The Tall House Mystery (Musaicum Murder Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding

      CHAPTER 1

       Table of Contents

      THERE is no pleasanter place in London after dinner than the large central hall of the Carlton Club, with its comfortable armchairs and its little coffee tables, that suggest both privacy and gregariousness.

      For here a man may speak to a fellow-member without being introduced—perhaps because it has so large a number of young men among its members. Just now, the tables were almost empty. It was only a little past eight. Haliburton had dined early in that large dining-room where the portraits of Conservative statesmen look down tolerantly on morning-coats or full tails. Haliburton had had a friend, a saturnine, silent man called Tark, dining with him; and now Moy, a young solicitor, had dropped in for a few words.

      Haliburton was talking at the moment.

      "I think I'm a fatalist," he was saying. "Yes, on the whole, I think I am." He was a pleasant-faced young man, tall, thin, with a certain assured yet unhurried way with him which, some said, was due to the fact that he had never yet had to bestir himself for anything. He was the son of Haliburton, the banker, and grandson of Haliburton, the ship-owner, and through his mother alone had as an income what many would consider a handsome capital. He was Unionist member for some small country constituency until something better should be free.

      Moy was about the same age, around twenty-five; small of stature, quick and eager in eye and movement. Tark, the third man, struck such a different note that at first glance one would have taken him for a foreigner. Moy liked Haliburton, but he did not care for his companion, whom he had met in his company a couple of times lately. But, though he did not like Tark, Moy was interested in the man. For the young solicitor was writing a play in secret, and was keenly interested in finding characters for it. Haliburton, he had decided, was no earthly good to a writer. Rich. Easy going. Kindly...but this other, the chap with the name that suited him somehow—because it rhymed with shark probably, Moy decided—he might be very useful. He turned to him now.

      "You a fatalist too?" he asked. "But you can't be, or you wouldn't have fished Haliburton out of that weir as you did."

      Everyone in their little world knew that Tark's punt and Haliburton's canoe had collided on the Thames, and that, but for Tark's swimming powers, the House of Haliburton would have had no heir, for Haliburton could not swim. Somehow you wouldn't expect him to, Moy reflected. Haliburton would naturally count on a motor boat turning up, or a submarine nipping along, or a seaplane swooping to his assistance.

      "No." Tark's voice suggested that he had said all there was to say on the point. He was the most silent man that Moy had yet met.

      "A fatalist doesn't necessarily mean a man of inaction," Haliburton explained carefully.

      "He evidently struggled in the water!" Moy said with a laugh. Haliburton laughed too. Tark only gave a twist of his thin tight lips.

      What a pity that his play was not on the Inquisition, Moy thought. Tark would do so splendidly for one of the inquisitors; a man without feelings, but with plenty of intelligence. Or had Tark intelligence? He looked at the low forehead, the high set ears, the something about the whole face that suggested stone, or wood, and was not sure. But his suitability for the role of inquisitor seemed to fit better the longer he studied him. Yet Tark had never shown him any eagerness, any intensity of emotion, and an inquisitor must be capable of both. It must be something hidden deep down in the man. Unless his ideas of him were all wrong, Moy reflected.

      "Well." Moy roused himself from his discreet

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