“Please, dear!” begged Mrs. Claire.
“Is it too much,” asked Gaunt on a high note, “to ask that this conversation should grow to a point?”
“May I interrupt?” murmured Falls. “Dr. Ackrington suggests that Questing, feeling that the place was getting too hot for him, has staged his own disappearance in order to make good his escape. We have got so far, haven’t we?”
“Certainly. Further, I suggest that he was lying in the shadows when you hunted along the path last night after the scream, and that as soon as you had gone he completed a change of garments. Doubtless he had hidden his new clothes in some suitable cache. He threw the ones he was wearing into Taupo-tapu and made off under cover of the dark. In support of this theory I draw your attention to a development of which Falls has acquainted me. They have salvaged Questing’s white waistcoat from Taupo-tapu. How could a waistcoat detach itself from a body?”
“It was a backless waistcoat,” Dikon muttered. “The straps might have gone. And anyway, sir, the chemicals in the thing…”
But Dr. Ackrington swept on with his discourse. “It is even possible that the person you, Falls, heard moving about when you returned was Questing himself. Remember that he could only get away by returning through the village or by coming on round the hill. No doubt he waited for everything to settle down. He acted, of course, under orders.” Dr. Ackrington coughed slightly and looked complacently at Falls. “My theory,” he said with a most unconvincing air of modesty, “for what it is worth.”
“If you don’t mind my saying so, Uncle James,” said Simon instantly, “in my opinion it’s not so much a theory as a joke.”
“Indeed! Perhaps you’ll be kind enough…”
“You’re trying to tell us that Questing wanted to make a clean get-away. What was his big idea letting out a screech you could hear for miles around?”
“I had scarcely dared to hope that I would be asked that question,” said Dr. Ackrington complacently. “What better method could he employ if he wished to protect himself from interruption from the Maori people? Do you imagine that after hearing that scream, there was a Maori on the place who would venture near Taupo-tapu?”
“What about us?”
“It was sheer chance that kept Bell and your mother and sister and Mr. Falls behind. And, most important, please remember that it had been arranged that we should all pack into Gaunt’s car for the return journey. All, that is, except Questing himself, Simon and Smith. It was an unexpected turn of events when Gaunt, Edward, Falls and I all decided, separately, to walk. He had expected to be practically free from disturbance. The audience was leaving when Questing himself went out.”
“And what about this print?” Simon continued exactly as if his uncle had not spoken. “I thought the idea was that somebody had deliberately kicked the clod away. Bell’s pointed out that Questing wore pansy pumps.”
“Ah!” cried Dr. Ackrington triumphantly. “Aha!” Simon looked coldly at him. “Questing,” his uncle went on, “wished to create the impression that he fell in. If my theory is correct he will have made as great a change as possible in his appearance. Rough clothes. Workmen’s boots. He waits until he has changed his evening shoes for these boots and then stamps away the edge of the path.” Dr. Ackrington slapped the table and flung himself back in his chair. “I invite comment,” he said grandly.
For a moment nobody spoke, and then, to Dikon’s profound astonishment, one after another, Gaunt, Smith, the Colonel, and Simon, the last somewhat grudgingly, said that they had no comments to offer. It seemed to Dikon that the listeners round the table had relaxed. There was a feeling of expansion. Gaunt touched his forehead with his handkerchief and took out his cigarette case.
Obviously gratified, Ackrington turned to Falls. “You say nothing,” he said.
“But I am filled with admiration nevertheless,” said Falls. “A most ingenious theory and lucidly presented. I congratulate you.”
“What is it about the man?” Dikon wondered. “He looks all right, rather particularly so. His voice is pleasant. One keeps thinking he’s going to be an honest-to-God sort of fellow and then he prims up his mouth and talks like an affected pedagogue.” Out of patience with Falls, he turned to look at Barbara. He had tried not to look at her ever since she came in. Her pallor, her air of bewilderment, and the painful attentiveness with which she listened to everybody and said nothing seemed to Dikon almost unbearably touching. She was watching him now, anxiously, asking him something. She answered his smile with a shadowy one of her own. There was an empty chair beside hers.
“Dikon!”
Gaunt had shouted at him. He jumped and looked round guiltily. “I’m sorry, sir. Did you say something to me?”
“Dr. Ackrington has been waiting for your answer for some considerable time. He wants your opinion on his solution.”
“I’m terribly sorry. My opinion?” Dikon thrust his hands into his pockets and clenched them. They were all watching him. “Well, sir, I’m afraid I’ve been completely addled by the whole affair. I can’t pretend to have any constructive theory to offer.”
“Then I take it you are prepared to accept mine?” said Ackrington impatiently.
Why had he got the feeling that they were bending their wills upon him, that they sat there boring into his mind with theirs, trying to compel him to something?
“What the devil’s the matter with you?” Gaunt demanded.
“Come, come, Bell, if you’ve nothing to say we must conclude you’ve no objection.”
“But I have,” said Dikon, rousing himself. “I’ve every objection. I don’t believe in it at all.”
He knew that his explanations sounded hopelessly inadequate. He heard himself stumbling from one feeble objection to another. “I can’t disprove it, of course, sir. It might be true. I mean, it’s all sort of logical but I mean it’s not based on anything.”
“On the contrary,” said Dr. Ackrington and his very mildness seemed to Dikon to be most disquieting, “it is based on the man’s character, on the circumstances surrounding him, and upon the undisputed fact that no body has been found.”
“It sounds so sort of bogus, though.” Dikon floundered about through a series of slangy phrases which he was quite unaccustomed to use. “I mean it’s the kind of thing that they do in thrillers. I mean he wouldn’t know there was going to be all that chat at the concert about the girl who fell in Taupo-tapu. Would he? And if he didn’t know that then he wouldn’t know about the scream keeping the Maoris away.”
“My good fool,” said Gaunt, “can’t you understand that the scream was introduced because of the legend? An extra bit of atmosphere. If he hadn’t heard the legend and the song he wouldn’t have screamed.”
“Precisely,” said Ackrington.
“Well, Mr. Bell?” asked Falls.
“Yes, that fits in, of course, but I’m afraid it all sort of fits too neatly for me. As if it was concocted, don’t you know? Like china packed too closely. No lee-way for jolts. I’m afraid my objections are maddeningly vague but I simply cannot see him hiding a disguise in an extinct geyser and tossing his boiled shirt into a mud pot. And then going off — where?”
“It is highly probable that a car was waiting for him somewhere along the road,” said Ackrington.
“There’s a goods train goes through at midnight,” suggested Smith. “He might of hopped onto that. Geeze, I hope you’re right, Doc. It’d give you the willies to think he was stewing over there, wouldn’t it?”
Mrs. Claire uttered a cry of protest and Ackrington instantly blasted Smith.
“Cut it out, Bert!” advised Simon. “You don’t put things nicely.”