Part Five: Dinah

—?”

“I have been in love with you, nobody else, ever since Thunderbolt dumped you at that gate. Remarkable, isn’t it! When you were fifteen, it was even slightly improper. Don’t you think I’ve behaved very well, on the whole?”

“Edward will never believe that, now,” Dinah said.

“Do we care?”

Dinah came the nearest to a giggle he had ever seen her.

“Isn’t it odd, Edward doesn’t matter any more! When I came here I thought you’d be furious with him! I told him if he said any of those things to you I hoped you’d knock him down! But it doesn’t really matter, does it!”

“Well, I don’t say it wouldn’t be a pleasure. Dinah, darling—I’ve got to know this. Shall you mind coming to America to live—some day?”

“I’d live in a tent in a desert if you were there.”

After a moment’s silent struggle he said, “It isn’t quite as bad as that in New York. And now I must take you home, you know, this really won’t do.

Put your hat on, and I’ll find mine.” He loosed his arms and rose reluctantly and stood watching while she pinned on her hat in front of the mantelpiece mirror.

She followed him into the little foyer and as he set his hand on the doorknob he felt a tug at his sleeve.

“Bracken. Please kiss me like that again before we go.”

Bracken obliged. And then, because his heart was choking him—

“What would Edward say?” he asked lightly, caught up his hat, and swept a bemused and radiant Dinah through the open door into the passage.

It was quite dusky in the street, and the rain had stopped. Bracken wanted to go home with her and tell Edward where to head in, but she insisted that she could slip upstairs without being seen, and anyway, she didn’t mind anything now. But when they reached the corner of the Square she hung back. A carriage had stopped in front of the house and people in evening dress were getting out.

“Oh, bother!” said Dinah. “People coming to early dinner. It’s a theatre party tonight. Couldn’t I stay with you till about eight-thirty and then they’d all be gone and I could get in without meeting anybody.”

“Won’t you be missed?” he asked doubtfully.

“I left a note for Miss French. She won’t worry, so long as I’m with you.”

“You’ll get awfully hungry,” he suggested.

“I’m hungry now. I couldn’t eat any tea. Isn’t there some place we could dine, like a tea-shop, where we wouldn’t know anybody?”

“I suppose there are such places,” he said, running his mind over Soho, where friends of Clare’s would never be.

“Oh, please, Bracken, it would be such fun, and we may never have another chance like this!”

“We’ll have lots of chances,” he reminded her with amusement. “All the rest of our lives!”

“But not for weeks, Bracken, and it will be so long before I even see you again! After Miss French goes I shall probably have some gorgon that will even read my letters!”

“The woman tempted me,” he murmured resignedly, and hailed a passing hansom and gave the name of a little French restaurant where he hoped he would not see anybody he knew. “We really ought to collect Miss French and take her along,” he said with a last twinge of conscience as the cab turned the corner away from the Square.

“We can’t get at her,” Dinah said with some satisfaction. “I can’t get in and she can’t get out—not without being questioned. Not till after they’ve all gone to the theatre. Anyway, she’ll think we are having dinner there in your rooms, and that would be proper, wouldn’t it, with your man serving it?”

“It would have been simpler, at least. But I let him go as soon as I came in.” Bracken recalled suddenly that Partridge would be waiting at the club

to dine with him, and decided that it was too late now, and gave himself up to the enjoyment of this unexpected windfall of Dinah’s company, as she said gravely:

“Is there any way to save Miss French?”

“From getting the sack? Not if Edward’s got the bit between his teeth!”

“It’s our fault,” said Dinah only.

“You’re very fond of her, aren’t you,” he observed, and Dinah nodded without speaking and he saw that her eyes were full. “Then we’ll save her,”

he said. “After he fires her.”

“How?” She looked at him with a faint hopefulness. “She’ll have to get another job as soon as she can. She had a sister who was ill for years and so Miss French wasn’t able to put any of her money in the bank. She had to use it all. And she isn’t—young, any more. I really don’t know what will happen to her if she has to go, it’s something I just—can’t bear to think about.”

“What do you think I’m here for?” said Bracken. “I’ll buy her for you.”

“Now, Bracken—!” She was half vexed that he should joke about it.

“It might look better if we called her a housekeeper after you’re married, though.”

“You mean I could have her then?”

“Why not?”

“Bracken, honestly, if I suddenly said Please give me the earth, would you say Why not?”

“Why not?” said Bracken, and took her hands. “Sweetheart, with me you are going to have the earth—as much of it as you can use. It’s not considered good form to talk about money—is it. But mine was honestly made. I’m not ashamed of it. And they say money can’t buy happiness. It’s usually the people who haven’t got it who say that. Sour grapes, Dinah.

People can be happy without it, I don’t say they can’t. But with it, they can be happier.”

Dinah sat looking down at her own hands held fast in his. Quite deliberately she raised them, and his, and he felt her lips and her tears on his fingers.

“Nobody ever loved anybody the way I’m going to love you,” she said.

“Oh, God above, Dinah, it’s such a little thing! Wait till I really get started!”

“It’s not a little thing. It’s Miss French’s whole life. And to think I was almost afraid to mention it for fear—”

“For fear of what?” The words came almost sharply in his anxiety.

“The most I—thought of—was that you might be willing to give her a few pounds to—to sort of tide her over till she found something. And I was afraid—”

“Afraid of what?” he insisted.

“Well, it was because of something Mortimer Flood said once—about Clare.” She paused unhappily, and Bracken said:

“What was that?”

“He said—he meant to be funny, of course, when he said it—and he said, ‘Good God, the woman has begun to spend my money before there is anything in it for me!’ And Clare blushed, and Edward sort of snorted, and Father laughed, but I don’t think he liked it. Mr. Flood didn’t seem to realize that he’d said anything.”

Bracken was silent so long that she looked at him uncertainly.

“Have I made some kind of—mistake?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said slowly, and saw the bewilderment in her face. “You were afraid.”

“I don’t—know what you mean.”

“And you are still afraid,” he said, for her eyes were wide and dark, and her lips were not quite steady. “Of me,” he added without emphasis. “I’m trying to think how I deserved that.”

Swiftly under his grave regard she rallied, and began to smile. Her fingers curled closer inside his.

“You don’t deserve it,” she said, “and I apologize. I should have known I could ask you straight out. I should have said—Bracken, we must look after Miss French. Would that do?”

“Perfectly. Just kindly remember hereafter that you aren’t marrying anybody named Flood.”

She leaned back luxuriously in the cab, her shoulder against his.

“I never thought I’d look forward to marriage!” she sighed contentedly.

“And yet you find you do?” he queried, smiling.

“Now that I find it’s going to be you, I can’t wait!”

“Of course you realize your father and Edward are going to raise Cain,”

he remarked.

“They can’t stop us, can they?”

“Until you’re of age, they can. Even then, the clergy will snub us because of the divorce. Shall you mind being married in a register office?”

“So long as it means I can live with you for ever after I don’t care where I’m married.”

“Thank you. Everyone is going to say that you’re too young, and make a perfect ogre of me. We’re going to be a scandal, Dinah, shall you mind that?”

“Bracken—would you rather not?”

“Not marry you? When it’s all I’ve thought of for years? I want you to know what you’re getting into, that’s all.”

“Do you want to know something, Bracken? Every girl in London, beginning with the Norton-Leighs, is going to wish she was in my shoes!

Only this afternoon, Evelyn said that if you ever so much as looked at her she’d be wildly in love with you!”

“I’m glad you warned me,” he remarked. “I’ll be very careful where I look. What did you say?”

“I wanted to kill her then, but now I’m sorry for her—because she isn’t in a hansom cab on her way to have dinner with you. And I am. This is me, Dinah, driving down Shaftesbury Avenue with the man I’m going to marry!

I’m all full of fireworks and rockets! Does it show?”

“Yes, it does. Most becoming.”

“And that’s another thing. Do you think I’ll look all right, when I’m fixed up a little? I’ll never have Clare’s looks, you know. I have to wear ruffles pinned across my front inside my bridesmaid’s dress because I haven’t got a figure. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you that.”

“I might have guessed.”

“Bracken, I’ll never be beautiful or clever. Are you sure you’re not making a mistake?”

“Quite sure.”

“But I’m not at all the sort of woman I thought you’d marry!”

“What sort was that?” Bracken inquired with interest.

“You ought to have a princess, at least—beautiful and strange.”

“But that’s what I’m going to have.”

She shook her head.

“It’s just me, Bracken.”

“Some day—not in a hansom cab—I shall really exert myself, Dinah, and tell you all the things you are to me. Meanwhile, will you just take my word for it that you’re everything I want in the world?”

They dined very well and unobserved at a corner table at Antoine’s in Compton Street, and Bracken ordered champagne. Dinah said she felt as though they were married already, and Bracken suspected that the waiter was convinced it was a honeymoon.

“I’ve always wondered what people talked about after they were married,” Dinah confessed as the meal went on. “I always thought they must run out of things to say. But now it all looks so easy!”

It was nearly ten when they got back to St. James’s Square after a roundabout drive home because there was still so much to say. They would not be able to see each other again before she was banished to Gloucestershire, except perhaps a few minutes at the wedding with everybody looking. Bracken was firm against stolen meetings from now on, feeling that he must pull up somewhere until after the divorce became a fact, or at least a decree nisi. He had laughed when Partridge cautioned him against becoming Involved, as Partridge put it, with another woman. He had laughed still more when Partridge explained further that by English law one adultery might make a divorce but two cancelled out and no divorce was possible. And it was just that sort of thing, said Partridge gloomily, that the Queen’s Proctor dearly loved to ferret out. None of it made any sense. But at least the Queen’s Proctor must not be allowed to take an interest in his meetings with Dinah. She might be permitted to see Virginia after she returned to the Hall, and they could send each other letters that way.

Virginia would love carrying messages.

Bracken stood at the bottom of the steps and waited till the footman had let her into the house. Then he walked slowly back to Ryder Street, thinking what a day it had been.

As he put his key into the lock a man stepped out of the shadows on his right and said, “Mr. Murray?”

“Yes,” said Bracken. “Who are you?”

“Inspector Evans, of Scotland Yard.”

“Well, come in!” said Bracken cordially, beyond surprise. “Let’s have a drink!”

8

WHEN Bracken had turned on the lights and glanced at the man’s card, he said, “Well, Inspector—what’s on your mind?”

“I’m afraid it’s rather a—difficult subject,” said the Inspector delicately, and Bracken stared at him.

“Don’t be tactful,” he said. “Why have you come to see me?”

“Are you aware, Mr. Murray, that a woman calling herself your wife has been living in a Bloomsbury lodging-house?”

“I am since this afternoon,” Bracken admitted, while his insides went into a cold, tight knot. “Why?”

“You saw her this afternoon?”

“She came to my office. First I knew she was in England. We—haven’t been living together.”

“When did she leave your office today?”

“About five, I think it was.”

“Did you accompany her?”

“No. I left quite a bit later. Why?”

“Have you seen her since then?”

“No. Why? ”

“She has been murdered.”

There was silence. Then—

“Let’s have that drink,” said Bracken, going to the sideboard. As he handed the Inspector his glass he said, “Where and how? Or can’t you say?

Am I under suspicion?”

“It would be just as well if you can account for your time during the last four hours.”

“Well, I can’t.”

“Can’t?”

“Can’t. So what’s next?”

“I think I’d better warn you, Mr. Murray, that you’re putting yourself in rather a serious position.”

“Yes. What next?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to hold yourself available for further questioning.”

“I’m afraid you will. Does that mean jail?”

“No,” said the Inspector, and added reassuringly, “Oh, no,” and left it at that.

“You mean not yet,” Bracken suggested. “Mind if I get my solicitor around here before we go any further?”

“No objection to that,” said the Inspector.

“You see, just to make it look worse,” said Bracken, going to the telephone on the desk, “I had started divorce proceedings. Hullo, I say, Partridge—I’m frightfully sorry I didn’t keep that appointment. Would you mind coming round to Ryder Street now?—Well, as a matter of fact, Scotland Yard is here, and I think I’m going to need legal advice.—Thanks very much.” He hung up. “Lives in Dover Street Be here in a few minutes.

Do you think in the meantime you could tell me a little more about what has happened?”

“May I ask you, Mr. Murray, why you are wearing a coat that doesn’t match your trousers?”

“Oh, well, that I can explain. I got wet coming home from the office.

Before I went out again in rather a hurry I changed my damp coat without stopping to change my trousers. It’s in the other room, in case you want to examine it for bloodstains?”

“We aren’t looking for bloodstains. She was strangled.”

“In broad daylight?”

“Some time between six and nine P.M.”

Bracken looked down at his own right hand, flexing the fingers thoughtfully.

“That wouldn’t be easy to do,” he said. “Lisl is—was a tall, extremely able-bodied woman. It would be like tackling a wildcat.”

“Unless of course it was someone she knew well,” the Inspector suggested quietly. “Someone who could come quite close to her, perhaps take her in his arms, without arousing her suspicions.”

Bracken nodded.

“Such as a husband. Yes, I can quite see that,” he said.

There was a silence, while the Inspector sipped his whisky appreciatively and Bracken sat staring into his own glass.

“Who found her?” he asked then.

“She had struck up an acquaintance with a woman named Levine who lived across the passage—a woman of rather questionable character,” said the Inspector apologetically. “Apparently Mrs. Murray had confided in her.

She knew that Mrs. Murray intended to see you today, and they had arranged to dine together so that Mrs. Murray could tell her about the interview. She heard Mrs. Murray come in about six o’clock and set her own door ajar to show that she was in and waiting to join her. A little later she heard Mrs. Murray’s door open and assumed that she was coming to keep their engagement. Instead, she reached her own door just in time to see Mrs. Murray’s door closing behind a man, She saw only his back.”

“Well?” Bracken queried as the Inspector paused. “Didn’t she listen at the keyhole?”

“Since it appeared to her that Mrs. Murray had company, and she supposed it was yourself, the Levine woman says she went out to a place near by where they had dined together before. Mrs. Murray did not join her there. When she went back to the house an hour or so later she knocked on Mrs. Murray’s door and got no answer. She waited another hour, feeling, she says, vaguely uneasy—knocked again and still got no answer. Then she tried the door, thinking Mrs. Murray might have left a message for her inside. The door was not locked. Mrs. Murray was lying across the sofa, dead.”

“So Levine is ready to put the rope around my neck,” said Bracken.

“No, it’s not as bad as that,” the Inspector objected mildly. “But we would like to know—”

“Where I was at the time. No one could blame you for that. The Levine didn’t happen to notice whether the man was wearing a coat that didn’t quite match his trousers?”

“The passage was quite dark by then. Mrs. Murray’s room was lighted.

She saw his silhouette—a tall man with broad shoulders.”

“Six feet two, one hundred and eighty-five pounds. Or if you prefer, thirteen stone three.”

The Inspector smiled indulgently.

“You needn’t take too grim a view, Mr. Murray. Not yet.”

“If I had ever wanted to murder my wife, Inspector—and I don’t say I never have—I don’t think I should have attempted it with my bare hands.

Strangling—as I understand it—requires time. It almost requires that the

murderer should, as it were, enjoy his work.” In spite of himself his shoulders hunched nervously. “I just wouldn’t have the guts,” he said.

Partridge arrived then and was given a tall tumbler while events were explained to him. Tongue-tied in the presence of the Inspector, he looked guardedly at Bracken, who laughed recklessly and said, “All right, tell him!

I can’t see any sense in trying to be discreet about this thing. I’m in it just about up to my neck! What Mr. Partridge hesitates to mention,” he added to the Inspector, “is that I asked him to dine with me at my club to discuss the interview with my wife which took place this afternoon, and then I didn’t turn up!”

The Inspector began to look severe.

“I must say, Mr. Murray, you’re not making it easy for us,” he said disapprovingly.

“Oh, I thought I was. Have another drink?”

“You’re making it very easy for him to get a wrong impression, if I may say so,” Partridge rebuked him. “Surely you can say where you did have dinner.”

“At a pub in Kensington,” said Bracken, too promptly.

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Is there someone there, such as a barmaid, who could identify you?”

“No.”

“You are not on oath now,” said Partridge, frowning at him. “But you may be. Where did you have dinner tonight?”

“Meaning you don’t like the pub in Kensington? I’m afraid it’s the best I can do.”

“Mr. Murray—” The Inspector cleared his throat. “Is it your firm resolve not to account for your whereabouts during those four hours?”

“Nothing firmer.”

And now, for the first time, the shadow of doubt dwelt on the Inspector’s face, and Partridge looked quite apprehensive.

“About the divorce,” said the Inspector. “You mentioned, didn’t you, that you had started proceedings. Was everything in order on that? Were there any hitches?”

“None. The evidence was quite clear against her,” Bracken stated definitely.

“The case would have come up after the Long Vacation,” said Partridge.

“There wasn’t much doubt of the verdict. He would have had his freedom.

So you see there was no motive.”

“But now there isn’t any case!” Bracken pointed out wilfully and both of them turned on him looks of grave reproof.

Bracken stood on the hearthrug holding his glass, the evening with Dinah still bubbling in him like champagne, producing in him what seemed to him extraordinary clarity, complete detachment, utter reason, with regard to the fantastic circumstances he faced. He felt no grief for Lisl—only horror at the ugly thing that had happened to her. He did acknowledge a kind of guilt. She had told him she was afraid, and he had dismissed that as part of her game. But it was very fresh in his mind that the last words she spoke to him in the office were an implicit threat to Dinah.

“My dear Partridge—my dear Inspector Evans—can either of you seriously contemplate the possibility of my being such a blithering fool as to murder Lisl now? I’d have everything to lose and nothing to gain! You say yourself I’d have been free in a few months’ time. Or do I seem to you the sort of man who could so hate a woman he once loved that he could lose sight of everything else in a brutal desire to choke the life out of her? Do you think perhaps I am not quite sane? Because if I am sane, I am not the man you are looking for! The man you want, Inspector, is the man who still loves her, who cares what she does, or has done in the recent past. A man who might even dread a reconciliation with me, if she came to see me as she did today.”

“Is there such a man?” the Inspector queried alertly.

“I think there is. Name of Hutchinson. The fellow she left me for, several years ago.”

“Where was he last heard of?”

“That I don’t know, except that she told me this afternoon he followed her everywhere she went after she had left him in his turn, for someone else. It seems most likely that he has trailed her to England. She said he had made threats. She said she was afraid of him. I blame myself very bitterly now for not taking her apprehension more seriously. Apparently she had good reason to fear him.”

“Well, that’s something to go on with.” The Inspector rose, visibly relieved that Bracken had been able to offer even this glimmering hope of a

solution which might absolve himself. “We’ll have to try to find him. Could you identify him?”

“Yes, I could, though I haven’t seen him for three years. He’s about my size, but heavier, grizzled hair and moustache. He’s a Californian, so his speech would be noticeable here.”

The Inspector was writing down notes.

“Well, I think that’s all for now, Mr. Murray. If you will kindly come to my office tomorrow morning at ten, I’ll have the Levine woman there. I want her to see you, from behind. And we’ll want to go into this matter of Hutchinson further.” He looked back gravely from the doorway. “We’re still interested in where you were tonight, you know,” he said, and went.

When the door had closed Partridge said worriedly, “My dear boy, you are asking for it, you know, with that story about the pub. What happened?”

“Not even for you, Partridge, will I name names tonight.”

Partridge looked more worried still.

“It is most indiscreet of you to be involved with another woman just now.”

“So you’ve said, and I didn’t mean to be. Indiscreet is a most inadequate word for what I did this evening—and I won’t part with it unless they’ve got me right up there on the gallows!”

“It won’t come to that, of course, but—”

“You mean you hope it won’t, but you aren’t quite sure,” Bracken grinned. “Hutchinson is their man. It could be Serrano, or it could be somebody since Serrano, but I’m betting on Hutchinson. Of course if they can’t find him, or anybody else but me, it begins to be awkward. But I’m also betting on Scotland Yard. At least they didn’t clap me in jail!”

“No,” said Partridge cautiously. “But don’t try to leave town.”

“You mean I’m being watched?”

“Sure to be.”

“And if I walked out of the house now and went to a railway station I’d be stopped?”

“You would.”

Bracken sat down.

“Wherever she is,” he said, “Lisl is enjoying this.”

9

DINAH and Miss French went for their usual walk in the park the following morning, oppressed by the knowledge that Alwyn was interviewing gorgons in the library, and fortified by Bracken’s promise that Miss French would go on his own payroll after Dinah married him.

When Dinah returned home the night before and ran upstairs to the top floor, light-headed with love and champagne, she had found Miss French lying down in her bedroom which opened off the schoolroom on the opposite side to Dinah’s. Miss French had been crying, and the room smelled of the Florida Water she rubbed on her head when it ached. Her only fault, she knew, was that she was a better judge of men than Lord Alwyn, and had trusted Bracken completely. For that she had got the sack, and it seemed that the long, affectionate friendship between her and Dinah was to be ended. But even then her anxiety was for Dinah and not for herself. She had not known until Lord Alwyn threw it in her face that Bracken had a wife, for Dinah had scrupulously refrained from discussing his affairs. The news had come as a shock to Miss French, and had shaken her confidence in him and her own judgment of him. Lord Alwyn implied that Bracken had led Dinah on with hopes of his being free to marry her, and it was not until she heard Dinah’s stammering, ecstatic account of the conversation in Bracken’s chambers that Miss French saw how cruelly wrong about the whole thing Lord Alwyn was. When Dinah went on to tell how Bracken had said she would need help with the establishment and that Miss French should come to them permanently as a sort of housekeeper, the headache miraculously went, and they made cocoa on the schoolroom spirit-lamp and had a celebration with biscuits and fruit from the cupboard, and didn’t go to bed till after midnight, there was so much to talk about.

As they were returning through Waterloo Place from their walk the contents-bills of the morning papers caught their horrified eyes.

JOURNALIST’S WIFE MURDERED. MRS. BRACKEN MURRAY: SENSATION. Miss French recovered first from a kind of paralysis of incredulity and bought a paper. They stood together on the pavement, Dinah reading over her shoulder— found strangled in Bloomsbury lodgings—

husband well known in Fleet Street— estranged for several years— further questioning of Mr. Murray as regards his whereabouts at time of his wife’s death—

“He was with me,” said Dinah in a whisper. “Why doesn’t he tell them?”

“No gentleman would bring your name into it,” Miss French said with conviction, and added a little dramatically, “He’d hang first!”

Dinah walked home in a haze, carrying the paper. In the front hall they met Alwyn, also with a paper in his hand.

“Oh, you’ve seen it,” he said dryly. “Well, I’m afraid your friend Murray is right up against it now.”

“What will they do?” Dinah asked.

“Arrest him, I should think. Unless he has an absolute watertight alibi for the time of the murder, and he doesn’t seem to have one. You’d think an innocent man could say where he was, wouldn’t you! Somebody must have seen him! Perhaps you will see reason now, instead of making a scene when I forbid you to have anything to do with him!”

Dinah turned and walked past her brother and up the stairs, followed by Miss French. She climbed the second flight slowly, as though she trailed a broken wing. Miss French went into her room to take off her hat, but Dinah stood still in the middle of the schoolroom floor, holding the paper and trying to think. Further questioning of Mr. Murray— you’d think an innocent man could say where he was— he’d hang first— somebody must have seen him…. I saw him, Dinah thought. I’m the only one who saw him.

I could tell them where he was while his wife was being strangled. But he never will. If I don’t tell—

Cold with terror, she saw Bracken in the dock, being tried for murder rather than mention her name, saw the wigs and gowns and solemn pageantry of the courtroom—Archie knew all about that—perhaps Archie could do something, perhaps Archie could save him—but Archie wasn’t with him last night. There was only one person who could save him. There was only one way….

Dinah’s eyes rested on the door of Miss French’s room, opening out of the schoolroom where she stood, with the key on the schoolroom side. Miss French’s purse and gloves lay on the table where she had dropped them in her agitation before she went into her room. Dinah darted across the schoolroom, pulled Miss French’s door shut on her and locked it.

“Miss French,” she said against the panel. “Miss French, you’ve got to listen! I’ve locked you in—can you hear me? Will you please stay quietly

where you are till I get back? I’m going down to Scotland Yard and tell them where Bracken was, so they’ll let him go.”

Miss French rattled the doorknob and said something Dinah couldn’t hear. She raised her voice a little.

“You can’t stop me, do you see? If they find out, it’s not your fault, you couldn’t stop me! And I’m going to pay the cab fare out of your purse, but Bracken will give it back to you!”

She snatched up Miss French’s purse and ran out of the schoolroom and down the upper flight of stairs. The bedroom corridor was empty, but from the top of the lower flight she could hear Edward’s voice in the drawing room. Step by step she descended, screened by an angle of the hall, her feet cushioned by the stair-carpet, flitted to the outer door and heard it close behind her with a stealthy click. From the step, she remembered to turn to the left to avoid passing under the drawing room windows, and caught a cab at the corner of Charles Street.

“I want to go to Scotland Yard,” she told the driver as she got in. “Please hurry.” She thought he looked surprised, but it was not so much at her destination as at her youth and evident state of distraction. Dinah did not know that people went to Scotland Yard for the sake of a lost umbrella much oftener than to rescue a lover from being tried for murder, and she felt that her mission must be suspected at once.

A large, benign constable stood at the gate of the big red building above the Embankment. He watched with interest while the very young lady with a wing in her hat paid her cab-driver and gave him a tip which wreathed him in smiles. Then the constable realized with increasing interest that she meant to enter Scotland Yard. He didn’t get them like that very often here.

“Please,” said Dinah, pausing before him, “I want to see someone about the murder.”

“Which murder, miss?”

“M-Mrs. Bracken Murray.”

The constable came to life. He led her into the entrance hall where a police sergeant sat behind a desk, and there was a whispered conference.

The sergeant looked at her piercingly, as if he could not believe that he actually saw a girl in a blue polonaise with a wing in her hat standing where Dinah stood, and then he got up and went away. The constable gave her a chair and stood guard above her as though he though she might try to leave.

The sergeant came back very soon and crooked a finger at her, saying,

“Will you come this way, please, miss?”

She followed him to the lift and then along miles of upper corridors, and finally he opened the door of an office and motioned her inside and left her there alone. Presently an inner door opened and a tall grey-haired man with a kind smile approached her.

“Good morning,” he said. “I’m Chief Inspector Jerrold. You have something to tell me about the Murray case?”

“Yes. Is he here? Please don’t let him see me, he wouldn’t want me to tell.”

The Chief Inspector’s smile went.

“First of all, will you please tell me your name?” he requested.

“I’m Dinah Campion. You can’t arrest Mr. Murray, because he was with me last evening. My governess said he’d never mention that to save himself, so I—had to come.”

“How long was he with you, last evening?”

“I went to his rooms after tea. I don’t want you to think—you see, I’d never gone there alone before, but I was in trouble at home and I ran away to him because—because he’s the person I love best in the world and I had to see him.”

“And was he there when you arrived?”

“No, he was late, so I waited. His man let me in.”

“What time did Mr. Murray come home?”

“Just after six. I heard the Palace clock strike while I was sitting there.”

“And how long did you stay after he came in?”

“I was with him till nearly ten, but we weren’t in his rooms all that time.

It was his man’s evening out and he’d gone, so we had dinner at a place in Compton Street. He—Mr. Murray wasn’t out of my sight all that time. I don’t want you to think—you see, we’d never done such a thing before, but I wasn’t going to be allowed to see him again for a long time, and—he said we should get the governess and take her along, but that was impossible, and—I overruled him.”

The Chief Inspector’s smile was coming back.

“I’m sure you did,” he said.

“So now that you know where he was, you’ll let him go, won’t you?”

“My dear child, he’s not under arrest, you know.”

“My brother said he would be, if he didn’t have an alibi. My brother is Lord Alwyn, and I’ve got another brother who is a Junior at the Temple, but they weren’t any good to Bracken because you see they didn’t know where I was, last evening. I had to come here myself, didn’t I?”

The Chief Inspector was seeing a great deal of rather blinding light. He was not a student of the peerage, but he could orient himself at once when he heard Lord Alwyn’s name, and he was not surprised, in a way, that the honest, self-possessed young person in front of him had walked out of Debrett. She was young, but she was brave, and she was trying to protect the person she loved best in the world.

“Yes, I’m glad you’ve come,” he said gently. “We had to ask Mr. Murray some questions, of course, and there was a certain amount of mystery about his whereabouts last evening, which is now happily cleared up.”

“You—you haven’t put him in jail?”

“Dear me, no, he’s in the next room. Would you like to make sure?” He opened the inner door, through which he had emerged a few minutes before.

“Come and see for yourself,” he smiled, for while he believed her story he wanted Bracken’s reaction to her presence there.

Three men stood up as she entered, among them Bracken. Dinah ran at him and clasped him protectively around the shoulders, crying, “Oh, Bracken, are you all right? I came as soon as I could!”

“Of course he’s all right,” said the Chief Inspector rather testily. “We haven’t exactly had thumb-screws on him, you know!”

Bracken held her against him, looking bewildered and at the same time very proud.

“Dinah, what on earth have you been up to? How did you get here?”

“The paper said you hadn’t got an alibi. So I locked Miss French in her room and came to tell them where you were last evening.” She turned on the beaming Scotland Yard people with rather an air of a well-brought-up tigress defending its young, her arms still around Bracken. “Have you finished with him? May I take him away now?”

“Certainly, do what you like with him,” said the Chief Inspector. “But first I must ask you to sign a written statement of what you told me in the other room, if you don’t mind.”

Dinah said she didn’t mind, and the Chief Inspector explained that she must come into the other room with him and repeat her story before a

stenographer. She left Bracken with a backward glance, safely in the company of Partridge and Inspector Evans, and followed Chief Inspector Jerrold into the room she had entered first. A quiet little man with a pad and pencil took down her answers to the Chief Inspector’s questions, turning them into a statement as he went. Within a remarkably short time this was returned to her, typed, for signing. Dinah wrote her name with a firm hand, and the Chief Inspector led the way back to where Bracken was waiting, and said he was free to go. Dinah took his arm.

“Where’s your hat, Bracken?” she asked in a motherly way.

Somebody gave Bracken his hat, and Dinah held out her hand to the Chief Inspector. Generations of graciousness were in the simple gesture.

“You’ve been very kind,” she said, looking up at him. “Thank you so much for listening to me.”

“My dear Lady Dinah, it was the greatest pleasure,” he said gallantly, and when Bracken had said his own goodbyes she led him away, still holding his arm protectively. Scotland Yard stood and watched them go, with fatuous smiles, for Dinah shimmered with romance.

They passed the desk in the entrance hall, where the sergeant said,

“Everything all right, miss?” and Dinah smiled at him broadly and said,

“Yes, thank you.” And they came to the gate, where the constable touched the brim of his helmet and said, “Good morning, miss,” and Dinah, holding Bracken’s arm, said, “Good morning, and thank you.”

Then Bracken spoke.

“Shall I call a cab, miss?”

“Yes, please,” said Dinah faintly, and when it came she sank into the seat and pulled him down beside her as though now, at last, he was rescued.

“Oh, Bracken, I was so frightened! What did they do to you?”

“Well, first,” he said solemnly, “I was boiled in oil. And then I was drawn and quartered. And after that I was questioned on the rack—”

“Oh, if that’s all,” said Dinah, beginning to get her wind back, “I needn’t have come!”

“Dinah, I haven’t words.” He took both her hands and kissed them, as the cab entered Trafalgar Square. “You were superb. Scotland Yard will never be the same again. Nor shall I.”

“Nor will Edward, if he finds out!”

“I’m coming in now and talk to Edward.”

“Had you better?”

“Yes, it’s time.”

“He’s convinced you’re in jail by now! Bracken, what did happen? Did you know she was in London?”

“Only since yesterday afternoon, when she suddenly appeared at the office. Gave me something of a shock, I admit!”

“She came—? But what did she want?”

“It was a form of blackmail. Partridge was going to deal with it. And then this other thing happened. Inspector Evans was waiting for me when I got home last night.”

“Oh, Bracken, and I went to bed so happy!”

“So did I,” he said. “God forgive me, so did I. They asked me to come down to the Yard this morning, and the woman who had found—found the body was there. She had seen a man go into Lisl’s room, about six, and assumed it was me. When they asked to see my hat, I was sure she had seen Hutchinson.”

“Who is he?”

“The man Lisl had been living with on the Continent. He is a Westerner and always wore a broad brim in New York. Apparently he still does.

Anyway, my hat was wrong, and she said I was too slender for the man she had seen. How’s that for a word? Slender, she said!”

“I like thin men,” said Dinah softly.

“All right, I’ll see that you have one. In the meantime—” He took the flat jeweller’s case out of an inner pocket, extracted the watch, and put the chain around her neck. “Let Edward make the most of that!”

“Oh, Bracken, do we dare?”

“You, after taking on the whole police force, talk about daring? Where on earth is this fellow going?”

The cabby, having had no directions, had simply followed his nose. Put right by a few words from Bracken through the trap, he soon brought them to St. James’s Square and Bracken helped Dinah down, and they rang the bell. The footman looked surprised to see Dinah, whom he had admitted an hour ago with Miss French, and Bracken asked for Lord Alwyn, who sent back word that he would see them in the library.

But the library had no terrors for Dinah now, and she followed Bracken quite jauntily across the black-and-white marble squares of the hall floor,

her fingers clasping the little watch which was their talisman.

“Well—” Alwyn began emphatically as soon as they appeared in the doorway, and Bracken cut in, speaking very softly, looking very bland, as was his way in a crisis.

“Now, before you say another word, Alwyn, let’s get one thing quite clear. I am going to marry Dinah. I told you that two years ago, so you can’t say you weren’t warned. If you want to make a row about it, I am still going to marry Dinah. So why can’t we talk it over sensibly?”

“Dinah is much too young to make up her mind,” said Alwyn.

“I agree. That’s why I am hoping that you will take a reasonable view of things and allow an ordinary engagement to exist in the ordinary way, at least till she has passed her eighteenth birthday. And by that I mean I must be free to see her, make her little gifts, take her around with only the usual amount of chaperonage, and no objections from you.”

“But my dear fellow, you’re in the midst of a bloody scandal!”

“Much as it may surprise you, Alwyn, I did not kill my wife. Even Scotland Yard says I didn’t, now. What’s more, they are well on the track of the man who did. The publicity is unfortunate, certainly, but it will blow over, publicity always does. And I fail utterly to see why you consider a marriage like Clare’s to a man like Flood less objectionable than Dinah’s, for love, to me. Incidentally, old boy—Dinah will have just as much money to spend as Clare ever will!”

Alwyn was uncomfortable. He had allowed his natural domineering nature to run away with him, and he had been honestly horrified at the idea of Dinah’s being involved in a cause célèbre—and he was touchy and resentful because Virginia Murray had had the effrontery to refuse him twice, and on top of that accept his brother Archie who had no prospects.

But he had always liked Bracken, who was a very useful man on a horse, and he had a very wholesome respect for the Murray fortune.

“Well, you do see my position, don’t you, old boy,” he said placatingly.

“Of course you did mention at the ball that you were taken with Dinah, but it was hard for me to believe that you meant to follow through on it—Dinah is a sweet child, of course, but she isn’t quite the wife I’d pick for a man like you.”

“Dinah has said something of the same kind herself,” said Bracken. “It’s just possible that I see something in Dinah that both of you have yet to

discover. But if she stays exactly the way she is now for the rest of her natural life, I shall be content.” He put his arm around her, holding her close to his side. “May we have your blessing, Alwyn, or must we do the best we can without it?”

“I seem to have very little choice, since you’ve both made up your minds.” Alwyn rose from behind the desk, shook hands with Bracken and kissed Dinah sketchily. “Stubborn little beggar, aren’t you,” he said to her with a grudging affection. “Always did have a mind of your own, dammit.

Well, you’ve got him now, I hope you’re satisfied!”

“Thank you, Edward,” said Dinah in her usual docile tone, but her smile was wide and cheeky.

“Well, how about lunch, eh?” queried Alwyn, ready to do the thing handsomely once he started. “You’ll stay to lunch, won’t you, old boy?

Have to celebrate this with champagne, I suppose!”

“That’s very kind of you,” said Bracken, and his fingers tightened excruciatingly in Dinah’s ribs, with triumph.

“Oh, heavens, I forgot Miss French!” Dinah cried. “Edward, Bracken says I can have her after we’re married, to help with the housekeeping, so don’t you think it would be silly to sack her in the meantime? Can’t she just stay on now, we’ve been such friends!”

“Very well, have everything your own way!” said Alwyn, making as graceful a surrender as possible. “I swear it’s got so a man isn’t master of his own house any longer, the women run it all!”

“And may Bracken come up to the schoolroom with me and tell her—

now, before lunch?”

“Tell her what? Oh, I see. Whatever you like, go ahead! Luncheon at one-thirty.” Alwyn waved them out.

They took the two flights of stairs at a run, hand-in-hand, and arrived breathless at the schoolroom door where she stopped him, pointing towards the key still in Miss French’s lock.

“She’s in there,” she whispered.

“Do we have to let her out right away?”

“You could kiss me first,” Dinah suggested hopefully.

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