Bream reached Queen’s Close to find lights blazing but no one in sight till he entered the upper flat.
“Not quite,” the house-surgeon answered his frightened question. “I told him she was gone, and so she was, practically speaking. You’ve fetched the strychnine?”
Bream produced a parcel and in a whisper asked where Blundell was now. Engrossed with the injection, Colin shook an indifferent head.
“I sent him to boil water while I rang you. He was so long I had to go for it myself—and he was slumped in a chair, as though he’d had a stroke. I left him there.”
“What’s the answer?” inquired the agent significantly.
“Not suicide,” was the stern reply. “But if she does die, I don’t dream of proving it. God, if I’d had help! He’s been given ample opportunity to get rid of certain articles, also to change out of his dress-shirt; but I saw it, he hadn’t been to bed. Look to the coffee on the stove. I’ll be wanting it—with any luck.”
The kitchen was empty, the coffee unpercolated, for the simple reason that the electric current was not on. Grimly Bream set it going, then inspected the maid’s room, which still stank noisomely of gas, but of nothing else. Practice makes perfect, he reflected, as he locked the door and pocketed the key.
He found the doctor tensely awaiting the result of the strychnine. Informed about the coffee Colin nodded.
“It’s things like that which clinch matters—for you and me. I’ll show you another.” And pulling Bream into the drawing-room he displayed an empty cigarette-box. “You see? I left it with twenty of my own in it. Thinking they were the doped ones, he took ’em off—and hearing my ring, he dumped the lot into his especial box. I know, because he offered me one—and, by the grace of God, I noticed this.”
He produced from his pocket a half-smoked cigarette with a V-shaped snag at the unlit end.
“I did that,” he explained, “with my nail, tearing open the packet. Take charge of it, will you?”
“Sharp work! He hoped, I take it, to get you mildly fuddled so he could detain you longer than you realised?”
“Exactly. The gas must be given time to finish her. He nearly managed it. It’s more than likely she won’t recover.”
In silence they regained the bedside. If life still lingered in the unconscious girl, Bream could detect no sign of it. Answering his unspoken thought, Colin muttered jerkily:
“If she dies, it’ll be all up with Somervell. Oh, we can start a hue and cry, but you know, as I do, it will come to nothing. Just one more human sacrifice, to cover up—what?”
Bream slipped softly back to the drawing-room and put through a call to Scotland Yard.
Diana did not die. Six hours later she opened her eyes, half-recognised Colin, and had to be firmly restrained from attempting to speak. Her weakness was so great she drifted off immediately, to wake at midday. This time memory began to revive, and with a terrible fear in her eyes she tried to sit up.
“It’s all right,” Colin soothed her; “plenty of time, you know. Yes, I mean that,” he added, for he realised what thought was in her mind. “To-day’s only Thursday. Now, then, it’s too soon to talk, but if you wanted to ask me something?”
“Has he been caught?” she whispered, her voice a rough croak he had to stoop to hear.
A great surge of joy swept through Colin’s fatigued body.
“Then he—Blundell—can be arrested?” he asked tensely.
She pondered this in bewildered anxiety, her eyes straying up at the rose canopy of the bed.
“I—don’t know,” faltered the hoarse voice. “How did I get here? I was down below—in his library.”
He saw that she had no knowledge whatever of the gas which had so nearly caused her death. Stroking her hand, he leant over her, his tired eyes burning into hers.
“Tell me only this. Was it chloroform?” he demanded.
“Yes. But how—?”
“I smelt it. Quiet, now, or you’ll be sick. I want you to sleep some more. Later on we’ll have it all out.”
She must not suspect that her story might be successfully countered by the one her godfather had had ample time to concoct. The fact was, Blundell was still the incalculable quantity—at large, aware that his victim still clung to life, at any moment likely to be back with his hypocritical solicitude, his disarming appearance of a man broken by shock. Till a statement was obtained he could not be placed under restraint. In the meantime, he was a potential danger, for which reason Colin had refused to allow another physician on the scene, or a nurse. Strangers might be bribed or hoodwinked into giving information. Diana must be safeguarded from all interference. Colin, holding the fort alone, had agreed with Bream on a policy, in pursuance of which he now waited till his charge had fallen into a doze, then shut the bedroom door quietly and made a telephone call from the drawing-room.
“Get in here as inconspicuously as you can,” he was saying, when a slight sound in the passage made him alter his tone, and without perceptible break continue, “Oxygen. . . . Yes, and as quick as you can; though it’s hardly any use. She’ll just go out. They seldom rally in these cases.”
He replaced the receiver, stepped briskly into the hall, and saw Blundell making quietly for Diana’s door. Firmly he placed his hand on the thick-set arm.
“Don’t go in, sir. I’ve asked a colleague to come round. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I heard what you said,” replied Blundell, with working features. “There’s been no change?”
“None. It’s only a matter of time, I’m afraid. You’d like to see her?” And he opened the door.
Blundell peered in at the motionless quilt above which a deathly-white cheek could be seen. His lips moved uncertainly, he bowed his big head, and with a gesture of clumsy dignity, thanked Colin and withdrew. When the lower flat door had closed, Colin went back to the telephone, finished his interrupted communication, and returned to sit beside the bed.
At nine that evening Diana was given tea. Her pulse was approaching its normal beat, and she now insisted on being heard. Colin called softly to Bream and Inspector Headcorn, who were playing double patience in the drawing-room; they entered quietly, notebooks in hand, and took seats.
“This must be short and sweet, you know,” Colin warned them in an undertone. “Just the bare facts, understand?” To Bream he whispered: “Both those entrances fastened? Chain on the front door, bolt drawn on the other?”
Bream assured him that the two doors had been seen to. The cupboard one was locked and bolted this morning when he examined it.
“I don’t suppose it’s been tampered with since?”
“Oh, no! He’s had no opportunity. We may as well begin.”
The curtains had been drawn, the one rose-shaded lamp on the bed-table shed a softening light over the four sharpened faces. Diana, wrapped in a white shawl—her dressing-gown had been got rid of because of its reek—lay with her head propped against two lace-edged pillows. Ill though she looked and was, she was steady and collected. Her sunken grey eyes held what had long been absent from them—positive hope. Colin felt her pulse again and spoke to her gently.
“Suppose,” he said, “you begin with going to bed last night. Tell us why you got up.”
She drew a quivering breath.
“I heard a car outside. His voice—and two others. It was about one o’clock. I looked down from that window, and just below I saw . . . oh, my God!”
She gasped and stiffened, staring straight ahead past the broad shoulders of the Inspector. The three men faced round. Framed in the dressing-room door, against the dusk of egg-blue walls, Nicholas Blundell faced the company, a service revolver levelled at the speaker’s forehead. Amidst a torrent of oaths two shots thundered, the top of Diana’s head seemed to burst, and for her it was as though a black curtain blotted out demoniac turmoil.
Some one’s foot caught the lamp cord. The alabaster vase which formed the stand fell to the floor with the crack of a splintered bulb. In darkness, thick with acrid fumes, a struggle had begun, three men against an unseen beast of the jungle. Headcorn reeled from a blow like that of a heavyweight boxer. A third shot grazed Bream in the thigh, and simultaneously Colin felt a left punch of staggering force glide off his temple as he made futile grabs at empty space. Blundell, solicitor-at-law, was a maniac, obsessed with but one desire—to sell his freedom at the highest possible price.
Colin flicked the wall-button, and as other lights flared on looked in agony towards the bed. With a sigh of thanksgiving he saw that Diana had collapsed only from shock, though the two neat holes drilled in the padded head-board level with her hair showed the narrowness of her escape. Two more shots remained undischarged. Headcorn, amidst the wreckage of a Sheraton chair, grappled with his assailant, whose right hand still brandished the revolver. Neither was gaining the least headway. The Inspector panted from the blows rained on chest and head, and blood poured from a cut above his eye. Bream was nowhere to be seen. Stooping, Colin dragged the lamp-plug from its wall-socket, and firmly grasping the alabaster stand aimed a mighty blow at the solicitor’s hairy knuckles, which just eluded him. As he took aim again a fourth bullet ploughed the ceiling, and though he had dodged in time, the other fist, planted powerfully in his solar plexus, sent him drunkenly against the bed, too dazed to know whose fingers twitched the lamp from his hold.
“That’s done it!”
It was Bream’s voice, shrill with triumph. Blinking, Colin beheld the private agent just taking a third deft turn with the lamp-flex round two thrashing legs. He lent a hand in the capture, no easy job even now. Ten seconds more, and Inspector Headcorn sat astride the heaving chest, wiped sweat and blood from his eyes, and gasped in the formal phraseology of his profession:
“Nicholas Godfrey Blundell, I arrest you in the name of the law—for criminal assault and attempted murder—and it is my duty to warn you that anything you say will be used in evidence!”