“Good God!” thought Willis, “the fellow’s a tight-rope walker-or he’s too drunk to fall.” There were yells of applause, and a girl began to shriek hysterically. Then a very tall woman, in a moonlight frock of oyster satin, who had made herself the centre of the most boisterous of all the parties, pushed past Willis and stood out on the edge of the basin, her fair hair standing out like a pale aureole round her vivid face.
“Dive!” she called out, “dive in! I dare you to! Dive in!”
“Shut up, Dian!” One of the soberer of the men caught her round the shoulders and put his hand over her mouth. “It’s too shallow-he’ll break his neck.”
She pushed him away.
“You be quiet. He shall dive. I want him to. Go to hell, Dickie. You wouldn’t dare do it, but he will.”
“I certainly wouldn’t. Stow it!”
“Come on, Harlequin, dive!”
The black and white figure raised its arms above its fantastic head and stood poised.
“Don’t be a fool, man,” bawled Dickie.
But the other women were fired with the idea and their screams drowned his voice.
“Dive, Harlequin, dive.”
The slim body shot down through the spray, struck the surface with scarcely a splash and slid through the water like a fish. Willis caught his breath. It was perfectly done. It was magnificent. He forgot his furious hatred of the man and applauded with the rest. The girl Dian ran forward and caught hold of the swimmer as he emerged.
“Oh, you’re marvellous, you’re marvellous!” She clung to him, the water soaking into her draggled satin.
“Take me home, Harlequin-I adore you!”
The Harlequin bent his masked face and kissed her. The man called Dickie tried to pull him away, but was neatly tripped and fell with a jerk into the pool, amid a roar of laughter. The Harlequin tossed the tall girl across his shoulder.
“A prize!” he shouted. “A prize!”
Then he swung her lightly to her feet and took her hand. “Run,” he called, “run! Let’s run away, and let them catch us if they can.”
There was a sudden stampede. Willis saw the angry face of Dickie as he lurched past him and heard him swearing. Somebody caught his hand. He ran up the rose-alley, panting. Something caught his foot, and he tripped and fell. His companion abandoned him, and ran on, hooting. He sat up, found his head enveloped in his hood and struggled to release himself.
A hand touched his shoulder.
“Come on, Mr. Willis,” said a mocking voice in his ear, “Mr. Bredon says I am to escort you home.”
He succeeded in dragging the black cloth from his head and scrambled to his feet.
Beside him stood Pamela Dean. She had taken off her mask, and her eyes were alight with mischief.
Chapter V. Surprising Metamorphosis of Mr. Bredon
Lord Peter Wimsey had paid a call upon Chief-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard, who was his brother-in-law.
He occupied a large and comfortable arm-chair in the Chief-Inspectors Bloomsbury flat. Opposite him, curled upon the chesterfield, was his sister, Lady Mary Parker, industriously knitting an infant’s vest. On the window-seat, hugging his knees and smoking a pipe, was Mr. Parker himself. On a convenient table stood a couple of decanters and a soda siphon. On the hearthrug was a large tabby cat. The scene was almost ostentatiously peaceful and domestic.
“So you have become one of the world’s workers, Peter,” said Lady Mary.
“Yes; I’m pulling down four solid quid a week. Amazin’ sensation. First time I’ve ever earned a cent. Every week when I get my pay-envelope, I glow with honest pride.”
Lady Mary smiled, and glanced at her husband, who grinned cheerfully back. The difficulties which are apt to arise when a poor man marries a rich wife had, in their case, been amicably settled by an ingenious arrangement, under which all Lady Mary’s money had been handed over to her brothers in trust for little Parkers to come, the trustee having the further duty of doling out each quarter to the wife a sum precisely equal to the earnings of the husband during that period. Thus a seemly balance was maintained between the two principals; and the trifling anomaly that Chief-Inspector Parker was actually a mere pauper in comparison with small Charles Peter and still smaller Mary Lucasta, now peacefully asleep in their cots on the floor above, disturbed nobody one whit. It pleased Mary to have the management of their moderate combined income, and incidentally did her a great deal of good. She now patronized her wealthy brother with all the superiority which the worker feels over the man who merely possesses money.
“But what is the case all about, exactly?” demanded Parker.
“Blest if I know,” admitted Wimsey, frankly. “I got hauled into it through Freddy Arbuthnot’s wife-Rachel Levy that was, you know. She knows old Pym, and he met her at dinner somewhere and told her about this letter that was worrying him, and she said, Why not get somebody in to investigate it, and he said, Who? So she said she knew somebody-not mentioning my name, you see-and he said would she ask him to buzz along, so I buzzed and there I am.”
“Your narrative style,” said Parker, “though racy, is a little elliptical. Could you not begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end, and then, if you are able to, stop?”
“I’ll try,” said his lordship, “but I always find the stopping part of the business so difficult. Well, look! On a Monday afternoon-the 25th of May, to be particular, a young man, Victor Dean by name, employed as a copy-writer in the firm of Pym’s Publicity, Ltd., Advertising Agents, fell down an iron spiral staircase on their premises, situated in the upper part of Southampton Row, and died immediately of injuries received, to wit: one broken neck, one cracked skull, one broken leg and minor cuts and contusions, various. The time of this disaster was, as nearly as can be ascertained, 3.30 in the afternoon.”
“Hum!” said Parker. “Pretty extensive injuries for a fall of that kind.”
“So I thought, before I saw the staircase. To proceed. On the day after this occurrence, the sister of deceased sends to Mr. Pym a fragment of a half-finished letter which she has found on her brother’s desk. It warns him that there is something of a fishy nature going on in the office. The letter is dated about ten days previous to the death, and appears to have been laid aside as though the writer wanted to think over the wording a bit more carefully. Very good. Now, Mr. Pym is a man of rigid morality-except, of course, as regards his profession, whose essence is to tell plausible lies for money-”
“How about truth in advertising?”
“Of course, there is some truth in advertising. There’s yeast in bread, but you can’t make bread with yeast alone. Truth in advertising,” announced Lord Peter sententiously, “is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal. It provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow. Which incidentally brings me to the delicate and important distinction between the words ‘with’ and ‘from.’ Suppose you are advertising lemonade, or, not to be invidious, we will say perry. If you say ‘Our perry is made from fresh-plucked pears only,’ then it’s got to be made from pears only, or the statement is actionable; if you just say it is made ‘from pears,’ without the ‘only,’ the betting is that it is probably made chiefly of pears; but if you say, ‘made with pears,’ you generally mean that you use a peck of pears to a ton of turnips, and the law cannot touch you-such are the niceties of our English tongue.”