Chapter 16

JANE Clifton went rigid with fear. The detective's voice sounded as though it came from an immense distance.

" . . . he was very circumstantial . . . gave our man the very fullest particulars. He said that there was a picture on the wall, and that if you felt along the frame you'd find a spring that allowed it to swing back from the wall. That is the picture, isn't it?"

She was incapable of further shock---only now did she realise that they had walked together into the room where the secret printing press was hidden.

Peter was talking, and his voice betrayed neither fear nor excitement.

"It is quite true: there is a room. I found it by accident the other day."

He went to the wall, touched the picture and there was a "click!" The frame swung out as though impelled by a hidden spring. Behind was a deep cup-like depression, in the centre of which was a small iron wheel---rather like the driving wheel of a car in miniature. This he turned and pulled. The panelling swung open heavily. Putting his hand inside the opening, he switched on a light and passed through, Bourke following.

Jane came slowly to the doorway. She saw a long and lofty room---the benches she had seen before---there was no press, no bank-notes, nothing of the apparatus of forgery which she had hurriedly glimpsed a few nights previously.

"Humph!"

Bourke glanced up and down the empty benches.

"Something has been bolted to that central table," he examined the holes in the wood. "They don't look to be very recent," he said, and looked up. "Those wires must have been connected with whatever was on the table. I shouldn't be surprised if this place had been used for some such purpose."

"I thought that it had been used for a dark room."

How calmly Peter was speaking! His very coolness brought her back to the realities.

Bourke was rubbing the top of the table with his finger.

"Acid," he said, and, turning on his heel, walked out of the room. "This can wait---hallo, Rouper here? Who brought him?"

"Dr. Wells." Jane found her voice.

"Did he? That was very enterprising of him. Hallo, Rouper!"

The inspector greeted his chief without enthusiasm.

"The doctor brought me over from Hertford to see this man----"

"You told me that he brought you here because of the quarrel my husband had with Mr. Hale," said Jane. "I don't think that you knew there had been a murder when you arrived, did you?"

For a second the inspector was nonplussed.

"That's a matter I can't discuss with you, madam," he said gruffly.

"Discuss it with me." Bourke's voice was very quiet. "Did you know this murder had been committed when you came from Hertford?"

The detective hesitated.

"No, sir."

"Good---let me see this body."

The police officers were hardly out of the house before Donald Wells asked:

"What on earth made you try to get Rouper into trouble, Jane?"

"I was trying to stop him lying," she said.

He was biting his lip, his mind searching this way and that for an explanation of her new attitude. Peter had insisted upon going with Bourke and Rouper. Marjorie had discreetly disappeared, and they were alone in the library.

"Jane, you've got to get used to the idea that Peter isn't normal. I hate to admit it, but when I went up to see him this morning I fully expected to find him---God knows what I expected."

Their eyes met and held.

"I wonder what you did expect?" she asked slowly. "Was it to find Peter covered with blood and with a hammer by his side?"

This time it was no involuntary question, slipped from the tongue in a second of indiscretion. She spoke with cold deliberation.

Donald Wells was struck dumb: for a brief moment of time he could only stare at her.

"Yes," he said at last, in a voice little above a whisper. "How odd that---you should have said that---thought that."

Jane's smile was as cold as her words.

"You must have been pleasantly surprised," she said.

She went across the park to meet the three men on their return. Peter looked white and ill. Bourke was his sphinx-like self. Only Rouper showed any perceptible cheerfulness.

Peter was talking earnestly to the detective. She heard him say emphatically " . . . see Radlow," and at that moment he seemed conscious of her presence and came quickly towards her.

"Will you go to town and wait for me?" he asked. "I am wiring to your father and asking him to see you at the flat---I think you had better go to Carlton House Terrace and not to the hotel."

She hesitated.

"It is Basil?"

"Yes," he answered shortly, and went on: "Bourke will take you and Marjorie back with him---get Anna to pack for you, and I will send your baggage or bring it with me. I would have wired for your father, but I don't want you to stay here a minute longer than necessary. Donald is staying with me."

"Couldn't I stay too?" she asked, almost pleaded.

He shook his head. "No---I want you to go at once, please."

She went back into the house meekly and found Marjorie in the library. Mrs. Wells listened to the proposal, and, when Jane had finished:

"I'll wait for Donald---unless you very much wish me to go back with you. And, Jane, will you forget all the nonsense I talked in the night about Donald? I was rather annoyed with him, and I'm afraid I've got the tongue and soul of a virago. It is Basil, of course? We'd better clear out of here. They will want to telephone. I suppose he has relations---I have never heard of them."

That thought had not occurred to the girl. Somewhere perhaps was an old man or woman to whom this news would come as the very knell of doom. She shivered, and prayed most fervently that nowhere in the world would the tidings bring such misery.

Her own attitude puzzled her as she began feverishly to pack. She had liked Basil, though it was a liking entirely dissociated from tenderness. She felt terribly sorry for him---why did she not feel the grief proper to the loss of one who had been at any rate a friend?

She was kneeling by her trunk when the self-revelation came. Basil Hale had been the midnight visitor---the man who had forced his way into her room on her wedding night, the prowler under her window! Subconsciously she had known this---but since when? Knowledge must have come in the rose garden when he was telling her of Peter. His furtiveness, the fact that he was there at all, had betrayed him.

She sat back on her heels, stony-faced, aghast. It was Peter's voice outside the door which roused her.

"Are you ready---Bourke is going back at once."

She had only a few things to lay on the top of the trunk, and these she placed, slamming down the lid. At the bottom lay the grisly relics of the murder.

"Come in."

He entered and looked at the trunk in dismay.

"Couldn't I bring that? It is rather large----"

"No---I must take the trunk."

He went back to the head of the stairs and called Bourke. Mr. Bourke was not appalled.

"We can put it in the back," he said. "I'm sorry to rush you, Mrs. Clifton, but we must bring Hale up to the house."

It needed only that to hasten her.

Bourke was going back to town for some purpose which he did not disclose. Whatever was the reason, it seemed a matter of urgency, for he was impatient to be gone. The trunk was brought down to the hall, and she followed. Bourke was standing by the library door. The newspapers had arrived whilst she was packing and had been put upon the hall table. Bourke had taken the first journal that came to his hand, and had just opened it as she appeared.

"Are you ready?" he began, and then saw from the tail of his eye an arresting head-line. "Good God?" he gasped.

For there, in the stop-press column of the middle page, he saw a head-line and an announcement:

HERTFORD MURDER MYSTERY.
DEATH IN THE GROUNDS OF A
HONEYMOON HOUSE.

Mr. Basil Hale, a well known art connoisseur, was found dead in the grounds of Longford Manor in the early hours of this morning. It is at Longford Manor that Mr. Peter Clifton and his bride are spending their honeymoon. Both Mr. and Mrs. Clifton were personal friends of the deceased man. There can be little doubt that Mr. Hale is the victim of foul play. The Hertfordshire police are investigating the murder.

"Read that!" He thrust the paper into Peter's hands, and flew into the library; Jane heard him speaking rapidly at the telephone.

Looking over Peter's arm, she read the paragraph with a sinking heart. There could be no questioning the sinister significance of that paragraph.

"I'm terribly sorry." Peter put down the paper with a groan. "Of course, they had to tell the facts as they were: I hoped your name wouldn't come into the case."

Well Jane knew why the detective was telephoning, and she waited his return with a thumping heart. In a few minutes Bourke came out.

"This is the London edition," he said. "It went to press at four o'clock this morning---the murder was committed at three and not discovered until seven! Somebody has been a pretty quick reporter. And that somebody is the man who committed the murder!"

He looked at Jane and then at the waiting car.

"The night telephone operators have gone off duty, and it will take a couple of hours to get into touch with them, and that applies to the night staff of the newspaper. I have asked them to have the gentleman who received the news meet me at Scotland Yard at twelve---now, Mrs. Clifton."

But their departure was to be still further delayed. They reached the door at the same moment as a dusty taxicab deposited its fare.

Mrs. Untersohn had not completely dressed. In the cold light of morning, and bereft of the aid which artifice gave to her appearance, her face would have been unpleasant to see; now it was distorted into a grimace of agonised rage.

"Where is he?" she screamed as she staggered towards them.

Then she saw Peter, and her shaking finger accused him.

"Murderer . . . murderer!" she howled. "You killed him!"

She sprang at him, a shrieking fury, but Bourke caught and held her.

"Let me go. . . . I'll kill him. . . . Peter Clifton---Peter Welerson, do you know what you've done . . . you've killed my son---your own brother!"

Jane Clifton reeled back as though she had been struck in the face.