THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR
by
Josephine Tey

THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR

JOSEPHINE TEY

CHAPTER 1.

It was four o'clock of a spring evening; and Robert Blair was thinking
of going home.

The office would not shut until five, of course. But when you are the
only Blair, of Blair, Hayward, and Bennet, you go home when you think
you will. And when your business is mostly wills, conveyancing, and
investments your services are in small demand in the late afternoon.

And when you live in Milford, where the last post goes out at 3.45, the
day loses whatever momentum it had long before four o'clock.

It was not even likely that his telephone would ring. His golfing
cronies would by now be somewhere between the fourteenth and the
sixteenth hole. No one would ask him to dinner, because in Milford
invitations to dinner are still written by hand and sent through the
post. And Aunt Lin would not ring up and ask him to call for the fish on
his way home, because this was her biweekly afternoon at the cinema and
she would at the moment be only twenty minutes gone with feature, so to
speak.

So he sat there, in the lazy atmosphere of a spring evening in a little
market town, staring at the last patch of sunlight on his desk (the
mahogany desk with the brass inlay that his grandfather had scandalized
the family by bringing home from Paris), and thought about going home.

In the patch of sunlight was his tea-tray; and it was typical of Blair,
Hayward, and Bennet that tea was no affair of a japanned tin tray and a
kitchen cup. At 3.50 exactly on every working day Miss Tuff bore into
his office a lacquer tray covered with a fair white cloth and bearing a
cup of tea in blue-patterned china, and, on a plate to match, two
biscuits: petit-beurre Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, digestive
Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Looking at it now, idly, he thought how much it represented the
continuity of Blair, Hayward, and Bennet. The china he could remember as
long as he could remember anything. The tray had been used when he was
very small by the cook at home to take the bread in from the baker, and
had been rescued by his young mother and brought to the office to bear
the blue-patterned cups. The cloth had come years later with the advent
of Miss Tuff. Miss Tuff was a war-time product: the first woman who had
ever sat at a desk in a respectable solicitor's in Milford. A whole
revolution Miss Tuff was in her single, gawky, thin, earnest person. But
the firm had survived the revolution with hardly a jolt, and now, nearly
a quarter of a century later, it was inconceivable that thin, grey,
dignified Miss Tuff had ever been a sensation. Indeed her only
disturbance of the immemorial routine was the introduction of the
tray-cloth. In Miss Tuff's home no meal was ever put straight on to a
tray; if it comes to that, no cakes were ever put straight on to a
plate: a tray-cloth or a doyley must intervene. So Miss Tuff had looked
askance at the bare tray. She had, moreover, considered the lacquered
pattern distracting, unappetizing, and "queer". So one day she had
brought a cloth from home; decent, plain, and white, as befitted
something that was to be eaten off. And Robert's father, who had liked
the lacquer tray, looked at the clean white cloth and was touched by
young Miss Tuff's identification of herself with the firm's interests,
and the cloth had stayed, and was now as much a part of the firm's life
as the deed-boxes and the brass plate and Mr. Heseltine's annual cold.

It was when his eyes rested on the blue plate where the biscuits had
been that Robert experienced that odd sensation in his chest again. The
sensation had nothing to do with the two digestive biscuits, at least
not physically. It had to do with the inevitability of the biscuit
routine: the placid certainty that it would be digestive on a Thursday
and petit-beurre on a Monday. Until the last year or so he had found no
fault with certainty or placidity. He had never wanted any other life
but this: this quiet, friendly life in the place where he had grown up.
He still did not want any other. But once or twice lately an odd, alien
thought had crossed his mind, irrelevant and unbidden. As nearly as it
could be put into words it was: "This is all you are ever going to
have." And with the thought would come that moment's constriction in his
chest. Almost a panic reaction, like the heart-squeezing that
remembering a dentist appointment would cause in his ten-year-old
breast.

This annoyed and puzzled Robert, who considered himself a happy and
fortunate person, and adult at that. Why should this foreign thought
thrust itself on him and cause that dismayed tightening under his ribs?

What had his life lacked that a man might be supposed to miss?

A wife?

But he could have married if he had wanted to. At least he supposed he
could; there were a great many unattached females in the district and
they showed no sign of disliking him.

A devoted mother?

But what greater devotion could a mother have given him than Aunt Lin
provided - dear, doting Aunt Lin?

Riches?

What had he ever wanted that he could not buy? And if that wasn't riches
he didn't know what was.

An exciting life?

But he had never wanted excitement. No greater excitement, that is, than
was provided by a day's hunting or being all-square at the sixteenth.

Then what?

Why the "This is all you are ever going to have" thought?

Perhaps, he thought, sitting staring at the blue plate where the
biscuits had been, it was just that childhood's attitude of
something-wonderful-tomorrow persisted subconsciously in a man as long
as it was capable of realization, and it was only after forty, when it
became unlikely of fulfilment, that it obtruded itself into conscious
thought, a lost piece of childhood crying for attention.

Certainly he, Robert Blair, hoped very heartily that his life would go
on being what it was until he died. He had known since his schooldays
that he would go into the firm and one day succeed his father; and he
had looked with good-natured pity on boys who had no niche in life
ready-made for them; who had no Milford, full of friends and memories,
waiting for them; no part in English continuity as was provided by
Blair, Hayward, and Bennet.

There was no Hayward in the firm nowadays: there had not been one since
1843; but a young sprig of the Bennets was occupying the back room at
this moment. Occupying was the operative word, since it was very
unlikely that he was doing any work, his chief interest in life being to
write poems of an originality so pristine that only Nevil himself could
understand them. Robert deplored the poems but condoned the idleness,
since he could not forget that when he had occupied that same back room
he had spent his time practising mashie shots into the leather armchair.

The sunlight slipped off the edge of the tray and Robert decided it was
time to go. If he went now he could walk home down the High Street
before the sunlight was off the east-side pavement; and walking down
Milford High Street was still one of the things that gave him conscious
pleasure. Not that Milford was a show-place. It could be duplicated a
hundred times anywhere south of Trent. But in its unselfconscious
fashion it typified the goodness of life in England for the last three
hundred years. From the old dwelling-house flush with the pavement that
housed Blair, Hayward, and Bennet and had been built in the last years
of Charles the Second's reign, the High Street flowed south in a gentle
slope - Georgian brick, Elizabethan timber-and-plaster, Victorian stone,
Regency stucco - to the Edwardian villas behind their elm trees at the
other end. Here and there, among the rose and white and brown, appeared
a front of black glass, brazening it out like an overdressed parvenu at
a party; but the good manners of the other buildings discounted them.
Even the multiple businesses had dealt leniently with Milford. True, the
scarlet and gold of an American bazaar flaunted its bright promise down
at the south end and daily offended Miss Truelove, who ran the
Elizabethan relic opposite as a tea-shop with the aid of her sister's
baking and Anne Boleyn's reputation. But the Westminster Bank, with a
humility rare since the days of usury, had adapted the Weavers' Hall to
their needs without so much as a hint of marble; and Soles, the
wholesale chemists, had taken the old Wisdom residence and kept its
tall, surprised-looking front intact.

It was a fine, gay, busy little street, punctuated with pollarded lime
trees growing out of the pavement; and Robert Blair loved it.

He had gathered his feet under him preparatory to getting up when his
telephone rang. In other places in the world, one understands,
telephones are made to ring in outer offices, where a minion answers the
thing and asks your business and says that if you will be good enough to
wait just a moment she will "put you through", and you are then
connected with the person you want to speak to. But not in Milford.
Nothing like that would be tolerated in Milford. In Milford if you call
John Smith on the telephone you expect John Smith to answer in person.
So when the telephone rang on that spring evening in Blair, Hayward, and
Bennet's it rang on Robert's brass-and-mahogany desk.

Always, afterwards, Robert was to wonder what would have happened if
that telephone call had been one minute later. In one minute, sixty
worthless seconds, he would have taken his coat from the peg in the
hall, popped his head into the opposite room to tell Mr. Heseltine that
he was departing for the day, stepped out into the pale sunlight, and
been away down the street. Mr. Heseltine would have answered his
telephone when it rang and told the woman that he had gone. And she
would have hung up and tried someone else. And all that followed would
have had only academic interest for him.

But the telephone rang in time; and Robert put out his hand and picked
up the receiver .

"Is that Mr. Blair?" a woman's voice asked - a contralto voice that
would normally be a confident one, he felt, but now sounded breathless
or hurried. "Oh, I am so glad to have caught you. I was afraid you would
have gone for the day. Mr. Blair, you don't know me. My name is Sharpe,
Marion Sharpe. I live with my mother at The Franchise - the house out on
the Larborough road, you know."

"Yes, I know it," Blair said. He knew Marion Sharpe by sight, as he knew
everyone in Milford and the district: a tall, lean, dark woman of forty
or so; much given to bright silk kerchiefs which accentuated her gipsy
swarthiness. She drove a battered old car, from which she shopped in the
mornings while her white-haired old mother sat in the back, upright and
delicate and incongruous and somehow silently protesting. In profile old
Mrs. Sharpe looked like Whistler's mother; when she turned full-face and
you got the impact of her bright, pale, cold, seagull's eye, she looked
like a sibyl. An uncomfortable old person.

- "You don't know me," the voice went on, "but I have seen you in
Milford and you look a kind person, and I need a lawyer. I mean, I need
one now, this minute. The only lawyer we ever have business with is in
London - a London firm, I mean - and they are not actually ours. We just
inherited them with a legacy. But now I am in trouble and I need legal
backing, and I remembered you and thought that you would --"

"If it is your car" Robert began. "In trouble" in Milford meant one of
two things: an affiliation order or an offence against the traffic laws.
Since the case involved Marion Sharpe, it would be the latter; but it
made no difference, because in neither case was Blair, Hayward, and
Bennet likely to be interested. He would pass her on to Carley, the
bright lad at the other end of the street, who revelled in court cases
and was popularly credited with the capacity to bail the Devil out of
hell. ("Bail him out!" someone said one night at the Rose and Crown.
"He'd do more than that. He'd get all our signatures to a guinea
testimonial to the Old Sinner.")

"If it is your car --"

"Car?" she said vaguely; as if in her present world it was difficult to
remember what a car was. "Oh, I see. No. Oh no, it isn't anything like
that. It is something more serious. It's Scotland Yard."

"Scotland Yard!"

To that douce country lawyer and gentleman Robert Blair Scotland Yard
was as exotic as Xanadu, Hollywood, or parachuting. As a good citizen he
was on comfortable terms with the local police, and there his connexion
with crime ended. The nearest he had ever come to Scotland Yard was to
play golf with the local Inspector: a good chap who played a very steady
game and occasionally, when it came to the nineteenth, expanded into
mild indiscretions about his job.

"I haven't murdered anyone, if that is what you are thinking," the voice
said hastily.

"The point is: are you supposed to have murdered anyone?" Whatever she
was supposed to have done, this was clearly a case for Carley. He must
edge her off on to Carley.

"No; it isn't murder at all. I'm supposed to have kidnapped someone.

Or abducted them, or something. I can't explain over the telephone.

And, anyhow, I need someone now, at once, and --"

"But, you know, I don't think it is me you need at all," Robert said.

"I know practically nothing about criminal law. My firm is not equipped
to deal with a case of that sort. The man you need --"

"I don't want a criminal lawyer; I want a friend. Someone who will stand
by me and see that I am not put-on. I mean, tell me what I need not
answer if I don't want to, and that sort of thing. You don't need a
training in crime for that, do you?"

"No; but you would be much better served by a firm who were used to
police cases. A firm that --"

"What you are trying to tell me is that this is not 'your cup of tea'.

That's it, isn't it?"

"No, of course not," Robert said hastily. "I quite honestly feel that
you would be wiser --"

"You know what I feel like?" she broke in. "I feel like someone drowning
in a river because she can't drag herself up the bank, and instead of
giving me a hand out you point out that the other bank is much better to
crawl out on."

There was a moment's silence.

"But on the contrary," Robert said, "I can provide you with an expert
puller-out-of-rivers; a great improvement on my amateur self, I assure
you. Benjamin Carley knows more about defending accused persons than
anyone between here and --"

"What! That awful little man with the striped suits?" Her deep voice ran
up and cracked, and there was another momentary silence. "I am sorry,"
she said presently in her normal voice. "That was silly. But you see,
when I rang you up just now it wasn't because I thought you would be
clever about things" ("Wasn't it, indeed," thought Robert) "but because
I was in trouble and wanted the advice of someone of my own sort. And
you looked my sort. Mr. Blair, do please come. I need you now. There are
people from Scotland Yard here in the house. And if you feel that it
isn't something you want to be mixed up in, you could always pass it on
to someone else afterwards, couldn't you? But there may be nothing after
all, to be mixed up in. If you would just come out here and 'watch my
interests', or whatever you call it, for an hour, it may all pass over.
I'm sure there is a mistake somewhere.

Couldn't you please do that for me?"

On the whole Robert Blair thought that he could. He was too good-natured
to refuse any reasonable appeal and she had given him a loophole if
things grew difficult. And he did not, after all, now he came to think
of it, want to throw her to Ben Carley. In spite of her betise about
striped suits he saw her point of view. If you had done something you
wanted to get away with, Carley was no doubt God's gift to you; but if
you were bewildered and in trouble and innocent, perhaps Carley's brash
personality was not likely to be a very present help.

All the same, he wished as he laid down the receiver that the front he
presented to the world were a more forbidding one - Calvin or Caliban,
he did not care, so long as strange females were discouraged from
flinging themselves on his protection when they were in trouble.

What possible kind of trouble could "kidnapping" be, he wondered as he
walked round to the garage in Sin Lane for his car? Was there such an
offence in English law? And whom could she possibly be interested in
kidnapping? A child? Some child with "expectations"? In spite of the
large house out on the Larborough road they gave the impression of
having very little money. Or some child that they considered "ill-used"
by its natural guardians? That was possible. The old woman had a
fanatic's face if ever he saw one; and Marion Sharpe herself looked as
if the stake would be her natural prop if stakes were not out of
fashion. Yes, it was probably some ill-judged piece of philanthropy.
Detention "with intent to deprive parent, guardian, etc." of its
possession." He wished he could remember more of his Harris and
Wilshere. He could not remember offhand whether that was a felony, with
penal servitude in the offing, or a mere misdemeanour.

"Abduction and Detention" had not sullied the Blair, Hayward, and Bennet
files since December 1798, when the squire of Lessows, much flown with
seasonable claret, had taken across his saddle-bow the young Miss
Gretton from a ball at the Gretton home and ridden away with her through
the floods; and there was no doubt at all, of course, as to the squire's
motive on that occasion.

Ah, well; they would no doubt be open to reason now that they had been
startled by the irruption of Scotland Yard into their plans. He was a
little startled by Scotland Yard himself.

Was the child so important that it was a matter for Headquarters?

Round in Sin Lane he ran into the usual war, but extricated himself.

(Etymologists, in case you are interested, say that the "Sin" is merely
a corruption of "sand", but the inhabitants of Milford of course know
better: before those council houses were built on the low meadows behind
the town the lane led direct to the lovers' walk in High Wood.) Across
the narrow lane, face to face in perpetual enmity, stood the local
livery stable and the town's newest garage. The garage frightened the
horses (so said the livery stable) and the livery stable blocked up the
lane continually with delivery loads of straw and fodder and what not
(so the garage said). Moreover the garage was run by Bill Brough, ex-R.
E.M. E., and Stanley Peters, ex-Royal Corps of Signals; and old Matt
Ellis, ex-King's Dragoon Guards, looked on them as representatives of a
generation that had destroyed the cavalry and an offence to
civilization.

In winter, when he hunted, Robert heard the cavalry side of the story;
for the rest of the year he listened to the Royal Corps of Signals while
his car was being wiped, oiled, filled, or fetched. Today the Signals
wanted to know the difference between libel and slander and what exactly
constituted defamation of character. Was it defamation of character to
say that a man was "a tinkerer with tin cans who wouldn't know a nut
from an acorn"?

"Don't know, Stan. Have to think it over," Robert said hastily, pressing
the starter. He waited while three tired hacks brought back two fat
children and a groom from their afternoon ride ("See what I mean?" said
Stanley in the background) and then swung the car into the High Street.

Down at the south end of the High Street the shops faded gradually into
dwelling-houses with doorsteps on the pavement, then to houses set back
a pace and with porticos to their doors, and then to villas with trees
in their gardens, and then, quite suddenly, to fields and open country.

It was farming country: a land of endless hedged fields and few houses;
a rich country but lonely - one could travel mile after mile without
meeting another human being. Quiet and confident and unchanged since the
Wars of the Roses, hedged field succeeded hedged field and skyline faded
into skyline, without any break in pattern. Only the telegraph posts
betrayed the century.

Away beyond the horizon was Larborough. Larborough was bicycles, small
arms, tin-tacks, Cowan's Cranberry Sauce, and a million human souls
living cheek by jowl in dirty red brick; and periodically it broke
bounds in an atavistic longing for grass and earth. But there was
nothing in the Milford country to attract a race who demanded with their
grass and earth both views and tea-houses; when Larborough went on
holiday it went as one man west to the hills and the sea, and the great
stretch of country north and east of it stayed lonely and quiet and
unlettered, as it had been in the days of the Sun in Splendour. It was
"dull" and by that damnation was saved.

Two miles out on the Larborough road stood the house known as The
Franchise, set down by the roadside with the inconsequence of a
telephone kiosk. In the last days of the Regency someone had bought the
field known as The Franchise, built in the middle of it a flat white
house, and then surrounded the whole with a high, solid wall of brick
with a large double gate, of wall height, in the middle of the road
frontage. It had no relation with anything in the countryside: no farm
buildings in the background; no side-gates, even, into the surrounding
fields. Stables were built, in accordance with the period, at the back
of the house, but they were inside the wall. The place was as
irrelevant, as isolated as a child's toy dropped by the wayside. It had
been occupied as long as Robert could remember by an old man, presumably
the same old man; but since The Franchise people had always shopped at
Ham Green, the village on the Larborough side of them, they had never
been seen in Milford. And then Marion Sharpe and her mother had begun to
be part of the morning shopping scene in Milford, and it was understood
that they had inherited The Franchise when the old man died.

How long had they been there, Robert wondered. Three years? Four years?

That they had not entered Milford socially was nothing to reckon by.

Old Mrs. Warren, who had bought the first of the elm-shaded villas at
the end of the High Street a small matter of twenty-five years ago in
the hope that Milford air would be better for her rheumatism than the
sea, was still referred to as "that lady from Weymouth". (It was
Swanage, incidentally)

The Sharpes, moreover, might not have sought social contacts. They had
an odd air of being self-sufficient. He had seen the daughter once or
twice on the golf course, playing (presumably as a guest) with Dr.

Borthwick. She drove a long ball like a man and used her thin brown
wrists like a professional. And that was all Robert knew about her.

As he brought the car to a stop in front of the tall iron gates, he
found that two other cars were already there. It needed only one glance
at the nearer - so inconspicuous, so well groomed, so discreet - to
identify it. In what other country in this world, he wondered as he got
out of his own car, does the police force take pains to be well-mannered
and quiet?

His eye lighted on the farther car and he saw that it was Hallam's, the
local Inspector, who played such a steady game on the golf -course.

There were three people in the police car: the driver and, in the back,
a middle-aged woman and what seemed to be either a child or a young
girl. The driver regarded him with that mild, absent-minded,
all-observing police eye, and then withdrew his gaze; but the faces in
the back he could not see.

The tall iron gates were shut - Robert could not remember ever seeing
them open - and Robert pushed open one heavy half with frank curiosity.

The iron lace of the original gates had been lined, in some Victorian
desire for privacy, by flat sheets of iron, and the wall was too high
for anything inside to be visible, so that, except for a distant view of
its roof and chimneys, he had never seen The Franchise.

His first feeling was disappointment. It was not the fallen-on-
evil-times look of the house although that was evident; it was the sheer
ugliness of it. Either it had been built too late to share in the grace
of a graceful period or the builder had lacked an architect's eye. He
had used the idiom of the time, but it had apparently not been native to
him. Everything was just a little wrong: the windows the wrong size by
half a foot, wrongly placed by not much more; the doorway the wrong
width and the flight of steps the wrong height. The total result was
that instead of the bland contentment of its period the house had a hard
stare. An antagonistic, questioning stare. As he walked across the
courtyard to the unwelcoming door Robert knew what it reminded him of: a
dog that has been suddenly wakened from sleep by the advent of a
stranger, propped on his forelegs, uncertain for a moment whether to
attack or merely bark. It had the same what-are-you-doing-here?
expression.

Before he could ring the bell the door was opened not by a maid but by
Marion Sharpe.

"I saw you coming," she said, putting out her hand. "I didn't want you
to ring, because my mother lies down in the afternoons and I am hoping
that we can get this business over before she wakes up. Then she need
never know anything about it. I am more grateful than I can say to you
for coming."

Robert murmured something and noticed that her eyes, which he had
expected to be a bright gipsy brown, were actually a grey hazel. She
drew him into the hall, and he noticed as he put his hat down on a chest
that the rug on the floor was threadbare.

"The Law is in here," she said, pushing open a door and ushering him
into a drawing-room. Robert would have liked to talk to her alone for a
moment, to orientate himself; but it was too late now to suggest that.
This was evidently the way she wanted it.

Sitting on the edge of a bead-work chair was Hallam, looking sheepish.

And by the window, entirely at his ease in a very nice piece of
Hepplewhite, was Scotland Yard in the person of a youngish spare man in
a well-tailored suit. As they got up, Hallam and Robert nodded to each
other.

"You know Inspector Hallam, then?" Marion Sharpe said. "And this is
Detective-Inspector Grant from Headquarters."

Robert noticed the "Headquarters", and wondered. Had she already at some
time had dealings with the police or was it that she just didn't like
the slightly sensational sound of "the Yard"? Grant shook hands, and
said: "I'm glad you've come, Mr. Blair. Not only for Miss Sharpe's sake
but for my own."

"Yours?"

"I couldn't very well proceed until Miss Sharpe had some kind of
support; friendly support if not legal, but if legal so much the
better."

"I see. And what are you charging her with?"

"We are not charging her with anything" Grant began, but Marion
interrupted him.

"I am supposed to have kidnapped and beaten up someone."

"Beaten up?" Robert said, staggered.

"Yes," she said, with a kind of relish in enormity. "Beaten her black
and blue."

"Her?"

"A girl. She is outside the gate in a car now."

"I think we had better begin at the beginning," Robert said, clutching
after the normal.

"Perhaps I had better do the explaining," Grant said mildly.

"Yes," said Miss Sharpe, "do. After all, it is your story."

Robert wondered if Grant were aware of the mockery. He wondered a
little, too, at the coolness that could afford mockery with Scotland
Yard sitting in one of her best chairs. She had not sounded cool over
the telephone; she had sounded driven, half-desperate. Perhaps it was
the presence of an ally that had heartened her, or perhaps she had just
got her second wind.

"Just before Easter," Grant began, in succinct police-fashion, "a girl
called Elisabeth Kane, who lived with her guardians near Aylesbury, went
to spend a short holiday with a married aunt in Mainshill, the suburb of
Larborough. She went by coach, because the London-Larborough coaches
pass through Aylesbury and also pass through Mainshill before reaching
Larborough; so that she could get off the coach in Mainshill and be
within a three-minute walk of her aunt's house, instead of having to go
into Larborough and come all the way out again, as she would have to if
she travelled by train. At the end of a week her guardians - a Mr. and
Mrs. Wynn - had a postcard from her saying that she was enjoying herself
very much and was staying on. They took this to mean staying on for the
duration of her school holiday, which would mean another three weeks.
When she didn't turn up on the day before she was supposed to go back to
school, they took it for granted that she was merely playing truant and
wrote to her aunt to send her back.

The aunt, instead of going to the nearest call-box or telegraph office,
broke it to the Wynns in a letter that her niece had left on her way
back to Aylesbury a fortnight previously. The exchange of letters had
taken the best part of another week, so that by the time the guardians
went to the police about it the girl had been missing for three weeks.
The police took all the usual measures, but before they could really get
going the girl turned up. She walked into her home near Aylesbury late
one night, wearing only a dress and shoes and in a state of complete
exhaustion."

"How old is the girl?"

"Fifteen - nearly sixteen." He waited a moment to see if Robert had
further questions, and then went on. (As one counsel to another, thought
Robert appreciatively, a manner to match the car that stood so
unobtrusively at the gate.) "She said she had been 'kidnapped' in a car,
but that was all the information anyone got from her for two days.

She lapsed into a semiconscious condition. When she recovered, about
forty- eight hours later, they began to get her story from her."

"They?"

"The Wynns. The police wanted it, of course, but she grew hysterical at
any mention of police, so they had to acquire it second-hand. She said
that while she was waiting for her return coach at the cross-roads in
Mainshill a car pulled up at the kerb with two women in it. The younger
woman, who was driving, asked her if she was waiting for a bus and if
they could give her a lift."

"Was the girl alone?"

"Yes."

"Why? Didn't anyone go to see her off? "

"Her uncle was working and her aunt had gone to be godmother at a
christening." Again he paused to let Robert put further questions if he
was so minded. "The girl said that she was waiting for the London coach,
and they told her that it had already gone by. Since she had arrived at
the cross-roads with very little time to spare and her watch was not a
particularly accurate one, she believed this. Indeed, she had begun to
be afraid, even before the car stopped, that she had missed the coach.
She was distressed about it because it was then four o'clock, beginning
to rain, and growing dark. They were very sympathetic and suggested that
they should give her a lift to a place whose name she did not catch,
where she could get a different coach to London in half an hour's time.
She accepted this gratefully and got in beside the elder woman in the
back of the car."

A picture swam into Robert's mind of old Mrs. Sharpe, upright and
intimidating, in her usual place in the back of the car. He glanced at
Marion Sharpe, but her face was calm. This was a story she had heard
already.

"The rain blurred the windows and she talked to the older woman about
herself as they went along, so that she paid little attention to where
they were going. When she at last took notice of her surroundings the
evening outside the windows had become quite dark and it seemed to her
that they had been travelling for a long time. She said something about
its being extraordinarily kind of them to take her so far out of their
way, and the younger woman, speaking for the first time, said that as it
happened it was not out of their way; and that, on the contrary, she
would have time to come in and have a cup of something hot with them
before they took her on to her new crossroads.

She was doubtful about this, but the younger woman said it would be of
no advantage to wait for twenty minutes in the rain when she could be
warm and dry and fed in those same twenty minutes; and she agreed that
this seemed sensible. Eventually the younger woman got out, opened what
appeared to the girl to be drive gates, and the car was driven up to a
house which it was too dark to see. She was taken into a large kitchen
--"

"A kitchen?" Robert repeated.

"Yes, a kitchen. The older woman put some cold coffee on the stove to
heat while the younger one cut sandwiches. 'Sandwiches without tops' the
girl called them."

"Smorgasbrod."

"Yes. While they ate and drank, the younger woman told her that they had
no maid at the moment and asked her if she would like to be a maid for
them for a little. She said that she wouldn't. They tried persuasion,
but she stuck to it that that was not at all the kind of job she would
take. Their faces began to grow blurred as she talked, and when they
suggested that she might at least come upstairs and see what a nice
bedroom she would have if she stayed, she was too fuddled in her mind to
do anything but follow their suggestion. She remembers going up a first
flight with a carpet and a second flight with what she calls 'something
hard' underfoot, and that was all she remembered until she woke in the
daylight on a truckle bed in a bare little attic. She was wearing only
her slip and there was no sign of the rest of her clothes. The door was
locked and the small round window would not open. In any case --"

"Round window --" said Robert uncomfortably.

But it was Marion who answered him. "Yes," she said, meaningly, "a round
window up in the roof."

Since his last thought as he came to her front door a few minutes ago
had been how badly placed was the little round window in the roof, there
seemed to Robert to be no adequate comment. Grant made his usual pause
for courtesy's sake and went on.

"Presently the younger woman arrived with a bowl of porridge. The girl
refused it and demanded her clothes and her release. The woman said that
she would eat it when she was hungry enough, and went away, leaving the
porridge behind. She was alone till evening, when the same woman brought
her tea on a tray with fresh cakes and tried to talk her into giving the
maid's job a trial. The girl again refused; and for days, according to
her story, this alternate coaxing and bullying went on, sometimes by one
of the women and sometimes by the other. Then she decided that if she
could break the small round window she might be able to crawl out of it
on to the roof which was protected by a parapet, and call the attention
of some passer-by or some visiting tradesmen to her plight.
Unfortunately her only implement was a chair, and she had managed only
to crack the glass before the younger woman interrupted her in a great
passion. She snatched the chair from the girl and be laboured her with
it until she was breathless. She went away, taking the chair with her,
and the girl thought that was the end of it. But in a few moments the
woman came back with what the girl thinks was a dog whip and beat her
until she fainted. Next day the older woman appeared with an armful of
bed-linen and said that if she would not work she would at least sew. No
sewing, no food. She was too stiff to sew and so had no food. The
following day she was threatened with another beating if she did not
sew. So she mended some of the linen and was given stew for supper. This
arrangement lasted for some time, but if her sewing was bad or
insufficient she was either beaten or deprived of food. Then one evening
the older woman brought the usual bowl of stew and went away leaving the
door unlocked.

The girl waited, thinking it was a trap that would end in another
beating; but in the end she ventured on to the landing. There was no
sound, and she ran down a flight of uncarpeted stairs. Then down a
second flight to the first landing. Now she could hear the two women
talking in the kitchen. She crept down the last flight and dashed for
the door. It was unlocked and she ran out just as she was into the
night."

"In her slip?" Robert asked.

"I forgot to say that the slip had been exchanged for her dress. There
was no heating in the attic, and in nothing but a slip she would
probably have died."

"If she ever was in an attic," Robert said.

"If, as you say, she was ever in an attic," the Inspector agreed
smoothly. And without his customary pause of courtesy went on: "She does
not remember much after that. She walked a great distance in the dark,
she says. It seemed a highroad, but there was no traffic and she met no
one. Then, on a main road some time later, a lorry driver saw her in his
headlight and stopped to give her a lift. She was so tired that she fell
straight asleep. She woke as she was being set on her feet at the
roadside. The lorry driver was laughing at her and saying that she was
like a sawdust doll that had lost its stuffing. It seemed to be still
night-time. The lorry driver said this was where she said she wanted to
be put off, and drove away. After a little she recognized the corner. It
was less than two miles from her home. She heard a clock strike eleven.
And shortly before midnight she arrived home."

CHAPTER 2.

There was a short silence.

"And this is the girl who is sitting in a car outside the gates of The
Franchise at this moment?" said Robert.

"Yes."

"I take it you have reasons for bringing her here."

"Yes. When the girl had recovered sufficiently she was induced to tell
her story to the police. It was taken down in shorthand as she told it,
and she read the typed version and signed it. In that statement there
were two things that helped the police a lot. These are the relevant
extracts:

"When we had been going for some time we passed a bus that had MIL FORD
in a lighted sign on it. No, I don't know where Milford is No, I have
never been there."

"That is one. The other is:

"From the window of the attic I could see a high brick wall with a big
iron gate in the middle of it. There was a road on the farther side of
the wall, because I could see the telegraph posts. No, I couldn't see
the traffic on it, because the wall was too high. Just the tops of
lorry-loads sometimes. You couldn't see through the gate because it had
sheets of iron on the inside. Inside the gate the carriage- way went
straight for a little and then divided in two into a circle up to the
door. No, it wasn't a garden, just grass. Yes, lawn, I suppose.

No, I don't remember any shrubs; just the grass and the paths."

Grant shut the little notebook he had been quoting from.

"As far as we know - and the search has been thorough - there is no
other house between Larborough and Milford which fulfils the girl's
description except The Franchise. The Franchise, moreover, fulfils it in
every particular. When the girl saw the wall and the gate today she was
sure that this was the place; but she has not so far seen inside the
gate, of course. I had first to explain matters to Miss Sharpe and find
out if she was willing to be confronted with the girl. She very rightly
suggested that some legal witness should be present."

"Do you wonder that I wanted help in a hurry?" Marion Sharpe said,
turning to Robert. "Can you imagine a more nightmare piece of nonsense?"

"The girl's story is certainly the oddest mixture of the factual and the
absurd. I know that domestic help is scarce," Robert said; "but would
anyone hope to enlist a servant by forcibly detaining her, to say
nothing of beating and starving her?"

"No normal person, of course," Grant agreed, keeping his eye steadily
fixed on Robert's so that it had no tendency to slide over to Marion
Sharpe. "But believe me, in my first twelve months in the force I had
come across a dozen things much more incredible. There is no end to the
extravagances of human conduct."

"I agree; but the extravagance is just as likely to be in the girl's
conduct. After all, the extravagance begins with her. She is the one who
has been missing for --" He paused in question.

"A month, "Grant supplied.

"For a month; while there is no suggestion that the household at The
Franchise has varied at all from its routine. Would it not be possible
for Miss Sharpe to provide an alibi for the day in question?"

"No," Marion Sharpe said. "The day, according to the Inspector, is the
28th of March. That is a long time ago, and our days here vary very
little, if at all. It would be quite impossible for us to remember what
we were doing on March the 28th and most unlikely that anyone would
remember for us."

"Your maid?" Robert suggested. "Servants have ways of marking their
domestic life that are often surprising."

"We have no maid," she said. "We find it difficult to keep one: The
Franchise is so isolated."

The moment threatened to become awkward and Robert hastened to break it.

"This girl - I don't know her name, by the way."

"Elisabeth Kane; known as Betty Kane."

"Oh yes; you did tell me. I'm sorry. This girl - may we know something
about her? I take it that the police have investigated her before
accepting so much of her story. Why guardians and not parents, for
instance?"

"She is a war orphan. She was evacuated to the Aylesbury district as a
small child. She was an only child, and was billeted with the Wynns, who
had a boy four years older. About twelve months later both parents were
killed in the same 'incident', and the Wynns, who had always wanted a
daughter and were very fond of the child, were glad to keep her. She
looks on them as her parents, since she can hardly remember the real
ones."

"I see. And her record?"

"Excellent. A very quiet girl, by every account. Good at her school
work, but not brilliant. Has never been in any kind of trouble, in
school or out of it. 'Transparently truthful' was the phrase her form
mistress used about her."

"When she eventually turned up at her home, after her absence, was there
any evidence of the beatings she said she had been given?"

"Oh yes; very definitely. The Wynns' own doctor saw her early next
morning, and his statement is that she had been very extensively knocked
about. Indeed, some of the bruises were still visible much later when
she made her statement to us."

"No history of epilepsy?"

"No; we considered that very early in the inquiry. I should like to say
that the Wynns are very sensible people. They have been greatly
distressed, but they have not tried to dramatize the affair or allowed
the girl to be an object of interest or pity. They have taken the affair
admirably."

"And all that remains is for me to take my end of it with the same
admirable detachment," Marion Sharpe said.

"You see my position, Miss Sharpe. The girl not only describes the house
in which she says she was detained, she describes the two inhabitants
and describes them very accurately. 'A thin, elderly woman with soft
white hair and no hat, dressed in black; and a much younger woman, thin
and tall and dark like a gipsy, with no hat and a bright silk scarf
round her neck.'"

"Oh yes. I can think of no explanation, but I understand your position.
And now I think we had better have the girl in, but before we do I
should like to say --"

The door opened noiselessly and old Mrs. Sharpe appeared on the
threshold. The short pieces of white hair round her face stood up on
end, as her pillow had left them, and she looked more than ever like a
sibyl.

She pushed the door to behind her and surveyed the gathering with a
malicious interest.

"Hah!" she said, making a sound like the throaty squawk of a hen.

"Three strange men!"

"Let me present them, mother," Marion said, as the three got to their
feet.

"This is Mr. Blair, of Blair, Hayward, and Bennet - the firm who have
that lovely house at the top of the High Street."

As Robert bowed the old woman fixed him with her seagull's eye. "Needs
re-tiling, "she said.

It did, but it was not the greeting he had expected.

it comforted him a little that her greeting to Grant was even more
unorthodox. Far from being impressed or agitated by the presence of
Scotland Yard in her drawing-room of a spring afternoon, she merely said
in her dry voice: "You should not be sitting in that chair; you are much
too heavy for it."

When her daughter introduced the local Inspector she cast one glance at
him, moved her head an inch, and quite obviously dismissed him from
further consideration. This Hallam, to judge by his expression, found
peculiarly shattering.

Grant looked inquiringly at Miss Sharpe. "I'll tell her," she said.

"Mother, the Inspector wants us to see a young girl who is waiting in a
car outside the gate. She was missing from her home near Aylesbury for a
month, and when she turned up again in a distressed condition she said
that she had been detained by people who wanted to make a servant of
her. They kept her locked up when she refused, and beat and starved her.
She described the place and the people minutely, and it so happens that
you and I fit the description admirably. So does our house. The
suggestion is that she was detained UP in our attic with the round
window."

"Remarkably interesting," said the old lady, seating herself with
deliberation on an Empire sofa. "What did we beat her with?"

"A dog whip, I understand."

"Have we got a dog whip?"

"We have one of those 'lead' things, I think. They make a whip if
necessary. But the point is, the Inspector would like us to meet this
girl, so that she can say if we are the people who detained her or not."

"Have you any objections, Mrs. Sharpe?" Grant asked.

"On the contrary, Inspector. I look forward to the meeting with
impatience. It is not every afternoon, I assure you, that I go to my
rest a dull old woman and rise a potential monster."

"Then if you will excuse me, I shall bring her in."

Hallam made a motion, offering himself as messenger, but Grant shook his
head. It was obvious that he wanted to be present when the girl first
saw what was beyond the gate.

As the Inspector went out Marion Sharpe explained Blair's presence to
her mother. "It was extraordinarily kind of him to come at such short
notice and so quickly," she added, and Robert felt again the impact of
that bright, pale old eye. For his money, old Mrs. Sharpe was quite
capable of beating seven different people between breakfast and lunch
any day of the week.

"You have my sympathy, Mr. Blair," she said unsympathetically.

"Why, Mrs. Sharpe?"

"I take it that Broadmoor is a little out of your line."

"Broadmoor!"

"Criminal lunacy."

"I find it extraordinarily stimulating," Robert said, refusing to be
bullied by her.

This drew a flash of appreciation from her, something that was like the
shadow of a smile. Robert had the odd feeling that she suddenly liked
him; but if so she was making no verbal confession of it. Her dry voice
said tartly: "Yes, I expect the distractions of Milford are scarce and
mild. My daughter pursues a piece of gutta-percha round the golf-course
-"

"It is not gutta-percha any more, mother," her daughter put in.

"But at my age Milford does not provide even that distraction. I am
reduced to pouring weedkiller on weeds - a legitimate form of sadism, on
a par with drowning fleas. Do you drown your fleas, Mr. Blair?"

"No, I squash them. But I have a sister who used to pursue them with a
cake of soap."

"Soap?" said Mrs. Sharpe, with genuine interest.

"I understand that she hit them with the soft side and they stuck to
it."

"How very interesting. A technique I have not met before. I must try
that next time."

With his other ear he heard that Marion was being nice to the snubbed
Inspector. "You play a very good game, Inspector," she was saying.

He was conscious of the feeling you get near the end of a dream, when
waking is just round the corner, that none of the inconsequence really
matters because presently you'll be back in the real world.

This was misleading because the real world came through the door with
the return of Inspector Grant. Grant came in first, so that he was in a
position to see the expressions on all the faces concerned, and held the
door open for a police matron and a girl.

Marion Sharp stood up slowly, as if better to face anything that might
be coming to her, but her mother remained seated on the sofa as one
giving an audience, her Victorian back as flat as it had been when she
was a young girl, her hands lying composedly in her lap. Even her wild
hair could not detract from the impression that she was mistress of the
situation. The girl was wearing her school coat and childish, low-heeled
clumpish black school shoes; and consequently looked younger than Blair
had anticipated. She was not very tall and certainly not pretty. But she
had - what was the word? - appeal. Her eyes, a darkish blue, were set
wide apart in a face of the type popularly referred to as heart-shaped.
Her hair was mouse- coloured, but grew off her forehead in a good line.
Below each cheekbone a slight hollow, a miracle of delicate modelling,
gave the face charm and pathos. Her lower lip was full, but the mouth
was too small. So were her ears. Too small and too close to her head.

An ordinary sort of girl, after all - not the sort you would notice in a
croc; not at all the type to be the heroine of a sensation. Robert
wondered what she would look like in other clothes.

The girl's glance rested first on the old woman and then went on to
Marion. The glance held neither surprise nor triumph, and not much
interest.

"Yes, these are the women," she said.

"You have no doubt about it?" Grant asked her; and added: "It is a very
grave accusation, you know."

"No, I have no doubt. How could I?"

"These two ladies are the women who detained you, took your clothes from
you, forced you to mend linen, and whipped you?"

"Yes, these are the women."

"A remarkable liar," said old Mrs. Sharpe, in the tone in which one
says: A remarkable likeness.

"You say that we took you into the kitchen for coffee," Marion said.

"Yes, you did."

"Can you describe the kitchen?"

"I didn't pay much attention. It was a big one with a stone floor, I
think, and a row of bells."

"What kind of stove?"

"I didn't notice the stove, but the pan the old woman heated the coffee
in was a pale blue enamel one with a dark blue edge and a lot of chips
off round the bottom edge."

"I doubt if there is any kitchen in England that hasn't a pan exactly
like that," Marion said. "We have three of them."

"Is the girl a virgin?" asked Mrs. Sharpe, in the mildly interested tone
of a person inquiring: Is it a Chanel?

In the startled pause that this produced Robert was aware of Hallam's
scandalized face, the hot blood running up into the girl's, and the fact
that there was no protesting "Mother!" from the daughter, as he
unconsciously but confidently expected. He wondered whether her silence
was tacit approval or whether after a lifetime with Mrs. Sharpe she was
shock-proof.

Grant said in cold reproof that the matter was irrelevant.

"You think so?" said the old lady. "If I had been missing for a month
from my house it is the first thing that my mother would have wanted to
know about me. However. Now that the girl has identified us, what do you
propose to do? Arrest us?"

"Oh no. Things are a long way from that at the moment. I want to take
Miss Kane to the kitchen and the attic, so that her descriptions of them
can be verified. If they are, I report on the case to my superior and he
decides in conference what further steps to take."

"I see. A most admirable caution, Inspector." She rose slowly to her
feet. "Ah well, if you will excuse me I shall go back to my interrupted
rest."

"But don't you want to be present when Miss Kane inspects to hear the
--"

blurted Grant, surprised for once out of his composure.

"Oh dear, no." She smoothed down her black gown with a slight frown.

"They split invisible atoms," she remarked testily, "but no one so far
has invented a material that does not crease. I have not the faintest
doubt," she went on, "that Miss Kane will identify the attic. Indeed, I
should be surprised beyond belief if she failed to."

She began to move towards the door, and consequently towards the girl;
and for the first time the girl's eyes lit with expression. A spasm of
alarm crossed her face. The police matron came forward a step
protectively. Mrs. Sharpe continued her unhurried progress and came to
rest a yard or so from the girl, so that they were face to face. For a
full five seconds there was silence while she examined the girl's face
with interest. "For two people who are on beating terms we are
distressingly ill acquainted," she said at last. "I hope to know you
much better before this affair is finished, Miss Kane." She turned to
Robert and bowed. "Good-bye, Mr. Blair. I hope you will continue to find
us stimulating." And, ignoring the rest of the gathering, she walked out
of the door that Hallam held open for her.

There was a distinct feeling of anticlimax, now that she was no longer
there, and Robert paid her the tribute of a reluctant admiration. It was
no small achievement to steal the interest from an outraged heroine.

"You have no objections to letting Miss Kane see the relevant parts of
the house, Miss Sharpe?" Grant asked.

"Of course not. But before we go farther I should like to say what I was
going to say before you brought Miss Kane in. I am glad that Miss Kane
is present to hear it now. It is this. I have never to my knowledge seen
this girl before, I did not give her a lift anywhere, on any occasion.
She was not brought into this house either by me or by my mother, nor
was she kept here. I should like that to be clearly understood."

"Very well, Miss Sharpe. It is understood that your attitude is a
complete denial of the girl's story."

"A complete denial from beginning to end. And now, will you come and see
the kitchen?"

CHAPTER 3.

Grant and the girl accompanied Robert and Marion Sharpe on the
inspection of the house, while Hallam and the police matron waited in
the drawing-room.

As they reached the first-floor landing, after the girl had identified
the kitchen, Robert said: "Miss Kane said that the second flight of
stairs was covered in 'something hard', but the same carpet continues up
from the first flight."

"Only to the curve," Marion said. "The bit that shows. Round the corner
it is drugget. A Victorian way of economizing. Nowadays if you are poor
you buy less expensive carpet and use it all the way up. But those were
still the days when what the neighbours thought mattered. So the lush
stuff went as far as the eye could see and no farther."

The girl had been right about the third flight, too. The treads of the
short flight to the attic were bare.

The all-important attic was a low, square little box of a room, with the
ceiling slanting abruptly down on three sides in conformity with the
slate roof outside. It was lit only by the round window looking out to
the front. A short stretch of slates sloped from below the window to the
low white parapet. The window was divided into four panes, one of which
showed a badly starred crack. It had never been made to open.

The attic was completely bare of furnishing. Unnaturally bare, Robert
thought, for so convenient and accessible a storeroom.

"There used to be stuff here when we first came," Marion said, as if
answering him. "But when we found that we should be without help half
the time, we got rid of it."

Grant turned to the girl with a questioning air.

"The bed was in that corner," she said, pointing to the corner away from
the window. "And next to it was the wooden commode. And in this corner
behind the door there were three empty traveling-cases - two suitcases
and a trunk with a flat top. There was a chair, but she took it away
after I tried to break the window." She referred to Marion without
emotion, as if she were not present. "There is where I tried to break
the window."

It seemed to Robert that the crack looked much more than a few weeks
old; but there was no denying that the crack was there.

Grant crossed to the far corner and bent to examine the bare floor, but
it did not need close examination. Even from where he was standing by
the door Robert could see the marks of castors on the floor where the
bed had stood.

"There was a bed there," Marion said. "It was one of the things we got
rid of."

"What did you do with it?"

"Let me think. Oh, we gave it to the cowman's wife over at Staples Farm.
Her eldest boy got too big to share a room with the others any more and
she put him up in their loft. We get our dairy stuff from Staples. You
can't see it from here, but it is only four fields away over the rise."

"Where do you keep your spare trunks, Miss Sharpe? Have you another
box-room?"

For the first time Marion hesitated. "We do have a large square trunk
with a flat top, but my mother uses it to store things in. When we
inherited The Franchise there was a very valuable tall-boy in the
bedroom my mother has, and we sold it, and used the big trunk instead
with a chintz cover on it. My suitcases I keep in the cupboard on the
first-floor landing."

"Miss Kane, do you remember what the cases looked like?"

"Oh yes. One was a brown leather with those sort of caps at the corners
and the other was one of those American-looking canvas-covered ones with
stripes."

Well, that was definite enough.

Grant examined the room a little longer, studied the view from the
window, and then turned to go.

"May we see the suitcases in the cupboard?" he asked Marion.

"Certainly," Marion said, but she seemed unhappy.

On the lower landing she Opened the cupboard door and stood back to let
the Inspector look. As Robert moved out of their way he caught the
unguarded flash of triumph on the girl's face. It so altered her calm,
rather childish face that it shocked him. It was a savage emotion,
primitive and cruel; and very startling on the face of a demure
schoolgirl who was the pride of her guardians and preceptors.

The cupboard contained shelves bearing household linen and on the floor
four suitcases. Two were expanding ones, one of pressed fibre and one of
rawhide; the other two were: a brown cowhide with protected corners and
a square, canvas- covered hat-box with a broad band of multi-coloured
stripes down the middle.

"Are these the cases?" Grant asked.

"Yes," the girl said. "Those two."

"I am not going to disturb my mother again this afternoon," Marion said,
with sudden anger. "I acknowledge that the trunk in her room is large
and flat-topped. It has been there without interruption for the last
three years."

"Very good, Miss Sharpe. And now the garage, if YOU please."

Down at the back of the house, where the stables had been converted long
ago into a garage, the little group stood and surveyed the battered old
grey car. Grant read out the girl's un- technical description of it as
recorded in her statement. It fitted, but it would fit equally well at
least a thousand cars on the roads of Britain today, Blair thought. It
was hardly evidence at all. "'One of the wheels was painted a different
shade from the others and didn't look as if it belonged. The different
wheel was the one in front on my side as it was standing at the
pavement,'" Grant finished.

In the silence the four people looked at the darker grey of the near
front wheel. There seemed nothing to say.

"Thank you very much, Miss Sharpe," Grant said at length, shutting his
notebook and putting it away. "You have been very courteous and helpful,
and I am grateful to you. I shall be able to get you on the telephone
any time in the next few days, I suppose, if I want to talk to you
further?"

"Oh yes, Inspector. We have no intention of going anywhere."

If Grant was aware of her too-ready comprehension he did not show it.

He handed over the girl to the matron and they left without a backward
glance. Then he and Hallam took their leave, Hallam still with an air of
apologizing for trespass.

Marion had gone out into the hall with them, leaving Blair in the
drawing-room, and when she came back she was carrying a tray with sherry
and glasses.

"I don't ask you to stay for dinner," she said, putting down the tray
and beginning to pour the wine, "partly because our 'dinner' is usually
a very scratch supper and not at all what you are used to. (Did you know
that your aunt's meals are famous in Milford? Even I have heard about
them.) And partly because - well, because, as my mother said, Broadmoor
is a little out of your line, I expect."

"About that," Robert said, "you do realize, don't you, that the girl has
an enormous advantage over you - in the matter of evidence, I mean.

She is free to describe almost any object she likes as being part of
your household. If it happens to be there, that is strong evidence for
her. If it happens not to be there, that is not evidence for you: the
inference is merely that you have got rid of it. If the suitcases, for
instance, had not been there, she could say that you had got rid of them
because they had been in the attic and could be described."

"But she did describe them, without ever having seen them."

"She described two suitcases, you mean. If your four suitcases had been
a matching set she would have only one chance in perhaps five of being
right. But because you happened to have one of each of the common kinds
her chances worked out at about even."

He picked up the glass of sherry that she had set down beside him, took
a mouthful, and was astonished to find it admirable.

She smiled a little at him and said, "We economize, but not on wine,"

and he flushed slightly, wondering if his surprise had been as obvious
as that.

"But there was the odd wheel of the car. How did she know about that?

The whole set-up is extraordinary. How did she know about my mother and
me, and what the house looked like? Our gates are never open. Even if
she opened them - though what she could be doing on that lonely road I
can't imagine - even if she opened them and looked inside she would not
know about my mother and me."

"No chance of her having made friends with a maid? Or a gardener?"

"We have never had a gardener, because there is nothing but grass. And
we have not had a maid for a year. Just a girl from the farm who comes
in once a week and does the rough cleaning."

Robert said sympathetically that it was a big house to have on her hands
unaided.

"Yes; but two things help. I am not a house-proud woman. And it is still
so wonderful to have a home of our own that I am willing to put up with
the disadvantages. Old Mr. Crowle was my father's cousin, but we didn't
know him at all. My mother and I had always lived in a Kensington
boardinghouse." One corner of her mouth moved up in a wry smile. "You
can't imagine how popular mother was with the residents."

The smile faded. "My father died when I was very little. He was one of
those optimists who are always going to be rich tomorrow. When he found
one day that his speculations had not left even enough for a loaf of
bread on the morrow, he committed suicide and left my mother to face
things."

Robert felt that this to some extent explained Mrs. Sharpe.

"I was not trained for a profession, so my life has been spent in odd
jobs. Not domestic ones - I loathe domesticity - but helping in those
lady-like businesses that abound in Kensington. Lampshades, or advising
on holidays, or flowers, or bric-A-brac. When old Mr.

Crowle died I was working in a tea-shop - one of those morning-coffee
gossip shops. Yes, it is a little difficult."

"What is?"

"To imagine me among the tea-cups."

Robert, unused to having his mind read - Aunt Lin was incapable of
following anyone's mental processes even when they were explained to her
- was disconcerted. But she was not thinking of him.

"We had just begun to feel settled down and at home and safe when this
happened."

For the first time since she had asked his help Robert felt the stirring
of partisanship. "And all because a slip of a girl needs an alibi," he
said. "We must find out more about Betty Kane."

"I can tell you one thing about her. She is over-sexed."

"Is that feminine intuition?"

"No. I am not very feminine and I have no intuition. But I have never
known anyone - man or woman - with that colour of eye who wasn't. That
opaque dark blue, like a very faded navy - it's infallible."

Robert smiled at her indulgently. She was very feminine after all.

"And don't feel superior because it happens not to be lawyers' logic,"

she added. "Have a look round at your own friends and see."

Before he could stop himself he thought of Gerald Blunt, the Milford
scandal. Assuredly Gerald had slate-blue eyes. So had Arthur Wallis, the
pot man at the White Hart, who was paying three different monetary
levies weekly. So had -- Damn the woman, she had no right to make a
silly generalization like that and be right about it.

"It is fascinating to speculate on what she really did during that
month," Marion said. "It affords me intense satisfaction that someone
beat her black and blue. At least there is one person in this world who
has arrived at a correct estimate of her. I hope I meet him some day, so
that I may shake his hand."

"Him?"

"With those eyes it is bound to be a 'him'."

"Well," Robert said, preparing to go, "I doubt very much whether Grant
has a case that he will want to present in court. It would be the girl's
word against yours, with no other backing on either side.

Against you would be her statement - so detailed, so circumstantial.

Against her would be the inherent unlikeliness of the story. I don't
think he could hope to get a verdict."

"But the thing is there, whether he brings it into court or not; and not
only in the files of Scotland Yard. Sooner or later a thing like that
begins to be whispered about. It would be no comfort to us not to have
the thing cleared up."

"Oh, it will be cleared up, if I have anything to do with it. But I
think we must wait for a day or two to see what the Yard mean to do
about it. They have far better facilities for arriving at the truth than
we are ever likely to have."

"Coming from a lawyer, that is a touching tribute to the honesty of the
police."

"Believe me, truth may be a virtue, but Scotland Yard discovered long
ago that it is a business asset. It doesn't pay them to be satisfied
with anything less."

"If he did bring it to court," she said, coming to the door with him,
"and did get a verdict, what would that mean for us?"

"I'm not sure whether it would be two years' imprisonment or seven
years' penal servitude. I told you I was a broken reed where criminal
procedure is concerned. But I shall look it up."

"Yes, do, "she said. "There's quite a difference."

He decided that he liked her habit of mockery. Especially in the face of
a criminal charge.

"Good-bye," she said. "It was kind of you to come. You have been a great
comfort to me."

And Robert, remembering how nearly he had thrown her to Ben Carley,
blushed to himself as he walked to the gate.

CHAPTER 4.

"Have you had a busy day, dear?" Aunt Lin asked, opening her table
napkin and arranging it across her plump lap.

This was a sentence that made sense but had no meaning. it was as much
an overture to dinner as the spreading of her napkin and the exploratory
movement of her right foot as she located the footstool which
compensated for her short legs. She expected no answer; or rather, being
unaware that she had asked the question, she did not listen to his
answer.

Robert looked up the table at her with a more conscious benevolence than
usual. After his uncharted step-picking at The Franchise, the serenity
of Aunt Lin's presence was very comforting, and he looked with a new
awareness at the solid little figure with the short neck and the round
pink face and the iron- grey hair that frizzed out from its large
hairpins. Linda Bennet led a life of recipes, film stars, godchildren,
and church bazaars, and found it perfect. Well-being and contentment
enveloped her like a cloak. She read the Women's Page of the daily paper
(How to Make a Boutonniere from Old Kid Gloves) and nothing else as far
as Robert was aware. Occasionally when she tidied away the paper that
Robert had left lying about she would pause to read the headlines and
comment on them. ("'MAN ENDS EIGHTY-TWO DAY FAST' - silly creature! 'OIL
DISCOVERY IN BAHAMAS' - did I tell you that paraffin is up a penny,
dear?") But she gave the impression of never really believing that the
world the papers reported did in fact exist. The world for Aunt Lin
began with Robert Blair and ended within a ten-mile radius of him.

"What kept you so late tonight, dear?" she asked, having finished her
soup.

From long experience Robert recognized this as being in a different
category from: "Have you had a busy day, dear?" "I had to go out to The
Franchise - that house on the Larborough road. They wanted some legal
advice."

"Those odd people? I didn't know you knew them."

"I didn't. They just wanted my advice."

"I hope they pay you for it, dear. They have no money at all, you know.
The father was in some kind of importing business - monkey-nuts or
something - and drank himself to death. Left them without a penny, poor
things. Old Mrs. Sharpe ran a boarding-house in London to make ends
meet, and the daughter was maid-of-all-work. They were just going to be
turned into the street with their furniture when the old man at The
Franchise died. So providential!"

"Aunt Lin! Where do you get those stories?"

"But it's true, dear. Perfectly true. I forgot who told me - someone who
had stayed in the same street in London - but it was first-hand, anyhow.
I am not one to pass on idle gossip, as you know. Is it a nice house? I
always wondered what was inside that iron gate."

"No, rather ugly. But they have some nice pieces of furniture."

"Not as well kept as ours, I'll be bound," she said, looking
complacently at the perfect sideboard and the beautiful chairs ranged
against the wall. "The Vicar said yesterday that if this house were not
so obviously a home it would be a show-place." Mention of the clergy
seemed to remind her of something. "By the way, will you be extra
patient with Christina for the next few days? I think she is going to be
'saved' again."

"Oh, poor Aunt Lin, what a bore for you! But I was afraid of it. There
was a text in the saucer of my early-morning tea today: 'Thou God se est
me' on a scroll, with a tasteful design of Easter lilies in the
background. Is she changing her church again, then?"

"Yes. She has discovered that the Methodists are 'whited sepulchres', it
seems, so she is going to those 'Bethel' people above Benson's bakery,
and is due to be 'saved' any day now. She has been shouting hymns all
the morning."

"But she always does."

"Not 'sword of the Lord' ones. As long as she sticks to 'pearly crowns'
or 'streets of gold' I know it is all right. But once she begins on the
'sword of the Lord' I know that it will be my turn to do the baking
presently."

"Well, darling, you bake just as well as Christina."

"Oh no, she doesn't," said Christina, coming in with the meat course. A
big soft creature with untidy, straight hair and a vague eye. "Only one
thing your Aunt Lin makes better than me, Mr. Robert, and that's hot
cross buns, and that's only once a year. So there! And if I'm not
appreciated in this house, I'll go where I will be."

"Christina, my love," Robert said, "you know very well that no one could
imagine this house without you, and if you left I should follow you to
the world's end. For your butter tarts, if for nothing else.

Can we have butter tarts tomorrow, by the way?"

"Butter tarts are no food for unrepentant sinners. Besides, I don't
think I have the butter. But we'll see. Meanwhile, Mr. Robert, you
examine your soul and stop casting stones."

Aunt Lin sighed gently as the door closed behind her. "Twenty years,"

she said meditatively. "You won't remember her when she first came from
the orphanage. Fifteen, and so skinny, poor little brat. She ate a whole
loaf for her tea, and said she would pray for me all her life.

I think she has, you know." Something like a tear glistened in Miss
Bennet's blue eye.

"I hope she postpones the salvation until she has made those butter
tarts," said Robert, brutally materialistic. "Did you enjoy your
picture?"

"Well, dear, I couldn't forget that he had five wives."

"Who has?"

"Had dear - one at a time. Gene Darrow. I must say, those little
programmes they give away are very informative, but a little
disillusioning. He was a student, you see. In the picture, I mean.

Very young and romantic. But I kept remembering those five wives, and it
spoiled the afternoon for me. So charming to look at too. They say he
dangled his third wife out of a fifth- storey window by the wrists, but
I don't really believe that. He doesn't look strong enough, for one
thing. Looks as if he had chest trouble as a child - that peaky look and
thin wrists. Not strong enough to dangle anyone. Certainly not out of a
fifth-storey ..."

The gentle monologue went on all through the pudding course; and Robert
withdrew his attention and thought about The Franchise. He came to the
surface as they rose from table and moved into the sitting-room for
coffee.

"It is the most becoming garment, if maids would only realize it," she
was saying.

"What is?"

"An apron. She was a maid in the palace, you know, and wore one of those
silly bits of muslin - so becoming. Did those people at The Franchise
have a maid, by the way? No? Well, I am not surprised. They starved the
last one, you know. Gave her --"

"Oh, Aunt Lin!"

"I assure you. For breakfast she got the crusts they cut off the toast.
And when they had milk pudding ..."

Robert did not hear what enormity was born of the milk pudding. In spite
of his good dinner he was suddenly tired and depressed. If kind, silly
Aunt Lin saw no harm in repeating those absurd stories, what would the
real gossips of Milford achieve with the stuff of a real scandal?

"And talking of maids - the brown sugar is finished, dear, so you will
have to have lump for tonight - talking of maids, the Carley's little
maid has got herself into trouble."

"You mean someone else has got her into trouble."

"Yes. Arthur Wallis, the pot man at the White Hart."

"What, Wallis again!"

"Yes, it really is getting past a joke, isn't it? I can't think why the
man doesn't get married. It would be much cheaper."

But Robert was not listening. He was back in the drawing- room at The
Franchise being gently mocked for his legal intolerance of a
generalization. Back in the shabby room with the unpolished furniture,
where things lay about on chairs and no one bothered to tidy them away.

And where, now he came to think of it, no one ran round after him with
an ash-tray.

CHAPTER 5.

It was more than a week later that Mr. Heseltine put his thin, small,
grey head round Robert's door to say that Inspector Hallam was in the
office and would like to see him for a moment.

The room on the opposite side of the hall, where Mr. Heseltine lorded it
over the clerks, was always referred to as "the office", although both
Robert's room and the little one behind it used by Nevil Bennet were, in
spite of their carpets and their mahogany, plainly offices too. There
was an official waiting-room behind "the office", a small room
corresponding to young Bennet's, but it had never been popular with the
Blair, Hayward, and Bennet clients. Callers stepped into the office to
announce themselves and usually stayed there gossiping until such time
as Robert was free to see them. The little "waiting-room" had long ago
been appropriated by Miss Tuff for writing Robert's letters in, away
from the distraction of visitors and from the office-boy's sniffings.

When Mr. Heseltine had gone away to fetch the Inspector, Robert noticed
with surprise that he was apprehensive as he had not been apprehensive
since in the days of his youth he approached a list of examination
results pinned on a board. Was his life so placid that a stranger's
dilemma should stir it to that extent? Or was it that the Sharpes had
been so constantly in his thoughts for the last week that they had
ceased to be strangers?

He braced himself for whatever Hallam was going to say; but what emerged
from Hallam's careful phrases was that Scotland Yard had let them
understand that no proceedings would be taken on the present evidence.
Blair noticed the "present evidence" and gauged its meaning accurately.
They were not dropping the case - did the Yard ever drop a case? - they
were merely sitting quiet.

The thought of Scotland Yard sitting quiet was not a particularly
reassuring one in the circumstances. "I take it that they lack
corroborative evidence," he said.

"They couldn't trace the lorry driver who gave her the lift," Hallam
said.

"That wouldn't surprise them."

"No," Hallam agreed; "no driver is going to risk the sack by confessing
he gave anyone a lift. Especially a girl. Transport bosses are strict
about that. And when it is the case of a girl in trouble of some kind
and when it's the police that are doing the asking, no man in his right
sense is going to own up to even having seen her." He took the cigarette
that Robert offered him. "They needed that lorry driver, "he said; "or
someone like him," he added.

"Yes," Robert said, reflectively. "What did you make of her, Hallam?"

"The girl? I don't know. Nice kid. Seemed quite genuine. Might have been
one of my own."

This, Blair realized, was a very good sample of what they would be up
against if it ever came to a case. To every man of good feeling the girl
in the witness-box would look like his own daughter. Not because she was
a waif, but for the very good reason that she wasn't. The decent school
coat, the mousy hair, the un-made-up young face with its appealing
hollow below the cheek-bone, the wide-set, candid eyes - it was a
prosecuting counsel's dream of a victim.

"Just like any other girl of her age," Hallam said, still considering
it. "Nothing against her."

"So you don't judge people by the colour of their eyes," Robert said
idly, his mind still on the girl.

"Ho! Don't I!" said Hallam surprisingly. "Believe me, there's a
particular shade of baby blue that condemns a man, as far as I'm
concerned, before he has opened his mouth. Plausible liars every one of
them." He paused to pull at his cigarette. "Given to murder, too, come
to think of it - though I haven't met many killers."

"You alarm me," Robert said. "In the future I shall give baby-blue eyes
a wide berth."

Hallam grinned. "As long as you keep your pocket-book shut you needn't
worry. All Baby-blue's lies are for money. He only murders when he gets
too entangled in his lies. The real murderer's mark is not the colour of
the eyes but their setting."

"Setting?"

" Yes. They are set differently. The two eyes, I mean. They look as if
they belonged to different faces."

"I thought you hadn't met many."

"No; but I've read all the case histories and studied the photographs.

I've always been surprised that no book on murder mentions it, it
happens so often. The inequality of setting, I mean."

"So it's entirely your own theory."

"The result of my own observation, yes. You ought to have a go at it
sometimes. Fascinating. I've got to the stage where I look for it now."

"In the street, you mean?"

"No, not quite as bad as that. But in each new murder case. I wait for
the photograph, and when it comes I think: 'There! What did I tell
you?'"

"And when the photograph comes and the eyes are of a mathematical
identity?"

"Then it is nearly always what one might call an accidental murder - the
kind of murder that might happen to anyone given the circumstances."

"And when you turn up a photograph of the reverend vicar of Nether
Dumbleton, who is being given a presentation by his grateful
parishioners to mark his fiftieth year of devoted service, and you note
that his eyes are wildly unequal in setting, what conclusion do you come
to?"

"That his wife satisfies him, his children obey him, his stipend is
sufficient for his needs, he has no politics, he gets on with the local
big-wigs, and he is allowed to have the kind of services he wants. In
fact, he has never had the slightest need to murder anyone."

"It seems to me that you are having your cake and eating it very
nicely."

"Huh!" Hallam said disgustedly. "Just wasting good police observation on
a legal mind. I'd have thought," he added, moving to go, "that a lawyer
would be glad of some free tips about judging perfect strangers."

"All you are doing," Robert pointed out, "is corrupting an innocent
mind. I shall never be able to inspect a new client from now on without
my subconscious registering the colour of his eyes and the symmetry of
their setting."

"Well, that's something. It's about time you knew some of the facts of
life."

"Thank you for coming to tell me about The Franchise affair," Robert
said, returning to sobriety.

"The telephone in this town," Hallam said, "is about as private as the
radio."

"Anyhow, thank you. I must let the Sharpes know at once." As Hallam took
his leave, Robert lifted the telephone receiver.

He could not, as Hallam said, talk freely over the telephone, but he
would say that he was coming out to see them immediately and that the
news was good. That would take the present weight off their minds. It
would also - he glanced at his watch - be time for Mrs. Sharpe's daily
rest, so perhaps he would have a hope of avoiding the old dragon. And
also a hope of a tete-a-tete with Marion Sharpe, of course; though he
left that thought unformulated at the back of his mind.

But there was no answer to his call.

With the bored and reluctant aid of the Exchange he rang the number for
a solid five minutes, without result. The Sharpes were not at home.

While he was still engaged with the Exchange, Nevil Bennet strolled in,
clad in his usual outrageous tweed, a pinkish shirt, and a purple tie.

Robert, eyeing him over the receiver, wondered for the hundredth time
what was going to become of Blair, Hayward, and Bennet when it at last
slipped from his good Blair grasp into the hands of this young sprig of
the Bennets. That the boy had brains he knew, but brains wouldn't take
him far in Milford. Milford expected a man to stop being undergraduate
when he reached graduate age. But there was no sign of Nevil's
acceptance of the world outside his coterie. He was still actively, if
unconsciously, epate-ing that world as his clothes bore witness.

It was not that Robert had any desire to see the boy in customary suits
of solemn black. His own suit was a grey tweed; and his country
clientele would look doubtfully on "town" clothes. ("That awful little
man with the striped suits," Marion Sharpe had said of a town-clad
lawyer, in that unguarded moment on the telephone.) But there were
tweeds and tweeds, and Nevil Bennet's were the second kind. Quite
outrageously the second kind.

"Robert," Nevil said, as Robert gave it up and laid down the receiver,
"I've finished the papers on the Calthorpe transfer, and I thought I
would run into Larborough this afternoon if you haven't anything you
want me to do."

"Can't you talk to her on the telephone?" Robert asked - Nevil being
engaged, in the casual modern fashion, to the Bishop of Larborough's
third daughter.

"Oh, it isn't Rosemary. She is in London for a week."

"A protest meeting at the Albert Hall, I suppose," said Robert, who was
feeling disgruntled because of his failure to speak to the Sharpes when
he was primed with good news for them.

"No, at the Guildhall, "Nevil said.

"What is it this time? Vivisection?"

"You are frightfully last-century now and then, Robert," Nevil said with
his air of solemn patience. "No one objects to vivisection nowadays
except a few cranks. The protest is against this country's refusal to
give shelter to the patriot Kotovich."

"The said patriot is very badly 'wanted' in his own country, I
understand."

"By his enemies; yes."

"By the police for two murders."

"Executions."

"You a disciple of John Knox, Nevil?"

"Good God, no. What has that to do with it?"

"He believed in self-appointed executioners. The idea has a little gone
out' in this country, I understand. Anyhow, if it's a choice between
Rosemary's opinion of Kotovich and the opinion of the Special Branch,
I'll take the Special Branch."

"The Special Branch only do what the Foreign Office tells them.

Everyone knows that. But if I stay and explain the ramifications of the
Kotovich affair to you, I shall be late for the film."

"What film?"

"The French film I am going into Larborough to see."

"I suppose you know that most of those French trifles that the British
intelligentsia hate their breath about are considered very so-so in
their own country? However. Do you think you could pause long enough to
drop a note into the letter-box of The Franchise as you go by?"

"I might. I always wanted to see what was inside that wall. Who lives
there now?"

"An old woman and her daughter."

"Daughter?" repeated Nevil, automatically pricking his ears.

"Middle-aged daughter."

"Oh. All right, I'll just get my coat."

Robert wrote merely that he had tried to talk to them, that he had to go
out on business for an hour or so, but that he would ring them up again
when he was free, and that Scotland Yard had no case, as the case stood,
and acknowledged the fact. Nevil swept in with a dreadful raglan affair
over his arm, snatched up the letter and disappeared with a "Tell Aunt
Lin I may be late. She asked me over to dinner."

Robert donned his own sober grey hat and walked over to the Rose and
Crown to meet his client - an old farmer - and the last man in England
to suffer from chronic gout. The old man was not yet there, and Robert,
usually so placid, so lazily goodnatured, was conscious of impatience.

The pattern of his life had changed. Up to now it had been an even
succession of equal attractions; he had gone from one thing to another
without hurry and without emotion. Now there was a focus of interest,
and the rest revolved round it.

He sat down on one of the chintz-covered chairs in the lounge and looked
at the dog-eared journals lying on the adjacent coffee table.

The only current number was The Watchman, the weekly review, and he
picked it up reluctantly, thinking yet once more how the dry feel of the
paper offended his finger-tips and its serrated edges set his own teeth
on edge. It was the usual collection of protests, poems, and pedantry;
the place of honour among the protests was accorded to Nevil's future
father-in-law, who spread himself for three-quarters of a column on
England's shame in that she refused sanctuary to a fugitive patriot.

The Bishop of Larborough had long ago extended the Christian philosophy
to include the belief that the under-dog is always right. He was wildly
popular with Balkan revolutionaries, British strike committees, and all
the old lags in the local penal establishment. (The sole exception to
this last being that chronic recidivist Bandy Brayne, who held the good
bishop in vast contempt and reserved his affection for the Governor - to
whom a tear in the eye was just a drop of H2O, and who unpicked his most
heartbreaking tales with a swift, unemotional accuracy.) There was
nothing, said the old lags affectionately, that the old boy would not
believe; you could lay it on with a trowel.

Normally Robert found the Bishop mildly amusing, but today he was merely
irritated. He tried two poems, neither of which made sense to him, and
flung the thing back on the table.

"England in the wrong again?" asked Ben Carley, pausing by his chair and
jerking a head at The Watchman.

"Hullo, Carley."

"A Marble Arch for the well-to-do," the little lawyer said, flicking the
paper scornfully with a nicotine-stained finger. "Have a drink?"

"Thanks, but I'm waiting for old Mr. Wynyard. He doesn't move a step
more than he need, nowadays."

"No, poor old boy. The sins of the fathers. Awful to be suffering for
port you never drank! I saw your car outside The Franchise the other
day."

"Yes," said Robert, and wondered a little. It was unlike Ben Carley to
be blunt. And if he had seen Robert's car he had also seen the police
cars.

"If you know them you'll be able to tell me something I always wanted to
know about them. Is the rumour true?"

"Rumour?"

"Are they witches?"

"Are they supposed to be?" said Robert lightly.

"There's a strong support for the belief in the countryside, I
understand," Carley said, his bright black eyes resting for a moment on
Robert's with intention and then going on to wander over the lounge with
their habitual quick interrogation.

Robert understood that the little man was offering him, tacitly,
information that he thought ought to be useful to him.

"Ah well," Robert said, "since entertainment came into the country with
the cinema, God bless it, an end has been put to witch-hunting."

"Don't you believe it. Give these Midland morons a good excuse and
they'll witch-hunt with the best. An inbred crowd of degenerates, if you
ask me. Here's your old boy. Well, I'll be seeing you."

It was one of Robert's chief attractions that he was genuinely
interested in people and in their troubles, and he listened to old Mr.

Wynyard's rambling story with a kindness that won the old man's
gratitude and added, although he was unaware of it, a hundred to the sum
that stood against his name in the old farmer's will; but as soon as
their business was over he made straight for the hotel telephone.

There were far too many people about, and he decided to use the one in
the garage over in Sin Lane. The office would be shut by now, and anyhow
it was farther away. And if he telephoned from the garage, so his
thoughts went as he strode across the street, he would have his car at
hand if she - if they asked him to come out and discuss the business
further, as they very well might, as they almost certainly would - yes,
of course they would want to discuss what they could do to discredit the
girl's story, whether there was to be a case, or not. He had been so
relieved over Hallam's news that he had not yet come round in his mind
to considering what --

"Evening, Mr. Blair," Bill Brough said, oozing his large person out of
the narrow office door, his round, calm face bland and welcoming. "Want
your car?"

"No, I want to use your telephone first, if I may."

"Sure. Go ahead."

Stanley, who was under a car, poked his fawn's face out and asked: "Know
anything?"

"Not a thing, Stan. Haven't had a bet for months."

"I'm two pounds down on a cow called Bright Promise. That's what comes
of putting your faith in horseflesh. Next time you know something --"

"Next time I have a bet I'll tell you. But it will still be horseflesh."

"As long as it's not a cow" Stanley said, disappearing under the car
again; and Robert moved into the hot, bright little office and picked up
the receiver.

It was Marion who answered, and her voice sounded warm and glad.

"You can't imagine what a relief your note was to us. Both my mother and
I have been picking oakum for the last week. Do they still pick oakum,
by the way?"

"I think not. It is something more constructive nowadays, I understand."

"Occupational therapy."

"More or less."

"I can't think of any compulsory sewing that would improve my
character."

"They would probably find you something more congenial. It is against
modern thought to compel a prisoner to do anything that he doesn't want
to."

"That is the first time I have heard you sound tart."

"Was I tart?"

"Pure angostura."

Well, she had reached the subject of drink; perhaps now she would
suggest his coming out for sherry before dinner.

"What a charming nephew you have, by the way."

"Nephew?"

"The one who brought the note."

"He is not my nephew," Robert said coldly. Why was it so ageing to be
avuncular? "He is my first cousin once removed. But I am glad you liked
him." This would not do; he would have to take the bull by the horns. "I
should like to see you sometime to discuss what we can do to straighten
things out. To make things safer -" He waited.

"Yes, of course. Perhaps we could look in at your office one morning
when we are shopping? What kind of thing could we do, do you think?"

"Some kind of private inquiry, perhaps. I can't very well discuss it
over the telephone."

"No, of course you can't. How would it do if we came in on Friday
morning? That is our weekly shopping day. Or is Friday a busy day for
you?"

"No, Friday would be quite convenient," Robert said, swallowing down his
disappointment. "About noon?"

"Yes, that would do very well. Twelve o'clock the day after tomorrow at
your office. Good-bye, and thank you again for your support and help."

She rang off firmly and cleanly, without all the usual preliminary
twitterings that Robert had come to expect from women.

"Shall I run her out for you?" Bill Brough asked as he came out into the
dim daylight of the garage.

"What? Oh, the car. No, I shall't need it tonight, thanks."

He set off on his normal evening walk down the High Street, trying hard
not to feel snubbed. He had not been anxious to go to The Franchise in
the first instance and had made his reluctance pretty plain; she was
quite naturally avoiding a repetition of the circumstances. That he had
identified himself with their interests was a mere business affair, to
be resolved in an office, impersonally. They would not again involve him
further than that.

Ah well, he thought, flinging himself down in his favourite chair by the
wood fire in the sitting-room and opening the evening paper (printed
that morning in London), when they came to the office on Friday he could
do something to put the affair on a more personal basis, to wipe out the
memory of that first unhappy refusal.

The quiet of the old house soothed him. Christina had been closeted in
her room for two days in prayer and meditation, and Aunt Lin was in the
kitchen preparing dinner. There was a gay letter from Lettice, his only
sister, who had driven a truck for several years of bloody war, fallen
in love with a tall, silent Canadian, and was now raising five blond
brats in Saskatchewan. "Come out soon, Robin dear," she finished,
"before the brats grow up and before the moss grows right round you. You
know how bad Aunt Lin is for you!" He could hear her saying it. She and
Aunt Lin had never seen eye to eye.

He was smiling, relaxed and reminiscent, when both his quiet and his
peace were shattered by the interruption of Nevil.

"Why didn't you tell me she was like that!" Nevil demanded.

"Who?"

"The Sharpe woman! Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't expect you would meet her," Robert said. "All you had to do
was drop the letter through the door."

"There was nothing in the door to drop it through, so I rang, and they
had just come back from wherever they were. Anyhow, she answered it."

"I thought she slept in the afternoons."

"I don't believe she ever sleeps. She doesn't belong to the human family
at all. She is all compact of fire and metal."

"I know she's a very rude old woman, but you have to make allowances.

She has had a very hard --"

"Old? Who are you talking about?"

"Old Mrs. Sharpe, of course."

"I didn't even see old Mrs. Sharpe. I'm talking about Marion."

"Marion Sharpe? And how did you know her name was Marion?"

"She told me. It does suit her, doesn't it? She couldn't be anything but
Marion."

"You seem to have become remarkably intimate for a doorstep
acquaintance."

"Oh, she gave me tea."

"Tea! I thought you were in a desperate hurry to see a French film!"

"I'm never in a desperate hurry to do anything when a woman like Marion
Sharpe invites me to tea. Have you noticed her eyes? But of course you
have. You're her lawyer. That wonderful shading of grey into hazel. And
the way her eyebrows lie above them, like the brush-mark of a painter
genius. Winged eyebrows, they are. I made a poem about them on the way
home. Do you want to hear it?"

"No," Robert said firmly. "Did you enjoy your film?"

"Oh, I didn't go."

"You didn't go!"

"I told you I had tea with Marion instead."

"You mean you have been at The Franchise the whole afternoon!"

"I suppose I have," Nevil said dreamily, "but, by God, it didn't seem
more than seven minutes."

"And what happened to your thirst for French cinema?"

"But Marion iiss French film. Even you must see that!" Robert winced at
the "even you". "Why bother with the shadow, when you can be with the
reality? Reality. That is her great quality, isn't it? I've never met
anyone as real as Marion is."

"Not even Rosemary?" Robert was in the state known to Aunt Lin as "put
out".

"Oh, Rosemary is a darling and I'm going to marry her, but that is quite
a different thing."

"Is it?" said Robert, with deceptive meekness.

"Of course. People don't marry women like Marion Sharpe, any more than
they marry winds and clouds. Any more than they marry Joan of Arc.

It's positively blasphemous to consider marriage in relation to a woman
like that. She spoke very nicely of you, by the way."

"That was very kind of her." The tone was so dry that even Nevil caught
the flavour of it.

"Don't you like her?" he asked, pausing to look at his cousin in
surprised disbelief.

Robert had ceased for the moment to be kind, lazy, tolerant Robert
Blair; he was just a tired man who hadn't yet had his dinner and was
suffering from the memory of a frustration and a snubbing.

"As far as I am concerned," he said, "Marion Sharpe is just a skinny
woman of forty who lives with a rude old mother in an ugly old house,
and needs legal advice on occasion, like anyone else."

But even as the words came out he wanted to stop them, as if they were a
betrayal of a friend.

"No, probably she isn't your cup of tea," Nevil said tolerantly. "You
have always preferred them a little stupid and blonde, haven't you?"

This was said without malice, as one stating a dullish fact.

"I can't imagine why you should think that."

"All the women you nearly married were that type."

"I have never 'nearly married' anyone," Robert said stiffly.

"That's what you think. You'll never know how nearly Molly Manders
landed you."

"Molly Manders?" Aunt Lin said, coming in flushed from her cooking and
bearing the tray with the sherry. "Such a silly girl. Imagined that you
used a baking-board for pancakes. And was always looking at herself in
that little pocket mirror of hers."

"Aunt Lin saved you that time, didn't you, Aunt Lin?"

"I don't know what you are talking about, Nevil dear. Do stop prancing
about the hearth rug and put a log on the fire. Did you like your French
film, dear?"

"I didn't go. I had tea at The Franchise instead." He shot a glance at
Robert, having learned by now that there was more in Robert's reaction
than met the eye.

"With those strange people? What did you talk about?"

"Mountains - Maupassant - hens --"

"Hens, dear?"

"Yes; the concentrated evil of a hen's face in a close-up."

Aunt Lin looked vague. She turned to Robert as to terra firma.

"Had I better call, dear, if you are going to know them? Or ask the
vicar's wife to call?"

"I don't think I would commit the vicar's wife to anything so
irrevocable," Robert said dryly.

She looked doubtful for a moment, but household cares obliterated the
question in her mind. "Don't dawdle too long over your sherry or what I
have in the oven will be spoiled. Thank goodness, Christina will be down
tomorrow. At least I hope so; I have never known her salvation take more
than two days. And I don't really think I will call on those Franchise
people, dear, if it is all the same to you. Apart from being strangers
and very odd, they quite frankly terrify me."

Yes; that was a sample of the reaction he might expect where the Sharpes
were concerned. Ben Carley had gone out of his way today to let him know
that, if there was police trouble at The Franchise, he wouldn't be able
to count on an unprejudiced jury. He must take measures for the
protection of the Sharpes. When he saw them on Friday he would suggest a
private investigation by a paid agent. The police were overworked - had
been overworked for a decade and more - and there was just a chance that
one man working at his leisure on one trail might be more successful
than the orthodox and official investigation had been.

CHAPTER 6.

But by Friday morning it was too late to take measures for the safety of
The Franchise.

Robert had reckoned with the diligence of the police; he had reckoned
with the slow spread of whispers; but he had reckoned without the
Ack-Emma.

The Ack-Emma was the latest representative of the tabloid newspaper to
enter British journalism from the West. It was run on the principle that
two thousand pounds for damages is a cheap price to pay for sales worth
half a million. It had blacker headlines, more sensational pictures, and
more indiscreet letterpress than any paper printed so far by British
presses. Fleet Street had its own name for it - monosyllabic and
unprintable - but no protection against it. The Press had always been
its own censor, deciding what was and what was not permissible by the
principles of its own good sense and good taste. If a "rogue"

publication decided not to conform to those principles then there was no
power that could make it conform. In ten years the Ack-Emma had passed
by half a million the daily net sales of the best-selling newspaper in
the country to date. In any suburban railway carriage seven out of ten
people bound for work in the morning were reading an Ack-Emma.

And it was the Ack-Emma that blew The Franchise affair wide open.

Robert had been out early into the country on that Friday morning to see
an old woman who was dying and wanted to alter her will. This was a
performance she repeated on an average once every three months, and her
doctor made no secret of the fact that in his opinion she "would blow
out a hundred candles one day without a second puff". But of course a
lawyer cannot tell a client who summons him urgently at eight-thirty in
the morning not to be silly. So Robert had taken some new will forms,
fetched his car from the garage, and driven into the country. In spite
of his usual tussle with the old tyrant among the pillows who could
never be brought to understand the elementary fact that you cannot give
away four shares amounting to one-third each he enjoyed the spring
countryside. And he hummed to himself on the way home, looking forward
to seeing Marion Sharpe in less than an hour.

He had decided to forgive her for liking Nevil. After all, Nevil had
never tried to palm her off on Carley. One must be fair.

He ran the car into the garage, under the noses of the morning lot going
out from the livery stable, parked it, and then, remembering that it was
past the first of the month, strolled over to the office to pay his bill
to Brough, who ran the office side. But it was Stanley who was in the
office; thumbing over dockets and invoices with the strong hands that so
surprisingly finished off his thin forearms.

"When I was in the Signals," Stanley said, casting him an absent-minded
glance, "I used to believe that the Quarter-bloke was a crook, but now
I'm not so sure."

"Something missing?" said Robert. "I just looked in to pay my bill.

Bill usually has it ready."

"I expect it's somewhere around," Stanley said, still thumbing. "Have a
look."

Robert, used to the ways of the office, picked up the loose papers
discarded by Stanley so as to come on the "normal" tidy strata of Bill's
arrangement below. As he lifted the untidy pile he uncovered a girl's
face: a newspaper picture of a girl's face. He did not recognize it at
once, but it reminded him of someone and he paused to look at it.

"Got it!" said Stanley in triumph, extracting a sheet of paper from a
clip. He swept the remaining loose papers on the desk into a pile and so
laid bare to Robert's gaze the whole front page of that morning's
Ack-Emma.

Cold with shock, Robert stared at it.

Stanley, turning to take the papers he was holding from his grasp,
noticed his absorption and approved it.

"Nice little number, that," he said. "Reminds me of a hint I had in
Egypt. Same far-apart eyes. Nice kid she was. Told the most original
lies."

He went back to his paper-arranging, and Robert went on staring.

THIS IS THE GIRL

said the paper in enormous black letters across the top of the page; and
below it, occupying two-thirds of the page, was the girl's photograph.
And then, in smaller but still obtrusive type, below:

IS THIS THE HOUSE?

and below it a photograph of The Franchise. Across the bottom of the
page was the legend:

THE GIRL SAYS YES: WHAT DO THE POLICE SAY?

See inside for the story

He put out his hand and turned over the page.

Yes; it was all there except the Sharpes' name.

He dropped the page and looked again at that shocking frontispiece.

Yesterday The Franchise was a house protected by four high walls; so
unobtrusive, so sufficient unto itself that even Milford did not know
what it looked like. Now it was there to be stared at on every
bookstall, on every news agent's counter from Penzance to Pentland: it's
flat, forbidding front a foil for the innocence of the face above it.

The girl's photograph was a head-and-shoulders affair, and appeared to
be a studio portrait. Her hair had an arranged-for-an-occasion look and
she was wearing what looked like a party frock. Without her school coat
she looked not less innocent, nor older; no. He sought for the word that
would express it. She looked less taboo, was it? The school coat had
stopped one thinking of her as a woman, just as a nun's habit would. A
whole treatise could probably be written, now he came to think of it, on
the protective quality of school coats. Protective in both senses:
armour and camouflage. Now that the coat was no longer there, she was
feminine instead of merely female.

But it was still a pathetically young face, immature and appealing. The
candid brow, the wide-set eyes, the bee stung lip that gave her mouth
the expression of a disappointed child, it made a formidable whole. It
would not be only the Bishop of Larborough who would believe a story
told by that face.

"May I borrow this paper? "he asked Stanley.

"Take it," Stanley said. "We had it for our elevenses. There's nothing
in it."

Robert was surprised. "Didn't you find this interesting?" he asked,
indicating the front page.

Stanley cast a glance at the pictured face. "No, except that she
reminded me of that hint in Egypt, lies and all."

"So you don't believe that story she told?"

"What do you think!" Stanley said, contemptuous.

"Where do you think the girl was, then, all that time?"

"If I remember what I think I remember about the Red Sea sadie, I'd say
very definitely oh, but definitely on the tiles," Stanley said, and went
out to attend to a customer.

Robert picked up the paper and went soberly away. At least one man-
in-the-street had not believed the story; but that seemed to be due as
much to an old memory as to present cynicism.

And although Stanley had quite obviously read the story without reading
the names of the characters concerned or even the place-names, only ten
percent of readers did that (according to the best Mass Observation);
the other ninety percent would have read every word, and would now be
discussing the affair with varying degrees of relish.

At his own office he found that Hallam had been trying to reach him by
telephone.

"Shut the door and come in, will you?" he said to old Mr. Heseltine, who
had caught him with the news on his arrival and was now standing in the
door of his room. "And have a look at that."

He reached for the receiver with one hand and laid the paper under Mr.

Heseltine's nose with the other.

The old man touched it with his small-boned, fastidious hand, as one
seeing a strange exhibit for the first time. "This is the publication
one hears so much about," he said, and gave his attention to it, as he
would to any strange document.

"We are both in a spot, aren't we?" Hallam said, when they were
connected, and raked his vocabulary for some epithets suitable to the
Ack-Emma. "As if the police hadn't enough to do without having that rag
on their tails!" he finished, being naturally absorbed in the police
point of view.

"Have you heard from the Yard?"

"Grant was burning the wires at nine this morning. But there's nothing
they can do. Just grin and bear it. The police are fair game.

Nothing you can do, either, if it comes to that."

"Not a thing," Robert said. "We have a fine free Press."

Hallam said a few more things about the Press. "Do your people know?"

he asked.

"I shouldn't think so. I'm quite sure they would never normally see the
Ack-Emma and there hasn't been time for some kind soul to send it to
them. But they are due here in about ten minutes, and I'll show it to
them then."

"If it was ever possible for me to be sorry for that old battle axe,"

Hallam said, "it would be at this minute."

"How did the Ack-Emma get the story? I thought the parents - the girl's
guardians, I mean -bwere very strongly against that kind of publicity."

"Grant says the girl's brother went off the deep end about the police
taking no action and went to the Ack-Emma off his own bat. They are
strong on the champion act. 'The Ack-Emma will see right done!" I once
knew one of their crusades run into a third day."

When he hung up Robert thought that if it was a bad break for both
sides, it was at least an even break. The police would without doubt
redouble their efforts to find corroborative evidence; on the other
hand, the publication of the girl's photograph meant for the Sharpes a
faint hope that somebody somewhere would recognize it and say: "This
girl could not have been in The Franchise on the date in question
because she was at such-and-such a place."

"A shocking story, Mr. Robert," Mr. Heseltine said. "And if I may say
so, a quite shocking publication. Most offensive."

"That house," Robert said, "is The Franchise, where old Mrs. Sharpe and
her daughter live, and where I went the other day, if you remember, to
give them some legal advice."

"You mean that these people are our clients?"

"Yes."

"But, Mr. Robert, that is not at all in our line." Robert winced at the
dismay in his voice. "That is quite outside our usual - indeed, quite
beyond our normal - we are not competent --"

"We are competent, I hope, to defend any client against a publication
like the Ack-Emma," Robert said coldly.

Mr. Heseltine eyed the screaming rag on the table. He was obviously
facing the difficult choice between a criminal clientele and a
disgraceful journal.

"Did you believe the girl's story when you read it?" Robert asked.

"I don't see how she could have made it up," Mr. Heseltine said simply.
"It is such a very circumstantial story, isn't it?"

"It is, indeed. But I saw the girl when she was brought to The Franchise
to identify it last week - that was the day I went out so hurriedly just
after tea - and I don't believe a word she says. Not a word," he added,
glad to be able to say it loudly and distinctly to himself and to be
sure at last that he believed it.

"But how could she have thought of The Franchise at all or known all
those things if she wasn't there?"

"I don't know. I haven't the least idea."

"It is a most unlikely place to pick on, surely - a remote, invisible
house like that, on a lonely road, in country that people don't visit
very much."

"I know. I don't know how the job was worked, but that it is a job I am
certain. It is a choice not between stories but between human beings. I
am quite certain that the two Sharpes are incapable of insane conduct
like that. Whereas I don't believe the girl incapable of telling a story
like that. That is what it amounts to." He paused for a moment. "And
you'll just have to trust my judgement about it, Timmy," he added, using
his childhood's name for the old clerk.

Whether it was the "Timmy" or the argument, it was apparent that Mr.

Heseltine had no further protest to make.

"You'll be able to see the criminals for yourself," Robert said,
"because I hear their voices in the hall now. You might bring them in,
will you?"

Mr. Heseltine went dumbly out on his mission, and Robert turned the
newspaper over so that the comparatively innocuous GIRL SMUGGLED ABOARD
was all that would meet the visitors' eyes.

Mrs. Sharpe, moved by some belated instinct for convention, had donned a
hat in honour of the occasion. It was a flattish affair of black satin,
and the general effect was that of a doctor of learning. That the effect
had not been wasted was obvious by the relieved look on Mr.

Heseltine's face. This was obviously not the kind of client he had
expected; it was, on the other hand, the kind of client he was used to.

"Don't go away," Robert said to him, as he greeted the visitors; and to
the others: "I want you to meet the oldest member of the firm, Mr.

Heseltine."

It suited Mrs. Sharpe to be gracious; and exceedingly Victoria Regina
was old Mrs. Sharpe when she was being gracious. Mr. Heseltine was more
than relieved; he capitulated. Robert's first battle was over.

When they were alone Robert noticed that Marion had been waiting to say
something.

"An odd thing happened this morning," she said. "We went to the Anne
Boleyn place to have coffee - we quite often do - and there were two
vacant tables, but when Miss Truelove saw us coming she very hastily
tilted the chairs against the tables and said they were reserved. I
might have believed her if she hadn't looked so embarrassed. You don't
think that rumour has begun to get busy already, do you? That she did
that because she has heard some gossip?"

"No," Robert said sadly; "because she has read this morning's Ack-Emma."
He turned the newspaper front side up. "I am sorry to have such bad news
for you. You'll just have to shut your teeth and take it, as small boys
say. I don't suppose you have ever seen this poisonous rag at close
quarters. It's a pity that the acquaintance should begin on so personal
a basis."

"Oh no!" Marion said, in passionate protest as her eye fell on the
picture of The Franchise.

And then there was unbroken silence while the two women absorbed the
contents of the inner page.

"I take it," Mrs. Sharpe said at last, "that we have no redress against
this sort of thing?"

"None," Robert said. "All the statements are perfectly true. And it is
all statement and not comment. Even if it were comment - and I've no
doubt the comment will come - there has been no charge so the case is
not SUB JUDICE. They are free to comment if they please."

"The whole thing is one huge implied comment," Marion said, "that the
police failed to do their duty. What do they think we did? Bribed them?"

"I think the suggestion is that the humble victim has less pull with the
police than the wicked rich."

"Rich," repeated Marion, her voice curdling with bitterness.

"Anyone who has more than six chimneys is rich. Now, if you are not too
shocked to think, consider. We know that the girl was never at The
Franchise, that she could not --" But Marion interrupted him.

"Do you know it? "she asked.

"Yes," Robert said.

Her challenging eyes lost their challenge and her glance dropped.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"If the girl was never there, how could she have seen the house? She did
see it somehow. It is too unlikely for belief that she could be merely
repeating a description that someone gave her. How could she see it?
Naturally, I mean."

"You could see it, I suppose, from the top deck of a bus," Marion said.

"But there are no double decker buses on the Milford route. Or from on
top of a load of hay; but it is the wrong time of the year for hay."

"It may be the wrong time for hay," croaked Mrs. Sharpe, "but there is
no season for lorry-loads. I have seen lorries loaded with goods as high
as any hay waggon."

"Yes," Marion said. "Suppose the lift the girl got was not in a car, but
on a lorry."

"There is only one thing against that. If a girl was given a lift on a
lorry she would be in the cabin even if it meant sitting on someone's
knee. They wouldn't perch her up on top of the load. Especially as it
was a rainy evening, you may remember - No one ever came to The
Franchise to ask the way or to sell something or to mend something -
someone that the girl could have been with, even in the background?"

But no; they were both sure that no one had come, within the time the
girl had been on holiday.

"Then we take it for granted that what she learned about The Franchise
she learned from being high enough on one occasion to see over the wall.
We shall probably never know when or how, and we probably could not
prove it if we did know. So our whole efforts will have to be devoted to
proving not that she wasn't at The Franchise but that she was somewhere
else!"

"And what chance is there of that?" Mrs. Sharpe asked.

"A better chance than before this was published," Robert said,
indicating the front page of the Ack-Emma. "Indeed, it is the one bright
spot in the bad business. We could not have published the girl's
photograph in the hope of information about her whereabouts during that
month. But now that they have published it - her own people, I mean -
the same benefit should come to us. They have broadcast the story and
that is our bad luck; but they have also broadcast the photograph and if
we have any good luck at all someone somewhere will observe that the
story and the photograph do not fit. That at the material time, as given
in the story, the subject of the photograph could not possibly have been
in the stated place, because they personally know her to have been
elsewhere."

Marion's face lost a little of its bleak look and even Mrs. Sharpe's
thin back looked less rigid. What had seemed a disaster might be, after
all, the means of their salvation.

"And what can we do in the way of private investigation?" Mrs. Sharpe
asked. "You realize, I expect, that we have very little money; and I
take it that a private inquiry is a spendthrift business."

"It does usually run away with more than one had bargained for, because
it is difficult to budget for. But to begin with I am going myself to
see the various people involved and find out, if possible, on what lines
any inquiry should be based. Find out what she was likely to do."

"Will they tell you that?"

"Oh no. They are probably unaware themselves of her tendencies. But if
they talk about her at all a picture must emerge. At least I hope so."

There was a few moments' silence.

"You are extraordinarily kind, Mr. Blair."

Victoria Regina had come back to Mrs. Sharpe's manner, but there was a
hint of something else. Almost of surprise: as if kindness was not one
of the things she had normally met with in life, nor expected. Her
stiffly gracious acknowledgement was as eloquent as if she had said:
"You know that we are poor and that we may never be able to pay you
adequately, and we are not at all the kind of people that you would
choose to represent, but you are going out of your way to do us the best
service in your power, and we are grateful."

"When do you go?" Marion asked.

"Directly after lunch."

"Today!"

"The sooner the better."

"Then we won't keep you," Mrs. Sharpe said, rising. She stood for a
moment looking down at the paper where it lay spread on the table. "We
enjoyed the privacy of The Franchise a great deal," she said.

When he had seen them out of the door and into their car, he called
Nevil into his room and picked up the receiver to talk to Aunt Lin about
packing a bag.

"I suppose you don't see the Ack-Emma ever?" he asked Nevil.

"I take it that the question is rhetorical," Nevil said.

"Have a look at this morning's. Hullo, Aunt Lin."

"Does someone want to sue them for something? It will be sound money for
us, if so. They practically always settle out of court. They have a
special fund for the --" Nevil's voice died away. He had seen the front
page that was staring up at him from the table.

Robert stole a look at him over the telephone and observed with
satisfaction the naked shock on his cousin's bright young features. The
youth of today, he understood, considered themselves shock-proof; it was
good to know that, faced with an ordinary slab of real life, they
reacted like any other human being.

"Be an angel, Aunt Lin, and pack a bag for me, will you? Just for
overnight --"

Nevil had torn the paper open and was now reading the story.

"Just London and back, I expect, but I'm not sure. Anyhow, just the
little case, and just the minimum. Not all the things I might need, if
you love me. Last time there was a bottle of digestion powder weighing
nearly a pound, and when in heck did I ever need a digestive powder!

All right, then, I will have ulcers ... Yes, I'll be in to lunch in
about ten minutes."

"The blasted swine!" said the poet and intellectual, falling back in his
need on the vernacular.

"Well, what do you make of it?"

"Make of it! Of what?"

"The girl's story."

"Does one have to make anything of it? An obvious piece of
sensationalism by an unbalanced adolescent?"

"And if I told you that the said adolescent is a very calm, ordinary,
well-spoken-of schoolgirl who is anything but sensational?"

"Have you seen her?"

"Yes. That was why I first went to The Franchise last week to be there
when Scotland Yard brought the girl to confront them. Put that in your
pipe and smoke it, young Nevil. She may talk hens and Maupassant with
you, but it is me she turns to in trouble."

"To be there on their behalf? "

"Certainly."

Nevil relaxed suddenly. "Oh well, that's all right. For a moment I
thought you were against her ... against them. But that's all right.

We can join forces to put a spoke in the wheel of this" he flicked the
paper "this moppet." Robert laughed at this typically Nevil choice of
epithet. "What are you going to do about it, Robert?"

Robert told him. "And will you hold the fort while I am gone." He saw
that Nevil's attention had gone back to the "moppet". He moved over to
join him and together they considered the young face looking so calmly
up at them.

"An attractive face, on the whole," Robert said. "What do you make of
it?"

"What I should like to make of it," said the aesthete, with slow venom,
"would be a very nasty mess."

CHAPTER 7.

The Wynns' home outside Aylesbury was in a countrified suburb: the kind
of district where rows of semidetached houses creep along the edge of
the still unspoiled fields; selfconscious and aware that they are
intruders or smug and not caring, according to the character their
builders have given them. The Wynns lived in one of the apologetic rows
- a redbrick string of ramshackle dwellings that set Robert's teeth on
edge, so raw they were, so crude, so hang-dog. But as he drove slowly up
the road looking for the appropriate number, he was won over by the love
that had gone to the decoration of these regrettable objects. No love
had gone to their building; only a reckoning. But to each owner, as he
took over, the bare little house had represented his "sufficient
beauty", and having found it he served it. The gardens were small
miracles of loveliness, each succeeding one a fresh revelation of some
unsuspected poet's heart.

Nevil really ought to be here to see, Robert thought, slowing down yet
once more as a new perfection caught his eye: there was more poetry here
than in a whole twelve months of his beloved Watchman. All his cliches
were here: form, rhythm, colour, total gesture, design, impact Or would
Nevil see only a row of suburban gardens - only Meadowside Lane,
Aylesbury, with some Woolworth plants in the gardens?

Probably.

Number 39 was the one with the plain green grass bordered by a rockery.

It was also distinguished by the fact that its curtains were invisible.

No genteel net was stretched across the window-pane, no cream casement
cloth hung at the sides. The windows were bare to the sun, the air, and
the human gaze. This surprised Robert as much as it probably surprised
the neighbours. It augured a noncomformity that he had not expected.

He rang the bell, wishing that he did not feel like a bag man. He was a
suppliant, and that was a new role for Robert Blair.

Mrs. Wynn surprised him even more than her windows did. It was only when
he had met her that he realized how complete a picture he had built in
his mind of the woman who had adopted and mothered the child Betty Kane:
the grey hair, the solid, matronly, comfortable figure, the plain,
broad, sensible face - perhaps, even, an apron or one of those flowered
overalls that housewives wear. But Mrs. Wynn was not at all like that.
She was slight and neat and young and modern and dark and pink-cheeked
and still pretty, and had a pair of the most intelligent bright brown
eyes that Robert had ever seen.

When she saw a stranger she looked defensive and made an involuntary
closing movement with the door she was holding; but a second glance
seemed to reassure her. Robert explained who he was, and she listened
without interrupting him in a way he found quite admirable. Very few of
his own clients listened without interrupting, male or female.

"You are under no obligation to talk to me," he finished, having
explained his presence. "But I hope very much that you won't refuse. I
told Inspector Grant that I was going to see you this afternoon, on my
clients' behalf."

"Oh, if the police know about it and don't mind --" She stepped back to
let him come past her. "I expect you have to do your best for those
people if you are their lawyer. And we have nothing to hide. But if it
is really Betty you want to interview, I'm afraid you can't. We have
sent her into the country to friends for the day, to avoid all the fuss.
Leslie meant well, but it was a stupid thing to do."

"Leslie?"

"My son. Sit down, won't you?" She offered him one of the easy chairs in
a pleasant, uncluttered sitting-room. "He was too angry about the police
to think clearly - angry about their failure to do anything when it
seemed so proved, I mean. He has always been devoted to Betty.

Indeed, until he got engaged they were inseparable."

Robert's ears pricked. This was the kind of thing he had come to hear.

"Engaged?"

"Yes. He got engaged just after the New Year to a very nice girl. We are
all delighted."

"Was Betty delighted?"

"She wasn't jealous, if that's what you mean," she said, looking at him
with her intelligent eyes. "I expect she missed not coming first with
him, as she used to, but she was very nice about it. She is a nice girl,
Mr. Blair. Believe me. I was a schoolmistress before I married - not a
very good one: that is why I got married at the first opportunity - and
I know a lot about girls. Betty has never given me a moment's anxiety."

"Yes; I know. Everyone reports excellently of her. Is your son's fiancee
a schoolfellow of hers?"

"No, she is a stranger. Her people have come to live near here and he
met her at a dance."

"Does Betty go to dances?"

"Not grown-up dances. She is too young yet."

"So she had not met the fiancee?"

"To be honest, none of us had. He rather sprang her on us. But we liked
her so much we didn't mind."

"He must be very young to be settling down?"

"Oh, the whole thing is absurd, of course. He is twenty and she is
eighteen. But they are very sweet together. And I was very young myself
when I married and I have been very happy. The only thing I lacked was a
daughter, and Betty filled the gap."

"What does she want to do when she leaves school?"

"She doesn't know. She has no special talent for anything, as far as I
can see. I have a notion that she will marry early."

"Because of her attractiveness?"

"No, because --" She paused and apparently changed what she had been
going to say. "Girls who have no particular bent fall easily into
matrimony."

He wondered if what she had been going to say had any remote connexion
with slate-blue eyes.

"When Betty failed to turn up in time to go back to school, you thought
she was playing truant although she was a well-behaved child?"

"Yes; she was growing bored with school and she had always said - which
is quite true - that the first day back at school is a wasted one. So we
thought she was just 'taking advantage' for once, as they say. 'Trying
it on' as Leslie said when he heard that she hadn't turned up."

"I see. Was she wearing school clothes on her holiday?"

For the first time Mrs. Wynn looked doubtfully at him, uncertain of his
motive in asking.

"No. No, she was wearing her week-end clothes ... You know that when she
came back she was wearing only a frock and shoes?"

Robert nodded.

"I find it difficult to imagine women so depraved that they would treat
a helpless child like that."

"If you could meet the women, Mrs. Wynn, you would find it still more
difficult to imagine."

"But all the Worst criminals look innocent and harmless, don't they?"

Robert let that pass. He wanted to know about the bruises on the girl's
body. Were they fresh bruises?

"Oh, quite fresh. Most of them had not begun to 'turn' even."

This surprised Robert a little. "But there were older bruises as well, I
take it."

"If there were they had faded so much as to be unnoticeable among all
the bad new ones."

"What did the new ones look like? A whipping?"

"Oh no. She had actually been knocked about. Even her poor little face.
One jaw was swollen and there was a big bruise on the other temple."

"The police say that she grew hysterical when it was suggested that she
should tell them her story."

"That was when she was still ill. Once we had got the story out of her
and she had had a long rest, it was easy enough to persuade her to
repeat it to the police."

"I know you will answer this frankly, Mrs. Wynn. Has there never been
any suspicion in your mind that Betty's story might not be true? Even a
momentary suspicion?"

"Not even a momentary one. Why should there be? She has always been a
truthful child. Even if she hadn't, how could she invent a long,
circumstantial story like that without being found out? The police asked
her all the questions they wanted to; there was never any suggestion of
accepting her statement as it stood."

"When she first told her story to you, did she tell it all in a piece?"

"Oh no; it was spread over a day or two: the outline first, and then
filling in the details as she remembered them. Things like the window in
the attic being round."

"Her days of coma had not blurred her memory."

"I don't think they would in any case. I mean, with Betty's kind of
brain. She has a photographic memory." Has she indeed! thought Robert,
both ears erect and wide open.

"Even as a small child she could look at the page of a book - a child's
book, of course - and repeat most of the contents from the picture in
her mind. And when we played the Kim game - you know, the objects on the
tray - we had to put Betty out of the game because she invariably won.
Oh no, she would remember what she saw."

Well, there was another game in which the cry was "Growing warm!",
Robert remembered.

"You say she was always a truthful child - and everyone supports you in
that - but did she never indulge in romanticizing her own life, as
children sometimes do?"

"Never," said Mrs. Wynn firmly. The idea seemed faintly to amuse her.

"She couldn't," she added. "Unless it was the real thing it was no use
to Betty. Even playing dolls' tea-parties, she would never imagine the
things on the plates, as most children are quite happy to do; there had
to be a real thing there, even if it was only a little cube of bread.
Usually it was something nicer, of course; it was a good way to wangle
an extra and she was always a little greedy."

Robert admired the detachment with which she considered her longed-for
and much-loved daughter. The remains of a schoolmistress's cynicism?

So much more valuable, anyhow, for a child than a blind love. It was a
pity that her intelligence and devotion had been so ill-rewarded.

"I don't want to keep on at a subject that must be unpleasant for you,"

Robert said. "But perhaps you could tell me something about the
parents."

"Her parents?" Mrs. Wynn asked, surprised.

"Yes. Did you know them well? What were they like?"

"We didn't know them at all. We never even saw them."

"But you had Betty for - what was it, nine months? - before her parents
were killed, hadn't you?"

"Yes; but her mother wrote shortly after Betty came to us and said that
to come to see her would only upset the child and make her unhappy, and
that the best thing for everyone would be to leave her to us until such
time as she could go back to London. She said, would I talk to Betty
about her at least once every day."

Robert's heart contracted with pity for this unknown dead woman who had
been willing to tear her own heart out for her only child. What treasure
of love and care had been poured out in front of Betty Kane, child
evacuee!

"Did she settle down easily when she came? Or did she cry for her
mother?"

"She cried because she didn't like the food. I don't remember her ever
crying for her mother. She fell in love with Leslie the first night -
she was just a baby, you know and I think her interest in him blotted
out any grief she might have felt. And he, being four years older, was
just the right age to feel protective. He still does - that is why we
are in this mess today."

"How did this Ack-Emma affair happen? I know it was your son who went to
the paper, but did you eventually come round to his --"

"Good heavens, no," Mrs. Wynn said indignantly. "It was all over before
we could do anything about it. My husband and I were out when Leslie and
the reporter came - they sent a man back with him when they heard his
story, to get it firsthand from Betty - and when --"

"And Betty gave it quite willingly?"

"I don't know how willingly. I wasn't there. My husband and I knew
nothing about it until this morning, when Leslie laid an Ack-Emma under
our noses. A little defiantly, I may add. He is not feeling too good
about it now that it is done. The Ack-Emma, I should like to assure you,
Mr. Blair, is not normally my son's choice. If he had not been worked-up
--"

"I know. I know exactly how it happened. And that tell-us-
your-troubles-and-we'll-see-right-done is very insidious stuff." He
rose. "You have been very kind indeed, Mrs. Wynn, and I am exceedingly
grateful to you."

His tone was evidently more heartfelt than she had expected and she
looked doubtfully at him. What have I said to help you? she seemed to be
asking, half-dismayed.

He asked where Betty's parents had lived in London and she told him.

"There is nothing there now," she added. "Just the open space. It is to
be part of some new building scheme, so they have done nothing to it so
far."

On the doorstep he ran into Leslie.

Leslie was an extraordinarily good-looking young man who seemed to be
entirely unaware of the fact - a trait that endeared him to Robert, who
was in no mood to look kindly on him. Robert had pictured him as the
bull-in-a-china-shop type; but on the contrary he was a rather delicate,
kind-looking boy with shy, earnest eyes and untidy, soft hair. He glared
at Robert with frank enmity when his mother presented him and had
explained his business there; but, as his mother had said, there was a
shade of defiance in the glare. Leslie was obviously not very happy with
his own conscience this evening.

"No one is going to beat my sister and get away with it," he said
fiercely when Robert had mildly deplored his action.

"I sympathize with your point of view," Robert said, "but I personally
would rather be beaten nightly for a fortnight than have my photograph
on the front page of the Ack-Emma. Especially if I was a young girl."

"If you had been beaten every night for a fortnight and no one did
anything about it, you might be very glad to have your photograph
published in any rag if it got you justice," Leslie observed
pertinently, and brushed past them into the house.

Mrs. Wynn turned to Robert with a small, apologetic smile; and Robert,
taking advantage of her softened moment, said: "Mrs. Wynn, if it ever
occurs to you that anything in that story of Betty's does not ring true,
I hope you won't decide that sleeping dogs are best left."

"Don't pin your faith to that hope, Mr. Blair."

"You would let sleeping dogs lie and the innocent suffer?"

"Oh no; I didn't mean that. I meant the hope of my doubting Betty's
story. If I believed her at the beginning I am not likely to doubt her
later."

"One never knows. Some day it may occur to you that this or that does
not 'fit'. You have a naturally analytical mind; it may present you with
a piece of subconscious when you least expect it. Something that has
puzzled you deep down may refuse to be pushed down any more."

She had walked to the gate with him, and as he spoke the last sentence
he turned to take farewell of her. To his surprise something moved
behind her eyes at that light remark of his.

So she wasn't certain, after all. Somewhere, in the story, in the
circumstances, there was some small thing that left a question in that
sober, analytical mind of hers. What was it?

And then, with what he always remembered afterwards as the only perfect
sample of telepathic communication in his experience, he paused as he
was stepping into his car and said: "Had she anything in her pockets
when she came home?"

"She had only one pocket: the one in her dress."

"And was there anything in it?"

There was the faintest tightening of the muscles round her mouth. "Just
a lipstick," she said evenly.

"A lipstick! She is a little young for that, isn't she?"

"My dear Mr. Blair, they start experimenting with lipstick at the age of
ten. As a wet-day amusement it has taken the place of dressing-up in
mother's things."

"Yes, probably; Woolworth is a great benefactor."

She smiled and said good-bye again, and moved towards the house as he
drove away.

What puzzled her about the lipstick? Robert wondered, as he turned from
the uneven surface of Meadowside Lane on to the black, smooth surface of
the main Aylesbury-London road. Was it just the fact that the fiends at
The Franchise should have left it with the girl? Was that what she found
odd?

How amazing that the worry in her subconscious mind had communicated
itself so instantly to him! He had not known that he was going to say
that sentence about the girl's pockets until he heard himself saying it.
It would never have occurred to him, left to himself, to wonder what was
in the pocket of her frock. It would not occur to him that the frock
might have a pocket at all.

So there was a lipstick. And its presence was something that puzzled
Mrs. Wynn.

Well; that was a straw that could be added to the little heap he had
collected. To the fact that the girl had a photographic memory; to the
fact that her nose had been put out of joint without warning only a
month or two ago; to the fact that she was bored with school; to the
fact that she liked "reality".

To the fact above all that no one in that household, not even detached,
sensible Mrs. Wynn, knew what went on in Betty Kane's mind.

It was quite unbelievable that a girl of fifteen who had been the centre
of a young man's world could see herself supplanted overnight without
reacting violently to the situation. But Betty had been "very nice about
it."

Robert found this heartening. It was proof that that candid young face
was no guide at all to the person who was Betty Kane.

CHAPTER 8.

Robert had decided to kill a great many birds with one stone by spending
the night in London.

To begin with, he wanted to have his hand held. And in the circumstances
no one would hold his hand to better purpose than his old school friend
Kevin Macdermott. What Kevin did not know about crime was probably not
so anyhow. And as a well-known defending counsel his knowledge of human
nature was extensive, varied, and peculiar.

At the moment the betting was evens whether Macdermott would die of high
blood-pressure before he was sixty or grace the Woolsack when he was
seventy. Robert hoped the latter. He was very fond of Kevin.

They had first gravitated towards each other at school because they were
both "going in for law", but they had become and remained friends
because they were complementary. To the Irishman, Robert's equanimity
was amusing, provocative, and when he was tired, restful. To Robert,
Kevin's Celt flamboyance was exotic and fascinating. It was typical that
Robert's ambition was to go back to the little country town and continue
life as it was; while Kevin's was to alter everything that was alterable
in the law and to make as much noise as possible in the doing of it.

So far Kevin had not altered much - though he had done his best where
some judges' rulings were concerned -bbut he had made considerable noise
in his effortless, slightly malicious fashion. Already the presence of
Kevin Macdermott in a case added fifty percent to its newspaper value -
and a good deal more than that to its cost.

He had married - advantageously but happily - had a pleasant house near
Weybridge and three hardy sons, lean and dark and lively like their
father. For town purposes he kept a small flat in St. Paul's Churchyard,
where, as he pointed out, he "could afford to look down on Queen Anne".
And whenever Robert was in town - which was not oftener than Robert
could help - they dined together, either at the flat or at the latest
place where Kevin had found good claret. Outside the law Kevin's
interests were show hacks, claret, and the livelier films of Warner
Brothers.

Kevin was to be at some Bar dinner tonight, so his secretary had said
when Robert had tried to reach him from Milford; but he would be
delighted to have a legitimate excuse for dodging the speeches, so would
Robert go along to St. Paul's Churchyard after dinner and wait for him.

That was a good thing; if Kevin came from a dinner he would be relaxed
and prepared to settle down for the evening - not restless and with
three-quarters of his mind still back in the court-room, as he sometimes
was.

Meanwhile he would ring up Grant at Scotland Yard and see if he could
spare him some minutes tomorrow morning. He must get it clear in his
mind how he stood in relation with Scotland Yard: fellow sufferers, but
on opposite sides of the fence.

At the Fortescue, the Edwardian old place in Jermyn Street where he had
stayed ever since he was first allowed to go to London on his own, they
greeted him like a nephew and gave him "the room he had last time": a
dim comfortable box with a shoulder-high bed and a buttoned-plush
settee; and brought him up a tray on which reposed an outsize brown
kitchen teapot, a Georgian silver cream jug, about a pound of sugar
lumps in a sixpenny glass dish, a Dresden cup with flowers and little
castles, a red-and-gold Worcester plate made for "their Maj's' William
IV and his Queen", and a much buckled kitchen knife with a stained brown
handle. Both the tea and the tray refreshed Robert. He went out into the
evening streets feeling vaguely hopeful.

His search for the truth about Betty Kane brought him, only half
consciously, to the vacant space where that block of flats had been: the
spot where both her parents had died in one shattering burst of high
explosive. It was a bare, neat space, waiting its appointed part in some
plan. Nothing was there to show that a building had ever stood on the
spot. Round about, the unharmed houses stood with blank, smug faces,
like mentally deficient children too idiotic to have understood the
meaning of a disaster. It had passed them by and that was all they knew
or cared about.

On the opposite side of the wide street a row of small shops still stood
as they had obviously stood for fifty years or more. Robert crossed to
them and went into the tobacconist's to buy cigarettes; a
tobacconist-and-news-agent knows everything.

"Were you here when that happened?" Robert asked, leaning his head
towards the door.

"When what happened?" asked the rosy little man, so used to the blank
space that he had long ago become unaware of it. "Oh, the incident? No I
was out on duty. Warden, I was."

Robert said that he ad meant was he here in business at the time.

Oh yes; yes, certainly he had the business then; and for long before it.
Brought up in the neighbourhood, he was, and succeeded his father in the
business.

"You would know the local people well, then. Do you remember the couple
who were caretakers of the block of flats, by any chance?"

"The Kanes? Of course I do. Why shouldn't I remember them? They were in
and out of this place all day. He for his paper in the morning and then
her for her cigarettes shortly after; and then back for his evening
paper and her back for the third time probably for cigarettes again; and
then he and I used to have a pint at the local when my boy had finished
his lessons and would take over for me here. You knew them, sir?"

"No. But I met someone the other day who spoke of them. How was the
whole place wrecked?"

The little pink man sucked his teeth with a derisive sound.

"Jerry-built. That's what it was. Just jerry-built. The bomb fell in the
area there - that's how the Kanes were killed, they were down in their
basement feeling fairly safe - and the whole thing just settled down
like a house of cards. Shocking." He straightened the edge of a pile of
evening papers. "It was just her bad luck that the only evening in weeks
that she was at home with her husband, a bomb had to come." He seemed to
find a sardonic pleasure in the thought.

"Where was she usually, then?" Robert asked. "Did she work somewhere in
the evenings?"

"Work!" said the little man with vast scorn. "Her!" And then,
recollecting: "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sure. I forgot for the minute that
they might be friends of --"

Robert hastened to assure him that his interest in the Kanes was purely
academic. Someone had remembered them as caretakers of the block of
flats, that was all. If Mrs. Kane was not out working in the evenings,
what was she out doing?

"Having a good time, of course. Oh yes, people managed to have a good
time even then if they wanted it enough and looked hard enough for it.

Kane, he wanted her to go away to the country with that little girl of
theirs, but would she? Not her! Three days of the country would kill
her, she said. She didn't even go to see the little thing when they
evacuated her. The authorities, that is. With the rest of the children.
It's my opinion she was tickled to death to have the child off her hands
so that she could go dancing at nights."

"Whom did she go dancing with?"

"Officers," the little man said succinctly. "A lot more exciting than
watching the grass grow. I don't say there was any actual harm in it,
mind you," he said hastily. "She's dead and I wouldn't like to pin
anything on her that she isn't here to unpin, if you take my meaning.

But she was a bad mother an a bad wife, that's flat; and no one ever
said anything to the contrary."

"Was she pretty?" Robert asked, thinking of the good emotion he had
wasted on Betty's mother.

"In a sulky sort of way, yes. She sort of smouldered. You wondered what
she would be like when she was lit up. Excited, I mean, not tight. I
never saw her tight. She didn't get her excitement that way."

"And her husband?"

"Ah, he was all right, Bert Kane was. Deserved better luck than that
woman. One of the best, Bert was. Terribly fond of the little girl.

Spoiled her, of course. She had only to want something and he got it for
her; but she was a nice kid, for all that. Demure; butter wouldn't melt
in her little mouth. Yes, Bert deserved better out of life than a
good-time wife and a cupboard-love kid. One of the best, Bert was ..."

He looked over the roadway at the empty space reflectively. "It took
them the best part of a week to find him, "he said.

Robert paid for his cigarettes and went out into the street both
saddened and relieved. Sad for Bert Kane, who had deserved better; but
glad that Betty Kane's mother was not the woman he had pictured. All the
way to London his mind had grieved for that dead woman: the woman who
had broken her heart for her child's good. It had seemed to him
unbearable that the child she had so greatly loved should be Betty Kane.
But now he was free of that grief. Betty Kane's mother was exactly the
mother he would have chosen for her if he were God. And she on her part
looked very like being her mother's daughter.

"A cupboard-love kid." Well, well. And what was it Mrs. Wynn had said?
"She cried because she didn't like the food, but I don't remember her
crying for her mother." Nor for that father who so devotedly spoiled
her, apparently.

When he got back to the hotel he took his copy of the Ack- Emma from his
dispatch case, an dover his solitary dinner at the Fortescue considered
at his leisure the story on page two. From its poster-simplicity opening
--

On a night in April a girl came back to her home clad in nothing but a
frock and shoes. She had left home, a bright, happy schoolgirl with not
a ...

to its final fanfare of sobs it was of its kind a small masterpiece.

It did perfectly what it set out to do. And that was to appeal to the
greatest number of readers with one and the same story. To those who
wanted sex interest it offered the girl's lack of clothes, to the
sentimentalist her youth and charm, to the partisan her helpless
condition, to the sadist the details of her beatings, to the sufferer
from class-hatred a description of the big white house behind its high
walls, and to the warm-hearted British public in general the impression
that the police had been if not "nobbled" then at least lax, and that
Right had not been Done. Yes, it was clever.

Of course the story was a gift for them - which is why they had sent a
man back immediately with young Leslie Wynn. But Robert felt that, when
really on their mettle, the Ack-Emma could probably make a good story of
a broken connecting-rod.

it must be a dreary business catering exclusively for the human
failings. He turned the pages over, observing how consistently each
story was used to appeal to the regrettable in the reader. Even GAVE
AWAY A MILLION, he noticed, was the story of a disgraceful old man
unloading on his income-tax and not of a boy who had climbed out of a
slum by his own courage and enterprise .

With a slight nausea he put the thing back in his case and took the case
with him to St. Paul's Churchyard. There he found the "daily"

woman waiting for him with her hat on. Mr. Macdermott's secretary had
telephoned to say that a friend of his was coming and that he was to be
given the run of the house and left alone in it without scruple; she had
stayed merely to let him in; she would now leave him to it; there was
whisky on the little table by the fire and there was another bottle in
the cupboard, but it might, if you asked her, be wise not to re mind Mr.
Macdermott about it or he would stay up too late, and she had great
trouble getting him up in the morning.

"It's not the whisky," Blair said, smiling at her, "it's the Irish in
him. All the Irish hate getting up."

This gave her pause on the doorstep, evidently struck by this new idea.

"I wouldn't wonder," she said. "My old man's the same, and he's Irish.

It's not whisky with him; just original sin. At least, that's what I
always thought. But perhaps it's just his misfortune in being a Murphy."

It was a pleasant little place, warm and friendly, and peaceful now that
the roar of the city traffic was still. He poured himself a drink; went
to the window to look down on Queen Anne; paused a moment to note once
more how lightly the great bulk of the church floated on its base - so
proportioned, so balanced, that it looked as if one could take it up on
a palm and dangle it there; and then sat down and, for the first time
since he had gone out that morning to see a maddening old woman who was
changing her will again, relaxed.

He was half asleep when he heard Kevin's key in the lock and his host
was in the room before he could move.

Macdermott tweaked his neck in an evil pinch as he passed behind him to
the decanters on the table. "Its beginning, old boy, "he said, "it's
beginning."

"What is?" Robert asked.

"The thickening of that handsome neck of yours."

Robert rubbed his neck lazily where it stung. "I do begin to notice
draughts on the back of it, now you come to mention it," he said.

"Christ, Robert! Does nothing distress you?" Kevin said, his eyes pale
and bright and mocking under their black brows. "Even the imminent
prospect of losing those good looks of yours?"

"I'm a little distressed at the moment, but it isn't my looks."

"Well, what with Blair, Hayward, and Bennet, it can't be bankruptcy; so
I suppose it's a woman."

"Yes, but not the way you mean."

"Thinking of getting married? You ought to, Rob."

"You said that before."

"You want an heir for Blair, Hayward, and Bennet, don't you? "The calm
certainty of Blair, Hayward, and Bennet had always pricked Kevin into
small gibes, Robert remembered.

"There is no guarantee that it wouldn't be a girl. Anyhow, Nevil is
taking care of that."

"The only thing that young woman of Nevil's will ever give birth to is a
gramophone record. She was gracing a platform again the other day, I
hear. If she had to earn the money for her train fares she mightn't be
so willing to dash about the country being the Vocal Minority." He sat
down with his drink. "I needn't ask if you are up on business.

Sometimes you really ought to come up and see this town. I suppose you
dash off again tomorrow after a ten a. m. interview with someone's
solicitors."

"No," Robert said. "With Scotland Yard."

Kevin paused with his glass half-way to his mouth. "Robert, you're
slipping," he said. "What has the Yard to do with your Ivory Tower?"

"That's just it," Robert said equably, ignoring this additional flick at
his Milford security. "It's there on the doorstep and I don't quite know
how to deal with it. I want to listen to someone being intelligent about
the situation. I don't know why I should unload it on you. You must be
sick of problems. But you always did do my algebra for me."

"And you always reckoned the stocks and shares ones, if I remember
rightly. I was always a fool about stocks. I still owe you something for
saving me from a bad investment. Two bad investments, "he added.

"Two?"

"Tamara and Topeka Tin."

"I remember saving you from Topeka Tin, but I had nothing whatever to do
with your breaking with Tamara."

"Oh, hadn't you, indeed! My good Robert, if you could have seen your
face when I introduced you to her. Oh no, not that way. Quite the
contrary. The instantaneous kindness of your expression, that blasted
English mask of courtesy and good breeding - it said everything. I saw
myself going through life introducing Tamara to people and watching
their faces being well-bred about it. It cured me of her in record time.
I have never ceased being grateful to you. So produce what is in the
dispatch case."

Nothing escaped Kevin, Robert thought, taking out his own copy of Betty
Kane's statement to the police.

"This is a very short statement. I wish you would read it and tell me
how it strikes you."

He watched the impact on Kevin, without preliminaries to dull the edge
of it.

Macdermott took it, read the first paragraph in one swift eye movement,
and said: "This is the Ack-Emma's protegee, I take it."

"I had no idea that you ever saw the Ack-Emma," Robert said, surprised.

"God love you, I feed on the Ack-Emma. No crime, no causes celebres: no
causes celebres, no Kevin Macdermott. Or only a piece of him." He lapsed
into utter silence. For four minutes his absorption was so complete that
Robert felt alone in the room, as if his host had gone away. "Humph!" he
said, coming out of it.

"Well!"

"I take it that your clients are the two women in the case, and not this
girl?"

"Of course."

"Now you tell me your end," Kevin said, and listened.

Robert gave him the whole story. His reluctant visit; his growing
partisanship as it became clear that it was a choice between Betty Kane
and the two women; Scotland Yard's decision not to move on the available
evidence; and Leslie Wynn's rash visit to the offices of the Ack-Emma.

"So tonight," Macdermott said, "the Yard is moving heaven and earth to
find corroborative evidence that will back up the girl's story."

"I suppose so," said Robert, depressed. "But what I want to know is: do
you or do you not believe the girl's story?"

"I never believe anyone's story," Kevin pointed out with gentle malice.
"What you want to know is: do I find the girl's story believable? And of
course I do."

"You do!"

"I do. Why not?"

"But it's an absurd story," Robert said, more hotly than he had
intended.

" There is nothing absurd about it. Women who live lonely lives do
insane things especially if they are poor gentlewomen. Only the other
day an elderly woman was found to have kept her sister chained up to a
bed in a room no bigger than a good- sized cupboard. She had kept her
like that for three years, and had fed her on the crusts and potato
skins and other scraps that she didn't want herself. She said, when it
was discovered, that their money was going down too fast and this was
her way of making ends meet. She had quite a good bank balance actually,
but it was the fear induced by insecurity that had sent her crazy. That
is a much more unbelievable and - from your point of view - absurd story
than the girl's."

"Is it? It seems to me just an ordinary tale of insanity."

"Only because you know it happened. I mean, that someone had actually
seen the thing. Suppose, on the contrary, that the rumour had merely
gone round; that the crazy sister had heard it and released her victim
before any investigation could be made; that the investigators found
only two old ladies living an apparently normal life except for the
invalidish nature of one of them. What then? Would you have believed the
'chained-up' tale? Or would you, more likely, have called it an absurd
story'?"

Robert sank a little deeper into his depression.

"Here are two lonely and badly dowered women saddled with a big house in
the country, one of them too old to do much household work and the other
loathing it. What is the most likely form for their mild insanity to
take? The capture of a girl to be servant to them, of course."

Damn Kevin and his counsel's mind. He had thought that he had wanted
Kevin's opinion, but what he had wanted was Kevin's backing for his own
opinion.

"The girl they capture happens to be a blameless schoolgirl conveniently
far from home. It is their bad luck that she is so blameless, because
since she had never been caught out in a lie to date, everyone is going
to take her word against theirs. If I were the police I would have
risked it. It seems to me they are losing their nerve."

He shot an amused glance at Robert, sunk in his chair, glooming down his
long legs at the fire. He sat for a moment or two enjoying his friend's
discomfiture.

"Of course," he said at length, "they may have remembered a parallel
case, where everyone believed the girl's heart-rending story and were
very thoroughly led up the garden."

"A parallel!" Robert said, folding his legs and sitting up. "When?"

"Seventeen-something. I forget the exact date."

"Oh," said Robert, dashed again.

"I don't know what is 'Oh' about it," Macdermott said mildly. "The
nature of alibis has not changed much in two centuries."

"Alibis?"

"If the parallel case is any guide the girl's story is an alibi."

"Then you believe - I mean, you find it believable - that the girl's
story is all nonsense?"

"A complete invention from beginning to end."

"Kevin, you are maddening. You said you found it believable."

"So I do. I also find it believable that it is a tissue of lies. I am
not briefed for either side. I can make a very good case out for either,
at the shortest notice. On the whole I should prefer to be counsel for
the young woman from Aylesbury. She would be wonderful in the
witness-box, and from what you tell me neither of the Sharpes would be
much help, visually, to a counsel."

He got up to help himself to more whisky, holding out his other hand for
Robert's glass. But Robert was in no mood for conviviality. He shook his
head without lifting his gaze from the fire. He was tired and beginning
to be out of temper with Kevin. He had been wrong to come. When a man
had been a counsel in the criminal courts as long as Kevin had, his mind
had only points of view, not convictions any more.

He would wait until Kevin had half-finished the glass he was sitting
down with, and then make a movement to go. It would be good to put his
head on a pillow and forget that he was responsible for other people's
problems. Or rather, for the solution of them.

"I wonder what she was doing all that month," Kevin said
conversationally, taking a large gulp of practically neat whisky.

Robert's mouth opened to say: "Then you do believe the girl is a fake!"
but he stopped himself in time. He rebelled against dancing any more
this evening to Kevin's piping.

"If you drink so much whisky on top of claret, what you will be doing
for a month is a cure, my lad," he said. And to his surprise Kevin lay
back and laughed like a schoolboy.

"Oh, Rob, I love you," he said delightedly. "You are the very essence of
England. Everything we admire and envy in you. You sit there so mild, so
polite, and let people bait you until they conclude that you are an old
tabby and they can do what they like with you, and then just when they
are beginning to preen themselves they go that short step too far and
wham! out comes that business-like paw with the glove off!" He picked
Robert's glass out of his hand without a by-your-leave and rose to fill
it and Robert let him. He was feeling better.

CHAPTER 9.

The London-Larborough road was a black, straight ribbon in the sunshine,
giving off diamond sparks as the crowded traffic caught the light and
lost it again. Pretty soon both the air and the roads would be so full
that no one could move in comfort and everyone would have to go back to
the railways for quick travel. Progress, that was.

Kevin had pointed out last night that, what with present ease of
communications, it was quite on the cards that Betty Kane had spent her
month's vacation in Sydney, N. S.W. It was a daunting thought. She could
be anywhere from Kamchatka to Peru, and all he, Blair, had to do was a
little thing like proving she wasn't in a house on the
Larborough-Milford road. If it were not a sunny morning, and if he were
not sorry for Scotland Yard, and if he didn't have Kevin to hold his
hand, and if he were not doing pretty well on his own so far, he might
have felt depressed.

Feeling sorry for Scotland Yard was the last thing he had anticipated.
But sorry he was. All Scotland Yard's energies were devoted to proving
the Sharpes guilty and Betty Kane's story true for the very good reason
that they believed the Sharpes to be guilty. But what each one of them
ached in his private soul to do was to push Betty Kane down the
Ack-Emma's throat; and they could only do that by proving her story
nonsense. Yes, a really prize state of frustration existed in those
large, calm bodies at the Yard.

Grant had been charming in his quiet, reasonable way - it had been
rather like going to see a doctor, now he came to think of it - and had
quite willingly agreed that Robert should be told about any letters that
the Ack-Emma might provoke.

"Don't pin your hopes too firmly to that, will you?" he had said in
friendly warning. "For one letter that the Yard gets that has any worth
it gets five thousand that are nonsense. Letter- writing is the natural
outlet of the 'odds'. The busybodies, the idle, the perverted, the
cranks, the feel-it-my-duties 'PRO BONO PUBLICO' He and Civis,"

Grant said with a smile. "Also the plain depraved. They all write
letters. It's their safe outlet, you see. They can be as interfering, as
long-winded, as obscene, as pompous, as one-idea'd as they like on
paper, and no one can kick them for it. So they write. My God, how they
write!"

"But there is a chance --"

"Oh yes. There is a chance. And all these letters will have to be weeded
out, however silly they are. Anything of importance will be passed on to
you, I promise. But I do remind you that the ordinary intelligent
citizen writes only one time in five thousand. He doesn't like what he
thinks of as 'poking his nose in' which is why he sits silent in a
railway carriage and scandalizes the Americans, who still have a hick
interest in other folk - and anyhow he's a busy man, full of his own
affairs, and sitting down to write a letter to the police about
something that doesn't concern him is against all his instincts."

So Robert had come away pleased with the Yard and sorry for them. At
least he, Robert, had a straight row to hoe. He wouldn't be glancing
aside every now and then wishing it was the next row he was hoeing. And
moreover he had Kevin's approval of the row he had chosen.

"I mean it," Kevin had said, "when I say that if I were the police I
should almost have risked it. They have a good enough case. And a nice
little conviction is always a hitch up the ladder of promotion for
someone. Unfortunately or fortunately for the citizen the man who
decides whether there is a case or not is the chap higher up, and he's
not interested in any subordinate's speedy promotion. Amazing that
wisdom should be the by-product of office procedure."

Robert, mellow with whisky, had let the cynicism flow past him.

"But let them just get one spot of corroboration and they'll have a
warrant at the door of The Franchise quicker than you can lift a
telephone receiver."

"They won't get any corroboration," said the mellow Robert. "Why should
they? How could they? What we want to do is to disprove the girl's story
ourselves, so that it doesn't damn the Sharpes' lives for as long as
they live. Once I have seen the aunt and uncle tomorrow we may have
enough general knowledge about the girl to justify a start on our own
investigation."

Now he was speeding down the black shining Larborough road on the way to
seeing Betty's relations in Mainshill - the people she had stayed with
on that memorable holiday. A Mr. and Mrs. Tilsit, they were.

Tilsit, 93 Cherrill Street, Mainshill, Larborough, and the husband was
travelling agent for a firm of brush-makers in Larborough and they had
no children. That was all Robert knew about them.

He paused for a moment as he turned off the main road in Mainshill.

This was the corner where Betty had waited for her bus, Or said she
waited. Over there on the other side, it must have been. There was no
side turning on that side, nothing but the long stretch of unbroken
pavement as far as one could see in either direction. A busy enough road
at this time of day, but empty enough, Robert supposed, in the doldrum
hour of the late afternoon.

Cherrill Street was one long series of angular bay windows in dirty red
brick, their forward surface almost scraping the low red-brick wall that
hemmed them in from the pavement. The sour soil on either side of the
window that did duty for a garden had none of the virtues of the
new-turned earth of Meadowside Lane, Aylesbury; it grew only thin London
pride, weedy wallflowers, and moth-eaten forget-me-nots. The same
housewife's pride obtained in Cherrill Street as in Aylesbury, of
course, and the same crisp curtains hung at the windows; but if there
were poets in Cherrill Street they found other outlets for their souls
than gardens.

When he had rung unavailingly and then knocked at 93 - indistinguishable
from the others, as far as he could see, except by its painted numerals
- a woman flung up the bedroom window next door, leaned out and said:
"You looking for Mrs. Tilsit?" Robert said that he was.

"She's gone to get her groceries. The shop at the corner."

"Oh, thanks. If that's all, I'll wait."

"Shouldn't wait if you want to see her soon. Should go and fetch her."

"Oh. Is she going somewhere else?"

"No, just the grocer's; it's the only shop round here. But she takes
half a morning deciding between two brands of wheat flakes. You take one
packet up right firm and put it in her bag and she'll be quite pleased."

Robert thanked her and began to walk away to the end of the street, when
she hailed him again.

"Shouldn't leave your car. Take it with you."

"But it's quite a little way, isn't it?"

"Maybe, but it's Saturday."

"Saturday?"

"School's out."

"Oh, I see. But there's nothing in it" "to steal," he was going to say
but amended it to: "Nothing in it that's movable."

"Movable! Huh! that's good. We had window-boxes once. Mrs. Laverty over
the way had a gate. Mrs. Biddows had two fine wooden clothes-posts and
eighteen yards of clothes-rope. They all thought they weren't movable.
You leave your car there for ten minutes, you'll be lucky to find the
chassis!"

So Robert got obediently into the car and drove down to the grocer's.

And as he drove he remembered something, and the memory puzzled him.

This was where Betty Kane had been so happy. This rather dreary, rather
grimy street - one of a warren of streets very like itself. So happy
that she had written to say that she was staying on for the rest of her
holidays.

What had she found here that was so desirable?

He was still wondering as he walked into the grocer's and prepared to
spot Mrs. Tilsit among the morning customers. But there was no need for
any guesswork. There was only one woman in the shop, and one glance at
the grocer's patient face and the cardboard packet in the woman's either
hand made it plain that she was Mrs. Tilsit.

"Can I get you something, sir?" the grocer said, detaching himself for a
moment from the woman's ponderings - it wasn't wheat flakes this
morning, it was powdered soap - and moving towards Robert.

"No, thank you," Robert said. "I am just waiting for this lady."

"For me? "the woman said. "If it's the gas, then --"

Robert said hastily that he wasn't the gas.

"I have a vacuum cleaner and it's going fine," she offered, and prepared
to go back to her problem.

Robert said that he had his car outside and would wait until she had
finished, and was beating a hasty retreat; but she said: "A car! Oh.

Well, you can drive me back, can't you, and save me carrying all those
things. How much, Mr. Carr, please?"

Mr. Carr, who had taken a packet of soap-flakes from her during her
interest in Robert and wedged it into her shopping-bag, took her money,
gave her change, wished her a thankful good-day, and cast a pitiful
glance at Robert as he followed the woman out to his car.

Robert had known that it was too much to hope for another woman with
Mrs. Wynn's detachment and intelligence, but his heart sank as he
considered Mrs. Tilsit. Mrs. Tilsit was one of those women whose minds
are always on something else. They chat brightly with you, they agree
with you, they admire what you are wearing, and they offer advice, but
their real attention is concentrated on what to do with the fish or what
Florrie told them about Minnie's eldest or where they have left the
laundry book or even just what a bad filling that is in your right front
tooth - anything, everything except the subject in hand.

She seemed impressed with the appearance of Robert's car and asked him
in to have a cup of tea - there being apparently no hour of the day when
a cup of tea was not a possible article of diet. Robert felt that he
could not drink with her even a cup of tea without making plain his
position of opposing counsel, so to speak. He did his best, but it was
doubtful if she understood; her mind was so plainly already deciding
whether to offer him the Rich Tea or the Mixed Fancy biscuits with his
tea. Mention of her niece made none of the expected stir in her
emotions.

"A most extraordinary thing, that was, wasn't it?" she said. "Taking her
away and beating her. What good did they think that was going to do
them? Sit down, Mr. Blayne, come in and sit down. I'll just --"

A bloodcurdling scream echoed through the house. An urgent,
high-pitched, desperate screaming that went on and on, without even a
pause for breath.

Mrs. Tilsit humped her parcels in a movement of exasperation. She leaned
near enough to Robert to put her mouth within shouting distance of his
ear. "My kettle," she yelled. "I'll be right back."

Robert sat down, and again considered the surroundings and wondered why
Betty Kane had found them so good. Mrs. Wynn's front room had been a
living-room: a sitting-room warm with human occupation and human
traffic. But this was clearly a "best" room, kept for visitors who were
not intimate enough to be admitted to the back regions; the real life of
the house was in the poky room at the back. Either kitchen or
kitchen-sitting-room. And yet Betty Kane had elected to stay. Had she
found a friend? A girl-next-door? A boy-next-door?

Mrs. Tilsit came back in what seemed like two minutes, bearing a tray
with tea. Robert wondered a little at this promptness of action until he
saw the tray's contents. Mrs. Tilsit had not waited to make a decision;
she had brought them both: Thin Wine and Sweet Shortbread. At least, he
thought, watching her pour, this woman explained one of the oddities in
the affair: the fact that when the Wynns had written to have Betty sent
home at once, her aunt had not flown to a telegraph office to break the
news that Betty had left for home nearly a fortnight ago. The Betty who
had gone a fortnight previously would be much less real in Mrs. Tilsit's
mind than the jelly that was cooling on the back window sill.

"I wasn't worried about her," Mrs. Tilsit said, as if in echo to his
thoughts. "When they wrote from Aylesbury about her, I knew she would
turn up. When Mr. Tilsit came home he was quite upset about it - he goes
away for a week or ten days at a time, you know: he's agent for Weekses
- carried on like a mad thing, he did; but I just said you wait and
she'll turn up all right, and she did. Well, nearly all right."

"She said she enjoyed her holiday here enormously."

"I suppose she did," she said vaguely, not looking gratified, as Robert
had expected. He glanced at her and realized that her mind was already
on something else. The strength of his tea, if one was to judge by the
direction of her eye.

"How did she pass her time? Did she make friends?"

"Oh, no; she was in Larborough most of the time."

"Larborough!"

"Oh, well, when I say most of the time, I do her an injustice. She
helped in the house in the mornings, but in a house this size and me
used to doing everything myself there isn't much to do. And she was here
on holiday, wasn't she, poor thing, after all that school work?

What good all that book work is to a young girl I don't know. Mrs.

Harrop's daughter over the way could hardly write her name, but she
married the third son of a lord. Or perhaps it was the son of a third
son," she said, looking doubtful. "I forget for the minute. She --"

"How did she spend her time in Larborough? Betty, I mean."

"Pictures, mostly."

"Pictures? Oh, the cinema, I see."

"You can do that from morning till night, if you're given that way, in
Larborough. The big ones open at half past ten and they mostly change
mid-week and there's about forty of them, so you can just go from one to
another till it's time to go home."

"Is that what Betty did?"

"Oh no. She's quite sensible, Betty is. She used to go in to the morning
round because you get in cheaper before noon, and then she'd go
bus-riding."

"Bus-riding. Where?"

"Oh, anywhere the fancy took her. Have another of these biscuits, Mr.

Bain; they're fresh from the tin. She went to see the castle at Norton
one day. Norton's the county town, you know. Everyone imagines
Larborough is because it's so big, but Norton's always been --"

"Did she not come home to lunch, then?"

"What? Oh, Betty. No, she'd have coffee lunch somewhere. We always have
our real meal at night anyhow, you see, with Mr. Tilsit being out all
day, so there was always a meal waiting when she came home. It's always
been my pride to have a good nourishing, sit-down meal ready for my --"

"What time would that be? Six?"

"No, Mr. Tilsit doesn't usually manage home before half past seven."

"And I suppose Betty was home long before then?"

"Mostly she was. She was late once because she went to an afternoon show
at the pictures, but Mr. Tilsit he created about it though I'm sure he
had no need to. What harm can you come to at the pictures? And after
that she was always home before him. When he was here, that is. She
wasn't so careful when he was away."

So the girl had been her own mistress for a good fortnight. Free to come
and go without question and limited only by the amount of holiday money
in her pocket. It was an innocent-sounding fortnight, and in the case of
most girls of her age it undoubtedly would have been that.

The cinema in the morning or window-gazing; a coffee lunch; a bus-ride
into the country in the afternoon - a blissful holiday for an
adolescent; the first taste of unsupervised freedom.

But Betty Kane was no normal adolescent. She was the girl who had told
that long and circumstantial story to the police without a tremor. The
girl with four weeks of her life unaccounted for. The girl that someone
had ended by beating unmercifully. How, then, had Betty Kane spent her
unsupervised freedom?

"Did she go to Milford on the bus, do you know?"

"No, they asked me that, of course, but I couldn't say yes or not."

"They?"

"The police."

Yes, of course; he had forgotten for the moment that the police would
have checked Betty Kane's every sentence to the limit of their power.

"You're not police, I think you said."

"No," Robert said yet once again; "I'm a lawyer. I represent the two
women who are supposed to have detained Betty."

"Oh yes, You told me. I suppose they have to have a lawyer like anyone
else, poor things. To ask questions for them. I hope I'm telling you the
things you want to know, Mr. Blayne."

He had another cup of tea in the hope that sooner or later she would
tell him something he wanted to know. But it was mere repetition now.

"Did the police know that Betty was away on her own all day?" he asked.

She really thought about that. "That I can't remember," she said.

"They asked me how she passed her time and I said that mostly she went
to pictures or bus-riding, and they said did I go with her and I said -
well, I'll have to admit I told a white lie about it and said that I did
now and then. I didn't want them to think that Betty went to places
alone. Though of course there was no harm in it."

What a mind!

"Did she have letters while she was here?" he asked as he was taking his
leave.

"Just from home. Oh yes, I would know. I always took the letters in.

In any case, they wouldn't have written to her, would they?"

"Who?"

"Those women who kidnapped her."

It was with a feeling of escape that Robert drove in to Larborough. He
wondered if Mr. Tilsit had always been away "ten days at a time" from
his home or if he had got the travelling job as an alternative to flight
or suicide.

In Larborough Blair sought out the main garage of the Larborough and
District Motor Services. He knocked at the door of the small office that
guarded one side of the entrance and went in. A man in a bus inspector's
uniform was going through papers on the desk. He glanced up at Robert
and without asking his business continued his own affairs.

Robert said that he wanted to see someone who would know about the
Milford bus service.

"Time-table on the wall outside," the man said without looking up.

"I don't want to know about times. I know them. I live in Milford. I
want to know if you ever run a double-decker bus on that route."

There was silence for a long time: a silence expertly calculated to end
at the point where Robert was about to open his mouth again. "No,"

said the man.

"Never?" Robert asked.

This time there was no answer at all. The inspector made it plain that
he was finished with him.

"Listen," Robert said; "this is important. I am a partner in a firm of
solicitors in Milford and I --"

The man turned on him. "I don't care if you are the Shah of Persia.

There are no double-decker buses on the Milford run! And what do you
want?" he added as a small mechanic appeared behind Robert in the
doorway.

The mechanic hesitated, as if the business he had come on had been upset
by a newer interest. But he pulled himself together and began to state
his business. "It's about those spares for Norton. Shall I --"

As Robert was edging past him out of the office he felt a tug on his
coat and realized that the little mechanic wanted him to linger until he
could talk to him. Robert went out and bent over his own car, and
presently the mechanic appeared at his elbow.

"You asking about double-decker buses? I couldn't contradict him
straight out, you know; in the mood he's in now it'd be as much as my
job's worth. You want to use a double-decker, or just to know if they
ever run at all? Because, you can't get a double-decker on that route,
not to travel in, because the buses on that run are all --"

"I know, I know. They are single-decks. What I wanted to know was
whether there ever are two-deck buses on the Milford route."

"Well, there are not supposed to be, you understand, but once or twice
this year we've had to use a double-decker when one of the old single
ones broke down unexpected. Sooner or later they'll be all double-deck,
but there isn't enough traffic on the Milford run to justify a double,
so all the old crocks of singles eventually land on that route and a few
more like it. And so --"

"You're a great help. Would it be possible to find out exactly when a
double-decker did run on that route?"

"Oh, certainly," the mechanic said, with a shade of bitterness. "In this
firm it's recorded every time you spit. But the records are in there" -
he tilted his head to indicate the office - "and as long as he's there
there's nothing doing."

Robert asked at what hour there would be something doing.

"Well, he goes off at the same time as me - six. But I could wait a few
minutes and look up the schedules when he's gone if it's very important
to you."

Robert did not know how he was going to wait through the hours till six
o'clock, but six o'clock it would have to be.

"Righto. I'll meet you in the Bell - that's the pub at the end of the
street about a quarter past six. That do?"

That would do perfectly, Robert said. Perfectly.

And he went away to see what he could bribe the lounge waiter at the
Midland into giving him out of hours.

CHAPTER 10.

"I suppose you know what you're doing, dear," Aunt Lin said, "but I
can't help thinking it's very odd of you to defend people like that."

"I am not 'defending' them," Robert said patiently. "I am representing
them. And there is no evidence whatever that they are 'people like
that'."

"There is the girl's statement, Robert. She couldn't just have made all
that up."

"Oh, couldn't she?"

"What advantage would it be to her to tell a lot of lies?" She was
standing in his doorway passing her prayer-book from one hand to the
other as she put on her white gloves. "What else could she have been
doing if she wasn't at The Franchise?"

Robert bit back a "You'd be surprised!" It was always best with Aunt Lin
to take the line of least resistance.

She smoothed her gloves into place. "If it's just that you're being
noble, Robert dear, I must say you are just being wrongheaded. And do
you have to go out to the house? Surely they could come to the office
tomorrow. There's no hurry, is there? It isn't as if someone was going
to arrest them on the spot."

"It was my suggestion that I should go out to The Franchise. If someone
accused you of stealing things off Woolworth's counter and you couldn't
disprove it, I don't suppose you would enjoy walking down Milford High
Street in broad daylight."

"I mightn't like it, but I should most certainly do it and give Mr.

Hensell a piece of my mind."

"Who is Mr. Hensell?"

"The manager. Couldn't you come to church with me first and then go out
to The Franchise? It's such a long time since you've been, dear."

"If you stand there much longer you'll be late for the first time in ten
years. You go and pray that my judgement may be perfected."

"I shall most certainly pray for you, dear. I always do. I shall also
put up a little one for myself. All this is going to be very difficult
for me."

"For you?"

"Now that you're acting for those people I shall't be able to talk about
it to anyone. It is quite maddening, dear, to sit silent and hear
everyone telling for gospel truth things you know for a fact are wrong.

It's like wanting to be sick and having to postpone it. Oh dear, the
bells have stopped, haven't they? I'll just have to slip into the
Bracketts' pew. They won't mind. You won't stay to lunch at that place,
will you, dear?"

"I don't suppose that I shall be invited."

But his welcome at The Franchise was so warm that he felt that he might
very well be invited after all. He would say no, of course; not because
Aunt Lin's chicken was waiting, but because Marion Sharpe would have to
do the washing-up afterwards. When there was no one there they probably
ate off trays. Or in the kitchen, for all anyone knew.

"I am sorry we refused to answer the telephone last night," Marion said,
apologizing again. "But after the fourth or fifth time it really was too
much. And we didn't expect you to have news so soon. After all, you had
only set out on Friday afternoon."

"Your telephone callers: were they male or female?"

"One male and four female, as far as I remember. When you rang this
morning I thought it was beginning again, but they seem to be late
sleepers. Or perhaps they don't really get evil-minded much before
evening. We certainly provided the Saturday evening's entertainment for
the country youths. They congregated in a group inside the gate and
cat-called. Then Nevil found a bar of wood in the out-house --"

"Nevil?"

"Yes, your nephew - I mean, your cousin. He came to pay what he called
"a visit of condolence", which was very nice of him. And he found a bar
that could be wedged in the gateway to keep the thing shut; we have no
key for it, you see. But of course that didn't stop them for long.

They hoisted each other up on the wall and sat there in a row being
offensive until it was time for them to go to their beds."

"Lack of education," old Mrs. Sharpe said thoughtfully, "is an
extraordinary handicap when one is being offensive. They had no resource
at all."

"Neither have parrots," Robert said. "But they can be provocative
enough. We must see what police protection we can claim. Meanwhile I can
tell you something pleasanter about that wall. I know how the girl saw
over it." He told them about his visit to Mrs. Tilsit and his discovery
that the girl amused herself by bus-riding (or said she did) and his
subsequent visit to the Larborough and District Motor Services garage.

"In the fortnight that the girl was at Mainshill there were two
breakdowns of single-deck buses due to go out on the Milford run; and
each time a double-decker had to be substituted. There are only three
services each way daily, you know. And each time the breakdown happened
to the bus due to go out on the midday service. So there were at least
two occasions in that fortnight when she could have seen the house, the
courtyard, you two, and the car, all together."

"But could anyone passing on top of a bus take in so much?"

"Have you ever travelled on the upper deck of a country bus? Even when
the bus is going at a steady thirty-five, the pace seems funereal.

What you can see is so much farther away and you can see it so much
longer. Down below, the hedges brush the window and the pace seems good
because things are closer. That is one thing. The other is that she has
a photographic memory." And he told them what Mrs. Wynn had said.

"Do we tell the police this?" Mrs. Sharpe asked.

"No. It doesn't prove anything; just solves the problem of how she knew
about you. When she needed an alibi she remembered you, and risked your
not being able to prove that you were somewhere else. When you bring
your car to the door, by the way, which side of the car is nearest the
door?"

"Whether I bring it round from the garage or in from the road the
offside is next to the door, because it's easier to get out of."

"Yes; so that the near side, with the darker paint on the front wheel,
would be facing the gate," Robert said conclusively. "That is the
picture she saw. The grass and the divided path, the car at the door
with the odd wheel, two women both individual - the round attic window
in the roof. She had only to look at the picture in her mind and
describe it. The day she was using the picture for the day she was
supposed to have been kidnapped was more than a month away, and it was a
thousand to one against your being able to say what you had done or
where you had been on that day."

"And I take it," Mrs. Sharpe said, "that the odds are very much against
our being able to say what she has done or - greater - where she has
been in that month?"

"The odds are against us, yes. As my friend Kevin Macdermott pointed out
the other night, there is nothing to hinder her having been in Sydney,
N. S.W. But somehow I am far more hopeful today than I was on Friday
morning. We know so much more about the girl now." He told them of his
interviews in Aylesbury and Mainshill.

"But if the police inquiries didn't unearth what she was doing that
month --"

"The police inquiries were devoted to checking her statement.

They didn't start, as we do, with the premise that her statement is
untrue from beginning to end. They checked it and it checked. They had
no particular reason to doubt it. She had a blameless reputation, and
when they inquired from her aunt how she had spent her holiday time they
found that it had consisted of innocent visits to the cinema and country
bus-rides."

"And what do you think it consisted of?" Mrs. Sharpe asked.

"I think she met someone in Larborough. That, anyhow, is the obvious
explanation. It's from that supposition that I think any inquiry of ours
should start."

"And what do we do about engaging an agent?" asked Mrs. Sharpe. "Do you
know of one?"

"Well," Robert said, hesitating, "it had crossed my mind that you might
let me pursue my own inquiries a little farther before we engage a
professional. I know that --"

"Mr. Blair," the old woman said, interrupting him, "you have been called
into this unpleasant case without warning, and it cannot have been very
willingly; and you have been very kind in doing your best for us. But we
cannot expect you to turn yourself into a private inquiry agent on our
behalf. We are not rich - indeed, we have very little to live on - but
as long as we have any money at all we shall pay for what services are
proper. And it is not proper that you should turn yourself into a - what
is it? - a Sexton Blake for our benefit."

"It may not be proper, but it is very much to my taste. Believe me, Mrs.
Sharpe, I hadn't planned it with any conscious thought of saving your
pocket. Coming home in the car last night, very pleased with what I had
done so far, I realized how much I should hate giving up the search to
someone else. It had become a personal hunt. Please don't discourage me
from --"

"If Mr. Blair is willing to carry on a little longer," Marion
interrupted, "I think we should thank him heartily and accept. I know
just how he feels. I wish I could go hunting myself."

"There will no doubt come a time when I shall have to turn it over to a
proper inquiry agent whether I want to or not. If the trail leads far
from Larborough, for instance. I have too many other commitments to
follow it far. But as long as the search is on our doorsteps I do want
to be the one to pursue it."

"How had you planned to pursue it?" Marion asked, interested.

"Well, I had thought of beginning with the coffee-lunch places. In
Larborough, I mean. For one thing, there can't be so many of them. And
for another, we do know that, at any rate at the beginning, that was the
kind of lunch she had."

"Why do you say 'at the beginning'?" Marion asked.

"Once she had met the hypothetical X, she may have lunched anywhere.

But up till then she paid for her own lunches and they were 'coffee'
ones. A girl of that age prefers a bun lunch anyhow, even if she has
money for a two-course meal. So I concentrate on the coffee-places. I
flourish the Ack-Emma at the waitresses and find out as tactfully as a
country lawyer knows how whether they have ever seen the girl in their
place. Does that sound like sense to you?"

"Very good sense," Marion said.

Robert turned to Mrs. Sharpe. "But if you think you will be better
served by a professional - and that is more than possible - then I shall
bow out with --"

"I don't think we could be better served by anyone," Mrs. Sharpe said.

"I have expressed my appreciation already of the trouble you have gone
to on our behalf. If it would really please you to run down this - this
--"

"Moppet," supplied Robert happily.

"Mopsy," Mrs. Sharpe amended, "then we can only agree and be grateful.

But it seems to me likely to be a very long run."

"Why long?"

"There is a big gap, it seems to me, between meeting a hypothetical X in
Larborough and walking into a house near Aylesbury wearing nothing but a
frock and shoes and well and truly beaten. Marion, there is still some
of the Amontillado, I think."

In the silence that succeeded Marion's departure to fetch the sherry the
quiet of the old house became apparent. There were no trees in the
courtyard to make small noises in the wind and no birds to chatter. The
silence was as absolute as the midnight silence of a small town. Was it
peaceful, Robert wondered, after the crowded life of a boarding-house?
Or was it lonely and a little frightening?

They had valued its privacy, old Mrs. Sharpe had said in his office on
Friday morning. But was it a good life shut in behind the high walls in
the perpetual silence?

"It seems to me," Mrs. Sharpe said, "that the girl took a great risk in
choosing The Franchise, knowing nothing of the household or its
circumstances."

"Of course she took a risk," Robert said. "She had to. But I don't think
it was as big a gamble as you think."

"No?"

"No. What you are saying is that for all the girl knew there might be a
large household of young people and three maidservants at The
Franchise."

"Yes."

"But I think she knew quite well that there was no such thing."

"How could she?"

"Either she gossiped with the bus-conductor or - and I think this is
more likely - she overheard comment from her fellow- passengers. You
know the kind of thing: 'There are the Sharpes. Fancy living alone in a
big house like that, just the two of them. And no maids willing to stay
alone in a lonely place so far from shops and the pictures -' and so on.

It is very much a 'local' bus, that Larborough-Milford one. And it is a
lonely route, with no wayside cottages and no village other than Ham
Green. The Franchise is the only spot of human interest for miles. It
would be more than human nature is capable of to pass the combined
interest of the house, the owners, and their car without comment of some
kind."

"I see. Yes, that makes sense."

"I wish, in a way, it had been through chatting with the conductor that
she learned about you. That way, he would be more likely to remember
her. The girl says she was never in Milford and doesn't know where it
is. If a conductor remembered her, we could at least shake her story to
that extent."

"If I know anything of the young person she would open those childlike
eyes of hers and say: 'Oh, was that Milford? I just got on a bus and
went to the terminus and back'."

"Yes. It wouldn't take us very far. But if I fail to pick up the girl's
trail in Larborough, I'll try her picture on the local conductors. I do
wish she was a more memorable creature."

The silence fell round them again while they contemplated the
un-memorable nature of Betty Kane.

They were sitting in the drawing-room, facing the window, looking out on
the green square of the courtyard and faded pink of the brick wall.

And as they looked the gate was pushed open and a small group of seven
or eight people appeared and stood at gaze. Entirely at their ease they
were: pointing out to each other the salient points of interest - the
favourite being apparently the round window in the roof. If last night
The Franchise had provided the country youth with its Saturday-evening
entertainment, it was now, so it would seem, providing Sunday- morning
interest for Larborough. Certainly a couple of cars were waiting for
them outside the gate, since the women of the party wore silly little
shoes and indoor frocks.

Robert glanced across at Mrs. Sharpe, but except for a tightening of her
always grim mouth she had not moved.

"Our public," she said at last, witheringly.

"Shall I go and move them on?" Robert said. "It's my fault for not
putting back the wooden bar you left off for me."

"Let them be," she said. "They will go presently. This is what royalty
puts up with daily; we can support it for a few moments."

But the visitors showed no signs of going. Indeed, one group moved round
the house to inspect the out-buildings; and the rest were still there
when Marion came back with the sherry. Robert apologized again for not
having put up the bar. He was feeling small and inadequate. It went
against the grain to stay there quietly and watch strangers prowling
round as if they owned the place or were contemplating buying it. But if
he went out and asked them to move on and they refused to, what power
had he to make them go? And how would he look in the Sharpes's eyes if
he had to beat a retreat to the house and leave these people in
possession?

The group of explorers came back from their tour round the house and
reported with laughter and gesticulation what they had seen. He heard
Marion say something under her breath and wondered if she were cursing.

She looked like a woman who would have a very fine line in curses. She
had put down the sherry tray and had apparently forgotten about it; it
was no moment for hospitality. He longed to do something decisive and
spectacular to please her, just as he had longed to rescue his lady-love
from burning buildings when he was fifteen. But, alas, there was no
surmounting the fact that he was forty-odd and had learned that it is
wiser to wait for the fire-escape.

And while he hesitated, angry with himself and with those crude human
creatures outside, the fire-escape arrived in the person of a tall young
man in a regrettable tweed suit.

"Nevil," breathed Marion, watching the picture.

Nevil surveyed the group with his most insufferable air of superiority,
and it seemed that they wilted slightly, but they were evidently
determined to stand their ground. Indeed, the male with the
sports-jacket and the pin-striped trousers was clearly preparing to make
an issue of it.

Nevil looked at them silently for a further few seconds and then fished
in his inner pocket for something. At the first movement of his hand a
strange difference came over the group. The outer members of it detached
themselves and faded unobtrusively through the gate; the nearer ones
lost their air of bravado and became placatory. Finally the
sports-jacket made small rejecting movements of surrender and joined the
retreat through the gate.

Nevil banged the gate to behind them, levered the wooden bar into place,
and strolled up the path to the door, wiping his hands fastidiously on a
really shocking handkerchief. And Marion ran out to the door to meet
him.

"Nevil!" Robert heard her say. "How did you do it?"

"Do what?" Nevil asked.

"Get rid of those creatures."

"Oh, I just asked their names and addresses," Nevil said. "You've no
idea how discreet people become if you take out a notebook and ask for
their name and address. It's the modern equivalent to: 'Fly, all is
discovered." They don't wait to ask your credentials in case you may
actually have some. Hello, Robert. Good morning, Mrs. Sharpe. I'm
actually on my way to Larborough, but I saw the gates open and those two
frightful cars outside so I stopped to investigate. I didn't know Robert
was here."

This quite innocent implication that of course Robert was capable of
dealing equally well with the situation was the unkindest cut of all.

Robert could have brained him.

"Well, now that you are here and have so expertly rid us of the nuisance
you must stay and drink a glass of sherry," Mrs. Sharpe said.

"Could I come in and drink it on my way home in the evening?" Nevil
said. "You see, I'm on my way to lunch with my prospective
father-in-law, and it being Sunday there is a ritual. One must be there
for the warming-up exercises."

"But of course come in on your way home," Marion said. "We shall be
delighted. How shall we know it is you? For the gate, I mean." She was
pouring sherry and handing it to Robert.

"Do you know morse?"

"Yes, but don't tell me you do."

"Why not?"

"You look a most unlikely morse addict."

"Oh, when I was fourteen I was going to sea, and I acquired in the heat
of my ambition a lot of incidental idiocies. Morse was one of them. I
shall hoot the initials of your beautiful name on the horn, when I come.
Two longs and three shorts. I must fly. The thought of talking to you
tonight will support me through luncheon at the Palace."

"Won't Rosemary be any support?" Robert asked, overcome by his baser
self.

"I shouldn't think so. On Sundays Rosemary is a daughter in her father's
house. It is a role that does not become her. Au revoir, Mrs. Sharpe.
Don't let Robert drink all the sherry."

"And when," Robert heard Marion ask as she went with him to the door,
"did you decide not to go to sea?"

"When I was fifteen. I took up ballooning instead."

"Theoretical, I suppose."

"Well, I gassed about gases."

Why did they sound so friendly, so at ease, Robert wondered. As if they
had known each other a long time. Why did she like that light-weight
Nevil?

"And when you were sixteen?"

If she knew how many things Nevil had taken up and dropped in his time
she might not be so pleased to be the latest of them.

"Is the sherry too dry for you, Mr. Blair?" Mrs. Sharpe asked.

"No, oh no, thank you, it is excellent." Was it possible that he had
been looking sour? Perish the thought.

He made a cautious glance at the old lady and thought that she was
looking faintly amused. And old Mrs. Sharpe being amused was no
comfortable sight.

"I think I had better go before Miss Sharpe bars the gate behind Nevil,"
he said. "Otherwise she will have to come to the gate again with me."

"But won't you stay and have lunch with us? There is no ritual about it
at The Franchise."

But Robert made his excuses. He didn't like the Robert Blair he was
becoming. Petty and childish and inadequate. He would go back and have
ordinary Sunday lunch with Aunt Lin and be again Robert Blair of Blair,
Hayward, and Bennet, equable and tolerant and at peace with his world.

Nevil had gone by the time he reached the gate, in a flurry of sound
that shattered the Sabbath quiet, and Marion was about to close the
gate.

"I can't think that the Bishop approves of his future son-inlaw's means
of transport," she said, looking after the roaring object as it streaked
down the road.

"Exhausting," Robert said, still caustic.

She smiled at him. "I think that is the first witty pun I have ever
heard anyone make," she said. "I hoped you would stay for lunch, but in
a way I'm rather relieved that you aren't."

"Are you indeed?"

"I made a 'shape', but it didn't stand up. I'm a very bad cook. I do
faithfully what it says in the book, but it hardly ever works out.

Indeed, I'm surprised to death when it does. So you will be better off
with your Aunt Lin's apple tart."

And Robert suddenly and illogically wished that he was staying, to share
the "shape" that had not stood up and to be gently mocked by her along
with her cooking.

"I'll let you know tomorrow night how I get on in Larborough," he said
matter-of-factly. Since he was not on hens-and-Maupassant terms with
her, he would keep the conversation to practicalities. "And I'll ring up
Inspector Hallam and see if one of their men can give a look round The
Franchise once or twice a day just to show the uniform, so to speak, and
to discourage idlers."

"You are very kind, Mr. Blair," she said. "I can't imagine what it would
be without you to lean on."

Well, if he couldn't be young and a poet, he could be a crutch. A dull
thing, a thing resorted to only in emergencies; but useful, useful.

CHAPTER 11.

By half past ten on Monday morning he was sitting in front of a steaming
cup of coffee in the Karena. He began with the Karena because when one
thinks of coffee at all one thinks of a Karena, with the smell of the
roasting coffee downstairs in the shop and the liquid version waiting
upstairs among the little tables. And if he was going to have a surfeit
of coffee he might as well have some good stuff while he could still
taste it.

He was holding the Ack-Emma in his hand with the girl's photograph open
to the gaze of the waitresses as they passed, hoping vaguely that his
interest in it might cause one of them to say: "That girl used to come
in here every morning." To his surprise the paper was gently removed
from his grasp, and he looked up to see his waitress regarding him with
a kind smile.

"That is last Friday's," she said. "Here." And she proffered that
morning's Ack-Emma.

He thanked her and said that while he would be glad to see this
morning's paper he would like to keep the Friday one. Did this girl,
this girl on the front page of Friday's ever come in here for coffee?

"Oh no, we'd have remembered her if she did. We were all discussing that
case on Friday. Imagine beating her half to death like that."

"Then you think they did?"

She looked puzzled. "The paper says they did."

"No, the paper reports what the girl said."

She obviously did not follow that. This was the democracy we deified.

"They wouldn't print a story like that if it wasn't true. It would be as
much as their life's worth. You a detective?"

"Part time," Robert said.

"How much do you get an hour for that?"

"Not nearly enough."

"No, I suppose not. Haven't got a union, I suppose. You don't get your
rights in this world unless you have a union."

"Too true," said Robert. "Let me have my bill, will you?"

"Your check, yes."

At the Palace, the biggest and newest of the cinemas, the restaurant
occupied the floor behind the balcony, and had carpets so deep that one
tripped on them and lighting so subdued that all the cloths looked
dirty. A bored houri with gilt hair, an uneven hem to her skirt, and a
wad of chewing-gum in her right jaw took his order without ever glancing
at him, and fifteen minutes later put down a cup of washy liquid in
front of him without letting her eyes stray even approximately in his
direction. Since in the fifteen minutes Robert had discovered that the
never-look-at-customers technique was universal - presumably they were
all going to be film-stars the year after next and could not be expected
to take any interest in a provincial clientele - he paid for the
untasted liquid and left.

At the Castle, the other big cinema, the restaurant did not open until
afternoon.

At the Violet - royal purple everywhere and yellow curtains - no one had
seen her. Robert, casting subtleties aside, asked them bluntly.

Upstairs at Griffon and Waldron's, the big store, it was rush hour and
the waitress said: "Don't bother me!" The manageress, looking at him
with absent-minded suspicion, said: "We never give information about our
customers."

At the Old Oak - small and dark and friendly - the elderly waitresses
discussed the case interestedly with him. "Poor love," they said.

"What an experience for her! Such a nice face, too. Just a baby. Poor
love."

At the Alengon cream - paint and old-rose couches against the walls -
they made it plain that they had never heard of the Ack-Emma and could
not possibly have a client whose photograph appeared in such a
publication.

At the Heave Ho - marine frescoes and waitresses in bell- bottomed
trousers - the attendants gave it as their unanimous opinion that any
girl who took a lift should expect to have to walk home.

At the Primrose - old polished tables with raffia mats and thin,
unprofessional waitresses in flowered smocks - they discussed the social
implications of lack of domestic service and the vagaries of the
adolescent mind.

At the Tea-Pot there was no table to he had and no waitress willing to
attend to him, but a second glance at the fly-blown place made him sure
that, with the others to choose from, Betty Kane would not have come
here.

At half past twelve he staggered into the lounge of the Midland and
called for strong waters. As far as he knew he had covered all the
likely eating-places in the centre of Larborough and in not one of them
had anyone remembered seeing the girl. What was worse, everyone agreed
that if she had been there they would have remembered her. They had
pointed out, when Robert was sceptical of that, that a large proportion
of their customers on any one day were regulars, so that the casuals
stood out from the rest and were noted and remembered automatically.

As Albert, the tubby little lounge waiter, set his drink in front of
him, Robert asked, more out of habit than volition: "I suppose you've
never seen this girl in your place, Albert?"

Albert looked at the front page of the Ack-Emma and shook his head.

"No, sir. Not that I recollect. Looks a little young, sir, if I may say
so, for the lounge of the Midland."

"She mightn't look so young with a hat on," Robert said, considering it.

"A hat," Albert paused. "Now, wait a minute. A hat." Albert laid his
little tray down and picked up the paper to consider it. "Yes, of course
- that's the girl in the green hat!"

"You mean she came in here for coffee?"

"No, for tea."

"Tea!"

"Yes, of course, that's the girl. Fancy me not seeing that, and we had
that paper in the pantry last Friday and chewed the rag over it for
hours! Of course it's some time ago now, isn't it? About six weeks or
so, it must be. She always came early - just about three, when we start
serving teas."

So that is what she did. Fool that he was not to have seen that. She
went into the morning round at the cinema in time to pay the cheaper
price - just before noon, that was - and came out about three, and had
tea, not coffee. But why the Midland, where the tea was the usual dowdy
and expensive hotel exhibit, when she could wallow in cakes elsewhere?

"I noticed her because she always came alone. The first time she came I
thought she was waiting for relations. That's the kind of kid she
looked. You know: nice plain clothes and no airs."

"Can you remember what she wore?"

"Oh yes. She always wore the same things. A green hat and a frock to
match it under a pale grey coat. But she never met anyone. And then one
day she picked up the man at the next table. You could have knocked me
over with a feather."

"You mean he picked her up."

"Don't you believe it! He hadn't even thought of her when he sat down
there. I tell you, sir, she didn't look that sort. You'd expect an aunt
or a mother to appear at any moment and say: 'So sorry to have kept you
waiting, darling." She just wouldn't occur to any man as a possible. Oh
no; it was the kid's doing. And as neat a piece of business, let me tell
you, sir, as if she had spent a lifetime at it.

Goodness, and to think that I didn't spot her again without her hat!"

He gazed in wonder at the pictured face.

"What was the man like? Did you know him?"

"No, he wasn't one of our regulars. Dark, youngish; business gent, I
should say. I remember being a little surprised at her taste, so I don't
think he could have been up to much, now I come to think of it."

"You wouldn't know him again, then."

I might, sir, I might. But not to swear to. You er planning any swearing
to, sir?"

Robert had known Albert for nearly twenty years and had always found him
of an excellent discretion. "It's like this, Albert," he said.

"These people are my clients." He tapped the photograph of the
Franchise, and Albert gave vent to a low whistle.

"A tough spot for you, Mr. Blair."

"Yes, as you say: a tough spot. But mostly for them. It is quite
unbelievably tough for them. The girl comes out of the blue one day
accompanied by the police, to whom she has told this fantastic story.

Until then neither of the two women has ever set eyes on her. The police
are very discreet and decide that they haven't enough evidence to make
it a good case. Then the Ack-Emma hears about it and makes capital out
of it, and the story is all over Britain. The Franchise is wide open, of
course. The police can't spare men to afford constant protection, so you
can imagine the lives these women are leading. My young cousin, who
looked in before dinner last night, says that from lunch-time on crowds
of cars arrived from Larborough, and people stood on roofs or hoisted
themselves up on the wall to stare or take photographs. Nevil got in
because he arrived at the same time as the policeman on the evening
beat, but as soon as they left the cars were swarming again. The
telephone went continually until they asked the Exchange not to put
through any more calls."

"Have the police dropped it for good, then?"

"No; but they can't do anything to help us. What they are looking for is
corroboration of the girl's story."

"Well, that's not very likely, is it? For them to get, I mean."

"No. But you see the spot we are in. Unless we can find out where the
girl was during the weeks she says she was at The Franchise, the Sharpes
will be in the position of being permanently convicted of a thing they
haven't even been accused of!"

"Well, if it's the girl in the green hat - and I'm sure it is, sir - I'd
say she was what is known as 'out on the tiles', sir. A very cool
customer she was for a girl that age. Butter wouldn't melt in her
mouth."

"Butter wouldn't melt in her little mouth," the tobacconist had said of
the child Betty. And 'on the tiles' was Stanley's verdict on the
pictured face that was so like "the hint he had had in Egypt."

And the worldly little waiter had used both phrases in his estimate of
her - the demure girl in the "good" clothes who had come every day by
herself to sit in the hotel lounge.

"Perhaps it was just a childish desire to be 'grand'," the nice side of
him prompted; but his common sense refused it. She could have been grand
at the Alengon, and eaten well, and seen smart clothes at the same time.

He went in to have lunch, and then spent a large part of the afternoon
trying to reach Mrs. Wynn on the telephone. Mrs. Tilsit had no telephone
and he had no intention of involving himself in a Tilsit conversation
again if he could help it. When he failed he remembered that Scotland
Yard would most certainly, in that painstaking way of theirs, have a
description of the clothes the girl was wearing when she went missing.
And in less than seven minutes, he had it. A green felt hat, a green
wool frock to match, a pale grey cloth coat with large grey buttons,
fawn-grey rayon stockings and black court shoes with medium heels.

Well, at last he had it, that setting-off place; that starting point for
inquiry. Jubilation filled him. He sat down in the lounge on his way out
and wrote a note to tell Kevin Macdermott that the young woman from
Aylesbury was not such an attractive brief as she had been on Friday
night; and to let him know, of course between the lines that Blair,
Hayward, and Bennet could get a move on when it was necessary.

"Did she ever come back?" he asked Albert, who was hovering. "I mean,
after she had 'got her man'."

"I don't remember ever seeing either of them again, sir."

Well, the hypothetical X had ceased to be hypothetical. He had become
plain X. He, Robert, could go back tonight to The Franchise in triumph.
He had put forward a theory, and the theory had proved fact, and it was
he who had proved it a fact. It was depressing, of course, that the
letters received so far by Scotland Yard had all been merely anonymous
revilings of the Yard for their "softness" to the "rich", and not claims
to have seen Betty Kane. It was depressing that practically everyone he
had interviewed that morning believed the girl's story without question;
was, indeed, surprised and at a loss if asked to consider any other
point of view. "The paper said so." But these were small things compared
to the satisfaction of having arrived at that starting-point; of having
unearthed X. He didn't believe that fate could be so cruel as to show
that Betty Kane parted with her acquaintance on the steps of the Midland
and never saw him again. There had to be an extension of that incident
in the lounge.

The history of the following weeks demanded it.

But how did one follow up a young, dark business gent who had tea in the
lounge of the Midland about six weeks previously? Young, dark business
gents were the Midland's clientele; and as far as Blair could see all as
like as two peas, anyhow. He was very much afraid that this was where he
bowed out and handed over to a professional bloodhound. He had no
photograph this time to help him, no knowledge of X's character or
habits, as he had had in the case of the girl. It would be a long
process of small inquiries - a job for an expert. All he could do at the
moment, so far as he could see, was to get a list of residents at the
Midland for the period in question.

For that he went to the manager, a Frenchman who showed great delight
and understanding in this sub rosa proceeding, was exquisitely
sympathetic about the outraged ladies at The Franchise, and comfortingly
cynical about smooth-faced young girls in good clothes who looked as if
butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. He sent an underling to copy the
entries from the great ledger and entertained Robert to a sir op from
his own cupboard. Robert had never subscribed to the French taste for
small sweet mouthfuls of unidentifiable liquids drunk at odd times, but
he swallowed the thing gratefully and pocketed the list the underling
brought as one pockets a passport. Its actual value was probably nil,
but it gave him a nice feeling to have it. And if he had to turn over
the business to a professional, the professional would have somewhere to
start his burrowing. X had probably never stayed at the Midland in his
life; he had probably just walked in for tea one day. On the other hand,
his name might be among that list in his pocket - that horribly long
list.

As he drove home he decided that he would not stop at The Franchise. It
was unfair to bring Marion to the gate just to give her news that could
be told over the telephone. He would tell the Exchange who he was and
the fact that the call was official, and they would answer it. Perhaps
by tomorrow the first flood of interest in the house would have subsided
and it would be safe to unbar the gate again. Though he doubted it.
Today's Ack-Emma had not been calculated to have an appeasing effect on
the mob mind. True, there were no further front-page headlines; the
Franchise affair had removed itself to the correspondence page. But the
letters the Ack-Emma had chosen to print there - and two thirds of them
were about the Franchise affair - were not likely to prove oil on
troubled waters. They were so much paraffin on a fire that was going
quite nicely anyhow.

Threading his way out of the Larborough traffic, the silly phrases came
back to him; and he marvelled all over again at the venom that these
unknown women had roused in the writers' minds. Rage and hatred spilled
over on to the paper; malice ran unchecked through the largely
illiterate sentences. It was an amazing exhibition. And one of the
oddities of it was that the dearest wish of so many of those indignant
protesters against violence was to flog the said women within an inch of
their lives. Those who did not want to flog the women wanted to reform
the police. One writer suggested that a fund should be opened for the
poor young "victim of police inefficiency and bias". Another suggested
that every man of good will should write to his Member of Parliament
about it and make their lives a misery until something was done about
this miscarriage of justice. Still another asked if anyone had noticed
Betty Kane's marked resemblance to Saint Bernadette.

There was every sign, if today's correspondence page of the Ack-Emma was
any criterion, of the birth of a Betty Kane cult. He hoped that its
corollary would not be a Franchise vendetta.

As he neared the unhappy house he grew anxious, wondering if Monday too
had provided its quota of sightseers. It was a lovely evening, the low
sun slanting great golden swathes of light over the spring fields; an
evening to tempt even Larborough out to the Midland dullness of Milford;
it would be a miracle if, after the correspondence in the Ack-Emma, The
Franchise was not the Mecca of an evening pilgrimage. But when he came
within sight of it he found the long stretch of road deserted; and as he
came nearer he saw why. At the gate of The Franchise, solid and immobile
and immaculate in the evening light, was the dark-blue-and-silver figure
of a policeman.

Delighted that Hallam had been so generous with his scanty force, Robert
slowed down to exchange greetings; but the greeting died on his lips.
Along the full length of the tall brick wall, in letters nearly six feet
high, was splashed a slogan: "FASCISTS!" screamed the large white
capitals. And again on the farther side of the gate: "FASCISTS!"

"Move along, please," the Force said, approaching the staring Robert
with slow, polite menace. "No stopping here."

Robert got slowly out of the car. "Oh, Mr. Blair. Didn't recognize you,
sir. Sorry."

"Is it whitewash?"

"No, sir; best quality paint."

"Great heavens!"

"Some people never grow out of it."

"Out of what?"

"Writing things on walls. There's one thing: they might have written
something worse."

"They wrote the worst insult they knew," said Robert wryly. "I suppose
you haven't got the culprits?"

"No, sir. I just came along on my evening beat to clear away the usual
gapers - oh yes, there were dozens of them - and found it like that when
I arrived. Two men in a car, if all reports are true."

"Do the Sharpes know about it?"

"Yes, I had to get in to telephone. We have a code now, us and The
Franchise people. I tie my handkerchief on the end of my truncheon and
wave it over the top of the gate when I want to speak to them. Do you
want to go in, sir?"

"No. No, on the whole I think not. I'll get the Post Office to let me
through on the telephone. No need to bring them to the gate. If this is
going to continue they must get keys for the gate so that I can have a
duplicate."

"Looks as though it's going to continue all right, sir. Did you see
today's Ack-Emma?"

"I did."

"Strewth!" said the Force, losing his equanimity at the thought of the
Ack-Emma. "You would think to listen to them we were nothing but a
collection of itching palms! It's a holy wonder we're not, come to that.
It would suit them better to agitate for more pay for us instead of
slandering us right and left."

"You're in very good company, if it's any consolation to you," Robert
said. "There can't be anything established, respectable, or praiseworthy
that they haven't slandered at some time or other. I'll send someone
either tonight or first thing in the morning to do something about this
obscenity. Are you staying here?"

"The sergeant said when I telephoned that I was to stay till dark."

"No one overnight?"

"No, sir. No spare men for that. Anyhow, they'll be all right once the
light's gone. People go home, especially the Larborough lot.

They don't like the country once it gets dark."

Robert, who remembered how silent the lonely house could be, felt
doubtful. Two women alone in that big, quiet house after dark, with
hatred and violence just outside the wall - it was not a comfortable
thought. The gate was barred, but if people could hoist themselves on to
the wall for the purpose of sitting there and shouting insults, they
could just as easily drop down the other side in the dark.

"Don't worry, sir," the Force said, watching his face. "Nothing's going
to happen to them. This is England, after all."

"So is Ack-Emma England," Robert reminded him. But he got back into the
car again. After all, it was England, and the English countryside at
that - famed for minding its own business. It was no country hand that
had splashed that "FASCISTS!" on the wall. It was doubtful if the
country had ever heard the term. The country, when it wanted insults,
used older, Saxon words.

The Force was no doubt right; once the dark came everyone would go home.

CHAPTER 12.

As Robert turned his car into the garage in Sin Lane and came to a halt,
Stanley, who was shrugging off his overalls outside the office door,
glanced at his face and said: "Down the drain again?"

"It isn't a bet," Robert said, "it's human nature."

"You start to be sorry about human nature and you won't have time for
anything else. You been trying to reform some one?"

"No, I've been trying to get someone to take some paint off a wall."

"Oh, work!" Stanley's tone indicated that even to expect someone to do a
job of work these days was being optimistic to the point of folly.

"I've been trying to get someone to wipe a slogan off the walls of The
Franchise, but everyone is extraordinarily busy all of a sudden."

Stanley stopped his wriggling. "A slogan," he said. "What kind of
slogan?" And Bill, hearing the exchange, oozed himself through the
narrow office door to listen.

Robert told them. "In best quality white paint, so the policeman on the
beat assures me."

Bill whistled. Stanley said nothing; he was standing with his overalls
shrugged down to his waist and concertinaed about his legs.

"Who've you tried? "Bill asked.

Robert told them. "None of them can do anything tonight, and tomorrow
morning, it seems, all their men are going out early on important jobs."

"It's not to be believed," Bill said. "Don't tell me they're afraid of
reprisals!"

"No, to do them justice I don't think it's that. I think, although they
would never say so to me, that they think those women at The Franchise
deserve it."

There was silence for a moment.

"When I was in the Signals," Stanley said, beginning in a leisurely
fashion to pull up his overalls and get into the top half again, "I was
given a free tour of Italy. Nearly a year it took. And I escaped the
malaria and the Ities and the Partisans and the Yank transport, and most
of the other little nuisances. But I got a phobia. I took a great
dislike to slogans on walls."

"What'll we get it off with?" Bill asked.

"What's the good of owning the best-equipped and most modern garage in
Milford if we haven't something to take off a spot of paint?" Stanley
said, zipping up his front.

"Will you really try to do something about it?" Robert asked, surprised
and pleased.

Bill smiled his slow, expansive smile. "The Signals, the R. E.M. E., and
a couple of brooms. What more do you want?" he said.

"Bless you," Robert said. "Bless you both. I have only one ambition
tonight: to get that slogan off the wall before breakfast tomorrow.

I'll come along and help."

"Not in that Savile Row suit, you won't,"

Stanley said. "And we haven't a spare suit of --"

"I'll get something old on and come out after you."

"Look," Stanley said patiently, "we don't need any help for a little job
like that. If we did we'd take Harry." Harry was the garage boy. "You
haven't eaten yet and we have, and I've heard it said that Miss Bennet
doesn't like her good meals spoiled. I suppose you don't mind if the
wall looks smeary? We're just good-intentioned garage hands, not
decorators."

The shops were shut as he walked down the High Street to his home at
number 10, and he looked at the place as a stranger walking through on a
Sunday night. He had been so far from Milford during his day in
Larborough that he felt that he had been away for years. The comfortable
quiet of Number 10 - different from the dead silence of The Franchise -
welcomed and soothed him. A faint smell of roasting apples escaped from
the kitchen. The firelight flickered on the wall of the sitting-room,
seen through its half-open door. Warmth and security and comfort rose up
in a gentle tide and lapped over him.

Guilty at being the owner of this waiting peace, he picked up the
telephone to talk to Marion.

"Oh, you - how nice!" she said, when at last he had persuaded the Post
Office that his intentions were honourable; and the warmth in her voice
catching him unawares - his mind being still on white paint - caught him
under the heart and left him breathless for a moment. "I'm so glad. I
was wondering how we were going to talk to you; but I might have known
that you would manage it. I suppose you just say you're Robert Blair and
the Post Office gives you the freedom of the place."

How like her, he thought. The genuine gratitude of "I might have known
that you would manage"; and then the faint amusement in the sentence
that followed. "I suppose you've seen our wall decoration?"

Robert said yes, but that no one ever would again, because by the time
the sun rose it would have gone.

"Tomorrow!"

"The two men who own my garage have decided to obliterate it tonight."

"But could seven maids with seven mops?"

"I don't know; but if Stanley and Bill have set their minds on it,
obliterated it will be. They were brought up in a school that doesn't
tolerate frustrations."

"What school is that?"

"The British Army. And I have more good news for you: I have established
the fact that X exists. She had tea with him one day.

Picked him up at the Midland, in the lounge."

"Picked him up? But she is just a child, and so-- Oh, well, she told
that story, of course. After that anything is possible. How did you find
that out?"

He told her.

"You've had a bad day at The Franchise, haven't you?" he said, when he
had finished the saga of the coffee shops.

"Yes, I feel dirty all over. What was worse than the audience and the
wall was the post. The postman gave it to the police to take in. It is
not often that the police can be accused of disseminating obscene
literature."

"Yes, I imagined it must have been pretty bad. That was only to be
expected."

"Well, we have so few letters that we have decided that in future we
shall burn everything without opening them, unless we recognize the
writing. So don't use typescript if you write to us."

"But do you know my handwriting?"

"Oh yes, you wrote us a note, you remember. The one Nevil brought that
afternoon. Nice handwriting."

"Have you seen Nevil today?"

"No, but one of the letters was from him. At least, it wasn't a letter."

"A document of some kind?"

"No, a poem."

"Oh. Did you understand it?"

"No, but it made quite a nice sound."

"So do bicycle bells."

He thought she laughed a little. "It is nice to have poems made to one's
eyebrows," she said. "But still nicer to have one's wall made clean. I
do thank you for that - you and what's-their-names - Bill and Stanley.
If you want to be very kind perhaps you would bring or send us some food
tomorrow?"

"Food!" he said, horrified that he had not thought of that before; that
was what happened when you lived a life where Aunt Lin put everything
down in front of you, all but put the stuff in your mouth: you lost the
capacity for imagination. "Yes, of course. I forgot that you would not
be able to shop."

"It isn't only that. The grocer's van that calls on Monday didn't come
today. Or perhaps," she added hastily, "it came and just couldn't call
our attention. Anyhow, we should be so grateful for some things. Have
you got a pencil there?"

She gave him a list of things and then asked: "We didn't see today's
Ack-Emma. Was there anything about us?"

"Some letters on the correspondence page, that is all."

"All anti, I suppose."

"I'm afraid so. I shall bring a copy out tomorrow morning when I bring
the groceries, and you can see it for yourselves."

"I'm afraid we are taking up a great deal of your time."

"This has become a personal matter with me," he said.

"Personal?" She sounded doubtful.

"The one ambition of my life is to discredit Betty Kane."

"Oh; oh, I see." Her voice sounded half relieved, half - could it be? -
disappointed.

"Well, we shall look forward to seeing you tomorrow."

But she was to see him long before that.

He went to bed early, but lay awake, rehearsing a telephone conversation
that he planned to have with Kevin Macdermott; considering different
approaches to the problem of X; wondering if Marion was asleep, in that
silent old house, or lying awake listening for sounds.

His bedroom was over the street, and about midnight he heard a car drive
up and stop, and presently through the open window he heard Bill's
cautious call - not much more than a throaty whisper. "Mr.

Blair! Hey, Mr. Blair!"

He was at the window almost before the second utterance of his name.

"Thank goodness," whispered Bill. "I was afraid the light might be Miss
Bennet's."

"No, she sleeps at the back. What is it?"

"There's trouble at The Franchise. I've got to go for the police because
the wire is cut. But I thought you'd want to be called, so I--"

"What kind of trouble?"

"Hooligans. I'll come in for you on my way back. In about four minutes."

"Is Stanley with them?" Robert asked as Bills great bulk merged with the
car again.

"Yes, Stan's having his head bound up. Back in a minute." And the car
fled away up the dark, silent High Street.

Before Robert had got his clothes on he heard a soft "sshush" go past
his window, and realized that the police were already on their way. No
screaming sirens in the night, no roaring exhausts; with no more sound
than a summer wind makes among the leaves the law was going about its
business. As he opened the front door, cautiously so as not to wake Aunt
Lin (nothing but the last trump was likely to wake Christina), Bill
brought his car to a standstill at the pavement.

"Now tell me," Robert said, as they moved away.

"Well, we finished that little job by the light of the headlamps - not
very professional, it isn't, but a lot better than it was when we got
there - and then we switched off the heads and began to put away our
things. Sort of leisurely like: there was no hurry and it was a nice
night. We'd just lit a cigarette and were thinking of pushing off when
there was a crash of glass from the house. No one had got in on our side
while we were there, so we knew it must be round the sides or the back.
Stan reached into the car and took out his torch - mine was lying on the
seat because we'd been using it - and said: 'You go round that way and
I'll go the other and we'll nip them between us.'"

"Can you get round?"

" Well, it was no end of a business. It's hedge up to the wall end. I
wouldn't like to have done it in ordinary clothes, but in overalls you
just push hard and hope for the best. It's all right for Stan; he's
slim. But short of lying on the hedge till it falls down there's no way
through for me. Anyhow, we got through one on each side, and through the
one at the back corners, an met in the middle of the back without seeing
a soul. Then we heard more crashing of glass and realized that they were
making a night of it. Stan said: 'Hoist me up, and I'll give you a hand
after me." Well, a hand would be no good to me, but it happens that the
field level at the back comes fairly high up the wall - in fact, I think
it was probably cut away to build the wall so that we got over fairly
easily. Stan said had I anything to hit with besides my torch and I said
yes, I had a spanner. Stan said: Forget your bloody spanner and use your
ham fist; it's bigger.'"

"What was he going to use?"

"The old rugby tackle, so he said. Stan used to be quite a good
stand-off half. Anyhow, we went on in the dark towards the sound of the
crashing glass. It seemed as if they were just having a breaking tour
round the house. We caught up with them near the front corner again, and
switched on our torches. I think there were seven of them.

Far more than we had expected, anyhow. We switched off at once, before
they could see that we were only two, and grabbed the nearest. Stan
said: 'You take that one, sergeant," and I thought at the time he was
giving me my rank out of old habit, but I realize now he was bluffing
them we were police. Anyhow, some of them beat it, because though there
was a mix-up there couldn't have been anything like seven of them in it.
Then, quite suddenly it seemed, there was quiet - we'd been making a lot
of noise and I realized that we were letting them get away, and Stan
said from somewhere on the ground: 'Grab one, Bill, before they get over
the wall!" And I went after them with my torch on. The last of them was
just being helped over, and I grabbed his legs and hung on. But he
kicked like a mule, and what with the torch in my hand he slipped from
my hands like a trout and was over before I could grab him again. That
finished me, because from inside that wall at the back is even higher
than it is at the front of the house. So I went back to Stan. He was
still sitting on the ground. Someone had hit him a wallop over the head
with what he said was a bottle, and he was looking very cheap. And then
Miss Sharpe came out to the top of the front steps and said was someone
hurt? She could see us in the torchlight. So we got Stan in - the old
lady was there and the house was lit by this time - and I went to the
phone, but Miss Sharpe said: 'That's no use. It's dead. We tried to call
the police when they first arrived." So I said I'd go and fetch them.
And I said I'd better fetch you too. But Miss Sharpe said no, you'd had
a very hard day and I wasn't to disturb you. But I thought you ought to
be in on it."

"Quite right, Bill, I ought."

The gate was wide open as they drew up, the police car at the door, most
of the front rooms lit, and the curtains waving gently in the night wind
at the wrecked windows. In the drawing-room which the Sharpes evidently
used as a living-room Stanley was having a cut above his eye-brow
attended to by Marion, a sergeant of police was taking notes, and his
henchman was laying out exhibits. The exhibits seemed to consist of half
bricks, bottles, and pieces of paper with writing on them.

"Oh, Bill, I told you not to," Marion said as she looked up and saw
Robert.

Robert noted how efficiently she was dealing with Stanley's injury - the
woman who found cooking beyond her. He greeted the sergeant and bent to
look at the exhibits. There was a large array of missiles, but only four
messages, which read, respectively: "Get out!"

"Get out or we'll make you!"

"Foreign bitches!" and "This is only a sample!"

"Well, we've collected them all, I think," the sergeant said. "Now we'll
go and search the garden for footprints or whatever clues there may be."
He glanced professionally at the soles that Bill and Stanley held up at
his request and went out with his aide to the garden, as Mrs. Sharpe
came in with a steaming jug and cups.

"Ah, Mr. Blair," she said. "You still find us stimulating?"

She was fully dressed in contrast to Marion, who was looking quite human
and un-Joan-of-Arc in an old dressing-gown and apparently unmoved by
these proceedings, and he wondered what kind of occasion would find Mrs.
Sharpe at a disadvantage.

Bill appeared with sticks from the kitchen and lighted the dead fire,
Mrs. Sharpe poured the hot liquid - it was coffee and Robert refused it,
having seen enough coffee lately to lose interest in it - and the colour
began to come back to Stan's face. By the time the policeman came back
from the garden the room had acquired a family-party air, in spite of
the waving curtains and the non-existent windows. Neither Stanley nor
Bill, Robert noticed, appeared to find the Sharpes odd or difficult; on
the contrary, they seemed relaxed and at home. Perhaps it was that the
Sharpes took them for granted; accepting this invasion of strangers as
if it were an everyday occurrence. Anyhow, Bill came and went on his
ploys as if he had lived in the house for years; and Stanley put out his
cup for a second helping without waiting to be asked. Involuntarily,
Robert thought that Aunt Lin in their place would have been kind and
fussy and they would have sat on the edge of the chairs and remembered
their dirty overalls.

Perhaps it was the same taking-for-granted that had attracted Nevil.

"Do you plan to stay on here, ma'am?" the sergeant asked as they came in
again.

"Certainly," Mrs. Sharpe said, pouring coffee for them.

"No," Robert said. "You mustn't, you really must not. I'll find you a
quiet hotel in Larborough, where --"

"I never heard anything more absurd. Of course we are going to stay
here. What do a few broken windows matter?"

"It may not stop at broken windows," the sergeant said. "And you're a
great responsibility to us as long as you are here, a responsibility we
haven't really got the force to deal with."

"I'm truly sorry we are a nuisance to you, sergeant. We wouldn't have
flung bricks at our windows if we could help it, believe me. But this is
our home and here we are staying. Quite apart from any questions of
ethics, how much of our home would be left to come back to if it was
left empty? I take it if you are too short of men to guard human beings,
you certainly have no men to guard empty property?"

The sergeant looked slightly abashed, as people so often did when Mrs.

Sharpe dealt with them. "Well, there is that, ma'am," he acknowledged,
with reluctance.

"And that, I think, disposes of any question of our leaving The
Franchise. Sugar, sergeant?"

Robert returned to the subject when the police had taken their
departure, and Bill had fetched a brush and shovel from the kitchen and
was sweeping up the broken glass in room after room. Again he urged the
wisdom of a hotel in Larborough, but neither his emotion nor his common
sense was behind the words. He would not have gone if he had been in the
Sharpes' place and he could not expect them to; and in addition he
acknowledged the wisdom of Mrs. Sharpe's view about the fate of the
house left empty.

"What you want is a lodger," said Stanley, who had been refused
permission to sweep up glass because he was classed as walking-wounded.

"A lodger with a pistol. What d'you say I come and sleep here of nights?
No meals; just sleeping night watchman. They all sleep anyhow, night
watchmen do."

It was evident by their expressions that both the Sharpes appreciated
the fact that this was an open declaration of allegiance in what
amounted to a local war; but they did not embarrass him with thanks.

"Haven't you got a wife?" Marion asked.

"Not of my own," Stanley said demurely.

"Your wife if you had one might support your sleeping here," Mrs.

Sharpe pointed out, "but I doubt if your business would, Mr. er Mr.

Peters."

"My business?"

"I imagine that if your customers found that you had become night
watchman at The Franchise they would take their custom elsewhere."

"Not them," Stanley said comfortably. "There's nowhere else to take it.
Lynch is drunk five nights out of seven and Biggins wouldn't know how to
put on a bicycle chain. Anyhow, I don't let my customers tell me what I
do in my spare time."

And when Bill returned, he backed Stanley up. Bill was a much married
man and it was not contemplated that he should ever sleep anywhere
except at home. But that Stanley should sleep at The Franchise seemed to
both of them a natural solution of the problem.

Robert was mightily relieved.

"Well," Marion said, "if you are going to be our guest at nights you
might as well begin now. I am sure that head feels like a very painful
turnip. I'll go and make up a bed. Do you prefer a south view?"

"Yes," said Stanley gravely. "Well away from kitchen and wireless
noises."

"I'll do what I can."

It was arranged that Bill should slip a note into the door of Stanley's
lodgings to say that he would be in for lunch as usual. "She won't worry
about me," Stanley said, referring to his landlady. "I've been out for
nights before now." He caught Marion's eye, and added: "Ferrying cars
for customers - you can do it in half the time at night."

They tacked down the curtains in all the ground-floor rooms to provide
some protection for their contents if it rained before morning, and
Robert promised to get glaziers out at the earliest possible moment
deciding privately to go to a Larbor- enough firm and not risk another
series of polite rebuffs in Milford.

"And I shall also do something about a key for the gate, so that I can
have a duplicate," he said, as Marion came out with them to bar the
gate, "and save you from being gate-keeper as well as everything else."

She put out her hand, to Bill first. "I shall never forget what you
three have done for us. When I remember tonight it won't be these clods
that I shall remember" - she tilted her head to the windowless house -
"but you three."

"Those clods were local, I suppose you know," Bill said as they drove
home through the quiet spring night.

"Yes," Robert agreed. "I realized that. They had no car, for one thing.
And 'Foreign bitches!" smells of the conservative country, just as
'Fascists!" smells of the progressive town."

Bill said some things about progress.

"I was wrong to let myself be persuaded yesterday evening. The man on
the beat was so sure that 'everyone would go home when it grew dark'
that I let myself believe it. But I should have remembered a warning I
got about witch-hunts."

Bill was not listening. "It's a funny thing how unsafe you feel in a
house without windows," he said. "Take a house with the back blown clean
off and not a door that will shut: you can live quite happily in a front
room provided it still has windows. But without windows even a whole
undamaged house feels unsafe."

Which was not an observation that provided Robert with any comfort.

CHAPTER 13.

"I wonder if you would mind calling for the fish, dear," Aunt Lin said
on the telephone on Tuesday afternoon. "Nevil is coming to dinner, and
so we are going to have an extra course of what we were going to have
for breakfast. I really don't see why we should have anything extra just
for Nevil, but Christina says that it will keep him from making what she
calls 'inroads' on the tart that is going to do again on her night out
tomorrow. So if you wouldn't mind, dear."

He was not looking forward greatly to an extra hour or two of Nevil's
society, but he was feeling so pleased with himself that he was in a
better humour to support it than usual. He had arranged with a
Larborough firm for the replacement of The Franchise windows; he had
miraculously unearthed a key that fitted The Franchise gate and there
would be two duplicates in existence by tomorrow; and he had personally
taken out the groceries together with an offering of the best flowers
that Milford could supply. His welcome at The Franchise had been such
that he had almost ceased to regret the lack of light exchanges on
Nevil's lines. There were, after all, other things than getting to
Christian-name terms in the first half-hour.

In the lunch hour he had rung up Kevin Macdermott and arranged with his
secretary that when Kevin was free in the evening he would call him at
10 High Street. Things were getting out of hand and he wanted Kevin's
advice.

He had refused three invitations to golf, his excuse to his astounded
cronies being that he had "no time to chase a piece of gutta-percha
round a golf-course".

He had gone to see an important client who had been trying to interview
him since the previous Friday and who had been provoked into asking him
on the telephone if "he still worked for Blair, Hayward, and Bennet".

He had got through his arrears of work with a mutely reproachful Mr.

Heseltine, who, although he had allied himself on the Sharpe side, still
obviously felt that The Franchise affair was not one for a firm like
theirs to be mixed up in.

And he had been given tea by Miss Tuff out of the blue-patterned china
on the lacquer tray covered by the fair white cloth and accompanied by
two digestive biscuits on a plate.

It was lying on his desk now, the tea-tray, just as it had been a
fortnight ago when the telephone had rung and he had lifted the receiver
to hear Marion Sharpe's voice for the first time. Two short weeks ago.
He had sat looking at it in its patch of sunlight, feeling uneasy about
his comfortable life and conscious of time slipping past him. But today
the digestive biscuits held no reproach for him, because he had stepped
outside the routine they typified. He was on calling terms with Scotland
Yard; he was agent for a pair of scandalous women; he had become an
amateur sleuth; and he had been witness of mob violence. His whole world
looked different. Even the people he met looked different. The dark,
skinny woman he used to see sometimes shopping in the High Street, for
instance, had turned into Marion.

Well, one result of stepping out of a routined life was, of course, that
you couldn't put on your hat and stroll home at four o'clock of an
afternoon. He pushed the tea-tray out of his way and went to work, and
it was half-past six before he looked at the clock again and seven
before he opened the door of Number 10.

The sitting-room door was ajar as usual - like many doors in old houses,
it swung a little if left off the latch and he could hear Nevil's voice
in the room beyond.

"On the contrary, I think you are being extremely silly," Nevil was
saying.

Robert recognized the tone at once. It was the cold rage with which a
four-year-old Nevil had told a guest: "I am extremely sorry that I asked
you to my party." Nevil must be very angry indeed about something.

With his coat half off Robert paused to listen.

"You are interfering in something you know nothing whatever about; you
can hardly claim that is an intelligent proceeding."

There was no other voice, so he must be talking to someone on the
telephone - probably keeping Kevin from getting through, the young
idiot.

"I am not infatuated with anyone. I never have been infatuated with
anyone. It is you who are infatuated with ideas. You are being extremely
silly as I said before ... You are taking the part of an unbalanced
adolescent in a case you know nothing about; I should have thought that
was sufficient evidence of infatuation ... You can tell your father from
me that there is nothing Christian about it, just unwarranted
interference. I'm not sure it isn't incitement to violence Yes, last
night ... No, all their windows broken and things painted on their walls
... If he is so interested in justice he might do something about that.
But your lot are never interested in justice, are they? Only injustice
... What do I mean by your lot? Just what I say. You and all your crowd,
who are for ever adopting good-for-nothings and championing them against
the world. You wouldn't put out a finger to keep a hard-working little
man from going down the drain, but let an old lag lack the price of a
meal and your sobs can be heard in Antarctica. You make me sick ... Yes,
I said you make me sick Cat-sick. Sick to my stomach. I retch!"

And the bang of the receiver on its rest indicated that the poet had
said his say.

Robert hung up his coat in the cupboard and went in. Nevil, with a face
like thunder, was pouring himself out a stiff whisky. "I'll have one
too," Robert said. "I couldn't help overhearing," he added. "That wasn't
Rosemary, by any chance?"

"Who else? Is there anyone else in Britain capable of an ineffable
silliness like that?"

"Like what?"

"Oh, didn't you hear that bit? She has taken up the cause of the
persecuted Betty Kane." Nevil gulped some whisky, and glared at Robert
as if Robert were responsible.

"Well, I don't suppose her stepping on the Ack-Emma band-wagon will have
much effect one way or another."

"The Ack-Emma! It isn't the Ack-Emma; it's The Watchman. That mental
deficient she calls father has written a letter about it for Friday's
issue. Yes, you may well look squeamish. As if we weren't coping with
enough without that highfalutin' nugget of perverted sentimentality
putting in its sixpence-worth!"

Remembering that The Watchman was the only paper ever to have published
any of Nevil's poems, Robert thought this showed slight ingratitude.

But he approved the description.

"Perhaps they won't print it," he said, less in hope than looking for
comfort.

"You know very well they will print anything he chooses to send them.

Whose money saved them just when they were going down for the third
time? The Bishop's, of course."

"His wife's, you mean." The Bishop had married one of the two
granddaughters of Cowan's Cranberry Sauce.

"All right, his wife's. And the Bishop has The Watchman for a lay
pulpit. And there isn't anything too silly for him to say in it or too
unlikely for them to print. Do you remember that girl who went round
shooting taxi-drivers in cold blood for a profit of about
seven-and-eleven a time? That girl was just his meat. He sobbed himself
practically into a coma about her. He wrote a long heart-breaking letter
about her in The Watchman, pointing out how under-privileged she had
been and how she had won a scholarship to a secondary school and hadn't
been able to 'take it up' because her people were too poor to provide
her with books or proper clothes, and so she had gone to blind-alley
jobs and then to bad company - and so, it was inferred, to shooting
taxi-drivers, though he didn't actually mention that little matter.
Well, all the Watchman readers loved that, of course; it was just their
cup of tea. All criminals according to the Watchman readers are
frustrated angels. And then the Chairman of the Board of Governors of
the school - the school she was supposed to have won a scholarship to -
wrote to point out that, so far from winning anything was she, her name
was 159th out of two hundred competitors; and that someone as interested
in education as the Bishop was should have known that no one was
prevented from accepting a scholarship through lack of money, since in
needy cases books and money grants were forthcoming automatically. Well,
you would have thought that that would shake him, wouldn't you? But not
a bit. They printed the Chairman's letter on a back page in small print;
and in the very next issue the old boy was sobbing over some other case
that he knew nothing about. And on Friday, so help me, he'll be sobbing
over Betty Kane."

"I wonder if I went over to see him tomorrow --"

"It goes to press tomorrow."

"Yes, so it does. Perhaps if I telephoned --"

"If you think that anyone or anything will make his lordship keep back a
finished composition from the public gaze, you're being naive."

The telephone rang.

"If that's Rosemary, I'm in China," Nevil said.

But it was Kevin Macdermott.

"Well, sleuth," said Kevin. "My congratulations. But next time don't
waste an afternoon trying to ring up civilians in Aylesbury when you can
get the same information from Scotland Yard by return."

Robert said that he was still sufficiently civilian not to think in
terms of Scotland Yard at all, but that he was learning rapidly.

He sketched the happenings of last night for Kevin's benefit, and said:
"I can't afford to be leisurely about it any more. Something must be
done as quickly as possible to clear them of this thing."

"You want me to give you the name of a private agent, is that it?"

"Yes, I suppose it has come to that. But I did wonder --"

"Wonder what?" Kevin asked, as he hesitated.

"Well, I did think of going to Grant at the Yard and saying quite
frankly that I had found out how she could have known about the Sharpes
and about the house; and that she had met a man in Larborough and that I
had a witness of the meeting."

"So that they could do what?"

"So that they could investigate the girl's movements during that month
instead of us."

"And you think they would?"

"Of course. Why not?"

"Because it wouldn't be worth their while. All they would do when they
found out that she was not trustworthy would be to drop the case
thankfully into oblivion. She has not sworn to anything, so they could
not prosecute her for perjury."

"They could proceed against her for having misled them."

"Yes, but it wouldn't be worth their while. It won't be easy to unearth
her movements for that month, we may be sure. And on top of all that
unnecessary investigation they would have the job of preparing and
presenting a case. It's highly unlikely that an overworked department,
with serious cases flooding in at their doors, are going to all that
bother when they could quietly drop the thing on the spot."

"But it's supposed to be a department of justice. It leaves the Sharpes
--"

"No, a department of the law. Justice begins in court. As you very well
know. Besides, Rob, you haven't brought them any proof of anything. You
don't know that she ever went to Milford. And the fact that she picked
up a man at the Midland and had tea with him doesn't do anything to
disprove her story that she was picked up by the Sharpes.

In fact, the only leg you have to stand on is Alec Ramsden, 5 Spring
Gardens, Fulham, South West."

"Who is he?"

"Your private sleuth. And a very good one, take it from me. He has a
flock of tame operators at call, so if he is busy himself he can supply
you with a fairly good substitute. Tell him I gave you his name and he
won't palm off a dud on you. Not that he would, anyhow. He's the salt of
the earth. Pensioned from the Force because of a wound 'received in the
course of duty'. He'll do you proud. I must go. If there's anything else
I can do just give me a ring some time. I wish I had time to come down
and see The Franchise and your witches for myself.

They grow on me. Good-bye."

Robert laid down the receiver, picked it up again, asked for
Information, and obtained the telephone number of Alec Ramsden. There
was no answer and he sent a telegram saying that he, Robert Blair,
needed some work done urgently and that Kevin Macdermott had said that
Ramsden was the man to do it.

"Robert," said Aunt Lin, coming in pink and indignant, "did you know
that you left the fish on the hall table and it has soaked through to
the mahogany and Christina was waiting for it?"

"Is the gravamen of the charge the mahogany or keeping Christina
waiting?"

"Really, Robert, I hardly know what's come over you. Since you got
involved in this Franchise affair you've changed entirely. A fortnight
ago you would never have dreamed of putting a parcel of fish down on
polished mahogany and forgetting all about it. And if you had you would
be sorry about it and apologize."

"I do apologize, Aunt Lin; I am truly contrite. But it is not often I am
saddled with a responsibility as serious as the present one and you must
forgive me if I am a little jaded."

"I don't think you are jaded at all. On the contrary, I have never seen
you so pleased with yourself. I think you are positively relishing this
sordid affair. Only this morning Miss Truelove at the Anne Boleyn was
condoling with me on your being mixed up in it."

"Was she indeed? Well, I condole with Miss Truelove's sister."

"Condole about what?"

"On having a sister like Miss Truelove. You are having a bad time,
aren't you, Aunt Lin?"

"Don't be sarcastic, dear. It is not pleasant for anyone in the town to
see the notoriety that has overtaken it. It has always been a quiet and
dignified little place."

"I dont like Milford as much as I did a fortnight ago," Robert said
reflectively, "so I'll save my tears."

"No less than four separate charabancs arrived from Larborough at one
time or another today, having come for nothing but to inspect The
Franchise enroute."

"And who catered for them?" Robert asked, knowing that coach traffic was
not welcomed in Milford.

"No one. They were simply furious."

"That will larn them to go poking their noses. There is nothing
Larborough minds about as much as its stomach."

"The vicar's wife insists on being Christian about it, but I think that
that is the wrong point of view."

"Christian?"

"Yes - 'reserving our judgement', you know. That is merely feebleness
not Christianity. Of course I don't discuss the case, Robert dear; even
with her. I am the soul of discretion. But of course she knows how I
feel and I know how she feels, so discussion is hardly necessary."

What was clearly a snort came from Nevil where he was sunk in an easy
chair.

"Did you say something, Nevil dear?"

The nursery tone clearly intimidated Nevil. "No, Aunt Lin," he said
meekly.

But he was not going to escape so easily; the snort had only too clearly
been a snort. "I don't grudge you the drink, dear, but is that your
third whisky? There is a Traminer for dinner, and you won't taste it at
all after that strong stuff. You mustn't get into bad habits if you are
going to marry a bishop's daughter."

"I am not going to marry Rosemary."

Miss Bennet stared, aghast. "Not --!"

"I would as soon marry a Public Assistance Board!"

"But, Nevil --!"

"I would as soon marry a radio set." Robert remembered Kevin's remark
about Rosemary giving birth to nothing but a gramophone record. "I would
as soon marry a crocodile." Since Rosemary was very pretty Robert
supposed that "crocodile" had something to do with tears. "I would as
soon marry a soapbox." Marble Arch, Robert supposed. "I would as soon
marry the Ack-Emma." That seemed to be final.

"But, Nevil dear, why?"

"She is a very silly creature. Almost as silly as The Watchman."

Robert heroically refrained from mentioning the fact that for the last
six years The Watchman had been Nevil's bible.

"Oh, come, dear; you've had a tiff; all engaged couples do. It's a good
thing to get the give-and-take business on a firm basis before marriage;
those couples who never quarrel during their engagement lead
surprisingly rowdy lives after marriage; so don't take a small
disagreement too seriously. You can ring her up before you go home
tonight."

"It is a quite fundamental disagreement," Nevil said coldly. "And there
is no prospect whatever of my ringing her up."

"But, Nevil dear, what --"

The three thin cracked notes of the gong floated through her protest and
gave her pause. The drama of broken engagements gave place on the
instant to more immediate concerns.

"That is the gong. I think you had better take your drink in with you,
dear. Christina likes to serve the soup as soon as she has added the
egg, and she is not in a very good mood tonight because of getting the
fish so late. Though why that should make any difference to her I can't
think. It is only grilled, and that doesn't take any time. It's not as
if she had to wipe the fish juice off the mahogany, because I did that
myself."

CHAPTER 14.

It further upset Aunt Lin that Robert should have breakfast next morning
at 7.45 so that he could go early to the office. It was another sign of
the degeneration that The Franchise affair was responsible for. To have
early breakfast so that he might catch a train, or set out for a distant
meet, or attend a client's funeral was one thing. But to have early
breakfast just so that he could arrive at work at an office-boy hour was
a very odd proceeding and unbefitting a Blair.

Robert smiled, walking up the sunny High Street still shuttered and
quiet. He had always liked the early morning hours, and it was at this
hour that Milford looked its best; its pinks and sepias and creams as
delicate in the sunlight as a tinted drawing. Spring was merging into
summer, and already the warmth of the pavement radiated into the cool
air; the pollarded limes were full out. That would mean shorter nights
for the lonely women at The Franchise, he remembered thankfully.

But perhaps with any luck by the time the summer was actually here their
vindication would be complete and their home no longer a beleaguered
fortress.

Propped against the still closed door of the office was a long, thin
grey man who seemed to be all bones and to have no stomach at all.

"Good morning," Robert said. "Did you want to see me?"

"No," said the grey man. "You wanted to see me."

"I did?"

"At least, so your telegram said. I take it you're Mr. Blair?"

"But you can't be here already!" Robert said.

"It's not far," the man said laconically.

"Come in," said Robert, trying to live up to Mr. Ramsden's standard of
economy in comment. in the office he asked as he unlocked his desk:
"Have you had breakfast?"

"Yes, I had bacon and eggs at the White Hart."

"I am wonderfully relieved that you could come yourself."

"I had just finished a case. And Kevin Macdermott has done a lot for
me."

Yes, Kevin, for all his surface malice and his overcrowded life, found
the will and the time to help those who deserved help. In which he
differed markedly from the Bishop of Larborough, who preferred the
undeserving.

"Perhaps the best way would be for you to read this statement," Robert
said, handing Ramsden the copy of Betty Kane's statement to the police,
"and then we can go on with the story from there."

Ramsden took the typescript, sat down in the visitors' chair - folded up
would be a more accurate description of his action - and withdrew
himself from Robert's presence very much as Kevin had done in the room
in St.

Paul's Churchyard. Robert, taking out his own work, envied them their
power of concentration.

"Yes, Mr. Blair?" he said presently; and Robert gave him the rest of the
story; the girl's identification of the house and its inmates; Robert's
own entrance into the affair; the police decision that they would not
proceed on the available evidence; Leslie Wynn's resentment and its
result in the Ack- Emma publicity; his own interviews with the girl's
relations and what they revealed; his discovery that she went bus-riding
and that a double-decker did run on the Milford bus-route during the
relevant weeks; and his unearthing of X. "To find out more about X is
your job, Mr. Ramsden. The lounge-waiter, Albert, knows what he looked
like, and this is a list of residents for the period in question. It
would be too great luck that he should be staying at the Midland, but
one never knows. After that you're on your own. Tell Albert I sent you,
by the way. I've known him a long time."

"Very good. I'll get over to Larborough now. I'll have a photograph of
the girl by tomorrow, but perhaps you could lend me your Ack-Emma one
for today."

"Certainly. How are you going to get a proper photograph of her?"

"Oh. Ways."

Robert deduced that Scotland Yard had been given one when the girl was
reported missing and that his old colleagues at Headquarters would not
be too reluctant to give him a copy; so he left it at that.

"There's just a chance that the conductor of one of those double-decker
buses may remember her," he said as Ramsden was going. "They are
Larborough and District Motor Services buses. The garage is in Victoria
Street."

At half-past nine the staff arrived - one of the first being Nevil; a
change in routine which surprised Robert. Nevil was usually the last to
arrive and the last to settle down. He would wander in, divest himself
of his wrappings in his own small room at the back, wander into "the
office" to say good morning, wander into the "waiting-room" at the back
to say hello to Miss Tuff, and finally wander into Robert's room and
stand there thumbing open the bound roll of one of the esoteric
periodicals that came for him by post and commenting on the permanently
deplorable state of affairs in England. Robert had grown quite used to
running through his morning post to a Nevil obbligato. But today Nevil
came in at the appointed time, went into his own room, shut the door
firmly after him, and, if the pulling in and out of drawers was any
evidence, settled down to work at once.

Miss Tuff came in with her notebook and her dazzling white peter-pan
collar, and Robert's normal day had begun. Miss Tuff had worn peter-pan
collars over her dark frock for twenty years and would have looked
undressed, almost indecent, without them now. A fresh one went on every
morning; the previous day's having been laundered the night before and
laid ready for putting on tomorrow. The only break in the routine was on
Sundays. Robert had once met Miss Tuff on a Sunday and entirely failed
to recognize her because she was wearing a jabot.

Until half past ten Robert worked, and then realized that he had had
breakfast at an abnormally early hour and was now in need of more
sustenance than an office cup of tea. He would go out and have coffee
and a sandwich at the Rose and Crown. You got the best coffee in Milford
at the Anne Boleyn, but it was always full of shopping females ("How
nice to see you, my dear! We did miss you so at Ronnie's party!

And have you heard" - and that was an atmosphere he would not face for
all the coffee in Brazil. He would go across to the Rose and Crown, and
afterwards he would shop a little on behalf of the Franchise people, and
after lunch he would go out and break to them gently the bad news about
The Watchman. He could not do it on the telephone because they had no
telephone now. The Larborough firm had come out with ladders and putty
and recalcitrant sheets of glass and had replaced the windows without
fuss or mess. But they, of course, were private enterprise.

The Post Office, being a Government department, had taken the matter of
the telephone into avizandum and would move in their own elephantile
good time. So Robert planned to spend part of his afternoon telling the
Sharpes the news he could not tell them by telephone.

It was still early for mid-morning snacks, and the chintz and old oak of
the Rose and Crown lounge was deserted except for Ben Carley, who was
sitting by the gate-legged table at the window reading the Ack-Emma.
Carley had never been Robert's cup-of-tea any more than, he suspected,
he was Carley's but they had the bond of their profession (one of the
strongest in human nature), and in a small place like Milford that made
them very nearly bosom friends. So Robert sat down as a matter of course
at Carley's table; remembering as he did so that he still owed Carley
gratitude for that unheeded warning of his about the feeling in the
countryside.

Carley lowered the Ack-Emma and regarded him with the too-lively dark
eyes that were so alien in this English Midland serenity. "It seems to
be dying down," he said. "Only one letter today; just to keep something
in the kitty."

"The Ack-Emma, yes. But The Watchman is beginning a campaign of its own
on Friday."

"The Watchman! What's it doing climbing into the Ack-Emma's bed?"

"It wouldn't be the first time," Robert said.

"No, I suppose not," Carley said, considering it. "Two sides of the same
penny, when you come to think of it. Oh, well. That needn't worry you.
The total circulation of The Watchman is about twenty thousand. If
that."

"Perhaps. But practically every one of those twenty thousand has a
second cousin in the permanent Civil Service in this country."

"So what? Has anyone ever known the permanent Civil Service to move a
finger in any cause whatever outside their normal routine?"

"No, but they pass the buck. And sooner or later the buck drops into -
into a - a --"

"A fertile spot," Carley offered, mixing the metaphor deliberately.

"Yes. Sooner or later some busybody or sentimentalist or egoist, with
not enough to do, thinks that something should be done about this and
begins to pull strings. And a string pulled in the Civil Service has the
same effect as a string pulled in a peepshow. A whole series of figures
is yanked into action, willy-nilly. Gerald obliges Tony, and Reggie
obliges Gerald, and so on, to incalculable ends."

Carley was silent a moment. "It's a pity," he said. "Just when the
Ack-Emma was losing way. Another two days and they would have dropped it
for good. In fact, they're two days over their normal schedule, as it
is. I have never known them carry a subject longer than three issues.
The response must have been terrific to warrant that amount of space."

"Yes," Robert agreed gloomily.

"Of course, it was a gift for them. The beating of kidnapped girls is
growing very rare. As a change of fare it was beyond price. When you
have only three or four dishes, like the Ack-Emma, it's difficult to
keep the customers' palates properly tickled. A tit-bit like The
Franchise affair must have put up their circulation by thousands in the
Larborough district alone."

"Their circulation will slack off; it's just a tide. But what I have to
deal with is what's left on the beach."

"A particularly smelly beach, let me say," Carley observed. "Do you know
that fat blonde with the mauve powder and the uplift brassiere who runs
that sports-wear shop next to the Anne Boleyn? She's one of the things
on your beach."

"How?"

"She lived at the same boarding-house in London as the Sharpes, it
seems; and she has a lovely story as to how Marion Sharpe once beat a
dog half to death in a rage. Her clients loved that story. So did the
Anne Boleyn customers. She goes there for her morning coffee." He
glanced wryly at the angry flush on Robert's face. "I needn't tell you
that she has a dog of her own. It has never been corrected in its
spoiled life, but it is rapidly dying of fatty degeneration through the
indiscriminate feeding of morsels whenever the fat blonde is feeling
gooey."

There were moments, Robert thought, when he could very nearly hug Ben
Carley, striped suits and all.

"Ah well, it will blow over," said Carley, with the pliant philosophy of
a race long used to lying low and letting the storm blow past.

Robert looked surprised. Forty generations of protesting ancestors were
surprised in his sole person. "I don't see that blowing over is any
advantage," he said. "It won't help my clients at all."

"What can you do?"

"Fight, of course."

"Fight what? You wouldn't get a slander verdict, if that's what you're
thinking of."

"No, I hadn't thought of slander. I propose to find out what the girl
was really doing during those weeks."

Carley looked amused. "Just like that," he said, commenting on this
simple statement of a tall order.

"It won't be easy and it will probably cost them all they have, but
there is no alternative."

"They could go away from here. Sell the house and settle down somewhere
else. A year from now no one outside the Milford district will remember
anything about this affair."

"They would never do that; and I shouldn't advise them to, even if they
would. You can't have a tin can tied to your tail and go through life
pretending it isn't there. Besides, it is quite unthinkable that that
girl should be allowed to get away with her tale. It's a matter of
principle."

"You can pay too high a price for your damned principles. But I wish you
luck, anyhow. Are you considering a private inquiry agent? Because if
you are I know a very good --"

Robert said that he had got an agent and that he was already at work.

Carley's expressive face conveyed his amused congratulation at this
swift action on the part of the conservative Blair, Hayward, and Bennet.

"The Yard had better look to its laurels," he said. His eyes went to the
street beyond the leaded panes of the window and the amusement in them
faded to a fixed attention. He stared for a moment or two and then said
softly, "Well, of all the nerve!" It was an admiring phrase, not an
indignant one, and Robert turned to see what was occasioning his
admiration.

On the opposite side of the street was the Sharpes' battered old car,
its odd front wheel well in evidence. And in the back, enthroned in her
usual place and with her usual air of faint protest at this means of
transport, was Mrs. Sharpe. The car was pulled up outside the grocer's,
and Marion was presumably inside shopping. It could have been there only
a few moments or Ben Carley would have noticed it before, but already
two errand boys had paused to stare, leaning on their bicycles with
voluptuous satisfaction in this free spectacle. And even while Robert
took in the scene people came to the doors of neighbouring shops as the
news flew from mouth to mouth.

"What incredible folly!" Robert said angrily.

"Folly nothing," said Carley, his eyes on the picture. "I wish they were
clients of mine."

He fumbled in his pocket for change to pay for his coffee, and Robert
fled from the room. He reached the near side of the car just as Marion
came out on to the pavement at the other side. "Mrs. Sharpe," he said
sternly, "this is an extraordinarily silly thing to do. You are only
exacerbating --"

"Oh, good morning, Mr. Blair," she said in polite social tones. "Have
you had your morning coffee or would you like to accompany us to the
Anne Boleyn?"

"Miss Sharpe!" he said, appealing to Marion, who was putting her
packages down on the seat. "You must know that this is a silly thing to
do."

"I honestly don't know whether it is or not," she said, "but it seems to
be something that we must do. Perhaps we have grown childish with living
too much to ourselves, but we found that neither of us could forget that
snub at the Anne Boleyn - that condemnation without trial."

"We suffer from spiritual indigestion, Mr. Blair. And the only cure is a
hair of the dog that bit us. To wit, a cup of Miss Truelove's excellent
coffee."

"But it is so unnecessary! So --"

"We feel that at half past ten in the morning there must be a large
number of free tables at the Anne Boleyn," Mrs. Sharpe said tartly.

"Don't worry, Mr. Blair," Marion said. "It is a gesture only. Once we
have drunk our token cup of coffee at the Anne Boleyn we shall never
darken its doors again." She burlesqued the phrase in characteristic
fashion.

"But it will merely provide Milford with a free --"

Mrs. Sharpe caught him up before he could utter the word. "Milford must
get used to us as a spectacle," she said dryly, "since we have decided
that living entirely within four walls is not something that we can
contemplate."

"But --"

"They will soon grow used to seeing monsters and take us for granted
again. If you see a giraffe once a year it remains a spectacle; if you
see it daily it becomes part of the scenery. We propose to become part
of the Milford scenery."

"Very well, you plan to become part of the scenery. But do one thing for
me just now." Already the curtains of the first floor windows were being
drawn aside and faces appearing. "Give up the Anne Boleyn plan - give it
up for today at least- and have your coffee with me at the Rose and
Crown."

"Mr. Blair, coffee with you at the Rose and Crown would be delightful,
but it would do nothing to relieve my spiritual indigestion, which, in
the popular phrase, 'is killing me'."

"Miss Sharpe, I appeal to you. You have said that you realize that you
are probably being childish, and - well, as a personal obligation to me
as your agent, I ask you not to go on with the Anne Boleyn plan."

"That is blackmail," Mrs. Sharpe remarked.

"It is unanswerable, anyhow," Marion said, smiling faintly at him. "We
seem to be going to have coffee at the Rose and Crown." She sighed.

"Just when I was all strung up for a gesture! "

"Well, of all the nerve!" came a voice from overhead. It was Carley's
phrase over again, but held none of Carley's admiration; it was loaded
with indignation.

"You can't leave the car here," Robert said. "Quite apart from the
traffic laws, it is practically Exhibit A."

"Oh, we didn't intend to," Marion said. "We were taking it round to the
garage so that Stanley can do something technical to its inside with
some instrument he has there. He is exceedingly scornful about our car,
Stanley is."

"I dare say. Well, I shall go round with you; and you had better step on
it before we are run in for attracting a crowd."

"Poor Mr. Blair," Marion said, pressing the starter. "It must be horrid
for you not to be part of the landscape any more, after all those years
of comfortable merging."

She said it without malice - indeed, there was genuine sympathy in her
voice - but the sentence stuck in his mind and made a small tender place
there as they drove round into Sin Lane, avoided five hacks and a pony
that were trailing temperamentally out of the livery stable, and came to
rest in the dimness of the garage.

Bill came out to meet them, wiping his hands on an oily rag. "Morning,
Mrs. Sharpe. Glad to see you out. Morning, Miss Sharpe. That was a neat
job you did on Stan's forehead. The edges closed as neat as if they had
been stitched. You ought to have been a nurse."

"Not me. I have no patience with people's fads. But I might have been a
surgeon. You can't be very faddy on the operating table."

Stanley appeared from the back, ignoring the two women, who now ranked
as intimates, and took over the car. "What time do you want this wreck?
"he asked.

"An hour do?" Marion asked.

"A year wouldn't do; but I'll do all that can be done in an hour." His
eye went on to Robert. "Anything for the Guineas?"

"I've had a good tip for Bali Boogie."

"Nonsense," old Mrs. Sharpe said. "None of that leppocras blood were any
good when it came to a struggle. Just turned it up."

The three men stared at her, astonished.

"You are interested in racing?" Robert said, unbelieving.

"No; in horseflesh. My brother bred thoroughbreds." Seeing their faces
she gave a dry cackle of laughter, so like a hen's squawk. "Did you
think I went to rest every afternoon with my Bible, Mr. Blair? Or
perhaps with a book on black magic? No, indeed; I take the racing page
of the daily paper. And Stanley would be well advised to save his money
on Bali Boogie; if anything in horseflesh ever deserved so obscene a
name that animal does."

"And what instead?" Stanley asked, with his usual economy.

"They say that horse sense is the instinct that keeps horses from
betting on men. But if you must do something as silly as betting, then
you had better put your money on Kominsky."

"Kominsky!" Stanley said. "But it's at sixties!"

"You can, of course, lose your money at a shorter price if you like,"

she said dryly. "Shall we go, Mr. Blair?"

"All right," Stan said. "Kominsky it is; and you're on to a tenth of my
stake."

They walked back to the Rose and Crown; and as they emerged from the
comparative privacy of Sin Lane into the open street Robert had the
exposed feeling that being out in a bad air-raid used to give him. All
the attention and all the venom in the uneasy night seemed to be
concentrated on his shrinking person. So now in the bright early-summer
sunlight he crossed the street feeling naked and unprotected. He was
ashamed to see how relaxed and seemingly indifferent Marion swung along
at his side, and hoped that his self-consciousness was not apparent. He
talked as naturally as he could, but he remembered how easily her mind
had always read the contents of his, and felt that he was not making a
very good job of it.

A solitary waiter was picking up the shilling that Ben Carley had left
on the table, but otherwise the lounge was deserted. As they seated
themselves round the bowl of wallflowers on the black oak table Marion
said: "You heard that our windows are in again?"

"Yes; P. C. Newsam looked in on his way home last night to tell me. That
was smart work."

"Did you bribe them?" Mrs. Sharpe asked.

"No. I just mentioned that it was the work of hooligans. If your missing
windows had been the result of blast you would no doubt still be living
with the elements. Blast ranks as misfortune and therefore a thing to be
put up with. But hooliganism is one of those things that Something Must
Be Done About. Hence your new windows. I wish that it was all as easy as
replacing windows."

He was unaware that there had been any change in his voice, but Marion
searched his face and said: "Some new development?"

"I'm afraid there is. I was coming out this afternoon to tell you about
it. It appears that just when the Ack-Emma is dropping the subject -
there is only one letter today and that a mild one - just when the
Ack-Emma has grown tired of Betty Kane's cause The Watchman is going to
take it up."

"Excelsior!" said Marion. "The Watchman snatching the torch from the
failing hands of the Ack-Emma is a charming picture."

"Climbing into the Ack-Emma's bed," Ben Carley had called it; but the
sentiment was the same.

"Have you spies in The Watchman office, Mr. Blair?" Mrs. Sharpe asked.

"No; it was Nevil who got wind of it. They are going to print a letter
from his future father-in-law, the Bishop of Larborough."

"Hah!" said Mrs. Sharpe. "Toby Byrne."

"You know him?" asked Robert, thinking that the quality of her tone
would peel the varnish off wood if spilt on it.

"He went to school with my nephew - the son of the horseleech brother.

Toby Byrne, indeed. He doesn't change."

"I gather that you didn't like him."

"I never knew him. He went home for the holidays once with my nephew,
but was never asked back."

"Oh?"

"He discovered for the first time that stable lads got up at the crack
of dawn, and he was horrified. It was slavery, he said; and he went
round the lads urging them to stand up for their rights. If they
combined, he said, not a horse would go out of the stable before nine
o'clock in the morning. The lads used to mimic him for years afterwards;
but he was not asked back."

"Yes; he doesn't change," agreed Robert. "He has been using the same
technique ever since, on everything from Kaffirs to creches. The less he
knows about a thing the more strongly he feels about it. Nevil was of
the opinion that nothing could be done about the proposed letter, since
the Bishop had already written it and what the Bishop had written is not
to be contemplated as waste-paper. But I couldn't just sit and do
nothing about it; so I rang him up after dinner and pointed out as
tactfully as I could that he was embracing a very doubtful cause and at
the same time doing harm to two possibly innocent people. But I might
have saved my breath. He pointed out that The Watchman existed for the
free expression of opinion and inferred that I was trying to prevent
such freedom. I ended up by asking him if he approved of lynching,
because he was doing his best to bring one about. That was after I saw
it was hopeless and had stopped being tactful." He took the cup of
coffee that Mrs. Sharpe had poured out for him. "He's a sad comedown
after his predecessor in the See, who was the terror of every evil-doer
in five counties and a scholar to boot."

"How did Toby Byrne achieve gaiters?" Mrs. Sharpe wondered.

"I assume that Cowan's Cranberry Sauce had no inconsiderable part in his
translation."

"Ah, yes. His wife. I forgot. Sugar, Mr. Blair?"

"By the way, here are the two duplicate keys to The Franchise gate. I
take it that I may keep one. The other you had better give to the
police, I think, so that they can look round as they please. I also have
to inform you that you now have a private agent in your employ."

And he told them about Alec Ramsden, who appeared on doorsteps at half
past eight in the morning.

"No word of anyone recognizing the Ack-Emma photograph and writing to
Scotland Yard? "Marion asked. "I had pinned my faith to that."

"Not so far. But there is still hope."

"It is five days since the Ack-Emma printed it. If anyone was ever going
to recognize it they would have by now."

"You don't make allowances for the discards. That is nearly always the
way it happens. Someone spreads open their parcel of chips and says:
Dear me, where did I see that face?" Or someone is using a bundle of
newspapers to line drawers in an hotel. Or something like that. Don't
lose hope, Miss Sharpe. Between the good Lord and Alec Ramsden, we'll
triumph in the end."

She looked at him soberly. "You really believe that, don't you?" she
said, as one noting a phenomenon.

"I do," he said.

"You believe in the ultimate triumph of good?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I suppose because the other thing is unthinkable.

Nothing more positive or more commendable than that."

"I should have a greater faith in a God who hadn't given Toby Byrne a
bishopric," Mrs. Sharpe said. "When does Toby's letter appear, by the
way?"

"On Friday morning."

"I can hardly wait," said Mrs. Sharpe.

CHAPTER 15.

Robert was less sure about the ultimate triumph of good by Friday
afternoon.

It was not the Bishop's letter which shook his faith. Indeed, the events
of Friday did much to take the wind out of the Bishop's sails; and if
Robert had been told on Wednesday morning that he would bitterly regret
anything that served to deflate the Bishop he would not have believed
it.

His lordship's letter had not run very true to form. The Watchman, he
said, had always set its face against violence and was not now, of
course, proposing to condone it, but there were occasions when violence
was but a symptom of a deep social unrest, resentment, and insecurity.

As in the recent Nullahbad case, for instance. (The "unrest, resentment,
and insecurity" in the Nullahbad case lay entirely in the bosoms of two
thieves, who could not find the opal bracelet they had come to steal and
by the way of reprisal killed the seven sleeping occupants of the
bungalow in their beds.) There were undoubtedly times when the
proletariat felt themselves helpless to redress a patent wrong, and it
was not to be marvelled at that some of the more passionate spirits were
moved to personal protest (Robert thought that Bill and Stanley would
hardly recognize the louts of Monday night under the guise of
"passionate spirits"; and he held that "personal protest"

was a slight understatement for the entire wrecking of the ground-floor
windows of The Franchise.) The people to be blamed for the unrest (The
Watchman had a passion for euphemism: unrest, under-privileged,
backward, unfortunate where the rest of the world talked about violence,
the poor, mentally deficient, and prostitutes; and one of the things
that Ack-Emma and The Watchman had in common, now he thought about it,
was the belief that all prostitutes were hearts-of-gold who had taken
the wrong turning) the people to be blamed for the unrest were not those
perhaps misguided persons who had demonstrated their resentment so
unmistakably, but the powers whose weakness, ineptitude, and lack of
zeal had led to the injustice of a dropped case. It was part of the
English heritage that justice should not only be done but that it should
be shown to be done; and the place for that was in open court.

"What good does he think it would do anyone for the police to waste time
preparing a case that they were foreordained to lose?" Robert asked
Nevil, who was reading the letter over his shoulder.

"It would have done us a power of good," Nevil said. "He doesn't seem to
have thought of that. If the magistrate dismissed the case the
suggestion that his poor bruised darling was telling fibs could hardly
be avoided, could it? Have you come to the bruises?"

"No."

The bruises came near the end. The "poor bruised body" of this young and
blameless girl, his lordship said, was a crying indictment of a law that
had failed to protect her and now failed to vindicate her. The whole
conduct of this case was one that demanded the most searching scrutiny.

"That must be making the Yard very happy this morning," Robert said.

"This afternoon," amended Nevil.

"Why this afternoon?"

"No one at the Yard would read a bogus publication like The Watchman.

They won't see it until someone sends it to them this afternoon."

But they had seen it, as it turned out. Grant had read it in the train.
He had picked it off the bookstall with three others not because it was
his choice but because it was a choice between that and coloured
publications with bathing-belle covers.

Robert deserted the office and took the copy of The Watchman out to The
Franchise together with that morning's Ack-Emma, which had quite
definitely no further interest in The Franchise affair. Since the final,
subdued letter on Wednesday it had ceased to mention the matter.

It was a lovely day: the grass in The Franchise courtyard absurdly
green, the dirty-white front of the house glorified by the sun into a
semblance of grace, the reflected light from the rosy brick wall
flooding the shabby drawing-room and giving it a smiling warmth. They
had sat there, the three of them, in great contentment. The Ack-Emma had
finished its undressing of them in public; the Bishop's letter was not,
after all, as bad as it might have been; Alec Ramsden was busy on their
behalf in Larborough and would without doubt unearth facts sooner or
later that would be their salvation; the summer was here with its
bright, short nights; Stanley was proving himself "a great dear"; they
had paid a second short visit to Milford yesterday in pursuance of their
design to become part of the scenery, and nothing untoward had happened
to them beyond stares, black looks, and a few audible remarks.

Altogether, the feeling of the meeting was that it all might be worse.

"How much ice will this cut?" Mrs. Sharpe asked Robert, stabbing her
skinny index finger at the correspondence page of The Watchman.

"Not much, I think. Even among The Watchman clique the Bishop is looked
at slightly sideways nowadays, I understand. His championship of Mahoney
didn't do him any good."

"Who was Mahoney?" Marion asked.

"Have you forgotten Mahoney? He was the Irish 'patriot' who put a bomb
in a woman's bicycle basket in a busy English street and blew four
people to pieces, including the woman, who was later identified by her
wedding ring. The Bishop held that Mahoney was merely misguided, not a
murderer; that he was fighting on behalf of a repressed minority - the
Irish, believe it or not - and that we should not make him into a
martyr.

That was a little too much for even Watchman stomachs, and since then
the Bishop's prestige is not what it was, I hear."

"Isn't it shocking how one forgets when it doesn't concern oneself!"

Marion said. "Did they hang Mahoney?"

"They did, I am glad to say - much to his own pained surprise. So many
of his predecessors had benefited from the plea that we should not make
martyrs, that murder had ceased to be reckoned in their minds as one of
the dangerous trades. It was rapidly becoming as safe as banking."

"Talking of banking," Mrs. Sharpe said, "I think it would be best if our
financial position were made clear to you, and for that you should get
in touch with old Mr. Crowle's solicitors in London, who manage our
affairs. I shall write to them explaining that you are to be given full
details, so that you may know how much we have to come and go on, and
can make corresponding arrangements for the spending of it in defence of
our good name. It is not exactly the way we had planned to spend it."

"Let us be thankful we have it to spend," Marion said. "What does a
penniless person do in a case like this?"

Robert quite frankly did not know.

He took the address of the Crowle solicitors and went home to lunch with
Aunt Lin, feeling happier than he had at any time since he first caught
sight of the Ack-Emma's front page on Bill's desk last Friday.

He felt as one feels in a bad thunderstorm when the noise ceases to be
directly overhead; it will still continue and probably still be very
unpleasant, but one can see a future through it, whereas but a moment
ago there was nothing but the dreadful "now".

Even Aunt Lin seemed to have forgotten The Franchise for a spell and was
at her woolly and endearing best - full of the birthday presents she was
buying for Lettice's twins in Saskatchewan. She had provided his
favourite lunch - cold ham, boiled potatoes, and brown-betty with thick
cream - and moment by moment he was finding it more difficult to realize
that this was the Friday morning he had dreaded because it would see the
beginning of a Watchman campaign against them. It seemed to him that the
Bishop of Larborough was very much what Lettice's husband used to call
"a busted flush". He couldn't imagine now why he had wasted a thought on
him.

It was in this mood that he went back to the office. And it was in this
mood that he picked up the receiver to answer Hallam's call. "Mr.

Blair?" Hallam said. "I'm at the Rose and Crown. I'm afraid I've got bad
news for you. Inspector Grant's here."

"At the Rose and Crown?"

"Yes. And he's got a warrant."

Robert's brain stopped functioning. "A search warrant?" he asked
stupidly.

"No; a warrant to arrest."

"No!"

"I'm afraid so."

"But he can't have!"

"I expect it's a bit of a shock for you. I admit I hadn't anticipated it
myself."

"You mean he has managed to get a witness - a corroborative witness?"

"He has two of them. The case is sewn up and tied with ribbon."

"I can't believe it."

"Will you come over or shall we go to you? I expect you'll want to come
out with us."

"Out where? Oh yes. Yes, of course I shall. I'll come over to the Rose
and Crown now. Where are you? In the lounge?"

"No, in Grant's bedroom. Number five. The one with the casement window
on the street over the bar."

"All right. I'm coming straight over. I say!"

"Yes?"

"A warrant for both?"

"Yes. For two."

"All right. Thank you. I'll be with you in a moment."

He sat for a moment getting back his breath and trying to orientate
himself. Nevil was out on business, but Nevil was not much of a moral
support at any time. He got up, took his hat, and went to the door of
"the office".

"Mr. Heseltine, please," he said, in the polite formula always used in
the presence of the younger staff; and the old man followed him into the
hall and out to the sunlit doorway.

"Timmy," Robert said, "we're in trouble. Inspector Grant is here from
Headquarters with a warrant to arrest The Franchise people." Even as he
said the words he could not believe that the thing was really happening.

Neither could old Mr. Heseltine; that was obvious. He stared, wordless,
his pale old eyes aghast.

"It's a bit of a shock, isn't it, Timmy?" He shouldn't have hoped for
support from the frail old clerk.

But shocked as he was, and frail and old, Mr. Heseltine was nevertheless
a law clerk, and the support was forthcoming. After a lifetime among
formulae his mind reacted automatically to the letter of the situation.
"A warrant, "he said. "Why a warrant?"

"Because they can't arrest anyone without one," Robert said a trifle
impatiently. Was old Timmy getting past his work?

"I don't mean that. I mean, it's a misdemeanour they're accused of, not
a felony. They could surely make it a summons, Mr. Robert? They don't
need to arrest them, surely? Not for a misdemeanour."

Robert had not thought of that. "A summons to appear," he said. "Yes,
why not? Of course there's nothing to hinder them arresting them if they
want to."

"But why should they want to? People like the Sharpes wouldn't run away.
Nor do any further harm while they are waiting to appear. Who issued the
warrant, did they say?"

"No, they didn't say. Many thanks, Timmy; you've been as good as a stiff
drink. I must go over to the Rose and Crown now - Inspector Grant is
there with Hallam - and face the music. There's no way of warning The
Franchise, because they have no telephone. I'll just have to go out
there with Grant and Hallam hanging round my neck. And only this morning
we were beginning to see daylight, so we thought. You might tell Nevil
when he comes in, will you? And stop him doing anything foolish or
impulsive."

"You know very well, Mr. Robert, I've never been able to stop Mr.

Nevil doing anything he wanted to do. Though it has seemed to me that he
has been surprisingly sober this last week. In the metaphorical sense, I
mean."

"Long may it last," Robert said, stepping out into the sunlit street.

It was the dead period of the afternoon at the Rose and Crown and he
passed through the hall and up the wide, shallow stairs without meeting
anyone, and knocked at the door of Number Five. Grant, calm and polite
as always, let him in. Hallam, vaguely unhappy-looking, was leaning
against the dressing-table in the window.

"I understand that you hadn't expected this, Mr. Blair, "Grant said.

"No, I hadn't. To be frank, it is a great shock to me."

"Sit down," Grant said. "I don't want to hurry you."

"You have new evidence, Inspector Hallam says."

"Yes; what we think is conclusive evidence."

"May I know what it is?"

"Certainly. We have a man who saw Betty Kane being picked up by the car
at the bus stop."

"By a car," Robert said.

"Yes, if you like, by a car but its description fits that of the
Sharpes'."

"So do ten thousand others in Britain. And?"

"The girl from the farm, who went once a week to help clean The
Franchise, will swear she heard screams coming from the attic."

"Went once a week? Doesn't she go any longer?"

"Not since the Kane affair became common gossip."

"I see."

"Not very valuable pieces of evidence in themselves, but very valuable
as proof of the girl's story. For instance, she really did miss that
Larborough-London coach. Our witness says that it passed him about half
a mile down the road. When he came in sight of the bus-stop a few
moments later the girl was there waiting. It is a long, straight road,
the main London road through Mainshill --"

"I know. I know it."

"Yes; well, when he was still some way from the girl he saw the car stop
by her, saw her get in, and saw her driven away."

"But not who drove the car?"

"No. It was too far away for that."

"And this girl from the farm - did she volunteer the information about
the screaming?"

"Not to us. She spoke about it to her friends, and we acted on
information and found her quite willing to repeat the story on oath."

"Did she speak about it to her friends before the gossip about Betty
Kane's abduction got round?"

"Yes."

That was unexpected and Robert was rocked back on his heels. If that was
really true that the girl had mentioned screaming before there was any
question of the Sharpes being in trouble then the evidence would be
damning. Robert got up and walked restlessly to the window and back.

He thought enviously of Ben Carley. Ben wouldn't be hating this as he
hated it, feeling inadequate and at a loss. Ben would be in his element,
his mind delighting in the problem and in the hope of outwitting
established authority. Robert was dimly aware that his own deep-seated
respect for established authority was a handicap to him rather than an
asset; he needed some of Ben's native belief that authority is there to
be circumvented.

"Well, thank you for being so frank," he said at last. "Now, I'm not
minimizing the crime you are accusing these people of, but it is
misdemeanour, not felony so why a warrant? Surely a summons would meet
the case perfectly?"

"A summons would be in order certainly," Grant said smoothly. "But in
cases where the crime is aggravated - and my superiors take a grave view
of the present one - a warrant is issued."

Robert could not help wondering how much the gadfly attentions of the
Ack-Emma had influenced the calm judgements at the Yard. He caught
Grant's eye and knew that Grant had read his thoughts.

"The girl was missing for a whole month all but a day or two," Grant
said, "and had been very badly knocked about, very deliberately. It is
not a case to be taken lightly."

"But what do you gain from arrest?" Robert asked, remembering Mr.

Heseltine's point. "There is no question of these people not being there
to answer the charge. Nor any question of a similar crime being
committed by them in the interval. When did you want them to appear, by
the way?"

"I planned to bring them up at the police court on Monday."

"Then I suggest that you serve them with a summons to appear."

"My superiors have decided on a warrant," Grant said, without emotion.

"But you could use your judgement. Your superiors can have no knowledge
of local conditions, for instance. If The Franchise is left without
occupants it will be a wreck in a week. Have your superiors thought of
that? And if you arrest these women, you can only keep them in custody
until Monday, when I shall ask for bail. It seems a pity to risk
hooliganism at The Franchise just for the gesture of arrest. And I know
Inspector Hallam has no men to spare for its protection."

This right-and-left gave them both pause. It was amazing how ingrained
the respect for property was in the English soul; the first change in
Grant's face had occurred at the mention of the possible wrecking of the
house. Robert cast an un expectantly kind thought to the louts who had
provided the precedent, and so weighted his argument with example. As
for Hallam, quite apart from his limited force he was not likely to look
kindly on the prospect of fresh hooliganism in his district and fresh
culprits to track down.

Into the long pause Hallam said tentatively: "There is something in what
Mr. Blair says. Feeling in the countryside is very strong and I doubt if
they would leave the house untouched if it was empty.

Especially if news of the arrest got about."

It took nearly half an hour to convince Grant, however. For some reason
there was a personal element in the affair for Grant, and Robert could
not imagine what it could be or why it should be there.

"Well," the Inspector said at length, "you don't need me to serve a
summons." It was as if a surgeon was contemptuous at being asked to open
a boil, Robert thought, amused and vastly relieved. "I'll leave that to
Hallam and get back to town. But I'll be in court on Monday. I
understand that the Assizes are imminent, so if we avoid a remand the
case can go straight on to the Assizes. Can you be ready with your
defence by Monday, do you think?"

"Inspector, with all the defence my clients have we could be ready by
tea-time," Robert said bitterly.

To his surprise, Grant turned to him with a broader smile than was usual
with him; and it was a very kind smile. "Mr. Blair," he said, "you have
done me out of an arrest this afternoon, but I don't hold it against
you. On the contrary, I think your clients are luckier than they deserve
in their solicitor. It will be my prayer that they are less lucky in
their counsel! Otherwise I may find myself talked into voting them a
testimonial."

So it was not with "Grant and Hallam hanging round his neck" that Robert
went out to The Franchise. not with a warrant at all. He went out in
Hallam's familiar car with a summons sticking out of the pocket of it;
and he was sick with relief when he thought of the escape they had had
and sick With apprehension when he thought of the fix they were in.

"Inspector Grant seemed to have a very personal interest in executing
that warrant," he said to Hallam as they went along. "Is it that the
Ack-Emma has been biting him, do you think?"

"Oh no," Hallam said. "Grant's as nearly indifferent to that sort of
thing as a human being can be."

"Then why?"

"Well, it's my belief - strictly between ourselves - that he can't
forgive them for fooling him. The Sharpes, I mean. He's famous at the
Yard for his good judgement of people, you see; and, again between
ourselves, he didn't much care for the Kane girl or her story; and he
liked them even less when he had seen The Franchise people, in spite of
all the evidence. Now he thinks the wool was pulled over his eyes and
he's not taking it lightly. It would have given him a lot of pleasure, I
imagine, to produce that warrant in their drawing-room."

As they pulled up by The Franchise gate and Robert took out his key,
Hallam said: "If you open both sides I'll drive the car inside, even for
the short time. No need to advertise the fact that we're here."

And Robert, pushing open the solid iron leaves, thought that when
visiting actresses said "Your policemen are wonderful" they didn't know
the half of it. He got back into the car and Hallam drove up the short
straight drive and round the circular path to the door. As Robert got
out of the car Marion came round the corner of the house wearing
gardening gloves and a very old skirt. Where her hair was blown up from
her forehead by the wind it changed from the heavy, dark stuff that it
was to a soft smoke. The first summer sun had darkened her skin and she
looked more than ever like a gipsy. Coming on Robert unexpectedly she
had not time to guard her expression, and the lighting of her whole face
as she saw him made his heart turn over.

"How nice!" she said. "Mother is still resting, but she will be down
soon and we can have some tea. I --" Her glance went on to Hallam and
her voice died away uncertainly. "Good afternoon, Inspector."

"Good afternoon, Miss Sharpe. I'm sorry to break into your mother's
rest, but perhaps you would ask her to come down. It's important."

She paused a moment, and then led the way indoors. "Yes, certainly.

Has there been some - some new development? Come in and sit down." She
led them into the drawing-room that he knew so well by now - the lovely
mirror, the dreadful fireplace, the bead-work chair, the good "pieces",
the old pink carpet faded to a dirty grey - and stood there, searching
their faces, savouring the new threat in the atmosphere.

"What is it?" she asked Robert.

But Hallam said: "I think it would be easier if you fetched Mrs. Sharpe
and I told you both at the same time."

"Yes. Yes, of course," she agreed, and turned to go. But there was no
need to go. Mrs. Sharpe came into the room very much as she had on that
previous occasion when Hallam and Robert had been there together: her
short strands of white hair standing on end where they had been pushed
up by her pillow, her sea-gull's eyes bright and inquiring.

"Only two kinds of people," she said, "arrive in noiseless cars:
millionaires and the police. Since we have no acquaintances among the
former and an ever-widening acquaintance with the latter I deduced that
some of our acquaintances had arrived."

"I'm afraid I'm even less welcome than usual, Mrs. Sharpe. I've come to
serve a summons on you and Miss Sharpe."

"A summons?" Marion said, puzzled.

"A summons to appear at the police court on Monday morning to answer a
charge of abduction and assault." It was obvious that Hallam was not
happy.

"I don't believe it," Marion said slowly. "I don't believe it. You mean
you are charging us with this thing?"

"Yes, Miss Sharpe."

"But how? Why now? "She turned to Robert.

"The police think they have the corroborative evidence they needed,"

Robert said.

"What evidence?" Mrs. Sharpe asked, reacting for the first time.

"I think the best plan would be for Inspector Hallam to serve you both
with the summonses, and we can discuss the situation at greater length
when he has gone."

"You mean, we have to accept them?" Marion said. "To appear in the
public court - my mother too - to answer a - to be accused of a thing
like that?"

"I'm afraid there's no alternative."

She seemed half intimidated by his shortness, half resentful at his lack
of championship. And Hallam, as he handed the document to her, seemed to
be aware of this last and to resent it in his turn.

"And I think I ought to tell you, in case he doesn't, that but for Mr.

Blair here it wouldn't be a mere summons, it would be a warrant and you
would be sleeping tonight in a cell instead of in your own beds. Don't
bother, Miss Sharpe: I'll let myself out."

And Robert, watching him go and remembering how Mrs. Sharpe had snubbed
him on his first appearance in that room, thought that the score was now
game all.

"Is that true?" Mrs. Sharpe asked.

"Perfectly true," Robert said; and told them about Grant's arrival to
arrest them. "But it isn't me you have to thank for your escape: it is
old Mr. Heseltine in the office." And he described how the old clerk's
mind reacted automatically to stimulus of a legal sort.

"And what is this new evidence they think they have?"

"They have it all right," Robert said dryly. "There is no thinking about
it." He told them about the girl being picked up on the London road
through Mainshill. "That merely corroborates what we have always
suspected: that when she left Cherrill Street, ostensibly on her way
home, she was keeping an appointment. But the other piece of evidence is
much more serious. You told me once that you had a woman - a girl from
the farm who came in one day a week and cleaned for you."

"Rose Glyn, yes."

"I understand that since the gossip got round she doesn't come any
more."

"Since the gossip - you mean the Betty Kane story? Oh, she was sacked
before that ever came to light."

"Sacked?" Robert said sharply.

"Yes. Why do you look so surprised? In our experience of domestic
workers sacking is not an unexpected occurrence."

"No; but in this case it might explain a lot. What did you sack her
for?"

"Stealing," said old Mrs. Sharpe.

"She had always lifted a shilling or two from a purse if it was left
around," supplemented Marion; "but because we needed help so badly we
turned a blind eye and kept our purses out of her way. Also any small
lift able articles, like stockings. And then she took the watch I'd had
for twenty years. I had taken it off to wash some things - the soapsuds
rise up one's arms, you know - and when I went back to look for it it
had gone. I asked her about it, but of course she 'hadn't seen it'. That
was too much. That watch was part of me, as much a part of me as my hair
or my fingernails. There was no recovering it, because we had no
evidence at all that she had taken it. But after she had gone we talked
it over, and next morning we walked over to the farm and just mentioned
that we would not be needing her any more. That was Tuesday - she always
came on Mondays - and that afternoon after my mother had gone up to rest
Inspector Grant arrived with Betty Kane in the car."

"I see. Was anyone else there when you told the girl at the farm that
she was sacked?"

"I don't remember. I don't think so. She doesn't belong to the farm - to
Staples, I mean; they are delightful people. She is one of the
labourers' daughters. And as far as I remember we met her outside their
cottage and just mentioned the thing in passing."

"How did she take it?"

"She got very pink and flounced a bit."

"She grew beetroot red and bridled like a turkey cock," Mrs. Sharpe
said. "Why do you ask?"

"Because she will say on oath that when she was working here she heard
screams coming from your attic."

"Will she indeed," said Mrs. Sharpe contemplatively.

"What is much worse, there is evidence that she mentioned the screams
before there was any rumour of the Betty Kane trouble."

This produced a complete silence. Once more Robert was aware how
noiseless the house was, how dead. Even the French clock on the
mantelpiece was silent. The curtain at the window moved inwards on a
gust of air and fell back to its place as soundless as if it were moving
in a film.

"That," said Marion at last, "is what is known as a facer."

"Yes. Definitely."

"A facer for you, too."

"For us, yes."

"I don't mean professionally."

"No? How then?"

"You are faced with the possibility that we have been lying."

"Really, Marion," he said impatiently, using her name for the first time
and not noticing that he had used it. "What I am faced with, if
anything, is the choice between your words and the word of Rose Glyn's
friends."

But she did not appear to be listening. "I wish," she said passionately,
"oh, how I wish that we had one small, just one small piece of evidence
on our side! She gets away - that girl gets away with everything,
everything. We keep on saying 'It is not true', but we have no way of
showing that it is not true. It is all negative. All inconclusive. All
feeble denial. Things combine to back up her lies, but nothing happens
to help prove that we are telling the truth.

Nothing!"

"Sit down, Marion." her mother said. "A tantrum won't improve the
situation."

"I could kill that girl; I could kill her. My God, I could torture her
twice a day for a year and then begin again on New Year's day. When I
think what she has done to us I --"

"Don't think," Robert interrupted. "Think instead of the day when she is
discredited in open court. If I know anything of human nature that will
hurt Miss Kane a great deal worse than the beating someone gave her."

"You still believe that that is possible?" Marion said, incredulous.

"Yes. I don't quite know how we shall bring it about. But that we shall
bring it about I do believe."

"With not one tiny piece of evidence for us, not one; and evidence just
- just blossoming for her?"

"Yes. Even then."

"Is that just native optimism, Mr. Blair," Mrs. Sharpe asked, "or your
innate belief in the triumph of good, or what?"

"I don't know. I think truth has a validity of its own."

"Dreyfus didn't find it very valid; nor Slater; nor some others of whom
there is record," she said dryly.

"They did in the end."

"Well, frankly, I don't look forward to a life in prison waiting for
truth to demonstrate its validity."

"I don't believe that it will come to that - prison, I mean. You will
have to appear on Monday, and since we have no adequate defence you will
no doubt be sent for trial. But we shall ask for bail, and that means
that you can go on staying here until the Assizes at Norton. And before
that I hope that Alec Ramsden will have picked up the girl's trail.
Remember we don't even have to know what she was doing for the rest of
the month. All we have to show is that she did something else on the day
she says you picked her up. Take away that first bit and her whole story
collapses. And it is my ambition to take it away in public."

"To undress her in public the way the Ack-Emma has undressed us? Do you
think she would mind?" Marion said. "Mind as we minded?"

"To have been the heroine of a newspaper sensation, to say nothing of
the adored centre of a loving and sympathetic family, and then to be
uncovered to the public gaze as a liar, a cheat, and a wanton? I think
she would mind. And there is one thing she would mind particularly.

One result of her escapade was that she got back Leslie Wynn's attention
- the attention she had lost when he became engaged. As long as she is a
wronged heroine she is assured of that attention; once we show her up
she has lost it for good."

"I never thought to see the milk of human kindness so curdled in your
gentle veins, Mr. Blair," Mrs. Sharpe remarked.

"If she had broken out as a result of the boy's engagement - as she very
well might - I should have nothing but pity for her. She is at an
unstable age and his engagement must have been a shock. But I don't
think that had very much to do with it. I think she is her mother's
daughter; and was merely setting out a little early on the road her
mother took. As selfish, as self-indulgent, as greedy, as plausible as
the blood she came of. Now I must go. I said that I would be at home
after five o'clock if Ramsden wanted to ring up to report. And I want to
ring Kevin Macdermott and get his help about counsel and things."

"I'm afraid that we - that I, rather - have been rather ungracious about
this," Marion said. "You have done and are doing so much for us.

But it was such a shock. So entirely unexpected and out of the blue.

You must forgive me if --"

"There is nothing to forgive. I think you have both taken it very well.
Have you got someone in the place of the dishonest and
about-to-commit-perjury Rose? You can't have this huge place entirely on
your hands."

"Well, no one in the locality would come, of course. But Stanley - what
would we do without Stanley? - Stanley knows a woman in Larborough who
might be induced to come out by bus once a week. You know, when the
thought of that girl becomes too much for me, I think of Stanley."

"Yes," Robert said, smiling. "The salt of the earth."

"He is even teaching me how to cook. I know how to turn eggs in the
frying pan without breaking them now. 'Do you have to go at them as if
you were conducting the Philharmonic?" he asked me. And when I asked him
how he got so neat-handed he said it was with 'cooking in a bivvy two
feet square.'"

"How are you going to get back to Milford?" Mrs. Sharpe asked.

"The afternoon bus from Larborough will pick me up. No word of your
telephone being repaired, I suppose?"

Both women took the question as comment, not interrogation. Mrs.

Sharpe took leave of him in the drawing-room, but Marion walked to the
gate with him. As they crossed the circle of grass enclosed by the
branching driveway, he remarked: "It's a good thing you haven't a large
family or there would be a worn track across the grass to the door."

"There is that as it is," she said, looking at the darker line in the
rough grass. "It is more than human nature can bear to Walk round that
unnecessary curve."

Small talk, he was thinking; small talk. Idle words to cover up a stark
situation. He had sounded very brave and fine about the validity of
truth, but how much was mere sound? What were the odds on Ramsden's
turning up evidence in time for the courts on Monday? In time for the
Assizes? Long odds against, wasn't it? And he had better grow used to
the thought.

At half past five Ramsden rang up to give him the promised report; and
it was one of unqualified failure. It was the girl he was looking for,
of course, having failed to identify the man as a resident at the
Midland and having therefore no information at all about him. But
nowhere had he found even a trace of her. His own men had been given
duplicates of the photograph and with them had made inquiries at the
airports, the railway termini, travel agencies, and the more likely
hotels. No one claimed to have seen her. He himself had combed
Larborough and was slightly cheered to find that the photograph he had
been given was at least recognizable, since it had been readily
identified at the places where Betty Kane had actually been. At the two
main picture houses, for instance - where, according to the box-office
girls' information, she had always been alone - and at the ladies'
cloakroom of the bus-station. He had tried the garages, but had drawn
blank.

"Yes," Robert said. "He picked her up at the bus-stop on the London road
through Mainshill where she would normally have gone to catch her coach
home." And he told Ramsden of the new developments. "So things really
are urgent now. They are being brought up on Monday. If only we could
prove what she did that first evening! That would bring her whole story
crashing down."

"What kind of car was it? "Ramsden asked.

Robert described it, and Ramsden sighed audibly over the telephone.

"Yes," Robert agreed. "A rough ten thousand of them between London and
Carlisle. Well, I'll leave you to it. I want to ring up Kevin Macdermott
and tell him our woes."

Kevin was not in chambers, nor yet at the flat in St. Paul's Churchyard,
and Robert eventually ran him to earth at his home near Weybridge. He
sounded relaxed and amiable, and was instantly attentive when he heard
the news that the police had got their evidence. He listened without
remark while Robert poured out the story to him.

"So you see, Kevin," Robert finished, "we're in a frightful jam."

"A schoolboy description," Kevin said, "but exquisitely accurate. My
advice to you is to 'give' them the police court and concentrate on the
Assizes."

"Kevin, couldn't you come down for the week-end and let me talk about it
to you? It's six years, Aunt Lin was saying yesterday, since you spent a
night with us, so you're overdue anyhow. Couldn't you?"

"I promised Sean I'd take him over to Newbury on Sunday to choose a
pony."

"But couldn't you postpone it? I'm sure Sean wouldn't mind if he knew it
was in a good cause."

"Sean," said his doting parent, "has never taken the slightest interest
in any cause that was not to his own immediate advantage. Being a chip
off the old block. If I came would you introduce me to your witches?"

"But of course."

"And would Christina make me some butter tarts?"

"Assuredly."

"And could I have the room with the text in wools?"

"Kevin, you'll come?"

"Well, it's a damned dull country, Milford, except in the winter" - this
was a reference to hunting, Kevin's only eye for country being from the
back of a horse - "and I was looking forward to a Sunday riding on the
downs. But a combination of witches, butter tarts, and a bedroom with a
text in wools is no small draw."

As he was about to hang up Kevin paused and said: "Oh I say, Rob?"

"Yes?" Robert said, and waited.

"Have you considered the possibility that the police have the right of
it?"

"You mean, that the girl's absurd tale may be true?"

"Yes. Are you keeping that in mind as a possibility, I mean?"

"If I were I shouldn't --" Robert began angrily, and then laughed.

"Come down and see them, "he said.

"I come, I come," Kevin assured him, and hung up.

Robert called the garage, and when Bill answered asked if Stanley was
still there, "It's a wonder you can't hear him from where you are,"

Bill said.

"What's wrong?"

"We've just been rescuing that bay pony of Matt Ellis's from our
inspection pit. Did you want Stan?"

"Not to speak to. Would you be very kind and ask him to pick up a note
for Mrs. Sharpe on his way past tonight?"

"Yes, certainly. I say, Mr. Blair, is it true that there is fresh
trouble coming about The Franchise affair or shouldn't I ask that?"

Milford! thought Robert. How did they do it? A sort of
information-pollen blown on the wind?

"Yes, I'm afraid there is," he said. "I expect they'll tell Stanley
about it when he goes out tonight. Don't let him forget about the note,
will you?"

"No, that's all right."

He wrote to The Franchise to say that Kevin Macdermott was coming down
for Saturday night and could he bring him out to see them on Sunday
afternoon before he left to go back to town?

CHAPTER 16.

"Does Kevin Macdermott have to look like a tout when he comes to the
country?" Nevil asked the following evening, as he and Robert waited for
the guest to finish his ablutions and come down to dinner.

What Kevin in country clothes actually looked like, Robert considered,
was a rather disreputable trainer of jumpers for the smaller meetings,
but he refrained from saying that to Nevil. Remembering the clothes that
Nevil had startled the countryside with for the last few years, he felt
that Nevil was in no position to criticize anyone's taste. Nevil had
turned up to dinner in a chaste dark grey suit of the most
irreproachable orthodoxy, and seemed to think that his new conformity
made him free to forget the experimentalism of his immediate past.

"I suppose Christina is in the usual lather of sentiment?"

"A lather of white of egg, as far as I have been able to judge."

Christina regarded Kevin as "Satan in person" and adored him. His
Satanic qualities came not from his looks - though Kevin did indeed look
a little like Satan - but from the fact that he "defended the wicked for
the sake of worldly gain". And she adored him because he was
good-looking and a possibly reclaimable sinner, and because he praised
her baking.

"I hope it's a souffle, then, and not that meringue stuff. Do you think
that Macdermott could be lured into coming down to defend them at Norton
Assizes?"

"I think he is much too busy for that, even if he were interested. But
I'm hoping that one of his dogs bodies will come."

"Primed by Macdermott?"

"That's the idea."

"I really don't see why Marion should have to slave to provide
Macdermott with lunch. Does he realize that she has to prepare and clear
away and wash up every single thing, to say nothing of carting them to
and fro a day's journey to that antediluvian kitchen?"

"It was Marion's own idea that he should come to lunch with them. I take
it that she considers the extra trouble worth while."

"Oh, you were always crazy about Kevin; and you simply don't know how to
begin to appreciate a woman like Marion. It's - it's obscene that she
should be wasting her vitality on household drudgery, a woman like that.
She should be hacking her way through jungles or scaling precipices or
ruling a barbarous race or measuring the planets. Ten thousand nit-wit
blondes dripping with mink have nothing to do but sit back and have the
polish on their predatory nails changed, and Marion carts coal. Coal!
Marion! And I suppose by the time this case is finished they won't have
a penny to pay a maid even if they could get one."

"Let us hope that by the time this case is finished they are not doing
hard labour by order."

"Robert, it couldn't come to that! It's unthinkable."

"Yes, it's unthinkable. I suppose it is always unbelievable that anyone
one knows should go to prison."

"It's bad enough that they should go into the dock. Marion who never did
a cruel or underhand or shabby thing in her life And just because a --
Do you know, I had a lovely time the other night, I found a book on
torture, and I stayed awake till two o'clock choosing which one I would
use on Kane."

"You should get together with Marion. That is her ambition too."

"And what would yours be?" There was a faint hint of scorn in the tone,
as though it was understood that the mild Robert would have no strong
feelings on the subject. "Or haven't you considered it?"

"I don't need to consider it," Robert said slowly. "I'm going to undress
her in public."

"What?"

"Not that way. I'm going to strip her of every rag of pretence, in open
court, so that everyone will see her for what she is."

Nevil looked curiously at him for a moment. "Amen," he said quietly.

"I didn't know you felt like that about it, Robert." He was going to add
something, but the door opened and Macdermott came in, and the evening
had begun.

Eating solidly through Aunt Lin's superb dinner, Robert hoped that it
was not going to be a mistake to take Kevin to Sunday lunch at The
Franchise. He was desperately anxious that the Sharpes should make a
success with Kevin; and there was no denying that Kevin was
temperamental and the Sharpes not everyone's cup of tea. Was lunch at
The Franchise likely to be an asset to their cause - a lunch cooked by
Marion for Kevin, who was a gourmet? When he had first read the
invitation - handed in by Stanley this morning - he was glad that they
had made the gesture, but misgiving was slowly growing in him. And as
one perfection succeeded another in unhurried procession across Aunt
Lin's shining mahogany, with Christina's large face hovering in eager
benevolence beyond the candle-light, the misgiving swelled until it took
entire possession of him. "Shapes that did not stand up" might fill his
breast with a warm, protective affection; but they could hardly be
expected to have the same effect on Kevin.

At least Kevin seemed glad to be here, he thought, listening to
Macdermott making open love to Aunt Lin, with a word thrown to Christina
every now and then to keep her happy and faithful. Dear Heaven, the
Irish! Nevil was on his best behaviour, full of earnest attention, with
a discreet "sir" thrown in now and again often enough to make Kevin feel
superior, but not often enough to make him feel old.

The subtler English form of flattery, in fact. Aunt Lin was like a girl,
pink-cheeked and radiant: absorbing flattery like a sponge, subjecting
it to some chemical process, and pouring it out again as charm.
Listening to her talk Robert was amused to find that the Sharpes had
suffered a sea-change in her mind. By the mere fact of being in danger
of imprisonment, they had been promoted from "these people" to "poor
things". This had nothing to do with Kevin's presence; it was a
combination of native kindness and woolly thinking.

It was odd, Robert thought, looking round the table, that this family
party - so gay, so warm, so secure - should be occasioned by the dire
need of two helpless women in that dark, silent house set down among the
endless fields.

He went to bed with the warm aura of the party still round him, but in
his heart a chill anxiety and an ache. Were they asleep out there at The
Franchise? How much sleep had they had lately?

He lay long awake and wakened early: listening to the Sunday morning
silence, hoping that it would be a good day - The Franchise looked its
worst in rain, when its dirty-white became almost grey - and that
whatever Marion made for lunch would "stand up". Just before eight a car
came in from the country and stopped below the window and someone
whistled a soft bugle call. A company call, it was B Company. Stanley
presumably. He got up and put his head out of the window.

Stanley, hatless as usual - he had never seen Stanley in any kind of
head covering - was sitting in the car regarding him with tolerant
benevolence.

"You Sunday snoozers," said Stanley.

"Did you get me up just to sneer at me?"

"No. I have a message from Miss Sharpe. She says when you come out
you're to take Betty Kane's statement with you, and you're on no account
to forget it because it's of the first importance. I'll say it's
important! She's going round looking as if she had unearthed a million."

"Looking happy!" Robert said, unbelieving.

"Like a bride. Indeed I haven't seen a woman look like that since my
cousin Beulah married her Pole. A face like a scone, Beulah has; and
believe me, that day she looked like Venus, Cleopatra, and Helen of Troy
rolled into one."

"Do you know what it is that Miss Sharpe is so happy about?"

"No. I did cast out a few feelers, but she's saving it up, it seems.

Anyhow, don't forget the copy of the statement, or the responses won't
come right or something. The password's in the statement."

Stanley proceeded on his way up the street towards Sin Lane and Robert
took his towel and went to the bathroom greatly puzzled. While he waited
for breakfast he looked out the statement from among the papers in his
dispatch case and read it through again with a new attention.

What had Marion remembered or discovered that was making her so happy?

Betty Kane had slipped somewhere, that was obvious. Marion was radiant
and Marion wanted him to bring the Kane statement when he came. That
could only mean that somewhere in the statement was proof that Betty
Kane was lying.

He reached the end of the statement without finding any likely sentence
and began to hunt through it again. What could it be?

That she had said it was raining and that it - perhaps - had not been
raining? But that would not have been vital or even important to the
credibility of her story. The Milford bus, then? The one she said she
had passed when being driven in the Sharpes' car. Were the times wrong?
But they had checked the times long ago and found they fitted nearly
enough. The "lighted sign" on the bus? Was the time too early for a sign
to be lighted? But that would have been merely a slip of memory, not a
discrediting factor in her statement.

He hoped passionately that Marion in her anxiety to obtain that "one
small piece of evidence" on their side was not exaggerating some
trifling discrepancy into proof of dishonesty. The descent from hope
would be worse than no hope at all.

This real worry almost obliterated the social worry of the lunch from
his mind, and he ceased to care greatly whether Kevin enjoyed his meal
at The Franchise or not. When Aunt Lin said to him covertly, as she set
off for church: "What do you think they'll give you for lunch, dear? I'm
quite sure they live on those toasted flake things out of packets, poor
things," he said shortly: "They know good wine when they taste it; that
should please Kevin."

"What has happened to young Bennet?" Kevin asked as they drove out to
The Franchise.

"He wasn't asked to lunch," Robert asked.

"I didn't mean that. What has happened to the strident suits and the
superiority and The Watchman aggressiveness?"

"Oh, he has fallen out with The Watchman over this case."

"Ah!"

"For the first time he is in a position to have actual personal
knowledge of a case The Watchman is pontificating about, and it has been
a bit of a shock to him, I think."

"Is the reformation going to last?"

"Well, do you know, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if it did. Apart from
the fact that he got to an age when they normally give up childish
things, and was due for a change, I think he has been doing some
revision and wondering if any of the other Watchman white-headed boys
were any more worthy of championing than Betty Kane. Kotovich, for
instance."

"Hah! The patriot!" Kevin said expressively.

"Yes. Only last week he was holding forth on our duty to Kotovich - our
duty to protect and cherish him, and eventually provide him with a
British passport, I suppose. I doubt if today he would be quite so
simple. He has grown up wonderfully in the last few days. I didn't know
he even possessed a suit like the one he was wearing last night.

It must be one he got to go to his school prize-giving in, for he
certainly has worn nothing so sober since."

"I hope for your sake it lasts. He has brains, the boy, and once he got
rid of his circus tricks would be an asset to the firm."

"Aunt Lin is distressed because he has split with Rosemary over The
Franchise affair, and she is afraid he won't marry a bishop's daughter
after all."

"Hooray! More power to him! I begin to like the boy. You put a few
wedges into that split, Rob - casual like - and see that he marries some
nice stupid English girl who will give him five children and give the
rest of the neighbourhood tennis parties between showers on Saturday
afternoons. It's a much nicer kind of stupidity than standing up on
platforms and holding forth on subjects you don't know the first thing
about. Is this the place?"

"Yes, this is The Franchise."

"A perfect 'mystery house'."

"It wasn't a mystery house when it was built. The gates, as you can see,
were scroll-work - rather nice work too - so that the whole place was
visible from the road. It was the simple operation of backing the gate
with the iron sheeting that converted the house from something quite
ordinary to something rather secret."

"A perfect house for Betty Kane's purpose, anyhow. What a piece of luck
for her that she remembered it."

Robert was to feel guilty afterwards that he had not had greater faith
in Marion, both over the matter of Betty Kane's statement an dover the
lunch. He should have remembered how cool-minded she was, how analytic;
and he should have remembered the Sharpe gift for taking people as they
found them and its soothing effect on the persons concerned. The Sharpes
had made no effort to live up to Aunt Lin's standard of hospitality, no
effort to provide a formal dining-room lunch. They had set a table for
four in the window of the drawing-room where the sun fell on it. It was
a cherrywood table, very pleasant in grain, but sadly needing polishing.
The wine glasses, on the other hand, were polished to a diamond
brilliance. (How like Marion, he thought, to concentrate on the thing
that mattered and to ignore mere appearance.)

"The dining-room is an incredibly gloomy place," Mrs. Sharpe said.

"Come and see it, Mr. Macdermott."

That too was typical. No sitting round with their sherry making small
talk. Come and see our horrible dining-room. And the visitor was part of
the household before he knew it.

"Tell me," Robert said to Marion as they were left alone, "what is this
about the --"

"No, I am not going to talk about it until after lunch. It is to be your
liqueur. It is a piece of the most astonishing luck that I should have
thought of it last night, when Mr. Macdermott was coming to lunch today.
It makes everything quite different. It won't stop the case, I suppose,
but it does make everything different for us. It is the small thing'
that I was praying for to be evidence for us. Have you told Mr.
Macdermott?"

"About your message? No, I haven't said anything. I thought it better
not to."

"Robert!" she said, looking at him with a quizzical amusement. "You
didn't trust me. You were afraid I was havering!"

"I was afraid you might be building more on a small foundation than it
would hold."

"Don't be afraid," she said reassuringly. "It will hold. Would you like
to come to the kitchen and carry the tray of soup for me?"

They had even managed the service without fuss or flurry. Robert carried
the tray with four flat bowls of soup, and Marion came after him with a
large dish under a Sheffield plate cover, and that seemed to be all.
When they had drunk their soup, Marion put the large dish in front of
her mother and a bottle of wine in front of Kevin. The dish was a
pot-all-feu chicken with all its vegetables round it; and the wine was a
Montrachet.

"A Montrachet!" Kevin said. "You wonderful woman."

"Robert told us you were a claret lover," Marion said, "but what is left
in old Mr. Crowle's cellar is long past its best. So it was a choice
between that and a very heavy red burgundy that is wonderful on winter
evenings but not so good with one of the Staples' fowls on a summer
day."

Kevin said something about how seldom it was that women were interested
in anything that did not bubble or, alternatively, explode.

"To be frank," Mrs. Sharpe said, "If these parcels had been saleable we
should probably have sold them, but we were exceedingly glad that they
were too scrappy and varied for that. I was brought up to appreciate
wine. My husband had a fairly good cellar, though his palate was not as
good as mine. But my brother at Lessways had a better one, and a fine
palate to match."

"Lessways?" Kevin said, and looked at her as if searching for a
resemblance. "You're not Charlie Meredith's sister, are you?"

"I am. Did you know Charles? But you couldn't. You are too young."

"The first pony I ever had of my own was bred by Charlie Meredith,"

Kevin said. "I had him for seven years and he never put a foot wrong."

And after that, of course, both of them ceased to take any further
interest in the others and not over-much in the food.

Robert caught Marion's amused and congratulatory glance at him, and
said: "You did yourself grave injustice when you said you couldn't
cook."

"If you were a woman you would observe that I have not cooked anything.

The soup I emptied out of a can, heated it, and added some sherry and
flavouring; the fowl I put into a pot just as it came from Staples,
poured some boiling water over it, added everything I could think of,
and left it on the stove with a prayer; the cream cheese also came from
the farm."

"And the wonderful rolls to go with the cream cheese?"

"Stanley's landlady made those." They laughed a little together,
quietly.

Tomorrow she was going into the dock. Tomorrow she was going to be a
public spectacle for the delight of Milford. But today her life was
still her own and she could share amusement with him, could be content
with the hour. Or so it seemed if her shining eyes were any evidence.

They took the cheese plates from under the noses of the other two, who
did not even pause in their conversation to remark the action, carried
the trays of dirty dishes away to the kitchen and made the coffee there.
It was a great gloomy place with a floor of stone slabs and an
old-fashioned sink that depressed him at sight.

"We put the range on only on Mondays, when the scrubbing is done,"

Marion said, seeing his interest in the place. "Otherwise we cook on the
little oil-stove."

He thought of the hot water that ran so instantly into the shining bath
when he turned the tap this morning, and was ashamed. He could hardly
visualize, after his long years of soft living, an existence where one's
bathing was done in water that was heated over an oil burner.

"Your friend is a charmer, isn't he?" she said, pouring the hot coffee
into its jug. "A little Mephistophelian - one would be terribly afraid
of him as opposing counsel - but a charmer."

"It's the Irish," Robert said gloomily. "It comes as natural to them as
breathing. Us poor Saxons plod along our brutish way and wonder how they
do it."

She had turned to give him the tray to carry, and so was facing him with
their hands almost touching. "The Saxons have the two qualities that I
value most in the world - two qualities that explain why they have
inherited the earth: kindness and dependability, or tolerance and
responsibility, if you prefer the terms. Two qualities the Celt never
had; which is why the Irish have inherited nothing but squabbles. Oh,
damn, I forgot the cream. Wait a moment. It's keeping cold in the
wash-house." She came back with the cream and said, mock rustic: "I have
heard tell as how there's things called refrigerators in some folks'
houses now, but we don't need none."

And as he carried the coffee to the sunlight of the drawing-room he
visualized the bone-chilling cold of those kitchen quarters in winter
with no roaring range as there had been in the palmy days of the house
when a cook had lorded it over half a dozen servants and you ordered
coal by the wagon-load. He longed to take Marion away from the place.

Where he would take her he did not quite know - his own home was filled
with the aura of Aunt Lin. It would have to be a place where there was
nothing to polish and nothing to carry and practically everything was
done by pressing a button. He could not see Marion spending her old age
in service to some pieces of mahogany.

As they drank their coffee he brought the conversation gently round to
the possibility of their selling The Franchise at some time or other and
buying a cottage somewhere.

"No one would buy the place," Marion said. "It is a white elephant: not
big enough for a school, too remote for flats, and too big for a family
these days. It might make a good madhouse," she added thoughtfully, her
eyes on the high pink wall beyond the window; and Robert saw Kevin's
glance flash over her and run away again. "It is quiet, at least - no
trees to creak, or ivy to tap at the window-panes, or birds to go
yap-yap-yap until you want to scream. It is a very peaceful place for
tired nerves. Perhaps someone would consider it for that."

So she liked the silence; the stillness that had seemed to him so dead.

It was perhaps what she had longed for in her London life of noise and
elbowing and demands; her life of fret and cramped quarters. The big,
quiet, ugly house had been a haven. And now it was a haven no longer.

Some day - oh-please-God-let-it-happen - some day he would strip Betty
Kane for ever of credit and love.

"And now," Marion said, "you are invited to inspect the fatal attic."

"Yes," Kevin said, "I should be greatly interested to see the things
that the girl professed to identify. All her statements seemed to me the
result of logical guesses like the harder carpet on the second flight of
stairs. Or the wooden commode - something that you would almost
certainly find in a country house. Or the flat-topped trunk."

"Yes, it was rather terrifying at the time, the way she kept hitting on
things we had and I hadn't had time to gather my wits - it was only
afterwards I saw how little she really had identified in her statement.

And she did make one complete bloomer, only no one thought of it until
last night. Have you got the statement, Robert?"

"Yes." He took it out of his pocket.

They had climbed, she and Robert and Macdermott, the last bare flight of
stairs and she led them into the attic. "I came up here last night on my
usual Saturday tour round the house with a mop. That is our solution to
the housekeeping problem, in case you are interested. A good large mop
well soaked in absorbent polish-stuff run over every floor once a week.
It takes five minutes per room and keeps the dust at bay."

Kevin was poking round the room and inspecting the view from the window.
"So this is the view she described," he said.

"Yes," Marion said, "that is the view she described. And if I remember
the words of her statement, as I remembered them last night, correctly,
then she said something that she can't -- Robert, would you read the bit
where she describes the view from the window?"

Robert looked up the relevant passage and began to read. Kevin was
bending slightly forward staring out of the little round window, and
Marion was standing behind him, smiling faintly like a sibyl.

"'From the window of the attic,'" read Robert, "'I could see a high
brick wall with a big iron gate in the middle of it. There was a road on
the farther side of the wall, because I could see the telegraph posts.
No, I couldn't see the traffic on it, because the wall was too high.
Just the tops of lorry-loads sometimes. You couldn't see through the
gate because it had sheets of iron on the inside. Inside the gate the
carriage-way went straight for a little and then divided in two into a
circle up to the door. No, it wasn't a garden, just --'"

"What!" yelled Kevin, straightening himself abruptly.

"What what?" Robert asked, startled.

"Read that last bit again, that bit about the carriage-way."

"' Inside the gate the carriage-way went straight for a little and then
divided in two into a circle up to the --'"

Kevin's shout of laughter stopped him. It was an abrupt monosyllable of
amused triumph.

"You see?" Marion said into the sudden silence.

"Yes," Kevin said softly, his pale bright eyes gloating on the view.

"that was something she didn't reckon with."

Robert moved over as Marion gave way to let him have her place and so
saw what they were talking about. The edge of the roof with its small
parapet cut off the view of the courtyard before the carriage-way
branched at all. No one imprisoned in that room would know about the two
half-circles up to the doorway.

"You see," Marion said, "the Inspector read that description when we
were all in the drawing-room. And all of us knew that the description
was accurate - I mean, an accurate picture of what the courtyard is
like; so we unconsciously treated it as something that was finished
with.

Even the Inspector. I remember his looking at the view from the window,
but it was quite an automatic gesture. It didn't occur to any of us that
it would not have been as described. Indeed, except for one tiny detail
it was as described."

"Except for one tiny detail," Kevin said. "She arrived in darkness and
fled in darkness and she says she was locked in the room all the time,
so she could have known nothing of that branching drive. What does she
say, again, about her arrival, Rob?"

Robert looked it up and read:

"'The car stopped at last and the younger woman, the one with the black
hair, got out and pushed open the big double gates on to a drive. Then
she got back in and drove the car up to a house. No, it was too dark to
see what kind of a house, except that it had steps up to the door. No, I
don't remember how many steps; four or five, I think. Yes, definitely a
small flight of them." And then she goes on about being taken to the
kitchen for coffee."

"So," Kevin said. "And her account of her flight? What time of night was
that?"

"Some time after supper - if I remember rightly," Robert'said, shuffling
through the pages. "After dark, anyhow. Here it is." And he read:

"'When I got to the first landing, the one above the hall, I could hear
them talking in the kitchen. There was no light in the hall. I went down
the last flight, expecting every moment that one of them would come out
and catch me, and then made a dash for the door. It wasn't locked and I
ran straight out and down the steps to the gate and out on to the road.
I ran along the road - yes, it was hard like a highroad - until I
couldn't run any longer, and I lay in the grass till I was feeling able
to go on.'"

"'It was hard, like a highroad,'" Kevin quoted. "The inference being
that it was too dark to see the surface she was running on."

There was a short silence.

"My mother thinks that this is enough to discredit her," Marion said.

She looked from Robert to Kevin and back again, without much hope. "But
you don't, do you?" It was hardly a question.

"No," Kevin said. "No. Not alone. She might wriggle out of it with a
clever counsel's help. Might say that she had deduced the circle from
the swing of the car when she arrived. What she would normally have
deduced, of course, would be the ordinary carriage sweep. No one would
spontaneously think of anything as awkward as that circular drive. It
makes a pretty pattern, that's all - which is probably why she
remembered it. I think this tit-bit should be kept as make-weight for
the Assizes."

"Yes, I thought you would say that," Marion said. "I'm not really
disappointed. I was glad about it not because I thought that it would
free us of the charge but because it frees us of the doubt that must
have - must have --" She stammered unexpectedly, avoiding Robert's eyes.

"Must have muddied our crystal minds," finished Kevin briskly, and cast
a glance of pleased malice at Robert. "How did you think of this last
night when you came to sweep?"

"I don't know. I stood looking out of the window and at the view she
described, and wishing that we might have just one small tiny,
microscopic piece of evidence on our side.

And then, without thinking, I heard Inspector Grant's voice reading that
bit in the drawing-room. Most of the story he told us in his own words,
you know. But the bits that brought him to The Franchise he read in the
girl's words. I heard his voice - it's a nice voice - saying the bit
about the circular carriage-way, and from where I was at that moment
there was no circular carriage-way. Perhaps it was an answer to unspoken
prayer."

"So you still think that we had best 'give' them tomorrow and bank
everything on the Assizes?" Robert said.

"Yes. It makes no difference actually to Miss Sharpe and her mother.

An appearance in one place is very like an appearance in another except
that the Assizes at Norton will probably be less unpleasant than a
police court in one's home town. And the shorter their appearance
tomorrow the better from their point of view. You have no evidence to
put before the court tomorrow, so it should be a very short and formal
affair. A parade of their evidence, an announcement that you reserve
your defence, an application for bail, and voila!"

This suited Robert well enough. He did not want to prolong tomorrow's
ordeal for them; he had more confidence, in any case, in a judgement
framed outside Milford. And most of all he did not want, now that it had
come to a case, a half-decision, a dismissal. That would not be
sufficient for his purpose where Betty Kane was concerned. He wanted the
whole story of that month told in open court, in Betty Kane's presence.
And by the time the Assizes opened at Norton, he would, please God, have
the story ready to tell.

"Whom can we get to defend them?" he asked Kevin as they drove home to
tea.

Kevin reached into a pocket, and Robert took it for granted that what he
was looking for was a list of addresses. but what he produced was
obviously an engagement book.

"What is the date of the Assizes at Norton, do you know?" he asked.

Robert told him and held his breath.

"It's just possible that I might be able to come down myself. Let me
see, let me see."

Robert let him see in complete silence. One word" he felt, might ruin
the magic.

"Yes," Kevin said. "I don't see why I shouldn't - short of the
unforeseen. I like your witches. It would give me great pleasure to
defend them against that very nasty piece of work. How odd that she
should be old Charlie Meredith's sister. One of the best, the old boy
was. About the only approximately honest horse-coper known in history.

I have never ceased to be grateful to him for that pony. A boy's first
horse is very important. It colours his whole after-life - not only his
attitude to horseflesh; everything else as well. There is something in
the trust and friendship that exists between a boy and a good horse that
--"

Robert listened, relaxed and amused. He had realized, with a gentle
irony untinged with any bitterness, that Kevin had given up any thought
of the Sharpes' guilt long before the evidence of that view from the
window was presented to him. It was not possible that old Charlie
Meredith's sister could have abducted anyone.

CHAPTER 17.

"It's a perpetual wonder to me," Ben Carley said, eyeing the
well-populated benches in the little court, "how so many of the lieges
have so little to do on a Monday morning. Though I must say it's some
time since the gathering has had so much tone. Have you noticed the
Sports Wear? Back row but one, in a yellow hat that doesn't go with her
mauve powder or her hair. If she's left that little Godfrey girl in
charge, she's going to be short of change tonight. I got that girl off
when she was fifteen. She'd been swiping cash since she could walk and
she's still swiping it. No female to be left alone with a till, believe
me. And that Anne Boleyn woman. First time I've seen her in court.
Though how she's avoided it so long I don't know. Her sister's for ever
paying out cheques to cover her R. D. ones. No one's ever discovered
what she does with the money. Someone blackmailing her, perhaps. I
wonder who. I wouldn't put it past Arthur Wallis at the White Hart.
Three different orders to pay each week, and another on the way, just
won't come out of a potman's pay."

Robert let Carley burble on without listening to him. He was only too
conscious that the audience in court was not the usual Monday-morning
collection of loafers putting off time until they opened. The news had
gone round, by the mysterious Milford channels, and they had come to see
the Sharpes charged. The normal drabness of the court was gay with
women's clothes and its normal drowsy silence, sibilant with their
chatter.

One face he saw which should have been hostile but was oddly friendly:
that of Mrs. Wynn, whom he had last seen standing in her lovely little
patch of garden in Meadowside Lane, Aylesbury. He could not think of
Mrs. Wynn as an enemy. He liked her, admired her, and was sorry for her
in advance. He would have liked to go over and say how d'you do to her,
but the game had been laid out on the squares now and they were chequers
of different colour.

Grant had not appeared so far, but Hallam was there, talking to the
sergeant who had come to The Franchise the night the hooligans wrecked
the windows.

"How's your sleuth doing?" Carley asked during a pause in his running
commentary.

"The sleuth's all right, but the problem is colossal," Robert said.

"The proverbial needle just gives itself up by comparison."

"One girl against the world," mocked Ben. "I'm looking forward to seeing
this floosie in the flesh. I suppose after all the fan mail she's had
and the offers of marriage and the resemblance to Saint Bernadette,
she'll think a country police court too small an arena for her. Did she
have any stage offers?"

"I wouldn't know."

"I suppose Mama would repress them anyhow. That's her there with the
brown suit, and she looks a very sensible woman to me. I can't think how
she ever came to have a daughter like -- Oh, but she was adopted, wasn't
she? An Awful Warning. It's a constant reminder to me how little folk
must know about the people they live with. There was a woman over at Ham
Green had a daughter that was never out of her sight as far as she knew,
but daughter walked out in a pet one day and didn't come back and
frantic mother goes howling to the Police, and police discover that the
girl who has apparently never been away from mother for a night is a
married woman with a child, and has merely collected child and gone to
live with husband. See police records if not believing Ben Carley. Ah
well, if you grow dissatisfied with your sleuth let me know and I'll
give you the address of a very good one.

Here we go."

He rose in deference to the Bench, while continuing a monologue on the
Bench's complexion, possible temper, and probable occupation yesterday.

Three routine cases were disposed of - old offenders apparently so used
to the procedure that they anticipated the drill, and Robert half
expected someone to say "Wait for it, can't you!"

Then he saw Grant come in quietly and sit in an observer's position at
the back of the Press bench, and he knew that the time had come.

They came in together when their names were called and took their places
in the horrid little pew as if they were merely taking their places in
church. It was rather like that, he thought: the quiet and observant
eyes and the suggestion of waiting for a performance to begin. But he
suddenly realized what he would be feeling if it were Aunt Lin in Mrs.
Sharpe's place, and was fully aware for the first time of what Marion
must be suffering on her mother's behalf. Even if the Assizes saw them
cleared of the charge, what would compensate them for what they had
endured? What punishment fit Betty Kane's crime?

For Robert, being old-fashioned, believed in retribution. He might not
go all the way with Moses - an eye was not always compensation for an
eye - but he certainly agreed with Gilbert: the punishment should fit
the crime. He certainly did not believe that a few quiet talks with the
chaplain and a promise to reform made a criminal into a respect-worthy
citizen. "Your true criminal," he remembered Kevin saying one night,
after a long discussion on penal reform, "has two unvarying
characteristics, and it is these two characteristics which make him a
criminal: monstrous vanity and colossal selfishness. And they are both
as integral, as ineradicable as the texture of the skin. You might as
well talk of 'reforming' the colour of one's eyes."

"But," someone had objected, "there have been monsters of vanity and
selfishness who were not criminal."

"Only because they have victimized their wives instead of their bank,"

Kevin had pointed out. "Tomes have been written trying to define the
criminal, but it is a very simple definition after all. The criminal is
a person who makes the satisfaction of his own immediate personal wants
the mainspring of his actions. You can't cure him of his egoism, but you
can make the indulgence of it not worth his while. Or almost not worth
his while."

Kevin's idea of prison reform, Robert remembered, was deportation to a
penal colony: an island community where everyone worked hard. This was
not a reform for the benefit of the prisoners. it would be a nicer life
for the warders, Kevin said; and would leave more room in this crowded
island for good citizens' houses and gardens; and since most criminals
hated hard work more than they hated anything in this world, it would be
a better deterrent than the present plan, which in Kevin's estimation
was no more punitive than a third-rate public school.

Looking at the two figures in the dock Robert thought that in the "bad
old days" only the guilty were put in the pillory. Nowadays it was the
untried who bore the pillory and the guilty went immediately into a safe
obscurity. Something had gone wrong somewhere.

Old Mrs. Sharpe was wearing the flat black satin hat in which she had
appeared at his office on the morning of the Ack-Emma irruption into
their affairs, and looked academic, respectable, but odd. Marion too was
wearing a hat - less, he supposed, out of deference to the court than as
some protection against the public gaze. It was a country felt with a
short brim; and its orthodoxy lessened to some extent her normal air of
being a law unto herself. With her black hair hidden and her brilliant
eyes shadowed she looked no swarthier than a normal out-of-doors woman
might. And though Robert missed the black hair and the brilliance, he
thought that it was all to the good that she should look as "ordinary"
as possible. It might lessen the pecking-to-death instinct in her
hostile fellows.

And then he saw Betty Kane.

It was the stir on the Press bench that told him she was in court.

Normally the Press bench was occupied by two bored apprentices in the
art of reporting: one for the Milford Advertiser (once weekly, on
Fridays) and one combining the Norton Courier (twice weekly, Tuesdays
and Fridays) with the Larborough Times and anyone else who would take
the stuff. But today the Press bench was filled and the faces were
neither young nor bored. They were the faces of men invited to a meal
and quite ready for it. And Betty Kane was two-thirds of what they had
come for.

Robert had not seen her since she stood in the drawing-room at The
Franchise in her dark blue school coat, and he was surprised all over
again by her youth and her candid innocence. In the weeks since he had
first seen her she had grown into a monster in his mind: he thought of
her only as the perverted creature who had lied two human beings into
the dock. Now, seeing the actual physical Betty Kane again, he was
nonplussed.

He knew that this girl and his monster were one, but he found it
difficult to realize. And if he, who felt that he now knew Betty Kane so
well, reacted like that to her presence, what effect would her
child-like grace have on good men and true when the time came?

She was wearing "week-end" clothes, not her school things. A cloudy blue
outfit that made one think of forget-me-nots and wood-smoke and
bluebells and summer distances, and was further calculated to bedevil
the judgement of sober men. Her young and simple and
very-well-brought-up hat stood back from her face and showed the
charming brow and the wide-set eyes. Robert absolved Mrs. Wynn, without
even having to consider the matter, from any conscious dressing of the
girl for the occasion, but was bitterly aware that if she had lain awake
at nights devising the outfit it could not have served its purpose
better.

When her name was called and she walked to the witness-stand, he stole a
glance at the faces of those who could see her clearly. With the sole
exception of Ben Carley who was looking at her with the interest one
accords a museum exhibit there was only one expression on the faces of
the men: a sort of affectionate compassion. The women, he observed"

had not surrendered so easily. The more motherly ones obviously yearned
to her youth and her vulnerability, but the younger ones were merely
avid, without emotion other than curiosity.

"I don't believe it!" Ben said, sotto voce, while she was taking the
oath. "You mean that child was on the loose for a month? I don't believe
she's ever kissed anything but the book!"

"I'll bring witnesses to prove it," muttered Robert, angry that even the
worldly and cynical Carley was succumbing.

"You could bring ten irreproachable witnesses and still not get a jury
to believe it; and it's the jury who count, my friend."

Yes, what jury would believe any bad of her!

Watching her as she was led through her story, he reminded himself of
Albert's account of her: the "nicely brought-up girl" whom no one would
have thought of as a woman at all, and the cool expertness with which
she attached the man she had chosen.

She had a very pleasant voice: young and light and clear, without accent
or affectation. And she told her tale like a model witness; volunteering
no extras, explicit in what she did say. The Pressmen could hardly keep
their eyes on their shorthand. The Bench was obviously doting. (God send
there was something tougher at the Assizes!) The members of the police
force were gently perspiring in sympathy. The body of the court
breathless and motionless.

No actress had ever had a better reception.

She was quite calm, as far as anyone could see; and apparently unaware
of the effect she was having. She made no effort to make a point or use
a piece of information dramatically. And Robert found himself wondering
whether the understatement was deliberate and whether she realized quite
clearly how effective it was.

"And did you in fact mend the linen?"

"I was too stiff from the beating, that night. But I mended some later."

Just as if she were saying: "I was too busy playing bridge." It gave an
extraordinary air of truth to what she said.

Nor was there any sign of triumph in the account of her vindication.

She had said this and that about the place of her imprisonment, and this
and that had proved to be so. But she showed no overt pleasure in the
fact. When she was asked if she recognized the women in the dock and if
they were in fact the women who had detained and beaten her, she looked
at them gravely for a moment of silence and then said that she did and
they were.

"Do you want to examine, Mr. Blair?"

"No, sir. I have no questions."

This caused a slight stir of surprise and disappointment in the body of
the court, who had looked forward to drama; but it was accepted by the
initiates without remark; it was taken for granted that the case would
go forward to another court.

Hallam had already given his statement, and the girl was now followed by
the corroborative witnesses.

The man who had seen her picked up by the car proved to be a post-office
sorter called Piper. He worked on a postal van which the L. M.S. ran
between Larborough and London, and he was dropped off at Mainshill
station on the return journey because it was near his home.

He was walking up the long, straight London road through Mainshill when
he noticed that a young girl was waiting at the stop for the London
coaches. He was still a long distance from her, but he noticed her
because the London coach had overtaken him half a minute previously,
before he had come within sight of the bus-stop; and when he saw her
waiting there he realized that she must just have missed it. While he
was walking towards her, but still some distance away, a car overtook
him at a good pace. He did not even glance at it because his interest
was concentrated on the girl and on whether when he came up with her he
should stop and tell her that the London bus had passe. n saw the car
slow down alongside the girl. She bent forward to talk to whoever was in
it, and then got in herself and was driven away.

By this time he was near enough to describe the car, but not to read the
number. He had not thought of reading the number anyhow. He was merely
glad that the girl had got a lift so quickly.

He would not take an oath that the girl in question was the girl he had
seen give evidence, but he was certain in his own mind. She had worn a
palish coat - grey, he thought - and black slippers. Slippers? Well,
those shoes with no straps across the instep. Court shoes.

Well, court shoes, but he called them slippers. (And had every
intention, his tone made it clear, of going on calling them slippers.)

"Do you want to examine, Mr. Blair?"

"No, thank you, sir."

Then came Rose Glyn.

Robert's first impression was of the vulgar perfection of her teeth.

They reminded him of a false set made by a not very clever dentist.

There surely never had been, never could be any natural teeth as
flashily perfect as those Rose Glyn had produced as substitutes for her
milk teeth.

The Bench did not like her teeth either, it seemed, and Rose soon
stopped smiling. But her tale was lethal enough. She had been in the
habit of going to The Franchise every Monday to clean the house. On a
Monday in April she had been there as usual, and was preparing to leave
in the evening when she heard screaming coming from upstairs somewhere.

She thought something had happened to Mrs. or Miss Sharpe and ran to the
foot of the stairs to see. The screaming seemed to be far away, as if it
came from the attic. She was going to go upstairs, but Mrs.

Sharpe came out of the drawing-room and asked her what she was doing.

She said someone was screaming upstairs, Mrs. Sharpe said nonsense, that
she was imagining things, and wasn't it time that she was going home.
The screaming had stopped then, and while Mrs. Sharpe was talking Miss
Sharpe came downstairs. Miss Sharpe went with Mrs.

Sharpe, and Mrs. Sharpe said something about "ought to be more careful".
She was frightened, she did not quite know why, and went away to the
kitchen and took her money from where it was always left for her on the
kitchen mantelpiece, and ran from the house. The date was 15 April. She
remembered the date because she had decided that next time she went
back, on the following Monday, she would give the Sharpes her week's
notice; and she had in fact done that, and had not worked for the
Sharpes since Monday, 29 April.

Robert was faintly cheered by the bad impression she was patently making
on everyone. Her open delight in the dramatic, her Christmas Supplement
glossiness, her obvious malice and her horrible clothes were unhappily
contrasted with the restraint and good sense and good taste of her
predecessor in the witness-box. From the expression on the faces of her
audience she was summed up as a slut and no one would trust her with
sixpence. But that did nothing to discount the evidence she had just
given on oath. Robert, letting her go on, wondered if there was any way
of pinning that watch on her, so to speak. Being a country girl,
unversed in the ways of pawnshops, it was unlikely that she had stolen
that watch to sell it; she had taken it to keep for herself. That being
so, was there perhaps some way of convicting her of theft and so
discrediting her evidence to that extent? She was succeeded by her
friend Gladys Rees. Gladys was as small and pale and skinny as her
friend was opulent. She was scared and ill at ease, and took the oath
hesitatingly. Her accent was so broad that even the Court found
difficulty in following her, and the prosecution had several times to
translate her wilder flights of English into something nearer common
speech. But the gist of her evidence was clear. On the evening of Monday
the 15th April she had gone walking with her friend, Rose Glyn. No, not
anywhere special, just walking after supper. Up to High Wood and back.
And Rose Glyn had told her that she was scared of The Franchise because
she had heard someone screaming in an upstairs room, although there was
supposed not to be anyone there. She, Gladys, knew that it was Monday
the 15th that Rose had told her that, because Rose had said that when
she went next week she was going to give notice. And she had given
notice and had not worked for the Sharpes since Monday the 29th.

"I wonder what dear Rose has got on her," Carley said, as she left the
witness-box.

"What makes you think she has anything?"

"People don't come and perjure themselves for friendship - not even
country morons like Gladys Rees. The poor silly little rat was
frightened stiff. She would never have come voluntarily. No, that
oleograph has a lever of some sort. Worth looking into if you're stuck,
perhaps."

"Do you happen to know the number of your watch?" he asked Marion as he
was driving them back to The Franchise. "The one Rose Glyn stole."

"I didn't even know that watches had numbers," Marion said.

"Good ones do."

"Oh, mine was a good one, but I don't know anything about its number.

It was very distinctive, though. It had a pale blue enamel face with
gold figures."

"Roman figures?"

"Yes. Why do you ask? Even if I got it back I could never bear to wear
it after that girl."

"It wasn't so much getting it back I thought of as convicting her of
having taken it."

"That would be nice."

"Ben Carley calls her 'the oleograph', by the way."

"How lovely! That is just what she is like. Is that the little man you
wanted to push us off on to, that first day?"

"That's the one." "I am so glad that I refused to be pushed."

"I hope you will still be as glad when this case is over," Robert said,
suddenly sober.

"We have not yet thanked you for standing surety for our bail," Mrs.

Sharpe said from the back of the car.

"If we began to thank him for all we owe him," Marion said, "there would
be no end to it."

Except, he thought, that he had enlisted Kevin Macdermott on their side
- and that was an accident of friendship - what had he been able to do
for them? They would go for trial at Norton little more than a fortnight
hence and they had no defence whatever.

CHAPTER 18.

The newspapers had a field-day on Tuesday.

Now that The Franchise affair was a court case, it could no longer
provide a crusade for either the Ack-Emma or The Watchman - though the
Ack-Emma did not fail to remind its gratified readers that on such and
such a day they had said so and so, a plain statement which was on the
surface innocent and unexceptionable but was simply loaded with the
forbidden comment; and Robert had no doubt that on Friday The Watchman
would be taking similar credit to itself, with similar discretion. But
the rest of the Press, who had not so far taken any interest in a case
that the police had no intention of touching, woke with a glad shout to
report a case that was news. Even the soberer dailies held accounts of
the court appearance of the Sharpes, with headings like EXTRAORDINARY
CASE and UNUSUAL CHARGE. The less inhibited had full descriptions of the
principal actors in the case, including Mrs. Sharpe's hat and Betty
Kane's blue outfit, pictures of The Franchise, the High Street in
Milford, a school friend of Betty Kane, and anything else that was even
approximately relevant.

And Robert's heart sank. Both the Ack-Emma and The Watchman, in their
different ways, had used The Franchise affair as a stunt. Something to
be used for its momentary worth and dropped tomorrow. But now it was a
national interest, reported by every kind of paper from Cornwall to
Caithness; and showed signs of becoming a cause celebre.

For the first time he had a feeling of desperation. Events were hounding
him, and he had no refuge. The thing was beginning to pile up into a
tremendous climax at Norton and he had nothing to contribute to that
climax; nothing at all. He felt as a man might feel if he saw a stacked
heap of loaded crates begin to lean over towards him and had neither
retreat nor a prop to stay the avalanche.

Ramsden grew more and more monosyllabic on the telephone and less and
less encouraging. Ramsden was sore. "Baffled" was a word used in boys'
detective stories; it had not until now had even the remotest connexion
with Alex Ramsden. So Ramsden was sore, monosyllabic, and dour.

The one bright spot in the days that followed the court at Milford was
provided by Stanley, who tapped on his door on Thursday morning, poked
his head in, and seeing that Robert was alone came in, pushing the door
to with one hand and fishing in the pocket of his dungarees with the
other.

"Morning," he said. "I think you ought to take charge of these. Those
women at The Franchise have no sense at all. They keep pound notes in
tea-pots and books and what not. If you're looking for a telephone
number you're as likely as not to find a ten-shilling note marking the
butcher's address." He fished out a roll of money and solemnly counted
twelve ten-pound notes on to the desk under Robert's nose.

"A hundred and twenty," he said. "Nice, ain't it?"

"But what is it?" Robert asked bewildered.

"Kominsky."

"Kominsky?"

"Don't tell me you didn't have anything on! After the old lady giving us
the tip herself. Mean to say you forgot about it?"

"Stan, I haven't even remembered lately that there was such a thing as
the Guineas. So you backed it?"

"At sixties. And that's the tenth I told her she was on to, for the
tip."

"But a tenth? You must have been plunging, Stan."

"Twenty pounds. Twice as much as my normal ceiling. Bill did a bit of
good too. Going to give his missus a fur coat."

"So Kominsky won."

"Won by a length and a half on a tight rein; and was that a turn up for
the book!"

"Well," Robert said, stacking the notes and banding them, "if the worst
comes to the worst and they end up bankrupt, the old lady can always do
a fair trade as a tipster."

Stanley eyed his face for a moment in silence, apparently not happy
about something in his tone. "Things are pretty bad, eh?" he said.

"Fierce," said Robert, using one of Stanley's own descriptions.

"Bill's missus went to the court," Stan said, after a pause. "She said
she wouldn't believe that girl even if she told her there were twelve
pennies in a shilling."

"Oh? "Robert said, surprised. "Why?"

"Much too good to be true, she said she was. She said no girl of fifteen
was ever as good as that."

"She's sixteen now."

"All right, sixteen. She said she was fifteen once and so were all her
girl friends, and that wide-eyed wonder didn't fool her for a moment."

"I'm very much afraid it will fool a jury."

"Not if you had an all-woman jury. I suppose there's no way of wangling
that?"

"Not short of Herod measures. Don't you want to give this money to Mrs.
Sharpe yourself, by the way?"

"Not me. You'll be going out there some time today and you can give it
to her if you like. But see you get it back and put it in the bank or
they'll be picking it out of flower vases years hence and wondering when
they put that there."

Robert smiled as he put the money away in his pocket to the sound of
Stanley's departing feet. Endlessly unexpected, people were. He would
have taken it for granted that Stan would have revelled in counting
those notes out in front of the old lady. But instead he had turned shy.
That tale of money in teapots was just a tale.

Robert took the money out to The Franchise in the afternoon, and for the
first time saw tears in Marion's eyes. He told the tale as Stanley had
told it - tea-pots and all - and finished: "So he made me his deputy;"
and it was then that Marion's eyes had filled.

"Why did he mind about giving it to us?" she said, fingering the notes.
"He's not usually so - so --"

"I think it may be that he considers that you need it now, and that that
makes it a delicate affair instead of a matter-of-fact one. When you
gave him the tip you were just the well-off Sharpes who lived at The
Franchise, and he would have turned over the proceeds to you with eclat.
But now you are two women out on bail of l200 each in your personal
recognizances and of a similar sum by one surety on behalf of you each;
to say nothing of having the expenses of a counsel to come; and are
therefore, I think, in Stan's mind not people that one can hand over
money to easily."

"Well," said Mrs. Sharpe, "not all my tips have had a margin of a
length-and-a-half on the right side. But I don't deny that I am very
glad to see the percentage. It was very kind of the boy."

"Should we keep as much as ten percent?" Marion asked doubtfully.

"That was the arrangement," Mrs. Sharpe said equably. "If it hadn't been
for me he would be short by the amount of a bet on Bali Boogie at this
moment. What is a Bali Boogie, by the way?"

"I am glad you came," Marion said, ignoring her mother's quest for
education, "because something unexpected has happened. My watch has come
back."

"You mean you've found it?"

"No. Oh no. She sent it back through the post. Look!"

She produced a small, very dirty, white cardboard box, which contained
her watch with the blue enamel face and the wrapping that had been round
the watch. The wrapping was a square of pink tissue paper with a
circular stamp reading SUN VALLEY, TRANSVAAL and had evidently started
life embracing an orange. On a torn piece of paper was printed: I DON'T
WANT NONE OF IT. The capital I was dotted like a small letter, after the
fashion of illiterates.

"Why do you think she turned squeamish about it?" Marion wondered.

"I don't for a moment think she did," Robert said. "I couldn't imagine
that girl ever relinquishing anything that her hand had closed over."

"But she did. She sent it back."

"No. Someone sent it back. Someone who was frightened. Someone with a
rudimentary conscience, too. If Rose Glyn had wanted to be rid of it she
would have thrown it into a pond without a second thought. But X wants
to be rid of it and to make restitution at the same time. X has both a
conscience and a frightened soul. Now who would have a bad conscience
about you just now? Gladys Rees?"

"Yes, of course you are right about Rose. I should have thought of that.
She never would have sent it back. She would have put her heel on it
sooner. You think perhaps she gave it to Gladys Rees?"

"That might explain a lot. It might explain how Rose got her to court to
back up that 'screaming' story. I mean, if she had been the receiver of
stolen goods. When you come to think of it, Rose could have very little
chance of wearing a watch that the Staples people must quite often have
seen on your wrist. It is much more likely that she was 'large' with it
in favour of her friend. 'A little thing I picked up." Where does the
Rees girl belong to?"

"I don't know where she belongs to - somewhere the other side of the
county, I think. But she has come to work for that isolated farm beyond
Staples."

"Long ago?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"So she could wear a new watch without question. Yes, I think it was
Gladys who sent back your watch. If ever there was an unwilling witness
it was Gladys on Monday. And if Gladys is shakable to the point of
sending back your property, a faint hope begins to dawn."

"But she has committed perjury," Mrs. Sharpe said. "Even a moron like
Gladys Rees must have some glimmering of awareness that that is not well
seen in a British court."

"She could plead that she was blackmailed into it if someone suggested
that course to her."

Mrs. Sharpe eyed him. "Isn't there anything in English law about
tampering with a witness?" she asked.

"Plenty. But I don't propose to do any tampering."

"What do you propose to do?"

"I must think it over. It is a delicate situation."

"Mr. Blair, the intricacies of the law have always been beyond me, and
are always likely to be, but you won't get yourself put away for
contempt of court or something like that, will you? I can't imagine what
the present situation would be like without your support."

Robert said that he had no intention of getting himself put away for
anything. That he was a blameless solicitor of unblemished reputation
and high moral principles, and that she need have no fear for herself or
for him.

"If we could knock the prop of Gladys Rees from under Rose's story it
would undermine their whole case," he said. "It's their most valuable
piece of evidence: that Rose had mentioned the screaming before there
was any suggestion of a charge against you. I suppose you couldn't see
Grant's face when Rose was giving evidence? A fastidious mind must be a
great handicap in the C. I.D. It must be sad to have your whole case
depend on someone you would hate to touch with a barge-pole. Now I must
be getting back. May I take the little cardboard box and the scrap of
paper with the printing?"

"It was clever of you to have seen that Rose would not have sent it
back," Marion said, putting the scrap of paper into the box and giving
it to him. "You should have been a detective."

"Either that or a fortune-teller. Everything deduced from the egg-stain
on the waistcoat. Au revoir."

Robert drove back to Milford with his mind full of this new possibility.
It was no solution to their predicament, but it might be a lifeline.

In the office he found Mr. Ramsden waiting for him; long, grey, lean,
and dour.

"I came to see you, Mr. Blair, because it wasn't a thing that could be
said over the telephone very well."

"Well?"

"Mr. Blair, we're wasting your money. Do you happen to know what the
white population of the world is?"

"No, I don't."

"Neither do I. But what you're asking me to do is to pick this girl out
of the white population of the world. Five thousand men working for a
year mightn't do it. One man might do it tomorrow. It's a matter of pure
chance."

"But it always has been that."

"No. In the first days the chances were fair. We covered the obvious
places. The port, the airports, the travel places, the best-known
honeymoon' places. And I didn't waste your time or money in any
travelling. I have contacts in all the big towns and in a lot of the
smaller ones, and I just send them a request saying: 'Find out if such
and such a person stayed at one of your hotels," and the answer is back
in a few hours. Answers from all over Britain. Well, that done, we are
left with a small proposition called the rest of the world.

And I don't like wasting your money, Mr. Blair. Because that is what it
will amount to."

"Do I understand that you are giving up?"

"I don't put it like that, exactly."

"You think I should give you notice because you have failed."

Mr. Ramsden stiffened noticeably at the word "failed".

"It's throwing good money away on a long chance. It isn't a business
proposition, Mr. Blair. It isn't even a good gamble."

"Well, I have something for your consideration that is definite enough
to please you, I think." He fished the little cardboard box out of his
pocket. "One of the witnesses on Monday was a girl called Gladys Rees.

Her role was to supply evidence that her friend Rose Glyn had talked to
her about screams at The Franchise long before the police were
interested in the place. Well, she supplied the evidence all right, but
not con amore, as you might say. She was nervous, unwilling, and was
obviously hating it - in contrast to her friend Rose, who was having the
time of her life. One of my local colleagues suggested that Rose had got
her there by pressure, but that didn't seem very likely at the time.
This morning, however, the watch that Rose stole from Miss Sharpe came
back by post in this box, with the printed message enclosed. Now Rose
would never have bothered to return the watch; she has no conscience at
all. Nor would she have written the note, having no desire to repudiate
anything. The conclusion is inescapable, that it was Gladys who received
the watch - Rose could not have worn it without detection anyhow - and
that was how Rose got her to back up her lies."

He paused to let Ramsden comment. Mr. Ramsden nodded, but it was an
interested nod.

"Now we can't approach Gladys with any kind of argument without being
accused of intimidating witnesses. I mean, getting her to go back on her
story before the Assizes. Kevin Macdermott could probably do it by force
of personality and persistent questions, but I doubt it; and anyhow the
Court might stop him before he had achieved anything. They are apt to
look sideways on him when he begins to ride a witness."

"They are."

"What I want to do is to be able to put this printed scrap into court as
evidence. To be able to say that it is Gladys Rees's writing. With the
evidence that it was she who had the stolen watch, we make the
suggestion that Rose used pressure on her to testify to what is not
true. Macdermott assures her that if' she was blackmailed into giving
false evidence she will probably not be punished for it, and she breaks
down and confesses."

"So you want another specimen of Gladys Rees's printing."

"Yes. And coming along just now I was thinking about it. I have the
impression that her present job is her first one, so it can't be very
long since she left school. Perhaps her school could furnish one. Or,
anyhow, provide a starting-off place. It would be enormously to our
advantage if we could come by a specimen without provocateur methods.

Do you think you could do something about it?"

"I'll get you a specimen, yes," Ramsden said; as who should say: Give me
any reasonable commission and it will be executed. "Did the Rees girl go
to school here?"

"No, I understand she comes from the other side of the county."

"All right, I'll find out. Where is she working now?"

"At an isolated place called Bratt's Farm, over the fields from Staples,
the place behind The Franchise."

"And about the search for the Kane girl --"

"Isn't there anything you could still do in Larborough itself? I can't
teach you anything about your business, I know that, but she was in
Larborough."

"Yes, and where she was we traced her. In public places. But X may live
in Larborough, for all we know. She may just have gone to ground there.
After all, a month or practically a month is an odd time for that sort
of disappearance, Mr. Blair. That sort of thing usually ranges from a
week-end to ten days, but no longer. She may just have gone home with
him."

"Do you think that is what happened?"

"No," Ramsden said slowly. "If you want my honest opinion, Mr. Blair, it
is that we have missed her at one of the exits."

"Exits?"

"That she went out of the country, but looking so different that that
butter-wouldn't-melt photograph didn't convey her at all."

"Why different?"

"Well, I don't suppose she was provided with a phoney passport, so she
would presumably travel as his wife."

"Yes, of course. I took that for granted."

"And she couldn't do that looking as she does. But with her hair swept
up and some make-up on, she would look quite different. You have no idea
the difference sweeping-up hairdressing makes to a woman. The first time
I saw my wife with one I didn't recognize her. It made her so different,
if you want to know, that I felt quite shy with her; and we'd been
married twenty years."

"So that's what you think happened. I expect you're right," Robert said
sadly.

"That's why I don't want to waste any more of your money, Mr. Blair.

Looking for the girl in the photograph is not much use, because the girl
we're looking for didn't look a bit like that. When she did look like
that, people recognized her at first glance. At the cinemas and what
not. We traced her easily enough during her time on her own in
Larborough. But from then on it's a complete blank. Her photograph
doesn't convey her to anyone who saw her after she left Larborough."

Robert sat doodling on Miss Tuff's nice fresh blotting-paper - a
herring-bone pattern, very neat and decorative. "You see what this
means, don't you? We are sunk."

"But you have this," Ramsden protested, indicating the printed scrap of
paper that had come with the watch.

"That merely destroys the police case. It doesn't disprove Betty Kane's
story. If the Sharpes are ever to be rid of this thing the girl's story
has to be shown to be nonsense. Our only chance of doing that is to find
out where she was during those weeks."

"Yes. I see."

"I suppose you have checked on private owners?"

"Planes? Oh yes. The same thing goes there. We have no photograph of the
man, so he might be any one of the hundreds of private owners who went
abroad with female companions in the specified time."

"Yes. Pretty well sunk. Not much wonder Ben Carley was amused."

"You're tired, Mr. Blair. You've been having a worrying time."

"Yes. It isn't very often a country solicitor has something like this
dumped on his shoulders," Robert said wryly.

Ramsden regarded him with what amounted on the Ramsden visage to a
smile. "For a country solicitor," he said, "it seems to me you're not
doing badly, Mr. Blair. Not badly at all."

"Thanks," Robert said, really smiling. Coming from Alec Ramsden that was
practically an O. M.

"I shouldn't let it get you down. You've got an insurance against the
very worst happening - or will, when I get that printed evidence."

Robert flung down the pen he had been doodling with. "I'm not interested
in insurance," he said with sudden heat. "I'm interested in justice. I
have only one ambition in life at this moment. And that is to have Betty
Kane's story disproved in open court - to have the full account of what
she did during those weeks made public in her presence and duly backed
up by irreproachable witnesses. What are our chances of that, do you
think? And what - tell me what - have we left untried that could
possibly help us?"

"I don't know," Mr. Ramsden said seriously. "Prayer, perhaps."

CHAPTER 19.

This, oddly enough, was also Aunt Lin's reaction.

Aunt Lin had become gradually reconciled to Robert's connexion with The
Franchise affair as it moved from the provincial-unsavoury to the
national-celebrated. It was, after all, no disgrace to be connected with
a case that was reported in The Times. Aunt Lin did not, of course, read
The Times, but her friends did. The vicar, and old Colonel Whittaker,
and the girl at Boots, and old Mrs. Warren from Weymouth (Swanage); and
it was vaguely gratifying to think that Robert should be solicitor for
the defence in a famous trial, even if the defence was against a charge
of beating a helpless girl. And of course it had never even remotely
shadowed her mind that Robert would not win the case. She had taken that
quite placidly for granted. In the first place Robert himself was so
clever; and in the second Blair, Hayward, and Bennet could not
conceivably be connected with a failure. She had even regretted in her
own mind, in passing, that his triumph would take place over at Norton
and not at Milford, where everyone might be there to see.

So that the first hint of doubt came as a surprise to her. Not a shock,
since she still could not visualize the prospect of failure. But
definitely as a new thought.

"But, Robert," she said, sweeping her foot round under the table in an
effort to locate her footstool, "you don't suppose for a moment that you
are going to lose the case, do you?"

"On the contrary," Robert said, "I don't suppose for a moment that we
shall win it."

"Robert!"

"In trial by jury it is customary to have a case to put to the jury. So
far we have no case. And I don't think that the jury is going to like
that at all."

"You sound quite pettish, dear. I think you are allowing the thing to
get on your nerves. Why don't you take tomorrow afternoon off and
arrange a golf four? You have hardly golfed at all lately and it can't
be good for your liver. Not golfing, I mean."

"I can't believe," Robert said wonderingly, "that I was ever interested
in the fate of a 'piece of gutta-percha' on a golf course. That must
have been in some other life."

"That is what I say, dear. You are losing your sense of proportion.

Allowing this affair to worry you quite unnecessarily. After all, you
have Kevin."

"That I take leave to doubt."

"What do you mean, dear?"

"I can't imagine Kevin taking time off and travelling down to Norton to
defend a case that he is foreordained to lose. He has his quixotic
moments, but they don't entirely obliterate his common sense."

"But Kevin promised to come."

"When he made that promise there was still time for a defence to
materialize. Now we can almost count the days to the Assizes and still
we have no evidence and no prospect of any."

Miss Bennet eyed him over her soup spoon. "I don't think, you know,
dear," she said, "that you have enough faith."

Robert refrained from saying that he had almost none at all. Not,
anyhow, where divine intervention in The Franchise affair was concerned.

"Have faith, my dear," she said happily, "and it will all come right.

You'll see." The charged silence that succeeded this evidently worried
her a little, for she added: "If I had known you were doubtful or
unhappy about the case, dear, I should have said extra prayers about it
long ago. I am afraid I took it for granted that you and Kevin would
manage it between you." "It" being British justice. "But now that I know
you are worrying about it I shall almost certainly put up some special
petitions."

The matter-of-fact application-for-relief tone with which this was
uttered restored Robert's good humour.

"Thank you, darling," he said in his normal good-natured voice.

She laid the spoon down on her empty plate and sat back; and a small
teasing smile appeared on her round, pink face. "I know that tone,"

she said. "It means that you're humouring me. But there's no need to,
you know. It's I who am right about this, and you are wrong. It says
quite distinctly that faith will move mountains. The difficulty always
is that it takes a quite colossal faith to move a mountain, and it is
practically impossible to assemble so large a faith; so mountains are
practically never moved. But in lesser cases like the present one it is
possible to have enough faith for the occasion. So instead of being
deliberately hopeless, dear, do try to have some confidence in the
event. Meanwhile I shall go along to St. Matthew's this evening and
spend a little time praying that you will be given a piece of evidence
tomorrow morning. That will make you feel happier."

When Alec Ramsden walked into his room next morning with the piece of
evidence, Robert's first thought was that nothing could prevent Aunt Lin
taking credit for it. Nor was there any hope of his not mentioning it,
since the first thing she would ask him at luncheon, in bright,
confident tones, would be: "Well, dear, did you get the evidence I
prayed for?"

Ramsden was both pleased with himself and amused; so much could be
translated, at any rate, from the Ramsden idiom into common knowledge.

"I had better confess frankly, Mr. Blair, that when you sent me to that
school I had no great hopes. I went because it seemed to be as good a
starting-place as any, and I might find out from the staff some good way
of getting acquainted with Rees. Or, rather, letting one of my boys get
acquainted. I had even worked out how we could get printed letters from
her without any fuss, once one of my boys got off with her. But you're a
wonder, Mr. Blair, You had the right idea after all."

"You mean you've got what we wanted!"

"I saw her form mistress and was quite frank about what we wanted and
why. Well, as frank as need be. I said Gladys was suspected of perjury -
a penal servitude affair - but that we thought she'd been blackmailed
into giving evidence, and to prove it was blackmail we needed a sample
of any printed letters she ever wrote. Well, when you sent me there I
took it for granted that she would not have printed a single letter
since she left the kindergarten. But the form mistress - a Miss Baggaly
- said to give her a minute to think. 'Of course," she said, 'she was
very good at drawing, and if I have nothing perhaps the visiting
art-mistress might have something. We like to keep good work when our
pupils produce it." As a comfort for all the duds they have to put up
with, I suppose, poor things. Well, I didn't have to see the
art-mistress, because Miss Baggaly hunted through some things and
produced this."

He laid a sheet of paper down on the desk in front of Robert. It
appeared to be a free-hand map of Canada, showing the principal
divisions, towns, and rivers. It was inaccurate but very neat. Across
the bottom was printed DOMINION OF CANADA. And in the right-hand corner
was the signature: Gladys Rees.

"It seems that every summer, at breaking-up time, they have an
exhibition of work, and they normally keep the exhibits until the next
exhibition the following year. I suppose it would seem too callous just
to toss them out the day after. Or perhaps they keep them to show to
visiting big-wigs and inspectors. Anyhow, there were drawers full of the
stuff. This," he indicated the map, "was a product of a competition -
'Draw a map of any country from memory in twenty minutes' - and the
three prize-winners had their answers exhibited. 'This was a "third
equal".'"

"I can hardly believe it," Robert said, feasting his eyes on Gladys
Rees's handiwork.

"Miss Baggaly was right about her being good with her hands. Funny when
she stayed so illiterate. You can see where they corrected her dotted
capital I's."

You could indeed. Robert was gloating over the place.

"She has no mind, the girl, but a good eye," he said, considering
Gladys's idea of Canada. "She remembered the shape of things, but not
the names. And the spelling is entirely her own. I suppose the 'third
equal' was for the neat work."

"Neat work for us, anyhow," Ramsden said, laying down the scrap of paper
that had come with the watch. "Let us be thankful she didn't choose
Alaska."

"Yes," Robert said. "A miracle." (Aunt Lin's miracle, his mind said.)
"Who is the best man at this sort of thing?"

Ramsden told him.

"I'll take it up to town with me now, tonight, and have the report
before morning, and I'll take it round to Mr. Macdermott at
breakfast-time, if that's all right with you."

"Right?" said Robert. "It's perfect."

"I think it might be a good idea to finger-print them too - and the
little cardboard box. There are judges who don't like handwriting
experts, but the two together would convince even a judge."

"Well," Robert said, handing them over, "at least my clients are not
going to be sentenced to hard labour."

"There's nothing like looking on the bright side," Ramsden commented
dryly; and Robert laughed.

"You think I'm ungrateful for such a dispensation. I'm not. It's a
terrific load off my mind. But the real load is still there. Proving
that Rose Glyn is a thief, liar, and blackmailer - with perjury thrown
in as a sideline - leaves Betty Kane's story still untouched. And it is
Betty Kane's story that we set out to disprove."

"There's still time," Ramsden said, but halfheartedly.

"About all there is time for is a miracle."

"Well? Why not? They happen. Why shouldn't they happen to us? What time
shall I telephone you tomorrow?"

But it was Kevin who telephoned on the morrow, full of congratulations
and jubilation. "You're a marvel, Rob. I'll make mincemeat of them."

Yes, it would be a lovely little exercise in cat-and-mouse play for
Kevin; and the Sharpes would walk out of the court "free". Free to go
back to their haunted house and their haunted existence; two half-mad
witches who had once threatened and beaten a girl.

"You don't sound very gay, Rob. Is it getting you down?"

Robert said what he was thinking: that the Sharpes saved from prison
would still be in a prison of Betty Kane's making.

"Perhaps not, perhaps not," Kevin said. "I'll do my best with the Kane
over that howler about the divided path. Indeed, if Miles Allison
weren't prosecuting I could probably break her with it; but Miles will
probably be quick enough to retrieve the situation. Cheer up, Rob. At
the very least her credit will be seriously shaken."

But shaking Betty Kane's credit was not enough. He knew just how little
effect that would have on the general public. He had had a large
experience lately of the woman-in-the-street and had been appalled by
the general inability to analyse the simplest statement.

Even if the newspapers were to report that small bit about the view from
the window - and they would probably be much too busy reporting the more
sensational matter of Rose Glyn's perjury - even if they reported it, it
would have no effect on the average reader. "They tried to put her in
the wrong, but they were very quickly put in their place." That is all
it would convey to them.

Kevin might successfully shake Betty Kane's credit with the Court, the
reporters, the officials, and any critical minds who happened to be
present; but on the present evidence he could do nothing to alter the
strong feelings of partisanship that Betty Kane's case had aroused
throughout the country. The Sharpes would stay condemned.

And Betty Kane would "get away with it".

That to Robert was a thought that was even worse than the prospect of
the Sharpes' haunted life. Betty Kane would go on being the centre of an
adoring family - secure, loved, hero-worshipped. The once easy-going
Robert grew homicidal at the thought.

He had had to confess to Aunt Lin that a piece of evidence had turned up
at the time specified in her prayers, but had pusillanimously refrained
from telling her that the said evidence was good enough to destroy the
police case. She would call that winning the case; and "winning" to
Robert meant something very different.

To Nevil, too, it seemed. And for the first time since young Bennet came
to occupy the back room that used to be his, Robert thought of him as an
ally, a communal spirit. To Nevil, too, it was unthinkable that Betty
Kane should "get away with it". And Robert was surprised all over again
at the murderous rage that fills the pacifist-minded when their
indignation is roused. Nevil had a special way of saying "Betty Kane":
as if the syllables were some poison he put in his mouth by mistake and
he was spitting it out. "Poisonous", too, was his favourite epithet for
her - "that poisonous creature". Robert found him very comforting.

But there was little comfort in the situation. The Sharpes had accepted
the news of their probable escape from a prison sentence with the same
dignity that had characterized their acceptance of everything, from
Betty Kane's first accusation to the serving of a summons and an
appearance in the dock. But they too realized that the thing would be
escape but not vindication. The police case would break down and they
would get their verdict. But they would get it because in English law
there was no middle course. In a Scots court the verdict would be Not
Proven. And that, in fact, would be what the result of the Assizes
verdict next week would amount to: merely that the police had not had
good enough evidence to prove their case, not that the case was
necessarily a bad one.

It was when the Assizes were only four days away that he confessed to
Aunt Lin that the evidence did suffice to defeat the charge. The growing
worry on that round, pink face was too much for him. He had meant merely
to give her that sop and leave the matter there; but instead he found
himself pouring it all out to her as he had poured out his troubles as a
small boy, in the days when Aunt Lin was an omniscient and omnipotent
angel and not just kind, silly Aunt Lin. She listened to this unexpected
torrent of words so different from the normal phrases of their meal-time
intercourse in surprised silence, her jewel-blue eyes attentive and
concerned.

"Don't you see, Aunt Lin, it isn't victory; it's defeat," he finished.

"It's a travesty of justice. It isn't a verdict we're fighting for; it's
justice. And we have no hope of getting it. Not a ghost of a hope!"

"But why didn't you tell me all this, dear? Did you think I would not
understand or agree, or something?"

"Well, you didn't feel as I did about --"

"Just because I didn't much like the look of those people at The
Franchise - I must confess, dear, even now, that they aren't the kind of
people I naturally take to - just because I didn't much like them
doesn't mean that I am indifferent to seeing justice done, surely?"

"No, of course not; but you said quite frankly that you found Betty
Kane's story believable, and so --"

"That," said Aunt Lin calmly, "was before the police court."

"The court? But you weren't at the court."

"No, dear, but Colonel Whittaker was, and he didn't like the girl at
all."

"Didn't he, indeed?"

"No. He was quite eloquent about it. He said he had once had a
what-do-you-call-it - a lance-corporal in his regiment, or battalion or
something, who was exactly like Betty Kane. He said he was an injured
innocent who set the whole battalion by the ears and was more trouble
than a dozen hard-cases. Such a nice expression: hard-cases, isn't it?
He finished up in the greenhouse, Colonel Whittaker said."

"The glasshouse."

"Well, something like that. And as for the Glyn girl from Staples, he
said that one glance at her and you automatically began to reckon the
number of lies there would be per sentence. He didn't like the Glyn girl
either. So you see, dear, you needn't have thought that I would be
unsympathetic about your worry. I am just as interested in 'abstract
justice' as you are, I assure you. And I shall redouble my prayers for
your success. I was going over to the Gleasons' garden party this
afternoon, but I shall go along to St. Matthew's instead and spend a
quiet hour there. I think it is going to rain in any case. It always
does rain at the Gleasons' garden party, poor things."

"Well, Aunt Lin, I don't deny we need your prayers. Nothing short of a
miracle can save us now."

"Well, I shall pray for the miracle."

"A last-minute reprieve with the rope round the hero's neck? That
happens only in detective stories and the last few minutes of
horse-operas."

"Not at all. It happens every day somewhere in the world. If there was
some way of finding out and adding up the times it happens you would no
doubt be surprised. Providence does take a hand, you know, when other
methods fail. You haven't enough faith, my dear, as I pointed out
before."

"I don't believe that an angel of the Lord is going to appear in my
office with an account of what Betty Kane was doing for that month, if
that is what you mean, "Robert said.

"The trouble with you, dear, is that you think of an angel of the Lord
as a customer with wings, whereas he is probably a scruffy little man in
a bowler hat. Anyhow, I shall pray very hard this afternoon, and tonight
too, of course; and by tomorrow perhaps help will be sent."

CHAPTER 20.

The angel of the Lord was not, as it turned out, a scruffy little man,
and his hat was a regrettably Continental affair of felt with a tightly
rolled brim turned up all round. He arrived at Blair, Hayward, and
Bennet's about half-past eleven the following morning.

"Mr. Robert," old Mr. Heseltine said, putting his head in at Robert's
door, "there's a Mr. Lange in the office to see you. He --"

Robert, who was busy and not expecting angels of the Lord, and quite
used to strangers turning up in the office and wanting to see him, said:
"What does he want? I'm busy."

"He didn't say. He just said he would like to see you if you were not
too busy."

"Well, I'm scandalously busy. Find out tactfully what he wants, will
you? If it is nothing important Nevil can deal with it."

"Yes, I'll find out; but his English is very thick and he doesn't seem
very willing to --"

"English? You mean, he has a lisp?"

"No, I mean his pronunciation of English isn't very good. He --"

"The man's a foreigner, you mean?"

"Yes. He comes from Copenhagen."

"Copenhagen! Why didn't you tell me that before I --"

"You didn't give me a chance, Mr. Robert."

"Show him in, Timmy, show him in. Oh, merciful heaven, do fairy-tales
come true?"

Mr. Lange was rather like one of the Norman pillars of Notre Dame.

Just as round, just as high, just as solid and just as
dependable-looking. Far away at the top of this great round, solid,
erect pillar his face shone with friendly rectitude.

"Mr. Blair?" he said. "My name is Lange. I apologize for bothering you"
- he failed to manage the "th" "but it was important.

Important to you, I mean. At least, yes I think."

"Sit down, Mr. Lange."

"Thank you, thank you. It is warm, is it not? This is perhaps the day
you have your summer?" He smiled on Robert. "That is an idiom of the
English, that joke about one-day summer. I am greatly interested in the
English idiom. It is because of my interest in English idiom that I come
to see you."

Robert's heart sank to his heels with the plummet swoop of an express
lift. Fairy-tales, indeed. No; fairy-tales stay fairy-tales.

"Yes?"he said, encouragingly.

"I keep an hotel in Copenhagen, Mr. Blair. The hotel of the Red Shoes it
is called. Not, of course, because anyone wears red shoes there, but
because of a tale of Andersen, which you perhaps may --"

"Yes, yes," Robert said. "It has become one of our tales too."

"Ah, so! Yes. A great man, Andersen. So simple a man and now so
international. It is a thing to marvel at. But I waste your time, Mr.

Blair, I waste your time. What was I saying?"

"About English idiom."

"Ah, yes. To study English is my hubby."

Hobby, "Robert said involuntarily.

"Hobby. Thank you. For my bread and butter I keep an hotel and because
my father and his father kept one before me but for a hub -- a hobby?
yes, thank you ... for a hobby I study the idiomatic English.

So every day the newspapers that they leave about are brought to me."

"They?"

"The English visitors."

"Ah, yes."

"In the evening when they have retired the page collects the English
papers and leaves them in my office. I am busy, often, and I do not have
time to look at them, and so they go into the pile and when I have
leisure I pick one up and study it. Do I make myself clear, Mr.

Blair?"

"Perfectly, perfectly, Mr. Lange." A faint hope was rising again.

Newspapers?

"So it goes on. A few moments of leisure, a little reading in an English
paper, a new idiom - perhaps two - all very without excitement.

How do you say that?"

"Placid."

"So. Placid. And then one day I take this paper from the pile, just as I
might take any of the others, and I forget all about idiom." He took
from his capacious pocket a once-folded copy of the Ack-Emma, and spread
it in front of Robert on the desk. It was the issue of Friday, May the
10th, with the photograph of Betty Kane occupying two-thirds of the
page. "I look at this photograph. Then I look inside and read the story.
Then I say to myself that this is most extraordinary. Most extraordinary
it is. The paper say this is the photograph of Betty Kann. Kann?"

"Kane."

"Ah. So. Betty Kane. But it is also the photograph of Mrs. Chadwick, who
stay at my hotel with her husband."

"What!"

Mr. Lange looked pleased. "You are interested? I so hoped you might be.
I did so hope."

"Go on. Tell me."

"A fortnight they stayed with me. And it was most extraordinary, Mr.

Blair, because while that poor girl was being beaten and starved in an
English attic, Mrs. Chadwick was eating like a young wolf at my hotel -
the cream that girl could eat, Mr. Blair, even I, a Dane, was surprised
- and enjoying herself very much."

"Yes?"

"Well, I said to myself: It is after all a photograph. And although it
is just the way she looked when she let down her hair to come to the
ball --"

"Let it down!"

"Yes. She wore her hair brushed up, you see. But we had a ball with
costume -- costume?"

"Yes. Fancy Dress."

"Ah. So. Fancy dress. And for her fancy dress she lets her hair hang
down. Just like that there." He tapped the photograph. "So I say to
myself: It is a photograph, after all. How often has one seen a
photograph that does not in the least resemble the real person. And what
has this girl in the paper to do, possibly, with little Mrs.

Chadwick, who is here with her husband during that time! So I am
reasonable to myself. But I do not throw away the paper. No; I keep it.
And now and then I look at it. And each time I look at it I think: But
that is Mrs. Chadwick. So I am still puzzled, and going to sleep I think
about it when I should be thinking about tomorrow's marketing. I seek
explanation from myself. Twins, perhaps? But no; the Betty girl is an
only child. Cousins. Coincidence. Doubles. I think of them all. At night
I look at the photograph, and all come to pieces again. I think: But
certainly beyond a doubt that is Mrs.

Chadwick. You see my dilemma?"

"Perfectly."

"So when I am coming to England on business, I put the newspaper with
the Arabic name --"

"Arabic? Oh yes, I see. I didn't mean to interrupt."

"I put it into my bag, and after dinner one night I take it out and show
it to my friend where I am staying. I am staying with a compatriot of
mine in Bayswater, London. And my friend is instantly very excited and
say: But it is now a police affair, and these women say that never have
they seen the girl before. They have been arrested for what they are
supposed to have done to this girl and they are about to be tried for
it. And he calls to his wife: 'Rita! Rita! Where is the paper of a week
last Tuesday?" It is the kind of household, my friend's, where there is
always a paper of a week last Tuesday. And his wife comes with it and he
shows me the account of the trial - no, the - the --"

"Court appearance."

"Yes. The appearance in court of the two women. And I read how the trial
is to be at some place in the country in a little more than a fortnight.
Well, by now, that would be in a very few days. So my friend say: How
sure are you, Einar, that that girl and your Mrs.

Chadwick are one? And I say: Very sure indeed I am. So he say: Here in
the paper is the name of the solicitor for the women. There is no
address, but this Milford is a very small place and he will be easy to
find. We shall have coffee early tomorrow - that is breakfast - and you
will go down to this Milford and tell what you think to this Mr. Blair.

So here I am, Mr. Blair. And you are interested in what I say?"

Robert sat back, took out his handkerchief, and mopped his forehead. "Do
you believe in miracles, Mr. Lange?"

"But of course. I am a Christian. Indeed, although I am not yet very old
I have myself seen two."

"Well, you have just taken part in a third."

"So?" Mr. Lange beamed. "That makes me very content."

"You have saved our bacon."

"Bacon?"

"An English idiom. You have not only saved our bacon. You have
practically saved our lives."

"You think then, as I think, that they are are one person, that girl and
my guest at the Red Shoes?"

"I haven't a doubt of it. Tell me, have you the dates of her stay with
you?"

"Oh yes, indeed. Here they are. She and her husband arrived by air on
Friday the 29th of March, and they left again by air, I think, though of
that I am not so certain on the 15th of April, a Monday."

"Thank you. And her 'husband', what did he look like?"

"Young. Dark. Good-looking. A little - now, what is the word?

Too-bright. Gaudy? No."

"Flashy?"

"Ah. There is it - flashy. A little flashy, I think. I observe that he
was not greatly approved of by the other Englishmen who came and went."

"Was he just on holiday?"

"No, oh no. He was in Copenhagen on business."

"What kind of business?"

"That I do not know, I regret."

"Can't you even make a guess? What would he be most likely to be
interested in in Copenhagen?"

"That depends, Mr. Blair, on whether he was interested in buying or
selling."

"What was his address in England?"

"London."

"Beautifully explicit. Will you forgive me a moment while I telephone?

Do you smoke?" He opened the cigarette box and pushed it towards Mr.

Lange. "Milford 195. You will do me the honour of having lunch with me,
Mr. Lange, won't you? -- Aunt Lin? I have to go to London directly after
lunch ... Yes, for the night. Will you be an angel and pack a small bag
for me? ... Thank you, darling. And would it be all right if I brought
someone back to take pot-luck for lunch today? ... Oh, good Yes, I'll
ask him."

He covered the mouthpiece, and said: "My aunt, who is actually my
cousin, wants to know if you eat pastry?"

"Mr. Blair!" Mr. Lange said, with a wide smile and wide gesture for his
girth. "And you ask a Dane?"

"He loves it," Robert said into the telephone. "And I say, Aunt Lin.

Were you doing anything important this afternoon? ... Because what I
think you ought to do is go to St. Matthew's and give thanks. Your angel
of the Lord has arrived."

Even Mr. Lange could hear Aunt Lin's delighted: "Robert! No, not
really!"

"In the flesh ... No, not a bit scruffy ... Very tall and beautiful and
altogether perfect for the part ... You'll give him a good lunch, won't
you? ... Yes, that's who is coming to lunch. An angel of the Lord."

He put down the telephone and looked up at the amused Mr. Lange.

"And now, Mr. Lange, let us go over to the Rose and Crown and have some
bad beer."

CHAPTER 21.

When Robert went out to The Franchise, three days later, to drive the
Sharpes over to Norton for the Assizes on the morrow, he found an almost
bridal atmosphere about the place. Two absurd tubs of yellow wallflowers
stood at the top of the steps, and the dark hall gleamed with flowers
like a church decorated for a wedding.

"Nevil!" Marion said, with an explanatory wave of her hand to the massed
glory. "He said the house should been fete."

"I wish that I had thought of it," Robert said.

"After the last few days, it surprises me that you can think at all. If
it were not for you, it is not rejoicing we should be today!"

"If it weren't for a man called Bell, you mean."

"Bell?"

"Alexander Bell. He invented the telephone. If it weren't for that
invention we should still be groping in the dark. It will be months
before I can look at a telephone without blanching."

"Did you take turn about?"

"Oh no. We each had our own. Kevin and his clerk at his chambers, me at
his little place in St. Paul's Churchyard, Alec Ramsden and three of his
men at his office and wherever they could find a telephone that they
could use uninterruptedly."

"That was six of you."

"Seven of us with six telephones. And we needed them!"

"Poor Robert!"

"At first it was fun. We were filled with the exhilaration of the hunt,
of knowing that we were on the right track. Success was practically in
our laps. But by the time we had made sure that none of the Chadwicks in
the London telephone book had any connexion with a Chadwick who had
flown to Copenhagen on the 29th of March and that all the air line knew
about him was that two seats had been booked from Larborough on the
27th, we had lost any feeling of fun we had started with. The Larborough
information cheered us, of course. But after that it was pure slog. We
found out what we sold to Denmark and what she bought from us, and
divided them up between us."

"The merchandise?"

"No, the buyers and sellers. The Danish tourist office was a godsend.

They just poured information at us. Kevin, his clerk, and I took the
exports, and Ramsden and his men took the imports. From then on it was a
tedious business of being put through to managers and asking: 'Have you
a man called Bernard Chadwick working for you?" The number of firms who
haven't got a Bernard Chadwick working for them is unbelievable. But I
know a lot more about our exports to Denmark than I did before."

"I have no doubt of it!"

"I was so sick of the telephone that when it rang at my end I nearly
didn't pick it up. I had almost forgotten that telephones were two-way.
A telephone was just a sort of quiz instrument that I could plug into
offices all over the country. I stared at it for quite a while before I
realized that it was, after all, a mutual affair and that someone was
trying to call me for a change."

"And it was Ramsden."

"Yes, it was Alec Ramsden. He said: 'We've got him. He buys porcelain
and stuff for Brayne, Havard and Co.'"

"I am glad it was Ramsden who unearthed him. It will compensate fort him
for his failure to run down the girl."

"Yes, he's feeling better about it now. After that it was a rush to
interview the people we needed and to obtain subpoenas and what not.

But the whole lovely result will be waiting for us in the court at
Norton tomorrow. Kevin can hardly wait. His mouth waters at the
prospect."

"If it was ever in my power to be sorry for that girl," Mrs. Sharpe
said, coming in with an over-night bag and dumping it on a mahogany
wall-table in a way that would have turned Aunt Lin faint, "it would be
in a witness-box facing a hostile Kevin Macdermott."

Robert noticed that the bag, which had originally been a very elegant
and expensive one - a relic of her prosperous early married life,
perhaps - was now deplorably shabby. He decided that when he married
Marion his present to the bride's mother would be a dressing-case -
small, light, elegant, and expensive.

"It will never be in my power," Marion said, "to have even a passing
sensation of sorrow for that girl. I would swat her off the earth's face
as I would swat a moth in a cupboard except that I am always sorry about
the moth."

"What had the girl intended to do?" Mrs. Sharpe asked. "Had she intended
to go back to her people at all?"

"I don't think so," Robert said. "I think she was still filled with rage
and resentment at ceasing to be the centre of interest at 39 Meadowside
Lane. It is as Kevin said long ago: crime begins in egoism, inordinate
vanity. A normal girl, even an emotional adolescent, might be
heart-broken that her adopted brother no longer considered her the most
important thing in his life; but she would work it out in sobs or sulks
or being difficult, or deciding that she was going to renounce the world
and go into a convent, or half a dozen other methods that the adolescent
uses in the process of adjustment. But with an egoism like Betty Kane's
there is no adjustment. She expects the world to adjust itself to her.
The criminal always does, by the way. There was never a criminal who
didn't consider himself ill-done by."

"A charming creature," Mrs. Sharpe said. "Yes. Even the Bishop of
Larborough would find some difficulty in thinking up a case for her.

His usual 'environment' hobby-horse is no good this time. Betty Kane had
everything that he recommends for the cure of the criminal: love,
freedom to develop her talents, education, security. It's quite a poser
for his lordship when you come to consider it, because he doesn't
believe in heredity. He thinks that criminals are made and therefore can
be unmade. 'Bad blood' is just an old superstition in the Bishop's
estimation."

"Toby Byrne," Mrs. Sharpe said with a snort. "You should have heard
Charles' stable lads on him."

"I've heard Nevil," Robert said. "I doubt if anyone could improve on
Nevil's version of the subject."

"Is the engagement definitely broken, then?" Marion asked.

"Definitely. Aunt Lin has hopes of the eldest Whittaker girl. She is a
niece of Lady Mountleven and a grand-daughter of Karr's Krisps."

Marion laughed with him. "Is she nice, the Whittaker girl?" she asked.

"Yes. Fair, pretty, well-brought-up, musical, but doesn't sing."

"I should like Nevil to get a nice wife. All he needs is some permanent
interest of his own. A focus for his energies and his emotions."

"At the moment the focus for both is The Franchise."

"I know. He has been a dear to us. Well, I suppose it is time that we
were going. If anyone had told me last week that I should be leaving The
Franchise to go to a triumph at Norton I wouldn't have believed it.

Poor Stanley can sleep in his own bed from now on, instead of guarding a
couple of hags in a lonely house."

"Isn't he sleeping here tonight?" Robert asked.

"No. Why should he?"

"I don't know. I don't like the idea of the house being left entirely
empty."

"The policeman will be round as usual on his beat. Anyhow, no one has
even tried to do anything since the night they smashed our windows. It
is only for tonight. Tomorrow we shall be home again."

"I know. But I don't like it. Couldn't Stanley stay one more night?

Until the case is over?"

"If they want to wreck our windows again" Mrs. Sharpe said, "I don't
suppose Stanley's being here will deter them."

"No, I suppose not. I'll remind Hallam, anyhow, that the house is empty
tonight," Robert said, and left it there.

Marion locked the door behind them, and they walked to the gate, where
Robert's car was waiting. At the gate Marion paused to look back at the
house. "It's an ugly old place," she said, "but it has one virtue.

It looks the same all the year round. At mid-summer the grass gets a
little burnt and tired-looking, but otherwise it doesn't change. Most
houses have a 'best' time - rhododendrons or herbaceous borders or
virginia creeper or almond blossom, or something. But The Franchise is
always the same. It has no frills. What are you laughing at, mother?"

"I was thinking how bedizened the poor thing looks with those tubs of
wallflower."

They stood there for a moment, laughing at the forbidding dirty-white
house with its incongruous decoration of frivolity; and laughing, shut
the gate on it.

But Robert did not forget; and before having dinner with Kevin at the
Feathers in Norton he called the police station at Milford and reminded
them that the Sharpes' house would be empty for that one night.

"All right, Mr. Blair," the sergeant said; "I'll tell the man on the
beat to open the gate and look round. Yes, we still have a key. That'll
be all right."

Robert did not quite see what that would achieve; but then he did not
see what protection could be afforded in any case. As Mrs. Sharpe had
said, if anyone was minded to break windows, then the windows would
inevitably be broken. He decided that he was being fussy and joined
Kevin and his law friends with relief.

The law talks well, and it was late before Robert went to bed in one of
the dark-panelled rooms that made the Feathers famous. The Feathers -
one of the "musts" of American visitors to Britain - was not only famous
but up to date. Pipes had been led through the linenfold oak, wires
through the beamed ceilings, and a telephone line through the oak planks
of the floor. The Feathers had been providing comfort for the travelling
public since 1480 and saw no reason why it should stop.

Robert fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow and the
telephone at his ear had been ringing for some moments before he became
aware of it.

"Well?" he said, still half-asleep. And became instantly wide awake.

It was Stanley. Could he come, back to Milford? The Franchise was on
fire.

"Badly?"

"It's got a good hold, but they think they can save it."

"I'll be over as soon as I can make it."

He made the twenty miles in a door-to-door time that the Robert Blair of
a month ago would have considered reprehensible in the achievement of
another and quite inconceivable as an achievement of his own. As he tore
past his own home at the lower end of Milford High Street and out into
the country beyond, he saw the glow against the horizon like the rising
of a full moon. But the moon hung in the sky, a young silver moon in the
pale summer night. And the glow of the burning Franchise wavered in
sickening gusts that tightened Robert's heart with remembered horror.

At least there was no one in the building. He wondered if anyone had
been there in time to rescue what was valuable from the house. Would
there be anyone there who could distinguish what was valuable from what
was worthless?

The gates were wide open and the courtyard - bright in the flames - was
crowded with the men and machines of the Fire Service. The first thing
he saw, incongruous on the grass, was the bead-work chair from the
drawing-room; and a wave of hysteria rose in him. Someone had saved
that, anyhow.

An almost unrecognizable Stanley grabbed his sleeve and said, "There you
are. I thought you ought to know, somehow." Sweat trickled down his
blackened face, leaving clear rivulets behind them, so that his young
face looked seamed and old. "There isn't enough water. We've got quite a
lot of the stuff out. All the drawing-room stuff that they used every
day. I thought that's what they'd want if it had to be a choice. And we
flung out some of the upstairs stuff, but all the heavy stuff has gone
up."

Mattresses and bed-linen were piled on the grass out of the way of the
firemen's boots. The furniture stood about on the grass as it had been
set down, looking surprised and lost.

"Let's take the furniture farther away," Stanley said. "It's not safe
where it is. Either some lighted bits will fall on it or one of those
bastards will use it to stand on." The bastards were the Fire Service,
doing their sweating and efficient best.

So Robert found himself prosaically carting furniture through a
fantastic scene, miserably identifying pieces that he had known in their
proper sphere. The chair that Mrs. Sharpe had considered Inspector Grant
too heavy for; the cherrywood table they had given Kevin luncheon at;
the wall-table that Mrs. Sharpe had dumped her bag down on only a few
hours ago. The roar and crackle of the flames, the shoutings of the
firemen, the odd mixture of moonlight, head-lights, and wavering flame,
the mad juxtaposition and irrelevance of the bits of furniture, reminded
him of how it felt to be coming round from an anaesthetic. And then two
things happened together. The first floor fell in with a crash. And as
the new spout of flame lit the faces round him he saw two youths
alongside whose countenances were alive with gloating. At the same
moment he became aware that Stanley had seen them too. He saw Stanley's
fist catch the farther one under the chin with a crack that could be
heard even over the noise of the flames, and the gloating face
disappeared into the darkness of the trampled grass.

Robert had not hit anyone since he gave up boxing when he left school,
and he had no intention of hitting anyone now. His left arm seemed to do
all that was necessary of its own accord. And the second leering face
went down into obscurity.

"Neat," remarked Stanley, sucking his broken knuckles. And then, "Look!"
he said.

The roof crumpled like a child's face when it is beginning to cry; like
a melting negative. The little round window, so famous and so
ill-reputed, leaned forward a little and sank slowly inwards. A tongue
of flame leapt up and fell again. Then the whole roof collapsed into the
seething mass below, falling two floors to join the red wreck of the
rest of the interior. The men moved back from the furnace heat.

The fire roared in unrestricted triumph into the summer night.

When at last it died away Robert noticed with a vague surprise that the
dawn had come. A calm, grey dawn, full of promise. Quiet had come too;
the roar and the shoutings had faded to the soft hiss of water on the
smoking skeleton. Only the four walls stood, blurred and grimy, in the
middle of the trampled grass. The four walls and the flight of steps
with their warped iron railing. On either side of the doorway stood what
remained of Nevil's gay little tubs, the soaked and blackened flowers
hanging in unrecognizable shreds over their edges.

Between them the square opening yawned into a black emptiness.

"Well," said Stanley, standing beside him, "that seems to be that."

"How did it begin?" asked Bill, who had arrived too late to see anything
but the wreck that was left.

"No one knows. It was well alight when P. C. Newsam arrived on his
beat," Robert said. "What became of those two chaps, by the way?"

"The two we corrected?" Stanley said. "They went home."

"It's a pity that expression is no evidence."

"Yes," Stanley said. "They won't get anyone for this, any more than they
got anyone for the window-breaking. And I still owe someone for a crack
on the head."

"You nearly broke that creature's neck tonight. That ought to be some
kind of compensation to you."

"How are you going to tell them? "Stanley said. This obviously referred
to the Sharpes.

"God knows," Robert said. "Am I to tell them first and let it spoil
their triumph in court for them; or am I to let them have their triumph
and face the awful comedown afterwards?"

"Let them have their triumph," Stanley said. "Don't mess it up."

"Perhaps you are right, Stan. I wish I knew. I had better book rooms at
the Rose and Crown for them."

"They wouldn't like that," Stan said.

"Perhaps not," Robert said a shade impatiently. "But they have no
choice. Whatever they decide to do they will want to stay here a night
or two to arrange about things, I expect. And the Rose and Crown is the
best available."

"Well," Stanley said, "I've been thinking. And I'm sure my landlady
would be glad to have them. She's always been on their side, and she has
a spare room, and they could have that sitting-room in front that she
never uses; and it's very quiet down there, that last row of Council
houses facing on the Meadows. I'm sure they'd rather have that than a
hotel where they would be stared at."

"They would indeed, Stan. I should never have thought of it. You think
your landlady would be willing?"

"I don't think; I'm sure. They're her greatest interest in life at the
moment. It would be like royalty coming to stay."

"Well, find out definitely, would you, and telephone me a message to
Norton? To the Feathers at Norton."

CHAPTER 22.

It seemed to Robert that at least half Milford had managed to pack
itself into the court at Norton. Certainly a great many citizens of
Norton were milling round the outer doors, vocal and frustrated; furious
that when a case of national interest was being decided at "their"
Assizes they should be done out of their right to witness it by an
influx of foreigners from Milford. Wily and deceitful foreigners, too,
who had suborned the Norton youth to keep places in the queue for them -
a piece of forethought which had not occurred to Norton adults. It was
very warm and the packed court stirred uneasily throughout the
preliminaries and through most of Miles Allison's account of the crime.

Allison was the antithesis of Kevin Macdermott, his fair, delicate face
that of a type rather than a person. His light, dry voice was
unemotional, his method matter-of-fact. And since the story he was
telling was one which they had all read about and discussed until it was
threadbare, they withheld their attention from him and amused themselves
by identifying friends in court.

Robert sat turning over an dover in his pocket the little oblong of
pasteboard that Christina had pressed into his hand on his departure
yesterday and rehearsing phrases for afterwards. The pasteboard was a
bright Reckitt's blue and bore in gold letters the words: NOT A SPARROW
SHALL FALL, and a picture in the right upper corner of a robin with an
outsize red breast. How, wondered Robert, turning the little text over
an dover in his fingers, did you tell someone that they had no home any
more?

The sudden movement of a hundred bodies and the subsequent silence
brought him back to the court-room, and he realized that Betty Kane was
taking the oath preparatory to giving evidence. "Never kissed anything
but the book," Ben Carley had said of her appearance on a similar
occasion. And that is what she looked like today. The blue outfit still
made one think of youth and innocence, speedwell and camp-fire smoke and
harebells in the grass. The tilted-back brim of her hat still showed the
childish forehead with its charming hair line. And Robert, who knew now
all about her life in the weeks she was missing, found himself being
surprised all over again at sight of her.

Plausibility was one of the first endowments of the criminal; but up to
now such plausibility as he had had to deal with was of the
old-soldier-ten-bob-note kind easily recognized for what it was, the
work of amateurs at the job. It occurred to him that for the first time
he was seeing the real thing at work.

Once again she gave her evidence in model fashion, her clear young voice
audible to everyone in court. Once again she had her audience breathless
and motionless. The only difference this time was that the Bench was not
doting. The Bench, indeed, if one was to judge by the expression on the
face of Mr. Justice Saye, was very far from doting.

And Robert wondered how much the judge's critical gaze was due to
natural distaste for the subject and how much to the conclusion that
Kevin Macdermott would not be sitting there ready to defend the two
women in the dock unless they had a thundering good defence.

The girl's own account of her sufferings did what her counsel's had not
done: roused the audience to an emotional reaction. More than once they
had given vent to a united sigh, a murmur of indignation; never overt
enough to rank as a demonstration, and so bring down the Court's rebuke,
but audible enough to show which way their sympathies lay. So that it
was in a charged atmosphere that Kevin rose to cross-examine.

"Miss Kane," began Kevin in his gentlest drawl, "you say that it was
dark when you arrived at The Franchise. Was it really so dark?"

This question, with its coaxing tone, made her think that he did not
want it to be dark, and she reacted as he intended. "Yes. Quite dark,"
she said.

"Too dark to see the outside of the house?"

"Yes, much too dark."

He appeared to give that up and try a new tack.

"Then the night you escaped. Perhaps that was not quite dark?"

"Oh yes. that was even darker, if possible."

"So that you could not possibly have seen the outside of the house on
some occasion?"

"Never."

"Never. Well, having settled that point, let us consider what you say
you could see from the window of your prison in the attic. You said in
your statement to the police, when you were describing this unknown
place where you were imprisoned, that the carriage-way from the gate to
the door 'went straight for a little and then divided in two into a
circle up to the door.'"

"Yes."

"How did you know it did that?"

"How did I know it? I could see it."

"From where?"

"From the window in the attic. It looked out on the courtyard in front
of the house."

"But from the window in the attic it is possible to see only the
straight part of the carriage-way. The edge of the roof cuts off the
rest. How did you know that the carriage-way divided in two and made a
circle up to the door?"

"I saw it!"

"How?"

"From that window."

"You want us to understand that you see on a different principle from
ordinary beings? On the principle of the Irishman's gun that shoots
round corners. Or is it all done by mirrors?"

"It is the way I described!"

"Certainly it is the way you described; but what you described was the
view of the courtyard as seen by, let us say, someone looking over the
wall at it; not by someone looking at it from the window in the attic
which you assure us was your only view of it."

"I take it," said the Court, "that you have a witness to the extent of
the view from the window."

"Two, my lord."

"One with normal vision will be sufficient," said the Court dryly.

"So you cannot explain how, speaking to the police that day in
Aylesbury, you described a peculiarity that you could not possibly have
known about if your story was true. Have you ever been abroad, Miss
Kane?"

"Abroad?" she said, surprised by the change of subject. "No."

"Never?"

"No, never."

"You have not, for instance, been to Denmark lately? To Copenhagen, for
instance."

"No." There was no change in her expression, but Robert thought that
there was the faintest uncertainty in her voice.

"Do you know a man called Bernard Chadwick?"

She was suddenly wary. Robert was reminded of the subtle change in an
animal that has been relaxed and becomes attentive. There is no
alteration in pose, no actual physical change. On the contrary, there is
only an added stillness, an awareness. "No." The tone was colourless,
uninterested.

"He is not a friend of yours."

"No."

"You did not, for instance, stay with him at a hotel in Copenhagen?"

"No."

"Have you stayed with anyone in Copenhagen?"

"No, I have never been abroad at all."

"So that if I were to suggest that you spent those missing weeks in a
hotel in Copenhagen and not in an attic at The Franchise, I should be
mistaken."

"Quite mistaken."

"Thank you."

Miles Allison, as Kevin had anticipated, rose to retrieve the situation.

"Miss Kane," he said, "you arrived at The Franchise by car."

"Yes."

"And that car, you say in your statement, was driven up to the door of
the house. Now, if it was dark, as you say, there must have been
side-lights on the car, if not head-lights; which would illuminate not
only the carriage-way but most of the courtyard."

"Yes," she broke in, before he could put it to her, "yes, of course I
must have seen the circle then. I knew I had seen it, I knew it."

She glanced at Kevin for a moment, and Robert was reminded of her face
when she saw that she had guessed correctly about the suitcases in the
cupboard that first day at The Franchise. If she knew what Kevin had
waiting for her, Robert thought, she would have no spare thought for a
passing triumph.

She was succeeded in the witness-box by Carley's "oleograph", who had
bought both a new frock and a new hat for her appearance at Norton - a
tomato-red frock and a puce hat with a cobalt ribbon and a pink rose -
and looked more luscious and more revolting than ever. Again Robert was
interested to note how her relish of her part discounted, even with this
more emotional audience, the effect of what she said. They didn't like
her, and in spite of their parti pris attitude their English distrust of
malice cooled their minds towards her. When Kevin, cross-examining,
suggested that she had in fact been dismissed and had not 'given in her
notice' at all, there was a So-that's-it! expression on every second
face in court. Apart from an attempt to shake her credit, there was not
much that Kevin could do with her, and he let her go. He was waiting for
her poor stooge.

The stooge, when she arrived, looked even less happy than she had looked
in the police court at Milford. The much more impressive array of robes
and wigs clearly shook her. Police uniforms were bad enough, but in
retrospect they seemed positively home-like compared with this solemn
atmosphere, this ritual. If she was out of her depth in Milford, she was
obviously drowning here. Robert saw Kevin's considering eye on her,
analysing and understanding; deciding on his approach. She had been
scared stiff by Miles Allison in spite of his patient quietness,
evidently regarding anything in a wig and gown as hostile and a
potential dispenser of penalties. So Kevin became her wooer and
protector.

It was positively indecent, the caress that Kevin could get into his
voice, Robert thought, listening to his first sentences to her. The
soft, unhurried syllables reassured her. She listened for a moment and
then began to relax. Robert saw the small, skinny hands that had been
clutched so tightly together on the rail of the box slacken and spread
slowly to a prone position.

He was asking about her school. The fright had faded from her eyes and
she was answering quite calmly. Here, she quite obviously felt, was a
friend.

"Now, Gladys, I am going to suggest to you that you did not want to come
here today and give evidence against these two people at The Franchise."

"No, I didn't. Indeed I didn't!"

"But you came," he said; not accusing, just making the statement.

"Yes," she said, shamefaced.

"Why? Because you thought it was your duty?"

"No, oh no."

"Was it because someone forced you to come?"

Robert saw the judge's instant reaction to this, but so, out of the tail
of his eye, did Kevin. "Someone who held something over your head?"
finished Kevin smoothly, and his lordship paused. "Someone who said:
'You say what I tell you to say or I'll tell about you'?"

She looked half-hopeful, half-bewildered. "I don't know," she said,
falling back on the escape of the illiterate.

"Because if anyone made you tell lies by threatening what they would do
to you if you didn't, they can be punished for it."

This was clearly a new idea to her.

"This court, all these people you see here, have come here today to find
out the truth about something. And his lordship up there would deal very
sternly with anyone who had used threats to make you come here and say
something that was not true. What is more, there is a very heavy
punishment for persons who take an oath to speak truth and tell what is
not true; but if it so happened that they had been frightened into
telling lies by someone threatening them, then the person who would be
punished most would be the person who made the threats. Do you
understand that?"

"Yes," she said in a whisper.

"Now I am going to suggest to you what really happened, and you will
tell me whether I am right." He waited for her agreement, but she said
nothing, so he went on. "Someone - a friend of yours, perhaps - took
something from The Franchise. Let us say a watch. She did not want the
watch herself, perhaps, and so she handed it on to you. It may be that
you did not want to take it, but your friend is perhaps a domineering
person and you did not like to refuse her gift. So you took it. Now I
suggest that presently that friend proposed to you that you should back
up a story she was going to tell in court and you, being averse to
telling lies, said no. And that then she said to you: If you don't back
me up I shall say that you took that watch from The Franchise one day
when you came to see me' - or some other threat of that sort."

He paused a moment, but she merely looked bewildered.

"Now, I suggest that because of those threats you did actually go to a
police court and did actually back up your friend's untrue story, but
that when you got home you were sorry and ashamed. So sorry and ashamed
that the thought of keeping that watch any longer was unbearable to you.
And that you then wrapped up the watch and sent it back to The Franchise
by post with a note saying: 'I don't want none of it.'" He paused. "I
suggest to you, Gladys, that that is what really happened."

But she had had time to take fright. "No," she said. "No, I never had
that watch."

He ignored the admission and said smoothly: "I am quite wrong about
that?"

"Yes. It wasn't me sent back the watch."

He picked up a paper and said, still mildly: "When you were at that
school we were talking about, you were very good at drawing. So good
that you had things put up for show at the school exhibition. I have
here a map of Canada - a very neat map which was one of your exhibits
and which indeed won you a prize. You have signed it here in the
right-hand corner, and I have no doubt that you were proud to sign such
a neat piece of work. I expect you will remember it."

It was taken across the court to her, while Kevin added:

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it is a map of Canada which Gladys
Rees made in her last year at school. When his lordship has inspected it
he will no doubt pass it on to you." And then, to Gladys: "You made that
map yourself?"

"Yes."

"And wrote your name in the corner?"

"Yes."

"And printed DOMINION OF CANADA across the bottom?"

"Yes."

"You printed those letters across the bottom that read: DOMINION OF
CANADA. Good. Now, I have here the scrap of paper on which someone wrote
the words: I DON'T WANT NONE OF IT. This scrap of paper, with its
printed letters, was enclosed with the watch that was sent back to The
Franchise - the watch that had gone missing while Rose Glyn was working
there. And I suggest that the printing of I DON'T WANT NONE is the same
as the printing Of DOMINION OF CANADA. That it was written by the same
hand. And that that hand was yours."

"No," she said, taking the scrap of paper as it was handed to her and
putting it hastily down on the ledge as though it might sting her. "I
never. I never sent back no watch."

"You didn't print those letters that read: I DON'T WANT NONE OF IT?"

"No."

"But you did print those letters that read DOMINION OF CANADA?"

"Yes."

"Well, later in this case I shall bring evidence that these two
printings are by the same hand. In the meantime the jury can inspect
them at their leisure and arrive at their own conclusions. Thank you."

"My learned friend has suggested to you," said Miles Allison, "that
pressure was brought on you to come here. Is there any truth in that
suggestion?"

No."

"You did not come here because you were frightened of what might happen
to you if you didn't?"

She took some time to think over this, evidently disentangling it in her
mind. "No," she ventured at last.

"What you said in the witness-box at the police court and what you have
said today is the truth?"

"Yes."

"Not something that someone suggested you might say?"

"No."

But the impression that was left with the jury was just that: that she
was an unwilling witness repeating a story that was someone else's
invention.

That ended the evidence for the prosecution, and Kevin went straight on
with the matter of Gladys Rees on the housewife principle of "getting
her feet clear" before he began the real work of the day.

A handwriting expert gave evidence that the two samples of printing
which had been put into court were by the same hand. Not only had he no
doubt about it, but he had rarely been given an easier task. Not only
were letters duplicated in the two samples but combinations of letters
were similarly duplicated, combinations such as Do and AN and ON. As it
was evident that the jury had already made up their minds for themselves
on this point no one who saw the two samples could doubt that they were
by the same hand - Allison's suggestion that experts could be wrong was
automatic and half-hearted. Kevin demolished it by producing his
fingerprint witness, who deposed that the same fingerprints were to be
found on each. And Allison's suggestion that the fingerprints might not
be those of Gladys Rees was a last-stand effort. He had no wish that the
court might put it to the test.

Now that he had established the fact that Gladys Rees had, when she made
her first declaration, been in possession of a watch stolen from The
Franchise and had returned it immediately after that declaration with a
conscience-stricken note, Kevin was free to deal with Betty Kane's
story. Rose Glyn and her story had been sufficiently discredited for the
police to be already laying their heads together.

He could safely leave Rose to the police.

When Bernard William Chadwick was called there was a craning forward and
a murmur of interrogation. This was a name that the newspaper readers
did not recognize. What could he be doing in the case? What was he here
to say?

He was there to say that he was a buyer of porcelain, fine china, and
fancy goods of various kinds for a wholesale firm in London. That he was
married and lived with his wife in a house in Ealing.

"You travel for your firm?" Kevin said.

"Yes."

"In March this year did you pay a visit to Larborough?"

"Yes."

"While you were in Larborough did you meet Betty Kane?"

"Yes."

"How did you meet her?"

"She picked me up."

There was an instant and concerted protest from the body of the court.

Whatever discrediting Rose Glyn and her ally had suffered, Betty Kane
was still sacrosanct. Betty Kane, who looked so much like Bernadette,
was not to be spoken of lightly.

The judge rebuked them for the demonstration, involuntary though it had
been. He also rebuked witness. He was not quite clear, he inferred, what
"picking up" involved and would be grateful if the witness would confine
himself to standard English in his replies.

"Will you tell the court just how you did meet her," Kevin said.

"I had dropped into the Midland lounge for tea one day and sheer - began
to talk to me. She was having tea there."

"Alone?"

"Quite alone."

"You did not speak to her at first?"

"I didn't even notice her."

"How did she call attention to her presence, then?"

"She smiled, and I smiled back and went on with my papers. I was busy.

Then she spoke to me. Asked what the papers were and so on."

"So the acquaintance progressed."

"Yes. She said she was going to the flicks - to the pictures - and
wouldn't I come too? Well, I was finished for the day and she was a cute
kid, so I said yes, if she liked. The result was that she met me next
day and went out to the country in my car with me."

"On your business trips, you mean."

"Yes; she came for the ride and we would have a meal somewhere in the
country and tea before she went home to her aunt's place."

"Did she talk about her people to you?"

"Yes, she said how unhappy she was at home, where no one took any notice
of her. She had a long string of complaints about her home, but I didn't
take much notice of them. She looked a pretty sleek little outfit to
me."

"A what?" said the judge.

"A well-cared-for young girl, my lord."

"Yes?" Kevin said. "And how long did this idyll in Larborough persist?"

"It turned out that we were leaving Larborough on the same day. She was
going back to her people because her holiday was over - she had already
extended it so that she could run about with me - and I was due to fly
to Copenhagen on business. She then said she had no intention of going
home and asked me to take her with me. I said nothing doing.

I didn't think she was so much of an innocent child as she seemed in the
lounge at the Midland - I knew her better by that time - but I still
thought she was inexperienced. She was only sixteen, after all."

"She told you she was sixteen?"

"She had her sixteenth birthday in Larborough," Chadwick said with a wry
twist of the mouth under the small dark moustache. "It cost me a gold
lipstick."

Robert looked across at Mrs. Wynn and saw her cover her face with her
hands. Leslie Wynn, sitting beside her, looked unbelieving and blank.

"You had no idea that actually she was still fifteen?"

"No. Not until the other day."

"So when she made the suggestion that she should go with you, you
considered her an inexperienced child of sixteen?"

"Yes."

"Why did you change your mind about her?"

"She convinced me that she wasn't."

"Wasn't what?"

"Inexperienced."

"So after that you had no qualms about taking her with you on the trip
abroad?"

"I had qualms in plenty, but by then I had learned what fun she could
be, and I couldn't have left her behind if I had wanted to."

"So you took her abroad with you?"

"Yes."

"As your wife?"

"Yes, as my wife."

"You had no qualms about any anxiety her people might suffer?"

"No. She said she still had a fortnight's holiday to come and that her
people would take it for granted that she was still with her aunt in
Larborough. She had told her aunt that she was going home, but had told
her people that she was staying on. And as they never wrote to each
other it was unlikely that her not being in Larborough would become
known to her people."

"Do you remember the date on which you left Larborough?"

"Yes; I picked her up at a coach stop in Mainshill on the afternoon of
March the 28th. That was where she would normally have got her bus
home."

Kevin left a pause after this piece of information so that its full
significance should have a chance. Robert, listening to the momentary
quiet, thought that if the courtroom were empty the silence could not be
more absolute. "So you took her with you to-Copenhagen. Where did you
stay?"

"At the Red Shoes Hotel."

"For how long?"

"A fortnight."

There was a faint murmur of comment or surprise at that.

"And then?"

"We came back to England together on the 15th of April. She had told me
that she was due home on the 16th. But on the way over she told me that
she had actually been due back on the 11th and would now have been
missing for four days."

"She misled you deliberately?"

"Yes."

"Did she say why she had misled you?"

"Yes. So that it would be impossible for her to go back. She said she
was going to write to her people and say that she had a job and was
quite happy and that they were not to look for her or worry about her."

"She had no compunction about the suffering that would cause parents who
had been devoted to her?"

"No. She said her home bored her so much she could scream."

Against his will Robert's eyes went to Mrs. Wynn, and came away again at
once. It was crucifixion.

"What was your reaction to the new situation?"

"I was angry to begin with. It put me in a spot."

"Were you worried about the girl?"

"No, not particularly."

"Why?"

"By that time I had learned that she was very well able to take care of
herself."

"What exactly do you mean by that?"

"I mean: whoever was going to suffer in any situation she created, it
wouldn't be Betty Kane."

The mention of her name suddenly reminded the audience that the girl
they had just been hearing about was "the" Betty Kane. "Their" Betty
Kane. The one like Bernadette. And there was a small uneasy movement, a
taking of breath.

"So?"

"After a lot of rag-chewing --"

"Of what?" said his lordship.

"After a lot of discussion, my lord."

"Go on," said his lordship, "but do confine yourself to English,
standard or basic."

"After a lot of talk I decided the best thing to do would be to take her
down to my bungalow on the river near Bourne End. We used it for
week-ends in the summer and for summer holidays, but only rarely for the
rest of the year."

"When you say 'we', you mean your wife and you?"

"Yes. She agreed to that quite readily, and I drove her down."

"Did you stay there with her that night?"

"Yes."

"And on the following nights?"

"The following night I spent at home."

"In Ealing."

"Yes."

"And afterwards?"

"For a week after that I spent most nights at the bungalow."

"Was your wife not surprised that you did not sleep at home?"

"Not unbearably."

"And how did the situation at Bourne End disintegrate?"

"I went down one night and found that she had gone."

"What did you think had happened to her?"

"Well, she had been growing very bored for the last day or two - she
found housekeeping fun for about three days, but not more, and there
wasn't much to do down there - so when I found she had gone I took it
that she was tired of me and had found someone or something more
exciting."

"You learned later where she had gone, and why?"

"Yes."

"You heard the girl Betty Kane give evidence today?"

"I did."

"Evidence that she had been forcibly detained in a house near Milford."

"Yes."

"That is the girl who went with you to Copenhagen, stayed there for a
fortnight with you, and subsequently lived with you in a bungalow near
Bourne End?"

"Yes, that is the girl."

"You have no doubt about it?"

" No."

"Thank you."

There was a great sigh from the crowd as Kevin sat down and Bernard
Chadwick waited for Miles Allison. Robert wondered if Betty Kane's face
was capable of showing any emotion other than fear and triumph.

Twice he had seen it pulse with triumph and once when old Mrs. Sharpe
crossed the drawing- room towards her that first day he had seen it show
fear. But for all the emotion it showed just now she might have been
listening to a reading of fat stock prices. Its effect of inward calm,
he decided, must be the result of physical construction. The result of
wide-set eyes and placid brow and inexpressive small mouth always set in
the same childish pout. It was that physical construction that had
hidden, all those years, the real Betty Kane even from her intimates. A
perfect camouflage, it had been. A facade behind which she could be what
she liked. There it was now, the mask, as childlike and calm as when he
had first seen it above her school coat in the drawing-room at The
Franchise; although behind it its owner must be seething with unnameable
emotions.

"Mr. Chadwick," Miles Allison said, "this is a very belated story, isn't
it?"

"Belated?"

"Yes. This case has been a matter for press-report and public comment
for the past three weeks, or thereabouts. You must have known that two
women were being wrongfully accused if your story was true. If, as you
say, Betty Kane was with you during those weeks, and not, as she says,
in the house of these two women, why did you not go straight to the
police and tell them so?"

"Because I didn't know anything about it."

"About what?"

"About the prosecution of these women. Or about the story that Betty
Kane had told."

"How was that?"

"Because I have been abroad again for my firm. I knew nothing about this
case until a couple of days ago."

"I see. You have heard the girl give evidence and you have heard the
doctor's evidence as to the condition in which she arrived home. Does
anything in your story explain that?"

"No."

"It was not you who beat the girl?"

"No."

"You say you went down one night and found her gone."

"Yes."

"She had packed up and gone?"

"Yes; so it seemed at the time."

"That is to say, all her belongings and the luggage that contained them
had disappeared with her."

"Yes."

"And yet she arrived home without belongings of any sort, and wearing
only a dress and shoes."

"I didn't know that till much later."

"You want us to understand that when you went down to the bungalow you
found it tidy and deserted, with no sign of any hasty departure."

"Yes. That's how I found it."

When Mary Frances Chadwick was summoned to give evidence there was what
amounted to a sensation in court, even before she appeared. It was
obvious that this was "the wife"; and this was fare that not even the
most optimistic queuer outside the court had anticipated.

Frances Chadwick was a tallish, good-looking woman, a natural blonde
with the clothes and figure of a girl who has "modelled" clothes; but
growing a little plump now and, if one was to judge from the
good-natured face, not much caring.

She said that she was indeed married to the previous witness, and lived
with him in Ealing. They had no children. She still worked in the
clothes trade now and then - not because she needed to, but for
pocket-money and because she liked it. Yes, she remembered her husband's
going to Larborough and his subsequent trip to Copenhagen. He arrived
back from Copenhagen a day later than he promised and spent that night
with her. During the following week she began to suspect that her
husband had developed an interest elsewhere. The suspicion was confirmed
when a friend told her that her husband had a guest at their bungalow on
the river.

"Did you speak to your husband about it?" Kevin asked.

"No. That wouldn't have been any solution. He attracts them like flies."

"What did you do, then? Or plan to do?"

"What I always do with flies."

"What is that?"

"I swat them."

"So you proceeded to the bungalow with the intention of swatting
whatever fly was there."

"That's it."

"And what did you find at the bungalow?"

"I went late in the evening hoping I would catch Barney there too --"

"Barney is your husband?"

"And how. I mean, yes," she added hastily, catching the judge's eye.

"Well?"

"The door was unlocked, so I walked straight in and into the
sitting-room. A woman's voice called from the bedroom: "Is that you,
Barney? I've been so lonely for you." I went in and found her lying on
the bed in the kind of negligee you used to see in vamp films about ten
years ago. She looked a mess and I was a bit surprised at Barney.

She was eating chocolates out of an enormous box that was lying on the
bed alongside her. Terribly nineteen-twenty, the whole set-up."

"Please confine your story to the essentials, Mrs. Chadwick."

"Yes. Sorry. Well, we had the usual exchange --"

"The usual?"

"Yes. The what-are-you-doing-here stuff. The wronged wife and the
light-of-love, you know. But for some reason or other she got in my
hair. I don't know why. I had never cared very much on other occasions.
I mean, we just had a good row without any real hard feelings on either
side. But there was something about this little tramp that turned my
stomach. So --"

"Please, Mrs. Chadwick!"

"All right. Sorry. But you did say tell it in my own words. Well, there
came a point where I couldn't stand this floor - I mean, I got to a
stage when she riled me past bearing. I pulled her off the bed and gave
her a smack on the side of the head. She looked so surprised it was
funny. It would seem no one had ever hit her in her life. She said: 'You
hit me!" Just like that; and I said: 'A lot of people are going to hit
you from now on, my poppet', and gave her another one.

Well, from then on it was just a fight. I own quite frankly that the
odds were all on my side. I was bigger for one thing and in a flaming
temper. I tore that silly negligee off her, and it was ding-dong till
she tripped over one of her mules that was lying on the floor, and went
sprawling. I waited for her to get up, but she didn't, and I thought she
had passed out. I went into the bathroom to get a cold wet cloth and
mopped her face. And then I went into the kitchen to make some coffee. I
had cooled off by then and thought she would be glad of something when
she had cooled off too. I brewed the coffee and left it to stand. But
when I got back to the bedroom I found that the faint had been all an
act. The little -- the girl had lit out. She had had time to dress, so I
took it for granted that she had dressed in a hurry and gone."

"And did you go too?"

"I waited for an hour, thinking Barney might come - my husband. All the
girl's things were lying about, so I slung them all into her suitcase
and put it in the cupboard under the stairs to the attic. And I opened
all the windows. She must have put her scent on with a ladle. And then
when Barney didn't come I went away. I must just have missed him,
because he did go down that night. But a couple of days later I told him
what I had done."

"And what was his reaction?"

"He said it was a pity her mother hadn't done the same thing ten years
ago."

"He was not worried as to what had become of her?"

"No. I was, a bit, until he told me her home was only over at Aylesbury.
She could quite easily cadge a lift that distance."

"So he took it for granted that she had gone home?"

" Yes. I said, hadn't he better make sure - after all, she was a kid."

"And what did he say in answer to that?"

"He said: 'Frankie, my girl, that "kid" knows more about
self-preservation than a chameleon."

"So you dismissed the affair from your mind?"

"Yes."

"But it must have come to your mind again when you read accounts of The
Franchise affair?"

"No, it didn't."

"Why was that?"

"For one thing, I never knew the girl's name. Barney called her Liz.

And I just didn't connect a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who was
kidnapped and beaten somewhere in the Midlands with Barney's bit. I
mean, with the girl who was eating chocolates on my bed."

"If you had realized that the girls were identical, you would have told
the police what you knew about her?"

"Certainly."

"You would not have hesitated owing to the fact that it was you who had
administered the beating?"

"No. I would administer another tomorrow if I got the chance."

"I will save my learned friend a question and ask you: Do you intend to
divorce your husband?"

"No. Certainly not."

"This evidence of yours and his is not a neat little piece of public
collusion?"

"No. I wouldn't need collusion. But I have no intention of divorcing
Barney. He's fun and he's a good provider. What more do you want in a
husband?"

"I wouldn't know," Robert heard Kevin murmur. Then in his normal voice
he asked her to state that the girl she had been talking about was the
girl who had given evidence; the girl who was now sitting in court. And
so thanked her and sat down. But Miles Allison made no attempt to
cross-examine. And Kevin moved to call his next witness.

But the foreman of the jury was before him.

The jury, the foreman said, would like his lordship to know that they
had all the evidence they required.

"What was this witness that you were about to call, Mr. Macdermott?"

the judge asked.

"He is the owner of the hotel in Copenhagen, my lord. To speak of their
having stayed there over the relevant period." The judge turned
inquiringly to the foreman.

The foreman consulted the jury.

"No, my lord; we don't think it is necessary, subject to your lordship's
correction, to hear the witness."

"If you are satisfied that you have heard enough to arrive at a true
verdict - and I cannot myself see that any further evidence would
greatly clarify the subject - then so be it. Would you like to hear
counsel for the defence?"

"No, my lord, thank you. We have reached our verdict already."

"In that case any summing-up by me would be markedly redundant. Do you
want to retire?"

"No, my lord. We are unanimous."

CHAPTER 23.

"We had better wait until the crowd thins out," Robert said. "Then
they'll let us out the back way."

He was wondering why Marion looked so grave, so un-rejoicing. Almost as
if she were suffering from shock. Had the strain been as bad as all
that?

As if aware of his puzzlement, she said: "That woman. That poor woman, I
can't think of anything else."

"Who?" Robert said stupidly.

"The girl's mother. Can you imagine anything more frightful? To have
lost the roof over one's head is bad - Oh yes, Robert my dear, you don't
have to tell us." She held out a late edition of the Larborough Times
with a stop-press paragraph reading: THE FRANCHISE, HOUSE MADE FAMOUS BY
MILFORD ABDUCTION CASE, BURNT TO THE GROUND LAST NIGHT. "Yesterday that
would have seemed to me an enormous tragedy. But compared with that
woman's calvary it seems an incident. What can be more shattering than
to find that the person you have lived with and loved all those years
not only doesn't exist but has never existed? That the person you have
loved so much not only doesn't love you but doesn't care two hoots about
you and never did? What is there left for someone like that? She can
never again take a step on to green grass without wondering if it is
bog."

"Yes," Kevin said, "I couldn't bear to look at her. It was indecent,
what she was suffering."

"She has a charming son," Mrs. Sharpe said. "I hope he will be a comfort
to her."

"But don't you see," Marion said, "she hasn't got her son. She has
nothing now. She thought she had Betty. She loved her and was as sure of
her as she loved and was sure of her son. Now the very foundations of
her life have given way. How is she to judge any longer, if appearances
can be so deceptive? No, she has nothing. Just a desolation. I am
bleeding inside for her."

Kevin slipped an arm into hers and said: "You have had sufficient
trouble of your own lately without saddling yourself with another's.

Come; they'll let us go now, I think. Did it please you to see the
police converging, in that polite, casual way of theirs, on the
perjurers?"

"No; I could think of nothing but that woman's crucifixion." So she too
had thought of it as that.

Kevin ignored her. "And the indecent scramble for a telephone that the
Press indulged in the moment his lordship's red tail was through the
door? You will be vindicated at great length in every newspaper in
Britain, I promise you. It will be the most public vindication since
Dreyfus. Wait here for me while I get out of these. I shall't be a
moment."

"I suppose we had best go to a hotel for a night or two?" Mrs. Sharpe
said. "Have we any belongings at all?"

"Yes, quite a few, I'm glad to say," Robert told her; and described what
had been saved. "But there is an alternative to the hotel." And he told
them of Stanley's suggestion.

So it was to the little house on the outer rim of the "new" town that
Marion and her mother came back; and it was in the front room at Miss
Sim's that they sat down to celebrate - a sober little group: Marion,
her mother, Robert and Stanley. Kevin had had to go back to town. There
was a large bunch of garden flowers on the table which had come with one
of Aunt Lin's best notes. Aunt Lin's warm and gracious little notes had
as little actual meaning as her "Have you had a busy day, dear?" but
they had the same cushioning effect on life. Stanley had come in with a
copy of the Larborough Times, which carried on its front page the first
report of the trial. The report was printed under a heading which read:
ANANIAS ALSO RAN.

"Will you golf with me tomorrow afternoon?" Robert asked Marion. "You
have been cooped up too long. We can start early, before the
two-rounders have finished their lunch, and have the course to
ourselves."

"Yes, I should like that," she said. "I suppose tomorrow life will begin
again and be just the usual mixture of good and bad. But tonight it is
just a place where dreadful things can happen to one."

When he called for her on the morrow, however, all seemed well with
life. "You can't imagine what bliss it is," she said. "Living in this
house, I mean. You just turn a tap and hot water comes out."

"It is also very educational," Mrs. Sharpe said.

"Educational?"

"You can hear every word that is said next door."

"Oh, come, mother! Not every word!"

"Every third word," amended Mrs. Sharpe.

So they drove out to the golf-course in high spirits, and Robert decided
that he would ask her to marry him when they were having tea in the
club-house afterwards. Or would there be too many people interrupting
there, with their kind words on the result of the trial?

Perhaps on the way home again?

He had decided that the best plan was to leave Aunt Lin in possession of
the old house - the place was so much hers that it was unthinkable that
she should not live there until she died - and to find a small place for
Marion and himself somewhere else in Milford. It would not be easy,
these days, but if the worst came to the worst they could make a tiny
flat on the top floor of Blair, Hayward, and Bennet's. It would mean
removing the records of two hundred years or so; but the records were
rapidly arriving at museum quality and should be moved in any case.

Yes, he would ask her on the way home again.

This resolution lasted until he found that the thought of what was to
come was spoiling his game. So on the ninth green he suddenly stopped
waggling his putter at the ball and said: "I want you to marry me,
Marion."

"Do you, Robert?" She picked her own putter out of her bag and dropped
the bag at the edge of the green.

"You will, won't you?"

"No, Robert dear, I won't."

"But, Marion! Why? Why not, I mean."

"Oh as the children say, 'because'."

"Because why?"

"Half a dozen reasons, any one of them good by itself. For one, if a man
is not married by the time he is forty, then marriage is not one of the
things he wants out of life - just something that has overtaken him,
like flu and rheumatism and income-tax demands. I don't want to be just
something that has overtaken you."

"But that is --"

"Then I don't think that I should be in the least an asset to Blair,
Hayward, and Bennet. Even --"

"I'm not asking you to marry Blair, Hayward, and Bennet."

"Even the proof that I didn't beat Betty Kane won't free me of being the
woman in the Kane case': an uncomfortable sort of wife for the senior
partner. It wouldn't do you any good, Robert, believe me."

"Marion, for heaven's sake! Stop --"

"Then you have Aunt Lin and I have my mother. We couldn't just park them
like pieces of chewing-gum. I not only love my mother, I like her. I
admire her and enjoy living with her. You, on the other hand, are used
to being spoiled by Aunt Lin - oh yes, you are! - and would miss far
more than you know all the creature comforts and the cosseting that I
wouldn't know how to give you - and wouldn't give you if I knew how,"
she added, flashing a smile at him.

"Marion, it is because you don't cos set me that I want to marry you.

Because you have an adult mind and a --"

"An adult mind is very nice to go to dinner with once a week, but after
a lifetime with Aunt Lin you would find it a very poor exchange for good
pastry in an uncritical atmosphere."

"There is one thing you haven't even mentioned," Robert said.

"What is that?"

"Don't you care for me at all?"

"Yes; I care for you a great deal. More than I have ever cared for
anyone, I think. That is, partly, why I won't marry you. The other
reason has to do with myself."

"With you?"

"You see, I am not a marrying woman. I don't want to put up with someone
else's crochets, someone else's demands, someone else's colds in the
head. Mother and I suit each other perfectly because we make no demands
on each other. If one of us has a cold in the head she retires to her
room without fuss and doses her disgusting self until she is fit for
human society again. But no husband could do that. He would expect
sympathy - even though he brought on the cold himself by putting off
clothes when he grew warm instead of waiting sensibly to get cool -
sympathy and attention and feeding. No, Robert. There are a hundred
thousand women just panting to look after some man's cold. Why pick on
me?"

"Because you are that one woman in a hundred thousand and I love you."

She looked slightly penitent. "I sound flippant, don't I? But what I say
is good sound sense."

"But, Marion, it is a lonely life --"

"A 'full' life in my experience is usually full only of other people's
demands."

"and you will not have your mother for ever."

"Knowing mother as I do, I have no doubt that she will outlive me with
perfect ease. You had better hole out: I see old Colonel Whittaker's
four on the horizon."

Automatically he pushed his ball into the hole. "But what will you do?"
he asked.

"If I don't marry you?"

He ground his teeth. She was right: perhaps her mocking habit of mind
would not be a comfort to live with.

"What had you and your mother thought of doing now that you have lost
The Franchise?"

She delayed over her answer, as if it were difficult to say, fussing
with her bag, and keeping her back to him.

"We are going to Canada,"she said.

"Going away!"

She still had her back to him. "Yes."

He was aghast. "But, Marion, you can't. And why to Canada?"

"I have a cousin who is a professor at Mcgill. A son of mother's only
sister. He wrote some time ago to ask mother if we would go out to keep
house for him, but by that time we had inherited The Franchise and were
very happy in England. So we said no. But the offer is still open. And
we - we both will be glad to go now."

"I see."

"Don't look so downcast. You don't know what an escape you are having,
my dear."

They finished the round in a business-like silence.

But driving back to Sin Lane after having dropped Marion at Miss Sim's,
Robert smiled wryly to think that to all the new experiences that
knowing the Sharpes had brought to him was now added that of being a
rejected suitor. The final and perhaps the most surprising one.

Three days later, having sold to a local dealer what had been saved of
their furniture and to Stanley the car he so much despised, they left
Milford by train. By the odd toy train that ran from Milford to the
junction at Norton. And Robert came to the junction with them to see
them on to the fast train.

"I always had a passion for travelling light," Marion said, referring to
their scanty luggage, "but I never imagined it would be indulged to the
extent of travelling with an over-night case to Canada."

But Robert could not think of small-talk. He was filled with a misery
and desolation that he had not known since his small soul was filled
with woe at going back to school. The blossom foamed along the line
side, the fields were burnished with buttercups, but the world for
Robert was grey ash and drizzle.

He watched the London train bear them away and went home wondering how
he could support Milford without the hope of seeing Marion's thin, brown
face at least once a day. But on the whole he supported it very well. He
took to golfing of an afternoon again; and although a ball would always
in the future be for him a "piece of gutta-percha", his form had not
seriously deteriorated. He rejoiced Mr. Heseltine's heart by taking an
interest in work. He suggested to Nevil that between them they might
sort and catalogue the records in the attic and perhaps make a book of
them. By the time Marion's good-bye letter from London came, three weeks
later, the soft folds of life in Milford were already closing round him.

MY VERY DEAR ROBERT (wrote Marion),

This is a hasty all revoir note, just to let you know that we are both
thinking of you. We leave on the morning plane to Montreal the day after
tomorrow. Now that the moment is almost here we have discovered that
what we both remember are the good and lovely things, and that the rest
fades to comparative insignificance. This may be only nostalgia in
advance. I don't know. I only know that it will always be happiness to
remember you, And Stanley, and Bill and England. Our united love to you,
and our gratitude.

MARION SHARPE

He laid the letter down on his brass and mahogany desk. Laid it down in
the afternoon patch of sunlight.

Tomorrow at this time Marion would no longer be in England. It was a
desolating thought, but there was nothing to do but be sensible about
it. What, indeed, was there to do about it? And then three things
happened at once.

Mr. Heseltine came in to say that Mrs. Lomax wanted to alter her will
again, and would he go out to the farm immediately?

Aunt Lin rang up and asked him to call for the fish on his way home.

And Miss Tuff brought in his tea.

He looked for a long moment at the two digestive biscuits on the plate.

Then, with a gentle finality, he pushed the tray out of his way and
reached for the telephone.

CHAPTER 24.

The summer rain beat on the airfield with a dreary persistence. Every
now and then the wind would lift it and sweep the terminus buildings
with it in one long brush-stroke. The covered way to the Montreal plane
was open on either side and the passengers bent their heads against the
weather as they filed slowly into it. Robert, moving up at the tail of
the queue, could see Mrs. Sharpe's flat black satin hat and the short
strands of white hair being blown about.

By the time he boarded the plane they were seated and Mrs. Sharpe was
already burrowing in her bag. As he walked up the aisle between the
seats Marion looked up and saw him. Her face lighted with welcome and
surprise.

"Robert!" she said. "Have you come to see us off?"

"No," Robert said. "I'm travelling by this plane."

"Travelling!" she said, staring. "You are?"

"It's a public conveyance, you know."

"I know. But you're going to Canada?"

"I am."

"What for?"

"To see my sister in Saskatchewan," Robert said demurely. "A much better
pretext than a cousin at Mcgill."

She began to laugh, softly and consumedly.

"Oh, Robert my dear," she said, "you can't imagine how revolting you are
when you look smug!"

THE END

