Dancing Death Page 13

  “Sit down, old chap. Have some tea!” Travers moved the wicker chair to the table. “We’ll get a move on. George, you seize one bathroom and I’ll collar the other!”

  Braishe was still there when they got back. The cigarette he was smoking seemed to have steadied his nerves, but Travers kept chattering away while getting into his clothes.

  “Why exactly did he persist in that pagoda idea, Martin?”

  “Well, you know what he was like. He was the same when he was a boy; wasn’t he, George? Never happy unless he got off somewhere by himself. You see, he couldn’t bear being disturbed when he was working. When I was here—and that wasn’t very often lately—he just used to come over after dinner, and we’d talk till I turned in. After that he’d often work till well into the morning.”

  “And how’d he come to know about the gas?”

  “How’d he know! Good God! Weren’t the papers full of it?”

  “Yes—but to know the siphon was in the safe; to know its properties; to know the combination, and so on.”

  “Oh, that! Naturally, we talked about it. I regard Denis as my own brother. I’d trust him with anything. I showed him the siphon; told him everything—except the formula. He wouldn’t have understood that if I’d told him.”

  “Quite! You see, I’m not asking questions for the sake of it. We’re just having a dress rehearsal before the Scotland Yard person gets here. . . . Any row likely, do you think, because it’s gone?”

  Braishe grunted scornfully. “I don’t give a damn if there is! I’d as much right to have that gas in my house—lethal or not—as you have to keep a pet cobra—provided it’s under proper control. The gas was in a foolproof siphon, in a safe with a combination known only to two people.”

  The three of them scurried along by the hedge path. Travers deposited his parcel of manuscript on the desk and ran his eyes round the room. Braishe made straight for the fireplace.

  “I’ll strike a match, then you’ll see it. Here we are! Wedged in between two bricks, with the plunger down.”

  “Gas all gone?”

  “Gone twenty seconds after the plunger was depressed!” said Braishe bluntly.

  Paradine said nothing. He merely shook his head and looked worried. Travers stepped back, ran his eyes round the room again, then frowned.

  “It seems all so damn silly to me!”

  “That’s just it!” agreed Paradine. “It’s unnecessary—except that mad people do mad things.”

  “There you have it!” Braishe cut in quickly. “Let me explain, and I think you’ll see it. He was heading for a breakdown. Perhaps the book wasn’t going any too well—or he imagined it wasn’t. Am I right in saying that people who have lost control like that are apt to be . . . cunning?”

  “Possible, of course,” said Paradine.

  “Well, during the evening—personally, I should say between the time we got up to go and the time he spoke to William—he took the gas and the phone—”

  “Excuse me,” interrupted Travers. “I don’t yet get the hang of that phone business. Why should he take the phone? If it’d been the burglar who took it, I could have understood the motive.”

  “Well, as I see it, it was like this: He took the gas so as to have it by him. Probably he had fits of depression that terrified him, and rather than face another one, he’d decided to kill himself. When he took the phone away he had some crazy sort of idea that if the loss of the gas was discovered, the police couldn’t be warned. ... Still, what’s it matter? He did take it: we know that. Didn’t you find it out there in the snow? Then, when he got inside here, he had a brainstorm and cut and threw all those balloons about. Then he did himself in. The little siphon’s just two and three quarter inches by three quarters, with the plunger at safety, so he merely held his breath, pushed down the plunger, and wedged the whole thing between the two bricks. Then—and this is the point—he threw himself on the bed, face down, legs up, and his hands to his ears—perfectly natural attitude, under the circumstances—and waited for death. It probably caught him in a second or two. . . . Oh! and just one other thing in confirmation: Pollock says every window was shut—the first time that’s happened since he slept here.”

  He looked at them inquiringly. Travers got his comments in first; it might have been said that he stampeded the meeting.

  “That’s all right. I don’t think the authorities’ll have anything to say to that. What do you think, George?”

  “Of course, it’s—er—”

  “Of course it is! It’s unusual, that’s what you were going to say! But it’s an unusual case!” He waved his hand airily round the room. “Everything’s unusual. It’s bound to be!” He went straight ahead without a pause. “About that siphon. Could you get it out without touching anything except the plunger?”

  The merest depression of the plunger released it. Travers was amazed when he saw it at close quarters.

  “Good Lord! It’s like a tiny scent bottle!”

  “It is rather. Just a cylinder with a siphon top. This plunger has to have two complete turns before it can be depressed: that constitutes the safety device. The apparent thickness of the glass is due to its really being a vacuum flask. I should also add that the plunger was sealed with wax.”

  “What happens when the plunger is depressed?”

  “The gas emerges as a fine mist; in other words, it vaporizes, then diffuses and percolates. It’s colourless, odourless, and heavier than air.”

  “The very thing I wanted to ask!” said Travers. “I’m probably speaking with all the ignorance of the layman, but if the gas was heavier than air, why didn’t it sink to the floor and stay there? I mean, how did it get as high as his mouth?”

  Braishe smiled faintly. “Density has nothing to do with it. It doesn’t matter how heavy it is! It’ll diffuse in any case, only, the heavier the gas, the slower the diffusion. The molecular motion within the gas itself would cause diffusion to every part of an enclosed space, however small the amount of gas and wherever released.”

  “That’s good enough for me!” said Travers. “I’ll put it back myself, if you’ll indicate exactly where. His prints are sure to be on it.”

  “What’s to be done now?” Braishe asked as he wiped his fingers on his handkerchief.

  “Well, George and I’ll have to put everything as it was yesterday morning; then we’ll lock the place up till the police come.”

  Braishe showed no particular inclination to move. Even when Travers backed to the door and Paradine prepared to replace the balloons, he still hugged the mat.

  “Sorry we must kick you out,” smiled Travers. “George and I will have to back out ourselves as the balloons go down.”

  “Sorry! The fact is I was rather interested.” He moved out to the narrow veranda. “See you at breakfast, then!”

  “We’ll be over in a couple of shakes!” Travers told him.

  As soon as he’d really gone, he turned to Paradine. “Really interesting solution, that of Martin; don’t you think so? It’s yet another explanation of where Denis got to before the light went out!” He waited to see if there was any response to that piece of irony, but none came. “And something else: it explains that awkward way he moved through the snow. He had the telephone gadgets on him—probably under his coat! . . . What about the balloons? Got ’em all right?”

  As he went forward the pencil he was carrying suddenly dropped. He peered round, then got to his knees, and it was only after he’d struck a match that he found it.

  “Worst of being bat eyed, George! Balloons finished?”

  Paradine had a look at his handiwork. “Think so—except these two or three by the door.”

  “Can’t think how you remember ’em!”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Colours, I think. Association of ideas.”

  “Where’d you put that punctured one?”

  “Just by the bed. That’s where Martin was standing when he picked it up. This one goes by the fireplace; this here; this by the door
. . . and that’s the lot.”

  Travers began to lock away the manuscript. “Oh, by the way; how did Martin get into this gas business?”

  “Well, he did bio-chemistry at Oxford and took up research work there. Then Harry—his father—had large interests in Uganda cotton and got him to join the research board of the Cotton Growers’ Association, and he took over their main lab., as you know.”

  “Hunting the boll weevil?”

  “I suppose so . . . partly. There’s a fortune for the chap who can deal with that. What Martin and his people were doing was experimenting with gases known to be lethal, such as the organic isothiocyanates; then he stumbled on this Braigene. Between ourselves, I’m hoping rather well of it.”

  Travers nodded. Then he came to a sudden decision. Was George after all so dense as he was making himself out to be? Why not try him out by letting him see—very roughly—the lie of the land? And better still, why not give him the chance of committing himself to some definite opinion?

  “By the way, George, you remember when I picked that telephone out of the snow? Martin says Fewne threw it there. But it wasn’t snowing when Fewne came to the pagoda—and yet, when I picked it up, it had far more snow on it than had fallen that morning!”

  “You mean, it had been thrown there before?”

  “Well—er—it must have been!”

  Paradine frowned. “Let me see. The telephone was going right up to the time when the party broke up. Why shouldn’t Denis have taken it between then and when he turned in? We’d never have noticed him, you know!”

  Travers might have retorted that that was just what they would have done. There was someone at that porch till the last guest had gone. Fewne, out there in the snow, must have been seen. However, he nodded in agreement.

  “You’re probably right!” He had a last look round. “That seems to be all. Everything’s the same as we left it yesterday, except—this’ll show the police how thoroughly we work!—a couple of dead matches that were under the bed last night aren’t there now!”

  The other said nothing; he merely laughed. Travers joined in. “Not bad eyesight that, for an old ’un, George—what?”

  A few other things of unequal importance happened before breakfast. William reported a quiet night, and Challis couldn’t remember the exact number of balloons that went with that costume of Fewne’s. And, as he pointed out, it wouldn’t be any use to inquire, since two of the balloons had to his own knowledge been destroyed during the night. Tommy Wildernesse had stuck a pin in one for devilry, and Mirabel had exploded the other with her hands. Possibly others had gone West too.

  “What were they filled with?” Travers asked him. “I mean, what made them float in the air?”

  “Haven’t you been to Margate, old boy? Special gas, supplied by the balloon people. Perfectly harmless stuff. I brought it down with me. Pollock’s got the empty gadget somewhere.”

  “Who filled ’em?”

  “I supervised—and Charles tied ’em up.”

  The last thing was perfectly ridiculous. As Travers came from the dining-room safe, where he’d checked its contents, he paused before the Chippendale mirror. Then he smiled to himself as he turned back the corner of his eyelid. As he moved away he smiled again. Had he really bamboozled George Paradine, or had the green in his own eye been rather too visible?

  For his announcement, Travers chose a moment at the end of the meal, when everybody happened to be present. He produced a pile of envelopes and a couple of foolscap sheets.

  “I’d rather like everybody to do a small job of work this morning. It’s awfully interesting and won’t take more than a few minutes.”

  Challis eyed the envelopes critically. “What’s the idea, old boy? Soup tickets?”

  Travers simulated a laugh. “Not yet—thank God! No, it’s something really brainy—sort of thing you’ll revel in, Challis. The idea’s this: I’ve read that manuscript of poor Denis’s, and apparently he proposed to add somewhere about three more chapters. I’m not suggesting for a moment that I’ve the faintest chance of being appointed his literary executor—I mean, I don’t want anything out of the idea. What I’m suggesting is that we state our ideas as to how he proposed to finish it. As he left it, there’s a most intriguing situation. You probably won’t agree with me when I say it’ll be something to pass away a few minutes over. Not only that—the book will certainly be finished by somebody or other, and it’ll be interesting to see whose ideas coincide most with those of the particular author who ultimately undertakes to finish it for publication.” He looked round persuasively. “Now, what do you say?”

  “Sounds interesting,” said Braishe.

  “What sort of a book is it?” asked Wildernesse. “Adventure, detective, or what?”

  Paradine chuckled. “You’re giving yourself away pretty badly, young man! What is it, exactly, Ludo? Got the plot?”

  “I have. And I’ve made two copies. I wonder if you’d take one for Celia and Brenda? The other I’ll leave here.”

  He gave his glasses a polish, blinked round, and began.

  “This is the plot, as I’ve written it down. I need hardly say it gives no idea of the really enthralling way the characters are developed, or of the delicacy of the actual writing. This is just a bare outline. Proposed title is Distressful Virtue. All ready? Here goes, then!”

  “DISTRESSFUL VIRTUE

  “Isabel Lake, the eldest of three sisters, is a girl with strongly developed maternal instincts. The story opens with her interest in a man who somehow slips away again out of her life—not the first experience of the sort that has happened to her. And that is a pity. She is a charming girl, a delightful companion, and one with enormous potentialities for making a man happy. Then her two sisters, whom one might call modern, slap-dash women of the world, both marry; almost, it seems, in spite of themselves and rather as a matter of course. Thereupon Isabel deliberately throws herself at the head of Robert Carey, a rising young artist possessed of private means. She marries him. He apparently adores her, and they seem to be amazingly happy.

  “We arrive at the second part of the book, for which the first was merely preparation. Two years later, Isabel begins to go through a period of self-recrimination and doubt.

  “I should say that this outline here becomes scandalously inadequate!

  “She tells herself she won her husband by a trick. Ought she to expiate that act? Does her husband really love her? She feels, in fact, that if only she could lose her husband and then win him again by legitimate means, her conscience would cease to reproach, and her life would be anchored to a definite point.

  “Now, a year previously, her own cousin, a most attractive girl in the twenties, just back from completing a musical education in Paris, joins the household. Isabel deliberately throws the two together. Finally, to hasten the experiment, when the three of them are at Carey’s cottage in Cornwall, she fabricates an excuse to be called away urgently, leaving the two of them alone.

  “The last chapter deals with her feelings in London. She is still assailed by doubts. How is she to know if they have really profited, as it were, by her absence? Must she return and judge by their reactions to each other—by their looks and faces? But she knows she can’t go down there again, with all the old doubts and wonderings. It would drive her mad. She must know. Life with further indecision wouldn’t be worth living.

  “Now we come to the very last words of the last chapter:

  “Her eyes fell listlessly upon the copy of The Times which had fallen from her lap and lay by her feet on the floor. With an action almost mechanical, she picked it up and, her mind still remote from the set formality of print, let her eyes run idly over the pages. It was then that the idea came.’”

  He took off his glasses again and peered round apologetically. “That’s the thing I want you to do. What was the idea? What did she decide to do?”

  “Hm! It’s a bit stiff!” was Paradine’s comment.

  “Most unusual,” said Br
aishe.

  “Imagine it’s a play without its fifth act,” suggested Travers. “Try and put yourself in her place. There are the envelopes, by the way, with your names on ’em. Just jot down an answer briefly. Sentence or so’ll do.” He handed them out, with three for Paradine. “I’ll collect ’em in about an hour, if I may.”

  As he left the room with Paradine, the others were already gathered round that synopsis for a second reading.

  “Something I was going to suggest you’d do, George. Will you see Martin when you come down and find out what’s been done about tracing that doped drink? If it was doped, it must have been for a special purpose—the burglary ... or worse. Trace it from where it was mixed to when it was handed out.”

  He watched him as far as the landing, then turned to find Palmer at his elbow.

  “Ransome just spoke to me, sir.” He coughed. “The remark was, sir, ‘You needn’t hang round me. I’ve got nothing to tell you!’”

  “And of course you weren’t hanging round!”

  “Certainly not, sir.”

  “I see. Nothing to tell you! Find her at once, will you? Tell her I want to see her in the breakfast room—immediately!”

  CHAPTER XII

  RANSOME TAKES NO FURTHER INTEREST

  RANSOME sat bolt upright on the edge of the easy chair on one side of the fireplace, watchful as a cat and at the same time trying to convey an impression of deferential ignorance. The high collar of the blouse she was wearing, and the small black bow—a tribute, no doubt, to the departed—gave her an air of primness that was almost straitlaced. Travers reclined in his favourite attitude, legs crossed and finger tips together, his voice perfectly dispassionate and his words so economical as to be unpleasantly direct.