“You arranged all this, didn't you?” he asked her.
“Arranged? I ...”
Her dead-serious voice recalled him.
“Please! Don't make a fool of me!”
Wrenching loose from the hand he had put on her arm, Barbara ran for the door. Frederic, a stony eye on one corner of the ceiling, slowly moved aside for her as one who calls attention to the fact that he could have sent for the police. Miles hurried after her.
“Here! Wait! I wasn't blaming you! I ...”
But she was already flying down the soft-carpeted hall, in the direction of the private stair to Greek Street.
Miles glanced round desperately. Opposite him was the illuminated sign of the gentleman's cloakroom. He snatched up his raincoat, crammed his hat on his head, and returned to face the speaking eye of Frederic.
“Are the dinners of the Murder Club paid for by somebody in a lump sum? Or does each person pay for his own?”
“It is the rule for each person to pay for his own, sir. But tonight–“
“I know, I know!” Miles thrust banknotes into the man's hand, with pleasurable exhilaration at the thought that he could nowadays afford to do so. “This is to cove everything. Present my distinguished compliments to Professor Rigaud, and say I'll ring him in the morning to apologize. Don't know where he's staying in London,” this was an impasse he swept aside, “but I can find out. Er – have I given you enough money?”
“More than enough
“Sorry. My fault. Good night!”
He dared not run to hard, since his old illness was apt to claw at him and make his head swim. But his pace was tolerably fast all the same. As he got downstairs and outside, he could just see the glimmer of Barbara's white dress, under the short fur wrap, moving in the direction of Frith Street. Then he really did run.
A taxi rolled down Frith Street in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue, its motor whirring with great distinctness in the hollow-punctuated silence of London at night. Miles shouted at I without much hope, but to his surprise it hesitatingly swerved in towards the kerb. With his left hand Miles caught at Barbara Morell's arm; with his right he twisted open the handle of the cab door before someone else should appear, ghostly out of the rain- pattering gloom, to lay claim to it.
“Honestly,” he said to Barbara, with such a warmth of sincerity that her arm relaxed, “there was no reason to run away like that. You can at least let me drop you off at home. Where do you live?”
“St. John's Wood. But ...”
“Can't do it, governor,” said the taxi-driver in a fierce voice of defiance mingled with martyrdom. “I'm going Victoria way, and I've only just enough petrol to get home.”
“All right. Drop us at Piccadilly Circus tube-station.”
The car door slammed. There was a slur of tyres on wet asphalt. Barbara in the far corner of the seat, spoke in a small voice.
“You'd like to kill me, wouldn't you?” she asked.
“For the last time, my dear girl: no! On the contrary. Life has been made so uncomfortable for us that every little bit helps.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“A high-court judge, a barrister-politician, and a number of other important people have been carefully flummoxed at something they'd arranged. Wouldn't it delight your heart if you heard?as you never will?of an Important Person who couldn't make a reservation or got thrown back to the tail-end of a queue?”
The girl looked at him.
“You are nice,” she said seriously.
This threw Miles a little off balance.
“It isn't a question of what you call niceness,” he retorted with some violence. “It's a question of Old Adam.”
“But poor Professor Rigaud?
“Yes, it's a bit rough on Rigaud. We must find a way to make amends. All the same! – I don't know why you did t, Miss Morell, but I'm very glad you did it. Except for two reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“In the first place, I think you should have confided in Dr. Fell. He's a grand old boy; he'd have sympathized with anything you told him. And how he would have enjoyed that case of the man, murdered while alone on a tower. That is,” Miles added, with the perplexity and strangeness of the night wrapping him round, “if it was a real case and not a dream or a leg-pull. If you'd told Dr. Fell ...”
“But I don't even know Dr. Fell! I lied about that too.”
“It doesn't matter!”
“It does matter,” said Barbara, and pressed her hands hard over her eyes. “I'd never met any of the members. But I was in a position, you see, to learn all their names and addresses, and that Professor Rigaud was speaking on the Brooke case. I phoned everybody except Dr. Fell as Dr. Fell's private secretary, and said the dinner had been postponed. Then I got in touch with Dr. Fell as representing the President. And hoped to heaven both those two would be away from home tonight if someone did ring up for confirmation.”
she paused, staring straight ahead at the glass partition behind the driver's seat, and added slowly:
“I didn't do it for a joke.”
“No. I guessed that.”
“Did you?” cried Barbara. “Did you?”
The cab jolted. Motor-car lamps, odd in newness, once or twice swept the back of the cab with their brief unaccustomed glare through dingy rain-misted windows.
Barbara turned towards him. She put out a hand to steady herself against the glass partition in front. Anxiety, apology, a curious embarrassment, and?yes! Her obvious liking for him?shone in her expression as palpably as her wish to tell him something else. But she did not speak that something else. She only said:
“Other reasons?”
“You told me there were two reasons why you regretted this?this foolishness of mine tonight. What's the other one?”
“Well!” He tried to sound light and casual. “Hang it all, I was a good deal interested in that case of the murder on the tower. Since Professor Rigaud probably isn't on speaking terms with either of us?
“You may never hear the end of the story. Is that t?”
“Yes that's it.”
“I see.” She was silent for a moment, tapping her fingers on the handbag, her mouth moving in an odd way and her eyes shining almost as though there were tears in the. “Where are you staying in town?”
“At the Berkeley. But I'm going back to the New Forest tomorrow. My sister and her fiance are coming up for the day, and we're all travelling back together.” Miles broke off. “Why do you ask?”
“Maybe I can help you.” Opening her handbag, she drew out a folded sheaf of manuscript and handed it to him. “This is Professor Rigaud's own account of the Brooke case, specially written for the archives of the Murder Club. I?I stole it from the table at Beltring's when you went to look for him. I was going to post it on to you when I'd finished reading, but I've already learned the only thing I really wanted to know.”
Insistently she thrust the manuscript back into his hands.
“I don't see how I can be of any use now,” she dried. “I don't see how can be of any use now!”
With a grind of gears into neutral, with the whush of tyres erratically scraping a kerb, the taxi drew up. Ahead loomed the cavern of Piccadilly Circus from the mouth of Shaftesbury Avenue, murmurous and shuffling with a late crowd. Instantly Barbara was across the cab and outside on the pavement.
“Don't get out!” she insisted, backing away. “I can go straight home in the Underground from here. And the
