Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 41

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POINTER had found one other thing among Vardon's effects which might have a bearing on the case. This was a packet of four letters tied with a shoe-lace. They were all from an address which he had seen already given in the police reports as the home of Sir Richard Ash, the partner of the late Branscombe.

The notes were short ones. Beginning "Dear Philip," and ending "Sincerely yours, Barbara Ash."

And sincere enough the writer seemed to have been. Phrases such as "you're sleeping life away," varied with, "can't you wake up, and show what's really in you?" Once came the surprising aphorism, "There's no use your saying that content's a jewel. It isn't. It's awfully cheap paste."

Pointer had sat awhile thinking, after he read them. All but one were undated. The envelopes were missing, but the shortness, the absence of general news, the thick linen paper suggested that the notes had been sent to some one in England. They were the kind of letters that might be expected to have some effect. Had they stirred a man up to commit a crime? It was possible. It would depend on the man, and on whether they came as a final touch on the dipping scales of right and wrong. The keys were a different matter.

These damning keys. Seen in the morning-room at Riverview just before the end—if Florence was right—and found lying among a lot of oddments in the bottom of Vardon's valise marked for the hold. Pointer did not think that they had been slipped in after the things on top had been packed. Apart from how Vardon had got hold of them, why had he kept them? Were they to be used again? If so, why pack them in the bottom, and in a bag not intended for the voyage?

"A gentleman from New Scotland Yard to see you, sir," Bates announced immediately after the interview with Tangye, laying Pointer's card down beside the young man who sat reading the Araucana. In spirit back in the New World, listening to a war-chief's song.

Fiery and fresh, the lines still hummed in his head.

"No—I—eh—" Before he could collect his thoughts sufficiently to finish his protest, Pointer was bowing to him. Vardon did not ask what the Chief Inspector wanted. He waited. Pointer explained himself at once.

"I'm in charge of the investigations about that missing money. Would you mind telling me how the note which has been traced to you, came into your possession? I ought to tell you that a criminal charge may follow, and that, if so, what you say may be used against you. You are quite at liberty to refuse to answer—if you think it wise."

Vardon looked as though greatly tempted to avail himself of the freedom. But after a moment, he told Pointer the same story as he had the solicitor.

"And how do you explain the fact that her keys have been found in your luggage?" the Chief Inspector asked when the artist was silent.

"Her keys? Impossible! Mrs. Tangye's keys!" Vardon sat open-mouthed.

Pointer said that it was true, nevertheless.

Vardon, after staring at him, as though he might be joking, finally suggested that Mrs. Tangye must have dropped them unnoticed on his table when she was in his room. The artist went on to say that he had started his packing, by shaking the tablecloth into his valise, and then throwing in other things on top. The valise bore out this simple method.

"What hour did Mrs. Tangye come to your room?"

"About three."

"And what hour did you start packing?"

Vardon thought that he had begun about a quarter past eleven, when he came in from a musical play to which he had gone.

"Did you have any other visitors in your rooms on Tuesday?"

Vardon said that, as far as he knew, nobody had come to see him.

"And now, why did you—well—decamp, when Superintendent Haviland and an inspector of his called on you yesterday morning?"

Vardon flushed hotly. Up and up, the crimson surged, until his very ears burned a brick red against his fair hair.

"I lost my head," he said bitterly. "I wanted time to think things over."

"And to get rid of the remainder of the notes," Pointer finished to himself.

"Few people care to be caught in a tight corner by the police," Vardon went on. "That note I got Mrs. Tangye to write was in my bag. My bag had gone. Not that it's of any value except for that precious bit of paper. You must confess the outlook was pretty bad for me."

Naturally, since a man cannot be both hare and hound, Pointer never considered any outlook so bad that jockeying the police would better it.

"May I ask—by the way, we're verifying the whereabouts of every one, of course—merely a matter of routine—where you were this last Sunday?"

"Sunday?" Vardon seemed puzzled. "At a concert in the Albert Hall."

"Meet any friends?"

"No."

"Did you go alone?"

"Yes."

"And Monday afternoon?"

"Writing letters in my diggings."

"And Tuesday afternoon, from four to six?"

Vardon waited a moment as though to be quite sure.

"I did a lot of strolling through shops generally," he said vaguely.

"You were seen near Twickenham on a motor-bicycle about five," Pointer said suddenly. "Can you explain that?"

"I was thinking of calling on a friend who lives out that way. Then I changed my mind. Half decided to call on Mrs. Tangye and ask a question about the sending off the rest of the money. Thought better of that, too. Decided that I was too wrought up to think clearly, and roamed the shops instead, chiefly the Army and Navy stores."

"Just so. But may I ask why you didn't mention this trip across the river just now? Why you didn't tell it me voluntarily?"

The worm turned.

"Does any one ever tell anything voluntarily to the police?" Vardon asked, and Pointer's eye acknowledged the hit. "You didn't go to Riverview itself last Tuesday?"

"I only wish I had." Vardon leant forward. "I looked at my watch as I crossed Richmond Bridge. It was a little before five. Had I gone on, it might have made all the difference. A chat sometimes does."

"Were you on friendly terms with Mrs. Tangye?'

"I'd never met her before. She came up last Tuesday unannounced. As she came in she introduced herself."

"I see. You never went to see your cousin after his marriage?"

Vardon played with the covers of the book beside him. He had the true artist's hands. Small-boned, slender.

"Once. Our parents had not been on good terms. He was much older than I. By chance Mrs. Branscombe was out that day. Just as, by chance, I was in South America when they married, and at sea the day he died."

"Mrs. Tangye was different, you say, from what you expected?"

"Rather!"

"And how was it that you had so clear an idea of what she would be like? Since you had never met her?"

"Oh—well—I had heard of her, you know. Got an impression of a rather masterful character—"

"I see." Pointer looked at his boot tips as he sat resting his head on one hand. "Have you written to Mrs. Tangye lately?" Pointer asked next.

Vardon hesitated. Palpably.

"I think I've said all on the subject that I care to say, for the present," he said finally.

"So you did write? You did ask her for money? You see, I've no intention of being unnecessarily prying, but we know that you came home from South America some ten months ago now, and approached various people in the city with a view to interesting them in some proposition of yours. Now it seems likely that you would have mentioned the matter to the woman who had inherited all your cousin's money. Was the proposition a gold mine, as they say?"

"In a way. I'm afraid I can't discuss it with you." There was a silence. "Don't think I'm keeping anything back that can help you." Vardon went on quickly, "to my mind, what will help you best, would be to make you realise Mrs. Tangye's whole manner on Tuesday. She struck me as being in a most extraordinary—I don't know what to call it—moodstate of mind? She was paying me one thousand five hundred pounds in ready money. Not being a rich woman, that must have meant something to her. It did to me, by Jove. Yet she gave me a feeling that she wanted to get it over, and be at something else. I doubt if ever such a large sum was given to a totally unexpecting person with such casual speed." For the first time Vardon smiled a little. "She tugged the envelope out of her handbag and handed it to me..."

"One moment! Was it already in an envelope? I mean didn't she have to separate it from any other notes?"

"No. She had two envelopes. The other looked about the same size. She handed me the one without looking at it. She asked me to count the money. I could hardly see. I had to count it four times, and each time it added up to something different. So I let it go at that, and pretended to find it correct. I had to almost hold on to her to get her to sit down and write that note saying that it was a loan, before she was out of the room in a sort of whirl of hurry and flurry. I felt that way, of course. I had a hundred things to do. But I should have expected Mrs. Tangye, or any woman, to talk a lot. Give me some good advice. Ask questions as to how it would be first applied. But no. All the business part of the interview I had to force on her. She acted as though she had handed me a ticket for Peter Pan. I can't explain it except by her intending to kill herself."

"What makes you so sure?"

"This gift of the money, for one thing. I didn't see it at the time in that light, naturally, but above all, her manner, her air of being done with things. Finished with them. I can't express clearly what made me think that. For, after that loan of the money, the rest was a confused jumble, but the impression was made very clearly.

"One thing I'm certain of. If it wasn't suicide, then it was accident. Mrs. Tangye struck me as just the kind of woman to have an accident with a weapon. She was very hasty in her movements. Very impatient. I can imagine her snatching at something that caught in her laces, and giving a pull. Thank God, if the shot had to be fatal, at least, it was instantaneous." And at that Varden walked to the window to raise it.

As he did so, he all but tripped. It was but a second's catch in his step, but Pointer, like Wilmot, thought of those words of the maid.

"And what exactly was it that made you change your mind on Tuesday about going on to see her? When you were so near Riverview."

"I thought it seemed rather ridiculous. Like an interchange of state visits. She had been to see me at three. I to run in to see her at five. I didn't want her to think that I was going to sit in her pocket."

"You didn't pass the house?"

"No."

"Do you know the companion at Riverview?"

Vardon started. Whether because of the question, or because his mind was on something else, it was impossible to tell.

"No."

"My I ask the name of the friend who lives out Twickenham way?"

"You may not. Sorry."

Pointer was fairly certain that it was Barbara Ash.

"Mr. Vardon, we want nothing in the world, nothing," Pointer spoke very convincingly, "but to get at the truth about the death of Mrs. Tangye. That's the only reason, I assure you, why I ask unpleasant questions, dig up uncomfortable things, and generally make myself a confounded nuisance. The only things I'm interested in, the only things I remember, are what help on the search. A search for truth, remember. Truth and justice. Nothing else.

"You say you think Mrs. Tangye's death was a suicide. I don't. But if you could convince yourself that we don't want you, or any man, unless he's guilty, we might be able to help each other.

"If you're guilty, of course you must do the best for yourself you can. I think I should get you in the end," Pointer gave the other a knife-like look. "But if you're innocent, I assure you that no one—not even the girl you were going to see Tuesday 'out Twickenham way,' can want more earnestly to prove you so. For that means a step nearer to the right man, the guilty man."

It was a long speech for Pointer. But it had done its work—apparently. Vardon seemed in a more friendly mood. "You mean I'm as suspect as all that?"

"Frankly, things look very black against you."

"But how could there be a murder here? Why? Mrs. Tangye wasn't the kind of a woman to stir people to violent emotion either way, I should have thought. She seemed a nice, warm-hearted, hot-tempered, high-spirited woman."

Why hot-tempered and high-spirited, Pointer wondered.

"You say, she wasn't the kind of woman to stir people deeply," the Chief Inspector repeated. "I'm afraid the fact that she very likely had some fifteen hundred pounds, on, or near her, last Tuesday afternoon, and that they may have thought she had three thousand with her, would stir some hearts to their very foundations."

Vardon showed an aghast face. He asked about the money. Pointer told him the outlines of the land sale, and then questioned him about his work.

Vardon spoke interestingly of it. He had started out as a painter of portraits in Buenos Aires. Come down to barns, fences, and signposts in Argentina, then, so he told Pointer—drifted to Patagonia, taken up photography when he had a frozen right wrist that refused to limber up—and now was working as a film photographer of wild animals. Of the creatures that live lives so like, yet so unlike our own.

Pointer asked him whether he could change his own film camera into one that would carry plates, and the two discussed mechanical means. Vardon showed an expert's skill in taking a kodak to pieces that he drew out of his pocket, and re-assembling it.

Finally Pointer questioned him about the lost bag. Vardon did not seem in a hurry to let him have the details.

"I'm afraid it's gone for good. Left in the taxi probably. Fortunately, except for that paper of Mrs. Tangye's, there was nothing of value in it."

"Rather an important exception," Pointer said dryly. He had ascertained that the young man had not acted as though there was nothing of any value in the bag when he first learned of its disappearance.

"Very much so," Vardon agreed. "I thought I gave it to the page-boy when I drove up. But they deny that. I was paying the cabby at the time, who was slow about making the right change. Then in the lounge, after a room had been given me, I stayed down looking up time-tables and comparing routes. It must have been nearly half an hour later that I finally went upstairs. Even then I didn't miss the bag at once. When I did, I ran downstairs but the hotel denied all knowledge of it. We got a bit warm, and I went off to another hotel."

"Did you go back to the first one afterwards to inquire?"

"I did, naturally. I asked for the manager. And the band played the same tune as before. Hall porter, lift-boy, chamber-maid, and reception-clerk. I think on the whole, now I'm cooler, that they're doubtless right. I must have left it in the cab or at my old diggings. Or on the pavement outside while I waited for the taxi to come up."

Pointer knew that on Wednesday morning, Vardon had made every effort to get the bag traced. He had telephoned Scotland Yard about its loss, describing its contents as chiefly papers of no value except to the owner but offering a reward of five pounds for its return. He had sent a similar announcement to be inserted in the personals of the Morning Post. His message to the "Lost" department had been very urgent. He had spoken as though greatly concerned to recover the bag. Now he professed himself quite prepared to accept its loss as a definite fact. Yet, in it, so he claimed, was this important paper. Pointer thought that Vardon on the whole, would prefer the bag not to be found. And the Chief Inspector wondered why. Was the paper, the important half-sheet, with Mrs. Tangye's words on it, really in the bag? If so, was it accompanied by other papers of which he wished the police to remain in ignorance?

Had there been a bag at all, or had there not?

Pointer's last questions were about Tangye. Vardon said he knew him fairly well. Had he approached him about this "gold mine" of his in South America? Vardon at once said that he had written to ask if the subject would interest him, and had received a pleasant but definite letter saying that Tangye never speculated or went in for possibly risky investments. As to Riverview itself, Vardon had spent many a week there as a lad. It had belonged to his grandparents.

Pointer spoke of Oliver Headly. Vardon had met him once by chance on a boat crossing to South America about eight years ago, and taken a great dislike to the man whom he spoke of as a disgrace to his race.

Did he know what had become of him? Vardon said that save for the fact that he had made Latin America too hot to hold him, he had heard nothing of him.

Pointer found Haviland waiting for him at the Yard. Ostensibly with some housebreaker's finger-prints to be verified, but in reality to hear how the interview had gone. He had no doubt as to the guilty man. Vardon's flight, he thought, meant just that. And his explanations, he considered very poor.

"In fact, I never saw a poorer case," he repeated now for the third time. "The money traced to him. He confesses to having the whole of the missing sum, and he takes good care to get it into the hands of a confederate. Keys of her safe and doors found in his possession. Proof that he knows the dead woman's companion. Proof that he was seen hanging around the house at the time of the death. Why, it's a cert, for a fact!"

"Dorset Steele's a good man," Pointer murmured, "no better criminal solictor in town." The wording was ambiguous, but Haviland agreed.

"Still, not all the lawyers' brains in the Kingdom can talk away facts. But it's odd he doesn't seem to give a damn for the bag now. It should be all important to him, and that's a fact. But with, or without it, his solicitor'll have his work cut out to get him off, if you choose to have him arrested."

"That's just it." Pointer seemed finally convinced that his boot tips had nothing more to tell him. "That's just it, Haviland. Send Vardon up for trial, and accuse him of Mrs. Tangye's murder, and I doubt if he'd have a dog's chance of getting off without at least penal servitude for life."

"You don't think he's guilty, sir? Not after those keys?" It was not so much a question as an exclamation.

"I don't know yet."

"Well, I can't see what answer he could make to such a charge, in fact," Haviland said in a distinctly disappointed tone. Visions of returning with Vardon handcuffed fading from his mind. He bore the young man a grudge. He had all but cost Henry Haviland his official life.

Dorset Steele was thinking very much what Haviland was saying as he ordered his lunch. He sat staring at his meat with such a suspicious air, that the waiter hovered near anxiously.

"Tough job!" muttered the solicitor, stabbing at the plate with his fork.

"Tough chop?" repeated Smithers horrified. "Indeed, sir?" and whisking it off, he retired in person to the grill.

Dorset Steele gulped down a glass of port, followed it with boiled potatoes, and rising, under the impression that he had had his usual meal, passed out.

"Miss Barbara waiting to see you, sir," he was told at his office. A young girl who looked about twenty—she was six years older—light of foot as Atalanta ran up to him.

"I couldn't get to you before, grandfather, how did it go? Will he be all right?"

"Nice muddle you've got the firm into," he said testily. "The young man is guilty."

"Guilty of stealing that money? Oh, no I No!"

"If he can't find the bag, supposing he's definitely arrested, that's what the jury will say, and that's all that matters!"

Barbara pulled a chair up, stood on it, and laid her cheek against his wild, gray hair.

"How you frightened me till I remembered it was only you now tell me all—everything."

He told her, peering at her every now and then over his glasses. She was a pleasant sight. A pretty girl, if the term be not taken too strictly. She was tall, slender, erect; with bright brown eyes, bright brown hair, a bright pink and white complexion, bright rose-red lips, a bright smile, and one beauty. A laugh of rare charm. Like silver bells ringing in the sunlight. But she was not laughing now. Dorset Steele had been to see Pointer. The Chief Inspector had been frank as to the larger charge that hovered as yet dimly in the background, but which was to move slowly, inexorably, to the foreground of its own weight as it were. Barbara listened in silence. She was breathing fast and tense when the solicitor had finished.

"You think his having been seen near Riverview at that hour so bad? Grandfather? We live near there, you know," her voice quivered, "wouldn't it explain matters if people knew that Phil and I had just got engaged—secretly? Suppose Mrs. Tangye had guessed that, and for that reason wanted to help him—and me. Philip only asked for the money so as to marry me, you know."

"Eh?" Dorset Steele wheeled, and stood looking at her like a rook inspecting a Jenny Wren. Then he took a turn up and down, his hands under his coat-tails that flapped in time to his tread.

"You'll break down when you're cross-questioned. For this case may yet go before a jury. You'll break down, and then where will we be? Worse off than ever! The jury—"

"I shan't break down. Phil asked me to marry him many times. And I—I—" she hung her head. Two bright drops rolled slowly over her soft young cheeks. "I don't want to tell a lie, but I must, oh, I must save him! In my heart I said yes. Surely I can truthfully say I accepted him. I did in my heart. Where's my bag, my hanky's in it—"

"M-m," mumbled the solicitor gruffly, but wiping the tears off with a very tender touch. "Yes—that might be a help. He was hovering around Twickenham on Tuesday to see you? I guessed as much."

"Oh, yes! That's quite true."

"It's all quite true, or it's of no use," snapped Dorset Steele. "And that about Mrs. Tangye—yes—yes—that might help. But what about yourself?" he shot the question at her savagely. "What about yourself, heigh? All the notoriety? All the ordeal? Though you've grit in you. What about yourself, child?"

"Oh, grandfather," the girl, quite undismayed by his glare, caught hold of his coat with both hands and buried her face between them, "if you save him you save all of me. I was such a pig to him! I thought he was too easy-going, too contented. I thought he needed waking up. I only talked to him about money—money—money, every time he asked me to marry him. The last time I jeered at him because he was poor."

"Are you going to tell that to any jury?" stormed Dorset Steele, apparently beside himself with indignation, but patting the back of one brown little hand. "Because, if you are, it's all up with him. There's the motive. Don't you see?" This time he released himself resolutely. "Barbara, my dear, are you sure he's innocent?"

She did not raise her head. "Grandfather, you know he's innocent!" And even the keen old lawyer did not notice that she had not answered his question.

"M-m, well, perhaps I think so—but you see his father and I were old friends—" then the solicitor shook off his momentary weakness, "but the only question that concerns us, is what will the jury think? Now put your bonnet on, and I'll take you to see him. If you've thought it over. Weighed the consequences. Heaven knows what your mother will say when she hears of it!"

"Put my what on? What do you suppose this is?" Barbara touched the velvet tam o'shanter she wore. "I'm ready. As to mother—she's still in Yorkshire."

According to all novelists, Barbara ought to have stopped to use her powder-puff before starting off. She did not own that apparently inevitable adjunct to every woman. Certainly Philip Vardon noticed nothing amiss as the door swung open and Dorset Steele barking: "I've brought some one to see you," shut it, and walked the landing outside.

Vardon started up. Pointer had only just left him. He leapt forward; then he took a step back.

"You oughtn't to've come, Barby. But, how like you! How like you!"

"Phil, dear Phil!" It was she who ran to him and put both arms around his neck. "You poor dear boy! You poor darling!"

And after that Vardon took the goods the gods provide but once in a life, and the two were tragically happy. Sensing danger, yet content for the moment, till a harsh, irascible, cough sounded outside.

"It's my grandfather. I must go. Now, remember, we got engaged last Saturday on the links. I asked you not to tell any one."'

"It was to see you I biked down to Kew, Tuesday afternoon. I wanted to tell you what had happened!" He stood looking into the face he thought so lovely.

"I wish you had come to the house," she sighed.

"Unfortunately I remembered that you had said that on Tuesday you were going to your aunt's at Hampton Court, so I didn't ring. I didn't want to meet your mother. Not after the last interview I had with her."

"Mother's a darling. But she knows so little of life. She doesn't know how to judge," explained her aged daughters There fell a dead silence. Barbara wished that she had not used that last word. The door opened with considerable difficulty.

"Ready?" growled Dorset Steele, and started ahead down the passage.

Barbara took a 'bus back to her home. With every turn of the wheels her heart grew heavier. She had told her grandfather that Vardon was innocent, but she felt a sickening doubt as she thought over the whole position. Now that she was alone by herself. Away from that atmosphere of suspense, and pity, and dread. The doubt came first when her thoughts again ran over their talk last Saturday. It had been on the Richmond links.

Vardon had asked her to marry him. There was another young man in the offing, and he was jealous. Very jealous. Barbara had thought this just as well then. Every detail came back to her now, and added its mite to the growing pile of fear deep down within her.

"Why don't you get some money?" she had asked impatiently. "Others get it. Why can't you? Nobody cares how nowadays."

"That's the sort of speech to make a man commit a crime," Vardon had said thoughtfully, rather than indignantly.

His words had startled her even then. She had looked at him half laughing, half impatient. She had been thinking of business. As she looked round at him his face seemed to her to have changed. The desire for money exudes a poison gas of its own, necessary though our modern life has made the shekel. Its blight lay on Vardon at that moment. It had taken something from his face, leaving it, even to her eyes, less attractive.

"It's no use asking me if I love you, when you haven't enough to marry on. Mind you, I don't promise that I should marry you under any circumstances. What about playing on? Some one else may possibly want that bunker where your ball has been resting this half-hour."

Vardon had picked up his niblick. He was the sort of man, she reflected, who would always use a niblick in a bunker. Barbara watched him slogging away. The lie was certainly bad. But was he one to make the best of it? Five explosions clouded the air with sand and stones before the ball was shot out—to lie very close to the pin she had to own. Half the bunker seemed to have accompanied it.

Barbara gave her own ball a neat little undercut and holed it. Philip promptly went on with the talk.

"I asked you to marry me just now," he said rather sternly, "and you pointed out that a poor devil of an artist—or photographer, worse yet—living in Patagonia has no right to a wife. As Spiers wants to marry you, and is well off, am I to understand that he will be the lucky man?"

Barbara had known both the men in question since her early teens. She was not in the least nervous.

"I told you the strick truth, Phil." Voice and face were alike kind at that moment. "You're letting every opportunity drift past you. I don't believe you've ever exerted yourself in your life! What have you to share with a girl? Nothing except fat content."

"Fat content!" the words stung her as she remembered them to-day. There had been no fat content in the face she had just held so close to her own. His laugh even then had exasperated her. Why could she not let him go? But there were times when Vardon seemed to have Barbara under a reluctant spell. It was his good looks, she had told herself last Saturday, not the good qualities she believed underlay his gentleness. She despised man or woman who was led by the outside of things. Surely she would not be so disinclined to part, if Phil had a broken nose, and turned his feet in? She even gifted him with a pair of outstanding ears in her effort to be honest with herself.

Vardon, quite unconscious of these devastating changes in his appearance, played on moodily.

"Money is a test nowadays. Of course it's horrid. But you can't get away from it. Father would like to see the old Mandarin idea of knowledge the only nobility, but—" she shook her head. "So, until you have enough for two to live on, you're not in the running."

"And dear Spiers passes the post with ease?"

There was no doubt about Vardon having lost his usually sweet temper. His drive nearly swiped the tee-box off its foundation. His ball rocketed up to heaven like a Saint Catherine's wheel surrounded with tufts of grass and debris.

Barbara had eyed him coldly.

She intended to turn away in silence. But at twenty-six it is still hard to be dignified with an old playfellow.

"Edgar's money would have nothing to do with it in any case," she replied loftily. "I don't care any more for him than I do for you, but at least he can ask a girl to marry without being ridiculous. And you can't. Not as things stand. Sorry not to finish the round, but I'm tired."

She meant that she was cross.

"Look here!" he said hotly. "You quote your father. I wonder what he would say to giving up the round in a fit of sulks?"

Privately Barbara wondered too. But she had an answer ready. What woman ever runs completely out of that ammunition?

"After your language when you sliced into those briars, I think he would advise it," she said primly. The very hedge itself fell back a foot.

Suddenly she laughed. After all youth is youth. Vardon joined in, and they finished the round in at least neutrality. When it was over he held a gate shut that led to the high road.

"If I had money, Barby, should I be in the running? If I were prosperous, and all that, would you marry me?"

"It isn't the money, though it does take that to live nowadays. It's all that not having money stands for."

"There's that pamphlet of mine on South American lizards..." he began.

"Finished?" She turned on him with an eager light in her dark eyes. At the look on his face Barbara flushed in vexation. She would have liked to shake him. Shake him till the cloak of take-things-as-they-came should drop off him.

"I see," she said in a low tone. "Not finished, still!"

"Hang it all, writing isn't like hurdy-gurdy, that you turn the handle."

"I think a hurdy-gurdy more to be respected. It would mean effort. You don't make any. You never have! If we married, people would say that it was I who married you!"

Barbara thought again of her last glimpse of him. His face had not looked easy-going at that moment. Vaguely even then, the girl had felt that instead of doing good she had done harm.

She had meant to prod Philip's better nature awake. Had she prodded the other side of him instead? It was Barbara's first qualm on that score. Her first lesson gainst improving her fellow-mortals. But she had felt so sure that deep within careless, easy-going Philip Vardon lay a man, generally fast asleep, who sometimes, at rare intervals, had walked and talked with her. It was that seldom seen, other Vardon, who had captured her. He was not in the least like the lazy casual fellow with whom she generally had to be content. She began to realise that there are at least three sides to everybody. The best, the worst, and that serviceable mixture of both, the everyday. In striving to rouse the best had she stirred up the worst? Even last Saturday she had been vaguely uneasy.

Barbara trembled as she stared out of the 'bus window. Did she love Vardon? She was not sure. Not at this moment. A little while ago, talking to her grandfather of his peril, in the room with him, seeing his worn face, an overwhelming rush of feeling, such as she had never dreamt of, had swept her away, in spite of herself as it were. But now? Now that she could lose sight of his danger, her thoughts swung around to herself. Had she been quite honest on Saturday with her talk of money as the test of character? She sat thinking awhile. Barbara had a shrewd inner vision. There was good stuff in her. Her mother wanted her to marry Edgar Spiers. Edgar was well off. She had thought that she wanted to follow her heart, and marry Vardon, provided she could wake him up to work harder. What she had really wanted, she saw it now, was to marry both a man with money, and the man she—if not loved—was attracted to. It was not him whom she had tried to help, but herself. Yes, herself. She wanted to marry him, and at the same time marry well. She did not spare her feelings. And what was the result of her efforts? With cold terror she realised that Philip Vardon, who, if left to himself would never have hurt a fellow creature, would possibly, probably, be shortly accused of murder. Accused of it. Could he be guilty? She did not think so. But in this sudden white honesty that flamed through her, she knew that whatever she might appear before man, before God she felt a doubt. A doubt which would prevent her marrying him. She would fight for him till he got out from under this awful cloud, but then—she would have to take stock of where she stood. All the passionate side of her nature he touched. All that side, that has to do with self-sacrifice, with pity, he now called towards him. But Barbara knew she would need more than this. She would not marry Philip until she was absolutely certain that he was innocent. But no one should know that.