Murder in Bethnal Square

by Sydney Fowler

Books Of Today Ltd
1946

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Inside front cover:

WHAT THIS STORY IS ABOUT

When the blackmailer, Henry Coldwater, was murdered with a bayonet in his office in Bethnal Square, there were few regrets, but it was unfortunate that Basil Forbes should have chosen the day of the murder to give Coldwater the soundest thrashing of his life.

        Acting on Forbes' behalf Mr. Jellipot, the precise little solicitor whose perspicacity has on several occasions earned

the whole-hearted respect of the authorities, experienced little difficulty in clearing his client, but he left the police with a problem which almost defied solution.

CONTENTS

I	MR. JELLIPOT AND AN IMPORTUNATE WIFE
II	CONCERNING MURDER IN BETHNAL SQUARE
III	MR. JELLIPOT ENQUIRES
IV	ANALYSIS OP POTENTIAL MURDERERS
V	APPEARANCE OF BASIL FORBES
VI	INGENUOUSNESS OF BOB LONGWORTHY
VII	MRS. RENSHAW SPEAKS FREELY
VIII	CONSIDERING DUCKWORTH
IX	STUBBORNNESS OF THOMAS DUCKWORTH
X	QUESTIONS FOR MRS. FORBES
XI	A QUESTION OF BANK-NOTES
XII	WHERE THE BANK-NOTES CAME FROM
XIII	CANDOUR OF MR. FLIPP
XIV	CONSULTATION WITH MR. JELLIPOT
XV	PURSUES THE HISTORY OF A TEN-POUND NOTE
XVI	CONTINUES THE SAME PURSUIT
XVII	SOME NEW FACTS FROM JESSICA LEE
XVIII	MRS. RENSHAW HAS MORE TO SAY
XIX	CONCERN A BACK ROOM
XX	MRS. RENSHAW SEES MR. JELLIPOT
XXI	HESITATION OF MR. JELLIPOT
XXII	REVELATIONS OF SNEAKY DAWES
XXIII	MR. JELLIPOT WIILL NOT DECIDE
XXIV	APPEARANCE OF MR. BRICE
XXV	JESSICA STATES HER OWN CASE
XXVI	CALLERS ON MR. JELLIPOT
XXVII	MR. FLIPP AS A GOOD PARENT
XXVIII	OPINIONS OP SIR REGINALD CROWE
XXIX	INTERFERENCE OF MR. JELLIPOT
XXX	MR. FLIPP IS PREPARED FOR FLIGHT
XXXI	A MEETING IN CROMWELL ROAD
XXXII	ENTRANCE DURING THE NIGHT
XXXIII	SOMETHING MR. JELLIPOT DID NOT FORSEE
XXXIV	A BULLET FOR MR. FLIPP
XXXV	REWARDS FOR JESSICA
XXXVI	SOME MATTERS THAT MIGHT BE WORSE

Chapter I

MR. JELLIPOT AND AN IMPORTUNATE WIFE

MR. JELLIPOT looked at the woman who sat in tearful appeal at the side of his office desk. It was not his nature to be rude to women, nor indeed to men without much more cause than he had now, and the irritation he felt was only mildly evident in his voice as he said: "I am afraid, Mrs. Forbes, that it is not a case I can undertake. I am not accustomed, neither do I desire, to practise in the criminal courts. There are firms - I can recommend you to one, if you desire - who specialise in defending those who are accused of capital crimes, and who would be far more competent than I can profess to be."

        Alice Forbes was not naturally an aggressive woman, but he was fighting for the life of one whom she had the good or bad fortune to love, and it gave spirit to her reply. "You don't really mean that?"

        Mr. Jellipot, from being mildly irritated, became mildly surprised. He was habitually exact of speech, and was seldom, if ever, accused of saying that which he did not mean. He was naturally diffident of his own powers, and it was a fact that the notorious murder cases in which he had been engaged had been forced upon, rather than sought by, him. But did he honestly think that, if he should undertake the defence of this woman's probably most objectionable and homicidal husband, he would be represented less competently than by Jones & Littlepin, or Crompton Moss? He avoided a point on which his conscience was less than sure. "Will you tell me why you have come to me?" he asked, and her heart leapt as she heard the words, with a swift instinctive consciousness that he temporised, and would be certain to yield at last.

        "I came to you," she said, "because it's so similar to the murder in Razor Street - I mean the puzzle's almost exactly the same - and you got Miss Barman off when everyone thought she'd be convicted for certain sure. I know when I read the papers I thought she'd done it myself, though I didn't think he was much loss, and I don't suppose anyone did."

        Mr. Jellipot remembered that she had done it, which was something he could not say, but it disinclined him more than before to be drawn into such a battle again. Alice Forbes saw that she had said the wrong thing, though she could not understand where her error lay. She added: "I suppose you think it was a cheek walking into your office without any introduction or anything. But when you are in such trouble as mine - - ! And I don't want you to think that I can't pay."

        She opened a shabby handbag, from which she took a little roll of bank-notes, sixty pounds in all, which she had brought to satisfy, if it would, the traditional rapacity of the law.

        Mr. Jellipot looked at them with distaste. In his commercial practice he would charge with a liberal, even at times a high conception of the value of what he did. But that was a different matter. There, large sums of money would be at stake, to be lost or won: contracts would be signed by which commercial enterprises were launched, or sold, and much would hang upon the expertness and accuracy with which they were drawn. He took money where money was being wagered or made. He had no compunction in that.

        But these criminal charges which must be contested at a cost which could not be recovered even by an innocent man: often with money representing years of penurious thrift, which would be swept in an hour, like chicken-feed, into some wealthy barrister's bulging purse! His distaste for its financial aspects was not the least of the causes which disinclined him to cultivate business which had come of late with increasing frequency to his door.

        "You had better put that back," he said, with more geniality in his tone than she had heard previously, "till you are asked. You'll find that will happen quite soon enough. . . . What I meant was that, if your husband's trouble is at all like that in which Miss Barman found herself, it doesn't follow that I should be the one who would be most likely to get him out. The mere fact that I was instructed might prejudice the jury, as soon as they heard my name. And, besides, things don't go the same way twice. . . . And I think I should tell you, Mrs. Forbes, that Miss Barman didn't get off through anything that I was able to do. The case developed quite unexpectedly."

        Mrs. Forbes appeared to be unimpressed by these warnings. "I don't mind how unexpected it is," she said stubbornly, "so that it ends in the right way."

        Mr. Jellipot had a disposition to ask her how recently she had read the parable of the importunate widow, whom she understudied so well. She was not a widow. But she might be one in three months, or even a little less, if her husband were to be hanged for a crime of which he was most probably guilty. Still, it wouldn't do to say that! He checked an errant thought to ask: "Before I can discuss this further, I must put a question to you, to which, in your husband's interest, I must urge you to give an absolutely frank reply, and which I shall treat as absolutely confidential under whatever circumstances: Are you really sure that your husband is an innocent man?"

        "Yes," she said with an obvious, if inconclusive, sincerity, "there's no doubt about that."

        "But you have reason to think that the police may not agree?"

        "Inspector Combridge thinks he did it. You could tell that from the way he talked"

        "I have found Inspector Combridge to be a very shrewd, and he is certainly a fair-minded, man. Why should he think at, if it is not true?

        "Because of what Basil wrote, and him being there."

"Perhaps," Mr. Jellipot said, with a sigh for his own weakness, for he saw his feet slip on the edge of a pit he would have preferred to miss, "you'd better tell me the whole tale?

Chapter II

CONCERNING MURDER IN BETHNAL SQUARE

MRS. FORBES did not object, but it appeared that, on this subject at least, she lacked a fluent narrative style. She seemed to find it hard to begin, and Mr. Jellipot watched her silently, offering no help. She said at last: "It was about some silly letters I wrote three years ago."

        "Before you were married to Mr. Forbes?"

        "Yes, of course."

        "Letters to the murdered man?"

        "Yes. To Mr. Coldwater."

        "If they were written before your marriage, you need not have been greatly concerned?"

        Mrs. Forbes did not appear to agree. "They were silly letters," she repeated. "Very silly. Not the sort you want anyone else to read."

        "You didn't wish Mr. Forbes to see them, Did you think it would make serious trouble?"

        "No. Not serious. Not what you'd call serious. It - it would have been worse than that."

        "I'm afraid I don't understand."

        "I mean Basil would have laughed. It wouldn't have been a thing he'd ever forget."

        Mr. Jellipot said "Yes. I see," as in fact he did. He had not practised for over thirty years without learning something of the incomprehensible folly of girls when a pen is in their hands, and a man in their thoughts; and he knew something of the use to which such letters are often put when in unscrupulous hands. He knew, also, that it is not, in most instances, as is popularly supposed, the fear of tragic quarrel which renders their writers desperate in later years to prevent them coming to the sight of husbands, lovers, or children. It is the fear - perhaps the certainty - of ridicule, of exposure of a weakness which may be absurdly inconsistent with the assumed or attributed character of discreeter years. Alice Forbes had been something to her husband which the sight of those letters would have destroyed for ever. And he would not have taken it in a tragic mood. Worse than that. Basil would have laughed. Yes, Mr. Jellipot had no doubt that he understood.

        But it seemed that, if he were to have this tale fully told, it would only be in reply to questions from him. He asked: "And where are those letters now?"

        "I burned them yesterday. Before I heard what had happened."

        Mr. Jellipot was puzzled. He had supposed that Basil Forbes was suspected of murdering Mr. Coldwater in a chivalrous attempt to recover them on his wife's behalf, but it seemed that the tale was to be less simple than that. He wished that the woman had the will or the wit to tell it in a straightforward manner, but, as he could not have it in his own way, it must be in hers. He asked: "How had you got them back?"

        "Mr. Coldwater promised them to me when I'd paid him a hundred pounds. I'd paid fifty-four, and I had a legacy which was enough to settle the balance and a bit more. So I went to see him, and bought them back."

        "When was that?"

        "Yesterday morning-"

        "The day Henry Coldwater was killed?"

        "Yes. Just before. I mean a few hours before."

        "And your husband knew about this?"

        "He didn't know the legacy, or that I was getting them back. He knew about the pound a week."

        "You mean that you had been paying the hundred pounds at the rate of a pound a week? If your husband knew that, there wasn't much more for him to know, was there?"

        "I didn't know that he'd found that out."

        "So I suppose he went to get the letters after they had been returned to you?"

        "Yes."

        "And what - what does he say - happened then?"

        "He thought Henry was telling lies. He says he thrashed him, and he still kept saying the same, as of course he couldn't help doing, so Basil said at last he'd ask me if it were true, and if it wasn't he'd go back and thrash him again."

        "And he may have thrashed him rather too hard?"

        "No, he didn't do anything silly like that. He says Henry was all right when he came away. It was after that someone went and stuck a bayonet into him out of the grate."

        "A bayonet?"

        "Yes. Henry's father'd brought it back from the war. He used to keep it in the fender to break the coal."

        "Well," Mr. Jellipot said, "anybody could have picked it up. It isn't as though he'd been killed with something your husband took into the room."

        "Of course not," she agreed eagerly. "You'd think anyone would see that."

        "But," he went on, not wishing to encourage her too far in what might prove to be a vain hope, "it is also true that it would be most likely to be used by someone who had entered the room without any homicidal purpose, and who therefore had no lethal weapon in his possession. That is to say, it was one which might be snatched up, either with murderous purpose, or in self-defence, in the course of a quarrel that developed in Mr. Coldwater's room, as you say that that with your husband did.

        Mrs. Forbes gave the solicitor an angry, almost suspicious stare, as the force of this argument penetrated her mind. "I suppose," she said, "you might make almost anything out, if you go guessing round. But I don't see that it's any use to us, saying that."

        Mr. Jellipot sighed slightly, wondering why so many women have been created without the faculty of logical reasoning. Perhaps, he reflected, it may assist the directness of their approach. To see both sides with equal clarity may be a source of weakness rather than strength. He said aloud: "No. It probably isn't. . . . But you said, if I understood you correctly, that your husband had written something of an unfortunate character?"

        "Well, he had to write, because Mr. Coldwater wouldn't ever see anyone unless they made an appointment first, and said what their business would be. I don't think he liked meeting people unexpectedly, and besides, it made them understand how important he was. So there's nothing really in that."

        "I should suppose the fact that your husband wrote to be in his favour rather than now. It shows that there was no concealment about his call. Unless, of course, there was something in the letter threatening Mr. Coldwater's life?"

        "No, I'm sure there wouldn't be that."

        "Perhaps you don't really know what it did say?"

        "I haven't seen it. But it was something about breaking every bone in his body that Inspector Combridge seemed to think shouldn't have been there."

        "And you don't think that should be taken seriously?"

        "Not from Basil. It would be just what he would be likely to do."

        Mr. Jellipot allowed himself to look slightly surprised. "You mean that he would be likely to break every bone in the body of a man with whom he might have a difference to adjust?"

        "That's a way of speaking, of course. It only means that he'd give him a thrashing if he thought that it was the best thing for him to have and that was just what he did."

        "Yes. . . . It is a sound point. The threat is evidently not one to be taken literally. Nor, in fact, did it occur. . . . I suppose your husband admitted having thrashed Mr. Coldwater, when he was questioned by the police?"

        "Yes, of course. He's not the sort that tells lies. He said he was sorry when he came away that he hadn't given him more than he did. But when he found that I'd really had the letters, he thought it might have been about right, except for him having got hold of the hundred pounds."

        Mr. Jellipot considered this with a mind disposed to be favourably influenced by Mrs. Forbes's conhdent belief in her husband's veracity. But he reflected that even a habitually truthful man, as he was willing to suppose Basil Forbes to be, might hesitate to accuse himself of a capital crime. And Inspector Combridge, if the woman were to be believed, was not favourably impressed. "Your husband," he asked, "has not, as far as you are aware, been arrested yet?"

        "No. I thought, if I came to you at once, you'd stop anything happening like that."

        "I am afraid you attribute more power to me than I possess. Where is Mr. Forbes now?"

        "He's at the bank, of course."

        "He's a bank employé?"

        "He's the accountant at the New Oxford Street branch of the London & Northern Bank."

        "I suppose he knew you were coming to see me this morning?"

        "Oh, no, he didn't! He told me not to put my foot into it at all. I expect he'll punish me when he does."

        "Punish you?" Mr. Jellipot asked, mildly surprised again by the expression, and the cheerfulness with which it was mentioned. "Not seriously, may I hope?"

        "He always beats me when I don't do what I'm told. I expect it's the best way."

        "Mr. Forbes appears to be somewhat addicted to demonstrations of physical vigour. But such - may I say evidences of affection? - are not sufficiently serious to prevent you following your own judgment when it differs from his?"

        "You see," she answered complacently, "he's a very strong man. . . . I couldn't let him go to prison, if you mean that."

        "We will hope," Mr. Jellipot replied, but without much confidence in his voice, "that the question does not arise. . . . Mrs. Forbes, I am sorry that, at this stage, and on my present information, I cannot undertake to act for your husband, nor should I be disposed to do so if I had his instructions, which I have no reason to suppose that I ever shall. . . . But if you will trust my discretion as to what use, if any, I may make of the information you have given me this morning, I will have a few words with the police, and may possibly be able - but I don't want you to hope too much - to relieve your mind of the fear which you how have.

        "You must understand that it is the duty of the police to question - and perhaps to suspect - all who are on the scene of a crime of violence of this character. But they don't usually make an arrest without having very good reason for what they do. If you like to come to see me tomorrow morning, you may find me better able to advise you than I am now. . . . At the present moment I have an overdue appointment of some importance with certain gentlemen who are almost certainly waiting with impatience in the outer office."

        With these words the solicitor shook hands with Mrs. Forbes, and gently but firmly conducted her to the door.

Chapter III

MR. JELLIPOT ENQUIRES

"IS that you, Combridge? Yes, Jellipot speaking. If I am not misinformed, you are interesting yourself in the decease of a Mr. Henry Coldwater, which took place in Bethnal Square yesterday afternoon?"

        "Decease? Murder's the word. Yes, I certainly am. If you've got a good tip for me - - "

        "No. I am afraid I am seeking rather than offering information. But may I conclude from that remark that the case is not as simple as you would like it to be?"

        "Well, there aren't many that are. Not on the first day. What is it you want to know?"

        "What sort of a man was he?"

        "He was a red-hot rogue. Whoever stuck him did the world a good turn. But it's rough on us. We've been trying to catch him for seven years, and we'd just baited a trap that would have had him doing one of the longest stretches the law allows."

        "Do I understand that you regard it as a reflection upon the C.I.D. that he should have died without learning what a dock is like from an inside view?"

        "Yes. That's what I was trying to say."

        "What was his particular line of iniquity?"

        "Oh, you might call him a general practitioner. Any kind of financial fraud. Been a solicitor's clerk, and learned all the law he could to put it to the wrong use. Selling businesses for ten times what they were worth was his special line. Used to write very clever letters to his victims, rather discouraging them from buying, and then talk to them just differently enough to pull them in. But he had other lines besides that. Blackmailing must have brought him in a good sum."

        "So I have been led to infer. . . . The fact is that I had a Mrs. Forbes in to see me this morning. She seemed to think - quite erroneously I expect - that the police were about to exhibit their usual ineptitude by arresting her husband for something he hasn't done."

        "So he's getting the wind up, is he? That's always worth knowing. And I suppose I'm to have the pleasure of having you against me again?"

        The inspector's tone suggested that it was a pleasure he would not object to miss, but Mr. Jellipot answered equably, taking the points which had been raised in his usual orderly manner.

        "I don't think he's getting the wind up at all. I gathered that the lady came to see me without her husband's knowledge, and is anticipating a certain amount of marital difference - or perhaps discipline would be the more accurate word - if he should learn what she has done. But as I naturally declined to take instructions from her, and it is improbable that I should consent to act for Mr. Forbes even if he should ask me himself, the question of being against you does not arise, even if you had been contemplating his arrest, which I shall be pleased to assure the lady is not the case."

        "I shouldn't go quite that far, if I were you. Anyway, you haven't had it from me."

        "But I think I have. From what I have understood already, the case against Basil Forbes can only be strong in the absence of any alternative probability. I suppose that it would have influenced you - perhaps decisively - against him had it been a fact that he had come to me in anticipation of being arrested, but in the absence of that indication, if you have not already decided that you can find the criminal without looking further than him, I incline to think that it is very unlikely that you will do so at a later day."

        "Well, have it your own way! But it isn't quite as simple as that. . . . As a matter of fact, I should be glad to feel we could rule Forbes definitely out, because we should know what we're up against better than we do now. But he's not one who makes it easy to give him a clean ticket. The way he said that he hadn't killed Coldwater made it sound about level odds that he'd murder me. All the same, if you've got anything out of his wife that you're free to tell, and that you think it might be useful to me to know, I'll come round in the morning, and lap it up."

        "I haven't much. But you can come round now if you like. I shan't have much leisure tomorrow.

        "If you're sure that it's not too late?"

        "No. I should have rung you up earlier in the afternoon, but I've had a full day. If you come now, I can give you any time up to an hour."

        Inspector Combridge replied that he would be at Mr. Jellipot's Basinghall Street office as rapidly as the traffic lights would allow, and the solicitor telephoned to his house-keeper to say that he would be half an hour late for dinner, and received no more than a respectful "Yes, sir," in response, which, had they heard it, might have been the envy of a large number of married men.

        Having settled that, he proceeded to the signing of letters, and the customary clearing of his desk from the litter which had accumulated during the day, so that when Inspector Combridge was announced he was able to listen with the free mind of one whose work, for that day, was done.

        "You will appreciate - " he began, when the inspector was seated comfortably, and had succumbed to the temptation of one of the choice cigars which Mr. Jellipot kept for his most valued clients and friends, while limiting himself to one daily after-dinner indulgence - "you will appreciate that, though I am not acting professionally for Mr. Forbes, and though I received permission from his wife to use the information she gave me entirely at my own discretion, yet the obligation of confidence - the obligation to exercise that discretion in the interests of these two people - must still remain. I do not say that that consideration will restrain me from repeating freely what she has said to me - it may actually operate in an opposite direction - but I suggest that you should first tell me as much as you feel free to do concerning the circumstances of the crime, so that I may be better able to judge of what the position, as between Forbes and the law, is likely to be."

        "Yes. I'll do that. There's nothing to keep back, as between you and me. But how much do you know now? I suppose you've read what's been in the Press?"

        "No. I can't say that I have. Not much more than the headlines. I've been too busy."

        "Well, it's not a long tale. I've told you the kind of man Coldwater was. He was a queer fish. I don't mean that there's anything queer about being a rogue, but he had some queer ways, though I don't say that there may not have been some method in them.

        "For one thing, he carried on his different businesses at Coldwater House - - "

        "Do you mean that his place of business had the same name as himself? That it was named after him?"

        "No. It was the other way round. It's been Coldwater House for about sixty years, and he was a younger man. He either took the place because it had the same name as himself, and he thought it would sound well, or he changed his name, for the same reason, to match the property. But which it was, we've never been able to find out. When he attracted our notice first he was Henry Coldwater of Coldwater House, Bethnal Square, and we've never been able to get behind that."

        "Well, it doesn't matter. You were going to say something about his different businesses?"

        "Yes. That he carried them on separately on different days. He had employés who only came certain days of the week, so that some of them seem never to have met, though they've been on the staff for years; and he had one day - Monday it was - when he would be quite alone. On that day, his rule was that he would see people by appointment only, though it was one, as what happened yesterday shows, which wasn't always strictly observed.

        "His own office was on the first floor, and he had a pull there that would release the catch of an inner door in the hall. Anyone calling to see him would have to ring first, and then he would call down a speaking tube, and if he expected them, or they were anyone he wanted to see, he would release the catch and tell them to come up, and to be very careful to close the door. But, in fact, it works on a spring, and if anyone pushes it open widely enough to pass through, it will close itself. The care wouldn't be needed to shut it, but to close it gently enough for it not to latch again.

        "When I add that he kept records of the appointments he made, and that the list for Monday was on his desk when he was found, you'll understand that, unless someone called whom he hadn't expected, but whom he invited up when he heard who it was, we've got to pick from a small list."

        "Yes. I see that. I see also why Mrs. Forbes described it as being a good deal like the Razor Street murder. But I shouldn't suppose that you'd have quite the same kind of difficulty that puzzled us then. The caller in this case wouldn't be likely to want to lift suspicion from others, hut only to save himself. Considering that those who called after Coldwater was dead would get no reply, and, I suppose, conclude sooner or later that he was out, and go away, you ought to be able to get very close to the right man. But you'll tell me that there's something that makes it less simple than that?"

        "Well, I don't know. At present there's one man that we haven't found, and we don't know whether he'll say that he saw Coldwater alive, or couldn't make anyone hear. But, apart from that, there are one or two rather puzzling features. Not pointing in any particular direction, but just being unlikely things that give you the uncomfortable feeling that there's something about it that won't be easy to fit together."

        "I think I've heard you say," Mr. Jellipot replied, "that the points that seem queerest at first are usually those that prove most useful in solving a difficult problem, which struck me as a very likely eventuality."

        "Did I say that? Well, we'll hope it'll be true here. I expect you read that it's practically certain that the man was killed with a bayonet he used to keep in the grate?"

        "It was told to me as a fact. 'Practically certain' is, I believe, an expression which usually means highly probable, but not certain at all. How does the measure of doubt arise?"

        "The bayonet, if it were used, had been wiped clean, and put back in its place, and it bore no finger-prints. The first reason we had, in spite of that, for thinking it had been used was that there was no other weapon about, and that the blade exactly fits, not only the wound, but the holes in the clothes of the murdered man through which it was driven. It shows how firmly it was thrust in, and pulled out again - probably not immediately after - that these holes are so exact - I mean that there are no slitting at all. . . . You might think that I put it too high when I say it's practically certain that it was used; but we've had a curious piece of evidence which increases the probability, and explains how it was cleaned.

        "There's an elderly man named Cooper who occupies a third story flat at 7, Bilton Crescent, and his back room overlooks the yard of Coldwater House, though it isn't a very near view.

        "He says that he was alone on Monday afternoon, amusing himself with a bagatelle-board, which seems to be a very frequent occupation with him. When he scores fifty or over (I don't know much about the game myself, but he assures me that, on his board, it isn't easy to do) he treats himself to a drink, and when he does that he usually stands at the window, and looks out over the back gardens of Bilton Crescent and Bethnal Square.

        "He says that on Monday afternoon he scored over fifty three times, and on one of those occasions but unfortunately he can't remember which, or what time it was, not thinking it to have been of any importance at the time - he saw a man come out of the back door of Coldwater House, and go to a tap in the yard, and very carefully wash what looked like a long knife, and may well have been this bayonet, with which the murder had been committed a few minutes before."

        "He might have been seen by any of some scores of other people?"

        "Yes. But we can't find that he was."

        "It sounds to me," Mr. Jellipot said deliberately, "an incredible tale."

        "So it did to us. But Cooper seems to be a respectable and intelligent man, and there is no apparent reason why he should lie. Besides that, it is consistent with - indeed, it explains - the condition in which the bayonet was left."

        "Does Cooper say that he could recognise the man if he should see him again?"

        "No. He says definitely that he couldn't. The most we can get is that he was wearing a dark overcoat and a bowler hat, and that he wasn't a particularly large man. And the last point, if it be reliable, lets Forbes out, for he's about six-foot-three."

        "Which may be very lucky for him. But I can't see - and I'm not saying this because Mrs. Forbes has been here - that you ever had any case against him that would have had a reasonable chance of success. If he'd thrashed Coldwater rather too vigorously, and he died in consequence - that might have been natural enough. But to thrash him first, and then finish him off with a bayonet - it doesn't sound a very probable thing. But, by the way, what condition would Coldwater have been in to receive further callers after the treatment that he had received?"

        "Well, he wouldn't have found it very comfortable to get up and resume his seat. His face wasn't marked, if you mean that. Forbes seems to have confined his attention to one spot. It was a case of a small man, and one about twice his size. Coldwater doesn't seem to have put up any fight, or, if he did, it made no difference either to Forbes or himself."

        Mr. Jellipot's imagination dwelt upon the experiences of the man who had been whipped like a child of five, and bayoneted at a later hour of the day. He said aloud, with his usual moderation of language: "He seems to have had an uncomfortable afternoon." He added: "It looks as though you've got to concentrate on the man that you haven't yet been able to find."

        He roused himself to a fresh animation to say: "But there's one thing that, queerly enough, you haven't told me, and I haven't asked. If anyone rang the bell and got no answer, it's a fair assumption that Coldwater was dead then, but how long was it before the body was found, and by whom?"

        "Well, it was like this: there's a woman, a Mrs. Whitepepper, who lives round the corner in Cary Street, who was employed to clean up daily at Coldwater House She had her own keys, and expected to let herself in if she found the outer door locked, which she usually did on Mondays, when no one except Coldwater himself would be there, and he didn't usually stay as late as five-thirty, which was her time to arrive.

        "She says she was a little later than usual, it being about twenty to six when she let herself in, having another woman with her, a niece, a Miss Whistler, who helps her in her work.

        "The younger woman stayed below, filling buckets, but Mrs. Whitepepper went upstairs, and found Coldwater lying dead. She says she went straight to the telephone when she saw how he lay, and rang up for the police; and I don't doubt it was what she did, for it was barely five-forty-five when we got the news at the Yard, and I was on the way there."

        "You've no reason to think she knew anything more than that?"

        "Not the least. We found her quite ready to talk, but with nothing useful to say. Besides, the medical evidence was that the man had been dead for two hours, more or less, before she arrived."

        "Then we can put her out of our minds?"

        "Yes. There's nothing to be got there."

Chapter IV

ANALYSIS 0F POTENTIAL MURDERERS

"WE can't expect to find a man," Inspector Combridge said reasonably, "if we don't know who we're looking for, or where he's likely to be."

        It was a proposition to which Mr. Jellipot assented readily. "But," he said, "I hope it's not quite as bad as that," to which the Inspector replied that it wasn't as bad as that. It was a bit worse. After which he proceeded to explanation.

        The list of appointments which had been found on Mr. Coldwater's desk read:

Flipp's Accounts . . . . . . . . 10.45
Lady Gleaner's Maid . . . . . .1.30
Forbes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.15
Long . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.15
Duckworth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.0

        "The man," Inspector Combridge went on, when he had allowed Mr. Jellipot time for the assimilation of this list, "kept a rather full diary, with a lot of information in it which we should have been glad to have while we could have talked it over with him, but he was discreet in his own way. He mentions people most often by numbers, or letters which may not be their real initials, and we haven't observed that he entered his appointments at all.

        "Monday was his day for private interviews, as I said before, and he probably made a note of these on a slip of paper, such as the one we found, and destroyed it afterwards. As a matter of fact, there's no date on this one, but there's no doubt of what it was, as the list agrees with the people who are known to have called.

        "Of course, those who were before Forbes don't come into the picture, unless they made a second visit, because when he beat him up, as he admits that he did, he certainly wasn't dead. But there's no doubt that they were there.

        "Flipp is a man he employs for most of his dirtiest work. Not only blackmailing jobs, but making bogus purchases at shops he's trying to sell, while the victims are on the scene, and, in fact, anything that a decent man wouldn't do. He says he's there every Monday, which there's no reason to doubt.

        "We haven't checked up on Lady Gleaner's maid yet. For one thing, there's not been much time, and it can't well be any help to us; but there's no doubt that she was there, because there's a cheque of Lady Gleaner's for a hundred pounds made out to self or bearer in the safe, dated two days before. Whoever stuck that bayonet under Coldwater's ribs saved the lady a hundred pounds, and possibly a lot more. But there'll be time for dealing with that.

        "Besides these two, we know that Mrs. Forbes went there without an appointment. She says she had a legacy of a hundred and twenty pounds for which the cheque reached her on Monday morning, and as soon as she could get out she went to the bank and drew the money. After that, she went to Coldwater's office, and rang, and when he'd heard through the speaking-tube what her business was he had her up, and she paid him forty-six pounds, and had her letters back.

        "There's no reason to doubt her tale. Her money was in the safe with Lady Gleaner's cheque, and it was her getting hold of the letters then from which the trouble began - that is, unless we are to say that Forbes had nothing to do with the man's death, about which I've still got an open mind.

        "That brings us to his call at two-fifteen. Here, again, we know what happened up to a point. There's no reason to doubt Forbes' account of his interview with Coldwater up to when he thrashed him for not handing over letters he hadn't got. It fits in with what Mrs. Forbes says, and it's all the more convincing because we interviewed him about it before he'd had any opportunity of talking it over with her."

        "You must have got on his track very quickly for that."

        "So we did. There was the letter he'd written to Coldwater under some other papers on his desk. If was from the New Oxford Street branch of the London & Northern, and when I rang up there I heard that he'd been working late, and only just left. They gave me his private address, and I got there just as he was putting his latch-key into the door.

        "That's how it was, and I had a talk with him alone first, and then he called in Mrs. Forbes.

        "I've no reason to doubt that he told the truth to a point - it's when you get beyond that!

        "I learned from the bank that he had arranged to take his lunch-hour later than usual - from two to three - and he was back punctually, but sent out for some sandwiches during the afternoon, saying he'd been too busy to get much lunch. The manager says he didn't notice anything particular about his manner during the afternoon, unless it were that he was in rather better spirits than usual, but he seemed to be in a special hurry to get home, and lost his temper for a moment when it was found that one of the counter-men couldn't balance his cash, and he was likely to be delayed in consequence."

        "All of which," Mr. Jellipot replied, "is not merely consistent with his own tale, but provides very strong evidence that he is an innocent man."

        "I won't argue that. I'm not trying to put it on him at all. But if he didn't, who did? We've got two more men on the list, and the first is no more than a name, and mayn't be a true one either.

        "It's just there that we're stuck. None of Coldwater's employés whom we've interviewed yet admits having heard the name, and Flipp says that it's most unlikely that anyone would have been calling of whom he wouldn't know something. I've got two men now going over every scrap of writing in the office, and following up every number that had been scrawled on the telephone-pad or anywhere else, but up to an hour ago they'd drawn an absolute blank."

        "Long isn't a very uncommon name."

        "No. It would be better for us if it were. We found that Coldwater House was repainted by Long & Hewitt last year. We found that there's a James Long in the firm who's over seventy, and was in the office practically all day, and he had a son in the business who was killed in a motor accident three weeks ago. Mr. James Long said they might have painted Coldwater House. They painted a good many business premises during the course of the year. But as far as he was personally concerned it was the first time he had heard the name, and he should be sorry for anyone who wasted time trying to blackmail him."

        "I think," Mr. Jellipot said thoughtfully, "that there are times when your profession must be intensely exasperating."

        "We shan't disagree there. . . . After that, we come to Duckworth. He's a mild little man. Small enough to have been the one who was seen washing the bayonet, but we can't arrest him for that. What he says is that he rang the bell and got no answer, though he went on till he was tired of standing about, because he wanted to see Coldwater particularly, as he was afraid of what might happen if he didn't. "That may be true or false, but either way it saves us the trouble of looking for anyone who may have called after four, because, if it's true, it means that the man was already dead, and if it's false it's about fifty to one that it was Duckworth who did the job."

        "Had he any sufficient motive for such a crime?"

        "Oh, plenty, I expect! Probably a lot more than he'll tell us. But if we were to arrest everyone who'd got a motive in such cases as this we should have to enlarge the docks."

        "Yes. No doubt. It seems to me you've only got to find the elusive Long, and you'll have the man."

        "I'm not saying you're wrong. But we've nothing really to go on, unless he's good enough to provide it himself, as they often do. . . . And the worst of it is that Sir Henry's got it into his head that Forbes is the guilty man, and that I ought to be working up the case against him instead of looking round for someone else who doesn't exist."

        "That," Mr. Jellipot agreed, "is unfortunate." He knew the Assistant Commissioner to be a man of sudden judgments not always established on prosaic basis of fact, and he knew also that Chief Inspectors cannot treat such opinions with the levity which they deserve.

        "I wonder," he said, "whether it would be any advantage to ring up Sir Reginald Crowe. We have found his opinion on character before now to be very sound."

        Sir Reginald Crowe was the chairman of the London & Northern Bank. He was known to have a better knowledge of his staff, and to maintain a closer contact with them, than most bank chairmen think it needful to do; and he had been associated with Inspector Combridge and Mr. Jellipot in a previous experience, the memory of which must always unite the three in more than a casual intimacy.

        "Well," the inspector answered, though without enthusiasm, "it can't do any harm."

        Mr. Jellipot hoped for more than that. He hoped it might do a little good. He had come, during the conversation, to a decided opinion that Basil Forbes was an innocent man. But if the Assistant Commissioner were disposed for his arrest, he saw that there was a serious danger that the young man might be on the threshold of an unpleasant experience, from which he must endeavour to save him. And every straw is of assistance to turn the scale.

        He got through to Sir Reginald at once, which, as a large part of the bank's business now went through his office, was not surprising. But he found the banker to be busily engaged, and disposed to cut him off before he had time to begin.

        "Look here, Jellipot, I've got a most important conference on. I really haven't a moment to spare. If it's that Vortex muddle, you can just do what you think best. It's the kind of mess in which I'd trust your judgment even more than my own."

        "It's not that at all. I shan't keep you more than thirty seconds. You've got a man named Forbes on your staff."

        "Yes. Accountant at the New Oxford Street branch. Quite a good man. What are you doing with him?"

        "You don't think he's the kind of man who would murder anyone?"

        "Yes, of course. Why not?"

        "I mean seriously."

        "And I didn't mean he'd think it a joke. What are you getting at?"

        "If you can spare two minutes I'll try to explain more clearly."

        "Call it four. The gentlemen who are here seem to be able to quarrel among themselves without any help from me."

        With this permission, Mr. Jellipot gave a brief account of the circumstances surrounding Mr. Coldwater's violent end, and Basil Forbes' association therewith, and, having the benefit of this information, Sir Reginald answered the question which had been first propounded.

        "If you want my opinion as to whether Forbes committed that murder, I should say certainly not. Not that I should blame him overmuch if he had, except for being a fool. When a blackmailer's killed it's an illegal service to the community for which a man ought to get six months' holiday on full pay. But I suppose it's no use telling Combridge that, and Sir Henry'd throw a fit.

        "But Forbes wouldn't have done it. For one thing, he values his place with us, which he would almost certainly lose if he were convicted of such a crime. But there's more in it than that. Would he kill a man when he'd just relieved his feelings by thrashing him, and got him in a mood for licking his boots? I should say there would be no more unlikely time. Tell Combridge from me that if he arrests him he'll be sorry when he's discharged; and some nasty things said about the thick heads of the police, more likely than not.

        "But if he must arrest him, and won't listen to wiser men, ask him not to do so till we've got the monthly balances out, when it won't be quite such a bother to us as it would now."

        Mr. Jellipot translated this shrewd and characteristically expressed opinion of the youthful and unconventional chairman of the London & Northern Bank into his own more precise ant less picturesque idiom, and Inspector Combridge said rather gloomily: "Yes. He's right enough there. It wasn't a very likely time for him to kill him when he'd just blown off steam in the way he had. That is, of course, if there isn't something we don't know, that might alter the whole deduction from what we do. I suppose I've got to go on looking for all the short men in London named Long, and then try to find out whether they had any dealings with Coldwater. It sounds as though, before I get through with that, I might be a lot older than I am now."

        Mr. Jellipot thought, not for the first time, that criminal investigation required qualities of mind and character which were not his. He knew that he would be appalled by the hopeless nature of such a task. Indeed, he would not know how to begin! But he did not say this, being well content with the immediate object which he had some reason to think he had gained. He replied only: "It does look rather that way. And, perhaps, if you have any more trouble with Sir Henry about Forbes, you might get him to have a word with Sir Reginald. He might take more notice of his opinion than yours or mine."

        "Which," was the inspector's inarticulate reflection, "shows what a fool he is." Sir Henry would doubtless regard any expression of opinion by the chairman of the London & Northern Bank with the deference which he would consider due to that of an important man.

Chapter V

APPEARANCE OF BASIL FORBES

MR. JELLIPOT paused in his perusal of a title-deed which he did not wholly approve. He made a marginal note, and, as he did so, it crossed his mind that Mrs. Forbes was due to appear. She was not likely to be later than the appointment which he had made. How far would it be justifiable for him to advise her to dismiss her fears? He did not think her husband was guilty. But he was not sure. He felt a greater confidence that the police were not in possession of evidence sufficient to obtain a conviction. That should mean that there would be no present probability of arrest. But again he was not sure. The attitude of the Assistant Commissioner introduced an element of considerable doubt.

        His reflections were interrupted by the appearance of his articled clerk, Richard Dilke, at the door. "Mr. Basil Forbes is here, sir. He seems very anxious to see you without delay. He says he's only got about half an hour and the matter's urgent."

        "You said Mr. Forbes, Richard?"

        "Yes, sir."

        "Isn't this the time for Mrs. Forbes to call?"

        "Yes, sir. I told him you had an appointment, and couldn't he look in later, but he wouldn't take that. I didn't know whether you'd wish them to meet."

        "Richard," Mr. Jellipot said with a kindly seriousness, "you are developing a discretion which should eventually produce a very good lawyer, if you should ever pass your examinations, an event which I will not entirely discourage you from anticipating. In the last fifty-eight years, I have seen many surprising things.

        ". . . No, I don't know that I do. Show him in, and if Mrs. Forbes calls later, tell her that Mr. Forbes is here, and let her wait or go, as she may prefer. Now I wonder," he thought, as the clerk withdrew, "what can have brought him here? Probably she couldn't keep her mouth shut, and he's come to see what mischief she's done, and to tell me that, when he wants help, he knows how to ask for it himself. . . . Well, that's reasonable enough, and he may be rather interesting to see." And as he thought this he rose to receive one of the largest men who had ever sunk into the comfortable depths of his client's chair.

        The normal expression of Basil Forbes might have been genial, as that of largely made men often is, but he was evidently unaccustomed to self-repression, and now in a state of angered irritation which he made no effort to hide. "You wish to see me?" Mr. Jellipot enquired tentatively.

        "Well, I've come here! It's about that damned Coldwater business, of course." Mr. Jellipot would give him no help. "You wish to see me," he repeated tonelessly, "about that?"

        "Alice said you'd be the one to make people see sense."

        "I am afraid the lady we mention exaggerates any capacity I may have. It is not always easy to make people see anything. What sense are you anxious that they should see?"

        "There's no need to fence. I know Alice came here."

        "So I conclude. It might have been more discreet to let her do so a second time."

        "Discreet be damned. I want the thing stopped in a legal way."

        "Perhaps if you'd tell me, Mr. Forbes, what you want stopped, and how you expect me to do it?"

        "I want this talk stopped in the bank that I murdered Coldwater. It would have been a lunatic thing to do. They might as well call me non compos mentis straight out. And after writing to say that I was coming to break his bones! It's like saying that I'm not fit to be in the bank at all. And, besides, I shouldn't have needed a bayonet. When I'd got him down, I could have twisted his neck like that, before he had time to squeal, if I'd been such an utter mug."

        As he spoke, he made an expressive gesture with his hands, causing Mr. Jellipot to repcat his reflection that Henry Coldwater had had a suffering afternoon.

        He asked aloud, with an inward thought that; the more this voluble young man talked, the more he was likely to learn: "You don't really apprehend being dismissed from the bank?"

        "I should say not! They'd be in a mess if they did. I've been managing that branch for the last two years, and the turnover's about twice what it was. You can bet your boots Sir Reginald hasn't missed noticing that."

        Mr. Jellipot, looking mildly surprised, said: "I hadn't known you were manager."

        "No. And they'd tell you I'm not. If a customer wants some accommodation he goes to Mr. Broughton, and Mr. Broughton asks me what I think. That's how it works. And if they want to know whether a signature's forged they come straight to me. That's all the difference there is."

        "Mr. Broughton being the gentleman who draws the manager's salary?"

        "Yes, of course. You think I'm making a silly boast, but I thought you'd want the real facts, if you are to be any good to me."

        "I think," Mr. Jellipot answered slowly, "that you are angry and excited, and putting matters rather differently from what you would do in a quieter mood."

        "Well, perhaps I am. But look what I've had to stand! Alice playing the fool, and that filthy swine getting her cash, and she having had all the worry she has, and me going short of eggs for a year, and now a young cad like Binns making a joke about how soon I'll be in the hangman's shed! If I am, it won't be for any name beginning with C. It will be the letter before."

        Mr. Jellipot had an orderly mind, which it was not easy to bustle. Declining to confuse himself among the many questions suggested by this extraordinary utterance, he went on: "I hope you didn't blame Mrs. Forbes for having come to see me yesterday?"

        "Blame her? No. She should have asked me first. But she's got trouble enough with this thing turning out as it has. And it wasn't a bad thing to do. I'd thought of you myself, but I wasn't going to look as though I expected to be accused. Not till I heard what they're saying behind my back. . . . Alice is one of the best."

        "So I judged. But I understood that there are occasions when the maintenance of what you consider to be satisfactory marital relations requires the exercise of a certain amount of physical discipline, and that, on this occasion, she was just a little apprehensive - - "

        Mr. Jellipot paused in rnid-sentence, and looked interrogatively at his bellicose client, who became momentarily silent. He even looked confused. Then he said: "Well, she was a sport to come, if she thought that. I told you Alice is one of the best." He had a further moment of silence which Mr. Jellipot did nothing to interrupt. Then he broke out with: "I said I'd tell you the whole truth, so it had better come out, though I wasn't thinking of this. It's true I have walloped her now and then. But we haven't been any worse friends for that, and it's done her good in more ways than one. It hasn't been what you'd call hard."

        Mr. Jellipot was not instant in his reply. He wondered whether Mr. Forbes' definition of hardness were one to which his wife would agree. And when he paused, Basil Forbes, venturing farther in pursuit of the promised truth, drew out his pocket-book, and abstracted from its inmost recess a small piece of twice-folded paper.

        "Besides," he said, "I've got this."

        Mr. Jellipot opened it, and read aloud this surprising quatrain:

"Though weals may rise across my thighs,
And my ' - ahem! - ' may tingle,
It's better to be whipped and wed
Than be unsmacked and single."
ALICE FORBES.

        He observed that the lines themselves were in a more masculine hand than the signature, and concluded that the lady was not the author of the sentiment to which she had subscribed her name. Feeling unprepared for more direct comment, he asked: "You are a poet, Mr. Forbes, as well as being a banker, and - shall I say a man of your hands?"

        "Yes. All good bankers are."

        "It may be so. But it is a fact of which I was not aware."

        Mr. Forbes admitted that it was not generally known. But he instanced Sydney Dobell, Samuel Rogers, and other bankers who had won fame for their metrical compositions in earlier centuries, to which he added a surprising list of living bankers who had demonstrated their proclivity by the publication of volumes of verse. He pointed out that he had not said that all bankers were good poets, but that all good bankers were poets, which Mr. Jellipot recognised to be a proposition less inherently improbable, and far harder to overthrow.

        "You expose my ignorance," he said, "in more ways than one. . . . But we must not allow ourselves to be diverted from the subject on which you called. I am not sure that the rather surprising sentiment which your stanza expresses constitutes a necessary antithesis, and it is therefore open to the criticism that it is not logically sound. Apart from that, there must - you will understand that I am speaking quite impersonally, so that the idea of assaulting me need not arise - there must always be the question of duress to be considered in appraising the inferential value of such a signature. But having said that, I will add that I am personally satisfied, from a remark made by Mrs. Forbes herself, that what you have said is substantially true." His mind wandered against his will to consider the probable reaction of that shrewd and capable Quaker lady, Miss Patience Manly, towards whom matrimonial intentions had been vaguely and timidly forming in his own mind, if he should propound to her the propriety of signing a duplicate of that submissive poem, and withdrew baffled from that which was beyond human imagination. He ended with: "It is a world of interesting and surprising differences," and as Mr. Forbes showed no disposition to discuss this dictum, Mr. Jellipot recognised a concluded subject, and said: "I wish you'd tell me how you came to know that Coldwater was blackmailing your wife, and what you meant to do besides breaking his bones when you called upon him."

        "I didn't say I should break any bones. Not unconditionally, that is. I said I should break every bone he'd got, if he didn't stop baiting my wife, and hand over whatever letters he'd got of hers. It isn't likely he'd have made an appointment if I'd put it the other way."

        "No. That's reasonable. It's rather surprising that he did see you under the circumstances, not having the letters to show."

        "Yes. I've thought that. But I don't suppose he took what I said literally."

        "No. And I suppose he hadn't met you before?"

        For the first time a smile appeared on Basil Forbes' angry countenance. He looked down complacently on his own bulk. "No," he said, "I don't think he had. But I think there was another reason that gave him confidence, and that was that he really hadn't got the letters, and could deny it with truth, knowing that he'd have Alice to back him up, whether she admitted having had them returned to her, or denied the whole thing."

        Mr. Jellipot recognised both the psychological subtlety and soundness of this theory, and for the first time the possibility that Mr. Forbes had not gone beyond fact when he had described his services to the London & Northern Bank entered his mind. Well, all the better if so! Basil Forbes was clearly an unusual type, but he was not therefore necessarily a fool, and if he had wit he might be the easier to extricate unharmed from the unpleasant position in which he stood. He said: "But what I asked was how you came to know what Coldwater was at."

        "It was just a letter I opened casually. I wasn't spying. I didn't think that Alice had any secrets from me. And when I'd read it, if it didn't blow the whole thing wide open, it was enough to show what Coldwater was at, and that he needed taking in hand in the right way."

        "I shouldn't have thought that the man would have risked writing on such a subject - not so that it could be understood by a third party."

        "But it wasn't from him. It was Alice's own letter. She'd been finding it more than she could do keeping up the pound a week out of the housekeeping money, and got two or three pounds behind, and into some debts with the shops that she knew I didn't allow - it was about that, more than anything else, that we had one or two differences the first year we were married, and I had to make her understand that she'd either have to pay cash or get hurt. I daresay it wouldn't seem to you that she'd done much wrong, but when a man's in a position like mine, where reputation counts, the tradespeople will give his wife almost any credit she wants, and it's a very dangerous thing."

        "Yes," Mr. Jellipot agreed, "I can sce.that." He knew, as all solicitors must, how much misery, how many financial disasters and bankruptcies by which men are ruined or shamed, are caused, not by their own follies or miscalculations, but by the obstinate extravagance of wives whom they are unequal to check. Perhaps if there were more men who used the primitive argument that Mr. Forbes had found effective, it might be a happier world, and one with less work for the lawyers to do!

        "Well," Basil Forbes went on, "when I'd made her understand that what we couldn't pay for we couldn't have, I couldn't complain if she sometimes said we must go without. I could see that she didn't spend overmuch on herself, and when she started giving me two eggs for breakfast instead of three, and talked about how much she had to spend on the children's clothes, I said I could live through that. I thought she was just a muddler, and it couldn't be helped, but what she was really doing was squeezing a pound a week out of the money I gave her for other things."

        "So she wrote asking for time?"

        "She wrote saying she couldn't possibly pay anything that week, but she'd got a hope of being able to pay the lot, and get the letters returned to her, if he'd only be patient, and not send them to me, as he'd threatened to do. She said, shrewdly enough, that he'd get nothing by that, and he could tell by what she'd paid already that he'd have the money from her, if he gave her time. What he needed was time of another kind. And when she addressed it she put Manchester on it instead of London, because she'd got a legacy in her head that was coming from there, and so it came back to me.

        "Of course, there wasn't anything in the letters that Alice need have minded me seeing. She admits that herself now.

        "She isn't the sort who could write anything she need mind being put into print for the world to see. I never supposed that there was. She was just sensitive about nothing, in a way that, if you know her, you'd understand." (Mr. Jellipot made no comment on this. He thought it just possible that he did. "Basil would have laughed." He remembered that. Clearly, silence was best.) "But you asked me what happened when I went up to see Coldwater.

        "That won't take long to tell, and it would have been one of the best things that I ever did if some thick-headed fool hadn't stuck that bayonet into him after I'd gone.

        "There's no sense in killing a man you don't like, even apart from the risk you run of dying a worse death because other people are almost certain to come butting in. If there's no life after this, you end his troubles, just as much as anything that that kind of dog can have of a better sort; and if there is, it's better to let him go on doing caddish things and warming up his last residence all the time.

        "But what happened was this. He told me that it was true that Alice had had some correspondence with him, and he had kept the letters - out of affection, he was fool enough to pretend, as though I should believe that! - but he said he hadn't blackmailed her; such a thought wouldn't have entered his mind in a thousand years. He had been reluctant to return the letters because of their sentimental interest, and she had unfortunately misunderstood him, and thought that money would persuade him to give them up. If he hadn't tried to hand me that dope, I might have been easier to persuade that he'd given her the letters that morning, or if he d said that she'd paid him over fifty pounds, though I mighn't have left him then till he'd coughed it up. He may have had the sense to expect that, or simply been afraid to admit that he'd been blackmailing her, but anyhow, he said that he'd given them back out of pure goodwill, and I told him to cut that tripe, and hand them over in thirty seconds, or he'd be a sorry man.

        "So when he said it again, I picked up his chair by the back - it wasn't heavy, even with him on it; his furnishing was all about as mean as himself - and shook him off on to the floor.

        "Then I sat down on it myself, and picked him up by the coat-collar, and shook him till he went quietly over my knee. There was a ruler from the desk that did well enough, and I gave him a bit of what he deserved.

        "But when I found that however hard I laid on he wouldn't change from squealing that Alice had got the letters, I began to think that it just possibly might be true, so I said I'd find out, and if it wasn't I'd come back and do a more thorough job.

        "I'd been mad at first, because I'd set my mind on getting the letters, and giving them back to Alice myself, with a warning not to keep anything from me again. It wasn't at all the same thing for her to have got them back a few hours before. But beating him in the way I had made me feel a lot better, and I was in good spirits enough till I met that damned detective at the gate when I got home, and learned that the man was dead."

        Mr. Jellipot, who had listened very intently to this narrative, now considered it in a thoughtful silence.

        "I suppose," Mr. Forbes broke out with an irritation that an inward nervousness may partly excuse, "that you're going to tell me that you don't believe anything that I've said."

        "On the contrary," Mr. Jellipot replied placidly, "I am very much disposed to believe everything that you have told me at this somewhat ferocious interview. But it was not quite what I had expected to hear."

        "And may I ask where it went wrong?"

        "I rather thought that you had chastised him with the bayonet."

        "And then stuck it into him by mistake? I suppose you'd got it all worked out to end up with me in the condemned cell?"

        "No, I can't say that I had. I am puzzled by the washing of the bayonet - by it being done in the yard. I don't understand it at all. If you tell me that you did nothing with the bayonet, I am disposed to accept your word."

        "Well, you can have that. I didn't even sec it was there. But it's bad luck for me to hear you say that."

        "May I enquire why?"

        "Because I'm depending upon you to find out who did it."

        "I don't think you must do that, Mr. Forbes. I'm a busy man. And, besides, I should almost certainly fail."

        "There'll be no peace for me till it's cleared up."

        "You don't think that it would be any help to you if I were to write to the young man Binns, requiring an apology, or threatening him with a slander action?"

        "Not much. What would an apology be worth that he didn't mean? . . . I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm not a rich man, but we can find fifty or sixty pounds, from what's left of the legacy that Alice has just had. I don't mind offering half of that as a reward to anyone who'll start us off on the right track."

        "I think that might be a wise course. Say twenty-five pounds. It is not an excessive sum, but it is one for which people will usually tell anything that they have seen, if they have no very urgent reason for silence. It should, I think, be offered through the police. The trouble will be how to word it, and to avoid being worried with doubtful or bogus claims. How would you like it expressed?"

        "I'll leave all that to you, if you don't mind."

        "Very well. I will undertake that. And now, if you don't mind, I will ask you to go. It is, if I may mention so small a matter, a little past my usual lunch-hour, and I am afraid to think how many callers may be waiting to see me now."

        Mr. Forbes rose in haste. "Holy Moses!" he said, "I've been here two hours. And I was due back more than an hour ago."

        "I don't think," Mr. Jellipot said, "you need worry much about that. I will mention the matter to Sir Reginald, attributing your delay to my own prolixity, of which I have heard him say that he is already sadly aware."

Chapter VI

INGENUOUSNESS OF BOB LONGWORTHY

INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE, returning to Scotland Yard from a vain search for elusive Longs, was informed that the Assistant Commissioner and Superintendent Davis had expressed separate desires to see him. He recognised that the difference was likely to be that between hindrance and help, but an Assistant Commissioner, even of the more incompetent type, still is an Assistant Commissioner, with power to do much good, or even definite harm, to the career of the most capable of Chief Detective-Inspectors.

        "Let Superintendent Davis know that I'm with the Chief," he said. "I'll be with him as soon as I get away."

        He found, which was not an infrequent experience, that Sir Henry was an angry man.

        "I can't think," he said, "how you could let that reward-bill go out without my knowledge - without consultation with me. It was a most imprudent, improper step! You must withdraw it at once."

        "I'm sorry, sir," the inspector answered mildly. "I couldn't see that it would do any harm. Superintendent Davis saw it. I think he'll tell you, sir, that he thought it was a good move. And its wording - of course, we altered it a bit, just to show that we have our own ways in these matters - but it was very carefully drawn by Mr. Jellipot. And he's a very capable solicitor, as we've found before now."

        "I don't like Mr. Jellipot."

        "No, sir. He's annoyed me before now."

        "Yet you let him and his criminal client make cat's-paws of us in this highly reprehensible manner."

        "I'm afraid I didn't look at it quite in that way."

        "Don't you see that it's only done to turn our eyes from the real criminal?"

        "I see that that is quite possible. But, even if that's so, it's the making of the offer that's so astute. Superintendent Davis said that if we refused to advertise the reward a good counsel would be able to make more of it than if we did."

        "Never mind Davis now. I suppose you've got a mind of your own. If there's really a man named Long, it's up to you to find who he is, without letting the murderer advertise a reward. It makes us look absolute mugs, besides - - "

        Sir Henry's exclamatory voice became still, perhaps because he was not sure of what, if anything, he had meant to say. His reserves of thought were always meagre, and his sentences liable to die out abruptly, like a river in a dry land. Inspector Combridge, knowing he played a game that patience would often win, went on quietly: "You see, sir, it's almost certain that there is a man named Long, and, if Forbes is bluffing, he runs the risk that he turns up, and what he says may be bad for him. If we'd refused to advertise the reward, he'd have had that against us, and brought it up at the wrong time that we'd meant to fix it on him, and wouldn't look anywhere else. But when we do what he asks, if that's how it is, we've done better to call his bluff, and it may end in getting just the extra proof against him that we require."

        "It may do all sorts of things," Sir Henry replied obstinately, "but it's more likely it won't. And what I want you to understand is that I should have been consulted first."

        What Inspector Combridge understood was that the reward-bill was not to be withdrawn, but that he and Superintendent Davis were to be held responsible for any untoward development. He was too used to that to feel any particular anxiety, especially with Davis at least equally involved.

        He repeated that he was sorry, which was the most frequent expression with which he left the Assistant Commissioner's room, and went off to what he hoped might be a more fruitful conference.

        He found that the superintendent was not alone. A young man of slender proportions and a fresh, ingenuous primness of countenance sat on a chair opposite Superintendent Davis's desk, nursing a bowler hat on his knee.

        "This young man," the superintendent announced, with a ponderous sarcasm that seemed to leave his victim passively unaware, "who is at present nameless, has called to ask us a few questions."

        "Such as - - ?"

        "He is particularly interested to know the exact conditions under which the reward in the Coldwater case will be paid. I thought, as you know Jellipot, and I don't, that you might be able to answer that better than I."

        "I don't think there need be any difficulty about that. He doesn't require information that will lead to someone being found, or evidence that will secure a conviction, as these offers most often do. If the offer brings in any information that satisfies us that the murderer can be identified, or even that Coldwater was alive after 3 p.m., I think he would be willing to pay."

        The young man brightened so visibly at this assurance that Superintendent Davis thought it well to emphasise the condition it bore. "Satisfies us, my lad," he repeated with slow emphasis. "You understand that? Satisfies us?"

        "Oh, I could do that! When would it be paid?"

        "It would be paid at once," Inspector Combridge replied. "There'd be no doubt about that. What have you got to tell us?"

        "I saw Mr. Coldwater myself at a quarter past three."

        "You saw him alive?" Superintendent Davis asked.

        "Yes."

        "And left him in the same condition?"

        "Left him? Oh, yes. Of course. It isn't likely that anyone would have killed him while I was there."

        "And your name is, I suppose, Long?"

        "It's Bob Longworthy."

        The superintendent looked at his brother-officer to say: "It appears to be a case of abbreviation." He resumed his examination. "About how long were you there?"

        "I couldn't say that exactly. It seemed quite a long time."

        "Half an hour?"

        "Well, hardly that."

        "Ten minutes?"

        "I should think it was more."

        "You had an appointment with him?"

        "Yes. For three-fifteen."

        "And you kept it punctually?"

        "Yes. I waited by the clock at St. Stephen's Church till it was twelve minutes past. I didn't want to be late."

        "I suppose you went to pay him some money?"

        "Oh, no! I haven't got any. I mean, not worth talking about. Not to a gentleman like him."

        "Gentleman? We shouldn't have called him that. Why did you go to see him, if it wasn't anything to do with money?"

        "I'd rather not say that."

        "I'm afraid you'll have to. That is, if you want to see any money from us."

        "That isn't what you promised. I thought I could have trusted you, being police. I thought you were sure to be moral men."

        Bob Longworthy's face had flushed with some uneasy emotion. He twisted his hat nervously in his hands. There was an expression of sheeplike obstinacy on his face which warned the superintendent's long-experienced mind that he must play him without jerking the line. He said: "Now look here, son. I don't suppose you've done anything seriously wrong, and if not you've got nothing to fear from us. Even if he had found you out in something you'd rather keep as quiet as you can, you needn't be afraid of telling us here. We're not after you. We want to find the man who killed Coldwater, and anyone who can give us information that helps us in that is doing a public duty, and we shall protect him as far as we possibly can."

        "I don't know who murdered him. I never said I knew that."

        "No. You didn't. You said you saw him alive at three-fifteen, and left him so, say at three-thirty. If that's true, it's very important to us. It lets one suspected man out entirely, and gives us the time, within half an hour, when the murder occurred.

        "But you've got to satisfy us that you're telling the truth, neither more nor less, and you can't do that unless you are quite frank as to why you were there, and what happened."

        "I don't see that. I should have thought it was more like the other way."

        Superintendent Davis considered this unexpected retort, and saw more weight in its simple shrewdness than he felt it expedient to admit. Was a man's statement on such a matter really less worth belief because he declined to add information on his separate and most private affairs? None the less, he meant to get the whole truth if he could.

        He put an additional gravity into his voice as he went on: "Now, Mr. Longworthy, you must try to put yourself in our place, and see where you stand. You come here and tell us you were with this man at half-past three, on some business that you don't want the police to know; and at four o'clock he was dead. Don't you see that you may be in a very serious position yourself, if you fail to satisfy us that you are telling the simple truth, neither more nor less?"

        Inspector Combridge, listening silently to this dialogue, and watching Bob Longworthy with the intentness of a waiting cat when a mouse hesitates to advance, saw that he understood, and was scared by, the implication of this question. His hands trembled upon the brim of the moving hat, in his eyes were visible tears. He said: "I shouldn't have come here if I'd done that. Nobody would"

        "On the contrary, it might be the safest thing you could choose. Coming to us before we had run you down, as we should have been certain to do.

        "Now understand that I'm not suggesting that you killed Coldwater. If I thought that, I should be talking to you in a different way. What I say is that when you tell us you left him alive you're saying something that you can't prove, and you must therefore satisfy us, if you can, that you're telling the whole truth. Can you give me the name of any living person who knows that you left Coldwater alive?"

        "Mother does."

        "You mean that your mother was with you, or only that you told her the same thing that you're telling us?"

        The question, simple though it might sound, reduced the boy to a moment of silence. Had the criminal, Inspector Combridge wondered, really walked into their arms in this unlikely guise? Anything less like a murderer he had seldom seen. But then, he had to remind himself, that is how murderers mostly are!

        After this pause of hesitation, the answer came: "Mother saw him after I left."

        "Your mother saw him after you left? How do you know that?"

        "She told me so when she got back."

        "At what time was that?"

        "Just a few minutes after me."

        "Well, that's certainly interesting. We shall have to hear what she has to say."

        "I'm not sure," the boy said dejectedly, "that I ought to have mentioned her. She won't want to be mixed up in a thing like this."

        "You did quite rightly. It would have been bound to come out, first or last. Do you still refuse to say why you went to see him?"

        "I went to appeal to his better nature."

        "His what? And you found it a tough job?"

        "I don't know that I'd done much good."

        "And what did you appeal to his better nature about?"

        "That's what I don't think that I ought to say."

        "Don't you? Well, that can wait. We'll have a proper written statement now of what you do condescend to tell us."

        "And then shall I have the reward?"

        Inspector Combridge had risen during the last exchanges of this conversation. He had given a questioning glance to the superintendent, and received a slight nod in response. It was in both their minds that if the boy's mother were interviewed before he could return to tell her what his own narrative had been, it would be conducive either to the elucidation of truth, or the exposure of an equally possible mendacity.

        Now it was the superintendent's turn to look interrogation, and Inspector Combridge answered the question: "Yes. We can promise that. Jellipot won't jib when he knows we've learned enough to clear his client. That's what he's after. I'll see that you get the cash."

        He waited only long enough to hear the boy dictate his address: "6, Amptill Terrace, Bayswater," and went out to call the fastest available car, in search of a Mrs. Longworthy whom he was not likely to find.

Chapter VII

MRS. RENSHAW SPEAKS FREELY

INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE pressed the bell at 6, Amptill Terrace, and the door opened with as much promptitude as can reasonably be anticipated in the Bayswater district. No. 6, Amptill Terrace - the same would have been true of 16 or of 66 - was a warren of the "service flatlets" in which so many thousands of Londoners are content or constrained to dwell.

        The brisk, rather slatternly, Irish maid who opened the door looked blank at the mention of Mrs. Longworthy, and said that there was no one there of that name. Was she sure of that? Yes, quite. She was evidently impatient to close the door, which, in view of the fact that it was then 11.43 a.m., the amount of upstair work she had still to do, and the fact that it was her afternoon out, was a natural attitude.

        But Inspector Combridge showed no disposition to go. Was he wrong in the number? No. He knew it to be a kind of mistake that he did not make. Had Bob Longworthy forgotten the address of his home? It was an improbable error. Had he erred as to the existence of his own mother? It was even less likely. Had he told a concocted tale and given a false address, thinking that there were few ways in which £25 could be so easily earned? It was a possible solution, and one of which, if it were true, Superintendent Davis should be promptly informed. He said: "I think I'd better have a word with the manageress. Perhaps you'll give her my card."

        The girl looked at it, abated her previous brusqueness, asked him to step in, and left him seated in the hall, while she went for her mistress. The manageress, a Miss Williams, a pleasant, brown-eyed Welshwoman, quickly appeared. The brown eyes were opened rather more widely than usual, with the vague apprehension that is commonly roused by any contact with the police in the minds of those whom it is their mission to guard. She thought it to be no more than a discreet demonstration of untroubled conscience to assume, before he could speak himself, that he came searching for rooms. She said: "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid at the moment I'm full up."

        "I don't wonder at that," he answered affably, looking round at the neat cleanliness of the hall, "they're not all as well kept as this. But I'm not looking for rooms."

        She was visibly pleased at the praise he gave, and to find that he addressed her in so friendly a tone. She answered: "Well, you see, we've only just opened here. It's all new."

        So it was. What these places would be like after five years of miscellaneous tenancies - - ! But he saw that he had put her at ease, as his object had been. He said: "I was told that Mrs. Longworthy lives here. It's she that I was wanting to see."

        "I'm afraid you've come to the wrong house. There's no one of that name here."

        "I don't think I have. It's not my mistake, if so. Have you got a young man here named Bob Longworthy?"

        "There's a young man named Bob. He's Mrs. Renshaw's son. I hope he hasn't done anything wrong?"

        "Is he the sort that you'd think might?"

        "No. I should have thought it very unlikely indeed. I should call him a very harmless young man."

        "Does he twist his hat in his hands when he sits down?"

        "I can't say I've seen him. But it sounds what he'd be likely to do."

        "I think I'll see Mrs. Renshaw, if you don't mind."

        "Very well. If you'll wait a moment I'll let her know."

        "I don't mind announcing myself."

        "I don't think I could let you do that. It won't take a moment to call up."

        Inspector Combridge recognised that, as he was ignorant of the number of the lady's room, it was a point which Miss Williams must decide in her own way, and in fact, the delay was as momentary as she had foretold. Mrs. Renshaw said she would receive her visitor, and Norah was deputed to lead the way.

        She led up four flights of stairs that, from being easy and broad, became steeper as they ascended past landings of diminishing size, until they came to a top floor which, unlike those beneath it, had been converted into a single flat.

        It consisted of two bedrooms, the larger of which was used as a living room also during the day, a bathroom, and kitchenette.

        The living-room, into which Inspector Combridge was shown, was occupied by two ladies, the elder of whom rose to receive him with the remark: "Please take a seat. I think I can guess why you have called. . . . Jessica, if you hurry, there'll just be time for you to get to the cleaners and be back when lunch is ready."

        Jessica, a girl of not more than eighteen or twenty years, said, "Yes, mother," and rose obediently. Inspector Combridge concluded that conversation was not to begin till she had gone, and remained observantly silent.

        Mrs. Renshaw, if that were her true name, impressed him favourably. Her eyes, like her words, had been simple, direct, sincere. He felt that, whatever the truth might be, he would have it - or at least so far as she might know it - from her.

        He thought he recognised in the simple, wholesome sincerity of a face that was no longer young an evident likeness to the young man of another name. But, curiously, the girl who had called her mother did not impress him in the same way. She had a nervous, thin-featured face, such as will change from beauty to ugliness with a changing mood, and in her eyes there was a gipsy glint and a gipsy slant. It was a face that might become radiant with the years, or disfigured by envy or spite as it should find that life would be sweet or sour. But it was hard to think of her as being united by any tie of blood to the older woman.

        At the moment, it seemed that she found life sour rather than sweet. It was not hard to see that her eyes had been reddened by recent tears. Inspector Combridge, an observant man, and of some domestic experience, decided, without a too-direct glance, that she would have a child in about five months. Or perhaps less.

        He observed also, upon a small open desk, which would have been within reach of his outstretched hand as he sat, an envelope addressed to Miss Jessica Lee, in a girlish hand. How many names did these people have?

        He was puzzled by these observations, but not displeased. It was all rather queer, but his experience was that, when you investigate murder, queer things are very frequently found. It encouraged him to hope that he was ploughing a fertile held.

        By this time the girl had parcelled a dress with which her errand was evidently concerned, and as she went out, Mrs. Renshaw began to speak: "I suppose it's something about Mr. Coldwater that's brought you here. I thought that might be over, now he was dead. But I suppose that was too much to hope."

        "When a man's murdered, we naturally make some enquiries. We rely on everyone to tell us whatever they know that may help us to solve the crime."

        "Yes. Of course I wasn't thinking of that. What is it you want to know?"

        "You have a son named Bob?"

        "Yes."

        "He calls himself Bob Longworthy?"

        "He is Bob Longworthy. You see I've been married twice."

        "Oh! . . . and the young lady is also your child?"

        "She is not really related to me. She is a child of my second husband, who was married before."

        "I see. I was a bit puzzled when they said no one named Longworthy lived here. But, like most puzzling things, it's very simple when it's explained."

        "They shouldn't have said that. But I can quite understand that they didn't know. We've only been here a short time, and of course we just call him Bob."

        "Yes. That's clear enough. The fact is that your son has come to us, and claimed the reward."

        Mrs. Renshaw looked surprised. She said: "What reward? He didn't say anything about it to me."

        "There is a reward of twenty-five pounds offered for information concerning the Coldwater murder."

        "You mean he has claimed that? I should be surprised if, from what I know already, he could be of much assistance to you. He means well, but what he does is not always wise. . . . I suppose he thought the money would be very useful to us at the moment. What is it actually offered for?"

        "It would be paid, amongst other things, for definite proof that Henry Coldwater was alive after 3 p.m., which would prove the innocence of a man who is under suspicion now."

        "You will excuse me saying that it doesn't sound a very large amount, if it's as important as that. I thought that when the police offer rewards in such cases they name really substantial sums."

        "It's not offered by us. It's by the suspected man, and I believe it's all he can afford."

        "Then we ought to help him in any way that we can; though I'm not sure that it would be very nice to take his money for that. What has Bob told you already?"

        "He referred us to you."

        "He didn't call on you to refer you to me. He must have said something first."

        "He said that he'd seen Coldwater after three, and that you could prove that he had left him alive."

        "Left him alive?" Mrs. Renshaw's face broke into a smile, though she had shown no levity in her previous attitude. "You weren't wondering whether Bob killed him, were you? You don't know Bob!" She added, with a resumed seriousness: "But he was right when he said that. I saw Mr. Coldwater after Bob must have left, and he was certainly alive then."

        "You are sure it was after?"

        "Yes. I think that's practically certain, by the time I got home." She thought a moment, and said with finality: "Indeed, it's absolutely certain, because he mentioned Bob having been there."

        "And he couldn't have returned?"

        "I came straight back here, and he was home when I arrived. No. It's quite impossible."

        "That seems to let him out finally. I don't mean that we were really suspecting him. But we like to avoid assumptions for or against, and clear everything up as it comes. Actually, we've got the time of the murder fixed by these enquiries within half an hour, which is something definite, though it leaves a lot to be done.

        "But there's one thing, Mrs. Renshaw, I'm bound to ask, that your son seemed very unwilling to tell. That is, why you were both calling on Coldwater within an hour of his getting killed. I'm quite willing to believe that it had nothing to do with the murder, in which case it will be absolutely private with us, but you can see that it puts the whole thing in a different light, if there's no mystery about that."

        "Yes. I see that plainly enough. As a matter of fact, when I let Bob out, I suppose you might say I let myself in, as being the last who is known to have seen Henry Coldwater alive. But I'm afraid I shouldn't have been much use with a bayonet! I suppose Bob refused to say anything?"

        "He wasn't at all willing to speak about what his business was."

        "Naturally not. That's why I wish he hadn't gone to you at all. But I think you will have to know."

        "I am sure you will find it the wiser way."

        "Well, anyway, here's the tale. Last March Coldwater sold us - sold Miss Lee, really - Jessica - a stationery business off Edgware Road."

        "And I suppose it was no good?"

        "No. That would be going too far. We paid a great deal too much for it. It took not only a sum of money that Jessica inherited from her father when she was eighteen, but every penny that I could raise as well. But I don't think he meant to cheat us more than such a man normally would.

        "The business was for Jessica to manage, and it will be all right in the end, but it will take time to work it up, and money to get the right stock in place of the rubbish there was - and that's why we're living here."

        "And I suppose you were trying to persuade him to return part of the sum your daughter had overpaid?"

        "No. We shouldn't have been quite as silly as that. The matter developed in a far more serious way.

        "It's true that we complained when we found that the turnover was much less than we had been told. But he said that was because of Jessica's inexperience. He professed to be honestly concerned, and said he'd look in as often as he could, and give her some good advice.

        "He looked in a good many times, Jessie's told me since, and persuaded her that he was going to marry her - I suppose you've seen enough in your profession of how foolish a girl can be - and the end of it is that she'll be having a child."

        "And it was about this that you were both seeing Coldwater that afternoon?"

        "I went as soon as Jessica told me what Bob was up to. I meant to put a stop to any mischief that he might do."

        "Mischief? Do you mean violence that you thought you might be in time to prevent?"

        "No. Of course not. Bob went to beg him to marry her, and I went to tell him that it should never happen with my consent."

        "You thought that, even under the existing conditions, you could not approve the marriage?"

        "Yes. I knew enough of the man to be sure of that. Bob, as I have said, means well, but he's not always very wise."

        "How did the girl feel about it, if I may ask?"

        "I don't think that matters now. We can be thankful he's dead. Of course, I should have let her marry him if I had known how he would end. The trouble was that he might have lived long enough to ruin her life."

        "She'd have been a rich woman if she had. At present the lawyers can't find an heir. It looks as though it: will all go to the State in the end."

        "Which may be the best way. That is, unless it could be returned to all the people he's robbed. I should have been sorry for Jessica to be rich on such money as that."

        Inspector Combridge rose. He said: "I'm sorry that I've had to trouble you. It's very likely that you won't see me again.

        He was satisfied that he had been told the truth, and he might have been better pleased with a less probable tale. Still it did establish the approximate time of the murder, and let Basil Forbes out. That was something gained. He must consider Duckworth again.

Chapter VIII

CONSIDERING DUCKWORTH

"WELL, sir, that's how it is," Inspector Combridge said, with the exemplary patience that discreet officers must exercise in dealing with even the densest of their superiors. "Bob Longworthy watched the clock and got there exactly at three-fifteen. After that, his mother got there, and by then he'd had his talk and cleared off, and she went upstairs and had hers. If it wasn't three-forty-five by when she came away, it couldn't have been much less, and it may have been later.

        "It's really the more probable guess that it was. And then, at four o'clock, Duckworth's tale is that he got no answer, and came away. . . . And he's a small man, and a small man was seen washing the bayonet."

        "You seem to overlook," Sir Henry said acidly, "that this Longworthy boy came to get the reward."

        "You mean, sir, that he might have made up the tale of having seen Coldwater alive, when he found that that was what he was wanted to say?"

        "If he'd found him dead, and been too frightened to give the alarm, isn't that probable?"

        "But if the man was killed before then, how could he have got upstairs?"

        "You don't know that he did."

        "There's the mother's evidence, as well as his, sir."

        "You don't expect the woman to give away her own son?"

        "Well, as to that, I saw her separately, before he could get home."

        "And she played her part as cleverly as a woman will? You don't suppose the boy had really started out without letting her know what he was up to?"

        Inspector Combridge avoided a direct reply to this question. It suggested possibilities which had not been absent from his own mind, though he was disposed to put them aside. The trouble with the Assistant Commissioner was that he could only entertain one theory at a time, and his unreasoned advocacy was likely to rouse opposition in more balanced minds which might incline them to press too heavily on the opposite scale.

        "I thought, sir," the inspector went on, in his more deferential manner, "however that might be, there couldn't be any harm in asking Duckworth a few more questions. It seems to me that he's in a rather tight place."

        "That's only if you believe Longworthy. If we detain that young man on suspicion for a few hours we may find that he starts telling a different tale."

        Inspector Combridge was disinclined to agree. He thought that it would more probably be waste of time, if not worse. He wanted rather to cultivate Bob Longworthy to a fuller confidence on the assumption that what he had said already was true, and that his reluctant reticence must be overcome so that he would become a satisfactory witness for the Crown when Thomas Duckworth would be in the dock.

        But he saw that Sir Henry would not lightly abandon his fixed idea that the criminal was Basil Forbes, and that the energies of the C.I.D., which should have been directed to enclosing him in its fatal net, were perversely engaged in making loopholes for his escape. He answered diplomatically: "But we shan't lose anything, shall we, sir, if we question Duckworth a bit first? We can always run Longworthy in, and the more we're sure that Coldwater was dead at four, the more we can frighten him as to his own position."

        "Very well," the Assistant Commissioner agreed: "if you're set on that. But don't lose any time. One way or other, you've got to make this Longworthy boy tell the truth, and then you'll have as good a case against Forbes as any reasonable jury could wish. The most likely thing, to my mind, is that Longworthy rang and got no reply, and he and his mother made up the tale in the way he told it to you just to pick up the reward. He wasn't to mention her unless he found he couldn't pull if off in a simpler way; but that money they meant to have."

        "Yes, sir. I see it's possible to look at it that way. I'll get after Duckworth at once." Fortunately, there was no difficulty about that. Thomas Duckworth was butler to Viscount Swinfield, and it was an occupation that obliged him to spend the most part of his time in his employer's house. But though this conversation took place at 10.45 a.m., it was afternoon before the inspector set out for Fitzmorton Square.

        The reason for this delay was partly that Inspector Combridge (as far as the call of duty allowed) was a humane and considerate man. He did not, at this time, think of Duckworth as a murderer, but only as one against whom there was a most grave suspicion, and he had trained himself to show suspects the consideration due to innocent citizens, until his own mind was finally resolved. He had observed that Duckworth was in a highly nervous condition. The man had declined to give any indication of the object of his call upon Henry Coldwater, beyond such inference as might be drawn from the admission - or perhaps assertion would be the better word - that he had been apprehensive of the consequences of failing to secure the expected interview, and had remained so long ringing at an unanswered bell that the murdered man, had he been still alive, could not have failed to hear him.

        It was an easy guess that the business which took him there was discreditable to one, if not both, of those who had expected to meet, but, if Duckworth were innocent of the murder, that was not an aspect of the matter into which it was Inspector Combridge's present business to probe. Rather he would wish to make it as easy as possible for Henry Coldwater's (more or less) innocent victims to give him the assistance his case required, without involving them in avoidable trouble, either socially or with the law.

        It had been evident that Thomas Duckworth was nervous of any police interest in himself becoming known either to his employers or his fellow-servants, and he had mentioned the mid-afternoon as a time when he could most easily be interviewed in his butler's room with the minimum of observation, or interference with the duties of his employment.

        But, besides this, Inspector Combridge had a more professional reason for exercising the patience which four hours' waiting required. He had put a man on the routine duty of enquiring into Thomas Duckworth's character and record, though without live]y expectation of any relevant fact being discovered, and he delayed now to obtain his report.

        Viscount Swinfield, a dull, wealthy, charitable, most respect- able peer, was hardly likely to employ a butler of criminal antecedents or proclivities, and a personal enquiry upon the telephone had elicited that the man had been in his present position for over three years, and that his services had in all respects been such as wealthy and respectable peers require.

        But now Inspector Combridge frowned as he read. Thomas Duckworth might be blameless, but, if so, he was certainly unfortunate. Officially, he was an innocent, law-abiding butler. Certainly one who would be likely to recover heavy damages should his character be attacked. But three times in the last eight years it had happened that there had been serious burglaries at the houses where he was employed. Worse than that, there had been a butler named Fender in earlier years who had had the same unfortunate disposition to attract burglars to the houses in which he served, and who had disappeared when his evidence would have been valued by the police; and the zealous officer who had undertaken the present enquiry had discovered that Thomas Duckworth, on his free days, would sometimes visit the house where the aged mother of Aaron Fender lived in a modest but comfortable retirement, without having found it necessary to apply for the widow's pension for which she was by length of years, if not otherwise, eligible.

        Apart from this sinister record, it appeared that Duckworth gambled - heavily for a man in his position - on the turf. He had accounts with two well-known betting firms. They had been open for several years, during which losses had always been, though not always promptly, paid. At present, both accounts were in order. Actually, he had backed a long-odds winner with both firms, and received substantial payments during the last ten days.

        "Well, he's a wrong 'un, right enough," Inspector Combridge concluded, as he digested this information, "though he seems to have gone straight enough since he got into his present job. Probably thought the game was too risky to try again. Just the sort of man that you'd expect to be calling at Coldwater I louse. But it doesn't follow that he'd kill anyone. He doesn't sound quite the type. . . . Though a heart-to-heart talk, with this to go on, ought to find him rather more communicative than he's been yet."

        So, with a determination not to be satisfied with less than a frank explanation of Thomas Duckworth's business with the dead man, Inspector Combridge found himself seated in a very comfortable butler's pantry, as a clock on the mantelpiece, between himself and an uneasy host, struck half-past three.

Chapter IX

STUBBORNNESS OF THOMAS DUCKWORTH

INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE, confronting Mr. Thomas Duckworth, was aware that he dealt with a nervously frightened man. But he had learnt more than once before that one in such a condition may be both wary and shrewd; and in this case he knew that there might be causes to account for such nervousness other than that of having any complicity in Henry Coldwater's death.

        He experienced this wary shrewdness almost immediately when he tried the effect of introducing Mr. Duckworth's earlier and probably more authentic name. He thought, with some reason, that, whether the man should admit or deny it, the fact of having been obliged to adopt either of these dangerous alternatives would further weaken any remains of self-confidence that he might possess. But when he said, with an abruptness meant to be disconcerting: " - or Mr. Fender, as I believe you are sometimes called," the man stared at him blankly, and asked: "Who by?" which left the imputation neither admitted nor denied. And while Inspector Combridge had a moment of hesitation as to whether he would do well to develop this line of attack further, Mr. Duckworth countered boldly enough with: "See here, officer, I don't know why you come after me, or what you think that you're getting at, but if you're hoping to show that I killed Coldwater, when I did no more than ring his bell, and came away when I couldn't get any answer from him, you're trying something you can't do, and you can't expect to get any help from me."

        "We've just got this on you," the inspector answered with an equal bluntness. "There's a witness to prove that Coldwater was alive at three-forty-five, and you say you called on him at four o'clock, and it's quite plain that he wasn't alive after that."

        "Then I should say that if you found someone who says he was alive at a quarter to four, you've found him as did him in more likely than not."

        "You must leave us to judge of that. . . . But look here, Duckworth, we only want to get at the truth. And if you've told it, you've got very little to fear, unless you keep something back. And if it's true that the man was murdered just before you got there - I don't say he was or wasn't, but I'm not putting it on to you yet, or I shouldn't be here talking the way I am - you'll have to go into the box to say when you called, and I needn't tell you that whoever's defending the man we accuse will want to know what you were doing there."

        "Well, so he might. It doesn't follow that he'd find out."

        "You'd be in a very unpleasant position if you didn't tell - or if you made up a tale that wasn't good enough to go down. . . . Of course, if you tell us first, we may be able to give you some help when the time comes - there's such a thing as counsel agreeing not to ask something awkward if there's a good reason shown - but if you don't tell us the truth, you can't expect any protection from us."

        "Well, I'll say this much. I called to get something back that he'd got of mine."

        "Which I suppose you still want?"

        "I didn't say that."

        "Then you've had it back since?"

        "I didn't say that either. I don't want any more to do with Coldwater or his affairs. Not as long as I live."

        "Probably not; but you won't find it so easy to get away from it."

        "And all I've done was to ring a bell, when I'd been asked to call!"

        "How were you asked?"

        "I don't see why I should say that. But it's not such a secret. I had a card."

        "Have you got it now?"

        "No. I threw it away."

        "Wouldn't it have been more natural to keep it to remind you what time the appointment was for?"

        "No, it wouldn't! As a matter of fact, it didn't say. I'd written to say when I'd call, and it just said that he'd be expecting me at the time I'd said."

        "And you won't tell me more than that?"

        "No. I don't see why I should."

        "Then if you are innocent, I should call you a very foolish man."

        "You can call me anything you've a mind."

        Inspector Combridge went without further words. He had made a good guess that whatever Thomas Duckworth had gone to get he had either obtained on that occasion, or else subsequently, so that it was no longer upon his mind. In the first alternative, it could scarcely be true that he had turned away from a closed door, and in the second there must almost certainly be someone probably Flipp - who had assisted him in its recovery. It appeared probable that a straight talk to Flipp might be more productive than further baiting of an obstinate and frightened man. He saw that if it were true that Flipp had subsequently assisted the man to recover whatever he had called to get, it made it more probable that his tale of ringing in vain was a literal truth, and so deepened the mystery of how Henry Coldwater could have died during a time which had now been reduced to ten minutes rather than twenty apart from the extreme improbability that he had been alive when Duckworth had called, and had ignored his repeated ringing - an improbability which was increased by the medical evidence of the time when death must have occurred. But, after all, it was the truth he sought, and that could be reached, if at all, by elimination of error, even though it might seem at the time to increase the mystery by which he was confronted.

        He resolved that his next morning's occupation should be a further talk with Theophilus Flipp, but when that day came it brought an unexpected item of information which turned his steps in another direction.

Chapter X

QUESTIONS FOR MRS. FORBES

ALICE FORBES, after one of the worst frights that a loving woman can have, had recovered her equanimity as the days passed, and Basil came home with his usual regularity and with a contagious confidence in the decisive methods by which he had routed the suspicious nonsense of those poking police.

        Normally an affectionate couple, the threat of deadly danger had drawn them into a closer and more conscious intimacy - she with the knowledge that it was her own folly, and his desire to protect her from annoyance in his own emphatic manner, which had brought that danger upon him, and he with a real and ready sympathy for the trouble which she had had (and which he believed to have been even more causeless than it was), complicated, perhaps, by a sense of masculine satisfaction in the part he had played.

        It was therefore with the unpleasant shock of returning danger which she had too quickly supposed to have passed from a clearing sky, that Mrs. Forbes, as she had just settled the baby into its cradle, and was laying the table for her solitary midday meal, while the daily girl dished it up, saw Inspector Combridge opening the front gate with the evident intention of calling upon her.

        She hesitated a moment what a time for the man to come! - and then, as the bell rang, she called out: "You'd better go on with what you're doing, Becky. I'll go to the door." The next moment she confronted the inspector, holding the door about eighteen inches open, but showing no intention of inviting him to cross her threshold.

        "Mr. Forbes isn't in," she said, before he had time to speak. "He never is at this time of day."

        "It isn't him that I'm wanting to see. Can I have a few words with you, Mrs. Forbes?"

        "Yes, of course."

        "May I come in a few minutes?"

        "I'm sorry. I've just got baby to sleep."

        Inspector Combridge saw that he was not to be received as a welcome guest. It was apparent that Alice Forbes was reluctant to admit, even-to her own mind, that a subject which she regarded as closed could be reopened.

        "Well," he said good-humouredly, "I can ask you here if you prefer. On Monday morning last week you drew a hundred and twenty pounds from a bank in Grafton Street?"

        "Yes. I've told you that once before."

        "And they paid you that sum in ten-pound notes?"

        "Yes."

        "Will you please tell me exactly what you did with them?"

        "They were my money. I don't see why I've got to say that."

        "I can't make you, if you refuse. But it would be a foolish attitude to adopt. You have already said that you paid forty-six pounds of that money to Henry Coldwater. You couldn't have done that exactly in ten-pound notes."

        "I gave him fifty pounds, and he gave me four pounds change."

        "Yes. That agrees with the amount of the notes found in his safe. But what I want to ask you is this - and I want you to answer very carefully, because a mistake - and a real mistake would be hardly possible - might have most serious consequences - were the notes you paid Coldwater some of the actual ones that you had from the Grafton Street bank that morning?"

        "Yes, of course. What else could they have been?"

        "That would be for you to say. It's only the fact that I'm asking now. You are absolutely sure about that?"

        "Yes. Of course."

        "Thank you, Mrs. Forbes. You may have helpecl us very much."

        Showing no desire to prolong the conversation, Inspector Combridge went, leaving Mrs. Forbes in some doubt of the wisdom of the attitude she had taken.

        As she thought it over, her mind became puzzled as to the possible significance of the inspector's curiosity on such a point. Might it be, she thought, with a sudden fear, that the identification of the notes would provide some evidence against Basil, which would catch him in a deadly, unavoidable trap? Would she learn in the coming days that she had brought him to death because she lacked the sense to refuse reply to questions the meaning of which she did not know?

        With reflection, the fear passed. In the first place, Basil's innocence, to her, was a conviction that did not allow of the smallest intruding doubt; and surely, that being so, the truth should not be hindrance but help, assisting towards that exonerating discovery that would clear his name from suspicion even in foolish minds. And she knew enough of banking methods to remember that the identity of the notes could be established with ease. She had seen the clerk at the Grafton Street bank make a record of their numbers before passing them across the counter. Inspector Combridge must surely be familiar with that procedure! . . . But then, why on earth had he come to her? She must ask Basil when he should come home this evening, as he surely, surely would.

        So she told herself, having reason for her support. Yet she had some anxious hours before the time arrived at which suspense would be relieved by his appearance, or be exchanged for more definite fear.

Chapter XI

A QUESTION OF BANK-NOTES

INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE, disregarding the fact that the hour of lunch had arrived, went on to the New Oxford Street branch of the London & Northern Bank, and asked to see Mr. Basil Forbes. He had learnt enough of the bank routine to know that the manager would have gone out at that hour for his own lunch, and that Mr. Forbes would be in charge; which involved, among other propitious circumstances, that the interview at which he aimed could take place in the comfortable privacy of the manager's room.

        As he approached the counter, Mr. Forbes, who had been given some instructions to a ledger-clerk at the back, came forward, with an expression of rather grim geniality, and said in a voice loud enough for most of the staff and some customers at the counter to hear: "Come to apologise, Inspector? I made a small bet that you would. I thought you were the sort that could be depended on for the decent thing."

        Inspector Combridge, who had called with a different purpose, and to whom the idea of apologising had not occurred, took this quietly, and was fair and quick-minded enough to see that it was an interpretation of his visit for which there might he some justification.

        "I'm always willing to say I'm wrong," he conceded. "I suppose you heard from Mr. Jellipot this morning?"

        "So I did. Cost me twenty-five pounds which I'm never likely to see again to prove what never ought to have been in doubt in any reasonable man's head. You can't wonder if I feel a bit sore."

        "It was an unpleasant business for you, of course," the inspector replied, "but you mustn't blame us too much. After all, it isn't our fault if a man gets himself murdered just after he's been thrashed."

        In conceding this, he went as far as he felt able to do. The information that had come to him a few hours before had put him on to an enquiry which seemed to bring Mr. and Mrs. Forbes into the picture again, though he could not see what parts had been theirs. But if Basil Forbes were really innocent, he might be ab