The Tall House Mystery (Musaicum Murder Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding

and Gilmour shared the ground floor of a pleasant rambling house. It was emphatically the flat of two young men who were workers. Ingram, as has been said, wrote on more or less mathematical subjects. Gilmour was a Civil Service First Division clerk. Both young men lived well within their means. At the moment, Moy found Frederick Ingram with his half-brother in the latter's book-lined writing-room. Frederick had dropped in to ask about some doubtful figures in an equation, he explained. Moy knew that he had gone in for that sort of thing during his short and inglorious career at Oxford, and also knew that the elder Ingram was giving him some proof-reading to do for him. But proof-reading would hardly explain the look on Frederick's face as he brushed past the solicitor, his beetling black brows knitted, his small, but thick-lipped, mouth set. And even in the room, usually so devoid of all stir, there was something that suggested a clash of personalities still in the air. Ingram himself had a firm will. He looked as much. His was a handsome face with its scholar's brow and deep-set passionate eyes with their direct gaze. A humorous mouth, a rather forbiddingly high-bridged nose, and a resolute jaw.

      He now pushed some books away, and stretched himself as though he too had felt the tension, and was glad to relax.

      "Gilmour out?" Moy asked after shaking hands and accepting a glass of light Australian wine. He learned that Gilmour was in his own den. So into the lounge Moy and his host now went. A door opened.

      "Frederick gone?" Gilmour asked in a defensive voice, apparently prepared to shut the door instantly on a negative reply.

      "Yes, some of my figures puzzled him," Ingram said slowly, and with a sigh of vexation, or weariness that could hardly be connected with figures.

      His telephone rang, and he stepped back into his room.

      "Figures of some sort are always the explanations of a fall from Frederick," Gilmour said under his breath, as Ingram closed his door. Moy grinned. None knew better than he how involved the financial affairs of the younger Ingram were, and he strongly suspected that Ingram had given him some work to do merely as an excuse for helping him out with money, though he claimed to have found Frederick unexpectedly careful and good at the job.

      Ingram now came back, and the three discussed the taking over of The Tall House. Ingram was vastly entertained at the idea. He had an engagement, however, and had to hurry off, leaving Gilmour and Moy to finish working out the details on paper.

      "I hope he'll get his money's worth," Moy said as they finished. "A rather vulgar way of putting it. But I hope Ingram won't be let down."

      "You mean Miss Pratt?" Gilmour slanted his head on one side and looked doubtful. He was a smallish man, very good at games. He was not, and did not look, clever, but he did look companionable and cheery, which was all that was necessary in a stable companion of Ingram's, Moy reflected. The mathematician had brains enough for any two.

      Moy now grunted that he did mean Miss Pratt.

      "If she's any judge of character, she'll take Ingram and be thankful," Gilmour said warmly.

      "Haliburton's a nice chap too," Moy reminded him a trifle impishly. He found himself looking forward to the coming five weeks at The Tall House from its sheer human interest. A lovely girl, two honest men in love with her...what more could any future dramatist hope to find laid out before him? Whom would she choose? Ingram had fame and sufficient means to live in quiet comfort. Haliburton could offer splendor and a title later on. Which would Winnie Pratt take?

      CHAPTER 2

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      "WHY do you dislike me so?" Winnie Pratt smiled up at the young man beside her. Most young men would have been overcome with joy, for Miss Pratt made a lovely picture as she stood on the lawn of The Tall House in a white muslin frock with a soft green sash and a large hat. Her flower-like little face just now wore a bewildered, hurt expression that her delicately aligned eyebrows emphasized.

      Gilmour laughed awkwardly. "Have I been rude, Miss Pratt? If so, it's only because I'm not accustomed to such visions of loveliness. I'm grown into a dull old hack." Now Lawrence Gilmour did look rather dull, but he was distinctly not old, and he was quite unusually good-looking in a fresh-faced, ruddy, rather countrified way.

      "Is he a dull old hack?" she asked Moy, who was passing them at the moment.

      "Do you want a standing opinion?" he asked with affected seriousness.

      "If it's not too expensive," Miss Pratt returned, smiling at him.

      "Nothing is too expensive for you!" he retorted with mock devotion. "Then merely as an opinion for the purpose of the discussion, and subject to the—"

      "Help! Let me escape!" Gilmour edged away with mock fright, but with genuine eagerness, and walked back into the house.

      "There!" Winnie waved a hand after him, "tell me, Mr. Moy, why he avoids me so. It—it's—most—" She seemed at a loss for a word.

      "Unusual," Moy finished, laughing. She laughed too. But there was vexation in her lovely eyes. "It's so noticeable," she persisted petulantly.

      Moy refused to take her seriously. "The absence of one worshiper among the multitude? Surely not!" But he went after Gilmour.

      He found him in the square hall of the house drinking lemon squash.

      "Look here," Moy began at once, "why make yourself conspicuous, old man?"

      "In what way?" Gilmour's tone was wary.

      "By insisting so markedly on having nothing to do with Miss Pratt," Moy finished. "What's wrong with meeting a lovely young thing half way? Most men would give half their fortune to be in your shoes."

      "I'll do a deal with them, instantly!" Gilmour grinned back. "I loathe the girl, Moy, and that's the truth."

      Moy stared at him. Yet he looked in earnest. But of course this was just a joke.

      "Because of her cadaverous and withered appearance, I suppose," Moy asked. Even Gilmour laughed at that question.

      "I know it sounds mad," Gilmour was speaking a little under his breath, slowly and very gravely. "She's infernally pretty. And yet—" He hesitated. "Oh, well, put it down to my not wanting to make a fool of myself—just now. Oh, damn, there she comes again!" And catching sight of a flicker of white muslin, he once more fled, this time into a farther room.

      Moy's lips twitched as he watched him. From where he stood, he could see that the white muslin belonged to Mrs. Pratt, not to the daughter. He himself went back into the garden again, but he did not make for Miss. Pratt. Winnie was not for any solicitor. He wondered with a moment's amusement how Mrs. Pratt would take it if he entered the lists too. For Mrs. Pratt considered that Haliburton was the only possible choice for her beautiful daughter. Unfortunately Winnie, like many another spoiled beauty, seemed on her arrival at The Tall House to have suddenly set her heart on what apparently she was not to have, and that was Gilmour. He was evidently anchored elsewhere, Moy reflected. No man whose heart was free could withstand those smiles. Gilmour had been about to say as much just now. What did perplex Moy was the extraordinary fact of Gilmour's dislike of the girl, his almost open hostility to her. It was all really more amusing to watch and speculate over than he had expected. And few things in life are that. He was, of course, prepared to see the Haliburton-Ingram silent, well-mannered duel continue, but he had never hoped to see Miss Pratt fairly throw herself at the head of a third man, who would try his best to throw the enchantress back again. He wondered how Haliburton and Ingram liked it.

      Fortunately they were such pleasant fellows, both of them, and Miss Pratt's attack was simply an acute form of wanting what she was not going to get, which would cure itself in time. Luckily it was Gilmour and not Frederick Ingram whom she had suddenly decided to capture. Frederick Ingram professed himself one of her victims, but Winnie refused even to look at him; which was as well, for Frederick was an utter waster. It was said that even Ingram had been so stirred by the cheek of Frederick daring to lift his eyes to the Beauty, that he had told him not to come near