“To the place from which you came. I’ve heard that said before, but I can’t remember where.”
“If you ever heard a man condemned to death, then you heard it said then.”
“My God, yes! That was it. I went to a murder trial once. There was a horrible old man, the Judge-I forget his name. He was like a wicked old scarlet parrot, and he said it as though he liked it. ‘And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul.’ Do we have souls, Harlequin, or is that all nonsense? It is nonsense, isn’t it?”
“So far as you are concerned, it probably is.”
“But what have I got to do with Victor’s death?”
“Nothing, I hope. But you ought to know.”
“Of course I had nothing to do with it.”
And indeed, she might not have. This was the most phantasmal part of the illusion-the border where daydream and night-dream marched together in an eternal twilight. The man had been murdered-of that he was now certain; but what hand had struck the blow and why was still beyond all guessing. Bredon’s instinct told him to hold fast to Dian de Momerie. She was the guardian of the shadow-frontier; through her, Victor Dean, surely the most prosaic denizen of the garish city of daylight, had stepped into the place of bright flares and black abysses, whose ministers are drink and drugs and its monarch death. But question her as he might, he could get no help from her. She had told him one thing only, and over and over again he pondered it, wondering how it fitted into the plot. Milligan, the sinister Milligan, knew something about Pym’s, or somebody who worked at Pym’s. He had known of this before he met Dean, for he had said on meeting him: “So you’re the chap, are you?” What connection was there? What had Dean, at Pym’s, had to do with Milligan, before Milligan knew him? Was it merely that Dian had boasted, laughing, of having a lover from that respectable agency? Had Victor Dean died merely because of Dian’s fancy for him?
Wimsey could not believe it; the fancy had died first, and the death of Dean was, after that, surely superfluous. Besides, when they of the city of night slay for passion’s sake, they lay no elaborate schemes, wipe off no finger-prints and hold no discreet tongues before or after. Brawls and revolver-shots, with loud sobs and maudlin remorse, are the signs and tokens of fatal passion among leaders of the bright life.
One other piece of information Dian had indeed given him, but at that moment he could not interpret it, and was not even aware that he held it. He could only wait, like a cat at a mouse-hole, till something popped out that he could run after. And so he passed his nights very wearily, driving the car and playing upon a penny whistle, and snatching his sleep in the small hours, before taking up the daily grind at Pym’s.
Wimsey was quite right about Dian de Momerie’s feeling for him. He excited her and frightened her, and, on the whole, she got a sensation of rather titillating horror at the sound of the penny whistle. But the real reason of her anxiety to propitiate him was founded on a coincidence that he could not have known and that she did not tell him.
On the day after their first encounter, Dian had backed an outsider called Acrobat, and it had come in at 50 to 1. Three days after the adventure in the woods, she had backed another outsider called Harlequin, each way, and it had come in second at 100 to 1. Thereafter, she had entertained no doubt whatever that he was a powerful and heaven-sent mascot. The day after a meeting with him was her lucky day, and it was a fact that on those days she usually succeeded in winning money in one way or another. Horses, after those first two brilliant coups, had been rather disappointing, but her fortune with cards had been good. How much of this good fortune had been due to sheer self-confidence and the will to win, only a psychologist could say; the winnings were there, and she had no doubt at all about the reason for them. She did not tell him that he was a mascot, from a superstitious feeling that to do so would be to break the luck, but she had been to a crystal-gazer, who, reading her mind like a book, had encouraged her in the belief that a mysterious stranger would bring her good fortune.
Major Milligan, sprawling upon the couch in Dian’s flat with a whisky-and-soda, turned on her a pair of rather bilious eyes. He was a large, saturnine man, blank as to morals but comparatively sober in his habits, as people must be who make money out of other people’s vices.
“Ever see anything of that Dean girl nowadays, Dian?”
“No, darling,” said Dian, absently. She was getting rather tired of Milligan, and would have liked to break with him, if only he had not been so useful, and if she had not known too much to make a break-away healthy.
“Well, I wish you would.”
“Oh, why? She’s one of Nature’s worst bores, darling.”
“I want to know if she knows anything about that place where Dean used to work.”
“The advertising place? But, Tod, how too yawn-making, Why do you want to know about advertising?”
“Oh, never mind why. I was on to something rather useful there, that’s all.”
“Oh!” Dian considered. This, she thought, was interesting. Something to be made out of this, perhaps. “I’ll give her a ring if you like. But she’s about as wet as a drowned eel. What do you want to know?”
“That’s my business.”
“Tod, I’ve often wanted to ask you. Why did you say I’d got to chuck Victor? Not that I cared about him, the poor fish, but I just wondered, especially after you’d told me to string him along.”
“Because,” replied Major Milligan, “the young what-not was trying to double-cross me.”
“Good heavens, Tod-you ought to go on the talkies as Dog-faced Dick the Dope-King of the Underworld. Talk sense, darling.”
“That’s all very well, my girl, but your little Victor was getting to be a nuisance. Somebody had been talking to him-probably you.”
“Me? that’s good! There wasn’t anything I could tell him. You never tell me anything, Tod.”
“No-I’ve got some sense left.”
“How rude you are, darling. Well, you see, I couldn’t have split to Victor. Did you bump Victor off, Tod?”
“Who says he was bumped off?”
“A little bird told me.”
“Is that your friend in the black and white checks?”
Dian hesitated. In an expansive and not very sober moment, she had told Tod about her adventure in the woods, and now rather wished she had not. Milligan took her silence for consent and went on:
“Who is that fellow, Dian?”
“Haven’t the foggiest.”
“What’s he want?”
“He doesn’t want me, at any rate,” said Dian. “Isn’t that humiliating, Tod?”
“It must be.” Milligan grinned. “But what’s the big idea?”
“I think he’s on Victor’s lay, whatever that was. He said he wouldn’t be here if Victor hadn’t popped off. Too thrilling, don’t you think?”
“Um,” said Milligan. “I think I’d like to meet this friend of yours. When’s he likely to turn up?”
“Damned if I know. He just arrives. I don’t think I’d have anything to do with him, Tod, if I were you. He’s dangerous-queer, somehow. I’ve got a hunch about him.”
“Your brain’s going to mush, sweetest,” said Milligan, “and he’s trading on it, that’s all.”
“Oh, well,” said Dian, “he amuses me, and you don’t any more. You’re getting to be a bit feeding, Tod.” She yawned and trailed over to the looking-glass, where she inspected her face narrowly. “I think I’ll give up dope, Tod. I’m getting puffy under the eyes. Do you think it would be amusing to go all good?”
“About as amusing as a Quaker meeting. Has your friend been trying to reform you? That’s damn good.”
“Reform me, nothing. But I’m looking horribly hag-like tonight. Oh, hell! what’s the odds, anyway? Let’s do something.”