Grey Mask leaned a little forward.

“Well, he won’t be hanged if he doesn’t do what he’s told, but he’ll go down for a seven years’ stretch. Tell him so.” He scribbled on a piece of paper and pushed it over. “Give him this. If he doesn’t prefer liberty, ten per cent, and a pretty wife to seven years hard, he can have the seven years. He won’t like it.”

The other man took up the paper.

“He says he doesn’t know why he should marry the girl. I told him I’d put that to you. Why should he?”

“Provides for her-looks well-keeps her quiet-keeps her friends quiet.”

The other man spoke quickly:

“Then you think there might be a certificate?”

“I’m not taking risks. Tell Thirty-two he’s to use the letter as we arranged.”

“Then you do think-”

There was no answer. The other man spoke again:

“There’s nothing at Somerset House. Isn’t that good enough?”

“Not quite. Everyone doesn’t get married at their parish church or the nearest registry office-everyone doesn’t even get married in England.”

“Was he married?”

Grey Mask straightened the shade of the reading lamp; the lane of light that had led to the door disappeared.

“If Forty there had ears, he could answer that question.”

“Forty-”

“Perhaps. Forty says he used to walk up and down the deck. He says he talked. Perhaps he said something; perhaps he talked of things he wouldn’t have talked about if he hadn’t known that Forty would be none the wiser. In the end the sea got him and none of us are any the wiser. Pity Forty there never learned lip-reading.”

He lifted his hand and signalled with it. Forty then, was the janitor. And he was stone-deaf-useful in a way of course, but awkward too. Charles wondered how he knew when there was anyone on the other side of the door. Of course if he had his hand on the panel and anyone knocked, he would feel the vibration. Yes, it could be done that way-a code of signals too.

He had just reached this point, when the light went out. The door had begun to open, and then Grey Mask put his hand to the switch of the lamp, and the room went dark, with just one blur of greenish dusk which faded and was gone in the gloom.

Charles got up. He was rather stiff. He got back into his mother’s room without making any noise, and before he put his hand on the door, he stood for an instant listening, and could hear no sound. He would have liked to rush them from behind, catch them perhaps at the head of the stairs and send them sprawling, a loud war-whoop and their own bad consciences to aid. It might have been a very pleasant affair. He liked to think of Forty’s square bulk coming down with a good resounding thud upon the wild writhings of the other two.

Hang Margaret! If she hadn’t come butting into heaven knew what of a dirty criminal conspiracy, he might have been really enjoying himself. Instead, he must mark time, must tiptoe through his own house after a pack of scallywags.

Charles tiptoed. He reached the head of the stairs and looked down into the hall. Someone moved in the twilight; a light went on. Lattery, the caretaker, crossed the lighted space whistling “Way Down Upon the Swanee River.” He whistled flat.

Charles charged down the stairs and arrived like an exploding bomb.

“Where the devil have you been, and what the devil have you been doing?”

Lattery stared, and his knees shook under him; his big, stupid face took on a greenish hue.

Charles ran to the garden door. It was still open. He ran up the garden, and heard the door in the wall fall to with a slam. By the time he got it open and burst into the alley, someone was disappearing round the corner into Thorney Lane. He sprinted to the corner and round it. The someone was a whistling errand boy with a crop of red hair that showed pure ginger under the street lamp.

At the bottom of Thorney Lane there was a woman.

He ran after her. When he reached the roaring thoroughfare, there were half a dozen women on every couple of yards of pavement. The two big cinemas at either end of the street had just come out.

He went back to the house in a black bad temper.

CHAPTER IV

He interviewed Lattery, and could not determine whether he had to do with an unfaithful steward or a great stupid oaf who was scared to death by the sudden apparition of a gentleman whom he believed to be some thousands of miles away.

“Where had you been?”

“Seeing it was Thursday,” said Lattery in his slow perplexed voice.

“Where had you been?”

“Seeing it was Thursday, Mr. Charles-I beg your pardon, sir-seeing it was Thursday and the day I take my pay from the lawyer same as he arranged-and I put it to him fair and square, and so he’ll tell you. I put it to him, sir, wouldn’t it be convenient for to fix on Thursday for me to take the evening off like? And the lawyer he says to me-and one of his clerks was in the room and could tell you the same-he says to me as how there wasn’t any objection.”

“Thursday’s your evening off?”

“Yes, Mr. Charles-I beg your pardon-sir.”

“You always go out on Thursday?”

“Yes, sir.”

Lattery’s face had regained its florid colour, but his round eyes dwelt anxiously on Charles.

“Do you always leave the garden door open?” Charles shot the question at him suddenly.

“The garden door, sir?”

“The door from the little passage into the garden. Do you generally leave it open?”

“No, sir.”

“Why did you leave it open to-night?”

“Was it open, sir?”

“Don’t you know it was? Didn’t you come in that way?”

“I come in through the front door,” said Lattery, staring.

They were in the study, which opened out of the hall. Charles crossed to the door, flung it open wide, and looked across.

“If you came in through the front door, who bolted it and put up the chain?”

“Please, sir, I did.”

Charles felt a little ridiculous. He banged the door and came back to his seat.

“When I reached this house an hour ago,” he said, “the door on the alley-way was open. I came in by it. The garden door was open, and I came into the house by that. I went upstairs, and there was a light in my mother’s sitting room.”

“Someone must have left it on, sir.”

“The people who left it on were still in the room,” said Charles drily. “They were men-three of them. And they got away down the stair just before me. Are you going to tell me you didn’t see anything?”

“I take my oath I didn’t see anything.”

“Or hear anything?”

Lattery hesitated.

“I sort of thought I heard a door bang-yes, I certainly thought I heard a door, for it come into my mind that the missus was early.”

CHAPTER V

Miss Standing sighed, sniffed, dabbed her eyes with rather a tired-looking handkerchief, and plunged an experienced finger and thumb into the depths of a large box of Fuller’s chocolates. Having selected a luscious and melting chocolate cream, she sighed again and continued the letter which she had just begun. She wrote on a pad propped against her knee, and she addressed the bosom friend whom she left behind only two days before at Madame Mardon’s very select and expensive Swiss Academy. The words, “My darling angel Stephanie,” were scrawled across the pale blue page.

Miss Standing sucked at her chocolates and wrote on:

It’s all too perfectly horrid and beastly for words. All the way across M’amselle could only tell me that poor papa had died suddenly. She said there was only that in the telegram, and that I was to come home. And when I got here last night, there wasn’t any Mrs. Beauchamp like there always is in the holidays, and the servants looked odd. And M’amselle went off this morning, and I don’t really know what’s happened, except that Papa was at sea in his yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean. So there isn’t any funeral or anything, and of course I haven’t got any black-only just the things I came away with. And it’s all frightfully miserable. If you don’t write to me, I shall die. It’s frightful not to have anyone to talk to. The lawyer- Papa’s lawyer-is coming to talk to me this morning. He telephoned to say he was coming. I suppose I shall be simply frightfully rich. But it’s so depressing. It makes me wish I’d got some relations, even frightfully dull ones like Sophy Weir’s. Do you remember her aunt’s hat? I haven’t any relations at all except my cousin Egbert, and I’d rather have no relations than him-so would anyone. He’s the most appalling mug you ever saw.