“Not at all,” said Dikon. “It was given me in my baptism.”

“Is that so, sir? Very unusual. Old English perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” said Dikon coldly. Webley cleared his throat and waited.

“Sergeant Webley,” said the Colonel uncomfortably, “is making some inquiries…”

“Yes, of course,” said Dikon hurriedly. “I’m sorry I interrupted, sir. I’ll go.”

“No need for that, Mr. Bell,” said Webley with a sort of fumbling cordiality. “Very glad you looked in. Quite an unfortunate affair. Yes. Take a seat, Mr. Bell, take a seat.”

With a claustrophobic sensation of something closing in upon him, Dikon sat down and waited.

“I understand,” said Webley, “that your movements last night were as follows.” He flattened his note-book on his knees and began to read from it. “But I’ve heard all this before,” Dikon thought. “I’ve read it a hundred times in air-liners, on the decks of steamers, in hotel bedrooms.” And he saw yellow dust-jackets picturing lethal weapons, clutching hands, handcuffs, and men like Mr. Webley squinting along the barrels of revolvers. More in answer to his thoughts than to Webley’s questions he cried aloud: “But it was only an accident!”

“In a case of this sort, Mr. Bell, disappearance of the party concerned under circumstances pointing to demise, we make inquiries. Now, you were saying?”

His heavy interrogation began to take on a kind of lifeless rhythm: question, answer, pause, while Sergeant Webley wrote and Dikon fidgeted, and again, question. It was a colourless measure reiterated drearily with variations. Under its burden Dikon walked again down a narrow track, through a gap in a hedge, and across a barren place where white flags showed clearly. Beyond the drone of Webley’s voice a single scream rose and fell like a jet from a geyser.

Webley was very insistent about the scream. Was Dikon positive that it had come from the direction of the mud cauldron? Sounds were deceptive, Webley said. Might it not have come from the village? Dikon was quite positive that it had not and, on consideration, said he would swear that it had arisen close at hand in the thermal region. Where precisely had he been when he first saw Mr. Falls? Here Webley unfolded a large-scale and extremely detailed map of the district. Dikon was able to find his place on the map and, a punctual wraith, Mr. Falls walked again towards him in the starlight. “Then you’d say he was about half-way between you and the mud pot?” The sense of impending horror which had haunted Dikon ever since he woke was now intensified and translated physically into a dryness of the throat. “About that,” he said.

Webley looked up from the map, his pale finger still flattened on the point where Dikon had stood. “Now, Mr. Bell, how long would you say it was from the time you left Mrs. and Miss Claire until the moment you first saw Mr. Falls?”

“No longer than it takes to walk fairly briskly from the car to the point under your finger. Perhaps a couple of minutes. No more.”

“A couple of minutes,” Webley repeated, and stooped over his note-book. With his head bent, so that his voice sounded more muffled than ever, he said much too casually: “You’re in young Mr. Claire’s confidence, aren’t you, Mr. Bell?”

“In what sense?”

“Didn’t he tell you about his ideas on Mr. Questing?”

“He talked to me about them. Yes.”

“And did you agree with him?” asked Webley, raising his florid face for a moment to look at Dikon.

“At first I considered them fantastic.”

“But you got round to thinking there might be something in it? Did you?”

“I suppose so,” said Dikon and then, ashamed of answering so guardedly, he said firmly: “Yes, I did. It seems to me to be inescapable.”

“Is that so?” said Webley. “Thank you very very much, Mr. Bell. We won’t trouble you any more just now.”

Dikon thought: “I seem to be forever getting my congé.” He said to the Colonel: “I really came to tell you, sir, that Mr. Gaunt has been very much upset by this appalling business and thinks he would like to get away, for a time at least. He’s most anxious that you should know how much he appreciates all the kindness and consideration that he has been shown and… and,” Dikon stammered, “and I hope that after a little while we may return. I’m so sorry to bother you now but if I might settle up…?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said the Colonel with obvious relief. “Quite understandable. Sorry it’s happened like this.”

“So are we,” said Dikon. “Enormously. I’ll come back a little later, shall I? We’ll be leaving at about eleven.” He backed away to the door.

“Just a minute, Mr. Bell.”

Webley had been stolidly conning over his notes, and Dikon, in his embarrassment, had almost forgotten him. He now rose to his feet, a swarthy official in an ugly suit. “You were thinking of leaving this morning were you, Mr. Bell?”

“Yes,” said Dikon. “This morning.”

“You and Mr. Geoffrey Gaunt and Mr. Gaunt’s personal vally?” He wetted his thumb and turned a page of his note-book. “That’d be Mr. Alfred Colly, won’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. Well, now, we’ll be very sorry to upset your arrangements, Mr. Bell, but I’m just afraid we’ll have to ask you to stay on a bit longer. Until we’ve cleared up this little mystery, shall we say?”

With a sense of plunging downwards in a lift that was out of control, Dikon said: “But I’ve told you everything I know, and Mr. Gaunt had nothing whatever to do with the affair. I mean he was nowhere near. I mean…”

“Nowhere near, eh?” Webley repeated. “Is that so? Yes. He didn’t drive home in his car, did he? Which way did Mr. Gaunt go home, Mr. Bell?”

And now Dikon was back in the meeting-house, and Gaunt, shaking with rage, was pushing his way out along the side aisles as if propelled by an intolerable urge. He was engulfed in a crowd of people who stared curiously at him. He showed for a moment in the doorway and was gone.

Dikon was recalled by Webley’s voice. “I was asking which way Mr. Gaunt went home from the concert, Mr. Bell.”

“I don’t know,” said Dikon. “If you like I’ll go and ask him.”

“I won’t trouble you to do that, Mr. Bell. I’ll ask Mr. Gaunt myself.”

We are slow to recognize disaster, quick to erect screens between ourselves and a full realization of jeopardy. Perhaps the idea of something more ominous than accident had lain dormant at the back of Dikon’s thoughts. As there are some diseases that we are loath to name, so there are crimes with which we refuse consciously to associate ourselves. Though Dikon was oppressed by the sense of an approaching threat, his conscious reaction was to wonder how in the world under these new restrictions he was to cope with Gaunt. Thus, by a process of mental juggling, the minor was substituted for the major horror.

He said: “If you’re going to see Mr. Gaunt perhaps I may come with you. I don’t know if he’s up yet.”

Webley looked thoughtfully at him and then with an air of heartiness which Dikon found most disconcerting he said: “That’ll do very very nicely, Mr. Bell. We like to do things in a friendly way. If you don’t mind introducing me to Mr. Gaunt, I’ll just explain the position to him. I’m quite sure he’ll understand.”

“Are you, by God!” thought Dikon, and led the way along the verandah.

As they approached Gaunt’s rooms, Colly came out staggering under the weight of a wardrobe trunk. Webley gave him that hard stare with which Dikon was to become so familiar. “You’d better take that thing away, Colly,” said Dikon.

“Take it away?” asked Colly indignantly. “I’ve only just brought it out. What am I supposed to be, sir? Atmosphere in the big railway-station scene or what?” He glanced shrewdly at Webley. “Pardon me, Chief-Inspector,” he said. “There’s no corpse in this trunk. Take a look if you don’t believe me, and don’t muck up our underwear. We’re fussy about details.”