“Now I’m a free man until Monday afternoon—”
The hall telephone signalled at that moment and he got up with a groan.
“Boast not!” he growled. “That is the office or I’m a saint!”
It was the office, as he had so intelligently foreseen. He snapped a few words at the transmitter and came back to the room. And Tab was very voluble.
A Polish gentleman concerned in certain frauds on insurance companies had been arrested, escaped again, and having barricaded himself in his house, was keeping the police at bay with the aid of boiling water and a large axe.
“Jacko is enthusiastic about it,” said the savage Tab, speaking thus disrespectfully of his city editor, “says it is real drama—I told him to send the dramatic critic. Gosh—I did his job the other night.”
“Going out?” asked Rex with mild interest.
“Of course I’m going out, you thickheaded jibberer!” said the other unkindly as he struggled into the collar he had discarded.
“I thought all that sort of stuff was invented in the office,” said the young architect monstrously. “Personally I never believe what I read in newspapers.”
But Tab had gone.
At midnight he joined a little group of police officers that stood at safe range from the besieged house, whose demented occupant had found a shotgun. Tab was with them until the door of the house was stormed and the defender borne down and clubbed to a state of placidity.
At two o’clock in the morning, he and Carver, the chief of the detectives engaged in the case, adjourned to the police mess and had supper. It was half-past three and the streets were lit by the ghostly light of dawn, when he started to walk home.
Passing through Park Street, he heard the whirr of wheels and a motorcar flew past him. It had gone a hundred yards when there came to him the explosion of a burst tire. He saw the car swerve and stop. A woman alighted and examined the damage. Apparently she was alone, for he saw her open the toolbox on the running-board, and take out a jack. He hastened his footsteps and crossed to the middle of the road. The only other person in sight was a cyclist down the road who had dismounted and was examining his wheel.
“Can I be of any assistance?” asked Tab.
The woman started and turned.
“Miss Ardfern!” he said in astonishment.
For a second she seemed uncomfortable and then with a quick smile:
“It is Mr. Tab! Please forgive the familiarity, I cannot remember your other name.”
“Don’t try,” he said, taking the jack from her hands, “but if you are very anxious to remember, I am called Holland.”
She said nothing whilst he was raising the car. When he was knocking the torn wheel free, she said:
“I am out rather late, I have been to a party.”
There was light enough for him to see that she was dressed very plainly and that the shoes she wore were heavy and serviceable. He would have gone farther and said that she was dressed poorly. Inside the car on the seat by her side was a square black case, smaller but deeper than a suitcase. Perhaps she had changed her clothes—but for all their surprising agility in this direction, actresses do not change their clothes to go home from a party.
“I have been to a party too,” he said, jerking off the wheel and rolling it to the front of the car, “a surprise party with fireworks.”
“A dance?”
Tab smiled to himself.
“I only danced once,” he said, “I saw the gentleman taking aim with the shotgun and danced right merrily yo ho!”
He heard the quick intake of her breath.
“Oh, yes, it was the Pole. We heard the shots and I knew that he had taken refuge in his house before I left the theatre.”
The wheel was replaced now, the tools returned and the old wheel strapped to the car.
“That is OK,” said Tab stepping back. “Oh no, it was nothing,” he said hastily as she began to thank him, “nothing at all.”
She did not offer to drive him home. He rather hoped that she would; indeed, her method of going was a little precipitate, and she was out of sight before he realized that she was gone.
What on earth was she doing at that time in the morning he wondered? A party she had said, but again it occurred to him that fashionable actresses did not go to parties in that kind of outfit.
Rex was awake when he reached home and came out to him. Strangely enough, although they discussed the happenings of the night, Tab did not mention his meeting with Ursula Ardfern.
V
“Ursula Ardfern,” Tab woke with the words on his lips. The hour was eleven and Rex had been out and was back again.
“L’ami de mon oncle has been—did you hear him?” asked Rex, stopping his towel-encompassed companion on his way to the bathroom.
“Who—Bonaparte?”
“Wellington is his name, I believe. Yes, he came rather subdued and apologetic, but full of horrific threats toward Uncle Jesse. I turned him out.”
“Why did he come?”
Rex Lander shook his head.
“Heaven knows! Unless it was that he simply had to find somebody who knew uncle well enough to be interested in hearing him curse the old man. I’ve persuaded him to leave town until the end of next week. But I must say that I was impressed by the brute’s threats. He says he will kill Uncle Jesse unless he makes reparation.”
“Twiff!” said Tab contemptuously and went to his tub. Over his breakfast (Rex had had his two hours before) he returned to the subject of Mr. Jesse Trasmere and his enemy.
“When a man soaks he’s dangerous,” he said. “There isn’t any such thing as a harmless drunkard, any more than there is a harmless lunatic. Carver and I had a talk on the matter early this morning and he agreed. That man is certainly intelligent, which is more than you can say of the
