"I'll tell you what you'll do, sir," said Sir Benjamin. "You'll sit down there like a sensible man, and you'll give your testimony when it's asked for. Not before."
Payne whirred in his throat. Rampole saw the short white hair bristle on the back of his head.
"Are you familiar with the law, sir?" he rasped.
"Yes, sir, I am," said Sir Benjamin. "I happen to be a magistrate myself, you know. Now will you obey my instructions, or shall I — "
Dr. Fell coughed. He inclined his head sleepily towards the door, hoisting himself up from his chair as Dorothy Starberth entered. Payne turned jerkily.
"Ah, come in, my dear," he said, pushing out a chair. "Sit down. Rest yourself. Sir Benjamin and I"-the whites of his eyes flashed over towards the chief constable, "will talk presently."
He folded his arms, but he did not move from the side of her chair, where he had taken up his stand like a guardian. Sir Benjamin was ill at ease.
"You know, of course, Miss Starberth," he began, "how we all feel about this tragic business. As long as I've known you and your family, I don't think I need say more." His sincere old face looked muddled and kindly. "I dislike intruding on you at this time. But if you feel up to answering a few questions…"
"You don't have to answer them," said Payne. "Remember that, my dear."
"You don't have to answer them," agreed Sir Benjamin, controlling his temper. "I only thought to save you trouble for the inquest."
"Of course," said the girl. She sat quietly, her hands in her lap, while she told the story she had told last night. They had finished dinner a little before nine o'clock. She had tried to entertain Martin and keep his mind off the forthcoming business; but he was moody and distraught, and had gone up to his room immediately. Where was Herbert? She did not know. She had gone out on the lawn, where it was cooler, and sat there for the better part of an hour. Then she had gone in to the office to look over the day's household accounts. In the hall she had met Budge, who informed her that he had taken a bicycle-lamp up to Martin's room, as Martin had asked. Several times, during the half-hour or three-quarters ensuing, she had been on the point of going up to Martin's room. But he had expressed a desire to be left alone; he was sullen, and had been bad-tempered at dinner; so she had refrained from doing so. He would feel better if nobody saw his state of nerves.
At about twenty minutes to eleven she had heard him leave his room, come downstairs, and go out the side door. She had run after him, reaching the side door as he was going down the drive, and called to him — afraid that he might have taken too much to drink. He had called back to her, snapping some words she did not catch; his speech was rather thick, but his step seemed fairly steady. Then she had gone to the telephone and communicated with Dr. Fell's house, telling them that he was on the way.
That was all. Her slow, throaty voice never faltered as she told it, and her eyes remained fixed on Sir Benjamin; the full pink lips, devoid of make-up, hardly seemed to move at all. At the conclusion, she sat back and looked at the sunlight in one unshuttered window.
"Miss Starberth," said Dr. Fell, after a pause, "I wonder if you'd mind my asking a question?… Thank you. Budge has told us that the clock in the hall out there was wrong last night, though none of the others were. When you say that he left the house at twenty minutes to eleven, do you mean the time by that clock, or the right time?"
"Why―" she looked at him blankly; then down at her wristwatch and up at the clock on the mantelpiece. "Why, the right time! I'm positive of it. I never even glanced at the clock in the hall. Yes, the right time."
Dr. Fell relapsed, while the girl regarded him with a slight frown. Evidently nettled at this irrelevancy being brought in again, Sir Benjamin began to pace up and down the hearth rug. You felt that he had been nerving himself up to ask certain questions, and the doctor's interruption had scattered his resolves. Finally he turned.
"Budge has already told us, Miss Starberth, about Herbert's entirely unexplained absence…."
She inclined her head.
"Think, if you please! You are positive that he never mentioned the possibility of leaving suddenly-well, that is, you can think of no reason for his doing so?"
"None," she said, and added, in a lower voice: "You needn't be so formal, Sir Benjamin. I understand the implications as well as you do."
"Well, to be frank, then: the coroner's jury is likely to put an ugly interpretation on it, unless he returns immediately. Even so you see? Has there been any ill-feeling between Herbert and Martin in the past?"
"Never."
"Or more recently?"
"We hadn't seen Martin," she answered, interlacing her fingers, "since about a month after father died, up until the time we met his boat at Southampton the day before yesterday. There has never been the slightest ill-feeling between them."
Sir Benjamin was plainly at a loss. He looked round at Dr. Fell, as though for prompting, but the doctor said nothing.
"At the moment, he went on, clearing his throat, "I can think of nothing else. It's — ah — very puzzling. Very puzzling indeed. Naturally, we don't want to subject you to any more of an ordeal than is necessary, my dear; and if you care to go back to your room…"
"Thanks. But if you don't mind," said the girl, "I should prefer to remain here. It's more-more… well, I should prefer to remain."
Payne patted her on the shoulder. "I'll attend to the rest of it," he told her, nodding towards the chief constable with dry, vicious satisfaction.
There was an interruption. They heard a nervous, whispering jabber in the hall outside, and a voice which suddenly croaked, "Nonsense!" with a shrillness so exactly like a talking crow that everybody started. Budge came sailing in.
"If you please, sir," he said to the chief constable, "Mrs. Bundle is bringing one of the housemaids who knows something about that clock."
"— now you march!" squawked the crow's voice. "You march right in there, young lady, and you speaks to 'em. It's a nice state of affairs, it's a nice state of affairs, I say, if we can't 'ave truth-telling people in the 'ouse, I say…. Pop!" concluded Mrs. Bundle, making a noise with her lips like a cork pulled out of a bottle.
Escorting a frightened housemaid, she came rolling through the door. Mrs. Bundle was a little lean woman with a sailor's walk, a lace cap coming down into her bright eyes, and a face of such extraordinary malevolence that Rampole stared. She glared upon everybody out of a dusty face, but she seemed less to be damning everybody than to be meditating some deep wrong. Then she assumed a wooden stare, which gave her a curious cross-eyed look.
"'Ere she is," said Mrs. Bundle. "And what I say is this: things being what they are, I say, we might as well all be murdered in our beds or Get Took By Americans. It's all the same. Many's the time I've said to Mr. Budge, I've said, `Mr. Budge, you mark my words, there's no good a-going ter come of mucking about with them ghosters. 'Tain't in natur,' I've said, `for this 'ere tenement of clay (which we all is) to be alwis a-trying to beard them ghosters by their beards,' I says. Pop. You'd think we was Americans. Pop! And them ghosters, now―"
"Of course, Mrs. Bundle, of course," the chief constable said, soothingly. He turned to the little housemaid, who trembled in Mrs. Bundle's grip like a virgin ensnared by a witch. "You know something about the clock — er — ?'
"Martha, sir. Yes, sir. Truly."
"Tell us about it, Martha."
"They chews gum. Drat 'em!" cried Mrs. Bundle, with such ferocious malignancy that she gave a little hop.
"Eh?" said the chief constable. "Who?"
"They takes pies and hits people," said Mrs. Bundle. "Eee! Squee! Pop! Drat 'em!…"
The housekeeper showed a tendency to hold forth on this theme. She was not talking about the ghosters, it seemed, but about the Americans, whom she proceeded to describe as "nasty cowboy people with straw hats on." The ensuing monologue she delivered, shaking a bunch of keys in one hand and Martha in the other, was a trifle clouded in meaning, due to the listeners' inability to tell when she was referring to the Americans and when she was referring to the ghosters. She had concluded a lecture which seemed to deal with the ghosters' impolite habit of squirting one another in the face with soda-water from syphons, before Sir Benjamin summoned enough courage to interfere.