“You never thought of the navigable drain that runs from your place to the river?”

  Hench started. Never. “Why?”

  “Or that a punt might have been brought up there?”

  Hench turned white. “You don’t surely suggest that the crimes were committed in my cottage? Why, they were drowned.”

  “Isn’t it possible they were drowned in the drain, and then taken down to the river, and carried in the punt alongside the garden of Fen Court?”

  Hench gave a little gasp. “What a foul thing! But—but, Mr. Hope, then it must have taken place while I was away.”

  “Obviously between half-past eight and ten.”

  Hench sat thinking for a minute or two. There was hardly a doubt that he was staggered by Ned’s revelation. “Then you think that letter must have been taken from Mr. Habershon’s pocket while in my cottage?”

  Ned assented. “I think there is no other solution.”

  Hench, who was apparently rather sensitive, had seen Nancy relax a little of her stiffness, and lost some of his own timidity.

  “It is a dreadful thought,” he mused. “But, even then, it is very hard to imagine what can have happened. Granting a callous ruffian, or ruffians, who had no scruples, Mr. Hope, the mordinal business perplexes me. Surely I heard that the mordinal was found in the thermos flask brought from town by Mr. Habershon.”

  “There is no doubt that dregs were found containing mordinal,” Ned agreed. “I know no more than you about that. I can only suggest an hypothesis as an alternative theory.”

  Nancy frowned at him. Was he going to give this away to Hench?

  Ned went on, without looking at her. “The flask had no trace of finger-prints. They would have been on it when it was found, if some one had not taken the trouble to clean them off. Even if Habershon had doped his young relations, he would have left the prints, since it was his flask and they would naturally be there. What about an outsider, who lured Habershon and his wards into your cottage while you were away, substituted a flask similar to that owned by Mr. Habershon, a flask filled with coffee doped with mordinal——”

  “Yes, but how would he know that Habershon had set out with a flask?” Hench objected.

  “He knew,” said Ned, who did not enlighten him with regard to the suspicion under which Mrs. Hoing lay. “Having substituted the flask, he might have put Rainy and Miss Rowe in the water, knocked old Habershon on the head——”

  “But why, if he was already doped?” asked Nancy.

  “Aye, that’s the question,” said the little man. “Miss Johnson has hit it.”

  Ned shrugged. “I am only stating a theory. I see the snag, but there is one way of getting round it—merely supposititious, as the whole theory must be. If Habershon and the others came into your cottage, it may be assumed that they came to see you——”

  Hench protested hotly. “I deny it, Mr. Hope. I never invited them. I must really ask you——”

  “Oh, do wait a moment!” Ned cried, impatiently. “I am not suggesting that you did invite them. But some one did, possibly in your name. Why the dickens should they go there otherwise?”

  “I am sorry. I see your point. Though it amazes me.”

  Ned continued. “Very well. Rightly or wrongly, they went to Pear Cottage to see you. You are not in. Obviously the man, or men, who lured them there must have told them you would be in presently. Isn’t that possible?”

  “It’s obvious, if they came there thinking to see me.”

  “As no doubt they did. But they are asked to wait, and I suppose they preferred to do that, since they had come so far to see you. But we may assume that your fire was low—you had left it to visit Daly for the evening. Isn’t it just possible, too, that the murderer heard Habershon refer to the thermos in the car. That would be left on the road outside. Can we swear that he did not offer to go and fetch it, and actually did so?”

  “No, that seems possible, Mr. Hope. Do go on.”

  “He brings the flask, or one which is identical with it, but in which the mordinal has been placed. Now Habershon had had coffee at Upperton, while Ivor Rainy and Miss Rowe had plumped for ices. Either because he did not feel the cold so much while waiting, or wished his niece and nephew to have more, he did not drink as much as they, and, consequently, took less of the dope in solution.”

  “Seems logical,” murmured Hench.

  “And likely. But, that being the fact, he may have recovered, or began earlier to recover, from the effects of the dope, and been stunned by a blow from the murderer, who saw his plan in danger.”

  Hench seemed at once convinced and astounded. Nancy needed no further proof of the soundness of the argument. She knew that Ned himself had been struck on the previous night in much the same spot, a blow aimed at the back of the head just above the neck.

  Ned looked at his watch. “I wonder what is keeping Brews?” he said.

  Nancy frowned. “It is getting on. Had he any one, any other detective with him when he called at your cottage, Mr. Hench?”

  “No; he was alone, Miss Johnson.”

  “Probably he had sent Hoggett and the man Sankey to dig up the ‘hide’,” said Ned. “Anyway it looks as if we must wait here some time. What about a game of dummy whist? Do you play, Hench? I am sure the landlord will have cards.”

  Mr. Hench did play. The cards were obtained, and they began a game. None of them played very well that night. They had one eye on the fall of the cards, and the other on the door.

  Nine came, then ten. They were all growing impatient. Hench thought he must soon be getting home. He had come on a bicycle, but even with that nine miles is nine miles. But Ned felt that Brews meant the little man to stay, and dissuaded him.

  “Wait till eleven,” he said. “You’re helping us to pass the time, and you may hear something interesting too when Brews does arrive. We ourselves are going back to London to-night.”

  Hench sat down again, and they resumed their interrupted game. At ten minutes to eleven, just as Ned had dealt, they heard the front door open, Ned sprang to his feet, spilling the cards over the table as he bumped against it. Nancy turned excited eyes on the door. Hench sat still, twiddling his fingers restlessly.

  “Inspector Brews to see you, sir,” said the landlord, opening the coffee-room door suddenly.

  Chapter XXVIII

  WHEN Inspector Brews came into the room, and hurriedly shut the door behind him, Nancy gave a little cry, and even Ned started, and swore.

  Brews looked like a man who has been playing half-back on a muddy Rugby field against uncompromising opponents. He was muddy, hot, bruised, and had a handkerchief tied round his forehead. But he smiled a little as he saw the sensation his appearance had created.

  “I have only a moment, sir,” he said to Ned, his voice rather thick, “I have to get over to the doctor’s to have my head bound up——”

  Nancy burst out before he could finish. “What is it? Are you badly hurt, Inspector?”

  “Missed it, and no more!” said he. “Edge of a spade,” and he tapped his bandage. “Here you are, Mr. Hope.”

  He made an almost imperceptible movement of his head towards Hench, as if to warn Ned that the news was not to be communicated, put a leaf of his note-book in Ned’s hand, and bolted again before they could stop him.

  Hench found his tongue first after Brews’s disappearance. “Has he been fighting?”

  “With wild beasts at Ephesus,” said Ned, glancing at the paper, and then excitedly at Nancy. “We must get to town as quick as we can. Come along.”

  Hench was quite bewildered now. “But what is it? What has happened?”

  “Look in the papers to-morrow,” replied Ned. “Nancy, get your coat on! I’ll go out and start the car—I’m sorry, Mr. Hench, but we haven’t a moment to spare.”

  Hench remained staring and stupefied for a minute after they had gone. But Ned and Nancy had no further thought to spare for the little man. Already the engine was turning over, and Nancy was restraining her impatience with the greatest difficulty. She wanted to ask what had been written on the leaf from Brews’s note-book, but knew that Ned would not satisfy her curiosity until they were on their way to town.

  But once clear of Upperton, and she would take no denial. “Who was it, Ned?” she asked urgently. “Don’t be a pig!”

  Ned told her. “Hoggett! They arrested Mrs. Hoing at six to-day, and Hoggett not half an hour ago. I know no more than that.”

  Nancy gasped. “The policeman! But what could he get out of it?”

  He was as astonished as she. “There you have me, old thing. All I know is that I must get this to the office as soon as I can. Brews said I would be the only journalist in the know, and I am.”

  He opened out then, and the car flew. Nancy said very little during the journey to London. Sometimes she thought Brews must be mistaken, and sometimes that a man of his experience would not risk an arrest of that kind on flimsy evidence. Hoggett, of all people! Then it must have been Hoggett who had struck Ned from behind on the previous night.

  She could not doubt that the constable had been admirably situated for a job of the kind. The marsh was on his beat, and on many nights he might be the only person walking the roads after dark in that region. It was the lack of apparent motive that puzzled her.

  Otherwise, if the motive was granted, there was evidence that pointed to Hoggett. It was the constable who had found, as he said, Ned lying by the gorse bushes. He had spoken of a little man who had burst from the shelter of the gorse and fled on his approach. But no one else had seen the flying man.

  Their first stop was in Fleet Street, at the newspaper offices. Ned made Nancy come in, and sit by the fire in a waiting-room, while he saw the news-editor, and handed in his report. He came back in ten minutes, glowing and satisfied, and took her back to the car.

  “You’re going straight home to bed, and then I’ll go home, and do a bit of the same,” he said, as he started the car once more. “I expect you are dead to the world. I know I am!”

  “What did they say to you,” Nancy asked, as they rushed off towards Hampstead.

  “I had difficulty in preventing them from embracing me,” Ned replied. “And I have an order for a serial at my own figure. I didn’t make a bad deal, buying Fen Court, after all. Sooner have those poor devils alive than all the deal, though,” he added.

  “Are you going down to Upperton again tomorrow?” she asked.

  “I am never going down to Upperton again if I can help it,” he returned. “My recollections of the place are too ghastly. To-morrow I take a real holiday, and so do you. We’re going to the Chilterns. I’m going to look for a house there, which doesn’t require heroes to live in it. I say, Nancy, are you game?”

  She smiled at him. “No; I’m dead, and half asleep. I can’t take it in yet. But to-morrow I’ll go with you, and tell you if I like the house. I can’t say more, can I?”

  “You can, to-morrow,” whispered Ned. “If you can make up your mind, it may help me to make up my own.”

  “So you aren’t sure yet?” she rallied him.

  “Not about the exact house, but perfectly sure about everything else,” he retorted.

  “Does one go with the house?”

  “I can’t tell you till we see it,” he said. “But be ready at ten to-morrow morning when I call.”

  Nancy was ready at ten next day. By that time she knew more of the mysterious arrest of the previous night than either of them had been able to gather from Brews’s exiguous scrap of paper.

  The Record had made a scoop with Ned’s news, and the other details two pressmen had been able to gather, after rushing down to Upperton in a high-power car.

  From the account in the newspaper Nancy knew that Superintendent Langley had arrested Mrs. Hoing at the house in Gale Street about six on the previous evening. She had refused to say anything at first, but, it was reported, had made a statement when she was told later on of the arrest of Police-constable Hoggett near Fen Court.

  The scanty details about the actual arrest of her male accomplice explained very little, but it was clear that the Upperton detective force, headed by Brews, had come upon him after dark, digging up the “hide” once used by Hench. He had resisted arrest, and almost felled the inspector with a spade in the course of the struggle. But he had been finally mastered, and taken to Upperton.

  Excavations in the hole, made after his departure, revealed the Bearer Bonds which had played such an important part in the Fen Court mystery. They were wrapped in a small waterproof sheet, and apparently undamaged.

  “I have no more idea of the connection between Mrs. Hoing and the constable than you have,” said Ned, later on, when they were driving towards High Wycombe. “And I don’t intend to spoil a perfectly good day by inquiring. The weather report says that rain is coming to-night. This is to be a picnic, with ‘all the world well lost for——’”

  “For a house!” said Nancy, with a demure smile, “All right. I expect we’ll hear soon enough.”

  “I dropped a note to Brews, asking him to come and see us when he has time. He’ll come. Then we shall know what Americans call the inside dope. Meanwhile; what sort of a house do you favour?”

  They spent the rest of that day very pleasantly indeed, and it lacked precisely half an hour to tea time, when Nancy stood in a hilly lane, looking at a charming half-timbered cottage, in a sunny garden, and announced that, if she wanted a house to live in, this was the exact and predestined house.

  Ned looked at her earnestly. “Do you want a house to live in, Nance darling? If you do, then it’s yours.”

  “Without encumbrances?” she asked, half-mockingly, half-tenderly.

  “With me,” said Ned. “Oh, my dear, you don’t know how I love you, and want you.”

  Nancy dropped her guard at once. “I think I do, dear,” she said. “Yes, I know; because I want you, too, and I—I think this is my house.”

  “Have another cup of nectar?” Ned asked, half an hour later, as they sat at tea in a cottage at Perlingham. “I’ll be hanged if it tastes like tea!”

  Chapter XXIX

  INSPECTOR BREWS came to town on the day following their house-hunting tour in the Chilterns. He had business at Gale Street, and was there until six in the evening, in consultation with Langley, and a representative of Scotland Yard.

  At seven he dined with his Scotland Yard confrère, and at a quarter to eight he announced his intention of going to West End Lane.

  “That where these amateurs of yours live?” asked the C.I.D. man.

  “One of them,” said Brews. “I promised to let them know what happened. I owe it to them. They’re the first civilians who ever gave me a tip you could put your necktie on, let alone your shirt!”

  “Unusual,” the other admitted. “I saw the fellow’s pieces in the paper, but there was so much blather about psychology, and that kind of tripe, that I thought he was one of the usual criminologist duds. Well, you seemed to have pulled off quite a strip this time. Our people got a shock when they heard of the arrest. I don’t mind admitting that we thought that little bird blighter did the dirty work.”

  “So did I at first,” replied Brews, as he rose. “But my sideline expert got on to the lighting failure, and put me right.”

  “Have a coffee before you go,” said the other, smiling.

  “I’m invited to coffee at Mr. Hope’s flat,” said Brews. “I said I would be round after eight, and I don’t want to disappoint them. Many thanks for the grub. Come down and see me any time at Upperton, and we’ll see what the ‘Blue Boar’ can do for us.”

  When Brews presented himself at Ned’s flat, and was sitting with a cup of coffee before him in the cosy sitting-room, he relaxed into a smile.

  “Got a neater bandage on to-night,” Mr. Hope, he said, as he foraged in the box of cigarettes handed to him. “You must have thought I had been acting for the movies last time you saw me.”

  “You certainly gave us a shock,” Nancy told him. “I congratulate you on your escape, Inspector. There are nicer weapons than a spade!”

  He nodded as he lighted up. “Much! But it wasn’t Hoggett’s spade that brought Mr. Hope down, or Habershon either. That was his baton.”

  “Don’t tell us in scraps; let us hear all about it,” Nancy protested. “How did you come to arrest Hoggett?”

  Brews leaned back in his chair. “Let me see. You knew as well as I did that Mrs. Hoing was probably at the back of the plan.”

  “Yes. Did she make the promised statement?” Ned inquired.

  “She turns King’s Evidence, though I don’t see that it will do her much good,” Brews replied. “But she was our starting point. At the same time her alibi was incontrovertible. There was no chance of proving that she was out of London, or in Essex, on the night of the murders.”

  “That meant an accomplice.”

  “Obviously. An accomplice who knew Habershon and knew the country. Hench filled the bill better than any one else. He knew Habershon, and he had told lies—though not with any evil purpose—and got himself suspected on that account. But then there was the fact that he was visiting Daly that night. We assumed that he spoke to the constable to fake an alibi, but we did not realise that it was an alibi for Hoggett too! How could we? There was nothing earlier in the case to connect him with the murders.”