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  “Good heavens! I say, you might be the answer to a prayer.”

  “I probably am. Not a maiden’s prayer, though. I happen to be married and done for.”

  “Well, if you’ve got time to listen, let me unbelt this tale. I’d love to put the problem in front of somebody else, and, if you wouldn’t mind, I should think you’re just the chap.”

  “My days are my own. Half a minute. More beer.”

  They ordered it, and the girl set it down on a glass-topped table.

  “Now then,” said Bassin, taking out his pipe and offering Carey the matches. “I won’t ask you to read the bally things—at least, not yet—but the thing is, you see—”

  “Rummy sort of tale,” said Carey, when Bassin had laid all the facts before him. “And Mrs. Carn didn’t give you the slightest hint that she knew who had written the letters? I mean, sometimes the recipients of anonymous letters have a pretty good hunch as to the sender.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t know. Hadn’t the foggiest, in fact. You see, the letters obviously referred to the book, and I don’t suppose she knew much about the book. It’s not a book a woman would care about, I’d say.”

  “Oh, but you can’t argue like that. I mean, people aren’t, so to speak, divided into two sexes intellectually, are they? I should say it’s impossible to find a book that all men like and all women don’t. It depends on the individual.”

  “Yes… Look here, Lestrange, would you have time and inclination to read these galleys if I lent them to you, say, for a couple of days? You see, the solution lies somewhere in the book, I’m pretty sure, My own impression is that Carn is also dead, and the next thing I’m expecting to hear is that somebody is making an attempt to cancel the order for the printing. Somebody is pretty keen to make certain that the book never gets before the public. I ought to warn you, too, to keep it dark that you’ve got the galleys, if you do take them. You may be running a risk by having a copy of the book in your possession—I don’t know.”

  “I’ll take a chance,” said Carey. He finished his beer whilst Bassin went upstairs to get the proofs, and, when he received them from him, he went over to a large assorted bundle consisting of rucksack and sketching materials, and pushed the galleys into his raincoat pocket. It was a large pocket with a gusset, and it accommodated the paper-covered proofs without difficulty. Carey put the raincoat on, promised to return the proofs by registered post or by hand at the end of forty-eight hours, if not sooner, dressed himself in his impediments, rather after the manner of the White Knight, and waved his hand in farewell.

  Bassin, pipe in mouth, went to the inn door, and stood there gazing after him until he swung off to the left at the end of the village street and disappeared. Bassin then put on his own raincoat, for the sky still threatened, picked up his ashplant, and went in the opposite direction; he was bound for the House by the Brook. It had occurred to him that there might be people in the neighbourhood who could be persuaded to tell him things, which they had not seen fit to tell the police. He also thought that it would lend interest to his solitary walks, if they had a definite object. This, he decided, should be a quest of the cash-box. True, the police were also on its track, but it would do no harm were he to join in the search.

  •3•

  There was a lane beside the House by the Brook, and on the other side of it a small farm. To the farm belonged the paddock containing the lamb, a small orchard at the eastern end of the paddock, and a duck-pond and untidy farmyard on the other side of the path. The duck-pond was a part of the brook wired in at either end to prevent the ducks from straying, and widening out into a scooped muddy basin with one steep side flanked by the pathway railing, and one gently sloping side up to the muddy farmyard.

  A bridge and culvert carried the lane across the water, and up the grassy trackway bitten into by two deep grooves made by cart-wheels walked Bassin to reach the side-gate.

  He crossed the farmyard and went up to the door. A couple of Buff Orpington hens fled squawking at his approach, a large, rough-haired dog looked dubiously at him and then flung itself out on the end of its chain in his direction, and a calf, in a small cowshed, hearing strange footfalls, but seeing nobody, began to bellow for its mother.

  A little girl with shoes but no stockings, a cropped but untidy head, and a dirty but intelligent face, came round from the far side of a water-butt and accosted him.

  “Mother’s out.”

  “Father?”

  “Gone to market.”

  “Anybody else about the place?”

  “Me and Diddle.”

  “Diddle?”

  The child scorned to reply, but raised her hand and impelled a terrifying screech in the direction of the house. A youth of about seventeen emerged. He was half-witted, it seemed.

  “Diddle,” said Mr. Bassin, “did you see the man with the big black box?”

  “Ah,” replied the moron with a leer.

  “Which way did he go?”

  “Over that way,” said the little girl, pointing along the path in the direction of the village. “I sen him, too, and that’s the way he went.”

  “Thanks. Did you know him?”

  “Nor.”

  “Never seen him before?”

  “Nor, not as I knows on.”

  “Thanks.” He gave each of them twopence, and went back to the path. The child, he felt sure, would know everybody in the village, and probably nobody else in the world. He went back to the horse-trough, walked past it and, turning to the right round the market cross, came upon another culvert. This time the little brook went under a metalled road.

  Houses were clustered along this arm of the village, but there was a space where the brook ran. The stone bridge-head was so high that he could not see over it. It occurred to him that a man in unlawful possession of someone else’s large cash-box would want to be rid of the box at the very earliest opportunity.

  Anything tossed over the bridge-head might remain undiscovered for years. He could see, in his mind’s eye, the thief and murderer, hastening in broad daylight, away from the House by the Brook, burdened with the evidence of the crime. He could see him open the box, snatch out the contents, stuff them into his pockets…

  He walked farther along the road to see whether there was any way of getting down to the water’s edge at the place where the road crossed the stream.

  There seemed to be no way at all, for the cottages were built in a row. He returned to the horse-trough and so to the church path. He stepped over a low railing, got down to the edge of the brook, removed his shoes and socks, turned up the ends of his trousers, and began to wade.

  He reached the culvert, and even, in his zeal, ducked underneath its opening, but there was no trace of the cash-box. He searched both banks, but to no purpose.

  He dried his feet on his handkerchief, resumed his shoes and socks, and walked back towards the inn for lunch. Before he reached it, however, a new thought struck him. He returned to the public call-box by the horse-trough and dialled the police station.

  To a voice at the other end he replied by offering his theory that the cash-box had been tossed across the bridge-head where the brook flowed under the Allisbury-Towsley road. The voice thanked him for the suggestion, and reminded him that the thief would have had some difficulty in opening the cash-box since he himself had stated that he had trousered the key, which he had given up to the police before the inquest.

  Bassin apologised for troubling them, and returned to the farm. The little girl was still there. She was paddling, not in the water, but, with ecstasy, in the thick, slimy mud of the duck-pond. Bassin again addressed her.

  “I say, this man with the box. You say you didn’t know him?”

  “Nor.”

  “Well, had you ever seen him before?”

  “Nor.”

  “Not sneaking round the house to have a look, or anything of that kind?”

  “Nor,” said the child, sturdily resisting the mental effect of a leading questio
n.

  “Well, which way did he go?”

  “Nor, I don’t knor.” She ceased regarding her ankles—her feet were invisible in the mud—and looked up in Bassin’s face. “T’other gentleman give me a sixpence,” she remarked. Bassin thought this an odd and unlikely proceeding on the part of the police, grinned and gave her twopence. “He went the same-ole way as you,” she said simply.

  “Would you know him again if you saw him? What was he like?”

  “Nor, I don’t knor.”

  “Fathead!” thought Bassin irritably, walking away. When he looked back the child was biting the edge of one of the coins he had given her, and gazing after him. He waved, but she made no response.

  He walked on, pondering the problem again. If it was Carn himself who had killed his wife it was not likely that he would have chosen so unwieldy and so noticeable a burden as the cash-box. Why, also, should he have taken the trouble to gather up the letters and remove them?

  “Ah, but wait!” he said aloud. An old man passing stopped and said good day. Suppose the whole thing, letters, proof and all, was so much dust thrown to conceal the fact that Carn proposed to murder his wife? He nodded to the old man, and resumed his thoughts.

  The theory of Carn’s guilt, whether the newspapers or the police had conceived of it, held water. He could see that. If Carn had written the anonymous letters himself he would have had good reason for wanting them destroyed. Handwriting-experts, with their magnifications and measurements, would soon make odious comparisons between the writing of the letters and his own undisguised hand, of which plenty of examples could be obtained.

  If Carn were indeed the murderer, then the more spectacular the deed the better, from his point of view. To steal the letters obviously and dangerously as a climax to murdering his wife by striking her with the cash-box, was more likely to lead suspicion away from him than a quieter and (as it were) a more domestic method of attaining his ends and bringing about her death.

  He tried to remember Carn, but could not do it, except for a vague mental picture of bigness, blondness, and a kind of bear-like exuberance. He retained an impression, too, of a happy man, and such, he reflected, are not, so far as has been discovered, among the most likely murderers.

  Then, again, if the little girl were at all trustworthy, the man she had seen with the cash-box was not Carn, whom she would know quite well by sight, since the little farm was not thirty yards from his house. That brought the thing back to the book. He wondered what Carey would make of the esoteric essay, which set out to show that Priapus was a Hebrew deity (one of the more debased forms of Jahveh) and which lauded Thor as a good Nazi.

  One thing, he reflected, the book had been very well and very carefully printed. The thin paper of the galleys gave no idea of the final appearance of the book, which was to come out on special hand-made paper, but the large clear type was beautiful in its austerity, and the only mistake he had noticed in the whole of the text was the obvious misprint of a B for a D in the German of “Thunder and Lightning.”

  He returned to the inn, to find that he was wanted on the telephone.

  •4•

  Carey sprawled happily upon the short turf of a high bare hill, and looked out over the countryside. It was almost like being in an aeroplane, for the country dwarfed almost to the scale of a map, showed a winding tree-fringed river, churches, houses, ricks, ribbon-roads and a silver reservoir, and, far off but easily distinguishable, a large town nine miles distant.

  He took out his map and compared its details with the view, then laid it aside, took out a piece of bread, some cheese, and chocolate and had his midday meal. On the map he had made rings round all the inns with promising names.

  So far, he had painted just one sign. That was for a man who had gone newly into the business of inn-keeping. His pub had been renamed “The Best of Three,” and Carey had enjoyed himself and had imbibed much free beer of excellent quality.

  He had also received the sum of ten guineas. His garish and striking sign depicted the Judgment of Paris.

  The threatened rain had not come; instead, the clouds had given place, here and there, to promising rifts of blue sky. The wind has risen, but was not cold, even upon the heights. There was nobody about. It seemed as good a chance as any he was likely to get for a perusal of the galleys Bassin had given him.

  His first deduction, made on page two, and one that he saw no reason to reassess, was that the writer was a confirmed and rabid anti-Semite. There was, for instance, a jingle about Daniel-Nathaniel, Nathaniel-Daniel of presumably Pickwick Papers fame, but it was followed by gross and unnecessary reference to the prophet Nathan and the Hebrew king David. The story of Bathsheba and the parable of the ewe lamb were referred to, and the whole passage was couched in language, which only a private press could have tolerated.

  Carey whistled a few bars of a Morris dance tune. Then he made a brief note on the margin of the page, for it had been arranged between them that this would be the easiest way for him to give Bassin his opinions, comments, and conclusions.

  A few pages further on there was a short essay entitled “Coelacanth: a moral.” It pointed out that the fish called by this name had remained untouched by evolution for two hundred and fifty million years. An offensive reference to the Jews followed.

  Carey made another note, and read on to the end of the book. The tone was the same throughout the whole essay. Of the quality of the writing there could be no doubt. It was the work of a master. It also bore evidence, Carey thought, of being, in bestial fashion, supremely a labour of love. Every epithet had been selected, it seemed, as though a lover were selecting a bud for a bouquet. The culminated effect was remarkable. An artist himself, he appreciated the artistry of the writer. The poison plants were exquisitely chosen. The delightfully balanced prose sentences were precise and very delicate forms of torture. Carey wiped his fingers on a dry paint-rag when he had put the galleys back into his pocket, and then got up and walked a little way back on his tracks to regain the chalky path, which he had left. It led up and over the hill, southwest, in one direction, and back to the village in the other. He had made up his mind to go on, for there were several inns within easy reach of one another on the southwest side of the hill, but the perusal of the galleys had caused him to alter his plans. Backing a fairly strong wind, he returned by the way he had come. Halfway down, a gap in a hawthorn hedge gave him a short cut across a close-cropped field on the heel of the hill. At the bottom of the field was another footpath, steep and deeply rutted, which dipped suddenly on to the road.

  He crossed the bridge by the station, walked across the London road, bore on eastwards past cottages and the post office, and reached the inn at half-past three. He put his head in at the lounge door, could not see Bassin, went up to the office window, enquired for him, and was told that Mr. Bassin had been summoned by telephone to London.

  Carey went to the village shop for brown paper and string, then to the post office for a letter card and to register his parcel. Before he reached the counter, however, he overheard an argument between the postmistress and the telegraph boy.

  “There’s nobody of the name of Lestrange stayen at the ‘Lion’ I tell you, missus. My brother works there. Didden I ought to knor?”

  “Well, telegram says ‘Lestrange, Lion Hotel.’ Can’t get away from that. Perhaps gentleman be expected there today.”

  “Nor, he ain’t, neether. My brother was tellen me norbody ain’t expected. Slacker than ever, they are. Keepen alive on the bar, and snacks to cyclists.”

  “You tekken it, anyhow.”

  “It’s nor good, I tell you.”

  “You be Government servant, ben you?”

  “Ah. Give here, then. Whaddida do with my belt?”

  Carey took his parcel outside again, and beat the telegraph boy to the “Lion” by a second and a half. The telegram read:

  “Keep proofs. Back in the morning. Bassin.” It had been handed in at Aubery, a village about five miles off.
Bassin had not gone to London. His telephone message had been from the printers. The senior partner of Saxant and Senss wanted to see him to discuss what should be done about the book. Mr. Saxant had left the printing press at three, and Bassin had gone to his house to talk things over with him.

  This Carey did not know, but, having the proofs still in his possession, he thought it might be interesting to find out from the printers whether the author had made any very drastic alterations in the book when he had corrected the proofs. It was a job, which would come within Bassin’s province, he reflected, although hardly within his own. He would put it up to Bassin later. Very good printing, though. A single repeated error, and that such an obvious one that the only odd thing about it was that so careful a firm should have missed it, especially as Senss was a German, and one example came in a German word.

  Having the remainder of the afternoon and evening at his disposal, he first booked a room at the “Lion” for the night, thinking that he might as well meet Bassin there on the morrow, and then deposited all his paraphernalia, including the proofs, in his room. He locked the room, deposited the key at the office, and walked to Aubery over another round hill.

  Arrived there at the end of an hour and a quarter, he decided to apply at the inn, as was his custom, for permission to paint a new sign, and, whether this offer were accepted or refused, to remain in the village until the inn was open to the public, to have a pint of beer, talk pig with anyone who was knowledgeable, play darts with any who would, and get back to the “Lion” by half-past eight or so, just in time to have dinner.

  He did not know whether Bassin was still in Aubery; he had no idea that Mr. Saxant, the senior partner, lived there, and he put Bassin and the galleys and the death of Mrs. Carn completely out of his mind.

  The innkeeper was agreeable to have the sign repainted. The house was the “George and Dragon.” Carey put in a couple of hours’ work and promised to return next day to complete it. He received his pint free of charge, talked pig, accepted, in the spirit in which it was offered, a good deal of criticism of his picture, played darts, and was about to return to the “Lion” when Bassin walked in.