'Now, now. Not about any of those things, ma'am. It's some new evidence that's bobbed up since. It may sound rummy, and you may not see what I'm drivin' at, but just you answer the questions like a good gal-'
This was the best way of handling her, for it shook her up. 'You needn't treat me like a child,' she said coldly. 'I'm quite capable of understanding that the silliest questions may be important. Or may seem so to you.'
'Ahhh! That's better. What was your maiden name, ma'am?'
She remained looking fixedly at him. 'So,' she said in a flat tone. 'You know about it, then.'
'What was your maiden name?' 'Elizabeth Ann Lord.'
'And, if the question don't seem too insultin' what was your father's name?'
She spoke quickly. 'You say was. You are quite right. My father's name was John Stuart Lord. He is dead.'
'The notorious `L.'?' inquired H.M. in an exceedingly casual tone.
'So they inform me. I never knew him well. I–I have not seen him since I was a child.'
'When did you learn he was dead?'
'Only three days ago. There was a notification from the police in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Also a long letter from a firm of solicitors-' Her breathing was quicker and her colour heightened: quite suddenly she seemed to drop her defences. 'A minute ago I talked to you about fairness. I'll be fair, if you will. Is it something to do with my father? Is that why you've been spying on us?'
'Spying?'
She made a gesture of impatient helplessness. 'We can't get anywhere, you can't even accuse me of anything, unless you come out and say what you mean. Yes, spying. That man,' she nodded curtly towards me, 'was spying on me tonight. And long before that. I thought, when I saw him as a policeman, that he seemed familiar — somehow. Now that I've seen you two together, I remember where I saw him before. He drove up to Colonel Charters's house early in the evening with you. He was the man Larry, my husband, saw driving away from the house. Larry heard then and there that he was there under a false name, and… well, we're not deaf or dumb or blind, Sir Henry Merrivale. We know who you are.'
I have seldom in my life felt such a worm as under that brisk little lady's eye. But over H.M.'s face went a change like a shadow off the sun; I could not tell whether it was curiosity, or relief, or mirth.
'Ho ho ho,' he said. 'And so you thought the old man's hounds were bayin' on your trail, hey? Is that why you been nervous?'
She contemplated him.
'I do not think it is funny,' she observed gravely. 'Let me tell you something about myself. It is a little easier than I had anticipated. I was born in Germany, and I lived there until I was ten years old, when my mother died: that was just at the end of the war. I did not know what my father was doing. But I saw him kill a man once. It was horrible, because my father was very tall and handsome and pleasant. It was in our flat at Berlin. It was horrible, because his pleasantness did not change: he just took out a gun and shot the man, and afterwards some men came and took the body away. My father bought me a toy because I had been frightened. Several men came often to visit him.'
Again I heard that curiously Teutonic inflection in her voice, which I had heard once or twice at the villa in Moreton Abbot. She shook some of it off, and gestured.
'Of course I knew what was going on. Children do. But I didn't mind, really. When the war was over, and my mother had died, I came to stay with a cousin of hers here in England. My father disappeared. I have not seen him since then, except once about ten years ago, when he came to my `aunt's' house unexpectedly and said he must lie low for a day or two, because — ' She stopped. 'That does not matter. I visited Germany several times. That was where I met Larry; I think he told you he studied there? Also, that was where he met Mr. Hogenauer, I think.
'But I never saw Mr. Hogenauer until he turned up in this neighbourhood some time ago. That is to say, I thought not. But all the same I could have sworn I had met him somewhere before — and I couldn't think where. I kept racking my brains and racking my brains. It wasn't until three days ago, when I got that letter from America, that I realized. It came to me all of a sudden, when I was reading the letter about my father: I saw a face. Mr. Hogenauer had been one of the men who came to our flat in Berlin when I was ten years old.'
She leaned forward, hammering the palm of her hand slowly on the arm of the chair.
'And for a good many months he'd been hanging about us. Why? He was horribly secretive about himself. I thought there was some game, without knowing what game. I still don't know. Then I heard from the colonel that you yes, I'd heard all about you and something about your department were coming down here. I heard something vague about L. On the night you turned up, I had been put into such a position that I gave strychnine salts to Mr. Hogenauer by accident. On top of all that, I found on the desk-blotter in Hogenauer's study the blottings of some words from a letter he'd written, and it showed that there was something-something big, and ugly, and-' Again she stopped. 'But why are you spying on us? We haven't done anything. You know that the least bit of scandal will ruin Larry's career. Why? Why?'
There was a silence, after blue devils released at last, and a breathless silence.
'I see,' said H.M.
For a moment he remained ruffling the two tufts of hair at either side of his big bald head. The skull looked back at him from the desk. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Evelyn, who was studiously examining every side of her cigarette.
'Ma'am,' said H.M., clearing his throat, 'it's the blinkin' awful cussedness of things in general that's tangled things up for you as well as us. We've been worried about that somethin' Big and Ugly you talk about. And apparently it's a big ugly turnip-ghost: nothin' else. You've been worryin' yourself unnecessarily. We weren't spying on you.'
'I don't believe you,' she said sharply, and sat up.
'All right. You don't have to. It's true, though. Here, now. Let's go back to important things. Your husband knew Hogenauer pretty well, didn't he? Wait! I can see you flashin' out with that, `Not particularly, before you even open your mouth. Don't. I mean, he'd got more than a nodding acquaintance? Uh-huh. Leave it at that. Did you know Hogenauer tolerably well too?'
'No more than a nodding acquaintance. No better than I knew any of Larry's other patients. I rather liked him, really; but for some reason-maybe it was subconscious memory; don't laugh! — I felt a bit afraid of him without knowing why.'
'Yes. Now…' He turned round towards me, and his mouth silently framed the word, 'slush': which gave me something of a start until I remembered the cant term for counterfeit money. I got out of my pocket the inevitable ?100-note, which had dogged my travels all night, and handed it over to H.M. He shook it in front of her. 'Ever see this before, ma'am?'
She was evidently puzzled, and looking for traps. 'Not many of them,' she said. 'It's a hundred-pound note isn't it?'
'It's a counterfeit note.'
'Is it? I wouldn't know.'
'Still and all, bein' in this neighbourhood,' said H.M. persuasively, 'you'd have heard all about the capture of Willoughby, the forger, and the discovery of his plant for makin' slush: hey?'
Quite suddenly Elizabeth Antrim began to laugh. It was an honest sound, and it brought honest colour to her face.
'I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry, she told him hastily. Her blue eyes were shining-despite the puffiness of the lids. 'But — you will have me up on one charge or another, won't you? So. If it's not one thing it's another. I'm not a counterfeiter. Really, I'm not. Ask Colonel or Mrs. Charters.'
The question to be taken up next, of course, was that of the newspaper which Mrs. Antrim said she had found in Hogenauer's scullery, and in which the note had been wrapped up. I think we were all a good deal startled when H.M. said nothing whatever about it. He merely folded up the note and put it into his waistcoat-pocket, where he patted it like a handkerchief. Evelyn glanced up quickly from her cigarette.
'Did you know, by the way,' asked H.M., without any change of tone, 'that there'd been a burglary here last night?'
For several seconds the woman did not speak; she appeared completely incredulous. Then she moistened her pink lips.
'Burglary,' she repeated rather than asked. 'But that's impossible! I mean, nothing was stolen. When you say
