MAX CARRADOS MYSTERIES - Complete Series in One Volume. Bramah Ernest

to write to Mr Johns next door—let him get the letter to-night—inquiring whether he is still disposed to take this house.”

      “I had thought of doing that shortly.”

      “Then that is all right. Besides, he will ultimately decline.”

      “Oh,” she exclaimed—it would be difficult to say whether with relief or disappointment—“do you think so? Then why——”

      “To keep him quiet in the meantime. Next I should like you to send a little note to Mr Irons—your maid could deliver it also to-night, I dare say?”

      “Irons! Irons the gardener?”

      “Yes,” apologetically. “Only a line or two, you know. Just saying that, after all, if he cares to come on Monday you can find him a few days’ work.”

      “But in any circumstances I don’t want him.”

      “No; I can quite believe that you could do better. Still, it doesn’t matter, as he won’t come, Mrs Bellmark; not for half-a-crown a day, believe me. But the thought will tend to make Mr Irons less restive also. Lastly, will you persuade your husband not to decline his firm’s offer until Monday?”

      “Very well, Mr Carrados,” she said, after a moment’s consideration. “You are Uncle Louis’s friend and therefore our friend. I will do what you ask.”

      “Thank you,” said Carrados. “I shall endeavour not to disappoint you.”

      “I shall not be disappointed because I have not dared to hope. And I have nothing to expect because I am still completely in the dark.”

      “I have been there for nearly twenty years, Mrs Bellmark.”

      “Oh, I am sorry!” she cried impulsively.

      “So am I—occasionally,” he replied. “Good-bye, Mrs Bellmark. You will hear from me shortly, I hope. About the hawthorn, you know.”

      It was, indeed, in something less than forty-eight hours that she heard from him again. When Bellmark returned to his toy villa early on Saturday afternoon Elsie met him almost at the gate with a telegram in her hand.

      “I really think, Roy, that everyone we have to do with here goes mad,” she exclaimed, in tragi-humorous despair. “First it was Mr Johns or Jones—if he is Johns or Jones—and then Irons who wanted to work here for half of what he could get at heaps of places about, and now just look at this wire that came from Mr Carrados half-an-hour ago.”

      This was the message that he read:

      Please procure sardine tin opener mariner’s compass and bottle of champagne. Shall arrive 6.45 bringing Crataegus Coccinea.—Carrados.

      “Could anything be more absurd?” she demanded.

      “Sounds as though it was in code,” speculated her husband. “Who’s the foreign gentleman he’s bringing?”

      “Oh, that’s a kind of special hawthorn—I looked it up. But a bottle of champagne, and a compass, and a sardine tin opener! What possible connexion is there between them?”

      “A very resourceful man might uncork a bottle of champagne with a sardine tin opener,” he suggested.

      “And find his way home afterwards by means of a mariner’s compass?” she retorted. “No, Roy dear, you are not a sleuth-hound. We had better have our lunch.”

      They lunched, but if the subject of Carrados had been tabooed the meal would have been a silent one.

      “I have a compass on an old watch-chain somewhere,” volunteered Bellmark.

      “And I have a tin opener in the form of a bull’s head,” contributed Elsie.

      “But we have no champagne, I suppose?”

      “How could we have, Roy? We never have had any. Shall you mind going down to the shops for a bottle?”

      “You really think that we ought?”

      “Of course we must, Roy. We don’t know what mightn’t happen if we didn’t. Uncle Louis said that they once failed to stop a jewel robbery because the jeweller neglected to wipe his shoes on the shop doormat, as Mr Carrados had told him to do. Suppose Johns is a desperate anarchist and he succeeded in blowing up Buckingham Palace because we——”

      “All right. A small bottle, eh?”

      “No. A large one. Quite a large one. Don’t you see how exciting it is becoming?”

      “If you are excited already you don’t need much champagne,” argued her husband.

      Nevertheless he strolled down to the leading wine-shop after lunch and returned with his purchase modestly draped in the light summer overcoat that he carried on his arm. Elsie Bellmark, who had quite abandoned her previous unconcern, in the conviction that “something was going to happen,” spent the longest afternoon that she could remember, and even Bellmark, in spite of his continual adjurations to her to “look at the matter logically,” smoked five cigarettes in place of his usual Saturday afternoon pipe and neglected to do any gardening.

      At exactly six-forty-five a motor car was heard approaching. Elsie made a desperate rally to become the self-possessed hostess again. Bellmark was favourably impressed by such marked punctuality. Then a Regent Street delivery van bowled past their window and Elsie almost wept.

      The suspense was not long, however. Less than five minutes later another vehicle raised the dust of the quiet suburban road, and this time a private car stopped at their gate.

      “Can you see any policemen inside?” whispered Elsie.

      Parkinson got down and opening the door took out a small tree which he carried up to the porch and there deposited. Carrados followed.

      “At all events there isn’t much wrong,” said Bellmark. “He’s smiling all the time.”

      “No, it isn’t really a smile,” explained Elsie; “it’s his normal expression.”

      She went out into the hall just as the front door was opened.

      “It is the ‘Scarlet-fruited thorn’ of North America,” Bellmark heard the visitor remarking. “Both the flowers and the berries are wonderfully good. Do you think that you would permit me to choose the spot for it, Mrs Bellmark?”

      Bellmark joined them in the hall and was introduced.

      “We mustn’t waste any time,” he suggested. “There is very little light left.”

      “True,” agreed Carrados. “And Coccinea requires deep digging.”

      They walked through the house, and turning to the right passed into the region of the vegetable garden. Carrados and Elsie led the way, the blind man carrying the tree, while Bellmark went to his outhouse for the required tools.

      “We will direct our operations from here,” said Carrados, when they were half-way along the walk. “You told me of a thin iron pipe that you had traced to somewhere in the middle of the garden. We must locate the end of it exactly.”

      “My rosary!” sighed Elsie, with premonition of disaster, when she had determined the spot as exactly as she could. “Oh, Mr Carrados!”

      “I am sorry, but it might be worse,” said Carrados inflexibly. “We only require to find the elbow-joint. Mr Bellmark will investigate with as little disturbance as possible.”

      For five minutes Bellmark made trials with a pointed iron. Then he cleared away the soil of a small circle and at about a foot deep exposed a broken inch pipe.

      “The fountain,” announced Carrados, when he had examined it. “You have the compass, Mr Bellmark?”

      “Rather a small one,” admitted Bellmark.

      “Never