“Yes,” said Fay. “Three more. I only stole them. I didn't spend them.”
“Come to think of it, what else is in that brief-case? What makes it bulge like that?”
“Don't touch that brief-case! Please!”
“All right. I've got no right to badger you like this. I know that. I'm only doing it because—because it's necessary. But you ask what difference it makes? When for nearly six years the police have been trying to find out what happened to this case and the money inside it?”
The footsteps outside in the passage, which they had been too preoccupied to hear until now, approached the door with a casual air. But the tap on the door, though not loud, had a peremptory sound which could not be disregarded.
It was Miles who spoke; neither of the two women were capable of it.
“Who's there?”
“I'm a police officer,” said the voice outside, with that same combination of the casual and the peremptory. “Mind if I come in?”
Miles' hand, still holding the banknotes, moved as fast as a striking snake when he thrust those notes into his pocket. It was, he thought to himself, just as well. For the person outside did not wait for an invitation.
Framed in the doorway, as he swung the door wide open, stood a tall square-shouldered man in a raincoat and a bowler hat. All of them, perhaps, had been expecting a uniform to Miles at least this was rather more ominous. There was something vaguely familiar about the new-comer's face: the close-cropped moustache turning grey, the square jaw with muscles conspicuous at the corners, the suggestion of the military.
He stood looking from one to the other of the persons in front of him, his hand on the knob; and, in the passage behind him, the light reared and lowered a shadow of he opening and closing of teeth.
Twice those teeth opened and closed before the newcomer cleared his throat.
“Miss Fay Seton?”
Fay rose to her feet, turning out her wrist by way of reply. Superbly graceful, unconscious of the tear-stains on her face; drained of violence, past caring.
“My name is Hadley,” the stranger announced. “Superintendent Hadley. Metropolitan C.I.D.”
And now Miles realized why this face was vaguely familiar. Miles had moved over to the side of Barbara Morell. It was Barbara who spoke.
“I interviewed you once,” said Barbara shakily, “for the Morning Record. You talked a good deal, but you wouldn't give m permission to print much of it.”
“Right,” agreed Hadley, and looked at her. “You're Miss Morell, of course.” He looked thoughtfully at Miles. “And you must be Mr. Hammond. You seem to have got yourself pretty thoroughly soaking wet.”
“It wasn't raining when I left home.”
“Always wise,” said Hadley, shaking his head, “to take a raincoat when you go out in these days. I could lend you mine, only I'm afraid I'm going to need it myself.”
The studiedly social air of all this, with its element of deadly danger and tension underneath, couldn't go on for long. Miles broke it.
“Look here, Superintendent!” He burst out. “You didn't come here to talk about the weather. The main thing is—you're a friend of Dr. Fell.”
“That's right,” agreed Hadley. He came in, removed his hat, and closed the door.
“But Dr. Fell said the police weren't going to be brought into this!”
“Into what?” Hadley asked politely, with a slight smile.
“Into anything!”
“Well, that depends on what you mean,” said Hadley.
His eyes wandered round the room: at Fay's handbag and black beret on the bed, at the big dusty tin box drawn out from under the bed, at the drawn curtains on the two little windows. His gaze rested, without apparent curiosity, on the brief-case lying there conspicuously under the light over the chest-of-drawers.
Miles, his right hand tightly clutching the sheaf of banknotes in his pocket, watched him as you might watch a tame tiger.
“The fact is,” Hadley pursued easily, “I've had a very long 'phone conversation with the maestro . . .”
“With Dr. Fell?
“Yes. And a good deal of it wasn't quite clear. But it seems, Mr. Hammond, your sister had a very bad and dangerous scare last night.”
Fay Seton moved round the big tin box and picked up her handbag from the bed. She went to the chest-of-drawers, tilted the mirror above it so as better to catch the light, and set about with handkerchief and powder to remove the traces of tears. Her eyes in the mirror were blank, like blue marbles; but her elbow quivered frantically.
Miles clutched the banknotes.
“Dr. Fell told you what happened at Greywood?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“So the police have to be called in?”
“Oh, no. Not unless we're asked. And in any case you'd approach toe police of the district; not London. No,” said Hadley in a leisurely way, “what Fell really wanted was to know the name of a certain test.
“Certain test?”
“A scientific test to determine . . . well, what he wanted to determine. And whether I could tell him anyone who knew how to carry it out. He said he couldn't remember the name of the test, or anything much about it except that you used melted paraffin.” Hadley smiled slightly. “He meant the Gonzalez test, of course.”
Then Superintendent Hadley moved forward.
“Dr. Fell also asked me,” he went on, “whether we had any means of finding out Miss Seton's address, in case you”--he looked at Miles--”in case you by any chance missed her. I said naturally we had, since she must have taken out an identity card.” Hadley paused. “By the way, Miss Seton, have you got your identity card?”
The reflection of Fay's eyes regarded him in the mirror. She had almost finished making up; her hands were steady.
“Yes,” answered Fay.
“As a matter of form, may I see it?”
Fay took the card out of her handbag, gave it to him without comment, and turned back to the mirror. For some reason the look of wild strain was returning to her eyes as she picked up the powder compact again.
(What, thought Miles, is going on under all this?)
“I notice, Miss Seton, that this doesn't give any last address.”
“No. I've been living for the past six years in France.”
“So I understand. You've got a French identity card, of course.”
“I'm afraid not. I lost it.”
“What was your means of employment in France, Miss Seton?”
“I had no fixed means of employment.”
“Is that so?” Hadley's dark eyebrows went up, in contrast to the polish of his steel-grey hair. “Must have been a bit difficult to get rations there, wasn't it?”
“I had no—fixed means of employment.”
“But I understand you've trained professionally both as librarian and as secretary?”
“Yes. That's true.”
“In fact, come to think of it, you were employed as secretary by a Mr. Howard Brooke before his death in nineteen thirty-nine. Now there,” observed Hadley, as though suddenly struck by a new idea, “there's a case where we should be glad of a bit of help, to pass on to our French colleagues.”
(Watch the immense cat approach! Watch its devious courses!)
“But I was forgetting,” said Hadley, dismissing this so instantly that all three of his listeners jumped, “i was forgetting the real reason why I came here?”
“The real reason why you came here?”
“Yes, Miss Seton. Er—your identity car. Don't you want it back?”
“Thank you.”
Fay was compelled to turn around. She took the card from him; and then, in her grey dress and long damp tweed coat, sh stood with her back to the chest-of-drawers. Her body now hid the brief-case, which seemed to shout to heave. If Miles Hammond had been a thief with every seam of his pockets lined with stolen property, he could not have felt guiltier.