“Now, let’s have the story as briefly as possible, if you please,” Sir Clinton requested.
Ernest looked helplessly round the room for a moment.
“I can hardly believe I’m safe,” he explained. “I’ve had such a time, such a time. Dreadful!”
“Yes, tell us about it.”
“After dinner, I thought I’d go down and have a look at the Maze,” Ernest continued. “I hadn’t been there, you know, since the affair happened; and I thought I might as well go down and look round the place. I wish I’d never had the idea. Such a time I’ve had.”
His eyeglasses slipped askew on his nose and he laboriously set them right before continuing.
“Damn these things! I must get a new pair. They’re always dropping off.”
“Yes?” Sir Clinton repeated, patiently. All his levity had vanished, Wendover noticed, now that he had come to real business.
“After lunch I thought I’d go down to the Maze; but it seemed a lot of trouble, going all that distance; and I very nearly gave up the idea. I wish I had. But then I thought of the push-bike I keep in the garage. It would be easy enough to pedal down on it. So I got it out and went off by the road that leads to the East Gate.”
He put out his hand tentatively towards the tumbler, but drew it back again at the sight of Sir Clinton’s frown. He looked like an overgrown baby caught in the act of mischief.
“Yes?” Sir Clinton repeated once more.
“I went into the Maze, you know, never thinking that anything could possibly happen there. I never dreamed of anything happening, you understand? And I walked through it to Helen’s Bower—the place where my brother Roger was murdered, you remember? And when I got there I sat down. I’d come a good way, you see. And I felt that I’d like to sit down.”
“Did you see anyone in or near the Maze up to that moment?” asked Sir Clinton.
Ernest pondered for a moment or two. His trepidation, far from brightening him, seemed to have made him look duller than ever.
“No,” he said, hesitatingly at last, “I can’t say I did. I don’t remember seeing anyone.”
“And then?”
“Where was I? Oh, yes, I sat down. It was rather hot; and I thought I’d like a seat. I meant to sit there and smoke a cigar before looking round the Maze. I sat there for a while, I don’t quite know how long. Some time, at least. And then I may have fallen into a doze. The sun was very hot, even when I was in the shade of the hedge, you understand? It makes you sleepy. I suppose I dozed off. Perhaps I was asleep for quite a while.”
“You can’t give me anything more exact than that, can you, Mr. Shandon?”
“No, I’m afraid I can’t. It was quite a while, though, I feel pretty sure of that.”
He put out his hand towards the tumbler again.
“I really think I’d get on better if I had another drink.”
Sir Clinton looked at him with unconcealed distaste. Then he picked up the tumbler himself.
“Two fingers then.”
He went across to the window and poured away the surplus from Ernest’s generously filled glass.
“Now, come along, Mr. Shandon. The sooner we get your story the sooner I can get to work. You must pull yourself together.”
Ernest Shandon drank off his whiskey neat and then gave a sigh of relief.
“I feel better now. I’ve really had a terrible time! Where was I? Oh, yes, I woke up.”
“Thrilling!” said Sir Clinton, brutally. “And what next?”
Wendover could not help seeing that Sir Clinton’s temper was wearing thin under the strain of listening to this outpouring of rambling narrative. And this time there was no Stenness who could be turned on to complete the tale. They were dependent entirely on the terror-stricken creature before them.
“I woke up,” Ernest repeated, staring at them with wide-opened eyes as though chronicling some vast convulsion of Nature. “And just after I woke up I seemed to hear steps somewhere near me. I wasn’t very wide awake, you understand? and I sat listening for a moment or two—or it may have been for a little longer than that,” he added with an evident effort at exactitude. “And I thought to myself it might be young Torrance or Stenness. It couldn’t have been the girls, you see? because they had taken the car and gone off to do some shopping in Ambledown. I know that, because they said they were going there and I wondered why they didn’t go to Stanningleigh, which is nearer. But I suppose they wanted to go to some special shop in Ambledown. There are better shops in Ambledown …”
A glimpse of the expression on Sir Clinton’s face brought him suddenly back to his direct narrative.
“So I called out: ‘Who’s there?’ just like that, you know. But nobody replied. So I was wondering who it could be; and I was just going to call again when suddenly I heard the noise of an airgun going off; and something whizzed past me as close as that!”
He indicated a track almost grazing his cheek.
“I jumped up. I didn’t wait to hear any more. I can take the right decision as quick as most people, I assure you, Sir Clinton. I ran as fast as I could to the entrance, and then I heard the fellow reloading the gun! It was dreadful! My blood didn’t freeze or anything like that, but I suffered agonies—agonies!”
“Quite so,” said Sir Clinton soothingly. “You were in a blue funk. We quite understand. An alarming situation. And what happened after that?”
“I ran out into the Maze. Luckily I’d spotted where the fellow was. He was at the same loophole that he’d used when he killed Roger. Oh, I had all my wits about me; I was really very cool, considering the state of affairs.”
“And then?”
“Then I ran through the Maze as hard as I
