He paused and sighed.
“It was all very exhilarating,” he went on easily. “My only trouble was that I was afraid that the wretched game would come to an end before I got away. With great presence of mind, therefore, I locked the door leading to the servants’ quarters so that any serenade on the dinner gong would not bring out the torchlight procession immediately. Then I toddled off down the passage, out of the side door, across the garden, and arrived all girlish with triumph at the garage and walked slap-bang into our Georgie looking like an illustration out of ‘How to Drive in Three Parts, Send No Money.’ ”
He stopped and eyed Abbershaw thoughtfully.
“I got the mental machinery to function with a great effort,” he continued, “and when I had it ticking over nicely I said to myself, ‘Shall I tonk this little cove on the cranium, and stuff him under the seat? Or shall I leap past him, seize the car, and go home on it?’ And neither stunt seemed really promising. If I bunked, I reasoned, George would rouse the house or chase me in one of the other cars. I couldn’t afford to risk either just then. The only other expedient therefore was to tonk him, and the more I looked at him the less I liked the notion. Georgie is a sturdy little fellow, a pugnacious little cove, who might quite easily turn out to be a flyweight champ, somewhere or other. If I was licked I was absolutely sunk, and even if I won we were bound to make a hell of a noise and I was most anxious not to have any attention focused on me while I had that pocketbook.”
“So you came back to the house with me meaning to slip out later?” said Abbershaw.
“George has made the bell ring—three more shots or a packet of Gold Flake,” said Mr. Campion facetiously. “Of course I did; and I should have got away. All would have been as merry as a wedding bell, in fact,” he went on more sadly, “if that Anne woman had not decided that I was just the sort of harmless mutt to arouse jealousy safely with Mr. Kennedy without giving trouble myself. I couldn’t escape her—she clung. So I had to wait until I thought everyone would be asleep, and then, just as I was sneaking out of my room, that precious mock butler of theirs came for me with a gun. I knocked it out of his hand, and then he started to jump on me. They must have rumbled by that time that the old boy had got rid of the packet, and were on the lookout for anyone trying a moonlight flit.”
He paused, a faintly puzzled expression passed over his face. “I could have sworn he got the packet,” he said; “anyway, in the fight I lost it. And that’s the one thing that’s really worrying me at the moment—what has happened to that wallet? For if the man who calls himself Dawlish doesn’t get what he wants, I think we are all of us for a pretty parroty time.”
He stopped and looked at Abbershaw steadily.
“It doesn’t seem to be of any negotiable value,” he said, “and as far as I can see, the only people who are interested in it are my client and Dawlish, but I can tell you one thing. It does interest them very much, and to get hold of it I don’t believe they’d stick at anything.”
“But what was it?” persisted Prenderby, who was more puzzled than ever by these explanations.
Campion shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said, “unless it was the Chart of the Buried Treasure, don’t you know.”
Abbershaw got up from his chair and paced slowly up and down the room.
“There’s only one weak spot in your story, Campion,” he said suddenly. “It sounds like Gospel apart from that. But there is one thing I don’t understand. It’s this: Why didn’t you have a revolver on you when you came out into the garage?”
“Answered in one,” said Mr. Campion. “Because I hadn’t one: I never carry guns.”
“Do you mean to say that you set out on an infernally dangerous game like this without one?” Abbershaw’s voice was incredulous.
Mr. Campion became momentarily grave.
“It’s a fact,” he said simply. “I’m afraid of them. Horrible things—guns. Always feel they might go off in a fit of temper and I should be left with the body. And no bag to put it in either. Then poor little Albert would be in the soup.” He shuddered slightly.
“Let’s talk about something else,” he said. “I can keep up my pecker in the face of anything else but a corpse.”
Prenderby and Abbershaw exchanged glances, and Abbershaw turned to where the young man with the tow-coloured hair and the unintelligent smile sat beaming at them through his glasses.
“Campion,” he said, “you know, of course, that Colonel Coombe died last night? Do you know how he died?”
Mr. Campion looked surprised.
“Heart, wasn’t it?” he said. “I thought the old bird had been scratching round the grave for the last year or so.”
Abbershaw’s expression did not change.
“Oh,” he said, “if that is all you know it may surprise you to hear that he was murdered—while the Dagger Ritual was going on.”
“Murdered!”
Every trace of frivolity had vanished from Albert Campion’s face. There was no mistaking the fact that the news had appalled him, and he looked at Abbershaw with undisguised horror in his pale eyes.
“Murdered?” he repeated. “How do you know?”
“I saw him,” said Abbershaw simply. “They wanted a signature on the cremation certificate, and got me in for it. They wouldn’t let me examine the body, but I saw the face
