The rain poured down.
"Then we're all agreed," said Sir Henry Merrivale, "that there's only one person who can be guilty?"
In Inspector Agnew's office at the police station, Ag-new, H.M., and Masters had their chairs drawn up to the inspector's roll-top desk. On this desk, under the light, lay small groups of articles and official forms. Latest to be added to them was a small spoon, together with the analyst's report that in the coating of grapefruit juice adhering to the spoon he had found one-fifteenth of a grain of C 21 H 22 N 2 O 2, or strychnine.
Rain sluiced down the windows and gurgled along the gutters. It was nearly ten o'clock.
"We're agreed on that?" demanded H.M.
"Definitely," said Agnew.
"Oh, ah," conceded Masters, cautious even here.
"Good. Then what in the name of St. Ignatius's beans is delayin' you? Write out your warrant and get the chief constable to sign it. There's no honey-sweet savor about these murders. I tell you, our friend is too dangerous to be allowed loose any longer."
Masters fingered his chin.
"We're protecting that gal," pursued H.M., "as much as we can, without actually havin' a policeman sleeping with her—"
"Now, now!" growled Masters, his sense of the proprities offended.
"But we can't go on doin' it forever. Something's got to be done, and done quick."
Inspector Agnew picked up the spoon and tapped it on the desk.
"Do you think, sir," he asked, "that the person in question has twigged it that we know what we do know?"
H.M. meditated.
"I don't see how, son. The subject's never been brought up, at least by Masters or me; and our star witness is primed in case questions are asked. Now, Masters, speak up: what about it?"
Masters was dogged.
"Now, sir, it's all very well to say that," he complained. "But we can't go flying off the handle like that. I admit that the person you say is guilty is guilty. Lummy, I can't very well deny it! We've been fooled by as innocent-faced a piece of acting from a thoroughgoing snake as I ever saw."
"You're right there," agreed Agnew, contemplating the past without amusement.
"Very well!" said Masters. "The case is good. But it's not complete."
He tapped a sheaf of documents.
"We've got here evidence of motive: that's good. We've got here," he tapped an official form, "the statement of the chemist, Lewis L. Lewis: that's better. We've got here, after some downright fine staff-work by Inspector Agnew," continued Masters, who believes in keeping in well with the local police, "evidence of the purchase of the knife in Gloucester. That's still better."
He held up the knife with which Arthur Fane had been stabbed. It still bore, at a distance, resemblance to a rubber one.
"The ironmonger's willing to identify the person who bought it. That was a bad bloomer on our friend's part. But it always happens. These clever people will do it."
Masters put down the knife, and picked up an official cellophane envelope containing traces of a whitish powder.
"Finding the stuff itself, in the place where we did find it. Lummy! That's the best yet. So far as I'm concerned personally, or a jury's concerned, that's hanging evidence. But, sir, the case isn't complete. It's all very well to say, 'Write out your warrant.' We can't make out one, and the chief constable can't sign it, until we know how the ruddy knife was used, and how the person in question managed to exchange it with the toy one in full view of all the other witnesses."
"Oh, that?" murmured H.M., as though completely uninterested.
Masters pushed his chair away from the desk. His temper was simmering again.
"Oh, that?" he mimicked. "I suppose you don't think that's important?"
"It's important. Sure. But it's not difficult."
"No? You just tell me how it was done — tell me a practical way — and I'll have our friend in chokey before you can say Jack Robinson. The poison-in-the-grapefruit part of the thing, I admit, is easy. That's just what we thought it must be. But the dagger business has got me up a tree, and I don't mind saying so."
H.M. looked distressed.
"Oh, son, think! I thought you'd tumbled to it long ago. Especially considering what went on in that room that you've heard all about but haven't understood. And considering that most people's idea of usin' their eyesight and estimatin' time is rummy enough to interest J.W. Dunne."
"You're not going to tell me that the whole blasted crowd except one were blind?"
"No, no, no. Looky here. I'll do better than tell you how it was done. I'll show you how it was done, if you'd like to go out there again tonight."
'That suits me, sir!" declared Masters, with a breath of deep and wicked satisfaction.
"And me," said Agnew.
"Good. I sort of thought you might want a demonstration. So I asked Adams's chauffeur to…"
H.M. paused. His eyes opened, and then narrowed.
"Lord love a duck," he muttered. "Adams! And young Courtney!"
"What about them?"
H.M. looked guilty. "I haven't seen the young feller since this afternoon, when-we sent him and the Browning gal up to see Mrs. Fane. But I told him I was feelin' in fine fettle for dictation as usual tonight. I told him to be at Adams's house at nine sharp. He's gone out there in the pourin' rain, and it's past ten already. Y'know, I've got a sort of idea that I may have some explaining to do."
"Well, there's the telephone," said Masters impatiently. "Ring him up and explain."
The telephone was supported at the desk on one of those folding steel frameworks by which you can pull it out or push it back. H.M. put his hand on the receiver, but for the moment he was not looking at it. He blinked absent-mindedly at the articles on Agnew's desk, revealed with hypnotic clearness by the green-shaded lamp. They were the rubber dagger, the real dagger, the spoon, and the little rows of numerals on another equally important piece of evidence.
“They may have gone to bed at the Fanes'," continued Masters, taking down his raincoat from a hook. "But, I tell you straight, if I could see my way clear to putting a certain party under lock and key, I'd wake up the Assistant Commissioner himself. If—"'
There was an interruption.
"Gaaal" roared Sir Henry Merrivale.
He pushed back his chair with a hideous, chalk-like squeak on the bare boards which made his two companions jump. When they whirled round to look at him, he was regarding the desk with the expression of one whom during a bout of delirium tremens, has just seen another spider walk along the wall.
"The Haunted Man,' " said H.M.," 'or The Ghost's Bargain.' Masters, don't ever wish you were me."
"I never did," said Masters, "and, by George, I never will! What's all this foolishness now?"
"It's not foolishness," H.M. assured him with the utmost earnestness. "I'm being pursued. I wish you had the sense to see how you were bein' pursued too."
"Pursued by what?"
"Never mind," said H.M. darkly. He turned back to the telephone again. "Oi! Operator! Operator? Gimme Cheltenham double four, double four. That's right… So. Line's engaged." He banged back the receiver. "I wonder what that young feller's doin' now?"
Courtney himself would not have been pleased with this question. What he had been doing, up to a few minutes of that call, was sitting in Major Adams's library and listening to a long lecture on India.
It was being delivered by the major himself. And, since it was the second long lecture on India to which he had listened recently, he had grown a trifle fed up.
He preserved a Chesterfieldian politeness. Aside from his first visit to the house, he had not since set eyes on his host, whose habit was to play golf all day and bridge most of the night. But, in the absence of H.M., the major was now laying himself out to be agreeable.
The rain sluiced down. H.M. was an hour and ten minutes late. Courtney, having brought no raincoat to Cheltenham, had been imperfectly protected on the journey out by an umbrella he borrowed from the hall-porter at The Plough. His shoes and trouser-legs were soaking. Worse than this were the twinges of disquiet he experienced as the hour grew later.
"Rather odd experience, what?" inquired the major, comfortably pulling at a cheroot. "I'll tell you an odder. At Poona, in nineteen-o-nine…"
Out in the hall, the telephone rang.
Courtney jumped up.
"That's probably for me," he said. "You don't mind if I answer it?"
"My dear chap!" said the major. "Dammit. Not at all. Do."
When he took down the receiver, a female voice spoke. It spoke in a quick, stealthy whisper, shaking with terror so that the words were barely distinguishable.
"I want to speak to the doctor."
"Wrong number," Baid Courtney wearily. "What number did you want?"
The voice grew softly frenzied. "I want double-four, double-four. Isn't that double-four, double-four?"
"Yes, that's right. But there's no doctor here. Doctor who?"
"The big doctor!"
Light broke on him. "You mean Sir Henry Merrivale? Isn't that Mrs. Propper speaking?"
"Yes, yes, yes! (S-s-hh! Daisy, if you carry on like that we'll both get our throats cut!) Oh, my God."
"Mrs. Propper! Listen! This is Courtney here. Mr. Courtney."
"His secretary?"
"Well — yes. What is it? What's wrong?"
The voice grew even softer. "Sir, you've got to come over here. Somebody's got to come over here. There's a man in the house. A burglar. I saw him climb in through the winder."
Score another for psychic fits!
"Listen, Mrs. Propper. Can you hear me? Right! Go down and wake up Mr. Fane, Mr. Hubert Fane…"
"I wouldn't stir out of this room," said the voice passionately, "not if you was to give me all the money in the Bank of England."
"But where are you speaking from?"
"I'm speaking from my bedroom. There's an extension telephone here. Oh, sir, for God's sake send the big doctor over here. Or come yourself. I wouldn't go near them nasty police, after what they said to me today, not if you was to give me—"
"Right. I'll come straight away. But somebody's got to let me in."
There was a fierce, whispered colloquy with an even more frightened Daisy.
"When you get here," muttered Mrs. Propper, who was gratifyingly quick-witted as a conspirator, "give three rings on the doorbell — one, two, three — so's we'll know it's you. Then we'll run downstairs and let you in."
"Right. Good-by."
The tone of his voice, though he tried to keep it casual, was such as to bring Major Adams popping out of the library.
"Anything up, old chap?"
"That was the Fanes' cook. There's a burglar in the house. I'm going over there now.'.'
The major's eyes gleamed.
"Is there, by Jove? Need any help?"
"No, thanks. I can manage."
The major was depressed. But he was sportsman enough to see that this was the other fellow's shot.
'Take a mack from the hatrack. Wait here. Back in half a second. Know just what you want."
He darted upstairs. He returned lovingly carrying a three-thirty express rifle which, at a conservative estimate, would have stopped a charging tiger at five hundred yards.
"Take it along," he said. "Always wondered what one of these things would do to a burglar. Nobody ever burgles this house, dammit. Take it with you. Might be useful. What?"
"But I can — "
"My dear chap, not another word. Bain won't hurt it. Fell in the river with it once myself. If you don't feel up to potting the blighter, you can use it to intimidate him with. Or I can get you a pair of knuckledusters, if you'd rather? Might be useful. What?"
He was already bustling Courtney into a mackintosh. The raincoat, several sizes too small, set Courtney's wrists some inches out of the sleeves and threatened to crack across the shoulders.
"What I mean is, I can't go about firing rifles at burglars in other people's houses! In the first place, it's illegal. In the second place, if I used this thing on him they'd have to scrape him off the walls. In the third place—"
"Here's your hat," said the major, jamming it down on his head. "Better hurry. Good hunting, my dear chap. If I hear any rumpus I'll come and lend a hand."
The door closed, and he was shut out in the rain.
He set out at a run. But the path was slippery, the gate greasy, the pavement of Fhzherbert Avenue like a water-chute. He had to slow down, or he would have gone head over ears.
It was a tropical rain which must have made many of the residents feel at home. There was no thunder or lightning; only a steady driving deluge which struck the pavement to rebound up again under your chin and in which you could not even have heard yourself shout.
Even the street-lamps were hardly visible. Courtney put his head down and butted along against the downpour. He could feel his hat and collar growing sodden, and the heavy squelch of his shoes. But the thought which crowded out all others in this roaring gloom was that Mrs. Propper's intruder was not a burglar of the sort she thought — and that Ann Browning, alone except for an equally terrified Vicky Fane, was shut up in a room which already held enough unpleasant memories.
His skin felt clammy. He was glad he had the rifle, now.
When he reached the gate, he was running again. Beyond the front lawn, "The Nest" showed dim and whitish through the sheen of rain. And there was no light in the house.
He ran up the path, feeling the breath rasp in his lungs. Whatever this "burglar" might be doing, he would hardly continue it if he heard somebody at the door. Courtney glanced up at the windows of Vicky's bedroom. They were dark, but they might only be curtained.
With a deep wave of thankfulness he pounded up the front steps.
He gave Mrs. Propper's signal, three short rings at the doorbell, and waited.
Nothing stirred in the house. He could hear only the rustling roar of the rain, the rush from a water-spout, the drumming on his own body. The minutes dragged by, and still nothing happened. In desperation, he again gave the signal of three sharp rings, before he realized where the trouble lay.
The doorbell did not work.