“That you, Sam? How are you...? Never better, Sam! There’s a question I want to ask you.... Thank’ee Sam. How many vents are working now?...”
Tom Look wood looked up wildly at the air-ventilator humming and whacking above his head. He looked at an equally bewildered Jenny.
“Only three? You’re sure of that? Right, Sam. Gimme their names and descriptions. Yes, I said descriptions! Uh-huh... No, the first one’s no good. Try the second... Lord love a duck, that sounds like the one we want! But try the third, just for luck... No, he’s no good either. It’s Charley Johnson. Gimme the address. It’s nearly six o’clock — he’s bound to be at home now... Thanks a million, Sam. And try to keep to one woman next time, hey? — All right, all right!”
Ringing off with the handsome air of one who has made all things clear, Sir Henry Merrivale spun the dial once again.
“Sergeant? I want a squad car, to hold three people and a driver, as quick as kiss-your-hand. Two minutes? Outside the Horse Guards Avenue entrance? Right!”
Lumbering to his feet, H.M. took down from a rack an ancient Panama hat and thrust it on. This hat, which had a band of startling colors and whose brim was turned down all round like a bowl, gave an even more sinister look to the great man’s unmentionable face.
“Sir!” protested Tom. “What in the name of sense is all this business of air-vents, and how can it help us?”
“You wanted a miracle explained, didn’t you?” demanded the great man. “All right. Are you comin’ with me, or not?”
Within the promised two minutes, and in the police car — Jenny and Tom sitting in the back seat, H.M. piled in front with the chauffeur — they whipped out of Horse Guards Avenue, turned left, and shot down Whitehall. H.M. who himself has never driven a car without landing through a shop window or against a lamp-post, made caustic comments about driving skill to a red-eared police driver.
Far beyond the towers of Westminster, behind its stately terraces and flats, lies a region of dingy, almost unknown, streets. The red-brick houses in these streets, by a show of brass knobs and letter-slots, try to keep up a brave pretense that they are private homes and not lodging houses.
But gritty winds make discarded newspapers dance along their gutters; children scream; there is an overriding clatter of dustbins. Before one such dingy house, which did look like a private home and really was, the car stopped.
“Come on, you two,” grunted H.M.
He impelled Jenny and Tom out of the car, and up a flight of stone steps to the front door. There he jabbed his finger at the bell.
“For the last time,” said the desperate Tom, “will you tell what an air-vent—” H.M. pulled down the brim of his hat even harder.
“Who said anything about an air-vent?” he howled. “I didn’t. I said ‘vent.’ That’s the theatrical and professional term for a ventriloquist. — Didn’t you ever hear a ventriloquist?”
Jenny’s hands flew to her open mouth.
“According to your story,” pursued H.M., “there were only four persons in the whispering gallery with you. This time we can acquit both your Aunt Hester and your Cousin Margot — they were leaning over the railing, much too far away from the wall.
“We can acquit the outraged verger in charge of the place. But who else was there? According to you, a fat and red-faced countryman — a little too thoroughly dressed up as a countryman, wasn’t he? — who carried a packet of sandwiches and a thermos flask.
“When you heard the words, he was sitting against the walls and plainly drinking tea. All right, my fatheads! Who’s the only man alive who can make his dummy speak clearly while he himself is walloping down a full glass of water? You know the answer.
“I rang up the king of all impresarios and found out the names and descriptions of the only three vents working in London. This Charley Johnson won’t know much about the case. Somebody handed him a fiver to play what he thought, and probably still thinks, was a joke. But he, when we see him, can tell us who bribed him to—”
The front door was hurled open.
There is no other word for it — the door crashed against the wall and all but rebounded.
In the doorway there stood, swaying slightly, that same fat man Jenny recognized from the whispering gallery. His face was now less professionally red; he was bald, and wore no wig. Instead of his countryman’s clothes, he was wrapped round in a somewhat grubby dressing gown of black and orange stripes. In one hand he held a whiskey-and-soda, in the other a half-eaten sandwich.
But what held them was the expression of his face. His eyes were so horribly wide open that a ring of white showed all the way round the iris.
“Look out, you two!” snapped H.M.
Tom dragged Jenny back just in time.
Charles Johnson, making a bubbling noise, took one step forward. Then he pitched headlong down the stone steps, turning over twice before he lay face down on the pavement.
The smashed glass, the half-eaten sandwich, had flown wide and fallen. Because of the man’s tiger-striped dressing gown, it was a moment or two before any of them saw the black handle of the knife driven into his back just under the left shoulder-blade.
Nobody moved until the police driver sprang out of the car. It did not need the driver’s nod, looking up, to tell them Johnson was dead.
Children’s roller skates crashed past on the opposite side of the street, amid shouting. A few windows banged up; a few women’s heads were thrust out. That was all.
H.M.’s face was white.
“Easy, my dolly,” he said, putting his hand on Jenny’s arm and speaking with surprising gentleness. “Is that the man you saw at the whispering gallery?”
The shock was too great. Jenny could only nod.
“Then that means,” said H.M., “this is no straight business of frightening a gal out of her wits. It means there’s somebody who’s dead-determined, crazy-mad, to get what he or she wants. Somebody got here before us and shut Johnson’s mouth. Murder with a knife is all in the day’s work. And that means...”
He brooded so long, ruffling his fingers at his temples, that Tom could not remain quiet.
“H.M.!” he said. “What is it?”
“It means there’s been a slight change of plans,” he answered.
“How?”
“You, my dolly,” said H.M., “aren’t going to spend the night at my house after all. If you’ve got the nerve, you’re goin’ straight back to spend the night at Aunt Hester’s.”
A golden sky was becoming tinged with purple over the thin Tudor chimneys of Hampton Court Palace.
Sir Henry Merrivale, in his most maddening mood, sat on an upended wheelbarrow, in one of the few remaining Tudor quadrangles: of dark red brick, with its white stone lions uprearing from the walls beside sly little windows. H.M. was again smoking his black pipe, and looked up at Tom without favor.
“Well,” he asked querulously, “where’s the whole party now?”
“As far as I know, they’re still tramping through miles and miles of picture galleries.”
“But looky here, son!” protested the great man. “According to my watch, and the notices posted up, this place should have been closed for a long time. Shouldn’t they all have been flung out of here hours ago?”
“Yes. But it seems Uncle Fred has a lot of influence with the director or the curator or whatever they call him. They’re being taken over the whole show at their leisure, particularly since Jenny’s keen to see the maze; and that’s a long way from here.”
“Maze, hey?” H.M. repeated thoughtfully.
“Now listen to me!” roared Tom, assuming an oratorical posture. “Since a few minutes past six yesterday afternoon, when you got rid of us all, until half an hour ago, when I set eyes on your ugly dial again, you’ve asked questions by the bucket. But you won’t answer a single question yourself. Why?”