“I determined, perhaps foolishly, to repay him in his own kind. I put the punt in to shore, landed, and went very carefully along the bank, hiding as far as possible behind the willows. When I reached the bridge, I saw him leaning over it, as if he were looking out for me. Very carefully I crossed the road, and concealed myself under the extreme arch of the bridge, which runs partly over dry ground. In a moment or two I heard him in conversation with a companion, and what they said assured me that my worst fears were realized. They were on my track; they were in close touch with Nigel, and they had the intention of heading me off somewhere below Shipcote Lock. But two encouraging points emerged from their conversation. One was that they intended to go ashore at the end of the lock-stream—why, I do not know—and leave their canoe moored. The other was that Inspector Leyland of the C.I.D., whom they appeared to mention with some awe, was staying at the Gudgeon Inn, Eaton Bridge.”
Bredon was compelled to go to the window and clean out his pipe; he was not certain of his own gravity. Leyland, to his admiration, sat perfectly unmoved.
“Well,” continued Farris, “I hadn’t the courage to break my journey at Millington Bridge. I went on down to Shipcote, and when I found their canoe moored, I—I stole the paddles.” He chuckled a little at the memory of his own cleverness. “Since then I’ve seen nothing of the canoe. But they may have followed me by land; and I thought the best thing I could do was to report the matter at once to the police. I have a room booked here for the night.”
“I see,” said Leyland. “Oh Lord, tell him, Bredon.” And they told him.
“Now that,” said Bredon next morning, “is as straightforward a tale as I’ve ever heard told. You can still go on suspecting him if you like; I do myself, rather. But I’m just going over to Oxford to apply one more test to Master Nigel’s performances. Coming?”
“Afraid not. Too many darned suspects about in this pub; I mean to keep an eye on them.”
So it was Bredon alone who went over to Oxford, Bredon alone, though armed with a note from Leyland, who went into Mr. Wickstead’s well-known boot-shop, and demanded whether Mr. Nigel Burtell was a customer; whether, if so, they had any record of his size. He was assured, in horror-stricken accents, that of course Mr. Burtell dealt there; Mr. Burtell was one of the best-dressed young gentlemen in Oxford; of course they kept his measure on record. They brought out a portentous volume, in which every client had a page devoted to himself, a complete chiropodic dossier. There was not a corn, it seemed, in any of the more exclusive Colleges which was not on record here. True, there was no absolute facsimile of the rising generation’s footsteps; but there was an outlined figure, pencilled from the life, which gave the exact conformation, and whatever facts it did not divulge were chronicled in the margin. A vast book, alphabetically arranged, from which your name never disappeared until you had paid off your bill to Messrs. Wickstead, or given them any other indication that you intended to take your custom elsewhere.
Bredon turned the pages languidly, dawdling over one name after another as if he were afraid of not finding what he wanted when it came to the point. He noticed his own surname, and wondered whether he had some unsuspected relative in residence. At last he reached “Burtell,” and, mastering his excitement, began to plough through the highly documented record. “Something about a hammertoe here, I see,” he remarked.
“A hammertoe? Oh dear me, no, sir; Mr. Burtell’s toes are perfectly straight; you must be reading the wrong side of the page. Allow me, sir—there’s ‘Shape of the toe’; nothing about hammertoes there, you see.”
“Yes, I see,” said Bredon. “Yes, confound it all, I see.”
XXIII
Bredon Plays Patience Again
“Would you be shocked,” asked Nigel, “if you thought I’d done it?”
He was sitting up, for the first time, in a costume as nearly approaching full dress as Leyland would permit. Angela sat opposite him, knitting vaguely. Her attitude throughout his stay in bed had been rather embarrassed, and he was evidently determined to establish more normal relations.
“I’m too old to be caught that way,” she said. “You want me to say or imply that I don’t think you did it. You’d better ask me whether I’d be shocked if I knew you’d done it. Because, after all, it makes a lot of difference if you can give a person the benefit of the doubt. As it is, I’m only provisionally shocked, if you understand what I mean.”
“But the idea of talking to a murderer does shock you?”
“Of course it does. If I read in the paper that a total stranger has broken his neck I’m not shocked—not really. But if my hairdresser broke his neck I should be shocked—why, I don’t know.”
“But that’s a different kind of shock.”
“I’m not so sure. I suppose very good people when they come in personal contact with really wicked people, do really disapprove of them morally. But an ordinary humdrum person,
