"From Canifest. I got it just before dinner. It's interestin' And this is what it says." H. M. drew the folded paper from his inside pocket. "I asked him, as a matter of fact, what time John Bohun had called on him at his home last night.
`WENT HOME," said Canifest, `JUST AFTER MORNING EDITION OF GLOBE-JOURNAL WENT TO PRESS, PRECISELY TWO FORTY-FIVE A.M. FOUND CALLER IN QUESTION WAITING AT SIDE DOOR AND TOOK HIM TO MY DEN. DO NOT KNOW WHAT TIME HE LEFT DUE TO HEART ATTACK YOU MAY UNDERSTAND, BUT AM CERTAIN NOT EARLIER THAN THREE-THIRTY.' "
H. M. tossed the slip of paper on the table.
"He said three o'clock," snapped H. M., "because he thought it was a safe time to admit he'd arrived here. As a matter of fact he didn't get here until an hour or two afterwards.:'
"But somebody got here!" shouted Willard. "Somebody drove in at ten minutes past three! Who was it?"
"The murderer," said H. M. "He's played in every bit of luck on the globe; he's been shielded by every trick of luck that nature and fate and craziness could invent; he's fooled us in front of our very eyes, but grab him, Masters!"
The voice ripped across the room as somebody flung open the door to the gallery. The door to the staircase banged open at the same time, and Inspector Potter plunged through at the same time that Masters appeared in the other. Masters said with quiet and deadly formality:
"Herbert Timmons Emery, I arrest you for the murder of Marcia Tait and Carl Rainger. I have to warn you that anything"
The lank sandy haired figure stared only for a second before it dodged under the hand that had descended on its shoulder. It whirled a chair at Potter's legs; ducked again, while still crying something, and plunged down the staircase door. Potter caught a piece of a coat and then a leg. He should not have tripped the man up. They heard the cry out of the dark, and then the crash. Then there was silence while a white-faced Potter got up shakily on the landing, and they saw him peering down into the dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY
June Over Whitehall
Above the small severe name-plate reading, "Sir Henry Merrivale," the door was inscribed with staggering letters, splashed in white paint, "Busy! No Admittance! Keep Out! " And below, in an even angrier script, it added, "This means You!" The old hallway was musty and warm at the top of Whitehall's ancient rabbit-warren; through a crooked window on the stairs they could see the moving green of trees.
Katharine looked at the door and hesitated. "But it says!" she protested.
"Nonsense," said Bennett. He pushed open the door.
Both windows were open to the lazy June air; there was a smell of old wood and paper in the dusky room, and a hum of traffic from the Embankment below. H. M.'s big feet were on the desk and entangled with the telephone. His big bald head was hung forward so that the glasses slid down his nose, and his eyes were closed.
Bennett rapped on the inside of the door. "I'm sorry to interrupt, sir," he said, in the middle of a whistling snore, "but we thought..”
H. M. opened one eye. He seemed to be galvanized. "Go 'way! Out! I won't be disturbed, dammit! I sent you that report on the accordion-player yesterday afternoon; and if you wanta know why the key of G had anything to do with Robrett's dyin', then you, look in there and you'll see. I'm busy! I — who's there, hey?" He sat up a little, and then scowled savagely. "Oh, it's you two, hey? I might 'a' known it. I might 'a' known somebody like you would interrupt when I'm engaged on a very serious business. What are you grinnin' at, curse you? It is seriousl It's the Dardanelles matter, only I forget the chief part of it now. It's somethin' to do with the peace of the world." He sniffed, and looked at them in a disgruntled fashion. "Humph. You look sorta happy, and that's bad. "
"Happy?" roared Bennett, with an explosive affability. "Sir, let me tell you '
"Sh-hh!" said Katharine. "Be dignified. Whee!"
H. M. looked sourly from one to the other. "You practically light up this office. Gives me a pain, that's what it does. Well, I suppose you'd better come in. You two are goin' to get married, ain't you? Haaah! Just wait till you do; that'll fix you. You see if it don't. Haaah!"
"Are you telling me," said Bennett, "that you don't remember we were married a month ago today? I suppose you've also forgotten you gave the bride away? And that Kate stayed with your daughter after good old Uncle Maurice tossed her out of the house?"
"Old Maurice," grunted H. M. His eye twinkled. "Sure, I remember now. Ho ho. Well, now that you're here I suppose you'd better sit down and have a drink. Ho ho. Look here, I certainly put the wind up you two, didn't I? I bet you thought old Uncle Maurice was guilty of that funny business down at the White Priory. How's Paris?"
They sat down on the other side of the desk. Bennett hesitated.
"It's about the funny business," he admitted, "that we wanted to talk to you-in a way. That is. well, we're sailing for New York in a couple of days, and we've got to take back some complete account of it, you know. We've never had the details on account of all the uproar and fuss that happened after Emery's arrest. We know he died in the hospital two days after he fell-or threw himself — down those stairs…"
H. M. inspected his fingers.
"Uh-huh. I was hopin' he'd do somethin' like that. He wasn't a very bad sort, Emery wasn't. Point o' fact, I might 'a' been inclined to let him go after all; I was a bit hesitant about the thing until he murdered Rainger just because Rainger had spotted him. That was mucky. The whole thing was mucky. I didn't hold it much against him for killin' Tait in hot blood. I didn't want to see him hang for that. But the nastiness came out in the other thing… "
"Anyhow, sir, what everybody seems to know is that he killed her with that heavy silvered-steel figure he had on the radiator-cap of his fancy automobile; that is, the one he did have there the first time I saw the car. When he drove out to the White Priory next day, he'd changed it for a bronze stork. I remember noticing that at the time, although it didn't register fully. But what's got everybody up in the air is how you knew all this, how you got on to him in the first place-"
"And," said Katharine, "why you put on that little show with us reconstructing the attempted murder, when all the time you actually suspected him?'
H. M. blinked. His dull eyes took in a flushed and radiant couple who had, after all, no tremendous interest in the affairs of the dead.
"So," said H. M., "you still don't see it, hey? I hadda trap him, and it was the only way I could prove it on him. I don't like to talk about this kind of thing, much. Funny. Wait a minute. I got Emery's statement, the statement he made before he died, here in the desk somewhere."
Wheezing, he bent over and ransacked drawers, muttering to himself. Then he produced a blue-bound sheaf of paper; he brushed off some tobacco-ash and weighed it in his hand.
"That's human tragedy. I mean, son, it was human tragedy. Now it's File Number Umpty-Umph, so many lines of type, so much `I-did-and-I-suffered' stuck down so formally on a piece of paper that you can hardly believe anybody did suffer. I got stacks of 'em here in the desk. But this man Emery did suffer. Like hell. There were a couple of nights when I kept seein' his face. And I like the chase and the chess-gambits; but I don't like to see anybody take the three-minute-walk to the rope when that man might 'a' been me. Son, that's the last and only argument against capital punishment you'll ever hear. Emery's trouble was that he loved that empty good-lookin' leech Tait far too much."
He stared blankly at the blue-bound sheets, and then pushed them away.
"What were you askin'? I get kind of absent-minded these days, when it's summer again.
"Oh, yes. I'll let you have the thing as I saw it. I didn't suspect him at first: not at all. I'd have chosen him, when I got to the house at the beginning, as one of the few who didn't kill her. Y'see, I'd heard about that box of poisoned chocolates — I knew he hadn't any intention of killin' her when he sent 'em. He hadn't. It was a press-agent's stunt, exactly what he said and what I thought. That threw me off. I figured him as the nervous, hopping type who, if he had committed a crime, wouldn't rest till he'd told about it and got it oft his chest. I was right in that; I figured him to break down in one way or another, and he did. He never meant to kill her (that's what he says, and I believe it) even when he drove to the White Priory that night, until — but I'll tell you that in a minute.