“To young Simmonds, as he let himself in by the ground-floor casement into the Load of Mischief, only one fear presented itself—the fear of a false verdict. He was of the type that cannot commit cold-blooded murder. The more civilization advances the more ingenious does crime become; meanwhile, it becomes more and more difficult for one man to kill another with his hands. Simmonds might have been a poisoner; as it was, he had discovered a safer way: he would be a gasser. But there was this defect about the weapon he was using—it might create a false impression on the jury. Imperative, then, not merely to kill his man but to prove that he had killed him. That is why, after turning on the gas in the sleeping man’s room, he waited for two hours or so outside; then came back, flung open the window to get air, and turned the gas off again, only pausing to make sure that his victim was dead.
“How he worked the door trick I don’t know. We shall find out later. Meanwhile, let me tell you that one of the friends I made last night in the bar parlour told me he had seen Simmonds hanging round the hotel just after closing time, although (for the fellow is a teetotaller) he had not been drinking there. This was on the very night of the murder. That was a point in which I was in a position to score off you. There was another point, over which you had the same opportunities of information, but neglected them. You remember the letter which Mottram left lying about in his bedroom? It was in answer to a correspondent who signed himself ‘Brutus.’ I took the trouble to get from the offices of the Pullford Examiner a copy of the issue in which that letter appeared. It is a threatening letter, warning Mottram that retribution would come upon him for the bloodsucking methods by which his money had been made. And it was signed ‘Brutus.’ You’ve had a classical education; you ought to have spotted the point; personally I looked it up in an encyclopædia. Brutus wasn’t merely a demagogue; he led the revolt in Rome which resulted in the expulsion of his own maternal uncle, King Tarquin. The same relation, you see, that there was between Simmonds and Mottram.
“Well, I’ve applied for a warrant. I’m in no hurry to use it; for, as long as Simmonds is off his guard, he’s all the more likely to give himself away. Meanwhile, I’m having him watched. If you go and talk to him, just to form your own impressions, I know you’ll be careful not to say anything which would give away my suspicions. And I can wait for that twenty pounds too.”
Bredon sat spellbound. He could see the whole thing happening; he could trace every calculation in the mind of the criminal. And yet he was not convinced. He was just about to explain this, when a fresh thought struck him and interfered with their session. “Leyland,” he said, in a very quiet voice, “you aren’t smoking, and I’ve had my pipe out these last ten minutes. Can you tell me why there should be a smell of cigarette smoke?”
Leyland looked round, suddenly on the alert. It was only as he looked round that he noticed how insecure was their privacy. The rain had stopped some time since, and there was no reason why an interloper should not be standing outside, listening through one of the numerous chinks in the wall behind them. Gripping Bredon’s arm, he darted out suddenly, and rounded the corner of the building. There was nobody there. But close to the wall lay a cigarette-end, flattened and soiled as if it had been trodden by a human foot. And as Leyland picked it up a faint spark and a thin stream of smoke showed that it had been trodden on only a moment before, not quite successfully. “Callipoli,” he read, examining the stump. “Not the sort of cigarette one buys in the village. It looks to me, Bredon, as if we were on the track of something fresh here. We’ll leave that cigarette-stump exactly where we found it.”
XI
The Generalship of Angela
“Angela,” said Bredon when he found her, “I’ve got a job of work for you.”
“Such as?”
“All you’ve got to do is to make Brinkman and Pulteney open their cigarette-cases for inspection without knowing that they’re doing it.”
“Miles, it won’t do. You know I can’t work in blinkers. There’s nothing I dislike so much as a want of complete confidence between husband and wife. Sit down and tell me all about it. You’d better make sure of the door first.” And she turned down the little shutter which protected their keyhole on the inside.
“Oh, all right,” said Bredon, and told the story of their recent alarms. “It almost must be somebody in the house. Brinkman and Pulteney are both cigarette-smokers, and of course it would be easy for me to cadge a cigarette by
