Tab did not see the detective again until he had left the girl in the vestibule of her hotel. Coming out into the street, Carver, true to his word, appeared from the night and took his arm.
“We will walk home. You don’t take enough exercise,” he said. “Lack of exercise is bad for the old, but it is fatal for the young.”
“You are very chatty this evening,” said Tab. “Tell me something about your little nephew.”
“I haven’t a nephew,” said the detective shamelessly, “but I am feeling kind of lonely tonight. I have had a very disappointing day, Tab, and I want to pour my woes into a sympathetic ear.”
“Faugh!” said Tab.
Carver showed no inclination to find a sympathetic listener, even when they were back at the flat, and he had a modest whiskey and soda before him.
“The truth is,” he said at last, in answer to a direct question, “I have reason to believe that I am being most carefully watched.”
“By whom?” asked the startled Tab.
“By the murderer of Trasmere,” said the detective quietly. “It is a humiliating confession for a man of my experience and proved courage to make, but I am afraid to go home tonight, for I have a large premonition that our unknown friend is preparing something particularly startling in the way of trouble for me.”
“Then you really want to stay the night here?” said Tab as the fact dawned upon him.
Carver nodded.
“Your instinct is marvellously developed,” said he. “That is just what I want to do, if it is not inconvenient. The fact is, I had not the moral courage to ask you before. It isn’t very pleasant to admit—”
“Oh shush!” said Tab scornfully. “You are no more scared of the murderer than I am.”
“I am more accessible to him in my own lodgings,” said the detective and that sounded fairly true. “If I stayed in a hotel I should be even more accessible, so I am going to make use of you, Tab. How do you feel about it?”
“You can bring your belongings and stay here until the case is over,” invited Tab. “I don’t think that Rex’s old bed is made up.”
“I prefer the sofa, anyway. Luxury enfeebles and vitiates a man as it enfeebles and vitiates a nation—”
“If you are going to be oracular, I am retiring to bed,” said Tab.
He went into his room, brought out a rug and a pillow and threw them on to the broad settee.
“I’d like to say,” said Carver, as Tab was leaving him for the last time, “how surprisingly good you look in evening kit. The difficulties of making a reporter look like a gentleman must be almost insuperable, but you have succeeded beyond my most sanguine expectations.”
Tab chuckled.
“You’re indecently humorous tonight,” he said.
He hadn’t been in bed five minutes before the light went out of the sitting-room. Mr. Carver was apparently settling himself to sleep.
Tab’s dreams were happy, but they were strangely mixed. Within five minutes of his head touching the pillow, he was carrying Ursula through her scented garden and his heart was full of gratitude to providence that this great and wonderful prize had come to him. And then in his dream he began to feel uncomfortable. Glancing over his shoulder he saw the sinister figure of Yeh Ling watching him and he was in the garden no longer, but on the slope of a hill flanked by two huge pillars, and Yeh Ling stood at the entrance of his queer house arrayed in dull gold brocade.
“Bang. … Bang!”
Two shots in rapid succession.
XXX
He woke with a start. There was a rush of feet in the sitting-room and then—crash!
He was out of bed in a second and into the sitting-room. Carver was nowhere to be seen and he felt by the draught that the door of the flat was wide open. He put his hand on the light switch and a voice from the darkness said:
“Don’t touch that light!”
It came from outside the door and it was Carver who was speaking.
Below came the thud of the street-door closing.
Carver came hurriedly into the room, passed him, ran to the window and looked out.
“You can put it on now,” said Carver. A red welt was slashed across his face and it was bleeding slightly.
He put up his hand and looked at it.
“That was a narrow squeak,” he said. “Yes, he’s gone. I could have taken a chance and run downstairs after the door slammed, but even that might have been a fake to lure me into the open.”
The whole building was awake now. Tab heard the sound of unlocking doors and voices speaking from above and below.
“It was the cigar that gave me away,” said Carver ruefully. “I was a fool to smoke. He must have seen the red end in the darkness, and on the whole I think he shot pretty accurately.”
There was a small Medici print hanging by the side of the window. The glass was shattered. A round bullet-hole showed on the white shoulder of Beatrice D’Este.
Carver fingered the hole carefully.
“That looks to me like an automatic,” he said. “He is getting quite modern. The last time he killed a man he used a type of revolver which was issued by the Chinese government to its officers some fifteen years ago. We know that from the shape of the bullet,” he went on unconcerned. “There is somebody at the door, Tab. You had better go and explain we have had another attack of burglaritis.”
Tab was gone some ten minutes, quieting the tenants of the flats. When he returned he found Carver examining the track of the second bullet, which had struck the lower window sash and which had drilled a neat little hole.
“Probably hit the wall opposite,” said Carver, squinting through.
“The man below found this on the stairs,” said Tab.
It was a small
