When the maids brought her fresh outfit she took the opportunity of questioning them.
“Was Mr. Stenness the only man in the house when I came back?”
“Yes, miss. Miss Sylvia took her uncle away with her in the car—Mr. Ernest, I mean. And Mr. Neville went out of the house before poor Mr. Shandon did. And Mr. Hawkhurst, he went out quite early on. I saw him passing the window with his airgun in his hand.”
Vera had ceased to listen. The word “airgun” had linked up in her mind with the memory of the dull concussions which she had heard in the Maze. That was the noise she had heard—the dull report of an air-rifle! And the metallic rasping was the grating of the spring as the murderer recharged his weapon. But the recognition of the noises left her even more perplexed.
“Of course, one can kill a rabbit with an airgun; but one couldn’t kill a man with it even at close-range. And yet I’m certain it was an airgun that I heard. I’d have recognised it at once if it hadn’t been that I was so shaken up by the way things happened.”
She puzzled over the problem for a time without success; and at last dismissed it from her mind and began to make arrangements which she thought might be necessary when the men returned to the house.
Meanwhile Stenness, accompanied by the gardener, had made his way to the Maze. As they came in sight of it, they saw the figure of Howard Torrance emerge from one of the entrances and gaze in their direction. Recognising the secretary, he came rapidly towards them.
“Seen Miss Forrest, Stenness?” he demanded as soon as he reached speaking distance. “Is she all right?”
“She fetched us,” Stenness explained. “She’s completely done in, of course. That’s natural. But I don’t think she’ll come to any harm. I left two maids with her, just in case; though it looked more as if the maids would collapse before she did.”
Howard nodded without replying, and Stenness continued:
“We’d better get into the Maze now and stand guard over the body till the police turn up. They’ll be here shortly.”
Howard hesitated a moment.
“Sure you know how to get about in that Maze, Stenness? You won’t get tangled up? Got bogged in it myself once already. No desire to have another dose, you know.”
“There’s no danger of that. Both Skene and I know every inch of it. He cuts the hedges.”
This seemed to allay Howard’s doubts, and he led the way to the entrance. But here Stenness displaced him.
“I’ll take the lead, I think. I know the path. Besides, one never can tell. Somebody may be in there yet.”
He tapped his shotgun in explanation of his full meaning, and Howard acquiesced.
“Right! In you go!”
They entered the labyrinth, Stenness in advance with his gun ready, Howard and the armed gardener bringing up the rear. For a minute or two they walked in silence along the intricate corridors, Stenness taking turning after turning without the slightest hesitation.
“I wish I had had the thing by heart as he seems to have,” Howard reflected, as he noted the easy way in which the secretary seemed to hold to his route. “It would have been a different business, then.”
All at once, Stenness halted abruptly and made a gesture of caution to his companions. His quick ears had caught something which they had missed.
“There’s somebody moving in the next corridor,” he whispered. “Wait here. I’ll fix him.”
With his gun ready he stepped suddenly round the corner of the alley and immediately they heard his curt command:
“Hands up!”
When they in turn had rounded the corner they found the secretary covering with his shotgun an unattractive stranger. The reddish hair, the ugly mouth, made worse by a ragged and untidy moustache, the peculiar vulpine expression, and the flashy clothes, all combined to produce a bad impression even at the first glance. As he stood, hands in air, in front of Stenness’s gun, his eyes wandered from one face to another with something of the expression of a rat at bay.
“Run over this fellow, Torrance,” said the secretary. “He may be armed.”
Howard searched the man methodically and extracted from one pocket a heavy automatic pistol. Beyond that, the man had no other weapon.
“See if it’s been fired,” suggested Stenness.
“Fully loaded, and hasn’t been fired,” Howard reported.
“Good! Now, my man, how do you come to be here?”
“I was rowing on the river; and as I was coming near here, I heard someone yelling blue murder, so I came up. What would you have done, eh? Kept away, I expect. Then I came inside this monkey-puzzle to give a hand. And I’ve stuck here ever since. That satisfy you?”
“Nothing to do with me. The police will be here shortly. You can explain to them. Meanwhile, you’ll come along with us. Skene, take charge of this fellow. If he tries to run, empty your gun into his legs. Now come along.”
Again taking the van, Stenness continued on his way, and in a very short time he brought them to one of the centres of the Maze.
Howard Torrance followed him into the tiny precinct; but his first glance led him to protest.
“This isn’t the place where I found the body. It must be in the other centre.”
Stenness’s shoulders blocked the view for a moment; but almost at once he stepped aside.
“There’s a body here, at any rate,” he said, going forward as he spoke. “It’s Roger Shandon.”
“Roger!” exclaimed Howard in blank surprise. “It was Neville Shandon’s body that I found.”
“Then they’ve both been murdered,” Stenness pointed out coldly. “That’s obvious.”
“But what I heard sounded like a single attack,” protested Howard.
Stenness shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s for the police
