ERNEST BRAMAH Ultimate Collection: 20+ Novels & Short Stories in One Volume. Bramah Ernest

had rather a time of it,” he reported, with a nervous laugh, “but I think it will be all right now. She is in the spare room.”

      “Then we will take our places. You and Parkinson come with me to the bedroom. Inspector, you have your own arrangements. Mr Carlyle will be with you.”

      They dispersed silently about the house. Hollyer glanced apprehensively at the door of the spare room as they passed it but within was as quiet as the grave. Their room lay at the other end of the passage.

      “You may as well take your place in the bed now, Hollyer,” directed Carrados when they were inside and the door closed. “Keep well down among the clothes. Creake has to get up on the balcony, you know, and he will probably peep through the window, but he dare come no farther. Then when he begins to throw up stones slip on this dressing-gown of your sister’s. I’ll tell you what to do after.”

      The next sixty minutes drew out into the longest hour that the lieutenant had ever known. Occasionally he heard a whisper pass between the two men who stood behind the window curtains, but he could see nothing. Then Carrados threw a guarded remark in his direction.

      “He is in the garden now.”

      Something scraped slightly against the outer wall. But the night was full of wilder sounds, and in the house the furniture and the boards creaked and sprung between the yawling of the wind among the chimneys, the rattle of the thunder and the pelting of the rain. It was a time to quicken the steadiest pulse, and when the crucial moment came, when a pebble suddenly rang against the pane with a sound that the tense waiting magnified into a shivering crash, Hollyer leapt from the bed on the instant.

      “Easy, easy,” warned Carrados feelingly. “We will wait for another knock.” He passed something across. “Here is a rubber glove. I have cut the wire but you had better put it on. Stand just for a moment at the window, move the catch so that it can blow open a little, and drop immediately. Now.”

      Another stone had rattled against the glass. For Hollyer to go through his part was the work merely of seconds, and with a few touches Carrados spread the dressing-gown to more effective disguise about the extended form. But an unforeseen and in the circumstances rather horrible interval followed, for Creake, in accordance with some detail of his never-revealed plan, continued to shower missile after missile against the panes until even the unimpressionable Parkinson shivered.

      “The last act,” whispered Carrados, a moment after the throwing had ceased. “He has gone round to the back. Keep as you are. We take cover now.” He pressed behind the arras of an extemporized wardrobe, and the spirit of emptiness and desolation seemed once more to reign over the lonely house.

      From half-a-dozen places of concealment ears were straining to catch the first guiding sound. He moved very stealthily, burdened, perhaps, by some strange scruple in the presence of the tragedy that he had not feared to contrive, paused for a moment at the bedroom door, then opened it very quietly, and in the fickle light read the consummation of his hopes.

      “At last!” they heard the sharp whisper drawn from his relief. “At last!”

      He took another step and two shadows seemed to fall upon him from behind, one on either side. With primitive instinct a cry of terror and surprise escaped him as he made a desperate movement to wrench himself free, and for a short second he almost succeeded in dragging one hand into a pocket. Then his wrists slowly came together and the handcuffs closed.

      “I am Inspector Beedel,” said the man on his right side. “You are charged with the attempted murder of your wife, Millicent Creake.”

      “You are mad,” retorted the miserable creature, falling into a desperate calmness. “She has been struck by lightning.”

      “No, you blackguard, she hasn’t,” wrathfully exclaimed his brother-in-law, jumping up. “Would you like to see her?”

      “I also have to warn you,” continued the inspector impassively, “that anything you say may be used as evidence against you.”

      A startled cry from the farther end of the passage arrested their attention.

      “Mr Carrados,” called Hollyer, “oh, come at once.”

      At the open door of the other bedroom stood the lieutenant, his eyes still turned towards something in the room beyond, a little empty bottle in his hand.

      “Dead!” he exclaimed tragically, with a sob, “with this beside her. Dead just when she would have been free of the brute.”

      The blind man passed into the room, sniffed the air, and laid a gentle hand on the pulseless heart.

      “Yes,” he replied. “That, Hollyer, does not always appeal to the woman, strange to say.”

The Clever Mrs. Straithwaite

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      Mr Carlyle had arrived at The Turrets in the very best possible spirits. Everything about him, from his immaculate white spats to the choice gardenia in his buttonhole, from the brisk decision with which he took the front-door steps to the bustling importance with which he had positively brushed Parkinson aside at the door of the library, proclaimed consequence and the extremely good terms on which he stood with himself.

      “Prepare yourself, Max,” he exclaimed. “If I hinted at a case of exceptional delicacy that will certainly interest you by its romantic possibilities——?”

      “I should have the liveliest misgivings. Ten to one it would be a jewel mystery,” hazarded Carrados, as his friend paused with the point of his communication withheld, after the manner of a quizzical youngster with a promised bon-bon held behind his back. “If you made any more of it I should reluctantly be forced to the conclusion that the case involved a society scandal connected with a priceless pearl necklace.”

      Mr Carlyle’s face fell.

      “Then it is in the papers, after all?” he said, with an air of disappointment.

      “What is in the papers, Louis?”

      “Some hint of the fraudulent insurance of the Hon. Mrs Straithwaite’s pearl necklace,” replied Carlyle.

      “Possibly,” admitted Carrados. “But so far I have not come across it.”

      Mr Carlyle stared at his friend, and marching up to the table brought his hand down on it with an arresting slap.

      “Then what in the name of goodness are you talking about, may I ask?” he demanded caustically. “If you know nothing of the Straithwaite affair, Max, what other pearl necklace case are you referring to?”

      Carrados assumed the air of mild deprecation with which he frequently apologized for a blind man venturing to make a discovery.

      “A philosopher once made the remark——”

      “Had it anything to do with Mrs Straithwaite’s—the Hon. Mrs Straithwaite’s—pearl necklace? And let me warn you, Max, that I have read a good deal both of Mill and Spencer at odd times.”

      “It was neither Mill nor Spencer. He had a German name, so I will not mention it. He made the observation, which, of course, we recognize as an obvious commonplace when once it has been expressed, that in order to have an accurate knowledge of what a man will do on any occasion it is only necessary to study a single characteristic action of his.”

      “Utterly impracticable,” declared Mr Carlyle.

      “I therefore knew that when you spoke of a case of exceptional interest to me, what you really meant, Louis, was a case of exceptional interest to you.”

      Mr Carlyle’s sudden thoughtful silence seemed to admit that possibly there might be something in the point.

      “By applying, almost unconsciously, the same useful