Anthony Berkeley

“ Barker never did anything quite so vulgar as exactly to walk, nor did he precisely glide, chassis or slither; he just progressed. The sound of Mr. Priestley attacking his quite admirable fire stopped him. He retrogressed.
“Permit me, sir,” said Barker, neatly twitching the poker out of Mr. Priestley’s grasp. He dropped on one knee on the hearthrug as if about to breathe a prayer up the chimney, and lightly tapped three pieces of blazing coal. The fire was as perfect as a fire in this world can be, and Barker was not going to demean himself by pretending that he thought it anything else. ”

“ It is you who are the stumbling-block, Laura.”
“Oh!” squeaked Laura, aghast at the implication of his words. “You’re not—you’re not going to shoot me too?”
Mr. Priestley hurriedly turned his face away. His shoulders quivered slightly. When he turned round again he had recovered his composure.
“No, Laura,” he said, neither sternly nor gently but with a curious blend of the two. “No, that is not what I meant. Fortunately there is no need to go to such extremes. It suits our case well enough to remember that a wife cannot give evidence against her husband, nor a husband against his wife.” ”

“ The result was that Laura’s cocoa plunged hastily into her lap, where it mingled with the water that had already found its billet there. She drank Mr. Priestley’s cocoa instead, on that gentleman’s firm insistence, but it did not really appease her.
When they had finished they steamed gloomily in front of the fire for a space. Their garments hung clammily upon them.
There is nothing like clamminess to bring out the worst in a man or woman. Mr. Priestley felt clamminess invading his very soul, and the more clammy his outer person became the more sore he felt inside. ”

“ Had not George been permitted to be the humble instrument for bringing about Guy’s marriage with the only woman in this world remotely approaching worthiness, and had he not been rewarded beyond rubies by being allowed to be the great one’s best man—an honour he valued far more than the note from his captain announcing that he had been awarded a blue for rugger? Yet, after all that, here he was, red in the face and not unconscious of his epoch-making action, saying gruffly that he was getting fed up with all that chat about murder! Murder has turned people into revolutionaries before George. ”

“ I owed my landlady, who seized all my belongings for her rent and turned me out into the street. I was homeless, without a roof to shelter me, a rag to my back, or a penny in my purse.”
“But—but what about that car of yours,” stammered Mr. Priestley, whose eyes were nearly starting out of his head.
“Oh!” said Laura, who had been far too carried away by her sense of drama to remember such unimportant items as speedy two-seater cars. “The car, yes. The car,” she went on, pulling herself together, “belongs to the man himself.” ”

“ He assumed a terrific scowl, brandished the poker and laid his hand on the telephone.
Mr. Priestley sprang forward as if to forestall him, but his companion in crime was quicker. With a piercing shriek she flung her arms about Mr. Priestley’s neck and clung to him desperately.
“Save me, Mr. Mullins! Save me!” she cried hysterically. “My husband would never forgive me if I got three years—never! He’s so dreadfully conventional. Oh, save me—save me!”
His fair burden embarrassed Mr. Priestley not a little in his efforts to reach the telephone. ”

“ So far as he knew, George had not meant anything, except a desperate endeavour somehow to break the thick cord of this interminable argument, but desperation sharpens the wits and George saw in a flash what he must have been meaning. “Why,” he explained modestly, “carry out an experiment, of course. A psychological experiment,” he added with pride. “Not a real murder, of course. Just fix things so that a chap thinks he’s committed a murder, you see. Oughtn’t to be so difficult. You could hammer out half a dozen different ways of working it, Guy, with your gumption.” ”

“ At this point Laura became aware that words were coming towards her, jerkily, over the side of the car.
“N-not so f-fast!” came the words spasmodically. “I can’t—hold on—m-much longer!”
Laura glanced at her speedometer; the needle was hovering between forty and fifty. She hastened to pull up at the side of the road.
“I’m so sorry,” she said contritely, as Mr. Priestley sobbed for breath and relief. Travelling outside the shelter of the windscreen at fifty miles an hour does knock the breath out of one.
“’Sallright,” gasped Mr. Priestley, drooping like a wet blanket over the side of the car. ”

“ So should grown-up children be too, thought Mr. Priestley, reluctantly abandoning in favour of its legal owner the rôle of protector which he had been beginning again to contemplate. The next instant he hastily picked it up again. Of course she needed protection, now more than ever —from this coarse, obtuse, gross-bodied husband of hers! Mr. Priestley had no doubt at all that this must be a correct description of the absent Mr. Spettigue. “God bless my soul!” he repeated.
With intuitive genius the girl must have been following the line of his thoughts. ”

“ Across his delighted vision strayed the germs of three separate and distinct plans for making an innocent citizen imagine that he had murdered a fellow. “The ordinary man’s reactions to murder, eh?” he chuckled. “It could be done. Upon my soul, it could! What do you say, Doyle?”
What Mr. Doyle should have said is: “Nesbitt, your cocktails were good, your champagne better, your port superlative. Of all have we drunk, and in consequence we are not a little elated. Let us realise the fact, and not toy with fascinating impossibilities.” ”

“ Priestley was an honest man, even with himself. He knew quite well why he had done it. Because he wanted very badly indeed to marry Laura, and the breathless thrill he had obtained by buying a special licence made out in her name had been cheap at the price.
He reached his rooms in a thoroughly unhappy state. His triumph at Duffley was as dust and ashes in his mouth. Dust and ashes make very poor eating. For, of course, when Laura heard his story, she would naturally have nothing more to do with him. ”

“ Priestley’s and extended them invitingly.
Mr. Priestley put the key into them.
Laura weighed it pensively in her hand. “You’re very conventional, aren’t you?” she asked.
Mr. Priestley, who was under the impression that he had just killed one of his fellow-men and was not in the least sorry for it, nodded. “In some circumstances,” he said primly, “one has to be.”
“Well,” said Laura, as if arriving at a decision, “I’m not. Never! If the people are all right, the circumstances can take care of themselves; that’s my creed.” ”

“ But, of course, Agatha must not know. Agatha would hardly understand.
“But you must beware for yourself,” observed the intriguing young woman very earnestly. “The Man with the Broken Nose is merciless. Human life means nothing to him. If he knew you were sheltering me, he’d kill you as soon as that beetle.”
“Would he?” said the startled Mr. Foster. Perhaps earning this young woman’s unbounded gratitude would not be quite so pleasant after all, if it involved being killed as soon as a beetle. ”

“ In his folly George expanded like a flower in the sun, and looked back with incredulous astonishment to the remote time when he had brooded sorrowfully upon radiators and petrol-tanks in connection with this extraordinarily nice young person.
A very pleasant morning was spent.
George and Monica were not the only two people to spend a pleasant morning. Cynthia did also in her way, and Mr. Doyle and Guy too, were not ill-pleased with it, though their enjoyment was not wholly unmixed. It was one thing to realise the use to them of Alan’s presence; it was another to obtain a monopoly of it. ”

“ Instead he said: “Well, you haven’t killed a man.”
If she could have thought that it would help the situation in any way, Laura would have retorted: “Well, neither have you, you silly little man! You’ve been hoaxed, if you want to know.” But she could not see that it would be the least use to her. Besides, why should she do all the suffering? Let him think what he did think, and be as worried about it as he liked. She had, furthermore, not the least wish to hear Mr. Priestley pointing out that the hoax seemed to have recoiled on its perpetrator’s head. ”

“ Mr. Priestley’s surprise was genuine enough, but he was much more interested at the moment in his experiment with the soap. “But surely I told you downstairs? What else do you imagine I wanted this bedroom for?”
Laura brushed away the remnants of her tears with an indignant hand. It is seldom given to mortal man, and still less to mortal woman, to feel quite so incredibly foolish as Laura did at that moment. ”

“ Cynthia pursued.
George consulted his pipe. It gave him no help. “I expect they’ll think of something,” he said feebly. “Trust old Guy, eh?”
It appeared that this was not a well-chosen observation. “Trust old Guy?” repeated Cynthia with energy. “Yes, I’ll trust old Guy to get himself, and all the rest of us as well, into the most appalling mess. They’ll think of something, will they? Heaven forbid! They’ve thought of quite enough already. Anything else will be just about the last straw. What you were doing to encourage them, George, I can’t think. ”

“ Laura opened her mouth, but no words came. Perhaps because there were none to come.
“But I see through you by this time,” Mr. Priestley went on, lashing himself as he went. “You took me in at first with your pathetic story about stolen letters, but you don’t take me in again, young woman! You’re a hypocrite, and that’s the long and the short of it. At one moment butter won’t melt in your mouth, at the next you’re tricking me into shooting a perfectly innocent man. It’s my belief that you knew the whole time that that revolver was loaded. ”

“ Draped professionally over the chairs in Laura’s bedroom, and less professionally on the bed, were frocks, coats, cloaks, stockings, hats, gloves, and other accessories, all the spring outfit, in fact, and some of the winter and last summer’s as well, except the undies, for which she had judged Mr. Priestley to be not quite old enough as yet despite his years—all arranged with the artless idea of affording pleasure to her benefactor. ”

“ Anything more utterly helpless and appealing could hardly be imagined. “Then you’re—you’re going to leave me in the lurch, Mr. Mullins?” she asked, in a funny, shaky little voice.
Mr. Priestley squirmed. It appeared to him with sudden and unexpected force how remiss it was of him not to be a burglar. It was not playing the game. Here was this charming girl expecting to meet her burglar, never dreaming that she was doing anything else but meet her burglar; and there was Mr. Priestley going about the place not being a burglar at all. ”

“ Yes, where haughty managers, with the power of doubled salary or dismissal in their hands, had been ignominiously repulsed, he, Mr. Priestley, had succeeded. Involuntarily he drew himself up. “Scandalous!” he repeated. “Outrageous! Who is the scoundrel?”
“The man,” said Laura with sudden inspiration, “you shot.”
“What!” exclaimed the startled Mr. Priestley.
There was a tense pause.
Laura broke it. “Oh, why shouldn’t I tell you the truth?” she said in low, bitter tones. “You’ve been kind to me. The only man who ever has.” She hesitated a moment to decide exactly what the truth should be. ”

“ Yet still in clubs and places where men gather, the bare mention of the word is enough to provoke the knowing wink and the cunning dig in the ribs. And where the clubs wink the public schools guffaw; there is no place where tradition is so strong as a public school. It gave Alan a pleasurable feeling of doggishness just to enter the room where Dora was sedately reading a magazine; to sit on the same couch with her was sheer daredevilry.
Here he was, yes, he Alan Spence, alone in a room with a chorus girl, exchanging light badinage, keeping his wicked end up as well as a grown man! ”

“ The mildest of men will show signs of unrest on hearing the word “cad” directed at themselves from the lips of a pretty girl, and Mr. Priestley, as he had already proved to his own surprise, was apparently not the mildest of men. His subsequent outburst, the cumulative result of desperate anxiety manfully suppressed and blank horror, simply followed.
Before they had preceded the landlady into the charming pink-and-white bedroom, on whose hearth a fire was already miraculously burning, sanity had returned and he was mildly penitent for the freedom of his speech. ”