XXVI

Tab gasped.

“You’re not joking?”

“I am not joking,” said Yeh Ling quietly. “I repeat I know the murderer. He has been within reach of me many times.”

“Is he a Chinaman?”

“I repeat he has been within reach of me many times,” said Yeh Ling, “but there are reasons why I should not betray him. There are many reasons why I should kill him,” he added reflectively. “You are going to see Miss Ardfern?” He changed the subject abruptly. “Do not go there in the afternoons, or if you do, approach from the front of the house. Miss Ardfern is taking lessons in revolver shooting and one of my men, who has been watching the house from the lower meadows, has had several narrow escapes.”

Tab laughed and offered his hand.

“You are a strange man, Yeh Ling,” he said, “and I don’t know what to make of you.”

“That is my oriental mystery,” said the Chinaman calmly. “One reads about such things. ‘For ways that are dark and for ways that are strange⁠—’ you know the stanza?”

Tab went away with an amused feeling that Yeh Ling had been laughing at him, but he had been serious enough when he had been talking about the murder; of that Tab was sure.

Long before he reached the house he saw Ursula Ardfern. She was standing in the middle of the road opposite her gate, waving her hand to him, a dainty figure in grey, her flushed face shaded by a large garden hat.

“I’m such an expert shot, now,” she said gaily as he jumped off, “that I thought of putting a few long range ones in your direction to see how you looked when you were scared.”

“I’m glad you didn’t, if Yeh Ling’s uncomplimentary reference to your shooting is justified,” he said as he tucked her hand under his arm.

“Have you seen Yeh Ling? And was he very rude about my marksmanship?”

“He said you are a danger to life and property,” said Tab gravely, and she laughed.

“You would manage your bicycle better if you used both hands,” she said, releasing her own. “I want you to see my heliotrope. I have to keep it in a garden by itself; it is a cannibal plant, it kills all the other flowers. How could you spare time to come down?” she asked, her voice changing, “aren’t you very busy?”

Tab shook his head.

“I have been instructed to get very busy indeed,” he said grimly.

“Over this last case?”

“I can do no more than the police are doing,” he said, “and Carver seems to have lost hope, though he is a deceptive bird.”

“No clue of any kind has been discovered?”

Tab hesitated here. He had promised Carver that he would not speak of the new pins, but perhaps the restriction was confined only to the printed word.

“The only clues we have,” he said as he sat down by her side under the big maple, “are two very bright and very new pins which we found, one in the passage after the first murder, and one just inside the vault after the second. Both were slightly bent.”

She looked at him thoughtfully.

“Two pins?” she repeated slowly. “How strange⁠—have you any idea of the use that was made of them?”

Tab had no idea, neither had Carver.

“The murderer was, of course, the Man in Black,” she said. “I read an account of the case, particularly Mr. Stott’s statement⁠—he is the scared little man who ran away when Yeh Ling and I went to search the house for our papers. Yes, I say ‘our’ advisedly.”

“By-the-way, did Yeh Ling really find what he wanted?”

She nodded.

“And what you wanted?”

She bit her lips.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I think he did and is keeping it from me. He swears that there was nothing of interest to me, but I believe he is being⁠—kindly reticent. Some day I am going to have it out with him.”

The hand that was nearest to him was playing with a twig on the seat, and summoning his courage, he took it in his own and she did not resist.

“Ursula, it isn’t easy⁠—you’d think that a man with my enormous nerve could take the hand of a woman⁠—that he loved⁠—without his heart going like an aeroplane propeller, wouldn’t you?”

She did not answer.

“Wouldn’t you?” he repeated desperately. He could think of nothing else to say.

“I suppose so,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “And you’d think that an actress who had been made love to eight days a week, counting matinees, for years on end, could carry through a scene like this without having an insane desire to burst into tears. If you kiss me, Turner will see you.”

Tab could never remember that moment very clearly. He had a ridiculous recollection that her nose was cold against his cheek, and that in some miraculous fashion a whisp of hair came between their lips.

“Lunch is served, madam,” said Turner awfully.

He was an elderly, grim-looking man, and apparently he did not trust himself to look at Tab.

“Very well, Turner,” said Ursula with extraordinary courage and coolness. And when he had gone: “Tab, you have realised poor Turner’s worst fears; he told me that I was the first actress he had ever taken service with, and I gather he looks upon the experiment as a dangerous one.”

Tab was a little breathless, but he had his line to say.

“The only thing that can save your character, Ursula, is an immediate marriage,” he said boldly, and she laughed and pinched his ear.

The confusion of Tab’s recollections of that day, extended to the golden hours which followed. He came back to town in a desperate hurry⁠—he was aching to write to her! He wrote and he wrote, and an expectant night editor peeped in at him and crept softly away to warn the printer that a big story of the murder was coming along (the night editor had distinctly counted a dozen folios to the left of Tab’s elbow) and it was only at almost the eleventh hour that he found he was mistaken.

“I thought you were doing the Mayfield murder. Where’s your story?” asked the indignant man.

“It is coming along,” said Tab guiltily. He stuffed the unfinished letter into his inside pocket, set his teeth and tried to fix his mind upon the crime. He would stop at the most incongruous moments to conjure up a rosy vision of that day, only to turn with a groan to.⁠ ⁠…

“… the position of the body removes any doubt there may have been as to the manner in which the man met his death. The features of the two crimes are almost identical.⁠ ⁠…”

So he wrote at feverish haste for half-an-hour, and the night editor, cutting out the superfluous “darlings” that appeared mysteriously in the copy, formed a pretty clear idea as to what Tab had been writing when he was interrupted.

Tab posted the letter, went home, and began another, this being the way of youth.

It was all a dream, he told himself when the morning came. It could not be true. And yet there was a fat envelope containing the letter he had written overnight, awaiting the post.

Tab opened the letter and added seven pages of postscript.

Later in the morning he asked Jacques, the news editor, if he believed in long engagements. He asked this casually as one who was seeking information for business purposes.

“No,” said Jacques decisively, “I don’t. I believe after a man has been two or three years on a newspaper he gets stale, and ought to be fired.”

Tab had not the moral courage to explain the kind of engagement he meant.

That day the weather broke. The rain shot down from low-hanging clouds, the temperature fell twelve degrees. Nevertheless, he thought longingly of the garden of Stone Cottage. It would be snug under the trees, snugger still in that long, low-ceilinged sitting-room of hers. Tab heaved a deep sigh and strolled off to fulfil his promise to Rex.

Rex was full of his new scheme, and dragged his visitor into the bedroom where blue prints and maps and plans seemed to cover every available surface.

“I’m going to build a veritable mansion of the skies,” he said, “I have chosen the site. It is just this side of where Ursula Ardfern has her cottage. The only rising ground in the country.”

“I know the only hill in that part of the world,” said Tab with sudden interest, “but unfortunately you have been forestalled, Rex.”

“You mean by Yeh Ling,” said the other carelessly, “I’ll buy him off. After all, it is only a freak on his part to put up a house there.”

Tab shook his head.

“You will have some difficulty in persuading him to sell,” he said quietly, “I happen to know that he is almost as keen on his house as you are on yours.”

“Stuff,” laughed Rex. “You seem to forget that I am made of money!”

Tab shook his head.

“I didn’t forget that,” he said, “but I repeat I know Yeh Ling.”

Rex scratched his head irritably.

“It will be a shame if I can’t get it,” he said. “Could you persuade him⁠—I’ve rather set my heart on that site. I saw it once in the old days, long before I ever knew that Ursula Ardfern lived nearby and I said to myself: ‘One of these days I’ll build a house on that hill.’ How is my adored one, by-the-way?”

The opportunity which Tab had wanted.

“Your adored one is my adored one,” he said quietly. “I am going to marry Ursula Ardfern.”

Rex fell into the nearest chair, looking at him with eyes and mouth wide open.

“You lucky dog!” he said at last, and then he came to his feet with his hand outflung. “I go away on a holiday and you steal my beloved,” he said, wringing Tab’s hand. “No, I am not feeling at all bad about it⁠—you are a lucky man. We must have a bottle on this.”

Tab was relieved, to an extent greater than he had anticipated. He had rather dreaded telling the lovesick youth that the object of his passion had agreed to bestow herself upon the best friend of the man who was responsible for their meeting.

“You are going to tell me all about this,” said Rex, busy with the wire-cutters, “and of course, I’ll be your best man and take in hand the arrangements for the swellest wedding this little village has seen in years,” he babbled on and Tab was glad to let him talk.

Presently they came back to the subject of the house. Rex made no attempt to hide his disappointment that the ideal site was taken.

“I should have given it to you, old man,” he said impulsively, “what a wedding gift for a pal! But you shall have a house that is worthy of you, if I have to build the darned thing myself! As an architect I am a failure,” he went on, “my views are too eccentric. Poor old Stott swooned at the sight of some of my designs,” he chuckled to himself. “I’m not going to give up the attempt to carry my great idea into effect,” he told Tab at parting, “I shall see Yeh Ling at the earliest opportunity. I may be able to persuade him to sell.”

Tab went down to Hertford the next afternoon and never had his bicycle moved more leisurely.

“I told Rex,” he blurted out and he saw her face fall.

“He wasn’t hurt,” said Tab, anxious to relieve her mind, “in fact, he behaved like a brick! Do you mind very much? My telling him, I mean?”

“No,” she said quietly. “He wasn’t hurt?”

Tab laughed.

“It may sound uncomplimentary to you but I am sure that Rex was only temporarily infatuated.”

He saw a smile dawning and took her face between his hands.

“If I were Rex,” he said, “I should hate Tab Holland.”

“Rex is stronger minded,” she said. “Let us go into the garden. I have been thinking things out, and I feel that there is something that you ought to know, and the longer I put it off, the harder it will be to tell.”

He followed her, carrying an armful of cushions, arranged her chair, and sat upon its arm; and then, in the most unconcerned voice, holding no hint of the tremendous statement she was to make, she said:

“I killed Jesse Trasmere.”