been killed about the same time, and not so long ago, neither.'
Mr Egg remembered the advertisement, and the false name, and the applicants passed out by a different door, so that none of them could possibly tell how many cats had been bought and paid for. And he remembered also the careful injunction to bring the cat at 6 o'clock precisely, and the whistling lad with the basket who had appeared on the scene about a quarter of an hour after them. He remembered another thing--a faint miauling noise that had struck upon his ear as he stood in the hall while Jean was saying good-bye to Maher-shalal-hashbaz, and the worried look on Mrs Proctor's face when she had asked if Jean was fond of her pet. It looked as though Mr Proctor junior had been collecting cats for some rather sinister purpose. Collecting them from every quarter of London. From quarters as far apart as possible--or why so much care to take down names and addresses?
'What did the old gentleman die of?' he asked.
'Well,' said Mrs George, 'it was just heart-failure, or so the doctor said. Last Tuesday week he passed away in the night, poor soul, and Mrs Crabbe that laid him out said he had a dreadful look of horror on his poor face, but the doctor said that wasn't anythink out of the way, not with his disease. But what the doctor didn't see, being too busy to come round, was them terrible scratches on his face and arms. Must have regular clawed himself in his agony--oh, dear, oh, dear! But there! Anybody knew as he might go off at any time like the blowing out of a candle.'
'I know that, Sally,' said her husband. 'But what about them scratches on the bedroom door? Don't tell me he did that, too. Or, if he did, why didn't somebody hear him and come along to help him? It's all very well for Mr Timbs--that's the landlord--to say as tramps must have got into the house after the Proctors left, but put us in here to look after the place, but why should tramps go for to do a useless bit of damage like that?'
'A 'eartless lot, them Proctors, that's what I say,' said Mrs George. 'A-snoring away most likely, and leaving their uncle to die by himself. And wasn't the lawyer upset about it, neither! Coming along in the morning to make the old gentleman's will, and him passed away so sudden. And seeing they came in for all his money after all, you'd think they might have given him a better funeral. Mean, I call it--not a flower, hardly--only one half-guinea wreath--and no oak--only elm and a shabby lot of handles. Such trash! You'd think they'd be ashamed.'
Mr Egg was silent He was not a man of strong imagination, but he saw a very horrible picture in his mind. He saw an old, sick man asleep, and hands that quietly opened the bedroom door, and dragged in, one after the other, sacks that moved and squirmed and mewed. He saw the sacks left open on the floor, and the door being softly shut and locked on the outside. And then, in the dim glow of the night-light, he saw shadowy shapes that leapt and flitted about the room--black and tabby and ginger--up and down, prowling on noiseless feet, thudding on velvet paws from tables and chairs. And then, plump up on the bed--a great ginger cat with amber eyes--and the sleeper waking with a cry--and after that a nightmare of terror and disgust behind the locked and remorseless door. A very old, sick man, stumbling and gasping for breath, striking out at the shadowy horrors that pursued and fled him--and the last tearing pain at the heart when merciful death overtook him. Then, nothing but a mewing of cats and a scratching at the door, and outside, the listener, with his ear bent to the keyhole.
Mr Egg passed his handkerchief over his forehead; he did not like his thoughts. But he had to go on, and see the murderer sliding through the door in the morning--hurrying to collect his innocent accomplices before Mrs Crabbe should come--knowing that it must be done quickly and the corpse made decent--and that when people came to the house there must be no mysterious miaulings to surprise them. To set the cats free would not be enough--they might hang about the house. No; the water-butt and then the grave in the garden. But Maher-shalal- hashbaz--noble Maher-shalal-hashbaz had fought for his life. He was not going to be drowned in any water-butts. He had kicked himself loose ('and I hope,' thought Mr Egg, 'he scratched him all to blazes'), and he had toiled his way home across London. If only Maher-shalal-hashbaz could tell what he knew! But Monty Egg knew something, and he could tell.
'And I will tell, what's more,' said Monty Egg to himself, as he wrote down the name and address of Mr Proctor's solicitor. He supposed it must be murder to terrify an old man to death; he was not sure, but he meant to find out. He cast about in his mind for a consoling motto from the Salesman's Handbook, but, for the first time in his life, could find nothing that really fitted the case.
'I seem to have stepped regularly out of my line,' he thought sadly; 'but still, as a citizen--'
And then he smiled, recollecting the first and last aphorism in his favourite book:
To Serve the Public is the aim
Of every salesman worth the name.
THE MAN WHO KNEW HOW
For perhaps the twentieth time since the train had left Carlisle, Pender glanced up from Murder at the Manse and caught the eye of the man opposite.
He frowned a little. It was irritating to be watched so closely, and always with that faint, sardonic smile. It was still more irritating to allow oneself to be so much disturbed by the smile and the scrutiny. Pender wrenched himself back to his book with a determination to concentrate upon the problem of the minister murdered in the library. But the story was of the academic kind that crowds all its exciting incidents into the first chapter, and proceeds thereafter by a long series of deductions to a scientific solution in the last. The thin thread of interest, spun precariously upon the wheel of Pender's reasoning brain, had been snapped. Twice he had to turn back to verify points that he had missed in reading. Then he became aware that his eyes had followed three closely argued pages without conveying anything whatever to his intelligence. He was not thinking about the murdered minister at all--he was becoming more and more actively conscious of the other man's face. A queer face, Pender thought.
There was nothing especially remarkable about the features in themselves; it was their expression that daunted Pender. It was a secret face, the face of one who knew a great deal to other people's disadvantage. The mouth was a little crooked and tightly tucked in at the corners, as though savouring a hidden amusement. The eyes, behind a pair of rimless pince-nez, glittered curiously; but that was possibly due to the light reflected in the glasses. Pender wondered what the man's profession might be. He was dressed in a dark lounge suit, a raincoat and a shabby soft hat; his age was perhaps about forty.
Pender coughed unnecessarily and settled back into his corner, raising the detective story high before his face, barrier-fashion. This was worse than useless. He gained the impression that the man saw through the manoeuvre and was secretly entertained by it. He wanted to fidget, but felt obscurely that his doing so would in some way constitute a victory for the other man. In his self-consciousness he held himself so rigid that attention to his book became a sheer physical impossibility.
There was no stop now before Rugby, and it was unlikely that any passenger would enter from the corridor to break up this disagreeable solitude a deux. But something must be done. The silence had lasted so long that any remark, however trivial, would--so Pender felt--burst upon the tense atmosphere with the unnatural clatter of an alarm clock. One could, of course, go out into the corridor and not return, but that would be an acknowledgement of defeat. Pender lowered Murder at the Manse and caught the man's eye again.
'Getting tired of it?' asked the man.
'Night journeys are always a bit tedious,' replied Pender, half relieved and half reluctant. 'Would you like a book?'
He took The Paper-Clip Clue from his attache-case and held it out hopefully. The other man glanced at the title and shook his head.
'Thanks very much,' he said, 'but I never read detective stories. They're so--inadequate, don't you think so?'
'They are rather lacking in characterisation and human interest, certainly,' said Pender, 'but on a railway journey--'
'I don't mean that,' said the other man. 'I am not concerned with humanity. But all these murderers are so incompetent--they bore me.'
'Oh, I don't know,' replied Pender. 'At any rate they are usually a good deal more imaginative and ingenious than murderers in real life.'
'Than the murderers who are found out in real life, yes,' admitted the other man.
'Even some of those did pretty well before they got pinched,' objected Pender. 'Crippen, for instance; he need never have been caught if he hadn't lost his head and run off to America. George Joseph Smith did away with
