The Sleeping Sphinx

'Sir!' exclaimed the young man.

'Don Dismallo!' cried Doris.

The rush of welcome in both their voices, the quickness with which they hurried toward him, touched his heart To them he was right. He fitted. He could be confided in. At any other time he would have welcomed them. But now, with the clock ticking relentlessly on and something happening up there at the tomb ...

'Doris,' he said, 'where's your father?'

'Father,' returned Doris, 'has gone on home. We took a short cut through here, and met Ronnie. Father said he thought I'd much prefer to walk home with Ronnie, and

hurried on.' Her voice shivered with disgust 'I thought it was so crude of him.'

'Crude!' said Ronnie. 'Your father! 'Crude.' Oh, save us!'

But for once Doris would not be diverted.

'Don Dismallo, there is something funny going on, isn't there?'

'Look here,' said Holden, 'I won't lie to you and say there isn't But I want you both to go on home.' (Mutiny impending!) 'I'll walk part of the way with you, if you like. I have something very serious to say to you both.'

He hadn't All his thoughts were concentrated on Celia, and on coffins in the sand. But what he did was the only thing to do.

'Oh,' murmured Doris. 'We-ell! In that case'

In sudden and rather furtive silence, with Holden between the two like an itinerant wall, they walked down the path. Southward the drive which led to the church curved back to the main road. By crossing the meadows to the main road again, they could cut off much of the distance to Widestairs.

Soil in silence they tramped, through dew-wet meadow grass. It seemed to Holden that he could hear their hearts beating.

'Doris,' he began, 'you intimated early this evening that you were going to make the fur fly. And I must say you kept your promise.

'I did, didn't I?' asked Doris, between fear and complacence. 'Thorley and I had been meaning to get married, sooner or later, ever since we'd been . .. you know.'

(Holden gave her a warning look.) But tonight' Doris gulped, 'I sort of forced the issue.'

'Tell me, Doris. What do you think of Thorley Marsh now?'

'I think he's wonderful.'

'Ha, ha, ha,' said Ronnie, and uttered a long peal of laughter like somebody imitating a ghoul in a radio play. He stopped and appealed to Holden.

I ask you, sir,' he demanded, 'if that's not a good one? From what Doris has been telling me, her fat boy friend first walloped his wife and then poisoned her. And she thinks he's wonderful.'

'Don Dismallo,' said Doris, 'will you please tell that offensive person on your left to shut his mouth until I finish speaking?—And, anyway, he didn't'

'Ha, ha, ha,' said Ronnie.

'Oi! Easyl Both of you! Come on, now.'

The swishing tramp of feet resumed. What was happening now, back at the vault?

'I—I love him,' declared Doris. 'AH the same, I was a bit disappointed with him tonight.'

'Why, Doris? (Quiet, Ronniel) Why?'

'Oh, not over the walloping business! Which he didn't do anyway.' Doris's eyes gleamed. 'I'd rather have admired him for that'

'Well,' said Holden, 'of course that's one way of looking at it.'

'I shouldn't really mind being knocked about myself now and then. You,' said Doris, sticking her head past Holden's shoulder to look at Ronnie, 'you wouldn't have the nerve to wallop me, would you?'

'Don't you be too sure of that,' said Ronnie, sticking his head over Holden's shoulder to look at Doris.

'Oi! Wait a minute!'

For this wasn't funny. Certainly not to either of them. In the voice of the youth in the sports coat, his face white and twitching, there was a new, dangerous note. Holden had heard it in men's voices before; it meant business.

'You were saying, Doris,' he prompted, 'that Thorley disappointed you tonight'

'Well! When everybody started questioning him, I expected him to wipe the floor with them. And he didn't. I expected him to be like that man in the film, the Wall Street broker who . . .'

'Film!' echoed Ronnie tragically. 'I ask you, sir!'

'Easy, now!'

'You take her to a film,' said Ronnie. 'And in comes some basket who acts like the Wild Man of Borneo. And she sighs and says, 'How lovely.' In real life,' added Ronnie, with contempt, 'you'd just tell the servants to sling the basket out of the house.'

'Listen to Lord Seagrave's son talking!' sneered Doris.

Now they were over the fence, into the main road. Farther and farther, close to Widestairs, while these two wrangled. The minutes were ticking by; anything might be happening at the vault Then, just as Holden thought he could decently get away, something Doris said rang a vivid warning bell in his mind.

'What infuriates me so much, you know, is that it's all That Woman's fault Ronnie!' 'Uh?'

'You remember what I told you a long time ago? About the man that Margot Marsh was so mad about?'

'Dinstinguished-looking middle-aged bloke? The one Jane Faulton caught her with in that New Bond Street place?'

(What the devil was this?)

'Jane didn't see the man face to face,' Doris said impatiently. 'That’s why we don't know who he is. And yet,' she pondered, 'though I denied it like fury tonight for Thor-ley's sake, I could sometimes swear Thorley knows who the man was, and for some reason just won't say.'

'Well, what about the old geezer?'

'You find that man,' Dons announced darkly, 'and you'll find who poisoned her.'

'Rubbishl'

'Is it?'

'If he was having an affair with her,' Ronnie pointed out, 'why should he want to bump her off? He'd be enjoying himself, wouldn't he?'

'She got on his nerves,' said Doris, 'so he killed her. Or maybe it was a married man, and she wanted to marry him and he didn't. So he poisoned her.'

'Or maybe,' retorted Ronnie with heavy sarcasm, 'it was somebody in politics, who couldn't afford the scandal. Maybe it was Mr. Attlee.'

'I tell you—!'

'Doris!' Holden interrupted softly, but in a tone that could not be mistaken. All three of them stopped in the road.

They had passed the vicarage, and passed the beginning of a tall yew hedge on the right. Ahead loomed the lights of Widestairs, shining against mellow red brick, with the sweep of semi-circular steps which gave the house its name.

'What's all this,' asked Holden, 'about Margot and 'the New Bond Street place?'' He had long ago begun to formulate a theory about Margot's death. 'Don't you understand, Doris, that this may be important evidence? Don't you understand you may be quite right?'

'Oh, dear!' said Doris, appalled. Her reaction was instinctive. 'You won't tell on me?'

'Naturally,' answered Holden, recognizing the only point that worried her, 'I won't say where the information came from.'

'Don Dismallo!' She regarded him with a kind of pity. 'Celia—Celia never notices anything. She doesn't even guess about Thorley and me. But hasn't she told you that a long time ago That Woman started going to a fortune teller in New Bond Street? And that’s where she started getting worked up?'

(Yes, Celia had. Visits to a fortune teller, followed by angry rows with Thorley.)

'A fortune teller,' he said aloud. 'A Madame Somebody-or-other.'

'Madame Vanya, 56b New Bond Street Only there wasn't any Madame Vanya, you see. It was all a gag.' 'I beg your pardon?'