The first that Esdaile knew of all this was from the younger of Mollie's two maids. Monty and Audrey had arranged to dispense with the services of these two domestics, but Philip, still lingering on, had wanted the younger one at least back. She had promised to come, but had not done so, and Philip had sought her out. Thereupon she had said that she would rather not come.
"Why?" Philip had asked; but she had given no satisfactory reason.
He had then turned to the second maid, but with no better result.
After all, it didn't matter. It was very little trouble for himself and Monty to make their own breakfasts. They could take their other meals at the Chelsea Arts Club, and there would be no difficulty in getting a woman one or two days a week to clean.
Then, to his extreme astonishment, on the very day after Mollie's departure for Santon, he left Monty to a sandwich-and-coffee luncheon in the studio and came out of his house to find Lennox Street almost as full of people as it had been on the morning when the parachute had descended on the studio roof.
"What's the matter? Anything happened?" he asked the nearest loiterer at his gate; but he did not learn what had really happened till he reached the Club.
Certainly the joke, if it was a joke, appeared to be "on him." Simultaneously two grinning fellow-members thrust into his hand that morning's issue of theRoundabout. TheRoundabout, I should say, is theCircus's(much inferior) rival.
It contained a photograph of Esdaile's house, with the spot where the parachute had descended marked with a cross.
It was, of course, a thousand pities. No man likes the house he lives in held up to the idle public gaze. Had the annoying thing been submitted to my own paper I could have stopped it. Had it been a big thing I might even have stopped its appearance in theRoundabout, for, while we cut one another's throats in detail, we have our understandings in larger matters. Hurriedly I scanned the rest of the paper to see whether any letterpress went with the picture. None did. There was simply the photograph, with a couple of quite innocent descriptive lines underneath.
"Seems to me rather a stumer," I said to Willett. "Is Hodgson losing his grip a bit?"
"Haven't noticed it," Willett replied. "Sound man Hodgson. Doesn't often do things without a reason. I think we might go a bit slower on actresses and mannequins. This is the crash we were talking about the other morning, isn't it?"
"Yes. A wash-out I should have said."
"Perhaps he's playing the local-interest card. He's doing that just now. I don't see why we shouldn't do more of it."
"I think we'll wait for a better story than that anyway," I replied. "Well, let's get to work——"
But all that afternoon the thing worried me. It was a trifle, perhaps, but it was a trifle on the wrong side. More, unlike some other trifles, I already saw how dangerously capable of further development it was. I have told you what the attitude of the Presswas to this question of civil flying. It was one of simply awaiting events. But all the time events were fermenting, so to speak. High over our heads Olympian minds were shaping and re-shaping policies and plans, and Argus eyes were tirelessly watching for indications of the receptivity of the popular mind. Had Hodgson heard something that we had not? As you sometimes see an insignificant person's affairs, of no interest in themselves, solemnly weighed by the Lords of Appeal because of some novel and far-reaching point they raise, was something in the nature of a Test Case now being sought? Had we on theCircusbeen wrong in assuming that the idea was simply to catch and make an example of the careless joy-rider and the idiot who stunted over towns? Was some more important point to be raised, and had Hodgson had wind of it?
I was inclined to think not, and for the reason I have just given. Make a thing big enough, and we hang fairly well together; but take the whips off, so to speak, and we go as we please. If it had been as important as all that we should have heard of it. Willett, who is a youngster of parts, was in all probability right. Hodgson was merely catering for the local interest.
But still I was uneasy, and my uneasiness had nothing to do with the annoyance the publication of the photograph of the house in Lennox Street must cause Esdaile. I was thinking of far graver possible consequences. Even the lightest measure of Publicity is not a thing to be trifled with. Here I know what I am talking about. The merry fellows of the Chelsea Arts Club might pull Esdaile's leg about his haunted house, and want to know whether the White Lady dropped any hairpins as she passed, or if the horrible shroudedfigure with the crimson-dripping hands would make a good film; but we journalists have to take these things a good deal more seriously than that. Publicity, sometimes of the most incredibly silly kind, is our meat and drink and hourly breath. All day and every day our brains are on the stretch in our endeavors to secure it. We bring our heaviest guns to bear on the elusive thing, are sure we can't possibly miss it this time, let fly, and lo! we have missed after all. Like a pithball on a fountain, it is still dancing there untouched, and any penny peashooter may bring it down when all our trained intelligence has failed.
And what would be the effects on our Case if it came down?
Well, you can see that for yourself. In obscurity lay our hope that the thing might remain what on the face of it it appeared to be. Switch the arc-lamps of the great papers on to it, with the whole power-house of dynamic government behind them, and all was over. Not an aspect of the Case would go unprobed to the very bottom, and the hungry newspapers would find themselves, not with a mere aeroplane crash that could be dismissed in a couple of lines, but with a really fine fat, first-class Murder Case that would keep them merrily going for weeks.
And I can assure you that we all wanted very badly indeed just such a Case. We wanted it for more reasons than one. We wanted it, as we always do, in the ordinary way of our business, but much more we wanted it to take people's minds off other matters. We wanted it for the same reason that made us resolutely print those pictures of girls bathing during the blackest days of the War. We wanted it because the Man in the Public-house was restless and showed adisposition to pry into affairs in which his interference is only wanted when a General Election draws near. Bathing girls were very well in their way; a really high-class line in Divorce Cases would have outstripped them easily, if I may be permitted the unintentional expression; but the man who could have given us on theCircusthe first Assassination in the Air could have named his own price for it.
The flat in which I live with the old housekeeper who looks after me is not in Chelsea at all, but a quarter of an hour's walk away, just round the corner from Queen's Gate. It is exceedingly comfortable (as indeed it should be considering the rent I am made to pay for it), I have my own furniture, and on the whole I don't ask for a much better place to work in. For, quite apart from my paper, I do work, and I don't want to give you the impression that the whole of my leisure time is given over to the investigation of what happens to my Chelsea friends.
I was, as a matter of fact, particularly busy just about that time. Day after day I was getting up at half-past six in the morning, breakfasting at my table as I worked, and continuing without interruption till it was time for luncheon and the office. Since you are probably not in the white-elephant line of business, I won't tell you which of my novels I was at work on. I will only say that I at any rate was interested in it, and, severe as was the strain of writing from seven o'clock in the morning till midday, I sometimes hatedto break off. Mrs. Jardine had orders not to admit anybody whomsoever between those hours, and obeyed them to the letter.
You may judge then of my surprise when there walked into my study at nine o'clock in the morning, and not over Mrs. Jardine's dead body, Billy Mackwith.
"Don't scold the old lady," he began without preface. "I suppose she hadn't any barbed wire except that on her chin—it is rather like one of the gooseberries we used to make on the old wiring-course. I had to see you."
"Had breakfast? Have a cup of coffee?" I asked him.
"Nothing, thanks. Well, I think I saved friend Philip a certain amount of trouble yesterday," he said, putting down his hat, stick and gloves. I don't think Mackwith buys a glossy new silk topper every time he goes out, but I do honestly believe he buys a new pair of lemon-colored gloves.
"Oh? How was that?"
"At the inquest on that fellow," he replied. "And by the way, I saw theRoundabouttoo. I suppose it has its humorous side, but it's very annoying too. I should go for 'em for libel. A house can be libeled, you know. Anyway, it's a good job he's out of town."
I was on the point of saying, "A good job he's what?" when I checked myself. If you remember, I had last seen William Mackwith, K.C., when I had left him at Sloane Square Station an hour or two after that confounded aeroplane accident. He and Hubbard had gone off to keep their respective appointments, while I myself had followed our check-coated friend Westbury into a public-house. Whether either Esdaileor Hubbard had seen him since I didn't know. I now gathered that Billy at any rate hadn't seen Esdaile.
"Yes?" I said. "What trouble have you been saving him?"
"Well, I told you—I saved him the bother of stopping for the inquest."
I had of course known that there must be an inquest, but I suppose I had been busy and had forgotten it again. This began to be interesting.
"Tell me about the inquest," I said.
He took a cigarette from his case and offered me one. Then he continued between puffs.
"Well, as a matter of fact there wasn't very much trouble. One man seemed inclined to be cantankerous, but we brought it in Misadventure all right. We——"
I imagine that at this point he caught sight of the expression on my face, for he stopped suddenly.
"Esdaile did go out of town, didn't he?" he asked.
"I'll tell you about Esdaile in a moment. Go on about the inquest."
He seemed puzzled, but went on.
"Of course, that was my idea in speaking to that Inspector that morning. It would have been a pity to upset the Esdailes' plans. So I explained this to the Inspector and gave him my card—said I hadn't seen very much, but as much as anybody else—result, I was made foreman of the jury."
Here I had a little flash of illumination as regards Inspector Webster too. Esdaile, if you remember, had said to him, "Yes, that was Mr. Mackwith, the King's Counsel; didn't you know?" and Webster had answered, "Was he indeed, sir?" My respect for theInspector's powers of giving nothing away went up several hundreds per cent. Apparently it was the Inspector who had seen to it that Billy had been put on the jury.
"Well, you were made foreman. You said one man gave trouble. Who, and why?"
"Oh, some fellow or other—Westcott or Westmacott I think his name was—I forget. Insisted on viewing the body. Wanted his money's worth I suppose. He was sorry he did though."
This was more and more interesting. I asked what sort of a man this Westmacott was.
"The sort of fellow who would be down in the cellar before his wife and children when there was an air-raid on, I should say," Billy replied. "Awful nuisance of a man. But he got his all right. He'll probably be taking solid food again this day week."
"Then you did see the body?"
"Had to, if only to keep this fellow quiet. He stuck out right to the finish too, but we got our dozen without him. Prima facie case, of course. Death by burning, and what wasn't that was general smash-up."
"Was a doctor called?"
"The divisional surgeon was there, but he quite agreed, and I saw to the rest in my capacity as foreman. There was only one man who wasn't satisfied, and he was busy——" Billy twinkled wickedly.
You may imagine how I was beginning to relish all this. The Chelsea Arts with its rags about haunted houses and White Ladies who dropped hairpins was well enough in its way, but its humor could not compare for a moment with the spectacle of a rising King's Counsel who practically forced himself on to a jury-panel, got himself made foreman, and then burkedinquiry by shutting up the only juryman who had as much as a suspicion of the dangerous truth—and all this in the whitest innocence and purest good faith! I could have laughed aloud. Had he been a willing instrument in the affair he could not have done his work more efficiently and completely.
"Is the poor fellow buried yet?" I asked in a suppressed voice.
"Yesterday," said Billy.
"And he can't be dug up again?"
Mackwith gave me a sharp look. "What do you mean?" he asked quickly.
"Dug. Past participle of the verb to dig. I mean is he buried once for all?"
"Short of an Exhumation Order from the Home Secretary he is. I don't understand you."
"And that's rather difficult to get, isn't it?" I continued.
"I should say the North Pole was comparatively easy," Billy replied.
At this point my laughter really became too much for me. I remember hoping that it didn't seem too rude, but I couldn't help it. Billy let me finish, and then asked quietly, even gravely, "Now if you're feeling better, will you please explain?"
I suppose my laughter had been just a little hysterical. As I have already told you, I myself stand only on the verge of this Case; but not so my friends, and Esdaile in particular. I remembered—and deep under that rather remarkable laughter it moved me more than a little to do so—the extraordinary range and sweep of emotions that had shaken Esdaile in the course of a single day. I remembered the bright strained tension of those first minutes after he had come up out of thecellar, the shock of that telephone message from the hospital that had told him what had happened to a friend. I remembered that black depression when Hubbard and I had found him waiting alone in his house for Monty. I remembered his ache on Joan Merrow's account, our later talk with Monty, his nascent and grim resolve that in the teeth of all the world the accident theory should be maintained, his dismay when he had realized what a post-mortem examination might disclose. I ran over again his whole day, from that merry breakfast-party to the appearance of Inspector Webster in our midst at ten o'clock at night.... Well, one peril was now safely past. In the absence of the Exhumation Order of which Mackwith spoke, there remained no tittle of material evidence save a battered bit of nickel-steel in Westbury's possession or in that of the police. If only for Esdaile's sake, I felt as if a weight had been lifted from me.
And, on the top of all, Billy Mackwith's innocent complicity must have moved me to that inane outburst.
"Well, for one thing, Esdaile isn't out of town at all," I said, wiping my eyes.
"Well, I thought he was. That isn't the joke, is it?"
"Not altogether. You see——"
"Do you mean that stupidRoundaboutthing?"
"No.... I beg your pardon, Billy. It came over me all of a sudden. Now I think I can tell you——"
And so another was added to our nicely-lengthening list of Principals in the Case.
While I spoke Billy had risen, and was pretending to examine the prints on my walls. I continued to talk; talking was, in fact, my morning's work that day. I finished, and there was a long silence. I thought my barrister-friend would never have done looking at those prints.
Then suddenly he crossed over to my table and stood leaning lightly on his fingertips.
"Why wasn't I told this sooner?" he asked, his eyes brightly on mine.
For a moment I thought he meant that our neglect to inform him had landed him into this equivocal position with regard to the coroner's jury, and was beginning to explain that, being everybody's business, it had also apparently been nobody's. But he cut me short.
"Oh, I don't mean that. Leave the inquest out of it for the present. What I mean is that I could have saved our friend a good deal of mental pain if I'd known—and you too," he added, "from the way you laughed just now."
"How?" I asked.
"In this way," he replied, sitting down on the edge of my table and giving his striped cashmere trousers a little hitch. "Say that a shot has been fired.... Philip, I take it, has been worrying about the consequences to this fellow Smith, and incidentally to Miss Merrow. Now if I'd been there to ask Rooke a few material questions I think I could have assured him that it's a thousand to one there won't be any consequences."
"Why not?"
"The state of the body," he replied promptly. "Rooke saw it, you say, or at any rate quite enough of it; I saw it too; and, shot or no shot, it wouldn't have taken me two minutes to get out of Rooke that there was no earthly possibility of proving that a shot caused death."
"You mean there were so many other good reasons?"
"Well, I'm not a doctor, but I should say at least a dozen. No wonder that fellow Westbury—ah, that's his name, not Westcott—had to make a bolt for it. Unless somebody can be produced who actually saw the shot fired there won't be the ghost of a Case, and I'm inclined to think that even then it would reduce itself to shooting with intent to kill or wound—which is a felony, of course, but not quite the same thing as murder. No, I think you can take it from me that there won't be any consequences."
I pondered this for a moment. Then I saw the flaw in it. Every man to his trade. Here was the advocate speaking, his whole acute mind trained to one single end—the getting of his man off. But I myself work in a different material and saw the Case from my own angle.
"One moment," I interposed. "When you say consequences you mean legal consequences? In other words he'd slip through your fingers simply because nobody actually saw him do it?"
"He wouldn't even be charged. That was practically a certainty before the inquest. It's overwhelming now the other fellow's buried."
"But legal consequences are not the only kind of consequences there are in the world."
"Oh, I'm not speaking of moral consequences. They're quite another matter," quoth Billy.
"Not as regards Esdaile's having a rotten time over this," I differed. "Let's look at it from another point of view for a moment. Neither you nor I know Smith. But Hubbard and Esdaile do, and there's this friendship between them. And mark you, friendship too isn't always the same thing it was before the War. There were lots of men we called friends then very much as a matter of habit; I mean it didn't often occur to you to ask what kind of a man your friend would be when it came to the pinch. We've all made new friends, and there are some of the old ones whose names we never want to hear again. You see what I mean? I mean the bond must be pretty strong for two men like Esdaile and Hubbard to take instantly to the thought of shielding Smith like ducks taking to water. I watched them—it was really exciting—you could read both their faces like books. Very well. Up to this point we're both talking the same language. When we say consequences we mean legal consequences.
"But here's where the difference comes in. I don't know what Hubbard's views are, as I haven't seen him since that night; but I do know what Esdaile's are. He's shielding Smith—but only till he hears what he's got to say for himself. He doesn't want to condemn him unheard. I admit that in the meantime he's taken certain rather risky steps, and my own opinion is that he won't find it very easy if he wants to retrace them again; the river'd have to be dredged for a pistol, for example, and Lord only knows what sort of a reason he'd give for even having interfered at all. But my point is that he's done nothing final yet.Smith's got to satisfy him, and if he can't—well, it can't be quite the same between them again after that, can it?"
"You mean their friendship's broken?"
"Well, that's not quite the way I should put it. It might break, or possibly it might not. What I mean is that a friendship with a man who's killed other men in battle isn't the same thing as one with a man who murders another in peace-time. It may be as good for all I know, as I haven't done either, but obviously it isn't the same."
"No, I suppose not," Mackwith agreed. "And as for retracing his steps, I agree with you that the best thing he can do is to keep his mouth shut. I certainly intend to about that inquest. Life's too short to go moving for Exhumation Orders."
"Well, next there's Joan Merrow. Exactly the same thing applies to her. Is she going to marry a soldier or an assassin? Is Esdaile going to let her? He's her guardian for all practical purposes, and he's got that question to answer."
The barrister laughed. "I don't think he need worry about that. Miss Merrow strikes me as a young woman who won't stand any nonsense from guardians. Well," he took up his hat and stick, "I must be getting along. I didn't expect all this when I came in, but it seems to me the Case is over now. Barring these moral consequences of yours, it practically ended when I gave in our verdict yesterday."
"I hope you're right," I replied. "I thought so myself a few days ago, though, and that evening a Police Inspector marched in."
He stopped at the door and spoke over his shoulder.
"Oh? You seem doubtful. Any reason?"
"None," I replied. "Only what women call a sort of feeling about it."
Mackwith laughed.
"We'll see about that when it comes," he said. "So long——"
The surface indications were of course of the very slightest. So far they consisted merely of the photograph in theRoundabout, my speculations whether Hodgson had anything up his sleeve, and similar trifles. But others were pending. The danger of the coroner's inquest might be safely past, but at least half a dozen other rocks loomed immediately ahead. The Aiglon Company, for example, would want to know what had gone wrong with their machine, and the manufacturers would be even more interested. The same with the parachute people. The Aero Club and the Royal Aeronautical Society both have their Accidents Investigation Committees, and it was quite likely that claims against various Insurance Offices had already been lodged. You cannot thrust a finger into the close web of modern life without stirring up all manner of complexities. I suppose it was these that I had already begun to fear.
Perhaps most immediate of all was the question of unauthorized flying. What had that machine been doing over London at all? Military machines come and go under orders, but not commercial planes piloted by civilian aeronauts. Setting such things as Murder and Manslaughter entirely on one side, was it not probable that Smith would be called to book on thisaccount? From our point of view it was obviously most undesirable that he should be brought into Court on any charge at all; but what if we couldn't prevent it? What if, in the inhuman collision of powerful business interests behind, the lawyers were to get to work—an Insurance Company resist a claim, say, or the Aiglon people proceed against the manufacturers on a point of warranty? You may think I was seeing lions in the path, but it is never safe to reckon on meeting nothing more formidable than a sheep. And I have nothing against lawyers as a class. I don't think Billy Mackwith would pick my pocket of a single sixpence. But I do believe they are like the road-mender with the stone. He hit it with his hammer ten times without breaking it, and was then asked whether he did not think he would have a better chance of splitting it if he turned it splitting-edge uppermost. "How do you know I want to split it?" he replied. I suspect even Billy of not wanting to split it sometimes.
"Willett!" I called as I entered my office after lunch that day. "Just get me out the latest thing about Air Navigation, will you?"
"Is the new one out yet?" Willett replied, walking to the big glass-fronted cupboard where we keep the current papers of this kind; the others are on the library shelves downstairs. "I think they were withdrawn. I seem to remember sending to the Stationery Office and being told there'd been a muddle of some sort."
"There must be something in force," I said. "I want that, whatever it is."
"Just a moment—ah, here we are!"
Willett was both right and wrong. A certain issueof Statutory Rules and Orders had as a matter of fact been withdrawn, but an amended reprint was now available. He handed the slender white booklet to me. It was dated April 30th, 1919, and had therefore been in force for some days at the time of the Lennox Street accident.
I walked to my desk and settled down to the study of it.
I don't know that I was very much the wiser for my efforts. So much seemed to be in the air in every sense of the word. The paper was not even an Act, but an Order, and it seemed to me that its phrases about "contravention of these Regulations" might in practice mean almost anything. What, for example, did "stress of weather or other unavoidable cause" mean? What would happen in case of a kind of accident expressly excluded from the Order—"within a circle of a radius of one mile from the center of a licensed aerodrome"? What about the special cases permitted "by direction of the Secretary of State on the recommendation of a Government Department"? I don't mean that the intention of it all wasn't plain enough. The drafters of the Regulations had done the best they could in a new and totally unexplored field. For all practical purposes this new science was just as old as the War, and these detailed points of law had not arisen during the War. But they were coming up now, a whole body of practice still to make, and any youngster who chose could loop the loop and what little proved Law there was at one and the same time.
In fact, the only quite unmistakable paragraph I found was the one that promised proper castigation "to any person obstructing or impeding the authorities" and so forth—that is to say, Hubbard, Esdaile,myself and the rest of our little gang of law-breakers.
And, before I pass on, bear with me for one moment while I ask you to observe how all History began to loom behind our Case, ready at any moment to drive it irresistibly forward. For that four-centuries-old Upspringing of daring and glory and adventure that we call the Renaissance is come suddenly and magically into our midst again to-day. There are now to seek and to chart and to possess Indies and Orients, not of the unembraced and bridal waters, but of the already defeated and subject Air. Our age hears the old imperious call, and across four hundred years of time the hands of a George receive Romance from those of an Elizabeth. It may seem a far cry from this to the Man in the Public-house, but it crept and lapped about our Case like a slowly-mounting flood. Idle rumors brought with the milk to Chelsea doorsteps; a Press eager to take its lead from any momentary whiff that ruffles the popular mind; a Government that without that Press could not govern for a week; and the radiance of this new sunburst over all—this is the apparatus of our Drakes and Burleighs of to-day. And, so long as the mighty thing went forward unimpeded, what did any individual matter?
"Foreman? You may well say foreman! But he hasn't finished with me yet! You've seen what it says in to-day'sRoundabout, haven't you? Very well, young-fellow-me-lad; you watch it! They laugh best that laugh last. It isn't over yet!"
I was grinding my teeth behind my copy of thepaper he had just mentioned. The thick-headed fool had done it. I was not reading the paper; I was merely using it to hide behind as I stood at the Public-house counter with one foot on the brass rail.
"Over? It hasn't begun yet!" Westbury continued, his convex eyes glaring from one face to another. "It's ventilation these things want—ventilation in the public Press—and I tell you I haven't started yet! I went into this Case out of public spirit—'Webster,' I says to our friend, 'if you want me you know where to find me'—I'm a busy man with my own private affairs to look after, but right's right and I'm not the man to hang back when forward's the word—and if they think I'm as easy stopped as all that they're mistaken, K.C. or no K.C.! The body was viewed—some of 'em didn't want to, but I saw to that—but I contend there ought to have been a proper post-mortem. And you may take it from me that if there had been this Case would have gone forward."
"Do you mean to a Criminal Court, Harry?" a voice asked.
"I said gone forward; I didn't say what Court. We'll see about Courts by and by. This Mister Smith or whatever his name is will be had up for flying to the danger of the public, and we'll see what happens then!"
Once more I vehemently cursed him. It was half-past eight at night, with nothing unusual doing at the office, and I had left Willett in charge so that I might find Westbury. It was perfectly certain that after Hodgson's leading article of that morning Westbury would not spend the evening in the retirement of his home, but would be out for what young Willett calls "gin-and-glory." As it happened, I hadrun him to earth at my very first attempt, in the same Saloon Bar in which I had first seen him.
You may know Hodgson's leading-article style. If we on theCircusdon't imitate it it is not that we deny that it "gets across." It is allusive, rorty and familiar, and there is frequently common sense behind it. If the Man in the Public-house likes his news served up in that way you can't blame Hodgson for meeting his wishes. This is what he had written, no doubt sending his Chelsea sales up by hundreds of quires:—
"TOM, DICK AND ICARUS.
"Our correspondent Mr. Harry Westbury is some lad. You will find his letter at the foot of the next column to this. Why, asks Harry, in these days when you may consider yourself lucky to have a roof over your head at all, should your head and that roof be brought into sudden and violent contact? Not that Harry is a jumper; he isn't going to challenge Joe Darby; but the ceiling and your occiput can establish connection just the same if the former comes down on the latter. What he really means is that aeroplanes, subject to sudden syncopes of the engines, have no business over Chelsea's pleasant roofs at all."H.W. does not claim that he personally suffered damage from the crash we reported last Friday. But he is a respected House and Estate Agent residing in the district and speaks feelingly.C'est son métier, as our gallant and Gallic Allies say. He means, we take it, that if civil aviation is to develop, corresponding safeguards must be developed side by side with it. Here we are with Harry all the way. Our Olympians may have burst a number of brain-cells over the present Regulations, but they will have to find a new wave-length. Tom, Dick and Harry we know, but we have not yet been properly introduced to Tom, Dick and Icarus. No, sir, not with building materials at their present price and the plumber rolling up in his Rolls-Ford. The pilot who came down in Chelsea last Thursday is said to have been employed by the Aiglon Company. Nuff said. If the Aiglon or any other Company is out for public support it knows what to do. In the meantime we hope Mr. Westbury won't raise his house premiums. But that is another story.
"Our correspondent Mr. Harry Westbury is some lad. You will find his letter at the foot of the next column to this. Why, asks Harry, in these days when you may consider yourself lucky to have a roof over your head at all, should your head and that roof be brought into sudden and violent contact? Not that Harry is a jumper; he isn't going to challenge Joe Darby; but the ceiling and your occiput can establish connection just the same if the former comes down on the latter. What he really means is that aeroplanes, subject to sudden syncopes of the engines, have no business over Chelsea's pleasant roofs at all.
"H.W. does not claim that he personally suffered damage from the crash we reported last Friday. But he is a respected House and Estate Agent residing in the district and speaks feelingly.C'est son métier, as our gallant and Gallic Allies say. He means, we take it, that if civil aviation is to develop, corresponding safeguards must be developed side by side with it. Here we are with Harry all the way. Our Olympians may have burst a number of brain-cells over the present Regulations, but they will have to find a new wave-length. Tom, Dick and Harry we know, but we have not yet been properly introduced to Tom, Dick and Icarus. No, sir, not with building materials at their present price and the plumber rolling up in his Rolls-Ford. The pilot who came down in Chelsea last Thursday is said to have been employed by the Aiglon Company. Nuff said. If the Aiglon or any other Company is out for public support it knows what to do. In the meantime we hope Mr. Westbury won't raise his house premiums. But that is another story.
"The Man in the Public-house."
That was the whole text of it. Was it fair comment on a matter of public interest? Well, I don't say it wasn't. Was it a timely reminder that high-spirited lads who had lately been praised for their dare-devilry must now pull themselves together and fall into line with the new conditions? Very likely. Was it a legitimate attempt to arouse interest in the age's new wonder, or merely a political stick with which covertly to beat some high official dog or other? I didn't know.
For my mind was occupied with quite other thoughts. From round the edge of my paper I was trying to sum up Westbury—a young man, but unexercised; seldom drunk, as a man in decent physical condition would have been on half that he swallowed, but already habituated and inured; probably quite well-to-do, in that mysterious way that causes tradesmen quietly to acquire their own houses and to drive in their own two-seaters to places of entertainment such as that I was in; and yet in a sense a minor man of affairs as distinct from a tradesman, a cut above the shirt-sleeves-and-counter business, if not exactly entitled to style his occupation a profession. He had got over the first overweening stage of the vanity of that day's publicity; he was now a little disparaging what he wouldn't have allowed anybody else to disparage; was treating Hodgson quite as a familiar, in fact, which as far as I was concerned he was perfectly at liberty to do. A dangerous beast, I thought again, and none the less dangerous now that Billy Mackwith, as foreman of that coroner's jury, had got his back thoroughly up.
"Yes, Mr. Mackwith, K.C. or O.B.E., or whatever you call yourself," he was muttering again, "they laugh best that laugh last. If he'd even said to me,'What'syouropinion, sir?' I won't say but what I should have thought a bit more of him, but him and his silk hat and gloves ... you wait a bit! There's a few will be surprised before this Case is over!"
It seemed to me that he scarcely took the trouble to veil what he really meant. Nor was I surprised at the way in which his hearers evidently took his words. For, looking from his cunning yet stupid face to the six or seven other faces about him, I could make a guess at their attitude too. Remember those first faint rumors that had found their way with the morning's milk to Audrey Cunningham's doorstep. Remember what whispered currency they must have had before they had come to Audrey at all. Remember that photograph in theRoundaboutthat had filled Lennox Street with a gaping crowd that morning, a crowd that had taken a couple of days to diminish and die away. Esdaile told me later, too, that for a week he had been conscious of turning heads as he had walked along the streets.... Oh, I could have made this Case of ours a thing of pistols and parachutes only, but I wished to go a little farther than that. Not that I have any particular views on mass-suggestion at large. My business is simply to observe its working. And here I was, in a Saloon Bar, observing it in a very curious form.
For I think that every single member of the group to which I was listening behind my newspaper had more than an idea of what Westbury really meant. I think they knew perfectly well that when he spoke of flying to the public danger he meant very, very much more. I don't think there was one of them who had not heard the story of Inspector Webster and the bullet. Secretive as he was, he would be garrulousamong his intimates if garrulity enhanced his self-importance. I am perfectly certain that every one of them knew all this, knew that he had been thwarted in his legitimate demand for a post-mortem examination, and knew in addition something else that I also was to know by and by.
Then suddenly something happened that placed all this beyond any doubt whatever.
Besides their own party, I was the only person at that end of the room, and I had been there long enough to have drunk three glasses of beer instead of the one that still stood only half empty on the counter at my elbow. As I listened the voices suddenly dropped. There was a minute of whispering, during which (realizing a little late that eavesdroppers must keep up appearances) I finished my beer and ordered a second glass. Then Westbury's voice rose again.
"Yes, 'corresponding safeguards or words to that effect,'" he said. "I gave my copy of the paper away. Er——"
The last was a sudden clearing of his throat, evidently intended to attract attention—my attention. I half dropped the paper and saw the convex eyes on mine.
"If that paper belongs to the house, sir, might I have a glance at it just for one moment?" he said.
I had bought that copy of theRoundaboutmyself, but I knew that that was in no sense the point. Without a word I handed it to Mr. Westbury. My second glass of beer was placed before me, and as I half turned to get a coin from my pocket I felt, positivelyfelt, their eyes on me. I also felt their removal as I took up my change and resumed my former attitude. Westbury had taken the paper with a "Thank you, sir."
"Ah, it's open at the very page. Begin here, Tom," he said. "'If civil aviation is to develop——'"
And he passed the paper to one of his companions.
I had not the least intention of leaving. I was perfectly well aware that Westbury had not wanted that paper, but had wanted to see my face. He was not likely to recognize it as that of the younger novelist whose portrait appears publicly from time to time, since in order to maintain that humorous status I have for a dozen years refrained from having my photograph taken at all; but I knew enough of my man to be sure that little had escaped him during that half hour or so when he had occupied that position of privilege outside Esdaile's French window, and that he probably remembered every face of that breakfast-party—Mackwith's and my own among the rest. That was why I had no thought of leaving. He was hardly the kind of man I should have had much to say to in the ordinary course, but if he saw fit to challenge me, well and good. In fact, I hadn't very much choice in the matter. I had only to picture to myself what sort of glances would be exchanged among them were I suddenly to finish my beer and walk out and my remaining became almost a necessity. Nay,hehad already challengedmewhen he had borrowed my paper. My only doubt was whether, in view of that whispered conversation and of the dimensions Rumor had now attained, they hadn't all challenged me.
The next moment Mr. Westbury had gone still farther. He had also chosen the ground on which our duel, if there was to be a duel, was to take place. ThePublic-house has its own punctilio. I wouldn't go the length of saying that you can't ask a stranger for a match without offering to buy him a drink in return, but such invitations are given on quite slight occasions. I was not surprised, therefore, when Mr. Westbury, catching my eye, acknowledged the loan of the paper by saying, "Will you have a drink, sir?"
So I had in a sense either to eat his salt or refuse it. I did not hesitate. Certainly that beer was salt enough.
"Thank you," I replied.
"And what is it, sir?"
"I'll have another glass of beer."
He ordered it. Then, "I think we've met before," he said.
The silence of the others was suddenly very noticeable. It was for all the world as if some referee had ordered, "Seconds out of the ring."
"I'm afraid I don't quite——" I began.
"Well, I won't say it got as far as an intro," he took me up, "but weren't you at a certain house in Lennox Street when an accident occurred the other day?"
"I was, but I wasn't aware——"
"Oh, I wasn't inside the house. But I was able to be of some little assistance outside," he replied. "A very curious affair, sir," he added tentatively.
"Rather a sad one," I replied.
There was a pause. "Chelsea's very much interested in that accident," he continued.
I answered that I didn't live in Chelsea.
Then suddenly he became almost amiable; but for all his amiability his eyes were like the hard-boiled eggs on the counter, only a trifle yellower.
"Well, that's two of you gentlemen I've met now," he said. "I haven't the pleasure of knowing yourname, but the other gentleman was Mr. Mackwith."
There was a certain correctness about this opening that I had reluctantly to acknowledge. He may or may not have known my name—the chances were that he had already ascertained it—but I read his thought. A few minutes ago, possibly before he had become aware of my presence, he had spoken pretty freely of Mackwith; he was now obviously asking himself whether I had overheard this. In all probability I had, but in such cases the official attitude is the best. Had Mr. Westbury been an administrator I could have imagined him penning a minute: "This does not come within the knowledge of this Department."
"Yes," he continued after a pause, "I had the pleasure of sitting on a coroner's jury with Mr. Mackwith the other day."
"Really?"
"Yes, and strange as it may seem, in connection with this very accident we're speaking of."
"That's very interesting," I said genially. "I haven't seen Mr. Mackwith since the occurrence. What happened at the inquest on the unfortunate man?"
"The verdict was in the papers, sir. And my own views are in that paper my friend is reading. They're twice over, as a matter of fact, once in a letter of mine they printed and once in the editor's remarks on it."
"Ah, then you're Mr. Westbury!" I exclaimed with feigned surprise. "I was reading both your letter and the article just now. I congratulate you. I see you're in touch with both sides."
Mr. Westbury looked at me with mistrust. "What both sides?" he asked.
"With both the men who came down that morning," I replied. "You were at the inquest on one of them, and you very properly call for an inquiry into the other man's conduct."
"I do!" he said so vindictively that he might almost have been spitting the two words into one of the sawdust-filled spittoons. "I do more than call, Mr.——" he glared.
"Oh? But how can you do more?" I asked politely. "There are certain prescribed forms in such cases, and if inquiry on those lines turns out to be satisfactory I should have said there was nothing more to be done?"
"Ah! If!" said Westbury, with the greatest intensity of meaning.
There was a palm in a copper pot behind him, and above his head a picture of a huntsman holding up a fox over the baying pack preparatory to drinking Somebody's Whisky. My eyes wandered reflectively to these objects for a moment; then I took a further step. It seemed to me too late to draw back now.
"But—well, since we are discussing this I wish you could be a little plainer," I said. "You say all Chelsea's interested in this Case, and I don't live in Chelsea. Why is Chelsea so interested?"
He replied promptly enough. "Because, sir, of certain things that don't appear on the surface of which I happen to have some knowledge."
"May I ask what things?"
He echoed me.
"And may I ask you something, and that is whether you happen to be aware that the police searched certain premises the other morning?"
"Do you mean the morning of the accident?"
"I donotmean the morning of the accident. I'm speaking of last Friday morning, at six o'clock, before anybody was about."
I considered a moment. Then, "But why not?" I replied. "Is there anything unusual about that? Surely when an accident takes place the police are the proper people to investigate it?"
I thought he would have jumped out of his chair with vehemence.
"Ah!" he cried. "Now you're talking! That's more like! The proper people? So they are; you stick to that! And now I'll ask you this: If that's so, why keep things back from them? Why this hushing up? Answer me that. Or bring some of your friends to answer it. That's all I have to say!"
And he flung himself back in his chair and continued to mutter softly.
It was evident that his choler against Mackwith had risen again. What had passed between the two men was no less plain. If Mackwith was right in his estimate of this fellow, air-raid nights spent in cellars are not the best of training for duties so unpleasant as those a coroner's inquest sometimes involves. Billy, on the other hand, did his bit in a Field Company and is tempered metal throughout. In any contest of wills between two such men there was no doubt which would be the victor. It had hardly occurred to Billy that there was a contest. Innocently and unconsciously, he had ridden roughshod over Westbury, and, if Westbury's mutterings meant anything, was to suffer for it.
"But," I said presently, "I'm afraid I don't understand even yet. It seems to me you're bringing a charge against somebody of interfering in a veryserious matter. If anybody has interfered I agree with you that it's a public scandal and ought to be exposed. But I can't believe I've understood you properly."
He did not reply.
"And not only that," I continued, "but, if you'll forgive my saying so, you're neither bringing a charge nor leaving it alone."
Here, for the first time, a third person put in an aside.
"Tell him about that, Harry," a voice whispered.
(And, feeling pretty sure that I could guess what "That" was, I thought, "Now for that wearisome bullet story all over again!")
"I need hardly say," I went on, "that if you have any such charge to make there's not a single person who was there who won't gladly help you."
("Tell him about that, Harry," the voice whispered again.)
Then it was that Mr. Westbury "went back on" that eager group of mutes who had so scrupulously kept the ring for us. I saw their faces fall as, with a little jerk of his head to me, he rose. Whatever the "That" was they wished him to tell me, they apparently were not to be present at the telling. Looking back on the scene, I don't think he had any particular motive in this except more "gin-and-glory"; he would tell them all about it, with embellishments, afterwards. He passed down the bar and held the swing door open for me to precede him; then the door gave a "woff woff" as he followed me out.
I ask you to notice several untenable points about the position I had taken up. Twice at least I had flatly lied, once when I had told him that I had not seen Mackwith since the morning of the accident, and once when I had given him to understand that I knew nothing of the police search of Esdaile's premises. I say nothing of the greater lie, that we were all ready to help him in his efforts to get to the bottom of the Case. I count that as more the natural momentum the Case itself had now acquired than any personal untruthfulness on my own part.
Next, I now saw that as an eavesdropper my technique had been painfully clumsy. I had attracted attention to myself. I had accepted Westbury's hospitality, but (believe me, out of pure forgetfulness) had omitted to return it. Several times he had given me an opportunity, which I had not taken, of telling him my name, though I had admitted my knowledge of his. These may seem small things, but there are ways and ways of drinking a glass of beer. Within certain limits, I had a distinct sense of social failure.
And if, over and above all this, I had given him and his associates credit for too little intelligence, that I am afraid is rather a fault of mine. It may even have something to do with my position as a younger novelist. I constantly forget that one man is as good as another because he is as many.
So here I was, a clumsy, unmannerly fellow with a guilty conscience to boot, face to face with a very Chesterfield of the best licensed establishments and the whole body of law and order and public duty overwhelmingly on his side. We stood there under the unlighted public-house lamp, while the violet light of the May evening slowly faded from what Hodgson had called "Chelsea's pleasant roofs."
He was fully aware that he possessed what the correspondents used to call the initiative. This showed in his very few first words. I, it appeared, was to be forced to open the ball.
"Now, sir, you wished to see me, I believe," he said pompously.
I was on the point of reminding him that it was he who had made the proposal to come outside when he put up a peremptory hand.
"No, no. I know what you're going to say, and that don't go down. When I say you wanted to see me I mean you came here to-night for that purpose. Specially. Well, here I am."
I suppose I should have been within my rights in answering that I had entered those swing doors for a glass of beer and had not spoken to him until he had borrowed my newspaper; but obviously that line led nowhere. Moreover, from his comparative calm of manner now, I realized that while the larger advantages lay with him, at least one small tactical superiority was mine. He was quiet for the moment, but would probably flare up again immediately at the mention of Mackwith's name. So I kept Mackwith in reserve.
"Well," I said in a conciliatory tone. "I have a feeling that both of us wished to see the other, and from what you've told me with very good reason. Isn't that so?"
"How do you mean, what I've told you?" he said suspiciously.
"I mean that you've given me the impression that there's more in this Case than meets the eye."
He grunted. "Impression's good!"
"That there's some sort of a misunderstanding that ought to be cleared up."
"'Impression's' damned good!" he muttered again. "I like 'impression.'"
"Well, never mind the word. You reminded me a few minutes ago that we were all there that morning, and so I take it that we're all interested. Can't we talk it quietly over?"
I don't think I ever saw eyes capable of staring for so long without a blink. Old Dadley had been right when he had said, "He stares you down, he does." I awaited his pleasure.
"No, that won't wash either," he said curtly at last. "You came here for a purpose. Specially. I won't say the place isn't free to anybody, but it would be bad for trade if everybody stood behind a paper looking for twenty minutes at a glass of beer. I don't think there's any need to be plainer than that."
"Very well, have it that way if you like," I returned. "You tell me the whole of Chelsea is interested in this Case. Well, as I was there when it happened it's natural that I should be interested too."
"Hah!... Well, all I have to say to that is that nobody would have guessed it at the time," he answered.
"Indeed? Why not?"
"Hah! Why not? Itisa bit of a puzzle, isn't it? But suppose we put it this way: Here's two men come tumbling on a man's roof. Bit of a bump they make, don't they? Say a thousand people watching, eh? It isn't a thing that happens every day exactly, you'dthink? Very well.Now where were all of you?Finishing your breakfast? 'Interested,' you say. Well, you'd expect the master of the house to be a bit interested. But where washe? Where were all the rest of you, except him that went up on the roof? You seem to me more interested now than you did then. That's the first point that strikes me."
It struck me, too, as being both stupid and acute, at the same time hardly worth mentioning and yet unpleasantly significant. If his suggestion was that at the time of the accident we were all whispering together in some dark nefarious plot, it was too ridiculous to answer; but if he meant that it was at least remarkable that not one of us except Rooke, and Hubbard for one brief moment before his arrival, had taken the trouble to step outside to see what had happened, I could only reluctantly agree with him. You will remember that precisely the same observation had struck Hubbard and myself at the time.
"Yes," he repeated, seeing my discomfiture, "that's the first point that strikes me; where was Mr. Esdaile, for instance, thathedidn't come out?"
I answered rather slowly. "I see what you mean. As a matter of fact thatwasvery curious. I wonder if you'll believe me when I tell you that Mr. Esdaile knew nothing of that accident till it was all over?"
He stopped for a moment in his walk. Without noticing it we had begun to walk. "Why not?" he demanded.
"Because he was down in the cellar at the time. He'd gone down to fetch a bottle of wine."
He resumed his walk. "But he came up again. I saw him."
"That was some time after."
"That's right," he confirmed, as if he had been testing my truthfulness. "It was about half an hour after. Funny way to spend half an hour with all that going on, wasn't it?"
As I was entirely of his opinion, I made no reply.
"So," he continued, "what strikes me about it is that you're more interested now than you were then. Now we'll pass on to another point. All the time this is happening you're all inside except one of you, and he's on the roof. He's the only person up there till the police came—has the field to himself so to speak. Then he comes down the ladder in a very shaky sort of state."
"Do you wonder?" I interposed with a quickness that surprised myself. "You were on that jury——"
"In a very shaky state," he repeated. "Nervous as a cat, as you might say. That was the state he was in when he came down that ladder. Why?" His manner changed suddenly to truculence. "Why? Hah! That's the question, isn't it? Some of you'd like to make out you know nothing at all about it, but they laugh best that laugh last, and don't you make any error about it!"
Apprehensive as I was, I forced myself also to laugh.
"And you're doing your laughing in the newspapers? Well, do you know, Mr. Westbury, I see very little in all this. Your letter certainly raises a very interesting subject, and I'm quite of your opinion that flying ought to be better regulated; but I wonder if you'd resent a piece of advice from an older man?"
"Much obliged, I'm sure." Those were the words. The tone in which they were uttered bore no relation to them.
"But let me give it, for all that. You seem to beon the point of making charges against somebody for something or other. Well, that's never a safe thing to do, but if I were you I'd certainly think twice before I started with a rather distinguished barrister. They're usually able to look after themselves pretty well in such matters."
I said it quite deliberately. It was abundantly plain that unless I kindled his wrath again he might go on laughs-best-ing and laughs-last-ing all night. I didn't want to hear his vague and muttered menaces. I wanted to know whether that bullet was in the hands of the police, and if so, what action was to be taken. So I produced Mackwith from my sleeve.
"And another thing I'll tell you plainly," I said with something nearer real warmth. "If I were to hear any annoying whispers about myself I shouldn't have a moment's hesitation in taking any steps I thought proper. As I see this business, you force your way into a private garden under cover of an accident, pick up some cock-and-bull story or other, go spreading it about, and then, when you're very properly put in your place by a coroner's court——"
But I got no further. By this time we were in a quiet and dingy street where almost every house seemed to have an "Apartments" card over the door, and at the fury of his outbreak I expected every door to be flung open and every blind to be drawn up.
"Hah! Sothat'syour lay, is it, Mister Man? We've got it at last, have we? You think you can come it heavy like your blasted barrister friend, do you? Oh yes, you're all in it together!Iknew what you came for to-night! I forced my way into gardens, did I? And what about those that force themselves on roofs before the police come, touchingthings they've no business to be touching, eh?Ipick up cock-and-bull stories, do I? And what does some others pick up?I'mput in my place, am I? We'll see what sort of a place some of you fine gentry's put in presently! Trying to cod me one of you was in the cellar for half an hour! A bit too much roof and cellar for my fancy! I was a shade over the odds for one of you anyway! He had to comedownthe ladder again, hadn't he? And you hold a ladder when you see a man coming down it, don't you? Very well, Mister Pry! You go prying somewhere else, and drink your beer a bit quicker next time!Mykids aren't going to be shot at and no questions asked! The questions'll come presently. They laugh best that laugh last——"
And, as a neighboring door was opened, and a blind across the street was drawn up, and a window-sash creaked somewhere else, it came upon me in a moment what had happened.
Philip Esdaile's hands had not been the first to pat Monty Rooke's pockets that morning. Westbury, holding the ladder, had been before him.