“All right, Colonel.” Gaunt raised his hands and let them fall on the table. “I give up. I met the man and told him precisely what I thought of him. I’m sorry it’s had to come out. Another bit of most undesirable publicity. If my agent was here he’d give me absolute hell, wouldn’t he, Dikon? My one desire was to keep out of this extremely distasteful affair. I’m perfectly certain that Dr. Ackrington is right and that the whole thing’s a put-up job. Frankly, I’m tremendously anxious that my name should not appear and that is precisely why I hoped to avoid any mention of this encounter. I’ve been foolish. I realize that. I apologize.”
“It’s just too bad about you,” said Simon. “You’re in it with the rest of us. Why the heck should you get away with a pack of lies!”
“You’re perfectly right, of course,” said Gaunt. “Why should I?”
“If people start talking about murder — ” began Smith confusedly, and Gaunt at once interrupted him.
“If there’s talk of murder,” he said, “I fancy this story gives me a complete alibi. Young Saul says that he saw me walking up to the main road. As a matter of fact I remember passing the lighted hut. I distinctly noticed a smell of beer. The thermal region’s in the opposite direction. I suppose I should be grateful to the dubious Mr. Saul.”
“You should be thankful you haven’t landed yourself in a damned equivocal position,” said Dr. Ackrington, staring at Gaunt. “I pass over the more serious view, which we should be perfectly justified in taking, of your attempt to keep us in the dark. I merely advise you to make quite sure of this alibi you have just thought of.”
“It is quite genuine, I promise you,” said Gaunt easily. “Might we get on with someone else’s movements?”
“Well, of all the bloody nerve — ” began Simon.
“Simon!” said his parents together and the Colonel added, “You’ll apologize to your mother and sister, immediately, Simon. And to Mr. Gaunt.”
Dikon, in his distress, had time to reflect that the Claires were a little too good to be true. Simon muttered his apology.
“Suppose,” Mr. Falls suggested, “we get on with the other narratives. Yours, for instance, Ackrington.”
“By all means. I shall begin by stating flatly that if I could have got at Questing last night I should certainly have given him fits. I left the hall with every intention of giving him fits. I couldn’t find him. I heard voices in the distance; in the light of Gaunt’s emended statement, I presume they were his and Questing’s voices but I did not recognize them. I had it in my head that Questing would be half-way across the thermal reserve and I hurried along with the idea of catching him up. I did not find him. I carried on and came home.”
“May one know why you wanted to tackle him?” asked Falls.
“Certainly. His behaviour at the concert. It was the final straw. Any questions?” asked Dr. Ackrington loudly.
“Too right, Doc, there’s a question,” said Smith with an air of the deepest acumen. “Can you prove it?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Any other questions?”
“I should like to know,” said Falls, “if you noticed the gap in the path.”
“I am glad, Falls, that you at least have had the intelligence to ask the only question that can possibly have any useful bearing on our problem. I did not. I must confess I don’t actually remember seeing the flag, which I admit is curious. But I’m perfectly certain there was no gap in the path.”
“Might you have missed it, Uncle?” asked Barbara suddenly and Dikon noticed how the men all looked at her as if a domestic pet had given utterance.
“Conceivably,” said Dr. Ackrington. “I don’t think so. However. Now you, Edward.”
“It’s unfortunate,” said Gaunt airily, “that nobody saw the doctor whizzing past the geysers.”
“I am aware of that. I realize my position. The purple policeman has doubtless put some fantastic interpretation upon the circumstance. I agree that I am unfortunate in that I was unobserved.”
“But you were observed, James,” said the Colonel, opening his eyes very widely. “I observed you, you know.” iv
The Colonel seemed to be mildly gratified by his brother-in-law’s reception of this news. He smiled gently and nodded his head at Dr. Ackrington, who gaped at him, opened and shut his mouth once or twice, and finally swore softly under his breath.
“I was behind you, you know,” Colonel Claire added. “Walkin’.”
“I didn’t suppose, Edward, that you cycled through the thermal region. May I ask why you have not mentioned this before?”
Colonel Claire returned the classic answer: “Nobody asked me,” he said.
“Were you hard on his heels the whole way, Colonel?”
“Eh? No, Falls. No, you see he went so fast. I caught sight of him when I got to that gap in the hedge round the village and then the bumps in the ground hid him. Then I saw him again when I got to the top of the mound. He was nearly over at the hill by then.”
“I must say it’s not my idea of a cast-iron alibi,” said Gaunt, who seemed to welcome any chance of scoring off Dr. Ackrington. “Two little peeps in the dark with craters and mounds between you.”
“Oh, he had a torch,” said the Colonel. “Hadn’t you, James? And, by the way, the scream was much later. I was nearly home when I heard the scream. I thought it was a bird,” added the Colonel.
“What sort of bird, for God’s sake?”
“A mutton-bird, James. They make beastly noises at night.”
“There are no mutton-birds round here, Edward.”
“Does it matter?” asked Dikon wearily.
“Not two hoots, I should have thought,” said Gaunt bitterly. “I’ve always detested nature study.”
“He is sure of himself all of a sudden,” thought Dikon.
They ploughed on with the Colonel’s story. When asked if he had noticed the gap in the path he became distressingly vague and changed his mind with each question as it was put to him. Falls took a hand. “You say you had a pocket torch, Colonel. Now my recollection of the gap is that it showed rather sharp and dark in the torchlight, like a shadow or even a stain across the outer edge of the path.”
“Yes!” the Colonel exclaimed. “That’s a jolly good way of describin’ it. Like a black stain.”
“Then you did see it?”
“I only said it was a good way of describin’ it. Vivid.”
“Didn’t you notice that the white flag at the top was missing?”
“Ah! Now, did I? You’d notice a thing like that, wouldn’t you?”
Dr. Ackrington groaned and executed a rapid tattoo with h is fingers on the table.
“But then again,” the Colonel said, “one saw the red flags going off at the foot of the mound, so naturally one wouldn’t follow them. And the path is quite sharply defined and that. One would just follow it up the mound, wouldn’t one, Agnes?”
“What, dear?” said Mrs. Claire, startled by this sudden demand upon her attention. “Yes, of course. Naturally.”
“The hole!” Dr. Ackrington shouted. “The gap! For pity’s sake pull yourself together, Edward. Throw your mind, a courtesy title for your cerebral arrangements, I fear, back to your walk up the path. Visualize it. Think. Concentrate.”
Colonel Claire obediently screwed up his face and shut his eyes tightly.
“Now,” said Dr. Ackrington, “you are climbing the path, using your torch. Do you see the white flag on the top of the mound?”
Colonel Claire, without opening his eyes, shook his head.
“Then, as you reach the top, what do you see?”