“Is he dead? Oh, he isn’t! Oh, he can’t be! Oh, send everyone away!”
The two women went. Algy went. Gay heard him ask where there was another telephone, and then something about the butler’s pantry. The door was shut. Sylvia stopped crying and said,
“Is Francis dead?”
“I think so.”
“He shot him!” said Sylvia in a quick, excited voice. “Oh Gay, it was dreadful! They were quarrelling and he shot him!”
“Sylly-who?”
“Mr. Zero,” said Sylvia with a sob that almost choked the word.
“But you had the pistol in your hand-you had it.”
Sylvia looked at her with wide, frightened eyes.
“I picked it up.”
“But Francis was outside-the other side of the hedge. Where was this Zero man?”
“He was outside too.”
“Then how did you get the pistol?”
Sylvia swayed as if she was going to faint again. She let go of Gay and said in a failing voice,
“I picked it up.”
Gay caught her by ths arm.
“Sylly, pull yourself together. You can’t faint now-there isn’t time-Algy is telephoning to the police. You’ve got to tell me what happened. You’ve got to make up your mind what you’re going to say. They’ll ask you hundreds of questions. Tell me what happened-quickly, before anyone comes.”
Sylvia drew a long breath.
“I told you-I had to meet him-”
“This blackmailing Zero man?”
“Yes-I told you. I took the letters he wanted-out of the safe.”
“Go on.”
“I wrapped them up in a handkerchief that Marcia left behind. It was a very ugly one-”
“It doesn’t matter about the handkerchief. Go on.”
“It does, because that’s why I couldn’t find them-after I’d dropped them. I mean. It was a dark green handkerchief with a sort of brown check on it. I can’t think why Marcia got it.”
Gay thought, “It’s exactly like a nightmare. Francis has been murdered, and we’re talking about the colour of Marcia’s handkerchief.” She said,
“Tell me what happened-tell me what happened.”
The couch was covered with crimson leather. Sylvia leaned back into the corner. Her black satin cloak had fallen open. The hood had dragged her hair and disarranged it. A bright spot of colour burned in either cheek. She said with a rush of words,
“Francis was here. I don’t know how he knew I had gone out. I opened the parlour door-”
“You left the light on.”
Sylvia looked faintly surprised.
“I never can remember about lights-I didn’t mean to leave it on. I suppose Francis saw it.”
“Sylly, you’re not telling me what happened.”
Sylvia began to breathe a little faster.
“I went right down to the end of the yew walk where the seat is, and the window, but I didn’t like doing it a bit, because I don’t really like that sort of place very much even in the daytime. I had a torch, and when I got to the window it shone through it, and Mr. Zero said, ‘Is that you?’ and I said it was. And he said, ‘Have you got those letters?’ and I said ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Hand them over quick, and put out that torch of yours,’ and I said ‘Why?’ and he got awfully cross and said to put it out at once. And then we heard someone running, and it was Francis.”
“How do you know it was Francis?”
Sylvia stared and shuddered.
“He called out. I was so frightened, I thought I was going to faint. Then they began to fight, and they were saying awful things. And Mr. Zero said, ‘Take that!’ and there was a shot, and the pistol fell down and I picked it up.”
Gay tried to think whether anyone would believe a story like this. She didn’t see how they could. She tried to think whether she could believe it herself.
The door opened and Algy Somers came into the room.
She said, “Sylvia, will you say that all over again. To Algy. Algy’s got to help us. You’ve got to tell him.”
Sylvia turned lovely plaintive eyes on Algy and said it all over again. As far as Gay could tell she used exactly the same words, like a child repeating a lesson that it has learned by heart.
Algy brought a chair over to the couch and sat down quite close to them.
“Who is Mr. Zero, Lady Colesborough?” he said.
Sylvia looked helpless.
“That’s what he called himself when he talked to me on the telephone.”
Algy said “Yes?” in an encouraging voice, and, when that did not produce anything, “Don’t you know his real name?”
“Oh, no,” said Sylvia.
“You were meeting him to give him some letters. Will you tell me why?”
“He wanted them,” said Sylvia with a sob. “He said they were his. He said he’d tell Francis-about the other things-” Her voice broke.
“He was blackmailing you?”
Two large tears rolled down Sylvia’s cheeks.
“Yes, he was. And Gay said not to meet him, and I wish I hadn’t now, but I didn’t want him to tell Francis about the paper.”
Algy said “Help!” to himself. He had awful visions of the sort of witness that Sylvia was going to make, he had awful visions of what she might be going to say.
He asked, “What paper?” and with a complete sense of unreality heard Sylvia say,
“The one I took when I was staying with the Wessex-Gardners. I can’t even remember the man’s name.”
It was Gay who said “Lushington,” and it was Gay who saw the white line come on either side of Algy’s mouth. There was one of those silences which seem as if they might go on for ever. Then Gay put out a hand to stop Sylvia, and Algy said very quietly indeed,
“You took a paper from Mr. Lushington’s room,at Wellings a week ago?”
“He made me,” said Sylvia. “He said he’d give me two hundred pounds. And I’d lost it at cards, and Francis would have been so angry.”
It seemed a complete explanation.
Algy said, “He being Mr. Zero?”
Sylvia nodded.
“So I had to get the letters when he told me to.”
Algy said, “I see.” He got up and walked in the room. The window was open. Francis Colesborough had gone out that way. There was a drawer pulled out on one side of the writing-table, pulled out in a hurry and left. He stood looking down at it without touching anything. He wondered what had been taken from it in that last hurry, and saw a packet of cartridges lying there and thought, “It was his own pistol. He snatched it up and went out.” There was a sheet of paper on the blotting-pad, a letter just begun. You don’t read another man’s letters, but Francis Colesborough was no longer another man. He was “the deceased” in a murder case, and one of the first things the police would do would be to read this letter.
Algy bent down and read it as it lay a little crookedly on the pale yellow blotting-paper.
There was no beginning. That halted him, because there was something strange in a letter which discarded all the usual forms. The strangeness sounded a warning bell. The check was momentary, yet in that moment he had braced himself against what might come. Without any change of expression he read:
“You disturb yourself unnecessarily. Neither Zero nor the agent is under the least suspicion. This rests in quite another quarter. M.L. has decided-”
The writing broke off there.
Algy Somers went back to the butler’s pantry and rang up Montagu Lushington.
XXI
Colonel Anstruther leaned back in his chair and frowned at Inspector Boyce. He had been a Chief Constable for ten years without ever coming to closer quarters with a cause célèbre than the pages of his daily newspaper. He now found himself threatened with a sensational publicity from which no man in the British Isles was more averse. He had an exact and orderly mind, and disapproved of crimes which could not be immediately docketed and pigeon-holed. He drummed on the arm of his chair and said,
“The Home Office is sending a man down. You’ll have to take instructions from him as to the political issues involved. He will be present when the safe is opened, and so will Sir Francis Colesborough’s lawyer.”