Seeing is Believing

H.M. soothed him.

'Steady on, Masters. I'll just bet you you're not really thinkin' about impossibilities at all. You're thinkin' about your great big beautiful case against Mrs. Fane. Now aren't you?'

'That's as may be, sir.'

'Aren't you? Because, son, that case is shot to blazes. She wouldn't be likely to give herself strychnine just to prove she died of tetanus. Now would she?'

Masters did not say anything. But he cast longing eyes at a murderous-looking Malay kris on the wall.

H.M. smoked reflectively.

'I was just wonderin'. If we eliminate Mrs. Fane, subject to change of mind without notice, is there anybody else we can eliminate?'

Masters was emphatic about this.

'No, there is not. In one of your cases, I wouldn't eliminate the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Whoever you think it can't be, that's always the person it is. What were you going to say, though?'

'I was just thinkin' about Dr. Rich.'

'To tell you the truth, sir, so was I.'

'Here's a chap,' argued H.M., 'who's had a lot laid at his door he's not guilty of. That business with the alleged rusty pin, for instance. The poor feller must have gone nearly out of his mind Thursday night.'

'Oh, ah,' acknowledged Masters. 'And no motive.'

'And, so far as appears, no motive. What do you think, son?'

'I think,' snapped Masters, taking up his hat, 'that we've done enough talking. I think that the sooner we cut along there and see Mrs. Fane and the cook, the sooner we can argue as much as we like. Are you ready, Sir Henry? And you, sir? Then what are we waiting for?'

Ten minutes later, when H.M. had been persuaded to put on a coat, they were ringing the front door bell at the Fanes'.

The door was opened by an effulgent Daisy, whose snub nose and freckled face shone as though they had been polished. Masters greeted her with a smile that was confidential and bland.

'Good afternoon, miss.'

'Good afternoon, sir.'

'And how is Mrs. Fane today? Better, I hope?'

'Ever so much better, sir,' beamed Daisy. The look she directed at H.M. had in it something little short of awe. 'She's sitting up a bit, in bed.'

'Do you think we might see her, now?'

'I don't see why not, sir. Miss Browning's with her now. But I'll have to go and ask. Will you come in?'

'No hurry, miss. No hurry! As a matter of fact, we'd just like to have a word with Mrs. Propper first. Now, now! Nothing to be alarmed about. Just a little thing where we think she can help us.'

'Auntie's in the kitchen. This way, please.'

Ann Browning was not upstairs. She was coming down the stairs at this moment, dressed in a white twill sports-frock with bare arms, and with much of the strain gone from her face. The bruise on her neck under the ear must have been covered with powder, for it was not visible.

Masters greeted her genially as she reached the hall.

'Afternoon, Miss Browning! Sorry to hear about that business the other night. You haven't been getting yourself attacked again, have you?'

Ann stopped short.

'You told him!' she said, looking reproachfully at Courtney. 'I wish you hadn't!'

'Hang it all, Ann, it might have been serious! You don't seem to realize the danger you were in.'

'It was nothing, Mr. Masters,' she assured the chief inspector, ignoring this. 'Please forget it. I don't want any bother. I–I suppose you've come to see Vicky? Is there anything new?'

Masters adopted an air of jocoseness which Courtney found somewhat heavy.

'Nothing much, miss. Except,' he lowered his voice, 'you can thank your lucky stars you were sitting on the lawn at Major Adams's place with us at four o'clock in the afternoon on Thursday.'

'Why?'

'Ah! Big secret, miss. Very dark. Come along, Sir Henry.'

While Ann stared at them perplexedly, Masters and H.M. followed Daisy towards the dining room. Courtney held back to speak to her.

'You didn't,' said Ann, with her eyes on the floor, 'you didn't ring up or come round on Friday or Saturday. At night, anyway. I was rather hoping you would.'

His day, which hitherto had been overcast and threatening rain, suddenly grew dazzling with sun. 'You mean that?' 'Yes. Of course.'

'My dear girl,' he roared, 'if I'd any idea, any idea at all, that you.. Good God, what's that?'

The noise, it is true, would have made anyone jump. It was due to a variety of circumstances. The dining- room floor was of polished hardwood which did not creak, but was, on the contrary, of exceptional firmness and slipperiness. Round it were scattered a few rugs like islands. It is unwise to step quickly on one of these rugs when you are not looking where you are going. Sir Henry Merrivale had committed this error.

Merely to say that H.M. took a toss conveys nothing. It lacks the element of majesty attendant on what happened.

His feet flew straight out ahead of him as though galvanized. His despairing howl was of no avail. After describing something of an arc, his ample posterior struck the floor with a crash that made the chandelier rattle, and sent him slithering six feet into a china-closet. There was a pause. Then there rose up in his powerful voice such a torrent of profanity, such a flood of blasphemy and vile obscenities, as must have made George Merrivale himself blush in the infernal regions.

'Sh-h!' urged Masters, also galvanized. 'No, no, no! Sh-h!'

The kitchen door was flung open, and Mrs. Propper dashed out.

'I won't have such language—'

She broke off abruptly. Something of Daisy's awe had communicated itself even to Mrs. Propper.

'Heaven save us,' she breathed, 'it's the big doctor.'

Qnly inarticulate gobbling sounds answered her, since Masters had fastened a big hand over H.M.'s mouth.

He removed his hand only when he judged it safe.

'Madam,' said H.M. getting his breath but continuing to sit on the floor, 'I'd sort of like to suggest that you got your verbs confused. I'm not a big doctor. But I need a big doctor. I need him like billy- o.'

'I do hope you're not hurt, sir?'

'Hurt? I'm paralyzed! I'm-'

'Would you like me to rub some embrocation on it?'

H.M. merely looked at her.

'Get up, sir!' hissed Masters, in embarrassed despair. He tried to lift H.M., who merely sat stubbornly like a mule until a sudden idea appeared to occur to him.

Then he got up of his own accord, quickly, and went round counting the rugs. His deadly injury seemed to be forgotten.

If on Thursday night Mrs. Propper would merely have called him'a wild man, this afternoon she showed no such tendency. To Mrs. Propper, a chastened woman, he was something only a little short of a wizard. He had saved Vicky Fane from dying of lockjaw.

Masters saw it, and resolved to take due advantage.

'Very interestin'!' growled H.M., surveying the room. 'Very!' Suddenly he seemed to remember; he groaned, and belatedly affected a bad limp; but, as this impressed nobody — even the anxious Mrs. Propper — he grudgingly discarded it.

'No sympathy,' he said. 'No sympathy for anybody! Looky here, ma'am. Chief Inspector Masters wants to ask you…'

'You ask her, sir,' said Masters softly.