"Where are we going?"
"Oh, to the graveyard," said H.M. And he touched with satisfaction the police .38 stuck into his belt
"And is this little shooting party necessary?"
"Well—not exactly necessary." said H.M., as though talking to himself. He puffed out first his cheeks and then his mouth. "It may not even come off. Burn me, no! But can you sort of recollect some instructions I gave last night in the graveyard? When that policeman joined us at the cenotaph?"
The green canopy of the wood, seeming lifeless even of birds, passed over their heads.
"You gave that cop," Cy answered, "the key to the cenotaph door. You told him to stand guard all night with the door locked, and not go off duty until..."
"Uh-huh? What are you stopping for?"
"Until seven o'clock this morning." Cy marched on. "You also left a long note for Lieutenant Trowbridge. Then you're laying a trap?"
"Which may not come off."
"But look here! You and Byles said this would-be murder was going to be hushed up! And there'd be no prosecution!"
"No prosecution," said H.M., again lovingly touching the .38 in his waistband, "under the law."
Cy did not speak again until they were almost at the other end of the baseball field.
Who, he was wondering to himself, had decided that the uncanniest hour of twenty-four was at dusk or in the night? Cy would have chosen the hush of morning, when nothing stirs, and the baseball field now looked as though no person had ever played there.
As they approached the dull green outfield fence, they saw that the door with the bolt(on this side) stood partly open. To the right against the fence there lay piled carelessly a canvas tarpaulin such as might have covered a car.
"If you are after somebody," Cy’s voice was a whisper, "won't we be seen?"
"No, son." The same whisper came back. "Our little friend will be comin' from another direction. That's dead certain."
Unexpectedly, H.M. whispered at the end of the tarpaulin near the door. "Don't bolt the door," he said, "until Larkin comes off duly. Got that?"
One fold of the tarpaulin moved as though in understanding.
Then they were in the graveyard.
Now doubtless, as an ordinary thing, it would have been inspiring to watch the spectacle of Sir Henry Merrivale crawling on his hands and knees. But to Cy, who had caught sight of his face and deduced the Old Maestro meant murder, it had no element of comedy. They crawled, making little sound because they were on sandy soil instead of in grass, along the fence at its inner side, a good distance towards the south.
Then Cy peered out from behind a blackened tombstone, with H.M. near him.
Nothing moved. Nothing.
There lay the graveyard, enclosed on three sides by the thick yew raggedness of hedge, its fronds like horns, which towered up nearly eight feet and then seemed to topple inwards by its own weight.
It darkened the graveyard. There was the harsh grass, over knee-height but not to the waist. There stood the stone angel with its neck badly cracked. There mourned the other stone angel, face hidden. There, faintly discerned, was a flat stone slab set up from the ground on four little legs. On the south side loomed the black bulk of the Renfield Mausoleum.
On the north, now diagonally opposite Cy...
There was still the same policeman, or it may have been another, on duty at the Manning Cenotaph. The cenotaph, round and blackish-coloured, its circle of black pillars supporting the flat-domed roof, seemed to be half devoured by the tall hedge pressing round it from behind.
Then at long last the policeman on duty moved, and consulted his watch.
Cy Norton did the same, the busy little ticking hammering in his ears.
"Just seven o'clock," he whispered to H.M.
The policeman's "A-h-h-h!" of a spreading yawn, as he stretched his shoulders, could clearly be heard in that hush. Except for a gas station and a drugstore some distance up Fenimore Cooper Road, there was no sign of life for nearly a quarter of a mile.
Hesitating, the policeman glanced at the big new vault key in his hand. He dropped it into his pocket. Then he walked away towards the door in the ballfield fence, his footsteps rasping and swishing with inhuman loudness.
The door in the fence closed after him.
Again silence, while the minutes crawled and Cy’s nerves seemed to jerk....
"It's ten minutes past seven," he whispered to H.M. "This plan, whatever it is, isn't going to work."
"Well, I didn't say it would," the querulous whisper returned. "Y'see, I got to get the eleyen-forty-five plane for Washington this morning.!"
He stopped abruptly.
From behind the cenotaph, in what seemed the hedge pressing against it, there was a crash. It sounded like a hammer against heavy glass.
Then, from the same direction, a revolver shot whacked out.
The birds, small as they were, whirred up from that graveyard with a noise like rocketing pheasants. The air seemed to be full of them. A man's voice, which Cy could not identify, shouted from outside the hedge beyond the cenotaph. ,
"Smashed the back window that was already broke ...if anybody tries to get out through this hedge..."
Two more heavy shots. There was a noise of someone frantically clawing or tearing at hedge branches, where they were much thinner along the left side of the cenotaph.
"Trying to get into the graveyard!" the same voice called.
And now—one against the eastern wall, two near the mausoleum southwards—Cy could see three blue-uniformed figures with Colt .38's.
There was slower, more careful tearing in the hedge tendrils, now close down to the ground against the black pillars of the cenotaph. A pause was followed by a sudden, short rip as someone began to crawl into the garden....
"Ho!" said H.M. He lifted his own .38 and fired.
And it was apparent that H.M., despite many boastings of his prowess in the past, couldn't shoot for beans.
A white chip mark sprang up high against a black pillar, with the whing of the ricochetting bullet Three more shots blasted out from two different directions. It was as though every sound were intensified by a mad loudspeaker.
A pause, and somebody fired again.
Then the quarry, unhurt, dived forward, slid like an eel, and disappeared amid the tall grass.
"There's not much wind," H.M. called out, and painfully stood up straight "Keep watchin' the grass! Wherever it starts to move, pump 'em in."
Cy Norton found his voice.
"H.M., are you as crazy as everybody else?"
"What’s that son?"
"This isn't a big place! If you want to rout somebody out, why don't you use tear gas?"
H.M., paying no attention, cut loose again. The stone angel with the cracked neck swayed without falling, but its head tumbled off grotesquely and thudded into long grass. Two more shots answered from the south. The top of a headstone flew to pieces.
"Got it!" yelled H.M. "Hold your fire!"
It was just after a fusillade from the south.
"You see that big flat stone held up on the little legs?" H.M. demanded. "Somebody's lyin' beside that, and may have crawled under. Move round and get down low, so we can all let go without hittin' each other when I count three. Ready?".
"I give up!" A voice screamed from the tall grass, weakly, but with gathering volume. "I give up!"
"Hold your fire!" H.M. repeated. "All right! Then stand up!"
The figure rose very slowly. It stood looking round in a dazed way, and then was violently sick.
"There!" said H.M., pointing. "That's the feller who was the accomplice in Manning's vanishing trick. That’s the feller Manning wanted to expose, for the sake of the daughter who was determined to marry him."