‘Let’s reconstruct the whole of last Monday. What time do you say you got up in the morning?’
Mallows had barely time to drink his coffee before Gently was pounding away at him again.
‘I don’t remember…’
‘Was it eight? Was it nine?’
‘No… half past seven… you’d better ask Withers.’
‘I’m asking you! Now, when did you read her letter?’
‘Her letter…?’
‘Yes — the one demanding money.’
‘I never had such a letter-’
‘Oh? Then how was it found in your bureau? It was dated as from the previous Sunday, and asks for an immediate advance of fifty pounds.’
‘I repeat, I never had such a letter!’
‘It is scarcely worth your while to deny it. Our handwriting expert will check it and there will be no question about his verdict. So having read it, of course, you rang her up, and suggested that she should meet you at lunch. But, in the meantime, you came to your decision: you weren’t going to pay Mrs Johnson any more. Where did you park your car, by the way?’
‘At the Haymarket-’
‘At last, you admit it! I thought you were going to deny it again, and to go on swearing that you lunched at home. Then at what time did you meet her?’
‘I didn’t… I didn’t meet her!’
‘Then why were you seen together?’
‘We weren’t…’
‘You were — I have witnesses to prove it. Your appearance is unusual, you know, and you’d be foolish to gamble on people not noticing you. And the whole thing fits so neatly. Later on, we have other witnesses.’
‘I swear before God that I lunched at home!’
‘Though admitting that you parked your car at the Haymarket?’
‘That was later-!’
‘Not by the accounts we have. You were parked there between one and two-thirty p.m. You occupied that time in having lunch with Mrs Johnson, and finally, according to witness, you drove off with her in your car…’
The clock marched on from three to four. Drably, the buildings across the way crept into relief. Mallows’s condition grew worse than ever, and he seemed scarcely able to sit on the chair; he had come to the state when Gently’s voice was growing meaningless, when the sharpest of questions evoked little response.
And Gently himself, he looked in little better shape, sitting hunched and small over Walker’s desk. He was keeping his head propped up with his hands and his voice, usually clear, had become hoarse and thick.
‘What reason could you have for trying to mislead me?’
‘No… no… you don’t understand…’
‘You knew quite positively that Johnson was innocent?’
‘No… I didn’t… didn’t know… not positively…’
‘Was Seymour the person you meant?’
‘No…’
‘Aymas…?’
‘Didn’t fit… couldn’t fit…’
‘Wimbush, perhaps… perhaps Baxter?’
‘Not Baxter…’
‘Wimbush?’
‘Him neither…’
‘What about Watts?’
‘That too… ridiculous…’
‘Yet you knew about the letter.’
‘Yes, I knew… of course I knew…’
‘How did you know?’
‘I told you… guessed it.’
‘How did you guess it?’
‘Easy… easy…’
‘Tell me how.’
‘I’ve told you already.’
‘Tell me again.’
‘No… not again…’
‘But I want to know how you guessed it.’
‘Yes… I know… you want to know how…’
‘What reason did you have for trying to mislead me?’
‘Didn’t mislead you… meant in good faith…’
Ponderously Gently relit his pipe, his movements seeming to come from some slow-motion film. For at least a minute he sat silently puffing, puffing, too exhausted, apparently, to form his usual smoke rings. Hansom watched him, bleary-eyed, Walker was unobtrusively napping; Stephens, to keep awake, was staring with eyes unnaturally wide. The stenographer, his pencils arranged fan-wise in front of him, lay back in his chair, his lids narrowed to two slits.
Gently rose to his feet and walked round to the front of the desk. He leant heavily against it, dropping a hand on Mallows’s shoulder.
‘It’s time, perhaps, that I spoke more frankly…’
Mallows, with an effort, lifted up his head. Through the settling smoke of Gently’s pipe Hansom could see the pair of them, eyeing each other.
‘How did the letter prove that he’d done it?’
‘You bastard, Gently… you out-and-out bastard…!’
‘But it did prove it, didn’t it? The paper was yours.’
‘Yes… and you’ve known it all along… you devil!’
‘How did he get it?’
Mallows gestured, feebly, helplessly. ‘It was pinched from the studio… he studies papers, you know. I don’t suppose he knew that I’d seen him take it, but I had… so as soon as you showed me the letter
…’
‘But you knew something before that?’
‘Yes… everything… I told you. Then he wasn’t at his car, though he left the cellar before me…’
‘Why wouldn’t you tell me?’ Gently leant back on the desk: he neither knew nor cared whether the others could fathom this moment of truth.
‘You may not understand it, but he’s a decent fellow, at the bottom… I was probably his nearest friend… with me, he was like a child.’
‘Yet you knew he couldn’t go free.’
‘It’s not enough to know these things. You don’t betray your friends because of the logic… only by blunders. That’s how you betray them.’
‘The blunders imposed by your conscience.’
‘No, my dear fellow… no phrases…’
‘You knew, and you knew you must tell.’
‘I knew he was decent… who was I to condemn him?’
There was silence. Nobody stirred in the hazy, thickaired office. The only motion was of the smoke which curled in tendrils from Gently’s pipe. It seemed an age before Mallows, drawing his head up again, said:
‘What happens now — are you going to pull him in?’
Gently slowly shook his head. ‘Not now… he’ll keep a while. I’ve had a man outside his house since yesterday morning.’
‘He’s a family man, you know.’
