The Wills of Jane Kanwhistle

by Sydney Fowler

Herbert Jenkins
1939

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WHAT THIS STORY IS ABOUT

Frederick Corder was to receive, under the will of Jane Kanwhistle, the sum of £10,000 provided he committed a different crime every day for one year and, at the same time, avoided imprisonment. This provision could not be legally enforced; but Corder, for a very good reason, determined to carry out the terms. When his solicitor, Mr. Jellipot, a shrewd judge of character, non-committally remarked that offences recognised to be against the law were numerous and included delinquencies of great variety, he had no thought of murder. But murder was committed, and Mr. Jellipot was inevitably compromised.

        Sydney Fowler's brilliant story of a murder problem arising out of a dead woman's eccentricity is well up to his usual high standard. Mr. Jellipot, his unassuming but acutely perceptive little solicitor, is rapidly becoming one of the foremost characters in detective fiction.

THE WILLS OF JANE KANWHISTLE

CONTENTS

I	IMPLICATIONS OF A LAWYER'S LETTER
II	A MOST CONDITIONAL LEGACY
III	ADELINE STUDIES HER VIEWS
IV	TWO MORE FROM THE LIST
V	ADELINE STUDIES CRIME
VI	ENTER THE PRESS
VII	MR. SAXTON REMEMBERS THE MILK
VIII	ADELINE CALLS ON MR. JELLIPOT
IX	INVITATION TO TREES
X	OPINIONS OF SIR REGINALD CROWE
XI	MEETINGS AT HITHER DENE
XII	EXTREMES MEET AT TEA
XIII	ADELINE PLAYS BRIDGE
XIV	BREAKFAST AT TREES
XV	MR. KANWHISTLE SEEKS ADVICE
XVI	THE DAILY CRIME, AND SOME DETAILS
XVII	INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE GIVES SOME ADVICE
XVIII	CONCERNING AN ANCIENT SEWER
XIX	MR. KANWHISTLE EMPLOYS A DETECTIVE
XX	MR. CUTMORE CONSENTS
XXI	INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE MUST SHOP IN KETTLEWELL
XXII	AMOROUSNESS OF MR. KANWHISTLE
XXIII	MR. CORDER IS NOT A WORM
XXIV	EVELYN TAKES CONTROL
XXV	MR. CORDER DENIES
XXVI	SILENCE AT DINNER
XXVII	MR. JELLIPOT DOES NOT BELIEVE
XXV	MR. JELLIPOT TAKES THE BOOK
XXIX	MR. JELLIPOT'S OPINIONS ONLY
XXX	BUT IT WAS NOT THERE
XXXI	MR. JELLIPOT WOULD DECLINE
XXXII	FOR WILFUL MURDER
XXXIII	ADVICE OF MR. BUTCHER, K.C.
XXXIV	MR. BUTCHER WILL HAVE HIS WAY
XXXV	THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
XXXVI	INSPECTOR COMBRIDGE EXPLAINS
XXXVII	MISS KANWHISTLE'S FINAL JOKE

CHAPTER I

IMPLICATIONS OF A LAWYER'S LETTER

80A Basinghall St.
E.C.2.

Dear Sir,

Jane Kanwhistle deceased.

        In accordance with the instructions of my late client, I have to advise you that it has become my duty to communicate the terms of her will to those whom it may concern, and to request that you will attend at this office at 10:30 a.m., tomorrow, Wednesday, the 13th inst., for the above-mentioned purpose.
        I am instructed to inform you that it may be of benefit to yourself to be present.

Yours faithfully,
E. E. JELLIPOT.

        Frederick Corder looked at his watch. It was now 9.35.

        He looked across the breakfast-table. "Addie," he said, "you might have let me have this a bit earlier."

        "Yes, dear? It isn't anything serious, is it? I thought it was only about removing the typewriter, and we always get that about this time in the month."

        "No. It isn't that. It's about Aunt Jane."

        Adeline looked faintly interested. "She hasn't left you anything, has she? It would take more than a letter to make me believe that!"

        She might have responded differently had her husband's tone sounded a more jubilant note, but his expression had not been that of a man to whom unexpected affluence had suddenly come.

        "I don't know," he replied dubiously. "Perhaps it'll sound better to you than it does to me."

        He handed over the letter.

        She read it with brightening eyes. "I don't see," she commented, with her customary common sense, "how the terms of the will can concern you unless you benefit from it. If she's only left you an odd thousand or two, it will make a lot of difference to us."

        "Yes - if. But you know what Aunt Jane was. I never had a penny from her, and when she borrowed five shillings I don't believe her purse was any farther off than her own bag. She just did it in the hope that I hadn't got it to lend, or to make me a bit poorer. I suppose I can get that back now, if I make a fuss. I don't expect anything more."

        "Well, I think there is. I think that's what the letter means. Anyway, you'll soon know. I'd better see whether your shoes are clean."

        "I don't think I shall go. If she's left me anything, it will be a dose of rat-poison more likely than not. You know she was about the most unpleasant joker you ever met."

        "Anyway, there's a chance. Unpleasant people sometimes leave quite decent wills. You'd be silly not to find out."

        "Yes, perhaps I should. But I don't want to sit there watching Percy grin. It isn't only what we know Aunt Jane was. There's something in the tone of that damned lawyer's letter I don't like."

        Adeline passed this without denial. She had had a similar thought, which it had seemed inexpedient to mention. As the literary member of their marital and

the value of words, and there were implications in the last paragraph which she did not like. The "may be of benefit" suggested a conditional rather than an absolute blessing, and even that the cautious lawyer did not support with his own assurance. He had been "instructed to inform." But, closely considered, this sentence did not bear directly upon the benefits accruing under the will so much as the presence of one of those whom "it may concern" at a meeting which was due to be held in about forty minutes. It might be that Fred's absence would be fatal to the terms of the probable legacy, and that this short notice had been enjoined by the peculiar sense of humour in which Aunt Jane had specialised, as only a wealthy spinster may. Certainly Fred must be there.

        She said aloud: "Well, we shall soon know. It'll be the quickest way on the tube."

        She looked at the window of their fourth-floor Bloomsbury Street flat, against which the rain beat. She said: "You can't go in that old raincoat. I'll see whether Bill's taken his."

        Frederick Corder made a gesture of protest, a half-articulate murmur: he half rose from the breakfast-table. But these abortive demonstrations ceased as Adeline disappeared through the door. He would much rather have gone in 'that old raincoat' than borrowed on such an occasion from the flat below, but he recognised that the decision was not for him.

        Ten minutes later, he set out, with a black over-coat on his back (Bill Saxton's Fleet Street duties occupied him during the night hours, and it had been fine when he had left last evening), and, with two minutes to spare, he arrived at Mr. Jellipot's office, and was promptly shown into the solicitor's private room.

CHAPTER II

A MOST CONDITIONAL LEGACY

MR. JELLIPOT read the will. It was somewhat long, and Adeline might have criticised it for an excessive prolixity, but, having been drawn up by Mr. Jellipot himself, it was a document of legal clarity and soundness.

        It was also, and perhaps unexpectedly, prosaic. But Mr. Jellipot was not a type of solicitor who would be likely to countenance a post-mortem joke. Mr. Corder, listening to it, was relieved, puzzled, disappointed of the vague hope which he had endeavoured to suppress, but which had refused to be entirely banished.

        It left Miss Kanwhistle's whole estate to her dearly loved nephew, Percival Kanwhistle, subject only to the lability to pay somewhat numerous legacies and annuities under conditions set out with detailed particularity, and including some charitable bequests of liberal amount, but not such as to seriously impair a fortune which was not less than eighty thousand pounds, as Mr Jellipot's cautious estimate had allowed, even after due allowance had been made for the claims of a rapacious Government.

        Mr. Percy Kanwhistle, the only other relative invited to hear the will, who had, at first, viewed his cousin's presence with a rather nervous hostility, fearing that it might portend some diminution in his own confidently anticipated inheritance, soon came to wear the complacent grin which Fred had prophesied would be on his face. Indeed, as the will proceeded to its conclusion, he looked at Fred with a puzzled wonder mingled with his customary contemptuous toleration sharing his own speculation as to why he had been invited at all.

        But Mr. Jellipot, after reading the concluding attestation with his usual punctilious respect for legal exactness, paused for no more than one impressive moment, and then said, with an added gravity of expression: "So much for the will as it was drawn up on my own advice in accordance with the instructions that I received. It has not been revoked, and its provisions stand." (The momentary blankness passed from Percy's countenance, and the grin resumed.) "But there is a codicil, of no legal validity, though it has the appearance of having been regularly signed and witnessed, of which I need scarcely say that I had no previous knowledge, and with which I should have declined to be associated under any circumstances. But I feel, with some hesitation, that it is best to communicate it to you two gentlemen, and to tender my advice thereon, if you should ask me to do so. The codicil is this:

        "I further direct that my nephew, Percival Kanwhistle aforesaid, shall pay the sum of Ten thousand pounds to my nephew, Frederick Corder, now of 73A Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C.2, within thirteen calendar months of the date on which the said Percival Kanwhistle and the said Frederick Corder, having been summoned for that purpose by less than twenty-four hours' notice, shall be apprised together of the contents of this codicil, providing that the said Frederick Corder shall not fail to attend punctually to the said summons, and that he shall commit at least one legal crime, either felony or misdemeanour, on that day, and on each of the three hundred and sixty-four following days, of which crimes he shall supply a detailed list, with any evidences which may reasonably be required in confirmation thereof within seven days of the commission of the last of the said series of misdemeanours or felonies, to a solicitor to be mutually agreed between my said nephews, provided that in the event of the said Frederick Corder failing to attend the summons to the reading of this my will or either failing to regularly commit the full series of misdemeanours or felonies above provided or being convicted in any court of summary jurisdiction or committed for trial in relation to any one or more of the said series, then this codicil shall be absolutely void and of none effect, but providing also that if the said Frederick Corder shall fulfil the conditions herein set out and the said Percival Kanwhistle shall refuse or neglect for a period of two calendar months thereafter to pay over the said sum of Ten thousand pounds then the whole benefit of this will shall pass to the London Institute for Physical Research of 47 Creech Street, London. N.W.7. as though their name had been substituted for that of the said Percival Kanwhistle throughout, and subject only to the same provision that they shall pay to the said Frederick Corder the said sum of Ten thousand pounds. As witness. etc."

        Mr. Jellipot read this lengthy codicil in an expressionless tone, and, having done so, paused silently, as though desiring to learn the reactions of the two young men most directly concerned.

        Frederick Corder's face had flushed with mingled resentment and disappointment, as he realised the mockery which the dead woman had made of his reputation for somewhat timid observance of the laws of his native land. But he sat still, offering no comment upon it, while his cousin, leaning back with out-stretched legs in Mr. Jellipot's most comfortable chair, broke the silence with: "And you tell us all that's bunkum, from end to end?"

        "I should prefer," Mr. Jellipot replied, with his usual precision, "to put it with greater exactness, and in somewhat different phraseology, but your supposition is not materially inaccurate.

        "The codiciI, though not drafted with the full clarity which the law prefers, would yet be, in my opinion, of undoubted validity, but for the fact that it purports to encourage the commission of crime, and I must advise you that it is radically invalidated by that defect."

        "Then we can just give it a miss?"

        "You must, of course, both decide for yourselves the attitude you will adopt, and the actions, if any, which you will take upon it. . . . It may occur to you, Mr, Kanwhistle - Mr. Jellipot turned to the young man who was likely to be his more profitable client, and sank his voice to a pleasantly persuasive earnestness as he said this - "that the codicil, apart from its eccentric, and perhaps I may be allowed to add, reprehensible conditions, indicated with exactness the amount - the very moderate proportion - by which your late aunt desired that Mr. Corder should benefit from the estate. I am happy to be able to advise you that an unconditional and voluntary instruction to me that he should receive that sum, upon realisation, would be entirely legal, and, if I may say so, a happy method of dealing with the fantastic, if not impossible condition which it sets out."

        "Yes," Mr. Kanwhistle replied, with a suggestion of sarcasm in his voice which was not overlooked by either of his auditors, "I should say it would!"

        "Do I gather," Mr. Jellipot asked, in a carefully expressionless voice, "that you approve the suggestion which I have made?"

        "I should say not! I am going to do what the old lady wished, neither more nor less."

        "You mean that if Mr. Corder should see his way to fulfil the condition imposed upon him - I need not say that I am neither advising nor contemplating such a possibility - you would make no difficulty about paying over the amount in due course?"

        "No one ever said that Percival Kanwhistle wasn't a good sport. If Fred likes to sweat for it, there'll be the cash ready the day it's earned. He's got to commit three hundred and sixty-five crimes at the rate of one a day, and keep out of quod? That's what I understood. It ought to be worth that to watch!"

        Mr. Kanwhistle's eyes, as he said this, met those of his angry cousin with a sardonic humour hard to endure. He added: "You needn't think you won't collect, if you romp in at the post. I don't mind Mr. Jellipot holding the stakes."

        Mr. Jellipot, speaking with unusual emphasis, said that he must decline to undertake any such responsibility.

        "Well," Percival replied, "that's for you to say. I only thought that he might make a better running if he saw that the cash was there."

        Fred knew that his cousin meant what he said, in his mocking way, and that though he would not give him a single fiver of the inheritance from any sense of equity or goodwill, yet, if the condition should be fulfilled, he would no more refuse to pay because the codicil could not be legally enforced, than repudiate a betting debt on the same ground.

        But the mocking tone, emphasising the previous mockery of the dead, angered him to such a point that, had the conditions been even a little less monstrous than they were, he would have accepted the challenge. As it was, it roused him, when he might otherwise have retired without further words from a place to which, apart from Adeline's urging, he would not have come, to hit back with the question: "I suppose the will's good?"

        "Yes," Mr. Jellipot answered, without hesitation. "I'm afraid it is."

        There was a note of finality and regret in this pronouncement which neither invited further questions nor encouraged hope that it might be upset. Mr. Corder rose. "I expect," he said, "you'll have other things to talk over, and, anyway, there's nothing more for me to hear." It was rather with the intention of leaving his cousin in a state of doubt than with any thought of undertaking a career of criminality that he added: "I don't know yet what I shall do. You can't expect me to decide without thinking it out."

        "You haven't much time for that," Percival answered, with cheerful sarcasm. "You ought to be getting busy with the first crime."

CHAPTER III

ADELlNE STATES HER VIEWS

MR. FREDERICK CORDER, so shockingly incited to a life of unceasing crime, sat down to a modest tea-shop lunch in Cheapside, with his thoughts still upon the mocking insult which he had received from his deceased relative, whose only grievance against him had been the inoffensive rectitude of his simple life. Was he really, he reflected, the spineless worm which he had appeared in that lady's eyes?

        It was an unwelcome thought to one whose daily bread was earned by the designing of book-jackets which usually depicted the lethal actions of stern-jawed men, or women with clothing missing or disarrayed, whose fingers pressed the trigger of fate, or who thrust remorseless daggers into the bodies of their would-be ravishers.

        Was he really a spineless worm? Or, if not, how could he demonstrate his challenged manhood in refutation of this insult from one to whom the satisfaction of verbal reply was no longer possible?

        Obviously, by fulfilling the conditions of the codicil, and picking up the money. But that was not a reasonable proposition. He doubted whether there were so many as three hundred and sixty-five various offences in the whole code of criminality. He would have to repeat some distasteful crime with monotonous reiteration! Did the codicil allow that, or did it imply that he must wake each morning with the plan for a new manner of wrong-doing developed during the night?

        So far as he could recollect the wording, that would not be necessary. He might steal a bun from the plate which the waitress had now deposited before him, and repeat that operation every day for the required period (unless the shop should be closed on Sundays), and so earn the reward. But without detection, so many times? He thought not Yet his mind strayed to think how much he could do with so large a sum. He might even make secret purchase of a publishing house. Without disclosing the unsuspected ownership, he could change its staff until he found men of real ability and discernment, who would prefer his book-jackets on their merits, and accept Adeline's novels with judgment equally sure.

        So he might dream; but what could he really do? His mind recurred to the thought to which he had given voice in Mr. Jellipot's office. Might it not be possible to contest the will?

        He remembered that the lawyer's reception of that suggestion had been discouraging. But might that not having been owing to Percy's presence? Or even to the fact that the document had been drawn in his own office?

        He recalled the proposal which Mr. Jellipot had made that the money should be paid unconditionally. That, at least, had been a gesture of kindliness in his direction. It encouraged him to the idea that he would give the solicitor a second visit. If he could state convincing reasons why it would be vain to challenge that eccentric document, well and good. If he should fail to do so, might it not be wise to take an independent opinion? He saw that, if the will could be upset, his position would be far better than if he should win the reward of a year of crime. . . . He rose, paid his check, as law-abiding citizens are accustomed to do, and went back to Basinghall Street. He found that Mr. Jellipot was disengaged, and was shown without delay into his private office.

        "I am pleased," the solicitor said at once, in his pleasantly diffident, almost apologetic manner, "that you have come back for a further talk, though I am afraid that I can do nothing which will be of material assistance to you.

        "You will, I am sure, acquit me of any complicity in the codicil which may well seem to you to be evidence of an unbalanced mind; and you will perhaps believe that I only resolved to carry out the instructions of my late client, which, as I had not accepted them during her lifetime, I was under no obligation to undertake, through the hope that I might have become instrumental in arranging a happier settlement of the matter, as I have been unable to do."

        "What I wanted to ask you," Mr. Corder, encouraged by this friendly reception, replied, "was whether, in your considered opinion, there is no possibility of contesting successfully a will which contains such condition. Even," he concluded shrewdly, "should there be no more than a doubtful chance, my cousin might prefer to settle for a moderate sum, rather than contest an issue by which he might lose more."

        "I had considered that aspect of the matter," Mr. Jellipot replied, "and was not surprised when you raised the question; but I am unable to advise you to entertain such a course of action.

        "In the first place, the will, which was of my own drafting, is dated two years earlier than the codicil, and even could you produce evidence that your aunt was non compos mentis at the date when she made the addition to which you naturally object, it would not affect the validity of the earlier document.

        "I must add that I am satisfied in my own mind that she was of full testamentary capacity when the will was drawn. It is free from eccentricity of any kind; and even the codicil is evidence of a sardonic humour rather than any mental weakness. It could be argued that, as she could not have seriously supposed that you would attempt the fulfilment of its conditions, its wording should not be taken seriously, having no real intention, except to annoy one whom, from whatever reason, she did not like."

        "Yes. I can see that. I dare say there aren't as many different crimes recognised by English law as there are days in the year, even though you might include murder and manslaughter, and a lot of others that no one would seriously consider in connexion with such a proposal."

        Mr. Jellipot was not quick to reply. He was a respecter of English law. Emphatically, he was not going to be a party to any suggestion of fulfilling the codicil's terms. But he had a speculative, active and ingenious mind, and he had given some idle thought to the subject. He was not merely unable to assent to Mr. Corder's proposition. He had arrived at the contrary conclusion that a total of three hundred and sixty-five separate misdemeanours would make little difference to the total of an English citizen's possible iniquities, even though he should prefer to avoid the more dangerous and repulsive, and even the more recondite crimes, such as marrying his grandmother, or stealing a locomotive, for which the bye-laws of the Great Western Railway Company provide an appropriate penalty, which, though relatively moderate, has proved sufficient to prevent this particular form of theft becoming widely popular.

        He contented himself with a non-committal reply that the offences recognised by a well-organised civilisation are somewhat numerous, and include delinquencies of great variety.

        Mr. Corder, who was by no means a fool, recognised the restraint of the lawyer's words, and the idea came to his mind that the course of criminality which had been thrust before him might seem less impracticable to Mr. Jellipot's judgment than repellent to his moral code.

        Perhaps for the first time a doubt that the ten thousand pounds might not be utterly unattainable took shallow, uncertain root, and may explain the next enquiry which he addressed to the solicitor, with the obliquity which the subject required.

        "It isn't only the absurdity of the idea in itself. It isn't easy to see how any proof would be possible. It's easy to imagine what you would say, as a law-respecting solicitor, if anyone should come to you to give your certificate, so to speak, that three hundred and sixty-five crimes had been committed with impunity, so that the amount due under the codicil could be properly claimed."

        "The idea," Mr. Jellipot agreed, "is fundamentally foolish. But, approaching it as a strictly hypothetical question, if I should be informed of the wrong-doings of a client, under the customary obligations of professional secrecy, and providing that the retention of misappropriated property were not involved, and that the contingency of further delinquencies did not arise - - "

        He paused, leaving the sentence incomplete, and Mr. Corder, feeling that there was no further wisdom to be obtained in that office, and having no clear purpose in his own mind, remarked vaguely that it was a silly business, and that he was much obliged to Mr. Jellipot, shook hands, and departed. He remembered that he had now been several hours absent from home, and that Adeline would have some natural impatience to hear what he had to tell.

        He reached Bloomsbury Street at about four, and found her laying tea for two in intelligent anticipation of his return, for it was a meal he would seldom miss. She had already decided that good news would have been more speedily brought, and a glance at his face confirmed her belief that there was none to hear. She said tactfully: "You'd better get your shoes off, and return that overcoat, and then tell me while we have tea."

        "Oh, it's soon told," he answered, with a sound instinct that the dramatic quality of the news would be reduced by a more gradual approach, "we're to have ten thousand pounds in a year from now, if I commit three hundred and sixty-five crimes."

        "Ten thousand pounds! Well, that isn't so bad, though we could do with it a bit sooner than that. But don't stand there, dear, dropping water all over the floor. Perhaps you'd better dry the coat on the towel-rail before you take it down. But be quick. Don't be ages washing; the tea's ready now."

        Fred disappeared obediently into the bathroom, and Adeline turned her mind to pleasant anticipation of spending the substantial sum which was to be theirs in a year's time.

        She had not taken her husband's statement literally. She supposed that Miss Kanwhistle had imposed some unpleasant condition, such as that Fred should engage in an uncongenial occupation. His aunt had always sneered at his obstinately patient efforts to make a living in the way he did. Well - poor Fred! Adeline, an affectionate and intelligent wife, knew how he would feel. He would have all the sympathy from her that the occasion required. A year of uncongenial drudgery - perhaps with the stipulation that he should not touch a pencil during that period. And every day, as he had graphically said, he would consider a crime. . . . But, after all, a year is soon done! It did not enter her mind that Fred might be excused from fulfilling the condition which had been imposed upon him. Probably the poor dear had been wandering about in the rain all these hours trying to reconcile himself to what he would have the sense to see that he could not avoid.

        She poured out the tea, tactfully took a rather burnt piece of toast for herself, put a better slice on her husband's plate, and prepared herself to give him her undivided attention as he came back into the room.

        She listened with exemplary patience to his account of the morning's interview, and though realising that the proposition was not as simple as she had hoped, she still did not easily reconcile herself to resigning the substantial legacy.

        "When you say crimes," she remarked, "you don't mean really serious things. Not that do anyone any harm. You mean anything that's against the law."

        "Yes. That's about how I understand it."

        "There mayn't be quite as much in it as it sounds," she said optimistically. "I dare say most of us break a law most days, more likely than not."

        "We don't do it for twelve months, without missing a day."

        "No. But if you set your mind to it, you might find it would be easy enough."

        "Think so? I don't. And just about the last day I might get caught, and blue the whole thing."

        "You mean you might get locked up, and the crime business would have to stop? But I don't see why it should. You could break a mug, or whatever they give you there."

        "I don't mean that. Though if I went on that way I expect I should end in a straightjacket, or a padded cell, and what could I do then? Probably there'd be nothing left but suicide on the last day. I believe that's a legal crime, though it always seems to me the best day's work that some people would ever be able to do. . . . But I wasn't thinking of doing crimes in a jail. I meant that, if I get caught, it's all off. That's one of the conditions."

        "You hadn't told me that before. What a dirty pig your aunt must have been."

        Fred observed with some satisfaction that Adeline took this last snag very seriously. He had not liked some of her previous remarks, which had seemed to contemplate his prospective criminality with a levity which he could not share.

        Indeed, up to that point, angry as she was at the obstacle which Miss Kanwhistle had erected between her nephew and the coveted legacy, she had had a certain amount of sympathy with the old lady's attitude. She did not regard her husband (of whom she was genuinely fond) as a spineless worm, but she was aware that he had a reputation for rectitude which might irritate an unholy mind.

        But now her thoughts strayed to the idea which his vision of final suicide had suggested. Under such - indeed, under any circumstances - would Percival pay an amount which she saw that it would be impossible to recover by legal process? But on this point Fred gave her a reluctant assurance. If he should run the course, he felt that the reward was sure. But, he said what an "if"!

        Adeline was beginning to feel the same. If a conviction would cancel the legacy, she saw the unpleasant possibility of much onerous amateur criminality ending in disgrace, such as, should the tale become known, would bring derision upon her husband, if not contempt, with no golden consolation to follow. "I shouldn't like," she said, "to hear Percival laugh."

        "He couldn't do that if we just leave it alone, which is the only sensible thing to do."

        "He wouldn't laugh if he had to pay over the cash."

        "There isn't much chance of that."

        "There won't be any unless we get busy before midnight. I'll tell you what, Fred. I want to think this out quietly, and while I'm doing it you'd better make a list of all the crimes you can think of. They might give us some bright ideas."

        She went to the mantelpiece, and lighted a cigarette, and as she did this Fred shivered with a premonition of doom, for Adeline never smoked during the day.

        But he went obediently to the bureau, fetched out unused memorandum book, headed the pages methodically with the letters of the alphabet, and began to enter the crimes that came first to his particularly innocent mind.

        For the next twenty minutes there was silence, broken only by an explanation from Adeline: "I wish it hadn't been the thirteenth! It seems rather like hitting below the belt."

        But Fred made no reply. He was commencing the page dedicated to T with Treason, which he felt to have vaguely better possibilities than Stealing Locomotives, with which he had decorated the opposite page. Adeline, having made her protest against the date, lit a third cigarette from the second, and relapsed into silent thought.

        She put the ashes of the third cigarette into the ashtray as she said "I suppose it wouldn't matter if you got convicted after the year was up, so long as you keep clear for that time?"

        "No. I don't know that it would. Not after I'd got the money. I suppose not. Why do you ask that?"

        "Only that it sets a time-limit. It's nice to feel that, if we once got our hands on it, we shouldn't have to cough it up, whatever happened afterwards. . . . I think it may turn out to be rather fun."

        "You don't really mean - - ?"

        "I think there'll be plenty left for Percy after he's handed over what's coming to us. But let's look at your index of crimes. You ought to have got some good ideas all the time you've been writing there."Fred passed over the book. The pages consecrated to the first two letters of the alphabet lay open before her. She read Arson - Bigamy. She frowned over the latter word. She had not supposed that Fred had such a deplorable mind. "I don't think," she said coldly, "that you'll need that." She turned further pages. "You seem," she said, "to be thinking of going into the crime business in quite a large way."

        She put the book down, and became thoughtful again. "Fred," she said surprisingly, "now the rain's stopped, I wish you'd go to the twopenny library in New Oxford Street, and get me a copy of Reggie's Wantons Don t Starve. I know there's one there. I saw it yesterday. But if it's out, go on to another library. I want that book particularly. It'll be threepence, being a new one."

        "I thought you said Hardwick's books were all tripe."

        "So they are, but I want this."

        Glad that he was not being sent on a less innocent errand, he went out in the fawn raincoat which had been considered unfit for the morning ceremony, and procured the book without difficulty.

        Adeline looked at it with disfavour. "You didn't," she asked anxiously, "have to pay a deposit upon it?"

        "No. They know us too well for that."

        "Very well. Then if you tear it up, it will be a crime. I expect they could prosecute you if they saw you do it. That ought to be good enough. But as they won't, all they'll be able to do is to sue for what it's worth, and they may never trouble to do that."

        "You want me to tear it up?"

        "Yes. You can't burn it. That's the worst of having nothing but gas-fires. But we can always rob one of the meters if it's getting late, and we're hard up for an idea."

        Overborne by a more resolute will, and feeling that the event was in better hands than his own, Fred proceeded without further words to tear up the work which his wife disliked, and to drop the fragments into the wastepaper basket.

        While he did so, Adeline got out the book in which she had intended to write the later portion of the novel More Jam for Jane on which she was now engaged. She had resolved to put it to a more profitable, if not to a better use.

        Neatly, she entered the date, and the particulars of the crime. She ruled a column for Fred to initial the entry, and another for herself as witness. She intended to have that record complete, orderly, and convincing to Mr. Jellipot's legal mind, when the year should end. Under her watchful care, Fred should not be jailed, nor Percival allowed to escape. As she did so, she heard the cover of Wantons Don't Starve rip. The year of crime had begun.

CHAPTER IV

TWO MORE FROM THE LIST

HAVING completed the destruction of Reggie Hardwick's masterpiece, Fred returned to his laborious compilation of a schedule of prospective crimes. It may have been the subtle influence of the lurid book-jackets on which his imagination was habitually exercised which inclined him to recollection of the major iniquities of civilised or semi-civilised men, rather than the myriad misdemeanours known to, or even created by, English law.

        Yet as the catalogue increased in length, it was inevitable that it should diminish in average seriousness, and contain a larger proportion of more feasible wrong-doings. Adeline, looking over his shoulder, observed him to enter Sleeping-out under the less practical suggestion of purloining a substantial item of the Great Western Railway Co.'s property.

        "I think," he said hopefully, "that that might be rather a good idea for a summer night."

        "You're sure that it is a crime?"

        "Yes. I've read about people being sent to jail for it, though I've never understood why."

        "That's when they've no visible means of support."

        "So that I should have to be careful not to take a walking-stick with me?"

        "Don't try to joke. It's too serious. It sounds to me the kind of thing you might get caught at, and spoil everything. But, of course," she added more hopefully, "I might keep watch, and give you warning to run away. The worst objection would be that you couldn't be sure that you'd go off.

        "Fancy lying awake at eleven-fifty-five, knowing that if you weren't asleep within five minutes it would cost you ten thousand pounds! Unless, of course, the law says it's sleeping-out to lie awake under a hedge."

        "It probably does. It's just the sort of thing that it would. In twelve months' time, we ought to know a lot more law than we do now. I shouldn't wonder if I could get a job by then in Mr. Jellipot's office.

        "I suppose it won't do for tomorrow if I lift one of Bill's ideas for a jacket for Dead Man's Revenge? saw something on his desk last night that would just do."

        "I shouldn't risk it. Laws don't have much concern with things that are really wrong. They're more concerned with stopping what decent people are likely to do."

        Fred did not reply. He had just thought of hawking without a licence. Simple. Brief. Surely the law would be broken sufficiently by a single hawk? He scribbled in haste, lest an idea of such value should be lost, and as he did it his spirits rose. In imagination, he was surrounded by a forest of brittle laws. They snapped around him like rotten wood. With this optimistic vision, he went to bed.

        Next morning, the conversation was resumed upon waking, for the lawless enterprise on which they had entered obsessed their minds. Tactful as ever, and convinced of her superior discretion, Adeline proposed that the programmes of evil-doing should be her department, only (and inevitably) the execution his.

        She did not crudely suggest her own superiority. She emphasised anxiety to help, even though, as she allowed, it could be in no more than a subordinate rôle. The firing-line would be his. It would be her part to do no more than to plan, to propose, to watch. Fred accepted this allocation without demur. He was not jealous of the responsibility which she assumed. Rather, he was secretly content, both with the assistance she offered, and the support of a spirit more resolute and buoyant than he possessed.

        It was not until breakfast was nearly over that he learnt, with some relief, the simple nature of his second venture upon the slippery path of dishonesty.

        "You're going to the Bleech Publishing Company this morning, aren't you?" Adeline asked.

        "Yes. I'm taking half a dozen rough sketches for the jacket of Hotbottle's new novel. Hotbottle's to be there himself. He always likes a voice in choosing his own jackets."

        "You'd be likely to be left alone in the top office, if you get there much before time?"

        "Yes. I can, anyway, if I want to. I've got a lot of drawings there. I could say I was sorting some out to bring away."

        "You could pick up something in the office that isn't yours, and bring it away just as easily?"

        "Yes, of course. If you could call that a crime. They wouldn't make any fuss, if they saw me do it. They'd only think it was a mistake. They've known me too long."

        "It would be theft, all the same."

        "Not if they saw me do it, and didn't object."

        "Well, that depends. But they mustn't see you. We've got to have three hundred and sixty-five hundred per cent cast-iron crimes. Have you worked out how that number goes into ten thousand?"

        "Not exactly. You know how I hate figures."

        "Well, I have. I did it when I waked in the night. It's either twenty-seven or twenty-eight. I couldn't quite make out which, doing it all in my head. Say twenty-seven pounds ten a day. It's worth while being careful for that."

        It was an argument with which Fred had no disposition to disagree. His thoughts settled upon a ruler which had lain on the desk of that upper office, unused, as far as he knew, for the nine years during which the Bleech Publishing Co. had had the assistance of his facile pencil. He knew that, if the directors of the firm should see him bearing it away, they would not raise their voices to call him back.

        But it must be worth at least a shilling. More probably two. He remembered vaguely having read that, in an earlier century, it had been a capital offence to steal anything of greater value than a shilling (or was it tenpence?), and though he had no fear that he would be led by this petty larceny to the hangman's noose, the memory sufficed to dismiss any remaining doubt that he would fulfil the requirements of the codicil when he should remove the ruler from the custody of its legal owners. With this purpose he set out, and opportunity became his, as he had foreseen. But he did not bear the ruler away.

        When he returned home for tea, he pulled out of his pocket a fountain-pen. It was of good make, with a gold nib of superior quality. lt was certainly worth much more than a shilling.

        He looked at it with satisfaction rather than shame.

        "This," he said, "is Mr. Hotbottle's pen."

        Adeline's brows contracted slightly. "He won't guess that you've got it?"

        "No. How should he? I saw him drop it, going down the stairs, and waited a moment to see whether he'd come back, before picking it up."

        But Adeline still looked serious. She knew that Fred disliked Mr. Hotbottle, as she disliked Reggie Hardwick. Probably more. Suppose Fred were to get out of hand?

        She made remarks of some abstract wisdom concerning the necessity of subduing emotional impulses in business matters, to which he assented readily, but without appearing to give them the full attention which they deserved.

        He was considering another difficulty. What was to be done with the pen?

        "I can't carry it about," he said. "I might pull it out where Hotbottle would see it. You know what my memory is."

        "No, of course not. We shall have to put things like that on one side till the year's over."

        "We might get quite a lot."

        "I've been thinking of that. We shall need a cache. But you'd better leave that to me. If any one gets into trouble, it will be you, and it may be just as well that you shouldn't know where everything is."

        Fred made no objection to that, and Adeline went on to the subject of the next day's crime.

        In the course of her researches at the British Museum necessitated by the writing of More Jam for Jane, she had come, that morning, upon the curious information that though it is no legal offence for a woman to parade the public streets in male attire, the law exacts a higher standard of propriety for men, and inflicts penalties upon them if they are found wandering in a woman's skirts.

        Here, she had instantly seen, was a crime which could be committed easily, quickly, and safely, and would provide something of the variety which would ensure that poor Fred would not become weary of ill-doing before the total would be complete.

        "You can change into some of my things, and I will go into the street first, and give a signal when I am sure that no cops are about, and you can just walk up and down a few yards, and run in again if you see anyone coming. If it's after twelve, it will do for tomorrow's crime, and you can have the day free."

        "I don't see why we shouldn't do that every evening and save trouble in other ways."

        "Fred, dear, I've often heard you say silly things, but never anything much sillier than that. A thing may be safe once, but if you make a practice of it, it's an absolutely different matter. That applies to almost anything, but particularly to this. If you were to take to running out every night with my things on, it would be certain to be observed before long, and very likely someone would hide and watch. If you were doing that, I'd be glad to sell the whole ten thousand for two pounds ten, and think I'd got the best of the deal."

        "All right, Addie. You win."

        Feeling that she had the situation well in hand, Adeline got out the book which was to be at once a warrant for the drawing of £10,000, and a record of evil courses probably unequalled for variety, persistence, and regularity in the history of the civilised world, and had the second item entered, signed, and witnessed by herself as having inspected the stolen pen.

        At about twenty minutes before midnight, they went into the bedroom together, and Fred adventured what he had supposed would be the swift and easy process of putting on his wife's clothes. Half an hour later he knew more.

        The ordeal was not simplified by Adeline's insistence that the change should be most thoroughly made. She said, with reason, that the law could not descend with penal force upon a man who wore no more feminine attire than a shoe, a scarf, or a glove. Probably (though here she admitted less certainly) not a hat. With the degree of completeness doubtful, there could be no absolute surety apart from an entire change.

        But a woman's stockings are still articles of feminine attire, even though they may split half-way down (not to speak of the foot), as in fact they did. But the ankles remained sound, and they were (need it be said?) an old pair.

        "I never noticed that you had such slim ankles," Adeline remarked sweetly to a gratified Fred, whose temper, by this time, was in a dangerously inflammable condition. "They're all right really. The suspenders will hold them up. There's no reason that you shouldn't dress as a beggar-maid."

        It was far past midnight when Adeline went out to an empty street, while Fred lurked behind the half-opened street door, praying that his guardian angel might not be too disgusted by his recent conduct to protect him from being seen by any occupant of the other flats.

        But nothing happened. After a cautious patrol of the pavement, Adeline called him to come forth. He emerged for a few yards, and ran hastily back to cover.

        Adeline followed him in. "You're sure," she asked, "that that bit was enough?"

        "It's got to be," he answered, with more emphasis than he could usually command. "I felt something burst at the back."

        He went to sleep that night with the pleasant consciousness that he could go through the coming day "wearing the white flower of a blameless life," and that he had surmounted the third step of the long and difficult stair which Miss Kanwhistle's malign humour had invited him to ascend.

CHAPTER V

ADELINE STUDIES CRIME

ADELINE spent the greater part of the following morning in the reading-room of the British Museum improving her knowledge of English criminal law.

        It cannot be said that she had any reason for disappointment in the number or variety of offences which it recognises, and for which it imposes penalties sufficient to bring them within the conditions the codicil required. But she observed that a very large proportion of them were such as Fred was not eligible to commit; either age, or sex, or occupation shutting him out from graduation in the full chorus of English crime.

        She learnt for the first time that, under the Poor Law Assessment Act of 1869, it is a criminal offence to omit a ratepayer's name from the rating list, but this is a form of wickedness only possible to rating officials; she observed other classes of turpitude which, while not impossible, would require much preliminary preparation, particularly if they were to be committed with the necessary impunity. Such, for instance, was the impersonating of seamen in the endeavour to collect their pay, for which the Admiralty Act of 1865 provides six months' hard labour for those who adventure it in a blundering manner; Fred could not desert from the Royal Navy, neither had he any facilities for refusing to weigh bread.

        There was another category, almost equally large, of offences which she felt sure that Fred would not consent to perpetrate, even should she be willing to incite him thereto; for she could not fail to observe that the law, although primarily concerned in less defensible interferences with human liberty, prohibits many things which are personally degrading, and even morally wrong. A man of unvarying sobriety is naturally unwilling to be drunk in a public place, and the occupation of a "fraudulent displayer of wounds" is not one which most designers of book-jackets would desire to enter.

        A third category must be ruled out as too likely to lead to the prosecution which would make the cost of the enterprise so much heavier, while rendering it barren of the gain which it was intended to reach. The risk of keeping a lottery was evident even to her inexperienced judgment, while to undertake the role of a refractory pauper would be to make disaster sure.

        She gave more optimistic consideration to the fact, of which she had been ignorant previously, that it is a criminal offence to be in possession of more than five counterfeit foreign coins. It had the aspect of a singularly innocent form of wrong-doing, and one which could be practised with the reticence which the occasion required. She even had a passing thought that the conditions of the codicil might be fulfilled by a continuous retention of the worthless coinage. Would it not be a fresh daily crime every twenty-four hours that Fred should walk abroad with the six lawless metal discs in a hip-pocket which might be stitched up to avoid the inadvertent publicity which his absent-minded methods would otherwise be too likely to give?

        But she put this speculation from her mind as she recollected that Percival would be the sole judge, with no possibility of appeal against his decision. She intended that the required conditions should be observed beyond possibility of cavil. And, besides, how could more than five counterfeit foreign coins be obtained? The difficulties in the way of a would-be criminal were not easy to overcome.

        Yet, when she surveyed the sum of her morning's work, she could not complain of an empty net.

        The Larceny Act of 1861 had been replete with the most useful hints, as, in less variety, had the Profane Oaths Act of the previous century. There were possibilities in unlicensed peddling. Fred might damage trees, shrubs, plants, and telegraph posts with good hope that his nefarious activities would escape the notice of the police: he might kill hares in warrens, or pigeons under a variety of unlawful circumstances. Fishing in private waters during the day-time might be arranged with a reasonable certainty that it would never come before the single magistrate who is empowered to deal with its comparatively venial guilt. . . . Yes, for a first morning's research, it was not bad. But she had never previously realised how many days there are in a year.

        Meanwhile Fred went through the innocent hours in a state of nervous anxiety, such as he had certainly never expected to feel in his wildest dreams. He was afraid lest he might be inadvertently led into some casual breach of his country's very numerous laws, and so commit a second crime in a single day. It was a waste which he could not afford.

CHAPTER VI

ENTER THE PRESS

THE months passed, and the neatly entered record of Mr. Frederick Corder's daily crimes lengthened with the steady regularity of their setting suns.

        It had been early February when he had gone through the rain in Bill Saxton's overcoat to Mr. Jellipot's office. It was now May. In the meantime he had committed ninety-two crimes, and remained a man of good repute, unconvicted, and (as far as he could observe) unsuspected of any wrong.

        There had been narrow escapes. Occasions when he had skirted the edge of discovery, or had found it difficult to outrun an involuntary innocence before the striking of the midnight hour. Once he had narrowly avoided the dual perils, when he decided at 11.35 p.m. that he was too near the possibility of allowing midnight to arrive without having perpetrated the selected crime. Adeline had let him loose at g p.m. with an airgun concealed in his trouser-leg, on what should have been a moonlit night, in a wood which (as she had gone to some trouble to ascertain) no game-keeper controlled, but in which rabbits were said to gambol in multitudes. Fred had talked with some confidence of his airgun skill, and Adeline, waiting in a friend's car at the side of the lonely road, had expected that a few minutes would be sufficient to enable him to secure the single rabbit which the occasion required.

        But the moon had been hidden by clouds. It had been densely dark under the boughs, and the rabbits, possibly shunning the discomfort of a drizzling rain, could neither be seen nor heard. Could an intention of poaching, under impossible conditions, rank as an accomplished crime? Perhaps it could; but Fred, stumbling in the dark, and waiting for moonlight which did not come, had a cold doubt. He went back to Adeline while there might yet be time to save the position, and reported his non-success.

        "Jump in," she said hurriedly, "we'll do something else to make sure."

        The street in the little country town where he smashed the Belisha beacon three minutes before midnight struck had appeared to be quite deserted, but a constable had leapt from the shadows, and blown his whistle as Fred scrambled back to the car.

        Disaster, final and absolute would have been the sequel of this intervention had not a plan, already designed for such an emergency, been put into successful operation.

        Fred had not entered the car. He had mounted the running-board, holding on until pursuit was out-distanced, and then, as the car slowed, dropped off, and gone off by himself down a side lane. The constable, as they had feared, had taken the number of the car, and it was only five minutes later that Adeline was stopped, and the car searched for a man who was not there.

        She, being questioned, was entirely truthful, and moderately frank. She had seen the beacon smashed. She had, at that moment, been going at a very moderate pace. A man had jumped on to the running-board. She had no doubt that he was the one who had smashed the beacon. He had been wearing a dark coat. She had not seen his face. She had accelerated. Perhaps foolishly. But was it not a natural action? Was it not natural to wish to shake him off, she being alone in the car? Anyway, he had dropped off. What more was there to be said?

        It was a needless elaboration of precaution that had caused Fred to carry out the plan also agreed, by which he made a cross-country way to a local railway station, travelled some distance from London during the night, and arrived back at Euston at 8.30 a.m. as Adeline, had the enquiry proceeded to such a point, would have said that she was expecting her husband to do. . . .

        Except for one or two such narrow escapes as these, the ninety-two crimes had been safely perpetrated, and with no more than negligible harm or inconvenience to the community against whom they made lawless war.

        Adeline, directing the campaign, had been careful to assort crimes in such a way as to avoid monotony and distribute degrees of risk. She was resolved that Fred should stay the course, but she was vigilant to make it as attractive as possible. Actually, it appeared, so far, to have done him good rather than harm. His physical condition had clearly improved. His eyes were brighter. His walk was more active and confident. It seemed that a new interest had come into his life. It made her afraid at times that he might err from overboldness, and bring their hopes to ruin by attracting the notice of the police.

        But, on the Friday in May to which we have come, she was mentally at ease, both with the knowledge that the crime of the day (the purloining of a bottle of milk) had been committed without possibility of detection following, and that she had a safe and pleasant plan for the following morning.

        He had scarcely taken his seat on the opposite side of the low fireside tea-table when she began: "I thought we might go to Hampton Court tomorrow." She knew that the weekend habit made it rarely possible for him to do any business in the city on Saturday mornings. She added: "There's a train soon after eleven that we might catch."

        "If you're staging the next event there, I should say you'd better move it about a hundred miles farther off. A profane oath in the middle of Salisbury Plain is about the only thing that's left for us now."

        It was the tone more than the words that warned her that Fred was in a despondent mood, and her first care was to assure him of the ease with which he would be able to execute the next of the series of diurnal iniquities.

        "There's a compartment at the end of that train that's reserved for ladies. It's not a full train, and nobody gets into the compartment, more often than not. Anyway, I watched, and there wasn't anyone this morning; and the guard's at the far end of the train.

        "If we get in together, or rather I get in first, just as the train's going to start, we can change at the first stop, and you'll have broken the law without one chance in a million that you'd get prosecuted, and not one in a hundred that it will be noticed at all."

        Fred did not fail to observe that Addie had planned with her usual careful efficiency, but his mood did not improve. He objected: "If it's only you in the compartment, and you don't object, I'm not sure that it's a crime at all, unless a railway official asked me to get out, and I wouldn't budge, and then I should get a summons for sure. I might be a shortsighted man."

        "Well, so you are. But why make up your mind that I shan't object? I shall probably kick up a ghastly fuss. In fact, I object now. I think it will be a most ungentlemanly thing for you to do."

        "Well," he said rather ungraciously, "I don't say it was a bad idea. A bit better than some, anyway. It isn't like impersonating a policeman, or robbing a church poor-box.

        "But the fact is that the game's up. They've got the whole tale in the Talker, and I suppose it'll be in the morning papers tomorrow, from one end of the country to the other."

        "What do you mean by the whole tale?"

        "I mean the codicil to the will, of course."

        "They don't say that you're trying to earn the money?"

        "No. Even if they guessed it, they wouldn't dare. But we couldn't go on with everyone watching."

        "You're not willing to give up now, after all we've done?"

        "I don't see that there's anything else possible."

        Adeline became silent. The publicity which was threatened must certainly increase the risks of detection, and there were still one hundred and seventy-three daily crimes to be contrived and perpetrated before the day would arrive on which Fred could claim the inheritance so hardly and wickedly to be won.

        And Percival might make some excuse, even then! It was a fear which would often haunt her in the hours of too-wakeful nights, and which roused a fierce determination that they should not be foiled, if the conditions had been fulfilled. Or, if so, there should be one more than the required total! Would not murder be a fitting climax to the long and varied list of the twelve months' crimes? She did not go far enough in imagination to decide which of them should stain their hands with Percival Kanwhistle's blood, nor would it have been easy to imagine Fred murdering his cousin. or anyone else. ("Infirm of purpose! - Give me the daggers.") But she was clearly resolved that there should be no further peaceful existence for Miss Kanwhistle's heir while that ten thousand pounds, having been fairly earned, should remain in his banker's hands. . . . Her mind swung back to the immediate trouble, which threatened to make the more remote one of no more than theoretical interest, but the thought of Percival had given her resolution a harder quality, which was apparent in her next words: "We can't give up now, after all we've done. We've got to think out a way."

        Fred had been thinking, too. He was not uninfluenced by the fact that Adeline had taken the news in a fighting mood; and he was as reluctant as she to surrender the hope of wealth, for which he had already steeped himself so deeply in his country's crimes. He said: "It all seems to me to depend upon whether they can guess that I've started to win the stakes."

        Yes. She saw that, If those around him, or who might make enquiry, should be convinced of his past and present innocence, there could be no reason to suspect him now of beginning a criminal career which would be three months too late. But could they bluff it out, even in the midst of unceasing guilt? She had some confidence in her own power to deceive. She had the great advantage of being habitually truthful and direct in action and speech. It is an incidental asset of such characteristics that, at sufficient need, they can lie more convincingly than their weaker neighbours. She had some confidence in herself; but of Fred she was less sure. She looked at him doubtfully. "You never," she said, "could tell a really good lie."

        Fred, who would have resented a charge of untruthfulness, was not pleased by this dubiously worded compliment. "I don't know," he said, "what you mean. I'm not going to let out what I've been doing, if you're hinting at that."

        Adeline answered vaguely: "Well, you know what these pressmen are." Fred could be warned, but not changed. She asked "Did you bring the paper?"

        "The Talker? No. I saw it at the Club. I tried to get a copy afterwards, but they were sold out, so they said. I expect they'd never had any to sell. It's not a paper you often see on the stalls."

        "How much did they say?"

        "Oh, just the facts. They've printed the codicil in full, under the headings: 'Lady's Eccentric Will. Legacy to be Won by Crime.' That wouldn't matter so much. It's the daily papers. It's sure to get into them. "

        Adeline did not dispute that. They both knew Fleet Street too well. It was that same knowledge which gave confidence to her next words: "Whatever they print, it will be forgotten in less than a week, if we can bluff them off now."

        She added: "If any reporters come smelling round, you'd better leave them to me."

        Fred said she could take on the lot, if she felt she could handle them better than he; but, while he spoke, Bill Saxton, with his usual grinning cheekiness, put his head in at the door, and asked: "May I come in? Or is it an awkward time?"

        Adeline, cursing him in her heart, though she would have welcomed his cheerful presence under different circumstances, answered: "Yes, of course. But I'm afraid the tea's getting cold."

        "I don't mind that," Mr. Saxton answered, as he advanced briskly to the offered chair. "I only thought Fred wouldn't want me prying about if he were just packing up the poisoned chocolates, or forging a cheque."

        "Yes," Adeline answered, without affecting not to understand him, "I suppose it's a good joke to you; but it's a bad one to us, and a bit stale."

        "Must have been rotten for you," the journalist agreed, with cheerful superficial sympathy. "But Cartwright's told me off to interview Fred, and we'll pay ten guineas. I told him Fred was too fly to give me the tale for nothing."

        "Well," Adeline answered, as Fred's silence showed his willingness to leave the initial skirmish to her, "if you think anything we can tell you is worth the money! But that's your risk. You'd better finish the tea-cake first, and then ask what you want to know."

CHAPTER VII

MR. SAXTON REMEMBERS THE MILK

BILL SAXTON grinned genially at Fred, who looked at him with less friendly eyes. Fred knew that such interviews were no more than occasional parts of the journalist's duties. Normally, Bill was an inside man, and his being delegated to this interview might fairly be attributed to the fact that they were known to be neighbours, and on friendly terms. Looked at from that angle, it had an aspect of hitting below the belt, which he was disposed to resent. It was through the use - perhaps it might be said, the abuse - of that friendship that he had been able to walk in uninvited, and claim that which might have been refused to another reporter.

        On the other hand, friendship counts for something. Bill had shown this when he had arranged payment for an interview which a reporter thinking only of the interests of his paper would have aimed to obtain freely. Also, if Bill would publish what Fred would wish his acquaintances, the general public, and especially the police, to believe, he might do him a service greater than, and very different from, anything that he would suppose.

        But Fred knew that friendship, however real, would weigh little against the instincts of the journalist, and the interests of the Morning News. He asked cautiously: "What do you want me to say?"

        "I want you to tell me, in your own words, what you think of your aunt's will."

        "I think it's about the lousiest ever made."

        As Bill's pencil rapidly jotted down this explosive opinion, Adeline interposed: "You mean, what did Fred think of it, when we heard of it three months ago? We can't keep thinking about it all the time; we've got other things to do."

        "And you've given up trying to earn the money?"

        "Oh, no, he hasn't."

        "You mean he's having a shot at winning it?"

        "Of course I didn't. I meant just what I said."

        "You mean he couldn't stop what he didn't start?"

        "Mr. Saxton, you are bright! . . . I don't see why he should mind telling you this. Jane Kanwhistle always hated him, and she stuck the codicil on to the will just to make him as mad as she knew how. Mr. Jellipot - he's her solicitor - said he knew nothing about it being there till she was dead. He said the codicil wouldn't have any legal value, even if anyone could fulfil such crazy conditions, as it was against public policy, and Fred's cousin, who's got the lot, couldn't be made to pay up.

        "But you can be sure that it wasn't meant to be a way for Fred to earn ten thousand pounds. It was just to annoy him by dangling the money at the other side of a ditch that he couldn't jump. Unless she thought he might be mad enough to get into trouble trying - try to jump the ditch, and fall in - and you can't tell that, unless you know how silly she thought he was, or how crazy she may have been."

        "If you think she wasn't all there, you ought to contest the will. You might get young Kanwhistle to compromise, if nothing better than that."

        "That was what Fred thought of at once. But r Mr. Jellipot said there wasn't a chance. We should have had something to go on if it had been part of the will, but it was stuck on two years later.

        "And besides, it would be said that it was evidently not intended to be taken literally. No one could expect to break the law once a day for a year and not be noticed by the police, and no one but a lunatic i would be likely to try.

        "Spiteful things are often put into wills, just to annoy, and that isn't considered any evidence that the people aren't sane. Anyway, Mr. Jellipot said that there wasn't a chance, and Fred could do nothing better than forget it. After all, she only exposed her own nasty character. I don't see why Fred should mind."

        "No," Bill agreed, "that sounds the sensible way to look at it. I suppose you can't tell me what set the old cat's back up?"

        "Only that she thought Fred hadn't enough vice in him, and she liked Percival better because he had. I don't see why Fred need be ashamed of that."

        "No. He ought to feel just the other way. Good old Fred!"

        Mr. Saxton shut his notebook. He felt that he had obtained the raw material for as long a column as the thing was worth. He added: "I think it's you who ought to have the ten guineas, Mrs. Corder. But I dare say you'll know how to look after that."

        And then, just as he was rising to leave, he remembered something, and a cloud of doubt, "small as a man's hand," rose in his alert and curious mind.

        "By the way," he said, "I heard that Mrs. Fortey's milk was stolen this morning."

        Mrs. Fortey occupied the flat two floors below.

        Fred had been silent since Adeline had taken the interview so firmly in hand, but now he felt that he played the right game when he looked up to say with a hint of righteous indignation in his voice: "I didn't steal Mrs. Fortey's milk, if you mean that."

        Bill Saxton grinned. "No," he said drily. "I know you didn't."

        "Oh, Fred," Adeline said, as the door closed, "if only you could have kept still!"

        "I don't see what there'd be wrong in that, even if it hadn't been true, as it was. It was Bill's milk I took. I didn't go down to hers."

        "Neither do I. But there was something, all the same. It's made him suspect, if he doesn't know."

        "Then what are we to do now?"

        "What can we, except to go on? We don't want to be beaten, and we're just beating ourselves if we stop now without being sure we must."

        Fred did not deny that. He said: "Then it's still to be Hampton Court?"

        "Yes. Unless you can think of something better.

        "Not if you can't. You've raked up fifty times more innocent crimes already than I thought there were in the whole penal code."

        He did no more than justice to Adeline's systematic industry when he said that. She had analysed and tabulated an almost incredible number of offences separately defined and penalised by the complexities of English law. And though there were very many which Fred was, so to speak, ineligible to commit, there was a residue of many hundreds among which to select from week to week, and of a variety sufficient to avoid any danger of his finding monotony in his lawless deeds.

        Now she consulted her chart anew, not to disturb the programme for the next morning, which, unless they should be closely mobbed (scarcely a reasonable anticipation) still seemed to her as good a selection as could be made, but to alter that which she had chosen for the following day. The deposit of waste matter on public land is not an operation which can be safely performed, even at night, by one who may be surrounded by prying, suspicious eyes. She must find something better than that.

        She considered alternative iniquities with a frowning intentness, only interrupted by a brief door-mat interview with a reporter from the Evening Herald. ("If you mean that my husband's a lunatic, why not say so straight out?"); and meanwhile Mr. William Saxton returned to Fleet Street to report to the feature editor of the Morning News the interview which he had obtained.

        "Corder didn't say much," he concluded. "He let the missus do the talking, but it seemed sensible enough, and it seemed a crazy idea that he would be trying to win money in such a way. Besides, he'd; have had to break the law about a hundred times already, or he'd have run himself off the course, and . it isn't sense that he wouldn't have been caught out before now.

        "But, just as I was leaving, I remembered the morning's milk. There's always a pint bottle left at the door of our own flat - the Corders are on the floor above - and I pick it up and take it in when I get back in the morning, unless I'm home earlier.

        "Well, this morning it wasn't there, and I supposed it had been taken in, but my wife said it hadn't, and I must be wrong, as she had distinctly heard the milkman lay it down when she had been going along the passage.

        "So I went back to look for it, but it wasn't there. Then I went down to the floor below, and there were two bottles outside Mrs. Fortey's door, so I thought the man might have made a mistake, and left ours there.

        "It was no use ringing to ask, because I know that Jill Fortey doesn't get up before three, unless she's got a rehearsal, so I took one, and told my wife to ask her about it later. Well, so she did. Jill said she always takes two pints. She needs milk for her complexion. I don't know whether it's for internal application. I thought she took something stronger than that. But there's no doubt that our bottle was delivered and disappeared. But who would have been likely to come up there and take it? There's only the Corders above us."

        Mr. Cartwright listened to this tale. He rubbed his chin in a way he had when hesitation troubled his mind. It sounded to him a most improbable supposition, founded on very slender evidence. But he had some confidence in Bill Saxton's scent for a story. Just possibly he might have made a good guess.

        "We should want," he said, "a lot more than that before it would be any use."

        "Yes, of course. But if you'd heard how Corder rose to the bait!"

        "You haven't missed anything else, except this bottle of milk?"

        "No. I don't think so. He borrowed an overcoat once, but Mrs. Corder brought it back."

        "Because, if he's been pilfering from his friends every day for the last three months - - "

        "Oh, but he'd hardly have tried keeping that up all the time! He's been shop-lifting more likely than not.

        "It was a conversation which, had she been able to hear it, would have confirmed Adeline in the wisdom of the programme of widely assorted unrepeated crimes which she had been so diligent to arrange. Even Bill Saxton's imagination had not gone beyond a hand-to-mouth opportunism of casual, continual theft.

        "Well," Mr. Cartwright concluded, "you'll know how to write the interview up. You must take what Mrs. Corder said at its face value now. No libel actions for us! But you can have any time off that you like to follow it up. There may come a time when we shall have something that we can use, and that no one else has."

        Bill Saxton went off to write an article suitable to the occasion and the instructions he had received. It was innocent enough, and after the blue pencil of an expert sub-editor had been exercised upon it, it became of such a character that even Adeline's cautious alertness was led to doubt whether the allusion to the missing milk had been more than an idle jest.

CHAPTER VIII

ADELINE CALLS ON MR. JELLIPOT

MR JELLIPOT was accustomed to tell himself, with some truth, and his usual diffidence, that he did not understand women. His acquaintance with them (if we except a timidly developing autumnal romance with a Quaker lady who can hardly be considered typical of her own sex) was certainly of a distant and professional rather than an intimate character. But, whatever the limits of his own understanding might be, it was common for them to approach him in more confident and confiding moods.

        He had a good memory for names, and when he heard that a Mrs. Corder had called, and requested an interview, he had no difficulty in associating her with Miss Kanwhistle's eccentric will. He said: "Show her in," rather reluctantly, anticipating that his time would be wasted, and his patience strained, by some vain appeal that he should persuade Mr. Percival Kanwhistle to a generosity which the will did not indicate, nor the law require. Perhaps he must listen sympathetically to some tale of misfortune or pressing debt, which only Percival's generosity could relieve. Perhaps - such things had been - it would end in his own cheque-book appearing from the little drawer at his left hand, to make a loan of the character which is not entered in business books. But he hoped not; for the lending of money is always an embarrassment to a shy man. It may be considered the solitary exception to the fundamental law that it is more blessed to give than to receive. . . .

        Mr. Jellipot looked at a young lady dressed in a manner vaguely satisfactory to his masculine eyes, with a face that was intelligent rather than beautiful, but with the advantage of a clear, straight glance, a firm chin, and a ready smile. As he met her, his anticipation of the interview changed. Forgetting that he did not understand women, he judged her to be efficient, sensible, one on whom it would be safe to rely. Certainly not one who would pester him with absurd requests. Beyond that, he regarded her only as Frederick Corder's wife. He took little interest in contemporary fiction, and was unaware that Adeline Corder had a growing reputation for lightly-written mystery tales.

        "I came to see you," she said, "about the codicil to the Kanwhistle will."

        "Yes?" he replied tentatively. "I am sure that Mr. Corder understood that I had no responsibility for it, nor knowledge of its existence until after Miss Kanwhistle's death."

        "Yes. I understood that. It's really about what's getting into the daily papers."

        "It is a temporary annoyance, which is, I fear, unavoidable. A will, when probate is granted, becomes a public document, and any unusual reference, or provision, is commonly discovered by the news agencies. There is no remedy, apart from comment of a libellous character."

        "Comment?" she echoed dubiously. "Do you mean that a libel can be inserted in a will, and then repeated with impunity in the daily press, so long as they avoid comment upon it?"

        "No. That would be going too far. But does the question arise? Are you suggesting that the codicil libelled Mr. Corder in such a manner that any publication of it is actionable? That is arguable only on the condition that it is libellous to associate the name of any man with the possible commission of crime. It is one which I should regard with very great hesitation, but on which I would obtain counsel's opinion should you instruct me to do so."

        "That was about what I supposed. But what do you think of this?"

        Adeline drew from her bag a cutting of the paragraph in the Talker which had first come to her husband's notice, and Mr. Jellipot read it with his usual deliberation. Written in the jesting style characteristic of the periodical in which it appeared, it certainly visualised a possibility, if no more, that Frederick Corder might have embarked already upon a downward career of crime.

        Mr. Jellipot pondered this for some silent moments. Then he said: "It is possible - it is barely possible - that a libel action might be brought successfully, and even result in the award of substantial damages. The costs of such an action would be considerable. If it were lost, they would be heavy. The award of damages does not necessarily mean that they will be paid, nor even that the plaintiff's costs will be recovered.

        "It is - I am going to give you no more than my first reaction - a litigation which I should hesitate to advise, even if I were satisfied of the stability of the publishers and printers concerned.

        "When I even consider its possibility " - Mr. Jellipot turned his eyes directly upon his visitor with a gentle and yet penetrating regard as he said this - "I am, of course, assuming, as you will expect me to do, that Mr. Corder was not tempted, for however short a time, to comply with the conditions specified in the codicil, for it is obvious that the defence of such an action might take the direction of strict enquiry into that possibility.

        "You will, when I say this, allow that I do no more than recognise every condition, however remote or hypothetical, which must qualify the advice I give."

        Adeline heard this without her glance falling before the solicitor's shrewd though friendly eyes, but a smile curved her lips as she answered: "From all you say, such an action would evidently be too hazardous for us to attempt, as we have very little money to risk."

        "It is, I am sure, a discreet decision."

        Mrs. Corder rose to leave. "I thought, somehow," she said, "that I should like you to know."

        Mr. Jellipot, rising also, appeared to check himself on the threshold of speech.

        Mrs. Corder hesitated. Her hand went to her bag. "What should I pay you?" she asked. She was unsure whether it were customary to pay for such a call at the time, or to wait for a bill to be sent to her.

        But Mr. Jellipot gently shook his head. "There will be no charge," he said, "on this occasion."

        She went out, wondering whether there were significance in those last words. Did he anticipate that she would come to him again, at a greater need?

        Left alone, Mr. Jellipot was conscious of certain speculations which did not produce the full moral reprobation which was their due. He was mildly excited, mildly shocked, at his own thoughts. . . . He had not judged Frederick Corder capable of such conduct. Probably that judgment had been correct. "The woman tempted me - - " Mrs. Corder was an exceptional woman. She knew how to say enough - just enough - and no more.

        Well, it was no business - certainly no responsibility - of his - and in the end he would surely know.

CHAPTER IX

INVITATION TO TREES

MR. FREDERICK CORDER was partly, and not unpleasantly, aware of the change which had come to him as the result of his three months' course of criminality, so ably directed and abetted by his cool and resourceful partner. He had acquired a more upright carriage, a more confident glance from alerter eyes. In his private imagination he surveyed the world with a hawk-like glance, which may have been less evident to those upon whom it fell. At his side would hang, at times, an imagined sword: a short, straight, keen, lethal weapon, symbolising his private warfare upon the organised force of law. Had the inciting codicil not placed a period upon his course of iniquity it is possible that a second year might have found him of willing capacity to continue even without Adeline's sympathetic support. Had they not been at one in avoiding anything really wrong, it is possible that he might have emerged from this year of intensive training as a veritable king of crime. Should he be discovered in anything which the law would regard as deserving serious penalty, it was possible, even so, that he would find himself in a position in which it would be difficult to continue to make a living by honest means, and he must decide between becoming dependent upon the precarious earnings of More Jam for Jane, and his wife's subsequent novels, and changing his status from a mere amateur (if he could be described, even now, correctly by that inoffensive word) to that of a professional criminal.

        Now, as he walked the streets, he looked round continually for new ideas which might be given to Adeline to be noted down for his future programme, and with a frequent envy for those around him, who were eligible for so many crimes which he could not hope to commit.

        Could he water milk? The opportunity would be hard to find; and, even so, it was by no means clear that he would have done a criminal deed, unless he were either the wholesale or retail vendor of the adulterated liquid. Rather than become a criminal himself, he might merely have created other criminals, who would be unaware of the legal status which had been thrust upon them. It was to save himself from such disastrous pitfalls, which might otherwise cause Mr. Jellipot's impartial acumen to decide at last that the conditions had not been fulfilled, that Adeline now spent two mornings a week regularly at the British Museum following the intricate mazes of English law.

        Could he abandon an infant? It is a difficult enterprise for a partner in a childless marriage, and even had he been more favourably placed in that particular, it is improbable that Adeline would have approved the idea. Could he carry firearms without a licence? Well, perhaps he might. But would not the gunsmith object to sell?

        It had become necessary to act with an increased caution - Adeline in the choice, and he in the execution of lawless deeds - since Mr. Saxton had so unceremoniously intruded upon them, for though the privacy of the lady's compartment had been violated without official protest, they had been disconcerted to observe the journalist alighting at Hampton Court from the farther end of the train, and to be subsequently trailing them at a timid distance, which they had abruptly shortened by turning a corner and then waiting until he had almost run into them as he came round it a minute later.

        After that, they had kept together, showing a willingness for the journalist's company which, as he had been too distant to observe the "Ladies only" upon the compartment window, had reluctantly convinced him, not of the innocence of the day, but that there had been no lawless object in the expedition which he had joined, and caused him to catch an annoying cold as he had watched during the later evening for Fred to issue from his upper floor for some evil deed which he might have in mind for the darker hours.

        "That," Adeline said, "ought to teach the wretch that we've got nothing to hide." But would it? The more certain fact was that Bill Saxton's suspicions had been aroused, and that he had evidently been deputed by the editor of the Morning News to discover the truth. For they judged correctly that it would require more than a private curiosity to draw him to Hampton Court at an hour when he would normally have been taking the repose which his midnight labours had justly earned.

        Until the following Tuesday, when she had called upon Mr. Jellipot, and for the two subsequent days, I Adeline had felt it necessary to resort to the very cream of the schedule of possible delinquencies from which the daily selection was made; but in doing this she felt herself to be acting with a prodigality which might have disastrous ultimate consequences. Had she not been hoarding these with a view to some special difficulty, some urgent need? Suppose a time should come when Fred would be in bed with a cold, if no worse than that? Suppose - so many things.

        It was Friday morning when she looked across the breakfast-table to say: "I tell you what it is, Fred, we've got to clear out of London."

        Fred looked doubtful. It was a method of escape which had already been in his own mind, but which he had not liked. For how long was it to be? It doesn't matter where you may wander if you have nothing more local to do than the next chapter of More Jam for Jane, but a brisk trade in book-jackets is best conducted from an address which should not be far either from W.C.2 or E.C.4. Besides, with a shrewdness which for once may have passed that of his quick-witted wife, he saw snags. Away from their own home, their own resorts, and the crowded metropolitan streets, they might be more easily followed, more closely observed. Even occasion might be found to inspect their luggage, which would presumably include the fatal journal of evil deeds which it had become a constant evening practice to enter up.

        "What," he asked, with the doubt evident in his voice, "should you say to going abroad? Say a week in Paris? They'd hardly follow us there, and we'd have a chance to think up some new ideas?"

        "We couldn't do it. I don't suppose we could fulfil the conditions there. You can't break English laws while you're in France."

        "No? I don't see why not. You could some, anyway. What about writing begging, or perhaps blackmailing letters? You wouldn't say the police couldn't arrest me when I got back because they'd been sent from a Paris hotel? Not, I mean, if they were addressed here."

        "I don't know how that would be. But you're not going to send such letters, so it's no use discussing that. "

        "No, of course not. I only used it as an illustration. There must be lots of things besides those."

        "I don't know whether they are or not, but you won't risk it with my consent. I've got an idea, since I saw Mr. Jellipot, that we shan't have much difiiculty in collecting, if we keep the rules of the game, and we should be crazy to risk anything over that."

        It was a proposition which Fred did not seriously dispute, but they spent some time in academic discussion of the terms of the codicil, recalling the solicitor's criticism of its phraseology, which, perhaps even more than its purport, had been distressing to the exactitude of his legal mind.

        In the end, they had neither finally dismissed nor adopted the idea that their career of crime could be continued in greater security if they should make a temporary migration to some distant part of the British Isles, when Fred changed the subject by asking: "What have you got cooked up for me today?"

        "I've got something so simple," Adeline replied cheerfully, "that it's hard to think of it as a crime at all; and so safe that I thought you might offer to walk down to Fleet Street with Bill this evening, and do the deed while he's watching for any wickedness he may see you commit.

        "And that reminds me that there's a letter for you on the window-ledge. It was that coming which decided me to use the idea today, and if you open it before I explain, I want you to be very careful not to injure the stamp."

        Fred got up with some alacrity to collect the letter. His correspondence was not heavy, most of his business being personally transacted. It consisted mainly of occasional dunning letters, and less frequent cheques. Adeline's, as was natural to a semi-successful novelist, was more voluminous, and was already warning him of the possibility that he might come to be known, at no distant day, as Mrs. Corder's husband. It gave him a further incentive to attain the dignified independence which comes from the knowledge that the bank will honour your cheque for ten thousand pounds: a position hardly to be gained by the slow production of a thousand book-jackets, however lurid. He saw a rather square business envelope of substantial quality on which his name and address were correctly typed.

        He observed that he was described as Esq., which was not the invariable practice of the typists of the publishing offices for whom the most part of his work was done. He observed also that the postmark was E.C.2; but inspected the stamp in vain for any indication to justify the care with which he had been urged to preserve it.

        Finally, he turned the envelope over, and saw that the name of the London & Northern Bank was embossed upon the flap. It meant nothing to him. His own small and reluctantly permitted overdraft was a source of quarterly profit to a rival establishment. He inserted a finger to tear it open, and withdrew it. "If there's a fortune in the stamp," he said, "I'd better slit it with a knife."

        "There's no fortune," she said, "but there's the easiest crime that you've ever done."

        Without waiting for further explanation, he cut open r the envelope, gazed for one puzzled moment at the typewritten contents, and handed the letter to his wife.

        "Perhaps," he said, "you know the meaning of this."

        With no readier understanding than his own, she read:

TREES,
HITHER DENE.
May 12, 1934.

DEAR MR. CORDER,
        Your name has been very kind]y given to me by my friend, Mr. Jellipot, as that of an artist particularly capable of undertaking a little commission which would involve your presence at Hither Dene for a few days, more or less.
        If you should not be otherwise engaged, and could spare the time, perhaps you would accept my hospitality at the above address?
        In that case, and if the 3.17 p.m. from Charing Cross on Saturday next would suit your convenience, there will be no occasion to reply to this letter. Our mutual friend, Mr. Jellipot, will be on the train, and my car will meet it at Hither Dene station.

Yours sincerely,
REGINALD CROWE.

        P.S. Both Lady Crowe and myself will be additionally pleased should Mrs. Corder - whose last novel we much enjoyed - be able to come also. R. C.

        "Well, anyway," Adeline said, "it's a very nice letter."

        "I suppose you say that because they say they've read When Maud Went Home," Fred answered peevishly. "It seemed rather cool cheek to me. . . ."

        Adeline understood very well the mixture of pride and jealousy which confused her husband's reaction to such evidences of her literary reputation. She answered with her usual tactfulness: "I suppose he just put that in to get us to go. The last man who said how much he'd enjoyed my last book hadn't read a page, and doesn't know how completely he gave himself away when I drew him on. . . . But who is Mr. Crowe, anyhow? He seems to be a bank manager, more likely than not, unless he picked that envelope up in the street."

        It was a point on which Fred was better informed. "The name of the Chairman of the London and Northern," he said, "is Sir Reginald Crowe. It isn't likely that there'd be two using those envelopes. The question is, are we to go?"

        The question was not one to which Adeline felt it possible to give an instant reply. She saw that, if Fred were to go, she must do so also. It would be too great a risk for them to be separated during this year of crime. And that thought led to a passing wonder as to how far, and with what motive, Mr. Jellipot might have been responsible for the invitation.

        She was sure that he had understood. She had a suspicion that, however little it might influence the cautious rectitude of his conduct, he was more interested than shocked by the information which, more by telepathy than explicit words, she had conveyed to an astute mind. Yet, from another angle, she saw reason to doubt this theory. Mr. Jellipot had disassociated himself with emphasis from that discreditable codicil, as the facts entitled, and his reputation rendered it imperative for him to do. This position had been confirmed by the press, which had given prominence to the fact that the codicil had been added subsequently to the drawing up of the will, and without the knowledge of the solicitor concerned. Yet, however vaguely, his name must be connected with the event, and, much more so if it should become known at some future date that he had been required to adjudicate upon the record of crime and should pronounce that the stake had been fairly won. Was it consistent with the legal caution which he had shown up to this point that he should risk the implications of having stayed in the same house with them during the period of the lawless deeds?

        She saw another possibility. Might not Mr. Jellipot, on reflection, have decided that it was his duty to persuade them to abandon their nefarious enterprise? Might he not have enlisted the banker's powerful assistance to that purpose? Might they not find that they would have to face a vexatious weekend of persuasive argument, which would be difficult to endure, and might even fatally impede them in their daily practice? Suppose that this commission so unexpectedly offered were of the nature of a bribe to lure Fred from a life of crime? Sir Reginald Crowe striving as a good citizen should, somewhat after the fashion of the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society, to enable her husband to make a sufficient living by honest means to induce him to abandon his fallen ways? Perhaps they thought that orders for book-jackets rarely came, and that he was now stealing from actual poverty, as much as for the glittering prize ahead? With less than her usual logic, she flushed angrily at the thought.

        So she hesitated, in a mind further confused by pleasure at the kind allusion to When Maud Went Home, desire to make the acquaintance of Lady Crowe, and cold fears that her wardrobe (even though it might be reinforced by that rose-coloured evening dress which she had coveted in Paul & Snelford's Regent Street window yesterday) would be inadequate for the occasion; and while she remained silent, Fred broke out with an exclamation which showed that his thoughts had started along the same road as her own, though they had turned in at a different gate.

        "It's some trick of Percy's, more likely than not. I vote that we don't go."

        "Percy's?" she echoed in a puzzled voice, and then: "Oh, you mean he's asked Mr. Jellipot to set a trap for you somehow? No, I don't think it's that."

        "Well, I do. It's just what Percival would. I don't say he won't stump up if we stay the course. I feel sure he will. But he'd think it good sport to dish me in any way that he could. He'd do anything that isn't actually hitting under the belt, and it's the sort of case where it isn't over easy to see where the belt lies."

        Adeline did not concern herself to question this metaphorical description of Mr. Kanwhistle's sporting code. But she felt sure that he would not have been able to obtain Mr. Jellipot's co-operation, nor was it probable that he would have gained that of the Chairman of the London & Northern Bank.

        "I don't know what it means," she said. "I'm as puzzled as you are. But it isn't that."

        "Well, it might be. They mightn't try to spy on us at all. They might just trap me in a locked room where there wouldn't be a possibility of breaking any law that was ever made, except committing suicide, and I'm not going to do that, even for you. I'm not even going to fail in the attempt."

        No. They both saw that. Even failing in the attempt, at which people can become expert with sufficient practice. would be useless here, for there would be almost certain prosecution to follow.

        "It wouldn't," he added gloomily, "even be a crime to smash up the room, when you were locked in like that."

        But, however perversely, Fred's misjudgment of Mr. Jellipot, as she considered it to be, had resolved Adeline's wavering mind. She might have been less confident of the solicitor's friendly integrity had she known that Percival Kanwhistle was to be their fellow-guest at Hither Dene, he having actually accepted Sir Reginald's invitation before the dictation of the one they were now discussing. But, having no suspicion of this, she said: "You needn't worry about suicide. We've only got to keep together, and even if we get locked in, we shall have a good crime in reserve. But you needn't ask what it is. I hope it won't come to that. . . . But we were saying that we ought to get away from Bill while this invitation was lying waiting for you to open it, and it would be silly not to go, now we've got just what we said we wanted. And it ought to be rather fun.

        "Of course, we can come away any time we like, or, if it seems that there's any trick being played, I'd let you seduce Lady Crowe - I know how you've been hankering after that kind of crime - but the trouble is that it wouldn't be a crime at all! We've noticed times enough that the law doesn't bother much about things that are really wrong. That is, not unless you knock her on the head first, and if you do that she'll be almost certain to mention it when she feels better, and you'll get run in, and the whole thing spoiled, and I should say that she's worth a lot less than ten thousand pounds; besides that, you'd get all the pleasure, and I should lose my share of the cash."

        Fred did not trouble to reply to this ribald suggestion. Hardened criminal though he must be, his mind did not respond blithely to the idea of such unceremonious treatment of Lady Evelyn Crowe. He rightly understood Adeline's words to mean no more than that she had resolved upon a weekend, or longer, at Hither Dene, and that she liked the idea. That was how she would talk when a pleasant excitement stimulated her mind. He said: "Well, if that's how it's to be, you'd better tell me about this crime of not tearing a stamp, and we'll get that out of the way now."

        "It isn't a crime to tear it. It's only that it would make it useless for what we want. If you look at it again, you'll see that the post-mark's missed it almost completely. When you've got it off, you'll have to look very closely to see that it's been cancelled at all."

        "You mean I'm to use it again?"

        "That's the idea. I've read that it's done so much in Australia that the Post Office there prosecutes people who try it on - that is, when it can prove a case. For some reason, English people aren't equally enterprising. But we've got to do it so that it couldn't possibly be proved that it's anything to do with you."

        Adeline then proceeded to direct the operation with the careful efficiency which had brought them safely through so many previous ventures, and must multiply them so largely yet before they would be in reach of the golden bait.

        She selected a sheet of notepaper from her own desk which could not be suspected of having Fred's finger-prints upon it. She folded it, inserted it in an envelope of equal virginity, and paused a moment with a poised pen. She had thought to send it to the Postmaster-General. But suppose that letters so addressed did not require stamps? She was conscious, as so often now, of an ignorance which must not be risked. On an impish impulse, which reason told her could be safely indulged, she addressed the envelope to Percival Kanwhistle.

        "There's nothing wrong in anything I've done yet," she remarked, "but you've got to do the rest with your own hands, and so that they can't possibly fix it on you, even though they put every detective in the Post Office - and I believe they've got scores - on to your track.

        "You'd better put on some gloves, and soak the stamp off, and then gum it on carefully enough for it to look fresh and natural. If you make a good job of it, I should say that it will be about ten millions to one that it won't be noticed at all, and if it is, the odds would still be about that much more that they couldn't trace it back to me, and as to you, there'd be no chance at all, unless Bill's looking in at the kitchen window while you're at work, and he'll have to hold on to the wall with his nails to do that."

        "He might hang down by a rope from the roof."

        "The cat might have a litter of puppies. But I'll look out all the same, and make sure that he isn't there. You're quite right that we can't be too careful, being watched as we are"

        Fred set to work with no further words. His fingers were sensitive, as those of a designer of book-jackets should be. Even wearing gloves, he did a good job, and when it was completed it would have needed a closer inspection than any letter is likely to get in a busy sorting-office to observe that the stamp was not being used for the first time.

        It gave him the sense of satisfaction, of power, which was too often the consequence of unholy but successful ventures. But before he finished, he had found occasion to reflect that Australians must have more leisure than is to be found in an older country.

        Adeline inspected, and approved his work. "You'd better not let Bill see you post it," she remarked, "it was a silly thing to suggest. And after the way I've addressed it, you'd better post it in the city. You'll be certain not to forget?"

        Fred gave the required assurance, and departed eastward. Half an hour afterwards, Adeline set out in the opposite direction with more money in her handbag than she could afford to spend. She had that dress in Paul & Snelford's window in mind. And shoes. And - other things which bedroom servants must not regard with supercilious eyes.

CHAPTER X

OPINIONS OF SIR REGINALD CROWE

SIR REGINALD CROWE was a young man - singularly so for the position of Chairman of one of the great English banks. How he had come to that position has been told before, and is a matter with which we have no present concern. Having had cause for complaint against the manager of one of the bank's Lancashire branches, he had demanded his dismissal, and when the board had declined to listen to this request, he had used the fortune which the boom in the cotton industry had enabled him to acquire to gain a secretly plotted control of the majority of the bank's shares, sufficient, as they finally proved, to enable him not only to procure the discharge of the offending manager, but to take the office which he had now held for more than six years, during which his vigorous and sometimes unorthodox methods had raised the London & Northern to a position second to none in the English banking world, and caused the "big five" to regret that further banking amalgamations were impracticable in the present state of the English law.

        It was after Sir Reginald gained this position that the transactions incidental to the exploitation of the Ralston invention, and the tragedy of the Bell Street murders connected therewith, had brought him into contact with Mr. Jellipot and Inspector Combridge (Chief-Inspector, as he now was), as well as providing him, in Lord Britleigh's sister, with a charming wife, whom he had previously wooed in vain.

        Since that time it had been his pleasant annual custom to invite the two gentlemen mentioned to share for a few days the hospitalities of his country house, at such times as the Chief-Inspector's leave and the solicitor's business obligations would combine to allow.

        Now they sat together in a first-class compartment of the 3.17 as it drew out of Charing Cross Station, their privacy secured by the key of an obsequious guard, and with a pleasant sense of having left, for a brief space, the cares of a tiresome world.

        "I wonder, Jellipot," Sir Reginald said, "whether we've hooked the cartoonist. There ought to be some fun if we have; especially when he finds that Kanwhistle's on the spot."

        Mr. Jellipot looked more serious. "I don't know," he answered, "that fun's quite the right word to use. I have been disposed to think, on the reflection which I should have given the matter at an earlier moment, that I acted with less discretion than the position required when I - - "

        You needn't blame yourself for that. The thing's public knowledge," Sir Reginald, who rarely had the patience to allow Mr. Jellipot to reach the end of one of his carefully qualified statements, interrupted cheerfully.

        "The primary responsibility," the solicitor replied, with the tone of one who will not be diverted from the worship of abstract truth by any personal consideration, "was entirely mine. But I was about to say that your invitation has certainly been accepted (though I am not aware that I used the word cartoonist in describing a gentleman who is, unless I have bee materially misinformed, a designer of what are, I believe, commonly known as dust-covers or book-jackets, for the protection, or perhaps for the advertisement of books as they leave the publishers' premises), as I observed Mr. and Mrs. Corder entering a carriage at the farther end of the train."

        "Mrs. Corder? Evelyn will be pleased that we've got her." Mr. Jellipot looked faintly surprised. "I was not aware," he said, "that the ladies had met previously."

        "No. That's what Lady Crowe wants. She's rather keen on her books."

        "You mean," Mr. Jellipot asked, with quick intelligence, though with undiminished surprise, "that Adeline Corder is a writer of books which Lady Crowe admires?"

        "Yes. That's it. I supposed you knew who she was, being, more or less, a client of yours."

        "It is a fact of which I was ignorant, and which occasioned a surprise for which I can advance no logical justification. I must admit that I am not a frequent reader of contemporary literature, but the lady appeared to me, at the one brief interview which we have had, to be of a particularly alert and intelligent mind. "

        To this point Chief-Inspector Combridge had listened in silence to a conversation which he did not understand, and into which it might be unmannerly, to intrude; and his profession tamed him to a willing silence so long as other people would talk. It was only when the fluency of others failed that it would become his part to stimulate it with adroit remarks.

        He was on holiday now, and among friends: as much off his guard as a man of such training can ever be. But the conjunction of the two names - Corder and Kanwhistle - had waked a memory which reflection confirmed, and which could hardly be a repeated chance.

        "I suppose," he interposed confidently. "you mean you've invited the beneficiaries under the Kanwhistle will?"

        "Yes," Sir Reginald answered. "You'll see the two jokers meet."

        "They don't know yet that they're on the same train?"

        "I don't," Mr. Jellipot answered, "suppose that they are. Mr. Percival Kanwhistle, when he calls upon me, is usually the sole occupant of a sports car, which I have understood to be his customary vehicle of locomotion. I doubt whether he ever uses any other. At least," he added, with his usual careful precision, "within the limits of our own land. I have no doubt that he may avail himself of the services of a ship for marine occasions."

        "I suppose they don't love each other," the inspector asked curiously. He was puzzled, and instinctively aware of something more to be told. The Chairman of the London & Northern Bank was capable of surprising actions, sometimes of a mischievous, even boyish quality, but he was hardly of the sort to invite two incongruous or unfriendly guests that he might make sport of their antagonisms while beneath his roof.

        "They are not," Mr. Jellipot replied, as the banker again left the conversation to him, "of congenial dispositions, nor was the nature of Miss Kanwhistle's will, either in its main provisions or that most regrettable codicil, of a character to improve them to cordiality."

        Sir Reginald Crowe's nimble mind was working with its usual efficiency, though his words had been slower, to come. He was conscious that, although there might be plausible, and even veracious explanation of those two invitations of which he had no reason to be ashamed, yet he had not been innocent of some thoughts of another kind. He had certainly looked forward with pleasure to observing the actions - or inactions - of the man who had been so temptingly lured to a career of diurnal crimes, with something shockingly approaching hope that actions might be the word But it would never have entered his mind in his wildest dreams to betray anyone so sportingly occupied to the talons of an unimaginative and unrelenting law. It had not occurred to him previously that, in inviting the cousins and Chief-Inspector Combridge to become fellow-guests, he might be exposing Frederick Corder to a perhaps fatal peril, such as he would not otherwise have had to face.

        He saw also that, apart from the realities of the position, the appearance of an important member of the Criminal Investigation Department upon the scene was liable to an interpretation little conducive to Mr. Corder's peace of mind, or consistent with the good faith of the invitation which that gentleman had accepted from him. Indeed, the coincidence of these two invitations, even without the complication of Percival Kanwhistle's added presence, was a carelessness which might not easily be believed, and placed upon him an obligation (as he looked at the matter) to see that no unpleasant consequence should follow from their common sojourn beneath his roof.

        All this was, of course, on the assumption that Mr. Corder had accepted his aunt's mocking invitation to a year of crime. Otherwise, he might meet the inspector, ignore his cousin, and fulfil the commission he had been invited to undertake, with a quiet mind. But that was not what Sir Reginald was inclined to expect, and perhaps hope, the position to be. He did not therefore anticipate trouble which he would be unequal to handle. He had some confidence in himself. He merely became alert to the position, as a general watches the deployment of foes whom he had gone too nearly to overlooking.

        "You mustn't suppose," he said, "that I asked them because I thought they were bosom friends; and certainly not because Corder'd be likely to go for Kanwhistle on sight. The fact is, they're both business invitations, and quite separate, though they are concerned with the same matter in almost opposite ways. Tell him, Jellipot. It's your doing rather than mine. "

        "I am not aware," Mr. Jellipot replied, with a readiness to repudiate this construction which may have sprung from a conscience not entirely at ease, "that I have either deviated from or exceeded the very natural and proper instructions which I received.

        "Sir Reginald" - he turned to the inspector as he went on - "three years ago, actuated by generosity rather than merely business considerations, and in excess of the limit to which he was professionally advised to go, lent a sum of four thousand pounds upon a property adjoining his residence at Hither Dene.

        "Recently, the owner died, and it became necessary to take possession of property which the executors concerned were unwilling to touch. Sir Reginald, who, as you may know, is rather obstinate in being unwilling to take a loss, and being advised that the amount was greater than would be likely to be reached at public auction, has been anxious to secure a private buyer.

        "A few weeks ago, I had reason to think that I had found an American gentleman who would give the price we were asking, but he returned to his own country without reaching a decision, and he has now written asking that photographs or sketches of the property should be forwarded to him, for the approbation of the lady whom he is about to marry.

        "It was Sir Reginald's own suggestion that some drawings in black and white, or perhaps a water-colour sketch, might be more attractive mellower was the actual word he employed - than photographs, in presenting a house the antiquity of which is, to American eyes, its particular charm. I had his instructions to find a suitable artist, and it occurred to me that Mr. Corder might be able to undertake the work, which it is important to have properly executed.

        "So long as our American correspondent remains an uncertain buyer, you will agree that it is my duty to Sir Reginald to remain alert to other opportunities. My client, Mr. Percival Kanwhistle, having inherited a substantial fortune, is looking round for a suitable residence. I have recommended Maidcote Manor to his consideration, and Sir Reginald has, very naturally, invited him to Hither Dene to enable him to inspect the property in a leisurely manner."

        Chief-Inspector Combridge listened to this lucid but somewhat prolix explanation, and his mind, as Sir Reginald may have desired, was partially diverted from the consideration of Frederick Corder as a potential criminal. "You mean," he said, "that while Kanwhistle is looking over the house he'll see Corder there making a sketch for another customer, and that's to give him a leg up to the bid you want him to make?"

        "It did occur to me," Mr. Jellipot modestly admitted, "that the position might be conducive to that result."

        For the moment the conversation paused while discretion strove to restrain Sir Reginald from further speech. In the end it gave way to his habitual preference for the bolder course, and the frontal attack.

        "See here, Combridge," he said, "we're good friends now, and I expect we always shall be. But I don't invite guests to Trees to spy on each other, or make trouble after they leave. I suppose it's understood that you're off duty till you go back to the Yard?"

        The inspector did not deny this, but answered cautiously, and with some surprise: "You don't mean me to understand that Corder's breaking the law every day, and I'm to see it, and just look on? I shouldn't have thought there was a mug on earth crazy enough to go in for a game like that."

        "Of course I didn't mean anything of the kind. I don't know that he ever broke a law in his life. I'm told that that silly will was just to poke fun at him, because he wouldn't take tuppence if it fell into his hands because some other fool had forgotten to press button B. But what I mean is that it's his matter, not ours; and when you take a week off, I should say you've got less business than most men to be hunting after a bad smell."

        Inspector Combridge could not fail to see that there was a reasonable basis for this argument. He was on vacation. His official duties were suspended. More than the average citizen, he might claim that such an interlude implied that he should not busy himself in pursuit of those who fail to honour their country's laws.

        "Well," he said, "from what you say - and what's common sense - I don't suppose there's anything to be seen; and you're right that I needn't lose any sleep trying to turn it up. Of course, if one of them bashes the other's head, you'll call in the local police. You won't need any interference from me."

        Mr. Jellipot felt that this was as much as any C.I.D. officer could be expected to say, and would have turned the conversation to other channels, but Sir Reginald's methods of verbal warfare were more aggressive.

        "That," he replied, "is the right way to look at it, and no more than I should have expected you to say. But I'll say something myself which goes a bit farther than that. If Mr. Corder's been committing a daily crime for the last three months without anyone noticing what's been going on, you policemen can't do the law or your own bosses a better service than to leave him alone, and take care that no one ever makes a guess at a game he's busy playing so much better than you."

        "I don't see that, Sir Reginald. I don't see that he ought to be treated any different from any other law-breaker just because he's hoping to make an extra rake-up at the end of his career."

        "I didn't say that he should for that reason. I wasn't thinking of him. Suppose you do run him in on the last day of the year, and when he's been fou