Wolf in Man’s Clothing

and he knew it and he thought he’d get him first. And he got me and-and couldn’t tell anybody but Claud what had happened and why. And then the other person, whoever it was, saw that action had to be taken at once. I mean it was-well, it was the same thing: kill or be killed.”

Nugent said nothing. Peter said, “But, my gosh, why didn’t they go to the police? I mean all your father had to do was ask for police protection. And whoever he meant to shoot…”

“That’s the point,” said Craig. “Whatever the disagreement, quarrel, whatever it was, was about something that neither the murderer nor my father wanted to tell the police about. That’s why I keep thinking the Miller checks come into the thing. I mean-well, I don’t think Miller himself is lurking around the countryside somewhere, although of course he might be-but I do think that the checks might have been used to blackmail my father. To keep him, perhaps from going to the police. My father would have hated the fact that he had given money to the Bund to come out. He’d have done anything to prevent it; he was that kind of man.”

“Murder,” said Nugent softly, “is usually done either in blind rage or from some very strong and personal motive.”

And I said suddenly, “Alexia had the checks. Alexia was in the garden just before your father shot you.”

“And Alexia,” said Nugent, “is very like Nicky and Nicky very like Alexia. How was she dressed that night, Brent? I mean she didn’t happen to be wearing, say, slacks? Women do.”

“You mean he might have seen her going to the garden, happened not to see her leave the garden and go back to the house, and thus that he mistook me for Alexia?” said Craig frowning.

“M’mm, roughly,” said Nugent. “You are sure it was Alexia you talked to?”

“Yes,” said Craig. “And she wasn’t wearing slacks. She had on a dinner dress, I’m sure; a black dress she wore at dinner, and a long coat.”

There was another silence during which I thought back somewhat confusedly to the times I’d seen Nicky and the times I’d seen Alexia and wondered whom I’d really seen-Alexia in a checked coat and slacks, or Nicky. I could fancy Alexia in Nicky’s clothes and, at a distance, even a short distance, so like him that one would think it was Nicky. But I couldn’t somehow see Nicky in Alexia’s trailing feminine clothes. And then I saw what I suppose Nugent had seen from the beginning and that was that the whole question of alibis was threatened, at least, so far as the twins’ alibis went. Was it Nicky Beevens had seen coming from the meadow the previous afternoon or Alexia? “Why, that means,” I burst out suddenly, “that it may have been Alexia in the meadow last night. It may have been…”

“Exactly,” said Nugent. “And of course there might have been another reason for your father thinking you were someone else, Brent. That’s pretty obvious. If he was jealous of her and had reason to believe that she liked some other man and had gone to the garden that evening to meet him…”

Peter had been swelling a little around the cheeks and getting very pink. He cried, “Look here, Nugent, if you mean me, she doesn’t. I mean I didn’t. I mean-oh, look here. I may as well make a clean breast. I-well, I think she’s terribly attractive; who wouldn’t? But I-I-” he faltered, and Nugent said, “You what?”

“Well, I-oh, gosh. I didn’t murder Mr. Brent. And I-there’s something I did get into that I tried to stop and couldn’t and I didn’t want to tell…” he faltered again, scarlet to his blond hair.

“If you mean Alexia,” began Craig, “say so…”

“I don’t mean Alexia,” said Peter. “I mean Mrs. Chivery.”

“Maud!” cried Craig sitting up. “My God, you’ve not fallen in love with her, have you?”

“Maud-oh, shut up! That’s not it. Mrs. Chivery-oh, for God’s sake…”

“What do you mean?” asked Nugent. “If you’ve got anything to say, get it out.”

“All right,” said Peter swallowing hard. “But it' not easy. It-I didn’t mean to. You see, well, it’s the Spanish jewels.”

The Spanish jewels again. And Maud’s talk of investment. Peter had got stuck again, and I said crisply, “You wanted her to invest in Spanish jewels.”

“Spanish…” began Craig incredulously, and Peter interrupted.

“Yes,” he said defiantly, but rather miserably, too, “Spanish jewels. It was this way. I was talking-too much; you know the way one gets carried away. Anyway, I was telling about a chap I know who was in the Spanish war, and he told me about taking a truck-oh, I know it sounds utterly ridiculous, but that’s what he said and what I told Mrs. Chivery about-he said he was taking a truck full of jewelry and silver that had been donated by various Loyalists from one place to another when the war was over. He was caught en route, so to speak. So he didn’t know what to do with his truck load of stuff and he hid it somewhere behind an old church. He knew the exact location, and he said it would take some money for-oh, greasing palms and that kind of thing, but he insisted that sometime he was going to get the money and go back and bring out the jewelry. I don’t think he really meant it; anyway the chances were all against his being able to do it, even if the stuff hasn’t been found months ago. But Mrs. Chivery-well, she kept talking to me about it; said she had some money and wouldn’t I get in touch with the fellow who told me about it and all that. She said her husband would be against her putting up the money and that Mr. Brent would be against it, so I wasn’t to tell them. I couldn’t believe that she was in earnest about it; then, when I began to think she was I-my God, I did everything I could think of to discourage it. Told her how absurd it was, the whole story. But she didn’t think it was absurd at all; and I suppose things like that did happen. I mean, I remember reading stories of how the Loyalists gave up everything in the way of jewelry that they could get their hands on. I suppose some things were caught like that, in the process of delivery, so to speak, when the Spanish war ended. But as an investment it was the bunk,” said Peter simply. “And I told her so. But the more I said against it the keener she was.”

“Yes,” said Craig, “Maud would be. But all you had to do was to refuse to take the money.”

“Well, naturally I did,” said Peter. “But she kept insisting. I was sorry I had ever mentioned the thing to her. And it was so-well, gosh, so completely absurd I sort of was embarrassed about it. Wished I hadn’t made such a good story.”

“Is that all?” said Nugent.

“Yes,” said Peter. “Except I think she’s still got it in her head.”

“Well, all you have to do is to keep on refusing,” said Craig wearily, and looked at the clock and then at Nugent. There was a wordless and rather desperate appeal in his eyes. Nugent got up. “We ought to hear from Miss Cable soon,” he said. “I’m convinced that she left voluntarily. Try to be patient, Brent.” His voice was kind-too kind. I thought of all the things that could have happened and then tried not to think of them as I had tried not to think so many times that day.

And I might say now that I had succeeded rather too well but not in the direction I intended. I didn’t want to think of why Drue had gone, or why she stayed away without telephoning or letting us know anything of her whereabouts, but I didn’t intend to let something important, a small thing but terribly important, go straight past my ears quite as if I hadn’t heard it. That was carrying the ostrich act too far. Nugent went toward the door but Craig stopped him.

“Have you got the details of my father’s-death, pretty well established?” he asked.

“The general set-up, yes,” said Nugent. “There are two alternatives. One is that whoever killed him could have poisoned the brandy with digitalis taken from the medicine box which was then-oh, thrown away, I suppose. We’ve searched for it and not found it; we were in the hope of getting some fingerprints.”

My hand went to my pocket. But I waited-somewhat nervously, I might add. Nugent went on crisply, “In that case, your father could have taken the poisoned brandy shortly before his interview with Miss Cable…”

“Then you don’t think Drue killed him!” cried Craig, his whole face suddenly alight and eager.

“I didn’t say that,” said Nugent, but still in a kind and quiet voice which again seemed to me too kind, as if he felt sorry for Craig, below his mask of officialdom. And that meant that Nugent feared, too, for Drue. And if he feared for her, that was why he had begun to believe that she was not guilty of murder. It completed a disastrous and terrifying little circle of logic. Nugent went on, “I said there were two alternatives. The other, of course, is that Miss Cable killed him deliberately with a hypodermic syringe containing too large a dose of digitalis. But let me finish my first hypothesis. If then, your father drank the poisoned brandy and then collapsed just as Miss Cable was talking to him, she could have been-I say could have been-under the impression that he was having a heart attack, or he could have asked her to help him, according to her story. At which she gave him merely a medicinal amount of digitalis, and he died from the effects of the other.”

“There was no poisoned brandy in the decanter,” said Craig slowly. “But…”

“Exactly. The noise made by the falling vase, as it was probably intended to do, drew attention away from the