This firmness had the effect of sobering Mrs. Pemble. She said: "Oh yes, of course! I remember perfectly! We couldn't go back for it, because I'd promised the children I'd be home in time to tuck them up in bed, hadn't I, Clive?"
"Thank you," said Hannasyde. "That is all I wanted to know."
"If only there was anything else I could tell you I should be simply delighted," said Betty earnestly. "I mean, I think it's so appalling—it worries me frightfully, doesn't it, Clive?"
"Yes, rather!" said her dutiful helpmate.
Hannasyde thanked her, evaded an invitation to tell her what he had discovered, and departed. Mr. and Mrs. Pemble returned to the drawing room, and in the intervals of playing with her children Mrs. Pemble discussed exhaustively the various causes which might account for the superintendent's strange question. When the children had been removed, under protest, by their nurse, she went away to invite Rosemary Kane, over the telephone, to motor to the Cedars after dinner for a nice, cosy talk.
Rosemary, undeterred by her oft-stated conviction that Joseph or Paul Mansell had murdered her husband, at once accepted this invitation, with the result that the rest of the party at Cliff House were able to spend an evening of comparative peace. Lady Harte showed Emily the snapshots she had taken in the Congo; Sir Adrian read a book; Jim and Patricia played billiards; and Timothy vanished on secret business of his own.
When Rosemary returned she found that Emily had already been carried up to bed, and that the others were on the point of following her. Asked whether she had spent a pleasant evening, she said that it had been a relief to get away from the atmosphere of Cliff House, but that she and Betty Pemble were on different planes.
Shortly before one o'clock Sir Adrian, whose habit it was to read far into the night, laid down his book and sat up in bed, listening intently. After a moment he got up, put on his exotic dressing gown, and went softly out on to the corridor, armed with a torch. The house seemed to be in darkness. He walked down the passage to his stepson's room and very quietly opened the door. He took one step into the room, and suddenly the silence of the room was rent by the shrill ringing of what seemed to be innumerable bells.
"Good God!" exclaimed Sir Adrian, annoyed.
Jim woke with a start and snapped on his bedside light. "What the blazes?— Hullo, Adrian! What's all the row about?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," replied Sir Adrian. "I came to tell you that I think someone is moving about downstairs, but I imagine whoever it may have been has by this time made good his escape. Will these bells never stop ringing?"
"Blast that infernal boy!" swore Jim, getting out of bed. "You bet this is his doing!"
The noise had by this time roused everyone in the house but Timothy. Lady Harte, Patricia, Rosemary, and a group of sleepy and scared servants all clustered on to the corridor, demanding to know what had happened, and from Emily's room came the sound of her voice calling to Miss Allison. While Patricia went to reassure the old lady, Jim located the cause of the disturbance, which proved to be an ingenious burglar alarm laid under the sheepskin mat before his bedroom door. It did not take him long to still the clamour, and in a few moments Rosemary was able to uncover her ears and to ask in an injured voice who was responsible for making such an unnecessary din.
"Timothy, of course," replied Jim. "And to think I gave him the money for it!"
"Really, I begin to think that boy may go a long way!" cried Lady Harte, her maternal pride aroused. "I call it extremely clever of him—much better than anything the police have done! What set it off?"
"I did," answered Sir Adrian. "I fancied I heard someone moving about under my room and came to wake Jim. It was not my purpose, however, to wake the entire household."
At this moment Ogle came up the front stairs, her hair in two plaits, a red-flannel dressing gown girt about her with a cord, and a steaming cup in her hand. "Who's making this outlandish noise?" she demanded angrily. "Frightening the mistress out of her senses, I'll be bound!"
"Have you been prowling about downstairs?" asked Lady Harte severely.
"No, my lady, I have not! Prowling, indeed! I've been making a cup of Ovaltine for the mistress. She can't sleep, and no wonder, is what I say! Such goings-on!" She swept by the group on the passage and stalked into Emily's room.
"Thank you, Adrian!" said Jim in a broken voice. "I undoubtedly owe my life to you."
Chapter Fifteen
Mr. Harte, learning at the breakfast table of the night's happenings, was torn between pride in the success of his invention and disgust at having slept through the disturbance. He thought it excessively funny that his father should have sprung the alarm, and when rebuked by his ungrateful stepbrother for having set such a booby trap outside his door, said indignantly that it was not a booby trap, and how on earth could he have guessed, anyway, that his father would go wandering about the house in the middle of the night?
His mother staunchly supported him and agreed that the alarm should be set every night. Mr. James Kane said that this was what drove a man from home and expressed a desire for the police to make haste and clear up the mystery.
"I must say, I think it's high time they did," said Lady Harte; "I begin to wonder whether they're doing anything at all. Most unsatisfactory!"
She might have been comforted had she known that Sergeant Hemingway was saying much the same thing.
"We get no forrader," he grumbled. "We've got no less than nine suspects for Clement Kane's death, and though this attempt on young Kane seems to whittle the number down a bit at first glance, when you go into it you find it's made the whole thing in a worse muddle than what it was before. Take Pretty Paul. You might have thought we'd got him in a cleft stick when we found out about him being on the premises when Clement was shot, but not a bit of it! He pulls out a highly unconvincing story of what he'd been doing, and those Pembles go and corroborate it. It's disheartening, Chief. Are we looking for one murderer or two murderers, that's what I'd like to know?"
"So should I," said Hannasyde.
"Well, to my way of thinking, there's just one person behind the whole show, and I've a strong notion it's Paul Mansell. Myself, I don't fancy Jim Kane. If he was clever enough to make away with two cousins without leaving a single clue behind him, I can't see what he wants with a couple of faked attempts on himself. We hadn't got a thing on him, which he must have known. What's more, if he loosened that nut on his car, he was taking a tidy risk. Suppose it had come off in the middle of the town, and he'd sailed into an omnibus, or something? Nice mess he'd have made of himself! Suppose there'd been another car coming towards him when the nut did come off? He fits the first two murders—I give you that; but he doesn't fit this latest denouement. If we're after someone who fits the two murders and the two attempts, all we've got is a couple of Mansells—and of the two I'd put my money on Paul—and this Leighton, whom we haven't seen. For the life of me, Super, I can't see why you're so shy of thinking it might be Pretty Paul."
"I don't like his motive," replied Hannasyde. "The stake isn't big enough."
"Well, I don't know," said the sergeant. "I've known a man to murder his own mother for the sake of a few hundred pounds' insurance money."
"We're not dealing with a criminal of the poorer classes, nor have I known a man to murder three people for the sake of a few hundred pounds."
"Dare say he expects to make a few thousands."