and thrown down those stairs in King Charles's Room. Poor swine! He was too drunk to defend himself, but not too drunk to think. Thinking killed him. What's that you got in the bottle? Gin? I hate gin, but I'll take one neat. He wasn't very pretty in life, and he's even less pretty when he's dead. I can rather sympathize with him now.
'But,' Emery shrilled, 'he went out to-'
'Uh-huh. That's what you thought. Ever know that chap when he was too far gone to keep some part of his brain still clickin'? He went out, and surprised Somebody down in that room at the end of the gallery. Somebody strangled him and chucked him downstairs… I'm a pompous ass, ain't I?' inquired H. M., opening and shutting his hands. He peered at Bennett. 'I kept jeerin' at your bogies and noises. And, all the while I was sittin' in that room, that poor frustrated swine of a Rainger was lying at the foot of the steps with his face blue and fingermarks on his throat. But how was I to know it? I only suspected one thing. I didn't suspect murder. We only saw it when Potter and I looked at the stairs. -Easy, Masters! Where are you goin'?'
The Chief Inspector's voice shook a little. 'Where would I be going, sir?' he demanded. 'This puts the lid on it I'm going to find out where everybody in this house…'
'No you're not, son. Not if I can prevent you. Nobody else in this house is to know he's dead.'
'What?'
'That's what I said. Potter's guardin' him, and Potter won't let anybody in. What can we do for him now, except piously take off our hats? He's dead. We're goin' to leave him exactly where he is, Masters, for maybe a few hours. It may be a brutal trick; it may be insultin' the clay to turn it into a dummy for a show; but the show's goin' to go on according to program. When our little group goes to that staircase in the dark, and the candle's held up, they'll see him down there just as he fell. All right. I'll have that drink now.'
He took bottle and glass from Emery's unsteady hands, and then looked at Emery, who had sat down on the bed.
'I got some instructions for you, son. I want you to listen carefully, and for God's sake don't deviate from what I tell you. You're the only one who can carry it off to convince 'em, because you're Rainger's friend. You're not to go down to dinner. You're to stay here, with that door locked on the inside. If anybody comes to the door, no matter who it is or on whatever pretext, you're not to open it. You're to tell 'em through the door that Rainger is waking up from his stupor, but that he's a pretty unsightly object and you won't show him until he's presentable. Got that?'
'Yes, but-?'
'All right. As soon after dinner as we can manage, the whole crowd of us will come up here for a little experiment in King Charles's Room. Never mind exactly what it is. If anybody tries to rout Rainger out to make him take part in it, use the same excuse as before. Jim Bennett here will take Rainger's place in the experiment, and I'm goin' to be Marcia Tait. I don't dare have Masters directly on the scene; and he's goin' to be, for a certain very good reason, at the foot of the staircase. When we've gone into King Charles's Room, so that they still think you're back here, sneak out of this room; go down there; stand in the doorway, and watch. They probably won't notice you. They'll be on the landing, and there'll be no lights but a candle. Whatever you see or hear that you don't expect, don't say anything until I give you the word. Is that clear?'
Masters struck his fist on the table.
'But look here, sir! Can't you give us some intimation as to what you do expect? I'll fall in with this lunacy, if you like. But you're not mad enough to imagine that the murderer will give himself away when he sees Rainger's body down there, are you? The murderer knows it's there.'
H. M. regarded him curiously. With a shark-like gulp, and without apparent effort, he swallowed three fingers of neat gin. Then he stared at the glass.
'You still don't see it, do you? Well, never mind. I got some instructions for you too. Better come down with me and take a look at Rainger. I'm afraid The Devil hasn't left much of a signature; but we'll grub round a bit and see. Hey!' He shook Emery's shoulder. 'Pull yourself together, son. Yes, and you too. Fine nephew I got, lookin' pale around the gills! When you go down to dinner, act natural! Understand?'
'I'm all right,' said Bennett. 'But I was just wondering how much dinner you expect a person to eat. Is that included, with your little scheme in front of us? Look here, sir, it's not on the level! It's a damned dirty trick! Pull all the games you like on us, but what about those women? What are they going to feel like when they look down? Louise has had about enough shocks as it is; and you know she's not guilty. You know Kate isn't guilty either. Then what's the use in dangling a dead man in front of them, like a kid with a rubber spider on a wire?'
H. M. set down the glass. He lumbered to the door, and turned only when he beckoned to Masters.
'It's a conjurin' trick,' he said, 'that I can't explain now. But I've got to do it. And my rubber spider's goin' to bite somebody, son, unless I'm very much mistaken. All I've got to tell you is that you'll let me down badly, and you'll do something that won't be pleasant for you to remember when you see the consequences, if you give a hint to anybody as to what's goin' on. Understand? Anybody. Come on, Masters. '
He opened the door. Mellow and deep through the house, but with something in its note at once of terror and finality, quivered the stroke of the dinner-gong.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Gambits Replayed
'I think,' said Maurice Bohun, slowly brushing one hand across the palm of the other, as though he were wiping a slate, 'I think we are almost ready to proceed with the curious experiment Sir Henry has suggested?' He looked up from contemplating his hands. 'I may say that it will not, of course, lead us to anything that concerns the actual murderer of Miss Tait. Although at Sir Henry's express wish I have refrained from telling all of you the fact that is, until such time as a certain gentleman shall be in a condition to defend himself — nevertheless we ourselves have little doubt. But. '
How Bennett got through that dinner he could never afterwards remember. Against his own inclination and even against his own will, something had compelled him to go to the King's Room before he went downstairs. He could not be content, with his mind full of troubled horrors as to what the thing might look like, until he had looked at it and curbed his imagination. Afterwards he wished he had not. It was a price. Inspector Potter stood guard at the door to the gallery: there were no lights on in the room, and only a sickly moonlight had begun to penetrate through the windows. But the door to, the secret staircase was open in a strong draught, and flashlights moved at the bottom where H. M. talked in low tones to Masters. He moved over to this door. He had not realized how high and steep and dangerous this staircase was: how the uneven stone steps, between narrow walls that smelled like a cellar, seemed to plunge down into a pit. Masters' light flashed up into his face so suddenly that he almost lost his balance. Then the beam turned down again on the other face, the face that was twisted back over one of the treads, and did not blink its eyes before the light.
Dinner, to which Bennett presently sat down with five others — H.M., Maurice, Willard, Katharine, and Louise was turned by Maurice into a hideous formality. Afterwards Bennett liked to forget it. Everybody except the host was conscious of a new strain, as though they felt without being told that death had come to the house again. When he went down to the library, he saw Louise for the first time since landing in England. She sat near the fire, wearing dark blue, with her mouse-colored hair flat and parted in the middle. In whatever cloudy mental picture he had already formed, he had always remembered her as short and thickset, her freckles predominating and her age as vaguely twenty-eight. He was surprised how thin she seemed now, her eyes dark-rimmed but surprisingly fine. Emotional strain had made a ghost of her, and yet a far from dowdy ghost. Her age might have been forty.
He mumbled a platitude or two. There was nothing to say, and he would not make the mistake of trying to say it. She smiled mechanically when she extended her hand; then clasped it about a handkerchief and stared into the fire, seeming to forget the rest of them. Maurice-burnished out in prim elegance-was very gracious, and extolled the sherry he offered them 'to replace the detestable fashion of cocktails.' His thin laugh rang under the roof. Jervis Willard was quiet and courteous, but he had begun to pace about the library with that caged stride of his, and you saw that he needed a shave. When H. M. lumbered in, blinking and mumbling amiably at everybody; Bennett thought that they all started a little. He could not tell whether the subject of the night's experiment had yet been mentioned. Katharine came down last of all. She was in plain black, without jewelry or ornament, but her shoulders gleamed against the dark panelling.
