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

very good-natured..." he began vaguely. Gilmour hardly knew Haliburton.

      "He has that reputation," Mrs. Pratt threw in, "but—well—I doubt his standing much nonsense. He's not been accustomed to it. Besides, why should he? And if he let Winnie go—" Her face seemed to grow pinched at the mere words. "No, listen!" she said imperiously, "I'll be quite frank. I'm living on my capital. I was a wealthy girl myself, and married a man who was believed to be well off. So he was—so we both were for a time. But we were both extravagant, and when he died I found that even his insurance had been mortgaged. I was left to struggle along with Winnie as best I could, for we neither of us had any relations. Bit by bit my capital has been eaten into, until—well, I can't keep the flag flying much longer. Now Basil Haliburton at the moment would settle half the world on Winnie. And she loves him. In reality." The last two words came defiantly. "Anything else is just play. I want the affair settled when we leave here. And so it will be if you head off your friend."

      "But he's quite well to do," Gilmour urged.

      "Not as Mr. Haliburton is!" was the unanswerable reply. "Let alone as well off as Basil will be when his grandfather dies."

      "I know he has big expectations," Gilmour agreed, "but I assure you that Ingram's means—"

      "Are not the kind that I want for Winnie," snapped Mrs. Pratt.

      "But perhaps the kind that she wants for herself," came the reply with a smile that Mrs. Pratt called "positively fiendish" in its impudence.

      "It's no good, Mrs. Pratt. I'm backing my friend to win."

      There was a moment's silence.

      "Do you suppose I've endured what I have to be thwarted now—when the struggle is nearly over?" Her tone startled him by its intensity. He saw that he had gone too far.

      "Look here, Mrs. Pratt," he spoke in a more conciliatory tone, "give Ingram a trial. You talk as though he were a pauper. He's anything but."

      Again came that snap of her fingers at her side, and suddenly Gilmour guessed—rightly—that Mrs. Pratt had borrowed money on the strength of her daughter's coming engagement to Haliburton. But she only gave him a rather fierce look and moved away. Gilmour looked after her ruefully. He very much disliked unpleasantness.

      "Mrs. Pratt seemed peeved with me—just like you," he said under his breath to Moy.

      "I don't wonder. You're a sort of involuntary dog-in-the-manger. And she looks a good hater."

      "Well, if my corpse is found some fine day lying in the tool shed, you'll know where to look," and Gilmour broke off to watch with open pleasure Ingram capture Miss Pratt and lead her off to the house under the plea of some books having come from Hatchett's and wanting her help to choose a couple for his sister's children.

      Ingram led the way into the library which had been handed over to him for his exclusive use all the more absolutely in that no one else wanted it. He was the only member of the five who had to continue his work at The Tall House itself, and it evidently was work that admitted of no putting off. During the day and early evening he might—and did—dance attendance on Winnie Pratt, but from ten onwards every night he shut himself into the library and let nothing disturb him. Sometimes it was long past midnight when he went up to his rooms. No one at the house got up early. Moy talked as though he let the milkman in on his way to his office in Lincoln's Inn, but a quarter to ten was the earliest that ever saw him running down the steps to his little car. At half-past nine Gilmour would have started for the tube. Half-past ten saw Haliburton off the premises. Moy sometimes thought that it was because Ingram could be with Winnie so many hours of the day, that he left suppers and the evenings to Haliburton. Certainly as far as the two men were concerned, the balance seemed only too even. Whichever one was with her appeared to be the favored man.

      In the library she carefully selected the books whose bindings pleased her the best, and then stayed on listening to Ingram's eager words about the popular book he was planning on the arithmetical aspect of the universe. He was a charming talker and, as she listened, as she watched his rapt eyes, something of the fascination which he could exert over her came back again. No one but Ingram ever talked to Winnie as though she had a brain. He appealed to it, and Winnie's intelligence struggled forward to meet the appeal. Perhaps, too, something was due to Gilmour's flat refusal to be led on her string. At any rate, for the time being, Ingram regained something of his old ascendency over her. There had been a week or two when he had entirely eclipsed Haliburton.

      That young man now strolled in and joined in the chat. He seemed genuinely interested in Ingram's talk and gave a little sigh when Winnie drifted out again in answer to Mrs. Pratt's urgent reminder that she and her daughter were due at a friend's cocktail party.

      When she was gone Haliburton would have lingered, but Ingram made it clear that he wanted to write a few pages before the post left. As a rule he let no one inside his writing-room. By sheer personality he had established a sort of frozen line at the door across which no one stepped uninvited. The door had stood open just now and the room had been free to anyone who cared to step in, but, with the going of Winnie, Ingram changed, as he was wont to change, at his desk. For one thing he seemed to grow years older, for another he tolerated no time-wasters.

      Moy was certain that Ingram often locked himself in. He had an idea that the scientist was working against time, or at least working on something where time counted. And apparently that something was to be kept a dead secret until publication. Ciphers, probably, he thought. Once he had heard a sound he knew well enough, the clang of the lid of a deed box and the turning of a key. That was just before Ingram had hurried out to join the others. Evidently Ingram kept his ideas well safeguarded.

      CHAPTER 3

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      ALFREDA LONGSTAFF was not happy, and did not look it. But there were possibilities in her pale, dark face. She looked the kind to break records, had she the chance, behind a wheel, or in a 'plane. If so, Fate had not given her much of a hand to play, so far. Alfreda was the only child of the rector of Bispham, and was expected to keep house for her father and mother. She rebelled, naturally, but as no money was forthcoming for any training that would enable her to earn her own living, she had rebelled in vain—though by no means in silence, or in secret. But this last spring she had hoped for a release. Chance had brought down to Bispham a young man whose good looks attracted her immensely. She thought that he cared, too...he had come to the rectory in the first place because he heard that the rector played a good game of chess—as he did—but after that Alfreda had flattered herself that Lawrence Gilmour came because of her. He was the only marriageable man of good position and of her own age who had come into her life so far. Alfreda went all out for his capture. He liked games—well, she had a one figure handicap and a magnificent service, and gradually the links and the lawn tennis courts seemed to oust the chess board. She had shown her hand quite openly, sure of her prize. But he had gone away with only the usual civil partings. Flowers and a box of chocolates had come—once. That was over a month ago—a month of the village's open and concealed amusement or pity.

      She was thinking of Gilmour today, when the secretary of the golf club asked her to play a round with a London man whose partner had failed to turn up, as had Alfreda's. Men met on the links meant little, she had found, and this one wore a wedding ring. He had a clever face, she thought, and decided, with one of her inward sighs, that he had not lived all his life in Bispham, or he would never look like that. The rector's wife had just been rebuking her daughter that morning because the sugar basins had not been properly filled. Alfreda was expected to see to this. What a life, or rather what a death! thought Alfreda.

      She never played better, and Warner, the man from town, was two down at the ninth hole.

      "You ought to give me a stroke a hole," he said with a smile, "but then, I'm—"

      "Oh, don't say you're feeling ill!" she interrupted almost fiercely.

      "Feeling ill?" he repeated wonderingly.

      "Whenever