aAnd how is everybody at home?a she asked; in the circ.u.mstancesa"she realised as soon as the words were outa"a fatuous and even slightly impertinent question. But again David seemed unconscious of the blague. He ran a hand through his scanty hair and applied himself to answering as earnestly and painstakingly as if some detailed piece of technical information had been required of him.
aM-motheras all right,a he said. aB-but I c-canat imagine anything ever really ups-setting her. N-Nickas a b-bit jumpy, as you can imagine. And we h-havenat h-heard from Madge at all.a All at once he looked wretched. aItas h-horrible, isnat it? About that g-girl, I m-mean.a aDid you know her?a aI m-met her for the f-first time at N-Nickas p-party. She s-stayed with mother at Ch-Christmas, but I was away with Nick in Bermuda.a aAnd I suppose youad no idea what was going on?a aNo. N-none. They d-donat confide in me m-much. B-but itas a frightful d-disgrace. I c-could hardly b-bring myself to c-come here this m-morning. I f-felt I wanted to c-creep away and hide s-somewhere, like c-cats do when theyare ill.a Upon this zoological simile he paused; he was a man who rarely indulged in such advanced and literary tricks, and this present lapse must, Judy thought, be the issue of powerful emotions.
aNo one,a she hastened to rea.s.sure him, acould possibly blame you, David.a aNo, I know, but you s-see, itas a f-family affair. A m-matter,a he said simply, aof honour. Th-thatas how I s-see it, anyhow, though I suppose itas v-very old-f-fashioned of me.a aI think itas a very proper feeling to have,a said Judy. aBut you mustnat,a she added firmly, alet it g-geta"d.a.m.n! sorrya"get you down.a He smiled. aItas f-funny how c-catching a stammer is.a aAnyway, itas not as bad as my lisp,a said Judy repentantly. aIam afraid that between us we must sound like the aBeforea section of an Elocution School advertis.e.m.e.nt.a aOh n-no. I l-like your lisp.a David flushed. aItas very attractive.a aPlebeian,a Judy countered severely. aIave studied the subject, and I know. You hardly ever get it in the middle and upper cla.s.ses.a David appeared to be uncertain about the proper response to this.
aAnyway,a he said at last deprecatorily, aitas only v-very slighta I say, though, itas awful ch-cheek of me to be t-talking about you l-like this. Rotten b-bad form.a Judy looked into his large spaniel eyes and was saddened by the feeling she glimpsed there, since she knew that she would never be able to reciprocate it. She was, however, a particularly feminine young woman, and consequently her mild dejection was mixed with a determination to make modest use of Davidas infatuation. She crossed her legs and looked shyly at her toes.
aGood lord,a she said, aI should be a fool if I thought there was anything offensive about thata I say, David, is your brother going to sue that loathsome paper?a It had been decided that the last take was satisfactory, and Griswold was accordingly going on to deal with the next music section. aRoll the film, please,a he said; and when it obediently appeared on the screen he conducted the score through, in silence, with one eye on his stopwatch, while the Philharmonia gossiped, did crossword puzzles or read detective stories. Napier came up, and before David could answer her question, Judy said: aGood morning, Mr. Napier. Itas a beautiful score.a aFor heavenas sake,a said Napier, visibly pleased, adonat judge me by this stuff.a aThatas what all you composers say.a Judy smiled. aOn the day one of you admits that his film score is the best thing heas ever done, the Music Department will take a week off and get plastered by way of celebration.a Napier chuckled and went off to pester Griswold. aSorry, David,a said Judy. aI interrupted you.a aN-not at all,a he said, with conscientious civility. aActually, N-Nick isnat going to s-sue.a He wriggled and hunched his shoulders. aYou s-see, he admits itas all t-truea"about that g-girl and the c-contract, I mean.a aOh,a said Judy rather blankly. aBut surely he must realise that if he doesnat, the studiosa"a aTheyall k-kick him out.a When David, who was the soul of courtesy, descended to interruption, it was patent that he was strongly moved. aHe knows that and heas ready to p-put up with it. Atonement, he s-said. Quite d-decent of old N-Nick, in a way. I m-mean,a David added unhappily, aonead think it was d-decent if he hadnat p-played such a rotten uns-sportsmanlike trick. And on a g-girl, too. That m-makes it m-much w-worse.a aAnd Madge? What will she do? If this story isnat disproved, then even the abysmal film-going public is likely to lose a lot of their enthusiasm for her. And that means that Leiper will be in a state about it, too.a aM-Madge is i-incommunicado.a And David paused, slightly disconcerted, it was possible to surmise, at having dredged up so venturesome a word. aW-we c-canat,a he interpreted, ac-contact her. I j-just d-donat know what sheall do.a He glanced nervously about him and lowered his voice. aI s-say, d-did you hear that s-someone had tried to p-poison N-Nick?a Judy sat up abruptly. aWhat?a aItas quite t-true. S-someone put p-poison in his medicine.a aLord, Lord...a Mingling with Judyas very genuine shock there was an impulse of unholy curiosity. aBut this morningas papersa"a aNo, the P-press hasnat been told about it yet,a David explained gloomily, and there was a brief, painful silence before he went on. aItas like a n-nightmare, isnat it?a aOh, David, Iam so awfully sorry,a said Judy in unfeigned sympathy. aIt must be h.e.l.l for you.a He shrugged. aDoesnat do to m-make a f-fuss about these things,a he said rather shortly. aG-grin and b-bear em, thatas the ticket.a He turned towards her, once more diffident. aBut I say, Judya"ah, M-Miss Flecker, I m-meanaa Here we go, thought Judy: this is the storm cone going up. And aloud she said: aYes, David?a aYou-you w-wouldnat c-care to have d-dinner with me some t-time, w-would you? I d-donat expect you w-would,a he added rescissorily, ab-but I thought Iad j-just ask. I just thought Iada"a aBut of course, David,a said Judy. aItas sweet of you to invite me. Iad be charmed.a aYou really w-would? You d-donat think itad be b-bad form, with M-Maurice d-dead? We c-could g-go somewhere v-very quiet.a aNo, of course I donat think itad be bad form.a Oh dear, Judy thought, how appallingly ingenuous this conversation must sounda aDid you have any particular day in mind?a aItas awfully d-decent of you.a Davidas grat.i.tude was so overwhelming as to be almost pitiful. aJust whenever you s-say, of coursea I s-suppose you w-wouldnat be f-free tonight?a aWell, itas rather short notice, buta"a aP-please donat let me be a n-nuisance. Ia"a aBut as a matter of fact I am free tonight. What time, and where?a said Judy somewhat brusquely; in order to stop David apologising and get to the point, it was necessary, she felt, to be forthcoming and unmaidenly. Moreover, there had occurred to her a scheme calculated to satisfy the rather unscrupulous inquisitiveness she was nourishing as to the Cranesa reactions to the scandal in which they had become so suddenly involved, and it would be desirable, in pursuance of this, to keep the conversational initiativea"no very difficult job, admittedly, where David was concerned.
aW-well,a he said, awhere would you l-like? Thereas the S-screenwritersa, or the S-savoy, oraa aIave got an idea.a Judy smiled a conscientiously winning smile. aDo you think we could perhaps dine at your house?a David looked rather doubtful. aW-well,a he began.
aIave never been there, you know, and Iave often wanted to see it. But of course,a Judy added wistfully, aif youad really rather notaa The glance he gave her was disconcertingly shrewd.
aYou want to s-see the house?a he enquired. And had Judy not been convinced that he was temperamentally incapable of being sardonic, she might well have suspected him of it now. As it was, she felt slightly uncomfortable.
aYes, I should like to,a she said a little breathlessly. aAnd also, of course, alsoaa"she cast about in her mind for some more specific object of curiosity, and after a rather too lengthy pause found onea"aoh, the Maze.a aThe M-Maze?a David echoed; and again there was that in the way he spoke which evoked in Judy a fleeting uneasiness. aWell, I d-donat see any reason why you shouldnat s-see the M-Maze, if youare i-interested. I should quite l-like to have a l-look at it myself.a aYou never have?a said Judy incredulously; she could scarcely believe that there existed a person capable of having a maze on the estate and yet not exploring it at the first possible opportunity. Labyrinths are romantic and adventurous places, and beneath her surface urbanity Judy was a romantic and adventurous young woman. aYou really never have?a she reiterated.
David made a fussed, apologetic gesture.
aWell, itas a l-long w-way from the house,a he explained. aN-near where the old T-Tudor m-manor used to be. And itas v-very n-neglected and over-g-grown. But you can certainly have a l-look at it if you c-come before the l-light goes.a aDavid, whatas at the centre?a He stared, for the moment uncomprehending. aThe c-centre?a aOf the Maze, I mean. Thereas always something at the centre of a maze. A sundial, ora"a aA t-tomb.a aWell, perhaps, but that must bea"a Abruptly Judy checked herself; her eyes widened; for an instant looked absurdly young. aYou mean there is a tomb,a she said excitedly, aat the centre of your Maze?a aThatas what Iave been t-told,a said David with indifference. aT-tomb of the chap who m-made the M-Maze, oh, hundreds of y-years ago. F-funny idea, if you ask me.a Judy drew a deep breath of pure pleasure.
aDavid, we must explore it. Promise youall take me.a aYes, all right.a He was quite honestly uninterested. aI d-donat mind.a And at this point Judy remembered, rather belatedly, that her suggestion of dining at Lanthorn House had not been received with any great enthusiasm, and that she must not be so discourteous as to forget that it was still a re infecta.
aOh, but look here,a she said contritely, ait isnat really fair of me to intrude on your family whena"well, with things as they are. Perhaps some other timeaa aN-no, please.a David seemed preoccupied with some species of inward calculation. aItall be quite all right. M-motherall be d-delighted to m-meet you. And p-perhaps itad be as well if I w-wasnat s-seen d-dining out. L-looks callous, you know.a He emerged from his abstraction and smiled. aG-good idea of yours, really.a aWell, if youare really sureaa aOh, yes. You see, I w-want M-Mother to m-meet you. Iam sure youall t-take to each other.a Like a serialised Victorian novel, Judy reflected: the son, of good family, introduces to his termagant Mamma the poor but honest girl whom he loves and hopes to marry. Will she turn up in a frightful hat? Will she drop her aitches and eat peas with a knife? Will he be threatened with disinheritance if he persists in his suit? And which will prevail in hima"his pa.s.sion for that quite impossible She or his sense of cla.s.s solidarity? (No, that wasnat right: unsullied family traditions.) Read what happens in the next quarteras issue of Household Wordsa Poor David, thought Judy, as she abandoned this fantasy, itas a shame to take advantage of him when oneas feeling for him is so irremediably temperatea But such penitence as she felt was unfortunately quite inadequate to restrain her from taking advantage, and she therefore said: aYes, Iam sure we shall. I look forward to it.a aIall d-drive you there, shall I? I b-borrowed Nickas B-Bentley to c-come here this morning.a aThat sounds lovely. But what time are you likely to finish work? I may have to stay a bit later than usual.a aOh, I c-can w-wait for you.a aNo, donat hang about.a Judyas considerateness was partly conditioned by the fear that he might elect to do his waiting in her office. aYou go on home as soon as youave finished, and Iall borrow a car from Frank Griswold, or someone, and follow you on my own. I can be there by sevena"itas just outside Aylesbury, isnat it?a aThatas right. Once you g-get to Aylesbury anyone will d-direct you. But are you sure you d-donat mind?a aNo, of course not.a Judy stood up. aThatas settled, then. And now I must go back and do some work. So au revoir.a For a moment he did not reply, and in his silence there was something of that obscurely unsettling, incalculable quality she had glimpsed earlier. But then he, too, got to his feeta"his delay in performing this courtesy was also vaguely discomposinga"and nodded and slowly smiled.
aAu revoir,a he said. aT-till this evening.a The picture of Judy that emerges from the foregoing conversation is, I suppose, rather mixed and ambiguous, and more particularly where her motives in accepting David Craneas invitation are concerned. But she was, as a matter of fact, a perfectly ordinary, straightforward young woman, and her predominant emotion, for the time being, was a perfectly ordinary, straightforward curiosity. Since Sat.u.r.day the studios had been full of gossip about the Cranesa"a tongue-wagging of epic scope which the Mercuryas revelations had enormously intensified; and the opportunity of studying the Cranes at close quarters was one which in consequence she found quite irresistible. Woman-like, she was a great deal more interested in people than in facts, and it cannot, therefore, be a.s.serted that her reason for contriving the invitation to Lanthorn House stemmed from any very avid desire to solve the mystery of Mauriceas death and the attempted killing of Nicholas. But the Crane family were important, half-legendary figures in her world, and she was not intellectually sophisticated enougha"or intellectually sn.o.bbish enough, if you prefera"to be convinced of their ultimate insignificance in the larger scheme of things. She wanted to stand at the very centre of the scandal and contemplate it from there; and David Craneas infatuation was her only pa.s.sport to that dubious privilegea Vulgar curiosity, she told herself as she strolled back to the Music Department: thatas all it is.
And at this stage she did not recollect that it was curiosity, in the proverb, which killed the cat.
It was when she was on her way to get lunch at the studio Cluba"a preserve of the Upper Orders which she sometimes used in preference to the overcrowded canteensa"that she encountered Gervase Fen, who was carrying an old raincoat and had on his extraordinary hat.
ah.e.l.lo,a she greeted him. aAre you detecting?a He shook his head. aUnluckily no. Iave just come away from an Unfortunate Lady conference.a aGood Lord, are they still going on? I thought Sat.u.r.dayas was the last.a aSo did we all. But Leiper didnat concur with the particular brand of nonsense we agreed on, and convened us again this morning.a aBut the Cranesaa aThe Cranes were unanimous in staying away. Everyone else was there. A certain gloom was perceptible, I thought. Iam, surprised, myself, that Leiperas going on with it.a aSo am I. What on earth does he imagine is going to happen about Nicholas and Madge?a aFrom what I heard him say to Stafford, he believes the whole affair to be a conscienceless newspaper stunt having no basis in fact whatever.a aDo you really mean to say heas so stupid as to think itas all lies?a aJust that. And no one seems to have the nerve to disillusion him. I find it all,a said Fen comfortably, avery pathetica By the way, you remember I asked you on Sat.u.r.day what att.i.tude the Crane family adopted towards Gloria Scott?a aYes.a aYou said that about Nicholas you didnat know. Do you know now?a aYes. After all the talk thereas been I can hardly avoid knowing. It seems he was always exceedingly nice to hera"and not at all because she was bedworthy, or anything of that kind. Just pure altruism.a aSo that people were a good deal surprised when the letter was published?a aLord, yes. Bowled overaI say, is this important?a aG.o.d knows,a said Fen. aIall tell you what it is, Miss Flecker,a he went on rather balefully. aHumbleby is getting above himself. Heas not keeping me au fait with the case. All heas done so far is to telephone me at some unG.o.dly hour last night, gabble a few incoherent words at me, and then ring off before I had time to extract a single solid piece of information from him. Did you know that someone has tried to poison Nicholas?a aYes. I heard this morning. David told me.a aDavida? Oh, thatas the dim brother, of course. I havenat met him yet.a Judy hesitated. aProfessor Fen, youa"you donat think he could possibly be the murderer?a aMy dear girl,a said Fen kindly, afor the moment I know of no cogent reason for eliminating any human being who is at present walking the earth. Why do you ask?a aWell, heas invited me to his motheras house for dinner this evening, and I thought you might know if he was under suspicion, and if he had been I would have kept my eyes open, thatas all.a aTo dinner? At his motheras house?a Fen shook his head. aaTis ill pudling in the c.o.c.katricea den,a he murmured, aand they must walk warily that hunt the wild boar.a aThis excursion into Bunyan signifying what?a aKeep your eyes open in any casea And now I must catch my bus. Good-bye. And look after yourself.a He was gone.
Tea-time found Judy exceptionally busy, and she was not pleased to be interrupted by David Crane. On this occasion, however, he stated the pretext for his visit with unusual directness.
aI s-say, Miss Flecker, itas my c-car,a he said. aN-Nickas car, I m-mean.a Judy said patiently: aWhatas the trouble? Wonat it go?a aS-someoneas s-smashed up the engine.a aWhat?a aW-with an iron b-bar.a Judy stared at him. aDavid, are you sure youare not dreaming?a aN-no, of course n-not. L-look for yourself if you d-donat b-believe me.a He seemed quite distraught. aI t-tried to s-start her, and she w-wouldnat g-go, and then I l-looked to see if I could s-spot what was wrong, anda"and there it w-was.a aIt was all right when you arrived, though, wasnat it?a said Judy not very intelligently. aI meana"a aOh, yes. It w-was all right then.a aBut in broad daylight, David! I donat understand how anyone can have daredaa aIt was in Nickas l-lock-up,a he explained. aOnly, of course, n-no one ever actually l-locks them, and I didnat. So you s-seeaa Judy did see. Adjoining the carpentersa workshop there was a row of lock-up garages (whose doors, as David had rightly observed, n.o.body ever bothered to secure) reserved for the use of the studioas Upper Twenty. And since from morning to night the carpentersa shop yielded an unintermittent uproar of hammering and mechanical saws, the noisy act of vandalism which David had reported could have been carried through, behind the garageas closed door, in reasonable safetya Vandalism. Judyas heart sank. The car was Nicholasa, not Davidas, and she knew that in certain quarters the feeling against Nicholas was running higha But this explanation had apparently not occurred to David; he seemed completely perplexed. aI d-donat understand it,a he muttered haplessly. aI just d-donat understand it at all.a aWhat are you going to do?a Judy demanded; it could serve no useful purpose, she felt, to blurt out the theory she had just formulated.
aOh, Iall hire a c-car in the v-village to t-take me home. That p-partas all right. B-but I w-wish I knew why. It seems so p-pointless, doesnat it?a aYes,a Judy agreed. aYes, it does.a aI know I oughtnat to be b-bothering you about it, n-not when youare w-working. B-but I just had to t-tell someone.a aYouall see the police about it, I suppose?a aYes. C-certainly I shall. Filthy rotten t-trick,a said David miserably. aMust catch the b-bounder who did it.a He stood there shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, and now his self-consciousness, which the outrage had sent temporarily into abeyance, began to seep back. aWell. As I s-say. Thought Iad just t-tell you about it.a aIad go to the police straight away if I were you.a David squared his shoulders. aQuite right. G-get it over and done with. Thanks for l-listening, Miss F-Flecker.a aWhy not Judy?a He made a gesture so preposterously bashful that she had the utmost difficulty in suppressing a gust of ribald and unseemly mirth.
aThanks, Judy,a he said. aIall g-get along now. See you l-later.a And aHeavens!a thought Judy as the door closed behind him, awhat have I let myself in for? Fathomless abysses of nescier faireaa aBut itas d.a.m.ned queer,a she murmured aloud, aabout that car. I wonderaa And after a momentas cogitation she reached for the telephone, put a call through to the College of St. Christopher in Oxford, and asked for Professor Fen.
Professor Fen was there. His voice sounded as if the telephone had awakened him from a particularly deep and agreeable bout of slumber; which in fact it had. What, he enquired rather surlily, was the matter?
But on hearing Judyas story he became audibly more complaisant and alert. aIam sorry if I disturbed you,a Judy said in conclusion, abut I thought it just possibly might have something to do with the case, and soaa aYes, you may very well be right. Will you do something for me?a aWhat?a aThe caras still there, is it? It hasnat been towed away?a aNo, itas still here.a aWell, then, get a garage-man up from the villagea"or else someone at the studios who knows about carsa"and have him look at the steering-gear.a aThe steering-gear? But whya"wait, though: I think I see what youare getting at. Onlya"a aDonat theorise, please. Act. And ring me back, will you? as soon as youave found out.a This proved to be about an hour later.
aWell?a Fen enquired.
aYou were right. Something essential in the steering had been filed almost completely througha"Iam afraid Iam stupid about these things, so I canat tell you exactly what it was, but the man said it was a murderous trick, because if it snapped when the car was moving fast, theread be an appalling smash.a aQuite so. Well, I continue to guess quite nicely, even if I donat actually deduce very much. Has David Crane told the police?a aYes. The local bobby came along and scratched his head over it. I told him he ought to get in touch with Inspector Humbleby and tell him about it. Was that right?a aPerfectly.a aAnd was it meant for Nicholas?a aIt looks that way, doesnat it?a aAnd then, I suppose, the person whoad done it found out David was driving the car, and didnat want to kill him, and put the engine out of action because that was the best way he could think up of cancelling what head done.a aYes. Quite a plausible hypothesis, in the circ.u.mstances. Of course, thereas one other possibility.a aI know what you mean: David did the whole thing himself, after he arrived here, so as to create aa"a red herring.a aYou have a good, lively, sceptical brain,a Fen commented. aBut donat let it make you careless when you go to Lanthorn House this evening. Remember, weave none of us any idea what face this particular c.o.c.katrice is wearinga Good-bye.a It was five past six, and the air was full of a slow, depressing drizzle, when Judy left the studios and set off for Aylesbury.
She had borrowed Griswoldas cara"a large, rather antiquated Humber saloon badly scarred by the destructive proclivities of its owneras innumerable children. Judy had commandeered it before, and it was not, in her experience, at all a reliable machine; but it was better than a sequence of buses, or the inordinate expense of hiring a taxi. It had the peculiarity, which Griswold freely admitted no one had ever been able to explain, of seeming on the point of petering out and then, at the last possible moment and quite without human intervention, suddenly revving itself up until the bonnet rattled, the cheeks of the pa.s.sengers quivered as with an ague and an efflux of pastel-blue smoke shrouded it like dense fog. Griswold was accustomed to maintain (though not with much confidence) that this had something to do with the hand throttleas being caught up with the clutch, and in the course of time he had become inured to it, but it never failed to unnerve strangers, and it was with a good deal of wariness that Judy edged the eccentric vehicle out on to the road.
At the outset, however, it behaved tolerably well, and she made good progress until she was almost into Aylesbury. Then, just as she was rashly congratulating herself on this state of affairs, the front off-side tyre, which was worn wafer-thin at the sides, exploded resoundingly. Fortunately she was not travelling fasta"the Humber, indeed, was not endowed with any great turn of speeda"and she was able to come b.u.mpily but safely to a halt at the roadas verge. She climbed out and examined the tyre with dismay.
Aylesbury was still four miles off, and the rain, tiring of its earlier indecisiveness, had begun to fall more heavily. The road was deserted and there was no house in sight. Judy moaned faintly and groped in the car for the raincoat which luckily she had with her. Then, resigning herself philosophically to manual labour and to making her dbut at Lanthorn House looking like something the cat had dragged in, she fished out the tool-kit. She was an independent young woman who when professional help was not available believed in coping with her misfortunes herself.
Back in the early thirties some engineer had been visited with the inspiration of a Trouble-Free Jack, and for weeks had toiled to devise a tool capable of being manipulated (as the advertis.e.m.e.nts setting forth the thingas virtues presently announced) by a Child. All scientific progress, however, has its drawbacks; no bath water is ever thrown out without some species of baby goes down the plughole with it; and it proved that, in the case of the Trouble-Free Jack, Ease of Manipulation could not be achieved (by this particular engineer, anyway) without Extreme Difficulty of a.s.sembly. The manufacturers did not, of course, overtly admit this depressing discovery; they were at pains to supply an Instruction Chart indicating how the Jack might swiftly and easily be put together. But as regarded the particular instrument which Judy now had in her hands, this vade mec.u.m had long since vanished, and after ten minutesa uninterrupted toil the thing still remained as hopelessly unworkable as ever.
She beat a retreat to the interior of the car and sat there wondering sombrely what to do next. To walk into Aylesbury in the rain was an intolerable prospecta"but there was likewise no future in sitting here till darkness fell, fiddling with the irreconcilable component parts of a Trouble-Free Jack. She must stop someone, therefore, and bespeak a.s.sistance or a lift to the nearest garage. Two cars had pa.s.sed already. They had looked at first as if they might be going to stop, but as soon as they were near enough to make out that the penalty for this would be changing a wheel in what looked like developing into a cloud-burst, they had accelerated again and gone by. How, Judy wondered, could a subsequent motorist be effectively halted? The traditional formula was to be fixing oneas suspenders and hence showing oneas legs; but Judy felt sufficiently disgruntled and mistrustful of her luck to suspect that if she attempted this the first person to happen by would be some species of s.e.xual maniac. And besides, she had on nylons and it was wet. She decided that the less blatant forms of allure would have to do.
At first they were notably ineffectuala"and in view of her soaking hair and sodden raincoat Judy was not altogether surprised. Three cars in succession ignored her signalling. But the fourth stopped, and a large, jovial, middle-aged man emerged from it with ma.s.sive cries of dismay at Judyas plight and unreserved offers of help. No trouble at all, he a.s.sured her heartily: head have it fixed in a jiffy, see if he didnat. Having taken one look at the Trouble-Free Jack, he produced his own; and in very little more than a jiffy the wheel was in fact changed.
Judy, her fears of s.e.xual maniacs submerged in relief, informed the jovial man that he was an angel and that she could kiss him. And he, having in a brief, brotherly, pleasant fashion accepted and reciprocated this offer, a.s.sured her again that it had been no trouble, re-inserted himself, chuckling vastly, into his car and drove away.
By the time Judy reached Aylesbury it was twenty past seven; and in spite of Davids optimistic prognosis, she had some difficulty in finding anyone who could direct her to Lanthorn House, and even when she had done so, continued on her way without much faith in the correctness of the route that had been indicated. Surelya"she was asking herself twenty minutes latera"this abominable cart-track Iam on canat be right? Or is it some idiotic short cut? At a small stone railway-bridge she pulled up and gazed bewilderedly about her. The twilight was closing in like an ambush, the rain fell monotonously, the rubber of the wipers creaked against the windscreen. In all directions there were dripping woods and fields and hedges and fencesa"but of a house, or a human being, no sign. The engine sputtered in a sullen, foreboding way; obscurely but unmistakably it conveyed to Judy the impression that it was not prepared to go on like this for very much longer.
Well, the only thing to do was to go on following the instructions of that palsied old imbecile in Aylesbury, and hope for the best.
Over the ruts and pot-holes of that unconscionable lane the car lurched forward. There appeared a succession of conspicuous landmarks for which Judy had no briefa"a barn, a chalk escarpment blurred and ghostly in the rain and the dusk, a ruined church or priory. aHe didnat mention this,a she muttered crossly as each one hove in sight. aHe never said anything about this.a Presently she had to switch on the lights. And all at once, without quite realising what was happening, she found that the Humber was crawling painfully up a one-in-seven slope between cataracts of water which raced downwards on either side. She changed down; changed down again. But the engine was no longer in good heart for such stoic enterprises. Its pulse grew momently feebler; it began to knock; it developed, in its extremity, a sort of death rattle. In anguished auscultation Judy wrestled with the controls, but vainly. Long before the summit was reached a sudden explosion from beneath the bonnet delivered the coup de grace, and the whole infuriating mechanism fell silent.
Judy crammed on the brakes, panicked momentarily when in spite of them the car started to slip back, and succeeded in bringing it to a halt by letting it drift against the lanes bank at an angle of forty-five degrees. The lack of optimism with which she plied the self-starter proved abundantly justified. In a final desperate effort she wound the handle until it kicked, and wrenched her arm so badly that she could not go on. Then she resigned herself, at long last, to the inexorable fact: the car was stranded.
ad.a.m.n,a she said. ad.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n!a And standing there alone in the rain, while a small river of water gurgled round the Humberas back wheels, she wept hot tears of frustration.
As if its appet.i.te had been whetted by its earlier, more gradual conquests, the darkness was coming on faster now, was licking greedily at what remained of the day. Judy stemmed her tears and a moment later turned abruptly, thinking that someone stood behind her. But it was only a scarecrow on the other side of the hedgea"a scarecrow leaning backwards, rigid like a day-old corpse propped on a shooting-sticka And that sort of simile, Judy told herself sternly, isnat calculated to cheer you up very much. Pull yourself together, girl; make up your mind what youare going to do.
And of course, there was only one answer to that: she could scarcely stay here all night. The car must be abandoned and she must find shelter. She had long ago lost faith in the directions given her in Aylesbury for getting to Lanthorn House, but she had followed them to the bitter end, and if by some remote chance there was any truth in them, she ought by now to be quite near her destination. There was, too, another feature of the situation which offered a pale, faute-de-mieux sort of encouragement: the rain was palpably slackening off, and in a minute or two might with any luck cease altogethera She looked at her watch: ten to eight. But there was not the least possibility, as far as she could see, of finding a telephone whereby she might recite her mishaps to David and apologise for her lateness and, proleptically, for her drowned and unprepossessing condition. By this time she would naturally enough have been glad to waive the visit altogether, but there would, she realised, be no advantage to her in that, for to get back to Aylesbury and civilisation would probably be an undertaking even more formidable than the search for Lanthorn House. No, her best course was to plod onwards and once again hope for the best. She did what she could to immobilise the car and then set off.
At the summit of the hill she paused to get her bearings. According to what she had been told, this track ought to debouch in a main road, along which she must walk, northwards, for about a couple of hundred yards, and then turn off to the right. As far as she could make out at the moment, she was heading straight into a pathless wilderness, but none the less she pushed on doggedly between monotonous hedgerows and was presently rewarded by coming upon an isolated cottage, at whose door she knocked. A weedy, furtive-looking scion of the emanc.i.p.ated peasantry appeared to be the cottageas sole occupant, and the particular fashion in which he eyed her warned Judy that it would be impolitic to linger there; but the information she received was encouraging, for it revealed that her mentor in Aylesbury had not in fact led her astray: the main road was only a short distance away and Lanthorn House tolerably close at hand. Moreover, there was an hourly bus, she learned, which would take her right to its gates.
The hourly bus, however, swept maddeningly by before she was able to achieve the main road, and she was obliged in consequence to continue walking; by this time the condition of her shoes and stockings was incapable of deteriorating much further, and there was a kind of perverted comfort to be derived from that. With her long, athletic stride Judy marched on, devising conversational gambits suitable to be employed on arrival, and from time to time ruefully contemplating the indelible oil-marks which the Trouble-Free Jack and the starting-handle had imprinted on her slender hands. And before long she came to the branch road of which she was in search, and turned off along it.
The rain was still holding off, and here and there the canopy of cloud was splitting like stretched canvas, so that the encroachments of night were temporarily halted and reversed by the veiled illumination of the sunas dying rays. The road ran grey and ghostly into invisibility, hemmed in by beech trees whose bare wet branches gleamed wanly, like fading phosph.o.r.escence, and whose last yearas leaves still lay in mouldering drifts against the gra.s.sy banks where now and then a primrose could be discerned. It was very quieta"so quiet that the sound of your footsteps began after a while to seem like a wanton profanation of some supernatural conspiracy of silence; and without being properly conscious of it Judy began to hum jauntily to herself, b.u.t.tressing her independence against the insidious, pervasive hush. The road wound downwards and the trees that stood sentinel along it thickened and multiplied. There were deep dells among them, fringed with brambles and dead bracken except where the outcropping chalk prevented their growth. Probably a good place for bluebells, Judy thought irrelevantly; not a bad place for highway robbery, eithera And was she never going to get to Lanthorn House?
But even as this rhetorical question presented itself, she rounded a bend and came within sight of the gates. At least, she supposed that these were the gates. Someone was entering them from the opposite direction, anywaya"a man in a hat and mackintosh; and there was that in the way he walked which suggested to Judy that it might be Nicholas Crane. He had not, however, seen her or heard her steps, for he went on in ahead of her without looking round.
Arrived at the entrance to the drive, Judy paused to take stock of the situation. In the heraldically carved stone gateposts there was nothing to indicate that this was her destination, and the lodges, where she might have enquired, were patently uninhabiteda"looked, indeed, uninhabitable. But there had been no other house in this particular road, and it was a fairly safe bet that this was what she was seeking. No harm in finding out, anyway. Judy walked through the gates into the estate.
The continuing downward gradient was vaguely disconcerting; in the dusk you had the sense of descending into positively troglodytic depths. The trees and gra.s.s and bushes and undergrowth grew rankly here, unchecked by cultivationa"though, as only the evergreens were in leaf, there was an impression of barrenness, too; the small buds on the tangled stems were invisible, and they looked dead. Distantly a night-owl cried, and a clock chimed half-past eight. There was a cold wind stirring in the foliage, and as it fingered her sodden clothes and hair Judy shivered and quickened her pace.
The man (Nicholas?) who had preceded her was not in sight; but the drive twisted incessantly, and unless he had turned off it into the grounds he could scarcely be very far ahead. He might, of course, be waiting for her among the bushesa"and the vision which that possibility conjured up was not wholly agreeable. None the less, Judy went forward steadily. Soon, surely, she was bound to come in view of the house, and there would be lights and food and hot fires and cheerfulness. She pictured herself demurely wrapped in a dressing-gown while her outer clothes dried, humorously reciting the tribulations she had gone through. Even now she was capable of looking back on them fairly tolerantly; so in an houras timea"
And it was at this point that she heard the voice.
It came from beyond the bend confronting her, and she knew it at once for Nicholasas. It said: ah.e.l.lo! Enjoying the weather? a And then, in an altered tone: aWhat are youa"so youare thea"a And then a shot.
Birds flew up out of the trees with a whirr of wings, calling distractedly. The echoes of the explosion resounded through the hollow in which the house lay.
And beyond the bend in the drive a man cried out feebly and fell.
It was all over in a moment. And Judy, who had her share of courage, quickened her steps and rana"not away from whatever ghastly thing had happened, but towards it. She came round the bend and stopped short at what she saw.
Nicholas Crane lay sprawled on his back at the driveas verge. His lips were curled back from his teeth in a kind of snarl; his hat had dropped off and his immaculate fair hair was spattered with mud; his eyes were open but sightless; beside his right hand lay an automatic pistol. A long knife had been driven upwards through his ribs into his heart, and even in that faint and waning light it needed no more than a glance to tell Judy that he was dead.
No more than a glance; and since the moment of the attack scarcely twenty seconds had pa.s.sed. That meant that the attacker must still be near at handa"and no sooner had Judy realised this than her blurred senses became sharply focused as she tried to determine which way he had gone. Though her heart was beating fast, she was for the moment queerly devoid of both fear and repugnance. To pursue seemed somehow natural and inevitable, in spite of the appalling peril it must certainly involve; and long before this primordial instinct had taken conscious shape she found that she was, indeed, pursuing.
Hearing guided her. Nicholas Craneas murderer, who had obviously heard her running up, was plunging noisily away through the undergrowth in blind flight. Racing frantically after him, Judy was conscious that the automatic was in her handa"though she had no recollection whatever of having picked it upa"and conscious, too, that the b.u.t.t was still warm where Nicholas had held it. It gave her immeasurable confidence, and that despite the fact that she had never fired any sort of gun in her life. In an Amazonian frenzy she ran recklessly ahead.
And now, as if at a signal, darkness had shut its jaws over the last remnants of day, and its annihilating conquest was complete. The rain was falling againa"but Judy was past caring about rain, was trans.m.u.ted, indeed, into a creature wholly compounded of impulse, wholly devoid of calculation. Her heart pounded; the salt sweat dripped from her forehead into her eyes; in a dozen places her clothes were ripped and rent by brambles, and there was scarcely a square inch of her stockings that the brush had not mauled. A Maenad figure, physically splendid, she fled through the unkempt grounds of Lanthorn House like an arrow, stumbling sometimes but always recovering, beating against hardly visible obstacles yet never falling, oblivious of reason, stripped in a second of the veneer with which centuries of civilisation had overlaid what was natural in hera And Chance, rejoicing in the overthrow of its age-old enemy the considering intellect, took her into its special care, driving her along the track of her quarry, whenever sense faltered or doubted, as unrelentingly as a ravenous brute in pursuit of its prey.
The terrain was rising as she ran, up towards the rim of the bowl in which Lanthorn House lay secluded; and presently the chase led out of the trees and thickets on to bare turf which ascended, at the last steeply, to what was apparently a flat, gra.s.sy terrace of some description. Judyas foot struck a fragment of submerged masonry and she fell. She was up again instantly, but by wretched bad fortune the automatic had flown out of her hand, and her helpless groping failed to discover it again. If she lingered to search for it her quarry would irrevocably elude her; she must not, thereforea"the decision was made at once and unhesitatinglya"linger to search for it. And she was running again even before that decision was made.
The person she hunted must be tiring, for she was closer to him nowa"so close that she could hear his frantic breathing above the sound of her own. What she was to do on overtaking him she never once paused to consider: it would be a hand-to-hand fight now, and she would have to be extremely lucky to get the best of that. But circ.u.mspection had altogether deserted her. She dimly sensed that, once undertaken, an affair like this must in honour be carried through to the end, however mortal its issue might be. Her stride lengthened; her breath and pulse grew quicker; and she knew she was gaining ground fast.
The distance between the two of them cannot have been more than a couple of yards at the moment when the high hedgea"at least two feet higher than a tall mana"loomed up out of the obscurity and the ground became overgrown again. For an instant Judy paused, feeling for the gap through which her quarry had blundered. Then she found it and followed. A second hedge immediately confronted her, and after briefly listening for the sound of her quarry she turned right between it and the first. It had been a gruelling run and her energy was flagging now, but so also must be the energy of the person she pursued, and she pushed on, grimly determined to make up the leeway she had lost in seeking a breach in the hedge. To the left she turned, to the left again, to the right; and was obscurely though incuriously aware that hedges were all about her. But presently, at a bifurcation, she halted, the better to choose her direction, and for the first time realised that she could no longer hear the attackeras movements; which meant, of course, that he had gone to ground and was lying in waita Judy took a few uncertain steps along the left-hand fork; stopped, bewildered, when she saw that this alley forked againa Then, somewhat belatedly, she understood where she was.
In an emergency the human mind is apt to function in odd, incalculable ways. Into Judyas, as she stood there a little dazed by the sudden knowledge that she had plunged unwittingly into the Lanthorn House Maze, there drifted with the sharp clarity of a lesson learned by heart certain words that she had encountered long ago.
aI have heard or reada of a man who, like Theseus, in the Attick Tale, should adventure himself, into a Labyrinth or Mazea but as the Night fell, wherein all the Beasts of the Forest do move, he begun to be sensible of some Creature keeping Pace with him and, as he thought, peering and looking upon him from the next alley to that he was inaa And Judy shivered. Somewhere in this maze, as in that, there was a tomb.
At heart Judy was superst.i.tiousa"and let no one mock at her for it. Superst.i.tion is not mere intellectual error; it is a part of the emotional life, and the worldly-wise who suppress it do so at the risk of impoverishing their souls, an eventuality which for the most part they do not succeed in avoiding. So the words of the story (only a story, she told herself fiercely: nothing more than thata) wrought in Judy an effect which in the circ.u.mstances was very far from being beneficial. They shattered, suddenly and horribly, the spell of frenzy which the hunt had cast upon her, and as her normal perceptions returned, she realised that she was exhausted and that it would be futile to attempt morea And as a matter of fact, she reflected sombrely, it had been futile to attempt as much. Worse than futile: crazya and the recognition of her folly in attempting to tackle a desperate murderer single-handed came upon her like a douche of ice-cold water. Mad, mad! She had been possessed, she now saw, possessed by those devils whose name was said to be Legion; and after propelling her headlong down the most appropriate local equivalent of the Gadarene slope, they had deserted her, left her to fend for herself in a condition of physical and spiritual exhaustion, the virtuea"so to call ita"gone out of her, all pa.s.sion spent. Common sense, the more insistent for its temporary exile, returned to plague and rebuke her from every side. What ought she to have done? Hurried on to the house, of course, and reported the killing. No one would have dreamed of blaming her for not embarking on this fantastic enterprise, and she would long ago have been safe, with light and warmth and companya Company; Judy was beginning to feel a longing for that, as she stood there in the darkness, between the high hedges, with water dripping off her ruined clothes on to the b.u.mpy, cluttered ground underfoot. Yes, company, she thought, would be a very pleasant thing at the moment.
In the meantime, what strength she had left must be devoted to getting out of this atrocious place and as far away from it as possible.
She was not, as yet, badly frightened. That was to come later. But she knew that somewhere a killer lay in ambush; and a maze, ordinarily an innocuous plaything, can in certain circ.u.mstances begin to seem like a trap. With a wry grimace Judy recalled the pleasurable antic.i.p.ation of just this exploration which she had expressed to David Crane only that morning. Aeons ago, it seemed; and nowa"
Well, now the thing to do was to make a move, and that as furtively as might be.
Direction? Easy enough. She must go back the way she had come, and fortunately she remembered the turns she had taken. Right at the entrance, then left, left, right. That meant left, right, right and the entrance would be on her left.
What she did not remember was that mazes are designed specifically to confuse people who have made a note of the way they came.
After ten minutes of anguished searchinga"the more nerve-racking in that her progress was necessarily far from noiselessa"Judy, realised that she was indeed trapped. In a Maze with a Murderer, she thought, and because the springs of hysteria were starting to trickle inside her, she giggled inanely to herself. Unless, of course, the murderer had succeeded where she had failed, and got himself out somehow or other. But that was unlikely. Perhaps he was as afraid of her as she was of hima"and as this possibility occurred to her Judy giggled again. More loudly, this time. And aMy G.o.d,a she thought, as with an effort she got control of her nerves again, aif Iam going to go on like this I might just as well shout and tell him straight out where to find me.a (aaSo he stood still and hillooad at the Pitch of his Voice, and he supposad that the Echo, or the Noyse of his Shouting, disguisad for the Moment any lesser sound; because, when there fell a Stillness again, he distinguishad a Trampling (not loud) of running Feet coming very close behind him, wherewith he was so daunted that himself set off to runaa) Not loud. No, of course it wouldnat be. That was to be expected.
aBut you must make up your mind, Judy my girl, just what it is youare frightened of: on the one hand, M. R. James-plus-tomb, or on the other Mr. X, who pushed a knife into Nicholas Crane. You canat have it both ways. Or can you? It rather looks as if you cana Well then, put it like this: which would you rather have waiting for you round this corner youare coming to, X ora"or the inhabitants of the place, whispering in conference? Take your pick, ladies and gents: a guaranteed triple-proof homicidal maniac or a group of fine spectres, jewelled in every holea But this wonat do. It wonat do at all. Stand still, Judy. Stand still, get a grip on yourself, and do some hard thinking.
As soon as her own movements ceased, it was very quiet there. There was the unrelenting patter of the rain, of course, but beyond that, nothing. Really nothing? Well, sometimes the hedges rustled, as though there were a person fumbling at them on the other side.
aAnd, indeed, as the Darkness increasad, it seemed to him that there was more than one, and, it might be, even a whole Band of such Followers: at least so he judgad by the Rustling and Cracking that they kept among the Thicketsaa The rustling was due to the rain. Of course it was due to the rain. Ora"since this was a neglected, abandoned placea"to animals. Small animals.
aawherein all the Beasts of the Forestaa Rats?
Judy put two fingers into her mouth and bit them till the blood came. It wouldnat do to scream, wouldnat do at all, not with Mr. X lying doggo perhaps only a few feet awaya Cats, presumably, lay cattoa"and despite all she could do to prevent it, Judy giggled again, and went on giggling. The imbecile noise of it got out of hand, continued (as it seemed to her last surviving outposts of caution) interminably.
Then, when at last it stopped, the silence that replaced it seemed even more horrible than before.
All at once black misery overwhelmed her: misery bitter and intense beyond guessing, seas of it millions of fathoms deep. It wasa"had she known ita"a reaction altogether healthier and more salutary than the half-wit facetiousness in which her shaken mind had earlier been indulging; but to her it was far more ghastly than that, was the ultimate abyss beyond which there could be nothing, nothing worse. On all sides the high, abominable hedges hemmed her in, their unpruned summits just perceptible as a ragged line against the night sky. She was cold, soaked, inexpressibly tired and terribly afraid. And careless, now, of what might happen to her, she fell to sobbing like a lost child.
How long that lasted she was never afterwards able to say, for this was the point at which her mind grew numb and refuseda"last prophylactic against its own impending ruin!a"to accept any longer the messages of her senses. She was vaguely aware that when the sobbing ceased she started to move again, but what impelled her to do this, and how long it lasted, remains unknowable. Probably her blind wandering about that unspeakable labyrinth did not continue for so very long, but to her it seemed like days. She remembersa"remotely, like something in an almost-forgotten dreama"that whenever she turned into a cul-de-sac, which was often, she would emerge from it again without any sense of frustration or disappointment; and the truth is that at this stage she was a mere automaton, as bereft of will and cognition and conation as a robot, without the least consciousness of what she was looking for, or why. Days, it seemed; no, months, centuriesa So that when at last she came out from among the hedges she did not immediately realise what had happened.
But something made her hesitate, staring blankly into the darkness. And at that hesitation her brain began painfully to function again. She was in the open. She was no longer penned in. She had escaped, at last, out of the crazy, bewildering sequence of alleys and bends and impa.s.ses.
So it was all over. For a moment she could hardly take it in. After what she had been through it seemed impossible to a.s.similate. But it was true. It was true. She could feel that she was freea She gave a choking gasp of relief.
And quite near her, something moved.
Judyas throat went dry; she tried to cry out and could not. Her hand, jerking in a nervous spasm against the pocket of her raincoat, rattled something there. Matches. She did not pause to reflect that the cold rain would extinguish a flame almost instantaneously. With trembling fingers, in a last frantic s.n.a.t.c.hing at courage and reason, she dragged out the box and struck one of the matches.
For an instant it flared up brightly. And Judyas heart sickened at what, in its brief and wavering illumination, she saw.
She was not out of the Maze at all. On the contrary, she was in the clearing at its centre. And a short distance in front of her was the tomba Only it wasnat a tomb. It was a grave, a humped mound with a decaying headstone askew at one end. And something that might or might not have been human was crawling across that mound.
The flame went out.
So then Judy did scream.
Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford, was restless that Tuesday afternoon. Term was over: for the vacation he had no specific plans, and he felta"which was uncommon in hima"very much at a loss for something to do. Moreover, he could not disguise from himself the fact that his criminological amus.e.m.e.nts were beginning to display the ominous characteristics of an addiction, or at the very least of a settled habit, and in consequence of this he fretted at being kept out of touch with the Crane case by Humblebyas deplorable uncommunicativeness. Sherlock Holmes, when circ.u.mstances omitted to supply pabulum for his febrile intellect, had soothed himself with doses of cocaine, but the Dangerous Drugs Act had put a stop to all that sort of thing, and such lawful alternatives as remaineda"alcohol, for instancea"would be only very doubtfully efficacious. It was nota"said Fen, addressing himself to the impa.s.sive quadrangle outside his first-floor rooms at St. Christopherasa"it was not that he had any ideas about the Crane case, as things stood; it was simply that he feared Humbleby might have overlooked some clue germane to its solution. And although he knew that the C.I.D. are not fools, and that this was therefore very unlikely, such considerations failed to soothe him. Mistrust of experts, in spite of all that the apologists for technocracy can advance against it, is deeply rooted in the English character, and Fen, whose habit of mind was not cosmopolitan, shared in it abundantly.
His restlessness was accentuated by Judyas report on the tampering with Nicholas Craneas Bentley, and its odd sequel. A scrupulous murderer, Fen thoughta"scrupulous, anyway, where the lives of those he considered innocent were concerned; and that att.i.tude might prove to have its importancea But more facts were needed, more facts. A dozen times Fen had examined and a.n.a.lysed the data he already possessed, and he was convinced, by now, that no enlightenment whatever was to be derived from them; but somewhere or other the significant, the vital, indication must be awaiting discovery. Fen had no faith in the absolute dogma that such ciphers as man can create man can also solve, since he was aware that the history of crime exhibits a number of instances to the contrary; but he did believe that in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases mysteries are susceptible of explanation, and that this was the hundredth case he was not at all prepared to a.s.sume. So he prowled and pondered and grew peevish, and the afternoon waned into early evening, and still there was no news from Humbleby.
At seven-thirty Fen decided to take the initiative, and telephoned to Scotland Yard. But Humbleby was not there, and they either did not know, or else from policy refused to say, where he might be found. Fenas irritation increased, and he rang up Lanthorn House. Eleanor Crane, who, answered, was civil and appeared to recognise his name, but no, she said, Inspector Humbleby had not been there since the previous evening, and he had not said when, if at all, he proposed returning.
aAh,a said Fen. aWell, thanks very much, Mrs. Crane. I thought it just possible that he might be with you. I hope I didnat interrupt your dinner.a aNot at all. Davidas guestaa"the husky voice was ever so slightly sardonica"aDavidas guest hasnat turned up yet, so weare keeping dinner back.a A little cloud of obscure forebodinga"for the moment no larger, certainly, than a manas handa"took shape at the back of Fenas mind.
aI suppose,a he said, athat that would be Miss Flecker.a aYes. I didnat realise you knew her. To judge from my sonas not over-subtle allusions, Iam afraid he may have been pestering her rather.a aIs she very late, may I ask?a aIt seems that she said she would be here by seven definitely. I hope she hasnat had an accident. But weare rather out of the way here, so it may just be that sheas not able to find us. She hasnat been here before.a aJust so. Thank you again, then.a Fen said good-bye and rang off.
An accidentaBut in forty minutesa lateness there was no reasonable ground for misgiving, and Fen had no cause for thinking that Judy stood in any danger from the unknown Xa"the more so since X had apparently gone to such trouble and risk to prevent David from driving home, and probably smashing himself up, in Nicholas Craneas car. None the less, Fen found that he was oddly perturbed, and after a short interval of vague and futile worrying he telephoned the Long Fulton Music Department. He had not much hope that at this time of day anyone would be there, but it happened that Johnny, who was currently engaged in the composition of an immense and vacuous symphony, had decided that the Music Department was a convenient, quiet and sympathetic place in which to score this opus during the evenings, and he was consequently available and able to give Fen the information required. Yes, he said, Miss Flecker had left for Aylesbury, in Mr. Griswoldas car, shortly after six.
And that being so, Fen reflected as he rang off, she ought certainly to have arrived there by seven; the distance between the two places was not great. But no doubt Eleanor Craneas explanation was the true one: she had simply lost her waya Fen confabulated with his soul and discovered that his indistinct anxiety on Judyas behalf derived in the long run from nothing more subtle and altruistic than the desire to do something. It was largely a sham, a pretexta"all else having faileda"for purposive action of some sort. That fact elicited, he felt a good deal easier in his mind. Judy had probably arrived at Lanthorn House by now, but there was no reason why he should not drive over there and make sure of it, and the excursion would keep him occupied for a while. Having dressed himself for rain, he left his rooms and went out to his car.
It was a small red sports model, exceptionally strident and dissolute-looking, which he had purchased from a cashiered, impoverished undergraduate years before. A chromium nude leaned forward from the radiator cap, and the name LILY CHRISTINE was engrossed in large white letters across the bonnet. A leaky hood shielded the caras seating rather perfunctorily from the elements. Fen ascertained that he had enough petrol for the eighteen- or twenty-mile journey and noisily set forth.
It was completely dark, and raining hard, when at a quarter to nine he drove in through the Lanthorn House gates; and he came upon the body of Nicholas Crane so suddenly that only the gleam of the knifeas haft in the headlights prevented him from running over it. He stopped the car, climbed out, and made a brief, melancholy examination. aPoor devil,a he muttered. aBut I donat suppose he had time to be much afraid.a To judge from the flaccidity of the limbs, death was still only somatica"which meant that it had probably not occurred earlier than four hours ago; but it was not possible, he thought, to make a more definite estimate than that. He took a torch from the car and by casting about discovered with its aid a crumpled, muddy handkerchief lying near-by, with the initials J.A.F. embroidered on it. And at that his anxiety was abruptly renewed. From what he knew of Judy he thought it very unlikely that she had killed Nicholas Crane, but it looked as if some time this evening she had been on the spot, and if by any chance she had witnessed what happeneda Fenas investigation of the area became notably swifter and more purposeful as soon as this possibility occurred to him.
And it did not take him long to find what he was looking for; Judyas reckless pursuit was imprinted in mud as plainly as any zealot for footprints could desire. The small, sharp impression of the shoes were superimposed on the impressions made by the person she had followeda"and that showed that at any rate she had not gone with him under duress. But there was more: both persons had been running fast, since the impression of the heel was consistently deeper than the impression made by the ball of the foot and the anterior edge of the sole was in every case prominently etched. And since Judy had been running, she had been tracking the other person not by his footprintsa"to follow footprints in tangled undergrowth while continuously running fast is an impossibilitya"but by his actual presence; in other words, she must have been chasing him close behind. More yet: by comparing the amount of water which had collected in the footprints with the amount which had collected in the natural hollows of the ground, it was feasible to make a rough guess at how long ago the chase had taken place; not more than an hour previously, Fen estimated, and probably rather lessa These observations occupied him for scarcely more than half a minute, and they left him seriously alarmed; much as he admired the girlas courage, he could scarcely commend her wisdom, and what the issue of the chase might have been he did not at all care to imagine. He began to follow the tracks, taking care not to tread in them and moving as rapidly as he could. And until he came out of the trees and bushes on to an open slope, he made good progress. Here, however, he was obliged to pause uncertainly, swinging his torch this way and that, for at this higher level the turf was springy and porous, and in spite of the rain oneas steps, as an experiment speedily proved, left no marks on it. Without much optimism Fen walked slowly upwards; at this stage the only thing he could do was to look about at random. And presently he came to the terrace of flat ground where Judy had tripped and fallen, and where he was able to make out the scanty, ground-level remains of a dismantled or ruined house. He paused irresolutely, listening, but apart from the steady hiss of the rain the silence seemed absolute. A moment later, however, his eye was caught by a dull metallic gleam in the torch-light, and he stopped to pick up a small automatic pistol from which, as the contents of its clip demonstrated, a single shot had been fired. Though admittedly equivocal, it was not, he felt, a very rea.s.suring discovery, except in so far as it indicated that he was still on the right track; and there remained the problem of what direction he should take now. For a few minutes he walked in continually widening circles centred on the spot where he had come on the gun, but without finding any trace that would help him. And he was just setting off in the upward direction, on the not specially cogent but unimprovable grounds that this would be a direct continuation of the line that Judy and her quarry had taken thus far, when he heard the scream.
It was not a loud scream, or a long one, but it was enough to indicate the way he must go, and a few moments hard running through ruin and darkness brought him