Chapter V.Confusing the IssueIn the shadow of a shrubbery two hitherto respectable English citizens clutched one another with ecstatic fingers, moaning feebly. Through uncurtained French windows just in front of them a large policeman could be seen, flourishing a revolver. The words, “You stand still!” floated out into the peaceful night.“Oh, my sacredhat!” moaned the shorter of the two citizens in the shrubbery. “This is better than the films—far, far, better. Why go to the cinema, when you can stage this sort of thing in your own home?”The other citizen, a tall, lanky figure with bowed shoulders, removed his pince-nez, misty with emotion, and polished them hastily. His long body quivered with guilty joy. “Yes, but look here, Doyle,” he said reluctantly, “what’s going to happen? We can’t have Laura taken off to the police-station.”“Why not?” asked that young woman’s future brother-in-law unfeelingly. “It’d do her all the good in the world. And I wouldn’t bail her out either. Oh, sportsman!” he added, as more words floated out on the still air. “He’s trying to get her to bolt for it, see? Strikes me that old Priestley’s coming through this with colours flying.”“He is,” agreed Guy. “But I really think we ought to intervene now, you know. Matters have been taken rather out of our hands, with this ass of a policeman interfering. We don’t want to get involved in a conspiracy to make a bigger hass of the law than it usually is. We’d better go along and explain before things get worse.”“Good God,no!” croaked Mr. Doyle with emotion. “For Heaven’s sake don’t spoil things now, Nesbitt. They’re just beginning to get interesting. We couldn’t have got a policeman into it more neatly if we’d plotted for a month. Just think how his presence is going to intensify our friend’s reactions, my dear chap!”“That’s true enough,” said Guy quivering again.“And you needn’t worry about things,” pursued Mr. Doyle earnestly. “Not so long as Laura’s on the spot. You leave it to her. I’d back that girl to— Hullo! What the blazes is happening now?”In the lighted room two uneasy backs now confronted their audience. The constable could be seen approaching them with awful determination in every line of his massive form.“Great Scott!” observed Mr. Doyle a moment later, in tones of respect. “He’shandcuffed’em. Handcuffed ’em together. Handcuffed Laura to—well, well, I’ll be blowed!” One gathered that the person who ventured to handcuff Laura had earned Mr. Doyle’s deepest veneration.Guy began to chuckle silently. The idea of a handcuffed Laura appeared to appeal to him too.“Keep still!” Mr. Doyle implored, recovering from the first shock of this novel spectacle. “Oh, Nesbitt, keep still! We mustn’t interrupt this. Oh, sacred pigs, how gorgeous! Look, he’s going to make out a report. My dear chap,canyou see Laura’s face? We’ll rescue ’em later somehow, but—oh,cripes!” He clung to a laurel-branch and abandoned himself to helpless giggling.Guy, scarcely less self-controlled, caught at his arm. “Look! That friend of yours is turning the tables. Oh, well done, man, well done! Look—he’s going to put him in the cupboard. He—well, I’ll be hanged!”With damp eyes they watched Mr. Priestley’s imitation of an American film-drama. An instant later a heavy body in swift if somewhat unsteady motion, lumbered past their hiding-place; peeping cautiously out, they were just able to catch the look of alarm and despondency which was being worn by the most disconcerted damsel in England at that moment. They clapped their hands hurriedly over their mouths and clung to one another again. Then came George.“Did you fellows see?” demanded George weakly. “Didyou see?”“We did, oh admirable corpse,” moaned Mr. Doyle and promptly clung to this more solid support. “And do you mean to say you lay through it all and never gave yourself away?”“Don’t think I did, no,” replied George modestly. “But look here, I say, what on earth are we going to do? That bobby’s rather messed things up, hasn’t he?”“We’ll give them ten minutes to get away,” Guy grinned, “and then we’ll liberate him. It’s all right, I think. Laura will take her cue from that handcuff, and see the game’s up. She’ll bring him back here, and we’ll have to file the thing off. Do you know, I wondered all the time whether it would come off at all (the plot, I mean, not the handcuff), but I never dreamed it would fail as gloriously as that.”“She got him up to scratch all right,” George observed. “Something to do with letters, he was babbling about. Anyhow, he pooped off like a good ’un. Well, what about wandering along to the drawing-room and telling the other two what’s happened? I say, we’ll have to let that bobby out soon, or he’ll have the house over. Listen to him!”They listened. Through the French windows now came sounds as of a large person in distress, whoopings, bellowings and thuds, mingled now and then with muffled solos on the policeman’s whistle.“We’ll give him five minutes,” Guy decided. “Come on, then.”Doyle caught his arm, his face alight with new excitement. “I say, Nesbitt,” he spluttered, “don’t go in yet. I—I’ve had a tremendous brain-wave. Look here—don’t you see what the gods have sent us?”“Beyond a bellowing bobby,” said Guy, “and an awkward pair of handcuffs, I don’t, no.”“Why,” exclaimed Mr. Doyle, now almost incoherent with excitement, “why, don’t you see? A detective story in real life! The stock beginning of half the thrillers ever published! Mysterious stranger murdered, bobby surprises suspicious couple who may or may not be guilty, couple turn tables on bobby and make their escape, and when bobby is released—the corpse has disappeared! Man, it’s great! We must make use of it somehow!”They stared at each other. George stared at both of them. He was not quite sure what was happening, but as long as they did not want him to put on another false beard or spoil another white shirt with red ink, he was perfectly game.Over Guy’s features spread an unholy smile. “This wants looking into,” he agreed. “Let’s to the drawing-room.”Disregarding the muffled frenzy from the library, they went.Two agitated women rose at them as one girl, and danced before them.“Guy, dear,” demanded that gentleman’s wife, “whathasbeen happening? We heard the shot, and then. Whatisthat curious whistling noise?”“Pat, tell me the whole story,” Miss Howard danced with impatience, “or I’llscream! I couldn’t have stood it a minute longer. I don’t care how strict your orders were, we were coming out the very next minute. Weren’t we, Cynthia?”With all possible haste Guy put them out of their misery. He went on to mention Mr. Doyle’s brilliant scheme.“Oh, dear!” Cynthia collapsed weakly into a chair. “Guy, this is too silly.PoorLaura! Handcuffs! Oh,dear!”But Miss Howard was made of sterner material. Disregarding her sister’s interesting predicament, she concentrated on the matter in hand. “Clues!” she announced, wrinkling her own pretty forehead in the same way as that which, in her sister’s case, had led directly to Mr. Priestley’s undoing. “Wait a minute—let me think! The body’s gone. Yes, but how did it go? It was dragged! Where to? Obviously the river, where there was a boat waiting in readiness to receive it. How’s that?”The others looked at her with respect.“But look here,” George interposed, “what’s it all about? I mean, what are you getting at? What’s the idea?”The others looked at him, without respect.“They want to set the scene for an ordinary conventional shilling-dreadful, George, in order to find out what would really happen in actual life instead of fiction,” Cynthia told him gently. “I’m not at all sure that I approve. Anyhow, never mind those children; come and sit here and tell me how you liked being shot. But do, for goodness’ sake, take off that dreadful beard!” she concluded with a little squeak, collapsing again.George did as he was bid, and tugged manfully at his spirit-gummed beard. Having tugged the tears into his eyes, he gave up the effort in despair and continued to wear his face-embroidery.The others were busily conferring.“A sack of potatoes is what we want,” Doyle remarked. “We don’t want to have to drag George on the seat of his trousers, but unless you can suggest anything else——!” He looked inquiringly at Guy.“I don’t think we have a sack of potatoes,” Guy replied, “and there’s always the possibility that George might object. What about a rug, with George sitting on it? That ought to give the right track.”“That’s fine,” Dora agreed breathlessly. “Come on, George; you’re wanted.”“At once, do you think?” Doyle demurred.“Of course, idiot!” retorted his fiancée frankly. “We must let himhearthe corpse being dragged out.”“Dora,” said Mr. Doyle, “you’re a wonder. Come on, George!”Not altogether willingly, George came.In the hall Doyle held up his hand. “We’re murderers, don’t forget,” he whispered. “Now, where the murderer in real life usually goes wrong (the one who gets caught, I mean) is, as my fellow criminologist will tell you, through insufficient attention to detail. Take care of the details, and the body takes care of itself. Let us therefore concentrate upon details. We are a couple of genteel desperadoes, aren’t we? Therefore, we’re in boiled shirts and dinner-jackets. Good! But we are on a river-trip, and we don’t want to be recognised by stray passers-by; therefore we wear overcoats and hats, and mufflers across our mouths. Overcoats, hats and mufflers forward, please?” He grabbed his own coat and began to struggle into it.“Is that really necessary?” asked George plaintively.“Not for you. You’re only a corpse. For us, yes. Ready, Nesbitt? Then you creep very softly in by the door here, George, and take up your former position. We will enter by the French windows, talking in gruff voices in a foreign tongue, to match your beard and decorations. We are, as a matter of fact, inhabitants of Jugo-Chzechovina, and converse almost entirely in ‘z’s’ and ‘x’s.’ Let her rip!”George crept dutifully off, and Guy, pulling his soft hat well down over his eyes, led the way down the passage. Mr. Doyle hovered near his fiancée, who was keeping a superintendent’s eye upon all of them. “Do you realise this means our furniture, old girl?” he grinned at her.“Furniture? Pat—what do you mean?”“Why, isn’t this the chance of a life-time? I’ve got a scoop here, backed by that bobby’s evidence, that’s going to be worth a whole houseful of furniture, and a watering-can for the garden as well. What else do you think I’ve been engineering it all for? Thzmx zp! as they say in Jugo-Chzechovina.” He sped after his host, winding his muffler across the lower part of his face as he went. Dora gazed after him with a very different expression on her face from that usually seen by the public.When the two approached the French windows a moment later, the noise was still in full swing, though now spasmodic and conveying a somewhat dispirited effect; but they had hardly stamped over the threshold and exchanged a few gruff “z’s” and “x’s” before it ceased abruptly.“Eel ehcoot, ler jongdarm, sxs zz,” grunted the shorter of the two Jugo-Chzechovinians. “Oo eh ler zbodyx? Ahxha! Venneh soor, Zorx! Soor ler mattoh-x, zzz.”With stealthy movements and sibilant noises they spread a mat beside George and rolled him on to it. Refusing to wait in the wings this time, Cynthia and Dora appeared in the doorway to watch the performance, the latter going so far as to lend a helping hand, tapping about on the parquet flooring with her high heels; for, as she very reasonably pointed out to her fellow-conspirators as they bent over the corpse together: “Il faut absolument xsx avoir une vamp, zzz?”The inert George was then conveyed on his rug across the floor, over the threshold into the garden (involving a four-inch drop on the small of his back) and across the lawn to the river at the bottom. There Mr. Doyle caused all four of them to jump energetically about, so as to leave the choicest collection of footprints that any sleuth could desire, after which they returned to the house.From the cupboard in the library all this time had come a silence even more eloquent than the former protestations.“Anything else to be done?” asked Mr. Doyle, thoughtfully, when they had returned again to the hall. He seemed to have taken charge of affairs for the moment and Dora, observing the gleam in his eye, had no difficulty in understanding why. She gave her fiancé the credit of being an artist; he was, she knew, quite capable of arranging the whole thing purely for art’s sake. But the vision of that elusive furniture was a very powerful aid to art.She was very ready to encourage him. “Clues!” she said, wrinkling her forehead again. “We must have some more clues. But what?”“It’s a pity we’ve got to do things in such a hurry,” remarked Guy. “This sort of affair wants properly thinking out. I don’t see how we’re going to arrange a real set of interdependent clues, on the spur of the moment.”“Well, I can think of one at any rate,” said Mr. Doyle thirstily. “Blood! When all’s said and done, there’s nothing like blood. The river was all right, but blood is well known to be thicker. Some blood, please, somebody!”“No, I’m hanged if I will,” said George with decision, catching the predatory gleam in his eye. “I’ve done my share.”“But only in red ink, George,” Mr. Doyle pointed out wistfully. But George, muttering about “this infernal beard,” was already on his way upstairs and to the bathroom.“I suppose you haven’t got a spot of blood to spare, have you?” Mr. Doyle inquired politely of his host.“Pat, I won’t have you after my husband’s blood,” Cynthia interposed.“Besides,” added her husband, “I gave away most of mine yesterday. I’m afraid I’m almost bloodless at the moment.”“And it’s practically useless trying to get any out of a stone, I understand,” said Mr. Doyle thoughtfully. “How exceedingly awkward. I shall have to furnish some myself. I take it that you have at any rate a lethal weapon of some sort on the premises; a safety razor, for instance. Lead me to the slaughter, then, please.”“Don’t bleed to death, darling one, will you?” remarked Dora with anxiety.“Dora, you touch me,” said her fiancé with emotion. “This solicitude is admirable. No, for your sake, my dearest, I will try very hard not to bleed to death.”“I was thinking of the furniture we’re going to get out of this,” retorted his fiancée frankly. “We don’t want it wasted.”Mr. Doyle moved with dignity upstairs.Guy, following him, looked back over his shoulder. “I think you’d better turn the library light out,” he said. “We don’t want any more unwelcome visitors. And turn all the other lights out as well, will you, Cynthia? I’ve been thinking that we may want analibilater.”Cynthia turned into the drawing-room to carry out this request; Dora made her way out into the garden to enter the library once more. She was an astute young woman, and she had recognised that a light turned out by somebody entering the library from the house instead of the garden might give the policeman material for thought upon the wrong lines.Guy’s chance reference to further visitors proved to be not wide of the mark. As Dora was tap-tapping out into the garden again after extinguishing the light, a form loomed up out of the darkness in front of her.“Hullo, Mrs. Nesbitt,” observed the form cheerfully. “Bit late to call, I know, but I saw a light as I was passing (seems to be out now) and it’s rather urgent, so I thought you wouldn’t mind. Oh, I—I beg your pardon. I thought it was Mrs. Nesbitt.”If Dora had been nonplussed it was only for a moment. In rather less than a second and a half she had determined on her line of action. Drawing the chiffon scarf she was wearing across the lower part of her face, she clutched violently at the form’s arm. “Murder!” she exclaimed tensely. “There’s been murder done in there. No—don’t go in, you’ll only make matters worse. Go for the police—quick!”The form (a thick, short form it was) staggered back. “M-Murder?” it echoed. “Good gracious, you don’t mean Mr. or Mrs. Nesbitt?”“No!” Dora replied impatiently. “They’re out of the way. They’ve been got out of the way, if you must know. It’s nothing to do with them. It’s the Crown Prince of—no, I daren’t tell you. My own life hangs by a hair. Quick, I must go; I can’t keepthemwaiting any longer. The police—run for the police!”“Th-th-them?” repeated the now thoroughly agitated form. “Good Heavens, do you mean the—the murderers?”Dora laughed bitterly. “You can call them that, of course. They call themselves executioners. It’s a matter of opinion, I suppose. But I mustn’t stay a moment longer. Ifhecaught us we shouldn’t be alive another second!”“Who ishe?” gasped the form.“The Man with the Broken Nose,” Dora replied in sardonic tones. “You’ve never heard of him, I suppose? Oh, God, would that I hadn’t either!” Her voice broke with considerable artistry. Dora was certainly wasted in revue.“But look here!” squeaked the form. “Who is—the CrownPrince? Good gracious, but——”Dora shook his arm with awful agitation. “Hush!” she whispered tensely. “He’s coming. Run, man—run for your life! And for the police, of course. Run!” With a final shake she broke away from him and darted in the direction of the river.The form stood for a hectic moment gazing after her. Then it too lumbered away at a brisk jog-trot. It did not lumber in the direction of the library.Considerably pleased with herself, Dora returned to the house. Only Cynthia and George (now beardless) were available, sitting, a little uneasily, on the couch in the now darkened drawing-room. Guy and Mr. Doyle were still about their bloody business.“George, I’m surprised at you,” remarked Miss Howard facetiously, when this state of affairs had been made known to her. “Sitting there and holding hands with Cynthia in the dark. Why haven’t you been up and busy, like me? Listen to what sister’s been doing for the cause.” With no little zest Dora embarked upon an account of her encounter with the form.She was just finishing it when the other two conspirators returned, Mr. Doyle complaining bitterly of weakness and requiring his fiancée to support him on his feet. Shaking him off, that unfeeling young woman promptly began to recite her adventure over again.“But who on earth was it?” Cynthia wondered.“Search me!” responded Miss Howard tersely. “I didn’t stop to ask him his name and address. Anyhow, you see what I’ve done. Provided a new and independent witness, and filled him up with just the sort of tale we wanted—Crown Prince and executioners and gangs and distressed damsel and all the rest of it. The Man with the Broken Nose! Do you know, I’m rather proud of that title; I feel there’s a good thriller behind that title, simply waiting to be written. Oh, by the way, here’s a souvenir,” She tossed a handkerchief into Cynthia’s lap. “I extracted it from his coat-sleeve in the intervals of shaking same. I could have relieved him of his watch and chain if I’d wanted too, and probably his collar and tie as well; he was far too dithery to notice little details like that. Most useful knowledge I’ve gained, if I ever take to crime in real earnest.”Cynthia was examining the handkerchief by the light of a candle which Guy had lit. “R.F. in one corner,” she announced. “Who on earth is R. F., Guy?”“Reginald Foster!” replied her husband promptly. “The biggest bore in creation.” He began to shake again with unholy glee. “Have you any blood left, Doyle?”“Precious little, and I don’t mind telling you that I’m not parting with it. There may be a few scrapings in the cup, though. Why?”“Just an idea. Here, George; something you can do. On the hall-table you’ll see a cup, bearing traces of blood. Wipe that handkerchief round inside it, and then go and drop it on the river’s brim—where we’ll hope that not even the Inspector from Scotland Yard will mistake it for a primrose. Hurry, won’t you?”George hurried.“I think you’re being perfectly horrible, Guy,” said his wife. “Why couldn’t you go on using red-ink, like civilised human beings?”“Because red-ink when analysed does not respond to the tests for human blood, wife.”“But good gracious, you’re not expecting matters to get as far as that, are you?”“I was once a Boy Scout, Cynthia,” Mr. Doyle intervened, “and my motto was ‘Be Prepared.’ It still is. Another of my mottoes,” he added thoughtfully, “if I remember aright, was ‘Zing-a-zing, Bom Bom!’ But don’t ask me what that means, because I never could discover. It’s probably Jugo-Chzechovinian.”“But what did youdowith the blood?” Cynthia pursued.“Oh, just sprinkled it about in convenient dollops, like the gentle dew from Heaven, you know.”“Well, goodness knows what’s going to come of all this,” Cynthia sighed.“I say,” remarked George, with the appearance of careful thought, “wouldn’t it be a good idea to put your brother and sister off now? Er—supposed to be coming on Tuesday, aren’t they? Yes,” said George weightily, “if I were you I should put them off.”“We’re certainly going to get into the most dreadful mess,” said Cynthia, not, however, relieving George’s mind.“Your library carpet’s got into that already,” said Mr. Doyle consolingly.“Enough of this chatty badinage!” Dora broke in. “Do you know that Mr. Reginald Foster has gone galloping off for the police? He won’t find him, because he won’t think of looking in your library cupboard, but he’ll ring up the nearest station; and then things are going to get busy. We’ve got to work out a plan of campaign. Remember I’ve had it put on record that our host and hostess were lured away from the house.”“Well, there’s nothing to contradict that,” Guy agreed. “It’s lucky we gave the maids the week-end off, just in case of emergencies. Emergencies seem to be arising every minute. I’ve thought out a plan. I’ll get George and you, Doyle, to help me push the car out of the garage and a little way down the road, and then I’ll come driving back, making as much noise as I can, and generally enact the householder arriving home after a long ride. I surmise that those strange sounds, which seem to have died away altogether, will then break out with renewed force from the library, and I shall liberate our prisoner. I will then deal with any other emergencies as they crop up. It doesn’t matter about our stories coinciding, because your household won’t have heard or know anything at all. So, after you’ve helped me with the car, you three sneak home and go straight to bed.”“All except me,” murmured Mr. Doyle, “who will be summoned to the telephone a few minutes after the prisoner has been liberated. ‘Knowing that such a distinguished journalist was in the vicinity, Mr. Nesbitt, etc.’”Guy grinned at him guiltily. “You’re not going to make a newspaper story of it too, Doyle, surely?”“You bet I am,” rejoined Mr. Doyle grimly. “And a houseful of furniture too. My motives, let it be understood, are entirely mercenary.”“Well, good luck to them! Now then, here comes George; are we all ready?”“I say,” said Cynthia suddenly. “I wonder what’s happening to poor Laura all this time? It’s nearly half-past eleven. Oughtn’t we to do something about her? But I suppose we can’t!”It was the first time anybody had given a thought to poor Laura for almost an hour.“By Jove, yes, Laura,” agreed her husband. “We must keep an eye open for her. I hope she doesn’t bring that fellow gaol-bird of hers back at an awkward moment. And what the deuce are we going to do abouthim?”Had Guy but known it, that question was already in process of being answered for him at a spot some considerable distance away.
In the shadow of a shrubbery two hitherto respectable English citizens clutched one another with ecstatic fingers, moaning feebly. Through uncurtained French windows just in front of them a large policeman could be seen, flourishing a revolver. The words, “You stand still!” floated out into the peaceful night.
“Oh, my sacredhat!” moaned the shorter of the two citizens in the shrubbery. “This is better than the films—far, far, better. Why go to the cinema, when you can stage this sort of thing in your own home?”
The other citizen, a tall, lanky figure with bowed shoulders, removed his pince-nez, misty with emotion, and polished them hastily. His long body quivered with guilty joy. “Yes, but look here, Doyle,” he said reluctantly, “what’s going to happen? We can’t have Laura taken off to the police-station.”
“Why not?” asked that young woman’s future brother-in-law unfeelingly. “It’d do her all the good in the world. And I wouldn’t bail her out either. Oh, sportsman!” he added, as more words floated out on the still air. “He’s trying to get her to bolt for it, see? Strikes me that old Priestley’s coming through this with colours flying.”
“He is,” agreed Guy. “But I really think we ought to intervene now, you know. Matters have been taken rather out of our hands, with this ass of a policeman interfering. We don’t want to get involved in a conspiracy to make a bigger hass of the law than it usually is. We’d better go along and explain before things get worse.”
“Good God,no!” croaked Mr. Doyle with emotion. “For Heaven’s sake don’t spoil things now, Nesbitt. They’re just beginning to get interesting. We couldn’t have got a policeman into it more neatly if we’d plotted for a month. Just think how his presence is going to intensify our friend’s reactions, my dear chap!”
“That’s true enough,” said Guy quivering again.
“And you needn’t worry about things,” pursued Mr. Doyle earnestly. “Not so long as Laura’s on the spot. You leave it to her. I’d back that girl to— Hullo! What the blazes is happening now?”
In the lighted room two uneasy backs now confronted their audience. The constable could be seen approaching them with awful determination in every line of his massive form.
“Great Scott!” observed Mr. Doyle a moment later, in tones of respect. “He’shandcuffed’em. Handcuffed ’em together. Handcuffed Laura to—well, well, I’ll be blowed!” One gathered that the person who ventured to handcuff Laura had earned Mr. Doyle’s deepest veneration.
Guy began to chuckle silently. The idea of a handcuffed Laura appeared to appeal to him too.
“Keep still!” Mr. Doyle implored, recovering from the first shock of this novel spectacle. “Oh, Nesbitt, keep still! We mustn’t interrupt this. Oh, sacred pigs, how gorgeous! Look, he’s going to make out a report. My dear chap,canyou see Laura’s face? We’ll rescue ’em later somehow, but—oh,cripes!” He clung to a laurel-branch and abandoned himself to helpless giggling.
Guy, scarcely less self-controlled, caught at his arm. “Look! That friend of yours is turning the tables. Oh, well done, man, well done! Look—he’s going to put him in the cupboard. He—well, I’ll be hanged!”
With damp eyes they watched Mr. Priestley’s imitation of an American film-drama. An instant later a heavy body in swift if somewhat unsteady motion, lumbered past their hiding-place; peeping cautiously out, they were just able to catch the look of alarm and despondency which was being worn by the most disconcerted damsel in England at that moment. They clapped their hands hurriedly over their mouths and clung to one another again. Then came George.
“Did you fellows see?” demanded George weakly. “Didyou see?”
“We did, oh admirable corpse,” moaned Mr. Doyle and promptly clung to this more solid support. “And do you mean to say you lay through it all and never gave yourself away?”
“Don’t think I did, no,” replied George modestly. “But look here, I say, what on earth are we going to do? That bobby’s rather messed things up, hasn’t he?”
“We’ll give them ten minutes to get away,” Guy grinned, “and then we’ll liberate him. It’s all right, I think. Laura will take her cue from that handcuff, and see the game’s up. She’ll bring him back here, and we’ll have to file the thing off. Do you know, I wondered all the time whether it would come off at all (the plot, I mean, not the handcuff), but I never dreamed it would fail as gloriously as that.”
“She got him up to scratch all right,” George observed. “Something to do with letters, he was babbling about. Anyhow, he pooped off like a good ’un. Well, what about wandering along to the drawing-room and telling the other two what’s happened? I say, we’ll have to let that bobby out soon, or he’ll have the house over. Listen to him!”
They listened. Through the French windows now came sounds as of a large person in distress, whoopings, bellowings and thuds, mingled now and then with muffled solos on the policeman’s whistle.
“We’ll give him five minutes,” Guy decided. “Come on, then.”
Doyle caught his arm, his face alight with new excitement. “I say, Nesbitt,” he spluttered, “don’t go in yet. I—I’ve had a tremendous brain-wave. Look here—don’t you see what the gods have sent us?”
“Beyond a bellowing bobby,” said Guy, “and an awkward pair of handcuffs, I don’t, no.”
“Why,” exclaimed Mr. Doyle, now almost incoherent with excitement, “why, don’t you see? A detective story in real life! The stock beginning of half the thrillers ever published! Mysterious stranger murdered, bobby surprises suspicious couple who may or may not be guilty, couple turn tables on bobby and make their escape, and when bobby is released—the corpse has disappeared! Man, it’s great! We must make use of it somehow!”
They stared at each other. George stared at both of them. He was not quite sure what was happening, but as long as they did not want him to put on another false beard or spoil another white shirt with red ink, he was perfectly game.
Over Guy’s features spread an unholy smile. “This wants looking into,” he agreed. “Let’s to the drawing-room.”
Disregarding the muffled frenzy from the library, they went.
Two agitated women rose at them as one girl, and danced before them.
“Guy, dear,” demanded that gentleman’s wife, “whathasbeen happening? We heard the shot, and then. Whatisthat curious whistling noise?”
“Pat, tell me the whole story,” Miss Howard danced with impatience, “or I’llscream! I couldn’t have stood it a minute longer. I don’t care how strict your orders were, we were coming out the very next minute. Weren’t we, Cynthia?”
With all possible haste Guy put them out of their misery. He went on to mention Mr. Doyle’s brilliant scheme.
“Oh, dear!” Cynthia collapsed weakly into a chair. “Guy, this is too silly.PoorLaura! Handcuffs! Oh,dear!”
But Miss Howard was made of sterner material. Disregarding her sister’s interesting predicament, she concentrated on the matter in hand. “Clues!” she announced, wrinkling her own pretty forehead in the same way as that which, in her sister’s case, had led directly to Mr. Priestley’s undoing. “Wait a minute—let me think! The body’s gone. Yes, but how did it go? It was dragged! Where to? Obviously the river, where there was a boat waiting in readiness to receive it. How’s that?”
The others looked at her with respect.
“But look here,” George interposed, “what’s it all about? I mean, what are you getting at? What’s the idea?”
The others looked at him, without respect.
“They want to set the scene for an ordinary conventional shilling-dreadful, George, in order to find out what would really happen in actual life instead of fiction,” Cynthia told him gently. “I’m not at all sure that I approve. Anyhow, never mind those children; come and sit here and tell me how you liked being shot. But do, for goodness’ sake, take off that dreadful beard!” she concluded with a little squeak, collapsing again.
George did as he was bid, and tugged manfully at his spirit-gummed beard. Having tugged the tears into his eyes, he gave up the effort in despair and continued to wear his face-embroidery.
The others were busily conferring.
“A sack of potatoes is what we want,” Doyle remarked. “We don’t want to have to drag George on the seat of his trousers, but unless you can suggest anything else——!” He looked inquiringly at Guy.
“I don’t think we have a sack of potatoes,” Guy replied, “and there’s always the possibility that George might object. What about a rug, with George sitting on it? That ought to give the right track.”
“That’s fine,” Dora agreed breathlessly. “Come on, George; you’re wanted.”
“At once, do you think?” Doyle demurred.
“Of course, idiot!” retorted his fiancée frankly. “We must let himhearthe corpse being dragged out.”
“Dora,” said Mr. Doyle, “you’re a wonder. Come on, George!”
Not altogether willingly, George came.
In the hall Doyle held up his hand. “We’re murderers, don’t forget,” he whispered. “Now, where the murderer in real life usually goes wrong (the one who gets caught, I mean) is, as my fellow criminologist will tell you, through insufficient attention to detail. Take care of the details, and the body takes care of itself. Let us therefore concentrate upon details. We are a couple of genteel desperadoes, aren’t we? Therefore, we’re in boiled shirts and dinner-jackets. Good! But we are on a river-trip, and we don’t want to be recognised by stray passers-by; therefore we wear overcoats and hats, and mufflers across our mouths. Overcoats, hats and mufflers forward, please?” He grabbed his own coat and began to struggle into it.
“Is that really necessary?” asked George plaintively.
“Not for you. You’re only a corpse. For us, yes. Ready, Nesbitt? Then you creep very softly in by the door here, George, and take up your former position. We will enter by the French windows, talking in gruff voices in a foreign tongue, to match your beard and decorations. We are, as a matter of fact, inhabitants of Jugo-Chzechovina, and converse almost entirely in ‘z’s’ and ‘x’s.’ Let her rip!”
George crept dutifully off, and Guy, pulling his soft hat well down over his eyes, led the way down the passage. Mr. Doyle hovered near his fiancée, who was keeping a superintendent’s eye upon all of them. “Do you realise this means our furniture, old girl?” he grinned at her.
“Furniture? Pat—what do you mean?”
“Why, isn’t this the chance of a life-time? I’ve got a scoop here, backed by that bobby’s evidence, that’s going to be worth a whole houseful of furniture, and a watering-can for the garden as well. What else do you think I’ve been engineering it all for? Thzmx zp! as they say in Jugo-Chzechovina.” He sped after his host, winding his muffler across the lower part of his face as he went. Dora gazed after him with a very different expression on her face from that usually seen by the public.
When the two approached the French windows a moment later, the noise was still in full swing, though now spasmodic and conveying a somewhat dispirited effect; but they had hardly stamped over the threshold and exchanged a few gruff “z’s” and “x’s” before it ceased abruptly.
“Eel ehcoot, ler jongdarm, sxs zz,” grunted the shorter of the two Jugo-Chzechovinians. “Oo eh ler zbodyx? Ahxha! Venneh soor, Zorx! Soor ler mattoh-x, zzz.”
With stealthy movements and sibilant noises they spread a mat beside George and rolled him on to it. Refusing to wait in the wings this time, Cynthia and Dora appeared in the doorway to watch the performance, the latter going so far as to lend a helping hand, tapping about on the parquet flooring with her high heels; for, as she very reasonably pointed out to her fellow-conspirators as they bent over the corpse together: “Il faut absolument xsx avoir une vamp, zzz?”
The inert George was then conveyed on his rug across the floor, over the threshold into the garden (involving a four-inch drop on the small of his back) and across the lawn to the river at the bottom. There Mr. Doyle caused all four of them to jump energetically about, so as to leave the choicest collection of footprints that any sleuth could desire, after which they returned to the house.
From the cupboard in the library all this time had come a silence even more eloquent than the former protestations.
“Anything else to be done?” asked Mr. Doyle, thoughtfully, when they had returned again to the hall. He seemed to have taken charge of affairs for the moment and Dora, observing the gleam in his eye, had no difficulty in understanding why. She gave her fiancé the credit of being an artist; he was, she knew, quite capable of arranging the whole thing purely for art’s sake. But the vision of that elusive furniture was a very powerful aid to art.
She was very ready to encourage him. “Clues!” she said, wrinkling her forehead again. “We must have some more clues. But what?”
“It’s a pity we’ve got to do things in such a hurry,” remarked Guy. “This sort of affair wants properly thinking out. I don’t see how we’re going to arrange a real set of interdependent clues, on the spur of the moment.”
“Well, I can think of one at any rate,” said Mr. Doyle thirstily. “Blood! When all’s said and done, there’s nothing like blood. The river was all right, but blood is well known to be thicker. Some blood, please, somebody!”
“No, I’m hanged if I will,” said George with decision, catching the predatory gleam in his eye. “I’ve done my share.”
“But only in red ink, George,” Mr. Doyle pointed out wistfully. But George, muttering about “this infernal beard,” was already on his way upstairs and to the bathroom.
“I suppose you haven’t got a spot of blood to spare, have you?” Mr. Doyle inquired politely of his host.
“Pat, I won’t have you after my husband’s blood,” Cynthia interposed.
“Besides,” added her husband, “I gave away most of mine yesterday. I’m afraid I’m almost bloodless at the moment.”
“And it’s practically useless trying to get any out of a stone, I understand,” said Mr. Doyle thoughtfully. “How exceedingly awkward. I shall have to furnish some myself. I take it that you have at any rate a lethal weapon of some sort on the premises; a safety razor, for instance. Lead me to the slaughter, then, please.”
“Don’t bleed to death, darling one, will you?” remarked Dora with anxiety.
“Dora, you touch me,” said her fiancé with emotion. “This solicitude is admirable. No, for your sake, my dearest, I will try very hard not to bleed to death.”
“I was thinking of the furniture we’re going to get out of this,” retorted his fiancée frankly. “We don’t want it wasted.”
Mr. Doyle moved with dignity upstairs.
Guy, following him, looked back over his shoulder. “I think you’d better turn the library light out,” he said. “We don’t want any more unwelcome visitors. And turn all the other lights out as well, will you, Cynthia? I’ve been thinking that we may want analibilater.”
Cynthia turned into the drawing-room to carry out this request; Dora made her way out into the garden to enter the library once more. She was an astute young woman, and she had recognised that a light turned out by somebody entering the library from the house instead of the garden might give the policeman material for thought upon the wrong lines.
Guy’s chance reference to further visitors proved to be not wide of the mark. As Dora was tap-tapping out into the garden again after extinguishing the light, a form loomed up out of the darkness in front of her.
“Hullo, Mrs. Nesbitt,” observed the form cheerfully. “Bit late to call, I know, but I saw a light as I was passing (seems to be out now) and it’s rather urgent, so I thought you wouldn’t mind. Oh, I—I beg your pardon. I thought it was Mrs. Nesbitt.”
If Dora had been nonplussed it was only for a moment. In rather less than a second and a half she had determined on her line of action. Drawing the chiffon scarf she was wearing across the lower part of her face, she clutched violently at the form’s arm. “Murder!” she exclaimed tensely. “There’s been murder done in there. No—don’t go in, you’ll only make matters worse. Go for the police—quick!”
The form (a thick, short form it was) staggered back. “M-Murder?” it echoed. “Good gracious, you don’t mean Mr. or Mrs. Nesbitt?”
“No!” Dora replied impatiently. “They’re out of the way. They’ve been got out of the way, if you must know. It’s nothing to do with them. It’s the Crown Prince of—no, I daren’t tell you. My own life hangs by a hair. Quick, I must go; I can’t keepthemwaiting any longer. The police—run for the police!”
“Th-th-them?” repeated the now thoroughly agitated form. “Good Heavens, do you mean the—the murderers?”
Dora laughed bitterly. “You can call them that, of course. They call themselves executioners. It’s a matter of opinion, I suppose. But I mustn’t stay a moment longer. Ifhecaught us we shouldn’t be alive another second!”
“Who ishe?” gasped the form.
“The Man with the Broken Nose,” Dora replied in sardonic tones. “You’ve never heard of him, I suppose? Oh, God, would that I hadn’t either!” Her voice broke with considerable artistry. Dora was certainly wasted in revue.
“But look here!” squeaked the form. “Who is—the CrownPrince? Good gracious, but——”
Dora shook his arm with awful agitation. “Hush!” she whispered tensely. “He’s coming. Run, man—run for your life! And for the police, of course. Run!” With a final shake she broke away from him and darted in the direction of the river.
The form stood for a hectic moment gazing after her. Then it too lumbered away at a brisk jog-trot. It did not lumber in the direction of the library.
Considerably pleased with herself, Dora returned to the house. Only Cynthia and George (now beardless) were available, sitting, a little uneasily, on the couch in the now darkened drawing-room. Guy and Mr. Doyle were still about their bloody business.
“George, I’m surprised at you,” remarked Miss Howard facetiously, when this state of affairs had been made known to her. “Sitting there and holding hands with Cynthia in the dark. Why haven’t you been up and busy, like me? Listen to what sister’s been doing for the cause.” With no little zest Dora embarked upon an account of her encounter with the form.
She was just finishing it when the other two conspirators returned, Mr. Doyle complaining bitterly of weakness and requiring his fiancée to support him on his feet. Shaking him off, that unfeeling young woman promptly began to recite her adventure over again.
“But who on earth was it?” Cynthia wondered.
“Search me!” responded Miss Howard tersely. “I didn’t stop to ask him his name and address. Anyhow, you see what I’ve done. Provided a new and independent witness, and filled him up with just the sort of tale we wanted—Crown Prince and executioners and gangs and distressed damsel and all the rest of it. The Man with the Broken Nose! Do you know, I’m rather proud of that title; I feel there’s a good thriller behind that title, simply waiting to be written. Oh, by the way, here’s a souvenir,” She tossed a handkerchief into Cynthia’s lap. “I extracted it from his coat-sleeve in the intervals of shaking same. I could have relieved him of his watch and chain if I’d wanted too, and probably his collar and tie as well; he was far too dithery to notice little details like that. Most useful knowledge I’ve gained, if I ever take to crime in real earnest.”
Cynthia was examining the handkerchief by the light of a candle which Guy had lit. “R.F. in one corner,” she announced. “Who on earth is R. F., Guy?”
“Reginald Foster!” replied her husband promptly. “The biggest bore in creation.” He began to shake again with unholy glee. “Have you any blood left, Doyle?”
“Precious little, and I don’t mind telling you that I’m not parting with it. There may be a few scrapings in the cup, though. Why?”
“Just an idea. Here, George; something you can do. On the hall-table you’ll see a cup, bearing traces of blood. Wipe that handkerchief round inside it, and then go and drop it on the river’s brim—where we’ll hope that not even the Inspector from Scotland Yard will mistake it for a primrose. Hurry, won’t you?”
George hurried.
“I think you’re being perfectly horrible, Guy,” said his wife. “Why couldn’t you go on using red-ink, like civilised human beings?”
“Because red-ink when analysed does not respond to the tests for human blood, wife.”
“But good gracious, you’re not expecting matters to get as far as that, are you?”
“I was once a Boy Scout, Cynthia,” Mr. Doyle intervened, “and my motto was ‘Be Prepared.’ It still is. Another of my mottoes,” he added thoughtfully, “if I remember aright, was ‘Zing-a-zing, Bom Bom!’ But don’t ask me what that means, because I never could discover. It’s probably Jugo-Chzechovinian.”
“But what did youdowith the blood?” Cynthia pursued.
“Oh, just sprinkled it about in convenient dollops, like the gentle dew from Heaven, you know.”
“Well, goodness knows what’s going to come of all this,” Cynthia sighed.
“I say,” remarked George, with the appearance of careful thought, “wouldn’t it be a good idea to put your brother and sister off now? Er—supposed to be coming on Tuesday, aren’t they? Yes,” said George weightily, “if I were you I should put them off.”
“We’re certainly going to get into the most dreadful mess,” said Cynthia, not, however, relieving George’s mind.
“Your library carpet’s got into that already,” said Mr. Doyle consolingly.
“Enough of this chatty badinage!” Dora broke in. “Do you know that Mr. Reginald Foster has gone galloping off for the police? He won’t find him, because he won’t think of looking in your library cupboard, but he’ll ring up the nearest station; and then things are going to get busy. We’ve got to work out a plan of campaign. Remember I’ve had it put on record that our host and hostess were lured away from the house.”
“Well, there’s nothing to contradict that,” Guy agreed. “It’s lucky we gave the maids the week-end off, just in case of emergencies. Emergencies seem to be arising every minute. I’ve thought out a plan. I’ll get George and you, Doyle, to help me push the car out of the garage and a little way down the road, and then I’ll come driving back, making as much noise as I can, and generally enact the householder arriving home after a long ride. I surmise that those strange sounds, which seem to have died away altogether, will then break out with renewed force from the library, and I shall liberate our prisoner. I will then deal with any other emergencies as they crop up. It doesn’t matter about our stories coinciding, because your household won’t have heard or know anything at all. So, after you’ve helped me with the car, you three sneak home and go straight to bed.”
“All except me,” murmured Mr. Doyle, “who will be summoned to the telephone a few minutes after the prisoner has been liberated. ‘Knowing that such a distinguished journalist was in the vicinity, Mr. Nesbitt, etc.’”
Guy grinned at him guiltily. “You’re not going to make a newspaper story of it too, Doyle, surely?”
“You bet I am,” rejoined Mr. Doyle grimly. “And a houseful of furniture too. My motives, let it be understood, are entirely mercenary.”
“Well, good luck to them! Now then, here comes George; are we all ready?”
“I say,” said Cynthia suddenly. “I wonder what’s happening to poor Laura all this time? It’s nearly half-past eleven. Oughtn’t we to do something about her? But I suppose we can’t!”
It was the first time anybody had given a thought to poor Laura for almost an hour.
“By Jove, yes, Laura,” agreed her husband. “We must keep an eye open for her. I hope she doesn’t bring that fellow gaol-bird of hers back at an awkward moment. And what the deuce are we going to do abouthim?”
Had Guy but known it, that question was already in process of being answered for him at a spot some considerable distance away.