Later that same evening I met Bansted again.
As it happened, I was in bed at the time. I’d been in bed for about half an hour, in fact. The light was out, and the dormital was beginning to simmer gently. I could feel a delicious, cotton-woolly drowsiness closing in on me. In another minute I should be clean off.
Then, cutting in suddenly from the world that I was trying to let slide, I heard the sound of my door-handle turning. It wasn’t much of a sound. But it was enough to rouse me like a shot of strychnine. There wasn’t a more wakeful man in the whole Institute by the time the catch had slid right back and the door began to open.
I don’t mind admitting that I felt a shudder go right down my spine as I watched that door. It wasn’t that I was frightened. Nerves of that sort have never troubled me. It was simply that it was so horribly like what I had grown accustomed to in the old days when Dr. Mann had still had his room farther down the passage. And as I struggled up from sleep like a diver surfacing I had one thought and one thought only in my mind. It was straight nightmare. I wondered in what state I would find the top of my visitor’s head.
But the figure that came round the edge of that door wasn’t in the least ghostly. It was wearing a very ordinary camel-hair dressing-gown and felt bedroom slippers. Except that it was behaving rather more quietly than I had ever known anyone in the annexe behave, it might simply have mistaken its little cubicle. But the fact that it didn’t put the light on showed that it couldn’t be that. And a moment later when it switched on one of those little fountain-pen torches of the kind that doctors carry I guessed that the poor thing must be up to something.
I played sleepy-cat while the beam came over in my direction. And then, after I had felt the beam tickling my closed eyelids and go away again, I counted ten and opened up. It was just as I had expected. The visitor was hovering like a big moth round the chest-of-drawers. In the reflected light of the torch I could see that he had the top drawer half-open already.
Now I may not be nervous, but I am fussy. I’ve always been that way. Going through the Customs I have never liked having my scanties pawed over. And I didn’t even know that my new room-mate’s hands were clean. So I decided to do something at once.
“Looking for the Eno’s?” I asked.
As I asked it, I switched on the bedside lamp. And there was Bansted. I was a bit taken aback because I had thought I recognised the dressing-gown as Dr. Smith’s. But I was evidently not nearly so taken aback as Bansted. After all, I was only sitting up on one elbow being polite. Whereas he had transferred the torch to his left hand and was pointing a revolver at me with his right.
“Don’t move,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked. “Anything wrong?”
It could have been that my reply annoyed him. Or he may have been afraid that I would take a flying leap out of the bed and try to grapple with him. Whatever it was he began moving away from me.
“Give me that automatic you’ve got.” he said.
“What automatic?” I asked.
“You know,” Bansted told me.
I shook my head. But Bansted was still in earnest.
“If you don’t hand over that automatic I shall c-call for help,” he said.
“Okay. You call, I’ll help,” I promised.
And judging by the way things were going, I thought that he would pretty soon be in need of some kind of assistance. Burgling somebody else’s room does rather take it out of you if you’re not used to it. And I’d noticed that there was a distinct break in Bansted’s voice the last time he had spoken to me.
“I’m not jok-ing.”
The same little break again. This suited me. Because, above all things, I needed time. It seemed now as if Una had been very sensible in wanting to dispose of that Luger. And it did look as though the bottom of the sea would after all have been the best place for it.
“How d’you know I’ve got an automatic?” I asked.
“Where?”
“On the moor. Last night. In your car.”
“Oh, that,” I said, with a shrug of my shoulders. “That wasn’t an automatic. I told you. That was a back-fire. You saw yourself how badly she was running.”
For a moment, I thought that had settled it. The shrug of the shoulders had been a very good one, and the pyjama jacket had concealed nothing. But the next remark of Bansted’s made things difficult again.
“You hadn’t got the engine running,” he said. “You were holding the automatic in your hand when it went off.”
“Were you all that near?” I asked.
“I was,” Bansted replied. “If you’d pulled in a bit sooner you’d have hit me.”
“Pity I didn’t,” I told him.
“I wondered if you’d say that,” Bansted answered with just that note in his voice that revealed the triumph he was feeling. “Now will you give it to me.”
“Oh, very well, then.”
I gave that same shrug of the shoulders again. But there was another reason for it this time. I’ve got Una’s automatic under my pillow. And I had to wriggle to get at it.
“There it is,” I said, pointing it full at him. “I think this must be the one you mean.”
Even at the time the funny side struck me. But the fun escaped Bansted entirely. His eyebrows went up at the same moment as his jaw went down, and I saw him suddenly change to pistachio colour. Not that this was surprising. He’d seen me with a revolver in my hand before.
Considering the state he was in, he behaved very creditably.
“It’s—it’s no use, Hudson,” he said. “If you do anything foolish you’re for it. I took the precaution of telling Rogers what I was doing. If I’m not back inside ten minutes he’s going to sound the alarm.”
“You don’t say,” I answered. “Is he in this too?”
That interested me. Because I’d never been able to see how anyone single-handed could have got away with things so successfully. It was because of this that I had been keeping an eye on the Kimbell-Swanton combination. But a Bansted-Rogers unit was much more promising.
“He is,” I heard Bansted saying. “Rogers and I are acting strictly in conjunction.”
“Then let’s have him in,” I replied. “He’s got a right to be here.”
There wasn’t much difficulty in getting hold of Rogers. After all, it was only about three-quarters of an inch of Office of Works boarding that separated us. With my free hand I banged hard on the dividing wall.
“That you, Rogers?” I asked. “Could you spare a moment. We need you. There’s no one to say when to fire.”
He very nearly came through the wall he was with us so soon. And he had evidently been sitting up in readiness for a summons of some sort. His hair wasn’t rumpled, and he still had his collar and tie on. This wasn’t bad considering that it was after one-thirty already.
“Would you like to go back for a firearm of some sort?” I asked. “I’m sure Bansted would lend you one.”
Then I turned to Bansted.
“Be a good fellow and make this thing so that it doesn’t go off,” I said. “Then I’d like to have it back, please. Sentimental reasons, you understand.”
I had to hold the Luger by its muzzle before Bansted would come forward to collect it. And even then I was aware that Rogers was right up on his toes just to make sure that I didn’t crack his pal over the skull with the butt. A sigh went up from both of them as soon as the weapon was safely in Bansted’s possession. Then, as so often happens with anyone who is deeply in your debt, he turned nasty.
“You probably think you’ve been very clever, don’t you?” he asked.
“Only so so,” I replied. “I’ve found out you’ve got a revolver of your own as well as a rifle. But that’s about all. Is Rogers the typist?”
Both sides were now putting up a very good acting performance. I was doing the casual Wilton stuff. And Bansted and Rogers were behaving with a church-warden kind of dignity that was not bad for a bedroom thief and his accomplice. The typist remark, for instance, had been received with raised eyebrows and nothing else.
“I’ve had my eye on you for some time,” Bansted went on.
“Don’t,” I said. “Please don’t. I’m ready to offer friendship but nothing more. Besides, think of Rogers.”
Bansted crossed his arms. This is usually one of the most effective attitudes. But a dressing-gown is not the right costume for it. He reminded me of a comic on the music halls.
“I think, Hudson,” he said, “that you rather underestimate our intelligence. Rogers’s and mine.”
“Impossible,” I said. “Tell me more.”
He nodded his head.
“That’s what I propose to do,” he said. “In the first place, this was a quiet, hard-working Institute before you came.”
“Go on.”
“The day someone fired at Gillett you couldn’t be traced, remember?”
“I knew where I was,” I said. “All the time.”
“And when you found you’d missed him,” Bansted went on, “you tried to spread the story that he’d invented the whole shooting.”
“That’s one reading,” I agreed.
“And when Una was fired at you were the only witness.”
“What about Una?”
“I’ve come to the conclusion,” said Bansted slowly, “that she’s concealing something.”
That was practically the first thing he’d said that made sense. Because I’d arrived at the same conclusion too. But I wanted to hear what else Bansted had to say.
“Did I shoot Mann too?” I asked.
“Mann shot himself,” Bansted replied. “Probably because he knew you were after him. He was in your room most of the night. Rogers heard you . . . ”
I turned towards Rogers.
“Don’t say we kept you awake,” I interrupted. “I know these walls are just plywood, but . . . ”
Bansted, however, hadn’t finished yet.
“And we have proof you were in Plymouth the night after the culture was stolen. We know how you got rid of it.”
“How did I?” I asked.
“In a match-box. You gave it to a sailor.”
I shook my head.
“They were just matches,” I said. “Just ordinary Bryant and May’s.”
“So you admit the incident?”
It didn’t seem worth while denying it.
“Where were you sitting, chum?” I asked.
“We’d just come in,” Bansted told me. “Rogers and I. We didn’t speak to you at the time because we thought you were drunk.”
“So did I.”
“What do you propose to do about it?” I asked.
“It’s out of our hands,” Bansted replied. “Wilton knows all about it.”
“Including the automatic?”
“No,” said Bansted, and I could detect the note of contempt in his voice as he said it. “Rogers and I decided that there was the need for action. That’s why we took matters into our own hands.”
“May I have it back, please?” I asked.
Bansted seemed surprised. Even a bit shocked, I thought.
“After the trial,” he replied severely.
With that he picked it up and lowered it gently into his pocket. His own revolver was lying on the dressing-table close by his right hand.
“But it’s mine,” I reminded him.
He paused.
“Safer where it is,” he said.
“Not necessarily,” I told him. “I can’t aim with it. You can.”
Because it was obviously no use arguing, I got up and went over to the door. Bansted kept me covered all the time. But he had finished his little bit of detective work. And I was only just beginning. For a start, I jerked the door wide open all in one go. It was just as I had expected. Or almost. There was someone there—Swanton. He wasn’t actually down on one knee, peering through the keyhole. But he was pressed up so close against the panel that he nearly fell inside on top of me.
“I thought I heard voices,” he said lamely.
He was staring hard at Bansted, who was trying hard to conceal his revolver.
“No one here,” I said. “Must have been owls.”
But while Swanton was still staring at Bansted I was having a good look at Swanton. And he was certainly worth looking at. He was wearing an oilskin and a sou’wester that made him look like a Boy Scout collecting for the local lifeboat. Below the bottom of the oilskin appeared a pair of Wellingtons. But what particularly interested me was that the clothes were entirely dry. And that showed that he hadn’t yet been wherever it was that he was going.
“Can I lend you an umbrella?” I asked.