“Well, sir, that was rather stupid, I know, but I’d come to see Moira, and if I ran into anyone I didn’t want to be recognized. You see, we weren’t quite ready to give out our marriage.”

Moira had let the pillow fall. When Lucius turned to her and said, “Have you married this man?” she said, “Yes.” There was a pause. Then he said,

“What am I going to do with you?”

She tilted her head and looked up at him.

“You won’t really like the headlines in the papers.”

Miss Silver said,

“Mr. Bellingdon, this has been an attempt upon your life. In view of the other deaths which have occurred it cannot be hushed up.”

Moira turned upon her.

“Hold your tongue, damn you! What’s it got to do with you?”

Lucius came in harshly.

“I am not concerned with anything in the past. I have to deal with what has happened tonight. In the morning I shall report to the police and everything will be in their hands. For now, you and your husband will leave this house. You can go to your room and bring away whatever you can carry. I presume he came in a car. You can go away in it. Masterson will remain here while you fetch what you want.”

She looked down at her green house-coat.

“I can’t go like this.”

“You have ten minutes. Make the most of them!”

Half way to the door she turned and came back.

“Look here,” she said in her old drawling voice, “we might as well do a deal. Let me have the necklace and I’ll clear off for keeps.”

The blood rushed to Lucius Bellingdon’s head. He swung round and picked up the hand-telephone from the table beside his bed.

“I give you ten minutes! If you’re not out of the house by then, I shall call the police!”

“Well, you needn’t be so cross about it,” she said and turned again towards the door. Clay Masterson’s voice followed her.

“Not very clever, my sweet. That damned necklace is about as safe as an atom bomb.”

She said contemptuously.

“You haven’t any guts. He won’t prosecute.” She went out of the room, and the door fell to behind her.

Lucius turned to Clay Masterson.

“There is no question of my prosecuting or not prosecuting, as you very well know. Murder isn’t a private matter, and you have both done murder and attempted it.”

“Prove it!”

It was the last thing any of them said before Moira came back. If the occasion had not been a tragic one somebody might have laughed. She had dressed, and she was wearing two fur coats and carrying a miscellaneous armful of suits and dresses. A crammed suit-case gaped in the doorway.

Lucius Bellingdon spoke to David, on guard over Clay Masterson.

“You can let him go.”

The cord of Miss Silver’s dressing-gown was unknotted, the crossed wrists were set free. Masterson stretched, went over to the door, and picked up the suit-case, forcing it to close. On the threshold he turned.

“Moira’s right, you know, about the headlines and the general stink. And you won’t be able to prove a thing. Better let dead men lie.”

They came down to the car which waited at the turn of the drive. It stood in deep shadow, and in this shadow someone moved. Masterson dropped the suit-case and reached for and found an arm. Even in the dark it was beyond cavil the limp and undermuscled arm of Arnold Bray. He quailed, cried out, and tried to twist away, but Masterson held him.

“What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you. I knew you would come back to the car. I want my money.”

“And what are you supposed to have done for it?”

“I did what you told me-I loosened the nuts on his car.”

“And you will stand in the dock for it if you start blabbing!”

“I’ve got to have the money!”

“I haven’t got it to give you. You’ll have to wait for it.”

The grip that held him had loosened. Arnold stepped back.

“You’re clearing out-the two of you? I wish I had never had anything to do with you and your dirty work! For the last time-do I get what you promised me?”

Clay Masterson reached for him, swung him about, and knocked him sprawling amongst the bushes. Moira was already in the front seat, her armful of garments tossed in behind. He threw the suit-case in after them, slid into the seat beside her, and started the car.

As the sound of the engine died away, Arnold Bray got to his feet. He had a deep scratch on his cheek and quite a few bruises. His eyes were overflowing with weak vindictive tears. He shook his fist in the direction which the car had taken and cursed it. Presently he slipped a hand into his pocket and brought out three hexagonal objects. He could not see them, but it gave him great pleasure to feel them there. The fingers that ran over them came away greasy. He stooped down and wiped off the grease on the leaves and pine needles under the trees. He had taken off three of the nuts from Clay Masterson’s off front wheel and he had loosened the others. He had, in fact, repeated exactly what he had done under Masterson’s orders to Lucius Bellingdon’s car. He had a long score to settle with Masterson. He thought that he was in the way of settling it. What?-he was to be the dogsbody, to do what he was told, to take the most damnable risks, and to get nothing-nothing after all? When he thought of the risks he had run, a cold sweat came out on him and trickled down his back. He lifted the hand which held the nuts and flung them wide and far among the bushes which bordered the drive. He had been a fool and he was getting a fool’s payment, but he could do some paying too. Clay and Moira were gone and he could whistle for his money. But how far would they get before the wheel came off?

If they had had to come away in all that of a hurry they would be making for the coast and a quick get-away across the Channel. That meant the Emberley road. Let Clay Masterson find out what it felt like to plunge down Emberley Hill on three wheels. Let him find out!

Chapter 36

THEY were perhaps a quarter of the way down the hill, when Masterson became aware that there was something odd about the steering. He might have noticed it sooner if he and Moira had not been engaged in so violent a quarrel. If she had not been such a fool as to drag in the necklace, if he had not been such a fool as to tie that wretched handkerchief over his face, if each of them had had the sense to steer clear of the other, if they had never met-on some such mud-slinging lines recriminations were being bandied, until in their sound and fury normal perception was blotted out. It was only when the car swerved dangerously and his automatic attempt to right it failed that Masterson came back with a shock to the fact they they were on the most dangerous hill in the county, and that the car was out of control. Moira came to it no more than a panic moment later. She screamed, he cursed her, and the car ducked and swerved to the right.

They had not Lucius Bellingdon’s luck. They were on the steepest part of the hill with a sheer drop into the old Pit quarry on the right. While the wheel which Arnold Bray had loosened went bounding on down the descending road the car lurched to the brink, hung there for a moment, and plunged to the rocks below.

The news came through in the early morning hours. Someone had seen the gap in the low bank and reported it. There was splintered glass on the edge, and a gold shoe which had belonged to Moira Herne. It must have been among the welter of things she had thrown in at the back of the car, but just how it had been flung clear when everything else went down was one of those happenings which no one can explain. The Emberley police certainly did not attempt to do so. They came out to investigate, and they found the off front wheel at the bottom of the hill, and Clay Masterson and Moira Herne at the bottom of the quarry, both of them dead and the car mere scrap. From the police station they rang up Lucius Bellingdon and told him what they had found. Moira Herne was well enough known in Emberley. She was a careless driver, and had been before the magistrates there on more than one occasion -parking on the wrong side of the road, crossing against the lights, driving without due care and attention. There would be plenty of gossip as to why the wheel of Mr. Masterson’s car should come off on Emberley Hill not much more than twenty-four hours after the same thing had happened to Mr. Bellingdon, and how it came about that Mrs. Herne was there with most of her clothes all thrown in loose as if she had left home in an almighty hurry.