THE JEALOUS HUSBAND

Geoffrey Lane glanced impatiently at the cream-coloured telephone by his bedside. Jabbing a cigarette in his mouth with a nervously irritable gesture, he lit it and paced the room. As though to be free of the frustrating confines of the elegant gilt-panelled wall he flung open the french windows and stepped out on to the little balcony.

Below him the wide and spacious promenade of Westbourne lay, bathed in the golden haze of the summer’s evening, and beyond it the yellow sands ran down to a smooth, glimmering sea. But the beauty of the panorama made little appeal to the man who scowled down at it from his room at the Hotel Majestic, that luxurious cream and gold caravanserai of one of the South Coast’s most fashionable resorts.

Geoffrey Lane pulled at his evening tie and turned back into the room. As he did so the telephone jangled into life. With a muttered exclamation of relief, he crossed quickly and lifted the receiver. The woman’s voice over the wire smoothed the scowl from his face, drove the tension from the lines round his mouth.

“Geoffrey, darling! I couldn’t ring you earlier—”

“What happened? Where are you?”

“Here—at the hotel, of course.”

“The number of your room, what is it?”

“I’m on the floor above you.”

“The number, quickly!”

There was a smile in her voice as she answered him slowly, conscious of the power she exercised over him.

“Two-o-one…if you must know.”

“I’m coming up—”

“No, no, you can’t do that.”

“I must see you. Oh, my darling, you can’t imagine how long it’s been, this waiting—”

“I know, my dear, but please—”

“What is it?”

“It—it’s too risky.”

“Nonsense! You’re trying to put me off. What is it? What’s wrong? You agreed to come down here, and now…” He spoke quickly, harshly.

“It’s too risky, I tell you,” she said, her voice level and cool. “He’s followed me. I’ve seen him.”

“What! You mean he’s here?”

He puffed ineffectually at his cigarette, which had gone out.

“He’s here,” she said.

“But when did he arrive? How did he know?”

“He was here a few minutes ago. He’s just gone down to have a drink.”

With a vicious gesture of frustration, he crushed the cold cigarette into the ashtray by the telephone. For a moment he babbled incoherently into the mouthpiece, ill concealing his chagrin and bitter dismay. “But I must see you—I must! Can’t I come up to your room for a moment?”

“I daren’t let you. I’m frightened…”

“Don’t be so silly—he won’t be coming back yet.”

“It—it’s not silly. Geoffrey, I think he suspects.”

“Suspects? How d’you mean?”

“Why, that you and I—”

“Oh, rubbish, my dear! How could he think that I…?”

“Well, I’m sure he knows something. What made him change his mind at the last minute and come down here?”

“Just coincidence, that’s all. How could it be anything else?”

“He’s been acting so oddly.”

“Be sensible, darling. Please let me—”

He broke off and turned as the door behind him opened slowly.

His eyes widened in amazement as he saw her husband standing there.

The woman at the other end was speaking again as he fumbled to replace the receiver and let it fall with a sharp clatter on to the table.

“Marsden!” he gulped.

And then as the other came forward to reveal an automatic held menacingly pointed at him, Lane’s voice rose in a croak of fear. “Good God, man, what—”

“Shut up!” Marsden said, through lips that were a grim line. With his heel he shut the door behind him. He went on, his tone cold and expressionless: “You needn’t put your hands up, Lane. It won’t make the slightest difference.”

“Now listen, Marsden. I don’t know what—”

The man behind the evil-looking revolver ignored his attempt to speak. He said coolly: “Surprised, aren’t you? Thought I was well out of the way. That I didn’t know about you and Helen—”

Lane made a tremendous effort to gain control of the situation. Perspiration glistened on his face and he trembled as he stepped forward purposefully.

“Don’t be a damn fool,” he said heavily. “Put down that gun.”

“You dirty rat,” the other went on evenly. “I’ve been watching you. Watching you for a long time—and now you’re going to—”

Lane was moving towards him as the gun barked. For a moment he stood, swaying slightly, staring at Marsden through the little cloud of acrid smoke. Then his face contorted in agony and he dropped to the floor. As he fell he knocked over a table lamp.

There came a metallic scream from the telephone receiver that lay where it had fallen alongside its cream cradle beside the bed. Then came a distorted babble of words. Then the line went dead. On the floor above a door slammed.

* * * *

Jimmy Strange was leisurely tying his black tie when he heard the revolver-shot. He paused for a moment, one eyebrow raised quizzically. Then, observing that his tie was still slightly crooked, he pulled it into shape. He stood back from the mirror, flicked a purely imaginary speck of dust from the lapel of his immaculate dinner jacket, lit a cigarette and strolled out of the room.

The reason for Jimmy Strange’s not undistinguished presence at the Hotel Majestic that weekend could be described in one word of magical significance. Sandra. Do not let this reason, amply sufficient as it may appear, occasion the faintest lift of an interrogatory eyebrow, however. For—perhaps, oddly enough—Sandra was not a weekend guest at the hotel. That delectable piece of alluring femininity was, in fact, many miles away at that moment, in London.

Nevertheless, she was still the reason why Jimmy had come down that evening to Westbourne. He had run away from her. Put more plainly, he was escaping from the risk that he might ask Sandra to marry him. And be accepted. That was the only fault he had to find with her since the day almost of their first meeting. She was so attractive, so desirable, that there were far too many other guys around ready, eager and willing to step into his shoes with alacrity. And, moreover, any one of them would, in order to reserve her for himself alone and forever, up and marry her like a shot.

Now Sandra, in spite of a figure that was a dream of delight and a face that was a delightful dream, was a nice girl. She wanted to get married. To the right man. And Jimmy, to whom she’d made it pretty plain that he was the right man, was becoming increasingly aware that it was about time he put the all-important question. And that if left too late he’d wake up one morning to find himself at her wedding—as best man, wearing a rueful smile.

All the same, the prospect of losing her was grimly depressing. Thus, making suitable excuses, he’d slipped away for a quiet weekend, deliberately to avoid her dangerous proximity that might cause him to ask that question he knew he would afterwards inevitably regret. The brief break would, he felt, give him a chance to take a grip on himself and he’d return complete with his old level-headed equanimity.

Now stepping into the corridor to investigate the origin of the revolver-shot, he grinned to himself. Perhaps it wasn’t going to be the quiet weekend he’d anticipated, after all!

His grin widened as he saw a few rooms away a woman beating her hands against a door.

“Let me in!” she was sobbing. “Open the door—oh, please let me in!”

Jimmy puffed out a cloud of cigarette smoke, and his eyes narrowed, unobtrusively approached her. He noted that she was wearing a revealingly modelled evening gown and that jewellery flashed from the hands that continued to beat on the door.

“Open the door!” Her voice rose hysterically. “You must open it!”

She was unaware of him until he stood close to her and said:

“What goes on?”

With a sobbing gasp she turned, and he was pleasurably intrigued to observe that she was decidedly attractive. Sleek, dark hair, wide, slightly slanted eyes. She spelt sophisticated allure in capital letters. He sensed that she spelt something else, too. In even bigger letters. Danger. With that warming signal ringing somewhere back of his brain, Jimmy tapped the ash off his cigarette and waited for her to recover from the surprise of his presence at her side.

“I’m afraid I startled you,” he said reassuringly.

“Oh!” she gasped. “Something—something dreadful’s happened!”

“Anything I can do to help?”

She stared at him piteously. “I don’t know. My husband’s in there, and I must get in—”

“You mean he’s locked you out?”

“No, no—it—it’s someone else’s room. But he’s there I know. I could hear him over the phone—and the shot.”

“The shot?”

Jimmy Strange’s eyes regarded her shrewdly. She was terrified about something all right. From her few gabbled words he’d pieced together part of what had happened. The fact that she was outside ‘someone else’s’ room, with her husband on the inside, told him plenty.

She was saying, the words half choked by her fear:

“I ran downstairs. Oh, this is terrible! He’s shot him—my husband’s shot him!”

“Shot who?”

“Geoffrey.”

Jimmy nodded. He had the angle—or rather the triangle—on it. She was just the sort, he decided, who’d never be satisfied with only one man around. Even the man she’d married. She craved the flattery, the sordid excitement of other men’s company. And it looked as if this time she’d got some poor fool, and herself, into a jam.

She was beating at the door again.

“Oh, let me in! Let me in!”

Jimmy was turning over in his mind whether he should offer to try one of his parlour-tricks on the lock and open the door for her, when there came the scrape of the key on the inside.

“Thank God!” the woman breathed, and stood back, relief and apprehension mingled in her expression.

The door opened, and a man in evening dress stood there. The woman gave a gasp of surprise.

“Geoffrey! But I thought you were… Where’s Charles?”

Geoffrey Lane surveyed her calmly, though Jimmy noted that a little nerve was twitching beneath his left eye.

“Your husband?” the man queried, in apparent puzzlement. “I don’t know. He’s not here.”

She stared at him, bewildered.

“But I—I heard him. He—”

“My dear,” he interrupted her firmly, with an oblique glance at Jimmy, “pull yourself together… Come in and have a drink.” He looked questioningly at Jimmy, as if aware for the first time of his presence. He said: “Is this gentleman with you?”

The tip of Jimmy’s tongue touched his lips in anticipation of receiving an invitation to join in the offered refreshment—but the expression on the other’s somewhat set features was not encouraging. Hiding his disappointment, he said airily:

“Oh, don’t mind me. I—er—just happened to come out of my room when I thought I heard a shot.”

The man glanced quickly at him, then at the woman. There was a moment’s silence, then: “Yes, it did sound like one.” Geoffrey Lane’s expression contrived to relax until it appeared almost affable. “But it must have been a car, I think.”

And with a nod of dismissal, he turned to the woman.

“Come along, Helen.” Over his shoulder he called: “Goodbye.”

Jimmy stared at the closed door through a cloud of cigarette smoke. He turned on his heel and made his way back to his own room, a thoughtful frown shadowing his face.

He stood before his mirror and automatically straightened his tie, while he pondered over the little scene he had witnessed.

“Odd. Definitely odd,” he mused. “Car my ruddy elbow! That bang was an automatic, or my name’s not James but Jasmine…” He scowled at his reflection. “And then what the woman said suggested that while she’d been chin wagging over the blower with dear Geoffrey, who was in his room below, she’d heard hubby come in and take a pot at him… Then what a hell of a time he’d been opening his door to her, with her trying to break it down with her bare hands… Oh, odd, Jimmy, my lad, and fairly asking to be looked into!”

He lit a fresh cigarette.

“It would be vaguely interesting to know, also,” he continued, musingly, “what’s happened to hubby. It was him she expected to be in the bedroom, bumping off her boyfriend…”

Glancing at the window, his mouth suddenly quirked at the corners with a grin. He crossed and looked down for a moment at the promenade and the sea, over which the gloom of approaching night was now falling. He opened the french windows and stepped on to the narrow balcony.

Moving like a shadow and ducking behind the balcony railing so that he would not be observed from below, he made his way swiftly across to the balcony of the room adjoining his. It appeared to be unoccupied, and he had passed it and stood outside the french windows of the room beyond. It was this room, he calculated, wherein the man called Geoffrey was now knocking back a drink with the wife of another man.

His ear close to the window he could hear her speaking:

“I knew it was him. I was sure I couldn’t have mistaken Charles’ voice.”

The man replied:

“The fool! Trying to shoot me like that. Luckily, he missed—”

“Thank God!”

“I pretended he’d hit me. I flopped down and he must have panicked. He rushed out on to the balcony and got away through the room next door. Fortunately it’s empty. Then I heard you at the door.”

“I thought he’d killed you!”

“Damned near did!” growled the other. “Shook me up, I can tell you. I thought it’d be as well to make sure he’d pushed off before I opened the door to you.”

“That was why you were so long?”

“I thought it would be safer for you, But he’d gone all right.”

“Oughtn’t we to find him?”

“No need to worry about that for the moment.”

“But, Geoffrey—”

“He left me for dead and he’ll make himself scarce. For his own sake, we’ve got to keep this business quiet.”

“Of course.”

“Have another drink, darling? You look a bit white still.”

There was the sound of drinks being mixed. Jimmy thought longingly of what he could do to a double Scotch and cautiously eased his cramped position. After a moment, he heard the wife say:

“You’re sure he got into the room next door all right, Geoffrey? It’s getting dark and he might have slipped on the balcony, and—”

“Rubbish! I tell you he’s got away scot-free.” His tone took on an aggrieved tone. “Why you should be worrying about him, when I’ve been nearly murdered by the blighter—”

“It’s not that, darling,” she said quickly, mollifying him. “But if anything has happened to him, there’d be the dickens of a commotion. People asking questions—”

“Oh, pull yourself together,” the other snapped. “Charles is all right. If you don’t believe me, climb out on to the balcony and see for yourself.”

Jimmy drew in his breath sharply and flattened himself against the wall, still crouched down, as he heard the woman approach the windows. As she manipulated the bolt that held one window shut, he considered the chances of making a dash back to his own room. He decided he couldn’t possibly make it without being spotted. All he could do was to make himself look as much like a stray cat as possible—without much hope of success!

Then, just as he was racking his brain for a plausible answer to the inevitable questions that would follow his discovery, and had decided that the excuse of sleep-walking wouldn’t cut any ice, he heard her say;

“Oh, I can’t shift this bolt—I expect you’re right, Charles is safe enough.”

There was a muttered agreement from the man and Jimmy breathed freely again as the woman moved away from the window.

The other was asking, his voice rising sharply:

“By the way, Helen, who was that chap outside the door?”

“Never seen him before,” was the reply. “He just appeared on the scene out of the blue.”

“Hmm… Well, I choked him off all right, and he won’t bother us again.” There followed a slight pause, then in more casual tones the man went on: “You know, I think it’d be better if I got back to London tonight.”

“Geoffrey! Why?”

“Well, I—”

“You’re not going to leave me here, by myself—”

“Darling, please do calm yourself… Don’t you see—your husband may turn up again, and it’d be better if I’m not here. Surely, that’s commonsense?”

“I suppose you’re right,” she agreed doubtfully.

“Now, you run along and fix your make-up,” he suggested amiably, “you’ve been crying a little, poor pet—and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“You think we should risk having dinner together?” There might have been a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

He laughed shortly.

“I think we can. Anyway, I’d rather die with a full stomach!”

“Don’t joke about it, Geoffrey, please.”

Followed some murmured endearments from the man, then the woman went out.

Jimmy was about to make a move back to his room, having decided that he’d heard all there was to hear, when he caught the sound of the man flashing his telephone. He waited and listened again. The man was saying:

“Give me Reception, please… Reception? Oh, I shall be leaving tonight…” There followed some words that Jimmy couldn’t catch. Then: “Yes, the eleven-twenty for London. Will you arrange about my luggage and a taxi…? Only a suitcase and a trunk… Yes, better be here at eleven sharp…”

A few minutes later Jimmy Strange strolled across the hotel foyer towards the reception clerk. Men and women in evening dress brushed past him; a waiter, his expression anxiously purposeful, whisked by; a pretty girl, gazing around for her escort, paused to give him a veiled glance that was not without interest, but—for once— Jimmy was oblivious of her passing, only his nostrils quivered at the cloud of exotic perfume that trailed after her. But his mind was on other things. He was intent only on a certain piece of information he was seeking. One or two details he needed in order to fill in more completely the picture of the drama he had butted into upstairs.

Casually he said to the desk clerk:

“Wonder if I might have a glimpse of your visitors’ book?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Chap I saw leaving room one-fourteen just now—I know his face, but can’t quite place him,” Jimmy said as he pulled the heavy book towards him.

“Often the way, sir,” the clerk smiled understandingly.

Jimmy ran a finger down the column of names.

“Let’s see…. Ah, here we are! Room one-fourteen. Geoffrey Lane. London. Nationality, British. That’s the chap all right.

“Is that the gentleman you have in mind, sir?”

“Yes, thanks. Has he been here long?”

“Mr. Lane, sir? Matter of three weeks.”

Jimmy nodded and moved towards the dining room, whence dance music was being rhythmically dispensed. Not at all displeased with the information he had obtained, humming to the tune that was being played, he strolled down the wide, short stairway into the dining room.

The maître d’hôtel hurried obsequiously forward and led him to his table. A waiter bowed over him with the menu.

“Large Scotch-and-soda,” Jimmy murmured mechanically as the inevitable prelude to his order.

“Yessair.”

He concluded his order and glancing round, observed:

“Quite a crowd tonight.”

“It is always the same weekends, sair.”

“Tell me…would that be Mrs. Lane dancing with Mr. Lane over there?”

“Er—Mrs. Lane? No, sair. That is Mrs. Marsden.”

“Oh, my mistake.”

The waiter bent lower to add with an almost imperceptible cough:

“I have not seen Mr. Marsden, sair. I do not think he comes here.”

Jimmy grinned and said: “Quite!”

The waiter bowed and swept away.

Presently, when he was sure that Lane and Mrs. Marsden were engrossed with the fish course and each other’s conversation, Jimmy drained his whisky and unobtrusively quitted the dining room.

He found the first floor deserted. He stood outside room one-fourteen and with a glance up and down began his adroit manipulation with the lock. A few moments later he was knowledgeably inspecting another lock of a cabin-trunk inside room one-fourteen. Again he proceeded to perform something that was slightly more skilful than a mere parlour trick. The trunk was open. Its contents tightened his mouth into a grim line, brought a chill light to his narrowed eyes.

“So that’s your bright idea, Mr. Geoffrey Lane!” he mused. He closed the trunk again. Snapped back the lock—and then wheeled round, tensed for action.

Someone was turning a key in the door.

For a second he thought of making a dash for it via the window.

But with the realization that it was too late came a better notion. He threw himself on to the bed, quickly disarranged his hair and sprawled back with an inane grin.

Geoffrey Lane came in to stare at him in angry amazement.

From his look of surprised recognition, Jimmy guessed that the other’s unexpected return was connected with some relatively trivial errand, such as a forgotten cigarette case or handkerchief, and not to do with him. At this rapid deduction, Jimmy gave a mental sigh of relief. He might get out of the spot yet.

“’Lo, ol’ man,” he greeted him tipsily. “C’mon in!”

“You again! What the hell are you doing here?”

Jimmy giggled, tried to raise himself on his elbow, and flopped back again. Lane gave a glance at the trunk, then at him, suspicion sharpening his look. “What are you doing in my room?” he rasped.

Making what seemed to be a tremendous effort, Jimmy sat up, eyeing the other blearily. “Your room, ol’ man?” he queried thickly.

He giggled again, interrupting it with an artistically simulated hiccough. “Don’ be shilly!”

Lane advanced upon him threateningly.

“I shan’t ask you again,” he glowered. “What are you doing here?”

“Sssshush!” Jimmy raised an admonishing finger, and then smoothed the pillow. “You’ll wake the baby!” He lurched to his feet, swaying. “Have a drink? Oh! ’S’funny, whersh the bottle? ’S’disappeared! M’glash’s disappeared, too!” He giggled again, and half supporting himself on the other’s shoulder, spoke in a whisper that betokened a world-shattering revelation. “D’you know, ol’ man—d’you know what? I believe we’re in the wrong room!”

Lane shook him off angrily, but the suspicion receded from his face. “Drunken fool!” he exclaimed.

Jimmy giggled again. “He-he! Let’sh see what’s the number of thish room.” He reeled to the door, opened it and staggered back into the room. “Two hunn’red ’n’ fourteen,” he announced, blinking owlishly. “What did I tell you? My room’s two hunn’red ’n’ twenty. Proves it.”

“That still doesn’t explain how you got in here.”

“I rememmer now. I went to ask the liftboy to get ’nother bottle, ’n’ I mush’ve got in here by”—another hiccough—“mish-take.”

“This door was locked,” cut in Lane chillingly.

Jimmy hiccoughed once more to give himself time in which to think up the answer to that one. He grinned again and said:

“Thash what you think, ol’ man.”

“What d’you mean?”

“’Cos when I was coming in, the cham’er-maid was coming out. See?”

The other made no reply, but seemed to accept the explanation with some relief. He threw another furtive, quick glance at the trunk as Jimmy sidled drunkenly to the door.

“Well, I s’pose I’d better toddle off to my own li’l nest—”

Lane helped him out of the room with an unceremonious shove. “Come on! Get out!”

Jimmy allowed himself to be hustled into the corridor, protesting loudly. “All ri’, ol’ man, all ri’! Whash the hurry?”

The door slammed on him. And with a muttered: “Oh, what a rude man!” he tottered along to his room.

Some time later found Jimmy chatting to the commissionaire at the hotel entrance:

“Where d’you get your taxis?”

“Off the station rank, sir—always rely on them. Will you be wanting one, sir?”

“Not just now. I was just—er—wondering, that’s all.”

And with a little smile flickering across his lips he went in search of a telephone. As he shut himself in one of the hotel callboxes the smile on his face grew wider. He picked up the receiver.

* * * *

In his office at Scotland Yard, Inspector Crow scowled at the clock on his desk and heaved himself to his feet. It was late and he’d had a heavy day. Reaching for his bowler, he mentally savoured the steak-and-kidney pudding, which his loving and dutiful wife would be keeping warm for him. But his gastronomical anticipations were to be shattered by the sudden appearance of Sergeant Warburton at the door. The Sergeant was bearing a slip of paper and his lips were in a prim line.

“Could anything be more vexatious, sir?” he murmured querulously in answer to his superior’s brusque inquiry.

“What is it?” growled Crow with heavy patience.

“It’s a message from that wretched Strange person.”

The Inspector banged his hat on his desk with a thud.

“Gawdalmighty!” he roared. “Can’t that ruddy nuisance let me clock off in peace sometimes?” The other made a commiserating noise, and Crow turned on him wrathfully. “Well, don’t stand there like a pantomime fairy! What is it?”

Sergeant Warburton went pink. “It’s a message they took at the switchboard, sir. Apparently this Strange person didn’t wish to speak to you personally.”

“Guilty conscience,” the Inspector grunted.

Warburton coughed delicately. “Not exactly, sir, if I may contradict you. The reason he gave was that—er—the sound of your voice would ruin his dinner.”

Inspector Crow made no comment. He merely drew his ginger eyebrows together in a forbidding glare, muttering something to the effect that it would be he himself who’d be having his dinner ruined. The thought of having to miss that hot steak-and-kidney pie was unbearable. “Read the message,” he grunted wearily.

Sergeant Warburton pouted.

“It—er—it’s somewhat disrespectfully worded, sir—”

“Read it!”

“As you wish, sir.” He read:

“Crow, Old Bird.

How about a spot of ozone to pep up your appetite—plus a nice little murder all neatly tied up for you? Then come to Westbourne—it’s so bracing! Be there—at the local police station—by eleven o’clock tonight, and you’ll click for a present from the seaside! It won’t be a stick of rock, either. But then you aren’t a sweet-tooth, are you, Old Sourpuss?

As ever, Jimmy Strange.”

Warburton’s nose twitched in delicate disapproval as he concluded the message. “Distinctly discourteous, sir, and, to my mind, doesn’t make sense.”

Crow’s expression was bitter. Through gritted teeth he growled: “Plain enough to me that there’s something up at Westbourne which Strange has ferreted out. We’d better get down there, and”—with a glance at the clock—“if we want to make it by eleven, we’ll have to move. Fast!”

“Tonight’s the night I usually wash my hair, sir—” began Sergeant Warburton tentatively.

“Hell-fire singe your blasted hair!” exploded Crow, the veins standing out on his forehead like cords. “Get the car ready. Move!”

And Sergeant Warburton meekly but hurriedly withdrew.

* * * *

The Hotel Majestic luggage porter and the man in taxi driver’s cap grunted as they handled the trunk preparatory to hoisting it on to the waiting taxi.

“Cripes!” muttered the porter. “Bit of a weight, eh?”

“Yus,” said the other, in a gin-and-fog croak.

“Must be full o’ bricks!”

“Yus.”

“Rather heavy, I’m afraid,” said Geoffrey Lane from the taxi’s interior.

“We’ll manage it, sir,” said the porter, and to his companion, who was re-knotting his thick scarf more securely round his ears: “Ready ter lift, mate?”

“Yus.”

“Then h’up she goes!”

And with much grunting and heavy breathing the trunk was safely deposited on the cab, and while the other clambered into the driver’s seat, the porter slammed the door and touched his forehead expectantly. “Thank you, sir.” He turned and instructed: “Station, mate.”

“Yus.”

“Blimey! D’you always say ‘yus’, mate?”

“Yus.”

And the taxi drove off.

Several minutes later it pulled up, and the driver leant out, opened the door and extended his vocabulary to mutter hoarsely: “’Ere y’are sir.”

Geoffrey Lane got out—and saw the blue lamp jutting out from the wall overhead. With a quick indrawn gasp he turned on the other:

“You fool! This is the police station!”

“Yus,” was the inevitable monosyllabic response. But this time it was accompanied by an unexpectedly swift punch which draped itself neatly on Lane’s jaw. As his passenger slumped quietly to the ground, the other loosened his scarf slightly and observed: “That’ll keep you quiet!”

He turned and squeezed the motor-horn loudly. In a moment a policeman appeared through the door beneath the lamp.

“Now then, now then! What’s all this?”

“Inspector Crow there?”

“An’ supposing he is?”

“Only that the present wot was promised ’im ’as arrived,” was the croaked reply.

The policeman’s jaw dropped as he saw the figure the other was indicating lying inert on the pavement. The hoarse voice went on: “Better fetch Inspector Crow, quick—and tell him ter take a look at the gent’s luggage while ’e’s abaht it!”

“Wait here, I’ll get the Inspector…”

“Yus.”

In a moment, the policeman, his tones raised excitedly and with Inspector Crow behind him, reappeared. “Taximan here says—” He broke off and glanced up and down the street. “Blimey! He’s ’opped it!”

“Never mind about him,” grunted Crow, his heavy bottle jaw stuck out aggressively. “Take care of this man here. Get him inside. He’s out cold.”

The policeman called for assistance and the unconscious Geoffrey Lane was carried into the police station.

The Inspector eyed the trunk on the taxi calculatingly. He muttered to Sergeant Warburton, standing at his elbow; “What was it the driver chap said about the luggage?”

“Something to the effect that you should look into it, sir,” volunteered the other pedantically.

“We’ll start on this trunk. Come on, give me a hand.”

Together they wrestled it off the taxi, the Sergeant wearing an air of distaste at having to indulge in such manual labour, and Crow muttering ripe curses beneath his grampus-like breathing.

“Now,” he gasped, “get a spanner—we’ll crack the lock open and see what’s inside. Come on, Sergeant!”

The lock soon yielded, and as they opened the trunk the Inspector grunted to Sergeant Warburton: “Now, for Pete’s sake, don’t say you faint at the sight o’ blood!”

* * * *

“As you’ll have no doubt guessed,” said Jimmy to Sandra over drinks two days later, “when the pie was opened there was the body of Charles Marsden. Not a very dainty dish, I’m afraid, to set before anyone.”

Sandra shuddered and he took her hand.

“Not unnaturally, of course, this discovery somewhat upset Lane’s getaway. In fact,” he went on, “he finally confessed that Marsden had missed him with the shot the wife and I heard, and foxing him, he grabbed him from behind and strangled him.”

After a moment Sandra said:

“Not exactly a quiet weekend for you, darling.”

“It took my mind off things,” he grinned.

“Such as?”

He hesitated. Then: “Oh…things, you know. Being away from you, and all that.”

Her glance was tender.

“I’m glad you missed me,” she said huskily.

Uneasily he realized he’d not had a moment, while he’d been away, to think up a plan whereby he could duck marrying Sandra but still at the same time not lose her. Been too busy, he told himself morosely, poking his nose into someone else’s trouble to worry about his own. He still had his tricky problem to solve…

Sandra was saying:

“By the way, what happened to the taxi driver? He seemed to be mixed up in it pretty well.”

“Yes, mysterious-like, wasn’t he?” Then suddenly Jimmy spoke in a hoarse gin-and-fog croak: “Shoved orf, ’e did, inter the night—modest sorter bloke.” And added the one inevitable monosyllable: “Yus!”

Sandra laughed delightedly.

“Oh, Jimmy, you really are heavenly! If only I could’ve seen you in that borrowed get-up, driving that taxi!”

He joined in her amusement. He thought no woman could laugh so attractively as she did. Perhaps, after all, being married to her wouldn’t be such a tie? She really was so lovely, so deliciously desirable. They’d have wonderful times together.

He leaned forward impulsively.

“Darling.”

“Yes. Jimmy?”

“Darling…,” and then grinned, as involuntarily it seemed his voice took on a gin-and-fog croak: “Wot abaht another drink? Yus?”