"To the Bentley?" said Jim, shaking out his table napkin. "The steering went, and we ended up safely but ungracefully in the ditch."
"Don't try and throw dust in my eyes, Jim!" she said. "You needn't think my nerves won't stand the truth. I've faced too many dangers in my time—"
"Nerves!" interrupted Emily fiercely. "No one talked of nerves in my young days!"
"And a very good thing too!" said Lady Harte. "I don't know what they are. Never did."
"You don't know how fortunate you are," said Rosemary with a pitying smile.
"On the contrary, I do know. Jim, I insist upon being answered!"
"Well, Mother, a nut holding one of the ball joints had worked loose, and it fell off."
"That," said Sir Adrian, helping himself to salad, "of course explains everything. Enlighten our ignorance, my dear boy."
"I don't want to hear anything about nuts and ball joints," announced Emily. "If someone's been tampering with your car, say so!"
Jim looked up to find Miss Allison's gaze inquiringly on his face. "Was it tampered with, Jim?" she asked.
"Traitress!"
"I did try to make out it was an accident, but no one believed me. If it wasn't an accident we'd all rather know."
"Of course it wasn't an accident!" declared Timothy scornfully. "And now perhaps you'll believe I did not run the Seamew on the rocks!"
"I think," said Sir Adrian in his tranquil way, "that since speculation is so rife, you had better tell us just what did happen, Jim."
"Well, sir, it seems fairly obvious the car was tampered with."
"That is very disturbing," said Sir Adrian. "If you have not already done so, you should inform the police."
"I have. That's what made me late for lunch. The superintendent's going to look into it."
"I should think so indeed!" snapped Emily. "I don't know what the world's coming to!"
"Of course, what I am waiting for," said Rosemary, "is for somebody to try and bring it round to Trevor. Or possibly even me."
No one but Emily paid any attention to this remark, and as she merely said that the least said about that Dermott the better, Rosemary was discouraged from pursuing the subject.
"I have yet to learn that I am an alarmist," said Lady Harte; "but it is quite obvious that we must take immediate steps. This is beyond a joke. Whom do the police suspect?"
"Adrian," replied Jim with a cheerful grin.
Even Emily laughed at this. Norma said: "Adrian? Good God, the police must be out of their senses! Adrian doesn't know one end of a car from the other!"
"It grieves me to think I made so ill an impression on the superintendent," said Sir Adrian, delicately dropping tarragon over his salad. "What, if any, is my motive, Jim?"
"Oh, stepfather complex, sir! Gnawing jealousy."
"Ah yes, of course!" agreed Sir Adrian. "But surely it is a little odd of me to have borne with you all these years and to choose the moment when you are about to leave my roof for ever to murder you?"
"Actually," said Rosemary, who had been listening with deep interest, "people suffering from inhibitions often behave quite irrationally."
Emily looked at her with acute dislike. "If you've nothing to say more worth listening to than that, you'd better hold your tongue," she said crushingly.
"Well, it's very funny, no doubt; but I'm not going to have such nonsensical things said of my husband!" announced Lady Harte. "It annoys me very much indeed, for no one could have been a better father to Jim than Adrian!"
"I utterly refuse to subscribe to that," said Jim. "He never came the father over me in all his life."
"Thank you, Jim," said Sir Adrian, touched.
"Something must be done!" said Norma in a martial voice. "If I had my revolver—well, anyway, this decides it! From now on you'll carry a gun, Jim."
"I haven't got a gun," replied Jim. "Besides, from the look of things, I'm to be done in by accident."
"The Killer's failed twice," said Timothy. "We've got to be prepared for absolutely anything now. I say, it's most frightfully exciting, isn't it, Jim?"
"Lovely," agreed Jim.
"The extraordinary thing is that I had an intuition from the start that it was the Mansells," said Rosemary. "I was laughed to scorn, of course, but when I get one of my premonitions—"
"I suppose there's no doubt it is one of the Mansells?" interrupted Norma, looking at her son.
Emily unexpectedly demurred at this. "Joe Mansell's a fool, and always was, but there's no harm in him that ever I saw, and I've known him for fifty years and more."
"Yes, but what about Paul?" asked Rosemary. "Do you know, I've always had a feeling about him? I can't describe it, but—"
Emily sniffed. "If you're telling me that Paul Mansell murdered my son and Clement, I don't believe a word of it. A whippersnapper like him!"
"If he didn't, Aunt, who did?" demanded Lady Harte.
"I'm sure I don't know. It seems to me people will do anything nowadays. I've no patience with it," replied Emily.
By the time the party rose from the luncheon table a great many methods of protecting Jim from his unknown enemy had been put forward and heartily condemned.
The news that a plain-clothes man had arrived, and was apparently keeping the house under observation, afforded gratification to no one but Timothy, who at once dashed out to make his acquaintance.
Emily, bristling, said that they had had enough of policemen prying about the place and upsetting the servants; Patricia agreed with Lady Harte that to send one man only to guard Jim's precious person was frivolous; and Rosemary complained that the sight of a detective "brought it all back to her." Jim, discovering that his bodyguard, a shy but very earnest young man, proposed to accompany him if he left the premises, not unnaturally decided to cancel an expedition to a ruined abbey which Miss Allison had expressed a desire to visit. When Patricia had seen Mrs. Kane comfortably bestowed on the couch in her own sitting room for her customary siesta, she went downstairs again to join Jim in the garden, the edge of her pleasure in this programme being considerably dulled by Rosemary's saying thoughtfully that it must be rather horrid to reflect that behind any bush or tree a murderer might be lurking.
When Mr. Harte exercised a simple sense of humour by stalking his stepbrother down to the lake and suddenly commanding him in gruff accents and from behind a rhododendron to "stick 'em up!" Miss Allison came to the conclusion that two chairs on the terrace would be more agreeable to her shattered nerves than wandering about all too well-wooded grounds.
Mr. Harte, roundly cursed by Jim, was quite unabashed.
"Made you jump, didn't I?" he said ghoulishly. "As a matter of fact, I'm guarding you."
"Thanks," said Jim. "Are you going to guard me the whole afternoon?"
"Well, while you're in the garden I shall. Sergeant Trotter—that's the new detective, you know—said I ought to."
"I'll have a word with Sergeant Trotter," said Jim grimly. "Come on, Pat, let's go and sit sedately on the terrace."
Mr. Harte accompanied them back to the house, chatting with his usual insouciance. Halfway across the south lawn he stopped, his blue eyes gleaming with excitement.
"Say, buddy!" he pronounced. "I got a swell idea! Only I must have some dough!" He planted himself in front of Jim and raised an eager, beseeching countenance. "Have you got any money, Jim? Because if so, could I have some, please? There's something I frightfully want to go and buy in Portlaw, and if you gave me about ten bob—or perhaps a pound, if you can spare it—I could whizz in on my bike."
"Look here, is it something devilish?" asked Jim suspiciously.
"No, no, honestly it isn't! As a matter of fact, it's actually for you, and I know you'll be pleased!"