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СКАЧАТЬ bird and a bottle," Cheale answered handsomely. Like the car the lunch was his Company's.

      He chose a safe corner, and in guarded voices they discussed the inquest.

      "It's a clear and simple case of suicide," Cheale began. "Clear and simple!" repeated Wilmot. "Is anything ever quite limpid?"

      "You think it's suicide," Cheale looked at him with certainty. "What about your article in to-day's Courier?"

      Wilmot met his gaze with a faint, deprecatory smile. "I'm a newspaper man. When it's a case of two alternatives I naturally choose the more spectacular, or the more dramatic. Whichever word you prefer."

      "But speaking as man to man?"

      "There you go again," complained Wilmot. The two were old friends. "As what man to what man? As a journalist to the consultant of an insurance company that bars suicides from payments, of course I back suicide. If I were Tangye's friend, and speaking to him, I should equally agree with him as to his wife's death being undoubtedly an accident."

      "Turncoat!" the other muttered reproachfully. "Backslider!"

      "I'm a broken reed," Wilmot confessed. "Don't lean on me. I change sides as often as a Chinese regiment—or a lateen sail.

      "Singing with the wind;

       Veering with the current."

      Cheale looked pointedly at the grouse, the wine, and then at the man opposite him. Wilmot and he laughed.

      "Our directors read that article of yours this morning. They want you to investigate this case for us, if you will. For, as you say, we have a suicide clause in all our policies. Of course the Company doesn't want to contest an honest claim, as you know well. Not that I mean that Tangye would put forward a dishonest one—"

      "But you think so!"

      "Well—no. I wouldn't go as far as that, either. Other people too can sit on both sides of the fence. But Tangye struck me as over-keen this morning in the court-room about the death being an accident. Ram it down your throat—dare-you-to-disbelieve-it tone and manner, that I thought a little odd. Though he looks a bit of a blusterer. Also the evidence itself seems to me to point as much to suicide as to a slip. But I must go over to Dublin at once on a complicated investigation that may need time. Will you take the case on? Prove for us that Mrs. Tangye's death, was, what I believe it was, a suicide?"

      "How do you prove a suicide?" Wilmot asked captiously. He was known to his conferes as Wilful Willie. "Isn't it rather like proving something to be a ghost? I can see how you prove a murder, but a negative?"

      He inhaled the bouquet of the wine. Fragrant. Hinting at far-off violets.

      "Yet, quibbling apart, you think it's one? Come, out with the truth! You were better than the best detective in the Brice Revenue Frauds. And in the Tomkins murder, you were right again as to where the murderer would be found. I heard that you prophesied before any one else how the Palking diamond theft would turn out."

      "Some song, Caedmon!" Wilmot murmured approvingly, with closed eyes and a fatuous smile. "Sing on, Minstrel! Sing on the Works of Wilmot the Wonder. The Wizardly Winner!"

      Cheale took no notice.

      "Well then," the Special Correspondent laid aside his chaff. "To my mind, on the evidence as so far known, I—the veritable I—hover between a suicide and an accident. Now inclining strongly to the one, now to the other conviction. When did Mrs. Tangye insure with you?"

      "She and her husband both took out policies in favour of each other, instead of settlements, when they married."

      "Big ones?"

      "Ten thousand pounds apiece."

      Wilmot pursed his lips.

      "Who pays the premiums?"

      "Tangye pays both according to the agreement."

      "Supposed to be fairly well-to-do, isn't he?"

      "Used to be. Very much so. But the firm has never recovered from that Mesopotamian crash in oils just before he married. And we happen to have private information, that a big Irish broker with whom he has large commitments, won't be able to weather settlement. That's day after to-morrow. Hit by the fall in the franc. If so, Tangye too, may have to go under. I shall be able to get more definite information tomorrow on the spot. Now, what's your answer? Will you look into the case for us? Sift any claims that Tangye may make? As I told you, he's already thundering for the insurance money."

      "The river always gives me rheumatism," objected Wilmot.

      The other mentioned what sounded like an excellent plaster in Bank of England notes, and Wilmot did not consider himself a wealthy man.

      "You'll take your own line, of course." Cheale lit a cigarette. "Had it been any one but you, I intended to suggest looking up Mrs. Tangye's past as a first step."

      "Mrs. Tangye's past! Mr. Tangye's present is very much more to the point, believe me, if you hope to prove a suicide."

      "That's our platform obviously. The idea of domestic trouble. But you haven't given me an answer yet. Will you take the case on for us?"

      "For the truth—yes," Wilmot corrected him quickly. And to do Mr. Cheale and his Company justice, that was what he wanted. They settled it at that. Cheale went into particulars.

      His lunch over, Wilmot telephoned his new interest in the case to the Chiswick Police Superintendent, who was just finishing a modest midday meal with the Chief Inspector. Pointer in particular welcomed the news most cordially, for, as he explained to Wilmot, it would greatly help his own inquiries.

      "If you'll slip me in under your cloak, and let me ask some questions ostensibly to help you make up your mind I'll be greatly obliged. Otherwise, I should be rather put to it to get the information I need, without arousing suspicion that suspicion was aroused."

      As Wilmot taxied out to the two officers, he ran over in his mind the questions he wanted to put. He had not troubled to do so before. Wilmot was not a detective. He had carefully abstained from probing the Hinterland of the Tangye's married life yesterday. All he had sought then was sufficient material for his dreamy, gloomy sketch of the quicksands under the smiling ripple.

      Arrived at the station, he hastily skimmed through Haviland's report.

      Besides the servants, the household at Riverview only consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Tangye, and Miss Saunders, the companion. It was Miss Saunders who, after telephoning to the police, had rung up Mr. Tangye's offices in the city. The head clerk, who took the message, told her that Mr. Tangye had already started for home. He had reached Riverview in a quarter of an hour to be met by the sympathetic Superintendent with the news of the tragedy.

      Questioned about the way in which the rest of the day had been spent by Mrs. Tangye, the maids had had nothing out of the way to report. Nor did the diary which the police had reconstructed with great care of the days before yesterday, the fateful Tuesday, show anything noteworthy.

      On Saturday the husband had gone off for a week-end in the country. Mrs. Tangye often shared these, but this time it was a man's shooting party in Norfolk, and she had remained at home. On Sunday morning, however, she had telephoned to a local garage for a car, and had driven down to an orchid-show СКАЧАТЬ