Stannard essayed a smile.
"There was no reason," he said, "why I shouldn't have done this before. One cause of my reluctance;" he brooded, "may have been shrinking from mere noise. Just as all of us shrink from making loud noises in an ordinary house at night
"I had some idea, perhaps from fiction, that it would be a boom or a crash. Logical reasoning should have told me that such trap-doors, in use, would fall smoothly and without noise. Or, at a time like this, that the machinery might not work at all.
"In any case, I laid hold of the lever and pulled. It moved a little, but only a little. I pulled again, harder. A rasping noise followed, either from the lever's mechanism or from under the trap-door. Then I laid hold, blind-determined, and put out all my weight with both hands. And the trap fell.
"With luck there would have been no more than a heavy creak. But the right-hand trap-door, too heavy for its old hinges, ripped loose and fell into the pit with a crash which seemed to bring down the roof."
Martin Drake stared at the past.
The crash which had roused him out of sleep — loud, yet not very loud because it was muffled by a heavy oak door and the inside of the pit — the crash which had roused him, at two o'clock, was just that
But Stannard was speaking again.
"If I had expected a noise," he said, "I never expected a noise like that. It dazed me. Immediately afterwards," he turned his head towards Martin for a brief look, "my friend Drake called out from the grille of the iron door 'Stannard!' And them 'Stannard! Are you all right?' I shouted back, 'Yes! Quite!' Though I fear my voice showed — never mind.
"While I was tugging at the lever, I had put down my lamp on the floor. Now, in not quite the best state of mind, I went over to the edge, and turned the beam of the lamp down into the pit. It was square in shape, a brick-lined shaft much bigger than the oblong trap."
Stannard paused.
"Well, Mr. Masters," he added, "Inspector Drake must have told you what I saw."
"What you saw?" exclaimed Martin.
"I saw a very young girl," said Stannard, "lying on her back. Her eyes showed whitish slits, and her mouth was open. Her bodily mutilations: well, those are for the morbid. But this I saw; and it seemed to me that all the evil forces in that room were settling down on her like flies."
With a murmured apology Stannard rose to his feet Limping a little, he went slowly to a gilt table in the middle of the room. On the table-top, of eighteenth-century mottled marble, had been set out a decanter of whisky, a syphon, and glasses. He now faced Martin and Ruth; and Masters, twitching round his own chair, also faced Stannard.
"Enid Puckston," said Masters. "Now we're getting to it!"
Stannard's eyes were glittering darkly as of old. His hand trembled very slightly as he tipped whisky into a glass.
"Enid Puckston," Masters repeated. "Did you recognize the girl, sir?"
"No. Never saw her before."
"But you guessed she was murdered? And recently?"
Stannard, in the act of pressing the handle of the syphon, gave Masters a long and almost affectionate look.
"Yes, Inspector," he answered. "I guessed that." Soda hissed into the glass.
"You were one of a group of people (eh?) who found a blood-stained dagger — with fresh blood — over in the condemned cell?"
"I saw it shortly after it was found, if that's what you mean."
"Just so. Didn't you (hurrum!) associate that dagger with the murdered girl?"
"Not at that moment, I think. Afterwards, naturally."
Masters was snapping at him now; and Stannard, motionless with the glass in his hand, seemed to throw his replies through half-shut teeth.
"Mr. Stannard, do you know what a person is required by law to do when they find a murdered body? — Mind your answer."
"Inform the police, I believe. — Mind your grammar."
"Ah!" said Masters. "Now I understand Mr. Martin Drake was within easy calling-distance of you.. "
"Come to think of it," Stannard frowned, "he called to me, for a second time, shortly after I saw the girl's body. His voice seemed to come from farther away, as though he'd moved back from the grille. But he called, 'Are you sure you're all right?'"
"Did you answer that?"
"Yes. I told him to mind his own damned business."
"So you could have called for help. And yet you didn't?"
Stannard's gaze wandered towards Ruth.
"Inspector," he said tenderly, and took a deep pull at the whisky and soda, "I wouldn't have 'called for help,' as you put it, for anything on earth."
"What did you do next?"
Stannard took another deep pull at the whisky and soda, emptying the glass.
"I put my lamp on the floor. I put my hands on the edge of the shaft opposite the side on which the trap door had fallen. I let myself hang down inside, stretching my arms to full length. Then I let go, and landed on my feet in the blood beside the dead girl."
Masters was badly jarred. "You mean — you thought you might give help of some kind?" "Never mind my motives. That's what I did." "Oh, ah. And then?" '
"The shaft, as I had noticed before," Stannard's husky voice had grown huskier, "was ten feet deep." His vitality seemed to be ebbing, despite the whisky. "I couldn't get out. I was shut in. And I had no lamp. Consequently, all I could do was sit down in a corner and wait for daylight."
"But why in turn's name did you do that? If you knew the shaft was ten feet deep?"
"Chief Inspector!" Martin said sharply. And, though Masters turned a sinister eye which threatened prison or worse, Martin ignored it. "If you'll let me ask Stannard just one question, in my own way, I'll guarantee to get you out of this trouble. Is that fair, or isn't it?"
Masters made a disgusted gesture in surrender. Stannard, who had been leaning his weight with both hands on the marble-topped table, looked up with some attempt at lightness and humour.
"Your question, my dear Drake?"
Martin looked him in the eye.
"You were beginning to have the horrors," Martin said. "But you wouldn't give in. You meant to show these young swine they were pretty small beer when it came to nerve. So you deliberately dropped down into that shaft, and left your light behind, to sit in the dark near a — an ugly sight, until you were let out at four in the morning. Is that true?"
There was a silence.
"You put it bluntly," said Stannard. "However, that's true."
Ruth had sat up, her hands clenched. Despite her self- control, the tears stung to her eyes.
"Stan, you idiot!" she raved. "You utter, absolute, and complete idiot!’
Stannard, though clearly as blind as a bat regarding women, appeared to sense a new quality here. But he did not believe it
"Ruth, my dear," he began, and hesitated. He was again sedate and grave. "If any foolishness of mine ever gives you the slightest concern," he said, "it will have been worth it."
And, to conceal the horror growing in him, he blundered back to the sofa and sat down in his old place. Hastily he picked up the cigar and clipped its end with a cutter; Martin passed across a pocket-lighter.
"There's little more to tell," Stannard drew in smoke deeply, "though it was perhaps — no matter. I told you I couldn't get out. There was, of course, a door at the bottom of the shaft"
"A door?" said Martin.
"Yes. Logical deduction, as I sat in my corner, convinced me that there must be one. You know the facts: you should be able to see why the door was there, its purpose, and where it led. But the door," Stannard said thoughtfully, "was locked. I found it after groping round the walls in the dark. Locked!
That, Inspector, should give you a clue to the mystery of the girl's death. As for my plight when daylight came…"
"Martin," Ruth cried, "only opened the iron door, and threw the key inside!"
"One moment," Stannard intervened. "It was not Drake's fault Tell me, my dear fellow: when you fell from the roof this morning, was your wrist-watch smashed?"
The villain of the piece shook his head.
''No. It was the first thing I heard when I woke up. Ticking on my bedside table. I'm wearing it now."'
"Tell me the time, will you?"
"It's… ten minutes past eleven."
"No," contradicted Stannard. He smiled and coughed out of cigar-smoke. "I examined your watch today. It's something over ten minutes fast Now do you see why I was so badly caught?"
Martin, reconstructing last night, saw himself hauling down a heavy paper-bale to sit on: that was just after the vigil began. He remembered looking at the luminous figures of his watch, and thinking Stannard's own watch must be fast because it was well past twelve. But — Stannard was right — his watch must have been fast
"Stan, you mustn't keep thinking about it!" urged Ruth.
"But I was never more controlled!" said Stannard. "Would you believe, Inspector, that in my brick corner I alternately dozed and woke up, and dozed and woke up? In darkness the — the poor girl beside me seemed to my imagination worse than she had looked in light The quiet, the damned quiet! And the influences of people who'd dropped there!
"Presently I waked from my doze. My lamp had gone out on the floor above me; but there was a dim kind of grey from the two little windows up above. I kept my eyes on my wrist-watch; it said thirteen minutes to four. Before going down there I had opened the door of the execution shed a little way — you remember?"
"Yes. I remember," Martin said grimly.
"So that Drake would be sure to hear. Thirteen minutes to go. Then…
"Then Drake's voice cried, 'Stannard! Stannard! Are you all right?' Bracing myself for those last extra minutes, I was completely off balance. I managed to croak out 'I'm here. I'm—' Whereupon he said the time was up, and he was opening the iron door. I heard the door open, and the key clatter inside. Then he said something about entertaining evening, and he was free and so was I’
1 was paralyzed. I could not utter a word. Such is the nature of an unexpected voice. Then, since he seemed to be going away…"
"Damn it," protested Martin, whose guilty conscience troubled him, "how could I have known you were down there?"
"You couldn't have. It was my own — call it what you like. I did find my voice, and start to call after you. You heard that?"
"Faintly. When I was on my way out"
"So I knew myself in a trap for heaven knew how long. I was there with what remained of Enid Puckston, and the other things. The only possibility was to break down the door I spoke of, the door at the front of the shaft
"Inspector, have you ever tried this? On many, many occasions in fiction I have read, Twice he hurled himself at the door, and on the third attempt the lock splintered.' Well, try it. If this had been a proper prison door, I shouldn't have had a chance. But it wasn't’
"It became an endless series of kicks with a heavy country boot Once or twice I stumbled over — Enid Puckston. I think it took half an hour. The last frantic kick, which wrenched my ankle and made me think I was done, tore the lock out of the door.
"I had my pocket-lighter, which I had not used except for a cigar or two. In front of me was a short brick passage running straight Can you guess what it was?"
Masters, who long ago had swung his chair round again, spoke in an expressionless voice.
"No need to guess, sir. I know what it was."
"Oh?"
"It was the way the prison doctor and governor and the rest came down to certify death after an execution. Also the way they carried the body up again, so the prisoners wouldn't get a look at it from windows."
"Ah! So I reasoned! The passage must lead to—"
'To the prison mortuary on the ground floor of Wing B," Masters said slowly. "Along a little passage, turn left to another passage, up a flight of steps into the mortuary. Mr. Drake was sitting all night with his back to one wall of the mortuary."
"I was?"
"Oh, ah. The door's a little way down from where you were sitting, in the wall between the aisle and the paper-bales. Listen, Mr. Stannard!"
Masters held up a pencil and studied its point
"We know how you got up into the mortuary, pretty well done in," said Masters, "and with a bad ankle. You managed to get to the condemned cell, and rang the alarm-bell till the rope broke. The constable found you there afterwards. Now could you give me some answers?'
"What the devil do you think I've been doing?"
"Now, now! No call to get excited!’
Stannard’s cigar had burnt down raggedly. He dropped it into an ashtray beside the sofa. With some fervency Martin wished that the Chief Inspector, who could at times be as yielding yet as smothering and stifling as a feather bed, would end a questioning which was having such bad effect on — Ruth, for one.
"You smashed the locked door to the underground passage. Oh, ah! You had a pocket-lighter? Oh, ah! Was there a key in this lock on the other side?"
"No."
"Though you'd been told no doors were locked at the prison except the main gates?"
"It was the only locked door." Stannard, his black eyebrows raised, leaned forward and again seemed to throw back the words through half-closed teeth. "The hinges of the front gates were oiled, though I didn't oil them. The lock and hinges of that door were oiled, though I didn't oil them. Are your wits beginning to wake up?"
"Maybe, sir! Maybe! Were there blood-spots in that underground passage?"
Ruth tried to, and only just succeeded in, stifling a gasp.
"Yes," Stannard said briefly. "I didn't tread in them."
"And blood-spots in the other passage? Where it turned left, I mean?"
"Yes."
"And blood-spots on the stairs up to the mortuary?" "A few."
"What was Miss Puckston's body lying on, sir? On the floor, or on anything else, like?"
"She was lying," Stannard pressed his hands over his eyes, "on a fairly large travelling-robe or lap-robe, plaid in colour, with each corner rather twisted up. As though…"
"Ah! As though somebody'd twisted the ends together like a parcel, and carried her there?"
"I can't be expected to answer that"
"Just so. Still—!" Honey flowed in Masters's heavy voice. "Didn't you investigate any blood-spots in the mortuary?"
Stannard stared straight ahead.
There was a door in the mortuary," he replied, "which led out into a big fan-shaped garden, with a prison wing on each side and a spiked wall at the end. It was on the side of the condemned cell. There was a white moving mist. The garden had gone to ruin, but it was overrun with flowers. Red, blue, yellow; I don't know their names.
"Yes, yes, I went out there! In a square patch of grass there was a scuffed space where the travelling-rug may have been placed. That was the way Hessler must have gone."
"Who's this 'Hessler' you keep mentioning?"
"A mutilating murderer."
"What about him?"
"He poisoned his guards in the condemned cell. Logic, Inspector! He ran to the execution shed, opened the trap that would receive him, and jumped down. He reached the mortuary by way of the passage and the stairs. They shot him in the shoulder as he was climbing the spiked wall, and he fell back into a flower-bed. All this I saw too: in the mist."
With some effort Stannard got up. All his vitality had gone; his jaw sagged. He caught a brief flash of it when he addressed Ruth and the others.
"My dear," he said formally, and took Ruth's hand again as though she were made of china, "Lady Fleet has asked us to stay on tomorrow. I can rearrange my engagements to suit it, if you can?"
"Yes! I can arrange itl Of course!"
Thank you. And now, gentlemen," added Stannard, quite convinced they would believe every word he said, "this country air has a tendency to make me sleepy. Yes. It's past eleven, and I think m turn in. We have had — ah — a most interesting discussion. We must continue it soon. Yes. Good night."
And the shortish, stocky barrister, his dark hair gleaming, sauntered to the door while he firmly put down his bad ankle to keep from limping: facing the world with defiance, as though he carried a sword.
There was a long silence, even after they faintly heard his footsteps slacken and slow down on the stairs.
"I didn't think," Martin said slowly, "there were any knights-errant left in this world. But, by God and all honour to him! — there goes one of them!"
Ruth, who was standing and looking anxiously at the door, immediately showed her state of mind by attacking Martin.
"'Knights-errant,'" she scoffed in her quiet voice. "Don't you see all he needs is somebody to look after him?"
The Great Defender?"
"Oh, rats!'' said Ruth. "All he needs is someone to — to let him be a little idiotic but keep him solid and distinguished, which you've got to admit he is. And take you, Martin!"
Again he recognized, as he had recognized last night, that long-lingering if tender note of satire: which, like an arrow on a string, must be drawn to full arc before it is fired. Mentally, he shied back.
"Hold on, now! This is no time for discussing my imperfections!"
"You loathe being taken care of. For instance: are you hungry? You know you haven't had a bite to eat since last night?"
For some reason Martin's gorge rose sickeningly at the very thought of eating.
"Woman," he said, "if there's one thing on this earth I WILL NOT stand, it's being pestered with admonitions to eat something. Especially when I'm working. Food!" He was about to say, 'to hell with food,' when the mocking imp at the back of his brain reminded him that he also was shaky, from a fall off a roof, and not quite rational.
"You see?" smiled Ruth, turning up her palm.
"See what?"
"You like the clinging-vine," said Ruth, "who undoubtedly would manage your house so inefficiently, Martin dear, that you'd get furious and run it yourself." Ruth hesitated, and tears came into her eyes. "I don't know what I'm doing here," she said, "I must see poor Stan gets safely upstairs."
And, her green dress flashing, she ran out of the room.
During these remarks, which he had not heard. Chief Inspector Humphrey Masters was for once off his official dignity. He leaned back in his chair, his boiled blue eye contemplating a comer of the ceiling. On his face was a trace of reluctant admiration.
"Now if I might ask you, Mr. Drake," he mused, after ruminating for a while, "what did you make of that little "statement?"'
"With Stannard, you mean?"
"Clever!" said Masters, shaking his head. "Oh, ah! Just as wide as they make 'em; and I've met a few in my time. Did you notice he never once mentioned the alibi?"
"What alibi?"
"Come, now! You found that dagger at close on midnight Even allow a mix-up with watches: 't isn't much one way or the other. Dr. Laurier testified (and testifies) the blood was fresh within half an hour. Say half-past eleven or a bit later. The police surgeon says Enid Puckston might certainly have been killed round about half-past, though he's like all doctors about allowing much leeway."
"Half-past eleven! But that means—!"
"Now, was she killed with that dagger?" Masters mused.
"Inspector Drake tells me old Sir George Fleet gave away his rapier-collection about November of 1925. Sir George never did like steel; he preferred guns; and after there'd been a knife-murder at Priory Hill he gave the stuff away to Major Colwell, the Governor of Pentecost But was the Puckston girl killed with that dagger?
"There's very strong evidence she was. You can't identify a knife-wound certain-sure like a bullet-wound. But unusual blade; unusual wounds corresponding; fits exactly. Blood-group type's same. Yes; there you are."
Whereupon Masters sat up straight '
"Sir, that girl was killed in the garden between the two prison-wings. There's evidence: I tell you straight. She was carried down under the gallows-trap in a travelling-robe. After (mind you) being brought to the garden alive. And that took time. Lots of time. What's the result?
"It's this. Every one of you five people who went to the prison, and were together even before then, has got an alibi as big as a house. Eh?" "I hadn't thought about it So that's the perfect alibi, is it?" "We-el!" said Masters, regarding him with broad and fishy skepticism. "No. I don't say perfect. I could pick a flaw in it
But it’d go down with a jury like peaches and cream. You'd want strong evidence to upset it?"
"And you think you can upset it?" "If you ask me whether I want to upset It" Masters said i violently, "the answer is: yes. I smacking well do! If you ask me whether I can upset it, the answer is: probably. I'll know tomorrow. There's a little camera-trick, Mr. Drake, that might
interest you."
Sir Henry Merrivale, at this point lumbered very slowly into I the room and passed them without appearing to see them.] H.M.'s big face wore a mottled pallor, and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. It struck Martin Drake with a chill of dread. And Masters — who had sworn at the time of the Bronze Lamp case he would never again be worried by the old man's carryings-on — uttered a roaring oath and jumped up. "Have you been on that roof?" Masters demanded.
H.M. did not reply. He went over and stood with his back to the fireplace, his feet wide apart Fumbling for a handkerchief in his hip pocket, he mopped his forehead slowly and returned the handkerchief. His eyes were blank. After a long time he spoke.
"Masters," he said, "we're not finished yet But if we play the cards light we'll finish soon. Masters, we've got the swine good and proper."
And the tone of his voice stung Martin Drake like a red-hot wire.
"We've got a beauty," said H.M., envisaging the murderer. "What sticks in my gorge," he tugged-at his collar, "is that Puckston gal being killed just merely for the reason she was killed. Masters, we've got a real vicious ‘un. And, oh, so innocent!"
"Sir Henry! Listen!"
"Hey?"
"I knew you'd twigged it" Masters said with satisfaction, "as soon as you shouted out to let you think, and then rushed off to the roof. But what have you got?"
"I know how Sir George Fleet was murdered."
Masters reached for his notebook.
"And don't you forget that," said H.M., pointing a finger malevolently, "because it's the keystone of the whole business. Everything falls down without it" And, Martin noted with disquiet, H.M.'s face was still pale.
"I won’t forget" Masters assured him. "And—?"
"I can tell you the truth about that goddam skeleton in the dock."
"Ah! Just so! Anything else?"
Again there was so oppressive a quiet that they could hear, above H.M.'s head, the almost noiseless gold clock ticking between its two candelabra. The satiny dark-red walls, with their high cream-coloured curtains, seemed to have a stifling quality despite their open windows.
"Y’know," said H.M. thoughtfully, "I've been an awful dummy. Almost as bad a dummy as when I nearly slipped up in that Goblin Wood case. It was because I never connected the pink flash with wood."
"You never connected the pink flash with.. what?"
"With wood," said H.M., reaching over to knock his knuckles on a table.
"Goddelmighty," whispered Masters. "Listen, sir! When Sir George fell off that roof, the only wooden-made things on it were the frames of the beach-chairs and the wicker settee! And all of 'em were fifty feet away from him!"
"I know that"
"Was somebody biding behind them?" "No."
Masters wiped his forehead. ELM. was persisting in mazy speculation.
"Y'see, Masters, you've got to find two units, sort of, like the wood here and the skeleton in the clock with old Dr. Pierre Laurier rocking back and forth in front of it But, burn me, still they don't fit into a pattern until you connect 'em together with a real clue…"
Here H.M. roused himself out of his reverie.
"I say, Masters. Am I making myself clear?"
"Curiously enough," retorted Masters, with towering and stiff-jawed dignity, "you are not" Then slow suspicion dawned and grew clear in his expression. "Sir Henry, are you trying to do me in the eye again?"
"Oh, my son! No! I wouldn't do that!"
"Oh, no,", said Masters in a hollow voice. "Oh, no. No. You never have, have you? Oh, no. In a pig's ear you haven't!"
H.M. looked at him steadily.
"I'm not doin' it this time son. Honest It's too serious."
This almost if not quite reassured his companion, who again opened the notebook.
"And I get all the details," he insisted, "straightaway?"
"Every detail," H.M. reassured him, "goes on the table tonight. For our conference. We've been dealt some awful good cards, but a little conjuror's hokey-pokey won't do any harm when it's our turn to deal."
"Then what was all that flummery a minute ago? First you started gabbling about a beach-chair, and then about the skeleton and Dr. Laurier…"
"Wait a minute! I didn't.."
"And," Masters rode him down, "you said they were connected by a real clue."
"Oh, Masters! The whole place is flooded with clues."
"Maybe so. You talked about a 'real' clue, that bonged down out of the air, like, and hit you on the head. I can't see the wood for the trees. I don't see anything, except that the alibi is a fake. Where did you get this 'real' clue? Where did it come from?"
H.M. pondered.
"Well," he said, "from my reincarnation."