style="font-size:15px;"> “Craig’s speaking. Who have you been dining with tonight, Flaherty?”
“You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve called me up in the middle of the night,” began the annoyed Irishman, “to ask me who I’ve been dining with?”
“This is serious, Flaherty. I want to know.”
“Why, with Johnny, of course – Johnny Gray. I asked him to come to dinner.”
“What time did he leave you?”
“Nearer eleven than ten,” was the reply. “No, it was after eleven.”
“And he was with you all that time? He didn’t leave for a quarter of an hour?”
“Not for a quarter of a minute. We just talked and talked…”
Craig hung up the receiver and turned away from the instrument, shaking his head.
“Any other alibi would have hanged you, Johnny. But Flaherty’s the straightest man in the C.I.D.”
In view of what followed when Johnny reached his flat in the early hours of the morning, this testimony to the integrity of Inspector Flaherty seemed a little misguided.
“Nobody else been here?”
“No, sir,” said Parker.
“What did you do with the shirt I took off?”
“I cut off the cuffs and burnt them, sir. I did it with a greater pleasure, because the rounded corner cuff is just a little demode, if you do not mind my saying so, just a little – how shall I call it? – theatrical.”
“The rest of the shirt — ?”
“The rest of the shirt, sir,” said Parker deferentially, “I am wearing. It is rather warm to wear two shirts, but I could think of no other way of disposing of it, sir. Shall I put your bath ready?”
Johnny nodded.
“If you will forgive the impertinence, did you succeed in persuading the gentleman you were going to see, to support your statement?”
“Flaherty? Oh, yes. Flaherty owes me a lot. Good night, Parker.”
“Good night, sir. I hope you sleep well. Er – may I take that pistol out of your pocket, sir? It is spoiling the set of your trousers. Thank you very much.”
He took the Browning gingerly between his finger and thumb and laid it on Johnny’s writing-table.
“You don’t mind my being up a little late, sir?” he said. “I think I would like to clean this weapon before I retire.”
Chapter XVIII
Jeff Legge reclined in a long cane chair on a lawn which stretched to the edge of a cliff. Before him were the blue waters of the Channel, and the more gorgeous blue of an unflecked sky. He reached out his hand and took a glass that stood on the table by his side, sipped it with a wry face and called a name pettishly.
It was Lila who came running to his side.
“Take this stuff away, and bring me a whisky-and-soda,” he said.
“The doctor said you weren’t to have anything but lime juice. Oh, Jeff, you must do as he tells you,” she pleaded.
“I’ll break your head for you when I get up,” he snarled. “Do as you’re told. Where’s the governor?”
“He’s gone into the village to post some letters.”
He ruminated on this, and then:
“If that busy comes, you can tell him I’m too ill to be seen.”
“Who – Craig?”
“Yes,” he growled, “the dirty, twisting thief! Johnny would have been in boob for this if he hadn’t straightened Craig. If he didn’t drop a thousand to keep off the moor, I’m a dead man!”
She pulled up a low chair to his side.
“I don’t think Johnny did it,” she said. “The old man thinks it was Peter. The window was found open after. He could have come in by the fire-escape – he knows the way.”
He grumbled something under his breath, and very discreetly she did not press home her view.
“Where’s Marney – back with her father?”
She nodded.
“Who told him I was married to you?”
“I don’t know, Jeff,” she said.
“You liar! You told him; nobody else could have known. If I get ‘bird’ for this marriage, I’ll kill you, Lila. That’s twice you’ve squeaked on me.”
“I didn’t know what I was saying. I was half mad with worry.”
“I wish you’d gone the whole journey,” he said bitterly. “It isn’t the woman – I don’t care a damn about that. It’s the old man’s quarrel, and he’s got to get through with it. It’s the other business being disorganised that’s worrying me. Unless it’s running like clockwork, you’ll get a jam; and when you’ve got a jam, you collect a bigger crowd than I want to see looking at my operations. You didn’t squeak about that, I suppose?”
“No, Jeff, I didn’t know.”
“And that’s the reason you didn’t squeak, eh?”
He regarded her unfavourably. And now she turned on him.
“Listen, Jeff Legge. I’m a patient woman, up to a point, and I’ll stand for all your bad temper whilst you’re ill. But you’re living in a new age, Jeff, and you’d better wake up to the fact. All that Bill Sikes and Nancy stuff never did impress me. I’m no clinger. If you got really rough with me, I’d bat you, and that’s a fact. It may not be womanly, but it’s wise. I never did believe in the equality of the sexes, but no girl is the weaker vessel if she gets first grip of the kitchen poker.”
Very wisely he changed the subject.
“I suppose they searched the club from top to bottom?” he said.
“They did.”
“Did they look in the loft?”
“I believe they did. Stevens told me that they turned everything inside out.”
He grunted.
“They’re clever,” he said. “It must be wonderful to be clever. Who’s this?” He scowled across the lawn at a strange figure
