the body printed, if you want to see them. But it was just the ordinary gas-oven affair."

"A bit of a job, sir. Everything was in confusion. But I've sifted out the important items"—he waved his hand toward the neat packets on the escritoire—"and they tell the tale plain enough. He's been gambling heavily on the Exchange and came out on the wrong side. I've rung up Lockhurst's office. Got some man Forbury on the phone and told him I'd be along later to see if any shares are missing from the safe there. Hyson dealt in bearer bonds and one expects embezzlement in a case like this."

"No, sir. He dealt with a London firm—Erkenwald and Maitland—from this address."

"What did that matter, sir, seeing he was going to commit suicide? He'd no further reason for keeping things quiet, at that stage. As a matter of fact, he must have made up his mind pretty quick at the last moment, sir. He was writing a letter to his brokers and broke off short in the middle to go to the gas-oven. Right in the middle of a sentence."

"He may have learned of Mr. Lockhurst's death," Sir Clinton ruminated. "That would mean auditors and trouble for Hyson."

From the inspector's face it was clear that he envied the leisure of his superior.

"I haven't had much time for studying the news this morning," he confessed. "When did he die, sir?"

"I don't know," Sir Clinton admitted. Then a thought seemed to strike him. "They have a phone here? I think I'll ring up and find out."

"Mr. Lockhurst died on Tuesday night, it seems. Hyson heard about it on Wednesday forenoon when he happened to ring up the house to ask for the invalid. So the nurse tells me. But there's something further. The executor is Mr. Harberton, the solicitor. He came to the phone and told me that in going through some letters which Mr. Lockhurst hasn't been allowed to deal with he found one of these poison-pen productions. I asked him to read it to me and I took a copy. He's sending the document itself to me at Lockhurst's office. Here are the contents to go on with:

"Hyson is using your private room to meet one of your typists after the office is closed for the night. After this you cannot pretend you don't know what is going on.

"Somebody jealous of somebody," Craythorn decided, rather vaguely. "Might be a woman who thinks someone's poaching on her preserves. Might be a man trying to put a spoke into Hyson's wheel—one of the office staff, perhaps."

"Mr. Lockhurst was rather strait-laced about that sort of thing," said Sir Clinton. "If that letter had fallen into his hands, he'd have been nettled at the idea of his office being turned to such purposes. And it wouldn't have stopped there."

"Looks like someone trying to get Hyson the push, sir, so as to get a bit of promotion on the cheap, doesn't it?"

"Possibly he had enemies," Sir Clinton concurred. "But that will keep till we go to the broker's office. We'd better have a look round here, first." He glanced at his wrist-watch and then mechanically compared it with the mains-controlled electric clock on the mantelpiece. "Suppose we begin with that. It's stopped at 9.20."

Craythorn in turn glanced at the clock dial and found the hands at 9.20, whilst the seconds disc was motionless.

"And so we get the time of death neatly recorded, eh? I'm afraid it won't wash. If you find an electric clock not going, there are only three probable explanations: first, it hasn't been started; second, it's out of order; and third, there's been an interruption of the current. Now make a note of 9.20 and we'll see if it's in working order."

He pressed in the stud at the back, released it gently, and the clock started immediately.

"Nothing wrong with the mechanism, evidently. So either it wasn't going yesterday or else someone interrupted the current. We may as well ask if it was a going concern yesterday, but that will keep for the present. Let's look around first. We may have more questions to put."

As he was about to step back from the clock his eyes fell on the hearth and he stooped down interestedly.

"No, sir," the inspector declared, rather indignantly. "And I think I ought to say, sir, that I haven't had time yet to search this room thoroughly. These papers of his kept me up till all hours, and this morning I thought it as well to wait till you came."

"Quite all right, Inspector," said the Chief Constable soothingly. "On the face of it, his papers were the likeliest place to look for an explanation of his death. But let's get on now, shall we? Someone has knocked out his pipe on the fender here. It wasn't you. So we'll have to ask what Hyson did in the way of smoking. Was there a pipe in his pocket when the contents were examined?"

"No, sir," he admitted. "A box of matches and a cigarette-case was what we found."

"Don't look so depressed," Sir Clinton advised. "We'll have to find out when this hearth was cleaned up and the fender dusted, before we can lay any stress on this ash. In the meanwhile, you might see if you can collect it. There's some unburnt tobacco amongst it and we might be able to get the brand identified by an expert if necessary."

Craythorn took a small envelope and a camel's-hair brush from his pocket, knelt down, and meticulously gathered up the mixture of ash and tobacco-leaf. Then, sealing the envelope, he wrote a few words on it and transferred it to his pocket. Meanwhile Sir Clinton had been examining his surroundings.

"Everything looks very spick-and-span," he commented. "Except one thing. Those flowers in that silver rose-bowl are withered, while the ones in the vases about the room seem quite fresh."

He went over to a small occasional table which stood in the centre of the room and dipped his hand down among the flowers which it held. As he did so, his eyebrows lifted as though in surprise. Craythorn, having finished his task, followed the Chief Constable's example and found the bowl dry of water.

But his remark went unheeded. Sir Clinton had gone down on hands and knees and was exploring the surface of the carpet with his open palm. For some minutes he searched vainly over the surface but at last he stood up again and drew Craythorn's attention to one spot on the carpet.

"It's damp, sir, if that's what you mean. It doesn't show up on the dark carpet, but I can feel it all right."

"It's at least twelve hours since that was spilt," Sir Clinton pointed out. "If it had been merely a drop or two, it would have dried up in that time. So it must have been a fair quantity. Couple that with the waterless rose-bowl with the withered flowers, Inspector, and see what you make of it."

He pursued his examination of the room, but so far as Craythorn could see, nothing else of importance presented itself.

"Now, I think we might have a talk with that maid. What's her name? Cissie Worgate. Very good. Let's have her in, Inspector."

Cissie, though she had been expecting the summons, was visibly nervous as she entered the room. It was one thing to talk to the affable inspector but quite another to stand up and be questioned by the Chief Constable, who might—for all she knew—put one under lock and key without so much as "by your leave." Cissie's ideas about the police hierarchy were vague and her views on a Chief Constable's powers extensive. She was trembling a little as she made her entry.

"There's no need to be flurried," Sir Clinton assured her kindly. "I'm only going to ask you a question or two about the routine of the house. You'll be able to answer them without even having to think. Now, first of all, you see that clock's stopped. Can you remember when you saw it going, last?"

Cissie was much relieved by the question. She had feared she was to be examined about the discovery of Hyson's body, and as that had formed the subject of recurrent nightmares during her fitful dozing during the night, she wanted to think as little about it as possible. Still, this first interpellation was so unexpected that it took her momentarily aback.

"It was going, sir, just before I went out, yesterday afternoon. I looked in here to see the time after I'd set the supper-table, before I went upstairs to dress to go out. I wanted to see how much time I had in hand because I was going to the cinema, sir, and I wanted to get there in time for the start of a long picture. That's how I remember it, sir. It was at twenty to three, and I remember noticing the clock was going. Besides, the time I got from it was quite right. I got to the picture house just when the long picture was starting, so the clock must have been at the right time."

"Now that's just what I wanted from you. If all witnesses were as sound as this, we'd have an easier time."

At the word of praise, Cissie lost her nervousness, which was what the Chief Constable aimed at.

"Now another point," he continued. "It's mild weather and this fire hasn't been lighted. But I suppose you dust and sweep the room regularly and go over the hearth even if there are no ashes to clear up?"

"Quite sure, sir," Cissie declared firmly. "Some maids scamp their work, sir, but I don't. I like work."

"Yes, sir, in the morning. It was quite clean, sir, though. I just gave it a dusting."

"And you found nothing but dust, nothing in the way of bits of torn paper or cigarette ends?"

"No, sir," she said positively, "nothing but dust that you'd brush away with a duster."

"I don't do that, sir. Mrs. Hyson always arranges the flowers all over the house. I know she put fresh ones in yesterday morning, for she took all the vases and bowls away while I was doing this room."

Sir Clinton let her see that he was quite satisfied with her replies. Then he passed to another topic.

"There's one before breakfast, sir. And one comes round about half-past twelve. Then there's another one at four o'clock. And the last one comes some time after six—about a quarter past, usually."

"When you went out, yesterday afternoon, there was no letter in the letter-box, was there? You'd have seen it if it had been there?"

"No, sir, there wasn't any. I'd taken the midday letters out of the box when they came and put them on the hall table. The four-o'clock post hadn't come in when I left the house, sir."

"Now we're nearly finished," Sir Clinton said, to Cissie's relief. "Just a couple of questions more. Mr. Hyson smoked, didn't he?"

"Well, I think that's all we need trouble you about," he said after a moment or two's thought.

Cissie retired, flushed but more at ease in her mind, now that this ordeal was over. Sir Clinton turned to the inspector.

"Before I forget," he directed, "ring up the police surgeon and ask him to look carefully for a bruise at the back of Hyson's head. He'll probably have to shave off the hair to find it. Also ask him to note carefully if the skull's fractured, though I don't think it's likely."

"I don't know what it was. But I want to find out," Sir Clinton retorted. "Don't phone from here, though. You might be overheard. Wait till you get to that telephone kiosk down the Avenue."

The inspector evidently found some food for thought in the order. All his earlier suspicions came flooding back again. A knock on the head? Whom did that bring in? Barsett, perhaps? But why drag in Barsett? A woman could knock a man on the head easily enough, if she went about it the right way. And Hyson and his wife had been in the house alone together up to seven o'clock at any rate, as the supper-table showed. What was more, in a case of this sort you couldn't be sure of the precise hour of death. The police surgeon was too careful a man to go giving definite estimates. And there was plenty of motive in the background. And there was that sister to give an alibi to Mrs. Hyson if the times did get a bit awkward. Well, a good deal would turn on that bruise if the doctor could find it, evidently.

"Now I think we'd better see Mrs. Hyson," Sir Clinton suggested. "We can speak to her sister afterwards. One at a time."

"They'll have their story all ready," said the inspector, full of his resuscitated suspicions. "They'll have gone over it together while they were waiting here this morning, not to speak of the time they were together last night."

"Are you thinking of handcuffs already?" inquired Sir Clinton sardonically. "I'd wait a while yet. There's no evidence to prove anything, so far."

When Linda Hyson was called into the room Sir Clinton, knowing the relations between her and her husband, did not embarrass her by too much sympathy with her loss. After a tactful remark or two he put the interview on a footing of pure officialism.

"You gave Inspector Craythorn an account of what happened last night, Mrs. Hyson," he recalled. "I needn't trouble you to go over that again, except for one or two points. But some other things have turned up, and I'd like to be certain about them."

Obviously she had spent a sleepless night. There were dark shadows under her eyes and her whole bearing gave the impression that she was thoroughly tired and rather anxious.

"Thank you," said Sir Clinton. "Now first of all, can you give me any idea when that clock on the mantelpiece stopped?"

"But it's going," she pointed out. "It's all wrong, though," she added after mechanically glancing at her wrist-watch. "That's funny. Usually it keeps time almost to a second."

"It stopped last night," Sir Clinton explained. "I restarted it this morning to make sure it was in working order. Now, can you remember when you saw it going, yesterday?"

Linda seemed rather puzzled at the whole incident. Evidently the stopping of the clock struck her as strange, and the importance Sir Clinton attached to the stoppage perplexed her. She thought for some seconds before answering.

"The last time I remember looking at it was just before supper last night. I looked then to see if it was supper-time. That was just before seven o'clock. It was going then, so far as I can remember. It certainly was at the right time."

"Not while I was in the house," she declared. "Of course, I went out about eight o'clock. A fuse may have gone after that. I can't say anything about that."

"Naturally. But to your own knowledge there was no fuse trouble and the main switch wasn't taken out while you were in the house?"

"No, certainly not," Linda answered frankly. "If you hadn't told me that the clock had stopped, I'd have known nothing about it till I came to look at the time."

"That's what I expected," Sir Clinton confessed. "Now, another matter. I believe you look after the flowers in the house? Your maid doesn't fill the vases?"

"Oh, no. I prefer to arrange flowers myself. Then I can get them just as I want them."

"And you put fresh water into all the vases and so forth? Into this one?" he queried, pointing to the rose-bowl.

Craythorn saw the trap that was laid, but he saw too that it failed to catch anything. Linda Hyson showed not the slightest sign of interest in the rose-bowl.

"Now another point, Mrs. Hyson. The maid tells us that Mr. Hyson smoked cigarettes. Did he ever smoke a pipe?"

"No," she declared. Then, correcting herself, she added, "Some years ago he tried to take up pipe-smoking, but it didn't suit him and he dropped it almost at once. For three or four years now he smoked nothing but cigarettes. I don't know if he even had a pipe in his possession."

"You were alone in the house between the time your maid went out yesterday afternoon and the time Mr. Hyson came back from the office? Had you any visitor during that interval?"

"No, nobody," she declared definitely. "Unless you mean the tradespeople, of course. The milkman left a bottle of milk on the scullery window-sill, as he usually does. I can't remember any others."

"No, no letters came either at four o'clock or by the six-o'clock post. I'd have noticed them in the letter-box if they had come. The milkman is the only caller I can remember, and he didn't even ring the bell."

"That's quite clear," Sir Clinton said. "Now let's turn to your phone. You rang up Mr. Barsett at half-past two. Then shortly after eight o'clock you were rung up by someone who appears to have been hoaxing you. The point is, your phone was in working order at eight. About an hour later, you rang up this house and could get no answer...."

"I've found out why that was," Linda interrupted. "When the repairer came this morning, he found the wires of our phone cut. So of course it was impossible to get a connection. The cut was intentional, he told me, not a thing that might have happened by accident. Your men found the phone out of order when they arrived, I'm told."

"I hadn't heard of this before," Sir Clinton explained. "So on that basis someone must have cut the wires sometime between eight and nine o'clock. You've no idea who could have played that trick, I suppose?"

Again Craythorn's suspicions blazed up. She might have cut the wires herself when she went out to go across to her sister's flat. But why? To prevent anyone ringing up Hyson? Possibly, but again why? That seemed a blank end, so far as his present knowledge went.

"I've no idea at all about the telephone affair," Linda replied. "I can't think of anyone who would play a practical joke of that sort. And I can't imagine what led anyone to cut the wires. It may have been pure malicious mischief on someone's part. There seems no other explanation."

"You didn't recognise the voice of the person who rang you up about eight o'clock? Was it a man's or a woman's?"

"I think it was a man's voice. But it was very indistinct and somehow muffled—like someone speaking through cotton-wool, if you can imagine that."

"It might be that, possibly," Linda agreed. "It certainly sounded very woolly and I couldn't recognise it."

"Let's try an experiment," Sir Clinton suggested. "You know the Inspector's voice now. He'll go out to the kiosk down the Avenue and ring you up now, after wrapping the transmitter in his handkerchief. You'll listen here and see if the effect is the same."

They tried the experiment and Linda admitted that the handkerchief wrapping had changed the timbre of Craythorn's voice markedly, so that she could hardly recognise it.

"Then it may have been someone you knew, after all," Sir Clinton pointed out when the inspector returned. "It might even have been a woman with a contralto voice purposely disguising it. I'm afraid we shan't get much further along that line."

"The more I think over it," Linda volunteered, "the more I feel that it was someone I know. I can't tell why. It's just an impression. And quite likely I'm imagining it just by thinking too much about it. One thing I'm quite sure of, though. I can't put a name to the voice."

"If you do recall it, you'll let us know. Now I'd like to have a word or two with your sister, if she's here."

But when Miss Errington came, they extracted nothing fresh from her. She confirmed what Linda Hyson had said, but beyond that she had nothing to add.

"I'd just like to have a look at your fuse-box," Sir Clinton said finally, abandoning any hope of further information. "Can you let us see where it is?"

"We've had fuses blown on the power-circuit several times. Our vacuum-cleaner seems to take a lot of current. But I can't remember any of our lights ever going out."

Sir Clinton posted the inspector at the mains-controlled clock and then withdrew fuse after fuse until the clock stopped. He examined all the fuse-holders, replaced them, and then came back to the drawing-room.

"The clock's on the lighting circuit," he informed the inspector. "All the lighting fuse-holders are in new condition. There's no stain on any of them to show that a fuse has ever gone in them, just as Mrs. Hyson said. So obviously the clock didn't stop because the fuse had gone. Someone may have stopped it by taking out the fuse-holder, of course. But there doesn't seem much point in that, so far as I can see. A temporary breakdown in the main cable circuit seems the most likely explanation. It's hardly worth bothering about, since the clock stopping gives us no key to Hyson's death in any case. Now, there's just one thing more, and then I think we're finished here. Just ring up the district Post Office, please, and ask when a letter would be delivered here if it had the 12.30 P.M. postmark on the envelope. While you're doing that, I'll have a look round the rest of the premises."

Craythorn got his information almost immediately and was ready with it when Sir Clinton had finished his inspection.

"And actually it appeared in the box after the six-o'clock post had gone past, and Mrs. Hyson has no recollection of seeing it till you showed it to her later on in the evening. Please ring them up again, Inspector, and ask for the postman who actually carried out the delivery at 4 P.M. and 6 P.M. yesterday. Find out from him if he delivered any letters here on either of these rounds. And make sure, too, that he didn't forget to deliver a letter and then came back unofficially to drop it into the letter-box after he'd completed his round. Sometimes a letter gets displaced amongst the pile they carry in their hands and they only come upon it when they're long past the house where it should have been delivered."

Craythorn went to the phone once more, but came back to say that the postman declared that no letters for the Hysons had been in either the four-o'clock or six-o'clock delivery. He had not gone near the house on either occasion.

"Then that leaves only one obvious possibility," Sir Clinton declared. "Let me see the envelope of that letter. You have it in your pocket, I suppose?"

Craythorn produced it and Sir Clinton took a Coddington lens from his pocket. After a careful examination of the address on the letter he handed both lens and envelope to the inspector.

"We'll need to put Mr. Duncannon wise to this latest poison-pen trick," he pointed out. "You see what's been done? The poison-pen pest is getting afraid of being caught posting these things. They're now being delivered by hand, apparently. But in order to divert suspicion, they're made to look as if they'd come through the post. Look at the address and you'll see that the paper has been roughened with India-rubber. That letter was first of all addressed in pencil to the poison pest's own address, probably with only a circular or something equally innocuous inside. If Mr. Duncannon's trap had caught it being posted, it was quite innocent. When it was delivered at the poison pest's house, the envelope was steamed open, the poison letter put into it instead of the circular, and then the pencil-writing was rubbed out and the Hyson address put on. Then the poison pest dropped it into the Hyson letter-box personally, so as to make it appear that the letter had come by the last postal delivery. That would keep Mr. Duncannon and his merry men still on the alert at the pillar-boxes and so divert them from the real channel of delivery. Quite neat. The same game used to be played by some S.P. betting sharks, to get the wrong postmark on the envelope."

"It looks to me," Sir Clinton ruminated, "as if one of the essential things in this case is to get hold of that poison-pen pest. Half the stuff may be lies. It probably is. But there may be a grain of truth in it here and there. If we had the writer, we could soon sift out anything that would serve our turn. But in the meantime, let's go on to Lockhurst's office and see what's to be dug out there. You'd better bring along all these documents. We may need them to check things up."

Craythorn obediently collected the neat piles of letters which he had stacked on the desk and stowed them in the empty suit-case which he had brought with him.

Chapter Twelve
THE DEFALCATIONS

"WHO'S in charge here at present?" asked the Chief Constable as young Cadbury came forward to the counter to ask his business.

"Give him my card, please, and ask him to be good enough to spare me a few minutes."

Cadbury glanced at the card. Sir Clinton Driffield? Phew! The Hyson case, the sleuths on the track, and here he was, right in the middle of it. Perhaps they'd even ask him to give evidence. This was life!

"Are you really Sir Clinton Driffield, sir?" he demanded impulsively, so that his voice rose to a squeak with emotion.

Cadbury decided to stick to that visiting-card. It would be something to show to his friends as supporting evidence to any story he had to tell them.

"If you'll just come this way, sir," he requested, "Mr. Forbury's in the private office."

As Sir Clinton passed the barrier, he saw that the girl clerks had evidently caught Cadbury's falsetto ejaculation. Three faces turned towards him, each with a different expression. The slight fair-haired girl was frankly interested to see a local celebrity at close quarters. The second girl examined him aloofly with an expression on her features as though she were saying: "Is that all?" to herself. The dark aquiline girl stared at him intently for a moment and then glanced down at the papers on her desk, making an obvious pretence of absorption in her work. But out of the tail of his eye as he walked on, he could see her look up again and give him a long suspicious survey.

As Sir Clinton stepped into the room, followed by Craythorn, Forbury rose from his chair with just a shade of cringing in his manner. He looked even more untidy than usual in his shabby office coat and unchanged collar. With the usual haste of a nervous man, he broke silence without waiting for the Chief Constable to speak.

"I wasn't thinking of him, sir," said Forbury, simply. "It's these things that I've found missing. That man has been playing Old Harry with everything since Mr. Lockhurst fell ill. And, of course, I'd no idea of what was going on. No idea at all. I'm not in the least to blame. He kept me from any hand in affairs. He took everything on his own shoulders and kept me completely in the dark. I give you my honest word, sir, I'm not responsible in the slightest. Thank God for that. But it's simply dreadful. I don't know what the auditors will say when they come to go through the thing."

He took out a crumpled handkerchief and wiped beads of perspiration from his brow without interrupting the stream of his lamentable explanation.

"I've been trying to get some idea of it all. There's ever so much missing. Bearer bonds belonging to our clients—he's cleared the safe of them. And he must have been forging as well. There's nothing to show, nothing. It's lucky Mr. Lockhurst didn't live to see things come to this pass, sir. If I'd only had even an inkling of what was going on. A clean sweep, he's made, nothing less. I don't know but the business will have to go through Carey Street before all's done. But I had no hand in it. I had nothing to do with it. You understand that? He kept me out of everything, once Mr. Lockhurst fell ill. It's lucky I can say that now."

Sir Clinton waited patiently until Forbury's emotion exhausted itself. He could well believe that the clerk had spent himself over the examination of the situation. He looked a complete wreck. But there was something more than weariness in his eyes. There was fear as well. After all, that was hardly surprising. If the business foundered amid the results of Hyson's embezzlements, Forbury would be out in the street. At his age, where would he find anyone eager for his services, especially with this record of catastrophe behind him? He would simply be another black-coated unemployable.

"Inspector Craythorn has some documents with him which may help to check part of the business," Sir Clinton explained. "But in the meanwhile we've other things to look into. We can take it, from what you say, that Hyson has been playing ducks and drakes with whatever he could lay hands on. Leave that aside for the moment. I want to know something about this office in general. You needn't tell me anything about Mr. Lockhurst. I knew him, slightly. When he fell ill, what happened here? Who took his place, and so forth?"

"Hyson did, sir. I believe he got a power of attorney from Mr. Lockhurst. That made me a shade suspicious, at the time; for he really didn't need such a thing for ordinary routine business. I found out why he wanted it when he threatened to dismiss me. He's always wanted to get rid of me. And I've been with Mr. Lockhurst years longer than he had."

Then Forbury laid bare to the officials the undercurrents of the office: Hyson's favouring of Olive Lyndoch, the long struggle against the introduction of the Moon-Hopkins machine, the certainty that its adoption would lead to Forbury's supersession and the promotion of Olive.

"And he treated me like a dog, sir. Always gibing and sneering in an overbearing kind of way. But what could I do? I've a wife and family depending on me, and I'm getting no younger as time goes on. I just had to sit down under it all and hope he'd stop short of actually pitching me into the street. But he was a ruthless brute and I knew that was coming."

Forbury's embittered voice showed that not even the death of his persecutor had effaced the grudge he bore. Sir Clinton deemed it wisest to lead him to other subjects.

"Some people seem to have put two and two together," Forbury admitted dejectedly. "I've had a couple of clients in this morning already. I think they'd smelt a rat when the news of Hyson's suicide leaked out. There's a paragraph about it in one of the local papers, I understand, this morning, and that's quick work. By now, it'll be all over the place. Bad news travels like lightning."

Cadbury came into the private office, presented an envelope to Sir Clinton, and then retired lingeringly, staring back over his shoulder as he did so in order to prolong his examination of the local celebrity. The Chief Constable opened the envelope and drew from it a letter in its own envelope.

"Just look at that address, Mr. Forbury, please. Do you recognise the handwriting?"

"It's addressed to Mr. Lockhurst," Forbury commented, gazing at the writing as though he hardly knew what to make of it. "No, sir, I can't just say I recognise it. That is, I can't tell you who wrote it. It's familiar—in a sort of a way—and yet I can't place it. You know what I mean?"

"The writer makes a Greek 'e' like the letter 'epsilon' in the Greek alphabet," Sir Clinton pointed out. "Which kind of 'e' do you make yourself, when you write with a pen?"

"Me?" ejaculated the clerk in a suspicious tone, as if he scented some trap. "You're not suggesting I wrote that address, are you? I don't know why you showed it to me, but I didn't write it, I can swear to that. Look here, sir. Here's a lot of notes of mine"—he picked up some papers from the desk—"just glance your eye over these and you'll see there isn't a trace of a likeness."

Certainly Forbury's minute, crabbed script bore not the least resemblance to the address on the envelope.

"I'll take your word for it," Sir Clinton said without ado. "Now think for a moment. Does anyone on your staff write with a Greek 'e'?"

Forbury considered this question so long before replying that Craythorn almost made up his mind that the man must be lying. But when the explanation came, it was quite satisfactory.

"The bother is, sir, that I don't see much of their handwriting," Forbury pointed out. "It's typescript they turn out for us, and it's only now and again that I've ever seen anything they've written with a pen. That's why it's so hard to recall. One of them, I'm sure, does use a Greek 'e.' It's not young Cadbury. He writes a schoolboy scrawl. Let me think.... It's not Miss Nevern, I'm pretty sure of that...."

"That leaves two of them, doesn't it?" Sir Clinton had noted the number in the outer office as he came through. "H'm! Let's see how we can get at it."

Forbury produced a sheet and Sir Clinton, sitting down at the desk, scribbled several lines at the top of the paper.

"This represents a statement you have made to us, you understand, Mr. Forbury? Or, at any rate, the last few lines of it. Quite innocuous, as you'll see if you glance at it. Now we'll call in your two typists. What are their names?"

"Well, they'll be kind enough to witness your signature to this. The inspector and I, being officials, are hardly the right people to act as witnesses, you understand?"

When the two girls had been called in, Sir Clinton explained what they had to do:

"Just sign your names—your full names—on the left of Mr. Forbury's and write 'Witness' after your signature, please."

Effie Hinkley signed first, with the air of one carrying out a boring formality. Olive Lyndoch followed her, glanced at the lines in Sir Clinton's writing at the head of the sheet with keen inquisitiveness which rather amused the Chief Constable. When she had signed, he dismissed them both.

"Now," he said, picking up the paper. "There's enough to go on. I was banking on the 'e' in 'witness,' but we've got an 'e' in Olive and two small 'e's' in Miss Hinkley's signature. She uses an ordinary English 'e' in each case. But Miss Lyndoch favours a Greek 'e' both in her signature and in 'witness.' It isn't proof positive, but it's interesting. When people start trying to disguise their handwriting, it's just these little things that they're apt to forget, simply because such trifles are second nature to them. They ignore them in the effort to make the general character of the script as unlike their normal writing as possible."

He lifted some documents under which he had concealed the anonymous letter before the typists came into the room; and, handling the envelope very gingerly, he pulled out the letter to Lockhurst and spread it out on the desk for Forbury to read.

Forbury read through the accusation with a very troubled expression on his face.

"Well, Hyson's dead," he said at last with obvious reluctance, "but I wouldn't have put it past him to do a thing like that. He was a bad lot, a real bad lot."

"We know all about that," Sir Clinton said bluntly. "What I want to know is the other half of it—who the girl was. Can you throw any light on that?"

"I don't like to say anything that might hurt a girl..." he stumbled. "I don't really know anything...."

"When the police come in at the door, chivalry goes out of the window," Sir Clinton affirmed. "We're not at King Arthur's Round Table here. If you have information, you ought to give it to us. Otherwise we shall have to suspect all three of these girls and that might be unfair to one or two of them. If it's slander you're afraid of, you can make yourself easy."

"I'm not afraid in that way," Forbury declared with more spirit than Craythorn had expected from him. "I'm thinking whether it's fair to give you what's no more than the merest suspicions. I don't know of any such goings-on in this office. I never caught Hyson kissing any of the typists or anything of that sort. He was too clever for that, I may tell you, seeing how Mr. Lockhurst would have looked on things of that kind."

"Well, you've some grounds for suspicion, anyhow," said Sir Clinton impatiently. "You've made that plain. What are they? Out with it."

Forbury was evidently torn between the desire to get some of his own back and the wish to be as fair as possible.

"Well, sir, I told you that Hyson and Miss Lyndoch were pretty friendly. In fact, he was doing his best to get in that Moon-Hopkins machine so that she would get a lift up in the office. That's well known to all the staff, so I'm not saying anything I oughtn't to, there. They were absolutely hand in glove in that matter. But as to what that letter says, I can't tell you one way or another. What's more, Miss Lyndoch's been different lately and so has Hyson. She's gone about as if she'd got a sick headache. I can't describe it exactly. Perhaps she felt her nose out of joint, because Hyson took to favouring the junior typist, Miss Nevern."

"Yes, sir. He's been using her more than Miss Lyndoch, getting her to take his dictation in here, and so on. Mind you, sir, I'm not suggesting there's anything funny in it. I'm just answering your question as best I can. All I mean is that there's been a coolness between Hyson and Miss Lyndoch lately, and Miss Nevern's been taking the place Miss Lyndoch used to have."

"Look at the date on that letter—the postmark, I mean," Sir Clinton directed. "Does this coolness you speak about fit in with that?"

"You mean did it start round about then? It did, so far as I can remember. But that's just an impression."

"Oh, I'm quite sure about her, sir. She's a bit sharp-tongued and doesn't mind saying what she thinks of people. She had a sort of down on Hyson. One could see she didn't like him in the least. When he took charge here, she called him 'the new broom,' and she was always making hits at him when she talked to the rest of us. She's a very independent sort of girl, sir."

"I'd say she's rather a featherhead, sir, in some ways. Quite efficient in her work, but not much ballast. But I know nothing at all against her—against her private character, I mean. I've never seen her let Hyson take any liberties with her, or even try it on. And it's no fault of hers if Hyson made her do the work Miss Lyndoch used to do. She had to do as she was told."

"Naturally. Now just a formal question. Could you account for your movements on the night of Hyson's death, say from the time you left the office up to half-past ten?"

"Do you mean he didn't suicide? That he was murdered? And you're suspecting me of it? I had nothing to do with it, if he was murdered. I'm a good churchgoer. I never set eyes on him after I left the office."

"I know, now. I went home, had supper with the wife, smoked a pipe after that, then she and I and my eldest went out to the pictures, and we didn't get home till about eleven. I can prove that; there's no doubt about it whatever."

"It was a formal question," Sir Clinton pointed out. "Don't get excited about it, Mr. Forbury. We sometimes have to ask things like that."

"That's for the coroner's jury to settle," Sir Clinton assured him. "Don't let's take on their work."

Forbury was evidently about to say something further when Cadbury came to the door.

"That Miss Ruth Jessop's called, Mr. Forbury. She's in a fine way," he added in an undertone. "About off her rocker to know if some bonds of hers are safe. Says she must see you about it at once and no denial taken. Better see her, or she'll have a fit of hysterics outside."

Cadbury disappeared and returned to usher Ruth Jessop into the private office. She was in a woeful state of excitement, just as Cadbury had described. She glanced round, recognised Forbury, and ignored the others.

"I've just heard some dreadful stories, Mr. Forbury," she began, almost gabbling in her agitation. "They say that man Hyson has been embezzling. I was told that a whole lot of bonds have gone amissing. Is there anything in that, Mr. Forbury? Don't put me off, for it'll all come out in the end. I must know if my bonds are safe."

Forbury's glance at Sir Clinton carried an easily interpretable message: "I told you bad news travels fast. Here's the result."

"I know I was a fool to leave the things here after Mr. Lockhurst took ill, Mr. Forbury," Ruth went on without waiting for an answer and stuttering a little in her haste. "I never trusted that man Hyson in the least. Look at the way he's treated his poor wife. A thorough scoundrel, Mr. Forbury, that's what he was, a dreadful creature. And now he's taken to suicide. One can't even get him punished. It's... it's terrible. Oh, why didn't I take my bonds away before this happened? It's not as if I hadn't had warning of the sort of man he was. I'll tell you something about him, Mr. Forbury. It happened in this very office. I'd come in to see him in the afternoon about something or other, and I forgot my bag when I was leaving. I only found it out a good while later and I came back to see if I could get it. I thought the office might be open late, perhaps. I looked up as I came along, Mr. Forbury, and I could see a light in the window here. Then I saw a girl going up the steps, a fair-haired girl in a grey dress. She went in. She was a good bit ahead of me. When I came into the hall, I could hear her steps away up on the stairs. Then I heard a door open and shut. I went up after her, and when I got to the door of the office I knocked. No one took the least notice. I knocked and knocked, and no one came. So I went away down again and looked up at the windows. Every one in the building was dark, except the one in this office we're in. Well, that was plain enough, wasn't it? I knew what sort of a man Hyson was. And the girl couldn't have gone into any other office, because they were all dark. So it was no use going upstairs again and trying to get in, was it, Mr. Forbury? Oh, if only I'd done what I ought to have done, then, and taken my bonds to my bank! I might have known he was spending money on women and that he couldn't be getting it honestly. Oh, dear!... Oh, dear!..."

Her emotions got the better of her. Tears rolled down her pendulous cheeks, sobs shook her plump body, she collapsed on the settee and cried unashamedly, like a heart-broken child.

"You must pull yourself together, Miss Jessop," he said kindly. "Perhaps your bonds haven't been taken, after all."

"Mr. Forbury will go through the safe immediately and find out definitely. But while he's making his search, I expect you'd rather be alone, or have one of the girl clerks to look after you?"

Ruth Jessop made an inarticulate protest. Even in her unnerved state, apparently, she would have preferred to rely on male sympathy instead of being handed over to one of her own sex. But she was given no chance to object. Effie Hinkley was called in, and Ruth was transferred to her rather austere and contemptuous charge in the little room which Forbury usually occupied.

"She'd better have a chance to calm down before she goes out into the street," Sir Clinton said, when the door had closed behind her. "Just see if her bonds have disappeared, Mr. Forbury."

Forbury shrugged his shoulders as though to indicate that it would be time wasted. Then he ran his eye over several of the lists he had drawn up, paused at one item, and shook his head gloomily.

"They're gone," he reported. "He took all the bearer bonds he could lay hands on, first thing. It was after that that he took to forging signatures to the transfers."

"Hard luck on her," Sir Clinton commented. "She doesn't look very affluent, poor thing. Still, if Lockhurst's estate runs up to a fair figure, she may get some dividend out of it. Lockhurst is technically responsible, I suppose, since the bonds were left in his charge."

If things got to that pitch, he reflected pessimistically, it meant the street for him. No other local firm would want to take over the business and keep it afloat. But the Chief Constable allowed him no time to ruminate on that subject.

"Now, Mr. Forbury, I want to see Miss Lyndoch. Will you call her in here, please?"

Chapter Thirteen
THE ARCTIC FOX

FORBURY put his finger on the white TYPISTS-button on the desk and pressed it once, with the air of one summoning spirits from the vasty deep. Had something of the sort obeyed his call, it would have surprised him hardly more than what he saw when the senior typist entered the room.

Forbury had no reason to like Olive Lyndoch; but when he saw her come into the private office, his natural kindliness overbore his grudge against her for doings in the past. Instead of the cool, self-confident personality to which he was accustomed, he found before him a spiritless, heavy-eyed girl, evidently near to tears. Forbury's mind was so full of the Hyson tragedy that he linked it immediately with the girl's changed appearance and jumped instanter to a correct inference. "Why, she must have been fond of that fellow!" he deduced. The discovery amazed him. Olive Lyndoch had always seemed to him a cold, calculating kind of girl, the last sort of person to be carried away by sentiment. And a married man, too! He'd credited her with more common sense than that, somehow. And yet, there she was, looking as though all the props had been knocked from under her world and nothing could put it right again. A rum affair! He simply could not understand any girl falling "in love" with Hyson, a man who, in Forbury's opinion, had been a mere compendium of unlikeable qualities. What on earth had she seen in the fellow? A queer world, really, when things like this happened in it. Yet for all his amazement, the little man found some place in his mind for pity. He disliked the girl intensely; but to see her in that state made him sympathise with her trouble, since it was obviously so deep.

"Please sit down, Miss Lyndoch," said Sir Clinton, pointing to a chair at the desk. "I can see you're rather upset just now, but we have to put a question or two. Can you throw any light on this for us?"

He pointed to the anonymous letter which was still spread out on the desk, but as she put out her hand to it he made a restraining gesture.

In her normal state, Olive would have acted her part coolly enough. All she had to do was to glance over the document as though seeing it for the first time, and then wait for questions. But at this moment she was too busy with her own thoughts to take note of such trifles. Ossie was dead! His dismissal of her had been hard enough to bear; but even after that, there was a chance of winning him back. That hope had always been in her mind, and it had dulled her pain as she now realised. But this final disaster was far more dreadful. Death finished everything. She'd never see him again, never hear his voice, never feel his arm about her any more. What did anything else matter now, compared with this awful loneliness which had fallen on her as she read that brief paragraph in the newspaper.

Sir Clinton, watching her intently, saw that she had paid no attention to the crudely-pasted scraps of lettering which formed the document. Unobtrusively he turned the paper round again, as though he wished to consult it himself.

Olive made an effort to pull herself together. No need to look at that letter. She knew its contents well enough.

"You mean about Mr. Hyson bringing girls to the office after hours?" she asked dully. "That's true enough."

And to numb her present agony, she deliberately revivified that other anguish which she had gone through as she looked from the tea-shop window and saw her supplanter on the steps of the office. She described the scene to them: the diffident approach of the little figure in grey with the conspicuous fox fur, the halt of indecision on the office steps, and the dark front of the building broken only by one lighted window, the window of this private office.

"You recognised the girl as one of your fellow-typists?" asked Sir Clinton suavely.

"She was wearing a grey coat and skirt and a grey fox fur. I'd seen her dressed like that when she left the office half an hour or so before."

"No, I didn't. But if you go outside you'll find the fox fur on her coat-hook now," she said waspishly. "Surely that's good enough for you."

"Do you mean Miss Nevern's fur?" interrupted Forbury, shocked to the core by this unexpected charge against a girl whom he had always assumed to be straight.

Her nerves were gradually fraying under the strain of this interview, which had come on the top of her own personal trouble. She wanted someone to be kind to her, instead of all this questioning about trivial things. Why couldn't they leave her alone? She had all that she could bear, already. And there was no one to be kind to her, now that Ossie was dead.

Not much chance of her ever forgetting that date. It was printed ineffaceably on her mind.

Sir Clinton picked up the envelope of the anonymous letter. Craythorn idly speculated whether they could bring up enough fingerprints on it to make their case. After passing through the post, it would hardly give clear results with the ordinary powders. But they might get something by Hudson's silver chloride method. The Chief Constable, however, had something else in view. He glanced at the postmark on the envelope to refresh his memory. Now he had all the case he needed, and he chose the most direct method.

Olive was of different metal from Ruth Jessop. Trouble left her dry-eyed. She had no inclination to bury her head in the cushions of the settee and cry her heart out. But as she sat there at the desk, with unseeing eyes, a wave of black despondency seemed to well up in her mind. Ossie was gone. What did anything matter after that? If these men wanted answers to their idiotic questions, why not tell them and then perhaps they'd let her alone. That was what she wanted most, just to be left alone and not to be worried by trivial things. She had come to the end of her tether and was ready to admit anything, so long as it brought her surcease from this futile catechism. Let them put their fussy little questions and be done with it. She gave an assenting nod.

"The seventeenth? You're quite sure? Now will you explain why you sent this message to Mr. Lockhurst?"

Olive suddenly had an optical illusion. The room seemed to extend itself, the ceiling grew lower, and everything diminished in size as though she were examining it through the wrong end of a pair of opera-glasses. She seemed to be under interrogation by a trio of pigmies. Well, that put things into perspective. What did these people matter? She faced round towards the Chief Constable.

What were they after now? Olive asked herself with dull resentment. What had she to do with "other letters of the same sort"? Oh, of course, that poison-pen stuff there had been such a fuss about.

Now would they leave her alone? One would think there was no real trouble in the world, to see these people worrying about things that had no importance whatever. She could almost have laughed at them from the pinnacle of her sorrow.

"Because she took Ossie away from me, that's why. I used to meet him here. Then she got hold of him and he dropped me. Is that plain enough for you?"

She's got roused at last, Craythorn reflected, as he examined her critically. Hell knows no fury, etc. And then that suggestion of Sir Clinton's about the possibility of a bruise at the back of Hyson's head flitted across his mind. Olive Lyndoch was a well-built girl, lithe and sinewy. She could have stunned Hyson if she took him unawares, and she was powerful enough to drag him to the gas-oven while he lay at her mercy. And that would account for her curious apathy in the first part of this examination. It was the relaxation after the strain, perhaps. He waited for Sir Clinton's next move, but it surprised him completely when it came.

She rose listlessly, went out, and returned with a key which she laid on the table before the Chief Constable. Sir Clinton drew a second key from his pocket, placed the two side by side, and examined them carefully.

To himself, Craythorn admitted that "the Chief had wiped his eye for him." He himself had taken one of these keys from Hyson's pocket when he made the inventory last night. It had gone with the other things to the station; and evidently Sir Clinton had secured it there this morning. Then, in that tour of inspection he made while Craythorn was telephoning, he must have found that it fitted no lock on the premises and must have brought it along in the hope of finding why Hyson had carried it. And now it turned out to be a second key of Olive Lyndoch's flat. Well, one knew what that meant. No wonder she had been furious when this Nevern girl cut her out and captured Hyson for herself.

Sir Clinton made no comment on the identity of the keys. He gave Olive her own back and left the other in Craythorn's charge. Olive received the key indifferently. Evidently she had forgotten that without it she could not have got into her flat again. She sat waiting for any further questions.

"Now, Miss Lyndoch," Sir Clinton demanded, "tell me what your movements were after you left this office last night."

"Yes. I didn't go out again. I stayed there until about eleven o'clock, doing one thing and another, and then I went to bed."

"No visitors? Nobody you could call to prove that you actually were at home all the time?"

Olive shook her head. Craythorn got the impression that she had completely missed the point of the question.

"That's all for the present, thank you," Sir Clinton intimated. "Would you ask Miss Hinkley to come and speak to us, please?"

Olive nodded mechanically and left the room without even a word in reply. She seemed to have become entirely absorbed in her own unhappy thoughts. In a few seconds Miss Hinkley appeared: neat, cool, and collected, with the faintly-cynical expression which was habitual in her.

"She's still moaning and talking about being ruined. Rather too melodramatic to be genuine. She wants all the limelight to herself."

"Just look at this, please," Sir Clinton invited her, pointing to the anonymous letter. "Can you throw any light on it?"

Effie Hinkley studied the message closely and her eyebrows rose as she read it. Then she re-read it with an amused expression.

"Nice piece of work," she commented. "I wouldn't put it past Hyson, myself. He tried to put the comether on me, once. But he wasn't my style, quite apart from other things. I choked him off completely. As to the other girls, you'll have to ask them themselves. I took no interest in his doings."

"So am I," Effie retorted, unperturbed. "But I know nothing, so I can't tell you anything. I never saw this thing before and I've no idea who made it up. I don't know whether the tale's true or not, so I can't say one thing or another. Anything else?"

"Then we can take it that your relations with Hyson were purely on a business footing and that outside the office hours you and he never met?"

"You'd make a first-class witness, Miss Hinkley," Sir Clinton declared with a smile. "Now, if you'll write down your address, we needn't trouble you further."

Effie jotted down the required particulars, glanced up at Sir Clinton with the inquiry: "That's all?" and then composedly left the room. When she had gone, Sir Clinton turned to Forbury.

"I'd like to see Miss Nevern now. Perhaps you'd better leave us while we talk to her."

"Just as you please, sir," Forbury agreed, evidently with some relief. "I'll send her in here."

He went out, and in a few seconds Kitty Nevern appeared at the open door. She was nervous, but was making a brave effort not to show it; and she forced a smile as Sir Clinton's gesture invited her to take a seat. Craythorn's appraising glance noted that she was a natural platinum blonde and that she was wearing a grey skirt.

"Now, Miss Nevern," Sir Clinton began, "you know you don't need to answer questions unless you want to. But you may be able to help us, if you like to do it. And, frankly, I think it would be in your own interest if you did answer. Is that quite clear?"

"Yes, sir," Kitty answered with some slight hesitation which might have been due to her nervousness. "I suppose it's something about Mr. Hyson?"

"We'll come to Mr. Hyson by-and-by. Now let's go back to the month before last. Can you remember what you did on the night of the seventeenth?"

Kitty's face showed that she was completely at sea. She frowned faintly as though striving to force her memory. Then, quite naturally, she shook her head as though giving it up.

"No, I couldn't remember that," she declared. "It's too far back and I've nothing to go on. I don't even remember what day of the week the seventeenth was."

"Let's try again. A Miss Jessop came to the office this morning. You know her? One of the clients. Once upon a time she left her bag behind her. Can you remember anything about that?"

It was plain enough from Kitty's expression that she had no idea what the Chief Constable was driving at. But she recalled the incident of the forgotten bag.

"Oh, yes, I can remember that," she said. "I found her bag on the floor here, after she'd gone, and I kept it till next day. I gave it to Cadbury—the office-boy, you know—to hand over to Miss Jessop when she called for it. If she hadn't come for it, I'd have sent her a note about it."

"Well, it's the day she left her bag that I'm speaking about," Sir Clinton explained. "You know where you are now? Can you remember anything about how you spent your time on that evening?"

Kitty frowned again and twisted her fingers in her lap in what appeared to be an agony of concentration.

"Try it another way," Sir Clinton suggested. "Can you remember the bag incident clearly? Yes? Then can you carry on from that to what happened during the rest of the day? For example, can you remember leaving the office that night? Or who you went downstairs with? Anything of that sort that would jog your memory?"

"I simply can't remember a thing about it," she declared, with a little quiver in her voice. "I can't. I can't."

"You didn't forget anything yourself that day—leave anything behind, I mean, and come back for it?"

"Well, try again," said Sir Clinton patiently. "What do you do with yourself in the evenings? Dance, go to the pictures, play bridge, or what?"

"I think I might have gone to the pictures, that night," she said slowly. "Somehow... I've a sort of idea I did... No, I can't be really sure about it."

"Oh, I'm quite sure about that," Kitty affirmed without hesitation. "What good would it be to come back here? I couldn't have got in. I've no key."

"Mr. Hyson would have one, of course," Sir Clinton agreed. "Now Mr. Hyson's dead, as you probably know. Was he a friend of yours—I mean outside office hours?"

"Not exactly a friend," she explained. "I went to the pictures once or twice with him, and he wanted to hold hands and that sort of thing. I didn't want him to do that. And he used to call me in here and try to paw me about. I hated that. And he used to send me chocolates, as if that gave him some sort of claim on me. I had to keep on the right side of him. He'd have sacked me, if I hadn't. But I never let him go too far with me. It was beastly, because it seemed to make Miss Lyndoch cross with me. She'd been a favourite of his before. I didn't want to put her nose out. But I could see by the way she looked at me, sometimes, that she thought I was cutting her out. And I could hardly tell her I wasn't, could I? It was awfully awkward. But what could I do?"

"Very unpleasant," Sir Clinton agreed. "Now, Miss Nevern, tell me what you did last night after you left here."

"I went and had some tea, first of all. Then I went to the pictures. That boy Cadbury asked if he might come along with me...."

She stopped abruptly as if this had suggested something to her, then she went on rapidly:

"That reminds me! I believe I can remember now what I did that evening after Miss Jessop forgot her bag. I'm not dead sure of it, but I think... I'm almost sure that I went to the pictures that night too, and that Cadbury came with me. I'm almost certain about it. Would you ask him, sir? Perhaps he could remember. He's outside in the office there."

After seeing the rest of the staff taken one by one, the boy had been expecting this summons. It made him feel important in the extreme. He was so impressed by the solemnity of the occasion that he even remembered to pull his tie straight as he crossed the threshold. He would dearly have loved to pose as the Indispensable Witness; but though he had racked his brains, he had failed to think of a single fact which seemed to bear on Hyson's death. Still, here he was in the presence of the Master Sleuth, and already he was framing the phrases in which he would describe the meeting to his young friends. "He put me through it—proper, I can tell you!" "He looked me up and down with these steely eyes of his, and says he..." " 'Sir Clinton,' says I, 'this is what I saw...' " And so on. Very dramatic, and tense.

The "Mr." delighted Cadbury, as Sir Clinton intended it should. It gave him the assurance that he was being treated as adult to adult and not as a schoolboy. He sat down ungracefully and suddenly discovered that he did not know what to do with his hands. Then he wished he had taken the precaution of washing them before this interview. After this, he had an opportunity of stealing a glance at Kitty's face. Had they been "fairly putting her through it" the way they had evidently done to Miss Lyndoch and Miss Jessop? But to his relief, he could see no signs of emotional breakdown in her features. She was gazing at him, he found rather to his embarrassment, as though she was hoping for something. He caught her eye and glanced shyly aside.

"Now, Mr. Cadbury, we're in hopes that you may be able to help us a little," Sir Clinton continued pleasantly. "Got a good memory? That's what we want. Well, I suppose you can remember last night. What did you do after leaving the office?"

Cadbury shot a glance at Kitty's face again and found her gazing intently at him. What did she want him to say? It flashed across his mind that Hyson had suicided last night. How could Kitty be mixed up in that affair? He couldn't imagine. Still, he could give her an alibi. He forgot all about looking the Master Sleuth steadily in the eye. Instead, he kept his gaze on Kitty's face to see if he was saying the right thing.

"I went out to a tea-shop, first of all, sir. Then I went to the pictures—the Majestic, sir—with Miss Nevern."

Ah! Evidently he had said the right thing! What a relief! Kitty gave him an encouraging smile: so she was all right, and it was all right, whatever "it" was.

"Till about eleven o'clock, sir. Then I saw Miss Nevern home," he added with a mixture of pride and self-consciousness.

"Now we'll go back a bit," Sir Clinton suggested. "Do you often accompany Miss Nevern to the pictures?"

Cadbury was inwardly thankful for the Chief Constable's phrasing. It enabled him to avoid the confession that he hadn't "taken" Kitty to the pictures. She had insisted on paying for herself.

He wasn't likely to forget episodes like that. These two visits to the picture-house stood out like beacons in retrospect. All he had done was to sit beside her and hold her fur on his lap, but that in itself had provided him with amazing sensations and recollections.

And now Cadbury, without guessing it, did prove to be the indispensable witness. He fumbled in his pocket, produced a crumpled and dog-eared volume.

"I'll look it up in my diary, sir," he mumbled, turning over the pages with clumsy haste. "Yes, it's here, sir."

Sir Clinton glanced at the name of the month at the top of the page. His eye caught the large exclamation mark after the note on the visit to the picture-house, and he had little difficulty in fathoming Cadbury's little secret. Tactfully he forbore to read the entry aloud, much to the boy's relief. And Cadbury had further cause for joy. He could see from Kitty's face that he had said the right thing, though he was quite unable to guess what, exactly, he had achieved by his evidence. Sir Clinton's comment put him almost into the seventh heaven.

"Thanks, Mr. Cadbury. That's a very valuable piece of evidence. You won't mind our keeping this diary of yours for a while?"

This would be something to boast about, wouldn't it? Complimented by the Master Sleuth! Valuable evidence! Of course they were welcome to keep his diary if they needed it. He was so excited that he could only nod in answer to Sir Clinton's request.

"Now would you go and get Miss Nevern's coat and fur, please," Sir Clinton asked him, glancing at the girl for permission as he spoke.

"Would you please put these on, Miss Nevern," Sir Clinton suggested when Cadbury returned with the articles.

"Now, Mr. Cadbury, would you be so good as to ask Miss Jessop to come here for a moment?"

Under Effie Hinkley's faintly sarcastic ministrations, Ruth had recovered some command of herself. She came into the room, sniffing and red-eyed, but at least not hysterical.

"Would you look at Miss Nevern carefully, Miss Jessop," Sir Clinton directed, "and then tell us if you think she was the person you saw going into this office after hours on the occasion you mentioned?"

Ruth Jessop looked uncomfortably at Kitty as if not very sure what she should say.

"Walk a few steps up and down, Miss Nevern," Sir Clinton suggested. "Perhaps that will make it easier."

Kitty did her best to walk naturally, but she could not help feeling rather self-conscious as she paced up and down the room under the eyes of the spectators. Ruth stared at her at first as if in doubt, but Sir Clinton surmised that she was really trying to cover up a possible mistake. At last she seemed to make up her mind.

"No, it must have been someone else I saw, Sir Clinton," she said. "There's a likeness, and of course the dress and fur are the same. But I don't think it was Miss Nevern, Sir Clinton. In fact, now I look carefully, I'm sure it was someone else. Yes, I'm quite sure."

She glanced at the Chief Constable to see if this was the answer he had expected, and she was evidently relieved to find how narrowly she had escaped a trap when he continued:

"You're quite right. Miss Nevern wasn't anywhere near this office when you saw the girl come in here that night. It must have been the similarity in the costumes that puzzled you at the first glance."

"Oh, yes, Sir Clinton, that was it," Ruth hastened to confirm his hint. "It was that that misled me for a moment. But Miss Nevern's face is different from that girl's, and although her walk's rather like the other one's, I can see the difference easily enough now."

At this moment, Effie Hinkley came into the room and handed an envelope to the Chief Constable.

With gesture asking permission, Sir Clinton opened the envelope, examined the contents, and passed them over to Craythorn. The inspector turned first to a telegram form:

OFFICER IN CHARGE POLICE HEADQUARTERS.
MRS. TELFORD USED TO MEET HYSON AT HIS OFFICE AFTER HOURS. SALVATOR.

Craythorn examined the particulars on the form. Office of origin: Waterloo Street; Time handed in: 11.49 A.M.; Received: 12.03 P.M. Sent on from the G.P.O. to police headquarters; better allow ten minutes for that, and another ten minutes for transmission between headquarters and Lockhurst's office. He glanced at his watch and found his estimate fairly accurate, as it was just twenty-five past twelve. "Salvator"? Funny name, that, he reflected. Then a further idea occurred to him, an obvious one: this wire might be another of these poison-pen productions, and "Salvator" was just a pseudonym, not a real name at all. Well, he'd have a look at the back of the original telegram form and see what address was given by the sender. And, with luck, if this really was a poison-pen production, the girl at the post-office counter might recall the look of the sender and help to put them on the track of this poison-pen pest. And then yet another idea dawned on him. This Lyndoch girl had admitted sending one anonymous letter. Was she responsible for this telegram also? Handed in 11.49 A.M. at Waterloo Street. No, that barred her out. She'd been in the office here at 11.49 A.M. So were Forbury, the other two girl clerks, and this Jessop woman. And Cadbury. None of them could have got to Waterloo Street and back without their absence being noticed. Still, he'd better make sure of the point.

"Just a moment, sir," he excused himself to Sir Clinton, "I want to ask a question." Sir Clinton gave permission with a nod, and Craythorn turned to Kitty Nevern. "You haven't been out of the office, have you, since you came in this morning?"

"Me? No, I haven't been over the door-step," the boy answered rather indignantly.

"Miss Lyndoch or Mr. Forbury, have they been out?" Craythorn pursued addressing both Cadbury and Kitty.

"You've been in this room, part of the time," Craythorn reminded him, "so how can you be sure..."

He broke off, recalling that Cadbury had actually been in the outer office at the critical period round about a quarter to twelve.

Then a further idea occurred to him. That Lyndoch girl might have used the office phone and sent the wire by that means without leaving the office at all. But he rejected this explanation almost immediately. In such a case the telegram would have been marked as issued from the G.P.O., not from Waterloo Street Post Office. Rather crestfallen, he indicated to Sir Clinton that he had finished his intervention; and to cover his slight confusion he glanced at the second paper in his hand. It was merely a brief report stating that the police surgeon, in conducting the P.M., had found a marked bruise on the back of Hyson's head.

"Somebody knocked him out and then hauled him to the gas-oven," Craythorn decided. "Well, almost anyone might have done that single-handed."

He began to run over his list of suspects and was surprised to find how long it was. This Lyndoch girl—she'd got the mitten from Hyson not so long ago, and her manner this morning was a bit queer, to put it mildly. Then Hyson's wife—she had every reason to want the fellow out of the way, and she had a sister to give her a good alibi. And if it wasn't she, what about this man Barsett, who was always hanging about the house when Hyson was out? He had the same reason as the wife for wanting the husband out of the way. And now another possibility had turned up, if Hyson had been monkeying with this Telford woman, whoever she was. She had a husband, too, probably. And, finally, how did this poison-pen pest know so much about things? That seemed a bit rum, when one came to think of it.

Sir Clinton interrupted his further musings by speaking to Kitty Nevern and Cadbury.

"I must thank you both for your assistance," he said cordially. "Rather trying for you, Miss Nevern, I'm afraid; but we had to make it quite clear that you weren't mixed up in any way in this unpleasant affair. We've got Mr. Cadbury to thank for putting that completely out of the question."

Cadbury's ears reddened at this tribute. He was still very much in the dark as to what he had achieved; but at any rate here was the Master Sleuth giving him all the credit, and apparently giving Kitty a reason for being grateful. Splendid! He'd ask her to tea and to the pictures to-night and insist on paying for both, too!

As Kitty turned to leave the office, Sir Clinton looked at her again, and his memory went back to Mollie Keston's wedding-day. Beyond a doubt, there was a marked resemblance in figure between Kitty Nevern and Nancy Telford; and at that wedding Nancy Telford had worn a fur which, at a moderate distance, would look very much like the one that Kitty Nevern was wearing now. Then he remembered what Malwood had hinted at when he asked him about Nancy's illness. That might be a bit of the puzzle, though it was a beastly idea. Then he involuntarily shrugged his shoulders. Telford would be able to clear himself, easily enough. And that being so, the sooner he had an opportunity of doing it, the better.

In his turn, Sir Clinton was roused from his reflections by a voice. Ruth Jessop was again verging on hysterics. She had seized the opportunity to question Forbury about her bonds and had learned that they had vanished.

"But they can't have gone, Mr. Forbury! That would mean that quite a big bite's gone out of my income, and that's all I have to live on, Mr. Forbury! Are you sure you haven't made a mistake? You must have! Oh, I'll go to law about this. I'll go straight to my solicitor, Mr. Forbury. I'm not going to be robbed like this, I can assure you. Is there any chance of my getting my bonds back? Oh..."

"I think you'd better see your solicitor," he agreed. "Mr. Forbury can do nothing. It's no responsibility of his. But Mr. Lockhurst's executors will no doubt do the proper thing. See your solicitor and don't worry too much in the meanwhile."

"It's easy enough for you to say 'Don't worry,' Sir Clinton," Ruth retorted. "You haven't lost any of your income. But what are your police doing, when this kind of thing happens? Aren't you supposed to prevent crimes? And yet this man Hyson has been allowed to rob me without anyone lifting a finger. There ought to be a complaint made about it, Sir Clinton. There really ought!"

"Consult your solicitor about that, Miss Jessop," Sir Clinton advised, in a rather weary tone. "In the meanwhile, I'm afraid that the inspector and I need Mr. Forbury's assistance."

Forbury was acute enough to see the excuse which had been offered to him to get rid of Ruth. By degrees he edged her to the door and through the outer office; and at last he succeeded in breaking away from her on the doorstep.

While he was away, Sir Clinton sat down at the desk, drew a sheet of paper before him, and jotted down some notes, which he handed to the inspector as Forbury returned.

"I'll leave you and Inspector Craythorn to compare notes about Hyson's embezzlements," he said to the clerk. "He has some documents with him that he took from Hyson's house. They may help to clear up a point or two for you."

When he had taken his leave, Craythorn glanced at the note of instructions. As he read it, his face clouded with vexation.

"Why on earth didn't I think of that myself?" he demanded mentally. "I ought to have spotted it."

Chapter Fourteen
INSPECTOR CRAYTHORN'S SUSPICIONS

INSPECTOR CRAYTHORN had the type of mind which wants to have things cut and dried. He liked, as he said, to have a case where you knew the head from the tail. But this Hyson case still seemed to be completely vague. After a week of routine investigations, alibi-checking and the like, he could not even be sure whether it had been suicide or murder. "Facts, but no forrader," he summarized the results to himself. And the estimate exasperated him the more because it was correct.

Was it a case of suicide? Hyson had been up to the neck in these embezzlements, and Lockhurst's sudden death had meant an immediate investigation by auditors acting for the trustees, whoever they were. Exposure, swift and inevitable, had stared Hyson in the face as soon as he got word of his chief's collapse. And, as further investigation had proved, Hyson had not put aside any reserve of cash which would have served him in a flight. He had muddled the whole proceeds away in a series of operations which had become more risky as they developed, in the attempt to cover the initial losses by some lucky stroke. No luck had come his way, and the gas-oven might well have been his last resort.

But that left out of account the bruise on the back of his head which the police surgeon had discovered under the suggestion of the Chief Constable. Not much of a bruise, admittedly, but still it had to be fitted in somehow before one could feel satisfied.

Call it murder, then, and were you any better off? Craythorn had not wasted his week. He knew now pretty well how various people stood to one another and whether they had any motives for putting Hyson off the board.

Forbury had plenty of basis for a grudge against Hyson; and what was more, he had the fear of Hyson chucking him out into the street very shortly. There was your motive. But Forbury's alibi had been checked up and it stood firm. He had actually gone home as he said, and they had managed to fish out an acquaintance who had seen him in the picture-house which he had visited with his wife and child, that night. Forbury was clear.

As to Effie Hinkley, she had spent the evening at a dance-hall with a girl friend and two men, all of whom were ready to swear to her whereabouts at the critical time. Kitty Nevern and young Cadbury had been checked up, too, as a matter of routine; but it had never crossed Craythorn's mind to suspect either of them, so he was not surprised to find both of them cleared completely.

Then there was the maid, Cissie Worgate. She had been able to produce some people who had seen her in the church hall that evening. And there was no motive in sight in her case, anyhow.

After that, one came to the doubtfuls. Mrs. Hyson had an alibi of sorts, since she could produce her sister to testify in her favour. But Craythorn never regarded close kinsfolk as sound witnesses in a case of this type. Miss Errington was very fond of her sister, he had discovered, and to that extent her evidence might have to be taken with any amount of salt. In fact, they might both have been in the business of knocking Hyson on the head and dragging him to his death at the gas-oven. The two of them could easily have carried him between them from the drawing-room into the scullery. And all that tale about the summons on the phone—that sounded more than fishy. Especially when one coupled it with the cutting of the telephone wire, which was evidently part of the scheme. Why cut the wire except to forestall anyone ringing up? As to a motive, in Mrs. Hyson's case there was no need to look far. She must have hated Hyson; and then there was this fellow Barsett in the background, evidently keen on her.

Barsett himself was another "possible." He had no real alibi. His servants believed he was in his study all evening, working at something or other—as he declared himself—but no one had actually seen him after dinner. Motive? Same as Mrs. Hyson's.

And, finally, there was Olive Lyndoch, discarded mistress. And not taking it lying down, either, to judge from that anonymous letter. A big powerful girl like that could have clumped Hyson on the head easily enough and then dragged him to the gas-oven, if she had a clear field.

Now here was yet another suspect on his hands: Telford. Interviewing him would be an awkward job, and Craythorn wasn't looking forward to it. A bit stiff, having to tell a man that his dead wife had been playing about with Hyson, deceased. Still, that was a possible motive, if Telford had learned how the land lay. One had to be thorough, and Telford would have to go through it with the rest. So they had got him down from Scotland and he was waiting outside. Better have him in now and get it over.

Craythorn's first impression of Jim Telford was of a young man who took pains to keep himself in perfect condition. The inspector had been a gym instructor in his day; and he noted with approval the straight-backed figure, good shoulders, and light movements as his visitor came across the room to meet him. Sir Clinton had told him about Telford's club of ragamuffins; and the inspector felt he would like to put on the gloves with him and see how he shaped. Then he glanced at the face, with its powerful jaw and firm lips. A man like that could take a lot of punishment, Craythorn judged. Only the eyes seemed out of keeping with the rest, with their rather brooding expression. But that, the inspector reflected, was probably a result of the loss which Telford had suffered not so long ago.

"Sorry to have brought you all the way down from Scotland, Mr. Telford," Craythorn began.

"There's no need to apologise," Jim Telford interrupted, with a smile which was meant to put the inspector at his ease but which only made him feel uncomfortable when he looked forward to his task. "I gather you're a bit up against it over this Hyson business? I can't see what I can do for you. But ask anything you please, and I'll help if I can."

"Every little helps," said the inspector sententiously. "We've had to go round asking all sorts of people questions about him, in the hope of something turning up."

"Suicide, wasn't it?" Telford inquired. "I gathered as much from the beginning of the inquest. My father-in-law sent me some local newspapers about it."

"You were a close friend of Hyson's, weren't you?" inquired Craythorn, dodging the question unobtrusively.

"No, hardly that. Mrs. Hyson was an old friend of my wife and myself. When she married Hyson, we got to know him, of course, in a way. But he wasn't more than an acquaintance for either of us."

"Oh, wasn't he?" commented Craythorn to himself. Aloud, he answered with: "I quite understand. But you were a visitor at his house, sometimes, weren't you?"

"My wife and I used to go round at nights to play bridge, when we happened to be down here staying with my father-in-law. But usually Hyson was out, on these evenings. He wasn't much of a bridge-player at best. We generally had a man Barsett to make up a four."

"Do you know anything about the relations between Hyson and Mrs. Hyson?" asked the inspector bluntly.

"Does one talk about things of that sort?" asked Jim Telford, with a quick frown of displeasure. Then, realising the situation, he made a gesture as he answered: "I'd forgotten that this is official. That makes a difference, of course. Well... the gilt was off the gingerbread, obviously, if you take my meaning. She'd found him out and knew she ought never to have married him. We all knew that."

Jim Telford seemed puzzled by the question. Then he caught at what he imagined the inspector's meaning to be.

"You mean did he splash money about? You're thinking of this embezzling business that my father-in-law told me all about? Oh, no. The cash didn't go in that way. They lived very quietly. One maid. When she was out in the evening, we fended for ourselves."

"Well, I knew the public rooms, of course; and I've helped to carry a tea-tray into the back premises now and again, when the maid had her evening off. It was no news to me, reading about the inquest, that they had a gas cooker in the scullery. Is that what you want?"

"I just asked," Craythorn explained vaguely. "You mentioned a Mr. Barsett. He used to join you at bridge. Do you know anything about him?"

"In much the same way that my wife and I were friends of hers," Jim agreed. "Hyson wasn't the attraction in either case."

"Right!" said Craythorn. "I understand. Now did you know anything about Hyson? Bit of a Don Juan, wasn't he?"

"I've heard rumours of the sort," Jim Telford admitted, though with a certain reluctance, the inspector thought.

"You don't know anything definite? No special case? A girl in the office, or anyone like that?"

"No. I tell you he was no friend of mine. He didn't take me into his confidence about his amours, certainly."

"Better ask her," Jim suggested. "I never discussed the point with her, as you may suppose."

Craythorn could quite believe it. What he had hoped to get was any information which might have come to Jim Telford through Nancy, who was probably in Mrs. Hyson's confidence. But clearly Telford was not going to be communicative. The inspector tried a fresh line.

"We've had a lot of bother with anonymous letters in this district lately," he began. "Lots of people seem to have received them. The Post Office has been on the track but they haven't caught the culprit yet. You didn't get any while you were staying here a while ago did you? Or "Mrs. Telford?"

"Nor Mrs. Telford?" the inspector pressed, thinking he had detected an evasion in the answer.

"Quite possibly," Telford admitted. "I remember discussing what one should do with such things if one got them. My view was that they ought to go straight into the fire. She knew what I thought about it."

The inspector was now coming to the most awkward stage of the interview. He began to wish that he had taken the trouble to frame his opening beforehand, for he had left it to the inspiration of the moment.

"Now there's one question I've got to put to you, Mr. Telford. It's in the way of business and you know how we sometimes have to ask awkward questions just to have them contradicted and the answer put on record. You mustn't be offended by this one."

He watched Jim Telford keenly as he dragged out this preliminary, speaking in a reluctant tone to give the words time to carry their full effect.

"Well, fire ahead," Jim recommended, with a frown which did not escape Craythorn's eye.

"Right! Then this is it in a nutshell. Had you any reason to suspect that Hyson and Mrs. Telford were... well, on friendly terms?"

Jim Telford's emotion required no keen physiognomist for its detection. He flushed a hot red and Craythorn, noting how his fists clenched, gathered himself together involuntarily to repel a possible attack.

"What's that you say?" Jim demanded, raising his voice about its normal tone in his anger. "Damn your eyes! How dare you suggest a thing like that?"

"Well, since you take it like that, sir," persisted Craythorn, undismayed by this explosion of rage, "I'll put it to you straight and be done with it. We've had a suggestion of the sort from a certain quarter, and it's got to be dealt with, one way or the other."

Suddenly Jim Telford seemed to get an idea. He relaxed to some extent, though his eye still gave a danger-signal.

"Oh, your anonymous letter-writer, was it?" he demanded. "What did the letter say?"

The inspector was now fairly launched and he intended to have the thing clear before he dropped it.

"It said that Mrs. Telford used to meet Hyson after hours at Mr. Lockhurst's office."

"Oh, indeed," said Jim Telford slowly. "And when did you get this pack of lies?"

"Last Friday?" Telford seemed to have choked down his anger and his tone had returned to normal. "Ah, I see. Mrs. Telford can't speak for herself; Hyson's dead; so it's safe to put that yarn afloat since neither party's alive to contradict it.... Well, it's a pretty business, isn't it? Slandering a girl who's not long in her grave. Damnation! Can't you people catch the creature who's setting these things going? I'd know what to do, if I could lay hands on the writer of them."

"What was your question? If I knew that my wife was Hyson's mistress? Well, I didn't. Do you suppose that if she had been that and I had known it, Hyson would have got away with it with a whole skin? You mistake me considerably if you think anything of the sort. I'd have made him more than sorry, you can take that from me. Now is there any shadow of evidence for that slander—apart from your anonymous letter-writer? I've a right to know that."

Sir Clinton had mentioned to Craythorn the similarity between the costume Nancy Telford had worn at Mollie Keston's wedding and the costume of the unidentified visitor to Hyson at the office after hours; but the inspector swiftly decided in his own mind that this was not "evidence" for present purposes. He didn't propose to put anything of the sort into the hands of the angry man. That was a bit of information which could only be used at the right time, if ever.

"No, we're going on the letter," he explained coolly. "We can't ignore it, you see. That's why I had to put it to you. It's all in the way of business. Every little helps. Now we know better what to think of it."

"You must have a busy time if you pay attention to every bit of slander that a hound chooses to put on paper," said Telford, with an undisguised sneer. "Well, are you satisfied now?"

"You've answered my question," the inspector conceded. "And, you know, Mr. Telford, I hate to ask a thing like that. I know just how you look at it and in your boots I'd feel just as you do about it. But duty's duty," he ended sententiously. "We've often got to make inquiries that we'd rather not."

"I can believe it, if that's a sample," commented Jim Telford with an ugly smile. "Well, go on. Any more of them?"

"One or two," admitted Craythorn with a shade less geniality. "You knew something about the Hysons' domestic arrangements, I gather. Now his death occurred last Thursday. Was that their maid's usual night out, can you tell me? I'm just using you to confirm what we got in other quarters, I may say. We want to be sure that she was off the premises, you see?"

Jim Telford paused for some seconds before answering and his face suggested that he was racking his memory for some recollection which would enable him to check the matter.

"Yes," he answered finally. "That's right, so far as my knowledge goes. I remember that if I went round there for bridge on a Thursday we had to look after tea ourselves. There was no maid to bring it in. Yes, that's correct."

"Right! Then she ought to have been off the premises that night. She has an alibi, but we have to check everything, you know."

"It was very good of you to come down and help us with your evidence. You came by train, I suppose?"

"No," Jim Telford contradicted, "I drove down. I'm spending the night with my father-in-law here."

"Long drive that," commented Craythorn. "I'd have thought the train would have suited you better."

"It's only about two-fifty miles or so," Telford explained. "And if I'd come by train, I'd have had the bother of going into town to catch the express. I'm at Glen Terret just now, so I'd have had to take my car anyhow."

"Right!" said the inspector, but in a tone which suggested that he had really little interest in the matter. Then a fresh thought seemed to cross his mind.

"You smoke, I suppose? There's no harm in your having a cigarette or a pipe here, if you'd like to."

Telford gave him a quick glance as much as to ask: "What do you think you're after?" Then he shook his head.

"I never smoke during business interviews," he said, with a faint twang of irony in his tone.

Craythorn realised that he had failed in his indirect method. He wasted no further time but tried a frontal attack.

"What for?" he demanded. "Are you thinking of changing your own brand and looking for tips? Well, I smoke Algonquin A, if that's any help to you."

He drew out his pouch as he spoke, opened it, and displayed the contents. As it chanced, Craythorn himself smoked Algonquin A and recognised the mixture at a glance. Its appearance was quite different from that of the dottle left on the hearth on the night that Hyson died. A tobacconist had identified that beyond dispute: Wainwright's Trafalgar brand.

"It's a good cool smoke," Craythorn had the presence of mind to say, on the spur of the moment. "It's my own brand."

And in confirmation, he took out his own pouch and exhibited his tobacco, seizing the opportunity to compare the two samples to make quite sure. Jim Telford shut his pouch again and returned it to his pocket.

"Just one thing more," the inspector said, as though the point was a mere matter of form. "Can you give me an account of your movements on the night that Hyson died?"

At the question, Jim Telford raised his eyebrows in surprise, then, almost immediately, a frown came upon his face.

"Are you suspecting me?" he demanded, angrily. "I'm getting a very pretty idea of the police from the way you're running this interview. First of all you question me about some damned slanderous letter you've received and throw aspersions on people who can't defend themselves. And now you have the nerve to ask me to account for my movements, although I was two hundred miles away from here that day. Are you suspecting me of shoving Hyson's head into his gas-oven? If you are, then say so, and I'll know just what your intelligence amounts to."

He made a gesture of contempt and sat back in his chair. Craythorn endeavoured, not too successfully, to explain his inquiry.

"You're taking this in the wrong way," he declared placably. "It's a routine question, Mr. Telford. I've put it to every witness I've examined yet, in this affair. None of them took offence at it, so why should you?"

"It sounded a damned sight too much like suspicion, to me," he grumbled. "I don't mind that, in itself. But I've seen the way you hand on suspicions in the matter of that anonymous letter. Before my back's turned, you'll be asking your next witness if there's any reason to suppose that I murdered my wife. And perhaps Hyson as well. It's not good enough, not by a long chalk."

"You haven't answered my question, Mr. Telford," he reminded Jim, ignoring the outburst.

Jim Telford's face changed as though a fresh idea had occurred to him. He leant forward with an expression which suggested that he was laying a trap for Craythorn.

"Do you suspect me?" he asked silkily. "Just say so, if you do. I shan't be a bit surprised, after what you've treated me to, already."

But the inspector had faced hostile barristers in the witness-box too often to be entrapped so easily.

"If I didn't suspect you, Mr. Telford, you'd be going the right way about it to make me change my views," he declared quietly. "Now why make difficulties? All I want is something to put into my report. If I didn't ask you that question, I might be hauled over the coals for not having asked it, even if it is a pointless one. It's a mere matter of routine," he ended, with a certain disregard for truth.

"Very well, let it go at that," he agreed. "The bother is, I can't produce anyone who saw me that day. It was Thursday, wasn't it, when Hyson petered out? Well, this is how it was. I'm living at my cottage in Glen Terret just now, not in town. My maid's in hospital, getting through scarlet fever. So there's no one at the cottage but myself. I look after any meals I get there myself and I bring all the necessary food and so on down from town. So barring the kid who leaves the milk and the postman, nobody has any reason to drop in on me. That quite clear?"

"Quite," admitted Craythorn, glad to find that he was going to get at the root of things in spite of the initial breeze between him and his witness.

"Very well, then," Jim continued. "On that Thursday morning, I woke up in a weird state. The whole room seemed to be turning round and when I stood up, I nearly tumbled over with giddiness. I just had to crawl back to bed again and watch the walls spinning. I'm not liable to bilious attacks, but it must have been something of the sort. Some food I'd eaten, probably, that hadn't been quite according to Cocker. Anyhow, I was fit for nothing but to shut my eyes and lie still. So I did that and nothing else for most of the day. A ghastly sensation, I can assure you."

"Sounds like gall-bladder gone wrong," Craythorn suggested in a sympathetic tone.

"Maybe. Anyhow, I lay there and dozed as best I could. I woke up now and again and sat up, but whenever I did that the walls started to go round and round again. In the meanwhile the kid had brought the milk from the crofter's place up the glen a bit, and the postman had shoved a letter through the letter-slit. I didn't see them, and they didn't see me. I know they called, because I found the milk and the letter afterwards."

"A bright thought. It occurred to me immediately as soon as the ceiling began to play ring-a-ring-o'-roses over my head. In fact it seemed just the thing to do. Unfortunately I was alone on the premises, and in such a state that I couldn't take two steps without being sick. I've no phone there. And the nearest doctor is ten miles away. In the circumstances, I discarded the idea, bright as it seemed."

Jim Telford's obstructive tactics had roused the inspector's suspicions, and even this matter-of-fact recital failed to lull them entirely.

"Eight or ten hours after I woke up. Then I began to feel a shade better and was able to struggle into a dressing-gown and move about a bit. I was more or less all right next morning. A bit washed-out, naturally. People noticed that when I got up to the office. I was late, there, which wasn't surprising, considering the state I'd been in."

"No, once the thing passed off, I was more or less all right again. I didn't think it worth while to see a doctor. It seemed to have gone, completely. Evidently just a bad bilious turn, that was all."

Craythorn nodded as though this had satisfied him; but at the back of his mind lurked a very definite suspicion. Suppose there had been some truth in that anonymous telegram. Suppose Telford had got wind of his wife's intimacy with Hyson. He seemed a quicktempered fellow. Suppose he had squared his account with his wife, and that her death wasn't a case of suicide at all. That had been neatly enough arranged. And here was the second party in the affair—Hyson—also a suicide. And Telford had been out of human touch, by his own evidence, during the whole of the time from Wednesday evening until Friday morning. He had a car at his Glen Terret cottage. And the drive down from there was "only two-fifty miles or so." Call it eight hours each way and it wasn't out of the common. And there was plenty of time to allow for a good sleep in the car, parked at the roadside in some quiet by-road, if he needed it. If he hadn't been able to get a sleep, naturally he'd look washed-out when he turned up at his office on Friday morning.

There was no getting away from the fact that both Mrs. Telford and Hyson were dead; and that Telford was the only person who might have had a grudge against both of them. No certainty, the inspector reflected. Far from it. But very good grounds for suspicion, all the same.

"It's unfortunate that you can't produce someone who spoke to you during that time," he commented.

"Someone who spoke to me?" he repeated. "That reminds me of a thing I'd quite forgotten. I did speak to a man on Thursday night, round about nine o'clock."

"Oh!" ejaculated the inspector, rather crestfallen. "Then why didn't you say so before?"

"So you've been suspecting me, after all, have you?" Jim retorted in a tone that was none too agreeable. "You seem to me to be more zealous than brainy, if you don't mind my saying so. But perhaps it's part of your routine"—he sneered at the word—"to begin by suspecting everybody, whether they have anything to do with the business in hand or not. You don't consider people's feelings evidently."

"Yes, I did. It was your way of putting it that made me forget it. You evidently wanted someone who'd seen me on Thursday; and I was doing my best to think of someone who had, so I forgot about the other side of it."

"But no one came to the cottage, and you've no phone there, you tell me," objected the inspector with increasing suspicion. "How could anyone have spoken to you?"

"Easy enough," returned Jim Telford. "I've got a short-wave transmitter at my cottage. You can look that up, if you don't take my word for it. My call-sign's Gm3EB, and you'll find it in the Radio Amateur Call Book, or the Post Office will verify it for you. There's a man down here that I often speak to at night on the short waves. Cecil Netherby's his name, of 5 Stanhope Gardens. You can check that, easy enough, for he's on the phone. He's not a particular friend of mine. In fact, our only common interest is wireless. So he's a perfectly sound witness, you see. I mean, there's no reason why he should perjure himself on my account, since I've no doubt you'd suspect him of that as part of your routine."

"Very well. You can't ring a man up on the short waves. But he and I generally have a technical chat every second night by previous appointment. I had arranged to speak to him on Thursday night about nine o'clock; and by that time I was feeling a bit steadier on my pins, so I sat down at my transmitter and got in touch with him as usual. He's a methodical fellow and keeps a careful record of his transmissions. My own log will show the thing too. It's a condition of our licence that we keep a log. So you see it's a fact that although I saw nobody, still I did have a talk with an independent witness. Now are you satisfied?"

"I'll have to verify that, of course," said the inspector, fighting in the last ditch.

"Of course—as part of the routine. Well, you'll find it just as I've told you. And, as a special favour to me," Jim added, "be so good as to avoid dragging in your suspicions when you talk to him. I'll be inclined to cut up rough if I find you taking away my character as part of your routine."

The inspector felt, after the latest evidence, that he had gone too far; and he was glad enough of the chance to send Telford away in a less irritated frame of mind.

"It's hardly our business, sir," he explained. "The Post Office Investigation Branch deals with things of that sort through their own special staff. We only come into it when they've caught the perpetrator. They have an investigator down here on the spot at the moment, and he's doing his best. But it's not easy to lay one's hands on people of that kind, as you'll understand."

"No, probably not," Jim Telford agreed in a ruminative tone. "Still, one would like to see him nailed. And, by the way, Inspector, I got a bit hot under the collar when you were questioning me. Sorry if I rasped your feelings. But you know all about my affairs and I'm sure you'll make allowances."

"Of course, sir, of course," Craythorn hastened to confirm. "I hope you take no offence either. 'A policeman's life is not a happy one,' sometimes. We have to do things that go against our grain, whether we like it or not."

"Now just one thing," he said. "Have you any definite case against anyone in the matter of Hyson's death?"

"Not..." Jim broke off without mentioning the name which he appeared to have on the tip of his tongue.

"Good Lord, no!" said Jim, with unexpected vehemence. "I just asked out of mere curiosity. I don't want to see any mud stirred up."

"Ah," said Craythorn, rather disappointed. "Well, I'll have to see Mr. Netherby, of course. But I'll take care about what you said."

Chapter Fifteen
THE SHORT-WAVE FAN

CRAYTHORN wasted no time when he had work to do. Hardly was Jim Telford out of the police station than the inspector was at the telephone, trying to get in touch with his next witness. But Cecil Netherby proved to be an elusive person. He was, it seemed, a commercial traveller of sorts; and, having failed to run him down at any of his probable ports of call, Craythorn had to content himself with making an appointment at his house that evening. At eight o'clock he made his way to 5 Stanhope Gardens, which turned out to be a small semi-detached villa with "CHATSWORTH" painted on the gate in addition to the street-number.

Netherby was a small, stout, red-faced man, who at first regarded the inspector with some suspicion which he endeavoured to conceal under a flow of geniality.

"Inspector Craythorn? And what's your trouble, may I ask? If it's my hawker's licence you want to see, I pawned it last Thursday week, old man. If my parrot's caught psittacosis without permission from the authorities, then you can take the damn bird away with you and call it square. I'm sick of its conversation, long ago."

"I've called to see you about your wireless," the inspector explained concisely.

He was tired, after a busy day, and the humour of this cheery vulgarian failed to catch his mood.

"My wireless? Want to see my licence? I've got my amateur one, all present and correct; had it for years now."

"No, no, it's not that," Craythorn explained. "I want to ask a question or two about your transmissions."

"Oh? Say you so? Very well, then. 'Business before pleasure,' as the man said when he kissed his wife before calling on his sweetheart. Fire ahead, old man."

"Telford? Call-sign Gm3EB? That him? Yes, I do, old man. I get him every second night, almost; and he drops in to see me here if he happens to be in this neighbourhood. What about him?"

"One o' the best, old man, one o' the best," Netherby assured him. "No side about him. And sharp as they make 'em, sharp as they make 'em, especially when it comes to wireless. I know a fair bit myself, but he taught me a thing or two, I can tell you."

"You have to keep a log, haven't you, under the terms of your Post Office licence?"

"Right you are! You want to look at it, old man? I'll fetch it. 'S a matter of fact, I'm rather proud of it—the way I keep it, I mean. All shipshape and in apple-pie order. Just a jiffy."

He left the room and returned in a minute or two with his log which he laid on the table before the inspector. Craythorn opened it idly and discovered a series of incomprehensible abbreviations dotted through the entries: QSA4, QWX, R6, and others. He wished to avoid giving too direct a clue to his object, so before approaching it, he asked a question or two on more general matters.

"All I know about wireless myself is that you turn the knob to get the stations. But I've heard talk about these short waves and I got the idea that although you can talk to people in America, you can't get in touch with close-in stations. Some tale about the waves skipping over a whole tract of country completely. Is that right?"

"You can talk to a man on the next street quite O.K.," Netherby declared. "I often chat with a man in town here at G3RE. Telford and I helped him to design his transmitter when he built it. Scarsdale, his name is. He lives in Vendale Road, but he went to the Continent a few weeks ago. And I get Telford at Gm3EB as clear as a bell usually. But it's right enough that often you can't pick up a station only twenty miles away, whilst five minutes later you get America or the Continent coming through as clear as a bell. Trouble is that at short distances you sometimes bother other people listening on the ordinary broadcast band."

"Don't bother to explain," interrupted the inspector, hastily. "I wouldn't understand a word."

"Tell me what trouble it causes," asked the inspector, tactfully evading the threatened exposition.

"Well, I've had trouble enough over it, complaints to the G.P.O., rude letters, and so forth. There's an old cuckoo with an out-of-date receiver lives just round the corner from here and his set isn't selective enough, that's the root of the bother. The result is that when I start transmitting, I sometimes 'blanket' his reception, and he gets me instead of the B.B.C. It's his own fault for not buying a new set. I had to make him a wave-trap before I could quiet him."

Under cover of this conversational smoke-screen, the inspector had been turning over the pages of Netherby's log until he came to the entries made on the night of Hyson's death. Now, as if by chance, he fastened on this page and drew Netherby's attention to it.

"This is all Greek to me," he said, putting his finger on the entry. "The only bit I seem to understand is '9.15 P.M. Gm3EB.' That means that you were talking to Telford at a quarter past nine that night, doesn't it?"

"That's for 'Very good signal' and 'Very strong signal.' Wait a bit"—he glanced over the entry—"Oh, yes, I remember that night. He was coming over absolutely solid, absolutely solid."

The inspector interpreted this to mean that the transmission from Telford was unimpeachable in quality.

"He asked me to check his exact frequency in kilocycles, old man. I did it. I lost him for about a minute in the middle of that, probably a very quick fade, as he didn't mention any hitch at his end, but I got it measured when the transmission took up again. It was just his normal frequency, of course. Couldn't very well be out with crystal control."

"Good Lord!" ejaculated the inspector, who was getting lost in these explanations.

"Simple enough, old man, simple enough. Look 'ee here. His set's fitted with a quartz crystal specially cut. That vibrates a fixed number of times per second when it's excited and that controls the frequency of the wave sent out by his transmitter. I've got a crystal in my set, but it's cut differently from his, so my set sends out a wave of a different frequency from the one he sends out. Same idea as two different tuning-forks sending out musical notes of different pitches, see? So long as you use one tuning-fork you get only one note and that's fixed by the tuning-fork you use. That clear, old man?"

"That means I asked him what the weather was like with him. You see what he said: 'Cool, dry, some stars showing, wind N.E.' "

"I've never heard anything on the short waves," Craythorn explained. "Can you recognise the voice that's speaking to you, just as I can recognise which announcer's talking at the B.B.C?"

"Just as easy, old man, just as easy. You couldn't make a mistake when it's a voice you know and when it's a good night for transmission. Besides, you've got the fellow's frequency. That gives you an idea which station you're talking to. See?"

"A man couldn't fake his voice with a gramophone record, or anything of that sort?" demanded the inspector, thinking he saw a weak point.

"You've been reading tec yarns. That sort of thing may happen in them, maybe, but not in real life, not in real life. We talk on the short waves, you know, exchange ideas, give each other the latest notion that interests us. That doesn't go down in the log, but it's always done between friends. Now how could you fake a gramophone record to make it answer questions that have been put on the spur of the moment? It can't be done, old man, can't be done at any price."

"Look here! See this? I noticed a very slight hum in his transmission and I remember I spoke to him about it. And he said he had been sick and I asked a question or two about that. Could you get a gramophone record to answer me pat on things like that? Bosh, old man, bosh! No, when you find in my log that I've been talking to Telford or Stevens or Scarsdale, then you can take it that I have been talking to Telford or Stevens or Scarsdale, as the case may be. And that's flat. I'd go into court and swear to it, any day. I know what I'm talking about."

"You seem to know Telford pretty well," Craythorn said as though merely to get away from the field in which he had blundered. "Ever come across any of his family?"

"No, I didn't know them. He'd a pretty wife. Died lately, poor thing. I got a shock when he told me about it one night. I never spoke to her, just saw 'em together once in the street. But between you and me and the door-mat, old man, she looked to me like a V-A-M-P-I-R-E with all the letters in the right order and none of 'em missing. My missus was with me at the time, and she remarked on it too."

"I've heard she was pretty, but some of these good-lookers have no taste in dress," said the inspector, sagely. "Did she dress well?"

"A bit quiet, for my taste, old man. In grey, with a grey fur. I like 'em with more colour about 'em, myself. Not that she didn't suit that style. Hard lines on him, losing her. Very fond of her, too, one could tell by the way he spoke about her after she died. Suicide, it was. Very sad. Terrible for him."

And, rather to the inspector's surprise, Netherby betrayed a genuine sympathy with Telford in his misfortune. Apparently to cover this up, the little vulgarian changed the subject.

"That reminds me, old man, what about that other case of suicide we've had lately?—Hyson, I mean. That was a lad! My firm deals in ledgers and office books generally, and I came across him in Lockhurst's office when I called on business. What was at the back of that affair, d'you know? He'd been embezzling, of course. That's all come out. But why embezzle? Cherchez la femme, old man. She's generally at the back of things. You take my tip."

"Well, our offices are in the same street as Lockhurst's. I've seen a tall strapping wench going into Lockhurst's after hours, now and again. And only one light upstairs. Working overtime, perhaps. But that was a while ago. I haven't seen her doing that lately."

"Bar once. I did see her, one night, standing outside that office, with a look on her face as near hell as I can recollect. She didn't go in, that night, though. Just walked up and down for a moment or two, looking blue murder. Got the chuck, was my impression."

"Know her again? You bet I would, I've seen her often. But no names, no pack-drill, old man," he ended, guardedly.

Craythorn easily identified this girl who had stood outside Lockhurst's office "looking blue murder." Olive Lyndoch, obviously.

"I won't bother you further," he said. "Got another call to make to-night. Thanks for telling me these things."

"Come round any night and listen in on the short waves, old man," Netherby invited him hospitably. "Then you'll see how easy it is to spot a particular voice."

Craythorn's appointment was with the Chief Constable. He preferred to have his recollections fresh, when there was a chance of his being questioned about interviews. Sir Clinton listened without interruption to his report on Telford's and Netherby's evidence.

"You can hardly blame Telford for cutting up rough," he commented when the inspector had finished. "He was very fond of his wife, I'm told, and naturally that poison-pen tale would rasp him. This Netherby man seems to have his wits about him. By the way, Inspector, do you attach importance to that tobacco?"

"It's always a clue," declared Craythorn, scenting a trap. "Every little helps."

"Well, it won't do to say: 'Pipe tobacco: therefore a man must have been there.' What's to hinder a girl buying a pipe and some tobacco, smoking a whiff or two, and then leaving the remains on the hearth by intention? On the other hand, a man may find it convenient to change his brand of tobacco."

"Quite so, sir," admitted Craythorn, sceptically. "Have you seen the results of the P.M.?"

"No drugs detected and from the state of digestion they put death at about an hour after his last meal. But that's nothing one can lay stress on, you know. Digestion varies from individual to individual."

"This infernal poison-pen pest. That anonymous creature dropped a letter into Hyson's letter-box between eight o'clock and the time the maid came back. Now any person doing a thing like that would be keeping a sharp look-out to see if anyone was looking on. And I don't know if you noticed it, Inspector, but when I was going over the premises I happened to see that one of the drawing-room window-blinds hung slightly askew. So I tried pulling it down several times, and each time it left a slight gap between blind and sash through which one could see into the room from the outside. It's on the cards that the poison-pen pest looked in to make sure the coast was clear. I wish Duncannon could put his hand on the right person."

"That reminds me, here's another poison-pen production, addressed to me personally. I've put it between these glass sheets so that you can examine it without leaving finger-prints. But I don't suppose there are any finger-prints on it, anyhow. Have a look at it."

Like the other anonymous letters, this new document had been composed by pasting printed letters on a sheet of notepaper. Craythorn ran his eye over it and read:

"You don't know this. Barsett has been bluffing you. Ha! Ha! He paid a visit to Hyson on the night of the murder. Now what about it?"

"I've seen more of these things than you have, Inspector," Sir Clinton explained, "so perhaps I'd better tell you about one or two points. First of all, you see that the address on the envelope is typed, instead of being like the others. Then the notepaper is good stuff, not like the cheap kind used for the ordinary run of these things that I've seen. Again, all the 'genuine' poison-pen letters I've seen have been made by cutting bits out of one of the local newsrags which use rather bluntish type on inferior paper. This type is clean-cut and looks suspiciously like the fount they use for leaders in the Times; and the paper also reminds me of the Times, though that's just a guess."

"It looks like it," Sir Clinton agreed. "And, while we're on this poison-pen business, here's another exhibit. I asked Duncannon to give me a list, extending over six months from April to September, showing the dates on which poison-pen letters were received, so far as they were reported to him. Of course there may have been some that the addressees destroyed without reporting them. Anyhow, here's the list. Look at the output. That creature is really very industrious."

He handed the sheet of paper to Craythorn, who was surprised in his turn by the number of entries.

APRIL, 1, 3, 4, 5, 11, 12, 15, 21, 24, 27, 30;
MAY, 4, 7, 12, 13, 16, 21, 25, 26, 29;
JUNE, 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18, 21, 24, 25, 27, 30;
JULY, 1, 15, 17, 18, 21, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31;
AUGUST, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 17, 20, 22, 25, 26;
SEPTEMBER, 4, 7, 8, 11, 15, 16, 17, 21, 25, 28, 30.

"Phew!" ejaculated the inspector. "That's mass-production, that is. I'd no notion, sir, that it was going on at this rate."

"Quite enough of it, isn't there? without these amateurs taking a hand, I think," Sir Clinton declared. "But let's get back to our own business, Inspector. We'll have to go into this matter of Barsett again. You got a tale out of him and his servants that he was at home, alone, all that evening. Perhaps I'd better look him up myself and try my hand on him. Give him a chance of revising his souvenirs, eh? Perhaps they need it."

Chapter Sixteen
A REVISED VERSION

WHEN Sir Clinton called at Barsett's house next morning by appointment, he was ushered straight into a room which looked like a study. Joan Errington had been sitting at a typewriting desk, apparently taking some notes from Barsett; but she rose as the Chief Constable entered, and, gathering up some papers, left the room by a second door.

Sir Clinton had already seen Barsett, but only at some little distance on the day of Mollie Keston's wedding. Now, at close quarters he was struck by Barsett's eyes: hard and bright like a bird's, and with something of a bird's unwinking stare.

"Sorry to interrupt you," apologised the Chief Constable. "I shan't detain you long."

"It's nothing important," he assured the Chief Constable. "I was just dictating a note or two to my secretary. You're not a Baconian, are you?" he added, unexpectedly. "The Bacon-Shakespeare business, I mean."

"Merely as a hobby," Barsett explained. "Years ago, I came across one of these pro-Bacon pamphlets. I got interested. What struck me was the one-sidedness of the affair. The Baconians won't hear a word in favour of Shakespeare; the Shakespearians won't admit there's any evidence on the Bacon side worth considering. Now I'm neither for one side nor the other. I happen to have plenty of time on my hands, and I got caught by the notion of presenting all the available evidence on both sides as impartially as possible, so that people could judge for themselves. It's taken longer than I expected, but it's interesting enough. Trouble is, I'm not much of a literary man—I mean I can't write easily—and that has made it take longer than it might have done if I'd been an expert."

"I'll read your book when it comes out," Sir Clinton assured him. "Evidence is a thing I've had a good deal to do with, one way and another, and it's always interesting to get both sides properly presented. I see you've got a typewriter on the desk there. Can you compose on it? Some people haven't the knack. They need a pen to make their thoughts flow."

"I see she uses a Britannia," said Sir Clinton, moving across to examine the machine. "Do you find it satisfactory? I'm thinking of getting a new machine myself shortly, and I want something which will stand up to hard work."

"That one's had two years of very fair wear and tear," said Barsett. "Miss Errington hasn't suggested an overhaul, so far."

And taking permission for granted, he sat down at the desk, picked up a sheet of notepaper from a rack, and typed a few lines.

"It seems nice and light in the touch," he commented. "How does it do with envelopes?"

He took an envelope from the rack and typed an address which he scrutinised carefully when he had finished.

"It does very neat work," he admitted. "Two years old, you say, and no overhaul yet? That seems pretty sound."

He slipped the sheet of notepaper and the envelope into his pocket as he rose from the desk chair. A glance at them had been enough to show that the address on the anonymous accusation had been written on this machine; for not only was the type the same, but there was a slight defect in the letter "g" apparent in both specimens. And Barsett's stationery was of the same size and brand as that used by the accuser.

The machine was one thing, however, and the writer who used it was quite another. Barsett, Miss Errington, the servants, all had access to this typewriter. Possibly even a casual visitor might have taken the opportunity of using it. Then the picture of Miss Errington, rising from the desk-chair as he came in, crossed his mind. She had access to this machine every day. And her sister, as she must guess, was under suspicion in the matter of Hyson's death. She herself as well, if it came to that, might be implicated as an accomplice. If she knew anything against Barsett, she might feel that the best way to shield her sister was to give away her employer; but she might have shrunk from doing so openly.

Barsett indicated a chair to the Chief Constable; and as Sir Clinton seated himself he let his glance run round the room. On the mantelpiece, amongst a litter of silver knick-knacks, stood a tin of Algonquin A tobacco.

"And now, what else can I do for you?" asked Barsett, fixing the Chief Constable with his bright, unwinking stare.

"It's the Hyson affair," Sir Clinton replied bluntly. "Sometimes, Mr. Barsett, we find that if a witness wishes to emend the evidence he's given us, the best thing is to accept the change and make no fuss. We can do that in the early stages. If it gets the length of court, that's a different matter. Now some information has come into my hands which makes me think you might care to... revise what you said to Inspector Craythorn."

Barsett succeeded in suppressing any surprise that he might have felt at this direct attack.

"Some of this poison-pen stuff?" asked Barsett, shrewdly. "I've had samples from that factory myself."

"Our informant's identity is beside the question," he pointed out. "I've come here merely to give you the opportunity of amplifying what you told Inspector Craythorn. It's for you to decide whether you will or not."

Barsett examined the Chief Constable's face with a long, considering stare before he replied.

"You seem to have got hold of something," he decided at last. "Perhaps I'd better take advantage of your offer. If I do, that washes out my previous evidence?"

"It's on record," Sir Clinton pointed out, "but if you amplify it, naturally the new record holds the field."

"Simply that you had dinner at 7.30 P.M. and that you remained in the house during the rest of the evening."

"Well, up to a point, that's correct," Barsett declared with a rather wry smile. "The first half of it is perfectly true, at least. I had dinner at half-past seven, though it's an unfashionable hour. After dinner, I always come in here to work; and there's a standing order that I'm not to be disturbed unless I've made a previous appointment with somebody. And to make quite sure, I lock the door behind me when I do come in. I take my coffee in the dining-room and I keep whiskey and a syphon in that cupboard over there, so no servant need come and bother me during the evening.

"That night of Hyson's death, I came in here as usual. I'm not going to make any concealment about things. I'm very fond of Mrs. Hyson. I want to marry her, in fact; and if she'd only agreed to divorce Hyson, I'd have married her long ago, for she's attached to me. Now that Hyson is out of the way, we're going to get married as soon as we decently can. But she would never agree to take Hyson into the Divorce Court. She'd conscientious scruples about that."

"The thing has been unbearable for a long time," Barsett went on, still keeping his eyes fixed on Sir Clinton's face as though hoping to read some sign of sympathy on it. "You must have picked up things which told you what sort of fellow Hyson was—not fit to lick her shoes. And that made me more set on finding some way out of the impasse, as you can imagine. That's just to let you see that I'd been brooding over the business for a long while and that what I did wasn't merely an affair that I hit upon on the spur of the moment. I'd thought over it pretty carefully, and I could see only one way of getting what I wanted. I'm not asking your sympathy or approval or anything of that sort for the scheme I hit on finally. It wasn't ideal, and in a way it meant swindling the woman I was fond of. But at least it would have made her happier, and that was the main thing from my point of view.

"I'm a fairly well-to-do man. At least, I can afford to pay for my fancies, and this was something more than a fancy. To cut a long story short, my idea was to suborn Hyson into faking up a mock suicide. Get him to go off and be found drowned or something of that sort so that his wife would be certain he was dead. Actually, of course, he'd be alive and kicking, with a good slice of my money in his pocket to enjoy life with according to his standards."

"Nothing romantic about it at all," he said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Short of murdering Hyson, it was the only solution I could hit upon. She wouldn't marry me until he was certified dead. It was a case of getting her on false pretences, I admit quite frankly. But it would have made her happy, and that's all I cared about. I'm no stickler about the niceties of morality myself, in a case of this kind."

"There's one obvious flaw in your scheme," Sir Clinton pointed out. "Even if he fell in with it, what was to hinder his turning up later on and blackmailing you?"

"Doing the Enoch Arden act without the altruism? Well, I'd covered that in my plan," Barsett explained with a chilly smile. "He'd have had to do a bit of forgery to get my money. I wouldn't have objected so long as he stayed 'dead'; but if he resurrected himself, I'd have produced his forged cheque and gaoled him. I don't think he would have come back to bother us."

"You've got an ingenious mind," Sir Clinton complimented him with no trace of irony. "That's very neat. But all this is rather off the point, so far as my business goes. You came in here after dinner. What happened after that?"

"I'd brought a hat and a coat in here beforehand to wear over my dinner jacket. I simply put them on and got out of the window, over there. Then I walked round to Hyson's house. I knew he'd be at home. Mrs. Hyson rang me up at about half-past two that afternoon about a golf tournament and told me she knew he would be in that evening."

Sir Clinton noted that this fitted neatly with Linda's own evidence, but he made no comment on the point.

"And your idea was to call on him; and, in the course of a little friendly chat, make a cash offer for his wife," commented Sir Clinton. "I'm not easily surprised, Mr. Barsett, but I admit you've managed it."

"If you'd known Hyson, it wouldn't surprise you a bit," Barsett retorted. "He wasn't the man to turn a hair if you put that sort of proposition before him, provided he got enough out of it for himself. Besides, I had picked up some hints that made me think that cash was what he needed most, just then. I gather, from what's come out since, that he was in a fix; so I wasn't so far out."

"Well, go on with your tale," Sir Clinton suggested, abandoning this point as irrelevant at the moment.

"Mrs. Hyson's maid has half a day off on Thursdays," Barsett continued, "so I wasn't surprised when Hyson himself opened the door to me. He made some remark about his wife being out, hinting that I had come to see her and not him. But I told him I'd come on his account, not hers; I took off my hat and coat and he showed me into the drawing-room. I noticed that he seemed a bit on wires. Usually he was a cool, sneering brute, but that night his nerves must have been strained. He knocked against an occasional table by accident and brought down a rose-bowl or something of the sort that was standing on it.

"I saw I'd interrupted him in some job or other. The blinds were down and the electric light on, and he'd evidently been at work on some papers at a writing-desk which stands in one corner of the room. I sat down and pulled out my pipe. He wasn't the sort of man I'd stand on ceremony with, you know. Then I put the thing to him, without wrapping it up much. There was no need to do that in his case.

"I don't quite understand, now, what his position actually was. What did emerge was that he was prepared to look at my scheme, but he had a lot of objections to make to it of one sort and another. Also, he tried to push me up in my cash figure, again and again. But I'd made up my mind exactly how far I'd go, and he got nothing out of his attempts. We discussed one or two possible ways of faking a suicide, without coming to any definite plans. Also, he pressed me for cash in advance. But knowing the man, I naturally refused to look at anything of that sort.

"By-and-by I glanced at the clock and saw the hands stood at 9.20. You know how a glance at a clock makes you think of looking at your own watch. One does it mechanically. And in this case we'd been talking for a good long time, and 9.20 seemed a bit too early. So I had a look at my own watch, and found it was really 9.40, so the clock must have stopped twenty minutes before that.

"I got up, then. The fact is, I wanted to get away before Mrs. Hyson came home again. Whenever Hyson got us together, he had a habit of saying nasty things, double-edged remarks meant to make her uncomfortable. He knew exactly what our position was, you see; I mean he knew that we were fond of each other. And it always struck him as a huge joke to rub that in by saying things with two meanings. Naturally, I didn't want to run the risk of that happening, so I was anxious to get away before she came back. I left him about twenty to ten, roughly."

"It doesn't seem to account for a suicide," he pointed out at last. "You had stepped in at the critical moment and offered him a way out of his difficulties. And yet the next time he reaches the public view, he's got his head in the gas-oven. What do you make of that?"

"Not very much," Barsett admitted frankly. "But I told you the man was all on wires. You can't tell what may happen then. He was usually so cool. That made his condition strike me at once."

"Now, just a question," Sir Clinton said. "You and he were alone in the house. While you were there, did you hear any sound, any ordinary sound, I mean? Just think."

Barsett apparently racked his memory in vain for several minutes. Then his face cleared suddenly.

"I did hear one thing," he declared with an accent of certainty. "I heard the flap of the letter-box click and the noise of something falling into it. Now that you remind me of it, I recall that quite clearly."

"But perhaps, after all, my offer came a shade too late," Barsett suggested shrewdly. "I gather from what's come out that he'd been doing some forgery in connection with shares he was stealing. Lockhurst died just then, didn't he? That meant an overhaul of all the office books, inevitably; and that meant discovery, didn't it? Now, as I told you, I hadn't a cut-and-dried plan for the faked suicide. I'd made plain to him, though, that whatever scheme we devised must be an absolutely lock-fast one, with no chance whatever of any mistakes. I told him to think over that and produce a plan himself—since he knew his own limitations best—and then I'd go over it and see if any holes could be picked in it. Now suppose he sat down after I'd gone and began to think it over. He was all nerves. Most likely he found he couldn't evolve anything that had even a sporting chance of passing muster. He'd be desperate, wouldn't he? Hence the gas-oven. At least, it doesn't sound unlikely."

"You saw him; I didn't," Sir Clinton admitted, "so you're a better judge of his state of mind than I am."

"And you came straight home after leaving him? You met no one you knew, on the road?"

"No, nobody. I came back here and got in at the window. You may think that a bit out of the common, but the fact was I didn't want to leave any trace of that interview if I could help it. Obviously if he was going to disappear by a faked suicide with my financial backing, the less talk there was about that interview the better it would be. Keep people clean off the real track, you see?"

"I see your point," Sir Clinton conceded. "But now, tell me, Mr. Barsett, just why you didn't give us this tale at the very start. What induced you to suppress all this and mislead us as to your doings that night?"

"Just think a bit, Sir Clinton," Barsett retorted. "There's the inquest. Suppose I'd told the truth at the start, I'd have been called as a witness, wouldn't I? And all this story would have come out in public. It isn't a nice yarn, I'd be the first to admit. But if only myself had stood to lose by the telling of it, I wouldn't have minded. But what about Mrs. Hyson? Rather a damnable position for her, if it came out publicly that her husband and another man had been laying their heads together and making a bargain, a cash bargain, as to which of them was to have her. You see how I was placed? I had nothing to tell that really threw light on Hyson's suicide. The suppression of my story left things exactly where they were. What was the point in telling it, when it was bound to make a scandal round Mrs. Hyson's name? None whatever. So I simply kept it dark when your inspector came and questioned me; and I'd have held my tongue even now if it weren't that you seem to have got on the track in some way."

"Heavens, no!" declared Barsett. "The whole point of it depended on her not knowing. Naturally I haven't mentioned it to her at all."

"You don't happen to have a copy of the Times—to-day's issue? There's a paragraph in it that I'd like to look at."

Barsett went to an arm-chair and, from behind it, picked up the newspaper which he had thrown down after reading it. Sir Clinton opened it out, sought for a certain place, read for a moment or two, and then returned the paper to Barsett with a word of thanks.

"I think I'd better have a note of this evidence of yours," he decided. "I'll dictate a précis to one of my men and send it up to you. Look it over when it comes, please, and if it's all right you might put your initials to it and my man will return it to me. You don't mind? It's the usual thing."

As Sir Clinton settled himself in his car and pressed the self-starter, a rather forbidding smile crossed his features.

"Clever fellow, Barsett," he reflected. "What he suffers from is a lack of pictorial imagination."

He drove to Headquarters and summoned Inspector Craythorn, and a constable to whom he dictated a précis of Barsett's evidence. Then, dismissing the constable after giving him instructions to get Barsett's signature, he turned to Craythorn.

"It fits most of the facts, sir," Craythorn admitted. "It covers one or two things that he could hardly have known, any other way. The overturned table, for one; and the letter dropping into the box."

"He's hand in glove with Mrs. Hyson and her sister," Sir Clinton said, dryly. "They knew of all these points that he used in his tale. You don't suppose that these three people have refrained from discussing Hyson's death among themselves, do you? That stopped clock, for instance. And that reminds me, Inspector. I'm not very sure of the run of that electric main which serves Hyson's house. I know it goes along Cowslip Avenue and turns off into Ashleigh Park and Vendale Road, but I'd like to make sure whether Barsett's house is served by it or by another cable. The City Electricity Department will be able to tell you. Find that out for me, sometime, please."

"You're quite right, sir, about the main serving Hyson's house. But Barsett's house draws from another main: the one that runs along Cadogan Road. That's all you wanted? Now there's another thing you put me on to, you remember. You asked me to find out about the holidays some of these people took in the summer. I've got the facts here"—he produced a sheet of paper—"and I'll just read them to you."

"Hyson, sir, took no holiday at all. Probably afraid to leave Forbury in charge at the office for fear of his spotting that things were going wrong. He stayed at The White Hart in John Street the last three weeks in August, because the house in Cowslip Avenue was shut up and the maid on holiday. Mrs. Hyson and Miss Errington went away together, after the first week in August. They spent the first fortnight of their holiday with friends in Mullion, somewhere in Cornwall I think it is. The last week in August they took a motor tour up in Scotland. The maid, Cissie Worgate, was sent home for her holiday, to somewhere in Yorkshire. She was away the same three weeks as Mrs. Hyson. Barsett plays golf, and he went away all August. The first fortnight he stayed at Gillane—that's somewhere near North Berwick, sir—and the second fortnight he put in at Tain. Miss Jessop was away at Skegness for the first fortnight in July; and in September she went to stay for a week at the beginning of the month with an old aunt of hers at Lynmouth. Now for the staff at Lockhurst's office. They went off in relays, of course. That Lyndoch girl was at Broadstairs for the second fortnight in July. Effie Hinkley went with a couple of girl friends to Blackpool for the first half of August. Kitty Nevern was off the first fortnight in September; she went home to her people. Forbury took his holiday in the second half of August and went away with his family to Fisherwick, that little village down on the coast, you know. He has fares to consider, with that family of his. That's the lot, sir."

"Just leave me the paper," Sir Clinton requested. "Now here's a fresh item about our friend with the poison pen. You remember that dodge of passing an envelope through the post with a pencil address and then delivering it by hand? The way that letter came to Hyson's house, I mean. Well, Duncannon tells me that there's been no more of that after the Hyson affair. There have been poison-pen letters sent, but they've gone through the post in the normal way as they used to do at first. That seems interesting."

"I don't see much in it," Craythorn confessed frankly. "I'll think over it, sir, later on. What's interesting me just now is this tale of Barsett's. It seems to upset things badly. Do you make it all out, sir?"

"Well, I make out one thing," Sir Clinton said with a rather cynical smile. "Mrs. Hyson told us she left her house at eight o'clock. Barsett takes up the thread at 8.30 P.M. and accounts for Hyson, all alive and kicking, until 9.45 P.M. Just about that time, Mrs. Hyson had picked up that friend of hers and was giving her a lift home."

"You mean, sir, that Barsett's tale clinches Mrs. Hyson's alibi completely, so that she's out of the case?"

"It certainly fits most of the facts very neatly, as I said before," Sir Clinton said. "And it also fits in with the view that Barsett disposed of Hyson during the time he was in the house, according to his own story. I spotted one flaw in his tale. There may be more."

Chapter Seventeen
LAID BY THE HEELS

"NOW that you've cleared up this affair," said Sir Clinton, "I suppose you're going off elsewhere. No doubt you've got other cases waiting for you. Wish you as good luck as you've had here. We're grateful to you for ridding us of a pest."

"I'm wanted in the Midlands, now," Duncannon explained. "But of course I have my evidence to give in this case before I'm done with it."

"Well, I want you to do me a favour. We've got your suspect in the next room. When she's brought in, will you put your cards on the table and convince her, here and now, that the game's up? I know it's hardly playing the game to ask you to show your hand before the trial; but as you've got a lock-fast case it can't do any real harm. And it's essential to me to make her talk. It's in connection with the Hyson affair, so you can see it's important. If you'll make plain to her that the game's up, I'll take a hand at the proper moment."

"I don't see it can harm my case, anyhow," he agreed. "It's too strong for anyone to get behind the evidence, even if they know it beforehand. I've got all that's necessary here, since you forewarned me."

"Then bring her in," said Sir Clinton, turning to Craythorn. "She doesn't know why she's been brought here, does she?"

Without delay, Craythorn ushered Ruth Jessop into the room and placed a chair for her. She was obviously taken aback to find Duncannon present.

"I don't know what you want me for, Sir Clinton," she began at once. "Inspector Craythorn gave me no hint about it. You'll have to explain to me, you see."

"I shall make it quite clear," Sir Clinton assured her coldly. "Mr. Duncannon suspects that you are the person who has been sending out these anonymous letters. We wish to know what you have to say to that."

"I never heard anything like it!" she exclaimed. "Does that man accuse me? Why, one of the very first was sent to me. You know that perfectly well, Sir Clinton. Doesn't that show that I had nothing to do with sending them? Of course it does! The whole thing's too ridiculous! How could you prove such a thing? I ask you that. I'm not sure what the law is about these things, but anyway you've no right to make charges like that, when you can't prove them. It's libel or slander, or something. I'll see my solicitor about it. I warn you I shall."

Sir Clinton turned to Duncannon, as though putting the matter into his hands. The Post Office expert nodded in acknowledgement and took from an attache case an envelope. He showed the address to Ruth Jessop, without letting the envelope out of his hand.

"Most certainly not, Mr. Duncannon," she denied vehemently. "I never saw it before. I wonder you dare to suggest such things. But I'll have satisfaction for this, I warn you. I'll not allow people to defame me without taking steps about it, Mr. Duncannon. So now you know!"

Ruth suddenly seemed to sense real danger in the atmosphere. She dropped her parade of indignation and became sullenly suspicious.

"Has he the right to ask me questions like that?" she demanded, turning to Sir Clinton.

"I'll explain," said the Chief Constable, briefly. "I haven't made up my mind to bring a charge. Not yet. So I'm legally entitled to ask you questions like that. I ask you the same question myself."

This injection of formality seemed to shake Ruth. She fumbled in her bag, produced her handkerchief, and dabbed her lips with it.

"I buy postage stamps whenever I need them, sometimes in one place and sometimes in another. What's that got to do with it?"

"You've been seen buying stamps at the Grove Road sub-office," Duncannon explained in the same blasé tone.

"Well, and what if I have bought some there, Mr. Duncannon? Isn't a Post Office the proper place to buy stamps? Have you anything to complain about there? I didn't steal the stamps. I paid for them. Are you accusing me of pilfering, or what, Mr. Duncannon?"

Duncannon did not trouble to answer. He opened his attaché case again and took from it two small phials and some pads of cotton-wool. Moistening one pad with liquid from the first bottle, he laid it on the cancelled stamp of the envelope. Then, after leaving it for some seconds, he removed it and subjected the stamp to similar treatment with the liquid from the second phial. Then, after drying the paper with fresh cotton-wool, he held out the envelope. Across the stamp, in plain black letters, the inscription "J.C.D." appeared.

Ruth evidently failed to see what this implied, but she scented some trap and her voice quivered as she spoke:

"Well, what's that got to do with it, Mr. Duncannon? I suppose it's what they call sympathetic ink. But I didn't put it there and I know nothing about it."

Inspector Craythorn grinned. He appreciated this method of trapping people, now that he had an idea of what was afoot. He felt in his pocket, produced a wallet, and from this he extracted a book of postage stamps and also half a dozen stamps attached to each other at the perforation lines.

"I got them from her writing-desk while she went away to put on her hat," he explained.

"Wait a moment," Duncannon cautioned him. "Write your initials on that book before you hand it to me, so that you'll be able to identify it again. And do the same on that blank edge of stamp-paper attached to these others stamps."

As the inspector obeyed, Ruth Jessop stared at him with eyes which dilated as her dismay increased. She was a stupid little woman and even at this stage she did not understand what Duncannon had in reserve. The Post Office expert treated a stamp from the book and one of the other stamps by the same process he had used in the first instance. In each case, the black initials "J.C.D." came up boldly on the paper. Ruth stared at them, fascinated, but apparently her brain had been working.

"Well, and what has that to do with me, Mr. Duncannon?" she demanded shrilly. "I don't see that proves anything. Plenty of people buy stamps at the Grove Road office. Any of them may have got your funny stamps and put them on these anonymous letters."

"A mistake, there," he explained. "The girl behind the counter had special orders to give these prepared stamps to you and to no one else."

Ruth bit her lip hard, and glanced about the room as though in search of inspiration.

"People sometimes buy stamps from me when they run short themselves," was the best she could hit on.

"People don't want a dozen stamps at a time, when they run short," he objected. "Of course you'll call these persons as witnesses when the case comes on? Or if you give me their names now, I'll have the matter looked into."

At the words "the case," Ruth Jessop's mouth fell half-open in astonishment and dismay. Apparently she had not realised before that this was a preliminary to a criminal trial.

"I never had anything to do with it," she declared with a catch in her breath. "You've no right to say I had, just because you've done something with postage stamps. If that's all you have against me, then it's all a mistake."

"That's not everything," Sir Clinton interrupted. "You were away on holiday this summer, weren't you?"

"You were away from home during the first fortnight of July and for a week at the beginning of September, weren't you?"

"And no anonymous letters were despatched between July 1 and July 15, while you were away from home. Nor were any posted between August 26 and September 4, the week when you were staying with your aunt at Lynmouth. Curious coincidence, isn't it?"

Clearly this reinforcing evidence broke down Ruth's resistance. She had been so careful not to send any letters while she was away, lest the postmark should leave a clue. And now that very precaution was leading to her undoing. She collapsed ungracefully, sobbing and mopping her eyes with her handkerchief, her stout little body shaking with the spasms of her emotion. After a time she grew a little calmer and managed to put a question in a quivering voice.

"A ten-pound fine and imprisonment for twelve months," Sir Clinton said unsympathetically, "under the Post Office Act, 1908. It's no use expecting much sympathy, Miss Jessop. It's as bad a case as I've come across."

Ruth Jessop relapsed into sobs and inarticulate protests. She regained some control over herself, after a minute or two, and managed to gasp out:

"Your 'fun' apparently cost Mrs. Telford her life. She was a friend of yours, wasn't she?"

"Well, you caused it; and now you'll have to take the consequences whatever they are," Sir Clinton pointed out bleakly. "You'll be charged under the Post Office Act. That being so, I can't ask you any question bearing on the point. But I can ask you about one episode which won't be used at your trial. Are you fit to answer questions?"

Ruth Jessop glanced from one face to another but found no sympathy in any of them. Apparently she decided to make a clean breast of things in the hope that this might count in her favour with these hard-faced officials.

"I'll tell you... anything you want," she declared brokenly, giving her eyes a last wipe with her sodden handkerchief.

"Very well. We know your method of posting an envelope addressed to yourself in pencil and then rubbing up the pencil address and readdressing it to someone else, to give the impression that it had been mailed to him. After that, you delivered it by hand yourself, dropping it into the addressee's letter-box. You did that once in the case of Oswald Hyson, on the night he died, didn't you?"

Ruth seemed to pull herself together with an effort, now that she had been set a definite task. She spent a moment or two in consulting her memory, and then she began, gaining confidence as she proceeded:

"I'll... try to remember. I posted it... the envelope, I mean... in the morning. And it came back... to me by the... afternoon post. I know that's right... It's what I always did when I worked... in that way. Then I rubbed out the pencil address... and put Mr. Hyson's on the envelope in ink. Then, after it got dark, I went out Cowslip Avenue and..."

"This is where I want you to be careful," interjected Sir Clinton. "Tell us everything in detail."

"When I came to the Hysons' gate," Ruth went on more connectedly, "I looked to see if the blinds were drawn. I couldn't have risked passing the window of the drawing-room if they'd been up, because someone might have seen me and that wouldn't have been safe. But the blinds were down. One of them doesn't come down straight. It leaves a gap between the blind and the sash. I knew that, because I'd seen it one night when I was at the Hysons' house in the evening. But I thought that didn't matter if I was careful. So I went up to the door as quietly as I could and dropped the letter into the box. Then as I came away, I thought I'd like to have a peep into the room, just to make sure. So I stopped just for a moment as I was passing the window on the way to the gate again and glanced in. Mr. Hyson was sitting facing me, but back in the room, talking to another man. I don't know who the other man was. He was sitting in an arm-chair with his back to me and I could see only the top of his head and his shoes and part of his trousers. He was sitting a bit sideways. But I can't tell you who he was. I couldn't see enough of him to recognise him. He had light tweed trousers, that's all I can tell you. I don't even know the colour of his hair, because he was between me and the light."

"Oh, quite, Sir Clinton, quite sure. I'm really doing my best to tell you just what happened, Sir Clinton. I'm not holding back anything."

"I didn't wait more than a second. I was afraid Mr. Hyson might glance at the window and catch sight of me. I just went away very quietly and then I went back home again."

"You saw no sign of Mrs. Hyson on the premises? No other window lighted up in the house?"

"Oh, no, Sir Clinton. Except for the hall light and the drawing-room, it was quite dark."

"I can't tell you exactly, Sir Clinton, but I know it was between eight and half-past. I'm fairly sure of that, Sir Clinton."

"And you cut words and letters out of it for your poison-pen stuff? Now if you read the papers, you must have seen that the police were anxious to get every possible bit of evidence about this Hyson affair. Why did you not come forward and tell us then what you've told us now?"

"Oh, but, Sir Clinton," Ruth protested, "if I'd done that, then they'd have asked me how I came to be at the Hysons' house that evening and they'd have found out that I was sending these letters. I couldn't have that happening, Sir Clinton."

"Afraid of the consequences? Rather a pity—from your point of view. If you'd come forward voluntarily, it might have served your turn in this poison-pen case. You might have got more lenient treatment. But that's got nothing to do with us here. I want to ask another question. What church do you attend?"

"Ah! So that's where you got the name Salvator that you put to that telegram of yours—the one that was delivered while you were at Mr. Lockhurst's office. I congratulate you on that attempt to manufacture an alibi, Miss Jessop. You posted that telegram in an envelope addressed to Waterloo Street Post Office, with stamps on the form to cover the cost of the wire. The result was that it was telegraphed as 'handed in at 11.49 A.M.'; and at 11.49 you were with us in Mr. Lockhurst's office. But, unfortunately, I went into the history of your wire and heard it had been posted, not handed in."

Ruth Jessop seemed confounded by this exposure of her methods. But Sir Clinton gave her no time for regrets on that point.

"Oh, no, Sir Clinton, I didn't," Ruth Jessop protested, as if she were glad at last to have something she could deny.

"Oh, quite, quite sure, Sir Clinton. I did write you one, and I'm sure I'm sorry for it now. But that was a long time ago."

Ruth Jessop seemed to be recovering herself during these easy questions, but her respite was broken by the Chief Constable's next inquiry.

"Why did you not tell us that it was Mrs. Telford whom you saw going into Mr. Lockhurst's office after hours? You recognised her, didn't you? And yet you pretended not to know who it was, and we had to drag Miss Nevern into the matter. Why did you not make a clean breast of it then?"

Ruth's answer had so much egotism in it that even Craythorn was surprised by it.

"But that might have been slanderous, Sir Clinton, and it might have got me into trouble. You couldn't expect me to risk that, surely, Sir Clinton."

"Libel came easy enough to you," said the Chief Constable. "I don't see why you're so careful about slander, especially when it was a question of giving us your help."

"Oh, but that was quite different, Sir Clinton, quite different. No one knew I was sending these letters, you see. But if I'd said anything before witnesses, then everyone would have found out that it was I who'd said it. People might have said I'd done it out of spite, just."

Ruth Jessop explained this in such a matter-of-fact tone that it was clear she felt fully justified in what she had done.

"H'm! Well, your conscience is your own affair, of course," Sir Clinton admitted. "Let's go on. You sent one of your productions to Mrs. Telford at Glen Terret, didn't you?"

Ruth glanced quickly at the Chief Constable's face to see if she could detect whether he was bluffing or not. But she could read nothing on his features and evidently decided to tell the truth.

Evidently Ruth felt the change in the atmosphere as Sir Clinton put his questions. Hitherto the three men had been unsympathetic, now she sensed antagonism.

"Very nice. Well, Miss Jessop, when your trial comes on and Mr. Telford learns who was at the back of these letters..."

Sir Clinton's expression made a completion of the sentence unnecessary. Ruth evidently read the worst into that significant pause.

"You don't mean he'd... hurt me?" she broke out in panic. "I never meant any harm. I didn't, really, Sir Clinton. It was only a joke. Just a little fun. And, besides, if she didn't want people to say things, she shouldn't have misbehaved herself. Why should I suffer for her doings? It isn't fair, it isn't fair. You don't think he'll do anything really, Sir Clinton? You're just saying that to frighten me, aren't you? Oh!..."

"That'll do," said the Chief Constable sternly. "I've more to ask you. In that letter you wrote to Mrs. Telford, did you mention Hyson's name, or did you insinuate anything of the sort?"

But his tactics had played him false. Ruth Jessop was reduced to a mere bundle of nerves, and it was plain that she could not recall what she had actually said in Nancy Telford's letter.

"I... don't know.... I don't... know," she stammered between her sobs. "I've written so many letters.... Ever so many.... I can't remember what I put in each of them.... I can't.... It's no use asking me. I don't remember. I wish I could... but I can't. I can't."

"That sounds genuine," said Sir Clinton, critically. "Well, if you can't, you can't." He turned to Craythorn. "Take her away and make a formal charge against her on the basis that Mr. Duncannon gave you. Then let her out on bail. I take the responsibility for that."

"That's a nasty piece of goods," said Duncannon, as the door closed behind the inspector and his prey. "I begin to see now why you were so anxious for me to run her down. Pity we couldn't manage it quicker for you. But these things always take time, worse luck."

"Think Telford had a hand in Hyson's death? It looked like it, from some of the questions you asked."

"Telford has a complete alibi according to evidence that Craythorn collected. Unless you can suggest a scheme for bringing him here from Glen Terret in twenty minutes or so."

"That sounds a bit difficult, I admit," said Duncannon, with a laugh. "Then have you anyone else in view?"

"I'm not much given to confidences," the Chief Constable confessed, "but this is really in your field. Here's the latest anonymous letter."

He took from his pocket the letter incriminating Barsett and spread it out on the table. Duncannon glanced over it.

"Barsett?" he said, with a whistle. "Well, I've heard some rumours that might make it just possible, so far as a motive goes. But where did this production come from? Have you the envelope?"

"The envelope was typed on Barsett's own machine," Sir Clinton explained. "But it's easy enough to get access to that. His secretary, Miss Errington, uses it constantly; and any of the servants could find an opportunity of using it, no doubt."

"And who was this man that the poison-pen dame saw in Hyson's house that night? Barsett?"

"You're asking more questions than I can answer," said Sir Clinton with a smile. "Hunts of this sort take time. No one knows that better than yourself."

"Meaning you won't tell. Well, good hunting! Do you want me to take on this new recruit to the poison-pen brigade?"

"I think this last thing has served its turn," Sir Clinton assured him. "There won't be any more from that source."

"By the way, Inspector," said the Chief Constable, "you might give the press some information about our arresting Miss Jessop—just a note of the arrest and no comments, of course."

"Thinking of sparing the poor thing's feelings?" asked Sir Clinton. "I'm thinking of something quite different. Just do as I suggest, please."

"Phew! Telephoning is no joy of mine, but perhaps I may acquire the habit. Let's see. The Post Office—not Duncannon's branch. The city Electricity Department. Heston aerodrome might be the best place to get another tip. And a tobacconist, if I could find out his name. Four calls at least and two of them trunks. It's a weary world, Inspector."

Chapter Eighteen
THE KEY OF THE FIELDS

"NANCY TELFORD'S death?" said Sir Clinton in answer to a question from Wendover. "Yes, it's cleared up now. I'm not given to sentimentality, Squire, as you know; but that was a horrible affair. It's sickening to see a girl like that made the sport of circumstance."

"I've heard no details," Wendover pointed out soberly. "I went abroad after Mollie Keston's wedding and my only news of the affair was a casual reference to it in a letter from someone. He said she's committed suicide. I could hardly believe it; it seemed out of character, from what I knew of her, poor thing. Since it happened up in Glen Terret, I suppose you heard all about it from Forrest."

"I don't see how," Wendover declared. "You've nothing to do with affairs in Scotland. Tell me about it, will you?"

Sir Clinton made a gesture of agreement and paused for a moment or two while he put his narrative in order.

"Let's start with Mollie Keston's wedding, since you've mentioned it," he began. "We met Nancy Telford there, you may remember. Can you recall what she talked about?"

"Let's think," Wendover answered, racking his memory. "Oh, yes, kleptomania or something of that sort, wasn't it?"

"Irresistible cravings were what was in her mind," said the Chief Constable, "and the struggle that their victim could put up against them. And when she left us, you remarked on the alteration in her looks; and we agreed that she had all the air of a young Jezebel."

"Yes," admitted Wendover reluctantly. "She'd changed very much for the worse. It stared me in the face."

"No fault of hers, poor girl. Then you remember Malwood giving us a lecture on his pet glands and their secretions? How by the over-production of one particular hormone a woman might lose all control over herself and become like Swinburne's Faustine—'a love-machine.' Now, as I learned later, Nancy Telford was one of Malwood's patients. After that, it didn't take much acuteness to put two and two together about the change in her bearing."

"I suppose there's something in it," said Wendover reluctantly, "but it's not the kind of thing one cares to think much about. She was such a fascinating type before that, you know. I hate the idea. But didn't Malwood tell us something about X rays?"

"We'll come to that later," Sir Clinton said. "Stick to what we saw at the wedding. You may remember that soon after Nancy Telford left us, we saw her talking to a man who Malwood told me was Hyson. As you know, Squire, I've had to go into Hyson's affairs lately. A rank bad lot, that fellow. He'd made his wife miserable, so far as he could. He had one of his office-typists—a girl Olive Lyndoch—as a mistress. And just about that time, he was getting tired of this Lyndoch girl and looking about for someone else for a change. It was Nancy Telford's ill-luck that she ran up against him at a time when she was completely off her balance. He didn't help her to regain it."

"You needn't underscore that," interrupted Wendover. "I see what you're driving at. But Nancy Telford was head-over-ears in love with her husband. How could she do a thing like that?"

"That's where tragedy comes in," retorted Sir Clinton gravely. "She was in love with Jim Telford, ardently in love with him. I've every reason to know it. And she was a perfectly straight girl, too. But that gland had gone wrong and the result threw her into Hyson's hands. That was the irresistible craving she had in her mind when she spoke to us at the wedding. She did her level best to hold it in check, but the disease was too much for her. Imagine the thoughts and feelings of a straight girl landed in that position, Squire."

"Hardly bears thinking about," Wendover commented gruffly. "Go on with the story."

"I got the next part confirmed by Malwood; but actually I'd pieced it together myself beforehand, so there's no breach of confidence in telling you this. You remember what he told us at the wedding about some new X-ray gadget he'd set up? He tried it on Nancy Telford and made a complete cure, brought her wholly back to normal again, so far as the gland trouble went. But that didn't efface the past for her, unfortunately. You know an epileptic can commit a murder during one of his lapses and wake up without knowing what he's done. But suppose he does remember? What's his state of mind likely to be, if he happens to be a decent, conscientious man? Nancy Telford was in much the same position. She could remember what she'd done; and, looking back on it from her new normal state of mind it must have been like waking up and remembering a nightmare. Only in her case the nightmare was real and not only a dream."

"Ghastly!" interjected Wendover, who had enough imagination to picture the thing himself.

"Malwood noticed that although he had cured her gland trouble, she was very worried and depressed when she left his Institute. He hadn't the key to the business, of course, so he didn't quite know what to make of it. She might have got over it if she'd been left alone; but she'd no luck, poor girl. Someone else took a hand in the game. Go back to that wedding again, Squire. Can you remember what you and I and Malwood talked about after he'd finished telling us about glands? I asked you something about Neil Cream the poisoner. That may jog your memory."

"A local poison-pen pest, was that it?" asked Wendover after thinking for a moment or two.

"Correct. And that was the next character in the tragedy. By ill-luck, that poison-pen creature saw Nancy going to one of her rendezvous with Hyson at the office. That was an opportunity not to be missed. So, by and by, when Nancy had gone back to Glen Terret, this creature sat down and wrote her a letter. I've seen it, Squire. Telford got it after his wife's death. It was a diabolical production. It let Nancy know, in the crudest of language, that someone else knew her secret. That was bad enough, when the girl was doing her best to blot the whole thing out of her mind. But there was worse; for the poison-pen expert said quite plainly that the next move would be an anonymous letter to Jim Telford, giving the whole show away. It doesn't need much imagination to guess what the effect of such a thing would be on a girl who already was in Nancy's state of mind. She simply wasn't fit to cope with the situation, and she took the key of the fields, as Montaigne puts it. She sat down and wrote a letter to Jim Telford. I've seen that too, a terrible letter. And then she went off up the glen and drowned herself in Hart Lynn. Young Telford found her body in the water."

"It wasn't just an accident?" demanded Wendover. "She might have been careless, in that worked-up state, and slipped on the edge of the Lynn. It's a dangerous place, at the best."

"No good, Squire. She'd strapped her ankles and wrists before jumping in, to make a sure thing of it. No, it was suicide, with every justification for a verdict of unsound mind, if they had coroner's juries in Scotland."

"That's what young Telford did. He suppressed the poison-pen letter and the one that Nancy had written to him. Told some yarn about Nancy having left a note asking him to follow her, and how he'd thrown that note into the stream on the way up, as it seemed of no importance. He stuck to his lies, fighting to save Nancy's reputation, as any decent man would do in the circumstances. And he managed to satisfy the Procurator-Fiscal that there had been no foul play. Everyone was sorry for them, naturally. And that was the end of the business, so far as the public knew. He made just one slip."

"Yes, if he'd only done that, it might have passed for an accident, which would have been better still. But if he had thought of that, it would have been a bit too callous, in the circumstances, I think."

Chapter Nineteen
WITH MOST MIRACULOUS ORGAN

"But that's never been cleared up," interjected Wendover. "At least nothing's come out in the newspapers to account for it."

"Something will have to come out at the adjourned inquest; but not more than I can help," Sir Clinton explained. "I don't mind telling you about it, though, Squire. I know you won't bruit it abroad."

"Turn back to Mollie Keston's wedding again," Sir Clinton began. "You remember, Squire, that you pointed out Mrs. Hyson to me there and told me a thing or two about her personal affairs. That came in useful when we were called on to investigate Hyson's death. He was found dead in the kitchen, with his head in the gas-oven, and his body was discovered by the maid who came home about 10.15 P.M. after her afternoon and evening out. Inspector Craythorn was called in; and he noted a few things immediately. The first was that Hyson had got into a hopeless financial state; and, as we found later, he'd been stealing bonds and forging clients' signatures right and left. So it looked like suicide. Apparently he'd gassed himself round about 8.30 P.M."

"Merely approximate, of course. You know one can't fix these things to a minute. Mrs. Hyson wasn't on the premises. She came back again about twenty past eleven, with a curious tale. At ten to eight that evening someone had rung her up to say that there had been a burglary at the house of her sister, Miss Errington. Would she go over there? She took her car across and found there had been no burglary. She tried to ring up Hyson, but the line was dead; and next morning it turned out that the wires had been cut outside Hyson's house."

"No, it wasn't clear. It reminded her of young Telford's voice, she said, but as young Telford was up in Glen Terret, she didn't see how it could have been him. She stayed with her sister, according to her story, till 9.45 P.M. and then on the way home she picked up a friend at about ten o'clock, took her home, stayed there till after eleven, and then came home. Her sister and her friend confirmed this tale. They concluded that it was a practical joke. But actually there was a burglary in that district on the same evening; the house of a man Scarsdale was broken into.

"Now our friend with the poison pen comes on the scene. She was run down eventually by the Post Office Investigation Branch expert, one Duncannon, and turned out to be a woman Ruth Jessop, a hanger-on of the Hyson circle; so I may as well use her name now to save circumlocution. One of her letters was found by Craythorn in the Hyson letter-box after Hyson's death; and without going into details I may as well say that although it purported to have been posted it had actually been dropped into the box by hand. So there was someone who had been at the house at a critical time. But of course we did not know who she was at that stage.

"This poison-pen letter was addressed to Hyson and accused him of 'hugging girls' at his office after hours and it also accused Mrs. Hyson of being Barsett's mistress. Mrs. Hyson denied that at once to Craythorn as soon as the letter was opened. Still, Craythorn had his suspicions. Mrs. Hyson's alibi depended on her sister; her sister was Barsett's secretary; and Barsett was fond of Mrs. Hyson and could marry her only if Hyson was eliminated. These three were closely associated, and two of them had every reason to wish Hyson out of this world. So it might not have been suicide after all; murder was a possibility, with all three of them mixed up in it. And, besides, that cut telephone wire needed some explanation which didn't suggest itself easily if it were mere suicide.

"Next morning we went over the place. The electric clock in the drawing-room, where Hyson had been busy with his accounts, had stopped at 9.20 P.M., though none of the fuses in the circuit had ever been blown. There was some pipe tobacco and ash in the hearth which a tobacconist identified for us as Wainwright Trafalgar brand. Hyson smoked cigarettes only. Some flowers in a bowl on an occasional table were withered; there was no water in the bowl; and there was a wet patch on the carpet. Ergo, someone had upset the table and then stuffed the flowers back into the bowl. This suggested a struggle. Now the police surgeon had noticed a bruise on Hyson's chin which was put down to his head falling and hitting the floor of the gas-oven when he went under. But assume a struggle, and that bruise might have got there by other means."

"Our next port of call was Lockhurst's office. The old man had died the day before from that heart trouble of his, and, between that and Hyson's death, the staff were in a bit of a muddle, trying to find out where all their clients' shares and bonds had got to. Into the middle of this dropped a fresh poison-pen production which had been sent to Lockhurst, been overlooked or held up during his illness, and was forwarded to us by his executor, who found it among the accumulated documents. It had the same tale about Hyson using Lockhurst's office as a rendezvous for a typist. But it wasn't one of Ruth Jessop's contributions. The envelope was addressed in pen and ink, a thing she avoided always.

"By putting together one or two things we'd picked up, we identified the writer as Olive Lyndoch, the senior typist. And when I showed her the letter itself she gave herself away completely; for although she obviously didn't read it through, she was able to answer questions about the contents without hesitation. She admitted writing it, when we drove her into a corner. Then out came a little office-drama. She'd been Hyson's mistress. He'd thrown her over; and she was beside herself with jealousy because she imagined that he'd replaced her by another of the typists, a girl Nevern. She'd watched the office after hours one night and saw a girl in grey with a grey fur go upstairs, whom she supposed was Miss Nevern.

"Now, curiously enough, we'd just had a confirmation of this tale. Ruth Jessop came to the office while we were there; and when she found Hyson had stolen some of her bonds, she burst out with some story about his scattering his money on women. When we questioned her about this, she told practically the same tale as Olive Lyndoch had done. She'd seen a fair-haired girl in a grey fox fur going into the office after hours.

"We questioned the Nevern girl. She denied the whole story at once; but she couldn't remember—naturally enough—where she had actually been on that particular night. Luckily we got at the truth via the office boy, who happened to be deeply in calf-love with Miss Nevern. He produced his diary which showed that he'd gone with her to the pictures on that particular night. That cleared her completely. To make sure, we made Miss Nevern put on her coat and fur and we confronted Ruth Jessop with her. She couldn't identify the typist as the girl who had entered the office that night."

"I see where you are," Wendover interrupted. "It was Nancy Telford who was visiting Hyson?"

"Well," Sir Clinton explained, "I remembered that at Mollie Keston's wedding Nancy Telford had worn a costume and fur which tallied with the descriptions we'd had. But that proved nothing. I merely made a mental note of it at the time. Besides, you must remember that Ruth Jessop knew Nancy personally, and yet she didn't give us any sign that she had actually recognised the girl she saw going into the office."

"Ruth Jessop was playing a game of her own at that moment," Sir Clinton continued, ignoring the interruption. "She knew she was suspected of sending these poison-pen letters, so she had determined to provide herself with an alibi. She posted a telegram addressed to our headquarters and then paid her visit to Lockhurst's office so timed as to coincide with the time the telegram was received at Waterloo Street Post Office when the postman brought in his collection. But of course we disposed of that immediately by going into the history of the telegram. That telegram accused Nancy Telford of meeting Hyson at the office, and it was signed 'Salvator.' Ruth Jessop used the first word that came into her head; and it so happens that she attends St. Salvator's Church. But if she sent that wire, then she must have recognised Nancy when she saw her going into the office."

"Then why didn't she say so, instead of throwing aspersions on the typist?" demanded Wendover.

"She didn't drag in the typist. It was the Lyndoch girl in her jealousy did that. But when we confronted Ruth Jessop with the typist she didn't mention Nancy's name. Why? Because that telegram was on the way, and she didn't want to appear to know about Nancy for fear of giving herself away."

"I see," commented Wendover. "And at that time you had no definite proof that this Jessop woman was actually the poison pen?"

"Nothing we could rely on in a prosecution, so we had to go very cautiously. But once Nancy Telford's name was definitely linked with the business I remembered two more things. At Mollie Keston's wedding—it turns up everywhere in this affair, Squire—Nancy Telford mentioned casually that Jim Telford was a crime fan and followed all sorts of criminal cases in the newspapers. And I'd heard from Forrest once, in casual conversation, that Telford was a good boxer and ran a class to teach some ragamuffins the art of self-defence. Now that bruise on Hyson's chin might have been produced by someone giving him the usual knock-out; and if he'd gone down flat, there might be a bruise on the back of his head. The police surgeon found one, when I asked him to look for it. A man who's taken the knock-out could easily enough be dragged to a gas-oven and made to look like a suicide case."

"I suppose that's so," Wendover conceded reluctantly. "But that's the merest guesswork."

"Of course it is," Sir Clinton agreed at once. "For all one could tell, the bruise on the back of the head might have been caused by someone sandbagging him, previous to gassing him. But we couldn't leave Telford out of account. I turned Craythorn onto that. He asked Telford to come down here and see him; and I suspect the inspector made rather a hash of that interview owing to lack of tact. However, he managed to elicit a thing or two, all the same. He learned that Telford knew the Hysons had a gas-cooker in their kitchen and not an electric one; and that he knew Thursday was their maid's night out. Against that, he found that Telford smoked Algonquin A tobacco; whereas the stuff we found on Hyson's hearth was Wainwright's Trafalgar brand. But a man can change his tobacco if he chooses, so that didn't mean much.

"Craythorn then asked if Telford had received any of these poison-pen letters or if his wife had got any. Telford said that if Nancy had received any, she'd never spoken to him about them. He denied that he had received any himself.

"That was more than a bit fishy, as you can see for yourself, Squire; for we knew from the Post Office expert that Nancy Telford actually had received one poison-pen letter on the day of her death. But it was just possible she hadn't said anything about it to her husband, so far as we knew at that time. And when Craythorn questioned him about Nancy's acquaintanceship with Hyson, Telford lost his temper and denied furiously that there had been anything wrong."

"That meant neither one thing nor another," Wendover commented. "He was almost certain to say that in any case."

"Obviously," Sir Clinton agreed. "But apparently Telford's manner got Craythorn's back up, and he asked him bluntly to account for his movements on the night that Hyson died. And the result was one of the best alibis that could well be produced. That night, Telford was at Glen Terret, alone in his cottage and just getting over a bad bout of sickness. He had a short-wave transmitter there, worked off the grid current; and when he felt a bit better he got into touch with a man Netherby in town here, whom he often speaks to on the short waves. That was round about nine o'clock on that Thursday night; so unless you can see your way to get Telford down here at that very time, his alibi's a cast-iron one."

"A man can't be in two places at once, unless he's a bird," said Wendover, quoting Sir Boyle Roche. "That's plain enough. You checked his story, of course?"

"Naturally," said Sir Clinton, dryly. "Craythorn interviewed this Netherby man, and the story was absolutely lock-fast. Telford had spoken to him about nine o'clock, quite a long conversation. He'd asked Netherby to check the frequency of his transmission, and Netherby did so, finding it quite exact. Netherby was a good witness, for he keeps his log very carefully. They have to keep a log of their transmissions, it appears; it's a condition of their licences. Netherby produced his log and was even able to tell us that there had been a short interruption in Telford's transmission just as he was testing the frequency. Telford had mentioned that he'd been sick that day. There's no question of any faking by gramophone records or any wheeze of that kind. And Netherby knows Telford's voice beyond any doubt. He asked what the weather was like up in Glen Terret, and Telford told him what it was: 'Cool, dry, some stars showing, wind N.E.' Craythorn wasn't easily satisfied about the voice being right, but Netherby said he'd go into court and swear to it if necessary. He knows the voices of a lot of these amateurs; he mentioned a few that he often talked with, some fellow Stevens, and another local man called Scarsdale, who's abroad at the moment. Besides, the frequency of the transmission, he said, identified the transmitter. So there's not a shadow of doubt that it was Telford speaking on the short waves at 9.15 P.M. that night."

"Now we come back to anonymous letters again," Sir Clinton continued. "Someone—not Ruth Jessop or Olive Lyndoch—wrote me an unsigned note telling me that Barsett had been bluffing us and that he had paid a visit to Hyson on the night of his death. Barsett had told Craythorn that on that evening he stayed indoors; and his servants had confirmed this so far as their knowledge went. So I looked up Barsett myself and told him some information had come to hand which might make it advisable to allow him to emend his previous tale if he chose to do so. He crawled down without much ado, and told me a long detailed story of how he had gone to Hyson and offered him a good round sum in cash to fake a suicide and disappear. The idea was, of course, to leave Mrs. Hyson under the impression that her husband was dead and she was free to marry Barsett. I listened to his tale with a certain amount of admiration, Squire. First and foremost, he'd woven into it a vast amount of details which covered practically all we had found at Hyson's house when we went over it. Secondly, by his account, he had been alone with Hyson all the time between 8.30 P.M. and 9.45 P.M., so that his story gave Mrs. Hyson a complete alibi covering that period. Thirdly, his tale didn't exclude the very obvious possibility that he might have knocked Hyson on the head himself during the time he admitted he was in the house; and it takes a pretty bold man to volunteer that sort of news about himself and run the risk of the results, for remember that the medical evidence pointed to Hyson dying about 8.30 or 9 P.M. so far as it went."

"If it was a lie, he must be devilish fond of Linda Hyson," Wendover interjected. "But it may have been true, in which case..."

"He was 'for it,' " Sir Clinton completed the sentence. "Quite so. To counter that, he had to account for Hyson's suicide after he had retired from the scene. To cover that, he told me that Hyson was all on wires during their interview. But all the evidence about Hyson on that evening depicts him as perfectly normal in behaviour. That was a weak spot. But besides that, he made a downright blunder. Everything he had picked up from Mrs. Hyson, he used in his tale, even the stopping of the electric clock at 9.20 P.M. He had noticed that, he told me. But he never mentioned the electric lights going out when the current failed in the main! Can you imagine anyone telling a plain and detailed story and forgetting that episode? Incredible, to my mind. Fancy sitting for a minute or two in the dark and not remembering to mention it."

"I got Craythorn to find out how the mains run in that district," Sir Clinton went on. "Hyson's house and Barsett's house are on different cables. So if Barsett had been sitting at home that evening, he wouldn't have noticed anything wrong. His own house lights would have burned perfectly all the time. And Mrs. Hyson wasn't in the house to notice the temporary extinction, so she said nothing to him about it when they'd been talking matters over."

"Well, then, add to that fact that the anonymous letter was addressed on Barsett's own typewriter, and that the lettering was clipped from the Times, which happens to be Barsett's daily paper. The whole affair was obviously a put-up job by Barsett himself to shield Mrs. Hyson, whom he supposed we might have under suspicion. There wasn't a word of truth in it from start to finish."

"He must be devilish fond of her," Wendover repeated. "It takes some grit to run a risk of that size on a woman's account; for if you had taken him seriously he might well have found himself in Queer Street."

"Oh, quite the young Curtius," admitted the Chief Constable. "I've wondered how he proposed to wriggle out of the fix if we had accepted his tale. He'd left precious few loopholes for escape. It's lucky for him that he wasn't quite so clever as he supposed."

"A woman is physically able to sandbag an unsuspecting man," Sir Clinton said, rather elusively. "One must take everything into account, Squire. But let's take things in their order. Duncannon ran down his quarry and the poison-pen pest turned out to be Ruth Jessop, as I told you. I had suspected that she'd be an important witness if we could lay hands on her; and I'll tell you why. In the first place, one blind of Hyson's drawing-room window comes down askew and leaves a rift through which one can see into the room from outside. So when Ruth Jessop delivered that letter, there was a chance that she had seen into that room at a critical stage in the proceedings. Further, that was the last letter she delivered by hand, which looked as if she had got some scare which put her off the method. So when we got hold of her, I put her through it pretty stiffly; and she admitted that she had looked into the room about half-past eight. She'd seen Hyson there, and along with him another man whom she couldn't describe beyond saying that he wore light tweeds. Now Barsett declared that he wore a dinner-jacket when he visited Hyson at that time; so that was another spike driven through his yarn. Obviously his whole tale was pure concoction. But here was sound enough evidence that someone had been with Hyson between eight and nine o'clock. Incidentally, Ruth Jessop confessed to sending Nancy Telford the letter which drove her to suicide."

"What a vile little beast she must be," said Wendover, bitterly. "She must have known what damage she was doing. Didn't she show any remorse?"

"All she thought about was her own skin," Sir Clinton said contemptuously. "Leave her out of it for the present, and put yourself in my place. Where would your suspicions have landed you at that stage?"

"Let's take the people who had a grudge against Hyson, to start with," he began. "First of all, there was this Lyndoch girl, his discarded mistress. She evidently hated him, as witness the letter she sent to Lockhurst. Had she an alibi?"

"Then she had a motive and an opportunity," Wendover decided. "Young Telford you've ruled out by his alibi. Barsett you've put out of court by breaking down his story. H'm! That leaves... Linda Hyson and her sister, if they put their heads together and manufactured an alibi. Well, I simply don't believe those girls had a hand in it. It's simply not in character. If Linda Hyson was going to step outside her code at all, she could have got rid of Hyson by divorcing him. There was no need to kill him."

"You've omitted one possible," Sir Clinton pointed out chaffingly. "What about Ruth Jessop? She had opportunity, since we know she was actually at the house that night; and she may have had a motive, for all we can tell. Anything might happen, with a man like Hyson, you know."

"No, that's not in character either," retorted Wendover. "He wouldn't have wasted time on an unattractive woman."

"Well, where are you? Everybody cleared—and yet someone put Hyson through it. Shall I outline my own procedure at that point? I rang up the Post Office. Then I got in touch with the Heston aerodrome. And I made some inquiries from the local Electricity Department. Oh, yes, I started some inquiries among tobacco shops. And when I'd got my answers, I began to see light clearly enough. Think it over, Squire."

Wendover settled back in his chair and knit his brows in an effort to follow the Chief Constable's train of reasoning.

"The tobacco inquiries had to do with the stuff on the hearth, of course," he began slowly. "Then the Electricity Department would be able to tell you the exact time of the mains failure. But you had that already, to the dot, by the time the electric clock stopped. Heston aerodrome... I don't see where flying comes into the business. And I suppose the Post Office had something to do with the poison-pen stuff.... No, I'm not much further forward, Clinton. I'll admit it freely."

"Heston aerodrome broadcasts the flying weather over the whole country," Sir Clinton reminded him, "and the Post Office controls amateur wireless, remember."

"Then I don't see the point of these inquiries," Wendover confessed. "But go on with your story."

"Certainly, if you'll let me tell it without being interrupted every few sentences. Take the inquiry at Heston aerodrome first. I asked them about the weather over Glen Terret on the night of Hyson's death; and the reply was: 'Cold, cloudy, continuous heavy rain, wind S.S.W.' That didn't fit in with young Telford's report to Netherby: 'Cool, dry, some stars showing, wind N.E.' I began to wonder a bit when I got the Heston report. Then came the turn of our Electricity Department down town. They informed me that the interruption of the current in the mains that night was very short, perhaps a minute and a half. Netherby, when Craythorn questioned him, happened to mention that Telford's transmission was interrupted for 'about a minute' while he was testing the frequency of Telford's transmitter; and that interruption occurred just at the time when the electric clock stopped in Hyson's drawing-room. That made me infer that Telford's message did not come from Glen Terret at all, but from quite close at hand, here. That's confirmed in a way by the fact that Netherby found his reception first-class—'absolutely solid,' as he put it to Craythorn.

"That breakdown suggested that Telford's message originated somewhere on the line of the mains cable that feeds Hyson's house. It passes Hyson's house and then turns down Vendale Road. Now there was a burglary that night in Vendale Road, you remember; but as nothing was stolen, it was concluded that the burglar had been interrupted and had got away empty-handed. Scarsdale is the name of the house-owner; and Scarsdale's name cropped up in Netherby's evidence as one of his amateur wireless cronies. So there was a transmitter on Scardale's premises, in working order. Scarsdale cut off his house-current before he went away, but anyone could put it on again by throwing over the main switch."

"But from what you said before," objected Wendover in a puzzled tone, "the frequency of the waves emitted by Scarsdale's transmitter is fixed and is entirely different from the frequency of Telford's Glen Terret transmitter, which is also fixed. And this man Netherby measured the frequency of Telford's transmission that night and found it absolutely right. That seems to knock a hole in the hypothesis that Telford was using the transmitter in Scarsdale's empty house, surely."

"That stumped me completely at the time," Sir Clinton admitted frankly. "I know nothing about wireless. But my motto is: 'When you don't know, find out.' So, as I told you, I rang up the Post Office, Wireless Department; and one of their experts came to see me. I put the thing to him, and he laughed, because in practice it's so simple. The frequency of the waves from a transmitter is governed by a quartz crystal. If Telford took his own quartz crystal out of his Glen Terret transmitter and fitted it into Scarsdale's transmitter, then Scarsdale's transmitter would emit waves of a frequency identical with that of the waves from the Glen Terret transmitter. That's all."

"The quartz crystal's a tiny little thing that you could carry in your waistcoat pocket. Thirty seconds would clip it in position and the transmitter could be re-tuned in another thirty seconds. I asked the Post Office expert about it, and that was his estimate. Besides, remember, Netherby told us that Telford had helped Scarsdale in designing the transmitter, so he knew it from A to Z and could do the job in next to no time."

"H'm!" Wendover grunted, "it seems very quick, but I suppose that's all right. What next?"

"Next I remembered another thing Netherby had said to Craythorn. When a short-wave transmitter is working, and there's any old-fashioned poorly-selective receiver working on the medium-wave broadcasting band in the vicinity, the short-wave transmission is apt to interfere with the broadcast reception on the old receiver. We were lucky to find a listener with an old set who had been listening on the medium waves at the time of the mains breakdown; and he had heard part of the transmission from Scarsdale's station, in Vendale Road. That seemed to clinch the business, since it proved that Telford had not been talking from Glen Terret but from Vendale Road, just round the corner from Hyson's house."

Sir Clinton paused to light a cigarette, but Wendover did not take the opportunity of making any comment.

"Once I'd got that length," Sir Clinton resumed, "it was easy enough to sketch out the probable sequence of events. Telford had learned from his wife's letter and from Ruth Jessop's anonymous screed exactly what part Hyson had played. Knowing how fond he was of Nancy, it's not difficult to guess that he meant to take revenge. It wasn't ordinary unfaithfulness, you know. I'm not a married man myself, but I can make a guess at his feelings. I think he was quite ready to run any risk on his own account to get the account squared. But if he had gone direct and killed Hyson, obviously the whole story would come out and Nancy's affairs would have become public somehow during the trial. That was the last thing Telford wanted. So the obvious thing was to dispose of Hyson and not be caught.

"Now Jim Telford, as we know, was a crime fan, which meant that he was accustomed to thinking about the weak points in cases. He hit on the wireless alibi, which must have seemed as sound a scheme as one could well devise. He had talked regularly with Scarsdale and knew of his plans for going abroad, which meant that his transmitter would be available at the cost of breaking a window. He also had Netherby actually on the spot here, to whom he could talk by previous arrangement at the very minute when he needed his alibi. And he knew the routine of Hyson's house with the maid out on Thursday nights. All he had to do was to be sure that Hyson would be at home that night, and no doubt he could ascertain that easily enough through Barsett or even by writing to Hyson himself and making a fake appointment.

"Now Telford had to account for his absence from his office on Thursday. He did that by feigning illness; and he made that serve a double purpose by mentioning his supposed sickness in his talk with Netherby, thus adding an extra touch of verisimilitude to the idea that he was at Glen Terret. Thus he had the whole of Thursday and Thursday night at his disposal, so long as he could get back to Glen Terret in time to reach his office as usual on Friday morning. It's only a five-hundred-mile drive in all; and that's nothing to a man in the best of condition, like Telford.

"That brings us to his actual procedure on the night of Hyson's death. He arrived here and most probably parked his car in some side street. He wouldn't be fool enough to take it to a garage or put it in a public park, because somebody might remember it or its number if he had done that. Then he went to the kiosk which is just down the road from Hyson's house and rang up Mrs. Hyson. He did his best to disguise his voice, but he wasn't entirely successful for she was reminded of him when we asked if she knew the speaker. He told her his yarn about the burglary at her sister's flat; and then he kept watch on Hyson's house—you can see the gate of it from the telephone kiosk—until he saw her go off in the car. Then, possibly, he rang up again to make sure Hyson was alone. After that, he cut the Hyson's telephone wire to make sure of no interruption from Mrs. Hyson which might have put Hyson on his guard. He'd have been suspicious, perhaps, if she had got through and told him that the burglary yarn was a fake; and you may remember that she did actually try to ring Hyson up from her sister's flat.

"What happened after Telford called on Hyson is pretty plain. He must have talked to Hyson for a short time, otherwise he wouldn't have knocked out his pipe on the hearth. But it wasn't a long conversation, and eventually they got to their feet and Telford knocked Hyson out as he could easily do, being an expert boxer. That accounts for the two bruises on Hyson, one on the chin and one on the back of the head. It also accounts for the upsetting of the occasional table. Then, clearly, he dragged him to the gas-oven, put his head inside, and turned the tap on. Hyson would be incapable of helping himself; and I've no doubt Telford waited to see the business thoroughly done before he let himself out of the house again. The next stage was all thought out carefully. It only meant breaking into Scarsdale's house through any convenient window, switching on the current, putting his own quartz crystal into Scarsdale's transmitter, and re-tuning a bit. Then he was ready to talk to Netherby."

"Know your Hamlet, Squire? Remember that quotation: 'Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ'? Telford, sitting at the transmitter, reminds me of that. A wireless set has no tongue, and to Shakespeare it would certainly have seemed a 'most miraculous organ.' And it was through that 'organ' that the murder revealed itself, as you've seen. Shakespeare had an uncanny knack of making his words applicable to things undreamt of in his philosophy."

"Well, after he'd finished his talk with Netherby, Telford had only to replace Scarsdale's quartz crystal in the transmitter, switch off the house-current, make sure the coast was clear, and get away. Beyond a pencil flash-lamp he hadn't needed to show a light in the house. Then he had to get back to his car and go off on his two-fifty-mile drive to Glen Terret. And, so far as I can see, he'd have been absolutely safe but for two things which he could not possibly have foreseen. It was as clever a bit of work as I've come across yet."

"One was the mains breakdown, which happened at an unlucky moment. The other was the poison-pen stuff which suggested the connection between Hyson and Nancy Telford. Without that, we'd never have thought of associating Telford with Hyson's murder. And without the mains breakdown we could never have proved that the wrong transmitter had been used, no matter what suspicions we might have harboured."

"I see that," Wendover admitted. "But you've left one loose end. What about your inquiries from tobacconists?"

"The Scottish police did that for us. They found out where Telford dealt. And they discovered that he used to smoke Wainwright's Trafalgar brand up to the date of Hyson's death, but immediately afterwards he changed his taste and bought Algonquin A. Only a detail, of course, but details count. He must have remembered that he'd knocked out his pipe in Hyson's drawing-room. That was a bit of carelessness on his part, but he did his best to cover it up by choosing a new tobacco."

Wendover made no comment but apparently cogitated over something which puzzled him.

"But you said you weren't thinking of arresting young Telford," he recalled. "And yet you've proved that he murdered Hyson. You're not going to..."

"Let my employers down?" Sir Clinton filled in the gap. "No, Squire. Whatever I think privately does not affect me when it comes to doing what I'm paid to do. I'd arrest young Telford this moment, if I could."

"Then he's got away?" ejaculated Wendover without troubling to mask his relief at this. "That's not like you either, Clinton."

"When I'd made up my mind about the case," he explained slowly, "I sent Telford a wire: 'HYSON CASE PRACTICALLY COMPLETE BUT NEED YOUR EVIDENCE. PLEASE COME HERE TO SEE ME.' By the way, I ought to have told you that I got Craythorn to let out about Ruth Jessop being identified as the poison pen, so as to get that news into the papers; and I saw to it that Telford got a copy of one of them with that paragraph marked. That would make him all the more eager to come down here. He'd want to see Ruth Jessop and tell her a few things about herself, even if he went no further than that. I may say that we had her under observation, just in case Telford felt inclined to treat her as he did Hyson."

"But what was the point of sending that wire?" demanded Wendover. "You could have had him arrested up in Scotland, couldn't you?"

"Yes. And had a lot of bother with a Scottish warrant, and more trouble in bringing him down under guard. Much easier to let him drive down in his own car and then arrest him when he came within my own jurisdiction. Besides, I wanted his car here to see if anyone could identify it as having been on the streets that night. There was always the chance that someone might have noticed it and could identify it if they saw it again."

"There's something in that," Wendover conceded. "But he might have given you the slip."

"Why should he? He imagined that his alibi stood fast. Besides, Squire, although young Telford was a murderer, he was a decent fellow from all I ever heard about him. He wouldn't have let an innocent person be hanged in his stead. Rather than that, he'd have made a full confession and suicided. At least, that's how I read his character. So you see my wire was couched in such terms as to make him fear that someone else was actually in danger. That would bring him down quick enough, I guessed. He'd want to know how the land lay. Besides, of course, we had the police on the alert for his car all the way down his route, reporting to us when it turned up; so he couldn't have got far away even if he had decided to make a bolt."

"Well, one can provide against most things," said the Chief Constable, "but one can't provide against a jay driver trying to pass a lorry on a blind corner of a narrow road. Young Telford met the two of them, and there was a regular mix-up. He was dead when they picked him out of the wreckage. And in his pocket were Ruth Jessop's poison-pen letter to Nancy and the letter Nancy wrote to him before she committed suicide. That's how they came into my hands. He'd kept them; and I expect he was bringing them down to show them to Ruth Jessop, if he could get hold of her."

"I'm thankful it ended that way," Wendover admitted with immense relief. "One can't blame young Telford, somehow, even if he did take the law into his own hands. And Hyson deserved all he got. It's perhaps the happiest ending one could expect in a case of that sort."

"Except for the Chief Constable," Sir Clinton reminded him dryly. "There will be the usual outcry: 'Hyson Mystery Still Unsolved'; 'More Police Inefficiency'; 'Urgent Need of Reform at Headquarters.' Well, well, we shall just have to sit tight and bear it, since we can't try a dead man. Or even tell our story. Your withers are unwrung, Squire, and I expect you'll get a lot of pleasure in reflecting that Mrs. Hyson and Barsett can now get married and live happily ever after."

THE END

J.J. CONNINGTON (ALFRED WALTER STEWART)

FOR MURDER WILL SPEAK (US TITLE: MURDER WILL SPEAK)

A CLINTON DRIFFIELD MYSTERY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One THE MICE WILL PLAY

Chapter Two THE VERY SPICE OF LIFE

Chapter Three WORSE THAN THE SWORD

Chapter Four INSTRUMENTS OF FATE

Chapter Five AFFECTION'S SENTINEL

Chapter Six DUNCANNON OF THE I.B.

Chapter Seven LIFE'S UNFINISHED ROAD

Chapter Eight THE I.B. AGAIN

Chapter Nine GAS

Chapter Ten A FALSE ALARM

Chapter Eleven GRANDFATHER'S CLOCK?

Chapter Twelve THE DEFALCATIONS

Chapter Thirteen THE ARCTIC FOX

Chapter Fourteen INSPECTOR CRAYTHORN'S SUSPICIONS

Chapter Fifteen THE SHORT-WAVE FAN

Chapter Sixteen A REVISED VERSION

Chapter Seventeen LAID BY THE HEELS

Chapter Eighteen THE KEY OF THE FIELDS

Chapter Nineteen WITH MOST MIRACULOUS ORGAN