"I swore men, and I swear now," Cy told him, "I never had my eyes off those two. I might have been deceived, yes. But I still swear..."
A hidden amusement lay behind H.M.'s satiric expression.
"We were seeing the thing through your eyes," he said. "You sincerely believed what you said, while I was lookin' round the edges of the pool. But I could prove by your own testimony, if we had it written down, that what you swore couldn't possibly be strictly and literally true."
"How do you mean?"
"Betterton grabbed your ankle. (No, he wasn't concerned in the business!) He said something, and you yelled down at him. 'Get out of the pool!' or words to the same effect then, distinctly, you looked up.
"You looked up. Consequently, if 8 a flat contradiction to say you didn't ever have your eyes off Jean and Davis if you looked at Betterton and then looked up. I repeat it wouldn't have made any difference in the lightning switch. But, lord love a duck, you claimed something that was impossible. Also, d'you remember last night?"
"What particular part of last night?"
"When Jean ran away from the cenotaph? And you followed her, and caught her beside that same path through the bushes to the pool?"
(Dark crimson sunset, a low line, silhouetted against the sky. Red tinges in the pool. The tall bushes that looked like hedges.)
"Y'see," H.M. went on, "she practically told you the story then, if you'd listened properly. She's awful sympathetic towards you, son...."
"Is she really?" asked Crystal, with dark blue eyes flaming.
"Don't you remember," said H.M., "it was the first time she'd ever seemed furtive? She was scared, and all of a sudden was afraid we'd connected her with the disappearance. She scuffed the toe of her shoe in the grass, and asked you in a funny kind of voice whether they didn't suspect she was—and so on? Remember?"
"But how do you know that? You weren't there!"
"You mean you didn't see me. I was lurkin', and I showed up at the right time. Jean even told you she meant to turn to the right, Davis to the left, and stressed how they never got there. But remember: you didn't shout at Jean or Davis. You shouted only at Betterton. Why should they come back?"
"H.M., what about that damned wrist watch Manning was wearing?"
H.M. pushed back his Panama hat.
"Well, y'see.... Manning jumped into the pool with it. I wondered, bein' a silly dummy, why it didn't flash like a diamond when Manning (the presumed Davis) shot up out of the water on the opposite side.
"But one look-see at the watch—remember how we found Manning lying on the grave mound, and the inside of the wrist strap facin' up?—told me I could forget it. When the fake 'Davis shot up out of the pool, the insides of his wrists and hands were towards us.
"The watch, if you recall, had a dark brown strap with a dull buckle. At forty feet, against that brown suntan, it'd be completely invisible. And invisible when he trotted away. Manning just forgot the watch, that's all.
"But now we come to the graveyard. I'd been doing—hem—a modest little bit of ball-swatting. So, because I swatted one there, we found Manning on one of the grave mounds. Afterwards I went into the cenotaph, and..."
For a moment H.M. was silent, shaking his head.
"Son," he told Cy, "I said to Jean that I admired her father. And I did. Because there was the crownin' peak of his game.
"Now it's really true he did go out to that cenotaph, when he'd had a sudden fit of energy over a period of years, to clean up that battle panorama of the Revolutionary War. But, cor, how neatly he took advantage of it! He took advantage of all those cleaning materials to cover up the fact that he had to remove his suntan and hair dye before anybody saw him again.
"D'ye follow me?
"Jean quickly rapped out and said he'd been using the cenotaph 'recently’ to clean the panorama. But not as recently as that, for panorama cleaning. When we walked in there less than twelve hours after Manning disappeared, what did we find?
"Of three empty buckets, two were still moist on the inside. There were two sponges. One, inky black and clearly used on the walls, was bone-dry. The other, stained darkish brown but with a yellow edge to show the corner where somebody'd used it, was still damp. There was whitish sediment in a metal bowl. Finally, he'd smashed part of the back window; there were darkish stains on the ledge to show where a lot of coloured water had been poured outside.
"That was evidence! And more: I said there'd be certain to be evidence in the brand-new pigskin bag; there'd be a pair of swimming trunks.
"Manning had all the time in the world, and a hideaway nobody would think of. I told you awhile ago that ordinary dark suntan lotion, even several coats, ain't strictly water-proof; you can get it off with soap and water and hard scrubbing. The feller just stood up in that bowl from the big bowl and pitcher, and he sloshed himself down. He could mop up any water from the floor, and that burnin' sun we had all day would soon dry it.
'The hair dye wasn't so easy. But all he'd need to do was take a grey hair-wash (ask the druggists, as I did round Grand Central) and slosh it on over the black. Both of 'em would shortly fade. Meantime, he'd have a passable imitation of his original hair if you didn't see it in too good a light
"And then, when we found Manning dyin' and all this evidence of what really happened ... well, I had to deal with Jean.
'There she was, scared and wonderin' in the cenotaph, knowing what it meant and afraid even of a light in her face, smack-bang at my side. And I had to question her. With Manning apparently dyin' outside, I had to find out where Irene Stanley—Manning's wife, I thought—really lived."
Slowly H.M. drew a handkerchief from his hip pocket, wiped it across his forehead, and wiped the forehead again.
"Y'see, I thought Manning probably told all his plans to her. If she hears Manning's been attacked, shell know if 8 Davis and she may blurt out everything. But this’ll occur to the would-be murderer, too. Irene Stanley's not very safe. She's got to be warned before the newspapers warn her. Well, I was wrong. Even the old man"—H.M. coughed—"can be wrong sometimes. That's why I was sort of upset when I questioned her later.
"But the hair-raisin' difficulty of handling that girl Jean! There in the cenotaph, she asked questions about her father and then, very quickly, a question about Huntington Davis. D'ye still follow me?"
Cy nodded, in a dream.
"If Jean ever suspected her adored Dave had anything to do with an attempt on her father's life," Cy said, "she'd have gone off the deep end."
"Well, and so I lied to her," growled H.M. "I cleared Davis. I said he hadn't the nerve and hadn't the brains—which was very nearly true. But don't let anybody here say I was misleadin' you or misdirectin' you."
Slowly H.M.'s gaze travelled round the group, with a glare in it.
"I cleared Davis of suspicion," said H.M., "because I was speakin' to Jean and I ruddy well had to. Will any of you tell me, under the circumstances, what else I could have said?"
There was an uneasy silence.
"Now Davis," H.M. growled on, "wasn't all false front and celluloid, though he was more than half composed of it He'd never in two green centuries have had the brains to think of a scheme like
Manning's. But he could help carry it out. And he could improve it for his own self-help.
"By the way, Manning and Davis badly overplayed another rehearsed scene in the drawing room on Monday night. They were supposed to be havin' a row again. Davis heroically says he can support Jean financially. Manning couldn't keep back the contempt of: 'Knowing your position in your father's office, I doubt it' Davis fires back that he knows Manning's financial position too. But how could Davis have known it?