Hastings, his heart beating too fast for comfort, looked down. All he could see was the little black hat. The shaking of her body in his arms, the very fact that in his arms she was, deprived him of speech. They remained locked together. From the floor behind them came a hoarse, delirious babbling. Neither man nor woman heard it.
The sobbing grew quieter. A great resolve swelled in Hastings’s bosom.
“I w-want a—a hanky,” said a small voice from his shoulder.
From his breast pocket he whipped a square foot of white silk. A little hand snatched at it. Its work completed, she smiled up at him, then endeavoured to withdraw from his arms. Hastings held on.
“Please,” said the small voice, “will you let me go?”
“No!” roared Hastings. “No! Never any more!”
Slowly, she raised her head to look at him again. Immediately, thoroughly, satisfyingly, he kissed her. For a moment, a fleeting fraction of time, it seemed to him that the soft lips had answered the pressure of his.
But then she broke free. “Mr. Hastings!” She stamped her foot. “How dare—”
A grin of delight was on his face. “ ’Sno use,” he murmured. “ ’Sno use any more. I’m not frightened of you now, you darling!” He snatched at her again.
From the floor there came again that hoarse mutter. Again they didn’t hear it.
“And you know you’ve been in love with me for years,” said Hastings.
“Oh! I have not!” She was all indignation. Suddenly it went. “Yes, I have, though—for months, anyway. Oh, Jack, Jack, why didn’t you do this before?”
“Frightened,” said Hastings. “Wind up.”
“But—but whatever of?”
“You—and your damned sufficient efficiency. Yesterday I swore to myself I’d pluck up the nerve to tell you as soon as I caught you, red-handed, making a mistake. And you see I have—”
Her eyes flashed. “What d’you mean? Mistake! I like that! When I’ve caught the murderer—”
They both swung round, remembrance flooding back. The owner of the flat lay beside the overturned table, a shapeless heap in the dark dressing-gown.
Margaret shivered. “Mistake, indeed!” she began.
“Well, you did. This is a man’s job. You ought to’ve waited till I came back. God! how you frightened me! Suppose this outer door here hadn’t been ajar.”
“But, Jack—”
Hastings forgot murders. “Why d’you call me that?” he asked.
“ ’Cause I couldn’t always be saying ‘Spencer.’ I’d feel like a heroine in a serial. And don’t interrupt. I was going to say: Never mind, we’ve got the man. Won’t Colonel Gethryn be pleased?”
Hastings came back to earth. “By God!” he said. “So that’s the murderer, is it? So it was that Gethryn was after. Well, he’s a very ill criminal. How d’you know he is one, by the way?”
“He confessed. He was sort of delirious. Kept saying he’d done it, but wasn’t going to tell anyone. Horrid it was!”
Hastings rubbed his chin. “I wonder,” he said. “I wonder. Come on, we’re going to have a nice diplomatic talk with that porter I saw downstairs. And don’t forget we mustn’t let him get a line on what we’re after.”
IV
The hands of the clock in Mrs. Lemesurier’s drawing-room stood at five minutes to midnight.
There came a lull in the conversation which Anthony had kept flowing since he had sent his message to Hastings. A wandering talk it had been, but he had achieved his object. Save for the harassed look about her eyes, there was now nothing to tell of the strain the woman had been under. She had even laughed, not once but many times. She was, in fact, almost normal. And Anthony rejoiced, for he had found her to possess humour, wit and wisdom to support her beauty. She was, he thought sleepily to himself, almost too good to be true.
For a moment his eyes closed. Behind the lids there rose a picture of her face—a picture strangely more clear than any given by actual sight.
“You,” said Lucia, “ought to be asleep. Yes, you ought! Not tiring yourself out to make conversation for an hysterical woman that can’t keep her emotions under control.”
“The closing of the eyes,” Anthony said, opening them, “merely indicates that the great detective is what we call thrashing out a knotty problem. He always closes his eyes, you know. He couldn’t do anything with ’em open.”
She smiled. “I’m afraid I don’t believe you, you know. I think you’ve done so much today that you’re simply tired out.”
“Really, I assure you, no. We never sleep until a case is finished. Never. It’s rather sad in this one, because I can see it going on forever.” He saw her mouth contract with the pain of fear, and went on: “I mean, I don’t believe we’re ever going to catch the Sparrow.”
“The Sparrow?”
“Yes. Don’t you remember ‘Who killed Cock Robin’? It must have been the first detective story you ever read. You know, it was the Sparrow who did the dirty work. ‘And here, in a manner of speaking, we all are.’ All at sixes and sevens, that is. Here am I, come to the decision that either A. R. Gethryn or the rest of the world is mad. There are the police with entirely the wrong bird.
“The only real bit of work I’ve done today,” he went on, “has led me to find, not an answer, but another problem. The question is: was a certain thing done genuinely or was it done to look as if it had been done genuinely, or was it done in the way it was on purpose to look ungenuine? The answer, at present, is a lemon.”
Again she smiled. “It sounds awful,” she said. Then, with a change of tone: “But—but my brother? You were saying—”
Piercing, blaring, came the angry ring of the telephone.
Lucia leapt to her feet with a cry. Before she could move again Anthony was at the instrument. As he lifted the receiver she reached his side, pleading with eyes and hands for
