“A queer evening,” Miles declared, “is absolutely right. First the whole Murder Club disappears. Professor Rigaud tells us an incredible story,” Miles shook his head as though to clear it, “which grows even more incredible when you have time to think. The he disappears Common sense suggests he's only gone to – never mind. But at the same time ...”
The mahogany door to the hall opened. Frederic, the head-waiter, his round-jawed face aloof with reproach, slipped in.
“Professor Rigaud, sir,” he announced, “is downstairs. At the telephone.”
Barbara, who had stopped only long enough, apparently, to pick up her handbag and blow out one candle which was fluttering and flaring in a harsh gush of wax-smoke, had followed Miles into the outer room. Again she stopped short.
“At the telephone?” Barbara repeated.
“Yes, miss.”
“But” – the words sounded almost comic as she flung them out – “he was looking for someone to serve us drinks!”
“Yes, miss. The call came through while he was downstairs.”
“From whom?”
“I believe, miss, from Dr. Gideon Fell.” Slight pause. “The Honorary Secretary of the Murder Club.” Slight pause. “Dr. Fell learned Professor Rigaud had been ringing up from here earlier in the evening; so Dr. Fell rang back.” Was there a dangerous quality, now, about Frederic's eye? “Professor Rigaud seems very angry, miss.”
“Oh, good Lord!” breathed Barbara in a voice of honest consternation.
Over the back of one of the pink brocaded chairs, chairs ranged as stiffly round the room as in an undertaker's parlour, hung the girl's fur wrap and an umbrella. Assuming an air of elaborate unconcern which would have deceived nobody, Barbara picked them up and twisted the wrap round her shoulders.
“I'm awfully sorry,” she said to Miles. “I shall have to go now.”
He stared at her.
“But, look here! You can't go now! Won't the old boy be annoyed if he comes back and finds you're not here?”
“No half as annoyed,” Barbara said with conviction, “as if he comes back and finds I am here.” She fumbled at her handbag. “– I want to pay for my share of the dinner. It's been very nice. I–“ Confusion, utter and complete, overcame her down to the finger-tips. Her handbag overflowed, spilling coins and keys and a compact on the floor.
Miles restrained an impulse to laugh, though certainly not at her. A great dazzle of illumination came into his mind. He bent down, picked up the fallen articles, dropped them into her handbag, and closed it with a snap.
“You arranged all this, didn't you?” he asked her.
“Arranged? I ...”
“You dished the meeting of the Murder Club, by God! In some way you put off Dr. Fell and Mr. Justice Coleman and Dam Ellen Nye and Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all! All except Professor Rigaud, because you wanted to hear his first-hand account about Fay Seton! But you knew the Murder Club had never entertained any guests except the speaker, so you hadn't bargained on my turning up ...”
Her dead-serious voice recalled him.
“Please! Don't make a fool of me!”
Wrenching loose from the hand he had put on her arm, Barbara ran for the door. Frederic, a stony eye on one corner of the ceiling, slowly moved aside for her as one who calls attention to the fact that he could have sent for the police. Miles hurried after her.
“Here! Wait! I wasn't blaming you! I ...”
But she was already flying down the soft-carpeted hall, in the direction of the private stair to Greek Street.
Miles glanced round desperately. Opposite him was the illuminated sign of the gentleman's cloakroom. He snatched up his raincoat, crammed his hat on his head, and returned to face the speaking eye of Frederic.
“Are the dinners of the Murder Club paid for by somebody in a lump sum? Or does each person pay for his own?”
“It is the rule for each person to pay for his own, sir. But tonight–“
“I know, I know!” Miles thrust banknotes into the man's hand, with pleasurable exhilaration at the thought that he could nowadays afford to do so. “This is to cove everything. Present my distinguished compliments to Professor Rigaud, and say I'll ring him in the morning to apologize. Don't know where he's staying in London,” this was an impasse he swept aside, “but I can find out. Er – have I given you enough money?”
“More than enough money, sir. At the same time ...”
“Sorry. My fault. Good night!”
He dared not run to hard, since his old illness was apt to claw at him and make his head swim. But his pace was tolerably fast all the same. As he got downstairs and outside, he could just see the glimmer of Barbara's white dress, under the short fur wrap, moving in the direction of Frith Street. Then he really did run.
A taxi rolled down Frith Street in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue, its motor whirring with great distinctness in the hollow-punctuated silence of London at night. Miles shouted at I without much hope, but to his surprise it hesitatingly swerved in towards the kerb. With his left hand Miles caught at Barbara Morell's arm; with his right he twisted open the handle of the cab door before someone else should appear, ghostly out of the rain-pattering gloom, to lay claim to it.
“Honestly,” he said to Barbara, with such a warmth of sincerity that her arm relaxed, “there was no reason to run away like that. You can at least let me drop you off at home. Where do you live?”
“St. John's Wood. But ...”
“Can't do it, governor,” said the taxi-driver in a fierce voice of defiance mingled with martyrdom. “I'm going Victoria way, and I've only just enough petrol to get home.”
“All right. Drop us at Piccadilly Circus tube-station.”
The car door slammed. There was a slur of tyres on wet asphalt. Barbara in the far corner of the seat, spoke in a small voice.
“You'd like to kill me, wouldn't you?” she asked.
“For the last time, my dear girclass="underline" no! On the contrary. Life has been made so uncomfortable for us that every little bit helps.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“A high-court judge, a barrister-politician, and a number of other important people have been carefully flummoxed at something they'd arranged. Wouldn't it delight your heart if you heard―as you never will―of an Important Person who couldn't make a reservation or got thrown back to the tail-end of a queue?”
The girl looked at him.
“You are nice,” she said seriously.
This threw Miles a little off balance.
“It isn't a question of what you call niceness,” he retorted with some violence. “It's a question of Old Adam.”
“But poor Professor Rigaud―
“Yes, it's a bit rough on Rigaud. We must find a way to make amends. All the same! – I don't know why you did t, Miss Morell, but I'm very glad you did it. Except for two reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“In the first place, I think you should have confided in Dr. Fell. He's a grand old boy; he'd have sympathized with anything you told him. And how he would have enjoyed that case of the man, murdered while alone on a tower. That is,” Miles added, with the perplexity and strangeness of the night wrapping him round, “if it was a real case and not a dream or a leg-pull. If you'd told Dr. Fell ...”
“But I don't even know Dr. Fell! I lied about that too.”
“It doesn't matter!”
“It does matter,” said Barbara, and pressed her hands hard over her eyes. “I'd never met any of the members. But I was in a position, you see, to learn all their names and addresses, and that Professor Rigaud was speaking on the Brooke case. I phoned everybody except Dr. Fell as Dr. Fell's private secretary, and said the dinner had been postponed. Then I got in touch with Dr. Fell as representing the President. And hoped to heaven both those two would be away from home tonight if someone did ring up for confirmation.”