Mr. Campion had chatted in his own particular fashion all the way up, but now he turned to Abbershaw with something more serious in his face.
“I say,” he said, “what did happen about old Daddy Coombe? No one raised any row, I see. What’s the idea? Dawlish said he was murdered; you said he was murdered; Prenderby said he was murdered. Was he?”
His expression was curious but certainly not fearful, Abbershaw was certain.
“I didn’t say anything, of course, to the old Inspector person,” Campion went on, “because I didn’t know anything, but I thought you fellows would have got busy. Why the reticence? You didn’t do it by any chance, did you?”
“No,” said Abbershaw shortly, some of his old pompousness returning at the suggestion of such a likelihood.
“No offence meant,” said Mr. Campion, dropping into the vernacular of the neighbourhood through which they were passing. “Nor none taken, I hope. No, what I was suggesting, my dear old bird, was this: Are you sleuthing a bit in your own inimitable way? Is the old cerebral machine ticking over? Who and what and why and wherefore, so to speak?”
“I don’t know, Campion,” said Abbershaw slowly. “I don’t know any more than you do who did it. But Colonel Coombe was murdered. Of that I’m perfectly certain, and—I don’t think Dawlish or his gang had anything to do with it.”
“My dear Holmes,” said Mr. Campion, “you’ve got me all of a flutter. You’re not serious, are you?”
“Perfectly,” said Abbershaw. “After all, who might not have done it, with an opportunity like that, if they wanted to? Hang it all, how do I know that you didn’t do it?”
Mr. Campion hesitated, and then shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m afraid you’ve got a very wrong idea of me,” he said. “When I told you that I never did anything in bad taste, I meant it. Sticking an old boy in the middle of a house-party parlour-game occurs to me to be the height of bad form. Besides, consider, I was only getting a hundred guineas. Had my taste been execrable I wouldn’t have risked putting my neck in a noose for a hundred guineas, would I?”
Abbershaw was silent. The other had voiced the argument that had occurred to himself, but it left the mystery no clearer than before.
Campion smiled.
“Put me down as near Piccadilly as you can, old man, will you?” he said.
Abbershaw nodded, and they drove on in silence.
At last, after some considerable time, he drew up against the kerb on the corner of Berkeley Street. “Will this do you?” he said.
“Splendidly. Thanks awfully, old bird. I shall run into you some time, I hope.”
Campion held out his hand as he spoke, and Abbershaw, overcome by an impulse, shook it warmly, and the question that had been on his lips all the drive suddenly escaped him.
“I say, Campion,” he said, “who the hell are you?”
Mr. Campion paused on the running-board and there was a faintly puckish expression behind his enormous glasses.
“Ah,” he said. “Shall I tell you? Listen—do you know who my mother is?”
“No,” said Abbershaw, with great curiosity.
Mr. Campion leaned over the side of the car until his mouth was an inch or two from the other man’s ear, and murmured a name, a name so illustrious that Abbershaw started back and stared at him in astonishment.
“Good God!” he said. “You don’t mean that?”
“No,” said Mr. Campion cheerfully, and went off striding jauntily down the street until, to Abbershaw’s amazement, he disappeared through the portals of one of the most famous and exclusive clubs in the world.
XXV
Mr. Watt Explains
After dinner one evening in the following week, Abbershaw held a private consultation on the affair in his rooms in the Adelphi.
He had not put the case before his friend, Inspector Deadwood, for a reason which he dared not think out, yet his conscience forbade him to ignore the mystery surrounding the death of Colonel Coombe altogether.
Since von Faber and his confederates were wanted men, the County Police had handed over their prisoners to Scotland Yard; and in the light of preliminary legal proceedings, sufficient evidence had been forthcoming to render the affair at Black Dudley merely the culminating point in a long series of charges. Every day it became increasingly clear that they would not be heard of again for some time.
Von Faber was still suffering from concussion, and there seemed every likelihood of his remaining under medical supervision for the term of his imprisonment at least.
Whitby and his companion had not been traced, and no one, save himself, so far as Abbershaw could tell, was likely to raise any inquiries about Colonel Coombe.
All the same, although he had several excellent reasons for wishing the whole question to remain in oblivion, Abbershaw had forced himself to institute at least a private inquiry into the mystery.
He and Meggie had dined together when Martin Watt was admitted.
The girl sat in one of the high-backed Stuart chairs by the fire, her brocade-shod feet crossed, and her hands folded quietly in her lap.
Glancing at her, Abbershaw could not help reflecting that their forthcoming marriage was more interesting to him than any criminal hunt in the world.
Martin was more enthusiastic on the subject of the murder. He came in excited, all trace of indolence had vanished from his face, and he looked about him with some surprise.
“No one else here?” he said. “I thought we were going to have a pukka consultation with all the crowd present—decorations, banners, and salute of guns!”
Abbershaw shook his head.
“Sorry! I’m afraid there’s only Prenderby to come,” he said. “Campion has disappeared, Anne Edgeware is in the South of France recuperating, Jeanne doesn’t want to hear or think anything about Black Dudley ever again, so Michael tells me, and I didn’t think we’d mention the thing to Wyatt, until it’s a certainty at any rate. He’s had his share of unpleasantness already. So you see there are only the four of us to talk
