A Case in Camera
why the children had been put to bed while it was still broad day, but
he was not told that he might find the reason walking hand-in-hand under
the trees in Richmond Park.
It is no good asking whether Joan and Chummy were engaged. What is a
young woman's engagement nowadays? No doubt Joan's father had in his day
ceremoniously "waited upon" her maternal grandfather-elect and had "had
the honor" and so on, but Miss Joan always reminded me of the private
with the field-marshal's baton--she seemed to have come into the world
with a will of her own, a latch-key and her marriage-lines all
potentially complete. I remember she called an engagement an
"understanding." If by that word she meant what the Psalmist meant, she
certainly made haste with all her heart to get it.
Of course, Philip had sooner or later discovered what was going on under
his abused roof, and now knew all there was to be known about it. And it
must have occurred to him also that, with letters numbered "1," "2" and
"3" flying backwards and forwards all the time, any interruption of more
than a day or two would set Joan, away in Santon, Yorks, anxiously
wondering what was the matter.
You are now to see how far I was right in this.
VII
The lights he had switched on were a couple of standard lamps only, that
worked from plugs in the wall. Both had mignonette-colored shades, and
while one shade stood a-tilt near the syphon and glasses, the other
threw a soft light on Philip's little escritoire. As he sat the light
crossed his breast only, leaving his face in a half-transparent
obscurity. A few yards away the entrance to the studio made a dead black
oblong, so completely without trace of the evening light that must still
be lingering in the world outside that I judged that the dark-blue
roof-blinds were still drawn.
I suppose it was these roof-blinds, and Philip's apparent disinclination
to have them touched, that brought my surmises with regard to Monty
Rooke into my mind again. And somehow, back again under the roof where
the tragedy had happened, these surmises seemed to have grown a little
more threatening. Why this alteration of values should take place in me
I didn't know, but there it undeniably was, hovering (so to speak) in
the spaces above the unlighted chandelier, approaching as it were to the
very edge of the penumbra that crossed our host's breast, and
accumulated as in some dark power-house beyond the threshold of the
black studio doorway. And as this feeling grew on me lesser feelings
seemed by comparison to grow less still. My hastily-seized-on
explanation with regard to Joan seemed all at once insufficient. A shock
of some kind she would naturally receive; that was unavoidable in any
event; but what would be simpler than to write to her immediately, to
tell her what had been discovered since her departure, to promise to
send her daily bulletins, and to warn her that for the present, in the
absence of letters, these must suffice?
I didn't know to what extent I was supposed to be privy to the
Chummy-Smith-Joan-Merrow love affair, but in the circumstances I did not
let that trouble me. I just said what I thought. "She'll have to be told
some time or other," I finished by saying.
But for some reason or other he waved my words aside.
"Wouldn't do at all." His voice came from within the shade of the
mignonette-colored lamp. "Must think of something better than that."
"But she'll be expecting letters. And she won't get them. My way's much
the kindest. What's the objection?"
"Oh, heaps of objection," he answered evasively. "I don't know half of
'em myself yet."
On this I instantly fastened.
"Ah! Then you haven't seen the fellow yet you spoke of?"
I knew I had him. I could feel his mental wriggle.
"What fellow?"
"You said this morning it wasn't your affair, but somebody else's. The
fellow I mean is the somebody else."
He spoke slowly.
"Do you mean Rooke?"
"You didn't mention any name. I mean Rooke if it was Rooke."
This time we had to wait a long time for an answer, but at any rate it
cleared the air when it did come.
"It was Rooke. I don't remember very clearly exactly what I did say, but
I meant Rooke," he admitted.
"You say he's taken Mrs. Cunningham home. He's coming back, I suppose?"
With remarkable grimness Philip replied, "You bet he is."
"You mean you told him to?"
"Yes, and I told him to be pretty quick unless he wanted to drive me
crazy. I said I'd give him time for dinner at the Parrakeet, though. I
was waiting for him when you came in."
"Then--well, to put it plainly, do you want us to clear off?"
"No--at any rate wait a bit," he answered irresolutely. "I don't suppose
he'll be long now."
I don't know how much longer we should have continued to spar like this
had not Hubbard suddenly put a question. He had evidently been thinking
it over for some time, and he took care, with a preliminary "I say" and
a pause, that he had Esdaile's attention before putting it.
"I say," he said quietly, "about when you came up from below this
morning. Why did you want to brush Rooke's clothes?"
And that settled it. Esdaile began with one more "Did I?" but Hubbard
did not let him finish.
"Yes, you did," he cut him short. "It was the very first thing you did.
And he jumped back when you tried to touch him. Why?"
There was no further attempt at prevarication. Without even taking the
trouble to rise, Esdaile pushed back the lamp, opened the upper drawer
of the escritoire as he sat, and from the corner of it drew out and
placed on the table a 7.65 mm. Webley and Scott automatic pistol.
VIII
Honestly, I don't know whether I was surprised or not. On the whole I
hardly think I was. If he had produced another candlestick or jar of
liqueur I think I should have felt like getting up and walking out; but
here at last was something on the fuller scale. Thank heaven, we had
done with broken glass and sweeping-brushes and dark blue linen blinds.
We might now hope to get a little farther.
For a pistol is a pistol at all times and all the world over. No other
weapon has quite so exclusively sinister a meaning. Among the honorable
swords and rifles of war it is a low and sneaking thing, and in
peace-time an Apache's tool, something for the common garrotter to
shoot through his pocket with. Its proper place was the Criminal Museum
at Scotland Yard, not in a decent artist's studio.
So Philip put the revolting thing on his desk, and for a moment we sat
looking at its roughened grip, black as crape, and the glossy blackness
of the rest of it. Then without a word Hubbard took it up, glanced at
the safety-catch and slid back the breach. A cartridge lay ready in the
chamber. Then he withdrew the magazine. Six nickel steel bullets showed
through the perforations of the clip. The capacity of the W. & S. 7.65
is eight shots. One shot had therefore been fired.
Hubbard replaced the pistol on the desk.
"And where did _that_ come from?" he asked with pursed lips.
Philip shrugged his shoulders. Somehow the answer was "Rooke" as plainly
as if he had spoken the name.
"And where did he get it?"
"Up there." Philip's eyes made the slightest of turns up towards the
ceiling.
"From one of those two fellows?"
"I suppose so."
"How do you mean, you 'suppose' so? Don't you know?"
"I'm not perfectly sure yet. You see, just at that moment Audrey
Cunningham came in, and it isn't the kind of thing you discuss with
women there. I thought she'd gone, or I should have waited a bit."
"Well, don't you think it's time you told us a little more now?"
This is the narrative that followed, with that beastly object still
lying there in the silky light of the mignonette-shaded lamp.
IX
At first Monty had tried to get out of it by saying it was the keys.
Esdaile's is not a modern house; its keys are not of the Yale kind, of
which you can carry a dozen in one pocket; each of them is anything from
three to five inches long, and they weigh very few to the pound. In
handing over the house to Monty, Philip had given him eight or ten of
these; and so at first (Esdaile said) Rooke had wanted to say it was the
keys.
"I don't mean the keys," Philip had replied. "I mean the pocket on the
other side that you're nursing as if it had eggs in it. Why have you
been standing sideways and behind people all this time? And why did you
jump when I wanted to give you a dust-down this morning?"
Esdaile's face became animated as at last he warmed up to it all. He
spoke almost vehemently.
"You see," he said, "I wasn't going to have any more damned nonsense. I
had quite enough of that--hours of it--all this that I'm telling you
took place just after tea. So I was as short as you please. Pity I spoke
quite so soon, but I really thought Audrey'd gone. And the idiot hadn't
even put the safety-catch on," he added with disgust.
There was no need to urge him now. He was as resolved to tell his story
as before he had been reticent. The only unfortunate thing was that
until Monty should return he had so little to tell.
"So when he saw the key story wouldn't do he fetched out this pretty
little article," he continued, rapping with his knuckle on the
writing-desk. "Just like a kid caught stealing apples he was. I asked
him where he got it, and he said on the roof. Then he told me all about
you fellows going up into the bathroom, and how he'd been the one to
crawl along the gutter because he doesn't weigh as much as either of
you."
"But which of 'em gave it to him--Chummy or the other man?" Hubbard
asked.
"Well, I'm not so sure that either of them really 'gave' it to him,"
Esdaile replied. "He began to be a bit of a mule when I pressed him
about that. And of course I asked Monty all this before I knew it was
Chummy at all, and Monty doesn't know that yet, though I don't think he
ever met Chummy. No, as far as I can make out, the pistol was lying on
the roof, just out of Chummy's reach, and he kept pointing to it--moving
his hand like this."
The gesture Esdaile made was the very gesture I had seen Mr. Harry
Westbury make in the Saloon Bar earlier in the day.
"So he just picked it up and put it into his pocket?"
"Just that. Simple, isn't it?"
"And it's been fired?"
"As you see."
"Innocent young man. What did he do during the War?"
"Camouflage," Esdaile replied. "In Kensington Gardens there. Imitation
haystacks and dummy O.P. trees and gunpit-screens and painting tanks and
so on. Making anything look like what it isn't. Just what he would do."
"Does he know this thing's been fired?"
"That I can't tell you. Audrey came in then."
And that was the answer to all our further questions--Audrey had then
come in. Esdaile had as a matter of fact now told us all that had taken
place between himself and Monty Rooke. For further information we must
wait until Monty's return.
You may imagine, however, that I had now quite a lot of food for
thought. In the first place, Rooke had taken it upon himself to conceal
a highly material fact from the police. Whether Esdaile yet shared this
responsibility was at present debatable. Audrey Cunningham's
interruption half-way through Monty's story rather obscured the moral
aspect of this last. One does not set weighty machinery going for
trifles, and for all we knew Monty, when he arrived, might have a
complete explanation. In the meantime Esdaile was probably wise to hold
his hand.
A pistol, however, had undoubtedly been fired, and, as a further
examination of the barrel showed, probably recently. And, if you
remember, there was that small round hole in the starred roof-glass of