It was evident that he knew the sound too. It was the sirens of police motorcycles.
"I fear," said Manning, snapping the big shears together, "that this is rather earlier than I expected."
Whereupon he turned to H.M.
"I want you to accept these," he said, very gravely pressing the shears into H.M.'s hand and closing the fingers round them, "as a small souvenir. I may not see you again for some time."
And then, fully dressed, Manning dived head first into the pool.
H.M. stood motionless.
For once Sir Henry Merrivale, the Old Maestro, had been caught off balance: clean-bowled by something he hadn't expected. His face seemed to distend, and his eyes bulged behind the big spectacles.
Manning's Panama hat somewhat coquettishly, floated up to the surface of the water. One of his cork-soled shoes followed.
Out of the pool, almost at the feet of Cy and H.M. where they stood at midpoint along its side, appeared the sputtering and blinking face of Howard Betterton, who clutched blindly at the handrail.
At the same moment, on the other side, Jean Manning and Davis shot up out of the water side by side, holding themselves with rigid arms and hands on the handrail, knocking their heads together happily.
"Time to get out Mr. Betterton!" Jean called over her shoulder.
Obviously none of the swimmers had heard the police sirens, or seen Manning's dive. Jean and Davis, sending water flying as they swept up on land, started to trot down the wide path towards the bathing huts just as Manning's water-darkened alpaca coat floated to the surface, followed by his trousers.
Howard Betterton plucked at Cy's bare ankle.
"It seemed to me," Betterton gasped, "that something rather naked-looking shot past me as I was exploring the depths. I was just wondering ..."
"Get out of that pool!" Cy yelled at him. "Get out of that pool!"
He looked up. Jean and Davis, who a glance told him were not yet at the end of the path, had already turned and were trotting back. Jean was removing her cap, shaking out the yellow hair, and Davis wiping the wet hair from his eyes.
Betterton, whirling water like a beaver, struggled up and sat down with a plonk on the coping, his feet in the pool.
Jean and Davis had stopped on the coping, looking round. At the same moment, Crystal Manning—her beach robe looking like a dark and flowered kimono—appeared at the southern end of the pool.
Then, suddenly, everybody realized what had happened.
The agitated water glittered under a firier sun. By some freak of movement, a cork-soled shoe floated on either side of the Panama hat, as though representing Manning himself. His other clothes, now including a sodden silk scarf and a pair of underpants, floated round them.
Five pairs of eyes were fixed on the clothes. Only H.M., whose gaze had been travelling round the edges of the oblong pool since the first, did not watch the clothes. But six persons stood motionless, as though paralyzed, in a hollow of silence.
It may have been Jean who first realized. She extended her arm to point But Betterton, breathing hard, spoke first and very quietly.
"This is it," he said.
There was a pause.
"What's more," said Davis, indicating the house, "the cops are here."
7
From round the side of the house, at the northern end towards which lay the tennis court, three men were approaching. The first was dressed in street clothes. The other two, who marched a little way behind, were in uniform.
Davis, evidently feeling he had been too casual or callous, tried to show a concern he could not feel.
"Maybe," he cried, "Mr. Manning's had an accident. Maybe he hit his head on the bottom. I'll dive in and..."
"Stay where you are, son!" H.M.'s voice was not loud, but (with one exception) it kept them all petrified in the same position. "I don't want any of you to say a word—got that?—until I give you the wire."
"My pince-nez!" said Betterton, sploshing out on land. "I left my pince-nez in the bathing cabin. We all left our clothes there so that we could change for tennis! I can't deal with them if I can't see them!"
And, a stocky hairy figure in his brown bathing suit, he hurried round to the other side of the pool as the newcomers approached.
Up to Cy and H.M., carrying his hat in his hand and with quietly affable presence, marched Mr. District Attorney Gilbert Byles.
Now this was Westchester County. For a second Cy Norton wondered why Mr. Byles, of New York County, had come where he had no authority. But Cy, still watching the pool like the others, gave only a swift glance.
"Our best-dressed D.A.," as the press had it, was neither fancy poseur nor stuffed shirt If he looked much older than he actually was, it was because he took his job with intense seriousness.
A tall, sallow man, whose dark hair had not yet retreated far enough to make him seem bald, he had black arched brows over narrow brown eyes with a restrained sense of humour in them. His sallow face was strong with a pointed chin. When he saw Sir Henry Merrivale, he stopped dead and his grim expression changed.
"H.M.!" said Mr. Byles, with a broad grin. "You old sinner!"
"Lo, Gil," said the old sinner.
H.M., now lordly again, with his beach robe open to show the dignity of his corporation in a candy-striped bathing suit, shifted the big pruning shears to his left hand and shook hands.
"I didn't know you were..." Byles stopped. His grin vanished as quickly as his astonishment His quick, narrow eyes swept round the motionless figures beside the pool. "Are you a guest here?"
"That's right, son."
"Can you guess why I'm here?"
"Uh-huh. In a general sort of way."
"I want to see Mr. Manning." Byles spoke with tight-lipped satisfaction. "We've got reason to believe he's embezzled a hundred thousand dollars."
Of all the persons there—H.M., Cy, Jean Davis, and Crystal—there was no sound except a gasp from Crystal. The subject of embezzlement had not been mentioned last night. But the ugly word stayed there.
"Mind you," said Byles, "I warned him."
"You warned him?" demanded H.M. "How?"
"I phoned him last night I said I would be here"—Byles consulted his watch, finding it accurate—"at half-past nine. I said"— Byles's tone became a mockery, wickedly satiric, of Manning's tone—"that probably it was infra dig of me to come in a car myself and take him for questioning. I realized it was ostentatious, in bad taste, to be heralded by motorcycle sirens. But I had my reasons for such unusual conduct."
Then Byles's tone changed in a flash.
"Where is he?" Byles asked.
H.M. looked bothered.
"Well, son, that's a bit of a poser. He dived into that pool there." H.M. pointed with the shears. "Sure, sure! Those are his clothes."
"I see. And when did he come out?"
"That's just it y'see. He didn't come out."
"How long has he been in the pool?"
"Well... now. About five minutes."
Again Byles's expression changed.
"Five minutes! There's no man alive who can stay under water for..Byles stopped. "I want an embezzler," he said. "I don't want a suicide."
"Oh, my son!" groaned H.M., and flourished the shears in the air. "If I'd thought it had been suicide, or accident, or anything but jiggery-pokery, we'd all have been down after him in two whistles and a hoot"
Then what the hell are you talking about?"
"He went smack-bang into that pool," explained H.M., with great earnestness. "And he didn't come out Lord love a duck! Here's a man five feet ten inches tall, and naked as a forked radish; if he'd climbed out of that pool anywhere, d'ye think I wouldn't have seen him? But..."