Jim moved so that Timothy could see the door. "Only your father. Pull yourself together!"
Mr. Harte relaxed his taut muscles but still retained his grip on Jim's arm. "G-gosh, I thought it was the K-Killer!"
"You thought it was what?" inquired Sir Adrian, slightly taken aback.
"It's all right, sir; the little idiot started a wildcat theory that there was a Hidden Killer in the house and gave himself a nightmare. Pat, you cuckoo, you're just about as bad! The kid was only dreaming!"
"Yes, of course," said Miss Allison, who was feeling a little shaken. "Silly of me. I ought to have known. Only his eyes were wide-open, and I suppose I was half-asleep myself, and it didn't occur to me." She became aware all at once of the appearance she must present, with her head in a shingle-cap, and a kimono caught round her like an untidy shawl, and said distressfully, "Oh dear, I must look like nothing on earth!"
However, Lady Harte walked into the room just then, and in face of the appearance she presented, with her grey hair on end and a tropical mackintosh worn over a pan: of faded pyjamas, Miss Allison could not feel her own dishabille to be in any way remarkable.
"Hullo, Timothy. Had one of your bad dreams?" inquired Lady Harte.
"Oh, Mummy, I thought there was a man with a mask in the room! It was ghastly!"
"Have a drink of water," recommended his mother, stalking over to the washstand and pouring out a glass for him.
Timothy took the glass and gulped down some water.
"I suppose there isn't anyone prowling about?" said Lady Harte. "I noticed that the hall light was on as I came past the head of the stairs. You'd better go and have a look round, Jim. If I'd a gun I'd go myself; but thanks to the wretched laws of this country, mine are still in custody."
"Don't trouble," said Sir Adrian. "The light is on because I switched it on. I was downstairs looking for something to read when Timothy created all this commotion. If the excitement is now over, I propose to continue my search. Do you think a volume of sermons would be a soporific?"
"Excellent, I should say. Bring one up for your offspring, Adrian," replied Jim.
"What Timothy wants is not a book but a Dose," said Norma.
"Oh, Mother!" protested Mr. Harte.
"Bad luck!" sympathised Jim. "Not but what it serves you right for putting the wind up Patricia."
He and Miss Allison left him in his mother's expert hands and went back to their rooms. There were no further alarms during the remainder of the night, and Mr. Harte appeared at breakfast later in excellent spirits and full of strenuous plans for the day. Rosemary, who, in spite of being (she told them) a very light sleeper, had slept peacefully through the disturbance, explained this seemingly unaccountable phenomenon by describing her slumbers as a coma of utter nervous exhaustion and said that from then onwards she had been very restless, oppressed by the atmosphere of doom that hung over the house.
"That's quite enough!" interposed Lady Harte, helping herself to marmalade with a liberal hand. "We don't want any more nightmares."
Mr. Harte, inclined, in the comfortable daylight, to look upon his exploit as a very good joke, said that he hadn't had such a cracking nightmare since the occasion when Jim took him to see The Ringer. "It's because I'm interested in Crime," he said. "Old Nanny says things prey on my mind."
"When Jim took you to The Ringer," said his prosaic parent, "it wasn't Crime preying on your mind that gave you a nightmare, but lobster preying on your stomach. I remember very well when I asked Jim what he'd let you have for dinner he recited a list of all the most indigestible dishes anyone could imagine, beginning with lobster and ending with mushrooms on toast. So don't talk nonsense!"
This shattering reminiscence not unnaturally took the wind out of Mr. Harte's sails, and after a growl of: "Mother!" he relapsed into silence, and as soon as he had finished breakfast withdrew from the dining room and went in search of more congenial company.
An encounter with Superintendent Hannasyde later in the morning was almost equally dispiriting. The superintendent listened to his account of the foundering of the Seamew with an air of gravity wholly belied by a twinkle at the back of his kindly grey eyes. This did not escape Mr. Harte, and when the superintendent said solemnly that it was too bad no one believed his story, he retorted with asperity: "No, and no one believed me when I said Cousin Silas had been murdered, but I'll bet he was! And what's more, you think he was!"
"Leaving your cousin Silas out of it," said Hannasyde, "what do you want me to do about the Seamew? Salvage her?"
"No, because Jim says if she was tampered with, the strake with the hole in it would have been torn clean off. But I do think you might keep an eye on Jim. Patricia—Miss Allison, you know—believes he's in danger just as much as I do, and so does Mr. Roberts."
"Oh, I'll keep an eye on him all right," promised Hannasyde.
Timothy cast him a smouldering look of dislike and went off to find his friend the sergeant.
The sergeant soothed his injured feelings by listening to him with a proper display of interest and credulity and asked him what his theory was. Greatly heartened, Timothy took him into his confidence and propounded his theory of the Hidden Killer.
"I wouldn't wonder but what you're right," said the sergeant, shaking his head. "The Hand of Death, that's what it is. I've read about such things."
"Have you ever come across cases like that?" Timothy asked eagerly.
"Well, I haven't actually worked on one," admitted the sergeant. "Of course, they generally keep that kind of case for the Big Five."
"Say, it 'ud be a big feather in your cap if this did turn out to be a Hidden Killer, and you unmasked him, wouldn't it?"
"That's what I was thinking," said the sergeant. "But the Chief wouldn't like it if I was to drop my routine work and go hunting for Killers on my own."
"I expect there's a lot of jealousy at Scotland Yard," said Timothy darkly.
"You'd be surprised," replied Hemingway. "Awful, it is."
"Well, don't you think people ought to be watched? Couldn't you keep your eye on Pritchard, for instance? It often is the butler, and, as far as I can see, no one's even suspected him yet."
A diabolical scheme presented itself to the sergeant. He said: "That's right; but you see, we're handicapped, being policemen. What we really want is an assistant. Now, if you were to watch Pritchard, and all the rest of them, you might discover something."
"Well, I will," said Mr. Harte, his eye brightening. "Then if he does anything queer, I'll come and report to you."
"That's the ticket," said the sergeant. "You stick to him!" Later, recounting the episode to his superior, he said: "And if we don't have that butler turning homicidal it'll be a wonder."
"I call it a dirty trick," said Hannasyde.
"It is," agreed the sergeant cheerfully. "But the way I look at it is this. If it has to be me or the butler, it had better be him. What did you make of the Wreck of the Hesperus, Chief?"
"Nothing very much. It sounds most improbable. As far as I could gather, Oscar Roberts, who was the original scaremonger, made nothing of it, either."
"No, he's blotted his copybook properly, he has," grinned the sergeant. "Terrible Timothy's got it in for him all right. You didn't get anything more on Paul Mansell, I suppose?"
Hannasyde shook his head. "No. He certainly went to Brotherton Manor to play tennis, precisely as he says. He arrived at a quarter to four, the day Clement Kane was murdered, having been invited for half-past three. It all fits in quite clearly with the possibility of his having shot Clement Kane, but it doesn't make it any more than a possibility. According to his story, he lunched with a Mrs. Trent that Saturday and went on from her house to Brotherton Manor afterwards. She corroborates his story down to the last detail."