"They may be very heavy sleepers," I tried, fully aware of the inanity of
my suggestion.
Jervaise laughed unpleasantly, a nasty hoot of derision. "Don't be a
damned fool," he said. "The human being isn't born who could sleep through
that hullabaloo."
I relinquished that argument as hopeless, and having no other at the
moment, essayed a weak reprisal. "Well, what's your explanation?" I asked
in the tone of one ready to discount any possible explanation he might
have to make.
"It's obvious," he returned. "There can be only one. They were expecting
us."
"Do you mean that Miss Banks was deliberately lying to us all the time?" I
challenged him with some heat.
"Why that?" he asked.
"Well, if she were expecting us..."
"Which she never denied."
"And had warned all her people..."
"As she had a perfect right to do."
"It makes her out a liar, in effect," I protested. "I mean, she implied,
if she didn't actually state, that she knew nothing whatever of your
sister's movements."
"Which may have been true," he remarked in the complacent tone of one who
waits to formulate an unimpeachable theory.
"Good Lord! How?" I asked.
"Brenda may have been expected and not have arrived," he explained,
condescending, at last, to point out all the obvious inferences I had
missed. "In which case, my friend, Miss Banks's _suppressio veri_ was, in
my judgment, quite venial. Indeed, she was, if the facts are, as I
suppose, perfectly honest in her surprise. Let us assume that she had
arranged to let Brenda in, at say twelve-thirty, and having her father and
mother under her thumb, had warned them to take no notice if Racquet
started his cursed shindy in the middle of the night. The servant may have
been told that Mr. Arthur might be coming. You will notice, also, that
Miss Banks had not, at one-thirty, gone to bed, although we may infer that
she had undressed. Furthermore, it is a fair assumption that she saw us
coming, and having, by then given up, it may be, any hope of seeing
Brenda, she was, no doubt, considerably at a loss to account for our
presence. Now, does that or does it not cover the facts, and does it
acquit Miss Banks of the charge of perjury?"
I was forced, something reluctantly, to concede an element of probability
in his inferences, although his argument following the legal tradition was
based on a kind of average law of human motive and took no account of
personal peculiarities. He did not try to consider what Anne would do in
certain circumstances, but what would be done by that vaguely-conceived
hermaphrodite who figures in the Law Courts and elsewhere as "Anyone." I
could hear Jervaise saying, "I ask you, gentlemen, what would you have
done, what would Anyone have done in such a case as this?"
"Hm!" I commented, and added, "It still makes Miss Banks appear
rather--double-faced."
"Can't see it," Jervaise replied. "Put yourself in her place and see how
it works!"
"Oh! Lord!" I murmured, struck by the grotesque idea of Jervaise
attempting to see life through the eyes of Anne. Imagine a rhinoceros
thinking itself into the experiences of a skylark!
Jervaise bored ahead, taking no notice of my interruption. "Assuming for
the moment the general probability of my theory," he said, "mayn't we
hazard the further assumption that Brenda was going to the farm in the
first instance to meet Banks? His sister, we will suppose, being willing
to sanction such a more or less chaperoned assignation. Then, when the
pair didn't turn up, she guesses that the meeting is off for some reason
or another, but obviously her friendship for Brenda--to say nothing of
loyalty to her brother--would make her conceal the fact of the proposed
assignation from us. Would you call that being 'double-faced'? I
shouldn't."
"Oh! yes; it's all very reasonable," I agreed petulantly. "But how does it
affect the immediate situation? Do you, for instance, expect to find your
sister at home when we get back?"
"I do," assented Jervaise definitely. "I believe that Miss Banks had some
good reason for being so sure that we should find her there."
I am not really pig-headed. I may not give way gracefully to such an
opponent as Jervaise, but I do not stupidly persist in a personal opinion
through sheer obstinacy. And up to Jervaise's last statement, his general
deductions were, I admitted to myself, not only within the bounds of
probability but, also, within distance of affording a tolerable
explanation of Anne's diplomacy during our interview. But--and I secretly
congratulated myself on having exercised a subtler intuition in this one
particular, at least--I did not believe that Anne expected us to find
Brenda at the Hall on our return. I remembered that anxious pucker of the
brow and the pathetic insistence on the belief--or might it not better be
described as a hope?--that Brenda had done nothing final.
"You haven't made a bad case," I conceded; "but I differ as to your last
inference."
"You don't think we shall find Brenda at home?"
"I do not," I replied aggressively.
I expected him to bear me down under a new weight of argument founded on
the psychology of Anyone, and I was startled when he suddenly dropped the
lawyer and let out a whole-hearted "Damnation," that had a ring of fine
sincerity.