“I must go,” he said. “May I suggest that I get my friend Hastings to drive you up to town tomorrow to see your brother. That’ll be some time in the afternoon, after the inquest.”
“Mr. Gethryn, you thinking of everything, everything! May I? I love Mr. Hastings already—for taking such care of Jimmy, poor darling, when he didn’t know him from Adam.” She smiled; and Anthony caught his breath.
He made a move in the direction of the door; then paused. “Mrs. Lemesurier,” he said, “you can’t, I suppose, tell me anything I haven’t already picked up about the Abbotshall ménage?” Business seemed safer ground when his emotions were so hard to repress.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry; I can’t. Except Sir Arthur—and he’s only a guest—I hardly know anything about them. Mr. Hoode I met twice. I’ve never seen his sister. I dare say I should have known them quite well by this time if Jim hadn’t left Mr. Hoode in that funny way. But after that—well, it was rather awkward somehow, and we just haven’t mixed.”
“D’you know this Mrs. Mainwaring at all?”
“Not at all except from the illustrated papers.”
“Oh. So she’s what Zenith might call a Society Snake, is she? Well, well. Not a tennis champion or a plus-four person as well, is she?”
“Oh, no. I’m sure she isn’t. Mr. Gethryn, why all this curiosity?”
Anthony smiled. “Now don’t get scenting murderers in everything I say, will you. Merely my ’satiable curtiosity. I shall be punished for it one day. ‘And his tall aunt the ostrich spanked him with her hard, hard claw.’ That was for ’satiable curtiosity, you remember.” He turned to the door. “I really must go now.”
She stopped him, laying a hand on his arm. “Mr. Gethryn, one minute. Now that—owing to you—I’m happy again, I’m like the elephant’s child, too, simply bursting with curtiosity. Who did do it?”
Anthony laughed. “I haven’t the faintest idea—yet. On the subject of who didn’t do it I could talk for hours. ‘But whose the dastard hand that held the knife I know not; nor the reason for the strife.’ ”
“But you’re going to find out, aren’t you?”
“I have hope, lady.”
The black eyes held the green ones for a long moment. “I think,” she said at last, “that you’re the most extraordinary man I’ve ever met. Some day, you must tell me how you knew everything I did last night. I believe you were watching me; only you couldn’t have been.”
“I,” said Anthony, opening the door, “I am Dupont, I am Lecoq, I’m Fortune, Holmes and Rouletabille. Good night.”
She was left staring at the closed door. When she opened it to peer into the hall, he had gone.
IX
The Inquest
I
At ten o’clock the next morning they brought a note to Lucia, radiant from a nine hours’ sleep.
“My Dear Mrs. Lemesurier”—she read—“Hastings’s car, its owner and I will call for you at some time between four and five this afternoon.
“Do not attend the inquest this morning, and above all prevent your sister from doing so. No doubt this warning is unnecessary, but I thought safer to issue it. For it is highly probable that the coroner’s jury will return a verdict of murder against Archibald Deacon.
“Do not worry about this. Deacon had nothing to do with this messy business. (The great god Bias again, you see.) At the moment, however, things look bad for him. But I repeat: do not worry. Also, prevent your sister (I understand there is an alliance) from doing so more than is unavoidable. I promise things shall be straightened out.
Lucia, after the first shock, obeyed orders. Fond as she was of her sister and her sister’s titanic lover, she found worry, for this morning at least, impossible. After the events of yesterday, she somehow discovered herself possessed of a childlike faith in the power of Anthony Gethryn to work necessary miracles.
She told Dora; then spent the morning to such purpose that the girl’s fears were in some measure allayed.
II
At ten minutes to eleven Anthony left the Bear and Key and walked slowly in the direction of Abbotshall. He was tired and very tired. In spite of his fatigue he had barely slept. There had been so much to think about. And also so much which, though nothing to do with this work of his, had yet insisted on being thought about.
He entered the house at five minutes past the hour. Proceedings were being opened. The coroner and his jury had just seated themselves round the long table set for them in the study.
All about was an air of drama, heightened by the intensity of public feeling and the fact that the court was set on the actual scene of the crime. Marling felt the eyes and ears of the world bent in its direction. It rather enjoyed the feeling, but nevertheless went sternly, and with due solemnity, about its duty.
Anthony nodded to Boyd, shook hands with Deacon, ignored Hastings and Margaret Warren, already seated at the press table, and ran an eye over the jury.
The sight depressed him. “Mutton!” he murmured.
The coroner rapped the table, cleared his throat, and opened the court.
Five minutes later Superintendent Boyd turned to address a remark to Colonel Gethryn. But Colonel Gethryn was no longer there. Nor, apparently, was he anywhere else in the room. Boyd shrugged his shoulders.
Anthony was in the hall. In the far corner, by the front door, stood a knot of servants. They were clearly absorbed in their talk. On the steps were two policemen, their blue backs towards him. Slowly, Anthony mounted the wide, curving staircase. Once out of
