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‘I wasn't thinking of anything like that,' Harrison replied, in the same slow voice, ‘but I daresay it might happen that way – I think in this affair anything might happen to anyone at any time. Did you know Mr Lester is to be married on Saturday?'

‘What about it?'

‘It's only an idea but if you ask me – well, I don't much think that marriage will come off, then or ever.'

‘Why not?' Bobby asked, shrugging his shoulders at this fresh strange warning. ‘They've got a licence, everything's arranged, nothing to stop them, is there? They seem fond of each other, too,' he added, remembering suddenly and vividly their parting he had been a witness to. ‘They are fond of each other,' he repeated.

‘Yes, they are, that's why,' Harrison replied. ‘I think they're fond of each other more than most people ever are... very likely it wouldn't last but it's like that now... when you see them together you know that much without being told. He's fond of her, he's all there is to her, all she lives for... well, all the same, you mark my words, there'll be no marriage and that's the reason why.'

‘I don't see why that should prevent it,' Bobby said. ‘I don't see why anything should prevent it,' but all the same there was a certain uneasiness in his mind, as he remembered the look Mark had given him as he flashed by in his car.

The doctor who had been sent for arrived. His verdict was that Harrison was emphatically not fit even to leave his bed, and he looked very serious and shook his head. He always did so when he saw a patient for the first time; one would not have a patient think one had been called in unnecessarily. To-morrow, he thought, Mr Harrison might be better or he might again be worse, but in any case he must stay where he was for the present; if the authorities wanted to interview him, then they must come to him.

‘If Mr Harrison goes out to-night I will not be answerable for the consequences,' declared the doctor, and hearing that immemorial phrase, before whose vague terrors all must bow, Bobby knew there was no more to be said.

So he resorted to the nearest call box, whence he recounted his experiences to headquarters and asked for instructions. He was told to return at once to the Yard to report in more detail. As for the invalid Mr Harrison, the local people would be rung up and told to keep an eye on him, so that Bobby was freed from responsibility in that matter.

Back at the Yard, Bobby was questioned at length by Inspector Gibbons – Mitchell had not yet returned – and then was told he might go off duty.

‘It's too late to do much to-night,' Gibbons decided, ‘even if Mr Mitchell were here, and anyhow we must wait to know what he thinks. And it won't do any harm to give Harrison a night to think it over. I've told them out there to let themselves be seen, watching the house. That'll help to make Harrison understand it's pretty serious, though I don't suppose he'll go on holding his tongue once Mitchell gets after him. But he may be only talking through his hat, just a lot of vague notions and suspicions Treasury Counsel wouldn't look at for a minute. Still, it's one up to you we've been able to trace him at last, and I daresay Mitchell won't think you've done so badly.'

‘Thank you, sir,' said Bobby, flushing a little at this praise. He ventured to add, though official superiors do not much encourage comment: ‘I'm wondering a little what Harrison meant when he said Mr Lester's wedding wouldn't come off to-morrow. I thought myself Mr Lester looked very strange when he went by in his car.'

But Gibbons did not seem much impressed.

‘I don't see what we can do,' he said, ‘except make sure to-morrow whether there is a wedding or not. Most likely Lester only looked scared because he saw you and knew you would realize he had been to warn Harrison. Evidently there's some connexion. That's certain, and it'll have to be cleared up, but we must wait to know what Mr Mitchell thinks. I shouldn't wonder myself if you aren't right, and the truth is that Lester's guilty, and Harrison knows it, but won't tell if he can help it, because he's so bucked at Lester doing what he would have liked to do himself if he had had the guts for it.'

‘Only there doesn't seem any motive,' said Bobby doubtfully, ‘at least, I can't see any.'

‘In my humble opinion,' declared Gibbons, ‘it's a mistake to worry too much about motives. I've heard Mitchell say you can never tell a man's motive till you know it – and that's time enough. Lester may have thought the forty thou. Miss Laing was to have was only a put-off, and that if her stepfather died intestate she would take a half, or he may have had an idea that Miss Laing had been ill-treated in some way, or he may not have known about the proposed settlement, and thought because of the new will she was being left out altogether – or – or anything,' he concluded a little vaguely, ‘and anyhow, we must wait for Mitchell.' With that Bobby found himself dismissed, but his mind was restless and troubled as he walked away. He still remembered how wildly Mark Lester's eyes had seemed to stare as his car flashed by, how it had seemed as if he rushed in that speeding car to meet some unutterable doom. Nor had the impression then made been anything but heightened by Harrison's vague and uncertain warning. Bobby had had a long day, on his feet nearly all the time, much of it standing about in a way more wearying by far than straightforward walking would have been. But tired though he felt, and glad though he would have been of a rest, there had taken full possession of him by now that sombre passion of the chase the dreadful hunter knows when his quarry is man. Instead therefore of returning home to the bed and supper waiting for him, he made his way to the district where he knew Mark lived with his mother.

When he reached the house, it looked dark and deserted; in one room only, on the first floor, a light showed; and Bobby was leaning over the garden gate, watching it, when there came someone softly to his side.

‘Hullo, Owen,' the newcomer said. ‘I thought it was you. Anything fresh?'

Bobby started, for the soft voice had broken rudely on his troubled thoughts. But he recognized one of the C.I.D. men he had met during the course of the investigation. He had known, naturally, that Mark was under observation, though the fact was one that for the moment he had forgotten.

‘That you, Jones?' he said. ‘I didn't know you were on the job. Nothing new that I know of.'

‘I thought something might have turned up to bring you along when I saw you,' Jones remarked.

‘I didn't see you,' Bobby observed.

‘Didn't mean to be seen,' returned Jones with a touch of professional complaisance. ‘I had to report I had lost touch a little time ago,' he added. ‘The chap got out his two-seater and went tearing off at such a pace I hadn't a chance to follow. But he turned up back again here all right.'

‘I know,' Bobby said. ‘There's a lot more going on than we've any idea of, I think. I feel somehow as if we weren't so much doing C.I.D. work as just scuttling about, trying to get good seats from which to watch what happens next.'

‘Ah, you've had an education,' Jones said enviously, ‘that's what makes you able to talk like that.'

‘I don't know if it's education,' Bobby answered, ‘but that's how I feel – just like when you're in the theatre, waiting for the curtain to go up on the last act. But in this play it's only the second act we've seen, we've no idea what the first act was, and only God knows how the third act is likely to turn out.'

‘Nobody ever knows how anything's going to turn out,' declared Jones. ‘Put a bob on a horse, and do you even know if it'll start? Not you. Put in a week's leave at the seaside, and do you know what the weather'll be? Not you. Same everywhere.'

‘I suppose so,' agreed Bobby, ‘and that great dark house – it looks to me just like a curtain that might be drawn back any moment when it's time for the third act to begin. Did you know Mr Lester was to be married to-morrow?'

Jones nodded.

‘Looks to me as if he wanted to hurry it up before we pinched him,' he suggested. ‘That is, if that's what we're after. I've got no orders to do more than keep him under observation as far as possible but not to obtrude myself – with chaps like you crowding into the Force the way they are, the language is getting so educated they'll have to serve us with dictionaries, soon.'

‘We had a warning to-night,' Bobby remarked, ‘that the wedding wouldn't come off.'

‘It's all settled, isn't it?' Jones asked. ‘They seem mighty far gone on each other, too. You can tell that much by seeing 'em when they're together, by the way they shake hands as if no one else had ever done it except them. Why shouldn't it come off?'

As he spoke there sounded through the still night air a loud and sharp report, breaking upon the silence with a significance they both understood.

‘Good God! What's that?' Jones exclaimed.

Bobby began to run towards the house. Jones followed close behind him. They knocked; there was no answer.

‘Who else lives here? Do you know?' Bobby asked his companion.

‘Only Mrs Lester and an old housekeeper, besides a woman who comes in daily,' Jones answered. ‘Mrs Lester went to Brighton yesterday, and it looks as if the housekeeper wasn't in.'

‘We must get in somehow,' Bobby said.

One of the windows on the ground floor was open a few inches. With the help of his companion Bobby climbed on the sill and pushed up the sash. He scrambled through into the room and Jones followed. They groped their way into the hall and though the house was very quiet they thought they could detect a faint groaning sound coming from somewhere upstairs.

‘Anyone here?' Bobby shouted and got no reply.

They shouted again, and when there was still no answer they went up the stairs together, Jones lighting the way with the beam from his electric pocket torch. The house was provided only with gas that they did not stop to light. At the head of the stairs they saw a thread of light showing beneath one of the doors. They went to it quickly and opened it. Within, as they had more than half anticipated, lay Mark Lester, full length upon the floor, moaning faintly, a pistol in his hand, the blood flowing slowly from a wound where he had shot himself through the body.

‘Done himself in,' Jones said. ‘Knew it wouldn't be long before we pinched him and thought this way better than hanging.'

Bobby knelt by the prostrate man.

‘He's not dead,' he said, and indeed Mark, opening his eyes and looking at him, seemed to be trying to speak. ‘Do you know me?' Bobby asked. ‘Can you speak? Do you want to say something?'

‘My way... Mark's way... did it myself,' Mark muttered and then: ‘Brenda, Brenda,' he whispered, ‘fetch her, will you? Say... good-bye.'

He closed his eyes and Bobby said to his companion:

‘You stay here with him, will you? He may want to say something. I'll ring up a doctor, and the Yard, too, to let them know. Is there a phone?'

‘In the hall,' Jones answered, ‘near the door.'

Bobby went down and rang up the local police whom he asked to come along at once and to bring a doctor with them, and next his own superiors. To Scotland Yard he suggested that Miss Laing ought to be informed, as apparently the dying man wished for her presence, and he received permission to go to her at once.

It was some little distance to ‘The Cedars', but he was lucky in finding a belated cab, and when he got to the house, lights there showed that all the inmates were not yet in bed. When he knocked it was Brenda herself who came to the door.

‘Ah, you,' she said, recognizing him at once, ‘what has happened?' And it seemed she had some idea, for she added immediately: ‘Mark... Mr Lester... is it?'

‘He is hurt, there has been an accident,' Bobby answered gravely. ‘I think he wants to see you, he asked for you. Will you come at once? I have a taxi.'

She came down the steps immediately, without waiting to put on either hat or coat.

‘Won't you get a wrap or something?' Bobby asked.

She shook her head and went on to the waiting taxi.

‘We were to be married to-morrow,' she said, and then: ‘Was it an accident?'

He did not answer. Somehow he felt it was unnecessary to reply; he had a very clear idea that what Mark had done was no surprise to her, that in some way she had anticipated his action. He signed to the driver to start and took his seat by her side. He said to her:

‘Can you tell us why he did it?'

In her turn she made no answer and he asked again:

‘Was it because he was afraid he would be arrested?'

‘No,' she answered.

‘Was it because there was something he knew?'

‘It might be,' she answered then, ‘I think it might be that.'

‘Will you tell us what you think he might have known?' he asked again.

She turned her sombre, heavy eyes upon him, and did not speak. But she made a slight, negative gesture, and he knew that until she was ready, and that was not yet, she would say no word.

But he tried once more.

‘If you keep anything from us, you help the murderer to escape,' he reminded her.

‘No murderer escapes,' she answered moodily. ‘What is done is done, and there's no escape.'

‘I don't know about that,' Bobby said. ‘Our duty is to see criminals are caught.'

With another faint gesture she seemed to put that aside as unimportant. She said presently:

‘Shall we be in time? We shall be too late, I think.'

Bobby put his head out of the window and asked the driver to go faster if he could. Brenda said nothing more. Though Bobby spoke to her once or twice, she did not seem even to hear. But when at last the taxi drew up, she said, to herself as it seemed:

‘Too late, it's too late now.'