“Dawlish?” said Meggie.
Abbershaw nodded in the darkness.
“Yes,” he said. “Mr. Benjamin Dawlish is one of his names.” He paused, and then went on again with new enthusiasm, “Then imagine the brains of his gang,” he continued, “the man with the mind of a genius plus just that one crooked kink which makes him a criminal instead of a diplomat. It is most important that this one man of all others shall evade the police.”
Meggie nestled closer to him.
“Go on,” she said.
Abbershaw continued, his voice hardly raised above a whisper, but intense and vehement in the quietness.
“He must be kept away from the gang then, at all costs,” he said. “So why not let him live at some out-of-the-way spot in the guise of an innocent old gentleman, an invalid, going out for long drives in his ramshackle old car for his health’s sake; but in reality changing his personality on the road and becoming for a few hours an entirely different person? Not always the same man, you understand,” he explained, “but adopting whatever guise seemed most suitable for the actual detail in hand. A respectable suburban householder eager to open a small account when it was necessary to inspect a certain bank manager’s office; an insurance man when a watchman was to be interviewed; a jovial, openhanded man-about-town when clerks were to be pumped. And all these different personalities vanishing into thin air as soon as their work was done, each one of them merging into the quiet inoffensive old invalid driving about in his joke of a car.”
His voice died away in the darkness, and Meggie stiffened.
“The Colonel,” she whispered.
“Yes,” murmured Abbershaw. “I’m sure of it. He was the designer of the crimes. Dawlish organized them, and a carefully trained gang carried them out. The arrangements had to be written out,” he went on, “because otherwise it would entail the Colonel spending some considerable time with the gang explaining his schemes, whereas it was much better that they should not know him, or he them. You see,” he went on suddenly, “that’s what Dawlish had to guard against—double-crossing. Old Coombe’s plans had a definite market value. They were worth money to any criminal gang who could get hold of them, and, as I have said, to minimize any danger of this, Coombe was kept here, practically as a prisoner, by Dawlish. I dare say the only time he saw any member of the gang was when Gideon and some other member as witness came down here to collect the finished scheme for one robbery, or to discuss the next. On such occasions it was Coombe’s practice to invite Wyatt to bring down a house-party as a blind to distract attention from any of his other visitors, who may in some cases have been characters ‘known to the police.’ ” He stopped and sighed. “So far,” he said, “I was practically right, but I had made one tremendous error.”
“And that?” The girl’s voice quivered with excitement.
“That,” said Abbershaw gravely, “was the fatal one of taking Dawlish for Simister. Simister is a rogue about whom there are as many pleasant stories as unpleasant ones, but about Eberhard von Faber no one ever laughs. He is, without exception, the most notorious, unsavoury villain this era has produced. And I have pitched us all—you too—into his hands.”
The girl repressed a shudder, but she clung to Abbershaw confidently.
“But why,” she said suddenly, “why didn’t they succeed? Why didn’t the Colonel give Dawlish the papers and the whole thing work out according to plan?”
Abbershaw stirred.
“It would have done,” he said, “but there was double-crossing going on. The Colonel, in spite of his bodyguard—Whitby and the butler—must have got into communication with Simister’s gang and made some arrangement with them. I’m only guessing here, of course, but I should say that the Colonel’s plans were never allowed outside the house and that his attitude towards Simister must have been, ‘I will sell them if you can get them without implicating me.’ So Simister employed our friend, Mr. Campion, to smuggle himself into Wyatt’s party without being recognized by Dawlish.”
Meggie sat up. “I see,” she said, “but then, George, who murdered the Colonel?”
“Oh, one of the gang, of course—evidently. When they discovered that he had double-crossed them.”
The girl was silent for a moment, then;
“They were very quick,” she said thoughtfully.
Abbershaw jerked his chin up. This was a point which it had never occurred to him to question.
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
Meggie repeated her former observation.
“They were very quick,” she said. “If the Colonel didn’t have a heart attack he was murdered when we were playing with the dagger. Before I had the thing in my hand, in fact. Did they see the old man part with the papers? And if so, why did they kill him and not Albert Campion?”
Abbershaw was silent. This point of view had not occurred to him. As far as he knew, apart from the single affair on the landing, they had not spotted Albert Campion at all.
“Besides,” said Meggie, “if you remember, Dawlish seemed to be surprised when something you said suggested that Coombe had double-crossed them.”
Abbershaw nodded: the incident returned to his mind. Meggie went on speaking, her voice very low.
“So Albert Campion was the murderer,” she said.
Abbershaw started.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I don’t think that for a moment. In fact I’m sure of it,” he went on, as he remembered the scene—it seemed incredible that it was only that afternoon—when Mr. Campion had heard of the Colonel’s murder.
“I’m sure of it,” he repeated, “and besides,” he added, as the extenuating circumstances occurred to him, “why should von Faber have taken all those precautions to conceal someone else’s crime?”
Meggie was silent at this, and Abbershaw continued. “There’s no doubt that the Colonel intended to cheat the gang,” he said. “The documents were exquisite pieces of work, written on the finest paper in a hand so small that it would have taken a reading glass to follow the words. It
