With a heave Roger succeeded in clicking the lock with which he was struggling. He straightened his bent back and drew his pipe out of his pocket.
“I’ve talked enough for a bit,” he announced.
“Oh, rot!” Alec exclaimed incredulously.
“And it’s about time I put in a little thinking,” Roger went on, disregarding the interruption. “You run along down to tea, Alexander; you’re ten minutes late as it is.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to spend my last twenty minutes here doing some high-speed cogitating in the back garden. Then I shall be ready to chat with you in the train.”
“Yes, I have a kind of idea that you’ll be quite ready to do that,” said Alec rudely, as they went out into the passage.
XXVII
Mr. Sheringham Hits the Mark
Roger did not reappear until the car was at the front door and the other members of the party already making their farewells on the steps. His leave-taking was necessarily a little hurried; but perhaps this was not altogether without design. Roger did not feel at all inclined to linger in the society of Lady Jefferson.
He shook hands warmly enough with her husband, however, and the manner of their parting was sufficient to assure the latter, without the necessity of any words being spoken on the subject, that his confidences would be regarded as inviolate. The taciturn Jefferson became almost effusive in return.
Arrived at the station, Roger personally superintended the purchase of the tickets and deftly shepherded Mrs. Plant into a non-smoking carriage explaining that the cigars which he and Alec proposed to smoke would spell disaster to the subtleties of Parfum Jasmine. A short but interesting conversation with the guard, followed by the exchange of certain pieces of silver, ensured the locking of the door of their own first-class smoker.
“And so ends an extremely interesting little visit,” Roger observed as soon as the train started, leaning back luxuriously in his corner and putting his feet on the seat. “Well, I shan’t be sorry to get back to London, on the whole, I must say, though the country is all very well in its way. I always think you ought to take the country in small doses to appreciate it properly, don’t you?”
“No,” said Alec.
“Or look at it in comfort from the windows of a train,” Roger went on, waving an appreciative hand towards the countryside through which they were passing. “Fields, woods, streams, barley—”
“That isn’t barley. It’s wheat.”
“—barley, trees—delightful, my dear Alexander! But how much more delightful seen like this in one charming flash, that leaves a picture printed on the brain only to give way the next instant to another equally charming one, than stuck down in the middle, for instance, of one of those fields of barley—”
“Wheat.”
“—of barley, with the prospect of a ten-mile walk in this blazing sunshine between you and the next long drink. Don’t you agree?”
“No.”
“I thought you wouldn’t. But reflect. Sunshine, considered from the purely aesthetic point of view, is, I am quite willing to grant you, a thing of—”
“What are you talking about?” Alec asked despairingly.
“Sunshine, Alexander,” returned Roger blandly.
“Well, for goodness’ sake stop talking about sunshine. What I want to know is, have you got any farther?”
Roger was evidently in one of his maddening moods.
“What with?” he asked blankly.
“The Stanworth affair of course, you idiot!” shouted the exasperated Alec.
“Ah, yes, of course. The Stanworth affair,” Roger replied innocently. “Did I do that bit well, Alec?” he asked with a sudden change of tone.
“What bit?”
“When I said, ‘What with?’ Did I say it with an air of bland innocence? The best detectives always do, you know. When they reach this stage of the proceedings they always pretend to have forgotten all about the case in hand. Why they do so, I’ve never been able to imagine; but it’s evidently the correct etiquette for the job. By the way, Alec,” he added kindly, “you did your part very well. The idiot friend always shouts in an irritated and peevish way like that. I really think we make quite a model pair, don’t you?”
“Will you stop yapping and tell me whether you’ve got any farther with Stanworth’s murder?” Alec demanded doggedly.
“Oh, that?” said Roger with studied carelessness. “I solved that exactly forty-three minutes ago.”
“What?”
“I said that I solved the mystery exactly forty-three minutes ago. And a few odd seconds, of course. It was an interesting little problem in its way, my dear Alexander Watson, but absurdly simple once one had grasped the really vital factor in the case. For some extraordinary reason I appeared to have overlooked it before; hence the delay. But don’t put that bit in when you come to write up the case, or I shall never land the next vacancy for a stolen-crown-jewels recoverer to an influential emperor.”
“You’ve solved it, have you?” Alec growled sceptically. “I seem to have heard something like that before.”
“Meaning Jefferson? Yes, I admit I backed the wrong horse there. But this is a very different matter. I’ve really solved it this time.”
“Oh? Well, let’s hear it.”
“With the greatest pleasure,” Roger responded heartily. “Let me see now. Where shall I begin? Well, I think I’ve told you all the really important things that I managed to elicit from Mrs. Plant and Jefferson, haven’t I? Except one.” Roger dropped his bantering manner with startling suddenness. “Alec,” he said seriously, “that man Stanworth was as choice a scoundrel as I’ve ever heard of. What I didn’t tell you is that he gave Mrs. Plant three months in which to find two hundred and fifty pounds for him; and hinted that if she hadn’t got it already, a pretty woman like her would have no difficulty in laying her hands on it.”
“Good God!” Alec breathed.
“He even went farther than that and offered to introduce her to a rich man out of whom she would be able to wheedle it,
