The Immediate Results
As she took short cuts across the lawns, Vera kept a sharp look-out;
but no one was in sight. She had expected this; for if anyone had been
in the vicinity of the Maze they would assuredly have been attracted
by Howard’s shouts for assistance. She wasted no time in seeking in
the gardens for help, but hurried at her best speed to the house,
where she could at least get in touch with the police by means of the
telephone.
When, breathless with the last spurt she had made, she entered the
hall, she found it empty. The whole place seemed deserted and silent.
For a moment she thought of searching from room to room; but she
changed her mind almost immediately.
“I must keep my head,” she impressed on herself. “I know nothing about
the servants’ quarters and I’d lose time if I begin hunting. That last
sprint took it out of me; and I’m not fit to rush about. Someone else
must do that instead.”
She passed into the nearest room and rang the bell, keeping her finger
pressed down on the button.
“That ought to bring them quick enough.”
In a few moments she heard steps, and one of the maids appeared. The
sight of her amazed face reminded Vera of the picture she herself must
present: dishevelled, breathless, and without shoes on her feet.
“Are there any men in the house, Shelton? Quick, don’t waste time.”
The maid stared at the haggard girl before her as though in this
strange figure she could hardly recognise the cool and graceful Miss
Forrest of normal life.
“What’s come to you, miss?” she asked, without replying to the
question.
“Mr. Shandon’s been murdered. Is Mr. Stenness here, or Mr. Hawkhurst?
Or anyone else? Go and find them immediately, if they’re anywhere
about.”
Then, as the girl still seemed dazed by the news:
“Can’t you do as I tell you? Hurry! There’s no time to lose.”
A picture rose in her mind of the murderer returning to the Maze and
coming upon the defenceless Howard. Unlikely, of course, but after
this afternoon she would be slow to call anything unlikely. The maid’s
slowness irritated her overwrought nerves.
“_Will_ you go?”
But by this time the idea of murder had penetrated the dull mind of
Shelton and produced a reaction which Vera had not foreseen.
“Mr. Shandon murdered, and the man creeping about the place! I’d never
dare to go out of this room, miss. He might be in the hall now,
waiting for me. Oh, oh!”
Her voice rose in hysteria. Vera looked at her wearily.
“Want to scream, Shelton? Perhaps it’s the easiest way after all. I’d
have done it myself if I’d had any breath left. Come along with me.”
And taking the hysterical girl with her, she made her way to the front
door.
“Now scream as loud as you like.”
Shelton had not waited for the suggestion. Already she was shrieking
at the top of her voice.
“Anybody in the house or near it ought to hear that,” Vera said to
herself contentedly, as Shelton continued to screech. “Now, that’ll
do. Will you be quiet? I want to listen if anyone has heard you.”
It proved more difficult to stop the outcry than it had been to start
it. The screams passed into a serious attack of hysteria. But they had
served their purpose. From the back of the house appeared two
panic-stricken maids, while almost simultaneously Stenness, the
secretary, hurried down the main staircase.
“Thank goodness, a man at last!” Vera said, in relief.
Handing over the hysterical Shelton to the care of the other maids,
she led Stenness into the nearest room and gave him the state of
affairs in the fewest words. He listened intently without interrupting
her with a single question. From his unruffled manner, one might have
supposed that murders were all in the day’s work. And his calmness had
the effect of soothing Vera’s nerves, which had been jarred afresh by
the maid’s outbreak. When she had completed her narrative he nodded in
comprehension and left the room for a few moments. On his return he
had a tumbler in his hand.
“Drink this, Miss Forrest. You’ll need something to pull you together.
I’ve sent one of the maids to ring the bell in the stable-yard.
That’ll bring up a couple of gardeners fairly soon. They’ll think it’s
a fire, you know.”
He persuaded her to sit down, then went to the bell and rang it. It
was some time before any answer was made; and finally Shelton and
another maid appeared together, evidently clinging to each other for
company.
“Go up and get fresh shoes and stockings for Miss Forrest. Can’t you
see she needs them?”
When the two girls had gone he turned to Vera.
“Nothing like making them do something, otherwise we’d have the whole
lot down with their nerves.”
He glanced at his wrist-watch, and seemed to be making some rather
intricate mental calculation which dissatisfied him.
“You’ll be safe enough here, Miss Forrest. I must get off to telephone
for the police and put them on the alert. Then I’ll go down and get
Mr. Torrance out of the Maze. You want nothing else?”
Vera made a negative gesture, and he hurried out of the room. The
telephone occupied him for only a very short time; and in a few
minutes Vera, through the window, saw him setting off in the direction
of the Maze, accompanied by one of the gardeners. Both, she noticed,
were armed with shot-guns. She began to admire the efficiency of
Stenness. Hitherto she had looked upon him as the sort of man whose
life was spent in pure routine; and it was a mild surprise to find how
competently he had risen to this emergency. He had wasted neither
words nor time; everything essential had been done without hesitation.
He had even noticed her feet and had thought of sending for shoes and
stockings for her.
When the maids brought her fresh outfit she took the opportunity of
questioning them.
“Was Mr. Stenness the only man in the house when I came back?”
“Yes, miss. Miss Sylvia took her uncle away with her in the car—Mr.
Ernest, I mean. And Mr. Neville went out of the house before poor Mr.
Shandon did. And Mr. Hawkhurst, he went out quite early on. I saw him
passing the window with his air-gun in his hand.”
Vera had ceased to listen. The word “air-gun” had linked up in her
mind with the memory of the dull concussions which she had heard in
the Maze. That was the noise she had heard—the dull report of an
air-rifle! And the metallic rasping was the grating of the spring as
the murderer recharged his weapon. But the recognition of the noises
left her even more perplexed.
“Of course, one can kill a rabbit with an air-gun; but one couldn’t
kill a man with it even at close-range. And yet I’m certain it was an
air-gun that I heard. I’d have recognised it at once if it hadn’t been
that I was so shaken up by the way things happened.”
She puzzled over the problem for a time without success; and at last
dismissed it from her mind and began to make arrangements which she
thought might be necessary when the men returned to the house.
Meanwhile Stenness, accompanied by the gardener, had made his way to
the Maze. As they came in sight of it, they saw the figure of Howard
Torrance emerge from one of the entrances and gaze in their direction.
Recognising the secretary, he came rapidly towards them.
“Seen Miss Forrest, Stenness?” he demanded as soon as he reached
speaking distance. “Is she all right?”
“She fetched us,” Stenness explained. “She’s completely done in, of
course. That’s natural. But I don’t think she’ll come to any harm. I
left two maids with her, just in case; though it looked more as if the
maids would collapse before she did.”
Howard nodded without replying, and Stenness continued:
“We’d better get into the Maze now and stand guard over the body till
the police turn up. They’ll be here shortly.”
Howard hesitated a moment.
“Sure you know how to get about in that Maze, Stenness? You won’t get
tangled up? Got bogged in it myself once already. No desire to have
another dose, you know.”
“There’s no danger of that. Both Skene and I know every inch of it. He
cuts the hedges.”
This seemed to allay Howard’s doubts, and he led the way to the
entrance. But here Stenness displaced him.
“I’ll take the lead, I think. I know the path. Besides, one never can
tell. Somebody may be in there yet.”
He tapped his shot-gun in explanation of his full meaning, and Howard
acquiesced.
“Right! In you go!”
They entered the labyrinth, Stenness in advance with his gun ready,
Howard and the armed gardener bringing up the rear. For a minute or
two they walked in silence along the intricate corridors, Stenness
taking turning after turning without the slightest hesitation.
“I wish I had had the thing by heart as he seems to have,” Howard
reflected, as he noted the easy way in which the secretary seemed to
hold to his route. “It would have been a different business, then.”
All at once, Stenness halted abruptly and made a gesture of caution to
his companions. His quick ears had caught something which they had
missed.
“There’s somebody moving in the next corridor,” he whispered. “Wait
here. I’ll fix him.”
With his gun ready he stepped suddenly round the corner of the alley
and immediately they heard his curt command:
“Hands up!”
When they in turn had rounded the corner they found the secretary
covering with his shot-gun an unattractive stranger. The reddish hair,
the ugly mouth, made worse by a ragged and untidy moustache, the
peculiar vulpine expression, and the flashy clothes, all combined to
produce a bad impression even at the first glance. As he stood, hands
in air, in front of Stenness’s gun, his eyes wandered from one face to
another with something of the expression of a rat at bay.
“Run over this fellow, Torrance,” said the secretary. “He may be
armed.”
Howard searched the man methodically and extracted from one pocket a
heavy automatic pistol. Beyond that, the man had no other weapon.
“See if it’s been fired,” suggested Stenness.
“Fully loaded, and hasn’t been fired,” Howard reported.
“Good! Now, my man, how do you come to be here?”
“I was rowing on the river; and as I was coming near here, I heard
someone yelling blue murder, so I came up. What would you have done,
eh? Kept away, I expect. Then I came inside this monkey-puzzle to give
a hand. And I’ve stuck here ever since. That satisfy you?”
“Nothing to do with me. The police will be here shortly. You can
explain to them. Meanwhile, you’ll come along with us. Skene, take
charge of this fellow. If he tries to run, empty your gun into his
legs. Now come along.”
Again taking the van, Stenness continued on his way, and in a very
short time he brought them to one of the centres of the Maze.
Howard Torrance followed him into the tiny precinct; but his first
glance led him to protest.
“This isn’t the place where I found the body. It must be in the other
centre.”
Stenness’s shoulders blocked the view for a moment; but almost at once
he stepped aside.
“There’s a body here, at any rate,” he said, going forward as he
spoke. “It’s Roger Shandon.”
“Roger!” exclaimed Howard in blank surprise. “It was Neville Shandon’s
body that I found.”
“Then they’ve both been murdered,” Stenness pointed out coldly.
“That’s obvious.”
“But what I heard sounded like a single attack,” protested Howard.
Stenness shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s for the police to explain,” he said. “No use barking yourself
when you keep a dog.”
He went forward and covered the face of the body with his
handkerchief.
“It’s Roger, obviously; and stone dead. Nothing more to do here. Let’s
try the other centre next. Skene, you needn’t come. Keep your eye on
this fellow till we come back.”
He led Howard through the alleys once more and in a short time they
entered the second centre of the Maze.
“This is Neville Shandon, true enough,” the secretary reported. The
identification had taken longer, since the body lay on its face.
“Mustn’t disturb anything, Torrance. The police may be able to make
something out of it if we leave things alone.”
He rose from his knees and mechanically dusted his trousers as he
spoke. Howard was struck by the extraordinary matter-of-fact way in
which Stenness had treated the whole affair. One might have expected
some sign of emotion, surprise at the very least; but Stenness had
gone through the whole business without showing the slightest
disturbance. But as Howard reflected on the matter, he was forced to
admit that, after all, it was much what one might have anticipated.
Stenness, he remembered, had always been chary of showing any emotion
whatever. Probably this was just a case of carrying the normal to an
extreme where it became noticeable. Stenness, doubtless, took a pride
in that mask of coolness.
The secretary stooped for a moment over Neville Shandon’s body and
examined the left hand which lay clenched on the grass.
“There’s a piece of paper there. It looks as if it had been wrenched
out of his hand and a scrap left in his grip. Let’s see what one can
make of it without touching it.”
He knelt down and scrutinised the fragment painfully.
“Some of his notes on the Hackleton case, perhaps. I can read
‘Hackl . . .’ on it plain enough.”
Howard did not trouble to look at the paper at close range.
“What do you make of it?” he demanded, as the secretary rose to his
feet again.
“I? Nothing much. It might be someone trying to put Neville Shandon
out of business while the Hackleton case is on. That might account for
the notes being taken. Or it might be someone with a grudge against
Roger. He had some enemies. A threatening letter came from a man only
the other day.”
Howard digested these suggestions for a few moments without speaking;
then he offered an objection.
“But d’you think it’s likely that two murderers would choose an
identical moment for their attacks. Two simultaneous crimes is a bit
of a record, it seems to me.”
“Think so?” the secretary responded, carelessly. “It’s happened this
time, for all that.”
Howard had to admit the truth of this.
Stenness looked at his watch.
“I must be getting off to the outside of the Maze. The police will be
here very soon, and they’ll need a guide. I’ll take you back to Skene,
if you like.”
Howard nodded assent and once more Stenness led the way through a
tangle of alleys.
“Here’s Helen’s Bower,” he said, nodding towards its entrance. “You
can sit down there till I bring the police.”
Howard watched his figure disappear round a corner of the corridor and
then turned his steps to the entrance of the little enclosure where
Roger Shandon’s body lay. As he entered it, he was surprised to see
Skene on his knees at the foot of the hedge, evidently collecting some
small objects.
“What are you after, Skene?” he demanded. “I thought you were supposed
to be watching this fellow.”
Skene rose to his feet, rather sulky at being reproved.
“He ain’t escaped yet. I’m ’tween him and the door.”
Howard acknowledged the truth of both statements.
“What are you grubbing in the hedge for?” he continued, after he had
made his apology.
Skene extended an earthy palm on which rested some small objects.
“’Tis the lid of a tin box—one o’ these round ’uns. And here’s some
darts that Mr. Hawkhurst uses for that air-gun o’ his when he’s
shootin’ at a target. Let’s see . . . one . . . two . . . three . . .”
He laboriously counted up to seven and held out his hand for
confirmation.
“Put ’em in the box-lid, Skene, and lay ’em down somewhere safe. You
found them where I saw you searching?”
“Just in there, among the roots o’ the hedge. Like enough the other
bit o’ the box’ll be outside in the alley. I’ll have a look.”
“Don’t bother, Skene. We mustn’t disturb anything till the police get
here, you know. If there’s anything more, they’ll prefer to hunt for
it themselves. What you’ve got to remember is that you found these
seven things—seven, remember—at that point in the hedge. Better mark
it with a stick or something, so that you’ll know the exact spot
again.”
The sight of the darts had put a thought into his mind. He went over
to Roger Shandon’s body and examined it carefully. But so far as the
exposed portions were concerned, he found no trace of the thing for
which he was searching; and he did not care to take the responsibility
of altering the posture of the corpse.
As he rose to his feet once more he heard the note of a motor horn in
the distance.
“The police, I expect,” he said to Skene. “They’ll be here in a minute
or two. Mr. Stenness has gone to lead them in through the Maze.”