never again to be re - united. And though he could not but admire the flurried but undaunted courage of Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, he had to be content to envy it so far as Sir Charles was concerned, for he certainly did not possess anything like it himself. On the other hand there was no doubt that the lady had right on her side, and what can any President do but administer justice?
'Perfectly correct, Mrs. Fielder - Flemming,' he had to admit, hoping his voice sounded as firm as he would have wished.
For a moment a blue glare, emanating from Sir Charles, enveloped him luridly. Then, as Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, evidently heartened by this official support, took up her bomb again, the rays of the glare were switched again on to her. Roger, nervously watching the two of them, could not help reflecting that blue rays are things which should never be directed on to bombs.
Mrs. Fielder - Flemming juggled neatly with her bomb. Often though it seemed about to slip through her fingers, it never quite reached the ground or detonated. 'Very well, then. I will go on. My triangle now had the second of its members. On the analogy of the Barnet murder, where was the third to be found? Obviously, with Molineux as the prototype, in some person who was anxious to prevent the first member from marrying the second.
'So far, you will see, I am not out of harmony with the conclusions Sir Charles gave us last night, though my method of arriving at them was perhaps somewhat different. He gave us a triangle also, without expressly defining it as such (perhaps even without recognising it as such). And the first two members of his triangle are precisely the same as the first two of mine.'
Here Mrs. Fielder - Flemming made a notable effort to return something of Sir Charles's glare, in defiant challenge to contradiction. As she had simply stated a plain fact, however, which Sir Charles was quite unable to refute without explaining that he had not meant what he had meant the evening before, the challenge passed unanswered. Also the glare visibly diminished. But for all that (patently remarked Sir Charles's expression) a triangle by any other name does not smell so unsavoury.
'It is when we come to the third member,' pursued Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, with renewed poise, 'that we are at variance. Sir Charles suggested to us Lady Pennefather. I have not the pleasure of Lady Pennefather's acquaintance, but Miss Dammers who knows her well, tells me that in almost every particular the estimate given us by Sir Charles of her character was wrong. She is neither mean, grasping, greedy, nor in any imaginable way capable of the awful deed with which Sir Charles, perhaps a little rashly, was ready to credit her. Lady Pennefather, I understand, is a particularly sweet and kindly woman; somewhat broad - minded no doubt, but none the worse for that; indeed as some of us would think, a good deal the better.'
Mrs. Fielder - Flemming encouraged the belief that she was not merely tolerant of a little harmless immorality, but actually ready to act as godmother to any particular instance of it. Indeed she went sometimes quite a long detour out of her way in order to propagate this belief among her friends. But unfortunately her friends would persist in remembering that she had refused to have anything more to do with one of her own nieces since the latter, on learning that her middle - aged husband kept, for purposes of convenience, a different mistress in each of the four quarters of England, and just to be on the safe side one in Scotland too, had run away with a young man of her own with whom she happened to be very devotedly in love.
' Just as I differ from Sir Charles over the identity of the third person in the triangle,' went on Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, happily ignorant of her friends' memories, 'so I differ from him in the means by which that identity is to be established. We are at complete variance in our ideas regarding the very heart of the problem, the motive. Sir Charles would have us think that this was a murder committed (or attempted, rather) for gain; I am convinced that the incentive was, at any rate, a less ignoble one than that. Murder, we are taught, can never be really justifiable; but there are occasions when it comes dangerously near it. This, in my opinion, was one of them.
' It is in the character of Sir Eustace himself that I see the clue to the identity of the third person. Let us consider it for a moment. We are not restricted by any considerations of slander, and we can say at once that, from certain points of view, Sir Eustace is a quite undesirable member of the community. From the point of view of a young man, for the sake of example, who is in love with a girl, Sir Eustace must be one of the very last persons with whom the young man would wish that girl to come into contact. He is not merely immoral, he is without excuse for his immorality, a far more serious thing. He is a rake, a spendthrift, without honour or scruples where women are concerned, and a man moreover who has already made a mess of marriage with a very charming woman and one by no means too narrow to overlook even a more than liberal allowance of the usual male peccadilloes and lapses. As a prospective husband for any young girl Sir Eustace Pennefather is a tragedy.
'And as a prospective husband for a young girl whom a man loves with all his heart,' intoned Mrs. Fielder - Flemming very solemnly, 'it is easy to conceive that, in that particular man's regard, Sir Eustace Pennefather becomes nothing short of an impossibility.
'And a man who is a man,' added Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, quite mauve with intensity, 'does not admit impossibilities.' She paused, pregnantly.
'Curtain, Act I,' confided Mr. Bradley behind his hand to Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick.
Mr. Chitterwick smiled nervously.
CHAPTER VIII
SIR CHARLES took the usual advantage of the first interval to rise from his seat. Like so many of us in these days by the time of the first interval (when it is not a play of Mrs. Fielder - Flemming's that is in question) he felt almost physically unable to contain himself longer.
'Mr. President,' he boomed, 'let us get this clear. Is Mrs. Fielder - Flemming making the preposterous accusation that some friend of my daughter's is responsible for this crime, or is she not?'
The President looked somewhat helplessly up at the bulk towering wrathfully above him and wished he were anything but the President. 'I really don't know, Sir Charles,' he professed, which was not only feeble but untrue.
Mrs. Fielder - Flemming however was by now quite able to speak up for herself. 'I have not yet specifically accused any one of the crime, Sir Charles,' she said, with a cold dignity that was only marred by the fact that her hat, which had apparently been sharing its mistress's emotions, was now perched rakishly over her left ear. 'So far I have been simply developing a thesis.'
To Mr. Bradley Sir Charles would have replied, with Johnsonian scorn of evasion: 'Sir, damn your thesis.' Hampered now by the puerilities of civilised convention regarding polite intercourse between the sexes, he could only summon up once more the blue glare.
With the unfairness of her sex Mrs. Fielder - Flemming promptly took advantage of his handicap. 'And,' she added pointedly, 'I have not yet finished doing so.'
Sir Charles sat down, the perfect allegory. But he grunted very naughtily to himself as he did so.
Mr. Bradley restrained an impulse to clap Mr. Chitterwick on the back and then chuck him under the chin.
Her serenity so natural as to be patently artificial, Mrs. Fielder - Flemming proceeded to call the interval closed and ring up the curtain on her second act.
'Having given you my processes towards arriving at the identity of the third member of the triangle I postulated, in other words towards that of the murderer, I will go on to the actual evidence and show how that supports my conclusions. Did I say 'supports'? I meant, confirms them beyond all doubt.'
'But what are your conclusions, Mrs. Fielder - Flemming?' Bradley asked, with an air of bland interest. 'You haven't defined them yet. You only hinted that the murderer was a rival of Sir Eustace's for the hand of Miss Wildman.'
'Exactly,' agreed Alicia Dammers. 'Even if you don't want to tell us the man's name yet, Mabel, can't you narrow it down a little more for us?' Miss Dammers disliked vagueness. It savoured to her of the slipshod, which above all things in this world she detested. Moreover she really was extremely interested to know upon whom Mrs. Fielder - Flemming's choice had alighted. Mabel, she knew, might look like one sort of fool, talk like another sort, and behave like a third; and yet really she was not a fool at all.
But Mabel was determined to be coy. 'Not yet, I'm afraid. For certain reasons I want to prove my case first.
