III

The Immediate Results

As she took shortcuts across the lawns, Vera kept a sharp lookout; but no one was in sight. She had expected this; for if anyone had been in the vicinity of the Maze they would assuredly have been attracted by Howard’s shouts for assistance. She wasted no time in seeking in the gardens for help, but hurried at her best speed to the house, where she could at least get in touch with the police by means of the telephone.

When, breathless with the last spurt she had made, she entered the hall, she found it empty. The whole place seemed deserted and silent. For a moment she thought of searching from room to room; but she changed her mind almost immediately.

“I must keep my head,” she impressed on herself. “I know nothing about the servants’ quarters and I’d lose time if I begin hunting. That last sprint took it out of me; and I’m not fit to rush about. Someone else must do that instead.”

She passed into the nearest room and rang the bell, keeping her finger pressed down on the button.

“That ought to bring them quick enough.”

In a few moments she heard steps, and one of the maids appeared. The sight of her amazed face reminded Vera of the picture she herself must present: dishevelled, breathless, and without shoes on her feet.

“Are there any men in the house, Shelton? Quick, don’t waste time.”

The maid stared at the haggard girl before her as though in this strange figure she could hardly recognise the cool and graceful Miss Forrest of normal life.

“What’s come to you, miss?” she asked, without replying to the question.

Mr. Shandon’s been murdered. Is Mr. Stenness here, or Mr. Hawkhurst? Or anyone else? Go and find them immediately, if they’re anywhere about.”

Then, as the girl still seemed dazed by the news:

“Can’t you do as I tell you? Hurry! There’s no time to lose.”

A picture rose in her mind of the murderer returning to the Maze and coming upon the defenceless Howard. Unlikely, of course, but after this afternoon she would be slow to call anything unlikely. The maid’s slowness irritated her overwrought nerves.

Will you go?”

But by this time the idea of murder had penetrated the dull mind of Shelton and produced a reaction which Vera had not foreseen.

Mr. Shandon murdered, and the man creeping about the place! I’d never dare to go out of this room, miss. He might be in the hall now, waiting for me. Oh, oh!”

Her voice rose in hysteria. Vera looked at her wearily.

“Want to scream, Shelton? Perhaps it’s the easiest way after all. I’d have done it myself if I’d had any breath left. Come along with me.”

And taking the hysterical girl with her, she made her way to the front door.

“Now scream as loud as you like.”

Shelton had not waited for the suggestion. Already she was shrieking at the top of her voice.

“Anybody in the house or near it ought to hear that,” Vera said to herself contentedly, as Shelton continued to screech. “Now, that’ll do. Will you be quiet? I want to listen if anyone has heard you.”

It proved more difficult to stop the outcry than it had been to start it. The screams passed into a serious attack of hysteria. But they had served their purpose. From the back of the house appeared two panic-stricken maids, while almost simultaneously Stenness, the secretary, hurried down the main staircase.

“Thank goodness, a man at last!” Vera said, in relief.

Handing over the hysterical Shelton to the care of the other maids, she led Stenness into the nearest room and gave him the state of affairs in the fewest words. He listened intently without interrupting her with a single question. From his unruffled manner, one might have supposed that murders were all in the day’s work. And his calmness had the effect of soothing Vera’s nerves, which had been jarred afresh by the maid’s outbreak. When she had completed her narrative he nodded in comprehension and left the room for a few moments. On his return he had a tumbler in his hand.

“Drink this, Miss Forrest. You’ll need something to pull you together. I’ve sent one of the maids to ring the bell in the stable-yard. That’ll bring up a couple of gardeners fairly soon. They’ll think it’s a fire, you know.”

He persuaded her to sit down, then went to the bell and rang it. It was some time before any answer was made; and finally Shelton and another maid appeared together, evidently clinging to each other for company.

“Go up and get fresh shoes and stockings for Miss Forrest. Can’t you see she needs them?”

When the two girls had gone he turned to Vera.

“Nothing like making them do something, otherwise we’d have the whole lot down with their nerves.”

He glanced at his wristwatch, and seemed to be making some rather intricate mental calculation which dissatisfied him.

“You’ll be safe enough here, Miss Forrest. I must get off to telephone for the police and put them on the alert. Then I’ll go down and get Mr. Torrance out of the Maze. You want nothing else?”

Vera made a negative gesture, and he hurried out of the room. The telephone occupied him for only a very short time; and in a few minutes Vera, through the window, saw him setting off in the direction of the Maze, accompanied by one of the gardeners. Both, she noticed, were armed with shotguns. She began to admire the efficiency of Stenness. Hitherto she had looked upon him as the sort of man whose life was spent in pure routine; and it was a mild surprise to find how competently he had risen to this emergency. He had wasted neither words nor time; everything essential had been done without hesitation. He had even noticed her feet and had thought of sending for shoes and stockings for her.

When the maids brought her fresh outfit she took the opportunity of questioning them.

“Was Mr. Stenness the only man in the house when I came back?”

“Yes, miss. Miss Sylvia took her uncle away with her in the car⁠—Mr. Ernest, I mean. And Mr. Neville went out of the house before poor Mr. Shandon did. And Mr. Hawkhurst, he went out quite early on. I saw him passing the window with his airgun in his hand.”

Vera had ceased to listen. The word “airgun” had linked up in her mind with the memory of the dull concussions which she had heard in the Maze. That was the noise she had heard⁠—the dull report of an air-rifle! And the metallic rasping was the grating of the spring as the murderer recharged his weapon. But the recognition of the noises left her even more perplexed.

“Of course, one can kill a rabbit with an airgun; but one couldn’t kill a man with it even at close-range. And yet I’m certain it was an airgun that I heard. I’d have recognised it at once if it hadn’t been that I was so shaken up by the way things happened.”

She puzzled over the problem for a time without success; and at last dismissed it from her mind and began to make arrangements which she thought might be necessary when the men returned to the house.

Meanwhile Stenness, accompanied by the gardener, had made his way to the Maze. As they came in sight of it, they saw the figure of Howard Torrance emerge from one of the entrances and gaze in their direction. Recognising the secretary, he came rapidly towards them.

“Seen Miss Forrest, Stenness?” he demanded as soon as he reached speaking distance. “Is she all right?”

“She fetched us,” Stenness explained. “She’s completely done in, of course. That’s natural. But I don’t think she’ll come to any harm. I left two maids with her, just in case; though it looked more as if the maids would collapse before she did.”

Howard nodded without replying, and Stenness continued:

“We’d better get into the Maze now and stand guard over the body till the police turn up. They’ll be here shortly.”

Howard hesitated a moment.

“Sure you know how to get about in that Maze, Stenness? You won’t get tangled up? Got bogged in it myself once already. No desire to have another dose, you know.”

“There’s no danger of that. Both Skene and I know every inch of it. He cuts the hedges.”

This seemed to allay Howard’s doubts, and he led the way to the entrance. But here Stenness displaced him.

“I’ll take the lead, I think. I know the path. Besides, one never can tell. Somebody may be in there yet.”

He tapped his shotgun in explanation of his full meaning, and Howard acquiesced.

“Right! In you go!”

They entered the labyrinth, Stenness in advance with his gun ready, Howard and the armed gardener bringing up the rear. For a minute or two they walked in silence along the intricate corridors, Stenness taking turning after turning without the slightest hesitation.

“I wish I had had the thing by heart as he seems to have,” Howard reflected, as he noted the easy way in which the secretary seemed to hold to his route. “It would have been a different business, then.”

All at once, Stenness halted abruptly and made a gesture of caution to his companions. His quick ears had caught something which they had missed.

“There’s somebody moving in the next corridor,” he whispered. “Wait here. I’ll fix him.”

With his gun ready he stepped suddenly round the corner of the alley and immediately they heard his curt command:

“Hands up!”

When they in turn had rounded the corner they found the secretary covering with his shotgun an unattractive stranger. The reddish hair, the ugly mouth, made worse by a ragged and untidy moustache, the peculiar vulpine expression, and the flashy clothes, all combined to produce a bad impression even at the first glance. As he stood, hands in air, in front of Stenness’s gun, his eyes wandered from one face to another with something of the expression of a rat at bay.

“Run over this fellow, Torrance,” said the secretary. “He may be armed.”

Howard searched the man methodically and extracted from one pocket a heavy automatic pistol. Beyond that, the man had no other weapon.

“See if it’s been fired,” suggested Stenness.

“Fully loaded, and hasn’t been fired,” Howard reported.

“Good! Now, my man, how do you come to be here?”

“I was rowing on the river; and as I was coming near here, I heard someone yelling blue murder, so I came up. What would you have done, eh? Kept away, I expect. Then I came inside this monkey-puzzle to give a hand. And I’ve stuck here ever since. That satisfy you?”

“Nothing to do with me. The police will be here shortly. You can explain to them. Meanwhile, you’ll come along with us. Skene, take charge of this fellow. If he tries to run, empty your gun into his legs. Now come along.”

Again taking the van, Stenness continued on his way, and in a very short time he brought them to one of the centres of the Maze.

Howard Torrance followed him into the tiny precinct; but his first glance led him to protest.

“This isn’t the place where I found the body. It must be in the other centre.”

Stenness’s shoulders blocked the view for a moment; but almost at once he stepped aside.

“There’s a body here, at any rate,” he said, going forward as he spoke. “It’s Roger Shandon.”

“Roger!” exclaimed Howard in blank surprise. “It was Neville Shandon’s body that I found.”

“Then they’ve both been murdered,” Stenness pointed out coldly. “That’s obvious.”

“But what I heard sounded like a single attack,” protested Howard.

Stenness shrugged his shoulders.

“That’s for the police to explain,” he said. “No use barking yourself when you keep a dog.”

He went forward and covered the face of the body with his handkerchief.

“It’s Roger, obviously; and stone dead. Nothing more to do here. Let’s try the other centre next. Skene, you needn’t come. Keep your eye on this fellow till we come back.”

He led Howard through the alleys once more and in a short time they entered the second centre of the Maze.

“This is Neville Shandon, true enough,” the secretary reported. The identification had taken longer, since the body lay on its face. “Mustn’t disturb anything, Torrance. The police may be able to make something out of it if we leave things alone.”

He rose from his knees and mechanically dusted his trousers as he spoke. Howard was struck by the extraordinary matter-of-fact way in which Stenness had treated the whole affair. One might have expected some sign of emotion, surprise at the very least; but Stenness had gone through the whole business without showing the slightest disturbance. But as Howard reflected on the matter, he was forced to admit that, after all, it was much what one might have anticipated. Stenness, he remembered, had always been chary of showing any emotion whatever. Probably this was just a case of carrying the normal to an extreme where it became noticeable. Stenness, doubtless, took a pride in that mask of coolness.

The secretary stooped for a moment over Neville Shandon’s body and examined the left hand which lay clenched on the grass.

“There’s a piece of paper there. It looks as if it had been wrenched out of his hand and a scrap left in his grip. Let’s see what one can make of it without touching it.”

He knelt down and scrutinised the fragment painfully.

“Some of his notes on the Hackleton case, perhaps. I can read ‘Hackl⁠ ⁠…’ on it plain enough.”

Howard did not trouble to look at the paper at close range.

“What do you make of it?” he demanded, as the secretary rose to his feet again.

“I? Nothing much. It might be someone trying to put Neville Shandon out of business while the Hackleton case is on. That might account for the notes being taken. Or it might be someone with a grudge against Roger. He had some enemies. A threatening letter came from a man only the other day.”

Howard digested these suggestions for a few moments without speaking; then he offered an objection.

“But d’you think it’s likely that two murderers would choose an identical moment for their attacks. Two simultaneous crimes is a bit of a record, it seems to me.”

“Think so?” the secretary responded, carelessly. “It’s happened this time, for all that.”

Howard had to admit the truth of this.

Stenness looked at his watch.

“I must be getting off to the outside of the Maze. The police will be here very soon, and they’ll need a guide. I’ll take you back to Skene, if you like.”

Howard nodded assent and once more Stenness led the way through a tangle of alleys.

“Here’s Helen’s Bower,” he said, nodding towards its entrance. “You can sit down there till I bring the police.”

Howard watched his figure disappear round a corner of the corridor and then turned his steps to the entrance of the little enclosure where Roger Shandon’s body lay. As he entered it, he was surprised to see Skene on his knees at the foot of the hedge, evidently collecting some small objects.

“What are you after, Skene?” he demanded. “I thought you were supposed to be watching this fellow.”

Skene rose to his feet, rather sulky at being reproved.

“He ain’t escaped yet. I’m ’tween him and the door.”

Howard acknowledged the truth of both statements.

“What are you grubbing in the hedge for?” he continued, after he had made his apology.

Skene extended an earthy palm on which rested some small objects.

“ ’Tis the lid of a tin box⁠—one o’ these round ’uns. And here’s some darts that Mr. Hawkhurst uses for that airgun o’ his when he’s shootin’ at a target. Let’s see⁠ ⁠… one⁠ ⁠… two⁠ ⁠… three⁠ ⁠…”

He laboriously counted up to seven and held out his hand for confirmation.

“Put ’em in the box-lid, Skene, and lay ’em down somewhere safe. You found them where I saw you searching?”

“Just in there, among the roots o’ the hedge. Like enough the other bit o’ the box’ll be outside in the alley. I’ll have a look.”

“Don’t bother, Skene. We mustn’t disturb anything till the police get here, you know. If there’s anything more, they’ll prefer to hunt for it themselves. What you’ve got to remember is that you found these seven things⁠—seven, remember⁠—at that point in the hedge. Better mark it with a stick or something, so that you’ll know the exact spot again.”

The sight of the darts had put a thought into his mind. He went over to Roger Shandon’s body and examined it carefully. But so far as the exposed portions were concerned, he found no trace of the thing for which he was searching; and he did not care to take the responsibility of altering the posture of the corpse.

As he rose to his feet once more he heard the note of a motor horn in the distance.

“The police, I expect,” he said to Skene. “They’ll be here in a minute or two. Mr. Stenness has gone to lead them in through the Maze.”