“Not on your life. Fifty-fifty. I shall conduct the negotiations.”
“Will you? That’s pretty good. Why should I bring you into it at all? You can’t negotiate till I tell you whom to negotiate with. You don’t think I was born yesterday.”
“No. But knowing what I do, I could get you shifted from Pym’s tomorrow, couldn’t I? If Pym knew who you were, do you suppose he’d keep you on his virtuous premises for another day?”
“Well, look here. We conduct the negotiations together, and I take 60 percent.”
Milligan shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, leave it at that for the moment. I’m hoping it won’t pan out that way. What we want to aim at is getting the reins into our own hands.”
“As you say. When we’ve done that, it will be time enough to decide which of us is going to crack the whip.”
When he had gone, Tod Milligan went into the bedroom, and found Dian kneeling on the window-seat, staring down into the street.
“Have you fixed things up with him?”
“Yes. He’s a twister, but I’ll be able to make him see that it’ll pay him to be straight with me.”
“You had much better leave him alone.”
“You’re talking rubbish,” said Milligan, using a coarser term.
Dian turned round and faced him.
“I’ve warned you,” she said. “Not that I care a damn what happens to you. You’re getting on my nerves, Tod. It’s going to be great fun to see you come to smash. But you’d better keep off that man.”
“Thinking of selling me, are you?”
“I shan’t need to.”
“You’d better not. Lost your head over this theatrical gentleman in tights, haven’t you?”
“Why do you have to be so vulgar?” she asked, contemptuously.
“What’s the matter with you, then?”
“I’m frightened, that’s all. Unlike me, isn’t it?”
“Frightened of that advertising crook?”
“Really, Tod, you’re a fool sometimes. You can’t see a thing when it’s under your nose. It’s written too big for you to see, I suppose.”
“You’re drunk,” said Milligan. “Just because you haven’t quite managed to get off with this joker of yours-”
“Shut up,” said Dian. “Get off with him? I’d as soon get off with the public hangman.”
“I dare say you would. Any new sensation would do for you. What do you want? A row? Because, if so, I’m afraid I can’t be bothered to oblige you.”
There is a dreary convention which decrees that the final collapse of a sordid liaison shall be preceded by a series of no less sordid squabbles. But on this occasion, Miss de Momerie seemed ready to dispense with convention.
“No. I’m through with you, that’s all. I’m cold. I’m going to bed… Tod, did you kill Victor Dean?”
“I did not.”
Major Milligan dreamed that night that Death Bredon, in his harlequin dress, was hanging him for the murder of Lord Peter Wimsey.
Chapter XV. Sudden Decease of a Man in Dress Clothes
Chief-Inspector Parker continued to be disturbed in his mind. There had been another fiasco in Essex. A private motor-boat, suspected of being concerned in the drug-traffic, had been seized and searched without result-except, of course, the undesired result of giving the alarm to the parties concerned, if they were concerned. Further, a fast car, which had attracted attention by its frequent midnight excursions from the coast to the capital, had been laboriously tracked to its destination, and proved to belong to a distinguished member of the diplomatic corps, engaged on extremely incognito visits to a lady established in a popular seaside resort. Mr. Parker, still incapacitated from personal attendance upon midnight expeditions, was left with the gloomy satisfaction of saying that everything always went wrong when he wasn’t there himself. He was also unreasonably annoyed with Wimsey, as the original cause of his incapacity.
Nor had the investigation at the White Swan so far borne very much fruit. For a week in succession, tactful and experienced policemen had draped themselves over its bar, chatting to all and sundry about greyhounds, goats, parrots and other dumb friends of man, without receiving any return in the shape of mysterious packets.
The old man with the parrot-story had been traced easily enough. He was an habitué. He sat there every morning and every afternoon, and had a fund of such stories. The patient police made a collection of them. The proprietor-against whose character nothing could be proved-knew this customer well. He was a superannuated Covent Garden porter, who lived on an old-age pension, and every corner of his inoffensive life was open to the day. This excellent old gentleman, when questioned, recalled the conversation with Mr. Hector Puncheon, but was positive that he had never seen any of the party before, except the two carters, whom he knew well enough. These men also agreed that the gentleman in dress clothes and the little man who had talked about greyhounds were equally unknown to them. It was not, however, unusual for gentlemen in dress clothes to drop in at the Swan by way of a good finish to a lively night-or for gentlemen without dress clothes, either. Nothing threw any light on the mystery of the packet of cocaine.
Parker was, however, roused to some enthusiasm by Wimsey’s report of his conversations with Milligan.
“What incredible luck you do have, Peter. People who, in the ordinary way, would avoid you like the plague, gatecrash into your parties at the psychological moment and offer you their noses to lead them by.”
“Not so much luck, old man,” said Wimsey. “Good guidance, that’s all. I sent the fair Dian an anonymous letter, solemnly warning her against myself and informing her that if she wanted to know the worst about me, she had only to inquire at my brother’s address. It’s a curious thing, but people cannot resist anonymous letters. It’s like free sample offers. They appeal to all one’s lower instincts.”
“You are a devil,” said Parker. “One of these days you’ll get into trouble. Suppose Milligan had recognized you.”
“I prepared his mind to accept a striking resemblance.”
“I wonder he didn’t see through it. Family resemblances don’t usually extend to details of teeth and so on.”
“I never let him get close enough to study details.”
“That ought to have made him suspicious.”
“No, because I was rude to him about it. He believed me all the time, simply because I was rude. Everybody suspects an eager desire to curry favour, but rudeness, for some reason, is always accepted as a guarantee of good faith. The only man who ever managed to see through rudeness was St. Augustine, and I don’t suppose Milligan reads the Confessions. Besides, he wanted to believe in me. He’s greedy.”
“Well, no doubt you know your own business. But about this Victor Dean affair. Do you really believe that the head of this particular dope-gang is on Pym’s staff? It sounds quite incredible.”
“That’s an excellent reason for believing it. I don’t mean in a credo quia impossible sense, but merely because the staff of a respectable advertising agency would be such an excellent hiding-place for a big crook. The particular crookedness of advertising is so very far removed from the crookedness of dope-trafficking.”
“Why? As far as I can make out, all advertisers are dope-merchants.”
“So they are. Yes, now I come to think of it, there is a subtle symmetry about the thing which is extremely artistic. All the same, Charles, I must admit that I find it difficult to go the whole way with Milligan. I have carefully reviewed the staff of Pym’s, and I have so far failed to find any one who looks in the least like a Napoleon of crime.”
“But you seem convinced that the murder of Victor Dean was an inside job. Or do you now think that some stranger was hiding on the roof and did away with Dean because he was on the point of splitting on the gang? I suppose an outsider could get access to Pym’s roof?”