Murder in the maze E-Book

J. J. Connington

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Neville Shandon stood at the window of his brother’s study gazing contentedly out over the Whistlefield grounds. This was a good place to recuperate in, he reflected, especially when one could only snatch a couple of days at a time from the grinding pressure of a barrister’s practice. His eye travelled slowly over the prospect of greenery which lay before him, lawn beyond lawn, down to where a glint of silver showed where the river cut across the estate. Beyond that came the stretches of the Low Meadows, intersected here and there by the darker green of the hedges; then the long curve of the main road; and at last, closing the horizon, the gentle slope of Longshoot Hill surmounted by its church spire. A bee hummed lazily at the open window; then, startled by a movement, it shot away, the note of its wings growing higher and fainter as it receded in the sunlight. The King’s Counsel let his attention wander for a moment to the rooks sailing, in their effortless flight around the tree-crests by the river; then, with something more than apparent reluctance, he turned away from the landscape.

Leseprobe

Murder in the Maze

by J. J. Connington

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385742942

Contents

I.

The Hackleton Case

II.

The Affair in the Maze

III.

The Immediate Results

IV.

The Chief Constable

V.

The Evidence in the Case

VI.

The Toxicologist

VII.

The Pot of Curare

VIII.

Opportunity, Method, and Motive

IX.

The Burglary at Whistlefield

X.

The Third Attack in the Maze

XI.

The Squire’s Theories

XII.

The Fourth Attack

XIII.

The Dart

XIV.

The Forged Cheque

XV.

The Secretary’s Affairs

XVI.

The Last Attack in the Maze

XVII.

The Siege of the Maze

XVIII.

The Truth of the Matter

Chapter I. The Hackleton Case

Neville Shandon stood at the window of his brother’s study gazing contentedly out over the Whistlefield grounds. This was a good place to recuperate in, he reflected, especially when one could only snatch a couple of days at a time from the grinding pressure of a barrister’s practice. His eye travelled slowly over the prospect of greenery which lay before him, lawn beyond lawn, down to where a glint of silver showed where the river cut across the estate. Beyond that came the stretches of the Low Meadows, intersected here and there by the darker green of the hedges; then the long curve of the main road; and at last, closing the horizon, the gentle slope of Longshoot Hill surmounted by its church spire. A bee hummed lazily at the open window; then, startled by a movement, it shot away, the note of its wings growing higher and fainter as it receded in the sunlight. The King’s Counsel let his attention wander for a moment to the rooks sailing, in their effortless flight around the tree-crests by the river; then, with something more than apparent reluctance, he turned away from the landscape.

“You did pretty well when you bought Whistlefield, Roger,” he commented as he moved back into the room. “It’s as restful a place as I know. If it weren’t that I can get down here from time to time, I’d be hard put to it to keep fit for my work. Think of the Law Courts on a day like this! And that Hackleton case has been a bit of a strain, a bigger business than usual.”

His twin brother nodded a general assent, but made no audible reply. There was more than the normal family resemblance between the two men. In height and build they were much alike; both were grey-haired and clean-shaven; and even the hard lines at the corners of the barrister’s mouth found their counterparts in the deeply-chiselled curves which made Roger Shandon’s face a slightly forbidding one. Whether deliberately or not, the twins accentuated their physical resemblance by a similarity in their dress.

“We have the same tailor,” Roger once explained. “When I go to him, I say: ‘Make me a suit like my brother’s last one.’ I believe Neville says the same. The fellow has our measurements, so there’s no more needed on that visit. Neville and I have much the same taste in shades, so it generally comes out all right.”

The likeness between the twins went even deeper than the surface. Both owed their success in life to a certain hardness of character coupled with an abundance of energy. Neville, going to the Bar, had made himself feared from the first as a brutal and domineering cross-examiner; and his criminal practice had done little to soften his professional manners. Roger’s rise to prosperity had been more mysterious. It was vaguely known that he had made money in South Africa and South America; but the exact methods which had led to his fortune were never discussed by him. He had come home at the age of forty-five to find his brother one of the leading lights of the Bar. The purchase of the little Whistlefield estate had followed, and Roger had apparently been content to settle down in the countryside and make a clean break with the interests of his past.

The third brother, Ernest, seemed hardly to belong to the same family as the twins. Though five years younger, he had none of the vitality and energy which were so manifest in his elders; and the contrast was accentuated by the weakness of his eyes, which gazed incuriously at the world from behind the concave lenses of his pince-nez. Left to fend for himself by the time he was twenty, and with a couple of hundred a year of his own, he had simply vegetated without even attempting to go into any business; and when his brothers had made their fortunes, he had slipped into the role of parasite without a thought, had transferred himself to Whistlefield, and had continued to live there ever since. Roger had fallen into the habit of giving him a fluctuating allowance, which he eked out as best he could by betting on a small scale.

“What’s this Hackleton case that you were talking about?” he inquired with a certain dull interest.

Neville looked at his brother with an expression half quizzical and half contemptuous. For days the Hackleton case had extended in sordid detail over a good many columns of most daily newspapers, for its intricacy had been enlivened by frequent dramatic interchanges between witnesses and counsel. It had shown Neville Shandon at his best, relentlessly driving the defendants into one damaging admission after another.

“Do you never read newspapers, Ernest?” the barrister demanded, quite unnettled by his brother’s ignorance of one of the greatest cases in which he himself had taken a leading part. Ernest’s interests were limited, as Neville knew; and it was useless to expect him to go outside his normal range merely from family concern. Wide-ranging curiosity was the last quality one could expect from him.

Ernest blinked, took off his glasses and cleaned them, then replaced them carefully before replying.

“No. At least, not all of them. (Confound these glasses, they won’t grip my nose to-day, somehow. This is the fifth time they’ve fallen off.) I often look at the newspapers, Neville. I glance through the sporting news every day. I never read the law column, though. I can’t understand it, usually; and when I do understand it, it seems so damned dull. At least, it’s dull to me; so I don’t look at it, usually.”

The barrister shrugged his shoulders slightly. He was above petty vanity, and he felt no sting from his brother’s lack of interest in his work.

“Just as well you left the Hackleton case alone, then,” he said. “It’s an infernal tangle. It’s taken me months of work to see my way through it; and if I happened to break down before it comes to a finish, I doubt if a junior could take it on with anything like success. But I think this week will see the end of it.”

Roger had listened to the dialogue without moving a muscle. Ernest’s complete incuriosity was no surprise to him. He could almost have predicted it. The youngest brother had never had the slightest interest in anything which did not touch himself. Family triumphs meant nothing to him, except that indirectly they contributed to his welfare.

The barrister moved again to the window and looked out over the landscape. A cloud of rooks caught his eye, sailing together and then breaking up into a mass of wheeling individuals.

“After this sort of thing, the very thought of the air in the Law Courts makes one sick,” he said at last.

“Hackleton’s coming up for the rest of your cross-examination the day after to-morrow, isn’t he?” Roger asked.

“Yes. He’s a clever devil—sees a concealed point as well as I do myself, and generally manages to skate round it more or less. He’s just scraped through, so far; but I’ll have him yet. It’ll be a bad business for him if he makes a slip. This civil suit for breach of contract is only a preliminary canter, if things turn out as I expect. One single breach in his case, and the Public Prosecutor will be down on Hackleton instanter. There’s ever so much in the background which we can’t bring to light in this particular suit, but it would all come out if the thing were to be transferred to the Criminal Court. Then we could really get to the bottom of the business.”

“So I gathered, by reading the case. Anyone could see that there was a lot in the background that you couldn’t touch on.”

“Once it all comes out, it’ll be the end of Hackleton. Five years penal is the least he could look forward to. Pleasant prospect for a man who lives on champagne. He’s an amazing fellow: drinks like a fish and yet has almost as good a brain as I have.”

“And you think you’ll get him? Does he realise that?”

“I expect he does.”

“From all I’ve heard of him he hasn’t much to boast of in the way of scruples. He started his career by speculations in coffin ships, didn’t he? I seem to remember some trouble with the insurance companies in more than one case.”

The barrister nodded:

“Constructive murder, simply. But that would be a trifle to Hackleton. He’d do anything for money.”

Roger seemed to turn this over in his mind for a moment or two before he spoke again.

“If he’s as hard a case as all that, I think I’d put on my considering-cap if I were in your shoes, Neville. It seems to me that you’re the weak joint in the harness.”

“I? How do you make that out? I’ve got this case at my finger-ends, I tell you. No one knows it inside out as I do.”

“That’s precisely what I mean. Suppose he loosed a gang of roughs on you before this cross-examination comes off? A good sand-bagging would put you out of action for just the time necessary to keep you out of the case; and that’s all he needs. You say yourself that you have all the strings in your hands, and I don’t suppose you’ve brought every card out of your sleeve even for the benefit of your junior. It wouldn’t be like you if you have. You were always one to keep a good deal in reserve.”

“That’s true enough,” Neville conceded with a grim smile. “No one could handle Hackleton in just the way that I shall this week. But I’m not particularly afraid of sand-bags or that sort of thing. No one could tackle me here, so far as I can see. One can’t do that kind of business in broad daylight on the Whistlefield lawns. And there won’t be much chance of getting at me on the way up to town or in London itself. I quite admit the possibility of the thing when one’s dealing with Hackleton. It’s quite on the cards; and because it’s never been done before, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be done sometimes. I’m not nervous, of course; but I’m not likely to run any risks by going about much after dark until this affair is squared up.”

Roger Shandon’s face reflected the grimness of his brother’s smile.

“I quite understand what you feel about it. In fact, I’m in much the same boat myself. That’s what turned my mind to the possibility in your case.”

The barrister glanced at him keenly.

“Some more of your disreputable past cropping up, eh? I don’t care much for some of your old acquaintances. Who’s this fresh one?”

Roger grinned shamelessly. His brother knew something of the way in which he had made his money; for at times it had been useful to Roger to take legal advice without bringing an outsider into problems which came too near the edge of the law.

“It’s another gentleman with a grievance—from Cape Town this time,” he explained. “He says he acted as my agent in some I.D.B. business when I was out there. He says that I got the profit out of it and that the profit was big enough to split comfortably into two. According to him, I gave him away to the authorities later on; and he spent a period of retirement, on the Breakwater or some such health resort. The cure took some years in the sanatorium; and he hated the treatment. Too much open-air exercise with plain food; and too many uniforms about for his taste. That part’s true enough—he’s just out of gaol. As to the rest, he needn’t expect me to corroborate it on oath.”

“Blackmail, I suppose?” asked the barrister, perfunctorily. “I’ll have a talk with him, if you like. Perhaps my persuasive style”—the harsh lines about his mouth deepened—“would help to convert him to honesty. It’ll be no trouble.”

Roger nodded his thanks.

“I’ll turn you on if necessary; but it’s hardly likely. He seems to me a vapouring sort of beast. ‘Your money or your life’ style of thing, you know. When I naturally refused point-blank to pay him a stiver, he frothed over at once with threats to do me in. ‘Tim Costock, the Red-handed Avenger’—and all that sort of thing. I left him frothing. He didn’t seem to me the sort of type that would do more than froth—and he can prove nothing.”

“I don’t suppose he can.” Neville agreed, knowing from past experience that his brother left very little behind him for enemies to pick up. “Well, I want to run over my notes for the Hackleton case this afternoon. Where can I find a place where I’ll be free from interruption? With these youngsters in the house, one can never be sure of having a room to oneself for half an hour at a time; and even if one retires to one’s bedroom, somebody’s sure to start a duel with the piano. I thought piano-playing had gone out of fashion; but I’ve heard it every day since I came here.”

“That’s Arthur,” Roger Shandon interjected, irritably. “No one else touches the damned thing.”

Ernest had apparently been cogitating deeply. He now turned a dull eye on his elder brother.

“Try the Maze,” he advised.

“What do you mean by that?” demanded Neville. “Try the Maze? It sounds like an advertisement for tea or one of these riddles, like: ‘Why is a hen?’ ”

Ernest elaborated his suggestion.

“I mean the Maze,” he explained laboriously. “The thing like the one at Hampton Court, down by the river, close to the boat-house. None of the visitors is likely to find a way to either of the centres; and none of us is likely to disturb you. We don’t usually go there; at least, I don’t myself.”

Neville’s face had shown enlightenment at the first sentence.

“Oh, our Maze, you mean? We were talking about the piano when you burst in, Ernest, and I didn’t quite take the connection. That’s not a bad notion. As you say, nobody’s likely to bother me if I plant myself in either of the centres. Besides, I want all the fresh air I can get just now; it’ll be better out there than anywhere inside the house. Right. I’ll go to Helen’s Bower.”

He moved towards the door as he spoke; but before he reached it a piano sounded not far off, and the opening bars of Sinding’s Frühlingsrauschen came to their ears. Neville turned back with his hand on the door-handle.

“By the way, Roger, what about that young nephew of ours? He seems all right—a bit moody, perhaps, but nothing out of the common. What does the doctor say?”

Roger’s face clouded.

“Arthur? He’s a young pest. About thrice a week he takes a fancy to the piano, and then he spends the whole day playing one piece over and over again, like an automatic machine—except for the mistakes. Damnable. You don’t know how I hate the sound of the Spring Song and Frühlingsrauschen. You must have heard him at it this morning; and now he’s starting all over again.”

The barrister nodded.

“Yes, but what about his general tone?” he asked. “Has he got over the encephalitis completely? Did the Harley Street man find anything permanently wrong?”

Roger’s face betrayed little satisfaction.

“Oh, the specialist looked devilish wise the last time he examined him; but that was about all it amounted to. It seems they know next to nothing about sleepy sickness. I understood him to say that the brain cells are all churned up with the inflammation; and the result may be anything you please. Of course Arthur was lucky to get off with no physical damage—his eyesight and hearing and all that are quite all right. But it seems one can never tell what changes may have taken place in the brain structure—things that don’t normally show at all. He may be all right, for all one can tell. Or again, he might turn into a homicidal maniac any day; and then, as like as not, he’d go for the nearest relation handy. A nice sort of fellow to have in one’s neighbourhood.”

The barrister evidently considered this prophecy exaggerated.

“He seems quite normal to me,” he said.

“Oh, I don’t worry much over him,” Roger admitted. “It’s just that he’s got on my nerves so much that I can hardly see him without snapping at him. I’ll have to get rid of him, I think; send him on a sea-voyage or something of that sort.”

“Perhaps you get on his nerves, just the same way as he gets on yours,” Ernest began in his low voice. “That’s what usually happens. When one starts it, the other takes it up. Usually that’s the way these things go. I shouldn’t wonder—hullo, Sylvia! I didn’t expect you just yet; not for quite a while. I’m not quite ready.”

A girl in her early twenties had come into the room and now stood looking at her uncle with a fair pretence of indignation.

Sylvia Hawkhurst, the sister of the piano-playing Arthur, had been left an orphan before she came of age; and as her uncles were her trustees, she and her brother had been brought to Whistlefield by Roger Shandon. She liked “to play at house-keeping,” as she put it: and Roger soon learned that she could run his small establishment better than any paid housekeeper. Things went like clockwork after she had taken command; and he soon realised that the secret of her management was that everyone in the house adored her. One thing she had set her face against: “We’ll have no men-servants, if you please, uncle; at least, not in the house itself. I don’t mind a chauffeur, of course. But I know what a girl can do, and I’d prefer to keep within my limitations, if it’s all the same to you.” Her uncle had let her have her way, and he had never found any reason to complain of the results.

Sylvia’s housekeeping, however, occupied very little of her time. She hunted in the season, drove her own car, played tennis well and golf better still, and was reckoned one of the best dancers in the neighbourhood. Most characteristic of all, in spite of her looks, she was as popular with girls as with men.

As she came into the room, Ernest got out of his chair with his usual deliberation and began a faintly shamefaced apology for his unpreparedness; but she cut him short in mock irritation.

“He hasn’t even got his boots on!” she complained. “How is it that I can run everything to time in this house except you? Are you ever in time for anything, Uncle Ernest?”

“I always seem to have so much to do, Sylvia, usually. It’s been a very busy day.”

The corners of Sylvia’s mouth quivered a little in spite of her effort to look indignant.

“Very busy! I remember exactly what you did. You played tennis for precisely thirty-five minutes this morning. Then you organised a grand shooting tournament with the air-guns and bored everyone stiff with it except Arthur, who happens to be able to beat everyone else. Then you came into the house; and I suppose you looked at the newspapers till lunch. And since then, you’ve sat and smoked. You must be dog-tired, poor thing. Do you think you could wrestle with your boots now; or shall I have them brought here on a silver salver and give you a hand with them myself? I’d rather not; so if you can manage by yourself, I’ll go and bring the car round. Put your watch in front of you and pinch yourself once a minute. Then you won’t fall quite asleep. Do hurry up, uncle,” she concluded, more seriously, “I want to get off as soon as I can.”

“Where are you taking him?” asked Roger.

“I’m going over to Stanningleigh village to do some shopping first of all. Then I’m going to the Naylands to ask them to come across and play tennis. When Uncle Ernest heard that he begged me to take him along part of the way and drop him at the East Gate, so that he could walk along the main road to the bridge and have a look at the river.”

“I thought I’d like to see if it was worth fishing, just at present,” Ernest added, in further explanation. “I’ve been thinking about it for a day or two, but I’ve never found time, somehow. Usually, just when I was starting out something always seemed to come in the way. So to-day, since Sylvia was going that way in the car anyhow, I thought. . .”

He broke off, observing Sylvia’s indignant eyes fastened upon him.

“Boots!” she said, scathingly, and held the door open for him to go out.

“I’ll be ready in a minute or two,” he assured her hastily as he left the room.

“Men are a wonderful lot, aren’t they?” she said confidentially to her two remaining uncles, as the door closed. “It seems to me high time Uncle Ernest got married. He’s simply incapable of looking after himself. You two are at least able to cross the street for yourselves; but Uncle Ernest really gives me a lot of worry. I think I saw a fresh wrinkle when I was brushing my hair this morning.”

“I wondered what made you look peculiar at lunch-time,” Neville admitted. “Now you mention it, I see it on your brow. About as deep as this.”

He touched one of the deep-scored lines running down to the side of his own mouth.

Sylvia laughed.

“You alarm me, uncle. I must have a look at the ravages in a mirror before I venture out. Good-bye!”

She hurried out of the room. Neville looked at his watch.

“Time I was moving,” he said. “I think I’ll take Ernest’s advice and try the Maze for seclusion. It’s hardly likely that anyone will bother to go into it this afternoon; and I can’t stand this piano-playing of Arthur’s. It grows irritating, as you say. I’ll go now. But I must get my notes first.”

A thought seemed to strike Roger as the barrister opened the door.

“I think I’ll try the Maze myself this afternoon. I feel a bit sleepy; and it’s quiet in there. I shan’t disturb you. But if it’s all the same to you, I’ll take Helen’s Bower myself. I’m used to a chair there; it suits me. You can go to Narcissus’s Pool instead. There’s nothing to pick and choose between them, since they’re both in the Maze.”

“Very good,” the barrister agreed. “It’s all the same to me, so long as no one interrupts me.”

He nodded abruptly and left the room.

When his brother had gone, Roger Shandon went over to his writing-table and busied himself with some papers. The distant piano seemed to have become more intrusive now that he was left alone. It repeated Frühlingsrauschen with brain-wearying persistence and a reiterated error in one particular chord. Roger frowned irritably as he busied himself with the documents before him, jotting down a note from time to time on a scribbling-block.

“Damn that young whelp! I must talk to him about this. One can’t concentrate one’s attention when half one’s mind’s wondering if he’s going to make that same slip for the hundred and first time.”

He continued his work for a few minutes, then rose and rang the bell.

“Send Mr. Stenness, if you can find him,” he ordered when the maid appeared.

In Ivor Stenness, Roger had secured an ideal private secretary. Stenness not only had the efficiency of a machine, but he possessed a full measure of qualities hardly less important. If his employer was out of sorts, even the gruffest order failed to ruffle the secretary’s temper. He was capable of taking just the right amount of responsibility in emergencies without ever going a hair’s breadth over the score. And his especial recommendation in Roger’s eyes was that he could keep his mouth shut. He never asked for explanations which might have been difficult to give; and he never betrayed the slightest surprise when, as sometimes happened, he opened threatening letters.

“If I ever have a confession of murder to put on paper,” Roger used to say, “Stenness will take it down in shorthand, type it out, and get my signature, without turning a hair. So far as he was concerned, it would be just a letter.”

Stenness’s other qualities were more in demand among the remainder of the household. He had good natural manners; and he could play games well enough to make him useful where someone was often needed to make up a golf foursome or a bridge table. A casual glance at him would have suggested that he must employ a first-class valet; for his clothes always looked new and he had the knack of carrying them well.

With all this, he was a perfectly safe person to have in a house with a young girl. He was, somehow, too inhumanly efficient to be attractive to girls younger than himself; and he showed not the slightest desire to attract. Sylvia treated him as a good friend, but she had dozens of friends whom she treated in exactly the same fashion.

“Ah, Stenness!” Roger looked up as the secretary came in. “I’ve gone over these letters and jotted down some notes. You might get them off sometime to-day. There’s only one of them that needs any explanation. Here it is. . . .”

Neville Shandon’s grim face appeared at the door for a moment. In his hand was a sheaf of papers. Seeing his brother engaged with the secretary, he nodded without saying anything and closed the door behind him.

Roger continued his explanation of the matter in hand while the secretary took a note or two. As the instructions ended, the whirr of a car leaving the front of the house attracted Roger’s attention and he crossed the room to look out of the window. Sylvia was driving, and beside her was Ernest Shandon. They glanced up as they passed under the study window, and Sylvia waved her hand. Roger watched the car swing sharply off the main avenue on its way to the East Gate, and soon it vanished behind a belt of rhododendrons.

“They might have given Neville a lift,” Roger reflected as he turned back into the room again. “They’ll be passing the Maze on the road to the East Gate.”

The sound of the piano reasserted itself in the comparative silence which followed the passing of the car. Roger made a gesture of impatience.

“I suppose that’s my nephew playing?” he demanded.

“He was shooting darts at a target in the garden, a short time ago,” Stenness explained, “but I think he came in a few minutes ago.”

“It sounds like him. Since he had that attack of sleepy sickness he always fumbles a bit on his chords—doesn’t seem able to manage his fingers perfectly. That makes this din all the harder to bear.”

Stenness refrained from any comment. Roger, after a pause, continued irritably.

“Where are the visitors, Stenness? I wish they’d attract him out of the house. Some days he’s all right and one never sees him. Other days he sits and pounds that piano till one’s head rings with it.”

“I noticed Miss Forrest and Mr. Torrance going towards the rose garden a few minutes ago.”

Stenness confined himself to answering the direct question and quietly ignored Roger’s exasperation. It was no business of his to intervene in family squabbles.

“Well, that’s all I have for you at present, Stenness. As you’re passing the door, send my nephew to me, will you? I must put a stop to this nuisance. It’s gone on quite long enough.”

The secretary made a gesture of assent, then gathered up his papers and left the room. A few seconds later, the piano-playing stopped abruptly in the middle of a bar, and Roger’s ear caught the clang of the keyboard lid being carelessly slammed. After a moment or two, his nephew entered the study.

In order to give his irritation time to cool down, Roger refrained from speaking immediately. He motioned his nephew to sit down, whilst he himself pulled out his cigar-case and became busy with the preparations for a smoke. Having got his cigar well alight, he turned round.

“Must you hammer that piano for hours at a time, Arthur? I hate to interfere with your simple pleasures, of course; but the infernal din you make has had quite a long enough run. You’ve played Frühlingsrauschen at least two dozen times to-day; and that’s just twenty-four times oftener than I want to hear it. You can cut it out of the bill, after this. In fact, you can leave the piano alone, once for all. I’m sick of hearing you play. You’re a nuisance to everyone, raising Pandemonium at all hours of the day. Find some quieter amusement, or clear out of the house.”

Arthur Hawkhurst’s eyebrows rose in mild surprise at his uncle’s complaint.

“I’d no idea it worried you, uncle.”

“Well, drop it.”

“Perhaps I have been overdoing Frühlingsrauschen a bit. I hadn’t thought of that. Somehow I never seem to get through it without a mistake in one or two chords, and I want to make a clean job of it, once at least.”

“I’ve got a pair of quite good ears. You needn’t think I missed your mistakes. They make it more irritating, that’s all.”

Arthur hastened to admit his errors.

“Well, no more Frühlingsrauschen, then. What about the Barcarolle? Offenbach’s, I mean. Any objection to that?”

“Yes. Will you be good enough to understand that you’re not to bang on that piano again.”

“Oh, you mean it? I thought it was just your fun, uncle. But I like the piano. Surely you’ll let me use it sometimes.”

“No. I’ve had enough of it.”

“But . . .”

Roger’s face had been darkening.

“That’s enough! I’ve more important things to talk to you about. What age are you nowadays? Twenty-two or twenty-three, isn’t it? And you’ve never done a stroke of work in your life, so far? A pretty record, isn’t it?”

He paused, and paced over to the window and back again.

“That’s got to stop. I’ve had to support one loafer—your Uncle Ernest. But if you imagine that I have a fad for collecting loafers, you’re mistaken. I’ve got your uncle on my hands permanently, I suppose; but I don’t propose to increase my stock of parasites for your benefit. You’ll have to find something to do. I’m not going to let you hang around Whistlefield for ever.”

Arthur’s good-natured face had darkened in its turn.

“You might increase your stock of politeness without overdoing things, it seems to me. I’m not altogether a loafer. I’m an invalid.”

Roger took no notice of the plea.

“Whistlefield isn’t a hospital.”

“Or an asylum—I suppose that’s what you mean? You’d better take care, uncle. There are some things a fellow doesn’t forget, once they’re said.”

Roger’s temper, never very far below the surface, boiled up at his nephew’s remark.

“That’s enough, Arthur. I’ll give you three months more. After that, you can fend for yourself. You won’t starve. You’ve got enough money to keep you alive even if the worst comes to the worst. Anyhow, I wash my hands of you.”

Arthur Hawkhurst’s control was no better than his uncle’s when once the point had penetrated through the skin.

“A pretty specimen of an uncle! The kind one meets in the ‘Babes in the Wood,’ eh? Go out into the world and starve, Arthur dear. The little dicky-birds will put leaves on you—and I’ll get the money your mother left you! That’s the scheme, I suppose. It’s a wonder a thing like you is allowed to live.”

The flagrant absurdity of the charge checked Roger for a moment. After all, the boy was off his balance. One shouldn’t take him seriously.

“You’re an ass, Arthur!” was all he vouchsafed in reply.

But Arthur’s disturbed brain had tilted out of its normal equilibrium, and his rage found vent in a wild threat as he flung himself out of the room.

“I’ve a good mind to get in first myself; and do for you, before you can do me any more harm. Look out for yourself!”

As the door slammed behind his nephew, Roger settled himself back into his chair. Arthur’s outbreak had come as a complete surprise. Since his illness, the boy had given the impression that he merely needed a firm hand. He had loafed about the house in a condition not far from melancholia; and at first it had required steady pressure to bring him to take any interest in normal affairs. Gradually he had improved and had passed over into a state of cheerful irresponsibility. And now, just as the specialists were taking an optimistic view of the future, had come this collapse into something which seemed little short of mania, absolutely without warning.

“I’ll have to get this looked into,” Roger reflected. “He’s evidently not so far on the road to recovery as we thought.”

Arthur’s threat had left him completely indifferent. He had almost forgotten it when he rose again from his chair. In itself it seemed unimportant, merely some wild words flung out in a brain-storm. He left the house and took the road to the Maze.

Stenness saw his figure pass into the belt of rhododendrons; and as soon as it had disappeared, the secretary made his way to Roger’s study. An ABC time table was on one of the shelves; and Stenness, taking it down, began to study the times of trains.

“I can’t leave it later than that,” he said to himself at last. “The next one wouldn’t get me into London in time for the boat-train.”

His eye turned to the window and ranged over the lawns.

“Well, it’ll be a hard wrench to leave here, no matter what happens. And I wish I saw to-night over and knew where I stand.”

He passed to a fresh line of thought.

“At the worst, nothing will matter much if I don’t pull it off.”

He replaced the ABC on its shelf and went up to his own room. First locking the door, he began deliberately to pack his razors and other toilette articles in an attaché case. When he had completed this task, he glanced round the room.

“Nothing else? No, all the rest of the stuff is waiting for me in London.”

Chapter II. The Affair in the Maze

Howard Torrance fidgeted a little and then turned to the girl beside him.

“A bit feeble, just sitting about like this and doing nothing. Care to go down to the tennis courts and play a single?”

Vera Forrest knew the symptoms well. A good many men would have been glad enough of the chance to monopolise her and would have asked nothing better than to sit there in the shade in her company. But Howard had a surplus of physical energy which could be worked off only by continual exercise. “What’ll we do next?” was a phrase which ran through his talk like a reiterated battle-cry; and he seemed to have exalted Sloth to the premier position in his private catalogue of the mortal sins. She glanced at him mischievously and decided to tease him a little before letting him have his way.

“No, thank you,” she said, sedately.

Howard had a second suggestion ready.

“Want to go over to the links and play a few holes?”

“No, thanks.”

“What about taking the car to Stanningleigh. I need some cigarettes and I’ll stand you a box of chocolates.”

“No.”

Howard looked at her suspiciously.

“Is this a new game? ‘No, thank you. . . . No, thanks. . . . No.’ Trying to make it shorter each time, is that it? Well, you’ve got to the bottom of the bag this shot. This is where the master-brain says ‘Checkmate!’ Ahem! Like to take a boat out on the river for a while? You can’t say No in less than two letters.”

Vera made no audible response, but she shook her head in refusal. Her companion admitted his defeat gracefully.

“Didn’t think you’d manage it. You win. Will you have a saucepan or a cheap alarm clock? All the other prizes have been awarded already.”

Then, as though dismissing trifles and becoming serious:

“What’s to be done? We can’t sit around like this the whole day. Time’s on the wing, and all that.”

Vera looked at the shadows on the grass.

“It’s getting on certainly. We really haven’t time to do much before tea.”

“It couldn’t miss that, I suppose? It wants its tea?”

“It wants its tea,” Vera admitted, gravely.

Howard looked at his watch.

“Pity we wasted the best part of the afternoon just sitting round and loafing,” he commented disconsolately.

For a few moments he remained silent, evidently turning various projects over in his mind.

“Tell you what,” he suggested at last. “Ever been in the old Maze down there by the boat-house? No? Neither have I. What about dashing over and trying our luck with it? Part at the entrance; and the first that gets to the centre wins the game. They say it’s a grand puzzler.”

“Well, if it will make you happy, I don’t mind. But wait a moment. Hasn’t the Maze got two centres? Somebody told me that once.”

Howard brushed the objection aside.

“The first one to reach either centre scores a win. If you get there, sing out. I’ll trust to your native honesty to keep you from cheating.”

It was comfortable under the trees, and Vera attempted to put off the evil moment of departure even by a few seconds.

“How many entrances has the Maze?”

“Oh, don’t know, exactly. Four or five, I think. Nothing in that. Take the first one we come to, whichever it is. Then you go to the right and I’ll go to the left, or t’other way about if you like; and the best man wins. I’ll risk a box of chocolates or a tin of cocoa on it, if you insist. Come along, don’t let’s decay here any longer; I see a bit of moss has grown on my toe since we sat down—and no wonder.”

Vera gave in and rose from her seat with feigned reluctance.

“Bit stiff in the joints with sitting so long?” Howard inquired, sympathetically. “It’ll wear off at once.”

As they sauntered across the stretches of turf which led down to the Maze, Vera was struck by the quietness of the grounds.

“Whistlefield’s a lovely place, isn’t it, Howard?”

“Top-hole,” he agreed, cordially. “First-class tennis courts; good golf-course only a quarter of an hour away; the river’s quite decent for punting; plenty of room in the house to dance, and I believe they run a pack of otter-hounds somewhere in the neighbourhood.”

“I didn’t know you were a house-agent.”

Howard saw the dig, but took no offence.

“Sounds a bit like their patter, doesn’t it? ‘Company’s water, gas, and electric light. Telephone. Main drainage.’ Well, nothing to be ashamed of, is it? Whistlefield’s all right.”

“Sylvia’s lucky to be here. By the way, where has she gone to this afternoon, do you know? I haven’t seen her since lunch.”

“Off in the car to see some people and arrange for some tennis to-morrow. I must say Sylvia looks after one well when one comes to stay. Always on the go.”

“Where are the rest of the villagers?”

“One uncle’s off with Sylvia. The other two were in the study when I saw them last. Stenness is somewhere around. I met young Arthur when you sent me up to the house a few minutes ago. He was coming out of the gun-room with a nasty look in his eye and an air-gun in his hand. Gave him a cheery hail and got a grunt in reply. Seemed peevish about something or other, quite fretful, even. Wished him Good Hunting and asked him if he was going to shoot rabbits in the spinney. All I got was a growl that he was going to shoot something sitting if he couldn’t shoot it any other way. Seemed determined to work off bad temper by slaughtering something, no matter what!”

Vera’s face betrayed sympathy.

“Poor Arthur! It’s hard lines on that boy, Howard. He’s been changed a good deal by that beastly illness he had.”

Howard’s expression showed that he shared her feelings.

“Pity. Used to be a bright lad. All right, even yet; but not quite the same, somehow. Moody at times; and apt to loaf about doing nothing for half the day. No real go in him. A queer temper, too, some days. When I met him just now, for instance, he looked ready to bite me in the gizzard. Not at all the society man.”

Vera dismissed the subject, which threatened to throw a gloom over them both. They liked Arthur Hawkhurst, in spite of the occasional flashes of abnormality which he had shown since the attack of encephalitis lethargica.

“You’re playing quite fair, aren’t you, Howard? You’ve never been inside the Maze at all?”

“You don’t suppose I’d cheat for the sake of winning a tin of cocoa, do you? It’s amazing what a low view of mankind some girls have. Soured from the cradle, what? And born in suspicion, belike. Shake it off, or it’ll grow on you, Vera. Go and dig in the garden when you feel an attack coming on.”

“Oh, don’t rub it in! I know your motto well enough: ‘Perspiration is better than cure,’ or something like that, isn’t it? I only asked out of idle curiosity. No reflections on your honesty really intended.”

“Your apology of even date duly received and filed. Sounds like the house-agent vein again, that, doesn’t it? Come on, I’ll race you this last hundred yards and give you a start to that rhododendron. Half a tin of cocoa on the event, since you’re so mercenary.”

Vera rejected his offer; and they walked over the last lawn to the nearest entrance to the Maze.

The Maze at Whistlefield was a relic of earlier days when such things were fashionable; but it had been kept in good repair, and Roger Shandon’s gardeners spent a considerable amount of labour in clipping its topiary hedges into the semblance of green walls. Somewhat irregular in outline, it covered about half an acre of ground; but into that limited space there was compressed more than half a mile of pathways; and the shortest route to either of the centres was at least two hundred and fifty yards in length. But few except experts could have found their way to either Helen’s Bower or the Pool of Narcissus by walking a mere two hundred and fifty yards. The Whistlefield Maze was a labyrinth far exceeding in complexity its kindred at Hatfield and Hampton Court. Its twelve-foot hedges were impenetrably thick; and in its design it followed the “island-pattern” to such an extent that incautious explorers might wander by the hour through its tiny archipelago without gaining a foot towards the innermost recesses or even realising that they were simply coasting round and round the outline of some detached hedge.