got top rating from Variety. (That's the show you put Nell Gwynn in, isn't it? Uh-huh. I thought so.) All right. We'll fix it up with Baumann. We'll shoot a million dollars into production. A million-dollars,' said Emery, savoring the words, 'Yes, and so everything's right we'll bring over some of these Oxford guys to act as technical advisers. You think I don't want an artistic success? Well, I do. That's just what I do want,' he said fiercely, and the car swerved again. He meant it. Jerking his neck sharply, he went on: 'If that's what she wants, she'll get it. But not here. What kind of a guy is this Bohun, I'm asking you? — when he don't know his own mind from one minute to the next? Soft. That's Bohun. And here's their trick. To get her away from me, in case I'd make her see reason, they're taking her down to this place in the country; then we've lost her, see? But I won't bother with that end of it. She can go to the country. But there may be ways of queering their game right here in London.'
'How?'
'Oh, ways.' He wrinkled up his forehead and lowered his voice. 'Look. Keep this under your hat. Do you know who's putting up the money for this show? Eh?'
'Well?'
'It's Canifest,' said Emery. 'This is where we turn:'
He maneuvered through the traffic at Hyde Park Corner, and swung into the courtyard of a white-stone block of flats overlooking the brown earth and spiky trees of the Park. Emery beat the hall-porter into submission about not announcing their names; then growled and slid a banknote into his hand. They went up through a cathedral dimness to a landing where the door of Number 12 stood open. 'Like a funeral,' said Emery, sniffing the thick odor of flowers; but he stopped as he heard voices inside.
In a blue drawing-room, bright with wintry sun through wide windows, were three men. One of them, who leaned back in a window-seat smoking a cigarette, was a stranger to Bennett. On a table among a litter of crushed orchids lay a brown-paper parcel unwound from its wrappings, showing gaudy ribbon and a gaudily colored nude siren painted on the lid of a five-pound chocolate box. John Bohun stood on one side of the table, Carl Rainger on the other. And, as Bennett watched them, he knew that there was danger here. You had only to come into the rooms of Marcia Tait, among her belongings and things that she had touched, to feel the damnable atmosphere tightening again.
'I don't know whether you are aware of it,' John Bohun's voice rose sharply, hornet-like in suggestion, and lowered again. 'It is customary to allow people to open their own parcels. Manners, we sometimes call it. Did you ever hear anything of the sort?'
'Oh, I don't know;' said Rainger stolidly. He had a cigar between his teeth, and did not lift his eyes from the box. He reached out and touched the ribbons. 'I was curious.'
'Were you really?' said Bohun without inflection. He leaned over the table. 'Get away from that box, my friend, or I'll smash your fat face in. Is that clear?'
The man in the window-seat said, 'Look here!' Extinguishing his cigarette with a hurried motion, he got up. Rainger did back away from the table then. He was still composed, his eyes motionless.
'It seems to me, John,' the third man observed, in a sort of humorous rumble which might have cooled any animosities but these, 'that you're kicking up the devil of a row over this thing, aren't you?' He came up to the table, a big man of slow movements, and fished among the wrappings. Then he glanced over his shoulder at Rainger, speculatively. 'And yet after all, Mr. Mr. Rainger, it's only a box of chocolates. Here's the card. From an admirer who has no doubts. Does Miss Tait get so few presents that you're suspicious of this one? I say, you didn't think it was a bomb, did you?'
'If that fool,' said Rainger, pointing his cigar at Bohun, 'is sane enough to let me explain. '
Bohun had taken a step forward when Emery knocked perfunctorily at the open door and hurried in. Bennett followed him. The others jerked round to look at them. Momentarily this interruption broke the tension, but it was as though the room were full of wasps, and you could hear the buzzing.
'Hello, Tim,' said Rainger. The malice crept into his voice, though he tried to keep it out. 'Good morning, Mr. Bennett. You're in time to hear something interesting.'
'By the way, Rainger,' Bohun remarked coolly, 'why don't you get out of here?'
The other raised his black eyebrows. He said: 'Why should I? I'm a guest here, too. But I happen to be interested in Marcia, and her health. That's why I'm willing to explain even to you and Mr.,' he imitated the other's manner, 'Mr. Willard. There's something wrong with those chocolates.'
John Bohun stopped and looked back at the table. So did the man called Willard, his eyes narrowing. He had a square, shrewd, humorous face, deeply lined round the mouth, with a jutting forehead and heavy grayish hair. 'Wrong?' he repeated — slowly.
'It wasn't,' Rainger went on, his eyes never moving while he spoke with sudden sharpness, 'it wasn't any unknown London admirer who sent that. Take a look at the address. Miss Marcia Tait, Suite 12, The Hertford, Hamilton Place, W. 1. Only half-a-dozen people know she intended to come here. No report could have got around even now, and yet this box was mailed last night before she had even come here. One of her — we'll say her friends sent this. One of us. Why?'
After a silence Bohun said violently: 'It looks to me like a joke in damned bad taste. Anybody who knows Marcia would know she never eats sweets. And this cheap tuppenny affair, with a nude on the cover-' he stopped.
'Yes. Do you think,' said Willard, and slowly knocked his knuckles on the box, 'it might have been intended as a warning of some sort?'
'Are you trying to tell me,' Bohun snapped, 'that those chocolates are poisoned?'
Rainger was looking at him with a dull stare. 'Well, well, well,' he said, and mouthed his cigar in unpleasant mirth. 'Nobody had mentioned that. Nobody said anything about poison except you. You're either too much of a fool or you're too discerning. Very well. If you think there's nothing wrong with them, why don't you eat one?'
'All right,' said Bohun, after a pause. 'By God, I will!' And he lifted the cover off the box.
'Steady, John,' Willard said. He laughed, and the sound of that deep, common-sense mockery restored them for a moment to sane values. 'Now look here, old boy. It's no good getting the wind up over nothing at all. We're acting like a pack of fools. There's probably nothing whatever wrong with the box. If you think there is, have it sent to be analyzed. If you don't, eat all you like.
Bohun nodded. He took a dropsical-looking chocolate from the box, and there was a curious light in his eyes when he looked round the group. He smiled thinly.
'Right,' he said. 'As a matter of fact, we're all going to eat one.'
High up in the dingy room at the War Office, Bennett paused in his narrative as this time the gong-voice of Big Ben clanged out the quarter-hour. He jumped a little. The remembrance had been almost as real, while he stared at the hypnotic light on H. M.'s desk as the room here. Again he became aware of H. M.'s sour moon-face blinking in the gloom.
'Well, strike me blind!' boomed H. M., as hoarsely as the clock. He made sputtering noises. 'Of all the eternal scarlet fatheads I've heard about in a long time, this John Bohun is the worst. 'We're all goin' to eat one,' eh? Silly dummy. The idea being, I suppose, that if somebody had poisoned the top layer, and that somebody was in the room-which, by the way, hasn't been proved at all, at all-then that somebody would refuse to take a snack? Uh-huh. If every one of the top layer of chocolates was loaded — which would be improbable-you poison the whole crowd. If only about half the top layer was loaded — which would be very likely-all you could be sure of was that the man who had doctored the box would be devilish careful not to take a poisoned one. Crazy idea. Do you mean to tell me Bohun made 'em do it?'
'Well, sir, we were all pretty worked up. And everybody was looking at everybody else…'
'Gor,' said H. M., opening his eyes wide. 'Not you too?'
'I had to. There was nothing else for it. Rainger objected; he said he was a sensible man-'
'And so he was. Quite.'
'But you could see his own bogey had scared him. After pointing out several good reasons why he shouldn't, he nearly flew off the handle at the way Bohun was smiling. Emery, who was drunker than he looked, got mad and threatened to cram the whole lot down his throat if he refused. Finally he took one. So did Emery. So did Willard, who was thoroughly amused. So did I. It was the first time I ever saw Rainger shaken out of his cynical stolidity. I admit,' said Bennett, feeling a retrospective shiver, 'it was an absurd performance. But it wasn't funny to me. The minute I bit into that chocolate it tasted so queer that I could have sworn…'
'Uh. I bet they all did. What happened?'
