Chapter XXII

Three days before the discussion which took place in the last chapter, a young man who lay with a bandaged head in bed at a house in St. John’s Wood, becoming vaguely aware that certain irritating sounds in the bedroom were on the whole new to him, turned half round and opened his eyes to look at them. When he discovered that the source of the sounds was not the nurse, but a tweed-clad person, who was sitting by the bedside attending to the needs of his pipe, he gave an irritated snort and rolled over again. The operation was painful, and he cursed.

“Is he better, eh, Nurse?” said the tweed-clad one.

“Much better,” responded the nurse from some distant corner of the room. “We’ll have him about again in a couple of days.”

“Better!” growled the patient. “You’d call yourself better if there were a dozen trench-mortars going off inside your head, and you were nothing but aches all the way down! Better!”

“Well, what do you expect,” his friend said, with irritating reasonableness, “when you butt a car end on? I say, Johnnie, how on earth did you manage it?”

“How the hell should I know? I wish you’d go away and leave me alone!”

“Ungrateful devil, isn’t he?” the other apostrophised the nurse. “About as pleased as your dear brother was when I told him how I’d been a good Samaritan to you.”

“What!” In his indignation the patient nearly leapt out of bed. “You didn’t tell them at home, you damned blasted fool! Why the hell did you do that?”

“Well, how was I to know you didn’t want me to? _You_ weren’t sayin’ nuffin, and it’s usual to let a chap’s relations know if he’s going to kick the bucket. Ain’t you the heir and all that sort of thing?”

“You might have waited till I had, at least!”

“Well, _I_ didn’t know what you were going to do. You might have been killed, for all I knew, and there was the other chappie dancing round and howling like a damned dervish. Can’t imagine why he hasn’t set the cops on you already. Seriously, old thing, I thought you might be going to croak, and Godfrey ought to know about it, if you were. If I’ve put my foot in it, I apologise; but I don’t see how I was to know if you didn’t tell me.”

“Oh, all right,” John Loring grumbled. “I suppose you couldn’t help it. I never want to hear a word of any of them again, that’s all, and I don’t suppose they do, either. Did my charming brother show any interest, did you say?”

“Not much, I’m sorry to tell you,” said his friend, filling his pipe. “I must say I feel for you, ol’ man, having been a younger brother myself. I can’t say he seemed anything but relieved to hear it was me picked you up and he hadn’t got owt to do with it. Still, don’t take it to heart, my boy. I expect he was up to the eyes with this chap who’s gone and drowned himself. By the way, wasn’t Meston rather a _bête noire_ of yours, one time?”

“Go to hell!” was the reply. “I tell you I don’t want to hear a word about any of them.”

“No, but, I say, you ought to be bucked about this. He’s gone and got drowned, or drowned himself, it says in the paper. What’s the matter now?”

“Hell! What’s the good of telling me that _now_? Do shut up! Oh, Lord, what a rotten head I’ve got! I wish you’d take your filthy pipe away, Phil--and your face too.” John Loring, no better at bearing unexpected pain than most young men, rolled over again and swore furiously.

“I think you’d better go now, Mr. Weaver,” the nurse suggested. “He’s had enough visitors for the moment. You’ll find him quite different when he’s had a sleep,” she added in a whisper; and Philip Weaver, with various winks and grunts expressive of tactful understanding, took himself out of the room, feeling that ingratitude was certainly the portion of the good Samaritans of this world.

John Loring, however, had a naturally tough constitution, and, once he had got over the shock of his accident, his health, though not at the moment his spirits, began to improve rapidly. By the Sunday morning he was well enough to be dressed and to lie on Weaver’s sofa, turning over a sheaf of Sunday papers, and impartially cursing the items of news therein.

“Thought you said the brute drowned himself,” he growled at Weaver.

“What brute?”

“That,” said John, pushing the paper over. For some reason he seemed to fight shy of Meston’s name. “It says there he fell in.”

“Well, I didn’t say he didn’t, did I? I only said he might have. By Jove,” said Weaver, looking down the report of the inquest at Steeple Tollesbury, “that’s dashed odd, isn’t it? The chappie seems to have come to his berluggy end the same night as you smashed. Did you see anything of him, by any chance?”

“No, I didn’t! Do you mean it was the same day? Let’s see. Oh, hell, what a mess!” John flung himself back on the couch and beat the cushions as if his emotions defied any other expression.

“I say, old man,” Weaver went on, after a pause, “you know I hate to bother you and all that; but I wish you’d tell me what in thunder did happen. I choked off the Johnny you bashed for a bit, and I don’t think he’s killed, which is a mercy, cos the courts are always down on manslaughter cases; but I’ve been surprised he hasn’t been along to curse, and I’d awfully like to know what to say when he _does_ come.”

“I don’t care what you say. What’s it matter? I’m sure I don’t know what happened. I just ran into him, that’s all, and I don’t remember anything more till I woke up here with hell’s own headache and pains all over me.”

“With your lights off, old boy?”

“With my what? Oh, hadn’t I put ’em on? I suppose I forgot. They’re beastly things, anyway--make the road go all jumpy. Where did I do the deed, by the way?”

“Cross-roads a couple of miles out of Epping. I don’t know what happened--I wasn’t there. I’d been up at Morton’s place, and was buzzing back to town in a hurry, when I heard a chappie hooting no end on his horn and yelling ‘Keep out of the way!’ So I slowed down, and there you all were in the devil of a mess. You must have just missed hitting him amidships--as it was, you’d slewed him all across the road and buckled his hind-wheels, and chucked the chap himself through his windscreen. He was cut about and bleeding a bit, but nothing to write home about. _Your_ bus was tipped over on its side right across the road, and you’d been thrown out and were lying there looking like a goner. You made me feel quite queer in the tummy, I do assure you; but I think, if you ask me, it was luck for you, for the grocer or whatever he was would’ve certainly killed you on the spot if you hadn’t looked dead already. As it was, he let it all off to me, and made me tell him who you were and go and feel your lamps. And they were cold as stone, so they can’t’ve been on for some time. Eventually, when he’d used all the cuss-words he knew, he helped me load you into my bus, and we hoofed yours into the ditch somehow out of the way, and I went in to Epping and got somebody to go out and bring him in--fortunately it was a jolly hot night or he might have died of pneumonia. When I got to town, I routed out Maurice, and he came along grousing, and said you weren’t killed, and I was jolly relieved, I can tell you. But I’ve been waiting for the other chap to turn up ever since; he took your name, and said he’d have the law of you. However, he hasn’t been, and I hope he won’t now.”

“I don’t care if he does,” said John. “What’s it matter, anyway?”

“I say, is anything up, really?” Weaver asked curiously. “You seem a bit pipped, I must say, for a fellow that’s been miraculously saved from pegging out. Maurice said if your skull had been a millimetre thinner you’d have been a gone coon.”

“Only I wish it had been,” John growled. “Or I wish you’d let the fellow bash my head in. Sorry, Phil, I ought to be grateful to you for saving my life, I know. Only, as it happens, I’m not interested in it at the moment.”

“Well, I’m damned if I know what’s to be done with you,” Weaver sighed.

“Does it matter?” said John, returning to the _Sunday Express_.

Late on the same afternoon, however, the problem of Mr. John Loring’s immediate future, was somewhat rudely solved. The bell of Weaver’s flat rang in a peremptory manner, and, on going to the front door, its owner found there two persons whose official manner immediately suggested plain-clothes policemen.

“Is Mr. John Loring here?” one of them asked. “The same that met with a motor accident last Friday week? Thank you. May we have a word with him, please?”

“Oh, well, that’s torn it,” thought Weaver resignedly. “I suppose the grocer fellow must have woken up at last. Poor old Johnnie, I hope they won’t give him too rough a time.” And he led the way into the sitting-room, where John still lay on the couch embedded in a débris of newspapers.

“Mr. John Loring?” the first of the two policemen asked.

“That’s my name.” John Loring did not look up.

“Mr. Loring, I am Inspector Bille, of the Essex County Constabulary.” At the name, Philip Weaver gave a weak giggle, which he immediately suppressed as its owner turned a stern official eye on him. “I have to ask you to be good enough to come with me.”

“Where to?”

“To Colonel Lockwood’s house. He is anxious to have a few words with you.”

“I’m damned if I will,” said John, without moving. “If Lockwood wants to talk to me he can come and find me, and you can tell him I said so.”

“I’m afraid that won’t do, sir,” the Inspector said politely. “Colonel Lockwood gave strict orders for you to go to his house.”

“Well, you can take ’em back again. I’m not going near the place.”

“Come, Mr. Loring, it’s no manner of use taking that tone. Orders are orders, you know, and I’ve orders to bring you back with me.”

“Hard luck on you,” said John Loring insolently. “What’ll they do to you? Take away your stripes?”

“Now, Mr. Loring, I don’t want to make it unpleasant for you----”

“Then you’d better take your face out of here quickly!”

“--but you’ll see that I must do my duty. Let me tell you that it will be much better for you if you’d come without making difficulties.”

“But look here, Inspector,” Weaver struck in, seeing the veins swell on his lodger’s forehead, “aren’t you getting rather on your high horse, don’t you know? I mean, you’re not dealing with a criminal, are you? ’Tisn’t a crime to have a motor smash, and if the chappie wants satisfaction, he might at least ask for it like a gentleman, what?”

“Motor smash?” said the Inspector. “I’m not talking about any motor smash.”

“Then what in hell’s name _are_ you talking about?”

“Mr. Loring,” said the Inspector, “are you not aware that Mr. Meston’s body was found in the Toll last Wednesday?”

John Loring threw the papers away, and turned on him with a face of fury. “Will _none_ of you let me alone?” he shouted. “What the devil does it matter to me where you found his lousy body? You don’t expect me to put on mourning for him, do you?”

“No; but Colonel Lockwood would like to ask you a few questions----”

“Devil take you and the Colonel too! I tell you I won’t answer any questions! What’s the man got to do with me?”

“Colonel Lockwood,” the Inspector persisted, “wishes to put a few questions to you about your movements last Friday night.”

The Inspector could hardly have expected an amiable reply; but even he must have been astonished by the reception of his remark. For John Loring, his face suddenly flushing a deep red, leaped from the couch and flung himself at the Inspector’s throat, muttering, “You damned swine! Say that again, will you?”

Taken aback by the sudden onslaught, the Inspector reeled against the door, and would have fallen had not his companion caught him. There ensued a sharp but short mêlée, in which Philip Weaver, utterly bewildered by the turn of events, played no part, but stood gaping against the wall while the Inspector and the policemen dealt firmly but effectively with Loring.

“Well?” the latter demanded sullenly, when he was once more back on the couch, with the policemen sitting astride his legs. “Two of you against a crock! I hope you’re satisfied. What are you going to do now? Arrest me?”

“Not unless you make it necessary, sir,” the Inspector said in a soothing tone. “I’m still in hopes you’ll come with us like a sensible man. I’ve a car outside.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I’m afraid I shall have to arrest you, sir. But, believe me, I don’t want to.”

“But what in God’s name are you going to arrest him for?” Weaver put in. The Inspector turned an extinguishing eye on him.

“That, sir, is between me and Mr. Loring. Come now, sir, are you coming?”

“I am not.” John Loring set his teeth and passed his hand over his eyes. “If you’ve anything to arrest me for, you can arrest and be damned; but I’m not going back to Steeple Tollesbury unless you drag me. And that’s my last word, so you can stop arguing.”

“Then,” the Inspector’s voice became very official, “I have to arrest you, John Loring, on the charge of being concerned in the murder of William Meston at Steeple Tollesbury on the night of Friday, August the ninth, and to warn you that anything you say may be used in evidence against you.”

“What!” The prisoner, who had sat half up, fell back with a gasp. “You don’t mean--O God, that about puts the lid on it! The dirty little swine! All right, Billy-boy, arrest away. I’ll come quietly--isn’t that the word? Only mind my head. I’ve got the most damnable headache after talking to you. Bye-bye, Phil; I’ll see you get a bit of the rope.”

And in such manner did Mr. John Loring return to the home of his forefathers.