the solitary, friend that he had in the world, namely Inspector J. Humphrey Bull of the C. I. D., was deliberately cutting him absolutely and incredibly dead, began to react on the dead fish in pink sauce in Mr. Pinkerton’s grey little stomach with the force of a wicked Channel crossing, the large voice of Sir Lionel Atwater rose.
“Dammit, Jeffrey, is she coming, or isn’t she? Am I expected to cool my heels the rest of the winter?”
And as the cuckoo sprang out of the Swiss clock on the chimney piece and sounded eight smooth notes, the inn door opened again and a young woman with hair the colour of ashy gold in a knot at the nape of her neck came in, in a camel’s-hair coat buttoned up under her pointed chin and a brown felt hat with a little red and green feather in the band. Mr. Pinkerton, his mind torn distressfully between so many things happening all at the same time, looked quickly from the delicate sun-tanned face to her silken ankles and neatly shod feet, and knew instantly that this was the American lady.
She stood there for a moment, her dark eyes meeting Jeffrey Atwater’s across the lounge. Storm warnings that even Mr. Pinkerton could sense went up like tiny flags in every eye in the room, and deepened the alarming purple behind the white walrus fangs of Sir Lionel Atwater. Lady Atwater hastily slipped another bit of biscuit to the old mouse under the sofa, and sat there, a little pale. Mr. Darcy Atwater’s face brightened. “I say!” he exclaimed; and turned quickly as his wife shot him a glance that Mr. Pinkerton could only describe as significant.
Then Jeffrey Atwater moved out to meet the girl. She could not, Mr. Pinkerton thought, be over twenty-two or three, if she was that; though he knew, of course, from the advertisements in the papers that she might be practically in her grave and still not look it.
“This is Mrs. Bruce, Mother,” Jeff Atwater said stiffly. “And my father, Sally. This is my sister-in-law, and this is Darcy.”
Mr. Pinkerton, staring in utter fascination from his place by the rubber plant, noticed that not one of them moved to shake hands with her, except Darcy Atwater—and one look from the big dark Welsh girl made that abortive in the extreme.
Sally Bruce, he decided, must have lived abroad a long time. She didn’t move her chewing gum to the other side of her mouth, because oddly enough she wasn’t chewing any, and she said, “How do you do,” in a slightly husky and very pleasant voice, Mr. Pinkerton thought, instead of “Pleased to meetcha,” in a loud nasal one.
Sir Lionel balanced his weight on his knuckles and made two amphibian attempts to rise. Pamela Atwater jumped up to help him. He shook her off angrily. “Dammit, Pamela, do you think I’m a cripple?” He did allow his wife to give him a hand nevertheless, and they stood there, the three of them, with Darcy Atwater flanking them, elongating his chin in sheepish embarrassment, a sort of embattled legion, facing the American divorcée and the son and heir of the house of Atwater whom she had got in her toils.
“We’ll go up,” Sir Lionel said briefly.
Sally Bruce glanced at Jeff Atwater. He smiled with one side of his mouth, but the sullen angry fire in his blue eyes and the set of his jaw worried Mr. Pinkerton. He felt himself suddenly glad that Inspector Bull was there, even if he was acting in such an extraordinary manner, calling himself Briscoe and not recognizing people that he knew very well.
Mr. Pinkerton cast a furtive sidelong glance at the Atwaters, climbing the steep narrow old stairs to the first floor, took the last cold gulp of his coffee and slipped out from his chair under the rubber tree. As he did so the deaf and dumb gentleman looked up anxiously. The man who had gone into the dining room came out and stood in front of the fire, making odd noises with his tongue in his teeth.
“Nasty weather we’re having,” he said amiably to Mr. Pinkerton.
The deaf and dumb gentleman got up, went across the lounge to the opposite staircase and hurried up.
The man in front of the fire tapped his forehead. “Funny bloke,” he said.
“He’s . . . he’s deaf and dumb,” Mr. Pinkerton volunteered, timidly. Then he blinked. This was even odder, now that he came to think about it. The man in front of the fire had brought the deaf and dumb gentleman to the inn the evening before, and yet neither of them had acted as if he’d ever seen the other.
“Too bad I’m not deaf, or some other people here aren’t a bit dumber,” the man said. Then he laughed as if he’d made a very good joke. “McPherson’s my name,” he added.
“Pinkerton is mine,” Mr. Pinkerton said. He edged toward his own staircase.
“Not the detective, what?” Mr. McPherson asked. “Ha, ha, ha! That’s rich. I used to be a Pinkerton man myself.”
“Oh, really,” Mr. Pinkerton said.
“In the States and Canada. That was a long time ago. I’m travelling in vacuum cleaners now. Aren’t wanting a nice up-to-date little machine to save wear and tear on the little woman and the carpets, what? Ha, ha, ha!”
Mr. Pinkerton had never liked to be laughed at, certainly not by a traveller in vacuum cleaners. He mustered his small grey dignity.
“I might, for my London house,” he said.
“Okay, brother,” Mr. McPherson replied cheerfully—the effect, Mr. Pinkerton presumed, of his days in the States. “Don’t want to miss up on any business these days. Stopping here long?”
“A day or so,” Mr. Pinkerton said nervously.
“Me too.”
Mr. Pinkerton edged closer to his stairs and scurried up them. At the top he glanced back. Mr. McPherson had moved quickly across to Mrs. Humpage’s office and was looking through the register—acting, Mr. Pinkerton thought, considerably more like a Pinkerton’s man than a traveller in sweepers.
Mr. Pinkerton shook his head. It really was most odd. In fact, the more he saw of the Old Angel and its guests, the odder the whole place appeared.
He gained his door and went in. The maid Kathleen was there, turning down his bed. She still looked pale and shaken, or so Mr. Pinkerton thought at first. Then, in a brief instant, he realized that she had not been turning down his bed for more than half a moment. She had been listening at the panel wall. Through it he could hear the sound of voices, not loud or violent—not, at any rate, except when Sir Lionel Atwater had the floor.
The girl folded the yellow rayon bedspread.
“I put your sheets on wrong side out, sir,” she said. “But I didn’t change them. It’s bad luck, and we don’t want any—not any more than we’ve got.”
Mr. Pinkerton blinked at her. The dead sound in her cheery little voice—“Kathleen’s a ray of sunlight in this old-world place, sir,” Mrs. Humpage had said—made him fairly shudder.
“Has . . . the other gentleman come, sir?” she asked suddenly.
“Mr. McPherson?” Mr. Pinkerton asked.
“Not him.” She said it almost contemptuously. “The Mr. Fleetwood that Mr. Atwater was telephoning to when they first came, sir. Oh, dear—that’s him now, I expect.”
Mr. Pinkerton could hear the bell in the lounge jangling violently.
“Oh, dear!” the girl said
