transfer himself through the air, unseen, like Albertus Magnus: or some such scientific fairy-tale. Ken, that feller's either a lunatic or a quack or a genius. And you've got to find out which.'
CHAPTER TWO
The Inverted Flower-pot
I looked round at H.M., who was quite serious. He had turned to regard me with his head over his shoulder, the corners of his mouth drawn down and his face as wooden as ever; but with his eyes half shut in that sardonic, fishy look which I could not interpret. Then we pulled up at the veranda of the bungalow. A blue Hillman touring-car stood in the drive.
Colonel and Mrs. Charters were waiting for us on the porch. Charters I had not seen since the old days, when he had been H.M.'s right-hand man and very nearly his rival. But the years had not treated him, kindly in any way. He still kept his leanness, his stiff back, his clipped and courteous manner; yet he was an old man, and the expression round his eyes was one of worry and fretfulness — as though over
trifles. He looked as though he had missed the good things, and knew it. His dull-grey hair was close-cropped round the long head, his dull-grey eyes were kindly but tired, and I suspected that he had a set of false teeth to annoy him. The mufti smartness of his clothes was not so precise as I remembered it, but I instinctively addressed him as 'sir,' exactly as though it were the old days. Mrs. Charters, a good-natured dumpling of a woman in a print dress, bustled to make us welcome.
'I know it's the devil, Blake,' Charters said, 'to drag a man away on the evening before his wedding. Swear if you must, but listen: Merrivale and I decided you were the best one to help us.' His bony grip was genial, even if his voice sounded fretful. 'Come back here.'
He led us to the wide veranda at the rear, overlooking a faint-gleaming sea on which there were now shadows. A cool breeze ruffled through it. There were comfortable wicker-chairs, and bottles and a bowl of ice on the table. Charters picked up a cube of ice and dropped it, with a flat clink as though he were reflecting, into a tall glass. Then he looked out over the veranda-rail, down the height of the cliffs to where, far off, the beach was dotted with the heads of bathers in the surf.
'It's very peaceful down there,' he said. 'I only hope to God it remains so. This is a quiet corner of the world. I didn't want this business cropping up. I thought, when we'd caught Willoughby the other week, that we had the most in excitement Devon could provide.' He nodded towards a window, which evidently gave on his study, and at a tall iron safe just inside. I did not understand what he meant by Willoughby or by the glance at that safe, I only wish I had asked. Charters had turned irritable again. 'That was ordinary crime, but this cursed business-!’ Did you tell him, Merrivale?'
'I said Hogenauer was here, that's all,' grunted H.M.
'And,' I put in, 'that he was working on a machine or something to make himself invisible and carry him through the air. Look here, sir, you haven't brought me several hundred miles just to talk nonsense. What's it all about?'
Charters dropped another cube of ice into the glass. 'It's about this,' he said. 'I didn't know Hogenauer was in England, much less living within a dozen miles of here, until about three months ago. When you came up here did you notice another house — little brick house-just over the way? Yes. There's a Dr.-Antrim living there: youngish, quite a good fellow, with a very pleasant wife. My wife took quite a fancy to her. We've struck up an acquaintance, and we've more or less run in and out of each other's houses. One evening Antrim came up here bursting with news. It appeared he had just met an old acquaintance of his — Antrim had studied in Germany — about whose scientific talents he was enthusiastic. Yes: it was Hogenauer.
'Antrim was very anxious for me to meet Hogenauer. But we never did. I didn't let on to Antrim that I knew him, and Hogenauer has kept a very tight-closed mouth about knowing me. After he heard I was here, he only came up to see Antrim once or twice, though Antrim is his doctor and Hogenauer doesn't seem to have been well. I immediately looked him up at the police station. He's registered at the alien's bureau, and since last autumn he's been living in a neat little suburban villa at Moreton Abbot, not far from here. Well, I put a man to watch him. Of course, I had nothing to go on…. '
Charters handed round some admirable gin-fizzes. A little of his old sharpness, his old doggedness, had come back when he began to outline his facts. He sat down on the veranda-rail, his arms folded and hands cradled under bony elbows.
'He's been leading an ordinary life: except for one thing. On every alternate day, between eight and nine in the evening and often until much later, he shuts himself up in his back parlour. The windows are closed up with shutters of the old-fashioned wooden kind. The man I had watching him — Sergeant Davis — tried to get close and see what was going on. One night he climbed over the garden wall, crawled up under the window, and tried to look through chinks in the shutter. And this is what he says: he says that the room was dark, but that it seemed to be very full of small, moving darts of light flickering round a thing like a flower-pot turned upside down.'
H.M., who had been getting out his pipe, opened his eyes, shut them, and opened them again. His turned- down Panama hat gave his face the look of a malevolent urchin's. 'Oh, love-a-duck,' he said. 'Look here, old son. This Sergeant Davis, is he-'
'He's absolutely reliable. You can talk to him for yourself.'
'What about Hogenauer's household?'
'He keeps one manservant to do the cooking and cleaning. Or a series of them, rather. Two have already got the sack for being inquisitive. There's a new man there now.'
'Any friends? Close friends, I mean?'
Charters tried to gnaw at his cropped moustache. 'I was coming to that. As I say, I had my attention rather distracted by that Willoughby affair, which put me up to the eyes in work. But this much I can tell you. Hogenauer left Germany after, apparently, a quarrel with the government; and also apparently he didn't leave it with much money. Since he's been living at Moreton Abbot, he's had only one friend-in fact, outside Antrim the only man who's visited him at all. And this friend is Albert Keppel; he's dropped the `von.' '
'Uh-huh. The physicist,' said H.M., making a vacant circle in the air with his pipe. 'I heard him lecture. Pretty sound feller. And Keppel is a kind of exchange professor who's been lecturin' for a year at the University of Bristol. And Keppel lives in Bristol. And at Filton, in that same Bristol, is the biggest aeroplane works in England. And they're workin' double-shift, night and day, behind locked doors, on God-knows-what. Hey? Still…'
He made another circle in the air with his pipe.
'And still,' I said, 'I don't see what it has to do with me’
'Because L. is in England,' replied Charters sharply. He got up from the rail, and began to pace the veranda. He seemed to be looking back over the past. 'I dare say you didn't know L. Merrivale and I did — at least, we knew his name.'
'But not the man?'
'But not the man,' said Charters grimly, 'or the woman. L. may be a man or a woman. There's always been a dispute about that. All we know is that L. was the cleverest limb of Satan that ever plagued the Counter-Espionage Service. My God, Merrivale, do you remember '15. The tanks? L. very nearly got away with that information, if we hadn't stopped the bolt-hole. You see, L. wasn't and isn't a German, so far as we know; yet he might be German or English or French. He's a kind of international broker for secrets, and he doesn't care particularly whom he serves so long as he's paid. He's out after the big secrets. He gets them, and he sells them to the highest bidder.'
'But look here,' I protested: 'nearly twenty years after all the fuss, he must be a real Iron Man if he's still working. And surely you must have some clue- '
'We have,' said Charters calmly. 'Hogenauer has offered to tell us who L. is.'
There was a pause. The light was darkening to faint purple along the water, and the cliffs threw long shadows. Inside the house I heard a clock strike the quarter-hour after eight. Charter's long face, with its high ascetic framework of bones, was now as puzzled as H.M.'s.
'It was a week ago to-night,' Charters went on, considering each word, 'and Hogenauer came here-alone. It was the first time I had seen him face to face since the old days when we had him under observation. We've got a small household: just my wife, my secretary, and the maid: but they were all out. There's an inspector of police
