I returned spade and rake to the tool shed and left the kitchen garden.
There were no lights at the back of the entrance lodge. I found one door and two ground-level windows — it was a single-story building — and they were all locked. They would be. In that place everything would be locked, always.
But the garage wasn’t. Nobody was going to be so crazy as to make off with a couple of Rolls-Royces, even if they could have got past the electrically operated gate, which they couldn’t. The garage was fit match for the cars: the tool bench and equipment were the do-it-yourself devotee’s dream.
I ruined a couple of perfectly good wood chisels, but I had the catch slipped on one of the windows in a minute flat. It didn’t seem likely that they had burglar alarms fitted to a lodge, especially as there hadn’t even been an attempt made to fit half-circle thief-proof sash latches. But I took no chances, pulled the top window down and climbed in over it. When wiring a window the usual idea is to assume that the sneak-thief who breaks and enters is a slave to habit who pushes up the lower sash and crawls in under, apart from which the average electrician finds it much kinder on the shoulder muscles to wire at waist level instead of above the head. And in this case, I found, an average electrician had indeed been at work. The lodge was wired.
I didn’t drop down on top of any startled sleeper in a bedroom or knock over a row of pots and pans in the kitchen for the sufficient reason that I’d picked a room with frosted windows and it seemed a fair bet that that might be the bathroom. And so it was.
Out in the passageway I flicked my pencil light up and down. The lodge had been designed — if that was the word — with simplicity. The passage directly joined the back and front doors. Two small rooms opened off either side of the passage: that was all.
The room at the back opposite the bathroom proved to be the kitchen. Nothing there. I moved up the small passageway as softly as the squelching of my shoes would permit, picked the door on the left, turned the handle with milli-metric caution and moved soundlessly inside.
This was it. I closed the door behind me and moved softly in the direction of the deep regular breathing by the left hand wall. When I was about four feet away I switched on my pencil flash and shone it straight on the sleeper’s closed eyes.
He didn’t remain sleeping long, not with that concentrated beam on him. He woke as at the touch of a switch and half sat up in bed, propped on an elbow while a free hand tried to shade his dazzled eyes. I noticed that even when woken in the middle of the night he looked as if he’d just brushed that gleaming black hair ten seconds previously: I always woke up with mine looking like a half-dried mop, a replica of the current feminine urchin cut, the one achieved by a short-sighted lunatic armed with garden shears.
He didn’t try anything. He looked a tough, capable, sensible fellow who knew when and when not to try anything, and he knew that now was not the time. Not when he was almost blind.
“There’s a .32 behind this flash, Kennedy,” I said. “Where’s your gun?”
“What gun?” He didn’t sound scared because he wasn’t.
“Get up,” I ordered. The pyjamas, I was glad to see, weren’t maroon. I might have picked them myself. “Move over to the door.”
He moved. I reached under his pillow.
“This gun,” I said. A small grey automatic, I didn’t know the make. “Back to your bed and sit on it.”
Torch transferred to my left hand and the gun in the right, I made a quick sweep of the room. Only one window, with deep velvet wine curtains closed right across. I went to the door, switched on the overhead light, glanced down at the gun and slipped off the safety catch. The click was loud, precise and sounded as if it meant business. Kennedy said: “So you hadn’t a gun.”
“I’ve got one now.”
“It’s not loaded, friend.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said wearily. “You keep it under your pillow just so you can get oil stains all over the sheets? If this gun was empty you’d be at me like the Chatanooga Express. Whatever that is.”
I looked over the room. A friendly, masculine place, bare but comfortable, with a good carpet, not in the corn-belt class of the one in the general’s library, a couple of armchairs, a damask-covered table, small settee and glassed-in wall cupboard. I crossed over to the cupboard, opened it and took out a bottle of whisky and a couple of glasses. I looked at Kennedy. “With your permission, of course.”
“Funny man,” he said coldly.
I went ahead and poured myself a drink anyway. A big one. I needed it. It tasted just the way it ought to taste and all too seldom does. I watched Kennedy and he watched me.
“Who are you, friend?” he asked.
I’d forgotten that only about two inches of my face was visible. I turned down the collars of my oilskin and overcoat and took off my hat. My hat had become no better than a sponge, my hair was wet and plastered all over my head but for all that I don’t suppose it was any less red than normal. The tightening of Kennedy’s mouth, the suddenly still expressionless eyes told their own story.
“Talbot,” he said slowly. “John Talbot. The killer.”
“That’s me,” I agreed. “The killer.”
He sat very still, watching me. I suppose a dozen different thoughts must have been running through his mind, but none of them showed, he had as much expression in his face as a wooden Indian. But the brown intelligent eyes gave him away: he could not quite mask the hostility, the cold anger that showed in their depths.
“What do you want, Talbot? What are you doing here?”
“You mean, why am I not high-tailing it for the tall timber?”
“Why have you come back? They’ve had you locked up in the house, God knows why, since Tuesday evening. You’ve escaped, but you didn’t have to mow anyone down to escape or I would have heard of it. They probably don’t even know you’ve been away or I’d have heard of that too. But you’ve been away. You’ve been out in a boat, I can smell the sea off you and that’s a seaman’s oilskin you’ve got on. You’ve been out for a long time, you couldn’t be any wetter if you’d stood under a waterfall for half an hour. And then you come back. A killer, a wanted man. The whole set-up is screwy as hell.”
“Screwy as hell,” I agreed. The whisky was good, I was beginning to feel half-human for the first time in hours. A smart boy, this chauffeur, a boy who thought on his feet and thought fast. I went on: “Almost as screwy a set-up as this weird bunch you’re working for in this place.”
He said nothing, and I didn’t see why he should. In his place I don’t think I would have passed the time of day by discussing my employers with a passing murderer. I tried again.
“The general’s daughter, Miss Mary. She’s pretty much of a tramp, isn’t she?”
That got him. He was off the bed, eyes mad, fists balled into hard knots and was half-way towards me before he remembered the gun pointing straight at his chest. He said softly: “I’d love you to say that again, Talbot — without that gun in your hand.”
“That’s better,” I said approvingly. “Signs of life at last. Committing yourself to a definite opinion, you know the old saw about actions speaking louder than words. If I’d just asked you what Mary Ruthven was like you’d just have clammed up or told me go jump in the lake. I don’t think she’s a tramp either. I know she’s not. I think she’s a nice kid, a very fine girl indeed.”
“Sure you do.” His voice was bitter, but I could see the first shadows of puzzlement touching his eyes. “That’s why you scared the Me out of her that afternoon.”
“I’m sorry about that, sincerely sorry. But I had to do it, Kennedy, although not for the reasons that you or any of that murderous bunch up at the big house think.” I downed what was left of my whisky, looked at him for a long speculative moment, then tossed the gun across to him. “Suppose we talk? ”
It took him by surprise but he was quick, very quick. He fielded the gun neatly, looked at it, looked at me, hesitated, shrugged then smiled faintly. “I don’t suppose another couple of oil stains will do those sheets any harm.” He thrust the gun under the pillow, crossed to the table, poured himself a drink, filled up my glass and stood there waiting.