Seeing is Believing

wanted to stop the experiment?'

They looked at each other.

Rich fastened the button of his shabby dinner jacket, and squared his shoulders. Though he seemed the most disquieted person there, you would also have said that he was the most resolute.

'I'm afraid we can't stop here arguing,' he dedared. 'Whether we like it or not, we've got to call in the police. I suggest that we delegate one of us to ring up now, and try to explain what happened. It won't be easy.'

'I'll ring the police, if you like,' offered Ann Browning.

Again they turned to stare at her, and she lowered her eyes.

'You see,' she explained hesitantly, 'I–I live in Cheltenham. But I work in Gloucester. I'm the Chief Constable's, Colonel Race's, private secretary. I know a little about these things, because Colonel Race sometimes takes me along with him. He says I can get things out of the women.'

She made a deprecating grimace with her lips.

'So I thought perhaps if I could get in touch with Colonel Race himself, it might help. But still, maybe it would be better if a man did it. Do you think so?'

Rich regarded her with deepening interest. Even Frank Sharpless pricked up his ears, as though he had never noticed the girl before. Hubert Fane's expression was one of mild pride.

'My dear young lady,' Rich told her with some fervor, 'the job is yours. There's the telephone. Go to it. But what in the name of sanity are you going to tell them?'

Ann bit her lip.

'I don't know,' she confessed. 'It may be rather nasty for us. Especially if they call in Scotland Yard: as they probably will, because Colonel Race won't like his own people making awkward situations here. But there you are. You see, I'm certain none of us did it. But-'

It was Sharpless who finished this for her. 'But,' he said rather wildly, 'you're just as sure about the other thing. So am I. I've got eyes. I've got ears. I'll take my Bible oath, I’ll swear to my dying day, that nobody could have got in here either by the windows or by the door!'

And, as a matter of fact, he was perfectly right.

Six

In the library of a house not far away, Sir Henry Merrivale was beginning to dictate his memoirs.

It was an impressive moment. H.M., his spectacles down on his nose and his bald head glistening, was piled somehow into the desk chair in the room whose walls were hung with his host's collection of old weapons. H.M. had assumed what he believed to be an impressive posture: his elbow on the desk, and one finger at his temple like Victor Hugo. He tried to refrain from looking pleased with this, and merely succeeded in looking stuffed.

'I was born,' he began, with suitable portentousness, 'on February 6, 1871, at Cranleigh Court, near Great Yewborough, in Sussex.'

This, Philip Courtney thought, was going to be easy.

Courtney had spent a lazy afternoon. He strolled along the Promenade. He had coffee at the Cavendish. He tasted the 'waters,' and visited the museum. Towards nine o'clock, after a late dinner, he boarded a number three bus at the Center and was put down by the conductor at the beginning of Fitzherbert Avenue.

Yet he remained uneasy.

There were only half a dozen houses in the avenue, each set back in its own grounds behind shoulder-high stone walls. As he passed the big white square house which must belong to Arthur Fane, he stopped and looked at it.

No lights showed at the front. The summer dusk lay warm on quiet trees.

He wondered how Frank Sharpless was getting on, and how love-affairs could so play the devil with a man's mentality. But he had little time to wrestle with this. At the last house in the road — with the Cotswolds looming behind it — he was greeted by Major Adams, who passed him on to the library.

Here he was met by Sir Henry Merrivale with a violent handshake but a glare of such active malignancy that Courtney hurriedly thought back over recent events, wondering what the man could have heard against him. It presently struck him, however that this must be part of H.M.'s normal social manner; for he could tell that his host was trying to be affable. At all events, H.M.. settled down at the desk, assumed his heroic pose, and indicated that he was ready to begin.

'Yes, sir?'

H.M. cleared his throat.

'I was born,' he said with suitable portentousness, 'on February 6, 1871, at Cranleigh Court, near Great Yewborough, in Sussex. My mother was formerly Miss Agnes Honoria Gayle, daughter of the Rev. and Mrs. William Gayle, of Great Yewborough. My father— notwithstanding the slanderous rumors circulated at the time — was Henry St. John Merrivale, eighth baronet of the name.'

Courtney made a slight noise.

'Have you got that down?' inquired H.M., peering over his spectacles.

'Yes, sir. But are you sure that's quite the way you want to begin?'

The corners of H.M.'s mouth drew down.

'What's wrong with it?' he demanded sternly. 'Who's writin' this book, you or me?'

'I only thought it might be more—'

'You let me alone, son,' H.M. urged, with an air of darkly sinister things hidden. 'I know what I'm doin'. I got my reasons for usin' just exactly those words. Burn me, if I don't do anything else in this book, I am goin' to right a few old misunderstandings and settle a few old scores. Are you goin' to take down what I say, or not?'

'Right-ho. Fire away.'

H.M., ruffled, settled down to resume his interrupted train of thought.

'These rumors,' he continued, 'were deliberately circulated by my father's second brother, George Byron Merrivale, who may be described with moderation as a bounder and a louse. I will give my readers some idea of this man's character.

'He was warned off the Turf in 1882; kicked out of Boodle's for cheating at cards in the following year; married, sometime in the nineties — I disremember when — Sophy Treliss, because she was supposed to have money; and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1904, leaving two sons, Robert Blandforth Merrivale and Hugo Parr Merrivale, who now run a bucket-shop in the City and are almost as crooked as he was.'

'No,' said Courtney, whacking the edge of the little table at which he had been set to take down the great man's reminiscences.

'Oh, for the love of Esau what's wrong now?'

'Libel.'

'Nonsense. You can't libel a dead man.'

'Yes, but these two sons aren't dead. Or at least you say they're not.'

H.M. considered this. 'You think maybe it's a bit strong.'

'Strong? It'll get you a thousand-pound suit for damages before you're even out of the first paragraph.'

'Well… now,' H.M. reflected again. 'Yes, maybe it is a bit on the outspoken side. All right. I'll tell you what we'll say. We'll say, 'Robert Blandforth Merrivale and Hugo Parr Merrivale, who are now in business in the City and have inherited many of the family traits.' That's all right, surely?'

'But-'

'I didn't say their father's traits. I said the family traits. Lord love a duck, sayin' they've inherited the family traits is practically praising 'em, ain't it?'

Though Courtney seemed to detect a flaw in this argument, he remained silent.

'I will now give a sketch of my childhood days,' he continued abruptly. 'These childhood days would have been pleasant enough had they not been poisoned by the aforementioned George Byron Merrivale.

'This weasel was always the first to insist that I should be sent to the dentist or have my hair cut. He 'heard my lessons' by asking me what was the capital of Bessarabia, or setting sums in arithmetic about the activities of a half-witted goop who was always goin' into a provision-merchant's and ordering enough groceries to last the