The Ha Ha Case E-Book

J. J. Connington

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

AS THE TRAIN glided into the wayside station, Jim Brandon lifted his well-worn suitcase and a shabby leg-of-mutton guncase down from the rack. Through the windows he caught successive glimpses of fresh-painted white palings, trim flwer-beds dripping from a recent shower, a girl’s figure on a broad sweep of gravelled platform, a tiny station-house, a handful of waiting travellers by the overhead bridge, and a ticket-collector at the gate giving egress into the station yard.

Leseprobe

THE HA-HA CASE

J. J. Connington

© 2020 Librorium Editions

All rights reserved

Contents

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Chapter 13 | Chapter 14

Chapter 15 | Chapter 16

Chapter 17 | Chapter 18

__________________

Chapter 1

The Girl at the Station

AS THE TRAIN glided into the wayside station, Jim Brandon lifted his well-worn suitcase and a shabby leg-of-mutton guncase down from the rack. Through the windows he caught successive glimpses of fresh-painted white palings, trim flwer-beds dripping from a recent shower, a girl’s figure on a broad sweep of gravelled platform, a tiny station-house, a handful of waiting travellers by the overhead bridge, and a ticket-collector at the gate giving egress into the station yard. Then, with something which sounded like a sigh of relief, the engine came to a standstill, leaving him facing a bank of velvety turf bearing the name AMBLEDOWN picked out in ornamental letters.

He stepped out of his third-class carriage and cast a glance up and down the station, the questing glance of a man who expects a friend to meet him on his arrival. Then a change in his expression betrayed that he had been disappointed.

For a few moments he waited, as though in hope that the truant would even then put in an appearance. Carriage doors slammed; the engine emitted a diffident whistle; behind his back the train gathered way and puffed out on its farther journey. Five or six passengers who had alighted with him filtered past the ticket-collector and vanished. He found himself left on the platform with one porter and the girl in the leather golf-jacket whom he had noticed as the train came in.

Evidently his young brother had let him down, or else his premonitory telegram had miscarried. Jim Brandon frowned at finding himself in an awkward fix. Ambledown was the station for Edgehill; but, for all he knew, the estate might be miles away. A heavy taxi-fare would bulk over-large in his meagre budget.

He decided to consult the porter. Probably there would be some local motor-bus service which would land him in the neighbourhood of Edgehill, wherever it was. But as he picked up his luggage, the problem was solved for him. The girl came along the platform and, after a momentary doubtful inspection of him, she stepped forward and addressed him.

“Are you Mr. Brandon? I’m sorry I didn’t recognise you straight away, but you’re not in the least like Johnnie. I had to wait till the other passengers cleared out, before I could be sure that it was you.”

Then, seeing that he was obviously puzzled, she added a word or two in explanation.

“I’m staying at Edgehill, you know; and when your wire came, I volunteered to meet you with my car. I couldn’t bring Johnnie with me. It’s only a two-seater and it wouldn’t have held three of us on the way back.”

Jim Brandon’s face cleared. He was there on a delicate mission; and when his brother failed to turn up at the station, he had feared that he was being given the cold shoulder at the very start. It was a relief to find that, after all, Johnnie had not deliberately let him down. A bit off-hand, of course, sending a strange girl along, instead of meeting the train himself. Still, it didn’t necessarily prove that Johnnie resented his intrusion. That was all to the good.

“Very kind of you to take so much trouble,” he said gratefully. “I was feeling a bit stranded when I found Johnnie hadn’t shown up at the station. You see, I haven’t a notion where Edgehill is, or how one gets to it from here.”

“It isn’t a day’s run— just a few miles up the road. Will you bring your things along? My car’s outside, in the station yard.”

Jim Brandon curtly refused the services of the porter, gave up his ticket at the barrier, and followed his guide off the platform. He had his own reasons for taking an interest in the cost of a girl’s clothes, and half-unconsciously he noted the fit of her leather jacket and the cut of her brown tweed skirt. One didn’t get that kind of rig-out for nothing, he reflected. One had to pay for that effective simplicity.

A little two-seater, very spick-and-span, was standing at the kerb, and Jim Brandon noted that it was not one of the cheaper models.

“You might strap your things on behind,” the girl suggested. “I’m afraid you’ll have to nurse my golf-bag. There isn’t much room.”

He disposed of his luggage and took his place beside her, with the golf-bag between his knees. It was market-day in Ambledown; and the car had to crawl through the little town, avoiding frantic sheep, lethargic cows, and suicidal dogs at every turn. He forbore conversation while she threaded her way amongst the country carts and lorries which crowded the High Street. As they emerged from the town she turned to him with a smile.

“The limit, aren’t they? ‘Grandpa parked his cart in the High Street, time o’ the Crimean War, and what was good enough for Grandpa’s good enough for me nowadays.’ I like that conservative way of looking at things, though it is a bit of a bore at times, of course.”

Jim Brandon nodded agreement. He had admired her coolness and adroitness in meeting the emergencies of that undisciplined traffic. Evidently she was the sort of girl one could rely on in a tight corner. Not the kind to lose her head or get flustered.

“Nice little bus,” he said, by way of making conversation. “What can you get out of her?”

“Johnnie and I came up to Edgehill with a lot of luggage at the back, and we were doing fifty-five most of the way.”

“Pretty good, that. Johnnie driving?”

The girl at his elbow laughed gently and shook her head.

“Johnnie most distinctly not driving. My nerves are fair, Mr. Brandon, but they aren’t good enough for that, I assure you. Once was enough. I’ll never trust him with my car again, after that. I wouldn’t even lend him it to meet you at the station to-day, for fear of what he might do on the road. That’s why I came myself.”

“Johnnie always was one of the slap-crash brigade,” his brother admitted. “Careless young beggar. He’ll come to grief one of these days if he doesn’t mend his methods. You’re quite right to keep him away from the wheel if you value your car, Miss...”

“Menteith.”

Jim Brandon made a gesture acknowledging the information. He shifted his position slightly so that he might covertly study the girl beside him. Brown wavy hair, a short clean-cut nose, a firm but rounded chin: any passable-looking girl might have all these. Her mouth puzzled him. She smiled easily, and even in repose the corners of her lips gave the impression that the smile was not far away. And yet there was nothing vapid in her expression. Jim Brandon found in it something indefinable— mockery, cynicism, a touch of the ironic— which gave her a character of her own. He guessed, easily enough, that Miss Menteith could play the fool if she chose, without ever being the fool she pretended to be.

“I suppose you’re staying at Edgehill for the partridge-shooting,” she said, after a moment or two, without taking her eyes from the road. “It starts on Monday, doesn’t it? Johnnie’s very keen.”

Jim Brandon seemed slightly confused for a moment.

“I only brought my gun down on chance,” he admitted abruptly. “I don’t expect to be here for the partridges. The fact is, I’m not coming to Edgehill. I ought to have apologised for bringing you to the station on false pretences.”

“Not staying at Edgehill? But Johnnie told me you were coming,” Miss Menteith protested. “And Mrs. Laxford expects you, I’m sure.”

Jim Brandon’s shoulders twitched in an almost imperceptible shrug.

“A mistake somewhere, evidently. I’m going to put up at an hotel, if there’s one near by. If there isn’t, I dare say I can find some cottage where they’ll take me in for a night or two.”

Miss Menteith momentarily diverted her gaze from the road and darted a curious side-glance at her companion. Her eyebrows arched slightly as though in surprise at his announcement; but something in her expression betrayed that she was not quite so astonished as she pretended.

“I think I’d change my mind, if I were you,” she advised coolly.

Then, as though feeling she had gone too far, she added in a reluctant tone:

“There’s the Talgarth Arms in the village, of course. You can try it, if you like. It’s only a mile or so from the lodge-gates. I’ll take you there first of all and you can fix things up: book a room and leave your suitcase. Then we can go on to Edgehill. I was sent to collect you at the train, you know; and I can’t very well turn up empty-handed, can I?”

Jim Brandon seemed to consider the alternatives.

“You’re sure they expect me at Edgehill?” he demanded, after a moment or two.

“It would look rather queer if you didn’t go there, wouldn’t it?” she countered, without giving him a direct answer to his question. “You’re here to see your brother, aren’t you? He expects you to stay at the house. If you go to the Talgarth Arms, he might not like it.”

Jim Brandon could not feel certain whether that last sentence was faintly emphasised or not. He sat back and thought hard for a moment or two before replying.

On the one hand, he had come down there with the express intention of putting a spoke in Laxford’s wheel. At any cost, he reflected grimly, he meant to upset that man’s schemes, in which Johnnie was to be used as the essential tool. That being so, he had planned to avoid Edgehill, to establish himself instead at some independent base— like the Talgarth Arms— so that he would be free from accepting Laxford’s hospitality with its technical fetter of bread and salt. Instead of venturing to Edgehill he had intended to summon Johnnie to the inn and to conduct his campaign of persuasion upon neutral territory, outside the Laxford sphere of influence. That, of course, was the chivalrous method.

But, on the other hand, this observance of punctilio might well be a fatal handicap to his mission. Suppose he asked Johnnie to meet him at this inn. The message would put Laxford on the alert; and he might be strong enough to influence Johnnie— even to prevent him from turning up at all. Already there had been this curious substitution of Miss Menteith for his brother at the station; and perhaps Laxford had a hand in that. It might quite possibly have been arranged deliberately to prevent him getting Johnnie to himself at the start. And now, even if Johnnie consented to come to the Talgarth Arms, Laxford would have an opportunity of priming him immediately beforehand, rousing his suspicions, making him impossible to handle. That would be the worst atmosphere for delicate manœuvres.

At Edgehill, on the contrary, he could choose his opportunity for tackling Johnnie. He could select a moment when his brother was in a propitious mood. And the thing could be done in a casual way which would give it a far better chance of success.

After weighing the arguments on both sides, he decided to revise his plans and fall in with Miss Menteith’s proposal.

“Very well,” he agreed at last, “if they expect me at Edgehill, I’ll go there.”

“I think you should,” she replied, with no display of triumph at his conversion to her views. “We’ll go straight there, then.”

“It’s very good of you to take all this trouble for a stranger,” he began.

“No trouble at all,” she assured him, with a formality which sounded rather strange from her lips.

Then, with a sudden return to naturalness, she added:

“You and Johnnie aren’t much alike, Mr. Brandon.”

“Meaning that I’ve got a hooked nose and he hasn’t? Most people notice that. There’s a streak of foreign blood in our family— pretty far back, now, but it crops out on the surface at times. I’ve got a dash of the old Norman in me; Johnnie favours the Saxon side of the family. At least, so my Governor says.”

Miss Menteith had been thinking of mental and moral differences, more important than those between a straight nose and a curved one; but she made no attempt to explain this.

“That would account for it, certainly,” she admitted. “And then, of course, you’re much older than Johnnie, aren’t you? That helps to make the difference between you bigger still.”

Jim Brandon shook his head.

“You’re on the wrong track there, I’m afraid. Johnnie looks much younger than he is really. He’s just on the edge of twenty-one now. In fact, he comes of age to-morrow. There’s only a matter of four years between the two of us.”

This seemed to surprise Miss Menteith slightly. She glanced aside at him again as though to check her first impressions. Where had she got this false suggestion of a greater seniority? It did not lie in the leanness of the aquiline features, the curve of the predaceous nose, or the hardness of the mouth. These made him different from Johnnie, but not necessarily older-looking. Then she noted the corners of Jim Brandon’s lips and the two vertical lines between his brows. That was where the thing lay, perhaps. Johnnie’s normal expression spoke of happy-go-lucky cheerfulness. Worry, if he showed it at all, was like a swift-passing cloud. Jim Brandon’s face, on the contrary, hinted at a suppressed grudge against a world which had not used him according to his idea of his own merits. That ever-present yet almost invisible trace of bitterness made him look older than his years.

During the slight pause in the conversation, Jim Brandon’s thoughts had taken a very different channel. He was puzzled by this girl who had been sent to meet him. She was staying at Edgehill. She was on familiar terms there, since she spoke of “Johnnie” instead of saying “your brother” or “Mr. Brandon.” Without risking a direct snub, she had coolly assumed the right to advise him, as if she were an old friend instead of a stranger. She had managed to make him alter his plans at the last moment and go to Edgehill instead of to the village inn.

These were the facts about her; but what lay behind them? Was she an ally of Laxford, despatched to the station with the aim of enticing him into staying at Edgehill? That was quite on the cards, he reflected sourly. And a scheme of that sort had the further advantage that it prevented him from getting Johnnie to himself when they met at the train. Once at Edgehill, he might be kept under supervision. Privacy would be hard to secure. Seemingly innocent interruptions might easily be contrived to break into any tête-à-tête between Johnnie and himself. He could foresee endless difficulties already, and he began to curse his foolishness in dropping his original plan so hastily.

However, the blunder had been made— if it was a blunder— and he had to make the best of it. This girl, whoever she was, seemed inclined to talk freely enough; and he determined to utilise the chance. At least he could learn something about the environment into which he was about to plunge. The more information he had about that, the better equipped he would be to meet emergencies.

“Many people staying at Edgehill just now?” he asked in a casual tone, as though merely wishing to keep the conversation alive. “I suppose you’ve got a crowd on the premises, for the partridge-shooting next week?”

“Unless you call one a crowd, we haven’t. I believe some men are coming down soon, but just now there’s only one extra.”

“Yourself, you mean?”

“No, I’m not a guest. It’s a Mr. Hay who dropped in unexpectedly yesterday. I think he’s really here on business. He made some joke about lumber. I didn’t see any point in it. Then Mr. Laxford said they meant to fell some timber at Edgehill, so I suppose Mr. Hay came in connection with that.”

This information relieved Jim Brandon’s mind. Laxford, with a solitary guest on his hands, could hardly contrive to keep the two brothers apart for a whole week-end. It would be easy enough to get Johnnie to himself and to talk things over without fear of interruption. Edgehill, after all, was the right place, since it would give him the choice of the best opportunity when Johnnie seemed to be in an amenable mood.

Then his mind went back to the first sentence of the girl’s answer. She was staying at Edgehill, and yet by her own account she was not there as an ordinary guest. She must be some relation of Laxford or of Mrs. Laxford— a close enough relation to reckon herself as one of the family, apparently. In that case, he would have to be very cautious in what he said to her. No use giving points to the enemy.

Miss Menteith seemed to have the gift of thought-reading. When he made no comment on her remarks she turned to him momentarily with a faintly quizzical expression.

“You’re trying to place me, aren’t you? Wondering who I am? There’s no mystery about it, Mr. Brandon. I’m the Laxfords’ governess.”

“Are you?”

Evidently a trace of surprise crept into his tone, for now she gave a little laugh of pure amusement.

“You seem a bit taken aback,” she commented. “Why, may I ask? Don’t I look like a governess? Did you expect a poke-bonnet and mittens, or what?”

Jim Brandon looked slightly confused, but he took the bull by the horns:

“I didn’t expect to see a governess running a car like this one. You told me it was your own, didn’t you?”

Miss Menteith’s amusement became even more marked.

“It seems far above my humble station, you mean? Suspicious affair... How did she get it?... Queer times we live in... We all know what the post-war girl’s like, h’m!... And all that sort of thing. You’ll not be too disappointed if I clear my character? Dissipate these dreadful suspicions and what not? I love telling people the story of my life.”

Jim Brandon glanced sharply at his companion. Despite its irony, her speech sounded rather silly; and silliness was not what he expected from this girl, who seemed to have her wits about her. He had a shrewd idea that some definite purpose lay behind this chatter, though what that purpose was, he could not guess. On the face of things, she evidently wanted him to know her exact status at Edgehill; but surely no detailed explanations were needed.

Miss Menteith relaxed her pressure on the accelerator and let the car slow down to a mere twenty-mile-an-hour gait. Evidently she meant to allow herself time for her autobiographical sketch. Her opening was hardly what Jim Brandon had anticipated.

“Suppose for a moment, Mr. Brandon, that you were a girl just out of your teens, left stranded in the world with two hundred or two hundred and fifty a year. What could you do with it?”

“Live on it, I suppose. What else?”

Miss Menteith made an attractive grimace.

“Live on it? Yes. But how?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Digs, or a boarding-house. Something of that sort, I suppose.”

Miss Menteith nodded as though in confirmation.

“Yes, you might live in a women’s club or in some boarding-house, of course— very cheap ones. Can you guess what that means? I can remember the animals: the girl who fancies herself at the piano... the old lady who always has trouble with her false teeth at meals... the woman with a harsh voice that can be heard all over the room... the maiden lady who’s seen better days when she didn’t have to mix with dreadful people like yourself... and the rest. Bright companions! No privacy unless you shut yourself up in a cheerless bedroom with a slot radiator and a penny-a-night book from a lending library. And most likely the whole establishment will be bathed in an inescapable smell of boiled cabbage or fried onions.”

“It doesn’t sound very bright,” Jim Brandon admitted cautiously. “But you might take a flat.”

“Well, I’ve tried that too. Half your income goes in rent, and that leaves you so short that you have to cling to every penny of the rest, as if it were a family heirloom. Spend your mornings trailing from one local greengrocer to another, in the hope of getting potatoes a halfpenny a stone cheaper than last time. Shop at Woolworth’s, or in the Caledonian Market, or at the street stalls in— where is it?— Farringdon Road, I think, trying to pick up bargains in odd cups or job lots of oilcloth. You can’t afford a decent dressmaker. You wear somebody else’s cast-offs— ‘only been worn three times, moddom’— from the second-hand dealers in Bayswater. The theatre, when you can afford a splash, means standing at the pit-door. And when you get home after it, the fire’s been smoking before it went out; and you yearn for company— any sort— just someone to talk to, something to take the edge off the loneliness that comes over you when you’re all by yourself in the flat before you get to bed. And the people in the other flats may not be as quiet as you’d like, when you want to get to sleep and forget it all. It’s not much catch, I assure you. London’s the only place worth living in; but it’s merely tantalising to live in it when you have to look twice at a bus-fare before you spend it.”

“There’s something in that,” Jim Brandon agreed, thinking of his own experiences. “But what about a provincial town, or the country?”

“Same drawbacks and none of the advantages,” Miss Menteith commented.

“And so. . . ?”

“Well, I thought it out; and finally I put an advertisement into The Times and The Morning Post. Something like this. ‘Young Gentlewoman, age 23, capable, musical, child lover, many useful qualities, seeks post: highest references: salary secondary consideration.’ That threw the net wide enough. Some very rum fish came up in it, I can assure you. I wish I’d kept a few of the replies. Elderly gentlemen pining for Bright Young Society and asking for my photograph to see if I’d suit them. Ancient ladies, a bit uncertain in their spelling, who seemed to want either a maid-of-all-work or else someone to amuse their male friends in the evening. And so on. Rather amusing, really. I felt as if I’d paid my fee and was getting a correspondence course on Human Nature.”

She paused for a moment as though to give Jim Brandon his turn in the dialogue; but he merely waited for her to continue.

“The Laxfords saw my advertisement,” she went on, with a momentary smile at some covert jest of her own. “They offered me just the sort of thing I wanted. Two children, seven and five, with a nurse to take them off my hands part of the time. They stay with a grandmother for two months in the summer, and I can go abroad or take a cruise then, if I want to. I love these cruises. Such a weird gang one meets on board at times.”

Jim Brandon fancied he noticed a faint flush under the light tan on Miss Menteith’s cheek. She ran on with her description of her position.

“Anyhow, that’s how it works out. I live rent-free as one of the family in nice big houses. I can dress decently and I can just manage to run a car. Besides, it’s the gypsy sort of life I like.”

“Gypsy sort of life?” queried Jim Brandon. “I don’t see that side of it. Do you go caravanning between whiles?”

“No, I’d loathe caravanning,” Miss Menteith retorted. “I don’t mean that. But in some ways life with the Laxfords is a hugger-mugger sort of affair,” she explained vaguely. “Rather fun, if you have a sense of humour. It might not suit some people, of course.”

Jim Brandon picked his words carefully in his next remark.

“It seems a sound proposition, if you like the Laxfords,” he said at last. “With your two hundred and fifty a year, plus your salary, you ought to be able to turn round comfortably enough.”

“The salary doesn’t worry me,” answered Miss Menteith in an unusually dry tone.

Jim Brandon had his own ideas about the state of the Laxford finances, and he idly wondered how much Miss Menteith’s salary was in arrear at that moment. It might suit her to take a post with the Laxfords, but it would doubtless suit the Laxfords equally well to have a governess to whom salary was “a secondary consideration.” He could hardly push this subject further without risk of offence, so he turned the talk into a fresh channel.

“Is Johnnie getting on well with this work of his?”

“As well as can be expected, I think,” Miss Menteith answered rather evasively. “He certainly works. Mr. Laxford seems well enough pleased with his progress, I gather.”

Jim Brandon laughed unkindly.

“Translated into English, that means that he plods away but doesn’t make much of it. Johnnie was always a bonehead. A rabbit would be hard put to it to earn a living if it changed brains with my young brother. In some ways, he’s exasperating, especially if you have to explain anything to him.”

Miss Menteith seemed more than a little annoyed by the gloss put on her description.

“He’s very likeable,” she declared rather irrelevantly. “I’m rather fond of Johnnie. He’s pathetically young in some ways, and frightfully earnest about some silly schemes; but he’s not a bit priggish or conceited over them. I’m not sure...”

She broke off her sentence abruptly as though her tongue had run away with her. Jim Brandon guessed what she was avoiding. But this was a matter on which he wanted an outsider’s view; and he deliberately forced the subject upon her.

“He’s very young for his age, as you say,” he agreed at once. “A case of arrested development on some sides, perhaps. And that makes him easily influenced by some people. He might pick up ideas from anybody who chose to throw them in his way, especially if he liked the author.”

Miss Menteith kept her eyes fixed on the road with unnecessary intentness.

“He’s at the hero-worshipping stage, I think,” she confirmed.

Something in her tone suggested that this phase in a youth’s development might not be an altogether desirable one.

“And there’s only one hero on the premises for him to worship just now?” Jim Brandon suggested, with a trace of acidity in his voice.

“Mr. Laxford seems to have a lot of influence with him,” Miss Menteith admitted with a certain reluctance, as though she felt that she might be going too far.

Jim Brandon detected the faint critical inflexion in her voice, and he wondered if by any chance she felt a touch of jealousy in the matter. She seemed to have a fancy for Johnnie, to judge by the way she had almost fired up when she heard the youngster disparaged. If she were keen on Johnnie, it would be natural enough to find her resenting Laxford’s preponderant influence.

“You don’t seem to approve, altogether,” he suggested by way of probing further.

But evidently Miss Menteith thought she had gone far enough.

“What business is it of mine?” she retorted sharply. “Your family put Johnnie into Mr. Laxford’s charge, didn’t they? Well, it’s their affair; and if they’re satisfied with the result, there’s no more to be said, is there?”

Johnnie must have been talking, Jim Brandon reflected; or else this girl had kept her ears open to some purpose. She seemed to have a pretty good idea of the lie of the land; and her sympathy was not on Laxford’s side, to judge by her tone rather than her actual words. She might make a useful ally, if he could enlist her; and even if he stopped short of that, he might be able to utilize her in furthering his plans. In the meanwhile, he decided, he had better drop this rather ticklish subject.

The car rose and dipped as they ran across a culvert, and Jim Brandon caught a glimpse of a swollen little stream swirling brown and foam-flecked as it swept into the archway.

“Lot of rain you must have had lately,” he said with a gesture towards the water. “That’s fairly high.”

Miss Menteith nodded.

“Yes, it’s been pretty wet. All the streams are full. There was a lot of rain up in the hills, over yonder, and the water hasn’t drained off yet.”

“Is Johnnie doing much fishing in his spare time? He used to be rather keen about it.”

“He’s had to be careful lately, after that sprained ankle he got a month or so ago. Didn’t you notice him limping when he was up in town?”

“Up in town, was he?” Jim Brandon had some difficulty in stifling his surprise at this news. “No, I didn’t see him. When was he up?”

“Oh, ten days or a fortnight ago,” the girl answered. “He and Mr. Laxford went up together for the day. I thought Johnnie would be sure to look you up.”

Jim Brandon was hard put to it to preserve an air of indifference. Johnnie up in town, along with Laxford? It might mean nothing; perhaps they had merely run up to London on some casual errand which was no concern of his. Still... Johnnie hadn’t said a word about that excursion in his letters, either beforehand or afterwards; and in that suppression, at least, Laxford’s hand was plain. And if Laxford wanted the trip kept dark, there must be something going on behind the scenes. That was one useful bit of news that this girl had given him, though she didn’t realise it. Meanwhile, his best policy was to keep his suspicions to himself and not let her guess that she had given anything away.

“Most likely they were very busy,” he commented lazily. “There’s always so much to do in London when you’re only up for the day.”

“Well, his ankle’s all right again,” Miss Menteith volunteered, harking back to the earlier subject. “He had to be careful for a while, you know, and keep off rough ground for fear of giving it a fresh twist. Hard lines on him, being tied by the leg like that. He’s quite mad on shooting, just now; and he hated having to hobble about with a stick.”

Jim Brandon was glad to get still further away from dangerous ground.

“Not much shooting at this time, surely,” he pointed out.

“Not real shooting,” the girl agreed. “But Johnnie’s quite happy if he has a gun in his hand. He spends most of his time shooting rabbits. In fact, if we lived by his gun, the Edgehill diet would be painfully monotonous. Until the family rebelled, it was a case of the Curate’s Grace with us:

Rabbits hot and rabbits cold,

Rabbits tender and rabbits tough,

Rabbits young and rabbits old:

I thank Thee, Lord, I’ve had enough.’

I don’t want to see rabbit pie again in my life— not that I ever doted on it. Australia is the place for me. They don’t eat rabbits there, I’m told.”

Jim Brandon’s mind had gone back to that trip to London. A fresh possibility occurred to him.

“By the way,” he asked, “Johnnie didn’t go up to town to see a bone-setter, by any chance? About his ankle, I mean?”

Miss Menteith’s decided headshake disposed of this comforting hypothesis at once.

“No, I’m pretty sure he didn’t do anything of the sort. He’s an absurd young Spartan in some ways, you remember. Grin and bear it— all that sort of thing. He wouldn’t even let Mr. Laxford get a doctor from Talgarth to look at his ankle. There was quite a wrangle over it. I told him he was silly, not having the thing properly looked after. However, he was quite right, as it turned out. The thing got well again of itself, just by taking care.”

So that run up to town was still unexplained, Jim Brandon recognised with some uneasiness. London might mean lawyers, when Johnnie was in question; and lawyers might mean the very devil, at this juncture.

“This is Talgarth,” his companion explained as they ran into a trim little village. Jim Brandon glanced incuriously at the white thatched cottages, each with its little hedge-enclosed garden, a few larger dwellings, a shop or two, and an old-fashioned half-timbered inn with rambler roses thick on its frontage.

“It seems very neatly kept,” he commented.

“Yes, isn’t it?” Miss Menteith agreed, with a certain enthusiasm. “It belongs to Mr. Wendover— one of the local magnates— and he’s a model landlord, they say. He encourages the people to take some pride in the place. It all looks old-fashioned, but everything inside these cottages is modernised. I’ve been in one or two.”

“Must have cost him a pile,” Jim Brandon commented, with something rather grudging in his tone.

“That gate there is the entrance to the Dower House on the Silver Grove estate,” Miss Menteith explained as they left the village behind. “It’s empty just now. So’s the big house itself. There’s a very pretty little lake, up yonder behind the trees. If you stay here for a day or two, you ought to go up and have a look at it, it’s quite worth seeing. Nobody will mind, so long as you keep to the paths and don’t wander at large through the woods.”

Jim Brandon had a suspicion that all this local information was not being offered merely for its own sake. Miss Menteith was using it as a barrier to keep him from putting any more questions about Edgehill affairs. She had given him some information, but it had evidently been carefully selected. Now she was talking to forestall anything savouring of a cross-examination by him.

“That’s the entrance to Talgarth Grange,” she went on, as they swept past a big ornamental gateway leading into an avenue. “It belongs to that Mr. Wendover that I mentioned a minute ago. He’s chairman of the County Council, a J.P., president of the local Antiquarian Society, something in the Royal Agricultural Society, and all that kind of thing.”

“What sort of person is he?” Jim Brandon asked, merely to let her see that he accepted her tacit decision to keep off the Edgehill problem.

“Oh, he’s nice. Very nice indeed,” Miss Menteith declared with a rather surprising warmth and sincerity. “He’s the sort of man one likes at sight. He looks a sort of Ideal Uncle, if you see what I mean. A bit old-fashioned in some ways. Manners dignified, and yet genial, you know, the kind of thing they used to call ‘courtly.’ He brings it off and makes you feel it’s all genuine. He’s teaching me golf. He’s got a six-hole practice course on his ground up there, and he’s been awfully decent in playing with me and giving me a hand. The last man you’d expect to have a taste for crime,” she wound up unexpectedly.

“What’s that?” queried Jim Brandon. “He isn’t a Raffles or what not, is he?”

“No, no. He’s a criminologist— dabbles in murder cases, you know. He’s a friend of Sir Clinton Driffield, the Chief Constable of the county. I expect that’s where he picked it up.”

“Rum sort of hobby,” Jim Brandon commented with a slight shrug which might have indicated contempt. “Hasn’t he grown out of the Sexton Blake stage yet?”

“I can’t see the charm in gruesome stuff like that,” the girl admitted. “Morbid sort of taste, isn’t it? He ought to have got married, and then he’d have had brighter interests.”

“A woman-hater, is he?” Jim Brandon hinted, with a side-glance at his companion.

“Not a bit of it,” she retorted. “There’s nothing of the crusty old bachelor about him. He likes young people. He’s been very nice to me.”

“What’s his friend like? The Chief Constable, I mean.”

Miss Menteith reflected for a moment or two before replying. She seemed to have difficulty in recalling salient characteristics which would serve in a description; and when she finally tried to sketch the Chief Constable she produced only a disjointed catalogue of details.

“Oh, well, he’s somewhere round about thirty-five, I should think. But it’s difficult to guess his age. He’s about your height, and he’s got a close-clipped moustache and fine teeth. He’s got a sort of sardonic way of talking at times. There’s a kind of edge on what he says, if you understand what I mean... I can’t quite describe it. Sometimes it’s double-edged. Most of the time he seems politely interested— just on the verge of boredom, but not quite showing it. Then at other times he watches you in a speculative sort of way, not as if he were looking at your nose or your mouth or your eyes, but somehow as if he were seeing you as you really are— your personality, I mean, not your mere outside appearance. But that’s only the merest flash. Usually he looks as ordinary as possible,— more ordinary than the man in the street even. He gives you nothing to take hold of, somehow.”

“Curious cove, evidently. Doesn’t pose as the big official, then?”

“Not a bit. I only heard what he was by accident. Before that, I hadn’t a notion of what his line could be.”

“Did you ever meet his wife?”

“He hasn’t one,” Miss Menteith informed him curtly.

She seemed to have lost interest in Wendover and the Chief Constable. They had served their turn in keeping the conversation off other things. Now her expression betrayed a trace of perplexity, as though she were trying at the last moment to choose between two alternatives which confronted her.

“Here’s Edgehill,” she explained, turning the car into a lodge-gate which opened on a broad avenue leading upward through a belt of trees.

Then, slowing the car as though to spin out the last few moments, she turned to her passenger.

“You’ve been trying to size me up, haven’t you?” she demanded with a hint of mockery in her tone. “Well, I’ve been trying an experiment on you. So we’re quits, I think.”

She pressed the button and sounded a long blast on her horn, apparently to announce her arrival to those in the house, but possibly, Jim Brandon reflected, to prevent him from making any comment on her last speech.

As the car drew up before the house, Johnnie Brandon made his appearance at the front door.

Chapter 2

The Brandon Heritage

JIM BRANDON ushered his brother into the Edgehill gun-room; and then, after a cautious glance along the corridor, followed him over the threshold and closed the door.

“Take a pew, Johnnie,” he suggested pleasantly, with a nod towards one of the chairs. “I want to have a talk with you. We’ve not had a minute alone together since I came down.”

He propped his gun in a corner. Then, sweeping aside a scratch-brush and some rags, he cleared a space for himself on the table, sat down, and lit a cigarette.

“Have one? No? All right.”

For a moment or two Jim smoked in silence, reflecting that he had blundered badly in his opening. ‘I want to have a talk with you’ had been their father’s prelude to the discussion of delinquencies when they were children. That phrase must have struck a wrong note at the very start, as he could see from the expression on Johnnie’s face. It suggested that a wigging was coming, and that was the worst kind of beginning for a mission of persuasion. However, it was too late to worry about that.

Johnnie had detached the barrels from the stock of his gun and was preparing to clean them. He took this task seriously, and he went about it with a methodical deliberation which at this moment served to irritate his elder brother, who wanted to secure undivided attention from his junior. One by one, Johnnie collected his requisites with the care of a conjurer running over his properties before a performance. He reached across the table for a cleaning rod and screwed a brass jag to its end with a rather fumbling touch. From a drawer he produced some bristle brushes. He considered the scratch-brush for a moment, hesitating, and then dropped it back into its place. Another drawer was opened to secure clean tow and woollen patches. Then a shelf across the room had to be visited to fetch down bottles of linseed oil and Three-in-One, along with a pot of vaseline. Finally, after a clutch at some of the oily rags across the table, he ranged his collection in neat order before him, looked them over to see that none was missing, and prepared for work.

Jim, fuming internally but outwardly unmoved, watched his brother’s awkward movements as he walked to and fro. There had been some excuse for that girl when she miscalculated their ages. For all his twenty-one years, Johnnie had the look of a bulky, overgrown schoolboy; and that frank, freckled, and rather simple face added to the illusion of his immaturity. The blue eyes under the unruly mop of fair hair had still something of child’s candour in them. If the mouth showed any firmness at all, it was the firmness of obstinacy rather than of character. Jim reflected sourly on the ill-chance which had made the fortunes of that generation of Brandons dependent on the whim of an inexperienced dullard. Now the danger-period was upon them, and all might turn upon his own diplomacy. He put his cigarette on the table beside him, hitched himself into a more comfortable position, and addressed his brother.

“Why don’t you come up to London and see the Governor, Johnnie? He’s fond of you, and he feels it more than a bit when you seem to be avoiding him deliberately. He’s lonely now, since the Mater died, and it cuts him more than you’d think, your staying away like this. He’d like to see you.”

The overgrown schoolboy showed very plainly in Johnnie’s attitude in face of this appeal. He looked acutely uncomfortable and tried to conceal it by bending over his task. At last he gave an awkward shrug which revealed his inward discomfort.

“I can’t manage it just now, Jim; I can’t, really.”

Apparently encouraged by the boy’s obvious uneasiness, Jim tried a fresh argument.

“There’s one thing you might do. You know how much store the Governor sets by anniversaries and all that sort of thing— birthdays, Christmas, and so forth. Rot, I think it, myself. Still, there it is. You know what I mean. For the last month or two he’s been brooding over your coming-of-age. He’s spoken to me about it more than once. I can see what’s worrying him. Of course, in the old days, before he muddled things, it would have been a big spree on the estate. All the tenants to dinner, decorations, flag on the mast, speeches, everybody very mellow and cheery. He’d have spread himself over it and enjoyed every minute. It’s the sort of thing where he’d have shone, you know. Bluff old squire, and the young hopeful coming on. Well, that’s all dead and done with....”

A slight twitch of his lips betrayed his feelings for a moment. The contrast between the actual state of affairs and the might-have-been was a painful subject. If Johnnie was touched by it, he concealed his feelings by a closer absorption in his cleaning operations and avoided glancing at his brother.

“What he’s set his heart on,” the elder brother continued, “is just this. He wants you to spend your coming-of-age with him. It means coming up to town to-morrow, first thing. But you’ll get back in plenty of time for the partridges.”

Johnnie made a sudden gesture of refusal, but Jim continued smoothly as though he had not noticed it.

“ ’Twon’t be exactly a treat, I quite admit, to spend the day with a sick man in frowsy digs. I see that well enough. Still, I thought I’d come down and see if I couldn’t persuade you to humour him, Johnnie. ’Tisn’t much to ask, is it? The Governor’s been an old fool. True enough. Nobody knows it better than I do. Still, he’s very keen on you. It would give him no end of pleasure. Just look at it that way, Johnnie. Do the decent thing.”

Johnnie’s face had grown more and more overcast as the appeal progressed; but the cloud on it was one of worry and perplexity rather than of ill-temper. He appreciated all the points of his brother’s argument; but, behind his protective mask of rather surly indifference, a conflict between two loyalties was raging furiously.

Jim felt in his pocket and produced a letter. He held it out towards Johnnie for a moment and then, with an after-thought, drew it back again.

“I’ll read it to you. Then you’ll hear just how it sounds.”

Johnnie had recognised his own scrawling handwriting on the envelope.

“You needn’t bother, Jim. It’s my last letter to the Governor, isn’t it? I know quite well what I said to him.”

But Jim Brandon had his own reasons for reading this letter aloud. He knew that he could make it tell more heavily by mere intonations of his voice.

“You know what you said, all right, I expect. But I doubt if you know just how you put it in words. Listen, now.”

And with slight touches of emphasis here and there he read out the letter, watching the effect as he accentuated the unintentional cruelty of the wording.

3rd August, 1924.

My Dear Father,

Thanks for your letter of Tuesday, which I have received. I am indeed very sorry if I have pained you in any way; for of course I had no intention of hurting your feelings in the slightest degree. But I still feel that no useful purpose would be served by my coming to London at the present juncture. It would merely be an extra expense for you, and you say you are short of money. I am afraid we shall all be hard up until I come of age and we can get matters put in better order.

Besides, I am working hard at present with Mr. Laxford, and he thinks it would be a grave mistake to interrupt my studies at this particular moment. I must get some real training in book-keeping and estate management generally, as soon as possible.

I think you do Mr. Laxford injustice by some of the things you say in your letter. He has, I am quite sure, never misrepresented matters to me, and I am convinced that he has been perfectly straightforward with us all. I see nothing wrong with the negotiations he has been conducting in the matter of the estate; and I think it is very bad policy to pick a quarrel with him, as you seem anxious to do.

I am sorry to disappoint you, and you know I am not finding fault with you; but the plain truth is that you were letting me grow up entirely without any proper education whatsoever; and it is only since Mr. Laxford took me in hand that I have learned anything about subjects which I ought to know, in view of my future. I owe him a great deal for that, all the more since he has not received the remuneration agreed upon between you.

You cannot expect me to break into my studies by rushing up to London every now and then. I must have some education. I should feel ashamed to go about, all my life, in utter ignorance of important things.

Your affectionate son,

Johnnie.

Jim Brandon folded up the letter deliberately, slipped it into its envelope, and replaced it in his pocket.

“Well, Johnnie? Hear how it reads? A bit sore on the poor old Governor’s feelings, eh? That cut about his not having paid Laxford, I think you might have left it out. And you needn’t have dragged in that about your education. These things sting, rather. I’m not defending his way of doing things. If a man’s left an income of thousands a year and manages to spend half as much again each year, he can’t expect much sympathy from his family on that account. Still, you needn’t bear a grudge over it, if I don’t. You’ll come out on velvet at the end of it all.”

“I don’t bear any grudge at all,” Johnnie protested frankly. “I’m downright sorry if I hurt the Governor’s feelings, really, Jim. I didn’t mean to. Only... I don’t think any good would come of my going up to town to see him.”

“Interrupt your valuable studies too much, eh?”

“Yes.”

The rather grudging tone of the reply gave the elder brother an opening.

“Then why,” he demanded, “did you go up to town not so long ago?”

Johnnie was plainly confused by this home-thrust. He bit his lip and busied himself with his gun.

“Who told you I was up in town?” he asked rather shamefacedly after a moment or two.

“My detective agency, of course: Messrs. Pry and Trailem... No expense spared.... As a matter of fact I was told by Laxford’s governess— what’s her name? Menteith, I think. Nice girl, that. It was she who let out that you’d been up in town with Laxford.”

“Oh, Una told you, did she?” said Johnnie rather blankly.

“If that’s her name. Well, it seems you spent a whole day in London not so long ago. And never looked near the Governor. How did you fill in your time?”

“We went to a show,” Johnnie admitted haltingly.

“Must have given you value for money, there, if you sat in it from ten in the morning until you had to sprint for your last train. What else did you do?”

Johnnie seemed to have some good reason for evading a discussion of his doings in London. Instead of answering the question, he took up fresh ground.

“I’m not your kiddie-brother now, Jim. It’s my own affair, how I spend my time.”