“Poor devils!” said the inspector gently.

  The Superintendent nodded. He seemed to feel the need for fresh action. “Put that away carefully, Brews, and get busy. We have to get Habershon out.”

  Brews put the torn scrap of paper away in a flat box he carried. The Superintendent detached the grapnel, and threw it in again. Ned jumped to help him. Hench stood back a little, staring and afraid.

  This last cast was successful. Mr. Habershon’s body was soon on the bank. But there was nothing on his person to give a clue to his tragedy. He had some papers, of which the police took charge, watch and chain, matches, a pipe and pouch, and the sum of one pound fifteen shillings in his pockets.

  As they were examining him, Ned heard a car drive up the lane a little way, and stop. It was the ambulance, and a doctor had come with it. Sant by name, he was a recent arrival in the district, who had retired from the R.A.M.C., and “squatted.” The usual police-surgeon was in bed with bronchitis.

  When he saw the task which awaited him, he whistled loudly, and then sucked in his lips.

  “What sort of filthy job have you here, Superintendent?” he demanded.

  “Isn’t it beastly?” stammered Hench.

  The Superintendent shrugged. “Funny coincidence, sir. Two of them are suicides. You can’t get away from that. We found a note, and look at their wrists tied together. But the old gentleman is a problem.”

  “It seems to me a pretty problem altogether,” replied Sant, as he kneeled down beside the young woman, “get their wrists untied, will you. I can’t make a proper examination this way.”

  The wrists were loosed, and Sant made an examination. Then he turned to the body of the young fellow and finally to that of Mr. Habershon.

  “Coincidence in time, and in place,” he said, wiping his hands, and getting up. “None of the three has been dead more than, say, fifteen hours. Is it possible that the old man saw them going to make their dive, rushed up to stop them, and went in?”

  “Dimly possible,” replied Langley. “Then you mean it was last night?”

  “I should certainly say so. Why?”

  The Superintendent wheeled on Ned. “You were here last night, Mr. Hope.”

  “I was. I left at ten. But, if I had seen any one here, I should have told you.”

  Langley shrugged, and looked at Hench, “You saw a light here last night.”

  Hench had pulled himself together, “Yes. I thought it was this gentleman moving in.”

  “How could you see a light in the front room when you live away behind this house?” Ned asked, angrily.

  “That’s a point, sir,” remarked Langley.

  “I walked over to Hitherland, and was coming back,” said Hench, “I met Constable Hoggett at the cross-roads near Pulley’s farm, and spoke to him. You can see the front of this house from there. At least I took it to be this house, because it’s the only one near except my own, and I wouldn’t leave a light on.”

  “What time was this, sir?”

  “When I met Hoggett? Let me see. I think it was about nine forty-five. But you could ask the constable. He must have some time-table for his beat.”

  “Did you tell him you saw the light?”

  “No. I saw it after he had left me. He was on his bicycle.”

  Langley nodded, and turned to Ned, “We had better have your address, sir.”

  Ned gave it, “Gays’ Mansions, West End Lane, N.W.”

  Sant was looking impatient, “Let’s get the bodies into the ambulance. I suppose, if Smith is ill, you’ll want me to do the P.M.”

  “We may have to ask you, sir,” replied Langley. “Here, Jeff, run and get the men from the ambulance, and we’ll get it away. Mr. Hench, we know where you live. We’ll have a talk with you later.”

  “I can’t be of any help?”

  “None at all, thank you,” he turned to Ned again, as Hench walked off. “We’ll need your evidence, sir, at the inquest, and the young lady’s. Are you staying here, or going back to town, may I ask?”

  “Back to town,” said Ned, uncomfortably, “but I can run down in my car any time you want me.”

  “Good. As you were kind enough to lend your car, you must wait till Hoggett gets back. After that I don’t think we need detain you.”

  The ambulance attendants came up, and the three bodies were reverently removed. The doctor nodded to Ned, gave him a curious glance, and went off. Brews was glancing at the scrap of paper in the box.

  “Looks like a bit torn off a letter,” he said.

  “You’ll have to dry it out carefully, Brews. It may be very important.”

  Ned had noticed that little bit of paper too. It seemed to him to be a bit of note-paper, cream-laid stuff. But he did not interfere. To him, as to the doctor, it appeared that Mr. Habershon, possibly wandering in search of Hench’s cottage, had seen the young couple preparing to leap into the pond, and had lost his own life in an attempt to stop them.

  “I’m sorry I told Nancy the old chap had a vicious face,” he said to himself, remorsefully. “He did his best, evidently.”

  The inspector paid no further attention to him. He had gone down on his knees, and was examining the edge of the pond, measuring tape in hand. For once his cheerful face looked grim and grave, and there was not the ghost of a smile on his tight lips.

  Langley touched Ned’s sleeve, “You are aware that this is necessary, sir. No doubt you give your permission to our remaining in your grounds. You do? Good. Now I think I hear a car. It must be yours coming back. Just give me the address of the young lady too, and I needn’t keep you.”

  Ned gave Nancy’s address, said good-bye to the Superintendent, and went to where Hoggett had drawn up the car.

  “You left Miss Johnson with your wife?” he said to the man, as he got into the driving-seat.

  “Yes, sir,” replied Hoggett.

  Ned thanked him. He wanted to get back to Nancy. The whole thing must have been a frightful shock for her.

  He found her waiting outside the cottage. She had had a cup of tea, but her impatience had been too much for her. She felt that she could not sit in the tiny room, listening to Mrs. Hoggett’s well-meant, but loquacious, outpourings, and the flood of questions about the tragedy at Fen Court.

  “I want to go back at once, Ned,” she told Hope excitedly. “I must lie down and rest. What a hateful day this has been, hasn’t it? Simply loathsome!”

  He nodded, and set off again the moment she was beside him. She stared straight ahead. He minded his steering, and did not attempt to discuss what had taken place that day. Poor dear, she wanted to get it out of her mind, no doubt. Rotten enough that business of seeing old Habershon floating about in the pond, but the rest was worse. She had been back on the terrace by then, but no doubt she knew what had come after.

  She lit a cigarette suddenly, and smoked fast. When she had finished it, she glanced at him sideways. “Is it true there were two?” she murmured.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Young?”

  “Yes.”

  “How utterly foul!”

  There was a long silence then. They were near London, when the air, and the comfort and support of having Ned beside her, recovered Nancy a little.

  “Does any one know why it happened?” she said.

  He shook his head, “No one can say definitely. There’s a likelihood that they were lovers—young enough to have no patience, poor devils. Unless the old man saw them and tried a rescue, I can’t understand him.”

  “In the dark?” said Nancy.

  “Yes, that worries me. It must have happened after dark, if the doctor is right. How the dickens could he see them?”

  The subject languished again. They drove in through the suburbs, and presently Ned stopped his car at the door of Hampstead Mansions, where she had a tiny service flat.

  “Let me see you settled, old girl,” he said, as he got her out.

  “I would rather you didn’t, Ned,” she said. “Come round later if you like—in the evening.”

  “You’ll be all right? Sure?”

  “Oh, quite.”

  He looked dissatisfied, but saw that she walked in steadily enough, and started his car again. Ten minutes later he had garaged it behind his flat in West End Lane, and went in.

  Nancy had a wireless set. He himself was not very keen on the radio, but it was useful when you wanted late news. He determined to run round to see her about nine. That was the time they switched on the latest doings.

  Nancy’s flat consisted of a sitting-room, bedroom and bath-room, on the fourth floor of the mansions. When Ned called at ten minutes to nine, she led him into the cosy little sitting-room, and brought out a silver cigarette-box. She looked better now, and her voice was clear and steady.

  But she did not speak for a few minutes, after he had settled in an easy chair with his cigarette alight. She stared into the fire, while Ned let an absent glance wander round the room.

  His gaze came to rest at last on her one picture, a shimmering river scene in water-colours over the mantel. He turned away from it with an odd distaste.

  He had seen water enough that day to last him a lifetime! How could he live down by those beastly ponds after that? And who would take the house over from him? It had been ages in the market already, and, with three fresh ghosts to overweight it, it might remain there for another century. Rotten!

  He looked at Nancy, “Isn’t it about time for the News?” he asked.

  “Do you really want to hear it?”

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  She shivered a little, “I don’t—but I must, Ned. I say, I am most awfully sorry about your house. It seems a trifle when you think of this dreadful thing, but I know you can’t afford to drop seven-fifty.”

  He shrugged, “I should say not. Unless I can get some morbid person to buy it, it’s a bit of a blue egg for me.”

  Nancy got up.

  “I suppose you could stick it if you had to.”

  “I could—I suppose. But I’ll have a shot at selling first. You going to switch on that gadget?”

  “Yes. It may start any time now.”

  She went over to the cabinet, and tuned in. They waited. They heard the weather report, then came an S O S. They exchanged glances. The sober distinct voice of the announcer begged any one who could identify a young man, whose description he gave (a young man upon whose cigarette-case and match-box were engraved the initials I. R.), to come forward, or communicate with the Chief Constable for Essex, or Superintendent Langley of Upperton. He followed by giving a description of a young woman, age about nineteen, and of the costume she wore. This young woman was a friend of the young man already mentioned. If any listener could identify her, would he come forward or communicate with the officials already mentioned.

  Nancy sighed deeply, “Ned, what a ghastly thing!”

  He nodded, and then motioned for silence, “News coming through!—Yes; Fen Court— Listen! ”

  Chapter IV

  THEY listened in silence, their faces tense; staring straight before them, and, for the moment, unconscious of each other. The announcer gave brief particulars of the tragic discovery that day. Ned started slightly when he heard the words: Fen Court—property of Mr. Edward Hope, the novelist. That was annoying publicity. He would have shoals of pressmen after him for the story. He couldn’t be such a pig as to capitalise his experiences that afternoon.

  The thought passed through his mind in a flash. He listened again. Ah, here was news… a car had been found on the highway two-and-a-half miles from the scene of the tragedy. It was abandoned, the police had traced the registered number to Mr. Habershon. It was reported that an elderly gentleman, with a white beard, had entered a café in Upperton on the previous evening, in the company of two young people, a man and a girl. Further investigations were afoot. In view of the possibility that the three people seen in the café at Upperton might be those afterwards found drowned, would listeners please remember the S O S already given out.

  “By Jove!” said Ned, and drew a long breath.

  Nancy got up, and switched off the even voice, now relating the experiences of a Communist seized in possession of a pistol at Geneva.

  “What do you make of it?” she asked, as she returned to Ned.

  He shrugged. “Sounds perfectly potty! They couldn’t all have gone down there to commit suicide. And coffee first too.”

  “If it was the same crowd, no;” she agreed. “Would people take coffee before committing suicide? Don’t people to be executed sometimes have breakfast?”

  “Believe they do, sometimes,” he murmured. “I can’t understand it, but there it is. Then the car was two-and-a-half miles away. Did they all walk over and get in? And why my place. Isn’t there enough water elsewhere?”

  Nancy nodded. “Unless the old man was her father. It couldn’t have been his father, with the initials I. R. Do you think he wanted to marry her, and Mr. Habershon objected, and they bolted, poor things?”

  “With the old man in pursuit, but just too late to save them?” he mused, “I don’t know. I’m horribly sorry for them, but they’ve done in my little property, and dragged you and me into this inquest. I’ll run you down when it comes off. They’ll let us know.”

  Nancy bit her lip. “Sure to.”

  He had an inspiration suddenly, “I say, may I use your telephone? I might ring up Bell—he’s assistant news-editor on the Record, and a very decent chap. He may have some news. All the offices will be hopping with excitement.”

  “The ’phone is out in the lobby, old boy.”

  Ned went out to the telephone, and got on to his friend Bell after a time. Bell made a wild attempt to get the promise of the “story.” He said he had already rung up Ned without success. Ned, who was determined to sidestep any promise of the kind, temporised. Would Bell let him know if any one had got the identity of the two young people.

  “It ought to be easy,” he added.

  “It was easy,” said Bell, “a man we sent round to inquire about old Habershon has just come in. He says the fellow was Ivor Rainy, and the girl Maysie Rowe. Both relatives and wards of old Habershon—l say, where are you speaking from? I’ll send a man round.”

  “Piccadilly Circus, and I’m leaving for Folkestone just now,” replied Ned, mendaciously, as he rang off.

  Nancy was waiting anxiously for the news. He sat down beside her, and raised his eyebrows, “We made a good shot. Those two were wards of the old man. Don’t suppose their elderly guardian thought it wise for two such young things to marry.”

  “But why couldn’t they wait? Nancy cried, “they were about nineteen or twenty, weren’t they? In a year or two they would have——”

  She stopped, as Ned laid a hand on her knee heavily, “I say , Maysie Rowe! Could it be the same girl that Jimmy Huston knows? I’ve never seen her, but there was some one of that name he was rather smitten with.”

  “It may be,” she cried, “I never thought of it. Funny thing how one never imagines our acquaintances can get killed, or commit suicide. It is always some one else.”

  He looked at her now, hearing a weary note in her voice. She was pale again, and there were dark rings under her eyes.

  “You’ve got to go to bed,” he announced, getting up, “we may get a subpœna to-morrow, and be dragged up to that filthy inquest.”

  “I was just going to hint at it,” she said, nodding. “I feel like a rag. Sure you don’t mind?”

  “I’d be angry if you wanted me to stay,” said he. “Now don’t think over it, see? I’ll come round first thing in the morning.”

  “There may be something in the papers,” she said, as he went to the door.

  But there was very little fresh information in the newspapers next day, and for lack of it, they had had to spread themselves on the personalities of Mr. Habershon and his two wards; their style cramped a little by the legal caution of their editors.

  Ned just glanced at his paper, for he had been summoned to attend the inquest that morning. He went out for his car the moment he had finished breakfast, and drove round to call on Nancy.

  He found her much more cheerful. After all, Mr. Habershon and the unfortunate young people were not even acquaintances of hers. The shock of seeing the dead man in the pond, like all other shocks which have nothing intimate in them, had worn off. She, too, had received an official summons to the inquiry, and got in beside Ned five minutes after his arrival.

  “One comfort,” said he, as he drove away, “these affairs are rotten while they last, but they don’t last long. You and I will come in early, then we can vamose if it suits us.”

  She nodded. But they had gone a mile or two before she made a remark of her own, “It must be rather terrible to fall in love like that.”

  “Yes,” said he, soberly, “it must. My paper said it was understood in young Rainy’s circle of friends that he was engaged to the girl. Habershon must have been against it, or it would have been announced. People are important nowadays, even if they have no rank, if they have money. The two were cousins, and they would have come in for—I think it was a hundred thousand between them.”

  “So I read. Perhaps Habershon objected on account of their being related. Some people do, you know.”

  Ned shrugged. “I wonder if we are right off the mark.”

  Of course, they had been merely speculating on motives. Nancy dropped that, and turned to another side of the case.