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He accompanied the baffled manager, and behind the closed door:

"This is a very old house, isn't it, Mr. Cravel?"

The manager forced a smile. "The minds of the police seem to run on secret passages. Was it to discover that that you got your search warrant?"

"Mine doesn't run at all, it is walking just now," replied the officer. "But it is a very old house?"

"Goes back to Tudor days; some parts are older," said Cravel, wondering what was coming next.

Why had the police taken their departure? Why was he being questioned now? "Will you tell me what brought you here?" he asked.

"I have in my mind the death of Mr. Joshua Monkford." The officer spoke slowly, and he fixed Cravel with a glance. "It has suddenly puzzled the Berkshire police as much as it has puzzled Scotland Yard, and I am wondering whether you would care to make any statement on the matter."

"Am I under arrest?" asked Cravel quickly.

The inspector shook his head.

"No, you're not under arrest. You are not even being detained. I am asking you in the most friendly way."

Cravel had recovered his nerve by now.

"I have been questioned before and I have given all the explanations which have occurred to me," he said shortly.

The inspector hesitated.

"Of course, if a man had anything to do with the killing— not a vital part, mind you, Mr. Cravel— it wouldn't be a bad idea for him to turn King's evidence— that is, State's evidence. A man who did that might escape the worst punishment."

Cravel laughed. Really, there were times when the police were childish.

"I suppose you realize that you are suggesting that a respectable property owner of Berkshire has been guilty of a cruel and wicked murder?" he said deliberately. "You have no illusions on that point, Inspector?"

"None whatever," said the other.

He seemed at a loss as to how he should proceed, and when he resumed, it was to ask seemingly pointless questions about the number of guests that were entertained at the hotel in the course of the year. There was some object in this laborious cross-examination, and for the life of him Cravel could not guess what it was. For a quarter of an hour he was plied with stupid questions which could have no bearing upon the matter which was uppermost in his mind, and it was only toward the end that the examination became vital.

"I have information that Inspector Long and Detective-Sergeant Rouch came to this hotel this morning. What happened to them?"

"They went away again," said Cravel coolly. "Mr. Long is not a good friend of mine and suspects me of all sorts of trickery which I should never stoop to perform. Apparently, the secretary of Miss Revelstoke, a very good friend of mine, disappeared last night from a nursing home, and because he knew," he cleared his throat, "that I was interested in the young lady, he came down at five o'clock in the morning and stayed about a quarter of an hour. I haven't seen him since," he added truthfully.

"He drove away, did he?"

"He had a car, so he didn't walk," said the other sarcastically.

There was a knock, and the inspector got up and opened the door, and held a whispered colloquy with his subordinate.

"All right, Mr. Cravel, that's about all I want to know," he said. "I'm going now."

They went down into the hall again, and, to Cravel's unspeakable relief, the police car drove off with its phlegmatic passengers.

Now he had time to think clearly. First Betcher Long and now the girl had vanished into thin air. There was danger for him, big danger. He had got to the place where "Sauve qui peut" was a good family motto.

There was a little mahogany desk in his sitting room, and in the lower steel-lined drawer a cash box. He took this out and opened it; it was filled to the top with American bills, and these he laid on the table. From his current cash box he extracted a handful of English bank and treasury notes, and this done, he went into the room where he had left the girl and changed quickly into a tweed suit. His powerful car was garaged at the hotel, and his plans were already made. Week by week for three years he had ticked off the sailings of the liners that go out of Genoa to New York, and he had an American passport brought up to date.

Clay Shelton's amusement had been the forging of passports, and there was not one member of the gang who had not the necessary documents to take him into safety when real danger threatened. And real danger was here.

He heard a quick step in the hall, ran into the dining room, and swept the money into his pocket, and when the key turned in the lock and Alice Cravel came in, there was no evidence of the hasty departure he contemplated.

"The police have been here."

"I met them on the road," she said. "They stopped me and asked me a lot of foolish questions. They didn't say a word about Long or the girl. Where are they?"

He shrugged.

"God knows!" he said.

She looked at him in amazement.

"They're not here?"

"So far as I know, they are not here."

"Where are the others? Have they taken the girl with them?" she asked.

He smiled.

"You had better ask them," he said, and her glance was full of suspicion.

Then slowly she began to understand.

"They got away with her: I saw the ambulance on the Sunningdale Road ten minutes ago," she said. "I'd have stopped it, but I wasn't sure."

It was his turn to be astonished.

"The ambulance? Which way was it going?"

"Toward London."

He ran his fingers through his coarse hair, bewilderment in his face. Events had passed beyond his understanding.

"So far as I know, she was not in the ambulance, unless they came back while the police were here and smuggled her away. I had thought of that possibility."

In a few words he told her what had happened.

"And Betcher Long?"

He groaned.

"Don't ask me about Betcher Long. I tell you we dropped him, and he ought to be killed, but he wasn't."

"I want to see the room where he dropped," she said, and, wearily, he accompanied her to Monkford's suite.

"There's the hole and that's where he dropped, and if that isn't enough to kill a man, I don't know what is. I never dreamt he'd fall for it, but the sight of the girl threw him off his balance."

She looked down. The corners of the pit were scaffold poles; there were cross-supports to keep the scaffolding in place at three points.

"He may have struck those," she pointed, "and been thrown into one of the rooms down below."

"It couldn't have been on the ground floor, because the builders have boarded it in. If it happened at all it must have been in No. 3, and the police searched No. 3. Besides, he'd be knocked out. No, the thing is a mystery and I'm not going to attempt to solve it."

"Where are you going?" She looked at his unusual costume.

"Going to town," he said evasively. "There are one or two things I have to do."

"You're quitting!" she nodded accusingly.

"Don't be a fool," he said roughly. "Why should I quit?"

"Who else should quit but you?" she demanded. "Who has more to lose? Who is deeper in the mud and blood of this rotten graft than you? What did you do to Rouch?"

He made no answer.

"You clubbed him, and you are thinking this moment that he's in the river under Long's car by Runnymede Meadows. He's not!"

The man glared at her.

"He's not?" he said in a hushed voice. "Who told you?"

"He's alive, and wasn't in the car when you turned it into the river. He dropped out near Sunningdale level crossing; he must have recovered."

A dead silence, and then:

"How do you know?" he asked.

"The garage man at Sunningdale told me when I got back there— that is why I have returned," she said. "Rouch went there to telephone to the Berkshire police. You fool, that is why they came! Why else, did you think?"

Cravel put his hand up to his bloodless lips.

He raised his eyes slowly to hers.

"You've got money, haven't you?"

"I've enough money to last, yes," she replied.

"You'd better get out of England the best way you can."

"Do you know— any 'best way'?" asked the girl, her dark eyes regarding him gravely.

"What do you mean?"

"What is the best way out for a mouse when the cat is playing with it?" she asked. "For that is where we are."

He glanced round nervously.

"You'd better get them on the 'phone and warn them."

"I've already been on the 'phone in the hall," she said. "And to whom do you think I spoke? A police officer at the exchange. Get out of England!" she mocked him. "There is only one way out for you, Sonny, and that is the way Jackie went."

He dropped his eyes before hers. Now he pretended no more.

"I had to do it," he said in a low voice. "You know."

"I know," she nodded, "but it is the only way out for you. Where are you going?"

"I'm going round to get my car."

"Shall I tell you how far you'll travel in your car?" she asked, her hands upon her hips, standing with her back from the door.

"See here, what do you know?" he asked.

"I know there are two Berkshire policemen at each gate, and one of them is a motor-cyclist. There's no more chance of getting away from Heartsease than of getting away from hell!" she said.

She left him, a broken, fearful man, and he sat at the table biting his nails, turning over and over the might-have-beens of yesterday, and he was so planning and so rejecting each plan as fast as it was made when a voice called him from the corridor outside, and he reeled to his feet, and, flinging open the door, came face to face with Betcher Long!

Chapter 42

TWO narrow strips of plaster held a small square of lint on his forehead, but beyond that and the discolouration he could see extending past the dressing, he bore no marks of a fall. In manner and flippancy it was the old Betcher Long.

"Talking about bodies," he said, "you're the worst morgue keeper ever! Had a talk with my Berkshire rival, didn't you— Inspector Thingummy from Windsor? A good fellow, but short on ideas. How does that King's evidence scheme strike you?"

The man recovered his speech at last.

"Where did you come from—!

"'Baby dear," completed Betcher. "'Out of the everywhere into here!' And if you want to know where the 'everywhere' is, I'll tell you. It is in No. 3. And maybe I'd have died there, but the goodest of all the good Samaritans happened to be on the spot."

"Where is Nora?"

"Miss Sanders, I think you mean. She is on her way to London. What a stupid oaf you are, Cravel! Why do you imagine the inspector took you up to your room and kept you engaged in conversation for the best part of a quarter of an hour? We were getting Miss Sanders away from the house. My friend borrowed your pass-key very early in the morning, and I seized the opportunity while you were downstairs of making an inspection of your room. I'm rather glad you did not come up then, or I should have taken a course which would have defeated the ends of justice. In other words, I should have broken your neck. You know why I'm here now?"

"I can guess it," said Cravel.

He was quite calm now. Fear had dropped from him like a cloak in the presence of real danger.

"I have come to give you a faint chance. I can promise you nothing," said Betcher Long. "I want to know how Monkford was killed, and if you were not instrumental in his death, then you've a chance."

"If I turn State's evidence!" sneered the man. "And do you think, for one minute, knowing all you do, that I'm the sort of man to squeal on my friends?"

He considered for a while.

"So you had the pass-key? I didn't miss it until that damned inspector sent me down to get the key of No. 3."

"And it was while you were looking for it that I opened No. 3 from the inside and revealed myself to the astounded constabulary," said Betcher. "You will remember that the Berkshire man came in alone to search the room. He did that because he knew that there were three people hidden there, and it also gave me an opportunity of telling him what I wanted him to do."

"Where is my sister?" asked Cravel suddenly.

"She has gone away with a friend of mine."

"Arrested?" he asked quickly.

Betcher nodded. "I think she will get off, but I rather fancy she will be the only one. Jackson Crayley might have escaped, too, but you anticipated the course of the law, judged and executed him. That was diabolical, Cravel— a most evil deed."

Cravel did not meet the stern eyes of the detective; he was looking down at the ground. Betcher saw the patch of red come back to his face, but it was not the red of shame. Suddenly he looked up.

"You want to know how Monkford was killed, and I suppose the best thing I can do in the circumstances is to tell you."

"Did you shoot him?"

"No, I didn't shoot him."

"Did any of the others?"

"No." Again he shook his head. "He shot himself." And seeing the unbelieving smile: "He shot himself, I tell you."

"No weapon was found."

"The weapon was found," said Cravel, "only you didn't know it when you had it in your hand. You want to know?"

Betcher pointed to the door and the man walked out.

"I'll borrow that pass-key of mine," he said, and the detective handing him the key, he opened the door of Monkford's bedroom.

Cravel glanced at the yawning hole in the floor and smiled crookedly.

"You want to keep away from that hole; we nearly had an accident there this morning," he said, and Betcher Long, whose sense of humour was never entirely suppressed, could appreciate the humour of the man he intended hanging.