mark across the bridge of his nose. He rubbed his eyes, and then replaced the glasses. He did. not look at his own slip of paper. But he went round the desk behind H.M., circled entirely around the desk, and stopped before Serpos's chair. His grimy white suit looked as dingy as the dawn that was coming through the windows, and as our own bedraggled appearances against it. But he stopped before Serpos's chair, and two clever men faced each other.
'I think that's your man,' Stone said.
'Do you, now?' inquired Serpos, studying him.
'I wrote it down a while ago,' Stone went on, 'and, when this young fellow said a certain thing, I got a hunch that I knew was true. That was why I asked you if I could add something to my explanation; get me? I won't read it to you. I'll tell it to you.
'I'm from the States. Willoughby's in my line. I'd heard of Cash-Down Willoughby. I never ran across him. But, when this young fellow said something about his habits with money, I remembered something else. I remembered a counterfeiter by the name of Shell Fields, who used to operate in the Middle West about sixty years ago. He ran a counterfeiting plant. He had a gang to shove the queer for him. He didn't trust 'em. He liked to keep money on tap. And so he doped out a scheme to do it — so his own gang would never know where he kept his money — so the police themselves wouldn't, if they nabbed him. He hid his money in a place where nobody on God's green earth would ever look for it,
He hid it in his own counterfeiting plant.
'See?' asked Stone, with a sort of toiling lucidity. 'Like that old Poe thing; what's-its-name? The most obvious place. Money stacked up against the wall, open to view in a counterfeiter's hang-out..’
'He'd take a bundle of twenty-dollar bills, maybe. Or fifty-dollar bills. Twenty in a bundle, with a band around them. The first three would be counterfeits on each side of the bundle, like a sandwich. Nobody would look further, after seeing they were rotten counterfeits. And inside the sandwich there'd be fourteen real honest-to-God bills. That's what Willoughby did right here in England. And you were the only one who saw through it.'
For the first time Serpos's expression began to change. It may have been the effect of the muddy dawn on his face, but I do not think it was altogether that. Stone spoke with the same toiling lucidity, now fast and eager. The light of the lamp over the desk seemed even more uncannily bright on his face, on all our faces, when Stone turned towards H.M.
'No, I'm a liar,' Stone said. 'You saw through it, too. That was why you asked him He'd have known it was counterfeit money. He wouldn't have stolen it unless it was real. He thought it was real. But he had to be sure. So friend Serpos, he just makes sure. Great-goddelmighty, I can see everything! He takes specimens of all of it, he sneaks them out of the safe, and takes them to the great authority on the stuff-Hogenauer. Hogenauer tells him it's genuine. But Hogenauer won't take a cut of the profits and keep his mouth shut. Hogenauer's too honest. Hogenauer's been like a cat on hot bricks for fear the police will throw him out of the country. So Hogenauer's going to get in the good graces of l the police by telling the truth about this `counterfeit' stuff, the stuff the police think is counterfeit ' Stone stopped, as though in a mighty uplift of understanding. 'And that's why,' he added, 'friend Serpos has got to kill him.'
Against the noise of the dying rain, we were aware of a new sound: which was silence. H.M. had ceased to tap his pencil on the skull. Stone turned towards him. Also we became aware-which Stone seemed to sense as well-that all through the night H.M. had been managing dark affairs after his own fashion. And now he had ceased to tap on the skull.
'You agree with me,' said Stone, 'don't you?'
'Me?' said H.M. He' scowled and seemed to wake from dozing. 'Oh yes. More or less. I mean, I agree with you all except on one point.'
Here Serpos (as though on a spring) got up from his chair. He pushed his hands out in front of him, and sheer exhaustion made his speech incoherent. 'You can never say I did it,' he insisted. 'Nobody is going to say I did it. It's not true. You fools, you colossal fools, don't you see who really did do it? I'll tell. I don't care. I — '
Somewhere in the quiet house heavy feet were banging and pounding, drawing nearer as though with a message. The door to the hall opened; the combination of dingy daylight and bright lamplight made an ineffectual mask of Sergeant Davis's face.
'Sir' he said, and breathed with his tongue between his teeth as though he had bitten it. 'Sir, there's something wrong. There-'
'Is there, son?' rumbled H.M. quietly. 'Take it easy, now.'
'It's Colonel Charters, sir. The-the maid — I don't know — the maid tells me he got into the car — and drove away hell-for-leather over half an hour ago — with Mrs. Charters and certain things '
It was Evelyn who pounced on the desk and picked up the sheet scrawled in blue penciling with H.M.'s hand. I think, although I am not sure of it, that she read it aloud; but the words seem before my mind in print rather than in voice.
''You're the murderer, Charters,' that writing seemed to echo; `and I'm letting you read this because you won't take a hint and because I want you to get away. They say poisoning is the meanest and lowest crime in the sight of the law; but, God help me, Charters, I can't do it to an old friend. Don't you see, they'll all be on to you to-morrow morning as soon as they've had a chance to look at that 'counterfeit' money that only yourself has handled so far? I can't stop them. But I can give you an hour to get clear if you go now; and if you cut the 'phone wires and disable the cars you'll have more. Besides, you're not so bad, Charters. You wouldn't fasten the crime on living people, who could suffer, when it would have been easy. You only swore it was a dead man. Worse things have been done. Worse things will be done again. H.M.'
The rain had ceased. In the weird and changing lights, a faint flicker of sunlight came up over the sea and began to sweep the cobwebs out of the room. We could even hear the drag and murmur of the surf. H.M. sat with his hand shading his eyes; and even when we spoke to him he did not take it away.
'He's a clever man,' said H.M. 'I hope, and I believe, that he'll get away.'
CHAPTER TWENTY
'And Joris Broke Silence-'
AHEAD the road, always winding through a green rolling chess-board of fields, had taken on glory after the rain. It was as though a ghost of the rain still hung in the air; the sunlight kindled wet foliage in an empty world, and H.M.'s Lanchester roared through it. We swept out of the mists at six-thirty: Exeter, Honiton, Chard, Yeovil: by Sherborne 'twas morning as plain as could be:
It was touch-and-go whether we could make it. I considered while I sat at the wheel of the Lanchester. It was not the actual distance between Torquay and London; on those early morning ways, despite narrow roads and blind corners, the speedometer-needle flickered always between fifty and sixty. It would be getting through the traffic at London, getting to our separate homes for shaves and top-hats, to reach I Westminster by eleven- thirty.
And Joris did not break silence; Joris could not be persuaded to break silence. H.M., in fact, was asleep. He lay back vast in the tonneau, his posterior nearly sliding down off the seat: his hat was over his face, and, though it danced and joggled with our rush, H.M. remained loggish. Occasionally there would proceed from under the hat a long, whistling snore.
'Can't anything wake him up?' said Evelyn despairingly. 'I've tried everything I know. I've tried offering him a drink of whisky, I've tried telling him the Home Secretary said he was a silly fathead, I've tried''
