the grey pebbles. The low sky was grey. The road was deserted.
About half a mile from the bungalow the curate, his neat clerical dress exchanged (as usual on his visits to Helm in the character of Mrs. Bradley’s epileptic son) for grey flannel trousers, a dark crimson pullover, a tweed jacket and a dark grey overcoat, walked on the damp sand at the margin of the water, climbing the breakwaters as he came to them and occasionally stopping to skim stones on the waves. The young policeman, off duty, walked, with the decided footsteps of the Force, along the pavement which bordered the sea-road, and young Tom, who had brought an ancient motor-cycle with him, bestrode it and rode solemnly and noisily up and down the road until his engine stopped, just about fifty yards from Helm’s bungalow, and the motor-cyclist, seating himself on his own trench coat on the pavement, began to take off pieces of the antediluvian contraption and strew them about the gutter.
The curate gained the bungalow and knocked at the door. For a moment he fancied that nobody was at home, but slippered feet padded to the door and opened it. Wells experienced an uncomfortable qualm. He was certain in his own mind that this smiling, florid man had committed murder for the basest of all possible motives, that of pecuniary gain, and here was he himself, a man recently married, happy, content, secure in every worldly sense, putting his head into the jaws of death for the chivalrous but idiotic reason that, if he did not risk his life, an old woman with the outward appearance of a macaw, the mind of a psycho-analyst and the morals, so far as he knew, of a tiger-shark, would risk hers.
“Ah, it’s you,” said Mr. Helm. “Come in, my dear boy. Come in. And how is She?”
The little narrow place was very dark inside. All the blinds were drawn. Wells’s nebulous fears for his own bodily safety changed, for an instant, to panic terror. Every instinct shrieked to him to fly. Twenty years of subduing instinct to reason stood him in good stead, however, and, with a gulp which was histrionically inspired, he said in a quavering voice:
“Well, of course, you know, that’s what I’ve come to talk about.” ii
The first morning of the Easter Term was not the best time to choose for a visit to the Headmaster, as Mrs. Bradley fully realized, but on the previous evening she had received so extraordinary a letter from Noel Wells that no time, she felt, must be lost in relieving Mr. Cliffordson’s mind on the subject of Miss Ferris’s murder.
“Dear Mrs. Bradley,” the letter began—she re-read it in the train—“by the time you get this I trust I shall be with Daphne again. I beg your forgiveness, of course, if I have overstepped the mark, but you knew, I think, how alarmed I have been over your visits to that murderous devil in the railway-carriage hut, so I thought I would take the bull by the horns, and provoke him to make an assault on me.
“To this end I visited him, and, in the course of conversation, I allowed him to infer that the interest in the ten thousand pounds’ life insurance you told him of would come to him if anything happened to me after your death. He must be a fool, because he bit it, and, when I was certain he’d taken the bait, I commented on the benefits derived from bathing in sea-water, and left him. I behaved throughout the interview as much like a mentally-defective person as possible—not a very difficult task, according to my wife, of course!—and then I left him severely alone until I received a letter from him asking after you. I wrote that you had met with an accident and were not expected to live. Later in the day I went to see him, and informed him that you had not the slightest chance of recovery. He managed to lead the conversation on to the subject of the insurance money, and I reassured him as to the clause in your ‘will.’ The next time I saw him I affected grief and told him that you were dead.
“In next to no time I was being invited to indulge in the luxury of a sea-water bath. You can imagine with what pleasure I watched the evil fellow carrying about a hundred pailfuls of water up to the house. It was a bitterly cold, dark evening. In between his journeys I conversed with him about you and your virtues, and while he was on the job of carrying the water, I conversed with young Tom from the garage, and the policeman who is going to marry Tom’s sister.
“It all worked out very nicely. I had the bath, and Helm had got a very pretty and scientific grip on my feet, and my head was right under, when the other two, I suppose, burst in on us. I may say that on my previous visits I had been similarly escorted, so, you see, I took no risks worth mentioning. All the same, when they had overpowered him, I had to be spread out on the floor and artificially respirated; but it was not long before I felt, if not quite myself, near enough so to be glad that the whole thing had gone off so satisfactorily. Incidentally, I have received inside information that the police now have little doubt that in some way Cutler is responsible for the death of that poor girl in Lamkin, the village not far from here, but, unfortunately, nothing can be proved. They won’t charge Cutler with the crime because there is no evidence at present that he did murder the unfortunate girl Susie Cozens, but he will be charged with attempting to finish off
“Your affectionate friend,
“Noel Wells.”
“P.S.—They are still at work on the Lamkin case, of course. The difficulty seems to be that they cannot trace any connection between Cutler and the girl. However, young Tom’s future brother-in-law informs me that no pains are to be spared, even if Scotland Yard has to be called in, so I shall watch my morning newspaper for developments.”
Mrs. Bradley folded the letter and replaced it in its envelope. She laid it on the table. Then she rang the bell for Celestine.
“Madame?”
“You have heard of the legendary Sir Galahad, child?” asked Mrs. Bradley. Celestine permitted herself to smile beatifically.
“
“Marvellous,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I have the privilege of informing you that there exists such a person in the flesh.”
“In the flesh, madame?”
“Not in any unpleasing degree,” said Mrs. Bradley. “He is young, thin, deprecating, chivalrous. Incidentally, he has risked his life for mine.”
“Ah,
When Mrs. Bradley reached the school, she sought the schoolkeeper’s house before she went to interview Mr. Cliffordson.
