Crossword Mystery (11 page)

CLUES TO CROSSWORD PUZZLE

ACROSS

1. The End: strike it.

3. Some say Lord This cost US U.S.*

6. Better, said Sydney Smith, live in a cottage with this than in a palace without it.*

7. “— was I weary when I toiled at thee.”

9. Add to 2 down to make a goddess.

10. A Chinaman's first name sometimes.

12. Here lived a great emperor after his abdication.

16. Poet's epithet for an aeroplane doubtless.

21. A rum name for a flower.

22. Liberty? Oh, the reverse. Equality? Certainly. Fraternity? A sign of.

23. Here cook and P.C. meet, so say the comic writers.

24. Straits with a masculine beginning.

25. Once had many wives, now he's wiser.

27. Association with apples – and soap.

28. Palindrome. But is it a girl's name or a town in Europe?

30. When Sir Ralph the Bold was hurt in a this, it was a 37 across who was called for.

31. Pray in Latin.

32. Prickly. But sometimes you need it stiff and straight.

34. High toned, this.

35. Donkey's dinner: not yours, I hope.

37. See 30 across.

39. Sounds like a number, but isn't one, anyhow.

40. One needs this in life but not in an engine.

42. Good eating, these.

46. The boxer's hope – and dread.

47. This is just simply It.

49. “‘Charge, Chester, charge, — , Stanley, —'
Were the last words of Marmion.”

50. “Here? No, look there.” (Hidden, but if help is needed try a glass of effervescence.)

52. A poet's woe: a merchant's joy: fire! fire!!

55. Ah, that was before the motor age.

57. A little affects all, the Scripture says.

58. Another palindrome, but ask the Poet Laureate.

59. These came in March, as Caesar knew.

60. Ireland in a muddle, as usual.

61. Seems a busy insect has lost its tail, though it never had one.

62. Initials of a great country.

64. One must walk before one runs, they say, but one must this before one walks.

66. Very silly to fall into one of these.

70. Printers' measure.

72. We must learn to say this, the wise tell us.

73. And in life, how often we have cause to say this.

74. “—, take care, she is fooling thee.”*

75. Good gracious, I hope you aren't this.*

DOWN

1. Mr. John Ball (the late) wanted very much to know who was the gentleman when Adam this: use present tense and modern form.*

2. Add to 9 across to make a goddess.

4. The colours this when the thing was washed.

5. Just as 47 across is simply It, so this is That.

6. Initials of terror to a Russian; but the little dog seems to have got its tail in front.

8. Initials of a Society, very learned and apparently very antiquated.

11. The Provost of this college should put it in order: look how the window projects.

12. Add a man's name to a kitchen utensil to make a boat.

13. Hills of France.

14. If you add a tic to this, you get a lunatic, obviously.

15. Sounds as if a Persian poet wants his mother badly.

16. You have certainly two or three or even more of these (reversed).

17. Anyhow, can't well be more than the whole.

18. Ladies and judges go fine in this.

19. A prophet in a muddle apparently, or is he trying to hide himself from the king's anger?

20. Nothing can go faster, yet never wins a race.*

26. Those who can go this in winter to seek the sun.*

28. What would the crossword puzzle maker do without this useful animal?

29. A this of ham and eggs is a welcome sight to a hungry man.

32. Christopher was a tinker, the bard tells us.

33. Hard rock: has to do with the fairy folk.

36. When thick, the boxer's hall-mark.

38. You this if you will, they say. Hum!

40. It would be tame merely to drink from this, quaff instead.

41. Far, far from the restless sea.

42. Where the naughty child stands, but don't this wheat, please.*

43. What would they say in the tea shop if you asked for two boiled this?

44. This time comes before harvest.

45. The snail carries his on his back.*

48. Economical Romans used one letter for this.*

51. When a policeman's, the subject of much wit.*

53. A very modern prefix.

54. Well, this is a backward plunge.

55. “— the Joiner”: you will be this in bed to-night, I hope.

56. Sounds like those ladies wear, but are quite different, really.

63. This is only half.

65. Always in poetry.

67. Hot this is what one often thinks the politician deals in.

68. It is pleasant when the friendly Cockney gives you his this.*

69. Why, here's the Foreign Office for a change reversing not its policy but itself.*

71. Well, anyhow, not you.

In the morning the wind had fallen, but there was still rain, though less heavy than during the night, and Bobby had to give up the idea of the early swim he had been looking forward to.

When he went down to the breakfast-room he found the atmosphere there, too, distinctly on the stormy side. Colin Ross was looking sulky over a plate of ham and eggs to which, nevertheless, he was doing full justice; Miss Raby, just arrived from the cottage where she lodged, was looking slightly scared; and Mr. Winterton, the morning paper in his hand, was delivering a passionate harangue on the general critical condition of world affairs and the imminent danger of civilisation collapsing into a Bolshevist chaos. Bobby's entry made but the slightest diversion. Miss Raby, it is true, looked a trifle relieved, as if hoping his appearance would serve to check her employer's excited eloquence. But Colin nodded only the briefest and curtest of greetings, and Mr. Winterton scarcely interrupted his flow of general denunciation to wish Bobby good morning and wave him to a seat.

“As I was saying...” He continued his lurid prophecies. “Universal confiscation,” he declared, “that's what it comes to; seize everything you possess, from your wife to your last pair of trousers, that's their game. Nationalise everything; put it in their own pockets, they mean. Well, they'll find some of us have taken our precautions.”

“What precautions, uncle?” asked Colin, through a mouthful of ham.

It was a simple question enough; natural, too, Bobby thought; and yet it shut down Mr. Winterton's passionate discourse like a hand clapped upon his mouth. He even went a little pale; he peeped at his nephew over the top of his paper, and then suddenly turned his attention to the toast and grumbled that it was burnt, which wasn't true.

Taking advantage of the pause, Bobby told of the loss of his wrist-watch.

“Must have happened while we were out last night,” he said, addressing his host and thinking to himself that the remark was strictly accurate – more accurate that Mr. Winterton would guess.

Mr. Winterton and the other two expressed a conventional concern. Colin remarked there wouldn't be much left of any watch left out in such rain as they had had during the night, and he said this with a touch of malice, so that Bobby was again aware of an underlying hostility he had thought before he perceived in the young man's attitude.

It was a point to remember, he told himself, for he did not see that, on the face of it, his appearance in his ostensible character of a passing visitor should have disturbed Colin at all. Was it, he wondered, that Colin had some suspicion of his real character and of the true capacity in which he was present, and, if so, did that hint at a guilty conscience?

Miss Raby remarked that they were all very honest folk in the village, and if the watch were found it would certainly be restored. Bobby said he valued it greatly; he would willingly offer two or three pounds' reward to get it back (but would the almost subhuman niggards who checked expense-lists pass a reward like that for a watch that had only cost as much?). To explain the liberality of the reward, Bobby remarked that the watch was a present (and, indeed, the shopkeeper who had sold it him had described that process as “simply giving it away”), and Miss Raby observed that for the chance of earning such a reward every boy and girl in the neighbourhood would search every square inch of beach and shore.

“You think you dropped it on the beach?” she asked.

“Well, all I can say for certain,” Bobby answered with scrupulous accuracy, “is that I was wearing it when Mr. Winterton and I went out for a stroll, and when I was getting ready for bed I found I hadn't it.”

With that the subject dropped, though Bobby could not help wondering, as he addressed his considerable energies to the excellent ham and eggs before him, and to the equally excellent coffee, evidently made by someone who had taken the trouble to learn how, whether that missing watch of his was not at this very moment reposing safely in Miss Raby's handbag.

For the more he thought about that figure he had seen slipping so swiftly by him down the drive, the more he was inclined to believe it had been a woman's. And, if a woman, was it not most likely Miss Raby herself? So far as he knew at present, there was no one else in the neighbourhood with whom the unknown could reasonably be identified. There was, no doubt, the possibility that it had been someone landed from a motor-boat repeating its former visit. But that did not seem very probable to Bobby, though also he found it difficult to imagine why a secretary, who had unlimited opportunities of private talks with her employer during the day, should come for a secret interview with him in the middle of the night.

Glancing round the table – spread as it was with the bountiful breakfast of the well-to-do English, bright and gay with flowers, with freshly laundered linen, and shining, polished silver – he thought how typical it was of an ordered, prosperous, established civilisation that one could hardly conceive would ever pass away. Yet, to judge by Mr. Winterton's harangue, that civilisation was threatened by an immediate collapse he judged it necessary to take secret and hidden precautions against; so secret and so hidden, indeed, that he found even the least reference to them by his nephew oddly disconcerting.

Were those precautions, Bobby asked himself, the source of the hidden danger he thought threatened him?

And of the four of them sitting there, busy with their breakfast, exchanging trivial remarks, how many had spent at least a part of the night before, wandering about in the darkness outside on strange and doubtful errands? He himself had, for one; and Mr. Winterton for another; since to Bobby's mind at least the evidence of the light turned up in the study seemed sufficient proof of identity. That whoever had re-entered the house by the front door was Colin Ross was at least conceivable; and Bobby was still inclined to the belief that the second party to that odd colloquy on the lawn had been Mary Raby. Yet who, seeing them all sitting there, could have dreamed that doubt and mystery sat with them, that the dark form of murder hovered threateningly in the background, as yet uncertain whether to pass away as an unreal dream or to materialise into a dreadful actuality of the past – perhaps of the future, too?

Mr. Winterton had been very quiet after his nephew's apparently simple question, but now he began to talk again, still on the same theme – of the imminent danger of revolution, of the approaching chaos, of the necessity of being prepared for it (he did not use the word “precaution” again). None of the others said very much. It was not Bobby's business to discuss politics. Miss Raby did not appear much interested, but, possibly in fulfilment of her secretarial duties, made occasionally vague sounds that might have been meant for agreement – or anything else. Colin's only comment was to the effect that he would jolly well like to see any Government, red or white or any other colour, interfere with racing, and, for the rest of it, he didn't give two hoots; one Government was as bad as another.

“You'll care two hoots,” retorted his uncle, “when the smash comes. Look at the state of our finances. Bits of printed paper driving out good honest gold. But it won't be so long before the paper will just be good for what paper is good for – lighting fires. But gold's always gold, and people will be glad enough to come back to it some day.”

“Government will be confiscating it most likely,” Colin observed.

“If they can find it,” retorted Mr. Winterton. “They can't search every house in the country or dig up every garden, can they?”

No one tried to answer this conundrum. To change the subject – for Bobby was privately growing a little tired of threatened chaoses and the merits of the gold standard – he asked if the Airedale had returned yet. Neither Mr. Winterton nor Colin had inquired, and Miss Raby had not heard of the dog's disappearance. Cooper entering at that moment with the fresh supplies of ham and eggs necessitated by the gross under-estimate made of Bobby's appetite, was appealed to, and answered that nothing so far had been seen of the missing animal. Mrs. Cooper, indeed, had already, in spite of the early hour and the rain, been down to the village to inquire if it had been seen there, but had learnt nothing. She was getting quite worried, and was beginning to be afraid something must have happened.

“She's got quite taken up with the dog,” Cooper explained, “and felt so safe like with him around, knowing the way he barks at any stranger, and it is queer he hasn't come for his food.”

“Oh, the brute'll turn up all right,” Winterton answered.

“Yes, sir, I hope so, sir, I'm sure, if only to stop Mrs. C. worrying,” Cooper answered as he retired.