than that. I referred to the process that is nowadays — slurringly termed `living in the past.' I frankly live in the past. It is the only mode of existence in which I find it possible to skip the dull days.'
His smooth, pleasant voice rarely lifted or altered its tone. With his elbow on the table, and the fingers of a frail hand shading his eyes, he was still mildly deprecating. But Bennett, who had been wolfishly eating, looked up. He began to feel the power of this vague-looking man's personality; the wire and subtle strength of his ruling in this house. Bennett did not like the man, because he had a nervous schoolboy sensation, under the look of those disconcerting pin-point eye pupils, of having come to class unprepared before a gently satiric master with a habit of calling on you in the last five minutes before the bell.
'Well, sir,' said Masters, still imperturbably, 'it seems to be rather a good, um, mode of existence. The young lady's death doesn't seem 'to have bothered you much, I should fancy.'
'No,' said Maurice Bohun, and smiled. 'There will be others like her. That has always been so. Er — we were discussing…?'
'Mr. Rainger.'
'Ah yes. Quite so. I was forgetting: a most abominable habit of mine. So Mr. Rainger is drunk? Yes, I–I should have imagined that such an unfortunate occurrence would have affected him in precisely that fashion. I found him very interesting and amusing, with strange claims to scholarship. For various reasons of my own, I — ah — what is the term I jollied him along.' John, would you mind not tapping your fingers on the table? Thank you.'
'Masters,' said John Bohun violently, 'I demand to know what that swine said. I've got a right to know!' He came round the table.
Maurice interposed in an almost distressed fashion: 'Oh, come, John. Come now. Surely I am not mistaken in thinking that — ah,' he frowned, 'Mr. Masters is attempting to work you into a nervous frame of mind? In that case,' explained Maurice, with a gentle bewildered expression, 'you must not expect him to tell you. Be reasonable, my boy. He has his duties.'
Bennett's dislike of Maurice Bohun was growing with every word he uttered. It might have been his intolerable assumption of rightness in everything, especially when he happened to be right; and his old-maidish way of expressing it. Bennett began even more fiercely to sympathize with Katharine. He noticed, too, that Masters had been feeling the discomfort. Masters, in whose big face there was a suppressed anger, folded up his own napkin and said a surprising thing.
'Do you never get tired, sir,' said the stolid practical Masters, 'of playing God?'
For a brief time the muddled expression held Maurice's face, as though he were on the verge of protest. Then Bennett saw a look of cool Epicurean pleasure.
'Never,' Maurice answered. 'You are shrewder than I had thought, Mr. Masters… May I suggest something? Now that you have removed the button from your foil, or perhaps I should say — ah — the tinfoil from your club, would it not be better to ask me questions in your best Scotland Yard style? I shall do my best to answer.' He looked rather anxious. 'Perhaps I can even prevail on you to state your whole problem? I should much appreciate it. I have some considerable interest in the subject of criminology. It is quite possible that I might be able to help you.'
Masters seemed affable. 'Not bad, sir. Maybe not a bad idea. Do you know the situation we're in?'
'Er-yes. My brother has been explaining.'
'Half an inch of unmarked snow all around that little house,' said Masters, 'and no footprints, no marks anywhere, except your brother's tracks; innocent, of course. '
'Of course. I really wish you wouldn't walk about in that manner, John. I think,' said Maurice with a cool smile, 'I can take care of you.'
'I rather think you can,' returned Masters grimly. 'But can you explain how that murder was committed, then?'
Maurice touched the bridge of his nose as though for absent spectacles, and his smile was apologetic. 'Why-why, yes, inspector,' he ventured. 'It is quite possible I can.'
'Hell's fire!' cried Masters, suddenly letting off steam. He got up from the table, obviously contemplating what seemed to him the queerest fish that had ever slipped into his net, while Maurice made clucking noises. Masters hesitated, swallowed, and sat down again. All the tinfoil was removed from the club now. 'Very good, sir. Everybody seems to have an explanation of it except the police. Very neat and stimulating it is. I tell you frankly, I pity old Charley Potter if he'd bad to fall in among this crowd without assistance. And I don't want to listen to any rubbish about anybody flying out of that house, or walking on stilts, or vaulting, or hanging to trees. There's not even a shrub within a hundred feet of it, and no mark whatever in the snow. And there was nobody hidden there when we looked. But it's a very queer place, Mr. Bohun… Why do you keep it all fitted out like that?'
'A whim of mine. I told you that I lived in the past. I often spend nights there myself.' For the first time there was a sort of hazy animation about Maurice. The hand shading his eyes opened and shut. 'You would not understand, I fear. I can take the same sheer utter pleasure in talking to you as I would to a deaf person. Mr. Masters, I have done a remarkable thing. I have created my own ghosts.' He laughed softly, and stopped. 'May I offer you more kippers, sir? Thompson, more kippers for the inspector.'
'Were you very much interested,' struck in Masters, 'in Miss Tait?'
Maurice looked concerned. 'To your question — ah-`Were you in love with Miss Tait,' I must answer, sir, no. At least I do not think so. I admired her as a sort of accidental reincarnation.'
'Yet you wrote a play for her, I think?'
'So you have heard,' murmured the other, wrinkling his forehead, 'of my modest effort. No. I wrote it for my own amusement. I had become rather tired of being called Dr. Dryasdust. ' He placed the palms of his hands together before him, weirdly as though he were going to dive, and hesitated. 'In my younger days I suffered from illusions. These lay in a belief that the proper value of historical study consisted in its economic and political significance. But I am old enough now to be aware that almost the only gift no historian has ever possessed is any knowledge whatever of human character. I am now, I fear, an old satyr. You will be informed (I think you have been informed?) of my senile ecstasies over Miss Tait? Your expression indicates it. That is only partly true. In Miss Tait I admired the charms of all the dead courtesans with whom I should like to have had love affairs.'
Masters drew his hand across his forehead.
'Don't mix me up, if you please! — You encouraged Miss Tait to sleep out in that pavilion?'
'Yes.'
'Which,' Masters went on musingly, 'you had got repaired and restored, and which was used in the old days for a king to visit his fancy ladies on the sly… '
'Of course, of course, of course,' interposed Maurice, hastily and rather as though he were impatient with himself for having overlooked something. 'I should have understood. You were thinking of a secret passage underground, perhaps, to explain the absence of marks in the snow? I can reassure you, There is nothing of the kind.'
Masters was watching him; and Masters pounced now. 'We might have to take it to pieces, sir. Tear off the panelling, you know, which you mightn't like… '
'You wouldn't dare do that,' said Maurice. His voice suddenly went high.
'Or take up the floors. If they're the original marble, it would be a bit hard on you, sir; but to satisfy ourselves…'
As Maurice got up from his chair, his frail wrist knocked over the walking-stick that was propped against the arm, and its heavy gold head struck the floor with a crash. That crash had its echo in Masters' voice.
'Now, sir, let's stop this fiddling and evading and being so neat and slippery. Let's talk like men and answer questions; do you hear me?' He struck the edge of the table. 'It would be no trouble at all for me to get a warrant to take that beloved little shack of yours apart piece by piece. And, so help me, I'll get mad enough to do it before very long! Now, then, will you or won't you give assistance in this thing?'
'Surely-ah-surely I had already promised to do so?'
In the long pause afterwards, that pause when Bennett knew that the chief inspector had got his man, John Bohun walked away from the window out of which he had been staring. John Bohun's face (when both he and his brother were frightened) had a curious resemblance to Maurice's which you would never ordinarily have noticed. It was as though Masters held two men in play, like a fencer who conceals his skill under clumsiness.
'Your-your subordinate,' said John, and pointed behind him. 'He's out there on the lawn. he's examining
.. What's he doing?'
