Death at Swaythling Court E-Book

J. J. Connington

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

COLONEL SANDERSTEAD looked gloomily at his wrist-watch for the third time. Punctual to a second himself, he expected an equal clockwork precision from others; and even his long series of disappointments in the matter had failed to reconcile him to humanity’s slipshod methods. He gave another glance down the empty avenue which fell away from the terrace of the Manor towards the gates on the Fernhurst Parva road; then he addressed the dog at his side:
“If that young man doesn’t put in an appearance soon, old boy, we shan’t get our two rounds before lunch. I can’t think what this generation’s coming to.”
The dog, gathering from the tone of the remark that the Colonel was wounded but courageous in the face of adversity, wagged his tail mournfully through a small arc. Suddenly, however, he pricked up his ears and gave a short bark. From far down the avenue came the ascending roar of an engine; a motor-cycle, furiously driven, flashed from behind the trees at the turn, skimmed up the slope and stopped beside the terrace.

Leseprobe

DEATH AT

SWAYTHLING COURT

J. J. Connington

(Alfred Walter Stewart, 1880-1947)

1926

© 2022 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782383835448

Contents

Author’s Note

1: The Green Devil of Fernhurst

2: The Lethal Ray

3: The Warrant

4: What They Found

5: The Butler

6: The Map and the Compass

7: The Opening of the Inquest

8: The Verdict

9: The Theory of the Novelist

10: The Invisible Man

11: The Non-skid Tyre

12: One Part of the Story

13: The Voice from the Beyond

14: The Green Devil in Person

15: Another Part of the Story

16: How It Happened

Author’s Note

A READER beginning a detective story has two methods open to him in following the narrative. He may regard it simply as a tale and not trouble his head about the solution of the mystery until he reaches it in due course at the final chapter. Or he may treat the book as an exercise in reasoning and pit himself against the author in an attempt to work out the mystery for himself.

Unfortunately in many cases his labour is made futile because the author allows his detective to pick up some undescribed clue of supreme importance; and this generally happens in the middle of the book, after the reader has expended much mental energy in working his way through the tangle of incidents.

In the present book I have tried to play quite fair by my readers; and I believe that they will have a full knowledge of every essential fact before they reach the last chapter. They may therefore, if they so choose, embark light-heartedly on the task of detection with the assurance that they will at least know as much as the character who is attempting to solve the problem.

This statement may perhaps excuse my breach of literary etiquette in putting a prefatory note in front of a mere detective yarn.

―J. J. C

1: The Green Devil of Fernhurst

COLONEL SANDERSTEAD looked gloomily at his wrist-watch for the third time. Punctual to a second himself, he expected an equal clockwork precision from others; and even his long series of disappointments in the matter had failed to reconcile him to humanity’s slipshod methods. He gave another glance down the empty avenue which fell away from the terrace of the Manor towards the gates on the Fernhurst Parva road; then he addressed the dog at his side:

“If that young man doesn’t put in an appearance soon, old boy, we shan’t get our two rounds before lunch. I can’t think what this generation’s coming to.”

The dog, gathering from the tone of the remark that the Colonel was wounded but courageous in the face of adversity, wagged his tail mournfully through a small arc. Suddenly, however, he pricked up his ears and gave a short bark. From far down the avenue came the ascending roar of an engine; a motor-cycle, furiously driven, flashed from behind the trees at the turn, skimmed up the slope and stopped beside the terrace.

“Hullo! Hullo! Colonel,” the rider remarked breezily, “I must apologize for being late and all that; but I forgot to ring up a man before I left home, and I had to swoop into the grocery emporium and ask old man Swaffham to let me breathe a few words through his wire. Hope I haven’t kept you waiting for the golf-bag parade?”

“No harm done, Jimmy,” his host reassured him.

With young Leigh’s arrival, the Colonel had forgotten his previous fidgetings. He liked the younger generation, even if, as he regretfully admitted, he did not altogether understand them. Although only in his early fifties, the Colonel in some mysterious way left the impression upon strangers that he was a belated Edwardian who had survived into the Georgian era with all his mild prejudices intact. His social psychology seemed to have become truncated in the early years of the century. When motor-cars came in, he had been abreast of the times and had become a keen driver; but the high-powered motor-cycle appeared too late to secure his approval.

Golf had come into favour early enough to catch him in its net; and he had laid out in his park a private nine-hole course. He took golf, like everything else, very seriously. Once on the links, his conversation was confined to the putting-greens; and even there it was not abundant. It was, in fact, restricted to two words: “My hole,” if he had been successful; “Your hole,” if fortune went against him. At the eighteenth green he was accustomed to vary this by saying: “Your game,” or “My game,” as the case might be.

“Come along, Jimmy; we’ve just time for a couple of rounds,” said the Colonel, moving towards the path which led down to the first tee. Then, noticing that his dog was following them, he invited it, in the most friendly tone but with unmistakable firmness, to remain behind.

“Towser has never learned to be anything but a nuisance on the putting-green,” he explained, half-apologetically.

“Towser?” mused Jimmy Leigh aloud, “Towser? What sort of a name’s that? I never heard of any dogs called Towser.”

The Colonel rose to the bait.

“One of the dogs at Fernhurst Manor has always been called Towser,” he explained with dignity.

“Oh, I see.” Jimmy assumed the expression of one who suddenly fathoms a mystery. “Just as one of our family has always been called Leigh, eh? A positively coruscating idea. Saves confusion and wear and tear on the brain-cells. When you call for Towser in extremity, you get Towser. Perhaps not the same Towser as you had yesterday, but a sound reliable article with the identical label on the bottle.”

“You young scoundrels have no respect for tradition,” said the Colonel, with a faint grin. “Your forefathers, Jimmy, were decent country gentlemen; and now you come along— a black-faced mechanic, spending your time in that grubby laboratory you’ve fitted up at the Bungalow, down there. If you dug up the churchyard you’d find most of your ancestors turned in their graves by the thought.... By the way, I’ve got one of your new sound-boxes fitted to my gramophone. My congratulations; it’s a wonderful improvement. Voices sound less like Punch and Judy with your fitting.”

“Overwhelming applause and sound of boots in the gallery. Don’t all shake hands at once. As a matter of fact, it’s not a patch on a new affair I’ve just finished.”

“Is that the thing I heard about the other day, something like a ray that kills without leaving any marks?”

Jimmy Leigh assumed a disconcerted expression.

“Somebody’s been talking. The Secret Out or the Inventor Betrayed, tragedy in one fit. Who can it have been? Concentrate your attention on the name; and without apparatus of any kind or even the assistance of a confederate, I shall now proceed to divulge the artist’s cognomen.... It’s coming.... I have it!... The Reverend Peter Flitterwick, Vicar of Fernhurst Parva.... How’s that for mind-reading? The collection will not be taken.”

“It was Flitterwick, of course,” the Colonel admitted. “But I thought you were pulling his leg, to check his enthusiasm for gossip.”

“Dear! Dear! Terrible wave of scepticism extending from Iceland to the west coast of Ireland. Indications of secondary doubts farther east. Local patches of disbelief in Lethal Rays will be found in Southern England. Direct by wireless from the Psychological Bureau. I tell you what, sir. I’m giving a practical demonstration tomorrow morning: come along yourself and see what science can do.”

The Colonel examined his companion curiously.

“You’ll never get anyone to take you seriously, Jimmy. They say you’re sound on the scientific side; but you’re not impressive.”

“True bill, Colonel. The flesh-and-blood scientist is very human, most disappointingly unlike Sherlock Holmes. But with all my failings I manage to impress some people. Why, the other night at the “Three Bees,” old Summerley was boasting that he could ‘p’ison a man so that nobody, no, not even young Master Leigh at the Bungalow, could find it out.’ That’s a tribute of respect that even your favourite Sherlock never got. James Leigh, the great detective of Sleepy Hollow!”

The Colonel winced slightly. Fernhurst Parva was very dear to him; and he hated to have fun poked at it, even by one of a family that had been as long on the ground as his own forbears. Twenty years ago he had settled down on his small estate, determined, as he put it, “to do his duty by his tenantry”; and in the doing of that duty, as he saw it by his simple lights, he had considerably impoverished himself, and had captured the difficult affections of the slow-moving country-folk of Fernhurst Parva. To them, the Colonel’s least word was more than law, not because he could put the screw on them, but because they trusted him to do his best for everybody. He had gradually become a minor Providence in the district. To him, Fernhurst Parva was very important; and he disliked to hear it described as “Sleepy Hollow.”

“Fernhurst Parva is a very decent place,” he rapped out. “They’re not a lot of half-baked, semi-educated townsfolk, anyway. They stick to the old ways; and that’s uncommon in these times.”

“True,” Jimmy conceded, thoughtfully. “By the way, one of your favourite old traditions has bobbed up again lately. There’s talk in the village that the Green Devil’s reappeared. Somebody’s ‘for it’ this time, it seems.”

The Colonel glanced uneasily at his companion, suspecting another attempt at leg-pulling. The Green Devil at Fernhurst was a local superstition of which he was archasologically proud, but which he was rather ashamed to find cropping up at the present day. The phantom’s manifestations were supposed to be a portent of sudden and violent death in the neighbourhood; but its last recorded appearance had been far back in the nineteenth century; and the Colonel had believed that the legend was almost dead.

“Where did you get that?” he asked, suspiciously.

“Broadcasted by Local Information Bureau— Flitterwick.”

“Who saw it?”

“Somebody who told a boy who told a girl who told a man who repeated it to Flitterwick who gave it to me. Sounds a bit like the House that Jack Built, doesn’t it? But Flitterwick never had any notion of sifting evidence. All’s grist that comes to his gossip-mill, you know.”

The Colonel was inclined to pursue the subject; but by now they had reached the first tee, and he dismissed all minor matters from his mind.

“You can have the honour,” he said, pulling out his driver.

For three holes, Jimmy Leigh respected his host’s silence; but as they came to the next tee, his irrepressible loquacity broke out once more.

“There’s young Mickleby— the locum that Crabtree put in when he went off on holiday— driving Crabtree’s old Ford along the Bishop’s Vernon road. I envy Mickleby. He can look dignified even driving a tin Lizzie. Some lad, that. Sainted liver-flukes! Here comes the Micheldean Abbas Express with the fat proprietor at the wheel. See ’em pass each other. Mickleby’s dignity won’t allow him to give anyone else much of the road. I wish I were near enough to hear old Don Simon’s remarks; they must be fruity.”

“Your honour,” said the Colonel, testily.

He hated Simon: pestiferous fellow, setting up a motor-omnibus service to Micheldean Abbas, and bringing all sorts of new ideas into Fernhurst Parva. Always against constituted authority, was Simon; a man with no respect for territorial connections, next door to a Socialist. But what could one expect from a townsman? The fellow was for ever trying to stir up trouble in the village; one couldn’t have a quiet meeting on local affairs without him getting on his feet, making would-be acute comments and trying to rouse dissatisfaction in the country-folk. If Colonel Sanderstead had not been capable of immense self-restraint he might have foozled his drive, so much irritated was he by the mere name of the motor-bus proprietor. There was no further conversation between the players until the end of the round.

“Yours,” said the Colonel; and with that he put away his taciturnity until the first ball had been teed for the new round.

“I’ve just been wondering,” he went on, dropping the flag back into the hole, “what relation you will be to me when that nephew of mine marries your sister. Her decree nisi will be made absolute in another three weeks or so, Cyril told me the other day; and then I suppose they won’t put off much time.”

A cloud seemed to pass momentarily across Jimmy Leigh’s face; but it had gone before the Colonel could be sure that he had really seen it.

“Mind if I smoke a cigarette before we start the new round, Colonel?”

He pulled out his case and began to smoke as they stood at the teeing-ground. It was not until the cigarette was well alight that he answered the Colonel’s implied question.

“They ought to have married eight years ago. Hilton was never her style. No girl ever seems to know a bad hat, somehow.”

“The thing that passed my comprehension is why she did not get rid of him long ago.”

“Because he was too smart for that. He’s a queer card, is Master Hilton. He’s not tired of Stella; he’s as jealous of her as a couple of Othello’s rolled into one: and yet he’s been after dozens of women in the last few years.”

“Then I don’t see much difficulty,” said the Colonel. “He’s given enough away to establish a cruelty charge, all right. I’ve seen bruises on her wrists myself; and anyone could guess how they got there.”

“Yes, Colonel, but you don’t begin to understand Master Hilton even yet. He’s a bright fellow, a nap hand when it comes to this sort of thing. He goes off— untraceable; we’ve had private ’tecs on his track often enough and he shakes them off every time, like water off a duck’s back. Then he comes back, the loving husband, you know, and tells Stella all about it— full details— except for names and places. That’s his way of being humorous. No evidence at all. It was the merest shave that we nabbed him once at his games, a pure fluke. And that’s why everything’s been staked on that single case. If it were to break down— any hitch of any sort— I doubt if we could get him again.”

“Couldn’t he be thrashed into some sort of decency?”

“Not by me. You forget there’s been a war and that I didn’t manage to pick all of myself off the stricken field when I had had enough of it.”

“Why doesn’t Cyril do it, then?” growled the Colonel. “I’m not particular, Lord knows, but women are my weak point. I can’t stand seeing them hurt.”

“Stella and I have kept Cyril in hand— difficult job at times, I can tell you. No sinecure. He was all for knocking friend Hilton into the next county. But Stella and I made up our minds there was to be none of that. We want no grounds for people sniggering and hinting that Cyril had staked out an illicit claim on Stella; things are bad enough without that complication.”

“Well, perhaps you’re right.” Then Colonel Sanderstead’s simple code came out. “All the same, a man who treats a woman badly shouldn’t be allowed to go on existing. That’s my view; and if I were twenty years younger I’d like to take on Hilton myself, just on general principles.”

He pondered for a moment or two in silence, as if brooding over the case. Then he seemed to dismiss the subject.

“Your honour again, Jimmy.”

They played the second round in silence; and ended up all square. Whatever the Colonel’s reflections may have been, he evidently decided to say no more on a sore subject; and when the last putt loosened his vocal cords, he opened a new line of conversation.

“Have you seen much of our next-door neighbour, Jimmy, the fellow who took Swaythling Court?”

“Hubbard, you mean? I’ve come across him. Ardent butterfly-snatcher, I judge. His talk about Purple Emperors, Red Admirals, and Painted Ladies gives me a fine spacious feeling— as if I were being received at Court, almost. But apart from that, I don’t find much interest in his society. Greasy fellow, one of the kind that can’t talk to you without crawling all over you— putting his hand on your shoulder and spraying saliva into your physog.”

“The country-side’s getting infested with undesirables. First of all we have that damned fellow Simon with his stinking motor-omnibus coming in and trying to stir up discontent in the village; and now, instead of poor old Swaythling, there comes this fellow Hubbard— not our sort— and plants himself right down in the middle of us. Never spends a penny in the village, of course, though he seems to have plenty of money. I wonder what brand of profiteer he was in the war?”

“Ask Flitterwick,” Jimmy suggested. “But you’re wrong about his distaste for spending money locally. He’s most anxious to finance me— only we don’t quite seem to be able to hit off the relative values of Bradburys and brains. Perhaps we’ll get to it yet, though.”

“Look here, Jimmy,” interrupted the Colonel, anxiously. “Don’t get mixed up with these City fellows. If you want capital, I’d rather pinch a bit and find it myself for you. I think I could do it, if it’s a question of keeping you clear of that beggar. You can make the interest what you like— nothing, if it suits you. But don’t put yourself under an obligation to an outsider.”

Jimmy Leigh frowned slightly.

“Don’t you worry about obligations, Colonel. I can pay Hubbard any debt I owe him without sponging on my friends.”

The brusqueness of the reply set the Colonel thinking; but he understood that Jimmy had given him a broad hint not to continue the financial discussion. Fortunately a chance occurred to change the subject without difficulty. As they turned away from the green, a curious figure approached them.

“Sappy” Morton had an intellect considerably below par. Even the Colonel, with his affection for Fernhurst Parva, had to admit that one of its inhabitants was, as he gently put it, “hardly normal.” The rest of the population, blunter in description, referred to Sappy as “the village idiot.” Across that great moon-face there flitted a continual procession of expressions; but all that they revealed was emotion without a trace of intellect. And when the slack mouth opened, only the most rudimentary speech flowed out.

At the sight of Colonel Sanderstead, Sappy’s countenance was overspread by a vacant grin which represented his highest expression of delight. He came down towards the players at an ungainly trot, pulled himself up, and gave a vague gesture which seemed to have some remote kinship with a military salute. The Colonel solemnly and punctiliously acknowledged the salute, much to Sappy’s evident joy.

“Well, Sappy, been a good boy since I saw you last?”

“Good. Good,” the idiot responded, eagerly.

“And what are you doing with yourself, these days?”

Sappy reflected for a few moments before he replied:

“Sappy looking for pretty things.”

The Colonel exchanged a glance with Jimmy Leigh. To both of them, Sappy’s peculiarities were a source of some astonishment. The search for “pretty things” was the one passion of the idiot. He would sit for hours at a time intent on some flower that he had picked, turning it over and over to bring some fresh aspect into view. Butterflies he would chase for half an hour at a time, merely for the pleasure of watching them; and, curiously enough, he never attempted to catch them. There was no strain of cruelty in Sappy’s disordered mind. So far as the Colonel had been able to fathom the shoals and channels of that vague intelligence, Sappy regarded all living things as his brothers. The creature was easily moved to emotion; and once Colonel Sanderstead had come upon him, intent upon the scarlet and gold of a sunset, with tears rolling unheeded down his cheeks.

“I’m afraid most of your pretty things will be going to sleep for the winter, soon, Sappy. Autumn’s drawing on. No more butterflies or flowers for you then, you know. Never mind, perhaps we’ll have snow and you’ll see the trees covered with it.”

“No more butterflies? No more flowers?”

Jimmy Leigh broke in:

“Mr. Hubbard’s put all the butterflies to sleep in glass cases, Sappy.”

The idiot gaped at him unintelligently, so Jimmy patiently amplified his explanation.

“Mr. Hubbard catches butterflies. He puts them to bed in a glass case. He shuts the case. No more butterflies till next summer, Sappy.”

An expression of alarm flitted across the imbecile’s great face.

“Hubbard bad, bad. Hurt Sappy.”

“Eh, what’s that?” demanded the Colonel, sharply. Sappy was a protégé of his; and he had put down with a heavy hand any attempts on the part of the village boys to torment the idiot.

But it was impossible to extract any information from Sappy. He repeated: “Hubbard, bad, bad,” several times; but beyond that nothing could be got out of him. The Colonel made a mental note that the matter was worth looking into. It was bad enough that this greasy beggar Hubbard should settle down in the district, without adding to his sins by tormenting a defenceless creature like Sappy; and clearly, from the idiot’s bearing, there had been trouble of some sort. Colonel Sanderstead gave up the task of eliciting information from the simpleton and bethought him of a way to restore Sappy to good spirits:

“What’s the time, Sappy?”

The imbecile’s face broadened out into the vacant grin which was his sole expression of pleasure. He caught the Colonel’s sleeve and pointed eagerly to where the church tower of Fernhurst Parva rose out of the trees.

“Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong! Dong!”

He paused for a moment, and then completed his count:

“Ding-dong!”

“Quarter-past one, eh?”

The Colonel looked at his wrist-watch, which he had replaced after finishing his game:

“It’s 1.25 p.m., Jimmy. He’s right again. Wonderful how he remembers these chimes. I’ve never known him to make a mistake.”

He turned back to the idiot and pointed towards the church tower.

“Another chime coming soon, Sappy. You listen for it. Good-day to you.”

“Ta-ta, Sappy,” said Jimmy Leigh, as he followed his host towards the house. “You listen well.”

“Sappy listen,” the idiot assured him, his attention strained on the distant tower among the trees.

“You were boasting of your reputation as a detective, Jimmy,” the Colonel remarked, as they walked up the path, “I’ve often wondered how an ordinary man— say you or I— would get on, if he had to investigate a mystery. There’s no saying: we might manage quite well.”

“Or again we mightn’t? It’s always best to state a case in full, you know.”

“Well, I shouldn’t mind having a try,” Colonel Sanderstead confessed. “But in the ordinary run one never finds any cases to try one’s hand on. Our circle seems to be very free from murders and sudden deaths.”

“Not so free as you’d think,” corrected Jimmy Leigh, his face clouding over at some recollection. “It’s not three months since young Campbell shot himself— Cyril’s sub., you remember. Cyril was badly cut up about it. So was I, for that matter. Young Campbell pulled me out of a tight place, once upon a time. A friendly lad.”

“You needn’t try to pass it off as a joke, Jimmy. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in emotion of that sort. Have you any notion of what was at the root of it. It seemed a queer affair.”

“Cyril suspected the cub was blackmailed; but there was no certainty about it.”

“Blackmail! That’s a foul business. If I had my way, I’d make blackmail a capital offence and hang without scruple. Murderers are gentlemen in comparison to blackmailers.”

Jimmy Leigh seemed to have recovered his normal spirits.

“All right, Colonel. If any blackmailer gets throttled in Fernhurst Parva, I’ll know who’s responsible. Don’t be afraid. I shan’t split on you. On with the good work, say I. I never was a sympathiser with vermin, myself. So you can count on me to keep it dark if I find the corpse of one of your victims lying about. Well, till next time; and thanks for the game.”

He straddled his motor-cycle and pushed off abruptly.

2: The Lethal Ray

AS COLONEL SANDERSTEAD passed the trim Vicarage on the following morning, the door opened and he paused for a moment to let the Vicar join him. The Reverend Peter Flitterwick was a shade older than the Colonel— a thin, clean-shaven man with a slight stoop, and spectacles which lent him an air of peering benevolence.

“Good morning, Flitterwick. Pleasant day.”

“Good morning, Colonel. Indeed a most pleasant day and a pleasant place also. Angulus ridet, as Horace has it; this little corner of the world smiles to me each time I cross my door.”

“Oh, yes, quite so.”

The Colonel, somehow, never cared to hear Flitterwick’s praises of his beloved village; for some obscure reason, he felt a suspicion that they arose more from toadyism than from any real appreciation of Fernhurst Parva. He glanced at his wrist-watch and struck into a smart walk.

“You’re going to young Leigh’s, aren’t you, Flitterwick? We’ll have to hurry up, then. It won’t do to be late for our appointment.”

The Vicar, who was not in good training, found that he had enough to do in keeping step with the Colonel; and conversation was broken off until they reached the Bungalow, which was precisely what Colonel Sanderstead desired. Somehow he never was quite sure of Flitterwick: he felt that the vicar was too soapy, even if it were mere mannerism; and he disliked that habit of quoting Latin and then offering a translation in parenthesis. Colonel Sanderstead had heard him astounding old Miss Meriden with a classical tag, once. Shocking bad taste, that.

At the Bungalow, the old housekeeper opened the door.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pickering,” said the Colonel, with more heartiness than he had shown with Flitterwick. “All right again, I hope? Rheumatism quite gone? Good. But I’m afraid this place is a bit damp for you, too much down in the hollow, perhaps. Is Mr. Leigh disengaged?”

“If you’ll step this way, sir.”

She ushered them into Jimmy Leigh’s work-room: a big low-ceilinged apartment at the back of the house, with a french-window opening out on to a lawn. It seemed to be half-laboratory and half smoke-room, to judge by the furnishing. Big saddle-bag arm-chairs were grouped about the fire, whilst round the walls were workbenches of the laboratory pattern.

As the Colonel entered, he became aware that there was to be a fourth in the party, and only politeness kept him from showing his distaste for the company into which he had been brought. He shook hands with Jimmy and nodded stiffly to the remaining occupant of the room.

Hubbard was not an attractive character. He was a big clumsy man with an expression of watchful slyness which sat ill upon a person of his bulk. Somehow, with his little close-set eyes, his red face, his ugly hands with their vulgar display of rings, his large and slightly flat feet, he looked out of place between Jimmy and the Colonel. At their first meeting, Colonel Sanderstead had felt an instinctive antipathy for him. There was something about his manner, not furtiveness, exactly, but something akin to it, which had jarred on the Colonel’s nerves. A nasty type, the Colonel had judged him: a man who would try to gain his ends by soap if he were dealing with a strong man, but would bully to the extreme if he got a weaker man into his power.

Hubbard seemed to have missed the cavalier touch in the Colonel’s nod.

“Good morning, Colonel Thanderthead. Very pleathant weather to-day; but lookth a bit like rain, eh?”

The combination of the lisp with a naturally rough voice subconsciously irritated the Colonel. He nodded again, as stiffly as before, and then, to avoid further conversation with his bête noire, he glanced round the room in search of something which would enable him to address Jimmy Leigh. His eye was caught by a long metal tube running out from the french-window on to the lawn, an apparatus resembling the protector of the shooting galleries which occasionally appeared at the fairs of Fernhurst Parva.

“What’s that thing?” he asked.

Jimmy Leigh grinned.

“That? That’s the Lethal Ray Shooting Gallery— patent not yet applied for. Place a penny in the slot, press the button, and down comes a rat, rabbit, or guinea-pig. No aiming, no ranging. A perfect toy for the youngest child. A novelty. Likewise a curiosity. Buy one to take home with you to-day.”

The Colonel went forward and peered into the long metal chamber; but there was nothing which specially attracted his interest. The thing was simply an iron tube, about eighteen inches in diameter and built up in sections to a length of fifteen feet. The two ends were closed by means of glass plates; and the whole thing was supported on rough wooden trestles. As Colonel Sanderstead examined it, he was relieved to hear Hubbard engaging Flitterwick in conversation.

“You’ve never come acroth to thee my collecthion, parthon. Any morning you like, after ten o’clock. But perhapth you’re not much interethted in butterflieth?”

The Colonel absent-mindedly noted Flitterwick’s annoyance at Hubbard’s form of address. Parson! What an outsider the fellow was. And what was Jimmy Leigh doing with a creature like that in his house? It wasn’t like Jimmy. Usually he was careful in his choice of associates— more particular than most people.

“I shall be delighted to take an early opportunity, Mr. Hubbard, delighted.” Flitterwick’s voice hardly expressed the pleasure that his words implied. There was a sort of duty-to-be-gone-through tinge in his tone. “You may expect me on the first morning which my duties leave unoccupied. I understand that your collection is a wonderful one.”

“Itth very fair, thertainly. Itth cotht me a lot o’ trouble to put together.”

“Ah, quite so; you must be an enthusiast, Mr. Hubbard, a lover of beauty, evidently. Alas! Beauty is frail ware. You remember the verse in the Ars Amatoria? Forma bonum fragile est. A reprehensible writer, Ovid, though full of beauty.”

“I never read him, parthon. They didn’t teach Greek in my thcool. I gather he’th amuthing, from what you thay. Got the goodth, eh? Hot thtuff? You fellowth know where to nothe it out.”

He nudged Flitterwick meaningly in the ribs; then, growing confidential, he put his arm round the Vicar’s thin shoulder.

“There’th a nithe little butterfly I’ve got my eye on up in Upper Greenthtead. I marked her down one day I wath pathing in the car. I’d like to add her to my collecthion.”

The Colonel winced, relaxed his lips as if to say something, then thought better of it and continued his inspection of the apparatus. Jimmy Leigh gave him an excuse by dragging forward a large trolly loaded with some complicated machine, which evidently formed part of the “shooting gallery.” The Colonel helped him to place it in position at the end of the iron tube. Meanwhile Flitterwick was making efforts to steer the conversation on to other lines.

“Butterfly-collecting must be a most interesting recreation, Mr. Hubbard. Could you give me some idea of the modus operandi, the way you go about it? I fear that I am deeply ignorant of the whole affair.”

Unobtrusively he made a successful effort to free himself from Hubbard’s affectionate embrace.

“There’th really nothing in it, parthon. After you’ve caught a butterfly with the net, you take it out with your fingerth and put it into the killing-bottle....”

“The killing-bottle? Really? And what is the killing-bottle?”

Flitterwick knew all the little tricks to suggest intense interest in a conversation; but through continual use they had grown slightly mechanical. His eager questions might seem verbally to imply a keen desire for further information; but the tone in which they were uttered could not conceal his boredom. Hubbard, however, was too obtuse to notice that.

“It’th a wide-mouthed bottle with thome crystalth of thyanide of potash at the bottom of it. The thyanide give-th off pruthic athid fume-th; and that killth the butterfly.”

“I understand. Cyanide of potash in the bottle; and it gives off prussic acid; and that kills the butterfly. Really? Indeed? Most ingenious.”

“That preventth the butterfly from damaging itth wing-thcale-th in the death-thtruggle. Itth killed inthtantly.”

“Ah, most ingenious, most ingenious. And then, Mr. Hubbard?”

“Then you have to mount the butterfly before it getth thtiff. Pin it on a thetting-board, you know, with a cork cover and a groove for the body and bitth of cardboard to fix the wingth in pothithion.”

“Ah! very ingenious, Mr. Hubbard.”

Hubbard seemed to take this tribute as a personal one. He made another endeavour to lay his hand on the Vicar’s shoulder, and invited him to visit Swaythling Court as soon as possible so that he might see the actual apparatus.

By this time, however, Jimmy Leigh, with the Colonel’s help, had got his apparatus arranged in the position which he desired. He was now busy connecting wires with terminals; and when this was finished, he drew the attention of the company to the complete machine.

“Pass on to the next caravan, gentlemen. Here you see the Lethal Ray Shooting Gallery or Painless Destructor. Supersedes all rifles, revolvers, automatic pistols, bludgeons and knuckle-dusters. Kills instantaneously and leaves absolutely no marks. A pocket edition will enable householders to eliminate a burglar without soiling the carpet. The full-size machine will kill anything from a flea to an elephant. Makes an enjoyable recreation for long winter evenings. You press the button; it does the rest.”

“Suppose you tell us something about it, for a change,” interrupted the Colonel, caustically.

Jimmy Leigh became serious.

“The trouble is, Colonel, that it’s very difficult to make a complex thing like this clear to laymen. I really can’t go into the whole affair, because it would probably take me until to-morrow if I did. You see, you people don’t even know what a choke-coil is; you haven’t the groggiest notion of the effect produced by changing the surface-area of a condenser. And this affair is a pretty complicated stunt depending upon the mutual influence of induced currents. Will it be enough if I give you the backbone and leave out the rest?”

“Quite enough,” said the Colonel, who abhorred technicalities which he did not understand— as Jimmy Leigh already knew.

“Very well. First Steps in Murder, page one. Every time a muscle contracts in your body, there’s a slight flow of electricity in one direction or another. Now a current of electricity in one direction can be neutralized by another, equal current, flowing through the same material in the opposite direction. They cancel each other out, as it were. Got that?”

The Colonel nodded. His other two hearers seemed to be paying little attention.

“Your heart, Colonel, is simply a mass of muscle; and with every beat of it, a slight current of electricity is generated. They use that in the electro-cardiograph to determine whether the heart is normal or not. Suppose, now, you could interfere with that generation of electricity, stop it— to take an extreme case— you would knock the heart out of action; and your subject would suffer from something that would look like a bad attack of heart-disease. If your experiment was prolonged, you could throw the heart so much out of gear that the subject would find his vital machinery stopped completely. See that?”

“I’m not out of my depth yet,” the Colonel admitted with some pride.

“Well, that’s all there is in it. This machine here sends out a ray which I can direct to any point. That ray has the heart-interfering property; it disorganizes the electrical action of the heart-muscle. It affects all the muscles of the body, of course, but the heart-muscle is the only one we need bother about just now. Consequently, if the ray passes over an animal, the beast collapses. Don’t take my word for it. I’m going to show you the thing actually at work. I’ve got a rat I trapped yesterday and you can touch it off yourself if you like. Just wait a jiffy till I get the beast.”

“Fiat experimentum in corpore vili, by all means,” interjected Flitterwick.

“Quite right. ‘Try it on the dog,’ as we used to say. I’ll be back in half a mo’.”