Chapter 1

The policeman, passing through Moreston Square at three o'clock in the morning, saw lights still burning in the windows of the top-floor flat at 16. And he smiled to himself. That would be Miss Ruth Callice's flat. The chimes from St. Jude's Church rang the hour, rippling through the little eighteenth-century square and lapping it in security. Police-Constable Davis glanced up at a quarter-moon over the rooftops. No more, he thought, of one thing. These narrow red-brick houses, these white-painted window-frames and pane-joinings, wouldn't burst or burn amid a nightmare of noise. At least, P. C. Davis amended with the skepticism of all his tribe, not just yet.

In front of the door of number 16 stood a heavy shiny car, a new one to rouse envy. Again he looked up at the lighted windows, lulling against rooftop and sky.

Miss Callice was — nice. And he didn't mean it in any smug or smarmy way, either. Young, good-looking, but (still his mind would find no better word) nice. There were people up there, the men in black ties or white, the women in high-cut or low-cut dresses, sometimes as late as three in the morning, like this. But never any disturbance; seldom any drunks. They went in talking; they came out talking. What did they find to talk about?

At that moment, in the living-room on the top floor, John Stannard, K. C, was employing his most measured tones.

"Let's suppose, Ruth, your theory is correct. In that case, what would be the most dangerously haunted place in the world?’

Miss Callice, on the sofa under silver-shaded wall-lamps, made a protest.

"I didn't say it was my theory," she pointed out, and looked at her two companions. "It doesn't necessarily mean I believe in—"

"Say it," Stannard urged dryly. "Don't be afraid of a word; or you'll never get near the truth. Say it. 'The supernatural.' "

It. would have been difficult to tell Ruth Callice's age, though she could not have been more than twenty-eight. And P. C. Davis's definition of niceness would be hard to analyze even by closer observers.

Frankness? Honesty? True; but these qualities, when too strongly observable, are suspect because they may be assumed. It may have been that she completely lacked coquetry; never thought of it, never noticed herself; though she was undeniably pretty and her rounded body, in the oyster-coloured evening-gown, was far from unnoticeable as she sat coiled on the sofa.

The light, smoke-misted, glistened on her light-brown hair. She rested one elbow on the arm of the sofa, her arm straight up, fingers turning over a cigarette that had gone out. When she changed her position, the light altered the complexion of her face and shoulders from pale to pink to pale. Her straight-forward eyes, dark-brown, regarded Stannard deprecatingly.

"I only said—" she began again.

"Let me put the case to you."

"Oh, my lord of the law!"

"My dear Ruth, it's not necessary to mock at me."

Ruth Callice was genuinely astonished. She sat up. "Stan! I never thought any such thing!"

"Never mind," chuckled John Stannard, K. C.

He had one of those heavy voices, roughened into what for him was unjustly called a whisky-voice, which can make any statement sound abrupt. Thick-bodied, not overly tall, he picked up his cigar and settled back in the easy-chair. Out of a roundish face, roughened like his voice, the brilliant black eyes peered sardonically. Though he had reddened during those remarks with Ruth, this may have been a matter of the drinks.

"A man dies," Stannard went on, after a gust of cigar-smoke.' "His soul is heavy with evil; with spiritual poison; call it what you like. He may die a natural death; more probably, he commits suicide or is killed. In any case—"

Here Stannard made a chopping motion with his hand.

During this time neither Ruth Callice nor John Stannard had glanced at the third person in the gill-and-silver room: a young man who sat some distance away from them, his head down and his hands on his knees, near the empty fireplace and the grand piano. At the barrister's last words he did look up.

"Your dead man," continued Stannard, "in a spiritual sense is chained there, He's what the books call earthbound. Is that correct?"

Ruth gave a quick little nod of absorbed attention. "Yes. That, you see," she threw out her hands, "is what would make some of these houses so horribly dangerous, if it were true. It wouldn't be like an ordinary haunting. It would be like… like a man-eating tiger."

"Then why don't your psychical researchers do the obvious thing?’

The obvious thing? I don't follow you."

With the cigar Stannard gestured round at the bookshelves.

"You tell me," he retorted, "that at Something-Old-Hall there's a psychic strangler, and at Somewhere-Low-Grange there's an earthbound force that can crush you to death. It may be so; I can't say. But I can tell you a far better place to look for evidence. If what you say is true, what would be the most dangerously haunted place on earth?"

"Well?"

"The execution shed of any prison," replied Stannard.

He paused, letting the image sink in. Then he got up and went to the coffee-table beside the sofa; His black hair, showing no grey and brushed to a nicety round his head, gleamed in contrast to the reddish, roughened face. The white shirtfront bulged and crackled. Picking up the decanter, he poured a very little whisky into his glass.

"But that's — horrible!" Ruth cried.

"No doubt," Stannard agreed dryly. "All the same, think of it for a moment"

The sofa-syphon hissed.

"Your human tiger, at the very high point of his rage and desperation, is dragged to the execution shed and has his neck cracked on a rope." The strong, faintly husky voice pointed it vividly. "If anybody would leave an earth-bound soul in that place, he would.

"Believe me," Stannard added abruptly, "I've defended too many murderers not to know that many of them are decent honest fellows. There-but-for-the-grace-of-God, and all the rest of it When you hear the foreman of the jury say 'not guilty,' you feel half sick with relief. You pat yourself on the back for the rest of the week."

Ruth's eyes were fixed on his face.

"I've heard," she said, "that only two persons you defended on a murder charge were ever… well, executed."

"Much exaggerated, my dear. Much!" Stannard chuckled; then his expression changed. "But I've seen the other kind of murderer too. That's why I don't scoff at spiritual evil."

He lifted his glass, drained its contents, and put it down.

"By God, it is true to say they don't know the difference between right and wrong. Not at that time. Mostly they go to the rope with indifference; outwardly, that is. But not inside. They're boiling crazy. Society hasn’t understood them. Society has persecuted them. They want to tear…" Stannard spread out his hands. "That's why I say, Ruth, that a place like Pentonville or Wandsworth must be deadly. Hasn’t any psychical researcher ever thought of spending a night in the execution shed?" Ruth lifted her shoulders.

"I dent know," she confessed. "I never thought of it" And she turned towards the young man who was sitting near the fireplace and the grand piano. "What's your opinion, Martin?"

Martin Drake looked up. Like Stannard, he was dark. Unlike Stannard, he was tall. But his cat-green eyes, now absent minded, had a sardonic quality which sometimes matched Stannard's. He looked thin and he looked ill.

"Oh, I suppose they've thought of it," Martin Drake answered. "But they wouldn't be allowed to. The Prison Commission would have a fit"

"Right," chuckled Stannard.

(He missed no glance Ruth Callice turned towards Drake. There were currents in this room, not quite like a usual social evening.)

"But I wish we could do it," the young man said unexpectedly, and struck his clenched fist on his knee. "Lord, how I wish we could do it!"

Ruth's voice went up. "Spend a night in a…!"

"Oh, not you!" Drake smiled at her; it lightened the illness of his look to kindliness and affection. "I suppose, actually, I meant myself."

"But whatever for?"

Stannard, who had returned to the chair with his cigar, spoke gravely.

"You mean, Mr. Drake, that since the war you have found life in England dull and intolerably frustrating?"

"If — you want to put it like that, yes."

"Will you forgive me, Mr. Drake, for saying you are very young?’

"Will you forgive me, Mr. Stannard, for saying that you are a little pompous?"

Again Stannard chuckled. Perhaps he was doing this too much. His lips were drawn back from the teeth in a fixed, pleasant smile; his small black eyes glittered.

"Of course I forgive you," Stannard said heartily. "I have achieved—" he glanced at Ruth, evidently himself feeling young and callow at forty-five, and hating it—"I have achieved some small success In this world. That breeds pomposity sometimes. God knows I try to avoid it" His tone changed. "Are you serious about wanting to meet earthbound spirits?"

"Quite serious."

"Ah? Suppose I arranged it?"

Ruth Callice was now sitting bolt upright on the sofa. Her lips opened as though in expostulation, but she did not speak.

"It couldn't be done!" Martin Drake said. "Not at the prisons I mentioned, no. But what about Pentecost?" "Pentecost?"

"You've never heard of Pentecost Prison, Mr. Drake?" "Never."

Stannard crossed his knees comfortably and addressed Ruth.

"Fifty years ago Pentecost was one of our model local prisons." He paused. "I use the word 'local' prison to distinguish it from 'convict' prison. At local prisons, offenders serve sentences only up to two years; executions are always performed there.

"In '38," Stannard pursued, "Pentecost was closed. It was to be enlarged and modernized. Then came the war. The Government took it over with the usual rubber-stamp excuse of 'storage purposes'. Ever since then it's remained the same. It's not under the control of the Prison Commission; it's controlled by the Ministry of Works. I — ah — have some slight influence at the Ministry. I might get the keys for a night or two. Now do you begin to understand?"

"By George!" the young man said softly. His long, lean figure grew tense; his upper lip was partly lifted as though at the scent of danger. "I'd be eternally grateful, Mr. Stannard, if you could."

Stannard, too, seemed to have been struck by a startling new thought. Seeing that his cigar had gone out, he dropped it into a standing ashtray beside the chair.

"Extraordinary!" he said, and his face grew more red. "I've just remembered something else."

"Remembered what?" Ruth asked quickly.

"Pentecost is in Berkshire. It's under a mile or so from a place called Fleet House, a big Georgian house with a flat roof." His little black eyes stared at the past. "Eighteen years ago — or was it twenty? yes, twenty! — a man named Fleet, Sir George Fleet, pitched off that roof within sight of a lot of witnesses. It was accident, of course. Or else…"

"Or else?"

‘It was a supernatural murder." He spoke without smiling. Martin Drake brushed aside this reference to Fleet House. "Do you honestly think you can get the keys to the prison?"; "Oh, I think so. At least I can try. Where can I reach you tomorrow?"

"I'm afraid I've got to be at Willaby's Auction Rooms all morning. With a friend of mine named Merrivale." Unexpectedly, a reminiscent grin lit up Drake's dulled eyes. Then he became sober again. "But I can make a point of being at my rooms in the afternoon, if that's convenient? I'm in the 'phonebook."

"You'll hear from me," Stannard assured him.

Loud in night-stillness, the clock at St Jude's rang the quarter-hour after three. Stannard got up, brushing a trace of cigar-ash from his waist-coat He drew a deep breath.

"And now, my dear," he said to Ruth, "you must excuse me. Middle-aged barristers can't keep late hours like you young people, I’ll ring you tomorrow, if I may."

Throughout this conversation Ruth had kept her eyes fixed on Martin Drake. Doubt, uncertainly, showed in them and troubled her breathing under the oyster-coloured gown. Stannard noticed that Drake, though he got up politely, made no move to leave. It was a dead hour, dull on the wits and opium to the emotions. Yet something wrenched in Stannard's heart as his hostess followed him to the door.

In the little hall of the flat, every inch of wall-space was occupied by shelves of bright-jacketed books. Ruth Callice was the owner of a fashionable bookshop in Piccadilly, which she managed herself; that was how she and Stannard had met A dim little ceiling-lantern burned in the hall. Stannard picked up hat and rolled umbrella from an oak chest

"It was awfully nice of you to come," Ruth said.

"Not at all. The pleasure was mine. May I see you again?"

"Of course. As often as you can."

She extended her hands. Stannard, the suave, had considerable difficulty in managing his hat and umbrella.

"Thanks." He spoke gruffly. "I'll remember that. No; I can manage the front door. Thanks again. Good-night"

The door, closing heavily after him, made a hollow vibration. For a moment Ruth stood staring at the door. Then she returned to the sitting-room. Though both windows were wide open to the warm July night, she made a feint of attempting to push them higher to let the smoke out. Martin Drake, his back partly turned, was standing by the fireplace lighting a cigarette. Ruth went softly over to the grand piano and sat down.

She hesitated. Common-sense, practicality, shone In the dark-brown eyes as she lifted her head; a perplexity verging on impatience.. But this expression faded, with a wry twist of the mouth, as she began to play.

The tune was Someday I’ll Find You. It s saccharine notes riffled and rippled, softly, through the room and faintly out into the square.

"Ruth!"

"Yes, Martin?’

"You're one of the finest persons I ever met," said the young man, and threw his cigarette into the fireplace. "But would you mind not playing that?"

Ruth closed her eyes, the lids shiny and dark-fringed, and opened them again, "I'm sorry, Martin." Her fingers rested motionless. Without looking round Ruth added, "Still searching for her?"

"Yes."

"Martin, dear. Isn't that rather foolish?" "Of course it's foolish. I know that But I can't help it — There it is."

"You met her," Ruth pointed out dispassionately, "for just one evening."

"Long enough, thanks."

"And you haven't seen her for… how long?"

The other's reply was immediate, almost mechanical. "Three years. One month. And four — no, five days. I'll tick off the calendar this morning."

"Oh, Martini" The piano-keys jangled.

"I've admitted it's foolish. But how many things, the closest things, are governed by reason? Answer me that"

"You were both in uniform," Ruth persisted gently. "It was in that scramble and hectic whirl just after D-Day. You don't know anything about her, except that she wore a Wren's uniform. You don't even know her name, except the first and she admitted that was a nickname."

It was as though, in remonstrance, Ruth attempted to press and prod with every detail.

"A station buffet at Edinburgh!" she said. "A station platform! A train tearing through the blackout, with you two," her voice strengthened, "kissing and swearing you loved each other. Martin! Lots and lots of people have had adventures like that"

Martin Drake's face was white. Ruth, with her consummate tact should have noticed this.

"It wasn't an adventure," he said quietly.

"No. Of course not I didn't mean that Only — suppose you do find her, and she's married?"

"Curiously enough," retorted the other, with a brief return to his mocking air, "that possibility had occurred to me in the course of three years, one month, and five days." He lifted his shoulders. "What could I do? Murder the husband?"

"Well, but… suppose she's engaged. What would you do then?"

"Try to cut him out," Drake answered instantly. "Not that I could, probably. But—" he lifted a clenched fist, dropped it, and then cleared his throat—"use every trick, fair or unfair, to cut the swine out and get her back again. That needn't lead as far as murder, of course."

There was a silence. Still Ruth did not look round. The doubt the indecision in her eyes, had grown stronger.

"Ruth!" her guest began apologetically.

"Yes?"

He went across to her, stood beside her at the piano, and put his hand on her bare shoulder. "Thanks," he added, "for not asking the obvious question."

"What obvious question?"

"How many Wrens," he went on, — with a kind of fierce and shaky cheerfulness, "how many Wrens, at a time like that, must have said, 'Oh, just call me Jenny.' Jenny! Jenny! I know it So do several of my friends, who think it's funny. But it's not funny. That's the trouble."

Ruth reached up and disengaged his hand from her shoulder; rather quickly, he thought She did not admit or deny that she had thought of asking any such question. She looked straight ahead, unseeingly, at the music on the piano-rack.

"What did you think," she asked, "of our friend tonight?"

"Stannard?" Martin Drake's face clouded. "Stannard's a damn good fellow. I'm sorry I called him pompous. Nerves. If he can really get permission to spend the night in the execution shed at that prison…"

"If you two go there," Ruth interrupted quickly, "I'm going too. Did you notice that Mr. Stannard seemed rather-embarrassed?"

Drake was startled.

"The Great Defender? Embarrassed? Why?"

"Oh, no reason," said Ruth, with a lift of her head that-made the soft brown hair gleam. "No reason! No reason at all!"

And again her fingers moved over the piano-keys.

Downstairs, under the moon, the sleek black car still waited before the door of number 16. Inside the car, his thick arms round the steering-wheel, John Stannard sat where he bad been sitting for some time. Once more he heard the strains of Someday I’ll Find You drifting down from the lighted windows on the top floor.

This time Stannard trod on the starter. As the motor throbbed into life, he revved it to a hum which deepened into a roar. Then, very gently, he put the car in gear and drove off towards Kensington High Street.

Chapter 2

On the following morning, Friday July 11th, the blue-and-white flag was up at Willaby's in Bond Street to show that there would be an auction that day.

Martin Drake saw it as he turned out of Brook Street at a quarter to eleven. London in 1947, dazzling under its first really warm summer since the beginning of the war, winked with show-windows against dingy brick or stone. It heated the body and strengthened the spirits. Martin, freshly shaven and as well-dressed — as clothes-coupons permitted, felt his own spirits lift.

But that always happened on a sunny morning. It was the night he dreaded.

He hadn't, Martin reflected, been drunk at Ruth Callice's flat last night. Merely a trifle muzzy, and blackly depressed. He had an impression that some remark, some reference made by Stannard (he could not remember it now) ought to have had significance. But his mind was closed to so many things. He had almost become maudlin in the presence of Ruth Callice's obvious sympathy. He was so fond of Ruth that under any other circumstances… but there were no other circumstances.

Jenny!

The silent oration he addressed to himself ran something like this:

You are London's prize fool. You admit that At the age of thirty-four you have had, to put it very conservatively, some slight experience. Your conduct is not made more supportable by those people, two or three friends at the Savage Club, who know about it

"My dear old boy," one of them had said, "all you need is thus-and-so. With so many willing dames about…"

Or old Hook, with his touch of grey side-whisker and his twinkling eyeglass, who always quoted Leigh Hunt:

Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in—

And this, though you had to smile, touched a raw spot It was, in so many ways, expressive of Jenny, Jenny, blonde and, slender, in the blue uniform and hat which at first glance made her seem unapproachable. Jenny's eagerness, her sincerity, almost her naivete.

"A station-buffet at Edinburgh?' Ruth had said. "A station platform. A train tearing through the blackout, with you two kissing and swearing you loved each other."

Hell!

When such things happened to other people, Martin reflected, or even happened in stories, they had at least a trace of dignity. This hadn't

In the hush just before dawn on a summer morning, the express from Edinburgh stops at Rugby. Heavy boots clump and bumble along the wooden platform. Misshapen shadows, interweaving, loom up against the dim blue station lights and the faint glow from the services' tea-canteen. Captain Drake of the Gloucesters, and (rank and unit unknown) Jenny, hand in hand, stumble out to get a cup of vile tea. In the confusion and milling on that dark platform — every private's kit seems to swing and bang for a yard in each direction — you lose Jenny's hand.

That was all.

Eight minutes later, when the whistle blew and the doors slammed, Martin jumped into the train. He staggered along the corridors, over kit and luggage and bodies, calling Jenny's name. Two or three times he was answered, not seriously. There were cheers. The drugged dawn-wind blew drowsily. When they reached King's Cross, be swore to himself, it would be all right But, when that mob charged through the barriers, he couldn't find her either.

That was all too, except for the long waiting.

Ahead of him now, on this brilliant morning of July 11th, loomed the dun-coloured premises of Willaby's. Sedate and solid, hushed and holy, Willaby's yet wore an air of expectancy. How many treasures from the houses of the great and the near-great, of furniture and china and silver, of tapestries and pictures and armour: how many of these have passed under the hammer at Willaby's, perhaps, no man can compute. The porter — who recognized Mr. Martin Drake as a black-and-white artist of something more than national reputation — respectfully held open one door. "Morning, sir!"

"Good morning." The image of Jenny, held in abeyance, started up again like a toothache we think vanished overnight "Er-have they started yet?"

The porter eyed him reproachfully.

"Not till eleven, sir. As usual, Got your catalogue?’

"No. I'm just looking on today. What’s up this morning?"

"Furniture and carpets, sir. Mainly seventeenth and eighteenth century."

To judge by the subdued murmur of voices from upstairs, there must be a fair-sized crowd. A number of persons were mounting the broad, dingy staircase. At the top it opened into a large, square room, walls panelled in some material which resembled faded brown burlap, where they displayed specimens of future auctions. Beyond it lay another large room, with towering bookshelves. Both of these rooms opened, at right-angles, into the main auction-room.

"Hel-lo, Drake!"

A face, half-remembered, drifted past and was lost Martin returned the greeting vaguely. He heard a fashionably dressed woman talking, with greed and not for antiquarian reasons, about the display of carpets. An old man with a. white moustache, obviously a dealer, stood hunched over his catalogue.

The main auction-room was long and high. Sunlight sparkled against its grimy glass roof. At the rear, blue-smocked attendants lounged or stood with arms folded in front of a line of ticketed exhibits. The auctioneer's desk, like a high-set rostrum, faced out over a very long horseshoe-shaped table, covered with green felt round which would gather the chairs of the eagerest bidders. Martin had loathed crowds — no matter how soft-voiced or shuffling — ever since that night on the train. The whole room seemed to hiss at him.

"Get it dirt-cheap if the dealers don't…"

"Jump in at the beginning! That's when people are cautious, and…"

No!

Just off the main hall, at the right, opened another showroom smaller and narrower than the others. Here were displayed the items for the next sale, which would be on Monday. Arms and armour, of course! That was why he was here!

On two tables along the narrow sides of the room, and a long one down the centre, they had thrown rapiers, daggers, hand-and-a-half swords, even two-handed swords. Many were tied in bundles, most of them. unpolished. Round the walls there hung, very highly polished, the more obvious of the choice items. The only other person in the room was a girl, at the other end of the centre table, her back towards him, searching through a handbag.

Martin looked round.

The walls glittered with steel in low, dim-burning electric light. Halberds and guisarmes with long light shafts and undulled points. A wicked-looking main-gauche. What seemed to be — he took a step forward — a Thomas cup-hilt This was Martin's hobby; he wished he had a Monday's catalogue.

Then the girt at the other end of the table turned round. And he saw that it was Jenny.

Silence.

Martin Drake was faintly conscious of a murmur of voices from the other room, and the ticking of his wrist-watch. But he felt alone, and amid the stuffiness of the arms-room, with Jenny. At first his chest seemed light, light and hollow; then he felt a sensation almost like physical sickness.

Jenny, blonde and slender. Jenny, with the wide-spaced blue eyes, the eagerness and the — not, not naivete! some other expression! With intolerable vividness he remembered her, in the corner of the railway compartment her arms round his neck, and moonlight draining colour from her face, the rattlety-clack of the train dimming speech. Even now she was wearing a dark-blue tailored suit with a white blouse. Martin tried to speak. All he could force out was the inanity of, "Hello."

"Hello," said Jenny in a voice hardly above a whisper.

He started to walk towards her. Though they were separated only by the length of the green-felt-covered table with its weapons, it seemed an enormous distance. Then he noticed something else.

You are not permitted to smoke at Willaby's. Fumbling in her handbag, Jenny found a tortoise-shell cigarette case, the kind that contained only very small cigarettes. Jenny took, out a cigarette; and automatically he reached in his pocket for a lighter. But her hand was shaking so badly, as she lifted it, that she hastily put back the cigarette in the case.

Emotion caught these two like a net; it made them flounder; it kept them half deaf and partially blind. "Where were you on that train? I couldn't find you!" The blue eyes flashed up.

"I–I stayed behind on the platform. I thought you would too, so we shouldn't miss each other. — But it's too late!" she added. "It's too late!"

"How do you mean, it's too late?"

Jenny turned away from him, but he swung her back again. The softness of her shoulder under the blue coat, the brushing of the yellow hair in a long bob against his hand: he had to remember where he was. Then he lifted her left hand. Though there was no wedding-ring on the third finger, it held an engagement ring both costly and in good taste.

(Well, you've been expecting this, haven't you? You've been prepared for it? Steady!)

"Do you love him?"

Jenny looked away.

"No. But I'm afraid he's very much in love with me. And then grandmother — and, of course, Aunt Cicely—" "Do you love him?"

Still without looking round, Jenny shook her head violently. "Who is he?"

"He's awfully nice. He was one of the original Battle-of-Britain pilots. And his record since then…" The soft, sweet voice, perhaps over-cultured in accent, trailed away. "Did you ever try to find me?" Jenny asked accusingly.

"Jenny, I've done nothing else ever since that night! But all I knew was your nickname!"

"Jenny is short for Jennifer. Surely you could have guessed that?"

"Yes, of course. Only I thought.."

"You thought — you thought I gave that name on some kind of casual adventure." She clenched her fists.

"No, so help me! But it was the only clue I had. Did you ever try to find me?"

"Yes, of course. And I did: easily."

"Oh?"

"You’re Martin Drake. You're a famous artist You live at the Albany, and you're not married. Only grandmother said— and, of course, Aunt Cicely—"

"Look here," said Drake with restraint. "Who the devil are these two powerful jujus, grandmother and Aunt Cicely? Can't they be tipped over like any other savage idols?" He glanced round. "And, by the way, can't we get out of here?"

"No! Please. Sh-h!"

"Why Sh-h?’

"Grandmother's here. She wants to get something at the auction. How on earth did you know I was here?"

"As a matter of fact, I didn't I came here for a preview, to recommend one or two rapiers for Sir Henry Merrivale."

"Sir Henry Merrivale!" exclaimed the girl.

Jenny raised one hand as though to shade her eyes. On her flushed face, with the short nose and the rather broad mouth, was an expression be could not read. Martin noticed, absently, that beyond her was a stand of armour — a Cavalier half-suit, much blackened, with lobster-tail helmet — and behind it on the wall, a picture depicting one of the loves of Aphrodite.

"Sir Henry Merrivale!" Jenny exclaimed. "You know him?"

"Slightly, yes. I went to him last week about tracing you. He said he'd help, but just for the moment he was too much engrossed in studying the subject of reincarnation."

"The subject of… what?"

"Reincarnation," explained Martin. "He thinks he may be the reincarnation of— Hold on! Wait! I've got it!"

For the rush of happiness at seeing Jenny, it seemed to him, had loosed a spell from his wits. He knew now why a certain cloudy reference should have been clear.

"Got what?" asked Jenny, with that eagerness he knew so well.

"Last night a barrister named Stannard mentioned a place in" Berkshire: Fleet House, I think it was. He said there'd been some ugly business, twenty years ago, which was either an accident or a supernatural murder. And that's it, of course!"

"How do you mean?"

"A friend of Sir Henry's, Chief Inspector Masters, has been pestering him to take up the case. Masters wants to re-open it. It seems there's new evidence, anonymous letters or the like." Martin stopped short. "What is it? What's wrong?"

He interpreted Jenny's expression, now. It was fear. Again he became conscious of the room's stuffiness, and the weapons glittering round the walls: Jennifer said:

"Richard Fleet my fiancé, is the son of the Sir George Fleet who died. Aunt Cicely, who's only an aunt by courtesy, is Lady Fleet My grandmother is their closest friend."

"Listen, Jenny," said Martin, after a pause during which his throat felt dry. "There's only one question I'm going to ask you, but it's got to be answered."

"Yes?"

"Do you still feel as you did — in the train? Do you?" "Yes," replied Jenny and lifted her eyes. "Yes!"

"Jennifer, dear!" interrupted a calm, authoritative female voice. It cracked their idyll to bits. Jenny started; Martin swung round guiltily. "

And it is now time, in this chronicle, to introduce none other than Sophia, Dowager Countess of Brayle.

She had approached unheard. She was a large, commanding woman, her grey-white hair confined under a rakish fashionable hat, and her body so compressed into a dress of garish design that it almost, but not quite, failed to make her seem fat Her voice, which forty-odd years ago had been called a 'pure contralto' as her nose had been called 'sweetly aquiline,' could often be heard speaking on public platforms.

The Dowager Countess, in fact, occasionally showed habits rakish and even skittish. At these same public meetings, for instance, she had a trick of taking two sweeping steps backwards, while raising her right arm and exclaiming, "Here's three chee-ah-s." Sometimes she even did this in private, to the mild-voiced protest of Aunt Cicely.

All her friends would testify to her good qualities: that she was fair, that she was generous, that she even had a sense of humour. She had perhaps every good quality except that of being likeable. But that did not matter. The Dowager Countess meant to get her own way, always got her own way, and accepted this as naturally as she expected a lamp to light at the click of a switch. Whether you liked her, or didn't like her, simply did not matter.

"When you see my composure ruffled," she would say comfortably, "then will be the time to criticize."

This imposing lady, a faint smile on her face and an auction-catalogue in her hand, stood before the two culprits and waited with endless patience for someone to speak.

Jenny, pushing back her yellow hair, blurted it out

"C–Captain Drake," she said, "may I present you to my grandmother? Captain Drake, Lady Brayle."

The latter's nod and glance flickered over Martin as though he had not been there at all.

The auction," she said to Jenny, "has begun. Lot 72 should come up in a few minutes. I feel sure, Jennifer, that you will wish to be present? Follow me, please."

She swung round, her somewhat ample posterior conspicuous in the flowered dress, and moved majestically away. Jenny, on the other side of the long centre table, followed her almost parallel. Martin, with a raging heart, could only follow Jenny. At the far end of the table, however. Lady Brayle wheeled round with her back to the open arch into the main auction-hall. She glanced at the weapons on the table.

"Ah — Jennifer dear," she continued with a sort of cold archness. "It occurs to me we must not forget our fiancé Now must we?'

Jenny made an incoherent noise.

"Richard, or dear Ricky as we call him.." Lady Brayle paused. "Captain Drake. Let me see. You were in the Guards?"

"No. The Gloucesters."

"Oh. The Gloucesters." Her eyebrow indicated that she had momentarily scanned the army-list and found no such name. "How interesting. Richard, or dear Ricky as we call him, is one of our new breed of chivalry: our heroic and fearless knights of the air. Don't you think so, Jennifer?"

"Grandmother, he'd pass out if he heard you talk like that!"

But grandmother's contralto was now warming up with platform eloquence.

"You might give him, I think, some small present of arms. This fine old English blade," exclaimed Lady Brayle, picking up a Turkish scimitar of about 1885, and waving it in the air, "would surely be suitable. I am informed that the air-force seldom carry swords. But the spirit of it! You agree, Jennifer?"

"Yes, grandmother. But…"

"You agree, Captain Drake?"

Martin swallowed a heavy lump in his throat. This calm and indomitable old lady was trying to get his goat He longed to take one dig at her, just one. But he feared its effect on Jenny. Just how much influence this doubtless-benevolent Gorgon exercised over Jenny, who three years ago had given her age as twenty-two, he could not yet estimate.

"Quite," he agreed.

"It is no use, Captain Drake," she smiled at him. "It really is no use." "I beg your pardon?"

"But any criticism you might make of the weapons, of course!" said Lady Brayle, deliberately avoiding the issue and raising her eyebrows. The cold, shrewd grey eyes expressed astonishment "This cute little dagger, now, with the sheath!" she broke off. "Perhaps that might appeal to dear Ricky, Jennifer. Or here, better still…"

Martin gritted his teeth. His glance wandered past her into the main auction-hall. For the most part the spectators, either in chairs or standing up, had pressed close to the long horseshoe table below the rostrum. In the cleared space outside and beyond them, approaching slowly and at a lordly pigeon-toed walk, moved a figure which sent Martin Drake's hopes soaring up. "It's the Old Man," he breathed.

Chapter 3

The auctioneer's voice was small, thin, and at this distance all but inaudible.

"Lot 55… A fine Queen Anne table, grained mahogany, drawers richly gilt, date circa 1721, originally… "

The figure Martin had seen was a large, stout, barrel-shaped gentleman in a white linen suit His spectacles, usually pulled down on his broad nose, were now in place because he held his head up. On his head was a Panama hat, its brim curiously bent, and in his mouth he clamped an unlighted cigar.

As he advanced, his corporation majestically preceding him, there was on his face such a lordly sneer as even the Dowager Countess could never have imitated. Indeed, a close friend of Sir Henry Merrivale would have noticed something a little odd in his behaviour. The brim of the Panama hat, to an imaginative observer, might have been arranged so as to carry sweeping plumes. As he rolled the cigar round in his mouth to get a better grip, his left hand rested negligently in the air as though on the pommel of an imaginary sword. Aloof, disdainful, he sauntered towards the armour-room.

"Or this, for instance!" cried Lady Brayle.

Martin drew his gaze back. Into the room, unobserved, had slipped another figure: the tiny old man, with the white moustache, whom he had seen hunched over a catalogue in the outer room.

From the table Lady Brayle had fished up a heavy iron shield — round, convex, its outer side scored with dull embossments — and balanced it on the edge of the table.

"Really, Jennifer, I might defy you to find a better present than this shield of our lives and homes! This monument of antiquity, this holy…"

The apologetic little man cleared his throat

"I trust you will forgive the intrusion, madam," he whispered in a soft and creaky voice. "But the shield is not genuine." "Not genuine!"

"No, madam. I could give you reasons at length. But if you will look in the catalogue you will find it described only as 'Scottish type,' which of course means.. "

"Scotland," said Lady Brayle. "I believe the Fleets were originally Scottish. That will serve well enough. Look at it, Jennifer! Observe its beauty and strength of purpose!"

Lady Brayle was really thrilled. Also, she must have been a powerful woman. She caught up the shield with one hand on each side of the rim. Inspired, she took two sweeping steps backwards and swung up the shield with both arms — full and true into the face of Sir Henry Merrivale just as he entered the room.

The resulting bong, as H.M.'s visage encountered the concave side of the shield, was not so mellifluous as a temple-gong. But it was loud enough to make several persons in the auction-room look round. The Dowager Countess, for a moment really taken aback, held the shield motionless before H.M.'s face as though about to unveil some priceless head of statuary.

Then she lowered it

"Why, Henry!" she said.

The great man's Panama hat had been knocked off, revealing a large bald head. Through his large shell-rimmed spectacles, undamaged because the concavity of the shield had caught him mainly forehead and chin, there peered out eyes of such horrible malignancy that Jenny shied back. His cigar, spreading and flattened, bloomed under his nose like a tobacco-plant.

He did not say anything.

"I suppose I must apologize," Lady Brayle acknowledged coolly. "Though it was really not my fault You should look where you are going."

H.M.'s face slowly turned purple.

"And now," continued Lady Brayle, putting down the shield, "we must not be late. Come, Jennifer!" Firmly she took Jenny's arm. "I see Lord Ambleside and it would be most discourteous not to speak to Lord Ambleside. Good day, Captain Drake."

All might still have been well, perhaps, if she had not turned for a last look at Sir Henry Merrivale. Mention has been made of Lady Brayle's sense of humour. She looked at H.M., and her face began to twitch.

"I am sorry, Henry," she said, "but really—!" Suddenly she threw back her head. The once-pure contralto laughter, refined but hearty, rang and carrolled under the roof.

"Haw, haw, bawl" warbled the Dowager Countess. "Haw, haw, haw, HAW!"

"Easy, sir!" begged Martin Drake.

He seized H.M's quivering shoulders. Taking the squashed cigar out of H.M.'s mouth, in case the great men should swallow it, he threw the cigar away.

"Easy!" he insisted. "Are you all right?"

With a superhuman effort, no one knows bow great, H.M. controlled himself or seemed to control himself. His voice, which at first appeared to issue in a hoarse rumble from deep in the cellar, steadied a little.

"Me?" he rumbled hoarsely. "Sure, son. I'm fine. Don’t you worry about my feelin's."

"You — er — don't hold any malice?"

"Me?" exclaimed H.M., with such elaborate surprise that Chief Inspector Masters would instantly have been suspicious. "Oh, my son! I'm a forgivin’ man. I'm so goddam chivalrous that if I was ever reincarnated in mediaeval times, which I probably was, some old witch must 'a' copped me in the mush with a shield practically every day. You lemme alone, son. I just want to stand here and cogitate."

Martin, so intent on Jenny that he could think of little else, for the moment forgot him. Jenny and her grandmother were standing on the outer fringe of the crowd, their backs to the arms-room: though Jenny, peering round over her shoulder, tried some lip-message which he could not read.

H.M., cogitating deeply with elbow on one thick arm and fingers massaging his reddened chin, let his gaze wander round. Presently it found the halberds and guisarmes, their long shafts propped upright against the wall. Slowly his gaze moved up to their points. Then, musingly, the gaze travelled out into auction-room and found the ample, flowered posterior of the Dowager Countess.

"Ahem!" said the great man.

Elaborately unconcerned, he adjusted his spectacles and took down one of the weapons. Holding it horizontally on both hands, he ran his eye along the shaft with the critical air of a connoisseur. But it was obvious, from his blinkings, that he needed more tight. That was why he strolled out into the auction-room.

"One hundred and fifty.: Sixty?… Seventy?… Eighty?…"

The auctioneer, a sallow dark man with a pince-nez and a cropped moustache, had an eye that could follow lightning. He never missed; he never misinterpreted. A nod, a mutter, a pencil or catalogue briefly raised: the bidding flickered round that horseshoe table, or out into the crowd, more quickly than the senses could determine. Nobody spoke; all bent forward in absorption.

"Two hundred? Two hundred? Do I hear…"

"Oh, my God!" breathed Martin Drake.

That was where he saw what was approaching, on stealthy and evilly large feet, the unconscious back of Lady Brayle.

The only other person who noticed was the timid little man with the white moustache, who had observed all these proceedings in silence. But the little man did not cover, ground like Martin. Silently, in loping strides, he reached the side of the avenger; firmly he gripped the other side of the shaft, and looked at H.M. across it

H.M.'s almost invisible eyebrows went up.

"I dunno what you're talkin' about" he said in a hollow voice — though Martin, in fact had not uttered a word. He uttered one now.

"No," he said.

"Hey?"

“No."

H.M. altered his tactics.

"Looky here, son," he pleaded. "It's not as though I'm goin' to hurt her, is it? I'm not goin' to_hurt the old sea-lion. Just one little nip and bob's-your uncle."

"H.M., don't think I disapprove of this. I'd give a year's income to do it! But one little nip and I may lose the girl."

"What girl?"

"Two hundred poundst Do I hear more than two hundred pounds?"

"The girl I told you about! There! She's Lady Brayle's granddaughter!"

"Oh, my son! You stick Sophie in the tail and this gal's goin' to adore you."

"No!"

Faintly the hammer tapped. "Lord Ambleside, for two hundred pounds."

"Sold!" cried Lady Brayle, in the midst of that shuffling and mist of murmurs which greet the tap of the hammer. "Did you hear that, Jennifer? And to our good friend Lord Ambleside too! Here's three che-ah-s!"

Playfully Lady Brayle threw up her arm like an opera star. She took two swinging steps backwards. And she landed full and true against the point of the shaft gripped by Martin and Sir Henry Merrivale.

The sound which issued from the lips of Lady Brayle at that moment would be difficult phonetically to describe. If we imagine the scream of bagpipes, rising on a long skirling note of shock to burst high in a squeal and squeak of outrage, this somewhat approximates it For about ten seconds it petrified the whole room.

Jenny, after one horrified look, put her hands over her eyes.

The auctioneer, in the act of saying, "Lot 71," stopped with Jus mouth open. Two blue-smocked attendants, who carried each exhibit into the open space inside the table so that it could be exhibited during the bidding, dropped a Sheraton writing desk bang on the floor.

"Mr. Auctioneer!"

Shaken but indomitable, Lady Brayle made her voice ring out

"Mr. Auctioneer!"

Up from a hidden cubicle, to the auctioneer's right, popped that bald-headed gnome who at Willaby's takes your cheque or bobs up at intervals to see whether you are one whose cheque may be taken. He and the auctioneer seemed to hold a flashing pince-nez conference.

"Mr. Auctioneer," screamed Lady Brayle, and pointed dramatically, "I demand that these two men be ejected from the room!"

The auctioneer's voice was very soft and clear. "Have the gentlemen been guilty of unbecoming conduct my lady7" "Yes, they have!"

"May I ask the nature of the conduct?"