caught out in something or other. I'm bound to be hanged for something.' Why the suspicious behavior, the behavior that would have put a halter about any man's neck; why the manifest terror with regard to Marcia, when he could be proved innocent of…? The man with a bullet in his chest suddenly moaned and twisted. Bennett glanced down. His glance met the paper under his foot, moved away, and swiftly came back. The uneasy handwriting, with the long slopes and scrawls of a drunken man, staggered along a first line.
'Sorry to mess up the house. Please forgive me, but I've got to do this. You might as well know now that I killed Canifest”
At first Bennett's stunned wits refused to take in the sense of this. He could think of nothing but that it might be a slip. Then the implications behind came on him like a light that was too bright, so that for a second he could not fit together all the cloudy puzzles it explained. He bent down and with an unsteady hand picked up the sheet of notepaper.
`that I killed Canifest. I didn't mean to do it. All my life I've been trying to explain to people and myself that I didn't mean to do what I've done, and I'm sick of it; but I wouldn't have struck him if I'd known about the heart. I only followed him home to argue with him.'
Pictures of John Bohun flashed through his mind, of behavior and attitudes and mirth: his careful insistence that he had seen Canifest early in the evening, and yet his very late arrival at the White Priory…
'But I swear I didn't kill Marcia, or anything to do with it, and it's only a horrible accident you came to think so. I don't know who killed her. What difference does it make now? When she's gone, there's no reason for me to stay. God bless you and keep you, Kate. Cheerho old girl.'
The signature, 'John Ashley Bohun,' was clear and firmwritten.
There was a pungent medicinal smell in the room now. Masters was focussing a flashlight down, and Bennett heard the snip of scissors and the rapid clinking from Dr. Wynne's black satchel. That draught had blown the powder-smoke away. Bennett beckoned fiercely to Masters, holding up the sheet of notepaper. The chief inspector nodded. He gestured towards Willard, who stepped over swiftly, with no more than a quick curious glance in Bennett's direction, and took the flashlight.
'Water,' said Dr. Wynne. 'Luke-warm. Get it, somebody. None here. Where the hell's that stretcher? I can't extract the bullet here. Get his head up a little; one hand'll do it. Steady…'
Masters came over, looking rather wild-eyed. Bennett thrust the sheet of paper into his hands and hurried out after water. The door of his own room was open just across the way. He went in, got the washbowl, and overturned a little sheaf of colored matches. Katharine Bohun was waiting just where he had left her. She seemed more quiet now, although her hands were clenched together.
'He didn't — quite,' said — Bennett, hoping he was telling the truth. 'They think they can pull him through. Warm water: where's the bathroom?'
She only nodded, and opened a door just behind her. There was an ancient top-heavy geyser-bath in the dingy oilcloth room. With steady fingers she struck a match; the gas lit up with a hollow whoom, and little yellow- blue flames under the tank flickered on her face as she took the bowl. 'Towels,' she said. 'You'll want those. Sorry to be such a little fool. I'll come back with you. But. '
'Stay here. They'll be bringing him out in a minute. Easier not to watch that.'
They exchanged a glance, and suddenly she said a queer irrelevant thing. She said: 'I might be a murderer, you know.'
When he went back to the other room Masters was standing motionless, the note half crumpled-up in his hand. He took the bowl of water over, and held it steadily at Dr. Wynne's direction. 'They'll pull him through.' Did he hope that? Better for him to die. Better that the nervous, restless, tortured man now beginning to twist and gasp on the floor should go out under Dr. Wynne's fingers than live to step into a dock for the murder of Lord Canifest. He would be cleanly dead, and blessed or damned, before the law could go fumbling with its greasy rope and splashing mud on names. Bennett tried to imagine what had happened last night 'I followed him home to argue with him' — after Bohun had seen Canifest at the newspaper office. But all he could see was the water turning slowly red in the washbowl.
When at last he was instructed to put it down, he heard Masters' voice.
'That's it, then,' said the chief inspector heavily. 'That's why. But how could we be expected to know? He came up here, got that revolver out of the drawer there,' Masters pointed; 'and sat down. It took him a long time to write that note. Look at the long and short spaces between the sentences. I suppose this is his writing?' Masters rubbed his forehead. 'Well. Then what did he mean by this? He had it in one hand-used two hands to put the gun against his chest and it fell out when we picked him up.'
He extended in his palm what resembled a small triangular piece of silver, cracked along one side as though it had been broken off. Masters held it out briefly, and then clenched his fist.
'May I ask,' said a thin cool voice just behind Masters, 'whether there is any hope?'
'I don't know, sir.'
'Whether it was a pity or not,' said Maurice Bohun — in just that voice of sane, unanswerable common-sense which at certain wrong times and places can be the most infuriating — 'whether it was a pity or not, I fancy, depends on what he wrote in that note I observed you reading. May I ask its contents?'
'I'll ask you, sir,' said Masters, heavily but just as quietly, 'to look at this note and tell me if it's your brother's handwriting. I'd also like to ask, Is that all this thing means to you?'
'I detest stupidity,' Maurice pointed out. He gave each syllable its complete emphasis, — but a little network of veins showed in his forehead. 'And I fear he was always a fool. Yes, this is his writing. Now, then…”
'So he killed Canifest? Then it is to be hoped that he will not live. If he does, he will hang.' Maurice snapped the note back to Masters just as he snapped out the last word.
As though taking up the sound, a babble of voices sounded downstairs; and the clumping of heavy footfalls. Dr. Wynne got up with an exclamation, and Bennett hurried out into the gallery. He looked round for Katharine, but she had gone: a thing he noticed with an inexplicable sense of shock and uneasiness. Downstairs, as though echoing in his mind a summons to find her, a telephone-bell was ringing shrilly. The hall was full of alien figures as the stretcher was brought along, and still the telephone bell kept on shrilling.
'I do not know,' said Maurice's voice, 'what is delaying Thompson. He has orders, most definite orders, that a telephone is in this house for the purpose of being answered immediately, if at all. - You spoke, inspector?'
'I want to know, if you don't mind, where you and all the others were when you heard the shot?'
Maurice moved out into the hall to let two uniformed figures pass. Then he turned. 'Surely-ah-it cannot have occurred even to your mind, inspector,' he inquired, 'that this is another murder? It really is not. I myself was first on the scene of the unfortunate business. I had rather feared something of the sort, and I was curious to speak to my brother and understand the kinks that had grown into his mind.'
There was a shuffling inside the room.
'Easy, boys,' barked Dr. Wynne's voice; 'take him easy.
Through Bennett's brain went the words scribbled on the paper: 'God bless you and keep you, Kate. Cheer- ho, old girl.' Behind a blue-uniformed figure showed now a brown leather boot.
'It is another murder, I think,' said Maurice, staring at the body, 'that you need to concern yourself with. Lord Canifest… Yes, Thompson? Yes? What is it?'
For a second Thompson, who had almost run along the gallery, could not keep his eyes off the figure on the stretcher. His face was wrinkled up, and he opened and shut his hands spasmodically. Then, as Maurice's gentle satiric voice flowed smoothly on in asking the same question, he pulled himself together.
'Yes, sir. It was only… yes, sir. What I wished to tell you, there is a gentleman downstairs asking for Mr. Bennett. It's Sir Henry Merrivale, Mr. Maurice, and — “
Both Bennett and Masters whipped round. Through the former went suddenly a surge and exultation that was like a shout of triumph..
'— and another thing, sir…'
