“There’s another person I saw last night,” nodded Mr. Longvale. “I thought at first you must be shooting—is that the expression?—in the neighbourhood, but Mr. Foss told me that I was mistaken. She’s rather a charming girl, don’t you think?”
“Very,” said Jack dryly.
“A very sweet disposition,” Longvale went on, unconscious of the utter lack of sympathy in the atmosphere. “Nowadays, the confusion and hurry which modernity brings in its trail do not make for sweetness of temper, and one is glad to meet an exception. Not that I am an enemy of modernity. To me, this is the most delightful phase of my long life.”
“Sweet disposition!” almost howled Jack Knebworth when the old man had taken a dignified farewell. “Did you get that, Brixan? Say, if that woman’s disposition is sweet, the devil’s made of chocolate!”
XXII
The Head
When Mike went out, he found Stella at the gate of the studio, and remembered, seeing her, that she had been invited to lunch at Griff Towers. To his surprise she crossed the road to him.
“I wanted to see you, Mr. Brixan,” she said. “I sent in word to find if you were there.”
“Then your message was wrongly delivered to Mr. Knebworth,” smiled Mike.
She lifted one of her shoulders in demonstration of her contempt for Jack Knebworth and all his works.
“No, it was you I wanted to see. You’re a detective, aren’t you?”
“I am,” said Michael, wondering what was coming next.
“My car is round the corner: will you come to my house?”
Michael hesitated. He was anxious, more than anxious, to speak to Adele, though he had nothing special to tell her, beyond the thing which he himself did not know and she could never guess.
“With pleasure,” he said.
She was a skilful motorist, and apparently so much engrossed in her driving that she did not speak throughout the journey. In the pretty little drawing-room from which he had a view of the lovely South Downs, he waited expectantly.
“Mr. Brixan, I am going to tell you something which I think you ought to know.”
Her face was pale, her manner curiously nervous.
“I don’t know what you will think of me when I have told you, but I’ve got to risk that. I can’t keep silence any longer.”
A shrill bell sounded in the hall.
“The telephone. Will you excuse me one moment?”
She hurried out, leaving the door slightly ajar. Michael heard her quick, angry reply to somebody at the other end of the wire, and then a long interregnum of silence, when apparently she listened without comment. It was nearly ten minutes before she returned, and her eyes were bright and her cheeks flushed.
“Would you mind if I told you what I was going to tell you a little later?” she asked.
She had been on the telephone to Sir Gregory: of that Michael was sure, though she had not mentioned his name.
“There’s no time like the present, Miss Mendoza,” he said encouragingly, and she licked her dry lips.
“Yes, I know, but there are reasons why I can’t speak now. Would you see me tomorrow?”
“Why, certainly,” said Michael, secretly glad of his release.
“Shall I drive you back?”
“No, thank you, I can walk.”
“Let me take you to the edge of the town: I’m going that way,” she begged.
Of course she was going that way, thought Michael. She was going to Griff Towers. He was so satisfied on this matter that he did not even trouble to inquire, and when she dropped him at his hotel, she hardly waited for him to step to the sidewalk before the car leapt forward on its way.
“There’s a telegram for you, sir,” said the porter. He went into the manager’s office and returned with a buff envelope, which Michael tore open.
For a time he could not comprehend the fateful message the telegram conveyed. And then slowly he read it to himself.
“A head found on Chobham Common early this morning. Come to Leatherhead Police Station at once.
An hour later a fast car dropped him before the station. Staines was waiting on the step.
“Found at daybreak this morning,” he said. “The man is so far unknown.”
He led the way to an outhouse. On a table in the centre of the room was a box, and he lifted the lid.
Mike took one glance at the waxen face and turned white.
“Good God!” he breathed.
It was the head of Lawley Foss.
XXIII
Clues at the Tower
Michael gazed in fascinated horror at the tragic spectacle. Then reverently he covered the box with a cloth and walked out into the paved courtyard.
“You know him?” asked Staines.
Michael nodded.
“Yes, it is Lawley Foss, lately scenario editor of the Knebworth Picture Corporation. He was seen alive last night at eleven o’clock. I myself heard, if I did not see him, somewhere about that time. He was visiting Griff Towers, Sir Gregory Penne’s place in Sussex. Was there the usual note?” he asked.
“There was a note, but it was quite unusual.”
He showed the typewritten slip: it was in the station inspector’s office. One characteristic line, with its ill-aligned letters.
“This is the head of a traitor.” That and no more.
“I’ve had the Dorking police on the phone. It was a wet night, and although several cars passed none of them could be identified.”
“Has the advertisement appeared?” asked Michael.
Staines shook his head.
“No, that was the first thing we thought of. The newspapers have carefully observed, and every newspaper manager in the country has promised to notify us the moment such an advertisement is inserted. But there has been no ad of any suspicious character.”
“I shall have to follow the line of probability here,” said Michael. “It is clear that this man was murdered between eleven o’clock and three in the morning—probably nearer eleven than three; for if the murderer is located in Sussex, he would have to bring the head to Chobham, leave it in the dark and return before it was light.”
His car took Michael back
