“It doesn’t matter about the handkerchief. Go on.”

“It does, because that’s why I couldn’t find them-after I’d dropped them. I mean. It was a dark green handkerchief with a sort of brown check on it. I can’t think why Marcia got it.”

Gay thought, “It’s exactly like a nightmare. Francis has been murdered, and we’re talking about the colour of Marcia’s handkerchief.” She said,

“Tell me what happened-tell me what happened.”

The couch was covered with crimson leather. Sylvia leaned back into the corner. Her black satin cloak had fallen open. The hood had dragged her hair and disarranged it. A bright spot of colour burned in either cheek. She said with a rush of words,

“Francis was here. I don’t know how he knew I had gone out. I opened the parlour door-”

“You left the light on.”

Sylvia looked faintly surprised.

“I never can remember about lights-I didn’t mean to leave it on. I suppose Francis saw it.”

“Sylly, you’re not telling me what happened.”

Sylvia began to breathe a little faster.

“I went right down to the end of the yew walk where the seat is, and the window, but I didn’t like doing it a bit, because I don’t really like that sort of place very much even in the daytime. I had a torch, and when I got to the window it shone through it, and Mr. Zero said, ‘Is that you?’ and I said it was. And he said, ‘Have you got those letters?’ and I said ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Hand them over quick, and put out that torch of yours,’ and I said ‘Why?’ and he got awfully cross and said to put it out at once. And then we heard someone running, and it was Francis.”

“How do you know it was Francis?”

Sylvia stared and shuddered.

“He called out. I was so frightened, I thought I was going to faint. Then they began to fight, and they were saying awful things. And Mr. Zero said, ‘Take that!’ and there was a shot, and the pistol fell down and I picked it up.”

Gay tried to think whether anyone would believe a story like this. She didn’t see how they could. She tried to think whether she could believe it herself.

The door opened and Algy Somers came into the room.

She said, “Sylvia, will you say that all over again. To Algy. Algy’s got to help us. You’ve got to tell him.”

Sylvia turned lovely plaintive eyes on Algy and said it all over again. As far as Gay could tell she used exactly the same words, like a child repeating a lesson that it has learned by heart.

Algy brought a chair over to the couch and sat down quite close to them.

“Who is Mr. Zero, Lady Colesborough?” he said.

Sylvia looked helpless.

“That’s what he called himself when he talked to me on the telephone.”

Algy said “Yes?” in an encouraging voice, and, when that did not produce anything, “Don’t you know his real name?”

“Oh, no,” said Sylvia.

“You were meeting him to give him some letters. Will you tell me why?”

“He wanted them,” said Sylvia with a sob. “He said they were his. He said he’d tell Francis-about the other things-” Her voice broke.

“He was blackmailing you?”

Two large tears rolled down Sylvia’s cheeks.

“Yes, he was. And Gay said not to meet him, and I wish I hadn’t now, but I didn’t want him to tell Francis about the paper.”

Algy said “Help!” to himself. He had awful visions of the sort of witness that Sylvia was going to make, he had awful visions of what she might be going to say.

He asked, “What paper?” and with a complete sense of unreality heard Sylvia say,

“The one I took when I was staying with the Wessex-Gardners. I can’t even remember the man’s name.”

It was Gay who said “Lushington,” and it was Gay who saw the white line come on either side of Algy’s mouth. There was one of those silences which seem as if they might go on for ever. Then Gay put out a hand to stop Sylvia, and Algy said very quietly indeed,

“You took a paper from Mr. Lushington’s room,at Wellings a week ago?”

“He made me,” said Sylvia. “He said he’d give me two hundred pounds. And I’d lost it at cards, and Francis would have been so angry.”

It seemed a complete explanation.

Algy said, “He being Mr. Zero?”

Sylvia nodded.

“So I had to get the letters when he told me to.”

Algy said, “I see.” He got up and walked in the room. The window was open. Francis Colesborough had gone out that way. There was a drawer pulled out on one side of the writing-table, pulled out in a hurry and left. He stood looking down at it without touching anything. He wondered what had been taken from it in that last hurry, and saw a packet of cartridges lying there and thought, “It was his own pistol. He snatched it up and went out.” There was a sheet of paper on the blotting-pad, a letter just begun. You don’t read another man’s letters, but Francis Colesborough was no longer another man. He was “the deceased” in a murder case, and one of the first things the police would do would be to read this letter.

Algy bent down and read it as it lay a little crookedly on the pale yellow blotting-paper.

There was no beginning. That halted him, because there was something strange in a letter which discarded all the usual forms. The strangeness sounded a warning bell. The check was momentary, yet in that moment he had braced himself against what might come. Without any change of expression he read:

“You disturb yourself unnecessarily. Neither Zero nor the agent is under the least suspicion. This rests in quite another quarter. M.L. has decided-”

The writing broke off there.

Algy Somers went back to the butler’s pantry and rang up Montagu Lushington.

XXI

Colonel Anstruther leaned back in his chair and frowned at Inspector Boyce. He had been a Chief Constable for ten years without ever coming to closer quarters with a cause célèbre than the pages of his daily newspaper. He now found himself threatened with a sensational publicity from which no man in the British Isles was more averse. He had an exact and orderly mind, and disapproved of crimes which could not be immediately docketed and pigeon-holed. He drummed on the arm of his chair and said,

“The Home Office is sending a man down. You’ll have to take instructions from him as to the political issues involved. He will be present when the safe is opened, and so will Sir Francis Colesborough’s lawyer.”

“That was a very queer letter, sir,” said Inspector Boyce.

“Damned queer. Damned treasonable, if you ask me. Home Office report on sabotage missing, Lady Colesborough confessing she took it under instructions from a blackmailer who calls himself Mr. Zero, and her husband, who she thought was going to kill her if he found out, writing, ‘Neither Zero nor the agent is under the least suspicion.’ This means Francis Colesborough was in on that business, and lord knows what we shall find when we open his safe. ‘Neither Zero nor the agent-’ Now suppose Francis Colesborough was Zero-the agent very probably his wife. They were staying at Wellings when the paper was missed. She’s a pretty, silly woman. Suppose her husband put her on to getting the paper for him. Well, say she did it-what was she doing last night? She says-where’s that statement of hers?” He plucked it angrily from the desk and leaned back again. “Yes, here we are. She says:

“ ‘I went into the yew walk to meet a man who called himself Mr. Zero. I have never seen him, and I do not know his real name. He said my husband was keeping some of his letters, and he induced me to take them out of the safe in our London house and bring them down to Cole Lester. He said they were his property and would have his name on them. I found a packet which was marked “Zero.” It was this packet which I took into the yew walk. I did not take any pistol with me. I have fired a pistol, but I do not possess one. I am not a good shot. There is a window in the yew hedge. When I reached this window Mr. Zero was there, but on the other side of the hedge and behind it so that I did not see him. He asked me whether I had the letters, and when I replied in the affirmative he told me to hand them over quickly. I heard my husband coming on the outside of the hedge to the left of the window. Mr. Zero was on the right. They were both outside the hedge, and I was inside. My husband called out. He said angry things, and used language which I would rather not repeat. I don’t remember whether Mr. Zero said anything then. They began to fight. I had a torch. I saw a pistol in my husband’s hand. I think Mr. Zero got it away from him. They were fighting just outside the window, and I was very frightened. I heard Mr. Zero say, “Now what about it?” and, “Take that!” There was a shot. I don’t know what happened to the letters. I don’t know what happened to Mr. Zero. I thought I was going to faint. I thought my husband was dead. I picked up the pistol-’ ”