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‘Next time you feel like committing suicide, wait till you're alone.'

‘Why, that's good advice,' Mark answered, ‘so I will.' Bobby looked at him sharply, for there was a tone in his pronunciation of these last words that Bobby did not like. He said:

‘Tell me what's happened.'

‘Nothing,' said Mark.

‘Nonsense,' Bobby roared, raging, ‘tell me what he said to you.'

‘Nothing,' answered Mark stubbornly.

Bobby nearly choked.

‘Then what made you look like that?' he demanded.

‘Like what?' Mark returned, and then: ‘I didn't,' he added comprehensively.

‘You did,' said Bobby with emphasis, ‘you jolly well did... look here, Mr Lester, what's the good of playing the fool? It's quite evident he told you something, something important, unexpected. What was it?'

‘He told me nothing,' said Mark. ‘It wasn't the right man.'

‘That's a lie,' retorted Bobby, ‘a barefaced lie.'

‘It wasn't the right man,' Mark repeated.

‘It was,' Bobby fairly shouted, ‘you know it was, and he told you... what did he tell you?'

‘Nothing,' said Mark again, ‘nothing at all.'

‘You little rat,' Bobby growled and laid hold of him. ‘For two pins, I'd take you by the throat and shake the life out of you.'

‘Go ahead,' said Mark.

Bobby stared at him, trying to make out his expression in the dim light within the car. Bobby's arm fell to his side, his anger abated, he began to understand that more had passed between Mark and the man in the public house than he had dreamed of, that there had been that between them which had taken from Mark Lester all hope, all strength.

But what it was, Bobby could not even imagine.

‘Mr Lester,' he said as gently as he could, ‘won't you tell me the truth?'

‘No,' said Mark.

Bobby sank into silence, baffled and uneasy. He recognized he was faced with a determination it would not be easy to break down, a settled resolve that would not soon change.

‘If you don't,' he said presently, ‘it may very likely mean that the murderer will escape.'

‘Brenda – Miss Laing,' Mark answered slowly, ‘told me once that murderers never escape. Perhaps that's true.'

Bobby thought to himself that the records of the C.I.D. did not support that belief and then he thought again that perhaps those are records in which all things are not recorded.

‘Mr Lester,' he said once more, despairingly this time but making a last appeal, ‘I only want you to tell me what has happened to disturb you so much.'

‘Nothing,' answered Mark inflexibly. ‘There is nothing to tell you. The man I spoke to was not the right man. He had nothing to do with it. He knew nothing. That's all.'

‘All lies, you mean,' Bobby answered.

‘As you like,' Mark answered indifferently, and then his voice changed and all the indifference faded from it as he exclaimed: ‘Look, look where we are, where we've come to.'

Bobby saw then that they were passing the Regency Theatre.

‘The Regency,' he said, ‘why, what about it?'

‘Nothing, I didn't know we had come this way,' Mark mumbled. ‘We've come miles out of our way.'

He increased speed again.

‘I meant to go straight back,' he said, ‘and we've come round here instead.'

They shot through a press of traffic, and the Regency Theatre with its great flaring sign ‘Shakespeare' was left behind.

It was in silence that they drove on, and Bobby was still deep in troubled thought when presently the car stopped, this time just outside ‘The Cedars'.

‘I'm going in here,' Mark said to him. ‘You can do what you like. I shall be some time.'

‘I'm coming in with you,' Bobby said.

‘No, you aren't,' Mark retorted violently; ‘not you, you aren't.'

He got out of the car, and, leaving it standing there, walked up the drive to the house. Bobby did not attempt to follow. He had no authority to insist on accompanying Mark, and in Mark's present mood he was not likely in any case to learn anything from him. It would be better to wait, he thought, till Mark reappeared, when he might be more communicative. At any rate it was necessary to wait to make sure that no developments took place as a result of Mark's visit.

Inside the little car it was hot and stuffy, nor was there much room for Bobby's long legs, twist and curl them as he might. He got out accordingly, and began to walk up and down, occasionally pacing the length of the drive. But in the house nothing seemed to be happening, all was quiet, and only the glimmer of a light here and there showed that the inmates had not retired for the night.

As he walked up and down, Bobby racked his brains in vain to imagine some explanation of these bizarre happenings. What could it be, he asked himself again and again, that Mark had learned at ‘The Green Man' which seemed to have filled him with such horror, and why had he come on to ‘The Cedars' at this late hour? Was it to communicate to those in the house what he had learned at ‘The Green Man'? Was it something he felt he must tell them of at once? But, if so, why had he so obstinately refused to breathe a word of it to Bobby?

One hypothesis did indeed come into Bobby's mind, but it seemed to him so improbable that he put it aside at once.

But still the problem teased and worried him till at last, when it was not far from midnight, the front door opened, and there appeared, plainly visible in the light from the hall behind, first Mark himself, and then the tall form of Peter Carsley.

They came a little way down the drive together towards where Bobby was waiting, and Peter said in a troubled and uneasy voice:

‘You know... well, it's... well, we had never thought of such a thing.'

‘No,' agreed Mark. ‘No.'

‘Don't you think... well, wouldn't it be better I mean, it does seem like rushing things, doesn't it?'

Mark answered, pausing to light a cigarette:

‘That's my affair and Brenda's... if Brenda agrees, it's no one else's business.'

‘No, in a way, no,' agreed Peter, ‘only things are a bit exceptional just now, aren't they?'

‘It's because they are that I think it would be better to get married at once,' Mark said, and in the darkness, at a little distance, Bobby fairly jumped as he asked himself, with increased bewilderment, if it was to hurry on the date of his marriage that Mark had driven here with such speed, and if this necessity to hasten the ceremony was a result of what he had been told at ‘The Green Man'.

‘All this is getting madder and madder,' Bobby said to himself resignedly.

Peter was talking again now. He said:

‘You'll need a special licence.'

‘There won't be any difficulty about that, will there?' Mark asked. ‘I can say we have to go abroad or something like that.'

‘No, I expect that will be all right,' Peter agreed. ‘Well, I hope you'll be happy.'

‘Happy?' Mark repeated with a startled accent, as if that were the first time such an idea had occurred to him. ‘Oh, happy,' he said again, with an accent stranger still. He went on slowly: ‘When I saw Brenda first, the very first time, I knew I had to marry her ... or no one. I knew she was meant for me. It's funny to feel like that, why do you? Is there something makes you? I didn't know till then that people did, but then it somehow came over me ... did you feel like that?' he asked abruptly.

‘Oh, I don't know,' answered Peter awkwardly. ‘I suppose I just thought Jennie was a jolly fine girl and I went on thinking so till I thought it would be a jolly fine thing if we got married. That's all.'

‘Would you have let anything come between you?'

‘We jolly well didn't,' Peter answered. ‘We knew her father would never consent... we knew he might never forgive us... we knew it might mean he would try to smash my firm and I should have to get out... and we didn't care... if it had been all that ten times over, we should have done just the same.'

‘I don't mean like that,' Mark said in a low voice. ‘I mean all that's nothing at all... lots of people get married against their people's wishes... I mean if...'

He paused and Bobby leaned forward in sudden, swift excitement, for the idea had come to him very vividly that in what Mark was about to say would be exposed his secret. But Mark was silent still, and Peter said:

‘What do you mean? If... if what?...'

‘Nothing,' Mark answered in changed tones, and Bobby understood that now the secret, whatever it was, would not be told. ‘Only nothing would keep me away from Brenda... neither heaven nor hell,' he said with a kind of restrained vehemence.

‘Well, I don't suppose they'll try, will they?' Peter asked. ‘So long as Brenda's willing and neither of you mind making people talk a bit... that's all there is to it.'

‘That's all there's to it,' Mark repeated, but again with an odd accent in his voice.

Peter was silent for a moment or two. There seemed to be something he wanted to say that he didn't quite know how to express. He said at last, rather hurriedly:

‘Look here, old man there's just one thing... I don't want to meddle... but now you're going to get married...'

‘Go on,' Mark said.

‘It's about trying to find out who shot Sir Christopher,' Peter explained. ‘You said you meant to have a try... I should give that up now if I were you... I think you ought to...'

‘Do you? Why?'

‘I think you ought,' Peter repeated. ‘Lester, I wish you would promise me you would... give that up, I mean... for God's sake, man,' he broke out passionately, as though he could no longer quite control himself, ‘for God's sake, stop that.'

‘I will,' Mark said quietly. ‘I promise you that.'

‘Good,' said Peter very heartily. ‘Good,' he repeated, in tones of an immense incomprehensible relief. ‘Besides, you may have a chance to investigate another murder soon.'

‘What do you mean?' Mark asked sharply, and Peter laughed a little.

‘Well,' he said, ‘if you had seen the way my dear partner looked at me to-day...'

‘Oh, Marsden?'

‘Nothing he would like better than to cut my throat ... rather slowly, by preference. I'm not sure he won't have a try.'

They had begun to walk on again now, and had come to where Bobby was standing waiting in the shadow of the trees lining the drive. Mark was the first to see him and apparently remembered him then for the first time.

‘Oh, you,' he said, ‘you're there still.'

‘I thought I would wait for you,' Bobby answered quietly.

‘It's that policeman,' Mark explained to Peter. ‘You know.'

‘Oh, yes,' agreed Peter, recognizing him. To Bobby he said: ‘Did you hear what I was saying?'

‘I heard what you were saying just now,' Bobby answered, without thinking it necessary to emphasize that he had heard the rest of the conversation as well. ‘I don't know if you meant it or if you were joking, but it's rather serious to say someone wants to murder you.'

‘Well, he does all right,' Peter retorted, ‘and what's more, I told him I would tell you people so, so that you would know where to start looking if I were found some day with a knife in my back or my head bashed in.'

‘Do you mean that there has been a quarrel and he has used threats?' Bobby asked cautiously.

‘Quarrel?' repeated Peter. ‘Depends what you call a quarrel – when you were at the office this morning, when you went away, didn't you see how you left us? Glaring at each other across the table and only not going for each other because we knew the clerks would call in the police. If we had been alone somewhere... not but that I could tackle Marsden with one hand tied behind me, and he knows it, too.'

‘But you don't suggest...' began Bobby and paused.

‘I very much suggest,' Peter retorted. ‘Marsden wanted to buy me out. Under the deeds of partnership he has the right to do that. But there's a little clause that if we can't agree as to the figure it is to be settled by arbitration, after an independent examination of the books of the firm.'

‘Well, that's all right, isn't it?' asked Bobby.

‘Depends on what you call all right,' Peter answered again, ‘but I'm inclined to think Marsden has very good reason for objecting to an independent examination. He has offered me better terms than there's any need to. I've refused them. If there's anything wrong, it's going to come out. I think that's only fair to clients for one thing. And if anything comes out, I'm not going to have people saying that I knew all the time, but cleared off while I could, with my share of the swag.'

‘Have you any reason to think there's anything wrong?' Bobby asked.

‘Well, again, that depends on what you call reason,' replied Peter. ‘One night Marsden told me there was a big deficiency and clients had been swindled wholesale, the next morning he said I had misunderstood him, there was nothing wrong at all, all accounts were perfectly straight. But he won't let the books be seen, he's trying to keep them even from me, though of course I've a right to see everything when I'm supposed to be a partner. And between that afternoon and the next morning he had been to Paris for some unknown reason and come straight back, and meanwhile there had been the big robbery here.'

‘Are you suggesting he may have murdered Sir Christopher?' Bobby asked.

‘No,' Peter answered slowly and heavily, ‘no, I am quite certain he didn't do that... quite certain, more certain than I am that Sir Christopher was murdered at all. Besides, I thought you people said he had an alibi, that he had been seen in Piccadilly or somewhere.'

‘You can't always be sure of an alibi,' Bobby remarked. ‘When you are sure of it, it's conclusive. But alibis are often faked and always have been, from Dick Turpin on.'