Still he was looking in that same puzzled way at Stannard.
"On my word of honour, Mr. Fleet," the other assured him gravely, "I made no more than a casual reference. Ruth will verify that."
"Then it must have been something else. She was all right at breakfast; though, come to think of it, she did look a bit disturbed and disappointed at breakfast. But nothing wrong. She keeps talking about…"
"Mr. Richard!" called a weary female voice from the doorway.
Martin recognized the voice, very quickly, as that of the maid who had answered him on the telephone, and who had evidently met more than one American G.I. She was a brown-haired girl in her twenties, combining an air of boredom with conscientiousness. Though she wore cap and apron, she lounged in the doorway with her weight on one hip.
"Yes, Phyllis?"
"Your mother," said Phyllis, "don't like trespassers. There's been a trespasser out on the lawn for one hell of a long time." "Please don't bother me, Phyllis!"
"This trespasser," continued Phyllis, jerking her thumb over her shoulder in a way which may be seen on the films, "is a fat old guy with a big stomach and a bald head. I think he's nuts, because he gave the gardener some money. Now he's arguing with the gardener about how high you can grow tomato plants and still get the best tomatoes."
That's H.M.," said Martin. "Sir Henry Merrivale."
Stannard dropped the big key on the plan beside his discarded pencil. "Merrivale!" he exclaimed.
"Does that mean anything?" asked Ruth. "I think I heard the name from Jenny, but—"
"My dear Ruth." Stannard paused. "If I had that man against me in a criminal case, I'd think I had a walkover from the beginning and then suddenly discover I hadn't a leg to stand on. He's the craftiest old devil on earth. If he's here now, it means…"
Martin hurried to the nearer of the east windows and peered out sideways. He saw the crafty old devil almost at once. On the smooth lawn stood a tall stepladder, with a pair of pruning-shears near it. Beside it stood H.M. and a dour-faced man in overalls. H.M., glaring, was holding his band in the air to indicate a tomato-plant of improbable height. The dour-faced man shook his head with a fishy smile. H.M. levelled a finger at him in question. The dour-faced man still smiled fishily. Whereupon H.M. climbed nearly to the top of the stepladder, turned round, and indicated a tomato-plant of such height that it could have been credited only by a believer in Jack and the beanstalk.
But Martin saw something else. Towards their left was the gravel path, tree-shaded, leading to the front door. Up this path marched the Dowager Countess of Brayle.
Martin swung round and addressed Ricky. "Do you by any chance want peace and quiet in the house?"
"God knows I do," answered the harassed Ricky, who was still glancing at Stannard to remember where he had seen the man before. "It's all I do want Why?"
"Lady Brayle," Martin told him, "is coming up the path. Sir Henry is on the lawn."
"What about it?"
"Those two," said Martin, "act on each other like a lighted match in a box full of fireworks. Go out and grab 'em! Go out and bring 'em in here, where we can keep an eye on both! Quick! Hurry!"
Chapter 8
At one side of the broad leather-topped desk in the library stood H.M. At the other stood Lady Brayle.
Ricky's good-natured charm had worked, aided by the fact that he seized each by one arm. So they stood there, with their backs to the high glimmering-coloured books in the tall shelves, facing the group by the white marble mantelpiece across the room.
Grandmother Brayle had been at her haughtiest—"1 think I have met Captain Drake—" during the few sketchy introductions. Today she wore heavy horsy tweeds, her grey-white hair without a hat. Without a flicker towards H.M., she looked steadily across and up at her own reflection in a mirror over the fireplace, and (incidentally) over the other group's heads as she faced them. It was H.M. who broke the thick silence.
" 'Lo, Sophie," he volunteered with surprising meekness.
"Good evening, Henry."
"Nice weather we're bavin', ain't it?"
"That," murmured Lady Brayle, "is not altogether unexpected in July."
The length of the broad desk, with its inkpot and blue quill pen, separated them as though a leprous touch might be infected.
"Y’know, Sophie, we've been on speaking-terms for a good many years."
"Are you trying to appeal to my sentimentality, Henry? How amusing!"
"I say, though. Do you remember the night I took you to see Lewis Waller play Beaucaire at the old Imperial Theatre?"
"Please don't be ridiculous. Besides," Lady Brayle added suddenly, "your behaviour in that hansom was so utterly disgusting that…"
H.M.'was stung. "Burn it, Sophie, I only put my hand—"
"It will not be necessary to go into details."
"But you didn't tell your old man so he'd come whistlin' after me with a horse-whip, which you said you were goin' to. What I mean: you were an A-l sport in those days. Now you've turned into—" H.M. swung round. "Sophie, will you believe me if I tell you that honest-to-God I'm trying to help you? And your family?"
Lady Brayle hiccoughed with mirth. "When, yesterday, you…’
"But I didn't know I was buying the clock, did I?"
"You must excuse me," the other said crisply. "I was summoned here by an urgent phone-call from Cicely Fleet I do not know why. I—"
"Do you want the clock back?"
What effect this conversation was having on Ruth, Stannard, and Ricky, who were gathered with him beside the round table with the map, Martin could not tell. Ricky, he quite accurately guessed, had been told nothing about any attempt to buy a clock; and the water grew deeper. But Stannard, as a detached and sardonic observer of human life, sat down in the tapestry chair and, with pleasure, placed his fingertips together.
"Your behaviour yesterday," announced Lady Brayle, "was so despicable! So puerile! So childish—"
"Sure. Do you want the clock back?"
"Really, Henry." Lady Brayle seemed bewildered. "I have no interest whatever in the clock, except that I was asked to bid for it as a present for young Dr. Laurier." Her mouth tightened amid wrinkles. "And I should never allow Cicely to pay any such ridiculous price as…"
"Oh, Sophie! I'm not selling anything. It's yours if you answer me a few questions."
The other stared at him. "Questions? What questions?"
"Well," he said argumentatlvely, "when was the date you got that Willaby catalogue of the auction on Friday?"
"Really, Henry, I don't see—"
"I know you don't That's because I'm the old man. Date?"
"Everybody knows," retorted Jenny's grandmother, "that Willaby's post their catalogues from London just a week before the sale. I must have received mine," she computed, "on July 5th."
"That's what I thought But I had to be sure. Who else in this district subscribes to a Willaby catalogue?"
"Cicely, of course. And I think young Dr. Laurier. He is interested in arms and armour."
"What about Arthur Puckston, over at the Dragon's Rest?"
The wrinkles round Lady Brayie's mouth deepened, as though she were about to say she had no interest whatever in the Dragon's Rest But human curiosity, it appeared, would not be stifled.
"Incongruous as it seems," she conceded, "Puckston does.
He is… one of our fine old yeomen. He is not well off, as few of us are; but be wants genuine antiques for his inn."
"Uh-huh. It was a possibility. I see…"
Aunt Cicely herself, in what seemed to Martin some informal pinkish robe with lace over it, interrupted them men. Her entrance was flurried and apologetic, but with such real charm that it seemed to lighten the chill of Fleet House. Though she had perhaps a trick of archness and rapid speech, not quite in keeping with her faded beauty, the personality triumphed.