The Superintendent scratched his head. This was perplexing. It was safe to assume that the flag was not lowered until the Professor was dead, it followed that the photograph had not been taken by the Professor. Who then . . . ?
He stared out of the window and tried to concentrate on the problem : how to discover who had in fact taken the photograph ? But the monotonous rhythm of the train distracted him, and finally he put the reports away in his despatch-case and more or less abandoned the attempt at consecutive thought, resuming his idle gaze at the fields and hedges.
He became conscious that the Chief Constable was covertly watching him over the top of his paper. Realising that he was detected, Major Dillon lowered it and bestowed a friendly grin on the Superintendent.
“Seeing daylight ?” he asked.
Guest shook his head.
“No, sir, not yet,” he answered. “But it’s early yet,” he added, a little hurriedly ; he did not want the Chief Constable to reintroduce the topic of Scotland Yard. “There’s lots of evidence coming in, and plenty more to be collected. It’s too soon to start sifting it out. Liable to lead to false conclusions.”
“All right,” the Major answered reassuringly. “You go along your own road, Superintendent. I’ll stick to my word—it’s up to you to say when you want any help. And—er—perhaps, when you begin to see it as a whole, you’d better talk it over with me.”
“Very good, sir.” He spoke very respectfully, though to himself he wondered what earthly good it would do to make a sort of Father Confessor of the Chief Constable. A very decent sort, of course, but . . .
The conversation drifted away from “shop” to less specialised topics. The Major in particular displayed a remarkable knowledge of the sporting events of the day, and Guest began to wonder what kind of a show the two of them would put up when they dined with a literary panjandrum, as secretly, out of a derision based, on nervousness, he dubbed prospectively the celebrated publisher.
Nor did his confidence grow as the taxi, into which they bundled when London was reached, drew up before the pretentious portal of the Kemble Club. They were put to wait in a sort of lobby beside the magnificent staircase, whilst a page-boy went in search of Sir Guy Rogers. One or two members passed by and glanced at the couple, whose appearance was somewhat at variance with that of two or three other men who were evidently waiting also, and Guest became aware that to dine unchanged was not altogether in accordance with the custom of the club ; he even wondered whether his profession was written all over him. That Major Dillon seemed blissfully unaware of all this only added to the Superintendent’s discomfort.
Before many minutes had passed, however, the page-boy reappeared, followed by a tall and very .elegant gentleman, whose handsome features were crowned by waves of grey hair. The page-boy apparently contrived silently to indicate which were the publisher’s guests ; or perhaps it was the absence of evening dress. Sir Guy seemed entirely unconscious of any breach of etiquette, and advanced with a pleasant smile.
“Major Dillon ?”
“Yes,” said the Major, rising from his chair. “Sir Guy Rogers ? It’s very good of you to invite us to dine—ah, this is Superintendent Guest.”
“How d’you do ?” said Sir Guy, extending a slender hand. “Not at all,” he continued to the Major, “it’s a pleasure. And, I may add, a convenience· to me. Have to see the police, if they want you to, and I’d much rather it was out of business hours. But you’re in a bit of a hurry, aren’t you ? Right. Then let’s see about dinner.”
“Can we remove a little grime ?” enquired the Major, a suggestion which positively shocked Guest, though Sir Guy did not seem to find anything unusual in it.
They discussed three glasses of old dark sherry in a sitting-room full of members and guests. Sir Guy and the Chief Constable chatted easily enough about nothing in particular, whilst the Superintendent sat silent and embarrassed ; he had a new cause for this, insomuch as he had discovered, and extensively used, a hairbrush intended for the application of water to the human head, and he had applied it so vigorously that from time to time a chilly drop trickled down inside his collar.
But the sherry was excellent, and the major part of his unhappiness finally vanished when they were ushered, on their entry into the large dining-room, to a table in a quiet and secluded corner, where it was possible to talk about murders without being overheard by other diners.
Sir Guy, however, displayed no desire to talk of murders, or of anything else save himself and his business on the.one hand, and food and drink on the other. And at the outset of the meal these topics got intermixed in a manner calculated to confuse a country Superintendent with no literary pretensions.
“Devil of a day,” he remarked as the soup-plates were removed. “That’s what it is, though. Too many little books, too many little publishers, and not nearly enough big buyers. Give them a really big book, and what happens ? Goeblitz. Do you like Hock ? I think in this weather—and there’s still some Jesuitgarten 1921. Not of course a year to compare with 1911, but a good year. Yes, Goeblitz——”
“Sorry,” said the Major bluntly. “I’m afaid I’m” not much of a reader. Wisden’s Almanack, you know, and Country Life——”
“Aha !” cried the publisher, not in the least put out, “we must alter that. You ought to buy the whole of my new Empire Builders’ Library. You’ll find W. G. Grace is included. But, seriously—it’s no joke to be a publisher these days.”
And he launched into a long discourse, through which the names of books, authors, and fish occurred in what the Superintendent considered a wild miscellany. He even began to wonder whether the admirable Hock possessed a hidden potency ; and when from time to time Sir Guy appealed to him, he limited himself to an affirmative noise not far removed from a grunt. Fortunately this amply satisfied his loquacious host.
Apparently even Major Dillon felt after a while that he must come to business.
“Now about poor Professor Paley,” he said, seizing an opening whilst the publisher was engaged in a brief colloquy with the waiter.
“Ah, yes. Poor fellow. Very sad, very sad.” Sir Guy readily accepted the new topic. “And a great loss from my point of view. As a publisher I mean. Rather difficult personally, I found. Not—well, receptive of suggestions, if you understand me. And of course he wasn’t really interested in getting a big popular sale. Just as soon give his books away. Well, he could afford it. But that’s not business, you know.”
And in a moment he was away on another long disquisition on publishers and their relationship to their authors and their public.
“Funny thing,” Major Dillon firmly interrupted, “when you meet an author—oh, yes, I’ve even done that in my time—they always tell you they do all the work and the publisher gets the money. But publishers tell you that they’re the people who really tell the authors what to write. I gather that the trouble about Professor Paley was that he insisted on writing what he wanted to and didn’t much care whether anyone made anything out of it or not ?”
“That’s just about it,” said Sir Guy, smiling. “Though between you and me and the gate-post” (automatically he glanced at the Superintendent, who, however, was unconscious of any possible intention in the glance), “I liked his name to be in my catalogue. A distinguished name, after all.”
“Very much so,” Dillon replied. The Superintendent looked at him with a new respect; he seemed suddenly to be quite able to deal with the talkative publisher. “Now the thing is this,” and the Major went so far as to point an admonitory finger at Sir Guy’s waistcoat.
“Good,” said Sir Guy, “the oracle speaks.”
“Do you know what the Professor intended to say in his next book ? Between ourselves” (he tactfully avoided a repetition of Sir Guy’s phrase and glance), “the Professor was murdered—not a doubt of it. Now we want to know why. We also want to know how and who by——”
“By whom,” murmured the publisher.
“But if we know why,
we’re half-way to knowing how and who by,” the Major continued imperturbably.
“Just like my Crime and Horror series,” Sir Guy commented. “I’m sorry to hear this, though, about Paley.”
“Facts are facts,” the Chief Constable observed without much originality. “However, we’re looking for a motive. Now you perhaps can help. Would there be a motive in the book ?”
“Always a motive in the books I publish,” he replied. “But as for a motive for murder, I don’t know. Mind you, there was to be some stuff in the book. The Will to War he meant to call it. I wanted it to be not too—ponderous : there’s a big popular sale,you know, for a really good show-up of the causes of war. Middle-aged people like you and me—and that’s a compliment—are rather out of touch with the coming generation. The young people have got a contempt for the incompetent muddling which lands people in wars. A contempt for us. I’m not sure we don’t deserve it. There’s not much we can teach them—except perhaps about port.”
He was prompt to take his own cue, and the wine-waiter was no less prompt to place before him a heavily cut decanter.
“I don’t say I agree or disagree——” Major Dillon began.
“Of course not; there’s only one thing that doesn’t disagree with anyone—and here it is.” Sir Guy passed the decanter to the Superintendent. “Give me news of that,” he continued, vainly quoting R. L. S.
Guest raised his glass with the other two, and did his best to suggest after his first sip that he was expressing the same kind of sentiments as the more experienced Chief Constable. Certainly, he said to himself, this port had a way with it. Not like the stuff they sold you at an exorbitant price in Torgate.
“And now for our muttons,” said the Major, and made the well-fed Superintendent blink. “The motive, in fact. I gather the book was to have had some powerful pleading against war as a method of settling differences between civilised peoples. Is that it?”
“A bit more than that,” his host returned. “Professor Paley gave me to understand that it would contain some remarkable revelations. Remarkable, I suppose, to the people who understand international politics, rather than to readers of the penny Press. I gathered that he had got hold of two separate things. One was a set of documents showing the part which the vested interests—if you like, the firms who build armaments—had played in producing war. Not consciously, but indirectly. Their methods of getting orders from foreign countries. And from what he told me I gathered that the documents took the form of private letters from a big man in the armaments business written to his wife while he was on a world tour : in other words, while he was commercial travelling on a big scale. It will make him sit up, Rogers,’ he said to me, when we were talking it over. There’s a regular tariff all set out in black and white : a diamond brooch to the Under Secretary’s wife—an order for a submarine. A pearl necklace to the Secretary’s—a battle cruiser.’”
Sir Guy finished his glass of port and looked reproachfully at the Superintendent for his failure to circulate the decanter more rapidly.
“Did he say what firm ?” asked the Major.
Sir Guy laughed.
“No. But you can take it, it was one of the big fellows. And for the life of me, for that very reason, I can’t see that there’s a motive there. Pearl necklaces are all very well, but the most vested of interests draws a line somewhere—even a publisher.”
The Chief Constable nodded.
“And the other revelation which the book was to contain ?” he asked.
“I’m not so clear about it. But it was something he had got hold of in America. When I saw him, I don’t think he’d actually got it, but he knew pretty much what was in it.”
Hullo, thought Guest to himself, this sounds like Quirk again, and he plucked up courage to intervene, to the effect that he fancied the American document did not arrive till the very afternoon of the murder, and after the murder had been committed. The other two looked almost startled at his putting in his oar.
“Most likely I can get a sight of the document, whatever it is,” he added confidently.
Major Dillon took up the cudgels again, but, hard as he pressed the publisher, he could not get him to agree that it was likely that the book would have contained anything capable of provoking the murder of its author.
“After all,” he finally said, with a laugh, “the publisher has the last word. Sensationalism is all very well ; but libel is a thing we don’t care for—whatever indemnifying clauses we may put into our contracts. And murder is one worse than libel.”
The Superintendent would have liked to pursue the topic still further, but apparently the Major decided that there was no purpose in doing so. The talk swung back to what was evidently Sir Guy’s favourite topic : himself, his skill and difficulties as a publisher, the way in which he differed from other publishers in treating everyone fairly—authors, booksellers, public, and so forth. The Superintendent, who was unaccustomed to hear names which he regarded with awe on the station bookstalls bandied about as if their owners were mere ordinary human beings, was not a little impressed : the Chief Constable was less so.
At length they adjourned from the dining-room. Scarcely had they finished their coffee and got their long cigars well alight, when the Major sprang to his feet with an exclamation of dismay.
“By Jove, Sir Guy,” he said, “we must hurry, or we’ll miss our train. Devilish rude, but I can assure you I hate to break up the party, as it were. Still, there it is. A job’s a job.”
And the Superintendent found himself hustled into a taxi, amid a series of thank you’s and not at all’s, and being driven rapidly to, the station.
They just caught the train.
“Well, Superintendent,” asked the Chief Constable, “got anything useful out of that—apart from the dinner ?”
“Yes and no, sir. You see, there might be something in that armament stuff—but how are we to know who it was who wrote the letters ?”
“As to that, my dear man, if there’s no hint in the papers you found in the summer-house—well, it shouldn’t be impossible to get at it. Not so many firms, you know. And pre-war. And a big man. And married. Oh, lots to work on. If there’s no clue in the papers, let me know, and I’ll tackle it along the other line.”
And it has to be reported with regret that the Chief Constable yawned.
“Right, sir,” said Guest. And then he had another bright idea of his own. But, catching sight of yet another yawn, he decided to keep it to himself. That young Julian Paley—he was in an armament firm ; he might help the identification.
Major Dillon seemed conscious that his subordinate was eyeing him with some disfavour.
“Sorry, Superintendent,” he said apologetically, “but that fellow Rogers is such a devil of a wind-bag and talks so much about himself, that, ’pon my soul, I can hardly keep my eyes open.”
“Quite so, sir,”, answered Guest respectfully, whilst to himself he suggested that more likely it was the port.
This view, however, he revised later ; for had he not himself been remarkably abstemious, and had he not suddenly become aware that the Major was shaking his arm and that the train was at a standstill in Torgate station ?
CHAPTER XV
EXAMINES EVIDENCE
The Superintendent tumbled into bed thankfully enough, slept like a log, and woke to find another fine, sunny morning and the promise of another blazing hot day. The hour was early, and he lay quietly running over in his mind the new facts and suggestions which he had collected overnight.
It seemed quite possible that either the will or the book gave the key to the motive for the crime, but to begin by searching for motives seemed still the wrong procedure. The first obstacle which had to be overcome was the time of the murder ; and the second, the answering of the question “Who had access to the summer-house at that time ?” And there remained the cognate problem, how came the summer-house to be locked and the key inside ?
The Superintendent picked pencil and note
book from the table beside his bed. He had on the previous day made in the book a copy of his “timetable,” and to this he now added two new events.
2.45 : Flag seen to be half-mast.
4.0-4.15 : Photograph taken of Mr. Trent.
He stared at the amended list for some minutes, then sighed gently and put the notebook back on the table. He turned his attention back to the problem of the locked door, since the first of his new entries was conclusive.
There it was. The door locked ; only one key : the key inside the summer-house and on a table which the little American was positive none of the men who broke down the door had approached. There was—if Quirk was telling the truth—no possibility that one of those men had locked the door from the outside and kept the key in his pocket, intending to replace it inside the summer-house when ultimately the door was forced. And yet—by Jove, yes, that was a funny thing—whoever put down the key on that table had moved aside the book which was lying there. That suggested haste, rather than deliberation ; and it would be in keeping with the hasty thrusting of the key there as the discoverers of the tragedy burst into the room. “Discoverers”—but then one of them was murderer, not discoverer.
That was how it must have been done, for it was impossible—completely impossible, of that there was no question—for anyone to climb in through one of the windows. And from outside it was impossible so much as to see the little table, whilst the way in which the window opened made it, finally, impossible to throw the key on to it. From the railing along the edge of the cliff where Guest had stood and—good heavens, he had never read the report on that little chip of wood which he had carved out of the railing. . . .
The Superintendent sat up in bed with a sudden start. Was that it ? Someone had swung the key in through the window on a piece of cord—a double length of cord, it would be—and had gently drawn one end of the cord back through the loop of the ring. Yes, that certainly fitted the facts.
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