“It was,” said Wimsey, modestly.
“I might have known there was something wrong about it. You devil! Well—what now?—if you’ve exploded Oliver, I suppose you’ve spilled all the rest of the beans, eh?”
“If you mean by that expression,” said Mr. Murbles, “that we are aware of your fraudulent and disgraceful attempt to conceal the true time of General Fentiman’s decease, the answer is, Yes—we do know it. And I may say that it has come as a most painful shock to my feelings.”
Fentiman flung himself into a chair, slapping his thigh and roaring with laughter.
“I might have known you’d be on to it,” he gasped, “but it was a damn good joke, wasn’t it? Good lord! I couldn’t help chuckling to myself, you know. To think of all those refrigerated old imbeciles at the Club sittin’ solemnly round there, and comin’ in and noddin’ to the old guv’nor like so many mandarins, when he was as dead as a doornail all the time. That leg of his was a bit of a slip-up, of course, but that was an accident. Did you ever find out where he was all the time?”
“Oh, yes—pretty conclusively. You left your marks on the cabinet, you know.”
“No, did we? Hell!”
“Yes—and when you stuck the old boy’s overcoat back in the cloakroom, you forgot to stick a poppy in it.”
“Oh, lord! that was a bloomer. D’you know, I never thought of that. Oh, well! I suppose I couldn’t hope to carry it off with a confounded bloodhound like you on the trail. But it was fun while it lasted. Even now, the thought of old Bunter solemnly callin’ up two and a half columns of Olivers makes me shout with joy. It’s almost as good as getting the half-million.”
“That reminds me,” said Wimsey. “The one thing I don’t know is how you knew about the half-million. Did Lady Dormer tell you about her will? Or did you hear of it from George?”
“George? Great Scott, no! George knew nothing about it. The old boy told me himself.”
“General Fentiman?”
“Of course. When he came back to the Club that night, he came straight up to see me.”
“And we never thought of that,” said Wimsey, crushed. “Too obvious, I suppose.”
“You can’t be expected to think of everything,” said Robert, condescendingly. “I think you did very well, take it all round. Yes—the old boy toddled up to me and told me all about it. He said I wasn’t to tell George, because he wasn’t quite satisfied with George—about Sheila, you know—and he wanted to think it over and see what was best to be done, in the way of making a new will, you see.”
“Just so. And he went down to the library to do it.”
“That’s right; and I went down and had some grub. Well then, afterwards I thought perhaps I hadn’t said quite enough on behalf of old George. I mean, the guv’nor needed to have it pointed out to him that George’s queerness was caused a great deal by bein’ dependent on Sheila and all that, and if he had some tin of his own he’d be much better-tempered—you get me? So I hopped through to the library to find the guv’—and there he was—dead!”
“What time was that?”
“Somewhere round about eightish, I should think. Well, I was staggered. Of course, my first idea was to call for help, but it wasn’t any go. He was quite dead. And then it jolly well came over me all at once how perfectly damnably we had missed the train. Just to think of that awful Dorland woman walking into all those thousands—I tell you, it made me so bally wild I could have exploded and blown the place up! … And then, you know, I began to get a sort of creepy feeling, alone there with the body and nobody in the library at all. We seemed cut off from the world, as the writing fellows say. And then it just seemed to take hold of my mind, why should he have died like that?—I did have a passing hope that the old girl might have pegged out first, and I was just going along to the telephone to find out, when—thinking of the telephone cabinet, you see—the whole thing popped into my head ready-made, as you might say. In three minutes I’d lugged him along and stuck him up on the seat, and then I hopped back to write a label for the door. I say, I thought I was jolly smart to remember not to blot that label on the library blotting-paper.”
“Believe me,” said Wimsey, “I appreciated that point.”
“Good. I’m glad you did. Well, it was pretty plain sailing after that. I got the guv’nor’s togs from the cloakroom and took ’em up to my room, and then I thought about old Woodward sittin’ up waitin’ for him. So I trundled out and went down to Charing Cross—how do you think?”
“By bus?”
“Not quite as bad as that. By Underground. I did realize it wouldn’t work to call a taxi.”
“You show quite a disposition for fraud, Fentiman.”
“Yes, don’t I?—Well, all that was easy. I must say, I didn’t pass a frightfully good night.”
“You’ll take it more calmly another time.”
“Yes—it was my maiden effort in crime, of course. The next morning—”
“Young man,” said Mr. Murbles, in an awful voice, “we will draw a veil over the next morning. I have listened to your shameless statement with a disgust which words cannot express. But I cannot, and I will not sit here and listen while you congratulate yourself, with a cynicism at which you should blush, on having employed those sacred moments when every thought should have been consecrated—”
“Oh, punk!” interrupted Robert, rudely. “My old pals are none the worse because I did a little bit of self-help. I
