THE WHODUNIT COLLECTION: British Murder Mysteries (15 Novels in One Volume). Charles Norris Williamson

by a return of depression. "I am willing enough to tell you anything I can now," she said slowly. "But won't it do when all this horrible business is over. I am tired, so tired."

      "Come, Menzies. You can see how it is. Another day won't hurt. You don't think Miss Greye-Stratton'si made of iron."

      Menzies took out his watch. "If it hadn't been for me young fellow, my lad," he said, "you'd still be playing piquet with Royal at the hotel. In half an hour I've got to be digging Mr. Ling out and I guess this young lady can stand a quiet talk meanwhile. Now, Miss Greye-Stratton, please. Tell me everything your own way, and if any question occurs to me I'll ask it."

      His manner, suave though his voice was, admitted of no further dispute.

      "I'm unreasonable, Mr. Menzies," she said. "I can see you're quite right."

      "Go on," he said, and lit a fresh pipe.

      He smoked quietly while she told him her story, occasionally interjecting a question as some point became obscure. An ejaculation of appreciation escaped him as she told how she had refused to be a wife in anything but name to Ling.

      "Good for you, Miss Greye-Stratton."

      Her vivid face ebbed and flowed with colour as she went on. When she had concluded he scribbled a few Greek notes on the back of an envelope. "That bears out things as I placed them," he commented. "There's a point that's puzzling me, however. Your brother had a knife wound which he said was due to an accident. Do you believe that?"

      The peremptory question took her unawares as Menzies had meant it to. She reflected for a second before replying. "No," she said slowly. "I do not."

      "Did he say anything more no hint or explanation of any kind?"

      "He never said a word and I never questioned him. He was never in a condition to be questioned."

      The chief inspector gnawed absently at his moustache. "I'll own it puzzles me a bit," he said. "If it was Ling who did it, why didn't he make a clean job of it? Anyway, why should he get Errol up there and send for Miss Greye-Stratton to nurse him? People don't do things like that."

      "Remorse," suggested Jimmie.

      Menzies smiled. "Try again. You don't know Ling."

      "It's too far-fetched, I suppose," said Jimmie thoughtfully, "to think that it was done with the idea of bagging me. Besides, how should he judge that Pe Miss Greye-Stratton would write to me?"

      "Much too far-fetched," agreed the other man drily. "But you've given me some sort of an idea. You were not the only person they wanted out of the way. If Miss Greye-Stratton took the bit between her teeth they realised that she could make things pretty hot for them. They would want to keep an eye on her. I suppose you are sure "he addressed the girl "that Errol really was wounded? It wasn't just a frame-up?"

      "I'll answer that he was a very sick man when I saw him," said Jimmie.

      "Yes. Of course. I forgot your little scrimmage. Still, I think we've got a motive, and I'd sooner have a motive to build an assumption on any day than a heap of cigarette ash or scratches on a watch."

      "I don't see that it matters," exclaimed Jimmie, who secretly nursed a little contempt for what he considered the detective's over-subtlety. "Isn't it a bypoint, however you look at it? You know that Ling did the killing. You can get him for that. All you've got to do is to catch him."

      Menzies' smile broadened. "Now that is nice of you," he said suavely. "There's only one little objection to it. I don't know that he's guilty. I don't believe that he is. There never has been a case except when a murderer has been taken red-handed, of conclusive proof. It is only when you feel that a man is guilty that the worst difficulties begin to crop up. A detective has to examine every side-path. We'll take it that so far as the wound is concerned it was no frame-up. No sane person would believe that an injury like that was an accident. Now if Errol had got it in a row apart from this case he'd have no reason not to tell his sister. If Ling had done it, or had it done purposely, Errol probably would have been mad enough to give the gang away."

      "Unless he was scared," said Hallett.

      "Precisely. Unless he was scared. But I don't think he was scared. What I believe happened was that someone got out of hand and tried to do Errol. Who it was we'll very likely find out when we know who's standing in with Ling. The gang probably had something else mapped out to keep Miss Greye-Stratton under their wing, but they jumped to this racket." He pointed his pipe towards her. "It meant that if you had a sick brother you'd be as anxious to keep out of the way of the police as any other of them. Oh, they're a wise mob. I'd bet any money if I was a betting man that you never had any suspicion of Mrs. Buttle being anything but what she was made up to be?"

      Peggy stared at him.

      "She was Gwennie Lyne. There isn't an ounce of the Cockney about her."

      "I'd have sworn it was she when I came out last night," said Jimmie.

      "I wish to blazes you'd said so then," said Menzies. He glanced at his watch again. "Well, if anything more occurs to either of you people perhaps you'll let me know. I've got to get to work again. I've sent for a police matron and a nurse, Mr. Hallett, so perhaps you'll stay with Miss Greye-Stratton till they come. They'll be able to make arrangements."

      Jimmie's eyebrows jumped up, but the girl was before him. "A police matron?" she repeated.

      "I could understand a nurse," said Hallett. "But, as Miss Greye-Stratton says, why a police matron? You're not proposing to put her under under any restraint?"

      A little flash of temper showed in the chief inspector's face. It was gone instantly. He placed his hands on the sides of his chair and heaved himself up ponderously. "Not in the least," he said urbanely. "I'm only remembering that a little while ago some people preferred to try to burn her to death rather than run a risk of her telling what she has told. I don't believe she's in any danger now, but I should deserve to be broke if I didn't see that she was protected. That's why I sent for the matron, and what's more "he thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and jingled some coins "she won't be left alone night or day now till this case is over."

      Peggy's eyes met Hallett's and in their blue depths there lurked an appeal. Torn as she had been by the travail of the last few days she instinctively shrank from contact with strangers. It was not that she did not see and understand the reasonableness of Menzies' proposition. It was just one of those psychological phenomena of which there is no explanation. She had a latent impression conjured up by the use of the word police matron of a hard-featured, strident-voiced disciplinarian and she still retained enough of her old independent spirit to resent even the suggestion that she should be placed under any control.

      Hallett answered the appeal.

      "You're going a little beyond your rights, Menzies. If Miss Greye-Stratton doesn't object I haven't another word to say. But she's a free agent and you can't force protection on her against her will. So far as that goes I should consider it a privilege if she'd allow me--"

      Her face gleamed with gratitude. "I could go back to my flat," she cried, "and I could get a friend to come in to stay with me."

      Their failure to see his point of view exasperated Menzies, the more especially as he had been at some trouble to send for a matron of his acquaintance, the antithesis of Peggy's imaginings a little grey-eyed person whose sympathetic tact and good-nature had more than once tamed even the fiercest of suffragettes who came under her influence.

      "You're a pair of young fools," he said bluntly.

      Jimmie bowed.

      "You'd better get it out of your heads that I'm going to stand for any of this nonsense," he went on. "A fine thing to have you blundering round London on your own if Ling or any of the others slipped us now. I tell you, any danger you were in before wouldn't be a circumstance to what it would be now. We've stirred up this hornet's nest and they're ready to sting. They won't stand on ceremony if they can put anyone who can testify against them down and out, believe me."

      "That's