Parker grinned ruefully.
“I’m trying to think who it could have been,” he said. “It wasn’t a burglar or anybody like that-it was a deliberate attempt at murder. The light-bulb had been put out of action beforehand and he had been hiding for hours behind the coal-bunker. You can see the marks of his feet. Now, who in the name of goodness have I got it in for to that extent? It can’t be Gentleman Jim or Dogsbody Dan, because that’s not their line of country at all. If it had happened last week, it might well have been Knockout Wally-he uses a cosh-but we jailed him good and hard for that business down in Limehouse on Saturday night. There are one or two bright lads who have it in for me one way or another, but I can’t exactly fit it on to any of them. All I know is, that whoever it was, he must have got in here before 11 p.m., when the housekeeper shuts the street door and puts out the hall light. Unless, of course, he had a latch-key, but that’s not so likely. He wasn’t obliging enough to leave anything behind to identify him, except a Woolworth pencil.”
“Oh, he left a pencil, did he?”
“Yes-one of those pocket propelling things-not a wooden one-you needn’t hope for a handy mould of his front teeth on it, or anything like that.”
“Show, show!” pleaded Wimsey.
“All right; you can see it if you like. I’ve tried it for fingerprints, but I can’t get much-only vague smudges, very much superimposed. I’ve had our finger-print wallah round to look at ’em, but he doesn’t seem to have made anything of ’em. See if you can find the pencil, Mary dear, for your little brother. Oh, and by the way, Peter, there’s a letter for you. I’ve only just remembered. In my left coat-pocket, Mary. I’d just taken it out of the Flat 4 box when all this happened.”
Mary sped away, and returned in a few minutes with the pencil and the coat.
“I can’t find any letter.”
Parker took the coat and, with his available hand, searched all the pockets carefully.
“That’s funny,” he said. “I know it was there. One of those fancy long-shaped mauve envelopes with gilt edges, and a lady’s fist, rather sprawly.”
“Oh!” said Wimsey, “the letter’s gone, has it?” His eyes glinted with excitement. “That’s very remarkable. And what’s more, Charles, this isn’t a Woolworth pencil-it’s one of Darling’s.”
“I meant Darling’s-same thing. Anybody might carry one of them.”
“Ah!” said Wimsey, “but this is where my expert knowledge comes in. Darling’s don’t sell these pencils-they give them away. Anybody buying more than a pound’s worth of goods gets a pencil as a good-conduct prize. You observe that it carries an advertising slogan: IT ISN’T DEAR, IT’S DARLING. (One of Pym’s best efforts, by the way.) The idea is that, every time you make a note on your shopping list, you are reminded of the superior economy of purchasing your household goods from Darling’s. And a very remarkable firm it is, too,” added his lordship, warming to the subject. “They’ve carried the unit system to the pitch of a fine art. You can sit on a Darling chair, built up in shilling and sixpenny sections and pegged with patent pegs at sixpence a hundred. If Uncle George breaks the leg, you buy a new leg and peg it in. If you buy more clothes than will go into your Darling chest of drawers, you unpeg the top, purchase a new drawer for half a crown, peg it on and replace the top. Everything done by numbers, and kindness. And, as I say, if you buy enough, they give you a pencil. If you mount up to five pounds’ worth, they give you a fountain pen.”
“That’s very helpful,” said Parker, sarcastically. “It ought to be easy to identify a criminal who has bought a pound’s worth of goods at Darling’s within the last six months or so.”
“Wait a bit; I said I had expert knowledge. This pencil-a natty scarlet, as you observe, with gold lettering-didn’t come from any of Darling’s brandies. It’s not on the market yet. There are only three places it could have come from: one, from the pencil manufacturer’s; two, from Darling’s head office; three, from our place.”
“Do you mean Pym’s?”
“I do. This is the new pencil design, with an improved propelling mechanism. The old ones only propelled; this repels also, with a handy twist of the what-d’ye-call. Darling’s obligingly presented us with half a gross of them to try out.”
Mr. Parker sat up so suddenly that he jarred his shoulder and his head, and groaned dismally.
“I think it highly improbable,” went on Lord Peter, lusciously, “that you have a deadly enemy at the pencil manufacturer’s or at Darling’s head office. It seems to me much more likely that the gentleman with the cosh, or knuckle-duster, or sand-bag, or lead-piping, in short, the blunt instrument, came from Pym’s, guided by the address which, with your usual amiability, you kindly allowed me to give as mine. Observing my name neatly inscribed on the letter-box of Flat 4, he mounted confidently, armed with his cosh, knuckle-”
“Well, I’m dashed!” exclaimed Lady Mary, “do you mean to say that it’s really you, you devil, who ought to be lying there mangled and bruised in the place of my afflicted husband?”
“I think so,” said Wimsey, with satisfaction, “I certainly do think so. Particularly as the assailant seems to have walked off with my private correspondence. I know who-or to be grammatical, whom-that letter was from, by the way.”
“Who?” demanded Parker, disregarding the grammatical nicety.
“Why, from Pamela Dean, to be sure. I recognize your description of the envelope.”
“Pamela Dean? The victim’s sister?”
“As you say.”
“Willis’s young woman?”
“Precisely.”
“But how should he know about the letter?”
“I don’t suppose he did. I rather fancy this is the result of a little bit of self-advertisement I put in yesterday afternoon at the office tea-party. I made it clear to all and sundry that I had been experimenting on the roof with a catapult.”
“Did you? Who, exactly, were the all and sundry?”
“The twenty people taking tea and all the other people they mentioned it to.”
“Rather a wide limit.”
“M’m, yes. I thought I might get some reaction. What a pity it reacted on you and not on me.”
“A very great pity,” agreed Mr. Parker, with feeling.
“Still, it might have been worse. We’ve got three lines to go upon. The people who heard about the catapult. The people who knew, or inquired for, my address. And, of course, the bloke who’s lost his pencil. But, I say-” Wimsey broke off with a shout of laughter-“what a shock it must have been for whoever it was when I turned up this morning without so much as a black eye! Why in the name of creation didn’t you let me have all the details first thing this morning, so that I could have kept a look-out?”
“We were otherwise employed,” said Lady Mary.
“Besides, we didn’t think it had anything to do with you.”
“You should have guessed. Wherever trouble turns up, there am I at the bottom of it. But I’ll overlook it this time. You have been sufficiently punched, and no one shall say that a Wimsey could not be magnanimous. But this blighter-you didn’t manage to mark him, Charles, did you?”
“Afraid not. I got a clutch on his beastly throat, but he was all muffled up.”
“You did that badly, Charles. You should have socked him one. But, as I said before, I forgive you. I wonder if our friend will have another shot at me.”
“Not at this address, I hope,” said Mary.
“I hope not. I’d like to have him under my own eye next time. He must have been pretty smart to get that letter. Why in the world-ah! now I understand.”
“What?”
“Why nobody fainted at the sight of me this morning. He must have had a torch with him. He knocks you down and turns on the torch to see if you’re probably dead. The first thing he spots is the letter. He grabs that-why? Because-we’ll come back to that. He grabs it and then looks at your classic features. He realized that he’s slugged the wrong man, and at that very moment he hears Mary making a hullabaloo. So he clears. That’s perfectly plain now. But the letter? Would he have taken any letter that happened to be there, or did he know the writing? When was that letter delivered? Yes, of course, the 9.30 post. Suppose, when he came in to look for my flat, he saw the letter in the box and recognized whom it was from. That opens up a wide field of speculation, and possibly even offers us another motive.”