Seeing is Believing

average family for the next fourteen years.

'If I got the answer wrong, which I generally did, he would turn to my father and say, 'Henry, that boy's not being brought up right.' Then I got walloped because I wasn't being brought up right. Was this justice?'

H.M. gave the last sentiment a powerful oratorical flourish, and eyed his listener as though he expected an answer.

But he fell to brooding again.

'However, I am happy to say that life for George Byron Merrivale was not all ginger-pop either. At the age of eighteen months, when I first remember see in' him, I howled my head off. At the age of three I bit his finger almost through. At the age of five I poured hot treacle in his hat. But at the age of seven I fixed the bounder good and proper. I will now tell my readers how I did this.'

An expression of secret glee stole over H.M.'s face.

'You're gettin' all this down, are you?' he inquired anxiously.

'I am.'

'Every word of it?'

'Every word of it. But are you sure your memory goes back as far as the age of eighteen months?'

'Oh, I was somethin' of a prodigy,' H.M. admitted, not without complacency, 'but I was tellin' you about the measures I took for dealin' with my Uncle George.'

Again he assumed the stuffed air which indicated that he was now dictating.

'I unscrewed the big mirror from over my mother's dressing table. I took this out on the roof, among the chimneys, on a fine sunny day when I knew George Byron Merrivale would be driving along the road in his fine trap. I caught the reflection of the sun in the four-foot mirror, and I sent the beam from it smack into his eyes.'

(Courtney tried to picture his host, as a malignant small boy in large spectacles, sitting cross-legged among the chimneystacks with the mirror.)

'The louse had to pull up. He couldn't move. Forward, sideways, or back, wherever he tried to go I kept him blinded. This did not please him. Always noted for the vileness of his language, he now outdid himself. I could endure this no longer. Revolted by the bastard's profanity, I moved my mirror and sent its beam straight into the off-side eye of the horse.'

'Of the what?'

'Of the horse,' said H.M., coming off his dignity suddenly and just as suddenly resuming his pose again.

'This was effective. The noble animal took fright and bolted down the road at a speed only equaled by George Merrivale himself when pursued by his creditors. George Merrivale, taken off guard, went behind-over-ears into the road.

'He was not, I assure my readers, hurt in the least. Yet for this innocent escapade, which they will agree could've offended nobody with a sense of humor, I was chased three times round the stables before receivin' the worst walloping I had ever got prior to this date. Was that justice?'

He paused.

'Candidly,' replied Courtney, since an answer seemed to be expected of him, 'I should say yes.' 'Oh? You think so, hey?'

'If you don't mind plain speaking, I should say you must have been as villainous a little thug as ever walked.'

'Oh, I was no mollycoddle,' said H.M., obscurely pleased. He stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat.

'I will now deal with the time I put shaving-cream in George Merrivale's alarm-clock, so that every time the alarm rang the clock started to froth like a beer-tap. Or perhaps it will interest my readers more to hear-'

'Excuse me, sir. But did you ever devil anybody except your Uncle George?' 'How do you mean?'

'Well, I want to get the thing in perspective, that's all. If you go on like this, your readers will expect you to be giving him poison by the age of fifteen.'

'To tell you the truth,' nodded H.M., 'I thought of doin' that. I disliked that blister then, and I dislike him yet. This is doing me a lot of good, son. Haah! When I begin—'

'And do you date your first interest in crime from that time?'

H.M. looked blank. 'Crime?'

'I mean your success in solving criminal cases, both connected with the War Office and outside it?'

'Oh, son!' said H.M., shaking his head dismally and directing a pitying glance at his visitor. 'There's nothing, in that.'

'No, sir?'

'No. Lemme tell you so about some of the real things. I can't be bothered with these criminal cases any more. They don't interest me. I wouldn't touch one if-'

'Telephone for you, sir,' interrupted a lean and elderly maid, sticking her head into the room. 'Hey?'

'Gloucester wants you. Office of the Chief Constable, that's what they say.'

H.M. glowered at his guest with a look of deep, challenging suspicion, but Courtney kept a guileless face. H.M. cursed telephones and Chief Constables. But he plodded out into the hall to take the call. Courtney could hear him bellowing to the instrument like a sergeant-major on a parade-ground.

'Looky here, Race. I told you the cyanide was in the knitting-bag, and if you arrest that sister-in-law…'

Pause.

'What do you mean, another case?…

'Race, I tell you I can't! Burn me, I got important work on hand. I'm dictatin' my..

'Well, if you think it's goin' to be embarrassing, why don't you call in Scotland Yard?…

'Oh, you're going to? Then why bother me?..

'What do you mean, another 'impossible’ situation?…'

The telephone appeared to be speaking at length. 'Is that so, now?…

'And what's the name of this bloke who's been murdered?…

'Spell it. Oh! Fane! Arthur Fane.'

Philip Courtney jumped to his feet. The pipe he had been filling dropped out of his hands on the table.

He had been through a variety of emotions in the past hour. First there had been the necessity to keep a straight face, and refrain from laughing into H.M.'s empurpled visage. -

Second, it seemed to him that a man must be dead and buriable who could not find pleasure in these memoirs, provided Courtney himself didn't go mad first and provided libel, scandal, and scurrilousness could be reduced to a minimum.

But now—

Again he listened as H.M.'s voice bellowed out.

'All right, all right, all right! Looky here, Race. I'll do it on one condition. The chap you want from London is called Masters. Chief Inspector Masters….

'Yes, that's it. You get him into this hot water, and I'll jump in too…

'I can depend on that, can I?..

'All right, then. Yes, I'll go over now, if you're so blinkin' hot about it. All right. Hoo-hoo. G'-by.'

The receiver went up with a bang.

When H.M. plodded back into the library, he wore a somewhat guilty air which he tried to conceal under a truculent scowl. His corporation, ornamented by a large gold watch-chain, was truculent of itself.

'Get your hat, son,' he said. 'You're comin' along.'

'Where?'

'Just up the road,' insisted H.M., his truculence changing to honeyed persuasion. 'A solicitor named Arthur Fane has been polished off by his wife—' 'God Almighty!'

'But there seems to be some doubt about who did it.' All of a sudden Courtney was conscious of sharp little eyes boring into him from behind the spectacles; they made him jump.

'What's the matter, son?' asked H.M. casually. 'You don't know anything about it, do you?'

'No, but this autobiography—'

'Napoleon,' said H.M., 'could do five or six things at once. I can have a good shot at managin' two. You come along. I'll sort of look into this; and at intervals, I’ll sort of dictate to you over my shoulder.'